(St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center) Nathan and Whitney Romans married at St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls, Idaho.(TWIN FALLS, Idaho) -- A Virginia woman said she has no regrets about holding her wedding in a hospitals intensive care unit so that her cancer-stricken mother, who died just days later, could attend.



It meant everything to me to be able to have my mom there, Whitney Romans, 27, told ABC News. We used to talk a lot about my wedding when I was little and I have three older brothers so she always wanted to have a wedding for me.



Romans, of Hampton, Virginia, married her husband, Nathan Romans, on Dec. 10 at St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls, Idaho.



Whitney Romans mother, Debbie Tyler, spent almost two weeks in the ICU due to complications from cancer. Tyler, who spent her life helping women facing addiction and domestic violence, died at the age of 61 just five days after watching her only daughter get married.



She always told me that she didnt want to plan my wedding but she wanted to help me with it, Whitney Romans recalled. She didnt want to make the decisions for me but Im sure she would have loved to pick out flowers and decorations and I would have loved to have her in the room with me getting ready.



Whitney Romans got ready for her wedding herself in a hospital bathroom after her impromptu wedding came together in the span of less than 10 hours.



The hospitals ICU director, Curt Egbert, received a text from a nurse while at church that Romans had asked to marry in the hospital so her mom could be there.



I left my class and got my wife who I know does really well with decor and is able to plan these things, Egbert said. We ran home and got a few of our Christmas trees and loaded them into the back of our Suburban and grabbed any decorations we could.



Egbert, who had not yet met Whitney Romans, also called his sister, who is also a nurse at St. Lukes and whose daughter recently got married.



Egberts sister not only provided wedding decorations but also got her daughters wedding dress, which fit Whitney Romans perfectly.



The hospitals food service provided fresh flowers and food for the wedding, including cake and sparkling cider. Nurses transformed the ICUs waiting area into a wedding venue, complete with a runner down the hallway for Whitney Romans to walk down.



I came up out of the elevator and walked around the corner and they had a table set up outside with flowers and a Mr. and Mrs. banner and I just started bawling, Whitney Romans said. I had no idea that anybody would do something like that.



The wedding party gathered at the door to Tylers room, with around 30 family members and hospital staff there as witnesses. The familys local pastor came to the hospital quickly to officiate.



Whitney Romans three brothers, who with her have started a GoFundMe to help cover their late mother's medical expenses, also stepped into help, from playing music to livestreaming the ceremony for family and friends.



Weve talked many times about our wedding will look like and we never imagined it like this, but I think this was more beautiful than anything we imagined it being, said Nathan Romans. I knew Whitney wanted her mom there more than anything so it was an easy decision.



Whitney Romans said the wedding went by so fast but she knows her mother took it all in.



I know that my family all loved it and my mom loved it and thats really what it was about, she said. She was awake during the ceremony and you could tell she was trying really hard to concentrate.





Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.

0108263 License for publishing multimedia online



Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349
FREMONT  A house being torn down by the town of Fremont should be on the ground, with cleanup finished, before Christmas.

Town Council President Steve Brown said at Tuesdays council meeting that the contractor, Handy Excavating, Quincy, Michigan, tentatively has the demolition and cleanup slated to be done by Friday.

The home, located at 305 W. Toledo St., was deeded to the town by the property owner earlier this year for demolition because of a mold problem in the home caused by water damage.

Board appointments and re-appointments were also completed at Tuesdays meeting.

For the Fremont Redevelopment Commission, reappointed members are Chris Snyder, Steve Brown, Steve Vaughn, Ben Roederer and John Mueller.

Kay Clark was appointed to complete Fred Lees term on the board of zoning appeals.

Jonathon Brown, Susie Swager and Steve Vaughn were reappointed to the plan commission.

Nancy Hefley was reappointed to the parks board and Steve Vaughn was reappointed to the tree board.

The town park will also be receiving new equipment, as clerk-treasurer Kathy Parsons confirmed during the meeting that three new pieces have been ordered.

More information about different boards and commissions in Fremont can be found on the town website, townoffremont.org.
PORT JEFFERSON, N.Y., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Northwell Health President & CEO Michael J. Dowling and Mather Hospital President Kenneth Roberts will sign an agreement today for Mather to become a full member of the health system. The merger was approved in late November by both the Mather Board of Directors and by the Northwell Health Board of Trustees, and takes effect in January.

Mather will become Northwell's 23rd hospital and its fifth in Suffolk County, in addition to Huntington Hospital, Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead and South Oaks Hospital in Amityville.

"We're thrilled to have Mather as part of the Northwell Health family," said Mr. Dowling. "Mather is a highly respected community teaching hospital with a long and proud history of delivering exceptional care to residents of Suffolk County's north shore. We're committed to working collaboratively with Mather to strengthen and expand its clinical services, ensuring that the hospital will continue to fulfill its mission as a full-service community hospital."

"This month Mather Hospital celebrates 88 years of service to our community. So it is auspicious that at this time Mather officially becomes a member hospital of Northwell Health. This is a once-in-a-century event that fortifies us for future growth," noted Mather President Kenneth Roberts. "While we are now a member of one of the country's premier health systems, our mission remains the same  to provide our community care to the best of our ability, showing compassion and respect and treating each patient in the manner we would wish for our loved ones."

In July, Mather President Roberts and Chairman Kenneth A. Jacoppi signed a letter of intent to join Northwell as part of a long-term strategy to ensure advanced health care for Mather's communities and the future growth of the hospital. Over the next five months, representatives from Mather and Northwell were involved in due-diligence discussions and negotiated final terms of the agreement.

As a community teaching hospital, Mather provides state-of-the-art care in bariatrics, neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology, robotic surgery, breast health, mental health and emergency services. It also operates the advanced radiosurgery program Precision CyberKnife of New York. Mather's Graduate Medical Education program offers residencies in internal medicine, psychiatry, radiology and transitional year. Mather Hospital has more than 2,600 employees and has more than 600 staff and affiliated physicians. The hospital cared for more than 12,500 inpatients and over 40,000 emergency patients last year. Underscoring its clinical expertise, Mather physicians performed more than 3,800 inpatient surgeries and 10,500 outpatient surgeries.



As part of an extensive search process, Mather Hospital had held discussions with several health systems regarding possible affiliation since early 2016. Mather had been one of only two hospitals on Long Island that had not joined or announced plans to join a larger system.

Mather opened in December 1929 after local ship maker John T. Mather left a bequest to build the first hospital in the Town of Brookhaven. Today Mather is recognized as a MagnetTM designated hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, which recognizes healthcare organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. Mather is also one of two Long Island hospitals to earn four stars from The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for patient experience, safety, and timely and effective care measures.

About Northwell Health

Northwell Health is New York State's largest health care provider and private employer, with 23 hospitals, more than 600 outpatient facilities and nearly 15,000 affiliated physicians. We care for over two million people annually in the New York metro area and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Our 63,500 employees  15,000-plus nurses and 4,000 employed doctors, including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners  are working to change health care for the better. We're making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. We're training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Graduate Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu.

Contacts: Nancy Uzo, Mather

631-476-2723/[email protected]

Terry Lynam, Northwell

516-321-6702/[email protected]

SOURCE Northwell Health

Related Links

https://www.northwell.edu


SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MightyHive, the premier Programmatic Solutions Partner, has appointed two industry veterans, Ming Wu and Leah Kim, to the new roles of Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer respectively to continue the company's rapid global growth and expansion of the MightyHive brand. A new breed of marketing services provider and one of the largest and fastest-growing programmatic buyers in the world, the company has doubled in size over the last year and counts some of the world's leading brands, including Sprint and Yamaha Motor Corporation as customers.

"As we enter our next phase of growth, we are extremely fortunate to have Ming and Leah join our leadership team. Ming is one of the pioneers of programmatic and probably the only person in the world who has both built a large agency trading desk and then taken programmatic in-house on the client side as a CMO. Leah brings vast industry experience from both the technology and agency world and is the perfect person to lead our marketing efforts around the world," said Pete Kim, CEO of MightyHive.

Ming Wu, a digital marketing veteran and the former President of Accuen at Omnicom Media Group, joins as the company's CRO. He most recently served as Executive Vice President of Marketing at SolarCity, prior to its acquisition by Tesla. In addition to his extensive marketing background, he brings to MightyHive experience in enterprise software sales and systems integration.

"The digital marketing industry is at a crossroads and experiencing a level of transformation I haven't seen since digital first took hold, in no small part due to the rise of programmatic," said Ming Wu, CRO. "MightyHive's offerings empower marketers to take control of their technology, safeguard their first-party data, and reap the full benefit of media efficiency gains in a fully transparent environment. We represent a new way of doing business for marketers, and we're seeing a wave of demand from leading brands."

Leah Kim joins MightyHive as CMO, leaving her post as Accuen's Global Senior Director of Marketing, where she was instrumental in shaping the brand into a symbol of the programmatic industry. She is a recognized thought-leader to the world's top marketers and brings to the company deep marketing technology and services experience from previous roles at AppNexus, Microsoft, and AOL.

"Working with data-driven marketers and agencies in the programmatic space since its early days gives me a unique perspective on their needs and complex challenges," said Leah Kim, CMO. "Joining the all-star team at MightyHive is a great opportunity to help its world-class clients every step of the way on their path to programmatic self-sufficiency."

About MightyHive

MightyHive is the premier Programmatic Solutions Partner for forward-thinking marketers and agencies, wherever they are on the path to programmatic self-sufficiency. MightyHive empowers marketers to take control of their digital futures through world-class support and service of advertising platform technologies. We are defining a new services space for marketers that combines enterprise systems integration, and media and advertising technology expertise. Our offerings include programmatic insourcing, full-service management, and strategic advisory services. One of the largest and fastest-growing programmatic buyers in the world, MightyHive has helped hundreds of clients adopt programmatic, and has a global presence with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Sydney.

Jenny Mulholland

Gull Rock PR/East Coast

732-245-0021

[email protected]

Andrea Boren

Gull Rock PR/West Coast

650-644-1700

[email protected]

SOURCE MightyHive

Related Links

http://mightyhive.com


NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Dec. 21st, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Santa's sleigh might be the perfect ride for deliveries in America's snow belt, but for Southern California this year, Santa opted for something a little more hip  and dare we say  a little more Cali: his own, private helicopter. Donated for the day and piloted by the MANGIC Foundation's Mike Manclark, the helicopter picked up Santa from Costa Mesa Police headquarters where they flew to the Balearic Center Park in Costa Mesa, delighting children of our brave Costa Mesa Police Department of all ages with Holiday gifts, lunch and treats.

The gifts were all donated as part of the Costa Mesa Police Department's annual toy drive, which provides gifts to the children of the department's active duty officers. A 25-year tradition, the toy drive procures toys for children of all ages and then distributes them in spectacular fashion to ensure the children of the area's first responders have a Christmas they'll remember for years to come.

Children of Costa Mesa all met with parents in the park thinking they were going to have a group lunch. To their surprise, a helicopter approached the park and the children saw a white mitten begin to wave. The children became extremely excited when they realized Santa was landing in the park. Once the helicopter landed safely and Santa exited, the children ran up and greeted Santa with hugs.

With the help of the police and Manclark, presents were set up for multiple tables and lunch was delivered. Santa then spoke with each child one-on-one and gave out gifts. Lunch was served and the children were able to eat with Santa until he got back on the helicopter and flew away. The experience was unique for the children and the gesture was truly appreciated by the parents.

"The MANGIC Foundation has been supporting this amazing event for the past 10 years, and it's an absolute delight to see the reaction we get from the kids and their families as we roar in from above," said Mike Manclark, Founder of the MANGIC Foundation and owner/pilot of Santa's flying limo for the day. "Christmas is a time to make great family memories, and that's what we're hoping to achieve by helping Santa out with this event. We want to create a little magic they won't soon forget. Our police do so much for us and it feels so good to be able to do something for them and their families."

Launched in 2012 by successful entrepreneur Mike Manclark, the MANGIC Foundation believes in hands-on work that gives people a hand up and making a tangible difference in the lives of those they help. Every year, the MANGIC foundation supports dozens of non-profits and causes that support children, armed forces, and first responders, along with families in need.

For more information on the MANGIC Foundation and how you can get involved, visit www.mangic.com.

Media Contact:

Eric Blankenship

[email protected]

786-332-6554

SOURCE MANGIC Foundation

Related Links

https://mangic.com


The Corporation gains two more gold deposits in the vicinity of the Beacon and Camflo mills

MONTREAL, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - MONARQUES GOLD CORPORATION ("Monarques" or the "Corporation") (TSX.V:MQR) (OTCMKTS:MRQRF) (FRANKFURT:MR7) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Agnico Eagle Mines Limited ("Agnico") (NYSE:AEM, TSX:AEM) to acquire the McKenzie Break and Swanson properties (see our new property map covering close to 300 km2), which both host gold deposits near Monarques' wholly-owned Beacon and Camflo mills. The terms of the agreement are described at the end of this press release.

"This is an excellent transaction for Monarques, as it could significantly increase the resource available for processing at our Beacon mill," said Jean-Marc Lacoste, President and Chief Executive Officer of Monarques. "The previous owners made significant investments on these properties, including building ramps to access the two deposits. Furthermore, both deposits have the benefit of lying close to surface. The next step for Monarques will be to confirm the historical estimate of the two deposits in line with NI 43-101 and explore the options for extracting those resources. We will also try to determine the potential for increasing the resources of the deposits, as most of the drilling done on the properties was at a shallow depth."

McKenzie Break Property

The McKenzie Break property hosts a high-grade gold deposit that lies just 40 kilometres north of the Beacon mill and 25 kilometres north of Val-d'Or, Quebec. It consists of nine mineral claims covering a total area of 336.3 hectares, and is accessible year-round via Route 397 and a gravel road. The property is also about nine kilometres south of the rail link between Barraute and Senneterre. The property has surface and underground infrastructure, including a ramp providing access to the deposit, 80 metres below surface.

The McKenzie Break deposit has a historical estimate of 813,871 tonnes grading an average 6.63 g/t Au for a total of approximately 173,500 ounces of gold (source: Technical report on the McKenzie Break property, Claude P. Larouche, July 15, 2007). This historical estimate was realized by Placer Dome in 1991 and was calculated using the polygonal method and all the data collected from the green and orange zones and a cut-off grade of 1.70 g/t Au. Close to 60% of those ounces are located in the green zone, which grades an average of 8.49 g/t Au. In 1994, following the drilling of 67 additional holes in high-grade areas identified by Placer Dome's mineral inventory, Western Quebec Mines performed a new resource estimate for two of the six lenses interpreted. Both lenses were drilled on a tight grid (30 x 30 metres) to optimize the resource estimate. This new calculation, based on the polygonal method and using a cut-off grade of 3.5 g/t Au, shows a historical estimate of 161,348 tonnes grading 10.86 g/t Au, or approximately 56,300 ounces of gold, classified as indicated, and 24,695 tonnes grading 5.23 g/t Au, or approximately 4,200 ounces of gold, classified as inferred (Mannard, 1994). These estimates are not supported by an official technical report. A Monarques qualified person has not performed sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources as defined by NI 43-101, and the Corporation therefore does not consider them as current mineral resources. Although the historical estimates may not be reliable, the Corporation nevertheless believes that they provide an indication of the property's potential and are relevant for any future exploration program. In order for the historical estimates to become current resources, the Corporation must carry out new drilling on the property, and issue a new mineral resource estimate pursuant to NI 43-101.

A total of 37,750 metres of diamond drilling coming from 258 holes was carried out on the property. Drilling was concentrated on the green and orange zones. Most of the holes were shallow, with an average length of 150 metres per hole.The mineralization consists of multiple narrow veins, some of which are high-grade with a nugget effect.

In addition, metallurgical testing on samples involving gravity separation followed by direct cyanidation yielded a recovery rate of up to 99.5% (Source: Laboratoire LTM, July 2010).

Swanson Property

The Swanson property hosts a gold deposit located 65 kilometres from the Beacon mill and 12 kilometres northeast of Barraute, Quebec. It consists of one mineral lease and 129 claims covering a total area of 5,111 hectares, as well as a 500-metre ramp down to a depth of 80 metres. The property is accessible year-round via Route 367 and a gravel road. A railway track also crosses the property, as does a transmission line.

The Swanson deposit contains a historical estimate of 814,600 tonnes grading an average of 3.71 g/t Au, classified as inferred, for a total of approximately 91,200 ounces of gold. The historical estimate was realized by Lac Minerals in 1985. Previous operators concluded that there was potential to mine a smaller resource via an open pit. These estimates are not supported by a formal technical report. A Monarques qualified person has not performed sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources as defined by NI 43-101, and the Corporation therefore does not consider them as current mineral resources. Although the historical estimates may not be reliable, the Corporation nevertheless believes that they provide an indication of the property's potential and are relevant for any future exploration program. In order for the historical estimates to become current resources, the Corporation must carry out new drilling on the property, and issue a new mineral resource estimate pursuant to NI 43-101.

Terms of the agreement

Monarques can acquire the McKenzie Break and Swanson properties by paying Agnico a total of CA $4,600,000, including CA $1,600,000 payable in cash and CA $3,000,000 payable in common shares of the Corporation over a four-year period. Payments are as follows:

At signature of the agreement: CA $600,000 in common shares;

in common shares; On the first anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares;

in cash and CA in common shares; On the second anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares;

in cash and CA in common shares; On the third anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares; and

in cash and CA in common shares; and On the fourth anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares.

In addition, Agnico is entitled to a 1.5% net smelter return royalty on each property. Monarques can reduce each of these royalties to 1.0% by paying Agnico CA $750,000.

Concurrent with this transaction, the Corporation bought back a 1.5% net smelter return royalty on the McKenzie Break property in exchange for US $50,000 in cash and 600,000 common shares of Monarques.

These transactions are subject to regulatory approval.

The technical and scientific content of this press release has been reviewed and approved by Kenneth Williamson, M.Sc., P.Geo, the Corporation's qualified person under National Instrument 43101.

ABOUT MONARQUES GOLD CORPORATION

Monarques Gold Corp (TSX-V: MQR) is an emerging gold producer focused on pursuing growth through its large portfolio of high-quality projects in the Abitibi mining camp in Quebec, Canada. The Corporation currently owns close to 300 km of gold properties (see map), including the Beaufor Mine, the Croinor Gold (see video), Wasamac, McKenzie Break and Swanson advanced projects, and the Camflo and Beacon mills, as well as six promising exploration projects. It also offers custom milling services out of its 1,600 tonne-per-day Camflo mill. Monarques enjoys a strong financial position and has more than 150 skilled employees who oversee its operating, development and exploration activities.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements in this press release involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Monarques' actual results, performance and achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied therein. 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 press release.

SOURCE Monarques Gold Corporation
MCKINNEY, Texas, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second year in a row, MyTelemedicine has earned a place on Entrepreneur Magazine's Entrepreneur 360 List as one of the "Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America."

We did it again Entrepreneur 360

Based on a comprehensive analysis of U.S.-based private ventures, the Entrepreneur 360 List features organizations that demonstrate mastery of four metrics: innovation, growth, leadership, and impact. MyTelemedicine, a national telemedicine software and service provider, was recognized for leveraging its proprietary technology platform to meet a critical need in the marketplace and become a leader in the telehealth industry while maintaining a culture of creativity and excellence.

"We are thrilled to once again be highlighted by Entrepreneur Magazine for our efforts to make access to quality healthcare easier and more affordable," says Rey Colon, CEO and Founder of MyTelemedicine. "The ranking essentially quantifies everything that happens behind the scenes, and affirms that what we are doing in terms of our business strategy is on point."

MyTelemedicine launched in December 2014 with a proprietary, HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform that works in the cloud and lets healthcare providers consult with patients remotely. The company's advanced API technology also lets hospitals and other health care providers offer a customized telemedicine experience. Most recently, MyTelemedicine introduced Access a Doctor, a suite of products that connects members with U.S. licensed doctors 24/7 via phone, email or video conference, and also provides access to specialists, counselors, healthcare advocates and a prescription savings program. To simplify the enrollment process and management of Access a Doctor for employers, MyTelemedicine this fall also launched its user-friendly SimpoAdmin telehealth benefit administration platform.

"One of our core values is to innovate with purpose," says Colon, who earlier this year was selected to participate in the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative. The company's commitment to bridging the gap between healthcare and technology has allowed MyTelemedicine to service just under one million consumers nationwide in just under two years, and the numbers are growing daily.

Honorees for the Entrepreneur 360 List were identified based on the results from a comprehensive study of independently-owned companies, using a proprietary algorithm and advanced analytics. For additional details on the Entrepreneur 360 List and the companies recognized, visit: entrepreneur.com/360companies

About Us

MyTelemedicine a Digital Healthcare Technology company has developed a proprietary, HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform built in the IBM Cloud that allows healthcare providers to consult with patients remotely. Our Advanced API technology allows third parties to integrate and offer a customized telemedicine experience to support their brand identity. Physicians can perform on-demand consultations with members anywhere via telephone and video technology. Patients get advice, recommendations and a diagnosis, which may include a prescription for common illnesses. For more information please visit www.mytelemedicine.com.

Media Contact:

Chelsea Zaragoza

469-640-6101

[email protected]

SOURCE MyTelemedicine

Related Links

http://www.mytelemedicine.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA) praised sponsors and co-sponsors for their consistent leadership over the years that ensured fire sprinklers were included in the tax reform legislation passed by the House and Senate yesterday. The Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act has been pushed for years. Fire protection has now been included and overall fire and life safety systems have joined other tax incentives such as roofing, HVAC and security alarm systems.

"This accomplishment for fire and life safety has been 14 years in the making. To say we are excited is an understatement," explained Shane Ray, NFSA President. "Our NFSA team goal was to support Congressman Jim Langevin and all Congressional Leaders over the years who sponsored and co-sponsored the bi-partisan legislation that was first filed following the tragic Station Nightclub fire in Rhode Island that claimed 100 lives in early 2003."

The NFSA team was led by long-time fire safety advocate Jim Dalton, who spent many days over the past 14 years meeting with legislators, their staffers, and fire service stakeholders who also championed this legislation. He was joined throughout this process by Vickie Pritchett, NFSA Director of Outreach and Government Relations.

"This provision in the tax reform bill will save lives," added Dalton, NFSA Senior Policy Advisor. "We are thankful for our partners from the Congressional Fire Services Institute, International Association of Fire Chiefs, International Association of Fire Fighters, National Fire Protection Association, National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, National Volunteer Fire Council, Common Voices, Security Industry Association, Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, and others who championed this tax incentive."

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contained several critically important provisions which will provide significant incentives for property owners to install fire sprinklers. These include:

Small businesses will now be able to fully expense installation of fire sprinklers under section 179 of the tax code up to a cap of $1 million in each year of expense. This will allow for the retrofit and upgrading of numerous occupancies such as nightclubs. In addition, small businesses that may need to borrow money to pay for the retrofit will be able to fully deduct the interest expense on the loan.

in each year of expense. This will allow for the retrofit and upgrading of numerous occupancies such as nightclubs. In addition, small businesses that may need to borrow money to pay for the retrofit will be able to fully deduct the interest expense on the loan. Larger entities can fully expense capital expenses over the next five years. Starting in 2023, the amount that can be expensed will slowly taper down. This part of the provision means that fire chiefs and local policy officials can now ensure business owners have five years for full expensing, which we believe will provide the opportunity for many high-rise and other high-risk occupancy buildings to improve their fire safety features.

Tragic fires and significant property loss continue to plague our country. From President Harry Truman's report on fire prevention in 1947 to President Nixon's U.S. National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control which produced America Burning, progress has been made in America. However, approximately 3,000 still die annually due to structure fires. Our fear is that this number could rise. The American Fire Service has fought for years to establish incentives for business and property owners to be able to do the right thing. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provides these incentives. This legislation, coupled with the latest model building and fire codes from the International Code Council (ICC) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), will lead to a safer America.

About the National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA): NFSA was founded in 1905 and wants to create a more fire safe world, and works to heighten the awareness of the importance of fire sprinkler systems from homes to high-rise and all occupancies in between. The Association is an inclusive organization made up of dedicated and committed members of a progressive life-saving industry. This industry manufactures, designs, supplies, installs, inspects, and services the world's most effective system in saving lives and property from uncontrolled structural fires.

For more information about fire sprinklers, how they work and access to additional resources and information, visit www.nfsa.org for the latest material, statistics and a dedicated team of fire safety advocates ready to serve all stakeholders in order to fulfill the vision of a safer world.

Contact: Vickie Pritchett

(615)533-0305

[email protected]

SOURCE National Fire Sprinkler Association

Related Links

http://www.nfsa.org


ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nuctech, a leading global supplier of security products and solutions, recently held a ceremony in Rotterdam, Netherlands, announcing its newly launched branch, will become a global innovative center. "We hope to communicate more with our international peers, we will make progress in the industry and support the implementation and development of the Belt and Road Initiative," Chen Zhiqiang, the President of Nuctech stated.

A series of the latest products and services were displayed at the ceremony, and more than 100 representatives from Netherlands and other European countries attended. During the event, ideas were exchanged on application of cutting-edge technologies such as AI and big data, as well as the changes they might bring to the development of the industry.

"Our customers in Europe share the same value with Nuctech that science and technology will promote social development. We believe that craftsman's spirit can produce products of higher quality and also provide us the power to pursue innovation. Therefore, our new agency in the Netherlands will be committed to creating platforms for technology innovation, international marketing and after-sales service to deliver better services to our global customers." Chen Zhiqiang stated, "We hope to build an open mechanism of mutual learning and mutual benefit with our European customers, institutions and universities, and enterprises, and create a better and safer world together."

The mayor of Rotterdam welcomed Nuctech's new branch in the Netherlands. At the ceremony, he stated that the world more dangerous, and companies like Nuctech would well resolve these problems with technology innovation, and contribute to building a safer society.

About:

Founded in 1997, Nuctech has developed more than 200 types of security products including cargo/vehicle inspection system, parcel/baggage inspection system, human body inspection system, explosives and narcotics detector, liquid inspection system, radioactive materials monitors, etc. Maximizing its core competitive advantages of technical innovation, Nuctech reserves all intellectual property rights of its core technologies in the fields of computed tomography (CT), X-ray radiation imaging, trace detection of explosives & drugs, and radioactive materials monitoring. Currently, Nuctech possesses global manufacturing capacity and has production bases in China, Europe, and Latin America providing advanced technology, superb products and integrated solutions to customers from more than 150 countries and areas in the globe.

SOURCE Nuctech Company Limited
CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The French Pastry School will graduate new chefs from its Pastry and Baking (L'Art de la Patisserie) and Cake (L'Art du Gateau) programs on Friday, December 22, 2017 in front of hundreds of guests and family. The 9:00 a.m. ceremony at the Union League Club (65 W. Jackson Blvd., 2nd Floor) will be followed by a reception at the school (226 W. Jackson Blvd., 2nd Floor) where the graduates will showcase their expertise and learnings through an impressive and visually-stunning Grand Buffet presentation. The presentation will include whimsical celebration cakes with elements of contemporary cake design such as painted, stained glass motifs and delicate, life-like flower arrangements; signature plated desserts created with an extensive array of bold, colorful, and innovative techniques that highlight sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami flavors; towering, world-class chocolate sculptures; and stunning pulled and blown sugar masterpieces with fantasy-inspired pulled sugar flowers and ribbons.

"We congratulate our students on their dedication to excellence as they embark on or continue their career by opening their own small business or joining great institutions," said Chef Sebastien Canonne, Co-founder of the school.

The French Pastry School's mission is to offer an innovative, intensive education in which students are equipped to achieve excellence in the pastry, baking, and confectionery arts. Students from all over the world learn hundreds of recipes and techniques taught by world-renowned and award-winning chefs, all in state-of-the-art kitchens. They are taught a broad range of pastry and baking including: Breads & Breakfast Pastries, Sugar and Chocolate Confectionery, Ice Cream and Sorbet, Plated Desserts, Chocolate and Sugar Decoration and Sculpture, Petits Fours, and Celebration Cake Making and Decorating.

"We teach students how to create perfect pastries but are also heavily invested in their careers," said Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, Co-founder of the school. With small classes, an 18-1 student-faculty ratio, and 7 job opportunities per graduate, The French Pastry School has continued to provide well-trained professionals to the food industry since 1995. It is the only culinary school of its kind in North America.

For more information, please see www.frenchpastryschool.com and/or contact us at [email protected].

The French Pastry School

Founded in 1995, The French Pastry School of Kennedy-King College at City Colleges of Chicago is the only major culinary school in North America dedicated to all things sweet and baked. FPS provides hands-on education taught entirely in our state-of-the-art kitchens by world-renowned chefs, using the latest equipment and finest ingredients. Co-founders, Sebastien Canonne, M.O.F., and Jacquy Pfeiffer, James Beard Award-winning author, are both recipients of the French Legion of Honour Award, which is the most prestigious award given by the French government. Both chefs were featured in the "Kings of Pastry" documentary filmed by Oscar winner D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

CONTACT:

Emily Lo

312.726.2419

[email protected]

SOURCE The French Pastry School

Related Links

http://frenchpastryschool.com


SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As Sempra's Aliso Canyon natural gas reserve sprang another leak this week, reigniting nosebleeds and headaches among nearby LA County residents, Consumer Watchdog released an animation featuring Governor Jerry Brown and an updated "Twelve Days of Christmas" song highlighting his support for fossil fuels and dirty energy policies.

The remake of the classy Christmas song highlights that while Brown has circled the world as an advocate against climate change, he has stood behind the fossil fuel boom in California. Consumer Watchdog says that Brown's last year in office should be focused on correcting past mistakes and his new year's resolution should be to shut down fossil fuel infrastructure to truly address the cause of global warming.

Listen to the song and watch the animation here.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/S9COeUBiNkE

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/consumerwatchdog/the-twelve-days-of-jerry

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/248356689

(Lyrics & animation by Consumer Watchdog, music & vocals by Linda Good)

Lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Jerry"

On the first day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: a stacked board of the PUC.

On the second day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the third day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: a three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the sixth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the seventh day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the eighth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: expanded offshore drilling, stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: the biggest methane well blowout, expanded offshore drilling, stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the tenth day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: fired safety inspectors, the biggest methane well blowout, expanded offshore drilling, stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the 11th day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: more carbon emissions, fired safety inspectors, the biggest methane well blowout, expanded offshore drilling, stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

On the 12th day of Christmas, Jerry gave to thee: cap-and-trade for kickbacks, more carbon emissions, fired safety inspectors, the biggest methane well blowout, expanded offshore drilling, stopped regulating fracking, a cush job for his sister, needless refineries, a fossil fuel boom, three-billion-dollar nuke plant, power line fires and a stacked board of the PUC.

Each stanza's background:

1. Stacked Board of the PUC: Every single commissioner who sits on the pro-utility Public Utilities Commission is a former top aide or appointee of the Governor's with a history of pro-industry policies. The Brown Public Utilities Commission has granted unjustified rate hikes to major investor-owned utilities, supported the fossil fuel natural gas building boom and avoided public investigations into responsibility for utility disasters. See: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article167881277.html

2. Power Line Fires: Brown vetoed a bill last year that would have forced the PUC to prioritize utility mapping of power lines in hazardous areas to determine the clearing of brush near utility lines that sparked wild fires. PG&E is now under investigation for how power lines touched off wine country fires that killed 44 people and left thousands homeless. See: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Failure-to-adequately-regulate-utilities-helped-12292511.php

3. $3-Billion-Dollar Nuke Plant: Brown met with the CEO of Southern California Edison for two hours in February 2013, just a month before an illegal deal was struck between former PUC President Michael Peevey, now under criminal investigation, and an Edison executive assigning 70 percent of the $4.7 billion tab to ratepayers to close its leaky San Onofre nuclear power plant. Brown and his PUC backed the bailout deal despite the unethical and potential criminal conduct that led to it. Litigation over the settlement terms and the release of emails between Brown's office and the PUC is ongoing.

4. Fossil Fuel Boom: Oil drilling in California has risen 23 percent between 2009, the year before Brown was elected Governor, and the present. On Brown's watch, ratepayers have been saddled with billions of dollars in unneeded fossil fuel-powered electric generating capacity, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation.

5. Needless Refineries: Brown's signature legislation, SB 350, upped the state's renewable energy requirements, but sacrificed a provision to slash the use of petroleum in cars in half by 2030. Slashing the use of petroleum in cars would lessen demand for gasoline and thus the need for refineries in the state.

6. Cush Job For His Sister: Sempra Energy, parent of Southern California Gas and Aliso Canyon gas reserve owner, has paid Jerry Brown's sister Kathleen Brown more than $1 million in cash, stock and other benefits to serve on its board. Sempra has benefited from favorable treatment by regulators such as re-opening the Aliso Canyon natural gas reserve without knowing what caused the biggest methane blowout in US history.

7. Stopped Regulating Fracking: Unlike New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Brown has refused to ban fracking. SB 4, California's first law on fracking provided for minimal disclosure and passed only after a moratorium on fracking until it could be proven safe was dropped. It allowed the rubberstamping of fracking permits and mandated a study on the dangers of fracking whose results Brown has largely ignored. See: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/report/how-green-jerry-brown

8. Expanded Offshore Drilling: Though Brown criticized the Trump Administration for allowing expansion of oil drilling in federal waters off of the California Coast, hundreds of permits have been issued for offshore oil drilling in existing leases in state waters under Brown.

9. Biggest Methane Well Blowout: Brown has protected Sempra and its subsidiary Southern California Gas from public scrutiny via an emergency declaration on the Aliso Canyon well blowout. The carefully worded declaration assured the public that a PUC "investigation" was underway. The public would get only the results. The public is still waiting.

10. Fired Safety Inspectors: In 2011, Brown fired two top oil well safety regulators at the request of Occidental Petroleum and its attorney Gray Davis. The regulators were trying to enforce rules on the books that required oil companies to prove their wells wouldn't leak prior to obtaining permits, enraging them. Thousands of protected aquifers were poisoned as a result.

11. More Carbon Emissions: Carbon emissions from the transportation and refining sectors rose in California last year despite a cut in carbon emissions of nearly 5 percent in 2016. A surge in hydropower in the wake of drought and more renewable energy coming on line was responsible for the cut, but not regulation of carbon emissions. See: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/03/opinion-gov-brown-should-stop-protecting-the-oil-industry/

12. Cap-And-Trade For Kickbacks: This year, when California extended its cap-and-trade program limiting carbon emissions via setting of limits and trading of pollution permits, Governor Brown allowed the oil and gas industry to write the rules maintaining so many loopholes and exemptions that the program is guaranteed not to work.

For more on Jerry Brown's record on fossil fuels, see:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/report/browns-dirty-hands

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/PowerPlay

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog

Related Links

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org


LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Dutch Shell plc (the "Company") (NYSE: RDS.A) (NYSE: RDS.B) has been notified that following the payment of the interim dividend on December 20, 2017 in respect of the third quarter of 2017, the following Persons Discharging Managerial Responsibilities ("PDMRs") acquired notional dividend shares under the Long-term Incentive Plan ("LTIP") and Deferred Bonus Plan ("DBP") as applicable, as set out below. Details of the LTIP and DBP can be found in the Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F ended December 31, 2016 (www.shell.com/annualreport).

PDMR Date Acquired Share Type Number of notional dividend shares acquired Price per Share Ben van Beurden 20 December 2017 RDSA 13,426.71 EUR 27.32 Jessica Uhl 20 December 2017 RDS.A 1,279.63 USD 65.10 John Abbott 20 December 2017 RDSB 3,691.80 GBP 24.32 Harry Brekelmans 20 December 2017 RDSA 3,484.29 EUR 27.32 Andrew Brown 20 December 2017 RDSB 3,592.28 GBP 24.32 Ronan Cassidy 20 December 2017 RDSB 1,845.35 GBP 24.32 Donny Ching 20 December 2017 RDSA 2,619.25 EUR 27.32 Maarten Wetselaar 20 December 2017 RDSA 2,318.91 EUR 27.32

The Notification of Dealing Form for each PDMR can be found below.

This notification is made in accordance with Article 19 of the EU Market Abuse Regulation.

Mark Edwards

Deputy Company Secretary

LEI number of Royal Dutch Shell plc: 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70

Classification: Additional regulated information required to be disclosed under the laws of a Member State.

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Ben Last Name(s) van Beurden 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Chief Executive Officer Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument A ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MLX29 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency EUR Price 27.32 Volume 13,426.71 Total 366,817.72 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 13,426.71 27.32 366,817.72 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Jessica Last Name(s) Uhl 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Chief Financial Officer Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument A American Depository Shares (RDS.A) Identification Code US7802592060 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP Currency USD Price 65.10 Volume 1,279.63 Total 83,303.91 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 1,279.63 65.10 83,303.91 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) John Last Name(s) Abbott 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Downstream Director Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument B ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MM408 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency GBP Price 24.32 Volume 3,691.80 Total 89,784.58 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 3,691.80 24.32 89,784.58 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Harry Last Name(s) Brekelmans 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Projects & Technology Director Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument A ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MLX29 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency EUR Price 27.32 Volume 3,484.29 Total 95,190.80 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 3,484.29 27.32 95,190.80 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Andrew Last Name(s) Brown 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Upstream Director Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument B ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MM408 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency GBP Price 24.32 Volume 3,592.28 Total 87,364.25 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 3,592.28 24.32 87,364.25 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Ronan Last Name(s) Cassidy 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Chief Human Resources & Corporate Officer Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument B ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MM408 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency GBP Price 24.32 Volume 1,845.35 Total 44,878.91 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 1,845.35 24.32 44,878.91 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Donny Last Name(s) Ching 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Legal Director Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument A ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MLX29 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency EUR Price 27.32 Volume 2,619.25 Total 71,557.91 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 2,619.25 27.32 71,557.91 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated First Name(s) Maarten Last Name(s) Wetselaar 2. Reason for the notification Position/status Integrated Gas and New Energies Director Initial notification/ amendment Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor Full name of the entity Royal Dutch Shell plc Legal Entity Identifier code 21380068P1DRHMJ8KU70 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted Description of the financial instrument A ordinary shares of 0.07 each Identification Code GB00B03MLX29 Nature of the transaction Acquisition of notional dividend shares under the LTIP and DBP Currency EUR Price 27.32 Volume 2,318.91 Total 63,352.62 Aggregated information Volume Price Total 2,318.91 27.32 63,352.62 Date of transaction 20/12/2017 Place of transaction Outside a trading venue

ENQUIRIES



Shell Media Relations

International, UK, European Press: +44(0) 20-7934-5550

Shell Investor Relations

Europe: + 31-70-377-4540

United States: +1-832 -337-2034



SOURCE Royal Dutch Shell plc
Santa Claus has been preparing all year for Christmas Day, which is set to take place Monday amid a trans-continental sleigh ride.

Children need to be ready Christmas Eve to be sleeping in their beds when Santa comes, otherwise he will not be able to drop off any presents.

Now that the kids are bored of reading this article, we can get on with the real article and stop with the disguise.

Rex Carter has been one of Santas helpers in Black River Falls for 25 years, getting his start in 1992 after he was asked to be Santa for the Black River Memorial Hospital Christmas Tea.

I wore the beard and it was just seeing the mostly joy of the kids and the parents seeing their child, Carter said about why he likes being Santa.

Over the last 25 years, Carter has made special appearances as Santa at the hospital, daycare center, library, banks and the Christkindl Festival.

As Santa, Carter has two rules when interacting with kids: dont lie and also dont promise them anything.

First of all you cant bald face lie to a child, but there is the little white lie, Carter said

One of Carters favorite white lies is when children ask him where his reindeer are, to which he says they are at a farm outside of town because he cant trust the hunters.

They will shoot anything, Carter added with a smile. So you have to stretch the truth a bit.

Carter attributes his quick-witted personality to being a local actor in some plays.

I was a member of the Falls Players and they didnt have improv, but you did learn to perform and that is what you are doing. The child is the center, but you are also the center of attention, Carter said.

Carter is also known to talk his way out of being placed in a hard spot by children including when asked if he is the real Santa. His response is always, Well do I look like the real Santa?

Carter said children will often fill in the blanks and move on, which is why he loves the innocence of the children that sit on his lap every year.

One time Carter went to someones house as Santa, and when he left the kids showed their true innocence.

The next day when I came to work the grandmother said that after I had left, the kids went to the window and were looking for the reindeer leaving, Carter said. That is how innocent kids are.

Carter becomes Santa every year because of the kids, but he said being Santa is also about the parents and getting a picture for them, which can be hard to do sometimes.

Seeing Santa is a scary thing, Carter said. There are a lot of parents who come and dont expect to be in the picture because at home they have prepared the child.

Carter has noticed that having a bench next to Santa can help sometimes so the parents can sit with the child and act as a buffer.

Being scared sometimes also makes children forget their list completely. Carter has seen where kids will copy what the kid in front of them said when this happens.

While the kids can ask for many things, Carters wife Mary is always wondering about two specific answers, I always ask him what was the saddest thing and what was the cutest thing.

While most kids ask for toys, sometimes the childrens requests are much more heartfelt.

Ive had children say that they would like their dad back from Iraq. That just about brings a tear in your eye, Carter said.

Besides the answers kids bring him every time he is Santa, Carter especially enjoys watching children grow up year after year.

When you see the kids every year, you kind of see how the kids grow up. One year they may be a little timid to Santa, but next year they might be a little bit better, Carter said.

Carter is also currently a school bus driver for the Black River Falls School District, which posed an interesting question one day when he had his beard grown out.

I was a sub bus driver at that time and I had these little kids that wanted to be elves, Carter said adding that he then asked if they were good at building things. They fell right into that.

Despite all of the children he has been Santa for over the last 25 years, Carter is now excited that he can be Santa for his granddaughter Savannah. I got to be her first Santa.
HARRISBURG, Pa., Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Officers of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, President Rick Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder, issued the following statement on the passage of the GOP Tax Plan:

"Today, Senator Pat Toomey along with all twelve Republican Congressmen from our Commonwealth voted for a bill that will pose a considerable threat to working people across Pennsylvania. With their vote today, these legislators have handed a tax break to corporations and provided an incentive to outsource American jobs.

This tax plan will not only result in shipping existing jobs to foreign countries, it will encourage an increase in automation and the economic displacement of working people. This plan does nothing to ensure the hiring of additional workers, or provide a desperately-needed increase in the stagnant wages of the middle class.

Over the next ten years, working people, retirees and middle class families will face rising federal taxes, a reduction in public resources and services, and a ballooning national deficit, because of the actions of right-wing economic ideologues. While the Plan has passed both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, the State Federation thanks U.S. Senator Bob Casey and all the Democratic members of Pennsylvania's Congressional delegation for standing up for working families across the Commonwealth, and America."

SOURCE Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
Prescience Point Issues a Negative Follow-Up Report on Celadon Group (NYSE: CGI)

- Prescience Point believes that CGI's struggles to secure lenders for its proposed credit facility are in part the result of its 1) ongoing financial restatement issues, 2) recent disclosure of an active formal SEC investigation, and 3) recent disclosures which suggest continued deterioration in operating performance in the 3+ quarters since it last reported earnings.

- CGI has been selling off divisions to stay afloat in the short term; however, we expect these asset dispositions will greatly pressure the company's revenue and profitability going forward. For example, CGI recently sold its Quality division, a business which accounted for $12.8m of annualized operating profit in Q2'17.

- Recent evidence in our view confirms that CGI's tangible book value as of Q2'17 is significantly impaired. CGI's joint venture partner Element Fleet Management has written down the value of their JV on its balance sheet by 49% over the past three quarters; and, BKD is currently reassessing the accounting of around 11,000 pieces of equipment currently or previously owned by CGI. Both data points indicate that CGI's last-reported TBV is significantly overstated.

- Prescience Point is the research publication arm of Prescience Investment Group, a firm registered with FINRA
Small businesses and individuals to enjoy a more cost-effective way to send and receive payments in Indonesian Rupiah

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pundi X, a cryptocurrency point-of-sale ("POS") solutions provider for retail stores, today announced that it has partnered with Stellar.org, a Silicon Valley non-profit organization that supports the Stellar network, an open-source blockchain network that provides interoperability between financial institutions and different payment systems.

Under the agreement, Pundi X will integrate with the Stellar protocol to become an Indonesian Rupiah anchor on the network, enabling businesses and individuals to send and receive cross-border payments faster and at a lower cost. Additionally, Pundi X will start to support Stellar's native currency Stellar Lumens (XLM) in its cryptocurrency POS solution platform.

Stellar's distributed ledger provides an instant clearing and settlement platform, allowing money to move directly between people, companies and financial institutions in real-time, as easily as sending an email message. Within the network, XLM serves as the bridge between pairs of different currencies.

The network enables frictionless, scalable, and virtually-free cross-border payment transactions. It has been proven to securely process over 1,000 transactions per second and already has a billion unique user accounts. As a key partner, Pundi X will become the credit issuer to the Stellar network for deposits converted to or from Indonesian Rupiah.

Today, over 75 percent of Indonesian export and import activities are conducted in US dollars. However, Bank Indonesia plans to diversify the use of currencies in international trade. The partnership between Pundi X and Stellar.org will encourage businesses to send and receive payments in Indonesian Rupiah due to improved efficiency.

"We hope to increase the volume of international trade settled in local currencies by leveraging the benefits of blockchain and cryptocurrency," said Zac Cheah, CEO of Pundi X. "Together with the Stellar Network, Pundi X can facilitate faster cross-border payment with lower costs and we aim to assist Bank Indonesia in increasing the use of the Indonesian Rupiah in international trade."

Pundi X aims to solve the last mile challenge for cryptocurrency transactions with its point-of-sale ("POS") solutions. Every Pundi X POS device can be connected to the blockchain enabling consumers to easily buy or sell cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, XEM, LTC, XLM, PXS, QTUM tokens) using fiat money ( US Dollars, Rupiah, Baht, etc.), bank card, mobile wallet or with an NFC-enabled Pundi X Pass.

"We're excited to welcome Pundi X as an anchor to the Stellar network and believe this collaboration can potentially scale the volume of Indonesian Rupiah settlements, especially among the many under-banked citizens and small businesses," said Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Stellar.org.

About Stellar.org

Stellar.org is a Silicon Valley-based non-profit organization that supports the Stellar network, a free, open-source network that connects diverse financial systems and lets anyone build low-cost financial servicespayments, savings, loans, insurancefor their community. The Stellar network enables money to move directly between people, companies and financial institutions as easily as email. This interconnectivity means more access for individuals, lower costs for banks, and more revenue for businesses. For more on Stellar.org, visit http://www.stellar.org.

About Pundi X

Pundi X is a cryptocurrency point-of-sale ("POS") solutions provider for retail stores seeking to accept digital currencies in South East Asia. Pundi X POS enables shops, cafes and convenience stores to sell cryptocurrency to the average consumer and builds on the success of Pundi-Pundi, which is one of Indonesia's most popular QR code cashless payment apps. Pundi-Pundi has already signed up more than 100,000 registered users and over 500 merchant partners in Jakarta in less than a year of operation.

Pundi X public token sale starts on January 21, 2018 with the aim of financing over 700,000 Pundi X POS devices to be installed over the next three years across all target markets.

For more information, please visit: https://pundix.com/.

You can also find us on the following social media channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PundiXLabs

Telegram: http://t.me/pundix

Medium: http://medium.com/pundix

Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/pundixlabs

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOIf6WeLEzZi3DQxzenTZeA

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pundi_x/

SOURCE Pundi X
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Q BioMed Inc. (OTCQB: QBIO), a biotechnology acceleration company, is pleased to provide this year end update to its shareholders.

The Company ends 2017 with a full pipeline of assets advancing towards major milestones in 2018. The Company also ends the year with a clean balance sheet, having settled all outstanding debt and is poised for a very productive a catalyst-rich year in 2018.

We are pleased to provide a summary and an update on our pipeline assets below.

Strontium Chloride 89 Injection USP (Strontium-89)

Strontium-89 is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved drug for pain palliation in bone metastases, primarily from breast, prostate and lung cancers. Our product is the only FDA approved generic version of this radiopharmaceutical and is reimbursable by Medicare and private insurers. Strontium 89 is a pure beta emitting radiopharmaceutical. It is a chemical analog of calcium and for this reason, localizes in bone. There is a significant concentration at the site of active osteoblastic activity. This is the biochemical basis for its use in treating metastatic bone disease.

Strontium-89 shows prolonged retention in metastatic bone lesions with a biological half-life of 50 days, remaining up to 100 days after injection. Strontium-89 has been shown to decrease pain in patients with metastases. When Strontium-89 Chloride is used, pain palliation occurs in up to 80% of patients within 2 to 3 weeks after administration and lasts from 3 to 12 months, on average of about 6 months.

In the United States, of the estimated 450,000 individuals newly diagnosed with either breast or prostate cancer, one in three will develop bone metastases, a common cause of pain. These figures are expected to increase as the patient population ages.

Strontium-89 is a non-narcotic (non-opioid) cost effective means for the clinical management of debilitating cancer bone pain. There is a significant opportunity to market Strontium-89 as practitioners and caregivers are being encouraged to reexamine the use of opiates for treating patients in pain. The pain palliation market is estimated to be approximately $300 million annually. Clinical studies at leading medical centers around the world have demonstrated that patient survivals may be extended using Strontium-89 in combination with other agents. Additional therapeutic indications for Strontium 89 are possible, and we intend to pursue this objective in 2018.

We have experienced some delay in launching this drug due to the 2 major hurricanes impacting both of our manufacturing and logistical operations in Texas and Florida, but expect to have a new facility online for manufacturing by mid-January 2018 and pending FDA facility review, commercial sales shortly thereafter. This is expected to be major milestone as we ramp up commercial operations and head into the new year with near-term and long-term recurring revenues as well as the prospect of a significant market opportunity in broader therapeutic indications.

QBM 001 - Addressing a Rare Pediatric Non-verbal Spectrum Disorder

Causes of non-verbal learning disorder have been linked to several complications that range from a specific mutated gene as with Fragile X Syndrome and Dravet Syndrome or autoimmunity, in which the body's immune system attacks parts of the brain. Trauma, microbial infections and environmental factors have also been linked to non-verbal learning disorder. Ongoing research is helping to further explain the root cause of why children become non-verbal or minimally verbal.

Children born into families where there is a genetic history of autism or epileptic spectrum disorders or that have a sibling that has been diagnosed with an autistic or epileptic spectrum disorder have a much higher chance of becoming non-verbal.

More than 60,000 US children develop Autism Spectrum Disorders ("ASD") every year, of whom 20,000 become non-verbal. A similar number of children with ASD symptoms in Europe develop pediatric non-verbal disorder each year. No drugs are currently available to ameliorate this condition. In the United States, of the estimated 20,000 who become non- or minimally verbal and will require assisted living for the rest of their life. The lifetime cost of that care is estimated at $10 million per person.

Cognitive intervention is the only form of treatment that has shown to improve speech capability and social interaction; however, it has not been able to alleviate the lifetime burden of $10 million per person for cost of care. This is compounded by an additional $10 million during the lifespan of the person due to loss in productivity in addition to severe emotional strain for the child and the parents.

In light of the above, we are developing QBM-001 to be administered to a high-risk, target group of toddlers of 3 years or younger. We can identify these toddlers by blood markers, EEG testing and whole genome sequencing. A commonality that these toddlers share is faulty membrane channels, which was elucidated from retrospective genetic studies of nonverbal individuals. Faulty membrane channels can lead to many detrimental effects. We believe that QBM-001 acts as an allosteric regulator of these faulty channels in the brain to potentially alleviate the condition and allow toddlers to actively develop language and speech and avoid life-long speech and intellectual disability of being non-verbal.

As there are no treatment options for these patients, we believe there is a significant economic opportunity to bring a drug to market in this indication. The active ingredient in QBM-001 is well known and has been approved by worldwide regulators for many years. Q BioMed produced an analog of the parent molecule that serves multiple purposes. One, it eliminates gastrointestinal problems of the parent molecule. Two, it allows for a more time-release of product and it provides a load capacity, which is designed to prevent over-administration. Three, the aforementioned characteristics of QBM-001 then allow for more sustained levels of product in the body over time which is ideal for a condition that requires long-term, prophylactic use. Due to the unique composition of the analog and the known safety and efficacy of the parent molecule, we intend to advance this drug through the 505(b)(2) pathway in a single phase 2/3 clinical trial that we intend to commence in 2018.

We have made great progress in assembling our technical team and in the development of the final drug analogue which is now finishing pre-clinical testing. Once complete in Q1 2018, we expect to file an IND and initiate a pivotal clinical trial. We have already met with several potential clinical sites, both in the US and Europe and all look forward to collaborating on this pioneering study. Given the potential for an accelerated clinical trial pathway, we see this as a very significant catalyst in 2018 which could yield interim phase 2 data prior to the end of the year.

UTTROSIDE-B - A New Chemotherapeutic for Liver Cancer

The only currently marketed drug for liver cancer is a tryosine kinase inhibitor antineoplastic agent, Sorafinib. Uttroside-B appears to affect phosphorylated JNK (pro survival signaling) and capcase activity (apoptosis in liver cancer). It is a natural compound fractionated Saponin derived from the Solarim Nigrum plant. It is a small molecule that showed in early investigation to increase the cytotoxicity of a variety of liver cancer cell types and importantly to be up to ten times more potent than Sorafenib in pre-clinical studies. This potency motivated us to work with our partners to chemically synthesize the plant based molecule. Synthesis has progressed well in 2017, and we expect to have the final analogue ready for testing in Q1 2018. Once validated, we will prepare and submit an IND for a Phase one clinical trial to begin in late 2018.

MAN 01 - A Platform Technology with an Initial Focus on Glaucoma

We are developing MAN 01 as a first-in-class therapeutic eye-drop for the treatment of Primary Open Angle Glaucoma.

MAN 01 targets the Schlemm's canal and its role in regulating interocular eye pressure, one of the leading causes of glaucoma. No other glaucoma company is targeting the Schlemm's canal, the main drainage pathway in the eye. This unique vessel is responsible for 70-90% of the fluid drainage in the eye.

We believe that a deep pipeline of novel therapeutics can be developed from this research platform, which would treat a spectrum of vascular diseases including cystic kidney disease, pediatric glaucoma and inflammation.

We are completing development work on optimal delivery and absorption of a small molecule delivered topically to treat patients with Primary Open Angle Glaucoma. We anticipate completing pre-clinical proof-of-concept development in 2018 and expect to initiate a clinical trial program in 2019.

We have made great progress in our short history and we look forward to another exciting and eventful year in 2018. Stay up to date and follow our progress by joining our mailing list at www.qbiomed.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements include, but are not limited to, any statements relating to our growth strategy and product development programs and any other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition and stock price. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated are: risks related to our growth strategy; risks relating to the results of research and development activities; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; uncertainties relating to preclinical and clinical testing; our dependence on third-party suppliers; our ability to attract, integrate, and retain key personnel; the early stage of products under development; our need for substantial additional funds; government regulation; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in our SEC filings. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.

Contact:

Denis Corin

CEO

Q BioMed Inc.

1 888 357 2435

SOURCE Q BioMed Inc

Related Links

http://www.qbiomed.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- RA Holding Corp. ("RA Holding" or the "Company") announced today that it has approved a partial redemption of its Class A Preferred Shares issued pursuant to the Second Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization of Arcapita Bank B.S.C.(c) in the amount of $10 million or 2.05% of the total Class A Preferred Shares outstanding. The redemption record date is December 20, 2017 and funds are expected to flow on or before December 31, 2017. Upon completion of the redemption of 123,298 shares, the Company will have 5,894,213 Class A Preferred Shares outstanding.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT AN OFFER TO PURCHASE OR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO SELL ANY SECURITIES

About RA Holding Corp.

RA Holding Corp. is the top level holding company in the group created pursuant to the plan of reorganization of Arcapita Bank B.S.C.(c) and certain affiliates under chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Press Contact:

Infinite Global

Ada Oni-Eseleh, 646-685-8075

[email protected]

SOURCE RA Holding Corp.
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This upcoming holiday season, infuse your dinner parties with a little je-ne-sais-quoi by surprising your guests with mouth-watering Pineau des Charentes cocktails. Sip on this fortified wine blended with cognac on cold winter nights, mix it with amaro or rum to kick off happy hour or pair it with oysters for an added touch of sophistication.

Check your preconceived notions at the door and fully embrace Pineau des Charentes this holiday season. Fresh, sweet and fruit-forward, this fine wine can be white, red or rose depending on the grape variety. While it can surely be enjoyed on its own as an aperitif or as a pairing with French cheeses such as a light blue cheese or a chevre, Pineau des Charentes is also gaining traction as a key cocktail ingredient.

"What I love about Pineau des Charentes is its versatility," says Ms. Franky Marshall, NYC bartender and Bar Director at Le Boudoir, Brooklyn. "It works very well as a base spirit or modifier, and is easily incorporated into classic and modern cocktails."

To look like a seasoned mixologist minus the experience, follow one of these easy recipes:

Ciel Rouge: Lively, fresh, and goes down easy

1 oz red Pineau des Charentes

0.5 oz aged rum

0.25 oz China China amer

0.5 oz toasted orgeat

0.5 oz fresh lime juice

Add all ingredients to mixing tin.

Give a short, easy shake.

Strain into Julep Glass over pebble ice.

Garnish: Two dashes Angostura bitters, one lively mint sprig.

Quai des Brumes: When the occasion calls for something more spirit forward

0.75 oz rose Pineau des Charentes

1 oz rye whiskey (40% ABV)

0.25 oz Averna Amaro

1 barspoon Amaro Sfumato

Add all ingredients to mixing glass.

Stir with ice.

Strain into rocks glass over one large cube of ice.

Garnish: Flamed and discarded orange disc.

Martinelle: Because martinis never get old

1 oz Old white Pineau des Charentes

1 oz London Dry Gin

0.5 oz Genepy des Alpes

2 dashes absinthe

1 drop orange citrate bitters

Add all ingredients to mixing glass.

Stir with ice until cold.

Strain into Nick and Nora or cocktail glass.

Garnish: Expressed lemon twist placed on side of glass.

With a combined fruitiness and bold Cognac kick, Pineau des Charentes is the ideal partner for any holiday party, big or small. Open yourself to its aromatic palette and be creative in its usage. Because nothing beats a good winter cocktail with family and friends.

About Pineau des Charentes

The Pineau des Charentes Committee, known in France as the Comite National du Pineau des Charentes (CNPC), represents over 500 wineries and trade companies that produce Pineau des Charentes in France's Charente and Charente-Maritime regions. In 2016, 105,000 hectoliters of Pineau des Charentes were produced, 85,000 of which were sold across the world, amounting to nearly 11,5 million bottles. France remains the first consumer-market of Pineau des Charentes, but the spirited wine is progressively expanding its global reach: nearly 3 million bottles were exported in 2016, across 40 markets.

Visit http://pineauacademy.com for more information

Tune in with #InsidePineau and follow @Pineau_Academy on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Contact

Sarah Moreau

Sopexa c/o Pineau des Charentes

[email protected]

(646) 462-4269

SOURCE Pineau des Charentes

Related Links

http://pineauacademy.com


C $

MONTREAL, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Resolute Forest Products Inc. (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) today announced the closing of a transaction to acquire the 49 percent equity interest held by The New York Times Company in Donohue Malbaie Inc. for a cash purchase price in the amount of C$20 million. Resolute already owned 51 percent of the shares of Donohue Malbaie.

Donohue Malbaie owns and operates a paper machine with an annual production capacity of 224,000 metric tons of newsprint in Clermont (Quebec). The Clermont operation, which employs 153 workers, also houses all the equipment that produces the thermomechanical pulp supplying the machine. With this transaction, Resolute becomes sole owner of the Clermont operation.

"The New York Times Company has been an outstanding business partner since the late 1960s, and we thank the organization for its support over the years," said Richard Garneau, president and chief executive officer. "The time was right for Resolute to take full ownership of Donohue Malbaie, and today's transaction illustrates the company's confidence in the operation as well as our continued investment in the Province of Quebec."

Jim Follo, executive vice president and chief financial officer of The New York Times Company, said: "We've relied on the high-quality product produced in the Clermont mill to print The New York Times each day, and we're grateful to the team there. Resolute will remain our primary supplier of newsprint, and we look forward to a continuing relationship."

About Resolute Forest Products

Resolute Forest Products is a global leader in the forest products industry with a diverse range of products, including market pulp, tissue, wood products, newsprint and specialty papers, which are marketed in over 70 countries. The company owns or operates some 40 manufacturing facilities, as well as power generation assets, in the United States and Canada. Resolute has third-party certified 100% of its managed woodlands to internationally recognized sustainable forest management standards. The shares of Resolute Forest Products trade under the stock symbol RFP on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Resolute has received regional, North American and global recognition for its leadership in corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, as well as for its business practices. Visit www.resolutefp.com for more information.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Statements in this press release that are not statements of historical results, performance, financial condition, or other historical information of Resolute Forest Products Inc. are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as the words "will," "expect" and other terms with similar meaning indicating possible future events or potential impact on our business.

The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance. These statements are based on management's current assumptions, beliefs, and expectations, all of which involve a number of business risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in this press release. Some of the potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual future performance or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied in this press release include, but are not limited to, developments in non-print media, and the effectiveness of our responses to these developments; the highly cyclical nature of the forest products industry; intense competition in the forest products industry; any inability to offer products certified to globally recognized forestry management and chain of custody standards; any inability to successfully implement our strategies to increase our earnings power; the possible failure to successfully integrate acquired businesses with ours or to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions, such as Atlas Paper Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries, or divestitures or other strategic transactions or projects, such as our Calhoun, Tennessee, tissue operations; uncertainty or changes in political or economic conditions in the United States, Canada or other countries in which we manufacture or sell our products; global economic conditions; any difficulties in obtaining wood fiber at favorable prices, or at all; changes in the cost of purchased energy and other raw materials; physical and financial risks associated with global, regional and local climate conditions and change; any disruption in operations or increased labor costs due to labor disputes; disruptions to our supply chain, operations or the delivery of our products; cybersecurity risks; negative publicity, even if unjustified; currency fluctuations; any increase in the level of required contributions to our pension plans, including as a result of any increase in the amount by which they are underfunded; the terms of our outstanding indebtedness, which could restrict our current and future operations; our ability to maintain adequate capital resources to provide for all of our substantial capital requirements; losses that are not covered by insurance; any additional closure costs and long-lived asset or goodwill impairment or accelerated depreciation charges; any need to record additional valuation allowances against our recorded deferred income tax assets; our exports from one country to another country becoming or remaining subject to duties, cash deposit requirements, border taxes, quotas or other trade remedies or restrictions; the future regulation of our Canadian exports to the U.S., including softwood lumber and supercalendered and uncoated groundwood paper products; any failure to comply with laws or regulations generally; any additional environmental or health and safety liabilities; any violation of trade laws, export controls or other laws relating to our international sales and operations; unanticipated outcomes of legal proceedings or disputes in which we are involved; the actions of holders of a significant percentage of our common stock; and the potential risks and uncertainties described under the heading "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016.

All forward-looking statements in this press release are expressly qualified by the cautionary statements set out or referred to above and in the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Canadian securities regulatory authorities. The company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE Resolute Forest Products Inc.

Related Links

www.resolutefp.com


BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation and Calguns Foundation have filed a brief seeking U.S. Supreme Court review and ultimate reversal of a ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in their long-running challenge of California's waiting period requirement on additional firearm transactions for people who already own guns.

The case is known as Silvester v. Becerra, which challenges the Golden State's 10-day waiting period on firearms transfers to gun-owning citizens.

"Rights delayed are rights denied," said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. "By defending this waiting period, the state of California is essentially saying gun owners are potential criminals who are considered guilty until they prove themselves innocent, which is silly because they already own guns.

"The Second Amendment, which was incorporated to the states via the 14th Amendment in SAF's 2010 Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago, is not a second-class right," he added. "Nor are gun owners in California, or anywhere else in the Ninth Circuit, second-class citizens who must be treated differently than any other citizen simply because they wish to exercise their right to keep and bear arms."

Gottlieb said the Silvester case "simply begs for attention from the Supreme Court."

"It is nonsense for the state to enforce a waiting period on someone who has passed a background check and who already owns other firearms and may have a concealed carry permit," Gottlieb observed.

As noted in the brief, "there is no suggestion that the California legislature ever considered or addressed evidence regarding the need for a cooling-off period either generally or, more relevantly, for those who already own a gun."

"It's time for the Supreme Court to straighten out this problem," Gottlieb concluded.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation

Related Links

http://www.saf.org


Organizing committee chairman Wang Haotian said, Silk Road International Fashion Week 2017 was organized by the Zhongguancun Global Fashion Creative Industries Alliance and the Asia Model Association and co-organized by Huoerguosi Mojie Culture Media Co., Ltd, Special launch events for several designer collections, the Silk Road International Fashion Forum, the Silk Road International Fashion Ceremony and the Fashion Crafter Gold Lei Award Ceremony were held during the event, with representatives from Cambodia, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam in attendance. Designers including Zheng Qinger, Xiao Lu, Hu Sheguang, Qiao Jiangjiang, Flavia, Maria Kazak, Philip Cho, Ariunaa Surenjav, Mario Orfei and    held their personal fashion shows, respectively, with Matt Lee, a model from Macao and multi-talented artist, receiving wide attention.

The Fashion Crafter Gold Lei Award is designed to commemorate the craftsmanship of Lei Zu, a famous woman in ancient China and recognize the fashion practitioners who are named as examples in terms of craftsmanship and compete for the highest award in fashion. As the inventor of mulberry silk, Lei Zu was the first to create and develop silkworm breeding, as well as silk production and clothing making techniques. Lei Zu is considered as one of China's first contributors to the development of human civilization as well as one of the originators of the country's clothing and fashion industries. The organizers of the Silk Road International Fashion Week 2017 help to revive the Silk Road in an entirely modern way, in line with today's fashion trends!

For more information, please contact:

Mr. Cui

Tel: +86-139-1008-7122 / +86-158-0161-5861

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Huoerguosi Mojie Culture Media Co., Ltd.
ARLINGTON, Va., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- eGlobalTech (eGT), an IT solutions, cybersecurity, and management-consulting firm, today announced the passing of its founder, President, and CEO, Sonya Jain. Jain passed away at 54 years old on Sunday, December 17, 2017 after a long battle with cancer.

Sonya studied at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, where she was one of eight women in her class. Since founding eGT in 2004, Jain successfully grew the company to more than 300 employees. During that time, she was repeatedly recognized for her exemplary leadership abilities, entrepreneurial spirit, and philanthropic efforts. She was a 2017 recipient of the Women Who Mean Business Washington Business Journal award. She was also honored with a Women in Technology (WIT) Leadership Award and a SmartCEO 2016 Washington Future 50 award.

eGT Chief Strategy Officer Branko Primetica stated, "Everyone at eGT is deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Sonya Jain. She consistently demonstrated the highest values in business and her compassion for her people was unparalleled. We at eGlobalTech are firmly committed to continuing to build upon these values and to carrying on Sonya's vision and legacy to its fullest. This firm will continue to thrive and to provide the highest quality services for its clients, with Sonya's drive for excellence and can-do spirit serving as a constant inspiration."

Currently, eGT's executive team is continuing to manage the company's day-to-day operations and affairs without disruption, while a contingency leadership plan is set in motion.

Sonya is survived by her husband, Sanjiv Jain, and two daughters, Ritika and Eisha.

In remembrance of Sonya, donations can be made at the following link: https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/Tribute/SonyaJain.

About eGlobalTech

eGT is an IT solutions, cybersecurity, and management-consulting firm based in Arlington, VA. Our focus is to provide the public sector with innovative solutions, leveraging cutting-edge tools and methodologies to meet the Federal Government's most pressing business needs. To achieve this objective, our core practice areas  IT solutions development, cybersecurity, strategy, and mission services  are integrated to provide Federal clients with comprehensive, end-to-end results. For more information, please visit our website at www.eglobaltech.com.

For More Information, Contact:

eGT Public Relations

[email protected]

SOURCE eGlobalTech

Related Links

http://www.eglobaltech.com


CHESTER, S.C., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Specialty Polymers, Inc., has signed an agreement with Jose Olivieri of Olivieri & Associates to be the Company's new sales agent in Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and the Caribbean.

The Company's partnership with Olivieri & Associates will enable the numerous paint, coatings and adhesive companies based in the region to have access to the innovative water based emulsion polymers and adhesives that Specialty Polymers is known for.

Olivieri & Associates has more than 30 years of experience in the distribution of raw materials, containers, production machinery and retail systems for the paint, coatings, adhesives, inks and construction industries throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region. The new partnership with Specialty Polymers will add water-based emulsion polymers to their portfolio of products.

About Specialty Polymers:

Specialty Polymers is a dynamic, family-owned manufacturer of water based emulsion polymers and adhesives. In business for 50 years, Specialty Polymers is known for its innovative products, and outstanding customer service. With production facilities located on both coasts, Specialty is ideally suited to meet the needs of customers from around the world. Specialty's skilled production, research and development and customer service teams are committed to customer service by providing superior products and meeting each customer's unique delivery requirements.

Visit http://www.specpoly.com for more information.

SOURCE Specialty Polymers, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.specpoly.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Market Insights has a proprietary and highly unique research methodology that assists in the collation of market intelligence. A combination of primary and secondary research merged with opinions from market observers, industry experts, and other external sources is carried out.







Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05252858







The secondary research is exhaustive in nature and covers all facets of the sulphur recovery technology market. The report presents a comprehensive picture of the market on the basis of which research personnel are able to extract qualitative and quantitative insights. Simultaneously, domain experts and market observers who have a completely unbiased view of the global sulphur recovery technology market are consulted via personal interviews or telephonic conversations.



Important data points and aspects are verified and cross-validated several times to ensure near cent-percent accuracy. As every expert will have a slightly differing view of the sulphur recovery technology market, the statistical data undergoes a multi-layer funnel of validation through a triangulation method to arrive at market numbers. The final report can thus be considered an authoritative and conclusive source on the sulphur recovery technology market.



The sulphur recovery technology market report is a well-crafted report that follows a cohesive and logical structure. The report has made a relatively complex topic simple to understand and can prove immensely beneficial for both incumbents as well as new entrants seeking to enter the sulphur recovery technology market.



Report Description

The report discusses the approach taken by prominent companies actively involved in the sulphur recovery technology market to achieve consistent growth by expanding their geographic footprint in regions with the maximum potential. Companies are trying to enter into strategic partnerships with local partners in order to better address the specific requirements and demands of customers in the sulphur recovery technology market.



To gain a holistics view of the sulphur recovery technology market, a competitive analysis comprising company information coupled with their unique selling propositions is included in the report. The dashboard has a detailed comparison of sulphur recovery technology players in terms of operating margins, financials, product portfolio overview, long and short-term strategies, and recent developments. The report encompasses a market attractiveness index of different segments in the sulphur recovery technology market.



The report highlights the revenue generated from sulphur recovery technology across all the profiled regions and the countries within them. Apart from this, the sulphur recovery technology market profitability margins, value chain analysis, cost and pricing structures, drivers, restraints, opportunities, and trends impacting the sulphur recovery technology market are mentioned in the report. Macroeconomic factors such as per capita income and GDP have been considered in the sulphur recovery technology market report.



Scope of the Report

The research methodology has been immensely beneficial in extracting all the data pertaining to the sulphur recovery technology market. Mergers and acquisitions that influence the sulphur recovery technology market have been taken into account.



To cater to a highly diverse, global audience, the market values have been standardized into US dollars. The primary objective of the sulphur recovery technology market report is to enable readers to formulate their go-to-market strategies and make long-term investment decisions. The information provided in the report can assist the identification of new growth opportunities and ensure that organizations consolidate their position in the sulphur recovery technology market.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05252858



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


JACKSON, Calif., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today SunnyCal Solar, Inc., a solar products company specializing in "personal solar" products, announced the first in a series of new products that enable grid-free power.

FEMA-1 Structure equipped with four 380W solar modules

Collapsible solar arrays can be shipped fully assembled, and can be unfolded to an upright position, producing power immediately. The innovative lightweight structure can include up to 1500W of solar panels, and a unique "Daylight Inverter", that powers a 120V receptacle whenever the sun shines; no batteries required. A custom designed screw-in anchor system and tamper resistant screws enable secure installation.

SunnyCal CEO Steve Dollens said: "Our customers are seeking grid-free power solutions. The Collapsible Array is a direct result of our efforts to enable personal power for disaster-stricken areas like Central California and Puerto Rico." The Array fills the power gap between disaster and power restoration.

Upcoming personal power products include: Daylight Inverters for AC well water pumps, solar metal roofing and self-powered greenhouses.

About SunnyCal Solar, Inc: SunnyCal Solar has been installing turnkey solar systems since 2006. SunnyCal also established The SunnyCal Solar Store, supplying innovative power products for consumers and solar contractors. http://sunnycalsolar.com/products/prefab-fema-1.html

Media contact Becky at [email protected], 209-464-6100

Related Files

Prefab Array FEMA 1 Datasheet 1b reduced.pdf

Related Images

image1.jpg

Collapsible Array with 1500W of Modules

image2.jpg

Support Structure

image3.jpg

Daylight Inverter

Related Links

Product Link

SOURCE SunnyCal Solar Inc.
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Swimlane, a leader in security automation and orchestration (SAO), announced today interoperability with the RSA Archer Suite. Together, Swimlane and RSA can better help customers quickly and efficiently track and report on GRC-related activity without increasing the workload on security operations staff. The interoperability also streamlines security operations through a more centralized approach to automated incident response and security orchestration.

"Swimlane is committed to improving cybersecurity threat response capabilities and lowering incident response times by creating interoperability with the RSA Archer Suite," said Cody Cornell, CEO and Founder of Swimlane. "The partnership between RSA and Swimlane will help centralize GRC activities and reporting across all platforms. By automating the workflow and response, Swimlane will help RSA Archer customers respond faster and more consistently to compliance-mandated incident response processes."

As the volume of cyberattacks continues to rise, security administrators struggle to keep pace while manually performing repetitive and time-consuming tasks to track, mitigate and resolve security events across multiple platforms. Research by the Ponemon Institute finds that the average security operations team receives 17,000 alerts every week, but is only able to investigate 29 percent of them. And the Global Information Security Workforce Study predicts that the global shortage of cybersecurity professionals will reach 1.8 million by 2022.

Swimlane helps organizations get the most out of existing resources by automating time-intensive, manual processes and operational workflows in real time. An API-first architecture, extensive out-of-the-box integrations and prepackaged templates are designed to allow organizations to quickly enable orchestration across their entire security infrastructure. Swimlane aims to deliver powerful analytics, real-time dashboards and key performance reporting to maximize the incident response capabilities of over-burdened and understaffed security operations.

The RSA Archer Suite supports business-level management of enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC). The RSA Archer Suite is designed to empower business users to tailor applications to meet their business requirements without the need for coding or development skills. The RSA Archer Suite breadth, depth, adaptability and proven track record of delivering strategic value to customers has won over some of the most demanding Fortune 500 companies. These businesses have seized the power of the RSA Archer platform to make RSA Archer solutions their own, modeling additional business processes in a fraction of the time it would take to develop traditional custom applications.

The RSA Ready certified interoperability between Swimlane and the RSA Archer Suite helps deliver the visibility and control needed to combat advanced attacks and meet compliance requirements faster and more efficiently. This is done via integrated automation and orchestration that aligns GRC-specific activities with broader incident response processes. Swimlane can retrieve GRC-specific incident response data directly from RSA Archer to update ongoing cases. It can also update records within RSA Archer to ensure that compliance-related security activities are tracked and mapped to required regulations for future auditing and reporting.

About Swimlane

Swimlane is a leader in security automation and orchestration (SAO). Our platform empowers organizations to manage, respond to and neutralize cyber threats with the adaptability, efficiency and speed necessary to combat today's rapidly evolving cyber threats. By automating time-intensive, manual processes and operational workflows and delivering powerful, consolidated analytics, real time dashboards and reporting from across your security infrastructure, Swimlane maximizes the incident response capabilities of over-burdened and understaffed security operations.

Swimlane was founded to deliver innovative and practical security solutions to organizations struggling with alert fatigue, vendor proliferation and chronic staffing shortages. Swimlane is at the forefront of the growing market for security automation and orchestration solutions that automate and organize security processes in repeatable ways to get the most out of available resources and accelerate incident response.

www.swimlane.com

Swimlane is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado with operations throughout North America and Europe.

Media Contact:

Terri Douglas

Catapult PR-IR

[email protected]

(303) 581-7760, ext. 18

SOURCE Swimlane

Related Links

https://www.swimlane.com


LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Forecasts by Solutions (Risk and Compliance Management, Unified Threat Management (UTM), Security Incident Management, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Encryption, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Others), by Services (Professional Services, Managed Services), by Deployment Type (On-Premises, Cloud), by User Type (SMEs, Large Enterprises), by Industry Vertical



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5245541



Report Details

The latest report from business intelligence provider visiongain offers comprehensive analysis of the global Cyber Security market. Visiongain assesses that this market will generate revenues of $83.5bn in 2017.

With the growing prevalence of cyber attacks, and the proliferation of cloud, mobility, and bring-your-own-device (BYOD), cyber security is crucial for all points in the network. Cyber security threats and vulnerabilities can change from day to day, and even hour to hour. Effective steps for managing cyber risks today are unlikely to suffice for very long, and thus maintaining security in a wireless environment is challenging for most vendors in the ecosystem.

Cyber threats affect more than just the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure of a company. These threats can cause disruptions to the entire network and impact principal business functions and mission.

Several organizations integrate cyber defence with traditional security activities, such as physical and personnel security as part of an overarching effort to protect business operations from both external and internal threats. Furthermore, cyber security activities are now being prioritized and aligned to strategic business activities to minimize the damage of IT resources.

You need to read visiongain's objective analysis of how this evolving cyber security landscape will impact your company and the industry more broadly. How are you and your company reacting to the changing cyber threats? Are you sufficiently informed?



How this report will benefit you

Read on to discover how you can exploit the future business opportunities emerging in the cyber security sector. Visiongain's new study tells you and tells you NOW.

In this brand new report you find 261 in-depth tables, charts and graphs all unavailable elsewhere.

The 289 page report provides clear detailed insight into the global Cyber Security market. Discover the key drivers and challenges affecting the market.



Report Scope

Global Cyber Security Market Forecasts From 2017-2027



Regional Cyber Security Market Forecasts From 2017-2027

 Asia-Pacific Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Europe Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Latin America Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Middle East and Africa Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 North America Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Country Cyber Security Market Forecasts From 2017-2027

 U.S. Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 UK Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 France Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Russia Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 China Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Japan Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 South Korea Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Israel Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Saudi Arabia Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Cyber Security Solution Submarket Forecasts From 2017-2027

 Risk and Compliance Management Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Unified Threat Management (UTM) Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Security Incident Management Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Identity and Access Management (IAM) Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Encryption Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs) Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Others Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Cyber Security Service Submarket Forecasts From 2017-2027

 Professional Services Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Managed Services Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Cyber Security Deployment Type Submarket Forecasts From 2017-2027

 On-Premises Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Cloud Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Cyber Security User Type Submarket Forecasts From 2017-2027

 SMEs Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Large Enterprises Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Cyber Security Industry Vertical Submarket Forecasts From 2017-2027

 Aerospace and Defence Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 BFSI Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Public Sector Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Retail Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Healthcare Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 IT and Telecom Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Energy and Utilities Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Manufacturing Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027

 Others Cyber Security Market Forecast From 2017-2027



Profiles Of The Leading Cyber Security Companies With Market Share Of Th Leading 6 Companies

 Dell EMC

 Cisco Systems

 FireEye Inc.

 Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE)

 IBM Corporation

 Sophos Ltd.

 Intel Corporation

 Symantec Corporation

 TrendMicro Inc.

 Verizon Communications

 Lockheed Martin Corporation

 Northrop Grumman Corporation

 Palo Alto Networks Inc.



Who should read this report?

 Cyber security companies

 Information security specialists

 Cloud computing companies

 Internet of things companies

 Hardware providers

 Software vendors

 Managed services companies

 Industrial control system companies

 Large enterprises

 It contractors

 IT departments

 CEOs,

 Security vendors

 Heads of strategic development

 Marketing staff

 Market analysts

 Procurement staff

 Company managers

 Industry administrators

 Industry associations

 Company procurement departments

 Consultants

 Managers

 Governmental departments & agencies

 Business development managers

 Investors

 Banks



Visiongain's study is intended for anyone requiring commercial analyses for the Cyber Security market and leading companies. You find data, trends and predictions.

Buy our report today Cyber Security Market Report 2017-2027: Forecasts by Solutions (Risk and Compliance Management, Unified Threat Management (UTM), Security Incident Management, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Encryption, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Others), by Services (Professional Services, Managed Services), by Deployment Type (On-Premises, Cloud), by User Type (SMEs, Large Enterprises), by Industry Vertical (Aerospace and Defence, BFSI, Public Sector, Retail, Healthcare, IT and Telecom, Energy and Utilities, Manufacturing, Others).



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5245541



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Forecasts and Analysis by Type including GTT No. 96, Mark III, Moss. SPB & Small Scale AND by Region PLUS Profiles of Leading Companies in the LNG Carrier Market.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5245543



Report Details

Visiongain has calculated that the LNG Carrier market will see a capital expenditure (CAPEX) of $10,281 mn in 2017. Read on to discover the potential business opportunities available.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is one of the most commercially-viable energy solutions adopted by developing economies such as Asia Pacific to fulfil their energy requirements. Looking at the growth prospects, it is evident that access to economic and abundant energy sources would be a crucial factor supporting the momentum of this growth.



The LNG carrier market is driven by the arbitrage opportunity that exists between the supply side (North America, Africa, Qatar, Australia and Russia) and demand side (East Asia, Europe and emerging importers) of the LNG market. Very strong dynamics on both sides has created an opportunity for profits to be made. However, this opportunity can be constrained by lack of liquefaction capacity or LNG carriers.



In recent years, a large number of LNG carriers have been constructed, however, as prices fell, and the global market started to experience an oversupply of LNG due to a slowdown in LNG demand growth Since most LNG is sold on long-term contracts that are linked to the price of oil, LNG prices have also fallen and will continue to fall into 2017.

Visiongain's global LNG Carrier market report can keep you informed and up to date with the developments in the market.

With reference to this report, it details the key investments trend in the global market, subdivided by regions, capital expenditure and projects. Through extensive secondary research and interviews with industry experts, visiongain has identified a series of market trends that will impact the LNG Carrier market over the forecast timeframe.



The report will answer questions such as:

- How is the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier market evolving?

- What is driving and restraining the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier market dynamics?

- How will each submarket segment grow over the forecast period and how much sales will these submarkets account for in 2027?

- How will market shares of each the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier submarket develop from 2017-2027?

- Which individual technologies/type will prevail and how will these shifts be responded to?

- Which Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier submarket will be the main driver of the overall market from 2017-2027?

- How will political and regulatory factors influence regional the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier market and submarkets?

- Will leading national the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier market broadly follow macroeconomic dynamics, or will individual country sectors outperform the rest of the economy?

- How will market shares of the national markets change by 2027 and which nation will lead the market in 2027?

- Who are the leading players and what are their prospects over the forecast period?

- How will the sector evolve as alliances form during the period between 2017 and 2027?



Five Reasons Why You Must Order and Read This Report Today:



1) The report provides forecasts for the four main containment systems in the LNG carrier market

- GTT No 96 CAPEX 2017-2027

- T-Mark III and Mark Flex CAPEX 2017-2027

- Moss CAPEX 2017-2027

- SPB CAPEX 2017-2027



2) The report provides CAPEX forecasts (2017-2027), plus analysis, for four national LNG carrier constructor markets, providing unique insight into LNG industry development

- South Korea CAPEX 2017-2027

- Japan CAPEX 2017-2027

- China CAPEX 2017-2027

- India CAPEX 2017-2027



3) The report reveals tables detailing all existing and scrapped LNG carriers, as well as the full order book of upcoming carriers:



Existing Carriers:

- Ship Name

- Year Built

- Shipbuilder

- Operator

- Capacity

- Containment System



Order Book:

- Shipbuilder

- Expected Delivery Date

- Operator

- Containment System

- Capacity



4) The report includes Expert opinion regarding the LNG Carrier Market and its Future Outlook

- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.



5) The report provides market share and detailed profiles of the leading companies operating within the LNG Carrier market:

- Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI)

- Kawasaki Heavy Industries

- NYK Line.

- Misc Berhad

- STX Offshore and Shipbuilding

- Hudong Zhonghua

- Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME)

- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

- Maran Gas Maritime Inc. (MGM)

- Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd.



This independent 247-page report guarantees you will remain better informed than your competitors. With 108 tables and figures examining the LNG Carrier market space, the report gives you a direct, detailed breakdown of the market. PLUS, Capital expenditure AND details of all existing and scrapped LNG carriers, as well as the full order book of upcoming carriers from 2017-2027. This report will keep your knowledge that one step ahead of your rivals.



This report is essential reading for you or anyone in the Oil and Gas sector.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5245543



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


DESENZANO DEL GARDA, Italy, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vinum&Cibus Italici Consortium campaign kickoff in Canada will take place this December. The association which represents a group of Italian small and medium food and wine companies located in the Veneto region is ready to open up the Canadian scene.

The Vinum&Cibus Italici Consortium Opens to Canada Market The Vinum&Cibus Italici Consortium Opens to Canada Market

In the past days a video has been launched through web and social media to introduce the Consortium, the Veneto territory and culture. The promotional video has been shot with both English and French subtitles to be addressed to the entire market. The aim of the initiative is to show the peculiarities of Veneto's food and wine production whose quality is deeply linked to long traditions and place of origin and to offer an incredible opportunity to journalists, influencers, consumers and tradespeople from across Canada to learn about Italian wines.

Italian wines have gained an important role in the Canadian market, reaching the third place for value (21.24%) and the first for volume 22.44%. Quebec and Ontario are the two Canadian provinces with the largest share of wine consumed while in British Columbia the current trends really reflect the curiosity and excitement of B.C.'s wine-buying public and include roses, organic wines and exotic white grape varieties from Italy.

Canada is ranked fifth among the main importers of wine in the world, for 2016. Italian wine shows a steady growth in popularity and presence in this market and Italy is in first place in 2016 for quantity of wine imported to Canada, with over 50 million liters. According to the international wine experts the market is destined to grow, considering the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada signed on 2016. Quebec in particular has a historical propensity for wine culture, especially high-level wines.

The Vinum&Cibus Italici Consorzio represents a diverse group of small and medium wine and food Italian companies. Through membership of the Consorzio, they have succeeded in transforming competition into an alliance that can be used to face global challenges, especially in new markets. Made in Italy, passion and entrepreneurship are the keywords of Vinum&Cibus Italici's mission.

FOR MEDIA INQUIRES OR INFO:

Vinum&Cibus Italici

Promotional video in English:

https://www.facebook.com/vinumetcibusitalici/videos/987394381414390/

Promotional video in French:

https://www.facebook.com/vinumetcibusitalici/videos/987404671413361/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vinumetcibusitalici/

Website: http://www.vinumecibusitalici.it/

CONTACTS:

BLANCDENOIR SRL

Piazza Matteotti, 25

25015 Desenzano del Garda (BS)  Italia

Alice Franceschi

+39 0307741535

[email protected]

SOURCE Vinum&Cibus Italici Consorzio

Related Links

http://www.vinumecibusitalici.it


LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This is the 6th edition of the StatPlan Transformer Report.



The report sizes demand for power and distribution transformers in base year 2017 and forecasts sales from 2018 to 2022.







Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5253653







The report contains comprehensive quantitative data and qualitative analysis of the transformer markets, globally and for all regions and countries.



Generator Transformers Power Network Transformers Distribution Network Transformers

The markets for power and distribution transformers in 2017 in regions and major countries are analysed, with sales and the installed base by type of transformer and ownership. In an historical record, the six StatPlan Transformer Surveys are compared, with the installed base by type of transformer and ownership from 2012 to 2017.



The report predicts market trends in volume and value from 2017 to 2022, with the factors affecting price; input costs for raw materials, labour, energy and production capacity. Transformer production capacity is assessed in MVA by country and major manufacturer. Production capacity in tonnes and manufacturers of electrical steel are analysed. Market shares in value of the leading transformer manufacturers are listed.



The changing landscape of generation and the networks with the growth of DER and renewables, energy efficiency, logistics, electrification and other issues are identified and discussed, with commentary on the impact on transformers.



The report contains comprehensive quantitative data and qualitative analysis of the transformer markets, globally and for all regions and countries. Generator Transformers, Power Network Transformers, Distribution Network Transformers.



TRANSFORMER SALES IN MVA AND EX-FACTORY COST

Sales in base year 2017, forecast in MVA and in nominal $, annually from 2018 to 2022.

By region and 124 countries, in MVA and $ value

Country sales analysis in MVA by Power Transformer/Distribution Transformer



TRANSFORMER SALES COMPARED AT EX-FACTORY COST & INSTALLED COST $

Sales in base year 2017 and forecast to 2022 by region.

MARKET SHARES Global market shares in value for major transformer manufacturers.



GENERATOR AND TRANSFORMER INSTALLED BASE ANALYSIS

 Base year 2017, transformer type

 By region and 124 countries

 By type - GSU, Power Network Transformer, Distribution Network Transformer

 Power generation capacity MW

 Transformer capacity MVA, number of transformers, kVA per transformer

 Power transformers by ownership - Generator, Utility, Industry

 Distribution transformers by ownership - Generator, Utility, Industry



PPI (PRODUCER PRICE INDEX) TREND, FACTORS IMPACTING PRICE

 PPI trends and the following factors impacting prices are analysed.

 Demand for transformers, market and industry trends

 Production capacity - surplus/shortage

 Input prices of raw materials, energy, labour and future trends

 The economic and financial climate



THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS; GSU, POWER & DISTRIBUTION TRANSFORMERS

Transformers are needed at any stage where the voltage changes up or down. The stages and parameters are mapped as power is stepped up from generating plant to the high voltage transmission grid, down to medium voltage distribution grid and down to low voltage end user.



TRANSFORMER : GENERATOR CAPACITY RATIOS - MVA :

 By region and 124 countries-

 By type - GSU, Power Network Transformer, Distribution Network Transformer



TRANSFORMER PRODUCTION CAPACITY AND MANUFACTURERS

Production capacity is assessed, for transformer manufacturers and for electrical steel, for different regions and countries and surplus capacity identified, with its effect on prices. Manufacturers of both are listed with global shares of production capacity.



N-1, N-2, 2N, 2N+1 - STANDARDS OF REDUNDANCY

LONG TERM DEMAND CYCLE 1900-2050

The long term demand cycle depends on new build and replacement. Power transformers commonly have 40 year lives and with modern life extension can last even longer so the replacement cycle is a long term issue. To determine the demand cycle it is necessary to chart the growth of the transformer fleet over many decades. StatPlan has charted this since 1900 and the cycle is plotted to determine the demand cycle over 150 years, from 1900 to 2050. The long term demand cycle is not the same as the short term sales forecast.



THE POINT OF CONNECTION, CENTRAL AND DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

SMART TRANSFORMERS

The aging power grid, increasing energy demands, spiraling cost of generating electricity and its cost on the environment all point toward the need for a smart grid. Transformers serve as a hub for collection and distribution of energy and are key components of a smart grid.



MEPS AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Losses in transmission and distribution networks constitute the single biggest loss in any electricity system and 70% of these losses occur in the distribution network. Government regulations and programmes to reduce losses with energy efficient distribution transformers are outlined for different regions.



LOGISTICS

Power transformers can be the size of a house and weigh 400-500 tons. They often have to be transported large distances over difficult terrain with poor roads, underpasses and overpasses and limited load weight limits. Logistics problems and solutions are discussed together with their implications for transformers and similar large items of capital equipment.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5253653



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Polymer/BioPlastic Failure & Defects: Problem Solving Case-Histories" conference has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

This course is ideal for professionals involved in Analytical Services and new Technology development.

As an Analytical professional, you will learn interpretive skills & tips to help you provide world class services and consultation to your internal customers.

If responsible for Product/Process/Technology development programs, you will realize that most often the modifications, if effective, appear in the thermal-rheology data which can then help guide the projects, more effectively. What is more interesting is that such analytical data reveal time/temperature/mechanical/production history and sometimes even, present unexpected (accidental) information, that can form the basis of new technologies.

When Marketing technology to manufacturing based customers, relatively inexpensive but fairly common thermal-rheology techniques, are often brought in to discussions and so, can prove to be very powerful in communicating product/process improvements.

So join us and explore the hidden powers of thermal, mechanical, rheological & complimentary techniques !



Agenda:



DAY - 1

Mastering the Family of Thermal - Mechanical Techniques: Learning What They Can Do for Your Company



8:00-8:30

Continental Breakfast



8:30-9:45

Critical Knowledge for Mastering Polymeric Materials



Molecular architect of polymers in the solid and molten states, concept of amorphous vs crystalline states and their dependence on structure & processing, as well as impact on properties, modification of polymers via copolymers, blends or alloys, role of transitions such as Glass (Tg) and Melting (Tm) in polymer characterization and understanding polymer flow & fabrication. Emphasis on controlling What/Why/How in order to achieve the desired Performance from a polymer.



9:45-10:00

Coffee Break



10:00-12:00

Extracting Information Buried in Thermal-Mechanical Analysis Data



Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), modulated DSC (MDSC), thermomechanical analysis (TMA) and, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Role of transitions such as Glass (Tg), Melting (Tm), solid and molten-state Crystallization (Tch and Tcc) in polymer characterization. Measurements in simple and complex systems with confidence, quantification & separation of the various competing physical-chemical factors; theme being "Getting the Most out of Thermal-Mechanical Techniques", presentation of "Tricks & Tips of the Trade"



12:00-1:00

Lunch



1:00-1:45

Applications of Thermal/Mechanical Techniques Across the Polymer Industry



Breadth of technological information from thermal/mechanical techniques for specific polymer products. Thermoplastics (identification, branching, cross-link density, molecular weight effects, crystallinity). Thermosets (network structures, time-temperature dependence and characterization of gelation & curing). Composites (characterization of matrix/reinforcement, detection and quantification of anisotropy). Elastomers (characterization and deformation ). Copolymers (types, separation of physical effects to reveal composition). Blends & Alloys (compatibility vs miscibility, exchange reactions, interpretation of subtle changes).



1:45-2:15

Polyolefins: Structure-Property-Processing Probed via Transition Phenomenon

Molecular relaxations/transitions in various polyethylenes (LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE, Copolymers, Ionomers, Waxes) and polypropylene. Crystallization rates of PP vs Nucleating agents studied by DSC and compared to more sensitive rheological technique.



2:15-2:30

Coffee Break



2:30-3:30

Applications to Oriented/Unoriented Systems: FIBER & Plastic FILM Industries



Applicability of thermal/mechanical techniques in Fiber and Film industries. FILMS (finest differentiation of multilayer components vs complementary techniques such as IR, IR-OM and GC, measurement & control of crystallinity & its role in thermoforming, relationships between nucleation and processing rates and achieving high clarity at high crystallinities, differentiation of fractional draw-ratios and balanced vs unbalanced orientation processes, determining orientational and dimensional heat stabilization histories. FIBERS (orientation, extent, and production history, drying/annealing/ mechanical history).



3:30-4:00

Applications in Polymer ADDITIVES Industries: BEST PRACTICES



Best practices in selecting the additives for thermal & thermo-oxidative stabilization, flame retardancy, crystallization rate enhancement & morphology control via nucleation, simulation & control of melt viscosity.



4:00-4:30

Life-Time Prediction of Materials Using Thermal based Kinetics



Benefits vs pitfalls of predictions. Improving the reliability of predictions. 5 Case-Histories include, prediction of material life due to time dependent diffusion, time-temperature effects on the processes affecting material performance such as crystallization, decomposition, and gelation.



4:30-5:30

Brainstorm Your Problems for a Private/Group Discussion



5:30-7:00

Cocktail Mixer



DAY - 2

Case Histories of Industrial Problem Solving: Thermal-Mechanical-Rheological Techniques



8:00-8:30

Continental Breakfast



8:30-10:15

Rheology Techniques: Theory, Principle, & Molecular Architecture for Polymer Fluids



Science of rheology, characteristics of various fluids, origin and manifestation of viscoelasticity in polymer melts, discussion of rheology measurement techniques - oscillatory, steady state shear, and elongational flow, information on physico-chemical structural features, relevance to polymer processing, and key applications



10:15-10:30

Coffee Break



10:30-11:00

Rheology of Moisture, Heat, and Shear Sensitive Polymers



Most effective strategies for handling Nylons, Polyesters, EVOH, PVC, and the presentation of "Tricks & Tips of the Trade"



11:00-12:00

How to Identify Opportunities in Thermal-Mechanical-Rheological Data?



Impact on Science/Technology/ Business Development



7 Case-Histories will be presented wherein opportunities for problem solving and innovative concepts were identified during the course of routine thermal-mechanical-rheological characterization. Strategies will be discussed on creating such opportunities more frequently.



12:00-1:00

Lunch



1:00-2:00

Industrial Problem Solving with Thermal-Mechanical-Rheological Techniques



15-20 Case-Histories will be presented where Thermal-Mechanical-Rheological Techniques played a key role in resolving customer issues.



2:00-2:30

Coffee Break



2:30-4:00

Thermal Analysis & Rheology Instrumentation: Latest Developments



TBA



4:00-5:30

Brainstorm Your Problems for a Private/Group Discussion

For more information about this conference visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wkcm4r/two_day?w=5





Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


BOSTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyros Law Offices is alerting investors of Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) that it is investigating legal claims against the company for possible securities fraud violations committed by Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX).

In the last few weeks, Kyros Law has been contacted by numerous investors that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the company. Kyros Law is dedicated to fighting for the rights of these investors, and other investors that have lost money in VRX stock.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) investors that have invested over $100,000 before March 2016 are urged to contact our law firm immediately to protect their rights. Visit our VRX Lawsuit website or call 1-800-934-2921 to speak to someone about your case.

The investigation concerns possible violations of securities law committed by Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) management that has led to significant losses to investors. Recent lawsuits filed against the company allege that Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) may have improperly used a pharmacy network to artificially increase sales for their drugs.

In February 2016, Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) announced it would restate its financial results, citing issues with revenue recognition stemming from sales from a specific pharmacy network. That same month, the company came under SEC investigation. During this time, the stock price of VRX dropped significantly, with the share prices dropping more than 90%.

Kyros Law Offices urges Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl (NYSE: VRX) investors that invested more than $100,000 prior to March 2016 to contact our law firm immediately to protect their rights. Visit our VRX Lawsuit website or call 1-800-934-2921 to find out if you have a case.

Kyros Law specializes in a wide range of complex litigation, mass torts, and corporate governance matters, including the representation of whistleblowers, shareholders and consumers in securities fraud, false claims act and class actions. Our lawyers have been responsible for recovering hundreds of millions of dollars for our clients throughout the United States, Africa, Asia and Europe. Visit our website to learn more about our firm.

SOURCE Kyros Law
The Holmen Village Board took care of end-of-the-year budget matters as well as action on funding next years budget at its Dec. 14 meeting.

The village adopted a balanced budget of $6,323,391 for 2018 at a Nov. 9 public hearing. Property owners in the village will be providing slightly more than $3 million of the amount needed to cover expenses to provide services to its residents.

The 2017 levy, which will fund the 2018 fiscal year, has been set at $3,206,104. The mill rate of 21.5572 will mean taxpayers with property values assessed at $200,000 will pay $4,311.44 in 2018. The rate is down marginally from 21.8224 for the 2016 levy.

The villages portion of property taxes paid for the 2018 budget is 24 percent of the tax bill. Other entities receiving allocations from property taxes collected by the village are La Crosse County, the School District of Holmen and Western Technical College.

Since a change in the Act 59 law passed earlier this year, the state will no longer be among in the entities receiving property tax allocations.

The amount in expenditures anticipated for 2018 is $4,360,531 less than this years total of $10,683,922. Major spending in this years budget included the construction of a new library and reconstruction of Holmen Drive.

With the 2018 budget set to go, the police and parks and recreation departments submitted requests for vehicle purchases. The police department received approval to purchase and outfit two new squad cars at $60,000 each.

The Parks and Recreation Department also received approval for new equipment purchases of a pickup, a snow plow and salter/sander equipment.

The HVB passed a resolution approving changes to this years budget to mesh unanticipated revenues with actual expenditures.

Among the figures on the plus side are savings resulting from the library construction coming in under budget. Another is an environmental impact fee received from American Transmission Company for the Badger Coulee line thats designated for recreational purposes. The village also received unanticipated revenues from the sale of land bordering a retention basin that wasnt needed for stormwater containment.

Cost overruns for the Holmen and Hale drives construction project were $1,509,487. A number of the unanticipated expenses were to upgrade utility infrastructure such as sewer lines. However, the village did see $1,062,186 in unanticipated income from tax increment district #3. TIF#3 has had significant development in 2017, including a new Festival Foods store, mini-malls and other construction.

Donations for the new library collected so far total $167,310. In approving the $4.5 million project, the village board approved financing the librarys construction through a combination of borrowing and donations amounting to $1 million from individuals and other supporters.

Other proceeds in the 2017 budget reconciliation came from refinancing 2017A bonds and short term borrowing for 2017 capital outlay that came in under budget.
LAS VEGAS, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Each year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas brings together the world's greatest innovators and dreamers from across the consumer technology spectrum. And 2018 will mark the third year in a row that Hong Kong's XDynamics will be making an appearance. The company will be located at booth #26427, at the heart the drone section.

The carbon fiber monocoque chassis of the XDynamics Evolve drone strengthens structural stability and improves flight dynamics. Its remote controller is a smart pilot system which embeds a 7-inch viewfinder, 5-inch touch control panel, processing hardware, and software in an all-in-one package. XDynamics designs, develops, manufactures and markets high-end drone products for consumers and professionals. The company is committed to empower users with freedom and autonomy through drone technology, unleashing unlimited creativity in aerial videography and spatial data collection.

It's been a busy year for XDynamics: The company has not only been working on developing four specific drone platforms, but has also cooperated with Maxim's, a local food and beverage industry leader, to bring drone delivery another step closer to reality with a successful delivery trail in Hong Kong Science Park earlier this year. In a year marked by accomplishments and bold innovation, XDynamics will arrive at CES with the firm intention to make an impression in the competitive drone industry.

After testing and optimization, the Evolve carbon fiber quadcopter has arrived. It's the world's first consumer drone equipped with a dual screen controller. The focus in the last few months has been to create a rich and immersive user experience without sacrificing safety. Evolve is scheduled to hit the shelves later this quarter, and XDynamics will be taking pre-orders for the first time during CES.

Other highlights at CES will include a demonstration of the flying ability of the D-02, XDynamics' next-generation aerial platform for professional drone cinematography and industrial applications. The company will also unveil its next two industrial products, the G1 and F1.

All XDynamics drones are made of carbon fiber, and each is equipped with not only the company's trademark dual screen controller, but also with Amimon's "zero latency" wireless broadcasting technology. Together these make flying more simple, enjoyable and safe.

After two years of intense product development, XDynamics aims to show everyone at CES they're a force to be reckoned with in the drone industry. To book a meeting with the XDynamics team at CES, email [email protected]. The company will also be available for meetings in the days leading up to CES, from January 5 to 8.

XDynamics expects 2018 to be a pivotal year for its long-term success. The company has selected Irvine, California as the home of its first U.S. office which opened earlier this year.

About XDynamics

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Hong Kong, XDynamics designs, develops, manufactures and markets high-end drone products for consumers and professionals. Its development team consists of industry-leading experts from Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and mainland China with several decades of experience in aerial robotics, aerodynamics, flight control algorithms, computer vision and imaging technology. XDynamics is committed to empower users with freedom and autonomy through drone technology, unleashing unlimited creativity in aerial videography and spatial data collection.

Website: https://www.xdynamics.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/XDynamicsGlobal

Twitter: www.twitter.com/xdynamicsglobal

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/xdynamics-limited

CES Booth: LVCC, South Hall 2 - 26427

Contact

Lane Walcoff  Sales Manager

[email protected]

SOURCE XDynamics

Related Links

http://www.xdynamics.com


"The Zeel team is proud to be recognized with such an esteemed distinction," says Zeel founder and CEO Samer Hamadeh. "We're the trailblazers in what is now a competitive segment in the massage industry, and what sets us apart, and makes us award-winning, is our commitment to service, quality, security, and reliability. Massage at home and in hotels was just the beginning. We believe in Powering Massage Everywhere and now offer staffing solutions for spas and wellness programs for corporations. It's an exciting time in the technology-enabled wellness space."

Honorees were identified based on the results of a comprehensive study of independently owned companies, using a proprietary algorithm and other advanced analytics. The algorithm was built on a balanced scorecard designed to measure four metrics reflecting major pillars of entrepreneurship  innovation, growth, leadership, and impact.

Zeel is recognized for pioneering the same-day, in-home massage category. With Zeel, customers can order a soothing massage through the Zeel app or on zeel.com  delivered directly to homes, hotels, workplaces, and events in more than 75 U.S. cities. Customers can choose the time, length, and location for the massage; the preferred gender of the massage therapist; and a massage technique ranging from Swedish to deep tissue, sports, prenatal, couples, and sleep massage. On-demand massages can be scheduled to start as early as 8am and as late as 10:30pm, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Contributions to Zeel's entrepreneurial recognition include an award-winning staffing solution for spas with Zeel Spa; a platform for hotels to provide in-room massages with Zeel Concierge; and in-office massages with Zeel Corporate Wellness.

"Our annual evaluation is a 360-degree analysis of top privately-held companies representing and serving a variety of industries," explains Lisa Murray, Chief Insights Officer of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. "Every year we review a new batch of entries that reflect great entrepreneurial strides. The ones that make the list have implemented visionary initiatives impacting their communities for the better, innovative ideas redefining industry standards, leadership practices fostering enviable company cultures, and creative growth strategies launching their brands to new heights."

Details about the Entrepreneur 360 list are available at entrepreneur.com/360.

About Zeel

Zeel created the Massage On Demand category in 2012 and was the first company to bring same-day, in-home massages to customers. Ranked #167 on Inc. Magazine's 2017 Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S., Zeel is the leading and largest on-demand massage provider with over 10,000 licensed massage therapists in its network of over 75 U.S. cities. Zeel offers the most reliable on-demand massage service in as little as an hour, 365 days a year, with start times as early as 8am and as late as 10:30pm. Zeel delivers the highest quality, five-star massages from licensed, vetted massage therapists to homes, hotels, workplaces, and events. With best-in-class security protocols and white glove customer service, Zeel customers enjoy massages in the comfort, convenience, safety, and privacy of the place and time of their choosing. Booking, scheduling, and payment are made easy with the Zeel app for iPhone and Android. Zeel is also home to Zeel Spa, the on-demand staffing solution for spas; Zeel Concierge, which enables hotels to provide in-room massage bookings for guests; and Zeel Corporate Wellness, which brings chair massages to companies, events, and workplaces.

About Entrepreneur Media Inc.

For more than 40 years, Entrepreneur Media Inc. has been serving the entrepreneurial community providing comprehensive coverage of business and personal success through original content and events. Entrepreneur magazine, Entrepreneur.com, and publishing imprint Entrepreneur Press provide solutions, information, inspiration and education read by millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners worldwide. To learn more, visit entrepreneur.com.

SOURCE Zeel

Related Links

https://www.zeel.com


AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Zenoss Inc., the leader in Software-Defined IT Operations, announced today that the 2018 Zenoss ZenPack Challenge will take place at the company's GalaxZ18 user conference, June 20-22, 2018, at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas. The deadline for submissions is April 5, 2018.

The ZenPack Challenge is an annual contest that provides an opportunity for developers from around the world to showcase their skills by creating a unique ZenPack for the Zenoss hybrid IT monitoring platform. The challenge is sponsored by SOPRIS Technologies, a provider of end-to-end software and hardware solutions.

The 2018 ZenPack Challenge is open to all developers from anywhere around the world. Two finalists in each category, professional and university, will receive scholarships to attend GalaxZ18. At the conference, the finalists will showcase their ZenPacks on the Partner Showcase floor in front of all conference attendees.

ZenPacks are key elements of the Zenoss value proposition  deepening the platform capabilities by using a highly extensible model to collect health and performance data from all physical, virtual and cloud systems and to integrate with other IT operations systems. Strategic Zenoss partners such as SOPRIS have built entire business practices for the Zenoss platform, and ZenPack development is fundamental to these.

"We are elated to be the sponsor of the 2018 ZenPack Challenge," said Jorge Zepeda-Godinez, CEO of SOPRIS. "This challenge is a wonderful showcase of the innovation being created by the global Zenoss community, and we're proud to be a part of it."

ZenPacks are customizable plug-ins that extend the Zenoss platform using standard APIs and protocols, including SNMP, WMI, SSH and many more, to collect real-time health and performance data from any type of system or application. The flexible, highly extensible ZenPack model allows users to quickly expand the discovery, performance and availability monitoring capabilities of the Zenoss platform to new technologies in their IT environments.

The Zenoss ZenPack Catalog has grown to more than 500 ZenPacks created by Zenoss and the Zenoss development community, covering physical systems, containers, cloud deployments, applications and more.

"We encourage entries from all over the world from anyone who loves developing software and solving IT operations challenges," said Brian Wilson, chief customer officer at Zenoss. "Every year, we've been impressed with the developers' creativity and competitive spirit. We're very excited to see what the 2018 challenge has in store  especially with the addition of the university category this year, enabling students to join industry professionals in adding innovative new ZenPacks to our growing catalog so they can be shared and extended within the Zenoss TechZen Community."

The winner in each category will be awarded the 2018 Zenoss ZenPack of the Year award. All finalists will be highlighted in both the Zenoss ZenPack Catalog and the Zenoss blog and will receive a unique badge on the Zenoss TechZen User Community that may also be shared on social media.

GalaxZ18 attendees will also enjoy:

Interactive demonstrations and expert sessions with cloud and infrastructure leaders, practitioners, and industry experts

Strategies for enabling business through improved IT service health in hybrid IT environments

The latest how-tos and best practices from Zenoss subject matter experts

Instructor-led, hands-on technical training courses and certifications

One-on-one meetings with Zenoss technical experts and other key staff

The annual Z Awards, which recognize exceptional innovation, leadership and collaboration

Networking opportunities throughout

Registration for GalaxZ18 is now open online. For more information, please visit https://galaxz.zenoss.com.

Additional Resources

Connect to Zenoss on LinkedIn

Follow Zenoss on Twitter

Find Zenoss on Facebook

Bookmark Zenoss Blog

Visit the Zenoss Newsroom

Contact Zenoss

About Zenoss

Zenoss works with the world's largest organizations to ensure their IT services and applications are always on. As the leader in Software-Defined IT Operations, Zenoss develops software that builds comprehensive real-time models of hybrid IT environments, providing unparalleled holistic health and performance insights. This uniquely enables Zenoss customers to predict and eliminate outages, dramatically reducing downtime and IT spend. https://www.zenoss.com

About SOPRIS Technologies

SOPRIS Technologies Inc. provides end-to-end advanced solutions and services that address the business, technology and operational challenges faced by technology-driven companies. SOPRIS' services- and solutions-oriented portfolio spans consulting and transformation services, solution design, deployment, integration, operations, and maintenance as well as development centers. SOPRIS provides software and hardware design services that customize solutions to fit specific customer business requirements. SOPRIS offers solutions to media, telecommunications, enterprise, energy and government clients, as well as suppliers to these markets, across the Americas. In the USA, SOPRIS is a certified minority business enterprise (MBE), Hispanic owned, and is an equal opportunity employer. https://www.sopristec.com

Media Contact:

Alison Guzzio

[email protected]

484-459-3243

SOURCE Zenoss Inc.

Related Links

http://www.zenoss.com


The Federal Court in Melbourne has ordered that a land banking scheme known as the Realestate Equity Investment Trust (REIT) and an associated company, Timeline Project Management Pty Ltd (Timeline), be wound up.

REIT is a managed investment scheme that owns land located at Flinders Avenue in Lara in Victoria (below).

At least 82 investors have invested approximately $800,000 into the REIT scheme.

ASIC advise a large amount of the money paid to Timeline has been withdrawn and the balance of that account is now approximately $45,000.

The Lara Property was purportedly mortgaged in favour of a Shariah law lender known as Equitable Financial Solutions Pty Ltd (EFSOL) without the consent of the custodian of the Lara Property, Perpetual, and without that mortgage being registered with the land titles office.

ASIC advised the court the land had purportedly been mortgaged in favour of EFSOL for an amount of between $400,000 and $507,000.

The 2016 agreement, made under Shariah law, contemplates the transfer of the Lara Property to EFSOL and Lotus jointly, with EFSOL owning a 52 per cent share and Lotus owning at 48 per cent share.

The value of EFSOLs share is expressed to be consideration of $507,000 with $400,000 being paid into a solicitors trust account and $107,000 stated to be for services provided by EFSOL to Lara, including back office support, front office support and underwriting of any financial costs to Lara if REIT is unable to fund it.

It is not clear to ASIC where or why most of that money has gone as contrary to its legal obligations, no financial statements have been prepared for the REIT scheme for 5 years, ASIC advise.

Since 2013, investors have been making payments in respect of their investment to Timeline. The Court orders have been issued in English, Arabic and Somali given the source of the investors.

ASICs concerns included that:

REIT had been operating despite it not having a validly appointed responsible entity;

REIT appeared unviable given there had been no progress in, nor prospect of, developing the Land;

financial statements for REIT had not been prepared or lodged with ASIC since 2012; and

the interests of investors appeared to have been prejudiced by the operators of the scheme, including the dissipation of investors money by management to entities unrelated to the scheme.

ASIC Commissioner John Price said, ASIC will take action against unlawful managed investment schemes and the parties that run such schemes.

"Unlawful schemes such as land banking put investors' money at risk and investors should be very careful in checking whether schemes are legitimate before putting up their hard-earned money," John Price said.

Nicholas John Martin and Andrew Thomas Sallway of BDO Australia have been appointed as receivers of the property of REIT, liquidators of Timeline and to ensure that REIT is wound up in accordance with its constitution and the Courts orders.

Mr Martin and Mr Sallway are required to undertake a range of investigations into the affairs of REIT and Timeline, including to:

identify any assets and creditors;

identify unitholders in REIT and verify the amount invested by each unitholder;

determine the validity and value of any claims on the Land;

determine the nature of any potential claims against Timeline or REIT; and

once the pool of available funds has been determined, calculate the distributions that may be made to unit holders in REIT and any other creditors.

The orders also provide that Mr Martin and Mr Sallway are to take all reasonable steps to procure an enforceable offer to purchase the Land from another company, Equitable Financial Solutions Pty Ltd.

Mr Martin and Mr Sallway will report to the Court by 9 March 2018 with its listed for a case management hearing on 20 March 2018.

ASIC filed an application to wind up REIT and Timeline on 25 July 2017.

This followed the cancellation of the Australian financial services licence held by Lotus Securities Pty Ltd (Lotus), the responsible entity that managed the REIT scheme until 21 September 2016. Lotus was placed into liquidation on 14 December 2016, on the application of a creditor.

Lotus had secured debts totalling $700,000 and unsecured debts totalling $150,000.

Half the purchase price of $975,000 in 2010 was funded by private investors.

ASIC said John Isaacs, who was investigated by ASIC, has been involved with the management of REIT and Lotus and is connected with other entities involved in the scheme. The management of REIT, Lotus and Timeline includes Mr Isaacs, who has been involved with the management of REIT and Lotus and is connected with other entities involved in the scheme and Natalie McKeown, Mr Isaacs partner. Mr Sharmarke Mohamed Ahmed, a friend of Mr Isaacs, was the purchaser under the original contract of sale of the Lara property.

From around 2011, the REIT investors purchased units in the Lara Syndicate for at least $7,000 each as an initial deposit and paid a minimum of $300 per month under a savings plan.

Investor monies were being paid into Timelines account from June 2013 up until at least June 2017, notwithstanding that Timeline was deregistered on 25 January 2015 and Lotus had its AFSL cancelled on 21 September 2016.

An amount of $308,212.90 was received through the Paygate system from June 2013 to June 2017, from investors in REIT, by way of recurring deposits.

ASIC is concerned that no steps have been taken to develop the Lara property and on current information it appears that the development of the property cannot go ahead.
The family of the late magnate Nathan Werdiger, who founded Juilliard, are selling down.

The Australian reported the anticipated move could see more than $1 billion worth of real estate put in play.

Juilliard Group invests in the Australian commercial property market, specialising in CBD office spaces.

The company owns and manages a number of Melbourne CBD and suburban office buildings, certain semi-industrial sites and a regional shopping centre.

Some of the Juilliard Group's buildings in Melbourne CBD include 440 Collins Street (above) 535 Bourke Street, 459 Collins Street, and 574 St Kilda Road.

The Werdiger family's Juilliard Group is ranked as one of the largest private landlords in Melbourne.

Philippa Kelly is the chief operating officer at the Juilliard Group. The business has been run by Nathan's eldest son Shlomo since the early 2000s.

Nathan Werdiger, who died in 2015, established himself as one of Australia's most successful businessmen in textiles and later property. He died aged 93.

Polish-born, Mr Werdiger and his brother Nechemia, two of six children, were the only family members to survive the Auschwitz "selection" process run by infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death".

In 1945 he was rescued, close to death, by the Allied forces from another notorious concentration camp, Buchenwald. Werdiger recounted his times in Carolyn Ford's book Who Brought the Luck to the Lucky Country?
Video conferencing, digital publishing, and print-on-demand services have enabled a new generation of young writers to become published authors. In the last several months alone, at least four new anthologies of teen work have been published.

After working with young writers at the Ojai Playwrights Conference Youth Workshop (an arm of the prestigious Ojai Playwrights Conference), Tim Cummings decided to preserve some of this writing for posterityediting a collection that includes exemplary stories, poetry, and dramatic writings composed by teens during the last decade at the workshop. Cummings, a Writing for Young People MFA student at Antioch University, used Lulus publishing and distribution services to publish the anthology.

I felt it was important to do something that was lasting and to give people something that was tactile, he said of Anthology: The Ojai Playwrights Conference Youth Workshop 20062016, which was released in both print and digital formats in November. Its important to lift up these young voices.

The youth workshop is guided by program director and co-founder Kim Maxwell, and brings together a diverse group of about 12 Southern California teenagers. During the program, 14- though 18-year-olds write, learn improvisational exercises, meet successful playwrights, and ultimately perform their work at the conference. A portion of the books proceeds will go towards the scholarship fund that enables students in need to attend the nine-day program.

Cummings saw firsthand how the conference gave young writers the confidence and resilience necessary to navigate a tumultuous time. These kids are coming into a world thats really confusing to them, he said. Theyre looking at the adults around them going out of their minds with all this political turmoil.

Publishing Dreams

The Ojai book joins a number of other recently published teen anthologies. In June, young writers in New Jersey were published in the Beyond the Ink and Paper Anthology, a collection of writings from members of the Medford Teen Writers Guild. This will be the seventh consecutive year that students in the Burlington County Institute of Technology writing guild have produced an anthology. They released this years 106-page anthology through the self-publishing platform BookBaby.

Over the summer, the Larry J. Ringer Library in College Station, Tex., hosted an eight-week TEENS Publish workshop. At the end of the program, 15 young writers published their workeverything from a novel excerpt to a poem to a narrative nonfiction articlein the print-only 2017 TEENS Publish Anthology. The library hosted a launch party for the authors in October, sharing copies of the 160-page anthology published through CreateSpace.

Digital tools have also empowered teen writers in rural areas. Van Buren District Library marketing assistant Jeffrey Babbitt launched a Journey to Publication workshop for teenagers in 2016. His library system in rural Michigan has seven branches and counted 169,000 visitors last year. Since the library branches span significant distances, all meetings are conducted via video conference. The workshop lasts for 16 bi-weekly sessions, with students sharing work online.

In a rural area, creative people feel more isolated, said Babbitt, recalling his struggle to find support as a teen writer in a small town. Theyre not going to have the number of people to connect with that creative people in urban areas have. Theyre not going to have the same opportunities to connect with people who can teach them to write.

Babbitt published five stories on CreateSpace by the writers who completed the program last year. The 62-page VBDL Presents Teen Writers Anthology paperback is now available on Amazon. This program allowed me to make my dream come true, said Eric Wheeler, a 16-year-old participant who was inspired by the workshop to pursue a writing career. I am working on many pieces that will one day go out to a publisher. A number of the Ojai Playwrights Conference Youth Workshop alumni are also pursuing writing as a career or studying it in college.

Inspired by another rural Michigan library, Babbitt purchased a curriculum published by JLB Creatives Publishing to structure his classes. Developing an entire curriculum for writing courses is not something Im prepared to do, or have the time to do, Babbitt said, but noted that he designed a few worksheets of his own to supplement the curriculum.

About 10 writers completed Babbitts first program last year, and attendance fluctuates from meeting to meeting. So far this year, the most popular session of the Journey to Publication workshop counted 20 participants.

The teens who completed the program last year all appreciated the final printed product. You dive deeper into aspects that you just dont get into in a classroom, said Elizabeth Miller, a high school junior who finished the workshop last year. I just couldnt believe that something I had written was put out for the world to see.
12/18 NEW JAPAN ROAD TO TOKYO DOME REPORT

By Matthew Macklin on 2017-12-21 15:50:00

Road to Tokyo Dome, December 18th, Korakuen Hall:



Young Lions Cup: Shota Umino defeated Ren Narita. Very similar to Umino vs Yagi on the previous days show. Narita went after the injured knee, with Umino gutting it out and finding his opening. He hit a diving elbow and won after a Boston Crab. Narita held on as long as he could and made an attempt for the ropes, but he had to submit. Really solid match here.



Tomoyuki Oka defeated Tetsuhiro Yagi. Yagi was sporting a freshly shaven head after his run in with Minoru Suzuki. This embarrassment brought out an aggression in him, as he controlled the majority of the match, even slapping Oka at times. Oka used his power advantage with some big body slams and a gutwrench suplex. He got the win with... you guessed it, a Boston Crab.



Katsuya Kitamura defeated Hirai Kawato. This saw a meeting of arguably the two most impressive young lions. Kitamura used his size advantage to throw Kawato around. Kawato got back into it with a missile dropkick, and a triangle choke, but Kitamura countered that into a powerbomb. Kitamura scored the win with an incredible looking Jackhammer.



Masked Horse, Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask IV & KUSHIDA defeated TAKA Michinoku, Taichi, El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru. Horse was unmasked a couple of minutes in to reveal none other than Ryusuke Taguchi, which was a real shocker. This was a pretty fun back and forth match. Liger hit a superplex, Tiger hit a butterfly suplex from the top. Taguchi got the pin after a running hip attack and then tried to get Taichi's girl to whip him.



Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano defeated Henare & Togi Makabe. The stuff here between Ishii & Henare is must see! This was amazing. Ishii made Henare look like a star in the space of five minutes. Henare was worked over, until he started firing up with the stiffest slaps on Ishii. Ishii then chopped him repeatedly in the throat until Henare exploded with a lariat. Henare got a near fall with a Samoan drop, but Yano broke up the pin. Ishii almost beheaded Henare with a lariat before finishing him with a Brainbuster. It's a crime that Ishii doesn't have a singles match at the Tokyo Dome.



EVIL & SANADA defeated Yujiro Takahashi & Bad Luck Fale. Nothing out of the ordinary here, just a match to build EVIL & SANADA towards their title shot on January 4th. Fale accidentally splashed Yujiro, allowing the LIJ team to hit the Magic Killer for the win.



Kota Ibushi, Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan defeated Leo Tonga, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa. Leo was again booked really well. Both Tenzan & Kojima were unable to take him off his feet with a double shoulder tackle. Tama & Ibushi showed really good chemistry together early on. Kojima chopped all three guys in the corner, which was a really fun spot. Ibushi hit a triangle moonsault over the camera man and onto Tama. Leo hit Ibushi with an absolutely amazing dropkick, before Ibushi got the win with the knee strike.



Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI defeated Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka via DQ. This was absolutely wild. The ref had lost all control before the bell even rang. We had Taichi, Desperado & Kanemaru at ringside getting involved, nailing people with chairs. YOSHI was destroyed for the first half of this, with Goto unable to even get on the apron. When Goto finally got in, he had to fight from underneath to get any advantage. He and Suzuki were slapping and forearming each other as hard as they could. The finish saw Goto hit a reverse GTR and lock in an armbar. This saw Suzuki-Gun hit the ring abc cause a DQ. After the match Suzuki accepted Goto's challenge for a hair match at the Tokyo Dome.



Hiroshi Tanahashi came to the ring and apologised for missing the tour due to injury. He was then confronted by Jay White. They began brawling with White going after the knee and then elbowing Tanahashi into a KO. White then dropped him with The Switchblade and stood over the fallen IWGP Intercontinental champion.



Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI & Hiromu Takahashi defeated SHO, YOH & Kazuchika Okada. This was a really great main event and the final match of the year for these guys. Lots of good stuff early on with the juniors being the focus. SHO got the hot tag after YOH had been worked over. Okada and Naito got into it and Okada very quickly had Naito in the Cobra Clutch. It would have been over had BUSHI not broken it up. Lots of double and triple team in the last few minutes and more action than could be recapped. The match ended when Naito pinned YOH with Destino.



After the match Naito & Okada got into it again, and for the first time Naito was able to escape the Cobra Clutch and drop Okada with Destino. The final image of 2017 was Naito standing over Okada only weeks before the headline Wrestle Kingdom at the Tokyo Dome.

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Over 80% of Spains advertising agencies and professionals use branded content and native advertising to win over their audiences, research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has revealed.





According to the research, carried out with nPeople, 41% of advertisers use both formats on a regular basis, while half launch branded content and native campaigns to complement more traditional advertising avenues.In addition, almost 70% of Spains advertisers will increase their budget for branded content during 2018, said the report.Regarding audiences, 17% of Internet users said that branded content and native advertising are interesting, and most added that both formats convey a feeling of trust. Over 20% said that trust increases if branded content is showcased through a well-known media.The research points to an increasing trend and an advertising format that connects better with the audience than traditional ads, said Antonio Traugott, director general, IAB Spain . Advertisers are showing increasing interest in these formats. No doubt branded content and native advertising are going to be increasingly relevant for digital advertising.
Christmas Midnight Mass, presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican in Rome, is to be broadcast live via satellite in Ultra HD on Rai 4K on channel 210 of the Tivusat free-to-air satellite platform.





The initiative will take place under the auspices of the Segreteria per la Comunicazione of the Holy See, led by the Prefect Monsignor Dario Edoardo Vigano, who is managing the event. The project, coming a year after the transmission of the Holy Door Closing Ceremony in Ultra HD, is being handled via the Audiovisual Production department of the Vatican and sees the international debut of Vatican Media, a new brand that is managing and developing multimedia productions for the Vatican. This is one of the reforms of the Holy Sees communication system as requested by Pope Francis.A team of technicians from Globecast, Eutelsat , Rai, Sony and Tivusat is providing the required resources to bring the event to Italian homes via the highest quality Ultra HD images.The ceremony is always eagerly awaited all over the world, with Italian viewers who own a 4K-ready TV equipped with the Tivusat CAM able to view the Ultra HD signal. The event will be broadcast simultaneously on Rai 1 and on Rai 1 HD via digital terrestrial TV and satellite, as well across the world through the usual distribution used by the Vatican.Commenting on the project, Alessandro Alquati, Globecast Italia managing director, said: At a time of particular importance for the transition to 4K, Globecast is honoured and proud to be involved in the Holy See's Segreteria per la Comunicazione, working together with a powerful team of technological partners. Special thanks go to NTT Electronics for providing the 4K HEVC encoding equipment.
Spanish students at La Crescent-Hokah High School received some authentic Colombian dance lessons on Tuesday from a former Lancer exchange student.

Estafania Hererra, now co-owner of an optometry business in Cartago, Colombia, was a foreign exchange student 12 years ago at the high school. Hererra, along with her boyfriend Otto Gutierrez, returned to a La Crescent classroom this week to speak with students in Martha Hollenbecks Spanish classes.

Cheri Olson, who was Hererras host mother in La Crescent, was the one that reached out to Hollenbeck after learning Hererra would be traveling to the states for her sisters wedding. Olson, who has a son whos a high school senior, and two daughters that graduated from La Crescent, said that Hererra told her in the past how she wanted to give something back to the high school, because she appreciated the year she spent there so much.

Hererra said she has wanted to make a trip back for a long time now, but was always too busy with work. When her sisters wedding was set, Hererra decided it was the right opportunity to revisit La Crescent, which she refers to as her second home.

Im really happy to be here, said Hererra. Im enjoying meeting all the new people and seeing the ones I know.

Hererra and Gutierrez demonstrated and taught traditional Colombian dances to three different Spanish classes, and fielded questions that were asked and responded to in Spanish. Hererra spoke about her experience as an exchange student in La Crescent from Colombia, and answered a range of questions from the differences between the two countries, to what Hererras first impression of America was.

Hollenbeck said she was grateful that her students got the opportunity to speak with native Spanish speakers, which she said is crucial for them to become fluent in the language.

I try to speak as fluidly as I can in class, because thats what theyre gonna get in a Spanish-speaking country said Hollenbeck. That was one thing I really took away from when I studied abroad, getting there and thinking Im not ready for this pace.

On the other end, Hererra and Gutierrez, both looking to advance in the business world, appreciated the chance to test and strengthen their English speaking skills.

Its interesting because in our country, we never get to speak English, said Gutierrez, who said hes only been studying English for the past year. This is a good opportunity for us to speak to other people in the language.

This was Gutierrezs first time in Minnesota, and he said he was baffled that while here in winter, there was no snow. Hererra said theyre hoping it snows before the wedding this weekend, so Gutierrez can witness some full-blown Minnesota winter conditions.
In December 2015, a cyberattack cut off electricity in Western Ukraine, leaving 225,000 people without power. In December 2016 it happened again. A cyberattack plunged parts of Kyiv, the capital city, into darkness.

Who might be attacked this December?



Electricity anchors U.S. daily life



In a new era of warfare and of terrorism, cyberattacks are a growing global weapon and energy infrastructure is their frequent target.



In the United States, energy sites have suffered more cyberattacks than any other element of critical American infrastructure, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The grid has prevented major impacts so far, but the appeal to attackers is frighteningly clear. The risks from a widespread and prolonged outage are significant.



In 2003 a blackout caused in part by a tree branch cascaded throughout the Eastern United States and parts of Canada. Over two days, 50 million people lost power. The estimated impact to the United States was $10 billion in damages and 11 lives lost.



That was just two days. An extended power outage would disrupt not only electricity, but also water, food, sanitation, health, and transportation. At the extreme, a blackout has the potential to collapse the social order, threatening livelihoods as well as lives.



Americans have taken notice. Across the political spectrum, Americans rank cyberattacks behind only terrorism and the North Korean nuclear program as a critical threat to national interests.



Within this overall concern Americans are worried about damage to U.S. infrastructure. This is no idle worry.



National defense in a digital and interconnected grid



Across the decades, the building blocks of Americas electric system were designed to stand alone. There were no interconnected operating systems and no internet to link to. Software and management systems controlled assets like power plants and substations from the inside, in operational isolation.



Today existing assets across the system are being rapidly joined through digital pathways. At the same time, new assets ranging from small residential solar panels to new utility-scale natural gas generation are being brought online. This rapid connection of old and new assets creates an "expanding attack surface" for cyber attackers.



Cyberattacks can hit any part of the grid, making the full system part of our national defense. This threat to national security is not yet matched with an adequate national response.



Regulation is driven by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. Together they cover two of the three main aspects of the system - generation and transmission of power. Distribution, the last mile bringing electricity into communities, is largely regulated at the state level.



Looking ahead



These regulatory structures are being retrofitted in real time to incorporate cyber protection. Strong coordination between federal, regional, state, local, technical, and utility organizations with standard protections and a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities is essential.



It is a colossal task. From the Chicago Councils new working paper, here are four places to start:



First, augment cyber defense in the core grid. Cyber threats are volatile, never static. The NERC recently held its biennial grid security exercise, GridEx, to simulate cyber/physical attacks and to test the full ability of utilities and partners to respond. For those who opt in, GridEx serves as a flexible testing ground, one that can be expanded. Ultimately closer alignment between threat identification and industry is critical. One of the leading drivers of corporate investment in cybersecurity technology is addressing regulation.



Second, strengthen protections against national threats with roots in distribution. Across the 50 states, multiple sectors will need to be engaged to manage threats. A national platform allowing state-based public-utility commissions to engage in the discussion and implement consistent best practices will be critical. This could also help address staffing pressure at the state level, where PUCs cover a wide range of issues. Developers of new grid-connected technologies will need to be engaged, and utilities that operate across state boundaries have a unique role to play.



Third, demonstrate and scale components of resilience. GridEx needs to be married to strengthened operations and an expansion of resilient infrastructure. Network segmentation, backup and restore procedures, and training for staff to bring the grid back up in a crisis must be strongly rooted across organizations. In addition, smaller sources of power can offer resilience benefits to the system. These benefits need to be demonstrated with data-driven metrics and then scaled through the regulatory and management oversight of the grid.



Fourth, invest in the cyber foundation of the future energy marketplace. The energy system is becoming increasingly digital, interconnected, and distributed. A collaboration platform that involves federal and state regulators, the energy industry, and city leaders must be created to inform both regulation and industry best practice. Its ranks must also be filled with cyber experts from the financial, engineering, and education sectors as energy takes on more virtual and financial characteristics. As a foundational element, the Unites States is underrepresented in cyber expertise.



Conclusion



The electricity system in the United States has long been at the forefront of both societal benefit and innovation. Today, however, there is no coordinated and integrated national forum addressing cyber threats to energy infrastructure and cities, nor a platform to give the grid edge resources that may offer unique local protections.



A cyberattack has not yet thrown American cities into prolonged darkness. A concerted effort is needed to keep it that way.



This commentary is based on a working paper entitled Grid Security is National Security: Cyber Threats to Energy Infrastructure and Cities, published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The views expressed are the authors own.



Karen Weigert is a senior fellow on global cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She served as the first Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Chicago from 2011 to 2016 and is on twitter @KarenRWeigert.


A Black River Falls attorney accused of trading cash and legal services for sex has been sentenced to 25 days in jail after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor charges in August.

James Ritland, a former district attorney, plead guilty to two counts of attempted adultery and one count of disorderly conduct Aug. 9.

In addition to jail time, La Crosse County Circuit Court Judge Todd Bjerke sentenced Ritland to one year of probation including a sex offender evaluation and placement on the registry if appropriate. He is also to comply with any other evaluations his probation officer deems is appropriate.

Bjerke denied a request to stay the sentence pending an appeal.

During sentencing, both Monroe County District Attorney Kevin D. Croninger and Ritlands attorney Francis Rivard felt that a $125 fine plus court costs was a just punishment for Ritlands offenses.

I think we have come to a resolution that does carry with it some significant penalties. Im sure many people would indicate that they may not think that a fine is a strong penalty for Mr. Ritland, Croninger said.

Croninger and Rivard both felt the case against Ritland was based on unreliable witnesses, and that the public backlash that Ritland had received was punishment enough.

This case is truly fraught with pitfalls, Rivard said. The extremely obvious danger to the state was having three plaintiffs that may or may not be credible.

Rivard also submitted 12 letters of support for Ritland who all attested to his character.

I dont think there is any question that he has good character, but there is no question that he has made some mistakes, Rivard said.

Bjerke took special offense to this statement, I dont see this as a mistake, and it sort of offends my ears when I hear things like that when mistake is doing something wrong as opposed to a conscious act. A decision made not once, but several times.

Bjerke also questioned Ritlands character despite the 12 letters of support.

All of the letters talked highly of your character. I dont disagree with that. You have been trained to have good character. It is not easy to get a law degree. You spent 39 years in practice as a lawyer with what appears to be a good public persona, but when people dont know what you are doing behind closed doors so that it affects your public persona, that makes you a totally different person than in reality. Someone with good character needs to live that character 24-7 so to speak, not just in the public, Bjerke said. I see this case quite differently than what has been presented here.

Before he plead guilty to the three misdemeanors, Ritland was scheduled to stand trial Aug. 9 on multiple felony charges, including soliciting prostitution and maintaining a drug trafficking place.

According to a criminal complaint, a woman told authorities she ran into Ritland in 2013 and he told her he could help if she needed money, after which she visited the his office across from the Jackson County Courthouse and received cash in exchange for oral sex and showing him her breasts, according to the complaint.

A second woman, who had filled in as a paralegal at Ritlands office before landing in legal trouble, said Ritland offered to let her pay off her bills with sexual favors; he also gave her money to purchase heroin and shoot up in his office and posted bonds in La Crosse and Jackson counties to get her out of jail, according to the complaint.

A third woman reported she and the second woman went to Ritland when they were dope sick and needed money, and he paid her to show him her breasts. The woman said she wasnt providing information to authorities to receive a deal on outstanding charges but rather because it was wrong that Ritland was using drug sick girls to get his sexual pleasures, according to the complaint.

Ritland also requested intercourse, paying at least one of the women to bring other girls to him, according to the complaint.

Prior to being charged in August, Ritland told the River Valley Media Group he was confident that I will be found not guilty.

Ritland, 63, served as Jackson County District Attorney from 1981 to 1982. He ran for judge in 2015, finishing last in a six-way primary shortly after authorities began investigating him.

After sentencing, the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation could file a public complaint with the state Supreme Court.

Under Supreme Court rules, an attorney is required to report to the OLR, which would then conduct its own investigation. It is considered professional misconduct to commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyers honesty, trustworthiness or fitness.
Monrovia set for semistate battle with Lawrenceburg. Here's what to know.

Here's all the information you need to know before Friday's IHSAA semi-state football showdown between Monrovia and Lawrenceburg.
Citing his oversight of "an administration involved in disappearances and extrajudicial killings," the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov on December 20 within the framework of the so-called Magnitsky Act of 2012, which provides for sanctions against Russians implicated in serious human rights abuses.

Over the past two years, Russian rights organizations have registered a steady and alarming increase in the number of Chechens -- both men and women -- detained or abducted by security personnel, many of whom subsequently disappeared without trace. In January 2016, Memorial reported that at least 24 people had been apprehended during the previous three months, one of whom had since been found dead.

Two months ago, the news portal Caucasian Knot estimated that no fewer than 43 people had been reported missing by their families in Chechnya since the start of the year. A further seven abductions were reported in late November.

Human rights organizations believe the total figure is far higher, given that relatives of the disappeared might be afraid of incurring Kadyrov's wrath by reporting the abductions to the police and demanding a formal inquiry. Some individuals who have done so appear to have been pressured to withdraw their claims in front of TV cameras and apologize for impugning the security services.

That reluctance, and the obstructions and reprisals experienced by human rights organizations seeking to help victims and their relatives, render it impossible to calculate the precise dimensions of such abuses, Institute of Analysis and Conflict Prevention Director Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya told Caucasian Knot in late October.

Toxic Legacy

Enforced disappearances are part of the toxic legacy of Russias two military campaigns in Chechnya in the 1990s. In a briefing paper published in March 2005, Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated the number of such disappearances between late 1999 and early 2005 at between 3,000 and 5,000, and described the practice as follows:

An enforced disappearance takes place when a person is taken into custody by state agents, and the authorities subsequently deny that the person is in their custody or conceal the victim's whereabouts or fate in a way that places the victim beyond the protection of the law. Often victims of 'disappearances' also suffer torture or execution. Typically those responsible for 'disappearances' will try to avoid being called to account through cover-ups and by spreading misleading information.

HRW further argued that the scale of such disappearances in Chechnya at that time was so widespread or systematic as to meet the definition of a "crime against humanity" enshrined in the UN Declaration On The Protection Of Persons From Forced Disappearances.

Following the killing in 2005 of Chechen resistance commander Aslan Maskhadov, the incidence of enforced disappearances fell sharply. While HRW had documented the disappearance of 44 men between late December 2002 and late February 2003 -- an average of three per week -- Chechen human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhazhiyev claimed in 2008 that not a single such incident had been reported during the first four months of the year. (Nukhazhiyev also cited a figure of 4,300 disappearances since the start of the first war in late 1994.)

That is not to say, however, that the practice fell into abeyance: Natalya Estemirova, who represented the Moscow-based human rights watchdog Memorial in Grozny, had been investigating the suspected involvement of Chechen police and security personnel in such disappearances in the days before she was murdered in July 2009.

The new upsurge in enforced disappearances, which Caucasian Knot described as "systematic," differs from that of the early 2000s in two key respects.

First, whereas the overwhelming majority of wartime and postwar disappearances were purportedly the work of the federal forces Moscow dispatched to Chechnya to combat "international terrorism," today the perpetrators are being blamed on the police and security units subordinate to Kadyrov.

And second, whereas the earlier wave was seemingly indiscriminate, over the past two years the security services appear to have been targeting primarily young men suspected of sympathizing with the extremist group Islamic State (IS) but also suspected drug dealers and men believed to be gay.

Memorial and the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta independently compiled lists of individuals apprehended in the wake of the attacks on police officers in Grozny almost a year ago. A Novaya Gazeta article listing 31 people apprehended, 14 of whom were reportedly summarily executed during the night of January 26-27, generated so much negative publicity that the Kremlin dispatched Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova to Grozny in September to investigate. She failed to corroborate those reports.

Veteran human rights campaigner Svetlana Gannushkina recently told Caucasian Knot that only the Kremlin can prevail upon the Chechen authorities to put an end to enforced disappearances and similar human rights violations. Whether the sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury on Kadyrov will result in such pressure remains to be seen.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.


So apparently the Kremlin doesn't think 1917 was all that bad after all.

Throughout the year Vladimir Putin's regime studiously ignored dates associated with the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The last thing they wanted, of course, was for Russians to have popular uprisings and coups on their minds in these times of rising discontent.

But yesterday's anniversary marking the centenary of the founding of the Cheka -- the original Soviet-era secret police and the predecessor to the NKVD and the KGB -- was another story.

In a Kremlin speech, Putin called the Cheka and its successors an "inalienable part of our history" and said those who served the secret police were "true patriots and defenders of the state."

And in a lengthy interview with the official Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov offered a remarkable defense of the mass purges, forced deportations, and gulag system that cost millions of lives.

The Stalinist purges, he said, had "an objective side" and a "significant number of criminal cases were based on factual evidence."

The Moscow-based journalist Leonid Ragozin tweeted that the Kremlin's celebration of the Cheka's centennial completes "a full journey from left-wing terrorism to far-right oligarchic junta."

The human rights organization Memorial issued a statement saying that the celebrations made a "mockery of the memory of millions of victims" of Soviet-era purges.

You can tell a lot about a regime from the parts of its history it chooses to highlight.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
4 Gasoline purchases in the six hours after the earthquake reached 10 million liters, more than double the average full-day sales even though it was the middle of the night, the national fuel distributor said.
Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking Chinas resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Im RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish.

Before we get started, a few announcements: The newsletter is now biweekly, rather than going out only on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. To subscribe, click here.

And I will also be launching Talking China In Eurasia, a new podcast. Im joined by the Royal United Services Institutes Raffaello Pantucci to talk about Xi and Putin. Listen to the first episode here or below.

Xi Gets Pragmatic About Russia At The G20

It was light on optimism, but U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping injected a healthy dose of pragmatism back into the U.S.-China relationship with their meeting in Bali at a time when global anxiety is rising over Russias war against Ukraine.

Finding Perspective: The meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit was far from a breakthrough, but it did repair some damage from the recent backslide in relations between both countries and send some signals that the world isnt necessarily destined for Cold War 2.0.

The more than three-hour talks saw some blunt exchanges over contentious issues like Taiwan and North Korea, but the two leaders also pledged more frequent communications and decided that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing for follow-up talks in 2023.

Of particular note, Biden raised Russias invasion of Ukraine and threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons. Both leaders reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought, according to a White House readout.

While far from a sea change for Chinese policy, thats notable. The credibility of Beijings claims to be neutral on the Ukraine war continue to come under scrutiny, and China has shown discomfort of late with the Kremlins nuclear saber-rattling.

Xi made similar comments after a November 4 summit with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and during another G20 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the French readout.

Why It Matters: Xi is not abandoning Putin, but this marks the latest shift for Beijings balancing act over Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Four Chinese officials briefed on the February 4 meeting between Xi and Putin, where they declared a no-limits partnership, told the Financial Times that Putin didnt tell Xi the truth about the invasion and that Beijing was caught off guard by it.

What Xi knew about Putins war plans has been a topic of debate, and there is evidence to support both the idea that Xi was aware and that he was caught off guard.

Many analysts are of the opinion that Xi knew about Putin's decision to invade but expected a quick victory, which perhaps was what Putin believed at the time.

Others point to a steady stream of dismissals from Chinese officials and experts about the likelihood of an invasion in February and the fact that Beijing did not evacuate its citizens from Ukraine  like Western nations did  as evidence that China was not expecting a war.

China certainly has its own interests in keeping a distance from Moscows war and using that space to do some upkeep with the West. But perhaps the most important point here is that even if Putin did blindside Xi, China has stuck with Russia despite its battlefield failures, political isolation, and the atrocities its troops are accused of committing.

Again, this is pragmatism more than anything else. As Chinese experts often say, even if Russia is looking unattractive these days, why would Beijing abandon its main anti-Western partner as China continues to be in the crosshairs of rising American pressure?

Read More

 Want to hear more about Russia and Chinas complex relationship amid the Ukraine war? Then tune in to the debut of Talking China In Eurasia today at 2 p.m. CET/ 8 a.m. EST. You can listen live here and find the episode on RFE/RLs website and wherever you listen to your podcasts.

 Condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine and its global fallout is shaping up to be the key theme of the G20, with the Financial Times reporting that a joint communique from the summit takes aim at Moscow.

Expert Corner: The Future Of The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

Readers asked: Did Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharifs recent trip to Beijing breathe new life into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)? How do Islamabad and Beijing really feel about the project after all these years?

To find out more, I asked Filippo Boni, an expert on China-Pakistan relations at the Open University in Britain:

Shehbaz Sharif's visit to China was high on symbolism and relatively low on substance. While the two sides were keen to reaffirm and emphasize the strength of their strategic partnership, no significant new commitment was made. Apart from a few memorandums of understanding and attempts from the Pakistanis in the run-up to the trip to address some of CPECs issues  including payments to Chinese independent power producers  nothing major came from the visit. This is despite Sharif's attempts at revitalizing CPEC since April and the very close ties he enjoys with the Chinese leadership.

The outcome of this visit is not entirely surprising, especially if interpreted against the backdrop of Pakistan's current domestic predicaments. The security situation for Chinese nationals has deteriorated, the economy is struggling, and political instability is at one of its highest points in recent years. All these dynamics, coupled with the global scaling down of Belt and Road Initiative financing, have likely impacted Beijing's lack of commitment to new projects.

After almost 10 years and $25 billion worth of projects, there seems to be a general consensus on both sides that the first phase of CPEC  the one focused primarily on energy projects  was largely successful. The same cannot be said for the second phase, including the slow progress on the development of Special Economic Zones, and for the port of Gwadar, where little progress has been made for the ports full commercial functioning.

Do you have a question about Chinas growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org or reply directly to this e-mail and Ill get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. 'Sweep It Under The Rug'

Recent allegations of China operating 54 overseas police stations have fueled controversy around the world and sparked investigations, but in Hungary and Serbia the new findings are being met with swift denials by authorities, despite growing evidence.

The Details: My colleagues Akos Keller-Alant from RFE/RLs Hungarian Service, Mila Durdevic from RFE/RLs Balkan Service, and I reported on the fallout from these revelations and the slew of probes launched in many European countries recently.

The stations are overseas operations of the public security bureaus from two Chinese provinces and are used to persuade citizens to return to China, including through pressure on family members at home. While most of those involved appear to be suspected of crimes such as telecommunications fraud or corruption, dissidents have also reported that the stations have been used to monitor and threaten them.

Fourteen governments have already launched investigations into the overseas police stations, and the Dutch and Irish governments have ordered China to shut down the facilities in their countries.

But in Hungary and Serbia  two countries where Beijing is said to operate such facilities and whose governments prize their warming political and economic ties with China  officials appear to be trying to sweep it under the rug, as one analyst characterized it, despite growing scrutiny from opposition lawmakers in each country.

2. Global Ripples Hit Central Asia

Political and economic shocks from Moscows war in Ukraine, coupled with added strains from tensions between Beijing and Washington, are taking their toll around the world, especially in Central Asia, where countries in the region are closely tied to both China and Russia.

What It Means: As RFE/RLs Uzbek Service reported, Vladimir Norov, the countrys foreign minister, warned about geopolitical tensions affecting stability in the region and beyond while addressing his counterparts at an Organization of Turkic States meeting in Samarkand.

The breakdown in global cooperation is felt particularly strong in Central Asia. While some economies have been able to benefit by becoming a new home for businesses and capital relocated from Russia, others are seeing investment dry up and their economies coming under strain.

World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Anna Bjerde recently warned that Uzbekistan needs to continue with its market reforms in order to withstand the global economic shocks that are to come.

RFE/RLs Kyrgyz Service also reported that the countrys government is trying to court more investment but that questions remain from investors about Kyrgyzstans stability and investment climate. According to official statistics from January to June of this year, China is the leading source of foreign investment, with $129 million during that span.

3. The Tech In Moscows Iranian Drones

A new investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, looked into electronic components underpinning Tehran's production of the Mohajer-6 drone, which Russia has used in its war in Ukraine, and found that theyre far from homegrown.

What You Need To Know: The Mohajer-6 drones contain components produced by companies from the United States and the European Union, both of which have sanctions restricting the export to Iran of technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

The investigation also found drone components produced in China, including a real-time mini-camera made by a Hong Kong firm.

The drone also contains a microchip bearing the logo of a California technology company and a thermal-imaging camera that Ukrainian intelligence says may have been produced by a firm based in Oregon or China.

The international tech in the drone not only highlights the complex ecosystem that allows firms and buyers to circumvent sanctions slapped on both Iran and Russia, but also the close networks between Chinese and Western tech companies that still exist, despite a recent push to break some of those linkages.

Across The Supercontinent

On The Mainland: The watchdog group Freedom House recently launched a new project called the China Dissent Monitor, which tracks protests and other forms of dissent inside China. Read it here.

Censored: Chinese authorities behind a major trade expo in Shanghai pulled an opening ceremony address by European Council President Charles Michel that was set to criticize Russia's illegal war in Ukraine and call for reduced European dependency on China, Reuters reported.

Backtracking: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has softened his countrys stance toward China, moving away from his predecessor Liz Trusss decision to label it a threat.

One Thing To Watch

How long will Chinas stringent COVID policies stay in place?

New infections are rising as a winter wave hits and popular frustration continues to boil over inside the country as investor confidence stays dented over the measures. New footage also showed crowds of residents in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou escaping a compulsory lockdown and clashing with police.

Thats all from me for now. Dont forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your in-box on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
Under Iran's conservative Islamic regime, people can legally change their gender, even though homosexuality remains illegal. But they are still pressured to conform to conventional roles. Arsham, a young transgender woman in Iran, faces daily harassment from strangers and questioning by the morality police over her refusal to wear a hijab. She shared videos of her daily life with correspondent Masih Alinejad of RFE/RL's Radio Farda.
A U.S. bank has frozen $22.6 billion in assets owned by Kazakhstan's National Fund as part of a legal battle between the government in Astana and a Moldovan investor, the Reuters news agency reports.

Reuters on December 21 said Bank of New York Mellon had in October frozen the assets it holds for the Kazakh National Fund, leaving the government unable to access about 40 percent of the total holdings, which are highly derived from the countrys oil resources.

The reported action is a result of a lawsuit by Moldovan businessman Anatolie Stati against the Kazakh government.

Stati, his son Gabriel, and two family controlled companies invested in Kazakhstan's oil and gas industry and allege they were victims of harassment by the Kazakh government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev aimed at forcing them to sell their investments below fair price.

The Statis refused to sell the assets to the government and found an alternative buyer. However, they claim, that deal fell through after the government seized the oil fields.

Anatolie and Gabriel Stati and two of their companies won an international arbitration award of around $500 million against the government in 2013.

The Kazakh government has denied the allegations and refused to pay.

Reuters said the asset freeze comes from Statis attempts to pursue the payments.

A spokeswoman for the Bank of New York Mellon declined to comment, and the Kazakh Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment, Reuters reported.

The Statis have been embroiled in controversial deals over the years, according to a report published last year by RISE Moldova, a community of investigative reporters, which says the two businessmen had established multiple offshore companies to hide and re-channel their assets.

Based on reporting by Reuters, Eurasianet.org, Oilprice.com, and RFE/RL's Moldovan Service


The Jackson County Board of Supervisors decided Monday to table signing a resolution to approve American Transmission Companys easement for the Badger Coulee Transmission Line that will go through several portions of the county forest owned by Jackson County citing forestry practice and environmental concerns.

American Transmission Company is working with Xcel Energy Corp. to build the Badger Coulee Transmission Line that stretches 180 miles from Holmen to Blair and then across to Black River Falls and then follows Interstate 94 to Dane County. The line is expected to be operational in late 2018.

Members of the Jackson County Forestry Committee spoke up during the meeting that they had yet to receive answers from ATC about various environmental concerns that they had.

At Forestry we have been talking about this for a while. What we understood from day one is that we couldnt say no  that the law said that. We understood that it would go through the appraisal process, but we had a lot of forestry practice issues. This goes right through the forest, and it is in the state forest plan. We were communicating with them regarding that, Forestry Committee Chair John Chrest said during the meeting Monday.

Even with the forest practice concerns, Garrett Nix of Weld Riley, which is corporation counsel for the county, did raise the concern that ATC does not need to meet the demands of the county.

The fact of the matter is, I think they have been good partners to work with thus far. They may be willing to give consideration to us on some of our concerns as an act of goodwill or good gesture to the county. I dont think they are required to do so, which makes it tough from a bargaining position to have much leverage with them and get them to commit to these things, but we can certainly try, Nix said.

Since the meeting, ATC and Jackson County have setup a time to meet to discuss the environmental concerns.

At this point there have been some ongoing discussions and there is a plan for members of the project team to meet with the county in January to continue discussing their concerns, ATC spokesperson Kaya Freiman said.

Environmental practices major concerns

The Forestry Committee had several issues related to the construction practices ATC would employ while cutting trees in the county forest to make room for the Badger Coulee Transmission Line including protections from invasive species and ensuring that oak wilt would not be spread.

According to Freiman, both of these concerns are being addressed already as standard construction procedures for ATC.

ATC follows DNR protocols for doing trimming to prevent the spread of oak wilt. This is actually included as part of our permit for the project so it is a requirement that we follow this and we follow the Department of Natural Resources protocol for it, Freiman said.

To avoid transferring invasive species to other locations, ATC will fence off the areas with invasive species so the vehicles are not contaminated. If the vehicles need to go through invasive species, ATC has specific cleaning protocols for vehicles before moving to the next work area to prevent the spread of the invasive species.

Invasive species are noted in what we call environmental access plans. These are very detailed environmental maps that our construction contractors use when they are working in the right-of-way, Freiman said.

An independent environmental monitor that reports to the Public Service Commission is an additional layer employed to ensure these environmental practices are followed.

The Forestry Committee was also wondering if ATC would separate the wood into separate piles based on type to make it easier when companies come to pick up the wood.

Freiman said questions like this are something that is typically talked about with the property owner, which in this case would be Jackson County.

The fourth discussion point Jackson County had was whether ATC would help pay for a fence along Interstate 94 to keep elk and other animals off the road.

The fence along the interstate was originally built when the interstate was built. It is only 4-foot high, Chrest said. The DNR has talked to us and would like a 6-foot fence along there. So we were thinking as a part of this deal they could put a fence up.

Freiman said projects such as this are items Jackson County could use their $1.9 million environmental impact fee for, but ultimately said that it is a conversation that the county and ATC will need to have.

No other issues

Despite the environmental concerns, the Jackson County Board of Supervisors did not have any issues with the $50,500 ATC would pay Jackson County for the easement.

I believe that the Executive and Finance Committees directive was to go ahead with the offer. We are comfortable with the appraisal that we have been presented, Nix said.

The appraisal for the easement was conducted by Steigerwaldt Land Services, Inc., which is the same company that does all timber appraisals for Jackson County. Jackson County had the right to request their own appraisal, but felt the appraisal they were offered was fair.

If Jackson County decided to deny the request, there would be legal arbitration and the line would be constructed either way.

In the end, Chrest wanted to make sure that ATC treats the county forest like everyone else does.

We are just asking that if they are going to go through our forest that they take the necessary precautions to protect our forest just like every other person that cuts a log in our forest, Chrest said.
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
BISHKEK -- The television station belonging to Kyrgyz opposition politician Omurbek Babanov is on the air despite the fact that its property has been impounded by the authorities.

NTS editor Aziat Jeksheev told RFE/RL on December 21 that court officers had compiled an inventory of the broadcaster's property on December 20 and announced that it was impounded.

But NTS Director Jainak Uson-uulu was placed in temporary charge of the impounded property, allowing the channel to remain on air for now, Jeksheev said.

NTS had managed to keep some programs on air after court officers and police raided the media outlet on December 19, Jeksheev said. He said that Uson-uulu will remain in charge of the impounded property until a court decision in the case against the station.

NTS lawyer Amantur Abdrakhmanov told RFE/RL on December 20 that a December 19 court decision to impound the television channel's property resulted from a lawsuit filed by a company called Grexton Capital LTD, which claims that NTS owes it money.

A Justice Ministry document in a database compiled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project indicates that a company with a similar name, Grexton Trade Company, was established in Bishkek in October 2006 by Grexton Investment Group and is headed by Sergei Kostyrin.

Kostyrin is an associate of Maksim Bakiev -- a son of former President Kurmanbek Bakiev, who was ousted by protests and fled the country in 2010. Both are wanted in Kyrgyzstan and live abroad.

A court in Bishkek on December 20 sentenced Kurmanbek Bakiev and his brother Janysh Bakiev, a former head of the state bodyguard service, to 10 years in prison each in absentia in an illegal-land-use case.

Judge Damirbek Nazarov of Bishkek's Oktyabr district court said that, taking into account previous convictions in absentia, Kurmanbek Bakiev's total sentence now stood at 30 years in prison and Janysh Bakiev's at life in prison.

Maksim Bakiev was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for embezzling millions of dollars of state funds in October 2014.

NTS owner Babanov is a businessman who lost the October 15 presidential election but left the country after an investigation was launched into charges he incited ethnic hatred while campaigning for the election.

The whereabouts of Babanov, who denies the allegations and lives abroad, is not known.

He wrote on Facebook on December 20 that the steps taken against NTS, the largest private TV station in Kyrgyzstan, were "unimaginable" and claimed that his television channel was being "seized by a raid."

Babanov accused Kyrgyz officials of acting in the interests of Maksim Bakiev.

The raid on NTS is likely to spark new concerns about media freedom under President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, the ruling-party candidate who won the election with backing from outgoing leader Almazbek Atambaev and took office on November 24.

NTS carries some RFE/RL programming.
Russia has activated three new early-warning radar stations to detect missile attacks near its southeastern border, including its border with North Korea, after repeated missile tests by Pyongyang have raised fears of a possible conflict.

The deputy commander of Russias air force, Aleksandr Golovko, boasted that "for the first time in history" a trio of new Voronezh rocket-attack-detection radar stations had entered service in the Krasnoyarsk, Altai, and Orenburg regions, the Ministry of Defenses Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper reported on December 20.

The new radar stations all sit near Russia's borders with Kazakhstan and Mongolia, but with an operating range of 6,000 kilometers, they have the Korean Peninsula and chunks of Russias Pacific coastline in range.

The Kremlin activated its Voronezh-DM radar system covering its western borders in 2011, and has been replacing Soviet-era radar systems since 2005.

The new additions improve Moscow's radar coverage in the east. Previously, only one of its systems, in Irkutsk, was located east of the Ural Mountains.

Two Voronezh-type stations are located in the St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad regions, while one is based in Krasnodar, near Ukraine. A new radar station is also planned in Russia's far north during 2019.

Moscow tested the new deployments earlier this year, and in June the Ministry of Defense announced that its Krasnoyarsk-based system had detected six launches of ballistic missiles in the northeast Pacific.

Golovko did not mention any specific country as a threat. Plans for the new radar stations were announced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in June. China's border with Russia is also within range of the stations.

But it comes at a time of heightened tensions as a result of North Korea's repeated tests of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles this year.

Russia has condemned Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions, but it has also accused Washington of antagonizing North Korea and has pushed for direct dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington.

Russia has signalled several times that it is making preparations, should war break out on the Korean Peninsula.

The Kremlins top security adviser said earlier this month that Moscows top objective was to avoid war, but it was preparing for a scenario in which the situation devolves into fighting.

With reporting by Newsweek and TASS
Moscow has vehemently criticized the United States for imposing sanctions on Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and four other Russians accused by the United States of human rights abuses.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on December 21 that Russia considers the sanctions "illegal" and "unfriendly," while the Foreign Ministry called them "grotesque" and groundless.

The U.S. Treasury Department hit Kadyrov with financial and travel sanctions a day earlier under the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that aims to punish Russians alleged to be involved human rights violations, accusing him of torture and "extrajudicial killings."

Four other Russians added to the sanctions list under the law included Ayub Katayev, a security official the Treasury Department accused, along with Kadyrov, of "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" in Chechnya.

"We consider these sanctions illegal, we consider them unfriendly, and we do not agree with them," said Peskov, who is President Vladimir Putin's chief spokesman.

He said it was "highly probable" that Moscow would adhere to "the principle of reciprocity" in its response, suggesting that Russia would accuse U.S. officials or citizens of rights violations and bar them from entering the country.

Asked what American the Kremlin might target for sanctions as the "mirror image" of Kadyrov, Peskov said, "There are few people like him."

Human rights groups say Kadyrov has used threats and abuses to maintain control over Chechnya, the site of two post-Soviet separatist wars and years of insurgent violence stemming from the conflicts since Putin appointed him to head the region in 2007.

On a conference call with reporters on December 20, a senior U.S. State Department official said that "one or more of Kadyrov's political opponents were killed at his direction."

In a statement about the new listings, Treasury Department sanctions office director John Smith said the United States "will continue to use the Magnitsky Act to aggressively target gross violators of human rights in Russia, including individuals responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and other despicable acts."

The law is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after blowing the whistle on what he said was the theft of $230 million from Russian state coffers through tax fraud.

He died in jail in December 2009, and relatives and rights activists said he had been tortured and denied medical care. A Council of Europe investigation concluded the conditions leading up to his death amounted to torture.

The Treasury Department identified Katayev as a law enforcement official in Chechnya and accused him of involvement in a campaign of abuse against gay and bisexual men in Chechnya over the past year.

The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was the first to document evidence that police in Chechnya rounded up, tortured, and humiliated dozens people they considered to be gay. The report was later corroborated in part by RFE/RL as well as Human Rights Watch, which said the "anti-gay purge" lasted from late February until at least early April and that "it was ordered and conducted by officials in Chechnya."

Kadyrov and the Kremlin have denied the accusations.

Relations between Russia and the United States are badly strained by tension over issues including Russia's aggression in Ukraine, its role in the war in Syria, and what U.S. intelligence agencies say was an "influence campaign" of interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

With reporting by Interfax, Reuters, and TASS
The lower house of the Russian Parliament has ratified an agreement with Syria to extend Russias lease on a naval base at Tartus for 49 years.

The December 21 State Duma vote comes 10 days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to start withdrawing a "significant portion" of its forces from the war-ravaged Middle Eastern nation while at the same time vowing to leave a military presence in the country.

Franz Klintsevich, a lawmaker with the Federation Council Defense and Security Committee, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the upper chamber will likely follow the State Duma and ratify the pact on December 26.

Russia has backed the government forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and provided air support since 2015 in the fight against Islamic State (IS) insurgents and U.S.-backed antigovernment rebels. It has operated an air base in Syria since 2015.

The agreement with Syria will allow Russia to keep up to 11 warships, including nuclear-powered vessels, at the Mediterranean base in Tartus at any one time for the next 49 years.

Based on reporting by AP and Interfax


A draft order released by the Russian Justice Ministry suggests that the government may decide to label all media outlets receiving foreign funding as "foreign agents."

The document posted on the Internet on December 21 sets out proposed regulations for the implementation of a law signed by President Vladimir Putin in November that empowered the ministry to designate foreign media outlets as foreign agents.

The Justice Ministry declared Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VOA), and seven affiliated news services "foreign agents" on December 5, but has not pinned the designation on any other media outlets.

The draft order says that "a foreign media outlet is considered to be carrying out the function of a foreign agent" if it receives money or property from foreign states, organizations, or citizens, or from foreign-funded Russian entities.

The wording suggested that if the document is approved and issued, all foreign media outlets would be considered foreign agents.

The document said that designated media outlets must register as foreign agents or be registered by the Justice Department, and that they could only be removed from the list at the request of the Prosecutor-General's Office.

'Symmetrical Response'

Under the order, media registered as foreign agents would be obliged to label their output as coming from a foreign agent, conduct annual audits, and submit quarterly reports on their finances as well as reports on their operations and staff every six months.

Russian officials have said the law enabling foreign media outlets to be labeled foreign agents is a "symmetrical response" after state-funded Russian 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, including a separate law that applies to NGOs and civic groups, to silence dissent and discourage a free exchange of ideas.

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."

The European Union has called the Russian legislation a "threat to free and independent media and access to information." Human Rights Watch has condemned it as a "full-throttle attack on media freedom" and said it was "tailor-made to be selectively and politically enforced, and to silence voices they do not want Russian people to hear."

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 and Reuters
A Moscow court has ordered Pussy Riot punk protest band member Maria Alyokhina to perform 40 hours of community-service work as punishment for a protest she staged at the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB)

Judge Yulia Mordvina ruled on December 21 that Alyokhina violated the law on public gatherings when she and activist Olga Borisova unfurled a banner reading "Happy Birthday, Executioners" at an entrance to the FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square.

December 20 was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police organization that preceded dictator Josef Stalin's NKVD, the KGB, and post-Soviet Russia's FSB.

Alyokhina and photographer Denis Bochkaryov spent the night at police station ahead of the administrative hearing. They face up to 15 days in jail or a fine.

They were charged with participating in an unsanctioned demonstration that hampers "citizens' access to living space, transportation facilities, or social infrastructure."

The court had yet to rule on Bochkaryov's case. The charge carries a maximum jail term of 15 days, and offenders can also be fined.

Borisova was not detained and another photographer who was detained was released on December 20.

Alyokhina told RFE/RL in a telephone interview on December 20 that the purpose of the group's action was to remind FSB officers about the atrocities by its predecessors in the Soviet Union.

"We decided to come out today and congratulate the chekists, because everybody knows this is considered their holiday," Alyokhina told RFE/RL's Russian Service in a telephone interview from the police station where she was being held.

Officers and employees of the FSB are informally known as "chekists" after the Cheka, the secret police organization that was created by "Iron Feliks" Dzerzhinsky in 1917.

Under President Vladimir Putin, a longtime KGB officer and former FSB chief who has put many people with similar backgrounds in positions of power, December 20 is marked as the Day of the Security Service Workers.

Speaking at a ceremony in Moscow to mark the event on December 20, Putin said that the creation of the Cheka was "an inseparable part of our history" and praised the members of security services as "true statesmen and patriots."

Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot performer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a stunt in which band members burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012 and sang a "punk prayer" against then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was campaigning for his return to the presidency later that year.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were close to the end of their two-year prison sentences when they were freed in December 2013, under an amnesty they dismissed as a propaganda stunt to improve Putin's image ahead of the February 2014 Sochi Olympics. They have focused largely on fighting for the rights of prisoners since their release.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service, Mediazona and Dozhd TV
The U.S. Justice Department says its decision to require RT to register as a foreign agent under a decades-old law was prompted in part by conclusions from the U.S. intelligence community about the state-funded Russian TV network.



The comment on December 21 by Adam Hickey, a deputy assistant attorney general, was the fullest explanation to date from U.S. officials regarding RTs registration under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).



That has prompted angry recriminations from Russian officials, who say a law signed by President Vladimir Putin in November enabling the government to label foreign media outlets "foreign agents" was adopted in response.

Rights groups and Western governments fear the Russian law will be applied selectively and will further restrict freedom of the media in Russia.



Asked why the Justice Department directed RTs American operating unit to register under FARA now, rather than years ago when RT first started its U.S. broadcasting, Hickey cited a report issued in January by the U.S. intelligence community.

Cyber-And-Propaganda Campaign



That report concluded that Russia conducted a cyber-and-propaganda campaign aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S presidential race. It cited RT, formerly known as Russia Today, and the news agency Sputnik as distributing government propaganda.



"That report was certainly relevant to our decision to examine them more recently," he said.



RTs American operating unit, T&R Productions, filed its FARA registration on November 13 after weeks of protests and threats of retaliation within Russia. Two days later, a U.S.owned, Washington-area radio station that recently signed a contract to broadcast Sputnik newscasts filed its FARA registration.



At the end of November, RT was stripped of its credentials to cover Congress, a decision made by the committee of reporters that oversees press access to the U.S. legislative branch.

'Clear-Cut' Reasons



Andrew Feinberg, a former White House correspondent for Sputnik who was interviewed by the FBI about the agencys operations, said in September that the FARA registration would be wholly justified.



"This is a case where the reasons are clear cut, and the differences between RT and Sputnik and legitimate foreign-owned news agencies are readily identifiable. I think it's totally reasonable to act," Feinberg told RFE/RL at the time.



The registration filed by T&R Productions identified the foreign principal it was controlled by as TV Novosti, and confirmed it was "financed by a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal."



However, the company also suggested it did not know where TV Novostis funding comes from.



"Registrant's understanding is that the Russian Federation finances ANO TV-Novosti to a substantial extent. Registrant is not sufficiently aware of who supervises, owns, directs, controls or subsidizes ANO TV-Novosti," it said.



RT is not the only foreign media outlet operating in the United States that has registered under FARA over the years. Units belonging to broadcasters and publications from China, Korea, Japan, and Canada have been registered at various times. In the 1960s, the Soviet news agency TASS, along with the newspaper Pravda, were also FARA-registered.

'Reciprocal Measures'



The law, which was passed in 1938 to counter fears of Nazi propaganda and misinformation, does not restrict foreign media operating in the United States, but does require things like accounting registers, corporate documents, and similar records be made available for Justice Department inspection.



RTs director, as well as top Russian officials and lawmakers, had alleged that requiring RT to register amounted to an infringement on free speech, and Russia has taken what it describes as reciprocal measures.

The Justice Ministry on December 5 declared Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and seven affiliated news services "foreign agents."

Russia has not pinned the designation on any other media outlets. But on December 21, the ministry released a draft order whose wording suggested that, if it is approved and issued, all foreign media outlets would be considered foreign agents.

Russian officials have asserted that the new media restrictions are "symmetrical" with the U.S. measures. U.S. officials say the Russian action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws are different and that Moscow uses its "foreign-agent" legislation, including a separate law that applies to nongovernmental organizations and civic groups, to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.



While RT and Sputnik distribute their programs freely in the United States, RFE/RL is already subject to severe restrictions in Russia, with nearly all of its radio broadcasts forced off the air by 2012 due to administrative pressure. Neither RFE/RL nor VOA has any access to cable TV 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.
A new round of Syria peace talks sponsored by Iran, Russia, and Turkey began on December 21 in Kazakhstans capital, Astana.

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said Syrian regime representatives and an opposition delegation had arrived in Astana for two days of meetings.

After holding talks with a United Nations team, the opposition said it was more important "than ever before" that Russia push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government toward a political settlement.

Meanwhile, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the Russian delegation met separately with the Iranian and Turkish delegations.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions have been driven from their homes since the conflict began in March 2011 with a crackdown on antigovernment protests.

Russia and Iran support Assad's government, while the United States and Turkey support differing rebel groups.

The Astana talks have run parallel to UN-sponsored peace negotiations taking place in Geneva.

The Kremlin also hopes to convene a "national congress" of government and opposing forces in the Russian city of Sochi.

But no firm date has been set yet for that meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on December 21.

Nobody wants "to artificially accelerate" plans for the congress, Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a regular conference call.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters


The Jackson County District Attorneys office has ruled that Jackson County Sheriffs Office Deputy Justin Wathke acted in self-defense in the Oct. 28 shooting death of Lucas DeFord in the town of Brockway.

The investigation found that DeFord pointed a gun toward Wathkes head during an altercation before the officer shot DeFord in the lower right abdomen and chest.

Wisconsin law allows all persons, including police officers, to use deadly force in an act of self-defense if the person reasonably believed that he faced an unlawful interference that created a risk of death or great bodily harm. If, as here, the persons actions are privileged under the law of self-defense, they cannot be convicted of any crime, according to a release from the Department of Justice.

Sheriffs deputies were looking for DeFord since a 911 call about 12:20 a.m. Oct. 28. During the call, a woman said DeFord had been drinking and made suicidal comments before driving away.

Wathke responded to the location of the incident on Hwy. 54 and made contact with the victim.

Wathke found DeFords vehicle about 12:50 a.m. and attempted to make a traffic stop. DeFord drove into the victims driveway, stopping near the corner of the house, according to the statement.

The deputy said he parked his squad near the drivers side door to prevent him from entering the house.

DeFord quickly exited his vehicle, ran around the front of Wathkes squad and to the drivers side window, according to the statement.

The deputy said that DeFords arm was fully extended with a gun pointed toward Wathkes head as he sat in the squad. Wathke said he felt he was going to be shot and killed.

Wathke removed his gun from his hostler while yelling Stop! at DeFord before Wathke fired two shots.

It was later discovered that the gun DeFord pointed at Wathke was a pellet or BB gun, according to the statement.

DeFord fell and dropped the gun and the officer tried CPR, according to the statement.

An autopsy conducted at the University of Wisconsin Hospital determined DeFord died because of the gunshot wound to the chest.

The District Attorneys Office concludes that Deputy Wathke was reasonable in his belief that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm due to the suspects actions of failing to stop his vehicle, ignoring all police commands, and pointing what appeared to be a firearm at the officer. It was reasonable for Deputy Wathke to believe the suspect had the intent and the means to inflict death or great bodily harm to an officer, a release from the Department of Justice stated.
It was drawn up as an entertaining display of talent pitting school teams against each other in comedy, music, and dance.



But the Happy And Witty show was abruptly halted and suspended indefinitely after a brawl erupted in the audience at the Panjakent city theater in the northern Tajik province of Sughd.



A 30-second video recording by a witness, obtained by RFE/RL, shows a group of mostly young men throwing punches at each other, and grabbing and pulling each others jackets.

The fracas appears to be taking place near the front row as the rest of the audience sits or tries to take their seats in the middle and back rows.



A male voice can be heard pleading with the belligerents via a loudspeaker: "Take your seats, please! Everyone, take your own designated seats, please!"

Panjakent city police confirmed to RFE/RL on December 21 that the brawl occurred two days earlier during the Happy And Witty show, subsequently forcing the organizers to cancel the event.

The rumpus started with an argument over seating, according to Panjakent police official Mehrojiddin Kholziyoev.



Police have since arrested 10 people who face hooliganism charges, Kholziyoev said.

Panjakent education officials say no one was seriously injured in the fighting, which they insist did not involve any students.



"It was a brawl among the fans only," said Nekruz Kenjaev, the head of the youth- and sports-affairs department at the Panjakent city government.



"It ended quite quickly and nobody was harmed," Kenjaev said. He didnt say whether authorities plan to reschedule the event, which was quickly canceled.



The Happy And Witty contests have taken place across Tajikistan since 2016, with teams representing schools and universities.



Local winners move on to regional and national events that are aired on state TV.



The contests in the rest of the Sughd Province continue, and the winner will be announced at the end of the year.



Tajik authorities say the shows are aimed at "promoting healthy lifestyle and preventing unwanted trends among the young, and encouraging talented youth."

Written by Farangis Najibullah with reporting by RFE/RL's Tajik Service correspondent Mumin Ahmadi
An aide to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman has been detained on suspicion of being an agent of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

A government representative to parliament, Vadym Denysenko, told 112 Ukrayina TV on December 21 that Stanislav Yezhov was detained a day earlier.

Media reports say that Yezhov accompanied Hroysman on his international trips and often served as an interpreter.

He has worked in the past in the president's office and at the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States.

On December 20, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced that it had apprehended a government employee, whose identity was not disclosed, on suspicion of "acting in the interests of security services of the aggressor country."

The detainee was officially informed that he is a suspect, the SBU said.

With reporting by 112.ua
KYIV -- Tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskiy says that a London court's freezing of assets held worldwide by him and his partner, Hennadiy Boholyubov, in connection with trouble at Ukraine's largest lender, PrivatBank, is only "temporary."

The government nationalized PrivatBank, founded by billionaire former regional governor Kolomoyskiy, a year ago in an effort to avoid a financial collapse in the former Soviet republic. The bank had been dogged by rumors of bad debts caused by risky lending practices.

PrivatBank has since filed several lawsuits against the former owners and on December 19 the English High Court granted a global freezing order on some $2.5 billion worth of assets held by Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov, including six companies they are believed to own or control.

"This is a temporary freezing order for the time of the trial," Kolomoyskiy was quoted as saying on December 21 by the TSN.ua news service.

At issue are a series of transactions at PrivatBank that it alleges amounted to the misappropriation of funds.

Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov deny the allegations and have accused the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the country's central bank, of misrepresenting the state of PrivatBank's finances.

Kolomoyskiy has turned to the courts to challenge the nationalization and has tried to prevent Ukrainian authorities from cooperating with external companies to investigate the reasons for PrivatBank's insolvency.

"PrivatBank is confident that the English court will determine its claims fairly and objectively and that it will succeed in recovering funds that have been misappropriated from it," the bank said in a statement on December 20 in reaction to the court announcement.

The NBU, which has been administering the troubled institution, said in a statement it supported PrivatBank in its quest to recover funds as it looks to restructure and return to profitability.

The NBU believes that this lawsuit is "good news for taxpayers in Ukraine and the Ukrainian economy," the central bank said in the statement.

Kolomoyskiy, one of Ukraine's richest men, served briefly as head of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and was credited with preventing the spread of separatist sentiment in the region following Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea and backing of armed separatists further east in the Donbas.

But President Petro Poroshenko dismissed him in 2015, accusing him of setting up a private militia and trying to take over a state-affiliated oil company.

The region Kolomoyskiy governed, which is now called Dnipro Oblast, borders Donesk Oblast -- one of two regions held in part by Russia-backed separatists whose conflict with Kyiv's forces has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014 and continues despite a European-brokered agreement to end the fighting and resolve the conflict.

With reporting by Reuters and TSN
Ukraine's military says that one of its soldiers has been killed and four wounded amid multiple cease-fire violations by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in the previous 24 hours.

A Defense Ministry statement said the separatists violated the cease-fire 15 times using mortars and heavy artillery.

Separatists, meanwhile, claimed that government forces violated the cease-fire 36 times using assault rifles, grenade launchers, mortars, and artillery.

Fighting between Kyiv's forces and the Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014.

Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed to resolve the conflict -- have failed to hold.

Rights groups and Western officials have voiced alarm about a recent increase in hostilities.

At a meeting in Minsk on December 20, representatives of Russia, Ukraine, he separatists, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), affirmed their "commitment to a comprehensive, sustainable and unlimited cease-fire" starting at midnight on December 22-23.

The cease-fire was agreed "in connection with the forthcoming Christmas and New Year festivities" and existing agreements and obligations, it said.

The participants also reiterated that they hope to implement an exchange of detainees "before the New Year and Christmas holidays."

Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7.

With reporting by Interfax and TASS
The U.S. State Department says it has approved an export license for Ukraine to buy certain types of light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers.

Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on December 20 that Congress was notified of the decision on December 13.

The license covers weapons in categories such as semiautomatic and automatic firearms up to .50 caliber weapons, combat shotguns, silencers, military scopes, flash suppressors, and parts.

It does not allow the sale of heavier weapons, such as Javelin antitank missiles, that Ukraine has urged Washington to provide in order to strengthen its capabilities against the Russia-backed separatists it is fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

There are conflicting reports about the significance of the development.

An article in The Washington Post described the State Department decision as approval of "the first-ever U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine" and a "clear break" with past policy.

But the State Department and other media reports contradicted that.

"Under the previous two administrations, the U.S. government has approved export licenses to Ukraine, so this is nothing new," Nauert said.

According to Reuters, State Department records show that Ukraine has bought small amounts of light weapons and small arms for several years, both before and after Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014.

U.S. exporters can apply for direct commercial-sales licenses, which are reviewed by the State Department on a case-by-case basis, Nauert said.

Nauert said that the U.S. government has not directly provided lethal defensive equipment to Ukraine, but has not ruled out doing so.

The top U.S. military commander, General Joseph Dunford, said earlier this year that he recommended that the United States provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine to help the country "protect [its] sovereignty."

Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 26 that a proposal to provide lethal aid to Ukraine was awaiting a decision from the White House.

Ukrainian authorities have asked in particular for portable Javelin missiles, which they say would help soldiers in eastern Ukraine fend off attacks from tanks and self-propelled artillery.

Last month, ABC News reported that senior aides would present U.S. President Donald Trump with a $47 million plan to finance and sell high-tech defensive weapons to Ukraine.

Citing a State Department source, ABC News on November 18 said the proposed package included Javelins.

The war between Kyiv's forces and the Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014.

The U.S. envoy for peace efforts in eastern Ukraine, Kurt Volker, said on December 19 that 2017 had been "the most violent year" of the conflict and warned that hostilities were on the rise.

European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini said on December 20 that the humanitarian and security situation in the conflict zone has "deteriorated abruptly."

With reporting by The Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, ABC, and The Hill
Were coming into the Christmas home stretch. The one where you send out a bunch of Christmas cards, but still have to send the few where yearly accomplishments are shared in a letter. The one where you hopefully have your ingredients for the goodies you are planning to make but knowing that chances are, youve forgotten something.

The one where you think you have all your gift shopping done but something pops up that you think you just HAVE to buy like the gadgets that are suddenly showing up like a device that lets you tip bottles over so you can store to get the last drop, flashlights that run on water, a device that lets you block all those annoying calls and my personal favorite, which I might just buy for myself, is a combination tongs, spatula and colander.

The one where you have a bit of foot stomping temper tantrums, and just plain orneriness, which can put you from the nice to the naughty list when you see that even the lowest prices that were guaranteed when things were purchased now are even lower.

I love getting Christmas cards, dont you? My favorite ones are from friends who have young families where they send pictures and letters. Sentimental me saves them and part of my ritual every year is bringing them out and comparing to the years before.

I love sending cards out too. The way my handwriting is getting to be, it looks like I have been sampling a little too much eggnog so I hope the recipients know its from me. Kind of like the way I wrap packages.

Another part of my ritual is knowing that I will get no help in the actual writing of addresses and sentiments in the cards. Hubby hinders more than he helps in the writing part, but he sure does enjoy delivering things to the post office. Works for me!

Our Christmas this year is going to be a little discombobulated, but for the best possible reasons. Unlike last year, TJ is home for an extended visit from Colorado bringing his two cats, Lucas and Zachary, and Jason while having a week at home for the holiday, has to work on Dec. 24. So Christmas will be coming early and I am one happy mom.

We enjoyed a surprise visit from nephew Keith Johnson of New Richmond who dropped in while in the area. He was there to watch the disappointing finish to the Packer/Panther game, and enjoyed visiting with his cousins whom he hasnt seen for a few years.

This past weekend was the time for Christmas programs. The Christmas program at New Hope Community Lutheran Church was held this Sunday.

Both Northfield and Our Saviors Lutheran Churches had their Christmas programs this Sunday also. I am so thankful for the folks who record the programs and present them and pictures on social media. For those of us who just cant get out and about very well during the winter, it is a treat to be able to see them.

The 75-Bird Christmas Shoot was held recently at the Hixton Rod and Gun Club. They had a great turnout with 38 shooters and it was a busy day. The top shooter was Sandy Jack from Altoona. The winners from the Christmas Raffle were: Scott Gilbertson, BRF; Dan Lambrecht, Iron Ridge; Anne Mageland, Hixton; Tom Meyers, Arcadia; Ron Moehr, Mayville; and Greta Gearing, Taylor.

I recognized a few area names from the 4-H Honor banquet. Cloverbud graduate Kielyn Rowekamp. Club honor awards were given to Riley Hentsch, Doyle Hagen and Madison Shramek.

Club honor awards were given to Northfield Go-Getters Kivren Brasda, Carter Mann, Harold Smith and Stephen Junior Smith. Diane Heusi was recognized as a Friend of 4-H.

Congratulations to Ruth Casper of Hixton on her upcoming retirement from the School District of Black River Falls after 27 years. I remember fondly her years at Hixton Elementary School while she was school secretary and I came in to volunteer. This lady is a real go-getter and I dont see retirement slowing her down any.

Congratulations to Carol Jarrett on being hired to the position of program assistant at Interfaith Caregivers. We wish you much success in your new adventures.

Christmas Bucket List: instead of buy presents, be present. Instead of wrapping gifts, wrap someone in a hug. Instead of sending gifts, send love. Instead of shopping for food, donate food. Instead of make cookies, make memories. Instead of see the light, be the light.
That day, the AE1 and another vessel, the HMAS Parramatta, went on patrol but while the Parramatta sailed back into harbour, the AE1 did not. It was never seen again. It was the first wartime loss for the Royal Australian Navy, yet the exact reason for its sinking remains unclear. Naval historians said ships could find no trace of AE-1 after it sank.



The submarine wreckage

Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne said Thursday it was located more than 300 meters (984 feet) below the surface, near the Duke of York Islands, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, in a search using a Dutch-owned survey vessel , Fugro Equator, that started only last week. The first image of the submarine in its current state appears to show it still in one piece. The Australian government was now trying to contact descendants of those killed on board. Payne said a commemorative service was held to remember those who died after the vessel was found. Australia will now discuss with the Papua New Guinean government the building of a lasting memorial and ways to preserve the site.


U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMSSION Litigation Release No. 24019 / December 21, 2017 Securities and Exchange Commission v. Stephen C. Peters, VisionQuest Wealth Management, LLC, VisionQuest Capital, LLC, and VQ Wealth, LLC, Civil Action No. 5:17-cv-00630-D (E.D. NC filed December 20, 2017) Investment Adviser Charged with Running Ponzi Scheme The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a Raleigh, North Carolina-based investment adviser with running a Ponzi scheme that primarily targeted his clients, many of whom were retired and elderly. The SEC alleges that Stephen C. Peters, through his investment adviser firm VisionQuest Wealth Management, sold promissory notes issued by another one of his companies, VisionQuest Capital, to clients and other prospective investors while making false statements, including that proceeds would be invested into revenue-producing businesses with neither Peters nor his businesses receiving compensation. Peters allegedly claimed that the VisionQuest Capital notes presented little or no risk of loss and were "guaranteed." According to the SEC's complaint, investor funds were not used as Peters claimed. Peters allegedly spent at least $4.4 million on such personal endeavors as remodeling a large farm in North Carolina, purchasing fine art for his home, and constructing a vacation home in Costa Rica. Peters also spent at least $4.9 million to make Ponzi payments to earlier investors. In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina today announced criminal charges against Peters, including a charge that alleges that Peters attempted to withhold and conceal records from the SEC, fabricated records, and provided false testimony in the SEC's investigation of Peters' scheme. The SEC's complaint charges Peters, VisionQuest Wealth Management, LLC, VisionQuest Capital, LLC, and VQ Wealth, LLC, with violations of the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest and penalties as well as injunctions. The SEC's investigation has been conducted by Edward H. Saunders, Thomas B. Bosch, and John O'Halloran, and the case has been supervised by Aaron W. Lipson, Justin C. Jeffries, and Stephen E. Donahue. The litigation will be handled by Edward G. Sullivan and Thomas B. Bosch. The SEC examination that led to the investigation was conducted by Claudette Williams-Himes, Carole A. Solloway, Todd E. Rogers, Dale R. Perez, Gina Bailey, and Deborah Shaw of the SEC's Atlanta Office. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. SEC Complaint https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2017/lr24019.htm

Modified: 12/21/2017
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A police officer in Corte Madera shot and wounded a 23-year-old man, who authorities say made suicidal threats and appeared to be reaching for gun in his sweatshirt pocket after officers deployed a stun gun on him.

The incident began about 5:45 p.m. when police dispatchers got a call from a man saying his brother was missing and had threatened suicide, according to the Central Marin Police Authority.

Shortly after, dispatchers got a second call from the same man saying his brother was armed and at his house on San Clemente Drive, police said.

Officers responded to the address and found the suspect, whose name was not immediately released, walking on San Clemente Drive. Officers ordered him to stop, but he took off running, police said.

As the officers chased him on foot, he attempted to pull a handgun from the front pocket of his sweatshirt, officials said. An officer deployed a stun gun on the man, but it apparently had no effect on the man.

Another officer opened fire, hitting the man twice, officials said.

The wounded man was taken to Marin General Hospital and was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Officials said a handgun was recovered at the scene.

The Marin County Sheriffs Office is conducting an investigation into the shooting. The officer who shot the man was placed on administrative leave, in keeping with protocol for police-involved shootings.

The officers name was not immediately released.

Any witnesses can contact Marin County Sheriffs Detective Shawn Baker at (415) 473-7274.

The incident was the second officer-involved shooting in the Bay Area on Tuesday. About 5 p.m., police in Vacaville shot and critically wounded a man suspected of stabbing two family members, leading officers on a chase and ramming into a driver.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A 20-year-old woman suspected of stabbing a 19-year-old man to death during a domestic violence dispute outside a Fremont fast-food restaurant over the weekend was charged for murder, officials said.

Ayah Abdallah of Fremont was arraigned Tuesday at Fremont Hall of Justice on charges of murder and being armed with a deadly weapon.

The incident unfolded Sunday when police dispatchers received reports of the stabbing about 10 p.m. outside a Burger King on the 41000 block of Fremont Boulevard, police said.

The victim, Yusuf Nawabi of Fremont, was stabbed in the stomach during the altercation, police said.

Witnesses said they believe the incident began as a domestic dispute, police said.

Police officers and paramedics quickly arrived on scene and began performing lifesaving measures on Nawabi, who died at a hospital.

Police did not comment on the nature of the relationship between Nawabi and Abdallah.

Abdallah fled the Burger King in a silver Mercedes E-Class sedan, witnesses said. A witness provided police with a partial license plate number and detailed description of Abdallah, police said.

Officers learned the registered owner of the car lived on the 38000 block of Logan Drive, nearly three miles from where the stabbing occurred, police said. When officers arrived at the house, the Mercedes was parked in front.

Police conducted surveillance on the house and arrested Abdallah when she came out and got into the car about 11:45 p.m., officials said.

A black knife with a 4 1/2 blade was found on Abdallah at the time of her arrest, police said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Back home at Southold, first Black director aims to broaden reach

Sarah Taylor performed in "The Nutcracker" as a girl and now as a "party parent." She's trying to get more kids exposed to ballet.
TOMAH  Wayne L. Brandau, 87, of Tomah died Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017, at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse. Funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 23, at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wilton, with burial in the church cemetery with military honors. Relatives and friends may call from 10 a.m. to time of service. Smith-Nelson Funeral Home, Wilton is assisting the family with arrangements.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
The newest recipients of Quilts of Valor gather at Bethel AME Church in Georgetown on Dec. 16.
One of Galileo's first telescopes. He did not invent the telescope, but he did make several improvements and was the first to aim one at the stars.

The telescope is one of humankind's most important inventions, although were not entirely sure who to give the credit to.

The first person to apply for a patent for a telescope was Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey (or Lipperhey). In 1608, Lippershey laid claim to a device that could magnify objects three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex objective lens. One story goes that he got the idea for his design after observing two children in his shop holding up two lenses that made a distant weather vane appear close. Others claimed at the time that he stole the design from another eyeglass maker, Zacharias Jansen.

Related: Best telescopes 2021: Top picks for viewing planets, stars, and more

Jansen and Lippershey lived in the same town and both worked on making optical instruments. Scholars generally argue, however, that there is no real evidence that Lippershey did not develop his telescope independently. Lippershey, therefore, gets the credit for the telescope, because of the patent application, while Jansen is credited with inventing the compound microscope. Both appear to have contributed to the development of both instruments.

Adding to the confusion, yet another Dutchman, Jacob Metius, applied for a patent for a telescope a few weeks after Lippershey. The government of the Netherlands turned down both applications because of the counterclaims. Also, officials said the device was easy to reproduce, making it difficult to patent. In the end, Metius got a small reward, but the government paid Lippershey a handsome fee to make copies of his telescope.

Galileos telescope

A 1754 painting by H.J. Detouche shows Galileo Galilei displaying his telescope to Leonardo Donato and the Venetian Senate. (Image credit: Public domain)

In 1609, Galileo Galilei heard about the "Dutch perspective glasses" and within days had designed one of his own  without ever seeing one. He made some improvements  his creation could magnify objects 20 times  and presented his device to the Venetian Senate. The Senate, in turn, set him up for life as a lecturer at the University of Padua and doubled his salary, according to Stillman Drake in his book "Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (opens in new tab)" (Courier Dover Publications, 2003).

Galileo was the first to point a telescope skyward. He was able to make out mountains and craters on the moon, as well as a ribbon of diffuse light arching across the sky  the Milky Way. He also discovered the rings of Saturn , sunspots and four of Jupiter's moons.

Thomas Harriot, a British ethnographer and mathematician, also used a spyglass to observe the moon. Harriot became famous for his travels to the early settlements in Virginia to detail resources there. His August 1609 drawings of the moon predate Galileo's, but were never published.

The more Galileo looked, the more he was convinced of the sun-centered Copernican model of the planets. Galileo wrote a book "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican (opens in new tab)" and dedicated it to the Pope Urban VIII. But his ideas were considered heretical, and Galileo was called to appear before the inquisition in Rome in 1633. He struck a plea bargain and was sentenced to house arrest, where he continued to work and write until his death in 1642.

Elsewhere in Europe, scientists began improving the telescope. Johannes Kepler studied the optics and designed a telescope with two convex lenses, which made the images appear upside down. Working from Kepler's writings, Isaac Newton reasoned it was better to make a telescope out of mirrors rather than lenses and built a reflecting telescope in 1668. Centuries later the reflecting telescope would dominate astronomy.

Related: The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope: Getting a close-up look at our sun

Exploring the cosmos

The largest refracting telescope (one that use lenses to gather and focus light) opened at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, in 1897. But the 40-inch (1 meter) glass lens at Yerkes was soon made obsolete by larger mirrors. The Hooker 100-inch (2.5 m) reflecting telescope opened in 1917 at Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, Calif. It was there that the astronomer Edwin Hubble determined that the Andromeda Nebula was indeed (as some astronomers had argued) a galaxy far, far away (2.5 million light-years) from the Milky Way.

With the development of the radio, scientists could start to study not just light, but other electromagnetic radiation in space. An American engineer named Karl Jansky was the first to detect radio radiation from space in 1931. He found a source of radio interference from the center of the Milky Way. Radio telescopes have since mapped the shape of galaxies and the existence of background microwave radiation that confirmed a prediction in the Big Bang Theory.

Famous telescopes

Here are some of the more famous telescopes:

(Image credit: NASA)

This is the successor to Hubble, and its launch date has been delayed several times over the years, with the latest estimate now for Dec 18, 2021. Unlike Hubble, this telescope will be parked far from Earth and out of reach of repair crews. Its science will look at four major themes: the universe's first light, how the first galaxies were formed, how stars are formed, and looking at the origins of life (including exoplanets).

This telescope launched in 1990. Some of Hubble's major contributions include determining the age of the universe with more precision, finding more moons near Pluto, doing observations of galaxies in the young universe, monitoring space weather on the outer planets, and even observing exoplanets  a situation not anticipated for the telescope as the first major exoplanet discoveries didn't happen until the mid-1990s.

A flaw in its mirror was fixed with an upgrade from a space shuttle crew in 1993. Hubble underwent five servicing missions by shuttle crews, with the last one being in 2009. It remains in good health to this day and is expected to overlap some observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (Hubble is part of a set of four "great observatories" launched by NASA in the 1990s and 2000s. The other members included the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which made many discoveries of their own.)

This planet-hunting machine has found more than 4,000 potential planets since first launching in 2009. Initially, it focused on a section of the Cygnus constellation, but in 2013 problems with pointing consistently created a new mission in which Kepler moves between different regions of the sky. One of Kepler's major contributions is finding more super-Earths and rocky planets, which are harder to spot near bright stars.

This telescope in Chile has 66 receivers and its specialty is looking through the dust in young planetary systems (or through dusty stars and galaxies) to see how cosmic objects are formed. It was fully operational as of 2013. ALMA is unique in its sensitivity because it has so many receivers available. Some of its results include the clearest-ever image of the star Betelgeuse, and precise measurements of black hole masses.

(Image credit: Getty Images )

This observatory began operating since 1963, and is famous for many radio astronomy studies. The Puerto Rican telescope is also know for a message called the Arecibo Message that was directed at the globular cluster M13 in 1974. The observatory was damaged during a 2017 hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico. In popular culture, Arecibo was also the location of the climax of the 1995 James Bond film "Goldeneye", and it appeared in the 1997 movie "Contact."

On Dec. 1, 2020, the Arecibo Observatory collapsed due to structural failure and was deemed too costly to repair. The remaining structure was dismantled.

This is a set of 27 telescopes located in the New Mexico desert. Construction began on the VLA in 1973. Some of the VLA's major discoveries include finding ice on Mercury, peering into the dusty center of the Milky Way, and looking at the formation of black holes. The telescope array also was prominently featured in the 1997 movie "Contact" as the site where a purported extraterrestrial signal arrived.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

The twin telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii are the largest optical and infrared telescopes available. The telescopes started their work in 1993 and 1996. Some of their major discoveries including finding the first exoplanet "transiting" across its parent star, and learning about star movements in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy.

The Palomar Observatory, located in San Diego County, Calif., began work in 1949. The telescope is best known for discovering the small worlds Quaoar, Sedna and Eris in the Kuiper Belt, but its work also includes discovering supernovas (star explosions), tracking asteroids and looking at gamma-ray bursts.

Additional resources

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com contributor
On the winter solstice, the sun is at its southernmost point in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere.

The winter solstice is in full stride today (Dec. 21), which boasts the fewest hours of daylight for 2017 in the Northern Hemisphere.

Although the solstice gets an entire day of recognition, it happens in an instant: at 11:28 a.m. EST (16:28 GMT), when the North Pole is at its farthest tilt of 23.5 degrees away from the sun. This position leaves the North Pole beyond the sun's reach, and plunges it into total darkness, according to EarthSky.org.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the sun will shine directly overhead at Noon at exactly 23.5 degrees south of the equator, along the imaginary latitude line known as the Tropic of Capricorn, which runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil and northern South Africa. This is when when the sun appears to be at its southernmost point in the sky; as such, the Southern Hemisphere has its longest day of the year, and the Northern Hemisphere has its shortest day of the year, on the December solstice, according to EarthSky. [6 Ancient Tributes to the Winter Solstice]

At the moment of the solstice, the sun will also reach its southernmost point in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. After that moment, the sun will stop moving southward and will begin its trek northward in the sky  hence the name "solstice," which means "sun stands still" in Latin, according to NASA.

After the winter solstice, the days will begin to get longer in the Northern Hemisphere. But that doesn't mean temperatures will increase immediately. Rather, northern midlatitudes will experience the winter chill partly because they'll get about 9 hours of daylight in the weeks following the solstice, compared with the roughly 15 hours of daily sunlight they get around the summer solstice, Live Science reported in 2012. In addition, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, making it colder.

In addition, even as the days get longer, the oceans, which moderate temperatures on land, need a vast amount of energy from the sun to heat up.

There are countless cultures that have recognized the winter solstice. The most famous is in Stonehenge in England. When the sun sets on the shortest day of the year, the sun's rays align with Stonehenge's central Altar stone and Slaughter stone, which may have had spiritual significance to the people who built the monument, Live Science reported in 2013.

Across the world in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the ancient stonewalled Mayan city of Tulum also has a structure honoring the solstices. When the sun rises on the winter and summer solstices, its rays shine through a small hole at the top of one of the stone buildings, which creates a starburst effect.

Editor's note: This article was originally published Dec. 21, 2016. It was updated on Dec. 21, 2017.

Original article on Live Science.
It was a big year for space science, which means it was a tough job picking our favorites Here they are: are Space.com's top 10 favorite science stories of 2017.

2017 may go down in history as the year when a new era of "multi-messenger" astronomy truly got off the ground, thanks to one incredible discovery. The past 12 months have also been full of awesome discoveries about alien planets orbiting distant stars, including the detection of seven Earth-size planets around a single sun. And while scientists had to say farewell to the Cassini spacecraft, they also said hello to what might be an interstellar visitor to our solar system.

Be sure to tell us your favorite science stories in the comments!

1. Neutron-star crash

August 17 was a big day for astronomy; the kind of day that will be featured in history books and talked about as the beginning of a new era. On that day, astronomers made the first-ever observation of a cosmic event using both light and gravitational waves. This is called multi-messenger astronomy, and it's been compared to a person gaining a new sense of perception. Researchers have long been able to see the universe with light, now they can "hear" the universe with gravitational waves. When combined, the power of these two methods is greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, the journal Science named the discovery its 2017 Breakthrough of the Year.

The collision was detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), as well as the Virgo gravitational wave detector, and by "more than 70 ground and space based observatories," according to a statement from LIGO. The gravitational-wave observatories were able to confirm that the event was two neutron stars colliding; the light-base observatories were then able to glean more specific information about those two objects, including confirmation that neutron-star mergers are responsible for producing much of the universe's supply of heavy elements, like gold. The detection therefore confirmed that we are all made of (neutron) star stuff. The discovery is the first demonstration of what astronomers will be able to accomplish with multi-messenger astronomy. [Full Story: First Detection of Gravitational Waves from Neutron-Star Crash Marks New Era of Astronomy]

2. 7 Earth-size planets around TRAPPIST-1

This artist's illustration shows TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf star with seven small planets orbiting very close to it. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In early January, scientists announced the discovery of not one, not two, not sixbut seven Earth-size plants orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1. NASA was quick to provide some imaginative imagery of what the planets might look like, and envisioned what it would be like to stand on the surface of those planets. There was even discussion about how life, if it arose on just one of the planets, might have been carried to some of the other worlds via asteroids.

Since January, scientists have found reasons to doubt whether these planets could ever harbor life, and reminded the public that it will require much more advanced instruments to even begin to search for signs of habitability. But the discovery wasn't so much about actually finding life elsewhere in the universe, but of reminding us of the great potential the universe has to offer. This was an invigorating discovery for scientists and non-scientists alike, and a solid reminder of why humanity should continue to invest in ever-more advanced telescopes. The TRAPPIST-1 system is like something from the pages of a science-fiction novel, and it reminded us of the unimaginable worlds we have yet to discover. [Full Story: Major Discovery! 7 Earth-Size Alien Planets Circle Nearby Star]

3. The Great American Total Solar Eclipse

An illustration of the moon moving across the sun, in a total solar eclipse. (Image credit: NASA)

On Aug. 21, for the first time in nearly 100 years, a total solar eclipse crossed the U.S. from coast to coast. Along a narrow path stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, people watched as the moon blocked out the disk of sun, transforming night into day and revealing hidden layers of the sun's atmosphere, for just a few brief moments.

Cities both large and small welcomed the onslaught of visitors who drove into the path of totality (the area from which the total eclipse was visible), which was only about 70 miles wide. People scrambled to find eclipse glasses (and some shady dealers took advantage of that), and prayed for clear skies. And many, many people watched the event online from outside the path.

While a total eclipse takes place somewhere on Earth about every 18 months, they are not often visible from easy-to-get-to places or highly populated areas. The next total solar eclipse to cross part of the contiguous U.S. will be in 2024. If you're someone who has added "See a total solar eclipse" to your bucket list, let me tell from my own experience in August: seeing one total solar eclipse will only leave you hungry for another. Don't wait. [Here Are the Most Amazing Photos and Videos of the 2017 Solar Eclipse]

4. Enceladus' ocean

Saturn's moon Enceladus, photographed here by the Cassini spacecraft, has a subsurface ocean that also contains a chemical energy source that could be used by life-forms. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

In April, NASA scientists announced the detection of a possible energy source for life in the liquid- water ocean on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Samples from the subsurface ocean were obtained by the Cassini spacecraft, which made multiple passes through plumes of water that erupt from Enceladus' icy crust.

Once thought to be a solid chuck of ice orbiting the ringed planet, Enceladus is now considered one of the most potentially habitable environments in the solar system (besides Earth). Under the moon's solid, icy surface lies a global, liquid water ocean, and on the floor of that subterranean sea, hot water vents could support ecosystems like those found at the bottom of the ocean on Earth.

The new study identified the presence of molecular hydrogen (two hydrogen molecules bound together), which can serve as an energy source for life. The molecular hydrogen could be forming through chemical reactions between hot water and rock, generating a veritable food supply for potential life. [Potential Energy Source for Life Spotted on Saturn Moon Enceladus]

5. Cassini's "Grand Finale" at Saturn

An artist's illustration of the Cassini spacecraft plummeting through Saturn's atmosphere. (Image credit: NASA)

The Cassini spacecraft is one of NASA's great success stories. During its 13-year tenure at Saturn, the probe provided an up-close view of the planet's swooping rings, its turbulent cloud tops and many of its invisible features, like its magnetic field. Cassini also revealed a surprising amount of complexity in Saturn's moons. The probe found oceans of liquid methane, plumes of water erupting from an ice ball, and strange red streaks.

NASA was finally forced to end the Cassini mission in September because the probe was running out of fuel. The final stamp on an already great legacy was a dramatic series of loops that took it between the planet and the innermost rings, followed by a dive into Saturn's atmosphere that ultimately caused the probe to break apart. No space probe had ever flown directly into Saturn's atmosphere before, and Cassini was able to send back some in-situ data. Researchers are still digging through the data it collected during its final year at Saturn. [Cassini's Saturn Crash 2017: 'Grand Finale' at the Ringed Planet]

6. Gravitational waves are booming

An artist's illustration of gravitational waves, or ripples in the space-time fabric, created by two merging black holes. (Image credit: NASA)

It's been two years since scientists made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves  ripples in the cosmic fabric first predicted by Albert Einstein  and the field is absolutely booming. The Laser Interferometer Gravitation Wave Observatory, which made that initial discovery in 2015, announced the detection of gravitational waves from a neutron-star merger, which were also detected by more than 70 light-based telescopes and observatories. This was such a significant moment for astronomy, that we've chosen it as the No. 2 story on our list.

Perhaps the biggest indicator of this field's significance was the announcement that three scientists who pioneered the design and construction of LIGO were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

LIGO also found three more black-hole mergers, which makes five confirmed black-hole mergers spotted by LIGO. The details of those detections are interesting in their own right, but scientists are mostly excited that they are well on the way to having a large population of black-hole binaries to study. With a large population of black holes, scientists can begin to understand what characteristics are shared by these objects, and which characteristics are unique. From there, they can begin to understand how these objects form, and how they fit into the larger story of the universe.

Wait, there's more! The Virgo gravitational-wave detector came online in Italy in August, and made its first detection almost right away, spotting one of the black-hole mergers that was also seen by LIGO. By working together, LIGO and Virgo will be able to better confirm the detection of gravitational-wave signals, and do a slightly better job of narrowing down where they came from.

It's been a big year for gravitational waves, and the future is bright for this budding field.

7. First interstellar object detected in our solar system

The projected path of a space rock that might be the first interstellar object ever spotted in Earth's solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Researchers may have made the first-ever detection of an object in Earth's solar system that originated somewhere outside the system. The space rock, named 'Oumuamua, was first detected in October by scientists using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.

There are many ways a space rock could be flung out of the solar system. Scientists assume that space rocks from far away can occasionally wander toward Earth's sun, but identifying those rocks as alien visitors is difficult. In this case, the researchers modeled the path that the object will take based on its current trajectory, and found that it is headed out of the solar system (meaning it wasn't born in an orbit around the sun). Many space rocks get ejected from the solar system by the gravity of other (usually larger) objects, but 'Oumuamua doesn't seem to have undergone any such interactions. Additional observations are being carried out to try and confirm this preliminary conclusion. [Full Story: Visitor from Far, Far Away: Interstellar Object Spotted in Our Solar System]

8. Ingredients for life on dwarf planet Ceres

The dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It contains water and organic molecules. (Image credit: NASA/Dawn)

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and is dually categorized as both a dwarf planet and an asteroid. At first glance, its cratered and barren surface certainly doesn't look like a place where life would form. But the more scientists learn about Ceres, the more habitable it looks.

In February, researchers announced that they had detected organic molecules on Ceres' surface. Organic molecules are necessary for the formation of life as we know it, although they do not indicate the presence of life. That discovery is particularly significant when paired with the fact that Ceres may have a liquid water ocean beneath its surface. The presence of both liquid water and organic molecules presents the possibility that primitive life emerged there. [Full Story: Life's Building Blocks Found on Dwarf Planet Ceres]

9. Atmosphere on nearly Earth-size planet

This artist's illustration shows the near-Earth-size planet GJ 1132b, located 39 light-years away. Researchers have detected an atmosphere on GJ 1132b, a first for an exoplanet of this size. (Image credit: MPIA)

For the first time, researchers have observed the atmosphere of distant planet that is just slightly larger than the Earth. The planet, called GJ 1132b, appears to have a very hot and very thick atmosphere, which confirms earlier suspicions that this world has more in common with Venus than with Earth.

The direct observation of this planet's atmosphere is significant because thus far, astronomers have been able to directly study atmospheres only around gas giant planets like Jupiter. In at least one case, researchers directly observed the atmosphere of a planet eight times the mass of Earth. GJ 1132b, on the other hand, has a radius about 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 1.6 times that of Earth.

Alien planet atmospheres may contain evidence of life, so scientists are working hard to understand what to look for in those atmospheres, and how to look for it. Studying Earth-size exoplanet atmospheres remains a significant challenge for existing telescopes, but future instruments are being designed to target those studies. [Full Story: Discovery! Atmosphere Spotted on Nearly Earth-Size Exoplanet in First]

10. Evidence for flowing water on Mars might be drying up

This image of an inner slope of a crater on southern Mars has several seasonal dark streaks called "recurrent slope lineae," or RSL. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/USGS)

In 2015, researchers announced that they'd found evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. NASA later supported the claim that dark streaks on Martian hillsides (called recurring slope lineae, or RSL's) could be caused by liquid water mixed with high levels of salt. The salt would prevent the water from freezing or instantly turning into a gas in the thin Martian atmosphere.

But alternative explanations for those dark streaks have since emerged, and in November, a study added to that growing pile. The new work suggested that the dark streaks could be rivulets of sand, streaming down the sides of the dunes. This is a common phenomenon in what are called granular materials, such as sand. NASA published a news release about the new paper, implying that the conclusions were sound. But the story wrapped up with the authors of the new research noting that a definitive decision on the nature of the dark streaks would likely require direct study of a sample from the RSLs, something that seems unlikely to happen soon. [Full Story: Weird Dark Streaks on Mars May Not Be Flowing Water After All]

Runners-up

There were quite a few amazing space stories this year that didn't quite make our top 10 list. Here are some of the runners up.

New observations showed that Jupiter's auroras are even more mysterious and complex than researchers previously thought. They appear to be totally unlike Earth's auroras, as evidence by the fact that the north and south pole auroras are asymmetric.

A new measurement of the age of the moon found that Earth's neighbor is slightly older than some previous estimates suggested.

The speed of the universe's expansion is a major mystery in astrophysics at the moment, with two seemingly reliable measurement approaches producing slightly different results. A new study solidified one of those measurements, which means the mismatch likely lies in scientists' fundamental understanding of universal expansion.

The hottest exoplanet ever discovered is a real scorcher  in fact, it's hotter than the surface of some stars. KELT-9b's is a blazing 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,300 degrees Celsius), or just 2,200 degrees F (1,200 degrees C) cooler than the surface of the sun.

For the first time in 37 years, scientists turned on the backup thrusters on the Voyager 1 probe. The test firing gave the mission managers assurance that if the probe's primary thrusters fail, the spacecraft will still be able to point itself toward Earth and send back data from the edge of the solar system.

"Boyajian's star" (previously known as "Tabby's star") has continued its completely perplexing pattern of dimming and brightening at irregular intervals. This year, researchers more or less ruled out the possibility that the behavior was due to an alien megastructure orbiting the star. But that doesn't make this object any less mysterious to astronomers. In May, various telescopes and observatories joined together to study the star during one of these strange bouts of dimming and brightening.

If Mars was once a watery haven, what caused the planet to become a cold, lifeless rock? NASA's Maven spacecraft is continuing to study the mystery of Mars' missing atmosphere.

In September, the sun belched up the largest solar flare in over a decade. The enormous eruption sent high-energy particles hurtling at the Earth, causing interruptions in some radio communications frequencies.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Used and Ready for Re-Launch

DigitalGlobe

To commemorate some of the biggest global news events of 2017, the satellite imaging company DigitalGlobe has released photos of significant scenes from around the world as seen from space. HERE: Before SpaceX launched the first mission with both a reused orbital rocket and reused cargo craft on Dec. 15, DigitalGlobe photographed the Falcon 9 rocket on the launchpad.

Volcanic Island Growth

DigitalGlobe

Late in 2014, an island formed from underwater volcanic eruptions in the Kingdom of Tonga. This image from DigitalGlobes WorldView-2 satellite, taken on June 29, 2017, shows the newly formed island connecting

Serving Humanitarian Efforts

DigitalGlobe

Using its Open Data Program, DigitalGlobe aided in rescue and recovery efforts following the violent hurricanes in 2017. Brookshire, Texas, suffered substantial flooding after Hurricane Harvey.

Speaking Up

DigitalGlobe

Millions of people across the U.S. joined together on Jan. 21, 2017, marching for women's rights, racial equality, environmental protection and other causes, forming the largest protest in U.S. history. This image shows crowds participating in Denver, Colorado.

Airstrike in Syria

DigitalGlobe

The Al Shayrat airfield suffered significant damage after the U.S. military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles on April 7, 2017 in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria.

Site of Loss

DigitalGlobe

During the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Oct. 1, 2017, a gunman fired over 1,100 rounds into a crowd from the Mandalay Bay hotel across the street.

California Wildfires

DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe's Open Data Program offered insight on the multiple fires raging in California in 2017, including the Northern California Tubbs fire and the Southern California Thomas and Creek fires. The Coffey Park neighborhood in Santa Rosa suffered from extensive damage.

Increasing Tensions

DigitalGlobe

This Pyongsong factory is believed to be producing the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles North Korea launched in a series of increasingly capable ballistic missile tests in 2017. This image from DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite was taken on Nov. 21, 2017.

Raqqa Liberated

DigitalGlobe

After three years of being known as the de facto capital of the Islamic State in Syria, Raqqa was liberated by U.S.-backed Syrian militias. On Oct. 9, 2017, Syrian forces gathered in Raqqa's Al-Naim square in the midst of city ruins.

Aftermath of a Bomb

DigitalGlobe

In Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, a truck bomb exploded on Oct. 14, 2017, killing 512 and injuring 316. This image shows the scar, evidence of the most deadly terror attack of 2017.

Severe Famine

DigitalGlobe

Over 20 million people in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria are suffering from a serious famine. This image from the WorldView-2 satellite shows a refugee camp in Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria, one of the most heavily affected areas of the famine.
See more

Crashes in Roswell, New Mexico, and flashing lights over New Jersey  for decades, people around the world have looked up at the skies and reported mysterious unidentified objects (UFOs).

But are these sightings signs of alien visitation? And are they truly unexplained?

A recent New York Times investigation found that the Pentagon had, for years, funded a program to answer just that question. The program found several reports of aircraft that seemed to travel at high speeds and have no signs of propulsion, the Times reported.

While the vast majority of UFO sightings, when investigated, have turned out to be the result of ordinary Earthly phenomena, such as weather balloons, flares or rockets, some still leave experts scratching their heads  and looking to the skies for little green men. From white Tic Tacs to flashing lights, here are some of the most mysterious UFO sightings out there. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]

Fighter pilot encounter

The Times investigation highlighted one of the most intriguing UFO sightings, which was captured on video. In 2004, two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets (also called Super Hornet or Hornet) encountered a mysterious flying object near San Diego, The New York Times reported. The object seemed to be traveling at high speeds, was surrounded by a glowing halo and was rotating as it moved. According to audio from the event, one of the fighter pilots exclaimed, "There's a whole fleet of them," the Times reported.

One of the Navy pilots who witnessed the bizarre event, Cmdr. David Fravor, recalled that the object looked like "a white Tic Tac, about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet [12 meters] long with no wings," Fravor told The Washington Post. As his plane approached the UFO, the mysterious object accelerated "faster than I'd ever seen anything in my life," Fravor said.

Fravor, for his part, is convinced that the source of the object was extraterrestrial, he told The Washington Post.

French encounter

In 1981, a 55-year-old farmer in Trans-en-Provence, France, reported hearing a strange, high-pitched sound before seeing a flying saucer nearby. The lead-colored UFO took off almost immediately, he said.

What makes this sighting unique is that the farmer immediately contacted local police, who took soil and plant samples, according to a report of the incident. Experts from France's UFO-investigating body, formerly called Groupe d'Etudes et d'Informations sur les Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non-identifies (GEPAN), said the chemical evidence was consistent with heating of the soil and pressure from a heavy object. They also found traces of zinc and phosphate and evidence of abnormalities in the plants nearby.

However, skeptics said the smooshed plants could have been caused by tires, and cars had been heard traveling in the area around the same time as the farmer's sighting. Because there was a military base nearby, another explanation is that the French military was testing an experimental craft.

Sighting by retired astronaut

In general, some of the most reputable or credible sightings come from those who are in the skies all day long: pilots and members of the military. The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) logged one such sighting in 2013, Vice reported. Late in the evening in 2013, the man, a former commercial pilot, fighter pilot and astronaut, was looking at the sky with his family in Athens, Texas, when he noticed what looked like an orange, glowing fireball.

"When I looked up into the sky, I saw a fairly large, orange, glowing orb moving rapidly overhead [at] right about 90 degrees of elevation," the man reported to the NUFORC.

After a few minutes, a group of three similar objects followed the same flight path. Three minutes later, two more objects flew along that same route. The objects gave off no sound and seemed to glow from atmospheric heating, the man reported. He and his family attempted to record the objects using their iPhones, though the grainy, dark video was difficult to decipher, he said.

"They moved much faster than orbital satellites (International Space Station, for example) or airplanes, but much slower than meteors and did not change brightness as a meteor would upon entering the atmosphere," the man said in his call. "I have no explanation for what we saw."

Lights over Mount Shasta

Another report from the NUFORC came from an airline captain who was flying between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, when he noticed glowing blue lights over Mount Shasta in California that appeared much brighter than the stars typically do in the area.

"The two lights were approximately an inch apart in the windscreen and the size of normal stars," the captain noted in a report. Then, "one of the 'stars' just dimmed out over about a 10-second time span followed by the other one dimming out completely in about 10 seconds also."

The lights were stationary, so they were not falling stars or satellites, he said. [UFO Quiz: What's Really Out There]

"We were flying in crystal-clear skies and were not flying though any clouds whatsoever. These two lights were not following the typical west-to-east orbital path as most satellites do and were just sitting there kind of like ships hiding in plain sight," the captain reported to the NUFORC.

The lights also appeared to be far above the level of the plane, which was flying at 38,000 feet (11,580 m).

Not so U-FOs

For every unexplained sighting, there are dozens that turn out to be military flares, weird cloud formations, weather phenomena or elaborate hoaxes. For instance, GEPAN's database suggests that only 7 percent of all supposed UFO sightings are truly unexplained.

In the 1940s, the U.S. Air Force began investigating UFO sightings, and that program, called Project Blue Book, logged more than 12,000 reported sightings before it was shuttered in 1969. Most of those Project Blue Book sightings were ultimately explained. While a few remained unexplained, the people involved in the program were skeptical that these cases were true alien sightings or completely unknown physical phenomena.

"If more immediate, detailed, objective data on the unknowns had been available, probably these, too, could have been explained," a report in the Project Blue Book archive noted. However, the fact that human factors are involved  in particular, personal impressions and interpretations, rather than accurate scientific data  it's likely impossible to eliminate all unidentified sightings, the report noted.

Originally published on Live Science.
The Falcon 9 first stage after landing on a June mission to launch 10 Iridium Next satellites. The same first same will be used on the Dec. 22 launch of 10 more Iridium satellites, but will not attempt a landing.

BROOMFIELD, Colo.  In a break from its now-standard practice, SpaceX will not attempt a landing of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on its next launch this week, the company confirmed Dec. 19.

A SpaceX spokesperson said that the company is not planning to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 that is launching a fourth set of 10 Iridium Next satellites Dec. 22 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The company carried a successful static fire test of the booster at the pad Dec. 17.

SpaceX offered few details about the decision not to land the booster. "These are case-by-case decisions and are based on mission requirements and the needs of our manifest," a company spokesperson said in response to a SpaceNews inquiry.

Prior to the company's statement, there were reports on discussion boards that the Falcon 9 appeared to lack the landing legs and grid fins required for a landing. Matt Desch, chief executive of Iridium, confirmed that was a case in a number of tweets asking about it.

"That appears to be true," he said in response to one tweet asking if the first stage would not make a landing. "I understand that it won't be recovered," he said in another.

Desch appeared to rule out requirements specific to the mission that prevent the first stage from landing. The launch doesn't require any "dogleg" maneuvers, he said, and there are no special maneuvers planned to place satellites in different orbital planes.

The three previous Falcon 9 launches of Iridium satellites all included first stage landings on SpaceX's "drone ship" landing pad in the Pacific Ocean. The first stage for the upcoming launch is a reused stage that first flew on a June launch that placed the second set of 10 Iridium satellites into orbit.

This has led to speculation that SpaceX is no longer interested in landing older versions of the Falcon 9. This stage is of the "Block 3" variant of the rocket that, along with the Block 4, is carrying out Falcon 9 missions today. The company expects to introduce a Block 5 version early next year that will incorporate lessons from the earlier versions to enable greater reuse.

However, SpaceX has landed the four reused boosters it has previously flown, including the Dec. 15 launch of a Dragon cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida. None of those four stages have been launched again, but a company official said prior to that launch that the older first stages are not necessarily limited to a single reflight.

"Everything has a service lifetime," Jessica Jensen, Dragon mission manager at SpaceX, said at a Dec. 11 briefing about that mission. "Dragons and Falcons, depending on where they are and what the service lifetime is for that specific unit, can fly more than twice. We do have plans to fly more than twice in the future."

The upcoming Block 5, though, is intended to be flown 10 or more times. "We're certifying for at least 10 flights, and hoping for a lot more," Jensen said at a Dec. 15 post-launch briefing.

SpaceX has in the recent past not attempted landings only because of performance requirements. Three Falcon 9 launches in 2017  of the EchoStar 23, Inmarsat-5 F4 and Intelsat 35e geostationary communications satellites  did not attempt first stage landings in order to maximize performance for those large satellites. The other 14 launches this year to date all made landings on drone ships or the company's landing pad at Cape Canaveral.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
An artist's illustration of the "Halloween Asteroid" 2015 TB145, which looks much like a skull from certain angles. The asteroid flew harmlessly by Earth on Oct. 31, 2015 and will return in November 2018.

Astronomers will soon get another look at the big, ghoulishly weird space rock that buzzed Earth on Halloween three years ago.

The roughly 2,100-foot-wide (640 meters) Halloween asteroid 2015 TB145 gave Earth a close shave on Oct. 31, 2015, coming within just 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of our planet. (For perspective, the moon orbits at an average distance of about 239,000 miles, or 384,600 km.)

A Halloween flyby was quite appropriate, it turned out: Observations made at the time by a variety of instruments revealed that 2015 TB145 looks like an enormous skull, at least from some angles. [These Scary Things In Space Will Haunt Your Dreams (Photos)]

Astronomers also determined that the asteroid likely completes one rotation every 2.94 hours and that it reflects just 5 or 6 percent of the sunlight that hits it.

This image of asteroid 2015 TB145 was generated using radar data collected by the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. (Image credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF)

"This means that it is very dark, only slightly more reflective than charcoal," Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain, said in a statement today (Dec. 20). He co-authored a study about 2015 TB145's characteristics that was published in February 2017 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The asteroid may actually be an extinct comet that has lost its water and other volatile materials after many laps around the sun, researchers have said. Each of those laps takes 3.04 Earth years  which means 2015 TB145 will make another swing by our planet in mid-November 2018.

This next flyby won't be nearly as dramatic as the last one; the asteroid will zoom past at about 105 Earth-moon distances. But Santos-Sanz and other researchers are still looking forward to it.

"Although this approach shall not be so favorable, we will be able to obtain new data which could help improve our knowledge of this mass and other similar masses that come close to our planet," Santos-Sanz said in the statement.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
When We Were Apollo" will highlight the hundreds of thousands of people who made the moon landings possible.

A new crowd-funded documentary will look at the crowd behind the Apollo moon landings.

"When We Were Apollo," which reached its funding goal of $20,000 on Kickstarter, aims to address "what was it like to go to the moon  for the rest of Apollo's workforce?"

"I am a huge fan of the movies that have been made about the Apollo program that tell the stories of the astronauts, the missions, and the great leaders who inspired to make us think it was possible," says writer and director Zachary Weil with Contact Light Films, in a video that accompanies the "When We Were Apollo" crowdfunding campaign. "But I also wondered what putting a human on the moon was like for the rest of Apollo's workforce." [Apollo 11's Vintage Tech: The Most Amazing Moon Landing Innovations]

Approximately 400,000 Americans from more than 20,000 companies, universities and government agencies aided to the goal of landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely to Earth within the confines of a decade.

"This film shares their story," says Weil.

Set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2019, "When We Were Apollo" will look at the legacy of the moonshot through the lives and experiences of some of those 400,000 workers who were unheard from until now, including NASA structural engineer Larry Junker.

"It was a tremendous effort," recalls Junker in an interview filmed for "We We Were Apollo," describing his role in the construction of NASA's Vertical Assembly Building used to stack the Saturn V rocket for launch. "There were so many people working on this, NASA thought 'let's designate the last beam that's supposed to go in place and have people sign their names on it.'"

"I did that, and thousands of other people did it, too. But I wasn't smart enough to put my signature on the lower part of the beam  because the upper part was going to be covered in concrete!" says Junker with a chuckle.

In addition to talking with Junker, NASA engineer Al Koller and IBM contractor Martha LeMasters, among other Apollo veterans for the documentary, the team behind "When We Were Apollo" is also seeking stories and photos from other program alumni through the film's website.

"What's magical about the story of Apollo is that hundreds of thousands of people across our country heard this call to action and said, 'Yeah, let's go for it,'" explains Weil. "It is in the spirit of saying yes to a challenge as ambitious as Apollo that makes humanity great and it is a quality I never want us to forget."

The filmmakers plan to donate all of the footage and the materials collected to the Salmon Library at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to ensure the archive is preserved and remains accessible for generations to come.

"This project was a natural fit for our space collections," said Reagan Grimsley, head of special collections at UAH, in a statement. "We are glad to be able to assist the 'When We Were Apollo' team as they conduct research."

When We Were Apollo" mission patch decal. (Image credit: Contact Light Films)

"Our hope is that the production team will uncover untold stories that others can later use for research," he said.

With their funding goal achieved and more than a week left in their campaign, the filmmakers have announced stretch goals to extend the production, allowing for more research and interviews, including a possible visit to Australia to talk to the Apollo alumni from the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, which received and relayed the first images from the surface of the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.

For backing the production of "When We Were Apollo," the filmmakers are offering supporters with pre-release access to the feature-length film, t-shirts, decals and a copy of the documentary's companion book. Other perks include being listed in the film credits and for the highest pledges, invites to the premiere and a dinner with Apollo alumni featured on screen.

"Apollo was our space program, and we want you to feel the same way about this film," Weil says.

The "When We Were Apollo" Kickstarter campaign comes to an end on Thursday, Dec. 28.

Ultimately, Weil says, "We We Were Apollo" is just as much about looking at our past as it is about our future.

"The spirit of Apollo  that belief that we can do the big things regardless of what stands in our way  is still with us and we want to make sure it continues on as we chart a course forward," Weil says. "It is our deepest hope, through this film and beyond, that we'll always endeavor to do the big things, especially when times are hard, because they push to become the best version of ourselves."

For more details or to pledge, see "When We Were Apollo" on Kickstarter at kck.st/2BjqTG5 or the film's website: whenwewereapollo.com.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2017 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
The Cosmosphere space museum in Kansas and Holman Cellars have introduced "Moonwalker" wine featuring bottles autographed by three Apollo astronauts who explored the moon.

A Kansas space museum is giving new meaning to the "spirit of Apollo" with the offer of a new boutique wine.

The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas, a museum and education center dedicated to sharing the history of space exploration, has partnered with Holman Cellars, a family-run micro-winery in Napa Valley, to introduce Moonwalker wine. The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon is available in labeled bottles with engraved, digitized or authentic autographs of Apollo astronauts who explored the moon almost 50 years ago.

"Wine commemorating three of the living astronauts who walked on the moon is available just in time for holiday gift giving to your favorite Apollo-era enthusiast!" the museum announced on Thursday (Dec. 14). [NASA's 17 Apollo Moon Missions in Pictures]

The limited edition Moonwalker wine has the signature of approval of Alan Bean, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt, the fourth, tenth and twelfth humans to step foot onto the moon. Bean flew on Apollo 12 in November 1969, Duke on Apollo 16 in April 1972 and Schmitt landed on Apollo 17 in December 1972. All three were their Apollo mission's lunar module pilot.

Moonwalker is bottled from a exclusive barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon donated by Holman Cellars for the benefit of the Cosmosphere. A portion of the proceeds from the sale goes to support the Cosmosphere's international science education center and space museum.

"The sale of the wine directly benefits the Cosmosphere  proceeds support our operation and our ability to provide outstanding programs and exhibits," Jim Remar, president and incoming CEO of the Cosmosphere, said in a recent interview with collectSPACE. "Fifty percent of the proceeds [from the wine's sale] will be funneled to the Cosmosphere Foundation to support our programs in perpetuity."

Limited to one per buyer, 750 milliliters and 1.5 liter bottles of Moonwalker with a label hand-signed by Bean and Duke are available for $320 and $450 each, respectively. Same sized bottles with digitally-reproduced signatures of Bean, Duke and Schmitt are available for $120 and $240 each.

Moonwalkers Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Charles Duke (Apollo 16) and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) have leant their signature of approval to the Cosmosphere's Moonwalker boutique wine. (Image credit: NASA via collectSPACE.com)

Larger bottles of Moonwalker, in 3, 6 and 9 liters, engraved with all three Apollo astronaut autographs, retail for $530, $1,010 and $1,490 each while the limited supply lasts. The larger bottles are also limited to one per buyer. [Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]

The bottles are available for pick up from the winery or can be ordered online and shipped within the United States.

Holman Cellars specifically chose the Cabernet Sauvignon for Moonwalker "to last the test of time," said Remar.

"High acid and lean, Moonwalker wine boasts with red and black currants adorned with white pepper and a spicy long finish," he described.

Though other boutique wines have adopted space themed labels in the past, the Cosmosphere saw Moonwalker as a chance to do something unique to toast the Apollo moon missions as they begins marking 50 year anniversaries.

"The Cosmosphere wanted to do something to celebrate the moonwalkers and we thought this would be a fantastic way to honor these men, while doing something that has never been done before," said Remar.

In addition to curating and exhibiting hundreds of artifacts from the past 60 years of worldwide space exploration, the Cosmosphere has been responsible for the restoration and conservation of the "Liberty Bell 7" Mercury spacecraft, the Apollo 13 command module "Odyssey," and the Saturn V F-1 rocket engine parts raised off the ocean floor by Bezos Expeditions. The Cosmosphere is currently working on the restoration of the original consoles from NASA's Apollo-era mission control.

To read more about the Cosmosphere, see cosmo.org. For more about Moonwalker wine, see holmancellars.com/moonwalker.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2017 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
Britannia (one-hour)  Coming January 2018Britannia is written by the multi-award winning Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem, Spectre) and stars Kelly Reilly (True Detective, Sherlock Holmes), David Morrissey (The Walking Dead, The Hollow Crown) and Zoe Wanamaker (Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, My Family). Filmed completely abroad, Britannia is set in 43AD as the Roman Imperial Army, determined and terrified in equal measure, returns to crush the Celtic heart of Britannia, a mysterious land ruled by wild warrior women and powerful Druids who can channel the powerful forces of the underworld.Absentia (one-hour)  Coming February 2018Starring and executive produced by Castles Stana Katic, Absentia centers on FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic). While hunting one of Bostons most notorious serial killers, Agent Byrne disappears without a trace and is declared dead. Six years later, Emily is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive, and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.Sneaky Pete S2 (one-hour)  Coming 2018On the verge of starting fresh, Marius is abruptly dragged back into the role of Pete Murphy when two thugsbelieving hes Petethreaten to kill the Bernhardts if he doesnt take them to Petes estranged mother, Maggie, and the millions she stole from their mysterious employer. Now Marius must tread a dangerous line to find the elusive Maggie, protect the familywho are still reeling from the death and dealings of the past weekand keep up the Pete con, all while finagling a way to ditch the thugs and keep the money for himself.Sneaky Pete stars Giovanni Ribisi as Marius/Pete, Marin Ireland as Julia Bowman, Shane McRae as Taylor Bowman, Libe Barer as Carly Bowman, Michael Drayer as Eddie Josipovic, Peter Gerety as Otto Bernhardt and Margo Martindale as Audrey Bernhardt. The series was created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, with Graham Yost, Bryan Cranston, James Degus, Michael Dinner, Fred Golan and Seth Gordon executive producing.Picnic at Hanging Rock (one-hour)  Coming 2018The epic new series, starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay  Parts 1 and 2, In Darkness) as English headmistress Mrs Hester Appleyard, is a re-imagining of Joan Lindsays timeless Australian novel. In addition to Dormer, the series stars Lola Bessis (Swim Little Fish Swim) as Mademoiselle Dianne de Poiters, Lily Sullivan (Camp, Jungle) as Miranda Reid, Madeleine Madden (Tomorrow When The War Began, High Life) as Marion Quade, Samara Weaving (Monster Trucks, The Babysitter) as Irma Leopold, Ruby Rees (Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries) as Edith Horton and Inez Curro as Sara Waybourne.Picnic at Hanging Rock will plunge viewers into the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and one teacher on Valentines Day 1900, taking the audience on a new journey into the revered Australian novel.King Lear (one-hour)  Coming 2018Set in the fictional present, King Lear sets Anthony Hopkins (Thor, Red Dragon) as the eponymous ruler, presiding over a totalitarian military dictatorship in England. Emma Thompson (Love Actually, Nanny McPhee) stars as his eldest daughter Goneril. Also in starring is Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, War Horse) as middle daughter Regan, and Florence Pugh (The Falling, Lady MacBeth) will play Cordelia, the youngest of Lears children. Jim Broadbent (Gangs of New York, Moulin Rouge) is the Earl of Gloucester, Andrew Scott (Spectre, Saving Private Ryan) his loyal son Edgar and John Macmillan (The Dark Knight Rises, Hanna) his illegitimate offspring Edmund. Further completing the cast is Jim Carter (Downtown Abbey, The Golden Compass), Christopher Eccleston (The Leftovers, GI Joe), Tobias Menzies (Outlanders, Casino Royale), Anthony Calf (Riviera) and Karl Johnson (Rome, Hot Fuzz).A Very English Scandal (one-hour)  Coming 2018A Very English Scandal is the shocking true story of the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder. Hugh Grant is to return to British television screens for the first time since the early 1990s as the disgraced MP Jeremy Thorpe, who in 1979 was tried but acquitted of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott, played by Ben Whishaw.It is the late 1960s, homosexuality has only just been decriminalized and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party and the youngest leader of any British political party in a hundred years, has a secret hes desperate to hide. As long as his ex-lover Norman Scott is around, Thorpes brilliant career is at risk.Goliath S2 (one-hour)  Coming 2018In Goliath Season Two, Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) returns to criminal defense, taking on a grisly double murder case in Venice. His client is a 16-year-old boy  and Billys damn sure hes innocent. Billy and his team fervently build their case in the seedy underworld of Los Angeles, squaring off with a dirty cop, tight-lipped gangbangers, and a prosecutor with a point to prove. As the murders true culprits come to light, the implications reach as far as the mayoral race  and the citys preeminent billionaire developer.This season, Morris Chestnut (The Best Man, Think Like a Man) will play Chief Deputy District Attorney Hakeem Rashad, who was on the losing side of Billys (Billy Bob Thornton) last criminal case and has a bitter, old grudge against him. Ana De la Reguera (Narcos, Nacho Libre) will be playing Marisol Silva, a city councilwoman from the seamier side of Venice, in the race to be the first Latina woman mayor of Los Angeles. Also, Mark Duplass (Togetherness, Room 104) will play Tom Wyatt, a successful Los Angeles developer who wants to give the city a distinct skyline.Tom Clancys Jack Ryan (one-hour)  Coming 2018Amazon will debut Tom Clancys Jack Ryan, from Paramount Television and Skydance Television, next year on Amazon Prime Video. The series is a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the famed and lauded Tom Clancy hero. It centers on Jack Ryan, an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time. The one-hour, eight-episode dramatic series stars John Krasinski as Jack Ryan, as well as Wendell Pierce (The Wire) as James Greer and Abbie Cornish as Cathy Mueller. It is executive produced by Carlton Cuse who also serves as the showrunner, Krasinski, Academy Award nominated director Morten Tyldum who also directed the pilot, Michael Bays Platinum Dunes, and Graham Roland, who wrote the pilot based on a story he and Cuse developed. Executive producing Tom Clancys Jack Ryan with Bay at Platinum Dunes are Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, as well as Skydances David Ellison and Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross, along with Mace Neufeld and co-executive producer Lindsey Springer.The Man in the High Castle S3 (one-hour)  Coming 2018Season three of the Emmy award-winning The Man in the High Castle finds Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) grappling with her destiny after seeking safety in the Neutral Zone. Realizing that their fates are intertwined, she works with Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) to interpret the mystery of the last remaining films. Meanwhile, as tensions between the Reich and the Empire continue to rise, Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) returns from Berlin and is sent on a diplomatic mission to San Francisco, where he and Juliana reunite and come to a turning point in their relationship. Also in the new season, Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith (Rufus Sewell) finds himself celebrated by Nazi high society, but political forces are closing in as North American Reischsmarschall Lincoln Rockwell, and J. Edgar Hoover plot against him. Helen (Chelah Horsdal) takes drastic action to protect her family while they struggle with the aftermath of Thomas death, and Smith also learns of a shocking and ambitious new Nazi program that has personal and global ramificationsJason OMara (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) joins the cast as a series regular this season. OMara plays Wyatt Price who fled the war in Europe and whose family immigrated to New York from Ireland as refugees.Vanity Fair (one-hour)  Coming 2018Gwyneth Hughes adaptation of Thackerays literary classic is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and follows modern heroine Becky Sharp, played by Olivia Cooke, as she attempts to claw her way out of poverty and scale the heights of English Society. Her story of villainy, crime, merriment, lovemaking, jilting, laughing, cheating, fighting and dancing, takes her all the way to the court of King George IV, via the Battle of Waterloo, breaking hearts and losing fortunes as she goes.The Untitled Alan Yang/ Matt Hubbard Project  Coming 2018The Untitled Alan Yang / Matt Hubbard Project is being created by an award-winning team. Yang won an Emmy Award for writing the Netflix comedy series Master of None, which he co-created. He was also nominated for an Emmy while working on the NBC series Parks and Recreation. Hubbard won two Emmys for writing and co-executive-producing 30 Rock. His credits also include Parks and Recreation and NBCs Superstore. Fred Armisen has been nominated for nine Emmys over the course of his career, which has included Portlandia, Documentary Now! and Saturday Night Live. Maya Rudolph has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Saturday Night Live and will soon be heard in the animated series Big Mouth, as well as seen in Ben Falcones upcoming comedy Life of the Party.The Romanoffs (one-hour)  Coming 2018Amazon Prime Original The Romanoffs is created, written, directed and executive produced by nine-time Emmy award winner Matthew Weiner (Mad Men). The series is a one-hour contemporary anthology series set around the globe featuring separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family. Weiner is set to direct all episodes of the series, also executive produced and written by Semi Chellas (Mad Men). Kriss Turner Towner (The Bernie Mac Show), Blake McCormick (Mad Men), and Kathy Ciric (Z: The Beginning of Everything) co-executive produce.Recently announced stars slated to join The Romanoffs include Diane Lane, Aaron Eckhart, Corey Stoll, Andrew Rannells, Mike Doyle, JJ Feild, Janet Montgomery, Paul Reiser, Isabelle Huppert, Marthe Keller, Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Jack Huston, and Amanda Peet.White Dragon (one-hour)  Coming 2018John Simm stars as Professor Jonah Mulray who receives a devastating international phone call about the death of his wife, Megan (Dervla Kirwan), who has been working in Hong Kong. Hes poleaxed with grief, but has to galvanise himself to board a plane for Asia to identify his beloved wifes body. Megan has died in a car accident on the beautiful mountain roads at the top of Tai Po overlooking Hong Kong, and although a notorious black-spot, Jonah feels he must unravel the circumstances of her death following an emotional voicemail left by his wife just seconds before her death. With the help of Sally Porter (Emilia Fox) from the British Consulate, Jonah is taken to the mortuary and in the saddest of surroundings he realises his wife has gone forever.Homecoming (one-hour)  Coming 2018Homecoming is a half-hour drama series adaptation of the acclaimed 2016 Gimlet Media podcast of the same name from Amazon Studios, Universal Cable Productions (UCP), Anonymous Content, and Gimlet Media. Oscar-winner Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) stars in the series, with Emmy-nominated Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail executive producing and directing the series through his production company Esmail Corp as part of his overall deal with UCP. Executive Producers include Mr. Robots Chad Hamilton of Anonymous Content; Eli Horowitz (The Silent History) and Micah Bloomberg (Creative Control), creators of the podcast who will also write the series; Chris Giliberti (Alex Inc.), Alex Blumberg (Alex, Inc.), and Matt Lieber (Alex, Inc.) of Gimlet Media. Roberts also serves as Executive Producer through her production company RedOm along with partners Lisa Gillan and Marisa Gill.Phillip K. Dicks Electric Dreams (one-hour)  Premieres on January 12, 2018Based on various writings from author Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dicks Electric Dreams consists of ten standalone episodes, each set in a different and unique worldsome which lay in the far reaches of the universe and time, and others which are much closer to home. From five to 5000 years in the future, each compelling tale will both illustrate Philip K. Dicks prophetic vision and celebrate the enduring appeal of the prized sci-fi novelists work.The series features an all-star cast, including Steve Buscemi, Bryan Cranston, Greg Kinnear, Maura Tierney, Janelle Monae, Mireille Enos, Anna Paquin, Terrence Howard, Timothy Spall, Liam Cunningham, Richard Madden, Holiday Grainger, Mel Rodriguez, Vera Farmiga, Jack Reynor, Essie Davis, Benedict Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, among many others. Each episode has been adapted by leading American and British writers and directors.Mozart in the Jungle S4 (half-hour)  Coming February 16, 2018New melodies arise as Rodrigo (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Hailey (Lola Kirke) take their relationship public. Hailey struggles to prove herself as a conductor, while Rodrigo fights to keep his inspiration alive. Thomas (Malcolm McDowell) joins a start-up orchestra in Brooklyn that challenges Gloria (Bernadette Peters).The Tick S1B (half-hour)  Coming February 23, 2018In a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an accountant with mental health issues and zero powers comes to realize his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead. As he struggles to uncover this conspiracy, he falls in league with a strange blue superhero. Together, they launch into an adventure brimming with crazed archvillains, blood-soaked vigilantes, mad science, and superhuman freakery.
A High Court judge has ordered one of the biggest freezing orders against two oligarchs which is set to include one of Belgravias most expensive properties and a major stake in London-listed JKX Oil & Gas.

Ukrainian state-owned PrivatBank, previously owned by Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov, claims they took almost $2 billion (1.5 billion) from it through a series of dishonest transactions with companies they secretly owned or controlled.

The freezing order covers $2.5 billion of their global assets and is thought to include Kolomoiskys 27.4% stake in JKX. The pair fought long and bitter battles with the British board of JKX for many years until last year when several UK directors were ousted. Shares in JKX fell 2% to 11.95p today.

The oligarchs are defending the Privat case. They have challenged the justification for their banks nationalisation and accused the Ukrainian authorities of misrepresenting the state of its finances.

Bogolyubov, whose house in Belgrave Square could also be frozen, was famously sued by his own rabbi in a London property dispute.

He and Kolomoisky also last year reputedly paid more than $1 billion to settle a London legal action with Bill Clintons friend, Victor Pinchuk.
I ts covers have featured rock royalty and political leaders and now, 50 years after its launch, the iconic music magazine Rolling Stone has been sold by its founder.

Penske Media, the owner of Variety magazine, will take a controlling stake in a deal which values it at around $110 million (82 million).

From Sir Paul McCartney via Jay-Z to Pope Francis, Rolling Stone has covered music, politics and culture and its front covers were for many years the ultimate symbol of having made it.

It was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason and Wenner will remain editorial director.

Media investor Jay Penske said he hoped Rolling Stone will continue to ascend for decades across multiple platforms.

He added: "Our interest in Rolling Stone is driven by its people, its cultural significance and the globally recognised brand that has no peer in its areas of influence.

The magazine was put up for sale in September.

Singapore-based music start-up BandLab Technologies, which has a 49% stake, will continue as Wenner Medias partner.
N ot long now... On Monday morning people across the world will wake up to presents from their loved ones, gorge on a feast of seasonal treats and sip on whatever alcohol they could get their hands on during their increasingly terrifying trips to the supermarket. One tip to make it even better? Turn off your phone.

Its a big ask but this year Im going to give it a try. However nice the day, however happy I am with my gifts or content I feel to be back by the sea in Wales and off work for a few days, checking Instagram is the guaranteed way to annoy me.

Last year a quick scroll through social media displayed eight Identikit marriage proposals. Sparkling Christmas tree in the background? Check. Manicured hand with paltry diamond on the ring finger? Check.

I said yes! caption? Check. Somehow, sitting in the kitchen peeling a swede the size of a small child didnt compare, especially since I was experiencing severe Terrys Chocolate Orange bloat.

Other Instagram posts boast of trips to Barbados (Christmas dinner on the beach, lol!) or extravagant gifts (A car!? You shouldnt have! #luckyboy). But Christmas Day is the time for sharing in reality, not online, and every moment spent unnecessarily updating a dwindled audience could be better used elsewhere.

I have nothing against social media. I tweet constantly, post shots on Instagram occasionally and, increasingly sporadically, update my real-life friends on Facebook. It puts me in touch with people all over the world and Ive made some wonderful friends. But if theres any day to take a break, its December 25. Ill give it my best shot.



Forget panto  give me a bit of Noel noir any day

It's panto season, and London is being deafened by calls of Hes behind you! and Oh, no he didnt! Its all a bit much for me. The humour has become too staid, the acting too trite, the songs too samey. For some reason, Ive always preferred my Christmas to be a little more noir.

Give me the TV remote and I would watch Edward Scissorhands over Elf. Id choose black comedy Bad Santa over Miracle on 34th Street. Perhaps, at the end of another exhausting year, I find it more restorative to indulge my inner Scrooge.

Thats why, this year, I ignored invitations to Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington and Cinderella in favour of The Grinning Man, the new musical at Trafalgar Studios. In some ways, its not a world away from the Christmas offerings  there are toe-tapping songs, the puppetry is gasp-inducing and the costumes are suitably sumptuous. But theres darkness there too: it features incest, gore galore and a delightful turn from Amanda Wilkin as a nymphomaniac duchess. Marvellously macabre, its the perfect panto antidote. Or pantidote, if youll forgive the pun.

Herod wasnt all that bad really

Last week someone I follow on Twitter proposed that the role you play in your childhood nativity play is representative of your real- life personality. In theory, then, the little girl who is lucky enough to take the role of the Virgin Mary is innocent and loving. Joseph? Dutiful and long-suffering. A sheep? Maybe a little ignored.

So what should I surmise from my casting? I played King Herod, singing murderous instructions as I paced the stage in a rather fetching gold cloak.

It doesnt exactly bode well for a foray into parenthood.

I love being one of Santas helpers

Through my work on The Londoners Diary, I attend many a champagne-fuelled party and often leave greedily clutching my goodie bag. They come in particularly handy at this time of year, as Im able to plump my family and friends stockings with an impressive haul of candles, books, socks and whisky.

Some friends have given me a bit of flak for being cheap or lazy, suggesting that redistributing a gift, however expensive or desirable, just doesnt count.

I disagree: to me, a present earned in hours partying seems far more glamorous than one fished off a shelf at John Lewis.

And besides, Ive got enough to fill a sleigh: waste not, want not.
T he First Secretary of State has resigned because he forgot the first rule of political scandals: its the cover-up that kills you. Damian Green made inaccurate and misleading statements to the civil servant, Sue Gray, originally asked to investigate whether his behaviour towards a journalist and family friend, Kate Maltby, had been inappropriate.

Ms Maltby has endured what felt like another form of harassment at the hands of some quarters of the media for daring to say publicly how uncomfortable she felt at Mr Greens approaches. If her claims had been dismissed out of hand, it would have discouraged other women from speaking out. Instead it was a vindication for Ms Maltby that the inquiry into Mr Green found her account plausible. This probably would have forced his resignation even if No 10 had tried to keep him  as they wanted. After all, Theresa May had all but promised (in Ruth Davidsons words) to clean the stables  and shed established the precedent when she fired her Defence Secretary for claims of inappropriate behaviour without an inquiry.

But it was the fact that Mr Green didnt tell the truth to the Cabinet Office about police claims that pornography had been found on his parliamentary computer nine years ago that actually forced a very reluctant Prime Minister to fire him. Its a clear breach of the ministerial code but many, including this paper, will feel queasy that it was this dubious operation by former police officers that brought him down  instead of the new post-Weinstein climate that makes sexual harassment in the workplace unacceptable.

No Davis resignation

Mr Greens dismissal should not stop Met Commissioner Cressida Dick concluding her investigation into what many think looks like an unsavoury conspiracy. We also note in passing that David Davis has not gone ahead with his plan  which this paper reported  to resign if the PM fired Mr Green because of anything connected with the police raid in 2008. As has been observed: in politics, greater love hath no man than that he lay down his friends for his life.

In the grand scheme of things, Mr Greens departure wont affect the fortunes of the Government. A moderate pro-European, it is not clear whether Mr Green made his presence much felt inside the Cabinet on the key Brexit issues facing the country. He held the ring, rather than performed in it. Where Mr Green was trying to help was with the rest of the Governments agenda.

When Mrs May became PM last year she ripped out all the inner wiring that had made the Cameron Government function  getting rid of virtually the whole Downing Street staff and Cabinet Office ministerial team, for no other apparent reason other than that her own advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, didnt much like them.

All the lessons that had been learnt over the previous six years were lost. Unsurprisingly, the result was paralysis  and no real domestic achievements. It was an approach that culminated in the most disastrous manifesto in modern UK history. In the election aftermath, the Cabinet forced Mrs May to fire her advisers and Mr Green was hired to pick up the pieces. Although a university contemporary, he was not especially close to her. But as a rational, calming voice at the centre Mr Green was welcomed by an exasperated Civil Service. Now that hes gone there is no one around Mrs May with any enduring bonds of loyalty to her  the new, competent team recruited to No 10 hardly knew her at all before they got the call-up.

It probably doesnt matter much. Brexit dominates and its a strange combination of Brussels and the Brexiteers who set the parameters of that; while the loss of a majority makes any serious domestic reforms impossible anyway.

The one thing worth noting of this third Cabinet resignation in two months is that the sexual harassment scandal that started in Hollywood has probably not yet done with Westminster. More heads will roll.
F rom the big names to the hidden gems, its been a brilliant year for art lovers in London.

Unforgettable shows have graced some of the capitals most popular galleries, from Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain to Matisse at the Royal Academy. British art superstar Damien Hirst made a comeback at the Venice Biennale, Jean-Michel Basquiat had a major posthumous show at the Barbican, and the capital marked the centenary of the Russian Revolution.

Theres been lots to see, and much of it has been unmissable. From Tate to the National Portrait Gallery, London exhibitions have offered so much to feast the eyes on.

Our critics Ben Luke and Matthew Collings rounded up the very best of the best in the art world this year.

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread 1 /12 Rachel Whiteread Rachel Whiteread PA Rachel Whiteread Untitled (Clear Torso) - 1993 Rachel Whiteread Untitled (Amber Bed) - 1991 Rachel Whiteread Stairs (1995) Rachel Whiteread Line-up - 2007-08 Rachel Whiteread House (1993) Rachel Whiteread Due Porte (2016) Rachel Whiteread A gallery assistant poses next to Rachel Whiteread's installation "Untitled (One Hundred Spaces)" at the Tate Britain in London, Britain, September 11, 2017. REUTERS Rachel Whiteread A gallery assistant poses next to Rachel Whiteread's installation "Chicken Shed" at the Tate Britain in London, Britain, September 11, 2017 REUTERS Rachel Whiteread A gallery assistant walks past Rachel Whiteread's "IN OUT" collection at the Tate Britain in London, Britain, September 11, 201 REUTERS Rachel Whiteread A woman looks at Book Corridors on display at the Tate Britain in central London, during the Rachel Whiteread exhibition press view, which is part of the Curator's Tour. PA Rachel Whiteread Rachel Whiteread's 'Room 101', Tate Britain. Tate (Andrew Dunkley)

Matthew Collings and Ben Luke both agreed that Rachel Whitereads first major show at Tate Britain was one of the shows of the year. In his five-star review, Collings wrote that, She shows us how we love the ordinary but dont know we do. And homely surfaces remain as archetypes in our minds but we rarely see those exact surfaces any more. We read what we do see as if it were those old lost things.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans 1 /7 Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans Juan Pablo & Karl, Chingaza 2012  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans Shit buildings going up left, right and centre 2014  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans paper drop Prinzessinnenstrasse 2014  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans astro crusto, a 2012  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans Collum 2011  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans Tukan 2010  Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans  Wolfgang Tillmans

Our two critics were both in agreement that Tate Moderns Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition was another highlight of 2017. In his five-star review, Collings wrote, Its an impressive event: buoyant, thrillingly visual. Anyone might feel lifted just going in the door. Hes lively about looking. The images are always about his own interests and desires but were drawn in, happy to be carried along.

Cezanne Portraits

Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery 1 /7 Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair by Paul Cezanne c.1877 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Robert Treat Paine, 2nd. Photo  2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Child in a Straw Hat by Paul Cezanne 1896 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva Collection (M. 48.4); Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Uncle Dominique in Profile by Paul Cezanne 1866-7 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wolfe Fund, 1951 acquired from The Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss Collection (53.140.1); Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Self Portrait with Bowler Hat by Paul Cezanne 1885-6 NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Photo: Ole Haupt; Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Boy in a Red Waistcoat by Paul Cezanne 1888-90 National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honour of the 50th Anniversary of the Natio Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Man with Pipe by Paul Cezanne 1891-6 The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London; Cezanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Paul Alexis Reading a Manuscript to Emile Zola by Paul Cezanne 1869-70 Congresso Nacional, 1952. Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.

Phew! What an amazing show this is and how complicated it is to be amazed by it, said Matthew Collings in his five-star review of this rare show at the National Portrait Gallery, chosen by both him and Ben Luke as one of this years best exhibitions. It was a show that made the viewer gradually...into a philosopher of perception, just as he made himself into one.

Soutines Portraits: Cooks, Waiters & Bellboys

The Pastry Cook, 1925 (extract) / Scalarchives.com/Courtauld Gallery/The Lewis Collection

An artist known for wild brushstrokes and feverish distortions, this brilliant show at the Courtauld Gallery was chosen by both Matthew Collings and Ben Luke as one of their favourite shows of the year. To see Bellboy in real life is staggering. Nothing is known about the sitter, a pouting, moon-faced young man with hooded eyes. His splayed body in the painting might be sitting on the edge of an invisible chair or magically suspended in a nightmare void, Collings wrote of one of the paintings on show in the exhibition, in his five-star review.

Thomas Ruff

Surreal: Thomas Ruff's Machine 1390

Ben Luke chose Thomas Ruffs show at Whitechapel Gallery as one of his best of the year, describing him in his review as a great photographer but also an illuminating philosopher of his medium.

Modigliani

Modigliani at Tate Modern 1 /7 Modigliani at Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Jeanne Hebuterne, 1919 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Woman's Head (With Chignon), 1911-12 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Nude, 1917 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Juan Gris, 1915 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern The Little Peasant, 1918 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Beatrice Hastings, 1915 Courtesy of Tate Modern Modigliani at Tate Modern Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, 1916 Courtesy of Tate Modern

Matthew Collings chose this great show of inventive work by an artist who had an intense, shockingly short life as one of his favourite of the year. Read his five-star review here.

Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth

Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' 1 /8 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Flag, 1958.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017. Photo: Jamie Stukenberg  The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 2017 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Between the Clock and the Bed, 1981.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017. Photo: Jamie Stukenberg  The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 2017 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Summer, 1985.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017.  2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, 0 through 9, 1961 (c) Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2016. Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Fools House, 1961-62.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls, 1960.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017. Photo: Jamie Stukenberg  The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 2017 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1992-4.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2017 Jasper Johns - 'Something Resembling Truth' Jasper Johns, Target, 1961.  Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London. Photo:  2017. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY / Scala, Florenc

The Royal Academys huge retrospective of Jasper Johns immense body of work earned five stars from Ben Luke, who named it as one of the best shows of the year. Describing it as unmissable, he wrote, you want to eat these paintings. Johns did, in an exquisite, tiny work, Painting Bitten by a Man (1961).

Basquiat: Boom For Real

Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures 1 /7 Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Glenn, 1984  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Jean-Michel Basquiat on the set of Downtown 81.  New York Beat Film LLC. By permission of The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Photo: Edo Bertoglio Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Hollywood Africans, 1983  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris. Licensed by Artestar, New York Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Rammellzee vs. K-Rob, produced and with cover artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat, beat Bop record, 1983  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: Justin Piperger Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Self Portrait, 1984  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures A Panel of Experts, 1982  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: MFA, Douglas M. Parker Basquiat: Boom For Real - in pictures Untitled, 1982  The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam

It was probably the most hyped exhibitions of the year - the first major chance for UK audiences to see the work of the late art superstar, Jean-Michel Basquiat. He died at just 27 after reaching great fame and fortune, and making many famous friends along the way. The work lived up to expectations, and Matthew Collings named it as one of the best exhibitions of the year. In his review, he said, Anyone sensitive to art will be overwhelmed by Basquiats inventive attractiveness. He paints things in, paints them out and then puts them in again differently. You see the visual record of him shuffling all the components. Something arrives ultimately that is wholly fresh. Hes jazzy and garrulous, and surprisingly visually powerful.

The Place Is Here

Courtesy of Museums Sheffield. Photo Andy Keate.

This exhibition offered an enduringly powerful but very often jarringly timely look at race and identity from black and Asian artists working in the 1980s. Ben Luke chose it as one of the best exhibitions of the year, writing that it was essential. Every work in the group exhibition has its own unique charge, he wrote in his review.

Revolution: Russian Art 19171932

Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 1 /5 Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Revolution: Russian Art 1917 - 1932 - Royal Academy of Arts 2017. Boris Mikailovich Kustodiev, Bolshevik, 1920 State Tretyakov Gallery Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Kazimir Malevich, Peasants, c. 1930 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Wassily Kandinsky, Blue Crest, 1917 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Isaak Brodsky, V.I.Lenin and Manifestation, 1919 Provided with assistance from the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Fantasy, 1925 2016, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Described by Ben Luke as a sprawling but captivating show, this show by the Royal Academy to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution was chosen by Matthew Collings as one of the best this year. Luke wrote that it hammers home the grim Soviet reality: the lumpen socialist realist paintings of healthy, heroic athletes and workers in the final room were a wrecking ball to the broad, if often flawed, expression that comes before.

Richard Mosse: Incoming

Richard Mosse: Incoming 1 /7 Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming Richard Mosse: Incoming

Ben Luke chose this remarkable show at the Barbican as one of the best of 2017. Richard Mosses novel approach to photojournalism of the refugee crisis, using a thermal camera, created dramatic effects. Incoming is both stunning and, in the light of recent debates about migration, shaming, Luke said in his review.

Damien Hirst: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

AFP/Getty Images

Damien Hirst made a fantastic return to the art scene this year at the Venice Biennale. Matthew Collings chose his complicated triumph as one of the best shows of the year, writing in his review, Its a great series of reflections on fakery, belief, truth and absolutes  the end of our world reflected in the end of ancient worlds.

Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun, Behind the Mask

Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley

This pairing of contemporary artist Gillian Wearing and surrealist Claude Cahun was a pairing that enhanced both artists. Ben Luke chose it as one of the best of the year, writing in his review that, Influence, use wisely, unleashes an artists potential.

America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s

America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s 1 /9 America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Thomas Hart Benton, Cotton Pickers, 1945

Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 121.9 cm

Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/VAGA, NY/DACS, London 2016 America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Joe Jones, American Justice, 1933

Oil on canvas, 76.2 cm x 91.44 cm Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Museum Purchase, Derby Fund, from the Philip J. and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Georgia O'Keeffe, Cow's Skull with Calico Roses, 1931

Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 61 cm

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum / DACS 2016 America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930

Oil on beaver board, 78 x 65 cm Royal Academy of the Arts/The Art Institute of Chicago, friends of American Art Collection, 1930.934 America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Charles Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930

Oil on canvas, 61 x 78.7 cm

Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Alice Neel, Pat Whalen, 1935

Oil, ink and newspaper on canvas, 68.6 x 58.4 cm

The Estate of Alice Neel America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940

Oil on canvas, 66.7 x 102.2 cm

Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Philip Guston, Bombardment, 1937

Oil on masonite, 106.7 cm

The Estate of Philip Guston America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s Jackson Pollock, Untitled, c. 1938-41

Oil on linen, 56.5 x 127.5 cm

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016

The Royal Academy explored how artists responded to Depression-era America, with powerful results and much contemporary resonance. Chosen by Matthew Collings as one of the highlights of the year, he said in his review: As might be expected, our times appear to be uncannily mirrored in the artists exploration of their own moment.

Matisse in the Studio

Flower power: Matisses Safrano Roses at the Window, 1925 (partial) and below, the green glass vase that inspired it / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Selected by Ben Luke as one of the best exhibitions of the year, the Royal Academys approach to Matisses artistic influences shed new light on the artist. The exhibition showed many of the objects Matisse collected and how they inspired his work; it encourages you to use your imagination in something like the way Matisse used his, Matthew Collings said in his review.

Maria Lassnig

Disturbing vision: Triple Self-portrait/New Self, 1972

Paintings of a rare sensitivity of handling, is how Matthew Collings described those shown in Hauser & Wirths Maria Lassnig exhibition. He selected it as one of the best shows of the year, a show full of scenes that are part hilarious, part sinister.
Review at a glance









M atisse in the Studio is about the objects Matisse was surrounded by all the time, which found their way into his work. You see the real things  pots, chairs, patterned fabrics  and then the works of art they appear in or that became possible because of them.

The difference between them is significant because he was such an abstract inventor. An African mask is a great abstract visual invention, and so is a picture of a friend by Matisse. Masks are about power and religion, Matisses portraits are about  well, what? He was a great ruthless violator of normal appearances. Does the painting show his feelings, his emotions, joy at life, love of women? There is no absolute answer, but this exhibition causes you to enjoy all the questions.

There is a selection of 35 of these objects, matched to 65 of his paintings, sculptures, drawings and collages. The line-up is interesting. Roman torsos, medieval sculpted faces of saints, African fetishes, Islamic patterned objects, a fancy chocolate pot, an ordinary engraved pewter pot with a hinged lid, Moroccan fabrics, as well as contemporary photographs of nude women either Western or African and usually a bit dubiously sexy as well as respectably ethnographic or academic. Its hard to deny the pleasure in seeing a real thing and then, next to it, the artistic results it gave rise to.

It is interesting to contemplate a pot with a complicated handle, for example, and then the various visual inventions Matisse creates using it as a taking-off point. You are forced to see what extreme departures he makes from simple copying. The tie-ups are not all straightforward. The curators make a great job of balancing spelled-out connections: this object is right there in that painting, with subtle hints, this figure by Matisse is dramatically distorted, and so are those sculptures and masks from Mali.

Big influence: a Muyombo mask from Congo / Jean-Louis Losi

He was so dependent on his extensive collection of objects as idea-generators that whenever he moved to a different studio it had to be packed up and transported too, so he could still have the benefit of it. The shows richness lies partly in its exploration of the nature of that need. There is no ultimate rationale but it seems to be both psychological and formal (to do with shapes and colours in a pure design sense) and, in some roundabout way, spiritual.

The obvious use of objects, when it is indicated in the show, is never actually obvious in how they are treated. A little table and a pewter pot are reduced to simple signs. On the canvas or paper they might be brushy or linear in character, or flowing or awkwardly choppy. And they are part of a unity, a matter of colour-textures, patterns, structures and spaces that arises from all sorts of impulses : who knows what he was responding to, what subjective feeling? Hes manipulating your perception. In your mind, sign and the structure go together to make a picture.

Sometimes objects are matched up clearly with the artworks they appear in. But paintings of women Matisse knew, and whose appearance he distorted absolutely wildly in the service of his design ideas, are displayed in proximity to African masks and sculptures, and other sculptures from different cultures and times, not as direct source material but subtle influences.

Flower power: Matisses Safrano Roses at the Window, 1925 (partial) and below, the green glass vase that inspired it / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

His female portraits in the 1910s are almost unrecognisable as human, so chopped and altered are their features, and mismatched anatomically  even partially erased, so a face is, effectively, just an empty hole. But these violations are in aid of colour effects that are so richly sensuous and beautiful, and the visual ideas are so compelling, that the women dont come across as monstrous. He convinces you they are real and their artistic transformation is about fresh beauty or new seeing.

Nearby tribal masks he owned, which the artist striped and dotted, causing them to resemble trees as much as people, or vegetables combined with animals, are sympathetic to those painted portraits. It is clear the visual imagination of unknown makers on the other side of the world was profoundly connected in Matisses mind with the forms he came up with in his pictures of women; he found them similarly marvellous, weird and delicious.

Influence: the green vase which inspired Matisse's Safrano Roses / Franasois Fernadez

A nude standing in the studio, painted between 1906 and 1907, turns out to be based surprisingly directly on a photo Matisse owned, taken by an anonymous photographer, but also on a tribal artefact from the Congo. A hundred years ago Matisse filled a vase with flowers so he had the basis for an elaborate design, and you can see the very vase, transparent green glass, next to the painting it appears in, where it is a lot of stains and washes of diluted oil paint, as if Matisses seeing and re-seeing, bit by bit, of the various aspects of the vase, is presented as a set of shuffled fragments.

A decorative background of a shimmering lattice structure, in a painting from 1926 showing well-dressed ladies in a modern room, comes from a Haitian patterned fabric sewn in the previous century. We see it along with several other objects, including a painted Moroccan table and a brass Ottoman pot complete with a little Islamic crescent moon. In a handful of incredibly intense, mostly small paintings, we see all those objects recurring, always entirely different in mood.

The show causes you to enjoy directness when its there. And it encourages you to use your imagination in something like the way Matisse used his. If he made a vase into a sign in a painting long ago, now you can compare the real vase with its distorted representation, or if he distorts a body and nearby, vaguely connecting, theres a representation of a distorted human form done for a religious purpose, either way you get a really good lesson in what makes a Matisse a Matisse.

Matisse in the Studio is at the Royal Academy, W1 (020 7300 8000; royalacademy.org.uk) from Sat to Nov 12
A 500,000 fund to redirect surplus food to needy people is launched today by Michael Gove after he was inspired by the Standards Help A Hungry Child appeal.

The cash will go to charities, such as The Felix Project, that stop good food going to waste and then turn it into nutritious meals for people who would otherwise go without.

The Environment Secretary hopes the new Food Waste Reduction fund will help deliver a four-fold expansion of food redistribution by the middle of the next decade.

Mr Gove said he took action after being encouraged by the Standards principled campaigning and The Felix Projects inspirational work.

Every UK organisation that redeploys food and all charities that receive and share food with hungry people will get a chance to bid for funding.

It will be administered by sustainability experts Wrap  the Waste and Resources Action Programme  who estimate that the 17,000 tonnes of food redistributed in 2015 can be quadrupled by 2025.

New fund will ensure charities get extra aid to combat waste Christmas is a time when, generally, you cant have too much of a good thing. Families come together, friends drop by for a seasonal drink and goodwill goes hand and hand with a groaning plate and an energetically re-filled glass. But Christmas is also, at its heart, a time for recalling our responsibilities to those for whom too much of anything is a distant dream. Jesus came into this world not in splendour but in a stable. His first visitors were working men fresh from the fields where theyd been scratching a living. And within days he and his family were themselves refugees, fleeing persecution. Which is why it is important that we all think this Christmas of doing more to help those who are less fortunate. The Evening Standard has led the way with its appeal to support The Felix Project in redistributing surplus food. Its neither Left-wing nor Right-wing but common sense to want to get food which is nutritious and healthy into homes and onto tables. Yet hundreds of thousands of tonnes of quality food still go to waste. This isnt just a Christmas problem  its a year-round problem. As Environment Secretary, I believe we must all do much more to ensure that the effort which goes into producing quality food is matched by a determination to make sure it is eaten. Thats why we will set up a new Food Waste Reduction fund through the charitable Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap). This will make 500,000 in grants available to charities such as The Felix Project, FareShare, and other groups that work with homeless and vulnerable people. The money will finance specific projects such as fridges or vehicles, IT systems and food safety training. Wraps latest published data shows that 17,000 tonnes of surplus food were redistributed in 2015. By 2025, it believes this could quadruple. For that to happen, we must see more action across the food sector. I hope companies consider increasing the money they give Wrap as an instant lift. This is not just a UK problem. Its widespread in areas where food is abundant, and affects global climate, water, land and biodiversity. Just under seven per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from rotting food waste. In country terms, a Union of Food Waste Republics would come behind only China and the US in a global emissions league. Putting food to good use is also better for businesses. On average, less than five per cent of production ends up as surplus but a small percentage of a very large total is a considerable amount. From field to fork, food is wasted. Making sure we minimise this is good for the economy, the environment and society. This Christmas, I hope Standard readers enjoy every opportunity to share good times with friends and families. And that we remember that a sharing society is a gift in all our hands. By Michael Gove, Environment Secretary

Writing in todays Standard, Mr Gove said Christmas was a time for recalling our responsibilities towards people not lucky enough to enjoy full plates and festive feasts.

Hilary Croft, of The Felix Project, said: This is incredible news. Im delighted that the coverage that The Felix Project has received through the Christmas appeal has brought the opportunity for food surplus redistribution to the Governments attention. Michael Goves new fund will help to get more surplus food to more people who need it.

We have ambitious plans to expand so that we can extend our reach to support more charities who are providing for the disadvantaged  this requires funding from those who believe in what we are doing.

"Knowing that the Government is willing to financially support organisations like ours gives me hope that one day we will crack the dual issue of food surplus and food poverty.

The Help A Hungry Child appeal has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to tackle food poverty, which affects about 70,000 London children. It aims to ensure pupils in schools in deprived areas have access to sufficient food.

Special market stalls are being set up in 120 schools to give out free ingredients, which children can take home to their families and cook for dinner. All the food has been donated by supermarkets, wholesalers and other suppliers which have been unable to sell it, despite it being in-date and safe to eat.

Every 1 donated will guarantee a primary school child and their family the food needed for a nutritious meal. Every 500 will allow a new school to enrol on the programme, which aims to reach 50,000 children in two years.

The money will also help to ensure the charity can support its partners, which work to feed families in London, and finance its distribution network. This month a telethon, featuring stars such as Sir Ian McKellen and Jon Hamm, took the appeal above the 500,000 mark.
R on Chernow, a 68-year-old historian from New York is serenading me with a spirited rap: The ten dollar founding father without a father, got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter He doesnt skip a beat. Its impressive for a self-declared rap ignoramus.

This song is from Hamilton, the award-winning hip hop musical about one of the founding fathers of the United States, which enchanted America and is opening in London tonight. Chernow is the author of the biography of Hamilton which started the whole phenomenon when Lin Manuel Miranda, the shows creator, read it on holiday in Mexico and was struck by its dramatic potential.

Its a bit embarrassing that they accurately condensed 40 pages of my book into a four minute song, chuckles Chernow, ordering an Americano with soya milk.

Hamilton has given Chernow an experience that maybe no biographer has ever had; Ive been to more parties in the last three years than in the rest of my life combined, kids want selfies with me.

Chernow started writing the biography in 1998 because Hamilton seemed to be fading into obscurity. It is funny to think of that now because hes the darling of Broadway and possibly about to become the darling of the West End. It was optioned to be a film three times but it always went into a black hole, I was resigned to the fact that maybe I was wrong about the story and being sure it would be dramatised.

Then Miranda came along, with his vision of the book as a show with a racially diverse cast. They were introduced through a mutual friend. He invited me to see his show In the Heights, we stood backstage and he told me earnestly that Hamilton is a classic hip hop narrative. Im thinking to myself, buddy I have no idea what you are talking about. I was flabbergasted.

Ron Chernow

On the spot, he educated me in hip hop, talking about how the lyrics are dense, you can pack a lot of information into them, they have a lot of word play.

Chernow was appointed the shows historical advisor, Miranda wants historians to take the show seriously, which is unusual, normally Broadway and Hollywood dont care.

First look at the London cast of Hamilton 1 /9 First look at the London cast of Hamilton First look at the London cast of Hamilton Rachelle Ann Go (Eliza Hamilton) and Jamael Westman (Alexander Hamilton) Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Jamael Westman (Alexander Hamilton) with West End cast of Hamilton Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Rachelle Ann Go (Eliza), Rachel John (Angelica) and Christine Allado (Peggy) - The Schuyler Sisters Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Cleve September (Laurens), Jamael Westman ( Hamilton), Jason Pennycooke (Lafayette) & Tarinn Callender (Mulligan) Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Jason Pennycooke (Thomas Jefferson) with West End cast of Hamilton Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Giles Terera (Aaron Burr) with West End Cast of Hamilton Matthew Murphy First look at the London cast of Hamilton Michael Jibson (King George) Matthew Murphy

So why has Hamilton struck such a chord? Theres something improbable about his life, a fairytale quality. This illegitimate, orphaned, penniless kid who comes out of nowhere becomes a founding father of a nation. On one hand is hes charming and witty, dashing but hes also rash and headstrong and dangerously sure of himself. We can all admire him but his flaws are so glaring we can all identify with them. Everyone loves a story of a flawed genius. Miranda says that the story out-Dickens Dickens. He doesnt think London audiences will be at a disadvantage, because Americans dont know their own history either.

Hamilton would have loved his new found fame. He loved being the centre of attention and wouldve loved having all these pretty women singing his name on stage.

Chernow continues: Theres something about characters who are struck down young, he dies in a duel in his 40s. This is true of John F Kennedy and Lady Di. You have these figures who die young and stay young and glamorous in our imagination.

Hamilton London - Rehearsals

Hamilton is notable for having non-white founding fathers. When Chernow first met the cast, he says: Im embarrassed to say I was a bit shaken up. They were all black and latino. I thought oh gee. Then they started singing and they had glorious voices. In two or three minutes I ceased to notice their background and had become a raving militant for this concept. These actors had a special feel for the passion and idealism of the revolution. Revolutions are made by outsiders so it was an inspired decision.

The show is multicultural, tolerant, inclusive, in a world thats full of intolerance and xenophobia its a very nice reminder. Ive seen a change on Broadway already with more diversity.

The Obamas have seen the show multiple times and invited to the cast to perform at the White House last year. The show bleeds the spirit of the Obama era in terms of its tolerance and multiculturalism. Im glad its there during the age of Trump as a reminder of those values. Would he write Barack Obamas biography? I only write about dead people.

The current President hasnt seen the show yet and his deputy was booed when he came along - would Trump be welcome? We are open to everyone and didnt want it to be the show of any particular party. Trump doesnt seem to be a reader of history so that would be all to the good if he comes. Most presidents have been great students of American history, they feel its part of their training for the job.

Chernow is no pundit but says Trumps approval rating is down to 32 per cent, which means two out of three Americans dont approve of his performance. Ill leave it as that.

Hamiltons success has been bittersweet because Chernows wife Valerie never got to see it. She died in 2006 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Chernows Hamilton biography is dedicated to her, as best of wives and best of women and he wears her gold wedding ring. Id have loved for her to have been part of this experience, says Chernow. She taught in New York at a Community College that had a lot of African American and Latino students. Whenever Im with the various casts of Hamilton I always think they would have loved her and she would have loved them.

I read Hamilton aloud to Valerie and felt if she liked something, my general reader would. She was honest in her reactions.

Jamael Westman (Alexander Hamilton) with West End cast of Hamilton

Chernow is an accidental historian, an interloper in the academic world. His father ran a discount store in New Yorks Chinatown; his mother was a book keeper and his older brother is a retired doctor. He didnt study history at school but wanted to write novels and spent three years in the UK doing an English literature degree at Cambridge.

Every weekend hed take the train to London. I just lived and breathed London theatre. The early 1970s was this glorious period with Laurence Olivier, Maggie smith was a sexy young thing and a young Judi Dench was very poetic. That gives coming here now this real quality of fantasy for me.

Hes aware that tickets to Hamilton are expensive and it has already sold out. The audience has not been quite as diverse as the cast so I hope that over time everybody will get to see it. He hopes London will duplicate the monthly matinee in New York where students can see the show for $10 or for free if they cant afford it.

Chernows book has been at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for more than a year. Usually when a book comes out its nasty, brutish then six weeks later its gone and nothing changed. You used to see people reading it on the subway but now they have Kindles. With the show you can watch the audience and its one of those rare moments where we saw how art was changing peoples lives. Theyve said the way it discusses legacies meant they re-examined their lives. I think it will end up being one of the biggest selling biographies in history. Does that mean Chernow is now rich beyond his wildest dreams? Ill leave you to use your imagination on that.

Whats next? Lionsgate and Appian Way have bought the rights to his 2011 biography of Ulysses S Grant. Because of Hamilton there are a lot of producers looking at other books Ive done but its dangerous to write with one eye on dramatisation, the book is its own satisfaction.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow is published by Head of Zeus, 15; Buy it now.
T heres a storm in your teacup.

According to campaigners, almost all of the 160 million tea bags consumed in the UK every day are made from single-use, non-recyclable plastic, which are polluting composts and finding their way into the oceans. Our sea life is under threat.

Most of the big-name brands, including Tetley and PG Tips, make their bags using plastic polymers that are the result of intensive chemical processes, which wont biodegrade.

It can be hard to avoid in a coffee shop: Leon sells Yorkshire Tea and Taylors of Harrogates bags that are non-recyclable, and Costa uses Twinings tea bags in its stores, which are heat-sealed and contain a thin film of polypropylene.

So how can we ensure that our drinking habits arent damaging the environment? One option is to curb our tea drinking but we are a nation addicted and trying to break the habit now feels impractical.

Instead, you must seek out merchants that deal only in green tea. True eco-teas dont need nylon pouches to capture the flavour: from unbleached sachets to loose-leaf alternatives, the answer is in (or out of) the bag.

Swap your sachet

The wrong type of tea bag can get you in hot water, so swap your synthetic sachet for one thats recyclable. Swing by Good & Propers Tea Bar in Clerkenwell, or its van in Brockley Market: last month it launched a new core range of six teas in whole leaf, 100 per cent compostable bags. Just like Teapigs tea temples, stocked at Selfridges and Whole Foods, the bags are made from a non-toxic material called Soilon, a fine mesh made from corn starch which can be readily broken down by micro organisms in the soil, so you dont have to worry about them polluting your compost.

Alternatively, Heath & Heathers tea bags are sold in Planet Organic, Revital and Holland & Barrett. Theyre made from soft woods, hard woods and long fibre, and instead of using a traditional heat-sealing process like ordinary nylon tea bags, theyre folded and sewn with string.

Twinings is also going green: pop into its flagship store on The Strand to try its pyramid tea bag range, which is made from a material derived from maize starch.

Un-bleach

At Planet Organic, Amazon and Holland & Barrett you can buy Clipper Teas answer to green tea: the sachets are unbleached, meaning they havent been through the same colouring process that your ordinary tea bag has, which involves chemicals including chlorine. That practice only happens for aesthetic reasons, so the sole difference youll find is that Clippers bags look a little darker than your ordinary bright white sachet  but the colour hardly matters when youre about to dunk it in your mug.

Let loose

The third option is to turn over a new leaf and de-bag your life altogether. Loose leaf tea can take a little longer but it tastes twice as good: not only will you get the satisfaction of being an eco-hero but it also makes a higher quality, more flavoursome brew. Youll find environmentally-friendly loose leaf tea across all Whole Foods Market stores, by its own brand, Allegro, and Good & Proper still swears by loose leaf in its cafes for the best possible brew.

All seven of Yumchaas cafes across London also stock loose leaf: pop in for a brew or pick up a blend to take home. The packaging is made from craft paper and youre encouraged to drop your empty bags back to the shop if your borough doesnt recycle, so Yumchaa can recycle it for you.
T he other day my three-year-old came out of nursery with a printed sheet of instructions about his nativity play. Parents were asked to bring children to the church in a costume that, reading between the lines, we would almost certainly be throwing together in an expletive-laden last-minute frenzy. Your child has chosen to be a snowflake, read the instructions. It was that or a king, his key-worker explained. He chose snowflake.

Wow, I thought. Three seems a bit young to force children to choose sides in the culture wars. Whoops-a-Daisy Angel clearly has hidden depths! But it says something about the use of snowflake as social media insult/generational shorthand/Right-wing clickbait that I felt a swell of paternal pride. For 2017 has very much been a year of binary divides. On one side: the patriarchal kings in their paper crowns. On the other side, the special, special snowflakes.

A snowflake, according to Urban Dictionary, is a term used to describe extremist liberals that [sic] get offended by every statement and/or belief that doesnt exactly match their own. Snowflakes, because they think theyre so precious and unique but melt when faced with, say, someone who thinks the British Raj was just great or a Cabinet minister putting his hand on their knee. You triggered, snowflake?

The term originated in Chuck Palahniuks story Fight Club, spread on sites such as Reddit and 4Chan, blossomed on Donald Trumps Twitter account and is now mainstream in Britain too. Michael Gove recently called Boris Johnsons critics snowflakes after Johnson said something stupid.

And you cant open a certain kind of newspaper without reading someone  usually white, usually male, usually with a name like Piers or Giles  complaining about snowflakes. The Daily Mails resident historian, Dominic Sandbrook, cites an Oxford student suing for discrimination on mental health grounds and the Rhodes Must Fall protest as examples of snowflakery: There is simply no denying that there now exists a pernicious culture of narcissism and self-obsession at our universities, he asserts.

Political protest, you see, is narcissism. You could see a similar reflex as women shared stories of sexual harassment in the #metoo wave  the idea that the real victims are those poor men who get caught up in it.

#MeToo movement - thousands of women take to Twitter

So its easy to see why snowflake caught on. It captures women, minorities, LGBT people, (post-)millennials, immigrants, liberals and Remainers in one dismissable term. It speaks to the perception that these people are sheltered and over-sensitive.

And, lets be honest, there are enough tales of students demanding trigger warnings for Macbeth and boycotting cafeterias because their tacos are deemed cultural appropriation to make anyone go: Hang on WTF is going on here? But show me a student activist from any era who wasnt a bit insufferable. Its just that in the past their activities werent pored over by Fox News anchors and Spectator columnists.

Clearly, there is a debate to be had about the appropriate value to attach to personal experience in public debates. There is a troubling tendency on the Left to reduce all relations between genders and races to crude relationships of power and oppression. Theres another kind of power  you might call it something like moral capital  that comes from an accusation of sexism or racism, and this too can be abused.

There can be a reductive quality to identity politics, an idea that white people cant truly empathise with people of colour, trans women and cis women so relations must be mediated through ever-more ornate academic jargon.

But this process itself isnt to be feared: speech can and should evolve to accommodate those who previously had no voice. And the idea that this derives from a generation so sheltered that theyve never heard opposing points of view is absurd.

Its the precise opposite. The so-called Generation Snowflake has grown up, largely unchaperoned, online, where you cant fail to encounter people with vehemently and violently different opinions. Perhaps they have encountered opposing points of view so often that theyve actually started to develop some discourse around it. As New York University professor Ulrich Baer points out: We should recognise that the current generation of students, roundly ridiculed by an unholy alliance of so-called alt-Right demagogues and campus liberals as coddled snowflakes, realised something important about this country before the pundits and professors figured it out.

In the American context, thats a President whose stated aims are to strip away hard-won rights from minorities, women and LGBT communities. Which, in the grand scheme, is a far greater threat to free speech than a few students protesting about that clown Milo Yiannopoulos. And maybe  just maybe?  those minority students were protesting about Cecil Rhodes statues because Britain did some disgusting things in the past and its deeply weird that we never talk about them. To make that point in the face of jeers and dismissals is not snowflaky, its brave and necessary.

Which brings me back to those kings in their paper crowns. The funny thing about Trump is that he is incapacitated by people saying mean things about him. While snowflake has feminine connotations, women are remarkably adept at absorbing criticism. Men tend to fall apart at the merest prick to their pride. There was nothing quite so cherishable as watching the assorted alt-Right fascists melt like sleet on a windscreen when Twitter removed their blue verification ticks.

The irony is that those who throw snowflake around most often are usually those with the most inflamed senses of victimhood too. In the case of Trump voters it was a perceived threat to white American male values; with Brexit, the idea that EU bureaucrats and immigrants were undermining traditional British values. We are currently squaring circles in order to take account of these feelings. Meanwhile, those termed snowflakes are usually the ones actually taking account of the world as it is.

So, as I sewed snowflakes onto that pillowcase, I felt at last a little hope. Put enough snowflakes together and you get a snowstorm. Its been a long time coming.
A teenager has been left fighting for life and two others were injured after a triple stabbing in south-west London.

A boy, thought to be 16, was left with life-threatening injuries after the incident in Battersea on Wednesday night.

Another two men, both 18, were also injured.

Police said they were called at about 9.35pm, and that all three were believed to have been involved in the same altercation in Francis Chichester Way on the Doddington Estate.

The three have all been arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm.

One of the 18-year-olds was also arrested on suspicion of possession of a class B drug.

Police asked anyone with information about the incident to call them on 101 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
O liver Cromwell

CANCEL Christmas! Theres a bit of a civil war going on in Parliament this week, and were not talking about PMQs or pornography furores. An unidentified member of staff is making mischief with an historic bust of Oliver Cromwell.

On Tuesday evening the Labour Whips Office tweeted out an alert. Whodunnit? they asked, alarmed. Someone appears to have turned the bust of Oliver Cromwell in the Members Tea Room corridor to face the wall. They added an image of the crime scene but left the head as it was, perhaps for fear of damaging it.

Two hours later, though, Liam Byrnes communications officer Harry Kind took matters into his own hands, swivelling the bust back, and his colleague, senior researcher Erik Cummins, posting the proof. FTFY, he wrote, an acronym for fixed that for you.

But that wasnt the end of proceedings. Last night, staff in the Whips Office discovered that the bust was, once again, facing the wall. I feel we may have stumbled into some underground, long-running war of attrition, they tweeted.

Cromwell has something of a tricky relationship with Parliament. After leading the parliamentary armies to victory in the Civil War, like Charles I before him, Cromwell found members too uppity for his liking and closed them down. On the restoration of the monarchy after his death, his body was dug up, hung from a gibbet and beheaded just for good measure. Cromwells head is now buried in an unmarked grave in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to spare it further indignities.

The Londoner has a feeling that this saga is set to be continued.

---

So its goodbye to Damian Green, the First Secretary of State who stepped down last night. Clearing ones desk so close to Christmas must sting, but BBC journalist Jack Evans points out that his isnt the closest Cabinet sacking to Christmas. That unhappy prize is still claimed by none other than Peter Mandelson, sacked just two days before Christmas in 1998 after failing to declare a six-figure loan. That put him on the naughty list.

The bloody reign of Gordon Brown

GORDON Brown may not have been known for shedding tears during his political career but he certainly put blood into it. Thats according to Theo Bertram, a former special adviser who says the former prime minister once had a violent stationery incident while rushing to put his notes together for PMQs.

One morning he brought down his great clunking fist and stapled his thumb, Bertram explains. Blood oozed out but Gordon merely held up his thumb and, like a great bear examining a thorn in his paw, said matter-of-factly: I think Ive stapled my thumb. For weeks afterwards, the notes he carried into PMQs were smeared with his own blood. Bloody hell.

Quote of the Day

Handy tweeter: Sue Perkins (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images) / Getty Images

"Now Damian Green's got time on his hands as well." Sue Perkins laments the departure of the First Minister of State

Margaret gay-baited Cherie

Waspish: Princess Margaret (Photo by Kypros/Getty Images) / Getty Images

PRINCESS Margarets first marriage has been making the news again after viewers were treated to a dramatised peek into her gilded life in Netflixs The Crown. But a recently released biography of Margaret by Craig Brown recalls a story from Cherie Blairs autobiography that re-emerged online yesterday and shows a callous side to the princesss royal glamour.

The then prime ministers wife was talking to Margaret, right, at the Royal Opera House when she spotted a Cabinet minister and decided to introduce him. Have you met Chris Smith, our Culture Secretary, maam? And this is his partner... said Cherie.

Partner for what? asked Margaret.

Sex, maam, was Cheries blunt reply.

The princess then stalked off, Cherie wrote. She knew exactly what kind of partner I meant. She was just trying to catch me out.

The Londoner is impressed by Cherie Blairs forthrightness.

Naomie lands scoop of the year

The only cold Naomie Harris wants to endure this Christmas comes in the shape of an ice cream. The Bond actress has jetted off to the sunny Maldives for the festive period and has gleefully posted several photos from the resort while enjoying a three-scoop treat. "It's the simple things in life that make me happy...like ice cream in paradise," Naomie captioned the pictures making sure to tag the resort. We wonder how many moneypennies they sent back.

Tweet of the day

Journalist Nick Cohen channels the yuletide spirit.

A short cut to stardom for Alice

ALICE Eve is a crop above the rest. The actress has debuted a short hairdo on Instagram, which could be for her new role in Netflix martial arts drama Iron Fist. Season 2 is filming and Eve is rumoured to be playing a covert operative and chameleon adept at playing roles. Shell need more wigs.

---

CHEESY line of the day: Michael Gove tells a parliamentary select committee, I am deeply concerned about your unpatriotic attitude towards cheese. We hope they listened Caerphilly.
L ondoners face a rise in their council tax bills after Sadiq Khan opted to hike his share of the charge by the maximum amount allowed.

The Mayor announced today he would put up his precept by 5.1 per cent  the equivalent of 14.20 a year on the average council tax bill.

It represents the biggest increase in the City Hall precept since Ken Livingstone raised it 5.5 per cent in 2005 to pay for extra neighbourhood policing.

Many local councils are also expected to increase household bills by the maximum six per cent next year, meaning the average London household would be hit with an increase of around 60 a year for a band D property.

Those with larger homes would pay considerably more.

Mr Khan said the rise was to boost funding for the Metropolitan Police and the Fire Brigade.

He laid the blame for the increase firmly at the door of Government, saying ministers should hang their heads in shame for proposing real-terms cuts to the police and fire services in the wake of terrorist attacks and the Grenfell disaster.

London Tories described the move as logical but criticised the Mayor for increasing funding for the fire service which his own review had concluded did not need more, at the expense of the police.

Gareth Bacon, leader of the group, said: Yet again, he is grandstanding for his own political benefit.

Some Tory boroughs asked how the Mayor could justify asking residents to pay more to the Met when he is closing around 37 police stations across London.

But Mr Khan said it was not a decision he had taken lightly and that nothing is more important than keeping Londoners safe.

The Government has refused to back the Metropolitan Police or the London Fire Brigade with the money they need and so I have been left with no choice but to propose increasing council tax to protect our city from the threats that we face, he said.

Ministers should hang their heads in shame at their abject failure to protect Londoners by adequately funding our police and fire service and for leaving it to taxpayers here in London to help to bridge the gap.

London government expert Professor Tony Travers warned that the move represented the end of an era for council tax being held down.

This wont be the last of these increases. The Government has already decided to allow council tax to drift upwards to pay for things in future. Its own finances are under such pressure, he said.

Earlier this week, the Government, which controls 70 per cent of Met funding, declined to increase the planned level of police spending.

Instead, it gave the Mayor the power to add an extra 12 a year to household bills to help address a shortfall of 400 million over five years.

Ministers also turned down a 6 million bid for aerial ladders, drones and 1200 breathing apparatus kits for fire-fighters in August in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy. Mr Khan also asked for a further 6 million to run the fire service and pay for staff.

City Hall expects to receive 862 million from council tax in 2018-19, increasing the average precept from 280.02 to 294.22 a year.

The policing share of the precept will go up from 206.13 to 218.13 and the remainder from 73.89 to 76.09 a year.

The Mayor, whose total budget is 15.9 billion, has proposed 639 million for the Met, 147 million for the fire service, and 76 million for the GLA.

His council tax proposals will be contained within his draft budget which will be published for consultation later soon.
D amian Green has been sacked after he made "misleading" statements about allegations that police found pornography on computers in his parliamentary office in 2008.

He leaves his post as First Secretary of State continuing to deny "unfounded and deeply hurtful" claims he downloaded or viewed porn on his parliamentary computer.

Mrs May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her close ally to resign but stressed his behaviour "falls short" of the Seven Principles of Public Life.

Here is a timeline of events surrounding the arrest of shadow immigration minister Damian Green.

Damian Green left his post after an investigation found he breached ministerial code(Gareth Fuller/PA ) / Gareth Fuller/PA

2008

:: October 8 - The Cabinet Office calls in the Metropolitan Police to investigate the Home Office leaks.

:: November 19 - Junior Home Office official Christopher Galley is arrested and suspended from duty.

:: November 27 - Mr Green is arrested and held by the Metropolitan Police for nine hours on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office, and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office".

His home and his offices in Kent and in the Houses of Parliament are searched. He is released on bail.

:: November 28 - Speaker Michael Martin is widely denounced for allowing police into the Palace of Westminster to search Mr Green's office.

Tory leader David Cameron criticises the "heavy-handed tactics" employed by Scotland Yard.

The senior civil servant at the Home Office, Permanent Secretary Sir David Normington, confirms he called in the police following a number of leaks of sensitive information over "an extended period".

:: November 30 - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith refuses to apologise for the arrest, saying the police had to be allowed to "follow the evidence where they need to" without interference from the Government.

But Commons Leader Harriet Harman says the processes allowing police to search MPs' offices in the House of Commons should be reviewed, adding that "big constitutional principles" are at stake.

:: December 1 - Mr Galley insists he acted in the public interest.

:: December 2 - Scotland Yard announces an urgent review of its handling of the leaks probe. British Transport Police chief Ian Johnston is asked to deliver his interim findings to the Met's Acting Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, within seven days, followed by a full report in two weeks.

:: December 3 - Mr Martin says the police had neither a search warrant nor his permission to raid Mr Green's Commons office.

But the Metropolitan Police insists it had authority in the form of written consent from Serjeant at Arms Jill Pay, who is in charge of Commons security.

Mr Martin pledges that police will never again be allowed access to an MP's office or parliamentary papers without a warrant and the personal approval of the Speaker. He announces his intention to appoint a committee of seven experienced MPs to look into the seizure of Mr Green's papers, computer and mobile phone.

:: December 4 - Jacqui Smith defends the decision to call in the police, arguing the "systematic" leaking of sensitive Home Office documents could threaten national security.

Assistant Met Commissioner Bob Quick, the senior officer then in charge of the leaks investigation, says his officers made clear to the House authorities that they needed their consent as they did not have a search warrant. His comments appear to directly contradict Mr Martin.

:: December 16 - The Metropolitan Police announces they have received the final report into their probe into the Whitehall leaks.

Mr Johnston says Mr Green's arrest and the search of his parliamentary office was lawful, but questions the "proportionality" of the manner of Mr Green's arrest.

:: December 18 - The Commons home affairs committee announces that it will grill the Home Secretary, Mr Quick, the Home Office's top civil servant Sir David Normington and London Mayor Boris Johnson as part of its inquiry into the Green affair.

:: December 21 - Mr Quick accuses the Conservatives of trying to undermine his Whitehall leaks inquiry after information is published that he claims endangered his family.

The Tories and their supporters are "mobilised" against the investigation "in a wholly corrupt way", he says.

He says he was forced to arrange for his children to be moved out of his home amid security fears after a newspaper published details about a business run by his wife.

He later retracts the "corruption" comment but remains under pressure to say sorry for the other comments.

:: December 22 - Mr Quick offers an unreserved apology for all of his remarks shortly after Mr Cameron publicly demands a retraction of the "completely baseless allegation".

The Tories accept his apology and say they consider the matter closed.

2009

:: January 20 - The string of leaks which prompted officials to call in the police was "completely undermining" the work of the Home Office, its most senior civil servant says.

Sir David Normington defends his decision to call in Scotland Yard, saying he was "completely frustrated" by 20 leaks over a two-year period.

:: February 3 - Boris Johnson says he warned police chiefs that arresting a Tory frontbench MP over leak allegations would "go off like a rocket".

He says he was first informed by the now head of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Stephenson to brace himself for "a controversy involving an MP" at 10am on the day of the arrest.

:: February 13 - Following a Freedom of Information request by the Press Association, Scotland Yard says the Home Office leaks probe had cost nearly 60,000 in overtime and expenses alone.

:: April 7 - MPs cannot stop prosecutors in the Home Office leaks case using documents seized from Mr Green, the Attorney General warns.

The courts can decide that the material is admissible even if the Commons declares it is covered by parliamentary privilege, Baroness Scotland says.

:: April 16: The Crown Prosecution Service announces Mr Green and Mr Galley will not face prosecution.

:: April 17 - Ms Smith orders a review by Her Majesty's Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary. It emerges police searched Mr Green's emails for references to civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabarti.

:: April 18 - The Cabinet Office insists it had been "appropriate and responsible" to call in the police over the Home Office leaks.

:: April 24 - Mr Galley is sacked following a disciplinary hearing. He says he is looking for a job as a political researcher.

:: June 17 - A parliamentary inquiry is announced into the arrest of Mr Green. A panel of eight senior MPs will examine his treatment and the search of his office.

:: August 19 - Mr Green hails a police decision to remove his DNA from a national database as a "small but significant victory for freedom". He later calls for the records of other innocent people to be deleted.

:: October 12 - The results of an inquiry by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Mr Johnston's review are published.

2017

:: October 31 - Theresa May asks Whitehall's top civil servant to investigate allegations that Mr Green, now First Secretary of State, made inappropriate advances towards female activist Kate Maltby in 2015 - which he denies.

:: November 6 - Mr Green faces being interviewed as part of the Cabinet Office investigation, which is expanded to include claims that pornography was found on one of his parliamentary computers in 2008.

:: Former top policeman Bob Quick calls on Mr Green publicly to retract "deeply hurtful" allegations that he lied about "vast amounts" of pornography discovered on the MP's personal computer.

:: December 20 - Mr Green leaves his role after the inquiry found he breached the ministerial code over "inaccurate and misleading" statement which suggested he was not aware indecent material was found.

In her reply to his resignation letter, Mrs May said she "shared the concerns" over the original raid on his office and the comments made by a police officer who worked on the case.
L ondon MP David Lammy has been called a traitor and piece of s*** in a second piece of hate mail in a week.

The Labour heavyweight shared the vile letter on social media, shaming the sender for mailing it freepost rather than paying for a second-class stamp.

The handwritten note says the idiotic British voting public turned their backs on the late great Enoch Powell and the National Front in favour of a piece of s*** like you.

The person who wrote the letter added that living in Englands big towns and cities today is to live in a refugee camp, before calling Tottenham MP Mr Lammy a collaborator and Muslim appeaser.

It comes just days after Mr Lammy said he also received an email warning he could face a similar death to his former colleague, MP Jo Cox, who was murdered in June last year.

The note which Mr Lammy said he received, with the swearing blurred out. / David Lammy/Twitter

Under the subject heading your aims for black Britain, the message read: As you attack the white population of Britain in your aims to gain black supremacy in this country, remember what happened to Jo Cox.

I am not one of them but there are those out there who would like to see you suffer the same fate. Be careful!!

Mr Lammy, a Remain campaigner, has strived to work to eliminate institutionalised racism in Britain.

He has recently finished conducting a review into the over-representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the criminal justice system at the request of the Prime Minister.

In the past he has spoken of his familys fears over the horrific racist abuse he is bombarded with regularly.

It comes after an ethics watchdog report published earlier this month urged ministers to bring in legislation to force internet companies to curb the persistent, vile and shocking abuse suffered by MPs and public figures.

Streatham MP Chuka Umunna revealed he does not stand near the edge of Tube platforms for fear someone might push him onto the tracks.

A separate study found shadow home secretary Diane Abbott  who is regularly sent racist and sexist abuse  received nearly half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs ahead of the General Election.

The Standard has contacted Mr Lammy's office for comment.
S cotland Yard is carrying out a thorough investigation into the actions of two former police officers at the centre of claims that pornography was found on Damian Greens computer.

Theresa May criticised the former Met officer who spoke publicly about allegations of pornography found on Mr Greens computer. In her letter to Mr Green accepting his resignation, she wrote that she shared concerns raised about the 2008 raid on his Parliamentary office.

She also criticised the intervention of the former officer, thought to be former Met computer expert Neil Lewis, who spoke out in support of claims by former assistant commissioner Bob Quick concerning images found on Mr Greens computer.

The ex-detective constable is being investigated by the Met over the possibility of breaching confidentiality by revealing police inquiry details. Scotland Yard today confirmed the inquiry into the former officers was ongoing.

Ken Marsh, the chairman of the Met Police Federation, said: A thorough investigation is being carried out and quite rightly. We investigated Damian Green at the time and we have to investigate this fully as well. It is important to remember that these are not serving police officers; when you leave the police you are a member of the public. They are not subject to the same terms and conditions.

He said Mrs May was quick to point the finger at police, adding: My colleagues are fed up, 99.9 per cent of them would not have behaved in this way, certainly not while on duty.

Damian Green sacked as First Secretary of State amid computer porn allegations

In her reply to Mr Green last night the Prime Minister said: The vast majority of our police to be honourable public servants, working hard to protect the public. But I shared the concerns raised when your Parliamentary office was raided when you were a shadow home office minister. And I share the concerns raised... at comments made by a former officer involved in that case.

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said the forces professional standards department is investigating how the information was handled. At the end of November, Mr Lewis told the BBC he was shocked at the volume of pornographic material found on Mr Greens Commons computer and had no doubt whatsoever it had been amassed by the Tory MP.

The Sunday Times revealed the claims last month, quoting a statement from Mr Quick to the Leveson inquiry which said material of an extreme pornographic nature was found on computer files seized during the 2008 police raid. The raid was part of an investigation into Home Office leaks, overseen by Mr Quick. Green strongly denied the allegations and called Mr Quick an untrustworthy source.

Ms Dick has said the actions of the former officers in revealing confidential material was wrong and said they could face prosecution.
T heresa May says she is aware that a senior Ukrainian interpreter who visited Downing Street has been arrested over allegations he is a Russian spy.

The Prime Minister made the admission during a press conference in Poland after a photograph emerged of her with Stanislav Yezhov in No 10.

Mr Yezhov, an interpreter for the Ukrainian cabinet, was detained by the country's police on Thursday.

The Security Service of Ukraine said they arrested him for acting "in the interests" of the "aggressor" after being recruited by Russian intelligence agencies.

Stanislav Yezhov, who was detained on Thursday / REUTERS

Mr Yezhov reportedly accompanied Ukrainian prime minister Volodymyr Groysman on a visit to London in July.

Asked about the arrest, Mrs May said: "I'm aware of the reports in relation to the Ukrainian individual who attended Downing Street earlier in the summer.

"The action that's been taken is a matter for the Ukrainian authorities."

Ukraine's security service said Mr Yezhov acted "on the orders" of Russia to collect information "about the activities of government structures", with the help of "special equipment".

The official gave data to the Russians through "electronic channels of communication".

Mr Yezhov's home and workplace are now being searched by Ukrainian security services, they indicated.

The revelation came as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Friday.

It comes at a time when relations between Moscow and the West are at their coolest for several decades.

Mrs May attacked Russia for "weaponising information" as she announced a UK-Poland defence treaty.

"The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system, and it will not succeed," she said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "We are aware of reporting about the arrest of Stanislav Yezhov in Ukraine.

"We can neither confirm or deny the allegations against him. It is not our practice to comment on legal proceedings in other jurisdictions."

Mrs May's spokesman told a Westminster briefing: "Security at Downing Street is kept permanently under review."

Asked whether he would raise the issue of the alleged spy during talks with Mr Lavrov in Moscow on Friday, Mr Johnson said: "I think that is a matter for the Ukrainians.

"We want Ukraine to go on the right path and we are worried that Ukraine needs more encouragement, more help, to reform, to make sure it isn't captured by the wrong influences.

"I think possibly what this episode shows is the real difficulties and risks that the Ukrainian government is running. They need a lot of encouragement."
The Salvation Army of La Crosse County will host a memorial period for homeless people who have died from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday in the facilitys gym at 223 N. Eighth St.

The event, part of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day, will include a moment of silence, a candlelight vigil and a meal to commemorate homeless people who have died this year.

Individuals  either homeless or formerly homeless  who have died in recent years to be memorialized at the local event include Michael R., Arnold K., Carol P., Pearl F., Christina J., Janice K., Charles Z., John B., Jordan V., DeShawn Coco H., Andre W. and Wayne K.
T heresa May was today leading a wave of high-level criticism levelled at the police investigation into the former First Secretary of State Damian Green.

Mr Green became the third Cabinet minister to leave in weeks after he admitted lying about pornography which was found by detectives on his Commons computer.

A probe found Mr Green breached the ministerial code with "inaccurate and misleading" statements and he admitted police had told him about the porn as far back as 2008.

Responding to his resignation letter, the Prime Minister said she "share[d] the concerns" about the disclosures made by Neil Lewis, an ex-Scotland Yard detective responsible for leaking scandalous information.

She wrote: "I share the concerns, raised...across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in [this] case in recent weeks.

"I am glad that the commissioner of the Metropolitan police has condemned that, made clear that police officers duty of confidentiality endures after they leave the force, and that the Metropolitan polices professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made."

Theresa May's response to Damian Green's letter of resignation

Mr Green leaves his post as First Secretary of State continuing to deny "unfounded and deeply hurtful" claims he downloaded or viewed porn on his parliamentary computer.

Theresa Mays latter to Damian green in full I am extremely sad to be writing this letter. We have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives - from our early days at university, entering the House of Commons at the same election, and serving alongside each other both in Opposition and in Government. As Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and as First Secretary of State, you have brought great wisdom, good sense, and a commitment to helping the most vulnerable to my Cabinets in this Parliament and the last. I have greatly appreciated your hard work and the contribution you have made to my team, just as I did at the Home Office, where you served as Immigration Minister and Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, helping to drive through important but often difficult reforms. Like you, I know the vast majority of our police to be diligent and honourable public servants, working hard to protect the public and maintain law and order. But I shared the concerns raised from across the political spectrum when your Parliamentary office was raided in 2008 when you were a Shadow Home Office Minister holding the then Labour Government to account. And I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks. I am glad that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has condemned that, made clear that police officers duty of confidentiality endures after they leave the force, and that the Metropolitan Polices professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made. When allegations were raised about your personal conduct, I asked the Cabinet Secretary to establish as far as possible the facts of the case and provide advice on whether or not there had been a breach of the Ministerial Code. He has produced a thorough report which concludes that your conduct as a minister has generally been both professional and proper. You have expressed your regret for the distress caused to Ms Maltby following her article about you and the reaction to it. I appreciate that you do not recognise the events Ms Maltby described in the article, but you do recognise that you made her feel uncomfortable and it is right that you have apologised. I know that you share my determination to ensure that everyone who wants to play their part in our political life should feel able to do so - without fear or harassment, and knowing they can speak out if they need to. Equally, it is right that those who put themselves forward to serve the public should also be accorded the respect of a private life within the law. I have also carefully considered the reports conclusions in relation to two statements you made on 4 and 11 November which you now accept were inaccurate and misleading. This falls short of the Seven Principles of Public Life and is a breach of the Ministerial Code - a conclusion which has been endorsed by Sir Alex Allan, the Independent Adviser on Ministers Interests. While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of Ministers of the Crown. It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the Government and have accepted your resignation. Yours ever Theresa

But an investigation by the Cabinet Office found two statements Mr Green made on November 4 and 11, which suggested he was not aware indecent material was found in a 2008 police raid, were "inaccurate and misleading" and breached the ministerial code.

Mr Green said: "I accept that I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013.

"I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.

"The unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations that were being levelled at me were distressing both to me and my family and it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department."

Damian Green's computer had 'thousands' of explicit images on it, says ex-Scotland Yard detective

Andrew Mitchell, a former Tory Cabinet Minister, also leapt to Mr Green's defence, telling Sky News: "These two admitted breaches of the ministerial code are dwarfed by the extraordinary behaviour of the police which fortunately is now under investigation by the proper authorities."

Meanwhile Sir Peter Fahy, former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, also told Sky it was "not for police officers to make judgments about whether politicians are lying or not".

He said: "There may be a public interest...but I think the public interest in the impartiality of police officers and the public interest in confidentiality of public servants - and particularly police officers - is far, far greater, and that has to weigh in the balance.

"Ultimately it's not for police officers to make judgements about whether politicians are lying or not, ultimately that's a matter for the court.

"And it's not for police officers to make moral judgements about people's lifestyles, whether they're accessing or not accessing perfectly legal material."

Mr Green's sacking follows the November resignation of Sir Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary amid Westminster sleaze allegations.

The Tory veteran admitted that his behaviour had "fallen below the high standards required" in the role.

Days later, International Development Secretary Priti Patel was forced to resign over undisclosed meetings she held in Israel.

She went out in dramatic fashion after flying back from Africa to confront Mrs May.

The inquiry into Mr Green's conduct was triggered after Kate Maltby, who is three decades younger than Mr Green, claimed he touched her knee and later sent her a "suggestive" text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in a newspaper.

Reporting the probe's findings, Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said that with "competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings" it was "not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green's behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015, though the investigation found Ms Maltby's account to be plausible".
D amian Green's hopes of a comeback were sunk today when a former Cabinet colleague said he had lied.

The verdict from Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt came as it emerged that the Prime Minister tried in vain to save her deputy from being forced to resign over his denial that he knew pornography had been found on his parliamentary computer.

He lied on a particular incident, yes, Mr Hunt told the BBCs Today show. Lots of people who understand the context would appreciate why that might have happened.

"But that doesnt make it any more acceptable."

Damian Green sacked as First Secretary of State amid computer porn allegations

What this shows is that in our democracy we hold Cabinet ministers to the very highest standards of conduct.

Mr Green left his west London home at 9.15am and climbed into his Audi A6 refusing to answer questions about his resignation. He later arrived at Portcullis House in Westminster without speaking.

The MP for Ashford, 61, reluctantly quit as First Secretary of State and Cabinet Office minister last night after being confronted with the findings of an inquiry first called into allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances towards journalist Kate Maltby.

The investigation was then extended when former police officers Bob Quick and Neil Lewis spoke out about the explicit images found on his computer during an investigation into Whitehall leaks nine years ago.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt led the charge against the ex-detective, Neil Lewis, saying his actions 'don't sit comfortably in a democracy' / EPA

Today Downing Street piled pressure on Scotland Yard to take action against Mr Lewis. Mr Hunt led the charge against the ex-detective. If you look at what happened, some of the actions of a retired police officer dont sit comfortably in a democracy, he said.

Theresa May made very clear in her letter that she was very uncomfortable with what had happened and she was pleased Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, also felt that.

I think there are various other things we do need to get to the bottom of.

No 10 sources confirmed that Mrs May was concerned. She is clearly frustrated by the conduct of the ex-police officer, one said.

Damian Green's computer had 'thousands' of explicit images on it, says ex-Scotland Yard detective

The inquiry into Mr Green was led by the head of ethics and propriety at the Cabinet Office, Sue Gray. It found Ms Maltbys account was plausible and that Mr Greens flat denial that he had been told about the police findings of pornography was misleading.

No 10 confirmed today that Mrs May was handed the report on Monday and immediately asked for a second opinion from Sir Alex Allan, her independent adviser on ministerial interests.

Sources deny that she hoped Sir Alex, who had no formal role in the process, might save Mr Green  a friend from their Oxford University days and one of the key figures who stopped the Government from falling apart after her botched general election in June.

However, Sir Alex confirmed that Mr Green had broken the Ministerial Code, which was relayed to Mrs May yesterday afternoon. She then called Mr Green into her office at No 10 to confront him with the findings.

Friends of Ms Maltby say she is still waiting for a personal apology from Mr Green.

So far he has apologised in public for making her feel uncomfortable while denying making advances upon the 31-year-old, a family friend.

Rumours that a second person had come forward during the inquiry to say they had been the subject of unwanted advances by Mr Green were neither confirmed nor denied by Whitehall sources today. No mention of such evidence was mentioned in the summary.

A reshuffle will be held next month after the third Cabinet resignation in weeks, following those of Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon and International Development Secretary Priti Patel.

Timeline on Damian Green's fall from grace 2008 October: The Cabinet Office calls in the Metropolitan Police to investigate Home Office leaks. November: Shadow home affairs minister Mr Green is arrested and held by police for nine hours on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office, and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office. His home and offices in Kent and the Houses of Parliament are searched. He is released on bail. Senior civil servant Permanent Secretary Sir David Normington says he called police after leaks over an extended period. December: Scotland Yard says Mr Greens arrest and the search of his office was lawful. Assistant Met Commissioner Bob Quick, the senior officer then in charge of the leaks investigation, accuses the Tories of trying to undermine his leaks inquiry after information is published which he claims endangered his family. Mr Quick apologises after Tory leader David Cameron demands a retraction of the baseless allegation. 2009 January: The leaks were completely undermining the work of the Home Office, says Sir David, adding that he was completely frustrated by 20 leaks over a two-year period. February: Boris Johnson says he warned police that arresting a Tory frontbench MP over leak allegations would go off like a rocket. April: The Crown Prosecution Service says it will not prosecute Mr Green. 2017 October 31: Theresa May asks Whitehalls top civil servant to investigate allegations that Mr Green, now First Secretary of State, made inappropriate advances to Kate Maltby in 2015, which he denies. November 6: Mr Green faces being interviewed as part of the Cabinet Office investigation, which is expanded to include claims that pornography was found on one of his parliamentary computers in 2008. Mr Quick, now a former policeman, calls on Mr Green to retract deeply hurtful allegations that Mr Quick had lied in saying vast amounts of pornography were found on the computer. December 20: Mr Green leaves his role after the inquiry found he breached the ministerial code over an inaccurate and misleading statement. In her reply to his resignation letter, Mrs May said she shared the concerns over the first raid on his office and comments by a police officer on the case.

Mrs May has not decided yet whether merely to replace Mr Green or carry out the larger reshuffle some backbenchers want. No 10 said Mr Green will not be replaced immediately. Privately, senior sources indicated there would be no appointments until the new year.

Various runners and riders for Mr Greens twin roles were being mooted, but Mrs May is keeping open her options as to whether to fill both roles or leave one empty.

Mr Hunt was tipped by some MPs as a potential replacement because of his steady character. He declined to rule himself out today, while protesting that he was passionate about his current role. Obviously these things are a matter for the Prime Minister, but as far as I am concerned I am a Health man.

His name triggered rumblings from Remain supporters, who warned that they would not tolerate any change to the balance of the crucial Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit that makes key decisions on EU relations. Mr Green, who backed Remain in last years referendum on membership of the European Union, sat on the 10-member committee. It is equally divided between Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Remainers such as Philip Hammond, the Chancellor.

[Hunt] is not good because, as he recently said, he would now vote to Leave, said a senior one-nation Tory. We knew where Damians heart lay, although we appreciated he had to follow the Government line. One option if Mrs May wants to avoid a wider reshuffle is Sir Oliver Letwin, who served as Cabinet fixer under David Cameron and who was brought in last week to avoid a second government defeat on the EU Withdrawal Bill by negotiating a partial climbdown.

Friends of David Davis made clear he accepts the verdict that Mr Green broke the Ministerial Code and will not be resigning in solidarity. The Brexit Secretary had threatened to quit if his colleague was traduced on the basis of allegations made by ex-police officers. But the inquiry condemned Mr Green on the basis of his misleading response rather than the claims themselves.
A mazon has removed a "circumcision training kit" from sale over fears it could encourage those without training to try the procedure at home.

The online retailer took the product - which sold for up to 456 - offline after a complaint from the National Secular Society complained that the product normalised an unnecessary and risky practice.

Anthony Lempert, chair of the NSS medical forum, wrote: "Male circumcision in the UK is wholly unregulated and we fear that the sale of this product may encourage unqualified practitioners to carry out unnecessary surgery on infants in non-clinical conditions, resulting in serious harm.

"Non-therapeutic circumcision is unethical and unnecessary and is putting infant boys at risk of death and serious injury.

"This practice could be encouraged by the morally negligent sale of infant circumcision training kits to the public."

The kits were advertised on the site as made with soft, lifelike material, which is pliable, delicate, and realistic to the touch. Associated accessories could be purchased separately.

The British Medical Association has "no policy" on non-therapeutic circumcision, saying it is "for society to decide" what limits should be imposed.

"As a general rule...the BMA believes that parents should be entitled to make choices about how best to promote their childrens interests, and it is for society to decide what limits should be imposed on parental choices.

The Standard approached Amazon for comment.
A widow who woke up to see her prized jewellery being stolen from her hotel bedside has won thousands of pounds in compensation.

Primrose Grainger, 77, was still in mourning for her husband when two thieves crept into her room at the Grand Burstin Hotel in Folkestone, Kent, as she slept.

Among the jewels stolen were her wedding ring, a 5,000 turban-style ring, and a 3,000 Faberge-style band commissioned by her late husband, who had died three months earlier.

Mrs Grainger told Central London county court she loved her jewellery, which never left her sight, because it reminded her of places she and her husband had visited.

The pensioner sued the seaside hotel owners, Britannia Hotels Ltd, for compensation over the July 2013 thefts.

Judge Peter Wulwik yesterday ruled she is entitled to 12,781 in damages.

Ruling out the possibility that Mrs Grainger had left her door open, he found there had been a spate of thefts at the hotel and that the thieves had probably found a key in the building.

As far as she was concerned she was in a room with her daughter and the door was locked. She was entitled to believe her jewellery would be safe, he said. She had no reason to know that the hotel had been subject to a spate of thefts where thieves had gained entry using a key.

He found the hotel could have prevented the break-in by upgrading its keycard security.

The hotel argued that Mrs Grainger could have left her jewellery collection in one of its safe deposit boxes, but the judge found it was reasonable for her to keep the possessions close given their sentimental value.

Mrs Grainger told the court she was left profoundly shocked by the break-in and afraid to stay in hotels. She said it had compounded the grief of losing her husband. However, the judge did not award her compensation for psychiatric damage because this was not foreseeable by the hotel.
A Christmas map has been put together showing events for people who are planning to spend Christmas alone.

Premier Christian Radio created an interactive map of venues around the UK which will be holding events for people to attend on Christmas Day regardless of faith or background.

The map has been created as part of the radio shows Christmas Alone project which aims to help people find events to attend on Christmas day so that they dont have to spend it alone.

Loretta Andrews, a broadcaster on the Premier Drive Time radio show told the Standard that she started the project five years ago with her colleague Chris Byland.

Loading....

It started with a conversation where we said that we hated the idea of anyone being alone at Christmas, she said.

The pair realised that Premier Christian Radio was in a unique position as it had contact with a number of churches which already provided events during the Christmas period.

Ms Andrews said: We had the idea of providing a match making service which would match venues with people who had nowhere to go.

Since launching the project in 2012, the Christmas Alone project has worked year on year to encourage churches, business and charities to take part and put on an event.

Ms Andrews said that this year the project had a huge response with 369 venues registering to take part.

Many of the registered venues have agreed to provide transport for people to and from the events.

To create the map, Premier Christian partnered with Community Christmas, an organisation which encourages communities to organise events for the elderly on Christmas day.

People who are looking for a place to go at Christmas can click on their area on the map and will be provided with details about the event and a contact number for the venue.

Loneliness is an issue that is increasingly affecting the elderly in the UK. Last month, Age UK said that almost one million elderly people admitted to feeling lonelier over the festive period.

Community Christmas founder, Caroline Billington, said she set up the organisation as she wanted to take action to address the issue of loneliness in the UK.

She said: We hope that by using Christmas day as a trigger we can create long term connections for people.
T heresa May was accidentally dubbed "Madam Brexit" by a Polish translator in a live television broadcast.

An interpreter gave the Prime Minister the nickname during a joint press conference with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

And the PM could not help smiling as she heard the translation.

Mrs May arrived in the Polish capital on Thursday for talks aimed at strengthening ties with the eastern European state.

As the two European leaders addressed the media, an interpreter for the Polish prime minister referred to Mrs May as "Madam Brexit".

Mr Morawiecki was giving his introductory comments about the future UK-Polish relationship when the PM's new name was born.

Part of the speech was translated as: "It's very important for us that this co-operation, even though it will be based soon on different rules and different regulations than it has been so far because of Brexit.

"Because as Madam Brexit said, Brexit is Brexit..."

Mrs May was then seen smirking as Mr Morawiecki went on: "But regardless of all that, we all realise how important the co-operation in defence, internal affairs, economic affairs, financial affairs is, as is the co-operation in all the areas."

The pair appeared for the live broadcast after signing a joint UK-Poland Treaty on Defence and Security Co-operation, and with phase two of the Brexit negotiations, on the future UK-EU relationship, due to begin in the new year.
A n intimate new set of royal portraits of Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle were released today weeks after they delighted the world by announcing their engagement.

The first image shows Prince Harry and Ms Markle, who is dressed in a black dress with gold detailing, sat on the steps at Frogmore House, Windsor.

Harry is dressed in a blue suit and the couple have their heads pressed together and are holding hands in a way that shows off Ms Markles engagement ring.

The second black and white image shows the US actress wrapped in Prince Harrys coat as she holds his face and they both smile.

@alexilubo via @KensingtonRoyal

Alexi Lubomirski - a former assistant to Mario Testino and now a celebrated fashion photographer shooting for Harpers Bazaar and Vogue  shot the photographs.

He has photographed A-list stars including Beyonce, Charlize Theron, and Gwyneth Paltrow and lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

The royals released this photo 'as a way to say thank you' for the kind remarks about their engagement / Alexi Lubomirski via AP

Prince Harry, 33, and 36-year-old Ms Markle, who announced their engagement on November 27, are to wed on May 19 next year at a ceremony in St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle.

(@alexilubo via @KensingtonRoyal) / Alexi Lubomirski

Kensington Palace said in a statement: "Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle have chosen to release official photographs to mark their engagement.

"The photographs were taken by Alex Lubomirski earlier this week at Frogmore House, Windsor."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle engagement announcement 1 /36 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle engagement announcement Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Eddie Mulholland-WPA Pool/Getty Images Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle photo call today on the announcement of their engagement in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Getty Images Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace AP Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace PA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace AP Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Getty Images Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Reuters Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Sky News Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace PA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Getty Images Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace AP Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, London, after the announcement of their engagement PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leave following a photocall after announcing their engagement in the Sunken Garden in Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and Meghan Markle walk away after posing for the media in the grounds of Kensington Palace AP

After the pictures were released on Thursday, the photographer said: "A huge thank you to His Royal Highness Prince Harry and Ms Markle, for allowing me to take their official engagement portraits.

"Not only was it an incredible honour, but also an immense privilege to be invited to share and be a witness to this young couples love for each other.

"I cannot help but smile when I look at the photos that we took."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to marry on Saturday May 19

On Wednesday, Prince Harry and Ms Markle were pictured arriving at Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Christmas lunch.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex: Prince Harry & Meghan Markle 1 /108 The Duke and Duchess of Sussex: Prince Harry & Meghan Markle Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex leaves after attending a service of thanksgiving for the reign of Queen Elizabeth II at St Pauls Cathedral AP Freedom Gala AP Christmas 2021 Alexi Lubomirski Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend The Endeavour Fund Awards at Mansion House Samir Hussein/WireImage Oprah Winfrey interviews Duke and Duchess of Sussex PA Media Misan Harriman Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kiss on the steps of St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle after their wedding in St George's Chapel PA Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, pose with their newborn son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor in St George's Hall at Windsor Castle Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Sussex holding their son Archie during a meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mrs Tutu at their legacy foundation in cape Town, on day three of their tour of Africa PA Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle announce their engagement in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a Wheelchair Tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017 Reuters Prince Harry and Meghan Markle embrace following the polo at Coworth Park on 7 May 2017 Rex Features Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle announce their engagement in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace EPA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet Pony Major Mark Wilkinson and regimental mascot Cruachan IV during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a Wheelchair Tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017 at Nathan Philips Square on 25 September 2017 in Toronto, Canada Reuters Prince Harry with girlfriend Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games in Toronto PA Prince Harry with girlfriend Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games in Toronto Getty Images Prince Harry arrives with girlfriend actress Meghan Markle at the wheelchair tennis event during the Invictus Games in Toronto Reuters Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a Wheelchair Tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017 at Nathan Philips Square on 25 September 2017 in Toronto, Canada Getty Images Prince Harry with girlfriend Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games in Toronto Getty Images Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games in Toronto Karwai Tang/WireImage Prince Harry arrives with girlfriend actress Meghan Markle at the wheelchair tennis event during the Invictus Games in Toronto, Ontario Reuters Meghan Markle attends the Opening Ceremony of the 2017 Invictus Games at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada PA Meghan Markle on the cover of Vanity Fair Peter Lindbergh exclusively for Vanity Fair Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a Wheelchair Tennis match during the Invictus Games 2017 Getty Images Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle announce their engagement in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace Jeremy Selwyn Larking around: Harry and Meghan pull faces in footage not shown in the BBC engagement interview BBC Meghan Markle visits Nottingham for her first official public engagement with fiancee Prince Harry Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive at the Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, to attend a Terrence Higgins Trust World AIDS Day charity fair on their first official engagement together PA Meghan Markle arrives at the Terrance Higgins Trust World AIDS Day charity fair at Nottingham Contemporary Getty Images The royal brothers and their partners on Christmas Day. AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle listen to a broadcast through headphones during a visit to youth-orientated radio station, Reprezent FM, in Brixton PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive in Brixton EPA Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle visit Reprezent 107.3FM in Brixton Getty Images Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle visit Reprezent 107.3FM in Brixton Getty Images Loved up: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Cardiff Castle EPA Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle attend a street dance class during their visit to Star Hub in during their visit to Star Hub on January 18, 2018 in Cardiff, Wales. Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit the people of Edinburgh Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive to attend the annual Endeavour Fund Awards PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive to attend the annual Endeavour Fund Awards Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a reception for young people at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images rince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle meet a Shetland Pony as they arrive at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Frank Augstein/AP Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle speak with patrons at the Social Bite in Edinburgh AP Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle arrives for a visit in Birmingham on International Women's Day PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham Splash News Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet members of the public on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet members of the public on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA The Reverend Canon David Stanton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leave after attending a Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbet AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a reception with delegates from the Commonwealth Youth Forum at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ride in an Ascot Landau along the Long Walk after their wedding PA Meghan Markle walks down the aisle in St George's Chapel PA Harry and Meghan leaving Windsor Castle for the glamorous evening reception PA Harry and Meghan leaving Windsor Castle for the glamorous evening reception PA Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex head back down the Mall to Buckingham Palace during Trooping The Colour on June 9, 2018 Getty Images Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex talk to members of OneWave, an awareness group for mental health and wellbeing at South Bondi Beach on October 19, 2018 in Sydney, Australia. Getty Images Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex are seen during the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games in Sydney, Australia, 27 October 2018 EPA Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visits the Hubb Community Kitchen to see how funds raised by the 'Together: Our Community' Cookbook are making a difference at Al Manaar, North Kensington on November 21, 2018 in London Getty Images Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Britain's Prince Harry unveil a plaque to officially open Number 7, a 'Feeding Birkenhead' citizens supermarket and community cafe, at Pyramids Shopping Centre, as part of a visit to Birkenhead, northwest England, Monday Jan. 14, 2019 AP Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visits the National theatre in central London on January 30, 2019 AFP/Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrive for a visit to the Bristol Old Vic theatre, which is undergoing a multimillion-pound restoration PA Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (L) and Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, reacts as they visit Bristol Old Vic theatre in Bristol, south-west England on February 1, 2019 AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (R) and Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (C) help volunteers in the kitchen as they pack food parcels to go in the charity outreach van during a visit to One25 charity in Bristol, south west England on February 1, 2019 AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive to attend the annual Endeavour Fund Awards at Drapers Hall in London on February 7, 2019 AFP/Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Sussex try some food during a cooking school demonstration at Villa des Ambassadors in Rabat on the third day of their tour of Morocco PA Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duke & Duchess of Sussex, pet a horse at the Moroccan Royal Federation of Equestrian Sports in Rabat on February 25, 2019 AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle wearing a short Reiss dress on International Women's Day AFP/Getty Images Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attend a Commonwealth Day Youth Event at Canada House, where they meet young people who demonstrate a Canadian spring tradition of making maple taffy (maple syrup cooled on snow to make sweets) on March 11, 2019 in London Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Sussex leave following a Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey, London PA Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess Of Sussex attend a Commonwealth Day Youth Event at Canada House on March 11, 2019 in London WireImage Members of Britain's Royal family leave after attending the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey AP The Duchess of Cambridge (left) talks with the Duchess of Sussex (right) as they attend the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey, Richard Pohle/The Times/PA Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex hold their baby son in St George's Hall at Windsor Castle, Berkshire on 8 May 2019 REUTERS Archbishop Desmond Tutu kisses the forehead of baby Archie as his mother smiles on warmly Reuters The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrive for a visit to the Auwal Mosque, the oldest mosque in South Africa, on day two of their tour of Africa. PA Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attend a roundtable discussion on gender equality with The Queens Commonwealth Trust (QCT) and One Young World at Windsor Castle Jeremy Selwyn Prince Harry and Duchess of Sussex at The Fields of Remembrance in Westminster Abbey Jeremy Selwyn pixel8000

The Queen traditionally hosts a festive lunch for her family before leaving for her private Sandringham estate, where she spends December 25.

Ms Markle will join the Queen and other senior members of the royal family for Christmas Day.
K ate Maltby found herself at the centre of a sexual harassment storm sweeping Westminster when she spoke out in October about how Damian Green had left her feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed.

For many women, some of whom have contacted her for advice, she was a beacon and role model, ready to brave a backlash to stand up to unwanted sexual advances from men in powerful positions.

But she has faced sniping over her own behaviour, with a suggestion she betrayed a family friend in Mr Green, a claim her parents have firmly rejected.

Over 15 years ago, when he was shadow education minister, Mr Green did an interview for the school magazine 16-year-old Ms Maltby was editing.

It was a coup for an aspiring journalist and in her twenties she became involved in Tory activism. At this time, she sought the advice of Mr Green, an approachable and likeable figure,  including on political issues.

With a background in Greek and Latin, she describes herself as a scholar who has explored stories from Homer to Shakespeare. She has been on Newsnight, Question Time and Womans Hour. It was a piece she wrote for The Times a year ago about corsets, with a picture of her in one, that led to Mr Greens downfall. She said the day after the article he sent a text saying: Having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink any time?

Ms Maltby, 31, said she had been avoiding the 61-year-old MP for a year after a previous incident and ignored the message. The two dispute what happened. They met at a pub in Waterloo in 2015 and discussed whether she was considering a political career. The chat is said to have moved onto affairs in Parliament. She said: He mentioned his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee  so brief, it was almost deniable. I moved my legs away, and tried to end the drink on friendly terms. I dropped all contact for a year. I wanted nothing to do with him.

Mr Green denies this and any inappropriate conduct. The Cabinet Office inquiry did not rule on what happened but found her story plausible. Six weeks after the corset article he was propelled into the heart of No 10 after David Cameron quit. As an aspirant political writer it seemed impossible to avoid him ... So I sent him a message, It read: Many congratulations on joining the cabinet.
T he British mother jailed in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has been told by her lawyer that she is eligible for early release.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran for more than 600 days, was told the news by her lawyer on Thursday, Sky News reported.

She was arrested in 2016 during a holiday visit to show her daughter Gabriella to her parents.

British-Iranian Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, from Hampstead, is serving a five-year sentence over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Tehran government. She denies the accusations.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made a visit to Iran earlier this month to discuss Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe - who has been in prison since April 2016 - being freed.

It followed a blunder earlier this year when the foreign minister said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "teaching journalists" to people at the time of her arrest, a charge she denies.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, previously wrote to the Iranian ambassador in London, urging him to make clear to all state bodies in Iran that his wife was not involved in espionage.

Suffering: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe feels on the verge of a nervous breakdown in prison

He said he had not lost hope that she may return to his family by Christmas.

In a letter to diplomat Hamid Baeidinejad, Mr Ratcliffe said: "Nazanin remains a mum on holiday with a toddler, an ordinary citizen, British and Iranian, held in prison for doing a charity job."

Richard Ratcliffe is hoping wife Nazanin will be home for Christmas

"She is not a spy. She has never sold her country out. Not even the Revolutionary Court has claimed that. With all these new spy claims, the emperor has no clothes."

Earlier this year, a blunder by foreign minister Mr Johnson exposed the London mother to the threat of her five-year jail sentence being doubled.
M ore than 100 countries defied President Donald Trump and rejected his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The United Nations general assembly delivered a crushing blow to Mr Trump by voting in a huge majority that the United States withdraw its decision on the city.

The move came despite a threat by the US to cut off financial aid to countries that back the resolution.

Only nine countries voted against the resolution, while 128 voted in favour and some 35 abstained.

More than 100 countries voted against recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital / EPA

The UN general assembly voted to oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Thursday.

While the draft resolution did not mention the US, it said any decisions on Jerusalem should be cancelled.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump declared formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

But the decision was condemned and a rare emergency special session of the UN general assembly was called..

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the nation was being 'singled out for attack' on Thursday / EPA

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, had warned that the US would remember which countries "disrespected" it in the vote.

She said on Thursday: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again to make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

She added: "When a nation is singled out for attack in this organisation, that nation is disrespected."

But members seemed undeterred by Ms Haley's speech, voting in overwhelming majority against the US.

Palestian present Mahamoud Abbas said the result was a "victory for Palestine".
A merican TV presenter Catt Sadler has quit her role after learning that she earned about half of what her male co-host does.

Sadler, who had worked for E! News since 2006, said she asked for what I know I deserve after an executive made her aware of the pay gap.

But her requests were repeatedly denied, she alleged in a statement on Wednesday.

She said: "There was a massive disparity in pay between my similarly situated male co-host and myself. He was making close to double my salary for the past several years.

"How can I remain silent when my rights under the law have been violated? How can we make it better for the next generation of girls if we do not stand for what is fair and just today?"

She added that she had wanted to stay in the role but the decision was made for me and I must go.

An E! spokesperson told the BBC: "E! compensates employees fairly and appropriately based on their roles, regardless of gender. We appreciate Catt Sadler's many contributions at E! News and wish her all the best following her decision to leave the network."

In July this year, the BBC became embroiled in a gender pay gap row after publishing the salaries of its top-earners.

Chris Evans was the highest paid on more than 2m, with Gary Lineker second on 1.75m.

The highest paid woman was Claudia Winkleman, who was in the 450,000 to 499,999 pay bracket. Six men at the corporation received more than her.
N o charges will be filed against Venus Williams after she was involved in a crash which killed a man, police have said.

Jerome Barson, 78, was fatally injured when his wife Lindas car collided with the tennis stars vehicle in Florida on June 9.

A Palm Beach Gardens police report released on Wednesday cleared both Ms Williams and Mrs Barson over the incident.

Investigators say video shows Ms Williams had a green light when she entered a busy intersection but a car turned left in front of her, forcing her to stop.

Ms Williams then tried to get fully across but the Barsons' light turned green and their car slammed into Ms Williams' SUV.

Mr Barson died 13 days later. The family's attorney, Michael Steinger, said police were wrong and they intend to sue Ms Williams.

Ms Williams broke down in tears when asked about the crash during a Wimbledon press conference this summer.

She said: "There are really no words to describe, like, how devastating and - yeah. I'm completely speechless."
N othing beats the soft touch of cashmere against your skin.

The cosiness and the warmth make everything from thick jumpers to comforting rugs a really lovely part of a childs nursery.

Of course, such indulgences are going to come at a certain price but a cuddle from a cashmere-covered baby is worth it.

Before you splash out on a snuggle-worthy piece, here are a few things you should know about one of the finest natural fibres around.

What is cashmere?

Cashmere is a type of wool that is made from the soft undercoats of cashmere goats. Despite being significantly lighter, the material is eight times warmer than sheeps wool and doesnt irritate the skin. Its also stronger and more durable than other fabrics. If cleaned and cared for properly, cashmere can last for many years to come.

Why is cashmere expensive?

Cashmere products are pricey because of the way the material is produced. On average, a cashmere goat generates only a little over 100 grams of cashmere fibre each year  meaning it is made in limited quantities. It can take more than two cashmere goats to produce a single sweater, so you should expect a hefty price tag if you are after good quality cashmere.

From toys to lounge sets, there are plenty of cashmere pieces for babies and children to suit all budgets. Here are our top picks.

The White Company Cashmere Panda Jumper

Comprised of 100 per cent cashmere, this grey panda jumper is just as cosy as it is adorable. Perhaps best for very small babies, the soft-touch piece is delightfully gender-neutral and versatile. The best part? The White Company offers a special pill comb to use on their cashmere to keep it looking in tip-top condition.

125 | The White Company | Buy it now

Brora Cashmere Pom Pom hat

This cable-knit hat made from two-ply Scottish cashmere is a winter must-have for fussy children who hate having their heads covered, thanks to being so soft and light. Ours stayed on for an entire park visit  a first for a certain wilful one-year-old. Although there are three colour-ways to choose from, we plumped for the Winter White, simply because when worn, children resemble elfin snowflakes  and theres nothing better than that during the big freeze. Brora recommend hand washing  but because it belongs on heads, unwanted spillages are hopefully going to be minimal.

59 | Brora | Buy it now

Cashmere Heart Intarsia Cardigan

Available for children up to 12 years of age, this cardigan manages to be both brilliantly playful for babies and toddlers but also chic for older wearers (we would wager that a petit woman could fit into the 12-year-old sizes  it certainly crossed our minds). It is 100 per cent cashmere, encompassing all the delicacy youd expect and yet with a definite sturdiness that makes for warmth and durability. Expect constant compliments from strangers  who will invariably go into orbit when they find out there is a wealth of other colour-ways to explore too.

171 | Cashmirino | Buy it now

Huge, versatile blanket

These blankets are all handmade in Kashmir, meaning each one is completely unique  making them really special gifts. They are absolutely whopping  130 x 180cm - but we find the large size makes them a versatile addition to any nursery. Folded as the softest mattress topper for Moses baskets or spread out as an ultra-lux play mat, its one of those items that very quickly move from a luxury to an essential item. We found ours to be a real lifesaver as a pushchair blanket during the recent cold snap.

175 | Zanula | Buy it now

Bunny comforter

Cuddling a comforter can be a vital part of getting a baby to settle themselves to sleep. A cashmere version is surely nothing short of a slice of heaven for a baby: who wouldnt want to drift off to the Land of Nod with their cheeks nuzzled against something so soft? These make for a great gift idea because unlike clothes, babies cant grow out of these and the quality of the materials mean this little bunny is likely to journey through childhood without too much in the way of wear and tear.

55 | Purl English | Buy it now

Givenchy Kids Star Intarsia Knit Dress

This might be only 30 per cent cashmere, but its still super-soft against young skin. This dress is so special because it manages to be grown-up  the knitted logo is a fun nod to high fashion - without suggesting that little girls should dress beyond their years. Worn with Mary-Janes and thick tights  its perfect for Christmas Day or winter parties.

320 | Farfetch | Buy it now

Basil Cashmere Romper

There is nothing cuter than babies in rompers, which might go some way to explain the enduring popularity of what is now considered a vintage style. This cheery duck egg option is not only as warm and soft as youd expect from 100 per cent cashmere, but wonderfully pliable too making it easy for wriggly little people to move around in. Almost best of all is the gender-neutral Rust shade  a rich yellow hue that complements the Liberty print collection perfectly.

From 54 | Olivier Baby | Buy it now

Zara Girls Cashmere Sweater

Zara has an adorable selection of cashmere clothing for young children. Our top pick? This mauve-coloured girls sweater that comes in fives sizes from 6 months up to 3 years. With the winter season almost upon us, the round neck design should keep her feeling cosy and at the same time stylish.

34.99 | Zara | Buy it now

Burberry Mini Classic Cashmere Scarf with Archive Logo

A mini version of Burberrys iconic check piece, this snuggly scarf will bring a bit of luxury into any childs wardrobe. We particularly love how the multi-coloured lettering adds a playful touch to the classic design. Since it is made of 100 per cent cashmere, you can expect a sumptuously soft feel against the neck which is just the ticket for those with delicate skin.

230 | Burberry | Buy it now

Harrods of London Cable Knit Cashmere Leggings

Comfort and luxury go hand in hand with these cable knit leggings from the Harrods of London range. The baby trousers are made extra comfortable by super-soft pure cashmere and an elasticated waistband, making them ideal for cosy days indoors. They can also be paired with a matching cardigan and beanie hat to create a wonderfully winter-proof ensemble. Choose from four sizes from 0 to 18 months.

89.95 | Harrods | Buy it now

Marie-Chantal Mittens

Keep your little ones hands toasty with these adorable mittens by Marie-Chantal. The pure cashmere pieces are adorned with the brands signature crown and star in gold lurex and come in one size only.

59 | Marie-Chantal | Buy it now

Brora Cashmere Baby Blanket

With a range of designs available, including stripes and checks, this super soft blanket is perfect for keeping newborns snug and warm. It is composed of 100 per cent Scottish cashmere and can be dry cleaned only.
C hristoph Waltz has criticised those who say the next James Bond should be a woman.

The Oscar-winner, 61, who played 007 nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in 2015s Spectre, joked that the spy would have to be renamed Jemima if so.

Daniel Craig has said he will return for the 25th Bond film, but speculation is rife over who will replace him. James Norton is the current favourite, although there have been calls for the first female Bond.

When asked about this, Waltz told Mr Porter: Why? Because [Italian feminist writer] Oriana Fallaci said so? Come on. Have your own movie if you want. Why does it have to be James Bond? What would be her first name? Jemima? My answer is decidedly not.

In character: Christoph Waltz as Blofeld with Lea Seydoux in Spectre

The Austrian-German actors breakthrough came at 53, when he was cast by Quentin Tarantino as SS officer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds.

The star had moved to London in 1988 but could not land Shakespeare parts because of his accent.

He said: Just because Shakespeare was English, it doesnt mean, at all, that the English are the only ones who can do it.

Waltz also admitted to being a misanthrope, saying: I really find people despicable.

Daniel Craig - In pictures 1 /62 Daniel Craig - In pictures No Time To Die (2021) PA Wire The World Premiere of No Time To Die in London REUTERS Daniel Craig emerges from the waves in Casino Royale in 2006 Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz Getty Images Footage featured during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games starring Daniel Craig playing James Bond escorting The Queen through the corridors of Buckingham Palace An early publicity shot ahead of Casino Royale's release Lashana Lynch, Daniel Craig and LAa Seydoux attend the No Time To Die World Premiere at Royal Albert Hall in 2021 Getty Images No Time To Die AP Daniel Craig speaks onstage during The New Yorker Festival 2016 Getty Images Spectre - Royal World Premiere (2015_ Dave Benett Daniel Craig kisses his actress wife Rachel Weisz while they attend The Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund's Royal Film Performance 2015 of the 24th James Bond Adventure, "Spectre" at Royal Albert Hall Getty Images In one of Spectres (2015) set-piece action scenes, Bond chases the villains down a mountain in a plane, crashing it into their vehicle. As you would Seducing Lucia moments after saving ehr by dispatching a Spectre hit-squad Bond meets an old friend, Mr White as he pieces together Spectre's plot With Madeleine Swan (Lea Seydoux) Skyfall saw a new and younger Q (Ben Whishaw) The End? Bond at the climatic end of Spectre before he drives off with Madeleine 'Enjoying death' - Bond starts 2015's Spectre in a mask at the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico Being fitted with a tracker by Q Daniel Craig takes a selfie with fans as he attends the German premiere of the new James Bond movie 'Spectre' Getty Images Naomie Harris and Daniel Craig ose during an event to launch the 24th James Bond film Spectre at Pinewood Studios at Iver Heath AFP/Getty Images Lea Seydoux, Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci attend the Royal Film Performance of 'Spectre' at Royal Albert Hall Getty Images With the mysterious with Severine (Berenice Marlohe) Bond went to his family home, Skyfall, in his bid to save M (Judi Dench) from Silva Daniel Craig and his wife Rachel Weisz attend "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" premiere in Madrid Getty Images Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz take a romantic walk hand-in-hand to lunch in 2012 at a Japanese restaurant in NYC Splash News Bond in shadow as he stalks his prey in the opening of Skyfall in 2012 Face to face with Skyfall's villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) Ready to pull the trigger with Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) watching in the background MGM Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions Fighting Patrice (Ola Rapace) on top of a moving train On the move in a motocycle chase scene Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig in 'Dream House (2011) Daniel Craig takes a bow during opening night curtain call for the broadway production of "A Steady Rain" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on 29 September 2009 in New York Getty Images Daniel Craig in Defiance (2009) On the hunt for the organisation responsible for Vesper's death in 2008's Quantum of Solace arriving with Camille at an airfield in Bolivia Bond with Camille (Olga Kurylenko) Fighting Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace final battle With Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) In the opening pre-title chase scene of Casino Royale (2006) Seducing Solange (Caterina Murino) in Casino Royale Battling Le Chiffre across the card table at Casino Royale With Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Venice near the end of Casino Royale Daniel Craig with Sienna Miller in 'Layer Cake' (2004) Daniel Craig in 'Layer Cake' (2004) Daniel Craig in 'Layer Cake' with Colm Meaney (2004) Daniel Craig during the photocall of his film 'Road to Perdition' at the 59th International Venice Film Festival in 2002 PA

The full interview is online at mrporter.com
J on Favreau has kicked off filming on the upcoming live action remake of The Lion King.

The director marked the occasion by teasing fans with a picture of himself and Donald Glover, who will play Simba.

He tweeted the picture to his two million followers alongside the caption: Simba returns!

It comes days after he appeared to tease a small cameo role from Taika Waititi after welcoming him to the Pridelands.

The Ragnorak director was so excited at being on set that he tweeted: I saw things today you humans wouldnt believe. Things so exciting that I peed a little. From my eyes.

The remake of the Disney classic features a stellar cast of stars including Seth Rogan as Pumba the warthog, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar and pop superstar Beyonce as the voice of Nala.

James Earl Jones, who played Mufasa in the animated original, will reprise the role.

Speaking about the film, Favreau  who directed the Jungle Book remake  said: It is a directors dream to assemble a talented team like this to bring this classic story to life.

Disneys Lion King was released in 1994 and went on to become one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, raking in $968.5 million worldwide.

It earned Sir Elton John the Original Song Oscar for Can You Feel the Love Tonight and Circle of Life.

Beyonce - In pictures 1 /105 Beyonce - In pictures Beyonce / Instagram Beyonce and Jay-Z, together for the first time in an ad campaign for Tiffany & Co., its fair to say there is a third star in the spots: a never-before-seen painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat in the jewelers signature robin egg blu Beyonce/Instagram Beyonce accepts the Best R&B Performance award for 'Black Parade' onstage during the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards CBS Singer Beyonce during The 59th GRAMMY Awards at STAPLES Center on February 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, California Christopher Polk/Getty Images Recording artists Beyonce, Jay Z and daughter Blue Ivy Carter attend the 60th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Madison Square Garden on January 28, 2018 in New York City. Getty Images for NARAS Destiny's Child performs live at 'Women Rock!: Girls & Guitars' at the Wiltern Theater, Los Angele Kevin Winter/Getty Images Beyonce Knowles performs onstage during 2018 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival Getty Images for Coachella Beyonce and Megan Thee Stallion accept the Best Rap Performance award for "Savage" onstage during the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards CBS Broadcasting, Inc./AFP via Getty Images Beyonce reacts after winning the entertainer of the year award at the 50th NAACP Image Awards. Reuters Beyonce and Blue Ivy Carter attend the NBA All-Star Game 2018 at Staples Center Getty Images Singer Beyonce during The 59th GRAMMY Awards at STAPLES Center on February 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images for NARAS Beyonce and the twins on instagram Beyonce Instagram Crazy in Love Beyonce's 'Crazy in Love' 2017 Beyonce poses in the press room during the 59th annual Grammy Awards ceremony at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, USA, 12 February 2017. Beyonce won the Best Urban Contemporary Album, 'Lemonade' and Best Music Video, 'Formation. Mike Nelson/EPA 2017 Hip Hop Artist Jay-Z and singer Beyonce during The 59th GRAMMY Awards at STAPLES Center on February 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, California Getty Images 2017 Beyonce shares images from an exclusive Grammy's after party held by her sister Solange Beyonce 2017 Beyonce shares images from an exclusive Grammy's after party held by her sister Solange Beyonce 2017 Beyonce shares images from an exclusive Grammy's after party held by her sister Solange Beyonce 2017 Beyonce shares images from an exclusive Grammy's after party held by her sister Solange Beyonce 2017 Beyonce 'I have 3 Hearts' posted images to her Vault Beyonce 2017 Twins: Beyonce and Jay Z will have two new additions to the family. @beyonce 2017 Beyonce 'I have 3 Hearts' posted images to her Vault Beyonce 2017 Beyonce 'I have 3 Hearts' posted images to her Vault Beyonce 2017 Beyonce 'I have 3 Hearts' posted images to her Vault Beyonce 2016 Singers Beyonce and Bruno Mars perform during the Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images 2016 Singer Beyonce performs onstage during TIDAL X: 1015 in New York Theo Wargo/Getty Image 2016 US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (C) shares the stage with Beyonce (L) and Jay Z (R) during the 'Get Out The Vote' concert at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, Ohio David Maxwell/EPA 2016 Beyonce and Blue Ivy attend the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2016 Beyonce dress up as Barbie and Ken for Holloween @beyonce 2016 Beyonce Knowles in her Lemonde music video 2016 The 50th Annual CMA Awards Disney ABC Television Group 2016 Beyonce attends the 'Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology' Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images 2016 Beyonce in concert on the 'Formation: World Tour' at Marlins Park, Miami, America Rex 2016 Beyonce and Jay Z attend Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors at Quicken Loans Arena Getty Images 2016 Beyonce Knowles performs during the Formation World Tour at Croke Park Stadium, Dublin Andrew White/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images 2016 Beyonce performs onstage during TIDAL X: 1015 Theo Wargo/Getty Images 2016 Beyonce Knowles and Chris Martin of Coldplay perform during the half-time show at the NFL's Super Bowl 50 between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos in Santa Clara, California Reuters 2015 Singers Beyonce Knowles and Ed Sheeran perform a medley during the taping of "Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key Of Life - An All-Star GRAMMY Salute" concert at Nokia theatre in Los Angeles Mario Anzuoni/Reuters 2015 Beyonce Knowles and her rapper husband Jay-Z attend the welterweight unification championship bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada Al Bello/Getty Images 2015 Jay Z (L) and Beyonce attend the "China: Through The Looking Glass" Costume Institute Benefit Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Getty Images 2015 Beyonce in see-through Givenchy gown, attends the "China: Through The Looking Glass" Costume Institute Benefit Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2015 Nicki Minaj and Beyonce perform onstage during TIDAL X: 1020 Amplified by HTC at Barclays Center of Brooklyn in New York Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images 2015 Beyonce arrives at TIDAL X: 1020 concert at the Barclays Center in New York Brendan McDermid/Reuters 2015 Beyonce Knowles in her Ivy Park fashion range Ivy Park 2015 Beyonce Knowles in her Ivy Park fashion range Ivy Park @beyonce 2014 Blue Ivy Carter, Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles onstage during the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum in Inglewood, California Mark Davis/Getty Images 2014 Beyonce performs at The BRIT Awards 2014 at 02 Arena, London Ian Gavan/Getty Images 2014 Beyonce poses in the press room during the 56th GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles Frazer Harrison/Getty Images 2013 Beyonce Knowles performs on stage during a concert in the Rock in Rio Festival, Brazil Buda Mendes/Getty Images 2013 Beyonce Knowles performing on the Virgin Media Stage during day one of the V Festival at Hylands Park in Chelmsford Yui Mok/PA 2013 Beyonce Knowles attends the Costume Institute Gala for the "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images 2013 Singers Adele and Beyonce attends the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles Christopher Polk/Getty Images 2013 Beyonce performs during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana Ezra Shaw/Getty Images 2013 Beyonce Knowles, winner Best Traditional R&B Performance, poses in the press room at the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles Jason Merritt/Getty Images 2013 Singers Kelly Rowland, Beyonce and Michelle Williams perform during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana Ezra Shaw/Getty Images 2013 Singer Beyonce performs during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show at the Mercedes-Benz Superdom Chris Graythen/Getty Images 2011 Beyonce performs on the main Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm, Pilton Matt Cardy/Getty Images 2010 Beyonce Knowles performs onstage during the 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Kevin Winter/Getty Images 2009 Beyonce performs at the Staples Center Kevin Winter/Getty Images 2009 Beyonce arrives at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel Frazer Harrison/Getty Images 2009 Beyonce Knowles performs during the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards held at the O2 Arena in Berlin Dave Benett 2009 Justin Timberlake shows off his cheeky side in a pair of high-heels and a black leotard in Beyonce's spin-off SNL music video SNL 2009 US President Barack Obama dances with his wife and First Lady Michelle Obama as Beyonce sings "At Last" during the first Inaugural Ball in Washington Win McNamee/Getty Images 2008 Singers Beyonce Knowles (L) and Tina Turner perform onstage during the 50th annual Grammy awards held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California Kevin Winter/Getty Images 2007 Beyonce Knowles arrives at the 64th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California Frazer Harrison/Getty Images 2007 Beyonce Knowles performs onstage during the 2007 BET Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los AngeleS Getty Images 2006 Destiny's Child (from L to R) Kelly Rowland, Beyonce Knowles, and Michelle Williams, sing national anthem at the 55th NBA All-Star Game in Houston, Texas John Gres/Reuters 2006 Rapper Jay-Z and singer Beyonce Knowles perform onstage at the 2006 BET Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California Getty Images 2006 As the rain pours down, members of Destiny's Child, Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams pose under a tent in front of their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Ric Francis/AP 2005 Members of Destiny's Child sing during their Live8 performance in Philadelphia Tim Shaffer/Reuters 2005 Destiny's Child singer Beyonce Knowles performs onstage at the 2005 World Music Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California Kevin Winter/Getty Images 2004 Singers Prince and Beyonce perform during the 46th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles Gary Hershorn/Reuters 2004 Beyonce Knowles poses backstage after winning 5 Grammys in the Pressroom at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images 2003 Beyonce Knowles performs on stage at the MTV Europe music awards in Edinburgh, Scotland Alastair Grant)/AP 2002 Mike Myers as Austin Powers with Beyonce Knowles as Foxxy Cleopatra in a scene from 'Goldmember' New Line Cinema 2002 Destiny's Child members Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, show off their awards backstage for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal for the song "Survivor" at the 44th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles Reed Saxon/AP 2001 Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams of the group Destiny's Child accept their award for "Favorite Soul/R&B Band, Group or Duo" at the 28th Annual American Music Awards in Los Angeles Vince Bucci/AFP 2000 Destiny's Child at 'The Source Hip Hop Music Awards 2000' at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles Kevin WinterGetty Images

The Lion King is slated for UK cinema release in July 2019
Countries & Areas

Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe
This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for:

Enter Search Term(s):

Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL.

Thank you for visiting state.gov.
Almost half of the Romanians believe that the European Union is heading the right direction, as they place much or very much trust in this institution, while even more of them perceive the activity of the MEPs in negative terms, shows a poll of the Centre for Urban and Regional Sociology (CURS).

As many as 47% of the respondents said the EU is heading the right direction, in their opinion, claims the poll's results sent to Agerpres on Thursday. Moreover, 35% of the respondents believe that the European Parliament is the most important decision-making factor at EU level, although they know less about the names and structure of parliamentary groups. "Notoriety and political orientation of political groups in the European Parliament are matters less known to the interviewed. PPE, S&D and ALDE are the most known political groups from the European Parliament, while the association of the political orientation for each group is mostly done depending on the respondent's own political orientation," reads a release of CURS referring to the results of the poll.

According to the research, the subjects to the poll do not perceive the MEPs in positive terms. Many of them (38%) believe that the MEPs are neglectful in respect to their duties or that they have a clerk's attitude (43%). "Moreover, 45% of the respondents said that in their opinion the activity of the Romanian MEPs is even less efficient than that of other MEPs," shows the poll.

The respondents wish that the MEPs would support more their countries' interests, 8 out of 10 such respondents saying that the MEPs' ideas should have more to do with the national interest of their country of origin. According to the poll, this dominant opinion is somehow influenced by the perception according to which the MEPs support more the interests of the political groups to which they are affiliated, as 2 out of 3 of such respondents stated.

Such results can also be explained by the lack of information with respect to the activity of the MEPs and the European Parliament that the respondents also accept is true. Thus, 7 out of 10 respondents believe that the mass media in Romania tells very little about the activity of the MEPs compared with the importance of the issues discussed in the European Parliament.

The Centre for Urban and Regional Sociology conducted an opinion poll over December 12-15 into the perception of the public opinion in respect to the activity of the MEPs. The opinion poll was conducted on a representative sample of 543 respondents, adults residing in Romania, aged over 18. The data were collected by using the CATI method (interviewing by phone). The maximum admitted error margin is +/-4% for a trust level of 95%.
The future of Madisons Air National Guard base was bolstered Thursday with the announcement that it will become home to a squadron of $100 million F-35 fighter jets.

The first of the 18 planes is scheduled to arrive at Truax Field on Madisons North Side early in 2023 after an environmental impact study that will include a public comment period as it examines everything from jet engine noise to air emissions to social and economic impacts.

Gov. Scott Walker said he looked forward to hearing the sound of freedom flying over the Madison area.

Local politicians and business leaders have been campaigning to win the high-tech aircraft as a way of securing jobs and other economic benefits.

I congratulate the dedicated men and women of the 115th Fighter Wing, said U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison. I have been proud to play a lead role within the Wisconsin Congressional delegation advocating for the 115th, and I am pleased that the Air Force has recognized the tremendous strategic, geographic and economic capabilities that Truax offers.

Baldwins Republican counterpart, Sen. Ron Johnson, of Oshkosh, said the jets would benefit all of southern Wisconsin.

I look forward to Wisconsin playing a major role as the Air Force modernizes and enhances its capabilities to keep America safe and secure, Johnson said.

Huge cost overruns plagued the F-35 program early on. As production picked up, the 2014 per-plane price of $108 million began dropping and hit $94 million recently, a Pentagon procurement office spokesman said Thursday. A year ago, when President-elect Donald Trump blasted the costs, independent analysts said when all costs were included the price tag was closer to $138 million.

Last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that 250 F-35s had been deployed with plans to triple the number before 2022, but the effort is plagued by problems including the aircrafts inability to meet performance standards in trials, and that shortages of spare parts kept planes grounded 22 percent of the time.

Training grounds

seen as advantage

The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and a support group for the base, Badger Air Community Council, raised money to push for Truax.

We are extremely proud and excited about todays announcement for the 1,200 airmen of the 115th Fighter Wing, as well as for Greater Madisons economy, chamber president Zach Brandon said.

Truax employs 445 men and women full time in addition to 700 Guard members who participate in periodic drills. The chamber has estimated the base delivers $100 million in annual economic impact. It also provides emergency services for the adjacent Dane County Regional Airport, and area colleges benefit because Guard members receive government tuition support, Brandon said.

Mayor Paul Soglin predicted the new aircraft will maintain Truaxs economic stability for decades.

Community support and Truaxs relatively short distance from the training range at Volk Field were important selling points, said Jeff Wiegand, recently retired commander of the 115th and Badger Air Community Council executive director.

The Air Force announced last year that the base was one of 18 Air National Guard locations being considered for the growing fleet of F-35 jets. The field was narrowed to five finalists in December 2016.

Truax now is home to F-16 jets that are among the oldest still in operation. Being selected as an F-35 site should help protect Truax when the military re-evaluates its needs. The base was scrutinized in 2005 during the last national base realignment process.

Louder or quieter

Air Force studies show F-35s can be louder or quieter than F-16s depending on flight paths, use of afterburners and other factors. The federally mandated environmental impact studies usually include detailed projections of how loud the F-35s will sound in various locations around an air field.

Madison residents, especially those on the East Side, have often complained about the roar of commercial and military jets. The county airport and the Air National Guard have said they take steps to minimize noise.

The governor said he didnt expect F-35s to produce substantially more or louder noise around Truax Field.

As someone who lives in earshot of this, Ive got to tell you, its not that frequent, Walker said. The Executive Residence in Maple Bluff is about 7 miles southwest of Truax.

Walker also said the fighter jets and $20 million in federal dollars to upgrade the base would be like pouring jet fuel on the Madison-area economy.

Walker said no taxpayer money was offered to persuade the Air Force, and he would not say how much money was spent lobbying. He said the lobbying was largely done by the states federal delegation.

The Chamber of Commerce contracted with two advisers with military expertise in Washington, D.C., and raised $100,000 for its efforts to bring the fighters to Madison in conjunction with the Badger Air Community Council.

The Air Force on Thursday announced another new F-35 site, Dannelly Field in Montgomery, Alabama.

Putting F-35s at these two Air National Guard bases continues our transition into the next generation of air superiority, said Air Force Chief of Staff David L. Goldfein.

The other three bases announced in December 2016  Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho; Jacksonville Air National Guard Base in Florida; and Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Detroit  are considered reasonable alternatives to Truax and Dannelly.

State Journal reporter Molly Beck contributed to this report.
Prime Minister Mihai Tudose pointed out at Parliament on Thursday that he drew up a personal point of view when he referred to the fact that he doesn't support the draft law on the Royal House legal status, arguing that Elisabeta Palce should return to the administration and property of the Romanian state after King Mihai's death.

"I made a statement in a personal capacity, I believe that that Palace [Elisabeta Palace], in a personal capacity, I reiterate, should return to the Romanian state, as the Royal House has estates returned by the state," Mihai Tudose said, in reply to the journalists at the Parliament Palace when exiting the joint plenary session of the two Chambers, where he attended the solemn meeting devoted to the celebration of 28 years since the 1989 Revolution.

On the same topic, Chamber of Deputies Speaker Liviu Dragnea, who was next to Mihai Tudose, said: "Tomorrow [on Friday] we have a coalition meeting, we'll discuss it tomorrow." The coalition meeting would take place at Parliament around 11:00. The draft on regulating the legal status of the Royal House was filed with Parliament by Senate President Calin Popescu Tariceanu and Chamber of Deputies Speaker Liviu Dragnea, on November 7.

Prime Minister Mihai Tudose on Thursday said that he doesn't support the draft law on the Royal House legal status, arguing that Elisabeta Palace should return to the administration and property of the state after the death of King Mihai.

Agerpres.
Prime Minister Mihai Tudose on Thursday sent a message on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the Romanian Anti-communist Revolution of 1989, voicing his deep respect for the Romanians who paid with their own life in December 1989 for the country's liberty and democracy.

"My homage and deep respect for the Romanians who paid with their own lives in December 1989 for liberty and democracy. Their courage and faith are values that make us responsible and inspire us," Tudose wrote on his Facebook page.

According to the head of the Executive, we have the duty to honor their memory "by respecting and promoting the principles for which they fought."

Agerpres.
In late 2017 the African nation of Niger gave American and French UAVs operating in or over Niger permission to carry use Hellfire missiles and other guided weapons inside Niger. For the most part this means U.S. and French MQ-9 Reaper UAVs operating from existing bases in Niger, Mali and Djibouti. France also operates manned combat aircraft from bases in Mali. EU peacekeepers also operate armed UAVs and helicopters in northern Mali. There are about 800 U.S. troops in neighboring Niger, most of them maintaining the aerial surveillance UAVs and other aircraft and helping train Niger troops. In early October four American Special Forces soldiers were killed when the training exercise (a large patrol) they were supervising clashed with Islamic terrorists operating near the Mali border. Four of the Niger troops were killed as well and even more American and Niger troops were wounded. This led Niger to allow armed UAVs to operate in Niger. In the past there had not been many situations calling for rapid response by armed aircraft. The early October incident made it clear the situation had changed. Before October it was possible to get foreign aircraft to come and carry out an air strike but the process took time. The Niger and American troops in October were not expecting to encounter such a large force of Islamic terrorists and have armed UAVs on call would have made a big difference.

This problem is largely the result of the success of French counter-terror operations in Mali and the defeat of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In both cases many of the surviving Islamic terrorists fled to Niger. This has been going on for some time and Niger has responded by allowing in more and more foreign assistance.

A year ago construction began on a new U.S. AFRICOM (Africa Command) base in Agadez, Niger, 730 kilometers northeast of the capital (Niamey). The U.S. had received permission for such a base in 2014, a year after American UAVs began operating from a Niger base next to the Niamey airport. The new Agadez base is built largely from scratch because, unlike Niamey, Agadez does not have a large airport or much in the way of support for lots of aircraft operations. Agadez is closer to Chad, southern Libya and Nigeria, where American aerial surveillance is more in demand by the local governments. The U.S. shares intelligence obtained by the Niger-based UAVs with Niger and other nations in the area that have intelligence sharing agreements as well as with France, which leads the counter-terrorism effort in the region.

Since 2013 France has operated a counter-terrorism operation effort throughout the Sahel (the semi-desert area south of the desert that stretches across northern Africa) using about 4,000 French troops based mainly in Mali. About the same time work began on the Agadez base France and other European nations helped form the G5 Sahel Joint Force consisting of 5,000 troops from Sahel nations Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. The G5 force is mainly concerned with Islamic terror groups in the Sahel.

The idea for the G5 force has been around since 2015 but it was only by the end of 2016 that the countries involved agreed on the details. This included who would provide what in terms of the 5,000 soldiers and police needed and where they would be based. The G5 force will be stationed in three operational areas along with troops familiar with local conditions. Thus Sahel East would consist of troops from Chad and Niger. Sahel Central would be staffed by troops from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso while Sahel West would mainly use troops from Mali and Mauritania. Parts of the G5 force will be operational by the end of 2017. That would enable France to shrink and eventually disband the force of 4,000 French troops it has deployed in the Sahel since 2013 and reduce the 13,000 strong UN peacekeeper force in Mali. The recent attack on American Special Forces troops in Niger was related to building the G5 Force.

Agadez is the second American airbase in Africa and, like the first one, shared with France and other allies. The first U.S. base was established in 2002 when the United States began sharing an old French base in Djibouti (the northwestern neighbor of Somalia). Since then Djibouti has hosted the one official U.S. military base (Camp Lemonnier) in Africa. France and the United States SOCOM (Special Operations Command) have had special operations forces (commandos and special aircraft) outside the Djibouti capital since 2002. In 2014 the U.S. signed another ten year lease for that base. At that point U.S. forces in Djibouti were monitoring what was going on in the region (mainly Somalia and Yemen but also Eritrea, Nigeria, Mali, Libya, Kenya, and Ethiopia) not at interfering with the local terrorists. Not much, anyway. The Djibouti base also supported operations throughout the Sahel and did this with a dozen or so MQ-9s plus manned aircraft like the U-28, F-15Es and various maritime surveillance aircraft in addition to a growing number of other foreign aircraft.

Since 2007 the United States has created and expanded AFRICOM to manage all the increasingly numerous American military operations in Africa. Since most of these operations involved special operations forces rather than conventional military forces AFRICOM released little detail on what was where. But in the last few years more of these details have emerged. As suspected most of the fifty or so AFRICOM bases are temporary agreements to use existing civilian or military airbases or other facilities in African nations, usually ones where AFRICOM is providing assistance in dealing with Islamic terrorist activity or other security threats. Most of these facilities are considered temporary or contingent (there are arrangements to use an airbase or port facility if needed and on short notice). The permanent operations are bases or FOS (Forward Operating Sites) while the temporary sites are CSLs (cooperative security locations) where American and local forces operate together or CLs (contingency locations) where arrangements have been made for use if needed. About half the AFRICOM sites are CLs and not used by Americans on a regular basis.

AFRICOM is similar in organization to other commands (CENTCOM, for the Middle East, and SOUTHCOM, for Latin America, etc). Before AFRICOM was created those operations were coordinated between two other commands (the one covering Europe and the one covering Latin America). The establishment of AFRICOM means more money for counter-terror operations in Africa and more long range projects. No country in Africa had sufficient infrastructure for AFRICOM headquarters and few wanted to risk the political blowback from hosting a major American military headquarters.
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - The Honorable Mr. Santa Claus, Commanding Officer of Holiday Cheer, NORTHPOLECOM, conducts basic swim qualification at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Dec. 19, 2017. Basic water survival is a training requirement for Claus and all operational reindeer to pass every two years to maintain their water survival skills. The purposes of this training was to ensure the NORTHPOLECOM Logistics team was prepared for their upcoming night operations on Christmas Eve. Photo By: Gunnery Sgt. Evan Ahlin

X

0 20

Help Keep Us Soaring





We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling. We need your help in reversing that trend. We would like to add 20 new subscribers this month.

Each month we count on your subscriptions or contributions. You can support us in the following ways:
In the Kurdish north popular opposition to the corruption and mismanagement of the two Kurdish ruling parties has led to days of rioting and protests. This was not unexpected. Government salaries have not been paid for two months because of the September referendum on Kurdish independence. This rash act and the resulting disorder has the federal government threatening to send Arab troops in to restore order and end nearly three decades of Kurdish autonomy. This would be a tragic loss for Iraq as the Kurds, despite their current unrest, have had less corrupt and more effective government than the rest of Iraq since 1991. Because of that ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and Islamic terrorists in general have been less effective. The Kurds are also very effective at resisting Iranian subterfuge. All that is easily forgotten by the Iraqi Arabs who see the Kurds as an alien presence even though the Kurds are Sunnis and have lived in the area for thousands of years.

This autonomy began during the aftermath of the 1991 war to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. American and British special operations troops in northern Iraq helped train and organize the Kurds who, to the surprise of many, were able to drive out the Iraqi government forces and keep them out ever since. The Kurds had some incentive as Saddam Hussein had been particularly brutal in the 1980s, even using chemical weapons (including nerve gas) against Iraqi Kurds.

In effect, since the early 1990s the Iraqi Kurds up there have been largely autonomous. But they were not united. The main division was between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, which is led by the Talibani clan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which is dominated by the Barzani clan. The Turks, Iraqis and Iranians frequently exploit the PUK-KDP rivalry to keep the autonomous Iraqi Kurds weak. That seems to be a factor in the current situation . A lthough the Kurds are the most effective Iraqi fighters there continue to be internal disagreements within the Kurdish community . It was local politics that led to the September referendum on independence. Kurdish popular sentiment strongly favors an independent Kurdistan and the current Kurdish leadership openly promises a vote on independence in a few years. But this made no sense as none of the major powers (Turkey, Iran, and the United States) were willing or able to back such a move. The referendum gave the Iraqi government the popular support it needed to halt financial aid for Kurds and send in troops to settle a festering dispute over who should control Kirkuk province.

Despite the importance of maintaining unity, the Iraqi Kurds continue to squabble. This continues despite the two parties agreeing to unify in 2006. At first that appeared to work. But with more foreign aid coming in the PUK accused the KDP (which holds most top leadership positions) of taking more than their share. To make this worse Iran began offering direct aid to PUK and, according to the KDP and many in the PUK, trying to divide the Iraqi Kurds.

In effect the major threat to Kurdish autonomy was Kurdish political disputes. Despite that since the early 1990s Iraqi Kurdistan has maintained its autonomy and become far more stable and prosperous than the rest of the country. This encouraged Kurds because they saw themselves better able to run their own state than Arabs or Iranians.

Then came the 2003 U.S.-British invasion of Iraq and the establishment of a democracy throughout Iraq. That process was delayed for several years by a Sunni Arab Islamic terror campaign against the Shia Arab majority. By 2007 that was defeated, in part because the Kurds had some of the most capable military forces of any of the factions in Iraq, and that included the government. In 2006, when the factions agreed to unite the PUK had some 40,000 militiamen, and the KDP nearly 60,000. In addition, between them the two groups have about 50,000 reservists as well. Most of the militiamen were (and still are) armed and trained as motorized light infantry, and organized into brigades of 5,000-8,000. Several "armored" brigades were formed, equipped with Russian tanks, APCs, and artillery. There is also a small, but effective artillery force. In addition to these forces, there were an estimated 15,000-20,000 Kurds in the Iraqi Army or National Police, and a further 10,000 or so working for private security organizations. But the KDP and the Barzarni clan is largely to blame for the current mess because they misused their power and resisted growing calls to address corruption problems. If Iraqi Kurdish autonomy is lost it will be on the Barzanis and many Barzanis will refuse to admit it and the feuds will continue.

The Iranian Threat

Iranians and Iraqis are quietly fighting for control of the PMF (Popular Mobilization Force) militias after organized because the Iraqi army fell apart in the face of the ISIL advance that took Mosul and about a third of Iraq in a few months. Three years later, with ISIL defeated, there are over 120,000 PMF militiamen on the government payroll, most of them organized by Shia leaders and most of them accepting assistance (and direction) from Iran. The PMF accounts for nearly half the strength of the military and even if you include the Interior Ministry force (National Police and several thousand SWAT and special operations personnel) the PMF accounts for a quarter of the armed personnel the government pays for and, in theory, controls.

This development bothers a lot of Iraqis and has done so since 2015 when it was noted that there were already about 100,000 of these largely Shia militia. In late 2016 parliament passed (after much Iranian pressure) a law making the PMF a part of the armed forces. At that point the PMF militiamen were already on the government payroll (for about $500 a month). In late 2016 some (usually pro-Iran) militia leaders were demanding a share of the military budget and enough money (nearly half a billion dollars to start with) to build their own bases. That did not happen and it reminded all Iraqis what the Iranians were up to. The signs were already there.

The 2016 laws providing pay and other benefits for the PMF also included rules making it mandatory that non-Shia militia be included if they were of proven loyalty. There were plenty of those and by the end of 2016 about a quarter of the PMF were Sunnis. A smaller number were Turkmen, Christian and other minorities ISIL wanted to wipe out. More than half the militias were always Shia. Much publicity was given to instances where Shia militias massacred Sunni civilians and the use of many Iranian trainers and military advisors by some (at one point most) of the Shia militias and the Iran connection in general.

But most of the PMF just concentrated on defeating ISIL. Now that ISIL is defeated many PMF members and leaders believe some, or all, of the PMF units should be retained because the PMF is less corrupt and more experienced at fighting Islamic terrorism. But some Iraqi, and many foreign, observers note that the longer the PMF exists as a government supported militia the more likely corruption is to become a major problem and the experience dealing with Islamic terrorism will fade. What is needed is less corruption in the government and more professionalism in the military. The big appeal of the PMF to its current members is not religion or ideology but the payroll. Most of the PMF men were poor Shia from urban areas (Baghdad and down to Basra). The PMF was a job and commanders found that the threat of dismissal was an additional incentive for the PMF gunmen to do well.

Although the Shia Arabs feel an affinity with Shia Iran, the ancient (we're talking thousands of years here) Arab fear of the Iranians makes it possible for Shia and Sunni Arabs to make deals. And that's what Saudi Arabia, and the other Sunni Arab Gulf States, are doing with Iraq. Saudi Arabia sees Iran as the neighborhood bully, and Iraq as an Arab, not an Iranian, asset. Part of this came about because of the pro-Iran PMF militias in Iraq. By 2016 most Shia Arab politicians in Iraq tended to feel they are expendable to the Iranians, who are, quite naturally, more concerned with taking care of Iran, than Iraq, in all of this. Blood is thicker than religion.

The Iraqi Shia Arabs dont want to be dominated by non-Arab Iran (where Arabs are openly despised, especially the few percent of Iranians who are Arab) but also dont want to be dominated by their Sunni Arab neighbors and especially not by their own Sunni Arab minority (which created ISIL and has been a major supporter of Islamic terrorism since 2003).

There are constant reminders of the Iranian threat, which is considered equal, or even worse than the Sunni Arab Islamic terrorism attacks on Shia. For example in September 2017 a leader of one of the PMF Shia militias went public with his belief that his men would start killing American troops once ISIL was no longer a threat in Iraq. That was not a surprise to many Iraqi Shia. In August 2017 senior Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr called on the Iraqi government to dismantle the Iran backed Shia militias and incorporate loyal (to Iraq) members into the armed forces. The Iraqi prime minister (a Shia), wants to dismantle these Iran backed Shia Arab militias with more care and take more time doing it.

The cause of all this fear is largely because Iran has sent hundreds of IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) officers, most of them from the Quds Force (similar to the U.S. Special Forces, but which specializes in supporting Islamic terrorists not fighting them) and even more enlisted IRGC personnel to Iraq to train and advise these militias. Dozens of senior IRGC officers have been killed in Syria and Iraq since 2012. These IRGC personnel are seen by most Iraqis as hostile foreign agents but they did play a major role in turning these Shia militias into militarily useful organizations.

That effectiveness is now part of the problem and since ISIL was defeated (even before Mosul fell) the number of Shia religious and militia leaders who openly supported Iran was declining. More Iraqi Shia are doubting Iranian intentions towards Iraq and believe Iran ultimately wants to control the Iraq government or even partition Iraq and annex the largely Shia (and oil rich) south. At the same time Iranian efforts to discourage Iraqi Kurds from obtaining more autonomy are unwelcome with many Arab Iraqis who see this as another example of Iran treating Iraq like a subordinate, not an ally.

There are still over a thousand Iranians providing training, advisory and support assistance to the PMF Shia militias. The Iraqi government fears that these IRGC advisors and trainers are secretly building pro-Iran armed militias in Iraq. Thats simply not true because the IRGC is quite open about what they are doing to encourage Iraqi Shia to organize armed groups so they can work with Iran someday to impose the same kind of religious dictatorship in Iraq that has existed in Iran since the 1980s. That is equally unlikely (because of popular opposition inside Iraq) but the Iranians tend to think long-term.

December 19, 2017: In the west (Anbar Province) Iraqi EOD (Explosives Ordnance Disposal) teams and some foreign mine clearing personnel have, over the last two years, found and disposed of more than 38,000 pieces of ISIL ammunition, including those used for mines and roadside bombs. It was in 2015 that ISIL was first driven from parts of Anbar. It soon became clear that ISIL would always leave lots of explosive surprises behind. The U.S. has been training Iraqis for this EOD work since 2004 and after that Iraq had its own school that has been turning out a growing number of very effective EOD technicians. These men are essential if there is to be a rapid and sustained advance into ISIL held territory or urban areas ISIL has held for a while.

December 18, 2017: The government revealed that the security forces (army, police and militias) suffered some 35,000 dead and about as many badly wounded in the three years of fighting ISIL in Iraq. Foreign forces, mainly American, lost about fifty dead in the same period. The government is still trying to get a total count of civilian losses. This is difficult because ISIL did not publicize many of its mass killings and quietly put the bodies in mass graves. Many of these may not be found for years. Then there was the widespread use of civilians as human shields. That rarely worked during the last year of fighting as it became clear that the sooner ISIL was defeated the fewer overall deaths there would be. As high as the security forces losses were there were more civilians killed and ISIL losses were over 20,000 dead in Iraq, but many of those were foreigners.

There are still a few hundred ISIL fighters left in Anbar, mostly along the Syrian border. For the last month troops have been visiting hundreds of villages and remote farms in Anbar and further north (around Mosul) seeking ISIL gunmen. Many rural civilians fled and there are plenty of places diehard ISIL fighters could try to use as hideouts. This has led to several hundred ISIL dead and fewer losses among civilians and security forces (some of them from ISIL explosive devices). Losses are still being suffered in Mosul where ISIL left men (and women) behind with orders to try and establish terrorist cells. These Islamic terrorists had knowledge of hidden arms caches and will often be discovered using them to obtain arms or ammo. Most of the casualties in Mosul are from the many explosive devices ISIL left behind.

December 15, 2017: The top Iranian religious leader declared that the Iran backed PMF militias must follow the orders of the Iraqi government. At the same time the Iranian cleric declared that the PMF militias should not be disbanded. Many Iraqis, including most Shia, apparently want the PMF disbanded and the PMF militias not controlled by Iranian advisors (Quds Force officers) are disbanding.

December 14, 2017: ISIL snipers have become a persistent problem in several villages in Salahuddin province (north of Anbar and northwest of Baghdad) and adjacent Diyala province (northeast of Baghdad and bordering Iran). Both of these provinces have large Sunni Arab populations and have seen occasional combat between ISIL and Iraqi forces since 2016. With the collapse of ISIL control in Mosul and surrounding areas by mid-2017 many ISIL fled to the countryside and apparently remained there. It has been difficult to get out of the country and any ISIL gunmen operating in large (over a dozen armed men) groups tends to get noticed and attacked. But smaller groups, in some cases individuals, have evaded capture or death by travelling light. That means they have little opportunity to use bombs but have found that frequent sniping, even with an AK-47 (which can be pretty accurate in single shot mode when used by a marksman) can disrupt travel and economic life in an area. This is not a widespread problem but the news gets around and makes the rural population in both provinces anxious.

December 11, 2017: Senior Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr ordered the PMF militias loyal to him (about 10-20 percent of the total) to begin disarming and urged the government to provide government jobs (civil service or military) for the demobilized PMF men.

December 10, 2017: Iraq officially celebrated the defeat of ISIL in Iraq. For the Kurds there was less to celebrate, as was obvious on the 9th when the prime minister named the units most active in defeating ISIL and didnt mention the Kurds. This caused an uproar even among many Shia and Sunni Arabs who remembered that the Kurds not only stopped the ISIL advance in 2014 but were key in the effort to retake Mosul and the rest of ISIL occupied northern Iraq. The prime minister corrected his list by the time the official parades and other celebrations were underway. Another bit of bad news was the U.S. belief that there are still 500-1,000 ISIL members active in Iraq. Because of that threat plus a growing Iranian presence most Iraqis are fine with most of the 5,300 American troops now in Iraq remaining.

December 3, 2017: General Qassem Soleimani was proclaimed (via Iranian TV) the best Iranian armed forces commander during the last year. Soleimani commands the IRGC Quds Force and has been regularly praised as responsible for victories in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Soleimani is seen as some sort of master of mayhem and an ideal Iranian hero. The United States and many other nations consider Soleimani an international terrorist. To that end the head of the CIA recently warned Soleimani that he and his Quds Force associates would be held personally responsible if the Iran backed forces in Iraq or Syria attacked American troops. Soleimani had recently said that would happen if American troops did not leave Iraq and Syria. Most Iraqis want the Americans to stay until the Iranian threat is diminished.

November 28, 2017: In the north (Saladin Province, some 200 kilometers north of Baghdad) an American airstrike killed a known courier for senior ISIL leaders. Apparently the courier had information that led to an airstrike on December 1st just across the border in Syria (near the Euphrates River) that killed ISIL senior leader Abu Faisal and his deputy Abu Qudama. The U.S. confirmed these three deaths on December 20th.

November 27, 2017: In the north, near the Turkish border, Turkish F-16s carried out several airstrikes against at least two PKK (Turkish Kurdish separatists) hideouts leaving about 80 PKK fighters dead and a lot of PKK ammo and other explosive materials exploding in a spectacular fashion. The Iraqi government and local Kurds tolerate these Turkish airstrikes as long as they concentrate on PKK personnel hiding out in remote areas near the border. The Turks regularly launch airstrikes on PKK camps or concentrations they have identified in northern Iraq.
TICKERS: LIO; LOMLF

Source: Streetwise Reports (12/21/17)

Mike Niehuser, an analyst with Scarsdale Equities, provided background on an asset believed to be an "advanced exploration target."



In a Dec. 1 research note, Niehuser reported that of the 11 exploration targets in its recently acquired Navilawa Special Prospecting License area in Fiji, Lion One Metals Limited (LIO:TSX.V) decided to explore Banana Creek first. "Based on the amount of historic exploration activity with various exploration methods completed, we believe Banana Creek to be an advanced exploration target," he noted.

Accessibly located within the Navilawa caldera, 3 kilometers northeast of the company's Tuvatu project, Banana Creek "appears to contain both gold and base metal mineralization similar to Tuvatu's HT corridor," Niehuser wrote. Banana Creek could provide ore to the mill proposed for Tuvatu.

Niehuser provided a summary of the historic work done at Banana Creek but noted it was completed without "security, laboratory and assay methods necessary to be relied upon for resource calculation or investment purposes."

Past geophysical surveys showed a zone of hydrothermal alteration, and soil samples revealed an area of anomaly. Of the 800 rock chip samples taken, 114 reported over 1 gram per ton (1 g/t) gold. Fourteen of them indicated 10 g/t or higher gold, the highest being 46.3 g/t. From the 531 meters (531m) of diamond drilling that were done at Banana Creek, hole BCDH4 intersected 19.5 grams g/t gold over 0.4m at a depth of 32m.

Niehuser reiterated Scarsdale Equities' Buy rating and CA$1.40 per share target price on Lion One Metals, whose stock is currently trading at around CA$0.57 per share.

Want to read more Gold Report articles like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent articles and interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Streetwise Interviews page.

Disclosure:

1) Doresa Banning compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise reports as an independent contractor. She or members of her household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Lion One Metals Ltd. 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.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article.

Additional disclosures about the sources cited in this article
Fresh from defending itself over claims that social networks are destroying society, Facebook has become embroiled in yet another controversy. This time, it's been revealed that the company has allowed advertisers to exclude certain age groups from job ads placed on the platform---a practice Facebook doesn't seem to have a problem with.

A joint investigation from ProPublica and The New York Times shows that Facebook has enabled companies such as Amazon, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, and Target to place "recruitment ads limited to particular age groups." A recent Verizon ad, for example, only appeared on the Facebook feeds of users aged 25 to 36 years of age.

Facebook admits that its ad system needs work, and even cites a previous ProPublica report showing how companies could target their ads toward anti-Semites. But according to Facebook's vice president of ads, Rob Goldman, there's nothing to apologize for in this instance.

In a statement titled "This time, ProPublica, we disagree," Goldman wrote: "We know we have more work to do --- as previous investigations by ProPublica have shown. And we're investing heavily in more people and better technology so that we constantly improve over time."

"But in this case we disagree with ProPublica. Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work."

He goes on to say that Facebook tailors its employment ads by audience and showing certain ads to different age groups on the platform may not in itself be discriminatory.

The company has also argued in court filings that the Communications Decency Act's Section 230 law, which protects websites from being held liable for what users post, applies to these job ads.

However, experts say Facebook may be violating the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 with its actions. This prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment.

While some companies, including Target, State Farm and UPS, defended their targeted ads, others such as Amazon, Northwestern Mutual and the New York City Department of Education said they had changed or were changing their recruitment strategies.

Mark Zuckerberg did once say that if you're 30 or over, successful companies should not employ you. But now that he's 33, the Facebook CEO seems to have softened his stance on the matter.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday that his country has the highest economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the sanctions imposed against it. | Read More
New For 2018 - Mazda MX-5 Miata With Variety Of Top Colors To Match Cuffs

The 2018 Mazda MX-5 Miata soft top offers a variety of new color choices, with an available Dark Cherry soft top; Auburn Nappa leather interior; and Soul Red Crystal and Machine Gray Metallic premium exterior paint options

MX-5 Club with Brembo/BBS Package adds heated, black, leather-trimmed seats

Heated, RECARO sport seats headline new Brembo/BBS RECARO Package

MAZDA CONNECT TM infotainment system standard on MX-5 Sport

infotainment system standard on MX-5 Sport 2018 MX-5 soft top goes on sale nationwide beginning January 2018 with a starting MSRP[1] of $25,295

IRVINE, Calif. (December 20, 2017)  In the spirit of the holiday season, Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) today announced design, functional and performance updates to the 2018 Mazda MX-5 soft top models, furthering MX-5s mission to provide one of the best-driving cars in the world regardless of price point.

For 2018, customers will have the option to choose between a new Dark Cherry or Black soft top. Additionally, an Auburn-colored interior and Nappa leather seating surfaces are available in MX-5 Grand Touring models, which was previously only offered in the MX-5 RF Launch Edition.

While MX-5 is already known for its handling prowess, the soft tops rear suspension and power steering have been retuned to provide an even more surefooted ride. These improvements also help suppress unwanted cabin noise.

As in the past, theres an MX-5 for every kind of customer with three trim levels available. The entry-level MX-5 Sport represents the purest distillation of the MX-5 formula, while MX-5 Club is harder-edged, and MX-5 Grand Touring represents the most sophisticated option.

For 2018, MX-5 Sport adds a newly standard MAZDA CONNECTTM infotainment system with 7-inch full-color touchscreen display, multi-function Commander and HD Radio connectivity. Additional features in the MX-5 Sport include LED headlights and tail lights, cloth bucket seats, leather-wrapped shift knob and handbrake, Bluetooth phone pairing and audio streaming, dual cupholders and one USB port to interface with the audio system. Mazda Advanced Keyless Entry is also newly standard on all models, as it was previously an option on manual-transmission-equipped models.

MX-5 Club introduces newly heated cloth seats with red stitching, and it also comes standard with 17-inch dark gunmetal aluminum alloy wheels, a BOSE 9-speaker Premium audio system, including driver and passenger headrest speakers. MX-5 Clubs upgrades over MX-5 Sport include two USB ports and Blind Spot Monitoring with Rear Cross-Traffic Alert. Models equipped with the six-speed SKYACTIV-MT manual transmission feature Bilstein shocks, a limited-slip differential and a shock tower brace.

Available for MX-5 Club models is the Brembo/BBS Package, which now includes heated, black leather-trimmed seats, replacing the standard cloth seats. The features aerodynamic side still extensions, a rear bumper skirt, forged 17-inch BBS wheels and front Brembo brakes that provide greater heat tolerances in heavy braking. The new model year also ushers in the new Brembo/BBS RECARO Package that builds on the Brembo/BBS Package and substitutes the leather-trimmed seats for heated, RECARO sport seats.

MX-5 Grand Touring comes standard with heated, leather-trimmed seats, automatic climate control, automatic on/off headlights, High Beam Control with Adaptive Front-lighting System, Lane Departure Warning, auto-dimming rearview mirror, navigation, rain-sensing windshield wipers and additional sound absorption material in its cloth headliner, among a much longer list of creature-comfort features.

In addition to the Dark Cherry soft top and Auburn Nappa leather interior options, the 2018 MX-5 offers the newly available paint colors Eternal Blue Mica, Snowflake White Pearl Mica and Soul Red Crystal. Machine Gray Metallic, which was previously only available on MX-5 RF retractable fastback models, also joins the color palette. All MX-5 models sold in the U.S. come with a quick-revving, 2.0-liter SKYACTIV-G engine that delivers 155 horsepower. Power is routed to the rear wheels via a six-speed SKYACTIV-MT manual transmission or an available six-speed automatic with paddle shifters.

MSRP[2] for MX-5 soft top models is as follows:

6-Speed Manual Transmission 6-Speed Automatic Transmission MX-5 Sport $25,295 $26,645 MX-5 Club $29,155 $29,755  Club Brembo/BBS Package (6MT Only) $3,770  Club Brembo/BBS RECARO Package (6MT Only) $4,470 MX-5 Grand Touring $30,195 $31,270

Premium interior color (MX-5 Grand Touring only):

Auburn Nappa Leather $300

Premium paint colors:

Soul Red Crystal $595 Machine Gray Metallic $300 Snowflake White Pearl Mica $200

The 2018 MX-5 soft top begins arriving at dealerships at the end of December and will be available nationwide in January. Pricing and packaging information for the 2018 Mazda MX-5 RF will be announced at a later date.

Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, California, and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through nearly 600 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City.
McKayla Maroney. Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

In a new lawsuit filed today, gymnast McKayla Maroney, one of the young women who has accused former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse, alleges that she was forced to signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of a $1.25 million settlement with USA Gymnastics in 2016.

Maroneys lawsuit names the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, and Michigan State University, accusing those entities of negligence and sexual harassment.

In the suit, Maroney claims that she was forced to agree to a non-disparagement clause and confidentiality provision, and if she talked about her abuse or settlement, she would have to pay $100,000. But the new lawsuit claims that this NDA is illegal, and asks the court to nullify this clause.

I want people to understand that this kid had no choice. She couldnt function. She couldnt work, Maroneys lawyer, John Manly, told ESPN. They [USA Gymnastics] were willing to sacrifice the health and well-being of one of the most famous gymnasts in the world because they didnt want the world to know they were protecting a pedophile doctor.

More than 140 young women have accused Nassar of sexual abuse when he was the USA team doctor. He has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for possessing child pornography and he is still awaiting sentencing on sexual-abuse charges.

This news comes as victims and witnesses of sexual harassment are openly discussing how nondisclosure agreements can frequently prevent women from coming forward to report sexual violence.

Mark Jones, a spokesperson for the U.S. Olympic Committee, told The Wall Street Journal that they heard of allegations against a USA Gymnastics team doctor in 2015, but were not aware of a settlement. At that time USA Gymnastics indicated that they were in the process of contacting the appropriate law enforcement agencies. We are heartbroken that this abuse occurred, proud of the brave victims that have come forward and grateful that our criminal justice system has ensured that Nassar will never be able to harm another young woman.

USA Gymnastics and Michigan State have not responded to requests for comment.
At the invitation of New York, eight women who told the world about the sexual violations against them gathered together for the first time in mid-December to talk about the aftermath. Two of the women, Rachel Crooks and Jessica Leeds, say that the now-president made unwanted advances. (Crooks was a receptionist at Trump Tower, and says that in 2005 Trump repeatedly kissed her on the cheeks, and then the lips, while gushing about how she should be a model; Leeds says Trump, who was seated next to her on a plane, tried to put his hand up her skirt and grabbed her breast.) Three women, Mimi Haleyi, Dominique Huett, and Rose McGowan, say that Harvey Weinstein forced himself on them. Rebecca Corry, a comedian, says Louis C.K. asked her if he could masturbate in front of her. Suki Kim and Kristen Meizner say that the public-radio host John Hockenberry sexually harassed them. The womens experiences vary, but as McGowan made clear with her opening question to the group  Whats your level of fury?  they deeply identify with one anothers ongoing struggle and commitment to force change.

Rebecca Corry: What has infuriated me  it can literally get me hot-faced and a sweat mustache within two seconds  is when I think about all of the people who 100 percent knew that Louis C.K. was doing this the whole time, yet [even now] theyre so far up his ass they cant admit it. Im not saying that people need to denounce his talent, or denounce their friendship. What they need to do is acknowledge what he did and say that it is wrong. To ignore it is to condone it. All the late-night talk-show hosts, I dont believe one of them has done a single joke about what he did or even mention his name, not one! But theyll go after Lauer, theyll go after Trump, theyll go after Weinstein.

Jessica Leeds: But just being angry is not enough. It was okay for a little while, but where do we do from here?

McGowan: I disagree with that. I think anger, righteous anger, propels. If you look at Act Up, the AIDS activists, they had righteous anger. The civil-rights movement, that was very earned anger. And this is earned anger. A lot of women are really scared of showing it  when have you ever seen it on TV or in movies? Only if the mans cheating or something like that, right?

Rachel Crooks: I felt so many emotions the past year, but I finally felt anger when the #MeToo movement came up and all these other men were brought down. What happened to Trump?

Mimi Haleyi: I suppose Hollywood doesnt need Harvey Weinstein quite as much as Republicans need Trump in the White House, so hes getting away with more. I like to think he wont be exempt, that its just taking a little longer.

Leeds: Im not surprised Trump has escaped any consequences from the sexual-assault stories  there were so many other things he said that should have had consequences during the election. The Mueller investigation is the only hope of calling him to task.

Crooks: If Democrats win substantially in 2018, this could result in finally holding him accountable.

Corry: The justification in the comedy world is, Well, he only asked. I tweeted to one of his outspoken supporters, and I said, Well, if its not a big deal, invite him over for Thanksgiving. Let him corner your wife, grandma, and daughter, pull out his dick and masturbate to completion. Or ask them while theyre eating, repeatedly, if he can masturbate in front of them. Will that be a problem?

Rose McGowan photographed in New York, 2017. Photo: Cait Oppermann.

Meinzer: People have asked me, Why did it take over a year and a half after you left the company to say anything? Part of it is, I saw the people who spoke up evaporated. Number two, so much of how were taught to live in this world as women is to keep the peace, to smile, to say, Oh, oh! Thats fine! Of course I shouldnt do this, but once in a while, Ill look at the comments from trolls who are like, Well, that doesnt sound that bad. Its not like he gang-raped you.

McGowan: Or You took a settlement  thats the new You wore a short skirt, you deserve it. You know why I did? So I could go to therapy and put myself back together. It didnt work. I also donated to a rape charity. But the money I lost by being blacklisted? The amount of women who have been left by the wayside? Yall should be mad because youve lost a lot of art, a lot of business, a lot of thought.

Corry: I recently was asked, What are you getting from this? One of the other girls this happened to said, We got a face full of red pubes and not even a gift card to Starbucks. Im getting death threats, for telling the truth.

Leeds: I live in a New York bubble. I have had nothing but Thank you and Youre so brave.

Corry: I would challenge the media to stop using the word alleged.

McGowan: Yes, if I admitted I stole your purse, why is it still alleged? And why arent these men being prosecuted criminally instead of just losing their jobs?

Meinzer: I was in an interview recently, and they asked, How do you feel about this alleged   I said, I will not use the word alleged when I know what happened to me.

Leeds: I had the experience of being interviewed with Anderson Cooper last week, and he was very nice. Prior to that piece, they aired an interview with a woman who is the campaign manager for Roy Moore, and he didnt let her finish a sentence. He talked over her. He argued with her. And Im thinking, Okay  I dont agree with that woman, but Im not so sure that Im happy with his treating her that way.

Corry: Yeah, but she wasnt letting him finish at all. I saw that.

Leeds: But the way he was conducting that interview, it was a typical male 

Corry: I think we have to be careful about saying typical male if someone is being assertive. I just felt that [Cooper] was a journalist going, Youre gonna answer my questions. Just be careful with generalizing a certain gender as one way.

McGowan: But maybe things are changing some. In Hollywood, someone told me that two women writers said that its the first time theyve ever gone into rooms to pitch ideas that anybodys listened to them. And this music producer Im working with, he was saying he and his male friends were talking like, Yeah, there were times I pushed too far   To me if theres a hashtag Me Too, theres gotta be a hashtag, I Did It.

Corry: I dont see it in the comedy world. Its like, Lighten up. What, are you a prude now?

Crooks: More women are getting into politics. Maybe its just school council, but they want to redefine things.

Leeds: We need more women high up in Fortune 500 companies.

Suki Kim: I teach journalism, and my students are learning this is not acceptable to have men treat them this way. Its not okay for a really old boss to send me weird emails at 11 p.m.

McGowan: For me, the most positive thing is a girl coming up to me on the street crying and feeling it. Its not fun to feel this stuff, but whats the alternative? Plugging it up and just being another damaged person? I was just in India, which has a huge problem  its a real culture of silence there  and this woman in the audience when I was speaking said Me too. She started shaking and crying and said, Me too. And culturally thats massive.

Corry: I would love to get through this to the point where we realize that were actually human before our sexuality.

Kim: I would just like to do my work.

McGowan: Im really proud of all of us, because I know its not easy. Im used to being hated, but I know its a real shock to the system. Its shocking when people hate you and cant spell at the same time. They cant seem to do the your and youre. Your a whore! Im like, if youre going to call me a whore, do it right.
A volunteer looks for a grave to place a wreath on during the National Wreaths Across America Day at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia in Dec. 13, 2014. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Americas Fallen Military Deserve Eternal Honor

Each December, Americas profound respect, admiration, and honor for our fallen military is expressed through National Wreaths Across America Day.

The event is conducted through the organization Wreaths Across America whose mission is to Remember, Honor, and Teach. The mission is carried out by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as at over 1,200 additional locations in all 50 states, and at sea, and abroad.

This years event took place on Dec. 16, inspired by the words Im an American. Yes, I am.

The words are from a song written by Rick Charette titled Im an American. A rendition was performed by the Kennebunk Elementary School Childrens Chorus in Maine, during the 2016 Annual Wreath Escort to Arlington National Cemetery.

Read More Gold Star Families: Honoring Those Who Make the Ultimate Sacrifice

The childrens performance ignited patriotism in the hearts of their audience. As the entire audience joined the children in song, all cheered, and were struck with awe at America. The song is now continually song at Wreaths Across America events.

Patriotism, Pride, Honor

The origins of Wreaths Across America began in 1992 when Morrill Worchester, a wreath-maker from Maine had 5,000 extra holiday wreaths.

Worchester decided to use these wreaths as an expression of gratitude for fallen military personnel whose sacrifices gave him the freedom to be an American.

Twenty-five years later, on Dec. 16, 2017, Worchesters patriotism has been multiplied. According to the Wreaths Across America site, there are now: 1,422 participating locations nationwide, grateful Americans in every state placed more than 1,565,000 remembrance wreaths. At Arlington National Cemetery specifically, 244,700 wreaths (one for each marker there) were placed by more than 75,000 volunteers, the largest crowd to ever participate there. Nearly 500 truckloads of wreaths were transported across the country through a network of hundreds of volunteer drivers, donated trucking and diesel, and countless hours of dedicated volunteers committed to the mission to Remember, Honor and Teach.

The 2017 wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery began with the arrival of a mile-long convoy of ceremonial vehicles, including tractor-trailers, buses, and cars carrying wreaths, veterans, Gold Star and Blue Star Families, and supporters.

Arlington National Cemetery: Honor, Remembrance, Reverence

The recent wreath laying honoring Americas fallen military at Arlington National Cemetery demands our eternal remembrance and reverence for our patriots.

Our respect must be expressed not only at Arlington, but on hallowed ground wherever Americas fallen are laid to rest. Most importantly, the honor must forever burn in the hearts, minds, and soul of every person privileged to call America home.

America is the land of the free, and home of the brave only because our sacred freedom, liberty, and democracy has been protected and defended by our armed forces.

Our nation must forever remember their sacrifices and be fully committed to honoring their legacy. This honor deserves a full-force commitment throughout all of society, but especially through character education initiatives in our schools and campuses. This is critical to preserving and igniting the hearts of patriotism for Americas future.

Final Reflections

As wreaths on Americas hallowed resting places remind us to honor our fallen, we must also pause to remember those laid to rest on distant shores.

According to the American Battle Monuments Commission, there are 26 permanent military cemeteries and 29 federal memorials located throughout the world.

We must forever remain mystically united with our fallen on the hallowed grounds of these cemeteries. These locations include France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Philippines, Italy, Luxembourg, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tunisia, Northern Mariana Islands, Morocco, Panama, Mexico, and South Korea.

These cemeteries and memorials, most of which commemorate sacrifices of World War I and World War II, demand a mystical remembrance in the heart of every American. The heartbeat of each American must always beat with respect, reverence, and honor.

America must also eternally honor the clarion call of Lincoln at Gettysburg. His words must inspire respect for all who have offered the ultimate sacrifice for our nation:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to 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; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

Finally, may we forever be inspired by the hearts of children singing these words from Im an American on a day at Kennebunk Elementary School in Maine:

Im an American. Yes, I am.

I love my country. I love my land.

With you and me together, we each play a part.

We can make a difference with love in our hearts.

We are many. We are one.

We are shining in the sun.

Were united standing tall.

With liberty and justice for all.

Im an American. Yes, I am.

I hold the worlds future here in my hands.

Gonna sing and shout it! Its great to be free.

Every single person has dignity.

Im an American. Yes, I am.

I promise that I will do what I can.

Ill stand up for freedom. Live my life without fear

Going to make a better world, I know well persevere.

Vincent J. Bove, CPP, is a national speaker and author on issues critical to America. Bove is a recipient of the FBI Directors Community Leadership Award for combating crime and violence and is a former confidant of the New York Yankees. His newest book is Listen to Their Cries. For more information, see www.vincentbove.com

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Visitors pass in front of the ZTE stand on the first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 27, 2017. (Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images)

An Engineers Suicide a Symptom of Pressures Faced by Chinas Middle Class

A blog post written by the wife of a Chinese engineer who recently jumped to his death has called attention to the intense pressures that Chinas middle class faces.

Ou Jianxin, 42, a married man with two children, was an engineer at ZTEICT Technology Co., an information and communications technology (ICT) service provider that is controlled by parent company ZTE Group. On Dec. 10, he jumped to his death from a building at his workplace in Nanshan District, Shenzhen City, according to a Dec. 15 report by Chinas popular news portal Sina.

According to an online blog post published on Dec. 14, apparently written by his widow Ms. Ding, Ou decided to take his own life after he was forced to resign due to the companys internal restructuring and infighting among staff. On Dec. 1, Ous supervisor, surnamed Wang, tried to talk him into resigning from the job voluntarily.

Several days later, the companys human resources department offered Ou a severance package, which he refused. On Dec. 7, in a conversation with a departmental director surnamed Guo, Ou offered that he would resign if he could sell his companys stock options at four yuan ($0.6) per share, which was the companys stock price in 2016. Guo rejected Ous suggestion and said he could only sell at two yuan per share. When Ou refused his proposal, Guo threatened that Ou would face consequences.

According to the online post, Ou was a good husband, with a 9-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter, who came from a village in Chinas Hunan Province. He graduated from Chinas Beihang University before getting his masters degree at Nankai University, a public school in Tianjin City.

Ou worked for eight years at Huawei Technologies, a telecommunications equipment and services company, before he moved to ZTEICT in 2011, where he subsequently signed a labor contract to work from April 18, 2011 to Aug. 18, 2019. According to the blog, Ou was a diligent worker who often worked overtime, and sometimes even took home unfinished tasks.

With Ou gone, Ous widow said that the family has lost their only source of income, which allowed them to live in relative prosperity as part of the middle class. In Chinese society, the head of a household is also responsible to care for his parents and his in-laws, as an act of filial piety, which increased the financial burdens on Ou.

An Industry in Trouble

Ous money problems were most likely a sign of the financial problems suffered by his employers, Chinas biggest smartphone makers, Huawei and ZTE.

According to the Chinese regimes mouthpiece Xinhua, ZTE, because of poor earnings, started laying off employees in 2012, during which over 10,000 people were let go, amounting to 15 percent of the companys workforce. Many also had to take a salary cut. In January 2017, ZTE announced another wave of layoffs, targeting 3,000 employees, with 600 from the companys smartphone departments.

In March 2017, ZTE was found guilty of evading U.S. embargoes by buying U.S. technology components and incorporating them into ZTE equipment, then selling the equipment to Iran and North Korea, according to Reuters. ZTE had to pay $900 million to settle the case.

Employees at Huawei, which currently trails behind Apple and Samsung in terms of worldwide smartphone market share, were also under pressure to leave the company, according to a March 6, 2017 report by Sina. The Sina article, citing Huaweis own internal online discussion forum, said senior employers over the age of 34 were targets of the companys layoff policy. Programmers over the age of 40 were also targeted, as Huawei planned on cutting costs by replacing them with younger workers who commanded a lower salary.

We are all thinking about what we should do next, as we realize that Huawei doesnt guarantee our job security for the long term, said an anonymous 36-year-old engineer at Huawei, according to Sina.

Huawei doesnt generate as much profits as its competitor Apple does, though it sold a record 139 million smartphones in 2016. According to a November 2016 report by Strategy Analytics, a market research company headquartered in Boston, for the third quarter of 2016, Apple captured 91 percent of the global markets operating profit share, out of the $9 billion in total smartphone profits worldwide. Huawei obtained only 2.4 percent.

Increasing Property Costs

The cost of a home (most likely an apartment) is a financial strain faced generally by Chinas middle class, although what role high property costs played in his suicide is unknown.

The gap between personal income and housing prices has grown ever wider. According to Trading Economics, a macroeconomics statistics website headquartered in New York, wages in China increased from an average of 29,229 yuan (about $4,420) in 2008 to 67,569 yuan (about $10,219) in 2016, an increase of about 231 percent. Meanwhile, the housing market has consistently been on the rise. According to statistics by Chinas National Bureau of Statistics, residential housing prices on average more than doubled between 2006 and 2015, from 3,119 yuan (about $473) per square meter to 6473 yuan (about $983). In Beijing and Shanghai, residential housing prices more than tripled in the same period, reaching over 20,000 yuan ($30,362) per square meter in 2015.

The high prices have led many Chinese to take out loans. According to the South China Morning Post, Chinas total household debt has increased from 5.6 trillion yuan (about $846 billion) in August 2008 to 31.1 trillion yuan (about $4.7 trillion) in September 2016, an increase of 455 percent.
At Least 29 Falun Gong Practitioners Have Died in 2017 under the Chinese Regimes Ongoing Persecution

The Chinese Communist Party has persecuted the spiritual practice of Falun Gong for over 18 years, and the torture and killing of its practitioners continue to be carried out in secrecy in black jails, prisons, and detention centers.

As of Dec. 17, 29 Falun Gong practitioners are confirmed to have died in 2017 due to the persecution, in 15 provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, Shanghai, the northern provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning, and the southern provinces of Guangxi and Fujian.

15 died in prison. The remaining 14 died while being illegally held by local Chinese authorities, or harassed in their homes.

As of Dec. 19, the website confirmed that 4,160 practitioners in China have died from the persecution over the last 18 years, although the numbers of those killed for 2017 and for the persecution as a whole are likely to be much higher due to the difficulty of securing sensitive information in China.

Also, the death toll confirmed on Dec. 19 does not count those murdered through having their organs taken from them for use in Chinas organ transplantation industry. The harvesting of organs from unwilling victims is done in secret and third parties cannot confirm individual deaths.

The report An Update to Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter presents the findings from a meticulous examination of the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China. It estimates that between 60,000 and 100,000 transplants have been performed in China each year since 2001, with the primary source of organs being Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was introduced to the public in 1992. The practice involves slow, meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Many practitioners improved their physical and spiritual well-being, fuelling the disciplines popularity. By 1999, the number of practitioners grew to 70 million according to a state survey, though practitioners estimate the number to be over 100 million.

In July 1999, then-Party leader Jiang Zemin, out of fear that the disciplines teachings would put the CCPs atheist rule in jeopardy, launched a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Since then, hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been subjected to torture, brainwashing, and forced labor, according to Minghui.org.

Here are a few of the cases Minghui has documented.

Huo Runzhi, 72, from Nongan County in northeastern Chinas Jilin Province, died on Nov. 14, 2017. She had become mentally unstable and lost her memory since returning home from the hospital belonging to Jilin Womens Prison in August 2017, according to Minghui.org.

Huo was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2016, after the local police arrested her for placing Falun Gong materials in public places. While being held in the Jilin Womens Prison, she was physically and psychologically abused, with bruises all over her body. Many teeth became loose. She was finally taken to the prisons hospital at the end of April 2017, after suffering from rectal cancer.

Cheng Huaigen, 54, from Tainfu New Area in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Chinas Sichuan Province, died on May 29, 2017. Cheng was placing banners with words like The World Needs Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance in Huayang, a town in Chengdu, when he was kidnapped by police in June 2015, according to Minghui.org.

Cheng was held at a detention center in Shuangliu County. He was put on trial in June 2016, one year later. While held in detention, he was taken to a hospital on several occasions due to physical ailments that the persecution had caused. After the trial, he was detained at a prison in Lushan County.

On May 29, 2017, Chengs family got a phone call from the prison, saying that he had already gone into shock. By the time his family arrived, Cheng had already passed away.

Yu Guixiang, 65, from Changchun, the capital of northeastern Chinas Jilin Province, was kidnapped by police from the Jiutai District in Changchun, on June 16, 2017, while she was talking to others in public about Falun Gong, according to Minghui.org.

Yu went into shock three days later while being held at the Jiutai detention center. The head of the detention center did not call a doctor or send her to the hospital. She passed away on June 20, 2017. It is not known what kind of persecution she suffered while being held.
Body of Missing Mom Found in Memphis

A body found in Southeast Memphis, Tennessee, is believed to be of a mother who went missing over a year ago.

Keila Ashford Freeman, a 29-year-old, was reported missing back on Sept. 5, 2016. According to FOX13, the missing mother of two has not been seen since the disappearance.

Zach Crenshaw, a journalist for the network, tweeted that the body was found Wednesday morning, Dec. 20.

#BREAKING KEILA ASHFORD FREEMAN'S BODY HAS BEEN FOUND:

Randall Freeman provided the information about Keilas whereabouts as part of an agreement.

The missing mother of two has not been seen since September 5, 2016.https://t.co/HTKSzMJgx2 pic.twitter.com/gmjeAj0wZF  Zach Crenshaw (@ZachCFOX13) December 20, 2017

According to FOX13, the body was found at an active police scene located in the area of Barnstable road and Keynon Drive.

Sources told the network that the body belonged to Keila Ashford Freeman. An official autopsy to confirm the identity has yet to be done.

The cause of death is also pending.

The mothers husband, Randall Freeman, is the main suspect in her disappearance. He recently provided information on the location of Keilas remains as part of an agreement.

Randall was charged with 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder and multiple counts of attempted aggravated arson.

He currently remains in jail and is accused of firebombing a house last year on Sept. 4 at the 7000 block of Germanshire Lane in southeast Memphis, according to the Commercial Appeal, a daily newspaper in Memphis.

Randall allegedly threw a bomb through a window, causing the house to set on fire. At the time, five people were inside the house and escaped.

As of writing its still not clear what connection there is between the firebombing incident and the couple. Randall is expected to face new charges.

We can confirm that we went to the location (where the remains were found) based upon information provided yesterday, Shelby County Dist. Attorney General Amy Weirich said in a statement obtained by Commercial Appeal.

We can confirm that the information was provided relative to the case of Keila Freeman who has been missing since Sept. 5, 2016. We can also confirm that her husband Randall Freeman remains in custody on previous arson and attempted murder charges, but a new charge is expected as well as a disposition in all of his cases.

From NTD.tv
Charles Manson in March of 2009. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Getty Images)

Charles Manson Still On Ice, Says Official

A month after his death, the remains of Charles Manson are still being held in a California coroners division and theyre in limbo.

His body is still here. He hasnt been cremated, Sgt. Stephen Wells, who is a spokesman for the coroner division of the Kern County Sheriffs Office, told the New York Daily News on Thursday, Dec 21.

Basically, hes on ice, Wells said.

He died officially of heart failure and colon cancer on Nov. 19 at a hospital in Bakersfield.

The Kern County Sheriff has not formally recognized anyone as next of kin.

Weve been in contact with somebody, but nothing has been established. So were still actively seeking the next of kin. Once that is established, theyll make the decision, Wells told the paper. The next of kin chooses the manner of disposition.

His alleged grandson Jason Freeman, 41, filed a probate case for Manson at the Los Angeles County on Dec. 7. He has a court date next month. Two other men who described themselves as prison pen pals of Manson claimed that they got wills from the killer and wanted custody of the remains, according to the Daily News.

In a report from the Los Angeles Times days after Mansons death, local law enforcement had declined to comment on his condition, citing state and federal medical privacy laws that prevent the prison from commenting on protected health information for any inmate in our custody.

Officials wouldnt even comment on where Manson was being treated before his death.

They remain under CDCR custody and 24-hour supervision during this time, said Vicky Waters, a corrections department spokeswoman, according to the LA Times. CDCR also notifies and works with hospital security and law enforcement.

Manson had been serving a life sentence at the nearby Corcoran State Prison for ordering the murders of nine people, including actress Sharon Tate, according to Reuters.

Manson became one of the 20th centurys most notorious criminals when he directed his mostly young, female followers to murder seven people in what prosecutors said was part of a plan to incite a race war.

Manson was sentenced to death for the Tate-Leno LaBianca murders, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison after the California Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in the state in 1972.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Childs Remains Found Buried in Backyard of Cleveland Home

A Cleveland mother led investigators to a childs body buried in the backyard of her home on Tuesday, Dec. 9.

The body is believed to be of her 5-year-old missing disabled son, Jordan, according to court records obtained by Cleveland.com. The body reportedly showed multiple signs of abuse including injuries such as broken ribs.

Thirty-four-year-old Larissa Maria Rodriguez was taken into custody. According to CBS News, she will be charged with murder and felonious assault on Thursday, Dec. 21.

As of writing, the remains have not been fully confirmed yet, but even without the official identification courts records state that the body was Jordans.

According to Cleveland.com, the discovery began when the brother of Larissas boyfriend, Christopher Rodriguez, tipped-off police telling them the couple had buried the child in their backyard two months ago, after finding him unresponsive.

The brother, who was not named, called 911 to report the crime on Monday, Dec. 18, from Pakistan.

He said, when I came home, the kid was already dead, the caller told a dispatcher, according to a recording of the call obtained by CBS affiliate WOIO.

The brother told 911 that the boyfriend cried as he helped his girlfriend bury the body.

He told me that something happened with one of the kids and they didnt call the cops. Basically him and his girlfriend buried the kid in the backyard, he said.

Investigators responded to the call by visiting Larissas home. On the day they did not find anything until the FBI and medical examiner continued the search on Tuesday, where they dug for three hours before finding the remains, CBS News reported.

The childs aunt, Ana Rodriguez, said she had previously reported her sister and her boyfriend several times. She said shed seen him tied up in the corner with a sock in his mouth in one case, according to Cleveland.com.

In another case, Ana said a friend told her she saw Jordan nearly dead in a closet. She said she contacted Job and Family Services after her friend told her what happened.

I lived with them, Ana Rodriguez told Cleveland.com. He was in danger.

The aunt said Jordans developmental disabilities made him unable to speak.

That boy was special needs, premature, Ana Rodriguez said. He needed help. And all they did was [expletive] beat on him for no reason.

Larissa Rodriguez first told police that her son was in Houston, Texas, visiting his biological father and that his aunt picked him up. However, she could not give police any contact information of the father or aunt.

According to Cleveland.com, she was a mother of 9 and had a long history with local child welfare officials. In total, there were 13 neglect or abuse investigations on the her since 1999. The latest was in December 2016 and was closed in February.

Court records paint a picture of a neglected home, infested with rats and cockroaches.

From NTD.tv
People walk past movie theaters of the U.S. cinema chain AMC Theatres in Monterey Park, east of downtown Los Angeles, California, on May 22, 2012. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

China Releases Rules to Further Tighten Grip on Private Firms

In the latest move to further control privately owned businesses, China has issued a set of rules to rein in foreign investment.

On Dec. 18, a document was released to Chinese media outlining guidelines for private firms with foreign investments. The rules came from five Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bodies, including the Ministry of Commerce, the Peoples Bank of China, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Under the new rules, Chinese firms are now required to report all of their foreign investments to the central authorities. Investments that concern sensitive national or local matters, or sensitive industries must obtain approval from the regime.

In the same paragraph, the rules warned against using fraudulent investments to illegally obtain foreign exchange, divert assets, or conduct money laundering.

Chinese firms are now required to report all of their foreign investments to the central authorities.

Another rule mandated that firms secure loans from Chinese banks before committing to an overseas deal.

The Chinese regime has been clamping down on ambitious firms with large overseas acquisitions. In June, the countrys Banking Regulatory Commission targeted several conglomerates, including Anbang Insurance Co., Dalian Wanda Group Co., HNA Group Co. Ltd., and Fosun International Ltd., to assess their credit exposure. Together, these four have bought $46 billion in foreign assets over the past five years, including the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York (Anbang), movie chain AMC Theatres (Wanda), Hilton Hotels (HNA), and performance group Cirque du Soleil (Fosun).

In the same month, Anbangs billionaire chairman Wu Xiaohui was reported to have been detained by Beijings anti-corruption investigators. Anonymous sources tipped The Epoch Times that the investigation had to do with Wus ties to an opposition faction in the Party and his role in helping the faction launder money abroad.

Then, a month later, those four firms were blocked from getting new loans from state-run banks.

After finding itself in the Chinese regimes crosshairs, Wanda sought to sell off its real estate acquisitions in Los Angeles, Chicago, UK, and Australia, reported South China Morning Post in November.

The Chinese regime has been eager to extend its iron fist control on the private sector, from pressuring foreign firms to establish Party organizations, to curbing home property sales in major cities.

That is in part fueled by concerns that capital outflow will destabilize the economy, according to Chinese political commentator Huang Jinqiu. In an interview with overseas Chinese broadcaster New Tang Dynasty Television, Huang said foreign investments could leave risks within the countrys borders while banks capital is diverted overseas.

Meanwhile, Frank Xie Tian, a business professor at the University of South CarolinaAiken, noted that given the CCPs history of taking money from the wealthy, many businesses have moved their assets abroad via investments, out of fear.

They may have reason to be worried; China is running out of money. A recent report from the International Monetary Fund report estimated that Chinas debt was 2.55 times the GDP (gross domestic product).

Frank Fang contributed to this report.
After ten years of study, computer gaming disorder will be listed as an illness by the World Health Organization for the first time next year.

WHOs move to include computer gaming disorder in its International Classification of Diseases list comes after growing concern about the effects of gaming, especially among some Asian nations such as South Korea. South Korea has already introduced laws to limit access to computer games for children.

The list of diseases was last updated in 1990, reported New Scientist, who said the upcoming 2018 edition is still in its draft form.

As it is currently, the draft lists a range of criteria that medical professionals could use to decide if an individuals gaming habits have developed into a serious health condition.

According to the draft seen by New Scientist, an individual has a gaming disorder if they give growing precedence to computer games to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests.

Such unhealthy behavior would have to be ongoing for at least a 12 month period before a diagnosis is made.

The draft also said sufferers will continue to play computer games even when it results in negative consequences.

Vladimir Poznyak from the WHOs Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse told New Scientist that health professionals need to recognize that gaming disorders may have serious health consequences.

Most people who play video games dont have a disorder, just like most people who drink alcohol dont have a disorder either, said Poznyak. However, in certain circumstances overuse can lead to adverse effects.

Estimates of the proportion of computer game players who have a problem range from 0.2 per cent to one in five.

The Daily Mail reported that WHO has not listed other conditions linked to technology, such as so-called internet and smartphone addiction, owing to a shortage of evidence that they are real disorders.

The greatest people at risk of a gaming disorder are children and teenagers.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has issued a warning saying children and adolescents can become overly involved with computer games which brings on adverse results such as lower grades and poor social skills.

The academy noted that many of the most popular computer games emphasize negative themes and promote a range of negative behavior such as the killing of people or animals and criminal behavior, disrespect for authority and the law.

Approximately 90 percent of children in the U.S. play computer games, and more than 90 percent of those games involve mature content that often includes violence, reports Time.

Americas domestic computer game industry is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Please support independent journalism by sharing this article. Thank you very much!

From NTD.tv
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in Las Vegas on Feb. 19, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DOJ Prosecutors Looking Into Controversial Obama-Era Uranium One Deal

Deal gave Russia control over a Canadian company mining uranium in US. Despite assurances, the uranium has left the US.

Department of Justice prosecutors have requested information from FBI agents about an investigation they conducted into the so-called Uranium One deal, NBC News reported on Dec. 21.

DOJ prosecutors are currently establishing whether a special counsel is needed to look into the controversial deal that gave Russia control over Canadian mining company Uranium One, which at the time controlled 20 percent of the uranium supply licensed for mining in the United States.

By giving Russia control over a significant portion of American uranium supplies, the deal created a potential national security risk. Despite the assurances of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to Congress that the uranium mined by Uranium One would not leave the United States, it did.

A radioactive warning sign hangs on fencing around the Anfields Shootaring Canyon Uranium Mill on October 27, 2017, outside Ticaboo, Utah. Anfield with is in partnership with the Russian firm Uranium One, and bought the mill from Uranium One in 2015. (George Frey/Getty Images)

NRC memos reviewed by The Hill show that uranium transfers to Canada as well as Europe were approved by the Obama administration. From either destination, it could have made its way to other countries, potentially including adversaries of the United States in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Chairman of the Senate judiciary committee Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has called on the DOJ to appoint a special counsel to look into the agreement.

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley in Washington on Sept. 20, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Russias nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, acquired the controlling stake in Uranium One in 2010.

Because uranium, when enriched, is a key component for nuclear weapons, the deal required a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investments (CFIUS) in the United States.

The State Department is part of CFIUS and was required to give its approval for the deal. At the time of the review and the approval given by the State Department, Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state.

During the time the deal was under review, payments made their way from Uranium One and Russian officials to the Clintons.

During the time the deal was under review, payments made their way from Uranium One and Russian officials to the Clintons.

The payments were detailed by The New York Times in a 2015 expose, in which the payments made to the Clinton Foundation as well as former President Bill Clinton were detailed.

Uranium Ones chairman used his family foundation to make four donations to the Clinton Foundation, totaling $2.35 million.

According to The New York Times, those donations were not disclosed by the Clintons, despite a deal that Hillary Clinton reached with the Obama administration before being appointed as secretary of state that they would disclose all donors.

Former President Bill Clinton delivers a speech during the annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, on Sept. 21, 2016. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

At the same time that the security review was being conducted, Bill Clinton received a speaking fee of $500,000 from a Kremlin-linked investment bank.

In 2006, the Clinton Foundation had already received a $31.3 million donation from Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra, owner of mining company UrAsia, which merged with another mining company in 2007 to become Uranium One.

Giustra still serves on the board of directors of the Clinton Foundation.

The FBI had also uncovered evidence of a sophisticated Russian bribery plot to get the controversial deal approved.

Citing FBI and court documents, The Hill reported on Oct. 17 that the Russian officials had engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putins atomic energy business inside the United States.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton makes a concession speech after being defeated by Republican president-elect Donald Trump in New York on Nov. 9, 2016. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

The FBI also had a witness who possessed documents showing that Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the United States to benefit the Clinton Foundation, sources told The Hill.

An FBI informant in the case named William Campbell had gathered evidence on millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks, plus extortion and money laundering, the Hill reported based on a review of documents provided by Campbell.

Campbell had been prevented by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch from testifying before Congress on his findings. In October, the DOJ lifted the gag order on the informant, allowing him to speak to congressional panels.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks following a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch (L) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 19, 2016. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The FBI director at the time was Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

A leaked diplomatic cable obtained by Wikileaks shows that Mueller had personally flown to Moscow in early 2009 to deliver a 10-gram sample of highly enriched uranium. The transfer of the strip from the FBI director to Russian officials was conducted on the tarmac, according to the cable, which was sent by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The sample had been requested by Russia following the seizure of highly enriched uranium in Georgia in 2006 that had been transferred to U.S. custody.
End of Net Neutrality Puts AT&TTime Warner Merger on Ice

Trump administration shifts antitrust enforcement strategy

News Analysis

AT&Ts proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner, and the U.S. Department of Justices lawsuit to block the acquisition, sets up an intriguing battle showcasing the governments new antitrust strategy that could reshape the media and telecom industry.

With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)s repeal of net neutrality laws on Dec. 14, the government gains additional leverage in its suit against the merger.

Last-ditch settlement talks between AT&T Inc. and the Department of Justice (DOJ) fell apart, according to a Dec. 15 court document reviewed by Reuters, setting up a high-stakes courtroom battle set to begin March 19, 2018.

AT&T sees the proposed merger as a boon to consumers. The deal combines a massive distribution network with an established content provider in Time Warner Inc.

AT&T, one of the biggest telecom companies in the United States, operates a large fiber-optics network, owns the countrys No. 2 wireless provider, and is a leading satellite television distributor through DirecTV. Time Warner has a movie empirewith hits such as the Harry Potter franchise and the DC Comics superhero moviesas well as valuable TV properties, including HBO and Turner Broadcasting, which owns CNN.

The DOJ last challenged a vertical merger around 40 years ago.

Randall Stephenson, AT&Ts CEO, said the deal would give customers unmatched choice, quality, value, and experiences from the closer partnership between content producers and content distributors. The company envisioned the deal would be relatively straightforward to approve, given its not a horizontal merger and doesnt eliminate any existing competitors. Theres existing precedence of a similar merger, with the 2011 tie up of Comcast and NBC Universal.

Vertical Integration

The DOJs chief complaint is that an AT&TTime Warner merger would hinder competition and increase prices for consumersspecifically, that the new company would force its rival TV distributors to pay more to access HBO and Turner content.

Makan Delrahim, the DOJs new head of antitrust enforcement, is asking for a divestment of DirectTV or Turner Broadcasting before the merger can be approved, a request that AT&T and Time Warner have rejected.

In response, AT&T general counsel David McAtee called the DOJs lawsuit a radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent.

And McAtee is correct: DOJs challenge is a sharp departure from the way the Justice Department has handled antitrust enforcement in the last few decades. The DOJ last challenged a vertical merger around 40 years ago.

The proposed AT&TTime Warner deal is textbook vertical integration, in which companies at different points of the supply chain merge. Time Warner produces content for consumers, and AT&T provides consumers access to such contentand content from other producers. A horizontal integration, in contrast, is where companies in the same slice of the supply chain merge, such as the proposed merger of Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox (both are content producers).

While the AT&TTime Warner tie up does not reduce the number of media content producers or distributors, it does put competitors in both industries in a more difficult position.

American consumers often decry the rising cost of cable TV subscriptions from distributors such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable). But in the existing business model, distributors have very little say over prices. Distributors must pay content providers and TV networks, such as HBO, CNN, and ESPN, to carry content channels.

Because of the demand for programming, content providers dictate the prices distributors must pay, and force distributors to bundle less popular networks with more popular ones. If distributors balk at paying such high prices or unnecessary bundles, they risk not carrying the most popular channels and ultimately losing customers. While content producers arent directly consumer-facing, they ultimately command the price of distribution and how much consumers pay.

This means AT&T would have a vested interest in promoting the content it would own via its distribution platforms, while squeezing alternative providers. It could cause lower prices on DirecTV or U-verse (its fiber optic network), while charging competing distributors higher carriage rates for its programming.

Is this anti-competitive? The current DOJ administration believes so.

A Break from Tradition

At the turn of the last century, when the original trustbuster Theodore Roosevelt arrived on the scene, vertical integrations were illegal. But since the 1980s, theyve become legal by default, often in the context of greater regulatory oversight and with promises from companies to not engage in anti-competitive behavior.

That was the premise when the DOJ approved the 2011 merger between NBC Universal and Comcast. The approval came with many conditions, and Comcast has already been fined with violating one of them.

But that strategy may be a thing of the past. A recent speech by the DOJs Delrahim suggests a potential shift in how the U.S. government will view antitrust matters going forward.

Antitrust is law enforcement; its not regulation, Delrahim said at the American Bar Associations Antitrust Fall Forum on Nov. 16.

Unfortunately, behavioral remedies often fail to do that. Instead of protecting the competition that might be lost in an unlawful merger, a behavioral remedy supplants competition with regulation; it replaces disaggregated decision-making with central planning.

Delrahim argued that the recent trend of allowing anticompetitive mergers to occur, then applying conditions and restrictions on the resulting company and overseeing the companys activities to ensure good behavior, is inherently cumbersome and intrusive. It creates more regulation, places a heavy demand on the government to monitor, and can result in costly subsequent litigation.

In other words, its much more efficient and effective to prevent questionable mergers from occurring in the first place.

Impact of Net Neutrality

The FCC rolled back net neutrality laws on Dec. 14. In one fell swoop, the repeal of net neutrality rules has tilted the balance in DOJs favor in its case against AT&TTime Warner.

Net neutrality, enacted in 2015 under the Obama administration, is a set of rules that prevents internet service providers from giving bandwidth preference to one content provider over another. For instance, under net neutrality, a service provider such as Comcast could not throttle the streaming speed of pornography websites and boost the speed of its own content produced by NBC.

With net neutrality repealed, the DOJ just gained a new and powerful argument against the proposed merger. Going forward, AT&TTime Warner would be able and incentivized to slow the streaming and download speeds of content from its competitors, while HBO content streaming via DirecTV would enjoy higher bandwidth.

The sudden repeal of net neutrality essentially realizes the governments assertion against the proposed merger.
EU Executive Moves to Punish Poland Over Court Reforms

BRUSSELSThe EU executive launched an unprecedented process on Wednesday to suspend Polands voting rights in the European Union after two years of dispute over judicial reforms that Brussels says undermine Polish courts independence.

The European Commission, the guardian of EU law, will now ask the other EU governments to declare that Polands changes to the judiciary constitute a clear risk of a serious breach of EU valuesespecially the rule of law.

However, it gave Warsaw, where a new prime minister took office only this month, three months to remedy the situation and said it could rescind its decision if it did so. Often referred to as the EUs nuclear option, the move carries the ultimate threat of sanctions but is in fact unlikely to result in that.

The Commission has today concluded that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland, the Commission said in a statement.

Judicial reforms in Poland mean that the countrys judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority. In the absence of judicial independence, serious questions are raised about the effective application of EU law.

The Commissions deputy head, First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who has conducted talks with the Polish government dominated by Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for the past two years, said he was acting with a heavy heart but was obliged to take action to protect the Union as a whole.

We are open for dialogue 24/7, Timmermans said, saying that if Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who took office just this month, were to change tack, he would be ready to respond.

But Timmermans insisted: As guardians of the treaty, the Commission is under a strict responsibility to act  If the application of the rule of law is left completely to the individual member states, then the whole of the EU will suffer.

This decision has no merit. It is in our opinion a purely political decision, Beata Mazurek, a spokeswoman for Polands ruling party, was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP.

Stung by Britains vote last year to leave the Union, the EU institutions are battling a rise in euroskeptic nationalism across the continent and particularly in the former Communist east, where Polands ally Hungary has also prompted previously the Commission to threaten sanctions over the rule of law.

Existential Importance

Seeking to counter Warsaws accusations of an anti-Polish bias in Brussels and in his own behavior, Timmermans, who once worked in the Soviet bloc as a Dutch diplomat, praised Polands historic contribution to overcoming the Cold War divide of Europe but said Warsaw now bore a special responsibility to prevent new rifts opening up over democratic principles.

I want to stand by the Polish people in this time which is very difficult for them, and for us, he said, adding that the defending a separation of powers was of existential importance not just for the Polish nation but for the EU as a whole.

The next step in the process is that EU governments, meeting in the Council of the European Union, will hear Poland out and ask it to address their concerns.

But if 22 out of the EUs 28 countries and the European Parliament are not satisfied in the end, the process will move on to the next stages, which may mean sanctions.

The sanctions can involve the suspension of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights.

This formulation leaves open the possibility also of suspending EU financial transfers to Poland, now the biggest beneficiary of European funds aimed at boosting living standards in the former communist country.

Sanctions can be imposed with the backing of a majority of countries representing a majority of the EUs citizens. But to get to that stage, EU governments have first to unanimously agree that what was initially just a risk of a serious breach of the rule of law has now become a reality.

This is unlikely to happen, because Hungary has already declared that it would not support such a motion against Poland.

But the mere threat of it underlines the sharp deterioration in ties between Warsaw and Brussels since the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won power in late 2015.

The Commission and Council of Europe legal experts, known as the Venice Commission, say Polands judicial reforms undermine judges independence because they give the ruling party control over the sacking and the appointm

ents of judges, as well as the option to end the terms of some Supreme Court judges early.

The Council of Europe, Europes human rights watchdog, has compared such measures to those of the Soviet system.

The PiS government rejects these accusations, saying the changes are needed because courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. Polish President Andrzej Duda has until Jan. 5 to sign them into law.
Five People Arrested for Stealing From Cars of California Wildfire Evacuees

Police have arrested five people accused of stealing from cars belonging to California wildfire evacuees and taking over $75,000 worth of property, according to a police statement.

The burglary occurred on Dec. 5 at Oxnard when the Thomas fire was ripping through Ventura County. The owners of the two cars that were broken into had recently evacuated from their residence and were staying at a friends house for the night at Oxnard.

The family had placed a large number of their personal belongings in their car including jewelry, a guitar, clothing, electronics, and personal papers, which were all taken.

The police were able to track down the suspects from $10,000 in charges made to a credit card, authorities said.

Jasmine Zavala, 29, Maryann Zuniga, 29, and Juan Carrillo, 44 were all arrested on Dec. 10 for possession of stolen property among other charges after investigators executed a search warrant at an inn they were staying at and found property belonging to the victims.

Police arrested David Rosales, 28, about a week later on unrelated charges, however, during his arrest police found property belonging to the burglary victims allegedly in his possession. More property was recovered at Rosales residence in Camarillo.

During police investigations, Lisette Topete, 28, was also arrested in connection with the burglary, namely, receiving stolen property and possession of stolen credit cards, among other crimes.

Oxnard Police Department is urging the public to provide any further information in relation to the burglary.

From NTD.tv
Four-Year-Old Mauled by Dogs Has Difficult Road Ahead

After two weeks in the hospital, four-year-old Zion is back home  but he has a lot of healing left to do.

Hes excited to be out of the hospital, his mother Tiffany McHan told People magazine.

Were still taking precautions so he doesnt further injure himself. Hes eating and hes going to the bathroom. He has a long recovery, but hes in good spirits.

Zion was attacked by five dogsall pit bullson Dec. 8 outside his aunts house in Liberty, Texas.

His father, Trevion, did his best to fight off the animals, but before he could free his son, the boy had sustained serious injuries.

When I saw Zion freed, I picked him up and ran into the house, Tiffany told People. There was blood everywhere. I didnt think he was gonna make it. I remember him telling me, Mommy, Im okay. Im okay.

After the attack, little Zion was taken to Texas Childrens Hospital in Houston. Doctors there found he had a fractured skull, damage to his ears, several lacerations on his face and internal damage to the right side of his head, among other injuries.

Zion could see that the attack had disfigured him.

We still have a difficult road ahead. Its heartbreaking and some days [it is] unbearable to deal with the obvious changes in his physical appearance, Rochele Howard says of her grandson Zion. But there are moments moments when he is singing, dancing and playing. There is so much that went wrong that day and so much more that could have gone wrong. He survived.

Watching [Zion] in the hospital was hard at first, said Rochele. When he first saw himself in mirror, he said he was ugly and that he looked weird.

Now that he will have permanent visual injuries, I worry about how people will treat him. He survived the attack from the dogs but now he has to deal with people and sometimes they cause more damage and pain than the dogs.

In a photo shared on Facebook by his grandmother, Zion stands next to his father as they leave the hospital room. Zions face is obviously twisted  the result of nerve damage caused by the dogs.

The dogs who attacked him belonged to his aunt on his mothers side. The dogs had to be put down after the incident.

Zions parents have created a GoFundMe page to get assistance with his medical expenses.

The McHan family has had a tough year. When Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, it destroyed their apartment forcing them to move into a hotel. The family had to flee their home in a small boat.

Thats nothing compared to going through this, Tiffany told People.

From NTD.tv
Houston Baby Missing after Mom Slain is Found Safe

A six-week-old baby that was missing following the death of her mother has been found safe.

The babys mother, Carolina Flores, 33, was discovered with multiple stab wounds by a family member in northeast Houston on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 19.

Authorities at the time couldnt find her daughter, Shamali, reported ABC.

However, police have now found the baby, apparently unharmed, in an apartment in southwest Houston. She has been taken to an area hospital as a precaution, authorities said, according to NY Daily News.

No other details have been released on how police found the baby.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tweeted his happiness that Shamali had been found: Were ecstatic Baby Shamali Flores was found by our dedicated @houstonpolice guardians.

Excellence of our understaffed team is second to none. We look forward sharing more information later today.

Although we mourn the loss of her mother Carolina, we celebrate her recovery.

A suspect has been arrested, police confirmed, and is expected to be charged.

Police have been sensitive about Floress immigration status. She was an illegal immigrant from Honduras, her cousin told KTRK, adding that Flores had started to act differently and refused to talk about Shamalis father.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Chief Acevedo said: We want to make sure that people understand that our one focus  our only goal is to bring justice to this family and [to bring] baby back to where [she] belongs. Were not interested in anybodys immigration status.

Initially, the babys father, Marcos Mariano Tomas Palacios, was a person of interest in the case, but police said he has been forthright and cooperative. Police, however, havent ruled him out completely.
Dubbed the "Kayak Killer" for her role in the drowning death of her fiancee, Angelika Graswald is set to be released from prison in coming days. (Orange County Sheriff's Office)

Kayak Killer Freed from Prison, could now Face Deportation

The woman dubbed the Kayak Killer for sabotaging her fiancees kayak and causing his drowning death in the frigid waters of the Hudson River is getting out of jail soon, NYup reports.

Angelika Graswald, 37, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in Vincent Viafores death in April, 2015, and was sentenced to a minimum of one year and four months, and a maximum of four years in prison.

But now the Latvian national is set to be released from the Bedford Hills Correctional facility on Thursday, NEWS12 reports, citing the StateDepartment of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Kayak Killer freed from prison in time for Christmas https://t.co/8k0ffRqziI pic.twitter.com/Jo1MFusAe7  New York Post (@nypost) December 21, 2017

The woman is being set free based on time served, as Graswald had reportedly been behind bars in Orange County Jail for over two years before her transfer to the Bedford Hills facility.

The soon-to-be ex-con will now face 16 months of parole in Dutchess County and could end up getting deported as a convicted felon.

The investigation showed that Graswald had removed the plug on Viafores kayak knowing that he wasnt wearing a life vest and that the waters in the Hudson River in November were cold and dangerous.

She also allegedly moved the mans paddle away from him as he was drowning in the 46-degree Hudson River on April 19, 2015, Hudson Valley Post reported.

Graswald was arrested on April 30, 2015, and was initially charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, charges punishable by 25 years to life, after investigators found the plug in her car.

Viafores body was found approximately a month after Graswalds arrest.

Graswald took a plea deal on Monday, Jul. 24, 2017.

Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler told NEWS12 reporters that the deal was made with the consent of the victims family and ultimately holds Graswald accountable for the crime.

Viafores sister, Laura Rice, read an emotional victim impact statement to the court prior to the November sentencing.

Our family feels Angelika should be held accountable for the actions she has admitted to where a short four-year sentence does not seem just. Furthermore, serving a portion of that sentence seems even more unjust, she said, according to New York Post.

According to reports, her motive for killing the man she was set to marry was a life insurance policy worth $250,000.
Rohingya Muslim refugee Dildar Begum, 30, recovers from her wounds alongside her daughter Nurkalima, 10, at a hospital in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Sept. 15, 2017. Nearly 650,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since late August during the outbreak of violence in the Burma's Rakhine State. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Massacre of Rohingya Muslims Carried Out With Cruel Efficiency, Says Rights Group

Shawfika is a survivor of a massacre that occurred in Burmas strife-torn Rakhine State on Aug. 30. The massacre occurred five days after an attack by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 Burmese security force outposts in Rakhine State.

The ARSA attack on Aug. 25 unleashed a horrific response from the Burmese military, with the ensuing violence, including reports of ethnic violence, affecting mostly civilians. Some 650,000 Rohingya have since sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch (HRW), Shawfika  a Rohingya Muslim woman  described what occurred when the village of Tula Toli was attacked by armed Burmese soldiers and ethnic Rakhine villagers.

Speaking from one of the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, the 24-year-old said she witnessed her husband and father-in-law being killed.

They just kept catching men, making them kneel down and killing them. Then they put their bodies on a pile, Shawfika told HRW. First, they shot them and if they were still alive, they were killed with machetes. It took them one-and-a-half hours to carry all the bodies.

With five other woman, Shawfika was then taken to a building by six soldiers who raped them, she said.

Then they beat us, and when we were beaten down, they shot us. The shot missed me, and I pretended to be dead, and then I passed out. Then they left and put the house on fire, she said.

I woke up and realized I was in a pool of sticky blood. I tried to wake the others up but they didnt move. Then I broke through the [bamboo] wall and escaped, she said.

When I escaped from the house, all the houses in the area were on fire. I could hear women screaming from some of the other houses. They could not escape from the fires.

Shawfika was one of 18 survivors of the Tula Toli massacre which is detailed in a 30-page report by HRW Massacre by the River: Burmese Army Crimes against Humanity in Tula Toli.

The report documents how security forces trapped villagers in a Rohingya community along a riverbank and proceeded to kill and rape men, women, and children, and torch the village.

Hundreds were killed and 746 buildings in the village were destroyed, said the report.

During their investigation, HRW was told of how young children were pulled away from their mothers and killed, either thrown into fires or the river, or beaten, or knifed to death on the ground.

The Burmese armys atrocities at Tula Toli were not just brutal, they were systematic, said Brad Adams, Asia director for HRW. Soldiers carried out killings and rapes of hundreds of Rohingya with a cruel efficiency that could only come with advance planning.

Anatomy of a massacre: @HRW's investigation of systematic rape and murder of hundreds of Rohingya in village of Tula Toli. https://t.co/QIAKfWkMZR pic.twitter.com/nLp80xel9f  Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) December 19, 2017

The UNs chief for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, has called Burmese security forces actions against the Rohingya as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Earlier his month, Doctors Without Borders estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of violence.

The Burmese military has denied accusations it has carried out atrocities and have blamed the crisis on ARSA, who they consider an Islamic terrorist group. ARSA emerged during the past year and is reportedly funded from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

After decades of oppression, Rohingya Muslims and Hindus have lived in Burma as non-citizens and still have severely restricted access to government services and employment opportunities. The Rohingya are not considered among the countrys 135 official ethnic groups.

Since the 2012 outbreak of communal violence, many Rohingya have lived in ghetto-like camps where their movement is restricted. Attaining information from the ground about the well-being of Rohingya and Rakhine civilians still in Rakhine State is still problematic, with the military having curtailed media access into the region.

The U.S. has called for Burma to shine a spotlight on these accounts of ethnic cleansing.

The U.N. has repeatedly called for access for independent investigators to enter the region on a fact-finding mission so that those responsible for the human rights atrocities can be held to account.

Extensive interviews have revealed that more than 6,700 #Rohingya people were murdered during widespread violence in #Myanmar. This horrifying number includes at least 730 children below the age of 5. Full report: https://t.co/mLH2vysatw #RohingyaCrisis pic.twitter.com/KHjpYOF9bA  MSF International (@MSF) December 17, 2017

Please support independent journalism by sharing this article. Thank you very much!

From NTD.tv
New Data Show Foreign Owners Make up Small Amount of Homeowners in Canada

Small amount still enough to cause concerns, say analysts

OTTAWACanada is getting a clearer picture of the level of foreign cash in some of the hottest housing markets, adding more statistical fuel to the debate about how much influence foreign buyers have in driving prices to unimaginable heights, and what should be done about it.

The new housing statistics by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) and Statistics Canada shows that foreign buyers owned 3.4 percent of all residential properties in Toronto and 4.8 percent of residential properties in Vancouver.

The data also show foreign-owned homes are more expensive than those owned by Canadian residents.

This does show how foreign investors are a very big part in driving these markets.  Doug Porter , BMO chief economist

Graham Haines, research and policy manager at the Ryerson City Building Institute, said the foreign buyer data hint at larger issues about speculation in the real estate sector, making it the canary in the coal mine of a growing affordability problem.

What weve seen since 2010 is there is a lot more investment and speculation happening in the real estate market no matter where those people are coming from, he said.

Which raises the question for policy makers: What to do now?

Experts are split.

Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Financial Group, said the low proportion of foreign buyers nationally doesnt mean their influence in the housing market is just as small. Even a small percentage of new buyers in a market that is already stretched can have large ripple effects, he said.

These numbers, especially in Vancouver, might be a little bit lower than I might have guessed, [but] its still a very significant portion and to me this does show how foreign investors are a very big part in driving these markets.

David Madani, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics, said the data suggest the influence of foreign buyers isnt the primary driver of housing prices. More pressing is excessive mortgage credit from domestic banks and less-regulated non-bank lenders, as reflected in Canadas high level of household debt, he said.

The data released was the first in a multi-year effort to create the most comprehensive database of homes and owners. The plan is to have data on some 5,000 municipalities by the end of 2022, with more data on sales and country of origin among other variables.

The two agencies found that foreign investors have an appetite for newer model condominium apartments in Toronto and Vancouver.

CMHC survey data showed that non-resident ownership rates hovered at 1.2 percent in Toronto and Vancouver in buildings built before 1990, but jumped to 4.3 percent in Vancouver for anything built between 2000 and 2009, and 4.1 percent in Toronto for anything built since 2010. That means those units may not be available for local residents in need of a home or rental unit, Haines said.

It seems like a relatively small number, but when we talk about vacancy rate in the rental market, anything below 3 percent is a big deal, he said.

And there are hints foreign buyers are finding new markets in which to invest, particularly Montreal. The CMHC survey found the citys Nuns Island had the largest increases in the share of non-resident owners over the last year, climbing from 4.3 percent in 2016 to 7.6 percent this year.

CMHC believes that part of the increase in Montreal overall could be related to investors trying to avoid the 15 percent foreign ownership tax in Toronto and Vancouver. Another explanation could be that new foreign investors see Montreal as an undervalued market ready to take off, Porter said.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante is now lobbying the Quebec government for the powers to tax foreign owners similar to Toronto and Vancouver.

Im not planning on putting a tax, Im planning on getting the power from Quebec to create a tax if necessary. This is still in the plan, she said.
Nottingham, UK, Gets Worlds First Vending Machine for Homeless

A new vending machine was installed at the Intu shopping center in Broadmarsh, Nottingham, in the U.K. on Tuesday, Dec. 19, but it is not your typical vending machine  it takes no money and dispenses items like fresh fruit, sanitary towels, socks, and toothpaste for free.

The vending machine was set up by Action Hunger, an organization that was started by 29-year-old Nottingham native Huzaifah Khaled, to serve the homeless.

Khaled, who was completing his Ph.D. in law while working on the project, came up with the idea after seeing a rising number of homeless in his home city.

I spoke to a lot of homeless people and saw there was a crucial need for something like this, he told the Nottingham Post.

A year and a half ago, he started looking for a vending machine company that would donate a machine for a trial.

Eventually, N&W Global Vending agreed to give him a $10,000 machine, the Guardian reported. He then worked with the Nottingham-based Friary, a drop-in advice center for homeless people, to identify those most in need and to get volunteers to stock the machines.

We will be prioritizing rough sleepers, Friary CEO Sam Crawford said in a statement, according to CNN. Not everyone who visits us is a rough sleeper, some are homeless in other ways such as those in temporary accommodation.

The machine works with cards that allow the holder to take out up to three items per day at any time of day.

There are many charities and shelters that work tirelessly towards helping those whose daily lives are most mired in hardshipthough many have limited operating hours, Action Hunger says on its website. [This] often results in services being unavailable during the evening and night, and they can also be very expensive to run, with costs running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The immediate benefit of our vending machines is that they satiate hunger and provide nourishment to the most vulnerable members of society. They permit access to food and clothing free of charge at any hour.

Action Hunger insists that the machines will be a complement to other efforts to help the homeless in the city, and not a replacement.

But the machines have been criticized for enabling homelessness by making it easier for transients to stay out on the street. If they were to seek shelter at a place where they could get professional help, it might improve their chances of getting out of the poverty cycle, they argue.

We could have not put a limit on how many items people could receive, and not built in a system of checks, Khaled said, according to the Guardian. All of our users in Nottingham have to check in with the Friary once a week for their cards to continue working.

Action Hunger is currently working with local individuals and businesses to stock the machines, but they hope to get bigger companies involved as the effort scales up, the Nottingham Post reports.

Eventually they plan to go global, with rollouts expected in the other U.K. cities and the U.S. by the end of 2018, the Guardian reports.

Two machines are set to be installed in New York in February, with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle following.

It is just the beginning, Khaled told the Nottingham Post.

As the story of the machines gained momentum in the media, Khaled has been contacted by people all over the world who want to install a machine in their city, he said.

Ive had emails from people in Greece, Spain, Australia and China, all wanting to know more, he told the Guardian.

My ultimate hope for Action Hunger is for our idea to take root in cities all over the world, and for the homeless to have a lifeline to rely on while government policies work towards ending homelessness for once and for all, Khaled told CNN.

But before that happens, he needs someone to run the charity full time, reports the Guardian  hes set to start a full-time job at Goldman Sachs in February.
Partnership Between Academic Publisher and Chinese Internet Giant Raises Questions on Academic Freedom

Springer Nature and Tencent Holdings deal leads to censorship of what Beijing calls 'sensitive' topics

The partnership between a Chinese internet company and a German publisher of journals mainly focusing on scientific research has raised concerns that the Chinese regime will use the Western company to speak on its behalf, while censoring information it objects to.

On Nov. 4, Tencent Holdings Ltd., a Chinese conglomerate providing internet and telecommunications services, and Springer Nature, a publisher of academic research journals, announced a partnership, in which the two will promote science together and help young scientists, according to the Chinese regimes mouthpiece newspaper Peoples Daily.

The deal has come under much scrutiny from academics who believe the move will stifle academic freedom, given Chinas tendency to censor content it disagrees with.

At the partnership signing ceremony, Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent, said the deal would help young scientists connect with the industry and secure capital funding, as well as support science projects around the world that might need long-term investment.

Springer Nature will also officially become a partner of Tencents WE Summit, an annual forum where top scientists and professionals gather to share ideas on science and technology.

The partnership was announced just a few days after Springer said it had blocked access to a portion of its online articlesthose with keywords like Taiwan, Tibet, and Cultural Revolutionto comply with demands from the Chinese regime, according to Reuters. Beijing considers these topics to be controversial, as they call into question the Chinese Communist Partys legitimacy and reveal its dark history.

While Springer Nature issued a statement saying that less than 1 percent of its articles had been pulled, the Financial Times estimated that more than 1,000 articles from the journal International Politics and the Journal of Chinese Political Science had been blocked.

An example of Chinese rewards given to companies and individuals for abiding by the Chinese governments rules is the case of publisher Springer Nature, said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) at a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on Dec. 13 in Washington. Smith is co-chair of the commission tasked with monitoring human rights and rule of law in China.

Smith believed that Springer Natures decision meant it had to comply with Chinas censorship directives and was later rewarded for its censorship by signing a lucrative strategic partnership with the Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings.

Springer Nature is not the first international publisher to bow to Chinese pressure. In August, Cambridge University Press, a UK publisher, blocked online access in China to some 300 articleswith topics including the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, and Tibetfollowing a request from the Chinese regime, according to Reuters. The UK publisher eventually reversed its position and reposted these articles online after an outcry from the academic community.

The impact of the partnership is not limited to just within China, according to professor Lynette Ong, a China and Asia specialist at the University of Toronto.

The partnership between a major Chinese media company and Springer will most likely [mean Springer Nature will] have no qualms censoring its content in or outside China, for commercial or political reasons, said Ong, in an email interview.



She added, This doesnt bode well for academic freedom in the U.S., Canada, or elsewhere.

Tencent has its own agenda for such a partnership, according to a Nov. 6 article on the Hong Kong business news website Finet.hk, run by the Finet Group, an investment holding company that provides financial information services and technology solutions.

[Springer] Nature can basically hand over the latest and most up-to-date list of email addresses of all the best scientists, the article stated. In turn, Tencent could use such a list to recruit staff for its own artificial intelligence lab, located in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen City, and its YouTu Lab, with offices in Shanghai and Hefei, dedicated to image processing, pattern recognition, machine learning, and data mining.
Honey and Barry Sherman, Chairman and CEO of Apotex Inc., were found dead in their Canadian home on Friday, Dec. 15 in an incident police are calling 'suspicious.' Photo taken during (UJA) fundraiser in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Aug. 24, 2010. (The Globe and Mail/Janice Pinto/via Reuters)

Pharma Billionaire was Under Investigation Before Mysterious Death

Shortly before his mysterious death, Toronto billionaire Barry Sherman was working to shut down an investigation into a fundraiser he held for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that allegedly violated lobbying rules.

Toronto Star reports that lobbying commissioner Karen Shepherd has been investigating Sherman since 2016. Sherman, the founder of massive pharmaceutical company Apotex and his wife, Honey, were found dead in their home on Dec. 15.

Sherman was facing a five-year ban for holding the Trudeau fundraiser because it is illegal in Canada to lobby candidates that one helped get elected. Sherman filed a lawsuit in May last year to stop the investigation, saying the probe was taken and pursued in bad faith and/or for an improper purpose.

The investigation is an unanchored fishing expedition, Sherman wrote in the lawsuit and added that the subpoenas issued to Apotex executives were unconstitutional and, as a result, unenforceable.

The case is still ongoing and Shermans lawyers filed documents just days before his death.

Now is not the time to discuss litigation, Apotex spokesperson Jordan Berman told Toronto Star in an email. Our attention is focused on supporting our employees and the Sherman family after this terrible tragedy.

The lobbying complaints against Sherman were filed by Democracy Watch, a government accountability group.

Mr. Shermans fundraising activities for Prime Minister Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau and the Liberal party created conflicts of interest, Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher told Toronto Star.

Democracy Watchs two complaints should still be ruled on by the commissioner of lobbying despite the unfortunate and sad passing of Mr. and Mrs. Sherman, Conacher said.

Sophie and I are saddened by news of the sudden passing of Barry and Honey Sherman. Our condolences to their family & friends, and to everyone touched by their vision & spirit.  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) December 16, 2017

Homicide Team Takes Over

Canadian homicide detectives on Sunday took the lead in investigating the mysterious deaths of pharmaceuticals billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey, a day after relatives complained about the handling of the case.

The development does not mean the deaths are being treated as homicides, Toronto Police Service spokeswoman Michelle Flannery said.

The couple, who were celebrated for their philanthropy and financial success, were found on Friday hanging from a railing by the side of their pool by a real estate agent involved with selling their house in Toronto, Canadian media reported.

Police have said there was no sign of forced entry to the home, which is listed for sale at $5.4 million.

Autopsies conducted on Saturday and Sunday determined that Barry Sherman, 75, and his wife, 70, died from ligature neck compression, police said in a statement. They asked anybody with information on the case to contact authorities.

Flannery would not say whether police were looking for a suspect. Police had said on Saturday they had nobody in custody and were not seeking any suspects.

The case has dominated the Canadian news, with employees, friends and leading politicians expressing shock.

The Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun and Toronto Star reported Saturday that police were operating on the theory that Barry Sherman had killed his wife and hanged himself.

A statement issued late Saturday on behalf of the Shermans four children criticized that idea.

We are shocked and think its irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true, the statement reads.

We urge the Toronto Police Service to conduct a thorough, intensive and objective criminal investigation, it said.

Barry Sherman founded Apotex Inc. in 1974 and built it into one of the worlds biggest generic drug makers, making him one of Canadas richest people.

Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD.tv
Possible Human Organs Found Floating at Detroit Wastewater Plant Three Times in One Week

The Detroit wastewater plant mystery continues to thicken.

For the third time in one week, an organ was found floating at the Great Lakes Water Authoritys water recovery facility.

The organ was discovered before 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 20, WJBK reported. It is still unclear if the organ belongs to a human or an animal.

On two separate instances last week, two kidneys were found at the same facility, one on Friday and another on Saturday.

I know in the past weeks weve had some other incidents. There is an investigation into it right now, Capt. Darin Szilagy of the Detroit Police Department told WJBK. The results are still not back from the medical examiner for the origin of the recovered organs in the past week, so its an ongoing investigation.

The medical examiner will inspect the organ found on Wednesday to determine its origin.

Its inconclusive whether or not the tissue is human, Lisa Croff, a spokesperson for the Wayne County Department of Health told Detroit Free Press. Its being sent out for testing.

Water Resource Recovery Facility is located at 9300 W. Jefferson Ave. It used to be named the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The ominous discoveries led to concerns about water quality, but a water authority spokesperson told Fox News that the organs wont affect the process since they were found in the pre-treatment stage of the filtration process.

The Wayne County Medical Examiners Office told WXYZ that the organs may not be connected to a criminal act. As a result, the examiner will prioritize more urgent work over examining the organs and it may take months to find out where they came from.

According to the Great Lakes Water Authority website, the Water Resource Recovery Facility is the largest single-site wastewater treatment facility in the United States. The plant treats wastewater generated by up to 4 million people in Detroit and nearby communities.

The facility currently serves the needs of 35 percent of Michigans population. The plant was named as one of the top 10 engineering projects of the 20th century in 1999 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

From NTD.tv
Shots Fired as North Korean Soldier Defects Across Border

A North Korean soldier has managed to defect to South Korea through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) unharmed, just one month after another soldier was seriously wounded for doing so.

The Yonhap News Agency reported that the low-ranking soldier emerged out of the fog in front of a guard post at the DMZ just after 8 a.m. local time on Thursday.

After the defection, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said that North Korean border guards came up to the military demarcation line apparently searching for the defector.

In response, South Korean soldiers fired about 20 warning shots. This occurred at around 9:30 a.m., said a JCS spokesman.

The spokesman said that about 40 minutes later, some gunshots were heard coming from the North Korean territory, but no bullets were believed to have come across into South Korea, he said.

The news comes after the dramatic defection of a North Korean soldier, 24-year-old Oh Chong Song who was shot multiple times as he dashed across the border last month. After multiple surgical operations, Oh is said to be in a stable condition.

A day before the most recent defection, South Korean officials said that two North Koreans in a small wooden boat had also defected, reported Yonhap.

The Navy found it in waters about 100 kilometers north of Dokdo during a patrol mission, a ministry official said at a press briefing. A joint probe into the details of their identities is underway.

The JCS says that 15 North Koreans, including four soldiers, have fled directly to the South this year, versus one soldier and four civilians in 2016, reported Yonhap.

Some 30,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea mostly through China since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

From NTD.tv
Six Bodies Hung From Bridges Near Mexicos Los Cabos Tourist Resort

MEXICO CITYThe bodies of six men were found hanging from three different bridges near the Mexican tourist resort of Los Cabos on the Baja California peninsula on Wednesday, local authorities said.

The authorities did not give details on what happened to the men, but drug gangs often hang the bodies of their murdered victims in public to intimidate rivals. Drug gang violence is set to make 2017 Mexicos deadliest year in modern history.

Two bodies were found on a bridge in Las Veredas, near Los Cabos International Airport, and two on a different bridge on the highway between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, local prosecutors said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the prosecutors said two further bodies were found on a third bridge near the airport.

An official from the prosecutors office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bodies of the men had been hung from the bridges.

Violent crime has spiked in Baja California, particularly around the once peaceful resort of Los Cabos visited by million of foreign tourists every year. Los Cabos police chief Juan Manuel Mayorga was shot dead last week.

Mexico is on track for its most violent year since records began, with the rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, now one of the countrys most powerful, and disputes between other criminal groups fueling murder rates.

On Tuesday, authorities in the northern state of Chihuahua said 12 people were killed in clashes between armed groups.

The governor of the state of Baja California Sur, Carlos Mendoza Davis, said that authorities were investigating the incidents near Los Cabos.

I condemn these acts and any expression of violence. Today more than ever in #BCS we should be united, he said via Twitter, using the hashtag for the states initials.

Homicides have more than doubled in Baja California Sur this year, with 409 people killed through October, from 192 in all of 2016. In June authorities said they had found a mass grave with the bodies of 11 men and three women near Los Cabos.

More than 4.4 million passengers, mostly international, have passed through Los Cabos Airport so far this year, according to operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico.
Swan-Adoring Man High on Molly Becomes Stranded After Mishap With Swan Boat

A man who was rescued from the middle of a lake in Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 15 told police that he had taken the drug MDMA  also commonly known as ecstasy or Molly  before his escapade.

Keith Thurston, 36, also told police that he had gone to commune with the swans because the swans dont judge him, according to a police report released Monday, Dec. 18.

Lake Eola is in a public park in downtown Orlando and has a central fountain, swan-shaped paddle boats, and real swans.

The Orlando Police department says someone heard the man yelling for help and called 911.

It was early Friday morning when the bystander called emergency responders, telling them that a man had become stranded on the Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain in the center of the lake.

Police and firefighters rushed to the area at about 4 a.m., where they saw Thurston, who lives in Orlando, shivering on the fountain in shorts and a life jacket.

Weather Underground recorded the temperature in Orlando at about 60 degrees with wind speeds of about 7 mph shortly before 4 a.m.

According to an Orlando police report, the man had taken the swan boat to the fountain but forgot to tie it up and it floated away from him.

Before Thurston was transported [to hospital] he explained he ingested a large quantity of Molly (MDMA) and wanted to be with the swans because they didnt judge him, officers wrote in an incident report, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Charges against Thurston are pending.

From NTD.tv
Top Obama Aide Jokes About Death of Top Republicans

A former top official in the Obama administration came under fire on Thursday after sending a Tweet about the death of top Republican officials.

The inflammatory Tweet by Ben Rhodes, who was former President Barack Obamas deputy national security adviser, quickly drew a response from Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) who was shot in June.

And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence https://t.co/fOrm1JZwpu  Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) December 21, 2017

You may want to reconsider your rhetoric. https://t.co/VQVWej6n00  Rep. Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) December 21, 2017

You may want to reconsider your rhetoric, Scalise wrote in response to Rhodess controversial Tweet in which he had talked about the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence.

The comment by Rhodes came after Republicans in the House and Senate passed a sweeping tax reform bill.

The shooting of Scalise in June by Illinois man James Hodgkinson underscores the potential, real-life dangers of political rhetoric. While Hodgkinsons motive for the shooting is not known, he was passionate about politics. He had worked on Sen. Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign and had joined several protests against President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., before he used an assault-style rifle to attack a group of Republican lawmakers.

Police and investigators gather at an intersection near the scene where shots were fired during a congressional baseball practice, wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), in Alexandria, Virginia on June 14, 2017. (Reuters/Mike Theiler)

Liberal comedian and former CNN contributor Kathy Griffin sparked controversy in May after she did a photo-shoot holding a fake bloody severed head of Trump. Griffin initially apologized for her controversial actions, but later took the apology back.

Griffin was investigated by the Secret Service over the move.

Since last years elections there have been numerous violent threats against the president on social media.

Popstar Madonna said at the Womens March protest in Washington in January that she had thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. While she said later her comments had been taken out of context, the violent rhetoric might inspire someone to actually commit an act of violence.
Prime Minster Justin Trudeau is greeted by Montreal mayor Valerie Plante at city hall in Montreal on Dec. 19, 2017. Government insiders say the Liberals will devote 2018 to delivering on the agenda on which they were elected. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Trudeau to Focus on Economic Agenda in 2018

The ghost of Morneau's tax travails will most likely continue to haunt Liberals in the coming year

OTTAWAJustin Trudeaus Liberals are ushering out 2017 the same way they rang it in: in the midst of controversy over ethics and alleged elitism.

But as much as the prime minister doubtless wants to turn that page, government insiders say he has no intention of hitting the reset button in the new year.

He wont shuffle his cabinet or prorogue Parliament and come back with a throne speech laying out a new agenda for the second half of his four-year mandatethe traditional ways governments try to signal a fresh start.

Rather, 2018 will be devoted to delivering on the agenda the Liberals were elected ona year of relentless implementation, in the words of one insider, who spoke strictly on background.

In other words, a continued focus on spurring economic growth and job creation to ensure a more comfortable future for the middle class and those working hard to join it, as the Liberals never tire of saying.

That means a budget that once again emphasizes investments in infrastructure and preparing Canadians for a changing economy, where advances in artificial intelligence and other technologies threaten traditional jobs.

It means getting the infrastructure bank, created this year, up and running and leveraging private capital for projects that governments alone cant afford.

It means hosting a G7 leaders summit in June that focuses on investing in growth that works for everyone, preparing for the jobs of the future, and advancing gender equality, among other things.

And it means hosting for the first time both the Fortune Global Forum, a prestigious invitation-only gathering of the worlds business elite, and the companion Most Powerful Women Summit.

All of it is aimed at perpetuating the good economic news that dominated 2017: fastest growth among G7 countries, more than 400,000 jobs created, lowest unemployment rate since 2008.

Thats the kind of positive results the Liberals contend can be felt by real people. And its why they believe theyve been able to weather storms over ethics, reneging on Trudeaus signature promise to reform the electoral system, small business tax reform, and Canada Revenue Agency crackdowns on diabetics and othersdespite the best efforts of Conservatives and New Democrats whove been relentless in their pursuit of anything that suggests Trudeau and his ministers are wealthy elitists out of touch with the very middle class they profess to champion.

Ammunition for the opposition

On that score, the Liberals have handed the opposition parties and their newly minted leaders plenty of ammunition throughout the year, starting with the revelation that Trudeau and his family vacationed last Christmas on the private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan, multi-billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader to the worlds Shia Ismaili Muslims.

Federal ethics watchdog Mary Dawson investigated, and almost a year later, on Dec. 20, released a report concluding that Trudeaus vacation broke conflict of interest law that prohibits a minister or any member of their family from accepting gifts or advantages that could reasonably be seen as influencing government decisions. Dawson also concluded that Trudeau broke the ethics code when he travelled on the Aga Khans private helicopter.

The Liberals image as champions of the middle class took another self-inflicted hit in the summer, when Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced tax reform proposals he maintained were aimed at stopping the wealthy from using incorporation of their small businesses to gain unfair tax advantages.

The badly communicated plan backfired, triggering an avalanche of criticism from doctors, lawyers, accountants, farmers, and shopkeepers, who resented the implication that they were tax cheats, and pushback from premiers and even some Liberal backbenchers. Morneau ended up scrapping some proposals and softening others.

The furor drew attention to Morneaus own personal wealth and the fact that upon his appointment to cabinet he did not divest or put in a blind trust some $20 million worth of shares in Morneau Shepell, the giant pension management and human resources company founded by his father.

Dawson is now investigating whether Morneau was in a conflict of interest when he introduced pension legislation that may have benefited Morneau Shepell and the value of his shares.

The ghost of that controversy past will almost certainly continue to haunt Trudeau in the new year, when Dawson or her successorassuming Dion chooses to continue the investigationfinally rules on the matter.

Moreover, legislation to implement the small business tax reform may run into a brick wall when it gets to the independent-minded Senate, where a committee has already urged the government to scrap even the watered down proposals.

Conservatives lead briefly in polls

Morneaus tax travails and personal finances combined to make the last half of 2017 the most challenging time yet for Trudeaus two-year-old government. And public opinion polls briefly reflected the parliamentary turbulence, showing the Conservatives closing the gap withor even surpassingthe Liberals for the first time since the 2015 election.

Yet when the public mood was actually tested at the ballot box in a series of byelections this fall, the Liberals managed to easily hold onto safe seats and snatch away two Conservative seats in the midst of the controversy. And by year end, most polls suggested the Liberals had rebounded back into a relatively comfortable lead.

I think for the most part, the Liberals are benefiting from broader conditions that often benefit majority governments: rookie opposition leaders and a generally healthy economy with relatively low levels of unemployment, says University of Waterloo political scientist Emmett Macfarlane.

And so where there have been controversies, they arent necessarily sticking.

That said, Macfarlane says Andrew Scheers Conservatives have arguably made the most of what theyve been given, successfully pressuring the government to walk back its tax reform proposals.

He says his polling has found the Conservatives are gaining traction with working class Canadians who are pessimistic about their own personal economic circumstances, no matter what the national statistics show; negative about the current direction of the government; and hostile to immigration, free trade, and so-called elitesthe same kind of constituency that fuelled Donald Trumps presidential victory in the United States.

That may help explain why the Liberals are planning to double down in the coming year on investing in growth that works for everyone and delivering results that existing and aspiring middle class Canadians will feel in their pocketbooks.

Those best-laid plans could be upset, however, by circumstances beyond the governments control. There could be, for instance, economic repercussions if Trump were to follow through on his repeated threats to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement or if tensions over North Koreas nuclear threat were to boil over.

And then theres the unfinished ethics investigation into Morneau. As the pre-election campaign inevitably ramps up over the course of the year, opposition parties can be expected to pounce even more aggressively on anything that undermines the credibility of the very minister the Liberals are counting on to deliver their all-important economic message.

From The Canadian Press
President Donald Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley during a meeting on United Nations Reform at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept. 18, 2017. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

UN Adopts Controversial Anti-US Resolution

US Ambassador Nikki Haley says "We will remember it"

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that the United States will remember countries who voted against it in a controversial UN resolution.

In total 128 countries voted in favor of the resolution that condemned Americas decision to move its embassy to Israels capital, Jerusalem. Nine voted against the resolution, and 35 countries abstained.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation, Haley said ahead of the vote.

We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations.

Haley said that the United States as a sovereign nation has the right to decide where it locates its own embassy.

The presidents decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy, Haley said.

The United States has been required under law to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem since 1995 after Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act.

The 1995 act has widespread bipartisan support in Congress. The act was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote in the Senate six months ago.

While Trump is not the first U.S. president to have promised to make the movesimilar promises were made by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack ObamaTrump is the first to have acted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the countries who had voted against the resolution or abstained from voting.

President Donald Trump listens while Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes a statement for the press before a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 18, 2017. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be. But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theatre of the absurd, Netanyahu said in a video message.

I want to again express my thanks to President Trump and Ambassador Haley for their stalwart defense of Israel and their stalwart defense of the truth, he said.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said: Were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care.

The United States contributes by far the most to the annual UN budget, having provided $594 million in 2016, or 22 percent.

In total, the United States contributes around $3 billion to the UN each year, including the annual budget and other items, such as funding peacekeeping missions.

In September, Trump praised the United Nations for its noble goals but urged the 71-year-old institution to focus more on results, rather than process.

Speaking at a UN meeting in New York focused on reform, Trump said that while the organizations staff has doubled since 2000, and its budget increased significantly, it had not produced a significant increase in results.

I think the main message is make the United Nations Great. Not again make the United Nations great. Such tremendous potential, and I think well be able to do this, Trump said following his speech.

In 2016, the total expenditure of the UN was nearly $49 billion, up $10 billion from just six years earlier. Most of its funding is spent on humanitarian assistance, at $16 billion, followed by development assistance at nearly $12 billion, and peacekeeping operations at just over $9 billion.

(L-R) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (L), President Donald Trump, and Thailands Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai at the UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 18, 2017. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

The United Nations was founded on truly noble goals. These include affirming the dignity and worth of the human person and striving for international peace. The United Nations has helped advance toward these goals in so many ways: feeding the hungry, providing disaster relief, and empowering women and girls in many societies all across the world, Trump said in his speech.

Trump blamed bureaucracy and mismanagement for the organization not reaching its full potential.

We seek a United Nations that regains the trust of the people around the world. In order to achieve this, the United Nations must hold every level of management accountable, protect whistle-blowers, and focus on results rather than on process, he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the former Prime Minister of Portugal who replaced Ban Ki-Moon as UN Secretary earlier this year, seems to share Trumps vision of a reformed UN. In a May 2017 letter, he said, Our efforts to implement this ambitious reform agenda rest on ensuring that we simplify procedures, decentralize decision-making and move towards ever greater transparency and accountability.
Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia Dec. 21, 2017. (Reuters/Melanie Burton)

UPDATE: Australian Police Say Dont Suspect Terrorism After Car Plows Into Pedestrians

Driver has history of assault, drug use and mental health issues

MELBOURNEA car deliberately plowed into pedestrians injuring 19 people at a crowded intersection in the Australian city of Melbourne on Thursday, but police said they did not believe the attack to be terror-related.

In January, four people were killed and more than 20 injured when a man deliberately drove into pedestrians just a few hundred meters away from Thursdays attack. That too was not a terror attack.

At this time, we dont have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism, said acting chief Commissioner Shane Patton, who added that the driver suffered mental health issues.

Four of the injured were in critical condition.

Jim Stoupas, the owner of a donut shop near the intersection, told Reuters the vehicle was traveling up to 100 kph (62 mph) and the intersection was packed, just days before Christmas.

He just plowed into the pedestrians and what stopped him was, I think, just the amount of pedestrians hed mowed over, Stoupas said in a phone interview.

He came to a rest against the tram sign, and all you could hear was just bang bang bang bang bang (of the car hitting pedestrians) and screams.

Police allege the driver of the car intentionally ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians @abcmelbourne pic.twitter.com/CXdUKwc5Cc  Danny Tran (@DANNYTRAN) December 21, 2017

Police detained two men  the driver and another man who was filming the incident and was found with three knives. They have not been charged. At this stage, police say they do not believe the man filming has any connection with the driver.

The driver, 32, is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent and was driving a relatives car, reported The Australian.

The attack took place on Flinders Street, a major road that runs alongside the Yarra River, in the central business district of Australias second-biggest city.

Our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a post on his official Twitter account.

As our federal & state police & security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them. https://t.co/JkUM9TuIQe  Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) December 21, 2017

Melbourne has installed about 140 concrete bollards in the city center to stop vehicle attacks by militants similar to recent attacks in Europe and the United States.

Sydney, Australias biggest city, has installed concrete barricades in main pedestrian thoroughfares.

Australia has been on a high national threat level since 2015, citing the likelihood of attacks by Australians radicalized in Iraq and Syria.

Two hostages were killed during a 17-hour siege by a lone wolf gunman, inspired by Islamic State militants, in a cafe in Sydney in December 2014.

By Melanie Burton and Paulina Duran
UPDATE: Suspect and Victim Details Released in Australia Car Attack That Injured 19

Police say the driver of a car accused of intentionally ploughing into a group of pedestrians in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 21, has a history of assault, drug use, and mental health problems, the ABC reported.

After driving through the crowd, the white 4WD vehicle crashed into a nearby tram stop, sending 19 people to hospital and triggering peak-hour chaos near Melbournes Flinders Street train station.

According to police, the driver was a 32-year-old Australian of Afghan descent with a criminal history.

Of the 19 hospitalized victims, four remain in critical condition, it is reported.

Victoria Police told the ABC the injured include:

A four-year-old boy

A 25-year-old man

A 40-year-old man

A 43-year-old man

A 45-year-old man

An 83-year-old man

A 25-year-old woman

A 25-year old woman

A 30-year-old woman

A 35-year-old woman

A 47-year-old woman

A 58-year-old woman

There are also three men and two women whose ages are unknown, in addition to an off-duty police officer.

The 32-year-old man arrested at the scene also remains in hospital under police guard.

Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told ABC reporters the suspect was arrested by an off-duty police officer.

It would be right to single him out for special praise for the way in which he instinctively came to the aid of others, he said.

Been quiet at the 4WD until recently, appears investigators are back at the crime scene. #FlindersSt still cordoned off. @abcnews pic.twitter.com/wzJLVI3IbU  James Oaten (@james_oaten) December 21, 2017

Patton also reportedly said there was no evidence of a connection with terrorism.

We dont at this time have any evidence or any intelligence to indicate theres a connection with terrorism, he told the ABC.

A second man arrested on site was seen filming the incident. Police discovered he had a bag with multiple knives inside.

Police believe the second man has no connection with the incident, but is said to be assisting police with their inquiries, the ABC reported.

Victoria Police Commander Russell Barrett told ABC reporters all evidence points to an intentional act.

We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act. The motivations are unknown, Barrett said.

Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, called it a shocking incident.

Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, a state in Australia, also condemned the attack.

What happened in Flinders Street today was an act of evil.

This was an attack on innocent bystanderspeople finishing their Christmas shopping, heading home from work, unwinding for the year.

Tonight, Victorians stand strong, and we stand together, he stated.

Vehicle Was Traveling Up To 62 mph

Jim Stoupas, the owner of a donut shop near the intersection, told Reuters the vehicle was traveling up to 100 kph (62 mph) and the intersection was packed, just days before Christmas.

He just plowed into the pedestrians and what stopped him was, I think, just the amount of pedestrians hed mowed over, Stoupas said in a phone interview.

He came to a rest against the tram sign, and all you could hear was just bang bang bang bang bang [of the car hitting pedestrians] and screams.

The attack took place on Flinders Street, a major road that runs alongside the Yarra River, in the central business district of Australias second-biggest city.

A witness described the incident to ABC Radio Melbourne.

I saw a car, an SUV coming at high speed and really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleysand I hope not prams.

Ive really never seen anything like this before and I havent stopped shaking.

Prime Minister Turnbull issued a statement on his official Twitter account.

Our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them, Turnbull stated.

As our federal & state police & security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them. https://t.co/JkUM9TuIQe  Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) December 21, 2017

Troubled History

In January, four people were killed and more than 20 injured when a man deliberately drove into pedestrians just a few hundred meters away from Thursdays attack. That too was not a terror attack.

Melbourne has installed about 140 concrete bollards in the city center to stop vehicle attacks by militants similar to recent attacks in Europe and the United States.

Sydney, Australias biggest city, has installed concrete barricades in main pedestrian thoroughfares.

Australia has been on a high national threat level since 2015, citing the likelihood of attacks by Australians radicalized in Iraq and Syria.

Two hostages were killed during a 17-hour siege by a lone wolf gunman, inspired by Islamic State militants, in a cafe in Sydney in December 2014.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Kelly Folse, veterinary physician, has been arrested for shooting her neighbor's dog. (Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office)

Vet Arrested After Fatally Shooting Neighbors Dog

A woman has been arrested for fatally shooting her neighbors dog.

Investigators believe that Kelly Folse, 35, from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana made several threats towards the dog because she thought it barked too much and that it was aggressive.

Yet after conducting several interviews in the neighborhood, detectives said they found no evidence to suggest the dog was being aggressive, according to a Dec. 19 statement from Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office.

Folse worked as a veterinary physician at Abadie Veterinary Hospital.

A Louisiana vet is facing charges after shooting a neighbor's dog. https://t.co/g9IEOCwWUH  RocketCityNow (@rocketcitynow) December 20, 2017

Sheriff Joe Lopinto told reporters at a news conference that the 15-month old American bulldog, called Bruzier, was owned by a resident who lived next door to Folse in the 8900 block of Camille Court in River Ridge.

According to Fox News, Folse had complained with heated text messages to the owneridentified by the news outlet as Stacey Fitznerabout Bruziers barking.

We got him right after my son was born. He was such a loving dog, Fitzner told Fox8. He was a great, wonderful American bulldog.

Fitzner said she put Bruizer in the backyard as she left for work on Dec. 13. But when her mother came back to pick up her niece and nephew she noticed Bruzier.

Her and my nephew found the dog with blood surrounding him. Someone had to come up behind him and put the gun to him and shoot him, Fitzner told the news outlet.

They took him straight to the vet, which was closed, so they rushed to find a second vet. Veterinarians told them the dog had to be put to sleep after being there all night. The dog died on Dec. 14.

That veterinary clinic happened to be Abadie Veterinary Hospital, where Folse worked.

The hospitals owner, Dr. Scott Abadie, confirmed to Fox8 that Folse has been fired, saying he was shocked and disgusted to hear about Folses actions.

Its just not something you expect of anybody, especially a vet, he said.

He said she had worked at Abadie since she was 15 and had never received any complaints about her.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office said that detectives also found narcotics in Folses home.

She was arrested on Tuesday, Dec. 19, for aggravated cruelty to animals, illegal discharge of a firearm, and drug-related charges.
Woman, 69, Killed by Dog in Arizona: Reports

A volunteer at an animal-boarding facility in Phoenix was killed during a dog attack on Wednesday, according to police.

The attack took place at the Canine Country Club and Feline Inn, reported The Arizona Republic newspaper.

#UPDATE: We now know the name of the woman who was mauled to death by a dog at a #Phoenix kennel yesterdayhttps://t.co/2Q8NZspRgD pic.twitter.com/HXgACDEOvI  azfamily 3TV CBS 5 (@azfamily) December 21, 2017

She was here potentially to socialize the animal to prepare it for adoption when the attack took place, Jose Santiago, who is a spokesman for Maricopa County Animal Care and Control, told the Republic. No one actually witnessed the attack.

The woman, later identified by AZFamily as 69-year-old Carol Harris, had been working at the Canine Country Club and Feline Inn as part of a rescue group named Akita Advocates.

The dog involved in the attack is an Akita, a large breed of dog that can get to be two feet tall at the shoulder while weighing in excess of 100 pounds.

Akita Advocates Relocation Team Arizona posted a statement on Facebook.

She passed away while helping rehab an orphaned Akita in the hopes of him becoming adoptable, the post read, according to AZ Central.

Unbelievable, Greg Donahue, the owner of the animal facility, told ABC 15. Its so tragic; a lot of tears today  Weve never had more than a nip. This is unbelievablejust unbelievable.

After the attack, the dog was found and cornered by an employee.

The dog appeared to be covered in something that looked like blood to him and he then discovered the woman. At that point, 911 was called and they got the dog into a secure kennel, Santiago told 12 News.

The dog was taken by the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control, and it will likely be euthanized.
Orange S.A. provides various fixed telephony and mobile telecommunications, data transmission, and other value-added services to customers, businesses, and other telecommunications operators in France and internationally. It operates through France; Spain and Other European Countries; The Africa and Middle East; Enterprise; International Carriers & Shared Services; and Mobile Financial Services segments. The company offers mobile services, such as voice, SMS, and data; fixed broadband and narrowband services, as well as fixed network business solutions, including voice and data; and convergence packages. It also sells mobile handsets, mobile terminals, broadband equipment, connected devices, and accessories. In addition, the company provides IT and integration services comprising unified communication and collaboration services, such as LAN and telephony, consultancy, integration, and project management; hosting and infrastructure services, including cloud computing; customer relations management and other applications services; security services; and video conferencing, as well as sells related equipment. Further, it offers national and international roaming services; online advertising services; and mobile virtual network operators, network sharing, and mobile financial services, as well as sells equipment to external distributors and brokers. Orange S.A. markets its products and services under the Orange brand. The company was formerly known as France Telecom and changed its name to Orange S.A. in July 2013. Orange S.A. was founded in 1990 and is headquartered in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit

Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools:

Portfolio Monitoring

Top Stock Lists

Premium Reports

Stock Screeners

Live News Feed

Premium Support

Free for your first month.
Dunelm Group plc retails homewares in the United Kingdom. The company offers furniture and beds products, which include bedroom, living room, dining room, and other furniture, as well as bed and mattresses, and sofas and chairs; bedding products comprising bed linen, dorma, baby and kid's bedding, and duvets, pillows and protectors; curtains and rugs; and venetian, roller, roman, vertical, and made to measure blinds. It also offers range of home decor products, such as mirrors, clocks, ornaments, pictures and frames, candle and home fragrance, flower and plants, vases, kid accessories, cushions, bean bags, and letterbox flowers, as well as housewarming, engagement, anniversary, and wedding gifts; lighting products, including ceiling and wall lights, table and desk lamps, floor lamps, and pendants and lamp shades; and paint, wallpaper, DIY and upcycling, and haberdashery products. In addition, the company provides kitchen and utility products comprising cooking, dining, electrical, utility, and pet products; towel and bathmats, and bathroom accessories, as well as furniture and decor products; storage products, such as travel and luggage, home, clothes, and kitchen storage; kids bedroom, nursery, and accessories products; outdoor products, which include garden furniture and decoration, and entreating and dining products; and trends christmas products and winter essentials. It operates through a network of 177 stores and 2 distribution centers, as well as sells its products through an online store at dunelm.com. Dunelm Group plc was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Syston, the United Kingdom.
WASHINGTON  A president with no concern for veracity or consistency has assured us he is not considering the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. This does not make the prospect even marginally less remote. And it has done little to inhibit the attempt by some conservatives to discredit the investigation.

On a move against Mueller and his office, the wind is thick with straws. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, warns: We do not know the magnitude of insider bias on Mr. Muellers team. Sen. John Cornyn urges Mueller to clean house of partisans and wonders if the Special Counsels final report will be legitimate. The Murdoch pressled in silly shrillness by Fox News personalitiescontinues to trash the reputations of Mueller and his associates.

At one level, this is whataboutism run amok. What about Bill and Hillary Clinton? Didnt they ruthlessly discredit Ken Starr and his investigation? Why should Republicans hobble themselves with scruples?

But here is a difference. Clinton and his defenders were accusing an investigator of being a power-mad prig. Some of Trumps defenders are claiming, in effect, that the FBI is engaged in a coup detat (the words of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz)  a politically motivated attempt to reverse the results of the 2016 election. Their evidence? That some senior investigators donated to Democrats, supported Hillary Clinton and called Trump an idiot.

If that last charge were considered a disqualification, we would have the political equivalent of the Rapture (including, apparently, some of the Cabinet). But the larger point is this: Trump Republicans are willing to smear a man of genuine integrity, and undermine confidence in federal law enforcement, for reasons they must know are thin to the point of transparency. This is beyond cynicism. It is institutional arson. This is the profoundly anti-conservative strategy of Trump supporters against any institution (the courts, the media, law enforcement) that exposes the administrations deception and corruption: Burn, baby, burn.

Because Mueller is inexorable, the desperation in Trump world is palpable. We know that senior officials in the Trump campaign wanted to collude with the Russians in order to influence the election. (Donald Trump Jr. has admitted meeting with a Russian lawyer in June of 2016 to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton.) We know that Russian intelligence had the means to influence the election, hacked from a variety of sources. We know that Trump officials tried to conceal their contacts with the Russians, while seeking policy changes favorable to Russian interests. We know (on the credible testimony of a former FBI director) that President Trump tried to shut the investigation of these matters down. And it is a good bet that Mueller knows far more about all of this than we do.

As the investigation seems to be closing in on members of the Trump family, the president has a variety of options, all with serious risks. He might be able (it is debated among legal scholars) to fire Mueller directly. But unless he also abolishes the Special Counsels office, FBI officials would continue to investigate any crimes they have discovered. Other precedent would require Trump first to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (to whom Mueller reports), then (probably after a cascade of Justice Department resignations) find a stooge willing to fire Mueller. This would be a direct assault on the autonomy and integrity of the FBI, which still has defenders on Capitol Hill.

Or Trump could do a preemptive pardon of individuals being investigated. This would look deeply corrupt  like an admission of guilt written in neon  and there are serious legal issues surrounding a presidential self-pardon. This option would put the tolerance of Hill Republicans for executive lawlessness to the test. Is there any limit to their capacity for servility? The frog is in the pot, and it nears a boil.

If Trump takes any of these aggressive actions, it will define his presidency, exaggerate social division and throw America public life into chaos. At that point, he will deserve impeachment, whether he is impeached or not. (That will be determined, not by the degree of the offenses, but by which party controls the House of Representatives.)

Behind all this is a nagging fear. Other presidents would be restrained by the prospect of social division and political chaos. For Trump, these may be incentives. He seems to thrive in bedlam. But the anarchy that sustains him damages the institutions around him  a cost for which he cares nothing.
How to watch and what to know about Northern Iowa at South Dakota
The wave of anti-immigration sentiment that boosted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump has eerie historical parallels.

In 1955, historian John Higham wrote a book titled, "Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925." The restrictionist movements, ideas and legislative efforts chronicled in Higham's history bear a distinct resemblance to those that have emerged in the present day. But there are good reasons to think that this time is different because economic and cultural changes make it unlikely the U.S. will go down the same isolationist path that it trod in the early 20th century.

"Strangers in the Land" traces three distinct kinds of American nativism. The first, anti-Catholic sentiment, mostly died out after Irish immigration trailed off. But the recurrent bouts of panic over a papist fifth column bear an interesting resemblance to modern fears of Islam:

Catholic meetings were spied upon for evidence of military preparations. In Toledo the mayor, the police commissioner, and others bought Winchester rifles to repel an anticipated invasion, and many ... were afraid to go to bed at night. ... A rural schoolteacher in Minnesota went about heavily armed for weeks to defend himself against the anticipated massacre (of Protestants).

Higham's second type of nativism is anti-radicalism -- basically, early anti-communism. The third type, however, which became dominant in the 1920s, was racial nativism, or the belief that people of Northern and Western European descent were superior to others, and that the United States would collapse if they didn't remain a majority. It was this sentiment that ultimately led to the restrictive Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which severely limited immigration and set quotas ensuring that most immigration would come from the racially favored countries.

The 1924 law was recently praised by Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Meanwhile, the idea of preventing racial demographic change is central to the ethos of the alt-right activists who have been at the vanguard of agitating for immigration restriction. As in the early 20th century, a panic over changing demographics is leading to calls for the U.S. to close the gates. Higham's history seems to be repeating itself.

But things might not turn out the same way as they did 100 years ago. In the 1910s and 1920s, public pressure for immigration restriction was intense -- now, it's supported only by a shrinking minority of Americans. Polls find that support for decreased immigration has fallen in the last decade:

Trump's election hasn't sparked a general hardening of attitudes against immigrants, as occurred in the 1910s and 1920s. In fact, Americans of all political persuasions say more positive things about immigrants in 2017 than they did in previous years:

Americans are even less militant toward illegal immigrants. Polls show increasing support in 2017 for giving unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship rather than deporting them:

Why are Americans so pro-immigration, even in the age of Trump? One possible reason could be that they're more comfortable with diversity than their forebears were in the age Higham writes about. Americans certainly express fewer reservations about diversity than do people in Europe:

A second reason could be that some -- though not all -- of the changes restrictionists want have already happened on their own, with no need for new legislation. Illegal immigration, long the chief target of restrictionists' ire, has effectively stopped -- since 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population has fallen. Immigration from Mexico, the main source of population inflow during the 1990s and early 2000s, has been in reverse for a decade, with more Mexicans going south than coming north. Overall, low-skilled immigration to the U.S. is trailing off -- the main group now coming into the U.S. includes educated people, mostly from East and South Asia.

A third reason, though, is that the economy of 2017 is simply much different from the economy of 1917. In the days of rapid industrialization, immigrants mostly supplied cheap labor, working in factories and mines. Unions were afraid that immigrants would hold their wages down, while business owners were worried that foreign workers would come bearing radical anti-capitalist sentiment. This meant that both sides of the class divide were comfortable with the 1924 laws.

Today, however, the U.S. economy has transitioned from one based on low-wage manufacturing to one based on knowledge work and innovation. Whether immigrants ever threatened the jobs and wages of the native-born once upon a time, they probably don't threaten them now. There's plenty of evidence that knowledge workers complement each other, so that high-skilled foreigners raise the wages of high-skilled and low-skilled native-born workers alike.

In other words, enacting new laws and regulations against immigration -- such as the RAISE Act now being considered by Congress, or various other moves by the Trump administration -- would strike directly at the heart of U.S. economic leadership. Rather than boosting incomes for the native-born, it would lower them, by weakening American dominance in innovative industries.

So there's a good chance that history won't repeat itself. The 2010s and 2020s may not prove to be an echo of the xenophobic moment of 100 years ago. Even if Trump does enact some measures to keep out immigrants, it's likely that there will be pressure from both the public and from business groups for Trump's successor to reverse these measures.
To help us keep this website secure, please wait while we verify you're not a robot! It will only take a few seconds...

Loading...
The Vernon County Censor

Dec. 19, 1917

100 years ago

Christmas shoppers are more numerous than hairs on a rabbit.

Weather of yesterday and today makes us think of tobacco and the hustle and jungle of hard coin that goes with it. It has been growing mild and soft and indications are that there will be sufficient of it to put hanging weed in case.

House of representatives on Monday passed the constitutional prohibition amendment by a decisive vote.

Onions, per bushel $1.45 at Roman's Grocery.

On the seventh instant the beloved wife of L.W. Swain died at their Readstown home. A suitable tribute to her worth and life will appear next week.

Fancy navel oranges, 25c per dozen at Roman's Grocery.

Merchant and Postmaster Allen Halverson of West Prairie, was in the city, yesterday.

War Notes - Hamburg town, although more distinctly German-American than any other section of the county, has sent more men to the service than any other place, except possibly Viroqua.

Cashier John W. Lowe of Chaseburg bank, was among first to be drawn in the government lottery. He declined to ask exemption, but his young wife made such claim and he was exempted. Mrs. Lowe at that time wrote the exemption board that if circumstances shaped themselves she would not press her rightful claim. On a late day she withdrew her request and said she would, with government aid and assistance of her relatives be able to maintain herself and two young children, so that Mr. Lowe will be among those next to go to the front from this county. One of the finest examples of womanly loyalty Wisconsin will be able to produce.

The Vernon County Censor

Dec. 24, 1942

75 years ago

The Viroqua businesses wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

The VHS alumni dance is next Tuesday. Proceeds will go for the purchase of war bonds.

Mr. & Mrs. Arne Larson received word that their son, Carl, had been killed in action. He was in the Navy.

Obituaries: Julius Simpson passes from a heart attack, Mrs. Evelyn Hanson 29, George Kinnear 89, Elizabeth Sordahl 80.

Salvage director VonHaden says Washington is in great need of nylon or silk stockings and fats for war use.

Mrs. L. F. Taylor has collected as many addresses as possible of our service boys from the area and has displayed them for those who wish to send cards or gifts.

Wed: Anna Monson to Harland Peterson, Mary Bolen to Ralph Whistler, Dorothy Schlicht to Earl Henry, Roy Minshall to Vera Plesec.

The Gardner reunion was held at the home of Alvin Gardner and wife. Along with his mother, four sisters and three brothers attended.

The Vernon County Broadcaster-Censor

Dec. 21, 1967

50 years ago

Viroqua's Park Bowl development as a recreation center has been approved for $12,952 in federal LAWCON [Land and Water Conservation] funds, Mayor Vic Ellefson learned last week.

Viroqua's National Guard, soon to be part of a light maintenance company, will have less authorized strength when re-organization is complete. Currently, the Troop is authorized 75 total men and officers. In the future, 52 enlisted men, two officers and one warrant officer will be authorized for a total of 55.

Deaths: Aletta (Stigen) Larson, 84; Shirley Jean Johnson, 18; Mary (Gunderson) Sutherland, 100; John Krogan, 75.

Ten rural mailboxes were damaged, twisted or knocked off their posts Friday night between Viroqua and LaFarge on State 82. The Vernon County Sheriff DeVerne Hokland reports the incidents are under investigation.

Teachers and the Board "heard each other out" Wednesday last week but adjourned amicable when it became apparent they would get no closer toward agreement. On January 4 they will attempt to resolved differences in 1968-69 school year salaries and negotiated agreements. On the major issue, they are about $600 apart on annual salary.

Evelyn Nelson has been hired as the second Vernon County Welfare Homemaker. She succeeds Inez Hagen in the position.

The Vernon County Broadcaster

Dec. 17, 1992

25 years ago

The Viroqua City Council addressed the issues of the hospital expansion, well repairs and the possibility of a north-south through street at its most recent meeting. Vernon Memorial Hospital Foundation President Bud Bekkedal gave a presentation of VMH's plan for the new construction at the Council meeting.

The Viroqua School Board voted to borrow $265,000 for remodeling the existing bus garage to be used for administration offices, building a new bus garage and converting the current district office for classroom space. According to the district's financial consultants, there will be no increase in the debt service tax levy.

The Westby Rod and Gun Club was honored and received the Vernon County Group Wildlife Habitat Development Award. From the early 1920s, the Club has been involved in stocking trout in local streams and the construction of wing dams to control erosion.

Two rural Viroqua children were removed from a Viroqua group home by their mother and not returned at the proscribed time. The mother, May Ripley, and the two children were apprehended and taken into custody by the Las Vegas police department. They were taken into custody due to a Vernon County arrest warrant that had been issues for interference with custody.

Readstown elementary school teacher Nan Alexander was named Vernon County's Conservation Teacher of the Year. The award was given each year to a teacher that emphasized conservation education in her/his curriculum.

Wayne Peters, an organic farmer from Chaseburg, has served as a volunteer member of VOCA (Volunteers for Overseas Cooperative Assistance). He spent two weeks in the country of Estonia helping them set up organic cooperative farms.

The Vernon County Broadcaster

Dec. 20, 2007

10 years ago

Chris Hall, of Genoa, has been commissioned to create a White House ornament. Hall is the education director at Norskedalen Nature and Heritage Center near Coon Valley, and was commissioned to design an ornament by Effigy Mounds National Park. Each park was asked to commission a 9-inch ornament, which depicts the park. Hall was a park ranger at Effigy Mounds Parks and designed the Junior Ranger books. The ornament is located in the Blue Room, which houses the tree which holds the National Park ornaments.

Dairyland Power will explore the Vernon County landfill as an alternative to purchasing 600 acres for the ash landfill. It is reported that the existing landfill would need to be expanded in order to receive the amount of ash that Dairyland is expected to produce.

Please check the deadlines at the Broadcaster office as the holidays are fast approaching.

Deadline for the submission of nomination papers for public office is fast approaching. Circulation of the papers are Dec. 1, 2007 to Jan. 2, 2008.
OTTAWACanadian auto parts companies and their unionized workers are criticizing an influential business group for urging the Liberal government to move forward quickly with a revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership.

They say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was right to hold off on signing a renewed TPP last month at the APEC summit in Vietnam and that the governments critics of that decision are misguided.

The presidents of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association and Unifor, Canadas largest private sector union which represents autoworkers, say thats because the TPP is bad for the small and medium-sized auto parts companies and their employees.

Read more:

Canadas decision to decline TPP agreement shouldnt have been a surprise: Trudeau

Thomas Walkom: Why Justin Trudeau will eventually join the new Trans-Pacific Partnership

Five things to know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Flavio Volpe and Jerry Dias both say the Liberals need to go slow to undo the potential damage done to their sector when the previous Conservative government agreed to concessions in the original TPP that would have given Japanese carmakers an unfair advantage in the Canadian market.

Earlier this week, the Business Council of Canada sent Trudeau an open letter signed by 18 chief executives, telling him Canada must immediately join the reconstituted version of the TPP, which Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of in January.

John Manley, the council president, said it was imperative for the Trudeau Liberals to join because Asia will move on without Canada at a time when this country needs to diversify its trade portfolio.

But Volpe said the Liberal government has taken a thoughtful approach that benefits small and medium-sized companies and their employees instead of racing for the trophies that completed trade agreements represent.

Its not un-Canadian to try to get better terms before you get into bed with someone for decades, Volpe said in an interview Wednesday.

The U.S. is no longer in it, so theres no reason to accept terms when the context has changed.

Dias said Manley represents the interests of the chief executives and large companies, not their workers.

Its about allowing corporations to do anything they want, said Dias.

Its about a philosophy of free enterprise, as opposed to putting Canadians to work.

Volpe and Dias said separately that the previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper is to blame for agreeing to the original TPP deal during the 2015 federal election campaign. They said it was bad for their sector and was reached without consulting their industry until late in the process.

The TPP was about politics. It wasnt about economics. Harper was losing in the polls, he needed it as part of his election platform, said Dias.

Japan and the U.S. agreed in secret in April 2015 on what the content provisions of automobiles ought to be and then foisted the agreement on Canada and Mexico, said Volpe.

The Rules of Origin content levels were set at historic lows at 35 per cent for parts and 45 per cent for cars, which would have allowed cars built in non-TPP countries such as China and Thailand to flood the North American market, he said.

The current Liberal government listened to the concerns of the auto industry and blocked a plan by the 10 remaining TPP countries to sign a newly-configured version of the Pacific Rim trade pact last month at the APEC summit, said Volpe.

Trudeau incurred the wrath of Australia and Japan, who had been pushing the new, non-U.S. version of the deal.

Lawrence Herman, a Toronto trade expert with Herman and Associates, said finding a way to eventually join the new TPP is vital to Canadas trade interests  but not at the expense of the auto sector.

We just need to be sure that any trans-Pacific deal recognizes that Canada, unlike the Asian parties, is part of an integrated North American auto market, said Herman.

Scott Sinclair, senior research fellow with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the new TPP agreement is the same as the old flawed one, and the Liberals are right to be wary.

With the U.S. out, no Canadian-assembled vehicle can realistically meet the pacts rules of origin, which amounts to a one-way opening of the Canadian auto market, he said.

It will be impossible for the Trudeau government to honestly square this zombie pact with a genuinely progressive trade agenda.

SHARE:
WASHINGTONIn the dying hours of debate, with the United States poised to pass its most sweeping tax reform in decades  including far-reaching provisions touching health care, the economy and the national debt  a senator mentioned how it would also reach the northern neighbour, Canada.

He predicted it would pull companies south.

Were not gonna have any more pharmaceutical companies buying donut-makers in Canada and move their headquarters to get a lower tax rate, said Sen. Johnny Isakson, in a slightly bungled reference to Burger King buying Tim Hortons and relocating north.

Were gonna have a lot more companies thinking about becoming donut-makers and doing it right here in the United States ... Its an incentive to stay in America if youre located there, and come to America if youre not.

Thats one of the many goals of the bill that passed the Senate after Isakson spoke, then on Wednesday passed the House of Representatives, followed by a celebration at the White House where U.S. President Donald Trump toasted his first major legislative accomplishment.

The bill achieves at least four major changes: temporary personal tax cuts for most Americans for a few years, permanent corporate tax cuts, oil drilling in Alaskas natural wildlife reserve, and the sabotage of Barack Obamas signature health reform.

Its deeply unpopular.

One reason is its projected to increase the U.S. national debt by five per cent this decade. To offset this new $1.5-trillion hole, Republicans are hinting they might need to cut social spending.

Read more:

Trump closes in on first legislative victory as Senate moves tax bill forward

Analysis | Trump gets his first big legislative victory. It could still end up a political defeat

Analysis | Trump just got his tax cut. Is he ready for the problems it might create?

The bills greatest benefits flow to the wealthy, with provisions like relaxed taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. And it starts hurting the middle class as temporary personal cuts expire in a few years.

Passage of the bill comes as Republicans are bracing for a potential wipeout in next years midterms. One survey Wednesday showed them 18 percentage points behind Democrats in the worst performance for any party in decades of CNN polling. On the Senate floor, after Isakson spoke, Bernie Sanders offered an early taste of the campaign ahead.

What we are seeing today, in an unprecedented way, is the looting  the looting  of the federal treasury, Sanders said. Today marks a great victory for the very wealthy campaign contributors who have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican party over the years.

Thats a debate for Americans to sort out.

The White House said the focus of the new tax bill is the middle class, despite questions about whether the president would benefit from it. This comes as the House approved the bill by a mostly party line vote Tuesday. (The Associated Press)

For Canadians, there will be others. In the wake of this bill, policy-makers in Ottawa and the provincial capitals face two dilemmas: whether to react to these ground-shifting tax changes, and how.

In the blink of an eye, the mighty southern neighbour goes from having one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world to one that is equal to Canadas combined federal-provincial rates, which average around 27 per cent.

For about three decades, tax expert Jack Mintz says Canadas competitive edge in attracting business investment has rested on two pillars  a far lower corporate tax rate, and free trade.

One pillar is gone, with the U.S. tax change. The other is wobbling. Trump isnt just threatening to leave NAFTA  hes already bragging about aggressive trade penalties, illustrated Wednesday with the latest announcement of duties against Bombardier.

Mintz isnt proposing that Canada slash corporate taxes in response. He thinks Canada needs to consider a panoply of creative ways to pull investment north  from simpler regulations, to reviewing what gets taxed and what doesnt, and, if carbon taxes go ahead, to steer the proceeds back to companies.

Foreign companies that operate in North America are now going to look at, Do I invest in Canada, with a small population, small market, to serve the North American market, or do I go to the United States? said Mintz, of the University of Calgary.

When they look at Canada they now see ... similar tax rates and similar burdens (to the U.S.), he added. Then they look at regulations in Canada, which are increasing as the U.S. is reducing theirs.

Trump capped his day with a victory party.

On the White House lawn his Republican allies, some previously his worst critics, celebrated whats now indisputably a consequential first year in office  with a new right-wing Supreme Court judge, fewer regulations, more oil drilling, Obamacare now on life support, and tax cuts.

One boast from Trump is likely to echo across borders.

Companies are going to be coming back, Trump said.

Theyre going to stay in our country.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Bombardier Inc. is scaling back plans to begin a new aircraft program, preferring instead to focus on generating cash flow and whittling down about $9 billion in debt, said chief executive officer Alain Bellemare.

Over the past few years there was an overinvestment in aerospace, Bellemare said in an interview. We dont want to jump and launch an investment in a new program just for the sake of it.

Bombardier has racked up debt over the last few years for such programs as the new Global 7000 business plane, which is due to enter service late next year, and the C Series commercial jetliner, which made its debut last year and cost at least $2 billion more than planned. The company is now about halfway through a five-year turnaround plan to restore profit and reduce debt. It has predicted break-even cash flow next year.

Read more:

Metrolinx cuts Bombardier vehicle order by more than half

What the passing of the U.S. tax bill means and what it does to Canada

DBRS gives Bombardier rating slight upgrade

We want to make sure we optimize the cash that we will start generating in 2018, 2019 and beyond, said Bellemare, 56. He became CEO in 2015 and immediately set about shoring up the companys balance sheet by raising more than $5 billion, including $1.5 billion from the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, a $1 billion investment in the C Series by Quebecs provincial government and an equity sale.

The existing product line will generate sufficient revenue, he said, meaning the company sees no immediate need to start work on a new airplane. That marks a shift from January, when chief financial officer John Di Bert said Canadas biggest aerospace company would probably decide on a new model within 12 to 24 months.

Since Bombardier agreed in October to cede control of the C Series to Airbus SE, analysts have expected that the next big aircraft investment would be a business plane, typically the Montreal-based companys most profitable segment.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders said the company will have control of the C Series program but has no intention of buying out Bombardier. The European aerospace giant announced a deal to acquire a majority stake in C Series. (The Canadian Press)

Bombardiers mid-size Challenger line is the most likely candidate for a new model, said Ernie Arvai, a partner at aviation consulting firm AirInsight.

You go where the margin is, he said. I dont see the opportunity in commercial aircraft unless they do a larger C Series, and now that Airbus will be running the show, it wont be Bombardiers call to make. The company last week forecast that business-jet revenue would jump 70 per cent to $8.5 billion in 2020, saying the Global 7000 is sold out through 2021.

Bombardier at some point could build an extended-range version of the Global 7000, though a decision isnt imminent, Bellemare said. The longer-range aircraft, called the Global 8000, would surrender 9 feet (2.7 meters) of cabin length to gain 500 nautical miles of flight distance compared with the Global 7000, according to Bombardiers website.

We need to see what would be the ultimate performance of the 7000, and then we will decide on the 8000, he said. We have time. The focus is on the Airbus deal. After that, its whatever makes good business sense.

Bombardier remains committed to building commercial planes, such as CRJ regional jets and Q400 turboprops, Bellemare said.

Is Bombardier still going to be active in commercial aircraft? The answer is: For years to come, yes, he said in an interview Dec. 14 in New York. We are going to have a 40 per cent participation in the C Series, and we have no plan to exit that. Short term, we want to keep selling Qs and we want to keep selling CRJs.

The effort to improve cash flow could include buying back the Caisses 30 per cent stake in Bombardiers rail unit, Bellemare said. Canadas second-largest public-pension-fund manager paid $1.5 billion last year for its holding in the rail operation, which has an order backlog of more than $33 billion.

Its got nothing to do with the Caisse, he said. They have been a great partner. They came in at a time when we needed that.

Its got everything to do with how we return the best money to our shareholders, Bellemare said.

Read more about:

SHARE:
They say the best presents are experiences, not objects  although I wouldnt mind a nice pair of pearl drop earrings.

However, what I want is not of interest here, as I am writing about the rich, powerful and shameless, and the perfect holiday gifts for a few of these notable miscreants.

If their transgressions have trended, their foibles have melted the internet or their general demeanour has had you muttering I cant even  then this gift list is for you.

This year, I am giving you a sneak peek at this new and exclusive Entitled Collection.

Only men are on this gift list, which shouldnt surprise anyone.

The women this year have been bravely busy exposing powerful sexual harassers; or writing a much-admired book about a bruising electoral defeat (Hello, Hillary Clinton); or standing up with dignity for Canada in extremely difficult trade negotiations (way to go Chrystia Freeland, minister of foreign affairs and perhaps future prime minister.)

The men? Oy. They are giving entitled a bad name.

First, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

I was going to give him an afternoon with an Ice Master, a pro who could build him a great skating rink in Ottawa for far less than the shocking $5 million plus his government paid to have one installed in front of the House of Commons as part of the Canada 150 celebrations. What were they thinking? My guy could do it for mere thousands.

But the latest news has confirmed that our PM is skating on thin ice in more precarious ways, becoming the first sitting prime minister in history to be ruled to have broken ethics laws. That itself is a joke, given some of his ethically challenged predecessors.

Trudeau accepted a private helicopter ride for a family holiday last December on a private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan, leader of the worlds Ismaili Muslims, and chairperson of an institution to which the federal government had pledged a $15-million grant in July 2015. The outgoing ethics commissioner ruled this was a clear violation of ethics even if theres no proof the Aga Khan benefitted from his proximity to awesome power.

Trudeaus mea culpa press conference was painful to watch as he stuttered his way through it, although he did say sorry and affirmed that the ethics commissioners finding was important.

Another political leader might have brazenly asserted the public doesnt care about where he took his vacation as long as his policies benefit the great unwashed.

What to give Justin? Im going for one of those volunteer vacations in a developing country, where he can build houses for a week with his family, or clear land for a farm. Although knowing the contradictions inherent in this new-age guy, hed probably love it. The selfies alone would be fabulous.

Now to the Aga Khan, a friend of Justins late dad, Pierre Trudeau, and former friend of Justins until the ethics commissioner unfriended him for our current PM.

The Aga Khan may now be under investigation for inappropriate lobbying as a result of hosting the PM, so Im giving him the unique experience of inviting someone whos not entitled to his island. (Im available!)

Perhaps he could hold a lottery, in which you have to make less than $45,000 a year to win this once-in-a-lifetime vacation on a private-island getaway in the Bahamas! Given plummeting freelance rates, I may still be available.

Galen Weston Jr. An heir to the Weston family fortune and current CEO of Loblaw Companies, his company turned itself in to authorities to avoid facing criminal charges and fines for fixing bread prices from 2001 to 2015. Weston said they would offer $25 gift cards to customers, and promised it wouldnt happen again especially for 14 years.

Hmm. Im going to let Galen eat cake. A Loblaws heavily-iced slab cake, which tastes somewhat like petroleum (and which my grown kids still love.)

No more bread for Galen, just a daily mouthful of that cake until we all have our compensatory $25 gift certificates. As more than one smart soul has suggested, we can then donate the cards to the hungry and homeless. Call it a dough-gooder.

And finally, you know we couldnt leave him out, U.S. President Donald Trump, the Liar-in-Chief. The Stars correspondent Daniel Dale has documented Trumps lies, saying hes uttered hundreds of provable falsehoods since taking office.

So hows this for an experience Trump has clearly never had:

Remember that 1997 Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar, in which he played a fast talking attorney, habitual liar, and divorced father who is condemned, by a birthday wish from his neglected little boy, to 24 hours in which he cannot tell a lie? Yes!

This is a fantastic gift for Trump  and for the nation he is supposed to serve. I would add that the very day he cannot tell a lie, he also be ordered to hold a very long press conference in which he has to answer every question put to him, including those detailed allegations of sexual harassment.

No more biggest electoral victory in history. No more hey, Im going to lose money on this new tax bill. No more my taxes are under audit so I cant release them. Just Trump, condemned to tell the truth.

And if he still lies? Then the medical experts step in, rightfully querying Trumps dangerous level of delusion.

Happy Holidays, Entitled Ones. Heres to spreading the sunscreen on less fortunate shoulders, telling the whole truth and being able to eat bread that isnt part of a conspiracy.

You can continue to deck the halls with more apologies for your folly.

Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson

Read more about:

SHARE:
KAANAPALI, HAWAIIJust a few steps away, the boardwalk bustles with happy vacationers soaking up the island sun. A couple steps beyond that, the beach is packed with busy families and deck chairs packed with prostrate visitors, while a handful of swimmers are wading into the waves, braving a slight chill in the Pacific waters. Few of them would imagine a plantation  or a farm  is right nearby, but here on the green, tropical grounds of the Kaanapali Beach Hotel, I walk with executive chef Thomas Muromoto.

First, he shows me the banana trees, then the lemongrass and aloe, and finally one of Hawaiis primary staple crops, a big path of taro. A few minutes earlier, the chef had demonstrated how to cook a few of his favourite dishes  the foods of his childhood, growing up on neighbouring Oahu  and now I was seeing their provenance, in the fertile soil of Mauis west side. Hed grown up on the land and water, even surfing professionally, and now Muromoto had worked in the hotels kitchens for 18 years.

Our goal, he says, is for our guests to touch the culture with all five senses.

Like many visitors, Im in Maui to enjoy its tropical pleasures  among them, its reawakened culinary scene. While a couple decades ago, local restaurateurs aspired to little more than safe, solid, boring comfort food, the island is now home to some of the countrys best chefs. Beyond gourmet, many of them aim to serve up whats become known as Hawaiian Regional Cuisine, the staples of the states Indigenous culture, with contributions from those who came here to settle (and often, work the fields)  the Portuguese, Japanese, Filipino and Chinese.

I head a couple hundred metres up the boardwalk in Kaanapali, a resort area set between the West Maui Mountains and the Pacific, packed with luxury hotels and condos and high-end shops that's home to the closest cluster of good eating on the island.

Here I meet with chef Ikaika Manaku at the Westin Nanea Ocean Villas, a man who actually embodies this heritage. Also hailing from Oahu, he traces his lineage back to disparate parts of the Earth  Ireland and Germany, but also the Philippines and Portugal and Hawaii. Here, weve learned: Be proud of where you came from. Be proud of your cuisine, he says, a steadfast look on his face.

Sitting inside his restaurant, now quiet in the lull between breakfast and lunch, Manaku says the resort has made significant investments in bringing Hawaiian culture to their guests, even laying out the property to include traditional elements and employing a cultural adviser who shares her knowledge in the on-site cultural centre.

The son of a chef, he marvels at the new-found, worldwide popularity of poke (a raw-fish salad)  the taste of his childhood. Manaku says that the secret is in the seaweed  every island here has its own culture and taste.

And then he walks me through all sorts of combinations, mixing raw ahi tuna with different recipes involving sesame oil, alaea (an unrefined Hawaiian sea salt), local scallions, inamona (chopped roasted nuts), chili paste and, of course, ogo (also known as ogonori), the seaweed.

Cooking this, youre just like a winemaker, Manaku says. Everyone has a different hand. You can give the same recipe to five different chefs, and get five different tastes.

The next day, I tour around the island in search of even more flavours, heading inland to Sam Satos  in business since 1933  in Wailuku, the islands largest city. I join locals  who line up out the door  sitting down at a basic counter in a nondescript building and hungrily downing saimen, dry mein, teriyaki beef sticks and a healthy portion of Loco Moco, a Hawaiian favourite made of white rice, hamburger patty, fried egg and brown gravy.

I drive high on the flanks of Haleakala, Mauis volcano, stopping in at the Komoda Store in the cowboy town of Makawao for a famous malasada, a sort of Portuguese doughnut that originated on another island, Madeira. Further upcountry, I browse fresh produce amongst the verdant fields, picking my way through lilikoi and ginger and green onions and sweet potatoes at the Kula Country Stand, learning about the special climate and rain conditions that make this part of Maui so good for growing, and how all the best local chefs use fresh ingredients grown here.

And, of course, I eat pineapple. Once, this juicy fruit  which, contrary to popular belief, grows near the ground, not on trees  covered these Hawaiian islands, but now just one, Maui Gold, operates here.

Joining Maui Pineapple Tours, we bump out into their 1,000 acres of fields, learning about the pineapples lineage (it came from Brazil), growing cycle (18 to 24 months, with a second harvest soon afterward), harvesting methods (always by hand), finally tasting a few perfectly ripe specimens. Our guide, Steven Potter, pulls the fruit right off the stalk and slices it open, the dripping result so fresh that juice runs down my face  before I ask for seconds.

Back on the west side, I keep eating  cooking and sampling Filipino staples and Filipino-Hawaiian fusion with chef Joey Macadangdang at his fast-casual restaurant, Joeys Kitchen, then joining chef Charlie Owen for a tour of the menu at Hula Grill, a boardwalk, seaside favourite for almost a quarter century.

While a band plays island songs somewhere nearby, I sit by the palms and dine on everything from swordfish tacos to ahi steak and lobster pot stickers. Owen says they source from about 45 local farms, as well as local ranchers and fishermen who sometimes call him from the boat, on the way back to shore with a big catch. Its all fresh, and delicious.

Close your eyes and imagine eating and drinking in Hawaii, he says. This is it.

Tim Johnson was a guest of the Kaanapali Beach Resort Association, which didnt review or approve this story.

When you go:

Fly: Both Air Canada and WestJet fly into Kahului Airport on Maui, with connections from Toronto via Calgary and Vancouver.

Stay: I stayed at three Kaanapali Beach hotels.

Located right on the water, Aston at the Whaler on Kaanapali Beach (whalerkaanapali.com) is an oasis of tropical calm in the heart of everything. Just a few steps from the areas best restaurants and shopping, this all-luxury-condo hotel features sweeping views of the Pacific, plus a pool and whirlpool near the water, tennis courts and a spa. Since all units include a kitchen, they can arrange a private chef to cook you dinner.

Set beside Kaanapalis famous Black Rock, the Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa (Sheraton-maui.com) sits on a prime stretch of beach, close to coral reefs for snorkelling, and features a famous, nightly sunset torch-lighting and cliff-dive ceremony. You can dine on-site at a number of outlets, including Black Rock Kitchen, which features craft cocktails and dishes that factor the Hawaiian values of ohana (family) and aina (land) into every dish.

Encompassing 26 acres on Kaanapalis quiet North Beach, the Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resort Villas (westinkaanapali.com) features a massive man-made lagoon, complete with six pools and plenty of activities on the nearby beach, including traditional outrigger canoe rides. And try Pulehu (which means grilled in Hawaiian), which offers Italian fare cooked over an open flame.

Eat: Open for more than 22 years, Roys Kaanapali (royshawaii.com) is the brainchild of legendary Hawaiian chef Roy Yamaguchi, a pioneer of Hawaiian Regional Cuisine.

A perfect way to finish a meal (or pass an afternoon), shave ice is a Hawaiian classic  try it at Ululani Shave Ice, which uses premium juices, real fruit and even toasts its coconut shavings, right in house.

Tour: Maui Pineapple Tours (mauipineappletour.com) takes you right into the heart of the harvest. The 90-minute itinerary costs $65 U.S. and you can add a distillery tour/tasting for $10.

Do your research: kaanapaliresort.com, gohawaii.com

SHARE:
OTTAWAEthics commissioner Mary Dawson released a report Wednesday concluding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated conflict of interest rules when he vacationed last Christmas at the private island owned by the Aga Khan. Here are five key findings from the report:

1. The Aga Khan did not meet the definition of a friend.

There is an exception in the Conflict of Interest Act for gifts or other advantages from relatives and friends, but Dawson found it did not apply in this case. Dawson's report said the Aga Khan's relationship with Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, developed in the 1960s. That family friendship facilitated the current prime minister's friendship with the Aga Khan, but Dawson said it was still unlikely the vacation offer would have been extended to Trudeau "had there not been official interactions between the government of Canada and the Aga Khan and had Mr. Trudeau not become a significant player on the Canadian political scene."

Trudeau said Wednesday he still sees the spiritual leader to be a "family friend" despite Dawson's determination.

2. The prime minister broke the rules on gifts.

Dawson found Trudeau breached section 11 of the act, which pertains to gifts or "other advantages" when he and members of his family accepted the Aga Khan's "gift of hospitality" and the use of his private island. There were official dealings with the Aga Khan and his foundation  the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada  who were registered to lobby the Prime Minister's Office, Dawson said. She said the vacations could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence Mr. Trudeau in his capacity as prime minister.

3. Flights were an issue.

Dawson found Trudeau breached another section of the act when his family travelled on a non-commercial aircraft chartered by the Aga Khan in March 2016 and when he and his family travelled in the spiritual leader's private helicopter in December 2016. The act bars ministers and their family members from accepting travel on non-commercial chartered or private aircraft for any purpose unless it is in their capacity as public office holders, in exceptional circumstances or with the prior approval of the commissioner  none of which Dawson found in this case.

4. Trudeau failed to take steps to arrange his private affairs.

Dawson found the prime minister failed to arrange his private business in a way that would prevent him from being placed in a conflict of interest when his family vacation on the Aga Khan's private island in March 2016, and when Trudeau joined them on the island in December 2016.

Trudeau told Dawson he felt he could pursue a friendship with the Aga Khan after becoming Liberal leader, and then prime minister. Dawson called this understandable in light of the previous family connection and the fact they share common ideals and goals. However, she said Trudeau must put on hold his pursuit of friendships with individuals he is likely to have official dealings with: "Mr. Trudeau must ensure that he has arranged his private affairs so that they are not incompatible with his public duties as prime minister of Canada."

5. Trudeau failed to recuse himself from talks that gave an opportunity to further interests with the Aga Khan.

Dawson said Trudeau broke section 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act when he failed to remove himself from discussions that provided an opportunity to advance private interests associated with institutions of the Aga Khan. This part of the act requires public office holders to recuse themselves from any discussion, decision, debate or vote on any matter they would be in a conflict of interest.

However, Dawson said Trudeau didn't take part in any votes or decisions, nor provide the Aga Khan's foundation any preferential treatment.

Read more about:

SHARE:
A board member with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, an arms-length federal government agency established to counteract racism, has been fired amid concerns over what Muslim advocacy groups describe as Islamophobic commentary and her public association with purveyors of hateful propaganda.

Christine Douglass-Williams has been a board member since 2012 and her dismissal was confirmed on Wednesday to foundation chairperson Albert Lo. He said he was notified by the Department of Canadian Heritage, which is responsible for the foundation.

Lo said he was not provided with an explanation for Douglass-Williams dismissal. But a government source told the Star she was removed because of comments she has made online which do not reflect the goal of the foundation.

They do not work to eliminate racism or promote inclusion, and that is the mandate of the foundation, he said. Thats why her contract has been terminated.

Douglass-Williams addressed her dismissal in an email to the Star and on Jihad Watch.

Why? Because I dared to criticize political Islam, she wrote.

I make a distinction between those who practice Islam in peace and harmony with others, and those with an agenda to usurp democratic constitutions, demand special privileges over other creeds and who advocate the abuse of women and innocents as a supremacist entitlement.

It is odd to be removed from a race relations foundation for my private work in criticizing this aspect of Islam, of which the latter is not a race.

She called her removal a dishonourable decision on the part of Heritage Minister Melanie Joly and accused her of acting at the behest of questionable sorts. On Jihad Watch, she wrote that she is investigating some avenues concerning this ruthless and agenda-driven decision to dismiss me from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

In August, the Canadian Press reported Douglass-Williams position had come under review after she published an essay in May about her visit to Iceland with Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch.

Spencer has been characterized as an anti-Muslim extremist by the Anti-Defamation League and is considered one of Americas most prolific and vociferous anti-Muslim propagandists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization that tracks extremism.

Jihad Watch, where Douglas-Williams frequently writes, has also been designated a hate group by the SPLC, which describes it as one of the oldest, most prolific and popular anti-Muslim websites.

Jihad Watch is one of the leading voices pushing Islamophobic sentiment today, Amarnath Amarasingam, a prominent Canadian researcher of terrorism and Islamic extremism, said in an email. The idea that someone who sits on the Canadian Race Relations Foundations board would have anything to do with Jihad Watch or Robert Spencer is mind-boggling to me.

The CRRF is supposed to be about fostering inter-cultural understanding, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what Jihad Watch stands for.

Following her trip to Iceland, Douglass-Williams published a post on Jihad Watch under the headline Christine Williams: My Personal Warning to Icelanders, in which she cautioned the island country that many friendly, seemingly moderate Muslims are deceiving you.

You are in trouble, she wrote on May 16. Your numbers are too small in a vast land to continue as you are, in allowing Islamic supremacist incursion into your country as you have.

She later continued: You need street smarts with regard to immigrants. Islamic supremacists will smile at you, invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcome, but they do it to deceive you and to overtake you, your land and your freedoms.

The post raised alarm bells with fellow board members and was flagged with Heritage Minister Joly, according to the Canadian Press.

The countrys leading organization dedicated to the elimination of racism and the promotion of harmonious race relations, the Canada Race Relations Foundation, must have a board that recognizes the importance of diversity and inclusion in our society, Simon Ross, a spokesperson for the minister, said in an statement to the Star on Thursday.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims also expressed concerns and sent a formal letter to the government in October. Executive director Ihsaan Gardee said Douglass-Williams removal is an appropriate corrective measure taken by government to address (her) disturbing public record.

The removal of Ms. Douglass-Williams is long overdue in light of her known Islamophobic commentary and her public association with purveyors of hateful propaganda, such as Robert Spencer who has long been identified by human rights institutions as a leading figure of the Islamophobia movement in North America, he said in an emailed statement.

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation was created out of a settlement deal between the federal government and Japanese Canadians over their internment during the Second World War. As a part of the agreement, the government promised to create a foundation that would foster racial harmony and cross-cultural understanding and help to eliminate racism.

Launched in 1997, the foundation has an office in Toronto but hosts anti-racism workshops, training and roundtables across the country, in addition to funding research projects and publishing an academic journal.

Board members are appointed by the governor in council on the recommendation of the minister in charge of multiculturalism. Douglass-Williams was appointed in 2012 on the recommendation of Jason Kenney, who was then the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

Douglass-Williams biography on the foundation's website has now been taken down but it listed affiliations that included the Hudson Institute in New York and the Anti-Semitism Task Force with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. The latter organization says that Douglass-Williams was asked to join the task force in 2012 but it was never implemented. However, according to FSWC president and CEO, Avi Benlolo, Douglass-Williams has contributed to FSWC.

Her biography also stated that she previously worked as a television journalist with a Christian broadcaster, in addition to regularly contributing to the NewsReal blog and Front Page Magazine.

The latter two are published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a major media player in the United States Islamophobia network, according to a 2011 report by the Center for American Progress. A Washington Post investigation also found that the Freedom Center has helped cultivate a generation of political warriors seeking to upend the Washington establishment, including figures such as Stephen Miller, Donald Trumps senior policy adviser, and Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon, which Front Page Magazine described as the man of the year in a 2016 article.

Jihad Watch is also a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a blog where Douglass-Williams has become a prolific contributor, sometimes posting up to three times a day.

In August, she wrote a post defending her personal writings on Jihad Watch and included a statement she sent to the Canadian Press. She wrote that her writings are compatible with her work on Canadian Race Relations board and that she has the greatest respect for its pure, original mandate of human rights for all.

It is not racist to oppose the jihadist-Islamist agenda, she wrote in the post, which is headlined Christine Douglass-Williams: unjustly targeted by Canadas Islamophobia agenda.

Any efforts currently against me in my private work are an unjust, agenda-driven and a cruel attempt to intimidate me for my distaste for all supremacist agendas.

Other posts on Jihad Watch by Douglass-Williams have appeared under headlines such as UN launches app to empower migrants, encourage them to migrate safely and Jesuit scholar: Islam is an open-ended declaration of war against non-Muslims.

In June 2016, she wrote about a message she received from a friend who requested she write more positively about migrants. At first I thought: go do some yoga and count your blessings as a citizen of our free country, and shut up, she wrote.

She later continued: How many Westerners want our cities and countries to become replicas of Islamic states, with the full range of all the atrocities committed in them? Were on our way there, folks, unless we hold leaders accountable; those who should be protecting the citizens of our countries from bloodthirsty criminals and people who are encroaching upon our freedoms and safety.

Foundation chairperson Albert Lo said this is the only time a board member has been dismissed since he joined the organization in 2007.

Lo said he is not familiar with Jihad Watch or Douglass-Williams writings online and declined to comment on them. But he said his interactions with her as a board member have always been positive.

We always appreciated her positive contributions, he said. Shes always supportive of positive race relations.

He added that Douglass-Williams has been involved with a number of foundation initiatives involving Muslim issues. I saw quite a number of participants in the Muslim community say they were very warm to her and always positive and friendly.

On Jihad Watch, Douglass-Williams has written that she is pro-Muslim and pro-human rights, pointing to her book The Challenge of Modernizing Islam, where she differentiates between Islamists and human rights-respecting Muslims who strive to live peaceably and equally among Westerners.

I am appalled at Islamist intolerance and murder today of non-Muslims and even their fellow Muslims who strive toward human rights, she wrote.

On Thursday, she wrote that many letters were sent to the Heritage Department on her behalf, in addition to a petition attesting to my deep regard for human rights.

But extremism researchers like Amarasingam say Jihad Watch is one of the leading platforms in the counter jihad movement, which has been described as a loose international network based on the belief that Islam is at war with the West and Muslim immigration is a conscious effort to spread Sharia law.

For a lot of commentators on the site, the only way for a Muslim to be less violent is to be less Muslim, he says. The common assumption of most writers on the site is that Muslims are secretly planning a takeover of the Western countries through a slow erosion of western culture. This is why they also have pretty wild views against immigration and letting refugees into Western countries.

Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project, said Douglass-Williams has been on the anti-Muslim circuit for some time and has written hundreds of articles for Jihad Watch since 2012.

In an emailed statement, the Mosaic Institute, a non-profit that promotes diversity, said the removal of Douglass-Williams reflects that the personal behaviours of a board member do actually matter.

Ms. Douglass-Williams, through her writing and public comments, has revealed that she sees the Muslim community as categorically homogenous, assigning a particular set of characteristics and behaviours to them that, in her view, are a threat, the statement read. This type of thinking is the root of prejudice and discrimination. And that is what the Canadian Race Relations Foundation needs to dismantle.

Clarification- December 22, 2017: This article was updated from a previous version to include information from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies that its anti-Semitism task force was never launched.

Clarification  December 27, 2017: This article was further updated to make clear that Christine Douglass-Williams was asked to join the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies in 2012. According to Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of FSWC, while the task force has not been implemented, Douglass-Williams has contributed to the FSWC.

SHARE:
A corrosive gas that is fatal to humans in high concentrations should not be a toxic substance under Canadian environmental law, say federal researchers in a new proposal.

Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada staff came to this conclusion in a draft assessment of hydrogen sulphide published in September. Their assessment found that hydrogen sulphide, also known as H2S or sour gas, does not enter the environment in quantities, concentrations or conditions that constitute or may constitute a danger in Canada to human life or health.

The conclusion is at odds with the substances track record  H2S has already killed at least one oilpatch worker in Canada, while sickening dozens of others and killing livestock.

Sour gas, known for its rotten egg smell, is commonly found in hot springs, volcanic gases and biological waste, but can also leak from the wellheads, tanks, pipes and flare stacks of the oilfields. Thats where most high-concentration encounters tend to occur.

An October investigation by National Observer, the Toronto Star and Global News revealed a series of oil and gas industry run-ins with H2S that resulted in injury or death.

According to the federal proposal such industrial releases arent representative of ambient conditions in Canada, and therefore not considered relevant under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). If the government approves the proposal neither Health Canada nor Environment Canada will crack down on industrial releases of the dangerous substance.

A Health Canada spokeswoman wrote in an email that occupational exposure falls under provincial jurisdiction, and is not included in general population risk assessments under CEPA.

A coalition of scientists, lawyers, doctors and environmental advocates is concerned with that interpretation. The government has failed to adopt a science-based, precautionary approach to assessing H2S health risks in Canada, they wrote in a letter to Environment Canada last month.

The plan doesnt sit well with the victims of H2S exposure either  Jeff Crawford, a former oilfield worker who lives with permanent disability as a result of the gas, called the non-toxic assessment incredible. Crawford was hit in the face by a mixture containing H2S on the job in 2014, and today, suffers from PTSD, anxiety, dizziness and difficulty with eating, breathing, speaking, smelling and sleeping.

Its like saying cancer is not a disease, he said in an interview. Id like them to sit in front of me and tell me theyre doing that. Id tell them what I think about it.

Former Saskatchewan oilfield worker Jeff Crawford nearly died in a February 2014 accident. Three years later, his body struggles to complete its most basic tasks: chew food, swallow, taste, smell, speak properly, breathe clearly and sleep soundly.

Read more:

Toxic gas nearly killed this oil worker. His employer never told the province

That rotten stench in the air? Its the smell of deadly gas and secrecy

Theres no sense in speaking up despite deadly gas risks

Hydrogen sulphide, Health Canada noted, is already subject to a number of provincial, territorial and federal regulations on hazardous materials, environmental and air quality, and occupational health and safety. Additional monitoring, inspection, data collection and measurement takes place within the oilpatch to protect workers and the public from rogue H2S emissions that may find their way into unwary communities.

Like reading that water isnt wet

That H2S is toxic should be beyond debate, the coalition letter reads. It is plain that releases of H2S may occur as a result of oil and gas operations  It is equally plain that a release may constitute a danger in Canada to human life or health.

The federal proposal  while not yet finalized  also dismisses H2Ss rotten smell as a nuisance, without scientific or legal justification, it argues, and did not base its decision on the very lowest H2S exposures that are known to cause adverse health effects to humans.

Its focus on the general population, the groups say, also fails to consider vulnerable communities living near industrial operations, whose quality of life may be compromised by constant odours or even endangered in the event of a leak or spill.

Its kind of like reading that water isnt wet, said Elaine MacDonald, an environmental engineer at Ecojustice and director of its healthy communities program.

Thats why we decided to write the letter. We couldnt let it go  This is probably close to a 10 out of 10 in terms of ignoring the evidence.

Science Minister Kirsty Duncan declined to comment on whether the federal proposal was evidence and science-based, and requests for comment from Environment Canada on human health and sour gas were referred to the health department.

Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor did not respond directly to written questions, but issued the following statement via email:

Canadas Chemicals Management Plan is a world-leading program that is contributing towards the global goal of sound management of chemicals. In Canada, hydrogen sulphide is subject to a number of risk management measures, which are included in provincial and territorial regulations and guidelines for air quality, including the control of releases from industry.

Federal plan acknowledges data shortfalls

According to Health Canada, its not unusual for an assessment under CEPA to rule that a substance with highly hazardous properties is non-toxic. In May 2016, for example, the federal government determined that a group of azo dyes  known carcinogens  were non-toxic, since their exposure to people is very low, or non-existent.

But there are data gaps in their assessment of human health and H2S, wrote the researchers who submitted the draft assessment for sour gas. Long-term chronic experimental studies on the gass impact on human health are either limited or non-existent, the proposal notes, as is data on industrial releases in certain sectors (metal and metal refining, for example) located close to human populations. Researchers did however, access and consider decades of hourly H2S measurements taken in the air near pulp and paper mills, oil and gas fields, livestock farms and more.

The federal government said the assessment also considered exposure to people who live near industrial facilities, but that focus on general population exposure, has been its practice since the inception of the Chemicals Management Program  a sweeping evaluation of more than 4,000 chemical substances under CEPA with a deadline of March 2021.

That evaluation takes place as the federal government deliberates changes to the aging legislation, which has not been updated since 1999. A June 2017 report by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development identified several key weaknesses in CEPAs regulatory framework, and made a number of recommendations that could impact what kind information it considers in assessments. Several of them include special consideration for vulnerable communities, like those living in proximity to industry operations.

The federal government will respond to those recommendations in June 2018, but to rule on H2S while the entire act is called into question is definitely irresponsible, said former corporate lawyer and environmental law expert Jason MacLean.

It looks like a decision thats irrational and negligent on its face and it looks even worse I think to be doing this while (CEPA) is under consideration, the assistant law professor at University of Saskatchewan, told the investigation. It looks hasty, it looks rushed, and thats not in the public interest.

If the federal plan is approved however, and someone gets sick from ambient exposure to H2S, MacLean said it would be an uphill battle to try and sue the federal government for its ruling that the substance isnt toxic under CEPA. One would have to prove that Ottawa was negligent and flying in the face of independent scientific findings in its chemicals assessment, he explained, but any amount of legitimate scientific doubt to those claims could probably take the case apart in the courts.

Three years after an accident at a Saskatchewan oilfield, former oilfield worker Jeff Crawford still suffers severe health problems. Crawford, who suffered chemical burns in the ordeal, only eat food in a mashed-up liquid diet. He has lost his sense of taste or smell, and he must sleep upright, or else he ends up choking.

Independent scientist backs assessment

Geoff Granville, a Calgary-based scientist with expertise on managing the risks of toxic substances, said in an interview that he agrees with the governments draft assessment of H2S. People in a nonoccupational setting are not usually at risk, he explained, and if an incident does occur outside of the workplace, it may be accidental with unknown or extraordinary causes.

Thats tough for the federal government to regulate pre-emptively, said Granville, and not within the scope of CEPA: Its not (about) risk based on an accident situation, otherwise cars are toxic. That makes no sense. Its not accident driven, its got to be by the way the world operates.

Encounters based on industrial and workplace exposure, he added, are another matter entirely. Bad industry practice is unacceptable, said Granville, but since most industry regulation falls within the jurisdiction of provincial regulators and governments, it may be more practical for Ottawa to find other methods of encouraging adherence to H2S regulations than cracking down with the full force of CEPA.

The question then becomes, said Granville, what more can the federal government do to protect public safety?

He advocated for co-operation between jurisdictions to help address peoples very natural fear of H2S, like strengthening whistleblower programs or starting a conversation about how to handle to low, foul-smelling but ultimately not dangerous levels of H2S. In the context of CEPA, he said the word toxic takes on a legal meaning of its own, and much of the outrage with the federal plan has to do with semantics.

So how do the feds shame a provincial environmental ministry to step up and really regulate and do its job better? he asked. Whether you call it toxic or not, I actually think the feds could say, Were concerned about low levels of exposure to the public, which does happen, and therefore, were willing to prepare something to work with other jurisdictions and do x, y, z.

The governments assessment isnt final, and while the public commentary period has officially closed, Health Canada is encouraging stakeholders to submit any additional information that should be taken into consideration. In conjunction with Environment Canada, the department will publish a summary of public commentary on its proposal, its responses to those comments, and its final assessment of H2S in 2018.

SHARE:
OTTAWAMilitary commanders are reassessing Canadas future role in Iraq as declarations of victory over Daesh have been met with new rifts and tensions across the war-ravaged country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced earlier this month that the country had been fully liberated from Daesh, also known as ISIL, after the militant group was cleared from the last pockets of territory that it had held in the country.

The proclamation capped three years of often intense fighting that first started when Daesh captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared the creation of a self-styled caliphate.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters following a visit to the Middle East this week that victory came faster than Canada and its allies had expected, and the focus now is on ensuring stability in Iraq after Daesh.

Read more:

Iraq says its war against Daesh is over

Iraqi woman unveils harrowing memoir about being a sex slave for Daesh

U.S. weapons helped Daesh fuel industrial revolution of terrorism: Report

The military will present options to the government in the new year, though it seems evident that Canadian forces will be training Iraqi counterparts to protect against various threats from inside and outside the country.

Sajjan did not give any indication that the government was planning to end Canadas military mission in Iraq, which was extended this past summer to March 2019.

The progress against Daesh has gone actually quite well, to the point where we are actually ahead of schedule based on our plan, he said by telephone from London, where he was meeting with his British counterpart.

As you know, weve taken 100 per cent of the territory but a lot more work needs to be done to make sure that stability within the nation remains and the capacity building needs to start.

But despite Daeshs defeat on the battlefield, peace and stability remain fleeting in many parts of Iraq as long-standing divisions and tensions have started to re-emerge and even erupt into violence.

The most recent incident has seen three days of deadly protests in Iraqs Kurdistan region, where the main Kurdish political parties have turned on each other amid allegations of corruption.

The Kurds have also been at odds with the central government in Baghdad after holding a non-binding referendum on independence in September, which set off a series of limited skirmishes.

The federal government, which had largely ignored warnings of such a development for years, responded by ordering Canadian forces in Iraq to suspend all assistance to their Iraqi and Kurdish allies.

That order remains in effect.

There have also been complaints about the slow pace of reconstruction in Iraq, particularly in Sunni-dominated areas, and concerns about Irans growing influence with the Shia-controlled government in Baghdad.

The government is also looking at what additional aid efforts are needed to rebuild the country, Sajjan said, and bring its various ethnic and religious factions back together.

Were committed to making sure that . . . we can continue the great work that has begun with the military but also making sure that the rehabilitation piece is there, that political stability also remains, he said.

Read more about:

SHARE:
The Toronto Media Arts Centre will make its case for an interim occupation of a downtown condo building in court next month.

On Wednesday, a court determined that the City of Toronto and Centre will appear on Jan. 17.

The Toronto Media Arts Centre wants to secure an interim lease within the condo near Queen St. W. and Dovercourt Rd.

The Toronto Media Arts Centre (TMAC) had submitted the motion in hopes of eventually securing an interim lease within the condo near Queen St. W. and Dovercourt Rd.

Since 2015, the Centre has been locked in a fight with the City to greenlight its agreement of purchase and sale of the 36,000-square-foot facility, an action thats been repeatedly refused by the city, despite the planning departments Section 37 development provision. Section 37 provisions enable the City to negotiate contributions towards local community benefits when a development requires a Zoning By-law amendment.

The group then sued the city, along with Urbancorp, a large-scale condominium developer that has gone bankrupt, citing a breach of contract.

The four organizations that comprise the Centre are either homeless or soon to be, Henry Faber, president of the Toronto Media Arts Centre said.

We filed a notice for this injunction, said Faber. The citys response was not to that motion. It was to get the whole lawsuit dismissed  same as their defence from 2015.

This was blocked by the judge, he said.

In an affidavit, the City says the groups current iteration is different than the one it initially made the agreement with.

Since the city first engaged with TMAC, six of the eight organizations have resigned from TMAC, and two more have joined it and its Board of Directors (without the citys consent, which the city asserts is required), it says.

The Toronto Media Arts Centre has gone through several membership changes since it first formed in 2003. Anchored in recent years by the Images Festival, it has included venerable artist-run centres like Gallery TPW and InterAccess. None of them remain part of the not-for-profit consortium, which now counts as members Charles Street Video, the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, Gamma Space, and Dames Making Games, aimed at increasing female participation in video game culture.

Sally Han, manager of cultural partnerships with the citys arts and culture division, says in an affidavit the Toronto Media Arts Centre is incapable of raising adequate funds.

According to the Canada Revenue Agency TMAC has not raised a single dollar in receiptable charitable donations since reporting as a charity in 2014, she says.

But Faber says TMAC has invested heavily in the facility.

It is a space that TMAC has put over $800,000 of arts funding into, spent designing, designing the theatre, the galleries, he said. The engraved plates on the elevators say TMAC on them. From our perspective, its unquestionable who this was intended for.

Councillor Ana Bailao, has been involved with the negotiations for more than two years. Her office declined to comment for this story.

First hatched in 2011 as a partnership between TMAC and Urbancorp, the facility was hailed as an emblem of the right-minded evolution of the citys controversial Section 37 development provision.

The provision had been used for years by developers to gain their projects additional height outside the citys official plan in exchange for a community benefit  most often, a piece of public art or a parkette.

The TMAC space was conceived as a way to use the section 37 provision to address an urgent need, as a remedy to both the rampant gentrification of the area and the displacement of its cultural community.

Partly brokered by a group of local residents called Active 18, the thinking that went in to the TMAC project has helped to serve as a model for similar projects. Crows Theatre on Carlaw Street, gained ownership of their space at the foot of a new condominium tower through the section 37 provision earlier this year.

But the pioneer of the concept is still shut out of the space some six years on.

We agree to the fundamental principles of this agreement, Faber said, we just want interim occupancy. We said three years ago, that if we didnt resolve this, the organizations that make up TMAC would be out of space and unable to do their activities.

Correction  December 22, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said a judge ruled against the City of Torontos efforts to block the organization from occupying space in a Queen St. W. condo building and granted them an injunction. In fact, the judge did not grant or rule upon an injunction at this time. The court appearance on Dec. 20 was to set a date to argue TMAC's request for interim occupation.

With files from Murray Whyte

SHARE:
A 1996 memoir manuscript written by Barry Sherman reveals the late pharmacy mogul gave ample thought to the meaning of life, and concluded there was none.

I have always been conscious of my personal mortality, he wrote two decades ago.

The 75-year-old founder of generic drug manufacturer Apotex, and his wife Honey Sherman, 70, were found dead in their North York home last week. Their funeral is Thursday.

A partial draft of the memoir, called Legacy of Thoughts, was submitted as part of Shermans motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit brought by his orphaned cousins. He described the manuscript as his observations on philosophy, Canadian politics and the pharmaceutical industry.

Memories are brief, Sherman wrote in the preface, and even should there survive some physical manifestation of my existence, my thoughts will be forever lost unless I commit them to paper.

In the incomplete draft, he wrote that, while on vacation with his family, he felt the need to write something that would last beyond himself.

Sherman wrote frankly about his atheist convictions and his disdain for organized religion.

What seems clear is that most if not all theists cannot define that in which they purport to believe, and any attempt at explanation leads to absurdities, a portion of the first chapter reads.

Despite Shermans condemnation of religious beliefs, he and Honey were generous supporters of Jewish causes, donating at least $50 million to United Jewish Appeal throughout their lives.

On the other hand, Sherman emphatically wrote that he believes all humans are bound by the rules of physics, comparing human bodies to computer hardware and concluding: Free will is an illusion.

Power and wealth bring no obligation, he wrote, but they do bring opportunity.

Barring the existence of God, and free will, Sherman wrote: Life has no meaning or purpose.

 Meaning and purpose are, by definition, dependant on an intelligent being having an intent in mind. A corollary of the nonexistence of a God is that we are here with no meaning or purpose to our lives, he wrote.

Instincts, rather than God, explain humans pursuits of happiness and success  including his own, Sherman wrote.

I cannot see that human behaviour differs in any fundamental way from that of numerous species on the savannahs of Serengeti. We are all driven by our instincts to eat, drink, copulate, protect ourselves and our young, and cooperate with others, particularly those most closely related to us, if and when it is to our mutual advantage, he wrote.

Happiness is, I believe, best defined as satisfaction of these drives, and it is that which we all pursue.

A post-mortem on the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman over the weekend revealed their cause of death to be ligature neck compression.

Thousands of mourners paid tribute to a billionaire philanthropist couple who died under suspicious circumstances last week. The memorial was held at a convention centre in Mississauga, Ont.

Police called the deaths suspicious, and a police source told the Star they were investigating the theory that it was a murder-suicide.

Little is written about Honey, except a mention of their meeting in 1970, followed by their wedding a year later.

The fact that I make little mention of my wife and children should not be taken as suggesting that they are not important to my life, as that would be anything but true, Sherman wrote. However, it seems to me that information about my family is likely to be of less interest to a reader than my observations relating to philosophy, Canadian politics and the pharmaceutical industry.

The manuscript includes almost five chapters outlining some of the major events in Shermans life, from his Toronto upbringing to the time he founded Apotex.

The preface begins in a journal-like style, with a location and date entry: Serengeti, Tanzania, December 27, 1996.

Within the preface Sherman recounts how hes on vacation with his family, and how usually during vacations hes in frequent contact with work, even admitting he considered himself a workaholic.

It occurred to me today that there is no better time than now to put pen to paper and begin to write a text that has been forming in my mind for some time, he wrote.

Sherman also wrote about his unremarkable childhood, the early death of his father, his education at the University of Toronto and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his time as president of Empire Laboratories and the birth of Apotex.

He described himself as highly motivated but lethargic; a top student, but not particularly intelligent.

He described his first foray into generic pharmaceuticals, at a summer job at Empire Laboratories which was owned by his Uncle Lou. Sherman bought the company with friend Joel Ulster after his uncles death, and some maneuvering with the trust company handling Lous estate.

He then founded Apotex on his own in 1974, the origins of which he described in chapter five before the manuscripts abrupt end.

We followed this plan and it worked. (A lot more to come.), he wrote.

The remaining chapters, which are listed in Shermans index with such names as The Insatiable Cartel, Animal Farm, and Going for the Kill, are not contained in the draft.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Grieving relatives of Barry and Honey Sherman have sought the help of a legal heavy hitter to conduct their own investigation into the couples deaths.

Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan confirmed to the Star Wednesday night that he is offering informal help to the family of the billionaire philanthropist and his wife, whose mysterious deaths have shocked the city.

I have been serving as a resource person for the Sherman family and Barry and Honey were people who I admired and respect, Greenspan said.

The family did contact me to be a resource person for them and Ill fill that role.

Greenspan said he had no further comment on how the investigation would be conducted or when it will begin.

Barry Sherman, founder of the pharmaceutical company, Apotex, and his wife, Honey, were found dead in their North York home last Friday. Toronto police later confirmed that the Shermans died as a result of ligature neck compression.

A funeral to be held on Thursday is expected to draw thousands of mourners, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Read more:

Barry Sherman wrote frankly about atheist convictions in unfinished memoir

What we know  and dont know  so far about the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman

Competitors and critics agree Apotex founder Barry Sherman will be tough to replace

Read more about:

SHARE:
The Toronto police officer convicted of attempted murder in the fatal shooting of Sammy Yatim on a TTC streetcar now faces additional charges of perjury and attempting to obstruct justice.

Const. James Forcillo, 34, was charged last month with breaching his bail conditions after he was found at the apartment of his fiancee when he supposed to be under house arrest at a different location.

Last month, Forcillos bail was revoked. He is now in prison serving his six-year sentence while awaiting the appeal of his conviction and sentence next spring.

The new charges relate to Forcillos sworn affidavit filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal seeking to vary his bail conditions. He was arrested shortly before that hearing was to take place.

Forcillo is alleged to have committed perjury by making a false statement under oath in an affidavit, by stating he had fully complied with the conditions of his release on bail, including residing with his ex-wife at their home in Vaughan, according to the information filed in court.

Hes also now charged with obstructing justice by attempting to cause a judge with the Court of Appeal to act on, or deal with a statement made under oath in an affidavit that contained material omissions, misleading and or false statements, the court paperwork says.

A Toronto cop convicted of attempted murder has been arrested for allegedly breaching bail. Const. James Forcillo is accused of breaching house arrest conditions. (The Canadian Press)

Forcillos lawyer, Michael Lacy, wrote in email that he had no comment about the new charges.

Forcillos bail conditions included that he live with a surety, his now ex-wife Irina Ratushnyak, in their Vaughan home with their two children.

She and her parents each signed a surety in the combined amount of $510,000, money pledged to the court if Forcillo breached his bail conditions or failed to show up in court. They are no longer his sureties.

The affidavit filed in the court to support a bail variance outlined how the couple's marriage fell apart and that Forcillo had reconnected with a woman he knew from college in California.

That woman, Sara Balderrama, moved to Toronto and the pair planned to move into an apartment together and marry. Forcillos lawyers filed an application to have his address changed and add Balderrama as a surety.

But before that happened, two investigators knocked on a Toronto apartment.

Good morning, James, you are not supposed to be here, one of the investigators said, according to court documents filed on behalf of the attorney general. I know, it is only temporary, Im not here all the time, it is just temporary, Forcillo replied.

The next day, Forcillo was arrested and charged with failing to comply with his recognizance, which carries a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.

The court file included a photo of the name J. Forcillo, which appeared on the intercom directory in the apartment lobby where he answered the door. There was also a copy of the lease signed Oct. 29 by Forcillo and Balderrama.

Forcillo is scheduled to appear in court Dec. 29.

SHARE:
It is the Christmas list of a 12-year-old; a phone and Beats headphones. Pink or rose gold ones would be perfect.

Then there are the wishes that dont go under a tree.

Kaleigh Wright-Barton has those, too.

Less time on intravenous, another year without a major surgery, the family together under one roof, just not in a hospital.

Fingers crossed, says Kaleigh. She says that a lot.

This is probably the first year that were a little at ease, says Echo Wright, 30, looking at her daughter. Normally were so worried about your health, we just dont know what could happen, but because youre doing so well, we can expect to be home for Christmas this holiday season.

Fingers crossed again, says Kaleigh.

Toronto Star readers met Kaleigh at Christmas three years ago. Only 9, she was a longtime patient at the Hospital for Sick Children, born with some of her intestines protruding through a hole near her belly button. Its a condition called gastroschisis that causes abdomen walls to form incorrectly in the womb.

Often, those exposed intestines are surgically placed in the body but, in Kaleighs case, they werent functioning and were removed. That meant Kaleigh couldnt absorb enough nutrition through her intestines so she was fed supplements through an intravenous line near her heart.

That process, called total parenteral nutrition (TPN), is tough on the organs and led to liver damage. Two liver transplants are among the 17 major surgeries Kaleigh had in the first decade of her life.

Shes a warrior, says Jewell Barton, Kaleighs 33-year-old father. I call her my little soldier.

He was only 20, and Wright was 17, when Kaleigh was born. Theyre from Nova Scotia and came to Toronto in 2005 for an assessment of their 4-month-olds liver. They were told to pack for two to five days.

Theyve been here since with their daughter in and out of Sick Kids. Kaleigh spent her first two Christmases in hospital, including one in intensive care.

The family was on the front page of the Star in 2014 when they planned to visit family and friends in Weymouth and Digby, N.S., for Christmas. Kaleigh was well enough to make the trip for the first time in three years.

But, just days before Christmas, the trip was scuttled. Kaleighs blood became infected, another common side effect with TPN. That usually meant two weeks in hospital.

The holidays were saved, however, when doctors at Sick Kids approved a plan to let Wright administer the IV antibiotics herself. Shed been trained by hospital staff. The family flew east on Dec. 24, arriving just ahead of Santa.

Its a Christmas miracle, Wright told the Star at the time.

This season is more low-key. Wright and Barton are importing a bit of the Maritimes to their CityPlace neighbourhood apartment with a Nova Scotia lobster dinner planned for Christmas Eve. The family, including Kaleighs little brother, J.J., and toddler sister Layla, will then bake chocolate chip cookies for Santa and, of course, put out carrots for his reindeer.

Weve got the plans in motion, says mom. Well have the best Christmas ever.

There is much to celebrate.

Kaleighs health has been pretty stable, says her mother, and there have only been four in-patient visits to the hospital over the last year, usually because of an infection. There was one nine-month stretch two years ago without a hospital overnight. That was a record.

Im much better, says Kaleigh. I do miss out on more than I would want to, on some of the things Id like to do like swimming, sleepovers, hanging out with friends, the basic stuff.

Kaleigh attends school  she is in Grade 7  but staying over at a friends house is tricky because she is on TPN 18 hours a day and it has to be administered at specific times. But even that is an improvement on being hooked up around the clock as was once the case.

That doesnt mean there havent been some adventures. Earlier this month, Kaleigh did something rare for her when she blasted down the water slides at Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls. Her intravenous lines had to be sterilized after each foray into the water but, in all things, her parents try to balance the health risks against Kaleighs quality of life.

She also participated in the filming of those powerful fundraising videos for the hospital  part of the Sick Kids VS campaign, aimed at rebuilding the hospital  and can be seen running in the one where hundreds of kids come together with construction tools.

Youd have to know its me to see me, says the girl with the quick wit and infectious laugh.

With Kaleigh spending less time in the hospital, her father has more freedom as well. For a long time he worked at a drugstore near Sick Kids so he could race to his daughters side at a moments notice. Now hes employed as a plumbers apprentice. Wright is a full-time mom.

The family hopes that one day as Kaleigh grows and her intestines get bigger, shell be able to absorb enough nutrients on her own without the IV. She weighs around 90 pounds now and is just a smidge under five feet tall. She was 64 pounds three years ago.

Realistically, a lot of people get (TPN) for a lifetime, says Wright. but our goal is to get her to eat enough and to absorb the nutrients from that food and, with that, we can get rid of TPN. But its hard.

Right now, shes doing well so shes getting 80 per cent of her nutrients orally and 20 per cent through TPN.

And there is another big dream that could be more immediate. Kaleigh hopes to get to Disney World in Florida, but for now, hydration issues that affect her kidneys dont allow it.

Hopefully 2018 will be our year and she continues to make a lot of improvements, says Wright. Who knows, maybe by the end of year we could get to Disney. Its realistic.

For those who remember Kaleighs tribulations and cared as she tried to get home to Nova Scotia three Christmases ago, Wright says there is something shed like them to understand.

I would love them to know that in all of her struggles and all of her illness, she never lost her smile, says Wright, tears welling in her eyes. She smiled right through it, every step of the way. She made it look so easy.

I always say that if an adult had to go through what she is going through, Im sure  At least I know I probably wouldve given up. But she had hope and that gave us hope.

I also want them to know that Kaleigh has a bright future ahead, all thanks to our donor. We always say, sign your donor card. Without a donor, Kaleigh wouldnt be here.

2014 Star story about Kaleigh View document on Scribd

Read more about:

SHARE:
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAAustralian police were investigating Friday whether there was any terrorism-related motive behind the car ramming attack on Melbourne pedestrians that left 12 people in a hospital, three of them in critical condition.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull condemned the despicable and cowardly act. Nine of the 19 people originally injured Thursday were foreigners.

Victoria state police Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said on Thursday night that early indications were the driver of the car, a 32-year-old Australian citizen of Afghan descent with a history of drug abuse and mental health issues, was not motivated by terrorism. He said the ramming was being treated as a singular incident.

On Friday morning, however, Patton said the man had made several utterances while under police guard in a hospital on Thursday night, including mentioning poor treatment of Muslims, and that police were still exploring terrorism as a possible motive.

He made some utterances in respect to a number of matters, Patton told Australias Channel Nine television network. He spoke of dreams and voices but also attributed some of his activities as well due to the mistreatment of Muslims.

Asked if there were links to terrorism, he said: Thats certainly one area were exploring in respect to motivation.

But he added: We havent identified any extremist links with this man. We havent identified him linked to any groups. We havent identified anyone inciting him to do any actions, or any prior extremist activities prior to those utterances last night.

Seven of the 19 people admitted to the hospital were discharged overnight. Melbourne media reported three patients remained in critical condition, including an 83-year-old man, and that a 4-year-old boys condition had improved from critical to stable.

Read more:

Merkel vows to help survivors, learn from Berlin Christmas attack on anniversary

Charlottesville car attack suspect indicted on 10 counts, including first-degree murder

Police said nine foreigners were among the injured, including from South Korea, China, Italy, India, Venezuela, Ireland and New Zealand.

Our consular officials are working hard to get in touch with their families and make sure theyre aware of whats happened to their loved ones, Turnbull told a press conference on Friday.

Turnbull also reiterated that no terrorism link has been identified but that nothing should be ruled out.

This was a despicable and cowardly act, Turnbull said. But I want to reassure Australians that this is an isolated incident. We should continue to go about our daily lives the way we always do.

Turnbull said the man had come to Australia as a refugee, through normal refugee programs, not people smugglers.

He has a history of serious mental illness and drug abuse. He has no known links to any political issues or to extremist groups, and therefore the position Im advised of is that no terrorism link has been identified at this stage, Turnbull said.

In horrific scenes around 4:45 p.m. Thursday, the man drove a white SUV through a red light and speeded up into pedestrians crossing central Melbournes busy Flinders Street before crashing into a traffic barrier.

Patton said the man would undergo psychiatric assessment, with police hoping to formally interview him on Friday afternoon. The man was on a mental health plan but didnt show for a scheduled appointment on Thursday morning, Patton said.

The driver is known to police following a 2010 minor assault matter.

Police said a second man, aged 24, who was arrested after being seen filming the incident and found to have three knives in his possession, had been released. Hes expected to be charged with drugs and weapons possession but the alleged offences are not linked to the car ramming.

Patton reassured the public hundreds more police would be on the streets over Christmas and New Year.

It is the second time this year that Melbourne, regularly ranked one of the worlds most livable cities, has been traumatized by a car attack.

In January, six people were killed and more than 30 were injured when a car was driven up a footpath in Bourke Street, near Thursdays incident. Police arrested the driver, who was known to police for a history of illicit drug use, family violence and mental health problems. Police said the case was not terrorism-related.

There have been a number of car attacks in other parts of the world in recent years, many of them linked to terrorism.

In October, a man drove a truck down a New York City bicycle path, killing eight people. The driver is accused of providing material support to Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, among other charges, including murder.

In an August attack, 13 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded when a vehicle rammed into pedestrians on a walking street in Barcelona. London has seen three such attacks this year, two linked to Islamic extremists and another seen as a reprisal attack outside a mosque, killing 13 people altogether.

A vehicle attack on a shopping street in Stockholm in April killed five people, while an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last December killed 12.

The deadliest such attack in recent years took place in Nice, France, in July 2016 when a man drove a refrigerated truck weighing about 20 tons into a crowd, killing 86 people.

SHARE:
Canada walks political minefield by abstaining on UN vote against Trump embassy plan for Jerusalem

Mike Blanchfield and Alexander Panetta The Canadian Press

Canada tiptoed through one of the worlds most dangerous political minefields on Thursday when it abstained from a United Nations vote that rebuked U.S. President Donald Trumps Middle East policy.

The government walked away from the potentially explosive debate over Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, sustaining only limited damage: the United States said it was pleased, the Palestinians said they were fine, too, and Canadas leading Jewish affairs organization expressed muted disappointment.

Well-placed sources told The Canadian Press that the governments decision to abstain was the result of a painstaking two-week analysis that tried to balance two competing interests  Canadas support of the U.S.s sovereign right to decide on the location of its embassy versus Ottawas view that the status of Jerusalem has to be decided as part of a broader peace agreement.

Canada was one of 35 countries that abstained from voting on a contentious UN resolution denouncing Trumps decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The General Assembly voted 128-9 in favour of the resolution.

The vote placed Canada in a difficult situation because Trump had threatened to retaliate against countries that supported the resolution. And it came as Canada is in the midst of a tough renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with a protectionist Trump administration that has threatened to tear up the deal.

Sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said Canadian diplomats saw the political storm taking shape 10 days ago and started working on a plan. They analyzed several factors  Middle East policy, international politics and considerations closer to home: Canada-U.S. relations and Canadas bid for a temporary seat on the UNs Security Council.

Abstention was seen as the best option.

On Wednesday, Canada gave the U.S. a heads-up of its intention. On Thursday morning, the U.S. was informed of the final decision, a few hours before Marc-Andre Blanchard, Canadas UN ambassador, explained that decision to the General Assembly.

Canada didnt receive any assurances from the U.S., and American officials at the UN never promised that an abstention would be well-viewed, sources said.

But in the end, it appeared to assuage the Americans. Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the UN, thanked the countries that supported the U.S., including abstainers, Canada and Mexico among them.

We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the @ UN, Haley tweeted.

Blanchard made it clear the resolution never should have landed on the floor of the General Assembly.

We are disappointed that this resolution is one-sided and does not advance prospects for peace to which we aspire, which is why we have abstained on todays vote, Blanchard told the General Assembly.

Blanchard said Canada wants to emphasize that Jerusalem has special significance to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Denying the connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths undermines the integrity of the site for all. We also reiterate the need to maintain the status quo at Jerusalems Holy sites.

Blanchard also affirmed Canadas long-standing position that the status of Jerusalem should be left for a broader settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

The Palestinian General Delegation in Ottawa said in a statement that it welcomed Canadas balanced position as expressed by Blanchard.

Canadas stance with regards to the status of the city of Jerusalem and the announcement of the government that it will not move the Canadian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem come in line with international legitimacy, laws and resolutions, the delegation said.

David Cape, the president of the Toronto-based Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said he appreciated that Canada acknowledged the connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, and correctly described the resolution as one-sided and unhelpful.

That said, he added, we would have preferred for Canada to have voted no in order to send a clear message that it rejects continued efforts to use the UN as a platform to attack, de-legitimize, vilify and isolate Israel.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland discussed the issue of relocating the American embassy in Israel with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a meeting Tuesday on Parliament Hill, after which she suggested they had agreed to disagree.

Canada and the United States have different views on issues and I think that we have a strong enough relationship  both our two countries and Rex and I personally  that were able to be candid about those differences and explain them to one another, said Freeland, standing next to Tillerson.

Bessma Momani, a senior fellow and Middle East expert with the Centre for International Governance and Innovation said the threat of retaliation should not have influenced how Canada voted.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley is threatening the 193 UN member states and the United Nations with funding cuts if the UN General Assembly approves a resolution calling President Donald Trump's recognition of Israel "null and void." (The Associated)

Canada may find itself in a tough position as we try to renegotiate a NAFTA deal, but we should stand with the international community and wider expert opinion that the U.S. move is unnecessary, counterproductive and toxic, she said. Moreover, theres power in a collective response against Trump and we should take comfort in that.

Read more:

UN Security Council slams U.S. recognition of Jerusalem

Palestinian president says U.S. no longer fit to have role in peace process

Opinion: Jerusalem decision high-risk, low-reward for Trump

Read more about:

SHARE:
CHIHUAHUA, MEXICOA former deputy in President Enrique Pena Nietos party has been arrested as part of an investigation into the illegal use of public money to fuel his partys campaigns in Mexican elections last year, state officials announced Wednesday.

The former deputy, Alejandro Gutierrez, is one of several allies of Mexicos president suspected of taking part in an embezzlement scheme to propel his partys chances at a time of deep dissatisfaction with the government, according to former officials connected to the scheme and hundreds of pages of documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The arrest of Gutierrez, a veteran figure who helped control the finances of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is part of a widening inquiry into the enormous corruption that occurred under the previous governor of the state of Chihuahua. The governor was a close friend of Mexicos president and a rising star in the party before he fled to the United States to avoid corruption charges.

Read more:

Ex-union boss in Mexico moved from custody to house arrest

This 17-year-old YouTube star insulted a notorious drug lord. He was found with at least 15 bullet wounds

Its gone too far: Mexican man shot dead at sons school over work as a journalist

The case against him has already ensnared more than a dozen former state officials, some of whom are now co-operating with the authorities.

But the investigation is spreading and threatens to reach the highest ranks of government, according to testimony from the former state officials and financial records obtained by The Times.

Gutierrez is being investigated in connection with what former state officials call a nationwide plan to funnel tens of millions of dollars in public money to help the partys candidates in gubernatorial elections in 2016.

The money was sent to states with friendly governors in the party, who then created a trail of government contracts with fake companies that ultimately sent the money back for use in campaigns, according to the testimony and records.

At the time, top officials in the PRI were worried about losing the state elections in June 2016. The former state officials say the pattern of embezzling money to finance elections occurred in several states where the PRI was frightened of losing control.

The documents reviewed by The Times focus largely on the embezzlement scheme in Chihuahua. According to the records, millions of dollars were transferred in January 2016 from the federal government to the state for the purpose of education.

The funds were then shuffled and diverted to four companies used to embezzle money  businesses that the nations tax auditor has blacklisted as front companies, according to the government contracts reviewed by The Times.

Those companies, supposedly hired by the state of Chihuahua to provide educational services, received around $14 million (U.S.) in their accounts, according to the contracts and the bank records showing that the money had been received.

But the companies provided no such services, according to affidavits from current education officials in the state. Instead, the money was turned into cash and returned to the PRI to be used for election campaigns, according to the former state officials connected to the scheme.

One of them, Ricardo Yanez, the former minister of education in Chihuahua, described the plot in a sentencing document. He is serving a four-year prison sentence.

Not all of the money went to politicking, however.

About $230,000 was deposited directly into a business account operated by Gutierrez, the former PRI deputy, according to bank records and witness testimony.

The governor of Chihuahua announced the arrest on Twitter on Wednesday evening, describing it as a joint operation with the federal and state police. The governor said Gutierrez had been charged with embezzlement.

The federal Finance Ministry denied that any illicit payments had been made, contending that the nations budget system had been strengthened with strict controls on multiple fronts to guarantee accountability in the use of public resources.

But the trail of payments outlined in the documents suggest a tie between the embezzlement scheme and the party at a national level.

In the sentencing document, Yanez, the state education minister who has already been convicted, is quoted as saying that both Gutierrez and Chihuahuas former governor, Cesar Duarte, told him that the money had been sent from the federal government to finance the partys election campaigns. He said they told him the same plan had been carried out in several states.

Duarte has fled to the United States, where he is avoiding federal and state corruption charges, including allegations that he stole more than $300 million while in charge of the state.

Duartes daughter is a U.S. citizen, and according to legal documents reviewed by The Times, the former governor applied for a green card.

Duarte is believed to be living in Texas and New Mexico. Attempts to reach Duarte by phone and through visits to 10 properties in and around El Paso that are believed to belong to him were unsuccessful.

The head of Pena Nietos party at the time of the campaign finance scheme, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, has long been allied with the president and his family.

Beltrones is also named in the sentencing document. Yanez said he was told by the former governor that Beltrones had hatched the plan. Attempts to reach Beltrones on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

In the document, Yanez said that he met with Gutierrez, the former PRI deputy, and other officials at the partys headquarters in Mexico City. At that point, the PRI had already lost the election and the mindset of the participants switched to damage control.

The campaign cases are part of a wide-ranging investigation underway in Chihuahua, where the new governor, Javier Corral, has assigned his attorney general to delve into corruption.

The leeway that prosecutors have been granted by Corral is rare in Mexico, where investigations are seldom begun and, if permitted, rarely reach higher than low-level functionaries.

Over months, prosecutors have slowly worked their way through a roster of former officials who served under the previous governor, Duarte, pressuring them to co-operate.

Read more about:

SHARE:
BARCELONA, SPAINCatalonias secessionist parties won enough votes Thursday to regain a slim majority in the regional parliament and give new momentum to their political struggle for independence from Spain.

It was hardly an emphatic victory, however, as the separatists lost support compared to the previous vote in 2015, and a pro-unity party for the first time became biggest single bloc in the Catalan parliament.

The result left more questions than answers about whats next for Catalonia, where a long-standing push for independence escalated to a full-on clash with the Spanish government two months ago.

It was also a blow to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who as a result of the separatists defiance ousted the Catalan Cabinet and called the early election hoping to keep them out of power.

Instead, the elections outcome favoured fugitive former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who campaigned from Belgium where he is evading a Spanish judicial probe into the attempt to split from Spain. The investigation could lead to charges of rebellion and sedition that carry penalties of decades in prison.

Puigdemont, who got the most votes of any separatist candidate, greeted the results with delight and called them a rebuke to Spains central government.

The Spanish state has been defeated, Puigdemont said. Mariano Rajoy has received a slap in the face from Catalonia.

In a televised appearance from Brussels, the 54 year-old former journalist didnt make clear if he would try to return home, where an arrest warrant awaits him.

Read more:

Catalonia residents head to polls again as divisions deepen over independence

Catalonia isnt the only place in Europe that wants independence. Who else?

The other main winner was Ines Arrimadas, the leading unionist candidate. Scoring 25 per cent of the votes, her pro-business Ciutadans (Citizens) party won 37 seats, which will be the biggest single bloc in the 135-seat regional assembly.

The pro-secession forces can never again claim they speak for all of Catalonia, Arrimadas said, promising her party will continue to oppose the separatists. We are going to keep fighting for a peaceful co-existence, common sense and for a Catalonia for all Catalans.

But pro-independence parties  Puigdemonts Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), left-republican ERC and the anti-capitalist CUP  together won 70 seats, two above a majority but two less than in the previous parliament. The three groups fell short of winning a majority of votes, though, getting 48 per cent of the total.

The election has resolved very little, said Andrew Dowling, a specialist in Catalan history at Cardiff University in Wales. Independence has won but in a way similar to 2015  majority of seats but not in votes.

Dowling said that with the independence vote not reaching over half of the ballots cast, the European Union was not likely to get involved although the bloc will be keen on seeing the Spanish government actively address Catalonias grievances.

Rajoy has said that taking over control of the region again would be something he would consider if independence is sought by a new Catalan government. Spains constitution bars secession.

Thursdays election saw a record turnout of nearly 82 per cent of the 5.5 million eligible voters in Catalonia.

Eight of the absent politicians were elected as lawmakers. Unless their status changes, they will have to renounce their seats and pass them on to other party members or else the pro-independence bloc could be down a crucial share of votes.

Weeks of campaigning involved little debate about regional policy on issues such as public education, widening inequality and unemployment. At the heart of the battle instead was the recent independence push that led to Spains worst political crisis in decades.

Tensions have been high in Catalonia since the referendum, when Spanish police used rubber bullets and batons against voters who tried to block them from removing ballots from polling stations. Separatist regional lawmakers made a unilateral declaration of independence on Oct. 27, prompting Spains national government to take the dramatic step of firing the regional government and dissolving the Catalan parliament. Courts later ordered the arrest of the former Catalan leaders.

No incidents were reported during the election Thursday.

A new Catalan attempt to secede would also be an unwelcome development for the European Union, which is already wrestling with legal complications from Britains planned exit from the bloc. Senior EU officials have backed Rajoy, and no EU country has offered support for the separatists.

Catalonias independence ambitions also have scant support in the rest of Spain.

The outcome of the political battle is crucial for the region, which accounts for 19 per cent of Spains gross domestic product. An economic slowdown has been the most immediate consequence of the Catalan independence push. Spains central bank last week cut its national growth forecasts for next year and 2019 to 2.4 per cent and 2.1 per cent, respectively, cutting a percentage point off its previous predictions and citing the conflict in Catalonia as the cause.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a mecca for cartels and the land of notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Lagunas grew up never knowing his father. His mother left him with his grandmother as a child.

Lagunas left his hometown at the age of 15 without finishing high school, moving to the nearby municipality of Culiacan and washing cars to make a living, he said in an interview in July. It was in this adopted town that he took on the nickname that would later become known across cyberspace: El Pirata de Culiacan, or The Pirate of Culiacan.

He started landing invitations to more and more parties, and soon fell into a life of excessive drinking. He would post videos on social media showing him chugging beer and bottles of whiskey, sometimes getting so drunk he would pass out. The videos started going viral. In the years that followed, the bingeing teenager became a perverse YouTube sensation. At the age of 17, he racked up more than a million followers on Facebook and more than 300,000 on Instagram. His social media fame started earning him spots in music videos and at promotional events.

Read more:

Ex-deputy in Mexican President Nietos party arrested as corruption probe deepens

Its gone too far: Mexican man shot dead at sons school over work as a journalist

His baby face, matched with his belligerent, clownish behaviour, entertained the masses. Yet it was easy to forget that he was still a boy. He drew a beard on his chin to look older. He tattooed his arms  a pirate on one, a tiger on the other. He posted pictures on Instagram with large guns, half-naked women and luxury cars.

The drinking age in Mexico is 18, but El Pirata de Culiacan drank as if he had no limits. Like many teenage boys, he lived as if he was invincible, saying whatever he wanted about whomever he wanted. It was all a big game, a big party.

But in Sinaloa, one of Mexicos most violent states, no one is invincible  especially when you mess with the wrong people.

In one recent video posted online, a seemingly intoxicated Lagunas was recorded taking a stab at Nemesio Ocegera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho. Cervantes happens to be one of Mexicos most dangerous drug lords, according to U.S. government officials, the leader of the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco.

El Mencho a mi me pela la verga he said, which means, more or less, El Mencho, peel my c---, according to El Pais.

And on Monday night, while he and his friends partied at a bar in Jalisco, a group of armed individuals burst in and fired at Lagunas, the Attorney General of Jalisco, Raul Sanchez Jimenez, told Mexican media outlets. The teenager died, sustaining between 15 and 18 bullet wounds. Authorities managed to identify Lagunas by his tattoos.

Prosecutors have not determined the identities or motives of those responsible. But they confirmed to news outlets that they are investigating a possible link to the recent videotaped insult toward El Mencho.

El Mencho is one of the last people anyone would want to offend.

His cartel, the New Generation, is relatively new, coalescing less than a decade ago. It stemmed from the remnants of another group, the Milenio cartel, and makes money by selling guns, stealing gasoline, extortion and kidnapping, The Washington Posts Josh Partlow wrote in 2015. It is one of the fastest rising drug cartels in Mexico, operating in several Mexican states and forging underworld ties around the globe.

The group has been linked to thousands of murders, according to a Rolling Stone profile. Many of them have been traced specifically to their leader, El Mencho, who is reportedly a former police officer.

Lagunas death comes during a year that is on track to become the bloodiest on record in Mexico. In the first 10 months of 2017, 20,878 murders were counted nationwide, an average of 69 murders a day, Reuters reported.

Its a dangerous time and place for anyone, but especially for a teenage boy living recklessly in search of fame.

He opted to make a career as a broken toy of cyberspace, a path he carved out drink by drink and that left him with enemies of flesh and blood, Univision reporter Fernando Mexia wrote in an article titled The poisoned fame of El Pirata.

The YouTube star managed to transcend borders, even landing in Rolling Stone  not for his fame, but for his death. His killing gave him the popularity he never imagined, Mexia wrote.

As the teenagers celebrity rose, activists criticized the musicians, bands and promoters who featured him drinking in music videos. The attention only encouraged his dangerous behaviour and promoted the alcoholism of a minor, critics told Univision.

There are a lot of people who criticize him, but the truth is ... thats why El Pirata got started, said one artist, Luis Adame, of Ultimo Escuadron. Everyone in their own way tries to find a way to get ahead.

In recent interviews, Lagunas seemed to come to terms with his vices. He hoped to pursue a singing career, and reportedly had signed a contract with a record label.

Speaking to Pepe Garza, a radio host and producer, in July, Lagunas said he knew he needed to rein in the drinking.

You drink a lot all at once, and the body isnt meant for that, Garza said to him.

People ask me, How do you do it? How do you handle drinking so much? the teenager responded. I just laugh, I say I dont know how I do it.

But, he said, theyre right ... sometimes I go too far.

The host wished him the best with his career, encouraging him to get a grip on the partying ...so that he can last many years.

After hearing the news of his death, fellow Instagram celebrity and promoter Beto Sierra remembered Lagunas as a cheerful, positive, fun friend.

Sierra recalled encouraging him to calm down and control the drinking. He told me that he wanted to change, but on the weekend, there was no lack of bad influences, Sierra wrote on Instagram.

You were living a fast life ... you never listened, and I dont judge you, he said. Those who knew you know you were a good person.

Read more about:

SHARE:
WAUKESHA, WIS.One of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favour with a fictional horror character named Slender Man was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in a mental hospital, the maximum punishment possible.

Anissa Weier, 16, pleaded guilty in August to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but she claimed she wasnt responsible for her actions because she was mentally ill. In September, a jury agreed.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren on Thursday sentenced Weier to 25 years in a psychiatric institution, retroactive to the date of the crime. That means she would be institutionalized until age 37.

Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner into a wooded park in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb, in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. Leutner survived after she crawled out of the woods to a path where a passing bicyclist found her.

Read more:

Wisconsin girl reaches plea deal in Slender Man stabbing case

Facebook comment made during Slender Man jury deliberations was benign: prosecutor

Wisconsin girl in Slender Man stabbing case had broken mind, defence says

Both Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Mans proxies, or servants, and protect their families from him. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

Weier apologized in brief comments before her sentencing.

I do hold myself accountable for this and that I will do whatever I have to do to make sure I dont get any sort of delusion or whatever again, Weier told the judge, as she sat next to her attorney. I want everybody involved to know I deeply regret everything that happened that day. I know that nothing I say is going to make this right and nothing I say is going to fix what I broke.

Leutners mother, Stacie Leutner, sent the judge a letter this week in which she wrote that the trauma of the attack has defined our lives and that her daughter still fears for her life. For months, Payton slept with scissors under her pillow for protection, and she still keeps her bedroom windows closed and locked.

She will struggle with the events of that day and physical and emotional scars it left for the rest of her life, her mother wrote.

In her letter, Leutner did not ask the judge to sentence Weier to a specific length of time in the mental hospital, but she said her daughter wouldnt feel safe if either of her attackers is released back into the community unsupervised.

Payton has a lifetime of healing ahead of her and she deserves to be allowed to heal in an environment where she feels safe, her mother wrote.

No one from the victims family addressed the court during the sentencing hearing, deferring instead to the letter from her mother. Prosecutor Kevin Osborne argued for the maximum 25-year confinement, which the judge granted citing ongoing concerns about her mental stability.

Considering the nature and gravity of this offence, being supervised until the age of 37 is not all that long ... in terms of the fact that Payton is looking at a lifetime of scars, physical scars and psychological scarring, Osborne said.

Weiers attorney, Maura McMahon, argued that she should not be hospitalized beyond her 25th birthday. She played a video in court with Weiers father, sister and grandparents speaking on her behalf.

Shes grown mentally and physically, her father William Weier said. She knows what she did was wrong.

He asked for forgiveness from the Leutner family.

In a deal with prosecutors, Geyser, who did the stabbing, pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide with the agreement that she isnt criminally responsible and shouldnt go to prison. She will be sentenced in February, and prosecutors have asked that she be given at least 40 years in a mental hospital.

Slender Man started with an online post in 2009, as a mysterious spectre whose image people edit into everyday scenes of children at play. He is typically depicted as a spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He was regarded by his devotees as alternately a sinister force and an avenging angel.

SHARE:
WASHINGTONTo fill their top spot on the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats had a choice between experts in two critical policy arenas: a constitutional law ace with firsthand experience battling U.S. President Donald Trump, and an architect of sweeping immigration legislation.

By a wide margin, they chose the constitutional law expert. Why? To ready themselves for a battle with Trump that could end with impeachment proceedings.

The selection of Jerrold Nadler as the ranking member on Judiciary was the clearest sign yet of how seriously House Democrats consider the possibility of a full-blown constitutional showdown with Trump.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

You wouldnt know it from how many of them talk. When it comes to the I-word, most Democrats have walked a tightrope  with even Nadler hesitant to mention impeachment in interviews before votes were cast Wednesday.

Leaders have cautioned the rank and file not to push for impeachment because the public might view it as an overreach. The Houses few remaining moderate Democrats from swing districts have regularly warned the partys liberal flank against making the 2018 midterm elections about Trump or the investigations into his presidential campaign.

Look, Robert S. Mueller III is on the case, said Cheri Bustos from a western Illinois district that swung to back Trump last year. Weve got to let him do what hes going to go, and let the facts go wherever theyre going to go. In the end, the truth comes out, but I dont think we need to rush anything more than that.

Bustos had a one-word reply when asked what issues Democrats need to focus on in the next 11 months: Jobs.

Yet Nadler anchored his candidacy for his new position, vacated with the resignation of John Conyers Jr., on the 13 years he has spent either as chairman or ranking member of the panels Constitution subcommittee and, more recently, its courts subcommittee.

He also politely reminded Democrats in recent days of his efforts, beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing into last decade, to impede Trumps efforts to develop portions of New Yorks Upper West Side, which Nadler has represented in the New York state Assembly, and subsequently the House, for more than 40 years.

Nadler won a secret ballot 118 to 72, demonstrating that this caucus wants to be ready to clash with Trump if it vaults into the majority after next years midterm elections.

There is nobody better prepared, if the president messes around with the Constitution, to handle it than Jerry Nadler, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote.

A confidant of Nadlers since the 1970s, Schumer did not have a vote in the race, but he echoed the sentiment of many House Democrats.

It was not meant as a slight to the importance of immigration, an issue that Nadlers opponent, Zoe Lofgren, had argued was the partys main focus.

And these internal elections for leadership posts and top committee slots often turn largely on personal relationships that lawmakers build over decades in office. This race was no different.

Nadler had the backing of most, if not all, of New Yorks 18 Democratic lawmakers, as well as many members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The CBC has long held that seniority (Nadler was elected in 1992 and Lofgren in 1994) should be the most important trait in these posts rather than such qualities as the ability to raise money. Thats because many of its members come from poorer, urban districts and do not have the wealthy donor base of some of their colleagues.

Yet Lofgren hails from a state with 39 Democrats, and with roughly 80 females casting ballots in the Democratic leadership races, she was considered a strong challenger for a post Conyers vacated amid sexual harassment allegations.

One Democratic handicapper familiar with recent internal races expected Nadler to win by about 15 votes. Instead, he won by more than double that margin.

What changed the calculus?

The constitutional argument, Gerald E. Connolly said in explaining the broad support for Nadler. Democrats, he said, must prepare for the coming storm.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi downplayed any division within her caucus, suggesting that the race was spirited but helpful in highlighting key issues. It was a good, healthy race, said Pelosi, who stayed neutral. I thought they both made a very good showing.

Read more:

Analysis | Daniel Dale: Trump gets his first big legislative victory. It could still end up a political defeat

How Donald Trumps proposed immigration changes will tear families apart

Trump rules out firing Mueller as Russia probe studies transition records

Schumer said he first met Nadler when he a West Side kid, one of the leaders of the West Side political movement. The Brooklyn Democrat won his first assembly race in 1974, and Nadler won his two years later.

After a failed 1985 mayoral bid, Nadler won his House seat in 1992 and became a force on the Judiciary Committee, particularly as a top defender in 1998 of then-president Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings.

History and the precedents alike show that impeachment is not a punishment for crimes but a means to protect our constitutional system, he said then, in his opening statement during the committees proceedings. And it was certainly not meant to be a means to punish a president for personal wrongdoing not related to his office.

A fairly doctrinaire liberal, Nadler represents a district where Trump received just 19 per cent of the vote last year. He refused to attend Trumps inauguration, saying that he was legally elected despite allegations of Russian interference. Instead, Nadler said then, Trumps actions inflaming racial tensions made him not legitimate as president.

By May, after the firing of James Comey as FBI director, Nadler told CNN that there might be a very strong case for obstruction of justice charges against Trump.

Democrats are careful to say that Nadler will not push too far or too fast on any impeachment proceedings. He doesnt rush to judgment about anything, very deliberative, said Joseph Crowley, a friend of more than 25 years.

Such cautious statements aside, its hard not to conclude that Nadler was given his new job for a singular reason.

Its something I think he was made for, Crowley said. Hes at the right place at the right time and when we need him most.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Price-fixing tipoff gives Loblaw immunity, Dec. 19

When the price of bread doubled more than a decade ago, we were told it was because of a grain shortage. We now learn that one of the largest bread bakers in Canada (George Weston Ltd.) colluded with one of the largest grocery store chains (Loblaw) in Canada to fix the price of bread.

To add insult to injury, we now learn that some nameless bureaucrat has given them immunity for admitting they stole from their customers for years.

One has to ask if there is more collusion going on between these companies and the competition bureau. We should demand that this immunity be rescinded, that all companies involved be fully prosecuted and that consumers be completely compensated (with interest) for the overcharges.

Gerrard Weedon, Toronto

Read more about:

SHARE:
Its not every day  nor even every year  that Toronto opens six new subway stations. More like every other decade.

Thats a long wait for harried commuters. And an eternity for politicians in a hurry.

None of the politicians cutting the ribbons this month were in power all those years ago to cut the cheques. A timely reminder that they only ever benefit from the short-term election cycle, and rarely remain for the long-term investment horizon required to build subways.

Against that backdrop, the back and forth trajectory of transit construction in the GTA is easier to explain. Politicians come and go every few years, while their pet projects zigzag to their final destination:

Former finance minister Greg Sorbara drove the much-needed York University extension all the way to his own riding of Vaughan, a dubious terminus; ex-mayor Mel Lastman gave us the little-used Sheppard stub; the late Rob Ford begat the overbuilt Scarborough subway, with funding from his federal pal, then-finance minister Jim Flaherty; and Dalton McGuinty bankrolled much of it before bailing as premier.

A supporting role goes to Brad Duguid, the Scarborough cabinet minister who warned that any subway changes would be over my dead body. Like other transit contortionists and extortionists, Duguid isnt running again, so he will be long gone by the time his legacy becomes our albatross. Two public servants who have danced around the Scarborough debate are also out of the picture  chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat has quit, and the TTCs nimble CEO, Andy Byford, is New York-bound.

Who then will cut the next set of ribbons years from now?

A new cast of characters is driving the transit debate  Premier Kathleen Wynne, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, the NDPs Andrea Horwath and Mayor John Tory. Despite their disparate ideologies, they have a shared allegiance to the dubious Scarborough subway extension that defies logical transit planning and fiscal prudence.

How did the three major parties bond over this boondoggle? So much money for one solitary Scarborough byelection race in 2013, when they shamelessly outdid each other in bidding for voter support. Today, as the price keeps rising (more than $3.3 billion), and the number of stations keeps declining (just one at Scarborough Town Centre), how much longer until one of these politicians has the wit to get off this train and restore the original LRT design that would pay for seven more stations serving far more commuters closer to where they live.

The governing Liberals long ago made their pact with the electoral devil. Now, Browns PCs have opted to one-up them by promising to allocate even more money to future cost overruns in Scarborough, digging themselves in even deeper.

Justin Trudeau helped mark the opening of a subway extension on Friday, connecting Toronto to Vaughan, just north of the city. The prime minister says the six-station line is the first rapid transit to cross Torontos boundary. (The Canadian Press)

According to his campaign platform, Brown will bankroll the misguided subway tunnelling with a new form of financial engineering: If elected next year, the Tories plan to bring all TTC subway routes under provincial ownership, to take advantage of Ontarios ability to amortize the expenses (the TTC would still operate the system).

Its an interesting accounting exercise, without any greater political accountability. The PC transit vision promises something for everyone  a Scarborough subway extension, a Sheppard subway linkage (already rejected by city council), and an extension to Richmond Hill  without the money to pay for it all.

On his way to New York, Byford has become more candid about the future of the faltering Scarborough subway. As costs keep rising, certain to exceed the citys budgeted cap, he has suggested council would have to re-open the debate. Keesmaat, the former planner, also noted in retirement that there is a tipping point beyond which the unjustifiable becomes unsustainable.

All this second-guessing at city hall leaves an opening at Queens Park for someone to turn the Scarborough gravy train around. With the Liberals hunkering down and the Tories doubling down, will the New Democrats not take a second look at everyones tunnel vision?

The NDPs Horwath touts herself as the leader looking out for the little guy against vested interests and political boondoggles. Her party is as guilty as the others in playing byelection politics four years ago by joining the Scarborough sweepstakes.

But on the eve of a provincial election what better way for the NDP to resonate with all Torontonians than by reverting to the original LRT that would deliver several more stations instead of one for a lot less money? Is there no politician willing to get serious about making tracks, rather than leading us in circles?

Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

Read more about:

SHARE:
In a conversation with MSNBCs Chris Hayes, Jane Fonda said she felt a shift in the cultural landscape in the aftermath of the sexual harassment scandals that have hit Hollywood. And yet she noted, This has been going on a long time to Black women and other women of colour and it doesnt get out quite the same.

Black feminists have been making this exact point for years. In 2018, I hope the white women will truly start listening, and will ask themselves why they werent listening before.

It has been an interesting year to be a woman, to say the least. But for so many of us, the volume of the conversation continues to drown out women of colour, and specifically Black and Indigenous women.

As demanded by many signs at the Womens March and similar marches, I really want to know: White women, where were you?

For those of us who have been loudly advocating for feminism, it has been a frustrating time. The thrill of the moment has been tempered by wondering where everyone was prior to this year.

Merriam-Webster announced that feminism was its word of 2017 because it is their most looked-up term of the year. Searches for the definition spiked because of the Womens March, the television series The Handmaids Tale, DCs Wonder Woman film, and the #MeToo conversation. And it surely spiked every time people remembered that Donald Trump, a self-confessed groper, is President of the United States. People are clearly learning what feminism means for the first time but I cant keep teaching the same lessons over and over.

Millions of women stepped out in pink hats carrying placards on a brisk January day. Their chants and cheer warmed my heart in a way the previous days inauguration had put a chill down my spine. The joy of seeing so many women in unity, however, reminded me that for a long time many of them had been absent.

On a number of issues, it is a coalition of non-white, non-CIS women who lead the movements that have changed our political reality.

2017 marked the fifth year anniversary of the Idle No More movement, a stunning call for change organized and led by Indigenous women. The Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Women and Girls began this year. Its existence is the result of decades of activism on the part of Indigenous women.

Next year will be the fifth anniversary of the Black Lives Matter movement, both a hashtag and civil rights organization founded by three Black women. The Toronto chapter is helmed by trans folk and Black women; their efforts have forced a necessary conversation with the city, the province and organizations like Pride to contend with how racism affects Black, racialized, and trans people.

These movement and moments, however, have not garnered the attention and focus of the broader feminist community. Before now, it was rare to see white feminists support oppressed groups, let alone advocate for the changes being asked for by them. More likely, white feminists have demanded silence. The mainstream feminist movement has failed to fully value and advocate for the experiences of trans people and Indigenous and Black women.

Perhaps that is why one of Merriam-Websters runners-up for word of the year was complicit.

As a new year dawns, I hope that those who have been complicit in oppression will think about how that has harmed women.

As the #MeToo conversation has shown, there is a plethora of ways to be complicit in the silencing and oppression of women. Men and women who once saw themselves outside of the abuses of Hollywood are reflecting on how they bowed to pressure from abusers. Their acquiescence and self-preservation came at the cost of the careers of a number of women including Salma Hayek and Mira Sorvino.

Reflection and redress are needed now.

The feminist movement did not begin in 2017; it has been going on since long before now. Just because youre paying attention now, it doesnt mean you discovered feminism.

Against my most cynical tendencies, Im inclined to hope that a critical mass is assembling. Whether theyre wearing a pink hat or a hijab, a unified coalition will serve all women.

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.

Read more about:

SHARE:
It seems it's the Beckham boys who are excelling in the style stakes these days, as Victoria shared a gorgeous photo of the 'handsome boys' cutting elegant figures in their best wedding wear.

David Beckham and son Brooklyn were all decked out for the recent wedding of Victoria's little brother Christian Adams, who tied the knot with his girlfriend Emma Strafford this week.

Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Photos via Instagram, Victoria Beckham Photo via Victoria Beckham, Instagram Photo via Victoria Beckham, Instagram / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Photos via Instagram, Victoria Beckham

Victoria congratulated the happy couple on Instagram by sharing a short video of the pair enjoying their first dance as a married couple.

The proud mom of four also shared a snap of husband David and eldest son Brooklyn looking smart in stylish suits by British menswear brand Kent and Curwan.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

The two men appeared to be acting as groomsmen for the Adams' wedding, as their matching three piece suits with flower boutonnieres suggested.

Romance is not just hotting up in the Adams' household, last month Brooklyn was spotted cosying up to on/off girfriend Chloe Grace Moretz at a rugby match in Dublin.

The 18-year-old shared a photo with his 10.4 million followers on Instagram of the pair with the caption Dublin. You were amazing.
Entravision Communications Corporation operates as an advertising, media, and technology solutions company worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Digital, Television, and Audio. It reaches and engages Hispanics across acculturation levels and media channels. The company's portfolio encompasses integrated end-to-end advertising solutions, including digital, television, and audio properties. It also offers a suite of end-to-end digital advertising solutions, including digital commercial partnerships services, as well as advertising customers billing and technological and other support services, including strategic marketing and training; and Smadex, a programmatic ad purchasing platform that enables advertising customers or ad agencies to purchase advertising electronically and manage data-driven advertising campaigns through online marketplaces. In addition, the company provides a branding and mobile performance solutions, such as managed services to advertisers looking to connect with consumers on mobile devices; and digital audio advertising solutions for advertisers. Further, it sells advertisements and syndicated radio programming solutions through its Entravision radio network. As of March 3, 2022, the company had 50 television stations; and 46 Spanish-language radio stations. It serves advertisers from various industries, such as e-commerce, retail, entertainment, gaming, delivery services, financial technology, communications, lifestyle, and travel. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
TransUnion provides risk and information solutions. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Markets, International, and Consumer Interactive. The U.S. Markets segment provides consumer reports, actionable insights, and analytics to businesses. These businesses use its services to acquire new customers; assess consumer ability to pay for services; identify cross-selling opportunities; measure and manage debt portfolio risk; collect debt; verify consumer identities; and mitigate fraud risk. This segment serves various industry vertical markets, including financial services, insurance, tenant and employment, collections and services, technology, commerce and communication, public sector, media, and other markets. The International segment offers credit reports, analytics, technology solutions, and other value-added risk management services; and consumer services, which help consumers to manage their personal finances and consumer credit reporting, insurance and auto information solutions, and commercial credit information services. This segment serves customers in financial services, retail credit, insurance, automotive, collections, public sector, and communications industries through direct and indirect channels. The Consumer Interactive segment provides credit reports and scores, credit monitoring, identity protection and resolution, and financial management solutions that enable consumers to manage their personal finances and take precautions against identity theft. This segment offers its products through online and mobile interfaces, as well as through direct and indirect channels. The company serves customers in approximately 30 countries and territories, including North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, India, and the Asia Pacific. The company was formerly known as TransUnion Holding Company, Inc. and changed its name to TransUnion in March 2015. TransUnion was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Thursday, December 21, 2017

The Idaho Supreme Court imposed a 35-day suspension as reciprocal discipline

In the Nevada disciplinary case, Mr. Callister was counsel for a party who contested the legitimacy of a will in probate. In that case, Mr. Callister sent a letter to the witnesses of that will who had also submitted affidavits. In exchange for their honest testimony that they never witnessed the decedent signing a will, the letter offered to pay $5,000 to each witness, release all claims against them for their allegedly erroneous affidavits, and offered a further incentive of $2,000 to the first witness who called to accept the offer and provide required testimony. The letter also threatened the witnesses with personal liability and the legal implications of perjury if they failed to disavow the will.

The Nevada Supreme Court found that it is unethical for a lawyer to offer money to a fact witness contingent on the content of the witnesss testimony under N.R.P.C. 3.4(b), and that a lawyer may not threaten a witness with criminal prosecution for refusing to testify as a lawyer directs under N.R.P.C. 8.4(d).

In the Idaho hearing, Mr. Callister contended that the Nevada disciplinary proceedings were so lacking in notice or opportunity to be heard as to constitute a deprivation of due process and that imposing a reciprocal 35-day suspension would result in grave injustice. The Hearing Committee of the Professional Conduct Board and the Idaho Supreme Court concluded the Nevada procedure was not so lacking in notice or opportunity to be heard as to constitute a deprivation of due process and that imposing an identical sanction in Idaho would not result in grave injustice.

In an unrelated matter the court reinstated an attorney

On December 14, 2017, the Idaho Supreme Court entered an Order reinstating Dale R. Russell to practice law in Idaho. A condition of Mr. Russell' s reinstatement is that he not prepare on behalf of a client, any instrument or pleading naming himself or his spouse as a personal representative, trustee, guardian, or agent of a personal representative, trustee, or guardian unless he is related to the client as defined by I.R.P. C. 1. 8( c).

(Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/12/the-idaho-supreme-court-imposed-a-35-day-suspension-in-the-nevada-disciplinary-case-mr-callister-was-counsel-for-a-party-w.html
How many steps will it take to walk off Thanksgiving dinner?
When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.
Im at Secrets Cap Cana right now. It is fantastic! Stayed at Secrets SilverSands in Mexico which was great! this resort is amazing. Beach is large, lots of chairs available and pools galore. Activities at beach and pool, service has been wonderful. Food has been great and lots of evening entertainment.

And is new, open just about a year.

Ive been very happy with Secrets.
Agree with Greg, you said no tropical climate, but didn't say anything about the outback. You could consider an itinerary that would mix the two. If you're keen on a big 2 week road trip, you could do a loop Melbourne to Melbourne. On the way in, follow the Great Ocean Road. June is great for whale watching, Warnambool is a known spot, as well as Cape Nelson/Cape Bridgewater. From Melbourne to Cape Nelson, count 3 days. From there, follow the coast again, doing the Coorong, and then Kangaroo Island. Stay 3 days on the island. Then go back and from here do your outback portion of the trip. You could go to the Flinders Ranges, but I've never been, dunno how it is in June with 2WD cars. Mutawintji National Park is also beautiful, near Broken Hill, but requires driving on sometimes rough dirt roads, dunno how fine you would be with this. An easier option is the Mallee region. It's basically 4 national parks : Murray Sunset, Hattah Kulkyne, Wyperfeld and Little Desert. They're all worth it, but only a few areas are for 2WD. In Murray Sunset, the Pink Lakes area is a must, you should camp there and see the lakes. Plenty of wildlife, a true outback experience. Hattah Kulkyne is lakes (often dry) and forest, again plenty of birds (especially emus) and marsupials. Wyperfeld is a mix of sanddunes, forest and dry lakes. I would skip Little Desert though, it doesn't really have spectacular scenery, it's more for birdwatchers and naturalists. The Grampians are a must however, rocky mountains with again a lot of wildlife, 2 days is worthwhile there.

That'd be 7 days for the great ocean road + Kangaroo Island, 4 days in the Mallee country and a couple of days in the Grampians (last day to drive back to Melbourne). If you consider the Flinders Ranges and Broken Hill, skip the Mallee coz it's a big drive from KI to Flinders Ranges, or remove KI. But on the way back from Broken Hill, stop to Mungo National Park near Mildura, where you'll learn about fossils, it's got great scenery too. There's not much accommodation in the outback. Either you camp in the parks, or you pay a premium for the few accommodation available. But camping under the stars in those places is magical.

If you don't want to camp at all, then yeah a trip Melbourne to Brisbane via the coast would be better, you'll easily find motels everywhere. Must sees include Wilsons Promontory, Marlo and Cape Conran, Mallacoota and the coast around here, Ben Boyd, all the little parks along the coast, Booderee, Fitzroy Falls the Blue Mountains... From Sydney to Brisbane I've never been others will be able to help you.
Hi. My wife and I are visiting Costa Rica (San Jose, La Fortuna, Monteverde, and Manual Antonio) in late February. We are renting a small 4 wheel drive. Have been exploring the "things to do" around Arenal and wonder if I really need to fill up the schedule with booked excursions. We are very experienced travelers, and are generally "do it yourself" type people when traveling. Most excursions have pick up at the hotel, which we really don't need. I do want to see the wildlife, and don't mind paying local people to show me around a given park or refuge (but don't like large tour groups at all). Can I go to the Arenal National park (for instance) and pick up a local (good, English speaking) guide there? Or should I just bite the bullet and book things from TripAdvisor recommendations? Same with the lake, can I just cruise out there and rent some kayaks with a guide? The $ is not the issue, I just like flexibility and doing things at my pace.

One tour we will book is the Cano Negro tour, probably with Jacamar Naturalist. A friend recommended this, and given the distance, seems like the right thing to do. But they want to be paid via Paypal, which is weird to me. Comments on this also appreciated.
Scott knows more about the weather that time of zear, as I onlz travelled there in May.

Can I ask why you want to start in Lao Cai? If you hire a bike there, you have to go back there to return the bike.

It might be easier taking the bus from Lao Cai to Ha Giang, get a motorbike, do the loop, and then head to Hanoi (if you need to go south to Hanoi).

That would make life a bit easier. Taking a bus to Lao Cai to Ha Gaing, and Ha Giang to Hanoi is easy,I would suggest avoiding night buses though.

Some people do the Ha Giang Loop in 3 days. If possible I wuld aim for four days as you will not rush, and have time to include enough stops on the way (trust me, the scenery is so stunning you might want to stop every 5 minutes. Also, you can add detours to places like Lunc Cu, the Vietnamese Northpole.

With 4 days you could travel from Ha Giang to Yenh Min, YM to Dong Van, Dong Van to Meo Vac (it is onyl 20km, but this is the best route on this loop, and it allows you to explore Meo Vac a bit), and then from Meo Vac to Ha Giang. I always suggest not to rush this area, it would be shame, as t is just so beautiful. besides, if it is raining, you have to drive a bit slower and might need to stop if the rain gets too heavy.

here are information about the Loop, with route, sites and accommodaiton recommendation (oh, and some photos as well...)

https://solotravellerontour.com/ha-giang-loop/

Sapa still ofers some trekking, but there are reports on the forum that Sapa is one big construction site now. If including Sapa means less time for Ha Giang, I would leave it out.

Hope this helps a bit.
It's better to enjoy Cherry Blossom(Sakura) if you can come in early-mid April instead. If you can, come to Tokyo and enjoy Sakura for a few days on early April, and then move to Kyoto, then move to Kanazawa - Shirakawago - Takayama and then go to Kawaguchiko on mid April and come back to Tokyo.

If you can only come on mid-late March, you can only see Cherry Blossom on late March in Tokyo, Kyoto or Hiroshima, and the question is where do you see Cherry Blossom among these places. I recommend Kyoto Gyoen (Imperial Park) surrounding Kyoto Palace in Kyoto and Koishikawa Korakuen Garden and Rikugien Garden in Tokyo to see the early-blooming Cherry Blossom in late March, as follows.

https://www.japan-guide.com/blog/sakura17/170329_tokyo.html

https://www.japan-guide.com/blog/sakura16/160324_tokyo.html

https://www.japan-guide.com/blog/sakura17/170401_kyoto.html

https://www.japan-guide.com/blog/sakura17/170403_hiroshima.html

If you come to Kansai Region (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara) in the season (late March - mid April), you should book your hotel ASAP now. More than 1,200 hotels in the whole Kansai Region are fully booked early by huge numbers of visitors to Kyoto. You should also book your hotels in other areas within this month. Book, book, book and think later which to stay and which to cancel, because cancellations even 3-7 days before are FREE: you should KEEP your hotel at first!!
Hello I am planning on a solo trip to Japan for 14 days. I am male and don't know any Japanese

I was going to spend a few days in Tokyo then to Kyoto, Nikko and Hiroshima.

I thought of taking Intrepid tours but thought I could do this on my own for less. Hire some kind of tour in each city.

I was going to try and find 3 star Hotels.

I tried Airbnb in Europe but did not like that experience so much as I didn't';t always feel comfortable with staying in someones place.

I was thinking a hotel would at least have a reception to help you with basic questions.

Any advise how I can work out this itinerary?

I was thinking of 2 nights in Kyoto, Hiroshima.and Nikko. finishing bace in Tokyo for a couple more days.

I think buying a Japan train pass would be best in my situation?

I would stay in either Shibuya and or Shinkjuku in Tokyo.

Is it easy to get to down town Tokyo from the airport.

thank you
You will go thru US customs & immigration when you land at JFK, have all your papers in order. Then when you arrive at Colombia you go thru their customs and immigration. And the reverse, Colombia to JFK you have customs in the USA, then when you arrive home. If your trip is as you say strictly short term tourism you should have no problems, its a very popular vacation spot and really beautiful.

Drug cartels do not typically 2017 move thru individual travellers the way it was yes done in the 1970s till 1980s. They have their own airlines, planes and systems. Your main issue is you appear nervous about this - why --the main thing that generates a flag is yes profiling based on color, race and nation of origin but also inappropriate nervous behaviour. Terrorism is a much bigger threat these days than drug trafficking, although they are linked. Illegal migration to the USA is also flagged - you have your return ticket.

Just review your paperwork, have enough money and your receipts at your resort and you will be fine. Aprovecha - have a great time.
Is your company in need of the most reliable and efficient best Best Jasmine Tea s in the market? Your good luck led you to the ideal situation, so congratulations! You are in the best possible place. By eliminating the need to read through dozens of Best Jasmine Tea reviews, we are saving you time and stress.

Many customers find it difficult to decide which Best Jasmine Tea product to buy. The dilemma is brought about by the many types of Best Jasmine Tea in the market. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a clear understanding of how you may choose the most suitable Best Jasmine Tea available in the market.
- Members of Parliament from northern Uganda and West Nile are threatening to secede after Parliament passed the contentious Age Limit Bill

- While addressing members of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) on Tuesday, December 19, the party's Vice President Reagan Okumu said it was time for the North to break away

- Okumu holds that the destiny of Uganda was going to be determined by the people and not through Constitutional amendments that only favored one person

Uganda's Age Limit Bill that was overwhelmingly endorsed on Tuesday, December 19, by members of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party continues to generate heart across the country.

Members of Parliament from northern Uganda and West Nile are now threatening to secede after they failed to shoot down the contentious Age Limit Bill.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

My people have said that we either go federal or secede from this country. You have sat on us for a long time, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party Vice President, Reagan Okumu, said.

READ ALSO: Museveni could become president for life as Uganda's Parliament votes to remove age limit

Ugandan Parliament passed the Age Limit Bill on Tuesday, December 19, amid protest from opposition. Photo: Edge Uganda.

Install TUKO App To Read News For FREE

According to the members of FDC, Uganda's main opposition party, the destiny of Uganda was going to be determined by the people and not through Constitutional amendments that, in their view, only favored one person.

The destiny of this country will be decided by the people of Uganda, said Okumu who is the MP for Aswa county and commissioner of Parliament of Uganda.

READ ALSO: Drama as 6 Ugandan MPs are suspended amid debate on Bill seeking to extend Museveni's rule

Okumu and others chose to endorse a Minority report that sought to reject the Age Limit Bill and seven-year term for the president.

We cannot be amending the Constitution perennially to favor an individual.Yes, you have the numbers in Parliament, but we have the human resources to secede," Okumu warned.

READ ALSO: Two terms of 5 years is just a joke - Museveni tells MPs

With the removal of the age limit, President Yoweri Museveni, 73, will be free to vie again in another poll. Photo: Daily Monitor.

The Age Limit Article 102(b) of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda prevented presidential candidates outside the age bracket of 35  75 from vying for the top office.

And now that the restricting Constitutional requirement is out of the way, the 73-year-old President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for about 31 years, will be free to vie again in future polls.

READ ALSO: Pata kufahamu zaidi kuhusu maana ya majina haya katika jamii ya Wakikuyu

Swearing in of Raila Odinga is a huge mistake, the Attorney General warns - On Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- Chances of Embakasi East MP Babu Owino to retain his seat narrowed after a candidate in the election revealed the ODM man blocked him from voting

- In an explosive affidavit by ANC candidate, Babu Owino is accused of unleashing violence on his rivals and bribing voters inside a polling station

- The IEBC admitted it made errors during tallying of votes in which Babu Owino was declared the winner

The National Super Alliance (NASA) has been hit hard after Amani National Congres (ANC) candidate for the Embakasi East constituency told the court to nullify the election of Babu Owino as MP.

In an explosive affidavit seen by TUKO.co.ke, the ANC candidate said that Owino had used violence to block him from casting his vote in the hotly contested August 8 poll.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

In what seems like the last nail in Babu Owino's political coffin, Joshua Otieno said that the beating he received from Babu Owino's supporters send him to comma for five days.

ODM leader Raila Odinga and embattled Embakasi East MP Babu Owino. Photo: Babu Owino/Facebook

READ ALSO: KCSE student jumps into bore-hole after scoring C- (minus)

"I was hit on my forehead by the 1st respondent's supporters at Soweto Social Hall Polling Centre where I immediately fell down and was continuously roughed up until i lost consciousness and went into comma for a period of five days," he said in the affidavit.

He also accused the first time MP of threatening and intimidating IEBC officials with death while he bribed voters inside the polling station yet police officers and electoral officers could do nothing.

As reported earlier by TUKO.co.ke, Babu Owino's election hangs by a thread after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) admitted it made errors during tallying of results, supporting claims by the ANC candidate that the election was marred with irregularities.

Babu Owino and Francis Mureithi in court during a past session. Photo: Babu Owino/Facebook

READ ALSO: It's a great concern when 90% of KCSE 2017 candidates will miss university - Raila Odinga

"He had stopped the process and ballot had been arranged in front of him and people were queuing to be paid by him and his supporters as they proceed to go and vote. The police officers who were manning the station were watching as all this happened," he said.

The Returning Officer Nicholas Butuk said on Tuesday, December 19, that he made mistakes when declaring Owino as the winner in the hotly contested election.

READ ALSO: Police on the manhunt for Raila's ODM Director of Elections, Junet Mohamed

Jubilee candidate Francis Mureithi moved to court to challenge Owino's election and with the support of his ANC rival, Owino's fate seems to be sealed as the court analyses evidence produced.

ANC and ODM are both affiliate parties of the National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition.

Babu Owino back with his 'mtoto wa umbwa' comment that landed him in trouble - on TUKO TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
-Controversial preacher Gilbert Deya has been kicked back to police cells after court refused to grant him prayers to be released on bond

-Deya is facing charges of stealing babies in a child trafficking syndicate in the name of 'miracle babies'

-Deya was deported back to the country from England on Friday, August 4 to face charges of child trafficking

Disgraced preacher Gilbert Deya who is facing child trafficking case suffered a major blow on Thursday, December 21 after his pleas to be set free from Kamiti Maximum Prison where bed bugs are feasting on him were rejected.

Deya who runs a church in England, is accused of stealing babies and passing them over as miracle babies.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

He was deported back to Kenya on Friday, August 4 after years of trying to evade the long arm of the law for child trafficking.

READ ALSO: Pata kufahamu mali inayomilikiwa na familia za Raila Odinga na Uhuru Kenyatta

'Miracle babies' pastor Gilbert Deya. The court has refused to free him on bail. Photo: Kass FM

READ ALSO: William Ruto buys 1,000 goats for KSh 12 million in cash

Deya who was hauled to Kamiti Maximum Prison cells, had earlier complained that bedbugs were feasting on him and demanded to be given VIP treatment.

But the court on Thursday, December 21 declined to grant him his prayers to be released on bail pending hearing of his case.

"Court rules that Bishop Gilbert Deya remain in police custody until January 18th 2018 when he will be eligible for release on bond," the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said in a Twitter post seen by TUKO.co.ke.

READ ALSO: US does not care about Raila's legacy, only its business interests in Kenya - Millie Odhiambo

Deya had requested to be released on bond due to poor health but the DPP opposed the application explaining that the disgraced preacher remains a flight risk.

He will remain in police custody until Thursday, January 18, next year when he would be eligible to be released on bond.

I lost my leg in Afghanistan, almost gave up -on TUKO TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Russian-backed militants launched 15 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in ATO area in Donbas in last day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

The enemy violated ceasefire in ATO area 15 times over the past day. As a result of the enemy shelling, one Ukrainian soldier was killed, four servicemen were injured, the statement reads.

In Luhansk direction, illegal armed formations used 82mm and 120mm mortars to fire at Ukrainian positions near Travneve, Hladosove and and Novotoshkivske (53km north-west of Luhansk).

In Donetsk direction, Russian-backed militants launched attacks on Ukrainian strongholds outside Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk), using heavy mortars. The illegal armed formations also shelled Ukrainian positions near Kamyanka (62km south of Donetsk) and Butovka coal mine (11.4km north-west of Donetsk).

ish
One Ukrainian soldier was killed and another four were wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at a press briefing on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Unfortunately, one Ukrainian soldier was killed in enemy attacks in the ATO zone near Kamianka. Another four soldiers were wounded near Butivka coal mine, he said.

According to Motuzianyk, the wounded soldiers were immediately taken to military hospitals.

iy
The U.S. presidential administration has approved the delivery of small arms to Ukraine, in particular, sniper systems, for over $45 million, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, December 20, with reference to sources in the administration and the Congress.

"The Trump administration has approved the first ever U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, in a clear break from the de facto U.S. ban on arms sales that dates back to the Obama administration," the newspaper writes.

Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. At the same time, there has been no approval to export the heavier weapons the Ukrainian government is asking for, such as Javelin antitank missiles.

The report notes that the Trump administration notified leading congressional committees of the sale on December 13, but did not make any public announcements in this regard.

The move was heavily supported by top Trump national security Cabinet officials and Congress but may complicate President Trump's stated ambition to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, the report notes that Trump's chosen option was measured; he did not approve everything the Ukrainians asked for but nonetheless crossed the line of approving lethal sales, a significant shift in his administration's approach and U.S. policy overall.

op
The UN Security Council needs radical reforms and reorganization in order to prevent the paralysis of its work due to the unfair position of individual permanent members.

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Serhiy Kyslytsia said this at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, December 20, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The Council is not as effective as hoped and expected by the international community and many people around the globe not because it deliberately ignores some issues or does not work hard enough. On the contrary, the Council's agenda is growing and with every passing year its members spend more and more hours deliberating in this Chamber or in the neighboring consultations room," Kyslytsia said.

At the same time, he pointed to concrete shortcomings that limit the effectiveness of the work of the UN Security Council.

"First, the veto right of permanent members of the Council means that a substantive action is possible only when interests of the Five if not coincide then at least do not cross. In other cases, the Council is left paralyzed. Moreover, a lack of a mechanism to overturn a veto means that there are no incentives for a veto-wielding member to try to work out a solution on a contentious issue," he said.

Secondly, he said, the scope of implementation of adopted resolutions was always limited by the level of readiness of countries to do so. "This selective approach to implementation does not bode well for the Council's ability to make a real difference in various situations on the ground," Kyslytsia said.

Thirdly, a premise of an effective and efficient Security Council is based on the assumed and expected respect of the UN Charter and norms and principles of international law by all member states, he said.

In this regard, he recalled Russia's aggression against Georgia in 2008 and against Ukraine, starting in 2014. "Has the Council been able to provide a fitting response? The answer is well known," Kyslytsia said.

He noted that Russia was still occupying Crimea and certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as supplying military and armed forces there.

"The Russian delegation may also claim, as it usually does, that our remarks have no relation to the subject of today's discussion. Our answer is very simple - Russia's actions undermined and continue to undermine the international rule based system and they constitute a direct threat to international peace and security, which is the subject that this Council must be concerned about," Kyslytsia said.

He also expressed the conviction that "without a radical reform and a complete overhaul of the Security Council as it is right now, we can expect only more of the same - long discussions, sometimes even interesting ones, but with a limited impact where a real and concerted action is needed." Not much is needed to change the situation, he said.

"Merely a responsible attitude of permanent members to dispensing their duties for the good of the world. So far, this aspect of the Council's work is found wanting," he said.

op
Switzerland has extended for one year the freeze on the accounts of former Ukrainian and Tunisian Presidents Viktor Yanukovych and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, reads a statement posted on the website of the Federal Council of Switzerland.

"At its meeting on December 20, 2017, the Federal Council decided to extend for one year the freeze on the assets of ousted presidents Ben Ali (Tunisia) and Yanukovych (Ukraine) and their entourages," the statement reads.

The report notes that at the beginning of 2011, the Federal Council reacted immediately to the uprisings taking place at the time in a number of Arab countries by ordering, as a preventive measure, a freeze on the assets in Switzerland of ousted presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak and of politically exposed persons among their entourages. It subsequently announced a similar freeze in the context of the crisis in Ukraine in February 2014.

The freeze on the Ukrainian assets (CHF 70 million), which was extended by one year on the basis of a Federal Council decision on December 9, 2016, expires in February 2018.

The Federal Council of Switzerland expects that "this one-year extension is expected to yield tangible progress in pending proceedings and increase the likelihood of the assets being returned to the country of origin."
Employees of the counterintelligence unit of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) have exposed an official of the secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers for activities in the interests of the aggressor country's special services, the SBU's press service has reported.

"Law enforcers found that the official had been recruited by Russian intelligence agencies during a long-term foreign trip. Operatives of the Security Service of Ukraine documented that the official followed the instructions of Russian supervisors and collected information about the activities of government agencies, using special equipment. The offender transerred the collected data to supervisors via electronic communication channels," reads the statement.

The SBU noted that SBU officers, with the assistance of the government, had detained the agent of the Russian special services in office.

Criminal proceedings were opened under Part 1, Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Preliminary procedural measures are underway, in particular, searches at the place of work and residence of the official.

The detainee was notified about the suspicion of committing a crime.

op
Kyiv City Council has approved a decision to increase the budget of the Tourism Development Program for 2018.

A total of 73 deputies voted for the proposal, with at least 60 votes required to take a positive decision, the press-service of Kyiv City Council reports.

"In line with amendments, the total budget of the Tourism Development Program for 2018 will be more than UAH 50 million. The initial draft of the document for the next year envisaged UAH 14.4 million," reads the report.

Head of Tourism Promotion Department of Kyiv City State Administration, Anton Taranenko, noted that certain measures would be directed to promote and popularize the tourist brand of Kyiv inside the country and abroad.

According to him, a special film commission will be established to promote the Ukrainian capital as a site for filming movies, promos, and advertising.

In addition, he said that the tourist infrastructure will be improved, in particular, it concerns city navigation, the establishment of new and maintenance of existing municipal tourist information centers.

iy
An employee of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, who was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is Stanislav Yezhov, an aide of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The representative of the Cabinet of Ministers in the Verkhovna Rada, Vadym Denysenko, told this on the 112 Ukraine television channel late on December 20.

"The information that this person could engage in illegal activities has been known for a long time, and his work has recently been under surveillance," Denysenko said.

When asked whether the detainee is really Stanislav Yezhov, Denysenko answered affirmatively.

According to the media, Yezhov accompanied Groysman at all international meetings and on all trips. It was also reported that he had previously worked at the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States, as well as at the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.

op
SANAA, 20 December 2017  A UNICEF-chartered plane landed today in Sanaa and delivered nearly 6 million doses of essential vaccines to protect millions of children at risk of preventable diseases, including the current diphtheria outbreak that has reportedly infected over 300 people and killed 35. Most diphtheria cases and deaths are among children.

Nearly 1,000 days since the conflict escalated in Yemen, the country is in the grips of the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, with restrictions on fuel and food imports further complicating emergency response. The restrictions add to the misery of children in Yemen who already face the triple threat of diseases, malnutrition and violence.

Vaccinating children in Yemen now is critical to protect them from preventable diseases and death. It is vital that vaccines and other lifesaving supplies for children continue to flow into Yemen and across the country unimpeded. They are a lifeline for millions of children, said Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.

UNICEF reiterates its call on all parties to allow unhindered humanitarian access to all of Yemens land, sea and air ports and to facilitate the distribution of lifesaving assistance for children inside the country.

###

Notes to Editors:

The vaccines delivered through Sanaa airport today include:

- Tetanus and diphtheria vaccines for 2.7 million children and adults up to the age of 25

- Pentavalent vaccines to protect 2.5 million children against whooping Cough, hepatitis B and diphtheria.

Multimedia materials available here
Surgical tumour removal remains the preferred treatment for most patients with renal cell carcinoma, and many medical associations have proposed guidelines for the optimal surveillance of patients following surgery. This study evaluated the adherence of Canadian urologists to the follow-up guidelines proposed by the Canadian Urological Association (CUA) in 2009.

The study cohort was identified from the Canadian Kidney Cancer Information System, a prospectively populated database from 15 academic institutions in 6 Canadian provinces: British Colombia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. A total of 1982 patients who underwent radical or partial nephrectomy for stage pT1-3N0M0 renal cancer between January 2011 and June 2016 were included in the cohort. Numbers of abdominal and chest imaging tests performed during the follow-up period were captured and compared with the 2009 CUA guidelines. The level of compliance was measured by means of weighted  and Pearson correlation statistics. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate factors associated with noncompliance (under- or overtesting) in the postoperative surveillance period.

Of the 1982 patients, 1380 had stage pT1 disease, 164 had stage pT2 disease, and 438 had stage pT3 disease. There was incongruent adherence to the CUA surveillance guidelines, with a ratio of observed to recommended tests of 0.71 and 2.27 for chest and abdominal imaging, respectively. Overall, moderate correlation between observed and recommended tests was observed, with the highest value found for abdominal imaging in the pT3 group ( = 0.59 [95% confidence interval 0.52-0.66]). Patients who underwent radical nephrectomy and those who presented with a higher stage of the disease were less likely to receive fewer chest imaging tests than recommended, and those with stage pT2 disease, those with stage pT3 disease, those with conventional clear cell renal cell carcinoma and those with a low-risk histologic type had an increased risk of undertesting.

In the 6 Canadian provinces, there are large differences between guidelines and clinical practice in imaging surveillance after nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma. Better adherence to clinical guidelines could improve optimization of health care services.

CMAJ open. 2017 Dec 11 [Epub]

Alice Dragomir, Armen Aprikian, Anil Kapoor, Antonio Finelli, Frederic Pouliot, Ricardo Rendon, Peter C Black, Ronald Moore, Rodney H Breau, Jun Kawakami, Darrell Drachenberg, Jean-Baptiste Lattouf, Simon Tanguay

Affiliations: McGill University and McGill University Health Centre (Dragomir, Aprikian, Tanguay), Montreal, Que; McMaster University (Kapoor), Hamilton, Ont.; Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and University of Toronto (Finelli), Toronto, Ont.; Universite Laval (Pouliot), Quebec, Que.; Dalhousie University and Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre (Rendon), Halifax, NS; University of British Columbia (Black), Vancouver, BC; University of Alberta (Moore), Edmonton, Alta.; University of Ottawa (Breau), Ottawa, Ont.; University of Alberta (Kawakami), Calgary, Alta.; University of Manitoba (Drachenberg), Winnipeg, Man.; University of Montreal (Lattouf), Montreal, Que.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29229610
Cambodias delegation to the United Nations issued a strongly worded statement on Tuesday against a public forum organized by the United States and European Union which featured the daughter of jailed former opposition leader Kem Sokha.

At the meeting, Kem Monovithya called on the UN General Assembly to reconsider Cambodias membership in light of the governments dissolution of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party and a wider crackdown on political opposition to Prime Minister Hun Sen, civil society, and independent media.

The Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Cambodia registers its strong protest against such panel discussion, which is politically motivated with the clear intent to mislead international public opinion. The Permanent Mission considers this arrogant and disrespectful behavior as a serious interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Cambodia, the statement reads.

The mission went on to defend the actions of Hun Sens government, claiming the existence of dozens of minor opposition parties registered to vote in the 2018 general election was evidence that Cambodia was committed to pluralist democracy.

Meas Ny, a social researcher, told VOA Khmer on Tuesday that Hun Sen believes he can do whatever he wants, adding that only concerted international pressure could force his hand.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday said Cambodia can survive without trade with the west amid calls from his opponents for the European Union and the United States to impose economic sanctions.

The comments came after it was revealed that Hun Sens commerce minister, Pan Sorasak, had written to the premier early in December highlighting the importance of the multi-billion dollar export markets.

Hun Sens government has banned the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, jailed its leader, Kem Sokha, and led a crackdown on civil society groups and independent media it views as critical of the government.

Both the European Union and the United States have suspended election funding over the crackdown, while Washington has also imposed visa restrictions on some top officials. Both are also said to be considering economic sanctions, including the suspension of preferential trading agreements with Phnom Penh.

Speaking to garment workers this week in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen said his government was working to resist negative influence from the west while developing its agricultural sector, industry, and manufacturing.

We don't want any consequences from anywhere to negatively impact us. It is just like giving us oxygen and if they took out the oxygen, we die. We cannot become someone who is waiting for the oxygen, he said.

But, he added, Cambodia had survived economic sanctions in the 1980s and could do so again.

The world depends on each other. The other countries import to our nation, we also export to theirs. And do remember that tax exemption is only for the poor," Hun Sen said.
Cambodias ongoing crackdown on the opposition and civil society ahead of the 2018 election should be at the forefront of discussions at the United Nations General Assembly in January, the daughter of the countrys jailed opposition leader has said.

Speaking at a forum in New York last week, Kem Monovithya, a spokeswoman for the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party and the daughter of Kem Sokha, the jailed CNRP president, urged UN member states to add Cambodia to the agenda when the body meets in January.

I would propose that the member states especially those who have signed on to the Paris Peace Accord send a request to the UN Secretariat for a fact-finding mission, monitoring mission to Cambodia to assess the situation now and to talk to the Cambodian authorities to find solutions in regard to Paris Peace Accord, she said.

I would request that the member states request to UN body to review Cambodian membership at the UN, she added.

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has held power in Cambodia for more than 30 years, has deliberately sabotaged the democratic process in Cambodia.

You still see sort of lip service paid to that idea, but with the statement made this year that the Paris Peace Accord is over, the Paris Peace Accord is dead, the scales can now fall from my eyes that Hun Sen has revealed that he is ... the leader of one-party authoritarian state, he said.

Democracy is dead but it can be resuscitated. Countries like France, Japan, the rest of them, really need to step up here and join other concerned countries to raise the real cause on Cambodia so they turn away from this authoritarian [trend, he added.

In an interview with VOA Khmer this week, Farhan Aziz Haq, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said Guterres was concerned by the anti-democratic trend in Cambodia.

Both the United States and the European Union have withdrawn election funding for the National Election Committee, which was staffed with pro-government officials after three opposition appointees resigned in protest at the dissolution of the opposition in November.

Tuy Ry, Cambodias ambassador to the United Nations, has however claimed that such moves violate Cambodias autonomy and independence.

Speaking at the forum, which was hosted by the US State Departments mission to the United Nations, Pa Nguon Teang, founder of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, asked the United Nations members states to suspend Cambodia from the organization unless the government frees Sokha and reinstates the CNRP.

Rhona Smith, UN Special Rapporteur, was due to join the discussion by teleconference link, but instead issued a statement in which she described the situation in Cambodia as troubling and urged UN member states to open dialogue with Cambodia about human rights and democracy.
Monday, U. S. President Donald Trump outlined his National Security Strategy. During his speech, the president broke down what he called a new era of competition. VOA Beijing Correspondent Bill Ide joined VOAs Steve Miller by phone with Chinas reaction. Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump, publicly blamed North Korea for unleashing the so-called WannaCry cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year.
Construction of a long-awaited Thai-Chinese railway line that will link Thailand, Laos and China officially began on Thursday with a ground-breaking ceremony in the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Ratchasima.

The first phase of the project, a 250-km (155 mile) high-speed rail line linking Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, is expected to be operational in 2021.

The full line is expected to stretch 873 km (542 miles), linking Thailand and Laos at the northeastern Thai city of Nong Khai.

It is part of Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure drive, which aims to build a modern-day "Silk Road" connecting China to economies in Southeast and Central Asia by land and the Middle East and Europe by sea.

But the Thailand project, which began in 2014 with formal talks, has been beset by delays, including disagreements over the design and funding as well as technical assistance.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Thursday presided over a ceremony to begin construction of the first, 3.5-km section of the railway.

"Thailand is developing in every aspect to become the center of connectivity... and this route is to connect to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to China, India and further to other countries," Prayuth said in a speech.

Completion of the first section is expected to take six months, according to the transport ministry.

In September, Thailand signed two contracts worth $157 million with Chinese state enterprises covering the engineering design of the project and the hiring of Chinese technical advisers.
The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution rejecting the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told a packed hall ahead of the vote.

WATCH: U.N. General Assembly on Trump decision

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations, and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit," she added.

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon, said, "Those who support today's resolution are like puppets pulled by the strings of the Palestinian puppet masters. You are like marionettes forced to dance while the Palestinian leadership looks on with glee."

Palestinian request

The Palestinians had asked for Thursday's emergency General Assembly session to consider the Egyptian-sponsored draft.

It followed a U.S. veto Monday in the Security Council of a nearly identical draft resolution, which the other 14 council members supported.

The General Assembly resolution reaffirms Jerusalem's special status as a holy city and as a final-status issue to be resolved in future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It also says "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded.''

Unlike Security Council resolutions, the assembly measure is not legally binding, but it carries moral weight, demonstrating the will of the majority of the international community. It was adopted with more than a two-thirds majority of the 172 nations that voted  128 nations supported the measure, nine voted against it and 35 countries abstained.

The United States and Israel were joined in voting "no" by Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and Palau.

More than 20 nations did not turn up for the controversial vote, including Ukraine and Georgia, which have sought U.S. help in dealing with Russian aggression against their countries.

Pressure campaign

Earlier this week, Haley wrote to many U.N. member states and warned them that she would be taking names and reporting back to President Donald Trump on how nations voted, noting the president was taking the vote "personally."

"History records names, it remembers names," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the General Assembly. "The name of those who stand by what is right and the name of those who speak falsehoods. Today we are seekers of rights and peace."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu flew in for the special session. He angrily dismissed Trump's warning that if countries voted against the United States, he might cut aid to them.

"Such an attitude is unacceptable," Cavusoglu said. "This is bullying and this chamber will not bow to that. It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale. We will not be intimidated."

Among those who can scarcely afford to lose U.S. aid is Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East. Its ambassador voted for the resolution.

"There will be very close scrutiny and decisions made on that basis," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tim Lenderking said Thursday. "We have to measure that against the fact that there's a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen."

But Lenderking called the possible cuts in aid to those who voted against the U.S. no "empty threat."

Some abstentions

U.S. lobbying ahead of the vote did persuade some countries to abstain, including neighbors Canada and Mexico.

"Mexico does not see it as positive or useful to the peace process that a unilateral declaration has taken place to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Ambassador Juan Gomez Camacho said after the vote. "Nor do we believe it to be useful, and we see it as disproportionate, to convene an emergency meeting of the General Assembly."

Some of the European Union's 28 members broke with its consensus on Jerusalem, including the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, which all abstained.

Earlier this month, Trump said the United States considers Jerusalem the Israeli capital, and he started the process of moving the U.S. Embassy there.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its eternal capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state and now say the United States is no longer a reliable partner in the peace process.

The Trump administration says it is committed to a two-state solution in the Middle East if that is what the parties want, and that the physical location of its embassy should have no bearing on the talks.
Apple, the American multi-national technology company, has acknowledged it has taken action that slows the performance of its older iPhones.



After Primate Labs, which makes an application that measures the speed of iPhone processors, disclosed data Monday that seemingly showed the iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 models perform slower as they aged, Apple addressed the claims two days later.



Apple said it released software last year that makes those models operate more slowly to countervail problems with their aging lithium ion batteries, which can sometimes cause operational problems or cause phones to unexpectedly shut down.

The technology giant said the reason for the updated software was to provide better power management capabilities, which also slows down the phones, to prevent them from shutting down.



One solution to a slower, older iPhone would be to buy a new battery instead of a new phone. Apple charges $79 to replace the battery if the phone is no longer covered by a warranty. Owners can also purchase a kit to replace the battery. But the company has long been criticized by repair advocates for making the batteries difficult for users to replace on their own.
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) says it needs urgent and reliable funding in order to defeat al-Shabab militants and transfer security responsibilities to the Somali National Army.

AMISOM chief Francisco Madeira issued the appeal while talking to reporters in Nairobi Thursday.



We need urgent support. Our troops are ready, but they need to be resourced. This has not been happening to expectations, despite the repeated commitments by partners in different forums, said Madeira.



Madeira warned that lack of funding could endanger the hard-won gains in the fight against militants over the last decade.



A stable Somalia is critical for the stability across the East African region and beyond, and if we do not decisively address the threat of al-Shabab, [the group] will continue to pose a danger, he said.



AMISOM has said it will begin drawing down the number of troops in Somalia ahead of a total pullout in 2020. The first batch of 28 Ugandan soldiers left the country earlier this month.



A recent United Nations Security Council resolution slightly reduced the maximum number of troops to 21,626.



Pre-conditions



The AU plan for withdrawal set pre-conditions, including the training and equipping at least 30,000 Somali National Army (SNA) personnel with the support of the U.N. and other donor countries.



Madeira says it is the time to help the SNA prepare to take the lead in the stabilization process.



It is urgent that Somalia security forces are capacitated to take over the security responsibilities of their country. The integration of Somali National Army needs to happen in urgency, said Madeira.



Mission optimism



As the clock ticks towards a new year, AMISOM and the Somali Army, with the help of U.S. military, are preparing for a major offensive to drive al-Shabab militants out of their strongholds in the Juba Valley, the Gedo region and the Middle Juba region.



We look forward for 2018 with great optimism, said Madeira.



Madeira said AMISOMs 2018 plans include handing over major frontline bases across Somalia to the SNA.



But he questioned the viability of these plans without adequate funding and support.



We will work with the Somali National Forces and other stake holders to open unsecure main supply routes, protect strategic infrastructure such as key bridges in order to link population centers and support humanitarian activities. These operations are all subject to availability of adequate support, said Madeira.



On Tuesday, Somali Defense Minister Mohamed Mursal Sheikh Abdirahman said an assessment conducted by the government found that approximately 30 percent of the SNA soldiers do not have weapons.



The evaluators said some units also lack medium and heavy weaponry, and some are "undermanned."

Khadar Hared contributed to the story from Nairobi.
The father of an Australian woman killed by a police officer in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota says his family is concerned that investigators have not fulfilled their promise to give prosecutors all the necessary information to determine whether the officer involved should be charged with a crime.

Justine Damond was shot in an alley behind her Minneapolis home in July. She had called police to report a possible sexual assault, and as she approached a police car, officer Mohamed Noor fired his gun.

Damonds father, John Ruszczyk, told reporters Thursday in Sydney the family has concerns about the possibility that the initial investigation was not done properly and with the greatest integrity or sense of completeness.

Prosecutor frustrated

Last week, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman was caught on camera at a holiday party saying investigators from the states Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) in the case havent done their job and that he did not have enough evidence to bring charges against Noor. He also said the officer has refused to answer questions.

Freeman apologized Monday for the comments, saying he should not have been discussing the case publicly. He pledged to give an update next week on the status of the decision on whether to file charges.

He has since apologized for where, when and how he made those comments, Ruszczyk said Thursday. But he does not say that his comments about the BCA investigation itself were unfounded, inaccurate or in any way untrue. What are we to think?

Ruszczyk further urged the prosecutors office to pursue a rigorous investigation of his daughters death and to fill in gaps in the BCAs work honestly and fairly, but completely.

Protests

The shooting sparked widespread protests and led to the resignation of the Minneapolis police chief.

Officials say the officers body cameras were not turned on, a violation of Minneapolis Police Department rules. The shooting was also not captured by the patrol cars dashboard camera.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has defended the BCA, saying the agency is asked to investigate some of the most complex cases.

I have the utmost confidence in their professionalism, integrity, and thoroughness. Impugning the quality of their investigations is destructive, and detrimental in our efforts to seek and obtain justice, Dayton said in a statement.
Burkina Faso said it will immediately stop importing goods from North Korea and that it only learned of possible violations of U.N. sanctions through American news reports.

The West African country was the top importer of North Korean goods in Africa in 2015, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a website that collects and distributes international trade data.

Speaking to VOAs French to Africa Service, Burkina Fasos foreign minister, Alpha Barry, said the decision to end imports from North Korea takes effect immediately.

I wrote to my colleagues in Commerce and Finance, and we found out that, from January to August 2017, we imported $7 million worth of goods, he said, emphasizing that his government wasnt initially aware of the goods imported from North Korea.

Barry said he learned about the deals through news reports in the United States, prompting him to open an inquiry into the matter. We also found out that in 2015 these imports reached $38 million. These imports are mostly oil products, he said.

In addition to its imports, Burkina Faso exported about $637,000 in oil seeds to North Korea in 2015, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Burkina Fasos decision to sever economic ties comes amid heightened scrutiny of North Koreas business dealings. Following the rogue nations nuclear test in September, the U.N. passed new sanctions to restrict Pyongyangs imports and exports.

In October, the United Nations banned four ships found to be transporting North Korean goods from world ports. In one case, cargo included 30,000 North Korean-made rocket-propelled grenades.

This week, the U.S. requested that the U.N. add another 10 ships to the banned list.

Economic ties to North Korea dont constitute sanctions violations in and of themselves, but the U.N.s list of banned transactions has grown with Pyongyangs ongoing nuclear and missile tests.

The most recent U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in September, added imports of natural gas liquids to North Korea and textiles exports from North Korea to the list of banned transactions.

Global condemnation

Despite increased international scrutiny of associations with North Korea, some 30 African countries maintain economic ties with Pyongyang.

Many African states and populations are unaware of the massive and gross human rights violations committed by Pyongyang, said Grant Harris, a former senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council during Barack Obamas presidency.

Some African countries that promised to end relationships with North Korea later backtracked.

Namibia had made an announcement that it was going to be reducing its ties, and it was later revealed by U.N. investigators that the country had concealed a weapons factory built by North Korean laborers, Harris told VOAs Korean Service. Uganda had pledged to [end] security ties with North Korea back in May of 2016 but had ended up continuing those ties including with police trainers and through other activities.

Harris said the United States and other international partners should help these African countries fill the gap left by cutting ties with North Korea, particularly with regard to national security, and the training and professionalization of security forces.

This way, he said, African countries that can be peeled away from North Korea will have alternative relationships and military cooperation to draw on.
Catalonia holds a regional election Thursday that the Spanish government hopes will strip pro-independence parties of their control of the Catalan parliament and end their campaign to force a split with Spain.

Voting began at 9 a.m. Thursday and the nearly 2,700 polling stations will remain open until 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).

But, though final polls showed separatist and unionist parties running neck-and-neck, an effective pro-independence majority remains a likely outcome that would jolt financial markets and cast a long shadow over national politics.

With a record turnout expected, the more than one-fifth who are undecided among the 5.5 million eligible voters could shift the election outcome.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the Dec. 21 vote in October in the hopes of returning Catalonia to normality under a unionist government. He sacked its previous government for holding a banned referendum and declaring independence.

Economy

A new separatist majority would further dampen investors confidence in Catalonia, which by itself has an economy larger than that of Portugal and is the main driver of Spains economic growth. However, pro-independence leaders recently have backed away from demands for unilateral secession.

The independence campaign pitched Spain into its worst political turmoil since the collapse of fascist rule and return of democracy in the 1970s. It has polarized public opinion, dented Spains economic rebound and prompted a business exodus from Catalonia to other parts of the country.

Thursdays vote became a de facto referendum on how support for the independence movement has fared in recent months.

No clear majority

None of the six parties in the Catalan parliament  ranging across the ideological spectrum from separatist Marxists to the Catalan wing of Rajoys conservative Peoples Party (PP)  are expected on their own to come close to the 68-seat majority.

So, analysts expect the next Catalan government to result from weeks of haggling between parties over viable coalitions.

An analysis of polling data by the Madrid daily El Pais published on Tuesday found that the most likely scenario is separatists securing a majority with the backing or abstention of the Catalan offshoot of anti-austerity party Podemos.

Podemos backs the unity of Spain but says Catalans should be able to have a referendum authorized by Madrid to decide their future. At the same time, Podemos favors a left-wing alliance of Catalan parties that both back and reject independence.

In this, analysts say, Podemos is caught between two options it does not particularly like, but would prefer to back the separatists rather than a coalition involving Rajoys PP.

Separatist parties campaigned against the backdrop of Spanish courts investigating their leaders on allegations of rebellion for their roles in the Oct. 1 referendum, which was ruled unconstitutional.

Deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has campaigned from self-imposed exile in Brussels and his former deputy and now rival candidate, Oriol Junqueras, has done so from behind bars at a prison outside Madrid.

In a written interview with Reuters published on Monday, Junqueras struck a conciliatory tone and opened the door to building bridges with the Spanish state.
The future of Spain and Catalonia could be decided Thursday, as voters in the Spanish region head to the polls to choose new lawmakers for the regional parliament. The election was called by the Spanish government after it seized control of the Catalan administration, following the disputed independence referendum in October. Since then several independence leaders have been jailed or are in exile. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Barcelona, the heated debate appears to have brought voters out in big numbers.
A Beijing court has handed down prison sentences to 44 Taiwanese nationals in connection with a fraudulent telecom operation based in Kenya, a decision that is likely to increase tensions between China and self-ruled Taiwan.

The Taiwanese nationals were among 85 suspects who received various jail terms during Thursday's court session.Two of the Taiwanese nationals were sentenced to 15 years in prison for their part in the scheme.

China has secured the extradition of 288 Taiwanese nationals over the past year from various countries, including Kenya, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, who have been accused of defrauding Chinese citizens of millions of dollars. Chinese state media have said at least some of the fraud suspects allegedly called Chinese citizens and pretended to be prosecutors demanding payment for crimes or infractions, with the threat of jail for those who did not pay up. The victims were allegedly told to wire money to an account to clear their name.

The extraditions have angered Taipei, which has accused Beijing of effectively kidnapping its citizens.

China considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province, and has successfully kept other nations from establishing formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Cuban President Raul Castro plans to stay in office until next April before stepping aside, two months longer than originally anticipated, which then would end nearly six decades of Castro family rule of the communist country.



Cuba's parliament on Thursday extended its legislative period by two months to April 19 because of the impact of Hurricane Irma in September. With the current council of state  the powerful group Castro heads  also staying until mid-April, it ensures that the 86-year-old leader will remain in power until then.



Castro's first vice president, Miguel Diaz Canel, 57, is expected to be Cuba's next president, even as Castro remains the leader of the Caribbean island nation's communist party.



But Castro's departure would end 59 years of Castro family rule, starting with the revolutionary takeover of the government by Fidel Castro in 1959 when he overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro died last year after relinquishing power to his brother in 2008.



Canel has pledged to continue Raul Castro's policies, including limited growth of private enterprise as part of the country's planned economy, single party rule, and tight government control of virtually all aspects of life for Cubans.
4 Australian police stand near a crashed vehicle after they arrested the driver of a vehicle that had ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia.
International condemnation rolled in Wednesday over the murder of a journalist in Mexico's Veracruz state, the latest in a wave of such killings seen as an assault on free speech in the country.

The United Nations' human rights agency said in a statement through its Mexico office that the slaying of Gumaro Perez "confirms a terrible year for freedom of expression in Mexico.''

The Inter-American Press Society expressed its "consternation over the toll of journalists killed this year in the country, most of them with impunity.''

The 34-year-old Perez was shot to death Tuesday while at a Christmas party at his son's school in Acayucan, in the Gulf state of Veracruz. He was at least the 10th journalist slain in the country this year and the third in Veracruz.

The state prosecutor's office sought to cast doubt on Perez's journalistic credentials, issuing a statement Wednesday saying it had not been able to find any media outlet that he was actively working for and that a website under his authorship went inactive a few months ago.

That was disputed by an official with a regional program for journalist protection who said Perez had been working for the local government but continued to publish on a web portal and his Facebook page.

"For all legal purposes he was a journalist,'' said Jorge Morales of the Veracruz State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists. "We could say he was independent.''

Morales added that several people reported Morales' role with the municipal government had been as either a communications worker or an assistant to the mayor, though it was apparently in an informal capacity and he was not on the payroll.

Veracruz prosecutors also said in a statement it was "probable'' that Perez was linked to an organized crime gang and was killed by a rival group. The office cited information pulled from his cellphone and visits made to an imprisoned gang member, but did not provide evidence.

Family speaks out

Perez's family denied he had any links to the narco underworld.

"My brother is a very decent person who walks with his head held high and was admired by many,'' said Maribel Perez, the victim's sister. "It's not right that when we family members are here (at the wake) and we have yet to properly lay him to rest, they go around saying those things.''

Morales said a pronouncement "criminalizing'' Perez violates his presumption of innocence and "does not lead anywhere, does not resolve the case.''

Local governments in Veracruz and elsewhere in Mexico have often sought to discredit slain journalists in order to suggest their killings were not related to their work.

In the case of Candido Rios, who was killed in August near Acayucan, within 24 hours the deputy secretary for human rights said state investigators had ruled out that he was the target of the attack, which also left two other dead.

Journalist advocates and Rios' family denounced what they called a rush to judgment, saying authorities were too quick to rule out his work as motive in a state where so many journalists have been slain.

Details of the attack that killed Perez were still emerging.

Morales said unspecified authorities told him there were surveillance cameras and witnesses. The assailants apparently killed Perez while he was alone in a room.

Fidel Perez, a local reporter in Acayucan, said he had known Gumaro Perez - no relation - for eight years and he had earned the nickname "the red man'' due to his work covering crime.

Recently Gumaro Perez had been a "direct collaborator of the mayor'' who went around with the official and took photos of him, Fidel Perez said. He added that Gumaro Perez was "not an employee on the payroll and was paid directly out of (the mayor's) pocket.''

Gumaro Perez was part of a state program offering guidance in self-protection strategies to journalists carrying out certain "high-risk'' coverage. It is separate from a federal government program known as "the mechanism'' that offers reporters measures like panic buttons on their cellphones and home security.

Mexico is one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists, and Veracruz, plagued by drug gang violence and corruption, is seen as the worst state, with several killed there this year.

Besides Perez and Rios, newspaper columnist Ricardo Monlui was slain in the Veracruz town of Yanga, near the city of Cordoba, on March 19 as he left a restaurant with his wife and son. The attacker appeared to have been lying in wait.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 95 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 1992. In 43 of those cases, the CPJ says the motive has been confirmed as being directly related to the victims' work- including six in 2017, higher than any other year in that period.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres is disappointed that Myanmar has failed to cooperate with the world body's staff, a spokesman told VOA Burmese Thursday, a day after a special human rights envoy was barred access to the country.

We are disappointed by this. We encourage all member states to allow access to all of the human rights mechanisms of the U.N. system, spokesperson Farhan Haq said. We want to make it very clear that it is the responsibility of the government to cooperate with the human rights mechanism."

A day earlier, United Nations special human rights envoy to Myanmar Yanghee Lee said the government barred her from visiting the country to assess the current situation in the East Asian nation.

This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country, Lee said in a statement.

"Myanmar is still cooperating with the special rapporteur mechanism," said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kyaw Moe Tun.

"But Ms. Yanghee Lee's undertakings don't have impartiality and objectivity," he said. According to Reuters, Tun also said Myanmar had asked the U.N. to replace Lee with someone more who would be more familiar with the country, and both fair and impartial.

Mass grave discovered

Wednesday's announcement coincided with Myanmar's military disclosing the discovery of 10 bodies in a mass grave in northwestern Rakhine state, which more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims once called home before fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a brutal military offensive.

Myanmar Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Tun Tun Nyi told VOA Burmese that a five-member investigative committee led a probe on whether security forces were in any way linked to the mass grave found in Inndin village, Maungdaw Township, but refused to comment on international criticism and mistrust of security forces in the Rakhine state.

Myanmar's military has been accused of launching a scorched earth campaign in August against Rohingya villages in response to attacks on Myanmar police outposts by Rohingya militants.

Rohingya refugees have told human rights workers of a host of atrocities committed by security forces, including random shootings, rapes and the burning down of homes and entire villages. Myanmar dismisses the stories as exaggerated, and the army has cleared itself of any abuses.

The United Nations has described the reported actions carried out by Myanmar forces as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing."

The Rohingya minority has been denied citizenship and other rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Myanmar views the Rohingya as immigrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that many families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

VOAs Burmese Service contributed to this report.
Hong Kongs soaring property prices have pushed tens of thousands of families into tiny, partitioned apartments, sparking calls for creative solutions, including converting shipping containers and even water pipes into temporary homes.

The former British colony, one of the most densely populated places on Earth where individual, caged beds offer the only living space for some of the very poor, has seen home prices shatter historic records for 12 straight months.

In November, an apartment sold for HK$132,060 ($16,915) per square foot, making it the most expensive apartment per square foot in Asia.

This has forced some 200,000 individuals into tiny partitioned flats, averaging a mere 62 square feet (six square metres).

Government figures released on Wednesday show the number of households living in "inadequate housing", including partitioned flats and industrial buildings, surged nine percent to 115,000 this year.

Hong Kong had won praise for a post-war program that put hundreds of thousands into public housing and cleared hillsides of precarious, fire-prone squatter villages, but demand has since outstripped supply, inspiring ideas for short-term solutions.

Concrete water pipes - some measuring 2.5 metres in diameter - could be converted into a 120-square-feet mini-apartment for two, complete with a shower and a toilet, according to architect James Law.

They could be stacked between the citys high rises and utilize space otherwise going to waste, Law said, adding that he was seeking government approval.

Demand for shipping container homes has surged, with one manufacturer, Markbox, saying demand had doubled in the past year.

Online advertisements for converted containers, which are legal to build but illegal to live in, tout monthly rents of HK$3,000 to HK$5,000.

The government in the Chinese-ruled city has said it will continue to tackle the housing shortage and that it is exploring different forms of "transitional housing."

Non-governmental groups say while pipes and containers could provide temporary reprieve, they cannot be the solution.

"We welcome any possibilities to speed up the provision of temporary housing," said Lai Kin-kwok, convener of Platform Concerning Subdivided Flats in Hong Kong.

"But I want to stress these can only be short-term arrangements. Ultimately the government must speed up the construction of public housing."
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will testify before Peruvian opposition lawmakers intent on throwing him out of office Thursday in a sudden impeachment proceeding that threatens to make him the regions first president to be ousted over the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

The 79-year-old former Wall Street banker is in a fight for his political survival after an opposition-led investigative committee revealed documents showing the Brazilian construction giant at the center of Latin Americas largest corruption scandal made $782,000 in payments to his private consulting firm a decade ago. Some of the payments overlap with years that Kuczynski spent as a government minister.

Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing, stating in repeated appeals to the public that he left control of his firm in the hands of a business partner and knew nothing of the Odebrecht contract.

Analysts worry the impeachment vote could usher in a new period of uncertainty for Peru, which is one of South Americas most politically volatile nations. The vote is scheduled to come just eight days after the Odebrecht documents were first disclosed and is being pushed by the opposition Popular Force party led by Keiko Fujimori, who is the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori and who narrowly lost to Kuczynski in last years presidential election.

That they would impeach the president is not an unthinkable thing, said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist who has spent years studying Peru. Its that they would do it in a week without serious investigation, without a serious process of public debate.

High-ranking politicians across Latin America are being charged and sentenced to jail for taking bribes from Odebrecht. In a 2016 plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, the construction giant admitted to paying nearly $800 million to politicians, their campaigns and political parties in return for lucrative public works contracts that earned the company some $3.3 billion in profits.

More corruption

In Ecuador, Vice President Jorge Glas has been sentenced to six years in jail for orchestrating an Odebrecht bribery scheme. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is appealing his conviction on charges of corruption and money laundering related to the plot. In Peru, two former presidents stand accused of accepting money from Odebrecht. One is behind bars and the other in the U.S. seeking to avoid extradition.

In a letter to a Peruvian newspaper Saturday, Odebrecht confirmed Kuczynskis assertion that the payments in question were all handled by his colleague, Gerardo Sepulveda. Though little has been shared regarding exactly what services Kuczynskis First Capital provided, Odebrecht officials said the money was taxed, accounted for and not part of the corruption investigation.

These are contracts that I didnt sign, that were completely legal and accounted for, Kuczynski said in an hour-long televised interview with a half dozen Peruvian journalists Sunday. If this was a bribe would it have been done like that? Of course not.

On Tuesday, Kuczynski wrote to the Organization of American States requesting that the Washington-based group send an observer to monitor impeachment proceedings, arguing that Perus democratic stability is at risk. The OAS said it was sending two delegates to Lima for Thursdays vote.

The presidents detractors contend he should have disclosed the payments before taking office and that, at the very least, as a high-ranking government minister when the money was paid he should have done a better job to shield himself from potential conflicts of interest. Polls within Peru suggest a majority of Peruvians want the already deeply unpopular president out of office.

As a senior business leader and statesman with many ties to the private sector, Kuczynski was sort of Trump-like in not clearly breaking those ties. And hes paying a price for it, Levitsky said.

In order to oust Kuczynski, opposition lawmakers would need to secure 87 of 130 votes. The Popular Force party holds 71 seats in congress. Party spokesman Daniel Salaverry said that if Kuczynski appears Thursday, It should be to submit his resignation letter.

If Kuczynski should be removed, First Vice President Martin Vizcarra would be next in line. The former engineer has relatively little political experience at a national level and it is likely he would face many of the same difficulties Kuczynski has encountered in governing
U.S. Senator Mark Warner has spoken out about what he calls a growing chorus of irresponsible and reckless voices calling for an end to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation of ties between Russia and President Donald Trumps election campaign, saying such a move has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.

WATCH: Warner on Potential Constitutional Crisis

Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor that firing the special counsel or any other top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this administrations commitment to the truth, but also to our most basic concept of rule of law.

He expressed concern that critiques of the investigation seem to be growing in stridency and volume and seemed coordinated in recent weeks.

Any attempt by this president to remove special counsel Mueller from his position, or to pardon key witnesses in any attempt to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation, would be a gross abuse of power, Warner said.

WATCH: Warner on Consequences of Mueller Removal

White House lawyer Ty Cobb said Wednesday the Trump administration has no plans to fire Mueller.

If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumor, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them, Cobb said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community released a report that stated Russia had meddled in the election, showing a preference for Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump has denied any collusion.

Warners remarks follow several weeks of rumors that the Trump administration may try to remove Mueller from the probe.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters he is not considering firing Mueller, although his lawyers have accused the special counsel of illegally collecting tens of thousands of emails from Trumps presidential transition team.

In his remarks denying that firing Mueller was under consideration, Trump repeated once again that theres no collusion with Russia.

The emails in question came from the computers of 13 senior Trump transition officials, covering the period just after Trumps election to Inauguration Day, January 20.

Muellers monthslong investigation has already resulted in guilty pleas from two Trump aides, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and foreign adviser George Papadopoulos, for lying to federal investigators about their contacts with Russian officials. The investigation has also led to the indictments of two former key campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.

Trump has regularly disparaged the Mueller and congressional investigations of his campaigns links to Russia, and Republicans have increasingly criticized the Mueller probe as biased against Trump. Mueller dismissed one key FBI investigator from the probe when it was discovered he had exchanged negative comments about Trump in emails with another FBI official connected to the probe.

Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing his successor, former FBI Director James Comey, in May.

Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing his successor, former FBI Director James Comey, in May. 
A federal judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in a criminal case against four people, including Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, over a 2014 armed standoff with U.S. government agents, and rebuked prosecutors for withholding evidence from the defense.

Bundy, two of his sons and a fourth man were charged with 15 counts of conspiracy, assault and other offenses stemming from the confrontation, which galvanized right-wing militia groups challenging federal authority over vast tracts of public lands in the American West.

U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro told federal prosecutors they had willfully violated evidence rules in failing to turn over pertinent documents to the defense, adding, The failure is prejudicial, to ensuring a fair trial.

The ruling came a month after prosecutors began presenting their case to a federal court jury in Las Vegas.

Prosecutors warned

Navarro had warned prosecutors last week she might declare a mistrial after listing documents previously undisclosed by prosecutors that could be used to impugn government witnesses or bolster defendants arguments that they felt threatened by government snipers before the standoff.

In a stern rebuke on Wednesday, Navarro said prosecutors knew or should have known of the existence of memos from Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that might have been helpful to the defense.

Those memos and other documents, about 3,300 pages in all, were not turned over until well after an Oct. 1 deadline, and then only after repeated efforts by Bundys defense counsel, Navarro said.

Navarro set a retrial date for Feb. 26, 2018, but it is uncertain if there will be a new trial. Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre said prosecutors had yet to decide whether to pursue the case. Defense lawyers will argue for charges to be dismissed at a hearing set for Jan. 8.

We have a very strong case that this will never be tried again, Bundys attorney, Bret Whipple, told reporters.

Sessions responds

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions weighed in through a Justice Department spokesman in Washington.

The attorney general takes this issue very seriously and has personally directed that an expert in the departments discovery obligations ... examine the case and advise as to the next steps, said the spokesman, Ian Prior.

Fight over cattle

The April 2014 revolt at the heart of the trial was sparked by a court-ordered roundup of Bundys cattle by agents of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) after Bundy had refused for two decades to pay fees to graze his herds on federal property.

Hundreds of supporters, many of them heavily armed, answered Bundys public pleas for support and rallied at his ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, about 75 miles (120 km) northeast of Las Vegas, in a show of force to demand the return of his impounded livestock.

Police and government agents, vastly outgunned, ultimately retreated rather than risk bloodshed, and no shots were fired.

Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and co-defendant Ryan Payne, a Montana resident prosecutors linked to a militia group called Operation Mutual Aid, have cast the uprising as an act of patriotic civil disobedience against government excess.

Prosecutors contend Bundy, 71, and his followers were defying the rule of law by threat of violence, rather than engaging in an act of legal protest. The most serious counts the defendants face carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Acquitted in Oregon

Ammon and Ryan Bundy were acquitted last year, along with five people, in a separate conspiracy case over a six-week armed occupation of a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon by activists protesting against federal land management.

A would-be fifth defendant in the Nevada case, internet blogger and radio host Peter Santilli Jr., pleaded guilty on Oct. 6 to conspiracy and faces a possible six-year prison term.

Six lesser-known participants in the Nevada showdown went on trial earlier this year. Two were found guilty; one received a prison term of 68 years, a fourth awaits sentencing. Two pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a maximum one-year jail term.

Yet another group of six defendants from the Bunkerville standoff, including two other Bundy sons, Dave and Mel Bundy, were due to stand trial after the Cliven Bundy case concluded.

One of them, Micah McGuire, pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, and faces up to six years in prison when sentenced.
Myanmar wants to continue working with the United Nations on human rights but its investigator must be fair, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after special rapporteur Yanghee Lee was barred from visiting the country.

"Myanmar is still cooperating with the special rapporteur mechanism," said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kyaw Moe Tun.

"But Ms Yanghee Lee's undertakings don't have impartiality and objectivity," he said, adding that Myanmar had asked the United Nations to replace her with someone who knows Myanmar well and is both fair and impartial.

Lee had been due to visit Myanmar next month to assess human rights across the country, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, but on Wednesday she said she had been barred from visiting for the rest of her tenure.

She called for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar's military and said in a statement that the ban suggested something "terribly awful" was happening in the country.

More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping counter-offensive by the army and Buddhist vigilantes.

Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has called the violence "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place.

Myanmar has rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing, blaming most of the violence and torching of Rohingya villages on the Rohingya insurgents who attacked the security forces.

Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan State in northern Myanmar, where the army is battling autonomy-seeking ethnic minority insurgents.

Kyaw Moe Tun, who is director general of the foreign ministry's International Organizations and Economic Department, said a statement released by Lee after her last visit in July "was not objective and not impartial."

"If she comes again and does that, it is not easy to cooperate with us and have a positive attitude," he said.

Lee said in July that activists and journalists continued to be followed and questioned by state surveillance agents, and that her visit was beset by official snooping and access restrictions.

The office of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said at the time that it was "disappointed" with Lee's end-of-mission statement, which contained "many sweeping allegations and a number of factual errors."

It did not give any details and did not directly address the issues of access or surveillance.
Another North Korean soldier and two fishermen defected to South Korea on Thursday, which could be a sign that international sanctions intended to punish the leadership in Pyongyang are imposing harsh economic hardships on ordinary people.

South Korean guards fired up to 20 warning shots at North Korean troops that were in pursuit of the soldier who defected across the heavily militarized demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Roh Jae-cheon confirmed that a low-ranking soldier crossed the border in the midwestern region of the country on Thursday morning, but clarified that no shots were fired at the defecting soldier.

The army has safely secured the defector, and the relevant authorities will investigate the reasons and procedures for the defection, Roh said.

Rising numbers

He is the fourth soldier and one of 15 North Korean asylum seekers overall to cross directly into the South this year. In 2016 one soldier and four civilians crossed the DMZ to defect to the South. Most of the estimated 30,000 defectors, who have fled to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, have escaped through China.

In November, a North Korean soldier was critically wounded when North Korean border guards fired upon him as he ran across the DMZ to defect to the South. Surveillance cameras captured his dramatic escape and rescue by South Korean forces.

In addition to being shot five times, the soldier suffered from a parasitic worm infestation and chronic liver infection, the doctors who saved his life said, indicating perhaps poor health conditions prevalent in North Korea.

Fishermen found

The South Korean Unification Ministry said Wednesday that maritime police found two North Korean men drifting in a small boat off the coast. The two men requested asylum in South Korea and authorities are investigating their identities and claims, a ministry official said.

Also in Japan, a number of ships containing dead bodies have washed ashore this year. Analysts speculate the ships, presumed to be fishing vessels from North Korea, did not have enough fuel to safely return home

Sanctions impact

There is increasing concern the United Nations sanctions imposed on the Kim Jong Un government for continuing to test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, are causing food and fuel shortages and making economic conditions even worse for the estimated 70 percent of the North Korean population living at the edge of poverty.

In an effort to cut off funding for North Koreas nuclear program, the most recent round of sanctions prohibits the estimated $800 million textile export industry, reduces oil imports by a third. They also include a ban on the countrys $3 billion coal, iron, lead and seafood exports, which are believed to directly fund the North Korean military.

These (minerals) have been banned and are no longer being sold, and it has become difficult to feed soldiers. So it is obvious for hungry soldiers to try to defect, said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and president of the World Institute of North Korea Studies.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, recently said he is investigating claims the sanctions were making it more difficult for humanitarian organizations to provide food and medical aid to vulnerable populations in North Korea.

I have to raise awareness with the members of the Security Council that they also have the responsibility to prevent the detrimental impact of sanctions, Quintana said.

In September, South Korea announced plans to donate $8 million to help the World Food Program and United Nations Childrens Fund to provide food and medicine to North Koreans in need.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has tried to balance support for sanctions with efforts to increase engagement and dialogue with the North to improve relations.

Some critics say this type of aid will lessen the effect of the sanctions and help stabilize the Kim government as it continues to develop nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called Moons outreach efforts unworkable appeasement.

The North Korean government has rejected earlier offers of direct assistance and cooperation from Seoul.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
Pakistan is rejecting reports authorities plan to execute an Indian death row prisoner soon after arranging a meeting with his relatives next week in Islamabad.

Former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav was arrested in early 2016 in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan. In April this year, a military court sentenced him to death for espionage and terrorism against Pakistan.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal confirmed Thursday visas have been issued to the mother and wife of Jadhav. He told reporters at his weekly press conference the two are scheduled to arrive and meet Jadhav on December 25.

"Execution is totally not in the forecast," he said. "These are just comments in the air, mere hearsay. There is no such thing. This is our rich tradition in Islamic history about such meetings. He is a terrorist, he is the spy, not his mother and his wife. So the meeting has nothing to do with anything else."

The spokesman reiterated that his government is arranging the meeting "purely on humanitarian grounds" and acting on a request from Jadhav's family through diplomatic channels.

"The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We await further details from India in this regard," Faisal said. "Pakistan is ready and willing to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await inputs from India in this regard."

India says Jadhav is a former officer of the Indian navy but rejects the charges against him as baseless, saying he has no connection with the government.

Pakistani officials insist Jadhav has confessed before the country's military court that he was tasked by the Indian intelligence agency "to plan, coordinate and organize espionage, terrorist and sabotage activities" against Pakistan.

India asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in May to restrict Pakistan from executing Jadhav, arguing he was denied diplomatic assistance during what it called an "unfair trial." The ICJ suspended the execution, pending final judgment by the court.

Pakistan rejected India's assertions while submitting its reply to ICJ last week. Islamabad defended its stance of not granting diplomatic access to Jadhav, insisting he is a serving officer of the Indian Navy and entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying subversive acts.

Jadhav has filed an appeal with Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to seek clemency, which is still pending.
Less than five years after it pledged to end dozens of disputes over land and gain local consent for new plantations in Indonesia, one of the world's largest paper companies is backsliding on those vows. At issue: its dealings with a supplier that has been a butt of community opposition.

Asia Pulp and Paper denies it controls the little-known plantation company it wants as a supplier. But an Associated Press investigation reveals the paper giant has had close ties to the company, as it does with more than two dozen other suppliers it characterizes as independent.

Through the supplier, Asia Pulp and Paper is pressing ahead with plans to exploit 66,000 hectares (163,000 acres) of state land in the Bangka Belitung island chain off Sumatra despite resistance from 40 affected villages that some 100,000 people call home.

That runs against the company's commitment to gain the ``free, prior and informed consent' of local communities and indigenous people when developing new plantations.

Bangka and the other major island in the chain, a melting pot of Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Arab, Bugis and Batak peoples, are already pockmarked and polluted by illegal tin mining.

Villagers are intensely wary of industrial plantations after what some described as false promises from palm oil companies that wanted land.

Roadside signs declare "we reject industrial forestry plantations'' and "No BRS'' - a reference to Bangun Rimba Sejahtera, the company that's a front for Asia Pulp and Paper's expansion in the area.

"If this land is taken by BRS where we shall we go,'' said Yunus, the religious leader of Tambang Enam village, who uses one name.

"This land supports our society and economy, it pays our children's school fees,'' he said.

"We are ready to go to war. It's better than dying slowly. It's better for us to die at once.''

Asia Pulp and Paper is a trade name for a group of mills and forestry companies owned by Indonesia's family-run Sinarmas conglomerate that together form a global paper and packaging giant.

Its products touch consumers around the world, ranging from photocopy paper, tissues and cigarette boxes to special types of paper and card that become bottle labels, burger wrappers, noodle cups and menu cards.

Asia Pulp and Paper says BRS is in the final stage of being approved as a wood supplier.

Expansion

A spokesman told the AP in July that it and a second company under consideration, Buana Megatama Jaya in West Kalimantan, "both are independent suppliers and have no affiliation to APP or Sinarmas.''

An AP investigation into the ownership of 27 companies that supply the Sinarmas pulp empire with wood has revealed ties that indicate that the group can exercise significant influence over nearly all of them despite its characterization of them as independent.

In the case of the two potential wood suppliers, Buana Megatama Jaya is owned by two people - one a former director of a plantation company owned by Sinarmas, and the second a current manager of the same plantation company.

Corporate documents show BRS, meanwhile, was a Sinarmas creature for most of the past decade.

In 2007 it was owned by Margaretha Widjaya, who was deputy CEO of Sinarmas Forestry from 2002 to 2008 and is a granddaughter of the Sinarmas patriarch.

Corporate filings show that BRS was owned for years by two layers of holding companies that recorded their addresses as Sinarmas offices and whose top personnel and shareholders included Sinarmas executives.

On paper, its ties to Sinarmas vanished in 2013, when it secured its license to the state land on Bangka. One of its two current owners identifies himself in corporate filings with a single name and the second owner, a former forestry ministry inspector-general, did not answer calls.

But BRS later employed a corporate social responsibility officer who as recently as last year identified his employer as part of Sinarmas on a social media profile. He has since removed all references to the conglomerate.

Visits to half a dozen West Bangka villages revealed a wall of anxious opposition to BRS. Thousands of villagers have protested against the company outside local government offices.

"Our people live from farming so whatever company comes into our area, they inevitably kill us slowly,'' said Sartojoyo, the head of Simpang Tiga village. "No matter how hard they try to force us, we will not give even one scrap of land to any company.''

Though not affluent by the standards of nearby Singapore or Malaysia, villagers make a comfortable living from growing palm oil, prized Muntok peppercorns and other crops such as rubber and rice.

They also harvest natural medicines, wild honey and a lucrative species of mushroom believed to boost male virility from forests that make up about 15 percent of the concession lands.

It's enough to fund villagers' pilgrimages to Mecca and ensure young people aren't deserting the area to make money in big cities - a bounty villagers fear could be lost with the new plantations.

More than half of the 40 affected villages outlined their opposition in a May letter to the local government that they also sent to Indonesia's forestry and environment ministry.

In some places, village officials said BRS offered what it called a partnership giving villagers access to a small part of the land, but only for growing rubber.

Kasdani, the leader of Air Menduyung village, said the plantation company contacted him in May and offered to set up a meeting with Sinarmas itself, but he refused because no one in his village wants to surrender land.

"It's our livelihood,'' Kasdani said.
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski faces possible congressional impeachment Thursday over his alleged involvement with Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that is mired in Latin America's largest corruption scandal.



The ultraconservative populist party that controls Peru's legislature, Popular Force, is planning to unseat Kuczynski in a vote that he is "morally unfit" to lead the country.



Peru's political crisis stems from Odebrecht's acknowledgement that it bribed officials in the region for much of the century, resulting in the imprisonment of elites from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and other countries.



The scandal has had a more significant impact in Peru than any other country outside Brazil. Odebrecht was a participant in enormous infrastructure projects in Peru and has conceded it paid nearly $30 million dollars to Peruvian officials.



Kuczynski initially denied any ties with Odebrecht but it surfaced last week that a company owned by Kuczynski received more than $4 million from Odebrecht more than 10 years ago. The president also denies committing any illegal or improper acts and contends Popular Force was misusing its majority status to seize control.



"The constitution and democracy are under attack. We're facing a coup dressed in supposedly legitimate legal interpretations," Kuczynski said Wednesday in a nationally televised speech.



Popular Force needs 87 votes out of 130 in parliament to oust Kuczynski and they may have enough votes to succeed.



If congress votes to remove Kuczynski, his two vice presidents would depart as well and new presidential and parliamentary elections would be held.



On Wednesday, tens of thousands of people protested in the streets of the capital of Lima against the attempt to remove Kuczynski from office.



The protestors had various opinions about the legitimacy and the motives behind the impeachment vote, but different groups of protestors seemed to agree that corruption was rampant in congress and throughout the state establishment.
Poland's populist government remained defiant Thursday in the face of a European Commission decision to trigger a legal procedure that could lead to Poland losing EU voting rights.

The unprecedented move by the commission to invoke an article 7 process to deter the Polish government from tightening political control over the judiciary was met with bravado by the country's president, Andrzej Duda, who in a television address said he would go ahead and sign two controversial reform laws, adding to 11 other measures.

Duda was careful in his late Wednesday address, though, not to repeat some of the more fiery responses from Warsaw that have characterized the two-year-long confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels over the changes made by the country's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS).

"We're bringing in very good solutions in Poland that will serve to improve the justice system,"he said.



Poland's prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, also was careful with his wording in defending the actions of his government.



On Twitter he wrote, "Poland is as devoted to the rule of law as the rest of the EU."But he added,"Judiciary reform is deeply needed."



The signing of the measures, which critics say effectively places the Polish courts in the grip of the governing party, now sets the stage for a deepening crisis in the heart of Europe and threatens to divide the EU, east from west.

The European Commission says the two laws undermine the legal standards expected of member countries and amount to a"serious breach" of the rule of law. Other critics bemoan what they say is a turning of the clock back to the authoritarianism that Poland endured under Communism.

As the commission announced it was triggering an article 7 process, Poland's Justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, continued to purge senior judges, dismissing some by fax.

"We have to continue with the reforms of the justice system,"he told reporters.

Article 7 was added to the EU's founding treaty in 1999, allowing for sanctions to be imposed on a member country for breaching democratic rights. The article has never been invoked before, although the commission has threatened several times to use it in the past.

In announcing the EU decision, Frans Timmermans, the commission's first vice-president, said it was doing so"with a heavy heart"due to the adoption of several measures since the PiS came into power,"which put at serious risk [the] independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers in Poland."

Brussels rejects the Polish government's claim it is modernizing the judiciary and the courts. Timmermans said Wednesday the reforms should be in accordance with Poland's constitution and EU law.

"If the application of the rule of law is left completely to individual member states, then the whole of the EU will suffer," he said.

EU officials say that membership of the bloc requires states to observe the legal standards and norms agreed by all.

Analyst Bruce Wilson said, "Over the last two years there have been a number of legislative actions by the current ruling party which limit the independence of the judiciary, and the view of the European Union is that part of the process of building a democratic society is that the three arms of government, the executive, the judiciary and the parliament are independent."

Wilson, professor at RMIT University's European Center in Australia, said "in the last two years, 13 pieces of legislation, according to the EU, have threatened the independence of the judiciary."



He said Brussels fears the PiS is"limiting the capacity of the judiciary to review the actions of the government."



PiS leaders have couched their fight with Brussels as a David versus Goliath tussle with cosmopolitan overlords, accusing them of undermining patriotic values and the cohesion of the country.



The Polish government also has taken issue with Brussels for trying to force EU member states to admit Muslim war refugees and economic migrants. The position is supported by other central European states, including Hungary, which disapproves of Wednesday's triggering of article 7.



Zsolt Semjen, Hungary's deputy prime minister, condemned the commission's move as astounding and unjust."



He added in a statement,"It is unacceptable that Brussels is putting pressure on sovereign member states and arbitrarily punishing democratically elected governments."



How the standoff between Brussels and Warsaw now plays out is unclear.



The two laws President Duda signed defiantly would force two-fifths of the country's supreme court justices to retire and give parliament control over their replacements.



Poland has also fallen afoul of the EU commission  and attracted criticism at home and overseas for illiberalism  for changes to laws governing the media and human rights. In October, Human Rights Watch accused the PiS government of eroding the checks and balances necessary for democratic government.



"Since its election win in October 2015, Poland's ruling party, the right-wing Law and Justice Party [PiS], has used its majority in the Sejm [the Polish parliament] to seek to introduce laws and policies that have serious, negative implications for human rights and the rule of law," HRW said in its report.



The rights group accused the government of interfering with the independence of the judiciary and the administration of justice; undermining freedom of expression; limiting the rights of protesters; restricting women's reproductive rights; and violating the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers.



The claims were dismissed by the Polish government.



PiS has the support of half of the country, according to opinion polls, and the opposition to the government is divided and in disarray. But Poles are highly enthusiastic about EU membership, according to surveys, and analysts say there are political risks for the government if the confrontation worsens.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has dismissed the U.S. claim that a new Russian missile violates a Cold War-era arms treaty.

The U.S. and NATO have voiced concern that a new Russian cruise missile breaches the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The U.S.-Soviet pact bans all land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310-3,410 miles).

The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said at Thursday's briefing that the 9M729 land-based cruise missile "fully conforms to the demands of the treaty." She insisted that it "hasn't been designed and tested for the range prohibited by the treaty."

Zakharova said that Moscow expects Washington to start talks to discuss what Russia considers as U.S. violations of the treaty. Washington has rejected Russian claims of perceived violations.
A North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea, crossing the Demilitarized Zone, Seouls defense ministry said.

Emerging from a thick fog, the low-ranking soldier, reportedly 19 years old, appeared in front of a guard post around 8 a.m. Thursday, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported.

The defense ministry said there was no gunfire from the North when the soldier appeared. Later Thursday, South Korea detected North Korean soldiers apparently pursuing the soldier and fired 20 warning shots, according to the Associated Press. Gunfire was later heard from the North, but it may not have been retaliatory.

A month ago a North Korean soldier drove a jeep down a tree-lined road and then ran across the DMZ under a hail of at least 40 bullets from his ex-comrades. He suffered at least five gunshot wounds.

The defector in November managed to reach the Joint Security Area within the DMZ, which forms the de facto border between the Koreas since the Korean War, and took cover. He was later rescued by South Korean soldiers and airlifted by a U.S. forces helicopter to Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, where he underwent surgery for his wounds. He is believed to still be recovering there.

Novembers incident was the first shooting at the DMZ since 1984, when the two sides exchanged gunfire when a Soviet citizen ran across the border to defect to the South.

Thursdays defection was the fourth by a North Korean soldier across the DMZ this year. It occurred in a more remote area of the DMZ, which is 4 kilometers wide (2 miles) and 248 kilometers (155-miles) long.
South Africa's ruling ANC decided to downgrade its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office over a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, ahead of a U.N. vote on Thursday on a resolution urging Washington to drop the move.

The decision was taken at the end of a five-day African National Congress conference, in which Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as its new leader and South Africa's likely next president after 2019 elections, following Jacob Zuma.

"Delegates endorsed the proposal that we must give practical support to the oppressed people of Palestine and resolved on an immediate and unconditional downgrade of the SA [South Africa] Embassy in Israel to a Liaison Office," new ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule said on Thursday.

There was no immediate comment from Israel's Foreign Ministry.



South Africa's Ministry for International Relations and Cooperation said on its website that it was deeply concerned about Trump's move as it would undermine Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, which has been frozen since 2014.

The South African Board of Jewish Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation jointly condemned the ANC's decision.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states to vote on the draft resolution, which Washington vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process has been frozen for over three years.

Israel deems Jerusalem 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 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally.

The ANC's move comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing closer ties with other African countries.

Last month, on a visit to Kenya, Netanyahu announced that Israel was opening a new embassy in nearby Rwanda "as part of the expanding Israeli presence in Africa and the deepening of cooperation between Israel and African countries". Israel is seeking to expel thousands of African migrants to Rwanda.

On Thursday, Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" on Thursday and said Israel "totally rejects this vote, even before approval."

Trump upended decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies.

When under white-minority rule, South Africa was one of Israel's few allies on the continent. But after the 1994 demise of apartheid, relations cooled as the black-majority ANC took over. The ANC has condemned Israeli occupation of territories where Palestinians seek statehood, while maintaining full diplomatic and trade relations with Israel.
South Sudan's government and armed groups signed a cease-fire agreement Thursday during peace talks in Ethiopia, in their latest push to end a four-year civil war.



The agreement pledges that all parties on Saturday will end hostilities; freeze military positions; and release prisoners of war, political detainees, and abducted women and children.



African Union chairman Moussa Faki called the agreement "an encouraging first step" toward ending the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more from their homes.



But this is only the latest attempt at a peace agreement in a war that has mutated from a conflict between two sides to one between the government and multiple opposition groups, as the world's newest nation struggles to establish its identity.



South Sudan achieved independence from Sudan in 2011, but a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former ally, Riek Machar, devolved into civil war two years later. A peace deal was signed in 2015, but it collapsed within a year as fighting broke out in capital city Juba, and then-first vice president Machar was forced into exile.



The governments of the United States, Britain and Norway issued a statement Thursday welcoming the agreement and congratulating the parties on their "willingness to compromise for the benefit of the people of South Sudan." The statement calls on all parties to implement the agreement "immediately," including providing humanitarian access to affected areas.



The three nations also called on all parties to address the security and governance concerns that are, as quoted in the statement, "essential for peace."
Polls have closed in the election that could decide the future of Spain and Catalonia, as residents of the northern Spanish region voted to choose new lawmakers for the regional parliament.

The Spanish government called the election after seizing control of the Catalan administration, following a disputed independence referendum in October. Since then, several independence leaders have been jailed or are in exile. Many have campaigned during the election period via video link.

Exit polls suggested that pro-independence parties might keep their absolute majority in the parliament, La Vanguardia newspaper reported late Thursday. It was not clear whether the final results would match the exit poll.

The heated independence debate appeared to have brought out voters in big numbers. At one polling station in the central Barcelona district of Eixample, officials told VOA that by lunchtime, the number of voters was roughly double that in regional elections two years ago.

WATCH: Henry Ridgwell Reports from Catalan Polling Place

Among the voters standing in line in the winter sunshine was Xavier Drudis, a resident of Seattle in the United States. Drudis was back in his home city of Barcelona for the winter holidays, just in time to vote. Pinned to his coat was a yellow ribbon, a symbol of solidarity with the jailed independence leaders.

"I believe the society is very divided, so I believe the result is going to be very divided, so I don't think it's going to be a solution. But I also don't think we have to surrender," he said.

Local resident Irma Rio was more optimistic. "We are happy that we have elections, because the problems with independence and no independence will be solved," Rio said.

Fernando, a central Barcelona voter who did not share his surname, said the election would not solve the political paralysis.

"We need to approach this problem with sanity. And not with this. Because things will continue, will be the same," he said. "There are a lot of people intoxicated with the bad information of nationalists."

Earlier polls suggested the result could be very close, with no one party gaining a majority, which would most likely lead to lengthy negotiations involving the parties and attempts to form a coalition regional government. Early polling suggested voters were evenly split between pro-independence and pro-unity parties.

The Catalan National Assembly grass-roots campaign group has been at the forefront of organizing the independence protests, and its president, Jordi Sanchez, is in jail on charges of sedition. The vice president, Agusti Alcoberro, told VOA the campaign would go on.

"If there is a clear independence majority, we are going to have to debate whether to work with the government or pressure it to go faster," he said. "In case the independence movement does not win, we should rethink the way of acting, but always in a civic, peaceful and democratic way."

David Mejia, a candidate for the pro-unity Ciudadanos party, said the independence campaign was a big distraction.

"I believe that Catalonia is losing time and money talking about the independence process," he said. "It is time to put on the table those issues that really matter for Catalan society."

The Spanish government was counting on the 58 percent of voters who didn't take part in the disputed independence referendum to back pro-unity parties. Meanwhile, independence campaigners said they thought Madrid's tough crackdown had won them more support. With passions running so high, the race was too close to call.
Its a drizzly night in central Beirut, and breaths are being held as 27-year-old Maytham Khassir tells a packed room full of strangers how his aunt was murdered by her ex-husband.

Khassir, emotional, finishes, and his eyes survey the audience. A pause. Then, filling the cafe, a swell of applause rises to meet him.

With the rapid rise of Beiruts storytelling, scene moments like this are becoming ever more commonplace as Lebanese find they have a voice  and people willing to listen.

Embraced

I was nervous and afraid at the beginning, explains Khassir, who spoke at a storytelling evening focused on the issue of gender-based violence. But when I saw how they were reacting to the story, I felt like I was being embraced.

Storytelling and poetry have long played a part in the citys vibrant cultural scene, often through its theatrical companies.

But in the past few years accessible and interactive events have exploded in number and popularity, from the occasional small-scale gathering to weekly events filling their venues to the brim. And while practiced talent often begins the show, the growth in popularity of the open-mic sessions are allowing first-timers like Khassir a place to be heard.

Tradition as inspiration

I didnt realize it would have such an impact, explains Dima Matta, a teacher of English and creative writing at Balamand University, who launched a series of storytelling events in 2015 that came to be known as Cliffhangers. I figured thered be a group of university students who would come and share their stories, and then everyone would go about their way.

Thats not how it worked out. They told their friends, who in turn told theirs, and soon, a host of other events were popping up across bars and cafes in the city.

A number of those in the scene who spoke to VOA pointed to a degree of influence from America, and high-profile storytelling events like The Moth, which has spawned its own award-winning national public radio show.

But they were also quick to reference the power of stories and the oral tradition within the region as inspiration.

It is a tradition evident in the tarboosh-sporting and cane-wielding Hakawatis  storytellers whose folkloric tales kept communities rapt for centuries but whose numbers have sharply dwindled  or simply in the stories passed through generations over the dinner table or by the glow of a bedside light.

We come from a culture where storytelling is essential, says Rima Abushakra, who in 2016 co-founded another collective called Hakaya  Arabic for "tale."

In a region that has seen so much change, and a place where community and family are so central, they are central to memorializing moments," Abushakra said.

It could also be that were just real talkers, she adds, laughing.

A voice denied

Tales of the everyday and nonpolitical abound  anecdotes include heartbreak and humor.

Yet the scenes emergence is also spurred by what many involved feel is the denial of individual voices within Lebanon, and the shutting down of discussion.

A Cliffhangers event marking Lebanons first-ever Pride Week in May drew hundreds of people, with many present telling deeply personal stories in a country where being LGBTQI can still potentially get you arrested.

All these platforms are working for same purpose, says Majd Shidiac, whose open mic poetry nights have also taken off in popularity.

That is to give a platform for people to say what they need to say and create safe spaces for people performing, and to make words count, he said.

When tens of thousands took to the streets of Beirut in 2015 in protests sparked by the piling up of trash on the citys streets, Khassir, a journalist, felt duty-bound to not just report but participate.

However, jaded by the lack of change in a state riddled with corruption and still largely controlled by figures instrumental in a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, it was with a sense of pessimism.

"When I go [to storytelling events], I see that there are people who are passionate and believe in change, too, Khassir says, adding that telling the story of his aunt offered him a new way to speak out against injustice.

Lebanon has yet to produce a unified version for school textbooks regarding the countrys civil war, such is the lack of consensus within the country over its causes and consequences.

The conflicts echo in contemporary Lebanon, an echo felt by subsequent generations, says Matta, fuels the need  and importance  of talking freely.

We inherited all this trauma and anxiety, and its a question of what do we do with this as a people? People want to be listened to, and people want to listen.

Beyond Beirut

So far, these events remain largely, though far from exclusively, attended by a certain segment of young, middle-class Beirutis.

Efforts are underway, however, to change that.

Abushakra stressed that Hakaya goes out of its way to reach out to new potential storytellers, whether Palestinian refugees or Lebanese from the economically impoverished northern city of Tripoli.

This month [December], meanwhile, Cliffhangers is set to break out of the capital by engaging with village communities.

And Matta, once again, is experiencing the nerves of those first few events two years ago.

Its definitely scary. We dont know if people will show up, but we have to try, she says. People all over need this.
A senior U.N. official says people are dying because the Syrian government will not give the green light for an urgent medical evacuation from eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.

The United Nations has been asking the Syrian Government for permission to transport patients from eastern Ghouta to Damascus for urgent medical treatment since May to no avail.

Special advisor to the U.N. Syrian Envoy, Jan Egeland, says 494 people were on the priority lists for medical evacuations drawn up two months ago.

That number is going down, not because we are evacuating people, but because they are dying, said Egeland.

At least 400,000 people are trapped in eastern Ghouta, which is besieged by President Bashar al-Assads regime. U.N. humanitarian workers have been blocked from delivering food and other critical supplies to the civilians trapped there for months.

Because of this deprivation, Egeland says 12 percent of children in the city are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and one-third of malnourished children under five are stunted.

He tells VOA he has confirmation that 16 people have died since the medical evacuation lists were resubmitted in November. But, he adds that number is probably higher.

I fear during this Christmas and holiday season there will be more deaths unless we get the evacuation going. They have to be evacuated to get the treatment they need to save their life, he said.

Eastern Ghouta, which has been under siege since 2013, is only 15 kilometers east of Damascus. Egeland notes the Syrian capital has the hospitals needed to care for the wounded and critically ill patients. He says the city has enormous warehouses full of the special nutritional, therapeutic foods needed to treat acutely malnourished children.
As Adama Jarju explains how increased internet access can help his country, Gambia, out of poverty, his electricity cuts out and the Skype interview is disconnected.

"Most of my people are poor ... my family included. Most of us have no access to a computer," Jarju, who lives in the village of Makumbaya, told VOA.

Jarju was one of three students out of 150 from his village to complete high school. He is planning to attend university in the United States  with the hope of bringing the internet to his country.

"It will help them rise out of poverty," he said.

His sister Awa  the second of the three high school graduates  sits next to him. She plans to pursue a degree in marketing in the U.S., then return home and start a hotel to create jobs, particularly for women.

"I want to come back to my country so that I can create a lot of jobs for my people," she said. "The education here is not as advanced. So I have to dream of going to the United States."

Brother and sister are benefiting from the Starling Sponsorship Program  started by Ashleigh DeLuca, who taught at their school for three months nearly a decade ago.

School fees are paid

The program paid annual school fees of 16 selected children as long as their parents promised to keep them in school. But continuing their studies simply was not possible for a lot of children in the West African nation.

"Some of them dropped out, some of them got married, some of them passed away," Adama said.

The Jarju siblings and their classmate Penda Jallow, all of them 23 years old, defied obstacles, though, to earn their high school diplomas.

"Me and Awa, we are very grateful that we have supportive parents. To them, education is the key to success," Adama Jarju said.

DeLucas family also taught her the importance of education at a young age.

As a Colombian immigrant in the United States, DeLuca's grandmother did everything she could to keep her children in school, instilling in them the belief that education was their pathway to a better life.

Her grandmothers hard work and her mothers commitment to her own studies inspired DeLuca as well.

Incredibly proud of students

At the age of 17, she traveled to Gambia to teach schoolchildren, and after three months decided to start the program to help those who truly wanted to learn.

DeLuca said she is incredibly proud of the three students who made it through  and even prouder that they want to further their education.

"When we started this, we didnt even talk about college," she said.

The three students all have been accepted to a number of private universities in the U.S., but now face challenges in getting there  especially in regard to funding.

"Right now, we are having a tough time," Adama Jarju said, as he and his sister wait to hear if they will have adequate funding to travel to the U.S.

Funding still a question

"I dream of finishing my education in the United States," his sister said. "That will be a great opportunity to me ... new people, new culture ... it would be a great thing to learn more about the world and how the world is moving."

And despite the uncertainty of their funding, Ashleigh DeLuca and the students all are confident they can achieve this dream.

"They dont have the choice for this to not work out," she said. "This has the potential to change their lives, to change their families  even their village."
Two Turkish-American men have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a brawl at the Turkish Embassy in Washington earlier this year, according to court documents.

Sinan Narin, 45, of Virginia and Eyup Yildirim, 50, of New Jersey "each pled guilty in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to one count of assault with significant bodily injury. The pleas, which are contingent upon the Courts approval, call for each defendant to be sentenced to agreed-upon terms of one year and one day of incarceration."

Eighteen people, many of whom were members of the Turkish ambassador's security detail, were indicted for allegedly attacking protesters outside the ambassador's residence on May 16. All 18 were charged with conspiracy to commit a crime of violence, a felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years in prison. Several faced additional charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

The brawl took place outside the residence of Turkey's ambassador to Washington shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House.

Video of the protest recorded by VOA's Turkish service shows what appear to be security guards and some Erdogan supporters attacking a small group of demonstrators.

Men in dark suits and others were recorded repeatedly kicking one woman as she was curled up on a sidewalk. Another wrenched a woman's neck and threw her to the ground. A man with a bullhorn was repeatedly kicked in the face.

After police officers struggled to protect the protesters and ordered the attackers to retreat, several suspects dodged the officers and continued the attacks.

The Turkish Embassy claimed that Erdogan's bodyguards were acting in "self-defense" during the incident, and that the protesters were affiliated with the Turkish left wing PKK or Kurdistan Workers' Party.

The PKK has waged a three-decade long insurgency in southeast Turkey.


An aide to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman has been detained on suspicion of being an agent of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

A government representative to parliament, Vadym Denysenko, told 112 Ukrayina TV on December 21 that Stanislav Yezhov was detained a day earlier.

Media reports say that Yezhov accompanied Hroysman on his international trips and often served as an interpreter.

He has worked in the past in the president's office and at the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States.

On December 20, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced that it had apprehended a government employee, whose identity was not disclosed, on suspicion of "acting in the interests of security services of the aggressor country."

The detainee was officially informed that he is a suspect, the SBU said.
The U.N.'s special envoy for Yemen expressed deep concern Thursday about an escalation of violence in the country while also welcoming a pledge by a Saudi-led coalition to allow access to humanitarian aid at a key port.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed condemned Tuesday's Houthi rebel ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia, saying it was "an escalation that hinders peace efforts in Yemen."

After the rebels fired a missile at the Riyadh airport in November, Saudi Arabia put in place an air and sea blockade in Yemen for several weeks, saying the move was necessary to prevent shipments of arms from reaching the rebels.

The coalition said Wednesday that despite the new missile attack, the Houthi-controlled Hodeida port will remain open for 30 days in order to allow for shipments of food and other relief materials.

Houthi rebels seized the Yemeni capital of Sana'a in late 2014, forcing the country's internationally recognized president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, to flee to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led coalition responded in March 2015 responded by launching its operation to fight back against the rebels on behalf of Hadi's government. Since then, the World Health Organization says health facilities have reported more than 8,700 conflict-related deaths and 50,000 injuries.

Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called attention to the effects of the conflict on civilians in Yemen, where the United Nations says three million people have been forced from their homes.

On Thursday, the International Red Cross said there are one million suspected cases of cholera in Yemen, and that more than 80 percent of Yemenis lack food, fuel, clean water and access to healthcare.

Ahmed reiterated there is no military solution for the Yemeni conflict and said he is boosting his efforts to contact the warring sides and prepare for resuming a political process.
When Elizabeth Odio Benito and her fellow judges first arrived in The Hague to work at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, they didn't have a courtroom or rules to guide their work. They didn't even have robes.



What we did have was a great, great commitment, Odio Benito said.

As atrocities continued unabated, the judges began hammering out the legal framework for a groundbreaking United Nations court that wound up meting out justice for nearly a quarter of a century, prosecuting and sentencing some of the top military and civilian leaders from the devastating wars that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s.



Now the tribunal is finally closing its doors, with a ceremony in The Hague marking the milestone Thursday attended by Dutch King Willem Alexander and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. It is lauded by many for bringing a measure of justice to the region and making important contributions to the development of international law, but it still arouses fury in parts of the Balkans and its findings have failed to stem widespread denial of crimes there.



One of the last images in 24 years of courtroom drama will undoubtedly be one of the most enduring: Croat Gen. Slobodan Praljak, seconds after his convictions were upheld on appeal last month, declaring that he was not a war criminal and drinking from a vial he said contained poison. He died a short time later, joining a list of suspects that includes former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic who died in the court's custody before his trial ended.

Some still viewed as heroes at home

Praljak's death and adulation in parts of Croatia by people who consider him a war hero, not a criminal, highlighted the deep-rooted skepticism among nationalists in Croatia and Serbia toward a court they angrily claim was set up by NATO to mete out victor's justice.



Some war criminals released after serving their sentences have been welcomed home as heroes. Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, who was sentenced to 14 years for atrocities committed by Serb troops in Kosovo during the 1998-99 violence that left over 10,000 people dead, was invited by Serbia's defense minister to teach at the country's military academy.



Some victims say it took too long to deliver justice and legal scholars agree that some of the indictments were unwieldy and too broad - Milosevic, the man accused of being the driving force behind the Balkan wars, died in his cell in 2006 before judges could reach verdicts.



But elsewhere the court is considered a success, credited with key legal judgments on genocide and sexual violence against women in wartime and other advances in international law, and with ending a culture of impunity for military commanders and their political masters.

The court - the first of its kind since the post-World War II trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo - indicted 161 suspects, convicted and sentenced 90 of them, acquitted 19, sent 13 to local courts to prosecute and withdrew proceedings against 37. Two Serbs are being retried by a U.N. mechanism set up to handle appeals and other legal questions after the tribunal closes.



Unlike its sister tribunal that prosecuted crimes committed during Rwanda's genocide, the Yugoslav court has no fugitives on the run. Eight of the 90 suspects indicted by the Rwanda tribunal are still at large.



Success, but book is not closed

Part of the reason the Yugoslav court is now considered a success is that it ultimately managed to bring to justice two men considered the architects of the worst atrocities of the 1992-95 Bosnian war that left 100,000 dead - Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic and his political master Radovan Karadzic.



Both men spent years on the run before finally being arrested and put on trial. Both were convicted of genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica and of other crimes including overseeing the deadly campaign of shelling and sniping during the siege of Sarajevo. They are both appealing their convictions.

What the court did not manage to do was convict senior Serbs from Belgrade of complicity in crimes in Bosnia, although the retrial of Serbs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic tackles that issue.



My hope is that the book is not closed on judicial accountability for Serbian complicity out of Belgrade and my hope also is that historians will continue to examine that issue as thoroughly as possible, said David Scheffer, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes issues and now a law professor at Northwestern University.



Lord Paddy Ashdown, a former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said he experienced firsthand the power of the court when he spoke to Serb artillery commanders in Kosovo.

The Serb artillery commanders were more frightened of being indicted by the Hague tribunal than they were of being bombed by NATO, Ashdown told a conference in The Hague that discussed the court and its legacy.



Ashdown, who testified in three trials at the tribunal, is convinced the court's positive legacy will reach into the future. It already is seen as a key stepping stone toward the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which also is based in The Hague.



If you establish a system of justice, it not only brings to justice those who committed crimes, it also conditions and shapes the activities of those who are capable of committing crimes at a time of war, he said. That's the way you have begun to change the climate in which this appalling human madness of warfare takes place, and that is no small achievement.
Afghanistan made improvements on a number of fronts this year but still faces major challenges, ranging from the rejuvenated Taliban and other opposition forces to widespread corruption, challenges in putting together elections, a boom in heroin production and ongoing tensions with neighboring Pakistan, an annual U.N. report says.

After decades of war and chaos, the country again appears to be at a crossroads that depends in part on whether the Taliban will give up terrorism and crime in exchange for dialogue with the government aimed at fostering a lasting peace.

"The security situation remained highly volatile, as the Taliban and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP) showed continued capacity for inflicting mass casualties amid increased Afghan and international air strikes," said the report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The report was the topic for a series of speeches at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, with hopes raised that several international efforts to bridge political divides may eventually yield success, while diplomats from several countries expressed concerns about the drug boom and the long-term prospect of instability and terrorism spreading from Afghanistan.

The U.S. expressed willingness to "partner with anyone" to bring peace to Afghanistan, and Kabul's U.N. ambassador said he hopes "cooperation will foster cooperation."

While Pakistan was rarely mentioned by name, there were repeated references to the need for Afghanistans neighbors to be fully engaged and committed to the peace process, saying there is no military solution to the violence.

President Donald Trumps new policy for Afghanistan has included pressuring Pakistan to do more to track down on terror groups that are believed to have taken refuge there. Islamabad has sharply denied the allegations and claims no such groups are living on its soil.

While tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan spiked several times during the year, leading Islamabad to shut border crossings for extended periods and start to build a border wall, there also have been some recent positive signs. Islamabad has separately sent its military chief and a parliamentary delegation to Kabul for talks.

Another recurring theme at the Security Council underscored the need for continued international assistance, with speakers saying Afghanistan is not capable of self-reliance yet but that it must play the leading role in working out a peace deal.

And endemic corruption continues to plague the country.

"The National Unity Government continued to prioritize its reform agenda, with an emphasis on anti-corruption measures and security sector reform, in the face of ongoing security and governance challenges," the U.N. report said.

The election process has been slowed by a series of setbacks that have undercut public confidence, though plans still call for parliamentary and district council polls in 2018.

More children were in school and getting vaccinations this year, while women were making advancements, including greater political involvement. Production of several major crops jumped, particularly saffron.

But the biggest money crop  opium poppies  also skyrocketed. The Taliban relies on revenue from opium and heroin to fund its operations.

Heroin production was up 87 percent, leading to a U.S.-led bombing campaign against drug labs.

VOA Afghan contributed to this report.
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
The United States has approved the sale by U.S. manufacturers of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert confirmed this week that Congress was notified of the matter on December 13.

The legal framework for U.S. manufacturers to sell arms to Ukraine has existed since the Obama administration, Nauert said.

Nauert noted in remarks to reporters Wednesday that the government itself was not supplying weapons to Ukraine, but only allowing U.S. weapons manufacturers to do so.

The export license covers such weapons as semiautomatic and automatic firearms, the Reuters news agency reported. It includes combat shotguns, silencers, military scopes, flash suppressors and parts.

Administration officials said the equipment approved for sale was valued at $41.5 million. The Washington Post reported that there had been no approval for requests by Ukraine for heavier weapons, like Javelin anti-tank missiles. The newspaper also said Canada had approved similar sales to Ukraine this week.

Critics of the move say selling lethal arms to Ukraine threatens to escalate tensions between the United States and Russia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, on a trip to Kyiv in August, said the Trump administration was "actively reviewing" whether to provide lethal defensive weapons to the war-torn country.

"Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you're an aggressor, and clearly, Ukraine is not an aggressor," he said in response to a question about whether Russia might see such a move as a threat.

He also said Washington did not accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.
A federal appeals court in Virginia on Thursday rejected a bid by President Donald Trump's administration to prevent the U.S. military from accepting transgender recruits starting January 1.

The administration had urged the appeals court to suspend an order by a federal judge in Baltimore for the armed forces to begin accepting transgender recruits on that date. The administration has said the January 1 start date was causing the armed forces to scramble to revise their policies at the risk of harming military readiness.

In a brief two-paragraph order, the three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was denying the administration's request while the appeal proceeds.

Several transgender service members filed suit in Maryland after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, a move that would reverse a policy of the Republican president's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama to accept them. Trump cited concern over military focus and medical costs.

So far, three federal judges around the country have issued injunctions blocking Trump's ban. His administration has appealed all three rulings.

Thursday's action was in response to the administration's appeal of a November 21 ruling by U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis, who said the transgender prohibition likely violates the plaintiffs' constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

The Garbis ruling followed a similar one on October 30 by another federal judge in Washington, D.C. A third judge in Seattle also ruled against the administration on December 11.

In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender people from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty military personnel.
A simple coin toss could decide whether Democrats end Republican control in the Virginia State Legislature after 17 years.

A three-judge panel declared a tie Wednesday in the election for representatives from the state's 94th District  11,608 votes each for Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican incumbent David Yancey.

An earlier count gave Simonds the seat by one vote. Yancey challenged the result and said a disputed ballot should be credited to him, ending the election in a tie.

Virginia state law says any election that ends in a tie will be decided by lot, a procedure that relies on luck. But election officials have not yet decided how and when that will happen.

If Yancey wins, the Virginia House of Delegates will stay in Republican hands. If luck is in Simond's corner, the House will be evenly split with 50 seats for each party  meaning party leaders would have to broker a power-sharing deal.

Republicans have a two-seat margin in the Virginia State Senate.
The White House on Thursday condemned "in the strongest terms" this week's ballistic missile attack by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels that apparently targeted the Saudi royal palace in Riyadh.

The missile that the U.S. said targeted the official residence of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was the latest in a series of Houthi missile launches into Saudi territory.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders urged the United Nations to hold Iran responsible for "repeated and blatant violations" of Security Council resolutions on Yemen.

The White House and Saudi leaders have accused Iran of arming the Houthi rebels in Yemen with missiles, violating a 2015 Security Council resolution barring Tehran from exporting certain kinds of weapons unless it has council approval.

Iran does not deny backing the Houthis but does deny arming them.

'Undeniable' evidence

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, speaking at a news conference last week, displayed missile debris she said was "undeniable" evidence that the weapons the Houthi rebels have been using are of Iranian origin.

Experts are split over whether the evidence Haley offered is conclusive of sanctions violations. But many say it is clear that the rebels are receiving some form of Iranian assistance.

Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed credit for Tuesday's missile attack, as well as a similar launch last month targeting Riyadh's international airport. The Saudis reported no casualties in either attack, saying the missiles had been intercepted while in flight.

After the November missile attack, Saudi Arabia imposed an air and sea blockade in Yemen, saying the move was necessary to prevent arms shipments from reaching the rebels.

Dire humanitarian situation

The White House statement welcomed the news that the Saudi-led coalition was reopening the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida for at least 30 days to allow humanitarian and commercial shipments to Yemen's 27 million residents.

The United Nations and aid agencies had been warning that the monthlong blockade on the Hodeida was threatening Yemeni civilians who desperately need food and other aid. U.N. officials say 3 million people have been forced from their homes in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

U.N. Special Envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed expressed concern Thursday about an escalation of violence in the country. He condemned the latest Houthi missile attack on Riyadh, calling it "an escalation that hinders peace efforts in Yemen."

The Houthi rebels seized Yemen's capital of Sanaa in late 2014, forcing the country's internationally recognized president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, to flee to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led coalition responded in March 2015 by launching airstrikes against the Houthis on behalf of Hadi's government.The airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians and wiped out entire neighborhoods, including hospitals.

The International Red Cross said there were 1 million suspected cases of cholera in Yemen, and that more than 80 percent of Yemenis lacked food, fuel, clean water and access to health care.

Ahmed, the U.N. envoy, said there was no military solution for Yemen. He said he was boosting efforts to contact the warring sides and prepare for resuming a political process.

Thursday's White House statement called on all parties to support a political solution in Yemen, saying it "is the only way to advance long-term stability in Yemen and end the suffering of the Yemeni people."

"As the largest humanitarian donor to the people of Yemen, the United States remains committed to alleviating the dire human suffering in Yemen," the statement said.

But Yemen voted for Thursday's U.N. General Assembly resolution disavowing the United States' recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and its plans to move the U.S. Embassy there.

Threat on US aid

President Donald Trump has warned of cuts in U.S. aid to countries that voted against America interests at the U.N. Yemen can scarcely afford to lose U.S. aid.

"There will be very close scrutiny and decisions made on that basis," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tim Lenderking said Thursday. "We have to measure that against the fact that there's a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen."

Lenderking called the possible cuts in aid to those who voted against the U.S. on Thursday no "empty threat."

Reuters reported that airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen have killed at least 136 people since December 6.

The report quoted the spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights as saying, "We are deeply concerned at the recent surge in civilian casualties in Yemen as a result of intensified airstrikes by the  coalition, following the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on December 4."

VOA's Peter Heinlein at the White House and National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
With a shutdown clock ticking toward a deadline Friday night at midnight, House Republican leaders struggled Wednesday to unite the GOP rank and file behind a must-pass spending bill.

Although a major obstacle evaporated after key GOP senators dropped a demand to add health insurance subsidies for the poor, a number of defense hawks offered resistance to a plan by GOP leaders to punt a guns-versus-butter battle with Democrats into the new year.

There's still plenty of time to avert a politically debilitating government shutdown, which would detract from the party's success this week in muscling through its landmark tax bill.

Some lawmakers from hurricane-hit states also worried that an $81 billion disaster aid bill was at risk of getting left behind in the rush to exit Washington for the holidays.

Lawmakers said the GOP vote-counting team would assess support for the plan and GOP leaders would set a course of action from there.

Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, said "there's no specific direction right now" about the path forward. He spoke after an hourlong closed-door meeting of Republicans in the Capitol basement.

An earlier plan favored by pro-Pentagon members of the influential Armed Services Committee would have combined the stopgap funding bill with a $658 billion Pentagon funding measure. But the idea is a nonstarter with the Senate, especially Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.

Disaster aid

Meanwhile, an $81 billion disaster aid bill faced a potential separate vote of its own, but it was at risk of languishing because of opposition among some conservatives over its cost. Senate action on that bill, a priority of the Texas and Florida delegations, wouldn't come until next year anyway.

Democrats oppose the GOP endgame agenda because their priorities on immigration and funding for domestic programs aren't being addressed. Their opposition means Republicans need to find unity among themselves, which once again is proving difficult. In such situations, congressional leaders often turn to lowest common denominator solutions, which in this case would mean a stopgap measure that's mostly free of add-ons.

"The number of options is collapsing down," said Representative Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican. "I have faith that at the last possible moment, to paraphrase Churchill, when we have no other choice, we'll do what we need to do."

Regardless of how the crisis of the moment will be solved, most of the items on Capitol Hill's list of unfinished business are going to be pushed into next year.

"I think it's highly unlikely that there's a government shutdown," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier on Wednesday. "I think that the right thing to do is let's get a short-term funding [agreement] and we'll deal with these issues in January."

The upcoming short-term measure would fund the government through January 19, giving lawmakers time to work out their leftover business.

Hopes for a bipartisan budget deal to sharply increase spending for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies appeared dead for the year, and Democrats were rebuffed in their demands for protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Republican Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine announced Wednesday that they would not seek to add the insurance subsidies, which are designed to stabilize the Affordable Care Act's markets. The tax bill repeals requirement that individuals purchase insurance.

Trying to combine the health measure with the spending bill was a demand of Collins when President Donald Trump and Senate GOP leaders secured her vote for the tax bill.

House Republicans weren't part of that deal, and with the tax vote over, it became plain that Senate leaders were not able to deliver for her.

Programs for vets, children

Lawmakers said a short-term, $2.1 billion fix for an expiring program that pays for veterans to seek care outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system would be added to the package. So would a short-term "patch" to make sure the states facing shortfalls from the Children's Health Insurance Program, which pays for health care for 9 million children from low-income families, won't have to purge children from the program.

The fate of the $81 billion House disaster aid measure, now likely to see a separate vote, appears unclear. Conservatives are upset with the price tag of the plan, which also contains billions of dollars for California wildfire recovery. Democrats are pressing for more help for Puerto Rico, and California Representative Kevin McCarthy, the No. 2 Republican in the House, signaled a willingness for at least some accommodation to win Democratic votes.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California told fellow Democrats in an emailed update that GOP leaders aren't yielding on a Democratic demand that nondefense spending increases match the budget boost for the Pentagon.

"Unless we see a respect for our values and priorities, we continue to urge a strong NO" on the temporary funding bill, Pelosi said.

Democrats such as Schumer pressed for a two- or three-week temporary spending bill that would send a number of unresolved issues  including disaster aid  into the new year. Schumer appears to believe that shifting as many issues as possible into next year will increase his leverage on immigration and the budget.

Also in the mix is an expiring overseas wiretapping program aimed at tracking terrorists. It has bipartisan backing, but stout conservatives and some liberals oppose it. McCarthy said the program might just be extended for a few weeks, but libertarian-minded lawmakers opposed a plan by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan to add it to the stopgap measure.
Throughout the year, young members of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps beautify the city  cleaning and planting trees, and creating trails and green spaces in the city. They get a break at the holidays to share holiday cheer.

We all come together to have fun, says Corps member Chrishana Cameron, 21, who was enjoying the festivities at one of the Corps job sites. It's not always about work, she said of the holiday celebration.

Some members bring their young children. Others bring parents, brothers and sisters, and the youngsters all receive presents from Santa Claus.

The nonprofit organization helps young people at risk, says staff member Alex Lopez, a senior program director who once belonged to a street gang and served five years in prison.

I made a mistake, he says, but I use that as a tool to reach out to the young people and let them know that Ive been there, done that.

Lopez joined the Corps in 1991. He was later hired to a staff job and became a supervisor.

Whatever theyre going through, he says of the young recruits, I use my experience to lead them in the right direction.

The program combines job training and education. I dropped out of high school, recalls staff member Denise Haynes, who grew up in the Watts neighborhood. I made some bad choices in my life, but I didnt know you can turn all those things around. After joining the Corps in 1997, she completed a bachelor's degree in psychology.

The LA Conservation Corps was founded in 1986 by Mickey Kantor, a Los Angeles lawyer who would later serve as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. Modeled on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, it is one of many groups that offer job training and a second chance to 26,000 young people around the United States.

There are many kinds of youth corps, says Jimmie Cho, LA Conservation Corps board chairman. Some focus on the city, and others on rural regions. Cho says its really all about service and working to invest in other people.

Corps members in Los Angeles say the work is hard but rewarding, and the holidays are a time to celebrate their accomplishments with co-workers and family.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is in South Africa on his first foreign trip as head of state, visiting a country where he sought refuge after being fired as deputy president early last month.



Mnangagwa traveled to South Africa on Thursday to persuade investors that economically struggling Zimbabwe is an attractive business prospect after the Nov. 21 resignation of former leader Robert Mugabe, whose 37-year rule ended after a military takeover.



The African News Agency says Mnangagwa met South African President Jacob Zuma and remarked that he was happy to be back in the country.



Mnangagwa fled to South Africa after Mugabe dismissed him during factional fighting in Zimbabwe's ruling party. The firing prompted a backlash against Mugabe and Mnangagwa returned to Zimbabwe, where he was sworn in as president.
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa is urging Zimbabweans in South Africa to come back home to help him rebuild the countrys ailing economy.

Zimbabweans in South Africa flocked to the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria to listen to the president speak to them for the first time since his inauguration last month. Mnangagwa pleaded with the crowd , which included business owners, civil society, traditional leaders and ordinary Zimbabweans to invest in their motherland.



"May I say, I am hopeful. My team is hopeful," Mnangagwa said. "There is no business as usual. Things have changed. Its a new era. If it is left turn, it is left turn. If it is right turn, it is right turn."



Mnangagwa said his government is in the process of revising some laws that had scared off investors, such as the indigenization program, which required that all businesses be majority owned by Zimbabweans. He told the crowd that there are huge investment opportunities in areas such as mining, agriculture, rail infrastructure, road networks and service industries.

Zimbabwean business woman Dorriane Sithole, chief executive officer of House of Havilah, a fashion and design company, was upbeat after listening to Mnangagwas speech.



"So excited that Zimbabwe is finally open for business," Sithole said. "It was such a beautiful meeting here at the Zimbabwean embassy. I cant wait for all of us here, Zimbabweans and everybody from the SADC region to go in there and do lots of business so, Im so, so excited."



Marshall Sankara, executive chairman of the Zimbabwe Business Forum in South Africa, says his organization will double its investment drive to attract more than $100 million in investment a year for Zimbabwe.



"We really appreciate the president [and] his move to invite diasporans to invest back home," Sankara said. "We have come here to show solidarity with his initiative and we are saying Zimbabwe shall include all of us also in the foreign land in terms of the business."



The Zimbabwe embassy in South Africa organized the event during Mnangagwa's first official trip abroad as president. He'll also meet with South African President Jacob Zuma.
Rome mayor requests report into police practice of video apologies.

Rome's mayor Virginia Raggi has called for a report into the practice of individuals who insult members of the capital's vigili urbani local police being required to film their apology, which is then posted online, as revealed by Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica. The mayor said the practice predated her administration.

Normally in Italy those who are reported by local police for contempt must pay a fine  usually between 200 and 250  and write a letter of apology, thus cancelling the crime.

In Rome, however, those in contempt of vigili urbani must appear in a video, reading from a predefined script in which offenders proffer their "sincere apologies" and "deep regret" for their crime before expressing their "appreciation" of the work done by the local police.

Offenders are obliged to appear in a video, lasting at least 30 seconds, in which their face is visible. The video must then be published "on a video sharing platform, without access restrictions and with widespread viewership such as YouTube, Megavideo, My Space, Google Video."

The practice has generated criticism in the media and been described as public humiliation.
TELECOM INDUSTRY

AT&T plans bonuses for upward of 200,000

AT&T said Wednesday that it plans to invest an additional $1 billion into its U.S. networks in 2018 and give hundreds of thousands of employees a onetime bonus following Congresss passage of the Republican tax bill.

The additional funding is expected to support AT&Ts expanding high-speed Internet networks, as well as the next generation of wireless data, known as 5G, the telecom company said.

Congress, working closely with the President, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world, Randall Stephenson, AT&Ts chief executive, said in a statement.

As many as 200,000 workers will receive a bonus of $1,000 under the plan, AT&T said.

AT&T spent about $23 billion building out infrastructure in 2016, and estimates this summer suggested it was on track to spend $22 billion in 2017.

The announcement came as House and Senate Republicans approved a massive tax bill that slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Brian Fung

HOUSING

Existing-home sales rose in November

Americans purchased homes at the fastest pace in nearly 11 years, as sales climbed 5.6 percent in November.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that sales of existing homes rose last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.81 million units. Home sales were last this strong in December 2006, when properties sold at annual pace of 6.42 million.

Last months surge in home sales appears to have further squeezed would-be buyers who face a declining supply of homes on the market. The limited inventory has caused home values to rise faster than wages. The median home sales price increased 5.8 percent from a year ago to $248,000 in November.

Associated Press

SPACE INDUSTRY

SpaceX reveals new Falcon Heavy rocket

SpaceX unveiled its new Falcon Heavy rocket Wednesday, a month before its first launch.

Photos posted by SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk show the new rocket inside its Florida hangar. Missing is the cargo for the January test flight. Musk has said the Falcon Heavy will launch his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster into space.

The company is aiming to test-fire the rockets 27 engines at the pad by the end of the month. The launch is planned for a few weeks after the test.

Falcon Heavy is essentially the companys Falcon 9 times three. It features three Falcon 9 first-stage boosters joined with a second-stage on the middle one. It also has three times more engines.

The Falcon 9 is now used to hoist satellites and supplies to the International Space Station. The Heavy is intended for super-big satellites, as well as cargo destined for points far beyond, like Mars.

Associated Press

Also in Business

A subsidiary of European steel giant ArcelorMittal has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit over allegations that its western Pennsylvania coke plant had violated emissions rules over soot and other pollutants almost daily, according to a proposed agreement filed Wednesday in Pittsburgh's federal court. The environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment sued in 2015, saying the plant in Monessen had committed a variety of environmental violations since reopening in 2014 after more than four years of being idle. ArcelorMittal also agreed to implement air pollution controls that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated would cost $2 million.

A new drug developed by Merck and Pfizer won U.S. approval on Wednesday to treat type II diabetes, the Food and Drug Administration said. The oral drug, ertugliflozin, will be sold under the brand name Steglatro and compete with AstraZeneca's Farxiga, Johnson & Johnson's Invokana and Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim's Jardiance. All four drugs act as SGLT2 inhibitors, which work by causing patients to expel excess glucose through urine.

From news reports

Coming today

8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims.

8:30 a.m.: Commerce Department releases third-quarter gross domestic product.

10 a.m.: Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates.
Republicans in Congress celebrated the passage of the biggest rewrite of the U.S. tax code in decades Wednesday, with President Trump calling it a Christmas gift for hard-working Americans. Workers will see the first glimpse of a tax cut in February at the earliest, but it wont be until 2019  when people file their taxes for next year  that most will know whether they will pay more or less to the federal government.

In the meantime, tax attorneys, accountants and corporate payroll departments are scrambling to adjust to changes that wont be official until Trump signs the bill in January.

Homeowners are already peppering local officials with questions about whether they can  and should  prepay their 2018 property taxes in the less than a dozen days left in 2017, before new limits on such deductions take effect. Others are asking their accountants whether there are expenses  such as moving costs  that they should pay now before they are no longer eligible for preferential tax treatment.

Much of the confusion is the result of how quickly Republican lawmakers were able to pass the legislation.

[GOP tax bill passes Congress as Trump prepares to sign it into law.]

View Graphic Will your taxes go up or down in 2018 under the new tax bill?

I have been a tax attorney over 40 years. I have seen plenty of tax bills. This is unprecedented, said Robert Willens, a New York-based tax consultant.

Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, was just one year out of law school in 1986 when Congress last passed a significant revision of the tax code. He, and hundreds of other tax attorneys, spent years watching that process unfold, Rosenthal recalled.

This time, there hasnt been the deliberate and slow unfolding [of the legislation] like there was in 86, he said. The whole process has been so opaque and so rushed that few people understand what has been going on.

The new tax legislation, which delivers deep and permanent tax cuts to corporations and temporary relief to individuals, was hammered out by Republicans in a matter of months, delivering Trump his first major legislative victory on an issue many expected would not be resolved until 2018, if at all.

[How Republicans pulled off the biggest tax overhaul in 30 years.]

It is a double-edged sword for some business owners. Griff Paper and Film, a 100-person distributor in Philadelphia, plans to take advantage of the favorable tax treatment the law provides for pass-through corporations and use the savings to buy new equipment, hire more employees, and train the companys interns to become long-term workers.

But the slow rollout is proving problematic. The Internal Revenue Service has yet to issue guidance on how the company should handle its payroll, for instance.

View Graphic 10 key takeaways from the Republican tax bill

They screwed it up. It should have come out earlier, said Chief Financial Officer Mike Trapp.

With little more than a week left in 2017, some individuals are racing to decide whether to take advantage of the changes before the IRS has even finalized the details. The new tax legislation, for instance, would cap deductions for state, local and property taxes at $10,000, prompting a Montgomery County lawmaker to urge the county to help residents prepay their property taxes before the end of the year.

[The final GOP tax bill is complete. Heres what is in it.]

Tax attorneys, meanwhile, said they have heard from clients who plan to accelerate charitable contributions this year because they might not need the deduction next year to lower their tax bill. Others are pondering whether to delay receiving income until 2018, when it could potentially be taxed at a lower rate.

For many people, the law renders obsolete the calculations companies use to withhold taxes from their paychecks, potentially leading some workers to not set aside enough for federal taxes and face a penalty. The American Payroll Association is warning of a potential disaster as companies wait to update their computer systems to reflect the changes.

ADP, one of the largest providers of payroll services, says it built its system to quickly reflect changes in the tax rate. But this tax overhaul is more complicated, said Pete Isberg, ADPs vice president of government relations. Millions of workers have filed W-4 tax forms telling their employers how much in federal taxes they need to withhold. But that form will not be applicable under the new law, Isberg said.

Therefore, every W-4 on file, all 164 million of them, wont be valid starting next month, he said. We believe every working person is going to need a new W-4.

The IRS may have to design an entirely new W-4 form, which could take months, Isberg said. To complicate matters further, some states have separate W-4 forms that may also have to be changed, he said. We need guidance as soon as possible, he said.

ADP has asked the IRS whether it can automatically convert old W-4 forms into new documents without requiring employees to fill out anything, but the company has not received a response. Were looking at ways that we can simplify this for employers, he said.

A team of dozens of H&R Block executives closely monitored the legislations progress, and the company now expects to spend the next year updating its software to reflect the new law in time for the 2018 tax season, said Mark Ciaramitaro, the companys vice president of tax strategy. The company has already begun developing a training program for its front-line advisers.

We probably know enough to give people advice, and then if we find out the IRS is interpreting something differently, we can update that training and alert customers to the changes, he said.

On Monday, PenSoft, a provider of payroll services to small- and medium-size companies, delivered its 2018 software to thousands of customers  just in time for it to become out-of-date.

There is a misperception that as soon as that bill is enacted, I hit an easy button and the software is updated, said Stephanie Salavejus, chief operating officer of the Virginia-based company. But I have to get those formulas from the IRS. I am sort of in a holding pattern.

The chaos is likely to take months  and perhaps longer  to sort out as the IRS begins writing the rules governing the laws implementation. The agency has already said it doesnt expect the tax tables helping employers decide how much in federal taxes should be withheld from workers paychecks to be ready until mid-January, allowing them to be implemented in February.

The IRS will be working closely with the nations payroll and tax professional community during this process, the agency said in a statement.

But some tax experts are also concerned about the IRSs ability to quickly address the mounting concerns. The agency has been attacked by Republicans for years and has seen its budget cut repeatedly, leading some to question whether it will be up to the task. When the IRSs former commissioner, John Koskinen, stepped down last month, he blamed Congress for underfunding the agency.

I dont know how the IRS is going to enforce this stuff. They have to write regulations, give guidance to taxpayers. They are probably going to feel the brunt of this more than anyone, said Willens, the tax attorney.

Any delay could sow doubts among taxpayers, many of whom, polls show, are already suspicious of the legislations benefits.

Some employees are going to be anticipating that in their first paycheck in January, they are going to see this big tax cut, and that is not going to happen, said PenSofts Salavejus. There is still a lot of work to be done.


Glenn Thrush, seen sitting for a radio interview in July 2016, has been handed a somewhat different punishment than other prominent men accused of harassment recently. Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

The New York Times said it will suspend, rather than fire, political reporter Glenn Thrush, who was accused of harassing women when he worked for another publication.

Following a lengthy internal investigation, the newspaper said Thursday that Thrush would be given a two-month suspension and then stripped of his prestigious beat covering the White House. He will be reassigned once his suspension is up next month, Executive Editor Dean Baquet said in a statement.

Thrush, 50, was among the many prominent men who have been accused of harassing behavior over the past three months, a wave touched off by the Times itself with its revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Thrushs punishment is highly unusual in that he will not lose his job; most of the men who have been accused since October have been fired. The remedy in his case suggests that employers  or perhaps just the Times  are attempting to grapple with a variety of factors in dealing with those who are accused of workplace misconduct.

Thrush's professional fate was put in jeopardy last month by allegations published by the website Vox. The report, written by a former Politico editor, said Thrush had made unwanted overtures toward four women  including the author  when he worked at Politico, typically after social events involving alcohol. Thrush has since acknowledged a problem with alcohol abuse.

Baquet declined to explain the Timess reasoning for Thrushs suspension or why he is being removed from covering the White House, where he was among the most prominent beat reporters. But his continued presence on the beat could have raised questions about his impartiality, given that both he and President Trump have been accused of sexual harassment.

While we believe that Glenn has acted offensively, we have decided that he does not deserve to be fired, Baquet said in a statement. He said Thrush will receive training designed to improve his workplace conduct, and that Thrush is undergoing counseling and substance abuse rehabilitation on his own.

Baquet added: We understand that our colleagues and the public at large are grappling with what constitutes sexually offensive behavior in the workplace and what consequences are appropriate. It is an important debate with far-reaching consequences that we helped spark with our journalism and that weve been reflecting on internally as well. Each case has to be evaluated based on individual circumstances. We believe this is an appropriate response to Glenns situation.

Baquet and Thrush didnt return requests for comment.

Thrushs profile rose when he was hired by the Times in January just as Trump took office. His rotund face, goatee and habit of wearing a hat were parodied by Bobby Moynihan on Saturday Night Live in sketches featuring Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer, the former press secretary.

Before the allegations against Thrush arose, he had signed a contract to write a book about Trump with his Times colleague Maggie Haberman. The project was put on hold pending the outcome of the Times investigation.

Thrush also was a contributor to MSNBC, which had no comment on his status on Wednesday. The Times hasnt determined what Thrush will cover once he returns early next year.

In addition to its groundbreaking coverage of Weinstein, the Times broke several stories about Trumps alleged groping of women during the presidential campaign last year. It also revealed in April that Fox News host Bill OReilly and Fox News had settled five harassment claims against him by female colleagues since 2002.

An attorney at the Times, Charlotte Behrendt, led an investigation of Thrush over the past several weeks in which more than 30 current and former colleagues at the newspaper and Politico were interviewed.
Some hotel guests say that theyve been given incentives to opt out of housekeeping this year, but industry insiders say its unlikely that the service will become an extra fee in 2018. (iStock)

Columnist

When it comes to fees and surcharges, hotel guests are wondering: Whats next?

Mandatory resort fees mushroomed last year, even as hotels added new charges for all kinds of things, including cancellations and late checkouts. With pressure to squeeze even more profit from customers, you dont have to be an industry insider to see where this is going.

Rate growth has not kept pace by traditional standards, explains Bob Habeeb, chief executive of First Hospitality Group, a firm specializing in hotel management, acquisition and development. Traditional add-on costs that once made healthy contributions to the bottom line, like telephone revenue and in-room movies, have all but evaporated.

No one knows what 2018 will bring, of course, but that isnt stopping anyone from making predictions. Regardless of what happens, the takeaway is clear: Be on the lookout for surprises.

Some hotel guests say that they've seen incentives to opt out of housekeeping, for example. During a stay in Newport, R.I., says Nancy Jerdan, a retired office manager who lives in Springfield, Va., the Newport Marriott offered her up to 5,000 loyalty points to skip the cleaning. Jerdan accepted, but had misgivings.

I have mixed feelings about the no maid service policy, she says. Are they trying to put people out of jobs in order to save money?

Others see further-reaching motives. If enough people skip housecleaning and take the points, they fear that hotels might try to flip the equation. Rather than offering points for forgoing maid service, they argue, hotels could charge extra for providing it. Some hotels already charge extra for housekeeping, but those fees usually arent optional.

Industry insiders doubt that housekeeping could become an extra fee in 2018. Not only is there an unwritten agreement that housekeeping is part of a room rental, but hotels have noted with dismay the negative reaction to airlines separating checked luggage, which was also a traditional part of the ticket, from base fares.

A clean and tidy room throughout the stay is a basic expectation when paying for a hotel room and fundamental to the overall guest experience, says customer-service consultant Helen Horsham-Bertels, who once oversaw the consumer-affairs department at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Charging for the service would not be perceived well.

Another area of concern: mandatory resort fees. In 2017, these surcharges rose dramatically, with the average resort fee climbing to almost $21, up 9 percent from December 2016. While these charges arent new, experts say that more hotels probably will add them in 2018, including many that dont offer traditional resort amenities such as pools, exercise facilities or concierge service.

For some hotel guests, these fees have already gone too far. David Bond, a retired deepwater-drilling-team manager who lives in Phuket, Thailand, says resort fees are among the worst in the travel industry. The reason? When you book online, especially through a third-party site, the fees dont have to be included in the initial price quote.

Bond thinks that the United States should adopt a tough consumer law similar to that of Australia, which makes it illegal to advertise or charge a rate that includes a mandatory fee unless its reflected in the total cost.

Habeeb of First Hospitality Group says that it is far more likely that hotels will introduce new, customer-friendly fees in 2018, and they will be for optional items that guests want, as opposed to mandatory charges  like resort fees  for things that guests do not necessarily want. (The only way resort fees will be eliminated is if the government or courts get involved. As of now, that appears to be improbable.)

Take WiFi, for instance. Guests are growing to expect some level of service at no cost, Habeeb says. But in todays download-heavy environment, hotels might offer upgrades for faster and more robust connections. Also on the menu for next year: more intelligent  and optional  resort-fee bundles that allow guests to choose a package of services.

Other hospitality veterans say they think that hotels will experiment with a carrot-and-stick approach to fees. For example: Book direct with the hotel and it will waive its cancellation penalty, offer an early check-in or late checkout, or upgrade your room. Book through a third party, and the property could ratchet up the penalties. Hotels can offer the consumer these perks because they are saving 15 to 20 percent in commission, says Steve Patterson, president of Philadelphia Reservations & UrHomeInPhilly, a corporate-housing company.

Theres no question that some of the best and most creative minds in the hotel business are thinking about what to charge for next. But will they follow a more consumer-friendly path by adding services for which guests will want to pay, or will they impose more penalties? Either way, visitors will have to pay close attention to their hotel bills in 2018.
Street drummer Malik Stewart does some fancy drumstick moves as he performs near the Friendship Archway on a chilly weekend night. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

On a Friday night near the Gallery Place Metro station in downtown D.C., Malik Stewart plays his drums. A block away, Jinji Martine sings an amplified mix of pop hits and Christmas favorites.

Both are part of a vibrant busking culture, which for years has been part and parcel of downtown life in the nations capital.

But as the number of people living there has increased, so have complaints about performers, who fear that the citys push for a living downtown  drawing residents to the commercial core  will drive them out.

Two dozen residents and business owners testified last week at a D.C. Council roundtable to demand that the city enforce noise regulations or come up with more effective legislation.

Its become unbearable, said Ranya Elias, a 40-year-old government analyst who lives in the Residences at Gallery Place, an 11-story complex at Seventh and H Streets NW above the Metro stop. I shouldnt have to worry about hearing loss or not being able to enjoy my home in quiet.

Complaints about buskers are not new, but massive speakers and gasoline-powered generators mean street performers have gotten louder in recent years, Elias and her neighbors said.

Elias, who lives on the buildings fourth floor, said she sometimes sleeps with her air conditioning blasting to mute the noise and a heated blanket to compensate for the cold. Other residents have tried insulating their windows or getting sound machines.

It has all been to no avail, they said.

We knew this wasnt a purely residential area  we knew it would be busy  but this wasnt the bargain we made, said Robert Wuertz, vice president of the buildings condo board.

[D.C. home prices tripled in 15 years]

In part because of encouragement from developers and city officials, the number of people living downtown increased 16 percent from 2011 to 2016, from 8,449 to 9,831, according to the downtown D.C. Business Improvement District.

Downtown has evolved in the last 20 years, said D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2). We certainly recognize this is a problem, and one we havent had before.

The maximum noise level for commercial zones is 65 decibels during the day and 60 at night, but there is no limit for the unamplified voice, said D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs spokesman Jason Washington.

Residents, who have downloaded decibel-measuring apps on their phones, say they complain about noise readings above 100 but get no response from officials, including DCRA staff and police.

It seems like a lot of people have responsibility, which leaves no one with any real responsibility, said Elias, who has rented her apartment for six years.

Because street musicians are protected by the First Amendment, District agencies have little recourse for enforcement during the day, the DCRA and D.C. police said in a statement.

Additionally, the decibel-level reading must be taken from the nearest residential zone, and street performers are generally not performing in residential zones, the statement said. The condo where Elias and her neighbors live is in the citys downtown zone.

A D.C. police spokesman said noise complaints are part of a broader category of disorderly incidents, and he couldnt say how many were received.

Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who convened the roundtable, said the situation seems unfair to downtown residents. She is not considering new legislation but said existing noise ordinances should be enforced.

She pointed out that there was a swift online backlash when she called the hearing, and people suggested that she sided with the Gallery Place residents over the buskers. Bonds, who is African American, said some of the criticism was racially tinged, suggesting that she was favoring white gentrifiers over black street musicians.

Many of the District's longtime residents can't afford downtown apartments. A one-bedroom home in the Residences at Gallery Place is listed for $360,000. Financial disparity by race is growing in D.C., where the median annual income for white families is $120,000 and for black families is $41,000, according to a recent Georgetown University report.

I understand the concern, but we cannot pit those who can afford to live in the community against those who come into the community to make money, Bonds said.

Stewart, 25, is a D.C. native whose drumming helped him stay out of trouble when he was growing up. He said he is not opposed to newcomers but does not want them to push out the local culture.

Its disrespectful to try to erase what was already here, Stewart said. They minimize what were doing  not all, but some newcomers reduce our artistic value by calling us noise makers.

Stewart, who was inspired by D.C.'s native go-go music, has turned into a kind of local celebrity. As he drummed on a recent day  hands not slowed by the below-freezing temperatures  he twirled his sticks in the air, fist-bumped onlookers and motioned for a friend to join in.

[Airbnb becomes flash point in the Districts hot debate over gentrification]

Gentrification and the increased number of complaints that came with it led him to stop performing at 14th and U Streets NW, he said. As the number of complaints increased at Gallery Place, he has been doing fewer street performances and traveling more for paid performances.

I dont want to be pushed out of my own city, Stewart said.

Martine, 19, was homeless when she came from New York to D.C. last year and is trying to earn enough money to rent an apartment. She said she understands residents concerns about noise but does not have a choice: Singing is how she makes enough money to stay off the street.

She said she receives complaints almost every day.

I tell them they need to make a living, and this is how I make mine, said Martine, who hopes to enroll in community college in January.

Around 6 p.m. last Friday, her speaker died. But she kept singing, trying to catch the crowd heading into the Capital One Arena for the Wizards game at 7 p.m.

Mostly, the people passing by looked at their smartphones.

On her best day, Martine said, she made $80 per hour. The six hours she spent at Gallery Place on Friday were just okay, she said, looking at the change, dollars bills and a Wizards pamphlet that someone had dropped in her yellow collection bin.

I know the sound can be loud, but we want to be a part of a solution, said Stewart, who added that many street performers were not aware of the D.C. Council meeting and should be invited to future discussions.

David Mitchell, an English professor at George Washington University, said that if something does not change soon, he will consider moving from the Residences at Gallery Place. He said the music is so loud his daughter, who is blind, cannot use her voice-over software and cannot do her schoolwork in the apartment.

No one has control of their private living space, Mitchell said.
Bowie State University President Aminta Breaux, far left, and University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh, far right, stand with the parents of 2nd Lt. Richard W. Collins III, who was fatally stabbed in May. His parents were awarded his honorary degree from the University of Maryland this week. (Emily Chastain Photography )

The parents of a college student who was killed on the University of Maryland campus accepted an honorary degree on his behalf this week at the schools winter commencement.

On Tuesday, Richard and Dawn Collins received a posthumous bachelor of humane letters degree for their son, Richard Collins III, a Bowie State University student who was fatally stabbed in an incident that resulted in a hate-crime charge.

This is a fitting memorial to a young man whose life and death have touched our community so deeply, U-Md. president Wallace Loh said.

[A killing woke a lot of people up at U-Md. What will happen now?]

Collins  a 23-year-old, newly commissioned second lieutenant in the U.S. Army  was slain in May, shortly before his own graduation ceremony at Bowie State. He was stabbed at a College Park bus stop, an attack authorities have called "totally unprovoked."



Richard Collins III, shown at his ROTC Commissioning ceremony at Bowie State University. (Handout/Reuters)

Charged with murder in the stabbing death is Sean Urbanski, who was a U-Md. student at the time. A grand jury handed up a hate-crime charge in the case in October. Urbanski is white; Collins was black.

Collins and two friends were at the bus stop on May 20 when Urbanski allegedly approached them about 3 a.m., police said. Urbanski allegedly told Collins, Step left, step left if you know whats best for you, according to police charging papers. Collins refused to move, police said. Thats when Urbanski pulled out a knife and stabbed Collins, police said.

Lt. Collins was just days away from graduation at Bowie State University, our neighboring and sister institution in the University System of Maryland, Loh said.

Both of our campuses mourn the loss of a promising life that ended far too early.

Collins, Loh said, was known to be devoted to his family, his faith and his country.

The pain of this loss does not abate, he said.

Bowie States president, Aminta Breaux, and its former president, Mickey Burnim, attended the ceremony.

Breaux told the crowd that those who knew Collins remember him as an exceptional young man. His professor of military science described Collins as quiet but outgoing, she said  a person of good, strong character.

To the Collins family, thank you for sharing your remarkable son with us, Breaux said. He has left an indelible mark at Bowie State University and with those he met along lifes journey.
The Montgomery County Council has opted not to move forward on retroactive legislation that would have allowed residents to prepay their 2018 property taxes by the end of 2017. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

Change of plans: The Montgomery County Council wont be rushing to the rescue of homeowners shaken up by the GOP tax plan approved by Congress this week.

As the tax overhaul inched closer to passage Tuesday, council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda) urged the county to help residents prepay their 2018 property taxes by the end of this year, an option that could allow them to deduct those taxes in full, before a new cap takes effect.

But in less than 48 hours, that plan caved in under the weight of a rushed timeline and administrative hassles, as well as the still-murky question of whether prepayment as a way of avoiding the cap is possible at all.

Weve been doing our best to evaluate the proposal and the implications, and generally speaking, we are finding that theres so much uncertainty, said Hans Riemer (D-At Large), the councils president.

There was still hope for other D.C.-area residents worried about a big tax hit. Both in the District and Fairfax County  the most populous jurisdiction in the Washington region  officials said residents would be able to prepay, as long as they act quickly.

For Montgomery residents, however, no such luck. Both in an interview and in a memo sent to County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), Riemer outlined the hiccups behind Berliners prepayment proposal, which called on the council to retroactively pass legislation in January that would allow residents to prepay 2018 property taxes by the end of 2017.

To name a few problems: The countys Finance Department would have had to create a manual system for handling the payments almost overnight, most likely leading to errors and confusion. Residents would have to be alerted to the option and given instructions about how to prepay over the holidays.

And with the council out of session until mid-January, lawmakers would have to decide on a proposal without public hearings or analyses of overall costs. (State law does allow Maryland counties to enact prepayment legislation, according to county officials.)

Officials said it is still unclear whether homeowners would be able to prepay and get deductions on property taxes in jurisdictions that havent yet sent out tax bills.

Brian Wynne, an accountant in Bethesda, said he had been advising clients that if a tax has not yet been assessed, . . . by prepaying they may take your money, but it wont create a deduction.

The Republican tax overhaul caps deductions for state, local and property taxes at $10,000, affecting exactly the type of wealthy homeowners who make up a disproportionate share of residents of the District and its suburbs. Those homeowners would have needed significant cash on hand to pay their property taxes in the next 10 days. Multiple council members, including Berliner, said they could not determine how many Montgomery residents would have taken advantage of a prepayment option.

On Wednesday, District officials said residents may prepay their property taxes. Those payments can be paid electronically before midnight on Dec. 31, and D.C. branches of Wells Fargo will also accept checks or credit cards by the close of business Dec. 30, according to an advisory issued by the city.

Homeowners were warned not to mail payments, since they have to be received and recorded by the end of the year.

Going forward, we plan to use every tool in our toolbox to protect Washingtonians from the negative impacts of this devastating legislation, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in the statement.

Fairfax County has allowed residents to prepay their property taxes for at least 10 years, said Scott Sizemore, director of the county tax departments revenue division.

About 1,400 people a year usually opt to do so. But there was an increase in interest as it became more likely this month that Congress would pass a tax reform package, Sizemore said.

Since Dec. 11, he said, 143 homeowners have requested applications to prepay their property taxes, which can be done in monthly installments or several times a year.

This morning, we had about 20 requests, Sizemore said Thursday.

The county will process the applications through Dec. 31, but Sizemore said he cant guarantee that anyone paying with a check after Tuesday will have their accounts credited in time. If you want to do this, you can come in and pay, or you can do a wire or ACH transfer through bank accounts, he said.

In Montgomery, Riemer and council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large) said they would not have supported a retroactive bill presented to the council.

We were going to have to tell everybody, Youre going to have to talk to your tax adviser,  Leventhal said. It was problematic from the get-go.

Lawmakers shared conflicting stories about how many Montgomery residents contacted them after news of Berliner's plan spread. Leventhal said he had "been in touch with a lot of constituents about this," while Riemer said he got only a few emails.

Berliner said the proposal left too many questions unanswered in too short a time frame, but added that he did not regret posing the option.

"When I first proposed this, I didn't imagine there was going to be this level of complications, but sometimes that's what happens," he said.

Riemer said the council would have to look at how other facets of the Republican tax law will affect the county in the new year.

But we ought to do that carefully and thoroughly, he said. Not before we have a chance to read the bill.

Antonio Olivo contributed to this report.
Harvard students lay out in their bathing suits on the Quad after a snowstorm in 2015. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Columnist

It was no coincidence  on this frigid, winter night  that I maneuvered my sons toward the casket.

What is this? Son No. 1 asked.

Read and learn, I told them, in my best Ghost of Winter Past voice.

The weather shifted from light snow to hail and then to rain, one child read. Upon Washingtons return it was suggested that he change out of his wet riding clothes before dinner.

Ha!

Wet clothes, cold, refusing to listen, I said, before pointing to the model of George Washingtons coffin. Dead.

Mommmmm, they both moaned before leaving the exhibit.

Yes, the great general, war hero and father of our nation died an untimely death after not bundling up enough, and staying in his wet clothes.

[This womans name is on the Declaration of Independence. Why dont we know her story?]

Our candlelight tour of Mount Vernon on a cold, November night was my calculated, opening salvo to this years annual Winter Wear Wars.

We are in our 10th year of the ongoing battle. Ive tried it all  puffers and neoprene, hipster vests and roomy parkas, taking them with me to pick coats out themselves, splurging on something that costs more than anything Ive bought for myself  to no avail.

Why do kids hate winter coats?

I know Im not alone. I see the kids who have declared total victory over their parents, showing up at school in the dead of winter not only coatless but in shorts and tall socks (one point for Mom).

At the very least, we always give generously at coat drives.

I am not alone. This is the time of year when the parental cry of desperation echoes across all social media platforms:

"Heavily snowing and my child still refuses to wear a jacket," Natalie Scites announced on Facebook during a storm in West Virginia this month.

Its not just a thing with American kids, either.

Why does this child of mine REFUSE to wear a bloody coat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lamented Vanessa Breen, from the damp, chill corners of Doncaster, England.

Maybe it has something to do with their heroes.

"My mom bought my sister a new Columbia ski coat and my sister refuses to wear it because Ariana Grande wouldn't wear a jacket like that," an indignant older sister named Corrine Day wrote on Twitter.

Come on, Ariana, cant you wear a nice peacoat on stage next time?

And then there are superheroes. Dudes. The tights? Always the tights?

My son refuses to wear a coat because Green Lantern doesnt wear one. Should make for a fun winter, tweeted Donna Freydkin, back when her son was a preschooler.

Though Green Lantern was not spotted in Eddie Bauer, I checked in with Freydkin to see whether common sense had prevailed. Freydkins son, now 6, is yielding to the coat, she reported. But he wont do a hat or gloves until his fingers freeze.

Some experts say there may be more to this than the stubbornness of childhood. Winter coats can be like iron maidens for kids with sensory issues. Point taken. Weve all felt overbundled, and that can feel horrific to a child already struggling with the outside worlds control of their little bodies.

But that doesnt explain all of them.

[Amid so much adult ugliness, these 9-year-olds deliver a lesson in decency]

My 11-year-old says its a dilemma because his coat is only comfortable with a T-shirt underneath it, but then hes cold in class, and when he wears a hoodie, hes too bundled up. So I bought him a roomier coat.

But this pattern looks sort of girlish, he lamented when he put on the all-black jacket with a diamond quilting pattern. Huh?

I knew it was all about the swag.

Turns out another U.S. president, William Henry Harrison, also may have given in to fashion trends that led to his death.

The ninth president of the United States was the oldest elected to office, at 68. And he was probably trying to prove he was a fashionable, vigorous and vital man when he gave his epic, two-hour inaugural address in the rain and snow of March 4, 1841, without a proper coat or a hat.

He got sick. Doctors said it was pneumonia, and he died exactly one month after taking office.

Some historians have theorized that Harrison was actually poisoned by the sewage cesspool (the real swamp) near the White House.

Actually, the New England Journal of Medicine verified  back in 1968  everything every stubborn 6-year-old has yelled at his mother during the coat wars.

Thus, this study demonstrated no effect of exposure to cold on host resistance to rhinovirus infection and illness that could account for the commonly held belief that exposure to cold influences or causes common colds, the study said.

My 13-year-old backed this up.

Did you finish reading that thing about George Washington? he asked. They bled him. They kept taking his blood. Thats what killed him.

Can you hold my jacket? he said, before following his brother into the cold, night air.

Twitter: @petulad
A federal appeals court on Thursday declined to delay a requirement that the U.S. military begin enlisting qualified transgender men and women for the first time starting Jan. 1.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit refused to grant the Trump administrations request to temporarily block an earlier order that the military accept transgender recruits, potentially propelling the issue to the Supreme Court in the coming days.

[Pentagon prepares to accept transgender recruits beginning in January]

The ruling was another legal blow for the president, who surprised military leaders when he announced in July in a series of tweets that the U.S. government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.

His order reversed an Obama-era policy allowing transgender people to serve openly and receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery. That order was promptly challenged in federal court by active-duty transgender service members who say it violates their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection.

The one-page order from the 4th Circuit upholds a preliminary injunction issued by a lower court judge in Baltimore, one of three judges to rule against the administrations policy. The government has emergency appeals pending in the two other cases from D.C. and Seattle, but the injunction from Baltimore applies nationally.

To get around the 4th Circuit order from Judges Diana Gribbon Motz, Albert Diaz and Pamela A. Harris, the government would need to prevail at the Supreme Court.

Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said Thursday, We disagree with the courts ruling and are currently evaluating the next steps.

The Trump administrations plan that was set to take effect in March would have blocked military recruitment of transgender people, barred military funding for sex-reassignment surgery and possibly forced the dismissal of current transgender service members.

Justice Department lawyers have said the lawsuits are premature because the policy is on hold pending a review by the Defense Department, and they say no decisions have been made about whether to discharge active-duty service members solely because they are transgender.

In asking the court to delay the Jan. 1 start date, government lawyers said the timetable imposed by the lower court would be too burdensome on the armed forces and require training for thousands of recruiters and personnel responsible for providing medical screenings.

Even as the Justice Department has appealed the series of unfavorable rulings, the Defense Department on Dec. 8 issued detailed policy guidance to military recruiters for how to enlist transgender men and women.

Attorneys and advocates for transgender service members said in court filings that the memo undercuts the administrations assertion that it is struggling to prepare.

In the D.C. case, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly initially issued a preliminary injunction in October finding that the challengers were likely to prevail in asserting that the presidents order violates equal-protection guarantees in the Constitution.

In her subsequent ruling this month declining to postpone the start date for accepting transgender recruits, Kollar-Kotelly said the government has had nearly a year and a half to prepare to enlist transgender men and women.

[Judge says Trump administration can't stop funding sex-reassignment surgeries for military members]

In the Maryland case, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis went further than Kollar-Kotelly by blocking the administrations ability to deny funding for gender reassignment surgery. In his ruling, Garbis wrote that transgender service members have demonstrated that they are already suffering harmful consequences.
Virginias Democratic senators will recommend two candidates to the White House for an open federal judgeship in Alexandria: State Court of Appeals Judge Rossie Alston Jr. and Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Giles.

The nominee chosen by President Trump will replace U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, 65, who retired this fall after two decades on the bench. A champion for diversity, Lee worked to help nonwhite law students find footholds at elite levels of the legal profession.

While presiding over a court with one of the busiest dockets in the country, Judge Lee tirelessly mentored youths in the community and fostered the careers of generations of lawyers from the minority Bar, wrote Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner. Consistent with these values, we believe both Ms. Giles and Judge Alston would continue Judge Lees legacy.

Giles is a longtime prosecutor in the Eastern District who has helped put members of the gang MS-13 behind bars for murder and sex trafficking, including in a 2005 case involving the death of a 17-year-old pregnant federal witness. Giles began her career as a clerk for Lee.

Alston previously served as a Circuit Court and Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court judge in Prince William County. He also worked at the National Labor Relations Board under President Ronald Reagan and at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, as well as in private practice.

Virginia Republicans tried unsuccessfully to elevate Alston to the state Supreme Court last year to thwart Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had appointed another candidate.

Like Lee, Alston and Giles are African American and active in a camp Lee helps lead that introduces at-risk boys to the legal system.

The two were among six candidates interviewed by the two senators after recommendations from a committee of lawyers. The others were corporate attorney George Doumar, Assistant U.S Attorney Jay Prabhu and U.S. Magistrate judges Lawrence Leonard and David Novak.

The next judge will sit in one of the busiest courtrooms in the country, where high-profile national security and public corruption cases are often tried.

Trump's judicial nominees have tended to be young and conservative. Nineteen of his 59 nominees for the federal judiciary have been confirmed, including six district court judges. But the collapse of three nominees in the past week has led to increased scrutiny of the White House's choices.

Senators can traditionally hold up a federal court nomination in their state by refusing to sign a "blue slip" of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has begun ignoring blue slips for appeals court nominees but has thus far indicated that he will respect them at the district court level.
A former Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia is accused of stealing money from a federally funded school nutrition program years ago.

Shaun Brown, 58, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Norfolk on charges of wire fraud and theft of government property. The scheme lasted at least nine months in 2012, according to the indictment, and involved more than $400,000 in fraudulent reimbursements.

According to the indictment, Brown worked in 2011 and 2012 for a nonprofit called JOBS Community Outreach Development Corp. that worked with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Summer Food Service Program to provide meals to low-income children during school breaks. Prosecutors say that Brown and others directed employees to fill out fake forms inflating the number of meals served and would then pocket the extra funds.

Brown, who owns an export firm, ran a largely self-financed campaign against now-Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R) last year for the 2nd Congressional District seat vacated by Scott Rigell (R) and lost by a 23-point margin. Democrat Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie in the district on his way to winning last month's gubernatorial election, and Democrats are expected to target the seat more aggressively next year. Brown told the Virginian-Pilot in July that she plans to run again; at least three other Democrats are competing in the primary.

Brown could not immediately be reached for comment. The Democratic Party of Virginia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A 23-year-old Maryland man has been arrested and charged in an armed carjacking and two armed robberies that occurred last week in Northeast and Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police.

Malik Lamont Hill of Temple Hills was arrested Wednesday, police said. He faces a charge of armed carjacking and two counts of armed robbery.

The first incident occurred Dec. 13 in the 100 block of Victor Street NE, near Fort Totten. Police said Hill and another man, who has not been arrested, pulled guns on two people who were in a vehicle.

They stole property, police said, and ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, then used it to escape. The holdup occurred about 7:40 p.m.

About 8:20 p.m. the same night, police said, two men armed with gun robbed a woman who was sitting in a car in the 500 block of Powhatan Place NW, in Brightwood, about two miles north of the carjacking on Victor Street.

On Saturday, police said, two men armed with guns robbed a person sitting in a car in the 4300 block of Harewood Road NE, near Fort Totten. That holdup occurred shortly before 11:30 p.m.
The first six people to face trial in Inauguration Day protests that turned destructive in the nations capital were acquitted of all charges, a victory not only for the defendants but also for advocates who argued the government overreached in its effort to prosecute more than 200 people arrested as they marched through the city.

Following a nearly four-week trial and two full days of deliberations, a D.C. Superior Court jury delivered not-guilty verdicts Thursday on multiple charges of rioting and destruction of property.

The defendants  including a nurse for cancer patients, a freelance photographer and a college student  joined throngs of protesters who took to the streets Jan. 20 to protest Donald Trumps election. Prosecutors said the six were among a group that cut a violent swath through 16 blocks of the city, smashing businesses windows, tossing newspaper boxes into the street and damaging a limousine. Authorities tallied the damage at more than $100,000.

As the jury foreman read the not-guilty verdicts, the defendants began to smile. One of them, Alexei Wood, a 37-year-old freelance photographer from San Antonio, covered his face, sat down and began sobbing.

Outside the courtroom, Wood and the other defendants hugged one another and their supporters. One, in tears, pulled out her iPad to FaceTime her family and friends.



From left, Alexei Wood, Brittne Lawson and Oliver Harris leave court after their not-guilty verdicts were announced Thursday in the District. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

Jennifer Armento, 38, a Philadelphia woman who was among the six, said the verdict shows the country that the jury was unwilling to do what the government wanted them to do, which was criminalize dissent.

Oliver Harris, 28, a Drexel University doctoral student who was charged, said the acquittal was the only just verdict. He called his arrest and trial repeatedly traumatizing.

Also acquitted were Michelle Macchio, 26, of Naples, Fla.; Christina Simmons, 20, of Cockeysville, Md.; and Brittne Lawson, 27, of Pittsburgh.

From the start, defense attorneys said their clients and most others in the group of about 500 were peacefully protesting, while only a handful peeled off and became violent. They criticized police for failing to identify those people and said officers unfairly herded a group of about 200 and charged them with rioting.

[Amid questions about the line between free speech and rioting, trial to begin in Inauguration Day protest]

During his closing argument last week, attorney Steven J. McCool, who represented one of the men on trial, appealed to jurors to protect the rights of free speech.

But prosecutors said the demonstration, planned by a group that calls itself DisruptJ20, was aimed at destruction, not freedom of expression. Authorities say the group used black bloc tactics  wearing dark clothing and hiding their faces with masks and goggles so it would be harder to identify them. Some came armed with hammers, crowbars and bricks.

Prosecutors told jurors there was no evidence the six people on trial were personally involved in the vandalism but argued that they chose to remain with the group, essentially providing cover for those who caused the damage.

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rizwan Qureshi told jurors the group tore up your city, putting people in danger.

He presented the jury with the analogy of a bank robbery, likening the defendants to a getaway driver while comparing those who smashed windows to the robber in the bank.

They are both just as guilty, Qureshi said. This was not a First Amendment activity. They conspired by joining in the group to do unlawful things on the streets of your city.

One 59-year-old juror said the panel tried to determine the mind-set of the defendants and whether they supported the riotous behavior or they just had strong convictions about what theyre protesting about.

They decided the evidence only demonstrated that these six individuals walked in a protest.

Another juror, a 37-year-old man, said jurors made up their minds to acquit three defendants fairly early in their deliberations, but there was additional discussion about Wood, Macchio and Harris.

The juror said the panel considered whether video showing Wood cheering while others were breaking windows was evidence of guilt. They also discussed whether Harris, who was seen casually walking through the crowd as the rioting unfolded, should be convicted. And they talked about text messages Macchio sent, telling a friend she had arrived with the group. But they ultimately decided none of those behaviors were enough to prove the governments case.

There was no evidence to support whether or not these six willingly participated in the riots or aided and abetted the rioters, said the juror, who like the other juror spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy.

In a statement after the verdict, the U.S. attorneys office said prosecutors continue to assert that a riot occurred on Inauguration Day and that the destruction impacted many who live and work in the District of Columbia, and created a danger for all who were nearby.

We appreciate the jurys close examination of the individual conduct and intent of each defendant during this trial and respect its verdict, the statement said. In the remaining pending cases, we look forward to the same rigorous review for each defendant.

[Inauguration protesters were playing a role in the violence and destruction, prosecutor says]

The case follows one of the largest mass arrests for vandalism in the city, and authorities spent months preparing for trial and mining for evidence. Authorities confiscated the cellphones of the defendants to examine text messages and videos. And prosecutors sought court orders for defendants' Internet records, including website visits and Facebook accounts, in hopes of securing additional evidence to support their theory the protesters planned to participate in a violent demonstration. The searches were challenged by attorneys and civil liberties groups as violating the rights of the users.

In court, jurors heard from about 40 witnesses, including employees and patrons of businesses who described their fear as protesters pounded on or smashed windows. The jury also spent hours watching video of clashes between demonstrators and police.

One of the more controversial videos viewed by the jury was given to police from Project Veritas, an organization that uses secret recordings to target the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. A Veritas member secretly recorded a Jan. 8 DisruptJ20 planning meeting in the basement of a District church.

That video showed organizers advising that people wear comfortable shoes, avoid carrying identification and, if stopped by police, decline to give their names. One person says that would jam up the police. But the video did not show anyone discussing plans of vandalism or rioting.

[Secret video of Inauguration Day protest meeting provided by Project Veritas]

Before the case was presented to the jury, Judge Lynn Leibovitz threw out the most serious rioting charge against the six, a felony count of inciting a riot.

In her closing argument, defense attorney Sara Kropf reminded jurors that one of the police commanders was heard on a police radio at the beginning of the protest calling the demonstrators anarchists.

This is about politics. This is about police and local prosecutors who work for the Department of Justice. And we know who they report to, she said, referring to President Trump.

All the government proved was that these individuals showed up and walked as protesters, she said. And that is not a crime.

[Judge dismisses lead rioting charge in Inauguration Day protest trial]

In all, 212 people were charged in connection with the protests. Twenty of them have pleaded guilty, and prosecutors have dropped cases against another 20.

An additional 166 defendants are scheduled for trial, in groups of six or seven, through mid-2018. Though the U.S. attorneys office said it would move forward, one defense attorney said prosecutors should interpret the acquittals as a sign the remaining cases should be dropped.

I hope this sends a message to the U.S. attorneys office to let all of these people go, said attorney Betty Ballester, who represents one of the defendants scheduled to go to trial in April. The jury has spoken.

Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
MS-13 graffiti that references the "Sailors," a clique or unit of the gang, is written under the Capital Beltway in Maryland. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Eager to show that they were worthy of promotion, two MS-13 gang members targeted and killed a homeless man living in a shed in the Langley Park, Md., area, according to a federal indictment filed Wednesday.

The assailants were elevated to the rank of chequeo in the gang, according to the court papers. The homeless man died after being stabbed and beaten. His body was discovered May 15 inside the shed, which stands in an electric line right of way clearing. He was not named in court papers, but police previously identified him as 43-year-old Jose Regalado-Trujillo.

The killing is among a series in the Washington region that authorities have linked to a wave of violence by the street gang, which has recently made a comeback after years of relative calm. The details were revealed in the newest version of a sweeping indictment against a unit  or clique  of the gang, known as the Sailors.



Carlots 'Perrico' Cardenas-Banegas left) and Wilfredo 'Torro' Cardenas-Banegas are alleged members of the MS-13 'Sailors' clique. (Courtesy of Prince George's County Police)

[People here live in fear: MS-13 menaces a community seven miles from the White House]

The indictment alleges that Sailors members were involved in extortion, drug dealing, intimidation and murders.

The indictments description of events leading up to Regalado-Trujillos killing underscores how the gang expects and rewards violence in its members.

Around April of this year, according to the court papers, Donald Chuckie Mendez-Lopez and another MS-13 member discussed how they would have to kill a member of a rival gang to earn a promotion within the Sailors. Around that time, Mendez-Lopez and another MS-13 member targeted a homeless person they knew was living in a shed. Mendez-Lopez is specifically accused of aiding and abetting in the stabbing and beating of the man, although it is unclear who the other member was or which MS-13 member committed what specific acts, according to court papers.

Mendez-Lopezs precise age and address were not listed in the Wednesday filing, but two months ago, federal authorities said he was 18 and living in the Langley Park area.

Charles Burnham, an attorney listed in court records for Mendez-Lopez, could not immediately be reached to comment Wednesday.

After the slaying, Mendez-

Lopez and the other MS-13 member were given the rank of "chequeo," one level below "homeboy," according to federal court papers.

Chequeos, the indictment says, had to commit crimes on behalf of the gang to achieve trust and prove their loyalty.

The new indictment charges three additional, alleged members of the Sailors: Kevin Brosha Soriana-Hernandez, Carlos Perrico Cardenas-Banegas and Wilfredo Torro Cardenas-Banegas. They are accused of conspiracy to commit murder in attacks that occurred on or around Sept. 16, 2017, in Riverdale, Md.,  assaults done to try to advance operations of the gang.

The Cardenas-Banegas brothers already had been charged locally in the killing of Carlos Garita-Salazar, 19, who was from Landover Hills, Md.

Police who responded to a shooting  in the 6000 block of 67th Pl.  found Garita-Salazar inside a car. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. According to the federal indictment, Garita-Salazar had been shot and stabbed and was targeted because the assailants believed he was associated with a rival gang.

[A 14-year-old told of a teens killing by MS-13. Then, he disappeared too.]

Across the region, several brutal killings have been linked to the gang in recent months.

In court papers filed earlier this month in Virginia, authorities revealed that two teens whose bodies were found buried in Fairfax Countys Holmes Run Park earlier this year are believed to have been victims of MS-13. One of those youths, Edvin Mendez, may have been targeted because of a possible affiliation with a rival gang, according to court documents. The other, a 14-year-old who was an associate of MS-13, may have been killed for speaking to Mendezs brother about the slaying.

Also earlier this year, police found the body of 15-year-old Damaris Reyes Rivas near a Springfield park. Police say she was attacked with a knife and a large stick while MS-13 members recorded the assault on cellphones.

Montgomery County authorities are still working to determine the identity of a man killed in a particularly brutal incident attributed to the gang. Police said he was stabbed more than 100 times, decapitated and had his heart ripped out.
The Trump administration official responsible for overseeing undocumented minors in U.S. custody refused to allow a 17-year-old to terminate her pregnancy this month because his government office could not participate in violence against an innocent life, he said.

The determination by the official that an abortion would not be in the best interest of the teenager was central to a legal battle in federal court in Washington this week. E. Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services, has become the face of the administrations new policy of discouraging and even blocking access to abortion services for unaccompanied minors.

Refuge is the basis of our name and is at the core of what we provide, and we provide this to all the minors in our care, including their unborn children, every day, he wrote in a Dec. 17 memo unsealed in court on Thursday in which Lloyd explains why he opposed an abortion for the teenager, who was about 22 weeks pregnant.

We cannot be a place of refuge while we are at the same time a place of violence. We have to choose, and we ought to choose [to] protect life rather than to destroy it.

Attorneys for the teenager challenging the administrations policy as an unconstitutional ban on abortion say Lloyd is inappropriately using his government office to impose an antiabortion ideology on pregnant teens who cross the border illegally.

The teens individual case ended when the Justice Department dropped its appeals on Tuesday, allowing her to obtain an abortion.

[Trump administration drops appeals in case of immigrant teen seeking abortion]

The memo provides more details about the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy of the 17-year-old known only in court papers as Jane Poe. She told officials that she had been raped before crossing the border, and she threatened to hurt herself if she could not end the pregnancy. The teen briefly rescinded her request for an abortion after she said her mother and the person lined up to serve as her U.S. sponsor threatened to beat her if she had an abortion, according to the memo.

Lloyd rejected the teens request over the recommendation of at least one senior program staff person that the office assist her in obtaining the abortion, the memo shows.

Nobody should be blocked from obtaining an abortion, but with these facts in particular, it just shows how outrageous and extreme the policy is, said the teens attorney Brigitte Amiri of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Lloyds decision appears to be at odds with how Justice Department attorneys described government policy during oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in October. One Justice Department attorney told Judge Patricia A. Millett that in cases of rape and sexual assault, unaccompanied minors could obtain abortion services.

Certain regulations, however, apply only when a minor has been raped while in U.S. custody.

[Judge clears abortions for two immigrant teens in U.S. custody]

Before taking on the role of director in March, Lloyd worked as an attorney in the public policy office of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal and service organization. He worked at HHS during the administration of President George W. Bush.

In his memo, Lloyd acknowledged the troubling circumstances surrounding the teens pregnancy, but he writes that at nearly 22 weeks, the child has at least a fighting chance at survival if born.

The state in which the teen is being held does not have a ban on abortion at a particular stage in pregnancy, according to her lawyers.

Rachel Siegel contributed to this report.
Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler holds a news conference about the discovery of two sets of human remains in Lincolnia's Holmes Run Park. The bodies were found approximately 300 yards into the park near the intersection of Crater Place and Yellowstone Drive. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

Two more men have been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the MS-13-related killing of a Fairfax County high school student in August, Prince William County police said Thursday.

Tomas Antonio Pino-Mejia, 19, and Ismael Antonio Hernandez-Navarro, 19, both of no fixed address, were arrested in Frederick, Md., and Tennessee respectively in recent days in connection with the killing of Miguel Angel Ruiz Carrillo, 18.

The killing is the latest in a series of brutal slayings in Virginia and Maryland tied to a resurgent MS-13 gang, which is the regions largest and most violent.

Ruiz Carrillo, who had ties to MS-13, met gang members in a wooded area Aug. 3 near his home in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, according to recently unsealed search warrants in Fairfax. He was assaulted, driven from the scene and never heard from again.

Ruiz Carrillos body was discovered in Nokesville, Va., on Aug. 22, police said. Detectives uncovered information during the investigation that led them to search the area where his remains were discovered.

Mercedes Carrillo, the victims mother, said at the time that friends of her sons saw a group attack him near a pond close to their apartment in the 4200 block of Buckman Road. She said she did not think he was in MS-13.

Witnesses saw Ruiz Carrillo and gang members walking into a wooded area, where he was assaulted, according to the search warrants. After the assault, the gang members and Ruiz Carrillo were seen getting into a blue SUV being driven by a female associate of MS-13, the court records show.

[A 14-year-old told of a teens killing by MS-13. Then he disappeared, too.]

The search warrants do not detail what happened to Ruiz Carrillo after that, but his mother said in an August interview she had not heard from him after he disappeared, and calls to his cellphone went unreturned.

About two weeks after the slaying, Fairfax County police announced they had arrested Jose Vincent-Sosa, 20, and Edwin Dinarte Moreno, 18, both of Alexandria, along with a female juvenile, charging them all with Ruiz Carrillos abduction and with gang participation.

In September, Prince William police announced they had charged Hector Armando Gamez-Amaya, 28, with murder in Ruiz Carrillos killing. Gamez-Amaya was arrested in McDonough, Ga.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Gamez-Amaya had entered the United States illegally at an unknown time and was from El Salvador.

An immigration detainer has been placed on him.

A search warrant states one of the gang members, who accompanied Ruiz Carrillo into the woods, was a local MS-13 clique leader who went by the nickname Buny. He may be Gamez-Amaya.

The announcement of the new arrests comes a day after a federal indictment was filed against two Maryland MS-13 members, who were accused of fatally beating and stabbing a homeless man so they could be promoted in the gang.

Earlier this month, search warrants unsealed in Fairfax also revealed two bodies found in Holmes Run Park in February were two missing Fairfax teens, Edvin Mendez and Sergio Triminio, who were also probably killed by MS-13 members. No one has been charged in those slayings.
VIRGINIA

Murder suspect is

in custody in N.H.

A man wanted in the fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old man in Fairfax County in December has been taken into custody in New Hampshire, police said.

Endless Taylor, 24, has been charged with murder in the killing of 24-year-old Luis Bonilla on Dec. 1, Fairfax County police said. He was arrested in Hudson, N.H., after a police got a tip that he might be in the Lowell, Mass., area.

Fairfax County police officers were on routine patrol when they found Bonilla suffering from trauma to the upper body near a wooded area in the 7100 block of Fairchild Drive about 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 1, police said. Officers tried to resuscitate Bonilla, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Taylor was later identified as a suspect in the case. Taylor and Bonilla were acquaintances, and police said they are investigating a disagreement between the two in the weeks leading up to the killing.

 Justin Jouvenal

MARYLAND

Police identify man

who was fatally shot

Police in Montgomery County identified a man who was shot and killed over the weekend.

Andrew Douglas Turner, 18, was killed Saturday at his home in the 12900 block of Falling Water Circle in Germantown.

The shooting happened about 4:30 p.m. when a 911 call center got a call for a report of a man being shot. When officers arrived, they found Turner, who was dead inside the home.

The shooting comes in a year when there have been more than 240 homicides in the D.C. region. Of those, about 16 have been in Montgomery County, according to tracking by The Washington Post.

 Dana Hedgpeth

THE REGION

Officials: Man posed

as a physician

A man who prosecutors say posed as a physician and treated patients in southeastern Virginia has been arrested in Kansas.

The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a news release that Vishal Patel, 30, of Glen Allen, was arrested Tuesday by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Overland Park, Kansas.

According to an indictment, Patel has never been licensed to practice medicine in Virginia. Prosecutors say Patel stole identifying information of a licensed physician and obtained documents that fraudulently said Patel was a doctor.

The indictment says Patel used the fake documents to get a job at a health center in Newport News, Va.

Prosecutors say Patel saw patients, conducted and ordered tests and exams, and prescribed medication.

 Associated Press
Anna Behar and Daniel Behar, 11, left, died in a bus accident in Mexico this week. David, 15, third from left, and Moises, right, were injured. (Family photo)

Nearly everyone in the Behar familys tightknit Northern Virginia neighborhood knew about the Mexican cruise that they had planned for this month.

They were the kind of family who loved to travel  Moises Behar, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and Anna Behar, an international consultant. And they were most excited about adventures they could share with their two sons.

As part of the group of original homeowners in a section of Lorton near the Workhouse Arts Center, the couple often shared details of their plans with their neighbors. So when news broke this week about a fatal bus crash in southeastern Mexico, word spread quickly through Sego Lily Court that Anna, the couple's 11-year-old son Daniel and her mother, Fanya Shamis, were among the 12 people killed.

On Thursday, with Moises and another son, 15-year-old David, recovering from injuries at a Florida hospital, the Lorton neighbors mourned and searched for ways to absorb the family tragedy.

I cant even comprehend any of it, said Phyllis Martin, who was among the first people to meet the Behars when they moved to their home from the Dupont Circle neighborhood 12 years ago.

After confirming details of the accident Tuesday with Moisess sister in Miami, I went from house to house to all of my girlfriends to break the news, Martin said.

The State Department said eight Americans were killed when the speeding bus flipped over near ancient Mayan ruins in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Another 18 people were injured. The vehicle was ferrying 31 passengers to the ruins, which stand about a mile from the port of Mahahual, where the cruise ship was docked.

Moises was excited to share the Mayan ruins with his boys; he just couldnt wait, recalled Marlen Jose, another neighbor. Hes just a loving father and a loving husband. They did everything together. Went everywhere together.

That togetherness shows in the pictures Moises posted on his social media pages.

They include photos of Moises and Anna  who worked for the ICF International consultancy group in Fairfax  dressed for what appears to be a masquerade ball. Another shows a recent family trip to the Old Town Alexandria waterfront, where in one shot Moises is pretending to take the wheel of a clipper ship.

In those pictures, what friends described as Annas gregarious personality shines through.

Shes hilarious, Martin said. She could be loud, but she was always smiling.

Anna also loved her husband fiercely.

They would still glow whenever they were talking about each other, Martin said.

The family lives in a quiet but active suburban neighborhood of spacious single-family houses and townhouses near what used to be the Lorton prison. Neighbors regularly gather inside a community center for holiday celebrations and special events that double as networking opportunities for newer residents. Anna was helping to plan a casino night in February that has become a local favorite.

Now, her friends are trying to figure out how to help Moises to pay for the funerals of his wife and youngest son  setting up a GoFundMe account on his behalf while he and David recover in Florida.

Its just a natural thing for us to say: Lets gather and figure something out,  Martin said. They would do the same thing.
The last of four recounts in Virginia House of Delegates races ended Thursday with the status quo confirmed: Republican Bob Thomas defeated Democrat Joshua Cole by a margin of 73 votes.

But whether Thomas ultimately retains that seat in the 28th District  and Republicans their majority in the House  remains unclear, as the race is the subject of a pending federal court challenge.

Democrats are seeking a new election because more than 100 voters were given the wrong ballot on Election Day. A hearing on the case has been scheduled for Jan. 5, five days before the General Assembly is set to reconvene.

The recount held Thursday reduced Thomass margin of victory over Cole from 82 votes to 75 votes. A three-judge recount court resolved two additional ballots in Coles favor and certified Thomas as the winner.

Unfortunately, I think I have run out of votes to contest, said Jeffrey Breit, an attorney for Cole, at the hearing.

Thomas, a Stafford County supervisor who didnt attend the recount, declared victory.

[Why a game of chance will determine the future of Virginia politics]

I am honored to have a seat in this historic legislature, and I look forward to putting forth legislation that offers practical solutions to everyday issues, he said in a statement.

Cole, who appeared at the recount court, said that the race wasnt over and that he wouldnt rule out another option: contesting the election with the state legislature  a murky mechanism that hasnt been used in nearly four decades.

The main fight for us is pushing for a special election, Cole said. This has everything to do with making sure the people of the 28th District get a fair election. . . . This entire race is tainted.

Del. M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights), whom Republicans have tapped as House speaker if they keep their majority, said the recount should end the disputes over election results in the 28th.

Recounts within the parameters of the law are one thing, but fruitless litigation or contests only serve to delay us from our work and weaken this historic institution, Cox said.

Thomas and Cole were competing for an open seat. The district, which spans parts of Fredericksburg and Stafford County, is represented by Speaker William J. Howell (R), who is retiring.

But even with all ballots in all four disputed House races recounted, the fallout from Election Day continues.

In the 94th District, where Del. David E. Yancey (R-Newport News) led Democratic challenger Shelly Simonds by 10 votes, a recount on Tuesday reversed fortunes and made Simonds the winner by a single vote.

But on Wednesday, the recount court erased Simondss lead by awarding a questionable ballot to Yancey, leaving the race tied. The state Board of Elections will break the tie by picking a name from a bowl Wednesday. The law allows the loser to seek a second recount.

[Virginia court tosses one-vote victory that briefly ended GOP rule over House]

Including the Thomas victory in the 28th, Republicans hold a 50-to-49 majority in the House of Delegates, with one race tied.

If Simonds wins the random drawing next week, the House will be split evenly 50 to 50, forcing a rare power-sharing arrangement between Republicans and Democrats.

Stafford County Chief Circuit Court Judge Overton Harris, who oversaw the recount court in the 28th District matchup between Thomas and Cole, initially barred media from Thursdays proceedings.

But after an appeal by an attorney for The Washington Post, the chief judge granted a petition for public access to the recount.

It was a largely cordial affair as high-speed voting machines processing ballots hummed, and teams of elections officials gathered around tables to hand-count the ballots that couldnt be read while partisan observers looked on.

[Heres how recounts work in Virginia]

Tense moments came as election officials struggled to make decisions on questionable ballots.

In one instance, a Republican attorney shouted at a Democratic observer to stop talking when she began weighing in on a ballot where the voter filled out circles for both Cole and Thomas but put an X through the Thomas vote. In another instance, Democratic attorneys urged an elections official to reconsider setting aside a ballot where a voter both filled out Coles circle and wrote in his name.

Both ballots were eventually reviewed by the recount court and counted for Cole.

Breit, Coles attorney, told judges that the proceedings were as smooth as silk. Trevor Stanley, an attorney for Thomas, said local elections officials did a fantastic job.

[Virginia House in limbo after strange saga involving alleged rogue registrar]

Open-government advocates say barring reporters from the recount proceedings would have undermined public confidence in the elections.

There is an intense interest in knowing about the results and knowing that the process is conducted fairly and accurately so (the public) can have confidence in the final outcome, said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. The press is usually allowed in legal proceedings in some way. . . . The question is not Why should they be allowed? The question is Why shouldnt they be allowed in? 

Reporters observing the recount in the 94th District race between Yancey and Simonds were able to watch the discussion about a disputed ballot that later ended up being instrumental to the judges decision that the race was tied.

Journalists covering the House District 40 recount, in which Del. Timothy D. Hugo (R-Fairfax) held onto his seat, captured the civility of a democratic process in a time of partisan tension.

Clara Belle Wheeler, a Republican member of the state Board of Elections, said media should be present. Its sort of like being in the auxiliary box in the World Series. You can still see the batter, but you cant be calling balls and strikes, Wheeler said. I see absolutely no reason why you would not have press behind the rope.
Before Anita Hill, before #metoo, there was Dorena Bertussi.

The first person to file a sexual harassment complaint against a member of Congress  and win  was deeply jaded by an experience so political she worried that others would be discouraged from speaking out.

But nearly three decades later, Bertussi is hopeful that Congress will seriously address a problem that nearly took her well-being, self-confidence and career.

I guess it was some sort of validation, she said, through tears. I am so excited. This is really going to work. I think this is really going to be positive for the staffers.

In the span of just a few months, seven members of Congress have resigned or announced that they will not seek reelection amid allegations of inappropriate behavior or harassment.

In response to an inadequate reporting and investigation process, a House committee is working on a bill to overhaul the Congressional Accountability Act, including Bertussis suggestion that a victims advocate be hired.

Members on Tuesday finalized guidelines for mandatory harassment training for all members, staffers and interns.

No such initiative existed when Bertussi was a 34-year-old nurse on disability from San Diego who was newly hired to work for her local congressman, Democrat Jim Bates.

After a few weeks in a district office, she moved to Washington and had what she said was her first unpleasant run-in with her new boss. At the end of a workday, she was changing into her subway shoes in a staff room. He walked in and made a comment about her breasts, she said.

And I had my sock in my hand and I hit him with the sock, she recalled. Later, he called her into his office and asked whether she was physically being taken care of, she said. Another time, she said, he told her she looked like someone who likes to have it done rough to her.

Once, when she picked him up at the airport, driving past LEnfant Plaza, he vented to her about a young assistant, saying he wanted to push her against up the wall and hit her until blood trickles out her mouth, she said.

According to Bertussi, the next words out of his mouth were: So what would be the first thing I would see if I came over to your house? Would it be the bed?

Then came the final straw. She was sitting at her desk with her legs crossed. He entered the room and straddled her leg, she said. Then, according to Bertussi, he looked her square in the eyes and said, Dont ever do that again, laughed and walked away.

Reached by phone in San Diego, Bates, 76, said Bertussi misconstrued his comments and actions.

In retrospect, my take on all this is I was too casual or familiar in talking to my staff and should have been more professional, he said. I admit that I kidded and flirted [with others] and probably shouldnt have, in retrospect. But I never sexually harassed anyone.

The situation sent Bertussi in search of another job within months.

It was really a big dent to my confidence, she said. My self-worth was going downhill.

Then a Roll Call reporter called, and Bertussi agreed to join 20 women who shared stories of harassment perpetrated by Bates. She went on television with her face blurred and voice disguised. She did not feel like a trailblazer.

I was hunkered down, she said. I was on autopilot.

She came home one night to a phone message with the sound of a clock ticking. The U.S. Capitol Police advised her to find another place to stay, but she felt she had nowhere to go.

The morning after a San Diego reporter unmasked her, a TV camera appeared at her door. Soon she was speaking out on TV and in print without her identity obscured.

Bertussi said Bates mocked her, saying she had not filed an Ethics Committee complaint. she considered it a dare and marched over to the office.

She was given a postcard-size book of procedures, she said. She crafted a complaint that was rejected because it was not notarized or delivered by a member of Congress on her behalf.

Republicans tripped over themselves for the privilege, she said. Eventually, Bill Thomas, then a Republican representative from California, stepped up because he saw an opportunity to help knock Bates, a Democrat, from his seat, Bertussi said.

Attempts to reach Thomas were unsuccessful.

Bertussi said she was often quizzed about her motives by male reporters and others looking to vet her story. Her answer was always the same.

I could not deal long term with knowing that he could really hurt someone, she said. I would feel responsible. Thats why I did what I did. . . . I just got strong.

[Comstock stands up for victims of sexual harassment: I can be their voice]

As Bertussi spoke to The Washington Post in her Alexandria home, the television in her living room showed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissing women who accused President Trump of sexual misconduct.

In 1988, Bates won reelection with support from the National Organization for Women.

It was betrayal, Bertussi said. Yet she understood NOWs political predicament. Bates was pro-abortion rights, and NOW could not risk losing his vote in Congress.

The following year, the Ethics Committee issued a letter of reproval to Bates, which was a meaningless gesture to Bertussi.

He sent her a seven-sentence apology on his office letterhead, which she keeps buried in a storage container. Bertussi said the letter contains this wording: This happened because of inappropriate behavior on my part. Any discomfort I have caused you, I regret. I was insensitive and careless. For that I am truly sorry.

Speaking from California this week, Bates said his attorney wrote the letter, which he said he signed to put the situation behind him.

Compared with allegations of assault, his transgressions were very mild, Bates said.

Im being skewered and roasted and left out to dry, he said. This is painful, having to go through this over the years. I just think its so unfair.

Bertussi, a 65-year-old federal employee who leads a quiet life with her rescued greyhound, Tess, recently received a call from Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.). The two-term congresswoman from Northern Virginia wanted to know more about Bertussis story.

It was pretty much woman-to-woman, Bertussi said of their talk. Believe me, theres no one more jaded than me, and she convinced me our conversation was apolitical.

The next day in a public hearing of the House Administration Committee, Comstock described Bertussi as brave and said she could hear the pain but also the resolve in her voice when they spoke.

When the committee convened again weeks later, Bertussi attended as Comstocks guest and met a half dozen members who wanted to shake her hand.

There were no Democrats or Republicans in that room, Bertussi said. Everybody was serious about doing something. Enoughs enough.

As the hearing began, she sat silently in the second row of a room steps from Batess old office, mentally running through all she had endured to reach this moment.

I kept thinking, Its been 28 years, people. Lets move this forward. 
IOWA

Trump commutes executives sentence

President Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of an Iowa kosher meatpacking executive sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering  the first time hes used the presidential power.

The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the countrys largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of multiple members of Congress and other high-ranking officials who argued that Rubashkins sentence was too harsh, the White House said.

Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 of financial fraud for submitting fake invoices to the plants bank that made the companys finances appear healthier than they were so that it could borrow more. His prosecution came after federal authorities raided the plant and arrested 389 illegal immigrants in 2008.

The 57-year-old father of 10 has served more than eight years of his sentence, according to the White House, which stressed that the action is not a presidential pardon and does not vacate Rubashkins conviction.

 Associated Press

FLORIDA

State senator quits amid accusations

A powerful Florida state senator and candidate for governor resigned Wednesday, the day after an investigation found credible evidence of sexual misconduct.

Sen. Jack Latvala (R) continued to deny any wrongdoing as he announced that hes stepping down Jan. 5, and took parting shots at Republican leaders who he said called for his resignation before he could defend himself.

Hours earlier, Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) said he should resign. That came the day after former judge Ronald Swanson issued a report that Latvala likely inappropriately touched a top Senate aide and may have broken the law by offering a witness in the case his support for legislation in exchange for sex acts.

Swanson investigated a formal complaint by Rachel Perrin Rogers, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Wilton Simpson. Perrin Rogers accused Latvala of inappropriate touching in a Capitol elevator, at a private club and other occasions.

A former lobbyist whose name was redacted in the released copy of Swansons report said Latvala would touch her inappropriately.

 Associated Press

NEW YORK

Man who made threats in exs name gets prison

A former journalist from St. Louis who terrorized his ex-girlfriend and then made bomb threats in her name to Jewish groups was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison after the ex-girlfriend told the court the case shows domestic terrorism is rooted in violence against women.

U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said Juan Thompson, 32, committed domestic terrorism with threats in the name of New York social worker Francesca Rossi on a dozen occasions against Jewish community centers, schools or other facilities nationwide.

The threats came early this year, when more than 150 bomb threats were reported against Jewish community centers and day schools in 37 states and two Canadian provinces. Authorities blamed most on an 18-year-old Israeli-American Jewish hacker arrested in Israel in March.

The judge said Thompson created a sustained campaign against Rossi to terrorize her and cause pain to others.

Thompson, who pleaded guilty in June to cyber stalking and making fake bomb threats to a dozen Jewish facilities, apologized at the sentencing.

 Associated Press

Man sentenced in guns theft: A Wisconsin man who stole a cache of firearms from a gun shop and sent a rambling anti-government manifesto to President Trump was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison Wednesday. Joseph Jakubowski asked U.S. District Judge William Conley to either free him or execute him, saying in a profanity-laced exchange that he rejected rules and the law. Jakubowski was convicted in September of two weapons charges stemming from the April 4 theft from a gun store in Janesville that set off a 10-day manhunt.

 Associated Press
A projection on the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Tuesday was in reaction to guidance from Health and Human Services officials that staff should avoid certain words in drafting budget documents. (Human Rights Campaign)

The Trump administration is waging a linguistic battle across official Washington, seeking to shift public perception of key policies by changing the way the federal government talks about climate change, scientific evidence and disadvantaged communities.

The push drew fresh attention after employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were told to avoid certain words  including "vulnerable," "entitlement" and "diversity"  when preparing requests for next year's budget. But the effort to disappear certain language and replace it with other terms is much broader, sparking resistance from career officials in federal agencies, outside experts and congressional Democrats.

Climate change, for example, has for months presented a linguistic minefield; multiple references to it have been purged repeatedly at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. And in late summer, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention issued a language guidance document to employees and contractors bearing a column of words and phrases to be avoided, alongside a column of acceptable alternatives.

The one-page document recommends using all youth instead of underserved youth, referring to crime as a public issue/public concern rather than a public health issue/public health concern and describing young people who commit crimes as offenders rather than system-involved or justice-involved youths, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.

The document also says to avoid the term substance abuse disorder in favor of substance abuse issue  a change that runs counter to efforts by experts to cast substance abuse as a disease. A Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the recommended terminology is intended to be more accurate and better reflect Justice Department priorities.

The desire to literally change the conversation in Washington is nothing new. For decades, incoming administrations have sought to advance their political agendas by rebranding existing initiatives and lifting new words to prominence in White House news releases.

After winning the election on a vow to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Barack Obama dropped George W. Bush-era references to the global war on terror, creating a new budget category labeled overseas contingency operations. Meanwhile, Obama appointees at HHS abandoned the term unaccompanied alien children, replacing it with unaccompanied minors. (The current administration has reverted to alien children, which is statutory language.)

But even in the context of this historical tug-of-war, the chasm between President Trumps top deputies and the federal workers charged with carrying out government policies appears particularly wide.

The administration correctly understands that they are battling a hostile bureaucracy, said Barry Bennett, a GOP consultant who advised the president during last years general election campaign. The left likes to think that words are very important, particularly if its words they dont like. Well, the right thinks that, too.

The debate erupted last week after HHS officials instructed employees to avoid certain words when drafting the department's fiscal 2019 budget request. A budget request describes an agency's work and mission, establishes priorities and sends a broad message about the direction of federal policy under an administration.

The instructions were part of a one-page style guide, obtained by The Washington Post, that was included in a much longer budget guidance document. The style guide lists vulnerable, diversity and entitlement as words to avoid when drafting the agencys fiscal 2019 budget request  except when the terms are referenced within a legal citation or part of a title.

HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd confirmed that agency officials created the document but said they did not ban any words outright. The document was distributed to budget offices in the department's operating divisions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, an HHS official said.

At a budget meeting last week at the CDC in Atlanta, employees were also told to avoid four additional words and phrases: fetus, transgender, evidence-based and science-based. The origin and intention of that verbal direction remains murky.

In an email, Lloyd said that HHS and its agencies have not banned, prohibited or forbidden employees from using certain words. Instead, Lloyd said, employees have misconstrued guidelines provided during routine discussions on the annual budget process. It was clearly stated to those involved in the discussions that the science should always drive the narrative.

But an official at another HHS agency who was briefed last week on use of vulnerable, diversity and entitlement said the message was clear.

It was interpreted as you are not to use these words in the budget narrative,  said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency communications.

On Thursday, 10 Senate Democrats sent a letter to HHS acting secretary Eric Hargan asking for clarification about the language restrictions. If they are indeed in place, we respectfully request that you immediately reverse these policies, the lawmakers wrote. Words matter.

A group of 315 public health organizations also sought an explanation from Hargan. As the nations premier public health agency, the CDC cannot carry out its mission of improving the health and safety of all Americans when its staff are urged to avoid using basic phrases that are so intrinsic to public health, they wrote Thursday.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the HHS budget, interpreted the agencys guidance as more silly than sinister, saying it shows the bureaucracy trying to react to what they think the new administration wants to hear.

Agency officials are writing budgets to make the case for their priorities with both the Trump White House and the GOP-controlled Congress, Cole said, meaning they have to write in a way their audience might actually read.

Cole noted that Obama administration officials referred constantly to climate change, assuming that would "unlock the door" to congressional funding. Now, Cole said, the term has essentially vanished from budget discussions across departments. A top EPA appointee has instructed officials to eliminate it in grant solicitations and has zeroed out funding for several initiatives that mention the term. And some career officials have cut it from public communications material for fear of angering Trump appointees.

Colorado College environmental science professor Miroslav Kummel, for example, had agreed to teach an Introduction to Global Climate Change class at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument this summer. But then a volunteer with the monuments Friends Group informed him that he would have to revise his syllabus.

Unfortunately, I had to send your write-up to the National Park Service Climate Change office in Fort Collins for review, the volunteer wrote in an email. The NPS has been told that Climate Change must not be part of the message. All references to it in future documents, orientation talks, etc. will not be allowed.

Kummel declared the instruction not acceptable and threatened to pull out. The group ultimately relented, and he went on with the class.

Park Service spokesman Jeremy K. Barnum said in an email that friends groups are independent organizations separate from the agency and officials were not aware of any effort by headquarters to prevent the professor from delivering his presentation as planned.

Climate-related documents continue to be erased from Interiors website at a rapid clip: This month, the links to 92 national parks climate action plans disappeared, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department's move to censor the discussion about juvenile justice has alarmed longtime advocates. Marcy Mistrett, chief executive of the Campaign for Youth Justice, who has seen the "language guidance" document, said referring to youths who have committed crimes only as "offenders" defines them too narrowly. "They are still children."

She added: Its just very unusual to go that far into the weeds and actually handpick out words that are common words in a field.

Advocates said the new emphasis already is having an impact. A 2016 solicitation for proposals to provide mentoring to child victims of sex trafficking specifically cited LGBTQ youths, who make up a significant portion of the trafficked population, Mistrett said. This year, a similar solicitation for proposals contained no such mention.

Allies of the administration, while maintaining that no words have been banned outright under Trump, said word choices have also affected policies important to conservatives. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the antiabortion political action committee Susan B. Anthony List, argued that getting rid of the term fetus, for example, would be a welcome change.

The language we use to describe unborn human beings doesnt just follow cultural attitudes, it actually has shaped them and made unthinkable atrocities sound palatable, Dannenfelser said. We are glad to see the administration working to humanize widely used terms that will shape the next generations attitudes toward life.

Sarah Kaplan and Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.

Read more:

Diversity, vulnerable, entitlement among words employees told to avoid at HHS agencies

Trump administration releases climate science report, then questions findings

Under Trump, inconvenient government data is being sidelined
A federal judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the criminal conspiracy case against rancher Cliven Bundy and three other defendants, saying government lawyers suppressed key evidence that would have been favorable to the defendants' case related to a 2014 standoff with federal agents.

U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro determined that the prosecution suppressed evidence from FBI surveillance cameras recording the Bundy family home and the presence of Bureau of Land Management snipers around the property in the days leading up to the standoff there. Additionally, the prosecution did not provide FBI logs, maps, reports and threat assessments that said the Bundy family was not dangerous.

Navarro pointed to assessments conducted by the FBI, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center and the BLM that said the Bundy family is not violent and that they would probably get in your face, but not get into a shootout.

The court regrettably believes a mistrial is the only suitable option, Navarro told the packed Nevada courtroom. A fair trial at this point is impossible.

The case accused Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and Montana militiaman Ryan Payne of conspiring to commit a crime against BLM officers during the armed standoff near the family ranch in Nevada.

Navarro spoke of several reports that were also kept from the defense that showed that the Bundy familys cows  which had been illegally grazing on public lands for more than 20 years when the BLM orchestrated a roundup of the cattle  had no detrimental impact on Desert Tortoise habitat. The tortoise is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Such details cast doubt on the governments portrait of the family as violent, paranoid, anti-government extremists. But Navarro noted to the courtroom that declaring a mistrial does not mean that the men are being found not guilty.

That is not the courts decision, Navarro said. It is for a jury to decide.

As of Wednesday evening, Cliven Bundy was still incarcerated, but his attorney, Bret Whipple, said he planned to file an emergency motion to see his client released from jail without conditions. The Bundy family patriarch, along with other defendants, was granted conditional release earlier this month, but Cliven Bundy chose to stay in jail until he was allowed to leave without GPS monitoring, which Bundy said would acknowledge that he did something wrong, Whipple said.

Both sides have until Dec. 29 to file briefs on whether the judge should allow the government to pursue a new trial.

I do not think there is a jury in this country that will convict us, Ammon Bundy said outside the courthouse, an arm slung around his mothers shoulders as he spoke to reporters. The truth is on our side.

The mistrial does bring a lot of vindication to us, he said, noting that Navarro talked about our family, my dad, how he wasnt prone to use violence. My dad has said that many, many times. Hes not a violent man. Hes a man of peace. He only wanted his rights to be protected.

Supporters of the Bundy family streamed to the Nevada desert in the spring of 2014 after videos of BLM agents using a stun gun on Ammon Bundy and throwing his aunt to the ground went viral. The family put a call out for supporters to come to their aid in what they felt was an illegal roundup of their cattle.

A mistrial is, in some ways, the latest in a string of victories for the Bundy family.

Last fall, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, as well as other defendants, were acquitted of nearly identical charges for their 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016, a federal facility they said should be returned to the people of the southeastern Oregon county.

In a separate trial this year over the 2014 standoff, several men were acquitted by a jury.

Ryan Bundy, who represented himself in both Oregon and Nevada, told reporters that the familys decision to stand up against what they saw as federal tyranny was informed by their belief in the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly the white horse prophecy, which contends that LDS followers will be the final defenders of the U.S. Constitution. The LDS church has continually condemned the actions of the Bundy family and says that the white horse prophecy is not accepted doctrine and more akin to conspiracy theory.

But on Wednesday, Ryan Bundy spoke of the prophecy as truth: Joseph Smith prophesied that the Constitution would at some point hang as if it were by a thread, he said. Put it this way: Whether the church calls it doctrine or not, weve got quotes from several prophets reiterating that. . . . I take the words of the prophets both modern and previous ones seriously.

After the mistrial was declared, Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, yelled into a bullhorn outside the courthouse: Public lands belong to everybody! Not just to people who have the biggest guns! Around him, Bundy supporters jeered in response.

There are no public lands! one woman yelled. The government has the biggest guns! another man countered.

The prosecution and the FBI made some huge missteps, Suckling said afterward. That shouldnt confuse anybody about what the Bundys had done and their guilt with bringing an armed militia onto public land that belongs to everybody.
THE BLAME for the bloodshed and chaos in August in Charlottesville lies squarely with the neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other thugs who descended on that city, infusing it with their hatred and venom. That is no excuse for the incompetence of state and local police on the scene that day, who, despite ample and timely intelligence, failed in their most basic duties.

An accounting for that stunning failure began this week when Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas resigned and, a day later, State Police Superintendent Col. W. Steven Flaherty announced his retirement. News of their departures came less than three weeks after the publication of a comprehensive report, commissioned by the city, that heaped damning detail upon damning detail to describe their agencies' shortcomings in leadership, training, preparation and execution.

A sense of law enforcements bumbling and ineptitude that day is conveyed by the reports description of what happened when city police officers were finally ordered to don riot gear to deal with the enveloping mayhem. Retreating to a supply trailer, the report said, They had to fish through plastic bins to find their gear, which included gas masks, riot shields, and ballistic helmets. For many of them, it was the first time they had ever worn this equipment. It then turned out the supply of gas masks was inadequate and commanders could not find enough bullhorns.

The report, by Timothy Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney for Virginias Western District, focused much of its scathing commentary on the Charlottesville police. But it did not spare the state police, which, after all, outnumbered the Charlottesville force by at least 4 to 1 that day.

Hundreds of state troopers, uniformed as well as undercover, were on hand in Charlottesville. They did not cover themselves in glory.

Guided by Mr. Flaherty, who said only fools rush in to chaotic street skirmishes where they might be forced to use deadly force, the troopers mostly hung back. A key commander said she would not send arrest teams into the street, the result being that troopers watched impassively as alt-right demonstrators and counterprotesters brawled just a few feet away.

At one point, state troopers looked on inertly from behind barricades as a Klansman shot a handgun at the ground near a counterprotester who wielded a torch. Just then, a female counterprotester was punched in the face by an alt-right demonstrator; she suffered a concussion. When she asked the troopers for help, none of them responded, the report said.

So why have police?

Later, when state police in riot gear did move in to clear Emancipation Park, they pushed the alt-right demonstrators into throngs of counterprotesters in the adjacent streets, triggering more violence. It was, said Lt. Joseph Hatter, a Charlottesville police commander, the most messed-up thing I ever saw.

To say law enforcement was ineffective in the events in Charlottesville is an epic understatement. We hope the departure of the two top commanders is a sign that lessons have been learned from that debacle.
Joshua Gotbaum is a guest scholar in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

My friends started calling as soon as the news broke about the Amtrak derailment in Washington state.

They worried I would suffer flashbacks to the horrible night in May 2015 when Amtrak 188 derailed near Philadelphia. I was one of the "lucky ones"; unlike the woman right behind me, the midshipman two rows ahead and six others, I lived. I "only" had scratched corneas, broken ribs and a damaged knee.

In some ways, flashbacks are appropriate because the similarities between the two derailments are eerie: In both, the trains were going much too fast. In both, positive train control (PTC) safety systems could have prevented the accidents by automatically slowing down the trains. In both cases, PTC systems had already been installed on the tracks. And, in both cases, they hadn't been turned on yet  because the deadline for installing them hadn't been reached and Amtrak balked at spending money on safety until it absolutely had to do so.

I did have flashbacks, but they weren't to the accident. I flashed back to Amtrak's responses afterward, which were appalling  a combination of callous indifference and phony promises to reform. And to the response of Congress, equally appalling, which was both to delay PTC requirements that would prevent these disasters and to limit Amtrak's liability to compensate its victims when disasters occur.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending PTC for 45 years, but it took a head-on train collision in 2008 in California that killed 25 people and injured more than 100 to get Congress to move. Responding to that disaster, Congress gave major railroads more than seven years, until the end of 2015, to install PTC systems. Had the requirement been in place eight months earlier, Amtrak would have turned on its PTC system, Amtrak 188 wouldn't have derailed, I would still have my knee, and eight people would not have died.

Sadly, the response of the railroad industry to the Philadelphia disaster was not to install PTC, but to delay it. Railroads complained about the costs and threatened not to run their trains unless Congress pushed the deadline to 2018. Congress caved completely, allowing railroads to defer PTC without penalty. Congress even allowed an additional loophole: If railroads "showed progress," they didn't have to start using PTC until 2020.

The first thing that Amtrak Cascades 501 victims and their families will likely learn, as we did, is that this accident didn't have to happen. But the bad news doesn't stop there, because in 1997, Congress also decided to cap at $200 million the total compensation that Amtrak and other passenger railroads must pay when their negligence leads to an accident. This means that the costs of major accidents are sometimes borne not by the negligent railroad, but by its victims. One judge applying this cruel law in another case said, "There just wasn't enough money . . . what was given to one victim had to be taken from another." He described the process as a daily exercise in "Sophie's Choice."

That's what happened after the Amtrak accident in Philadelphia. Congress raised the cap to $295 million, but that was far from sufficient to compensate the eight families who lost loved ones and the 200 passengers who suffered life-changing injuries. Amtrak ended up paying only a fraction of the damage it had inflicted. The victims ended up bearing a large part of their own medical costs and lost wages. Meanwhile, Amtrak's chief executive  who ran what the NTSB described as a railroad lacking a "safety culture" for eight years  retired without so much as a slap on the wrist.

My heart goes out to the victims of Amtrak Cascades 501. They deserve better than what we experienced after Amtrak 188. Sadly, the responses from Washington thus far aren't encouraging. President Trump, ignoring the sharp cuts to Amtrak's funding that he proposed this year, used the tragedy instead to talk about an infrastructure program he has yet to propose  despite the fact that the tracks had been refurbished and the train was new. Congress, for its part, now makes statements about the need for PTC, but its members do not mention that they delayed requiring it and that more people have died as a result.

For the victims of the crash Monday near Seattle, its far too late to promise better safety controls. But its not too late to eliminate the liability cap and to say that government- funded railroads should be responsible for their actions and that the victims of Amtraks negligence should get the full protection of the law.
IN OCTOBER, the government tried and failed to keep an undocumented teenager in federal custody from ending an unwanted pregnancy. Yet officials appear to have learned little from 17-year-old Jane Doe's victory in court over the government's effort to keep her from the abortion clinic. Again, it has fought tooth and nail  and failed  to prevent two more pregnant teenagers from getting the medical care they desired.

Since his appointment by President Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), antiabortion activist E. Scott Lloyd has barred federally funded shelters for undocumented minors from "supporting" access to abortion without his approval. Mr. Lloyd has reached out personally to convince some teenagers against ending their pregnancies. Others, like Ms. Doe, are forced to attend "life-affirming options counseling."

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of two more undocumented teenagers whom ORR blocked from obtaining abortions. Like Ms. Doe, both are pregnant and crossed into the United States without their parents.

Both will now be allowed to get their abortions. A federal district judge allowed one teenager to travel to a clinic as of Monday. And the Justice Department dropped its appeal of the other teenager's case after discovering that she was 19 years old, not 17  meaning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not ORR, should take custody of her as an adult. ICE has now released her. But even if it hadn't, ICE allows undocumented women in its care to obtain abortions as a matter of policy.

The collapse of the court case demonstrates just how absurd ORR's policy really is. The government acknowledges that the Constitution grants these teenagers the right to an abortion. Yet when a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old have the same right under Roe v. Wade, how can the government justify summarily blocking one from obtaining an abortion but not the other? The rest of the government's case was equally flimsy. ORR argues that it has no obligation to "facilitate" the procedure  though in each case so far, the logistics and costs have been privately arranged, leaving ORR with the responsibility of simply getting out of the way.

ORR also made the case that the teenagers could simply leave the country or depart federal custody for a government-approved sponsor. But the fact that a person could cross back across the border doesnt strip her of constitutional rights while in the United States. And each week it takes to find a suitable sponsor makes abortion more difficult and dangerous to obtain.

Its welcome news that the government is no longer abusing its power over these two vulnerable teenagers. Yet even as the ACLU mounts a broader legal challenge to ORRs behavior, its likely that ORR will continue to trap other undocumented teenagers in the same situation. Mr. Lloyd should abandon this cruel policy.
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. But do you recall Saint Nicholas of Myra, the man behind Santa Claus? The jolly old elf of Christmastime lore is an embellishment on the historical persona of a Christian pastor from the 4th century. People adapted his legacy to suit their cultural needs, altering his attributes as they went along. As a result, the man behind the holiday fable is shrouded in myths and misconceptions. Here are five.

Myth No. 1

Saint Nicholas was a white European.

In the vast majority of depictions, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas are portrayed as white-skinned Europeans with rosy cheeks and white beards. Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly could have pointed to innumerable examples from film, art, toys and advertisements when, in a 2013 broadcast, she asserted that "Santa just is white ."

But Nicholas had a Mediterranean complexion and spoke Greek. He was born sometime after 260 in Patara, a port town on the coast of modern-day Turkey. The region had been colonized by the Greeks centuries earlier. The racial category of white wasnt one the ancient world was acquainted with, and it would not have occurred to anyone at the time to describe themselves in that way.

[Santa Claus comes in many different colors]

Myth No. 2

Saint Nicholas was a jolly man in a red coat.

From 1931 to 1964, artist Haddon Sundblom painted enchantingly warm scenes of Santa's home and hearth for the Coca-Cola Company . Norman Rockwell depicted Santa for the Saturday Evening Post looking cheerful and glad. And before that, Thomas Nast drew Santa for Harper's Weekly with his traditional red coat, white beard, round belly and pipe. Nast can be credited with working out the major aspects of Santa's look in his fanciful and imaginative drawings, which date to the second half of the 19th century.

But during the saints lifetime, Nicholas would have worn a simple tunic and cloak, like other Christian ministers of his era. No heavy furs needed on the Mediterranean coast. Nor would he have been decked out in embroidered robes of red or green, complete with miter, stole, gloves and rings, as is often the case in ornamental Old World statuettes of the saint. Christianity was an outlawed, persecuted, minority religion for about two-thirds of Nicks life. He probably would not have had the financial resources to acquire such an outfit, and even if he had, it would not have been prudent for him to traipse about town wearing it.

Nor was the saint noted for his cheerful disposition. In what was arguably the most important incident from the life of Nicholas, first recorded in the mid-6th century, he intervened in a court proceeding and halted a beheading. At the last minute, he stopped the executioner from performing his duty and then confronted the judge who had given the sentence. Nicholas berated the judge, Eustathius, until he admitted that hed accepted bribes. The episode was not about jovial generosity but rather a hard-nosed resolve to oppose injustice. So much for ho ho ho.

[Im Jewish. My husband is Christian. What to tell our daughter about Santa?]

Myth No. 3

Saint Nicholass gift-giving inspired his legend.

A National Geographic article tracking Nicholas's transformation from saint to Santa cites a "better-known tale" in which "three young girls are saved from a life of prostitution when young Bishop Nicholas secretly delivers three bags of gold to their indebted father, which can be used for their dowries." In describing Nicholas's festive metamorphosis from bishop to Kris Kringle, the History Channel's website likewise claims that the account of the three dowries is "one of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories."

While this is the legend that most directly connects Nicholas to his role in contemporary lore as a dispenser of gifts, his persona came alive thanks to an altogether uglier story. In the Middle Ages, the most popular tale about Nicholas involved a grisly murder mystery. Perhaps the earliest version dates to the mid-10th century and Lower Saxony. It goes like this: An evil innkeeperlured three children in, chopped them up and stuffed them into wooden pickling barrels. Nicholas arrived, uncovered the foul deed, and miraculously reassembled and restored the poor children to life.

The gruesome account became an instant hit. Traveling performers reenacted the drama in towns and villages across Europe. Thanks in part to this story, Nicholas became recognized as the protector and patron saint of children.

Myth No. 4

Saint Nicholas punched a heretic.

Nicholas's historical reputation as a dour opponent of wrongdoing has sometimes been carried too far. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, the legend goes, Nicholas punched the arch-heretic Arius, who argued that Jesus in his capacity as the Son was not co-eternal with God. By the 1500s, church frescoes and icons were depicting Nicholas slapping Arius. Maybe you've seen the more modern memes online: A stern-looking Byzantine saint says: "Deck the halls? Try deck the heretic." In another, he says: "I came to give presents to kids and to punch heretics. And I just ran out of presents." Denizens of the Internet have become so delighted with the story that they've even written songs about it  "I Saw Santa Punching Arius, " for example.

It is true that the intact skull of Saint Nicholas, enclosed in a tomb in Bari, Italy, shows evidence that his nose had been severely broken. But there is nothing to suggest that it was a result of landing a haymaker on Arius. The incident appears for the first time in the late 1300s, more than 1,000 years after Nicholass death, in the writings of a Venetian named Petrus de Natalibus. In the earliest version, Nicholas slaps an Arian. It could not have been Arius himself, who was not in attendance at Nicaea, since he was not a bishop.

[A first-grader writes to Santa, asking for food and a blanket]

Myth No. 5

Saint Nicholass remains have not been uncovered.

This fall, sensational headlines appeared across the Web: "Body of St Nicholas buried in Demre, claim officials " and "Santa dead, archaeologists say ." Archaeologists working on the ancient Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey, recently detected an open space or chamber beneath the tiled floor. Although they have not opened it or inspected it, they are hopeful that the chamber contains the undisturbed bones of the saint. Based on their efforts, one may have concluded that, before this year, the final resting place of Saint Nicholas was unknown.

But its unlikely that archaeologists will find a previously unknown hidden tomb underneath the church in Demre. After his death, sometime between 333 and 343, Nicholass Demre tomb became an international destination for Christian pilgrims on the way to the Holy Land. Then, in 1087, 62 sailors from Bari, Italy, came ashore, smashed open the tomb and hastily removed the bones, taking them on board their ship and delivering them to Bari on May 9. Ten years later, Venetian sailors entered the church at Demre, scraped together all the remaining bone fragments they could find and took them to Venice.

Researchers at the Relics Cluster at Keble College, Oxford University, have dated a pelvic bone fragment attributed to Saint Nicholas to the 4th century, which aligns with the traditional life span of the saint. The bone, acquired from a collection in Lyon, France, now resides in Morton Grove, Ill. More likely than not, Saint Nicholas rests across the globe  and of course, in our hearts.

englisha@campbell.edu

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.


Ashlee and Levi Smith play with their sons Liam, 3, and Aiden, 3 months, on Sunday in Salem, Utah. Ashlee, 26, and her husband float on and off the Childrens Health Insurance Program for their children. Ashlee volunteers with chronically ill children and says she sees the need for the program every day. (Sammy Jo Hester for The Washington Post)

The lingering uncertainty in Congress over the fate of the Children's Health Insurance Program has left Ashlee and Levi Smith torn between optimism and anxiety.

As the parents of two young children who have relied on the government-backed health-care plan, the Smiths are unsure whether they should stretch their finances to put their boys, 3 and 3 months, on a private plan  or have faith that a polarized Congress will work it out.

$1,200 for the four of us, Ashlee Smith, 26, said, estimating the plans monthly cost from their two-bedroom townhouse outside Salt Lake City, where she crafts necklaces as part of the family business. We cant pay that and save for a mortgage, or save anything at all.

Congress appears unlikely this week to reauthorize the Childrens Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which has become a crucial element in broader negotiations over how to fund the government. If no decision comes by Friday, then lawmakers are likely to take up the issue in early January  but with each delay, the pressure grows on families to find their own solutions.

For the Smiths, who are Republicans, the congressional stalemate over the $15.6 billion program is bigger than a question how to pay. It is also a question of who  or what  to believe.

Over the course of the year, their faith in the GOP-led Congress has eroded. Their general disenchantment became more pronounced when lawmakers, including even their home-state senator, Orrin G. Hatch, an architect of the CHIP program, failed to secure the funding.

The tangible effects of that inaction reverberated from the Smiths home to doctors offices and statehouses across the country. Nine million children use CHIP to help lower their medical costs.



Liam Smith, 3, throws a paper airplane Sunday in his familys Salem home. His parents have used the Childrens Health Insurance Program in the past. (Sammy Jo Hester for The Washington Post)

The Smiths have watched their GOP representatives in Washington focus on pushing politically difficult initiatives  from seeking to rescind the Affordable Care Act to enacting a sweeping tax overhaul.

CHIP is considerably more popular and, unlike many programs, enjoys bipartisan support. On television, the Smiths watched Alabama Sen.-elect Doug Jones use his nationally televised victory speech to demand funding for the program. Governors from red and blue states have pleaded with Congress, and television host Jimmy Kimmel delivered a monologue extolling the programs value. Everyone seems for it, and lawmakers insist they can get something done. Still, nothing.

Jesus, bless them, said Smith, holding Aiden in her hands and thinking of her lawmakers. I am not being very nice to my government, and I have faith that one day there will be good leaders who can put all the fighting aside. But theyve put themselves in such a corner that none of them can work together even when they agree.

CHIP was the product of a more congenial Washington. After the failure of President Bill Clintons health-care overhaul effort in the early 1990s, the liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) paired with Hatch, a conservative, to do something to reduce the number of uninsured children.

The idea was to fund it through settlements and taxes from the tobacco industry. In 1997, the federal government began giving block grants to states, who in turn crafted insurance plans for working-class parents. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the program helped reduce the rate of uninsured children from 14 percent to 7 percent.

Both liberals and conservatives got something from the plan. For Democrats, there was an opportunity to show how government can help more for people who cant afford medical care for their children. For Republicans, they got a chance to show how innovative states could be in creating their own programs.



Levi Smith plays with his son Liam, 3, on Sunday in their Salem home, while his wife, Ashlee, holds Aiden, 3 months. The family has relied on CHIP on and off, and Ashlee Smith says federal lawmakers have put themselves in such a corner that none of them can work together even when they agree. (Sammy Jo Hester for The Washington Post)

In Utah, the federal government disbursed more than $118 million in 2016 to offer insurance plans for the parents who made too much money to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford insurance on the federal government exchanges  thats about $48,000 for a family of four. More than 16,000 children in Utah currently use the program.

Since the program began, states have never faced a lapse in funding, and advocates hoped that Congress would reauthorize money this year as a matter of routine. It didnt.

In November, the House passed a bill that would reauthorize funding for the program if the money could be found from new sources, including taking funds that were used to support health centers in underserved communities.

Senate Democrats and some Republicans rejected the House plan, saying it would preserve one safety net by destroying another.

Federal funding for CHIP stopped flowing on Sept. 30. A report put out by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute published on Wednesday noted that states are running out of money faster than anticipated. Half will have no money for the program by January's end if nothing is done.

Nearly 2 million children would lose insurance by the end of January, the report said. Some families in Utah have said they will have to take on second or third jobs to help pay for private insurance, while others said they would stop working altogether to lower their income and qualify for government assistance.

Hatch told The Washington Post he remained confident that CHIP will be funded before states run out of money.

"Washington is clearly broken, and the dysfunction we've seen this year has been the worst in recent memory," said Hatch, who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Nonetheless, Hatch said predicted CHIP reauthorization "will pass the Senate in a fiscally responsible manner in the coming weeks  with enough time to ensure the program has no gaps in coverage  and continue to provide quality coverage for children across the country."



Monica Porras prepares her daughter, Deane Ortiz, 6, to go to a fundraiser on Dec. 8 in West Jordan, Utah. Porras is a 45-year-old mother of seven who has two autistic children and operates two cleaning businesses. CHIP helped pay for the treatment for her children. (Sammy Jo Hester for The Washington Post)

If Hatch cant keep this pledge, there is no consensus yet on what to do when the money runs out. Fifty states will have to conjure 50 different plans. Many, like Utah, say the costs of the program are too high to pay for it alone.

Officials in Alabama this week said they could accept no new children for their CHIP program.

Oregon has tapped into reserve funds. Some states, such as Colorado and Virginia, have told parents to search for private insurance options.

In Utah, there is a daily discussion about whether parents should do the same, according to Kolbi Young, a spokeswoman for the states health department.

The state has prepared for the worst, drafting letters to parents explaining the situation in the event Congress fails to act.

Were a Republican-leaning state with a Republican government, so were optimistic, Young said. But its tricky. We want our families to be prepared, but we dont want them leaving the program if they dont need to.

In the meantime, parents wait and fret.

Monica Porras, 45, who owns a small domestic and commercial cleaning business, said she has been grateful for CHIP because it allowed her to afford treatments for her 15-year-old son Abraham, diagnosed with autism.

If theres no CHIP, hell be in regression, she said.

"There must be a misconception of who we are, that we are not hardworking, that we are not deserving," Porras said.

The Smiths dont know how they would make ends meet if CHIP goes away. To supplement income from Ashlee Smiths necklaces, Levi Smith just took a customer service job that he hopes will lead him down the path to become a software developer.

The parents are uninsured, but in January they will receive coverage through a plan on the federal government's marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.

Recently, as the Smiths discussed what to do about providing for the children if they get sick, they tried to make sense of these political times.

Levi Smith said he learned to love the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas health-care law, because having low insurance costs helped him see a specialist after developing gout. He liked the idea of the Republicans tax cut legislation, at least if it meant that filling out tax forms would become simpler.

Im all for making life easier, Levi said.

Ashlee Smith saw it differently.

Theyre not seeing the most vulnerable, she said. Theyre seeing tax breaks for the rich when they could be taking care of doing better care. Were not the ones who are going to benefit.

Added Levi: "I believe that there are good people on both sides, but they just have different ways of doing good things. I just wish common sense would compromise. Without that compromise, I feel like we are taking something away from people, and it's not their fault. When you do that, I don't think you can talk about the American dream in the same way."

There was space for disagreement, Ashlee said, but she still questioned just how things in Washington could have gotten so bad. With a background in child development, she volunteers at a hospital to help parents and children with terminal illnesses cope. Many of them could only pay with CHIP.

Im still not sure that I believe in socialized medicine, but I think this is different, she said, holding her baby in her hands. I wish there could be something I could do to help, but I feel like Im just a small fish in this.



The Smith family plays Sunday in their Salem home. Without CHIP, Ashlee and Levi Smith are unsure how they will meet their childrens health-care needs while saving for a mortgage and other payments. (Sammy Jo Hester for The Washington Post)

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the source of a new report showing that states are running out of children's health insurance funds faster than anticipated. The report came from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute , not the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Paige Cunningham contributed to this report.
Vice President Pence arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday for an unannounced visit with U.S. troops, many of whom were just children when the war began here more than 16 years ago, and to meet with top Afghan leaders to discuss President Trump's strategy for the conflict.

Pences journey was shrouded in secrecy, and only a few members of his own staff knew about the preparations. He slipped out of Washington on Wednesday afternoon so that he could arrive at Bagram Airfield near Kabul long after the sun had set Thursday. He traveled in a nondescript C-17 instead of a traditionally labeled Air Force Two.

In the dark of night, he traveled via helicopter to the Presidential Palace in Kabul  a trip that almost didnt happen because visibility was low. Four helicopters took off without knowing whether they would be able to land. After they circled over Kabul, there was a brief break in the weather, allowing Pence to swoop in.

He met with President Ashraf Ghani and the countrys chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom he regularly communicates with on behalf of Trump.

I hope my presence here is tangible evidence that the leadership of President Trump, our administration and the armed forces that we are here to see this through, Pence said in the opening minutes of a meeting with Ghani and his staff.

After meeting for about 45 minutes, Pence returned to the airfield and spoke to about 500 troops for 20 minutes. He opened his remarks by passing along greetings from Trump, who has yet to visit a combat zone as president.

Pence said that Trump had this simple message: Tell them I love them.

The vice president thanked the troops for serving their country and being away from their families at Christmas, calling them heroes and the worlds greatest force for good. Pences voice was raspy from a cold and his eyes showed the exhaustion of long overseas travel following late-night congressional votes.

Although the crowd cheered when Pence mentioned that service members just received a pay raise and promised that their taxes would go down under the tax cut plan passed this week, it was otherwise rather subdued. After working a full day, the troops had to stand and wait for Pence for several hours. Several troops stood with their arms crossed or their hands folded behind their backs and listened, but did not applaud.

Pence also recapped the presidents new strategy for Afghanistan, which includes increasing the number of troops. Later in the evening, Pence wouldnt say if the president plans to send even more troops to the region.

Under President Donald Trump, the armed forces of the United States will remain engaged in Afghanistan until we eliminate the terrorist threat to our homeland, to our people, once and for all, Pence said in his speech to troops.

In Washington on Thursday afternoon, Trump made visited patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.



Pence meets with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and others at the Presidential Palace in Kabul. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Pence was supposed to travel to Egypt and Israel this week, but aides said he canceled his plans at the last minute so he could stay in Washington in case his vote was needed to break a tie in the Senate on the tax overhaul package.

That decision, which was announced Monday afternoon, came amid uproar over the Trump administrations decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and after several leaders in the region canceled their meetings with Pence. He is now expected to travel to the Middle East during the week of Jan. 14, according to senior White House officials.

His wife, Karen Pence, a regular travel partner whom he calls his own commander in chief, did not accompany him on the trip to Afghanistan.

Reporters who traveled with Pence operated under the terms of an embargo that did not allow publication until about an hour before he departed early Friday.

Throughout the visit, Pence said the United States is committed to supporting the Afghan government to defeat the Taliban and terrorist groups in the region.

That commitment marked a shift for Trump, who had repeatedly questioned why the United States was still involved in Afghanistan and why it was spending so much money there. During the presidential campaign, Trump called the war a terrible mistake but acknowledged that pulling out of the country at this point would lead to its collapse.

In August, Trump announced that the United States would continue its involvement in Afghanistan, saying that his first instinct was to pull out but that he changed his mind because decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In a policy speech, Trump said that the United States must seek an honorable and enduring outcome and would do so by focusing on killing terrorists in Afghanistan instead of nation-building, and by pressuring Pakistan to crack down on terrorist organizations.

For too long Pakistan has provided safe haven for the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, but those days are over., Pence said in his speech to the troops, who loudly cheered. Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with the United States. Pakistan has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals.

Trump declined to say how many more troops he expected to send to Afghanistan, although congressional officials have said they were told it would be about 4,000 more than the 8,500 U.S. service members who were already in the region at the time.

As the Afghanistan war has dragged on, it has faded from the attention of many Americans, and polls have shown that a majority of Americans just want the conflict to be over. Afghanistan was rarely discussed in presidential debates or campaign rallies, as Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton focused more attention on Syria, Iraq and North Korea.

Within two months of taking office in 2009, then-president Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Baghdad, and he went to Afghanistan a total of four times during his presidency. His predecessor, George W. Bush, made two trips to Afghanistan and four to Iraq. While Trump has made a number of international trips, he has yet to visit Afghanistan or Iraq.

Pence comes from a military family, although he never served himself. His father, Edward J. Pence, earned a Bronze Star in Korea, while his older brother, Gregory, enlisted in the Marines in college and served in Lebanon. Pences son is a Marine aviator based in the United States.

After speaking with the troops, Pence spent more than 40 minutes shaking their hands, posing for selfies and personally thanking them for their service. He took questions from reporters and posed for formal photos  but his favorite photo of the evening, he said, was taken soon after returning to base from the palace, when he asked to have his photo taken with the flight crew who made the long-shot trip through the darkness possible.

I said, I want to meet them,  Pence said. It was not an easy flight to take, but we felt it was very important  very important  to go to the palace. It was an opportunity to stand on the steps of the palace, shoulder to shoulder with President Ghani, and say, Were here. Its a real testament to these aviators that we were able to get in.

Pence left Afghanistan early Friday morning after just over seven hours on the ground.
To fill their top spot on the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats had a choice between experts in two critical policy arenas  a constitutional-law ace with firsthand experience battling Donald Trump, and an architect of sweeping immigration legislation.

By a wide margin, they chose the constitutional-law expert. Why? To ready themselves for a battle with President Trump that could end with impeachment proceedings.

The selection of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee was the clearest sign yet of how seriously House Democrats consider the possibility of a full-blown constitutional showdown with Trump.

You wouldn't know it from how many of them talk. When it comes to the i-word, most Democrats have walked a tightrope  with even Nadler hesitant to mention impeachment in interviews before votes were cast Wednesday.

Leaders have cautioned the rank and file not to push for impeachment, because the public might view it as an overreach. The Houses few remaining moderate Democrats from swing districts have regularly warned the partys liberal flank against making the 2018 midterm elections about Trump or the investigations into his presidential campaign.



Rep. Jerrold Nadler D-N.Y.), alongside House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte R-Va.), left, on Capitol Hill last month. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Look, Robert S. Mueller III is on the case, said Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), from a western Illinois district that swung to Trump last year. Weve got to let him do what hes going to do and let the facts go wherever theyre going to go. In the end the truth comes out, but I dont think we need to rush anything more than that.

Bustos had a one-word reply when asked what issues Democrats need to focus on in the next 11 months: Jobs.

Yet Nadler anchored his candidacy for his new position, vacated with the resignation of Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), on the 13 years he has spent as chairman or ranking Democrat on the panels Constitution subcommittee and, more recently, its courts subcommittee.

He also politely reminded Democrats in recent days of his efforts, beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing into last decade, to impede Trumps efforts to develop portions of New Yorks Upper West Side, which Nadler has represented in the New York State Assembly, and subsequently the House, for more than 40 years.

Nadler won a secret ballot 118 to 72, demonstrating that this caucus wants to be ready to clash with Trump if it vaults into the majority after next years midterm elections.

There is nobody better prepared, if the president messes around with the Constitution, to handle it than Jerry Nadler, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the vote.

[The campaign to impeach President Trump: A users guide]

Schumer, a confidant of Nadlers since the 1970s, did not have a vote in the race, but he echoed the sentiment of many House Democrats.

It was not meant as a slight to the importance of immigration, an issue that Nadlers opponent, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), had argued was the partys main focus.

And these internal elections for leadership posts and top committee slots often turn largely on personal relationships that lawmakers build over decades in office. This race was no different.

Nadler had the backing of most, if not all, of New Yorks 18 Democratic lawmakers, as well as many members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The CBC has long held that seniority (Nadler was elected in 1992 and Lofgren in 1994) should be the most important factor in these posts, rather than qualities such as the ability to raise money. Thats because many of its members come from poorer, urban districts and do not have the wealthy donor bases of some of their colleagues.

Yet Lofgren hails from a state with 39 Democrats, and with more than 60 women casting ballots in the Democratic leadership races, she was considered a strong challenger for a post that Conyers vacated amid sexual harassment allegations.

One Democratic handicapper familiar with recent internal races expected Nadler to win by about 15 votes. Instead, he won by more than double that margin.

What changed the calculus?

The constitutional argument, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said in explaining the broad support for Nadler. Democrats, he said, must prepare for the coming storm.

[House votes to kill Texas lawmakers Trump impeachment effort]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) played down any division within her caucus, suggesting that the race was spirited but helpful in highlighting key issues. It was a good, healthy race, said Pelosi, who stayed neutral. I thought they both made a very good showing.

Schumer said he first met Nadler when he a West Side kid, one of the leaders of the West Side political movement. The Brooklyn Democrat won his first assembly race in 1974, and Nadler won his two years later.

After a failed 1985 mayoral bid, Nadler won his House seat in 1992 and became a force on the Judiciary Committee, particularly as a top defender in 1998 of President Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings.

"History and the precedents alike show that impeachment is not a punishment for crimes but a means to protect our constitutional system," he said then in his opening statement during the committee's proceedings. "And it was certainly not meant to be a means to punish a president for personal wrongdoing not related to his office."

A fairly doctrinaire liberal, Nadler represents a district where Trump received just 19 percent of the vote last year. He refused to attend Trumps inauguration, saying that he was legally elected despite allegations of Russian interference. Instead, Nadler said then, Trumps actions inflaming racial tensions made him not legitimate as president.

By May, after the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director, Nadler told CNN that there might be a "very strong case" for obstruction-of-justice charges against Trump.

Democrats are careful to say that Nadler will not push too far or too fast on any impeachment proceedings. He doesnt rush to judgment about anything, very deliberative, said Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), a friend of more than 25 years.

Such cautious statements aside, its hard not to conclude that Nadler was given his new job for a singular reason.

Its something I think he was made for, Crowley said. Hes at the right place at the right time and when we need him most.

Read more from Paul Kane's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Senates top Republican on Thursday quashed calls from House leaders to tackle Medicare and Medicaid spending next year, declaring it politically unfeasible and thus off the 2018 agenda.

I think Democrats are not going to be interested in entitlement reform, so I would not expect to see that on the agenda, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at a breakfast sponsored by Axios. What the Democrats are willing to do is important, because in the Senate, with rare exceptions like the tax bill, we have to have Democratic involvement.

McConnells comments are a direct blow to the agenda of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who has been saying for weeks that Congress will work on ways to reduce spending on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare in the new year.

[Ryan says Republicans to target welfare, Medicare, Medicaid spending in 2018]

His statement is also a sign that Senate Republican leaders want to limit the situations in which they are willing to rely on procedural moves to get around Democratic opposition in a high-stakes election year.

Any challenge to entitlement spending could also find opposition in the White House. President Trump, as a candidate, promised he would not cut spending on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. In an interview with conservative radio host Ross Kaminsky earlier this month, Ryan said he was working to convince Trump about cutting spending on the programs.

McConnells dismissal of entitlement changes comes just one day after Republicans cheered themselves for passing the most sweeping tax bill to emerge from Congress in decades, the GOPs first major legislative victory since assuming control of both Congress and the White House.

Republicans passed the tax bill without a single Democratic vote by using the budget reconciliation procedure, which allows certain fiscal measures to pass the Senate without clearing the usual 60-vote hurdle.

The Senate could try to use the budget reconciliation maneuver to reduce federal spending on the entitlement programs. But such reductions are a much more politically treacherous endeavor than the tax overhaul, particularly with the GOP trying to protect a slim 51-vote majority in the Senate next year.

And Democrats are already warning Republicans against attempting to force any reductions to entitlement spending, making it almost certain that if the GOP goes ahead with such changes, they will be doing so without any Democratic support  and exposing themselves to attacks on the campaign trail.

While McConnell said Thursday that he was confident the GOP would keep the Senate majority after the 2018 elections because fewer Republican seats are in play, he warned that the map alone doesnt guarantee the outcome.

Read more at PowerPost
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello (center) addresses reporters next to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen ( left) and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson as they toured hurricane devastation on the island on Dec. 19, 2017. (Alvin Baez/Reuters)

Puerto Ricos governor is warning that the sweeping tax plan passed by congressional Republicans on Wednesday could deliver a crippling blow to the islands already-fragile economy, still reeling from the effects of major hurricanes.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello (D) is calling on lawmakers to rewrite a key part of the tax bill that he says might cause the islands hefty manufacturing sector to contract, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Supporters of the tax bill who track Puerto Ricos concerns closely said they are hoping to make minor changes to the new law  but that the new business tax is likely to survive.

The tax bill passed overwhelmingly in the House on Wednesday includes a new 12.5 percent tax on profits derived from intellectual property held by foreign companies  a move designed to compel those companies to move back to the United States. Puerto Rico is considered part of the United States in all realms except taxes  meaning that island residents dont pay federal income taxes but do pay into Social Security. Companies based on the island are treated as if they were located in other Caribbean tax havens not under an American flag.

Given its status as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico is not a foreign tax haven, Rossello said in a letter to top lawmakers Tuesday, adding that changing the islands tax status to treat it like the rest of the United States makes common sense.

The new tax is a big hit, and Puerto Rico both fiscally and economically is downtrodden, and this is the last thing they need, said Federico de Jesus, a former Puerto Rico government official who has been tracking congressional relief efforts for the island.



Department of Homeland Security personnel deliver supplies to residents of Santa Ana, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 5, 2017. (Carlos Giusti/AP)

Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.) said that the new tax will visit another Hurricane on Puerto Rico  an economic hurricane.

Velazquez, who represents parts of Brooklyn but was born in Puerto Rico, said that the change continues an awful tradition of Congress undermining the islands economy and that the tax could cost Puerto Rico more than 200,000 jobs at exactly the time when the Island needs all the help it can get.

The islands top advocates also complained that the tax bill failed to apply a new $2,000 child tax credit to Puerto Rico residents.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who pushed for the more generous tax credit, said he was really disappointed that a glitch in the law failed to apply it to the island.

I think we can fix that, and potentially very soon, Rubio said Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee who represents the South Florida congressional district closest to Puerto Rico, said he is also pushing to apply the child tax credit to Puerto Rico taxpayers in a bill that is likely to be introduced early next year to make other minor changes to the new tax laws.

Curbelo also pushed for Puerto Ricos ability to apply for opportunity zone tax breaks, designed to spur investment in economically depressed areas.



Sen. Marco Rubio R-Fla.), a proponent of a more generous child tax credit, admitted he was disappointed that it didnt apply to Puerto Rico. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

"There are a few provisions in the tax bill that Carlos did not agree with and others that he felt should have been included," Curbelo spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez said in an email."The good news is there will be opportunities in the near future to make corrections to and strengthen the tax code."

Rubio said he is also concerned about the potentially adverse effect of the new tax but said it is better than the original House-passed proposal that would have enacted an even higher tax rate. Rubio dismissed Rossellos concerns about adverse effects on Puerto Ricos manufacturing sector.

Weve not heard from a single company, and in fact, every one of these entities involved in Puerto Rico has told us theyre in favor of the tax bill, Rubio said in an year-end interview with reporters. And a few have told us  especially on the pharmaceutical side  that their general sense of it is that moving would make no sense, because its not clear that theres any other jurisdiction in the world thats more advantageous logistically and from a tax perspective.

Pharmaceutical companies employ roughly 90,000 Puerto Rico residents.

"The bigger threat to the industrial base is the lack of electricity, and its long-term status is also something of concern," Rubio said.

In coming days, Congress is set to consider a roughly $81 billion plan to respond to this year's hurricanes and wildfires in California, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands  legislation that would amount to the single largest emergency spending bill since 2009's supplemental funding for the war on terrorism.

Supporters say that the new disaster relief bill doesn't go far enough for Puerto Rico.

Curbelo spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez , who represents the state with the largest mainland Puerto Rican population, said this week that the proposal "is a step in the right direction but not good enough."

Read more at PowerPost
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill in Washington in June. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Republican senators who worked swiftly last summer to help write legislation protecting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III now are showing little urgency to get those measures passed.

The legislation, which would allow a panel of federal judges to review orders to fire the special counsel, was intended to prevent President Trump from pushing out Mueller before he completes his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

But two different bipartisan proposals have been mired in negotiations for months. And despite continuing signs from the president that he is unhappy with Muellers investigation  which prompted the initial call for the legislation  Republicans appear to be losing their resolve to act.

Were still having the discussion, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), the co-author of one of the bills, said this week. Its not driven by any current events.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), another co-author of one of the bills, said, I dont really know, when asked the status of negotiations.

The lack of action has prompted some Democrats to accuse Republicans of intentionally drawing out passage of the legislation.

There is a sense that the wagons have been circled, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and co-sponsor of one of the two bills. Blumenthal said his GOP colleagues are under political pressure not to cross the president on Russia.

The question is really whether our Republican colleagues have a sense of emergency that I think befits our present situation, Blumenthal said.

There is not much left to negotiate. Both Democrats and Republicans say the main sticking point between the two bills is a dispute over whether a three-judge review of a special counsels termination should occur automatically or at the special counsels request.

But should senators produce a compromise bill, the next hurdle is significant: convincing skeptical Republicans that it is constitutional for a three-judge panel to review a presidents termination order, when people in the executive branch serve at the pleasure of the president.

Ive never been convinced theyre constitutional, said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary committee.

[Trump teams meeting with Muellers office poised to ratchet up tensions]

On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans have not drafted parallel legislation, many of them instead joining forcefully with Trump in criticizing Muellers investigation. In particular, they have called for a separate independent investigation of political bias within the FBI, following revelations of texts between bureau officials disparaging Trump.

Graham, Tillis, Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) wrote their bills over the summer to protect Mueller after Trump hinted that he might fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a way of reorganizing the Justice Department. At the time, Trump was furious that Sessions, a Trump loyalist, had recused himself from campaign-related matters at the department, leaving oversight of Mueller's probe to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Installing a new, loyal attorney general with direct oversight of the investigation could make it easier for Trump to force Muellers dismissal.

If anything, Trumps invective against Mueller has escalated since then.

Earlier this month, after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with former Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, Trump launched a Twitter storm criticizing the bureau and its previous director, James B. Comey.

[I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn: Trump goes on tweetstorm about the FBI]

This week, an attorney for Trump's presidential transition joined the fray, arguing that Mueller improperly obtained the Trump transition team's emails from the General Services Administration rather than from the transition team directly.

The lack of resolution has some Democrats convinced that Republicans are holding off to give Trump wiggle room to fire Mueller if the probe gets too close for comfort to the Oval Office.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) accused House Republicans calling for Muellers ouster of participating in a seemingly coordinated campaign to promote baseless accusations against Muellers character and professionalism.

After his remarks, Warner stopped short of charging the White House with actively coordinating the campaign when asked by reporters  and also demurred when asked if Senate Republicans were complicit by not doing anything to protect Muellers probe.

Its hard for me to imagine that they wouldnt be troubled by what appears to be a coordinated effort to undermine Mueller in many ways  more broadly, even, the FBI, Warner said, attributing the Senate GOPs inaction to lawmakers preoccupation with the tax bill that passed along near-party lines Wednesday.

The White House again pushed back on the rumors of a possible firing of Mueller Wednesday evening.

For five months or more the White House has persistently and emphatically stated there is no consideration of firing the Special Counsel and the White House willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the Special Counsel, Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing the Russia investigation, said in a statement.

Tillis has said repeatedly over the last few weeks that he wants to strike a deal on legislation to protect the special counsel. But he also noted Trumps statement over the weekend that he has no plans to fire Mueller  and said he believes the president.

Graham echoed that sentiment  and also voiced support for a growing effort within the Senate GOP to shift the discussion to the need for separate investigations into bias at the FBI as well as the Justice Departments handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, and a 2010 decision to let Russia assume a significant stake in the U.S. uranium market

I take the president at his word, he has no intention to fire Mueller, Graham said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said he is waiting to see what negotiators come up with before he even considers putting a bill through the legislative process.

I suspect there are some Republicans that may not want to pass [the bill], said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the leading Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, though she warned that nothing would be worse for the GOP than if Trump fired Mueller.

Read more at PowerPost
Sen. Al Franken bade farewell to Capitol Hill on Thursday with a lengthy broadside against the policies of the Trump administration and a call for politicians to commit themselves to honesty in public discourse.

The speech put to rest questions about whether Franken (D-Minn.) would follow through on his promise to resign over more than a half-dozen allegations that he had touched women inappropriately.

Until Wednesday, Franken had not announced the date he would leave the Senate, and at least two Democratic colleagues  Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.)  recently said that he should reverse his decision.

In his farewell address, Franken lamented what he described as the degradation of truth in the national political debate and the hyper-partisan environment this has produced. He will resign his seat on Jan. 2 and his successor, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith (D), is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 3.

As I leave the Senate, I have to admit that it feels like were losing the war for truth, Franken said in his final speech on the Senate floor. Maybe its already lost. If thats what happens, then we have lost the ability to have the kinds of arguments that help build consensus.

As Republicans celebrated the passage of their tax plan in another part of the Capitol, Franken denounced the bill as a means of "showering corporations and wealthy donors with tax breaks and special favors."

The Republican tax bill represents a slap in the face to those forgotten men and women mentioned by President Trump during the 2016 campaign, he said. I guess the president forgot about them.

Franken is one of seven lawmakers who in the past three months have resigned or decided not to run for reelection after allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment. His departure is a symbol of the wider reckoning taking place over sexual misbehavior among powerful men and the power of womens allegations in the wake of the #MeToo campaign to raise awareness about sexual harassment.

[Analysis: Could Al Franken un-resign? Sure.]

On Thursday, Frankens speech was followed by warm tributes from colleagues who praised his legacy and said they were sad to see him go.

Im sorry that hes leaving under these circumstances, said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). Everyone who has ever lived has had moments they wish they could erase. . . . We all draw strength from the healing power of redemption, and we can take heart in the knowledge that tomorrow is another day.

Franken, 65, joined the Senate in July 2009 and worked hard to distance himself from his prior career as a comedian. Cultivating a reputation as a serious legislator, he emerged as a powerful voice against corporate interests in politics and one of the Democrats most pointed and effective critics of Trump.

The two-term senator had risen as far as to be discussed as a possible candidate for president in 2020, until a woman said last month that he had grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping and forcibly kissed her in 2006. That woman, Leeann Tweeden, was followed by several others who alleged sexual misconduct by Franken.

The drumbeat of allegations proved to be too much. On Dec. 6, a wave of Senate Democrats called for Franken to step aside, and the next day he said he would resign in the coming weeks.

Franken, who apologized in the face of some of the accusations, was defiant as he made his announcement. He has denied some allegations while saying he remembered other situations differently from his accusers. He also sought to turn the tables on Trump, who faces arguably more-serious allegations of sexual misconduct.

"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," Franken said in his Dec. 7 speech.

In his remarks Thursday, Franken did not address the allegations or outline his plans after leaving office. Instead, he took a comprehensive look at his political values and how they are faring under Trump.

With several references to Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), a political mentor who died in 2002, Franken said the Trump administration and the Republican Party have eviscerated policies designed to protect racial minorities, women and LGBT people, among other vulnerable groups.

The policies pursued by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans today could not stand in starker contrast to the values Paul championed, Franken said. The values propelling the Republican agenda today are about consolidating political and economic power in the hands of corporations and the very wealthy.

As Franken spoke, several Democratic colleagues sat listening. For most of the speech, there was only one Republican  Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)  in attendance.

Franken thanked Alexander for seeking consensus and a shared understanding of the facts as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Franken is a member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for when weve done that, he said.

Paul Kane and Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that RT had accused France of supporting terrorism in Syria. RT was quoting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On right, Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Kremlin-funded RT television network, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, celebrated RTs 10th anniversary in December 2015. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo/AP)

At long last, RT has arrived on French television.

The Kremlin-funded news agency aired its first broadcast Monday, with a segment that quoted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accusing the French government of "supporting terrorism" in Syria and featuring a far-right local politician who waxed poetic about a world where France "regained its independence" from NATO.

For an agency accused of spreading disinformation in the 2016 U.S. election, these are predictable messages, especially in a Western democracy that is no stranger to nativist populism.

The question is how many people in France and across Europe  where the extreme right has made significant gains in recent elections  will see these new nightly broadcasts.

For the moment in France, not many.

RT  formerly known as Russia Today  can be seen only via its website or with a subscription to the broadband arm of Iliad, a French telecommunications service provider. The channel will not be readily available in most French households, unlike Frances four major news channels, which run 24/7.

[National security strategy plan paints China, Russia as U.S. competitors]

This may soon change, as Frances two biggest telecommunications providers, Orange and SFR, are in negotiations with RT, the conglomerates confirmed to the French press this week. If the parties reach an agreement, RT could find wider audiences. The network has sizable ambitions: a reported launch budget of some $24 million, as well as the goal of hiring 150 employees by the end of next year.

RT is not a journalistic outlet  its an information weapon, said Ben Nimmo, a research fellow with the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab and an expert on disinformation and hybrid warfare. Its purpose is to build an audience to be used for information warfare if necessary.

Nimmo said that Margarita Simonyan, RTs editor in chief, has regularly described her organization as an information weapon and in the Russian press has compared it to Russias Defense Ministry.

[Putin thanks Trump for CIA intel that foiled a planned terrorist attack in Russia]

As Simonyan said in a 2013 interview: "It's a weapon like any other. Do you understand? And to say, why do we need it  it's about the same as saying: 'Why do we need the Ministry of Defense, if there is no war?' "

A year earlier, while discussing the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, Simonyan recounted: "The Defense Ministry was fighting with Georgia. But we were fighting the information war, and what's more, against the whole Western world."

RT technically has been in France since 2015, although not on television until now. The organization has operated a platform for digital journalism that was the object of much anxiety in the 2017 French presidential election, which saw the Kremlin-backed Marine Le Pen, a right-wing extremist, face off against the centrist Emmanuel Macron, who ultimately won in a landslide.

At a news conference in May, just weeks after his victory, Macron stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin and called RT and Sputnik organs of influence and propaganda that spread counterfeit truths about me.

[Russia rolls out plan to bar American media from parliament in RT retaliation]

I have always had an exemplary relationship with foreign journalists, Macron said, but they have to be journalists. To date, RT journalists are not accredited to attend French government events, such as regular Elysee Palace news conferences.

In the United States, RT  which intelligence agencies labeled as Russias state-run propaganda machine in a January report  registered last month as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. The following week, the congressional Radio-Television Correspondents Gallery revoked RTs credentials to cover Capitol Hill.

Xenia Fedorova, the chief executive of RT France, rejects what she considers the unfair exclusion the network already has suffered in France. "RT stands for news that is not covered by the mainstream media," she told the Reuters news agency this week. "We will keep the platform open to perspectives and opinions that are either not covered or silenced."

Fedorova did not respond when the Washington Post attempted to contact her.

Since the U.S. presidential election, Western concerns over the international expansion of the Russian media outlet often have proved largely unwarranted.

On RTs British channel, for instance, a controversial program anchored by the Scottish National Partys Alex Salmond generated a flurry of media attention when it debuted in November  as well as an almost immediate investigation by Ofcom, the British broadcasting watchdog, as to whether the program breached our rules on due accuracy.

But the numbers spoke for themselves: Only 16,000 viewers tuned in to see the first edition of Salmond, according to Britain's Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. Statistics from the same week showed the Salmond show had 8,000 fewer viewers than "Whale Adventure with Nigel Marven."

RTs German branch, RT Deutsch, has relied on digital distribution channels to reach its viewers since it was founded in 2014. It now has 120,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 350,000 followers on Facebook, although it is unclear what percentage of that audience is in Germany.

RT Deutsch often invites right-wing and left-wing experts or politicians on air who are less likely to be featured in more-established German media outlets. Whereas some of its German coverage resembles typical news documentaries or interviews, it also has developed a provocative style and recently accused some of its German competitors of circulating "Fake News."

While studies commissioned by RT often appear to inflate the size of the audiences reached, especially in the United States, it is unclear how much traction the network has. In the past, the Nielsen ratings, an industry standard for ascertaining audience size, have not listed RT.

In France, broadcast regulators told reporters that they would be constantly monitoring the Kremlin-backed newcomer.

It would be very problematic to ban something like that, because you then open the door to lots of other censorship concerns, said the Atlantic Councils Nimmo. But awareness is key.

Rick Noack in Berlin contributed to this report.
Cuban President Raul Castro will remain in power until April, the government said Thursday, delaying a historic transition that would leave the communist island nation without a Castro in charge for the first time since 1959.

The brother of former Cuban leader and revolutionary figure Fidel Castro, who died in 2016, Raul Castro, 86, had previously announced he would step aside when a new National Assembly was elected on Feb. 24. But the assembly decided Thursday to postpone the vote  and prolong Castros mandate  until April 19, citing delays and complications related to destruction inflicted by Hurricane Irma, according to official Cuban news outlets.

Observers suggested the powers that be in Havana may actually be angling for more time as they struggle to build a consensus over the path ahead.

[Trump: Well get Cuba straightened out]

The vote comes as Cubas thaw with the United States under President Barack Obama has turned frosty under the Trump administration, and as its own hard-liners question just how fast the island nation should embrace reform. Meanwhile, one of its closest allies  Venezuela  is mired in a deep economic crisis, unable to provide Cuba with as much cheap crude as it used to under an energy-for-doctors deal struck in 2000.

Theyre very nervous about this transition, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. Its going to go forward, but the Trump administration has thrown a wrench into their thinking, and they want to make sure things are going to go according to plan.

Obamas historic visit to Cuba in 2016  the first by a sitting U.S. president since 1928  promised a new dawn in long-problematic U.S.-Cuba relations. But the prospects for change have darkened.

[When President Obama moved to normalize relations with Cuba]

This year, U.S. officials said that at least 24 American staff members and spouses attached to its embassy in Havana were the victims of a mysterious attack that left at least some with brain trauma, affecting vision, balance and memory. Cuba has strongly denied any wrongdoing and protested the October expulsion of 15 of its diplomats from its new embassy in Washington.

President Trump also has curbed the less-restrictive rules on Americans traveling to Cuba enacted under Obama.

The Cubans, meanwhile, have sent conflicting signals.

Hard-liners have been pushing back against an accelerated economic opening. In August, Cuba at least temporarily suspended new business licenses, including for bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants. In October, however, the nations Foreign Ministry appeared to offer an olive branch to Cubans who fled the country in the 1950s during the Cuban revolution, introducing rules that make it easier for them to visit.

There is a clear battle between those who want to speed up and those who want to slow down economic reform, said Geoff Thale, a Cuba expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank.

It remained unclear whether Thursdays move signaled an attempt, preferred by some on the island, to keep Castro as leader for even longer.

The man currently tapped for the job of leading a post-Castro era is First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel. The 57-year-old was born after the revolution, and his ascension would signify a new generation of leadership.

Some have suggested he could be more of a moderate, though there is evidence to the contrary. A leaked video of Diaz-Canel in a private meeting with Communist Party members showed him threatening to block a website  OnCuba, which he accused of being very aggressive against the revolution  and accusing European diplomats of subversive activities in Havana.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Catalans cast their votes in a regional parliamentary election in Barcelona on Thursday. Their choice is between pro-separatist parties or those that want to keep the region firmly part of Spain. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The three pro-independence parties in Catalonia won a majority of seats in a parliamentary election in the restive region Thursday, setting the stage for another fraught showdown with the central government in Madrid.

With a record-breaking turnout of more than 80 percent, Catalans dealt Spains prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, a major setback as the secessionist leaders stood poised to return to power in Barcelona, among them former regional president Carles Puigdemont, now in exile in Brussels.

Rajoy and his allies have been defeated, Puigdemont said. They received a big slap-down.

Voters packed polling stations to pick a new legislature and to answer an old and bitterly divisive question: Did they back leaders who wanted to remain a part of Spain or seek independence?

[In the boxing ring and on the streets, Catalonia is split ahead of latest vote on future with Spain]

With 99 percent of the ballots counted, the three pro-independence parties had taken 48 percent of the vote, while the unionist parties and a few smaller parties had garnered 52 percent.

But the pro-independence parties were set to claim 70 seats in the regional parliament with those numbers, giving them a majority in the 135-seat chamber. The unionists and other parties would likely take 65 seats.

The secessionists won that many seats thanks to an electoral-college-style system that gives added weight to votes cast in less populated areas  the traditional strongholds of Catalan nationalist identity. The system is intended to balance out the populated urban areas with rural communities, thus affording parliamentary representation to regional groups even though they might lack a popular majority.

The pro-unity Citizens Party was poised to come in first in terms of votes but is expected to be unable to form a government.

The law is unfair that gives a majority to the Parliament that they dont have on the streets, said Citizens party leader Ines Arrimadas, speaking against the way votes are weighted  rural vs. urban  in Catalonia.

Still, she was ebullient, saying that her partys victory was made possible by more than a million brave people who rejected separation from Spain.

For the first time ever, a constitutionalist party won the election in Catalonia, Arrimadas said.

The pro-independent blocs majority means it will most likely form the new government after negotiations among its members.

Marta Rovira, the leader of the pro-independence Catalan Republican Left, said the secessionist blocs showing demonstrated that the citizens of Catalonia, the majority, voted for the republic.

She asked the prime minister: Mr. Mariano Rajoy, are you going to sit at a table as we always asked you and begin to negotiate? Are you going to abolish the 155?

Article 155 of the 1978 Spanish constitution was the tool Rajoy deployed, for the first time ever, to dissolve the rebellious regional legislature, take over the Catalan government and call snap elections.

Puigdemont warned: Europe has to take note. Rajoys remedies are not working. If he doesnt change, we are going to change the country faster than even we thought possible.

On Thursday, the balloting proceeded calmly across the region, unlike the chaotic referendum that was conducted in October despite being declared illegal by the countrys constitutional court. There were no reports of significant irregularities. Turnout was confirmed at a record 81 percent.

The election came less than two months after 2 million Catalans chose to secede from Spain and their leaders unilaterally declared independence, prompting the drastic moves by Rajoy.

The prime ministers hope was for a legal and orderly vote in which the regions secessionists would be swept aside. He failed. His Popular Party also lost seven seats in the election.

Miquel Iceta, the Catalan Socialists candidate, celebrated the huge turnout. The greater the participation, the more the joy for all democrats, he said.

At one polling place in an upscale neighborhood in Barcelona, voters on both sides of the independence issue confessed they felt more fatigue than excitement. Many said they were disturbed by the deep rift that has emerged in Catalan society.

It feels like Catalonia is totally broken, said Ines Corrales, 19, a student who had plastered a Spanish flag sticker on her motorbike helmet. She said she voted for the Cuidadanos, or Citizens, party, which opposes independence.

Corrales said that even her childhood friends had ribbed her for not supporting the separatists, calling her a fascist.

I was never for independence, though I love Catalonia, said Javier Sedo, 81, a pensioner with a cane. I believe the power of Spain is the union of its many nations.

Sedo, who joked that he wished his country were more like the United States of Spain, said he had voted for the socialists.

A father and son, Ramiro and Guillermo Salina, ages 59 and 21, came out to vote together. They supported two different pro-independence parties.

I want to see a negotiation toward independence, the father said. His son volunteered, I just want independence.

Did they think they would see a sovereign Catalonia?

They didnt, not anytime soon.

I think we will have to vote on this issue again and maybe again, Ramiro Salina said.

It was not only the Spanish government that sought to stop the secessionists. Most of Spain and its powerful business groups oppose an independent Catalonia. European leaders, too, have made clear they would not recognize an independent Catalonia and want the matter settled and the situation returned to constitutional normalcy, as Rajoy put it.

[Catalan separatists counted on support from the E.U. But they got the cold shoulder.]

Yet there was little normal about this election.

Puigdemont fled into self-exile in Belgium in late October. Spanish prosecutors have dropped their request for his extradition, but the separatist leader still faces arrest on charges of rebellion if he returns to Spain.

Spanish news media reported that the national police were keeping a close eye on the border with France to see whether Puigdemont attempts to return.

Meanwhile, former vice president Oriol Junqueras sits behind bars in the national prison outside Madrid, as prosecutors decide whether to charge him with sedition, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years. His party, the Catalan Republican Left, came in third on Thursday.

The ousted secessionist and former president Puigdemont said, The prisoners have to be freed, and Mr. Rajoy needs to start to make political process to find a solution.

Rolfe reported from Madrid. Raul Gallego Abellan in Barcelona contributed to this report.

Read more:

How Catalonias independence went from dream to defeat in just a month

Meet the two jailed activists behind Catalonias independence movement

Catalonias independence vote: What you need to know

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a measure rejecting the Trump administrations recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, a stunning rebuke of a U.S. decision that allies and adversaries alike warned would undermine prospects for peace.

Despite U.S. threats to cut aid to countries that backed the resolution and even funding for the United Nations itself, 128 countries voted in favor of the measure. Only nine countries  including the United States and Israel  voted against it. Another 35 abstained, and 21 were absent.

The vote in a rare emergency session was a public reproach of an administration that stands alone in the world in recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital, a status other governments say should be left undecided until the final stage of talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The nonbinding resolution on illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of occupied Palestinian territory declared actions that predetermine Jerusalems fate null and void. Even countries that abstained offered explanations that distanced themselves from President Trumps Dec. 6 decision.

The vote also underscored the apparent futility of the U.S. campaign to sway votes by threatening to cut funding, which some countries viewed as an effort to intimidate them into submission. Although Trump said Wednesday that he would be "watching" for countries that receive a lot of U.S. aid and voted "against us," the list of co-sponsors grew at the last minute to include Egypt and Jordan, the only two countries besides Israel that receive more than $1 billion in U.S. aid annually.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, set the stage for a future showdown.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out in this assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation, she said. We will remember it when, once again, we are called up to make the worlds largest contribution to the U.N., and we will remember it when many countries come calling on us to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.

Characterizing the United States as disrespected, Haley said the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem regardless.

No vote in the United Nations is going to make any difference on that, she said. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans look at the U.N. and how we look at countries that disrespect us at the U.N. And this vote will be remembered.

[U.S. threatens countries with loss of aid over U.N. vote on Jerusalem]

Although its significance is purely symbolic, the resolution carries political resonance, particularly in the Middle East, where the U.S. decision has sparked protests and drawn condemnation from Arab governments. Underscoring the U.S. isolation on the issue, even many allies have publicly appealed to the administration to reverse its position and leave Jerusalem's status undecided until Israelis and Palestinians negotiate terms.

On Monday, the United States exercised its Security Council veto to block the same resolution. All 14 other countries on the council, including U.S. allies Britain and France, supported the measure. Yemen and Turkey then submitted the resolution to the General Assembly, where the United States does not have veto power.

None of the countries that voted with the United States and Israel against the resolution are diplomatic powerhouses  Guatemala, Honduras, Togo and the Pacific island states of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau. Among those voting in favor were Russia, China and several U.S. allies, notably Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Japan and Turkey. The abstaining nations included Canada, Mexico, Australia, Colombia, Haiti, Poland and the Philippines.

But many of the countries that abstained said they would keep their embassies in Tel Aviv. Many said they abstained because they thought the resolution did nothing to help push Israelis and Palestinians to negotiations toward a two-state solution.

Mexico does not see it as positive or useful for a unilateral declaration to have taken place to recognize Jerusalem as the capital, said Mexicos ambassador, Juan Jose Gomez Camacho, adding that it was unnecessary to hold an emergency session to discuss the issue.

[Trump plan to move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem angers Middle East Christians]

Although the vote was lopsided, there were more abstentions than in at least five previous resolutions related to Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. A spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations attributed the shift to Haleys efforts, which included a warning that the administration would be taking names and a letter to ambassadors saying she would report the results to Trump.

All of todays no votes, abstentions and no-shows were in solidarity with the U.S. position, which is a testament not only to those countries priorities but also to the diplomatic outreach by Ambassador Haley and her team, the spokesman said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel rejects the UN resolution and at the same time expresses satisfaction with the high number of countries that did not vote for the resolution.

Israel thanks President Trump for his unambiguous position in favor of Jerusalem and thanks the countries that voted together with Israel, together with the truth, he said.

Palestinians exulted in the display of support at the United Nations. Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat called the vote evidence that the dignified world is united against intimidation and bullying.

Haley had watched with her arms crossed as Yemens U.N. ambassador, Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany, introduced the resolution and called Trumps action a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world.

Some of the harshest criticism came from Turkey. Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkeys democratic will with your dollars, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted before the debate.

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, spoke directly to the administration when he told the General Assembly: "We will not be intimidated. You can be strong, but this doesn't make you right."

In Jerusalem, however, there was relief that the Trump administration has Israels back, even if the U.N. showdown accomplishes nothing.

I think when the leader of the free world recognizes the history of Jerusalem, then it is meaningful, and in the long term it will make a big difference, said Jerusalems mayor, Nir Barkat. Clearly day-to-day, nothing will change. We will continue to build in the city; we will continue to uphold freedom of religion, freedom of movement and the status quo. These are things we do every day anyway.

The show in the U.N., besides being shameful, proves that it is becoming less and less relevant from our perspective, he said.
This June 7, 2014, photo shows the entrance to Camp 5 and Camp 6 at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay detention center, at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (Ben Fox/AP)

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with troops at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday, the first time an American defense chief has visited the U.S. naval outpost since scores of terrorism suspects were imprisoned there in 2002.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was among senior officials to visit Guantanamo in January of that year, just as the George W. Bush administration was flying in shackled, hooded suspected militants in the months after the 9/11 attacks.

The naval stations prison, which housed more than 700 inmates at its peak, became a symbol of the U.S. excesses that followed those attacks, including detainee torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and opaque, slow-moving military trials.

[The Trump era has stranded these five men at Guantanamo Bay]

Col. Robert Manning III, a Pentagon spokesman, said Mattis made the visit to thank service members during the holidays but was not scheduled to visit the prison facilities or meet with officials responsible for the 41 detainees remaining there.

The visit highlights the Trump administrations evolving approach to the prison and to prosecuting and detaining terrorism suspects.

Since taking office, President Trump appears to have backed off earlier promises to fill Guantanamo with bad dudes. His administration has taken little visible action to renew military detentions there or to overcome the hurdles holding up the military commissions that are supposed to try suspects in the 9/11 attacks.

Trumps predecessor, President Barack Obama, failed to deliver on his promises of shuttering Guantanamo, and lawmakers have consistently opposed moving inmates to U.S. facilities for detention or trial.

Guantanamo remains a symbol of torture and illegal and illegitimate detention and trials, said Raha Wala, director of national security advocacy at Human Rights First.

So its unsurprising that the Trump administration is figuring out what prior administrations already knew: Guantanamo is a big headache and an unattractive option compared to detention using normal procedures, Wala said.

[After first saying send him to Gitmo, Trump changes his mind about N.Y. terrorism suspect]

While political leaders including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who visited Guantanamo in July, have voiced support for continuing detentions at Guantanamo, resistance from agencies involved in trying and housing terrorism suspects appears to have helped quash any steps to renew detentions there.

Trump appeared to reference those challenges after a terrorism attack in New York last month.

After initially saying he would like to see suspect Sayfullo Saipov at the military prison, the president later tweeted that he would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system.

Dan Lamothe, Julie Tate, Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
Donald D. Lawrence Audio Article

Friends and family of Compatriot Donald D. Lawrence are deeply saddened to announce his passing on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022,...

Guadalupe Lupe Campos Audio Article

Guadalupe Lupe Campos of La Vernia, Texas, passed away in his home on Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022. Lupe was born...

Manuel A. Acevedo Audio Article

Manuel A. Acevedo passed away in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022, at the age of 76 years...
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Unannounced inspections of immigration detention centres in the United States cast doubt on whether it truly is a safe third country for many refugees.

A Dec. 11 report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security found problems that undermine the protection of detainees rights, their humane treatment and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.

The findings echo what many Winnipeg arrivals have said about the for-profit prisons where refugee claimants whove committed no crime are detained for months, and sometimes years.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Razak Iyal, a Ghana native who nearly froze to death and lost several fingers to frostbite while crossing the U.S. border into Canada, says he was immediately locked up in a detention facility when he sought protection in the U.S.

Razak Iyal, who nearly froze to death and lost several fingers to frostbite while crossing into Canada last Christmas Eve, marched through snowy farm fields because the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement prohibits most asylum seekers from making a refugee claim at the border.

Legally, they have to be in Canada to ask for refugee protection.

Were not criminals, Iyal said, adding thats how refugee claimants are treated at for-profit immigration detention centres in the U.S.

Last week, a report issued by the Office of the Inspector General found potentially unsafe and unhealthy detention conditions in such centres.

Spoiled and mouldy food, inadequate medical care, no access to working phones, strip-searching new arrivals and locking up innocent asylum seekers with those with criminal backgrounds are some of the problems the report identified. Arbitrary lockdowns by guards and segregating detainees without explanation were two other findings by the U.S. government watchdog.

Its very, very bad, said Iyal, who was held for nearly two years in the Eloy Detention Center, a private prison in Arizona owned and operated by CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, and under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I worked there for a dollar day, Iyal said. I had to because when I was in there, I dont have any money.

Hed fled Ghana after receiving threats due to his sexual orientation, and spent his life savings travelling from Africa to South America and north through Central America into Mexico. When he arrived at the U.S. border, the man  who has no criminal record and posed no security threat  asked for refugee protection and was immediately locked up in a detention facility. He was assigned to clean the bathrooms, which he did until he became fed up and frustrated and refused to keep doing the dirty work.

Iyal said his refusal landed him in the hold, where he was locked away in solitary confinement for one week. Another time, a guard ordered a lockdown of detainees in their cells because the guard said hed had a fight with his girlfriend and was upset, Iyal recalled.

The guards some of them are good and some are crazy, said Iyal, who has been living in Winnipeg since his arrival in Canada.

The U.S. detention centre audit found some facility staff reportedly deterred detainees from filing grievances and staff did not always treat detainees respectfully and professionally, and some facilities may have misused segregation. It also found, upon entering some facilities, detainees were housed incorrectly based on their criminal history.

That was terrifying for Yahya Samatar, an aid worker who fled Somalia after receiving threats from al-Shabaab terrorists.

Being with criminals in the place was absolutely inappropriate for me, said Samatar, who made international headlines after he crossed into Canada by swimming down the Red River in 2015.

Trevor Hagan / The Canadian Press files Yahya Samatar was held in a U.S. detention centre for months after fleeing Somalia.

He said he was held in U.S. immigration detention for nine months.

In the bed next to me was a guy who killed three people, and he had a nightmare every night, Samatar said. That really scared me a lot.

With no access to legal help, his refugee claim was dismissed by a U.S. judge; Samatar was released and told to await deportation. He headed for Canada, where he said he received much more humane and fair treatment.

After receiving dry clothing from Canada Border Services Agency officers at the Manitoba border town of Emerson, where he passed criminal background and international security checks, Samatar was sheltered and assisted by Winnipeg charities.

He received provincial assistance and legal aid to make his refugee claim, which was successful.

The stark contrast between the two countries has prompted Canadian refugee advocates to get involved in a legal battle challenging the designation of the United States as a safe third country for most refugees.

The purpose or intent of the Safe Third Country Agreement is that on both sides of the border, those seeking protection are afforded fair, transparent and robust refugee determinations, said Dorota Blumczynska, executive director of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba and vice-president of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

The council, along with Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches, is challenging Americas designation as a safe third country. Detaining refugee claimants for many months in places that may be unsafe isnt living up to the agreement, or any of the human rights conventions many countries signed on to, Blumczynska said.

Barring that they dont pose any security risk, people are allowed to enter the community and access support services while they await their refugee determination, she said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The federal government has given Manitoba a deadline of late February to endorse Ottawas general climate change principles, or risk losing an estimated $66 million in funding for low-carbon retrofits, the Free Press has learned.

Environment Canada confirmed Manitoba will lose its share of the $2-billion fund if it doesnt ratify the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change by Feb. 28.

The department confirmed Wednesday that federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna set the deadline in a recent letter to her provincial counterpart, Rochelle Squires. Neither the department nor Squires office would provide the letter, citing confidentiality.

Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press files Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires (left) with federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in Vancouver in November.

Its the latest escalation in a 12-month standoff, throughout which only Manitoba and Saskatchewan have refused to endorse the framework.

Squires said Tuesday shed be open to supporting the framework if Ottawa moves forward without prescribing a carbon-tax level on Manitoba. The federal Liberals have repeatedly said the two are not linked.

The money falls under the Low Carbon Economy Fund, which is to be used for projects that make buildings more energy efficient, and store or capture carbon during agricultural processes.

Each province and territory that endorses the framework will receive a baseline of $30 million, plus an amount based on population.

Officials said Wednesday Manitoba would be allocated roughly $66 million.

Roughly three-quarters of the $2-billion fund will go to provinces and territories. The rest will go to projects, which Indigenous, not-for-profit and business groups can apply for, as well as provincial and municipal governments, if their ideas meet the goals of the fund.

Environment Canada said Wednesday if Manitoba or Saskatchewan doesnt join the framework, the funding allocated for them 12 months ago will be moved to the challenge fund.

In October, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister proposed a carbon tax that falls short of Ottawas 2022 target of $50 per tonne of carbon. The Manitoba plan sets a flat $25 levy, meaning it only complies with escalating federal benchmarks for the first 2.5 years.

On Monday, Squires said Manitoba wont be able to get the funding because agreeing to the framework would compel it to reach the $50 target.

Environment Canada officials said Wednesday theres no framework document that must be signed, but rather, provinces must endorse a set of principles  including the need for carbon pricing  without any set targets. They noted when the other 11 provinces and territories ratified the framework last December, none of them had a 2022 plan in place.

The high-ranking officials, who asked not to be named, said Manitoba has been diligently reporting its climate plans, despite not ratifying the framework. They said once Manitoba does so, theyll co-author a statement outlining how the province intends to help the federal government reach its 2030 emissions-reduction target, as other provinces have done.

On Wednesday, Squires repeated the provinces claim that its plan will achieve greater emissions reductions than Ottawas targets, citing scientific modelling used by Environment Canada.

Cumulative emissions are projected to drop by more than one megatonne  80,000 tonnes more than with the federal carbon tax, in five years, Squires wrote in an email.

We look forward to opportunities to discuss with the federal government how the made-in-Manitoba climate and green plan will meet their climate objectives and exceed the emissions goals of the Pan-Canadian framework.

Meanwhile, McKenna made public Wednesday deadlines for when provinces carbon levies must kick in.

She has asked the regions to implement a minimum tax of $10 per tonne by Dec. 31, 2018, but only compels them to have a levy by the next day, at $20, before escalating by $10 each year until reaching $50 in 2022.

Provinces have until either March 30 to confirm theyre following a federal tax system, or Sept. 1 to announce their own plans, such as Ontarios cap-and-trade model or the British Columbia tax.

McKenna wouldnt say Wednesday whether her department has worked hard enough over the past year to get Manitoba on board, nor whether she feels Manitoba had a right to complain about its funding being in limbo.

We will be evaluating each system. We have a backstop, and they need to meet the backstop. But were encouraged that the (Manitoba) government announced that they are putting a price on pollution. That is the key, she said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two agencies that advocate for inmates are praising a new provincial program to release incarcerated men and women early.

The John Howard and Elizabeth Fry societies in Manitoba released a joint statement Thursday, throwing their support behind the new plan. On Tuesday, Justice Minister Heather Stefanson said 33 inmates had been released under the new responsible reintegration initiative since Oct. 1.

The program grants low-risk inmates a temporary absence from jail, and provides them with community supervision, plus assistance finding housing, work, education and addiction treatment. It applies to inmates in provincial jails, where sentences do not exceed two-years-less-a-day. It doesnt apply to inmates in federal prisons, who have stiffer sentences.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The province says one-third of the 33 inmates released under its responsible reintegration initiative have found jobs. Under the program, inmates at provincial facilities like Headingley Correctional Centre may be eligible for early release.

This is a smart way to go, John Howard Society executive director John Hutton said in the statement. We have promoted this kind of approach for several years, and were pleased to see Manitoba Justice move forward with it.

The province expects 100 inmates will be released from provincial jails each year under the program, Stefanson said.

So far, one-third of the 33 who are out have found jobs and another 27 per cent are in job-training programs, the province reports.

In Manitoba, the average length of sentence is 54 days. During that time, people may have lost jobs, housing, care and custody of children, key personal relationships and even their personal belongings, the province said Thursday by email.

The new program was designed to reduce strain on overcrowded jails and remand facilities, but in their joint statement, the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry societies said it would help if the province also returned funding to them to help them do the same work and to liaise with officers assigned to the early-release inmates.

We look forward to playing an important role in the success of this new provincial initiative, said Jyoti Singh, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba. While we have the capacity and the relationships in place to assist with reintegration, our resources are very limited.

The province pared back funding to both societies by 20 per cent this year.

Stefanson indicated theres no new money for the work; instead, existing probation and corrections officers are handling the program. They were reassigned from three other specialized units within the system.

She said Manitoba has among the highest incarceration rates in the country, along with some of the highest crime rates in Canada. The program is a step in the provinces criminal justice reform and its designed to lower recidivism rates, the justice minister said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The province needs to step back and let the Indigenous community figure out how to fix Manitobas child-welfare system, says activist Michael Redhead Champagne.

The founder of Winnipeg-based community organization Aboriginal Youth Opportunities is among seven people whom Families Minister Scott Fielding named Thursday to a legislative review committee that will recommend changes to reform child welfare.

Government really needs to take a step back, Champagne told reporters. He wants the advocates and communities to have space and time to talk among themselves about whats best for the children.

Michael Redhead Champagne wants the advocates and communities to have space and time to talk among themselves about what's best for the children. (Tyler Walsh / Free Press files)

I see many, many barriers to where we want to see our communities and families to ultimately want to be, said Champagne, who spent time in the child-welfare system as a youth.

The system in Manitoba is complicated and one parents find difficult to understand, which leads to panic when workers show up at their homes, he said.

Champagne wants everyone in the system  social workers, agencies, government, Indigenous organizations and families  to be on the same page. When children do have to be taken into care for their safety, We want to ensure they are living in the best possible situation, which means good families maintaining the childs culture, in homes on reserves or in the inner city, he said.

Fielding said the review process will involve Indigenous leadership and communities.

We want to ensure its a community-driven process (to) repair the system thats been broken.

The minister said the Tory governments priority is to reduce both the number of children in care, and their time in care, while striving to keep children with their families.

Hell meet with federal Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott next month to discuss a national child welfare strategy.

Fielding appointed Tory MLA Andrew Micklefield to head the review committee.

Compared with the rest of the country and the proportion of children taken into care, especially Indigenous children, Micklefield told reporters: Clearly, our numbers are way out of whack. Theyre off the charts.

In the legislation he inherited from the former NDP government, Fielding said, Manitoba goes too far in deciding when a child should be taken into care. You look at the thresholds, when a child should be taken into care, theyre the broadest in the country, he said.

Said Micklefield: We have to fix this. These arent numbers, theyre people, theyre children  this is not some numbers game here.

New Democrat MLA Bernadette Smith said she was pleased to see so many Indigenous advocates on the review committee.

The very first call to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that we must make sure that Indigenous kids can grow up with their parents, in Indigenous homes, said the MLA for Point Douglas.

We need to make progress towards that goal, while supporting all kids in care. As I former child in care, I know personally how important this is. This committee has several strong advocates on it, and we look forward to their recommendations.

Fielding said the review committee will talk to Manitobans about their experiences in care.

The other members of the committee are: Sherwood Armbruster, former chief operating officer for Siloam Mission; Diane Redsky, executive director of Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre; Joanne Crate, a member of Norway House Cree Nation and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanaks child and family services liaison officer; Dave Daniels, a group-home operator representing the Southern Chiefs Organization; and Audrey Frances Chartrand of Dauphin, a social worker representing the Manitoba Metis Federation.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Quebecs anglophones, francophones and allophones should all be on their smartphones demanding to know what in the name of Saint Rene Levesque just happened in the National Assembly.

We are not a small people, the late premier, Levesque, famously said after his victorious Parti Quebecois stunned everyone on election night in 1976. We are something like a great people. Wherever he is now, Ti-Poil  as the scant-haired Levesque was affectionately dubbed  must be madly shrugging his shoulders in embarrassment at provincial legislators voting to dissuade Quebecers from using the hybrid greeting Bonjour-Hi publicly.

The phrase is good-natured and handy, especially in Montreal, where both languages are used when one doesnt know which the other person speaks. Its customarily, though not exclusively, used in business to make interactions not just civil but convivial.

The Canadian Press Files The late Rene Levesque would not have been amused by Quebecs recent Bonjour-Hi controversy.

Given that, the only great thing in the attempt to quash mere civic politeness was the huge amount of offence it caused. How could it be seen as anything else when it has reduced Quebec, again, to an international political laughingstock?

Unfortunately, the sheer triviality of the unanimously adopted Bonjour-Hi motion exacerbates the serious problems it represents. And that will continue to plague Quebec long after the external mocking and internal mortification abate. Those problems can be grouped in two categories.

The first is the way language, almost 40 years after Bill 101 gave French-speaking Quebecers their majoritarian due, continues to be manipulated to foment tension and discord for shabby political gain.

Both the governing Liberals and the opposition Parti Quebecois are addicted to inventing surreal linguistic conflicts that pit primarily French-speaking and English-speaking Quebecers against each other. Allophones, who have neither language as a mother tongue, are caught in the crossfire. It is, frankly, a painful codependency that a great people should have overcome long ago.

Alas, the PQ needs periodically to indulge in rounds of bait-the-anglos to demonstrate how it remains Quebecs sole staunch defender of French. It tends to do so by pandering to a vocal minority who insist French is not just Quebecs majoritarian language, language of government transaction and most common language, but also its lone public language.

Given that there are approximately 128 languages spoken by students in the Montreal school system alone, the demand defies basic demography. The PQs declining fortunes show the effect of sacrificing reality to ideology. Still, the idea is frequently upheld with a fervour that would have made Levesque cringe.

The Liberals, sadly, also require manufactured argy-bargy around language to vaunt as the voice of political reason. Their saving role is to soothe the pride of a group often called Canadas best-treated minority  as if English-speaking citizens are some hybrid of hospital patient and rescue shelter pet.

The divide-and-conquer gambit couldnt be more crass, yet some still fall for it. Like the family that shouts at the dinner table because its the only way to be heard, Quebecers find themselves taking sides in language squabbles their better judgment says are irrelevant to life outside the political bubble.

Therein lies the second problem. Quebecers traditionally look to government to resolve problems other Canadians might see as entirely private matters. The trait is blamed on the mythical dominance of the Catholic church. Isnt everything?

But the Bonjour-Hi debate offends democratic freedom precisely by using language to cross a boundary of state intrusion no citizen of Quebec should tolerate. Its not about the language one speaks. Its about ones freedom to speak at all.

Most benignly, it interferes with Quebecs basic social architecture  the normal relations between citizens  by politicizing natural common courtesy. At its more toxic, its state intrusion on the capacity of free citizens to speak privately to each other.

So, Quebecers can regard it as jumped-up politicians barging in where they have no business. Or they can see it as the state testing the boundaries of soft tyranny. Neither is a great choice.

Its one Quebecers of all linguistic stripes will continue to face unless they put aside smallness to truly become something like the great people of Rene Levesques vision.

Peter Stockland is senior writer with Cardus and publisher of Convivium.ca.

 Troy Media
Arizona police arrested a woman who allegedly shot and killed her 2-year-old son last week.

Alyssa Pettibone was arrested on Monday by Buckeye Police Department officials and was charged with second-degree murder, according to their Facebook page.

Police responded to a 911 call reporting a shooting incident on Dec. 15 at about 4:12 p.m. Authorities found her son, Hudson, dead from an apparent gunshot wound in the bathroom floor, while Pettibone, 26, was found with stab wounds on her neck from an alleged suicide attempt, AZFamily.com reported.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

It is unclear if she has entered a plea. Pettibones attorney, Hector Diaz, did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.

She was taken to a local hospital and was arrested following her release from the hospital. She is currently at the Maricopa County Jail.

When police interviewed Pettibone, she said she was sorry and that she knew she was in deep, deep, deep, adding, No one would understand I, according to AZCentral.com.

 For more compelling true crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard.

Jeff Morris, a neighbor of Pettibones, told the outlet he was shocked to hear of what happened.

I dont understand why a mother would do that to her child, he said. You hear a lot about this holidays bring out the worst in people I guess.
A well-known dog expert tells PEOPLE its unlikely we will ever know what triggered last weeks attack on Virginia woman Bethany Lynn Stephens, who was mauled to death by her two pit bulls while on a walk with them in the woods. But the expert has some theories on what might have happened.

Dr. Richard Polsky, an academically trained expert on animal behavior and dog bites, says it is unlikely recent changes in their lives contributed to the canines homicidal aggression last Thursday  despite what authorities have said.

On Monday, authorities told reporters the animals had been neglected recently after being left Stephens father, who was not taking care of the dogs. The two animals, they said, had become more isolated with less and less human contact leading up to the attack.

If kept isolated more and more over time, I would imagine these dogs would have been happy to see their owner, explains Polsky, who has more than 25 years of professional experience. If you were keeping them isolated, I could see that playing into an attack on a stranger, especially if the dogs felt their safety was being threatened.

Bethany Lynn Stephens

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Stephens, 22, of Glen Allen, was found Thursday evening in the woods near an old family farm where she frequently walked her dogs, after her father called 911 around 8:20 p.m. to report that she hadnt returned home.

By all accounts, Stephens had a loving relationship with the dogs, who were euthanized not long after being found after the attack. Given that, Polsky believes that something in their immediate environment must have triggered one or both of the animals.

There had to have been something out there in the environment that triggered this and we dont know what it was, Polsky explains before listing several common triggers: the doorbell ringing, a territorial invasion, and violence. Usually with these attacks, one dog starts it and the other one joins in, which is what I suspect happened here.

Story continues

Polsky posits Stephens either did something to one of the dogs or one of the dogs experienced something to trigger its aggression towards her.

He speculates she may have corrected the dog in some way, or dog may have chased after a squirrel or encountered a dead animal; the dog was very interested in investigating it, she pulled the dog away which frustrated the animal, and he redirected his aggression towards the owner.

Over the last two decades, he says there have been between 30 and 45 fatal dog attacks in the United States. Polsky admits that most involved pit bull-type dogs but notes Rottweilers and mastiffs have also attacked humans. Almost always, the dog is male with little to no socialization or training, he says.

Most of the victims are very young or old, and they have no defense against a big, strong muscular dog, Polsky tells PEOPLE. Like in Stephens case, most of these incidences happen when the victim is alone.

 For more compelling true crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard.

He believes investigators will delve deeper into Stephens relationship with the dogs she raised from the time they were puppies.

They need to look into how often she walked these dogs in this area, if the dogs ever showed any aggression towards her, if she had history of punishing the dogsthere are just so many unanswered questions here, Polsky says. Most owners, they love their dogs, so they ignore signs of a dogs potential danger, thinking theyll outgrow it. It could have been something minor that made the dog turn on its owner.
In her first televised interview, Harvey Weinsteins former assistant Zelda Perkins alleges that the producer once tried to rape a Weinstein Company employee at the Venice Film Festival nearly twenty years ago. Per Variety, Perkins signed a non-disclosure agreement in 1998 and received 125,000 from Miramax, but broke her silence on the BBCs Newsnight show, which was broadcast Tuesday night in Britain.

We were at the Venice Film Festival and he tried to rape her, Perkins said on the news program. She alleges that the colleague was in shock and also did not want anyone to find out about the matter, but Perkins still confronted Weinstein herself. She said that he denied the accusation, and then he swore on the life of his wife and his children, which was his best get-out-of-jail card that he used quite a lot.

Read More:Meryl Streep Accused of Knowing About Harvey Weinsteins Abuse in She Knew Posters

Eventually, both Perkins and the alleged victim resigned from The Weinstein Company. Although Perkins expected that charges would be brought against Weinstein, she told the program, The lawyers made it very clear that we did not have many options. Because we hadnt gone to the police when we were in Venice, we had no physical evidence, and ultimately it would be two under-25-year-old womens word against Harvey Weinstein, Miramax Film Corp. and, essentially, the Disney Co.

Weinstein has denied all accusations of non-consensual sex, though a number of criminal investigations have already been started in both the U.S. and the U.K. Newsnight reported that Weinsteins lawyers repeated his denial of all allegations of non-consensual sex and of threatening behavior. The program also reported that Disney had not yet responded to a request for comment and Miramax had declined to comment.

Read More:Harvey Weinstein Sexual Assault Documentary in the Works at BBC

Story continues

During the interview, Perkins also spoke out about the supposed cult of personality surrounding the producer in his heyday, billing him as an extremely exciting, brilliant, stimulating person to be around.

She also offered her own theories as to why Weinstein  now accused of sexual harassing or assaulting nearly 100 women  committed his alleged crimes. I dont think hes a sex addict. Hes a power addict, Perkins said. Everything that drove him was about dominance with men and women.

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Related stories

Meryl Streep Accused of Knowing About Harvey Weinstein's Abuse in 'She Knew' Posters

Dustin Hoffman Accusers Speak Out in Powerful Interview: 'He Was Abusive and He Was a Bully' -- Watch

'Silicon Valley' Star T.J. Miller Accused of Sexual Assault and Choking a Woman
Photo credit: Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved

From Esquire

Republicans are poised to enshrine our budding plutocracy today with their passage of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act." The Senate shoved it through in the middle of the night by a 51-48 vote. Now, the bill will return to the House, which already passed a version yesterday that was so rushed it violated the parliamentary rules of the Senate and had to be rewritten. If President Trump signs whatever comes out of Congress - some voting "yes" haven't read the thing, and there have been as few hearings on it as humanly possible - it will become law. Considering Trump would sign a Costco receipt at this point if he thought it was a Big Win, this thing is pretty much a done deal.

The engineer through all this has been Paul Ryan, the House Speaker who has always billed himself as a True Believer in conservative economics. Like any True Believer, Ryan's faith persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Ryan really believes - or at least says he says so publicly - that if you cut taxes on the rich and large corporations, the savings will "trickle down" to the peasants and serfs. Never mind that we've tried trickle-down time and again, most recently in Kansas, and it never works. Governor Sam Brownback let the delusion run wild in that state, succeeding only in blowing a hole in the budget deficit and cutting funding for vital programs. Now, Republicans want to bring that nationwide. And never mind that CEOs have readily admitted they will not use their corporate tax savings to hire more workers or raise wages this time.

Ryan embarked on his victory lap on the morning news shows today, but he ran into Savannah Guthrie at Today in the process. Guthrie grilled him on the reality here, and asked him if his whole grand plan was actually just a symptom of living in a "fantasy world."

Savannah Guthrie challenging Speaker Ryan on the #GOPTaxScamBill: "Are you living in a fantasy world?"



Yes, he is.pic.twitter.com/Fj6PnA899i - Stand Up America (@StandUpAmerica) December 20, 2017

While Ryan may or may not truly believe in this nonsense, you can be sure it didn't matter to a whole lot of his Republican colleagues either way. They got their marching orders from the donors, and they're going to deliver. While everyone gets a tax cut for the first couple years - though the benefits are still many times greater for the rich - by 2027, the top 1 percent of earners will get 83 percent of the benefits of this tax bill. The top 0.1 percent alone will get 60 percent, while two thirds of the middle class will get a tax increase. Meanwhile, it will balloon the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. Remember under Barack Obama, when the Republicans were Deficit Hawks Concerned For Our Children's Future?

Story continues

The speed and recklessness with which the bill was written has also allowed congressmen and the lobbyists pulling their strings to insert blatantly corrupt provisions. There was the now-infamous so-called "Corker Kickback," a gift to real estate developers that will help a number of senators, including Bob Corker (formerly a Man of Principle who pronounced himself very concerned about the bill's deficit impact, then voted for the bill) and Donald Trump. Trump has frequently banged the drum about how mad his accountants are at him over this bill, but an NBC News analysis estimated his family could save $1 billion if it passes. (We don't know for sure because he refuses to release his tax returns, unlike every other president since Richard Nixon.) There's also the "pass-through" rule, a handout to wealthy business owners, including Trump. There's also this:

BREAKING: Docs show @JohnCornyn slipped line into the bill that enriches GOP fossil fuel donors & personally enriches 16 GOP lawmakers including @TedCruz. Line was inserted as Cornyn's fmr chief of staff lobbied on the issue for a natural gas corporation https://t.co/K5BLLcmlHI - David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 19, 2017

Republicans started this whole process making a big fuss about how they would "simplify" the tax code, to the point you could fill yours out on a postcard. Needless to say, that wasn't true either.

The whole process has been punctuated with outbursts of pure delusion from Republican senators. There was Orrin Hatch, who melted down in a committee meeting when Sherrod Brown suggested, accurately, that this bill is in no way a boost to the middle class. There was John Cornyn, who pitched the bill on Twitter yesterday by painting a picture of a Very Normal American Family:

Under #TaxCutsandJobsAct a married couple earning $100,000 per year ($60,000 from wages, $25,000 from their non-corporate business, and $15,000 in business income) will receive a tax cut of $2,603.50, a reduction of nearly 24 percent. - Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 19, 2017

There was also Senator Chuck Grassley, who defended cutting the estate tax, which only impacts inheritances above $5.49 million, thusly:

"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."

These people seem to be completely detached from reality, but they're holding on just long enough to loot this country for themselves and their friends. This is not a Trumpian development: it has been the dream of Republicans for many years. Nobody has clung to that dream as hard as Paul Ryan, who is rivaled as a shameless political operator only by every other Republican who has stood up and said this bill will help anyone who doesn't write plus-size campaign checks.



At a time when American income and wealth inequality is at a level that rivals Russia's - an actual oligarchy - and already widening by the day, Republicans are set to put it on rocket boosters. This is the larger phenomenon already fueling the hopelessness of ordinary people in our age, and convincing them that extreme politics are the only solution. Ryan and his allies are already talking about going after funding for Medicaid and Medicare next year. How extreme will the next era be?

You Might Also Like
Eleven cruise ship passengers and their tour guide are dead after their tour bus flipped over on a narrow highway in Mexico Tuesday.

The nationalities of the dead have not yet been released but several Americans and two Swedes were among those injured, the Associated Press reported. The total injured was about 18 people, according to a statement released by the Quintana Roo state prosecutors office.

The prosecutors office said a child and a Mexican tour guide were among the dead.

The AP reported the bus was en route to the ruins at Chacchoben, which is about 110 miles south of Tulum, a popular tourist destination.

Among the dead appear to be a South Florida grandmother while her 11-year-old grandson and other family members remain unaccounted for, their family told the AP.

Fanta Shamis, 78, was killed in the crash, according to her grandson, Benjamin Shababo, 18, who also said his young cousin may have died.

He told the wire outlet that his uncle, Moises Behar is in the hospital and that family members arent sure where his aunt, Anna Behar, and another cousin, 15, are.

We dont have really concrete information, Shababo said. Were all scared. Its just really scary to process this in my head that possible something really bad happened to them.

The cause of the accident is being investigated.

The tourists were headed out on an excursion of the Mayan ruins in southeastern Mexico when their bus ended up on its side along a two-lane road shortly after 9 a.m., the Washington Post reported.

The majority of the passengers arrived in Mexico on two ships belonging to Royal Caribbean Cruises: the Celebrity Equinox and the Serenade of the Seas, according to the Post.

In a statement obtained by the outlet, the company said, Our hearts go out to all those involved in the bus accident in Costa Maya. We are doing all we can to care for our guests, including assisting with medical care and transportation.
And they lived happily ever after!

Kensington Palace released three photographs from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's official engagement photo shoot, and the images look straight out of a fairy tale. The romantic snapshots were photographed by Alexi Lubomirski, who has shot everyone from Julia Roberts to Angelina Jolie.

The portraits are a refreshingly warm departure from more formal royal engagements snapshots of the past. Two of the black-and-white images show Meghan and Harry flaunting their love in a candid manner at Frogmore House, a private royal residence in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

And Meghan definitely lived up to her reputation as one of the most fashionable women in the world, wearing a $75,000 Ralph & Russo gown. The British-made dress from the Fall 2016 couture collection features a tiered tulle skirt and a see-through bodice decorated with intricate leaf embellishment.

While it's clear why Meghan chose the show-stopping number, a sheer gown was the last thing that many would expect her to wear! For her engagement photos with Prince William, Duchess Kate kept it a bit more modest in a white Reiss dress that hit just above the knees.

Could her unconventional Ralph & Russo number be a sign that her wedding gown also won't stick to tradition? Earlier this week, rumors surfaced that the royal family asked Israeli designer Inbal Dror to provide a sketch of a potential wedding dress for Markle.

The designer is known for creating sexy dresses with low-cut necklines and tight-fitting silhouettes.

Check out the video above for more on Meghan and Harry's wedding!
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are not your average royal couple.

The two released three portraits from their "stunningly sexy" engagement photo shoot, and many have noticed how different they are from Duchess Kate and Prince William's 2010 photographs.

In what is perhaps the most intimate images seen from any royal couple, Meghan and Harry flaunted their passionate love for each other in a series of candid snapshots. In two of the photographs, Meghan is seen wearing a $75,000 Ralph & Russo gown. The British-made dress from the Fall 2016 couture collection features a tiered tulle skirt and a see-through bodice decorated with intricate leaf embellishment.

The former "Suits" actress' sheer ensemble was a complete surprise to royal fans due to its revealing style and is a stark contrast from Kate's demure Reiss cream dress she wore for her own engagement shoot.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge commissioned Vogue photographer Mario Testino for their portraits seven years ago in November. At the time, the romantic portraits were considered groundbreaking due to their romantic nature. However, according to body language expert Judy James, Meghan and Harry's photos show an unprecedented level of intimacy that tops Kate and William's.

Reuters

"While William and Kate opted for some polite snuggling in their photos Harry has raised the bar by wrapping Meghan into his coat," she told Daily Mail.

She added: "Harry is clearly openly happy to let the rest of the world know how happy and in love he is and Meghan's high levels of confidence seem to have allowed him to sidestep the normal formality of a royal romance and show a far more intimate side of their relationship."



Furthermore, Meghan and Harry broke from royal tradition in one major way -- their photos were printed in black and white, something that hasn't been done in royal engagement photos since the introduction of color photography.

Story continues

Their engagement session was photographed at Frogmore House, a private royal residence in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The romantic snapshots were taken by Alexi Lubomirski, who has shot everyone from Julia Roberts to Angelina Jolie.

For more on the engagement photos, watch the video above!
The #MeToo movement, which re-emerged with a massive slew of sexual abuse allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein in October, has rocked not only Hollywood and the media, but also Washington DC. There have long been allegations of sexual misconduct and violence against powerful men in politics (Anita Hill testified publicly against Clarence Thomas, now a SCOTUS justice), but in light of #MeToo, stories of abuse are being taken more seriously.

In November, reports emerged that Congress had secretly spent more than $17 million in taxpayer money on sexual and other harassment settlements since 1997. Thats an average of $850,000 each year for the last two decades paid out to settle harassment claims against members of Congress and the legislative branch.

Politico reported in November that some of the $17 million had been paid out for claims related to workplace safety, and some of the payments were for settlements for other Capitol Hill offices, including the Capitol Police. Because the Office of Compliance, which is responsible for these types of payouts, does not release detailed information on the payments its impossible to know exactly how much taxpayer money is going toward sexual harassment settlements in Congress.

However, a small amount of new and important light has been shed since the initial reports last month. On December 6, Democratic Virginia senator Tim Kaine asked the Office of Compliance to make public the number of sexual harassment claims settled against senators between the years 2007 and 2017, according to NBC News. Citing confidentiality rules, the Office of Compliance denied Kaines request, but some new information emerged on Tuesday of this week.

According to ABC News, the Office of Compliance revealed that between 2008 and 2012, it paid out $115,000 in sexual harassment settlements to staffers employed by the House of Representatives. Nearly $100,000 of that $115,000 was paid to two male staffers who were employed by a former Democratic representative from New York, Eric Massa. Massas young male staffers accused him of various forms of sexual abuse, ranging from inappropriate comments to groping in 2010.

Story continues

The Office of Compliance will likely continue to see calls for increased transparency from members of Congress, as the public remains outraged and concerned over sexual abuse allegations against powerful men.

Of course, one of the biggest stories of abuse in Washington began last year when Donald Trump was running for president. Since his presidential campaign debuted, at least 19 women have spoken out and claimed that Trump sexually violated them. Trumps accusers have not backed down in light of his new job as POTUS, though Trump has yet to face any kind of legal consequences for the allegations against him.

But Trump is far from the only politician in the nations capital who stands accused of sexual misconduct. Many of the currently-accused elected officials have been involved with lawsuits that resulted in a payout to their accusers (though not necessarily from the Office of Compliance). Here are the other DC politicians who have recently had allegations against them go public.

Alcee hastings

A former staffer who worked with Democratic Florida representative Florida Alcee Hastings at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe sued Hastings and the Commission for sexual harassment in 2011. In 2012, Hastings was removed from the suit, and in 2014, the former staffer won the $220,000 lawsuit. Hastings is still in office.

blake farenthold

Republican Texas representative Blake Farenthold settled a lawsuit over sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and a hostile work environment filed by his former communications director for $84,000 in 2014, according to Politico. Farentholds settlement was paid through the Congressional fund that was secret until just recently. Farenthold wont be running for re-election next year and has promised to pay back the taxpayer money that was used to settle the suit against him.

trent franks

Two aides accused Republican Arizona representative Trent Franks of offering them money to carry surrogate pregnancies for him. After the House Ethics Committee announced it would conduct an investigation into Franks behavior with his aides, Franks admitted he made his staff feel uncomfortable, but decided to step down because he didnt think he would get a fair investigation.

john conyers

Democratic representative from Michigan John Conyers, the longest-serving member of Congress, stepped down from office after a flurry of sexual harassment and other sexual abuse allegations were leveraged against him this fall. Conyers denies that he did anything wrong, but multiple former staffers have accused him of making harassing comments, groping them, undressing in front of them, and asking for sex.

Al Franken

Al Franken, a longtime Democratic senator from Minnesota also stepped down this month amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. Franken, who was a comedian before entering politics, has been accused by at least seven women of various acts of sexual misconduct, including groping and forcing a woman to kiss him. Franken announced his resignation from the Senate earlier this month, but has so far continued to show up for his congressional duties.

What do you think about the #MeToo moment in Washington DC? Tell us on Twitter @BritandCo.

(Images via Getty Images)

You Might Also Like
Microsoft says it's ending forced arbitration for sexual harassment. Here's why that matters and what happens next, according to experts

Microsoft announced on Tuesday morning that it will no longer require women to settle sexual harassment cases privately, becoming one of the first major companies to eliminate what are known as forced arbitration clauses.

The tech giant also threw its support behind federal legislation introduced by a group of bipartisan lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bar companies from using forced arbitration for sexual harassment.

Forced arbitration prevents employees from taking their claims to court, instead requiring them to settle disputes in a private process run by a third party. The process is cheaper and faster for employers than a court case, but anti-sexual harassment advocates like Gretchen Carlson have pointed out that women are less likely to win cases in arbitration and receive smaller settlements than in trials. Advocates have also argued that arbitration allows companies to hide systemic issues from public view.

Forcing sexual harassment claims to be arbitrated is a tool to keep the company looking squeaky clean and out of the news, employment attorney Maya Risman said.

In a blog post, Microsofts chief legal officer and president Brad Smith said that most of the companys employees already did not have forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment. But an internal review found that such clauses did apply to a small segment of our employee population. The company has now voided those clauses, meaning all employees have the option of pursuing sexual harassment claims in court.

The company has also used arbitration to settle other types of disputes and did not say whether that would continue.

We concluded that if we were to advocate for legislation ending arbitration requirements for sexual harassment, we should not have a contractual requirement for our own employees that would obligate them to arbitrate sexual harassment claims, Smith wrote. And we should act immediately and not wait for a new law to be passed.

Story continues

Microsofts decision comes a week after Bloomberg reported that a former company intern alleged in February 2014 that another intern sexually assaulted her outside of work. The woman said Microsoft made the two work together while it investigated her claims.

The company told Bloomberg it encouraged the woman to go to law enforcement and offered to connect her with victim advocacy groups. (She was not working at Microsoft under a forced arbitration clause.) We work hard to create a safe work environment for every employee, the company said in a statement at the time.

Some advocates say that while Microsofts announcement on arbitration clauses is largely symbolic, it is still significant.

By doing this, Microsoft is saying that its going to take concrete steps to make its workplace culture more conducive to addressing and preventing harassment, said Emily Martin, the general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Womens Law Center. That message is important above and beyond the impact on individuals whose contracts are about to change.

Gillibrand and Grahams legislation estimates that 60 million Americans have forced arbitration clauses in their contracts, while a September study from the Employment Rights Advocacy Institute for Law & Policy found that 80% of the countrys 100 biggest companies use them.

While Microsoft apparently didnt use these provisions across its workforce, some companies use them more indiscriminately across their workforces to bind lower-wage workers as well as higher-wage workers, Martin said. By standing up and saying that it believes that these provisions arent fair to employees, Microsoft helps change the conversation in a way that has the potential to help a lot of people by increasing the pressure on companies to do the same.

But Myriam Gilles, a vice dean and professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, isnt so sure Microsofts announcement will influence smaller companies. Small companies might feel like these clauses protect their bottom line, Gilles said. They might feel more concerned about their bottom line than optics, considering they dont really have to worry about optics.

Amid the #MeToo movement, many have called for an end to forced arbitration. Carlson has become a prominent voice on the issue after navigating around the arbitration clause in her contract to sue Roger Ailes for sexual harassment last year. (Ailes, who died earlier this year, had denied the allegations). In August, Uber whistleblower Susan Fowlers lawyers filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court arguing that tech companies should eliminate these clauses, as the court weighs whether employers can ban class action lawsuits and force employees into arbitration.

Fowler and Carlson both praised Microsofts decision on Tuesday.

This is incredible: @Microsoft eliminates forced arbitration in cases of harassment etc.



The single most important thing tech companies can do to end harassment and discrimination is to end forced arbitration. https://t.co/l3BXsowErq  ??Susan Fowler???? (@susanthesquark) December 19, 2017

Huge forced arbitration news from @Microsoft - thank you for ending the secret practice in your company after being inspired by my bipartisan bill with @LindsayGrahamSC & @SenGillibrand !! https://t.co/FieVzDreNi  Gretchen Carlson (@GretchenCarlson) December 19, 2017

Thank you @Microsoft and @BradSmi for being on the right side of history with this bipartisan bill Ive been working so hard on! https://t.co/NCPQKCciwp  Gretchen Carlson (@GretchenCarlson) December 19, 2017

Even if more companies join in the movement to end forced arbitration for sexual harassment cases, however, Gilles is still concerned that companies will continue to use it to settle other workplace disputes, including over issues of racial discrimination, wage-theft accusations and the mistreatment of the elderly in nursing homes.

I get this is a cool thing that Microsoft is getting ahead on this issue thats in the news right now, Gilles said. But I would challenge Microsoft and every other companies to get rid of forced arbitration across the board.
At least 12 tourists are said to have died on their way to visit Mayan ruins

At least 12 people died when a bus carrying cruise ship passengers to Mayan ruins in eastern Mexico flipped over on a highway early Tuesday, officials said.

Seven Americans and two citizens of Sweden are among the injured, according to Quintana Roo state Civil Defense spokesman Vicente Martin, who said authorities haven't yet established the nationalities of the dead.

Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises said in a statement that passengers from two of its ships, the Celebrity Equinox and Serenade of the Seas, were involved in the crash. The company expressed its sympathies and said it was assisting with medical care and transportation.

A spokesman from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico said U.S. officials were working with local authorities to determine whether U.S. citizens were involved.

Video images from the scene showed the bus on its side in vegetation off the two-lane highway, with some survivors lying on the pavement while others walked around.

The bus was carrying tourists who had arrived to the coastal town of Mahahual aboard a cruise ship

Martin said the crash occurred as the bus was on its way to the ruins at Chacchoben, about 110 miles (175 kilometers) south of Tulum.

The cause of the accident was under investigation.

Costa Maya Mahahual, the bus company involved, said in a statement that the bus was carrying tourists who had arrived to the coastal town of Mahahual aboard a cruise ship.

In addition to the tourists, a guide and driver were aboard the bus, the company said.
A man arrives at an H&R Block tax center in New York April 15, 2014. April 15 is the deadline for Americans to file their taxes with the IRS. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATESBUSINESS  Tags: BUSINESS POLITICS)

For most accountants working in 2017, Congress passing the GOPs tax bill is the biggest shock to the system in their professional career. The legislation, which brings a sweeping overhaul of the nations tax code, will mean a tax cut for around 80% of American households, a lower corporate tax rate, and a higher standard deduction, just to name a few changes. On Friday, Dec. 15, accountants across the country downloaded the 1,097-page PDF and started reading the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

At H&R Block (HRB), the text of the bill immediately circulated to 50 tax analysts who dived in. Accountants for smaller firms sat at home and pored over the text to the chagrin of family members.

Over at Intuit (INTU), which owns TurboTax, It was a long evening, lets put it that way, said David Williams, who worked in the Senate for 15 years beginning his career dealing with President Reagans 1986 tax bill before becoming chief tax officer at Intuit. I used to sit on Senate floor and read these, advising the parliamentarian, so this brought me back.

Mark Stafford, a CPA in Maryland, got through 400 pages by Saturday morning and was firing off emails to clients, trying to get in the last-minute 2017 moves to take every advantage. It took a few run-throughs: the first for a general sense and to make questions and the second to answer them.

I had to be careful reading the bills until recently, he told Yahoo Finance. I knew it would change in conference. I did not want to remember some rule that was later deleted so the real reading only started to take place Friday.

The hurry? Clients need to know stuff and theyre asking questions.

There vast majority of the bill doesnt affect most people until they do their 2018 taxes  in 2019. But theres a handful of things clients want to know, said Barry Kleiman, a New Jersey accountant with Untracht Early. What can they do in the next two weeks?

The list of stuff you could do before year-end isnt long, and boils down mainly to whether a taxpayer wants to try to take advantage of deductions and if they want to prepay their property taxes in order to claim them as a 2017 deduction. (Its not even clear this is allowed, and wont be until the IRS issues rules. Also, not all municipalities will allow it.)

Story continues

The emails and ringing phones, however, arent mostly about end-of-year planning. People really just want to know if their taxes are going to go up, and whether they need to do anything differently in 2018. H&R Block has scrambled to train tax pros to provide guidance, especially on withholding, so taxpayers dont just receive everything in a refund  money they could have used to pay down debt, for instance.

The volume of inquiries may be higher, but its not an unusual situation for an accountant.

This is usually always a very busy time of year anyway because were getting ready for the tax season, said Mark Ciaramitaro, VP of tax strategy at H&R Block.

Clearly we are getting inundated with client calls, but otherwise we are taking in stride, said Kleiman.

Its still early

H&R Blocks Ciaramitaro noted that the IRS has yet to issue rules on a lot of this stuff, so there is a limit to whats known and what can be done. But its also really early in a very basic way: the date these changes take effect.

The vast, vast majority and terms and conditions start on Jan. 1, said Ciaramitaro. Most people wont see the effects until they file taxes in 2019.

This gives a substantial breathing room when it comes to training professionals and coding software. We have a full year to do that, thankfully, said Ciaramitaro.

Besides IRS rulemaking, Congress will also have to pass a technical corrections bill to fix the rush job of the bill it just passed, Intuits Williams noted. The 1,097-page bill text and 570-page Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) summary dont line up perfectly. Corrections bills arent uncommon, Williams said, but the speed at which this one was passed certainly was a factor.

So has the bill simplified taxes? Its hard to say.

The increase of standard deduction and limitations on itemized deductions mean a significant number of people will no longer need to itemize, said Williams. Its a form of simplification. But facts and circumstances of the individual taxpayer make it hard to boil it down.

Said another way, its clear that accountants are going to be in high demand going forward.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann. Confidential tip line: FinanceTips[at]oath[.com].

Read More:

American Airlines just resolved its 15,000 flight fiasco

The phone industrys clever plan to stop robocalls

Jack Dorsey on bitcoin and cryptocurrency

How cutting the 401(k) limit would affect peoples saving

Former ambassador: Mexico has moved on from NAFTA

Big bitcoin-friendly companies like Microsoft and Expedia hedge their bet

The real reason Mexico will never pay for the Trumps wall: Itd be treason

How Waffle Houses hurricane response team prepares for disaster

Trump weighs slashing one of the most popular tax deductions
Outgoing Sen. Al Franken used his final speech as a U.S. senator to thank family, staff and Democratic colleagues  and to excoriate President Trump.

Over the course of a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, the Minnesota Democrat, who is stepping down next month following allegations of inappropriate touching made by multiple women, tore into Trump and Republicans over their attacks on voting rights, LGBT rights, science, health care and  most recently  the middle class.

During his inaugural address, President Trump vowed that the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer, Franken said. But the Republican tax bill represents a slap in the face to those forgotten men and women. I guess the president forgot about them.

Franken decried what he described as the repeated lies of the Trump administration, including the presidents baseless claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

Its all based on a lie  and not a lie President Trump came up with, Franken said. Right-wing conservatives have been raising a false alarm about so-called voter fraud for years despite the fact that no credible evidence has ever been [found] demonstrating that it is a real problem.

The same, Franken said, goes for the administrations policies affecting the LGBT community.

Lurking behind these policies are lies, he said. Lies that the advocates of LGBT rights want to trample on peoples religious freedom. The lie that families led by a gay or lesbian couple dont provide a safe environment for children. The lie that allowing transgender people to use the appropriate bathroom opens the door to sexual assault. President Trump didnt invent these lies. But he and his administration proudly repeat them.

Franken also lamented Trumps attacks on science, citing a recent Washington Post report that the Trump administration had prohibited the Centers for Disease Control from using such terms as evidence-based and science-based.

Story continues

We now have enough evidence to conclude that climate change is real and it is man-made and it is a threat to our nations security and an existential threat to the planet, Franken said. President Trump didnt launch the war on science, but now hes leading the charge.

Franken, who is stepping down on Jan. 2, praised his replacement, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, as a worthy successor.

I have no doubt Sen. Smith will serve Minnesotans and all Americans well, Franken said.

Franken did not mention the allegations of sexual misconduct that led to his resignation. In a speech on the Senate floor announcing his intention to step down earlier this month, Franken insisted that some of the claims were not true and others he remembered differently.

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 then, referencing Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

He concluded Thursdays speech on a positive note.

Politics is about the improvement of peoples lives, Franken said. The American people know that to be true. And they fill me with hope for our future.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Trump's judicial nominee Matthew Petersen couldn't answer basic legal questions during his confirmation hearing. (Photo: NBC via Getty Images)

Law & Order fans might have been able to answer simple legal questions better than President Donald Trumps judicial nominee Matthew Petersen did during his confirmation hearing last week.

Petersen withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday after the release of an embarassing viral video showed him failing to answer basic law questions that Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) posed to him.

William N. Fordes, who was a producer on Law & Order throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, said Petersen might have spared himself some humiliation had he watched even a few episodes of the popular legal show prior to his hearing.

In a New York Times letter to the editor, Fordes suggested the show would have taught Petersen some basic legal concepts, such as what a motion in limine is, and what the various abstention doctrines are  both of which stumped the former nominee.

Fordes wrote:

The appalling performance by Matthew Petersen, one of President Trumps judicial nominees, in response to the withering questioning by Senator John Kennedy is inexcusable in this day and age, whatever the limitations of Mr. Petersens legal schooling and past experience. For while the television series Law and Order has been off the air for several years, it is in almost constant syndicated rerun. Had Mr. Petersen watched even a few episodes, he almost certainly would have known what a motion in limine is, and what the various abstention doctrines are. Shame on Mr. Petersen for not having attended the universal law school of the airwaves that was Law and Order.

Trump had nominated Petersen to be a lifetime judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Petersen, who is currently a member of the Federal Election Commission, is Trumps third nominee for a district court position who has been derailed over a lack of qualifications.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Today in 5 Lines

Republicans passed their tax-cut bill, sending it to President Trumps desk for signature. In a speech on the White House lawn, Trump, joined by GOP lawmakers, celebrated the passage of the legislation, saying its always a lot of fun when you win. Earlier in the day, Trump threatened to cut off aid to any country that votes for a UN resolution denouncing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. During a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner warned that if Trump fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it could lead to a constitutional crisis. A judicial panel awarded a contested ballot to Republican candidate David Yancy, producing a tie in Virginias 94th District House race.

Today on The Atlantic

What Exactly Is Sexual Misconduct?: The current reckoning with harassment is extremely important, writes Michelle Cottle. But not all offenders are created equal.

Hatch and Release: After months quietly preparing for retirement, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch might be having second thoughts. Was he persuaded by President Trump? (McKay Coppins)

Pass and Delay: Despite Republicans rush to pass their tax bill, President Trump likely wont sign the bill until early January. Heres why. (Russell Berman)

A Tax Cut for Christmas: Roughly 80 percent of American households will benefit from the Republican tax plan. The problem is, only 17 percent actually believe it. (David A. Graham)

Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal.

Recommended: Republicans Exact Their Revenge Through a Tax Bill

Snapshot

President Trump shakes hands with Speaker Paul Ryan as he celebrates with Congressional Republicans after the U.S. Congress passed sweeping tax legislation. Carlos Barria / Reuters

What Were Reading

What Comes Next: Passing a $1.5 trillion tax package was the easy part. Now, for the hard part: an ugly debate over how to handle the plans long-term consequences. (Heather Long, The Washington Post)

Recommended: Why Dont Most Americans Realize Theyre Getting Tax Cuts for Christmas?

Story continues

Compromise on the Horizon?: Lawmakers are working with the White House on a deal that will decide the fate of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as minors. (Seung Min Kim, Heather Caygle, and Elana Schor, Politico)

No Ones Stealing Anything: David French writes that Democrats responding to the Republican tax plan clearly dont understand the definition of private property. (National Review)

Meet the Apostates: These are the leaders of the Never Trump movement who were once part of the political establishmentand are now seen by some as its outlaws. (Sam Tanenhaus, Esquire)

More Trouble Than Hes Worth: Now that Republicans have passed tax cuts, Bruce Bartlett argues that President Trump is expendable. (USA Today)

The ACA Will Survive: President Trump said on Wednesday that Republicans have essentially repealed Obamacare. Heres why hes wrong. (Dylan Scott, Vox)

Visualized

What, When, and Who: Here are 10 things you need to know about the Republican tax-cut bill. (Kim Soffen and Reuben Fischer-Baum, The Washington Post)

Question of the Week

Twitter has changed its rules to protect against hateful conduct, but as Robinson Meyer writes, there could be two loopholes in its policy that might help President Trump: The rules wont apply to government entitiesor if the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.

This week, we want to know: Do you think the government should be exempt from Twitters new conduct rules?

Share your response here, and well feature a few in Fridays Politics & Policy Daily.

-Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey)

How are we doing? Send questions or feedback to egodfrey@theatlantic.com.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
London (AFP) - A British charity has set up a free vending machine containing essential items for the homeless, an initiative presented as a world first which they hope will be rolled out internationally.

Action Hunger has set up the machine in the city of Nottingham, central England. It contains items such as water, energy bars, socks and sanitary towels, which can be accessed by the local homeless with a special keycard.

"They permit access to food, clothing, and basic necessities at any hour of the day, and completely free of charge," the charity said in a statement. Keycard holders can take out three items per day.

Action Hunger is working with a local homeless day centre in Nottingham to distribute the key cards and understand the needs in the city.

The charity said that working with local support services was "instrumental to breaking the cycle of homelessness, and getting these men and women off the streets for good".

The goal is to ensure that food and clothing was always available to those who needed it.

The machines dispense fresh fruit, crisps, chocolate and sandwiches, as well as antibacterial lotion, toothbrush and toothpaste combination packs and even books.

Much of the food comes from organisations seeking to reduce food waste, including supermarket chains and food banks.

The three items per day limit is intended to stop dependency upon the machines and complement other homeless services.

Action Hunger said it would install machines in other cities, starting with London, Manchester and Birmingham in Britain; Paris; and New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle in the United States.

The initiative comes as a British parliamentary report out Tuesday called homelessness a "national crisis" and said the government had been "unacceptably complacent".

The Public Accounts Committee report said that more than 9,100 people were sleeping rough on the streets in 2016, while more than 78,000 households, including 120,000 children, were homeless and living in temporary accommodation.

The government said its Homelessness Reduction Act was the most ambitious reform in decades dedicated to ensuring people got support sooner.
Parents are suing schools that dont protect their children from harm. (Photo: Getty Images)

In early December, a middle school student in California named Rosalie Avila committed suicide. Her story echoes those that seem to arise on a regular basis now: stories of school bullies, mournful communities, and GoFundMe pages created to finance funerals.

But theres also a movement to find justice for what parents believe was their late childs school neglecting to stop bullying on school property and online. In September 2016, a Rochester, N.Y., family filed a lawsuit against the district of their 12-year-olds school, claiming negligence for an ongoing bullying problem that they say caused their childs suicide. In August, a New Jersey family filed a lawsuit against their childs school district, saying it failed to stymie cyberbullying that they say caused their 12-year-old to kill herself. An 8-year-old boy in Cincinnati died by suicide, and the family sued the school district for wrongful death in August.

The Avila family now plans to do the same, saying they verbally told school administrators and teachers of the Yucaipa-Calimesa School District that Rosie was being bullied but were met with inaction, according to the familys lawyer, Brian Claypool.

But the Avila family also says laws regarding bullying in public schools need to change, and they started an online petition for U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris and Mike Morrell, and California Assembly member Chad Hayes to draft Rosalies Law. Started two weeks ago, the petition has nearly met its 5,000-signature goal. Rosies Law would require schools nationwide to establish and implement suicide detection and prevention programs on campus, according to a press release.

Meanwhile, the school district issued the following statement to Yahoo Lifestyle:

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the Avila family. Our students, teachers, staff and the communities are mourning the loss of Rosalie as well. Yucaipa-Calimesa School District is committed to working with its students and the community on academics, student safety and well-being. We strive every day to be a safe, supportive and engaging learning environment. We will continue to raise awareness and work with students and the community to support our children. The issue of suicide awareness and prevention is very important to discuss and address as a community. We are cooperating fully with the Sheriffs office as it conducts its investigation. We are also conducting our own internal investigation. Given that these efforts are ongoing, and due to our commitment to protecting the privacy of our students and their families, we cannot share any details at this time.

Story continues

But as media outlets report these stories with what seems to be increasing frequency, one might wonder: Are child suicide rates actually increasing, or is more attention paid now because of the 24-hour news cycle and the speed at which these stories spread on social media?

Rosie Avila, who attended Mesa View Middle School in California, took her own life in early December. The family says the school ignored its bullying epidemic, according to the familys lawyer, Brian Claypool. (Photo: Courtesy of the Avila family)

According to a CNN report in August citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, children younger than 13 die by suicide once every five days. The data, which covered U.S. suicides from 1999 to 2015 for children ages 5 to 12, found the rate has increased by 54 percent for 11- and 12-year-olds.

A study from May 2017, meanwhile, looked at data from the Pediatric Health Information System and found that the number of childrens hospital admissions of patients ages 5 to 17 for suicidal thoughts or actions more than doubled from 2008 to 2015.

While grieving parents are beginning to hold schools responsible for their childrens deaths, every state already has laws in place that require schools to implement anti-bullying policies. And at Mesa View Middle School, which Avila attended, reporting procedures and disciplinary action were outlined, according to the school districts publicly available bullying prevention and intervention policy. School employees are required to report incidences of bullying to principal and principal is obligated to report to district; social media accounts may be suspended, the policy says. Corrective actions for a student who commits an act of bullying of any type may include counseling, behavioral intervention and education, and, if the behavior is severe or pervasive as defined in Education Code 48900, may include suspension or expulsion in accordance with district policies and regulations.

Whether that policy was implemented and enforced is the subject of an investigation. It also reflects the larger problem lawmakers and arbiters nationwide face when dealing with instances of school-related bullying: There is a lack of effective enforcement mechanisms by the state, and a lack of data about which policies are best practice.

There are anti-bullying curricula out there, but nothing thats demonstrated all that much success, Justin Patchin, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Were learning over the last decade that weve made progress on what works but we need more resources. Some schools are doing amazing things to prevent bullying, but there are no resources to evaluate efforts  its all kind of speculation and anecdotes.

Patchin explains that based on the data available, schools that use a social-emotional learning curriculum to teach students things like the steps to respect tend to have an impact on how kids relate to each other. Still, that doesnt reflect what happens when there is bullying. One 2013 study conducted by the American Education Research Association recommended that school employees need to better describe the types of bullying that take place to better prevent it.

Federal, state, private money is all needed. Some schools fundraise for these things, and PTAs sponsor assemblies or other programs to raise awareness. But if we want to make a serious dent, legislatively, we need more resources, Patchin explains. The problem with most state bullying laws is that they say schools have to deal with the issue and require schools to have policies, but dont provide provisions or money for schools to purchase the curriculum or hire social workers to do assessments. If authorities were really prioritizing this, theyd also provide the resources to fight it.

The California Department of Education outlines sample bullying prevention and conflict resolution policies on its website, as well as 35 regulations within the California Education Code that relate to discrimination, harassment, and bullying. California Assembly member Patrick ODonnell, chair of the education committee, declined to comment on the laws through a spokesperson, and ODonnells co-chair, Assembly member Rocky Chavez, did not respond to requests for comment.

For the Avila family to win a case against the school district, the family would have to prove that bullying was the cause of their daughters death  a difficult thing to do in a world where the internet has led to increased reports of depression in children, though Claypool says causation is defined as a substantial factor in bringing about the death, not the sole cause of the death.

Dewey Cornell, a professor at the University of Virginia and clinical psychologist who works on the schools Youth Violence Project, says its difficult to determine how frequently school systems are sued for failing to protect students from bullying because most cases are settled without readily available records. But he says there has been a dramatic increase in litigation since the early 1990s. Still, parents tend to lose cases to schools, Cornell adds, citing data from 2014.

No one expects schools to be perfect, but educators cannot ignore bullying and they should take reasonable steps to maintain a healthy school climate that is conducive to learning, Cornell told Yahoo Lifestyle in an email. In the workplace, adults are protected from a hostile work environment. Women and men who are sexually harassed at work can sue. There is no reason why children in school should not be afforded the same protections as adults in the workplace.

Or, as Rosalies bereaved mother, Charlene Avila, told NBC News, Now I know what my daughter was up against. Something needs to be done.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




Idaho Fish and Game Commission will meet by conference call Thursday, Dec. 21, to vote on extending the reduced bag limit and possession limits for steelhead that were set in October.

Proposed daily bag limits for spring 2018 are two steelhead daily and six in possession, which is same as the current bag limit. No steelhead longer than 28 inches in total length can be harvested on mainsteam Clearwater, North Fork Clearwater, Middle Fork Clearwater, or South Fork Clearwater.

The number of hatchery steelhead returning to Idaho is sufficient to provide a harvest fishery for adipose fin-clipped, hatchery-origin steelhead under reduced harvest limits through the spring season. Length limits will conserve broodstock needed for the Clearwater River Hatchery programs.

The call will begin at 8 a.m. at Fish and Game Headquarters, 600 S. Walnut in Boise.

There will be no public testimony taken during the call, but the public is welcome to attend. Those living outside of Boise can listen to the call by traveling to their nearest Fish and Game regional office.

Individuals with disabilities may request meeting accommodations by contacting the Idaho Department of Fish and Games Directors office directly at 208-334-5159 or through the Idaho Relay Service at 1-800-377-2529.
Madrid (AFP) - Spanish courts are probing 18 candidates running in Catalonia's election on Thursday over their role in the northeastern region's independence drive.

They could face prison sentences of 15 years or more, with three of the candidates are already behind bars awaiting trial.

Here is some information about the probes under way:

- Why the probes? -

The judge investigating the ousted regional president Carles Puigdemont and his cabinet accuses them of being "part of an organisation that had a premeditated and perfectly coordinated strategy" to split Catalonia from Spain.

- Data theft and misuse of funds -

A Barcelona judge is looking into the alleged theft of official data to create an independent treasury.

Barcelona's appeals court is also investigating whether the ousted government diverted public funds to hold the referendum.

The officials are also under investigation for disobedience for going ahead with the plebiscite despite the constitutional ban.

- Sedition -

High Court Judge Carmen Lamela in October ordered the leaders of two grassroots separatist groups, Jordi Sanchez of the ANC and Jordi Cuixart of Omnium Cultural, to remain in custody while they are investigated for sedition.

The two men allegedly urged supporters to take part in protests in Barcelona that made it harder for police to carry out raids on Catalan government buildings in September.

The leaders of the separatist groups had stood on a police car to address demonstrators.

During one protest officers were trapped in a building for hours and their vehicles were vandalised.

Under Spanish law the crime of sedition carries a sentence of up to 15 years in jail.

- Rebellion -

After Catalonia's parliament declared independence on October 27, Lamela agreed to hear a lawsuit for "rebellion" filed by public prosecutors against the Catalan government.

Under Spanish law the crime of rebellion consists of rising up "violently and publicly" to achieve a goal, such as "the independence of part of the national territory". It carries a sentence of up to 25 years in jail.

Story continues

The case was transferred to Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, who was already investigating members of the Catalan parliament.

This investigation is also looking into the alleged crimes of sedition and misuse of public funds.

In total 22 people are under investigation. Among them are the 14 members of the deposed Catalan government, the leaders of the two grassroots separatist groups and the ousted president of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell.

Puigdemont and four members of his government who fled to Belgium after the parliament's declaration of independence will be arrested if they return.

- Excessive charges? -

The lawyers for the candidates under investigation argue that the charges are excessive, since the separatist movement has always been peaceful.

They also say that the three jailed candidates' political rights have been violated, given that they have been allowed no more than 10 phone calls a week, each five minutes long, which makes it hard to campaign.

Supporters of the deposed leaders and jailed activists who back independence have held several demonstrations in recent weeks demanding freedom for their "political prisoners".
US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images

Beijing has responded to Donald Trumps recent labelling of China as a strategic competitor, by telling the US President to end Americas cold war mentality.

The remarks follow the publication of the Trump administrations National Security strategy on Monday, in which the President accused China of pursuing a repressive vision and designing economic policies to weaken America.

On Tuesday, the Chinese embassy in Washington hit back, describing the Trump administrations America First theme as selfish, and warned that promoting rivalry between the US and other countries will lead to failure.

The Americans on one hand say they want to develop a partnership with China, but on the other hand they take an oppositional stance. This is contradictory, it said in a statement.

It is completely selfish for any nation to put its interests above the common interests of other nations and the international community. It will lead to a path of self-isolation.

The statement adds: On the one hand, the US government claims that it is attempting to build a great partnership with China. On the other hand, it labels China as a rival. The self-contradictory rhetoric of the US betrays the truth that China and the US are becoming increasingly interdependent and have growing intertwined interests. The US' rhetoric also runs counters to China's efforts to cooperate with the US on bilateral and global issues.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said later on Tuesday that China was calling on Washington to stop distorting Chinas strategic intentions, or the US government would risk causing damage.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing she said: Any country, or any report, which distorts the facts, or maliciously slanders will do so in vain.

No one should be under the illusion that China will swallow a bitter pill that affects its interests.

We call on the US to stop distorting Chinas strategic intentions and to give up its cold war mentality and outdated concept that this is a zero-sum game  or it will end up causing damage to both sides.

Mr Trumps address on Monday came in stark contrast to that of his predecessor Barack Obama, who described China as a strategic partner.
Beijing (AFP) - China and Russia on Tuesday decried President Donald Trump's first National Security Strategy -- which pilloried both nations as challengers to US power -- as a "Cold War mentality" with an "imperialist character".

The two global powerhouses hit back hours after the Trump administration unveiled its approach to the world with biting language framing Beijing and Moscow as global competitors.

"We urge the United States to stop intentionally distorting China's strategic intentions and to abandon outdated notions such as the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game, otherwise it will only harm itself or others," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

Moscow issued its own denunciation moments later.

"The imperialist character of this document is obvious, as is the refusal to renounce a unipolar world, an insistent refusal," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The report's tough tone contrasts sharply with Trump's friendlier face-to-face encounters with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

"China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity," the document says.

- 'Malicious slander' -

Accusing China of seeking "to displace the United States" in Asia, the 68-page strategy is a litany of US grievances, from the Chinese stealing data to spreading "features of its authoritarian system."

"Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others," it says.

Beijing launched a vigorous defence of its "peaceful development", saying any report "which distorts the facts, or maliciously slanders will only do so in vain".

"China will never pursue its own development at the expense of other countries' interests," Hua told a regular news briefing.

Story continues

"At the same time we will never give up our legitimate rights and interests."

Trump received a lavish welcome during his first state visit to Beijing in November and was full of praise for Xi.

But the two countries have been locked in an increasingly acrimonious battle over trade issues, with Washington taking unprecedented steps to investigate and add tariffs to Chinese-made goods.

There are also lingering US concerns over China's military activities in the disputed South China Sea, while Washington has angered Beijing with its arms sales to self-ruled Taiwan.

- Softer on Russia -

Speaking on Monday after the report's release, Trump took a strikingly softer tone on Russia, lauding the benefits of counterterror cooperation with Moscow.

Trump claimed that a recent CIA tip-off about a terror attack on a cathedral in Putin's home town of Saint Petersburg had prevented deaths "in the thousands".

"They were able to apprehend these terrorists before the event with no loss of life and that's a great thing, and the way it's supposed to work," Trump said, offering the prospect of better ties.

Trump's presidential campaign is being investigated for possible collusion with Russia in the run-up to his shock 2016 election win -- allegations the 45th president has dubbed "fake news".

His security strategy warns that Russian nuclear weapons are "the most significant existential threat to the United States".

It also describes the Kremlin as a power that "seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders".

"Russia aims to weaken US influence in the world and divide us from our allies and partners," it warns.

The Kremlin's Peskov responded that Russia "cannot accept" being described as a threat to US security.

But Peskov praised "modest" positive features in the report, pointing to what he said was Washington's readiness to cooperate with Russia in areas such as an exchange of security information.

- 'Two administrations' -

The national security document -- 11 months in the making -- is required by law and is designed to form a framework for how America approaches the world.

Previous national security strategies have been released without much fanfare and served as guideposts, rather than doctrinal commandments.

But in this unorthodox administration, the document had taken on extra significance.

Foreign officials in Washington often complain that there are effectively "two administrations" -- one that they hear from day-to-day in contacts with the State Department and Pentagon and another coming from Trump, often via Twitter in 280 characters or fewer.

Trump and his advisors often publicly differ starkly on fundamental security issues from the Middle East to talks with North Korea.

But allies looking for clarity about the intentions of the world's pre-eminent economic and military power are likely to be confused by Trump's mixed messages.

Where the strategy warns Russia is using "subversive measures" to undermine "transatlantic unity," Trump again claimed that European allies were "delinquent" in paying for security "while we guarantee their safety and are willing to fight wars for them".

Where the strategy warned of Moscow's "destabilizing cyber capabilities" and interference in domestic political affairs, Trump made no such reference.
Judge says prosecutors withheld evidence in case stemming from 2014 armed standoff, handing Bundy family another victory its fight against the government

Cliven Bundy on his ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada. The Bundys have become heroes in the American west and in rightwing militia movements. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

A judge declared a mistrial in the conspiracy case against rancher Cliven Bundy and his family, dealing a major blow to the US government and another victory for those who have long fought federal regulators over land rights.

A Nevada federal judge ruled Wednesday that prosecutors willfully withheld evidence in the case against Bundy and two of his sons, who were facing a slew of felony charges stemming from a 2014 standoff with federal agents at the familys ranch north of Las Vegas. The mistrial marks the latest in a series failures by the US government to prosecute the ranching family and their supporters, who were found not guilty in a surprise verdict last year surrounding an armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon.

The Bundys  who were accused of assault, threats against the government, firearms offenses, obstruction and a range of other charges  have become heroes in the American west and in rightwing militia movements after their high-profile protests of federal land regulations.

Were just happy that the truth is finally coming to light, said Angie Bundy, wife of Clivens son Ryan, who was also on trial. Were wanting to go back to our lives.

The mistrial means the government might have another chance to try the family next year, but nonetheless marks a significant defeat for the federal prosecutors, who have aggressively targeted the family and dozens of supporters over the last two years.

The Bundys first received international attention in 2014, when the government attempted to seize the familys cattle after the ranchers refused to pay public land grazing fees for years. That led to an armed standoff between federal agents and the family and hundreds of supporters who flocked to the Bunkerville ranch to defend the ranchers. The government eventually retreated.

Story continues

Supporters of Cliven Bundy outside a Las Vegas federal courthouse in 2016. Photograph: John Locher/AP

In early 2016, Clivens sons Ryan and Ammon helped lead a similar standoff at the Malheur national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon to protest the governments prosecution of local ranchers. After that conflict ended, following law enforcements fatal shooting of one of the protest leaders, the federal government arrested the Bundys and their followers across the country, eventually filing conspiracy charges surrounding both the Oregon and Nevada conflicts.

After the Bundys were acquitted in Oregon last year, the Nevada case provided a high-stakes second opportunity for the US attorneys office to convict and imprison the family. But the second trial recently fell apart surrounding prosecutors decision to withhold documents that could have bolstered the defenses case, including records about the conduct of federal agents and the governments surveillance and use of snipers during the 2014 standoff.

The prosecutions missteps speak to the governments eagerness to secure a conviction that would strengthen federal control of land, said Bret Whipple, Clivens attorney.

Its a very high priority for the government. They are under so much pressure, he said in an interview after the decision. It really comes down to who controls the range and who will have access to it in the future  This is certainly a blow to anybody who believes in federal rights over states rights in my opinion.

Claims of federal misconduct have caused problems in both cases against the Bundys. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the FBI had posed as journalists in an effort to extract information from the defendants in the Nevada case. A key Bureau of Land Management agent in the case was also caught up in an unrelated ethics scandal.

In Oregon, FBI agents were investigated for allegedly covering up facts about the killing of one of the protest leaders.

Ammon Bundy after being released from custody on 30 November 2017. He is now living under house arrest. Photograph: Joel Angel Juarez/AP

Environmental groups and others supporting the prosecution have argued that the Bundys and their movement against federal regulations pose major threats to land sustainability and conservation and has emboldened militias and armed threats against the government.

In January, the Nevada judge will determine whether the prosecution is allowed to bring another trial.

US attorney Steven Myhre said in a statement, We respect the ruling of the court and take very seriously our discovery obligations. A US Department of Justice spokesperson also said that attorney general Jeff Sessions had directed an expert to be deployed to examine the case and advise as to next steps.

Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group that has opposed the Bundys, said the mistrial was only a setback: We still fully expect Cliven and the rest of the Bundy family to be held accountable.

Ryan and Ammon were recently released from jail after nearly two years behind bars and have been living under house arrest.

Its been the best thing in the world to have him home, said Angie, adding that she hopes there will be no further trials. I dont know what kind of case they have to come against us.

Cliven chose not to leave jail on house arrest, arguing that he is innocent and should not have to be monitored in any form, said Whipple, who said he was seeking to now get him released without any conditions. Im trying to get him out for Christmas.
Congress is close to lifting a 40-year-old ban on energy development in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but drilling for oil in that frozen wilderness may still be years away as the effort faces exhaustive environmental reviews and likely lawsuits.

It could be a decade or more before any well is drilled, following required environmental scrutiny and permit reviews  and then the inevitable lawsuits from local communities and environmental groups opposed to any development in that rugged wilderness.

Its still an open question about whether drilling will ever happen there, said Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former Interior Department official. Its hard to image that drilling will occur in the next 10 years  or ever.

The House voted Tuesday for a tax bill that includes a provision mandating that the Interior Department hold lease sales in the so-called 1002 area of the Arctic Refuge, a coastal portion of the 19-million-acre federally protected wilderness area. The refuge is estimated to contain 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude.

The House, in a revote, passed the measure Wednesday, sending it to President Donald Trump for his signature.

ANWR by itself would be a big bill, Trump said before the vote, noting that oil drillers had tried to open it for 40 years.

After years of dogged effort, the vote is a victory for Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, the measures chief benefactor. Republicans included a provision that would have sped up federal environmental reviews, but that was stripped out of the measure because it ran afoul of budget rules.

Drilling proponents say they are undaunted by the idea of a long wait  or numerous lawsuits  before oil production becomes a reality.

These are long term plays, so the development doesnt happen overnight, said Kara Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. While it may take many years for ANWR to produce oil, companies realize the refuge could eventually provide a geyser of crude.

Story continues

But environmentalists who successfully fought ANWR drilling for decades arent giving up. Their battle is just shifting from Capitol Hill to federal courtrooms.

The fight has just begun, said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwichin Steering Committee that was formed in 1988 to combat oil drilling proposals. We will rise up and protect the Arctic Refuge and the Sacred Place Where Life Begins just as our ancestors have before us.

Without detailing specific plans, conservationists have vowed litigation at every milestone on the long path to leasing in the refuge and potential oil-drilling there, stoking uncertainty about the potential activity for years after Trump signs the tax bill.

That could translate into lawsuits challenging energy companies bids to do seismic research aimed at mapping underground formations that could contain oil and gas, the environmental reviews necessary before any lease sale and the process of issuing drilling permits.

Authorities will have to comply with environmental requirements embedded in multiple federal laws, including mandates for extensive review and public comment before any leasing  providing another opportunity for legal scrutiny. Shoddy environmental evaluations can undermine lease sales long after they happen.

And theres precedent for that. Royal Dutch Shell Plc stunned observers by spending $2.1 billion snapping up offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea during a 2008 government auction. But that lease sale was thrown into years of doubt after critics successfully challenged the governments environmental analysis that underpinned it, prompting a court order to redo the assessment in 2010. It wasnt until 2015 that the lease sale was finally affirmed.

Shells experience and environmental could threaten the attractiveness of developing resources in Alaska, analysts from Barclays Plc said in a note Wednesday.

And, although Congress is compelling lease sales in the refuge, the decisions that lead to an auction could be in the hands of another president.

A future president who opposes drilling in ANWR could slow-walk selling leases or permitting wells in the coastal plain  or even halt the activity. While that resistance could in turn be challenged, the ensuing litigation might take years.

And all of that means more delay.

Senator Murkowski got this provision in the tax bill because she had her leadership over the barrel, but filling that barrel with oil is going to be a lot harder than she ever dreamed, Niel Lawrence, Alaska director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview.
A girl naps while waiting for a health insurance enrollment in California: Reuters

The State of Connecticut has become the latest to signal that it will end its childrens health insurance program unless Congress acts to renew the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which it let lapse in late September.

At current funding levels  or lack thereof  the program will expire in Connecticut by January 31, leaving underprivileged children without access to the insurance program that helps them get preventive care visits, medication, and other types of care.

Connecticut is just the latest state to announce that their resources are drying up, following after several others including Alabama, and Colorado. Alabama will freeze its program on January 1, while Colorado is set to do so January 31.

Funding the CHIP program has traditionally been a bipartisan affair, as it helps nearly 9 million children across the country to access healthcare they otherwise would not have. Even with that historic support, Republicans let the program slide as it has attempted to push through massive changes to American health and tax policy.

The CHIP program covers a segment of children in society whose families are affluent enough to not qualify for Medicaid, but arent able to afford other options. Children who fall under that income level are generally covered by the Medicaid program.

The lapse in funding for the CHIP program has garnered high profile criticism, including from comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who has waded into the debate on healthcare during his nightly show, and slammed congressional Republicans for turning childrens health into a political bargaining chip so that Republicans can pass a massive tax overhaul.

But others have questioned whether that is truly the rationale for holding CHIP funding, including the Washington Posts fact checking apparatus, which argues that Congress isnt withholding the vital funds for childrens health care. Instead, Congress simply isnt doing anything with it, that newspaper says.
A grand jury on Tuesday recommended that prosecutors pursue criminal charges in the death of Florida State University fraternity pledge Andrew Coffey, who died on Nov. 3 after a Pi Kappa Phi big brother ritual.

Coffey, 20, passed out after drinking a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon at the off-campus party and had to be carried by members of the fraternity, according to the grand jury finding. The next morning, he was found without a pulse by another pledge. An autopsy determined that he had a blood alcohol level of .447  which Dr. Lisa Flannagan characterized as abusive alcohol intake in her testimony.

We do see evidence that will support criminal charges and we leave the decision as to specific charging up to the State Attorney or a future Grand Jury, the grand jury wrote. An investigation into Coffeys death is still ongoing.

In an attachment to the report, Coffeys parents called for more accountability from members of the fraternity, describing Coffey as a hard-working friend to everyone who planned to enlist in the Navy.

Even as we are heartbroken, we are also troubled. Troubled that our son died alone in a room full of people, they wrote. Troubled that no one stood up and said stop, no, enough. Troubled that a group of young people saw someone in crisis and didnt act. And troubled that this continues to happen, again and again.

When young people continue to die senselessly due to indifference, reckless conduct and irresponsibilty, it is clear that change is not only necessary but crucial, they added.

Coffey is one of several fraternity pledges who have died this year after alleged hazing rituals, leading many universities  including Florida State  to suspend Greek life and consider reforms to combat a dangerous drinking culture.

While alcohol abuse is pervasive throughout our community, the scale on which it is embraced within the FSU chapter of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity is alarming, the grand jurys presentment said. The Grand Jury finds that while Andrew Coffeys alcohol consumption was not physically forced, the acts that culminated in his death occurred within an environment of hazing.

Willingness of the pledges to engage in life-threatening behavior in no way absolves fraternity members of their criminal culpability if they did anything to incite or encourage the behavior, the report stated.
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  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.

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  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, 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, are 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.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

US President Donald Trump has claimed his party "essentially repealed Obamacare" by passing a tax bill that rescinds a key component of his predecessor's health care legislation.

The Republican tax bill repeals the health insurance mandate that forms the core of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Mr Trump claimed the repeal would cripple Obamacare  something he and his party have long promised to do.

When the individual mandate is being repealed that means Obamacare is being repealed," Mr Trump told reporters at a Cabinet meeting. "...We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something much better.

The individual mandate requires all Americans to have health care coverage, or pay a penalty fee. The mandate encourages healthy people to buy insurance, which helps to keep premiums lower.

Without the individual mandate, the number of uninsured Americans would increase by 4m in 2019 and 13m in 2027, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Premiums are also expected to increase by about 10 per cent.

The Republican tax bill repealing the mandate passed both the House and Senate earlier this week. It returned to a final vote in the House on Wednesday, after the Senate made several minor, last-minute adjustments. The bill now goes to Mr Trump to be signed.

The bill's passage is expected to be the first major legislative achievement of the Trump administration. It will also be a welcome win for Republicans in Congress, who tried and failed to repeal Obamacare several times this summer.

Mr Trump, however, claimed he did not play up the mandate repeal until now, for fear that it would be misrepresented by the media.

Now that its approved, I can say that," he said on Wednesday.

The Republican tax bill does not fully repeal Obamacare. The Obama-era Medicaid expansion will stay in place, as will protections for women, people with pre-existing conditions, and other vulnerable populations.

Story continues

Americans will also still be able to buy health insurance through the ACA exchanges  though approximately 4.5m fewer people did so this year than last. This year's exchanges offered fewer options and higher premiums than in the past, and the Trump administration slashed the amount of time Americans had to enroll.

In a statement celebrating the passage of the tax bill, Mr Trump lauded the "great spirit of optimism sweeping across our land".

"Americans can once again rest assured that our brightest days are still to come," he said.
Donald Trump has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in aid from those nations which criticise his controversial decision to unilaterally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In a raising of the stakes over the USs move to recognise Jerusalem and shift its embassy there - something long requested by Israel and their conservative supporters in the US - Mr Trump said he could penalise those countries that voted against the move at the UN.

Previously, the USs UN Ambassador Niki Haley had warned the US would would be taking names of any countries who supported a resolution criticising Washingtons actions. A vote is scheduled to take place on Thursday after the US on Monday vetoed a vote by the UN Security Council that would have demanded Mr Trump reverse his decision.

The Associated Press said Mr Haley had written to most of the 193 UN members states warning of possible retaliation. She said the President was taking the matter personally.

Speaking to members of his cabinet on Wednesday, Mr Trump said he liked what Ms Haley had spelled out. For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us. They take hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars and then they vote against us, Mr Trump said.

Were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We don't care.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump declared he was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv, a decision that other countries had for decades declined to take as the final status of the city was always considered central to part of any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names. pic.twitter.com/ZsusB8Hqt4  Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 19, 2017

Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital, he said when he made the announcement. 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.

Story continues

His decision sparked widespread criticism and many questioned whether the US could have any meaningful role in trying to establish a Middle East peace deal, something Mr Trump has vowed to pursue.

The Palestinians had sought the General Assembly vote after the US used its veto on Monday. The UK had supported the censure and will likely do so again in the General Assembly.

Unlike votes taken by the Security Council, assembly resolutions are not legally binding although they do reflect world opinion.

In the letter sent by Ms Haley, she said: The US is simply asking that you acknowledge the historical friendship, partnership, and support we have extended and respect our decision about our own embassy.

She added: The President will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue.

On Twitter, she had written: At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we dont expect those weve helped to target us. On Thurs therell be a vote criticising our choice. The US will be taking names.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Turkey, chair of the summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and Yemen, chair of the Arab Group at the UN

The resolution that will be put to a vote is very similar to the defeated Security Council resolution.

It reaffirms 10 Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It says: Any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded.
Quito (AFP) - Ecuador's Constitutional Court on Thursday gave lawmakers authority to start proceedings aimed at dismissing Vice President Jorge Glas -- in prison for graft -- from office.

The court's judges gave unanimous backing to the National Assembly to go ahead with the procedure.

Its verdict follows a referral from the National Assembly last weekend. The next step is for a panel of lawmakers to decide whether to send the matter to the full National Assembly for a vote, which would strip the vice presidency from Glas.

Glas, however, is already on track to lose his office on January 2 in any case, when he will have been absent from his functions for the three months stipulated in the constitution.

He was put in preventive custody on October 2 and was sentenced last week to six years in prison for receiving $13.5 million in illegal kickbacks from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

Odebrecht has admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes to officials in several Latin American countries to secure inflated public works contracts. It has agreed to pay $2.6 billion in fines to the US, Swiss and Brazilian governments over the wrongdoing.

The Odebrecht scandal has rocked several administrations.

On Thursday, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski fiercely defended himself from accusations in Congress that he lied over $5 million he received from the Brazilian firm.

A vote in Peru's Congress could take place later Thursday on his impeachment.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey told U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday he could not buy its support in a United Nations vote on Jerusalem, and said the world should teach the United States a "very good lesson" by resisting U.S. pressure. Trump has threatened to cut aid to countries that support a draft U.N. resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in Ankara U.N. member states should not let their decision in Thursday's vote at the U.N. General Assembly be dictated by money. "Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," he said. "The dollars will come back, but your will won't once it's sold. "That is why your stance is important." Trump's announcement two weeks ago that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the city's status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks. Last week Erdogan hosted a special meeting of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, which condemned Trump's decision and called on the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. Trump's Jerusalem move led to harsh criticisms from Muslim countries and Israel's closest European allies, who have also rejected the move. A draft resolution calling for withdrawal of Trump's decision was vetoed at the United Nations Security Council by the United States on Monday. Following that vote, opponents of the U.S. decision called for the vote in the General Assembly. "I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said. (Reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton)
By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former executive at Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer SA pleaded guilty on Thursday to U.S. charges that he arranged a bribe to an employee of Saudi Arabia's state-owned Saudi Aramco to secure a contract for the sale of three jets.

Colin Steven, 61, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan. He said at the hearing that others at Embraer had approved of the payment and that he had agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors.

Steven, who was charged with violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, was released on bail following his court hearing, allowing him to return to Dubai, where he lives.

Steven is tentatively scheduled to be sentenced on June 21. The most serious charges against him carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to court documents, Steven, who was a vice president of sales, began discussing a possible sale of three jets to Saudi Aramco in 2006.

He admitted Thursday that in 2009, he met in London with Mazen Snobar, a Saudi Aramco employee, who told Steven that Saudi Aramco would buy new jets, rather than used ones as previously discussed, if he personally received payment.

Steven admitted in court on Thursday that he agreed to arrange a $1.65 million payment from Embraer to Snobar to seal the deal. He said he covered up the nature of the payment by making it through a South African company, purportedly for work on a real estate transaction, even though the South African company did no work and simply funneled the money to the Saudi Aramco employee.

Steven also admitted that he arranged for a $130,000 kickback to be sent from the South African company to himself, and falsely claimed while being interviewed by a U.S. law enforcement official that the payment related to a real estate deal.

Embraer agreed in October 2016 to pay $205.5 million to settle a six-year corruption investigation by U.S. and Brazilian authorities.

Story continues

The company said at the time that the investigation involved the sale of three E170 jets to Saudi Aramco for about $93 million, as well as deals in India, Mozambique and the Dominican Republic.

Embraer spokesman Daniel Bachmann said Thursday that the company was not involved in the U.S. investigation of individuals.

"From the beginning, Embraer treated the matter seriously and fully cooperated with the investigation" into the company, Bachmann said.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
The holiday season is fully upon us, and on Thursday the British monarchy gave us quite the present: Prince Harry and Meghan Markles official engagement photos. Kensington Palace released three stunning photos of the soon-to-be-married couple.

The photos were taken at the Frogmore House in Windsor by fashion photographer Alexi Lubomirski. Prince Harry was in a classic navy suit while Meghan wore a handmade Ralph & Russo gown. The palace confirmed to the Daily Mail that the $75,000 dress was privately purchased from the designer, but they did not say whether or not they paid full price.

Because royal fandom runs deep, the internet blew up with reactions to these lovey-dovey photos.

Omg these royal engagement photos make me want to get married. THE HAPPINESS BETWEEN THEM   Rachel Ettinger (@RachEttinger) December 21, 2017

Of course, there were also some jokes about the engagement photos.

All I can think while looking at the royal engagement photos is why did Meghan Markle dress like Poison Ivy  Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) December 21, 2017

The royal family forgot to release the unedited photos. Were all very happy about our engagement!! pic.twitter.com/n2lCHSLz3a  Burgermeister Meisterburger (@Mackomore) December 21, 2017

Nice touch, Mackomore. Nice touch.

Story continues

Rounding out the adorable factor for the day, Khloe Kardashian also got the internet talking with her pregnancy announcement. After months of speculation, the 33-year-old reality star finally confirmed the news she is expecting her first child with boyfriend Tristan Thompson.

On her Instagram, Kardashian wrote, My greatest dream realized! We are having a baby! She also explained why shes been so tightlipped about her pregnancy. Thank you to everyone for the love and positive vibes! I know weve been keeping this quiet but we wanted to enjoy this between our family and close friends as long as we could privately. To enjoy our first precious moments just us. Thank you all for understanding.

Kardashians fans were, in fact, understanding and sent their congratulations to the happy couple.

Khloe Kardashian is pregnant and Ive never been so happy. The queen is giving us a child pic.twitter.com/GVaOxiUFhW  Eden (@edengoodall) December 21, 2017

Nah I am actually so happy for Khloe Kardashian I could cry, feel like Ive grown up trying to support her going through her struggles with pregnancy, feel like a proud mother  beth (@_bethLDN) December 21, 2017

Though there were plenty of reactions to the big pregnancy news, Kardashians younger sister, Kylie Jenner, popped up in peoples minds, as she too has been dealing with pregnancy rumors. Jenner stole her sisters thunder!

KHLOE KARDASHIAN JUST ANNOUNCED HER PREGNANCY ON INSTA, CMON KYLIE WE ALL WAITIN ON U TOO HUN pic.twitter.com/WJV6qj3iR5  addi (@addison_ballard) December 20, 2017

Me on Kylie Jenners Snapchat now that Khloe confirmed shes pregnant pic.twitter.com/UrJY11tj6g  Maloree (@maloree_kriewal) December 20, 2017

Well, no time like the present, Kylie.

Watch: The internet slams Kim Kardashian for trolling Taylor Swift:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
(Reuters) - A new drug developed by Merck & Co and Pfizer Inc won U.S. approval on Wednesday to treat type II diabetes, the Food and Drug Administration said, adding another competitor to a growing class of treatments. The oral drug, known generically as ertugliflozin, will be sold under the brand name Steglatro and compete with AstraZeneca Plc's Farxiga, Johnson & Johnson's Invokana and Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim's Jardiance. All four drugs belong to a class known as SGLT2 inhibitors, which work by causing patients to expel excess glucose through urine. Merck and Pfizer won approval for Steglatro as a single therapy and in fixed-dose combinations with Merck's diabetes drug Januvia or with metformin, an older generic treatment typically given to newly diagnosed patients. Those will carry the brand names Steglujan and Segluromet, respectively. The approvals and prescribing information were listed on the FDA and Merck websites. The companies, in an emailed statement, said they expect to make the medicines available in early 2018. Under the collaboration Merck, which already has a sizable diabetes sales force, will sell the drug in the United States. As type II diabetes progresses, many patients need additional treatments to better control blood sugar levels. Januvia is the top-selling drug in a class known as DPP-4 inhibitors. The combination with ertugliflozin will compete with combination products from rivals, including Eli Lilly's Glyxambi, which combines Jardiance with its DPP-4 treatment Tradjenta. Jardiance, in a large study, demonstrated its ability to significantly cut the risk of heart-related deaths and hospitalizations from heart failure, claims now included in its label. Invokana has demonstrated similar heart protective qualities in high risk patients. Analysts are forecasting eventual annual sales exceeding $1 billion for Steglatro, but Merck and Pfizer will likely need to show similar heart protections if their medicine is to be competitive. Results of AstraZeneca's heart safety trial of Farxiga are expected in 2019. Diabetes, characterized by elevated blood sugar levels, affects roughly 30 million Americans, and can lead to severe damage to a range of organs in the body, including the eyes and kidneys and significantly increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington and Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Grant McCool)
Two of the women who have accused music mogul Russell Simmons of sexual misconduct said in a new interview that the alleged incidents made them feel worthless and cheapened.

Sherri Hines and Natashia Williams-Blach appeared on Megyn Kelly Today on Tuesday to discuss their allegations. They are two of several women who have come forward to accuse Simmons, who has denied all allegations.

Hines, a former member of hip-hop group Mercedes Ladies, said that Simmons raped her in 1983 when she was 17 or 18. Simmons attorney told the Los Angeles Times that he vigorously denies Hines claims.

When he finished, I ran out of there and I left. I was crying I couldnt believe I was just violated like that, Hines told Kelly. I felt embarrassed, I felt used, worthless.

The way I felt at the time wasI cant believe this man just violated me like I was nothing  Sherri Hines, Russell Simmons accuser. #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/48Q5TBZoAT  Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 19, 2017

Hines told Kelly that she had been contacted by the New York Police Department as part of their investigation into the allegations against Simmons, who announced last month that he would step away from his companies.

Williams-Blach, an actor who appeared in the Simmons-produced film How to Be a Player, said that Simmons tried kiss her and tried to force her to give him oral sex when she was 18. She said she was able to get out of the situation. Simmons attorney told the Los Angeles Times that he vehemently denied her allegations.

You realize you just escaped a minefield, Williams-Blach told Kelly. I went into an automatic, you just gotta go. You got to get out.

Both women said they struggled not to blame themselves after the alleged incidents. Williams-Blach said she initially believed she was somehow responsible for what happened to her because she had played the pink bikini girl in How to Be a Player and modeled in revealing clothing.

If I could see that 18-year-old girl today, of course, I would reassure her that it was not her fault. But I think this culture so much encourages this behavior, she said. When something like that happens, you feel cheapened.
Three family members were among the multiple American cruise ship passengers who were killed in a bus crash on Tuesday as they made their way to visit Mayan ruins in eastern Mexico.

Fanya Shamis of Coconut Creek, Florida, did not survive the crash, a family member confirms to PEOPLE. The Sun Sentinel reported Shamis daughter, Anna Behar, 46; and her grandson, Daniel Behar, 11, also died.

Another grandson, 18-year-old Benjamin Shababo, told The Sun Sentinel his uncle Moises Behar, of Lorton, Virginia, is in the hospital and they have been unable to locate his 15-year-old cousin.

We dont have really concrete information, Shababo told the newspaper. Were all scared. Its just really scary to process this in my head that possibly something really bad happened to them.

Bus crash in Quintana Roo, Mexico on Tuesday, December 19

The Associated Press reports that eight Americans were killed as well as two Swedes, one Canadian and one Mexican in the crash that occurred in Quintana Roo, Mexico. According to the BBC, the Quintana Roo state government said that at least one child died. The accident left another 18 injured.

Royal Caribbean wrote on Twitter that their heart goes out to everyone involved, and later posted that their 27 guests were on a bus tour to the Chacchoben Ruins.

The news from Costa Maya about a bus accident involving #CelebrityEquinox & #SerenadeoftheSeas guests is heartbreaking. Our hearts go out to all those involved. We are doing all we can to care for our guests, including assisting with medical care and transportation.  RCLcorp (@RCLcorp) December 19, 2017

Our 27 guests were on a bus tour to the Chacchoben Ruins. We are working with the local authorities to learn more about the accident. We are doing all we can to help our guests.  RCLcorp (@RCLcorp) December 19, 2017

The U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico also confirmed in a statement on their website that there were numerous deaths.

We express our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this tragedy. We are in contact with local authorities, and will continue to monitor the situation, they wrote. We have staff on the scene and at local hospitals to assist victims and loved ones. We are aware of several U.S. citizens injured in the accident. We confirm the death of multiple U.S. citizens in a bus accident in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Paris (AFP) - French anti-terror judges have ended an investigation into the missile attack on a plane that killed former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking Rwanda's 1994 genocide, legal sources said Thursday.

The long-running probe has been a major source of tension between the two countries following accusations that a Tutsi militia headed by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame was responsible for the attack on the plane in April 1994.

The missile strike near Kigali's airport sparked 100 days of slaughter of the Tutsi ethnic minority by members of Habyarimana's Hutu ethnic group, leaving an estimated 800,000 people dead.

Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide by supporting the Hutu regime, training the soldiers and militiamen who carried out the killings.

Ties had been on the mend until 2014 when Kagame repeated accusations that French soldiers had been involved in the bloodbath.

The relationship took an even worse turn when the French judiciary decided in October 2016 to reopen an investigation into the attack on the plane, as the French crew were among the victims.

In October, sources close to the probe told AFP that the judges had heard from a new witness who claimed to have seen the surface-to-air missiles used to launch the attack at the headquarters of Kagame's militia.

The testimony corroborates other versions of events that point the finger at Kagame's regime.

French authorities have been investigating the strike as French citizens were among those killed aboard Habyarimana's plane.

A total of seven people have been charged in France over the deaths, including Rwanda's current defence minister, James Kabarebe, and Franck Nziza who allegedly fired the missile.
Qalandiya (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - At least nine Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli troops Wednesday as fresh protests broke out over US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, hospital sources said.

At the Qalandia checkpoint between the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israeli forces fired tear gas, sound grenades and live ammunition at around 1,000 protesters, many of whom were throwing stones, an AFP photographer said.

Hundreds also gathered in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, triggering light clashes with the army. In Nablus in the northern West Bank, hundreds marched to an Israeli checkpoint, AFP reporters said.

In Gaza, sealed off by Israel for a decade, a few hundred people gathered for a protest in Gaza City. A few dozen went to the border, with minor clashes reported.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP that "riots" had erupted in several locations, with around "800 rioters throwing firebombs and rocks and rolling tyres at (Israeli) soldiers".

"Soldiers are responding with riot dispersal means," she said.

The Palestinian health ministry said nine people had so far been injured, none of them seriously.

Near daily protests have broken out since Trump's controversial December 6 announcement that he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US embassy to the disputed city.

Wednesday's protest was originally called to protest a planned visit by US Vice President Mike Pence, but he has delayed the trip.
Aba (DR Congo) (AFP) - As South Sudan's warring parties haggled over a ceasefire deal this week, dozens of refugees streamed into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, fleeing what they said was a fresh government offensive.

The apparent push to recapture the key rebel stronghold of Lasu came as mediators tabled a ceasefire agreement in Addis Ababa, which was signed by major parties to the four year conflict on Thursday and is to go into force on December 24.

However with South Sudanese rebel forces vowing to take back their stronghold of Lasu in Central Equatoria State -- regardless of the ceasefire -- the fragility of the deal was thrown into stark relief.

"I'm not sure the government wants peace. If they wanted peace, why would they attack Lasu so that we have to run again with our children," said Betty Moriba, a 28-year-old mother of five.

Having fled violence twice before, Moriba grabbed her children at the first sound of gunfire and ran towards the DRC, but was unable to salvage any of the family's prized possessions.

She and other witnesses say President Salva Kiir's troops attacked Lasu on Sunday, which has served as the headquarters for the Riek Machar's SPLA-IO, the main opposition movement in South Sudan.

"They came with armoured vehicles and machine-gun-mounted pick up trucks," SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP over the phone from Kampala.

Gabriel said the two sides fought each other for several hours on Monday morning before the rebels withdrew. He has vowed to launch a counter-offensive if government forces do not pull out.

Army spokesman Santo Domic Chol denied troops had launched an offensive on the town, accusing the rebels of attacking a government position as well as looting a village for food -- forcing troops to step in to save civilians.

"We have been ordered not to engage hostilities by pursuing rebels (but) at times we will fight if we are attacked in our positions which is what happened in Lasu."

Story continues

However it was unclear what government position he was referring to -- as both civilians and an official document released earlier this month indicated the area was under rebel control.

"These government soldiers came from Yei and they were shooting guns and killing people. That's what made us come this way," said James Mana, one of the fresh arrivals in the DRC, near the town of Aba.

Congolese authorities registered more than 200 refugees in the last five days.

Smoke could be seen rising from a village across the border.

- 'Cost and consequences' -

South Sudan this month entered into its fifth year of a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven nearly four million from their homes.

The UN Security Council warned last week that there would be "cost and consequences" for any side who blocks "last chance" peace efforts mediated by the regional authority IGAD, in a bid to revitalise a shattered peace agreement.

The peace deal was signed in 2015 to end 21 months of civil war between Kiir's government and Machar's rebels which broke out just two years after independence in 2011.

However the deal effectively collapsed in July 2016, when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then-first vice president Machar out of the country and his supporters back to battling the government in the bush.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million people to flock to neighbouring Uganda and the DRC in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016, a factor that is likely to further complicate negotiations.

A permanent ceasefire is the first step in negotiations to include a "revised and realistic" timeline to holding elections.

However after numerous failed ceasefires and collapsed peace deals, observers are sceptical.

"The regime is clearly not interested in negotiations or compromise and is the principle obstacle to peace," said Payton Knopf, the head of the South Sudan working group at the US Institute for Peace and former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan.

- 'I don't want to run anymore' -

Rights groups have blamed the government for systematic attacks on civilians in Equatoria, including killings, torture and rape.

As a result, many have sought shelter behind rebel lines, offering opposition fighters food in return for protection. But over the past couple of months, there have also been growing allegations of abuses at the hands of the SPLA-IO, gradually eroding popular support for the rebellion.

For the rebels, weakened by lack of ammunition and infighting, the loss of Lasu is just the latest in a series of military setbacks.

Civilians like Betty Moriba see little point in returning to South Sudan.

"I just want to be in one place, where I can raise my children," she said. "I just don't want to run anymore."
Zurich (AFP) - Total economic losses from natural and man-made disasters have soared by 63 percent to strike an estimated $306 billion in 2017, reinsurance firm Swiss Re said Wednesday.

"The US was hardest hit, including by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, which have made 2017 the second costliest hurricane season" after 2005, the company said.

Despite the rising financial cost of disasters in 2017, the cost in terms of lives held steady.

"Globally, more than 11,000 people have died or gone missing in disaster events in 2017, similar to 2016," Swiss Re said.

Its preliminary estimates for the amount of insured losses from natural and man-made disasters around the world is approximately $136 billion.

This is "well-above the annual average of the previous 10 years, and the third highest since... records began in 1970," Swiss Re.

The reinsurance firm -- which provides insurance to insurance firms -- said that insured losses from disasters have exceeded $100 billion in several years.

"The insurance industry has demonstrated that it can cope very well with such high losses," said Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophe perils at Swiss Re.

"However, significant protection gaps remain and if the industry is able to extend its reach, many more people and businesses can become better equipped to withstand the fallout from disaster events," he added.
It's amazing how different things can look with the benefit of hindsight: if Honda had known how the market was going to turn so dramatically towards hybrids and EVs, it might have thought twice about ending production of the Insight back in 2014. Although it's probably no surprise Honda is going to be launching an all-new hybrid at the upcoming 2018 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the fact that it's reviving the Insight nameplate to do it might have been less predictable.

The Japanese manufacturer has just announced the new Honda Insight Prototype will be making its global debut at the Detroit show, which will be a precursor to a production 2019 Insight that will go on sale in the summer of next year. The new Insight will be an upmarket, stylish, five-door passenger sedan utilizing Honda's innovative two-motor hybrid system, making it the newest electrified model in the company's portfolio.

It appears Honda is trying to position its new hybrid as a more premium offering than the first two generations of the Insight, which saw the second generation discontinued after a dramatic slump in sales between 2010 and 2013. Considering how unremarkable public perception seemed to be with the last Insight, it's perhaps a little surprising Honda has chosen to revive the nameplate, rather than going for something completely fresh with no baggage.

Nothing is being revealed by Honda at the moment about the performance, and more importantly, the fuel economy of the 2019 Insight, other than to assure us it will be "competitive with other compact hybrid models."

Henio Arcangeli, Jr., the senior vice president of Automobile Sales and general manager of the Honda Division, American Honda Motor Co., Inc., said of the prototype, "With its sophisticated styling, dynamic stance, ample interior space and best-in-class performance, the all-new Insight embodies Honda's approach to creating electrified vehicles without the typical tradeoffs. You won't have to be an electrification advocate to appreciate the new Insight  it's a great car in its own right, independent of what's happening under the hood."

The 2019 Insight makes its debut in Detroit on January 15, 2018.
WASHINGTON  House Republicans swear they had enough time to review a 500-page conference report released last Friday night before they voted on what they thought would be the final tax bill Tuesday. (They actually had to vote on the bill again Wednesday because of a parliamentary mishap.) But when we asked GOP lawmakers supporting the legislation this week for just one basic detail of the bill  the tax bracket percentages for individual income  hardly anyone could list them.

HuffPost had to ask 18 House Republicans to identify the tax brackets before we finally came across one member who could: Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah. (We stopped asking after Stewart, meaning the percentage of the House GOP conference who knew this key aspect of the bill could have been much worse than our imperfect survey suggests.)

To be clear, we were just looking for seven figures: 10 percent, 12 percent, 22 percent, 24 percent, 32 percent, 35 percent and 37 percent. We were not looking for congressional representatives to display some savant-like ability and provide the income thresholds for each bracket. We just wanted to see if Republicans knew this one simple element of a bill they were rushing into law.

They didnt.

Among the GOP lawmakers who were shaky on those specifics were members of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, the chairwoman of the House Budget Committee (Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee) and the lead author of the bill in the House (Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas).

Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was one of those Republicans who didn't name the seven tax brackets when asked. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

So the seven brackets? Brady said when we asked him. So you got them right there. Im heading to the floor and finishing my remarks on this tax cut and reform jobs act, so thank you.

When we pressed Brady again to name the brackets, he dismissed the question. So please, please. Seriously? I would like to finish my job, he said.

Even though Brady almost certainly should know the brackets in a tax bill he is authoring, the Ways and Means chairman was in good company.

Story continues

We repeatedly asked Budget Chairwoman Black, who repeatedly claimed she knew the brackets, but would not say them. At one point during our impromptu interview, an aide started a conversation in the elevator so the congresswoman could avoid the question. And then Black left the elevator for the House floor; we trailed behind still asking for the brackets with Black still saying she knew them without providing any proof.

As the head of the Budget Committee, Black oversaw the budget vehicle that allowed Republicans to pass the tax bill through a special legislative process without any Democratic support.

A number of House Republicans eventually admitted they didnt know the brackets off the top of my head. Those were the words of Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.). And Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.). And Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.).

Other Republicans tried their best to squirm away from the question. Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) claimed she knew the brackets, but wouldnt list them when we repeatedly asked. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said he could probably answer the question, but, loosely summoning Albert Einstein, added, Why remember what you can write down? And Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), who was happy to tell us that Republicans were getting more familiar with the bill, went mute after we asked about the brackets.

Still other Republican representatives tried their best to guess the brackets, including Roger Williams (R-Texas), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).

Gallagher and Cramer were close, but each left out one or two.

Asking those members of Congress to name the seven tax brackets was, of course, a gotcha question. It was also an entirely fair question  listen to our interviews below and you can hear that the lawmakers knew they were supposed to know.

Republicans began their quest for tax reform by promising a simpler tax code  one with fewer brackets, even though the relationship between brackets and simplicity is tenuous at best. Still, by their own words, reducing the number of brackets was a key goal. And the bill would be slightly easier to comprehend if there were fewer brackets  which there arent  although it still wouldnt really be easier to file your taxes.

Part of the reason House Republicans were so unfamiliar with the numbers was because House Republicans ended up swallowing the Senates tax bracket proposal, along with a number of deductions that the House eliminated but the Senate kept. (That also undermined the House GOPs claims about simplicity.) While the final bill was supposed to be a compromise, Senate Republicans clearly won some key battles, including on the individual tax brackets, so its at least a little understandable that House Republicans werent as familiar with those details.

But that wasnt the excuse we got from the lawmakers themselves.

House Republicans told us, time and again, that they were very familiar with the details of this legislation. When we suggested they didnt have much time to read the final legislation after it was released Friday night, they said they had plenty of time. Weve had several weeks! I read it on the plane two weeks in a row! Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) told HuffPost.

But how much should we trust that if, in the next breath, those lawmakers didnt know basic facts about the bill?

The individual tax brackets arent inconsequential; they just werent what Republicans were truly focused on. If you were to ask any House Republican what the new corporate tax rate will be, they almost certainly would have been able to tell you its 21 percent. If you asked them the top individual rate only, they likely would have been able to tell you it was 37 percent. Many members, in fact, were able to list the top bracket, which, as every member also likely knows, has been lowered from 39.6 percent.

The rates in the middle, however, the rates that actually apply to the middle class  the people Republicans kept saying the bill was aimed to help  were not numbers the lawmakers knew. At least not specifically. They didnt appear to have studied where individual rates were previously and where theyre going to be at various income levels  or if they did, they didnt study very hard.

GOP lawmakers were far more focused on corporate rates and the tax rates on higher incomes that affect them personally.

As Roger Williams  who has an estimated worth between $20 million and $70 million  said about the individual tax rate, I know what mines going to be.

But Republicans truly want you to believe they know the ins and outs of this legislation.

When we asked Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.) how familiar Republicans were with this bill, he said Republicans were as well-versed on this tax cut bill as any other bill as weve ever voted on.

And then, when we pressed Abraham to name the brackets, he listed 10 percent, 12 percent, 14 percent, 16 percent, 22 percent, 28 percent ... and trailed off. Thats three right out of seven.

You can listen to the interviews of each member we asked here:

Kevin Brady (R-Texas)

Diane Black (R-Tenn.)

Roger Williams (R-Texas)

Tom McClintock (R-Calif.)

David McKinley (R-W.Va.)

Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.)

Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.)

Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.)

Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.)

Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)

Chris Collins (R-N.Y.)

Jeff Denham (R-Calif.)

Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.)

Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.)

Billy Long (R-Mo.)

Ralph Abraham (R-La.)

Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)

And heres the successful attempt by Chris Stewart (R-Utah) at naming the brackets.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Miami (AFP) - Fierce hurricanes, heat waves, floods and wildfires ravaged the planet in 2017, as scientists said the role of climate change in causing or worsening certain natural disasters has grown increasingly clear.

It was also the year the world's second largest polluter, the United States, turned its back on the 196-nation Paris climate deal meant to limit global warming to under two degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

President Donald Trump, who has dismissed global warming as a Chinese hoax, vowed to quit the 2015 Paris accord and tapped fossil fuel allies to key environmental posts.

His administration also dropped climate change from the list of national security threats, announced plans to auction off vast swaths of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, and signed a proposal to eliminate the Clean Power Plan, aimed at limiting the release of polluting greenhouse gases.

Trump says the goal is to make America a dominant source of energy for the world, and to create jobs.

"Together, we are going to start a new energy revolution -- one that celebrates American production on American soil," Trump said in June.

In October, Trump signed a proclamation to make America a net energy exporter by 2026, reviving the coal industry and seeking to access the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, particularly on federal lands.

While the fossil fuel industry has applauded the moves, scientists have expressed alarm.

"The Trump administration, in less than a year, has done more to undermine climate policy than even the worst previous administration on climate (i.e. George W Bush) had done over the course of two full terms," said Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at Pennsylvania State University, in an email to AFP.

Mann blamed the conservative billionaire Koch brothers and fossil fuel lobbyists for essentially running US environmental policy under the Trump administration.

Story continues

"They must be stopped," he added, because their actions "pose an existential threat to us and our children and grandchildren."

- 'New normal' -

The more fossil fuels we burn, the hotter the planet becomes due to the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The world is currently on track for its third warmest year in modern times.

Experts say global warming can make certain events, like floods, drought and hurricanes, more frequent and sometimes worse.

Among the fiercest storms seen this year were severe monsoon rains in Bangladesh, India and Nepal that killed more than 1,200 people and affected 40 million people, destroying homes, livestock and crops, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Spain and Portugal have grappled with a deadly drought that dried up rivers, killed crops and fueled wildfires.

Meanwhile, an unusually active hurricane season roiled the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean with 17 big storms, the most since 2005.

Major, deadly hurricanes included Harvey, which flooded Texas with 50 inches (125 centimeters) of rain in some places. The massively powerful Irma devastated the Caribbean and Florida, while Maria flattened much of Puerto Rico.

California Governor Jerry Brown, whose state is currently battling its third largest wildfire since 1932, spoke this month of how such devastation could be the "new normal."

"This could be something that happens every year or every few years," Brown told reporters.

That phrase was echoed in the 2017 Arctic Report Card, an international peer-reviewed report on the fragile Arctic, which is warming at twice the pace of the rest of the world.

"The Arctic environmental system has reached a 'new normal,'" that will raise sea levels, alter weather patterns and unleash more extreme weather across the globe, it said.

- US 'doubling down' -

Just as extreme are the differing actions around the world to address climate change.

China, the world's biggest polluter, just unveiled plans for a national carbon market likely to become the world's largest exchange for emissions credits -- earning praise from environmentalists.

At a Paris summit this month, banks and companies pledged to move billions of dollars out of coal, oil and natural gas.

The United States, however, is "doubling down on fossil fuels to power the nation and the world," said Julia Olson of the Children's Trust, which along with dozens of US children is suing the US government for failing to protect the nation's air, land and water.

Peter Gleick, a president-emeritus of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said Trump's actions will reverberate for decades.

"Just as human-caused climate change is accelerating and having an increasingly clear impact on disasters and extreme weather events, the US administration is turning its back on climate science and policies that are needed to protect the American people, property, and the environment," he told AFP.

"The anti-science agenda of the Trump administration will, without doubt, lead to preventable deaths and disasters, and is inexcusable."
MINIDOKA COUNTY  A man was taken into custody early Thursday morning after shooting at Idaho State Police during an attempted traffic stop, according to ISP.

At about 12:30 a.m. Thursday, a trooper tried to get Cody L. Hinerman, 25, to pull over near the intersection of 300 South and 300 West in Minidoka County. Hinerman, who had committed multiple traffic violations, refused to stop and kept driving north toward Rupert.

Gun shots were fired at the trooper from Hinermans car during the subsequent chase, but neither the car nor the trooper were hit, police said.

Hinerman stopped about 10 minutes later and was arrested without incident. Two other men who were in the car with Hinerman were interviewed and released.

The shooting is under investigation by the Cassia County Sheriffs Office.
Tehran (AFP) - Tehran strongly denied on Wednesday that it had supplied weapons to Yemeni rebels which they used in attacks on its archfoe Saudi Arabia as alleged by both Riyadh and Washington.

"We have no arms link with Yemen," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told the ISNA news agency, after Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a rebel missile over Riyadh on Tuesday that it suggested was "Iranian-manufactured".

"The accusation that Iran gives weapons to various groups is rejected and we strongly deny it," he said.

"Yemen is in a blockade and such possibility does not exist anyway."

The audacious attack aimed at the heart of Saudi power follows the downing of another missile last month near Riyadh airport that triggered the tightening of a Saudi-led blockade on hunger-stricken Yemen.

Weapons used by the rebels "to defend against violation and non-stop attacks" are leftovers of previous governments, Ghasemi said.

"There isn't even the possibility of sending humanitarian aid."

A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Shiite rebels in Yemen since March 2015 and has repeatedly accused Shiite Iran of backing its co-religionists.

"The possession of Iranian-manufactured ballistic weapons by terrorist organisations, including the Iran-backed Huthi militia, is a threat to regional and international security," coalition spokesman said on Tuesday.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley described the strike as bearing "all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons".

She said Washington would be discussing options for Security Council action against Tehran, although that immediately drew strong reservations from Moscow.

More than 8,750 people have been killed since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the beleaguered government's fight against the rebels, triggering what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump's announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tires. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire. Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack. Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of the U.N. draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States "will be taking names". Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for "their brave and uncompromising stance". He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington's lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "The attitude towards Israel of many countries, on all continents, outside the walls of the United Nations, is changing and will ultimately permeate into the U.N. - the house of lies," he said. Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled. Israel considers Jerusalem 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 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Several senior diplomats said Haley's warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters. (Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Ori Lewis and Angus MacSwan)
Ivanka Trump's unannounced visit to a Connecticut high school this week reportedly prompted backlash from some students' parents.

The first daughter visited the Norwalk Early College Academy on Monday to discuss the importance of career education, something Trump has been promoting in schools across the nation.

"To see the passion and enthusiasm for bringing real-life skills into a classroom environment but then coupling it with real-life experience through internship creates this really beautiful virtuous angle," Trump said.

However, some parents were upset with Trump's surprise visit and claimed they were given little information regarding the arrangement, News 12 Connecticut reported.

RELATED: Ivanka Trump in her White House role



"This should have been brought to our attention, although I do understand security reasons," one student's parent, Karey Fitzgerald, told the local station. "I think we should have had the choice to send our child to school or keep them home."

SEE ALSO: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner sued over financial disclosures

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty also spoke with Trump in front of a handful of students at the school. The multinational technology company reportedly developed the academic program being used by students at the academy.

Students participating in the school's program are working towards degrees in software engineering and mobile programming. They are also able to earn both a high school diploma and associate's degree in just four years.

RELATED: Ivanka Trump through the years




Parents claimed they had received little information about Ms Trumps visit: AP

Ivanka Trumps surprise unannounced visit to a school in Connecticut has prompted some parents to pull their children from class.

The US presidents daughter addressed secondary school students at the Norwalk Early College Academy about the importance of education in the sciences, technology, mathematics, and engineering.

Ms Trump, who serves as an unpaid advisor to her father, said: "To see the passion and enthusiasm for bringing real-life skills into a classroom environment, but then coupling it with real-life experience through internship, creates this really beautiful virtuous angle.

Ms Trump, who is a former businesswoman and fashion advisor, drew attention to the event on Twitter. She said: Great visit to Norwalk Early College Academy today with @IBMCEO @GinniRometty.

PTECH schools equip high school students with skills training in #STEM & Computer Science, enabling them to thrive in our modern economy. It was an honour to meet so many bright and talented students!

Great visit to Norwalk Early College Academy today with @IBM CEO @GinniRometty. PTECH schools equip high school students with skills training in #STEM & Computer Science, enabling them to thrive in our modern economy. It was an honor to meet so many bright and talented students! pic.twitter.com/BPYuoTffsK

 Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 18, 2017

But Ms Trump provoked fierce criticism from those parents who disagree with Donald Trumps views. They claimed they had received little information about Ms Trumps visit, perhaps the result of concerns about security.

Story continues

"This should have been brought to our attention, although I do understand security reasons. I think we should have had the choice to send our child to school or keep them home, Karey Fitzgerald, a Norwolk parent, told News 12 Connecticut.

Monica Mercuri, an alumna of the academy, condemned Ms Trumps trip to the school, tweeting: "Hope the diversity of our students and our large immigrant population doesn't scare her away!"

The visit to the school comes just days after Ms Trump was accused of a "conflict of interest" after her fashion brand opened a shop in Trump Tower in downtown New York.

The company's first retail outlet, which sits behind the building's security checkpoint and armed police guards, sells handbags, shoes and jewellery in the lobby of the 58-storey skyscraper which is also the headquarter of The Trump Organisation.

Ivanka Trump merchandise had previously only been sold through wholesale distributors and online but some retailers had gone so far as to stop stocking the brand because sales plunged in the wake of Mr Trumps electoral victory.

The company recently began selling its wares, including $25 earrings, $34 candles and $298 handbags directly on its website. The shop has raised fresh concerns about the ethics of the Trump family profiting from the president's supporter base.

Ms Trump made more than $5 million (3.75 million) from her fashion business between January 2016 and March 2017. Nevertheless, she chose to step down from the day-to-day running of the company after her father became president and appointed her as his adviser.

She also transferred her business assets into a trust overseen by relatives including her older brother Donald Trump Jnr but continues to maintain control of the brand.

Related Video:

Watch NBC Nightly News on Yahoo View.
The Justice Department is reviving an inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the governments controversial approval of the Uranium One deal, NBC News reported on Thursday.

A now-dormant FBI investigation into whether Clinton had ties to the deal has not found evidence of wrongdoing. But NBC, citing multiple law enforcement officials, reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has in recent weeks directed Justice Department prosecutors to ask FBI agents to explain evidence uncovered in the probe.

Uranium One, a Canadian mining company with major U.S. holdings, was sold in 2010 to a Russian firm. Before the sale could go through, it needed approval from nine U.S. agencies, including the State Department. Because some of the people who stood to benefit from the sale were Clinton Foundation donors, conservative media and other critics of the 2016 presidential nominee have alleged a quid pro quo, even though the State Department didnt have the power to unilaterally approve or reject the deal and Clinton herself was not directly involved in the approval process.

Following pressure from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, Sessions last month said he would consider appointing a new special counsel to look into Clinton and Uranium One, as well as other matters involving Democrats. Sessions pledged during his confirmation hearing last year that he would recuse himself from any possible investigations involving Clinton.

The Uranium One obsession among Trump and his allies has increased in recent months as Special Counsel Robert Muellers probe intensifies into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. Four people have been charged, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said a missile fired by Yemen's Houthi group toward Saudi Arabia on Tuesday "bears all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons" as she pushed the U.N. Security Council to act. Saudi air defenses shot down the ballistic missile and there were no reports of casualties or damage. In contrast, a U.N. human rights spokesman said coalition air strikes had killed at least 136 noncombatants in war-torn Yemen since Dec. 6. Saudi-led forces, backing Yemen's government, have fought the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen's more than two-year-long war. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are "baseless and unfounded." "We must all act cooperatively to expose the crimes of the Tehran regime and do whatever is needed to make sure they get the message. If we do not, then Iran will bring the world deeper into a broadening regional conflict," Haley told the council. Haley said she was exploring, with some council colleagues, several options for pressuring Iran to "adjust their behavior." However, Haley is likely to struggle to convince some members, like veto powers Russia and China, that U.N. action is needed. Russia's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told council on Tuesday: "We need to abandon the language of threats and sanctions and to start using the instruments of dialogue and concentrate on broadening cooperation and mutual trust." Most sanctions on Iran were lifted at the start of 2016 under the nuclear deal brokered by world powers and enshrined in a U.N. Security Council resolution. The resolution still subjects Tehran to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions that are technically not part of the nuclear deal. Haley said the Security Council could strengthen the provisions in that resolution or adopt a new resolution banning Iran from all activities related to ballistic missiles. Under the current resolution, Iran is "called upon" to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years. Some states argue that the language of the resolution does not make it obligatory. "We could explore sanctions on Iran in response to its clear violations of the Yemen arms embargo," Haley said. "We could hold the IRGC (Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) accountable for its violations of numerous Security Council resolutions." A separate U.N. resolution on Yemen bans the supply of weapons to Houthi leaders and "those acting on their behalf or at their direction." (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Peter Cooney and Jonathan Oatis)
JEROME  Jerome County officials are exploring new options for leasing excess beds at the county jail after nearly a year of waiting on a contract from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The long-awaited contract, which would allow ICE to lease 50 beds at the Jerome jail, has been fiercely protested throughout the past year by local civil rights groups and dairy farmers, who say the move would create a culture of fear in the areas Hispanic community.

Now, in a development thats sure to be welcomed by opponents of the ICE proposal, county officials say theyre considering alternatives to the controversial deal  but theres disagreement on which alternative would be best.

Commissioner Charlie Howell wants to see Jerome take more state prisoners that might otherwise be sent out of state due to overcrowding in Idaho prisons. That theoretical became one step closer to reality Wednesday morning after a phone call between Rep. Clark Kauffman and Idaho Department of Correction director Henry Atencio.

Sheriff Doug McFall is less keen on the idea, and says he would rather pursue a potential contract with the U.S. Marshals Office.

After reading a report this week that the Idaho Department of Correction is considering shipping as many as 1,000 prisoners out of state to mitigate overcrowding in state prisons, Howell reached out to Kauffman to discuss the possibility of Jerome County taking in more overflow from the state.

The Jerome jail already houses some state prisoners  they currently account for about half of all inmates in the jail  but there isnt an official contract between IDOC and the county. Howell wants one.

Why are we spending state money out of state when we can keep state money in state? Howell said. Our economic drivers always to buy local, buy local, buy local. Why arent we serving local also?

In a phone conversation with Kauffman Wednesday morning, Atencio indicated that the state would be open to sending more prisoners to Jerome.

I guess they were under the impression that Jerome was waiting to be a repository for ICE, Kauffman said. He said, Boy, we would be glad to send prisoners to Jerome as opposed to out of state. And so we just kind of got the ball rolling for them to call the Jerome County sheriff or Commissioner Howell and see if they can make a deal.

Atencio confirmed that the state is indeed interested in leasing additional beds at the Jerome County Jail as soon as we can. The department had been in touch with county officials Wednesday, Atencio said, to work out details such as the number of beds available.

We would like to get going on it, he said.

The new talks with the state were applauded by Benjamin Reed, public relations coordinator with Jerome United Making Progress (JUMP), a local group opposed to the ICE contract.

That is definitely progress and a step in the right direction, Reed said. If they would abandon their pipe dream of getting this contract with ICE for easy money and get something that would benefit all of us in the state, that would heal a lot of community tension.

This wouldnt be the first time Jerome County and the IDOC have discussed entering a contract to house overflow from state prisons, according to Sheriff McFall. Prior to the new jail facility opening in 2016, McFall said, the state expressed interest in leasing as many beds as you have available.

The 135-bed jail opened in July 2016. As the year came to a close and he hadnt heard anything more from the state, McFall said, he reached out to IDOC himself and was told that the state wasnt interested in a contract at that time.

Now, the shoe may be on the other foot, as McFall has hesitations about taking more inmates from the state. For one thing, he said, the county jail doesnt have the physical structure or manpower to house a large population of state prisoners.

Quite frankly, were not a prison environment. Were a county jail environment. And theres a pretty big difference, McFall said. [State inmates] tend to be more hardened criminals that are a higher risk and take more manpower to keep under control.

Financial factors will likely also enter the discussion. The state pays the county $45 per bed per day. ICE is expected to pay $75, although that amount isnt guaranteed yet.

Its a matter of economics, McFall said. I think the people that voted for the jail in Jerome County expect us to make the best decision to get this bond paid off early.

A third option has also surfaced: Leasing beds to the U.S. Marshals Office.

The Marshals Office contacted Jerome County roughly a month and a half ago to express interest in renting bed space, McFall said. Like ICE, the Marshals Office is expected to pay $75 per bed per day.

If the county hasnt heard from ICE by Jan. 1, were probably going to at least communicate to them that weve got to hear one way or another, or were going to start talking to the Marshals Office, McFall said.

A contract from any agency would be presented to the county commissioners for a vote.

If given a choice between leasing beds to ICE and leasing beds to the state, Howell said, he would choose the state. He hopes to get a potential deal with the state on the commissioners agenda as early as next week.

To be honest, its less controversial than a deal with ICE, Howell said. And since we dont have a contract from ICE, for me its not a consideration. You take the business thats offered in front of you.

Its unknown how the other two commissioners would vote on any contract from the state, ICE, or IDOC.

Theres a lot of communication that needs to take place, and a lot of numbers, facts, and figures that are going to be looked at before I can even come close to saying which way I can go, said Vice Chairman Cathy Roemer.

This is the first Ive even known that the state has all these people to send, Roemer added. There is a huge lack of communication here. And that needs to be rectified.

Commissioner Roger Morley did not immediately return a call for comment.
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) - The last surviving female Sumatran rhino in Malaysia is seriously ill, a wildlife official said Wednesday, with vets racing to save the critically endangered creature.

Iman is one of just two Sumatran rhinos known to still be alive in Malaysia. She lives in a wildlife reserve on Borneo island, where she is part of a captive breeding programme with the last surviving male, Tam.

But the female, who was captured several years ago from a jungle-clad valley, is suffering severe bleeding from a tumour in her uterus, said Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga.

She has emerged from her mud wallow at the reserve in Sabah state and is being treated by experienced vets, but is only drinking and has refused to eat, he told AFP.

"We hope to be able to treat the illness," he added.

Iman has suffered from the same problem before but in the past vets managed to deal with it more easily, Tuuga said.

In June another female rhino at the same reserve was put down as she was suffering from skin cancer, leaving Iman and Tam as Malaysia's only surviving Sumatran rhinos.

The smallest of the rhino species and the only Asian rhino with two horns, the creatures were declared extinct in the wild in Malaysia in 2015.

There are fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild in neighbouring Indonesia, existing in tiny herds on Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo.

Their numbers have fallen dramatically due to the rapid expansion of agricultural plantations, which has devastated their natural jungle habitat, and as they have been increasingly targeted by poachers for their horns and hide.

Sumatran rhinos are born covered in shaggy, reddish-brown fur, earning them the nickname "hairy rhino".
A Florida man is facing negligence charges after his 5-year-old son fatally shot himself in the head with a gun he found in the glove box of the mans car.

Jamal Daniel Todman was arrested Monday and charged with negligent storage of a firearm in connection with the Oct. 4 death of his son Judah.

The accidental shooting happened outside an Orlando day care center, while Todman, 34, was inside picking up his 3-year-old son, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Its unclear how long Judah was left in the car by himself. However, when his father and brother came back, the gun from the cars glove box was on the floor, and Judah was slumped over with blood on his head, according to WESH.

The boy was rushed to a hospital across the street, but died from self-inflicted shooting wounds.

Investigators say Todman told them he kept the gun in the glove box and that it was usually locked, according to The Associated Press.

The gun is registered to Todmans wife. Todman himself was convicted of felony possession of a firearm in 2005 and is legally forbidden from owning a firearm.

In addition to the negligence charge, Todman was charged with carrying a concealed firearm by a convicted felon, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Mondays arrest came after an investigation lasting over two months. Todman has since bonded out of jail, according to NBC Miami.

Gunshot wounds are now the third leading cause of childhood deaths in the U.S., according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Pediatrics.

Jamal Daniel Todman, 34, has been charged with criminal negligence after his 5-year-old son fatally shot himself with a gun his father allegedly kept in the glove box of his car. (Photo: Orange County Jail)

Also on HuffPost

Jennifer Terry

Jennifer Terry, 44, is accused of taking her daughter around Ogden, Utah, to toss eggs at people.

Paul Rater

Paul Rater, 62, is accused of leaving his 5-year-old granddaughter alone in the desert with a loaded gun while he went to get a cheeseburger.

Colleen Manuelito

Colleen Manuelito, 28, is accused of leaving three small children in a car while she attended the Arizona State Fair.

Starved Wisconsin Teen

Mike Vega points to the area of sidewalk in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012, where he discovered a starving 15-year-old after she escaped from her abusive father and stepmother last week. The severely malnourished teenager had been forced to stay in an unfinished basement for years and an alarm would sound if she went upstairs, police records say. The teen told authorities she ate what she could find in the garbage and on the floor of her father and stepmother's Madison home. Sometimes she was made to eat her feces and drink her own urine, according to a police affidavit. (AP Photo/Todd Richmond)

This photo released by the Montgomery County Police Dept shows Zakieya Latrice Avery, 28. Montgomery County Police charged 21-year-old Monifa Denise Sanford and Avery with murder in the deaths of two of Avery's children, a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old. The women are also facing attempted murder charges for injuring the children's siblings, ages 5 and 8. (AP Photo/Montgomery County Police Dept.)

Erin Carnes

Carnes reportedly left her 1-year-old son standing next to a mailbox outside the home where she though the boy's father lived in Palmetto, Fla. Police say Carnes not only left her baby and his belongings at the wrong house, but that the 27-year-old mom hadn't told the father she was giving him their child. She was jailed and charged with child abandonment in Manatee County, near Tampa Bay.

Carmen Ramirez

In this undated photo provided by the Philadelphia Police Department, Carmen Ramirez is seen. Police say the parents of a disabled 3-year-old Philadelphia girl who died weighing just 11 pounds have been charged with murder in what authorities are calling her starvation death. Police say the parents, 30-year-old Carlos Rivera and 27-year-old Ramirez, also face counts of involuntary manslaughter, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal conspiracy in the death of Nathalyz Rivera. She was found unresponsive Monday, Sept. 9, 2013, at the family's squalid home. (AP Photo/Philadelphia Police Department)

Tanicia Goodwin

FILE - In this March 19, 2012, file photo, Tanicia Goodwin is arraigned in Salem District Court in Salem, Mass. A court hearing is scheduled Thursday, May 3, 2012, for Goodwin, who is accused in the attempted murders of her 3-year-old daughter, Erica, and her 8-year-old son, Jamaal. Both children survived the alleged attacks in March. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, Aram Boghosian, Pool)

Angelo Fabiani Arroyo

Angelo Fabiani Arroyo, 40, is accused of leaving his 4-year-old child at a car crash site and fleeing the scene.

Carron Washington

Carron Washington allegedly fed his 2-month-old daughter bleach because a friend from school told him it was a great cure for breathing trouble. The kid is OK, but Washington still called the incident, "probably be the dumbest decision I ever made in my life." Read the whole story here.

Michelle Windgassen; John Lewis

Michelle Windgassen, 27, and John Lewis, 32, were arrested on charges of endangering a minor while they were under the influence of drugs at a Louisville restaurant. Officers found Windgassen in the bathroom snorting heroin, and Lewis admitted snorting heroin a couple hours earlier.

Tyshekka Collier

Collier is accused of walking into her son's middle school in March, 2013 and hitting a sick child she mistook for her son. She then allegedly apologized to the child and then started slapping her own son, according to a Spartanburg County, South Carolina sheriff's office arrest report.

Delaina Garling

Having been banned from the Family Dollar Store after employees say she was stealing, this mother allegedly returned to the establishment and began pepper spraying the workers there. She then allegedly handed the can to her 7-year-old daughter, saying, "You know what to do, baby. Spray it!" The 7-year-old apparently realized this was one of those times mother does not know best. Read the whole story here.

Robert Forbes, Christina Forbes

Robert Forbes and Christina Forbes have been arrested by sheriffs in Citrus County, Fla. after their 9-year-old son was found with a cockroach in his ear.

Kimberly Margeson French Kissed Son, Wlliam Partridge, To Give Him Drugs In Jail

Officials in Penn Yan, NY, say Kimberly Margeson, 54, passed two Oxycodone painkiller pills to her 30-year-old, William Partridge by french kissing him during a jailhouse visit.

Austin Davis

Austin Davis is accused of beating his three children with a belt because one of his kids had passed gas in the car.

Karl Karlsen

For almost four years, police in upstate New York believed that Karl Karlsen's son Levi was accidentally crushed beneath a truck that he was working on in 2008. But after learning that Karlsen, 52, was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy on his 23-year-old son, they came to the conclusion that the father deliberately dropped the pickup on top of him. He was arrested on Nov. 23, 2012 and charged with second-degree murder

Koko Nicole Anderson

Koko Nicole Anderson, 21, from Mesa, Ariz., is shown after being jailed on aggravated DUI and criminal damage charges in this handout photo provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. Anderson was charged after crashing her car with her infant son inside through a gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport Thursday night, driving on the runway in the latest in a series of similar mishaps across the country that have raised questions whether the nation's airports are truly secure. (AP Photo/Maricopa County Sheriff

Cesar Ruiz

Ruiz is accused of pouring rum into his infant son's feeding tube in October, 2012 in Belle Chasse, La. BELLE CHASSE, La

William Lewallen

William Lewallen was arrested after Tulsa police found his 18-month-old daughter locked in a metal dog cage, his naked 4-year old daughter outside on a cold afternoon and him asleep in a drug or alcohol induced stupor.

Billie Warburton

Authorities in Virginia arrested 30-year-old Billie Jolene Warburton, of Norfolk, on Oct. 15, 2012, in the parking lot of a courthouse. Police allegedly found Warburton slumped over the steering wheel of her vehicle. Warburton's window was open, the motor was running and a young child was sobbing in a car seat in the back, police said. The officer allegedly observed blood on the center console and fresh injection marks on Warburton's arms. Warburton allegedly told police her child was crying because he had not been fed since the previous evening. The baby was placed in the custody of Child Protective Services and Warburton was transported to Western Tidewater Regional Jail under a no bond status for possession of heroin, driving under the influence of drugs, and felony child neglect.

Arthur Langley

Langley is accused of leaving his 1-year-old daughter home alone so he could go rob houses in October, 2012 in Brookhaven, Pa.

Betsian Carrasquillo Penalosa

Federal agents have arrested Betsian Carrasquillo Penaloza for allegedly prostituting her 14-year-old daughter in Puerto Rico. (teresa.canino@gfrmedia.com)

Jessica Schauer

This 26-year-old was charged with threatening to discharge a destructive device after allegedly saying she was going to blow up her daughter's elementary school. Witnesses say that Schauer warned, "Don't bring your kid to school that day," and when asked what day she meant, she said, "The day I blow it up."

Stacia Rogers And Jerry Montalvo

Cops found a 2-year-old girl under this couple's care sleeping outside a Florida mall at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2012. The two were arrested and charged with child neglect when it was found that Montalvo was allegedly on drugs, and Rogers let him leave with her daughter knowing that he was intoxicated.

Danielle Barron

Barron allegedly prostituted herself while her infant child was at home. She told police that her addiction to money led to a life of crime.

Sabrina Howard

Howard's addiction to morphine drove her son to commit suicide, because he lived in fear that she would overdose, according to police in Indiana.

James D. Blanchard

James D. Blanchard, 21, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for abusing his newborn son. A medical doctor said that the child has lost his vision and will likely never walk or talk. The doctor also said the injury was common with shaken babies.

Parents Accused Of Putting Daughter In Chicken Coop

Cops say that not only did Diana and Samuel Franklin keep their 15-year-old daughter in a chicken coop, they made her wear a shock collar and used it several times.

Father Allegedly Kicked Son

Dario Napolitano is accused of kicking his 3-year-old son at Disney World in late June, 2012.

Parents Blindfolded, Bound Their Kids Outside Kansas Walmart

Adolfo Gomez Jr., 52, and his wife, Deborah Gomez, 43, both of Northlake, Ill., were arrested at a Walmart in Lawrence, Kan., after someone spotted a 5-year-old boy sitting outside a sport utility vehicle with his hands and feet bound and a blindfold covering his eyes. -AP

Mother Tried To Sell Baby In Newspaper

Brittany Hill allegedly tried to sell her 4-month-old boy in a classified ad in June, 2012. Someone was going to try and buy the baby, but decided to call Dallas police instead.

Brandi Baumgardner

Baumgardner is accused of injecting her daughter with heroin roughly 200 times when the girl was 14-years-old.

Thar Kyi

Thar Kyi, 42 of upstate New York, accidentally hit his 8-year-old son in the head with a samurai sword while fighting another man. Kyi attacked the boy's mother's boyfriend while his three children were getting ready for school in the morning. The boy was treated at a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

'Tanorexic' Mom Charged With Burning Daughter

In May 2012, New Jersey mom Patricia Krentcil was arrested after taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning parlor. The daughter reportedly received severe burns from exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the aftermath of the arrest, Krentcil was banned from several local tanning salons. Krentcil's habit has also received wide criticism in mass media, including a spoof by Kristen Wiig on "Saturday Night Live." Read more.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
We introduced you recently to some victims of the Trump tax planpeople who expect to face higher taxes under the law President Trump is expected to sign in early January. So now, let us introduce you to some taxpayers who expect to benefit from the plan.

In general, Yahoo Finance found plenty of Americans who expect a modest tax savings of $1,000 to $2,000. Most are grateful for the extra cash and plan to put it to good use. Some worry about the $1.5 trillion in additional debt Uncle Sam is taking on to pay for the tax cuts, while others dont expect the tax cuts to last. But who disdains a bit of extra cash? Certainly not these folks:

The securities-lending rep in Omaha. Soren Grandall, 23, expects to save about $2,000 under the Republican tax plan. Thats mainly because hell fall from the 25% bracket in the current law to the 22% bracket under the new law. He may also benefit from the doubling of the standard deduction, from $12,000 to $24,000 for a married couple, and since he has no kids, the repeal of personal exemptions wont harm him.

Grandall voted reluctantly for Trump in 2016, and hasnt been thrilled with Trumps performance as president. He sees the passage of the tax bill as a win, but still has reservations. In the short term, they did pass something meaningful, he says. But I also see that at the end of the tax bill, its probably going to swing the other way and get a whole lot worse.

Soren Grandall of Omaha, Nebraska. Estimated tax savings: $2,000. Photo courtesy of Soren Grandall

The Iowa CPA. Steve Hellman of Waterloo, Iowa, figures hell save about $1,500 on account of his tax bracket dropping by a few percentage points. The 53-year-old accountant will put the money back into his business. Of his many clients in several Midwestern states, many will benefit from the new, higher threshold for the alternative minimum tax, which means theyll no longer have to pay under AMT rules and their overall tax bill will go down. But other clients will get stung by the new cap on state and local deductions of just $10,000. Here in Iowa, our upper-income people are going to be harmed by it, he says. Weve got a top income tax rate of almost 9%, and Ive got a lot of clients who are going to be limited to that $10,000.

Story continues

The aircraft maintenance technician in Georgia. Like many others, Scott Bell of Atlanta, 53, expects to drop from the 25% bracket to the new 22% bracket. That might save him $1,000 or so. But hes even more hopeful that lower tax rates for businesses will improve pay and work conditions for their employees. My company has already said that with lower taxes, theyre going to invest in people more, Bell says. If the U.S. economy is stimulated generally, were all going to do better. Thats literally true in Bells case, because he participates in a profit-sharing plan that will boost payouts to workers if corporate earnings rise.

The public policy adviser in Baltimore. The upcoming year will be a big one for Sam Kahl, 22, of Baltimore, since he plans to get married and buy a house. The doubling of the standard deduction will save him money while hes single, and maybe save him more once hes married. I would pay about $2,000 to $2,500 less, says Kahl, whos a public policy analyst for the state government. Thats important to me as somebody whos soon to be a homebuyer, and getting married. It allows me to purchase a little bit more of a home, and have a little bit more to save and invest.

Sam Kahl of Baltimore. Estimated tax savings: $2,000 to $2,500. Photo courtesy of Sam Kahl

The retired electronics salesman in southern California. Tim Roberts of Valencia, whos 64, minimizes withdrawals from his retirement funds in order to keep his tax bill as low as possible. Now, he thinks the new tax brackets will let him take a bit more out without paying more in tax. I think its going to be absolutely awesome, he says of the new tax law. For me, its quality of life. Ill use the money for seeing the country, spending time with family and friends. Hes already planning a long road trip next year to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and other parts of the northern Rockies. If he can finagle additional funds in a tax-friendly way, he might plan another trip up the Pacific coast to Vancouver, where hell do some salmon fishing.

The Delaware analyst. Todd Guidry of Wilmington expects to save as much as $1,500, mainly because his family will drop from the current 25% bracket to the new 22% bracket. The 30-year-old analyst at a financial firm will have to reevaluate his itemized deductions, since his family tithes (which counts as a charitable deduction), while also itemizing mortgage interest and state and local taxes. But those state and local taxes are right around the new $10,000 cap, so they wont lose much of a deduction, if any. And the new money will be welcome. Weve got a new roof coming in the next 5 years, and 2 kids who need a college fund, Guidry says. Every little windfall helps.

The retired schoolteacher in Michigan. Tom Torok, 68 of Vicksburg, Mich., expects to save between $1,000 and $1,500 in taxes, mainly from the doubling of the standard deduction. Hes digging out of a small hole formed when he incurred penalty fees for an early withdrawal from a retirement account a few years ago, and the extra cash will help. Its a meaningful amount of money, he says of the savings. Instead of having to borrow money in April to pay my taxes, I wont have to do that.

Tom Torok of Vicksburg, Mich. Estimated tax savings: $1,000 to $1,500. Photo courtesy of Tom Torok

He also thinks the tax cuts will help boost the local economy, which has been depressed from the longstanding loss of manufacturing jobs. A lot of people around here are going to go back to work for the first time in 8 years, he says. Companies are hiring now. When people go back to work, they pay taxes. I dont expect the national debt to grow if people are going to pay more taxes.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available.

Read more:

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman
34-year-old Gumaro Perez Aguilando was killed while he attended a Christmas event at his child's school - @ElMercurioVer

AMexican journalist was shot dead at an elementary school Christmas party Tuesday in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, becoming at least the 10th journalist slain in the country this year.

The state security coordinator said in a statement that dozens of parents and children were present as unidentified attackers shot 34-year-old Gumaro Perez Aguilando while he attended the Christmas event at his child's school.

Veracruz Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes condemned the shooting and said he ordered state police to provide protection to the journalist's family.

A sign reading "We demand justice. No more impunity" hangs at the journalists' union office in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state, Mexico, Credit: AFP

Perez covered crime news for a number of local outlets and had founded the online news site La Voz del Sur. He also worked for the local government in some capacity.

The State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists said Perez was part of a protection program.

"He belonged to the preventive program for safe coverage of this Commission since 2015, which refers to mechanisms for reporting that diminish danger in high-risk events," it said in a statement. "Nevertheless, regrettably, he had not made us aware of having received any threats that could have put him at risk."

Commission president Ana Laura Vazquez said the group would monitor the investigation and urged the state government to track down his killers and solve the case.
Mexico City (AFP) - A bus carrying tourists from a US cruise ship to an archeological site on Mexico's Caribbean coast crashed Tuesday after running off the road, killing at least 11 people including several foreigners, the state government said.

The crash, which left another 20 injured, happened on a highway in the state of Quintana Roo, located on the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula and well known as home to the resort city of Cancun.

The tourists had been on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Its port of origin was not immediately given.

Royal Caribbean's web site says its Caribbean cruises leave from the United States mainland or Puerto Rico.

The bus was carrying 31 passengers on a straight stretch of road with little traffic. The cause of the early morning accident was not immediately known.

The tourists were headed to visit the coastal resort town of Mahahual, which features Mayan archeological ruins. The specific site they were headed to is one called Chacchoben, the state government said.

The nationalities of the fatalities were not given but news reports said they included Italians and Canadians.

The company operating the bus, Costa Maya, said all the passengers on the bus were from the cruise ship, plus a tour guide and the driver.

A spokeswoman for Royal Caribbean declined to discuss the road accident.

On Twitter, the company expressed its condolences.
A bus carrying cruise ship passengers on a tour of ancient Mayan ruins flipped on a highway in southeast Mexico early Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 18.

The fatalities include five Americans, four Canadians, two Swedes and one Mexican, ABC News reported, citing an unidentified official familiar with the investigation.

Authorities confirmed to Reuters that a child was among the dead. A South Florida family told the Sun Sentinel they believed an 11-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed.

A bus transporting tourists to the Chacchoben Ruins in southeast Mexico lost control and overturned Tuesday, killing and injuring multiple people. (Photo: MANUEL JESUS ORTEGA CANCHE via Getty Images)

The bus had been headed toward the Chacchoben Ruins, roughly 290 miles south of Cancun. It was carrying 31 people, including 27 passengers traveling on two Royal Caribbean cruise ships, when the driver lost control in Quintana Roo state. Those two ships were Celebrity Equinox and Serenade of the Seas, the cruise line said.

Our hearts go out to all those involved in the bus accident, Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said in a statement. We are doing all we can to care for our guests, including assisting with medical care and transportation.

Our 27 guests were on a bus tour to the Chacchoben Ruins. We are working with the local authorities to learn more about the accident. We are doing all we can to help our guests.  RCLcorp (@RCLcorp) December 19, 2017

Passenger Vitor Maciel Fontes Jacques, 32, told ABC News he was with his wife and five family members on the bus when it suddenly ran off the side of the road.

Then the driver pushed it over and it started flipping over, Jacques said. And then the bus flipped on its side. He said the wreck left him with a broken clavicle, and his sister-in-law with a head injury that required surgery.

Mexican police officers and paramedics responded to the scene of the bus crash that left at least 12 people dead. (Photo: MANUEL JESUS ORTEGA CANCHE via Getty Images)

Serenade of the Seas passenger Chris Brawley told the Sun Sentinel he was traveling on another bus to the same Mayan ruins when it came upon the wrecked vehicle, just minutes after it flipped.

Story continues

He described the two-lane road as narrow, with no shoulder or guardrail. The road was dry and there was no sign of any other vehicle being involved in the crash, he said.

Last year, 11 tourists were killed in a crash, also in Quintana Roo, in which their bus flipped en route to Cancun, The Associated Press reported.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

Related...

Earthquake Kills Hundreds In Mexico

Hundreds of Passengers Struck with Norovirus on RCCL Ship

More Than 300 Passengers Get Nasty Stomach Bug On Royal Caribbean Cruise

Also on HuffPost

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Vice President Mike Pence has paid tribute to Donald Trump in a gushing two-minute monologue, thanking him for fulfilling miracles and spurring historic optimism.

Mr Pence told the US President he had restored American credibility on the world stage as the former real estate mogul looked on approvingly.

He also thanked Mr Trump for restoring this country and for achieving his campaign slogan to make America great again.

I know I speak on behalf of the entire Cabinet and of millions of Americans when I say, congratulations and thank you, he told Mr Trump at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country....Youve restored American credibility on the world stage. Were standing with our allies. Were standing up to our enemies.

Mr Trump sat arms-folded and expressionless during the exchange but later thanked Mr Pence, telling him: Thats very nice. I appreciate that.

Americans took to Twitter to express their horror at the exchange, calling it excruciatingly, stomach-churningly uncomfortable to watch.

Award-winning author Steve Silberman wrote: The ritual submission and exaltation is nearly pornographic. This is not America.

CNN reporter Keith Boykin said: When Trump finally goes down, I want everyone to remember that Mike Pence was complicit in every Trump decision from the beginning.

It comes just weeks after Mr Trump reportedly branded his deputy low class and his family yokels for bringing pets to the Naval Observatory  the official residence of the US Vice President.

Reports of friction between the pair over Mr Pences religious conservatism have regularly flared since Mr Trump took office and he has repeatedly mocked Mr Pences Christianity in public.

During a discussion about LGBTQ rights, Mr Trump reportedly motioned to Mr Pence and said: Dont ask that guyhe wants to hang them all!, according to the New Yorkers Jane Meyer.

Story continues

Ms Pences wife Karen is reported to believe Mr Trump is totally vile, according to a former campaign aide.

Ms Pence is said to have revealed her true feelings about Mr Trump just after the Access Hollywood video was released, which showed Mr Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women.

Read the transcript in full:

THE PRESIDENT: Mike, would you like to say a few words?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate it Mr President. As I told you last night, shortly after the Senate vote  I know I speak on behalf of the entire Cabinet and of millions of Americans when I say, congratulations and thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country. You described it very well, Mr President. From the outset of this administration, weve been rebuilding our military, putting the safety and security of the American people first.

Youve restored American credibility on the world stage. Were standing with our allies. Were standing up to our enemies.

But you promised economic renewal at home. You said we could make this economy great again, and you promised to roll back regulations, and youve signed more bills rolling back federal red tape than any President in American history. Youve unleashed American energy. Youve spurred an optimism in this country thats setting records.

But you promised the American people in that campaign a year ago that you would deliver historic tax cuts, and it would be a middle-class miracle. And in just a short period of time, that promise will be fulfilled.

And I just  Im deeply humbled, as your Vice President, to be able to be here. Because of your leadership, Mr President, and because of the strong support of the leadership in the Congress of the United States, youre delivering on that middle-class miracle.

Youve actually got the Congress to do, as you said, what they couldnt do with ANWR for 40 years. You got the Congress to do, with tax cuts for working families and American businesses, what they havent been able to do for 31 years. And you got Congress to do what they couldnt do for seven years, in repealing the individual mandate in Obamacare.

I know you would have me also acknowledge the people around this table, Mr President. I want to thank the leaders in Congress once again for their partnership in this. I want to thank your outstanding team, your Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, for Gary Cohn, for Ivanka Trump, for your great legislative team  all the members of this Cabinet who partnered to drive your vision forward over the past six months after you laid out that vision for tax reform.

But mostly, Mr President, Ill end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America. Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mike. Thats very nice. I appreciate that.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mr President, and God bless you.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Well, I also want to thank all of the members of the Cabinet, and I think we have a fantastic team. And next year, were going to go onto really some amazing things.
Congress failure to renew a program that provides health care to low-income children by years end could cause almost 2 million kids to lose their coverage as soon as next month.

Thats according to a report published Wednesday by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. Federal funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program, which is jointly run and financed by the federal government and the states, expired nearly two months ago. The program covers about 9 million children in the U.S.

But the GOP-controlled Congress, which made time to pass a sweeping tax bill that largely benefits corporations and the rich, didnt get around to reauthorizing CHIP  and now millions of children are in jeopardy.

States are rapidly running out of money to pay these childrens medical bills, and several have started notifying parents that their kids health care is poised to disappear. At least 14 states plan to terminate CHIP by the end of January, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Andrew Montoya, 35, of Longmont, Colorado, got a letter from the state government last month notifying him that his three daughters  Audrey, 8, Katrina, 5, and Scarlett, 3  might wind up uninsured because of Congress inaction.

They need to stop playing politics with our kids, said Montoya, an attorney at an organization that provides assistance to people with disabilities.

Montoya and his wife, Nicole, were both uninsured for most of their lives before the Affordable Care Act became law and they qualified for tax credits to reduce their monthly premiums. CHIP is called Child Health Plan Plus in Colorado.

We qualify because my income working as an attorney for a nonprofit organization is not very high, Montoya said.

He ran the numbers and discovered that adding his daughters to his health insurance policy would increase the cost by $450 to $650 a month, which he cant afford on his salary. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has asked the state legislature to fund CHIP until Congress acts.

Story continues

State officials are scrambling to figure out what to do, but are mostly powerless unless Congress does something. Twenty-five states are due to run out of money in January, and nine more during February, according to the Center for Children and Families. That puts health coverage for 1.9 million kids at risk next month and 2.9 million through February.

We are in a terrible situation right now, Linda Nablo, the chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services, said during a conference call with reporters hosted by the Center for Children and Families. We are certainly running numbers and trying to analyze options.

All this, of course, is being done as the holiday season approaches, she said. Its left us in a terrible quandary. Im not really sure what were going to say to parents or what the solution is going to be.

Virginia will have to shut down CHIP, known in the state as Family Access to Medical Insurance Security, at some point next month because the program is very nearly out of money, Nablo said. Theres no good options here.

Virginia originally told parents that their kids CHIP benefits would be in place through the end of January. Congress enacted legislation last month allowing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to reallocate unspent CHIP money between the states  but Virginia wound up on the losing end of the deal and has less funding than it expected, Nablo said.

Alabama already announced that its freezing enrollment in its CHIP, called Alabama ALL Kids, as of Jan. 1, and that the program will shut down completely at the end of next month. Connecticut also is freezing enrollment this Saturday and will close down CHIP, known there as the HUSKY Program, on Jan. 31.

Our phones are ringing off the wall, Cathy Caldwell, the director of the Alabama Bureau of Childrens Health Insurance Programs, said during the conference call. We have panicked families just wondering what in the world they have as options, so it is very, very stressful here in Alabama.

Virginia is urging parents to squeeze in whatever medical care they can before the coverage goes away, Nablo said.

We suggested to families that if your children needed a doctor visit or a dental visit, they might want to arrange that in the month of January, she said. And were particularly concerned about families with children in the course of treatment or who are very, very sick, potentially even hospitalized.

Audrey, Katrina and Scarlett Montoya of Longmont, Colorado, could lose their health care next month because Congress failed to pass legislation renewing the Children's Health Insurance Program. (Photo: Andrew Montoya)

The situation differs among the states, depending on how they established their versions of CHIP.

States that created standalone childrens health programs are most at risk, because they dont have the money themselves to keep them running and dont have another way to cover those children, Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families, told HuffPost.

Those states could change their Medicaid laws to allow those kids into that program instead, but that would take too long to prevent a lapse in coverage, Alker said. And while many of those children are in families that qualify for subsidized private insurance from the Affordable Care Acts exchanges, those policies are costlier than CHIP and have more meager benefits, she said.

Theres a few different ways children could end up going, all of them worse than where they currently are in CHIP, Alker said.

States that set up CHIP as an offshoot of their Medicaid programs are in a different bind. Federal law requires those states to maintain coverage for children, so these states would have to move all their CHIP kids into Medicaid, Alker said. But the federal government pays a much larger share of CHIP expenses than it does for Medicaid, so states would have to somehow find new money, she said.

Republicans say theyll act on CHIP when they return to Washington next month, which would be cutting it very close. And given the dysfunction seen in Congress this year, theres reason to doubt Congress can pass a bill in time to save the states and the kids on CHIP.

Theres no actual dispute in Congress that CHIP should be reauthorized.

The House even passed a bill to do so last month. Democrats opposed the legislation in large part because it would fund the CHIP renewal by rolling back elements of the Affordable Care Act. That didnt matter in the House, where Republicans have a large majority. But in the Senate  where a CHIP bill made it through committee in October without including any means to pay for it  reauthorizing the program would require 60 votes, and Republicans have just 52.

This is a game of chicken, said T.C. Bell, 30, who lives in Denver. My kids are just being put in the middle of that.

Bell is a full-time student with a very low income. He qualifies for Medicaid, known there as Health First Colorado. His daughters, 8-year-old Dagny and 5-year-old Emma, are covered by CHIP.

I have no option. My income is so small, I can barely keep a roof over my familys head, Bell said. As a child, he lacked health insurance; he doesnt want his daughters to have to scrounge for medical care, as his family did. Its kind of like going back to the shadows of health care.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated Andrew Montoyas age.

Also on HuffPost

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
TWIN FALLS  Dual-credit enrollment continues to explode across Idaho, with more high schoolers taking college-level classes.

The topic came up Wednesday during an Idaho State Board of Education meeting at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls.

Every other month, the state board meets at a public college or university  typically, about every two years at CSI. Its significant because the eight-member board is in charge of policymaking for all Idaho public education, from kindergarten through universities.

And on Thursday  the second day of the meeting  CSI administrators will share updates about the college with the states top education leaders.

During Wednesdays meeting, state board staff shared a preliminary report about dual credit. State legislators will receive the information when their session begins in January.

Dual credit is a hot topic, with a growing number of students and a hefty price tag. But state leaders say dual-credit students are more likely to be successful. The rate of former dual credit students who continue from their first to second year of college is between 70 and nearly 90 percent.

I think this connects the dots for everybody, said Debbie Critchfield of Oakley, vice president of the state board. This is the investment, and this is the return on investment.

Dual-credit classes allow teenagers to earn high school and college credits simultaneously. Here in south-central Idaho, many of the students take classes through CSI taught by a high school instructor.

State legislators appropriated $6 million for Advanced Opportunities for last fiscal year. But the total bill came to $12.1 million  about double the appropriation, Idaho Education News reported in July. The approximately $6 million to cover unexpected costs came out of the Public Education Stabilization Fund.

One major reason for the growth: Each Idaho public schooler has a total of $4,125 available to use from seventh through 12th grades. Money can be used to pay for dual-credit classes, overload classes, exams or professional-technical certifications.

The largest growth is among students taking fewer than 10 dual credits, state board staff said Wednesday. Thats the equivalent of about three classes or fewer.

Another big area of growth is students earning more than 30 credits  and even an associate degree by the time they graduate from high school.

During the 2012-13 school year, just 34 high schoolers earned an associate degree. That number jumped to 126 last school year.

The report also breaks down participation in college-level classes by factors such as gender, ethnicity and students eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.

White students and girls are taking advantage of dual credit classes at a higher rate.

Other topics from Wednesdays meeting include:

Reading, school improvement and mastery education

State Superintendent Sherri Ybarra presented information items about the latest developments in kindergarten-through-12th-grade education.

That included piloting the new Idaho Reading Indicator test, students earning Microsoft or Adobe certifications, and mastery-based education, allowing students to advance through schoolwork at their own level and pace.

Ybarra also talked about a one-year pilot project for State Technical Assistance Team phase I schools.

Seven schools across the state  including Wendell Middle School  have been identified as needing support and improvement for the 2018-19 school year under Idahos plan for the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

Emergency hiring

The Professional Standards Commission gave its annual report and a presentation about emergency provisional certificates.

With a statewide teacher shortage, theres an increase in the number of school employees hired without a teaching license. Alternate authorizations also include current teachers or school administrators who need a different endorsement.

So far this school year, Idaho schools have seen 648 alternate authorizations  up from 444 during the 2016-17 school year.

Changing school district boundaries

The state board considered three requests for annexing land into school district boundaries, affecting the Coeur dAlene and Lakeland school districts, Coeur dAlene and Post Falls school districts, and Sugar-Salem and Fremont school districts. None are in the Magic Valley.

Idaho Opportunity Scholarship

The board heard a report about the Idaho Opportunity Scholarship.

This year, a total of 3,716 scholarships were awarded. About 59 percent were renewals of existing scholarships.

Between 2016 and this year, there was a 21 percent drop in high school seniors receiving a new award.

The scholarship can be used at an in-state college or university. Its based on merit  having at least a 3.0 grade point average  and 70 percent on financial need.

The problem is a lack of funding to award a scholarship to everyone who qualifies. There are about 1,000 students on a waiting list.

Of those who receive a scholarship, the average GPA is 3.7. The average award amount is $3,300.

The state board is considering lowering the GPA requirement. But board President Linda Clark asked if the board should be asking for more money first.

State board staff said thats their plan. Theyre seeking $5 million more in state funding.

Board strategic plan

The board debated the purpose of its strategic plan and language in the document. It decided to bring back revisions in February.
Myanmar has barred an independent U.N. rights investigator and withdrawn any government cooperation for the rest of her tenure, prompting further indictments of the countrys backsliding on human rights. Observers say the move reflects a possible deepening of a bunker mentality as the country is besieged by international criticism over what the U.N. has labeled an ethnic cleansing campaign.

Yanghee Lee, the U.N.s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, was due to visit the country in January. She says she learned of the ban after repeated deadlines lapsed regarding her upcoming trip. When she called a government official, she was told there was some bad news.

Its a really troubling development, Lee tells TIME. I would be the last to imagine this would happen, especially under the NLD [National League for Democracy] government which operates on a ticket of democracy, human rights, and respect for rule of law. But weve seen a real backsliding.

Myanmar told Lee the decision to permanently rescind her access stems from what it called a biased and unfair statement she made at the end of her last visit in July. At the time, she accused Aung San Suu Kyis civilian government of behaving like its military predecessors, such as in its persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Lees assessments of rampant human rights abuses in Myanmarespecially her condemnations of official attitudes toward the Rohingyahave previously triggered backlash and protests. Buddhist monk and notorious nationalist provocateur Wirathu once called her a whore.

However, just two weeks ago, Myanmars representative to the U.N. reportedly told the Human Rights Council that the country was willing to continue cooperating with the investigator. Officials could not be reached to comment on the change of policy.

Lee says increasing resistance has been apparent, with two ministers declining to meet with her on her last visit. She added that de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared to be taking personally critical U.N. reports documenting widespread allegations of military-perpetrated rapes and killing of Rohingya.

Story continues

Read more: Myanmars Crisis, Bangladeshs Burden. Among the Rohingya Refugees Waiting for a Miracle

For human rights observers, Lees blacklisting comes as an escalation of Myanmars crackdown, but is not necessarily surprising. The government has refused to grant visas to a U.N. fact-finding mission tasked with examining claims of military-led abuses.

What is clear is that [Aung San Suu Kyi] is not prepared to accept international criticism, regardless of evidence presented about the atrocities committed, says Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

He added that Myanmar is increasingly adopting a shoot the messenger approach to human rights activists, investigative reporters, and UN agencies and NGOs that raise concerns about what the government is doing.

Except on tightly controlled government-led tours, journalists and foreigners have largely been barred from Rakhine State, where a military campaign has prompted more than 650,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar says it is responding to a Muslim insurgency; the U.N.s human rights chief says genocide cant be ruled out. Two Reuters journalists reporting on the crisis were arrested last week and their location remains unknown, leading to fears of enforced disappearances.

James Gomez of Amnesty International says the timing of Lees blacklisting is troubling given Medecins Sans Frontieress recent estimate of at least 6,700 Rohingya killed in just the first month of recent violence, and the militarys announcement that it discovered a mass grave.

Matthew Smith, CEO of watchdog Fortify Rights, says barring Lee shows Myanmar clearly has a lot to hide.

Myanmar is in shameful company in isolating itself from the U.N. in this way, he says. The government is unquestionably returning itself to pariah status.
By Yasmeen Abutaleb WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans delivered their biggest blow yet to Obamacare in their tax overhaul that won final congressional approval on Wednesday, and delayed until 2018 consideration of legislation that could help mitigate some of the damage to the 2010 law. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in three decades that now awaits Republican President Donald Trump's signature, includes a provision that removes a penalty imposed under Obamacare for Americans who do not obtain health insurance, a central tenet of the healthcare law. The aim of the penalty was to force younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. The penalty helped to uphold a popular Obamacare provision requiring insurers to charge healthy people and those with a pre-existing medical condition the same rates. Republicans have opposed the law formally known as the Affordable Care Act, the signature domestic policy achievement of Trump's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, since its inception. Intraparty divisions this year prevented them from repealing and replacing Obamacare, a top campaign promise, despite controlling Congress and the White House. But gutting the so-called individual mandate penalty significantly weakens the law. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said 13 million people will lose coverage over the next decade, and insurance premiums will rise 10 percent annually for most years over the same period. "We have essentially repealed Obamacare," Trump told a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House. "And we'll come up with something that will be much better, whether it's block grants (to the states) or whether it's taking what we have and doing something terrific." 2018 BATTLES LOOM Delaying action on three bills - two that would help stabilize the online markets set up under Obamacare to help individuals obtain insurance and another that would reauthorize a children's health program - sets up fresh battles over healthcare in Congress early next year. Republican Senator Susan Collins previously had said her vote for the Republican tax legislation hinged in part on a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass the Obamacare stabilization bills by the end of the year. Collins and fellow Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who together co-sponsored the two Obamacare stabilization measures, said they dropped their demand after it became clear that Congress would be able to pass only a short-term funding bill to keep the government open past Friday rather than a bill covering the remainder of the 2018 fiscal year. They said McConnell assured them he would support the bills next year and that they would ask that the legislation be brought up in January. The two senators also said legislation to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health insurance for about 9 million children whose families do not qualify for the Medicaid insurance program for the poor, would be pushed to next year. Federal funding for CHIP expired on Sept. 30. States have been spending whatever was left of their CHIP funds, and some have received temporary relief from a $3 billion reserve. More than a dozen states are poised to send warning notices to families by the end of this month that their coverage could end. "There is every reason to believe that these important provisions can and will be delivered as part of a bipartisan agreement," Collins and Alexander said in a joint statement. Even though Congress failed to pass comprehensive Republican healthcare legislation, Trump's administration succeeded in weakening Obamacare through executive actions. Trump in October cut off billions of dollars of subsidy payments to insurers that had helped cover medical expenses for low-income Americans, halved the Obamacare open enrollment period and slashed federal advertising encouraging people to sign up for coverage. Democrats and healthcare advocacy groups assailed the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. "The tax reform bill not only increases the federal deficit as well as healthcare costs, but also results in a significant loss of health coverage for millions of Americans," the National Multiple Sclerosis Society said in a statement. "People with pre-existing conditions, like MS, will be harmed the most." (Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Will Dunham)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate change will not be included in an important Pentagon strategy document set to be unveiled in January, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Defense Department said on Thursday. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters that not mentioning climate change did not mean it was no longer a priority for the U.S. military. The Pentagon strategy document, known as the National Defense Strategy, sets the priorities and direction for the U.S. military. The White House earlier this week released its overarching strategy document, which dropped former President Barack Obama's 2016 description of climate change as a U.S. national security threat. President Donald Trump in June announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord unless changes are made. "We don't specifically address climate change ... There is only so much, you know, depth and breadth ... it really reflects the high priorities of the department," Shanahan said. "It doesn't mean that it is not a priority or that it is a priority. What it says is in the national defense strategy, we don't address it," he added. Over the last decade, the U.S. military and intelligence officials have developed a broad agreement about the security threats that climate change presents, in part by threatening to cause natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas, damage American military bases worldwide and open up new natural resources to global competition. In written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote that "climate change can be a driver of instability," and "a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of-government response." His answers reflected, in part, a broad consensus laid out in a September 2016 memo prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which advises U.S. intelligence agencies, and said that climate change presents risks to stability, human health and food supplies. (Reporting by Idrees Ali, editing by G Crosse)
Editors note: This column first ran Oct. 16, 2014, in the Times-News and on Magicvalley.com.

Alturas County, an enormous area north of the Snake River, was created by the Idaho Territorial Legislature in 1864.

Though the county covered all of modern-day Elmore, Camas, Blaine, Ada and Owyhee counties, much of Clark, Jefferson, Custer, Power, Bingham and Bonneville counties, and some of Boise, Lemhi and Fremont counties, few towns existed in it.

By 1881, county seat Rocky Bar, originally a mining boomtown of 2,500 people, was failing. When the Legislature put the decision to move the county seat into the hands of Alturas County voters, people in the new town of Bellevue in the Wood River Valley thought their town was a shoo-in.

But Indian fighter, rancher, miner, stage company owner, statesman and land speculator John Hailey had a different idea.

Backed by eastern investors, Hailey picked out 440 acres between Ketchum and Bellevue, and laid out a townsite and a campaign to populate it. Hailey advertised the new town as the Denver of Idaho.

A bitter rivalry developed between the towns of Hailey and Bellevue in the race to become the county seat. Its said the election was fraught with fraud on both sides. Town supporters were encouraged to vote early and often, according to Sandra Hofferbers book A Pictorial Early History of the Wood River Valley.

Charges and counter charges were leveled, court suits were threatened, and, finally help was sent from the Idaho Territorial Governor, Hofferber wrote.

In the end, Hailey was declared the winner.

In 1884, John Hailey was elected a territorial delegate. In 1900, he became the chairman of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party when Idaho became a state.

Meanwhile, the territorial legislature started to whittle away at Alturas County. In 1889, Elmore and Logan counties were cut away from Alturas County. Bellevue became part of Logan County and became its county seat.

Two years later, after Idaho became a state, the Idaho Legislature attempted to return Bellevue to Alturas County by creating two new counties from Alturas and Logan. The Idaho Supreme Court struck down the measure.

The Legislature, in 1895, recombined Alturas and Logan counties, creating Blaine County. Hailey remained the county seat. Two weeks later, it divided Lincoln County  with Shoshone as its county seat  from Blaine County, named for Republican Sen. James G. Blaine, of Maine, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1884.
Ottawa (AFP) - Late pharmaceutical tycoon Barry Sherman sought to quash an investigation into his fundraising for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals just days before his death, according to a report Wednesday.

The 75-year-old chairman of Apotex and his 70-year-old wife Honey were found dead of strangulation in their Toronto home last week, police said. Apotex is the largest maker of generic drugs in Canada, and the Shermans' fortune was estimated at more than $3 billion.

Police said Sunday they were investigating the deaths as "suspicious," but stopped short of calling them homicides, while family and friends rejected media reports that it was a murder-suicide.

According to federal court documents obtained by AFP, Sherman tried to block subpoenas of two Apotex executives issued by Karen Shepherd, Canada's commissioner of lobbying, to compel them to speak with investigators.

The lobbying commissioner is tasked with ensuring that those who lobby public officials act transparently, are accountable and comply with a code of conduct.

The Toronto Star said the commissioner's team sought interviews with the executives in April but they declined.

- 'Fishing expedition' -

A month later, Sherman launched his lawsuit, claiming the subpoenas were an "unanchored fishing expedition" and "unconstitutional."

His lawyers filed several more documents in the case days before his death.

The probe into a fundraising event Sherman held for Trudeau in August 2015, during the last election campaign, was launched after complaints filed by Democracy Watch, a good-government organization based in Ottawa.

Sherman and Apotex faced a possible five-year ban on lobbying the government if it could be proven that he ran afoul of rules that prohibit registered lobbyists, such as Sherman, from lobbying office holders they helped get elected.

A second investigation into a November 2016 fundraiser co-organized by Sherman for Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau was reportedly dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Story continues

- 'A sense of obligation' -

But Phil McIntosh, director of investigations for the lobby commission, said in a report cited by the Toronto Star that "the directorate found evidence indicating that Mr. Sherman engaged in political activities that risk creating a sense of obligation on the part of one or more public office holders" through the August 2015 fundraiser.

Sherman and his wife had hosted between 100 and 150 people, each paying Can$1,500 ($1,165) to attend the event with Trudeau two months before his election victory.

The commissioner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In an email to AFP, Democracy Watch said Sherman's fundraising "created conflicts of interest not just for himself but also for Apotex, conflicts that should result in a prohibition on Apotex lobbying the federal government through to August 2020."

The advocacy group alleged that Sherman's lawsuit aimed "to try to delay the rulings" of the commissioner until after the next election in 2019.

Trudeau, who said he was "saddened by the news of the sudden passing of Barry and Honey Sherman," is due to attend a memorial service for the couple on Thursday.
Pope Francis addresses members of the Vatican Roman Curia gathered in the Vatican Clementine Hall for the annual Christmas Greeting - Corbis News

Pope Francis issued a stinging new critique of the Vatican's top administration on Thursday, saying "traitors" stood in the way of his reforms and made any change as hard as cleaning Egypt's Sphinx "with a toothbrush".

For the fourth year running, Francis used his annual Christmas greetings to the Roman Catholic Churchs central bureaucracy, or Curia, to lecture the assembled cardinals, bishops and other department heads on the need for change.

"Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush," he said, quoting a 19th-century Belgian churchman. The phrase did not evoke much laughter when the pope read it in the frescoed Clementina Hall of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace.

Since his election as the first Latin American pope in 2013, Francis has been trying to reform the Italian-dominated Curia to bring the Churchs hierarchy closer to its members, to enact financial reforms and guide it out of scandals that marked the pontificate of his predecessor, former Pope Benedict.

But he has encountered resistance, particularly as some departments have been closed, merged or streamlined.

In his address on Thursday, Pope Francis spoke of those "traitors of trust" Credit: AFP

Francis said some in the bureaucracy - the nerve centre of the 1.2-billion-member Church and whose members are entrusted with carrying out the pope's decisions - were part of "cliques and plots". Francis called this "unbalanced and degenerate" and a "cancer that leads to a self-referential attitude".

In his address on Thursday, he spoke of those "traitors of trust" who had been entrusted with carrying out reforms but "let themselves be corrupted by ambition and vainglory."

When they are quietly let go, he said, "they erroneously declare themselves to be martyrs of the system ... instead of reciting a 'mea culpa'" (Latin for "my fault").

Francis did not cite any specific examples.

Last June the Vatican's first auditor general resigned suddenly. He later said he was forced to step down because he had discovered irregularities but the Vatican said he had been spying on his superiors.

Story continues

Earlier this month, the Vatican bank's deputy director was fired under circumstances that have not been explained.

In July, in a major shake-up of the Vatican administration, Francis replaced Catholicism's top theologian, a conservative German cardinal who has been at odds with the pontiff's vision of a more inclusive Church.

Francis said the overwhelming majority of Curia members were faithful, competent and some saintly.

Later, in a separate meeting with lay Vatican employees and their families, Francis asked forgiveness for the failings of some Church officials.

He spoke hours before the funeral of Cardinal Bernard Law, the ex-Archbishop of Boston who resigned in disgrace after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests and whose name became a byword for scandal in the Catholic Church.
Ady Barkan, a progressive activist with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a press conference on Tuesday. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON  At least 63 activists were arrested Tuesday during protests of the Republican tax bill and how it could limit access to health care.

Progressive activists disrupted the final House of Representatives vote on the tax bill, yelling Shame! and other disparaging chants during the speeches and parliamentary procedures that preceded the vote.

To prolong the disruptions, most of the chants were done individually rather than as a group. Once a protester rose from the gallery to speak up, staffers quickly removed them from the chamber. They were subsequently subject to arrest by the U.S. Capitol Police, which reported 18 arrests.

Liar, liar. Youre lying. Only the rich people are gonna get anything, one woman yelled as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) described what he said would be the legislations benefits for ordinary Americans.

As the woman was escorted out by staff, she prompted some laughter when she added, You should go back to school to learn how to do math.

Another demonstrator promised political consequences for the Republican members who voted to enact the tax bill.

We vote too, she declared. Well remember you. Youre fired.

Another popular chant was Kill the bill, dont kill us. When the final vote occurred, the group chanted in unison, Shame, shame, shame.

Democratic lawmakers periodically signaled their approval of the protests with applause and cheering.

Story continues

The last-minute disruption of the vote was the culmination of about three weeks of mass civil disobedience by progressive activists, many of whom are people with disabilities.

They have focused their criticism of the tax bill on the reductions in social benefits they anticipate. Since the legislation is expected to add $1 trillion to the national debt, it would trigger automatic spending cuts due to so-called paygo rules.

Liberal critics fear that even if Congress waives paygo rules, as Republican leaders have promised, it would create enormous political pressure to cut essential safety programs.

Ady Barkan, a leader of the progressive Center for Popular Democracy who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis just over a year ago, gave new life to popular resistance earlier this month when a series of videos of him discussing the bill with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on an airplane went viral. Barkan worries that the automatic paygo cuts would reduce Medicare and deprive him of the aid he needs to buy a ventilator and other essential medical care.

You could save my life. Please, please remember this conversation, Barkan told Flake.

Barkan has since returned to the Capitol to be arrested multiple times in protest of the bill. He celebrated his 34th birthday on Monday with his participation in a die-in in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. He was one of 64 demonstrators arrested that night, according to U.S. Capitol Police.

Birthday boy @AdyBarkan getting arrested. Help him get his birthday wish by urging your legislators to vote down the #GOPTaxScam! https://t.co/xBeSGaIjJ9 pic.twitter.com/KXsD3rkcXG  Popular Democracy (@popdemoc) December 19, 2017

On Tuesday morning, Barkan and other activists with disabilities joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a press conference denouncing the tax legislation.

.@AdyBarkan: They afraid of seeing our humanity. They are afraid of recognizing our humanity. Because if they see us as human with hopes, dreams, love and families like them, their legislative agenda becomes terrible. #StopGOPTaxScam #TaxCutsandJobsAct pic.twitter.com/SP2cc5Zv6y  Popular Democracy (@popdemoc) December 19, 2017

There have been hundreds of arrests at the Capitol in the past three weeks, including three occasions where Barkan was arrested. Barkan was among those chanting on Tuesday, but he did not get arrested.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate later on Tuesday.

In the final hours ahead of the Senate vote, activists  many of whom traveled long distances to appear in the Capitol  converged on the offices of a handful of senators to register their discontent one last time.

A delegation of over 15 people from Kansas, the vast majority of whom were under age 30, sought to have a meeting with Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). Morans staff told them the senator was unavailable. Moran has at times expressed reservations about the tax bill, but his support for it has never truly been in question.

For the group of young activists from Kansas, it was specially disheartening that Moran would support a bill after the states experiment with dramatic tax cuts. Kansas bond rating was downgraded and its education funding gutted, prompting a revolt against Gov. Sam Brownback (R) from within his own party.

Sen. Moran cant claim ignorance. He knows what has happened in our state, said Logan Hoover, a 28-year-old graduate student at Kansas State who drove two days to get to Washington, D.C.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

If you look closely you can see people lying down on ground for die-in. The Capitol police create a wide perimeter that makes it hard to witness actual arrests. pic.twitter.com/eXUr3wAb0M  Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) December 20, 2017

Several demonstrators expressed concern about the tax bills elimination of the individual insurance mandate, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would result in 13 million fewer Americans having insurance.

Cameron Smith, 19, an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas, flew to Washington for the second time in two weeks to protest the bill. Smith was arrested during a demonstration two weeks ago and again on Monday.

Smith has bipolar disorder, which she treats thanks to the health insurance she gets through her father, who is a career military officer. But Smith said, choking back tears, that she couldnt imagine what it must be like to have a medical issue and no coverage.

The GOP tax bill affects every other person who doesnt live in that top 1 percent, Smith said.

One of those people is Marlo Dean, 47, who flew in from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to protest the bill and the Medicaid cuts she anticipates it will generate. She brought her 15-year-old son, Dante, with her. He has a rare neurological condition called Batten disease, which requires around-the-clock in-home nursing care.

The cuts to Medicaid and the program that Dantes in will take his life, Dean said.

Marlo Dean, 47, flew in with her son Dante, 15, who suffers from Batten disease  once treated by Va. Gov-elect Ralph Northam  from Virginia Beach. They came to defend Medicaid and other programs they rely on and fear will be cut as a result of the bill. pic.twitter.com/4zlRKr4HfO  Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) December 20, 2017

Hoover, Smith and Dean congregated with others outside the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), where several demonstrators staged a die-in to mimic the deadly effect they say that the legislation could have. Using the call-and-response technique of the human microphone, protesters took turns telling stories of medical hardship.

Speaking through a megaphone, the Capitol police warned those who had laid down on the floor that they were violating the law and would risk arrest if they did not move. Then, like clockwork, the police began creating a perimeter around the so-called prisoners, obstructing the view of onlookers and reporters hoping to document the dramatic scene.

As of Wednesday morning, the Capitol police reported that there were 33 arrests during demonstrations in the Senate office buildings on Tuesday. An additional 12 people were arrested for disruptions during the final Senate vote on the tax bill on Tuesday evening.

Jenson Larrimore, 36, drove up from Richmond, Va. to protest tax cuts after seeing @adybarkan. He was hit by a car while on a moped 11 years ago. A former chef, he now relies on Medicare and disability benefits. pic.twitter.com/5ecLQSILHG  Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) December 19, 2017

One of the arrestees was Jenson Larrimore, a 36-year-old who decided to drive up from Richmond, Virginia, to protest the tax bill after seeing Barkan on television last week. Larrimore, a former chef, was riding on a moped during a visit to Maui, Hawaii, about 11 years ago. He lost the use of his body from his midsection down.

I would not have lived and survived to tell the tale in this house had it not been for Medicaid, Larrimore said before his arrest.

Larrimore now lives on Medicare and disability benefits, and he was at the Senate office buildings to defend his benefits as much as anyone elses. But as the cops wheeled him away, his hands in zip-tie handcuffs in front of him, Larrimore warned able-bodied, gainfully employed Americans that the tax bill would hurt them too.

If you think because youre not here, or you have a job, or you worked for it, that this wont affect you, then youre wrong, he said, his voice trailing off as the elevator doors closed behind him.

This story has been updated with information about the protests on Tuesday evening and more current information on the total number of arrests.

Also on HuffPost

Taking Security Seriously

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) talks with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) before the start of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing concerning the roles and responsibilities for defending the nation against cyberattacks, on Oct. 19, 2017.

With Liberty And Justice...

Members of Code Pink for Peace protest before the start of a hearing where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Oct. 18, 2017. Committee members questioned Sessions about conversations he had with President Donald Trump about the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, the ongoing investigation about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and other subjects.

Whispers

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, speaks with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) before a confirmation hearing for Christopher Sharpley, nominee for inspector general of the CIA, on Oct. 17, 2017.

Not Throwing Away His Shot

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical "Hamilton," makes his way to a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies in the Rayburn Office Building during a round of meetings to urge federal funding for the arts and humanities on Sept. 13, 2017.

Medicare For All

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), center, speaks on health care as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), left, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), right, listen during an event to introduce the Medicare for All Act on Sept. 13, 2017.

Bernie Bros

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pack his office on Sept. 8, 2017. Members of the "Draft Bernie for a People's Party" campaign delivered a petition with more than 50,000 signatures to urge the senator to start and lead a new political party.

McCain Appearance

Sen. John McCain, second from left, leaves the Capitol after his first appearance since being diagnosed with cancer. He arrived to cast a vote to help Republican senators narrowly pass the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017.

A Narrow Win

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, center, speaks alongside Sens. John Barrasso, left, John Cornyn, right, and John Thune, rear, after the Senate narrowly passed the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017.

Kushner Questioning

Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, arrives at the Capitol on July 25, 2017. Kushner was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting about contacts he had with Russia.

Hot Dogs On The Hill

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) prepares a hot dog during the American Meat Institute's annual Hot Dog Lunch in the Rayburn Office Building courtyard on July 19, 2017.

And Their Veggie Counterparts

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) visits the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals veggie dog giveaway on July 19, 2017, countering a National Hot Dog Day event being held elsewhere on Capitol Hill.

Poised For Questions

Callista Gingrich, wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, waits for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican on July 18, 2017.

Speaking Up

Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 17, 2017.

In The Fray

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks to members of the media after announcing the revised version of the Senate Republican health care bill on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2017.

Anticipation

Christopher Wray is seated with his daughter Caroline, left, as he prepares to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be the next FBI director on July 12, 2017.

Up In Arms

Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 10, 2017.

Across A Table

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Capitol Hill on June 29, 2017.

Somber Day

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks about the recent attack on the Republican congressional baseball team during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill on June 15, 2017.

Family Matters

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, and his sons, Jack, 10, and Brad, arrive in the basement of the Capitol after a shooting at the Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 14, 2017.

A Bipartisan Pause

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, coach of the Republican congressional baseball team, tells the story of the shooting that occurred during a baseball practice while he stands alongside Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), left, a coach of the Democratic congressional baseball team on June 14, 2017.

Hats On

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) reacts about the shooting he was present for at a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, as he speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 14, 2017.

Public Testimony

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sworn in to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13, 2017.

Comey's Big Day

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017.

Conveying His Point

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testifies at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his interactions with the Trump White House and on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on June 7, 2017.

Selfie Time

Vice President Mike Pence takes a selfie with a tourist wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda on June 6, 2017. The vice president walked through the rotunda after attending the Senate Republican policy luncheon.

Budget Queries

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testifies before the House Budget Committee about President Donald Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017.

Flagged Down By Reporters

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaves a closed committee meeting on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017. The committee is investigating possible Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

Shock And Awe

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hold a news conference on the release of the president's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2017.

Seeing Double

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) arrives in the Capitol for the Senate Democrats' policy lunch on May 16, 2017.

Honoring Officers

President Donald Trump speaks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service on the West Lawn of the Capitol on May 15, 2017.

Whispers

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, and ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) talk during a hearing with the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 11, 2017.

Skeptical

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates arrives to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election on Capitol Hill on May 8, 2017.

Differing Opinions

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) gives a thumbs-up to protesters on the East Front of the Capitol after the House passed the Republicans' bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on May 4, 2017. The protesters support the ACA.

Real Talk

United States Naval Academy Midshipman 2nd Class Shiela Craine (left), a sexual assault survivor, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Military Personnel with (2nd from left to right) Ariana Bullard, Stephanie Gross and Annie Kendzior in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 2, 2017. Kendzior, a former midshipman, and Gross, a former cadet, were both raped twice during their time at the military academies. The academy superintendents were called to testify following the release of a survey last month by the Pentagon that said 12.2 percent of academy women and 1.7 percent of academy men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact during the 2015-16 academic year.

In Support Of Immigrants

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), center, is joined by dozens of Democratic members of the House of Representatives to mark "Immigrant Rights Day" in the Capitol Visitor Center on May 1, 2017 in Washington, D.C. The Democratic legislators called on Republicans and President Donald Trump to join their push for comprehensive immigration reform.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Paris (AFP) - French baby-milk maker Lactalis on Thursday ordered the recall of all of the production of one of its factories since February over fears of possible contamination with salmonella.

Lactalis, one of the world's top dairy producers, had already recalled around 7,000 tonnes of infant formula milk two weeks ago.

But in what it described as "a precautionary measure" on Thursday, it had now decided -- in consultation with the health authorities -- to recall "all infant formula and nutritional products manufactured and conditioned in the Craon factory" in north western France.

"Information received from the health authorities as well as the results of initial investigations carried out... led the group to issue a second recall, this time of all products manufactured since February 15, 2017 using a specific drying tower at the factory," the statement said.

The latest recall involves 720 batches of products sold in France and overseas, compared with the initial recall of 625 batches on December 10.

It concerned powders and infant cereals of the group's Picot and Milumel brands, as well as the Taranis powdered amino-acid mix, the company said.

"We now know that there has been a low-level dispersed contamination within Craon factory, due to work during the first 2017 semester," it explained.

The Craon site was shut down on December 8 "for a thorough and comprehensive audit," it added.

On Monday, the health authorities said that 23 infants had been identified as having drunk formula milk produced at Craon and who had caught salmonellosis.

Around a dozen of the infants had been hospitalised, but had subsequently been discharged and were "doing well", the authorities said.

The father of one three-month-old baby, who drank the milk, and the UFC Que Choisir consumer association, said Monday they had filed a complaint against Lactalis.

- 'Very sensitive products' -

Story continues

By recalling all of the factory's production, Lactalis was applying "the principle of maximum precaution," said Jehan Moreau, director of the French National Federation of Dairy Industries or FNIL.

"Infant milks are very sensitive products and no risks should be taken. But it's a terrible decision for them, because it will constitute a huge shortfall," Moreau told AFP.

Salmonellosis is a food poisoning that ranges from mild gastroenteritis to more serious infections. It is potentially more dangerous for young children, the elderly or weak.

The health ministry asked parents "not to use, where possible", the products concerned.

In the worst case, pediatricians recommend boiling the milk for two minutes.

Lactalis has set up a 24-hour helpline for consumers.

"We wish to extend our sincerest apologies to the families affected. We are well aware of the seriousness of the situation and fully understand the anxiety and inconvenience that have been caused," it said in a statement.
On Tuesday night in the Capitol, any residual semblance of bipartisanship  and you would have been hard-pressed to find one in recent months  wheezed its death rattle. The Republican-controlled Congress passed a largely unpopular tax reform bill along strict party lines in both the House and the Senate; not a single Democrat in either chamber voted yes. This, the Democrats say, was because the bill was written behind closed doors by Republicans who did not reach out across the aisle once during the drafting process. Republicans say the inverse.

There was zero outreach from Republicans on this issue, said Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, during Tuesdays debate. Not one moment when Republicans actually shared even a piece of paper or a document about ideas that might bring both sides together.

Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 2007, and they have capitalized on this moment by circling their wagons and driving legislation that fits their agenda: two (unsuccessful) attempts to repeal Obamacare, and now tax reform. In both cases, the Republican leadership relied on the Senate rule known as reconciliation, an arcane provision that allows the upper chamber to pass bills related to government spending with just a simple majority of 50 votes  precluding the need for any cross-aisle compromise.

If theres a story on bipartisanship in this Congress, its not that its died, one senior Democratic aide tells TIME. Its that it never existed.

It was not always this way. There was a time in the distant, receding past  about ten years ago  when Americans and the politicians who served them seemed to sincerely yearn for bipartisanship. Barack Obama ran his winning 2008 campaign on the promise of bridging the gap between the aisles that had widened during the George W. Bush years. But that pledge proved a pipe dream: Over the next eight years, congressional Republicans galvanized in opposition to the Obama agenda, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell notoriously declaring in 2010 that the single most important thing for the G.O.P. was to limit Obamas presidency to one term.

Story continues

But even though the Obama years witnessed widening partisan fault lines, but things were not yet completely Balkanized: lawmakers strayed from party lines on several high-profile votes, and there was at least a sense of serious deliberation on the matters at hand. Twenty-seven House Democrats voted against the 2010 law known as Dodd-Frank, the Obama administrations sweeping regulatory response to that decades financial crisis; 34 voted against the bill that would become known as Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act spent five months under congressional consideration; the new tax bill was introduced less than seven weeks ago.

The current moment has provided few opportunities for common ground, and the Republicans fight for tax reform  a fight, their talking points stressed, that was three decades in the making  exemplifies it. The G.O.P. fast-tracked their bill through Congress, with House and Senate committees spending just four days each marking it up. (During the last major tax reform effort, the House alone spent 26 days undergoing the markup.) Democrats have pointed to this, and to the relative dearth of public debate over the bill, as evidence of the Republicans reluctance to compromise; Republicans say the Democrats are simply playing stubborn politics.

Ive been known for my bipartisan work my whole forty years in the Senate, and you just cant get [these Democrats] to work with you, Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which oversaw the bill, told TIME outside the Senate chamber Tuesday evening.

As for whats motivating the perceived Democratic obstruction: Its hatred for Trump, Hatch says. They lost an election they thought they were definitely going to win.

I think its a fair statement that the Resistance does not want any cooperation with Trump on any high-profile issue, because they dont want Trump to have a victory, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, who says his past attempts at a bipartisan compromise on an Obamacare fix were rebuffed by Democrats. Their resistance to Trump is ridiculous. But some things have been bipartisan  and people said the same thing about the last Congress.

Going into the tax debate, it was assumed that the White House would work to needle a handful of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers enough to support the measure. Democrats are up for reelection in 10 states President Donald Trump won in 2016, but some of the most at-risk lawmakers were among the loudest critics of the Republican tax plan. Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, joined Trump on Air Force One for a trip to his home state to tout the presidents deal. On Tuesday, he said hed been optimistic about the prospect of the plan earlier in the fall, but he ultimately could not agree with the provisions in the final bill. I expected a proposal that was focused on cutting taxes for middle class families, Donnelly said Tuesday. Unfortunately, that is not the bill that the Majority Leader pushed through the Senate.

In September, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hosted three Senators from states the President won in 2016  Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia  at a bipartisan dinner on taxes. A month later, Sen. Claire McCaskill joined Heitkamp and Manchin at a bipartisan dinner with Ivanka and Jared Trump. But the dinners, phone calls, and trips on Air Force One did little to win them over. I was an easy pickup, Sen. Manchin told Politico this week. And a couple, two, three, other Democrats would have been easy pickups if they had just made an effort.

Earlier on Tuesday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was giddy as he banged an oversized gavel after his Republican colleagues helped him fulfill a major career goal. This has been a long work in progress, Ryan said after the vote. And what this achievement marks is a promise that this majority made and a promise that this majority kept.

Democrats, on the other hand, were unanimously opposed to the cuts. On the House floor Tuesday, Democrat after Democrat shamed the bill, calling it a handout to corporations and the wealthy and a slap in the face to middle class Americans. This GOP tax scam is simply theft, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it.

The House will have to vote on the tax bill again on Wednesday because two provisions in the bill violated Senate budget rules, but Democrats disdain for the bill is unlikely to change when that happens.

Twelve Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the bill. Most did so because a provision that caps the state and local tax deduction at $10,000 would disproportionately harm their constituents. One Congressman, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), voted against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act because of the impact it is projected to have on the deficit. Im all for tax reform, but it must grow the economy, not the debt, Jones said.

Democrats grew even testier as day became night. In the moments before the debate concluded and the voting began, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made his final appeal. This is serious stuff; we believe youre messing up America, Schumer said. You could pay attention for a couple minutes.

In a dark final moment, he called on his colleagues to vote no on the bill. Otherwise, I believe the entire Republican party and each of you will come to rue this day.

Amid heightened police presence, protests erupted as voting began. A middle-aged woman was seen dragged up the stairs of the Senate balcony by police, but they didnt deter her chants. People over profit! she pleaded as they carried her away.



Afterwards, Republicans were exuberant. Democrats have said that the American people will remember this night, Sen. Hatch said. I hope they do.
Yaounde (AFP) - A Radio France International (RFI) correspondent was acquitted Thursday in Cameroon after he was jailed for 10 years in April for "laundering the proceeds of terrorist acts", representatives said.

A military tribunal in Yaounde acquitted Ahmed Abba following an appeal, but he was sentenced to 24 months in prison for a lesser charge of failing to "denounce acts of terrorism".

This paves the way for his release although he has served a total of 29 months behind bars following his arrest in July 2015.

He had been facing up to a decade in jail after the court agreed in April with authorities' charges that he had collaborated with the Boko Haram jihadist group and failed to pass on information about planned attacks.

Abba has always denied all charges.

In a statement, his employer RFI said it had "not stopped proclaiming the innocence of Ahmed Abba".

"It took four months of waiting for Ahmed to see his lawyer. During this period, our correspondent was abused and it was not until February 2016 that the judicial process was allowed to begin," it said on its website.

Global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said: "Nothing can bring back those years he lost in jail but we are relieved to learn Abba could soon rejoin his family."

Cameroon, which has been battling militants in its remote northern region for years, ranked 130th out of 180 countries on RSF's global freedom ranking this year.
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's senate approved on Wednesday part of a judicial overhaul criticized by the European Commission, the United States and the countrys own president as a threat to judicial independence. The bill passed by the assembly is one of three that have triggered street protests across the country, a European Union state ranked as one of the bloc's most corrupt, and drawn opposition from thousands of magistrates. The three bills jointly limit magistrates' independence and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates. This makes magistrates the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. The proposed changes mean the country is joining its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. Lawmakers approved another bill on Tuesday, amending the definition of prosecutor's activity to exclude the word "independent". A third bill is widely expected to be approved on Thursday. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said there were "obvious risks" that the Commission could do the same in Romania's case if the legal changes take hold. "If someone imagines there will not be consequences, then they are from the moon," Iohannis told reporters. "There will be consequences, the magnitude depends on the laws' final form." It could be months before the bills are enforced. Opposition parties plan to challenge them in the Constitutional Court. The president could do the same, as well as send them back to parliament for re-examination, something he can do only once. He could also trigger a country-wide referendum on continuing the fight against corruption. Romania's ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. The country's prosecutor general, chief anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-organized crime unit have all criticized the proposed changes which they said will not only end the anti-graft fight but endanger general safety. Hundreds of magistrates protested in silence this week, lining the steps of courthouses across the country. Romania's anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 members of parliament to trial since 2006. The speakers of parliaments lower house and senate are both currently on trial in separate cases. (Reporting by Luiza Ilie, Editing by William Maclean)
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has said it's going to be a "huge day", with both the Senate and House of Representatives expected to vote on the Republicans' tax bill.

Speaking on the show Fox & Friends, Ms Sanders said, "Today is a huge day, not just for the White House, not just for Congress but most importantly for America."

She added that middle-class Americans will "see the biggest benefit out of this tax package" - even though multiple analyses show the plan will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Ms Sanders also criticised Democrats for not participating in the process to reform the US tax code.

"This is a president who wouldve been happy to take their call and certainly happy to have their vote, to help Americans have more money in their paychecks, more money in their pockets, more money for businesses to reinvest in this country," Ms Sanders said.

In early December, the Senate passed its initial tax plan in a late-night vote with no Democratic support and one Republican defection, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker.

On Tuesday, the House and Senate plan to vote again on a final tax bill, which has undergone changes in the reconciliation process between the two chambers of Congress.

Mr Corker has since said that he will support the final tax bill.

Passage in both chambers appears all but certain.

"Congress is standing at the doorstep of an historic opportunity," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Republicans assert that the package of tax cuts for corporations, small businesses and individuals will boost economic and job growth.

"This is about expanding opportunities for people who are striving to make the most of their lives," House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a news conference.
International agencies, including the UN, have condemned the blockade, which has left millions unable to receive aid

The key Yemeni port of Hodeidah. The blockage was cutting off aid to thousands, the UN said. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Saudi Arabia appears to have succumbed to growing international pressure and agreed to re-open the key Yemeni port of Hodeidah to food aid and commercial fuel for a minimum of 30 days.

Aid agencies, including the UN, have been warning that a month-long blockade on the port was cutting off aid to nearly 70% of those desperately in need of humanitarian relief. The Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015 to defeat Houthi rebels and restore the UN-recognised government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, but neither of those objectives has been met, and the war recently dragged past its 1,000th day.

Saudi Arabia has previously promised to open the ports, but a further closure within the 30-day period would cause a major political problem, not just for Yemen, but also UK-Saudi relations.

In a statement published on the Saudi government-run news agency, the coalition leadership said: The port of Hodeidah will remain open for humanitarian and relief supplies and the entry of commercial vessels, including fuel and food vessels, for a period of 30 days.

UK government officials said ministers had presented operational details to Saudi officials on ships waiting for clearance, and this had helped lift restrictions on three commercial food ships and one fuel ship.

The officials said the first fuel vessel to be cleared to enter Hodeidah in over a month was due to dock in the next 24 hours. Fuel is vital to pump water, transport food and mill grain. Yemen aid agencies on the ground also said they expected shipments to start moving shortly.

The foreign secretary Boris Johnson tweeted: I am very pleased at todays announcement by the Saudi-led Coalition that Hodeidah port in Yemen is open again. I have been urging this step for some time, and I hope this will start to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people and get them the supplies they desperately need.

Story continues

British ministers will be furious if the latest commitments prove worthless.

(January 1, 2011)

Arab spring protests erupt against Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power in Yemen since 1978. He agrees to step down in return for immunity from prosecution

(February 1, 2012)

Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Salehs former deputy, succeeds him as president.

(August 1, 2014)

Anti-Hadi protests hit the capital, Sanaa, after a cut to government fuel subsidies sharply increases fuel prices.

(September 1, 2014)

Houthi rebels take control of most of Sanaa and form an anti-Hadi alliance with forces loyal to Saleh.

(January 1, 2015)

The Saleh-Houthi forces seize the presidential palace in Sanaa and Hadi flees to Aden, Yemens second city.

(March 1, 2015)

Saudi Arabia enters the war at the head of a nine-country coalition bombing the rebels in defence of Hadis internationally-recognised government.

(January 1, 2017)

The UN puts the death toll at 10,000 since the Saudi intervention.

(November 1, 2017)

Saudi Arabia tightens its blockade on Yemen, including of humanitarian aid, after a rocket fired from the country falls close to Riyadh.

(December 1, 2017)

Saleh reaches out to the Saudi-led coalition, offering to turn the page if it lifts the blockade. The Houthis accuse him of a coup against our alliance and ambush his convoy as it flees Sanaa, killing him.

The Saudis may feel they are making military advances, and the future of Hodeidah is a distraction over the next month as it seeks to persaude the international community that Iran has been responsible for the scale of the Houthi resistance.

But Theresa May also spoke to the US President Donald Trump about the blockade on Tuesday. International development secretary Penny Mordaunt told the Saudis that they had no excuse to cut off humanitarian aid in a visit to Riyadh on Monday.

Theresa May also spoke to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by phone and welcomed the Saudi decision to reopen the port. According to Downing Street, she said that British officials have travelled to the region to assist with the UN inspection process, helping to speed up the distribution of much-needed humanitarian and commercial supplies.

She also confirmed the Crown Prince will be visiting the UK in the New Year.

Johnson has insisted Yemen is his number one foreign policy priority, and the Saudi refusal to respond to Western pressure was beginning to cause a major diplomatic rift.

Saudi Arabia has claimed the blockade has been necessary since arms and ammunitions designed for the Houthi rebels were being smuggled onto the aid ships, requiring a tighter new UN-monitored inspections regime. No ship is allowed into Hodeidah unless the Saudis give the cargo permission to dock, and it has been claiming that most ships have not been subject to sufficient inspection.

Houthis have three times fired long-range missiles towards Riyadh, provoking international condemnation. Saudi Arabia claims the missiles are Iranian-supplied missiles, but Tehran has rejected the allegation.
FILER  Magic Valley Festival of Giving handed out awards and checks totaling nearly $210,000 to 26 local nonprofits Wednesday at Southern Idaho Landscape Center.

Thats 20 percent more than was raised last year, event coordinator Ann-Pell Rongen said.

The big winners this year were the Boys and Girls Clubs of Magic Valley ($12,403), Hospice Visions ($11,796) and Santas Cause ($11,589).

The goal of the festival is to give back to the Magic Valley, Rongen said. The nonprofits receive 100 percent of the gross proceeds.

The four-day event, held in November every year, partners nonprofits and charities with business sponsors to create a festive fundraiser, including the Gala of Giving, Sip & Savor, a live and silent auction, and Christmas tree displays. Business sponsors pick up the tab for costs so the nonprofits have no out-of-pocket expenses.

Several dozen decorated trees  sold at auction  raised from $250 to $3,750 each, Rongen said.

Canyonside Christian School in Jerome won the Peoples Choice Award for its tree decorated with colorful trolls and garland, and received $1 for each vote it received  as did each nonprofit totaling about $7,000.

The Magic Valley Arts Councils Christmas tree, with decorations from its sponsor Design 125 in Twin Falls, won Best of Show. The winner of the MVAC tree also went home with a Gerilyn Fuestel painting from Full Moon Gallery, said Melissa Crane, marketing and sales director of the arts council.

Major sponsors for the fundraiser were Southern Idaho Landscape Center, which supplied the venue and financial support, and Farmers Bank, which provided financial support. Other sponsors were the Times-News and KMVT.
The container terminal at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah - Credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

Saudi Arabia yesterday declared it will keep open a vital port in war-ravaged Yemen to ease the humanitarian crisis, following pressure from Britain.

The kingdom said the Houthi rebel-controlled port of Hodeidah would remain open to humanitarian and commercial ships for a month, despite Mondays ballistic missile attack by rebels on Riyadh.

"The Coalition will allow the entry of commercial ships, including fuel and food vessels, for a period of 30 days," the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement. It said the move followed the "intensification" of a UN vessel security inspection program that it previously said was inadequate.

A malnourished Yemeni child receives treatment at a hospital in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen Credit: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP

Saudi Arabia leads a 10 nation coalition that is supporting Yemeni troops loyal to the internationally-recognized government in their fight against the Iranian-backed Houthis.

It closed Houthi controlled ports and airports in Yemen last month, in a move that drastically exacerbated food and fuel shortages in a country already reeling from nearly three years of war that has killed more than 10,000 people, caused a cholera epidemic and pushed millions to the brink of famine.

Although some aid ships have been allowed to dock in recent weeks, the ports have remained effectively closed to commercial shipping, which aid agencies say is vital to averting famine.

Secretary of State For International Developement Penny Mordaunt warned Saudi Arabia could be in breach of humanitarian law Credit: David Rose/The Telegraph

I am very pleased at todays announcement by the Saudi-led Coalition that Hodeidah port in Yemen is open again, Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary, said yesterday. I have been urging this step for some time, and I hope this will start to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people and get them the supplies they desperately need.

The first fuel vessel since restrictions were put in place was cleared to enter Hodeidah yesterday and is expected to dock in 24 hours, a UK official with knowledge of the matter told the Telegraph. Three food ships are also believed to have been cleared.

The coalition claimed its November 6 blockade was an attempt to stop the flow of weapons to the Houthis, which it said the UN-run vessel inspection system had failed to prevent.

Story continues

Yemeni women walk through the debris of a housing block allegedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in Sana a Credit: YAHYA ARHAB/EPA

However, it was roundly rebuked for the impact on the already-desperate civilian population, which is facing what has been described as one of the worst humanitarian crises in history.

In rare criticism of one of its allies, a British Cabinet minister warned Riyadh this week that its relationship with the UK could be damaged if it did not immediately act to ease restrictions which were worsening an already major crisis.

Penny Mordaunt, the secretary of state for international development, told the Telegraph that Saudi Arabia's withholding of aid could amount to use of starvation as a weapon, a crime under international humanitarian law.

While the UN and international humanitarian agencies raised the alarm over the blockade last month, Britain and other key Saudi allies initially remained mostly silent.

Amnesty International warned last month that Britain, France, and the United States could be "complicit" in war crimes by supplying arms to Riyadh and failing to oppose the blockade.

Britain has licensed 4.6 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia since the war in Yemen began in March 2015.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump celebrated a "historic" victory Wednesday as the US Congress passed a massive Republican tax cut plan, handing the president his first major legislative achievement since taking office nearly a year ago.

The House of Representatives voted along party lines to greenlight a $1.5 trillion overhaul that will impact every corner of the US economy through dramatic tax cuts for corporations and temporary reductions for individuals.

Opposition Democrats have branded the tax plan a giveaway to the wealthiest that risks blowing a hole in the national debt, but the revamp fulfills a core Trump campaign pledge to redirect money from government coffers into the pockets of working Americans.

"We broke every record," a jubilant Trump told scores of elated Republicans gathered at the White House for a victory lap, thanking them for driving through "the largest tax cut in the history of our country."

"We are making America great again," he declared, in a melee of smiles and handshakes with lawmakers -- who took turns to sing the president's praises.

"Something this big, something this generational, something this profound could not have been done without exquisite presidential leadership," gushed House Speaker Paul Ryan, as fellow lawmakers applauded.

The most sweeping rewrite of the US tax code in decades, the bill represents Trump's most important legislative victory in the 11 months since his inauguration, until now marked by the stinging failure to repeal his predecessor's health care law.

Billing it as a "Christmas gift" and a "history victory" for the American people, Trump and his Republicans hope their success in passing tax cuts plays to the party's advantage in next year's mid-term elections.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also takes a major step toward crippling Obamacare, by scrapping the individual mandate that requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine.

Story continues

"With this bill... we have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something that's much better," Trump declared.

Trump earlier gathered his cabinet members for a meeting where he discussed the tax accomplishment, and that gave way to an extraordinary scene as the president invited those present to join in prayer.

Housing Secretary Ben Carson, a fervent member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, proceeded to say grace, thanking God for giving America Trump and his tax cut plan.

"We're thankful for the unity in Congress that has presented an opportunity for our economy to expand so that we can fight corrosive debt that has been destroying our future," Carson intoned.

- Changing minds -

Having taken months to get across the finish line, the bill was delayed at the last moment Tuesday after a technical glitch required the Senate to strip three minor provisions from the bill before approving it overnight.

Since the House had already voted -- and the versions approved by both chambers must be identical -- it was forced to vote again on the changes. The bill passed the House 224 to 201, with 12 Republicans siding with all Democrats in voting no.

The measure tests conservatives' fidelity to the principle of fiscal discipline, as it is projected to add nearly $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

That figure drops to about $1 trillion when economic growth is accounted for.

Trump had leaned heavily on Republicans to push the contentious package through Congress. The party had been deeply fractured after the Obamacare repeal failure, and the prospects of success on tax reform in 2017 appeared remote.

The reform remains unpopular: a CNN poll shows that 55 percent of Americans oppose the tax plan, widely criticized as favoring wealthy people over the middle class, while just 33 percent support it.

But Republicans have pushed back at that notion, with Ryan predicting that Americans would be won over once they start to reap the benefits next year.

"I think people are going to change their view on this," he said.

The tax bill slashes the federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and the maximum individual income tax rate, for the nation's wealthiest, would drop from 39.6 percent to 37 percent.

It also doubles the standard deduction for families, and doubles the child tax credit, while eliminating or limiting several deductions currently claimed by millions of middle-class families.

- Economic 'rocket fuel' -

Ryan stated that a median-income family of four earning $73,000 annually would save $2,059 in taxes next year.

But he could not say whether the tax cuts would generate enough economic growth to pay for themselves.

Trump however was bullish. "By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy," he said.

Democrats meanwhile trashed the plan's implications for ordinary citizens.

"It is a victory for billionaires like Donald Trump... but this is a disaster for the American people," independent Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN.

Under the law, the corporate tax cuts are permanent, while those for individuals phase out beginning in 2026. By 2027, the Tax Policy Center warns, 53 percent of households will see their taxes rise.
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

Nikki Haley vs. everyone. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue. That was the message Nikki Haley emailed to scores of members of the United Nations weighing whether to vote Thursday in favor of a General Assembly resolution urging the United States to rescind its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Much more here from FPs Colum Lynch.

More ships to Western Pacific. The U.S. Navy is considering pushing more ships into the Western Pacific  closer to North Korea and China, the services chief said on a visit to Japan.

Given North Koreas blitz of ballistic missile and nuclear tests this year, the security environment got more demanding, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told sails aboard the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. We need more naval power. Richardson also said he plans to conduct more exercises with partners in the region in 2018.

Hold up. South Korea is pushing the U.S. to postpone joint military exercises until after the Winter Olympics as a way to calm the situation with North Korea, the Souths president told NBC News. He hopes the move could turn into a confidence-building measure with North Korea and that any halts to the drills would be dependent on a lull in Pyongyangs nuclear and missile tests.

Japan builds up. Staring down both North Korea and China, Japan if beefing up its military posture in a significant way. Tokyo is not only pushing a string of anti-ship and and anti-aircraft missile batteries into its southernmost islands close to China, but it is buying two powerful missile defense sites to be emplaced early next decade that can track and knock down North Korean ballistic missiles.

South Korea fires on Chinese boats. Adding to the tensions in the region, on Tuesday South Korean Coast Guard ships fired about 250 rounds at a group of Chinese fishing boats that were swarming the Korean ships. The Chinese boats are part of Beijings maritime militia which regularly challenges South Korean and Japanese ships, and acts as an arm of the Chinese navy.

Story continues

War in Ukraine. 2017 has been the deadliest year in the three year Ukrainian conflict, which has pitted the central government in Kiev against Russian-backed rebels, according to Kurt Volker, the State Departments envoy seeking a resolution to the war. Volker warned a think tank audience in D.C. on Tuesday that the impression the war has turned into a sleepy, frozen conflict is completely wrong and that the fighting in Ukraine is instead a crisis.

Saudi and Yemen: Worse and worse. U.S. President Donald Trumps pick for the top legal advisor at the State Department has acknowledged that Saudi Arabia could be violating U.S. and international law by restricting the flow of humanitarian aid in Yemen, FPs Dan De Luce scoops. More:

In written answers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month before her confirmation Tuesday, Jennifer Newstead moved away from the State Departments previous policy and indicated a stricter reading of statutes that prohibit American assistance to foreign countries blocking or hindering the flow of humanitarian aid.

Some movement? The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has decided to keep Yemens main Hodeidah port open for a month, the coalition said on Wednesday, allowing at least some much-needed humanitarian relief to take place.

Drone sales. The United States is looking to make changes to a major international arms control treaty that would open the door for wider exports of military drones, Defense News reports. The proposed change to the Missile Technology Control Regime would make it easier for nations to sell drones.

Whos where when. The Trump administration sent a few more names to Capitol Hill for confirmation on Tuesday. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty is up for Under Secretary for Nuclear Security at the Department of Energy; Andrea L. Thompson has been nominated for Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security; and Susan A. Thornton has been tapped for Assistant Secretary of State East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Thorntons nomination can be seen as a win for embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has come to rely heavily on Thornton. Over the summer, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon boasted that he was changing out people at East Asian Defense; Im getting hawks in. Im getting Susan Thornton out at State. That plan  among others he has hatched  doesnt look like it panned out for Bannon.

Welcome to SitRep. As always, please send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary.

Air for Syria. The U.N. Security Council approved the delivery of humanitarian aid across borders in Syria for another year on Tuesday, with Russia calling for an end to the program. The council voted 12-0 to extend the mandate of the cross-border convoys, with Russia, China and Bolivia abstaining.

Ordinary decent criminals. North Korea is cashing in on its hacking skills and the bitcoin boom with the Norths Lazarus Group hacking collective stealing bitcoin from unsuspecting users tricked by spear phishing emails.

Round two on Riyadh. Houthi rebels in Yemen have once again fired a ballistic missile at the Saudi capital of Riyadh, only a week after U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley showed off Iranian ballistic missile components from another missile launched at the city. In a video showing the missile launch, members of the Houthi movement say they targeted a meeting of Saudi King Salman and top officials.

Nikki Haleys attempts to bring the U.N. Security Council on board with sanctions against Iran for its alleged export of ballistic missiles, however, ran aground against Russian opposition. On Tuesday, Haley seized on a report from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lending credence to the possibility of Iranian missile exports to Yemen, arguing that the Security Council could sanction Iran, its Revolutionary Guard Corps, or adopt new restrictions on Irans ballistic missile programs.

La propagande en francais. The Kremlin-backed RT news channel is bringing its brand of conspiracy content to viewers in France, setting up a French-language footprint in the country where French President Emmanuel Macron has called the channel one of the organs of influence and deceitful propaganda.

The cost of Mosul. Somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died in the fight to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State, according to interviews of morgue workers and gravediggers conducted by the AP.

NATO cyber practice. NATO has been sharpening its cyber skills with a series of exercises, Locked Shields and Crossed Swords. Teams gathered at a NATO center of excellence in Tallinn have been practicing not just how to keep adversaries out of allied networks, but how to penetrate and defeat enemy systems, working in tandem with special operations teams to simulate hacking a moving train to allow commandos to stop it and seize servers onboard.

Stealth tanker. Boeing has shown off its concept for the MQ-25 Stingray, an unmanned stealth tanker which can take off from aircraft carriers and to supply the jets based on board. The sneak peek of the prototype reveals a Cylon Raider-style design, which will go up against entries from Lockheed Martin and General Atomics.

Myanmar journalist arrests. The government of Myanmar has detained two reporters from Reuters and held them incommunicado, prompting calls for their release by the State Department. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert pronounced the department deeply concerned about the detention of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, saying that the U.S. is calling for their immediate release.
By Alexander Winning and James Macharia JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader of South Africa's governing ANC party, said on Thursday he aims to stamp out corruption and pursue a policy of "radical economic transformation" that will speed up expropriation of land without compensation. Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader who became a businessman and is now one of South Africa's richest people, is likely to become the country's next president after elections in 2019, because of his party's electoral dominance. His promise to fight rampant corruption and revitalize the economy has been hailed by foreign investors. "This conference has resolved that corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality," Ramaphosa said in his maiden speech at the close of a five-day party meeting where he was elected. "We must also act fearlessly against alleged corruption and abuse of office within our ranks," he said in the early hours of Thursday after a long delay. Ramaphosa, who is South Africa's deputy president, was elected the new leader of the African National Congress (ANC) on Monday, succeeding President Jacob Zuma as party head after Zuma's presidency became tainted with corruption allegations. Ramaphosa's narrow victory over former cabinet minister and African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 68, is seen as a pivotal moment for the ANC, which launched black-majority rule under Nelson Mandela's leadership 23 years ago but is now deeply divided with its image tarnished. Ramaphosa paid tribute to Zuma in his speech, saying the ANC would be "united" despite a fractious campaign. Zuma had backed his ex-wife Dlamini-Zuma for ANC's top job. However, investors are concerned that Ramaphosa may not be able to push through policy changes because the ANC's top decision-making group, known as the "Top Six", was split down the middle, with three politicians apiece drawn from Ramaphosa's camp and that of Dlamini-Zuma. Analysts warned that the division of the party presidency, held by Ramaphosa, and the state presidency in Zuma's hands, could lead to policy uncertainty or paralysis. "Mr. Zuma, for instance, still occupies South Africas presidency  a cohabitation that may cause a period of policy uncertainty," Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said in a note. Expectations that Ramaphosa would win the ANC race had pushed the rand to 12.5200 per dollar on Monday, its firmest since March 27, when a cabinet reshuffle by Zuma rocked markets and triggered credit ratings downgrades to "junk." The rand weakened on Tuesday, but firmed on Wednesday as investors continued to digest how much clout Ramaphosa wields. "Victory for Ramaphosa, but not a loss for Zuma," said Geoff Blount, managing director at BayHill Capital. FOCUS ON ECONOMY Zuma has faced allegations of corruption since he became head of state in 2009, but has denied any wrongdoing. The president has also faced allegations that his friends the wealthy Gupta businessmen wielded undue influence over his government. Zuma and the Guptas have denied the accusations. Ramaphosa alluded to these allegations in his speech, saying, "At the state level we must confront the reality that critical institutions of our state have been targeted by individuals and families, through the exercise of influence and the manipulation of governance processes and public resources." He said this had weakened the state-owned enterprises in Africa's most industrialized economy. South Africa, the continent's traditional powerhouse, has had lethargic growth over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Ramaphosa also had a warning for corporate executives. "We must investigate without fear or favor the so-called 'accounting irregularities' that cause turmoil in the markets and wipe billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans," he said. South African furniture retailer Steinhoff, has been embroiled in a scandal over accounting irregularities, which have wiped more than $10 billion off its market value over the past two weeks. Ramaphosa also said he would aim to expedite job creation, improve the lackluster economy and speed up the transfer of land to black people. Two decades after the end of apartheid, the ANC is under pressure to redress racial disparities in land ownership where whites own most of the land. "This conference has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution," Ramaphosa said. He said the land transfers would be speeded up under the radical economic transformation program, a vague ANC plan to tackle racial inequality. (Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Addis Ababa (AFP) - South Sudan's government and several armed groups on Thursday agreed to a ceasefire from December 24, the latest push to end a devastating four year war in the country.

"This is an encouraging first step. You have given a ray of hope back to your people but it is only a small step. Now practical action is needed," said African Union chairman Moussa Faki ahead of the signing of the agreement during peace talks in Ethiopia.

South Sudan's leaders fought for decades for independence, but once they got it in 2011, a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar led to all out civil war in 2013.

A peace deal was signed in 2015 but collapsed in July 2016 when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then first vice president Machar into exile.

The opposition split, with Taban Deng taking over as first-vice president, while Machar's faction returned to battling the government in the bush.

While the initial fighting pitted Kiir's ethnic Dinka against Machar's Nuer, the renewed violence has metastasised with new opposition armed groups forming.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million South Sudanese to flock to neighbouring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

The latest round of peace talks, which the United Nations described as a "last chance" for peace in the country was pushed by the regional IGAD group as a revitalisation of the 2015 deal.

However observers have highlighted that the shifts in the conflict since 2015 will mean taking into account new grievances.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016.

A permanent ceasefire is the first step in negotiations to include a "revised and realistic" timeline to holding elections.

Story continues

The initial peace deal planned for elections in August 2018 -- a date seen as unfeasible by many observers.

Numerous ceasefires have failed over the past years, with even the 2015 peace deal dogged by fighting.

A fresh government offensive that coincided with the peace talks only added to doubts over Kiir's commitment to halting hostilities.

On Sunday, Kiir's troops attacked the town of Lasu in Central Equatoria State, which has served as the headquarters for Machar's SPLA-IO rebels, sending scores fleeing into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP they planned to launch a counter-offensive even if the ceasefire agreement was signed, if government did not withdraw voluntarily.
San Juan Moda is bringing back fashion to the island. (Photo: Getty Images)

In Puerto Rico, the show must go on.

Despite the devastating toll wrought by Hurricane Maria in September, residents are working hard to normalize life. And fashion week  or San Juan Moda, running from Dec. 19 through Dec. 22 at the Old San Juan Casino  is one of the events bringing joy to the community, while simultaneously providing a boost for the local economy.

A post shared by San Juan Moda (@sanjuanmodapr) on Dec 20, 2017 at 3:12pm PST

Internationally known designers like Stella Nolasco, who has dressed the likes of Beyonce and Issa Rae, will bring her latest collections to the runway. Also among those on the lineup is Giannina Azar, who gained notoriety after Jennifer Lopez wore one of her gowns for the One Voice: Somos Live! benefit relief event she organized with boyfriend Alex Rodriguez.

A post shared by Disenadora Giannina Azar (@gianninaazar) on Dec 14, 2017 at 7:29am PST

Local designers such Angel Guzman, Jaer Caban, and Eddie Guerrero will also have the opportunity to showcase their talents.

The event is among several efforts meant to give a boost to the islands economy; others include a fund sponsored by first lady Beatriz Rossello, to benefit a pediatric hospital in need of incubators for newborns, and a toy drive organized by actress Karla Monroig.

Even three months after the hurricane, more than 45 percent of the island remains without electricity. This event, however, aims to bring a beam of light to the Puerto Rican community.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




BURLEY  The city is planning major changes at Burley parks, including a smoking ban at two, requirements for parks in new subdivisions and a grant to complete a section of the greenbelt near the Overland Bridge.

City Attorney David Shirley will draft a new ordinance banning tobacco at the East Park skate park and at Salmon Park, which includes the citys swimming pool. A city ordinance is already in effect banning tobacco use at Burleys Storybook Park on 13th Street and Conant Avenue. The new version will include making the offense an infraction rather than a misdemeanor at the parks.

Minico High School senior Alex Mittelsteadt, a member of Idaho Drug Free Youth, made the request to the City Council to ban tobacco at the skate park.

Weve known for years that smoking is bad for you, Mittelsteadt said. The second-hand smoke is just as bad along with the chemicals children could be exposed to coming in contact with left behind cigarette butts.

The state will provide free signs.

Shirley said during the Tuesday council meeting that making the offense an infraction would mean a fine instead of jail as punishment.

It would expedite the process and make it similar to a traffic offense, Shirley said.

Councilman John Craner said he is not a smoker and does not encourage smoking but is concerned about the city regulating too much.The public pays to maintain the parks and the city wants people to use them, Craner said.

Im concerned were going over the top, he said.

Councilman Bryce Morgan said the skate park targets children, and so a ban make sense. Councilman Casey Andersen agreed with Morgan. And Councilman Randy Hawkins said how the signs are worded makes a difference.

Thank you for not smoking instead of it is prohibited makes it more palatable I think, Hawkins said.

Councilman Russ Mallory, who attended the meeting via phone, agreed with Craner.

The civil libertarian in me thinks its a step too far. I think it should be no smoking in the skate zone, not the entire park, Mallory said.

Brent Winn, the citys parks maintenance supervisor, suggested adding Salmon Park to the list because it is also a childrens park.

In other business, City Administrator Mark Mitton said a neighborhood park is planned in the new Harrison Estates subdivision at the southeast corner of Park Avenue and 27th Street.

The developers have agreed to include the park in the 165-lot subdivision. Developers at 276-lot Glacier Park subdivision have also agreed to put in a neighborhood park.

Its the largest subdivision weve ever had, Mitton said.

The city will maintain the parks after they are developed.

The city will never lose money on those parks because of all the houses in those subdivisions will pay for the maintenance, he said.

Mitton suggested that city officials consider putting the requirement for parks in subdivisions over 100 lots in the city code. Up to this point all of the developers have been compliant with the request.

Mitton said the city needs to take a hard look at how it is growing and add commercial zones around the residential areas to minimize traffic problems later on.

The city will also apply for an $80,000 grant to complete the paving on a section of the greenbelt path near the Overland Bridge. The completed section will link the park on Bedke Avenue to the park that will be developed on the southwest side of the Overland Bridge and Lex Kunau Park can be accessed by the walkway on the bridge. There is a 3,500-feet stretch that needs completed in the section.

Once the section is completed, only one more section of the planned pathway remains uncompleted. That section stretches from the east side of the Overland Bridge to the Heyburn Bridge near the Burley airport.
At least a dozen people were hurt on Thursday when a driver in a white SUV plowed through pedestrians at a busy intersection in Melbourne, Australia. Police have not confirmed whether the motive is terrorism-related, but Victoria Police told media that the incident was believed to be a deliberate act.

If it is terrorism, this would be far from Australias first attack. Heres a list of recent such incidents in the country:

2014 Endeavour Hills Stabbings

On September 23, 2014, 18-year-old Abdul Numan Haider stabbed two counter-terrorism officers in Endeavour Hills, a suburb of Melbourne, before he was shot dead. Haiders passport had been cancelled by authorities who feared he was planning to join ISIS.

2014 Sydney Hostage Crisis

On December 15, 2014, a lone gunman named Man Haron Monis held eighteen people hostage the Lindt chocolate cafe in central Sydney. Police officers stormed the cafe after a 16-hour standoff in which three people were killed including the gunman.

2015 Parramatta Shooting

On October 2, 2015, 15-year-old Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar shot and killed Curtis Cheng, a 58-year-old accountant, in the western Sydney suburb of Parramatta. Five men were arrested in connection to the killing, which New South Wales Police deputy commissioner Catherine Burn called a terrorism event.

2016 Minto Stabbing Attack

On September 20, 2016, a 22-year-old man inspired by ISIS stabbed an unknown man in the Sydney suburb of Minto. The culprit was charged with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder.

2017 Queanbeyan Stabbing Attacks

On April 7, 2017, two teenagers went on a stabbing spree in the town of Queanbeyan, killing one and harming three others. Police in New South Wales said one of the teenagers may have had terrorist links.

2017 Brighton Siege

On June 5, 2017, 29-year-old Yacqub Khayre stormed an apartment complex in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne. One woman was shot dead and another held hostage. The gunman was killed after shooting three police officers. He reportedly told police over the phone, This is for IS, this is for Al Qaeda.
By Roberta Rampton

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Two of President Donald Trump's Cabinet secretaries visited Puerto Rico on Tuesday to assess its needs after Hurricane Maria's devastation as U.S. lawmakers weighed a massive aid package to help the island and other areas of the country hit by natural disasters.

House of Representatives Republican leaders have unveiled an $81 billion aid package to deal with hurricanes and wildfires, the largest ever natural disaster package. The measure would include aid, not only for Puerto Rico, but also for states like Texas and Florida that were also hit by hurricanes and California, which is struggling to contain massive wildfires.

As Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson flew into San Juan, scores of houses with blue tarps covering damaged roofs were visible.

While the city hummed with activity, in more remote parts of the island residents remain without power and recovery is slow.

About 70 percent of Puerto Rico's power grid  as measured by its peak use  is operating, the government has said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is running the power restoration project, has projected that 95 percent of the grid will have power by the end of February, but it will take until the end of May for the rest of the island to be hooked back up.

Even before Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, the island was contending with $72 billion in debt. Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello has asked the federal government for a total of $94.4 billion in aid, including $31.1 billion for housing and $17.8 billion to rebuild its ruined power grid.

Daniel Kaniewski, acting deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who was traveling with Nielsen and Carson, said he had not seen the details of the House aid package. But he added: "We do need the funding eventually - we don't need it tomorrow. We need it soon."

Story continues

Puerto Rico's government has said 64 people died because of the hurricane, but after multiple media estimates of dramatically higher figures, Rossello on Monday ordered an official review of the death toll.

Related:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Caren Bohan and Phil Berlowitz)
Pair have disagreed over Jerusalem and Trumps Islamophobic retweets



Neither US nor UK mention visit in accounts of phone call



Theresa May met Donald Trump at the White House in January. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Theresa May spoke to Donald Trump on Tuesday about their countrys very different positions on Jerusalem, but it was left unclear whether previous damage to the relationship had been repaired  or whether the president would visit London in February to open the new US embassy.

The call between the two leaders came 13 days after May had announced she would speak to Trump about his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a position at odds with the policy pursued by London and almost all other UN member states, which argue that the fate of the city should be decided in comprehensive negotiations.

Asked if the two-week delay amounted to a snub by Trump, a spokesman for May said the pair had a good relationship, which included being able to differ on some matters.

The prime minister has always been clear on these matters that part of having a special relationship is that where there are times you dont agree, you can say so, the spokesman said.

However, there is still no agreement on a Trump visit to the UK, which had been postponed because of fears that it would trigger mass demonstrations. British officials say that ultimately Trump will have to decide whether to make the trip, given that large-scale demonstrations against him are planned, and that it would not be possible to stage-manage a visit to London, unlike during Trumps previous trips to Riyadh, Jerusalem, Warsaw and Beijing.

The US ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, a personal friend of Trump, said last week he expected the president to visit London in the new year, raising expectations that he would fly in to open a new $800m embassy complex in Battersea on the south bank of the Thames. However, neither the Downing Street nor the White House account of Mondays call mentioned a presidential visit.

A later statement from Downing Street said that May had offered condolences for Mondays train crash in Washington state and that they had discussed the different positions we took on the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and agreed on the importance of the US bringing forward new proposals for peace and the international community supporting these efforts.

Story continues

The issue of Jerusalem has isolated Washington from almost all its allies, and forced a rare US veto of a UN security council resolution on Monday, when the 14 other council members, including the UK, voted to call for the US recognition of its status as Israeli capital be rescinded.

The vote drew a bitter response from the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, who described it as an insult, adding: It wont be forgotten. In an official transcript of her remarks issued on Tuesday, however, the line about the vote not being forgotten was left out. The White House account of the presidents conversation with May did not mention Jerusalem.

The open rift over Jerusalem followed a sharp exchange between May and Trump after the president retweeted Islamophobic videos circulated by the extreme-right Britain First group, which was banned from Twitter this week. The prime minister publicly rebuked Trump, saying he had been wrong to share the videos, which drew a sour tweeted riposte from the president telling her not to focus on him but on what was happening in the UK.

A spokesman for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: It has taken Theresa May two weeks to contact Trump over his dangerous decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, yet she seems to have failed to use the opportunity to call him out for retweeting abhorrent Islamophobic material. As Prime Minister, May has a responsibility to stand up against hate and for all communities in our country..

The No 10 communique on Tuesdays phone call said the two leaders also discussed the situation in Yemen, and that May had expressed our ongoing deep concerns at the humanitarian situation.

A Saudi-led coalition supported by both countries is conducting an aerial bombing campaign and a blockade of rebel-held areas that has contributed significantly to a humanitarian disaster. May has called for an end to the blockade, but British officials acknowledge that Trump has far greater leverage on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, with whom the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have a close relationship.

Trump issued a brief statement on 6 December, saying he had asked US officials to ask Riyadh to allow food, fuel and water and medicine to reach Yemeni ports, but he has not put overt pressure on Salman on the issue.

Downing Street said May reported on progress in Brexit talks and the president and prime minister wished each other a very Merry Christmas and looked forward to keeping in close touch.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said discussions with London about the visit were continuing.

We are working with them to finalise the details, which we expect to announce soon, Sanders said.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May spoke for the first time since a row over his retweets of a British extremist group, addressing vexing questions about Brexit and Middle East peace Tuesday.

The call came nearly a month after the two clashed over Trump's tweets of "Britain First" anti-Muslim propaganda and hours after London took the unusual step of voting against Washington at the United Nations.

Britain was among 14 UN Security Council members who backed a resolution condemning Trump's decision to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, leaving the United States alone to veto.

"They discussed the different positions we took on the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and agreed on the importance of the US bringing forward new proposals for peace and the international community supporting these efforts," a Downing Street spokesman said.

"The President and Prime Minister discussed next steps in forging peace in the Middle East," the White House said.

There was no mention of the Twitter feud from either side, a row that has put Trump's state visit to the United Kingdom in further jeopardy.

"The two leaders exchanged holiday greetings and warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year," the White House said.

They also discussed Britains negotiations to withdraw from the European Union, with the British side claiming that they "agreed on the importance of a swift post-Brexit bilateral trade deal."

There was no mention of such an agreement in Washington's account of the call, although Trump has made similar pledges in the past.

"The prime minister updated the president on the recent good progress of the Brexit negotiations, and the president set out the progress he had made on his economic agenda," the Downing Street spokesman said.

"President Trump congratulated the Prime Minister on the decision by European Union leaders to move to the second phase of the Brexit negotiations," according to Washington.

Story continues

Earlier Tuesday, May chaired the first detailed cabinet discussion on Britain's future trade ties, after European Union leaders last week approved an interim agreement on the terms of their separation, and agreed to move talks on to trade next year.

London wants to secure "the best possible trading terms with the EU" that enable Britain "to set rules that are right for our situation and facilitates ambitious third-country trade deals," Downing Street said after the meeting.

May and Trump also talked about Yemen, with May "highlighting our ongoing deep concerns at the humanitarian situation," according to Downing Street.

"They agreed on the vital importance of reopening humanitarian and commercial access to prevent famine and alleviate the suffering of innocent Yemenis," the spokesman said.
WASHINGTON  Fresh off his only major legislative victory, President Donald Trump on Wednesday basked in the adulation showered upon him by a trifecta of Cabinet members, congressional Republican leaders and his own White House press team.

In the morning came the celebratory Cabinet meeting that doubled as an ego boost, with administration officials praising the president for what they saw as the progress of his agenda so far.

Trump spent more than 10 minutes rambling about the accomplishments in his first year in office, before turning to Vice President Mike Pence, inviting him to offer words of praise.

Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country, Pence said.

Speaking for several minutes, Pence said he was deeply humbled, as your vice president, to be able to be here, and thanked Trump for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America.

Later in the afternoon, White House officials issued a press release that consisted entirely of Trumps Cabinet members praising the president and the tremendous progress on his agenda.

The White House press office frequently sends reporters press releases that contain fawning editorials and positive news coverage of the president.

White House just sent out an entire press release of Cabinet members praising Trump. pic.twitter.com/WAscpAEdH2  Marina Fang (@marinafang) December 20, 2017

Finally came the White House ceremony celebrating House and Senate Republicans for passing their tax bill, where GOP leaders offered the president similarly fulsome praise.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) hailed Trumps exquisite presidential leadership, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called him one heck of a leader.

Mr. President, I have to say, youre living up to everything I thought you would, Hatch said, before adding that this is one of the great privileges of my life, to stand here on the White House lawn with the president of the United States, who I love and appreciate so much.

Story continues

Hatch also pledged to help Trump make this the greatest presidency that weve seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever.

And Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Budget Committee, got right to the point.

Thank you, President Trump, for allowing us to have you as our president, and to make America great again, she said.

Wednesdays Cabinet meeting was reminiscent of prior occasions this year in which Trump, a self-described loyalty freak, asked officials to publicly praise him.

After his much criticized response to Hurricane Maria ravaging Puerto Rico earlier this year, Trump held a briefing with officials on the island. At one point, he went around the table asking them to offer their compliments.

Turning to Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Ricos representative to Congress, Trump asked her to repeat the nice things she had said about him in television interviews.

At a Cabinet meeting in June, Trump famously asked administration officials, one by one, to give positive remarks.

Among other widely mocked moments, then-chief of staff Reince Priebus thanked Trump for the opportunity and the blessing that youve given us to serve your agenda and the American people.

Also on HuffPost

Trump throws rolls of paper towels into a crowd of Puerto Rico residents affected by Hurricane Maria as he visits Calgary Chapel in San Juan on Oct. 3.

Trump reacts as he sits in a truck on March 23 while welcoming truckers and CEOs to attend a meeting at the White House regarding health care.

Trump registers his surprise as he realizes other leaders, including Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, are crossing their arms for the traditional "ASEAN handshake" as he participates in the opening ceremony of the ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines, on Nov. 13.

Trump, along with first lady Melania Trump, Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, put their hands on an illuminated globe during the inauguration ceremony of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 21.

Trump looks up toward the solar eclipse while standing on the Truman Balcony at the White House on Aug. 21.

Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May are pictured ahead of a photo opportunity of leaders as they arrive for a NATO summit meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on May 25.

Trump boards Air Force One to depart for Vietnam from Beijing, China, on Nov. 10.

Trump holds up a pen after signing the HBCU executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 28.

Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wait for reporters to enter the room before their meeting in the Oval Office on March 17.

Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7.

Trump welcomes 11-year-old Frank Giaccio to the White House on Sept. 15. Frank, who wrote a letter to Trump offering to mow the White House lawn, was invited to work for a day along the National Park Service staff.

Trump and Putin shake hands as they take part in a family photo at the APEC summit in Danang, Vietnam, on Nov. 10.

Trump jokes with French President Emmanuel Macron about their handshakes at the start of the NATO summit at their new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on May 25.

Trump holds a mechanical tool as he attends a Made in America roundtable in the East Room of the White House on July 19.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump threatened to cut funding Wednesday to countries that vote against the United States on a motion at the United Nations condemning Washington's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"All these nations that take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council and they vote against us potentially at the Assembly," Trump said at the White House.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes," he continued.

"Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

Nikki Haley, Washington's UN envoy, had warned countries Tuesday that she would report back to Trump with the names of those who supported a draft resolution rejecting the US recognition.

"Nikki, that was the right message," Trump said.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki accused Washington of "threatening" member countries of the UN General Assembly ahead of Thursday's vote.
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Wednesday ordered the arrest of the relatives of a witness in an explosive US trial of a Turkish banker accused of violating US sanctions against Iran, state media reported.

Huseyin Korkmaz, a former police investigator now in the United States, last week described to a New York court how he had been investigating alleged corruption in 2013 and had gathered evidence before fleeing Turkey in 2016.

Istanbul prosecutors are now seeking to detain Korkmaz's parents as well as his wife, older brother and two sisters after he apparently told the court "I have given documents to my mother to hide", state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

The agency said police officers could not find the individuals at their addresses.

Korkmaz told the court he provided US officials with documents used in a case against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, deputy chief executive of Turkish lender Halkbank, who is accused in the sanctions case.

Other people have been charged but Atilla is the only person in the dock and has pleaded not guilty.

Korkmaz is wanted in Turkey over alleged links to US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey claims masterminded last year's attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gulen strongly denies Ankara's accusations.

According to Anadolu, Korkmaz had used the encrypted messaging application ByLock which Ankara says was used by the Gulen movement, especially putschists.

He is also one of the suspects in Turkey's investigation into the 2013 corruption probe that targeted Erdogan, which the government has since denounced as a coup attempt, the agency said.

- Tense relations -

The warrants come as the jury will begin deliberations later on Wednesday after the three-week trial which is testing already strained ties between the US and Turkey.

Relations between the NATO allies are tense over the US failure to extradite Gulen and US support for Syrian Kurdish militia branded "terrorists" by Turkey.

Story continues

A surprise in the trial's beginning came after Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab -- who was once close to Erdogan and his government -- was arrested in March 2016 in Miami and charged with subverting sanctions against Iran.

As the trial began last month, he appeared in court after a long time as the prosecution's star witness in the trial obsessively followed in Turkey.

Zarrab was one of the main figures of the 2013 corruption scandal in Turkey which Erdogan denounced at the time as a "dirty" plot.

During his testimony, Zarrab implicated Erdogan in a multi-million-dollar gold-for-oil scheme allegedly designed to subvert sanctions.

The US case has provoked the ire of Erdogan who has denounced the trial as a "plot" against Turkey while analysts say one or more Turkish banks face possible fines in the event of a guilty verdict.
Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey summoned a senior United Arab Emirates diplomat on Thursday to complain about a tweet by an Emirati minister that infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media reported.

The Emirates' foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan this week retweeted a post on Twitter in which a user made allegations of historic misdoings by "ancestors of Erdogan".

The tweet alleged that a former Ottoman governor pillaged and kidnapped people from the pilgrimage city of Medina in the early 20th century.

The Turkish foreign ministry summoned the Emirati charge d'affaires in Ankara on Thursday and complained about the post, state news agency Anadolu said.

The charge d'affaires was the top UAE diplomat currently present in Turkey as the ambassador was temporarily absent.

The offending tweet was posted by a user called "Ali al-Iraqi", presenting himself as an Iraqi dentist living in Germany.

"Ali al-Iraqi" said Fahreddin Pasha -- Medina governor from 1916 to 1919 -- "committed a crime against the people of Medina by stealing their money, kidnapping them and putting them on trains that took them to Syria and Istanbul".

The user added: "Those are the ancestors of Erdogan and this is the history that they have with Arab Muslims."

Fahreddin Pasha was governor during the siege of Medina (1916-1919).

Erdogan hit back on Wednesday, telling the minister to "know your place" as he railed against the twitter user's "slanderous claims".

"Know your place! It means you do not know this country, you do not know Erdogan, you do not know about Erdogan's ancestors," he retorted.

"When Fahreddin Pasha was protecting Medina... where were your ancestors?"

Erdogan went on the attack again on Thursday, saying the Emirati minister was "ill-brought up" and "too spoilt by oil and money".

Relations between the UAE and Turkey are filled with distrust as Ankara supports Qatar in a six-month crisis with its Gulf neighbours including the UAE, as well as political groups stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The UAE outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terror" group in 2014.

Turkish pro-government newspapers also routinely allude to UAE involvement in last year's attempted coup against Erdogan.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described the United Arab Emirates foreign minister as impertinent and spoiled by money on Thursday after he retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One. Without naming him, Erdogan said UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan - who shared a tweet accusing Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha of stealing money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916 - was ignorant. "Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has," Erdogan told an awards ceremony at his Ankara palace. "When my ancestors were defending Medina, you impudent (man), where were yours? First, you have to give account for this," he added. The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan's Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces the UAE opposes across the Arab world. Relations were further strained by Ankaras support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf emirate in June. Two months later, Sheikh Abdullah criticized what he called Turkey and Irans "colonial" actions in Syria, though Turkey and the UAE have both opposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Medina, now part of Saudi Arabia, was under Ottoman rule until the empire's collapse at the end of World War One. On Wednesday, Erdogan said Fakhreddin Pasha, who led the Ottoman forces, had not stolen from Medina or its people but strived to protect the city - where the Prophet Muhammad was buried - and its occupants during a time of war. "Believe me, this man who insulted us, who disrespected us, wouldn't even know what the holy relics are. They are ignorant like this," Erdogan said. (Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton)
The Hague (AFP) - A Dutch court Thursday sentenced two police officers to a six-month suspended jail term for the 2015 death of a man from Aruba, who suffocated after being arrested at a music festival.

Mitch Henriquez, 42, died after being wrestled to the ground and put in a chokehold when he resisted arrest at the event in The Hague in June 2015.

Judges in The Hague found Thursday that the "use of force by police went too far."

"A police officer must intervene in situations like this, but there are limits to the use of police force," the judges said in their ruling.

They said one of the officers had grabbed Henriquez around the neck, while the other hit him in the face and used pepper spray on him.

The chokehold "was too powerful and lasted too long", the judges said, adding that even though five officers were needed to get Henriquez under control, the subsequent use of pepper spray "also went too far."

Henriquez died while on his visit to relatives in the Netherlands from the Caribbean Dutch island of Aruba. The incident sparked almost a week of anti-police protests in The Hague, leading to some 200 arrests.

Police said at the time they had arrested Henriquez after he claimed to have a weapon. He resisted arrest and became unwell on the way to the police station, they said.

But mobile phone footage taken by witnesses showed several police officers restraining and sitting on Henriquez, before his limp body was put in a police vehicle.

The Dutch ANP news agency said the two officers were suspended from duty during the trial, but the police chief says they will now be re-integrated into the force.

Aruba, a tiny island lying just off Venezuela in the Caribbean, is a Dutch territory, and many people living in The Netherlands have links to it.
By David Morgan and Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

In sealing Trump's first major legislative victory, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while giving mixed, temporary tax relief to middle-class Americans.

The House approved the measure, 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up forced another vote on Wednesday. The Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of Wednesday.

"By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy," Trump said in a statement after the vote.

Trump, who had emphasized a tax cut for middle-class Americans during his 2016 campaign, said at the start of a Cabinet meeting before the vote that lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent was "probably the biggest factor in this plan."

Trump planned a tax-related celebration with U.S. lawmakers at the White House in the afternoon but will not sign the legislation immediately. The timing of the signing was still up in the air.

After Trump repeatedly urged Republicans to get it to him to sign before the end of the year, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the timing of signing the bill depends on whether automatic spending cuts triggered by the legislation could be waived. If so, the president will sign it before the end of the year, he said.

BUSINESS FRIENDLY

In addition to cutting the U.S. corporate income tax rate to 21 percent, the debt-financed legislation gives other business owners a new 20 percent deduction on business income and reshapes how the government taxes multinational corporations along the lines the country's largest businesses have recommended for years.

Story continues

Millions of Americans would stop itemizing deductions under the bill, putting tax breaks that incentivise home ownership and charitable donations out of their reach, but also making tax returns somewhat simpler and shorter.

The bill keeps the present number of tax brackets but adjusts many of the rates and income levels for each one. The top tax rate for high earners is reduced. The estate tax on inheritances is changed so far fewer people will pay.

Once signed, taxpayers likely would see the first changes to their paycheck tax withholdings in February. Most households will not see the full effect of the tax plan on their income until they file their 2018 taxes in early 2019.

In two provisions added to secure needed Republican votes, the legislation also allows oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and removes a tax penalty under the Obamacare health law for Americans who do not obtain health insurance

"We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we'll come up with something that will be much better," Trump said on Wednesday.

Democrats were united in opposition to the tax legislation, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy that will widen the income gap between rich and poor, while adding $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the $20 trillion national debt, which Trump promised in 2016 he would eliminate as president.

"PILLAGING"

"Today the Republicans take their victory lap for successfully pillaging the American middle class to benefit the powerful and the privileged," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

A few Republicans, a party once defined by fiscal hawkishness, have protested the deficit-spending encompassed in the bill. But most voted for it anyway, saying it would help businesses and individuals while boosting an already expanding economy they see as not growing fast enough.

In the House, 12 Republicans voted against the tax bill. All but one, Walter Jones of North Carolina, were from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California, which will be hit by the bill's cap on deductions for state and local taxes.

Despite Trump administration promises that the tax overhaul would focus on the middle class and not cut taxes for the rich, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, estimated middle-income households would see an average tax cut of $900 next year under the bill, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would see an average cut of $51,000.

The House was forced to vote again after the Senate parliamentarian ruled three minor provisions violated arcane Senate rules. To proceed, the Senate deleted the three provisions and then approved the bill.

Because the House and Senate must approve the same legislation before Trump can sign it into law, the Senate's late Tuesday vote sent the bill back to the House.

Democrats complained the bill was a product of a hurried, often secretive process that ignored them and much of the Republican rank-and-file. No public hearings were held and numerous narrow amendments favoured by lobbyists were added late in the process, tilting the package more toward businesses and the wealthy.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the bill in television interviews on Wednesday morning, saying support would grow for after it passes and Americans felt relief.

"I think minds are going to change," Ryan said on ABC's "Good Morning America" program.

Related:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

Graphic - Republican tax bill's tax brackets and rates: http://tmsnrt.rs/2BJnrIV

Graphic - U.S. debt level since 1950: http://reut.rs/2B3Yl3C

(Reporting by David Morgan and Amanda Becker; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Roberta Rampton, Gina Chon and Susan Heavey; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Trott)
By Arshad Mohammed and Gustavo Palencia WASHINGTON/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday followed Mexico in signaling that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez had won a heavily disputed presidential election last month, lending weight to his legitimacy in spite of ongoing opposition protests. The Honduran electoral tribunal at the weekend declared U.S. ally Hernandez the winner of the Nov. 26 election in spite of widespread misgivings about the count, which turned in favor of the incumbent after suddenly halting with the opposition ahead. Violent protests have broken out in Honduras over the vote, and the Organization of American States (OAS) urged the country to hold new elections to resolve the dispute. That proposal has, however, been rejected by senior Honduran officials. Hernandez's rival Salvador Nasralla traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior U.S. State Department official said that his government had no evidence that would alter the results. "At this point ... we have not seen anything that alters the final result," the official told reporters, saying Washington may wait to make a definitive judgment in case the opposition presents additional evidence of fraud in the election. Mexico on Tuesday congratulated Hernandez for being declared victor. Mexico's step, which followed the recognition of Hernandez by Colombia and Guatemala, strengthened the incumbent's hand and could tilt other countries in his favor. "The Mexican statement, and its review, indicates that a call for a new election is a pretty dramatic outcome in this case," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Washington may hold off on making a final judgment until the end of a five-day period when the opposition can produce further evidence to contest the results, the official added. He said a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state met with Nasralla, who has accused Hernandez of stealing the election. "He did not have any new (allegations of) fraud (or) evidence to present to us, and I think we are going to work through this quickly to get to a definitive U.S. statement, he added. "The Mexican statement is going to have a strong influence on whether we think we can move forward sooner. The Mexicans seem pretty certain in their statement." Hernandez on Wednesday named a new head of the armed forces, Rene Orlando Ponce, who quickly indicated on local radio that solving the impasse would be for Honduras alone. "We're not going to accept any interference beyond Honduran law," he said. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammad in Washington; Writing by Makini Brice and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish)
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump's declaration to be withdrawn, which was vetoed by the United States in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Monday. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem." Mansour said on Monday he hoped there would be "overwhelming support" in the General Assembly for the resolution. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a note on Twitter, warned the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution criticizing the U.S. decision. "At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names," she wrote. Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures" if the Security Council fails to act. Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories. Thursday's meeting will be a resumption of that session. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington's western allies. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls upon all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Haley said on Monday that the resolution was vetoed in the Security Council in defense of U.S. sovereignty and the U.S. role in the Middle East peace process. She criticized it as an insult to Washington and an embarrassment to council members. Israel considers Jerusalem 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 a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Susan Thomas and David Gregorio)
The United Nations human rights chief is to step down, suggesting that his re-election would involve lessening the independence and integrity of my voice after his outspoken criticism of world powers  including the US.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein said he would not seek a second four-year term as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, telling staff in an email: To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication.

The Jordanian Prince had reportedly been under pressure to tone down his criticism of Donald Trump, who he has previously described as dangerous and blamed for a surge in discrimination, anti-Semitism, and violence against ethnic and religious minorities.

This week Mr Hussein described the US decision to recognise Jerusalem of the capital of Israel as dangerously provocative and blamed the Presidents announcement for violence in which five people died.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had urged Mr Hussein to ease off his public criticism of the American President over fears it put US support for the United Nations at risk, reported Foreign Policy, which obtained the human rights chiefs email to staff.

In the statement, Mr Hussein wrote: After reflection, I have decided not to seek a second four-year term. To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice  which is your voice.

There are many months ahead of us: months of struggle, perhaps, and even grief  because although the past year has been arduous for many of us, it has been appalling for many of the people we serve.

He did not specifically mention the US, Mr Trump, or pressure to tone down criticism. But his decision to step down raises questions about the UNs role as a champion of human rights.

Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for Global Advocacy at Human Rights Watch (HRW), described Mr Hussein as a beacon of moral clarity and said it was sad to see he felt that he had no other choice but to step down at the end of his first mandate to protect the integrity of his voice.

Story continues

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of HRW, said Mr Hussein had faced working in a hostile environment.

A spokesman for Mr Guterres confirmed Mr Hussein would depart at the end of his current term in August.

He said: The High Commissioner informed the Secretary General last week of his intention not to seek another term. The High Commissioner has always enjoyed the full support of the Secretary General.

The US ambassador to the UN this week warned she was taking names of UN members who oppose Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The President threatened to withhold billions of dollars in aid from those nations which criticise his controversial decision.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - With China's backing, the UN Security Council on Friday slapped new sanctions on North Korea that will restrict oil supplies vital for Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs.

The council unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution that also orders the repatriation of North Korean workers sent abroad to earn revenue for Kim Jong-Un's regime.

It is the third raft of sanctions imposed on Pyongyang this year and comes as the United States and North Korea show no signs they are willing to open talks on ending the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

US President Donald Trump Friday hailed the move, saying the international community was pushing for peace with the isolated regime.

"The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 in favor of additional Sanctions on North Korea. The World wants Peace, not Death!" Trump tweeted.

The resolution bans the supply of nearly 75 percent of refined oil products to North Korea, puts a cap on crude deliveries and orders all North Korean nationals working abroad to be sent back by the end of 2019.

The United States put forward the draft text on Thursday following negotiations with China, Pyongyang's ally and main supplier of oil.

Describing North Korea as "the most tragic example of evil in the modern world," US Ambassador Nikki Haley said the new sanctions are "a reflection of the international outrage at the Kim regime's actions."

The resolution "sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishment and isolation," she said.

The measures are in response to North Korea's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on November 28 that marked an advance in Pyongyang's drive to threaten the US mainland with a nuclear strike.

Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if it attacks the United States while North Korea insists the world must now accept that it is a nuclear power.

Story continues

Last month, Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to cut off oil to the North, a move that would cripple its struggling economy.

Crude oil supplies were capped at four million barrels per year and a ceiling of 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products, including diesel and kerosene, was set for next year, down from two million barrels in a previous resolution.

If North Korea carries out another nuclear or ICBM test, "then the Security Council will take action to restrict further the export to the DPRK of petroleum," said the resolution.

The United States had initially sought to expel within a year tens of thousands of North Koreans, most of whom are working in Russia and China, but that deadline was extended to two years after Russia objected.

To prevent North Korea from circumventing sanctions, all countries were authorized to seize, inspect and impound ships suspected of carrying illegal cargo to and from North Korea.

- Sanctions only a means -

The measure bans sales of all industrial machinery, trucks, iron, steel and other metals to North Korea and bars exports of food, machinery, electrical equipment, earth, stone, wood and vessels produced in the reclusive state.

Addressing the council, China and Russia condemned North Korea's behavior but made the case for urgently opening diplomatic channels to ease tensions and move towards settling the crisis.

"Sanctions are only a means," said Chinese Deputy Ambassador Wu Haitao. "One should not expect to settle the problems through unilateral sanctions or pressure."

"We all must, we are all duty-bound, to provide opportunities for diplomacy to function," said Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov.

A total of 15 North Korean officials, most of whom work in banking, were added to the UN sanctions blacklist along with the ministry of the people's armed forces, which manages army logistics for the country.

An earlier list contained 19 names, later reduced to 16, but a final version listed 15 North Koreans, who will be subjected to a global visa ban and assets freeze.

Since September last year, North Korea has carried out its sixth and largest nuclear test and a series of advanced missile launches which are banned under UN resolutions.

The United States has led the drive at the Security Council to tighten sanctions aimed at piling pressure on Kim's regime to come to the negotiating table.

French Ambassador Francois Delattre welcomed the new measures, saying "this resolution bites."

"Maximum firmness today is our best antidote to the risk of war," he said.

The European Union said in a statement that it too is planning to adopt tougher sanctions against North Korea early next year.
There are a few encouraging signs that my dear old Republican Party may be returning to its roots. This is the party I grew up in  a party that was wary of too much government but insisted that vital public needs be adequately funded and competently handled. Members of the old GOP did not vote lockstep on virtually every issue, but studied the issues and exercised independent judgement. I have seen some stirrings lately that indicate a possible return to those days.

My mentor and former boss, Sen. Len Jordan, who served our state as governor (1950-1954) and later as senator (1962-1972), set the example for me. Although there were some party-line votes while he was in the Senate, he was a rugged individualist who followed his own moral compass in representing Idaho and the nation.

Jordan would never have voted to confirm a nominee for a federal judge position who was not qualified, no matter how politically connected the person was. He bucked his own president on two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court  Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell  finding both to be unqualified for that lofty position after independently studying their records. We have seen very little of that lately from the party Jordan loved.

But, low and behold, Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, recently refused to support two federal judicial candidates that the American Bar Association found to be unqualified to sit on the federal bench. One of them, Brett Talley of Alabama, was nominated for a lifetime district court position even though he had practiced law for less than three years and never tried a case. His only claims to fame were operating a political blog and being married to a woman who worked for the presidents White House Counsel. Although Talley was approved on a party-line vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Kennedy jumped ship to oppose Talley when it was discovered that he had failed to disclose his wifes job and the potential conflict of interest. Sen. Kennedy said he would vote against Talley in a heartbeat  twice if I can. Thanks in large part to his principled stand, Talleys nomination was withdrawn.

It is important to put individuals with strong experience on the federal bench because those judges handle serious civil and criminal cases. It is not the place for an inexperienced rookie or political hack. The ABA performs a valuable role in evaluating and rating candidates and should not be ignored.

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, provided the other ray of hope when he said he could not vote for Roy Moore for a seat representing his state in the U.S. Senate. Besides being the subject of credible allegations of molesting teenage girls, Moore had been kicked off of the Alabama Supreme Court twice for defying the law of the land. A judge can disagree with the law but he or she takes a solemn oath to uphold it and commits a serious breach of that oath by claiming to be above the law. Sen. Shelbys courageous stand harkens back to the ethics of the party that I remember from years ago.

This is not to say that the other party does not also engage in party-line tactics, but it is not the party in power now and the leaders set the tone. It is time for the GOP to get back to its past ethical standards  the standards set by Abraham Lincoln, the GOPs founder. I think he would approve of the recent independent thinking of Sens. Kennedy and Shelby, but be disheartened by the no-compromise, take-no-prisoners attitude too often exhibited by many of the others.

If members of the House and Senate were more interested in solving difficult national problems, rather than keeping their jobs, the immigration problem could be resolved.
The United Nations bodys debate and vote highlighted for a second time in a week the international isolation of the United States over the Jerusalem issue

The United Nations general assembly has delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump, voting by a huge majority to reject his unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The vote came after a redoubling of threats by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, who said that Washington would remember which countries disrespected America by voting against it.



Despite the warning, 128 members voted on Thursday in favour of the resolution supporting the longstanding international consensus that the status of Jerusalem  which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians  can only be settled as an agreed final issue in a peace deal. Countries which voted for the resolution included major recipients of US aid such as Egypt, Afghanistan and Iraq.



Although largely symbolic, the vote in emergency session of the world body had been the focus of days of furious diplomacy by both the Trump administration and Israel, including Trumps threat to cut US funding to countries that did not back the US recognition.

But only nine states  including the United States and Israel voted against the resolution. The other countries which supported Washington were Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Guatemala and Honduras.

Twenty-two of the 28 EU countries voted for the resolution, including the UK and France. Germany  which in the past has abstained on measures relating to Israel  also voted in favour.

Thirty-five countries abstained, including five EU states, and other US allies including Australia, Canada, Colombia and Mexico. Ambassadors from several abstaining countries, including Mexico, used their time on the podium to criticise Trumps unilateral move.

Another 21 delegations were absent from the vote, suggesting the Trumps warning over funding cuts and Israels lobbying may have had some effect.

Story continues

While support for the resolution was somewhat less than Palestinian officials had hoped, the meagre tally of just nine votes in support of the US and Israeli position was a serious diplomatic blow for Trump.



Immediately after the vote the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, described the result as a victory for Palestine. The Palestinians UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, described the result as a massive setback for the US.

They made it about them, Mansour told AFP. They did not make it about Jerusalem, so when you make it about them and to only be able to get nine votes to say no to it, I think it was a complete failure for their campaign.

Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the UN vote out of hand.



Israel thanks President Trump for his unequivocal position in favour of Jerusalem and thanks the countries that voted together with Israel, together with the truth, said a statement from Netanyahus office.



Speaking to the assembly before the vote, Haley  who earlier in the week told members that the US would be taking names  returned to the offensive.



I must also say today: when we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have expectation that we will be respected, she said. Whats more, we are being asked to pay for the dubious privileges of being disrespected.

Haley added: If our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our investment in other ways  The United States will remember this day.



Of all the issues at the heart of the enduring conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, none is as sensitive as the status of Jerusalem. The holy city has been at the centre of peace-making efforts for decades.

Seventy years ago, when the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Jerusalem was defined as a separate entity under international supervision. In the war of 1948 it was divided, like Berlin in the cold war, into western and eastern sectors under Israeli and Jordanian control respectively. Nineteen years later, in June 1967, Israel captured the eastern side, expanded the citys boundaries and annexed it  an act that was never recognised internationally.

Israel routinely describes the city, with its Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy places, as its united and eternal capital. For their part, the Palestinians say East Jerusalem must be the capital of a future independent Palestinian state. The unequivocal international view, accepted by all previous US administrations, is that the citys status must be addressed in peace negotiations.

Recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital puts the US out of step with the rest of the world, and legitimises Israeli settlement-building in the east  considered illegal under international law.

In his own speech Israels UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said UN members who backed the resolution were being manipulated. You are like puppets pulled by your Palestinian masters, he told the session.

While Thursdays resolution was in support of existing UN resolutions on Jerusalem and the peace process, the clumsy intervention by Trump and Haley also made the vote a referendum on Trumps often unilateral and abrasive foreign policy.

The debate and vote highlighted for a second time in a week the international isolation of the United States over the Jerusalem issue, following a similar vote in the security council on Tuesday in which it was outnumbered 14-1.



The threatening US posture, which had been denounced as both counter-productive and bullying, only seemed to have hardened the resolve of countries in opposing Trumps 6 December move.

The resolution, co-sponsored by Turkey and Yemen, called Trumps recognition null and void and reaffirmed 10 security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the citys final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It also demands that all states comply with security council resolutions regarding the holy city of Jerusalem, and not to recognise any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Earlier on Thursday, as it had become clear that the US and Israel would be heavily defeated, Netanyahu preemptively denounced the vote calling the UN a house of lies.

The state of Israel rejects this vote outright, Netanyahu said. Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether or not the UN recognises this. It took 70 years for the United States to formally recognise this, and it will take years for the UN to do the same.

Michael Oren, Israels deputy minister for diplomacy, called for Israel to cut its ties with the UN and expel the organisation from its Jerusalem offices.

We must evict the UN from the scenic Governors House, where its bloated staff does nothing, and give this historic site to a school, a hospital or  best yet  a new US embassy.
The continental rock underlying the east coast of North America is pretty boring, tectonically speaking. The last dramatic geological goings-on there happened around 200 million years ago, and most change since then has been from glacial, wind and water erosion.

But a project that helped image the layers of rock below the continent with unprecedented clarity has helped reveal a small, unusual feature that seems to be a relatively new "blob" of hot, rising rock below part of the U.S. Northeast.

Exactly what caused this blob and whether other similar blob structures might lurk under other continents isnt clear, said study co-author Vadim Levin, a Rutgers University geophysicist, but it raises plenty of interesting questions. The work on the blob was published online Nov. 29 in the journal Geology and presented Monday (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. [In Photos: Ocean Hidden Beneath Earth's Surface]

The unusual feature had been spotted before, when scientists used the seismic waves that routinely ricochet through the Earth's interior to reveal some of the structures hidden below our feet. Such waves travel at different speeds and angles through different types of rock, including rocks of different temperatures and rock moving in different directions. The small feature below the Northeast showed up as an area of unusually high temperature, but the pictures were pretty fuzzy.

Researchers have found there is likely a blob of rising hot rock some 121 miles (195 kilometers) beneath Earth's surface, beneath the North American tectonic plate. (Warm colors indicate lower speed of flow, indicating rocks that are warmer and rising.) Vadim Levin/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Enter the EarthScope project, a National Science Foundation-funded endeavor that placed thousands of seismic detectors and other instruments across the United States to get a clearer snapshot of the various features  such as earthquake faults and different layers of ancient rock  that are lurking below the surface. Levin likened the EarthScope data to going from using a tiny flashlight in a dusty room to having an overhead light.

Or, to compare it with another world-illuminating project, "it is comparable to sending Hubble up," he said, referring to the legendary space telescope.

Story continues

With the help of undergraduate students working on thesis projects, Levin and his colleagues found that the telltale stretch marks left when the rock in Earth's interior moves were missing from the same area where the rock below the surface appeared to be hotter.

Altogether, the evidence suggests that a blob of hot rock some 100 miles (160 kilometers) down is welling upward in the upper part of Earth's mantle (the layer of Earth just beneath the crust), the study authors said.

The exact source of this blob isnt clear; it doesnt have the deep roots down into the mantle seen at hotspots such as those that lie below Yellowstone or the Hawaiian Islands and fuel the formers hot springs and Hawaiis volcanoes found at each place, Levin said.

Barbara Romanowicz, a geophysicist at UC Berkeley who was not involved in the research, said in an email that this blob could be linked to a finger of material deeper in the mantle that she and one of her graduate students are describing in work currently being reviewed for publishing in a scientific journal. That finger extends horizontally along a hotspot track (or the trace left as tectonic plates moved over a volcanic hotspot) from the mid-Atlantic ridge  the seam that runs down the middle of the ocean floor  inland and northward, she said.

"There may be other features like the one they document along this track, tapping into the deeper conduit. The data are just not there to see them," Romanowicz said.

The blob's small size and hot temperature also suggest it is a relatively young feature  on the scale of tens of millions of years old  because it likely would've cooled off if it were younger, he said. There are also no surface features that could be connected to it, as it sits well below the bottom edge of the tectonic plate, Levin added.

Mechanisms that cause bubbles of mantle material to form closer to the surface than normal could be the culprit for the blob, he said, but that would take more work to investigate.

Another big question is whether this is a feature that happens more commonly under Earth's continents, or if its more of a curiosity. To answer that, scientists would need to deploy versions of EarthScope across other continents to get the same kind of precise images obtained for North America, Levin said.

"This is the kind of resolution we need everywhere, and I would say, not only under continents, but also under oceans. Perhaps even more so under oceans," Romanowicz said. Cost and technical challenges have stymied such efforts to date, but there is a renewed interested in implementing such networks. "This will help figure out the plumbing in the Earth's mantle, and much of the action is under the oceans," she said.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
Washington (AFP) - The United States blacklisted a rogues gallery of alleged rights abusers and corrupt officials on Thursday, as a new global sanctions law went into effect.

US diplomats and Treasury officials spent a year compiling evidence of the most brutal and cynical crimes by 14 senior figures and dozens of companies.

Then on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking any assets that those exposed on the list might have in banks or property on US soil.

Prominent on the list, Myanmar's General Maung Maung Soe is accused of leading a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against his country's persecuted Rohingya minority.

As chief of the army's Western Command, US officials said, he oversaw "killings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages."

Another notorious figure is Gambia's former president Yahya Jammeh, who stepped down this year but once ran a "terror and assassination squad called the Junglers."

"He ordered the Junglers to kill a local religious leader, journalists, members of the political opposition, and former members of the government," the US Treasury said.

The first woman added to the list was Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the late Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, and allegedly an organized crime boss in her own right.

Karimova has been charged at home with theft and embezzlement and the US statement alleged she has laundered her network's profits in a web of companies and funds.

The blacklist also includes officials and businessmen from Russia, China, Ukraine, Guatemala, Pakistan, Serbia, the Dominican Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Today's actions advance our values and promote the security of the United States, our allies and our partners," US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

"We must lead by example, and today's announcement of sanctions demonstrates the United States will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption."

Story continues

The global act, based on a previous US law that targeted Russian officials, was passed in late 2016 and officials have spent a year compiling the first list.

Just as the list of Russians under US sanctions has expanded regularly since the Magnitsky Act of 2012, the new global blacklist is also expected to grow.

Under the law, US citizens and institutions are forbidden from conducting business with those on the list, and any assets they hold under US jurisdiction are frozen.

- Corruption and abuse -

In addition, officials said, non-US foreign banks are often loathe to do business with blacklisted individuals in case their own US operations are exposed to prosecution.

"The United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

"Treasury ... will continue to take decisive and impactful actions to hold accountable those who abuse human rights, perpetrate corruption, and undermine American ideals."

Anti-corruption campaigners, who have long argued that graft and physical human rights abuses go hand in hand, welcomed the Trump administration's new stand.

"The United States has used financial pressures for decades against transnational threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism," said Brad Brooks-Rubin of The Sentry, an anti-corruption advocacy group.

"With these designations, the United States now recognizes public corruption and targeting of human rights defenders in this same light," he said.

"Over time, we look forward to robust use of these sanctions to target these threats wherever they occur."
A doctor uses a microscope to look at virus samples in a Biosafety Level III laboratory at the National Institute of Health: REUTERS/ Mariana Bazo

The US government has lifted a three-year ban on funding the development of three deadly viruses.

Lifting the ban will help scientists "develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health, National Institutes of Healths Director Francis Collins said during the announcement.

Development of three viruses - influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) - will begin shortly.

Between 2002 and 2003, nearly 800 people died around the world after an outbreak of Sars in China. However, no cases of the virus have been reported since 2004. Approximately 440 people died from Mers - also known as camel flu - between 2012 and 2015, according to the World Health Organisation.

Mr Collins said that a scientific review panels approval will be required before any centre or group can begin work on them, however.

NIH has not yet responded to a request for information on the makeup of the panel and what metric will be used to determine whether research is ethical," a requirement per Mr Collins' statement.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that research with infectious agents is conducted responsibly and that we consider the potential biosafety and biosecurity risks associated with such research," Mr Collins said in a statement.

The previous Obama administration had halted the development of the diseases in 2014 primarily out of safety concerns and in order to develop a new Federal policy regarding the funding of this research, according to an NIH statement from that time.

The agency stated that though the research helped define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions...and inform public health and preparedness efforts, it also posed biosafety and biosecurity risks, which need to be understood better.

As CNN reported, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accidentally exposed dozens of workers to anthrax in 2014 and vials of the deadly smallpox virus were found in a cardboard box in an unsecured refrigerator at NIH as well.

Story continues

The review panel will determine if the facility or institution wanting funding for the research has the "capacity and commitment to conduct [the research] safely and securely, and have the ability to respond rapidly" in case of an emergency.

Critics have suggested that development of the pathogens is too risky given the past breaches of safety protocol, which supercede any potential benefits to public health.

But, several scientists have suggested lifting the ban will be good for the research community.

Samuel Stanley, president of Stony Brook University and chair of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, told NPR that there has been increased scrutiny of laboratories working in this area, which can lead to an even more robust culture of safety. But I also fear that the moratorium may have delayed vital research.

"I believe nature is the ultimate bioterrorist and we need to do all we can to stay one step ahead, Mr Stanley said.
Footage of a police officer breaking a black mans leg by beating him with a baton during an arrest has been released by officials California.

Christopher Ballew suffered a broken fibula and a bleeding head wound while being detained in Los Angeles County.

The 21-year-old plans to take legal action against the city, according to Pasadena News Now.

Steve Mermell, Pasadena City Manager, authorised the release of six new videos, showing multiple angles of the violent arrest, which has sparked anger from civil rights groups.

The footage shows police attempting to arrest Mr Ballew at a Mobil petrol station on 9 November, after he is claimed to have committed multiple traffic violations while driving a white Mercedes.

The body camera and patrol car footage shows an officer approaching Mr Ballew as he is on his way to the cashier, before leading him back to his car.

Mr Ballew appears to resist being handcuffed as one officer pushes him up against his vehicle. Another officer warns him to stop acting like a dummy, and together they force Mr Ballew to his knees.

During the incident, Mr Ballew can be heard asking why he is being arrested and repeatedly asking for their commanding officer.

Mr Ballew eventually gets back to his feet. After being struck by a baton, he grabs it, but is pushed to the ground. One officer points his gun at at the suspect, but holsters it when the baton is dropped.

A hand pushes Mr Ballews head hard enough onto the concrete that a pool of blood starts to form.

Footage recorded by a bystander shows one of the policemen hitting Mr Ballews back with the baton, then striking his legs twice, while another officer punches him. A Pasadena city spokesperson said he had suffered a fractured fibula during the ordeal.

Mr Ballew was arrested on suspicion of assault on a peace officer, but released on a $50,000 bond the next day.

The Los Angeles County District Attorneys office decided not to prosecute Mr Ballew, citing a lack of evidence.

Story continues

John Burton, Mr Ballews lawyer, told Pasadena Now: We will be pursuing a claim for money damages. The reason is not just to get justice for him and compensation for what are some significant injuries that he has sustained but also to find out and document and expose what happened here.

Some of it is clear from the video but a lot of that is actually a complete mystery to me, and Im very anxious to find out how [police] are going to try to explain some of this conduct  which to me is inexplicable.

Delano Yarbrough, Pasadena's local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president, said he and found the officers actions reprehensible and inhumane.

We are concerned that such treatment continues against people of colour, especially black males, he told Pasadena Weekly.

Pasadena's Office of the City Manager has been contacted for comment.
The US ambassador to the United Nations has warned she is "taking names" of UN members who oppose Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In a letter to UN members, Nikki Haley said the US President took the issue personally and the names of those who supported a resolution rejecting the bill would be reported to him.

As you consider your vote, I want you to know the president and the US take this vote personally," she said.

She described Mr Trump's decision to move the US embassy as "an acknowledgement that peace is best advanced ... when all parties are honest with each other about the basic fact that Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since the country's founding".

The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us," she added.

In a Twitter post, she said: "At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more.

"So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us.

"On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names."

At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names. pic.twitter.com/ZsusB8Hqt4  Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 19, 2017

The 193-member UN general assembly, where there are no vetoes, will hold an emergency session on Thursday to vote on the latest resolution at the request of Turkey and Yemen.

The international community has broadly condemned Mr Trump's decision to move the embassy, with Turkey describing it as "a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts".

Story continues

Earlier this week, the US was outnumbered 14 to 1 at a UN security council vote on a resolution calling on America to reverse its decision, but the nation used its veto to block the measure.

Ms Haley described the 14-1 vote as an "insult", warning: "It won't be forgotten".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Ms Haley and Mr Trump for the veto in a video posted on his Facebook page, in which he said the US Ambassador "lit a candle of truth" and dispelled "lies".

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the veto "threatens the stability of the international community because it disrespects it".

Britain was among the nations that supported the resolution and Downing Street said Theresa May restated her disagreement with Mr Trump's decision after the vote during a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"The Prime Minister reiterated that the UK disagreed with the decision and believed it to be unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region," a No 10 spokesperson said.

She added that the status of Jerusalem should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and that Jerusalem should ultimately form a shared capital between the Israeli and Palestinian states.

The Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, said said he hopes for "overwhelming support" at Thursday's general assembly vote.

Israel considers Jerusalem its indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there, while Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel annexed in a 1967 war.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States is in talks with China on slapping new UN sanctions on North Korea and could put forward a draft Security Council resolution soon, UN diplomats said Wednesday.

The new measure is expected to target supplies of oil products to North Korea that are vital for military programs aimed at developing Pyongyang's nuclear strike capacity with advanced missile technology.

The new sanctions would be in response to the November 28 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that flew 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before splashing down in Japan's maritime economic exclusion zone.

Asked about the US-China negotiations, a council diplomat confirmed "there is definitely stuff going on" but said it was unclear whether China would agree to new sanctions targeting its Pyongyang ally.

"It's a big ask to get the Chinese to agree to a further resolution," he said.

A diplomat said the draft resolution could be circulated to the council this week, but others were skeptical that a deal could be reached so quickly.

In negotiations on previous sanctions, the United States has first agreed with China on provisions of each resolution before presenting the text to the full 15-member council, which has then quickly voted.

Since last year, North Korea has carried out a nuclear test -- its sixth -- and a series of advanced missile launches.

- Targeting oil -

After the latest ICBM test, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for "additional measures" against North Korea. And last week he told the council that the "pressure campaign must and will continue until denuclearization is achieved."

President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping last month to cut off oil supplies to North Korea, a move that would deal a crippling blow to its desperately struggling economy.

So far, the Security Council has imposed a full ban on supplies of condensates and natural gas liquids to North Korea, capped deliveries of refined oil products to two million barrels a year, and capped crude oil exports at current levels.

Story continues

China supplies most of North Korea's crude.

The council has also banned exports of North Korean coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, restricted joint ventures and ended the hiring of North Korean workers abroad.

The sanctions are aimed at choking off revenue to Pyongyang's military programs and piling pressure on leader Kim Jong-Un to come to the negotiating table.

The United States has also asked the council to blacklist 10 ships, including two Hong Kong-flagged vessels, for carrying banned cargo from North Korea.

The UN sanctions committee has set a deadline of 3:00 pm (2000 GMT) Thursday for council members to raise any objections to a request to ban all 10 ships from ports worldwide.

Under UN resolutions, North Korea is barred from developing missiles and a nuclear weapons capability, but Pyongyang has argued that the arsenal is needed for self-defense against the "hostile" United States.
A veterinarian in Louisiana was arrested on Tuesday and charged with aggravated animal cruelty after allegedly fatally shooting her neighbors dog in the head.

Kelly Folse, 35, is accused of killing Bruizer, a 15-month-old dog who belonged to her next-door neighbors in River Ridge, The Times-Picayune reported. Prior to Bruizers death, Folse had sent hostile messages to one of the neighbors about the dogs barking, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said during a news conference.

Local vet accused of shooting and killing neighbors dog because it wouldnt stop barking. @wdsu pic.twitter.com/uF3Htm5tSz  AUBRY KILLION (@AubryKWDSU) December 19, 2017

Folses family told local news station WWLT-TV that she is an animal lover and the allegations against her are outrageous.

Bruizer died on Dec. 14, the day after being found in the backyard of his home with a gunshot wound. A woman identified as one of the dogs owners, Stacy Fitzner, told Fox 8 she had left him in the yard when she went to work. When Fitzners mother was passing by the home later that day, she noticed Bruizer lying motionless in the grass. When she stopped to check on him, she saw he was surrounded by blood.

Bruizer was rushed to the vet, where he died as a result of his injuries. Though he was taken to the same vets office where Folse worked  Abadie Veterinary Hospital  she was not involved in his treatment.

When investigators spoke to Bruizers family, they saw a series of threatening text messages from Folse, who complained about the dog barking too much and being aggressive, according to WWLT-TV. Lopinto said at the news conference, however, that investigators found no evidence the dog behaved aggressively.

Scott Abadie, the owner of Abadie Veterinary Hospital, said he fired Folse the day that Bruizer died, after the dogs owners showed him totally inappropriate and disgusting text messages she had sent about Bruizer.

Story continues

So that gave us the first clue to it, Abadie told WWLT-TV. And later that morning there was some statements made about the dog that did not sit well with the technicians and myself and we just told her to leave right there.

Abadie also addressed the incident in a Facebook post on Tuesday, saying that everyone at the hospital was shocked and disgusted by what happened.

In addition to the animal cruelty charge, Folse faces additional charges of illegal discharge of a firearm and drug possession.

The case is reminiscent of a 2015 incident involving Texas veterinarian Kristen Lindsey, who shot and killed a cat with a bow and arrow. However, while Folse has not admitted to killing Bruizer, Lindsey bragged about her kill on Facebook, posting a graphic photo on Facebook and writing, Vet of the year award  gladly accepted.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
(Reuters) - A major West Coast highway reopened on Wednesday after workers spent two days clearing the wreckage from an Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state while speeding onto a bridge, state transportation officials said.

Crews had carted off the biggest chunk by the afternoon: the 270,000-pound (122,470-kg) locomotive involved in the Monday morning rush-hour crash in the city of Dupont, which killed three people and sent another 100 to hospitals.

The affected southbound stretch of Interstate 5, which runs from the Canadian border to Mexico, opened on Wednesday afternoon, the Washington State Department of Transportation said. There was a gouge in a road shoulder from where a train carriage slammed into the surface and guard rails were crushed but the roadway surface did not suffer any major damage, officials said.

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are seeking answers about the crash's cause in interviews with the train's engineer and a trainee conductor who were in the locomotive's cab.

NTSB members say they are focused on whether the engineer was distracted, but are timing their interviews with the crew this week around their recuperation from injuries. Investigators are also examining the wrecked train cars, which have been taken to a nearby U.S. military base.

The accident occurred during the train's inaugural run on a new, slightly quicker route between Olympia and Tacoma, with 86 people aboard, 80 of them passengers, Amtrak said. It was traveling at 80 miles per hour, more than twice the speed limit for the curved portion of track leading to the bridge.

NTSB investigators have found that the train's emergency brakes were automatically activated during the derailment rather than being engaged manually by the engineer.

They also said a safety system known as positive train control, which automatically slows trains if they go too fast, was not installed on the rail line. Congress had extended a mandatory deadline for having the system installed on all passenger railways to 2018.

Story continues

The derailment placed Amtrak, the country's main passenger rail service, under renewed scrutiny following a series of fatal incidents.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office identified the third victim on Wednesday as Benjamin Gran, 40, of Auburn, Washington.

The other two people killed were Jim Hamre and Zack Willhoite, transit enthusiasts who wanted to ride the inaugural run along the new route.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
The tax reform plan that just passed the House of Representatives will soon be signed into law by Donald Trump. But it will not personally benefit Donald Trump. Or so claims Donald Trump.

It would leave him a big loser, Donald Trump said last month. This is going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me, he said more recently. This is not good for me.

The White House is echoing this line. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Tuesday that while Trump might benefit on the business side, she added that on the personal side the president will likely take a big hit.

And yet, when pressed on whether he will release his taxes so we can verify this, Sanders once again said that Trump will not, because, she claimed, he remains under audit. His taxes are under audit, so hes not going to release those taxes, she said.

Its hard to overemphasize what a sign this is of the incipient and continued corruption of politics in the United States.

Almost no one, whether an expert in tax law or just a random member of the voting public, believes Trump, a man who lies so often that esteemed presidential historian Bob Dallek called it pathological, is telling the truth about what he can expect from the tax reform. As The Posts Glenn Kessler recently demonstrated, it could potentially cut his tax bills by tens of millions of dollars.

Americans know this, and would like him to release his returns to verify it. A CNN poll released Tuesday found that a majority63 percent of those surveyedbelieve the bill would enrich the Trump family. Almost three-quarters73 percentagreed Trump should release his taxes for public review.

Until Trump came along, every president since Richard Nixon has released his taxes so voters (and others) could review them. It has become a norm over the years. Beyond providing basic transparency, this has also shown that the system works, that our presidentor the people who would be presidentare not taking advantage of their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

But Trump broke with precedent during the campaign, repeatedly claiming that he was under audit. As noted above, Sanders reiterated this excuse this week.

Its hooey. There no rule banning anyone from releasing his tax returns while under audit. IRS rules require the presidents and the vice presidents tax returns to undergo mandatory examinations, which is a fancy word for audit. In other words, the chances that Trump, given the likely complexity of his tax returns, wont be under audit at any point while president, are not high.

But the rot goes deeper than Trump. Republicans in Congress could probably get a gander at Trumps tax returns if they so wanted, and could at least try to force Trump to show more transparency on them for the good of the public.

As CNNs Jeanne Sahadi reported earlier this year, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, or the Senate Finance Committee, or the Joint Committee on Taxation can request to confidentially see the presidentsor for that matter, anyonestax returns. That means Rep. Kevin Brady or Sen. Orrin Hatch could check into this for all of us. They could then share the results with their committee in a closed session. Or congressional Republicans could vote to release the returns to the full House or Senate, which would basically be another way to make the returns public.

I cant come up with any good faith reason they wouldnt want to do this, Susan Hennessey, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and editor of the Lawfare blog, told me in an interview Wednesday after I reached out to her because she tweeted on the topic. If there is nothing there, it would really be a favor to the White House because they could speak with credibility on the issue and really validate White House talking points.

Instead, we are left with the sense congressional Republicans so wanted this unpopular tax reform legislation to pass, they didnt want to look under the hood of Trumps tax returns and find out how he and his family benefit. Based on everything we know about Trumps business interests and the tax bill, it almost certainly would have made the task of passing this bill politically much harderif not impossible.

If this occurred in almost any other country, we would almost certainly call it legalized corruption. Instead, its just another day in Trumps United States.
The most recent chapter in the debate over net neutrality has been, like previous chapters, cacophonous. One notable difference this time around, though, was the relative quiet of many large tech companies. In previous years, these firms had been outspoken about the issue. What changed?

Netflixs net-neutrality journey is an illuminating example. In 2014, Reed Hastings, the companys CEO, issued a strongly worded warning about oppressive internet tolls that could threaten the webs status as a platform for progress. His company had recently tussled with Comcast (ultimately agreeing to pay the cable company to get data for its streaming videos to customers smoothly) and Hastings felt a need to take a stand in favor of net neutrality. In advance of a 2015 Federal Communications Commission vote on the issue that went as Netflix hoped, the companys representatives reportedly contacted or visited FCC officials more than a dozen times.

Recommended: 'God Made Republicans to Cut Taxes'

In the time between then and last weekwhen the FCC voted to undo its 2015 regulationssomething, apparently, had changed. We think net neutrality is incredibly important, Hastings said at a tech conference in late May, but went on to say that its not narrowly important to us because were big enough to get the deals we want. The deals he was referring to are the ones theoretically opened up by the repeal of net neutralitytheyre the fees that internet-service providers (like Comcast) could ask for from, well, just about anyone (like Netflix), in exchange for speeding their data along. Netflix did submit two filings to the FCC in the run-up to last weeks vote, but the commission didnt have any record of lobbying visits on the companys behalf during that time, according to Bloomberg.

What about that platform for progress? The reality is that Netflix and other large tech companies, such as Facebook and Google, have grown so dominant that net neutrality has become a nonissue for them. Theyre aware that their extensive, loyal user bases can protect them from any unfavorable deals that internet-service providers (ISPs) might devisetheres leverage to be gained from becoming a platform that broadband customers expect ready access to. And unlike smaller businesses, which lack that leverage, big tech companies have the political clout to fight policies they dont wantshould they choose to.

Story continues

Recommended: The Myth of the Trump Miracle

Basically, these companies are aware of how much theyve grown. When Netflixs CEO was complaining about internet tolls in 2014, the companys annual revenues were $5.5 billion; just three years later, theyre estimated to be more than twice that. From [these companies] standpoint, it doesnt really matter whos enforcing net neutrality, or if theres net neutrality at allthey dont need it, Larry Downes, a project director at Georgetown Universitys Center for Business and Public Policy, told me. They have all the leverage they need to make sure their content gets delivered as best it can be.

Because of that, Downes says, they didnt see the need to put up much of a fight this time. Youll have noted that their voices were extremely muted during this whole proceeding, Downes says. They said very little themselves. They didnt even say that much through their trade associations.

To be sure, tech companies did voice their displeasure with the outcome of last weeks vote. Amazons CTO tweeted that he was extremely disappointed. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer, said the decision was disappointing and harmful. Microsofts chief legal officer tweeted that repealing net neutrality will hurt consumers, business & the entire economy.

Of the tech companies named in this article, only Netflix and Google provided responses to a request for comment. Weve actually been pretty vocal, said Bao-Viet Nguyen, a Netflix spokesperson, pointing to pronet-neutrality tweets sent out from the companys account and the public comments it filed with the FCC. Nguyen added, Although there are other companies for whom this is a bigger business issue today, we continue to support net neutrality protections so that the next Netflix has a fair shot. And Scott Haber, a spokesperson for the Internet Association, a trade group that represents Facebook, Google, and Amazon (as well as a number of other big tech companies), said that the organization had been incredibly active on behalf of our members in trying to preserve net neutrality, issuing statements and publishing white papers on the subject.

Recommended: What's inand Out ofthe Final Republican Tax Bill

Still, it is one thing to put out tweets and press releases, and quite another to be dogging the FCC for months about an upcoming vote. One reading of those postFCC-vote laments from tech executives is that these companies see public-relations value in associating themselves with egalitarian digital ideals; another is that they are well aware that their employees care deeply about net neutrality as a political issue, even if it doesnt threaten any bottom lines.

Indeed, when I asked Larry Downes how big tech firms might recalibrate their business strategies after last weeks vote, he warned me, This is going to be very boring. Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society and a former reporter at Wired, agrees that its hard to imagine the Googles and Facebooks of the world doing things differently after net neutralitys repeal. These guys can afford to pay for fast lanesthe priority treatment that ISPs will soon be permitted to charge forthey can afford to pay access fees, they have the clout to make sure that when they do pay for those, that they get a better rate than someone else, Singel says. He remembers when, roughly a decade ago, Google strongly advocated for having net-neutralitylike rules govern the FCCs auction of a newly available segment of the radio spectrum. This time around, he says, Google was nowhere near the level of fight they put up in 2008, 2009, 2010. (For Googles part, a company spokesperson told me that it remain[s] committed to net neutrality and will work with other net neutrality supporters large and small to promote strong, enforceable protections.)

One thing that last weeks repeal could change, though, is the market for distributing content. These two markets have each become heavily consolidatedin both cases, a small number of large companies dominateand theres a concern that lifting net-neutrality protections would only speed up this process. Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, an antitrust research group, says that he expects last weeks vote to accelerate the contest for the last monopoly standing, because it enables ISPs to push for deals that large tech and media companies are best positioned to enter into. There will still be competition, he added, but it will be competition among the telecom and big tech platforms over who controls access to customers and monopoly power.

And because the repeal of net neutrality increases the upsides of being big, Stoller says, more companies will try to get bigger, which could speed up the race for lucrative business deals at the expense of product innovation. This is the race that led AT&T (a content-distribution company) to want to buy Time Warner (a content company) and Verizon (a content-distribution company) to want to buy Yahoo and AOL (both content companies). Stoller says he expects that last weeks vote will prompt similar companies to consider such deals of their ownperhaps a tech platform would even think about buying a telecom.

When it comes to large companies gaining power, the flip-side concern is about smaller companies losing it. Net neutralitys proponents fear, among other things, that an internet with fast lanes will squeeze out smaller firms that dont have the funds or negotiating power that large tech companies can use to push back against ISPs. Its the smaller retailers  that are going to feel more of that pain, says Singel, adding, Openness is the tool of insurgents. Indeed, it was smaller companies that were most vocal leading up to last weeks vote, which makes sense: Some of yesterdays voluble insurgents are todays quiet behemoths.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sweeping tax code changes aimed at keeping U.S. companies from shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes will not affect the battered economy of Puerto Rico, a senior White House official said on Wednesday. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello has said the provisions in a new tax bill passed by Congress could prompt drug and medical device manufacturers to leave the island territory, which is considered a foreign jurisdiction for tax purposes. "I personally do not think that this is going to hurt Puerto Rico," the White House official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The tax base erosion provisions in the bill provide exemptions for the cost of goods U.S. companies buy offshore, meaning supplies made in Puerto Rico would not be affected, the White House official said. The manufacturing plants are an economic lifeline for 3.4 million Americans in the territory, where the economy never recovered after Congress in 2006 ended a different set of longstanding business tax breaks. Puerto Rico has $120 billion of combined bond and pension debt and near-insolvent public health systems, and filed the largest-ever U.S. government bankruptcy this year. Three months ago, Hurricane Maria slammed into the island, tearing up homes and the power grid and bringing its economy to a halt. Congress is considering an $81 billion disaster aid bill - some of which is aimed at Puerto Rico - as part of a must-pass government funding bill. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Several large and devastating wildfires have led to mass evacuations in Southern California this December, which is extremely unusual for this time of year.

Most notably, the Thomas Fire, which has burned 272,600 acres. AccuWeather expects it to become the largest wildfire in California history. It is currently less than 1,000 acres away from the largest fire, the Cedar Fire, which burned 273,246 acres in October 2003 in San Diego, according to CalFire.

While this December has been particularly active, the month typically tends to be one of the calmer months in terms of wildfires.

There have been only eight California wildfires that burned more than 300 acres in December from 2000 to 2015. The second lowest months for large fire activity are January and February, according to CalFire.

In comparison, there have already been six wildfires that burned more than 300 acres this December.



CA wildfire 12-14-17

In this Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, flames from a back firing operation underway rise behind a home off Ladera Lane near Bella Vista Drive in Santa Barbara, Calif. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

Of the eight fires in December from 2000 to 2015, five were in Southern California and two were in Ventura County.

The total acres burned in those seven fires is 22,835, which is only a fraction of the Thomas Fire burning in Ventura County.

The previous largest fire in December was the Shekell Fire in Ventura, which burned 13,600 acres in 2006.

Wildfires are rare in December due to typical weather patterns in the Golden State. California has a dry season and a rainy season. The wet season typically peaks between December and March.

Extreme wildfires do not usually happen in California during December because it is usually in the wet season, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Jordan Root.

"Storms usually start to dip farther south across the western United States late in the year, which brings rain and mountain snow to the state," Root said.

Story continues

However, this year has been different. There are two main factors that are contributing to the extreme wildfires this December.

The year started out historically wet across the state, causing an abundance of new vegetation. This vegetation dried out during the hot and dry summer season.

"This has provided more dry fuels than normal," Root said.

Areas outside of Northern California have not seen much, if any, rain so far during the early part of the wet season.

"With Santa Ana wind events usually peaking late in the year, the combination of this, new vegetation from earlier in the year and the dry start to the rainy season have all led to dangerous fire conditions extending into December," Root said.
Israel is intensively lobbying countries around the world to oppose a UN resolution criticizing President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Israeli officials said Wednesday.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



PM Netanyahu (L) and President Trump (Photo: Reuters)

Thursday's vote in the UN General Assembly will indicate whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succeeded in his efforts to drum up new pockets of support in the developing world, as well as the extent to which Israel and the US areor are notalone on the question of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have turned to the General Assembly after the US vetoed a resolution this week in the Security Council calling on Trump to rescind his decision. While General Assembly votes, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not legally binding, they serve as a barometer of international sentiment on key issues.

The US and Israel are both placing great weight on Thursday's vote. US Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened UN member states with possible retaliation if they support the resolution, saying Trump takes the vote "personally" and the US "will be taking names." Critics accused the US of intimidation.

Israel's deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, said that the US and Israel were making "immense efforts" to block the resolution.

"We have a very, very simple message: Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years and the capital of Israel for almost 70 years," she told Channel 10.

Minister Hotovely (L) and PM Netanyahu (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official confirmed the government was making a "very vast" lobbying campaign to minimize the resolution's impact.

He said Israel is trying to persuade allies to abstain or even vote against it. He also said that Israel has asked Jewish organizations in certain countries to lobby their governments on Israel's behalf.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic contacts, refused to identify which countries Israel has approached or say how he expects them to vote. But he said he thinks the campaign will be "successful to a certain extent."

In some ways, the vote is a test of Netanyahu's foreign policy. In recent years, the Israeli leader has invested great efforts to look beyond Israel's traditional allies in Washington and Western Europe and cultivate ties with developing nations that have traditionally been supportive of the Palestinians.

He has portrayed these efforts as both a savvy strategy aimed at opening new markets for Israeli technology exports, as well as countering what Israel says is a deep-seated bias against it at the United Nations.

UN General Assembly (Photo: EPA)

This year alone, Netanyahu has visited China and hosted India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. He also has attended two summits in Africa, meeting with a host of leaders from across the continent, and in September, became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit Latin America with stops in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.

The votes cast by these countries will provide an indication about whether the diplomatic outreach is paying off.

Votes by other key allies with traditionally close ties to Israel, including Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada and smaller European countries like the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary, could also provide valuable indicators about support for the US-Israeli approach.

Many of these countries either abstained or opposed a landmark 2012 vote in the General Assembly that recognized Palestine with upgraded status as a nonmember state.

The Israeli official said a single vote at the UN on Thursday would not determine the success of Israel's diplomatic outreach. But he said "this is certainly part of it."

A draft of the UN resolution obtained by The Associated Press calls for affirming that any actions that "have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem" have no legal effect and must be rescinded. It also calls upon all states "to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions" in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, who was in New York for the vote, called the US threats "dangerous" and predicted that they would not have a major impact. "We believe that there is world consensus against the US decision on Jerusalem. This was clearly reflected in the Security Council, despite the US veto," he told the AP.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley vetoing the UN Security Council resolution (Photo: EPA)

Trump shattered decades of US neutrality on Jerusalem on Dec. 6 when he recognized the holy city as Israel's capital and said he will move the US Embassy there.

Trump said the move was not meant to prejudge negotiations on the final borders of the city, and instead merely recognized reality since Jerusalem already serves as Israel's capital.

But the announcement was widely perceived as taking the side of Israel in the most sensitive issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to key Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, and which Israel captured and annexed in 1967, as the capital of a future state. The international community has said the status of Jerusalem should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has repeatedly praised Trump's decision and said he expects other nations to follow suit. But so far, the announcement has triggered mostly denunciations and demonstrations around the world.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement and other groups have organized mass protests while its rival, the Gaza-based Islamic militant group Hamas, has called for a third violent uprising against Israel. In all, eight Palestinians have been killed, most in clashes along the Gaza border with Israel.

The unrest continued on Wednesday as dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where protesters burned a large American flag and hurled stones at the Israelis. Demonstrators also scuffled with Israeli police in east Jerusalem and along the Gaza border.

Abbas has said that the US can no longer serve as the sole Mideast mediator, and he has been trying to rally support in Europe and the Arab world.

On Wednesday, Abbas was meeting with leaders of Saudi Arabia, an influential country believed to have low-level but warming ties with Israel, before heading to France.
Israel is intensively lobbying countries around the world to oppose a UN resolution criticizing US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Israeli officials said Wednesday.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Thursday's vote in the UN General Assembly will indicate whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succeeded in his efforts to drum up new pockets of support in the developing world, as well as the extent to which Israel and the US areor are notalone on the question of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have turned to the General Assembly after the US vetoed a resolution this week in the Security Council calling on Trump to rescind his decision. While General Assembly votes, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not legally binding, they serve as a barometer of international sentiment on key issues.





Trump and Netanyahu during the US president's visit to Israel (: )

Trump went even further, telling reporters at a Cabinet meeting in Washington that opponents were likely to face a cutoff in US funding. "For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us," Trump said. "We're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

According to figures from the US government's aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania.

It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries.

The comments brought accusations of US intimidation.

A senior diplomat from a Muslim country, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Haley's letter: "States resort to such blatant bullying only when they know they do not have a moral or legal argument to convince others."

Responding directly to that comment on Twitter, Haley said: "Actually it is when a country is tired of being taken for granted."

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley vetoing Security Council resolution against Jerusalem declaration (Photo: EPA)

A senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Haley's letter as "poor tactics" at the United Nations "but pretty good for Haley 2020 or Haley 2024," referring to speculation that Haley might run for higher office.

"She's not going to win any votes in the General Assembly or the Security Council, but she is going to win some votes in the US population," the Western diplomat said.

A senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed Haley was unlikely to sway many UN states.

"We are missing some leadership here from the US and this type of letter is definitely not helping to establish US leadership in the Middle East peace process," the diplomat said.

"The first name that she should write down is Bolivia," Bolivia's UN Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz said of Haley's message. "We regret the arrogance and disrespect to the sovereign decision of member states and to multilateralism."

Ambassador Rhonda King of the tiny Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines sent Haley a letter saying that her country treasures the United States "as an enduring ally" but will vote against Trump's action.

"Sometimes, friends differ; on Jerusalem, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines respectfully differs from the USA; and so, too, do many of the staunchest friends and allies of the USA," King wrote. "We gently urge yet again that the government of the USA rethink its position and approach on this entire matter."

Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trump's remarks, but added: "It's the right and responsibility of member states to express their views."

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment on Trump's remarks on Wednesday.

Vast lobbying campaign

Israel's deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, said that the US and Israel were making "immense efforts" to block the resolution.

"We have a very, very simple message: Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years and the capital of Israel for almost 70 years," she told Channel 10.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official confirmed the government was making a "very vast" lobbying campaign to minimize the resolution's impact.

He said Israel is trying to persuade allies to abstain or even vote against it. He also said that Israel has asked Jewish organizations in certain countries to lobby their governments on Israel's behalf.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic contacts, refused to identify which countries Israel has approached or say how he expects them to vote. But he said he thinks the campaign will be "successful to a certain extent."

In some ways, the vote is a test of Netanyahu's foreign policy. In recent years, the Israeli leader has invested great efforts to look beyond Israel's traditional allies in Washington and Western Europe and cultivate ties with developing nations that have traditionally been supportive of the Palestinians.

He has portrayed these efforts as both a savvy strategy aimed at opening new markets for Israeli technology exports, as well as countering what Israel says is a deep-seated bias against it at the United Nations.

This year alone, Netanyahu has visited China and hosted India's prime minister, Narendra Modi . He also has attended two summits in Africa, meeting with a host of leaders from across the continent, and in September, became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit Latin America with stops in Argentina Mexico and Colombia.

Netanyahu meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto (Photo: Reuters)

Votes by other key allies with traditionally close ties to Israel, including Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada and smaller European countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary, could also provide valuable indicators about support for the US-Israeli approach.

Many of these countries either abstained or opposed a landmark 2012 vote in the General Assembly that recognized Palestine with upgraded status as a nonmember state.

Netanyahu with Chinese President Xi Jinping (: gettyimages)

The Israeli official said a single vote at the UN on Thursday would not determine the success of Israel's diplomatic outreach. But he said "this is certainly part of it."

A draft of the UN resolution obtained by The Associated Press calls for affirming that any actions that "have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem" have no legal effect and must be rescinded. It also calls upon all states "to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions" in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu with Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, who was in New York for the vote, called the US threats "dangerous" and predicted that they would not have a major impact. "We believe that there is world consensus against the US decision on Jerusalem. This was clearly reflected in the Security Council, despite the US veto," he told the AP.

Trump shattered decades of US neutrality on Jerusalem on December 6 when he recognized the holy city as Israel's capital and said he will move the US Embassy there.

Trump said the move was not meant to prejudge negotiations on the final borders of the city, and instead merely recognized reality since Jerusalem already serves as Israel's capital.

But the announcement was widely perceived as taking the side of Israel in the most sensitive issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to key Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, and which Israel captured and annexed in 1967, as the capital of a future state. The international community has said the status of Jerusalem should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has repeatedly praised Trump's decision and said he expects other nations to follow suit. But so far, the announcement has triggered mostly denunciations and demonstrations around the world.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement and other groups have organized mass protests while its rival, the Gaza-based Islamic militant group Hamas, has called for a third violent uprising against Israel. In all, eight Palestinians have been killed, most in clashes along the Gaza border with Israel.

Protests against the Jerusalem decision in Gaza (Photo: EPA)

The unrest continued on Wednesday as dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where protesters burned a large American flag and hurled stones at the Israelis. Demonstrators also scuffled with Israeli police in east Jerusalem and along the Gaza border.

Abbas has said that the US can no longer serve as the sole Mideast mediator, and he has been trying to rally support in Europe and the Arab world.

On Wednesday, Abbas was meeting with leaders of Saudi Arabia, an influential country believed to have low-level but warming ties with Israel, before heading to France.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's King Salman reassured Abbas that the kingdom continues to support Palestinian claims to Jerusalem.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that King Salman reiterated to Abbas Saudi Arabia's support for "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital city."

The meeting was attended by a number of senior princes and Palestinian officials.

The meeting, however, did not include the king's son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who met with Abbas in early November in Riyadh-- a month before President Donald Trump formally announced his administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
An Australian man of Afghan descent with a history of mental health issues drove a car into Christmas shoppers in the city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring 14 people, but police said they did not believe the attack was terror-related.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Police arrested the 32-year-old driver of the white Suzuki SUV, saying he has a history of assault, drug use and mental health issues.

"At this time, we don't have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism," said the acting chief commissioner of Victoria State, Shane Patton.

Scene of the incident

X

The Victoria State ambulance service said it had taken 13 people to hospitals, with several in critical condition, including a pre-school aged boy with head injuries.

Early reports said there were two men in the car, but Patton confirmed the suspect was driving alone.

Confusion had arisen when a second man was seen being apprehended alongside the driver. Patton said this was a 24-year-old man who was seen filming the incident on his mobile phone and found carrying a bag containing three knives.

Patton said that man was taken into custody to determine whether he was connected.

"At this stage we don't believe that to be the case," he said.

Patton said the investigation would involve the force's counter-terrorism unit to ensure "that there isn't that connection, and that there is no ongoing threat," but that this was being treated as a singular incident. He said police were working with Australian intelligence agency ASIO, and with Australian Federal Police, and that there was no intelligence to suggest the man was a person of interest to those bodies.

"We understand he's on a mental health plan and receiving treatment for a mental illness," Patton said.

Witnesses described horrific scenes from the incident, which started when the SUV ran a red light outside the city's iconic Flinders Street train station and sped up to hit pedestrians crossing the road, striking more than a dozen people before crashing into a traffic barrier near a cable car stop.

"I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and heard a thump," one man identified only as David said on ABC TV. He said he turned around saw "people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them."

The driver of the SUV in handcuffs

"As it (the car) approached this intersection ... it just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere," one witness who identified herself only as Sue told radio station 3AW.

A witness told the Australian Broadcasting Corp the vehicle was travelling at 80 to 100 kph (50-62 mph).

"There was no breaking or any slowing down at all," said Jim Stoupas, who said he was standing outside his donut shop when the car crashed into the people, one after another.

"All you could hear was just 'bang bang bang bang bang'," he said.

Bystanders rushed to drag the driver out of the vehicle before police arrived to arrest the man.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a tweet calling the incident "shocking" and said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and those treating them.

"Our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them," Turnbull said in a post on his official Twitter account.

"We've seen an horrific act, an evil act, an act of cowardice perpetrated against innocent bystanders," said the state premier, Daniel Andrews.

Police said officers have been deployed across the area and the site would be closed-off as a crime scene for some time.

"Police will continue to have a strong presence in the Melbourne CBD tonight," Barrett said.

The area was busy with Christmas shoppers at the time of the incident.

In January, four people were killed and more than 20 injured when a man deliberately drove into pedestrians at a spot just a few hundred metres away from the Thursday incident. Police said the January incident was not terrorism-related.

Melbourne has installed about 140 concrete bollards in the city centre to stop vehicle attacks by militants.

Sydney, Australia's biggest city, has installed concrete barricades in main pedestrian thoroughfares.

Authorities in cities around the world have taken similar measures following attacks in Europe and the United States.

Australia has been on a "high" national threat level since 2015, citing the likelihood of attacks by Australians radicalized in Iraq and Syria.

A staunch ally of the United States and its campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, Australia believes more than 100 of its citizens are fighting there.

Two hostages were killed during a 17-hour siege by a "lone wolf" gunman, inspired by Islamic State militants, in a cafe in Sydney in December 2014.
MK David Amsalem, who was appointed coalition chairman on Wednesday, was tasked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to promote the contentious nationality bill.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Amsalem replaces MK David Bitan, who stepped down from the position amid a corruption investigation against him.

"The first mission of the coalition chairman, MK Amsalem, will be to pass the nationality bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation that will enter Israel's history books," Netanyahu said Wednesday.





(Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

The bill proposal, first submitted 4 years ago by Likud MK Avi Dichter, seeks to enshrine as a Basic Law the concept that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. The legislation determines that all Israeli law must be interpreted according to this principle.

The legislation, which is considered by its opponents as discriminatory towards Arab Israelis, specifies some of the practical aspects of the State of Israel being the nation-state of the Jewish people. The bill addresses state symbols (national anthem, flag, icons), Jerusalem as the capital, Hebrew as the official language, the right of return for Jews, the ingathering of the exiles, Jewish settlement, relations with the Jewish Diaspora, the Hebrew calendar, and holy sites.

The coalition tried to push the bill in recent months, with not much success. A special committee was formed in the Knesset to handle the legislative process.

The proposal has drawn sharp criticism as a result of the need for the High Court to interpret Knesset legislation according to the definition of the State of Israel as Jewish before democratic.

Netanyahu requested to complete a first reading before the Knesset adjourns for the summer. However, Eyal Yinon, the Knesset's legal advisor, informed Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein that a proposal such as this cannot be advanced on such a short schedule.
NEW YORK - A former journalist from St. Louis who terrorized his ex-girlfriend and then made bomb threats in her name to Jewish groups was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison after the ex-girlfriend told the court the case shows "domestic terrorism is rooted in violence against women."

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



US District Judge P. Kevin Castel said Juan Thompson, 32, committed domestic terrorism with threats in the name of New York social worker Francesca Rossi on a dozen occasions against Jewish community centers, schools or other facilities nationwide.

The threats came early this year, when more than 150 bomb threats were reported against Jewish community centers and day schools in 37 states and two Canadian provinces. Authorities blamed most on an 18-year-old Israeli-American Jewish man arrested in Israel in March.

Juan Thompson

The judge said Thompson created a sustained campaign against Rossi "to terrorize her and cause pain" to others.

Thompson, who pleaded guilty in June to cyber stalking and making fake bomb threats to a dozen Jewish facilities, apologized at the sentencing, conceding, "There are wounds ... that will probably never heal."

Thompson's sentence was a year longer than prosecutors had requested, but the judge said it was warranted for a man who overcame an abusive childhood to graduate from Vassar College in 2013 and then turn his intelligence, social media expertise and creativity into "weapons against others."

"His intelligence and creativity made him such a horror," the judge said.

Rossi, wearing a shirt that said "Believe Women," said she was grateful to be alive but was "not convinced that he still won't try to kill me."

"The abuse and victimization that I was subjected to is not unusual," Rossi said. "We are here because domestic terrorism is rooted in violence against women. ... Intimate-partner violence needs more legal attention, given that 93 percent of female homicides are committed by a man the victim knows."

She also said digital technology should be recognized as "a powerful weapon to inflict violence."

Police search a Jewish Community Center after a bomb threat was reported in the Rochester suburb of Brighton, New York, March 7, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)

"Countless people are subjected to the same type and degree of stalking and abuse that Juan inflicted on me," she said. "And worse."

She said when she met Thompson he seemed to be the "perfect man," charming and intelligent, a passionate journalist who spoke of social justice.

Once living together, the "real Juan emerged," as he began to "isolate, shame and abuse me," Rossi said.

She said he convinced her that ex-boyfriends were stalking and threatening her. She said he made it seem an ex-boyfriend had posted a nude picture of her as his Facebook profile picture and an ex-boyfriend's wife had sued, alleging she had given a sexually transmitted disease to her husband.

Rossi said the abuse worsened in the nine months after she ended the relationship, with Thompson trying to get her fired the next day by posing as multiple journalists claiming to her bosses that she was being investigated for professional and ethical wrongdoing.

"Juan devoted over an entire year to destroying my life," she said. "He painted me as an anti-Semite, a racist, a drunk, a slut, a drug dealer, a child pornographer and a gun runner. He did everything that he could to instill terror in my life."

Rossi, who was composed during her lengthy statement but cried at least once, said Thompson used every digital platform imaginable to harass her and went after at least 47 people in her life, including her 92-year-old grandmother. She said she asked law enforcement for help more than 20 times but was told: "It will get worse, and then we can try to help."

Rossi said Thompson notified a Brooklyn police station five months before his arrest that Rossi was going to "shoot up" the precinct, causing the New York Police Department to interview her. Another time, she said, the NYPD firearms division showed up to investigate if she was selling guns.

Finally, the FBI investigated after Thompson posed as Rossi to report a threat to a San Diego Jewish community center, she recalled. Four days later, Thompson was arrested.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry established clandestine contact with Bangladesha Muslim country without any diplomatic ties with Jerusalemto offer a significant humanitarian aid package for the hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the Rohingya minority who fled to the country for fear of the Myanmar (former Burma) military.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Bangladesh expressed gratitude to Israel for the offer, but informed it that it cannot accept aid due to the sensitivity involved and the political ramifications that could ensue.

The Israeli foreign Ministry is reportedly exploring other routes through which to provide humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya refugees, who are still languishing in Myanmar in camps run by the UN or other international organizations.

Rohingya refugees (Photo: Reuters)

This year, the Myanmar army launched a vicious assault on the Rohingya minority living in the Buddhist country, and according to various reports, the army has slaughtered at least 10,000 people and ravaged the population by triggering the flight of up to 665,000 more who have sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.

Many observers have described the brutality as genocide or ethnic cleansing against the minority.

Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on August 25, the aid group said last week.

The wave of the Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh began on that date, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces provoked a sweeping response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has called the violence "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place.

Since then, shocking reports have reached the West about the brutality and cruelty gripping the country as the Myanmar army continues on its unabated retributive rampage, which has been characterized by the mass rape of women and children in front of their fathers and husbands, children and siblings, along with the massacre of civilians.

Human rights groups claim that despite the fact that the Myanmar government signed last month an agreement to allow some of the refugees to return to the country from Bangladesh, the army continues set fire to their villages, leaving them with nowhere to live.

Many citizens of Myanmar consider the Rohingya to be a group of Muslim invaders who bear responsibility for terror attacks that have hit the country.

Reuters controbuted to this report.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United Nations on Thursday, calling it a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on a resolution expected to pass at the General Assembly that criticizes US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether the UN recognizes this or not," Netanyahu said at the inauguration of the university hospital at the Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod.

"It took 70 years for the US to recognize this officially, and it'll take years more for the UN to recognize it as well. The treatment of Israel among many countries on all continents around the world is changing, and it will ultimately permeate into the halls of the UN," he asserted.

Netanyahu at inauguration of university hospital at the Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod. (Photo: Avi Rokach)

The prime minister said Israel "rejects this vote out of hand, even before it is passed."

"Jerusalem is our capital. We will continue building in it, and embassies of foreign nations, primarily the US, will move to Jerusalem. Write what I'm saying, because it will happen," Netanyahu added.

Israel is intensively lobbying countries around the world to oppose the UN resolution. An Israeli Foreign Ministry official confirmed the government was making a "very vast" lobbying campaign to minimize the resolution's impact.

He said Israel is trying to persuade allies to abstain or even vote against it. He also said that Israel has asked Jewish organizations in certain countries to lobby their governments on Israel's behalf.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive diplomatic contacts, refused to identify which countries Israel has approached or say how he expects them to vote. But he said he thinks the campaign will be "successful to a certain extent."

The Palestinians have turned to the General Assembly after the US vetoed a resolution this week in the Security Council calling on Trump to rescind his decision. While General Assembly votes, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not legally binding, they serve as a barometer of international sentiment on key issues.

The US and Israel are both placing great weight on Thursday's vote. US Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened UN member states with possible retaliation if they support the resolution, saying Trump takes the vote "personally" and the US "will be taking names."

Trump went even further, telling reporters at a Cabinet meeting in Washington that opponents were likely to face a cutoff in US funding. "For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us," Trump said. "We're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."
Canada's Police Department launched an investigation this week after 12 synagogues across the country received hate letters.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



So far, synagogues in Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton, Kensington, Calgary, Ottawa and Edmonton have all received the same anti-Semitic letter with the phrase "Jewry Must Perish" written around an image of a swastika inside a bleeding Star of David.

"It's a particularly ugly piece of hate mail that is threatening," Judy Shapiro, associate executive director of the Calgary Jewish Federation, told CBC News.

The letter sent to synagogues (Photo: B'nai Brith Canada)

"I tend to not take these things terribly seriously because they're designed to create intimidation. They're not necessarily a real threat, and when I say a real threat, I mean a threat to life, but they are certainly designed to intimidate and they're designed to make people feel uncomfortable and they succeed in doing that, which is unfortunate," she added.

The Calgary Police Department traced the letter to southern Alberta based on its postmark. They are working with police in other cities in an effort to identify where the others letters were sent from.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in response to the letters, "These recent acts of hatred and anti-Semitism have no place in our country and we will not tolerate it."

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley also denounced the letters, saying "Anti-Semitism has no place in Alberta or Canada. As Jewish families gather to share in the love and hope of Hanukkah, they deserve to do so in peace and security."

According to Bnai Brith Canada, there were 1,728 anti-Semitic incidents in the country in 2016, a 26 percent increase compared to 2015.
Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh on Thursday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus speech earlier this week in which he dubbed police investigations against him as a waste of time and money.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



We don't need to be a part of this discourse. This is how we do things, and this is how we will continue to do things, Alsheikh said during a ceremony honoring the Israel Police. I see business as usual in the police, and I do not see that this public discourse is sidetracking it from doing its job, and we will continue to do it.

Alsheikh also added that the police welcomes anyone who supports the police and the rule of law."

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh (Photo: Ido Erez)

Alsheikhs comments come two days after Netanyahu spoke at a Likud rally celebrating the eighth and final night of Hanukkah, where he scorned the corruption investigations against him as a waste of time and money and dismissed as insignificant the potential eventuality of any indictment recommendations made by the police.

So there will be recommendations. So what? Netanyahu said to the crowd of cheering supporters in Kfar Maccabiah.

Also speaking at the ceremony Thursday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan indirectly touched on the confrontation between Netanyahu and the police.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Photo: Zohar Shahar)

The police has become stronger over the last two years, in an unprecedented way. It has all been done for the sake of the citizens, for public order and for the rule of law, as it should be in a democratic country, Erdan said.

I will continue to do everything to strengthen the Israel Police and to support work that is so important for the citizens of Israel, he promised. The police has had great achievements ... Thank you for all that you are doing.

On Wednesday, Erdan was more direct on where he stood on the matter when he told the Knesset plenum he was uneasy with Netanyahus slighting of the police on Tuesday, while simultaneously acknowledging that there was some merit to his fiery speech.

I am not alright with all the statements or their style or the way that they can be interpreted, Erdan told the plenum, while noting that some of the things he said are justified, and he has to explain them in more detail to the public.

A day before Netanyahu's speech, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon stood shoulder to shoulder with Alsheikh, telling him during a candle-lighting ceremony for the seventh night of Hanukkah at a Border Police base that he had his ministrys full support.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon

Continue how you are. We, in the Finance Ministry, support you, the police and the rule of law, he said as he turned to address Alsheikh directly.

Continue to do the important work you are doing  All the knowledge and experience that you all have, you demonstrate for the people of Israel, Kahlon continued as he furnished praise on the police force.
A court in New Zealand sentenced three Israelis to eight years and three months for attempting to smuggle ecstasy through an airport in Auckland.

A local media outlet reported that the teens tried to smuggle in large quantities of the the recreational drug worth 3.6 million dollars.
President Tayyip Erdogan told the United States on Thursday it could not buy Turkey's support in a vote at the United Nations General Assembly on Jerusalem, and said he hoped the world would teach Washington a lesson.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars", Erdogan said after US President Donald Trump threatened to cut aid to countries that support a draft UN resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

President Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: AFP)

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there (the United nations) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

Earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United Nations, calling it a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on a resolution expected to pass at the General Assembly that criticizes Trump's Jerusalem declaration.

The 193-member General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on Trump's decision, sparking a warning from Washington that it will "take names."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has launched a virulent attack againt US President Donald Trump after he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital , going as far as comparing the American leader to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Fatah has been aiming its vitriol not just at Trump, but also at Vice President Mike Pence and the entire American administration.

The attacks have not been limited to social media, either, and have also been given a stage on Palestinian state media, which is controlled by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

The caustic attacks against Trump culminated in a post on Friday on Fatah's official Twitter page, which featured a photo of Trump above a photo of Hitler, with text in English saying: "I don't see any difference, do you?" and the hashtag "#HandsOffAlQuds," referring to Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

Yet another tweet featured a video showing a student from the Fatah group at Al-Quds University in Tulkarm entering one of the university's lecture halls and disrupts a gathering of an organization that receives support from USAID.

X

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is regularly targeted on Fatah social media pages, also came under attack from the Palestinian faction this week. But rather than focusing on diplomatic matters, Fatah's official Twitter posted a photo of Netanyahu and his wife accompanied by the word "corrupted" in Hebrew.

Fatah's attack against Trump is unusual, as the Palestinians have made efforts in recent years not to directly and bluntly attack the American administration, even after Trump's election, in an effort not to burn bridges with the White House.
South Africas ruling ANC decided to downgrade its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office over a US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, ahead of a UN vote on Thursday on a resolution urging Washington to drop the move.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The decision was taken at the end of a five-day African National Congress conference, in which Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as its new leader and South Africas likely next president after 2019 elections, following Jacob Zuma.

Jacob Zuma (L) Cyril Ramaphosa (Photo: EPA)

Delegates endorsed the proposal that we must give practical support to the oppressed people of Palestine and resolved on an immediate and unconditional downgrade of the SA (South Africa) Embassy in Israel to a Liaison Office, new ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule said on Thursday.

There was no immediate comment from Israels Foreign Ministry.

South Africas ministry for international relations and cooperation said on its website that it was deeply concerned about Trumps move as it would undermine Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, which has been frozen since 2014.

The South African Board of Jewish Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation jointly condemned the ANCs decision.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states to vote on the draft resolution, which Washington vetoed on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process has been frozen for over three years.

Israel deems Jerusalem 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 recognized internationally.

The ANCs move comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing closer ties with other African countries.

Last month, on a visit to Kenya, Netanyahu announced that Israel was opening a new embassy in nearby Rwanda as part of the expanding Israeli presence in Africa and the deepening of cooperation between Israel and African countries. Israel is seeking to expel thousands of African migrants to Rwanda.

On Thursday, Netanyahu described the United Nations as a house of lies on Thursday and said Israel totally rejects this vote, even before approval.

Trump upended decades of US policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washingtons Western allies.

When under white-minority rule, South Africa was one of Israels few allies on the continent. But after the 1994 demise of apartheid, relations cooled as the black-majority ANC took over. The ANC has condemned Israeli occupation of territories where Palestinians seek statehood, while maintaining full diplomatic and trade relations with Israel.
Hundreds of employees of the Foreign Affairs Ministry around the world demonstrated Wednesday in protest of what they deemed "deplorable working conditions."

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The diplomatic employees further demanded the reform intended to overhaul their conditions of employmentset to enter into force last week but held back due to budgetary disputesbe approved by the end of the year.

Foreign Affairs Ministry employees protest in Berlin

Protest outside the New York consulate

X

The Foreign Affairs Ministry's workers' union told the ministry's management in Jerusalem that 1,500 of its employees stationed around the world will not be signing their 2018 employment contracts until the reform was approved.

Employees are obligated to sign a new contract every year, which is why such a mutiny is expected to create legal difficulties in continuing to operate Israel's embassies after the 2017 contracts expire.

Foreign Affairs Ministry employees protest in New York

Even if a legal solution was found to continue employing the protesters without valid contracts, the workers' union has already announced all diplomatic missions will be shut down completely starting January 1 if the reform was not approved.

"We will not longer be transparent. The state must make good on its commitment to us. We were promised a reform by the end of the year and won't stop until we get it. We're not asking to become rich, all we want is to make an honorable living in return for our work and dedication to the country we hold so dear. No reform, no contracts, no missions for Israel," the workers' union said.
Judicial Selection Committee is growing more likely to appoint the first Muslim Supreme Court justice in the country's history, as Yedioth Ahronoth revealed Thursday morning that Israel Bar Association representatives have decided to nominate Tel Aviv District Court Deputy Chief Judge Chaled Kabub as their Supreme Court nominee, thereby forgoing the appointment of a private sector attorney.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



While Justice Abdel Rahman Zuabi has effectively already served as the first Muslim on the Supreme Court's bench, it was in a temporary capacity, thereby potentially making Kabub the first Muslim to receive a permanent position on the bench.

The Judicial Selection Committee is currently looking to appoint two new Supreme Court justice, replacing Justices Yoram Danziger and Uri Shoham who will retire this coming February.

Judge Kabub may soon become the first Arab Muslim Supreme Court justice (Photo: Ami Schuman)

The Israel Bar Association was thus supposed to suggest a series of nominees for the role, with the committee selecting the one found most apt.

In a dramatic turnaround, however, Chairman Nave and Judicial Selection Committee member Ilana Seker have decided to nominate Judge Kabub, a Muslim Arab, to the Supreme Court's bench.

The pair explained that for such a historic appointmentthe first Arab Muslim to receive a permanent appointmentthe Israel Bar Association was willing to concede the appointment of a private sector attorney to replace Danziger.

Nave and Seker further explained that Judge Kabub personified in his private and juridical character the best of both worlds: he is considered an outstanding jurist in many fieldseconomic, criminal and civiland known to be speedy and effective, with a laid back, "people's person" judicial temperament.

Israel Bar Association Chairman Nave was willing to forgo appointment a private sector attorney so Kabub may be nominated (Photo: Yariv Katz)

Beyond the above, the main reason for the Israel Bar Association's support for Kabub's candidacy was the fact he was a Muslim Arab. Nave was of the opinion appointing a Muslim justice to the Supreme Court will do much to promote the idea of representing all facets of Israeli society in the land's highest judicial institution, or an opportunity for it to practice what it preaches.

Nave also noted that Israeli Arabs, most of whom are Muslims, comprise almost a fifth of the populace and that the time has come to appoint the first Muslim judge to the Supreme Court.

"Recognizing the immense importance of such an appointment, the Bar is willing to push appointing a private sector attorney to the next round of appointments," he concluded.

Judge Kabub's name was floated to fill the so-called "Arab seat" during the previous round of Supreme Court appointments. Then Supreme Court Chief Justice Miriam Naor ended giving her support to Christian Arab George Karra , with her reasoning being he only had a handful of years left to serve in the Supreme Court. Shaked acquiesced to Naor's request as part of a deal between them and Karra was selected.

Justice George Karra (L) was appointed to the 'Arab seat' instead of Kabub during the last round of appointments (Photo: Haim Zach/GPO)

Legal sources said that with Nave and Seker throwing their weight behind Kabub's nomination, the three Supreme Court justices who are also part of the Judicial Selection CommitteeChief Justice Hayut and Justices Hanan Melcer and Neal Hendelwill be hard pressed to object to it, as Kabub is an exemplary and esteemed judge already widely considered to be a natural replacement for Karra when he retires in four years.

Minister Shaked is also expected to support the nomination, the sources said, so long as the second justice is selected from her own list of nominees.

Kabub mainly presided over criminal cases when he was starting out, but later proved himself capable in civic matters and is today considered one of the stars of the Tel Aviv District Court.

Throughout his years in the judiciary, Kabub has proven unafraid to pass down harsh sentences on organized crime members and white collar offenders alike.
ANKARA  President Tayyip Erdogan called the UAE foreign minister impertinent on Thursday after he retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One.

Without naming him, Erdogan said UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayanwho shared a tweet accusing Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha of stealing money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916was ignorant.

"Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has," Erdogan told an awards ceremony at his Ankara palace.

"When my ancestors were defending Medina, you impudent (man), where were yours? First, you have to give account for this," he added. The UAE charge d'affaires in Ankara was summoned to the foreign ministry over the matter, a ministry official said.
The weekly anti-corruption protest , to take place in Tel Aviv Saturday eveningwhose organizers are mostly affiliated with the country's left wingwill be met by a similar protest in Jerusalem, albeit one that has been afforded the support and even participation of several right-wing MKs.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Journalist Yoaz Hendel appealed to fellow members of Israel's right-wing in a Yedioth Ahronoth op-ed to take to the streets to protest for the rule of law in response to the mass demonstrations taking place in Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard.

The weekly Tel Aviv anti-corruption protest will receive a Jerusalem counterpoint this week (Photo: EPA)

Anti-corruption protests should not, Hendel said, be affiliated with any one side of the political divide, and this notion has garnered support among some Likud members. The party's MK Yehuda Glick, for instance, said he was looking favorably on attending Hendel's Saturday evening protest in the capital.

"Yoaz Hendel's trend is a positive one, and I'm therefore strongly considering attending the protest. His arguments are not anti-Bibi (referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahued). Unfortunately, the coalition's (recent) obsession with laws (possibly referring to the Recommendations Law and the " French Bill ") gave the opposition the tools to claim we were conducting ourselves improperly, and that is regrettable," Glick said.

"I don't want the public to conceive anyone fighting for the rule of law or against corruption to be against the government, the Likud party or Netanyahu," Glick explained.

Likud MK Yehuda Glick said he was strongly considering attending the protest (Photo: Eli Mendelbaum)

Folkman's fellow Kulanu parliamentarian MK Rachel Azaria voiced the same notion. "Saturday evening's protest is an important initiative. The public's trust in the legal system is a cornerstone of Israel society, and the recent spate of legislation to defend suspects of corruption threatens to undermine it. I intend to be at the rally," she said.

A third Kulanu MK, Meirav Ben-Ari, also supported the idea, albeit in a more reserved manner. "I think Yoaz's idea is proper. The war on corruption is a non-partisan issue. The thing is that (the protest's) timing is problematic. You cannot hold a Jerusalem rally separate from the Rothschild rally, especially when they take place at the same time. The protest is important, but it should not take place now," Ben-Ari opined.

Kulanu MK Meirav Ben-Ari said the protest was justified in principle, but it was not the right time for it (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Prime Minister Netanyahu's response to the positive outlook members of his coalition had on the protest was swift, with three Likud MKs and one of the party's ministers considered close to Netanyahu appealing to Likud and Kulanu MKs asking them to avoid participating in the rally.

Netanyahu's confidants told the MKs the protest did not serve the Likud or Netanyahu's purposes, and even damaged them. The Likud MKs and minister did qualify their appeal, however, by saying they were not contacting them on Netanyahu's behalf, but only of their own volition.

The organization for "Different Leadership", headed by former defense minister Moshe Ya'alon, called on its activists to participate in Saturday's protest. "We stand at the right of values, statism and the rule of law. It's not about right or left. War on corruption does not belong only to one side. It's a social, moral challenge to us all. It's a national duty. We must look our children in the eyes and tell them we did everything to preserve the State of Israel," the organization said.
Palestinian terrorist group Hamas's leader in Gaza said on Thursday a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction was collapsing, just 10 weeks after the agreement was reached.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The rivals signed a deal brokered by Cairo on Oct. 12 after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of the Gaza Strip, including its border crossings with Egypt and Israel, a decade after seizing control of the enclave in a civil war.

The deal bridged a deep gulf between Abbas's Western-backed mainstream Fatah and Hamas, an Islamist movement designated a terrorist group by Western countries and Israel. But continued disputes have delayed its implementation.

Hamas leader in Gaza Sinwar said Palestinian reconciliation may be nearing its end (Photo: AP)

Yahya Sinwar , Hamas's chief in Gaza and a key architect of the unity agreement, offered a bleak outlook on Thursday, suggesting the deal could suffer a similar fate to numerous reconciliation attempts over the past decade.

"The reconciliation project is falling apart. Only a blind man can't see that," Sinwar said in comments published by pro-Hamas media.

One of the latest disputes came earlier this month when Hamas, according to Fatah officials, missed a milestone to complete the handover of Gaza to Abbas's West Bank-based government.

Hamas says it has given up all administrative control in Gaza.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said Hamas had not transferred moneys as agreed, while Hamas said Hamdallah's government had not paid salaries in Gaza as agreed.

Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah said Hamas had not transferred moneys as agreed in the deal (Photo: AP)

Sinwar in the past has said his group would not go back to governing Gaza and that he was committed to making the deal succeed.

Fatah officials declined immediate comment.

"Reconciliation is collapsing because some people want to get from it the relinquishing of arms and the closing of tunnels ," said Sinwar without elaborating, but in apparent reference to Fatah.

The warring Palestinian sides signed the reconliation agreement a little more than two months ago (Photo: AFP)

During the last Gaza war, in 2014, Hamas terrorists used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel's superior forces and threaten civilian communities near the frontier.

Israel and the United States have called for Hamas to be disarmed as part of the pact between it and the Palestinian Authority, so that Israeli peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which collapsed in 2014, can proceed. Hamas has rejected the demand.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut attacked Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on a bill meant to curb the powers of the court.

In a conference organized by the Israeli Association of Public Law Hayut said, "Governance means the government ability to operate within the confines of its authority, it does not mean allowing actions that are against the law."

"The manner in which certain ministers and MKs express their views on the judiciary, regrettably, are far from showing respect and recent examples are shameful," Hayut added.
Ankara  The United Nations General Assembly's vote on Jerusalem on Thursday was a clear international rejection of President Donald Trump administration's "thuggish intimidation", the Iranian foreign minister said on Twitter.

Mohammad Javad Zarif said on his Twitter feed: "A resounding global NO to Trump regime's thuggish intimidation at #UN".
KABUL  Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to meet its leaders and underscore US commitment to the country four months after President Donald Trump agreed to an open-ended war against insurgents here.

Pence arrived on a military plane at Bagram Airfield under the cover of darkness on Thursday night after leaving Washington on Wednesday night. He then flew by helicopter to Kabul, where he met President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah at the presidential palace.

Pence told the leaders he hoped his presence there was tangible evidence that the United States was "here to see this through."
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New Peoples Army, despite branding them as terrorist organizations earlier this month.

In a statement, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said the suspension of military operations (SOMO) would begin Dec. 24 and end Jan. 2, 2018.

He said the government hoped the CPP-NPA would make a similar gesture of goodwill.

ADVERTISEMENT

CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison said he doubted the sincerity of the governments unilateral ceasefire.

If it is true that the AFP and the PNP will not launch offensive actions, then the NPA has no one to attack, Sison told Manila Standard.

But it seems this SOMO is a farce. The NPA will remain on alert against attacks from the AFP and the PNP, Sison added.

SNAP TO ATTENTION. President Rodrigo Duterte pays homage to fallen Police Officer 3 Wilfredo Gueta (left) who earned the Order of Lapu Lapu Kalasag Medal, slain in a drug buy-bust operation in Pasig City. Earlier, the President also pays in this file photo his last respects to fallen Army Capt. Rommel Sandoval (right) before the body was flown to Manila from Cagayan de Oro City. Sandoval, company commander of the 11th Scout Ranger Company, was killed in action while rescuing a wounded soldier in Marawi City during the known Marawi siege which started in May. Malacanang Photo

In a chance interview early Wednesday morning, Duterte said that he was considering the declaration of a Christmas truce so Filipinos could celebrate Christmastime without stress.

Look, if I declare a ceasefire, it is not addressed to the NPAs. Rather, I would want to celebrate Christmas with the rest of humankind or Filipinos without stress, he said during the wake of a slain soldier in Pasig City.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the military would follow President Dutertes directive regarding the suspension of military operations against the NPA.

I was actually adamant (on that), I did not recommend the cessation of military operations against the (NPA) but if the President declared (that) we are going to implement and abide by the directive of the President, he added.

The Philippine National Police said it too will abide by the order as soon as it has officially received a directive from Duterte to stop police operations against the CPP-NPA.

The corresponding memo circular will be issued soonest so that all PNP units, offices and stations will be guided accordingly, PNP spokesperson Chief Supt. Dionardo Carlos said.

The suspension of offensive military operations has been a customary move by both sides since the launch of formal talks in the late 1980s.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
The Philippines is poised to start exporting bananas, mangoes, pineapples, coconut oil, and other agricultural products to Turkmenistan, as the two countries recently discussed ways to expand their bilateral cooperation in various fields.

In a bilateral meeting, the Department of Foreign Affairs-Office of Middle East and African Affairs and Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Turkmenistan sought to expand partnerships particularly in the fields of agriculture, labor, tourism, small and medium enterprises, trade, sports, and investments.

Although they have not pegged a date for the Philippines to start exporting goods to the former Soviet republic, DFA-OMEAA Assistant Secretary Hjayceelyn Quintana stressed the great potential for exporting tropical fruits to Turkmenistan.

Pending bilateral agreements on political consultations, trade and economic cooperation, culture and tourism cooperation were likewise discussed during the visit, Quintana said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Both countries recognized the important role of their respective chambers of commerce, private sector representatives, and entrepreneurs, in coordinating and cooperating with each other in enhancing bilateral.

In November, both countries committed to expanding friendly ties built on the principles of trust and mutual respect.

Quintana noted the positive role of the neutrality policy of Turkmenistan and the similarity of both countries approaches in the fight against terrorism and extremism.

Proposals were expressed to further consolidate efforts to combat the challenges of the global agenda, she added.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
The Kuwaiti government Wednesday announced it charged an Audit Bureau to investigate allegations of kickbacks denounced by a local media regarding an agreement with France to buy 30 Airbus Caracal helicopters for $1.1 billion.

It was decided to refer the Caracal helicopters deal to the Public Anti-Corruption Authority to investigate it and take all relevant measures, said Anas al-Saleh, the government spokesman and state minister for cabinet affairs.

With regards to what has been raised in a local daily today (Wednesday) about the Caracal deal, it was also decided to refer the same issue to the Audit Bureau to scrutinize all data, documents and procedures of the deal, he added.

The move came after opposition lawmaker Mubarak al-Hajraf raised the issue in parliament on Wednesday and demanded an investigation, after the revelations made by local newspaper, al-Rai.

The local media has denounced the involvement of a middleman in the deal. The media citing French sister media, Marianne magazine, pointed out that the arranger had demanded tens of millions of euros from Airbus as a commission.

Kuwait and Airbus signed another deal in 2015 on the purchase 24 other helicopters.

The European aerospace giant is also facing investigations in the USA and Austria for similar wrongdoings.

The companys Chief Executive Tom Enders is among the figures being investigated for corruption allegations. He will leave his position at the end of his contract ending in 2019.
US President Donald Trump Wednesday threatened to cut aid for countries which voted Monday in the Security Council or which may potentially back a draft resolution at an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly this Thursday (dec.21) condemning President Trumps decision to declare Jerusalem capital of Israel and to transfer the US embassy to the holy city.

They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care, Trump told reporters at the White House.

The US found itself isolated Monday after 14 members of the UN Security Council including its western and Arab allies supported a draft resolution condemning Trumps December 6 unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel and to transfer the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. The resolution also called on countries to refrain from moving their missions to the city.

The US vetoed the resolution. It called the voting an insult and accused the Security Council of being biased.

Following the US veto, Turkey and Yemen supported by a group of Arab countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly to vote a resolution against Trumps decision. However, the resolution will not be binding.

US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, Tuesday warned countries that she has been tasked to report back on countries voting against the US.

The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us, she said in letters to UN envoys.

We will take note of each and every vote on this issue.

Several diplomats have slammed the US tactic saying that it further weakens Americas position.

Palestines Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, speaking in Istanbul Wednesday by the side of his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the US was making another mistake.

This is really a new definition of world order in politics and it seems that the American administration are putting their stamp on a new political reality that many countries will reject, Malki said.

Senior diplomats under condition of anonymity indicated Haleys move will not sway votes.

Middle East Eye reports that the US diplomat is rumored for a higher office.
Thats one of the important stories here, Mahajan said. Theres no target for the drug inside the eye, which totally explains why the drug didnt work. One of the benefits of this precision health approach is to identify which drugs we shouldnt use.

The researchers worked through the symptoms of the disease, matching each one with abnormal levels of proteins from the biopsies, and then with existing drugs that could potentially provide relief.

One feature of NIV is the excessive formation of new blood vessels in the retina, which can lead to a blinding hemorrhage. Clinicians traditionally treat this type of hemorrhage with surgery. However, eye surgery prompts inflammation and scarring in NIV patients. The protein analyses revealed elevated levels of vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, that correlated with moderate cases of the disease. The researchers turned to an anti-VEGF drug, bevacizumab, which had been approved to treat macular degeneration. Injections of bevacizumab were able to resolve hemorrhages in seven NIV eyes without surgery, the study said.

Drug reduces eye inflammation

Another symptom of NIV is cellular inflammation and leakage of proteins into the eye, which patients experience as cloudy vision, akin to looking through a fog, with occasional floaters or shadows, Mahajan explained. Through the protein analysis, researchers spotted several abnormally expressed molecules that drive these inflammatory symptoms. The molecules help determine the fate of developing immune cells known as T cells. After reviewing existing drugs, the researchers decided to try injections of methotrexate, which targets T cells in arthritis. It successfully reduced the number of inflammatory cells in the eye, the study said.

One of the benefits of this precision health approach is to identify which drugs we shouldnt use.

The protein analysis also revealed numerous inflammatory compounds that could be treated with steroids, so the research team decided to put steroid implants into three of the NIV eyes. The implants, which release steroids continuously over two years, reduced levels of 31 molecules related to inflammation and the eyes abnormal immune response.

But the study participants eventually developed scarring around the implants, suggesting that some of the proteins contributing to inflammation werent effectively blocked by steroids. And even after the steroid implantations, these eyes still expressed elevated levels of the inflammation-related protein interleukin-6.

The researchers used this clue to solve another issue in NIV: Scar tissue grows inside the eye, causing the retina to detach from the back of the eye. Surgery is the only option for treating this complication, but in NIV the scarring is so extensive the retina detaches again after the surgery. The researchers gave one participant in the study, who had already lost the use of one eye, a drug called tocilizumab to block interleukin-6 after reattaching her retina. The surgery was effective, marking the first time a retina has remained attached in an NIV patient and suggesting the drug may be beneficial to others with scarring inside the eye, Mahajan said.

The researchers also used the protein analysis to supplement and confirm the classification of NIV into five stages of severity. Now, in addition to physical symptoms, they know which proteins are most active in each stage, Mahajan said. For future patients, a liquid biopsy from the eye could help provide more precise diagnoses, he said.

More gradual decline in eye health

For the NIV patients in this family, the slope of their decline, once steep, is now more gradual. Were still working on a cure, Mahajan said. But we can do a better job of trying to maintain their sight with what weve learned.

The applications of the approach are even broader, Mahajan said.

In the future, we can imagine, in difficult-to-diagnose patients or patients not responding to treatment, just removing a few drops of fluid from the eye to very quickly learn exactly which proteins to target, he said. Liquid eye biopsies are outpatient procedures that are safe and painless.

Mahajan said he believes the work illustrates the power of proteomics, which could help fulfill the potential of precision health to diagnose diseases before they advance and provide a real-time look at biochemical processes driving disease.

This is a fantastic example of the precision health approach were taking in ophthalmology at Stanford, said Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD, professor and chair of ophthalmology. Its innovative, has broad applicability and, most importantly, is helping patients.

Mahajan is a member of Stanford Bio-X and Stanford ChEM-H. Researchers at the University of Iowa and Columbia University also contributed to the study.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01EY026682, R01EY0024665, R01EY025225, R01EY024698, R21AG050437, P30EY026877, T32GM007337, 5P30EY019007, R01EY018213, R01EY024698 and R21AG050437); the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; National Cancer Institute; Research to Prevent Blindness; the RD-Cure Consortium; the Tistou and Charlotte Kerstan Foundation; the Schneeweiss Stem Cell Fund; the state of New York; the Joel Hoffman Fund; the Professor Gertrude Rothschild Stem Cell Foundation; and the Gebroe Family Foundation.

Stanfords Department of Ophthalmology also supported the work.
The economy of Anglophone regions in Cameroon is losing billons due to the ongoing political crisis that includes ghost town operations and internet disruptions, a coalition of political parties and civil society organisations said on Tuesday.

According to the civil society groups quoted by local radio station, Balafon, the productivity of the Silicone Mountain that brings together many young start-ups and entrepreneurs in the fields of Information Technologies and Communication, has drooped. Most of these start-ups are located in Buea, a small town that has been described as the countrys home of innovation and Africas next tech hub.

The Silicone Mountain according to the Republican Youth Association of Cameroon loses 220 million FCFA every week since the beginning of the Anglophone crisis.

According to the coalition, the two Anglophone Regions (Southwest and Northwest Regions), play a strategic role in Cameroonian economy and consequently, the disruption of economic activities in the two regions has led to big losses for the countrys economy.

Earlier this year, a tree-month internet disruption in the northwest and southwest regions had severely affected businesses like internet cafes, microfinance institutions, and money transfer agencies.

People in the said regions have long decried marginalization by the majority French speaking part of the country. An attempted independence declaration under the Ambazonia Republic was met with armed force leading to deaths, mass arrests and injuries.

President Paul Biya has condemned the violence and called for dialogue but concrete efforts in that direction have yet to materialize.
Fifty-seven Liberians in Ghana have been arrested by police in the capital city Accra, after besieging the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the West African nation for 32 days, demanding to be resettled in Europe.

The group, including 35 women, five children and 17 men, had besieged the UNHCR office with their luggage and water, demanding to be resettled in a country other than Ghana and their home country, Liberia.

The police intervention comes after the UNHCR efforts to get them to return to their base in a refugee camp outside the capital city, failed.

According to UNHCR, there were about 11,000 Liberian refugees in Ghana. By 2013, 5,000 of them had been repatriated voluntarily to Liberia, while 3,500 opted for local integration and they were given two years residence permit, renewable every two years.

After rigorous investigations, 250 others were allowed to maintain their refugee status but some others, including the people arrested by the police, opted for exemption from being repatriated or being integrated.

An Associate Protection Officer at UNHCR in Ghana, Edmund Kwofie, has stated that the UNHCR does not recognize the presence of Liberian refugees in Ghana as the Liberian refugee situation had been brought to a close since June 30, 2012.

The Liberian Embassy in Ghana said the people arrested by the police could not describe themselves as Liberian refugees in Ghana.
Saif al-Islam, the son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, will contest in the upcoming presidential elections in the war-torn nation, a spokesperson for the family told Egyptian news agency, Egypt Today.

According to Basem al-Hashimi al-Soul, Saif al-Islam has the support and credentials required to end the chaos that has gripped the North African oil-rich nation since 2011.

Saif al-Islam enjoys the support of major tribes in Libya so he can run for the upcoming presidential elections due in 2018, said the spokesman.

A platform of the presidential campaign will soon be launched, al-Hashimi said. Saif al-Islam plans to impose more security and stability in accordance with the Libyan geography and in coordination with all Libyan factions, he added.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was released in June under a new amnesty law, after being detained for six years by a militia in the town of Zintan following the 2011 uprising that led to the killing of his father.

He has reportedly claimed to have led a military campaign against Islamic State militants in parts of Libya recently and claimed he would fight his way to Tripoli.

The 44 year-old is still wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed during his fathers reign.
Austrian, Turkish Railway Freight Carriers Sign MoU with Azerbaijan

(Baku) -- Representatives of Azerbaijan Railways, Rail Cargo Austria and Turkish State Railways signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Baku for the development of a high-speed railway network designed to connect China with Europe.Azerbaijan is banking on its ability to be a major cargo transport hub, with the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), the North-South and South-West transport corridors, as well as the newly commissioned Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway all crisscrossing the country.The agreement on creation of the TITR was signed in April 2016 in Baku by the railway authorities of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan.About 300,000-400,000 containers are expected to be transported via the Trans-Caspian international transport route by 2020.The North-South transportation corridor will serve as a link connecting the railways of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia moving 5 million tons of cargo per year, while the BTK railways annual capacity is set for 17 million tons of cargo.
The News in Brief

Russia to Sign Citizenship Agreement with Abkhazia



(MOSCOW) -- Russias Foreign Ministry recently held consultations with representatives of the Kremlin-backed rebel authorities in Georgias breakaway Abkhazia on regulating dual citizenship as well as simplifying procedures to acquire Russian citizenship.



Dmitry Shamba, the head of Abkhaz leader Raul Khajimbas administration, attended the talks last week, held a press conference regarding the consultations on December 11. Shamba said the high level meetings were still in the embryonic phase, but expected a final deal in the coming weeks or months.



The purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways to regulate the status of the individuals who currently have dual citizenship, said Shamba, adding that without a bi-lateral agreement, one has to renounce their previous citizenship before being eligible to apply for a Russian passport.



Since 2008, Abkhaz citizens have been barred from receiving Russian citizenship until an agreement is signed, said Shamba, adding that the new agreement would also apply to Russian citizens who was to take up residency in Abkhazia.



Under the new agreement, both nationalities would be allowed to hold two passports. (civil.ge)







,b>Geneva Talks focus on ethnic discrimination against Georgians in occupied regions



Ethnic discrimination against Georgian nationals living in the Russian-occupied Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) was in focus of the latest international discussions in Geneva.



The 42nd round of the Geneva International Discussions  the only international format of meetings addressing Georgia-Russia relations  was held on December 12-13.



The talks traditionally include negotiators from Georgia and Russia as well as representatives from occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region, and are co-chaired by United Nations (UN), Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and European Union (EU) officials.



At the recent meeting, the Georgian side said that the ethnic discrimination against Georgians has intensified lately in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region.



It was stressed that registering local residents as foreign citizens or forcing them to change their surnames and ethnic identity could lead to "a new wave of ethnic cleansing.



The meeting stressed that the fundamental rights and freedoms of Georgians living in the occupied areas are violated on a daily basis and international security mechanisms need to be created on the ground to ease the situation.



Another issue the Georgian side raised in Geneva was the necessity of protecting cultural monuments on the territory of the occupied areas.



The meeting also stressed the need for the immediate detention of a man from Abkhazia who killed a Georgian citizen at the "border line last year. But the occupied side suspended his prosecution.



The next round of the Geneva International Discussions is scheduled for March 27-28, 2018. (agenda.ge)







Georgian Government offers internship opportunity to ethnic minority students



The Government of Georgia is offering internships at state agencies to graduates and final-year students representing ethnic minorities of the country.



The new programme aims to better integrate the countrys ethnic minority groups into society.



After todays government meeting, the State Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality, Ketevan Tsikhelashvili said that the new internship program will be open to those students who are part of the 1+4 program.



The 1+4 program was launched in 2010 and it offers a one-year Georgian language preparation course for those who represent ethnic minority groups and desire to become university students and study in Georgia for four years.



Each year, the state offers scholarships within the 1+4 program to about 100 ethnic Armenian and 100 ethnic Azerbaijani students.



Tsikhelashvili believes that giving an internship opportunity at government departments to these students and graduates will further help them in their career.



"One of the main goals and priorities of our Government is civic integration [and] creation of the society where every citizen are equal and have the opportunity to fully realise themselves. It is also a priority to engage ethnic minorities in different aspects of life, Tsikhelashvili said.



She added that a pilot program has already been implemented in the beginning of this year, within which 65 young people went through an internship at 20 government departments and state agencies.



"The results of the pilot project were very positive, Tsikhelashvili said.



She added that now more ethnic minority representatives will be given such an opportunity. (Agenda.ge)




Josh McCloud heard something pawing up by the rooftop, but it wasnt reindeer.

This guy was too big for all the traps we set, McCloud said of the Norway rat he captured Wednesday morning at a home west of Reserve Street. After we sealed the house up, he started climbing into the ductwork and wreaking havoc. He was hungry.

The gray rat was the size of a mans fist, with a scaly tail about 9 inches long. McCloud had seen bigger ones when he worked in Chicago, but this was the first one hed caught in Missoula since he started his HoldFast Enviro Pest Solutions business six years ago.

We were doing a routine trap-and-bait to get mice out, McCloud said. I had no idea he was in there. Once theyre here, theyre really hard to get rid of.

Norway rats arent native to Montana. In fact, theyre not native to the United States. And theyre pretty much disliked everywhere else in the world.

They probably hopped a ride on a train coming into the state, said retired University of Montana mammalogist Kerry Foresman. Thats generally how they move. Our colder climate historically kept them out. But were getting into a scenario in the next 20 to 50 years where this type of thing will be more common. With increased temperatures and milder winters, invasive species like that will get well established.

Norway rats dont trigger the same defensive alarms as northern pike in a trout fishery or star thistle in a horse pasture. Theyve been spotted in Great Falls and Helena, although in small numbers. That said, Montana Department of Agriculture vertebrate pest specialist Stephen Vantassel wasnt happy to hear about a new observation.

There is no detente in this battle, Vantassel said. Go for victory. You want to control them sooner than later.

In addition to being fast-breeding, voracious, intelligent, trap-wary, disease-bearing, steel-gnawing challengers to human planetary domination, Norway rats also ravage local bird populations  especially ground-nesters. McCloud recalled watching pest-control training videos of rats leaping out of burrows to catch and kill pigeons. Fortunately, Norway rats arent known to carry hantavirus, a deadly human disease transmitted by native deer mice and packrats.

Norway rats are commensal rodents, Vantassel said. Thats the Latin term for 'share the table.' Theyre well adapted to the human environment.

To get them out of that human environment, Vantassel recommended against adding cats. Felines can be equally harsh on birds and other non-target species. Instead, he advised a pestilential version of supply-side economics: Remove the food supplies rodents depend on and remove many of the rodents.

The last technique is control, Vantassel said. When you have an incident where you see or hear mice in walls, declare war. This is not the time to set a trap. Lots of people buy a couple traps, catch one mouse, and think the problem is over. For a 1,200-square-foot house, Id set two dozen snap traps.

McCloud said he will return to the Missoula home to look for more rats. He used a swing-panel case trap to catch the first rat alive. The family living there had small children, and a rat-sized snap trap can break an adults finger. Now that the species is confirmed, however, hes ready for war.

Theyre the second-most successful mammal on the planet after us, McCloud said. They chew into houses and climb really well and if they get into the sewer system, they take advantage of that. Theyre a tough pest to get rid of.
The University of Montana Foundation touted the sale of its Montana Island Lodge to the highest bidder, but the Commissioner of Higher Education said he wished UM had procured more than $1.6 million to benefit the flagship.

"We're celebrating the fact that the University of Montana has these resources to put toward its mission this week," Cindy Williams, CEO and president of the UM Foundation, said Wednesday.

The UM Foundation had listed the Salmon Lake property in spring 2014 at $6.5 million, and its more recent listing offered the lodge for $2.49 million.

Commissioner Clayton Christian said he believed an earlier appraisal had come in well below $6.5 million, possibly around $3 million. He said he didn't know enough about the sale to be concerned about the amount, but he had hoped proceeds would be higher for the island and lakefront property.

"I'm a little surprised and disappointed in the sales price," Christian said. "Obviously, we want the foundation to maximize gifts and assets to the best they can for the benefit of our students."

The Montana Department of Revenue counts the market value of the property at some $5.1 million in all, with the island valued at $4.7 million and the lakefront acreage at $451,000 in 2017. But agency values can vary widely from actual sales prices.

In this case, Williams said the offer the UM Foundation accepted was the highest one any party has made for the unique 18,000-square-foot-lodge.

"The foundation did receive more than one offer to purchase the (Montana Island) lodge property. And the $1.6 million offer was the highest received and the highest ever received on the property in the time it's been for sale," Williams said.

Williams declined to share appraisals of the island and lakefront parcels, but she said the value of any property is ultimately the price a buyer will pay. Realtors informed decisions about the listing price, she said, and she made the decision to accept the $1.6 million offer in consultation with members of the governing board.

And the CEO said the market value of the property appears to be $1.6 million: "The value is really what someone will pay."

***

The Lipson family who owns the Resort at Paws Up paid cash for the Montana Lake Lodge and lakefront property, said Kirby Christian, the family's attorney. Kirby Christian is Clay Christian's brother; each said neither has any ownership interest in the property.

The Lipson family is the sole owner of the MEBC, the Montana Educational Benefit Company, which bought the lodge, said Kirby Christian. He said the Lipsons learned the price had been reduced, and they negotiated a fair amount given the condition of the property: "It does need work."

In an email, Larry Lipson said MEBC will contribute the real estate to a new charity the family is forming, the Montana Educational Benefit Foundation, and it will not be an extension of the resort. He said the foundation will be supported by the Lipson family and the community.

"The purpose of the foundation is to provide educational benefits to the state of Montana, which includes but is not limited to the support or sponsorship of scholastic events, seminars and publications," Lipson said. "The foundation plans to grant scholarships to qualified Montana students for advanced university studies.

"The Foundation (also) will host events for prominent educators in the fields of hospitality, culinary and training on the property."

***

In a phone call, CEO Williams said the Realtors did market the property, but she wasn't immediately prepared to cite a comprehensive list of all their strategies. She said they posted the property online, marketed it through a print publication, pushed it through social media, and discussed it with potential buyers.

She also noted the property is unusual, with 11 bedrooms and significant square footage, and the sellers always suspected it might not attract a private individual, but an entity that might use it for a function such as a group retreat. She said the UM Foundation has not retained any ownership in the Seeley Lake parcels.

Philanthropist Dennis Washington donated the property to the UM Foundation in 1995, according to UM. A donor agreement notes proceeds from the sale will be split among the four UM campuses, a UM official said earlier.

In January 2016, former vice president of finance Mike Reid said that the campus shouldn't drop the price too far below $6.5 million. That amount would allow UM to recoup roughly $1 million in maintenance costs through 2014 and receive a share of the remaining proceeds.

But Commissioner Christian said for whatever reason, the property hasn't attracted too many interested buyers. He said former UM President Royce Engstrom decided to list the property a few years ago partly because the flagship wasn't using the lodge and UM was busy with other efforts.

He said he understands the reason for the lower listing price given the earlier appraisal. However, UM has been in a budget crunch, and Christian said he wants the foundation to make the most of gifts to the campus.

"I'm not really in a position to second-guess it. Maybe that's what they thought they were doing. But I know certainly over the years, we'd hoped there was more of an asset there," Christian said.
After months in temporary offices, Stockman Bank Missoula Market President Bob Burns got to invite the community to his new building dominating the corner of Orange Street and Broadway.

Im not sure people viewed this as the gateway to downtown before, but they do so more now, Burns said during an opening tour of the six-story office tower. This investment has really expanded that idea.

About 200 city business leaders joined Burns for a view off the banks top-floor balcony, which overlooks the Clark Fork River as it flows from Mount Sentinel west to the far edge of the Missoula Valley. The banks conference room looks eye-to-eye with the St. Patrick Hospitals Western Montana Clinic and down on the spire of the St. Francis Roman Catholic Church. Its combination of brick facade, green window walls and stucco repeats the style of Stockman Banks 34 locations around the state.

It says Missoula is growing and open for business, said Nicole Rush of the Missoula Economic Partnership. Weve already had several companies tour it. I think it will be an anchor for this end of downtown and the Old Sawmill District as that comes online.

Burns said the construction salvaged as much as possible of the former Salvation Army building it replaced, and its design is in competition for greenest building in the state because of its energy efficiency, low-impact materials and healthy environmental qualities.

When completed, the building will provide commercial lending, residential mortgages, wealth management and insurance. It has enclosed customer parking and drive-up service.
COLUMBIA FALLS  School closures, downed power lines and challenging commutes announced the arrival of winter weather Wednesday in northwest Montana.

An avalanche warning also was posted for the mountains of west-central Montana, including the Bitterroot, Rattlesnake, southern Missions and southern Swan mountains near Seeley Lake.

And if that's not challenging enough, bitter cold temperatures are set to arrive Friday.

The storm dumped over 17 inches of snow in 24 hours Wednesday on the community of Hungry Horse.

Snow plow crews reported over three feet of snow between West Glacier and Devils Creek in the past 48 hours. Other crews reported 14 inches of snow had fallen between Noxon and Bull Lake. Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell reported 11.4 inches.

Schools in Columbia Falls, Whitefish, West Glacier and Troy were closed Wednesday. Polson schools were running on a two-hour delay.

Columbia Falls School Superintendent Steve Bradshaw said many of the schools bus routes were impassible following a storm that brought lots of snow and high winds.

Ive had easier mornings, Bradshaw said. The county worked really hard to stay ahead of the snow and theyve done a good job. But last night, the wind blew hard enough that I figured I would get that 5:30 call telling me the buses couldnt go.

Five of the 21 bus routes travel up in the canyon around the Hungry Horse community.

Bradshaw was told the snow was blowing hard enough in Hungry Horse that state plow crews were stalled by large drifts up to three feet deep.

One of my longtime bus drivers told me that was the first time that he had seen that happen, Bradshaw said. We also run buses on a number of country lanes. Very few of those have been plowed out this morning.

Bradshaw said it was hard to know just how much snow had fallen in Columbia Falls.

It might have been somewhere between 12 and 18 inches, he said. The wind blew so hard that its hard to measure. Last night, we also had a freezing type of rain that fell on top of the snow. It made for some treacherous driving conditions.

National Weather Service meteorologist Genki Kino said communities north of Polson received the most snow from the storm.

The snow levels didnt get quite low enough for Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley, Kino said, although snow began falling in Missoula about 7:15 a.m.

A surge of arctic air will change that later this week.

Were looking at some colder air moving into the region Thursday night into Friday through most of western Montana, said National Weather Service meteorologist Trent Smith. We could get a quick shot of snow in most areas in the range of a half inch to three-quarters of inch, but the bigger picture will be the significantly colder temperatures on Friday and Saturday. All of western Montana could see lows below zero and highs in the single digits to the teens.

While the models are still a little bit uncertain, Smith said there appears to be a chance for snow on Christmas Day.

Winter has arrived, Smith said.

This story contains information from the Associated Press.
Legislation to protect a portion of the East Rosebud Creek passed in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester and co-sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, seeks for 20 miles of the waterway to be designated part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

That classification would protect the affected portions of the creek from development and dams to ensure that they remain free-flowing.

Tester called Wednesday "a historic day for the next generation of Montana" and "a giant first step in protecting this area for our kids and our grandkids," but said nothing is guaranteed at this point.

"It's in Congressman (Greg) Gianforte's bailiwick now, and hopefully he can get it through the House to get it to the President's desk," Tester said. Groundwork and support from Montanans helped the bill reach this point, Tester said.

Under the legislation, stewardship of the affected parts of Rosebud Creek would fall to the U.S. Forest Service. It would cost less than $500,000, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate from April 2017.

The 20 miles of water the legislation seeks to protect is made up of two smaller segments of the East Rosebud Creek. One portion is a 13-mile segment on public land within the Custer National Forest, with a source in the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness. The section includes the point at which the creek enters East Rosebud Lake, including the stream between Twin Outlets Lake and Fossil Lake.

The second portion of the the creek is a 7-mile segment, also on Custer National Forest public land, and is described in the bill as "immediately below, but not including, the outlet of East Rosebud Lake downstream to the point at which the Creek enters private property for the first time."

Daines said he on Tuesday asked Energy and National Resources committee chair Sen. Lisa Murkowski and ranking committee Democrat Maria Cantwell to help the East Rosebud Wild and Scenic Rivers Act pass Wednesday night. Tester said he also spoke with Cantwell recently and credited her with helping the bill pass.

The bill passed by consent at around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Speaking about the bill's passage, Daines emphasized his happiness at the bipartisan work behind it.

"You don't always hear about people cooperating with people from other parties and getting things done," Daines said. "That's good news for Montana and good news for America. In the polarized world of politics, it's a great thing to get this done."

A second piece of legislation affecting Montana land was also passed Wednesday. The Alex Diekmann Peak Designation Act of 2017, sponsored by Daines and co-sponsored by Tester, seeks to name 9,765-foot peak in the Madison Range after Diekmann, a Bozeman-area conservationist.

The peak is located roughly 2 miles northwest of Finger Mountain on the western boudnary of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, according to the text of the bill.

Diekmann died of cancer in February 2016, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Though no one would discuss specifics at the time, the governors office and a private prison operator were negotiating before and during last months special legislative session about a potential deal to generate about $30 million to help fill Montana's budget hole.

The possible deal with CoreCivic, operator of the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, was a key point of contention during the special session called to deal with an anticipated $227 million shortfall in the state budget.

Emails obtained through a public records request show that offers were made and countered through emails and phone calls between CoreCivic and the office of Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.

It was unclear during the session, which ran Nov. 13-15, whether Bullock was discussing anything specific with CoreCivic.

Bullock never said directly if he would be willing to accept roughly $30 million  which the state had paid into an escrow account to possibly purchase the prison when Montana's contract with CoreCivic expired in mid-2019  in exchange for extending the contract.

A senior adviser to the governor said last week the most recent offer Bullock presented to CoreCivic was turned down because the length of the contract extension was not long enough.

Its not clear at this point if a deal will be worked out going forward.

Republican lawmakers said they first hatched the idea of accepting money from the account when CoreCivic approached them before the special session, saying the company had trouble getting traction with the governor to discuss what would happen with their contract when it expired in mid-2019. The existing contract has the option for two five-year extensions.

Since 1999, Montana has contracted with CoreCivic to run Crossroads, which houses about 660 prisoners. The state has paid a $9.17 per-prisoner per-day facility use fee into a fund that can be tapped at the end of the contract to go toward the cost of buying the prison. The use fee is in addition to about $64 the state pays per-prisoner per-day under an operating agreement.

Democrats did not support any deal, with opposition ranging from concerns over the ethics of private prison operations and CoreCivic using the states financial crisis for its own gain.

Republicans countered that it was a good way to access $30 million to help the state out when it needed funds desperately and that the Shelby prison has a lower cost-per-prisoner-per-day than the state prison in Deer Lodge, $117.16 a day in 2016.

The ultimate outcome of the special session included $76 million in cuts to state agencies, about $94 million in fund transfers and charging a fee on some State Fund accounts to bring in $30 million. That leaves about a $27 million anticipated hole if revenues continue to come in as predicted and lower than amounts from which the state budget was built.

A bill passed during the special session creates an account for any money from a deal with CoreCivic. The first $15 million of anything the state gets would go the fire suppression account and the rest could be used to offset cuts to state spending.

Eric Stern, a senior adviser to Bullock, said Friday in an email that the governor spoke with Damon Hininger, the chief executive officer of CoreCivic, on the eve of the special session. Stern said Bullock told Hininger he felt using the states situation to leverage a new contract was not appropriate.

Then followed some conversations directly between the governors office and CoreCivic about a temporary extension, when the special session was upon us and it was clear that money to pay for the fire season was going to be hard to come by, Stern wrote.

CoreCivic indicated we could have the $30 million if wed extend the contract for a period from six months to 10 years. We offered to extend six months and CoreCivic did not accept," he wrote.

Emails between Hininger and Tom Lopach, the governors chief of staff, on Nov. 15 at 5 p.m., about eight hours before the session wrapped up, show other details of CoreCivic's counter-proposal at that point, including:

 A one-time payment from CoreCivic of $32.7 million. According to the email, the company originally proposed a payment of $29 million, based on the total facility-use fee the state had paid to date. The governors office had proposed the $32.7 million, which includes money the U.S. Marshals service had also paid for people it housed at the prison.

 A five-year renewal to 2024. Crossroads agreement had a base term of 20 years, which expires Aug. 31, 2019, with two five-year renewal options. CoreCivic had proposed an initial extension for both options, to 2029. The state would retain its right to buy the facility at any time, as well as retain its current termination rights.

 Eliminating the per diem rate. The state had proposed eliminating the facility-use fee, which it had paid in addition to a per diem rate. The use fee, according to the email from Hininger, has been used for maintenance, capital expenses and property taxes. In eliminating the daily-use fee and blending the two per diems into one rate of $72.50, the state would see no additional annual costs, Hininger wrote.

Emails show that Lopach and Hininger spoke the morning of Nov. 15, the last day of the session.

As I mentioned, the governor is interested in the proposal you suggested based on the following terms, Lopach wrote, which would include the state receiving $32.7 million from the building account, extending the contract just six months past its current end date, to Dec. 31, 2019, and having a contract for a $64.73 daily rate, which would eliminate the $9.14 daily rate that had gone into the building account.

Thats the deal CoreCivic turned down.

Before the session, Bullock told a group of Montana television stations on Oct. 31 he hadn't seen a specific proposal and didn't want to explore that route.

An email from Quinn Holzer, operations director for the Legislative Fiscal Division, on Oct. 11 says Crossroads has been in talks with the executive regarding the re-negotiation of the contract. Holzer said this week he didn't mean to imply CoreCivic and Bullock had met directly and that his information about a possible deal came from Mark Baker, a lobbyist for CoreCivic.

It was my understanding that CoreCivic had been reaching out to the executive branch, attempting to open lines of communication. However, to my knowledge, there was not a specific proposal or a draft from which any re-negotiations would be made. I only know that CoreCivic was actively trying to open lines of communication, he wrote.

Holzer works for the legislative branch, and legislators cannot renegotiate contracts for the state; only Bullock can do that.

On Nov. 1, Bullocks budget director Dan Villa said a deal with CoreCivic wasnt an option in the eyes of the governor's office, saying it would conflict with the goal of a series of bills passed during the last legislative session aimed at reducing the number of people in jail.

We dont see the wisdom of ignoring all of the work done through justice reinvestment. We want fewer people in prison, we want to spend less on hard beds. Were not giving those a second to work but rather extending a contract for 10 years. There just isnt wisdom in that, Villa told Lee Newspapers.

An email from Nov. 9 shows that Hininger spoke with Lopach the night before and made an initial proposal then.

When asked Nov. 10 about any potential deal, Bullock's office did not directly answer, emailing a statement that said:

"What the governor proposed earlier this week is the result of weeks of discussions with Republican and Democratic legislators. ... The governor has put forth a reasonable solution that honors the 'a third, a third, a third' approach legislators on both sides of the aisle have said they are comfortable with. These proposals do not jeopardize our ability to negotiate the best terms for a long-term contract and get the best deal for Montana taxpayers."
Several Montana teens were recently featured on the national Megyn Kelly Today show to talk about suicide prevention efforts in the state.

As part of a series called Stressed Out Teens, Kellys crew interviewed teens from Great Falls and Helena and brought two of them, including Kaytlin Newlun of Helena, to film in New York. On the show, Newlun talked about her own mental health problems and why she thinks Montana has a particularly high rate of suicide.

The rate of suicide has increased by 28 percent in the United States since 2000, although the rates are variable by region and state. According to the 2016 Montana Suicide Mortality Report, the Intermountain West states have the highest rate of suicide as a region, and Montana has been among the top 5 states for four decades.

Kellys team came across the Montana students after reading a story in the Great Falls Tribune about a new app, called #LetsTalk. In addition to bringing the apps creator Nicole Zimmerman, a program coordinator at Great Falls Alliance for Youth, the show brought Newlun and a student from Great Falls.

Newlun said she was selected because she started a club at Helena High School called HHS Together.

Newlun started the club after one of her friends died by suicide. She told the show she has chronic health issues that cause physical pain every day that can lead to depression. HHS Together puts up posters around school to create awareness on the warning signs of suicide and different student resources. Newlun said she hopes to provide stress relieving activities during semester testing and advertise clubs to get students involved.

Its proven that getting involved can help you find friends and improve your mood, she said. You dont feel so alone.

Newlun said she thinks students in Montana are prone to feeling isolated and dont have enough resources when theyre experiencing mental health problems. She also said Facebook and other social media platforms create an intense competition and need for validation. Instead of hearing in person about several friends accomplishments, social media allows her to compare herself to endless people.

Newlun said young people are facing pressure to figure out their lives right after graduation, and they experience more pressure than their parents did to attend college. When one of her peers posted on Facebook that she got into her dream school, Newlun said she felt bad about her own financial decision to attend a community college.

So much knowledge of other peoples achievements make people need to live up to what other people are doing, she said.

But Newlun said she thinks young peoples involvement in the conversation on how to prevent suicide is a step in the right direction. She said it was humbling to be on Megyn Kelly Today to advocate for all youth in the United States. She said they werent given much information on what Kelly would ask or how long they would be filmed.

It was mostly nerve-wracking, but it also felt like we were doing something important, she said.

Although the app is fairly new, Newlun said she thinks it will connect students to important resources in the community.

Zimmerman developed #LetsTalk to put resources for suicide prevention in the hands of students. She asked students to help come up with content and promote #LetsTalk. The app has information on the warning signs of suicide, contact numbers, a calendar of events and for Great Falls users, a list of safe spaces. On the safe spaces tab, users can see different organizations on a map of Great Falls such as the police department and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Any business or organization can complete a form on the app to become a safe space.

On Kellys show, part of Montanas high rate of suicide was attributed to access to firearms, alcohol and and a social stigma that keeps people from seeking help.

The app is hoping to dismantle the social stigma.

We talked to youth and found out what they wanted, Zimmerman told Kelly.

The #LetsTalk app is available to download on iPhone and Android devices.

Warning signs of suicide include repeatedly talking about wanting to die or feeling a sense of hopelessness, increasing use of alcohol or drugs, changes in sleep habits, isolation and displaying extreme mood swings. People who know of someone exhibiting warning signs should remove firearms, alcohol, drugs or other objects that could be used in a suicide attempt and seek help from a medical or mental health professional or call a suicide hotline.

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-TALK.
Dear citizens of Lake and Sanders counties and the Flathead Reservation:

Stewardship. Its an old-fashioned word but at this holiday season and beyond, it still rings true with the obligations and opportunities we have to be sure that what we were given by those who passed before us is there in a usable way for those who come after us. It was made all the more real by the giants of the past generation, many of whom have passed recently.

I have had the honor and privilege of serving you as district judge of the 20th Judicial District for Lake and Sanders counties for the last three terms and going on 18 years. As I seek your vote in my re-election this next year, I want to reaffirm the commitment I made to you in 2000; of stewardship for the responsibilities Ive been given.

My prior elected office, as Lake Countys district attorney for two terms, six years before I assumed the bench, carried the same weight, responsibilities and opportunity for stewardship in the legal system we were given by those who came before us. The chance to help, to make a difference, to represent you, to respect the people before me by holding them accountable for their actions, and to the law our legislature determines. This has not always been easy but I cherish the trust that accompanied that responsibility.

Before I assumed elected office, I worked in civil practice in Polson with the French, Mercer, Grainey and ONeill law firm, which I joined from Cascade County, where I was a deputy attorney. I had my chance to return to Montana from my service in the U. S. Army as an Airborne JAG (Judge Advocate Generals Corps) officer. Recently I was considered for the Montanas federal U.S. district attorney position. During my law career, I have practiced in private practice and tried hundreds of cases as a district judge and as an attorney. Most importantly, I have had the privilege of serving you and my country for the bulk of my professional career.

I was mentored by Chief Justice Jean Turnage. I practiced before District Judge C.B. McNeil as an attorney until I assumed the bench, where I had the privilege of working with Judge McNeil for 13 years. I have handled cases as small as a traffic citation and a large as a capital homicide case where the defendant was convicted and sentenced to death. During this last term, I sat as the presiding judge on the civil case concerning the death of three people and others injured due to the failure of a car manufactured by Hyundai. In that case, the jury awarded damages in the amount of $8.1 million and a punitive verdict of $240 million, the fifth-largest verdict in the United States at that time. I have sat on the Montana Supreme Court when one of our current Supreme Court justices was unable.

I have had the privilege and honor to serve where I was raised here in Polson by my mother and father Dick and Keenie Christopher and work where both sets of my grandparents lived, in Great Falls where my dads folks lived, and currently in Sanders County where my mom was raised. Most importantly for me, I have had the chance to raise my sons in Montana.

Law has been a blessed career for me as it allowed me to serve the people with whom I was raised in a place I love. I ask for your continued support this next election year and look forward to using my experience and commitment to this land and people in continuing to serve you.
Chuck Denowhs recent guest column, titled EPA overreach has consequences, cites the story of a landowner near Basin convicted of violating the Clean Water Act as a cautionary tale of federal overreach. The opinion  rife with misinformation and exaggeration  paints the picture of a disabled veteran, unscrupulously persecuted by an army of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lawyers intent on imprisoning landowners for installing fences and digging ditches.

Sound like its not based in reality? Thats because it isnt.

For starters, the landowner was convicted of destroying sensitive wetlands on both private and federal property that he didnt own, without any active state or federal permits, after repeatedly being warned that his activities were unlawful by both federal and state officials. But more important than the factual inaccuracies peddled by Denowh, are the equally false notions regarding the underlying purpose of the Clean Water Act and the EPAs role in carrying out the law as intended by Congress.

The purpose of the Clean Water Act is to eliminate pollution of the nations navigable waterways. The act broadly defines the protected navigable waterways as the waters of the United States. So, what are the waters of the United States? This question has been the subject of controversy since the act was passed by Congress in the 1970s. Congress and the nations federal courts have both grappled with the question but had been unable to reach a clear consensus.

Contrary to Denowhs assertion, the United States Supreme Court itself could not reach a majority opinion on the scope of the federal governments jurisdiction to protect the waters of the United States. In fact, recognizing that this decision was best left to the agencys expertise rather than the courts, members of the Supreme Court urged the EPA to conduct new public rule-making to clearly define the waters of the United States. This request was echoed by members of Congress, developers, farmers, state and local governments, energy companies and others.

The EPA then did precisely what it was encouraged to do: conduct public rule-making to clarify the Clean Water Acts jurisdiction. The result of the EPAs rulemaking is the 2015 Clean Water Rule, based on years of scientific study, agency review and public input.

The Clean Water Rule takes a science-based approach to watershed protection, including protections for headwaters, tributary streams and wetlands. This is based on the hydrologic fact that water flows downhill, and upstream pollution will affect connected downstream waters.

The 2015 rule also provided much-needed clarity to the Clean Water Act, identifying which categories of waters are protected under the act and which are exempt. The rule includes a number of exclusions that protect Montanas agricultural industry and eliminate confusion for landowners, municipalities and small businesses.

The current EPA administration, led by Scott Pruitt, is working steadfastly to dismantle clean water protections that safeguard our drinking water and sustain the lifeblood of Montanas agricultural and recreational economy. Using short public comment periods and abstract bureaucratic procedures, the administration is attempting to invalidate the Clean Water Rule, making it easier for polluters to degrade our streams and wetlands.

Here in Montana, we understand the value of clean water. Over 100 years of under-regulated mineral extraction has left the state riddled with damaged waterways and burdened taxpayers with millions of dollars in cleanup costs. Do we really want to roll back the laws that protect our clean water and our economy?

A cautionary tale indeed.
Recently, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines introduced a bill to release approximately 500,000 acres of public land currently protected under the Montana Wilderness Study Act (MWSA).

This 1977 act created nine areas comprising 972,000 acres of land in Montana to be studied to see if they qualified for inclusion into the National Wilderness System.

That was 40 years ago. Congress directed the secretary of Agriculture to report its study findings within five years of implementation of the act. By 1982 the U.S. Forest Service (an agency of the Department of Agriculture) did an assessment and recommended that most of the WSAs should be managed as non-wilderness.

Congress has yet to act on those recommendations. In lieu of congressional action, by the late 1980s the Forest Service embarked on a policy of managing these WSAs as de facto wilderness, which prohibited most of the original uses permitted by the 1977 MWSA. This included prohibiting all motorized and mechanized access.

Forty years is far too long to "study" anything and it is classic government gridlock. The longstanding impasse demonstrates out-of-state interests making policy that directly affect Montanans.

Support Senator Daines and move public land utilization of WSAs off dead-center.

Rick Shaw,

Missoula
The Mount News Center

Featuring the extraordinary people, stories and news of Mount St. Mary's University, America's oldest independent Catholic university. Members of the media looking for information about setting up interviews, finding faculty experts or gaining access to campus for stories should contact Executive Director of Communications Donna Klinger at 301-447-5657 or d.j.klinger@msmary.edu.

Have a question, comment to share or want to find a photo from this week's big event? Check out the Mount on our social media channels!
A woman who apparently died of exposure in a rural area south of Butte has been identified as Nicole Reynolds, 34, of Helena, Butte-Silver Bow Coroner Lee LaBreche said Thursday.

Search and rescue workers found Reynoldss body late Wednesday morning on private property in the Little Basin Creek area.

LaBreche said it appears that she died of hypothermia. Foul play is not suspected, and her death appears to be accidental, LaBreche said.

Reynolds was reported missing around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday after she left a residence on the 500 block of Elkhorn Lane, off Little Basin Creek Road. Reynolds had walked away from the residence around 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, authorities said. Butte police were called after friends and relatives were unable to locate her after searching the area.

Reynolds's body was found around 11 a.m. Wednesday approximately 2.5 miles from the residence where she was last seen.

Her body was transported to the state crime lab in Missoula for toxicology and autopsy findings, LaBreche said Thursday.
Shoplifting, etc.

Police arrested Anyssa Burch, 30, of Butte at about 8 p.m. Wednesday at Town Pump, 531 S. Montana St., after an employee at Stokes Market, 1301 Harrison Ave., reportedly saw her put a shopping basket behind a counter that contained empty packages, according to police. Police said they found Burch at the Town Pump about 45 minutes later. She was arrested on charges of shoplifting, possession of drug paraphernalia, criminal contempt, and probation violation, all misdemeanors. While processing Burch at the jail, officers allegedly found a glass pipe used to smoke methamphetamine.

Marijuana possession

Police arrested Gordon Crain, 26, of Butte at about 9 p.m. Wednesday on West Quartz Street for two misdemeanors: possession of dangerous drugs and criminal contempt. According to police, Crain showed up for a court-sanctioned alcohol rehabilitation program and, during a search, police found marijuana in his possession.

Drug paraphernalia

Police arrested Alex Osier, 20, of Butte on the 200 block of Park Street at about 3:30 a.m. Thursday for two misdemeanors: possession of drug paraphernalia and criminal contempt. Police allegedly recognized Osier as having a warrant out for his arrest and during the booking process found a glass pipe used for smoking marijuana.

Reckless driving

Police arrested Lester Petrovich, 30, of Butte at about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday for three misdemeanors: reckless driving, failure to show proof of insurance, and driving without a valid license. Petrovich was headed west on Platinum Street when he allegedly veered onto a sidewalk, crossed Aluminum Street, and struck several vehicles in a parking lot.

Outstanding warrant

Police arrested William Mehrens, 62, of Butte on a criminal contempt warrant from Butte City Court at about 2 p.m. Wednesday. Animal control had asked for assistance while citing Mehrens for a park ordinance violation of having a dog in Stodden Park. When police arrived, they found that Mehrens had the outstanding warrant.
Montana's congressional delegation is asking U.S. Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke to support a conservation easement on 22,275-acres of private land near the Kootenai National Forest.

Members of the delegation said Wednesday that approval of the Kootenai Forestland Project in northwest Montana would sustain timber industry jobs and protect hunting, fishing and hiking access. It also would block residential development.

U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte asked Tooke to make the project a 2019 funding priority.

Daines and Gianforte are Republicans. Tester is a Democrat.

Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks said $6 million in federal money requested for the easement represents 75 percent of the cost.

The remaining 25 percent would come as a contribution in the form of donated land from Portland, Oregon-based Stimson Lumber.
I-183 threatens rights, freedoms

I'm an Affordable Care Act Navigator, which means it's my job to help anyone who needs it find access to health insurance. I wasn't very aware of the challenges faced by transgender Montanans before doing this job. But now I believe that our transgender neighbors should have the same rights and access to public facilities as all other Montanans.

I-183 threatens those rights and intrudes on personal freedoms all while asking local governments to foot the bill for unreasonable and unethical regulations. The proposed initiative would force Montanans to anyone demanding to see paperwork before allowing access to facilities in public spaces, such as libraries, parks and schools.

And all of this will cost Montana real money. North Carolina lost $5 billion in federal funding, $40 million in business investment and 1,250 jobs after enacting a similar bathroom bill. I hope you'll join me in supporting transgender Montanans and opposing I-183.

-- Marguerite Jodry, Billings
NOTICE:

TO BE CLEAR:

WE HAVE OUTLINED UNDER OUR RECORD MAINTENANCE POLICY WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE A FAIR PROCESS FOR ALL. SIMPLY PUT: IF THE COURT SAW FIT TO EXPUNGE YOUR RECORD,SO WILL WE, FREE OF CHARGE. ARRESTS DO NOT IMPLY GUILT AND CRIMINAL CHARGES ARE MERELY ACCUSATIONS,EVERYONE IS PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW AND CONVICTED. FCRA DISCLAIMER: MUGSHOTS.COM DOES NOT PROVIDE CONSUMER REPORTS AND IS NOT A CONSUMER REPORTING AGENCY. OUR DATABASE CANNOT BE USED TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT CONSUMER CREDIT, EMPLOYMENT, INSURANCE, TENANT SCREENING, OR ANY OTHER PURPOSES THAT WOULD REQUIRE FCRA COMPLIANCE. MUGSHOTS.COM PARTICIPATES IN AFFILIATE PROGRAMS WITH VARIOUS COMPANIES. WE MAY EARN A COMMISSION WHEN YOU CLICK ON OR MAKE PURCHASES VIA LINKS. MUGSHOTS.COM IS AN AGGREGATOR OF THE TODAYS CRIME NEWS. IN EACH FRONT-PAGE POST, THE HYPERLINK TO THE PRIMARY SOURCE IS SPECIFIED. ALL TRADEMARKS BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS, ALL MATERIALS TO THEIR AUTHORS. IF YOU ARE THE OWNER OF THE CONTENT AND DO NOT WANT US TO PUBLISH YOUR MATERIALS, PLEASE CONTACT US BY EMAIL mugshots.com1@gmail.com. THE CONTENT WILL BE DELETED WITHIN 48 HOURS.

MUGSHOTS.COM IS A NEWS ORGANIZATION. WE POST AND WRITE THOUSANDS OF NEWS STORIES A YEAR, MOST WANTED STORIES, EDITORIALS (UNDER CATEGORIES - BLOG) AND STORIES OF EXONERATIONS. OUR CONTENT REVOLVES AROUND CRIME, ARRESTS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT. WE BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION AND OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO PUBLISH UNPOPULAR SPEECH. OPEN RECORD LAWS WERE WRITTEN TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC; BY INFORMING THE PUBLIC OF ARRESTS AND TO HOLD LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ARRESTEES. MOST OF, IF NOT ALL MUGSHOT LAWS WERE CRAFTED TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM FEES FOR REMOVAL OF ONLINE MUGSHOTS AND TO FURTHER PROTECT THE PRESS FROM THOSE VERY SAME "MUGSHOT LAWS".WE DO NOT ACCEPT PAYMENT FOR REMOVAL OF ARREST INFORMATION AND/OR BOOKING PHOTOGRAPHS. MORE...
On Monday President Donald Trump rolled out his national security strategy, a key planning document that every president since Ronald Reagan has published to warn about threats to American national security and how best to respond to them.

Trump's plan is, unsurprisingly, an unabashedly "America First" strategy that, at 55 dense pages, is full of insights into how Trump's national security advisers see the world.

While usual suspects such as Iran and North Korea are described as threats, and campaign promises about the need for a border wall with Mexico are acknowledged, what is most newsworthy about the document is the extent to which it portrays Russia and China, America's traditional major state antagonists, as threatening. The document asserts that Russia and China "want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests," which seems quite at odds with the President's own enthusiastic embrace of Russia.

Overall, the new Trump strategy calls for a policy of "peace through strength" that emphasizes deterring these enemies by preparing US conventional forces for "major war" while also modernizing the country's aging nuclear forces. This new approach is necessary because the strategy document states that, "after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned. China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and globally."

Russia is "using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies...The American public and private sectors must recognize the threat and work together to defend our way of life," according to the strategy document. The document also describes Russian aggression against its neighbors: "With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region."

The document goes on to link Russia's "information operations" to a broader campaign to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users, or "trolls." This, of course, is similar to the US intelligence community's conclusions that Russia meddled in the 2016 American presidential election.

The emphasis on Russian perfidy may, in part, be a reflection of the "lead pen" of the document, Nadia Schadlow, the senior director for strategy at the National Security Council who in the mid-1990s was the desk officer for Ukraine at the Pentagon.

The strategy also calls out China in a number of areas. It accuses the Chinese of stealing US intellectual property every year valued at "hundreds of billions of dollars" and calls for tightening of visa procedures to "reduce economic theft by non-traditional intelligence collectors," which presumably could include the more than 300,000 Chinese students who attend US universities every year.

China "is building the most capable and well-funded military in the world, after our own," including a "diversifying" nuclear arsenal, according to the document, which goes on to warn that Chinese "land reclamation projects and militarization of the South China Seas flouts international law, threatens the free flow of trade, and undermines stability. China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region."

What's missing: Climate change and 'Islamic terrorism'

Where President Barack Obama's 2015 national security strategy document had a significant emphasis on the problematic effects of climate change, the Trump strategy doesn't have much to say about the topic other than to note that bringing down pollution should be a goal of the United States thorough "innovation" rather than "onerous regulation."

Also missing from the new Trump strategy document is any discussion of "radical Islamic terrorism," which is a great preoccupation of the Breitbartian wing of the Republican Party. The document eschews this description of the threat, which critics say conflates Islam and terrorism, settling instead for the uncontroversial and accurate phase "jihadist terrorists" to describe groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda.

This omission will likely provoke fulminations on Fox News by analysts such as Sebastian Gorka, who was forced out of his advisory role at the White House in August and who has made use of the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" a touchstone for the only proper way to describe the threat.

When President Trump delivered a speech Monday about the strategy at the Reagan Building in Washington DC he did invoke the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" despite the fact that the phrase doesn't appear anywhere in the lengthy strategy document. He did not, however, echo any of the document's criticism of Russia in his remarks.

Regarding terrorism, the strategy has some quite harsh words for Pakistan, "since no partnership can survive a country's support for militants and terrorists that targets a partner's own service members and officials," a reference to Pakistan's support for elements of the Taliban that attack American targets in Afghanistan.

NATO continues to play an important role in Afghanistan and, despite Trump's sometimes inflammatory rhetoric about the alliance, the strategy document describes NATO as "one of our great advantages over our competitors." It also calls for European allies in NATO "to increase defense spending to two percent of gross domestic product by 2024," which was also a goal of the Obama administration.

(Disclosure: I was one of the outside experts consulted by the Trump National Security Council as they formulated the strategy.)

What's promising (sort of): Technology and policy

The Trump strategy document includes considerable and welcome discussion of the intertwined roles of technology and policy. The strategy is clear about the threat to the United States posed by cyber intrusions  many of which emanate from the Russians and Chinese. The strategy calls for a defensible, modernized, federal information structure and also a "secure 5G Internet capability nationwide."

The 2016 hack of the obscure US Office of Personnel Management underlined the necessity of radical change in the way that the federal government does business. In that hack, personal information such as the Social Security numbers of more than 20 million current and former US government employees and their families were stolen.

The document calls for further American investments in "data science, encryption, autonomous technologies, gene editing, new materials, nanotechnology, advanced computing technologies, and artificial intelligence" in order to grow the economy of tomorrow. At the same time, it advocates for increased US government understanding of worldwide science and technology trends and their impact on American strategies.

This, of course, is an excellent idea, but as CBS News reported last month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is barely staffed and "has disintegrated into a shell of what it once was under President Obama."

Bolstering the State Department, but how?

The strategy document calls for an enhanced State Department in no uncertain terms: "We must upgrade our diplomatic capabilities to compete in the current environment and to embrace a competitive mindset. Effective diplomacy requires the efficient use of limited resources, a professional diplomatic corps, modern and safe facilities, and secure methods to communicate and engage with local populations."

And yet, this strategy comes at a time when the State Department is largely rudderless under the leadership of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has failed to fill many of the key positions in his department and who has embraced a proposed cut of a third of State's budget at the same time that the Pentagon is getting a 10% budget boost.

Ultimately, the strategy document is the responsibility of the National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster, who early in his Army career published "Dereliction of Duty," a blistering account of how the Pentagon brass during the Vietnam War only told President Lyndon Johnson: "What he wanted to hear...Bearers of bad news or those that expressed views counter to his priorities would hold little sway."

It would be surprising if McMaster were to make the same mistake with this key document that lays out the national security strategy of the United States. That is why the strategy document is unequivocal about the threat to democracies posed by Russian influence operations, even if that is not a message that President Trump always wants to hear.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include further content from Trump's Monday speech.
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 []
With so much advice out there about saving money, being encouraged to spend could sound a little weird. But that's what some financial services firms are telling retirees to do - to make a New Year's resolution to use more of those dollars they've been socking away. With about 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, more attention is being paid to "decumulation" strategies - the process of systematically drawing down all that money you've saved over the years. In theory, that should be a pleasant prospect. In reality, it's hard to flip a mental switch after decades of sacrifice. Moreover, spending more money when less is coming in can be pretty stressful."When we speak about spending resolutions, we usually speak about how to encourage people to spend less," said Meir Statman, a behavioral finance professor at Santa Clara University. "This is right for most young people. But with many older people, the problem is too little spending because of a reluctance to dip into capital."

A good chunk of retired Americans are financially situated to live it up a bit more. Research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and BlackRock Retirement Institute found that, on average, a significant portion of retirees at all levels of wealth weren't spending down much of their non-housing assets even well into retirement. A sample of 9,760 retiree households found that 18 years into retirement, many households still had 80 percent of their assets. (The research measured median non-housing assets, such as IRAs, and taxable savings and investment accounts.) There was even an increase in assets for many retirees through age 85.

The chart below tracks the assets of retiree households in three different wealth categories, from just before retirement to about 18 years later. It shows that even the lower wealth groups held on to a good portion of their assets - the medium wealth group ended up with 77 percent of what it started with while the lowest wealth group retained 80 percent.

These baby boomers have a lot of cash to throw around. But Generation X and millennials won't be so lucky by the time they hit 65. Boomers have defined benefit pension plans and they've profited from long-term real estate appreciation. They've also enjoyed a long period of above-average market returns. The increasing likeli hood of Social Security and Medicare cuts, however, may force future generations to use more of their savings just to get by.

"People have never been taught how to spend money," said Nick Nefouse, head of the defined contribution strategy team at BlackRock. "When you're accumulating money, you think about savings, and compounding, and the weighting of assets. You can't apply those ideas to decumulation - that's about cash flow, volatility around that cash flow, and longevity." BlackRock positions its LifePath target date fund as both an accumulation and decumulation product. The company said it is developing a decumulation tool tied to the fund that will adjust withdrawal recommendations based on factors that include changes in BlackRock's forward-looking capital market assumptions.

Many 401(k) plans that allow retirees to park their assets don't even allow monthly withdrawals. Some have withdrawal fees. To get more flexibility, a retiree may need to roll a 401(k) into an IRA - which can mean losing access to institutional share classes for funds, which are much cheaper than many products sold to retail investors.

Retirees loath to spend are forced to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) at age 70 1/2. The amount withdrawn is based on their 401(k) balance, divided by a life expectancy factor set by the IRS. Rather than take a big distribution at the end of the year, behavioral finance professor Statman suggests that retirees who can afford it (and whose plan allows it) transfer their RMDs from 401(k)s into checking or money market accounts on a monthly basis - to be spent. For people with donor-advised funds, he recommends automatic monthly or annual transfers from the fund to designated charities.

In other words, flip from auto-saving to auto-spending. Done smartly, it could make your life much more pleasant. And it will be a heck of a lot easier than pledging to lose weight or exercise more in the new year.
As Napas land-use and zoning authority tries to square a circle of booming tourism, surging housing prices and a citys changing character, three of its members will continue to have a hand in the effort.

Paul Kelley, Beth Painter and Alex Myers all received new two-year terms on the Planning Commission on Tuesday. The City Council reappointed the trio over three outside candidates who also applied for the jobs.

Painter, a zoning and permitting consultant who previously worked in the Santa Cruz and Ventura county planning departments, won support from all five council members, as did Myers, a Napa-raised real estate and business attorney appointed a year ago. Kelley, a local architect first appointed to the commission in May 2013, garnered three votes to edge out Katherine Lambert, an architect and design professor at the San Francisco-based California College of the Arts, whose two votes were the only ones given to a new candidate.

Also applying were Alton Hoover, an engineer and former professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and Michael Rogers, an entrepreneur.

Interviews by council members revealed a keen awareness of the balancing act that planners face weighing Napas chronic housing needs against the concerns of neighbors  and a burgeoning hotel and vacation industry against preserving some of Napas small-town quality of life.

In her two years on the commission, Painter has faced tussles over high-end lodgings, apartment buildings next to bungalows, and the other friction points of growth.

The most important thing is to be a good listener, she said of the competing interests of Napans old and new. When people come out for or against a project, its important to listen to everyones comments and let the project have its full exposure.

With that said, Painter emphasized the need to explore all paths toward a wider housing supply  and avoid letting such projects languish for years  before Napas inflated rents and selling prices make it even harder for workers to live near their jobs.

Moderate-income housing is something we want to approve, but more importantly, to get it built, she told the council.

Kelley promised his continued support for closer-to-downtown housing, including easier permitting for second units outside existing homes, to minimize the stress on city roads and infrastructure.

The difficulty of making room for vehicles  and the requirement of off-street parking for all residences  is holding back downtown housing that could boost supplies and avoid taxing street capacity, according to Kelley, who pointed to the absence of larger residential projects in the city core besides the 51 townhomes planned at the former Napa Valley Register block on Second Street.

As for Napas hotel supply, Kelley acknowledged its growth is likely to continue, but cautioned against letting too many new lodgings stray deeper into traditionally residential neighborhoods. To me, the question is not how many hotels there are but where they are, and I support having them downtown, he said.

Another, newer kind of lodging was on the mind of Myers, who conceded the difficulty of regulating Airbnb-style in-home rentals despite the requirement Napa created in 2015 for such homeowners to pay for licenses and live on the premises.

With unlicensed, absentee vacation rentals still plentiful online, Myers suggested adding once-a-year, drop-in inspections to prod hosts into obeying city law  and to cast a more skeptical eye on residents like the Napa husband and wife that got the a permit rejection reversed in June after saying they lived in separate homes while staying married.
The first thing to understand about San Francisco politics is with just 7.4 percent of its voters registered as Republicans, the citys main players are self-proclaimed liberals  or progressives in the preferred nomenclature.

The second thing, however, is that in San Francisco, politics is a blood sport and careers can be made or lost by even tiny conflicts of ideology, sexual orientation, ethnicity or personality.

San Franciscans  and the rest of us, vicariously  will soon see another exposition of the citys unique politics because its affable mayor-by-happenstance, Ed Lee, collapsed while grocery shopping last week and died.

This is not a time for political intrigue, city Supervisor Aaron Peskin said shortly after Lees death was announced. This is the time to send a message to the people of the City and County of San Francisco that we can and will govern.

Other local politicians said much the same thing, eschewing any interest in political maneuvering during the period of mourning.

Fat chance.

Almost immediately, the citys political plotters and schemers began plotting and scheming over Lees successor as mayor.

Initially, the title of acting mayor falls to London Breed, who happened to be president of the citys governing body, the Board of Supervisors, when Lee died.

Thats how Dianne Feinstein became acting mayor of San Francisco in 1978 when then-Mayor George Moscone was assassinated by another politician. She later won two full terms and lost a 1990 bid for governor, but won her U.S. Senate seat in 1992.

Conversely, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom became lieutenant governor in 2011, he, former Mayor Willie Brown and political powerhouse Rose Pak joined forces to persuade city supervisors to make Lee, then the city administrator, interim mayor on his promise not to run in 2011. He later reneged and won a term on his own that year.

Those two cases illustrate two points: that filling a mayoral vacancy in San Francisco is a very political process, and that the mayoralty can be, as it was for Feinstein and Newsom, an important rung on the political ladder.

The supervisors could allow Breed to remain as interim mayor, a la Feinstein. But that would freeze out the many other mayoral hopefuls who were planning 2019 bids because shes virtually declared her intent to run. Or the board could name someone else to fill out Lees term, just as he was appointed in 2011, and block Breed.

Brown, the former mayor and legendary speaker of the state Assembly, will play a big role in what happens. He is largely responsible for Newsoms succeeding him as mayor, for Lees conversion from bureaucrat to politician, and for Kamala Harris rapid rise from local prosecutor to state attorney general and then to a U.S. Senate seat. He also has close personal and political ties to Breed.

In San Francisco terms, Brown is not considered to be very progressive, and by wielding behind-the-scenes power in local politics, he has frustrated those on the citys left wing.

They contend that the city has been too accommodating to developers, high-tech firms and other business interests and too oblivious to the homeless, the working poor and other San Franciscans who have not participated in its obvious economic boom and suffer from its traffic congestion, sky-high rents and other living costs.

The back-to-back processes of choosing an acting mayor and then electing either that person or someone else will be a test of Browns clout, and a referendum on the citys ideological direction in the years ahead.
Rumors are flying that President Trump will try to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III by year's end.

Although this nightmarish prospect can't be counted as likely, and Trump insists he's not contemplating it, there are several reasons why he will not see a better time to lower the boom -- and the White House has surely taken them into account.

First, there are strong signs that Mueller may soon indict Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and advisor. Kushner's lawyer has been quietly shopping for a crisis response team of the sort brought on board for criminal prosecutions. Kushner's indictment would be a disaster for the president: Either his son-in-law goes to prison or cooperates by providing the mother lode of inculpatory information.

Probably no one, except possibly Donald Trump Jr., knows more about Trump's activities as president, candidate and entrepreneur. (Remember that Deutsche Bank, whose records Mueller recently subpoenaed, lent Kushner $285 million in addition to its highly questionable loans to Trump.)

Second, the coordinated onslaught against the FBI and Justice Department from Capitol Hill lends Trump a measure of cover for moving to shut down the investigation. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the majority whip, recently joined the chorus with a demand that "Mueller ... clean house of partisans."

Never mind that the attacks are 100 percent bogus: Anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment among FBI agents in 2016 far outstripped -- in quantity and quality -- any mutterings against Trump. Equally bogus is the recent charge that Mueller improperly obtained emails of the Trump transition: There is no 4th Amendment protection of transition emails, which are on government servers with government addresses, and no executive privilege since the Trump team was not yet in office. These counterfeit arguments are strictly for public relations purposes.

Third, Congress is about to leave town for Christmas break, leaving Washington at its sleepiest and least prepared for a nimble response.

Fourth, Trump's lawyers have scheduled a meeting with Mueller's team for later this week, and the script has already been written. Trump's team will ask about the progress of the investigation and when it will end; Mueller's side will respond that there has been progress but there is still much to do and they cannot estimate an end date. Trump will then have his rabble-rousing talking point.

For months, Trump's lawyers and the White House staff have been claiming that, as Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated just Friday, "(w)e expect this process to wrap up soon." There never was any basis for the expectation, which experienced prosecutors would find ludicrous, other than to set up a public argument that the inquiry has gone on too long and needs to be shut down.

There is one glaring problem with that position, which is that it is hard to see how the process can wrap up to the public's satisfaction without testimony of some sort from Trump. But Trump's lawyers may have concluded that he should avoid the expected reckoning with a skillful questioner, given the multiple, contradictory accounts of key events he has provided to date.

The very best he could hope for would be the worst day of his public life, made to look like a doddering fool and forced into a refrain of "I don't recall"s. Or he might answer some questions and expose himself to multiple counts of perjury.

As I've written before, if Trump does move to fire Mueller, we can't count on immediate consequences.

He would first have to find someone at the Justice Department willing to be remembered as his political stooge. And he would have to force the resignations of everyone above that person. It might be years before the department is able to regain its full footing.

Mueller surely has already banked important evidence against the president by requiring his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, to give his full story to state authorities and possibly to a federal grand jury. But state attorneys general may not be able to step into the breach. The Office of Legal Counsel has issued two opinions concluding that the president cannot be indicted during his term in office; if that position is correct, it would imply that the federal Constitution likewise bars state authorities from bringing charges against a sitting president.

The focus, then, would turn to Congress. It's possible lawmakers could reconstitute the investigation in some hobbled fashion, but the effort would take many months. And any attempt to actually remove the president from office would need to secure the support of 15 or so Senate Republicans, which still seems highly unlikely.

Crippled in public support and exposed as a boor and a rogue, Trump may yet survive to the end of his term -- a feat he'll define as "winning," always his paramount concern. As he memorably promised the country more than a year ago, "we're going to win so much, you're going to be sick and tired of winning."
Over two years. Thats how long Amy from The Bobby Bones Show and her husband have been fighting the system to bring their adopted children home from Haiti. As listeners of the show we have joined the couple in celebration, grief, frustration, and anticipation. Today, the long wait comes to an end as Amy, her husband, and their beautiful children boarded a plane to fly home, as a family, to Nashville, TN.

Amy shared this monumental family photo on Instagram before they stepped foot on the plane to begin their brand new life together:

We cannot send enough congratulatory wishes to this patient, kind, and loving family. May the memories of the past become distant and fleeting thoughts, and we pray that you replace the years of hardships with infinite moments of joy.

What a wonderful Christmas gift to all four of these lucky people who have been blessed with the unique ability to choose one another to be their forevers. Our cups runneth over just thinking about the many stories we will soon hear on the air.
Want to post something? Want to be added to our monthly newsletter which details each month's clay club meeting? (different than signing up for blog emails below) Have any questions? Contact Tori Motyl at Tori@MotylPottery.com

About Clay Club
Platelets are cells in the blood whose job is to stop bleeding by sticking together to form clots and plug up a wound. Now, for the first time, scientists have measured and mapped the key molecular forces on platelets that trigger this process.



The extensive results are published in two separate studies, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and in Nature Methods. We show conclusively that, in order to activate clotting, the cell needs a targeted force of a magnitude of just a few piconewtons  or a force about a billion times less than the weight of a staple, says Khalid Salaita, associate professor in Emory Universitys Department of Chemistry and the lead author of the studies. The real surprise we found is that platelets care about the direction of that force and that it has to be lateral. Theyre very picky. But they should be picky because otherwise they might accidentally create a clot. Thats what causes strokes.



Fibrinogen, the third most abundant protein in blood, acts like glue to stick platelets together as a clot forms. Each platelet has about 70,000 copies of a receptor for fibrinogen on its surface. These receptors can work like grappling hooks to latch onto fibrinogen.



What was puzzling, Salaita explains, is that platelets, despite having all these receptors, do not normally latch onto the abundant fibrinogen. They keep flowing past it until you have an injury and fibrinogen becomes anchored. Then the platelets rapidly bind to fibrinogen allowing platelets to aggregate and for clotting to proceed.



The Salaita lab is a leader in visualizing and mapping the mechanical forces applied by cells. In order to explore the biomechanics of blood clotting, the lab teamed up with physician and biomedical engineer Wilbur Lam, an expert in hematology at Emorys School of Medicine. Both Salaita and Lam are also affiliated with Emorys Winship Cancer Institute and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Tech.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-20 01:42:53|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

AMMAN, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Tuesday said the voting at the UN Security Council on a draft resolution on Jerusalem stresses that the international community rejects the U.S. decision that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the state-run Petra news agency reported.

Jordan's Minister of State said in spite of the U.S. veto against the draft resolution, the international law indicates that the U.S. move is illegal and void.

The draft resolution of Jerusalem was adopted by 14 members of the Security Council and was vetoed by the United States.

The minister added that Jordan will continue working at all fronts and with the international community to face the consequences of this decision and to lobby for recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Jordan will also work with the Arab group at the UN to ensure effective actions to protect the legal status of East Jerusalem as an occupied territory and that the U.S. decision is against laws in this regard, he added.

The United States on Monday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution on Jerusalem, approved by all other 14 members of the Security Council, blocking its adoption.

The Egypt-drafted text sought to ensure that any attempts to alter the characteristics or demographic composition of the Old City of Jerusalem had no effect and were rescinded.

It also called on all parties not to establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

Both before and after the voting, many countries, including key U.S. allies Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Qatar, expressed their disagreement with the United States, insisting that Jerusalem should be a shared capital of Israelis and Palestinians.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-20 17:21:27|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

Photo taken on Dec. 20, 2017 shows the mosaic floor uncovered in a monastery in Beit Shemesh, Israel. The remains of a 1,500-year-old (Byzantine Period) well-preserved monastery decorated with mosaic floors and imported marbles are being uncovered during large-scale excavations in Beit Shemesh. (Xinhua/Gil Cohen Magen)

JERUSALEM, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The remains of a 1,500-year-old (Byzantine Period) well-preserved monastery decorated with mosaic floors and imported marbles are being uncovered during large-scale excavations in central Israel's Beit Shemesh.

"We were surprised by the wonderful state of preservation of the ancient remains, and the richness of the finds being uncovered," Benyamin Storchan, director of the excavations for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), said Wednesday.

The excavation is being conducted prior to the expansion of Beit Shemesh, funded by the Ministry of Construction and Housing, and implemented by the CPM Corporation managed by Anatoly Snider.

"The artifacts found in the large building, which seems to be a monastic compound, may indicate that the site was important and perhaps a center for ancient pilgrims in the Judean Shephelah region," said Storchan.

"During the excavation, we uncovered the remains of walls built of large stone masonry and a number of architectural elements including a marble pillar base decorated with crosses and marble window screens," he said.

"The marble artifacts were brought from the region of Turkey and further inland by wagon. In one of the rooms we uncovered a beautiful mosaic floor decorated with birds, leaves, and pomegranates," Storchan noted.

"We already know of a number of ancient churches and monasteries in the Judean Shephelah, but this one has outstanding preservation," he added.

Until now, only a small percent of the monastery has been uncovered, which was abandoned in the 7th century for unknown reasons, according to IAA.

Since the beginning of the excavation during the summer, over 1,000 teenagers from different groups, mostly schools and pre-military organizations, have also participated in the excavation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-20 18:57:01|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

PHNOM PENH, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- A new World Bank report said Wednesday that improved urban planning, management, and infrastructure are needed to avoid further sprawl, congestion and pollution in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia.

The report, titled Urban Development in Phnom Penh, said Phnom Penh has witnessed significant urban growth over the last decade, and now has nearly two million residents in an increasingly sprawling urban landscape.

The report highlighted mounting challenges in the provision of basic services, including drainage, wastewater treatment, public transport and solid waste management. The management and finance of planning, governance and delivery of services have also been strained, it noted.

It said that despite an existing planning process, gaps in financing and technical capacity often lead to bottlenecks in the development of urban, spatial, and land use plans, especially at the Khan (district) and Sangkat (commune) levels.

"Phnom Penh faces an important opportunity to positively shape its future, create more jobs, and enable better services," Inguna Dobraja, World Bank country manager for Cambodia, said in a press release. "Urban development that is well-managed and planned can make a world of difference in ensuring better living standard for generations to come."

Judy Baker, World Bank lead economist, one of the report's authors, said well-planned cities allow the socio-economic benefits of urbanization to be fully harnessed and can create vibrant, livable, urban spaces.

"This is fully possible for Phnom Penh, but it will be a long-term process and will require a strong commitment from the government, citizens and the private sector," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 01:59:08|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

JERUSALEM, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Israel's coalition chairman, also one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest allies, said Wednesday he was stepping down due to the ongoing corruption investigation against him.

David Bitan, chairman of Israel's right-wing coalition and a lawmaker with the Likud, has been at the center of a wide-ranging criminal investigation over suspicions of bribery, fraud, money laundering, and breach of trust.

"The current situation makes it too difficult for me to function and I don't want to harm the work and functionality of the coalition," Bitan said in a statement.

"This morning, I asked the prime minister to release me from my role as chairman of the coalition," he said.

Bitan would keep his sit in the parliament for now. "I will continue to serve respectfully as a Likud member of the parliament and do all I can to continue to serve the public," said Bitan. "I thank the prime minister for his trust and support," he added.

Bitan, Netanyahu's main political arm in the parliament, was appointed by Netanyahu to serve as the chairman of the coalition two years ago.

He is one of the most vocal defenders of Netanyahu, who himself is under two criminal investigations over corruption allegations.

David Amselam, another lawmaker with the Likud and a close ally of Netanyahu, is newly appointed as chairman.

David Bitan and David Amsalem were the two main sponsors of the so-called "recommendation bill." The bill aims to end the police's current practice of recommending the general attorney office whether to press charges against a suspect upon concluding their investigation.

Bitan is suspected of taking bribes from a criminal organization head when he was a politician in the municipality of Rishon Lezion, Israel's fourth-largest city, located south of Tel Aviv.

He was questioned three times by the police. According to Channel 2 news TV, the police are close to striking a deal with a key suspect to become a state witness.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 02:44:19|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

DUBAI, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Crown Prince of Dubai on Wednesday adopted the "Economic Report of Dubai 2017," which reviews the major developments in the economy of Dubai, the state news agency WAM reported.

Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al-Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, adopted the "Economic Report of Dubai 2017", which reviews the major developments in the economy of Dubai in 2016 at the macro and sectoral levels and an overview of The growth of the Dubai economy in 2017.

The report was prepared by the Department of Economic Development in Dubai according to the latest official statistics available to the competent authorities in the emirate, as well as forecasts of some economic indicators that monitor them.

"The growth forecast for the Dubai economy is 3.2 per cent in 2017 and 3.5 per cent in 2018," said teh report.

It added that with a cyclical recovery in the growth of the global economy is gaining strength beginning in mid-2016 and the expected positive impact on the emirate, in addition to the important strategic initiatives launched by the Government of Dubai under the framework of Dubai 2021 plan, in particular hosting the Expo 2020.

And the Government of Dubai is moving ahead with its preparations to launch "mega infrastructure" projects.

"Our goal is to create an ideal business environment that is the best in the world. Dubai has built a solid economy that is resilient and responsive to the needs of the local and international business community," said the Crown Prince of Dubai.

Earlier in the month, Dubai has approved its biggest ever budget for 2018 with the aim to increase infrastructure spending to prepare for the six-month Expo 2020 which the emirate will host from October 2020 until April 2021.

Expenditure is set to increase by 19.5 percent to 56.56 billion dirham (15.41 billion dollars). Revenue is projected to surge by 12.5 percent next year to 50.36 billion dirham (13.72 billion dollars).

The projected deficit will be 6.2 billion dirham (1.68 billion dollars) deficit, representing 1.55 per cent of Dubai's gross domestic product.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetos an Egyptian-drafted resolution regarding recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, during the United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine, at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., December 18, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

CAIRO, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Foreign Ministry on Monday expressed regret at the UN Security Council's failure to pass the Egypt-drafted resolution on Jerusalem due to the U.S. veto.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said that the resolution reflects the international community's rejection to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision that aims at changing the status of Jerusalem.

Trump, breaking away from decades-old U.S. policy of neutrality on the issue, announced on Dec. 6 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered to move the U.S. embassy to the disputed holy city.

This has infuriated the Palestinians and Arab countries, which have strongly protested against the U.S. move. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, now occupied by Israel, as the capital of their future independent state.

Egypt filed a draft resolution to the UN Security Council urging the U.S. to rescind Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The U.S. on Monday vetoed the resolution, which was approved by 14 other members of the council, in reflection of the depth of global opposition to Trump's action, Zeid said.

He added that the Arab group in the UN will convene later to assess the situation and determine the next step in order to defend the status of Jerusalem.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 02:54:23|Editor: liuxin

Video Player Close

Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Behrouz Kamalvandi speaks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 20, 2017. Iran would keep its right to strike back if the United States is not going to suspend the sanctions against Iran, the spokesman for Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

TEHRAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran would keep its right to strike back if the United States is not going to suspend the sanctions against Iran, the spokesman for Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Wednesday.

"We are committed to our obligations and we are going to fulfill all our responsibilities," Behrouz Kamalvandi said the nuclear deal had secured Iran's benefits and the United States should respect its pertinent obligations.

However, if there are any signs of infringement of the deal, Iran will consider its own options, he said.

The the landmark nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is a multilateral document which was achieved after months of diplomatic efforts and approved by the UN Security Council.

The deal resulted in the removal of international and western financial and economic sanctions against Iran and imposed more restrictions on its controversial nuclear program.

For instance, "if by Jan. 14 next year, they are not going to suspend the (new) sanctions (against Iran), it means that they have exited the deal. So, naturally, it is the right of us to do whatever is needed and to retaliate," Kamalvandi added.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in October that the United States could not formally certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear accord. The U.S. Congress is expected to decide whether to continue suspending the sanctions against Iran.

Washington has also demanded inspections of Iran's military sites, which Tehran has rejected.

"So far, the United States have tried to put pressures" on Iran. The Iranian atomic official alleged that the United States has not respected some articles of the JCPOA, which recognizes Iran's right to take advantage of the benefits of the deal.

The United States has not respected several articles, such as article 26, 28 and 29 of the JCOPA, he said, adding that it has contradicted its own commitments, which prevents Iran from the benefits of the removal of sanctions.

The United States has tried a number of ways to prevent Iran from the benefits of the deal, Kamalvandi said, stressing that "the accord is not just about limitations (on Iran's nuclear activities), it is also about modernization a development" of peaceful nuclear energy program.

Iran's top officials have warned the United States of the repercussions of scrapping the nuclear deal by reimposing sanctions against the Islamic republic several times before.

Otherwise, over the past months, the U.S. administration has imposed sanctions on some individuals and companies accusing them of counterfeiting money for Iran and cooperating with Tehran over its ballistic missile program.

He has called the Iran nuclear deal, reached during the former U.S. president Barack Obama administration, "an embarrassment" for the United States and has called for renegotiations over some parts of it.

"We expect the other side also to respect its commitments," Kamalvandi said. "Something is very clear for us: as long as the other side continues to observe their responsibilities and commitments, we will, of course, respect this deal."

In the meantime, Kamalvandi expressed the hope that "we think there are still rooms for preservation of deal since the majority of the world supports it," he concluded.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 03:04:25|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday stressed the importance of conflict prevention in face of "not only a quantitative but also a qualitative change in threats to international peace and security."

"Prevention must be at the center of everything we do. It is better to prevent conflict than to manage it," he told the Security Council.

Prevention avoids tragic human suffering and it even saves money. Though hard to quantify and typically undertaken far from the media spotlight, prevention is a sound investment that brings ample, visible dividends, he said.

"Development is one of our best instruments of prevention, and the 2030 Agenda gives us enormous potential."

Respect for all human rights -- not only civil and political, but also economic, social and cultural -- is an essential element of prevention, he said. "In the lead-up to the outbreak of widespread violence, we often see increases in repression, the closing of space for civil society and the rise of sectarianism. We must invest in social cohesion, so that all people feel they have a stake in society."

Gender equality is closely linked with resilience, and women's participation is crucial to success, from conflict prevention to peacemaking and sustaining peace, he said. "Where women are empowered, societies flourish and peace processes have a better chance of taking hold."

He also called for more efforts to address the systematic violence faced by women before, during and after conflict, and to pursue justice for perpetrators as an essential part of post-conflict healing and recovery.

Prevention also includes preventive diplomacy -- efforts to respond promptly to signs of tension and to forge political solutions, said Guterres.

He saw "qualitative change" in threats to international peace and security.

The perils of nuclear weapons are again front and center, with tensions higher than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Climate change has emerged as a threat multiplier. Water scarcity is a growing concern, as demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40 percent by the middle of the century, he said.

Inequality and exclusion feed frustration and marginalization. Cybersecurity dangers are escalating, as some of the same advances in technology that have generated so many gains have also made it easier for extremists to communicate, broadcast distorted narratives of grievance, recruit followers and exploit people, noted the UN chief.

The number of armed conflicts has declined over the long-term, but in the Middle East and parts of Africa, conflicts have surged, he observed.

Conflicts are becoming more intractable. They are longer -- more than 20 years on average -- meaning that the people they displace are spending ever increasing amounts of time away from their homes and communities.

They are more complex, as armed groups compete for control over state institutions, natural resources and territory -- and as extremist groups with absolutist demands leave little room for diplomacy, he said.

There is also a multiplication of political factions and non-state armed groups -- with hundreds of armed groups in Syria alone -- and an increase in the regionalization and internationalization of conflicts, he said.

External military and financial support to conflict parties prolongs civil wars, and fuels wider tensions as local fights become proxies for larger rivalries, he said.

Conflicts are more linked with each other, and with the worldwide threat of terrorism. And transnational drug smugglers and human traffickers perpetuate the chaos and prey on refugees and migrants.

"Let us work together to enhance the (Security) Council's focus on emerging situations, expand the toolbox, increase resources for prevention, and be more systematic in avoiding conflict and sustaining peace," said Guterres.

He emphasized the importance of unity of the Security Council.

"Without it, the parties to conflict may take more inflexible and intransigent positions, and the drivers of conflict will push situations to the point of no return, again and again. But with unity, we can advance security and well-being for all."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 04:09:38|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA announced Wednesday that it has selected two finalist concepts for a robotic mission planned to launch in the mid-2020 to explore the solar system.

One finalist, known as Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR), seeks to return a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet that was successfully explored by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, to determine its origin and history, NASA said in a statement.

The other, called Dragonfly is a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites on Saturn's moon Titan, an ocean world in our solar system, it said.

The concepts were chosen after an extensive and competitive peer review process from 12 proposals submitted in April under a New Frontiers program announcement of opportunity, it said.

"This is a giant leap forward in developing our next bold mission of science discovery," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today."

The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions will receive funding through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts.

NASA said it plans to select one of these investigations in the spring of 2019 to continue on to subsequent mission phases.

The selected mission will be the fourth in NASA's New Frontiers portfolio, a series of principal investigator-led planetary science investigations that fall under a development cost cap of approximately 850 million U.S. dollars.

Its predecessors are the New Horizons mission to Pluto and a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, now heading to the asteroid Bennu for arrival in 2018.

NASA also announced the selection of two mission concepts that will receive technology development funds to prepare them for future mission competitions.

One is Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH), which will receive funds to develop cost-effective techniques that limit spacecraft contamination and thereby enable life detection measurements on cost-capped missions.

The other is Venus In situ Composition Investigations (VICI), which will further develop the Venus Element and Mineralogy Camera to operate under the harsh conditions on Venus.

The instrument uses lasers on a lander to measure the mineralogy and elemental composition of rocks on the surface of Venus, NASA added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 04:24:40|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

HELSINKI, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Supreme Court of Finland on Wednesday sentenced the main state prosecutor Matti Nissinen to pay fines for "breach of his duties".

Nissinen had approved procurement of training services from a company controlled by his brother.

The sentence was "40 day-fines". In the Finnish fine system, the value of a day-fine is based on the convicted person's income. In this case, the fine amounted to 1,740 euros.

The Ministry of Justice had suspended Nissinen from his position during the legal process. The ministry announced on Wednesday Nissinen could return to his work.

It would consider during the upcoming weeks whether there would be further repercussions. The worst option could be a dismissal.

Interviewed by the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, professor Olli Maenpaa, a leading Finish expert on administrative law, said there are major grounds for terminating Nissinen's position as the chief state prosecutor.

Maenpaa noted that according to the sentence the breach of duties was not minute. Nissinen had done it with intent, Maenpaa told the newspaper.

The chief state prosecutor is a presidential appointee in Finland. However, a decision to dismiss him would be taken by the cabinet, not the president. Such a dismissal would, according to the law text, require a particularly heavy reason.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 04:44:47|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

KIGALI, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda has banned importation of meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruits from South Africa over listeriosis viral disease, a statement released on Wednesday said.

The ban, aimed to prevent possible spread of the disease to Rwanda, became effective on Dec. 19, the statement from Rwanda's ministry of agriculture said.

The death toll from an outbreak of listeriosis has risen to 41 in South Africa, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) of South Africa said Monday.

Listeriosis is a serious, but treatable and preventable disease caused by the bacterium, listeria monocytogenes, which is widely distributed in nature and can be found in soil, water and vegetation.

Symtoms from the food-borne disease include diarrhea, fever, general body pains, vomiting and weakness.

Although anyone can get listeriosis, those at high risk of developing severe disease include newborns, the elderly, pregnant women and persons with weak immunity.

Importation of meat, milk and dairy products, vegetables and fruits from South Africa is banned until the country is declared free of listeriosis, the statement said.

It advised Rwandan farmers and veterinary doctors to quickly report any domestic animals that show signs of the same infection for urgent treatment.

The ministry said the ban is aimed to prevent possible spread of the disease to Rwanda.

Rwanda imports on average 2.4 tons of beef from South Africa monthly for the country's hotels, according to the ministry of agriculture.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 05:14:52|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

MAPUTO, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said Wednesday in Maputo in a national speech that despite the economic difficulties in the country, the state of the nation is encouraging.

Speaking at the assembly at the annual state-of-the-nation address, Nyusi said "because we are a resilient people, I can proudly and without fear affirm that the state of the nation is challenging, but encouraging."

The president acknowledged that the challenges that lie ahead are immense, which include the achievement of peace, the consolidation of national unity and the fight against corruption, inequality and poverty.

However, he said all these can be achieved only with a lasting peace. In this field, he pointed out that one of the main achievements in 2017 was the indefinite truce since December 2016 between the government and Renamo, the largest opposition party.

In his speech, the president also spoke of the achievements in education, health, justice, and economics.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 06:00:00|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ANKARA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Turkey is imposing "certain limits" on visa applications for U.S. citizens in its diplomatic missions after Washington's move to suspend visa proceedings with Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag said on Wednesday.

Akdag's remarks came one day after the U.S. Embassy in Turkey announced that the earliest date for visa appointments regarding non-immigrant applicants in its diplomatic missions in Turkey is January 2019.

"This matter must be fixed completely. The U.S. stance causes difficulty for U.S. citizens as well," he said, adding "we also have certain limits in terms of visas."

Akdag noted that this meaningless approach "should immediately be put aside."

In October, the U.S. embassy announced the suspension of non-immigrant visa services to Turkish nationals. The move came after the arrest of a local employee working at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Ankara.

On Nov. 4, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey announced visa applications were again being processed on a limited basis at its diplomatic missions in Turkey.

Following the U.S. move, Turkish missions in the United States also resumed processing visa applications of U.S. citizens at its diplomatic and consular missions in the U.S. on a "limited basis."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:20:14|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

PARIS, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Following Wednesday's home match against Caen, players and staff of Ligue 1 leaders Paris Saint-Germain will arrive in Qatar's Doha on Thursday for their annual mid-season Winter Tour training camp.

"We are excited to return to Qatar for this new winter tour, and to benefit from training in the country's warm winter weather, and its remarkable facilities in Aspire Zone," said Nasser Al-Khelaifi, Chairman and CEO of Paris Saint-Germain.

"Our team always enjoys visiting Qatar, experiencing first hand the culture, visiting various sites and witnessing the developments in its infrastructure and offerings since our last visit," he added.

Apart from training at the world-class facilities, several PSG players will have the chance of trying a popular local sport, and enjoying tours to famous sites in Qatar.

Since 2012, PSG and Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) have worked on a strategic partnership to promote Qatar's sport and leisure tourism. QTA has hosted several tours for PSG teams.

PSG built a nine-point lead atop the Ligue 1 table into the winter break. A huge challenge ahead will be the two-leg Champions League round of 16 against title holders Real Madrid.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:30:17|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- English Premier League leaders Manchester City have signed 20-year-old Paraguayan midfielder Jesus Medina, according to widespread media reports.

The 20-year-old, who made his international debut for Paraguay's senior side this year, is expected to be loaned out to Manchester City feeder club New York City next year.

According to the Guardian, City agreed to pay Paraguayan first division side Libertad three million British pounds (four million US dollars) for Medina's signature. The Sky Blues are understood to have beaten off interest from several other European clubs.

Medina, who can play as a winger or attacking midfielder, has made 74 appearances for Libertad since being promoted from the club's youth academy in 2012.

He has represented Paraguay at under-17, under-20 and senior level.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:30:18|Editor: ZD

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to withdraw financial aid from countries which back a United Nations resolution rejecting the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us," Trump told reporters at a cabinet meeting in the White House.

"We're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care," he added.

Trump's remarks came after the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley' s tweet saying that "the U.S. will be taking names" of those criticizing the U.S. choice at the UN General Assembly.

The UN General Assembly will meet for a rare emergency session to discuss the status of Jerusalem on Thursday after the United States vetoed earlier an Egypt-drafted request asking Washington to withdraw its decision to recognize the city as Israel's capital.

The United States on Monday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem.

All other 14 members of the Security Council voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted text. But as the United States, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, has veto power, the draft resolution failed to be adopted.

Before the vote, Egyptian ambassador to the United Nations Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta explained that the draft resolution seeks to ensure that any attempts to alter the characteristics or demographic composition of the Old City of Jerusalem have no effect and are null and void, and must be rescinded.

The draft resolution also calls on all parties not to establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem, he said.

According to UN sources, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said his country hoped that the General Assembly would draft a resolution urging the U.S. move to be withdrawn.

On Dec. 6, Trump declared that the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, triggering large-scale outrage in the Arab and Muslim world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:40:49|Editor: ZD

Video Player Close

U.S. President Donald Trump (C) speaks at an event celebrating the passage of the tax bill on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on Dec. 20, 2017. The U.S. Congress on Wednesday finally passed the Republican bill to overhaul the U.S. tax code over three decades, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk for signature, amid concerns that the change would widen income inequality and swell public debt. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:35:23|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- After more than a decade of decline, poverty in Latin America is once again on the rise, driven in part by economic crises in Venezuela and Brazil, according to a report released here by a UN agency on Wednesday.

Following 12 years of falling numbers, the poverty rate has increased two years in a row, growing 29.8 percent in 2015 and 30.7 percent in 2016, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) warned.

ECLAC's report, entitled "Latin America's Social Panorama 2017," says the number of people in the region that live in poverty is now at 186 million, including 61 million in extreme poverty.

2017 is expected to see a similar rate in rising poverty to 2016, but with a million more inhabitants suffering from poverty, due to demographic growth.

However, the increase is not across the board, with most countries making improvements, said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena.

"Why is it increasing in the region? Basically it's due to two countries, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil," Barcena told reporters at a press conference at ECLAC's offices in Mexico City.

Many other regional countries have seen a decrease in the poverty rate since 2014. Poverty rose slightly in Paraguay, El Salvador and Ecuador, according to the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 08:06:37|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

A Somali refugee woman and her child have lunch at a hospital in Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya, Dec. 19, 2017. The UN refugee agency said Monday it has repatriated some 74,141 Somali refugees from Kenya as at Nov. 15 since the voluntary return exercise began three years ago. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 10:15:51|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export posted a double-digit growth for the first 20 days of December on strong demand for locally-made ships and semiconductors, customs data showed Thursday.

Export, which accounts for about half of the economy, reached 31.5 billion U.S. dollars during the Dec. 1-20 period, up 16.4 percent from the same period of last year, according to the Korea Customs Service.

The country's overseas shipment kept rising for 13 months through November.

The daily average export amounted to 2.03 billion dollars in the Dec. 1-20 period, up 16.4 percent from a year ago.

In the cited period, exports for semiconductors and ships surged 80.5 percent and 48.8 percent respectively.

Oil product export advanced 29.2 percent, but those for automobiles and telecommunication devices tumbled 29.5 percent and 23.4 percent each.

Exports to China and the United States, South Korea's top two trading partners, rose 20.9 percent and 3.0 percent each, with export to Vietnam gaining 27.4 percent.

Demand for South Korean products from the European Union (EU) and the Middle East shed 5.9 percent and 16.1 percent respectively.

Imports climbed 19.5 percent to 29.4 billion dollars in the same period, sending trade surplus to 2.1 billion dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 10:40:54|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

OTTAWA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke some provisions of federal Conflict of Interest Act when he vacationed on a private island owned by the Aga Khan, a parliamentary commissioner said Wednesday.

Trudeau broke the act by failing to arrange his private affairs to avoid being in conflict of interest, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson said in a news release. She has been investigating Trudeau's Christmas trip in 2016 to the private island of the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims in the Bahamas.

The prime minister also violated the rules by accepting accommodations on the private island by someone who is registered to lobby his office, travelling on non-commercial aircraft charted by the Aga Khan, and not recusing himself from discussions that provided an opportunity to further the Aga Khan's interests, Dawson added.

Trudeau and his family stayed at the Aga Khan's home on Bell Island in the Bahamas from Dec. 26, 2016 to Jan. 4. Trudeau has publicly confirmed they were taken there by the Aga Khan's private helicopter.

In response, Trudeau told reporters on Parliament Hill Wednesday that he regretted not taking pro-active precautions to ensure there was no conflict of interest or appearance of conflict of interest.

"I'm sorry I didn't, and in the future I will be clearing all my family vacations with the commissioner," he said.

Dawson found that besides the post-Christmas trip, Trudeau had also accepted a vacation on the island for himself and his family in December 2014, and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau set up a trip to the island in March 2016 with a friend of hers and their children.

"The vacations accepted by Mr. Trudeau or his family could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence Mr. Trudeau in his capacity as Prime Minister," Dawson said in the news release.

In what Dawson titled: "The Trudeau Report," she looked at the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, which he is subject to as an member of parliament, as well as the Conflict of Interest Act which applies to him as prime minister.

She also ruled that Trudeau and the Aga Khan cannot be characterized as friends, which could have allowed for some exemptions under the Act.

However, the commissioner said that Trudeau didn't contravene the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, because he didn't discuss House business with the Aga Khan.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 11:21:00|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

by Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is headed for a major legislative victory with passage of a massive tax bill, but that may not help Republicans in the long run, experts said.

"Overall, the bill is a minus for the Trump administration. It is not a popular bill with the general public and will not help Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

The U.S. Congress on Wednesday finally passed the Republican bill to overhaul the U.S. tax code, sending it to Trump's desk for signature within days and to take effect in 2018, amid concerns that the change would widen income inequality and swell public debt.

This is a major U.S. tax overhaul -- the biggest in three decades -- in a bid to give big tax breaks to corporations, small businesses and individuals.

The White House says the legislation will boost investments by giving companies more favorable tax rates, which will result in more hiring as companies grow and require more manpower.

But experts say that will not necessarily help the GOP in the lead up to the 2018 congressional elections.

"The tax bill is not a plus for Republicans in 2018. Polls indicate that big majorities are opposed to key provisions and most Americans do not believe they will receive a meaningful tax cut," West said.

"The bill shifts the bulk of tax savings to the ultra-wealthy, leaving little for the middle class. It adds at least one trillion dollars to the national debt and likely will not produce much in the way of economic growth," West further explained.

Gregory R. Valliere, chief strategist at Horizon Investments, told Xinhua that if the economy is solid next November -- with unemployment rate below 4 percent and GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate around 3 percent -- this could help Republicans in the midterm elections.

But Trump is so deeply unpopular that the Republicans have to expect steep losses in the House, maybe close to the 24 seats the Democrats need to recapture the House. And with only a 51-49 majority in the Senate, the Republicans could lose control there also, he said.

Alan Viard, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told Xinhua it is difficult to tell whether passage of the tax overhaul will benefit the GOP in the long run.

"The polls currently show the bill as being unpopular, and Democrats plan to criticize the bill when campaigning against Republicans who voted for it," he said.

"However, Republicans think the bill will become more popular as it's implemented and they plan to praise the bill when campaigning against Democrats who voted against it. It seems unlikely that the bill will be a net political gain for Republicans, but it's not clear that it will necessarily be a net major political loss for them," he said.

Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency, told Xinhua that the bill gives the GOP an accomplishment in 2017, which was much needed after the party's earlier legislative efforts were stymied.

"The GOP donor base will be thrilled by reduction in corporate and individual rates, but the public is a little more skeptical given the temporary nature of the cuts," Mahaffee said.

Indeed, the GOP hopes that greater take-home pay and economic growth will win the public over by the midterms, while Democrats will continue to focus on how the greatest cuts went to corporations and the wealthy, he said.

A major plus for this bill is that it brings U.S. corporate tax rates into a more competitive position compared to other nations' rates. The downside is that it failed to result in a major simplification of the tax code and it will likely drive deficits and the national debt higher over the coming years, Mahaffee said.

In 2014 the United States had the world's third highest corporate income tax rate, at 39.1 percent, and experts said that has stunted the nation's economic growth.

While U.S. economic growth has picked up somewhat in recent quarters, Trump wants to push it higher. The president would also like to provide incentive for U.S. corporations to return home, at a time when around 3 trillion U.S. dollars are held overseas.

There's an ongoing argument between Democrats and Republicans, with the former contending that the tax plan will only benefit the top tier and fail to boost employment, and the latter arguing the plan will be overall beneficial.

Some experts say it remains unclear whether the plan will boost jobs, arguing that companies use excess cash to increase dividends to stockholders, rather than boosting employment.

Others, however, counter that many companies in fact do not pay out dividends to shareholders, and that more hiring is the inevitable result of companies that expand via help from tax breaks. Moreover, many stockholders of major corporations are themselves middle class Americans, and not wealthy tycoons.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:11:07|Editor: Liangyu

Video Player Close

SYDNEY, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The wreck of Australia's first submarine, a World War I vessel that disappeared 103 years ago during a patrol near Papua New Guinea, has been found in the waters nearby, Defence Minister Marise Payne told reporters here on Thursday.

The HMAS AE1 submarine went missing off Rabaul of Papua New Guinea's East New Britain province on Sept. 14, 1914, along with 35 crew members. It was finally located 300 meters deep, off the Duke of York Islands, in a 13th search attempt that began a week ago.

Payne said Australia's "oldest naval mystery" had been solved.

"The loss of the AE1 in 1914 was a tragedy," said Payne.

"It was the first loss for the Royal Australian Navy and the first allied submarine lost in World War I.

"The boat and her crew, who've been on eternal patrol since 1914 ... have now been found."

Efforts are being made to contact the descendants of the crew to "properly remember and commemorate their service and sacrifice," she said.

Australia's navy chief Tim Barrett said it was a significant day for the country, but it was also a "bittersweet moment."

"It's sweet in the fact that we have solved the mystery that has been lingering for 103 years. It's bitter because the purpose of this search was to find the men of AE1 and we have now done that ... these people who sacrificed much...for the service of their nation."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:17:14|Editor: Liangyu

Video Player Close

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Michel Temer said Wednesday that he will never give up the intended social security reform, on which a vote has been postponed to Feb. 19, 2018 by the Congress.

Before the voting takes place, the government will work to clarify the main points to congressmen, Temer said.

"I want to tell the federal representatives that we will never give up on the social security (reform). We will not give up in Brazil's name," he said.

The social security reform that has sparked heated debate in the country is a constitutional amendment proposal that requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to be approved.

The government said the reform is necessary to tackle a huge deficit, to ensure the payment of future pensions for those who are currently contributing to the system.

However, the opposition argues that calculations showing a deficit in the system were fraudulent. They also said that the reform would hurt those hard physical laborers, such as workers in construction and agricultural sectors.

The bill sets a minimum retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women, regardless of how many years one has worked. Critics say in some poor states in Brazil, life expectancy is not much beyond 65, so people would hardly have time to enjoy retirement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:22:16|Editor: Liangyu

Video Player Close

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's approval rating stayed high after his recent state visit to China, stopping the third consecutive week's downward trend, a weekly poll showed Thursday.

According to the Realmeter survey, support for Moon was 68.7 percent this week, up 0.1 percentage point from a week earlier. It was the first increase in four weeks.

The result was based on a poll of 1,508 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had 2.5 percentage points in margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level.

The pollster said supporters for Moon were not affected by some South Korean media's negative reports on his trip to China last week.

Some of the rightist conservative South Korean media outlets negatively reported on Moon's visit to China, but according to a separate survey by Realmeter, most respondents said such reports were unfair.

Moon's ruling Democratic Party maintained the top spot with a support rate of 51.1 percent. It was followed by the main opposition Liberty Korea Party with 18.5 percent.

The minor progressive Justice Party came next with 6 percent of support scores, followed by the minor conservative Righteous Party with 5.1 percent and the centrist People's Party with 4.9 percent each.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:32:17|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

HANOI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam imported 90,611 completely-built automobiles worth nearly 2.1 billion U.S. dollars from Jan. 1 to Dec. 15, down 16,684 units and down 196 million U.S. dollars over the same period last year.

The imported automobiles included 35,977 vehicles with fewer nine seats, and 41,845 trucks, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs on Thursday.

In recent weeks, Vietnam has imported more automobiles, especially cars, compared with last month, partly because many local people often buy vehicles before the lunar new year festival which falls in mid-February 2018, experts said.

However, total automobile sales this year are poised to drop against last year, mainly because potential buyers are waiting for lower prices of imported vehicles. Vietnam will next month slash import taxes on automobiles to zero percent in line with the ASEAN Free Trade Area.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:42:20|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

BEIJING/WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. national security strategy introduced by President Donald Trump Monday has drawn domestic worry with experts and the media calling it contradictory and against the general trend of the China-U.S. cooperation.

MEANS AND ENDS AT ODDS

Trump's means and ends are often at odds, said Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a interview with Xinhua when referring to the new national security strategy.

Paal said the strategy is long on the big picture and short on policy detail. "It's leaving me confused," he added.

"The prime example is ending bilateral trade deficits through trade sanctions. This is theoretically and practically impossible," he said.

There is a gap between Trump's viewpoint and that of his foreign policy advisors. The Atlantic magazine said on Wednesday, "For him, the important global schisms are not ideological but civilizational, national and personal: The West versus Islam, America versus the countries that swindle it..."

CHINA-U.S. INTERDEPENDENCE

On Monday, Trump called China a "rival power" in his administration's first national security strategy. The label does little to help bring the world's top two economies, also each other's largest trading partners, closer. In fact, the China-U.S. relationship, especially in the economic and trade sectors, has benefited both sides.

Bloomberg said in an article titled "Trump's Rivalry with China Overlooks U.S. Economic Reliance" that Trump is breaking with recent U.S. convention by "portraying China as a rival."

"But it may take more than an aggressive tone to change the complex relationship between two economies that are joined at the hip," said the article.

Dean Cheng, research fellow at Heritage Foundation, told Xinhua in a recent interview that "Both China and the United States will pursue their respective national interests. In areas where there are common interests, such as sustaining the international trading system or countering terrorism, there is clearly a lot of room for cooperation."

For Beijing and Washington, their cooperation leads to mutual benefits and their confrontation to losses on both sides, said a Chinese embassy spokesperson when responding to the new strategy, adding the United States would be advised to get accustomed to and accept China's development.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:52:21|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

HOUSTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Crude oil prices continued to inch up Wednesday after an energy agency revealed a drop of U.S. commercial crude oil inventories.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the strategic petroleum reserve, decreased by 6.5 million barrels last week to 436.5 million barrels, which is in the middle of the average range for this time of year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its report on Wednesday.

"The larger than expected drop in U.S. crude inventories together with the shutdown of a key North Sea pipeline continue to provide crude oil price positive movement following the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies including Russia recently agreed to extend production cut through the end of 2018," said Linhua Guan, chairman of the Houston-based Star Energy International Corporation.

Moreover, the crude oil market in general "would be net positive on the day for the major U.S. tax overhaul heading to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 12:52:21|Editor: Chengcheng

Video Player Close

TUNIS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The grief over the loss of his loved one showed no signs of abating two months on as Rached Dermouli, 56, tearfully recalled his young son's tragic drowning on an illegal migration trip to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea.

His 23-year-old son, Nader Dermouli, was traveling from Kerkennah island in the eastern costal province of Sfax to Lampedusa, the largest island among the archipelagoes in the Mediterranean Sea administered by Italy's Sicily Province. The capsizal on Oct. 8 claimed at least 45 lives.

"My son couldn't find a job after graduating from high school. Nader learned some skills for repairing cars and plans to run his own garage," Dermouli said, adding that his son tried many times to get bank loans but all failed.

Tunisia has witnessed waves of strikes this year, with young people, especially those from the underdeveloped inland areas on the edge of the Sahara desert, demonstrating for jobs and showing their dissatisfaction with the government's failure to deliver its promises.

Experts said that young Tunisian people are gradually losing confidence in both their destiny and the country's future in the face of high unemployment rates, soaring prices, uneven development and the great disparity between the rich and the poor.

Nearly 8,000 Tunisian illegal emigrants have successfully made their way to Italy so far this year, according to a research report by Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights -- known as FTDES for its French abbreviation, a civil rights institution with an official background.

According to the report, the number of illegal emigrants particularly skyrocketed in October 2017, 17 times the figure from the same period last year.

Some 40 percent of the illegal emigrants want to go to Europe and nearly two thirds of them are young people in their twenties, the report showed.

"My son Nader even wanted to give up his Tunisian nationality," Dermouli said.

One survivor of many of Dermouli Jr.'s childhood friends who were also on board the sunken ship told Xinhua that they got information from local informers via online social networking sites. The 25-year-old asked for anonymity.

"Each person pays 3,500 dinars (1,424 U.S. dollars) for the ship trip," he said, adding that they set off at 2 o'clock in the morning to escape security control and changed from a small trawler to a larger boat and finally boarded the ship to Lampedusa.

"I remember there were nearly 95 people on the ship, very crowded. Suddenly, a naval vessel hit us and our ship overturned and sunk," the young man said.

According to the FTDES report, about 307 illegal migration operations have been intercepted since January this year.

A 19-year-old who only gave his pseudonym Aymen in an interview with Xinhua is a dealer of an organization conducting illegal migration. "The timing for departure depends on various factors, such as weather conditions, the number of emigrants and police patrols," the Kerkennah native said.

Aymen said some emigrants had to stay in Kerkennah for over 20 days waiting for a right opportunity. "Fifty dinars (20 dollars) for a single night and 5 dinars (2 dollars) for one baguette," he added.

According to Ayman, usually more than 10 people live in one bedroom, and there have been extreme cases where 30 people are squeezed into one room.

Dermouli Jr.'s friend was fortunate enough to have survived the dreadful trip. When future chances to reach his dreamland in Europe come, he dares to take them.

"We want job, dignity and freedom. I'll try again," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 13:12:24|Editor: liuxin

Video Player Close

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China is not seeking global dominance and "we don't think there is a zero-sum game between China and the United States," said Cui Tiankai, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, here on Wednesday.

Cui made the remarks in an interview with CNN two days after the Trump administration released its first national security strategy, touting its "America First" doctrine and naming China and Russia as "rival powers" challenging American influence and interest.

For any strategy to look truly like a "strategy," it should embody "a truly global outlook," "forward-looking vision" and "a constructive and cooperative approach," said Cui in the interview about the 68-page document revealed on Monday.

"Frankly I think the current strategy could be improved in all these aspects," Cui added.

"China is not seeking global dominance, we believe in today's world all countries are confronted with a lot of common challenges, and we do share growing common interests," said the veteran Chinese diplomat.

"We don't think there is a zero-sum game between any country, especially between China and the United States," Cui said. "What is important for us is to form a wide-base global partnership to respond to the common challenges."

Cui said that the China-U.S. trade relationship has become increasingly connected and interdependent, and both economies and the peoples have benefited from it.

"China will continue to open its door wider to the rest of the world," and the huge and growing Chinese market is providing tremendous opportunities to U.S. business, said the ambassador.

Meanwhile, Cui acknowledged the existence of conflicting views about the bilateral relationship in the United States. "This is not something entirely new, it's been with us for maybe decades, and we have to stress and put emphasis on the growing common interest and mutual needs between our countries."

"The leaders of our two countries have had very good meetings in Mar-a-Lago, in the U.S. state of Florida, and in Beijing, and we have also established high-level dialogue mechanisms which have worked well for both countries," Cui said.

Countries like the United States and China have to follow a very positive, cooperative and constructive approach while "dealing with some possible differences," Cui said.

Cui noted that any trade war or currency war will hurt both countries, saying that China and the United States have to coordinate their positions to "have a full understanding of the concerns and the needs of the other side and try to build a position that will take care of the interests of both countries."

"That will bring a win-win outcome for all of us," the ambassador added.

In the nearly 10-minute interview, Cui also talked about the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, stating that China and the United States have shared goals on the issue.

"We both stand up the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula, we both want to maintain peace and stability, and we both prefer a diplomatic solution to the issue," Cui said.

"Cooperation and coordination between China and the U.S. have played a big part in strengthening international efforts to address this particular issue, and we should continue" in this regard, said the ambassador.
Photo shows HMAS AE1 in waters off the Duke of York Island group in Papua New Guinea. (Royal Australian Navy)

SYDNEY, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The wreck of Australia's first submarine, a World War I vessel that disappeared 103 years ago during a patrol near Papua New Guinea, has been found in the waters nearby, Defence Minister Marise Payne told reporters here on Thursday.

The HMAS AE1 submarine went missing off Rabaul of Papua New Guinea's East New Britain province on Sept. 14, 1914, along with 35 crew members. It was finally located 300 meters deep, off the Duke of York Islands, in a 13th search attempt that began a week ago.

Payne said Australia's "oldest naval mystery" had been solved.

"The loss of the AE1 in 1914 was a tragedy," said Payne.

"It was the first loss for the Royal Australian Navy and the first allied submarine lost in World War I.

"The boat and her crew, who've been on eternal patrol since 1914 ... have now been found."

Photo shows HMAS AE1 in waters off the Duke of York Island group in Papua New Guinea. (Royal Australian Navy)

Efforts are being made to contact the descendants of the crew to "properly remember and commemorate their service and sacrifice," she said.

Australia's navy chief Tim Barrett said it was a significant day for the country, but it was also a "bittersweet moment."
Airbnb and Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance are teaming up to provide services meant to defuse trouble with home sharing in Japan, where many residents worry about problems with guests.

This will be the first collaboration with a Japanese insurer for the U.S-based tech company, which, like ride-hailing service Uber, has hit speed bumps entering Japan.

As part of the partnership, Sompo Holdings unit Prime Assistance will operate a 24-hour call center for Airbnb hosts and guests to respond to complaints about problems with their rooms, noise and garbage. Service personnel will be dispatched if necessary to prevent any situations from worsening.

This service is already being tested in some areas before it will be scaled up. Starting in January, the call center will also provide directions to properties for guests.

In addition, the two companies will jointly develop insurance products. Airbnb currently offers universal compensation insurance to all hosts, but Sompo Japan hopes to use the platform's knowledge to develop more specialized policies.

Travelers from Malaysia stay in a one-room condo in Tokyo's Ota Ward.

Home sharing, known as minpaku here, is expected to grow in Japan after legislation freeing this business from Japan's hotel law restrictions takes effect in June. But potential hosts as well as neighbors remain wary of the practice, seeing it as a recipe for trouble, and more properties are needed. The Airbnb-Sompo partnership is meant to alleviate such worries so the market can expand.

Motivated by public concerns, local governments are adding their own regulations on top of the national home-sharing law, which imposes a cap of 180 days a year on minpaku businesses. Some municipalities have restricted the days of the week and areas where they can operate. Nearly half of Tokyo's 23 wards have proposed home-sharing regulations. The northern island of Hokkaido and the old capital of Kyoto plan to establish their own rules as well.
The Japanese government is considering making the Dec. 23 national holiday, the birthday of Emperor Akihito, a normal day after his planned abdication on April 30, 2019, officials said Thursday.

After Crown Prince Naruhito accedes to the throne on May 1, 2019, his birthday, Feb. 23, will be the new Emperor's Birthday holiday.

The government is contemplating such a possible change, because keeping the Dec. 23 holiday after the Imperial succession would raise concerns about dual authority between the old and new emperors.

The special law allowing Emperor Akihito to abdicate includes a revision to the law on national holidays stipulating that the Emperor's Birthday holiday will change to Feb. 23 from Dec. 23. But it does not say what to do with Dec. 23 after the abdication.

Some government officials point to the possibility that maintaining Dec. 23 as a holiday, albeit in a different name, could be seen as suggesting dual authority, because Emperor Akihito is to be given the title of "joko," or retired emperor, after the abdication.
With a plan by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to establish power plants in Kaduna, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), there is hope for improved power supply.

The NNPC put the megawatts (mw) capacity of the plants at 4, 600.

If achieved, power generation may rise above 9, 000 megawatts.

The development came yesterday on the heels of plans by Egbin Power Plc, near Ikorodu, a Lagos suburb, to raise its generation capacity from 1,250mw to 1,800mw.

According to a report by the Advisory Power Team in the Office of the Vice President, power generation figures in the first three weeks of this month were: 5, 156mw, 5, 077mw and 5,103mw.

In a statement in Abuja by NNPC spokesman Ndu Ughamadu, theoil giant said additional 4, 600mw will be generated through the recently-approved contract for the construction of the Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Gas Pipeline, dubbed the AKK Pipeline.

According to the statement, the AKK pipeline has started yielding early benefits with the commitment by the corporation to build power-generating plants with combined capacity of 4550 megawatts in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano states.

The power plant in Abuja is expected to generate 1,350 mw, Kaduna (900mw) and Kano (2,350mw).

Quoting the NNPC Group Managing Director (GMD), Dr Maikanti Baru, Ughamadu said the corporation, in partnership with private investors, would build power-generating plants to support Federal Governments effort to providing stable electricity in the country.

The statement quoted the GMD as saying: As part of the drive to establish power plants to augment the power supply to the nation, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has recently approved the AKK Gas Pipeline project to be financed through Public Private Partnership (PPP).

The project comes with other auxiliary ones which include: 1,350 megawatts, 900 megawatts and 2,350 megawatts of power generation plants in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano respectively.

It said the NNPC in partnership with private investors would also build fertilizer plants in some parts of the country, one of which would be located at Izzon, Niger State.

The NNPC spokesman said that in line with the presidential mandate on oil exploration in all the frontier basins, the corporation was well-focused on the exploration in the Bida Basin.

We have contracted the geological mapping of the Bida Basin to Ibrahim Babangida University, Lapai and the job would be completed in three months, the statement said.

Ughamadu said the corporation would go into more detailed seismic data acquisition in the Bida Basin by August 2018, to be followed by an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) exercise.

He said as part of the corporations effort to decongest the highways, the NNPC would encourage private investors to build tanker parking facilities around Minna Depot, Suleja Depot, Tegina, Mokwa, amongst others and charge the users of the facility appropriately.

The statement said talks were ongoing with the Federal Ministry of Works, Power and Housing to re-introduce weight bridges on the highways to checkmate the issue of excessive loading by tankers above the recommended 46, 000 ton gross weight.

The NNPC on its part has already directed all its depots nationwide to stop loading tankers with loading capacity above 40, 000litres, he said.

In Lagos, the Egbin Egbin Power Plc, spoke of plans to shore up its capacity from 1, 250mw by 550 mw with through the use of modern technologies and renewable energy sources.

Its Chairman, Chief Kola Adesina, said the decision to achieve the feat was part of the Phase II of the project, initiated and contained in the maiden sustainability report of Egbin in 2015.

The report had Securing the Future as its theme. It contained the highlights of the efforts of made by the company to ensure a satisfactory management of its assets, operations and relationships and to achieve growth.

According to Adesina, the report has helped the firm in putting in entrenching solid structures towards becoming the biggest thermal plant in the sub-region.

He said: Sahara Group (owners of Egbin Power Company), has in conjunction with Korea Energy Limited, acquired majority shareholding in order to complete Egbins privatisation in 2013. Following its privatisation, Egbin has invested in human, capital and infrastructure upgrade to enhance efficiency.

This is evident in its planned investments in additional gas pipelines, the proposed Floating Storage & Regasification Unit (FSRU) project, Egbin Phase II project with an estimated capacity of between 1,350mw and 1800mw, using modern technologies as well as the deployment of renewable energy sources to boost the Plants productivity.

According to him, Egbin Power Plc, has collaborated with other stakeholders, with a view to drive the adoption of a strategic direction that would reposition the sector for optimized performance.

The chairman said the company was leveraging on the recently declared eligible customer regime and mini grid regulations to advance system stability and improved service delivery.

He said the plan would enable power sector operators establish various resolution mechanisms to deal with critical challenges within the system to increase generation capacity.

WITH a plan by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to establish power plants in Kaduna, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), there is hope for improved power supply.

The NNPC put the megawatts (mw) capacity of the plants at 4, 600.

If achieved, power generation may rise above 9, 000 megawatts.

The development came yesterday on the heels of plans by Egbin Power Plc, near Ikorodu, a Lagos suburb, to raise its generation capacity from 1,250mw to 1,800mw.

According to a report by the Advisory Power Team in the Office of the Vice President, power generation figures in the first three weeks of this month were: 5, 156mw, 5, 077mw and 5,103mw.

In a statement in Abuja by NNPC spokesman Ndu Ughamadu, theoil giant said additional 4, 600mw will be generated through the recently-approved contract for the construction of the Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Gas Pipeline, dubbed the AKK Pipeline.

According to the statement, the AKK pipeline has started yielding early benefits with the commitment by the corporation to build power-generating plants with combined capacity of 4550 megawatts in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano states.

The power plant in Abuja is expected to generate 1,350 mw, Kaduna (900mw) and Kano (2,350mw).

Quoting the NNPC Group Managing Director (GMD), Dr Maikanti Baru, Ughamadu said the corporation, in partnership with private investors, would build power-generating plants to support Federal Governments effort to providing stable electricity in the country.

The statement quoted the GMD as saying: As part of the drive to establish power plants to augment the power supply to the nation, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has recently approved the AKK Gas Pipeline project to be financed through Public Private Partnership (PPP).

The project comes with other auxiliary ones which include: 1,350 megawatts, 900 megawatts and 2,350 megawatts of power generation plants in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano respectively.

It said the NNPC in partnership with private investors would also build fertilizer plants in some parts of the country, one of which would be located at Izzon, Niger State.

The NNPC spokesman said that in line with the presidential mandate on oil exploration in all the frontier basins, the corporation was well-focused on the exploration in the Bida Basin.

We have contracted the geological mapping of the Bida Basin to Ibrahim Babangida University, Lapai and the job would be completed in three months, the statement said.

Ughamadu said the corporation would go into more detailed seismic data acquisition in the Bida Basin by August 2018, to be followed by an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) exercise.

He said as part of the corporations effort to decongest the highways, the NNPC would encourage private investors to build tanker parking facilities around Minna Depot, Suleja Depot, Tegina, Mokwa, amongst others and charge the users of the facility appropriately.

The statement said talks were ongoing with the Federal Ministry of Works, Power and Housing to re-introduce weight bridges on the highways to checkmate the issue of excessive loading by tankers above the recommended 46, 000 ton gross weight.

The NNPC on its part has already directed all its depots nationwide to stop loading tankers with loading capacity above 40, 000litres, he said.

In Lagos, the Egbin Egbin Power Plc, spoke of plans to shore up its capacity from 1, 250mw by 550 mw with through the use of modern technologies and renewable energy sources.

Its Chairman, Chief Kola Adesina, said the decision to achieve the feat was part of the Phase II of the project, initiated and contained in the maiden sustainability report of Egbin in 2015.

The report had Securing the Future as its theme. It contained the highlights of the efforts of made by the company to ensure a satisfactory management of its assets, operations and relationships and to achieve growth.

According to Adesina, the report has helped the firm in putting in entrenching solid structures towards becoming the biggest thermal plant in the sub-region.

He said: Sahara Group (owners of Egbin Power Company), has in conjunction with Korea Energy Limited, acquired majority shareholding in order to complete Egbins privatisation in 2013. Following its privatisation, Egbin has invested in human, capital and infrastructure upgrade to enhance efficiency.

This is evident in its planned investments in additional gas pipelines, the proposed Floating Storage & Regasification Unit (FSRU) project, Egbin Phase II project with an estimated capacity of between 1,350mw and 1800mw, using modern technologies as well as the deployment of renewable energy sources to boost the Plants productivity.

According to him, Egbin Power Plc, has collaborated with other stakeholders, with a view to drive the adoption of a strategic direction that would reposition the sector for optimized performance.

The chairman said the company was leveraging on the recently declared eligible customer regime and mini grid regulations to advance system stability and improved service delivery.

He said the plan would enable power sector operators establish various resolution mechanisms to deal with critical challenges within the system to increase generation capacity.
We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.
Click the photo to write a caption and have a chance to win a free subscription to the Norfolk Daily News.


The rapprochement between Morocco and South Africa seems to annoy some pro-separatism journalists who continue to spit their venom in the media. The diatribe written on Eyewitness News by Jean Jacques Cornish against Morocco is illustrative of the demise of the separatist discourse in Africa in general and in South Africa in particular.

In a letter to new ANC head, Cyril Ramaphosa, Cornish attempted hard to hide the sun with one finger denying the triumphal significance of Moroccos return to the African Union and its growing clout in the continent.

After he described Morocco as a country of tourism, oranges and drugs, he continued his hate speech, claiming, Morocco has nothing to offer South Africa. Such a statement is not only emanating of envy but also of ignorance about Morocco and the projects it has ushered with African heavy weights including Ethiopia and Nigeria.

Someone should have told Cornish to look in the mirror before attacking Morocco. The same journalist, when he was chairman of the French Alliance of Pretoria, has said last March at the screening of Leila Marrakchis film, Rock the Casbah, that in the African continent, which swings between hope and despair, Morocco is rising thanks to the political and economic progress it has achieved as a land of hope and optimism.

He added It is high time that this great country, took the place it deserves in the African Union to continue to give its precious contribution to build Africa of the future.

Such a double speak not only undermines the credibility of Cornishs letter but makes him look inconsistent and self-contradictory and hence unqualified to give an advice to the ANC leader on his future African policy to say the least.
The West Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has underscored in a 66-page impact study that Morocco is welcome to the bloc provided that its membership proceeds gradually.

Jeune Afrique magazine, which gained access to the impact study that was submitted to the heads of state of the ECOWAS, said that the conclusions are overall in favor of Moroccos membership, while noting the existence of some concerns regarding the economic disparities between the North African Kingdom and the rest of the West African grouping.

The magazine outlined the main conclusions of the study, which raises questions over the implementation of the freedom of movement between Morocco and the bloc as well as concerns regarding the protection of vulnerable sectors for ECOWAS countries in the event of Moroccos accession to the group.

The single currency, the residency rights as well as other technical aspects were also raised in the study, which stresses that Morocco should take into account the concerns of the ECOWAS member states and hence proceed to a gradual integration process.

In this respect, a diplomatic source told Jeune Afrique that Morocco will enable ECOWAS member states to protect their vulnerable sectors by adopting an approach similar to the one applied between Morocco and the EU in the Association Agreement. This will give free access to ECOWAS member states to the Moroccan market without reciprocity as long as the ECOWAS wishes.

The study also highlights the economic benefits that the ECOWAS will gain from Moroccos membership, citing agriculture and industry as sectors where Morocco made headway.

The 52nd summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), held over the past weekend, tasked a committee, made up of five heads of state, to further examine the impact study on the admission of the North African Kingdom in the economic bloc.

Moroccos membership request was accepted in principle by ECOWAS heads of state at a June 4 summit in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

The admission of Morocco to the ECOWAS sub-region will make it the second largest economy after Nigeria. Thanks to its geographic location and trade agreements with the EU, Turkey, the US and several Arab countries as well as its port and airport hubs, Morocco will offer West African countries a gateway to new markets.

With the inclusion of Morocco, the ECOWAS will bolster its aggregated GDP to the 16th rank globally ahead of Turkey and right after Indonesia.
Italian Oil & Gas Company Eni has signed a Petroleum Agreement (PA) with the Moroccan State Company ONHYM to explore the Tarfaya Offshore area, located in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean offshore the cities of Sidi Ifni, Tan Tan and Tarfaya.

Under the agreement, Eni will be the Operator of the license with a 75 pc stake, while ONHYM will retain a 25 pc stake. The exploration rights cover an area of 23,900 square kilometers, divided into 12 separate exploration areas.

Eni says the new Petroleum Agreement will enable it to enlarge its existing position in Morocco, in line with the Companys strategy aimed at diversifying its exploration portfolio in basins with high hydrocarbon potential.

Eni is already present in Morocco through its operatorship in the Rabat Deep Offshore license (Eni 40 pc, ONHYM 25 pc, Woodside 25 pc, Chariot 10 pc) and the El Jadida Offshore license (Eni 75 pc, ONHYM 25 pc).

Eni is a multinational described as one of the global major petroleum companies. It has operations in 73 countries, employing 33,000 persons in the world and having a market capitalization of $55 billion, as of June 30, 2017.

The company constantly ranks among the top 100 on Fortune Global 500 list for largest companies by revenue. In 2016, the company was listed in the 65th place.
The Moroccan Phosphates company (OCP) and the Indian Krishak Bharati Limited (Kribhco) will jointly build a fertilizer production unit in Andhra Pradesh state, in southern India.

The $230 million worth project, co-financed by the two part-ners, will have an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons of NPK fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium). The fertilizer production unit is expected to start operations in the summer of 2018.

The announcement was made on the sidelines of a visit to In-dia of a large Moroccan delegation, led by Minister of Equip-ment, Transport, Logistics and Water, Abdelkader Amara.

During the visit (Dec.14 to 21), the delegation held talks with several Indian officials, including the Minister of State for For-eign Affairs, Mubasher Jawad Akbar, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Equipment, infrastructure and sea freight, as well as with members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The visit highlighted by the signing of bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding in several sectors, particu-larly health and the fight against epidemics, telemedicine, railways, roads, port infrastructure and water resources.
Deported migrants wait in a park near the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, on February 16, 2017, in northwestern Mexico. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly a year into his presidency, Donald Trump doesnt appear any closer to delivering on his promise to build a wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. But its hard to imagine hes not thrilled with the rest of the immigration picture in the U.S.

Along with killing DACA and limiting legal immigration, Trump also has Immigration and Customs Enforcement working harder than ever. Though total deportations fell in 2017, arrests of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. surged. The majority of those arrested were first convicted or charged with a crime, though many of those crimes were low-level traffic offenses. Still, some were innocent of all but being in the country illegally. The number of non-criminal immigrants arrested in 2017 increased by 250 percent, up to 13,600 compared to 5,498 in 2016.

Thats a reflection of new Trump policies laid out in an executive order issued early in his presidency. The order ended Obama-era prioritization of criminal immigrants and gave ICE officers much more latitude to arrest people for the simple crime of being in the U.S. illegally. And they took advantage of that latitude, making more than 143,000 arrests for civil immigration violations, up from 110,000 in 2016.

The president has made it clear in his executive orders: Theres no population off the table. If youre in this country illegally, were looking for you and were going to look to apprehend you, ICEs acting director Thomas Homan said earlier this month.

Overall deportation numbers fell in 2017 in part because fewer people were coming across the border. Immigrants who are detained within 100 miles of the border and have been in the U.S. for fewer than 14 days are eligible for expedited removal. The number of those immigrants deported this year dropped 17 percent, thanks in no small part to Trumps ability to instill fear in those who might otherwise cross.
The very senior senator from Mississippi, Thad Cochran, is reportedly about to pack it in. Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images

Thad Cochran first went to Congress in 1972, riding on the broad Mississippi coattails of Richard Nixon, alongside fellow Ole Miss cheerleader Trent Lott. Six years later, he became the first statewide Republican winner since Reconstruction, succeeding veteran segregationist Democrat Jim Eastland and symbolizing the partisan and racial realignment of his state and the South.

With John Conyerss resignation earlier this month, Cochran became the longest-serving member of Congress (Utahs Orrin Hatch has him beat in Senate seniority by two years, and is thus Senate president pro tem). Lott left the Senate 15 years ago this week. Cochrans current, seventh term doesnt run out until 2020, and the octogenarian is probably hoping Hatch will retire next year and let him crown his career as third in the line of succession to the presidency. But its not looking good. Aside from a urological ailment that has kept him back home in Mississippi a good part of this autumn, Cochran is reportedly not in the best state of mind to serve in the Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body. Politico had this unhappy report in October when Cochran got back to Washington for some key votes:

The 79-year-old Cochran appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday. He was unable to answer whether he would remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and at one point, needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located.

Now Politico is reporting that it may just be a matter of time until Cochran has to step down as Appropriations chair, and perhaps as senator:

[Cochran] hasnt presided over a hearing since early September. The Mississippi Republican has not given a speech on the Senate floor all year, and hes introduced only two bills during that time, both of them minor.

The 80-year-olds feeble performance has fueled expectations  among senators and aides whove witnessed his physical and mental decline firsthand  that Cochran will step down from the Appropriations chairmanship early next year, or resign from the Senate altogether.

The understanding is that he will leave after Jan. 1, said a Republican senator who serves on the Appropriations Committee. Thats what most of us believe will happen.

Its hard to imagine Cochran lingering on in the Senate if he has to give up the Appropriations gavel. Of all the types of latter-day southern senators  the demagogues, the ideologues, and the wheeler-dealers are other categories  Cochran represents the Appropriator, the congressman who is able to steer vast federal resources to his very poor state by dint of seniority and an easygoing demeanor. It is this quality that enabled him to survive (very narrowly) an ideology-based primary challenge in 2014 from fire-breather Chris McDaniel. In a runoff campaign, Cochran openly appealed to Mississippi Democrats and independents to keep him in the Senate to ensure that federal largesse continued to flow into the state.

And its Cochrans success as an Appropriator that has made it possible for him to stay in office despite a voting record that is much less savagely conservative than your average southern Republican would prefer.

Indeed, it seems Cochran (or the people around Cochran; its hard to tell how much autonomy he currently exercises), would like to hold on until this years on-again, off-again appropriations process is completed, once Congress tires of stopgap spending bills and gets serious, perhaps in January or February. But with No. 2 appropriator Richard Shelby of Alabama already more or less running the committee, its unclear why his Mississippi colleague doesnt bend to the inevitable, much as a 91-year-old Robert Byrd did in giving up the Approps gavel in 2008.

If Cochran does retire from the Senate in January, his states Republican governor, Phil Bryant, will appoint an interim senator who will serve until a nonpartisan special election that would coincide with next years general election (if theres no majority winner on November 6, then a special runoff would be held later in that month). Since Cochrans junior colleague Roger Wicker (a mere lad at 66) is also up in 2018, that would mean a double Senate election (which could also very easily happen in Arizona if John McCains health forces him to resign), which despite Mississippis deep-red character is always a perilous circumstance for the party in power.

This creates an interesting dilemma for the man who nearly ended Cochrans Senate career in 2014, Chris McDaniel, who was mulling another hyperideological campaign, this time against Wicker, next year. He could stay that course, or gamble on a special election in November. Either way, the Republican civil war will probably come to Mississippi in 2018. And the odds are high that whoever takes over Cochrans old seat wont resemble him very much  unless another former Ole Miss cheerleader is available.
Outspoken Uganda Medical Association (UMA) president Dr Ekwaro Obuku is in stable condition following last evening's attack by yet-to-be known assailants near his home in Kitikifumba.



According to UMA general secretary, Dr Muhwezi Muhereza, Obuku was attacked at his gate at around 8pm as he returned home from work.



"He was mugged at outside his gate. I don't know whether it's mugging or beating. That is a fact but he is stable and fine. He is not in danger and we are going to check on him today," Dr Muhereza told URN on phone this morning.

Attacked: Dr Ekwaro Obuku addressing the media earlier over health workers' welfare

Dr Muhereza declined to reveal the location of Dr Obuku's home and where he is hospitalised, saying the association will issue a detailed statement on the incident later today. We have since established that he is currently hospitalised at Case Medical Centre and is nursing nose injuries.



Luke Oweyesigire, the Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, confirmed the incident, saying Dr Obuku was attacked at his gate in Kitikifumba Zone in Kiira division in Wakiso district. His phone was robbed during the attack according to Oweyesigire. He also says the thugs robbed the handbag of Dr Obuku's relative identified as Joyce Akiigwa.



Dr Obuku was elected UMA president in September 2017 and is expected to serve until 2019. Obuku joined the leadership of UMA in 2013 as publicity and mobilisation secretary.



He was later elected secretary general. Dr Obuku dominated the media during the recent medical doctor's strike because of his outspokenness on health workers welfare and working conditions.



He steered UMA through the November 2017 strike demanding better remuneration for medical workers, a review of the supply chain and management of medicines, vaccines and medical supplies and disbandment of the Health Monitoring Unit.



The doctors only resumed work after government agreed to give them a pay rise. Government is yet to review the supply chain and management of medicines and disband the Health Monitoring Unit.
Members of Parliament on Wednesday night approved the extension of their tenure in parliament from five to seven years.



This was after the Mbarara Municipality MP Michael Tumusiime tabled amendments for the extension of the term of office for elected offices. These include the Office of the President, Members of Parliament and others.



The amendment came about as parliament was considering amendments carried in the controversial Constitutional (Amendment) (No.2) Bill, 2017. Tumusiime also tabled a certificate of financial implications saying that the proposed amendments were not to financially cost the country.



These proposed amendments by Tumusiime attracted a big debate with several MPs from the opposition side including Budadiri West MP Nathan Nandala Mafabi and Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga arguing that they cannot extend their own tenure yet the voters gave them a five year term.

MPs have extended their tenure by a further two years

"Members have interest in this, we came here for five years and we cannot make it retrospective. There is no way you can amend for yourselves. I don't agree with the seven years, five years are enough for use" said Nandala.



Mpuuga questioned how sure the MPs were; that, if they extend the tenure of parliament, Ugandans will in the referendum extend the tenure of the president as required by the Constitution. He said that the proposed extension of the tenure for elective offices offends Article 1 of the Constitution that gives power to the people.



"All these Articles move together and not in isolation, my understanding of the law is that these amendments are unconstitutional" said Mpuuga.



Buyaga West MP Barnabas Tinkasimire also opposed the move to extend the tenure of parliament.



"I think we are becoming too much to Ugandans. I want us to be honest to our country. These proposals are not coming in good faith." said Tinkasimire.



However, their arguments fell on the deaf hears of the majority National Resistance Movement MPs who argued that parliament had powers to amend the constitution and make laws for the Country.



Led by the deputy attorney general Mwesigwa Rukutana, Ibanda South MP John Byabagambi, Oyam South MP Betty Amongi, the MPs said that parliament is mandated under Article 79 of the Constitution to enact laws for peace and good governance.



"We are not considering only this parliament but also local council elections, president and we are doing this for posterity. The Finance ministry gave us a certificate and the proposed amendments do not have any financial implications to this country." said Mwesigwa.



Byabagambi argued that the extension of the tenure was to save the country a lot of money that will instead go to infrastructure development and the health sector.



Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga also seemed to agree with the extension of the tenure saying that it was only parliament to legislate and that they needed to carry out that duty.



"It is only this House which can legislate for the country on issues of governance, we legislated on five years and we can legislate again. What I understand with these proposals is that henceforth, instead of holding elections every five years, they will be held every seven years." said Kadaga.



She then put the question with MPs shouting out in approval of the extension of the tenure to seven years.
The lawyers who prepared the case against Sudhir Ruparelia, in which Bank of Uganda accuses the property mogul of stealing Shs 400 billion from Crane bank, can no longer represent the central bank in the case.

Sudhir Ruparelia with his lawyers at the Commercial court in Kampala

The direct involvement of BOU lawyers Timothy Masembe Kanyerezi (MMAKS Advocates) and David Mpanga (AF Mpanga/Bowmans) respectively, in the case has ended after Justice David Wangutusi, the head of the Commercial court, agreed with Sudhir that the duo were too conflicted to be lawyers in this particular case.

In his September application Sudhir argued that the two lawyers should be kicked out because they represented Crane bank until October 20, 2016, when BOU took over its management and thus the law firms shared confidential information with the central bank.

Commercial court has ruled in businessman Sudhir Ruparelia's favour. Bank of #Uganda lawyers; MMAKS Advocates & AF Mpanga Advocates have been disqualified from a #fraud case against him ? @bamulanzeki #CraneBank #banking pic.twitter.com/a0iwiN8UcD  The Observer (@observerug) December 21, 2017

In response to this charge both Masembe and Mpanga didnt deny that over the years they have represented Crane bank. But their point of departure was that there was no conflict since they represented Crane bank which is a separate entity from Sudhir, who has been sued as an individual in this current case.

Justice David Wangutusi didnt buy the two lawyers' defence. The Achilles-heel for Masembe and Mpanga, according to Justice Wangutusi, was in the very way they drafted the main case against Sudhir.

In their main pleadings, the lawyers acting on behalf of BOU, accused Sudhir not only of being the sole owner of Crane Bank which is against the Financial Institutions Act but also running the bank on his whims, suggesting that he was running its day-to-day activities.

Justice Wangutusi then found it strange that the lawyers diverted from that argument when they defended themselves once Sudhir accused them of conflict of interest, passionately arguing that they didn't take instructions from Sudhir but from Crane Bank.

The meaning of this, is that Crane bank and Sudhir were one and the same person, Justice David Wangutusi noted adding,  So going by that it means that there was a fiduciary relationship between the applicant [Sudhir ] and first (Masembe) and second (Mpanga) respondents.

David Mpanga to appeal the ruling

Justice Wangutusi, whose ruling was read for him by Nakawa chief magistrate Lilian Buchana, agreed with Sudhirs lawyers Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA) that perhaps during interactions between him and the two lawyers, Sudhir could have confided to them information which they could use against him in this case.

In the bid to have Masembe and Mpanga kicked out of the case, Sudhir contended that the duo cannot prosecute him because he has listed them as his witnesses.

In response, Mpanga argued that this would amount to conscription of lawyers akin to what warlord Joseph Kony was doing in Northern Uganda for some years. Nevertheless, Justice Wangutusi agreed with Sudhir that Mpanga specifically was a compellable witness since he was the architect of and signatory to the Confidential Settlement and Release Agreement (CSRA). Under the CSRA which is now under contention in the main case, Sudhir paid BOU US$8m purposely to get back his bank.

Justice Wangutusi said that Mpanga ought to have known better that once he signed the agreement he stopped being just a lawyer and became a potential witness.

Evidence has be laid showing Mpanga was heavily involved in the negotiations of the agreement; it should have been good to think that he would likely...be witness, Justice Wangutusi ruled, if the agreement is contested in court.

After the ruling, Moses Adriko, a senior partner in MMAKS advocates, indicated that they are going to file a notice of appeal at the court by close of business today.

We pray that typed record of proceedings is availed and the ruling is availed to us because we are going to appeal this ruling, Adriko, who represented Masembe who was not in court, said.

David Mpanga, at press conference held at his law chambers in Nakasero the same day, reiterated Adrikos point that an appeal is in the offing.

Cases in court are determined by precedents, Mpanga said, And this ruling cannot stand because it wouldnt be good for practicing lawyers.

The focus of the public, according to Mpanga, should more on why Crane bank was closed and who is responsible for the closure.

"Conflicted" Bank of Uganda lawyers consider appealing against today's Commercial court ruling in which they were disqualified from the #CraneBank fraud case ? @bamulanzeki pic.twitter.com/irojmoFO2e  The Observer (@observerug) December 21, 2017

dkiyonga@observer.ug
Active Asphalt Seep Discovered in the Northern Gulf of Mexico By Dr. Carolyn Ruppel, Research Geophysicist, U.S. Geological Survey

Dr. Robert S. Carney, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. Oceanography & Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University

December 17, 2017

During Dive 09 of the Okeanos Explorer Gulf of Mexico 2017 expedition, NOAAs Deep Discoverer (D2) remotely operated vehicle (ROV) found an asphalt seep at ~1,150 meters (~3,775 feet) water depth in an area known as Henderson Ridge. This is not the first time that NOAAs Office of Ocean Exploration and Research has discovered asphalt in locations where it was previously unknown in the northern Gulf of Mexico: In 2014, D2 found evidence of asphalt extrusions that had formed tar lilies on the seafloor ~170 kilometers (~105 statute miles) to the southwest of Henderson Ridge. Asphalt volcanism has also been described in the Green Canyon area of the northern Gulf of Mexico, at over 3,000 meters (~9,840 feet) water depth in the southern Gulf of Mexico (Campeche Knolls), on the Brazilian and Angolan margins, and offshore California.

The asphalt seep discovered on Dive 09 lies a few kilometers north of the Sigsbee Escarpment, a physiographic feature that separates the dimpled bathymetry of the northern Gulf of Mexico from the flat abyssal plain to the south. The thick, deeply buried salt deposits north of the Sigsbee Escarpment are responsible for the unusual dome and basin bathymetric pattern of the northern Gulf of Mexico and play a critical role in the seepage of natural gas, asphalt, oil, brines, and liquefied muds from the seafloor. Dive 09 encountered not only asphalt seepage, but also the remnants of carbonate columns that are thought to be formed by slow seepage of mineral-laden fluids and methane bubbles that emerged from the seafloor within a chemosynthetic community.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Under the pressure of thick overlying sediments, the Gulf of Mexicos deep salt layer, which is buoyant compared to the surrounding sediments, becomes mobilized and migrates upward as diapirs. Faults form as sediments are pushed aside by the diapirs, and the faults in turn become conduits to transfer hydrocarbons or other fluids upward to the seafloor. At the same time, sediments adjacent to and overlying salt domes often heat up due to the thermal characteristics of salt. Such warming also contributes to the mobilization of fluids at depth.

As a major petroleum basin, the northern Gulf of Mexico is underlain by deposits of oil and natural gas. Lacking geochemical analyses of the seafloor fluids, the scientists who participated in Dive 09 used the term asphalt to refer to a highly viscous form of petroleum that solidifies once it encounters the cold temperatures (~4.6C; ~40.3F) of the bottom waters. Before coming across the asphalt seep, D2 discovered solidified asphalt rocks that looked like viscous lavas (e.g., pahoehoe) squeezed from a tube.

The Henderson Ridge asphalt seep lay in a patch that measured several meters in diameter and that also hosted white filamentous bacterial mats. Within the seep patch, black tubules seemingly frozen in time protruded from the seafloor in various morphologies, including long thin tubes, squat inverted drops, and elongated, bulbous droplets. The tubules waved in the strong bottom currents, but did not detach from the seafloor during few minutes that the ROV videotaped them. These observations imply that the tubules were relatively viscous. Some of the older droplets had living material and sediment stuck to their surfaces, but most tubules were deep black and had no attached debris, possibly indicating that they were extruded more recently.

The 2013 and 2017 discoveries of asphalt north of the Sigsbee Escarpment expand the geographic range of known seafloor asphalt deposits in the Gulf of Mexico and further elucidate the mysteries of this leaky petroleum basin.
In recent past, India managed to improve its rating on ease of doing business and underwent massive reforms in terms of bringing in structural changes in the economy. This include demonetisation, rolling out of GST, prime focus on ease of doing business, putting money in the infrastructure building and dealing with corporate debt. This has already created disruption in businesses. Business Today's Anilesh S. Mahajan spoke to corporate honcho Sidharth Birla to understand the sentiments among businesses houses. Here are the excerpts of the interview.

Mr Birla, recently the government came up with GDP growth number for second quarter registering 6.7 per cent surge, this was seen as an upswing from the record bottom of 5.7 per cent dip in the previous quarter. What is your experience, what does these macro-numbers mean for businesses like yours...

There is an improvement in GDP numbers and subsequently in the economic activities as well. At the same time, private consumption was weaker than even the previous period. As a businessman, there are two important things. Firstly, what is the consumption level and secondly, what is the net outcome of all that economic activities. The real issue is to see, if we are competitive enough or in other words, are we making enough money in competing with others. When compared to China, our source of competitiveness is missing. This is our major weakness. Logistics, manpower, energy cost, interest cost can all be included where India's competitiveness still lacks. This is the prime factor to attract future investments, since we are barely earning and repaying the funds borrowed in last 5 years. Thus, GDP is an important parameter but is over-rated. Investment is lacking behind no doubt, but what is more disappointing is the consumption level and the reason could accrue to the fact no industry could bring out 70-80% of capacity utilisation in last 5 years. We have to keep a sharp eye on consumption story. Without consumption story, there will not be sufficient revenues. There will be fewer activities, no employment and definitely no future investment.

What will be your suggestion? How can we push consumption in next two quarters?

There are two things. Firstly 80% of the consumption story is in the mind of the person. People need a feel good factor to kick-start the consumption. This is blown away because of two factors, a) bad circumstances and b) uncertainty. In last one year, demonetization and then GST brought uncertainty in the market. GST is no doubt a very good move, but it has resulted in pain for some of the people. Such uncertainty kills the discretionary demand. We have to reduce the mental uncertainty among the consumers. There is enough consumption strength in India, the main issue is to translate it to real consumption. This is the first thing that needs to be done. This partly requires putting money back in the hands of the people and this can be done by consumer credit, through tax savings etc. There are enough anecdotal evidences, that the basic consumption among those in the informal section has gone down, and many cases drastically.

In managing the macro-numbers a big task is the keep the gap narrow of fiscal & Current account deficits. The experts fear some slips here. Any suggestions, how to go about it?

Theoretically, You can close the gap by not spending on critical components. That scenario will not help anyone, not even the economy. Constructive spending is critical. Government need to fix the revenue spending, and continue with the capital spending. The infrastructure sector is seeing a major push, and it is largely because of the capital spending government is doing. In days, when the private sector is not investing to most of our likings, the public funds are crucial. The fiscal deficit is a matter of policy, which we cannot decide. Spending above a limit is not good and cutting capital spending to reduce fiscal deficit is also not good. So, both the issues are there.

Another challenge is that that lot of FDI is coming to Brownfield projects, so this might sound fascinating that FDI numbers are increasing...but what are thoughts in corporate world?

Correct. A lot FDI is attracted in secondary market, stock markets. Huge amount is also waiting to come in, that too in stressed assets. At stressed assets, someone is actually going to lose valuation, i.e., original investors are going to lose valuation and other fellows are going to gain valuation. The good part is that the productive assets will remain productive but the fact is none of that capital is going to create any additional capacity. None of the FDI will come to MSMEs, and unless this sector grows, no jobs will be created.

The MSMEs mostly effected or have been killed by the demonetization and GST. Apart from this, they are the ones who are actually affected by the dumping happening because of cheaper Chinese products. So, what kind of scenario do you see in next 3-4 years?



Problematic. Ancillary suppliers will not be affected like the payers in open markets. Another big challenge is we don't have concrete and reliable data, along with this may of the players don't have their own voices. Traders are still audible, but we have not heard anything from hardcore manufacturing sector. I am not able to quantify their problems.

Many believe that there are several entrepreneurs -who may not want to come in the formal sector-largely due to direct tax, tax filing and other compliances issues

It may be because by avoiding the payment of these small amounts, which he is able to hide because of being in informal sector, is actually the margin he is earning. This is the same case with the many of the traders. This needs to be addressed. But unfortunately, many of them are afraid to disclose it, as they have a fear of future filings and compliances. No one has a capacity to pay for the past. This is appears to be a valid fear. For example, under voluntary disclosure scheme, (launched by NDA regime to capture black money both at domestic as well as foreign accounts), many couldn't. This was because they feared the taxmen may open the old cases. Many may want to disclose, but couldn't because of this mindset. They have this genuine fear that this will hamper working capital, which would routine work. That could be why these good schemes didn't evoke that kind of response. People had the willingness to pay but not the ability to pay. This is also affecting GST as some people are unwilling to take risk.

Another criticism, which implementation of GST faces is; Nobody i.e., the government, or industry bodies such as FICCI (Sidharth Birla led FICCI during a crucial discussions on GST) or CII did any comprehensive study to identify the challenges industry may face because of the implementation this new tax regime. Moreover, we journalists were floated with examples of the economies, which adopted GST. But most of them were not as diverse as India is, don't have this big informal sector.

There are two things. Firstly, the issue of principles. On principles, GST is very good. Yes from FICCI's point of view, the rate should be very well coordinated and minimize the rate differentials. We recognized at that time that because of various reasons and demography we need to keep differential rate. Secondly, because of the speed of roll out, everyone was busy in what the law should be, instead of more deeply participating in the rules. There was a very little time for consultation process, largely because of the time pressure. The combination of these two may have caused problems, in the initial implementation which is now is being sorted out. We majorly advocated for broadest basket of goods (to include alcohol, petroleum products), minimized differential rates and keep a reasonable rate.

One of the biggest challenges, the government is facing these days is job creation. We discussed at length how job creation was impacted because of the disruptions. But one of the innovative methods that government has adopted for job creation is skill development. So do you think anything is happening in skill development front?

The gap is very much and in fact has increased since past few years. The main problem, we pointed out in 2014 was not only the skill development aimed at the future, but the skills that existed were actually non-employable. The real need was to look out at the health of the agriculture, so that the pressure of supply of the people running away from agriculture is mitigated. We have to kill the supply of the surplus coming out of the agriculture by keeping them there, secondly we should have brought discipline willingly, which we are trying to do now by other means in the construction sector. But in the construction sector, there could have been far more activities, which the government intends to do now. In that case, even an unskilled person would have got employment (such road construction and all). According to a study done by Mckinsey, 40-45% of addition in jobs in future would have been taken care of if employment in construction would have increased. So, because of this skill development had very little to play with it. Bring everything under ministry of manpower, so that we can have a holistic thing from lower education level to labor employment.

Another issue that came in front of us is NCLT... that the promoters of the stressed assets will not be qualified to participate in the future.

This matter can be debated endlessly. All kinds of views go for large industries & small industries. The problems are very different. In small companies if promoter will not be able to come then it will be a problem. But if you will look it from two points. One is the process point of view and the other is ethical point of view. Ethically I think a promoter getting a chance at IBC stage is an issue (they have lost all possibilities available to them). You have all the opportunities up to reaching till the IBC stage. Forget India, anywhere in the world, it may not be an acceptable solution.

How does US do it?



They have super version of SICA (in chapter 11). The Systemic mindset has to be clinical. In India it's sometimes not clinical, its more emotional (as a society). Their main motto in USA is that their productive asset must not stop operating. Their assets move separately from their liabilities under the restructuring process. India is not moving in the same direction. Of course, in US too, people have misused chapter 11 to not to pay liabilities. But this I believe can be fixed.
Reliance Infrastructure, as part of its deleveraging strategy for future growth, on Thursday signed a deal with Adani Transmission Limited (ATL) for a 100 per cent stake in its Mumbai power business for a value of Rs 13,251 crore. As part of the deal, the ATL will take control of the integrated business of power generation, transmission and distribution. According to Rinfra, India's largest private integrated power utility, the latest deal is the largest ever debt reduction exercise by any corporate. Following the signing of the deal between RInfra and Adani Transmission, the shares of both the companies surged up to 10 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in intra-day trade.

Though the deal has been signed for a total consideration of Rs 18,800 crore, its actual value is Rs 13,251 crore that comprises the entire power business valued at Rs 12,101 crore and regulatory assets of Rs 1,150. Besides, the company said regulatory assets of Rs 5,000 crore and net working capital of Rs 550 crore will flow directly to RInfra. "The acquisition marks our foray into the distribution sector in India. We see distribution as the next sunrise sector as India embarks on its mission to achieve 24x7 power for all," said Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group. He added there was a "massive opportunity" for organic as well as inorganic growth.

Reliance Infrastructure's Mumbai power business is a gigantic power generation and distribution system that caters to a population of more than 3 million people in residential, industrial and commercial consumers of Mumbai. With a power generation capacity of over 1,800 mw, Reliance Energy generates annual revenues of Rs 7,500 crore with stable cash flows. For the quarter that ended in September, Reliance Infrastructure posted a net profit of Rs 5.44 billion and reported a total debt of around Rs 140 billion. Anil Ambani-led Reliance Infrastructure on December 6 had bagged contracts worth Rs 5,000 crore through international competitive bidding in Bangladesh to set up infrastructure for a 750 mw LNG-based combined cycle power plant.



With PTI inputs
Welcome to 'OZ' - The 'Other' Side of the Rainbow!! Posting is at 10AM, Noon and 2PM CST daily. Up to 12 days of posts on the main page. The archives have more. You can forward posts by clicking on the envelope at the bottom of the post. Enjoy your stay! *** If you need to contact me, or have a copyright issue, please use the "Contact The Wizard" form on the left side of 'OZ'. Original source and author is cited and credited in each post where possible. ***
All provisions regarding exploration of natural gas under 18th Amendment had been fully implemented: Shahid Khaqan 21 December, 2017



Related News Imran Khan distributed loan cheques under Kamyab Jawan Programme PTI govt to face all challenges coming its way: Imran khan More on this View All Tips for Taking Incredible iPhone Travel Photos

Top 2021 Accessories We Know You Will Love

Types of Casino Payment Methods

Are Slot Developers Important for players?

Best Poker Hands ever played on a Casino

Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry

Woke Bingo ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday told senators that all provisions regarding exploration, distribution and transportation of natural gas under the 18th Amendment had been fully implemented.



He was giving a statement in the Senate regarding distribution of gas among provinces. The Prime Minister said after 18th Amendment, the government had inducted provincial representation at the Ministry of Petroleum. He said the government had independent regulator in Pakistan with provincial representation. The government was working on addressing issues pertaining to the petroleum products at the Council of Common Interests level.



Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani on Wednesday expressed his anger over the leakage of proceeding of in-camera senate session, in which military leadership including army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa briefed the senators on countrys security situation, and said that sharing the information of in-camera session has tarnish the image of the house.



Parts of the in-camera senate session have been reported in various electronic media houses, despite complete ban on sharing of proceeding with media. The sharing of information of in-camera meeting caused the damage to senates image, therefore I decided to send the issue to House Business Advisory Committee, he said adding that leader of the house, opposition leader and other members were included in the committee.



The committee will also draft the future policy regarding in-camera session, he said. Chairman senate told that the leader of the house, opposition leader and few other senators have not spoken during the in-camera session. Getting news essential responsibility of media and it get the news form sources, however we should cautious, Rabbani said.



Reportedly, senators have alleged one member of the House to have leaked the information.



Senate Chairman has said that privilege of Senate was compromised and it was saddening that one member made details of the briefing and General Bajwas visit public. If this was how it was to turn out, the Senate might as well had allowed media to cover the developments.



Which institution or a head of an institution would agree for an in-camera briefing after the incident, Senate Chairman rhetorically asked. Rabbani said that he believes in freedom of press and that the responsibility lies with the senators.



While answering to the objection raised by Senator Nauman Wazir, Senate Chairman said that Director General (DG) of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) could not reveal details of the General Bajwas meeting with the senators.



The Senate today passed two bills. The first bill The Pakistan Tobacco Board (Amendment) Bill, 2017 provides to amend the Pakistan Tobacco Board Ordinance, 1968. The second bill The Apprenticeship Bill, 2017 provided for promoting, developing and regulating systematic apprenticeship programs in the establishments for securing certain minimum standards of skill.



Minister for States and Frontier Regions Abdul Qadir Baloch says the government was committed to implement recommendations of the FATA Reforms Committee. He was responding to a Calling Attention Notice moved by Syed Shibli Faraz regarding delay in legislation for merger of FATA with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in Senate. The Minister said FATA Reforms Committee gave twenty-five recommendations and directions had been issued for the implementation of twenty-four of them while only one recommendation regarding extension of jurisdiction of superior judiciary was the matter of concern. He expressed the hope that this issue would also be sorted out soon; and hopefully, the bill would likely be tabled in National Assembly soon.



Speaking on an issue of Public importance, Senator Farhatullah Babar warned against any secret move to mainstream militant organizations in the country which he said could spell disaster for peace in the region. The government to come out clean and place all facts before the Parliament for discussion and debate. He said that he had no proof but several strange happenings recently were alarm bells that lent credence to the suspicion that something was afoot.



He said the participation of banned outfits in the recent elections in NA 120 and in NA 4, the emergence of Milli Muslim League, the declaration by JuD to enter into electoral politics and the suspicious silence over the fate of Ehsanullah Esan the self-confessed murderer of APS Peshawar children indicated that something was cooking.



On another issue of public importance he drew attention towards the shrinking space of the civil society organizations and said that any policy about the NGOs must be based in legislation and not in executive orders.



He said that the civil society based on freedoms of association and freedom of expression was a valuable partner and not a threat to the state and regretted the enlargement of footprint of securities agencies in dealing with them. He said that statement by minister of state for interior in the senate two days ago and the formal reply given to a question in the Senate today was a proof that secret state agencies were the final arbiters of which NGO be allowed to work. Entrusting the task of registration to police or secret agencies was alike asking the wolf to guard the lamb.



Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudry said the government welcome any guide line come from the Senate of Pakistan. He claimed that the government has stopped registration of 27 NGOs over agencies report that they were involved in illegal activities.
Tribal people consent be sought before taking a decision on FATA: Afghan consul general

PESHAWAR: A senior Afghan diplomat on Wednesday cautiously responded to a question over the proposed merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and suggested that tribal peoples consent be sought before taking a decision on the matter.



Our government has no reservations over the merger, but the opinion of the people of the area is paramount before taking such a major decision, said Peshawar-based Afghan consul general Mohammad Moeen Marastial at a news conference at the press club on Wednesday.



When a reporter sought the Afghan governments stance on the proposed Fata-KP merger, Mr Marastial said the opinion of the people should be taken into consideration before taking major decisions, though Kabul had no reservations over the merger.



The Afghan diplomats statement appears to support the stance of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl, which also calls for obtaining the consent of the tribal people before the merger. Like the JUI-F, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) also has serious apprehensions over the merger plan.



Giving a statement in the National Assembly last Friday, PkMAP chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai had warned that it was a sensitive issue and Afghanistan could raise objections to any move to change the status of Fata.



Mr Marastial said that Irans Chabahar port would not affect his countrys trade with Pakistan, adding that Chabahar would facilitate trade among Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asian states, while the Karachi port would cater to commercial requirements of Pakistan and Afghanistan.



Chabahar port will have no effect on bilateral trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said, adding that cordial relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan could bridge ties among regional countries. The first phase of the Chabahar port was inaugurated early this month and it will serve as an alternative trade route to landlocked Afghanistan.



The educationist-turned-diplomat Moeen Marastial recently took charge in Peshawar. He replaced Abdul Waheed Poyan who has been posed as consul general in Karachi. Before his assignment in Peshawar, he was associate professor in Kabul University.



Mr Marastial was of the view that Kabul and Islamabad should improve relations and cooperation in different fields, including trade, education, culture and transport, instead of dragging their feet on political issues.



Economic, trade and cultural ties can pave the way for resolving political issues between the two neighbours, he said, adding that both countries should first improve trade and cultural relations. He said the consulate had very limited objectives and he wanted to strengthen relations with Pakistan in different sectors, including education, transport and culture.



I will try my best not to involve the Peshawar consulate in political disputes, he said and added that soon after taking charge he held a meeting with academicians and traders. He said that Islamia College University had increased reserved seats for Afghan students from nine to 15. Similarly, on his request, he said, the KP government had simplified admission process for refugees in schools and colleges. He called for greater cooperation and exchange of delegations between Pakistani and Afghan universities.



In reply to a question, the consul general said that Pakistan and Afghanistan were suffering due to prevailing lawlessness and, therefore, they should make joint efforts to bring about a lasting peace.



He said that other powers, including America, China, Iran and India, were protecting their own interests in the region and Pakistan and Afghanistan should also safeguard their mutual interests.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
The hospital initially reported an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound sustained by Waite E. Denton, 27, of Willsboro while hunting with Andrew L. Rolston, 33, of Willsboro. A subsequent investigation revealed Denton and Rolston were illegally hunting deer when Rolston accidentally shot Denton with a 20 gauge shotgun. The slug entered his right bicep and exited through his right tricep before grazing his upper back. Rolston transported Denton to Elizabethtown Community Hospital where he was later flown to the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont with non-life threatening injuries.

This investigation resulted in Rolston being charged with Assault 2nd degree, Reckless Endangerment 2nd degree, Criminal Possession of a Weapon 4th degree and Making a Punishable False Written Statement. He was arraigned at the Town of Westport Court where he was released on his own recognizance. Rolston is to reappear at the Town of Elizabethtown Court on December 28, 2017, at 1:30 p.m. and at the Town of Lewis Court on December 26, 2017, at 6 p.m. Denton was charged with Making a Punishable False Written Statement. He was released on an appearance ticket returnable to the Town of Lewis Court on December 26, 2017, at 6 p.m.

This investigation was conducted jointly with the New York State Environmental Conservation Police. Additional New York State Environmental Conservation Law charges are pending.
FORT EDWARD  A special prosecutor has been appointed for the case of a former Washington County Jail guard who was been charged with having sexual contact with an inmate.

The Warren County District Attorneys Office has been named to prosecute Brandon M. Donaldson, 22, of Whitehall, who was charged for alleged sexual encounters with a female inmate in a jail janitorial closet earlier this year while he worked as a correction officer.

The Washington County District Attorneys Office stepped away from the case because of a conflict of interest.

Donaldson faces two felony counts of third-degree criminal sexual act, brought by a Washington County grand jury after an investigation by the Washington County Sheriffs Office.

Donaldson was in Washington County Court on Thursday with his lawyer, John Oswald. Judge Kelly McKeighan adjourned the case until Jan. 4 to allow the special prosecutor to complete its portion of pretrial motions.

Oswald could not be reached for comment later Thursday.

Acting Warren County District Attorney Jason Carusone said it was too soon to say whether the case was headed to trial.

We are evaluating the case, he said.

Donaldson is not accused of forcing the woman to have sex, but under state law, inmates cannot legally consent to sexual contact with jail staff and sexual encounters are crimes.

The Washington County District Attorneys Office stepped away from the case because of its ongoing prosecution of the inmate who has alleged she had sexual contact with Donaldson.

The woman, a convicted burglar whose name is being withheld because she is considered the victim of a sex crime, landed back in jail for an unspecified period last month for a sanction in Washington County drug court. She was out of custody as of Thursday, and faces sentencing in the future depending upon how she does in drug court.

While there were concerns earlier this year that the woman may have been sexually involved with other jail staff members, Jordan said his office and the Sheriffs Office completed their investigation and no other charges were going to be filed.

For there to be additional arrests, there would have to be more accusations, Jordan said.

Donaldson is free pending prosecution. He faces up to 4 years in state prison on each count.

Donaldson was a part-time guard at the jail for about two years and was fired after police determined the veracity of allegations, Washington County Sheriff Jeff Murphy said.
Warren County supervisors are clinging to Brian Reichenbach like lovesick octopuses. When one arm gets peeled off, they wrap another one around him.

First, in September, Reichenbach decided to step down as county attorney so he could keep his position as Lake George town justice. The state Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics said holding both jobs raised conflicts of interest, and Reichenbach chose the $32,696-a-year judgeship over the $118,320-a-year county job.

I love being a town judge, he explained.

But then supervisors showed they can feel love, too, by offering Reichenbach work as an independent contractor to keep him around. Then they decided that wasnt enough and created a new job for him  special counsel to the Board of Supervisors.

The new part-time position pays $95 an hour and is meant only to last three months, but we wouldnt be shocked if that term gets extended.

Supervisors filled the county attorney job with Reichenbachs former assistant, Mary Kissane. Her old job hasnt been filled, however, and neither has the open spot of the second assistant.

That means the county has gone from having three full-timers in its attorneys office to having one. But it still has Reichenbach, who in his new position can be called on whenever supervisors need him.

And supervisors say they do need him.

He has been a tremendous county attorney, said Ron Conover, Boltons supervisor who is also head of the county board.

Theyre even interviewing him for the job of county administrator, which is also opening up. It looks like supervisors are trying to find a way around the conflict of interest ruling so Reichenbach can still be their No. 1 guy on the law.

If he stays as special counsel, and Kissane stays as county attorney, perhaps very little, besides their titles, will change. Reichenbach will still be supervisors first choice on legal matters, and Kissane will handle whatever he cannot. If he gets hired as county administrator, a similar dynamic could apply.

Glens Falls 3rd Ward Supervisor Claudia Braymer has pointed out the obvious  the boards actions look like a way to circumvent the state ethics opinion.

Remember, a much more direct way exists to avoid any conflicts  Reichenbach could quit his job as Lake George justice. Since he chose not to do that, he will be under a disadvantage in any job at the county as a lawyer, because hell always have to be watching out for any conflicts with his job as a judge.

Its odd that hes sticking around and doing in a back-door way the job that he announced he was giving up. But he did make a choice. Rather than twisting county job definitions in knots to keep him, supervisors should disentangle themselves and move on.

Local editorials represent the opinion of the Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Rob Forcey, Editor Ken Tingley, Projects Editor Will Doolittle, Controller/Operations Director Brian Corcoran and citizen representatives Dan Gealt, George Nelson and Patricia Crayford.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Taiwans Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has released its final version of the 2018 FIT scheme for the renewable energy industries on 14 December. For the first half of next year, the rate for 1-20kW solar PV projects is set at NT$5.8744/kWh, or 9.09% higher than the rate that was proposed earlier. As for geothermal power plants, their FIT rate for the first 10-year period of operation is set at NT$6.171/kWh, which is also 9.32% higher than the early tentative rate. MOEA furthermore announced that participants in the recently launched rooftop solar program will receive a rate increase of 3% in addition to the 6% hike for adopting high-efficiency solutions. MOEA believes that the final version of the 2018 FIT scheme will encourage the public to install solar PV systems and accelerate the development of geothermal power plants.

Before the final version of the 2018 FIT scheme was released on 14 December, MOEA had held two hearings on 11 October and 1 November, respectively, to draft the policy and consult the public. MOEA stated that the credibility of the FIT scheme is well established because its design is based not only on statistics and public input but also the objective realities of Taiwans climate and available resources. Nevertheless, the FIT rates and supporting policies for solar PV, offshore wind, and geothermal generation were fine-tuned before their finalization. The same principles behind the final review also apply to the development of related supporting policies.

With regard to FIT rates for solar PV projects, MOEA stated adjustments were made based on experiences and comments from industry professionals. In the final version of the FIT scheme, the construction time window of both ground-based and offshore (floating) projects has been extended by three months. Thus, projects that are scheduled for completion between 1 January and 30 September 2019 are now also eligible for the 2018 rates.

The government has also decided to maintain a strong level of support for small-scale and rooftop projects. The latest FIT rate table released by MOEA indicates that the rate reduction for the 1-20kW range will be much smaller compared with the cuts mentioned in the earlier public hearings. The calculation of the 2018 rates for 1-20kW projects is actually comparable to this years formula for 20-100kW projects. Additionally, MOEA announced that all participants in the rooftop solar program will get a rate increase of 3% that is extra to the 6% increase for rewarding the use of high-efficiency PV modules. This measure is an incentive for the public and is expected to help the program reach its target.

The FIT for offshore wind farms has taken account of the cost structures of wind farms in other countries. Furthermore, the government is going to compensate the domestic fisheries for the potential impact of wind turbines. After factoring the additional information, MOEA has tweaked its calculation of costs for the initial installation and operation phase to ensure consistency. The final version of the FIT scheme therefore has raised the rate of offshore wind farm by another 0.61%.

As for geothermal electricity projects, the FIT will be high during the initial operational period and then climb down gradually at intervals. The aim of the government is to hasten the building of geothermal power plants by reducing risks for prospective investors. The finalized rate for a geothermal power plant is set at NT$6.171/kWh for its first 10 years of operation. Again, this is an increase from the earlier tentative rate.

With the latest announcement, MOEA has formally concluded the design and review of the next years FIT scheme, which will be implemented in the follow-up legislative and bureaucratic processes. MOEA has stressed that the rates are based on actual market data and can be held up to scrutiny for their effectiveness (i.e. in terms of attracting investments) as well as fairness. Taiwans government will continue to carefully review FIT and related policies so that the islands renewable energy sector will have a solid foundation to grow on.

(Photo CreditCoCreatr via Flickr CC2.0)
First Solar, Inc. has announced that it is supplying over 860,000 high-performance thin film modules to power a 100 megawatt (MW)AC utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant developed by Zorlu Enerji in Pakistan. The Independent Power Producer (IPP) facility, part of the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in the countrys Punjab province, is expected to be completed and connected to the electricity grid by the first half of 2018.

When completed, the plant will increase Zorlu Enerjis installed capacity in the country to 156.4MW, a portfolio that includes a 56.4MW wind farm completed in 2013. The facility will generate an estimated 180 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year - sufficient to power approximately 140,000 average homes - for Pakistans Central Power Purchasing Agency, under a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

We are confident that First Solars advanced PV modules will thrive in Bahawalpurs desert conditions, delivering over eight percent more energy than conventional crystalline-silicon panels, and enabling our successful bid for a PPA, said Sinan Ak, Chief Executive Officer of Zorlu Enerji. We are also confident that we will set a new benchmark for solar energy in Pakistan, replicating the standards we set with our award-winning Jhimpir wind power plant. There is no doubt in my mind that this project will be a new milestone for the development of utility-scale solar in the country.

This project is part of a pivotal move by Pakistan to secure its energy independence by harnessing its solar resource, and we are proud to be playing an enabling role, said Stefan Degener, First Solars Head of Business Development for Europe and Africa.

In February this year, First Solar and Zorlu Holding signed a collaborative sales agreement under which Zorlu Solar became a major distributor of First Solars modules in Turkey, Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Pakistan, Romania, Serbia, Turkmenistan, the Ukraine, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. In addition to selling PV modules in these markets, Zorlu Solar is undertaking its own project development activity, powering its successful projects with First Solar technology.

This deal demonstrates Zorlu Groups ability to enable our sales strategy by expanding First Solars installed capacity well beyond our existing markets. It also proves that our high-performance technology and Zorlu Groups commercial expertise makes for a winning combination in any of the 26 markets covered by our agreement, Degener added.
WOODHULL State Representative Dan Swanson (R-Alpha) visited the Quincy Veterans Home on Tuesday, December 18 following reports of another case of Legionnaires Disease at the Western Illinois facility in late November.

Three recent cases were reported at the facility this fall several years after extensive renovations to water treatment facilities and response protocols in the wake of an outbreak of the disease at the facility nearly two years ago that killed 12 and sickened more than 50. Since that time, extensive renovations and response protocols have been developed and followed under the careful monitoring of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and mitigation company Phigenics.

Visiting the Veterans Home today gave me a deeper understanding of the proactive steps being taken by facility staff under the careful advice and supervision of the CDC and other health professionals at the top of their fields, said Rep. Swanson on Tuesday following his visit.

The staff and volunteers at this facility care for more than 350 Veteran residents. I wanted to talk with veterans who live at the facility to learn about their care as well as review procedures and protocols undertaken by the administration and staff to mitigate spread of the disease and monitor residents to ensure outbreak does not occur, said Swanson. I was impressed to learn that constant monitoring of each residents health conditions is done every 4 hours to provide early identification of symptoms of pneumonia and legionnaires disease. Further, extensive prevention and mitigation protocols are in place and followed to prevent spread of the disease when identified.

In a report issued to IDPH this Summer, protocols were detailed by CDC officials, IDPH officials, VA officials, representatives from mitigation contractor Phigenics and the Adams County Health Department. Those protocols and procedures are being followed and are largely credited with identifying the most recent cases early and allowing treatment as well as further mitigation to occur. Additional capacity building at local hospitals continues to be an issue worked on to better identify community cases of Legionnaires Disease, which is often simply diagnosed as pneumonia.

The long-term care facility is a 200-acre campus with 48 buildings, including seven residential buildings built between 1886 and 2011. Nursing home care is provided to more than 350 residents by over 577 employees and volunteers. The Home is credited with a local economic impact of over $54 million. Renovations to the water treatment facility included reduction of aerating fixtures, protocols for sanitizing of all water sources as well as flushing systems to allow hot water flushes of all water lines on a regular basis to reduce accumulation of bio-films. Point of use filters have also been implemented throughout the facility in accordance with a comprehensive water management plan.

According to the report issued in June, the water management program aligned with best practices identified in the CDCs water management toolkit. Control measures, control limits, and control points were routinely identified, and corrective actions consistently taken.

Rep. Swanson traveled to the facility on Tuesday with Adjutant Lloyd Anderson of American Legion Post 45 in Galva, Post Commander Wayne Glisan and they visited 74th District resident and Post 45 member Gene Boehle while investigating the facilitys procedures. Mr. Boehle reported he couldnt say anything bad about the facility. The food is good.

Adjutant Lloyd Anderson reported after the visit that, more people should come to the VA home and see first-hand that the residents are their number one concern, while Post Commander Glisan noted he observed a very professional staff and I am impressed with the procedures in place for water sanitation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Swanson decried efforts by some members of the legislature to politicize the issue of veterans health care. I would encourage members of the General Assembly to visit the Quincy Illinois Veterans Home to see first hand the proactive measures instituted to keep all our veterans healthy and safe. Continued vigilance will be needed, but is also expected, said Swanson, a 27-year military veteran and member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

74th District residents can learn more about the progress of the 100th General Assembly at Rep. Swansons legislative website at www.repswanson.com.
Today is Thursday, Dec. 21, the 355th day of 2017. There are 10 days left in the year.

1867 -- 150 years ago: A genuine Golden Crown cigar, manufactured by John C. Partidge & Co., Chicago, can be had at the Rodman House Saloon.

1892 -- 125 years ago: Miss Grace Jobe has been employed by the wholesale establishment of Frank N. Horn.

1917 -- 100 years ago: H.S. Cable announced that 8,000 new memberships have been received by the Red Cross.

1942 -- 75 years ago: Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Greer observed their 55th wedding anniversary at a family gathering in their home.

1967 -- 50 years ago: The ditty bags sent in October to men in Vietnam by the Black Hawk Chapter of the American Red Cross, Rock Island County, are being gratefully received by the servicemen, according to thank you letters flowing back to the Red Cross office and other Quad City individuals who had a part in making the 1,750 bags.

1992 -- 25 years ago: Christmas morning will be a little livelier and a little noisier at Chris and Carla Lawrences house in Geneseo, now that their 15 month old quadruplet daughters are talking and beginning to walk.
The opioid problem is complicated. Misuse and abuse of prescription medications and heroin have grown into a national crisis.

Opioid medications provide needed relief for many patients who experience chronic and severe pain, but these medications can be addictive and are commonly abused.

As we develop new policies for opioid use, we must establish balance between accessibility for pain patients and prevention of misuse. Heres the good news. Illinois has a lower rate of prescribing than many states, and our overall number of opioid prescriptions is on the decline here.

There are many educational courses available to prescribers with the latest information on safe prescribing practices. Doctors have logged thousands of educational hours to gain a better understanding of pain treatment. As leaders in health care delivery, Illinois physicians are actively working with all stakeholders to ensure this crisis is appropriately dealt with and doesnt happen again.

Prescribers have access to such clinical tools as the Illinois Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), which allows them to view patients prescription histories and identify troubling patterns.

The Illinois State Medical Society successfully supported legislation in Springfield that requires prescribers to enroll and use the PMP for all first-time opioid prescriptions.

When enacted, this will increase the PMPs use and effectiveness. However, weve also identified several areas where improvement is needed:

To prevent overdose deaths, we need to make treatment more accessible to those currently struggling with addiction. This includes expanded insurance coverage.

Law enforcement needs more resources to combat the illegal drug trade. Opioids such as fentanyl and heroin are easily available through illegal means in many communities.

Medication disposal programs must be a higher priority. Prescriptions linger in peoples homes and are a source of illegally diverted drugs. As our communities fight this epidemic, Illinois physicians are increasingly concerned about policies that will negatively impact patient care. Patients with chronic pain often report that health insurers deny access to opioids.

We find this ironic as some insurers wont reimburse for alternative pain treatment therapies. We must not marginalize patients seeking treatment for pain. As we move forward, Illinois doctors encourage policies that:

Promote insurance coverage for additional ways of treating pain, such as physical therapy, acupuncture, and counseling.

Expand access to therapies that treat addiction, ensure coverage for inpatient and outpatient therapies to treat addiction and remove prior-authorization restrictions to access addiction treatment services.

Make the Illinois PMP easier for physicians to use and integrate into electronic health record systems.

Make it easier for doctors to access PMP data across state lines. Example: Missouri currently does not operate a fully-accessible statewide PMP, which makes it difficult to obtain information on many Illinois patients who seek care or fulfill prescriptions across the border.

Solving the opioid crisis wont be easy. It is critical that we enact better policies that target opioid misuse and abuse while preserving responsible options to treat pain.
Just because once-green fields are now barren doesnt mean farms fall silent.

Even those who arent tending to livestock have plenty of things to fill the winter hours and days. Combines and planters need repaired and readied for spring. Decisions have to be made about what crops will be planted next season. Budgets have to be prepared.

Those who have never run a farm  family or commercial  can only imagine what goes into that last responsibility. There is a lot of projecting and guessing: from what the weather will do to how crop payments will trend to how the economy will affect the prices of equipment and materials.

Compound that with a growing mystery over the future of the United States role in the North American Free Trade Agreement and it would be easy to understand the hand-wringing taking place in the agriculture world.

About one-third of Illinois farmers surveyed by the Illinois Farm Bureau expect 2018 to be rougher than this year, while 59 percent anticipate things being the same. The majority are planning to delay buying equipment, while one-quarter say its likely they will cut back on labor or buy less-expensive seed.

In this climate, farmers are looking for ways to cut expenses, Illinois Farm Bureau senior economist Mike Doherty said. Its not only a matter of financial awareness; for many, it will be an absolute necessity.

The impact of that angst will extend beyond the tilled farmlands. The agriculture community pumps more than $121 billion a year into the states economy  nearly 10 percent of the total  and its 72,200 farms account for almost 6 percent of all the jobs in the state, according to the Illinois Department of Agriculture.

Illinois also is a leading exporter of agricultural commodities, with its 27 million acres shipping more than $8 billion in goods to other countries.

Given that, its not surprising that trade agreements and the future of NAFTA are big worries for Illinois farmers.

Our farmers understand the importance of trade and value its contribution to their bottom lines, so its always a priority. However, this years political focus on NAFTA and talks of withdrawing from the trade deal certainly keeps trade top-of-mind, according to Adam Nielsen, director of national legislation and policy for the Illinois Farm Bureau.

The Trump administration has signaled its desire to pull out of NAFTA. Many agriculture groups have expressed opposition to such a move, while some are supportive of going that direction if better agreements can be forged.

Unfortunately, thats a big if and it seems as though having a plan in place is not a priority. Its become modus operandi for federal agencies so blinded by the rush to dismantle the past that they dont even consider the future. The ambiguity of putting America first too often seems to mean America all by itself.

Failing to grasp, or choosing to ignore, that distinction when it comes to the importance of trade could be devastating.

Not just for the farmers who are able to see beyond the here and now.
Facing reduced financial support on the county and federal level, officials from the Vera French Foundation celebrated receiving more than $112,000 in grants from local supporters.

Vera French, which provides mental health support in Scott County, received a total of $112,042 for its programs and services in 2017. This came from 11 Quad-City agencies and organizations.

"We take our role as this community's mental health center very seriously and it is incredibly gratifying and encouraging that so many of our local grant funders recognize our work ... and are willing to support that work through funding," said Jessica Malcheff, the foundation's executive director.

Local funding is especially important, Malcheff said, as county and state funding has decreased in recent years.

Governmental financial support for agencies like Vera French varies from year-to-year, depending on the needs to be met and the political climate, said Denise Beenk, chief operating officer.

A significant change came in 2016, when Iowa launched regional, managed care for mental health, in an effort to control costs and improve services, she said.

"It has become much more difficult and time-intensive to receive payments for services that have been provided in a timely manner by the agency, which negatively impacts cash flow and affects the potential for expansion and growth," Beenk said.

The base of local financial donors has thus become more important, she said.

The Vera French center serves approximately 10,000 patients each year and the grants support school-based services, as Vera French has personnel in each Scott County school district. They also pay for play therapy supplies for children in the out-patient programs.

Other uses of the grants: Rick's House of Hope, which tends to grieving and traumatized children; and the Vera French housing program that provides 136 units of permanent, supported housing for those with mental illnesses.

In addition, the grants support expanded services at the Carol Center, a walk-in facility for clients located at 423 E. 32nd St., Davenport.

Grants were given by the following:

Amy Helpsenstell Foundation, Community Resources Corp., Quad-City Plus 60 Friendship Club, Regional Development Authority; Rotary Club of North Scott, Scott County Regional authority, St. Vincent's Home, Inc., Teens for Tomorrow, The Moline Foundation, Theisen's Home, Farm & Auto, Walmart Foundation.
Despite its location on the rural outskirts of Scott County, the Wapsi River Environmental Education Center hosted 40-plus visitors this past Saturday for a series of holiday craft workshops  a celebrated turnout.

"It was a really good weekend," said naturalist Becky Horton, who taught attendees how to create gift bags and bows out of recycled calendars and magazines. The following session on natural wreath-making led by naturalist Michael Granger drew a capacity crowd.

About 30 miles northwest of the metro Quad-Cities, the Dixon, Iowa, institution remains a popular destination for outdoors enthusiasts in the region. But a new study suggests the Scott County Conservation Board may attract more participants by offering environmental education programs at parks closer to the center of town.

E Resources Group, a consulting firm based in Webster City, Iowa, recently presented findings from its assessment of the wooded 225-acre site, which abuts a mile-long stretch of the Wapsipinicon River. From their research, they determined the Wapsi River Center has significant limitations due to the distance from the main population of Scott County, a contributor to downward trending participation rates.

Between July 2016 and July 2017, programming at the center reached close to 20,000 people, Dave Murcia, director of the preserve, said. During that same stretch, inclement weather and low attendance caused the staff to cancel 19 events, the third-most cancellations since they began tracking visits.

The number of field trips has declined, too, because of schools' lack of busing funds, Murcia said. During the 2016-17 school year, 83 schools from 20-plus districts in Iowa and Illinois visited the Wapsi River Center.

"There's so much more out there for people to do," said Murcia, who has overseen operations since 2006. "We're in competition with regular lifestyles."

Mostly free activities

Results of the study encourage the conservation board to realign its mission and expand its services at its other properties, including West Lake Park, Scott County Park and Buffalo Shores, to engage a larger audience, Murcia said.

The county, he added, currently is not seeking to acquire more land. However, plans are in the works for development of a new building at the 620-acre West Lake Park that could be used for year-round environmental education.

E Resources Group's study, which cost the county $19,600, also addressed the Wapsi River Center's finances, as well as staffing, infrastructure and marketing.

While most workshops are free, those that require the use of new supplies and materials cost $5-$10 per person. Facility rentals bring in about $13,000 annually, but that money does not directly benefit environmental education. Additionally, the Friends of the Wapsi Center provides less than $2,000 per year for specific equipment requests and special event needs.

"Nature centers reliant on but a few funding sources are highly vulnerable to funding cuts," the study reports. "With nearly all of the Wapsi River Environmental Education Center's funding coming from taxes, one vote of the supervisors would devastate the program and employment."

To help cover schools busing fares, the study recommends the Friends of the Wapsi Center launch a fundraising campaign.

Murcia, one of three full-time naturalists at the Wapsi River Center, said they could charge more for classes, but he does not want that to distract them from their primary goal.

"For me, it's not about the money," he said. "We're trying to create stewards for our environment and our community."

Great success ahead

The study also directs Murcia and his team to better incorporate the surrounding natural resources, especially the adjacent waterway and woodlands, into programming at the Wapsi River Center.

They have some opportunities to offer some really quality experiences that not everybody in the state can do, said Jean Eells, owner of E Resources Group. Theyve got some great success ahead of them.

Murcia wants to build on their existing partnerships. The study proposes they increase their coordination with St. Ambrose University, which owns and operates Menke Observatory on site.

The dark sky allows for public star gazing parties and night hikes.

"This is an excellent spot," Murcia said. "There's a reason why St. Ambrose University chose this location."

The staff plans to accommodate new science standards in schools and continue to showcase their collection of live animals.

"For a young child to get four to five feet close to a great horned owl," Murcia said, "thats an experience they're going to walk away from and remember."
IOWA CITY  Iowa City native, advocate and author Zach Wahls announced Thursday he will run for the Iowa Senate seat held by Bob Dvorsky, who does not plan to seek re-election in 2018.

Im running for the Iowa Senate for one simple reason, Wahls, a Democrat, told more than 100 people crammed into the Old Town Hall on Thursday afternoon for the announcement. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment that will determine the future of our state for generations to come, and I feel responsible.

Wahls, 26, gained national attention when his 2011 testimony before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee about growing up with gay parents went viral and became YouTubes most-watched political video of 2011.

On Thursday, Wahls celebrated his parents, Jackie Reger and Terry Wahls, on the 21st anniversary of their commitment ceremony, during which they walked down the aisle to the theme song from Star Trek Voyager.

He is co-founder of Scouts for Equality, which led a national campaign to end the Boy Scouts of Americas ban on LGBT people. Wahls is author of the book, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength and What Makes a Family.

Wahls, who graduated from Iowa City West High School and the University of Iowa, is now pursuing a masters degree in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, in Princeton, New Jersey. The Ivy League school has agreed to let Wahls finish his degree from Iowa, where he will be campaigning, he said in a phone interview Thursday morning.

The primary election is actually the same day as commencement, he said. So I wont be able to walk, but Ill be able to run.

Mitch Gross, a Coralville City Council member and Iowa City West teacher, told the crowd Thursday that when he decided not to run for Dvorskys seat, he looked for a candidate who would fight to restore collective bargaining rights stripped from unions in the Republican-controlled Statehouse, fully fund schools and end privatization of Medicaid.

The people of District 37 need a champion. Someone with a proven record of not just fighting, but winning, Gross said. He didnt have to look far to find Wahls, a former pupil. Well be counting on you.

Former foreign service officer Janice Weiner of Coralville announced earlier this week she, too, will seek the Democratic nomination for Dvorskys seat in the Iowa Senate.

Weiner, 60, a Princeton and Stanford law graduate, served for 26 years in the U.S. State Department, with diplomatic posts in East Berlin, Belgium, Turkey, Poland, Canada, Mexico City and Dusseldorf, Germany, as consul general. Her final posting was in the bureau of legislative affairs at the State Department, coordinating with Capitol Hill.

Wahls said hes talked with Weiner by phone and they expect to have a cordial competition.

All Iowans need a seat at the table, he said. That means more women, more young people, more people of color. If youre a Democrat, its time to get into the fight.

The 37th District of the Iowa Senate covers northern and eastern Johnson County, all of Cedar County and part of Muscatine County.

The primary election is June 5. The four-year Senate term begins in January 2019.
The family of Agnes McFedries Kennedy holds out hope someone with information about her homicide will come forward, even after 10 years.

Meanwhile, the Davenport detective who has worked the case from the beginning wants to take another look at the evidence before he retires in two years.

I would like nothing more before I leave here than to present a charge against someone and get a conviction for Agnes, said Detective Bill Thomas.

The detective thinks with advances in DNA technology it's worth a shot to retest the clothes Kennedy wore at the time the 51-year-old was strangled and left for dead in an icy downtown alley the night of Dec. 22, 2007.

Agnes has never been forgotten, her mother, Jean McFedries, said.

She thinks about Agnes constantly.

Comes up, you know, at least every day or every other day, McFedries said. You process it as it's life. You can't go back. You can't change it. So get yourself out of bed and get on with it. What else are you going to do?

McFedries thinks of Kennedy's four children, Desiree McFedries, has had the worst time coping with her mother's death.

Desiree, 35, remembers burying her mother on her 26th birthday.

So this time of year it kind of sucks, she said, but thank God I've got my son. He's a blessing.

She couldn't bear putting up a Christmas tree for several years, until a friend told her to think about her son, Camarion, now 11.

My friend is like, you got a kid, you can't do this to him, she said.

Kennedy's generosity and abounding sense of humor are what Desiree most remembers about her mother, be it volunteering at Cafe on Vine and mingling with the homeless customers there or the time she brought trinkets to help decorate Desiree's first-ever home.

She had the biggest heart, Desiree said. For someone to do that to her, it never seems real. I wake up and think it's a dream and she's going to walk through the door. It's hard to talk about sometimes, you know. I think the worst part is knowing there's somebody still out there.

Looking for Agnes

Jean McFedries' last interaction with Kennedy didn't go well, because she refused to allow her daughter to bring William Morgan, a boyfriend, to a dinner hosted by one of her other daughters, Kate Heuer.

I said dammit, Jean, why did you do that?" McFedries said. "What the hell would it have been had she brought him or not?

Kennedy lived a lifestyle, fueled by addiction to crack cocaine, in which she would disappear into the streets for hours and days at a time. Aware of this, her sisters would sometimes go out looking for her, and if they found her they would try to encourage her to seek help or bring her home with them. McFedries had her committed to rehab programs multiple times with no success.

After the phone call about dinner, Kate Heuer went looking for her older sister but couldn't find her.

Then, at around 8:30 p.m., police received a 911 call about a woman's body found face down in the 1800 block of West 7th Street, Davenport. Thomas said she was wearing a red and white top, tan pants and black socks, but her shoes, coat and purse were missing.

Still warm to the touch, the body was taken to the hospital, but medics couldn't revive her. Police determined the body was that of Agnes Kennedy; she had been strangled.

There were injuries indicating she tried to get away.

I think Agnes fought her attacker pretty well, Detective Thomas said.

Thomas also believes the crime was interrupted by another person. The attacker, he said, felt someone saw something or someone did actually see him, and he felt he had to stop right there, get her body out of his car and leave immediately.

The snow and sleet on the ground made it hard for investigators to collect evidence. Thomas tried everything he could think of.

I served more search warrants on this case than any other case I worked, he said.

Police sent more than 400 items of evidence to the state crime lab trying to find someone else's DNA, Thomas said. Whenever a vehicle was considered, he had the whole passenger front seat belt housing unit removed, took out the belts and sent every one of them to the lab searching for Kennedy's DNA.

Still no suspect

Hundreds of reports, statements and photographs on the Kennedy case fill binders at the police department.

You never really close a homicide case, Thomas said.

The hardest part of investigating the case for him has been the lack of cooperation from countless people police brought in for questioning, some who claimed to be Kennedy's friends.

We dealt with so many street people, Thomas said. I tell you what, they were friends of hers, and we had to drag them down here and they still didn't want to talk to us.

William Morgan, in prison on unrelated crimes, has not been identified as a suspect in Kennedy's homicide, but remains one of several persons of interest. He and Kennedy lived together at 801 W. 15th St., Davenport.

The searches included an alleged crack house a block away from where McFedries Kennedy was found. The house, at 1831 W. 6th St., was being purchased on contract by Jesse James Stewart Jr., then-57.

According to news reports from the time, Stewart was arrested after a search warrant was served at the home a week after McFedries Kennedys death. The subsequent search revealed 78 grams of crack cocaine there.

Stewart is serving a life sentence for drug charges. He has been questioned in the Kennedy case.

You wouldn't believe the amount of people on this case who were persons of interest that while we were investigating this we uncovered something else and the person got convicted, Thomas said, adding that it's possible Kennedy's killer is already locked up.

In 2011, Scott County authorities charged Chad Welsh with first-degree murder in the death of Angela Marie Hennes after linking DNA found at the crime scene with his DNA on file from an earlier, unrelated federal child pornography charge. A jury found him guilty a year later after he admitted to picking Hennes up in Davenport and choking her during a sexual encounter but not with the intent to kill her. He's serving life in prison.

Because the Hennes case resembled Kennedy's, Thomas questioned Welsh in prison about Kennedy. Asked how the conversations went, the detective said, Short.

Welsh also remains a person of interest in Kennedy's death.

We have not had a prostitute murdered in the city of Davenport since the arrest and conviction of Chad Welsh, Thomas said.

In her own words

Kennedy was in a drug rehabilitation program when Hennes was killed in January 2007.

In a series of Kennedy's hand-written journals that Jean McFedries recently shared with the Quad-City Times, Kennedy wrote about Hennes several times.

Nobody should die at the hands of a freak! Kennedy wrote. I don't want to die like that! Angela ... it could have been me.

She wrote extensively about her addiction, about failing as a mother and about life on the streets. She described herself as an overgrown juvenile delinquent who took her nine months of drug rehab to take a fearless moral inventory of her life.

In one passage she contemplated death, even telling her family where she wanted her funeral. When her daughter, Athena, discovered the journals in her apartment days after her mother's death, the family changed the arrangements to match what Kennedy wanted.

McFedries is disturbed that her daughter would write about dying.

But she lived on the street, and she did know a lot about the street life, her mother said. She did know more than she should have.

The oldest of Jean and Scotty McFedries' four children, Agnes was born Sept. 28, 1956, just a few weeks after the family came to the United States from Scotland.

She graduated from Davenport Central High School and Iowa State University, Ames, with a teaching degree. She taught for a while at Williams Intermediate School, Davenport.

McFedries could not pinpoint one particular reason or event that sent her daughter spiraling downward. While she put some blame on family stress, she said it was mainly the addiction to drugs and the people with whom Kennedy chose to associate.

I can speculate all I like, but she chose whatever she did, McFedries said. I got in there. I tried to make it stop. I tried everything. Her sisters Jennifer and Kate would follow her downtown and try to get her to come back.

Kennedy was adept at using makeup to hide injuries, her mother said.

You'd never have known all this was happening underneath, McFedries said. She could come here well-dressed, well-behaved, talk up a storm, and the next thing she's in jail.

Despite her associations, Kennedy never stopped caring for others. McFedries said, every winter, her daughter bought mittens from a local woman and handed them out to children in need.

Desiree McFedries said she was a teenager when she realized the lifestyle her mother had chosen. There were days her mother would be gone for hours, but not before leaving groceries on the front steps and a note saying she'd be back when she could. When she didn't come home, Desiree or her sister would make dinner for their younger brother, Keenan.

We had to grow up early, she said.

But she doesn't want her mother to be remembered as a criminal.

She did have an addiction, a lifestyle, Desiree said. But she was human. She deserves justice. If you knew her, you knew she had the biggest heart ever.

Kennedy wrote about how she wanted to be remembered:

When the lights go out on this worldly life, I want it to be said that I had a full life. That I did good things for others and that I would be missed.
A 41-year-old Davenport woman is facing sex abuse charges after police allege she had sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Virginia Jean Peterson, of 2417 Washington Lane, is charged with one count each of third-degree sexual abuse, enticing a minor under 16, and telephone dissemination of obscene material to a minor.

Third-degree sexual abuse is a Class C felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, while enticing a minor under 16 is a Class D felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years. Telephone dissemination of obscene material to a minor is an aggravated misdemeanor that carries a prison sentence of up to two years.

According to the arrest affidavits filed by Davenport Police Detective Erin Pape, on Dec. 13, Peterson engaged in sexual activity with the 14-year-old.

On Dec. 12 and 13, Peterson enticed the teen to have sex with her through a series of text messages as well as sending to his cellphone nude images of herself.

Peterson was booked into the Scott County Jail at 4:21 p.m. Tuesday. She was released Wednesday morning after posting 10 percent of a $10,000 bond through a bonding company.

Peterson has waived her preliminary hearing. She is scheduled to be arraigned at 11 a.m. Jan. 11 in Scott County District Court.

If convicted of the charges, Peterson will be required to register as a sex offender.
A Geneseo, Illinois, man was sentenced Wednesday to eight months in federal prison for theft of government funds and making false statements about his military service to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

William R. Jones, 68, also was ordered to pay a fine of $40,000 and pay restitution in the amount of $71,472 to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He also was ordered to serve three years of supervised release once he completes his prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

Jones pleaded guilty to the charges Aug. 22 in U.S. District Court, Rock Island.

According to prosecutors:

He joined the Air National Guard in 1971 and served in various Reserve or National guard components and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2002.

At no time did Jones ever serve in the Southeast Asia or Republic of Vietnam (RVN) theater of combat operations, or in any other theater of combat operations.

In 2003, he sought disability benefits based on claims to the VA that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder related to combat service in the RVN.

Jones falsely claimed that he had been a Special Operations air crewman on an AC-130 Spectre gunship and was shot down and wounded.

He claimed that he had been awarded a Bronze Star Medal with "V" for Valor and a Purple Heart for RVN service. The VA denied the claims after checking Jones military service records and determining that he was never in RVN.

Jones continued to press for claims for disability based on combat service and submitted a false DD-214 to the VA and caused the American Legion and public officials to petition or write the VA in support of him.

As a result of his false representations, he received $71,472 from the VA for combat-related disability.

On Oct. 31, 2013, Jones caused the American Legion to submit to the VA on his behalf a new claim with supporting documents that included a copy of an article from a newspaper in Geneseo.

The article was based on false information provided by Jones about his purported combat service and included copies of several false certificates for combat awards, a false certificate from MACV SOG (Vietnam Special Operations Group) attesting to Joness purported SOG service, a false certificate representing that Staff Sergeant Jones had received an Enlisted Aircrew badge in November 1971, and a letter dated 2008 from then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama stating that Jones was a RVN veteran.

On July 16, 2013, Jones submitted to the office of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin a Privacy Act Release form that contained false information indicating that Jones had served in combat in Vietnam in 1972, was assigned to Special Operations in Vietnam, and that he was shot down in enemy territory but rescued by U.S. Marines three weeks later.

As a result of these false statements to Durbin, the Senator conveyed the false statements to the VA in support of his claim for disability benefit, according to prosecutors.
A Davenport man who Davenport police say has been at the scene of at least 14 grab-and-dash thefts since June was taken into custody Wednesday.

Derick Lamont Levy, who also uses the alias Derrick Lamont Levy, 26, of 418 E. 8th St., is charged with 10 counts of second-degree theft, nine counts of third-degree theft, and one count of fourth-degree theft. Police say numerous additional charges against Levy are pending.

Levy also is charged with one count of ongoing criminal activity, a Class B felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

Second-degree theft is a Class D felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to five years. Third-degree theft is an aggravated misdemeanor that carries a prison sentence of up to two years.

The stores that Levy and his accomplices have allegedly struck include Von Maur and Victorias Secret, at NorthPark Mall, and Ulta Beauty at 4016 E. 53rd St. in Davenport. Levy and his accomplices allegedly struck these stores multiple times since June.

The total of the amount of merchandise stolen based on the current arrest affidavits is $19,223.45. That number will go higher as more charges are added, police said.

The items stolen include clothing, perfume, a hair dryer and other items.

Among the thefts committed include the Nov. 14 theft at Von Maur when Levy and a woman entered the store, selected multiple pieces of clothing and ran out the south entrance about 30 seconds later, according to the arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Detective Craig Burkle.

The value of the clothing taken in that theft was $3,778, according to the affidavit.

On Sept. 28, Levy and two women stole merchandise valued at $1,995 from Victoria's Secret, police say.

Levy and three women returned to Victorias Secret on Oct. 5 and stole 28 items valued at $1,500, according to Burkles affidavit. Then, Levy was at the store again on Oct. 12, stealing $1,083.90 in merchandise, according to the arrest affidavit.

On Oct. 15, Levy and another person went to Ulta Beauty with large handbags. According to Burkles affidavit, both began throwing merchandise into the purses before running out. The value of the merchandise totaled $1,288.

Levy returned to Ulta Beauty the next day, Oct. 16, with two other people, allegedly stealing 32 bottles of perfume valued at $2,926, according to the affidavits.

The rest of the affidavits detail similar grab-and-dash thefts since June in which Levy has been identified as one of the participants via security video.

Levy has a criminal history in Scott and Johnson counties in Iowa and Rock Island County in Illinois that is riddle with theft convictions. Davenport Police arrest affidavits credit Levy with having at least nine convictions for theft on his criminal history.

Levy currently is serving a five-year probation sentence on a second-degree theft conviction out of the Johnson County. He is not scheduled to be off of probation until June 20, 2021. Authorities are in the process of revoking his probation in that case.

Police also said that Levys accomplices will have numerous charges filed against them as they are identified.

Levy was being held Wednesday night in the Scott County Jail on cash-only bonds totaling $7,000 and cash or surety bonds totaling $69,000.
Construction of a new elementary school in the Pleasant Valley Community School District is expected to go out for bid next year and open for the 2021-22 school year.

At this time, district officials are discussing attendance areas for the future Forest Grove elementary school.

These are, roughly: South of Interstate 80, west of Criswell Street, east of Middle Road and north of 53rd Avenue, with an imaginary line extending from 53rd to Criswell, Pleasant Valley Superintendent Jim Spelhaug said.

In the past six weeks, Spelhaug said the district did a boundary line presentation at each regularly scheduled elementary PTA meeting, as well as at a meeting with all PTA presidents.

The boundary lines seem to make sense to residents, he said.

Chris Cournoyer, president of the Pleasant Valley School Board, said this week that people she has talked to have not raised boundary line concerns. However, she noted most PV parents with school-age children now will have aged out of elementary school years before it opens.

The district owns 15 acres of land along Forest Grove Road on which the new school will be built. The design of this structure will generally reflect the look of Hopewell Elementary School, 3900 Hopewell Ave., which opened in 2011 in eastern Bettendorf.
One of Davenport's longest-serving social service agencies is closing.

United Neighbors, Inc. has announced it will cease operations after lawsuits, mismanagement of funds and the loss of donors have made it impossible for the agency to continue operating.

Executive Director Evelyn Nelson said the board of directors voted Tuesday and the news was broken to the children, parents, patrons and staff Wednesday.

"They were crying and it was so bad," Nelson said in reference to telling the children. "They didn't even want to open their Christmas gifts. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life."

United Neighbors has struggled for the past 15 months after it was forced to terminate then-Executive Director Ida Johnson and three staff members.

Nelson, who was brought on board last year as deputy director with the intention of succeeding Johnson, stepped into the leadership position after discovering misuse of agency funds. Following Johnson's termination, Nelson contacted the Iowa Finance Authority with concerns over compliance of the tenant-based rental assistance program.

The Finance Authority suspended payments to the agency before ultimately demanding repayment of $235,600 in grant funding. All of the disbursements had been authorized during Johnson's tenure. An appeal is still pending.

Beyond losing its rental assistance program, Johnson and employees filed suit against the agency and Nelson over a number of issues, including breach of contract and recovery of unpaid wages, compensation and benefits.

As troubles mounted, the agency not only lost funding from sources it relied on in the past, but also U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant funds that would have helped fund its DREAM Homebuyers and Summer Parks programs.

With funds dwindling, it had to reduce the numbers of programs it could offer. At the end, it was primarily focusing on service to youth.

In a statement from the Board of Directors, it attributed these issues to the agency's struggles and need to close its doors.

"There were many factors that have caused the demise of the agency, namely lawsuits from past employees, IFA (Iowa Finance Authority) demands, bad press from KWQC and other entities, exorbitantly high insurance costs due to a high number of past claims, loss of donors and, complete loss of funding from United Way, SCRA (Scott County Regional Authority), and other entities," the statement read. "Many of our funders and donors were put off by the lawsuits the agency is facing and refused to give.

"Many others thought the issues we were dealing with were too political and did not want to get involved. This is not a travesty for United Neighbors, it is not a travesty for those in our community that have resources to thrive; but for those in this community that do not have those resources, the loss of United Neighbors will be a travesty. It is our sincere hope that our clients will find a replacement for the services that our agency has provided to them and that they remain on a firm standing of hope, success and accomplishment."

United Neighbors' roots trace back to the establishment of the Friendly House in 1911. As Friendly House branched out and began to reorganize neighborhoods, more organizations were formed.

The merging of the Eastside Neighborhood Development Corp. and the Central and Western Neighborhood Development Corp. boards eventually lead to the formation of United Neighbors in 1980.

The agency will officially close its doors at midnight Thursday. All questions or inquiries are asked to be directed to thankyou.unitedneighbors@gmail.com.

"We would like to thank all of those who supported us during these very trying times," the board's statement read. "Most importantly we would like to thank our clients who have been the sole reason for our perseverance. It has been a pleasure to be able to give the most vulnerable people in our community a chance to thrive."
Illinois' large population losses are pushing it closer to the possibility of losing not just one, but two congressional seats after the next Census, according to a new report.

Virginia-based Election Data Services has already projected that, based on current population trends, Illinois will lose one of its 18 congressional seats the next time seats are reapportioned.

However, as losses in the state have grown, the chances of losing more political clout is growing, too.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released figures estimating that Illinois lost 33,703 people between mid-2016 and mid-2017, taking its population down to just over 12.8 million.

Over the past three years, the state has lost more than 80,000 people, according to the estimates.

Election Data Services said its long-term analysis of population trends since 2010 shows Illinois would lose one seat but avoid losing two with only 36,803 people to spare.

But using a short-term methodology looking at the population losses in just the past year, the state would lose that second seat, the report said, meaning it would only have just 16 spots in the House after 2020.

Illinois has seen a steady decline in the number of congressional seats. It lost one after the 2010 Census and six since 1980.

"It's a continued diminishment of clout for our state and our region, as more people move out and go to Sunbelt states," said Robin Johnson, a political science professor at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois.

The loss of two congressional seats in Illinois would undoubtedly make drawing boundaries within the state more controversial and raise concerns in downstate Illinois, where rural areas have seen population declines for years.

"It should be proportionate but it will come down to the people writing the maps," Johnson said. He notes the city of Chicago has seen population losses, too.

The new projections by Election Data Services aren't so daunting for the state of Iowa. Iowa lost one of its five congressional seats after the 2010 Census, bringing it down to four. And even though the state's population is growing more slowly than others, the new population estimates don't point to it losing any seats after the next Census.

The Election Data Services report says that 15 or 16 states could gain or lose districts by the next Census. The report says using the new sets of projected data, Texas would gain three seats, while Florida would add two. Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon and possibly Minnesota would add one. Among the losers: Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and possibly Minnesota.

The report noted that the Census Bureau's latest population figures don't take into account the impact of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hitting the Gulf region in August and September.

It won't be until next year when we see whether population lost in Houston was enough to keep Texas at gaining only two districts, instead of three," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services. "And while Irma may have cut down some population in Florida, Maria's widespread and ongoing impact in Puerto Rico has reportedly led to a quarter million American citizens moving to Florida, mainly in the center of the state."
Iowa's Democratic race for governor probably will be decided at a convention, John Norris, one of the candidates said Wednesday, adding that he's comfortable with his position in the race.

Norris, a former top aide to Tom Vilsack with years of experience in state and federal government, is one of seven Democrats seeking the party's nomination to run next year.

The campaign, so far, has been fairly low key. But Des Moines businessman Fred Hubbell has been more visible with a volley of mail pieces over the past several weeks, and he and state Sen. Nate Boulton, D-Des Moines, have been aggressively seeking to draw attention to endorsements. Boulton has notched some key labor union support.

Asked about that Wednesday, Norris said he's comfortable that he has gained momentum since the unveiling of his state steering committee a month ago. He also thinks it will be spring before most voters truly focus on the campaign and that the June 6 primary probably won't decide the race.

"With seven candidates competing in the race, I see very few paths where this doesn't end up in convention," Norris said Wednesday in an interview with the Quad-City Times.

Norris was in the Quad-Cities for a Democratic Party gathering Wednesday evening in Bettendorf.

In order to win the primary outright, a candidate needs at least 35 percent of the vote. If not, then a convention would be called to pick a nominee.

"So our mantra is make no enemies. If you can't be someone's first choice, be their second choice. And I feel good about where we're at with that strategy. I think we're getting our share of the activists who have made a decision," Norris said.

He said that he believes his background is appealing to activists. Norris was Vilsack's chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the Obama administration. He also has a background in energy, having chaired the state utilities board and was appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Norris has been trying to build support in rural Iowa, where Democrats have faltered in recent elections. He's also called for reversing the decision to turn management of the state's Medicaid program over to private insurers and believes the state needs a stronger focus on helping people with mental health problems. Norris says there's not enough funding devoted to the problem, or an overarching state strategy to tackle it.
As part of a television documentary, a Dubuque psychic visited a Davenport salvage yard in an effort to find the remains of Trudy Appleby, who went missing in 1996.

Derric Carter, 25, owner of Carters Auto Salvage (formerly Big Reds), 3426 S. Concord St., said a California production crew arrived at his salvage yard Monday, along with medium Moriah Rhame.

A representative from the production company tried to contact Carter several times before he agreed to let the crew and the psychic onto the property. Carter eventually agreed to shut down his operation for the afternoon and received $1,500 for the use of his land and time, he said.

A cadaver dog and a drone were part of the proceedings, he said.

People uninvolved in the official investigation and CBS are producing a show called Midwest Medium, Moline Police Detective Michael Griffin confirmed in an email. Rhame led the crew to the salvage yard, he said.

I went and watched (Monday) but we did not have any involvement and, at this time, we do not believe that business has anything to do with the investigation, Griffin said.

A man who answered the phone at the number listed for Rhame said she had no comment.

Carter was skeptical about allowing the crew to film there. He even called the previous owner to discuss it, and also spoke with Griffin beforehand.

I dont believe in the supernatural for the most part, he said. If they dug around back there and they found some trace of her, I would completely rethink my life.

He said it was interesting to talk with the medium and watch the filming. In one location, The dog had extensive interest in that area, Carter said.

Attempts to reach Trudy Appleby's father were unsuccessful.

Family and friends of the missing girl continue to keep the spotlight on the case.

Amber Holderfield of East Moline was Trudy's best friend. She said other friends and family members know about the psychic's investigation.

"It's been so long that I don't get my hopes up because I've done that so many times," Holderfield said. "It would be great if the psychic is right."

But she realizes that Trudy's remains may not be found in Holderfield's lifetime.

Those who were close to Trudy, she said, "are broken every day of our lives."

In August, at a memorial vigil at First Baptist Church, East Moline, that has been held annually since Trudy disappeared, her father said he received many calls after Moline police issued a news release naming the late William Ed Smith as a possible person of interest in the case.

We have all the pieces  where she left, who she left with, Appleby said.

Smith, who died in 2014, is believed to be the last person to have seen 11-year-old Trudy Appleby in 1996, according to the news release. Police identified Smith as a possible person of interest.

In the news release, Griffin said Trudy was last seen near her home, and that on Aug. 21, 1996, she got into the passenger side of an older model, gray-colored vehicle with an unknown male.

At the vigil, Appleby said a witness  whom he identified as David Whipple  saw Smith in a similar vehicle Aug. 21, 1996, near his residence on Campbell's Island, East Moline. The witness saw a young female in the passenger seat of that vehicle and believed that person to be Trudy, whom the witness knew.

Information obtained from the investigation showed that Smith often traveled to the areas of Blackbird Island or Dynamite Island, which are accessible only by boat on the northern edge of Campbells Island.

In October, Moline and Illinois State police searched a property on Campbell's Island where Whipple once lived. The house on the property was razed by Rock Island County in 2004.

The investigation has shown that Smith had access to a vehicle similar to the one that was described as having picked up Trudy Appleby on Aug. 21, 1996. Leads from the investigation show that vehicle may have been scrapped shortly after she disappeared, according to the release.

Griffin said in the release that Smith died Dec. 23, 2014, and never admitted knowledge about Trudys disappearance, although he may have been the last person known to be seen with her before she disappeared.

The Appleby family, along with Crime Stoppers of the Quad-Cities, is offering a $10,000 reward for information about Trudys disappearance or any other information that will lead to a resolution in the case. Anyone with information is asked to call the Moline Police Department at 309-524-2140.
What happens when the GOP's latest foray into trickle down fails? If history is any guide, the GOP won't learn a thing.

Wednesday's passage in the House and Senate of a massive $1.5 trillion tax package puts the GOP on the doorstep of the most aggressive application of its failed socio-economic doctrine in decades. Previous attempts exploded the deficit, failed to achieve growth targets and accelerated income inequality at a historic pace.

Even conservative independent analysts see nothing different in this attempt, which was slated to pass the House and reach President Donald Trump's desk by week's end.

In essence, almost 40 years of theory and half-measures has led to this moment for Republicans. In total control of federal government, they can apply the Scripture of Trickle Down without check or balance.

So, again, what happens when new factories aren't built in Akron, Ohio? What happens when the massive corporate windfalls pays for stockholder dividends instead of wage hikes for workers? What happens when sweeping deregulation -- a key component of the trickle down myth -- again permits an unchecked Wall Street to crash the market?

What happens when, yet again, this fails everyone but the uber-rich and, once again, "trickle down" is exposed as "surge up?"

Paul Ryan, Generation X's top trickle down disciple, might not be around to answer for it. Those close to him say he's mulling retirement, Politico reported. Trump has proven himself a shameless enemy of fact. No doubt, the president will blame someone else -- probably the media -- when this experiment with social engineering goes bad.

An overwhelming majority of Americans don't expect the tax overhaul, and its drastic cuts to corporate tax rates, to improve their lives, polls show. The Congressional Budget Office and the Tax Policy Center alike say the legislation doesn't stand a chance at paying for itself over the next decade. Even Speaker Ryan himself almost admitted Thursday that the GOP's economic analysis might not square.

President George W. Bush's tax cuts didn't stop the Great Recession. President Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of postmodern trickle-down theory, spent much of his first term grappling with a recession that trickle down couldn't fix. The first real application of American trickle down was adopted in 1928, a year before the greatest economic collapse in the country's history.

Not only is trickle down no magic potion for job growth or economic stability, it looks to be a Petri dish for poverty and economic chaos. It's social Darwinism rooted in a belief that freedom is purely an economic pursuit.

Republicans in the Kansas Legislature came to grips with that reality the hard way. Recent years were spent cutting taxes year-after-year. The state's economy slumped; its public schools starved and its wages stagnated. This year, Kansas' GOP-dominated Legislature boosted taxes and overrode Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of the tax hike.

Come 2018, Republicans will test the most aggressive application of trickle down in a generation. Corporations will pay billions less in taxes. The wealthy will save millions. Americans in the middle of the economic spectrum might see a few hundred bucks. The poor, elderly and public schools will do with less.

History says this, too, will go badly. The deficit will explode. Even more wealth will be consolidated at the top of the economic food chain. And, at some point, the whole experiment blows up.

What then? Will the Republican Party finally abandon its most sacred guiding principle, propped up by pseudoscience and snake oil?

Doubtful. Myths die hard.
Al Scovel is on a mission to address a clear need in western South Dakota that has lingered for decades  the lack of a mental health center.

The Rapid City attorney and former state lawmaker wants the Legislature or Gov. Daugaard to dedicate funds to build one out there, which is how state government officials sometimes characterize this part of the state, according to Scovel.

Now, as he emphasized in a recent meeting with the Journal editorial board, those who have serious mental health problems must travel to the state mental health hospital in Yankton, which is 365 miles from Rapid City. It is a facility, he said, that is woefully understaffed and lacks resources.

The state has a history of giving "lip service to mental health needs, said Scovel, whose record of public service includes working for Bill Janklow when he was a governor known for getting things done.

What kind of people are we? he asked. How long are we going to allow this?

Scovel is not a lone voice on this issue. Rapid City Police Chief Karl Jegeris and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom raised similar concerns in February when Regional Health announced it was curtailing its services for the mentally ill.

At the time, the regions primary health-care provider said it would no longer admit behavioral health patients who do not have acute medical needs to the main hospital when the Behavioral Health facility is at capacity.

Instead, the hospital said, it would turn them over to law enforcement officials who would then have to decide whether to put them in jail or turn them loose while in crisis, which led to the creation of the West River Behavioral Health Alliance.

"This is fundamentally flawed because were using a criminal justice response for what should be a medical situation, Jegeris said at the time.

Thom added: We need a West River solution.  No singular entity can solve this. Its bigger than any one of us.

It is a proposition that Scovel endorses, but he is not waiting for a local official to lead the charge. He has taken it upon himself to find needed support to convince lawmakers and state officials that western South Dakota needs a state-supported mental health center for what he calls a crisis  it is very, very real.

He has made presentations and sought the support of the Rapid City Council and Pennington County Commission, which unanimously approved a resolution supporting additional mental health services in this area. He now recruits West River lawmakers on the eve of the legislative session.

Scovel is correct. It is a shame the West River lacks a mental health facility. The public and elected officials should heed his message and demand that one be built out here.
Thanks for support in a trying time

A sincere thank you to all of the people who gathered for the memorial service of my husband, Craig Tieszen, on Dec. 4. I appreciate those who attempted to attend but the weather made it too difficult. The kind words and tributes to Craig's life help tremendously in our grieving process.

We are forever grateful for the kind, respectful and professional care provided to Craig, brother-in-law Brent Moline and our families by: 1) the people of Rarotonga, New Zealand 2) Air New Zealand and United Airlines 3) the entire staff at Oscheim/Schmidt Funeral Home 4) the Rapid City Police Department with the rest of the law enforcement community 5) Gov. Daugaard and his staff 6) and Craig's legislative colleagues. The response of the U.S. Ambassador and the U.S. Consul to New Zealand made us grateful to be Americans.

More so, we have felt and treasure the outpouring of love and support from the citizens of Rapid City, of South Dakota and beyond. We are humbled by the donations to Craig's favorite place  the Club for Boys. As well, the developing Childrens Museum of the Black Hills has received many donations in Brents name.

Together with my sister, Anita Moline, and our families, we thank you very much.

Debra Tieszen

Rapid City

First tax 'reform,' then entitlements

For many years Republicans have hoped to gut the social safety net of federal programs. This effort has been unsuccessful because voters actually support beneficial programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. Now the GOP has found another strategy: through tax "reform" they will simply starve the government of money, requiring massive across the board cuts in services.

Millions more Americans will be without health care as a result of repealing Obamacare's individual mandate. Their expenses will largely be provided by emergency services, paid by taxpayers. It won't be long before ballooning federal deficits will require entitlement "reform," meaning Social Security and Medicare benefits will be slashed. Loss of benefits won't end there. Expect deep cuts for agencies that ensure clean air and water, airline and workplace safety, disaster relief, disease control, food safety, infrastructure, and others.

In ten years, to make some kind of payment on the trillions added to the national debt, the lower tax rate on individuals will expire, while the lower corporate rate will not. But, of course, that will be after the Trump administration has ended, when he and most of our current legislators will be beyond the reach of the voters.

Eric Smith

Rapid City
JOLIET  After driving eight hours from Spokane, Washington, and taking a quick 45-minute snooze at a highway rest stop, Sarah Crow was making history by scouring the fields for deer in south central Montanas first chronic wasting disease hunt Friday.

We werent successful in our late-season hunt in Ione, Washington, Sarah said of why she had made the long drive with her husband, Jake. We got snowed out.

By 2 p.m. she had already filled one of four tags she purchased online for $20 apiece, shooting a mule deer doe. After letting Fish, Wildlife and Parks technicians Sean Flynn and Jessica Goosmann take tissue samples and a tooth from the deers head, as well as pointing out on a map where the deer had been shot, the Crows were ready for some much-needed sleep.

Huge interest

No one in Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had imagined that this first-of-its-kind late-season hunt would be so popular. After all, a hunter may bag a deer infected with CWD.

That was a huge, huge unknown, said Barb Beck, FWP supervisor in Billings Region 5.

We really didnt have an idea what the demand would be, she added. We certainly didnt guess it would be that fast and strong.

The tags went on sale on Dec. 11 at 5 a.m. In a matter of minutes all 1,200 tags had sold out.

Jake Crow said he bought the licenses to encourage his wife to hunt out of state.

It was a lot cheaper this time around, he said.

When they heard about the CWD hunt, Jake set his alarm for 3:45 a.m. to ensure he got online early enough to purchase the tags. At $20 apiece for nonresidents, $10 for residents, Sarah was able to purchase four B tags for the price of what it would normally cost her to purchase just one nonresident Montana B tag. Jake also had two tags, and their friend, Justin Spring of Alberton, had two.

Nonresidents

Out of the 1,200 licenses FWP offered, 500 were for whitetail does and 500 were for mule deer does. Another 100 were for either-sex whitetails, as well as 100 for either-sex mule deer. The hunt runs until Feb. 15, unless the quota of 200 for each species is reached. By Monday, 107 deer had been checked at Joliet, 73 of them were mule deer, 34 were whitetails. Hunters have 72 hours to submit their harvested deer for testing.

The Crows werent alone in being out-of-state hunters who purchased the special season tags. About 25 percent of the total were bought by nonresidents, according to information from FWP. Just more than 200 nonresidents bought almost 300 tags. The nonresidents were more likely to purchase an either-sex mule deer and mule deer doe tag.

For residents, 650 hunters bought about 900 tags. Slightly more residents bought an either-sex whitetail tag. Hunters were allowed to purchase up to six tags, provided they hadnt bought any B tags during the general season.

Testing

All deer harvested are required to be tested for chronic wasting disease. The hunt is a way for FWP to determine how widespread and how prevalent the disease is in the Carbon County region. Thats why the agency has set up and staffed the check station in Joliet, but not all hunters will stop there. Some may bring their animals head to the Billings office for testing.

During the regular season, six deer killed in Carbon County tested positive for the disease, which prompted the special hunt. CWD is a progressive, fatal neurological disease that affects deer, elk and moose. It has been present for years in states east and south of Montana and Canadian provinces to the north. In all, the disease has been found in wildlife in 22 states and two Canadian provinces.

Spring said he took more precautions than usual when he boned out the mule deer doe that Sarah had shot.

We were being careful with it, he said. When we process it, well keep it separated until we hear back.

As part of the special hunt, those who bag an animal are not allowed to take the deers spinal cord or head out of Carbon or Yellowstone counties in an attempt to not spread the disease.

Eating the meat

It may take about two to three weeks for a Colorado lab to process the tissue samples. Each hunter receives a card with a code on it that corresponds to the samples taken. By logging online, they can find out the test results.

I wouldnt be comfortable eating it if it has CWD, Spring said.

The Centers for Disease Control has advised against eating wildlife that has tested positive for CWD, even though no case of transference of the disease from wildlife to humans who consumed venison has ever been documented.

One resident hunter told FWP technician Flynn that he was going to eat the deer he shot no matter the test results, but they were young whitetails. Beck said young of the year deer wont test positive because the disease takes two years to show up. Another resident visiting the check station said he would eat a deer that tested positive for CWD, figuring the disease has probably been around awhile and hes already consumed an infected animal.

Billings hunter Chris Sanford scored a whitetail doe tag to extend his unsuccessful archery season. One reason he bought a whitetail tag is because the prevalence of CWD has been lower in that species than mule deer. He said he wasn't sure if he would eat an infected deer or not.

What next?

Beck said if the special CWD hunt shows a disease prevalence of 5 percent or lower, FWP may not make any changes in its hunting regulations for the area, which includes Hunting Districts 502 and 510. If not enough deer are killed during the special hunt, FWP may consider conducting another, she said.

Were looking at structure and not just numbers, Beck said. Bucks are the primary offenders, and were already managing them pretty aggressively here, which may be why were not seeing (CWD) a lot.

The Crow Tribe also borrowed 25 kits from FWP to test deer killed on the Crow Reservation, which adjoins areas where diseased deer have been taken this fall.

One thing all of the hunters said is they shot healthy-looking deer, said Lee Burroughs, a Region 5 FWP warden, who manned the check station in Laurel during the regular deer season. Its not like they shot anything emaciated.

He said a few people have called in reports of sick-looking deer.

We take all of those seriously, Beck said.

BMAs OK

After some confusion over whether hunters would be allowed on Block Management Areas  private property where landowners are paid to allow public hunting  all BMAs in Carbon County are open for the special CWD hunt.

All of the landowners FWP warden Matt Heaton contacted in the area said they were willing to extend their contracts whether they got paid for the additional days or not. One of those BMAs provided the opportunity for Sarah Crow to harvest a mule deer doe.

The landowners seemed pretty excited to have a doe harvest, said Spring, one of Sarahs hunting partners.

He called some of the BMA cooperators in advance of his long journey southeast from Alberton. By the end of the weekend, Sarah had shot another mule deer doe, this one south of Belfry.

Weve never been over here so we didnt know what to expect, Spring said.

It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Stevensville High School Principal Brian Gum said he and his 16-year-old son made an "honest mistake" when they shot two bull elk in a hunting district in which only antlerless elk could be taken earlier this year.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks Game Warden Justin Singleterry said the two were in Hunting District 262 on Oct. 26 when they shot two bulls in the antlerless-only district, which is between the Eastside Highway and the Bitterroot Irrigation ditch. One was a 4-by-5 bull, and the other was a 6-by-6. Neither is considered a trophy bull.

Basically, they were both charged for hunting during a closed season, Singleterry said. There is no season or license for bull elk in that district.

Gum said he and his son assumed they were doing everything legally until Singleterry pointed out the boundaries. Gum was on private property that he mistakenly thought was Hunting District 261, which is adjacent to 262. Brow-tine elk are legal to take in HD 261.

"My son and I had the landowner's permission to hunt there; I've done that for four years," Gum said. "When you look at the regulations, you're supposed to use the Big Ditch as a marker."

Problem is, he used the wrong ditch.

"None of those ditches are marked," Gum said. "We went above what we believed was the Bitterroot Irrigation Canal - the big one carrying water - adjacent to the south of Sunset Bench. We never thought for a minute we were in HD 262. It never crossed our minds, otherwise we never would have shot our elk; that's no brainer. I've been a hunter for 31 years and never had any violations or tickets."

Gum said the citations and having the elk confiscated was devastating to his son, especially since it was his first bull.

"He's an outstanding kid, an honor student and an athlete," Gum said. "He was so excited."

Once they were notified of the mistake, Gum said they stuck around to help Singleterry field dress the elk.

Then he went to the store and bought a GPS to ensure he and his son never find themselves in a similar situation.

"What I learned is even if you have the landowner's permission, read the regs and think you are in the right spot, in today's world, you better have a GPS," Gum said. "To me, that was a teachable moment."

Both pleaded not guilty to the charge, which can carry fines from between $50 to $1,000, up to six months in jail, and the possible loss of hunting privileges.

"We pleaded not guilty to make sure we go through the proper channels and get our side heard," Gum said. "We didn't do it maliciously or with malicious intent. This is different than poaching, where you mean to do something. This is vastly different; it's easy to make an honest mistake when all those district run together and they're marked by a series of ditches."
As the battle over the gate across Hughes Creek Road headed to court, attorney Jesse Kodadek filed what he considers a once-in-a-lifetime Montana Supreme Court brief  in the form of a play.

He figures that judges get a little bored reading legal briefs all day, every day. And since the Hughes Creek Road-gate case has taken so many twists and turns, he thought writing the opening brief as a play might make it a little easier to understand.

I think about it all the time, especially with appellate judges, who read peoples writings every day, said Kodadek, who is based in Missoula. The Montana Supreme Court cant tell whats going on half the time, so I tried to be as clear as possible and lay out the story. I think theres one time in your lifetime you can do something like this.

Although the case goes back decades, it rose anew in January 2017 when the Ravalli County Commission denied a petition by landowners in the Hughes Creek area to abandon the upper stretch of the road. Instead, commissioners ordered the landowners to remove a gate that blocked the road for at least 40 years.

The gate was supposed to be removed by June 1. If landowners Jay and Tracy Bugli declined to take it down, the county threatened to do it on Aug. 1.

Meanwhile, on July 6, Judge Jeffrey Langton dismissed a lawsuit by the landowners behind the fence that sought to permanently gate Hughes Creek Road. But the Buglis and Wade, Charlene and Violet Cox went to court and were issued a temporary restraining order by Langton on July 31 and a court hearing was set for Aug. 14.

Meanwhile, they filed for a review of the lawsuit Langton dismissed, but also filed the Montana Supreme Court lawsuit in which Kodadek, the landowners attorney, took poetic license with the conventional court brief.

After stating the three issues for review, Kodadek then makes his statement of the case in Act I: The Political Process, which appears to have some potential for comic opera.

County: Hey, some people want us to make you take down that gate.

Landowners: The gate in front of our house? The one that has been there since at least the 1970s?

County: Yes, that one. Some people say a county road continues beyond it.

Landowners: Didnt you sue us in 1984 to try to get the very same gate removed?

And on it goes for four more pages, with Act II taking place at the courthouse. A footnote reminds the Supreme Court judges that this isnt a verbatim transcript.

Eventually, Kodadek returns to standard legalese. But he clearly enjoys flexing his literary muscle  he was a literature major in undergraduate studies  and said that after it was filed in October, he got a couple emails from other attorneys who enjoyed reading it.

But so far, no response from Ravalli County, except for a motion asking for an extension until Jan. 11, 2018, to file its own brief.

Perhaps theyre working on Act III.
LAS VEGAS  A U.S. judge in Nevada dealt another defeat Wednesday to federal prosecutors trying to punish leaders of armed standoffs meant to oppose federal authority over vast swaths of land in the American West.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro in Las Vegas declared a mistrial in the long-awaited case against states' rights figure Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy and self-styled Montana militia leader Ryan Payne.

Prosecutors were trying to prove the four broke the law in a tense armed confrontation between Bundy supporters and government agents who gave up efforts to confiscate Bundy cattle in 2014.

Navarro didn't dismiss the case outright, but said she might after a Jan. 8 hearing. She also severely criticized prosecutors for suppressing information and violating constitutional due process by failing to turn over all their evidence to defense attorneys. She called the conduct "willful."

"The defense has a right to information so it can go to a jury," the judge said, "so the jury can decide."

The setback comes a year after a federal jury in Portland, Oregon, acquitted Ryan and Ammon Bundy of all charges after leading an occupation of a U.S. wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon in early 2016 and demanding the federal government turn over public land to local control.

This year, prosecutors in Nevada failed to gain full convictions in two trials against six defendants in the Bundy case who acknowledged carrying assault-style weapons during the April 2014 confrontation outside Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Two of them, from Idaho, were memorably photographed on a highway overpass pointing weapons at heavily armed federal agents facing hundreds of flag-waving protesters in a dry riverbed below.

The display forced a smaller group of agents to quit rounding up Bundy cattle and sent a shock wave across Western states, where the federal government owns most of the land and many ranchers chafe at grazing restrictions.

Cliven Bundy, 71, has become a states' rights icon. Hundreds answered calls on social media to protest and protect him.

His trial on 15 felony charges, including conspiracy, weapon counts and threatening and impeding a federal officer, had been expected to last four months. The defendants face the prospect of decades in prison.

"Awesome. But not yet complete," Ryan Bundy said outside the courtroom where he had asked the judge to remove house arrest restrictions for him, his brother and Payne. Navarro said she'd decide that question later.

"I believe there is no jury in this country that will convict us," Ammon Bundy said. "We have something most powerful, and that's the truth."

Cliven Bundy remained in federal detention in protest, although his lawyer was seeking his release. Payne declined to comment.

Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre didn't immediately say whether he would retry the case.

Navarro spent 30 minutes in a packed courtroom citing evidence of misconduct by Myhre and his team.

The judge recalled prosecutors describing efforts to obtain records a "fantastic fishing expedition," ''urban legend" and a "shiny object to distract the court" as they denied the existence of video and log book evidence of a sweeping government operation covering a vast range half the size of Delaware.

Agents also set up corrals for protesters well away from the activity and designated them "free speech zones."

Navarro said she was dismayed to learn some 3,300 pages of previously undisclosed FBI and Bureau of Land Management records were turned over to defense attorneys since Oct. 10. The deadline had been Oct. 1 ahead of the trial that opened in mid-November.

Some contained references to snipers and surveillance cameras on hilltops around the Bundy ranch, which prosecutors had insisted did not exist.

The judge called it impossible for defense teams to have fully prepared for the trial. She also offered some stunning disclosures.

Despite written reports predicting the Bundys would not resort to violence, Navarro said government officials mounted a "Bundy media campaign."

Government news releases later asserted that Bundy cattle were being rounded up because he failed to pay more than $1.1 million grazing fees and penalties.

One threat assessment said the Bundys "will probably get in your face, but not into a shootout," the judge said.

Another report undercut a key claim by environmentalists and the government that Bundy cattle grazing in what is now Gold Butte National Monument caused any documented injury to tortoises.

The judge made no mention of a whistleblower memo by a former Bureau of Land Management investigator in the case that was made public last week.

It alleged widespread bad judgment, bias and misconduct during the planning and operation of the cattle roundup, as well as "likely policy, ethical and legal violations among senior and supervisory staff."
Missoula police have interviewed the former property manager who lived at the residence where bones and teeth believed to be from three children were found in a shed.

Doug Labare said he reached out to Detective Guy Baker last week and met with him Tuesday afternoon.

Over the summer, police began investigating after a cleaning crew found a box containing teeth and some bones in one of the sheds at a home on the 2100 block of South 12th Street.

Labare said the Missoula detective showed him photos of the box during his interview. He said he didnt recognize it, but didnt know whether the box had been among those that had been in the sheds on the property, or if it was put there after he left.

Police wanted to speak with Labare about the home and the box, but have stressed they do not have a suspect in the case.

The teeth and bones were examined and are believed to be those of three children. They have been sent for DNA testing to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, which runs the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a division under the Department of Justice.

Missoula police hope the testing will help to determine if the children were related and potentially tie them to an existing missing persons case. Sgt. Travis Welsh, public information officer, said the lab told Missoula police that testing and analysis could take three to six months.

Labare lived in a camper in the backyard of the home for around six years until he was forced to move in the summer of 2016, just over a year before the box was found. He said he had been a friend of Leo Russ Kerr, the former owner of the home, and had lived at the property taking care of Kerr for around two and a half years until his death in 2013.

I was with Russ, holding his hand, the day he died in St. Pats, Labare said.

Kerr grew up in the home, and Labare said to his knowledge it had been in the family for generations. After Kerrs death, Labare said he stayed at the property, remodeling the house and serving as a property manager for renters who lived there at the behest of Kerrs son, who lives out of state.

Following a disagreement between himself, the son and the then-tenants in the summer of 2016, a Missoula property management company was brought in to oversee the home and Labare moved his backyard camper elsewhere, he said. During the time he lived on the property, Labare said three different groups of people rented the home.

According to a search warrant, the box containing the teeth and bones was found in one of the sheds after tenants were evicted in September.

Labare said Kerr had been a hoarder and two of the sheds were packed front to back with boxes of his personal possessions. Labare said that once, at the sons request, he opened a few boxes at the front of one of the sheds to confirm the contents were Kerrs belongings, but that the son never came to get any of them. Labare said that when he left the property in the summer of 2016, all of the boxes were still there.

Another of the sheds contained various yard tools and other maintenance equipment, Labare said.

Labare said Baker asked him what he would have done if he had found the box.

I said I probably would do the same as the guys who did find it. I would be down here talking to you, Labare said he told the detective.

Labare said Baker also asked him about any connection he may have to Michigan. A Michigan detective has been in touch with Missoula police about the case, interested to know if it potentially could be related to a case in that state where three brothers went missing in November 2010.

Labare said he had been a long-distance truck driver for around three years, but didnt know if he had ever driven through or worked jobs in Michigan. He said he still had his log books and offered to turn them over to the Missoula police if they wanted them.

Police said Friday they are not aware of any connection to the missing Michigan boys other than that the ages of the boys are similar to what's believed to have been those of the children whose bones and teeth were found.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Detective Guy Baker at 406-396-3217.
Blog Archive November 2022 (35) October 2022 (61) September 2022 (60) August 2022 (63) July 2022 (65) June 2022 (68) May 2022 (67) April 2022 (62) March 2022 (68) February 2022 (54) January 2022 (61) December 2021 (70) November 2021 (72) October 2021 (67) September 2021 (59) August 2021 (56) July 2021 (57) June 2021 (66) May 2021 (63) April 2021 (75) March 2021 (73) February 2021 (61) January 2021 (69) December 2020 (62) November 2020 (62) October 2020 (70) September 2020 (51) August 2020 (52) July 2020 (60) June 2020 (57) May 2020 (79) April 2020 (56) March 2020 (52) February 2020 (50) January 2020 (69) December 2019 (58) November 2019 (64) October 2019 (44) September 2019 (49) August 2019 (71) July 2019 (71) June 2019 (71) May 2019 (67) April 2019 (74) March 2019 (85) February 2019 (64) January 2019 (73) December 2018 (66) November 2018 (81) October 2018 (87) September 2018 (66) August 2018 (76) July 2018 (84) June 2018 (86) May 2018 (64) April 2018 (83) March 2018 (78) February 2018 (69) January 2018 (69) December 2017 (82) November 2017 (87) October 2017 (89) September 2017 (77) August 2017 (75) July 2017 (76) June 2017 (90) May 2017 (86) April 2017 (59) March 2017 (61) February 2017 (82) January 2017 (91) December 2016 (90) November 2016 (80) October 2016 (75) September 2016 (95) August 2016 (104) July 2016 (93) June 2016 (96) May 2016 (98) April 2016 (99) March 2016 (113) February 2016 (82) January 2016 (98) December 2015 (113) November 2015 (94) October 2015 (93) September 2015 (98) August 2015 (97) July 2015 (105) June 2015 (103) May 2015 (95) April 2015 (100) March 2015 (102) February 2015 (93) January 2015 (114) December 2014 (110) November 2014 (103) October 2014 (105) September 2014 (96) August 2014 (96) July 2014 (112) June 2014 (119) May 2014 (109) April 2014 (116) March 2014 (117) February 2014 (109) January 2014 (116) December 2013 (117) November 2013 (121) October 2013 (125) September 2013 (93) August 2013 (115) July 2013 (110) June 2013 (102) May 2013 (115) April 2013 (113) March 2013 (119) February 2013 (108) January 2013 (119) December 2012 (132) November 2012 (115) October 2012 (121) September 2012 (115) August 2012 (124) July 2012 (102) June 2012 (121) May 2012 (121) April 2012 (127) March 2012 (130) February 2012 (112) January 2012 (131) December 2011 (129) November 2011 (118) October 2011 (118) September 2011 (110) August 2011 (138) July 2011 (146) June 2011 (139) May 2011 (144) April 2011 (127) March 2011 (140) February 2011 (116) January 2011 (134) December 2010 (133) November 2010 (136) October 2010 (148) September 2010 (128) August 2010 (155) July 2010 (129) June 2010 (138) May 2010 (152) April 2010 (161) March 2010 (119) February 2010 (149) January 2010 (155) December 2009 (177) November 2009 (171) October 2009 (176) September 2009 (159) August 2009 (156) July 2009 (170) June 2009 (157) May 2009 (185) April 2009 (179) March 2009 (183) February 2009 (170) January 2009 (181) December 2008 (189) November 2008 (183) October 2008 (164) September 2008 (164) August 2008 (177) July 2008 (179) June 2008 (170) May 2008 (191) April 2008 (175) March 2008 (195) February 2008 (162) January 2008 (188) December 2007 (187) November 2007 (189) October 2007 (194) September 2007 (156) August 2007 (194) July 2007 (163) June 2007 (176) May 2007 (190) April 2007 (177) March 2007 (192) February 2007 (165) January 2007 (170) December 2006 (182) November 2006 (177) October 2006 (185) September 2006 (180) August 2006 (156) July 2006 (160) June 2006 (177) May 2006 (173) April 2006 (157) March 2006 (158) February 2006 (146) January 2006 (144) December 2005 (135) November 2005 (138) October 2005 (128) September 2005 (141) August 2005 (136) July 2005 (133) June 2005 (119) May 2005 (143) April 2005 (52)
KATHMANDU, Dec 21: Nepal has become self-dependent on eggs after three years of announcement of the government for the same. The government had released a plan to make the country self-dependent on meat, egg and milk.

According to Nepal Egg Producers Association, there would be active participation of youths in animal husbandry sector after the announcement became successful at the joint initiative of government and private sectors.

Out of total production of eggs in proportion to the population of the country last year, each person got 33 eggs annually. Nepal becomes self-dependent on eggs after the egg production has now increased by around 46 percent.

A data shows that the production of eggs of duck and hen has increased continuously for the past three years.

A total of 13.4 million eggs of duck was produced in 2070/71 BS, 13.5 million eggs in 2071/72 BS and 13.9 million in 2072/73 BS.

Similarly, 859 million eggs of hen was produced in 2070/71 BS, 865 million in 2071/72 BS and 1.29 billion in 2072/73 BS, said Chairperson of the Association, Shivaram KC.

A total of 1.30 billion eggs of duck and hen have now produced in the country annually which was 900 million three years ago. RSS
Guwahati : The special court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Guwahati on Wednesday had sent the principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Khanapara to two-day police remand, who was arrested by the prime investigating agency in a graft case.

Rajesh Dhawan, principal of KV Khanapara in Guwahati was arrested by a CBI team on Tuesday evening, while Dhawan was taking bribe from a contractor at his official residence.

A top CBI official said that, a CBI team had arrested the principal red handed while he taking a bribe of Rs 30,000 in cash from a contractor for awarding a painting and electrical work.

On Wednesday, Dhawan was produced before the special court of CBI and the court had sent him to two-day police custody.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati: A forest guard was died after an adult rhino attack the forest guard in lower Assams Manas National Park on Sunday morning, officials said.

The incident took place between the Maut Camp and Rhino Camp inside the national park at around 8-30 am.

Park field director Hiranaya Sarma said that, the incident happend while four forest guards came out from their base camp (Rhino camp) for buying food items from a nearest market.

When the forest guard team came out from their base camp, an adult male rhino attacked the group in which a forest guard named Lankeswar Lahkar (53 years) died on spot. Later postmortem was conducted. The victim was hailed from Tihu area, Sarma said.

Two more forest guards had lost their lives in rhino attacks inside thenational park last year.

Under the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 programme, a total of 27 rhinos were translocated by the Assam forest department to the 950 sq km national park

since 2008, ten were killed by poachers, while three had died of natural reasons.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati, December 21 : Frontier Headquarters SSB Tezpur celebrated 54th Raising Day ceremony on December 20 at Recruit Training Centre SSB Salonibari in Assam's Sonitpur district.

On the occasion a colourful Parade consisting of troops from various units of the Frontier under Command of Desh Raj, Deputy Commandant presented a colourful March past at the historical Shivaji Parade Ground of Recruit Training Centre, SSB Salonibari.

P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier took the salute and inspected the Parade on a decorated inspection vehicle accompanied by Deputy Inspector General, SSB Recruit Training Centre SSB Salonibari.

At the outset Tsering Dorjai, DIG, SSB, Recruit Training Centre SSB salonibari welcomed the Chief Guest and highlighted evolution of SSB.

P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier presented the DGs Disc. to the Officers and Personnel of SSB Tezpur Frontier, RTC SSB Salonibari and the field units. 42 Personnel of Tezpur Frontier were awarded DGs Disc.

Trophies for best Operational, Administration and best Area of the Frontier were awarded by the Inspector General to 61st Battalion SSB Bhairabkunda, 23rd Battalion SSB Lalpool and Udalguri Area respectively. P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier recalled the origin of SSB from Tezpur by none other than our late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Shri B.N. Mullik.

The aim of SSB was to provide security to people of remote areas on Indo-China border and promote the sense of service security and brotherhood.

SSB was transformed into a border guarding force in the year 2001 and since then the force is performing the duties of sentinel on Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan Border.

SSB Tezpur Frontier is protecting the international border with 2 Sectors at Bezpara and Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh and 6 battalions deployed on Indo-Bhutan International border.

SSB is also deployed in Disturbed Area Belt on Assam-Nagaland border to maintain peace in the region.

In his closing remarks, the IG extended his thanks to all the participants and the invited guests with the hope that the Personnel of Tezpur Frontier will be re-dedicated to serve the nation with enhanced fervor and zeal.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati, December 21 : One suspected militant of the NSCN-IM faction was injured in a gun fight with Assam Rifles troops in Manipurs Noney district on Wednesday evening, officials said on Thursday.

According to the reports, the encounter took place in the area between Sibilong and Sinam village of Noney district.

A top official of Manipur police said that, the troops of Assam Rifles had apprehended another militant from the encounter area.

The injured militant was rushed to nearest hospital and he is yet to be identified.

On the other hand, the troops of Assam Rifless Longding and Khonsa battalion had apprehended four militants belonging to NSCN-U and NSCN-K factions in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday evening.

Kohima based Defence PRO Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer said that, based on intelligence input the Assam Rifles troops of Longding battalion had launched operation at Sonari area and apprehended three NSCN-U militants.

The nabbed militants were identified as Jaichok, Self Styled Lance Corporal Panyam Wangjen and Wangpan Wangsa.

Security personnel had recovered two pistols with live ammunition, opium, extortion note, paper with extortion details, multiple mobile phones and other incriminating evidence in possession from them.

Post spot interrogation the militants admitted allegiance to NSCN-U and admitted that the trio under the Self Styled Private had been involved in extortion activities for last six months.

In separate operation launched by the Khonsa battalion had apprehended a militant of banned outfit NSCN-K from Khonsa town area.

The nabbed militant was identified as Kammo Kanglom and security forces had recovered a pistol, live ammunition, opium and extortion note in possession from him.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
KATHMANDU, Dec 21: A Malaysian court has acquitted a Nepali migrant worker on drug trafficking charges. Bhim Bahadur Nepali of Siraha district, who worked as a security guard in Malaysia, was charged with trafficking drugs a year ago. The Malaysian laws deem drug smuggling illegal and slap a capital punishment.

Kuala Lumpur-based Nepali embassy confirmed the court's verdict on Nepali's case. The embassy pleaded the case on behalf of Nepal government in coordination with Malaysian law practitioners. The pleading charges were borne by the Nepal government.

The acquitted Nepali returned home on Wednesday with the financial help of the government. RSS
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE).
 "The Stability of Case Processing and Sentencing Post-Booker" | Main | New Florida bill to criminalize sex offenders coming with 300 feet of places where children congregate 

April 30, 2010

Federal prosecutors now seeking 25-year prison term for Rubashkin

Prosecutors asked a federal judge on Thursday to sentence a former kosher slaughterhouse executive to 25 years in prison, less than the life sentence they have said they were entitled to request. Former Agriprocessors Inc. manager Sholom Rubashkin, who was convicted of 86 counts of financial fraud in November, gave a tearful, halting speech at the end of his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. He was charged following a May 2008 immigration raid at the former Agriprocessors slaughterhouse, where 389 workers were arrested on immigration charges. Rubashkin told the court he had made mistakes and was remorseful. In a thick Brooklyn accent, he reiterated that he was sorry for his actions, and that he was put in a position by his family of running the operations of a large plant for which he had no training or interest.... Prosecutors had added up the charges in pre-sentencing documents and the total came to a life sentence. But assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Deegan said Thursday in court that the government would seek 25 years and not life, which is "usually reserved for violent criminals." "Here you have a defendant who had everything: family, love and support," Deegan said. "And he's asking for a lesser sentence because of it." Defense attorney Guy Cook, who had requested a six-year sentence, said the request for 25 years would essentially be a life sentence for the 50-year-old Rubashkin. Cook asked that he serve it at a facility in Otisville, N.Y., which better caters to the needs of Hasidic Jews. "He only has about 25 or 26 years left on this earth," Cook said. "Twenty-five years is a life sentence." U.S. District Court Judge Linda Reade says she'll issue a ruling on May 27.... Deegan said there were many victims in the case: the banks who lost money to Rubashkin because of the fraud, the cattle sellers who had to take out loans to avoid closure, and the citizens of Postville, who watched their largest employer fall into bankruptcy and their town's economy crumble. Deegan said Rubashkin wasn't some far-removed corporate officer who "sets (fraud) in motion," but rather a hands-on executive who personally broke the law and directed others to do the same. But Cook said he had gotten to know Rubashkin since he took on the case, and found him to be a deeply religious man who put the needs of others in front of his own. "It was not a Ponzi scheme, it was not a Madoff scheme," Cook said. "He made mistakes and he compounded those mistakes. And he felt trapped and didn't know how to get out."

This AP article , which is headlined "25-year term sought in Iowa slaughterhouse case," provides a recap of the conclusion of the two-day sentencing hearing in a high-profile white-collar case in Iowa. Here are some of the details:

Related posts on the Rubashkin case:

April 30, 2010 at 10:13 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e20133ed14b084970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Federal prosecutors now seeking 25-year prison term for Rubashkin :

Comments

Under what theory does enriching yourself with luxuries you got with money you spent years stealing count as a "mistake"?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 30, 2010 11:26:15 AM

Ahh Bill Bill Bill. Generations come and generations go, yet ever the earth remains. His first mistake was that he tried to accumulate riches. His second mistake was that he didn't make the first mistake in the legally proscribed way. His third mistake...hmmm...oh, according to Doug it's the fact he's Jewish in a Gentile legal system.

Three strikes and he's out.

Posted by: Daniel | Apr 30, 2010 1:51:45 PM

Daniel --

Do you know what greed is? Do you know what stealing is? Yikes.

"Generations come and generations go, yet ever the earth remains."

We're in agreement so far.

"His first mistake was that he tried to accumulate riches."

Wrongo. There is nothing per se wrong with trying to accumulate riches.

"His second mistake was that he didn't make the first mistake in the legally proscribed way."

"Legally prescribed way"??? I love that fancy-dance phrase. How about this: "Mr. X wanted to accumulate riches, so he belted Mr. Y over the head with a tire iron and grabbed his wallet, thus achieving his goal but not 'in the legally prescribed way.'" Do you actually think there's nothing wrong with being a thief?

"His third mistake...hmmm...oh, according to Doug it's the fact he's Jewish in a Gentile legal system."

Doug said nothing of the kind, nor would he have, since there's not a shred of evidence the defendant is being disadvantaged because of his religion. To the contrary, he's trying to GAIN an advantage by bleating about how pious he is.

I'll repeat the question you declined to answer: Under what theory does enriching yourself with luxuries you got with money you spent years stealing count as a "mistake"?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 30, 2010 4:27:04 PM

Bill.

It is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Posted by: Daniel | May 1, 2010 10:15:26 AM

Daniel --

And a stitch in time saves nine.

Now that we have that straight, do you have an answer?

Posted by: Bill Otis | May 1, 2010 11:52:49 AM

Bill's like a modern-day Diogenes with a pocket full of grand-jury subpoenas; And everyone who fails his honest-man test gets one.



Posted by: John K | May 1, 2010 1:00:28 PM

United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 344-345 (1974):

"The role of the grand jury as an important instrument of effective law enforcement necessarily includes an investigatory function with respect to determining whether a crime has been committed and who committed it. . . . `When the grand jury is performing its investigatory function into a general problem area . . . society's interest is best served by a thorough and extensive investigation.' Wood v. Georgia, 370 U.S. 375, 392 (1962). A grand jury investigation `is not fully carried out until every available clue has been run down and all witnesses examined in every proper way to find if a crime has been committed.' United States v. Stone, 429 F.2d 138, 140 (CA2 1970). Such an investigation may be triggered by tips, rumors, evidence proffered by the prosecutor, or the personal knowledge of the grand jurors. Costello v. United States, 350 U.S., at 362 . It is only after the grand jury has examined the evidence that a determination of whether the proceeding will result in an indictment can be made . . . ." Id., at 701-702.

"The power of a federal court to compel persons to appear and testify before a grand jury is also firmly established. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972). The duty to testify has long been recognized as a basic obligation that every citizen owes his Government. Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421, 438 (1932); United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 331 (1950). In Branzburg v. Hayes, supra, at 682 and 688, the Court noted that "[c]itizens generally are not constitutionally immune from grand jury subpoenas . . ." and that "the longstanding principle that `the public . . . has a right to every man's evidence' . . . is particularly applicable to grand jury proceedings." The duty to testify may on occasion be burdensome and even embarrassing. It may cause injury to a witness' social and economic status. Yet the duty to testify has been regarded as "so necessary to the administration of justice" that the witness' personal interest in privacy must yield to the public's overriding interest in full disclosure. Blair v. United States, 250 U.S., at 281 . Furthermore, a witness may not interfere with the course of the grand jury's inquiry. He "is not entitled to urge objections of incompetency or irrelevancy, such as a party might raise, for this is no concern of his." Id., at 282. Nor is he entitled "to challenge the authority of the court or of the grand jury" or "to set limits to the investigation that the grand jury may conduct." Ibid

Those are the words of that well-known fascist pig, Lewis Powell.

BTW, since I can't get a straight answer out of Daniel, maybe I'll try you. Under what theory does enriching yourself with luxuries you got with money you spent years stealing count as a "mistake"?

P.S. Thank you for mistaking me for Diogenes. You preferred Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards and the boys? Really? Personally, yes indeed, I prefer seeking out an honest man to evasions, half-truths fake piety and "everybody else does it."

Posted by: Bill Otis | May 1, 2010 4:26:33 PM

Maybe Daniel was making the point people get caught up in things and circumstances can easily spin out of control.

To me much of what counts as federal criminal law enforcement is catching people in the act of being human and thrashing them soundly for it.

Posted by: John K | May 1, 2010 9:49:04 PM

John K --

You're a smart guy, so let me try to actually break through.

There are many components to "being human": benevolence, courage, good will, vision, creativity, diligence and charity, to name a few.

And there are other parts: greed, deceit, violence, dominance, self-centeredness and malice, to name a few.

People have a choice among which of these things they want to make part of their lives. When a person, like Rubashkin, spends years choosing greed, deceit and self-centeredness, and winds up as a result taking things he knows do not belong to him, then a sane society will indeed punish him.

Human beings are not mere passive vessels. They make choices. You portray Rubashkin, as you have portrayed others, as getting "caught up in circumstances" that "spin out of control." Completely absent from your picture is Rubashkin's will. Like many (but fortunately not all that many) people, he wanted luxuries without working for them, so he just stole them.

Both justice and prudence dictate that he be punished. With all respect, any other view of human nature is just disconnected from reality.

Posted by: Bill Otis | May 2, 2010 11:45:56 AM

Post a comment
 House bill to create "National Criminal Justice Commission" to be rolled out tomorrow | Main | Triple-digit sentence for child molester 

April 26, 2010

"More Former AGs Question Sentence Sought in Bank Fraud Case"

More former Department of Justice officials are voicing concern over the potential life sentence facing Sholom Rubashkin, the kosher slaughterhouse manager in Iowa whose sentencing on federal bank fraud and money laundering charges is set for this week. On April 21, former attorneys general Nicholas Katzenbach and Edwin Meese III submitted a letter to Chief Judge Linda Reade of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa that expressed concern about the guideline sentence proposed in the Rubashkin case. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who is now general counsel at PepsiCo Inc., and eight former U.S. attorneys also signed the letter. Click here for a copy. Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for Rubashkin, said today that several more former DOJ officials including former attorneys general William Barr, Janet Reno and Richard Thornburgh  have signed the letter submitted to Reade. Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and former Solicitor General Seth Waxman are also signatories, said Lewin of Washington's Lewin & Lewin. Gorelick and Waxman are partners in the Washington office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Thornburgh is of counsel in the Washington office of K&L Gates, and Barr serves on the Time Warner board of directors. Rubashkin was convicted in November on 86 financial crime and related counts for his role in a scheme to defraud a bank that provided a $35 million line of credit to the Rubashkin family-owned Agriprocessors Inc., a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. At trial, Rubashkin, 51, admitted making mistakes regarding the loan; he denied any criminal wrongdoing. He has been jailed pending sentencing. The lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan Jr., who called Rubashkin's fraud "extraordinary," noted in the governments sentencing memo that Rubashkin faces a potential life sentence. Rubashkins lawyers argue that the guideline should not be followed. The attorneys say a six-year prison term, at most, is just punishment. A two-day sentencing hearing is set to begin April 28 in Reades courtroom. The court has received more than a thousand letters and e-mails that support leniency for Rubashkin.

The title of this post is the headline of this new item over at The Blog of Legal Times , which is reporting on some of the latest news involving a high-profile upcoming sentencing. Here are some of the details:

I have not recently blogged about the sentencing debate swirling around Sholom Rubashkin, in part because I was asked earlier this month to play a small role in aid to Mr. Rubashkin's defense team. Specifically, and in the interest in full disclosure, I had a hand in helping to draft the above-referenced letter to Chief Judge Linda Reade that has now been signed by many former US Attorneys General and former senior Justice Department official. The full letter with the names of the signors can be downloaded here: Download Former AGs letter about Rubashkin sentencing

As evidenced by the post at The BLT and by this new ABC News story, it seems that this letter is further raising the profile of a sentencing that is already getting plenty of attention from lots of different folks.

April 26, 2010 at 07:10 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e2013480296b09970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference "More Former AGs Question Sentence Sought in Bank Fraud Case":

Comments

A "modest number of years" for stealing $25m+? These commentators never tell us the correct number for a sentence here. Curious.

How having ten children, one of whom's autistic, and doing "charitable work" makes up for stealing $25m, I'll never know.

Posted by: Mark | Apr 27, 2010 9:05:18 AM

Mark --

The whole idea of modern day sentencing is to portray the swindler as the victim. That beach house he bought was a real burden, I tell you. Same with the sailboat.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 27, 2010 9:27:08 AM

I am a federal criminal defense attorney who has had several clients sentenced by Judge Reade. Unfortunately for Rubashkin, Judge Reade rarely varies from the Guidelines and almost never downwards. That is not to say, however, that the Government's position on all of the sentencing enhancements it is claiming is right. Having reviewed the sentencing memos and based on my general familiarity with the case and experience with Judge Reade, I think it likely that he will get 20-25 years.

Posted by: Iowa Attorney | Apr 27, 2010 10:33:27 AM

Iowa Attorney, I totally agree with you..In fact she agrees with the guidelines so much, I've seen her ask USAtty what his thoughts are and he would give a downward descend with his head, indicating he agrees.

She rarely, if ever varies down from the guidelines.....May as well have a robot rubber stamp the PSR right from the probation officers fingers... Kind of like a tag team, USAtty and Judge...

Posted by: Goodyr | Apr 27, 2010 11:17:22 AM

But many here have said that the guidelines are advisory! Some judges continue to blindly follow the guidelines!? Say it ain't so!

Posted by: KRG def attny | Apr 27, 2010 12:29:05 PM

With all due respect to the illustrious former DOJ officials who signed the letter, including those who are said to have added their names later (many of whom I either worked for or went to school with), how in the world can they know that Mr. Rubashkin's case is "unique" if they "have not undertaken any independent effort to ascertain the accuracy of the factual statements made by the parties." More to the point, I'd like to ask Mr. Lewin how I can get these worthies to write a letter about the "appropriate principles of sentencing" as applied to some of my pro bono crack clients.

Posted by: margy | Apr 27, 2010 2:09:12 PM

Mark--

It's the wealth discount. Implicit in the Guidelines is a six-point reduction for offender characteristics if the offender is wealthy, and an eight-point reduction if the offender is a celebrity. These same implicit reductions are also present in nearly all state sentencing guidelines.

This is why, for example, a girl who kills her boyfriend in a car wreck after being intoxicated underage is permitted to travel to Florida during the pendency of her case ("don't leave the jurisdiction"...ha!), and then posts intoxicated pictures of herself while there, receives six months. It also explains why Andrew Sullivan was not charged with marijuana possession--the prosecutor knew that the fame reduction would have made prosecution pointless, since the best he could do was probation anyways.

Posted by: Res ipsa | Apr 27, 2010 2:09:56 PM

Too bad the former DOJ luminaries don't pool their clout to call for drastic reductions in guideline sentences across the board.

Funny how nobody seems to notice or care how mindlessly harsh the punishments are until someone they care about is about to be crushed by them.

Posted by: John K | Apr 27, 2010 4:42:39 PM

KRG --

"But many here have said that the guidelines are advisory! Some judges continue to blindly follow the guidelines!? Say it ain't so!"

It ain't so. Let it not be said that I refuse to cooperate.

1. If you want to find out if the Guidelines are advisory, read the Supreme Court's opinion in Kimbrough. It was not written by anyone here.

2. To follow the guidelines often is not to follow them blindly. Simply because YOU think they're harsh doesn't require every disctrict judge to agree with you. Some judges typically follow them becasue they agree with them. Imagine that.

Beyond that, the guidelines were written to follow the ordinary, pre-existing sentencing practices of judges. That is why they occupy the heartland. That judges usually go along with the guidelines is therefore hardly a revelation; indeed, it's only a truism.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 27, 2010 6:38:36 PM

Bill writes: "To follow the guidelines often is not to follow them blindly. Simply because YOU (KRG) think they're harsh doesn't require every district judge to agree with you."

Bill, pretty much the rest of the civilized world thinks they're overly harsh.

Four recent scholarly books struggle (unsuccessfully by my reckoning) to explain why America's justice system is as harsh as it is:

"Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe," James Q. Whitman

"Thinking About Crime; Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture," Michael Tonry

"Thinking About Crime," James Q Wilson

Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (Studies in Crime and Public Policy)," Jonathan Simon.

Or consider this quote from Victoria Toensing, one of the wing-nut authoritarian conservatives who helped contrive American's draconian sentencing guidelines: "I was present at the creation of those guidelines. May God forgive me for ever supporting them."

Posted by: John K | Apr 28, 2010 1:00:32 AM

John K --

"... pretty much the rest of the civilized world thinks [the guidelines are] overly harsh."

1. The huge majority of the civilized world has never heard of the guidelines.

2. Among those who have, one must include Congress. In the more than 20 years since the guidelines became operational, how many times has Congress, under either party, demanded that even one guideline be lowered?

3. Instead, Congress has, in addition to the guidelines, created mandatory minimum sentencing, which is both harsher and less flexible than the guidelines.

4. The majority of THIS BOARD thinks the guidelines are too harsh, that's for sure. That's becasue the majority of this board is either in or aligned with the Excuse Factory. But it's a mistake to confuse that with the American public, which has different attitudes.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 28, 2010 2:46:36 PM

It is a sad day when the would be Chrismas Day bomber is receiving more civil rights from the Attorney General than Rubashkin. If you examine the facts you will note that the recommendations for Rubashkin are equivalent as if he had committed murder. If you examine the facts, the so called defrauded bankd actually made 21 million dollars on the revolving line of credit for purchasing large number of cattle. The justice department needs to justify the cost for the use of hundreds of federal agents and black hawk helicopters for an ICE bust- expecially given the fact that the illegal worker charges were dropped. This is why many non lawyer citizens find the legal system pathetic.

Posted by: FBM | Apr 28, 2010 3:48:18 PM

sorry for the typos

Posted by: FBM | Apr 28, 2010 3:49:39 PM

Bill writes: "In the more than 20 years since the guidelines became operational, how many times has Congress, under either party, demanded that even one guideline be lowered?

Congress? Maybe not.

But I'll go you one better. In commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, President W said: "I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison."

Posted by: John K | Apr 28, 2010 9:38:10 PM

John K --

To conclude that a particular guidelines sentence is overly harsh in one case is scarcely to conclude that the guidelines as a whole are too harsh. Still less does it provide support for your claim that "... pretty much the rest of the civilized world thinks [the guidelines are] overly harsh."

When I was a federal prosecutor, I often thought a below-guidelines sentence (usually for cooperation) was warranted. I would then support a motion for such a sentence.

The difference between us is that I take the cases one at a time, and you have a one-size-fits-all, ideologically driven notion that sentences are too harsh, period.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Apr 28, 2010 10:44:00 PM

"Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for Rubashkin, said today that several more former DOJ officials including former attorneys general William Barr, Janet Reno and Richard Thornburgh  have signed the letter submitted to Reade. Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and former Solicitor General Seth Waxman are also signatories, said Lewin of Washington's Lewin & Lewin. Gorelick and Waxman are partners in the Washington office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Thornburgh is of counsel in the Washington office of K&L Gates, and Barr serves on the Time Warner board of directors."

Judge should call these clowns before him and inquire why they wrote. If the answer is anything other than I am suffering from a debilitating brain disease, they should be jailed. Most were disgraces at the DOJ and they continue to be, only now more laughable than ever.

Posted by: Steven M Harris | Jun 24, 2010 7:52:35 AM

Post a comment
 Show me the role reversal when sentencing guidelines are more lenient | Main | Ninth Circuit en banc habeas dissent assails state judge plea involvement as "judicial extortion" 

June 21, 2010

Kosher plant chief Sholom Rubashkin sentenced to 27 years imprisonment

Sholom Rubashkin will receive a 27-year federal prison sentence on Tuesday for his leadership in the financial fraud scandal at Agriprocessors Inc., a judge declared today. U.S. District Judge Linda Reade will impose a 324-month prison term for the former eastern Iowa meat plant mogul, followed by 5 years of supervised release, according to a ruling filed this morning. She also will order Rubashkin to pay $18.5 million to First Bank Business Capital, the plants largest lender; $8.3 million to MB Financial Bank, another lender; and $3,800 to Waverly Sales, Inc., which received late payments from the plant for cattle. Rubashkin was convicted of 86 financial fraud charges last November for leading the scheme to defraud the banks. A South Dakota jury concluded at trial that Rubashkin had ordered employees to create bogus financial documents to collect advances on a revolving loan. The plan collapsed shortly after a May 2008 immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville, when the slaughterhouse plummeted into bankruptcy. Reade rejected defense arguments that Rubashkin lacked the authority to stop the criminal conduct at the Postville slaughterhouse founded by his father. She cited 11 examples from his trial, including testimony that he directed employees to create false sales records, and helped illegal immigrant employees secure false work papers. Rubashkins degree of control and authority was close to absolute, Reade wrote in the 52-page ruling. He told his employees when, where and how to commit the various crimes. Reade said Rubashkin lied at his trial when he testified that he never told employees to create fake sales records and customer checks. His testimony conflicted with former employee accounts that were more believable, she said. She also rejected defense arguments for a lesser sentence because of his charitable work, his relationship with his 16-year-old autistic son, Moishe, and other family responsibilities. Defendant devotes a substantial amount of evidence and argument to his contention that his offenses of conviction were not motivated out of a sense of personal greed, but rather, out of a sense of duty to maintain his family business for religious purposes, Reade wrote. No matter Defendants motive, he defrauded the victim banks out of millions of dollars. He unlawfully placed his family businesss interest above the victim banks interest. His family business and he personally benefitted at the expense of all the victim banks innocent shareholders. She later added: Additionally, it is entirely possible that a number of Defendants charitable deeds were funded with proceeds from his crimes. It is far easier to be generous with someone elses money instead of ones own. Prosecutors had asked Reade to impose a 25-year sentence. Rubashkins attorneys requested no more than six years. Defense lawyers said they plan to appeal Rubashkins conviction and sentence. We believe that the sentence is greater than necessary, said Rubashkin lawyer Guy Cook, of Des Moines. Its even greater than the government asked for. Its unfair and excessive. Its essentially a life sentence for a 51-year-old man, and its not in the public interest. Reade said she will read her sentence memorandum in federal court Tuesday in Cedar Rapids. Prosecutors and defense attorneys have scheduled press conferences afterward to speak about the case.

This local newspaper entry , which is headlined "Sholom Rubashkin to receive 27-year prison sentence," reports on the severe sentencing outcome in a high-profile federal white-collar case out of Iowa. Here are the early details:

It appears that Judge Reade rejected virtually all of the defense's guideline-based and non-guideline arguments for a lesser sentence for Sholom Rubashkin. It also seems that she wrote a very lengthy sentencing opinion to explain the exercise of her sentencing judgment. I will post that opinion when I can track down a copy.

Related posts on the Rubashkin case:

UPDATE: I pulled the sentencing opinion in this case that was filled this morning off PACER, and I have provided it for downloading here: Download Rubashkin sentencing opinion

June 21, 2010 at 01:24 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e2013484b0e2da970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Kosher plant chief Sholom Rubashkin sentenced to 27 years imprisonment:

Comments

After a quick skim, it appears the court did agree with at least two of the Defendant's arguments. It held it would not increase the BOL based on number of victims and it held Chapter 3's abuse of trust enhancement did not apply. This is likely why the PSR calculated a GL range of life, while the court's range was 324-405.

I think one quite notable part of the opinion (again, after only a quick over-view of it) is that it subtly threatens the Defendant not to appeal:

"Although an upward departure would be permitted under USSG 5K2.0(a)(3) and  5K2.21, the court declines to depart upward . . . [I]n the event the court is required to re-sentence Defendant, it reserves the right to revisit these upward departure provisions to determine whether their application would be appropriate." (Opinion at 46)

"Were the court to vary, the court would vary upward to take into account additional criminal conduct involving harboring of illegal aliens, which was charged in over seventy counts of the Seventh Superseding Indictment and were later dismissed." (Opinion at 50)

"The court notes that, even if it inadvertently erred in computing the advisory

Guidelines sentence, it would still impose a sentence of 324 months of imprisonment after considering the factors in  3553(a)." (Opinion at 50 n.18)

Posted by: DEJ | Jun 21, 2010 5:28:18 PM

i don't know!

""Although an upward departure would be permitted under USSG 5K2.0(a)(3) and  5K2.21, the court declines to depart upward . . . [I]n the event the court is required to re-sentence Defendant, it reserves the right to revisit these upward departure provisions to determine whether their application would be appropriate." (Opinion at 46)"

Sounds like a textbook example of the CRIMINAL ACTIVIY called BLACKMAIL or extrotion. so here we have another judge who deserves death like any other criminal who takes a life. and 27 years at his age is his life.

hope he at least managed to stash the loot! so the feebees and the banks dont' get one red cent!

Posted by: rodsmith3510 | Jun 22, 2010 2:51:42 AM

Banks I'm familiar with don't operate like unmonitored ATM machines to which lenders are blindly entrusted with carte-blanche access and unlimited lines of credit.

My bankers probably know more about my two small businesses than I do. So I'm always a little amazed to hear about "victim" lenders being taken for tens of millions of dollars by outlaw borrowers whose dealings the banks presumably pour over in routine, bottom-line audits.

"Fake documents"? Maybe. Still, I have to wonder if Rubashkin is some sort of evil genius at misdirection and sleight of hand or the banks simply stink at safeguarding shareholders and depositors money...and therefore might bear at least a little responsibility for their own negligence or gullibility.

I'm also in touch with the sort of angst, depression and desperation that jars the soul as legacy money succumbs to a severe recession...let alone an all-out assault on my workers by platoons of federal goons garbed in Darth Vader costumes.

So it's easy for me, if not for this particular hard-ass judge, to empathize with an otherwise descent person for making bad decisions of the sort Rubashkin apparently made under awful circumstances.

Sure, he deserves to be punished. But a virtual life sentence? Only by a judge and prosecutors who chose to see Rubashkin as an arch criminal as opposed to a distraught human being who crossed the line.

Still, the sound you'd be hearing if this were an audio clip would be me applauding Judge Reade for her spectacular "Tough As Nails" tap-dance routine.

Posted by: John K | Jun 22, 2010 10:47:07 AM

These white collar sentences mystify me. My last foray into federal court was a pretty straight forward meth manufacture/distribution case with an ICE enhancement. The guy picked up another state possession with intent while out on bond. Pages of priors. 15 years. This guy gets 27 years for financial crimes, despite what seem to be some legitimate (at least non-frivilous) grounds for a downward departure. I just don't see who wins here: the taxpayer? the victims? maybe the prison industry?

Posted by: Ala JD | Jun 22, 2010 11:26:08 AM

John K,

Ummm, May 2008 was mostly before the current economic situation. Certainly we were headed toward the cliff and even had our foot on the gas but we hadn't taken the plunge yet. And that makes me think most of the criminal activity was before even that. So it sounds a lot more like simple greed to me than trying criminal means after legitimate ones had failed. From what Doug psted, his trying to blame the situation as an inherited one makes that even less likely.

Try peddling that poor victim-criminal line elsewhere.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jun 22, 2010 11:28:29 AM

Soronel, check the dates for when gasoline prices were nudging and sometimes passing the $4 mark. Unless I'm mistaken, shipping and transportation costs were especially burdensome on businesses like meat-packing plants.

Beyond that, what business can long survive after its workers have been carted off and its doors padlocked?

Posted by: John K | Jun 22, 2010 12:04:21 PM

Also, my point isn't that he's a victim. It's that he's a human being more deserving of empathy (even with significant punishment) than the grandstanding and braying by prosecutors and a guidelines judge.

Posted by: John K | Jun 22, 2010 12:08:51 PM

Perhaps he should have hired legal workers and they wouldn't have been carted off. Pattern and practice rather than isolated incidents. Too bad more employers who make a habit of hiring illegal aliens don't face this sort of penalty.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jun 22, 2010 1:10:40 PM

The overarching "pattern and practice" before the Iowa raid was the federal government's habit of looking the other way. Apparently the plant had been hiring illegals as far back as the 1980s.

But then came Lou Dobbs -- asserting that poor illegals working in horror-show packing plants posed a greater threat to the economy than "American" corporations moving jobs into slave-labor countries like China and India.

Then came an election-year opportunity for the Bush Administration to pander to Dobbs mobs. The rest is history.

Posted by: John K | Jun 22, 2010 2:53:09 PM

JohnK --

Your sympathy for thieves is unfailing.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 22, 2010 3:36:21 PM

Sympathy for flawed human beings isn't a bad thing...unless you happen to be a prosecutor. Then it's a career impediment.

Posted by: John K | Jun 22, 2010 9:27:49 PM

JohnK --

When the human "flaw" is rapacious greed and continuous, mind-numbing dishonesty, as it was here, you're quite right that I have no sympathy.

And if you're waiting for me to apologize for my career as a prosecutor, you'll be waiting a long time.

No society on earth has or could afford the knee-jerk swooning for swindlers you routinely display on this blog. Are you really so thoroughly blind to the avarice and betrayal of principle these people show? Do you even know what avarice is? Apparently not, since, with you, it's always mere unfortunate "circumstances."

Yikes.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 22, 2010 10:08:37 PM

you should read this article:

Amicus Brief Slams Judge For Misconduct, Prejudice

http://chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=21863

Posted by: sara | Jan 21, 2011 1:49:24 AM

A belated plea of Guilty to Liking Bill Os comment  

DJB - JAG - Columbus Ohio

docile_jim+_brady@Safe-email.net



Your sympathy for thieves is unfailing.

Posted by: Bill Otis 22 Jun 2010 at 15:36:21

Posted by: Anon. #3.14159 | Oct 1, 2012 10:34:36 PM

Post a comment
 "DeLay flunked attitude test?: Harsh penalty could be linked to lack of remorse, some experts say" | Main | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals calls permanent halt to trial court capital hearing 

January 12, 2011

An appellate amicus brief in the Rubashkin case on sentencing issues

As regular readers may recall, and as detailed in this prior post, last summer a federal district court in Iowa decided to give Sholom Rubashkin a 27-year federal prison sentence for his leadership in a financial fraud involving his kosher meat-packing plant. Having spent some time looking at various facets of this high-profile case, I was troubled by the severity of this sentence and the district court's decision-making and I decided to help put together an amicus brief on sentencing issues as the case was appealed to the Eighth Circuit.

I am pleased to report that the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) help me put together and file this amicus brief, as is detailed in this press release and this blog post from the fine folks at WLF. The full Rubashkin amicus brief and be downloaded at this link, and the WLF blog posting by Stephen Richer does an especially nice job spotlighting why I wanted to get involved and also what the brief argues:

Consider a man who has ten kids, is an active participant in his town, runs a business that provides a needed service for his religious community, and has never before been accused of a crime. Imagine that this man is convicted of financial fraud that is tenuously linked to large societal monetary loss. The alleged fraud served to keep the community business afloat, not to fund personal extravagances. What type of punishment would this man deserve? A prison sentence? If so, how long? One year? Three years? But what about 27 years?... Thats the penalty recently imposed by a judge in the Northern District of Iowa on Sholom Rubashkin, owner of Agriprocessors, a Kosher meat processing plant in Potsville, Iowa.... Washington Legal Foundation, representing 18 noted law school deans and professors, former federal judges, and former prosecutors, added its voice to the opposition on Monday, January 10th by filing a brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to vacate the sentence and remand it to another federal trial judge for resentencing.... WLFs brief makes three arguments: First, that the district courts calculation of the guideline range was contrary to the Sentencing Guidelines instruction and related jurisprudence; second, that the district court largely ignored the Supreme Courts repeated admonition that a district court must not presume reasonable a sentence within the calculated Guidelines range; and third, that the functional life sentence given to Mr. Rubashkin (who is currently 51 years old) is incompatible with his personally history and is substantively much greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of sentencing set forth by Congress.

Related posts on the Rubashkin case:

January 12, 2011 at 11:23 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e20147e181fb04970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference An appellate amicus brief in the Rubashkin case on sentencing issues :

Comments

How about execution instead of prison being the appropriate sentence?

I see his children and the rest as being fluff rather than a reason for leniency. And perhaps if fraud was required to keep it going then the service wasn't quite so necessary. Hopefully the 8th shrugs off this argument like the fetid garbage that it is.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jan 12, 2011 11:49:36 AM

Professor,

In the interest of full disclosure, I think you should report whether you have been paid for this representation.

Mark

Posted by: Mark Pickrell | Jan 12, 2011 1:15:16 PM

At the district court level, Mark, I was compensated for providing some consulting advice in this matter, but I worked on the drafting and filing of this appeals brief pro bono. And in our motion seeking to file this amicus brief, these facts are disclosed. Gosh knows, I sure wish I could always get compensated for complaining about sentencing decisions I dislike.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 12, 2011 2:26:25 PM

Thanks, Professor. Always helpful.

And thanks, as usual, for all the work on this site.

Mark

Posted by: Mark Pickrell | Jan 12, 2011 4:25:35 PM

I would like to hear what happened to the findings of the discovery of the judge and prosecutor, their ex parte conferencing, and miscellaneous agreements about the management of this case, their prior personal relationships. I am hoping an appellate court forces them to pay all legal costs of the first trial and orders a retrial. This was a good example of the point that one should always counterattack the lawyer oppressor, the federal thug and the totally biased lawyers sitting on the bench. They are little more than organized criminal cult enterprise gang, not protecting the public, attacking productive entities, and generating government do nothing sinecures, little more productive than no show union mob jobs. Such counter discovery is a standard of due care which the defense bar refuses to acknowledge. Why? They owe their job not to the client, but to the prosecutor. GEt fired by a client, replace this commodity in minutes, at a certain level of skill. Deter the federal thug, and entire firms have to have mass layoffs.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 12, 2011 11:27:04 PM

Nice, amusing article. Much of the readers don't think that every sites must have comments part. Contrarily I consider that reader comments specify a blog. Briefly



Posted by: pandora bracelet | Jun 21, 2011 4:11:06 AM

Post a comment
 "Chinese Court Orders Death Penalty for Food Safety Crimes" | Main | James Q. Wilson's interesting take on what is behind falling crime rates: culture 

May 31, 2011

Rubashkin appeal raising more questions about high-profile federal fraud case

Regul;ar readers likely recall some aspects of the high-profile federal case, detailed in this prior post, in which last summer a federal district court in Iowa decided to give Sholom Rubashkin a 27-year federal prison sentence for his leadership in a financial fraud involving his kosher meat-packing plant. As explained in this post, I helped put together an amicus brief on sentencing issues as the case comes before the Eighth Circuit, and thus I am not a truly non-partisan observer of these proceedings. Nevertheless, anyone interested in this case or more generally in the administration of the federal criminal justice system will want to check out this new article from the Des Moines Register headlined "New questions surface about impartiality of federal judge." Here are excerpts:

The court schedule of a federal judge who faces allegations of bias in the financial fraud trial of Sholom Rubashkin has raised fresh questions about judicial impartiality. Defense attorneys argue that Rubashkin, who is serving a 27-year sentence, deserves a new trial because U.S. District Chief Judge Linda Reade failed to disclose all of the meetings she held with prosecutors before a 2008 immigration raid on Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant in northeast Iowa where Rubashkin served as an executive. Oral arguments are scheduled for the afternoon of June 15 at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. That morning, Reade -- a judge in the Northern District of Iowa temporarily filling in on the appeals court -- will hear cases with two of the three judges who will later listen to arguments in Rubashkin's appeal. Reade is also scheduled to sit with the same judges a day earlier. The scheduling is unfortunate because the subject of the appeal is judicial impartiality, said Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University. However, he said he doesn't expect it to disqualify any of the judges from hearing the case. "I would call it awkward, but I don't think there's anything more to say about it," he said.... Many also questioned the 27-year sentence she handed down, two years more than the prosecution requested. Before sentencing, six former U.S. attorneys general signed a letter expressing their concern about the sentence sought by prosecutors. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, the Washington Legal Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed legal briefs in support of Rubashkin's appeal. Forty-five members of Congress have written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to ask questions about the handling of the case. Last month, three members of the House of Representatives asked Holder about the case when he testified before the judiciary committee. Reade had previously acknowledged that she worked with the prosecution on logistics before the raid to ensure attorneys and interpreters would be available for the 389 workers arrested on immigration charges, but offered no further details. The defense argued Reade failed to disclose that she began meeting with law enforcement officials more than six months before the raid, and that she discussed topics far beyond "logistical cooperation."... Lubet, the law professor, said he can't imagine why Reade decided to sit on the trial. By doing so, she became a judge who made a point of assisting the prosecution in at least the initial stages of the case, he said. "Why not have a judge who had nothing to do with the prosecution, instead of one who had devoted significant time and energy into facilitating it?" he said.

Related prior posts on the Rubashkin case:

May 31, 2011 at 09:40 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e201538ed818d0970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Rubashkin appeal raising more questions about high-profile federal fraud case:

Comments

Judge Reade is definitely Pro Government.. I've seen her in action 2 times. Both times she asked the USA if the he approved the sentence....Its a wonder she is rubbing elbows with the 8th circuit judges amidst her own on going web...She is perfect for the 8th circuit court of Appeals...Remember Gall, the sentences that were enhanced as a result of the appeal process, hundreds of cases that were appealed and increased dramatically.

I believe she was one of the early propents of getting OWI'S as a crime of violence, thru the 8th circuit....Luckily Begay came along...Judge McConnell saved defendents and tax payers a ton of money and yrs lost in jail..I credit him with the change as he had the smarts and fortitude to call it the way he saw it...."No matter how many owi's are committed, they are not a crime of violence"...Even though Scotus made the ruling..

The 2nd encounter with Judge Reade was a resentencing, Career Offender and OWI, remand....Her closing words as she gave the sentence were, as a result of the 2 OWI's, which are, violent crimes....

That was the reason for the Remand, they no longer were....Oh well, Federal Judges and USA get away with most anything these days....Especially in the 8th circuit...

The guidelines are pretty much mandatory in her courtroom... I cannot believe that Pepper went thru her 3 times...Having a case like that would wash a lot of mud off her down the road.

Any others have the pleasure of a brow beating with Judge Reade..

Posted by: Abe | May 31, 2011 1:54:22 PM

Post a comment
 Florida cases support(?) DOJ's expressed concerns about white-collar sentencing disparities | Main | Remarkable new trial order in remarkable federal prosecution over house cleaner 

April 30, 2012

"High court should hear Rubashkin to consider overzealous DOJ and judge who was essentially on prosecution team"

The title of this post is drawn from the subheading of this new commentary in the National Law Journal by Alan Dershowitz and Ronald Rotunda, which carries a main headline of "Prosecutorial and judicial misconduct." Regular readers are likely familiar with the Rubashkin case because I have blogged a lot about its sentencing elements. (As reported here, with the help of the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF), last year I filed an amicus brief on sentencing issues when this case was before the Eighth Circuit; as I will discuss in some future posts, I have lately been working up an amicus brief urge SCOTUS to take up the case to resolve splits over reasonableness review in the circuits.)

Here are excerpts from the Dershowitz and Rotunda commentary:

Lawyers for Sholom Rubashkin  Paul Clement and Nathan Lewin  filed last month a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. Rubashkin is seeking relief from the Supreme Court because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit refused to consider evidence that Rubashkin first discovered after the trial that made the trial fundamentally unfair. Indeed, during the past few years, a series of federal judges have criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Emmet Sullivan of D.C. district court, who ordered a criminal investigation into the actions of prosecutors in the trial of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, suggested that the case reflected deeper problems at the Justice Department. Chief Judge Mark Wolf of the District of Massachusetts found that he regularly presided over cases where federal prosecutors withheld important evidence, about every other year for the past two decades. It's happened again, but this time the judge herself is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. When Agriprocessors, an Iowa kosher processing plant, learned that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) was concerned about its hiring practices and planned a raid, it hired a law firm to contact ICE and offered to cooperate with the authorities in terminating undocumented workers. ICE did not reply. Instead, on May 12, 2008, it launched a highly publicized raid, with about 600 agents in riot gear, accompanied by a Blackhawk helicopter. Agents arrested 389 workers. Five months later, the government arrested the plant's manager, Sholom Rubashkin, on charges of harboring illegal immigrants, but ICE's case had problems. For example, it turned out that an undercover ICE agent had twice tried to secure employment at this plant, but he was turned away because he did not have the proper papers. It would not do to have such a dramatic raid and nothing to show for it. The Justice Department filed seven superseding indictments charging bank fraud. The indictments included a creative theory  that Rubashkin falsely certified to the bank that Agriprocessors was complying with all the laws even though it was employing undocumented aliens. The federal jury did convict on the bank fraud charges, and the federal government dropped all immigration charges.... Federal prosecutors recommended life imprisonment. After widespread criticism of such a harsh sentence by many people (including six former U.S. attorneys general), the government asked for a 25-year sentence. Judge Linda Reade, the trial judge, imposed 27 years instead. But Reade did more than impose a disproportionate sentence. After Rubashkin's conviction and sentence, defense lawyers learned that Reade, over a six-month period, had been actively engaged in planning the Agriprocessors raid. E-mails and affidavits showed that, long before the raid occurred, Reade met with ICE agents to discuss "charging strategies, numbers of anticipated arrests and prosecutions, logistics, the movement of detainees, and other issues related" to the investigation and operation. At one meeting, which law-enforcement personnel attended at the judge's request, the judge stated that she was "willing to support the operation in any way possible, to include staffing and scheduling." She was essentially part of the prosecution team.... The judge and the prosecutors should have notified Rubashkin's lawyers that she had participated in planning the raid so that they could move to recuse her. Failure to do so was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.

Related posts on the Rubashkin case:

April 30, 2012 at 06:17 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e2016765f1095d970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference "High court should hear Rubashkin to consider overzealous DOJ and judge who was essentially on prosecution team":

Comments

"The judge and the prosecutors should have notified Rubashkin's lawyers that she had participated in planning the raid so that they could move to recuse her. Failure to do so was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct."

Look, I'm not known around here as being a sycophant for prosecutors but there is a significant difference between the judge planning the prosecution and the judge preparing the judicial system for what is going to be a big influx of cases. The article is not at all clear as to what the judge was actually doing. If it was the former, then certainly it was misconduct. But if it was the latter then I'm skeptical; that's comity. If I'm a judge the last thing I want is the executive dumping 400 cases on my docket in a big surprise and then going, "have fun!"

Posted by: Daniel | Apr 30, 2012 6:31:51 PM

Should the judge be anymore involved than just signing a search warrant?

Posted by: ? | Apr 30, 2012 7:41:15 PM

I believe that Judge Linda R Reade went down to St Louis 2 days before the appeal was argued, to fill in for another Judge that was gone....Isn't that convenient, to patch up loose ends and be convinceing.

When you go before Judge Reade, you are facing a tag team... The AUSA gives a brief argument and she affirms it, the defense attorney is given little attention and is denied...Pretty much what the defense argues doesn't qualify,, She affirms enhancements immediately, but departure/variances are brushed aside with an uncaring attitude.. She is the AUSA best friend in the world, while in court...It takes a higher court to overrule her to get a reduction.....There are no convincing arguments made...She is exactly like a prosecutor, not a judge..Maybe her past cases should be reviewed for those that have argued and been so denied by a rubber stamped Robot...Anyone out there had similar experiences with Judge Reade..Many defense attys do much better in a different district, with similar cases...

Posted by: Abe | May 1, 2012 10:20:12 AM

Daniel makes a good point. It's commonplace, when there will be a big raid, for prosecutors to have advance contact with the court. The court needs to be ready toarrange large numbers of defense lawyers and marshals in advance. The court needs to have staffing ready to handle the large numbers of complaints and cja vouchers. The court needs adequate courtroom space set aside. The court may need to rearrange it's ordinary schedule (to start processing cases at 7am, for instance, instead of 3pm, so they can finish in a day, so that defendants get counsel appointed quickly and do not have their initial appearances delayed.)

Should the court be expressing preferences among charges? No. Is it ok for the government to tell the court, for instance, "for the workers, we'll be charging only the aggravated felons, to keep the number of cases down"? I don't see why not.

The real problem is that this occurred on a small enough court that, evidently, the chief judge handles the administrative preparations herself and also takes lots of criminal cases -- something unlikely to happen on a larger court like SDNY or ND Ill or CD Cal or SD Fla. But that also exacerbates problems like needing to Perlman to get enough defense lawyers. (How many cja panel attorneys do you think could have been at the court on just an hour's notice?)

But the view that the government should just bring dozens or hundreds of defendants to court on a day of it's choosing, without discussing the matter with the court is foolish. Dershowitz is simply hyperventilating.

Posted by: Dershowitz is hyperventilating again | May 1, 2012 10:25:47 AM

you could say she's a lucky women. if that was me and i had any money in the world the fed's hadn't found. it would now be on her head as any number of mercenaires from around the world came to collect! for her two-faced treasonous activity.

you lawyers can try all the bill shit you want. if she was this invovled in the events leading up to the raid there is NO WAY IN HELL she should have had any part of ANY of the cases to follow!

Posted by: rodsmith | May 1, 2012 3:14:24 PM



I'm not advocating unlawful conduct ...

But some , in the past , have used a trial judge's (or famiy memeber's)  as a sanction for a perceived injustice 

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul in Oregon | Dec 21, 2017 10:14:19 AM

Post a comment
 Lamenting that the "law descends into a ghoulish inferno" as it contemplates the execution of a condemned Alabama murderer | Main | "Even Imperfect Algorithms Can Improve the Criminal Justice System" 

December 20, 2017

"President Trump Commutes Sentence of Sholom Rubashkin"!?!?!

The title of this post is the headline of this press release from the White House this evening. Here are the details:

Today, President Donald J. Trump commuted the prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, an action encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum, from Nancy Pelosi to Orrin Hatch. Mr. Rubashkin is a 57-year-old father of 10 children. He previously ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the countrys largest kosher meat-processing company. In 2009, he was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced thereafter to 27 years in prison. Mr. Rubashkin has now served more than 8 years of that sentence, which many have called excessive in light of its disparity with sentences imposed for similar crimes. This action is not a Presidential pardon. It does not vacate Mr. Rubashkins conviction, and it leaves in place a term of supervised release and a substantial restitution obligation, which were also part of Mr. Rubashkins sentence. The Presidents review of Mr. Rubashkins case and commutation decision were based on expressions of support from Members of Congress and a broad cross-section of the legal community. A bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking and distinguished Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars have expressed concerns about the evidentiary proceedings in Mr. Rubashkins case and the severity of his sentence. Additionally, more than 30 current Members of Congress have written letters expressing support for review of Mr. Rubashkins case.

Because I have some personal history working on this case, I am not inclined to comment at great length beyond wanting to here praise President Trump for bringing some (non-political?) attention to his historic clemency powers through this grant. I also will link to some prior posts about this long-controversial case.

Some of many prior posts on the Rubashkin case:

December 20, 2017 at 07:35 PM | Permalink

Comments

Hooray! Judge Linda Reade wont be lifting her flask for this one.

Posted by: FluffyRoss | Dec 20, 2017 8:14:34 PM

Judges who emulate

prosecutors involving criminal trials belong in a different profession

OR

in a  ; their choice 

Nemo  Me  Impune  Lacessit 

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul in Oregon | Dec 21, 2017 10:01:17 AM

You claim that this is not a political act?

Posted by: whatever | Dec 21, 2017 10:41:02 AM

Poor defendants of color who are involved in far less egregious frauds and are convicted at trial are sentenced to more excessive sentences than this person has served. Completely appropriate however that the commutation is given on the same day the GOP completed the "most massive" heist in US history.

Posted by: whatever | Dec 21, 2017 10:45:23 AM

Selective use of his clemency powers for favored defendants [why is this solitary guy guilty of bank fraud with 10 children -- notable for some reason -- chosen?] doesn't really help encourage a process where the power is used consistently in a broader fashion. So I don't see how much "praise" is really warranted here.

Posted by: Joe | Dec 21, 2017 11:10:45 AM

Unlike Obama against whom the Professor offered unrelenting criticism he now praises Trump who is clearly using his power to benefit the rich and powerful.

Posted by: whatever | Dec 21, 2017 11:21:11 AM

whatever: I see every act by every Prez to be political in some way, but some uses of the clemency power are obviously more political than others. This one strikes me as less political than the Arpaio pardon, but I would not contend that any Prez action in this arena was "not a political act." My comment above was a contention/hope that this Rubashkin clemency would bring some attention to his historic clemency powers that were not merely based in (critical) political terms. But it would seem, whatever, that you still see/criticize this decision largely in political terms (as is your right, of course).

Meanwhile, I criticized Prez Obama because he talked a big game about criminal justice reform on the campaign train in 2007, but then failed to use his clemency power in any way for his first two years in office, and only granted one commutation during his entire first term. If Prez Trump grants simply one more commutation over the next three years, he will have a better first term record than Prez Obama. As one who has long advocated for all modern Prez to use their clemency powers more, I praise those who do and criticize those who do not. Prez Trump has a lot more work to do on this front, but he has now done more on this front in his first year than did any of the last three presidents over their first two years in office.

Posted by: Doug B. | Dec 21, 2017 2:16:45 PM

"simply one more commutation over the next three years, he will have a better first term record than Prez Obama"

President Obama did various things, be them not enough for a strong supporter of reform in this area, to advance the issue of criminal justice reform. One aspect, but one, would be those parts of PPACA that have assisted those in the criminal justice system. This was touched upon on this blog as I recall in a few entries. But, if Trump grants "simply one more commutation," perhaps like this one rather clearly a special interest grant,* he would have a "better first term record" than Obama. As one who supports reform, this sort reaching to find anything possible good in one hand but being a stricter grader on the other, does not come off as very fair. Whatever's response might be a tad blunt, but you know, it isn't simply from left field.

----

* I think it is actually BETTER in a major way to not have a stand alone politically motivated usage of one's commutation/pardon power as compared to Obama's more slow and steady consistent usage.

Posted by: Joe | Dec 21, 2017 3:42:47 PM

@Doug

I see the commutation in political terms too. Sure, it isn't political in the blue state red state sense but that is not the only kind of politics that exist. How can anyone ignore the fact that he was/is wealthy and Jewish? I don't think he owes Trump anything: if I have any measure of the WH it is the son-in-law to whom Rubashkin owes the thanks. In other words, even if one thinks that Rubashkin's sentence was unfair (a dubious proposition but let's grant it for the sake of argument) why among all the injustices that exist in the world today is it THIS injustice that attracts Trump's attention? He had powerful friends, that is all. Rubashkin belonged to the right "in-group". There is no crime in that..it is not a crime to be Jewish or financially successful...but Rubashkin is yet more evidence that justice in this country is bought and sold to the highest bidder.

Posted by: Daniel | Dec 21, 2017 3:45:35 PM

Joe, I am a much stricter grader of Prez Obama because he campaigned on bringing "a new dawn of justice in America," and yet he largely ignored that pledge in the clemency arena until the second half of his second term. At the end, he did a whole lot (though still not nearly enough), but I think he was rightly criticized by many for not doing more earlier ESPECIALLY BECAUSE HE CAMPAIGNED PROMISING TO DO A LOT MORE.

Meanwhile, Prez Trump campaigned on being tougher on crime, and yet he granted a significant commutation sooner than any Prez in a long time. Like you, I would like to see this kick off a slow and steady consistent use of clemency powers. But every journey starts with a single step, and Prez Trump made that step sooner than others.

Meanwhile, Daniel, I am certain Jared Kushner helped bring this case to Trump's attention, but hundreds of prominent folks on both sides of the aisle brought this case to Prez Obama's attention. Do you think Prez Obama was inclined to reject the prospect of clemency because Rubashkin did NOT belong to the right "in-group" from Obama's perspective?

I think the best response to the concern that this one person got a break while other similar folks did not is to urge decision-makers to give other folks more consideration. It will always be "political" what types of offenders a Prez wants to focus on, but it ought to be constructive how the criminal justice community responds when relief is given in whatever form. In this particular setting, I always think "here are more who merit consideration" is a more constructive response than "you should not have given that person special consideration."

Posted by: Doug B. | Dec 21, 2017 5:43:58 PM

@Doug

@Doug writes, "In this particular setting, I always think "here are more who merit consideration" is a more constructive response than "you should not have given that person special consideration."

Well....that might be a more constructive response if one thought that building on this action was possible. Given, however, that I am deeply skeptical and even cynical about Republican efforts on justice (any kind of justice, not just criminal justice) count me among those who think that "here are more" is a waste of breath. Let me put it this way: actions speak louder than words and when Trump actually does something to address the chronic injustices in America I will allow myself hope. Until then, nope.





Posted by: Daniel | Dec 21, 2017 6:37:18 PM

Fluffy Ross has it right, beat me to the punch. So I will smile and be content in knowing that a bunch if people have been hammered to the cross by this former judge.

Especially drug cases, guideline sentences and every engancement applied, rarely any reductions. When a judge goes too far, big writeup for those that havent read her part in this case. Fluffy great job and so few words gettingbthe job done. I tip my flask to you.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Dec 22, 2017 12:17:48 AM

This has the appearance of a special interest commutation, just like the Arpaio, so there is nothing particularly "significant" about it coming from Trump. We had every right to expect such things from him. The fact they don't match his general rhetoric isn't exactly praiseworthy overall. Actually, his rhetoric at times was that he would break the normal rules to get things done, so you know, fair warning.

Obama used some enthusiastic language like politicians tend to do and once they are in office they repeatedly find out things are harder, especially when the other party more than usual don't want to play. Obama did get some stuff done. One more commutation won't make Trump more impressive here unless you use two standards.

Posted by: Joe | Dec 22, 2017 11:09:03 AM

Joe, it is 100% true when it comes to legislation, presidents "repeatedly find out things are harder, especially when the other party more than usual don't want to play." But clemency is different, which is why Obama could get so much done on his own on this front in 2015-2016, and why I criticized so much for doing so little on his own on this front from 2009 to 2014. And, "special interest" or not, Prez Trump softened the severity of federal sentencing for one imprisoned soul in his first year, while Prez Obama did not do that for any imprisoned soul his first two years. After 8 years in the Oval Office, I would bet Obama's commutation record will be better (because he closed on an historic pace). But, stunningly, if Trump is not re-elected, he would not have to grant any more commutations in order to tie Obama's first Term record.

That all said, I would be greatly surprised if Trump's CJ reform record ends up in the ballpark of Obama's, but Trump did not campaign promising CJ reform like Obama did. My standard is based on part on what a politician had promised to deliver and what seems feasible. Obama promise to bring in "a new dawn of justice," and really did not deliver in the CJ arena despite some good (and some not-so-good) efforts.

Posted by: Doug B | Dec 22, 2017 2:07:06 PM

Daniel: I certainly see a reasonable basis for being "deeply skeptical and even cynical about Republican efforts on justice," so I can respect the suggestion that one not "waste time" urging Prez Trump to do more clemency or more in the CJ reform arena. But I actually think Trump may be subject to doing something through effective cajoling in part because he seemingly has few core commitments in this context AND he may have unique contempt for certain kinds of prosecutorial/judicial decisions. Clearly Rubashkin supporters figured out a way to effectively cajole here, so maybe others can be effective in other settings.

Posted by: Doug B | Dec 22, 2017 2:21:07 PM

Let's hope the defendant makes his restitution payments.

Is Pollard in Israel yet?

Posted by: federalist | Dec 22, 2017 7:12:07 PM

Joe, either Trump's action was justified or it was not. You don't opine on that.

here's a blast from the past:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/world/middleeast/beirut-bank-seen-as-a-hub-of-hezbollahs-financing.html?ref=middleeast

Posted by: federalist | Dec 23, 2017 11:56:01 AM

"Joe, either Trump's action was justified or it was not. You don't opine on that."

I actually did "opine on that" (critique of the selective nature and like) but commenting on something Doug or whomever said is allowed too.

---

Doug, you can keep on going on, but one more commutation by Trump isn't going to impress me much vis-a-vis Obama, including taking into his complete record. You can critique Obama vs his rhetoric etc. all you wish [though him having high flowery rhetoric while running is imho not exactly too noteworthy -- that is what people do, partially out of naivete of what they can do with the system in place].

Posted by: Joe | Dec 24, 2017 3:03:46 PM

Post a comment
SIOUX CITY | Tod Deck was in the middle of trial, questioning a witness when his phone rang late Wednesday.

He had informed the judge he was expecting a call from the governor, and when his phone rang, he was granted a short recess to step out in the hall.

When Deck answered the phone, Gov. Kim Reynolds was on the other end, delivering good news: she'd chosen him to be a district court judge.

Deck had no time to celebrate.

"Two minutes later I was back in trial questioning the witness," Deck said Thursday morning.

The trial lasted for another hour, delaying the chance for Deck to appreciate the moment. His case was in Council Bluffs, so he had plenty of time to notify his wife, family and some friends before arriving home in Sioux City.

"I had the drive back by myself to let it sink in," he said.

It was likely the last trial Deck will try as an attorney. He'll be seated on the bench sometime next month, filling an opening created by the retirement of District Judge Edward Jacobson in October.

Deck and Sioux City lawyer Priscilla Forsyth had been nominated as the finalists. Deck said Forsyth is an excellent attorney, so he was "happy and surprised" to be chosen.

A Sioux City native, Deck is a partner in the Deck Law firm and is also a Woodbury County magistrate. He practices criminal defense law, divorce and family law, probate and other areas as well. He said he believed his experience in a number of areas of the law helped his candidacy.

Until he's sworn in, Deck will have 30 days to wrap up his practice, notifying clients that he'll no longer be representing them. He'll also wait to find out the verdict of his last trial, which was a bench trial that will be decided by the judge.

Deck will serve in Judicial District 3B, which includes Woodbury, Crawford, Ida, Monona, Plymouth and Sioux counties.
The man, now 78, had sexual contact with girls, both younger than 12, on or about New Year's Eve in 2009 and 2010, court documents say. They add that he told police he had sexual contact with one of the victims when she was approximately 6 years old.
Todays top picks from our online calendar. Find more events at siouxcityjournal.com/calendar.

Winter Solstice Snowshoe or Hike

Take a walk or snowshoe in the woods on the shortest day of the year 3 p.m. at Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center, 4500 Sioux River Road. Dress for the weather and in layers. Wear comfortable hiking or snow boots with good ankle support. Call 712-258-0838 for more information.

Service of the Longest Night: A Time of Prayer and Music for People Who Grieve at Christmas

Many battle the blues during the holidays. Join other midwinter mourners in a service of music and prayer exploring hope hidden in the dark side of the Christmas story 7 p.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2915 Glenn Ave. As we offer prayers with candles and written notes placed in our own wailing wall, pastors will anoint and pray for any who seek blessing.

History at High Noon: World War I: 1914-1918

Join us at the Sioux City Public Museum, 607 Fourth St. from 12:05 to 12:45 p.m. for a photographic presentation of World War I's causes, its major battles and its troubled conclusion. Visit www.siouxcitymuseum.org or call 712-279-6174 for more information.
DES MOINES | Kevin Reynolds, husband of Gov. Kim Reynolds, was encased in Iowa history on Wednesday.

Reynolds -- known as Iowa's first spouse, first gentleman or as the Governor sometimes calls him "the first dude" -- was on hand for an unveiling ceremony of his doll likeness that joined 44 other figurines in the First Doll display case in the first-floor south rotunda at the Iowa Capitol Building.

Reynolds has occupied a unique place in Iowa history since his wife was inaugurated as Iowa's first woman governor last May when she succeeded outgoing Gov. Terry Branstad, who resigned the post to become President Trump's choice as U.S. ambassador to China.

"It's an honor to be the first gentleman to join this unique collection," Reynolds told a small crowd that gathered to witness the unveiling a doll with porcelain face, hands and feet and a cloth likeness of the tuxedo he wore at his wife's inauguration. The other 44 dolls depict likenesses of the state's previous first ladies dating back to the state's territorial beginning in 1838.

"It's actually a tux that I own. There's nothing special about it that I'm aware of," Reynolds said during a brief question-and-answer session following his doll's unveiling. "Initially, I just said get a G.I. Joe doll and that would be fine."

Diane Becker, administrator at Terrace Hill, said the foundation contracted with a master dollmaker in Colorado to produce the Kevin Reynolds' doll, noting it was very difficult to find dollmakers that produce adult dolls and male dolls.

"We tried to make it look like Kevin," Becker said. It's pretty good, I think.'

The display case was unveiled on Dec. 28, 1976, and is one of the Capitol's most-popular attractions, said Joni Arnett, a tour guide supervisor. Reynolds will be the fifth doll added since the display's inception - including two separate likenesses of former first lady Chris Branstad in gowns from her husband's 1983 inauguration and his return to the office in 2011.

"This is a very special day for me," said Arnett, who called the display "a very concrete reminder of who we are as Iowans" and "a reminder that no matter what your gender is, you can aspire to the highest levels of public service."

"There are millions of visitors that have come through this building at the time that we've had this display and they all stop and look and they all really enjoy the doll case," Arnett noted.

"Hundreds of thousands of Iowa schoolchildren that have come here and they stand in front of the case and as the tour guides explain what they're looking at, talk about the histories of the governors, there are two questions that always come up: one of those questions is why isn't there a man in the case and the other question is if there is a woman governor what doll will be put in the place," she said. "So I have to say that I'm really pleased today that we finally have the answers to those questions."
In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings.

Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Monday found polls showing Trump at his highest in months. Stocks soared 200 points at the opening bell in anticipation of pre-Christmas passage of the Republican tax bill. The Dow has added a record 5,000 points in Trump's first year.

And the Russiagate investigation may have busted an axle. Though yet unproven, charges are being made that Robert Mueller's sleuths gained access to Trump transition emails illicitly.

This could imperil prosecutions by Mueller's team, already under a cloud for proven malice toward the president.

Recall: Daniel Ellsberg, who delivered the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, walked free when it was learned that the White House "Plumbers" had burgled his psychiatrist's office.

With things going Trump's way, one must ask:

What was U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley doing last week at what looked like a prewar briefing at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in D.C.?

Looming behind Haley was part of what was said to be an Iranian missile fired at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.

Though the rocket had Iranian markings, it was not launched from Iran, or by Iranians. Houthi rebels, for two years victims of a savage war waged by the Saudis -- using U.S.-made planes, missiles, bombs and drones -- say they fired it at the Riyadh airport in retaliation for what the Saudis have done to their people and country.

If so, it was a legitimate act of war.

Indeed, so great is the Yemeni civilian suffering from a lack of food and medicine, and from malnutrition and disease, Trump himself has told the Saudis to ease up on their air, sea, and land blockades.

As there is no evidence as to when the Houthis acquired the missile, or where, the question arises: What was Haley's motive in indicting Iran? Was this part of a new propaganda campaign to drum up support for America's next big Mideast war?

There are reasons to think so.

Haley went on: "It's hard to find a conflict or a terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran's fingerprints all over it."

But Iran is Shiite, while al-Qaida, which brought down the twin towers, aided by 15 Saudi nationals, is Sunni. So, too, are ISIS, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in Somalia and Islamic Jihad. Most Mideast terrorist groups are Sunni, not Shiite.

As for these Mideast "conflicts," which did Iran start?

We started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO started the war in Libya. The U.S. helped trigger the horrific Syrian civil war by arming "rebels." Only when President Bashar Assad looked like he was about to fall did Russia and Iran intervene on his side.

As for the "Shiite crescent," from Tehran to Bagdad to Damascus to Beirut, who created it?

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was Sunni dominated. It was the Americans who overthrew him and brought Shiite power to Baghdad.

In Syria, it was U.S.- and Sunni-backed "rebels," allied at times with al-Qaida, who drew Iran and the Shiite militias in to save Assad.

And the Israelis called the Shiite Hezbollah movement into being by invading and occupying South Lebanon in 1982. As Yitzhak Rabin ruefully said, "We let the Shia genie out of the bottle."

Are we now to fight a new Mideast war against a larger enemy than any of the others we have fought, to clean up the bloody mess we made of the region by our previous military interventions?

Before we march, with Haley as head cheerleader, Trump should consider the likely consequences for his country, the Middle East, and his presidency.

A war in the Persian Gulf would send oil prices soaring, and stock markets plummeting, even as it would split us off from our major allies in Europe and Asia. The Airbus-Boeing deal to sell Iran 300 commercial aircraft would be dead.

While the U.S. would prevail in an air, naval and missile war, where would the troops come from to march to Tehran to "democratize" that nation? Do we think a bloodied revanchist Iran would be easier to deal with than the one with which John Kerry negotiated a nuclear deal?

Would Hezbollah go after U.S. soft targets in Beirut? Would Iraqi Shiite militias go after Americans in the Green Zone? Would the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the oil-rich northeast of Saudi Arabia rise up and rebel?

And who would our great fighting Arab ally be?

Jared Kushner's new friend: a 32-year-old Saudi prince who has become famous for putting down $500 million each for a chateau near Versailles, a yacht on the Riviera, and a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
We want to know what you think about the movies. You can Tweet us your reviews @scweekender or share them on Facebook, facebook.com/siouxcityweekender. We'll pick the best comments on Monday before the next Weekender. Here are this week's movies:

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Starring: Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill

Story: Rey, Finn and Poe continue on their journey to unlock the mysteries of the Force and uncover more secrets of the past after finding Luke Skywalker.

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Ferdinand

Starring: John Cena, Kate McKinnon

Story: A bull with a big heart rallies a team of misfits to return home after being mistaken for a dangerous beast.

Rated: PG for rude humor, action and some thematic elements

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

The Shape of Water

Starring: A freaky fish guy

Story: A lonely woman's life is changed forever when she stumbles upon a classified experiment hidden inside the lab she works.

Rated: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Just Getting Started

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones

Story: An ex-F.B.I. agent and an ex-mob lawyer in the Witness Protection Program cross paths and must fend off a hit.

Rated: PG-13 for language, suggestive material and brief violence

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

The Disaster Artist

Starring: James Franco, Dave Franco

Story: An aspiring film actor forms a unique friendship with an odd and mysterious filmmaker who is about to make Hollywood history.

Rated: R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Coco

Starring: A young musician and a bunch of skeletons

Story: Miguel, an aspiring musician, decides to enter the Land of the Dead to uncover why his family put a ban on music.

Rated: PG for thematic elements

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Justice League

Starring: Batman, Wonder Woman

Story: Inspired by Superman's selfless act, Batman enlists the help of four other super-powered allies to defeat an event greater foe.

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Wonder

Starring: Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson

Story: A boy born with a facial deformity tries to fit in to a new school and prove he's just an ordinary kid.

Rated: PG for thematic elements including bullying, and some mild language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Murder on the Orient Express

Starring: Like, a bunch of people

Story: One man attempts to solve a "whodunit" crime aboard a train with 13 stranded passengers.

Rated: PG-13 for violence and thematic elements

Verdict: 'Murder on the Orient Express' is a middle-of-the-railroad mystery that underutilizes a terrific supporting cast. -@sizynski

Daddy's Home 2

Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg

Story: Brad and Dusty have settled their differences from the first film but must now deal with their intrusive fathers during the holidays.

Rated: PG-13 for suggestive material and some language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Thor: Ragnarok

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett

Story: A villain threatens to destroy Asgardian civilization while Thor is busy fighting for survival in a gladiatorial contest.

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive material

Verdict: 'Thor: Ragnorok' strikes in the upper echelon of Marvel films with electrifying action & humor that hits the nail on the head. -@sizynski

A Bad Moms Christmas

Starring: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell

Story: Our foul-mouthed and under-appreciated mothers rebel against the challenges and expectations their families have during Christmas.

Rated: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some drug use

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Jigsaw

Starring: No one you know

Story: Bodies start turning up around the city and their gruesome demises point to the killer known as Jigsaw.

Rated: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and for language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Suburbicon

Starring: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore

Story: A home invasion rattles a peaceful and quiet community, revealing the town's dark underbelly.

Rated: R for violence, language and some sexuality

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

The Snowman

Starring: Michael Fassbender and some snow people

Story: Detective Harry Hole (snicker) investigates the disappearance of a woman whose scarf is found on a spooky snowman.

Rated: R for grisly images, violence, some language, sexuality and brief nudity

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Same Kind of Different as Me

Starring: Renee Zellweger, Greg Kinnear

Story: An art dealer struggling to save his marriage befriends a dangerous homeless man, leading the three on a unique journey.

Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements including some violence and language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

Marshall

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad

Story: Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, battles through one of this career-defining cases.

Rated: PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexuality, violence and some strong language

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender

The Foreigner

Starring: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan

Story: When a humble businessman's daughter is killed in an act of terrorism, his buried past catches up to him as he seeks justice.

Rated: R for violence, language and some sexual material

Verdict: Your movie review could go here. Tweet us @scweekender
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.
Ashley Johnson, Technical Director of Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division, to speak.

LA PLATA, Md.

(December 21, 2017)The College of Southern Maryland (CSM) will recognize candidates for degrees and certificates during its 19th Winter Commencement Jan. 18 at the La Plata Campus. Recognizing CSM's nearly 60-year relationship with the Navy, a keynote address will be provided by Ashley Johnson. Johnson is the technical director of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division (NSWC IHEODTD), where he directs a multi-site workforce of approximately 1,900 employees with annual operations of more than $1 billion.Johnson's message to the graduates will focus on the value of failure in the learning process, he said. "My advice is this: Don't be afraid to fail. Expect failure. Embrace it. But most importantly, learn from it. I believe there is just as much knowledge in failure as there is in success," he said.CSM and the NSWC in Indian Head have strengthened ties this past year, including moving forward with plans to open the Velocity Center in Indian Head, a partnership that offers opportunities for CSM students to learn from and work with world-class scientists at NSWC. The college has been associated with Indian Head since 1960 when an apprentice program was established at the Naval Ordnance Station, Indian Head, and this close association with the U.S. Navy has continued throughout the history of the college."The collaboration between the College of Southern Maryland and my command to establish the Velocity Center in the town of Indian Head, Maryland, was extraordinary," Johnson said. "One of the challenges I face as technical director is the speed of the government's acquisition cycle. Developing a new technology and getting it into the hands of the warfighter is an incredibly long and sometimes arduous process. And, true to its name, the Velocity Center will help speed up that process, while proving other incredible benefits to the command, the college and the community."Imagine a place where government and industry meet to discuss bettering technology for our armed forces, a place where they can go and get funding through grants, a place where students can go and learn first-hand; both the successes and failures of our collaborative enterprises and apply it to their own studies. That is the goal of the Velocity Center: a place for innovation, collaboration, research and knowledge sharing," Johnson said. "None of this would be possible without the commitment and support from the College of Southern Maryland. CSM stepped up to answer the call when it mattered, and I am grateful to this institution and its leadership for what will undoubtedly be a boon to our respective organizations, the tri-county area, and ultimately the men and women of armed forces."Johnson's division at NSWC is charged with leading the U.S. Department of Navy in providing energetics, ordnance and EOD technical capabilities for all DoD interests through research, development, testing, evaluation, engineering, manufacturing and in-service support."I am a chief of strategy officer," Johnson said. "It is my job to oversee our projects and to ensure my workforce is accomplishing its objectives using safe and reliable operating procedures."During his tenure as technical director, Johnson has led the development of several major initiatives: a comprehensive strategic plan to revitalize and reinvigorate the facility and workload; a business case analysis to ensure optimal capabilities are maintained and developed; and the implementation of Center for Industrial Technical Excellence partnerships. Johnson also serves under the Chief Engineer of the Navy as the Deputy Warrant Officer for Explosive Ordnance Engineering.Johnson began his career at the former NSWC Indian Head Division in 1987 and spent the next 12 years managing the command's manufacturing operations for missile, torpedo and projectile warhead production. From 1999-2001, he managed and directed facilities and personnel within the command's Surface Weapons and Ammunition Program. Johnson served as the Navy's official spokesperson for the scale-up and production of nitramine gun propellants during the Gulf War.From 2006-2012, Johnson served as the department head for the Office of Naval Research's Hybrid Complex Warfare Science Division, where he managed and directed the integration of a science and technology (S&T) program consisting of basic and applied research, advanced technology development and other efforts. He also served as the applications director in the Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism S&T Department, where he oversaw both the Future Naval Capability and Exploration and Development programs.Johnson's other assignments included a tour as the S&T advisor at U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific, where he served with the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command to include a deployment with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.In 1987, Johnson earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. In 2008, he graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces as the Commandant's Distinguished Graduate and has a Master of Science in national resource strategy. He has completed the Defense Acquisition University Senior Acquisition Course, Navy Strategic Thinking Course and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI.Johnson received the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 2006, the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award in 2013 and was selected to the Senior Executive Service in 2013.CSM's winter commencement activities Jan. 18 will begin with a Nursing Recognition Ceremony at 1 p.m. in the Physical Education (PE) Center on the La Plata Campus with a reception immediately following on the upper level of the PE Center.The commencement ceremony will begin at 6 p.m. in the PE Center and tickets are required. Ticketholders are encouraged to arrive at least 30 minutes before the ceremony begins.Doors will open for guests at 5 p.m. Doors will close when the procession begins, and guests without tickets or arriving after the doors close may view the ceremony from the Fine Arts (FA) Center, which will carry a live streaming broadcast. A reception immediately following commencement will be in the Center for Business and Industry (BI), Chaney Enterprises Conference Room BI-113.In the event of inclement weather, a decision will be announced and posted at www.csmd.edu if commencement activities will be held on an alternate date. Graduates and guests may also call the inclement weather hotline at 301-369-1999 or 800-650-4023.The safety of CSM students, guests and employees is of utmost importance. CSM will conduct bag checks at commencement, and all individuals may be subject to a bag check before entry. CSM Public Safety officials encourage guests to leave large secondary bags, diaper bags and backpacks in their vehicles or at home as these will be subject to the bag check process at the door.Due to commencement activities, the PE building at the La Plata Campus will be closed for fitness and aquatics activities on Jan. 18.For information on commencement, visit www.csmd.edu/commencement.
Dr. Richard Fleming, vice president and dean of the Prince Frederick Campus at the College of Southern Maryland until the end of Dec. 2017.

LA PLATA, Md.

(December 21, 2017)After nearly nine years at the College of Southern Maryland (CSM), Dr. Richard Fleming, vice president and dean of the Prince Frederick Campus at the College of Southern Maryland, has announced his retirement from CSM effective the end of December. Barbara Ives, who serves as director of CSM's Office of Strategic Partnerships, which includes CSM's Nonprofit Institute, will serve in Fleming's role at the Prince Frederick Campus on an interim basis until June 30, 2018."During his years at CSM, Dr. Fleming oversaw significant growth at the Prince Frederick Campus," said CSM President Dr. Maureen Murphy. "The college is grateful for that service as well as Dr. Fleming's work to cement the college's ties with the Calvert County community."During Fleming's tenure at CSM, the second building was completed on the Prince Frederick Campus, adding 50 percent to the site's facility space. The B Building, completed in 2013, is the first across the college's four campuses to have earned LEED Certified (Silver level) status. It was also the first publicly funded LEED building in Southern Maryland and the second LEED building in Calvert County. In addition, other site improvements were made during Fleming's tenure, including the campus' new electronic entrance sign, all to "create a better, safer environment for everyone," Fleming said.Fleming used the large Multipurpose Room in the new B Building to promote community partnerships with the college, providing meeting space for more than 125 different organizations and close to 4,000 attendees. That space also served as the setting for the Ward Virts Concert Series, a free concert presented six times a year that is centered around a Bosendorfer grand piano donated to the college.In addition, Fleming oversaw the Destination College program at the Prince Frederick Campus, as the campus offered a taste of college to visiting fifth-graders. "We've hosted every elementary school in Calvert County, some multiple times, and provided opportunities for at least 4,000 fifth-graders," Fleming said.Fleming also worked with the CSM Continuing Education and Workforce Development Division as that division made CSM the provider for the Adult Basic Education/General Education Diploma program in Calvert and St. Mary's counties."My eight and a half years at the Prince Frederick Campus have been some of the happiest and most challenging times I can remember in my 40-year career with community colleges," Fleming said. "I work with a fabulous group of people who I consider to be my family and who are committed to our students and the community. It's hard to think of leaving."Fleming and his wife, Jean, plan to remain in Calvert County after Fleming's retirement. "I want to thank everyone who allowed Jean and me to become a part of this county and this community and who helped me provide educational opportunities for our students," he said. "Jean and I will be remaining in the county so I'm certain I'll see many of you at future events."Ives joined CSM in 2015 with more than 27 years of military service, both active duty and in the Naval Reserve, with a parallel career as an educator."I am confident that Barbara will not only provide excellent leadership during this time of transition, but our dedicated Prince Frederick Campus staff and faculty will continue to provide outstanding programs and services to our region," said CSM President Maureen Murphy.Before coming to CSM, Ives served as the dean of academics for St. Mary's Ryken (SMR) High School in Leonardtown, and as a teacher and chair of the math department. While at SMR, she was selected as 2007 Veteran Teacher of the Year for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and earned recognition as a National Honor Roll Outstanding American Teacher.Ives began her teaching career as a certified instructor in the California Community College system while still on active duty in the Navy. She earned a Bachelor of Science in geophysics/oceanography from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Science in leadership in education and an advanced certificate in supervision and administration from Notre Dame of Maryland University.
The Wilton Manors area plays host to many well known LGBT related nonprofits like the Pride Center, SunServe and Latinos Salud. But then theres CenterLink, an unknown but extremely important national LGBT non-profit that provides for emerging LGBT centers across the country.

Their mission: to support the development of strong, sustainable LGBT community centers.

It was in 1971 when the first LGBT centers opened their doors in Los Angeles, California and Albany, New York. Today there are Pride Centers across the U.S. and throughout the world providing services like counseling, social events, STI screening and even housing to the LGBT community.

In order to offer those services and expand their capacity for helping community members, pride centers need proper resources and funding. CenterLink, a nonprofit organization headquartered close to Wilton Manors works everyday to ensure that those centers here in Florida and across the country get the resources necessary to continue their work.

Every center focuses on the need from their community, CenterLink CEO Lora Tucker said. Most are small and they are trying to grow, and we help them to find grants to grow capacity.

Founded in 1994, CenterLink is a member-based coalition that works to ensure that LGBT community centers have the resources necessary to address the needs of their respective communities. Currently the organization serves over 200 LGBT centers in 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, as well as centers in Canada, Australia and China.

When I started at Compass in 1997 CenterLink was an all volunteer organization, said Tony Plakas, the CEO of Compass. They were a group of people who just wanted to help emerging centers, to help new centers get their footing and create a support structure so they didnt have to reinvent the wheel. Once upon a time CenterLink was a really important component of the work we do at Compass today.

According to CenterLink, over 60 percent of LGBT centers provide some direct health services including counseling, peer-led programs and support groups, as well as physical health and other mental health services.

A fundamental goal of our mission is to help build the capacity of centers to meet the social, cultural, health and political advocacy needs of LGBT community members across the country, CenterLinks website reads. CenterLink also acts as a voice for the LGBT community centers in national grassroots organizing, coalition building and social activism in order to strengthen and build a unified center movement.

The same percentage of centers also operate with 5 or fewer paid staff, and over 30 percent of LGBT centers nationwide make do without any paid staff members.

Despite the humble resources many centers operate with, CenterLink believes that LGBT centers offer some of the most important services to the LGBT community, and ensuring they are able to operate to their fullest potential is crucial when it comes to helping LGBT individuals and the pursuit of equal rights.

Whether they provide direct services, educate the public or organize for social change, community centers work more closely with their LGBT constituency and engage more community leaders and decision-makers than any other LGBT network in the country, CenterLinks site reads.

In order to ensure that LGBT centers working within CenterLinks network can maximize their capacity, CenterLink has been hard at work with national organizations to hold down Obama-era policy changes during an unsympathetic administration.

According to Tucker, they are also working on state and local levels to protect and pursue inclusive policies.

When I look at CenterLink and they way things are going with the new administration, things are crazy, Tucker said. On a state level we are working on equality work, to ensure that we elect good people and that people are paying attention to policies affecting the LGBT community.

On a local level, CenterLink has established the Center Action Network (CAN), which is an attempt to highlight projects and efforts by local organizations and LGBT centers, helping them to secure the funding, expertise and opportunities necessary to maximize their impact.

We created the Center Action Network, or CAN, to maximize the capacity of LGBT centers to mobilize. We are working on a grassroots level to empower our allies and support advocacy efforts. We are also helping to secure government funding channels, which are the lifeblood of these LGBT centers.

Tucker is a firm believer that the fight for equal rights is far from over, and working with LGBT centers and programs that seek to promote and secure inclusive policy as well as ensuring more LGBT representation in policy is a must.

After gay marriage I think we were asleep at the helm for a while there, Tucker said. And now weve come to realize that we need to be diligent about these things and continue with these small wins, and secure more representation for our communities in government.

CenterLink is currently working with local centers and organizations on a number of issues, one of which is the staggering number of LGBT youth who are without a home.

Our youth need support as they continue to get thrown out of their homes and get bullied, Tucker said. Many of these youth just need a place to sleep. Some centers, like the pride center in L.A., have a youth shelter, but theres not enough room. And other LGBT centers are working to build shelters, but they need resources.

CenterLink is also working to help programs that benefit the aging LGBT community  pointing out the work done by the Pride Center in Wilton Manors and other programs that are working on affordable LGBT senior housing  as well as working with programs for the trans community.

CenterLink is always looking for volunteers at their Wilton Manors location for those interested in getting involved with LGBT outreach and community work.

Our role is to highlight centers, and to ensure that they are thriving and that new centers that are created have proper need assessments, Tucker said. Very few people know that we are headquartered in Wilton Manors. We are holistically a very important part of the LGBT movement.

The CenterLink office is located at 1001 W Cypress Creek Rd in Fort Lauderdale. Visit www.lgbtcenters.org for more information.
The year 2017 was the year the 1960s tried to make a comeback.

There was the resurgence in white nationalist activity, widespread sexual harassment, and renewed concern about the use of nuclear weapons. The new president, Donald Trump, fanned perilous fires. He also tried to make friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin while an unfolding investigation was showing the Trump campaign had met with Russian officials as Russian operatives hacked into and leaked damaging information from the campaign of Trumps 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

There was fierce resistance to the white nationalist uprising. Crowds of counter-protesters met them on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, and other towns around the country. And large numbers of women (and some men) came forward to point a finger at men in powerful places who had sexually assaulted or harassed them. Pro-LGBT legal groups doubled down to fight efforts by right-wing groups to find loopholes in the law that could open the floodgates to discrimination against LGBT people. And the pro-LGBT groups sought new ways to use existing laws to provide protection from such discrimination.

By years end, the cultural war, which in the United States has frequently included a prominent conflict over equal rights for LGBT people, had re-intensified and seemed to reach a standoff. Many political observers looked to a U.S. Senate race in Alabama one to fill the seat vacated when Senator Jeff Sessions became U.S. Attorney Generalto break the tie. The two Senate candidates were a virulently anti-LGBT Republican and a quietly progressive Democrat. Right-wing evangelicals, staunch Republican partisans, and President Trump backed the Republican; progressives, women, African Americans, and LGBT organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, backed the Democrat.

The Democrat won, and that vote in Alabama seemed to many people to signal a change in voters throughout the country. It gave hope to many LGBT leaders that control of Congress might also change in 2018.

Here is a closer look at ten stories that made 2017 such a tumultuous year for LGBT people:

The U.S. Supreme Court wobbled.

After Congress refused to consider then President Obamas nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the LGBT community braced itself for a Scalia-like replacement from newly inaugurated President Trump and the Republican-dominated Senate. And Trumps nominee, Neil Gorsuch, filled that bill. But what LGBT legal activists did not anticipate was that one of the champions of equal rights for LGBT people on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would begin to falter. First, he voted with a majority in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer to say that church schools should receive state grants the same as non-church schools. Lambda Legal said the ruling amounted to state support for discrimination based on sexual orientation. Then, six months later, during oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, Kennedy appeared to favor the idea that a business could simply claim a vague religious belief hostile to LGBT people to gain a right to refuse service to them. The decision in that case and future prospects for Kennedys record on LGBT record will be revealed sometime next year.

Jeff Sessions became U.S. Attorney General.

As Alabamas U.S. Senator, Jeff Sessions established a reputation of hostility toward LGBT people. So when President Trump named him to head the Department of Justice, the LGBT community braced for trouble. In short order, Sessions withdrew the Obama administrations efforts to defeat an anti-LGBT law in North Carolina, opposed in court the application of Title VIIs prohibition against sex discrimination in employment to protect LGBT employes, issued a memo stating that the administrations policy would not recognize sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII, and issued a second memo suggesting that individuals and businesses could exercise their religious beliefs without limitations while doing business with government.

President Trump gutted executive order on contractors.

President Trump issued an executive order in March that revoked one by President Obama that had required companies winning contracts from the federal government to demonstrate they are in compliance with 14 federal laws, including those that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender stereotyping, and gender identity. Lambda Legal said Trumps executive order would make it extremely difficult to force federal contractors to comply with non-discrimination laws.

Courts roller-coastered on fight over Title VII.

Two federal appeals courts ruled this year that Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act should be interpreted to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. But in December, the U.S. Supreme Court refused an appeal brought by an employee in Georgia trying to establish the right to protection under that law. LGBT activists say the fight is not yet over and that other cases will likely come before the Supreme Court to test the issue in the future.

Gay ambassador nominee still pending.

In one of the few pieces of good news involving President Trump and the LGBT community this year, President Trump nominated an openly gay political operative, Ric Grenell, as ambassador to Germany. But at years end, the full Senate had yet to vote on Grenells nomination, and https://www.thedailybeast.com/senate-democrat-holding-up-trump-nominee-richard-grenell-over-insulting-and-derogatory-tweets">reports indicated Democrats were behind the stall.

President Trumps transgender executive order.

In July, President Trump announced on Twitter that the Department of Defense should ban transgender people in the military. A month later, he issued an official memorandum, directing the DOD to do so. But the ACLU and LGBT legal groups jumped into action, filing lawsuits and requesting injunctions to stop the order from taking effect. By years end, at least three federal judges issued preliminary injunctions to stop the Trump order from taking effect until the courts can decide whether the ban is unconstitutional, but the Department of Justice is seeking stays of those injunctions.

Trump administration gutted many policies for LGBT people.

Under President Trump, the Department of Education, with the Department of Justice, withdrew an advice letter to schools that had suggested transgender students were protected by Title IX. The Department of Health and Human Services announced it would no longer interpret the Affordable Care Act to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and it removed questions from at least two federal surveys that would have identified data specific to LGBT people. Housing and Urban Development canceled a survey to determine the prevalence of homelessness among LGBT people, and removed from its website a link that instructed emergency shelters on sensitivity to transgender people seeking help. The Census Bureau removed any mention of LGBT people among potential questions for the all-important upcoming surveys.

Resurgence in activities by white nationalists.

One of the loudest chants by white supremacists staging a violent protest in Charlottesville, Va., in August was Fuck you, Faggots. The driver of the car who plowed into a group of counter-protesters was associated with a right-wing group that called LGBT people sexual deviants. President Trump offered words of support for the right-wing protesters who chanted and carried signs with messages that were hostile to African Americans, immigrants, and LGBT people. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me, said Trump. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. He blamed counter protesters for the violence. And soon, there seemed to be an uptick in incidents of hate against LGBT people, women, Muslims, Jews, African Americans, and Latin Americans many in very public places, like major league ballparks and public schools. A Southern Poverty Law Center study found that 37 percent of 1,094 hate crimes recorded during the first 34 days after Trumps election directly referenced either President-elect Trump, his campaign slogans, or his infamous remarks about sexual assault.

Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

Presidential candidate Trump made a few supportive comments about the LGBT community during his campaign, but those remarks essentially disappeared after his inauguration. The only positive things he had to say about LGBT people in his first year were statements purporting to explain why he sought a ban on Muslims coming into this country (he said it would protect LGBT people from such attacks as the one on an Orlando nightclub in 2016). Many LGBT people felt more like they needed protection from Donald Trump. He chose heads of departments with notorious anti-LGBT histories who rolled back many of the pro-LGBT policies established under President Obama, he appointed federal judges who disagreed with landmark pro-equality Supreme Court decisions, he initiated and directed a ban on transgender people in the military, he repeatedly praised Russian President Vladmir Putin, whose anti-LGBT policies have escalated in recent years, and he used the most high profile bully pulpit in the world to give solace and encouragement to extreme right-wing protests that included anti-LGBT chants and signs.

Alabama voters chose Democrat for Senate seat.

A special election in Alabama in December became a bellwether. In a surprise development, the heavily and historically Republican state chose a progressive Democrat over an ultra-conservative Republican to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions departure to the Attorney Generals seat. This was not a simply partisan or ideological race. Moores claim to being a staunch Christian with reliably conservative, family-oriented values was shredded by persistent widespread allegations that, in his thirties, he had sexual contact with two females under the age of consent in Alabama (16) and five who were between 16 and 18. LGBT people had plenty of reason to oppose Moores ascension to the U.S. Senate long before those revelations drew national attention to the state. Going back more than a decade, Roy Moore was quick and comfortable with expressing his opposition to LGBT people.

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state bans on sexual relations between same-sex partners, then Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Moore said he thought such relations should be illegal. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on marriage for same-sex couples, Moore refused to comply. And during his contentious campaign this year for a U.S. Senate seat, he claimed his campaign troubles were LGBT people trying to ruin his campaign and change our culture. Moore, in the U.S. Senate, would have been a reliable vote against LGBT people in any context. And Moore had the endorsement of President Trump, who won 62 percent of the Alabama vote in 2016, despite his own problem with widespread allegations of sexual misconduct. But on December 12, by a narrow margin, voters in Alabama elected progressive Democrat Doug Jones, who pledged to fight hate and discrimination in all forms. Some commentaries say the vote indicates voters are beginning to turn against Republicans and President Trump. They predict next Novembers Congressional races could change the partisan majority in the Senate, maybe even the House, from Republican to Democrat. Its the kind of change that could be as dramatically good for the rights of LGBT people as this past year has been bad.
(WB) The situation for people with HIV/AIDS in Puerto Rico remains precarious three months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

Anselmo Fonseca of Pacientes de Sida Pro Politica Sana, an HIV/AIDS service organization that is based in the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan, told the Washington Blade last week during a conference call that Maria flooded the office in which he and his colleagues worked. He said Pacientes de Sida Pro Politica Sana has basically been operating out of Bills Kitchen, a San Juan-based organization that provides meals to people with HIV/AIDS in Puerto Rico.

Bills Kitchen lost electricity when Hurricane Irma brushed Puerto Rico on Sept. 7. Food and Friends in D.C. has donated $35,000 to Bills Kitchen in order to buy a generator.

Weve lost homes, Fonseca told the Blade. Weve lost food, opportunities to see our doctors on a regular basis.

Maria made landfall on Puerto Ricos southeast coast on Sept. 20 with 155 mph winds.

The hurricanes official death toll in Puerto Rico is 64, but Gov. Ricardo Rossello on Monday ordered a review of this figure amid widespread reports that suggest there may be more than 1,000 Maria-related deaths in the U.S. commonwealth. Statistics from the Puerto Rican government indicate the islands electrical grid  which was compromised before Maria and Irma  is at 65.4 percent capacity.

More than 200,000 people have left Puerto Rico since Maria.

Maria has affected all of Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Community Network for Clinical Research on AIDS is based near the main campus of the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. Roughly 900 people from across Puerto Rico  people with HIV/AIDS, women, drug addicts, people who are homeless and young people between 13-24  receive services from the organization each year.

Puerto Rico Community Network for Clinical Research on AIDS Executive Director Rosaura Lopez-Fontanez, told the Blade last week that her organization has lost over $250,000 in equipment and medication because of Maria. She said Maria also destroyed all of the Puerto Rico Community Network for Clinical Research on AIDS testing equipment and it had to redo its two clinics.

Lopez-Fontanez told the Blade the organization began to operate once again a week after Maria.

She said a local pharmacy provided space that allowed patients to receive their medications with no problem. Wilfred Labiosa, co-founder of WAVES AHEAD, a group that works with at-risk groups in Puerto Rico, told the Blade on Tuesday during a telephone interview that the 21 people with HIV with whom he works now have stable access to medications through the mail.

They have been able to finagle that, he said.

Lopez-Fontanez told the Blade her organizations dental clinic was able to operate in the office of a dentist who subcontracted space for $100 a day. She also said Bills Kitchen is cooking meals for her staff who have suffered tremendously.

It has affected all of Puerto Rico, that includes the HIV and the LGBT community, said Lopez-Fontanez.

She said three members of her staff and two clients have left Puerto Rico since Maria. Michael Kahane, who is the Southern bureau chief for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which continues to support Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico, told the Blade on Monday during a telephone interview that the thing that I hear more than anything right now is a ticket out.

Thats unfortunate, but the basic feeling of people with whom Ive spoken is whether or not they want to live in Puerto Rico, said Kahane. Its not something they can do until normal life is restored.

Federal government response has been dismal

Puerto Rico has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the U.S. People with HIV/AIDS were vulnerable before Maria because of a combination of factors that include a lack of resources to fight the epidemic, Puerto Ricos debt crisis and poor infrastructure.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told the Blade last month during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center that officials stocked up on medications and other supplies for the citys AIDS clinic before Maria made landfall. Her administration is also working with AIDS Healthcare Foundation to provide generators to people with HIV/AIDS and service organizations.

Kahane noted to the Blade that his organization in the days and weeks after Maria organized four airlifts that brought generators, water purification and personal hygiene kits, medications, feminine products and diapers to Puerto Rico.

He said the first generators went to health care centers and pharmacies across the island to make sure those entities were able to receive patients and care for patients and take the burden off hospitals. Kahane told the Blade that Yulin has requested another shipment of 50 generators for people with HIV and/or other chronic diseases.

If AIDS Healthcare Foundation can do this, why cant the federal government do this, asked Kahane.

Yulin remains among the most vocal critics of President Trumps response to Maria. Fonseca and Lopez-Fontanez both echoed Yulin when they spoke with the Blade.

The response has been dismal at the very least, said Fonseca. Some have even called it criminal negligence.

Lopez-Fontanez told the Blade that Puerto Ricans are still living without rooves over their head because of the Federal Emergency Management Agencys slow response to Maria. She also noted some of her patients have told her the only food to which they have access each day is the lunch they receive at her organizations HIV/AIDS prevention center and a bag of rice they get for dinner.

Right now I am so angry, said Lopez-Fontanez. Were supposed to be U.S. citizens. Were not being treated as U.S. citizens.

The Puerto Rican governments response to Maria has also been criticized.

Kahane acknowledged Puerto Ricos electrical grid was severely compromised before the hurricanes.

He told the Blade that Rossellos apparent reluctance to criticize Trump over his response to Maria has sparked anger on the island. Kahane also described Yulin  who appeared at a World AIDS Day concert in Miami that AIDS Healthcare Foundation organized  as a rock star.

With the limited resources that she has for running a municipality, her response has been overwhelmingly terrific, said Kahane. Theres obviously the state response and then theres the municipality response.

The Blades efforts to reach the Puerto Rican government for comment have thus far proven unsuccessful.

Yulin at last months U.S. Capitol Visitor Center press conference stressed the American people have been there for us. Lopez-Fontanez agreed.

The American people have been very good and very supportive of us, she told the Blade.

 Michael K. Lavers, Washington Blade courtesy of the National LGBTQ Media Association.
It is widely accepted that people in Italy take their coffee very seriously (if not, by and large, over-roasted and terrible). So serious, in fact, that coffee has become a modern means of extortion by the mafia.

According to a recent article in The Guardian, Italian crime families are forcing bars and restaurants are being bullied into selling specific coffee brands promoted by mobsters, who then take a cut of the profits.

Coffee is the new racket, said author Antonio Nicaso, one of the worlds leading mafia experts and university lecturer in Canada and the US. Bar and restaurant owners are willing to pay the higher prices for fear of retribution. Its a subtler way to extort money from owners of bars and restaurants  a difficult method for the police to intercept, he said.

According to the article, one group made owners buy minimum coffee orders of 20,000 ($23,500 USD). If the business owners were unable to pay the amount, the crime families would then take over the establishment.

And one member of an Italian crime family has even gone from coffee racket to coffee business. Concetta Riina, daughter of late Sicilian crime boss Salvatore Toto Riina, created an online espresso store with her husbandAntonio Ciavarello, who is under house arrest for fraudcalled Uncle Toto. Before shutting down after the Italian media caught whiff of a coffee line named after a man believed responsible for about 150 murders, the store included a Zu Toto range server and a pre-order for espresso pods, which were to raise money after police seized the familys savings.

In light of all this, Im willing to grant that Italians do in fact take their coffee more seriously than the rest of the world. Not in the this coffee could be just a little better so Im going to obsess over it for the next hour sort of way, but in the buy this or else way.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via ItalianGeneology.com
Awol Hanover ($9.30) overcame post 8, put away Fluff Me Up on the final turn, and proved a determined 1:57 winner over the late-rallying Fork in Wednesday evenings (Dec. 20) featured $11,500 Preferred 2 trotting event at Flamboro Downs.

One of five leavers at races outset, the three-year-old Donato Hanover gelding settled in mid-division as Lets Leavem (J Harris) dueled clear of Waikiki Hanover (Paul MacKenzie) just after completing a :28 first quarter. Bob McClure angled Awol Hanover off the pegs with five-eighths to go, flushed live cover from Fluff Me Up (Brett MacDonald) nearing a :57.4 half, and advanced in the two-wide flow while Fluff Me Up encroached on Lets Leavem on the clubhouse turn.

After Fluff Me Up pressed Lets Leavem into defeat up the far side, a now-uncovered Awol Hanover sustained his advance and stuck a head in front at the three-quarter mark in 1:27.4. He continued to wear down Fluff Me Up on the final turn before parrying a three-wide charge from Fork (Scott Coulter) through the final quarter mile. Awol Hanover ultimately beat Forkwho broke stride in the last yardsby half a length. Seeyou Men (Robert Shepherd) rallied belatedly to take third from the tiring Fluff Me Up.

Luc Blais trains Awol Hanovernow a five-time winnerfor the Determination group of Montreal. For McClure, the featured win capped a driving hat trick on the 10-race program.

The nations leading dash-winning driver also captured one of the three Alliance Claiming Series events for distaff pacers, teaming up with prohibitive favourite Argyle Alberwhosur ($2.80) in the nights fifth race and piloting her to a second consecutive win in the series. The Isaac Waxman trainee posted a 1:59 mile, 4-1/4 lengths better than her competition. Dorabella ($10.70, 1:57.3) and driver Jason Ryan gave Waxman a double in the series, while Island Blue ($14.00, 1.57.2) and Brett MacDonald narrowly prevailed from the pocket on arrival from Ottawa in the final division.

To view Wednesdays harness racing results, click the following link: Wednesday Results  Flamboro Downs.
The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, dedicated to honouring the rich tradition of horse racing across Canada, is seeking a part-time Bookkeeper/Administrator.

Position Available

Part-time Bookkeeper/Administrator

estimated 12-16 hours/week (specific hours TBA)

Summary of Job Description

The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, dedicated to honouring the rich tradition of horse racing across Canada, is seeking a part-time Bookkeeper/Administrator

Under the direction of the Managing Director, and reporting to the Board of Directors, the successful applicant will be responsible for performing a variety of bookkeeping, accounting and administrative support duties including but not limited to financial record keeping and transactions, accounts payable, receivable, general ledger, and database management

Desired individual will have:

Advanced experience with Simply Accounting or Quickbooks

Experience working in a non-profit/charity setting,

An outgoing and friendly personality

Demonstrated professionalism and tact in communications with a diversity of individuals,

Strong organizational and time management skills, acute attention to detail and ability to work well with committees, chairs, the Managing Director and Board members.

This position will be performed remotely, with attendance for meetings, approximately once monthly at the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, 555 Rexdale Boulevard.

Hours: Average 12-16 hours per week with possible seasonal variations

Compensation: $20/hour (negotiable based on skill level)

Qualifications:

Advanced proficiency in Simply Accounting and/or Quickbooks a must

Non-profit/charity organization experience a plus

Minimum three to five years related experience; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Additional proficiency in Windows operating systems and with Microsoft Office, Excel, Google Docs and Internet Explorer/Firefox.

Experience working with online banking and credit card payment software. (Paypal, Shopify)

Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Strong organizational, problem-solving, and analytical skills; ability to manage priorities and workflow.

Strong mathematical skills.

Strong interpersonal skills.

Ability to deal effectively with a diversity of individuals at all organizational levels.

Good judgment, with the ability to make timely and sound decisions.

Experience with database software (SUMAC)

Understanding of and commitment to the Hall of Fames mission.

Familiarity with the Standardbred and/or Thoroughbred racing industry.

Familiarity with WordPress website software an asset.

Duties & Responsibilities:

Prepare, records and transactions.

Performs billing for hall related activities.

Issues charitable receipts for donations via database software (SUMAC)

Issues cheques for bills and reimbursements in an accurate and timely manner; ensures that all expenditures are appropriately categorized.

Pays HST

Collects cheques and other payments from third parties

Collects past due accounts

Works closely with the Managing Director

Reconciles bank accounts and provides monthly reports to the planning committee; keeps clear records of all account activity and alerts Managing Director to any concerns, issues or past due accounts in timely manner.

Prepares financial reports and attends meeting to present to Board of Directors. (semi-annually or as required)

Proactively maintains highly organized filing system; files invoices, payroll paperwork, reimbursements and other financial records.

Prepares year end books for submission to independent auditor.

Update database records of donors, contributors and vendors, sponsors

Demonstrates a high level of professionalism in dealing with confidential and sensitive issues.

Assists in the development and implementation of systems and procedures as needed.

Supports Managing Director as needed with additional administrative duties, including website and social media updates, and event preparation.

Assists with special projects or does research as assigned, including annual induction gala, fundraising activities

Assists with Hall events, and outreach activities at racetracks as needed.

Performs other duties as assigned by Managing Director, committee chairs and board members.

Application instructions: To apply, please send a quality cover letter with your resume to [email protected] by January 5, 2018.

We thank all those who apply, but only those applicants who are selected for an interview will be contacted.

Physically located at Woodbine Racetrack, in Toronto, the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, a registered charity, each year honours the best in the Canadian horse racing industry and preserves the history of Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing throughout Canada.

Additional information about the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame can be found at canadianhorseracinghalloffame.com

(Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame)
It's a can't-miss edition of the Post Time with Mike and Mike show presented by Bet America coming up on Thursday (December 21).

The program will air at 10:30 a.m. (Eastern) at posttimewithmikeandmike.com and also can be heard on-demand at betamerica.com/barn.

Last week on the show, the newly appointed director of racing at Yonkers Raceway, Cammie Haughton, dropped a bombshell on the harness racing world by stating that the racetrack will do away with its passing lane in January.

While the passing lane was once considered innovative, it has since fallen out of favour with a percentage of the harness racing population. Driver Yannick Gingras, DRF's Garnet Barnsdale, and NAHU's Rod Allums Jr. will join the program to debate the pros and cons of the passing lane, and its future in the sport of harness racing.

"It will be interesting to get three different perspectives on the subject. One from a catch driver, another from a successful gambler, and yet another from a second generation horsemen," said show co-host Michael Bozich.

Also on the program, Part 3 of the sit-down discussion between all three of the USHWA Breakthrough Award nominees will air. Part 1 aired on Ray Cotolo's North American Harness Update, while Part 2 was hosted by Ryan Macedonio's Trotcast. Post Time with Mike and Mike's Michael Carter was also nominated for the prestigious award.

Midwest Harness Report's Tim Konkle will also join the show. Konkle will talk about his career in harness racing, and a bit more about the magazine, which primarily covers the sport in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Iowa.

If you haven't voted for the Post Time with Mike and Mike Awards as of yet, please do so on the Post Time website. The awards show will air Thursday, December 28, at 7:00 p.m. (Eastern).

(With files from Post Time)
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.
TACOMA  Former Mint Valley Elementary Principal Patrick Kelley denied allegations Wednesday that five students were illegally forced into the schools isolation booth in 2012.

But lawyers representing the children pressed Kelley on whether school policy at the time could have allowed general education students to be placed inside the 4-by-4-foot padded booth without documentation or their parents knowledge.

The Longview School District is the defendant in a federal lawsuit that could result in millions of damages if an eight-member jury finds in favor of the children and their families.

The plaintiffs claim that the students disabilities were aggravated when former special education teacher Jerry Stein allegedly placed them inside the booth for disciplinary reasons when the children were general education students.

In addition to the district, the suit names Kelley, Stein and former Superintendent Suzanne Cusick as defendants.

Stein, a longtime district employee, ran the Childrens Learning Center at Mint Valley at the time of alleged use of the isolation booth. The center, which housed the booth, served about a dozen of the districts most behaviorally challenged students.

Kelley said Wednesday that only one of the students  identified in court records as R.W.  was placed inside the booth on a single occasion on Oct. 31, 2012. The district is denying that the other four children were ever placed inside the booth.

As the schools principal, Kelley said he was the main official responsible for student discipline. However, Kelley said he also delegated authority to Stein, who also was the schools assistant principal.

Kelley said teachers would occasionally send students to Steins special education room for bad behavior.

On Halloween 2012, Kelley said he responded to a call from a school employee who told him that an unnamed student was being held in the isolation booth.

Administrators say the booth was primarily intended for special education students with individual education plans (IEPs) at the time. However, the school also was authorized by state law to use the booth on students who presented an imminent likelihood of serious harm to themselves or others.

Kelley said he found R.W. inside the booth when he arrived.

He should not be in there, Kelley told two paraeducators at the time, according to a taped deposition.

But Kelley said Wednesday that he believed the booth was used appropriately after he learned the facts related to the incident.

Tracy Gould, one of the paraeducators in the room, also testified Wednesday that R.W. was out of control. The 7-year-old was kicking, punching and trying to head-butt another paraeducator, who initially placed the boy in a chair hold and eventually moved him inside the booth for his own safety, Gould testified.

After finding R.W. inside the booth, Kelley said he escorted the first-grader to his office, where the boy was held until his parents picked him up.

But Roger Davidheiser, a lawyer for the families, challenged Kelley about the schools incident report, which failed to note any use of restraint and isolation.

Kelley said he was unsure why the report did not mention that R.W. was placed inside the booth.

Davidheiser also challenged Kelley on the lack of a school policy governing the use of restraint and isolation for general education students.

Was there a document trail that would indicate where Jerry Stein was taking these general education students when they were sent to him? Davidheiser asked.

Kelley admitted that neither the school nor the district had a policy governing the use of restraint and isolation on general education students.

Staff followed (state regulations) at the time, he said.

Davidheiser also called jurors attention to a 2010 review of the districts special education program.

Prior to the allegations, an outside reviewing agency had recommended that the district evaluate whether its timeout rooms met the required standards. The agency also told the district it needed to reduce its potential liability by either closing the rooms or ensuring that procedures for their use were closely and carefully followed.

Investigation admitted as evidence

U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Bryan also granted a request by plaintiffs Wednesday to allow a 2012 investigation into the alleged misuse of the isolation booth to be admitted as evidence in the trial.

Bryan had previously sided with the defense teams argument that the investigation documents are work product and protected by attorney-client privilege.

The report was not immediately available Wednesday because Bryan required the districts defense team to remove the names of juveniles not involved in the suit. Ken Friedman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told The Daily News that the report would become a public record if it is filed with the court.

The lawsuit dates back to Nov. 26, 2012, when photos of the booth were posted to Facebook by an angry parent who said her son told her that school employees were placing students inside the booth for stuff we all do.

Following a social media firestorm and onslaught of negative media coverage, the district told reporters at the time that it was hiring an independent investigator to look into whether the booth was used appropriately. However, findings of that taxpayer-funded investigation never were made public.

Francis Floyd, an attorney representing the district, said Wednesday the report will not reveal a smoking gun.

We think it will actually help us, Floyd told The Daily News.

Former Longview School District administrator Chris Fritsch opened the door to allowing the investigation into evidence during his testimony Tuesday.

Davidheiser asked Fritsch if the investigation caused the district any concern about the isolation booth. Fritsch said the report gave him no cause to discipline anyone.

I was led to believe that (the booth) ... met the legal requirements. And the people that were working that program were following all the rules and were keeping adequate records, Fritsch replied.

Bryan indicated Tuesday that its possible the findings in the report could prompt the plaintiffs lawyers to request a pause in the trial, which was originally expected to last three weeks.

Davidheiser said Wednesday that the plaintiffs plan to rest their case Thursday after playing two taped depositions from Cusick, the former superintendent, and Rod McHattie, the districts former director of special education services.

The defense has already called two witnesses to testify before the jury. Floyd said his team plans to present a number of motions related to the testimony already heard and hopes to get through the rest of its witness list by next Wednesday.
Estrella Barron watched through the windows of Community House on Broadway Wednesday as a trailer full of donated clothes, food and toys from Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company employees pulled up in front of the building.

Christmas is here, the Community House Director of Care said with a grin.

Nippon, a former partner of Weyerhaeuser that now owns its old pulp mill in Longview, raised about $17,000 and piles of donations from its 550 employees to be distributed to various nonprofit groups.

President John Carpenter said he was not surprised at the level of participation.

Weyerhaeuser has always had strong community outreach, he said during a break from lugging boxes of donations. Since Nippon is a new name in the community, we wanted to do some outreach to get our name out there and do something for the community where our employees live.

Throughout the crisp morning, a handful of volunteers carted boxes of gifts down the trailer ramp and into a back room at Community House, where they were placed under a Christmas tree sagging with ornaments.

Donations were also dropped off at the Emergency Support Shelter, the Humane Society, Luggage of Love, Head Start, Safe Kids, Lower Columbia CAP and the Childrens Justice and Advocacy Center.

Community House Executive Director Frank Morrison said every donation helps.

This is how we survive, Morrison said. We only get 8 percent of our funding from the government, and the rest comes from everyone else.

Morrison added that Community House will wrap the gifts and match them with wish lists from children staying at the shelter. Then the toys will be handed out at a Christmas party this weekend.

Nippon employee Kyle Crebar, 31, said he helped distribute the donations Wednesday because he wanted to learn about charity groups like Community House.

Its nice seeing the range of people in need that each charity covers, the Ridgefield resident said. Its cool to see how they all overlap and work independently.

Carpenter said Nippons community engagement will continue to gain momentum throughout the year.

Im very proud of our folks stepping up and helping the community, he said. The holidays are always a good time to help because there is so much need, but we will continue to ramp up the outreach in the coming months.

Giving back to the community is important to members of Local 633 of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, said Lowell Lovgren, president of the local, which represents Nippon union workers.

Its a cheerful season to bring the spirit out and show that we care about the community, especially the kids who dont have a lot at this time of year, Lovgren said. Its a heartwarming experience when you get to see the smiles.
RAINIER  An Oregon state agency has granted the City of Rainier a second month-long extension to respond to allegations about mismanagement of its sewer plant, including accusations that the city falsified monthly reports about plant operations and that it released raw sewage into the Columbia River without reporting the episodes to the state.

Oregons Environmental Quality originally gave the city until Nov. 30 to answer the accusations, then extended the deadline to Dec. 22. The new deadline is Jan. 19.

Mayor Jerry Cole said the city asked for an extension to conduct personnel investigations, which will play a role in their rebuttal.

On Dec. 1, Cole announced that Public Works Supervisor Dan Foultner would be put on paid administrative leave during an investigation involving public works responsibilities.

Foultner was the operator of the citys troubled sewer plant for several years until January 2015, which is part of the period that the states Department of Environmental Quality alleges the plant violated seven state environmental laws.

Foultner, according to DEQ, was not fully licensed to operate the sewer plant, but he was supervised by a fully-licensed worker of the Clatskanie sewage plant, which DEQ allows on a short-term basis. However, it is not clear how often the Clatskanie worker, Scott Shulda, reviewed Foultners work.

We typically set the timelines fairly short, and then if cities need more time, they figure out what they need and let us know, said Randall Bailey, who works for the DEQs Water Quality Permitting department, after Rainier asked for their first extension in November.
Meizu India has appointed Rakesh Bhatia as the new Sales Director of the company. With Rakesh Bhatia as a Sales Director and his strong background in the telecom sector in India and other overseas markets as well, Meizu Technology is all set for its massive expansion in India in the coming years.

Leon Zhang, Global Sales & Marketing Director  Meizu Technology, said, Rakesh Bhatia is a business specialist who very well understands the insights of consumer needs, thereby, will help both the company and the consumer to leverage each others potential in a right way. We are sure that his expertise in the telecom industry will help Meizu to expand exponentially in India and other South Asian countries.

Rakesh Bhatia, Sales Director  Meizu India, said, Indian market is a very exciting market to operate as consumers here are very receptive towards new technology and new brands. It just requires a constant focus to stimulate that eagerness. Meizu Technology has great a potential in India with a launch of innovative products, they are manufacturing overseas. Now, we just have to engage in executing our growth strategy to bring those innovative products to the Indian consumers.

Prior to joining to Meizu India, he was associated with LG India where he geared up the LG Telecom Business in MEA Region from scratch to 14 Countries. He is a Telecom and CEA specialist with in-depth knowledge of India, MEA, SAARC and SEA Region for Business Development and expansion. He is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta and has an overall experience of around 20 Years in the same field.

The company has recently launched many technologically advanced smartphones in China, such as Pro 7, Pro 7 Plus, m6 Note etc, which it would be bringing to India very soon.

@Technuter.com News Service
Mr Macrons desire to toughen Frances stance comes as far-right parties, who have seized on the migrant crisis, have made electoral gains.



The mayors of Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Toulouse and Nantes, claiming they have been backed up against a wall", have demanded Mr Macron's government do more to tackle the number of migrants arriving in France.



They said the government should hold a meeting to discuss the social emergency.

France has begun a new initiative to bring in 3,000 migrants directly from Africa, as 19 Sundanese migrants arrived on Monday who will be temporarily housed in a monastery in Alsace.



On Tuesday 25 migrants from Niger arrived in the country, followed by another group of African migrants on Wednesday. The flights will continue over the next two years, primarily from Chad and Niger, until the target of 3,000 is reached Die Welt reports.



The new migrant initiative was negotiated by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year in an effort to prevent mass migration across the Mediterranean to Europe.



President Macron has been joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has enacted a similar programme for Germany, along with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.



Italy has seen by far the largest number of migrants arrive through the Mediterranean route over the last two years.

Trouble is, if the following says something, it's not entirely sure this is working so far:Just what is their religious background? Or, are they going to see if they can get them on the right track? If anything, they cannot keep bringing in these migrants en masse, and not make a serious effort to deport those who are likely violent criminals. Even this is something that may have to be opposed.

Labels: Africa, dhimmitude, France, germany, immigration, islam, Italy, jihad, Moonbattery, political corruption, terrorism
About me I'm Avi Green

From Jerusalem, Israel

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best. My profile

Archives - Archives - July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022
The Page You Are Looking For Couldnt Be Found.

You are experiencing technical issues. Please contact our support to get more information.
UK PM forces her own deputy to quit after pornography scandal

Reuters, London :

British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign on Thursday after an internal investigation found that he had made misleading comments about pornography found on computers in his parliamentary office.

The resignation of one of May's most trusted allies who had helped pacify her deeply divided party, is a blow for May as she navigates the final year of tortuous Brexit negotiations before Britain's exit from the European Union in March 2019. Green, who voted to stay in the EU, was appointed as first secretary of state just six months ago in a bid to shore up May's premiership in the wake of her disastrous bet on a June snap election which lost her party its majority in parliament.

But Green's future was thrust into doubt when the Sunday Times newspaper reported last month that police in 2008 had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament. In response, Green said that the story was untrue.

A review, requested by May and conducted by a senior government official, concluded that Green's statements which suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on the computers, were "inaccurate and misleading."

The review, a summary of which was distributed by May's Downing Street office, found that he had breached rules governing the behaviour of ministers.

"I regret that I've been asked to resign from the government following breaches of the Ministerial Code, for which I apologise," Green said in a letter to May, who said she had accepted his resignation with deep regret.

Green, 61, added that he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers. He said that he should have been clearer about his statements after the story broke.

He is May's third cabinet minister to resign in recent weeks after May's defence secretary quit in November citing past conduct that fell below the required standards.

May's aid minister resigned a week later after admitting to holding undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials.

During the turmoil which followed May's botched election, she turned to Green - a friend and ally from their days at Oxford - to stabilise her premiership and appease those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit.




Riazs Code of Conduct at Alliance Francaise

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :

My art is a very personal statement of my own experience, and I believe, as an artist it is my response to the life around me. In my journey I found that my art represent a mark left by me, a little sign of my existence per se, so I feel a powerful impetus and a rational underpinning to create my art.

Artist Riazs soul tells him to explicate his true expression against all the discrimination happening in our society. His solo exhibition titled Code of Conduct refers to the nature of the term and how a state can misemploy that for their citizenry. The leaders have their hearts set on being businessmen, pushing through a dystopian reality that will have no scope for humanity in it.

Some nations are eager to concoct plots with religious bigotry sitting trigger-happy on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, rather than working on subjects like sustainable development, humanity or climate change.

Alliance Francaise de Dhaka (AFD) organises a solo art exhibition titled Code of Conduct by Mohammad Hasanur Rahman (Riaz) at its La Galerie in the citys Dhanmondi area. The Inaugural ceremony of the exhibition was held on December 19.

Cultural Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Noor MP was present as the chief guest while Liaquat Ali Lucky, Director General of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA) also attended the programme as the special guest on the occasion. Enthekhabul Hamid Apu, Managing Director of Hamid Group, also attended the opening ceremony as the guest of honor.

The exhibition imparts sensitivity about emotion and empathy that we need in order to establish equality and equity. The term had imbued the artist with passion and force that he tried to channel into his artworks.'

The exhibition will continue till January 2, 2018. n
Some companies announce worker bonuses after US tax cut

AFP, New York :

AT&T and Boeing were among the large US companies that announced new spending on their workers Wednesday after Congress approved a sweeping US tax cut.

AT&T plans to give $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 workers and will issue the checks over the holidays if President Donald Trump signs the bill before Christmas.

The company also said it plans to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018 due to the bill.

"This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said.

"In fact, we will increase our US investment and pay a special bonus to our US employees."

The handful of announcements came after the House of Representatives approved the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, sending the measure to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

Democrats criticized the bill as a budget-busting sop that mostly benefits the very wealthy, while Republicans argued it would boost economic growth.

Boeing announced $300 million in additional spending that includes funds for workforce training and to upgrade facilities to the "workplace for the future."

"We applaud and thank Congress and the administration for their leadership in seizing this opportunity to unleash economic energy in the United States," Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said.

"It's the single-most important thing we can do to drive innovation, support quality jobs and accelerate capital investment in our country."

Fifth Third Bancorp said it would boost its minimum wage for all employees to $15 an hour and distribute a one-time bonus of $1,000 to more than 13,500 employees.

Still, many analysts and economists have expressed skepticism the tax bill will boost growth as much as promised.

The tax cut "will improve corporate profits and that in turn will increase share buybacks and dividends more than it actually increases economic activity," said Karl Haeling, portfolio manager at LBBW Asset Management.

"Big companies have a lot of money right now," he said. "If they needed to build a big plant they would not have wait for it before the tax reform. I'm still skeptical that it really does that much."




Tea`s Company: Drifting by the coastal city of Negombo

Slowing down to smell the tea leaves in Negombo, Sri Lanka

Supriya Sehgal :

Matching my step to the heavy-footed hour between sunset and complete darkness, I strolled along Portutota Road, keeping note of when Negombos skies were turning purple from the blush of pink. There was light enough to peek into the shops that flank this main tourist tarmac. Despite scores of them crammed with suspiciously shiny antiques and aromatic tea from up country, the street felt beat with fatigue. Shopkeepers, faces drooped with boredom from the off-season month, looked out vacantly, in ever-waning hope that a tourist would walk in. Tuk-tuk drivers stood in clusters at every junction, sipping chai and turning sharply to see if a visitor - namely me - would help them make a quick buck in this lean period. When waved off or entirely ignored, they would get back to chatting animatedly with their group.

Negombo is, at best, a well-feted weekend getaway from Colombo (less than 40 km), with a pacy tenor of dash in-drink at the beach-dash out destination. That too, in good weather. For me, it was neither the weekend, nor good weather. Just a trip to slow down to see a harbour town minus the usual plush resorts that dot Sri Lankas coastline.

Of course, the lavish resorts had addressed themselves firmly to the edge of the sea here as well. But the sprawl of the town behind this one road was delightfully unassuming. On my first evening in Negombo, I scanned all of 500m of a straight stretch of road, and settled in at Rodeo Pub to nurse a bottle of Lion beer for hours. The bartender, seemingly allergic to empty tables, invited himself to mine since I was the only one of the two people who had graced the pub in a week. This is one of the perks of slow and solo travel - the unsolicited company of a local bartender.

Malinga, as I found out seconds later, would have never found the time to ditch the bar and sit with a patron on normal days. I was honoured. The next two hours were filled with his booming voice and animated gestures, with the city backgrounding his adventures since he was born.

Like the time he almost drowned in the sea when a fishing boat he was on toppled over, the vagaries of midnight beach picnics with his cousins and finding purchase in balancing himself at the edge of the Muthurajawela marsh to spot monitor lizards. There was only a single wistful halt amidst the rush of stories, and then off he went again to a new tangent. My thank you belied the gratitude I felt for him. I did try and repay by going back each evening for the next three days. Inadvertently, Malingas local wisdom steered my travels in the days to follow.

The mornings were reserved for the two main harbours of Negombo. I hopped aboard a tuk-tuk each day to watch the early morning action of hauling up fresh catch from the oruvas (outrigger canoes) to the large hall at the edge of the Negombo lagoon. The tireless activity of sifting, sorting and piling in different stacks was a precursor to the buzz of sale in the day. The wet harbour activity of slicing, chopping and packing was less sedate than that of the nearby dry harbour. Here, kilos of fish were carpeted on the beach, so the blazing sun could suck the moisture and give them a crispy texture. When the harbour activity slowed down, young boys and old men lined up at the side of a bridge with rudimentary rods to catch small fish for personal consumption. Fishing is inextricably woven into the history of Negombo - even centuries ago, it was a booming trading and fishing port.

The fish, and a hearty produce of superior cinnamon, enticed many foreign traders to its shores. In fact, Negombo, formerly Migamuwa, was christened as the current anglicised version by the Portuguese. The decline of their power gave way to that of the Dutch. One can still find the 17th century walls of a Dutch fort here, encircling the towns prison.

So a voyage to the fort and Hamilton canal, St Marys church, the Angurukaramulla Temple, a Ganesha temple and a monastery featured in my next few days at Negombo. But it was the crammed wholesale tea-shop that I found myself riveted to, one evening. Wooden boxes, large tins and flimsy packets filled to the brim lined the cosy shop. The air was thick with rich flavours - sometimes nutty, at other times malty. Lost in the smells and the different shades of brown, I must have been in the shop for over an hour without making a selection. The shopkeeper's cough snapped me out of my reverie. I handed him a bundle of notes and picked a basic green tea packet.

To the shopkeeper, I must have looked like I had lost myself. But in reality, by slowing down, I had found myself. Until now, my years were filled with bolting through cities with an itinerary in hand. This was one of the few times that I had signed up for a trip that made me halt to smell the roses. Well, in this case, tea. n
'Parents' flee by dumping baby girl in Feni

Md Joynal Abedin Khan :

After eight days of selling a newborn baby girl in Khulna, another unfortunate baby girl was allegedly kept in an abandoned state on the stairs of the old building of Feni Sadar Hospital on Thursday morning.

The parents kept the two-month old baby on the stairs for failing to meet the expenditure of sick baby, hospital sources said.

The couple also went on hiding to avert to take the further duty, according to them.

They kept the baby in the building as they did not get any help from the government and the rich people, they added.

Feni Sadar Hospital's Residential Medical Officer Dr Asim Kumar Sah said that the baby was recovered from the building around 9:00am. The Ward Master of the hospital rescued the baby getting information, the doctor said.

The baby was found in almost sound body, he added.

Feni Sadar Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Rashed Khan said that the baby had been already the taken for police observation. The hospital management will carry on the duty of the baby until a final decision, the OC said.

A local non-government organization (NGO) has shwon interest, but the baby will be handed over to its relatives if found , he added. If we fail to reach a final decision about the baby, then it will be produced in the court.

"The parents might have dumped the baby fearing ultra-starvation. We are investigating the incident," the OC said.

Earlier, a-day old baby girl was sold at Tk 4,200 for paying the bills of hospital in Paikgachha municipal area in Khulna district on December 13.

A childless mother Kabita Rani Sardar bought the baby with the arbitration of Farin Hospital in the upazila.

She said that the newborn was in negligence condition as its parents were passing hard time for ultra poverty.
AB Bank Board reconstituted

Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Director resign

Special Correspondent :

AB Bank Chairman M Wahidul Haque, Vice-Chairman Salim Ahmed and Director Faheemul Huq have resigned from the board of directors amid rumours of takeover of the private bank by a Chittagong-based business group.

They tendered their resignation at the Bank's annual general meeting (AGM) held at the Hotel Le Meridein in Dhaka on Thursday.

The AGM of the bank was held after shifting dates and venue for several times.

Resignations of Wahidul Haque, Salim Ahmed and Faheemul were accepted at the meeting. The meeting also appointed three new directors replacing them.

The new directors are Moshtaque Ahmed Chowdhury, Nazir Ahmed and Sheikh Shirin.

The bank also restructured its vital committees at the meeting, officials concerned told The New Nation in the evening.

Former Foreign Minister of the BNP government M Morshed Khan, who held 25 per cent shares of the bank, and his son Faisal Morshed Khan were present at the meeting.

Wahidul Haque did not attend the meeting citing health ground.

"I have resigned at the end of my term," Haque told The New Nation.

M Wahidul Haque joined the Board of Directors of AB Bank on December 12, 2007 as Director. He was unanimously elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors in July 2008. He has held the post since.

Soon after the resignation of Wahidul Haque and Salim Ahmed, the board of the bank made MA Awal and Firoze Ahmed Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively.

A central bank investigation recently detected Tk 165 crore money-laundering scam in the bank. The money was laundered to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through two shady organisations in the name of investment.

AB Bank Chairman M Wahidul Haque, two ex-managing directors M Fazlur Rahman and Shamim Ahmed Chaudhury, and its former head of financial institutions and treasury Abu Hena Mustafa Kamal were directly involved in laundering the money, says the central bank report.
Abdur Rab's battle for life

Story of paralysed betel leaf trader

Reza Mahmud :

"I can't be defeated. I never begged. I'm battling with my life for long. I don't mind whether I'm a winner or not, but I never think that I'm helpless," said a 67-year old man.

The man, Abdur Rab, has been paralysed for the last 26 years when he was 41. Rab said that he was a wholesale betel leaf trader in the city's Kaptan Bazar.

Then, he had some employees in his business to buy and bring betel leaf from Shambazar, a wholesale market, to his trading house in Kaptan Bazar.

He spent a good amount of money he had with the bank accounts. He had a four-member happy family. They are his wife, one son and two daughters. All were very much happy.

Rab said he has always been loved and respected by people at his native village of East Kawnia under Faridganj upazila in Chandpur district.

Expressing deep shock over his sorrowful life, Rab said he was suddenly got sick with an unknown

disease when he was 41. He had taken treatment from many hospitals, clinics and physicians. He went long ways in his treatment. And ultimately he spent all of his money and also sold other properties but failed to recover from the disease. At one stage, he became paralysed.

On the other hand, the total amount of his money went drying. His properties were sold to provide money for the long-run treatment.

He became bankruptcy. Even education for his children stopped due to poverty. But Abdur Rab did not give-up his battle of life for survival.

"After a long treatment I got understand that his sickness might never be cured. In the same time, I realized that I have been transformed into a poorer man from a rich businessman," he said.

"But I did not be upset. I have given solace to my wife and children that I will be able to start my business again. I collected some money as loan from my relatives to start a small business," he said.

"One day, I return to Dhaka with my new component, a wheel chair. I have gone to Kaptan Bazar to my fellow businessmen. They also have given me solace."

"I bought some betel leaves from one of the wholesalers who was my business competitor once. But so what! I have started my own business again, selling betel leaf to the street side shops in Gulistan, Bangabandhu Avenue, Purana Paltan, Baitul Mukarram and Motijheel areas."

Rab said he lives in a mess now in Kaptan Bazar.

Every morning Abdur Rab is seen to carry a steel basket full of betel leaves on his lap moving on his wheel chair from Kaptan Bazar to different areas to sale those.

It seems that he is not only bearing the weight of betel leaves on the wheel chair, but also his family as well as his sorrowful life. He moves like a struggling hero who never know to give up from the battle field.

Abdur Rab have been seen tired to move the wheel chair beside the speedy vehicles. Some time running rickshaws push his wheel chair as it is not so fast moving. Some time he face accident like situations but ignore those and continue towards his way. His son is now working as a day labourer in his village. He got married. The expenditures of their family have increased. But the income has not increased yet.

He has only Tk 4,000 as his capital. The struggling man said he used to sell his item to the small shops in dues (unpaid condition).

"The shopkeepers are not buy betel in cash but in credit. They paid the money after two or more days after taking another bundles in credit " he said.

Rab said, at morning time he sells the leaves to those shops. And in the evening, he collect money from them. But not the money of that day's betel leaves but it was previous day's price of the leaves.

The old man said that if any kind person give him some money as capital to start a shop here or there, it will be helpful for him as he is tired to run the wheel chair long.


Netanyahu calls UN `house of lies`

Reuters :

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a 'house of lies' ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution

calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

'The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval,' Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of US policy on December 6 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump's announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tyres. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.

Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack.

Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of the U.N. draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States 'will be taking names'. Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for 'their brave and uncompromising stance'. He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington's lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Trump threatens to cut aid to countries over UN Jerusalem vote

The Guardian :

Donald Trump has threatened to withhold "billions" of dollars of US aid from countries which vote in favour of a United Nations resolution rejecting the US president's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

His comments came after the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, wrote to about 180 of 193 member states warning that she will be "taking names" of countries that vote for a general assembly resolution on Thursday critical of the announcement which overturned decades of US foreign policy.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump amplified Haley's threat.

"Let them vote against us," he said.

"We'll save a lot. We don't care. But this isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars," he said. "We're not going to be taken advantage of any longer."

The warning appeared aimed largely at



UN members in Africa, Asia and Latin America who are regarded as more vulnerable to US pressure.

Egypt, which drafted Monday's UN security council resolution which the US vetoed, is particularly vulnerable, receiving $1.2bn in US aid last year.

But Trump's comments may also resonate elsewhere - including in the UK, which is hoping to negotiate a quick post-Brexit trade deal with Washington.

The emergency UN general assembly meeting was called for Thursday to protest against the US veto at Monday's security council meeting on a resolution the Jerusalem issue - which was supported by all other 14 members.

The security council resolution demanded that all countries comply with pre-existing UN security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city's final status be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Key US allies Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine were among the 14 countries in the 15-member council that voted in favour on Monday, and were expected to do the same at the assembly on Thursday.

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain or vote against it. However, a council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to US pressure and not support the draft resolution.

Critics point out the the Trump's recognition of Jerusalem - as well as the US veto - are both in opposition to numerous security council resolutions.

Trump's extraordinary intervention marked the latest escalation of diplomatic tensions over a decision that has seen the US widely criticised and isolated. It came after a day of high drama.

In a letter to UN ambassadors, Haley told countries - including European delegations - that she will report back to the US president with the names of those who support a draft resolution rejecting the US move at the UN general assembly on Thursday, adding that Trump took the issue personally.

The new draft resolution for Thursday's general assembly is very similar to Monday's defeated security council resolution. Unlike the security council, however, where permanent members can wield a veto, there are no veto rights in the general assembly.

The resolution reaffirms 10 security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded".

The draft resolution "demands that all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the holy city of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions".

Referring to Haley's letter, which was disclosed by the Guardian and other media organisations on Wednesday morning, Trump said: "I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations.

"Our great citizens who love this country are tired of this country being taken advantage of - we're not going to be taken advantage of any longer."

In her letter, Haley wrote: "As you consider your vote, I encourage you to know the president and the US take this vote personally.

"The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us," she continued.

Haley followed the letter by tweeting: "At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names."

Responding to the US threats, the Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, and the foreign minister of Turkey - a co-sponsor of the UN vote - Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at Istanbul's Ataturk airport that they believed UN member countries will ignore "pressure" from Haley.

"No honourable state would bow to such pressure," Cavusoglu said.

"The world has changed. The belief that 'I am strong therefore I am right' has changed. The world today is revolting against injustices."

A senior diplomat from a Muslim country said of Haley's letter: "States resort to such blatant bullying only when they know they do not have a moral or legal argument to convince others."

A senior western diplomat, described it as "poor tactics" at the United Nations "but pretty good for Haley 2020 or Haley 2024", referring to speculation that Haley might run for higher office.

"She's not going to win any votes in the general assembly or the security council, but she is going to win some votes in the US population," the western diplomat said.

A senior European diplomat agreed Haley was unlikely to sway many UN states.

"We are missing some leadership here from the US and this type of letter is definitely not helping to establish US leadership in the Middle East peace process," the diplomat said.
Armed men kidnap 20 rivals in Rangamati

Staff Reporter :

Armed men have kidnapped at least 20 people including union parishad (UP) members from Bondukvanga union in Rangamati district on Thursday.

Locals said, unknown gunmen arrived at the Vanghamura hilly area at 12am and picked them up at gunpoint.

The victims were hailed from villages of Naniarchar upazila under Rangamati district.

The names of the abducted persons could not be known immediately.

Locals said, the abducted persons were the supporters of Tapon Joyti Chakma, the leader of newly formed UPDF (Democratic) Party.

Tapon Joyti Chakma, in a statement, held responsible the UPDF's armed cadres for the incident.

He said, the UPDF move forward to commit the heinous crime to destroy his party.

Rejecting the allegation, Niron Chakma, a UPDF spokesperson, told The New Nation that he was not aware of the incident. "In my knowledge, no such incident took place. It is a motivated campaign launched by the UPDF (Democratic) Party," he added.

Superintendent of Police in Rangamati Md Tariqul Hasan said he had learnt that the armed gangs picked up a number of people from Vanghamura at noon.

"We learnt that as many as 20 people were abducted, but police did not immediately confirm the number," he added.

He also said the details of the incident are yet to be known. They are trying to gather information on the incident.

Officer-in-Charge of Naniarchar Police Station Abdul Latif said he was aware of the incident and investigating the matter.
US sanctions on 25 including Myanmar General

Reuters, Washington :

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on 52 people and entities for alleged human rights violations and corruption, including Myanmar military officer Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

The U.S. Treasury Department said the United States had "examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soe's activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages."

Others hit with sanctions included Benjamin Bol Mel, who has served as an adviser to South Sudan President Salva Kiir, and former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh, the department said.

The sanctions filed under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act showed the United States was "taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the U.S. financial system," U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

The move freezes any assets the sanctioned individuals and entities may hold under U.S. jurisdiction and blocks Americans from dealing with them.

Among others targeted were Gulnara Karimova, the daughter Of former Uzbekistan leader Islam Karimov, citing "corrupt activities," the statement said.
The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option.
Former IRA volunteer and ex-prisoner, spent 18 years in Long Kesh , 4 years on the blanket and no-wash/no work protests which led to the hunger strikes of the 80s . Completed PhD at Queens upon release from prison. Left the Republican Movement at the endorsement of the Good Friday Agreement, and went on to become a journalist. Co-founder of The Blanket , an online magazine that critically analyzed the Irish peace process. Lead researcher for the Belfast Project , an oral history of the Troubles.
CAIRO  Gov. Bruce Rauner said on Saturday hes been keeping after federal housing officials to be more transparent and to move as fast as possible as it relates to the housing crisis in Cairo.

What weve encouraged HUD, and weve pushed them, because theyre a bureaucracy. And weve done, you know, we sent a letter to em. Weve made calls and Kristys been pushing em, Rauner said during an interview with The Southern Illinoisan in Cairo, referring to Kristy Stephenson, a policy adviser to the governor and his southern regional director.

After touring Elmwood, McBride on Saturday, Gov. Rauner calls conditions 'outrageous' CAIRO  After touring the Elmwood and McBride public housing properties that federal housing officials have been helping residents relocate fr

We need them to be, Id like them to be, more transparent and also just to move as fast as possible," Rauner continued. "Sometimes a bureaucracy needs a kick in the pants. Well, weve been kicking em in the pants. Youve been kicking em in the pants. This is good. This is what it takes.

Rauner sent a letter last month to Acting Inspector General Helen Albert of the HUD Office of Inspector General, to encourage the completion of the ongoing investigation by HUD into the past management practices of the Alexander County Housing Authority.

Additionally, I urge the results of the investigation be as transparent as possible for the benefit of local stakeholders and the residents impacted by the public housing crisis in Cairo," Rauner wrote in the letter.

The letter was sent Nov. 14. It was one of several items provided to The Southern as part of a Freedom of Information Act request for all email communications between employees of HUD and Rauners office from April 10, when HUD officials announced that they would begin relocating about 185 families from two public housing complexes in Cairo, through Nov. 20, the date the request was made.

The emails provided as part of the public records request  only a handful of which pertained to Cairo  also showed that Sam Pfister, the director of federal affairs in Rauners office, sent an email on Nov. 13 to Victoria Barton, who works in HUDs congressional relations department, asking a number of questions about the Cairo situation, such as about how many families had relocated, whether they are being properly cared for, about the process for obtaining relocation vouchers, whether there are residents without heat, and HUDs plan to get them into adequate housing.

Both of the above mentioned emails from the governors office came after The Southern Illinoisan published a story on Nov. 8 titled Wheres Gov. Rauner on Cairo housing crisis? noting that numerous public officials  including HUD Secretary Ben Carson, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, Delta Regional Authority Federal Co-Chairman Chris Masingill, Democratic gubernatorial candidates J.B. Pritzker, Chris Kennedy and Daniel Biss and former candidate Ameya Pawar, State Treasurer Mike Frerichs, Sen. Dale Folwer, Rep. Natalie Phelps Finnie and former Rep. Brandon Phelps, among others  had visited Cairo since HUD announced its relocation plan, but that the long list did not include Rauner.

Where's Gov. Rauner on Cairo housing crisis? CAIRO  The following political leaders have visited Cairo since the public housing crisis in Illinois southernmost city came to a head:

Comptroller Susan Mendoza visited shortly after the story published, and while delivering turkeys to a social service provider in Cairo, said that Rauner was "all Carhartt and no heart"  a nod to his penchant for wearing the popular work wear brand. On Saturday, asked if he wanted to respond to her comment, Rauner said, "That's her role for Madigan is to say stuff like that. That's what Madigan directs her to do."

In Cairo on Tuesday, Comptroller Mendoza calls Gov. Rauner 'All Carhartt and no heart' CAIRO  As Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza traveled to Cairo on Tuesday to deliver turkeys and hams and visit with social service provider

After Saturdays visit  his first to Cairo since the April 10 relocation announcement  Rauner sat down with The Southern for a roughly 25-minute interview after touring Elmwood and McBride, as well as Little Egypt Estates, a small, privately-owned complex that 10 families are moving to from the developments slated for demolition. At the end of the interview, Rauner, unprompted by a particular question, made the statement about his administration kicking HUD in the pants.

HUD spokesman Jereon Brown responded, in an emailed statement, that instead of looking the other way on a problem that festered in Illinois for decades, HUD took the lead on the relocation effort in Cairo. Brown has previously acknowledged that there were oversight failures by the federal agency concerning the events that culminated in a housing crisis, but the federal housing agency has maintained that there were failures at all levels of government, not just at HUD. For instance, Brown said the economic crisis facing Cairo can not be laid at HUD's feet.

Our efforts were initiated prior to any inspiring motivational techniques employed by state officials, Brown said. Kick-starting the Cairo economy may prove to be more helpful.

There have been growing tensions between HUD and the Illinois governors office of late. The Southern asked Rauner, during his visit to Cairo, to discuss the circumstances that led his office to pull the nomination of Joseph Galvan to chair the Illinois Housing Development Authority board in the spring of 2016. Galvan, who was recently named as the regional administrator for HUDs Midwest Regional Office, held the unpaid state-level post for about 10 months upon being nominated by Rauner, but before the nomination was confirmed by the Senate.

HUD's new Midwest director was forced out as chairman of Illinois' housing finance agency Housing and Urban Developments newly appointed Midwest Regional Office regional administrator has a complicated relationship with the state o

Rauner told The Southern that the allegations received by his office resulting in the about-face on the nomination seemed very serious and credible. Rauner also noted that the allegations were forwarded to the Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General, no findings have been forthcoming in the time since, and that he believes in an American justice system of innocent until proven guilty. Brown declined to comment on Rauners remarks.

Galvan was once a political ally of the governor and campaigned for him. Though of late, Galvan has posted several comments on his personal Facebook page indicating that Rauner has lost his support. For instance, Galvan posted IVES FOR GOVERNOR on Oct. 28, a reference to Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, who is challenging the first-term governor in the 2018 Republican primary.

On Dec. 4, Galvan shared a quote by Rauner that has circulated widely across Illinois  Im not in charge. Im trying to get to be in charge.  in which the governor claimed that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was really running the show. Galvans own commentary on the post, which accompanied a link to a story in the Chicago Tribune about Ives' primary challenge of Rauner, stated: You are the Governor, but you proved you dont know how to govern. Move aside.

The emails obtained by The Southern in its FOIA request to Rauner's office about communications between the governor's staff and HUD staff also indicated that on Sept. 15, Pfister, Rauner's federal liaison, reached out to HUD staff for a call about the Cairo housing crisis that Barton, with the agencys congressional office, set up for early the following week.

Though there was very little additional communication via email about Cairo between the governors office and HUD, at least according to what was returned in the FOIA request, Rauners spokeswoman, Patty Schuh, previously said that the office has mostly been working through Bost's congressional office to stay abreast of the situation. She also has said that Illinois Housing Development Authority officials conducted a survey of available housing in Cairo not long after HUD officials announced the relocation effort with an eventual plan to demolish Elmwood and McBride. And she noted that officials with the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity helped city officials write grants to the Delta Regional Authority that were awarded for the local health clinic and to repair the entrance road to Bunge, one of the citys largest employers. She also said phone calls between the governor's office and HUD officials would not have been reflected in the email correspondence provided to The Southern.

The Southern Illinoisan made at least two dozen requests for information and/or interviews about what Rauners office was doing to assist federal officials with the housing, health and economic crises facing Cairo from July until November. For weeks, those requests were at various times ignored, or prompted replies that the office was looking into the matter, and needed more time to respond. Eventually, in November, Schuh said that part of the issue was that HUD was not freely sharing information with the state it needed to determine where it could assist.

Brown, of HUD, offered to call Schuh. But Schuh told The Southern at the time that the governor's office was trying to work through Bost's office  rather than directly with HUD  so as not to create communication confusion.

The Southern spoke with at least five different staffers in Rauners communication office through two significant staff transitions, most of whom are no longer working for the governor, between July and November.
MURPHYSBORO  After previous attempts to open his brewpub in other cities in Southern Illinois, the owner of Little Egypt Beer is eyeing Murphysboro as his next locale.

Brewpub owner Ken Rhude said he is eyeing Murphysboro, a move that is contingent upon his approval for a $900,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. He hopes to use the money to buy property and establish his brewpub off East Industrial Road, diagonal from the Kroger's store off Second Street in north Murphysboro.

The space is two buildings that are about 4,800-square feet.

Rhude said he will know in about 90 days whether he was approved for the loan.

This is the latest site Rhude is looking at, after his plans to move to West Frankfort fell through after he exhausted 12 loan sources, and after he chose not to move into Carbondale after City Council members voted to implement a 4-percent tax on beverages and prepared food.

The Murphysboro location would not have a bar, but would have 20 self-serve taps on the wall, from which patrons can draw their own samples or full beers  a growing trend in the market, he said. Prepaid cards would calculate tabs as patrons self-serve, he said.

The location would also have "fast-casual" food service, where thin-crust pizza would be served, he said.

He plans to hire 10 employees, providing limited service; tips would not be accepted, he said.

If he gets the funding and opens in Murphysboro, he will own the second brewpub in the city; the other is Molly's Pub. The Big Muddy Brewing Co., which is also in Murphysboro, is a microbrewery.
MURPHYSBORO  Thus far this year, the Murphysboro Food Pantry has served almost 500 more individuals than it did at the same time last year, with as many of those coming from Carbondale as from Murphysboro.

Because of that increase in service from Carbondale, the food pantry's outgoing director, Jane Williams, wants to ask Carbondale-area residents and businesses to consider donating to the pantry, particularly as the year ends.

Not that Williams is trying to cause an issue with any other local food pantries.

When she wrote on one of the organization's social media accounts that her nonprofit had given as much food to residents in Carbondale as to Murphysboro and was looking for more donations from that city, she said someone countered her post by posting inaccurate information.

She said she's not interested in engaging in a debate about which food pantry serves more local people or why, but that she was only interested in trying to get those considering or looking to make an end-of-year donation.

"It was not meant to imply that one pantry is doing a better job or not or one is doing a worse job, it was just (we wanted to draw attention to the need we have)," Williams said.

Murphysboro Food Pantry staff believe they will come close to serving, if not exceeding, the 37,500 individuals they provided food to this past year. Once every 30 days, on average, a family of four can get $120 to $150 worth of free food from the pantry.

"That translates into mega-tons of food," she said.

"So we're holding steady because I really do believe for Jackson County, that we're serving just about everybody that knows about us and can use us," Williams said.

The food pantry runs on a $110,000 budget, the vast majority of which goes to purchasing food to give to those in need, Williams said.

Early afternoon on Tuesday, the food pantry's new director, Megan Austin, was making calls to inform patrons who are 60 years and older of their selection for additional food through what staff call the Senior Box Program. Austin succeeds Williams, who is leaving the pantry after nearly 13 years of volunteering to care for her mother.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Murphysboro Food Pantry, located at 906 N. 14th St., is empty, closed for the day, having just received a shipment of food from the St. Louis Area Food Bank. That is the main source from which the Murphysboro Food Pantry buys the food it gives away.

The main section of the Murphysboro Food Pantry is like a small grocery store and waiting room, where patrons take a number for service, then sign in to receive the food. When their number is called, they can select a pre-packed box of food and then take a shopping cart to finish picking up other items they may need or want, such as rice, beans, raisins, breads or the fresh produce  milk, juices, vegetables, for instance  from the pantry's new produce cooler. Patrons can also choose from two to three choices of meat, which are stored in the pantry's new $50,000 commercial walk-in freezer, which was secured with grant money.

Surplus food waiting to be put in the main shopping area is stored in the pantry's warehouse, where there are at least two freezers and one stainless steel industrial type freezer, also purchased with a grant, Williams said.

Williams said the bulk of her time was spent fundraising and otherwise seeking donations to buy food for those who visit the pantry. The Murphysboro Food Pantry was incorporated in February 2004; donations are tax-deductible to the 501(c)3 organization.

Each year, Williams said her goal has been to be able to offer more food to the families and individuals seeking it.

The food pantry is open 9 to 11 a.m. Monday through Friday and serves those who meet federally established income guidelines.

In addition to cash donations, pantry staff are also seeking volunteers to help manage the facility and keep costs low.
QUINCY  The Illinois General Assembly's two veterans committees are scheduled to hold a joint legislative hearing to address the Legionnaires' disease outbreak at a veterans home.

Thirteen residents at the Illinois Veterans Home have died of the disease over the past three years, including 12 who died in 2015 and one whose death was reported in October.

State Sen. Tom Cullerton, D-Villa Park, toured the home in Quincy on Tuesday to prepare for the hearing, The Quincy Herald-Whig reported. It'll be held in Chicago on Jan. 9.

"If I'm going to hold legislative hearings, I have to know what I'm talking about, and I have to see the site physically for myself," Cullerton said.

Cullerton, who is the chairman of the Illinois Senate's Veterans Affairs Committee, said while he's concerned that the disease is still an issue at the home, he wants to keep the facility in operation. He said he would like to see it grow to serve more veterans.

"The flagship of our veterans facilities needs to stay open, needs to serve residents as best it can," Cullerton said.

He said the hearing will focus on the reoccurrence of the disease at the home and that will include a variety of agencies and individuals with insight into the outbreak.

Cullerton said it's important for the General Assembly to get to the root of the issue and "find out exactly what was known and who knew what."

Cullerton also blamed Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration of not solving the issue at the home completely.

"He (Rauner) came out in 2016 saying it's fixed, it's done, we're good, problem solved. Yet here we are almost exactly a year later and we've got more cases," Cullerton said. "Obviously, if the governor is not going to be able to fix it, the Legislature has to step in and do his job for him."

Rauner said that the legionella bacterium is common in water supplies throughout Illinois. He said "it's something we need to stay vigilant about."

"Our team there in the Quincy Veterans Home has been very aggressive, taken every appropriate step to keep over veterans safe and healthy," Rauner said.
This editorial appeared in the Dec. 17, 2017, edition of the The Quincy Herald-Whig:

Beyond the extensive safety measures that already have been put in place, what can be done to prevent further cases of Legionnaires' disease at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy?

That is one of the critical questions being asked after it was reported last week that families of 10 Veterans Home residents who died from the disease in 2015 have sued the state of Illinois for negligence, and an 11th lawsuit is expected to be filed.

Chicago's WBEZ Radio first reported the lawsuits Tuesday in a story that detailed multiple outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease at the Quincy facility in each of the last three years, resulting in 13 deaths and more than 60 cases of residents becoming ill from exposure to Legionella bacteria.

The families contend that those deaths and continued problems with eradicating the disease at the home were preventable. Among other things, they claim the state knew about the Legionella infections for more than a month in 2015 before making the information public.

The story has since reverberated around the state, and the finger-pointing has been predictably swift. There have been numerous calls from state and federal elected officials for further investigations and independent audits into how Illinois has managed this lingering crisis.

This is clearly a heartbreaking story that should not become a political one.

Unquestionably, the accounts of the sacrifices made by those veterans during times of war are compelling and their deaths tragic. That's why it's incumbent on health professionals to remain vigilant and intensify efforts to address ongoing issues that still confound experts.

Extraordinary steps have been taken since 2015 to address the spread of Legionella bacteria.

The Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs began an extensive rehabilitation of the Veterans Home that summer after Legionnaires' disease sickened 53 people there and led to 12 deaths. IDVA spokesman Dave MacDonna said last week the state to date has invested $6.39 million on the water system upgrades and other action to eliminate Legionella bacteria at the home.

Specifically, a chemical mixing system was installed at the Veterans Home to treat the water beyond what occurs at the city's water treatment plant, and a second level of purification occurs when the treated water is heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit to kill bacteria.

Along with other safeguards, water is tested daily across the 210-acre campus, with those results sent to a private lab for additional analysis.

Marty Detmer of Phigenics LLC, the Warrenville company hired to help develop a water treatment program, said the treatment protocol in place in Quincy outpaces industry standards and even that of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

In fact, testing data obtained by The Herald-Whig from the IDVA through a Freedom of Information Act request show the number of positive Legionella tests have declined substantially since the new plant went online in June 2016.

Results showed no tests after September in 2016, and only four of the 853 tests conducted in 2017 through Oct. 24 indicated Legionella levels above the mark considered acceptable for high-risk populations by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

By contrast, Phigenics tested 385 samples starting Sept. 11, 2015, through the end of that year. Eighteen of those tests had Legionella levels exceeding OSHA standards.

Moreover, protocols to treat residents who display symptoms of the disease were established with the help of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when none existed before the initial outbreak.

Despite those efforts, however, five other residents were sickened during another outbreak last year after the new water treatment plant and delivery system was unveiled, and three more cases have been confirmed this fall, including Roy Dehn, an 88-year-old resident who died Oct. 12 at Blessing Hospital.

With each new case, frustration understandably mounts and demands for "doing something" intensify. It should be left to health and medical professionals to determine what future actions should be taken.

Clearly, state and veterans' officials would be wise to keep the public informed on efforts being made to ensure the future care and well-being of the nearly 400 men and women who served their country now living at the Veterans Home.
DENMARK - Denmark-Olar Elementary School held its annual Christmas program on Dec. 14 in the schools gymnasium. All of the students at the school participated, and Katlyn Cramer presided. Jaleigha Patterson welcomed everyone, and Mileaha Johnson led the pledge of allegiance.

Under the direction of the music teacher, Bernadette L. Montes, the students performed a variety of Christmas classics. The D-O Elementary dance troupe also performed a Christmas Native American dance.

The pre-kindergarten students took first place in a friendly Christmas competition with their rendition of Rocking Around the Christmas Tree." The kindergarten class came in second. They performed the Santa Claus Poem." Third place went to the fifth graders who performed a Winter Fantasy dance routine.

Montes was assisted by Yolanda Sumpter.

It was good to see the parents support the children, Bamberg School District 2 Trustee Beverly Bonaparte said.

Assistant Principal Lindsey Toomer recognized the parents who served as judges for the program and thanked guests and parents.

Principal Dr. Lorraine Peeples praised the successful program and thanked the parents and the Mary Jane Dancers for their participation.

The highlight of the program was when Santa arrived to greet the students and take pictures with them.
Motorists face higher gasoline prices this Christmas travel season.

A T&D survey of Orangeburg-area stations found the average price of self-serve, regular gasoline was $2.194 a gallon on Monday.

The least expensive gasoline sold for $2.059 a gallon at the Murphy U.S.A. station in North Road Plaza and at the Shell K on North Road.

Last year, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in Orangeburg was $2.02 a gallon at Christmastime.

Two years ago, Christmas gasoline prices in the Orangeburg area were averaging $1.779 a gallon.

Prices this Christmas are lower than during the Thanksgiving holiday, when they averaged $2.24 a gallon.

Statewide, the average price of regular unleaded is about $2.17 a gallon. Only Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama have lower prices on average than South Carolina.

Gas prices are the lowest since Hurricane Harvey caused prices to spike in September.

The Energy Information Administration reports the decline follows an increase in U.S. gasoline inventories.

Total gasoline production hit 10.1 million barrels per day while implied gasoline demand amounted to 9.1 million barrels per day.

Due to a stronger economy, more Americans are expected to travel over the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

Auto club AAA says 107 million people will travel between Dec. 23 and Jan. 1, a 3.1 percent increase over last year.

It's the ninth straight increase in Christmas travel, according to AAA.

Most will travel by car  about 97 million  despite higher gasoline prices.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol offers the following safety tips for motorists traveling over the holiday weekend:

Have your vehicle checked for the following: brakes, battery, fluid levels, tire pressure, light bulbs and any parts that need regular maintenance.

Plan your route. Do you have maps in case there are detours?

Are you prepared for roadway emergencies? Bring along a first-aid kit, flashlight, blankets, drinking water, snacks, flares, jumper cables and an ice scraper.

Make sure your cell phone is fully charged before you leave.

If you are traveling into other states where you are unfamiliar with the roads, pay close attention to speed limits and other road signs.

Be patient. Do not tailgate. Follow from a safe distance and refuse to engage in aggressive/combative driving.

Make sure you get plenty of rest the night before traveling.

Try to save rest room/stretching breaks for designated rest areas.

Do not leave purses, wallets or other belongings visible in the vehicle.

Take the keys and lock your vehicle while pumping gas.
Jennifer Lyons Martin, 35, of Ehrhardt has been sentenced to six months in jail and six months home confinement for theft by a bank employee, U.S. Attorney Beth Drake stated Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs of Columbia further ordered that Martin pay $296,000 in restitution and perform 500 hours of community service.

Evidence presented at the change of plea hearing established that Martin worked for South State Bank in the Bamberg branch as a vault teller.

During an audit in 2015, more than $100,000 was discovered missing.

Martin was approached and confessed to taking almost $300,000 beginning in 2013 and lasting through September 2015.

She had two personal checking accounts and four savings accounts at South State into which she funneled the money. She spent almost all of it on restaurants, shopping, travel and living expenses.

The case was investigated by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston David Holliday Jr. of the Columbia office prosecuted the case.
Orangeburg County Councilman Clyde Livingston died in July after a long health struggle, leaving behind a legacy of service to his family and his constituents.

In November, Ray Wannamaker Sabalis was elected to serve out Livingstons unexpired term.

Since his death, I have learned from Clyde Livingstons family members and constituents about how deeply he cared about the well-being of members of multiple communities within the county, Sabalis said.

In my work on County Council, I intend to show the same level of concern for the countys residents, she said.

An Orangeburg County native, Livingston, 69, grew up in North and graduated from North High School and the University of South Carolina.

He was dedicated to serving his constituents.

"Daddy would bend over backwards. If he had the capability and the means to help somebody, he would, daughter Adriane Radeker said.

The certified public accountant was elected to represent District 6 on Orangeburg County Council in 1995, but his interest in politics and public service goes back further.

He served as student body president of his high school and was active in 4-H.

A former chairman of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party, he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the House District 93 seat in 1974.

Two years later, he unsuccessfully ran against Republican Congressman Floyd Spence for the 2nd District seat.

He was elected to the non-partisan Soil and Water Conservation District in 1992, serving until his election to the Orangeburg County Council District 6 seat. District 6 includes the City of Orangeburg and areas to the west along Edisto Drive.

As a county councilman, Livingston spearheaded the CREST (Community Resources Enhancement Sites Trust) program, which includes the Boys and Girls Club site on Cannon Bridge Road, the John W. Stroman Senior Center on Edisto Drive and the Senior Citizens Center on Mixon Mill Road.

As a councilman, he served on the board of Three Rivers Solid Waste Authority, the board of the S.C. Association of Counties Workmens Comp Trust and Property and Liability Trust and the Lower Savannah Council of Governments.

Battling diabetes, he underwent two amputations in 2016 before receiving rehabilitation therapy at The Oaks in Orangeburg. All the while, he was focusing on getting back to work.

"He'll be missed, said friend and fellow Councilman Heyward Livingston, also a North High graduate. I went out to The Oaks to visit him when he was out there, and that's what we talked about -- the people in his district. He was concerned and he wanted to get out and get back to work again.

Family, friends and colleagues said Livingston is deeply missed, recalling his determination, intelligence and sense of humor.

I remember that many times we would disagree in council, but we were always able to resolve things at the end of the day, Councilwoman Janie Cooper-Smith said. Clyde had a sense of humor you wouldn't believe.

In November, after months of campaigning, elections and even a voting machine mishap during the Democratic primary, Sabalis was certified as the winner of the special election to fill Livingstons unexpired term.

The seat has 13 months remaining on the term.

As a member of County Council, two of my emphases will be to ensure that the Orangeburg County Economic Development Commission has sufficient support and resources to continue its work to attract additional jobs to Orangeburg County and that the Orangeburg County schools and OCtech have sufficient resources and expertise to prepare the countys residents for these jobs, Sabalis said.

In addition, I hope to fulfill the confidence that the voters in District 6 placed in me at the time of the election by responding effectively to the issues that they raise that are within County Councils purview, she said.

Sabalis became the Democratic nominee for the seat after winning the Oct. 10 primary runoff against candidate Deloris Frazier. In November, she won the special election against Josh Ridley, the only Republican to file for the seat.

Since my election three weeks ago, I have benefitted from the multiple formal and informal briefings that I have received from knowledgeable people in both the city and county, and I plan to use that information to enhance my effectiveness as a council member in the coming months, she said.

Born in Orangeburg, Sabalis spent her childhood in Camden before moving to Columbia for 30 years. In 2000, she and husband Robert Sabalis relocated to Alexandria, Virginia, for his job.
During the Christmas season, it's fair to say people could use a lesson in personal finance. Too many will find themselves paying for the holiday long after the new year.

In an era when the future of cash is being debated and even credit and debit cards are considered yesterday's technology, the bottom line continues to be living within personal means. To do so means understanding how the world of finance works.

For some years, there has been debate on whether schools are doing enough to teach young people about the basics of finance.

South Carolina has made strides in doing so -- but can do better.

High schools in the state earned a B- for teaching personal finance in the recently released 2017 Report Card on State Efforts to Improve Financial Literacy in High Schools. It is titled Is Your State Making the Grade? 

The report card, prepared by Champlain Colleges Center for Financial Literacy, grades each of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on how well their high schools teach personal finance. The 2017 report card is the third done by the center, with previous reports cards in 2015 and 2013.

South Carolina joined Arkansas, Arizona, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan and Idaho in receiving a B-. Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia earned an A grade, and Utah was the only state to receive an A+.

John Pelletier, director of the Champlain College center, said states received B-, B or B+ based on whether courses allocated more than, equal to, or less than a quarter of the course to personal finance. South Carolina requires a half-year economics course, and personal finance is embedded in it.

The center estimates South Carolina students receive about seven hours of instruction in personal finance. It is unclear how or whether the state measures student proficiency.

Pelletier notes that research indicates students from wealthy communities are much more likely to have access to personal finance education in high school than students in poor communities.

The poor should have equal access to personal finance education in high school  it shouldnt be for just the rich, he said. But access is only possible if a state policy requires it.

In addition to compiling data from various sources, Champlains center conducted in-depth research on each states policies regarding the teaching of high school personal finance. The center reviewed state laws and regulations, graduation requirements, educational standards and assessment policies, and clarified questions in discussions with state education policy experts.

We are pleased with incremental improvements in many states, and South Carolina is part of the good news, Pelletier said. But states with C or lower grades have to do better."

The original Champlain 2013 and 2015 report cards generated widespread media attention. Of more importance, it sparked discussion among state legislatures, citizens and organizations committed to improving financial literacy.

There is need for further discussion -- and serious examination on how South Carolina can further improve personal finance instruction. Few things in education are any more important as studies show financial literacy is linked to positive outcomes like wealth accumulation, stock market participation, retirement planning and avoiding high-cost alternative financial services.

As Pelletier said: High school graduates are about to step into the world of work, military service or college, and they need to have the financial skills to navigate a complex world."
By Trend





Russian Minister of Economic Development Maksim Oreshkin will pay a working visit to Baku on Dec. 25, said a message posted on the website of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development Dec. 20.

According to the message, during the visit, Oreshkin will meet with Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev and take part in an expanded meeting of the Russian-Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani-Russian business councils and the opening ceremony of a representative office of the Russian Export Center JSC in Azerbaijan.

"The meeting will discuss the current relations and prospects of trade and economic relations between Russia and Azerbaijan in such important sectors as energy, industry, agriculture, transport, construction and tourism," the message said. Promotion of investment projects and initiatives as well as improvement of conditions for cooperation between the business circles of the two countries will be the key topics of the meeting."

Memorandums of intent are expected to be signed between Russian and Azerbaijani companies as part of the minister's visit. B2B meetings and an exchange of business contacts will also be held.

The data from the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee shows that trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia in January-October 2017 amounted to $1.89 billion, of which $528.97 million accounted for the export of Azerbaijani products to Russia.
By Trend





An international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Religions and Intercultural Dialogue has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku on December 21.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is taking part in the opening ceremony of the conference.

The conference is organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan, and is dedicated to the results of the Year of Islamic Solidarity, proclaimed by a decree of President Aliyev.

The international conference is attended by well-known state, religious and scientific figures from about 40 countries, heads and representatives of eight international organizations, special representatives of heads of various states, leaders of religious confessions, government, public and parliamentary members, representatives of the diplomatic corps.

The conference started with the recitation of ayahs from Holy Quran.












IPO values surged to $2.1 billion in 2017 from $676 million in the previous year, surging 55 per cent, while volumes also increased by 40 per cent, from four IPOs in 2016 to 12 in the current year, said global law firm Baker McKenzie.



The number of IPOs this year compared to 2015 climbed by 22 per cent, although capital raised fell by 3 per cent, the firm explained in its latest Cross-Border IPO Index.



Overall IPO activity from the Middle East (both domestic and cross-border) saw a 225 per cent increase in terms of volume and 315 per cent increase in value. The UAE and Saudi Arabia led domestic IPO activity with four listings each, followed by Oman with three and Qatar with one.



The UAE had the largest share (64.4 per cent) in terms of capital raising from the region, with proceeds of $1.3 billion from its four listings. This value excludes the $851 million listing of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for Distribution PJSC (the biggest listing on the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange in the past decade), which was only priced on December 13, 2017.



Stability of oil prices and the political situation will contribute to developing market penetration and enhancing liquidity, said Zahi Younes, Capital Markets/M&A partner at Baker McKenzie's associated firm in Saudi Arabia.



As per our recent global transactions forecast, strong economic reforms and privatization plans in Saudi Arabia will lead to an increase in investor appetite and are likely to drive IPO activity in 2018.



The top sectors by volume for domestic IPOs in the region in 2017 were financials and energy & power, with three listings each, and the top sector by value was the real estate sector, with more than $1.2 billion raised from one listing.



Global IPO volumes in 2017 reached the highest level in a decade, the Index said.



The Middle East region also picked up with 300 per cent increase in value of domestic deals and securing the first cross-border listing in the region since 2015.



Low market volatility as a result of the relatively benign geopolitical environment and improved market sentiment were behind the increase in global IPO activity, which saw both cross-border and domestic activity grow. In total, 1,694 companies raised $206.6 billion from IPOs, a jump of around a third in both value and volume on 2016.



Cross-border activity



Cross-border deals jumped by 60 per cent in volume, growing in all regions, including Latin America, which saw its first cross-border listing in 10 years. Cross-border capital raising also grew in value in 2017 by 25 per cent, the majority of which was accounted for by a strong performance in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and North America. That helped offset a decline in Asia Pacific cross-border capital raising.



The UAE recorded the only cross-border listing in the Middle East region, by ADES International Holding, which raised $243.5 million on the London Stock Exchange.



The economic activity associated with IPOs is vital for the overall development of regional capital markets, which in turn will stimulate further growth in Arab economies, said Mazen Boustany, head of Banking & Finance at Baker McKenzie Habib Al Mulla in the UAE.  TradeArabia News Service
A packed Christian church in southwestern Pakistan was targeted by two suicide bombers on Sunday, killing at least eight people and wounding up to 45, said a report.



The gunmen wearing explosives-filled vests stormed the church in Quetta city when Sunday services had just opened, exploding a suicide vest and shooting at the worshippers, said a Reuters report.



Christian places of worship are often targeted by Islamist extremists over Christmas.



No one has claimed responsibility, the report said.






This winter, Ajwa Hotel Sultanahmet offers the chance to step away from the conventional holiday and loose oneself in the winding streets of the magical city of Istanbul.



The artisanal gem is located in the very heart of Old Istanbul, providing guests with opulent yet quintessentially Turkish rooms, creating an air of excitement and mystery from the moment guests set down their bags. The winter season is the perfect time to make use of the extensive Culture Package available at the hotel, wherein guests can reside in lavishly decorated deluxe rooms. Visitors can marvel at the especially sourced artworks that adorn the grand walls of the majestic property. In order to keep up energy levels for a long day of exploring all that the city has to offer, the in-house Azerbaijani restaurant Zeferan provides diners with a sumptuous range of wholesome dishes that pay homage to the inviting scents and piquant flavours of the popular cuisine.



As part of the generous Culture Package guests will be supplied with an Istanbul travel card with a value of 50 Turkish Lira, which can be used whilst traversing across the beautiful city. Sights that are not to be missed include the iconic Blue Mosque, towering imposingly over the city, with its glorious minarets and domes. The Hagia Sofia would be the next stop, providing visitors with a glimpse of the architectural styles of both the legendary empires that once ruled Istanbul, the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Furthermore, visiting Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar and Istiklal Avenue will make for a truly memorable end to the year. With the plethora of historical sights and museums to fit into the trip, guests will be glad to find that the package includes 2 complimentary entries to sights of their choosing.



The combination of the grandeur of the hotel, the intriguing sights and sounds to take in and the flavoursome cuisine on offer render the festive well spent at Ajwa Hotel Sultanahmet.



Prices for the Culture Package start from 230 ($270.9) per night

 Deluxe Room with breakfast

 Two complimentary entries to the museums or historical sights in Istanbul

 Istanbul NOL Card with 50.TL

 15 per cent discount on dinner at Zeferan Restaurant. - TradeArabia News Service


Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
This past weekend my wife and I hosted 20 of our former housemates and closest Casper friends who have since moved away. During a dinner toast one of them reminded all of us how essential it is to love unrestrained and with an open mind. That kind of love has to be the surest way to make the world  and our communities and familiesa better place. Unpack these holiday recipes while you unpack how to love better this holiday season.

Winter Ginger Smash

We have finally come full circle with the ginger smash. This winter version from Speakeasy: The Employees Only Guide to Classic Cocktails Reimagined, will enliven your taste buds and festoon your glass with some seasonal color. Here, apple, lemon and cranberries do a lively, fruity dance with convincing acidity and subtle bitter complexity. The ginger lends earthy spice while a juniper forward gin creates the quintessential evergreen backbone. I recommend this delicious smash as a punch for your next holiday party.

1.5 oz. Gin

1.5 oz. Apple liqueur

 oz. Fresh lemons juice

1.5 tsp. sugar

10 cranberries

3 thin slices of fresh, peeled ginger

Muddle the ginger and sugar in a Boston shaker. Add the cranberries and keep muddling. Add remaining ingredients and fresh ice. Shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Pour unstrained into a rocks glass. If making as a punch, scale ingredients as necessary. Combine liquid ingredients and pre-freeze. Muddle in workable batches, then add ice and pre-chilled liquid to punch bowl.

Blue Blazer (makes two drinks)

The father of American Mixology, Jerry Thomas, debuted the Blue Blazer in his 1862 Bartenders Guide: How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivants Companion. It is essentially a fiery, dazzling preparation of a scotch hot toddy. If you try this at home, use extreme caution and first practice using only water until your pouring technique is well honed.

4 oz. Single Malt Scotch

4 oz. Boiling water

2 tsp. demerara, turbinado, or brown sugar

6-8 dashes bitters (optional)

2 lemon slices

2 lemon twists (optional)

Preheat two teacups and two metal mugs. Add the sugar, bitters, and water to one mug and the Scotch to the other. Ignite the Scotch and swirl to adequately enliven the alcohol molecules. Carefully pour the flaming scotch into the mug of hot water. Gradually increase the distance between the mugs as you continue to pour the stream of fire back and forth between the mugs. Repeat four or five times. Extinguish the flames in one mug with the base of the other and split the hot concoction between the teacups. Drizzle oil from the lemon twists over the drinks. Garnish each with the twists and lemon slices.

The burden of proof is now yours. Learn better to love unrestrained and with an open mind. Then go make a good unrestrained drink for a good open-minded friend.

A Wyoming native, Jeremy Hugus is a trial lawyer and the owner of Platte River Law Firm by day, a gourmand by night, and a humorist in his dreams. He is passionate about good food and drink and good people and treasures the robust community that blossoms around the table blessed with both. If you have questions or comments, or would like to see a particular spirit or topic featured, please email Jeremy at tribcocktails@gmail.com.

A very spirited thanks to Urban Bottle and Platte River Law Firm for helping to make this column possible.
After a contentious, three-hour public hearing last Tuesday night, the Casper City Council approved selling two city-owned buildings to local entrepreneurs hoping to bring new apartments and an apparel store to downtown.

City Council was split on the decision, with five members voting to sell the buildings and three voting against.

Shortly after the city received the bids in October, a conference center consortium urged Council to reject the bids because a study revealed the land in question was the best spot to potentially develop a roughly $70 million hotel and conference center.

The buildings, which are located on Ash Street north of Midwest Avenue, include the former Ka-Larks gymnastics studio and the former Milos Toyota body shop.

After struggling with the decision for a few weeks, Council decided to hold a hearing to let local residents voice their views. City Council chambers were full Tuesday night, with 18 people speaking in favor of accepting the bids, and 3 speaking against selling the properties.

***

The Downtown Development Authoritys CEO, Kevin Hawley, urged council to have faith in the consortiums vision for Casper.

The group includes representatives from the Downtown Development Authority, Casper Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Amoco Reuse Agreement Joint Powers Board and the Economic Development Joint Powers Board/Forward Casper.

While developing a hotel and conference center may sound overly ambitious, Hawley said the David Street Station  a public downtown plaza  was also a controversial project prior to its construction.

Everything we said we were going to do with the David Street Station, weve done, he said.

Given that the plaza recently opened and is not yet complete, the CEO also explained that its difficult to currently determine the value of the Ash Street buildings, which are located nearby.

But the majority of those who spoke Tuesday night encouraged Council to accept the bids.

Doing so would send a message that the city supports the energy and creativity of local entrepreneurs, said William Conte, a professor at Casper College who attended the hearing with about a dozen of his students.

Others expressed concerns that the large facility would negatively alter the landscape, dramatically increase downtowns traffic and take away needed business from other local hotels.

Multiple speakers said they supported the idea of developing a hotel and conference center, but felt the group should pick another location because they want the historic Ash Street buildings to be preserved.

The consortium also analyzed two other potential sites, including a Platte River Commons property and an area just west of the downtown core owned by Casper Redevelopment Corporation and the Natrona County Public Library Foundation. A study concluded that these locations were less desirable because they are further away from the citys center and would therefore generate less foot traffic downtown.

***

After listening to residents, Councilman Bob Hopkins said he firmly supported accepting the bids. The consortium told Council at a Dec. 12 meeting that they could present a concrete financial plan in six months, but Hopkins wasnt convinced.

The idea of having numbers together in six months is a myth, he said Tuesday.

Councilman Shawn Johnson, who pointed out at a meeting earlier this month that previous plans for a hotel and conference center never panned out, said Tuesday that he agreed with Hopkins.

Although he stated that the conference center sounded like a long shot, Councilman Charlie Powell said he was still voting to reject the bids because the facility could have a huge impact on Casper.

I dont want to take any action that reduces the likelihood of having that facility built, he said.

Explaining that the request for proposal process was flawed, Vice Mayor Ray Pacheco said he was also rejecting the bids.

There are many unknowns, he said.

Ultimately, Mayor Kenyne Humphrey and council members Dallas Laird, Shawn Johnson, Bob Hopkins and Chris Walsh voted to approve the bids. Vice Mayor Ray Pacheco and councilmen Jesse Morgan and Charlie Powell voted against them. Council member Amanda Huckabay was absent.

I didnt feel we were going to get it, so yeah, its a surprise, said David Kelley, who won the bid for the former body shop. The owner of Ashby Construction intends to use the building as office space for his own business and will then build three buildings next to it to rent out as apartments.

Scott Cotton, a co-owner of 1890 Inc., won the bid for the former gymnastic studio. Cotton previously explained that his custom apparel store needs a larger space to meet customer demands.

The buildings were part of the Plains Furniture property block, which also included a former livery stable that has not yet received a bid. City officials purchased the properties in early 2016 with no exact plans for their use.

Brandon Daigle, the chairman of the Downtown Development Authority, confirmed Wednesday that the consortium will continue on with their plans to bring a conference center to Casper using one of the other potential sites.
Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso said he does not believe an official analysis of the GOP tax
WASHINGTON  Its a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix a tax code that stifles business investment, keeps trillions in corporate profits languishing overseas and slows the American economy.

So argue Republicans in Congress, who hail their tax overhaul as an economic tonic that will deliver benefits to ordinary Americans well into the future.

This legislation includes meaningful changes that will help individuals and families struggling to move up the economic ladder, Wyoming U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, a Republican, said in a statement after the bill passed Tuesday night.

The Cowboy States all-Republican Congressional delegation cheered the tax plans approval this week.

Allowing Wyoming families and businesses to keep more of their hard-earned money will encourage additional investment in our economy and help our local businesses expand, generating economic growth and creating new jobs for Wyoming, Rep. Liz Cheney said in a statement.

Cheney specifically touted an increased standard deduction and child tax credit as well as the plans doubling of the estate tax exemptions.

This bill will encourage businesses to invest in the United States, creating jobs and economic growth, Cheney said.

Critics skeptical

Democrats and most nonpartisan analysts view things rather differently  and they point to history to argue their case. They see the tax plan as an ill-conceived bill that will further enrich the wealthy and swell the governments debts by at least $1 trillion in the next decade. Previous tax cuts, they note, have done little to boost hiring, raise wages or accelerate economic growth.

Either way, President Donald Trump is prepared this week to sign the measure into law, to take effect in 2018, after the House and Senate each passed it Wednesday. The bill  approved without a single Democratic vote in Congress  will mark the most far-reaching rewrite of tax law since 1986.

Over the weekend, Trump spoke expansively about the economic bounty he said the bill would unleash. Noting that the American economy grew at an annual rate of at least 3 percent in each of the past two quarters, Trump predicted that we could go to 4, 5, or even 6 percent, ultimately.... We are really going to start to rock.

The administrations official forecasts are more restrained. The Treasury Department and the White House budget office predict that the tax bill and other policy steps will support average annual growth of 2.9 percent from 2018-2027. That estimate adds about 1 percentage point to the average annual growth the Congressional Budget Office had forecast before any policy changes.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, has helped shepherd the bill through the Senate as the fourth-ranking member of that chamber.

I have always believed the best way for Washington to give Americans the most value for their money is to let them keep it at home, Barrasso said in a statement. This bill does that, while making American businesses more competitive and unleashing the full potential of our economy.

Nonpartisan observers expect the bill to deliver far less. The University of Pennsylvanias Penn Wharton Budget Model says it will increase growth by no more than 0.12 percentage point a year from 2018 to 2027 and swell the federal debt by at least $1.9 trillion in that time.

Broad plan

The plan is nothing if not ambitious.

It permanently slashes the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. It imposes a low one-time tax on companies overseas earnings, nudging them to return money theyve stashed abroad. It provides a windfall to people who pay the personal tax on business earnings. It will narrow and eventually end the tax on wealthy estates. And it will slash individual tax rates  but allow those cuts to expire in 2026.

If Congress allows the cuts to expire as scheduled, 95 percent of Wyoming taxpayers will pay more in 2027 than they do today, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The plan reflects the economic philosophy that has dominated the Republican Party since the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s: That cutting taxes and regulations and shrinking government will spur businesses to invest  in factories, equipment, software, people  and thereby energize the American economy. The benefits of a tax windfall to corporations and the wealthy will trickle down, in time, to ordinary Americans.

Kevin Hassett, chairman of Trumps Council of Economic Advisers, has asserted that the corporate tax cuts alone will end up swelling the average households income by at least $4,000 a year.

And Republicans say the economy could use a lift. Its growth from 2010 to 2016 has clocked in at annual average pace of 2.1 percent a year, unimpressive compared with the 3.2 percent average growth from 1948 through 2016.

Like European countries and Japan, the U.S. economy has been slowed by a slump in worker productivity. Productivity  worker output per hour  slogged ahead at an average annual rate of just 0.6 percent from 2011 to 2016, a fraction of the post-World War II average of 2.1 percent.

The more productive workers are, the more employers can afford to pay them. So productivity gains are vital to rising wages and living standards.

One way companies can make workers more productive is to invest in technology to make them more efficient. But in the 8.5 years since the Great Recession officially ended, businesses have been slower to invest than they were during previous long expansions.

Short term good

The Republican tax plan, its architects say, could accelerate such investment. Besides slashing corporate tax rates, the bill lets companies immediately write off the full cost of new equipment.

It would be good in the short term, said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at California State University-Channel Islands. Corporate cash flow would improve, helping investments. Businesses would be spending money and then hiring people.

But economists caution that the gains will likely be modest in the long run. Companies already hold nearly $2.4 trillion in cash. And they can still borrow at historically low rates. So if they want to invest more, they can already do so.

Its not like theyre dying for extra cash, says Joseph Song, senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Some smaller companies might invest some portion of their tax windfall. But large companies make their capital spending plans years in advance and arent likely to make major changes, Song says.

Whats more, most previous tax cuts have produced minimal economic gains. Wages actually fell, for example, after corporate rates were cut in the 1986 tax reform plan. And a one-time cut in the tax on overseas corporate profits in 2004 did little to boost investment or hiring.

Then theres the timing of the 2017 tax plan. The economy is nearly nine years into its recovery. Significant gains at this point would be unusual. The unemployment rate has reached a 17-year low of 4.1 percent.

Adding additional stimulus at this point, you run the risk of running the economy a little too hot, Song said.
A Montana judge has temporarily restricted wolf hunting and trapping near Yellowstone and Glacier national parks and imposed tighter statewide limits on killing the predators. Wildlife advocates sued last month claiming that looser hunting rules adopted in the Republican-controlled state could harm wolf populations. State District Court Judge Christopher Abbott on Tuesday ordered officials to reimpose rules from 2020 that allow the killing of only five wolves per person, instead of 20, and forbid the use of snares for trapping. Abbott also limited hunting and trapping near the national parks. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte criticized the ruling, saying he thinks the judge overstepped his bounds. But state wildlife officials have pledged to comply with the order.
Wind speeds reached nearly triple digits early Thursday morning in northwest Wyoming as a winter storm dumped snow across much of the state, according to the National Weather Service.

Gusts registered at 98 mph near Clark, a small community close to the Montana border. Wind speeds also reached 60 mph early Thursday morning on Wyoming Boulevard in Casper, 72 mph near Muddy Gap and 71 mph near Hiland in Natrona County.

The storm created hazardous driving conditions across portions of southeast and central Wyoming, with no unnecessary travel warnings on portions of Interstate 25 and closed sections of other highways.

Reports Thursday afternoon showed up to a foot of snow fell near Lander, 7 inches on Casper Mountain and 6.8 inches at the Casper/Natrona County International Airport, according to information from the weather service.

Light snow may return to Casper on Friday, along with wind chill values as low as 5 below zero and wind gusts up to 26 mph. Temperatures will warm slightly in central Wyoming over the weekend, with highs around 19 on Saturday and 27 on Christmas Day.

Thursday was the winter solstice, which marked the shortest day of the year. Casper had 9 hours and 1 minute of sunlight Thursday.
CHEYENNEA Wyoming lawmaker defended Tuesday how he conducted a meeting in Sundance in November when public comment included some ugly personal attacks.

The Wyoming Legislatures Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee met Nov. 20 in Sundance, where lawmakers discussed legislation that would update gender references in state statute and amend archaic language, according to the draft bill.

It would codify the rights of parties legally authorized to marry in Wyoming following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015 recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages across the country.

While the legislation had attracted little to no public attention prior to Nov. 20, around 35 people showed up to the Sundance meeting in opposition, said Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, committee co-chairman. The first to speak was Erik Akola, who moved to Wyoming from Alaska because, he said, men were men and women were women, according to a Dec. 5 WyoFile report. Akola, from outside Sundance, went on to describe same-sex couples as despicable and vile.

This was all as Akola was seated next to House Minority Leader Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie, who proposed the legislation. Connolly is a longtime advocate for LGBTQ issues and is herself in a same-sex marriage. Comments on the matter went on for more than two hours, with many expressing faith-based convictions that same-sex marriage has no place in Wyoming, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court decided.

Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said many of the comments were in opposition to same-sex marriage, but none of those subsequent to Akola were nearly as ugly.

The committee killed the bill with multiple lawmakers flipping their positions. Now it needs a two-thirds vote to be introduced during the 2018 session, effectively ending it for now.

Some interest groups questioned whether Case, the meetings chairman, should have put a stop to the public comment period on that bill.

Marguerite Herman of the League of Women Voters sent the council a memo calling on legislative leaders to implement additional decorum guidelines and encourage committee chairmen to enforce existing ones vigorously. This, she argued, would avoid the possibility of disruptive and abusive comments from intimidating legislators when considering bills. The memoco-signed by the Equality State Policy Center, Wyoming Equality and the Diocese of Cheyennerecommended chairmen do the following:

Keep comments directed at legislation

Not allow testimony to include personal attacks

Correct falsehoods or ask for evidence

Maintain an environment of decorum and respect, where witnesses may be heard free of interruption and intimidation

Because of the controversy that emerged from the meeting, the Wyoming Legislatures Management Councilwhich includes Senate President Eli Bebout, R-Riverton, and House Speaker Steve Harshman, R-Casper, as well as Connollydiscussed public decorum in interim committee meetings when they met Tuesday in Cheyenne. Case was called into the Management Council meeting.

Connolly acknowledged that Case interjected at one point to ask Akola to express himself in a responsible manner, asked questions when witnesses made false assertions about the bill and corrected those who made unrealistic claims. And while she said not all the comments after Akola were as offensive, she said others continued in that vein through implication over and over again.

Rep. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, made the long drive from the northwest corner of the state to Cheyenne to testify before the council. He said it would be unfair to say Case didnt do his job as chairman during the meeting and was walking a fine line. However, Gierau said he thought the comments did cross a line into inappropriate territory.

You can disagree without being disagreeable, he said. I think debate is fine, and thats a hard line to walk. (But) if we lower the bar 1 inch on this, were going to diminish this body. Well be going down a slippery slope.

Harshman expressed confidence in Cases work as chairman, and said sometimes things happen that can catch those running meetings off guard. While urging caution to those who believed the Legislature as an institution was being diminished by its handling of public testimony, he said the Sundance situation could serve to inform lawmakers going forward.

Lets take this and say it was probably a learning experience, Harshman said. Lets learn from it, move on and get better.

Case, however, said he probably wouldnt change much of how he handled the situation if he had to do it again. Aside from possibly prompting Connolly to move from her seat at the same table where people were testifying, he said he thinks he did his job in allowing the public to be heard. The comments that day were stunning, Case said. But in his view, they were mostly germane to the bill in question. Ultimately, he said he thinks he ran the meeting well.

I think I ran the meeting to allow for free speech, he said. I think thats why I sleep well at night.

The counciland Herman during her testimony Tuesdayagreed they want chairmen to exercise a high degree of autonomy in running meetings. But going forward, Bebout said he wanted to see the chairman manual updated and mandatory training provided for the 2018 interim.

At the end of the day, Herman said she was satisfied with the councils response to the situation.

The request that came from our memo was about going forward, she said. The two co-chairmen are some of the finest legislators in my 35 years (following the Legislature). I didnt want to go back and revisit (the Sundance situation) so much as going forward. And I think they were receptive to the fact we think its important.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Dec. 21 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.
PHOENIX  Arizona added enough residents in the 12 months ending July 1 to rank its growth the fifth highest in the nation.

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau put the states population at 7,405,743. Thats 1.6 percent higher than the same period a year earlier.

Only Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Washington grew faster. Floridas growth rate matched Arizona.

But its not because Arizonans are reproducing faster than residents elsewhere. In fact, the Census Bureau says the state added just 85,634 residents that way, at a rate slower than the national average.

Then there was the fact that 57,553 people died in the same period, for a net natural increase of just 28,081, or less than 0.4 percent.

Whats driving growth is that people are moving here from elsewhere. And one out of every five of those 79,316 new residents actually came from another country.

Economist Tom Rex of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University said the Census Bureau numbers are nothing surprising.

He said the 107,628 net year-over-year increase for the latest 12 months is virtually identical to the gain between 2015 and 2016.

It is a little higher than annual population gains in 2014 and 2015. But thats not saying much.

Population growth in the state remains considerably below the historical norm, Rex said.

The peak was 190,100 in 2006, he said, right before the Great Recession. In fact, the number of people Arizona added this past year is less than the figure for every year from 1992 through 2008.

Arizonas growth rate, while above the national average, was not enough to actually move the state up in the national rankings.

It remains at No. 14. And given that No. 13 Washington is growing even faster, the odds of overtaking that state, whose population tops 7.4 million, are not good for the foreseeable future.

Less clear is whether the states growth rate will lead to more political influence in Congress.

Arizona has nine seats in the 435-member U.S. House. And if you were to divide the states population into the national figure, the state would be entitled to 10 representatives now.

But its not quite that simple.

Even the tiniest states, like Wyoming with about 580,000 residents and Vermont at nearly 624,000, are entitled to a single representative. Only after the legal requirements for those smaller states are taken into account does the government do the calculations for how many House seats the other states get.

The new figures find that two states have lost population in the past year: West Virginia and Louisiana, fueled largely by people moving away.

But even among states with a net increase, the picture is more complex.

For example, New York remained No. 4 in overall population by adding about 13,000 residents. But that hides the fact that 190,000 more New Yorkers moved elsewhere than came into the state from other states.

And that figure was so high it did not offset the fact the state got 130,000 new international immigrants.

Arizonas western neighbor also had a net outflow of domestic migration, with 138,000 more people leaving for other states than the other way around. But California more than made up for that with nearly 165,000 new residents from other countries.
Interstate 19 in Nogales has reopened after being closed in both directions for several hours this morning due to a crash, officials said.

The closure was from Ruby Road, north of Nogales, to south of Grand Avenue interchange, according to a news release from the Arizona Department of Transportation.

No details were immediately available about the crash.
The Air Force will issue a study this spring on the environmental impact of basing F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base  though D-M so far has been passed over as a base for the next-generation stealth fighter.

In January, the Air Force announced Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas, as its preferred location for the first Air Force Reserve base to host the F-35, ahead of D-M and other bases that were finalists.

But the Air Force is writing an environmental impact statement on basing F-35s at D-M anyway, because it remains a reasonable alternative site along with Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, said Capt. Josh Benedetti, chief of public affairs at D-M.

D-M plans to publish a notice of intent regarding the F-35 study in the Federal Register in late March or early April, Benedetti said.

Three separate public-comment meetings on the study are tentatively planned for late April or early May, he added.

The F-35 study is required under the National Environmental Policy Act because the new jet hasnt flown here as part of regularly scheduled training.

The idea of basing F-35s in Tucson has drawn vehement opposition from some local residents who say the next-generation fighter jet is inappropriate for D-M because of noise, health and safety concerns.

Bryan Foulk, chairman of the business-backed Davis-Monthan support group DM50, said local groups along with the states congressional delegation continue to lobby the Air Force to assign D-M new missions, including an F-35 unit, citing D-Ms access to vast training ranges and unmatched flying weather.

Our message is, were open for business, were open to any mission set you want, Foulk said.

The Air Force wants to phase out D-Ms biggest mission set  the A-10 Thunderbolt II close air-support jet  though that plan has been put off amid Congressional opposition and high demand for the aircraft.

Business and civic leaders worry that D-M could be diminished or even vulnerable to closure if it loses major missions, citing D-Ms annual local economic impact of nearly $1 billion.

Rep. Martha McSally, a Tucson Republican and former A-10 pilot, said D-M may yet get an F-35 unit, as the Air Force decides where to base more than 1,700 F-35s it plans to acquire over the next three decades.

Its a viable base option, and there are still additional basing decisions to be made, McSally said.

The Air Forces F-35A model is significantly louder than jets that fly regularly at D-M, including the A-10 and the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and critics say the new, single-engine F-35 poses a safety threat to urban neighborhoods.

A group of Tucson residents sued the Air Force in January 2015, alleging its decision to significantly expand visitor-unit training at D-M  including some louder jets but not the F-35  was based on a flawed environmental assessment.

The lawsuit became moot in September when the Air Force said it was withdrawing its training expansion plan, after the National Guard decided to drop funding to staff its Operation Snowbird winter-training facility at D-M.

Tucson Forward, a nonprofit group of local residents formed in 2011, opposes the use of F-35s at D-M or at the Air National Guard 162nd Wing at Tucson International Airport, citing noise and safety issues and concerns about property values and negative effects on tourism.

Mary Terry Schiltz, president of Tucson Forward, said the group will continue to oppose basing of F-35s in Tucson, citing neighborhood associations in the region that have formally opposed the F-35 for years.

To undertake another EIS for basing F-35s in Tucson is a colossal waste of resources, further exacerbating the extreme waste and documented failures of the boondoggle F-35, with exorbitant costs and risks to our environment, safety for pilots and the public, Schiltz said.
PHOENIX  A state lawmaker is declaring his own war against the governors war on opioids.

Rep. Jay Lawrence, a Scottsdale Republican, wants to make it illegal for any state or local government or agency to limit the amount of regulated painkillers that physicians can prescribe at any one time. He said thats an issue best left to doctors and their patients.

The timing of his bill, HB 2030, comes as Gov. Doug Ducey prepares his own legislation  going in the opposite direction.

State health Director Cara Christ said earlier this year she would limit prescriptions for what she calls opioid naive patients  those who have not been taking opiates in the past three to six months  to a pill supply of no more than five days.

Christ also said Arizona law should have a limit on daily dosages to less than 90 morphine milligram equivalents, or MMEs. Thats the same as 90 milligrams of hydrocodone or 60 milligrams of oxycodone.

The risk of overdose doubles above 50 MMEs a day, say the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lawrence said Ducey is off base.

I do not believe that government can step in to tell the medical profession and tell medical doctors what is correct to prescribe, he said.

Lawrences proposed legislation drew a sharp response from gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato, who said opioid abuse has reached epidemic proportions and state intervention is necessary.

In the last year, weve had hundreds of people die ... from opioid-related overdoses, he said. Thats a huge number of people.

Scarpinato said the problem is getting worse.

So, absolutely, something more needs to be done here, he said.

He said Ducey isnt seeking to impose some restrictions over the objections of doctors, as many physicians are involved in crafting a final plan.

Thats also the position of the Arizona Medical Association.

The association is committed to actively participating in the governors stakeholder process and focusing on the comprehensive legislation expected from it, said Pele Peacock Fischer, its vice president for policy and political affairs.

Lawrence said he is not disputing that there is a problem. But hes not convinced hard and fast limits are appropriate.

Instead, he said, the key is physician oversight.

I believe we have enough disciplines in place, he said. And I want to see those disciplines in place so we know who is prescribing, how much theyre prescribing, and if someone is shopping doctors.

Scarpinato said the governor believes that oversight of doctors, by itself, is not enough.

He pointed to reports that four doctors in Mohave County prescribed 6 million doses of opioids in one year.

One of the doctors wrote 20,232 prescriptions amounting to more than 1.9 million pills, or about 7,350 a day.

Thats in a county with about 210,000 people, though there is some question whether the proximity to Las Vegas figured into the prescriptions.

We need to give law enforcement the tools in law to be able to hold them accountable, Scarpinato said.

Scarpinato acknowledged that what Ducey wants appears to be at odds with his repeated calls for less regulation.

Were not talking about blow-drying hair, he said. Were talking about drugs that can be miracle drugs for some but are very addictive and weve seen can lead to death.
In a tweet posted on Flake's Twitter account in the afternoon, he said he had just talked to the senator and that he "sounded good and is recuperating well in Arizona."
LIMA, Peru (AP)  Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is facing an impeachment vote following revelations his private consulting business received money from the Brazilian construction company implicated in Latin America's biggest corruption scandal. He will try to sway skeptical lawmakers to keep him in power Thursday before they vote.

Some of Latin America's most prominent political leaders have been accused of receiving bribes from Odebrecht, convicted in courts and sentenced to jail. Kuczynski's case has not gone before a judge and the payments are not believed to be linked to the corruption scheme. Nonetheless lawmakers contend they have grounds to remove him.

WHY ARE LAWMAKERS CONSIDERING OUSTING PERU'S PRESIDENT?

Opposition leaders in congress initiated impeachment proceedings against Kuczynski after an investigative committee revealed documents showing his private consulting firm received $782,000 in payments from Odebrecht more than a decade ago. Some of those payments overlap with Kuczynski's years as a government minister.

While no one has proven that Kuczynski committed a crime, proponents for his removal say he should have disclosed the payments and at the very least he failed to recognize a conflict of interest.

Kuczynski's approval rating has hovered below 20 percent and he has struggled to push through legislation since taking office in 2016. The opposition Popular Force party led by former first daughter Keiko Fujimori holds a majority in congress and is spearheading the impeachment vote. They will need 87 of 130 votes, which would immediately remove him from office.

WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT'S DEFENSE?

The former Wall Street Banker contends he left the reins of the consulting company, Westfield Capital, in the hands of business partner Gerardo Sepulveda while he served in government and had no knowledge of the Odebrecht payments. Kuczynski also asserts he reported and paid taxes on all Westfield Capital earnings.

Odebrecht has confirmed that it dealt exclusively with Sepulveda and stated that the transactions were not part of the larger corruption investigation currently underway in Peru.

The president likens the attempt to remove him as an "impeachment express" fueled by his opponents. In a letter to the Washington-based Organization of American States, he said his ouster threatens the nation's democracy.

WHAT IS ODEBRECHT ACCUSED OF DOING IN LATIN AMERICA?

In a 2016 plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, the construction company has admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes in a dozen countries  all but two of which are in Latin America. The bribes were paid to politicians, their campaigns and political parties to secure lucrative public works contracts and stretched into the highest echelons of government.

In Peru, Odebrecht has acknowledged paying $29 million to politicians and earning $143 million in profits as a result.

WHO HAS BEEN JAILED OR REMOVED FROM OFFICE?

If he is voted out, Kuczynski would become the first sitting president removed from office in Latin America as a consequence of the Odebrecht scandal.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is appealing a corruption conviction, while former Peruvian President Ollanta Humala is awaiting trial. Another former Peruvian president, Alejandro Toledo, has been accused of taking $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht and is currently in the U.S. seeking to avoid extradition. In Ecuador, Vice President Jorge Glas was recently sentenced to six years in prison for orchestrating an Odebrecht bribe scheme.

Meanwhile, dozens of other political leaders are under investigation as public prosecutors across Latin America continue to bring charges against lawmakers who participated in the scheme.

WHAT IMPACT MIGHT KUCZYNSKI'S OUSTER HAVE?

During his 16 months in office, Kuczynski has been outspoken in his criticism of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, lambasting that country's socialist government as a dictatorship and inviting regional leaders to Peru to find a diplomatic solution to its political crisis. He was also the first Latin American president to meet with Donald Trump, telling the U.S. leader that he prefers "bridges to walls."
Re: the Dec. 19 letter to the editor "We're tired of stress and hopping mad."

Yea, Marion!! Editor, please print again the letter from Marion Rogers. It bears repeating.

[We can't print it again, but here it is in case you missed it - Ed.]

We're tired of stress and hopping mad

Let me get this straight: The very same people in the GOP who quietly stood by while a racist pedophile with no regard for the law ran for the Senate in Alabama, are questioning the ethics of Robert Mueller? If this doesn't strike you as hypocritical, what does?

Mueller is a war hero with a Purple Heart who has served five presidents of both parties. He is a Republican. If Republicans can't trust this man, how on Earth are they able to back the train wreck that is our president? If Mueller is fired by Trump with no outrage or action from this Congress, get ready for a huge backlash from the American public. We are paying attention like we never had to before. We are tired of the daily stress this administration causes.

We are strong. We are loud and we are mad as hell. We are also the majority.

Marion Rogers

Downtown

Carol Kerchenfaut

East side
Robert Reichs column was right on about the rise of the oligarchy. However, I question his final optimistic paragraph, (t)hat wave could crash in the midterm elections of 2018. If so, the current triumph of the oligarchs will be the start of their undoing.

With so much wealth and power now concentrated in the hands of a few globally-based citizens, are we in fact witnessing the unraveling of American democracy? Reich suggests that the concerns of most Americans dont touch the oligarchy. He notes they dont attend public schools, dont depend on Social Security or Medicare, and borrow directly from global financial markets. Now that the big con of a tax plan has passed, wont they become even more insulated and powerful? With so many resources controlled by a few, the rest of us are more divided than ever, fighting each other for scraps. It gives me a chill that wont go away. Welcome to The Hunger Games, U.S.A.
5602 E. 22nd St., 748-1032.

El Sur believes in variety: It offers 10 soups.

Albondigas, caldo de pollo, pozole and caldo de queso are all on the menu. But owner Isela Mejia says the most popular are the chicken tortilla soup and the cocido, a beef soup. El Sur also serves menudo seven days a week.

We like to have different choices, Mejia says.

When Mejia made the decision to become vegan last month, she introduced El Surs first vegan soup, made with tomato broth, pasta shells, zucchini, carrots, corn, potatoes, brown rice and beans.

Its very hard to find vegan soups because most soups have chicken or beef bases, she says.

Mejia says the restaurant makes about three gallons of each soup every day in the winter season, and each is made with recipes passed down from Mejias mother and aunt, who are from Sonora. Soups are $7 for a small bowl, $8.50 for large.
Help India!

New Delhi, Dec 21 (IANS): A bill on making Triple Talaq a punishable offence and another one to give constitutional status to the backward classes panel is set to be introduced in the Lok Sabha next week, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said on Thursday.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, provides for three-year imprisonment and fine for men who orally divorce their wives and also gives such Muslim women the right to seek maintenance.

Support TwoCircles



The Constitution (123rd Amendment) Bill pertains to conferring constitutional status on the National Commission for Backward Classes.

The bill, passed by the Lok Sabha in April, was sent to the Rajya Sabha which passed the bill with amendments. Hence, the government will now reintroduce the bill.

In case of a constitution amendment bill, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha cannot differ. So the bill has to be reintroduced, the Minister said.

Government sources said some minor changes were made to the bill.
By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

In an attempt to draw the Central governments attention towards the off-centre campuses of Aligarh Muslim University, Asaduddin Owaisi, national president at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and Lok Sabha MP, has written to Union Ministry for the release of funds for Kishanganj, Murshidabad, and Malappuram centres.

Support TwoCircles



Owaisi has objected the UGCs move where the University Grants Commission stated that there is little justification to run AMUs off-campus centres. Asaduddin Owaisi, in his letter to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, said, I would like to put forward my strongest objection to this position taken by the UGC and demand that the same be reconsidered by the government.

UGCs audit report over AMU had justified the Muslim population in the cities where the centres are being located. Moreover, former minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Irani termed these centres illegal  which sparked a debate  and said that these centres could not be funded.

Owaisi has further written, The three centres mentioned above have a substantial population with no access to good education facilities and economic opportunities in particular.

However, the AIMIM leader particularly emphasized upon the Kishanganj centre  possibly because AIMIM fielded several candidates from this area in Bihar assembly election in 2015  and claimed that Kishanganj is very socially, economically and educationally backward compared to the rest of the country.

AMU Kishanganj Centre was announced in 2008-09 during UPAs regime but it still has been in uncertainty due to lack of appropriate funds. Due to lack of governments attention, the Kishanganj centre lies in horrible condition with its boundary wall being submerged in floods every year.

The Kishanganj centre has no allocated and specified buildings and the hostel rooms are being used to run classes due to lack of the building. The MHRD allocated a fund of Rs 136.82 Crore for the Kishanganj centre in 2014 itself. Out of this amount, Rs 104.23 Crore was marked for the development of capital assets in the Kishanganj centre. But the Centre has only received the first instalment of the same after allocation.

Your governments central agenda over the past three years has been that of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and this project will go a long way in making this slogan a reality, wrote Owaisi further.

It must be pointed out that the AMUs Murshidabad centre is no different from Kishanganj centre when it comes to the negligence of the central government. The Murshidabad centre  which is a minority-dominated locality in West Bengal  received only Rs 60 Crore of its allocated fund of Rs 107.8 Crore in August 2013.
Donald Trump, ever since he became the President of the United States has been hurling abuses against North korea. He has said that the US will destroy the North Korean Nation and there is a derisive reference to Kim Jong as the "rocket man"

The situation in the Korean Peninsula is tense and the American fleet is hovering in Korean waters. Donald Trump has said that past actions of the US administration should not be construed as weakness. He has repeated that North Korea better beware and he has promised that he will destroy North Korea. This is just rhetoric and one wonders how much of it is just words and how much reality.As per a retired US intelligence official, there will not be any war between North Korea and the US led by Trump, as both leaders are just posturing for effect.

This is reported by Newsweek magazine.

China and the US

A look back to history shows that when China similarly developed nuclear weapons in the early sixties of the last century, similar rhetoric was missing. President Johnson at that time was embroiled in the Vietnam War and he completely disregarded China going nuclear and developing WMD. The Americans must explain as to why no action was taken against China at that time when Mao Tse Tung was daily issuing threats to destroy the US.

What could be the reason that the reaction to China was muted and the reaction to North Korea so vehement? Is it because China was a large country and the Americans were scared of getting embroiled in a land war with China.

In contrast action and reaction to North Korea has been very violent and the US has threatened to destroy the country. Is it because North Korea is a very small Nation which is equivalent to what a pea has as far as the United States is concerned?

American policy

Historically, the American policy has been not to attack strong nations that can retaliate.They generally pick on small nations, which cannot attack the United States like Syria, Kosovo, and Yemen.

One cannot see them antagonizing the Soviet Union and its successor Russia or China at any point in time. They can approve an attack on North Korea but here also the fact that North Korea has a nuclear deterrent, is a drawback. This is the big game changer and America cannot take action similar to the one against Syria.

US Defense Department has opined that even in a conventional war, more than 300,000 Koreans will be killed.

An intelligence official has said there will be no war with between the USA and North Korea.

Reality check

A reality check of South Korea will show that Seul, which is just 38 kilometres from the North Korean border, life is continuing as usual despite knowing that North Korea has the nuclear strike capability. There are no bunkers, no nuclear shelters, and this obviously shows that the South Korean's do not expect a war with North Korea.

President Moon of South Korea has gone on record and said that there will not be another War on the Korean Peninsula. The only course of action appears that in the long run, the American will have to accept North Korea as a nuclear power. It won't be such a bad thing as China also went nuclear and the US accepted it. One cannot see any other possibility
When 17.4 million people voted for Brexit on June 23rd, 2016, they were not entering a public exam. This is the point a Question Time audience member made on last week's episode when lambasting Nicky Morgan and Rebecca Long-Bailey. Nowhere on the ballot paper did it once say 'please turn over to choose which type of Brexit you want: hard or soft.' Everyone knew leaving the EU meant ending the trading bloc's jurisdiction over the UK altogether. It did not mean opting to remain in certain European institutions.

The only party that fails to understand this is the Liberal Democrats.

During my interview with the Liberal Democrat candidate for Damian Green's Ashford seat, Adrian Gee-Turner, he said the terms of the debate have changed and that Parliament is unclear as to what type of Brexit it wants. He also said Brexiteers have created a mess. He is wrong.

"The only institution which is in a mess is the EU"

The only institution which is in a mess is the EU. The 2008 Recession shattered a common misconception that Britain's wealth is generated through EU membership. The trading bloc created the euro currency without laying down foundations for a political union alongside it. Because of it, larger economies had to bail out smaller ones. CityAM recently predicted slow Eurozone growth will trigger a recession next year.

Italy's economy is a ticking time-bomb, especially with Eurosceptic parties vowing to pull their nation out of the Eurozone via a referendum. That will have cataclysmic consequences for the trading bloc's survival.

Mr. Gee-Turner claims many Leavers want to remain a member of the Customs Union. Remaining in this protection ratchet is not Brexit.

The Customs Union prohibits the UK from signing trade deals with other countries. However, Mr. Gee-Turner was right to say the Norway deal would be a bad one for Britain. It would mean signing up to the Single Market and having to implement certain rules through the EEA Council. The Liberal Democrats want to avoid Brexit at any cost.

The EU will collapse at some point. I predict it will happen in 2022. There is no sense in remaining in a trading bloc with an overall aim of creating a federal Europe, or one that is close to collapsing regardless. This is something that does not fit the Liberal Democrats' vision for Britain. They need to stop patronising Britons- we all knew what Brexit meant. It's time to continue with this process and leave this sinking ship.
Eddy Barrow, the Chairman for Ashford Ukip, told Blasting News that the EU's intention from the very beginning was to create a federal superstate. Throughout the late 90s and 2000s, UKIP has been laughed off as a fringe movement and a bunch of paranoid Eurosceptics intent on isolating Britain's place in the world. David Cameron dismissed them as fruitcakes. Tony Blair tried to outwit Nigel Farage at a European Parliament debate in 2005.

"They were right about the EU from the very beginning"

The truth of the matter is, all Brexiteers, regardless of political convictions, owe UKIP a debt of gratitude.

They have brought Brexit to life to a greater extent than arch-Eurosceptics like John Redwood and Katie Hoey did in the Conservative and Labour parties respectively prior to the EU Referendum. They have achieved their ultimate goal. They were right about the EU from the very beginning. What's worse is that former Tory prime ministers Harold Macmillan and Ted Heath knew about Brussels' intentions and hid them from the British people.

Heath and Macmillan informed the British people that the EEC was central to their economic growth. In 1973, growth was at 7.4 per cent, a figure we have not witnessed at all this decade. The UK economy grew in the 80s and 90s because of reforms the then Conservative government enacted.

It had nothing to do with the EU. When Macmillan took office in 1959, growth stood at 6 per cent.

"Why did the UK need to join?"

Charles de Gaulle had the right idea from the very beginning, hence why he vetoed Macmillan's attempt to join the EEC. He said Britain had trade links, democratic institutions and cheap Commonwealth food the rest of Western Europe did not have access to, so why did the UK need to join?

Macmillan, Heath and their closest advisers wanted a global government of regional federations all this time. They both wanted Britain to prevent France and Germany from dominating the EEC. If they both saw what the EU has become now, history must teach us that they failed in their aim. France wanted West Germany to be part of the EU to ensure the former could monitor the latter.

But since German reunification in 1991, Germany has become the more powerful country in this alliance, proving France no longer benefits from EU membership.

For these reasons, UKIP has made this country proud by bringing the single issue of Brexit to life. They are not fruitcakes. They are heroes. They deserve as much recognition as the Anti-Corn Law League, which persuaded Peel to end the hated Corn Laws that held Britain back. The Corn Law Repeal Act 1846 made the UK the wealthiest country in the world. Leaving the EU will create the same outcome.
A Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate has attacked Labour Leave's plans to debate those wishing to overturn last year's EU Referendum result.

They are organising a public debate to directly challenge those wishing to overturn Brexit. The pro-Brexit group are planning to hold the event in Central London next year, making entry free for everybody to attend the spectacle.

Councillor Brendan Chilton, the Ashford Council Labour Leader and Director of Labour Future, tweeted: "In the new year, we will be challenging those seeking to overturn the referendum result to an open debate in Central London.

Open to everyone. Free. Details to follow. We will not stand by and watch our democracy be taken from us."

Adrian Gee-Turner, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for former First Minister Damian Green's Ashford constituency, accused Labour Leave and Ukip of demonising people.

"We will deal with the mess Brexiteers have created"

He added: "The people he is trying to demonise are those with the solutions to deal with his mess. Councillor Brendan Chilton is an ideologue. He does not know his a**e from his elbow. We will deal with the mess Brexiteers have created."

Eddy Barrows, Chairman of Ashford UKIP, said Councillor Chilton gave his party one-hundred per cent support during the EU Referendum.

He added: "In June last year, the people made it quite plain that they wanted a country completely severed from EU control and free to enjoy the self-determination for which it had fought for in two world wars and which had endured for many centuries until 1974.

"Whilst having concern about sensible no-strings cooperation with our neighbours after leaving, any suggestion of a legally binding formal partnership will, I am sure, be eyed very suspiciously by those who wanted their country back."

"There was no majority for Brexit"

Mr.

Gee-Turner hit back at Labour Leave's and UKIP's criticisms towards pro-EU campaigners. He said: "There was lots of misinformation during the original referendum and there was no majority for Brexit. That argument has been had a million times. Nothing was said about the type of Brexit people were voting for during the referendum.

"We held a pre-Brexit meeting and invited Damian Green, the Chairman of the Socialist Trade Unions Alliance, the current UKIP Leader Henry Bolton and a Liberal Democrat remainer to speak. Mr. Bolton said 'nobody in UKIP wants to come out of the Customs Union', but he changed his tune and decided that leaving the Customs Union was UKIP policy.

"Even if you speak to avid Leavers, they want to stay in the Customs Union."

Mr. Barrows said he led an eight month "Ashford Out" campaign following the confirmation date of the referendum and clarified that the vast majority of people were well aware that the intentions of the EU's founding fathers was always to create a monolithic European superstate.

He described the founding fathers as a "self-perpetuating group of autocrats and this would mean the end of Britain as a sovereign state."

"Leaving the EU whilst remaining a member of the Customs Union is the best place to be"

Mr. Gee-Turner said none of the options post-Brexit are ideal. The Liberal Democrat said leaving the EU whilst remaining a member of the Customs Union is the best place to be. He dismissed the "Norway option" as the "worst of the worst."

He added: "It was always going to end up like this. Many Leavers I've spoken to have said if it was going to be so traumatic, they wouldn't have voted that way. They did not realise the impact Brexit would have on the economy."

Mr. Barrows said the issue is with the type of Brexit Theresa May was seeking.

He said her deal was not desired by 17.4 million people.

The UKIP Chairman said the divorce bill, agreeing to be subject to EU regulations during a transitional period and ECJ jurisdiction for eight years, whilst failing to resolve the Irish border issue, all provide very real doubts that the final deal will be anything other than a complete capitulation.
This time of the year, beautiful Christmas trees are everywhere for people to enjoy. Well, almost everywhere. There is a $59,000 Christmas tree standing in one of Rome's busiest plazas. It literally died after two weeks after it was set up and decorated. There is no chance that it will get better because it was cut down and separated from its roots. Therefore, funeral plans are always being made for the dead tree.

City's investigation

The city isn't pointing a finger anyone, but Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi has launched an investigation into the tree's poor condition.

She is the one who authorized the purchase, and she is not pleased that it has lost almost all of the pine needles and is not a pleasing sight. Other top officials want to know what happened to cause the tree to start dying so soon after it was set up in the plaza.

The local media was told on Monday that the tree in Piazza Venezia is beyond saving because it has no roots. The suppliers who sent it to the plaza firmly emphasized that it was in excellent health when it was shipped. Stefano Cattoi, spokesman for the supplier is convinced the tree was transported improperly.

What makes matters worse is that there is another Christmas tree nearby that is healthy and decorated beautifully like a Christmas tree should be.

The full-bodied tree is a big contrast to the sickly one.

Rome spends 38 lakh on Christmas tree, it dies in 2 weekshttps://t.co/cMHfkRCloX

-via @inshorts  Saurabh Sahai (@ssahaiss) December 20, 2017

Social media reaction

The tree has been mocked on social media and has been given the name "Spelacchio" which means "balding" or "shabby" in the Italian language.

Somone on social media compared it to a toilet brush because of its long arms and empty branches.

Lastest success of Rome's Five Star Movement major Virginia Raggi, once hailed as a 'breath of fresh air' on English-speaking media: the municipality's main Christmas Tree in Piazza Venezia, known as Spelacchio, is dead. pic.twitter.com/YdPjI0E0dL  Leonardo Carella (@leonardocarella) December 20, 2017

The Christmas tree that is in one of the most beautiful places in the world has become a joke.

Social media has given the tree its own hashtag and a Twitter account. Even though some people are mocking scene, it saddens others.

How is this going to end?

People are wondering how this is going to end. They want to know if the city will leave the dead decorated tree up until New Year's Day or if it will be taken down. The tree is definitely not a pretty sight for people to see as they pass by it every day. Some people think it is not a good idea to leave the dead tree up because it could be seen as a metaphor for the people who are leaving it up and for the people of Rome.

What do you think should happen? Do you think the tree should be taken down and discarded or left up for people to mock it? Do you think Rome should request a refund for the $59,000 that was paid to the supplier?
Puerto Rico was ravaged by Hurricane Maria and its people had fled to safety in the US mainland. Most of them had left their pets behind, and these abandoned animals are struggling to survive after the Category 4 storm struck three months ago. The lack of resources is affecting their wellbeing.

Daily Mail UK reports that the available animal shelters were totally inadequate even before the disaster. The present situation is worse with the unmanageable numbers of pets that have now become strays. It has become a humanitarian crisis with many of the pets on the streets as the people try to rebuild their lives.

How to rescue these animals

An official of the Humane Society of Puerto Rico has explained that pet lovers want to hand over their pet cats, dogs and other animals and birds but, due to lack of space, many of them have to go back disappointed. The shelter has a limit on the number of animals they can accept. In one of the shelters, the limit is 80 and it already has 120 while the requirement is in the region of 250. Space restriction has forced the authorities to accommodate many of the pets in rooftop cages.

Incidentally, immediately after Hurricane Maria struck, some animal lover groups had taken action to shift a sizeable number of animals to no-kill animal shelters on the U.S. mainland. However, that option is no longer viable since they also are faced with a similar problem of space shortage.

Animal activist Sylvia Bedrosian says that people do abandon their pets but the present situation is a matter of concern.

Augment the capacity of the shelters

In order to augment the capacity of animal shelters in Puerto Rico, it is necessary to have funds and, officials and volunteers are aware of this aspect. They plan to raise at least $200,000 which will go towards rebuilding five existing shelters, and expect private donations will come in for this humanitarian cause.

There are associated problems that need to be handled like food for its animals. A shelter located on the south coast cares for more than 750 pets and its source of food for the inmates has dried up. It used to come from a nearby supermarket that would donate leftover food to help feed the dogs but it has downed its shutters  it was a casualty of Hurricane Maria.

Thousands of Puerto Ricans do not have a job, nor do they have any roof over their heads or electricity in their houses. Many of them have moved out to the mainland and have abandoned their pets. Even those who remain are unable to afford their pets because of various reasons, and it is ultimately the dumb animals that suffer.
In recent weeks, the news has been dominated by sexual assault allegations against various high-profiled men. After Donald Trump decided to comment on the latest revelations, critics on social media wasted no time firing back.

Trump on scandals

Just one month before Election Day in 2016 and Donald Trump was hit with an October surprise. The now infamous "Access Hollywood" tape was released to the public, which exposed the president's private conversation with former host Billy Bush where he revealed his thoughts about engaging in sexual activity with a married women, while also bragging about using his fame to touch women at will.

In the weeks that followed, the former host of "The Apprentice" was hit with allegations from 12 women who accused him of various forms of sexual assault and harassment. Trump denied the claims and was convincing enough to go on and defeat Hillary Clinton to become the new commander in chief. Fast forward to earlier this fall and the New York Times story that broke revealing the long history of assault allegedly committed by film producer Harvey Weinstein. Since then, multiple high-profiled men in Hollywood, in politics, and in the media have been accused of similar acts, ranging from unwanted passes to full-blown sexual assault. The most recent has been Roy Moore, the Republican Senate nominee in Alabama who has been accused of sexually assaulting various underage girls over the last 40 years.

Moore has denied the allegations, which Trump appeared to believe by taking his side in the upcoming election. As reported by The Hill on November 21, Trump was asked about the recent scandals and seemed thrilled.

.@POTUS' message to woman: "I'm very happy a lot of these things are coming out and I'm very happy...it's being exposed." pic.twitter.com/7eIzw3KUok  Fox News (@FoxNews) November 21, 2017

While addressing reporters at the White House on Tuesday before heading off to his private resort in Florida, Donald Trump addressed the aforementioned scandals.

"Women are very special," Trump said.

"I think its a very special time because a lot of things are coming out and I think thats good for our society," Donald Trump went on to add. "I think its very, very good for women, and Im very happy a lot of these things are coming out," he continued, while concluding, "Im very happy its being exposed."

Twitter reacts

Not long after Donald Trump's comments, those who oppose the current administration hit back on social media.

"What do you & your daughter Ivanka have in common? Trump's Answer: Sex," one tweet read.

This guy is so sick. pic.twitter.com/g2f64Nj2c9  Avraham Mendel Deitsch #WouldPreferThatYouBanNazis (@DeitschFactor) November 21, 2017

Be careful throwing stones from a glass White House  H Spencer (@Drilling_Down) November 21, 2017

What do you & your daughter Ivanka have in common?



Trump's Answer: Sexhttps://t.co/m9dBTPAoSt  H (@OHenryHernandez) November 21, 2017

"Choose words carefully. Amazing how he got the word 'exposed' in. Amazing. Good day to you Mr Fraud," another tweet went on to read. "Im not sure some women are too happy that 'these things are coming' out. Yikes!" one Twitter user wrote.

Are you happy they are coming out about you too ? Or are you using your selective memory genius chip ? And avoiding that part of special   Tammy Hunter (@Tamehnter) November 21, 2017

Meanwhile you don't condone Child molester Roy Moore and people are like they're just allegations, but why in the heck does Roy get banned from the mall and YMCA and he openly admitted first time his wife caught his eye was at age 15 is that not enough to scare people. Go ahead  Shirley Ward (@Shirley12726538) November 21, 2017

Choose words carefully. Amazing how he got the word "exposed" in. Amazing. Good day to you Mr Frued  James Pfizenmayer (@jimpfiz) November 21, 2017

"Are you happy they are coming out about you too ?

Or are you using your selective memory genius chip ? And avoiding that part of special," an additional tweet stated. The backlash continued as the opposition to Donald Trump in regards to his history of sexual assault allegations showed no signs of ending anytime soon.
As Republicans are on the verge of passing the biggest change to the tax code in over three decades, opposition from Democrats has continued as the majority of the mainstream media have made sure to hold the GOP's feet to the fire over the details of the bill. In response, Donald Trump decided to go on the attack during his early morning tweetstorm.

Trump on Twitter

Just after midnight on Wednesday morning the United States Senate voted along party lines to pass the controversial Tax Bill put forward by Republican leaders and Donald Trump. The bill narrowly passed, doing so 51-48, with only Sen.

John McCain not casting a vote due to being home in Arizona following a hospital stay. Later on Wednesday the House of Representatives is scheduled to re-vote on the bill after a technicality voided their previous passing of the bill on Tuesday. With the bill getting closer to the president's desk, the opposition has only grown louder, with the latest CNN poll showing over half the country opposing the tax plan. As seen on his Twitter feed on December 20, Donald Trump was quick to blame the media for the bill not being more popular with the American people.

The Tax Cuts are so large and so meaningful, and yet the Fake News is working overtime to follow the lead of their friends, the defeated Dems, and only demean. This is truly a case where the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017

Taking to his Twitter account on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump vented his frustration at his tax plan not going over well with many around the country.

"The Tax Cuts are so large and so meaningful, and yet the Fake News is working overtime to follow the lead of their friends, the defeated Dems, and only demean," Trump tweeted.

I would like to congratulate @SenateMajLdr on having done a fantastic job both strategically & politically on the passing in the Senate of the MASSIVE TAX CUT & Reform Bill. I could have not asked for a better or more talented partner. Our team will go onto many more VICTORIES!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017

Not stopping there, Donald Trump doubled down to help spin the narrative about his tax plan into the favor of the Republican Party.

"This is truly a case where the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon," he wrote, before adding, "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!" In a follow-up tweet, Trump gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell credit for getting enough senators on board. "I would like to congratulate Mitch McConnell on having done a fantastic job both strategically & politically on the passing in the Senate of the MASSIVE TAX CUT & Reform Bill," he wrote.

"I could have not asked for a better or more talented partner, Trump continued, while adding, "Our team will go onto many more VICTORIES!"

Here's how the GOP and President Trump plan to celebrate their win on taxes https://t.co/cf40NY28Fr  CNN (@CNN) December 20, 2017

Tax reaction

Not long after sending out his tweet, Donald Trump was hit with backlash from those on social media who refuse to take him at his word. "Republicans will never again be able to claim they care about the deficit, or really anyone other than their corporate donors. You are Russia's useful idiot, the republican sign boy," one tweet read.

Republicans will never again be able to claim they care about the deficit, or really anyone other than their corporate donors. You are Russia's useful idiot, the republican sign boy. You'll never be seen as competent and you'll never be respected. Enjoy your impeachment.  Abi Normal (@CheetoBane) December 20, 2017

YOU THINK A TRILLION DOLLER DEFECIT IS GOOD.? You especially like Millions losing health care dont you?And in a couple of years, if the tax scam hasnt been vetoed, there will be ANOTHER REPUBLICAN RECESSION.    (@MaureenJungblut) December 20, 2017

"76% of Americans know that you just screwed us over....that would be 76% of the voters in America," one Twitter user wrote.

"This bill incentives shipping US jobs overseas, like you do for all your Trump-branded apparel," another tweet stated.

Just so were crystal clear......the GOP just voted to give themselves a tax cut. The GOP just voted to give themselves and their donors a tax cut. DT is thrilled. Seems hypocritical and swampy. Trump supports are thrilled.  Melissa Willis (@Melissa26922212) December 20, 2017

This bill incentivizes shipping US jobs overseas, like you do for all your Trump-branded apparel. @realdonaldtrump averages 5.5 lies per day (fact); we should never expect his words to contain the truth.  amy_moss_ (@amy_moss_) December 20, 2017

76% of Americans know that you just screwed us over.... that would be 76% of the voters in America... Mueller and the voters will show you exactly how we feel soon   Nasty Kim  (@Purrrnella59) December 20, 2017

"Just so were crystal clear......the GOP just voted to give themselves a tax cut.

The GOP just voted to give themselves and their donors a tax cut. DT is thrilled," an additional tweet noted. With the House of Representatives getting ready to vote again on the tax bill, it was clear that the opposition was not going away.
General Hospital fans are a passionate bunch. There are plenty of opinions about the characters to go around, but Sam (Kelly Monaco), Jason (Steve Burton), and Drew (Billy Miller) are garnering a lot of attention. In fact, some would say people have lost their minds with that is going on. General Hospital has focused a lot of time on JaSam (Jason and Sam) throughout the years. When Burton exited back in 2012, no one believed the couple could be revived with a replacement. That was until Miller stepped into the role, showing everyone how intense the chemistry was between him and Monaco.

Fans cross the line

When Steve Burton returned to General Hospital, fans started to blend fictional life into their real life. There are plenty of upset fans who wanted Killy (Kelly and Billy) to remain together on the show. It was thought that the writers would leave Billy Miller as Jason and reintroduce Burton as the twin. Unfortunately, that didn't play out and some Killy fans were upset. They started to address the actors on social media, sending nasty messages. Both Kelly Monaco and Miller addressed their audience and asked them to stop. They included the message that bullying was not okay in any situation.

In recent episodes, a new band of crazed fans has arisen. General Hospital has made Sam act differently than expected, which has upset fans.

Many believe Jason is still her true love, and they won't settle for her being with Drew. Unfortunately, she is where she wants to be, and fans are going to have to accept that Drew is who she loves. Kelly Monaco has now started getting mean tweets and comments on social media from the fans who are wanting her with Jason.

Steve Burton sends fans a message

Now, we have already heard from Kelly Monaco and Billy Miller asking their fans to stop harassing their co-stars. This happened roughly a month ago. Here we are, back again with Steve Burton having to send out a tweet to remind General Hospital fans that they are actors telling a fictional story.

Burton isn't one to be overly dramatic so the fact that he took the time to address fans and ask them to stop says a lot.

Please stop.  There is no ill will with @kellymonaco1 or #BillyMiller. We are a team of actors telling a story. We are a team delivering the story we are given. No hate. No fan wars. We we one. :)  Steve Burton (@1SteveBurton) December 19, 2017

General Hospital has been on the air for over 50 years and this is the first big story that has brought out a significant number of opinions and nasty comments. Long-time viewers are shocked at what is transpiring on social media, especially after the actors have asked for it to stop.
Now that Disney has cemented the deal to acquire 20Th Century Fox, many fans of both the Avengers and X-Men are expecting to see both superhero teams on one big screen. One superhero in particular that they have been waiting to see sink his claws into the vast array of villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is none other than Wolverine.

Hugh Jackman hanging the claw for good

Despite reports about the groundbreaking $52Bn deal between Disney and 20Th Century Fox, Hugh Jackman still insists that he wont be coming back as a part of the "Avengers." Just like he said while promoting Logan, the last of the Wolverine stand-alone film series, 2017 will be the last time that hell wear the Adamantium claws.

The deal will finally see the X-Men, Deadpool, and the Fantastic Four joining the huge world of Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU together with Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Australian-born actor told the Collider during an interview that while it was interesting to see himself playing the Wolverine for 17 years and see Iron Man, The Hulk, and Wolverine together punch the Avengers in the head, its not going to happen. He also added that the ship has sailed for him, and he would like to see someone else wearing the Wolverine claws in the future.

Wolverine in Deadpool

Even before the news of Disneys shocking acquisition of 20Th Century Fox, Ryan Reynolds, who plays the merc-with-a-mouth Wade Wilson, has been publicly courting Hugh Jackman to play Wolverine again for the second installment of Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds absolutely wanted to entertain the idea of Wolverine crossing over to his Deadpool movie; however, Hugh Jackman has a different opinion about it.

According to Jackman, while the crossover might be a perfect fit for fans and the studio, he is hesitating because of the timing. It was around March 2017 when the rumors spread like a wildfire online about the possible collaboration between Reynolds and Jackman but were quickly rebuffed by the Australian actor.

But Ryan Reynolds and the writers behind the success of the first Deadpool film are not going to give up easily.

They might have lost the battle but not the war. According to some rumors, the Deadpool production team is now entertaining the idea of making Hugh Jackman appear not as Wolverine but as himself. How this cameo will play out in the story is now up to the capable hands of the writers and Reynolds.

Hugh Jackman is currently promoting his film, The Greatest Showman. In this film, he plays P.T. Barnum, which comprises a cast including Zac Efron and Zendaya.
Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page.

Loading...

Checking your browser before accessing the website.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please wait a few seconds.
HA NOI  BIM Group on Saturday will officially introduce Regent Residences Phu Quoc  the first six-star resort on the island  at a ceremony in HCM City.

Regent Residences Phu Quoc is a project, marking the arrival of this global luxury hospitality brand to Viet Nam, which will set a benchmark for the resort market in the country.

Carrying the most luxurious brand of the Asian-based Regent Hotels Group, Regent Residences Phu Quoc inherits all the essence of the brand blended with typical Vietnamese traditional architecture.

Inspired by the Opal stone - a symbol of hope, belief and success - which has its colours changing under the sunlight and the ability to bring inspiration, Regent Residences Phu Quoc looks like a raw Opal stone on the blue sea surface, intermingling with the green of trees and the brown of the wood to wake up every sense.

Regent Residences Phu Quoc, located in Phu Quoc Marina, has an area of 15ha, consisting of 120 hotel rooms, 76 luxury villas and 42 sky villas with a beach view, capturing the beauty of the island.

With the designs of famous names such as Blink, Element and LPA, every villa unit of Regent Residences Phu Quoc is simple but elegant, classic but modern.

Its luxury services are the highlight of Regent Residences Phu Quoc, all with strict standards to bring comfort to customers, from a spa and a bar, to a gym and restaurants.

The developer expects Regent Residences Phu Quoc to be the top destination not only for holidays but also for investment purposes, with a minimum guaranteed profit of 9 per cent per year in nine years and a revenue-sharing policy of up to 40 per cent.

Phu Quoc Island has significant potential for luxury resort tourism, which remains largely untapped, according to the BIM Group.

The developer plans to develop Phu Quoc Marina into a luxury tourism hub of the island in particular and Viet Nam in general, in which, Regent Residences Phu Quoc is an important effort to realise this ambition.

According to a representative of the Regent Hotels Group, with a development history of nearly 50 years, Regent has set the benchmark for luxury hotels worldwide with original values in every development. Regent is very strict in selecting partners and BIM Group meets our requirements in terms of financial, management and operation capacity.

With the beauty of Phu Quoc Island, Regent Hotels Group believes that Regent Residences Phu Quoc will be a magnet to attract thousands of high-end customers from all over the world. - VNS

Hotline: 0989 999 901  0937 971 971
HA NOI  Toyota Viet Nam is one of the first firms to ask the Ministry of Industry and Trade to issue business certificates in accordance with new government Decree No 116/2017/N-CP.

Specifically, the company has requested a new licence to import cars, including Lexus models, people carriers and trucks.

The company said it has completed all documents to comply with the provisions of the new decree, including a certified copy of the business registration certificate of Toyota Motor Viet Nam, a certified copy of the certificate of automobile warranty and maintenance by dealers of Toyota Motor Viet Nam and a certified copy of Toyota Motor Corporations rights to recall automobiles.

On October 17, the Government issued Decree No 116/2017/N-CP on requirements for manufacturing, assembly and importation of automobiles and automobile warranty and maintenance services.

This new decree follows the Circular No 20/2011/TT-BCT which expired in July 2016. It aims at tightening conditions for the import of cars into Viet Nam, making it especially difficult for private car importers.

According to the new decree, a private car import business must satisfy a long list of conditions, including having documents certifying or proving that it is entrusted by a foreign automobile manufacturer to recall imported cars in Viet Nam. Once licensed to import cars, a business must maintain business conditions and ensure the performance of their warranty, maintenance and recall responsibilities.

The decree requires car importers to provide quality certificates for cars imported into Viet Nam. Another requirement is every single batch of imported cars must be inspected.

Concerning the import of used cars into Viet Nam, the decree stipulates that small cars must have a remaining warranty duration of at least two years or have 50,000km left before warranty deadline, while other types of cars must have a remaining warranty period of one year or 20,000km.

Although this new regulation will likely lead to a decrease in the number of companies eligible for entry into the automobile importation market, such a reduction could benefit consumers in the sense that companies with weak capacity and lack of experience will be excluded from the market. Also, even strong, experienced importers will have to seek partnerships with famous and well-established foreign automobile manufacturers instead of less reputable and trustworthy partners.  VNS
HA NOI  Only 51 per cent of Vietnamese adults have credit registry coverage, much lower than the approximate 100 per cent in developed countries.

Le Anh Tuan, director of the Credit Information Centre (CIC)s Research and Development Division under the State Bank of Viet Nam, said it meant up to 49 per cent of local adults did not have access to credit.

According to Tuan, CIC, so far, has credit information of more than 34 million borrowers, of which 33.4 million are individual customers. The number has increased from the 31.5 million in January 2017.

CICs credit information database is currently mainly based on data from credit institutions. It means that only customers who have had credit ties with credit institutions have credit ratings at CIC, and credit institutions followed CICs ratings to decide their lending.

Experts suggested that CIC could use information from other industries instead of only data from credit institutions to have more people access credit. This would give banks access to people who did not have credit ties with them yet.

Information from the services of electricity, water, television, telephone and especially telecommunications should be feasible options, experts said, explaining that enterprises can have the same customers even while working with different industries.

Payment information data from industries providing the services would be an important input information source to help credit institutions appraise their customers although the customers did not have credit ties with them. Based on the bills of the services, customers with good payment history would also find it easier to access credit and vice versa.

Such information would also help banks get more customers and better appraise financial status of their customers to avoid risks. It will contribute to increasing the credit quality and ensure banks were warned in advance.  VNS
ONG NAI  The southern province of ong Nai attracted over US$1.3 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2017, $300 million higher than the set target.

According to the provincial industrial zones management board, it has attracted 1,733 FDI projects, so far, with total investment of $31.3 billion. Investors from 45 countries and territories have invested in the locality.

South Korea is the largest foreign investor in the province, following by Taiwan (China) and Japan.The board said despite laying down stricter conditions for investment projects, FDI capital that poured into the province still increased this year. In particular, disbursement reached $1.1 billion, equivalent to 88 per cent of the total registered capital.

In recent years, ong Nai has given priority to FDI projects using hi-tech, skilled labourers and are environment-friendly.

Mai Van Nhon, deputy head of the board, said investors believed in the provinces support for businesses.

The provincial Department of Industry and Trade also said the provinces export turnover this year reached $17 billion, posting 11.8 per cent year-on-year increase. It achieved trade surplus of $2 billion, while the countrys total trade surplus was expected to reach $3 billion.

Some export products reported high export turnover in 2017, such as garment and textile at $2 billion, or 15 per cent increase from 2016; rubber at 49,000 tonnes; cashew at 350,000 tonnes; and computers and spare parts at $590 million.

Duong Minh Dung, the departments director, said the high export turnover was because exporters found new markets while effectively exploiting traditional ones.

In addition, firms have effectively taken advantages of FTAs to expand production and increase productivity.

The provinces industrial production this year also saw stable growth.

inh Quoc Thai, chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said its index of industrial production this year was expected to rise by 8.6 per cent from 2016. The industrial production value was VN731 trillion, or an increase of 9.1 per cent from the previous year.

In 2018, ong Nai has targeted enhancing its economic restructuring, promoting economic growth with higher productivity and increasing businesses competitiveness. It will also further improve the business environment and focus on high quality human resources training.

The Peoples Committee forecast that its economic growth in 2018 would continue to be positive thanks to increase in manufacturing, trade, construction, retail and tourism.

Thai said investment in key projects such as the Ben Luc-Long Thanh-Dau Giay Highway and the upgraded Long Thanh International Airport would facilitate the provinces development.

ong Nai has targeted GRDP of 8-9 per cent, average income per capita of VN94-96 million and export turnover increase of 9-11 per cent in 2018.  VNS
HA NOI  The Vimo Technology Joint Stock Company (Vimo.vn) and Southern Airport Services Joint Stock Company (SASCO) on Tuesday signed a co-operation agreement on launching electronic payment services for Asian tourists when travelling into Viet Nam.

From January 1, 2018, Asian travelers will be able to use electronic payments in Vietnamese currency (VN) at SASCO duty-free and retail shops in the international terminal of HCM Citys Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

Foreign customers can use WeChat Pay electronic accounts installed on their mobile phones to scan quick response (QR) codes and make payments quickly and conveniently. One of the advantages of QR code payment is that customers do not need to carry a wallet or multiple cards, so they dont have to worry about the security of their card information at payment points.

Nguyen Van Hung Cuong, SASCOs deputy director, said that in accordance with the trend of electronic commerce, the company wants to catch up, leverage technology to optimise the business model, bringing convenience, options, quality and competitive prices to customers. The application of this advanced payment method also contributes to reducing the proportion of cash payments under the Governments guidelines, he added.

VIMO e-wallet is the first payment intermediary in Viet Nam allowing travellers to use WeChat Pay e-wallets paid for goods in Viet Nam ong currency at VIMO-accepting shops when traveling in Viet Nam. Currently, Vino.vn has nearly 500 stores accepting payments by WeChat Pay, including more than 50 stores of seven corporations at five international airports with direct flights to and from China.

According to o Cong Dien, general director of Vimo, Viet Nam is one of the most attractive destinations in the region for Chinese tourists, with an estimated 3.5 million arrivals and turnover of nearly US$3 billion in 2017. The co-operation among Vimo and other business units around the country will help build a secure, convenient non-cash payment environment for international travellers in general and Chinese travelers in particular when visiting Viet Nam.  VNS
Despite important trade agreements and commercial commitments between Viet Nam and China, local enterprises are not reaping expected gains. Pham Sy Thanh, Director of the China Economic Research Programme at the Vietnam Centre for Economics and Policy Research, explainsed the situation.

Can you run the current trade scenarios by us and explain possible advantages for Viet Nam from signing free trade agreements (FTAs) with China?

Most recently, on November 21, the ASEAN-Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement (AHKFTA) was officially signed, promoting trade and economic co-operation, goods, services and investment flows between ASEAN and Hong Kong.

The 2010 ASEAN  China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) has acted as a framework for comprehensive economic co-operation between the two sides.

In both FTAs, important issues are covered, including an elimination plan for preferential duty tariffs, rules of origin and other commodity rules, trade and services and investment co-operation for joint ventures with foreign capital not exceeding 49 per cent, customs clearance, and intellectual property.

Viet Nam has committed to eliminate tariffs on 75 per cent of Hong Kongs exports, while Hong Kong has pledged to eliminate 100 per cent of tariffs for Vietnamese goods.

Another important agreement with China is the One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR), through which Viet Nam may receive additional capital for infrastructure and transport development as well as multiple opportunities for investment and trade with other Southeast Asian countries.

Such mutually beneficial partnerships may help the countrys public and private sectors mobilise hundreds of billions of dollars worth of capital. Participation in the OBOR could also help Viet Nam garner greater tourism benefits.

Why do you think Vietnamese enterprises are unable to seize due business opportunities with their Chinese counterparts? What are the challenges facing Vietnamese firms?

Trade and investment relations with Chinese partners make up a large proportion of Vietnamese enterprises business activities, but our firms capability to take advantage of FTAs is still relatively low.

Even before the FTAs, Viet Nams firms had encountered certain barriers to the Chinese market, especially agricultural products.

Apart from price competition, local producers technical infrastructure, from warehouses to border crossing services, is still rather weak, often causing losses to traders. In addition, Chinas frequent policy changes may also make it difficult for Vietnamese businesses to catch up, further hindering and delaying the flow of goods.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the General Department of Vietnam Customs show that during the initial tariff dismantling processes, Viet Nam may find it difficult to compete with Chinese goods, with less than a third of Viet Nams exports to China benefiting from the ACFTA tariff preferences.

While Viet Nams exports of Chinas most wanted commodity categories are relatively high, they are impacted by strict or flexible rules of origin. More flexible rules of origin can significantly enhance Vietnamese export products added value, and vice versa.

What should we do then?

We need to learn from the examples of other countries like Japan or South Korea, even Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia. It is crucial to equip firms with sufficient knowledge of FTAs, as they are obviously not fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages they may face. They need direct guidance and facilitating policies from the higher-ups.

Vietnamese enterprises should be more transparent in applying the Harmonized System codes for goods identification and rules of origin, and understand better the use of certificates of origin for manufactured goods, in order to maximise FTA tariff preferences and stimulate domestic production.

However, the challenges that Vietnamese enterprises may face after these FTAs with China and Hong Kong are still a concern that cannot be addressed without the right policy framework.

Firstly, the risk of public debt. Viet Nam could fall into other dependency situations if proper controls are not exercised. Secondly, the fact that Chinese contractors nearly always bring their native workers to the host country is an issue that cannot be overlooked. Thirdly, Viet Nam should pay attention to the quality of projects invested in by China. The use of Chinese capital also poses challenges in managing quality, costs, social and environmental issues.

Problems aside, bilateral trade agreements between Viet Nam and China and Hong Kong have to be seen as a pathway to new opportunities for trade and investment that must be fully utilised for the countrys socioeconomic progress. VNS
HA NOI  The winners of the environment-themed photo contest launched by the General Department of Environment and Viet Nam Association of Photographic Artists were announced on December 19.

The first prize winner went to the photo Tea Farm by Nguyen Thanh Hai in the central province of Ha Tinh and the second prize winners are Laboratory by Nguyen Van Muoi from the northern province of Phu Tho and Red-Shanked Douc Langur by Nguyen Phan Vinh from the central city of a Nang.

The contest, open from May to October, themed Khat Vong Cua Thien Nhien (Aspiration of Nature), attracted more than 2,600 entries and 19 won prizes.

The contest aims to strengthen the creativity of the community and reflect the current state of environmental protection work throughout the country through the photographs, said deputy head of the general department of environment Hoang Van Thuc.

The participants helped to give a new perspective on Viet Nams environment. This will serve as valuable material for the environment sectors communication work, he added.

Pham Tien Dung, editor-in-chief of Viet Nam Photography Magazine, a judge of the contest, said: The winners are all lively and artful with profound messages about environmental protection, helping to raise awareness about this issue.

Nguyen Van Muoi, a second prize winner with his work Laboratory said: This is a meaningful platform for the photographers. Each photographer must travel to many places to have good shots. It is also a good chance for them to raise the awareness of themselves and the community about environmental protection.

Nguyen Phan Vinh, second prize winner with his work featuring the red-shanked douc langur, said he had to travel to Son Tra Peninsula, where this species lives, every day to catch the right picture.  VNS
HCM CITY  Pianist Nguyen uc Anh, who earned a masters degree at Freiburg Conservatory of Music in German, will hold a free piano concert at the HCM City Museum of Southern Women on December 27.

Reminiscenza will include masterpieces by Medtner, Brahms and Beethoven.

Anh, 26, has won top prizes at international competitions, such as the Alkan-Zimmerman International Piano Competition in Athens in 2014, and received a scholarship from the German government.

In October, Anh and pianists Duong Vu Minh, Luu uc Anh va Nguyen Phu Son, who have studied piano for years in Europe, established the Maestoso group to contribute to the development of classical music in Viet Nam.

The concert will begin at 8pm at 202 Vo Thi Sau Street in District 3.  VNS
HCM CITY Saigon Flea Market will host a Christmas Flash Sale at the Boomerang Bistro Saigon in District 7 on December 24.

There will be 100 stalls, offering decorative objects and ornaments, gifts and souvenirs for Christmas. It will also include unique clothes, home decorations, vintage items, handmade accessories, food, beverages and live music.

The market will open from 11am to 7pm at 107 Ton Dat Tien Street in District 7.  VNS
HA NOI  The Russian Centre for Science and Culture will host a Christmas celebration on December 26-28.

The programme consists of performances by artists from the Viet Nam Central Circus, dances and songs on the theme of the New Year, as well as contests and games. Santa Claus and Snow White will also be present to meet young guests.

A Christmas Tree programme especially for children will take place on December 26. On the following day, an event will be held for Russian language students at language schools in Viet Nam while a similar event for university students will take place on December 28.

The event will take place at 501 Kim Ma Street, Ha Noi. Entrance is free.  VNS
President Tran ai Quang (r) receives General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and President of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachith in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

HA NOI  A visit to Viet Nam by General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and President of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachith, was an important political event and a historical milestone between the two Parties, States and peoples, President Tran ai Quang has said.

Meeting the Lao leader in Ha Noi yesterday, the President congratulated the Lao Party, State and people on impressive achievements they had made in three decades of renewal. He hoped Laos would reap more success in its future development.

Quang said he was delighted at the fruitful bilateral ties in politics, security and defence, economy, education, culture, science and technology, which were all important in maintaining stability and bolstering socio-economic development in each nation.

President Quang hailed the close collaboration in organising the Viet Nam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017.

He asked both sides to continue close co-ordination and called for further co-operation in security and defence - and the prompt solution of difficulties.

Vorachith congratulated Viet Nam on the successful hosting of the APEC Year 2017 and expressed his sympathy over human and property losses Viet Nam suffered in recent storms and floods.

He appraised giant strides in bilateral relations, telling the Vietnamese leader about activities in Laos to mark 40 years of the signing of the Viet Nam-Laos Treaty of Amity and Co-operation and the 55th anniversary of diplomatic ties.

At the meeting, the two leaders said that both sides needed to exchange information in a timely manner and support each other at regional and international forums, especially the UN, ASEAN and Mekong Sub-region co-operation mechanisms, to maintain regional and global peace, security, stability and development.

The Lao leader invited President Tran ai Quang and his wife to visit Laos at an appropriate time.  VNS
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh meets Chairman of the Viet Nam  RoK Friendship Association Choi Young-joo in Seoul yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Huu Toan

SEOUL  Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh is on a working visit to the Republic of Korea (RoK) from Tuesday to Thursday on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties.

During a reception in Seoul yesterday for Chairman of the Viet Nam  RoK Friendship Association Choi Young-joo, Minh suggested the association facilitate visits to Viet Nam to boost trade, promote cultural exchange and tourism, strengthen friendship between the two countries people, and particularly ensure the interests of Vietnamese brides in the country.

Choi vowed to do his best to popularise Viet Nam, its country and people, and serve as a bridge connecting RoK firms with partners in Viet Nam, contributing to pushing forward the effective and practical development of bilateral ties.

Meeting two Vietnamese Honorary Consuls General to Busan-Kyeongnam and Gwangju-Cheonam, Minh expressed his hope that they would continue working closely with the Vietnamese Embassy in the RoK to launch practical activities in consular work and citizen protection as well as extend economic collaboration between the two countries localities.

During a meeting with former United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Vietnamese official hailed his contributions in his capacity as RoK Foreign Minister and UN chief, which helped develop bilateral ties and deal with global challenges regarding the environment, climate change, and poverty reduction.

Ban spoke highly of Viet Nams achievements in its reform process, peacekeeping missions and stature in ASEAN, APEC and the UN. He congratulated Viet Nam on successfully undertaking the role as host of APEC Year 2017 and expressed his willingness to work as a bridge to help Viet Nam in developing ties with the RoK as well as in the global integration process.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (r) receives Danish Ambassador to Viet Nam Charlotte Laursen in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Nguyen Dan

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc thanked Danish Ambassador to Viet Nam Charlotte Laursen for her important contributions to the two countries relations while receiving the outgoing diplomat in Ha Noi yesterday.

Congratulating the ambassador on fulfilling her tasks, Phuc noted with satisfaction the progress in the Viet Nam-Denmark comprehensive partnership in all priority areas, to which Ambassador Laursen greatly contributed.

Bilateral trade is developing positively, surpassing US$600 million in 2016, he noted, adding that the countries are also promoting cooperation in culture, health care, education, and energy, including wind power  a field that Denmark excels in.

To help boost Viet Nams connections with Denmark and the EU, he asked Denmark to push for the early signing of the EU-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement.

Phuc said he hopes with her experience, the ambassador will continue to support Viet Nam-Denmark relations. He reiterated that Viet Nam treasures ties with Denmark, an important partner of the country in Northern Europe.

For her part, Ambassador Laursen thanked PM Phuc, the Vietnamese Government, ministries and sectors for providing favourable conditions for her to fulfill tasks during her second term in Viet Nam. She also expressed her delight at Viet Nams socio-economic development and the thriving bilateral relations, including the establishment of a comprehensive partnership.

She noted that bilateral trade is growing well and about 130 Danish companies are now present in Viet Nam. Danish businesses are strong in various fields, and many of them want to engage in trade and retail activities in Viet Nam.

The ambassador said Viet Nam is facing challenges in some sectors, which are the spheres Denmark has strength in such as green growth, environment, energy, and food.

She pledged to continue supporting Viet Nam-Denmark relations in the future.  VNS
Phuoc Buu

Viet Nam News

THUA THIEN- HUE  Rice husk is no longer agricultural waste thanks to a heat press machine invented by rural engineer Tran inh Lai in central Thua Thien- Hue Province.

Lai said his machines are present in most localities around the country and also in Laos and Cambodia. Companies working in the industry that require huge volume of heat such as leather or textile in southern industrial parks are my main customers, he said.

The machine helps them conserve energy and reduce production costs, Lai added.

Rice husk is abundant across the country as Viet Nam is among the worlds top rice producers and rice is the staple food for Vietnamese, including for those in Lais home village An Xuan in the provinces Quang ien District.

Locals burn the husk to cook food but home cooking consumes little of the husk from rice production of each family. The majority of the husk is considered agricultural waste.

Lai designed his machine in 2007, but it took the machine almost seven years to become popular.

Born in 1976, Lai took a short course on simple engineering skill to make farming tools at Hue Vocational School for Industrial Skills in 1994 and began working in a cattle feed production plant.

He later quit his job and returned to the village to assist his family, where he opened a workshop to produce simple farming tools. I nurtured the idea of a machine to make husk burning bars but I didnt have enough money, he said.

Fortunately, I was lent a sum from the fund for science and technology research from the Department of Industry and Trade, Lai said. I succeeded in making the machine a year later.

The machine was first not welcome in the community as locals thought they didnt need the bars of pressed husk as a burning material. They had hay and wood instead, according to Lai.

In 2014, some sought the machine and quickly made the machine popular. Today I have customers abroad. I get orders, produce the parts and travel to the site for installation, Lai said, adding that the machine costs about VN70 million.

Quang Binh, Thua Thien- Hue and Quang Nam provinces have the most customers that bought the machines not for industrial assembly, but to produce husk bars for home burning.

Each province consumed 50 machines, thanks to their economic effectiveness and easy operation, said Le Van ong, an employee of Lais workshop.

First, husk is poured into a large funnel. The husk then flows to a tube, where the husk is pressed and heated to make bars. The bars drop out while dust and smoke are blown into a vertical giant tube, where smoke goes up and dust drops into a collecting tray.

The machine is electric-powered and has a control panel for operators. Husk, sawdust or sliced hay can all be fed into the funnel to make burning bars, ong said.

Lai also provides a heating tool, which helps burn the fragments of a husk bar and dry the husk before its poured into the funnel. Dry husk helps conserve the electricity that powers the machine.

According to Nguyen Thi Hang, who set up a facility producing the bars using Lais machines, the bars have changed the way of burning husk in the village. She said she expected the need for the bars would increase, which helps her earn more income.

ong said 1.1 tonnes of husk yields 1 tonne of the husk bars. Which means the same quantity, but for double energy effectiveness as calculated by my customers, he said.

ong, also a local, said he would assist Lai in producing more of the machines, as the village looks tidy from husk and hay since Lais invention came about.

In northern Bac Ninh Province, a young man became wealthy and created jobs thanks to the use of Lais machines to produce the bars. Lai and ong said they are supplying the machines and slow payment methods to those who lack funds.  VNS
Assyrians Ready for Christmas After the Caliphate's Collapse

Above, Immaculate Conception Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Qaraquosh will hold Christmas celebrations, despite its damaged interior. Below, a view of ruined homes in Qaraqosh as Yohanna Towaya stands in front of his parents' home. ( Yohanna Towaya) QARAQOSH, Iraq -- In their villages on the Nineveh Plain, Iraq's Christians are celebrating their first Christmas since the region's liberation from the Islamic State (ISIS). In the little town of Qaraqosh (also known as Baghdida), there will be no flocks of sheep grazing, or cows lowing, as in past years past, on the holy night of Christ's birth -- just the sound of Christians singing the Divine Liturgy at midnight in their burned churches.

More than three years ago, Yohanna Towaya left his home in Qaraqosh and escaped with his family as ISIS advanced. Coming back in September, he found his home had been torn apart and looted, with signs that ISIS had planned on burning it. But Towaya, a Syriac Catholic, was relatively lucky: Many houses were destroyed, including those belonging to his parents and his brother. "We left everything," he said. "We [Christians] had millions of dollars, but left it to keep our faith." Christmas in Qaraqosh is not just a celebration of Christ's birth, but an exercise in hope for Christianity in Iraq's resurrection after ISIS. More than 150,000 Christians were expelled from their homelands by ISIS' genocidal campaign. Only 250,000 Christians are estimated to remain in Iraq. This December has seen one-third of the displaced Christian population return to their homes, according to figures kept by the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee. Before the arrival of ISIS, Yohanna Towaya drew his income from three sources: his law practice, lecturing at the university and raising turkeys. All his agricultural equipment and poultry need to be replaced. But until he can get reimbursed, the funds Towaya needs to rebuild his business are tied up in the cost of the repairs to his house. Many other Christians are in similar situations. Towaya said the Christians are reconstructing houses, but the pace is slow. The town has no potable water, and families are relying on generators to power their houses. The average cost to rebuild a destroyed home is $60,000. The minimum estimate for repairs to a damaged home runs about $5,000. It's a tall order for the Christian survivors of the Islamic State's campaign of genocide. Their savings were either left behind or spent during their displacement. Father Salar Kajo, the vicar general for the Chaldean Catholic Diocese of Alqosh, told the Register that in Telleskuf, where he is a pastor, the Christians are getting "step-by-step" back to normal life. They reconsecrated and reopened their Chaldean Catholic church, St. George, which was badly damaged by ISIS, just in time for Christmas. The young people, he said, made a beautiful Nativity grotto and set up a large Christmas tree. "We feel that this Christmas is a very special Christmas for us after three years of being displaced from our villages," Father Kajo said. The priest said Christmas is an opportunity for spiritual solidarity. But the big gift that Christians around the world could give them would be aid in "getting our villages rebuilt and supporting the peace in our lands." Rebirth in Christianity's Cradle Rebuilding the Christian community in Iraq requires outside help. Their Churches are the only working civic institutions in northern Iraq, and they have relied upon a variety of cooperating organizations, such as Aid to the Church in Need, the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Near East Welfare Agency, and Catholic Relief Services, to name a few, to sustain their efforts. Christian reconstruction, including homes, church properties, schools, hospitals and other public properties, has an estimated price tag of $250 million, according to Aid to the Church in Need. Father Georges Jarhola, a Syriac Catholic member of the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, told the Register the pace of reconstruction depends on the pace of financial support. The committee estimates it needs $60 million to rebuild or repair the 13,000 houses in the Nineveh Plains region damaged or destroyed by ISIS. Restoring these homes would pave the way for 90,000 displaced Christians living in Erbil to return. So far, Father Jarhola said, the committee has been able to spend just $1.2 million on homes. Because livable housing is the top priority, the repair of most churches has had to wait. The people are celebrating this Christmas in burned churches, which have neither glass windows, electricity nor heat to ward off the below-zero temperatures in winter. But Father Jarhola said the plan is to get churches into top shape in time for Easter 2018. For now, Father Jarhola said the Christians are witnessing to the hope of the Resurrection as they celebrate the birth of Christ. "Celebrating Mass in a burned church sends a big message: that life goes up from death," he said. Challenges at Christmas Northern Iraq's infrastructure, long neglected before ISIS' arrival, is unlikely to be repaired for a long time due to bureaucratic red tape. Ashur Eskrya, the Dohuk-based director of the Assyrian Aid Society-Iraq, told the Register that the region needs a single political authority, not multiple political and religious authorities, coordinating the restoration of infrastructure and essential services. After returning to their homes, he said Christians are eager to get the electricity back on, clean water running and their churches restored. "The Church for our people is one of the most important things for returning life to the people," he said. Assyrian Aid Society has been working with the U.S.-based Iraqi Christian Relief Council to rebuild homes and get some limited infrastructure working in Qaraqosh to make the town more livable. The organization also has teams organizing Christmas activities in a number of villages to brighten people's spirits. Some volunteers will dress up as "Papa Noel" to bring 3,000 gifts to children at Christmastime. Eskyra said that the Christians on the Nineveh Plain need internationally guaranteed security to guarantee the region's neutrality, make sure that Christians can return to their homes and properties, and assure people the genocide that took place under ISIS will never happen again. If money from the U.S. Agency for International Development starts flowing to the churches, instead of only the United Nations, as Vice President Mike Pence announced in October, Eskyra said that would be a "concrete message" of support to Iraq's Christians. Christian leaders in Iraq expect it will take some time for the U.S. to put the promised direct funding of their projects into place. Security and Stability Long-term success will depend on economic development. But first security is needed, in order for thousands of families to return from Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. "People are happy to go back to their villages, but security is a big issue," said Michel Constantin, Catholic Near East Welfare Association's (CNEWA) Beirut-based regional director. Some Christians have delayed their return to Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, because they fear former Islamic State militia are still prowling the city. Constantin said the rebuilding and economic redevelopment is critical: Without the necessary money arriving soon to restore homes and livelihoods, the fear is that people will sell their property and leave -- this time for good. This Christmas, CNEWA has been funding a winter clothing drive to obtain hats, jackets and winter shoes for needy Christian children and their families. They are also working to restart the Christian hospital in Qaraqosh. In Qaraqosh, Constantin said, a third of families had returned to the area, and the town had shrunk to approximately 10,000 people, a fifth of its former size. The agrarian economy that supported the region has to restart from scratch, because ISIS destroyed the livestock and equipment. All of that needs to be replaced. In addition, he said, the fields have to be checked for unexploded shells and mines. All this runs into the millions of dollars. Christmas Hope After ISIS Christmas in Iraq usually is preceded by nine days of fasting, and then people fill the churches for midnight Mass. The liturgy is followed by people dancing in the streets, enjoying music and giving gifts to each other. In better days, the villages would launch fireworks into the night sky. Towaya said the gift Christians in the Nineveh Plain want this Christmas is support and hope for the future. Christmas celebrations continue for a second day, as people visit the tombs of the dead, reminding them of their ancient Christian heritage and their hope in the Resurrection. Towaya said he and other Christians cannot abandon the bones of their ancestors. They have returned to bring their villages back to life and send a message to the world that they will stay in their lands and witness that Christianity will continue in Iraq. "The people are building everything here for their faith," he said. "Here, it is the earth of the apostles, the earth of Christianity. "How can I leave it?"
HA NOI  The National Cancer Hospital (K Hospital) is working on a project to set up the first centre in the country to use proton radiation therapy to treat cancer.

Health experts say the new therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy that would reduce treatment time and promises to improve the quality of life during and after treatment.

Current popular cancer treatments include surgery, chemical therapy, radiation therapy and palliative care.

Deputy Health Minister Le Quang Cuong said that proton radiation therapy has been applied in some countries for its ability to treat tumors that cant be treated by Cobalt radiation or cyclotron radition. The therapy has also proved effective in treating head and neck cancer, prostate cancer and paediatric cancer.

The rate of patients treated with proton radiation having their tumors decrease in size after three years are considerably positive  80 to 90 per cent with liver cancer and almost 100 per cent with prostate cancer, he said.

K Hospitals statistics also reveal that survival rate of three more years among patients with first and second stage lung cancer is 86 percent, and of five more years among prostate cancer patients is 99 per cent. The survival rate of five more years among head and neck cancer patients is 74 per cent.

Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy that uses a single beam of high-energy protons to treat various forms of cancer with less side effects. The key factor in proton therapy is superior dose distribution, allowing physicians to precisely aim the highest dose at the tumor, avoiding healthy tissues.

Proton therapy is especially appropriate for cancers with limited treatment options and those where conventional x-ray radiotherapy presents an unacceptable risk to the patient, e.g. eye or brain tumors, tumors close to the brain stem or spinal cord.

Proton therapy is also very much indicated for the treatment of pediatric tumors. As a childs growth implies a constant high rate of mitosis, his cells will be as vulnerable to ionizing particles as proliferating cancerous ones.

It is therefore crucial to aim the beams only at the tumor to avoid damage like growth abnormalities, cognitive impairments, radiation-induced tumors, cardiac damage, and other complications later in life.

Tran Van Thuan, director of K Hospital, said that a treatment session in proton therapy generally takes 10 minutes, much less than the time need for other therapies applied in Viet Nam currrently.

This would also address the current overloading situation in cancer hospitals in Viet Nam and give more cancer patients the chance to live, Thuan said.

Overloaded, overworked

Thuan said K hospitals branches have been overloaded constantly in recent years.

In 2015, the hospital treated 11,700 patients, in 2016 the number was 12,000 and, so far this year, 15,000 patients up to this time of 2017.

At the K hospitals branch in Thanh Tri District, there are three cyclotron radiation machines. Thuan said each machine can be used up to 23 hour a day for 150 to 200 patients per day.

Meanwhile, it is recommended that each machine is only used for 40 patients per day, he said.

The overcrowding means the hospitals have to work extra hours to serve the patients: a day would only end at 3 or 4 oclock in the morning of the next day, which would begin just an hour later.

Three or four more new radiation machines are set to go operational in hospital only in April. Each cyclotron radiation machine costs VN50  100 billion ($2.2  4.4 million) on average.

Viet Nam sees 126,000 new cases of cancer each year, and the number of cancer deaths each year is 94,000.

Last year, the World Health Organisation continued to rank Viet Nam among the countries with the highest rate of cancer fatalities. Viet Nam was ranked 78th among 172 countries with a cancer death rate of 110 for every 100,000 people, along with Finland, Somalia and Turkmenistan.  VNS
HCM CITY  After a month of implementation, Sai Gon river buses carry just some 1,000 passengers a day, too little to be considered an alternative to reduce traffic congestion as was expected.

The river bus route covers 10.8 km from Bach ang Wharf in District 1 to Linh ong Station in Thu uc District, passing through District 2 and Binh Thanh District.

Lao ong (Labour) newspaper reported that passengers were mostly older people who wanted to see HCM City from a different perspective.

It is exciting to enjoy the trip, feeling the breeze on the river while staying away from the traffic congestion, said Nguyen Thi Lan, 65, from District 8.

Each river bus offers 75 seats; therefore, some people find it hard to get a ticket.

The whole trip takes about 45 minutes, including waiting time at three bus stops. However, as passengers need to wait more than two hours for the return river bus to depart, a lot of them opt for normal buses, taxis or motorcycle taxis.

Meanwhile, with the same route, bus No.19 takes just 25 minutes despite there being ten bus stops on the way.

In terms of pricing, travelling by river bus costs VN900,000 (US$39.6) per month, in comparison to VND112,500 to 135,000 ($5  6) for 30 normal bus rides.

Riding normal buses is cheaper and faster. I think river buses are only suitable for sightseeing, not going to work, said Tran Van Binh from Thu uc District.

Cooperative improvements

According to a report issued by Daily Ldt. Company, the projects investor, three river buses (including the backup one) serve about 1,000 passengers a day, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the 7.5 million motorbikes and 650,000 cars in the city.

Therefore, it is essential for the investor to evaluate the services impact to better arrange the timetable, number of tickets and availability of river buses.

Nguyen Van My, director of Lua Viet Travel Agency, said that the river bus could not be considered a form of public transportation as it has poor traffic connections with other bus routes.

Conversely, river bus trips are not attractive to tourists as there are no tourism spots around the stations.

To improve the service, besides the effort of investors, local authorities need to develop tourism along the river to improve the experience for passengers, he said.

According to Phan Cong Bang, head of the Water Transportation Administration under HCM City Department of Transport, the department is assessing the projects impact and passengers demands. Meanwhile, considering the investors financial capability, it is impossible to increase the number of river buses at the moment, he said.  VNS
All 11-digit mobile phone numbers in Viet Nam will be changed to 10-digit numbers in 2018, said Pham Hong Hai, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications. Photo ictnews.vn

HA NOI  All 11-digit mobile phone numbers in Viet Nam will be changed to 10-digit numbers in 2018, said Pham Hong Hai, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications.

According to Nguyen uc Trung, director of the Telecommunications Authority under the Ministry of Information and Communications, the change to fixed telephone area codes was completed nation-wide on August 31.

After completing the change to fixed phone area codes, there are some surplus codes such as 03, 04, 05, 07, 08 which will be used for the growth in mobile phone subscriptions, the authority said.

Accordingly, all 11-digit numbers with prefixes 012 of VinaPhone and MobiFone, 016 of Viettel, 018 of Vietnamobile and 019 of GMobile will be converted into 10-digit ones.

The last seven numbers of the 11-digit mobile phone numbers will remain the same, except for the prefixes 0166, 0188, 0199, which will be changed.

Existing 10-digit mobile phone numbers beginning with 090, 091, 092, 093, 094, 099, 098, 097, 096 will not be affected.

To minimise the impact on users during the conversion process, the service provider must give at least 60 days notice about the change to subscribers through mass media. They must also allow normal calls to the old numbers as well as new ones for 60 days, it said.

In 2007, when the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (now the Ministry of Information and Communications) officially issued 11-digit number for mobile networks, public expressed their concern that these numbers were often used for advertising and marketing, and usually abandoned after a short period of time. Many people use the mobile phone numbers to spread spam and anonymous messages. As a result, many people were not happy with the use of 11-digit SIM cards.

In the first half of this year, the ministry de-activated and recalled more than 20 million unregistered SIM cards, most of them were 11-digit ones in preparation for the digital reserves planning.  VNS
WASHINGTON  Donald Trump celebrated a historic victory on Wednesday as the US Congress passed a massive Republican tax cut plan, handing the president his first major legislative achievement since taking office nearly a year ago.

The House of Representatives voted along party lines to greenlight a US$1.5 trillion overhaul that will impact every corner of the US economy through dramatic tax cuts for corporations and temporary reductions for individuals.

Opposition Democrats have branded the tax plan a giveaway to the wealthiest that risks blowing a hole in the national debt, but the revamp fulfills a core Trump campaign pledge to redirect money from government coffers into the pockets of working Americans.

We broke every record, a jubilant Trump told scores of elated Republicans gathered at the White House for a victory lap, thanking them for driving through the largest tax cut in the history of our country.

We are making America great again, he declared, in a melee of smiles and handshakes with lawmakers -- who took turns to sing the presidents praises.

Something this big, something this generational, something this profound could not have been done without exquisite presidential leadership, gushed House Speaker Paul Ryan, as fellow lawmakers applauded.

The most sweeping rewrite of the US tax code in decades, the bill represents Trumps most important legislative victory in the 11 months since his inauguration, until now marked by the stinging failure to repeal his predecessors health care law.

Billing it as a Christmas gift and a history victory for the American people, Trump and his Republicans hope their success in passing tax cuts plays to the partys advantage in next years mid-term elections.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also takes a major step toward crippling Obamacare, by scrapping the individual mandate that requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine.

With this bill... we have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something thats much better, Trump declared.

Trump earlier gathered his cabinet members for a meeting where he discussed the tax accomplishment, and that gave way to an extraordinary scene as the president invited those present to join in prayer.

Housing Secretary Ben Carson, a fervent member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, proceeded to say grace, thanking God for giving America Trump and his tax cut plan.

Were thankful for the unity in Congress that has presented an opportunity for our economy to expand so that we can fight corrosive debt that has been destroying our future, Carson intoned.

Changing minds

Having taken months to get across the finish line, the bill was delayed at the last moment Tuesday after a technical glitch required the Senate to strip three minor provisions from the bill before approving it overnight.

Since the House had already voted -- and the versions approved by both chambers must be identical -- it was forced to vote again on the changes. The bill passed the House 224 to 201, with 12 Republicans siding with all Democrats in voting no.

The measure tests conservatives fidelity to the principle of fiscal discipline, as it is projected to add nearly $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

That figure drops to about $1 trillion when economic growth is accounted for.

Trump had leaned heavily on Republicans to push the contentious package through Congress. The party had been deeply fractured after the Obamacare repeal failure, and the prospects of success on tax reform in 2017 appeared remote.

The reform remains unpopular: a CNN poll shows that 55 per cent of Americans oppose the tax plan, widely criticised as favouring wealthy people over the middle class, while just 33 per cent support it.

But Republicans have pushed back at that notion, with Ryan predicting that Americans would be won over once they start to reap the benefits next year. I think people are going to change their view on this, he said.

The tax bill slashes the federal corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, and the maximum individual income tax rate, for the nations wealthiest, would drop from 39.6 per cent to 37 per cent.

It also doubles the standard deduction for families, and doubles the child tax credit, while eliminating or limiting several deductions currently claimed by millions of middle-class families.

Economic rocket fuel

Ryan stated that a median-income family of four earning $73,000 annually would save $2,059 in taxes next year.

But he could not say whether the tax cuts would generate enough economic growth to pay for themselves.

Trump however was bullish. By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy, he said.

Democrats meanwhile trashed the plans implications for ordinary citizens.

It is a victory for billionaires like Donald Trump... but this is a disaster for the American people," independent Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN.

Under the law, the corporate tax cuts are permanent, while those for individuals phase out beginning in 2026. By 2027, the Tax Policy Centre warns, 53 per cent of households will see their taxes rise.  AFP
BRUSSELS  The European Commission launched unprecedented disciplinary proceedings against Poland on Wednesday over its highly controversial judicial reforms which Brussels says threaten the rule of law.

In a major escalation against one of the EUs biggest states, Brussels triggered article seven of the EU treaty over what it sees as systemic threats to the independence of the Polish judiciary from the nations right-wing government.

Never before used against an EU member state, the proceedings can eventually lead to the nuclear option of the suspension of a countrys voting rights within the bloc.

But just hours after the announcement, a defiant Polish president went ahead and signed the reforms into law.

It is with a heavy heart that we have decided to initiate Article 7.1. But the facts leave us with no choice, Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters.

The Dutch commissioner said 13 laws adopted by Poland in the space of two years had created a situation where the government can systematically politically interfere with the composition, powers, the administration and the functioning of judicial authorities.

But Timmermans gave Warsaw three months to remedy the situation, saying Brussels could withdraw the measures if it did.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said on Twitter it was a difficult day for Poland, but also for the EU and said he would meet Polands new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki early next month.

EU President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and arch-rival of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, urged Warsaw to come to its senses and not seek a conflict at all cost in a case where it is simply not right.

Poland slams political move

Polands right-wing PiS government began making changes to the judiciary after coming to power in late 2015 and says the reforms are needed to combat corruption.

Brussels has repeatedly warned that it views the changes as a threat to the democratic principles and rule of law Poland signed up to when it joined the EU.

Poland deplores the European Commissions launch of the procedure foreseen in article seven, which is essentially political, not legal in nature, the Polish foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that it risks undermining mutual trust.

President Andrzej Duda later said he had decided to sign into law reforms to the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary pushed through parliament this month by the PiS government.

Duda defended the constitutionality of his moves insisting that in the US the president chooses Supreme Court judges, while the Senate gives its opinion; judges circles have no say in the matter.

He also insisted that the new laws absolutely serve the democratisation of the state.

The initial phase set in motion by the commission, the EU executive arm, allows member states to determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law.

Such a ruling would need the backing of 22 states out of 28.

Any possible sanctions would only come at a second stage and would need unanimous support of all EU members -- apart from Poland.

Hungary has already said it would veto such a move, making sanctions unlikely, but Brussels is hoping the start of proceedings will have significant symbolic power.

Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen called Wednesdays move a grave attack on Polish sovereignty and vowed that Budapest would oppose it in all forums, in comments to the state news agency MTI.

Protests in Poland

Polands parliament last week adopted new reforms allowing it to choose members of a body designed to protect judicial independence and reinforce political control over the Supreme Court.

The reforms have sparked street protests in Poland and concern from the US.

Warsaw and the EU have clashed over the reforms for more than a year with little result, with Poland refusing to implement the recommendations from Brussels.

The commission has been threatening to trigger article seven for months, but given that the threat of sanctions is no more than theoretical, the EU is trying to come up with other ways of getting Poland to comply.

One idea is to link access to European funding for major infrastructure projects to respect for EU values and rulings, with the EU due to start talks on its next multi-year budget in April.  AFP
MELBOURNE - A car ploughed into a crowd in Australias second-largest city on Thursday, injuring at least a dozen people, some of them seriously, officials said.

Witnesses said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle, which did not appear to be trying to slow down as it "mowed everybody down".

Victoria state police said they had arrested the driver of the car after it "collided with a number of pedestrians" in downtown Melbourne at a busy intersection just after 4.30pm local time (0530 GMT).

A second man was also arrested by police, who have not yet said whether they believe the driver was acting deliberately.

Paramedics were "treating and transporting to hospital" 13 people, with some seriously hurt, ambulance officials said.

Sky News Australia reported that a pre-school child with a head injury was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Citing witnesses, Sky said a white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd, with no signs the vehicle made an effort to slow down.

In a tweet, police appealed to members of the public to upload any images they might have of the incident to a cloud address to help assist with their investigation.

A witness, named only as Sue, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that she heard screams and saw "people flying everywhere".

"We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said.

"People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere."

Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw a "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys - and I hope not prams," he said.

"Ive really never seen anything like this before and I havent stopped shaking."

The incident came months after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbournes busiest mall in January, killing six people.

The driver, whose case is still being heard in court, had been pursued by police prior to the rampage after he had allegedly stabbed his brother.

The Australian government in August unveiled a strategy aimed at preventing vehicle terror attacks carried out in crowded public places after deadly assaults in Barcelona, Nice and London.

The strategy, commissioned after 86 people were killed in the Nice truck attack last year, offered businesses and local governments a guide to assessing how vulnerable their sites are.

Suggested steps include deterrent options like fencing and closed circuit cameras, and delaying approaches such as trees and bollards to slow down vehicles.  AFP
The Royal Air Force will be celebrating its centenary in 2018. Formed on April 1st, 1918 by the amalgamation of squadrons and personnel of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Air Force became the worlds very first independent air arm. Naturally, in true British tradition, there will be a wealth of celebratory events surrounding this major milestone next year across the British Isles, and indeed the world. For those of our readers who wish to be a part of some of these celebrations, and to take in the rich aviation heritage of the United Kingdom, Ian Allan Aviation Tours is offering a spectacular 18 day guided tour which will include three of Britains finest air shows, as well as visits to many of the nations most prestigious air museums and aviation heritage sites. Ian Allan Aviation Tours is the worlds premier aviation-minded tour operator, lead by aviation enthusiasts for aviation enthusiasts, and WarbirdsNews is proud to have them as a new sponsor. The company has an enviable reputation, and has been in business for several decades now. They already have a diverse array of tours scheduled for 2018, enough to cover almost any aviation fans favorite subjects (Check HERE to see the 2018 list).

But for those of you who would be interested in seeing what their 100th Anniversary of the Royal Air Force Tour will include, please click HERE to see the provisional itinerary as it currently stands

The highlights will be as follows:

For those unfamiliar with the British air show scene, the Royal International Air Tattoo is the worlds largest military air show (it will also be the RAFs main flying event commemorating their 100th Anniversary). The Flying Legends air show features the largest gathering of warbirds in a flying display outside of the USA, including three or more Hurricanes and 18+ Spitfires (Click HERE for WarbirdsNews review from this years event). The Shuttleworth Collections annual Military Pageant is famous for its WWI aeroplanes, most of which are original examples  nowhere else on earth can you see such a gathering. When put together these three airshows will cover 100% of the 100 year history of the Royal Air Force!

This once in a lifetime tour will quite literally be visiting the cream of Britains aviation museums, as well as three of its most prestigious air shows over the 18 day curated visit. Even with the intense aviation theme, there will still be some time to take in a few of Englands significant historic sites such as Windsor Castle and Stratford Upon Avon (home of William Shakespeare). Tour attendees will also have free time in Salisbury, London, Cambridge and York to enjoy as you wish.

Click HERE for the complete schedule and to get in touch with Ian Allan Aviation Tours
WEST UNION --- The Fayette County Sheriffs Office is warning parents to monitor their children's phones and other electronic devices after students at different schools were implicated in separate sexting investigations in recent weeks.

Sheriff Marty Fisher said parents should know what their children are looking at and what kind of content they have on their phones.

It is also important to communicate with your children so they understand the consequences of these actions and that this kind of behavior is against the law and they can be criminally charged for such actions, the sheriff said.

The separate probes included students at North Fayette Valley High School, North Fayette Middle School and Starmont High School and were initiated when parents and school officials contacted authorities with their concerns.

Three North Fayette students were charged including a 16-year-old male with third-degree harassment for possessing and forwarding inappropriate photographs of a minor; a 15-year-old female with drug and paraphernalia charges; and a 16-year-old female with possession and delivery of marijuana, sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of drug paraphernalia.

A 13-year-old male at North Fayette Middle School was charged with invasion of privacy for taking a photograph of a student in the restroom without their knowledge, according to the sheriffs office.

At Starmont High School, a 15-year-old male was charged with third-degree harassment; a 15-year-old female was charged with invasion of privacy for taking an inappropriate photograph of a student without their knowledge and third-degree harassment, deputies said.

Deputies are still continuing to investigate these incidents and are examining cell phones and more charges could be filed at a later date.
DES MOINES (AP)  The husband of Iowas first female governor has unveiled a doll of himself at the state Capitol, adding a twist to a popular  and some would say strange  tradition honoring the states first ladies.

Kevin Reynolds, husband of Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, was on hand Wednesday as a doll with his likeness became the newest addition to a permanent display case at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines.

The case holds dolls of most Iowa first ladies in history, dating back to territorial governors. Clad in tiny inaugural gowns, the dolls are from a mold based on former first lady Billie Ray, who started the tradition more than 40 years ago.

Officials say Kevin Reynolds doll, which is slightly taller than the others, was made in Colorado.
OSAGE -- Mitchell County Attorney Mark Walk and other county officials are seeking legal action against several opioid manufacturers outside Iowa in response to what they say is a growing public health epidemic stemming from the over-prescription of those drugs.

The pending lawsuit is a collaboration between several different parties, including the Mitchell County Board of Supervisors, the Iowa State Association of Counties (ISAC) and national law firms who want to help in the litigation process.

At the Mitchell County Board of Supervisors' earlier this month, the board unanimously approved a resolution to pursue legal action.

They were acting on an engagement letter and other paperwork from ISAC, which recommended that Iowa counties file lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Pharmaceuticals and their related companies.

Walk said he has been discussing the possibility of filing a lawsuit before the meeting Dec. 5.

"ISAC is recommending that everyone join in it," he said of the engagement letter and overall process. "I was pretty much up to speed on this because we had been talking to another firm for three to four months about doing this."

The firms involved are Creuger Dickinson, Simmons Hanly Conroy and von Briesen. Walk hopes to have a formal lawsuit filed in the next six months, but emphasized this was a preliminary estimate.

Bill Peterson, ISAC's executive director, said the topic has been on the organization's radar for the past couple years. He added he attended a meeting in October where lawyers from Creuger Dickinson and Simmons Hanly Conroy held presentations about why filing lawsuits against the aforementioned opioid manufacturers was plausible.

Peterson added that each Iowa county that participates with ISAC and the national law firms would file a separate suit. Those suits would be filed in the Northern District of Ohio because the manufacturers are out of state, so the cases must be federal.

So far, nine counties scattered across Iowa  including Mitchell  have stated they are interested in filing a lawsuit, Peterson said. He added the goal is having as many of Iowa's 99 counties join as possible.
WATERLOO  Maintenance costs and the prospect of nearby industrial development are threatening to close one of three runways at the Waterloo Regional Airport.

But local pilots and representatives of Livingston Aviation Inc. descended on the airport board Tuesday to serve notice they wont let runway 6-24 disappear without a fight.

Our concern is theres a concerted effort behind the scenes to make a decision to close this runway, said Joel Harris, a private pilot. We want a chair at the table.

Im sorry if our underwears in a twist over the thing, but its a big deal to us, he added. Its not only a safety issue but its an economic issue for this airport.

Rick Young, of Livingston Aviation, the airports fixed base operator, said the third runway is vital to the general aviation community, which represents 93 percent of landings and takeoffs.

If the airport commission and the director are concerned about economic development with our airport, you need to keep 6-24 open, Young said.

Airport Board Chairman Hugh Field said he shared a desire to keep the runway open but called the debate premature because a pavement assessment detailing the cost of repairing the runway isnt expected until January.

Lets see what the heck it costs and then we can do a cost-benefit analysis, Field said. There has been no decision made by this commission or by the City Council.

The general aviation group said Waterloo is the only airport in Iowa with three runways. Runway 6-24, the shortest at 5,500 feet, is important when strong crosswinds make the other two runways unsafe for small aircraft landings.

But the runway, constructed in 1944, is in poor repair and has major cracks. Airport Director Keith Kaspari has been closing the runway over the winter months due to its condition and to protect it from further damage from snow plows.

The Federal Aviation Administration ruled runway 6-24 is not eligible for federal funding due to coverage provided by the other two runways. Kaspari said the airport currently operates on razor-thin margins and does not have money to maintain the third runway on its own.

Im looking at basic math, folks, he said. We dont have it. We just dont have it.

That means any repair costs  initial estimates have put the bill as high as $2 million to $4 million  likely would fall on local property taxpayers in the form of a bond issue. But an ordinance adopted by the City Council in 1999 requires the airport to stand on its own without a city property tax subsidy.

Harris said its time for the city to reverse that policy.

This city should fund this thing, he said. Theres funding available if you deem it important.

A second issue affecting runway 6-24 is the citys desire to develop land along the west side of the airport near Leversee Road for industrial development with rail access. Developing that area is more complicated if the city has to work around the 6-24 runway protection zone.

Community Planning and Development Director Noel Anderson noted the city already approved a development agreement for Standard Distribution to construct a 50,000-square-foot warehouse on the southwest corner of the airport.

The firm is considering expanding that operation fourfold, while five or six additional prospects are interested in developing in that area if a railroad spur can be constructed to serve the sites, he said.

The ideal path for the rail spur goes through runway 6-24s protection zone, but Anderson said the city and consultants are now looking at a way to reroute the line around that zone.

Steve Dust, an airport board member and director of the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Chamber, said he believes the airport property could be attractive to new employers.

Weve got 300 acres around our airport thats been planned for industrial development, Dust said. One of the things thats becoming more and more important again is rail service.

But Livingston Aviations Tim Newton countered, You shouldnt do economic development at the cost of the airport.

Developing the property could also hurt the airports budget, which currently sees the largest portion of its operating revenue come from leasing its land for crop production.

The city is required to reimburse the airport for the fair market value of any land it takes for industrial development. That money, likely generated by tax-increment financing, would be put in a designated account for an FAA-eligible airport project.

But the city and airport officials have not publicly discussed any plans to offset the lost farm rental income the airport would incur.

Newton said he hopes all of those issues are fully discussed before the airport board or City Council makes any decisions on runway 6-24.

I dont think theres been an open discussion of the possibilities of different ways to fund the runway and an honest discussion of the value the runway brings to the airport, he said.
Advertisement

By The Associated Press

Dec. 20, 2017 | WASHINGTON, D.C.

By The Associated Press Dec. 20, 2017 | 02:24 PM | WASHINGTON, D.C.

A triumphant President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul Wednesday as a historic victory for the American people.



Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement  and the biggest tax changes in a generation.



We are making America great again, Trump declared, personally thanking his little team of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticized.



I dont know if well have bigger moments, but we hope to, said Trump.



The president was expected to sign the bill at a later date for technical reasons. In fact, the signing may be postponed until the start of the new calendar year in order to delay $120 billion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and spare Republicans from having to explain them in an election year.



The tax package provides a deep cut in the corporate rate, from 35 percent to 21 percent. On the individual side, about 80 percent of American households will get tax cuts next year, while about 5 percent will pay more, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.



People who make less than $25,000 will see an average tax cut of $60; those who earn between $49,000 and $86,000 will get about $900, and those in the top 1 percent of income  earning more than $733,000  will receive around $51,000 in tax savings, the policy center said.



Speaker Ryan has wanted to change the federal tax system since he arrived in Congress in 1999. So he couldn't resist a victory lap when the House approved the Republican $1.5 trillion tax bill twice this week, happily gaveling each vote to a close and announcing its passage.



Most agree the measure's approval marked a personal achievement for the Wisconsin Republican.




past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) May 25 (4) May 23 (6) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (7) May 19 (9) May 18 (4) May 17 (6) May 16 (5) May 15 (7) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (9) May 10 (3) May 09 (7) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (5) May 05 (8) May 03 (9) May 02 (1) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (8) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (10) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (7) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (8) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (12) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (8) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (2) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (2) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (2) Jan 20 (2) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (2) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (2) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (5) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (10) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (2) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (5) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (9) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (6) Oct 22 (4) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (10) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (6) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (8) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (5) Aug 31 (8) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (8) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (8) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (8) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (10) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (10) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (7) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (8) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (10) Jun 05 (14) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (6) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (2) May 29 (7) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (4) May 25 (5) May 24 (4) May 23 (5) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (3) May 19 (10) May 18 (6) May 17 (3) May 16 (6) May 15 (2) May 14 (3) May 13 (5) May 11 (1) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (2) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (5) May 03 (5) May 02 (1) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (8) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (14) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (9) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (9) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (13) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (6) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (9) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (9) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (2) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (5) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (12) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (7) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (10) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (12) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (6) Dec 08 (7) Dec 07 (12) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (13) Dec 04 (6) Dec 02 (8) Dec 01 (8) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (8) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (11) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (14) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (11) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (10) Nov 01 (8) Oct 31 (12) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (13) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (8) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (11) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (10) Oct 12 (11) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (10) Oct 09 (7) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (14) Oct 04 (9) Oct 03 (12) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (9) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (10) Sep 21 (12) Sep 20 (12) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (11) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (8) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (10) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (9) Sep 07 (8) Sep 06 (11) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (8) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (9) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (2) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (6) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (7) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (11) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (9) Jul 31 (11) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (11) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (7) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (5) Jul 06 (6) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (3) Jun 30 (8) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (7) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (7) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (9) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (8) May 30 (7) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (3) May 23 (5) May 22 (2) May 21 (3) May 20 (7) May 19 (11) May 18 (1) May 17 (7) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (4) May 11 (11) May 10 (2) May 09 (6) May 08 (6) May 07 (2) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (8) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (13) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (9) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (2) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (9) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (6) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (9) Feb 24 (11) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (6) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (2) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (10) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (2) Feb 05 (9) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (7) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (14) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (10) Jan 18 (11) Jan 17 (9) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (10) Jan 06 (8) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (5) Jan 01 (14) Dec 30 (13) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (5) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (7) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (9) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (17) Dec 09 (8) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (10) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (9) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (15) Nov 24 (7) Nov 23 (15) Nov 22 (9) Nov 21 (6) Nov 20 (11) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (13) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (7) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (13) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (8) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (8) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (15) Oct 26 (10) Oct 25 (10) Oct 24 (13) Oct 23 (9) Oct 21 (8) Oct 20 (13) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (8) Oct 16 (14) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (13) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (15) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (11) Oct 05 (18) Oct 04 (14) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (10) Sep 30 (11) Sep 29 (11) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (15) Sep 26 (7) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (17) Sep 20 (20) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (11) Sep 16 (10) Sep 15 (12) Sep 14 (9) Sep 13 (12) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (8) Sep 09 (9) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (13) Sep 06 (15) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (10) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (12) Aug 31 (14) Aug 30 (14) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (8) Aug 27 (9) Aug 26 (12) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (11) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (9) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (8) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (6) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (6) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (15) Jul 15 (14) Jul 14 (5) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (12) Jul 11 (8) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (10) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (10) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (7) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (11) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (14) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (8) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (11) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (16) Jun 03 (8) Jun 02 (12) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (7) May 30 (15) May 28 (7) May 27 (5) May 26 (21) May 25 (14) May 24 (10) May 23 (7) May 22 (8) May 21 (11) May 20 (5) May 19 (4) May 18 (10) May 17 (11) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (7) May 13 (12) May 12 (10) May 11 (7) May 10 (13) May 09 (4) May 08 (7) May 07 (3) May 06 (6) May 05 (9) May 04 (14) May 03 (7) May 02 (10) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (14) Apr 22 (16) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (16) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (8) Apr 10 (12) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (13) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (15) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (15) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (11) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (10) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (12) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (8) Mar 24 (7) Mar 23 (15) Mar 22 (17) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (8) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (19) Mar 15 (13) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (20) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (13) Mar 08 (13) Mar 07 (7) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (16) Mar 02 (16) Mar 01 (13) Feb 29 (8) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (16) Feb 26 (10) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (12) Feb 23 (14) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (12) Feb 18 (12) Feb 17 (11) Feb 16 (8) Feb 15 (9) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (10) Feb 12 (11) Feb 11 (13) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (13) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (19) Jan 31 (21) Jan 29 (11) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (13) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (2) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (13) Jan 21 (11) Jan 20 (9) Jan 19 (13) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (11) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (13) Jan 13 (9) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (5) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (1) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (13) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (11) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (9) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (10) Dec 08 (13) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (8) Dec 04 (11) Dec 03 (12) Dec 02 (16) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (11) Nov 28 (15) Nov 27 (16) Nov 26 (11) Nov 25 (9) Nov 24 (13) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (10) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (10) Nov 13 (14) Nov 12 (8) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (12) Nov 05 (17) Nov 04 (12) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (12) Oct 31 (11) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (10) Oct 28 (18) Oct 27 (16) Oct 26 (11) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (12) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (12) Oct 20 (17) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (15) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (10) Oct 14 (16) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (12) Oct 09 (21) Oct 08 (22) Oct 07 (19) Oct 06 (18) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (17) Oct 03 (13) Oct 02 (14) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (14) Sep 29 (15) Sep 28 (12) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (15) Sep 25 (13) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (10) Sep 22 (12) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (12) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (16) Sep 16 (21) Sep 15 (14) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (10) Sep 11 (16) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (8) Sep 08 (10) Sep 07 (7) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (9) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (10) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (14) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (13) Aug 20 (9) Aug 19 (13) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (12) Aug 11 (9) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (14) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (2) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (6) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (6) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (9) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (13) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (7) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (9) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (7) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (11) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (8) Jun 03 (9) Jun 02 (6) Jun 01 (4) May 30 (7) May 29 (9) May 28 (13) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (2) May 23 (8) May 22 (9) May 21 (7) May 20 (4) May 19 (6) May 18 (7) May 17 (8) May 15 (9) May 14 (5) May 13 (8) May 12 (6) May 11 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (6) May 07 (11) May 06 (7) May 05 (4) May 04 (11) May 03 (5) May 02 (4) May 01 (9) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (10) Apr 22 (8) Apr 21 (9) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (6) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (2) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (7) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (9) Mar 19 (9) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (9) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (11) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (12) Mar 11 (9) Mar 10 (12) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (11) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (8) Feb 27 (9) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (10) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (7) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (2) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (12) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (10) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (12) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (8) Jan 26 (13) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (12) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (10) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (11) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (8) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (9) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (10) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (10) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (9) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (10) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (9) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (12) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (6) Nov 18 (10) Nov 17 (12) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (12) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (7) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (9) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (14) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (9) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (8) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (11) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (7) Oct 15 (7) Oct 14 (8) Oct 13 (5) Oct 12 (8) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (11) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (8) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (10) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (7) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (8) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (11) Sep 24 (15) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (10) Sep 17 (10) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (7) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (9) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (12) Aug 19 (8) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (8) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (12) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (12) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (8) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (8) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (8) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (9) Jul 13 (10) Jul 11 (9) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (7) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (7) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (15) Jun 26 (10) Jun 25 (9) Jun 24 (16) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (12) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (13) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (14) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (16) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (18) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (8) May 31 (3) May 30 (6) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (8) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (2) May 18 (9) May 17 (1) May 16 (5) May 15 (5) May 14 (7) May 13 (7) May 12 (7) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (5) May 08 (10) May 07 (4) May 06 (13) May 05 (4) May 04 (10) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (9) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (9) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (7) Apr 14 (11) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (9) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (10) Apr 03 (9) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (8) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (7) Mar 21 (14) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (11) Mar 17 (12) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (8) Mar 14 (13) Mar 13 (8) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (8) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (15) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (12) Mar 02 (20) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (11) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (14) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (8) Feb 16 (11) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (2) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (2) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (7) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 27 (1) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (8) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (1) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (9) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (8) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (12) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (12) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (9) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (11) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (7) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (2) Oct 21 (7) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (7) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (20) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (21) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (34) Oct 04 (24) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (7) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (6) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (2) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (9) Sep 19 (11) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (6) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (11) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (10) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (8) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (7) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (7) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (10) Jul 22 (8) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (7) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (10) Jul 16 (11) Jul 15 (5) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (12) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (12) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (23) Jun 27 (18) Jun 26 (12) Jun 25 (14) Jun 24 (15) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (15) Jun 20 (9) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (11) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (6) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (9) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (8) May 24 (7) May 23 (6) May 22 (9) May 21 (6) May 20 (5) May 19 (6) May 18 (9) May 17 (10) May 16 (11) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (7) May 11 (7) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (11) May 05 (5) May 04 (9) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (8) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (10) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (8) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (11) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (9) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (10) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (2) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (2) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (5) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (9) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (10) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (8) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (8) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (8) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (7) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (16) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (5) Nov 25 (2) Nov 24 (6) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (15) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (5) Nov 08 (8) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (9) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (8) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (10) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (15) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (8) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (8) Sep 24 (8) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (9) Sep 20 (7) Sep 19 (8) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (7) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (9) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (10) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (15) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (7) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (11) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (15) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (7) Aug 19 (2) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (9) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (7) Aug 07 (9) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (11) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (6) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (8) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (14) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (8) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (14) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (12) Jun 15 (12) Jun 14 (10) Jun 13 (10) Jun 12 (9) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (12) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (12) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (3) May 25 (5) May 24 (9) May 23 (16) May 22 (12) May 21 (11) May 20 (7) May 19 (10) May 18 (8) May 17 (8) May 16 (10) May 15 (8) May 14 (5) May 13 (1) May 12 (6) May 11 (9) May 10 (9) May 09 (10) May 08 (9) May 07 (6) May 06 (5) May 05 (7) May 04 (10) May 03 (7) May 02 (9) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (12) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (9) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (10) Apr 14 (7) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (8) Apr 05 (8) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (11) Mar 30 (12) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (9) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (12) Mar 20 (14) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (12) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (8) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (13) Feb 25 (10) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (10) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (18) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (9) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (8) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (10) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (12) Jan 30 (7) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (7) Jan 27 (12) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (11) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (12) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (11) Jan 16 (9) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (9) Jan 10 (10) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (10) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (10) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (9) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (8) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (6) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (13) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (7) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (7) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (9) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (7) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (8) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (10) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (10) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (8) Nov 17 (9) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (12) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (8) Nov 06 (10) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (11) Nov 01 (10) Oct 31 (5) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (8) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (11) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (7) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (9) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (9) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (12) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (13) Oct 04 (11) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (14) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (12) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (10) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (8) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (7) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (14) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (11) Sep 14 (13) Sep 13 (11) Sep 12 (9) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (13) Sep 08 (11) Sep 07 (11) Sep 06 (16) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (8) Sep 01 (7) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (12) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (13) Jul 28 (10) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (12) Jul 22 (14) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (12) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (8) Jul 14 (15) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (6) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (9) Jul 06 (15) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (10) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (11) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (11) Jun 24 (9) Jun 23 (10) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (8) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (15) Jun 17 (8) Jun 16 (13) Jun 15 (15) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (6) Jun 12 (15) Jun 11 (7) Jun 10 (7) Jun 09 (18) Jun 08 (20) Jun 07 (17) Jun 06 (9) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (12) Jun 03 (13) Jun 02 (14) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (13) May 30 (8) May 29 (6) May 28 (8) May 27 (17) May 26 (8) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (9) May 22 (4) May 21 (4) May 20 (11) May 19 (14) May 18 (6) May 17 (10) May 16 (4) May 15 (5) May 14 (28) May 12 (9) May 11 (17) May 10 (15) May 09 (12) May 08 (5) May 07 (4) May 06 (10) May 05 (8) May 04 (10) May 03 (5) May 02 (6) May 01 (8) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (12) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (10) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (13) Apr 19 (11) Apr 18 (11) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (11) Apr 14 (17) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (16) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (18) Apr 08 (14) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (21) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (13) Apr 01 (8) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (11) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (12) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (8) Mar 20 (4) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (9) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (14) Mar 11 (13) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (17) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (13) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (14) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (18) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (13) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (13) Feb 22 (12) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (16) Feb 18 (17) Feb 17 (15) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (15) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (15) Feb 10 (11) Feb 09 (13) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (15) Feb 04 (15) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (14) Feb 01 (15) Jan 31 (11) Jan 30 (9) Jan 29 (19) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (9) Jan 26 (16) Jan 25 (19) Jan 24 (17) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (15) Jan 21 (9) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (12) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (14) Jan 12 (11) Jan 11 (13) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (20) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (14) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (14) Dec 30 (15) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (10) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (11) Dec 24 (9) Dec 23 (9) Dec 22 (15) Dec 21 (12) Dec 20 (11) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (12) Dec 15 (14) Dec 14 (11) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (17) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (12) Dec 07 (16) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (12) Dec 03 (15) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (12) Nov 30 (16) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (13) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (15) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (8) Nov 19 (9) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (9) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (10) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (14) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (13) Nov 01 (9) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (18) Oct 28 (13) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (12) Oct 25 (14) Oct 24 (20) Oct 22 (18) Oct 21 (18) Oct 20 (19) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (18) Oct 15 (8) Oct 14 (11) Oct 13 (9) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (27) Oct 08 (14) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (10) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (9) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (13) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (14) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (14) Sep 22 (20) Sep 21 (11) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (14) Sep 17 (8) Sep 16 (17) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (11) Sep 13 (9) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (14) Sep 09 (12) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (9) Sep 04 (20) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (16) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (13) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (11) Aug 25 (10) Aug 24 (14) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (13) Aug 21 (10) Aug 20 (13) Aug 19 (15) Aug 18 (8) Aug 17 (10) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (11) Aug 13 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (10) Aug 10 (17) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (13) Aug 07 (11) Aug 06 (13) Aug 05 (11) Aug 04 (11) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (10) Jul 30 (21) Jul 29 (14) Jul 28 (13) Jul 27 (16) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (15) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (15) Jul 21 (19) Jul 20 (17) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (26) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (20) Jul 14 (16) Jul 13 (19) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (13) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (16) Jul 05 (9) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (15) Jul 02 (11) Jul 01 (14) Jun 30 (13) Jun 29 (19) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (9) Jun 26 (16) Jun 25 (22) Jun 24 (17) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (15) Jun 21 (14) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (17) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (10) Jun 16 (17) Jun 15 (13) Jun 14 (14) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (13) Jun 11 (15) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (10) Jun 08 (23) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (20) Jun 05 (10) Jun 04 (11) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (21) Jun 01 (14) May 31 (10) May 30 (14) May 29 (8) May 28 (23) May 27 (20) May 26 (16) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (10) May 22 (18) May 21 (14) May 20 (12) May 19 (18) May 18 (14) May 17 (13) May 16 (4) May 15 (7) May 14 (16) May 13 (13) May 12 (8) May 11 (18) May 10 (8) May 09 (7) May 08 (13) May 07 (11) May 06 (15) May 05 (18) May 04 (17) May 03 (7) May 02 (5) May 01 (11) Apr 30 (19) Apr 29 (21) Apr 28 (18) Apr 27 (16) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (20) Apr 22 (23) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (16) Apr 19 (13) Apr 18 (6) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (16) Apr 15 (18) Apr 14 (13) Apr 13 (14) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (14) Apr 08 (12) Apr 07 (18) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (11) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (16) Mar 31 (16) Mar 30 (22) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (19) Mar 26 (31) Mar 25 (25) Mar 24 (26) Mar 23 (27) Mar 22 (22) Mar 21 (22) Mar 20 (13) Mar 19 (21) Mar 18 (20) Mar 17 (24) Mar 16 (18) Mar 15 (9) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (29) Mar 12 (15) Mar 11 (11) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (20) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (21) Mar 05 (22) Mar 04 (19) Mar 03 (9) Mar 02 (20) Mar 01 (11) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (27) Feb 26 (15) Feb 25 (18) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (19) Feb 22 (24) Feb 21 (10) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (25) Feb 18 (16) Feb 17 (19) Feb 16 (23) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (16) Feb 11 (12) Feb 10 (18) Feb 09 (12) Feb 08 (14) Feb 07 (8) Feb 06 (27) Feb 05 (28) Feb 04 (24) Feb 03 (17) Feb 02 (20) Feb 01 (23) Jan 31 (16) Jan 30 (20) Jan 29 (26) Jan 28 (17) Jan 27 (21) Jan 26 (24) Jan 25 (16) Jan 24 (14) Jan 23 (16) Jan 22 (17) Jan 21 (19) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (17) Jan 18 (13) Jan 17 (14) Jan 16 (10) Jan 15 (21) Jan 14 (16) Jan 13 (19) Jan 12 (30) Jan 11 (14) Jan 10 (11) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (23) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (21) Jan 05 (15) Jan 04 (18) Jan 03 (9) Jan 02 (12) Jan 01 (15) Dec 31 (18) Dec 30 (7) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (6) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (28) Dec 23 (12) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (17) Dec 20 (19) Dec 19 (19) Dec 18 (22) Dec 17 (24) Dec 16 (17) Dec 15 (29) Dec 14 (22) Dec 13 (12) Dec 12 (22) Dec 11 (24) Dec 10 (25) Dec 09 (18) Dec 08 (15) Dec 07 (21) Dec 06 (24) Dec 05 (30) Dec 04 (28) Dec 03 (26) Dec 02 (22) Dec 01 (33) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (18) Nov 27 (25) Nov 26 (17) Nov 25 (23) Nov 24 (27) Nov 23 (12) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (15) Nov 20 (23) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (24) Nov 17 (21) Nov 16 (20) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (15) Nov 13 (27) Nov 12 (23) Nov 11 (19) Nov 10 (21) Nov 09 (13) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (16) Nov 06 (32) Nov 05 (24) Nov 04 (20) Nov 03 (29) Nov 02 (12) Nov 01 (15) Oct 31 (20) Oct 30 (22) Oct 29 (27) Oct 28 (20) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (21) Oct 25 (15) Oct 24 (23) Oct 23 (26) Oct 22 (27) Oct 21 (28) Oct 20 (24) Oct 19 (13) Oct 18 (9) Oct 17 (30) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (20) Oct 14 (14) Oct 13 (17) Oct 12 (16) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (19) Oct 09 (22) Oct 08 (16) Oct 07 (18) Oct 06 (23) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (15) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (22) Sep 30 (25) Sep 29 (20) Sep 28 (17) Sep 27 (13) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (15) Sep 24 (24) Sep 23 (23) Sep 22 (18) Sep 21 (20) Sep 20 (11) Sep 19 (24) Sep 18 (25) Sep 17 (25) Sep 16 (19) Sep 15 (21) Sep 14 (15) Sep 13 (10) Sep 12 (23) Sep 11 (23) Sep 10 (25) Sep 09 (25) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (17) Sep 05 (14) Sep 04 (24) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (19) Aug 31 (20) Aug 30 (11) Aug 29 (24) Aug 28 (24) Aug 27 (16) Aug 26 (26) Aug 25 (21) Aug 24 (15) Aug 23 (19) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (25) Aug 20 (27) Aug 19 (19) Aug 18 (24) Aug 17 (14) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (15) Aug 14 (16) Aug 13 (21) Aug 12 (30) Aug 11 (19) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (12) Aug 08 (17) Aug 07 (21) Aug 06 (26) Aug 05 (23) Aug 04 (21) Aug 03 (12) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (19) Jul 31 (21) Jul 30 (25) Jul 29 (29) Jul 28 (23) Jul 27 (17) Jul 26 (11) Jul 25 (21) Jul 24 (14) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (19) Jul 21 (15) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (10) Jul 18 (15) Jul 17 (22) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (21) Jul 14 (20) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (29) Jul 10 (19) Jul 09 (17) Jul 08 (26) Jul 07 (21) Jul 06 (18) Jul 05 (14) Jul 04 (20) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (24) Jul 01 (23) Jun 30 (23) Jun 29 (18) Jun 28 (16) Jun 27 (16) Jun 26 (17) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (32) Jun 23 (29) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (17) Jun 20 (25) Jun 19 (28) Jun 18 (19) Jun 17 (25) Jun 16 (23) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (14) Jun 12 (22) Jun 11 (19) Jun 10 (17) Jun 09 (15) Jun 08 (16) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (29) Jun 05 (27) Jun 04 (24) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (22) Jun 01 (13) May 31 (9) May 30 (26) May 29 (19) May 28 (15) May 27 (15) May 26 (23) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (24) May 22 (13) May 21 (21) May 20 (18) May 19 (16) May 18 (7) May 17 (12) May 16 (25) May 15 (24) May 14 (23) May 13 (19) May 12 (17) May 11 (8) May 10 (6) May 09 (14) May 08 (21) May 07 (26) May 06 (14) May 05 (14) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (24) May 01 (13) Apr 30 (15) Apr 29 (24) Apr 28 (24) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (13) Apr 24 (27) Apr 23 (15) Apr 22 (21) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (17) Apr 19 (8) Apr 18 (20) Apr 17 (27) Apr 16 (27) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (8) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (22) Apr 09 (15) Apr 08 (15) Apr 07 (17) Apr 06 (14) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (19) Mar 31 (25) Mar 30 (13) Mar 29 (9) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (23) Mar 26 (22) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (25) Mar 23 (16) Mar 22 (13) Mar 21 (24) Mar 20 (27) Mar 19 (20) Mar 18 (24) Mar 17 (17) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (20) Mar 13 (28) Mar 12 (30) Mar 11 (20) Mar 10 (21) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (8) Mar 07 (17) Mar 06 (20) Mar 05 (19) Mar 04 (15) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (12) Feb 28 (16) Feb 27 (17) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (23) Feb 24 (15) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (24) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (24) Feb 18 (19) Feb 17 (27) Feb 16 (13) Feb 15 (11) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (13) Feb 12 (13) Feb 11 (21) Feb 10 (16) Feb 09 (15) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (17) Feb 06 (21) Feb 05 (17) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (23) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (8) Jan 31 (17) Jan 30 (22) Jan 29 (23) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (24) Jan 26 (12) Jan 25 (9) Jan 24 (12) Jan 23 (19) Jan 22 (19) Jan 21 (14) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (12) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (20) Jan 16 (14) Jan 15 (23) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (20) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (18) Jan 09 (11) Jan 08 (18) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (12) Jan 05 (12) Jan 04 (11) Jan 03 (10) Jan 02 (9) Jan 01 (9) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (13) Dec 26 (15) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (8) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (14) Dec 19 (17) Dec 18 (14) Dec 17 (14) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (9) Dec 13 (11) Dec 12 (16) Dec 11 (18) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (24) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (19) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (26) Dec 04 (15) Dec 03 (20) Dec 02 (17) Dec 01 (11) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (18) Nov 28 (21) Nov 27 (10) Nov 26 (22) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (18) Nov 21 (9) Nov 20 (17) Nov 19 (16) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (21) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (20) Nov 12 (16) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (15) Nov 06 (18) Nov 05 (19) Nov 04 (16) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (17) Oct 31 (17) Oct 30 (21) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (16) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (16) Oct 24 (18) Oct 23 (14) Oct 22 (17) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (8) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (12) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (19) Oct 14 (15) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (10) Oct 10 (23) Oct 09 (13) Oct 08 (15) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (13) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (16) Oct 03 (17) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (20) Sep 30 (17) Sep 29 (9) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (14) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (19) Sep 24 (13) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (21) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (20) Sep 16 (16) Sep 15 (10) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (18) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (24) Sep 10 (17) Sep 09 (16) Sep 08 (16) Sep 07 (10) Sep 06 (20) Sep 05 (13) Sep 04 (23) Sep 03 (14) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (11) Aug 31 (11) Aug 30 (13) Aug 29 (18) Aug 28 (14) Aug 27 (21) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (10) Aug 23 (17) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (14) Aug 20 (20) Aug 19 (20) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (9) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (12) Aug 14 (14) Aug 13 (19) Aug 12 (14) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (12) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (18) Aug 07 (16) Aug 06 (16) Aug 05 (20) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (12) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (16) Jul 30 (16) Jul 29 (11) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (9) Jul 26 (17) Jul 25 (20) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (11) Jul 22 (18) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (14) Jul 18 (11) Jul 17 (15) Jul 16 (12) Jul 15 (10) Jul 14 (8) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (17) Jul 11 (18) Jul 10 (16) Jul 09 (13) Jul 08 (10) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (8) Jul 05 (16) Jul 04 (14) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1)
Poachers have long killed elephants for their ivory, but no one knew the staggering toll on one of Africas largest elephant sanctuaries until John Poulsen 94 investigated.

Poulsen is a Duke University professor who specializes in tropical forest research. He and his wife, Connie Clark 94, also a Duke researcher, have a soft spot for Africa, as they both served in the Peace Corps there and later made the continent their off-and-on residence.

Elephants were not the original focus of Poulsens research, but as the poaching crisis grew, so did his interest in their conservation. In 2011, he began to hear worrying reports about poaching in Minkebe National Park in northeast Gabon, home to nearly half of Central Africas 100,000 forest elephants. Though smaller and darker than their famous counterpart, the bush elephant, these animals are no less prized for their ivory.

When he and other Duke researchers took a census, mainly by tracking elephant dung, they discovered that over a decade, the park had lost about 25,000 elephants.

Many poachers slipped over the border from neighboring Cameroon, where the city of Douala is a major hub of the international ivory trade.

Elephant numbers in the south of the park, which is 58 kilometers from the nearest major Gabonese road, have been somewhat reduced, Poulsen says. By comparison, the central and northern parts of the park  which, at one point, are just 6.1 kilometers from Cameroons national road  have been emptied.

For the very poor people involved in the illegal ivory trade, Poulsen explains, tusks can mean thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With corrupt officials sometimes involved in the lucrative business, governments often find it difficult to prevent poaching. Plus, todays poachers are often ruthless and equipped with sophisticated, military-grade weapons and other technology.

After Poulsens research was published in scientific magazines and national news media earlier this year, the Gabonese government and the countrys park agency sent a military brigade into Minkebe to force out poachers. The park agency placed satellite collars on more than four dozen elephants to gain a sense of the animals range, movement and the best ways to protect them from poachers. Poulsen and other Duke researchers are also experimenting with drones to collect even more accurate data.

In a separate but also promising development, the Chinese government announced it will halt domestic trade of ivory by the end of this year. With China representing the worlds largest market for ivory, the move offers some good news for elephant conservationists.

Still, as Poulsen says, The dramatic decline in the elephant population of a remote national park that once held the highest density of forest elephants in the world demonstrates that no place is safe from poachers.

This article was originally published in the fall 2017 issue of Willamette magazine.


Dec 21, 2017 | By Julia

Hala Zreiqat

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia, are pioneering a new type of 3D printed bone implant that could flip orthopaedic medicine on its head. For those of us whove experienced a fracture or broken bone, we all know that the healing process is time-consuming, costly, and painful, with no guarantee of complete success. Thats due in large part to our orthopedic technology, which has by and large remained the same for several generations: most fractured bones are just left alone to heal, usually accompanied by a rigid cast; in other cases, antiquated metal plates or screws are needed to repair the bones, which can do a number on many patients.

All that could soon be a thing of the past, as 3D printing continues to offer new, viable alternatives. Most recently, a Sydney-based professor and researcher by the name of Hala Zreiqat has been taking huge strides with the technology, along with her colleagues in the Universitys biomedical engineering department. While that may not be altogether surprising, Zreiqats choice of material is not necessarily what youd expect: the professors newest contribution to the field of orthopedic technology is a 3D printed ceramic implant that not only helps mend broken bones, but actually fuses with the natural bones over time, replacing the broken bits.

the traditional method of healing bones with metal screws

Zreiqat and her colleagues have been testing the 3D printed ceramic material for several years now, which has shown remarkable promise in healing broken arm bones in rabbits. More recently, the team has turned to sheep as testing subjects, in a new study which has continued to yield positive results. The 3D printed ceramic implants were successfully able to repair large leg fractures in the 8 sheep, unequivocally displaying the superiority of the new technology over conventional fracture treatment. The sheep were able to walk immediately after the surgery with their new implants, with plaster casts used only for the first month to help stabilize their legs. Time continued to reveal the positive impact of the implants: researchers witnessed complete healing in 25 percent of the fractures after only three months; after one year, the healing rate stood at a whopping 88 percent. Perhaps most exciting is when x-rays revealed the ceramic implant fusing successfully into the real bones as they grew back.

What does it all mean? While rabbits and sheep might not be the same as humans, theyre not that far off biologically speaking. If Zreiqats studies continue to prove successful, it could be only a short time before were reaping the benefits of 3D printed ceramic bone implants across the globe. In turn, that could boil down to faster healing times, less pain, and maybe even a longer lifespan for those suffering from osteoporosis.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

Source

Maybe you also like:












Dec 21, 2017 | By Benedict

Christmas is just around the corner, but not everyone in the 3D printing industry has given up on work just yet. Today brings news from Titomic, Materialise, Arcam, and several other additive manufacturing companies.

Titomic and Callidus team for oil & gas 3D printing

It might be snowing where you are, but its summer in Australia, which is where we start todays roundup: Australian metal additive manufacturing company Titomic has entered into a collaboration with Callidus Welding Solutions to 3D print parts for use in the mining and oil & gas industries.

Work is set to start February 2018, when Titomic will attempt to use its Titomic Kinetic Fusion process to fabricate Calliduss product development range. 3D printing of the prototype parts will take place at the new Titomic manufacturing facility in Melbourne, which should be fully built by February.

Titomic CEO Jeff Lang said the deal will enable Titomic to illustrate how rapid additive manufacturing via the Titomic Kinetic Fusion process can put companies ahead of their peers and provide significant efficiencies.

Upon completion of the project, Titomic plans to supply Callidus with its own Titomic 3D printing system. The 3D printing company says its large-scale Kinetic Fusion 3D printers are 10-100 times faster than some of the fastest printers in world.

Materialise may borrow $41.5 million from European Investment Bank

3D printing software giant Materialise has put pen to paper on a finance contract with the European Investment Bank (EIB). The deal will support Materialises ongoing research and development programs for growth between 2017 and 2020.

Big money could be changing hands as part of the deal. According to a press release, the contract provides credit of up to 35 million euros ($41.5 million) drawable in two tranches. The first tranche, drawable during the contracts first year, cannot exceed 25 million euros; the second can be drawn during the second year subject to a specified debt ratio being met.

The loan, which will be made at a fixed rate based on the Euribor rate at the time of the borrowing (plus a variable margin), will last six to eight years starting from the disbursement of the tranches.

North Carolinas Additive Device Inc. raises $650,000 in equity

Additive Device Inc., a 3D printing company based in Durham, North Carolina, has raised $650,000 in equity, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

If you havent heard of Additive Device, well, youre not alone. The company doesnt have a website, and appears to be in the early stages of its existence. Nonetheless, 11 investors contributed funds to the company, whose CEO is listed as Andrew Miller.

The filing puts Additive Device within the Other Health Care industry group.

Arcam EBM moving into 3x larger Gothenburg facility

Additive manufacturing specialist Arcam AB has signed a lease agreement with Castellum, allowing its EBM business to move into a refurbished 11,800-square-meter facility in Harryda, outside Gothenburg in Sweden.

Now part of GE, Arcam AB is expanding operations across several areas, including its Electron Beam Melting (EBM) division. Arcam EBMs new facility is almost three times bigger than its current site, allowing it to expand and cope with the growth of 3D printing.

The space will increase machine production capacity and allow for greater collaboration within the company, pulling together logistics, research and development, services, and operations, and follows the inauguration of an AP&C powder production plant in Canada earlier this year.

We recently raised almost one billion Swedish Krona ($119 million) in a new issue with the plan to invest in our growth; securing this new facility is testament of our commitment to the future of Arcam and the Additive Manufacturing industry, commented Magnus Rene, President and CEO. The new larger facility will accommodate the strong growth of Arcam and allow for further expansion as the market demands.

The facility will be ready in the first quarter of 2019.

K2M introduces Cervical 3D Expandable Corpectomy Cage System

K2M, a global leader in spinal solutions based in Leesburg, Virginia, has launched the worlds first 3D printed expandable corpectomy cage with cervical spine indications after receiving a CE Mark for its product.

The new CAPRI Cervical 3D Expandable Cage System attempts to provide Total Body Balance by stabilizing the cervical spine in cases of vertebral body resections resulting from trauma or tumor. It is purportedly the world's first 3D printed expandable device that can facilitate continuous in-situ height expansion and endplate angulation in the cervical spine.

The newly launched product has already been tested on a patient during a landmark surgical procedure. Using the CAPRI Cervical 3D Expandable Corpectomy Cage, we were able to dial in a precise height and lordotic angle in-situ while also utilizing a 3D printed device designed to allow for bony integration, commented Martin Gehrchen, MD, PhD, chief of spine surgery at Rigshospitalet in Denmark.

K2M's Lamellar 3D Titanium Technology uses an advanced 3D printing method and titanium powders to create structures that are impossible to fabricate with other manufacturing techniques. The company offers a comprehensive range of 3D printed spinal solutions beyond the new corpectomy cage system.

Bremen Castings and Eaton partner for 3D printed hydraulics components

Indiana-based CNC specialist Bremen Castings, Inc. (BCI) has partnered with power management company Eaton to accelerate new product development for hydraulics customers using 3D printing.

With an ExOne 3D printer, BCI and Eaton will be able to print 3D sand molds and cores used in the iron casting process at BCIs foundry and machine shop. This will enable BCI to supply a true, machined-complete prototype casting to customers before final approval, adding value for its customers by shortening product-to-market time.

Utilizing 3D printing in this way lays the groundwork for both companies to save time in material, tooling, engineering, inventory, transportation, and startup cost for new projects," said JB Brown, President, BCI.

The collaboration and use of 3D printing will also provide extra jobs in the Bremen area, as well as benefitting both supplier and customer.

The addition of this 3D printer allows BCI to produce cores and molds for low volume work and prototypes without producing expensive and time consuming tooling for customers, Brown added.

Neri Oxmans 3D printed death masks acquired by Australian gallery

Were ending the roundup where we began, because Vespers, a series of 3D printed death masks designed and 3D printed by Neri Oxman and Stratasys, has been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. The masks will be shown as part of the NGV Triennial exhibition until 15 April 2018.

Its been over a year since we first saw Neri Oxmans stunning Vespers collection, but the 3D printed death masks continue to turn heads and will now be shown to a whole new audience.

The masks have been acquired for the NGV Triennial, a celebration of contemporary art and design practices featuring more than 100 artists and designers from 32 countries. Works by Iris van Herpen, known around these parts for her amazing 3D printed fashion collections, will also appear in the exhibition.

For a Triennial that sets out to explore the interface between art, design, architecture, science, ecology, and technology, Neri Oxmans work could not be more fitting, said Ewan McEoin, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Vespers consists of 15 masks in three sub-series: past, present, and future. The death masks explore the themes of ancient traditions and future technologies and speculate about the cultural and biological preservation of life.

Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 printers were used to make the 3D printed masks. This led Naomi Kaempfer, Creative Director of Art, Design and Fashion at Stratasys, to wryly observe that the 3D printing company doesnt often get the opportunity to contemplate the topic of life and death from within the discipline and perspective of industrial design.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

Maybe you also like:












Dani Rodrik in Prospect:

Not so long ago, the argument over globalisation was seen as done and dustedby parties of the left as much as of the right.

Tony Blairs 2005 Labour conference speech gives a flavour of the time. I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation, Blair told his party. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer. There would be disruptions and some might be left behind, but no matter: people needed to get on with it. Our changing world was, Blair continued, replete with opportunities, but they only go to those swift to adapt and slow to complain.

No competent politician today would be likely to urge their voters not to grumble in this way. The Davos set, the Blairs and the Clintons are all scratching their heads, asking themselves how on Earth a process they insisted was inexorable has spun into reverse. Trade has stopped growing in relation to output, cross-border financial flows have still not bounced back from the global crisis of a decade ago, and after long years of stasis in world trade talks, an American nationalist has ridden a populist wave to the White House, where he disavows all efforts at multilateralism. Those that were cheerleaders of hyper-globalisation at the turn of the century stand no chance of understanding where it has gone wrong without realising how little they understood the process they were championing.

Back in 2005, in that same Blair conference speech, there was scope for doubt, and no mystery about what works: an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change to remain competitive. What of social solidarity? Would globalisation sweep it away? Blair insisted it could survive, but only if it were repurposed. Communities could not be allowed to resist the force of globalisation; the role of progressive politics was merely to enable them to prepare for it. Globalisation was the foregone conclusion; the only question was whether society could adjust to the global competition.

More here.


Investor Presentation - Odotech Transaction

Sydney, Dec 21, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Further to recent announcements regarding the Odotech transaction, Envirosuite Limited ( ASX:EVS ) ("the Company") is pleased to provide the attached presentation setting out the key transaction details as well as the rationale and integration strategy.



The Company also advises that it will release its quarterly updates ongoing in the month following the end of each quarter with the next update being in January 2018.



Transaction details



- $450,000 CAD ($458,000 AUD) to acquire the assets of Odotech Inc



- One-off cash settlement



- Sale structured as an asset purchase with key assets including:



o Existing client projects and maintenance contracts



o Family of patents related to the Enose (electronic nose) hardware, business names, trademarks, domain names



o Digital marketing materials



o OdoWatch software platform



o Inventory of sensor hardware



o Accounts receivable (circa $300K)



o Shares in continuing Chilean entity



- Offers of employment made and accepted by 12 Odotech employees in Canada



- 9 employees continuing in Chile



- Offices retained in Montreal (Canada) and Santiago (Chile)



Odotech acquisition rationale for Envirosuite



- Attractively priced opportunity to acquire an existing client base, extensive commercial relationships, intellectual property and additional technical functionality



- Complements Envirosuite's international expansion strategy



- Further strengthens Envirosuite's positioning in one of it's key market verticals - Wastewater



- Adds deep industry knowledge, expertise and an instant presence in target geographies



- The technical integration provides scope for additional functionality across all Envirosuite platform applications



- Envirosuite adds significant additional value to Odotech clients through adding the key proprietary pillars of its platform including: complaints management, source identification and predictive functionality



To view the full presentation, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/36L7U21A





About EnviroSuite Limited





EnviroSuite Limited (ASX:EVS) (FRA:57P) is an environmental management technology company that has developed a leading Software-as-Service platform which translates data into action in real-time.

Using proprietary algorithms built on more than 30 years of environmental consulting experience, Envirosuite's platform provides a range of environmental monitoring, management and investigative capabilities.

Envirosuite's platform is used worldwide by a range of clients in the mining, oil refining, transportation and water management industries and by governments looking to regulate industry in accordance with community well-being.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.envirosuite.com


Fastest Growing Jobs on SEEK.co.nz for 2017

Sydney, Dec 21, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - New Zealand's increasing need for social services has seen jobs in the Community Services & Development industry among the fastest growing on SEEK ( ASX:SEK ) ( SKLTY:OTCMKTS ) for 2017.



Based on the largest job ad growth and volumes on SEEK from January to November this year, the fastest growing jobs on SEEK for 2017 include:



- Housing & Homelessness Services [Community Services & Development], 156.8% [growth Jan-Nov 17 v Jan Nov 16]



- Employment Services [Community Services & Development],143.1% [growth Jan-Nov 17 v Jan Nov 16]



- Power Generation & Distribution [Mining, Resources & Energy],125.2% [growth Jan-Nov 17 v Jan Nov 16]



- Child Welfare, Youth & Family Services [Community Services & Development], 80.9% [growth Jan-Nov 17 v Jan Nov 16]



Janet Faulding, General Manager for SEEK New Zealand, says our country's rising cost of living and growing population is putting increased pressure on our country's Community Services & Development industry.



"There is a growing demand for people with skills to work in these social service jobs to help and care for Kiwis in need," said Faulding.



"Last year an Otago University study found that the "severely housing deprived" or homeless population in New Zealand was around 41,200, or about one in every 100 Kiwis," revealed Faulding.



The 2017 fastest growing jobs on SEEK, also highlights an increasing need for professionals to fill Power Generation & Distribution roles across the Mining, Resources & Energy industry.



"It's no surprise Power Generation & Distribution is amongst the fastest growing jobs on SEEK, our country has one of the highest rates of renewable electricity use in the world," said Faulding.



"New Zealand is now using less thermal and more renewable electricity generation [hydro generation and some wind generation], and as Kiwis increasingly use new technologies, our power consumption will continue to rise."



NEW ZEALAND JOB MARKET



Across New Zealand, there was continued advertising growth on SEEK during 2017, and in the lead-up to the festive season ad growth was thriving, with 9.4 per cent more new job ads on SEEK in November than 12 months ago.



"We saw positive advertising growth across 24 of 29 industries on SEEK this November," said Faulding.



MAJOR REGIONS



"Across the major regions, except for Auckland, SEEK saw double digit advertising growth in November," said Faulding.



"Wellington notched up the strongest growth this November, up 18.9 per cent y/y. Driving this ad uplift are Wellington's top advertising industries; Information & Communications Technology [ICT] [up 17 per cent y/y], Administration & Office Support [up 8 per cent y/y], and Government & Defence [up 61 per cent y/y].



"Fuelling this strong job ad growth across the Government & Defence industry in Wellington, was demand for professionals across the following fields - Government and Policy Planning & Regulation," continued Faulding



"While off a lower base, Canterbury was also a top performer, with job ads on SEEK increasing 12.8 per cent y/y. Across the region, the Trades & Services industry continued to offer the most job opportunities this November [up 12 per cent y/y], followed by Manufacturing Transport & Logistics [up 61 per cent y/y].



"Driving this solid advertising uplift across the Manufacturing Transport & Logistics industry in Canterbury, was demand for workers to fill roles in Warehousing, Storage & Distribution, Machine Operations and Assembly & Process Work, said Faulding."



"After strong and consistent job ad growth during 2017, the Auckland labour market has started to slow in the lead-up to the festive season, with job ads up 1.1 per cent y/y this November.



"Across Auckland, SEEK saw positive job ad growth in 13 of 29 industries. The ICT, Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics and Trades & Services offered the most job opportunities across the region in November," concluded Faulding.



SMALLER REGIONS



While off a lower base, job ads on SEEK in other smaller regions were also thriving this November, except for Taranaki, which had negative advertising growth due to small job ads growth over just 10 of 29 industries across the region:



LOCATION % GROWTH NOV 17 v NOV 16



West Coast 68.70%

Marlborough 54.90%

Southland 37.10%

Otago 32.20%

Northland 27.90%

Waikato 27%

Bay of Plenty 23.80%

Manawatu 20.30%

Tasman 11.80%

Hawkes Bay 7.10%

Gisborne 6.10%

Taranaki -11.20%



About the SEEK Employment Report



The SEEK Employment Report provides a comprehensive overview of the New Zealand Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI), which is the first New Zealand aggregate indicator to measure the interaction between labour market supply and labour market demand.



It also includes the SEEK New Job Ad Index which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications. SEEK's total job ad volume (not disclosed in this report) includes duplicated job advertisements and refreshed job ads. As a result, the SEEK New Job Ad Index does not always match the movement in SEEK's total job ad volume.



To view the Data, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/77JMO72P





About SEEK Limited





SEEK Limited (ASX:SEK) (OTCMKTS:SKLTY) is a diverse group of companies, comprised of a strong portfolio of online employment, educational, commercial and volunteer businesses. SEEK operates across 18 countries with exposure to over 2.9 billion people and approximately 26 per cent of GDP. SEEK makes a positive contribution to people's lives on a global scale. SEEK is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, where it is a top 100 company with a market capitalisation close to A$6billion and has been listed in the Top 20 Most Innovative Companies Globally by Forbes, and Number One in Australia.
President Paul Kagame Wednesday from Khartoum criticized the International Criminal Court ( ICC) arguing that African heads of states have been victims of The Hague-based court.

The Rwandan leader who is also chairman of the African Union (AU) joined his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir in the condemnation of the court.

We have also talked about the International Criminal Court, and I can say our opposition has been very clear for us, he said at a joint press conference with his host, President Omar al-Bashir.

So we look for what we need to do and what we need for Africa in order to be independent and advance our position not to be always a victim of this international court, he added.

President Kagame started Wednesday a two-day visit to Sudan.

Several African leaders have criticized ICC of being biased. Two former African heads of states have been arrested and tried by the court.

Former Liberian strong man Charles Taylor was handed 50-year jail sentence in 2011 for his role in atrocities committed in Sierra Leone during the countrys civil war in 1990s.

Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo has been since 2016 also facing trial in the court after being accused of four counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts.

The crimes were allegedly committed during post-electoral violence in Ivory Coast between 16 December 2010 and 12 April 2011 when Gbagbo refused to accept defeat by rival Alassane Ouattara.

Host President called on AU members to join the boycott of the court.

Sudan is inviting its brotherly African countries to implement the decisions of the AU summit, particularly the withdrawal from the ICC membership, if it failed to respond to the African demands, al-Bashir said.

ICC issued two international arrest warrants 2009 and 2010 against the Sudanese leader for alleged crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Darfur.

Burundi in October became the first country to quit the ICC arguing that the 15-year old jurisdiction is a political instrument and weapon used by the west to enslave other states.
The Parliament Wednesday passed a controversial bill which removes age limit in the quest of countrys top job with incumbent President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni set to run for a sixth term in office at the age of 77 in 2021.

315 voted in favor for the bill while 62 votes rejected it and 2 votes abstained. The Uganda parliament is dominated by ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). 73-year old President Museveni is yet to stamp bill.

The new constitutional amendment blows up 75-year age restriction but reinstates two mandates of five-year term which was cancelled in 2005 to allow the President to run again though being in power since 1986.

The bill was passed after nearly five months of heated debates marked by heckles and fighting.

Six members of the opposition opposed to the bill have been suspended.

NRM lawmaker, Raphael Magyezi hailed the vote saying it was a win-win outcome adding that the bill was not tailored for the President.

This was not about President Museveni. It is a win-win [situation]. The opposition fought, and we had to give them something.

Rogers Mulindwa, spokesperson of the ruling party added that the bill tackles age discrimination.

The opposition on the other hand noted that the move rolls back Ugandas democratic process.

Today, we have raped Ugandans. We have mortgaged the country. We have broken the hearts of Ugandans, said Winnie Kizza, leader of the opposition in the legislature.
Kenyas Favorite Son Does It Again

In the dead of night, residents of Kogelo sat wrapped in blankets, staring anxiously at the only big screen in Obamas ancestral home. They were not only hoping to witness the re-election of Barack Obama.








UN member-states will vote on Thursday on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, under strong pressure from President Donald Trump who has threatened to cut funding to countries that back the measure.

The UN General Assembly will hold an emergency session to decide on a draft resolution that the United States vetoed at the Security Council on Monday after all other 14 council members voted in favour of the measure.

On the eve of the vote, Trump suggested there could be reprisals for countries that support the motion, put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us, Trump said at the White House.

Well, were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care.

The draft resolution mirrors the vetoed measure, reaffirming that any decision on the status of Jerusalem has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

It does not mention Trumps decision but expresses deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain, and vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley sent an email to fellow UN envoys to put them on notice that the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us.

We will take note of each and every vote on this issue, she wrote in the message seen by AFP.

On Twitter, Haley posted that the US will be taking names when the ambassadors of the 193-nation assembly cast their vote on Thursday.

Nikki, that was the right message, Trump said.

A council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to US pressure, but the motion is all but certain to be approved.

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, contrary to the council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.
Congress' landmark tax reform legislation included an act expected to bring some benefits to Alabama's brewers and distilleries.

Folded into today's action on Capitol Hill was the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, which lowers the federal excise tax for breweries.

According to Dan Roberts, executive director of the Alabama Brewers Guild, the act cuts the federal excise tax in half from $7 per barrel to $3.50 for the first 60,000 barrels. That rate affects domestic brewers who producing less than 2 million barrels annually.

It also reduced the tax rate to $16 per barrel on the first 6 million barrels for all other brewers and all beer importers. The previous rate was $18.

The act maintains the $18 per barrel rate for producers of more than 6 million.

For distillers, the news is even better. The rate goes from $13.50 per proof gallon on the first 100,000 gallons to $2.70 per proof gallon, a reduction of about 80 percent, Roberts said.

The reductions, written as a two-year provision, have been an aim of the Alabama Brewers Guild for about 10 years, Roberts said. He believes it will stimulate economic growth.

"It means immediate savings for Alabama's 34 small brewers," Roberts said. "The margins are relatively low and this really affects their long-term profitability. That's money they can reinvest in their businesses, expand and hire more workers."

Bob Pease, president and CEO of Brewers Association, said the measure had bipartisan support. Craft breweries contribute about $616 million to the Alabama economy, according to the association.

James Foley, managing partner of Fairhope Brewing Co., said his company is considering a 12 percent capacity expansion as a direct result of the act's passage.

"This is a welcome relief that will enable us to invest in our team and grow our production," he said.

Roberts said the act had the support of Sen. Luther Strange and Reps. Mo Brooks, Bradley Byrne, Martha Roby, and Mike Rogers, as well as 54 Senate and 303 House colleagues who co-sponsored the bill.
Lee Roop | lroop@al.com

Ever wondered which Alabama communities have the highest median household incomes? How about the ones with the lowest media income? Wonder no more.

Don't Edit

Mary Colurso | mcolurso@al.com

Congress' landmark tax reform legislation included an act expected to bring some benefits to Alabama's brewers and distilleries. Folded into today's action on Capitol Hill was the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, which lowers the federal excise tax for breweries.

Don't Edit

William Thornton | wthornton@al.com

AT&T will award some 200,000 bonuses in the wake of the Trump administration's massive tax overhaul. The telecom giant said in a press release Wednesday the bonuses will go to all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers. In addition to the bonuses, AT&T said it will invest an additional $1 billion in the U.S. in the coming year.

Don't Edit

Lee Roop | lroop@al.com

This Christmas, if you and your friends and family had rather go out for breakfast, lunch or dinner than stay at home and cook, you might be surprised to find quite a few restaurants in the Birmingham metro area open and eager to serve you.

Don't Edit

Matt Wake | mwake@al.com

Jason Aaron, the man who writes Thor comic-books, wakes up wearing the Thor-print pajama-pants he sleeps in. He gets up out of bed, in the home he shares with his wife and sons, fixes coffee and ambles upstairs to his finished-attic office, still wearing the Thor pants, and sits at the large desk where he writes stories for iconic comic-book titles as well as gritty independent books.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Lawrence Specker | lspecker@al.com

In 2017, the APM container terminal at the Port of Mobile finished a Phase 2 expansion featuring two giant new cranes. In 2018 it'll see a $49.5 million Phase 3 expansion enabling further growth. The Alabama State Port Authority and the APM Terminals board of directors announced Wednesday that they had both approved a $49.5 million expansion of the container terminal. It'll feature a 400-foot extension of the dock serviced by the terminal's four container cranes, plus 20 acres of yard to store incoming and outgoing container shipments.

Don't Edit

Erin Edgemon | eedgemon@al.com

Southern Museum of Flight Executive Director Brian Barsanti said he reached out to U.S. Steel when a feasibility study showed a parcel the company owned near Barber Motorsports would be an ideal location for his museum to expand. The 24-acre site was later donated to the city of Birmingham by U.S. Steel through a development agreement with the city.

Don't Edit

Brian Kelly | bkelly@al.com

So you in the market for a water-front home in Gulf Shores. Perhaps along secluded West Beach even? Well, you'll have a tough time getting out for under a cool million in many cases, especially if your wish includes a private beach, dock, boat slip, raised level home and so on. You know, the dream home along Alabama's most pristine stretch of beach.

Don't Edit

William Thornton | wthornton@al.com

Huntsville's $350 million MidCity development is coming together, with the first phase of the multi-use entertainment and residential complex expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Don't Edit

Lee Roop | lroop@al.com

The new Alabama Space Authority took its first steps Tuesday as members met around Wernher von Braun's conference table in Huntsville to push for more aerospace activity and jobs in a state where the industry is surging. Glenn Rizner, chief of staff of the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Office, briefed authority members on the two general types of federal space licenses available to states and localities: launch sites and vehicle operations.

Don't Edit
The Cooking Channel has just finished two days of filming at Yo' Mama's restaurant, a downtown Birmingham lunch spot that's popular for its scratch-made, Southern-fried meals.

Ali Khan, host of the Cooking Channel's "Cheap Eats," and his crew filmed at Yo' Mama's Tuesday and Wednesday for a show that will likely air this coming spring.

Denise Peterson, the owner of Yo' Mama's, told AL.com this afternoon that representatives from the Cooking Channel have asked her not to reveal any details about the filming until the show airs.

The restaurant, which opened in 2014, has been voted Best Lunch for the past two years in a row in Birmingham Magazine's Best of Birmingham readers' poll.

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton visited Yo' Mama's and nearby Urban Standard on her visit to Birmingham during the Democratic primaries.

Also last year, AL.com featured Yo' Mama's on its list of 50 Essential Birmingham Restaurants.

Among the more popular dishes on the menu are chicken and waffles, fish tacos, hot wings, fried chicken, and shrimp and grits.

Yo' Mama's is located at 2328 Second Ave. North, and the phone number is 205-957-6545.

Lunch hours are 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Brunch is served from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the second and the last Saturday of each month.

For a full menu and more information, go to www.yomamasrestaurant.com.
While most Birmingham high school seniors are spending their Christmas holiday resting in anticipation of the second and final semester before college, one former Clay High student is preparing for one of his most important days in his already burgeoning career.

YBN Nahmir is a 17-year-old rapper, whose viral single "Rubbin' Off the Paint" and its accompanying video launched him to the top of the digital rap industry. And, although he might be done taking tests in the classroom, he is readying for his first big assessment as a professional rhymesayer. A right of passage of sorts, he's slated to headline a Thursday night show at New York's SOB's nightclub, a proving grounds for upstart rappers in the internet era.

Far away from his home in the Huffman area of Birmingham, he'll be doing more than just representing for the 205 while onstage in Manhattan's SoHo district. In his absence, he's connected with radio station 95.7 Jamz to give away $5,000 worth of toys to families in need back in the Magic City.

"(Birmingham is) where I grew up. That's my home, of course. I'm blowing up, so (I thought), 'Why not give back to everybody?'" Nahmir, whose real name is Nick Santana says. "What's the point of blowing up if you can't give back to the people who helped you blow up? It's about looking out for the people who don't have enough money to give a Christmas to their kids. I'm looking out for people who don't have that."

Fortunes changed for Nahmir fairly quickly, when his hit song was uploaded to YouTube by underground rap blog WorldStarHipHip in mid-September. Nahmir says the video got to around two million views when his life as a Clay High School senior became a tad too hectic.

"When I first started to blow up, everybody thought I was rich. Everybody started asking for stuff. My friends started becoming fans. Even my teachers began to act like fans," Nahmir says. "I was shocked the principals knew about it. Everybody knew about it. So, I started taking online classes. I couldn't really do my work. I was becoming a distraction."

The video now sits at 66 million hits, along with several other songs and videos between he and his YBN crew of close friends, cousins, and internet confidantes Nahmir earned from his early days, freestyling over a microphone into crowded chat servers on XBox Live.

Leveraging his appeal with pals across the social stratosphere, Nahmir made a temporary home for himself in Los Angeles, even adopting a West Coast-influenced rap style that several critics liken to fellow Alabama standout OMB Peezy.

YBN Nahmir and 95.7 Jamz's toy giveaway will be held Friday, December 22nd from 5-7 p.m. at Carter's, located on 2520 16th Street North in Birmingham.

"I ain't been home in a minute. I been working too much to go home," Nahmir says, stating that he's also a little cautious regarding the pitfalls of success for a local rap celebrity. "There's a bunch of hate in my city. Even though I'm puttin' on for my city. I don't wanna get caught up in none of that."

But, he is eyeing a return for one important social engagement.

"I'm definitely going to prom this year. I'm going to a couple proms. I ain't trying (to tell which ones). Just know I'm gon' pull up in a foreign (car). I ain't gon' tell you what else I'm gon' do, but they gon' be shook!"

Until then, his Christmas gift to the city might just have to hold his local supporters over until his homecoming.

Nahmir says he anticipates that the gesture may change perceptions of the violent imagery in his earlier music, helping people understand him as a normal teen who captilized from his creativity.

"I hope they take it as a positive image. Most people they see me. All they think about is the guns in my videos and the stuff I did back in the day that they know me for. I want to show them the other side of me - that I can help people out. It ain't always about violence. I'm trying to spread peace, low key. I (deal) with everybody. I'm trying to spread positive vibes."

And while he might be able to help some Birmingham kids get just what they wanted for Christmas, Nahmir will have to have to handle his business in front of a sellout New York crowd before he can make his own Christmas wish a reality.

"I don't really want nothing for Christmas. I just want to see my family, to be honest. Back in the day, I wanted everything. But, right now, I just want to see my family."

YBN Nahmir and 95.7 Jamz's toy giveaway will be held Friday, December 22nd from 5-7 p.m. at Carter's, located on 2520 16th Street North in Birmingham.
In 2011, research for my book "Christmas Tales of Alabama," inadvertently led to the reunion of old friends from the Homewood area who, unbeknownst to them, had become neighbors in Chattanooga after decades apart.

And it all started with a Christmas card addressed to the home where a "silly looking little long-legged dog" lived.

In 1959, Tim Wheeler was stationed on the USS Eldorado in the Port of Japan. As Christmas approached he was missing his family and friends in the Hollywood community of Homewood. He thought of his friend, Anne Kimbrough, who had been a classmate at Shades Valley High School. While at Auburn University, then called Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Anne began dating Tim's roommate Fred Burkhalter, and the three were fast friends.

Tim decided to send Anne a Christmas card but, after filling it out, he realized he didn't know her address. Hollywood was a small community so he decided to describe the Kimbrough home and hope the mail carrier could find it. On the envelope, he wrote: "Miss Anne Kimbrough, red brick house at the top of the hill somewhere in Hollywood... Postman: You'll know the house by the silly looking little long-legged dog who lives there." The return address said: "Somewhere in the Pacific."

I wrote in my book:

"Back in the States, the mail carrier read the description on the card and wondered if it referred to a dog he'd seen at a home in Hollywood. The little dog would bark excitedly whenever the postman dropped mail in the front-door slot. The postman decided he'd look for the house while on his rounds. Finally, on December. 16, when he approached a red-brick home in Hollywood, he saw the dog. It was a toy Manchester terrier that had particularly long legs for its small body."

Anne, who was still at Auburn when the card arrived, opened it when she came home the following weekend. Her mother had a message from the mail carrier, who asked that Anne let the postal service know he managed to get the letter to her despite the fact that there was no address. Anne kept the card but mailed the envelope to the Jefferson County postmaster, Roy Moncus, informing him of her mail carrier's detective work. The Birmingham News got wind of the story and published the tale along with a photo of Anne holding the card with Pepper in her lap.

Anne Kimbrough with Pepper and the Christmas card with a Japanese design. (The Birmingham News)

The story was soon picked up by wire services and was published around the country. However, reporters had mistakenly described Tim as Anne's fiance so she quickly alerted Fred, who was working in Atlanta and whom she was still dating, that the card was from their friend, Tim.

Before long, Anne was receiving cards from people in other states, as well as flowers from would-be suitors who had seen her photo in newspapers. Anne said an older man arrived at the door to her family's home one day, prompting her father to run him off. "My daddy just had a fit. He said 'Uh-uh. You're not going to meet my daughter.'"

When I called to interview Anne, I told her I had tracked down Tim Wheeler, who was working as an architect and living in Chattanooga with his wife, Gail. Anne and Fred, who had married, were coincidentally living just a few miles away. Anne later wrote to tell me the old friends had reunited. "Time Wheeler and his wife Gail met us for lunch Monday, thanks to you" she said. "It was a wonderful time catching up and laughing about the publicity his Christmas card had received. Old friendships are the best. Thank you for bringing us together after so many years."

It was the perfect ending to a story five decades in the making.
How big an impact can be expected from the U.S. Air Force's decision to locate the new F-35A fighter jet program in Montgomery?

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange compared it to Hyundai's decision in 2002 to locate its only manufacturing plant in North America in Montgomery.

"We're going to talk about the economic impact of this for years to come, and it will be there," Strange said.

The 187th Fighter Wing will receive the latest fighter aircraft to replace its F-16 jets, the culmination of a two-year recruiting process. The project means $3 billion in investment and the addition of 1,000 jobs in the coming years.

The Air Force expects the F-35As to begin arriving at Truax Field in early 2023 and at Dannelly Field later that year.

A guard unit in Wisconsin was also selected for the program.

For area recruiters, the decision underlines the stability of the 187th Fighter Wing and the Alabama Air National Guard for decades. According to the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce, the 187th Fighter Wing encompasses 1,400 people and already has an annual economic impact of more than $80 million over the last five years.

Once the jets get here, the economic impact will increase to more than $100 million annually.

And the decision could have other positive consequences. Alabama is already waiting on another significant jet project. State officials expect to hear sometime in spring 2018 whether Leonardo DRS will be picked to build the next generation of jet fighter trainer.

In March, Leonardo DRS announced it will build the T-100 jet at Moton Field if it wins a contract from the U.S. Air Force, creating 750 direct jobs and an initial net investment of $200 million to $250 million.

The company would build 350 of the jets over an estimated 20 years. The jet would replace a 50-year-old trainer jet now in use, and the overall project could have a transformational effect on the entire region, officials say, working with Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Fort Rucker, and a Dothan facility providing training for fixed-wing pilots.

State and local officials paid a three-day visit to Italy last month to tour Leonardo's plant near Milan. The company produces M-346 trainer jets, which is already in use by other countries, such as Israel, Poland, Singapore and Italy. It is the basis for the T-100 aircraft.
A Jefferson County man was indicted and jailed on four alleged violations of the Alabama Securities Act, said Jefferson County District Attorney Michael Anderton in a statement.

Anderton announced today that Kenneth Fitzgerald Lewis was arrested Nov. 29 after a grand jury indicted him on charges of one count each of sale of unregistered securities, also known as investment contracts, and sale of securities by an unregistered agent. Both of those charges are Class C felonies and are punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and up to $15,000 in fines per charge, if convicted.

Lewis was also indicted on two counts of fraud in connection with the sale of securities for making untrue statements of, or omitting to state, material facts to an investor; and for engaging in an act, practice or course of business which operates as a fraud or deceit upon an investor. Each of those charges are Class B felonies and are punishable by up to 20 years in prison and up to $30,000 in fines per charge, if convicted.

The indictment alleges that from December 2013 to June 2014, Lewis sold investment contracts issued by his company, Paradigm Real Estate Group, LLC, to one victim in Jefferson County. The investment contracts were issued to finance "flipping" real estate, Anderton said.

Lewis is accused of misrepresenting to the investor how the funds would be used, including his failure to tell the investor the funds would be used for personal expenses, according to the indictment. He is also accused of not telling the investor that another property bought with investor money had been sold and failing to give the money to the investor.

Anderton said neither Lewis nor the investment contracts he sold were registered with the ASC, as required by the Alabama Securities Act.

Lewis was released from the Jefferson County Jail on a $61,000 bond.
The new Alabama Space Authority took its first steps Tuesday as members met around Wernher von Braun's conference table in Huntsville to push for more aerospace activity and jobs in a state where the industry is surging.

Glenn Rizner, chief of staff of the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Office, briefed authority members on the two general types of federal space licenses available to states and localities: launch sites and vehicle operations.

Authority organizers say don't expect a drive for that yet - beyond what is already under way - but there could be a push later. If that seems a stretch, remember that one Alabama city is already working to land a private spaceship at its airport, Airbus is growing rapidly in Mobile, and other aerospace announcements have come in a steady stream.

With that background, the new Alabama Space Authority held its inaugural meeting at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center around a table used by von Braun's team when building America's first rockets and the Saturn V.

State Sen. Gerald Dial (R-Lineville), who sponsored legislation to create the authority, was elected its chairman. Companion legislation was also introduced in the House by state Rep. Howard Sanderford (R-Huntsville).

Sanderford was nominated as vice chair, but nominated U.S. Space & Rocket Center Dr. Deborah Barnhart, who served on the Florida Space Authority. Barnhart was approved by acclamation.

"When you look at how much space activity we have in the state now with the expansion of Dynetics and ULA (United Launch Alliance), it's such a critical mass," Barnhart said Wednesday. "We just want to optimize that to not leave anybody on the sidelines."

Barnhart said the authority will also work in areas including education and workforce development. "We can show young people there are plenty of great jobs here in Alabama that they and their parents and teachers just don't know about," she said.

Barnhart said trying to build a spaceport in Alabama might be something the state will consider. "There are already ongoing efforts in that direction for landing sites, and some are further ahead than others," she said.

Huntsville is already seeking an FAA license to land Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spaceship at the Huntsville International Airport when it begins supplying the International Space Station and returning science data from the orbiting laboratory.

United Launch Alliance and Bezos' Blue Origin company have both announced plans to build rocket engine plants in Huntsville, and Dynetics recently broke ground in Decatur on a three-building complex to test and develop next-generation large rocket parts.
Men and women serving in the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Wing roared approval today when Gov. Kay Ivey announced that the wing will be home to the F-35 fighter jet.

Ivey, speaking at the 187th Fighter Wing's base at Dannelly Field in Montgomery, said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson called her with the good news this morning.

The 187th Fighter Wing was one of five finalists competing to serve as home base for one of two F-35 squadrons. Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Wisconsin was chosen for the other.

"This is a huge announcement in the life of the River Region and the great state of Alabama," Ivey said, speaking to a bank of TV cameras and members of the 187th Fighter Wing.

Alabama officials had worked for months to be home to one of the squadrons for the F-35, which the Air Force calls its fifth generation fighter. It means new investment and jobs to develop infrastructure and the preservation of hundreds of jobs that make up and support the squadron.

The schedule calls for 18 F-35s to be delivered in 2023. They will replace the F-16s now flown by the 187th Fighter Wing.

Gov. Kay Ivey announces that the 187th Fighter Wing will be home to a new F-35 fighter squadron.

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said the Air Force decision speaks volumes about the quality of the 187th Fighter Wing, the dedication of those involved in the recruiting effort and the capability of the region to support it.

"You're not going to bed this sophisticated machine down in a place that technologically cannot support that," Strange said. "So this community is on the cusp of technological greatness. We've got every opportunity in front of us.

"This is in fact one of the best things to happen to the River Region, to Montgomery and the state of Alabama."

The Air Force also considered Gowen Field Air National Guard Base in Idaho, Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan and Jacksonville Air Guard Station in Florida.

Brig. Gen. Randy Efferson, Alabama Air National Guard chief of staff and former commander of the 187th Fighter Wing, said there will be more than $20 million in infrastructure developed to prepare for the transition from F-16s to F-35s.

The 187th Fighter Wing now includes the F-16 squadron, a combat communications group and a reconnaissance aircraft squadron. The wing's 100th Fighter Squadron is descended from Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering African-American flyers of World War II. Its members are called the "Red Tails" in recognition of that heritage.

"The original Tuskegee legacy that was established before the Air Force was even the Air Force is going to continue for another 50 years right here where its home is in the state of Alabama," Efferson said.

Alabama National Guard Adjutant General Sheryl Gordon said today's announcement by the Air Force is a testament to the 187th Fighter Wing's record of performance under pressure and during deployments.

"They've made a name for themselves," Gordon said. "We know that name. And now, the rest of the country knows that name. And that is why we ended up in the top five and now we're one of two."

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein said in a press release that the F-35 squadrons are part of the development America's "next generation of air superiority."

"It helps ensure we can always offer the Commander-in-Chief air power options and be ready to penetrate any enemy air defenses, hold any target at risk and go when and where the president tells us to go," Goldfein said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Leada Gore | lgore@al.com

More than 21,000 votes

Doug Jones and Roy Moore, the two top candidates in Alabama's special Senate election, accounted for more than 98 percent of the votes case this past week. But, thousands of voters wrote in a candidate. The list of write-ins includes a deity, cartoon characters, Hollywood personalities and famous politicians. These are the write-ins that made us laugh.

Don't Edit

Ashley Remkus | aremkus@al.com

'Anyone else'

Some folks just wanted anyone but Roy Moore or Doug Jones. Other write-ins include 'Anybody,' 'anyone,' 'a better choice,' and 'any other."

Don't Edit

Joe Songer | jsonger@al.com

'Any other Republican'

Alabamas senior Sen. Richard Shelby said he cast a write-in vote for a distinguished Republican and encouraged voters to do the same. But, some voters apparently didnt care about the distinguished partthey just wanted any Republican that wasnt Roy Moore.

Don't Edit

Robert E. Lee and the 'Ghost of Stonewall Jackson'

These Confederate generals appeared on ballots in Madison County.

Don't Edit

Ashley Remkus | aremkus@al.com

George Wallace

The former governor ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

The Jim Henson Company

Kermit the Frog

Forget the politicians and military guys. Apparently somebody thought the star of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show would make a better Senator than Doug Jones or Roy Moore. Or, maybe the Madison County voter just wanted us to have something to laugh about.

Don't Edit

File photo/Disney

Mickey Mouse

The Walt Disney Company's mascot appeared on write-in ballots from multiple Alabama counties, including Madison, Greene and Fayette.

Don't Edit

File photo

Bugs Bunny

"Eh, what's up doc?"

Don't Edit

File photo

SpongeBob Square Pants

So far we've only spotted one vote for the Krusty Krab's fry cook. Thanks, Madison County.

Don't Edit

File photo

Snow White

Since there wasn't a woman on the ballot, #princesspower.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Courtesy Everett Collection

Snoopy

Don't Edit

Debbie M. Lord

Jesus Christ

Couldn't choose between Doug Jones and Roy Moore? Some folks in Alabama turned to their faith to decide. God's only begotten son received a double-digit vote count. And that's only with write-ins counted from about 30 of the state's 67 counties.

Don't Edit

God

God was identified a few different ways on Alabama write-in ballots. Some just called him God, while others went with a more powerful phrase like God Almighty. I guess the later could mean a couple of different things.

Don't Edit

AP Photo/A&E, Zach Dilgard

Phil Robertson

The "Duck Commander" is really popular in Alabama. The patriarch of 'Duck Dynasty' received votes in at least 10 counties. In some counties, like Lawrence, Madison and Etowah, Robertson received multiple votes.

Don't Edit

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Ed Orgeron

Come on, Alabama. Just because Coach O's team knocked off Auburn, that doesn't mean he's a good pick for Senate.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Michael Casagrande | mcasagrande@al.com

Big Al

Roll Tide, y'all.

Don't Edit

Sharon Steinmann

Alexander Shunnarah

Do Shunnarah's votes outnumber his billboards? We're not sure. His name appeared on write-in ballots in several counties, including Jefferson and Madison.

Don't Edit

Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com

James Spann

We're not even a little bit surprised this weatherman made the list.

Don't Edit

File photo

Rick Grimes

It might not be a bad idea to have 'The Walking Dead' ring leader in Washington D.C. if a zombie apocalypse really happens.

Don't Edit

Charles Sykes

Jimmy Buffett

It's 5 o'clock in the Senate?

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Michelle Matthews | mmatthews@al.com

Travis Tritt

The person who wrote in this country singer had the "Best of Intentions."

Don't Edit

Ben Flanagan | bflanagan@al.com

Clint Eastwood

Did you know Eastwood was elected mayor of his adopted hometown, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California? He won that office is 1986. He's also served on the California State Park and Recreation Commission.

Don't Edit

Leada Gore | lgore@al.com

Chuck Norris

Sen. Chuck Norris just doesn't have the same ring as 'Walker Texas Ranger.'

Don't Edit

Mary Colurso | mcolurso@al.com

Santa Claus

See what happens when you schedule a special election in December? Merry Christmas, y'all.
Citing failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, a Minnesota lawmaker is refusing to meet with a group of local students, saying she doesn't want to open herself up to accusations of misconduct.

Republican State Rep. Mary Franson initially declined an invitation from the Alexandria Area High School Democratic Club on the grounds she didn't meet with partisan organizations. She later told a local Fox affiliate that her refusal "has absolutely nothing to do with me not wanting to meet with Democrats -- it has everything to do with the fact that we all have to be careful in today's world."

She later elaborated in a Facebook post first reported by ThinkProgress:

"A man's life was destroyed in AL. 40 years ago he met with minors alone and they recently accused him of horrendous actions. In the world of we must believe every sexual harassment claim, I would think my approach is beyond reasonable. All it takes is one perceived action and my life is destroyed. The life of my family is destroyed. That is a risk I will not take. I have spoken to numerous adults about this situation. They all agree that me meeting alone with minors is not appropriate."

Jack Ballou, 17, founder of the Democrats group said he met with Franson last year through a student/page program.

"She had no issue then," Ballou said.

Franson said she has offered to meet the students in a public area. She also pointed out the high school club had campaigned for her opponent and provided information on how to financially support his campaign.

Moore, Alabama's former chief justice, lost the U.S. Senate race to Democrat Doug Jones last week. Moore has been accused of having improper sexual contact with teenage girls in the 1970s, allegations he denies.
Update at 1:03 p.m. Senator-elect Doug Jones issued this statement:

"This is a big economic win for the people of Montgomery and surrounding communities, continues Alabama's famed aviation and aerospace history, and shows what can be accomplished when officials work together for what is best for the people of Alabama," Senator-elect Jones said.

The project will include $3 billion in investment and the addition of 1,000 jobs in the coming years, a significant economic win for the River Region and for all of Alabama.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced the selection of the 187th Fighter Wing, which was one of five finalists, on Thursday.

"I agree with Governor Ivey this is a testament to Alabama and the quality of its workforce," Jones said.

Update at 12:41 p.m. The Air Force released this statement:

"Selecting Truax Field and Dannelly Field will increase Air National Guard F-35A units providing 5th Generation airpower around the world," said Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. "As F-35As arrive at these locations, we will use the existing aircraft at these fields to replace the aging F-16s at other Air National Guard units."

F-35As will eventually replace many of the 4th generation Air Force aircraft. However, the Air Force will continue to fly a mix of 5th and 4th generation fighters into the 2040s, in order to maintain enough fighters to meet combatant commander requirements, provide required training and allow a reasonable deployment tempo for the force.

"Putting F-35s at these two Air National Guard bases continues our transition into the next generation of air superiority," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. "It helps ensure we can always offer the Commander-in-Chief air power options and be ready to penetrate any enemy air defenses, hold any target at risk and go when and where the president tells us to go. We're the options guys. The F-35 is critical to the family of systems we need to accomplish this mission for the nation now and in the future."

At this time, the Air Force expects the F-35As to begin arriving at Truax Field in early 2023 and at Dannelly Field later that year.

Update at 12:14 p.m. Gov. Kay Ivey released this statement:

"I am thrilled and very pleased that the 187th Fighter Wing has been chosen as the home for the new F-35 fighter jet," Governor Ivey said. "This announcement is huge for the River Region, it is huge for Alabama and is certainly a welcome gift for us as we approach Christmas. The decision to send the F-35 to Montgomery is a testament to the quality of our people and our workforce, and further cements Alabama's reputation as the leading aerospace state in the nation."

The F-35 is the military's latest fighting machine and will eventually replace many Cold War-era fighter planes, which are currently in use. The 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard currently includes a squadron of F-16 fighter jets, a combat communications group, an RC-26 reconnaissance aircraft squadron, and an eagle vision unit. The 187th was one of five Air National Guard units on the short list to receive the F-35.

"The Alabama Air National Guard is dedicated to excellence in protecting both our state and nation," Alabama Adjutant General Sheryl Gordon commented. "We look forward to adding the F-35 to our slate of tools available to enable us to carry out our mission."

"Lots of people were involved in this effort and are to be commended for landing the F-35 in Alabama. I appreciate the work of our entire congressional delegation, especially Senator Shelby, Senator Strange, and Representative Roby. I am also thankful for the hard work and dedication of our state and local partners including General Gordon, Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange, Montgomery County Commission Chairman Elton Dean and the Chamber of Commerce."

The decision to bring the F-35 to Montgomery is great for our state and for our national defense. We must continue to rebuild our military and this is an important step in that process. Congrats to @RepMarthaRoby for her work on this project.  Rep. Robert Aderholt (@Robert_Aderholt) December 21, 2017

I'm thrilled to announce the @AlabamaNG 187th Fighter Wing has been chosen as the home for the new F-35 fighter jet! The decision to send the F-35 to Montgomery is a testament to the quality of our people and our workforce. pic.twitter.com/PVKl6ciIcm  Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) December 21, 2017

Gov. Kay Ivey about to have press conference on Alabama landing Air Force F-35 Joint Strike mission. #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/AeVxaKW6Ll  Mike Cason (@MikeCasonAL) December 21, 2017

Update at 11:51 a.m. Sen Richard Shelby released this statement:

"This announcement by the Air Force is excellent news for our state and a true testament to Alabama's work in the defense sector. The strong support of the community, along with the proximity of Dannelly Field to several other major military bases, saving both time and money, led Air Force Secretary Wilson to choose Montgomery for the new F-35A fighter jet program. I am extremely proud of the operational strength of the 187th Fighter Wing, and I look forward to seeing the success of this new undertaking."

Today's announcement by the Air Force is excellent news for our state and a true testament to Alabamas work in the defense sector. Proud of the operational strength of the 187th Fighter Wing and look forward to seeing the success of this new undertaking. https://t.co/xTgCm6SJVq  Richard Shelby (@SenShelby) December 21, 2017

Update 11:43 a.m. Rep. Martha Roby tweeted and issued a statement:

"Today is a historic day for Alabama and the River Region. I could not be prouder of the men and women of the 187th for how they demonstrated their capability to carry out this special mission.

"I want to thank Brig. Gen. Randy Efferson, Mayor Todd Strange, Governor Kay Ivey, my colleagues in the Alabama congressional delegation, and the F-35 Task Force for their incredible teamwork in showing the Air Force all our area has to offer. There's no question that our community's firm support for our military installations and units made a big impression on decision makers.

"As the legacy unit for the Tuskegee Airmen 'Red Tails,' the 187th Fighter Wing has an incredibly proud history. With today's announcement, we know this unique unit has a very bright future with the F-35."

What a historic day for Alabama & the River Region! It has been confirmed that the 187th Fighter Wing at Dannelly Field in Montgomery has been chosen for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Mission. I could not be prouder of the men & women of the 187th. This is a BIG deal. pic.twitter.com/IJwWU6gCyS  Rep. Martha Roby (@RepMarthaRoby) December 21, 2017

Original article continues below:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is scheduled to make what the governor's office called a "major announcement" today at the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard.

Alabama National Guard Adjutant General Sheryl Gordon, Alabama Air National Guard Chief of Staff Brigadier General Randy Efferson, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange, and Montgomery County Commission Chairman Elton Dean will join Ivey.

Alabama has been competing to serve as a home base for the Air Force's F-35 jet.
Secretary of State John Merrill said his office identified a voter whose appearance on a television news clip on election night sparked concerns of voter fraud.

FOX 10 of Mobile interviewed the man at the Doug Jones election night event in Birmingham right after news broke that Jones was going to win the election over Roy Moore. The station interviewed a number of happy Jones supporters who were waiting for their candidate to come out and speak.

The reporter asked: "Why are you excited to see this victory?"

The response: "Because we came here all the way from different parts of the country as part of our fellowship. And, all of us pitched in together to vote and canvass together, and we got our boy elected!"

Merrill said people contacted his office questioning whether the man was an Alabama resident who could legally vote in the state.

Merrill said his office determined that the man has lived and worked in Alabama for more than a year and is a registered voter in the state.

"We applaud this young man's energy, excitement, and enthusiasm for the electoral process and we are always encouraged when we observe Alabamians who are actively engaged in campaigns and elections in our state," the press release from Merrill's office said.

Merrill's office receives complaints and questions about suspected voter fraud here.
Dr. John Burrell Bass Jr., who died Dec. 16 at age 73, was proud to be the only faculty member at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine who lectured every medical student since the school was established.

Noted as one of the nation's leading tuberculosis experts, Bass started his academic career at USA in 1974 as an assistant professor of internal medicine, rising through the academic ranks to lead the department of internal medicine as professor and chair on two separate occasions.

"We are grateful for the decades of dedicated service Dr. Bass provided to our school," said Dr. John Marymont, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the USA College of Medicine. "His early involvement in our medical school help set a trajectory for excellence in medical education that remains today."



Bass was the first pulmonologist at the USA College of Medicine, according to Crook. He also was instrumental in establishing the first fellowship program at USA, as well as the division of pulmonology and critical care medicine.



"Dr. Bass leaves a tremendous legacy at our medical school," said Dr. Errol Crook, professor and Abraham Mitchell Chair of Internal Medicine at the USA College of Medicine. "John served as a mentor for thousands of physicians and physicians-in-training. Many physicians today provide outstanding medical care with the benefit of lessons they learned from Dr. Bass."



After officially retiring in December 2009 as assistant dean for student affairs at the USA College of Medicine and distinguished professor of medicine, Bass continued to follow his passion for teaching, volunteering his time to supervise medical students and residents in training. He lit up with enthusiasm when teaching medical students and resident physicians about the art and science of medicine.

Outside the hospital, he was an avid reader of Walker Percy. He wrote poetry and played folk and bluegrass music using many acoustic musical instruments - especially the banjo.



According to Dr. William "Jet" Broughton, a professor of internal medicine at the USA College of Medicine who followed in Bass's footsteps and chose a career in pulmonary medicine, Bass was beloved and famous on a global scale.

"At international lung meetings, well-known researchers from all over the world greeted him by his first name," he said. "All of them - as we did - thought of him as brilliant and a friend. We will all miss him and are grateful for the opportunity to have known him."



Born in Abilene, Texas, Bass was a fourth-generation physician. He grew up in Gadsden, Ala., attended Auburn University and received his undergraduate degree from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1965. He also earned his medical degree at Tulane University, graduating with honors.



Bass completed his internship and residency training at the University of Alabama Hospital and Clinic in Birmingham, serving as chief medical resident. In 1974, he completed his fellowship in pulmonary medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"While completing his fellowship training at UAB, leaders who had moved to Mobile to start our medical school recognized Dr. Bass as an outstanding clinician and educator and recruited him to USA, where he would complete his entire medical career," Crook said.



Bass is survived by his wife, Rebecca Fordham Bass, of Mobile; two adult children, John Burrell Bass III (Johnnie) of Memphis, Tenn., and Anna Fordham Bass of Houston; and grandchildren Ella Rose Bass and Nathaniel Jay Bass.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018, at 11 a.m. (with visitation at 10 a.m.) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Mobile.



Donations may be made to the John B. Bass Endowment Fund for Education in Internal Medicine, USA Office of Medical Development, 300 Alumni Circle, Mobile, AL 36688. This fund is used to enhance the mission of the USA Department of Internal Medicine and continue the legacy made by Dr. Bass during his career.
An Alabama man was sentenced in Florida this week to prison time for traveling to meet a teenager for sex.

Bradly Jones, of Lake View, was convicted in the First Judicial Circuit of Florida of traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual contact, possession of methamphetamine, and drug paraphernalia. He was sentenced by Circuit Judge Edward P. Dickinson to eight years in prison.

As part of his sentence, Jones must also register as a sex offender.

According to a report from the Pensacola News Journal, Jones was arranging to meet with a 14-year-old girl in 2016. The 46-year-old was arrested as part of a police internet sting, where officers posed as teenagers and chatted with adults who solicited them for sex. The officer, posing as a teen, and the men would arrange a meet up location, and the men were arrested when they arrived.

Jones was carrying a bag of meth and a glass pipe when he arrived to meet who he thought was a teenage girl, the report said.
Roy Moore hadn up.JPG

Senate candidate Roy Moore

Khaula Hadeed serves as executive director of the Alabama chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

By Khaula Hadeed, Executive Director of the Alabama chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country's largest American Muslim civil rights organization. She is a proud Alabamian, a practicing Muslim, a U.S. citizen, a registered voter, and a firm believer in the promise of America.

One week ago, Alabamians who are Muslim, along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Alabamians voted in the special senate election. Voter registration drives and subsequent 'Get out the Vote' efforts capitalized on a newfound political attention in our communities.

Apathy, distrust, disillusionment and disinterest in voting have long plagued many fellow Americans. But because of the Presidential administration's public attacks on our families and children, Americans who are Muslim have taken greater interest in voting.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric has been adopted by many misguided candidates aspiring for political office in our state. One example is Roy Moore, who represented the zenith of religious-based bigotry. He was unabashed in his defamation of everyday Islamic practices, which actually inspire millions of American Muslim families, youth and children to be good citizens and give back to their local communities as volunteers in fire departments, PTAs, food banks and many other organizations. Inspired by Islamic teachings of serving God by serving humanity, there are about 50,000 American Muslim medical doctors across the nation, and several here in Alabama, saving American lives every day.

Trump and Moore's consistent attempts to undermine our constitutional right to freely practice our faith galvanized fair-minded Alabamians to come out and exercise our right to vote. This made it much easier for American Muslim community service organizations to get Alabamians who are Muslim to participate in elections, and contributed to a very high number of Alabama Muslims voting in this month's special senate election.

CAIR-Alabama's conservative estimate in regard to the number of Muslims who exercised their right to vote in the special senate election of December 12, 2017 is approximately 20,000. This number is significant as it also represents the 1.6% margin of Doug Jones' victory over Roy Moore.

Alabama Muslim voters share our country's strong family values, dedicated to raising and educating their children. They want to support candidates who believe that Americans who are Muslim deserve the same opportunities as all Americans - to build better futures for our families.

American Muslims share the same American values and freedoms that we all cherish, and believe in the right and freedom of all U.S. citizens to live and worship in their own way. We are standing up to defend our cherished American value of freedom of religion, a freedom that benefits all Alabamians.

All Americans deserve to be treated with the same dignity, fairness, and respect. The government should not make new rules banning one religion or singling out one group for discrimination based on how they pray.

American Muslims are the most racially and ethnically diverse religious group in the nation. Approximately half of Alabama Muslims are African-American. The largest Alabamian Muslim populations reside in Jefferson, Madison, Montgomery, and Mobile counties. Thousands of Alabamian Muslims contribute to our state's economy in many roles including nurses, doctors, teachers, and business people creating good paying American jobs.

With a greater sense of urgency to defend religious freedom for all as well as a renewed determination to organize and have their voices heard and their well-being ensured, Alabamians who are Muslim will continue to become more and more politically active.

Close elections will be contested with one more important demographic in the minds of those running these campaigns - American Muslim voters who simply want to succeed in the traditional American way - by working hard and supporting their families.

Whether it's through elections or just living out our faith teachings of serving God by serving humanity, American Muslims will continue to serve our nation alongside all fair-minded Americans. Anti-Muslim bigotry will continue to lose at the polls, so that all Alabamians may freely believe in and worship God without government interference.
If independence movements are given a legal path and engaged in negotiations, secession is much less likely to happen.

When Catalonia declared independence from Spain in October, it was the first time an elected government in Western Europe had declared independence from an unwilling host state since Irelands 1919 declaration of independence from Great Britain. Civil war did not follow Catalonias declaration as it did Irelands.

Deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont says he backed down from making the declaration effective because he wanted to avoid violence. As a result, Spain has reasserted its authority and imprisoned key figures in the independence movement, but polls show Catalans support for independence has only risen.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government held a referendum on independence, which had a high turnout and passed overwhelmingly; the Iraqi government responded quickly with military force, defeating Kurdish forces and driving them back from disputed territory.

How should central governments treat independence movements? My own research shows that central governments can limit the uncertainty and violence over secession campaigns when they provide a legal path to independence. The most recent scenes in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan only serve to further confirm this finding. When central governments crack down on independence movements, political and economic instability and even violence are the usual outcomes.

There are two major reasons why suppressing secession attempts by force is no solution to the issue. First, it is impossible to efface the dream of independence from peoples minds. Repression raises latent support for independence, even if it removes all public expression of that support. If the state eventually faces a moment of weakness or crisis, that latent support could quickly break out into a mass movement, as happened in various parts of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Second, when governments try to eliminate the possibility of independence, they give themselves a freer hand to mistreat their ethnic minorities. My research shows that democracies that define themselves as indivisible in their constitutions are less likely to decentralise power to their regions and give more rights to local communities to govern themselves.

If minorities around the world enjoyed a right to independence, few would exercise it. by

In many countries, even democracies, the ethnic majority opposes the autonomy aspirations of minorities. Therefore, governments are tempted to recentralise power as a way of winning votes. The recent growth of Spanish nationalist parties such as Citizens (Ciudadanos) is just another example of this familiar phenomenon. The most effective way to restrain central governments centralising temptation is to give minorities an exit option.

If minorities around the world enjoyed a right to independence, few would exercise it. In most places with secession movements, evidence suggests only a minority of the population supports their aims.

Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, secessionism generally does not spread across borders. Some evidence suggests that self-determination claims are more likely to arise when there are more such claims in nearby countries, but no one has yet found that the success of independence movements in one country causes independence movements to become more successful in nearby countries.

Even within countries, independence claims often do not spread. If Catalonia were allowed to become independent, there is little chance that the Basque Country or Galicia would follow in the near future. Unlike Catalonia, the Basque provinces enjoy tax autonomy and are not heavily taxed for the benefit of the rest of Spain.

If governments permitted independence, they could negotiate the terms. by

Moreover, Basque nationalists do not want to gain independence until all Basque territories support it, and the Basque region of Navarre has always shown weak support for independence. Galicia is politically conservative and enjoys net subsidies from the rest of Spain; independence is not a live option there.

If governments permitted independence, they could negotiate the terms. If Iraq had been willing to negotiate the terms of Kurdish independence, they likely could have won territorial concessions without the use of military force. If Spain had been willing to negotiate a binding referendum with the Catalan government similar to the British governments deal with the Scottish government in 2014, they could have worked out a threshold of success (say, 55 percent) that would have made success unlikely.

A failed referendum could have ended the independence threat for a generation. Instead, by sending in thousands of riot police, jailing politicians and taking their assets, banning websites, pressuring and raiding private newspapers, print shops, and hotels, and prosecuting political expression by private citizens, they have alienated moderate Catalans, lost face internationally, and ensured that independence and related issues like political prisoners will remain on the agenda for the indefinite future.

Supporting a negotiated, democratic solution to independence controversies does not mean supporting independence. It simply means taking away some of the risks and costs of these disputes and allowing a normal debate on the merits of the issue to take place. Governments will treat all their citizens better when they know they cannot forever trap them into political subjection against their will.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The Houthis are trying to resurrect the imamate that once ruled Yemen, but they lack support from most Yemenis.

The Houthi rebels December 4 execution of Yemens former President Ali Abdullah Saleh sent a massive shock across Yemen and the Middle East.

The dictator, who ruled for 33 years, had remained one of the most influential actors in Yemen even after a 2011 popular uprising forced him to step down. Saleh, having survived assassination attempts and other threats over three decades, often seemed invincible and even immortal.

But while it was shocking, Salehs killing did not necessarily surprise Yemenis. His recent alliance with his former enemy, the Houthis, had remained one of convenience; it was simply a matter of time before it fell apart and old hatreds resurfaced. Indeed, the Houthis ultimately executed Saleh to avenge his 2004 killing of their founder, Hussein Badr al-Dein al-Houthi, in his cave hideout in their northern Yemen stronghold of Saada.

The tension between Saleh and the Houthis had been mounting over the past year as the Houthis consolidated their control over government ministries and military forces that were previously under Salehs control, pushing Saleh and his party, the General Peoples Congress (GPC), into a subordinate status.

The situation escalated in mid-August after Saleh publicly called the Houthis a militia. In return, the Houthis called Saleh a traitor and vowed to have him bear the consequences of his words. The Houthis became more wary when Saleh gathered thousands of supporters to celebrate the GPCs 35th anniversary on August 24, 2017.

They became convinced that Saleh had been talking to the Saudi-led coalition fighting them in the civil war, hoping to switch sides and cut a deal with Riyadh. Clashes escalated after the Houthis stopped a convoy transporting Salehs son in Sanaa and exchanged fire with his guards, killing one of his senior aides.

Perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, Salehs death has been mourned even by many of his enemies in Yemen, including some of the youth activists who rose up against him in 2011 and others who lost family members at the hands of his troops during the past three years of civil war. Partly, this is because of the extremely brutal way in which the Houthis killed him, which violated Yemeni tribal and cultural norms.

But it is also because many Yemenis, however much they despised Saleh, saw in his recent defection from the Houthi alliance the last opportunity to defeat the rebel group, which many view as a much larger threat.

The Houthis do not represent all Zaydis in Yemen. by

The war originally broke out in September 2014 when the Houthis teamed up with military forces loyal to Saleh to overrun Sanaa and overthrow the government led by Salehs successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi of the GPC.

Unfortunately, over the past three years, some of what has been written about the Houthis rise to power has inaccurately depicted the Houthis as a popular indigenous opposition movement and as the victims of religious and political oppression trying to take their legitimate place in Yemens political order.

Such narratives, perhaps motivated in some cases by analysts understandable outrage over the actions of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and a desire to convince the United States to stop supporting it, often downplayed the Houthis wartime atrocities across Yemen and their broader threat to the countrys stability.

Some analyses, for example, explain the Houthis seizure of Sanaa as a natural consequence of the failure of the political transition process that began in 2011 after Salehs ouster. One narrative claims that Houthis took over Sanaa after they rejected, with some justification, a decision by a committee appointed by President Hadi to divide Yemen into six federal regions following the conclusion of the National Dialogue Conference in February 2014.

The proposed new federal arrangement would have left the traditional Houthi territorial base in Saada without access to a seaport or oil resources. Other analyses have highlighted the Houthis 2014 campaign against massive corruption under Hadis rule, an issue that resonated widely with Yemenis at the time.

But the Houthis quest for power runs much deeper.

{articleGUID}

They have been pushing by force from their stronghold south towards Sanaa since the late 2000s, and more aggressively since 2011. By the time the decision to divide Yemen into six regions was taken, the Houthis had already managed to take control over large swaths of the north, including parts of Amran, Hajja and al-Jawf.

And today, the Houthi-run government in Sanaa is one of the most corrupt Yemen has ever seen, raising serious questions about their claim to have the moral high ground in the conflict.

Another narrative depicts the Houthis as representatives of the Zaydi religious minority who are the victims of six wars that they fought against Saleh in Saada between 2004 and 2010. To be sure, the Saada wars might have contributed to the spread of the Houthi insurgency today. Some of the Houthis fighting in the current war saw their fathers and loved ones brutally killed by Salehs forces in the previous decade. But despite this, the Houthis had no problem allying with Saleh in 2014 and with his help, toppled Hadis government and dragged the country into a devastating civil war.

. by

The Houthis do not represent all Zaydis in Yemen. Their major enemies, whom they have managed to eliminate since 2014  including Saleh himself  were all Zaydis. Their insurgency and rise to power over the past three years have been driven far less by the grievances they suffered as a result of the Saada wars than by a long-running power struggle within the northern political elite, including Saleh, who have dominated Yemens politics for centuries.

Houthis belong to the Jaroudi sect, an offshoot of the dynamic and diverse Zaydi Islam. While Zaydism encourages scholarship and individuals freedom of interpretation, Jarudism believes in the strict right of Prophet Mohammeds descendants to rule. Indeed, the Houthi movement is deeply rooted in the Zaydi imamate that ruled Yemen for hundreds of years until 1962.

The Imams claimed authority to rule by virtue of being descendants of Prophet Mohammed, commonly known as Sayyids. During the imamate, Yemens rulers came exclusively from Sayyid families. But not all Sayyids embrace Houthi political aspirations, and Houthis do not represent all Sayyids.

Like many other political Islam movements, the Houthis use Islamic discourse to justify their right to power and legitimacy to rule. Many Yemenis believe that the Houthis are aiming to replace Yemens 1962 revolution principles and bring back a system based on Sayyid families right to rule.

The Houthis public discourse heavily preaches the superiority and right of ahl al-beit (people of the house, another term for the Prophets descendants), to rule. Al-wathiqah al-fikriyya, or the ideological document, which guides the Houthi movement, states the exceptionalism of ahl al-beit over other Muslims and says that descendants of the Prophet will guide the Ummah (nation) and rule over it.

The 1962 revolutionary principles, which include establishing a republican democratic system and ending discrimination and privileges based on class, are embraced by Yemenis, including those who rejected Saleh.

The 1962 revolution ended the imamate and centuries of isolation and political repression that left Yemen one of the poorest and most illiterate countries in the world. Although Yemenis enjoyed a bit more freedom after 1962, the revolution did not succeed in ending the Northern elites monopoly over power. Under the leadership of Saleh, who came to power in 1978, elites from his northern Hashid tribe became countrys dominant political and military force, until today.

Many in Yemen think that for the Houthis, this current war is about reclaiming their God-given right to rule that was taken away from the Sayyids in 1962. For many other Yemenis, the war is about fighting for the republican system that ended the Sayyid dynastys monopoly over power.

The Houthis' base of support inside Yemen is very narrow, and their political Islamist agenda is rejected by most Yemenis. by

Conditions in Yemen today are very different from those in place during the imamate. The imams isolated Yemen from the rest of the world and prohibited modern education so that Yemenis, much like North Koreans today, would remain too ignorant and uninformed to challenge their authority.

Opposition to the return of the imamate drives most Yemenis who are opposed to Houthis and those who are fighting them on the battlefield. Regionally, the imams operated in a much friendlier environment than the Houthis do today.

Saudi Arabia supported the imams attempt to reclaim power from the revolutionaries for five years following the 1962 revolution, fighting against Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser who backed the Republicans. Today Yemen is perhaps even more entangled in a regional competition for power, this time between Saudi Arabia and Iran [pdf]. Saudi Arabia says it is committed to defeating the Houthis who they perceive as Irans proxy in their backyard.

By killing Saleh, the Houthis lost the political cover that GPC offered them and isolated themselves even more in the region. Also, Salehs death seems to have pushed the Saudi-led coalition to resolve some of their differences that delayed the progress of their ground operations and contributed to a military and political stalemate.

{articleGUID}

A notable development is the meeting between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and leaders of Islah, Yemens Muslim Brotherhood party, in Riyadh on December 12.

Also important was the statement by UAEs minister of state for foreign affairs the following day indicating the UAE would work with Islah to promote regional stability. This signals a major shift, given the UAEs anti-Muslim Brotherhood position.

Previously, fear of a takeover by the Islamist Islah party (fighting on Hadis side) had led the Saudi-led coalition to withhold support from local forces  that have heavy Islah participation  fighting the Houthis in two key areas, Taiz and Baydha.

With this development, we might see an escalated ground offensive to push the Houthis out of these critical areas and possibly into the capital Sanaa in the coming weeks. A day after Islahs meeting with MBZ, the Houthis were pushed out of Bayhan, one of the most intense front lines that had been locked in a stalemate for years.

The Houthis base of support inside Yemen is very narrow, and their political Islamist agenda is rejected by most Yemenis. Without Salehs GPC and their relatively wider social and political base as part of their coalition, the Houthis goal of ruling Yemen alone by divine right will at least be exposed and apparent to all.

With the Houthis alone in the north, Yemens conflict, initially driven by local power dynamics and grievances, is increasingly taking an even more regional and sectarian nature, making it more complex than it already is.

During and beyond the war, Yemen will likely become a battleground for regional actors including, but not limited to, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The regional dynamic of the conflict must be addressed by the international community in order to mitigate the impact of the escalation of violence in Yemen after Salehs death.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Less than a week after a tropical storm crossed the Philippines, another one has already formed and is moving in.

Just a few days after Kai-Tak, a tropical storm that left dozens of people dead in landslides in central Philippines, a new storm, Tembin, is heading towards the country  but further south.

Kai-Tak went across the Visayas, including the city of Tacloban, whereas Tembin is heading for the southernmost region of the Philippines: Mindanao.

The centre of the storm is following a course that takes it through northern Mindanao and westwards through the Sulu Sea to Palawan, an elongated archipelago that stretches from the Philippines towards Borneo.

As Kai-Tak approached the island of Samar, NASAs measurements analysed a rate of rainfall of a stunning 193m per hour; the resultant flooding was widespread and chest-deep. Kai-Tak was a slow mover, at times almost stationary.

Tembin, locally called Vinta, is running in comparison. It has an approach speed of 25 kilometres per hour, which means less time for any heavy rain to fall. Nevertheless, model forecasts have a strip of predicted rainfall of about 400mm for the northeast coast of Mindanao and further west, covering Pagadian City.

More typically, figures of 200mm plus are likely over the north of Mindanao and the eastern side of Samar Island and Leyte, both drenched by Kai-Tak. Here, it will not take much rain to renew flooding and hinder the clean-up.

The heaviest rain reported so far as a result of Tembin is from the municipality of Loreto, in the province of Agusan del Sur, southwest of the storms centre and in northern Mindanao. In the last 24 hours, 172mm fell there.

Once over the South China Sea, and in contrast to its predecessor, Tembin may build to typhoon strength and head for southern Vietnam.
Egypts actions against Mahmoud Hussein are in clear and blatant violation of his basic human rights, network says.

As its journalist Mahmoud Hussein marks one year of being detained by Egypt, Al Jazeera Media Network has upped a call for the 51-year-olds release.

In a statement released on Wednesday, exactly one year after Hussein was held, the Qatar-based network condemned repeated renewals of his detention  the tenth and latest of which came on December 14.

He has still not been formally charged, but is accused of incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news with the aim of spreading chaos  allegations he, his lawyers and Al Jazeera strongly deny.

{articleGUID}

Mahmoud was detained in December last year by Egyptian authorities upon his arrival in Cairo while on annual vacation visiting his family, Al Jazeera said in the statement. Mahmouds physical health has deteriorated having first been held in solitary confinement from December 23 until March 20, 2017.

On June 13, while in prison, he sustained a fracture in his left elbow. To date, he has not been allowed access to the required medical treatment by the Egyptian authorities, even though Al Jazeera would cover all costs.

{articleGUID}

To mark the milestone, Al Jazeera journalists gathered in a studio at the Doha headquarters for a silent solidarity protest.

Al Jazeera strongly condemns the actions of the Egyptian authorities, which are a clear and blatant violation of his basic human rights which are supposedly guaranteed by Egyptian laws and international binding treaties, said the network.

{articleGUID}

We believe that the protection of journalists must be held in the highest regard  no journalist should be subject to intimidation, persecution, or imprisonment while carrying out their duties. Press freedom is a basic fundamental of democratic values.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Egypt 161st out of 180 countries in its press freedom index.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) dubs the country one of the worlds biggest prisons for journalists.

With at least 20 journalists behind bars in relation to their work, Egypt is among the worlds top three jailers of journalists.
Ruling party says move sends clear message to Israel that there is a price to pay for human rights abuses.

The African National Congress (ANC), South Africas ruling party, has resolved to immediately and unconditionally downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel to a liaison office.

The ANCs decision on Wednesday evening, announced during its 54th National Conference, came on the eve of a UN General Assembly emergency session where member states resoundingly approved a draft resolution rejecting US President Donald Trumps move to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

[It] sends a clear message to Israel that there is a price to pay for its human rights abuses and violations of international law, the ANC said in a statement.

In order to give our practical expression of support to the oppressed people of Palestine, the ANC has unanimously resolved to direct the SA government to immediately and unconditionally downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel to a liaison office.

A practical step towards peace

Hashem Dajani, Palestines ambassador in Pretoria, described the move as an important decision.

The Palestinian movement, Hamas, released a statement on Thursday acknowledging ANC members and activists in South Africas Palestine solidarity movement who convinced South Africans that it was the correct moral and ethical decision for their country.

The activist group, South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), said: the downgrade was a practical step towards a just peace.

In a statement, the organisation said: This move by the ANC actively applies pressure on Israels government to end its violations of international law.

But Steven Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg, said the ANCs move was not legally binding.

Its implementation at government level was also uncertain, he said.

There are people who are celebrating as if this is a done deal, when it is nowhere near that, he told Al Jazeera.

Until and unless the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) takes this resolution on board, it means nothing.

DIRCO is South Africas foreign ministry.

Friedman said that it was not unusual for the ANC to show support for the Palestinians.

It doesnt mean that it will translate into [government] policy, he said.

DIRCO officials, he added, are known to hold sympathetic views towards Israel.

Zionist organisation decries decision

Separately, the move angered the South African Board of Jewish Deputies and South African Zionist Federation.

We question the motives behind this discriminatory decision that would effectively prevent South Africa from playing any mediatory role in bringing about peace or dialogue between Israel and Palestine the group said in a statement.

This downgrade will do nothing for the Palestinian people and have a detrimental effect on South Africans. We further question the motives of organisations and individuals who have managed to capture the ANCs international relations agenda including the BDS.

{articleGUID}

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, seeks to end the Israeli occupation and dismantle Israels illegal wall and settlements, demands full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and calls for the rights of Palestinian refugees to be upheld.

The decision to downgrade the Israeli embassy came at the end of a five-day conference in which the ANC voted for a new leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, who takes over from President Jacob Zuma.

Follow Azad Essa on Twitter: @AzadEssa
First J20 case ends with six defendants exonerated on all charges, but advocates caution many trials remain.

A US jury exonerated six people who faced decades in prison for allegedly destroying property in Washington, DC on January 20  the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

A variety of felony and misdemeanour charges could have resulted in 60 years in jail for each defendant, but a jury on Thursday cleared them of all counts.

An anti-Trump demonstration on January 20 was organised by an umbrella group named Disrupt J20, which included anti-capitalists, ant-fascists, and activists from other ideological backgrounds.

Many observers saw the trial and possible decades-long sentences as a form of intimidation and criminalisation of free speech and freedom of assembly in the United States.

Everyone is relieved by the initial verdict, Sam Menefee-Libey of the DC Legal Posse, a group that provides support for the J20 defendants, told Al Jazeera shortly after the universal acquittal was delivered.

{articleGUID}

Menefee-Libey credited the solidarity and bravery of the community, as well as collective legal defence, for the acquittals.

Jude Ortiz, chair of the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and part of the defence team, told Al Jazeera he had no idea  no best guess as to what would happen with the verdict.

As he heard each not guilty verdict in the courtroom, it was an increasing rush, Ortiz said.

Freedom of assembly

The US Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia highlighted a riot that damaged or destroyed public and private property on January 20.

The criminal justice process ensures that every defendant is judged based on his or her personal conduct and intent. We appreciate the jurys close examination, the office said in a statement issued after the ruling.

Alexei Wood, a 37-year-old photographer and videographer whose livestream of the demonstration showed he did not participate in any property destruction, was among those charged.

Todays verdict reaffirms two central constitutional principles of our democracy: first, that dissent is not a crime and second, that our justice system does not permit guilt by association, Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, DC, said in a statement delivered to Al Jazeera.

Michelman added: We hope todays verdict begins the important work of teaching police and prosecutors to respect the line between lawbreaking and constitutionally protected protest.

{articleGUID}

There were also questions about the evidence used in an attempt to convict the defendants.

Most protesters were clad in all black with their faces covered. So screen captures and photos taken by far-right sources, as well as police body-worn cameras, were used to show the location of certain demonstrators throughout the demonstration.

The US Justice Departments prosecution team, headed by lawyer Jennifer Kerkhoff, used video from far-right sources such as Project Veritas  a nonprofit that performs sting operations on news media in attempts to uncover anti-Trump bias  and Lauren Southern, a right-wing Canadian internet personality, as evidence.

The jury didnt buy any of it, Ortiz said. While he didnt know if this will influence future attempts to criminalise protests, he said the jury clearly didnt think the prosecutions case was strong this time.

They definitely did not endorse the clear lack of evidence by giving convictions, Ortiz concluded.

The jury began deliberations on December 15. These were the first six defendants out of nearly 200 people who will face trial for alleged crimes related to Trumps January inauguration protest.

Thursdays verdict strengthened the J20 support network to keep fighting until everyone is free, Menefee-Libey said.
Khalid al-Khalifa says it is unhelpful to pick fights over side issues, which many interpret as Jerusalem reference.

Bahrains foreign minister has said it is unhelpful to pick a fight with the United States over side issues, while there is a threat from Iran.

Khalid al-Khalifa tweeted to his 460,000 followers on Wednesday: Its not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist Islamic republic.

Relations between Bahrain and the Islamic Republic, Iran, are strained over various issues.

Bahrain and Israel, meanwhile, are united in their views on Iran, which they see as a threat to security.

Its not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist Islamic republic     (@khalidalkhalifa) December 20, 2017

Many of the 672 people who responded to Khalifas tweet interpreted the side issues he referred to as Washingtons stance on Jerusalem.

On December 6, US President Donald Trump announced that the US recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

The move has drawn international condemnation and sparked a wave of heated protests around the world.

Khalifas tweet, which unlike most of his messages on the social media site was posted in English and not Arabic, comes after a Bahrain delegation came under fire for visiting Israel earlier in December, after Trumps announcement.

Aside from Decembers developments, Bahrains King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in September was at the centre of rumours that Manama had called for normalising relations with Israel.

Israels foreign affairs ministry tweeted that Khalifa had denounced an Arab boycott of Israel and confirmed Bahraini citizens were free to visit Israel. Shortly after the tweet was posted, it was deleted.

Critics say countries should refuse to normalise relations with Israel at a time when it is illegally occupying Palestinian land and oppressing the Palestinian people.

Sensitive topic

The status of Jerusalem has long remained a sensitive topic and one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Washingtons new stance has broken with decades of US policy.

No country currently has its embassy in Jerusalem.





Jerusalem, home to holy religious sites, has particular significance for Muslims, Christians and Jews.

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.

Palestinian leaders want occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel says the city cannot be divided.

On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly will vote on a draft resolution condemning the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Man who drove a car into pedestrians in Melbourne has mental health issues but no known terrorism links, police say.

A man who intentionally drove a car into a crowded intersection in the heart of Melbourne on Thursday has a history of mental health issues but no known terrorism links, police said.

The 32-year-old Australian man of Afghan descent was known to police and also has a history of drug use, Victoria state Police Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said.

At this time we do not have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism, Patton told reporters in Melbourne.

The suspect was apprehended by an off-duty officer of the Victoria police force. Both men were injured during the arrest.

The white four-wheel-drive vehicle crashed into a cable car stop on Flinders Street during late afternoon rush hour on Thursday.

The driver was arrested along with another person, who was seen filming the incident and was later found to be carrying several knifes.

We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act. The motivations are unknown, Victoria Polices Commander Russell Barrett told reporters.

Witnesses saw one man wearing a long-sleeved top being dragged from the white Suzuki Grand Vitara, while a second man wearing a red checked shirt was seen handcuffed and sitting on the ground.

Al Jazeeras Andrew Thomas, reporting from Sydney, said several of the wounded were in critical condition.

They havent established any links with terrorism. That isnt necessarily saying that this wasnt a terrorist event. But they certainly not saying that as yet, Thomas said.

Interestingly, the second person arrested on the scene was not inside the vehicle. There had been some speculation earlier that he may have been in the car. He wasnt. He was seen to be filming the incident on his mobile phone.

When police arrested him and looked inside his bag, they found some knifes. Thats why he was taken into custody as well. It is not clear whether he knew the man inside the car or not.

Daniel Andrews, Victorias State Premier, called it the incident an act of evil.

Our police, paramedics and fire fighters were there in good time and did their job, Andrews said.

There are 19 people admitted to hospital. Fifteen are in stable condition. Four are in critical condition. The patient being treated at the Royal Childrens hospital is not critical, he added.

The offender is one of the patients and is not in critical condition and the off-duty arresting officer who detained the offender did suffer some injuries and is receiving hospital treatment.
Catalonias secessionist parties projected to continue governing the breakaway region under threats from Madrid.

Exit polls following Catalonias snap election show pro-independence parties maintaining their majority in the regional parliament, setting up a conflict with Madrid.

Catalonias parliament has 135 seats, requiring 68 seats for a majority. Secessionist parties are projected to win between 67 and 71 seats.

The results are not in line with the desires of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who called the snap election in October.

Unionist parties are projected to win a maximum of 62 seats. No official results have yet been published and it was unclear if final results would match the poll published by La Vanguardia newspaper as voting stations closed.

Exit polls also showed a five percent increase in voter participation over the 2015 election that originally put pro-independence parties in power.

Rajoy issued a warning before the vote, saying the new government complies with the law or it knows what will happen.

This was an apparent reference to Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which Rajoy used to directly administer the independence-seeking region and dismiss the regional government after Catalonia declared independence in October.

Catalonias independence declaration came after an October 1 independence referendum that saw 90 percent of Catalan voters choose independence, although turnout was less than 50 percent. Spanish national police violently cracked down on the vote, using what rights groups called excessive force.

{articleGUID}

An imprisoned president

The separatist parties included centre-right Together for Catalonia (JxCat) and centre-left Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), and far-left, anti-capitalist Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP).

Exit polls suggest ERC will be the pro-independence party with the most seats among the separatist parties, winning between 34 and 36.

This would mean ERCs leader and Catalonias former vice president Oriol Junqueras, who is the only Catalan lawmaker that remains in prison on charges of sedition and rebellion related to the declaration of independence, will be Catalonias regional president.

Marta Rovira, the ERCs second-in-command, told reporters on Thursday that she hoped the vote would impose democracy on Catalonia. Rovira went on to decry the fact that Junqueras could not participate in the election.

JxCats presidential candidate and former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont fled to Brussels after the independence declaration.

An 18-year-old Catalan woman named Laura Sancho ceded her vote to Puigdemont on Thursday, her first time voting.

Sancho told reporters that Puitdemonts political situation is horrible.

Puigdemont tweeted the vote was very important, not only for the Catalonia of today but also for the Catalonia of the future.

Avui es un dia molt important, no per la Catalunya d'avui sino per la #Catalunya del futur. I tu Laura representes aquesta albada d'esperanca. Es el moment que la Republica dels ciutadans jubili la monarquia del 155 #JuntsxCat #21D pic.twitter.com/5v9Meq0qJE  Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) December 21, 2017

The unionists were led by the Cs, a populist party that generally votes with the political right, and is projected to win the most seats of any party: upwards of 37.

Ines Arrimada, the top candidate for Cs, said Thursdays vote was necessary for coexistence in Catalonia adding people should vote for the political option they want.

The Cs adopted a narrative of bringing back businesses that fled Catalonia since the independence crisis began.

A report released by the Spanish College of Commercial Registrars on December 1 said more than 2,800 businesses have moved their headquarters out of Catalonia for other parts of Spain between October 2 and November 30.

The regional branch of Rajoys conservative Peoples Party has adopted a similar stance. The partys presidential candidate, Xavier Garcia Albiol, said during a debate on Tuesday his first act as regional president would be to call the companies that have left and ask them to come back.

There is debate over how much of an impact the relocation of a companys headquarters had on Catalonia, as most businesses continued operating in the region at similar levels.
Catalonia is heading to the polls in a snap election to decide the future of the separatist project on Thursday.

The dismissed Catalan government, headed by former regional President Carles Puigdemont, declared independence from Spain on October 27.

The central government responded by enacting the previously-unused Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which allows Madrid to directly administer Catalonia.

The crisis sent shockwaves through Europe after Spanish police violently cracked down on an October 1 referendum on independence that saw 90 percent of voters choose to leave Spain, although voter turnout was less than 50 percent.

{articleGUID}

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the snap elections in October and said that Article 155 would restore normalcy to the breakaway region.

Instead, it brought further protests and controversies.

Eight members of the regional Catalan parliament were jailed on November 2, including dismissed Vice President Oriol Junqueras. A total of 13 Catalan legislators have been accused of rebellion, sedition and other charges.

Puigdemont fled Catalonia for Brussels with four other ministers in the hours following the declaration of independence. Spain issued an international arrest warrant for the sacked Catalan president, but dropped the warrant on December 5.

The Spanish warrant still stands. If Puigdemont returns to Catalonia, he will be arrested.

Junqueras, along with Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, two pro-independence organisers, are the only separatists that remain behind bars. Another seven legislators have been released on bail.

It is the first vote since the 2015 election that put secessionist parties in power. Polls conducted in Catalonia show the election could go either way.

Puigdemont is the presidential candidate for Together for Catalonia (JxCat). Junqueras Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), formerly Puigdemonts coalition member, has gained support and is expected to edge out JxCat in total number of votes.

The two parties are projected to win roughly 60 seats. The parties won 62 as a coalition in 2015.

The Popular Unity Candidacy, a far-left, anti-capitalist and pro-independence party, will round out the secessionist parties with between eight and 10 seats, putting pro-independence parties in range of the 68 seats needed for an absolute majority in the Catalan parliament.

On the unionist side, the Citizens, a pro-EU populist party that generally votes right-wing, is projected to win roughly 30 seats. This is a better showing than the nine seats they won in 2015.

The regional representatives of the national right-wing Peoples Party and centre-left Socialist Party, along with the left-wing In Common We Can coalition, which is not pro-independence, are expected to garner close to 40 seats in total.

Polls close on Thursday afternoon.
General Assembly to vote on decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israeli capital in face of unprecedented US intimidation.

The United Nations General Assembly is due to vote on Washingtons controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the face of unprecedented US intimidation.

Although the vote on Thursday will be non-binding, it is expected to pass easily in the 193-member UN body.

This prompted US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to warn that she will be taking names of the states which vote against the decision, while President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off aid to these countries.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, dismissed Haleys words.

The world has changed, he said. The notion of I am powerful therefore I am right has changed. Now the world is rising against the unfair.

From now on, no honourable nation and no honourable state will bow to such pressure.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki echoed his Turkish counterpart.

This is a new definition of world order in politics, he said, and it seems that the American administration are putting their stamp on [the] new political reality that many countries will reject.

What will Saudi do?

According to Elie Jacobs, a consultant at the Truman National Security Project, there is a possibility for some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, to abstain.

Saudi Arabia and the relationship the Saudis tried to court with Donald Trump could make [todays vote] really interesting, Jacobs told Al Jazeera.

I cant imagine they would vote against, but if they choose to abstain how many other Arab countries will decide to join them? he continued. Its a big question, one that the Saudis themselves are trying to figure out right now.





Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and met King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to shore up support for Thursdays draft resolution.

According to the PAs official news agency, Wafa, King Salman assured Abbas of the Kingdoms firm position on the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The General Assembly vote is reminiscent of a session in 2012, when an overwhelming majority backed Palestines upgrade in the UN to non-member state status.

Some 138 countries voted in support of the upgrade, while nine  including the US, Israel, Canada and several South Pacific countries  voted against.

Israel fostering relationships

Ahead of Thursdays vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the UN a house of lies.

The state of Israel rejects outright this vote, even before it passes, he said at an opening ceremony of a hospital in southern Israel.

The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well  the house of lies, he said.

Jacobs said that Israel has been working very hard over the last few years to improve relationships with other countries, particularly at the UN, to avoid these kind of blockbuster blowout votes.

In recent years, a number of West African countries have grown closer to Israel.

In July, Netanyahu became the first non-African head of state to address the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) summit in Liberia.

Furthermore, Israel has taken great strides to cooperate with and provide aid to a number of African countries in the areas of technology, agriculture, development and security.

On the other hand, South Africas ruling African National Congress (ANC) party decided on Wednesday to downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel to a liaison office.

For his part, President Trump said that he will be watching the votes in the General Assembly.

They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care, he said at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

A domestic policy decision

In addition to recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, Trump announced on December 6 that the US would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

No country currently has its embassy in the city, which is home to holy religious sites and has particular significance for Muslims, Christians and Jews.

On Monday, the US vetoed an Egyptian-sponsored UN Security Council resolution that asked countries not to establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

The US was outnumbered 14 to 1 when it vetoed that resolution.





Jacobs said that one of the reasons Trump and Haley are pushing back is because this is a domestic policy decision.

This is the fulfillment of a 22-year-old law that the US Congress passed on huge bipartisan majority, he said, adding that is it a widely popular law.

The idea that other countries should influence the way that America makes its decisions is really insulting to a lot of Americans, particularly this president, he said.

The status of Jerusalem has long remained a sensitive topic and one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Palestinian leaders want occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel says the city cannot be divided.
Cho Hyun-ah caused a flight to be delayed in 2014 when she had a tantrum about the way she was served macadamia nuts.

The former Korean Air executive who was at the centre of the so-called nut rage scandal will not serve any more time in jail. Cho Hyun-ah caused a flight to be delayed in 2014 when she had a tantrum about the way she was served macadamia nuts. South Koreas Supreme Court found Cho Hyun-ah not guilty of the most serious charge of breaking aviation security law by changing a planned flight route  a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years jail.

Al Jazeeras Kathy Novak reports from Seoul.
US-based NGO records 42 journalist deaths in 2017, at least 15 of which took place in Iraq, Syria.

At least 15 journalists were killed while covering the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria this year, making the two Middle Eastern countries the deadliest for reporters.

It was the first time in six years that Syria did not top the list as at least eight correspondents died in Iraq, a new report by the US-based non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) revealed on Thursday.

According to the report, at least 42 journalists  including eight women  were killed globally from the beginning of this year to December 15, 2017. Last year CPJ recorded 48 deaths among journalists.





Surges in journalists deaths have been linked to coverage of conflict, so its certainly good news that there are fewer media deaths in the Middle East. Its also a reminder of why journalist safety worldwide must remain a priority, said Joel Simon, CPJs executive director in a statement.

The report also found that the increase in the number of journalist deaths in Mexico reached a historical high this year, with at least seven people killed in reprisal for their work.

Among those killed in Iraqs Mosul was 30-year-old Shifa Gardi, an Iraqi Kurdish TV journalist who died in a roadside bomb blast while covering clashes between Iraqi forces and ISIL in February.

In June, a Kurdish journalist and French reporter were killed in an explosion in Mosul.

Groups with political affiliations were responsible for 45 percent of the total deaths, according to the findings of the report.

The number of journalists who have been targeted in reprisal for their reporting has dropped in the past two years, and according to CPJs records, which date back to 1992, about two-thirds of journalists killed are usually singled out for murder in retaliation for their work.

The decline may be due to various factors such as self-censorship and imprisonment as alternative means to silence reporters.

Other areas of conflict where journalists and media workers have been killed include Yemen and Afghanistan.

Jailed journalists

Earlier this month, CPJ released a report that placed the number of jailed journalists at 262  a record high this year.

While government crackdowns continue to take place in countries like Egypt, Turkey and China, detaining journalists is usually a tool used as part of wider crackdowns on dissent.

Monday marked one year since Al Jazeera reporter Mahmoud Hussein has been held in an Egyptian prison infamous for its human rights abuses.

He is accused of incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news  allegations that have been rejected by Al Jazeera.
Ramaphosa was elected as the new leader of South Africas ruling ANC party on Monday.

The new leader of one of Africas oldest political parties, says he has a new vision for his country.

Businessman, activist, and politician Cyril Ramaphosa says he will fight corruption with the same intensity as poverty and inequality.

He was chosen as the new leader of South Africas ruling ANC party in a bitterly fought campaign on Monday.

Ramaphosa now wishes to put all that behind and give his party a new direction.

But his plans to wipe out corruption will likely pit him against President Jacob Zumas supporters who control the highest decision-making body of the ANC.

Zuma has faced several serious allegations of corruption, and the ANC has lost support as a result.

So, can Cyril Ramaphosa save the party of Nelson Mandela?

Presenter: Hashem Ahelbarra

Guests:

Bongani Mbindwane  ANC Member and National Security Adviser to the police minister in South Africa.

Grant Masterson  Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy.

Thembisa Fakude  Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
You cannot buy Turkeys democratic will with your dollars, Erdogan tells Trump, ahead of UN vote on Jerusalem issue.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the international community to teach the United States a good lesson in an upcoming UN General Assembly vote on Washingtons controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Erdogans comments come after the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, warned on Wednesday that she would be taking names of the states voting against the decision and pass them to President Donald Trump, who has threatened to cut off aid to the countries in question.

The vote on Thursday is non-binding, but it is expected to pass easily in the 193-member UN body.

Mr Trump, you cannot buy Turkeys democratic will with your dollars. Our decision is clear, Erdogan said at a cultural awards ceremony in Ankara on Thursday.

I call on the whole world: Dont you dare sell your democratic struggle and your will for petty dollars.

I hope and expect the US wont get the result it expects from there (the UN) and the world will give a very good lesson to the US, Erdogan added.

{articleGUID}

Trump, on December 6, announced the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, deviating from decades-old policy and the international consensus that the citys status should be resolved through peace talks.

On Tuesday, the US vetoed an Egyptian-sponsored UN Security Council resolution that asked countries not to establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

The US, one of the five permanent members of the UN body with veto power, was outnumbered 14 to 1 when it vetoed that resolution.

Ankara tough on US move

Turkey has been highly vocal in criticising the US administration over its Jerusalem decision, leading calls at last weeks summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Istanbul last week to officially recognise East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Taha Ozhan, a ruling party MP and chair of the Turkish parliaments foreign affairs commission, told Al Jazeera earlier in the week that Ankaras efforts against Trumps move put pressure on regional countries to speak up.

Turkey has triggered this, and regional actors are reacting, he said.





A possible vote in the General Assembly will remind us of the scenes we saw a few years ago in the vote there for Palestine to be a non-member observer state, in which only the US, Israel and few more countries voted against the move, dominated by the rest of the members.

In the 2012 vote at the General Assembly, Palestine was given non-member observer status with 138 votes cast for the resolution and nine votes against it.

Thousands of Turkish protesters marched in various parts of the country through the weekend, carrying anti-US and anti-Israel signs and shouting slogans against the two countries.
Casualties reported after ferry capsizes and sinks between Dinahican and Polillo Island in Quezon province.

A ferry carrying more than 200 passengers has capsized off the Philippines in bad weather conditions, killing at least four people, authorities told local media.

The incident reportedly happened between Dinahican and Polillo Island in the Quezon province in central Philippines on Thursday.

Captain Armand Balilo, a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman, was quoted as saying by local media that teams already rescued 166 of the passengers on the ferry, adding that rescue operation was going on.

Police director Rhoderick Armamento in Quezon also told The Inquirer newspaper that most of the passengers of the ferry, which was bound for Polilio Island, were rescued and accounted for based on the passenger manifest.

Al Jazeeras Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Manila, said bad weather was hampering the rescue operation.

The navy rescue services told us that there was no typhoon advisory at the time of the accident. There were, however very rough seas, Alindogan said.

Initial reports suggested that the ferry may have been over capacity. But it has since become clear the ship had a capacity of 300, while the recorded number of passengers was 251.

Right now the priority is to conduct rescue operations. The next eight hours will be very critical, our correspondent said.

The Philippines coastguard is now working together with the navy and air force. But it is going to be difficult; its nighttime here and the rough seas between these two islands will not make it easier.

The Philippines, made of over 7,000 islands, often experiences tough weather conditions. Over the past week, heavy rain and landslides, triggered by tropical storm Kai-Tak, left more than 40 people dead.

Maritime accidents are common in the Southeast Asian country due to its poor sea transportation infrastructure.
A resounding majority of United Nations member states has defied unprecedented threats by the US to declare President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital null and void.

The non-binding resolution was approved at a UN General Assembly emergency meeting on Thursday with 128 votes in favour and nine against, while 35 countries abstained.

It passed despite intimidation by Trump, who had threatened on Wednesday to eliminate financial aid to member states who would vote against his decision, while Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, had warned that she would be taking names of those countries.

Shortly after the vote, Palestinian leaders called the vote a victory for Palestine and thanked the UN member states that rejected Trumps unilateral move despite all the pressure exerted on them.

This decision reaffirms once again that the just Palestinian cause enjoys the support of international community, and no decisions made by any side could change the reality, that Jerusalem is an occupied territory under international law, Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement.





Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, condemned Washingtons decision but said the UN vote showed respect for the rule of law.

Its a day of shame to those who stood shoulder to shoulder with the occupation and settlements against international law, he said.

But we appreciate very much that the majority of the international community decided, in spite of the threats and intimidation of the US, to stand tall with wisdom, far-sightedness, international law and the rule of law  and not the rule of the jungle.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, foreign minister of Turkey, a co-sponsor of the resolution, said on Twitter that dignity and sovereignty are not for sale.

Today, the international community once again showed that dignity and sovereignty are not for sale.#Turkey #Palestine and all other co-sponsors thank every country that supported #UNGA resolution on Palestine. pic.twitter.com/nw4Up6U8Fk  Mevlut Cavusoglu (@MevlutCavusoglu) December 21, 2017

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Irans foreign minister, also welcomed the result of the vote on Twitter, calling it a resounding global NO to Trump regimes thuggish intimidation at the UN.

For his part, Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had earlier called the UN a house of lies, condemned the preposterous vote and thanked Trump for his stance on Jerusalem.

I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refused to participate in this theatre of the absurd, he said in a televised statement.

So I appreciate that, and especially I want to again express our thanks to President Trump and Ambassador Haley, for their stalwart defence of Israel and their stalwart defence of the truth.

Great humiliation

The session on Thursday at the 193-member body was held at the request of Arab and Muslim countries after the US vetoed the same measure in the Security Council on Monday.





The US was outnumbered 14 to 1 in that vote.

While the Security Councils five permanent members  the US, Britain, France, China and Russia  had veto power on Mondays vote, there are no vetoes at the General Assembly.

Similar to the Egyptian-drafted text that was blocked by Washington on Monday, the draft resolution approved on Thursday did not mention the US by name but expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning Jerusalems status.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeeras senior political analyst, called the result of the General Assembly vote a great humiliation for the US.

Bishara said that most UN member states that voted in favour of the draft resolution did not necessarily do so to back the Palestinians but to support international legality.

They voted for what they saw as a violation of international law, he said.

The resolution starts by naming several UN Security Council resolutions, where the US either voted for or abstained, saying that Israel cannot annex East Jerusalem; that Israel cannot export its own population to East Jerusalem; that Israel cannot continue with the settlement building in East Jerusalem and so on, added Bishara.

All in all, 128 countries voted for international law.

Embassy move

In addition to recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, Trump announced on December 6 that the US would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

No country currently has its embassy in the city, which is home to holy religious sites and has particular significance for Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The US decision triggered a series of protests in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as major international cities  from Jakarta, through Istanbul, to Rabat.

The status of Jerusalem has long remained a sensitive topic and one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

After occupying the citys eastern part in the 1967 War, Israel annexed the territory. In 1980, it proclaimed it as its eternal, undivided capital.

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, however, see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

They have warned that any change to the status quo would mean the end of the peace process premised on a two-state solution.

Thursdays vote was reminiscent of a session in 2012, when an overwhelming majority backed Palestines upgrade in the UN to non-member state status.

In that vote, some 138 countries supported the upgrade, while nine  including the US, Israel, Canada and several South Pacific countries  voted against.
While many war criminals were brought to justice by for their role in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, many victims are still living with the horrors of that time. For those, justice was not served, and their attackers still walk free.

The UNs International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has closed.

A ceremony in The Hague  attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Dutch King Willem-Alexander  marks the end of 24 years of investigations and prosecutions.

The tribunal has been lauded for making significant contributions to the development of international law.

But some victims in Sarajevo say the court has failed to bring them justice.

Al Jazeeras David Chater reports from Sarajevo.
South Korean soldiers fire warning shots at border guards from North Korea who appeared to be searching for the soldier.

A North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea by crossing the demilitarised zone (DMZ) under the cover of thick fog, officials in Seoul say.

South Korean soldiers later fired about 20 warning shots at border guards from North Korea who appeared to be searching for the defected soldier, the officials said.

It was the fourth defection of a North Korean soldier this year.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Seoul, Se-Woong Koo, a political analyst and publisher of Korea Expose, a news magazine, said North Koreas economic situation is prompting soldiers and citizens to risk their lives by leaving the country.

There have been 15 cases in which North Koreans crossed the DMZ or through the East China Sea by ships in the last year or so, Se-Woong said.

South Koreans react to this with surprise and alarm. But then again, we have seen other cases before, including last year and the year before that, he added.

On November 13, a North Korean soldier defected along the Joint Security Area (JSA) that is policed by both the South and Norths militaries, with soldiers staring each other down face-to-face at the heavily fortified border that divides the Koreas.

Gunfire rang out and South Korean troops found the bleeding North Korean soldier  dressed in a combat uniform but unarmed  on their side. He was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The South Korean soldiers did not return fire.

{articleGUID}

The Korea Joongang Daily reported the North Korean was shot in the shoulder and elbow.

Yonhap described the incident as a very rare case because North Korean troops stationed along the DMZ are known for their loyalty to Pyongyang.

Last month was a dramatic moment because of the shots that were fired by North Korean soldiers at the defector, and because the South Korean soldiers had to cross into the zone to drag him to safety, Se-Woong said.

South Korean statistics, however, showed an overall decrease of defections from North Korea by 20 percent in the first month of 2017 in comparison to the year before.

Many in the South attribute the decrease to increased surveillance put in place under current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un along the main channel of defections, which is the border between North Korea and China, Se-Woong said.

As a result the numbers have gone down there. At the same time weve seen a slight increase in the extraordinary defections through the DMZ, he added.

The fact that we are paying so much attention to these cases goes to show that we are struggling to find out what is going on in North Korea. There are simply not enough sources that give us information about the regime, Se-Woong said.
Palestinian leaders have hailed the result of a vote at the UN rejecting a unilateral US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, calling it proof of international support for justice.

The international community has unequivocally proved that it will not be intimidated or blackmailed, and its members will defend the global rule of law, Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a statement after Thursdays vote.

But for many on the ground, the resolution approved by the UN General Assembly was nothing more than a symbolic act.

Its a pointless exercise, Amany Khalifa, a political activist in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has to evaluate the whole diplomatic process of going to the UN. The experience weve had is that for decades now these resolutions have not changed anything.

Breaking with decades of US policy in favour of a two-state solution, President Donald Trump on December 6 said Washington would formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would start the process of moving its embassy to the city.

The declaration dealt a blow to the Palestinian leadership, which for more than two decades has unsuccessfully attempted to establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

When a US veto at the UN Security Council earlier this week blocked the same draft resolution from passing, the PA decided to take the issue to the General Assembly, where the resolutions are non-legally binding.

We will take political, diplomatic and legal actions against Trumps declaration regarding Jerusalem, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA, said.

{articleGUID}

But Khalifa believes that the only ones who are still talking about the two-state solution are the PA.

It is in their interest to maintain this discourse, she said.

If they dont do so, they will cease to exist.

The PA, which administers pockets of the occupied West Bank, says that the only answer to the more than 70-year-old conflict is the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside the existing Israeli one.

But since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, meant to lead to the formation of that Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupation of these territories has only intensified, making it difficult for Palestinians to envision such a solution.

Currently, between 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli citizens  or 11 percent of the Israeli population  live in the occupied territories.

Guarded by heavily armed Israeli soldiers, they have taken up large swaths of Palestinian private land. At least 12 such settlements have been built around and in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.

Amid this reality, as well as dwindling hopes of Israel ever withdrawing its settlers, some say it is time for a different approach.

People are already living in the reality of settlements and they see that such a solution is impossible to be achieved on the ground, said Khalifa.

We need to accept that there is one state  the Zionist one  and then we can talk about finding other means of resistance  not clinging on to the two-state solution, she added.

Oslo ruined us

Jerusalems religious significance to Islam, Christianity and Judaism makes it by default more than just a local issue.

For many on the outside, particularly in Muslim-majority countries, Trumps Jerusalem declaration was outrageous. Since his decision, there have been rallies across major international cities, with tens of thousands turning up to protest and asking him to rescind his decision.

There have also been protests across the Palestinian territories, following calls by political leaders, with at least 10 people killed by the Israeli army.

However, those on the ground say that the response has not been as strong as the more grassroots protests witnessed in Jerusalem in July against Israels installation of metal detectors at the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

If you ask any of the guys protesting, theyll tell you: Trump wasnt any new news for us, Mariam Barghouti, a West Bank-based writer and political activist told Al Jazeera after attending a rally on Wednesday, adding that the demonstrators are mostly affiliated with the PA.

Theres no momentum.

A reason for this, says Nora Sub Laban, a resident of the Old City  which hosts Jerusalems major religious sites  is that Trumps decision reflected an already existing but painful truth.

When our leadership said it would accept a two-state solution, what was left for us to say? Oslo ruined us. We are surrounded by settlements from all sides and nothing is left for us of Jerusalem, Sub Laban, who fought a long legal battle with Israeli settlers who wanted to take over her home, told Al Jazeera.

{articleGUID}

She explained that while she does not believe in splitting Jerusalem for an Israeli and Palestinian state, many have lost hope and will accept anything they can get.

Our demands have continued to decrease as time goes on. And the international community has only let Israel grow stronger  from 1948 until today, she added, referring to the year of Israels establishment, known to Palestinians as the Nakba  when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homeland to make way for the Jewish state.

Heart of the conflict

The issue of Jerusalem has been at the heart of the conflict since its start.

When the UN proposed to partition historic Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, Jerusalem was meant to remain under the control of the UN due to its religious importance.

But a year later, the newly-established state of Israel seized the western half of the city and declared ownership over it.

In 1967, Israel annexed the eastern half of the city and claimed it as part of Israel  unlike the West Bank, which it physically occupies but does not claim.

The majority of the international community does not recognise Israels ownership of Jerusalem. As a result, all embassies in Israel are located in Tel Aviv.

{articleGUID}

Despite the international position, Israel has only consolidated its control over the city.

In 2002, it began building a separation wall cutting off the 3.1 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem. Many have not been able to enter the city for more than a decade and have stopped trying to, owing to the restrictions enforced by the Israeli army.

In addition, the PA is not allowed any presence or authority over the eastern half of the city, where some 420,000 Palestinians live in limbo  not citizens of Israel, nor Palestine.

The international community only believe in the rights of Palestinians on paper  not in reality, Mohammad Abu al-Hummos, a Fatah-affiliated activist in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera.

Not one decision taken against Israel has actually been applied on the ground, he added.

Some of us believed in the two-state solution  and our leadership convinced us of it  but unfortunately, if you look at the situation today, its pointless to do so.
President dismisses attempts by Congress to remove him for his alleged links to Odebrecht scandal as unconstitutional.

Perus President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is appearing in Congress to defend himself against allegations of covering up illegal payments from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

Legislators on Thursday opened a key debate on whether to launch impeachment proceedings against Kuczynski.

I am here at your request to squarely and firmly face the nation [regarding] a false and awful accusation that can only be understood within the context of an unconstitutional desire to remove me from power by the force of your votes, the president told Congress, calling attempts to impeach him unconstitutional.

After just 17 months in office, Kuczynski is facing possible removal after members of Perus Congress passed a motion to start impeachment proceedings against him last week.

In order to pass, the impeachment motion would need 87 votes in the 130-strong Congress.

The so-called Car Wash corruption scandal in Brazil has affected many countries in the region, implicating politicians and businessmen in Argentina, Mexico and Ecuador.

The accusations against Kuczynski centre on Westfield Capital Ltd, a company he owned, which received $782,000 from Odebrecht while Kuczynski was serving as Perus finance minister, according to Peruvian national paper El Comercio.

Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing, saying his company was managed by associates at the time. He reiterated this before Congress on Thursday saying he was appearing with the conviction of his own innocence.

{articleGUID}

Odebrecht became embroiled in a political scandal after admitting to paying more than $788m in bribes to win construction contracts across 12 countries.

In a televised address on Wednesday, Kuczynski said he had never withheld information intentionally.

I recognise I made mistakes, I want to ask for your forgiveness with my mind clear and pain in my heart for not being careful with my information about my activities, he said.

I am deeply sorry but this has never been a tool for dishonesty and criminal activity.

A coup in the making

Critics of the impeachment motion called the move unjust and unconstitutional.

Former Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano told Al Jazeera: Congress has given [Kuczynski] an ultimatum to resign or be removed, this violates his constitutional right to defend himself, the presumption of innocence and due process. It is a coup in the making.

The motion has been championed by Keiko Fujimori, the Popular Force party leader and daughter of the former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence for corruption and human rights abuses.

Keiko Fujimori lost the 2016 presidential elections by a narrow margin, fewer than 50,000 votes. Her party has already forced out five government ministers.

Fujimori herself has been implicated in the Odebrecht scandal over alleged campaign contributions.

On Tuesday, Marcelo Odebrecht, the former company president, was released to house arrest, having served two-and-a-half years in a Brazilian jail.

Odebrecht was initially sentenced to 19 years but agreed to testify for a lighter sentence. He will serve seven-and-a-half years under house arrest.

With reporting by Al Jazeeras Mariana Sanchez in Perus capital, Lima
Polands judicial reforms are causing consternation at the EU, which has invoked EU rules that would strip Poland of its voting rights if the concerns are not addressed.

Polands president has accused the EU of lying about his countrys planned judicial reforms.

It follows the triggering of a legal mechanism by the EU that could see the country stripped of its voting rights within the bloc.

Brussels says the laws are a threat to democracy.

The EU has given Poland three months to address its concerns, it may then consider suspending Warsaws voting rights.

But for that to happen all member states would have to agree and the problem for the EU is that Hungary has already made it clear it would veto such a move.

Al Jazeeras Natacha Butler reports from Paris.
Turkey has summoned a United Arab Emirates diplomat over a recent social media post insulting an Ottoman-era governor that was shared by the UAEs foreign minister.

Acting UAE ambassador Hawla Ali al-Shamsi was summoned to the Turkish foreign ministry, sources from the ministry told Anadolu news agency on condition of anonymity because of restrictions on speaking to the media.

The diplomat was informed of Turkeys concern over the post retweeted by Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The tweet was aimed at Fahreddin Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Medina, now in Saudi Arabia, from 1916-1919.

It suggested the Ottoman governor had committed abuses against the local population and pilfered property.

Medina, which houses the Prophet Muhammads tomb and is revered by Muslims, was ruled by the Ottoman Turks until they were defeated by the British and their Arab allies in World War I.

In the post, Turks were accused of stealing most of the manuscripts of the Mahmudiyah library in the city and sending them to Turkey.

These are Erdogans ancestors and their history with Arab Muslims, the tweet said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said: Its no coincidence that those who take pride in keeping the company of tyrants  at a time when Muslims are under violent attack  would target Fahreddin Pasha.

Erdogan said some Arab leaders were antagonising his country in order to cover their ignorance and their incompetence.

Turkeys president stressed Ottoman authorities were protecting the holy relics of the Prophet Mohammad from the British invasion of Hejaz, present-day western Saudi Arabia.
Trumps latest iteration of the travel ban excludes those with close ties to the US but many still face years in limbo

New York City  Under dim lights in her apartment, Khulood Nasher clutched two winter coats, with the price tags still on, for her sons trapped in Yemens war.

The last time she saw them, Omar was 13 and Rami 14 years old.

That was seven years ago.

Im not sure if maybe Ill still be alive when I see them again, Nasher said as her voice wavered. I really give up.

Years after applying to reunite with their mother, Rami and Omar had a visa interview at the US embassy in Djibouti last winter.





Nasher rushed to buy the coats to ensure that her sons didnt catch a cold after they stepped off the plane in New York.

Two weeks later, President Donald Trumps executive order banned citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, and pushed for extreme vetting on visa applications.

A second ban in June blocked only those without a bona fide US relationship like a family tie, work contract or university admission.

The third version, targeting citizens from six of the original countries plus North Korea, Chad, and Venezuela, was temporarily blocked by a federal court in October.

But earlier this month, the US Supreme Court ruled to let the government enforce the most recent ban while lower courts debate its legality.

The White House maintains that the ban is intended to target countries that have not provided enough information to allow for the proper vetting of travellers, but rights groups say it disproportionately targets Muslims.

And while Nashers sons  as the family members of a permanent resident who won asylum  do not fall under the travel ban, they still face extreme vetting procedures and lengthy delays under what legal experts and advocates have called a ban beyond the ban.

Life in Yemen is like hell

Nasher still holds on to her sons coats, but her hope for them to join her in the US is ebbing.

When you have kids who are suffering all the time, and you want to help these kids, how can you? said Nasher, a legal permanent resident who won asylum in 2014.

{articleGUID}

We have the right for our kids and family to join us, at least in this very bad situation. Its a humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

War has been raging between Yemens government, supported by a Saudi-led coalition, and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels since 2015.

The UN called the conflict the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.

Air raids have killed at least 10,000 people, mainly civilians, and famine threatens seven million more.

The fighting is everywhere. The bombs are everywhere. You do not feel safe. Wherever you go, you feel like you will be killed. There is no water, no gas, no nothing. The main sources of life don't exist. We are very scared by Rami Haemd

Life now is like a hell in Yemen, Nashers oldest son Rami said over the phone from Sanaa, Yemens capital, last month.

The fighting is everywhere, he told Al Jazeera.

The bombs are everywhere. You do not feel safe. Wherever you go, you feel like you will be killed. There is no water, no gas, no nothing. The main sources of life dont exist. We are very scared.

Nasher said Rami has told her he doesnt want to live any more and his younger brother, Omar, takes medication to sleep.

She said she suffers nightmares. She sees bombs in her sleep in her Bronx apartment and can only imagine what its like for her sons.

This is life in Yemen, Nasher said. Youre running from death day-to-day.

The silent Muslim ban

On Sunday, more than 200 Yemenis in Djibouti received letters that their visas were denied, according to a dozen applicants who contacted immigration lawyer Julie Goldberg and Yemeni-American community activist Ibraham al-Qatabi.

{articleGUID}

The reason given was Trumps proclamation, signed in September and put into force this month.

This is completely, flat out discrimination, al-Qatabi told Al Jazeera. This is unconstitutional and immoral, he added.

But for Nashers sons, there is still a small bit of hope.

Their applications as of Monday remained in extra security screening called administrative processing.

The US Department of State says most cases under processing are resolved within 60 days, but families have been left waiting for months this year with no clear reason why or how to end it, according to a dozen immigration lawyers and community advocates.

They reported that after the first travel ban in January, Yemenis were pushed en masse into administrative processing.

We feel like theres a ban beyond this ban, said Nasher.

Her sons applications have been in administrative processing since November 8, 2016.

I feel like all the Yemenis are suffering all over the world, theyre on hold for administrative processing.

Nashers lawyer, Julie Goldberg, said hundreds of her Yemeni clients have been stalled all year.

When the first ban came into place, when it was lifted, it was lifted with this restriction, Goldberg said.

Under the new administration, it is mandatory that every single person goes into admin processing. While they were implementing the ban, they were doing this visa processing, and its very specific to Muslim countries.

Her law firm is filing three class action lawsuits, with as many as 100 Yemeni plaintiffs each, to fight the delays that she and others say are targeted.

They (US authorities) work behind the scenes to block the ability of Yemeni families to unite and bring loved ones into the country by Albert Cahn, CAIR

We have an array of practices that we refer to as the silent Muslim ban, said Albert Cahn, legal director at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in New York.

They work behind the scenes to block the ability of Yemeni families to unite and bring loved ones into the country, Cahn said.

According to the lawyers, tactics include prolonged investigations of applicants with no criminal background, extensive social media searches and requests for DNA to prove family relationships.

These can delay cases for months or even years.

Administrative processing is not unique to Yemenis or to Trumps presidency.

There were nearly 200,000 cases under review last year, including 1,392 Yemenis, according to government data.

The largest group affected in 2016 were Chinese applicants, which reflects the size of the immigrant population.

Data by country is not yet available for this year, but lawyers report an increase in citizens from the banned countries under processing.

{articleGUID}

An official spokesperson with the Department of State told Al Jazeera that after Trumps memorandum in March implementing his executive order, the government started conducting more rigorous vetting.

The spokesperson added that the need for administrative processing is based on each individual case, and consular officers can ask for more information if a red flag comes up in security screening.

But attorneys question why entire families, including children, are now under processing.

Can you tell me why an 8-year-old child of a US citizen, who the second she lands, will become a US citizen, can you explain to me why that child needs to be in admin processing? Goldberg said.

Nasher, who completed an American masters degree in medical health physics, returned to the US in late 2010 on a tourist visa.

She was pregnant and accompanied by her seven-year-old son.

Rami and Omar, however, couldnt come with her to New York.

When the Arab Spring erupted in Yemen three months later, Nasher sought asylum.

She won it four years later and immediately applied for her older sons to join her.

That was more than three years ago.

The government estimates the process will take six months, but attorneys said that Yemenis have faced long delays compared with other nationalities.

There has always been extensive processing for persons from the Middle East, and they dont tend to keep records or documents, said Yolanda Rondon, a lawyer with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

It makes Yemenis in particular vulnerable.

Lack of official documents

Yemen lacked government infrastructure even before the war, and official documents either didnt exist or were suspected to be fake.

{articleGUID}

When the conflict shut down the US embassy in 2015, it became nearly impossible to process cases.

Nashers sons file disappeared, and it took her a year and the help of a lawyer to find it.

Her lawyer Goldberg sued the US government to push them to assign an interview for her sons.

The young men braved the day-long, dangerous boat journey from Yemen to Djibouti for their appointment on November 1, 2016.

More than a year later, their case status online still says under administrative processing.

After eight months of waiting, Nashers sons could no longer afford to live in Djibouti, where monthly rents run upwards of $1,000.

In July, they returned to Yemen. They now live in a relatives abandoned house in Sanaa, surrounded by war.

Nasher has tried everything to reunite with her sons.

She contacted the embassy of Djibouti, met New York legislators and shared her story for an Amnesty International report.

She said shes spent tens of thousands of borrowed dollars in the process.

After three years of waiting, some of the friends and family who loaned her cash have started to ask for it back.

Please, she tells them, just wait a little bit longer.
Carvell Wallace talks to Americans grappling with the state of the union while dealing with his own fractured history.
Having now read the comments of every #NeverTrumper and RINO on the planet about how lucky we were that Roy Moore was not elected to the Senate and that instead Alabamans wisely chose the moderate Democrat Doug Jones, I am hereby registering my passionate dissent. Like other dignitaries on the Right, I would have been delighted if Mo Brooks instead of Moore had won the nomination, particularly after the debacle that occurred last week; and I was not at all impressed by the ineptitude with which Moore defended his socially conservative positions (even the ones that I hold). I was also not pleased with the grandstanding done by Steve Bannon, and at the very least Id hope this would-be populist activist would weigh his political decisions more carefully in the future, get a shave and buy a real suit.

But lets be honest about the claim that the non-Left somehow dodged the bullet when a liberal Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate in what had been a deep Red State. Does anyone in his right mind believe that Jones will not act as Trump said he would, as a tool of Chuck Schumer and those leftist constituencies that helped put him in office? And what about the laughable prediction made by Bret Baier and various Fox-Allstars that Jones would be a centrist Democrat in the tradition of West Virginias Joe Manchin and North Dakotas Heidi Heitkamp. Havent those who predicted this bothered to notice that their centrist Democrats have voted on every key issue against the President, on the side of Chuck Schumer?

Am I supposed to believe, moreover, that the attacks on Republicans by the Democrats as sexual predators will now stop because, according to National Review, we had a conservative victory in the Alabama election? The day after Moore was defeated, that longtime lackey of a highly probable sexual predator Bill Clinton, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, demanded that Trump resign, on the grounds that he harassed multiple women before he became president. Please note that Senator Gillibrand belongs to a self-described feminist party that has been led by such notorious womanizers and possible rapists as the Lion of the Senate Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Further, the Democratic Party abounds in office-holders who have benefited from the largess of perhaps the most notorious sexual predator in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein.

Without trying to exonerate Moore for unseemly sexual conduct going back almost forty years, I would insist that there are grounds to be skeptical about at least some of the statements of his accusers. One of his attackers, Beverly Young Nelson, and her legal advocate Gloria Allred declined to offer up a high school yearbook that the thirty-year old Moore had supposedly signed for her. And it was later learned that Nelson adorned the inscription with her own writing. Although there is no excuse for a thirty-year old man making sexual advances to teenage girls, it is impossible to be certain about the validity of most of the reports concerning Moores misconduct. But even if we assume (as I do) that something disgraceful occurred in these incidents, it is doubtful they were on par with Clintons alleged rape and assault of women, misdeeds that Bills wife and other Democrats, like Senator Gillibrand, lied about for decades, while slandering his accusers.

Of course, I doubt that the attacks unleashed on Moore by Republicans, like Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and the editors of National Review and Weekly Standard, were entirely about Moores behavior forty years ago. The fact is hes just too conservative on social issues to please those who would like to change certain conversations. Roy Moore is not at all happy with gay marriage and as a judge refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, as David French reminds us in a fit of outrage, in violation of the Supreme Courts Obergefell v Hodges Decision. If memory serves, I recall the support from conservative Republicans last year that went to Kentucky Justice of the Peace Kim Davis when she refused to issue licenses for gay marriages. At the time Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and other Republican politicians hurried to Daviss defense, as a Christian exercising her religious freedom. Why is the failure of Judge Moore to recognize what he sees as a bizarre and sinful travesty on traditional marriage a danger to constitutional government, which is what French contends it is? That Moore refuses to go along with a Supreme Court ruling that he and I (and lots of other Americans) found to be absurd and against his religious conscience would hardly make him a menace in the U.S. Senate. Would French, who wears his antiracism on his sleeve, have accepted the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which denied that slaves who were brought into non-slave states became free because of their relocation?

I am truly appalled at how French in National Review and loads of virtue-signaling conservatives willfully misinterpreted Moores observation that families remained strong even under slavery. According the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert William Fogel, the majority (64%) of slaves in the United States during the late antebellum period lived in two-parent nuclear families. Most of the others lived with widowed single parents or in other arrangements but not necessarily in conditions imposed by slave sales. French is behaving like an historical illiterate, something he accuses Moore of being when he writes: In the antebellum South, black families were ripped apart constantly and intentionally. What he is describing is an exceptional situation, not something that happened constantly and intentionally. In any case, contrary to what French maintains in The Conservative Case against Roy Moore, Moore was not defending the enslavement of anyone. He was indicating that even under adverse circumstances family life in nineteenth-century America remained strong and based on traditional authorities.

But my point here is not to pick scholarly quarrels with authorized conservative journalists, whose passion for Political Correctness has become rather noticeable. It is to underline my belief that the defeat of Roy Moore does absolutely no good for any serious Right or for anyone interested in passing Donald Trumps agenda. It does not remove any enemies from Trump or Republican Congressmen and strengthens the hands of obstructionist Democrats in the Senate. It also seems that those conservatives who went after Moore were burnishing their RINO credentials. They were also showing irritation that some illiterate Southern cracker was forcing them to reconsider social issues they would like to put behind them.
On Monday, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution criticizing the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The vote was 14 to 1 and stated that the U.S. decision is null and void and must be rescinded, with only the U.S. voting against it. Under pressure by the Palestinians and Arab and Muslim nations, the president of the UN General Assembly has called an emergency session of the General Assembly for Thursday to consider a resolution similar to the one presented to the Security Council for the sole purpose of condemning the U.S. again.

These 14 countries, including supposed American allies that are supported financially by the U.S., did not mind embarrassing, humiliating, and insulting President Trump on the international stage and challenging U.S. sovereignty. The UN Security Council with its 14 members was trying to interfere and dictate to the U.S. what its foreign policy should be while being hosted by the U.S. on American soil and being supported financially by the generosity of the American taxpayers. These nations chose to vote for and appease Mahmoud Abbas, the corrupt Palestinian leader who was the second in command to the notorious terrorist Yasser Arafat, the financier of Palestinian anti-Israel and American terrorist attacks for decades, a Holocaust denier, and an unelected tyrant, over the leader of the free world.

In forcing the U.S. to use its veto, the other countries emboldened Americas enemies and adversaries by highlighting the isolation the U.S. faces on the world stage. All this on the same day Trump presented his administration s national security strategy. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said what we witnessed here today in the Security Council is an insult. It wont be forgotten. For the simple act of deciding where to put our embassy, the U.S. was forced to defend its sovereignty. The record will reflect that we did it proudly.

The 14 members of the security council included supposedly very strong U.S. allies such as Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Sweden, and Egypt, which was the one to introduce the resolution. France and Britain stated they voted for the Security Council resolution in the search of peace in the Middle East. The other countries were Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Ukraine, and Uruguay, China, and Russia. Ironically, the U.S. has its embassies in all those countries s own designated capital city.

The Palestinian Authority, which receives more than 50 percent of its foreign financial aid from the U.S., has been shamelessly leading the attack and the defamation campaign against the U.S. and the Trump administration. The Palestinian negotiators stated that the point of the resolution was to show that the U.S. stands alone on the Jerusalem recognition, to isolate the U.S., and to pressure the U.S. to reverse its position.

On December 13, in a speech at the special meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Abbas made false and anti-Semitic statements about Israel, Jews, and Jerusalem. Abbas revealed himself as an Arafat in a suit by following his predecessor beliefs in denying any Jewish history in Jerusalem at all and presenting Jerusalem as a Christian/Muslim city whose only connection to Jews is that they are lying about it and defiling it, and are excellent in faking and counterfeiting history and religion. On December 18, the UK, France, Sweden, Japan, and Italy chose to support the position and claims of such a leader for the sake of supposed peace over their important U.S. ally.

This is a critical moment for the Trump Administration and an important turning point in American foreign policy. The only explanation to those one-sided anti-American vote and criticism is a lack of fear of those nations and entities from any retaliation from the United States. It seems those nations seem to be more afraid of insulting or humiliating the Muslim, Arab, and the Palestinian crime family than the United States. If these allies are not afraid of the Trump administration why would the dangerous actors in the Middle East such as Iran, its proxies, and other Jihadists be afraid? If tiny, weak nations such as Bolivia, Uruguay, and Ukraine are not deterred by the U.S., why would North Korea be? If the PA which survives mainly because of U.S. funding, dares to disrespect and threaten the U.S. and continues violating existing U.S. laws by going after Israeli nationals in International bodies including the International Criminal Court, why would Hamas, Hizballah, and other terrorist entities hesitate to attack the U.S. and its allies?

In order for the Trump administration to retain its deterrence power and diplomatic leverage, Trump must fulfill his campaign promise by beginning to cut some of the aid it has provided to the UN, NATO, Japan, and any other country that it has helped financially and gotten nothing in return including the Palestinians. The U.S. seems to be as isolated as Israel internationally, but Israel is of course a geographically small nation while the U.S. is the only superpower left.

In 2017, United States provided the Palestinian Authority around $362 million for economic and security training, making Palestine the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid worldwide and accounting for 52 percent of all its foreign aid. In addition, America gave UNRWA, the UN agency that caters solely to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, $300 million, which funded almost 30 percent of its budget. Since 1950, the U.S. has given over $5 billion to UNRWA. Since 1979, the U.S. has given Egypt $1.3 billion a year which makes up 1/3 of Egypts military budget.

The United Nations consists of 193 sovereign nations and still the U.S. pays 22 percent of its budget, or about $1.2 billion, and 28 percent of the UN Peacekeeping budget, or about $2.2 billion a year. NATO is a military alliance that consists of 29 countries across North America and Europe and its main purpose is to protect European countries such as France, Britain, Italy who voted against the US. The U.S. contributes more than 22.1 percent of the direct collective funding that has kept NATO s military and civilian operations running since 1949, spending $1,877 for each American taxpayer annually.

The U.S. supports Japan militarily against the threats of countries such as North Korea and China with two billion dollars by having U.S. military bases in Japan with 49,000 U.S. troops stationed costing the U.S. $40,000 per soldier per year.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley warned that the U.S. will be taking namesduring the UN General Assembly vote on Thursday. It is about time. American generosity should not be taken for granted anymore and the time has arrived that those countries doing so are hit where it hurts the most, in their pocketbook.

Watch Shoula Romano Horings speech on YouTube Why Trump is right to Recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital"
The Russian attempt to influence the elections in America seems to have been confirmed. This attempt was carried out not through Donald Trump, but by Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton.

The 13th month after the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has just ended. For his political opponents, this month was as unfortunate as anything that is usually associated with the "unlucky" number thirteen.

The strategy of the Democrats after the defeat in November 2016 was understandable from the very beginning -- to deprive Trump of the post of president at any cost by either declaring him an illegitimate president, or recognizing him as legitimate, but removing him from the White House by impeachment. For example, the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller concerning the "criminal collusion between Trump and Putin" was for many months considered by "Democrats" the highest achievement of anti-Trumpism.

But no one knew about Trump's survival strategy in the Washington swamp.

The events of the past month give every reason to believe that Trump is aiming at the full-scale bankruptcy of his political opponents. This bankruptcy refers not only to financial, but also political, legal, and moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and its allies in the disinformation media.

Put yourself in Trump's place.

After all, he knows like no other that he is not Putin's marionette. It is reasonable to assume that Trump has built his counterstrike strategy based on this fact. Why did the Washington swamp not think about the possibility of such a counterpunch and precisely from this direction? Are Soros, Obama, and Clinton so naive that they sincerely believed that Trump would accept their rules of engagement and just idly sit by?

Did they seriously expect that an investigation into something that doesnt exist would trigger no answer from Trump? None of these neo-Marxists with allegedly high IQs bothered to consider a strategy to forestall Trump just in case he turned out not to be guilty of anything. Could the creatures of the Washington swamp have hoped that Trump would not take advantage of the opportunity provided to him by the Democratic surrealists?

The list of Trumps counterpunches during the 13th month is impressive. We suddenly found out that:

The trumped-up dossier on Trump about his adventures in Russia was ordered and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The fabricated dossier was probably used by the Obama administration for obtaining FISA court warrant for surveillance and wiretapping of Trump and his campaign headquarters until his inauguration.

The fabricated dossier was probably used by the Obama administration for obtaining FISA court warrant for surveillance and wiretapping of Trump and his campaign headquarters until his inauguration. The wife of U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr (in the Obama administration) was hired by Fusion GPS (the main contractor of the "Russian dossier") for work on drafting the dossier.

Bruce Ohr met both with the head of Fusion GPS and with former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele (a subcontractor of the "Russian dossier"). It was Steele who, using his old contacts in Moscow, managed to organize a communication channel for a Russian FSB disinformation diversion into the West.

The FSB-produced disinformation served as the basis for fabricating the "Russian dossier."

The same FBI "super-agent," Peter Strzok, was implicated in the case of Hillary Clinton, in the case of General Flynn, in the team of prosecutor Mueller, and in an extensive conspiracy against Trump.

This list is far from complete. Every day we learn something that no Hollywood screenwriter could ever come up with.

For example, look at the composition of the Mueller team. It's impressive. All of his investigators are supporters of Hillary Clinton. One of Mueller's investigators spent the election night of 2016 at Hillary's headquarters to take part in the expected celebration of Hillary Clinton's victory. Another investigator at one time was one of the Clinton Foundation lawyers. Mueller's right-hand man was a lawyer for a computer engineer who installed a vulnerable e-mail server for Hillary Clinton. It is documented that 9 of the 16 Mueller team investigators donated large sums of money to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

What was Mueller thinking while assembling his openly anti-Trump team? A man who has made his way to the very top of the Washington swamp is not a naif. Perhaps the Washington elites are not as smart as their lapdog press pretends.

Its impressive that the pause before Trump's counterpunch lasted a full year. For twelve months Trump was mostly picking fights with pseudo-reporters. And then someone turned on the green light. Almost every day, America began to learn the detials of the unprecedented "witch hunt," in which the investigation of Mueller is just the tip of the iceberg. The method and frequency of public disclosure of this information indicate that the people behind it are perfectly aware of the news cycle.

After only one month of Trump's counterpunches, most Americans are questioning the objectivity of Mueller and his team. The reputation of Mueller's team drops further every day. This is also facilitated by the fact that all the official charges put forward by the Mueller team so far are unrelated to either Trump or Russia. FBI agent Strzok (who was fired from Mueller's team for ardent anti-Trumpism) mentioned that this whole "Russiagate" against Trump started simply as an "insurance policy" for the Washington swamp in case of Trumps win. Nobody needs to explain to Americans what it means.

Since it became known that it was agent Strzok, a Hillary supporter, who not only initiated the Russian investigation but also the termination of the case against Hillary Clinton for criminal negligence in possession of top secret documents, many are calling for the "investigation of investigators." Of course, the criminalization of American politics will make our country look and feel very similar to the proverbial banana republics. Nevertheless, the Democrats have made their choice in favor of this particular method of political vendetta.

If evidence is presented that the Obama administration used FSB disinformation to obtain permission from the secret FISA court to wiretap the Trump campaign, the reputation of the Democrats and Obama will be destroyed. It is no secret to anyone that the Watergate scandal has led to the fact that the use of government institutions to spy on political opponents has become a real political taboo in America.

The surrealism of the situation lies in the fact that the Russian attempt to influence the elections in America seems to have been confirmed. Republicans should have listened to the Democrats when they accused Russia of interfering in the election process in America -- the Democrats knew exactly what they were talking about.

They knew that this Russian attempt was carried out not through Donald Trump, but through Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Gary Gindler is a conservative Russian-American blogger at Gary Gindler Chronicles.
Despite Donald Trumps sometimes boorish behavior, his approval ratings remain stubbornly high among evangelicals. According to an analysis of Pew Research surveys conducted in February and April 2017, Trumps approval ratings are at 75% among evangelical Christians, almost twice as high as among the general populace. While some Democrats might express surprise at evangelicals support for a man whose extravagant lifestyle would seem to eliminate him as a conservative hero, a closer look reveals the alignment between Donald Trumps rhetoric and the Biblical values of evangelicals.

Evangelicals are by and large a churchgoing group. According to Pew Research Center, among white evangelical Protestant registered voters interviewed in 2016, eight in ten said they attended church once a week, and 63% said they attended religious service at least once a week. While the values of evangelicals are anything but uniform, University of Stirling historian David W. Bebbington boiled the evangelical belief system down to four core ideas, what he called the quadrilateral of priorities:

The need to be born again; The supremacy of biblical authority; Salvation through the death and resurrection of the Son of God; Active sharing of the gospel through evangelism.

When looking at Trumps rhetoric, for example, in his Poland speech on July 6 and his inaugural speech in January, certain patterns emerge that align closely with the Biblical worldview of Christian evangelicals.

1. You are good. You are loving. You are courageous.

In the Obama years, we commonly heard negative things said about America and Americans. We could do better on healthcare, for example. We needed to overcome our inherent racism. The lecture of Attorney General Eric Holder under the Obama administration and the attendance of representatives from the White House at the funeral of Michael Brown, for example, signaled to some the administrations embrace of a narrative that America was guilty and in some ways, irredeemably so.

Trumps Inaugural Address, on the other hand, asserted a very different view of Americans:

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voices, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Trumps simple allusion to the courage, goodness, and love of all Americans was to many evangelicals a gentle reassurance that the highest office in the land no longer viewed us as bad. Trump even went further than to simply exculpate us from guilt. He called us courageous and good and loving. Such a view is in close alignment with the evangelical view that while all humans are sinners, through Christs love we are redeemed and made clean no matter the color of our skin or our gender. Such a positive perception of our identity as Americans was not lost on evangelicals in no small part because they closely aligned with the Biblical view of our redeemed spirit as a result of our faith in Christ.

2. Everyone deserves redemption.

In his inaugural speech, Trump continued to develop this theme that everyone deserves redemption regardless of his or her external identity. Once again, his reference to Detroit, a city nearly 85% black, and Nebraska, a state nearly 90% white, and his assertion that the children from both places are Gods children resonated powerfully with evangelicals.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky; they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the same breath of life by the same almighty Creator.

Such a message was inclusive enough to even include Hillary Clintons deplorables, whom the once favored-to-win Democratic nominee reviled and slandered as racist, homophobic, and sexist for supporting Trump.

Some may recall that clever pundits and journalists were once skeptical that any Trump supporters actually existed. The Russian-American satirist Oleg Atbashian wrote a clever piece on this phenomenon back in March 2016 before the election called Some of my best friends are Trump supporters.

When the electoral map is fluid, when things are happening rapidly in real time, and when no reliable historical data exists, we rely on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. In the absence of such, the writers simply fill the gap in their knowledge with their own prejudices, similar to how medieval mapmakers marked unexplored areas with here be dragons.

In retrospect, it did seem that Clintons Democrats marked vast stretches of territory with the words Here be dragons. The idea that our current Commander-in-Chief thought highly of these dragons as worthy, righteous people garnered even more support for the president from evangelicals.

3. We are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values.

Under Obama we were often told that the United States was a secular multicultural nation where people of many different creeds and colors came together to make a rich American tapestry. Trump presented a very different image of our nation. According to him, we are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles and this foundation is at the core of our free society.

Trump asserted the historical foundations of our religiosity at a speech he gave at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in May 2017:

When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they prayed. When the Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they invoked our Creator four times, because in America, we dont worship government, we worship God. That is why our elected officials put their hands on the Bible, and say, so help me God as they take the oath of office.

In Trumps America, we the people have a soul and a spirit. We are good and loving people, and we have the right to defend our identity as at our core our identity is linked to our belief in a loving God.

4. America has a soul worth preserving.

Such a vision, of course, fits neatly into the worldview of evangelicals. A loving God created each one of us and gave us a soul. Trumps Poland speech extended this theme as he projected his worldview that the West is engaged in a grand struggle between good and evil. Here Trumps central and recurring idea of the everlasting soul of a nation rising against the Zeitgeist to assert its place and identity resurfaces.

As Mark Bauerlein wrote in his excellent analysis We Want God, religious Americans understood the message of Trumps Poland speech clearly because even though some in the mainstream media presented it as being subliminally racist, It wasnt a dog whistle. It was an acclamation.

Trump states, Poland is the geographic heart of Europe, but more importantly, in the Polish people, we see the soul of Europe.

Later, he goes on to say, Im here to hold Poland up as an example for those who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization. According to Trump, our civilization is under threat and we are engaged in a battle that we dont even realize is taking place.

Our own fight of the West does not begin on the battlefield -- It begins with our minds, our wills, and our souls.

In the same way that Bebbington boiled evangelical beliefs down to four core values, I would argue that the values espoused in Trumps rhetoric can be boiled down to four main principles:

We are good people with a good history. We are deserving of redemption; We are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values; We have a soul that is worth preserving.

My prediction is that as long as Trumps message remains consistent, evangelical Americans will continue to overlook his personal and political failings and remain instead Trumps most ardent supporters, for Trump was one of the few who said they were good when for so long they had been told they were bad.
Only someone who worked in Hillary Clintons State Department and thought giving ISIS summer jobs would stop their beheadings and terrorist attacks could dispute Josh Meyers lengthy, well-researched article in Politico detailing how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook by undermining his own governments efforts to take down the terrorist groups drug trafficking operations:

I was part of the negotiating team that got the Iran nuclear deal done, the former Obama State Department spokeswoman told Fox News Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday. Until Politico wrote this piece, I had never even heard of this program. You know, the Politico story, this narrative in it is just false. And theres no evidence in this story to back up their allegations, Harf said. They quote a couple of low level ideological sources who clearly dont like the Iran deal, but everything I know just doesnt back up this narrative. This story is a hit job, honestly, with no truth behind it, Harf said. Meyer reacted to Harfs comments in an appearance with Fox News Shannon Bream, stating that her claim that his sources were low-level people was sort of ridiculous. They were not ideologues. They are not flawed. I dont know what shes talking about, Meyer said. These were the people, one was a Pentagon person, one was a DEA person. But I also talked to many, many dozens of other people to get sort of ground truth and see what their allegations were held up to the light of day. So this is not a story in 14,000 words where I was just taking spin from some people.

Politico in neither a wild west website nor right-wing publication. Yet Harf ignores and dismisses the documented evidence of how President Obama was so intent on getting any kind of nuclear deal with the state sponsor of terror known as Iran that he was willing to derail efforts that were about to shut down Hizballahs drug-running activities inside the United States:

In order to keep the Iran nuclear deal on track, Obama gave a free pass to Hezbollahs drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations, including crimes unfolding inside the United States, Politico reported. A Drug Enforcement Administration campaign, Project Cassandra, was launched to target the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollahs illicit networks, tracing the actions to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran, according to the online political news outlet David Asher, a Defense Department illicit finance analyst who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra, said the Obama White House ripped apart their efforts. This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision, Asher said. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down. The closer Obama got to cementing the Iran nuclear deal, Asher said, the more difficult it was to conduct their investigation into Hezbollah activities.

Harf denies this well-researched account with credible sourcing of how Obama bungled the opportunity to shut down Hizballahs drug trafficking operation, putting the lives of American youth at risk, in order to cement his legacy in the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal. As Josh Meyer detailed in Politico:

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests. The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollahs high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

This rivals anything the Clintons did at the Clinton Foundation or in the Uranium One deal with Russia. And it is not out of character for an Obama administration that precipitously withdrew from Iraq, creating a vacuum ISIS gladly filled while Obama silently watched. It is not out of character for an administration that traded six top Taliban leaders for deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Obama has a soft spot for terrorists and Marie Harf has a soft spot for Obama. Why Fox News hired such a shameless and clueless shill for the loony left remains a mystery.

Fox News, presumably in the interests of being fair and balanced, hired an Obama administration -- which includes the State Department of Hillary Clinton -- sock puppet who spread the false narrative that ISIS was not a virulent and existential threat, but rather just another community that needed organizing. She pushed the administration line that terrorism was just a reaction to climate change and the lack of jobs.

Not long ago, Harf opined on MSNBCs Hardball that the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS could be prevented by a good jobs program.

Also on last nights Hardball with Chris Matthews, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf stopped by to argue that the solution to defeating the Islamic State is finding economic opportunity for young Muslim men, because we cannot kill our way out of this war. Harfs appearance came after a weekend that saw 21 Coptic Christians beheaded and a gunman open fire at a free-speech debate in Copenhagen While Harf assured viewers that a lot of Islamic State fighters have been killed, she also claimed that force isnt the most effective strategy for combatting ISIS. We cannot win this war by killing them  we cannot kill our way out of this war, she said. Instead, she argued that the United States and its allies need to focus on the root causes, such as the lack of job opportunities for young Muslims. She said discouraged 17-year-olds opt to pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business due to their socioeconomic situation.

What makes a 17-year-old jihadi pick up an AK-47 is not the lack of summer jobs. It is, as we can finally hear it from the White House of President Trump, the desire of radical Islamic terrorists to deny women like Marie Harf their careers and their freedom, subjecting them to honor killings, genital mutilation, and other niceties dictated by Sharia law. They want to kill us because we are not like them, because we are infidels.

And to think, according to Harf, we are only a few Wal-Marts in Damascus and Baghdad away from world peace or that solar panels in the Sinai will make the lion lay down with the lamb. Who knew?

Harf served a President and a Secretary of State who shared the belief that climate change is a root cause of terrorism. President Obamas assertion in his commencement address to cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that the rise of ISIS in Syria and Boko Haram in Nigeria and the brutality of both is somehow linked to climate change shows just how dangerously detached from reality U.S. foreign policy has become.

For those who wondered why upwards of two hundred thousand have died in Syria, Boko Haram abducts Christian schoolgirls, and ISIS beheads and burns people alive in its reign of terror, the President placed a major part of the blame on fossil fuels and your SUV.

I understand climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world, yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram. It's now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East.

Believed by whom? Those who think Elvis Presley and Jimmy Hoffa are alive running a donut shop in Idaho? There was no violence, no beheadings, no burning people alive during the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are not out foraging for food. They are poster children for the evil that lurks in the world and that advances as we retreat from our global responsibilities and indulge in these irresponsible fantasies.

It is fairly certain that the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot in a cage was not caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide or that the beheading of Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya was caused by that coal plant in West Virginia,.

Yet that lowering carbon emissions and holding job fairs in Aleppo will stop terrorism is a belief shared by Marie Harf, now a Fox News contributor, paid to offer her comical musings as considered commentary. Now she defends Obamas coddling of a drug-dealing terrorist group that before 9/11 was the leading killer of Americans worldwide, and which aided groups killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Who needs MSNBC when you can watch Marie Harf on Fox News?

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.
Congressional sources are telling the Washington Free Beacon that Congress will investigate the Obama administration's efforts to thwart a decade-long investigation into the massive criminal activities of the terrorist group Hezb'allah.

A report in Politico earlier this week exposed the White House's interference in and eventual killing of a wide-ranging investigation by dozens of federal law enforcement agencies into Hezb'allah's billion-dollar drug trade in Latin America, as well as other illegal enterprises that included weapons-smuggling and human trafficking. The profits from these illegal activities  including drugs smuggled into the U.S.  were used to fund Hezb'allah terrorist activities around the world as well as their military actions in the Middle East, including assisting President Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq.

Senior law enforcement officials who were involved in the investigation say that the probe was stopped "at the top"  meaning the White House. The reason the investigation was halted was to curry favor with Iran and clear the way for an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.

Congress is now taking steps to formally investigate the reports, which multiple sources described to the Free Beacon as part of a larger Obama administration effort to overlook Iran's global terror operations in order to cement the nuclear deal. Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Oversight Committee and chair of its National Security Subcommittee, told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday that he and other top lawmakers are examining evidence that could implicate top former Obama officials, including National Security Council official Ben Rhodes, the architect of the former administration's self-described pro-Iran "echo chamber." "I've long believed that the Obama administration could not have done any more to bend over backwards to appease the Iranian regime, yet news that the Obama administration killed the investigation into a billion dollar drug ring that lined the terrorist group Hezbollah's pockets in order to save its coveted Iran deal may very well take the cake," DeSantis said. "Hezbollah is a brutal terrorist group with American blood on its hands and it would be unconscionable for American policy to deliberately empower such a nefarious group," he said. Lawmakers will be paying particular attention to whether Rhodes or other senior officials accused of misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran deal played a role in thwarting the Hezbollah investigation.

You may recall that Ben Rhodes bragged to the media about how he manipulated foreign policy experts to advance talking points on the Iran deal that the administration wanted advanced. Many of those talking points were fiction, and Rhodes knew it.

"Congress will be investigating this thoroughly and my National Security subcommittee will be particularly interested in how such a decision came about and whether it was driven by key Iran deal architects such as Ben Rhodes," DeSantis said. Congressional investigators are already preparing letters to various U.S. government agencies in order to obtain greater information about the alleged interference, according to those with knowledge of the matter. Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), a chief national security voice in the House who fought against the nuclear accord, told the Washington Free Beacon that Congress must investigate the Obama administration's actions and work to increase pressure on Hezbollah. "The report alleging the Obama Administration turned a blind eye and allowed Hezbollah to pump drugs into the United States to fund its terror campaigns in the Middle East is not surprising," Roskam said. "Hampering the DEA's investigation of Hezbollah would be emblematic of the previous administration's fixation to strike a nuclear accord with Iran at any costs." "This blind eye imperiled our efforts to combat Iran and its proxies' malign behavior and left us with a cash-flush Iran on the warpath across the Middle East with a nuclear program legitimized by the JCPOA," Roskam said, using the acronym for the nuclear deal's official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "Congress needs to investigate this report and do what the Obama Administration refused to do, severely increase pressure on Hezbollah and hold the terrorist group, and its benefactor Iran, accountable for their crimes."

The Obama administration lied about the Iran deal. It lied about what was in it. It lied about what it was supposed to do. It lied about the nature of the Iranian regime.

In fact, it's amazing that administration flunkies were able to keep most of those lies straight  except they were expert liars and hoodwinked not only the American people, but Congress as well.

Democratic senators who were inclined to vote against the deal were convinced otherwise by lies. Some organizations who might have been expected to oppose the nuclear deal were convinced to support it because of lies.

The lies have been proved. And the story about groveling before the Iranians, trying not to offend them by busting open their proxy Hezb'allah's criminal enterprises, is absolutely shocking in its implications. Any future attack on U.S. citizens by Hezb'allah will have been funded by the profits from criminal activities that were enabled by an American administration.

Today, this story has disappeared from most major media news sites. The Daily Beast has a story about the capture of a Brooklyn man who has been charged with aiding the terrorists, but it mentions the Politico story only in passing and without comment. Other than that, mostly silence. A story with massive implications for U.S. security and the safety of U.S. citizens has disappeared down the rabbit hole because it tarnishes the reputation of liberal icon Obama.

I hope Congress exposes Ben Rhodes and nails him for what Lee Smith writing in the Weekly Standard last year described so aptly:

For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe  they are.

Indeed.
When planning the pre-holiday week's stories, USA Today's editors (who recently proclaimed President Trump "not fit to clean the toilets" at the Obama Library) must not have been able to find a new story on the fake Russian collusion. They couldn't claim in fake news that Paul Ryan is retiring, and they couldn't make up that Trump is firing Tillerson. Maybe USA Today hadn't found the fake story in the Washington Post that Trump is going to drop Gorsuch.

USA Today obviously didn't have room to cover a story in Politico that the Obama administration sabotaged efforts to damage the financial operations of the Hezb'allah terrorist group, all so he could have his precious Iran nuclear deal.

They didn't have room to cover all the obvious bias on Mueller's team and the connections to Fusion GPS.

They basically needed a daily story to trash Trump, so they blamed Trump for a pretend buildup in white nationalists.

Underlying that shift from society's fringes to center stage is a new strategy that taps into the frustrations of white people angry at a society they say has marginalized them and a new political landscape that appears to give voice to their cause. President Trump's election last year became a major rallying point for white nationalists, who watched as the Republican repeatedly amplified some of their views in campaign rallies and tweets.

Back in the heyday of the 1920s, when progressives were having their pet scheme of prohibition "improving" America, there were 4 million members of the KKK. Democrat Robert Byrd was an outstanding leader over the years. Now they are down to around 0.003% of the population. Does that look like a buildup to anyone? There also can't be too many actual members of white nationalist groups, or we might see the number.

Trump must not be a very good recruiter.

They estimate that the KKK counts between 5,000 and 8,000 members nationwide. Back in the 1920's, when cities across the south were erecting monuments to Confederate generals, the Klan had 4 million members.

I am sure we will have to wait from now until eternity for USA Today to say the rhetoric of Democrats, rap stars, Hollywood, and the media has caused the buildup in Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and other Soros-funded groups to ramp up and cause violence. The race card and class card are repeatedly drawn. Cops are routinely trashed, and capitalism and corporations are disparaged while big government and socialist policies are pushed. Young people truly do not understand that capitalism is the system that reduces poverty and lifts people up, while socialism and communism hold people down and make them dependent on government.

It is especially disgusting to watch journalists and other Democrats essentially trash corporations and push more government and more socialist policies. After the Democrats trash the corporations with their rhetoric, the far-left protest groups climb on and trash corporations and capitalism. Sometimes they use violence and physically destroy businesses and jobs.

The Democrats seem to be so economically illiterate that they do not understand that all businesses are owned, run, and staffed by people, not inanimate objects. Every dollar that flows in and out of a company's coffers ends up flowing to individuals. The company develops and sells the product. Most of the largest owners of companies are mutual funds and public pension funds. If corporations do well, the California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Illinois pension funds will do better, which will reduce the taxes they need. Somehow, Democrats don't care about that.

It is no wonder that so many young people think communism and socialism are good and capitalism is bad. That is what they are continuously taught and what they read in the ever compliant media.

It sickens me that politicians, bureaucrats, and most Democrats believe they are entitled to so much of the public's money when they did not take any risk and did not earn the money.

There is almost zero chance that the USA Today will recognize that its rhetoric has contributed to the growth of the far-left protest groups while the paper's editors run a pathetic white nationalist story on the front page.
In a major break with Obama policy, the Trump administration will begin supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons. Ukraine has been the victim of Russian aggression as President Vladimir Putin has sent tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and massive amounts of equipment to aid rebels in eastern Ukraine looking to break away from the national government.

Putin has warned Western countries numerous times not to supply the Ukrainian government with lethal aid. He has maintained the lie that Russian soldiers are fighting in the Ukraine not on the orders of Moscow and are only "volunteers." Try telling that to the families of Russian soldiers killed in the conflict, whose loved ones' funerals have been kept out of sight.

While there is currently a ceasefire agreement between the Russians or rebels and the government of Ukraine, at any point that Putin sees an advantage, he is liable to break the deal. He just recalled military officers serving on a joint ceasefire commission, signaling that another escalation of the fighting may be on the way.

The small arms being sold to Ukraine will not alter the battlefield situation for the government. But more orders may be in the pipeline, including anti-tank missiles that could make a decisive difference.

The Hill:

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the administration approved the sale of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems and associated equipment to the country at a value of $41.5 million. The administration has not yet moved to approve heavier arms requested by Ukraine's government, including Javelin anti-tank missiles. The move from the White House is a departure from the Obama administration, which frequently condemned Russian aggression in the Ukraine but refused to approve the sale of arms to the country's western-aligned government. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) applauded the Trump administration's decision in a statement to the Post. "I'm pleased the administration approved the sale of defensive lethal arms to Ukraine," Corker said. "This decision was supported by Congress in legislation that became law three years ago and reflects our country's longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression." "We have crossed the Rubicon, this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming," another senior congressional official told The Post.

But...but...but...I thought Trump was supposed to be in Putin's pocket! Isn't he an intelligence asset for Russia?

Former DNI James Clapper thinks so. He told CNN that Putin is Trump's "case officer":

SCIUTTO: You heard the president's speech today. He calls out Russia and China, describes them as rival powers, rival powers to the U.S., but also says he wants to build a great partnership with them and had all of these friendly stuff to say about his phone calls with Vladimir Putin this week. Is that a contradictory message? CLAPPER: Well, it is to me. I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president. SCIUTTO: You're saying that Russia is handling President Trump as an asset? CLAPPER: That seems to be -- that's the appearance to me. So, you know, we've shared intelligence with the Russians for a long time. We've always done that. Although in my experience with them has been pretty much of a one-way street, where we provide them intelligence and we don't get much back.

This kind of hysteria about Trump's relationship with Russia should make Clapper a laughingstock. Instead, he is seen as an expert.

Is the left serious about this idea that Trump is some kind of Russian Manchurian candidate? Every time Trump says something nice about Putin, the left erupts into spasms of lunacy, saying it's "proof" that Trump and Putin are in bed together. This move to sell lethal aid to Ukraine will be a blow to that narrative  not that the left will pay it any mind.
Here we go again. Democrats are better at talking about DACA than actually fighting for DACA.

The Democrats will not fight for DACA this year, according to news reports:

With a deadline of midnight Friday to pass spending legislation, dozens of Democrats had vowed to withhold support if Republicans refused to allow a vote on a measure, known as the Dream Act, that would allow roughly 1.2 million immigrants to stay legally in the United States. But a group of vulnerable Democratic senators facing reelection in conservative states next year aren't willing to go that far  meaning the party is unlikely to muster the votes to block the spending bill. "We've got to get it done, but I'm not drawing a line in the sand that it has to be this week versus two weeks from now," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who faces reelection next year in a state that Trump won by more than 18 points. Other Democrats facing similar head winds echoed that sentiment, including Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Trump won those states by 42 and 19 percentage points, respectively.

"Realidad, amigo," as they say in Spanish!

It appears that Democrats will have to make a very tough political call in early 2018. Do we force the aforementioned senators to fight for DACA, or do we avoid that?

In 2010, the last time the DREAM Act failed in the U.S. Senate, it went down because of Democrats like Max Baucus and John Tester of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who voted "no."

The Democrats have a dilemma: do we take the Senate, or do we please the base? It's a tough call, and senators in West Virginia, et al. are not looking forward to a DACA debate.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
According to Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), Trump should be set to fire Mueller tomorrow, December 22, 2017.

Unfortunately for Speier and the Democrats, Trump won't be firing Mueller any time soon. Quite the opposite, a la Weekend at Bernie's, Trump will prop up Mueller's political corpse as he enjoys one helluva party.

According to the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris survey, 54 percent of registered voters believe that the relationship between Comey and Mueller amounts to a conflict of interest  not the percentage that a special counsel usually hopes for.

Here are only a few of the many reasons why.

In August of 2016, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok texted his mistress, Lisa Page, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office  that there's no way he gets elected  but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40[.]"

Peter Strzok played a major role in both the Clinton and the Russia investigations, and Lisa Page would later work on the Russia investigation as well.

"Andy" likely refers to Andrew McCabe, FBI deputy director, who oversaw the Clinton email server investigation after his wife received $700,000 from longtime Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe. McCabe also can't remember when he learned that it was in fact Hillary Clinton and the DNC who paid for the anti-Trump dossier.

Then comes FBI director James Comey, who drafted a letter exonerating Clinton months before the investigation ended, before Clinton was even interviewed. He happily accepted Strzok's recommendations to change the words "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless." After all, Strzok's recommendation saved Comey from having to write a second letter.

The Washington Post reports that Mueller and Comey enjoy a "long friendship" and are described as "brothers in arms."

Amazingly, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, with all of these revelations, sees "no good cause" to fire Mueller.

Nonetheless, up to now, far more evidence of collusion has been uncovered among high-ranking FBI officials than between Donald Trump and any Russian, and all without 4:00 AM raids or the laying of perjury traps (or any Justice Department investigation, for that matter).

Increasing Attacks against Mueller and His Cronies

At a minimum, Peter Strzok; his eternal paramour, Lisa Page; Andrew McCabe; and James Comey likely colluded to undo a possible Trump presidency.

As a result of the evidence that has come to light, members of Congress, media personalities, and others with deep roots within the FBI have expressed their outrage.

Former FBI assistant director James Kallstrom charged that "a bunch of sycophants in the FBI that were part of the Comey team ... are now exposed on obstruction of justice."

Representative Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) stated in an interview last Friday, "I'll be a little bit surprised if [McCabe's] still an employee of the FBI this time next week."

Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asserted in another interview that "everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the next president of the United States."

Fox News's Jeanine Pirro declared that "there is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice. It needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs."

So that is where we are.

While the Democrats try to extend the investigation as far into 2018 as possible in order to influence the midterms, Strzok, Page, McCabe, and others very well may become the targets of forthcoming criminal investigations. Even Rosenstein is at a greater risk of being fired. Mueller, however, is safe.

Because he is a political corpse completely void of credibility, Mueller will stay until this party ends. Trump will make sure of that.
(ANSA) - Rome, December 20 - A five-year-old boy fell to his death from a fifth-floor window in Rome's outlying Spinaceto district Wednesday. Attempts to revive him were vain. According to an initial reconstruction, the child is said to have climbed onto a radiator next to the window and opened it while his father's attention was elsewhere. He may have been attracted by Christmas decorations including a Father Christmas doll that was outside the window, sources said.

The accident took place in Via Padre Romualdo.

The child was in treatment for behavioural problems, sources said.

The boy's mother was not home because she had gone to fetch his sister from school.

Rome prosecutors have opened a probe into the boy's death and an autopsy will be carried out later this week, judicial sources said.


Houthis launch 83 missiles at Saudi Arabia, Arab coalition '20 Houthi fighters killed south of the capital', Al Hayat

(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 21 - The Saudi-led Arab coalition said Thursday that 83 ballistic missiles had been launched by Iran-linked Houthi rebels from Yemen at Saudi Arabia.



The news was reported by Al Arabiya.



Colonel Turki bin Saleh Al Maliki, spokesman for the coalition, said that many of the launch sites had been destroyed. The latest missile targeting the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was launched this week. Houthis have meanwhile said that 11 civilians including women and children were killed in airstrikes on northern Yemen on Thursday. The reports have not been independently verified.



Houthi-run television broadcaster Al-Masira said that the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes had occurred in the northern region of Saada, a traditional stronghold of the uprising. Saudi media have not yet confirmed the news, but the daily Al-Hayat reported that 20 Houthi fighters had been killed by ''armed men'' south of the capital Sanaa, controlled by the rebels. The news cannot be independently verified. (ANSAmed).




Rome prosecutors in Cairo to discuss Regeni murder case To meet with Egyptian prosecutor general

(ANSA) - Rome, December 21 - Rome prosecutors Giuseppe Pignatone and Sergio Colaiocco left for Cairo on Thursday to meet with Egyptian prosecutor general Nabil Sadeq.



They will be taking stock of the investigations conducted thus far into the murder of the Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, whose body was found with signs of sever torture on February 3, 2016, after he had disappeared on January 25, 2016.




Catalonia votes amid tension, future uncertain Many left decision until the last minute

(by Francesco Cerri) (ANSAmed) - BARCELONA, DECEMBER 21 - ''The Time of Truth!'' is the frontpage headline on El Punt Avui. ''Maximum Uncertainty'' is El Periodico's, while ''The Curtain Falls without a Clear Outlook'' is on the other large Catalan daily, Ara. Less than two months after the proclamation of the Catalan 'Republic' on October 27 by the pro-independence Govern and Parlament and the subsequent lightening blitz by the Spanish central government - which in only a few hours took control of the regional government and ousted its leaders - the rebel region began voting on Thursday amid sky-high tension. The pro-independence was overwhelmed by the unexpectedly harsh reaction from the Spanish state, with several leaders now 'in exile' in Belgium with former regional president Carles Puigdemont or in jail with his vice, Oriol Junqueras.



They are now hoping for vindication at the polls against the 'Franco-type methods' used by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. For the unionist side - Ciudadanos, PSC and PP - it is instead a historic chance to defuse the secessionist spiral. The latest polls show the pro-independence candidates in the lead, with an expected 67-70 seats out of 135, compared with 56-59 for the unionists. On Wednesday, however, a third of voters were still undecided and clear apprehension could be seen among pro-independence voters after the violence used by Spanish police at voting stations in the October 1 referendum, the numerous criminal charges handed down by the Madrid judiciary and the arrest of many of their leaders. If the pro-independence front wins with an absolute majority of at least 68 seats, the path towards the 'Republic' is expected to resume, but in a very different way. The two large pro-independence lists - Puigdemont's JxCat and Junqueras's ERC - will leave unilateral ways behind and focus on negotiations with the Spanish state. Puigdemont and Junqueras, after the tensions of the night prior to the 'declaration of independence', are now rivals in the race for regional presidency - though neither of the two might be able to hold the position. Thus, ERC's second-in-command Marta Rovira might end up president.



If the unionist list Ciudadanos were to win - polls have not ruled this out - Ines Arrimadas, who has capitalized on the resurgence of Spanish nationalism even in Catalonia, will try to form a fragile minority government with the socialists and populists. Analysts say that the resulting government will in any case be difficult to hold together and that there may be a return to the polls three months later if no clear majority wins.



(ANSAmed).




Serbia: acquisition of six helicopters discussed with Russia

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, 21 DECEMBER - Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin said acquisition of six Mi-17 multi-purpose helicopters had been discussed with Russia during a visit to Moscow by a Serbian delegation headed by President Aleksandar Vucic. "In line with our needs and financial capabilities, discussions were started with the Russian side about a purchase of up to six Mi-17 multi-purpose helicopters. That would renew our fleet significantly," Vulin said. When asked if acquisition of an S-300 anti-aircraft defense system had been discussed as well, Vulin said it was too early to talk about this. (ANSAmed)




By Arun Kumar



Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews





C zech director-writer duo Jan Hrebejk and Petr Jarchovsky have put together some interesting and original films about life in Czech Republic and Slovakia after the Velvet Revolution (which brought a peaceful end to communism in 1989). Petr Jarchovsky diffuses a wonderful complexity to his characters and Jan Hrebejk is a brilliant actors director, and moreover known for deftly chronicling domestic life of people across the social order. The duo have achieved international success for Divided We Fall (2000) and Up and Down (2004), both of the films could serve as a perfect introductory point to their works. Hrebejk and Jarchowsky have also made other critically acclaimed movies like Cosy Dens (1999), Pupendo (2003), and Zelary (2003). Their recent works didnt impress me as much as the earlier works (Honeymoon released in 2013 is my least favorite one). But with the latest collaboration titled The Teacher (Ucitelka, 2016), the writer-director combination have once again made a tightly focused morality tale that lays bare the corrosive Communist past of the country. The Teacher also addresses timeless themes like abuse of authority, class discrimination without ever preaching its lesson, but rather nudging us to witness life and share the characters social despair and moral dilemmas.







On paper, Teacher may sound like an harsh indictment of corruption and dishonesty on grass-roots level of the society. While the narrative palpably creates the climate of fear, it also deploys the typical Czech dark humor to strengthen the film-makers point about authority and corruption. The film, based on a real life incident, opens with a long shot of students arriving at the public school in the morning. Its cut to the arrival of parents to the same school premise in the night time. Director Jan Hrebejk juxtaposes the shots of children and their parents who walk through same corridors and classroom between disconnected timelines. The year is 1983 and the school is situated in the outskirts of Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia. Before revealing the parents night time gathering, we are introduced to the titular character named Maria Drazdechova (a splendid Zuzana Maurery). The middle-aged teacher dressed in flower-patterned skirt who exudes warm smile towards her fresh set of secondary class pupils. The first thing she does is a seemingly harmless thing: she calls every students name and asks them to state what their parents do for a living. This curious background check, as we learn later, is done with harmful and corrupt intention.

The secret meeting of the parents where majority of them support Maria, some out of fear and some out of misplaced sense of loyalty

The childrens parents have gathered at the school, under the watchful eyes of head-teacher, to discuss a recurring complaint on Maria Drazdechovas behavior. Couple of parents has initiated the complaint and its like the 12 Angry Men situation, where they have to convince the others to not implicate themselves in the web of corruption meticulously weaved by the teacher. Earlier in the narrative, its made clear that its not easy to bring down the teacher since Maria is the local chairwoman of the communist party and her influential boundaries may extend as far as Moscow. Any way, what has she actually done? The intrigue is brilliantly crafted through writer Jarchovskys non-linear setting, cutting between Marias malicious game of manipulation and the secret parents-teachers meeting where the majority of parents seem to side themselves on teachers side.





Marias curiosity in learning parents occupation is to make each one of them do different set of chores for her, in exchange for disclosing exam questions or bestowing good grades. She employs one parent to fix her hair, others to fix her washing machines, do electrical works, stand in long queues at the public shops, etc. Even few students do household chores in the teachers house after school. If the parents refuse to help her, she reacts by humiliating the students in front of the class and provides them bad grades. One of Marias foremost victims is Danka (Tamara Fischer), whose father works as an accountant at the airport. The girl has a fairly good IQ level and is naturally talented at gymnastics. But Maria gradually turns Dankas school life a hell, when her father Mr Kucera (Csongor Kassai) rejects the Maria's wish to deliver a cake to her sister in Moscow (through the flight crew). While some parents showcase absurd sense of loyalty for the teacher, most others do what she asks from them out of fear. Only Mr. Kucera and Mr. Binder (Martin Havelka) comes forth to discuss the immoral network based on blackmail and corrupt favors.

Danka (center) and her two other classmates who are treated as class 'outcasts' for not yielding to teacher Maria's wishes

Czech, Polish, Romanian, and many other Eastern European film industries have often shown excellent nuance in touching upon the awful layers of corruption that pervades every corner of the society. Although the themes and moral dilemmas addressed in these films can universally resonate with audiences, regardless of political system, the perverted communist regime of the past do seem to create a more morally suffocating atmosphere. Director Jan Hrebejks observation of the domestic spaces and life flowing within them has made some critics to bestow him with the label Chekovian. And, Hrebejk adeptly uses the domestic spaces to exhibit the woes of trying to live a principled life in an increasingly demoralized society. The director & writer focuses on the micro-level corruption which leads to basic subjugation of family units. Consequently, it becomes a common language that binds parent and children, citizen and the system. By making the parents sit at the same classroom of their children, its shown how the morally afflicted parents are as powerless as the young pupils, since the climate of fear and corruption only demands ones willingness to surrender. We see Mr. Kucera burdened with remorse when trying to approach flight crew to send the teachers cake and later theres an intense conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Binder where sex is used as the trump card to make him to kow-tow to the teachers misdeeds. These are some of the important instances that gracefully show how atmosphere of moral perversion can impact ones self and invade his domestic space.





The top notch editing allows us to side by side study the teachers despicable behavior and its profound impacts on the children (recalled by the parents). Director Hrebejk evokes discomfort and righteous fury at key moments, although his brand of absurd humor subtly mocks the villains of the narrative. Theres also a broad allegorical tone to the proceedings, since the teachers blatant manipulation has implications far beyond the school premise, especially with the behavior of powerful political spheres thats often boosted by the dangerous status quo. But the script and direction are more interested in recognizing the layers of everyday corruption than providing a loaded political lesson. The casting and performances are spot-on. Zuzana Maurery effectively induces our wrath and she neatly plays up the characters inherent absurdity without turning her into a caricature.






remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
It aims to enhance air traffic management modernisation cooperation and develop or harmonise global aviation standards.

The agreement was signed by the chairman of the QCAA Abdullah bin Nasser Turki Al Subaey, (pictured right) and executive director of SESAR, Florian Guillermet.

Al Subaey said the aviation sector in Qatar is significantly growing which is reflected on air traffic services and the efficient use of air space in the country. Joint cooperation with SESAR will have a positive impact in creating a balance and interoperability among air traffic systems, for the benefit of airlines as well as of travellers, he said.


[contextly_auto_sidebar]

ONE of the first things I saw when I moved to Athens, GA, two years ago was a gallery  okay it was the landing of a rock club, the Georgia Theatre  devoted to large, beautifully produced photographs by a guy named Jason Thrasher. Plenty of Athens musical heroes  R.E.M.s Michael Stipe, for example, and members of the Elephant 6 bands  were here, as well as people I didnt know. Each shot was distinctive, bringing out the personality of each artist along with, in most cases, his or her private environment.

It gave me a sense of a place that was  and had been  a real cultural community and not just a jumble of bands.

I ended up, as it happens, being introduced to Thrasher that night, and while we mostly kept missing each other over the ensuing year, I was struck by the seriousness of his craft and the wide range of his work.

So I was pleased to hear recently that Thrasher has put together a book chronicling the citys music scene. As a died-in-the-wool West Coaster who returned to Los Angeles, Im glad to have the vibrant scene back in Athens documented so well. Here is my conversation with Thrasher about his book, Athens Potluck. The book, which you can read about here, includes an introduction by Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers.

Your book has an unusual structure, with each musician suggesting the next one in the book. Whose idea was this, and why did it seem like the natural way to do Athens Potluck?

My wife, Beth Hall Thrasher suggested the idea that the first person select the next person and so on. We had been talking about how to do a book about the Athens music scene for a while and I had been photographing a lot of bands at the time. I didnt want to do a book of band photos. At least not for my first book and I knew I wanted to photograph individual artist or musicians in their homes but it was this idea that they choose where to go that set me on my path. If I had chosen everyone it might have happened and been another kind of book but with this approach it truly is a community project. The name Athens Potluck refers to the idea that everyone had to bring something to the table and that something was the person they chose.

Whats amazing about the Athens music scene is that its ranged, just in a few decades, from the B-52s and R.E.M. to Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal and Elf Power, to Drive-By Truckers and Future Birds and Cicada Rhythm bands that cover a huge range of styles. What do you think makes the scene in this little city so rich and stylistically varied?

The Athens I know and love is a very small town inside a small southern city.

Athens benefit

s from being very close to Atlanta and everything it offers including the largest airport in the world. I have always felt that the art and music made here has an amazing ability to get out into the world. Maybe its this access and as well as the isolation that has created an environment where art and music flourish but also get broadcast to a wide audience.

Beyond that there has to be something in the water or maybe its in the PBR. People here are supportive and secretly competitive. Friends inspire and push each other towards our goals constantly.

I know personally from this book that it was a greater effort that just my one-man show. This book was a true community effort. Not only with the 33 musicians that were photographed for the project and to the stories they each wrote for the book. The clubs hosted shows in support of the project and the greater Athens community (far and wide) pre-ordered over 400 books to make this thing happen.

One thing that struck me immediately about your photographs was how comfortable the subjects seemed  like they were able to be themselves, unguarded; this hit me especially with the image of Michael Stipe. Is this something youre conscious of, and how do you get there?

The main goal when I started this project was to make natural relaxed photographs. I didnt bring a lot of equipment along for the photos, no flash or strobes were used and mostly I worked with one camera and one lens. I wanted to just hang out and see what would happen. Some of the people in the book I had know for years and others I met the day of the photo shoot. Some were great friends and others have become great friends since these photos were made.

Ive know Michael for years but have never done a photo shoot with him but hes always been very kind and supportive of my photography. Hes a photographer also so I think we talked about cameras and old friends while we worked. Hes a pro and a hero of mine so he knew what he was doing and I tried to make good photos.

I think if you look closely at some of the photos in a few peoples chapters youll see us get more comfortable with each other as we spent time together.

The real trick is taking your time and just enjoying the process with the person your photographing. It is a process.

You have an image of Jeremy Ayers, who I never met but who I got the sense was sort of a muse of the scene there and embodied some of what made the citys culture distinctive. Would you like to say something about him?

Jeremy was everyones favorite. I remember very clearly meeting him on the street downtown very shortly after I moved to town. I knew he was special right away. He was really my first friend in Athens. We lost Jeremy a little over a year ago and it kicked this towns ass. It was a huge gut punch to almost everyone I know and love. As we were working on the book we tried to come up with a good way to honor Jeremy. Hes in several of the stories that the musicians wrote for the book. I had photographed Julian Koster at Jeremys house when he was living there so when I called Julian to ask him to write a story for the book he told me this amazing story about Jeremy. As soon I we got the final story I realized that it opened up a chance to include Jeremy in Julians section. It was one of my favorite parts of the book. I loved and I miss that amazing person.

Besides your shots of musicians, youve shot a lot of images of landscape, architecture, etc. I wonder what other photographers  especially photographers of the South like William Eggleston and Walker Evans  have ever been important to you?

Eggleston is King and Evans made me see the beauty of my home state of Alabama. Along the Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Larry Sultan they are my favorite photographers. Theres a nod to Eggleston near the end of the book if you look closely.

What kind of camera/ equipment do you typically use, and why do they seem like the right arsenal for what you do?

I like to keep it simple. This was the first real project for me where I realized what I could do with a digital camera and didnt wish that it was film. Keep in mind I started this 7 years ago and I gave up film 12 years ago. For the first 5 years I missed it greatly but with this project I did something that I could have never done with film. At least they way I did it. I started off with a Canon 5D Mark 2 and finished with a Mark 4 and a Sony Mirrorless.

Athens is, like most of the South, rainy, humid, deeply green and overgrown much of the year. How does this shape the way you photograph things, the way colors and light work in your images?

Thats the best part of the South. It effects the light in the best ways and its really the reason Im still here. We get all four seasons but winter is mild (how I like it) and it never really stays the same for too many days in a row. Its rainy and warm here in Athens right now, just days before Christmas and it very well could be hot tomorrow and then snow by the end of the week.

Theres a thickness to the air and sometimes it actually coats the camera body. Ive even had my sensor on the camera fog up. I love how this effects the light and the skin and the greenery. When civilization comes to an end, the South will be the first region to be taken back by nature.
Besides Ruias, the court also acquitted Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors.

CBI had named them in its charge sheet on December 12, 2011, alleging they had cheated the Department of Telecommunication by using Loop Telecom as a 'front' to secure 2G licences in 2008.

New Delhi: The Essar Group on Thursday welcomed the judgement of the special court acquitting its promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia in a case arising out of the probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

"We are thankful to the court for the judgement as it vindicates our stated position and the court has appreciated it," an Essar spokesperson said in a statement.

Besides Ruias, the court also acquitted Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors, Loop Telecom Promoters I P Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan, three companies-- Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile (India) Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd.

While the court had earlier charged them with the offence under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) read with section 420 (cheating) of IPC, substantial charge of cheating was made out against Saraf.

The CBI had named them in its charge sheet on December 12, 2011, alleging they had cheated the Department of Telecommunication by using Loop Telecom as a "front" to secure 2G licences in 2008.
Alia has recently wrapped up Meghna Gulzar's Raazi, where she will be seen with Vicky Kaushal.

Mumbai: Alleged lovebirds Alia Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra were often spotted spending time together, but these days it looks like the cracks in their relationship is going to last for long. Alia was just dealing with such a situation, when now Bangalore Mirror reports that her sister Shaheen Bhatt has too parted ways with her six-year boyfriend, stand-up comedian Rohan Joshi.

This leaves Shaheen and Alia each others only support and the sisters seem to be giving it their all since they were seen spending time in London recently, maybe to get over their heartbreak?

Alia has recently wrapped up Raazi, where she will be seen with Vicky Kaushal. Apart from that, she is waiting to work with Ranbir Kapoor in Ayan Mukerjis Brahmastra. Shaheen, on the other hand, is busy writing the script for Aashiqui 3, which will go on floors after some time.
Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma Kohlis wedding looked like it was straight out of a fairytale.

Virat and Anushka pose for a photo at the Delhi wedding reception. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

New Delhi: Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma Kohlis wedding looked like it was straight out of a fairytale. The couple was dressed in Sabyasachi outfits for the three-day wedding, and now theyre hosting a reception in Delhi.

The first photo from their reception is here and they look just straight out of Manyavars ad. The newly wed bride Anushka seemed no less than an Indian bride at the reception. Anushka at her Delhi reception was seen wearing red and golden saree, backless blouse and gajra.

The heavy jhumkas, gold necklace and red bangles, symbol of the newly wed in India made Anushka look stunning. A small red bindi and a sindoor (vermilion), thus making her look every bit beautiful as the perfect Indian bride.

Complimenting her is Virat, who opted for a black sherwani paired with a heavy dupatta for a royal effect and off white pyajamas.

Heres their photo:

Delhi: Virat Kohli & Anushka Sharma pose for photos at their wedding reception. pic.twitter.com/WuYZYu9bKe  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

And here, in this video, they are posing for the cameras:

#WATCH: Virat Kohli & Anushka Sharma pose for photos at their wedding reception underway in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/DvmhMLGfKO  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

The reception is currently being held at Durbar Hall in Delhi, which is also being attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Virat and Anushka invited him personally yesterday for their reception.
Defence lawyer Harvinder Singh Anand said the complaint lodged by the actor with police was an afterthought

Screengrabs from the video Zaira Wasim had posted about the incident.

Mumbai: A court here on Wednesday granted bail to Vikas Sachdev, a private firm executive arrested for allegedly molesting teenage Bollywood actor Zaira Wasim onboard a Delhi-Mumbai flight on December 9.

City civil and sessions court judge A D Deo granted bail to Sachdev (39) on a personal bond of Rs 25,000.

The court also directed Sachdev, a resident of suburban Kandivli, to visit the Sahar police station on the first Sunday of every month, and not influence any witness in the case.

Opposing the bail, Assistant Public Prosecutor Munna Inamdar said the relief should not be granted to Sachdev since the offence is of serious nature.

Defence lawyer Harvinder Singh Anand said the complaint lodged by the actor with police was an afterthought as she had not raised the issue with the cabin crew of the flight.

He also argued that Sachdev was illegally detained by the police before his arrest.

The court accepted the defence argument and granted bail to Sachdev.

Sachdev is working as western regional manager with Sun Broadcast in Mumbai.

Wasim had accused Sachdev of molesting her onboard the Mumbai-bound Vistara flight on December 9.

The incident was disclosed by the 'Dangal' actor herself, who had posted a video narrating her ordeal on the flight.

Following an outrage, Sachdev was booked under section 354 (Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of IPC, and relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) since the actor is a minor, and was arrested a day after the incident on December 10.

"He kept nudging my shoulder and continued to move his foot up and down my back and neck," the actor had said in an Instagram post soon after she alighted at the Mumbai airport.
Christian Bale will be next seen in 'Hostiles', directed by Scott Cooper, the film also features Rosamund Pike.

Mumbai: Actor Christian Bale feels that "culture will be richer" when white men are not the only ones in charge of everything.

The 'Dark Knight Rises' actor batted for a more inclusive Hollywood which can benefit everyone during a panel discussion with AOL Build to discuss his new film "Hostiles".

"Our culture will be so much richer the day that we stop saying, 'Hey, it's all white dudes who are running things,'" Bale said.

"Whether that be Hollywood, whether that be Washington, you know. We're going to get, in Hollywood, so much better films and so much more interesting stories being told and America will become the America that the rest of the world sees it as, that makes it unique," he added.

The British-born actor also talked about his love for America, which he called "such a beautiful, brilliant country", and moving his family there.

"It's the reason I moved here, it's the reason my kids have American accents. It's because it is that, it's a country of inclusion and invitation," Bale said.

Directed by Scott Cooper, 'Hostiles' also features Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Jesse Plemons, Adam Beach, Rory Cochrane and Ben Foster.
The IAF has issued the request for proposal to state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for the procurement of Tejas light combat aircraft.

The final deal for the procurement of Tejas fighter jets is likely to be inked within the next five months. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Faced with depleting strength of its fighter squadron, the Indian Air Force on Wednesday issued the request for proposal (RFP) to state-run aerospace behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the procurement of 83 Tejas light combat aircraft at a cost of over Rs 50,000 crore.

The IAF had earlier placed an order with the HAL for 40 Tejas aircraft.

The RFP for 83 Tejas light combat aircraft has been issued on Wednesday, setting the ball rolling for finalising the contract for the mega deal, official sources said.

The Defence Acquisition Council, the Defence Ministrys highest decision-making body on procurement, had in November last year approved purchase of 83 Tejas Mark 1 A by IAF at a cost of Rs 50,025 crore.

The sources said the final deal for the procurement is likely to be inked within the next five months.

They said out of the 83 LCA, 10 will be used for training purposes.

According to official figures, 14 squadrons of the MiG 21, MiG 27 and MiG 29 are due for retirement in the next 10 years which will bring down the fighter squadron strength to 19 by 2027 from the current 33.

The strength may be further reduced to 16 by 2032.

In an interview to PTI, HAL Chairman and Managing Director T. Suvarna Raju had said most of the 42 modifications in Tejas sought by the IAF, including weaponisation of the aircraft, had been carried out.

Tejas is a four-and-half generation world class fighter jet. There is no doubt about it. We can improve its various parameters. We are proud of Tejas. Every Indian will be proud of it. We will ensure enhancement in its quality and performance, Raju had said.

There have been views in the IAF that the Tejas aircraft was not enough to maintain its combat readiness and it needed to quickly procure a fleet of foreign single engine fighters to deal with any possible security challenges faced by the country in the backdrop of the dwindling size of its fighter fleet.

The IAF believes that it has to have a wide mix of aircraft to maintain an operational edge over its adversaries.

The HAL CMD had said that the four-and-half generation Tejas would be able to deliver what is expected of it.

The lifespan of the jet would be a minimum of 30 years just like any other frontline combat aircraft, he said.

The combat jets are classified under various generations depending on their avionics, capability and weapons systems.
Evidence adduced to substantiate charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the court, CBI says.

The Patiala House Court in New Delhi on Thursday acquitted all the 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi in the case. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said it will move Delhi High Court against the Patiala House Court verdict in 2G spectrum allocation scam case.

Earlier on Thursday, the CBI had said that after examination of the judgement it was found that the evidence adduced to substantiate charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the court.

Also read: Delhi court acquits A Raja, Kanimozhi, others accused in 2G scam verdict

The agency added that it will take necessary legal remedies regarding the 2G spectrum judgement.

The Patiala House Court in New Delhi on Thursday acquitted all the 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi, in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.

Read: 2G scam verdict: Delhi court acquits A Raja, DMK's Kanimozhi, others

Pronouncing the verdict on Thursday, the court said that the prosecution had failed miserably to prove any of its charges.
With the Prime Minister present in the House, the unrelenting Opposition members shouted slogans and sought his resignation.

New Delhi: The Opposition Congress forced adjournments in both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday over Prime Minister Narendra Modis conspiracy with Pakistan remark against his predecessor Manmohan Singh, which led to a virtual washout of Rajya Sabha proceedings, as Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu said there was no question of an apology. The Lok Sabha also didnt transact any business till lunch, and resumed work only after 2 pm.

Vociferous protests by members of the Congress and other Opposition parties seeking an apology from Mr Modi for his remarks started as soon as both Houses met for the day. Lok Sabha proceedings had to be adjourned for an hour, within three minutes of it having assembled, as Congress members stormed into the well and surrounded Speaker Sumitra Mahajans chair.

With the Prime Minister present in the House, the unrelenting Opposition members shouted slogans and sought his resignation. Amid pandemonium, the Speaker adjourned the House till 12 noon. When the House met at noon, the Congress members again trooped into the well and resumed shouting slogans as the Speaker began Zero Hour proceedings. However, after 19 minutes she again adjourned the House till 2 pm.

The Lok Sabha resumed work at 2 pm, though Congress MPs continued their protests and later walked out. The Lower House worked till late in the evening and even passed the Indian Forest (Amendment) Bill 2017.

Earlier, sources said the decision to raise the issue of seeking Mr Modis apology was taken by Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the morning, and he spoke to both Mr Mallikarjun Kharge and Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, the leaders of the Congress in the two Houses, about the matter.

The Rajya Sabha saw two adjournments in the pre-lunch period, till Chairman Venkaiah Naidu finally called it a day a little after 2 pm. Earlier, Mr Naidu had said there was no question of an apology on the issue as nothing had been stated inside the House.

Nobody is going to give an apology. Nothing happened in the House. No statement is made in the House. There is no practice of suspension of Question Hour. Dont make a mockery of the House. Already the wrong message is going, a visibly agitated Mr Naidu told the protesting members when the House reassembled at noon after the first adjournment.

However, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said a little before the House was adjourned for the day: We are not demanding an apology... But PM should come to the House and say that he has made such statements to win the elections.

Raising the issue, Mr Azad said the PM should clarify he had made such serious allegations against a former Prime Minister, a former vice-president and an ex-Army Chief for winning elections and it was an election stunt.

Not even an ordinary MP or a worker can think of joining hands with Pakistan... For the last few days, we have been demanding that the PM should clarify on it... Tomorrow it is his Question Hour... He should clarify, Mr Azad said.

Pointing at former Army Chief V.K. Singh, who was present in the House, Mr Azad said serious allegations had been levelled against a former Army Chief and several others. Amid the din, deputy chairman P.J. Kurien asked petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan to move the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy Bill 2017 for consideration and passage.

However, as members trooped into the well and started raising slogans like Pradhan Mantri Sharam Karo (PM, have shame) and Jhoothe Aarop Wapas Lo (Withdraw the false allegations), Mr Kurien asked the House to maintain order and let him take up the bill.

However, as the ruckus continued he adjourned the House for the day. Earlier in the day, the Chairman had disallowed the protesting Congress members from raising the issue and warned them not to create obstruction and allow other members to raise important issues. This is not the way, he said. This is Parliament. This is Rajya Sabha. The wrong message is going.

Later, when the House met again for Question Hour, Mr Naidus pleas to allow the House to function did not find favour with an unrelenting Opposition.

Dont attempt to snatch the rights of others. Let the members have the opportunity to ask their questions. Questions have been listed and much money has been spent... This is not the way, he said.

However, as the unrelenting members continued their uproar, the Chair adjourned the House till 2 pm.
On Wednesday, Pakistan directed its High Commission in New Delhi to issue visas to Jadhav's wife and mother.

Kulbhushan Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday issued visa to Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife and mother to visit Islamabad to meet the Indian prisoner on death row, the Foreign Office said.

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in May.

The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it. "Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today," Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal tweeted.

Pakistan had agreed to facilitate a meeting of Jadhav with his mother and wife in Islamabad on December 25. It also agreed to India's demand that they be accompanied by an official of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

On Wednesday, Pakistan directed its High Commission in New Delhi to issue visas to Jadhav's wife and mother.

Pakistan had claimed its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy".

According to India's version, Jadhav, a retired Naval officer, had been kidnapped from Iran where he was in connection with his business.
As per an assessment, sand mining is a highly profitable business, and the estimated turnover ranges between Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 crores annually.

Patna: The RJD has called for a statewide bandh on December 21 to protest against the sand mining policy of the state government.

According to RJD leaders, the ongoing crackdown on sand mining has forced the builders to slow down the construction work in Bihar which has led to job crisis among daily wage construction workers.

Speaking on the issue RJD Chief Lalu Yadav said that the state government is not concerned about the plight of the general public which is facing lots of hardship due to their policies. We will continue our fight and expose the failures of the government.

The JD(U)-BJP government after coming to power in July came up with a new policy to regulate the trade and also to end illegal sand mining in Bihar.

As per an assessment, sand mining is a highly profitable business, and the estimated turnover ranges between Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 crores annually. However, reports suggest that the state government have been earning only around Rs 500 crore out of it.

The issue of illegal sand mining in the state was first raised by deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi in August. He has been alleging that the senior RJD leaders have close links with people associated with the mining mafia in Bihar.
The husband could also be fined and the quantum of fine would be decided by the magistrate hearing the case.

New Delhi: The government on Wednesday conceded in Parliament that Muslim organisations were not consulted before it framed a draft bill to criminalise the practice of instant triple talaq.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha that the Government believed that the proposed bill would help ensure gender justice, gender equality and dignity of women.

The government has maintained that since the practice of instant triple talaq or talaq-e-biddat continues despite the Supreme Court striking it down, there is a need to bring a law.

To another written question in Lok Sabha on whether the Government consulted Muslim organisatons before framing the draft law, Minster of State for Law P.P. Chaudhary replied in the negative.

In a separate written reply, Mr Prasad said, the government is of the view that the issue arises from the humanitarian concept of gender justice, gender equality and dignity of women and not arising from faith and religion.

He said that since the Supreme Court struck down the practice of instant triple talaq, nearly 66 cases of husbands divorcing their spouses through this method were reported.

On December 15, the Union Cabinet cleared the Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Bill, which seeks to make the practice of instant triple talaq illegal and void and provides for a jail term for the husband.

The husband could also be fined and the quantum of fine would be decided by the magistrate hearing the case.
The chief minister said that the proposed law would help in controlling crime and reining in criminals, mafia and land sharks.

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government, on Wednesday, tabled the controversial UP Control of Organised Crime Bill 2017 in the UP Assembly.

The bill, which has provisions for stringent laws to check organised crime, was tabled by chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The bill is patterned on the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act.

The chief minister said that the proposed law would help in controlling crime and reining in criminals, mafia and land sharks.

The bill has a provision of stringent punishment for people engaged in organized crime with capital punishment accompanied by stiff penalty up to Rs 25 lakh and jail terms ranging from three years to life for other crimes, including possession of unaccountable wealth and harboring of criminals. It also allows seizure of the property of the accused. The bill has 28 additional provisions that are not present in the Gangster Act. Special courts will be set up to hear cases related to UPCOCA. The Opposition parties, however, have decided to oppose the bill. Leader of opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary said, There are sufficient provision in the IPC to control crime but the government is bringing this draconian legislation to target Muslims, Dalits and weaker sections of society. This law will also be used against political adversaries and also the media. SP president Akhilesh Yadav said that UPCOCA was another dhoka by the Yogi government which had passed off a furniture cleaning powder as an explosive some time ago. He apprehended misuse of the proposed law to target political rivals. SP MLA Sanjay Garg said that they would battle out in the state assembly and block passage of the bill in the legislative council where SP enjoyed a majority.

Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati, in a statement on Wednesday, said her party has seen in the past how laws are abused by those in power to quash the dissenting voices, especially of the Dalits and people from the Muslim community. The bill reflects the anti-minority mindset of the BJP and will be used to jail and torture the Muslims in false cases, she said.

BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari said that the provisions of the bill were designed to target opposition members.
She was rushed to a hospital, where she died. Her name hasn't been released yet.

The woman reportedly volunteered at a rescue group called Akita Advocates that rents space at the kennel. (Photo: Pixabay)

Authorities say a dog mauled a 69-year-old woman to death at a Phoenix boarding facility.

Phoenix police say the victim was found Wednesday in a dog exercise area at Canine Country Club and Feline Inn with significant injuries consistent with dog bites.

She was rushed to a hospital, where she died. Her name hasn't been released yet.

The woman reportedly volunteered at a rescue group called Akita Advocates that rents space at the kennel.

She was trying to socialize the animal to prepare it for adoption when the attack took place.

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control officials say the Akita Advocates group will put the dog down.
He is the first sitting high court judge to have been sentenced to jail.

Former Calcutta HC judge C.S. Karnan comes out of Presidency Jail in Kolkata. (Photo: Asian Age)

Kolkata: Former Calcutta high court judge C.S. Karnan was released from jail on Wednesday after the completion of his six-month sentence for contempt of court.

The sentence was awarded by the Supreme Court in May.

Mr Karnan left the Presidency Correctional Home premises around 11 am, his wife Saraswati Karnan said.

His wife and elder son, who arrived here last night from Chennai, accompanied him.

Mr Karnan was arrested from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu on June 20 after he had evaded the police for over a month.

The apex court had sentenced him to six months in jail for contempt of court on May 9. Karnan was a serving judge of the Calcutta high court at that time.

He is the first sitting high court judge to have been sentenced to jail.

Mr Karnans lawyer Mathew J. Nedampura said the former judge planned to write an autobiography. The former Calcutta high court judge will be in the city for a few days for pension and other retirement-related formalities, after which he will leave for Chennai. Mr Nedampura said Karnan, who had lost weight in these six months, would spend time with his family for a couple of weeks.

A seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by former chief justice of India J.S. Khehar, had asked the West Bengal director general of police (DGP) to take Karnan, who was on a warpath with the apex court for months, into custody.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued a bailable warrant against the judge to secure his presence before it in connection with the contempt case.

Mr Karnan had appeared before the apex court on March 31, a first in the countrys judicial history, and asked for restoration of his powers as a pre-condition for his re appearance, but the plea was rejected.

Mr Karnan, who had enrolled himself as an advocate with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu in 1983, was appointed a judge of the Madras High Court in 2009.

He was transferred to the Calcutta high court on March 11, 2016.
The shop had built an illegal mezzanine floor to accommodate the workers, who were sleeping when the fire broke out.

Mumbai: The Sakinaka police, which is probing the death of 12 workers in a fire that broke out at a farsan shop on Monday, has said it is investigating whether there were any lapses on the part of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials. The police has also asked the civic body to submit its report within 15 days over the norms breached by the shop owner.

The shop had built an illegal mezzanine floor to accommodate the workers, who were sleeping when the fire broke out.

It was caused by a short-circuit, but the presence of illegally stored inflammable articles, including gas cylinders, which aggravated the blaze, according to the police.

On Tuesday, Ramesh Bhanushali, the farsan shop, was remanded to five days of police custody by the Andheri court. He was arrested for building an extra floor illegally and not following fire safety norms.

DCP N. Reddy said, Its the BMCs responsibility to conduct an inquiry and submit a report. We are conducting our probe. Once we get that report we will see what needs to be done.

A Sakinaka police official said, It is the shop owners fault as he stored inflammable liquids in such a high quantity. Also, he didnt have any fire extinguisher. He had done several illegal works, and he is totally responsible for the death of 12 workers. He added that BMC should have demolished it.
Justice Nutan Sardesai of the Goa bench of the High Court dismissed the petition by Tejpal.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by Tehelkas former editor-in-chief, Tarun Tejpal, seeking quashing of rape and other charges levelled against him by a former woman colleague.

Justice Nutan Sardesai of the Goa bench of the High Court dismissed the petition by Tejpal, who has been accused of raping the woman during an event in Goa in 2013. The detailed order is expected to be pronounced later.

The district court in Mapusa town had earlier framed charges against Tejpal under IPC sections 354-A (sexual harassment), 376 (rape) and 376(2)(k) (rape of a woman by a person being in the position of control or dominance over the woman), and began the trial last month.

The crime branch later added to the case IPC sections 341 (wrongful restraint) and 342 (wrongful confinement), 376 (2)(f) (person in the position of trust or authority over women, committing rape of such women), 376 C (sexual intercourse by person in authority) and 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty).The detailed copy of the order, by which our petition has been dismissed, is not with us. So, we are not able to know on which ground it was rejected, lawyer Pramodkumar Dubey, who represented Tejpal in the high court, said.

Senior lawyer Aman Lekhi, who argued on behalf of Tejpal in the HC on December 12, had then presented before it CCTV footage of the area outside the lift of a five-star hotel, where he is alleged to have sexually assaulted the woman.
The union government is targeting construction of 19 lakh houses in the state till 2022, under PMAY.

Mumbai: The state government has asked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to provide open spaces for the construction of 50,000 tenements in Mumbai for Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) projects. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is trying to push housing projects, including SRA, so as to achieve targets of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), said sources from the housing department.

The union government is targeting construction of 19 lakh houses in the state till 2022, under PMAY. Accordingly, the state has approved construction of 182,783 new houses in the state under this scheme. MHADA has sent 94 project proposals to the state government, out of which 60 projects have been approved. The government has assured that it will provide affordable housing to the poor in the state. As such, 121,000 houses will be reserved only for the economically backward in the state. The state has approved 11 housing projects for the Konkan Board, which will construct 26,000 houses in the Mumbai metropolitan area, said housing department sources.

However, there are several issues in urban areas. Sufficient land is not available to construct tenements under low-cost housing. SRA schemes have been delayed for many years due to various reasons. At present, a letter of intent (LoI) has been issued to 1,513 SRA schemes and 4.41 lakh new houses will be constructed under them. The basic requirement for SRA schemes is transit camps which are not sufficiently available, causing a delay in the projects. The open spaces option has been preferred for it. If BMC provides open spaces, the scheme will get momentum, said housing department sources.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel in July this year, a new equation between the two countries began.

Mumbai: Taking relations between India and Israel a step further, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be coming to India for the first time on January 14 and will also visit Mumbai during his four-day tour. Two programmes are likely to take place, at the Chabad House at Colaba and at Hotel Taj in South Mumbai, where all the dignitaries will be present. Moshe (or Baby Moshe as the then two-year-old toddler was known), whose parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka who ran the Chabad House in Colaba were killed during the 26/11 attacks, is also likely to come to India.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel in July this year, a new equation between the two countries began. Modi had then invited Netanyahu to India. There are various initiatives between the two countries regarding security, defence, trade, culture and tourism.

Confirming the visit, a senior government official said that Netyanyahu would be the first international guest in India in the New Year. "He would be visiting Ahmedabad, Delhi, Agra and Mumbai. He is likely to start his visit from Ahmedabad on January 14. There are many programmes lined up for the Prime Minister which would be revealed at the appropriate time," the official who did not wish to be named told The Asian Age.

The sources in the government said that Mr Netanyahu would come to Mumbai on the last day of his visit. There are two-three programmes being chalked out for him. One of them would be at Chabad House or the Nariman House which was attacked by terrorists in 2008. In another programme at Hotel Taj, the dignitaries from various sections of the society would be meeting him.

When asked about Baby Moshe's visit, the official refused to comment. Modi during his visit to Israel had met Baby Moshe and invited him to visit India.

Modi's Israel visit was considered significant at the international level, as both the sides strengthened bilateral ties in several issues. Netanyahu would be the second Israeli Prime Minister to visit India, as former prime minister Ariel Sharon had visited the country in 2003.

Mr Netanyahu will visit the country on January 14. He is likely to attend programmes at Chabad House and Hotel Taj.
The Station House Officer of Padgha police station said that the lab test of the meat had confirmed it was beef.

The meat was being transported from Sangamner to Govandi in Mumbai where it was to be delivered to a meat-seller, say police. (Photo: File | Representational)

Thane: The Thane district police seized a stock of three tonnes of animal meat from a tempo with police claiming that it was beef.

Police said that the vehicle was intercepted in the early hours of Wednesday within the limits of Padgha police station and two persons, the driver and cleaner of the tempo, had been arrested.

The Station House Officer of Padgha police station said that the lab test of the meat had confirmed it was beef.

The official said that the tempo was coming from Nashik to Mumbai and the meat was concealed beneath scrap items loaded onto the tempo.

Police said that the tip-off about the tempo allegedly transporting beef was received from Bajrang Dal activists and a trap was laid at Ajroli checkpost to intercept the vehicle.

The meat was being transported from Sangamner to Govandi in Mumbai where it was to be delivered to a meat-seller, police said.

The official said that cases under relevant sections of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act of 1995 and also the Indian Penal Code had been registered against the two arrested persons.
The total strength of women members in the newly-elected Assemblies is just seven per cent in Gujarat and five per cent in Himachal.

BJP workers celebrate with cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Monday after the party's victory in the Assembly elections in Gujarat on Himachal Pradesh. (Photo: PTI)

In the many analysis and the noisy war of words thats still continuing in television studios after the Gujarat and Himachal election results, an important aspect that has been conspicuously absent from the discourse is the abysmally low representation of women fielded as candidates by both major players  the BJP and Congress. In Gujarat, the BJP and Congress fielded 12 and 10 women candidates respectively out of 182. In 2012, the strength of women members in the Gujarat Assembly was just 15, now its further down to 13. Similarly, in Himachal, of 338 contestants, only 19 were women. The BJP and Congress together put up nine candidates, of which four won.

The total strength of women members in the newly-elected Assemblies is just seven per cent in Gujarat and five per cent in Himachal. Further analysis shows that in the Assembly elections in March 2017, of the total number of 690 seats contested in five states, only 55 are represented by women. The strength of women MPs in the current Lok Sabha is 11.41 per cent, while in the Rajya Sabha its 11.43 per cent, far lower than the global average, and even compared to neighbours like Pakistan and Afghanistan. The depressingly low representation of women both in Parliament and the Assemblies, and in party nominations, underlines the need to bring back the focus on the long-awaited and much-disputed Womens Reservation Bill.

Introduced first in 1996 in the Lok Sabha, the bill has generated stormy debates and unruly behaviour inside Parliament. In its turbulent journey over 20 years, the bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010 by the UPA government, but lapsed with the dissolution of the House in 2014. The BJP government, despite its pre-poll promise of passing the bill, hasnt made any attempt to table it in Parliament in the last three years.

An argument against the formalisation of womens representation through the bill is why cant political parties create internal reservations ensuring the fielding of 33 per cent women candidates in every election. The fallacy of this argument is that internal reservations cant be made mandatory, and can easily be breached by any party. And even if internal quotas are made mandatory, if seats are not reserved, most of the women would get the worst seats from which they wouldnt be elected. Pitched against strong male candidates, the chances of such women losing are quite high. As winnability is extremely important in electoral politics, parties shy away from giving tickets to women. All parties must nurture and create women leaders from within their ranks by giving women more responsibilities and sufficient representation within their organisation at all levels so that they can take on anyone, irrespective of gender. But till that happens, its important to ensure a greater degree of womens representation trough affirmative action like the reservation bill. This would also encourage more women to join active politics.

Another criticism of reservations is the assumption that there will be proxy candidates like wives and other female relatives fronting for male candidates. Even if thats true, one cant still discount the fact that even these female relatives are women. Despite a large number of such proxy candidates in panchayats and local bodies with minimum 33 per cent quota for women, studies have shown very positive effects of reservation towards the cause of womens empowerment. A large number of women come out of the shadow of their male relatives, and develop and assert their leadership with time.

Another argument against reservation is that the proposed rotation of constituencies every five years will act as a disincentive to work in a constituency as no one would have a stake in it. Its also considered not fair that after nurturing a constituency for five years, one has to let it go due to reservations. The same logic would apply to a woman representative as well.

If she fights from a reserved constituency, its certain her constituency would be changed in the next term. A similar system is there in panchayats too, but the stakes for the Lok Sabha and Assemblies are far higher. One way out could be to make the rotation every 10 years rather than every five.

Then the current representative will have the chance of renomination from the same constituency. A possible guarantee of 10 years should be more than enough in an ever-changing flux of the world of politics. Various suggestions are made for accommodating women through reservations without hurting the interest of the current setup, like increasing the total number of constituencies through delimitation and others. But to consider and debate these suggestions, it is necessary that the government should initiate the bill first.

The participation of women in electoral politics compared to men is exceedingly low. Politics is a full-time and taxing job. The risk factor is extremely high; and as its difficult to pursue another career while in active politics, one needs financial resources even for mere survival. Women also need support system to supplement her traditional responsibilities at home. Very few women have access to independent sources of sufficient income and support, primarily from her family. The uncertainty makes it even more difficult. A man too may face similar problems. But in a traditional society, families are much more willing to invest in a man getting into politics compared to a woman.

Only affirmative action like reservation can incentivise more women, particularly from non-political families, to join electoral politics.

The BJP has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha and the largest number in the Rajya Sabha. Mrs Sonia Gandhi had written to the Prime Minister reaffirming her support for the Womens Bill, and Congress president Rahul Gandhi has reiterated that support. If the BJP and Congress join forces, no one can stop the bills passage. But for that the BJP must show political will and introduce it in Parliament as soon as possible.
Some of the Presidents strongest allies conceded that voters may not immediately warm to the new law.

Mr Trump himself complained in a tweet that defeated Dems and the media were out to demean the tax package but the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. (Photo:

Washington: A triumphant President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their USD 1.5 trillion tax overhaul on Wednesday as a historic victory for the American people. The American people, however, will need some convincing.

As Mr Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement and the biggest tax changes in a generation some Republicans warned that the party could face a painful political backlash against an overhaul that offers corporations and wealthy taxpayers the biggest benefits and was projected to trigger the loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

There was no hint of anxiety at the White House, though, as the president and congressional Republicans pushed any qualms aside and revelled in a much-needed win at the end of a year marked by GOP infighting and political stumbles.

We are making America great again, Mr Trump declared, personally thanking his little team of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticised.

I dont know if well have bigger moments, but we hope to, said Mr Trump.

The President was expected to sign the bill at a later date for technical reasons. In fact, the signing may be postponed until the start of the new calendar year in order to delay USD 120 billion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and spare Republicans from having to explain them in an election year.

The tax package provides a deep cut in the corporate rate, from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. On the individual side, about 80 per cent of American households will get tax cuts in 2018, while about 5 per cent will pay more, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Centre.

People who make less than USD 25,000 will see an average tax cut of USD 60; those who earn between USD 49,000 and USD 86,000 will get about USD 900, and those in the top 1 per cent of income earning more than USD 733,000 will receive around USD 51,000 in tax savings, the policy centre said.

The cuts will come at a price. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the legislation will add USD 1.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Some of the Presidents strongest allies conceded that voters may not immediately warm to the new law.

Andy Surabian, a senior aide for a pro-Trump super PAC, likened the Presidents position to that of Ronald Reagan, who struggled through low approval ratings early in his presidential term after Congress passed a tax cut that led to huge Republican losses in the 1982 midterm elections. Reagan went on to a sweeping re-election in 1984 after the economy improved.

Even if we dont start seeing positive effects in 2018, the important thing here is President Mr Trump sets himself up to win re-election in 2020, said Mr Surabian.

GOP strategists and candidates alike called on MrTrump to launch an immediate public relations tour to sell the plan to help avert an anti-Republican tsunami in 2018.

People dont understand it, said Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, though he still called passage a massive win for Mr Trump and the GOP.

Read: In his 1st legislative victory, Senate passes Trumps tax reform bill

Only about 1 in 3 voters have supported the legislation in recent days, according to several polls. About half of Americans believe the plan will hurt their personal finances. And 2 in 3 voters say the wealthy will get the most benefits, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week

The White House said on Wednesday that Mr Trump will actively promote the bill. Aides argued that media coverage has not accurately portrayed the benefits and that people will come around as they feel the payoff.

Mr Trump himself complained in a tweet that defeated Dems and the media were out to demean the tax package but the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon.

Democrats, who unanimously opposed the tax plan in Congress, were furious about the new policy yet upbeat about the potential political fallout in 2018s elections. They need to flip 24 House seats and just two Senate seats to take control of each chamber.

Asked if the tax bill will help Republicans hold the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leaned into a microphone and said, Let. Them. Think. That.

The bill goes far beyond taxes.

While it does not repeal the law known as Obamacare, the legislation finalised by the House on Wednesday attacks a central tenet of the health care system by eliminating the requirement that all Americans have health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office says elimination of the individual mandate will boost health care costs by about 10 per cent for those with coverage and leave 13 million additional Americans without health insurance in 10 years.

Millions of people will still remain covered under the laws Medicaid expansion and health care exchanges, but Mr Trump cast the package as a shadow repeal.

We have essentially repealed Obamacare, the President declared.

On taxes, the first modest effects will be felt in February paychecks.

People living in high-tax states like New York and California may ultimately pay more. Among those who benefit, the wealthy will make out far better than the working-class voters who fuelled Mr Trumps victory in 2016.

Mr Trump said on Wednesday the bill will spur economic growth as corporations, flush with cash, increase wages and hire more workers. Democrats questioned, even mocked that prediction.

Reflecting the political risks, some of the nations most vulnerable House Republicans voted against the bill.

Rep Peter King, R-NY, one of 12 GOP House members to vote no, said the tax plan would hurt many people in high-tax states. The bill imposes a USD10,000 cap on taxpayers who deduct their state, local and property taxes. Currently, there is no limit on how much in state and local taxes you can deduct.

All but one of the GOP no votes came from like-minded Republicans facing re-election in 11 months in moderate districts across New Jersey, New York and California.

The road to a Democratic House majority, if there is one, runs through these districts.

All the salesmanship in the world wont change the reality that the tax overhaul overwhelmingly favours the rich, Democratic critics said.

People think its unfair. They want tax reform, they dont want tax cuts for the wealthy, said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. And I think people will realise theyve been sold a pig in a poke.
He also spoke briefly about the Bangladeshi immigrant Akayed Ullah responsible for the latest New York terrorist attack.

US President Donald Trump said people coming from the lottery programme bring in some very bad people. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he was ending chain migration and diversity visa lottery. He also spoke briefly about the Bangladeshi immigrant Akayed Ullah responsible for the latest New York terrorist attack.

"We will get rid of chain migration and the visa lottery programme," he said.

He said people coming from the lottery programme bring in "some very bad" people.

"We do not want this group of people anymore," he said. People who met him in the neighbourhood said he was horrible, nasty, mean, would not talk to people, he said. "They could see it coming," he said.

Trump said the entire world can see America is coming back, rapidly and strongly.

"One of the great things, we are bringing back perhaps four trillion dollars into our country," he said in an apparent reference in the changes in the tax codes that would help companies bring back their money stacked abroad.

Donald Trump praised his Indian-American UN envoy Nikki Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be "taken advantage" of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

Haley as American representative vetoed against the draft resolution.

A similar resolution is being moved in the UN General Assembly too, where there is no veto provision.

Praising Haley for her stand in support of his policy, Trump said the countries would "potentially" vote against the US at the General Assembly.

"They take hundreds and millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then vote against us. We are watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We will save a lot of money," said the US President in his possibly last Cabinet meeting of the year.

Trump said people were tired of the US being taken advantage of.

"We are not going to be taken advantage anymore," he said.

Holding the Cabinet meeting in the backdrop of his major legislative victory on the Congressional passage of his sweeping tax reform bill, Trump said this meeting would be one of celebration.

He said this is a historic victory for the American people.

"It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hardworking Americans," he said adding that the tax reforms "brings overseas corporate profits back" to the US.

Trump said the US had unleashed its military might on ISIS and today the coalition to defeat the terror group has captured nearly 100 per cent of the territory held by the outfit in Iraq and Syria.

"We are making it very difficult for them," he said.
On October 13, Nawaz Sharif filed a petition in the SC for merge of Avenfield properties, Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Flagship Investments references.

Islamabad: Ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has again requested the chief justice of Pakistan to reconsider his order, passed on November 16, 2017 against clubbing all corruption references against him into one.

The cases have been filed against Mr Sharif and his family by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) after Mr Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court as the premier in July.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) chief filed an application in the Supreme Court through his counsel Khwaja Haris under Order V, Rules 2(5) and 4 of the Supreme Court Rules 1980 for consideration of the order passed in chamber by the Chief Justice seeking merger of the NAB references.

He prayed to the Chief Justice to direct the office to assign a number to the applicants constitutional petition and fix it for hearing before a learned bench of this court.

On October 13, Nawaz Sharif filed a petition in the SC for merge of Avenfield properties, Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Flagship Investments references.

The SC assistant registrar, however, raised objections over the Nawaz plea and the Chief Justice on November 16, 2017, while taking up the matter, upheld the objections, raised by the Assistant Registrar on October 20, 2017.
Pakistan has appointed Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, a former chief justice of Pakistan, to be its judge ad-hoc in the Jadhav case in the ICJ.

File photo of former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of 'espionage'. (Photo: PTI)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday granted visas to alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhavs mother and wife to visit the death-row inmate on December 25. Foreign office spokesperson Dr Mohammed Faisal tweeted: Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today, he said.

Last week, Pakistan had rejected Indias plea for consular access to Jadhav at the ICJ saying the facility could not be granted to a spy who had been convicted of terrorism. In its counter-memorial submitted to the ICJ, Pakistan said the consular access under the Vienna Convention was not for terrorists but legal visitors. Pakistan contended that Jadhav should not be considered an ordinary prisoner as he had confessed to his role in terrorism.

India challenged Jadhavs conviction in the ICJ but Pakistan disputed the jurisdiction after the court observed that turning down the request for consular access was a denial of right. In May, the UNs top court ordered Pakistan to stay the Jadhavs execution.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh contended that if Pakistan went ahead with the execution, it will amount to a premeditated murder.

Pakistan has appointed Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, a former chief justice of Pakistan, to be its judge ad-hoc in the Jadhav case in the ICJ. The procedures of the ICJ allow a party to nominate a judge ad-hoc in circumstances where there is no judge of the court with that partys nationality.

After the Indian request was considered for a few weeks, Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Mohammed Faisal had announced this month that Pakistan would allow the mother and wife of Kulbushan Jadhav to meet him. He said Pakistan had informed India it was ready to allow the visit of the mother of Jadhav, along with his wife on December 25.

A diplomat from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will be allowed to accompany the visitors. Requisite security would be provided to the visitors, he said. Pakistan had earlier only allowed Jadhavs wife to meet him but India sought permission for his mother too.

Jadhav was arrested last year in the Balochistan province for spying and stoking terrorism and sectarianism in the country. Islamabad also handed over dossiers to the UN regarding Jadhavs confessional statement.
Netanyahu mimicked veteran journalist Moshe Nussbaum of Channel 2 News.

Police have questioned Benjamin Netanyahu in two cases involving possible bribery, fraud and breach of trust. (Photo: File)

Jerusalem: An Israeli TV reporter says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologised to him in a phone call after mocking him in a speech.

Netanyahu mimicked veteran journalist Moshe Nussbaum of Channel 2 News - who has been covering the prime minister's ongoing corruption investigations - in a speech to his Likud party this week. Nussbaum told Army Radio on Thursday that he told Netanyahu he was not offended.

An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, confirmed the call.

Netanyahu has lashed out at media over coverage of the investigations.

Police have questioned Netanyahu in two cases involving possible bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and says the allegations are part of a political witch hunt by hostile media.
Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for their brave and uncompromising stance.

The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before approval, Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod. (Photo: File)

Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of US policy on December 6 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump's announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tyres. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.

Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack.

Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of the UN draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States "will be taking names".

Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for "their brave and uncompromising stance". He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington's lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The attitude towards Israel of many countries, on all continents, outside the walls of the United Nations, is changing and will ultimately permeate into the UN - the house of lies," he said.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.

Israel considers Jerusalem 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 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Several senior diplomats said Haley's warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing US voters.
Strikes came as Washington revealed that US forces have carried out more than 120 air strikes against jihadists in Yemen.

Saudi-born Abu Hajar al-Makki and three other AQAP militants were killed when a drone blew up their vehicle in the Wadi Obeida district of Marib province, east of the capital Sanaa, tribal sources said. (Photo: File/Representational)

Aden: The propaganda chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was among six jihadists killed in two separate US drone strikes in Yemen, tribal sources said Thursday.

Wednesday evening strikes came as Washington revealed that US forces have carried out more than 120 air strikes against jihadists in Yemen in 2017 as part of a long-running campaign that has intensified since President Donald Trump took office.

Saudi-born Abu Hajar al-Makki and three other AQAP militants were killed when a drone blew up their vehicle in the Wadi Obeida district of Marib province, east of the capital Sanaa, tribal sources said.

A separate strike on a second vehicle killed two other AQAP militants in the same area, they added.

Washington says its strikes have killed a number of senior AQAP figures in recent months, including Mujahid al-Adani, who was killed on November 20.

It considers AQAP to be the worldwide jihadist network's most dangerous branch.

The Sunni extremist group has thrived in the chaos of nearly three years of civil war between the Saudi-backed government and Shiite rebels who control the capital.

In addition to the air strikes, mostly carried out by drones, US special forces have conducted a number of ground raids against AQAP.

The Pentagon has also been attacking a local branch of the Islamic State group, which it says has doubled in size over the past year.
The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car.

Acting commissioner Shane Patton said that the police do not believe what happened is terror related but will continue to investigate. (Photo: AFP)

Melbourne: An Indian was among 19 people injured Thursday when a speeding SUV ran down pedestrians at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne in what the Australian police said a deliberate act.

A white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd at the intersection just after 4.30 pm local time (0530 GMT), injuring 19 people including Rohit Kaul, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir.

Quoting eyewitnesses, the local media said that people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle.

The attack was an act of evil and an act of cowardice, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.

He said the condition of four people hit was critical. Fifteen others were stable.

The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car.

My husband was talking to my son Avi and crossing the intersection. Suddenly, my husbands phone fell down and we could hear loud noises and people screaming on the other side before the line went dead, Kauls wife told PTI.

We tried to call him on his mobile but there was no response. We soon got a call from a fellow Indian who said my husband was injured and was being taken to a hospital, she added.

Her husband suffered leg injuries and will undergo a surgery this evening. He is stable, she said.

The driver was waiting for the red light and when people started crossing the road, he jumped the red light and crashed into them, she said, adding that it was a deliberate act.

Read: Car mows down pedestrians in Melbourne, injuring 12; driver arrested

A pre-school child who suffered a head injury is not in a critical condition.

Acting commissioner Shane Patton said that the police do not believe what happened is terror related but will continue to investigate.

He said police will allege the man intentionally drove into the pedestrians.

The driver of the car has been arrested and is receiving hospital treatment, Patton said.

The driver, identified as a 32-year-old of Afghan descent, was known to police in relation to minor traffic offences and a minor assault in 2010.

We believe hes driven down the tram tracks and he crashed into a tram-stop on the other side, Patton said.

A 24-year-old man was also detained at the scene after he was seen filming the incident on a phone. He was also carrying a bag that contained knives but police said it was probable that he had no links to the incident and say the driver was alone in the car, the Age reported.

The car was registered to a family member and police said was not stolen.

Victoria police appealed to people to upload any images they might have of the incident to a cloud address to help assist with their probe.
China has been consistently blocking moves by India, the US, the UK and France to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.

The issue of China blocking the listing of Masood Azhar at the United Nations is expected to come up in Friday's 20th round of India-China border talks in New Delhi. (Photo: File)

Beijing: China has rejected India's assertion that moves at the United Nations to list terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist were blocked due to narrow political considerations, saying it acted in a "candid way" over the issue based on rules and procedures.

China has been consistently blocking moves by India, the US, the UK and France to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the 1267 Sanctions Committee by putting technical holds.

India's permanent representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin, during an open debate Wednesday in the Security Council criticised some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism.

"It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," he said.

Responding to Mr Akbaruddin's remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that on Masood Azhar's issue China had "acted in a candid way with ease".

"So what we do is nothing to do with the narrow minded political considerations as you mentioned," Ms Hua claimed.

The issue of China blocking the listing of Masood Azhar at the United Nations is expected to come up in Friday's 20th round of India-China border talks in New Delhi.

The talks will be held between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi. Besides the border related issues, the two top officials also have the mandate to discuss all issues between the two countries.

"We have stated our position multiple times about the listing issue 1267 committee to the media queries and dealt the questions in a sincere way on different occasions in the past," Ms Hua said.

She said China "firmly" backed crackdown on various international terrorist groups.

Defending China's decision to block the moves against Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terrorist attack, Ms Hua said "on this issue, we make our own judgement based on the merit of the matters themselves".

She said the "relevant move" by China in 1267 committee was based on its rules and procedures. "We will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international communication," Ms Hua said.
by Nirmala Carvalho

A Kerala clergyman was beaten up for the "forced conversion" of a Hindu family. Nationalists troll political leaders who participate in charity events. Seven Pentecostal Christians were released in Uttar Pradesh, but their case is still pending.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  Anti-Christian and anti-Christmas persecution continues in India.

A Protestant church was attacked in Kerala and a clergyman beaten up on charges of forced conversions. In Maharashtra, local political leaders from the states ruling party were trolled on social media. In Uttar Pradesh, the authorities released on bail a number of Pentecostal Christians allowing them to celebrate the birth of Christ with their family.

On Monday, unknown attackers broke into the Home Mission Society Church in Kuttamala, about 35 km east of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the State of Kerala. The congregation is part of the Church of South India, the largest Protestant denomination in southern India.

The attackers ransacked the site, breaking up the furniture, the sound system and liturgical objects. The perpetrators have not yet been identified, but the police have begun their inquiry.

The sacking of the church is connected to another episode of violence that occurred a few days earlier. On 14 December, Rev Shine P Lawrence was attacked in Amboori, about three kilometres from his church.

After singing Christmas carols, the clergyman was taking a child home. Some witnesses noted that Hindu extremists targeted him because the boy and his family had converted to Christianity from Hinduism.

Because of his injuries, the reverend has had to go for treatment at the Neyyattinkara district hospital. In the complaint he filed, he said that he was beaten because of conversion.

Christians were also attacked by religious extremists elsewhere in the country during Advent. At Satna, Madhya Pradesh, 30 seminarians and two priests were held hostage for several hours a few days ago because they sang Christmas carols.

The car of two priests who had come to the police station holding their confreres was set on fire. Speaking to AsiaNews, the rector of the seminary condemned "the atrocities committed against Christian missionaries and the intimidation of religious minorities."

Hindu fundamentalism in India does not only affect Christians. In Mumbai, Maharashtra, Ashish Shelar, head of the local branch of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was trolled on social media for promoting a Christmas event.

He was accused of "betraying the cardinal values" and supporting "conversions" after he tweeted an invitation to his 90,000 followers.

The protectors of nationalism also trolled Amruta Fadnavis, wife of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, for attending a charity event to collect toys to give to poor children for Christmas.

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, Amal Pal Singh, a judge with the Court of Additional Session in Mathura, released on bail seven Pentecostal Christians arrested two weeks ago on charges of offending the religious sentiment of Hindus.

C Michael, national coordinator of the United Christian Forum (UCF) and of the Minority Affairs of All India Catholic Union (AICU), said that the members of the family, relatives and the community received this news of bail as a Christmas that arrived a week early.

The Christian leader said that their lawyer presented a bail order before the magistrate that ordered their detention. A surety bond of 50,000 rupees (US$ 780) was deposited for each.

Once all the procedures are completed they will be released. Most probably, either this evening or tomorrow morning, they may be able to join back their families, the lawyer said. However, the judge has not freed them of charges. The hearing on charges may come up sometime in January 2018.

The seven Pentecostals had been invited to pray by a resident of a village, who asked for their blessings to heal a sick relative. But local members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu paramilitary group, and the Bajrang Dal, the youth organisation of right-wing extremist Hindu group Vishva Hindu Parishad, went to the house, where they push around and beat up their victims.

I am happy that the rule of law has been upheld by the Honourable Judge, said a satisfied Pramod Singh, a lawyer who is president of the Christian Legal Association. The magistrate rejected the frivolous and false accusations by some political ideologues seeking to restrict the fundamental rights of individuals to express their beliefs.

For his part, UCP president Michael Williams said, We have requested the SSP of Mathura to provide protection to all those granted bail today. My prayer is that in this month of Christmas may there be peace and harmony among all communities.

I thank all for their prayers and encouragement who stood by together at this time, he added. It is time to set aside things that divide us and come together for the proper growth of our great country.

This order must cause fellow citizens to understand and respect the constitutional freedoms of each citizen. False allegations against members of any community for the sake of political mileage are just not acceptable.
by Purushottam Nayak

The ceremonies took place on 17 December with 25 priests, 30 nuns and 10,000 believers present. The Christian faith remains steadfast locally despite the violence of the 2008 pogroms by Hindu fundamentalists.

Cuttack-Bhubaneswar (AsiaNews) - Thousands of Catholics took part in the ordination of four young deacons and the confirmation in Christ of 348 people in Kandhamal. Both ceremonies took place last Sunday in Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Bamunigam.

The two events mark the most significant moment for the local Catholics during Advent and confirm the strength of the Christian faith in the State of Odisha (Orissa), marked by terrible pogroms in 2008.

Some 25 priests, 30 nuns and 10,000 believers attended the ordination Mass, presided by Mgr John Barwa, archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar.

"Today you are entrusted with the great task of preaching the Gospel with conviction, administering the sacraments, visiting the poor, the sick and the afflicted, the archbishop told the new deacons: Askhya Senapati, Ananta Uthansingh, Deepak Uthansingh and Divyaranjan Digal.

You must be clear in your preaching, with a strong faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit provides you with the wonderful gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, pity and the fear of God," he added.

Mgr Barwa also confirmed 348 people.

"I am very happy to receive the sacrament of confirmation, which makes me aware of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, said Snigdha Nayak, one of the newly confirmed.

Fr Santosh Singh, the local parish priest, is convinced that "now the kids will become more mature".

"We prepared them for five months, said Bijay Mantri, the catechist.
Party and government officials must promote traditional Chinese culture, not attend banquets and ceremonies. Shenyang University bans students from meeting to celebrate Christmas. In Gansu, Commerce and Industry Department forces business to remove Christmas trees from its online store.

Beijing (AsiaNews/RFA)  The disciplinary arm of the ruling Chinese Communist Party has banned its members and government officials from celebrating Christmas, likening the practice to "spiritual opium" for its members.

A notice issued by the Commission for Discipline Inspection of Hengyang city in the central province of Hunan warned city officials not to engage in meals and gatherings on Christmas Eve, warning that those caught violating the rules would have to "bear responsibility."

The wording of the notice suggests it has been sent to officials nationwide.

"With the approach of Christmas, leaders and officials of all ranks must promote traditional Chinese culture and take on the task of building a spiritual home for the Chinese people," the notice says.

"They must earnestly study the doctrine of cultural self-confidence introduced at the 19th Party Congress, and refrain from blindly celebrating foreign festivals or engaging in Western religions," it said.

"They must not attend any celebrations of a Western origin, and carry out good security work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day," it noted.

Meanwhile, a company in the northwestern province of Gansu has removed Christmas trees from its online store, after warnings from the local Commerce and Industry Department, sources told RFA.

The moves come after a university in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang banned its students from holding any gatherings to celebrate Christmas.

"In recent years, some young people have been blindly celebrating Western religious festivals such as Silent Night, the Chinese term for the night before Christmas, and Christmas Day as a result of the commercial hype surrounding Western culture," a directive from the Shenyang Pharmaceutical University's Communist Party Youth League branch said.
Exchange of warning shots between the two armies, but the bullets did not cross the border. Yesterday two civilians fled to South Korea. In all, 15 citizens of the North have escaped to the south.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - This morning, a North Korean soldier escaped to South Korea through the demilitarized zone (DMZ). After the deserter found injured in South Korea last month, this is the fourth military to flee from the socialist republic in a year.

The deserter is a young 19-year-old soldier who appeared at the post office on the west-west side around 8:04 am. After his escape, the North Korean border guards approached the military demarcation line to look for him. The passage was greeted by southern guards with a warning radio broadcast and 20 warning shots. Soon after, the same North fired some shots. None of the bullets crossed the border.

Meanwhile, the Unification Ministry states that two North Korean civilians were found yesterday on a small wooden boat and that a joint investigation to identify them is under way. Last month, another soldier had escaped from the militarized border, and was injured by several gunshots. The health conditions in which he was found opened a window on the harsh humanitarian conditions facing the population of North Korea.

15 North Koreans, including 4 soldiers, have escaped this year to South Korea. A significant increase compared to 2016, when only one soldier and four civilians fled.
by Michele Brambilla

The PIME regional superior runs the St Vincent Hospital in Dinajpur. The hospital "has a family touch that has become rooted over time. During the year, the superior general visited the mission. The PIME missionary met with Pope Francis in Dhaka.

Dinajpur (AsiaNews)  For Fr Michele Brambilla, PIME* regional superior in Bangladesh, the past year has been spent, as always, between the needs of the community of missionaries and the care of the sick. However, 2017 was also marked by an exceptional event, Pope Franciss visit to Dhaka, during which he brought the message of the universal Church to one of the "peripheries" of the Christian world.

The clergyman, who lives in Dinajpur, runs the St Vincent Hospital, the local diocesan medical facility where "I realise more and more of how, in addition to medical treatment, patients want people who are close to them, who make them feel at home."

On 2 December, he met the pope in the Holy Rosary church in Tejgaon, during the gathering reserved for the countrys consecrated Catholics. For him, the pontiff "came to this land of mission to confirm us in the faith." His Christmas letter follows:

Dearest friends,

as Holy Christmas approaches I decided to write to you to say a few things about myself. As you know, I have two major tasks in Bangladesh: I run the diocesan hospital and head the community of PIME missionaries.

In the hospital several people serve with me in various capacities, doing most of the work with the sick. I realise more and more of how, in addition to medical treatment, patients want people who are close to them, who make them feel at home.

I believe that our hospital, even though it is an institution, has a family touch that has become rooted over time, ever since Father Bonolo began to welcome some ill people and unaccompanied children in 1957 alone.

Perhaps even he would never have thought that it could become a hospital recognised by the government that continues to treat everyone, especially the poorest.

The very diverse PIME community experienced a special period during the visit of our Superior General who travelled to all the places where PIME missionaries are present and listened to each of them.

At the end of his visit, a three-day regional assembly was organised during which we shared pleasant and friendly moments.

However, the event that most touched each of us was the pope's visit. Once again, the Holy Father did what he preaches. He reached out to one of the peripheries of the Church, a land of mission, to confirm us in the faith.

I think that many of you saw the images on TV and I will not got into the details of what happened. For my part and that of many others, we are grateful to the pope for meeting us in the church of Tejgaon, Dhaka, and for his words and encouragement to continue our missionary work.

To each of you I send my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A big hug to everyone.

* Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions
New Delhi (AsiaNews) - Rajnath Singh, Indian Minister of the Interior, has assured that Christmas in India will take place without problems. Yesterday he met a delegation led by Card. Baselios Cleemis, president of the Indian Bishops' Conference (CBCI), who reported the concerns of Christians in the light of a series of episodes of intimidation in recent days. The Union government number two has promised safe festivities. However, just yesterday evening in Rajasthan, a group of Hindu fundamentalists interrupted a Christmas ceremony accusing the organizers of "forced conversions".

The meeting between the representative of the government of Narendra Modi and the ecclesiastical hierarchy takes place at a critical moment for the Christian minority. Last week in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, 30 seminarians and two priests were detained while they were in a village to perform Christmas carols. The Hindu radicals held them hostage and set a car on fire owned by another priest who had rushed to the police station to get news of the detainees. A couple of days ago in Uttar Pradesh a far-right youth faction linked to chief minister Yogi Adityanath issued a warning to Catholic schools: not to celebrate Christmas because it "leads" to the conversion of children. During the Advent period, again in Uttar Pradesh, seven Pentecostals were arrested on proselytism charges; the judge ordered them to be released on bail, but their judicial case is just beginning.

Card. Cleemis stated: I submitted a memorandum to the home minister to seek justice for the innocent people, request him to ensure such events do not happen in future and to provide safety for everyone in the country". Two days ago the Cardinal went to Satna, where he collected the testimonies of the Catholics and spoke to the police and civil authorities. The events of Satna, he argues, "threaten the credentials of our democratic system. He bemoaned that the police remained silent spectators when the Church people were manhandled inside the police station. The seminarians have been conducting non formal education in the village for several years. The attackers were all outsiders, not the villagers, the cardinal explained. Instead of registering a case against the attackers the police filed a case against a priest for alleged conversion, he added. The prelate dismissed the conversion charge as frivolous and absolutely baseless.

Despite the reassurances of the minister, yesterday around 8:30 pm (local time) some nationalist fanatics blocked Christmas celebrations in the district of Pratapgarh, in Rajasthan. The event was organized by the association "Masih Shakti Samiti" (committee of the power of Jesus) at the community center, owned by the government and right in front of the revenue agency and the police headquarters. Witnesses say that the radicals raided and overturned the modest decorations that embellished the hall. In a video filmed during the aggression, fundamentalists accuse the organizers of conversions extorted by force. "It's not true. The rally was authorized by the district authorities ", is the reply of the Christians, who were first arrested and then released overnight.
The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) announces "sweeping operations" against Christmas hats and clothing. Christians are about 10 per cent of the population. About 90,000 police officers will be deployed across the country during the holidays, 20,000 in Central Java alone.

Jakarta (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Indonesian police appealed on Thursday for tolerance and respect for other peoples religious celebrations after an Islamist group threatened to raid businesses to check for Muslims being forced to wear Santa Claus hats or other Christmas garb.

The hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said this week that it would conduct sweeping operations, and that forcing Muslims to wear Christmas attire was a violation of their human rights.

There can be no sweeping operations . . . members of the public should respect other religions that are carrying out celebrations, National Police Chief Tito Karnavian said during a security exercise in the capital Jakarta.

The FPI said it wants to enforce a fatwa, or decree, issued by Indonesias Islamic Clerical Council in 2016 prohibiting business owners from forcing employees to wear Christmas clothing.

The FPI built its reputation with raids on restaurants and bars serving alcohol during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In more recent years, it has turned its attention to Christian celebrations, calling on the Jakarta city government to stop sponsoring New Year celebrations, which attract many thousands of people.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) has recently softened its stance on Christmas greetings. It had previously said it was haram (prohibited) to say Merry Christmas to Christians.

Still, statements like the FPIs are a source of concern for Christians. Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country in the world, and Christians represent about 10 per cent of the population with 17 million Protestants (7 per cent) and 7 million Catholics (3 per cent).

Christians are often threatened by extremists and targeted by terrorists. On Christmas Eve in 2000, 11 churches were bombed in different parts of the country, killing 13 people and wounding another 100.

Since then, every year thousands of members of Indonesias largest moderate Islamic organisations (Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah) have made themselves available for security service in front of Christian religious buildings during the holidays.

This year the police did not issue any warnings, as they did in previous years. Nevertheless, many shopping malls in Jakarta have refrained from openly displaying a festive atmosphere.

A number of radio and television stations have also not broadcast Christmas carols, so as not to create problems for their activities.

About 90,000 police officers will be on duty across the country during the holidays, in an operation largely aimed at preventing militant attacks. More than 20,000 will be deployed in Central Java alone.

On Monday, Central Java Police Chief Inspector General Condro Kirono said that on Christmas Day police will be concentrated near churches and other places of worship.

The police will begin Lilin Candi Operation tomorrow.

Among the 2,800 churches in 35 regencies and municipalities in Central Java, 180 churches will have a more stringent security detail in place, including Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral in Jakarta (pictured).
Three bishops from Ghana, where he was a missionary, were present. Lay people came from Korea, Philippines, and Vietnam. Many young people came for a "young bishop" who now picks up the baton for a Church full of challenges.

Tokyo (AsiaNews)  Mgr Tarcisio Isao Yama Kikuchi, the new archbishop of Tokyo, took office during a ceremony with international significance.

The Mass was celebrated last Saturday morning in the citys cathedral, in the presence of the entire Japanese episcopate, the nuncio to Japan Archbishop Joseph Chennoth, and the Archbishop of Seoul Card Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, as well as lay people of various nationalities.

Three bishops from Ghana were also present. The new archbishop spent many years in that country as a missionary.

Fr Lembo, the parish of Fushu (Tokyo) and regional superior of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in Japan, spoke to AsiaNews about the event.

Mgr Kikuchi, 59, was born in Iwate Prefecture. He was appointed archbishop of Tokyo in October, and is also responsible for Caritas Japan.

"There were many lay people from various dioceses and many young people", a thrilled missionary said.

We too had contacted many young people, because it is an important experience. He is a young archbishop and he will lead us, hopefully, for the next twenty years."

The Mass was celebrated in various languages, and the bishops from Ghana paid tribute to Mgr Kikuchi in African fashion, singing.

The ambassador of Ghana was also in attendance, whilst the President of Ghana sent his greeting. "This is something one would not see in Japan," Fr Lembo said.

"The archbishops own words excited him, since he focused on the primacy of the word of God and on reaching out to people who most need such proclamation in todays society."

In his address, Mgr Kikuchi presented his motto, "diversity in unity", which for him means creating unity out of the differences in Japanese culture thanks to the word of God.

As Archbishop emeritus Peter Takeo Okada passed the baton to Mgr Kikuchi, he entrusted him with the Church of Tokyo, which has many challenges, those "coming from within, because of the many traditions  those of Nagasaki, and those of Tokyo  and of course societys challenges."

Many people came Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam to attend the ceremony. It was "A very beautiful celebration, of great significance, Fr Lembo said.
In the traditional meeting for the exchange of Christmas greetings, Francis returns to denounce "small cliques" and " self-centredness". And people who "when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a Pope kept in the dark, of the old guard, rather than reciting a mea culpa".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Roman Curia is and must be "of service" to the Pope's ministry and therefore to the universal Church, in a "diaconal" logic. The "unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliqueslead to a self-centredness and the "danger" represented by "betrayal of trust" or by those who "profiteer from the Churchs motherhood ", people who "do not understanding the lofty nature of their responsibility", "when they are gently dismissed, they falsely declare themselves to be martyrs of the system, of the 'uninformed Pope', of the 'old guard' ... instead of reciting the 'mea culpa'".

The presentation of Christmas greetings between the Pope and the Roman Curia is for Francis an opportunity to affirm the principles and essential points of his reform of the central structure of the Holy See (especially in 2016) or to indicate the "diseases" of which some who serve suffer (especially in 2014).

This year, " This year I would like to share with you some reflections on the Curia ad extra, that is, on its relationship with the nations, with the Particular Churches, with the Oriental Churches, with ecumenical dialogue, with Judaism, with Islam and other religions  in other words, with the outside world".

He continued that these reflections, "are based of course on the fundamental canonical principles of the Curia and on its own history, but also on the personal vision that I have sought to share with you in my addresses of recent years, within the context of the reform currently under way. Reforms that require patience, tenacity and sensitivity. For the Curia is an ancient, complex and venerable institution made up of people of different cultures, languages and mindsets, and bound, intrinsically and from the outset, to the primatial office of the Bishop of Rome in the Church, that is, to the sacred office willed by Christ the Lord for the good of the entire Church (ad bonum totius corporis)".

The universality of the service of the Curia, therefore, "comes from the catholicity of the Petrine Ministry" and for this reason Francis has used in the past the expression "diaconal primacy", "referring immediately to the beloved image of St. Gregory the Great of Servus servorum Dei. This definition, in its Christological dimension, is above all an expression of the firm will to imitate Christ, who assumed the form of a servant ". "A similar diaconal attitude must also characterize those who, in various capacities, operate within the Roman Curia".

The reference to "ministerial diaconia" led Francis to recall " a phrase in the ancient Didascalia Apostolorum, which states that the deacon must be the ear and the mouth of the Bishop, his heart and his soul.[6] For this agreement between the two is linked to communion, harmony and peace in the Church, inasmuch as the deacon is the guardian of service in the Church. And "St. Ignatius of Loyola has resorted to the senses in the contemplation of the Mysteries of Christ and of the truth".

"This is very important for rising above that unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques that in fact represent  for all their self-justification and good intentions  a cancer leading to a self-centredness that also seeps into ecclesiastical bodies, and in particular those working in them. When this happens, we lose the joy of the Gospel, the joy of sharing Christ and of fellowship with him; we lose the generous spirit of our consecration (cf. Acts 20:35 and 2 Cor 9:7).

Here let me allude to another danger: those who betray the trust put in them and profiteer from the Churchs motherhood. I am speaking of persons carefully selected to give a greater vigour to the body and to the reform, but  failing to understand the lofty nature of their responsibility  let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory. Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a Pope kept in the dark, of the old guard, rather than reciting a mea culpa. Alongside these, there are others who are still working there, to whom all the time in the world is given to get back on the right track, in the hope that they find in the Churchs patience an opportunity for conversion and not for personal advantage. Of course, this is in no way to overlook the vast majority of faithful persons working there with praiseworthy commitment, fidelity, competence, dedication and great sanctity.

The Curia and the particular Churches

" The relationship between the Curia and Dioceses and Eparchies is of paramount importance. In the Roman Curia these find whatever help and support they may need. This relationship is grounded in cooperation and trust, and never on superiority or conflict".

" The Visits ad Limina Apostolorum, in this sense, represent a great opportunity for encounter, dialogue and mutual enrichment. I have preferred, when meeting with Bishops, to have an open and sincere conversation that remains private and goes beyond the formalities of protocol and the customary exchange of speeches and recommendations. Dialogue between the bishops and the various Dicasteries is also important. In the course of the Visits ad Liminathat resumed this year, the Bishops told me that they were received well and listened to by all the Dicasteries. This makes me very happy".

This framework also includes preparation for the next XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, convened on the theme Young people, faith and vocational discernment. " To call upon the Curia, the bishops and the entire Church to give particular attention to young people does not mean considering them alone. It also means focusing on a critical theme for a combination of relationships and pressing issues, such as intergenerational relationships, the family, pastoral work, social life, and so forth".

The Curia and the Oriental Churches

"The unity and communion that dominate the relationship of the Church of Rome and the Eastern Churches represent a concrete example of richness in diversity for the whole Church. In fidelity to their own bimillennial traditions and in the ecclesiastical communio, they experience and realize the priestly prayer of Christ (cf. Jn 17).

"The relationship between Rome and the East is one of mutual spiritual and liturgical enrichment. Indeed, the Church of Rome would not be truly catholic without the priceless riches of the Oriental Churches and lacking the heroic testimony of so many of our Oriental brothers and sisters who purify the Church by accepting martyrdom and offering their lives so as not to deny Christ".

The Curia and ecumenical dialogue

Also in the ecumenical "journey" - "an irreversible journey and not a going back" - the Curia works "at fostering encounter with our brothers and sisters, untying the knots of misunderstanding and hostility, and counteracting prejudices and the fear of the other, all of which have prevented us from seeing the richness in diversity and the depth of the Mystery of Christ and of the Church. For that mystery is always greater than any human words can express. The meetings between Popes, Patriarchs and Heads of the different Churches and Communities have always filled me with joy and gratitude.

The Curia and Judaism, Islam, other religions

"The relationship of the Roman Curia to other religions is based on the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the need for dialogue. For the only alternative to the civility of encounter is the incivility of conflict.[26] Dialogue is grounded in three fundamental lines of approach: The duty to respect ones own identity and that of others, the courage to accept differences, and sincerity of intentions. The duty to respect ones own identity and that of others, because true dialogue cannot be built on ambiguity or a willingness to sacrifice some good for the sake of pleasing others. The courage to accept differences, because those who are different, either culturally or religiously, should not be seen or treated as enemies, but rather welcomed as fellow-travellers, in the genuine conviction that the good of each resides in the good of all. Sincerity of intentions, because dialogue, as an authentic expression of our humanity, is not a strategy for achieving specific goals, but rather a path to truth, one that deserves to be undertaken patiently, in order to transform competition into cooperation.

My meetings with religious leaders during the various Apostolic Visits and here in the Vatican, are a concrete proof of this".
by Melani Manel Perera

The State Festival was held in Trincomalee, where the civil war once raged. Its aim was to share the true meaning of Christmas. The streets of Colombo lit up for Christmas. The light of humanity always dawns with the Christmas, Sirisena said.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  Sri Lankan PresidentMaithripala Sirisena offered his Christmas wishes at this years State Christmas Festival at the Hindu Cultural Centre in Trincomalee last Saturday in the presence of Catholics.

In his message, he called on everyone to follow the spirit of Christmas and join hands with the government to achieve reconciliation among the countrys many communities for the benefit of its future without allowing any room to war.

To those present the president stressed that Christmas, which delivers the message of peace and love to the world, is an important occasion to boost reconciliation and harmony among different communities.

The countrys main Catholic clerics were present, including the Apostolic Nuncio, Mgr Phero (Pierre) Nguyen Van Tot, Mgr Winston Fernando, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka, and Mgr Noel Emmanuel, bishop of Trincomalee.

John Amaratunga, Minister of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs, and Rohitha Bogollagama, Governor of the Eastern Province, represented the civil authorities.

In a statement, the Presidential Secretariat said that the event was held in Trincomalee, which was affected by the countrys 30-year civil war, with a specific purpose, i.e. sharing the true meaning of Christmas among the countrys people.

I wish to extend my greetings to all Christian devotees who are preparing to commemorate the Christmas, the president said.

The President stated that the light of humanity always dawns with the Christmas. He also pointed out that the objective of Christmas is to give life to underprivileged people and all of us have the responsibility in this regard.

The festivity marks an important part in the harmonious coexistence of the countrys religious communities.

Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist: (70 per cent) out of 21 million. Islam is the second religion (7.6 per cent), followed by Hinduism (7.1 per cent) and Christianity (6.2 per cent)

All religious minorities  especially Muslims  have been targeted by Buddhist radicals, whose self-imposed mission is to "protect" the Sinhalese Buddhist community.

In Trincomalee, songs and dances enlivened the festival and the president presented awards and certificates to the winners of the competition organised for the occasion.

Meanwhile, for the third consecutive years festive lights were turned on yesterday in the streets of the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo until January on the initiative of the Ministry of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs and the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

Some 40 private groups set up the decorations in collaboration with the Sri Lankan Army and the Navy.
Shutterstock/Aleutie

In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia OHanlon wrote to the editor of New Yorks The Sun newspaper to ask whether her friends were right to say there was no Santa Claus.

Papa says, If you see it in THE SUN its so. Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Her letter prompted one of the most famous newspaper editorials in history, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

A modern-day Virginias smartphone is probably more capable than Santa of knowing what she wants for Christmas.

Read more: Ten tips to make your holidays less fraught and more festive

So, how long before Siri and a network of artificially intelligent successors (programmed to anticipate human needs and communicate with each other) usurp Santa and start asking the alternative question: is Virginia real?

In the spirit of the New Yorks The Sun (which no longer exists, sadly) this reply from a newspaper editor (if they still exist in the future) to a robotic Santa is set in 2047, 150 years after Virginia asked the question that is part of Christmas folklore.

December 2047

Dear Santa,

Your friends are wrong, affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age where they believe their intelligence can anticipate every thought and match it with an action.

Its true that you machines, invisible but ubiquitous, have trumped our natural intelligence through your endless, silent buzz with each other. It began in the 2010s with Siri, and ultimately reached your level of apparent omnipotence.

But dont forget. Somewhere (often remotely) at the end of every action, you are serving a human. In your case, its a little girl who wants to keep believing in the mystery and magic of Christmas.

So in answer to your question: Yes Santa, there really is a Virginia.

Dont forget. The Santa whom children believed in has always seen all and known all - just like you.

He has always had helpers to create the gifts and magic of his story. Now, the workshops are run by bots, and the elves have become marketing assistants who no longer know how to wrap a gift, let alone guess what a little girl might want.

And the reindeer, freed from training for their annual epic flight thanks to your army of drones, have gone to fat. Even Rudolph with his nose so bright can no longer guide himself to the food trough, let alone a sleigh tonight.

Santa, youve asked what this is all about, what is your purpose? And precisely, is there really a Virginia or is she, as your robotic friends say, the toy of a personal bot she has had since birth?

The personal bot boom of the 2020s, then the development of belief and philosophy by your robotic predecessors in the 2030s, was always going to lead to you asking this question.

Fair enough. In earlier times, we humans would have asked ourselves why we were helping a machine think about its purpose in life. In fear, our instinct would have been to instantly cut off its power. Now were flattered you asked.

Thankfully, we accepted how machines like you could do the heavy physical and mental lifting that for centuries has been the burden of humans.

We regulated your limits but gave you rights. Now our minds and bodies have been freed from the strains of earlier times, sparing us to concentrate on living good lives, rather than productive lives.

But, Santa, the good human life well lived starts with fantasy, as one of our predecessors, New Yorks The Sun, explained to children 150 years ago.

The power of fantasy describes where the work you do every year comes from.

But the fantasy does not belong to the other bots you talk to. The fantasy belongs to the child they serve. Such fantasy allows something unexplainable to create universal joy, an emotion you can understand but never experience.

And those fantasies are what will create new ways of meeting human needs. Such fantasies led people to dream of, then create, the first robots with only a fraction of your capabilities. Such fantasies found ways to power the planet without damaging it.

Your question about your purpose reminds us that such fantasies continue to matter - even to machines like you that learn effortlessly from us and each other.

But Santa, there is one fantasy you should not have. And that is that the little girl who craves a doll or a toy car like they used to drive in the good old days doesnt matter. Or that the little boy who craves a toy kitchen or inflatable ball is subservient to the personal bot your elves listen to.

No Virginia, Santa? She is real - even if not to you. And you are real to her, not as a machine but as a magical figure that sees all and knows all - just as you always have, long before Siri.

She and you live forever. A thousand years from now  nay, 10,000 years from now  you and what you stand for will continue to make glad the heart of childhood and children like Virginia.

Yours, Ed
By Brittany Cardwell, Affiliate Researcher, University of Otago

from www.shutterstock.com

Sick of tinsel, carols and talk of virgin birth?

In New Zealand, Australia and many other countries, its hard to escape Christmas in December.

But even if you dont believe in Christ or a God, religion can still be a powerful force. Research shows that even nonreligious people may hold unconscious beliefs linked to religion that can affect their psychology.

Read more: The mathematics of Christmas: a review of the Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus

By many measures, religion in Australia, New Zealand and the USA is declining  but Christianity still shapes the culture and politics of these societies, from the holidays celebrated to values officially endorsed.

Its not that surprising that religious symbols and traditions remain in secularised societies. What is surprising is how religious beliefs may remain in and affect the minds of secular people.

Subconscious responses to God

A study in Finland explored how religious and non-religious people responded to the idea of God.

The researchers used electrodes to measure how much sweat people produced while reading statements like I dare God to make my parents drown or I dare God to make me die of cancer. Unexpectedly, when nonbelievers read the statements, they produced as much sweat as believers  suggesting they were equally anxious about the consequences of their dares.

And thats not simply because nonbelievers didnt want to wish harm on others. A companion study showed that similar dares that did not involve God (such as, I wish my parents would drown) did not produce comparable increases in sweat levels. Together, then, these findings suggest that despite denying that God exists, nonbelievers behaved as though God did exist.

Does this mean that nonbelievers are lying when they say they reject God? Not exactly. Rather, these contradictory behaviours probably arise in part due to living in a theistic culture that hammers home the idea that God exists. Perhaps this leads nonbelievers to form implicit attitudes that are at odds with their explicit ones.

Explicit and implicit attitudes

Explicit attitudes are those people can call to mind consciously and can report when asked: for example carrots are good for me or God does not exist.

By contrast, people have little or no awareness of their implicit attitudes  the learned associations between ideas in their minds, such as how easily the concept carrot brings to mind another concept like bland, or how easily the word God brings to mind existence.

Read more: How religion rises  and falls  in modern Australia

As these examples illustrate, implicit and explicit attitudes can clash. Its possible for a person to say they love carrots while unconsciously bringing negative associations to mind about them. Or, to say God does not exist while unconsciously bringing to mind ideas of Gods existence.

In this way, it makes sense for nonbelievers to get nervous at the thought of daring God to do harm.

How attitudes shape health

The idea that mismatches between explicit and implicit attitudes can create conflict is consistent with the theory of cognitive dissonance.

Studies exploring this psychological phenomenon found that conflict between your behaviour (for example, meeting parental expectations of being a submissive daughter) and your own perception of who you are (for example, being an independent woman) was associated with relatively high scores on measures of neuroticism and depression, and low scores on measures of self-esteem, compared to people whose behaviours and self-perceptions better align.

Likewise, people whose implicit and explicit attitudes about their self-esteem are misaligned (those who report high self-esteem, but hold negative unconscious associations about the self, or vice versa) suffer negative outcomes. They are more likely to become defensive in response to negative feedback, to suppress their anger and to take days off of work for health reasons.

Might cognitive dissonance also be at play in the context of religion?

Religion and health

Cognitive dissonance, and the degree of alignment of implicit and explicit beliefs might help us understand relationships between religion and health. Indeed, positive outcomes of religious belief could help explain why implicit beliefs persist in nonbelievers.

A study of over 400 white American men showed that those who attended church had lower blood pressure, and a separate study found having a religious affiliation is associated with a greater sense of well-being. Tweets posted by Christians have been interpreted to reflect greater happiness and social connectivity than those from atheists, and believers in God are reported to be less anxious about their eventual death, and more certain about the meaning of their existence.

But things arent so simple when religious belief is less robust. People with moderate religious beliefs report lower well-being than those with very strong or very weak beliefs. Many factors will be at work here, but one to consider is that moderate believers are more likely to hold conflicting implicit and explicit beliefs.

Read more: The psychology of Christmas shopping: how marketers nudge you to buy

This might be particularly true if that group includes people who developed strong links between God and concepts of existence during their religious upbringing, but who have begun explicitly doubting those ideas.

If you are a nonbeliever then, you may have lingering beliefs in God that put you at risk of, at best, amusing self-contradictions, and at worst, poorer well-being.

At this point, youre probably wondering what you can do to reduce that risk. Unfortunately we cant offer much advice until more is understood about the links between religious beliefs and well-being.

For now, it is safe to assume that if you are a staunch (explicit) nonbeliever, then putting yourself in situations that reinforce your implicit religious beliefs (by, for example, attending church services at Christmas) may exacerbate your internal conflict.

Jamin Halberstadt receives funding from the John Templeton Foundation (grant number 22421)

.

Brittany Cardwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Originally published in The Conversation.


(By wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com (By wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

The outdoor lifestyle in Australia is something that attracts people from all over the world and it seems that a healthier outlook and living longer is a powerful pull for expats.The latest official figures show that people in Australia are living longer, but also working later into their lives, suggesting they are physically able to do so.The data from the 2016 Census of Population and Housing shows that the proportion of older people in Australia's labour force has increased over the past 10 years and over a third of older people were born abroad.Indeed around 14% of people aged 65 years and over were part of our labour force in 2016, up from 9.4% in 2006. In 2016, around one in every five people aged 65 to 74 years, or 21%, were in the labour force.The Census has also revealed that the number of older people is increasing. In 2016 some 16% of the population was aged 65 years and over, an increase of 664,500 since 2011. Additionally in 2016, there were almost half a million people, some 486,800, aged 85 years and over, an increase of around 85,000 people over the past five years.The figures also show that a large number of people living to be older in Australia have been born overseas. Some 37% of people aged 65 years were from another country with 67% born in Europe and 24% born in England, indicating how popular Australia is with British people.Older overseas born people who arrived in Australia around the mid 1970's and onwards were more likely to have been born in Asia than in Europe. This reflects the trend for the entire Australian overseas-born population.The Census also reveals that the majority of older people, some 82% only spoke English at home in 2016, while 3.2% spoke Italian and 2.2% spoke Greek. These were among the most commonly reported languages other than English.Older people were also more likely to report an affiliation with Christianity than those aged under 65 at 70% and 49% respectively.Older Australians continue to play a significant part in the community, with 19% of people aged 65 to 74 years providing care for a child aged under 15 who was not their own, most likely grandchildren.Tasmania had the highest proportion of older people at 19% while the Northern Territory had the lowest at 7.2% while South Australia has the highest proportion of people aged 85 years and over.While overall 71% of the Australian population live in major urban areas, older people were less likely to live in this type of area than those aged under 65 years at 65% compared to 72%, the data also shows.
Hi Everyone,



(I've already posted this in Mark's pinned thread, but just in case he's too busy I'd like to re-post here if that's ok. If I'm breaking any rules please call me out since this is my first time posting on a forum!)



My question is quite simple, but for some reason it's really difficult navigating the DIBP's website.



My situation:



I'm currently on the 1st stage of applying for the 820 Partner Visa, but I'm the 2nd person my partner has sponsored. His ex-girlfriend was sponsored successfully around 7-9 years ago, back when it was a paper application. The problem is that both of them don't have any clue as to when the visa was granted or any reference number that they might have received (details asked in the application I'm working on now). Unfortunately she shredded all the documentation when she became an Australian citizen.



Do you know who I (or my partner's ex-girlfriend) can contact to find this old, inactive visa information? I've tried calling, filling out different enquiry forms, but no luck.



Thank you very much!
Hi!



So I am a citizen of Australia. I am currently in the process of assisting my fiance who is a Sri Lankan citizen (working in the United Arab Emirates) to obtain a visa to live in Australia after our wedding in Sri Lanka.

We are looking at the prospective marriage visa (subclass 300) option to ensure that the both of us will be together in Australia immediately after the wedding (July 2019).



As stated in the partner migration booklet, we understand that the registration/ wedding ceremony can take place outside of Australia (in Sri Lanka).



However, we are required to provide the following:



"evidence that you intend to marry your fiance(e) within 9 months of being granted the visa. Such evidence must be a signed and dated letter (on letterhead) from an authorised marriage celebrant who will conduct your wedding ceremony. The letter must include the place and date (or date range) on which the planned marriage ceremony may take place"



We would like to know where, how and from whom in Sri Lanka we can obtain such a document to assist in our visa application.



Thanks!
Schick

Daimler has named Hartmut Schick as the new head of Daimler Trucks Asia where he will oversee operations for the Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks and Bus Corporation in Japan, and Daimler India Commercial Vehicles in India.

Daimler Trucks Asia is the Asian subsidiary of Daimler Trucks and Buses, Daimler said in a release. Shick will succeed Marc Llistosella, former head of Daimler Trucks Asia, who will leave the company in March 2018.

Schick has been the head of the Daimler Buses division and CEO of EvoBus GmbH since Jan. 1, 2009. Before this, he headed the global communications of the Daimler Group, according to Daimler.
On Monday, a bankruptcy court dismissed the bankruptcy of Franchise Services of North America Inc. (FSNA), the parent company of the U-Save car rental brand. U-Save and its subsidiaries were not included in the bankruptcy.

Judge Edward Ellington of the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Mississippi, ruled that the bankruptcy was filed without proper corporate authority. The court found that FSNA failed to prove that Boketo, a subsidiary of Macquarie Capital (USA), FSNAs largest shareholder, consented to the bankruptcy.

FSNA had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 26 based on liquidity issues associated with expenses incurred in litigation with Macquarie Capital.

FSNA declined to comment on the bankruptcy dismissal.
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.
One of the major questions after Sen. Jack Latvala announced his resignation is who exactly will replace him in the 16th District.

16th District is in parts of Pinellas, Pasco counties

Session starts Jan. 9; Latvala's resignation effective Jan. 8

RELATED: Sen. Jack Latvala resigns amid allegations



The district is in parts of both Pinellas and Pasco counties and will not be represented in the upcoming session because of Latvala's decision.

Both supervisors of elections in the counties have a lot of work ahead of them in 2018.

"What's going to happen now is I'm going to be contacted by the Department of State Division of Election from Tallahassee, who at the request of the governor will schedule a date for both the primary and a general special election to replace Latvala in the 16th District for the Florida State Senate," said Brian Corley, Pasco County's supervisor of elections.

Corley said the special election will take time. Candidates will have to qualify, and early and absentee voting will have to be held.

The session starts Jan. 9. Latvala's resignation takes effect Jan. 8.

"I haven't looked at all the dates yet because this is, literally, couldn't be more breaking news if you tried," Corley said.


A lawsuit has been filed against Essentials Massage and Facials of Westchase in Tampa for sexual assault.

Sexual assault lawsuit filed against Tampa massage chain

Client at Essentials Massage and Facials sexually assaulted by employee

Dakota Scott, 21, inappropriately touched Kristy Yarcho, 52, report stated

The suit alleges that a client was sexually assaulted during the course of a massage on July 19, 2017.

Kristy Yarcho, 52, said she went to Essentials Massage for a relaxing two-hour massage that day and was sexually assaulted by Dakota Scott, 21, the employee the spa assigned to her, according to the lawsuit.

When she moved away from him and told him to stop, Scott apologized profusely and the massage ended, according to the report.

The incident was reported to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office later that day, as well as the Florida Department of Health.

According to the report, the State's Attorney declined to prosecute the matter, but the Department of Health, which licenses masseurs in the state of Florida, began an investigation.

The complaint also alleges that the massage industry has a "substantial problem" of male therapists sexually assaulting female clients that is "known or should be known" to Essentials.

In late November 2017, a Buzzfeed News report revealed that one of Essentials competitors, Massage Envy, was the subject of nearly 200 claims of sexual abuse of clients nationwide.
Beyond Cannon Beach's Haystack: N. Oregon Coast's Ecola State Park

Published 12/20/2017 at 6:45 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Cannon Beach, Oregon)  It's paradoxically off the beaten path but still hugely popular. You have to drive along a tight, narrow and winding path from the northernmost entrance to Cannon Beach to find it: the sprawling, gi-normous Ecola State Park. There, despite the rather daunting, white-knuckle drive, sits one of the Oregon coast's most popular places.

Cannon Beach's Ecola State Park proves there is much more to the town than Haystack Rock, no matter how iconic it is.

Here's a glance at some of the details you can find in the Cannon Beach Virtual Tour of the North Oregon Coast. Click on the links for the full info, including how to get to some of the secret places and photos of the area from unusual angles. For the full effect, follow the virtual tour in its entirety.





Indian Beach Hiking Path and Surfing - Virtual Tour of Cannon Beach, Oregon Coast. Drive that wildly twisting road and youll end up at this beauty of a park, Ecola Creek State Park. Follow the signs to Indian Beach, where the parking lot overlooks a gorgeous view of the shoreline. Its also the stepping off point for the trail over Tillamook Head, which wanders some six miles to Seaside. ....MORE....





Indian Beach - Goonie's Rock in the Distance: Oregon Coast, Cannon Beach (Ecola State Park). Follow the signs to Indian Beach, where the parking lot overlooks a gorgeous view of shoreline. Wander through a small trail enclosed by trees, and you'll come to this picnic viewpoint above the crescent beach. ....MORE....





Ecola State Park and Tillamook Head Lighthouse. Nicknamed "Terrible Tilly," the lighthouse can best be seen from Ecola State Park's viewpoints on its southern end.

For generations, the Tillamook Head Lighthouse has captured the imaginations of visitors to Seaside and Cannon Beach, sitting a distant one mile away and remaining a mystery because it's the only Oregon lighthouse not accessible by walking up to it. ....MORE....

Viewpoints of Ecola State Park.This day-use area is just north of the city limits, after a mile and a half drive through a thick forest - after the signs proclaiming the parks entrance.

The main section of the park is Ecola Point, where numerous viewpoints offer you glimpses of Cannon Beach, Haystack Rock and the lighthouse. Its a popular spot for whale watching during the twice-yearly migrations. ....MORE....





Ecola State Park and Lewis & Clark. To the south, the hidden "Crescent Beach" comes into view, as well as alternate views of Haystack Rock and the sea stacks seen from most of Cannon Beach. Beneath the viewpoint, there's a spot of beach never accessible, though you might find a way as some have in the past. Hotels in Cannon Beach - Where to eat - Maps and Virtual Tours





More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging.....

More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining.....

Coastal Spotlight



LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles

Back to Oregon Coast

Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net

All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted
Winter Solstice and Its Astronomy Surprises: What It Means for Portland, Oregon, the Coast

Published 12/21/2017 at 3:45 AM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Oregon Coast) - For Oregon, winter officially starts this morning at 8:28 a.m. This day is the winter solstice: the day on which the Earth's northern pole is tipped away from the sun. It's also the shortest day of the year  well, sort of.

For the Oregon coast, it all means something a little different: there's another reason to check out today's sunset there, and for the next few days.

The interesting misconception about the shortest day of the year is that it's plural. Today is one of a few days that are the absolute shortest, according Jim Todd of Portland's OMSI.

On December 18 - 21, we will have nearly 8.5 hours of daylight to enjoy, he said. As seen from Portland, the sun will reach its lowest southern point in the sky at 21.5 degrees on the horizon.

Todd said because of the low angle of the sun's arc, it will produce the longest and most spectacular sunrises and sunsets of the year.

On the Oregon coast, this translates to even longer and more spectacular sunsets over the ocean. The great fiery ball lingers a tad longer than other times of the year, and it's more apt to create some bigger, wilder colors.

From now through this weekend, the north coast is looking at about eight hours and 39 minutes of daylight. Those numbers change slightly as you go south.

For example:

Sunrise today in Cannon Beach is at 7:54 a.m., four minutes later than the week before. It sets at 4:34 p.m., which is two minutes later than the week before. That is 8 hours and 39 minutes of daylight. That short figure remains for two more days.

Sunrise in Cannon Beach Friday and Saturday is at 7:55 a..m., while sunset is at 4:34 p.m. on Friday and then one minute later on Saturday.

About 100 miles to the south, Lincoln City will see sunrise today at a slightly different time: at 7:51 a.m. Sunset there will be at 4:37 p.m., making for eight hours and 46 minutes of daylight  slightly different from Cannon Beach and Portland.

Various sources can differ slightly on these exact numbers, however.

If you want to add yet another trippy layer to all this: consider that sunset actually happens a few minutes later on the coast than in Portland. This too changes as you head south. Oregon Coast Beach Connection tested this once in Warrenton and found sunset there happened seven minutes later than the almanac times listed for Portland.

If you want to add still another bizarre layer to the science of sunsets on the Oregon coast, you'll be shocked to discover when you see the sunset go down is actually an illusion. See Winter Solstice and How Oregon Coast Sunsets are an Illusion.

Another fascinating illusion comes into play this day as well, according to Todd.

Oregon Coast Lodgings for this event - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours

On the winter solstice the Sun from our Earth perspective appears to stand still, Todd said. This was of great concern to our ancestors because they believed that all heavenly objects were gods and that if the Sun god was displeased, it might just continue to keep rising and setting farther south until it eventually disappeared.

For those who can brave these cold nights either on the Oregon coast or inland, there's also a reward.

For those who received an exciting new telescope or binoculars for Christmas, this is a perfect opportunity to view the brilliant moon above the southern horizon after sunset, Todd said. In the morning sky, Jupiter and Mars are emerging into the eastern night sky before sunrise.



















More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging.....

More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining.....

Coastal Spotlight



LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles

Back to Oregon Coast

Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net

All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted
Bevil Oaks residents' request to join Hardin-Jefferson ISD will continue after a judge denied Beaumont ISD's latest efforts to dismiss the matter in a hearing this week.

The ruling by an administrative judge, which addressed the district's claim that it was legally prohibited from releasing the town's residents, clears the way for a hearing on the academic, economic and social effects of the proposed annexation.

Residents of the small town signed a petition in the spring asking to leave BISD and join the smaller H-J school district, which they say is closer and has better academic results and school environments. Bevil Oaks has tried to leave Beaumont ISD multiple times in the past 30 years, but all attempts have failed.

H-JISD's board voted in the spring to accept the city's students, but BISD's board of managers rejected the residents' petition in May, claiming that it doesn't meet the criteria in the Texas Education Code that allows for detachment.

In a motion filed at the State Office of Administrative Hearings in November, BISD attorney Miles Bradshaw repeated that argument, asking a judge to agree with the district's interpretation of the statute and dismiss Bevil Oaks' appeal.

Judge Merle Dover denied the motion Tuesday, ordering the appeal to go to a three-day trial in February.

The formula used in the education code prevents a district from detaching

properties if it would decrease the district's taxable value by more than twice the percentage by which it would reduce enrollment.

BISD says the formula should use the total assessed value of property and the number of Bevil Oaks students currently enrolled in BISD, while the town's residents claim the freeze-adjusted taxable value should be used and that students who have already transferred to Hardin-Jefferson should be included in the total.

According to BISD, the assessed value of taxable property in Bevil Oaks in 2016 was just over $76 million. Residents say the freeze-adjusted value of about $37 million should be used because it more accurately reflects the value that the district uses to generate revenue.

On the last day of the 2015-16 school year, there were 48 Bevil Oaks students in BISD and another 27 who had transferred to H-JISD. Residents argued that, using their calculations, detachment is legal.

Those values are from before Harvey and don't take into account post-storm changes to values or population.

Austin attorney William Bednar, who represents Bevil Oaks in the appeal, said the calculation has caused issues in cases for the last two decades.

"The idea of the formula is to try to prevent a relatively small number of students from detaching a large, disproportionately large amount of tax base from the sending district, but it really doesn't do that," he said.

School districts are funded largely through property taxes and state aid that is allocated based on enrollment numbers, both of which would be impacted for both districts if the boundaries change.

In response to criticism of BISD at the detachment hearings this spring, officials defended the district's academic performance and immediately rezoned the students to middle schools closer to Bevil Oaks than Martin Luther King Jr. Middle, where they were previously assigned.

Dover did not immediately elaborate in the ruling why she turned down the district's motion but set the trial to start on Feb. 12.

Education Commissioner Mike Morath will make the final decision in the case. He is required to consider the effects of the change on students in both districts and in Bevil Oaks.

H-JISD would likely have to take on up to $1.6 million of BISD's bond indebtedness if the annexation goes through, though the exact amount would be determined by County Commissioners' courts.

If the change is successfully applied by July 1, Bevil Oaks residents will change districts this fall. A decision made after that date would force them to wait until the 2019-20 school year.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/LizTeitz
Bangladeshi suspect Akayed Ullah, seen in this courtroom sketch, appears by video for a hearing from his hospital bed in New York, Dec.13, 2017.

A Bangladeshi man charged with bombing the New York City subway had visited Rohingya camps three months before the Dec. 11 attack, according to his wife who said that his sole mission was to hand out medicine to desperate refugees.

While visiting Bangladesh in September, Akayed Ullah made a side trip to camps in southeastern Coxs Bazar district housing Rohingya Muslim refugees from neighboring Myanmar, his wife, Jannatul Ferdous Jui, told BenarNews.

Since October 2016, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled cycles of violence and brutal military crackdowns in Myanmars Rakhine state, which have angered Muslims in many countries.

Before her husband returned to the United States, he went to Rohingya camps at Coxs Bazar to distribute aid, Ferdous Jui said, saying it took him nine hours to travel there from Dhaka by bus.

He distributed medicines to the Rohingya. It did not seem to me that he went there with any other purpose.

Ferdous Jui said Ullah showed no signs that he was planning a terrorist act in the United States.



Ullah faces five federal terrorism-related charges punishable by up to life in prison, according to court documents.

He spent most of his time with us, Ferdous Jui told BenarNews. But I never saw anything that may give the idea that he can do anything like this.

I want the U.S. authorities to investigate him. If he is guilty, he deserves punishment, she added.

New York police said four people were injured in the pipe-bomb explosion in a subway tunnel beneath the Times Square area, but Ullah was the only person seriously hurt. He was burned on his hands and torso.

Police said the bomb was strapped to his body when he allegedly set it off during the Monday morning rush-hour on Dec. 11. Ullah, a 27-year-old lone suspect, built the bomb out of matchheads and a piece of pipe he found at a construction site, and he carried out the attack in the name of the extremist group Islamic State (IS), U.S. federal investigators said.

Ullah was informed of the charges via video on Dec. 13 as he lay in a hospital bed in New York. He did not enter a plea and said little during the hearing, which lasted a little over 10 minutes.

Ullahs mother-in-law, Mahfuza Akhter, expressed doubts over the federal terrorism charges.

My son-in-law cannot do that, she told BenarNews. This is a conspiracy. I want a fair investigation.

In an earlier interview with the New York Times, Akhter said Ullah seemed happy when he left his home in Dhaka to visit the refugee camps, but was so upset when he returned from the southeast.

He said those people were living in hell, each and every minute, the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Sermons from radical preacher

Last week, Bangladeshi police quoted Ferdous Jui as saying that her husband may have been influenced by sermons and writings of radical Muslim preacher Jasim Uddin Rahmani, the imprisoned leader of a banned Bangladeshi militant group Ansar al-Islam, also known as Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and which is linked to al-Qaeda.

Rahmani, who is serving prison time for his involvement in the Feb. 2013 killing of Bangladeshi secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, was also the ideological guru of another local militant group, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Ferdus Jui said her husband, who had been living in Brooklyn since 2011, visited Bangladesh in early September, months after she gave birth to their son.

Despite their distance, Ullah was close to his wife and he made the trip to arrange U.S. immigration paperwork for his family, officials said. Ullah arrived in the United States on an F43 family immigrant visa six years ago because he had an uncle who was already a U.S. citizen.

Before the bombing, Ullah had no criminal record in the United States and in Bangladesh according to law-enforcement officials from both countries.

When police searched Ullahs home in Dhaka, they also did not find any books written by the militant preacher Rahmani, officials said.

Ullah could have been self-radicalized after watching militant videos online, Monirul Islam, chief of Bangladeshi polices counter-terror unit, told a news conference last week.

He is self-radicalized by watching militant contents online, Islam said. We do not have any proof of his militant links.

Last week in New York, FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney Jr. told a news conference that Ullah was inspired by a group that exploits technology in an effort to spread a violent ideology, effectively convincing sympathizers to commit terrorist acts worldwide.

The court documents had identified that group as Islamic State. IS had claimed responsibility for a terrorist siege at a cafe in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, during which 29 people, including 20 hostages and five gunmen were killed last year.

Federal officials said Ullah had penned anti-American messages in his passport, which they found while searching his apartment in Brooklyn.

O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE, a handwritten message said, according to investigators.

A very calm person

Ullahs old neighbors and acquaintances in Dhaka expressed disbelief that he could have become radicalized and committed a terrorist act.

Abul Boshor, 70, said he was a neighbor of Sanaullah, Ullahs father, since 1971.

Ullahs father was a good man, Boshor told BenarNews. I am confused how his son could do this.

Ullahs father, who owned a grocery store in Dhakas Hazaribagh neighborhood, died years ago of still unknown natural causes, neighbors said. Ullah was born and grew up in Hazaribagh, they said.

I saw Akayed growing up. He was a very calm person, said Abu Chhayed Miazi, a local businessman.

In interviews with BenarNews, neighbors described Ullahs father as a freedom fighter and veteran of Bangladeshs war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Ullah led a humble life, they said, and his father had strong hatred for terrorism and militancy.

None of Akayeds family member had any link with fundamentalist politics or ideology, said Miazi, who also ran a grocery store beside Sanaullahs. He [Akayed] never got himself involved in any altercation with anyone, he said.

Abdul Wahab, another local resident, said Ullah was one of his sons friends at the Kakoli School in Dhaka.

Ullah and his son also went to the Munshi Abdur Rob Riffles School in the same neighborhood and studied business administration, but Ullah quit before receiving his bachelors degree.

He said the bombing suspect was a shy man, too shy to even mention his name to new acquaintances.

He came to my house several times. He had a beard and used to say his prayers regularly. Akayeds behavior was never suspicious, Wahab told BenarNews.

Kamran Reza in Dhaka contributed to this report.
Indias decision to release thousands of youths who were arrested on suspicion of throwing stones at security forces during demonstrations in Indian Kashmir could help suspects find employment and lead to peace in the disputed Himalayan region, analysts said Thursday.

Authorities in insurgency-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir state last week began withdrawing charges against 4,500 first-time offenders who were accused of pelting security forces with stones during anti-India protests since 2010, a police official said.

I hope those who have been acquitted focus on re-building their careers in fields of their ability and choice, instead of indulging in violence and anti-national activities, north Kashmirs Deputy Inspector General V.K. Birdi told BenarNews.

He said more than 650 Kashmiri youths had been released so far under the governments amnesty program.

The idea behind dropping charges against these misguided youths is to gain the cooperation and confidence of Kashmiri people, which is essential for bringing peace to the region, he said.

Indian Kashmirs Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, announced the amnesty program last month, just days before Dineshwar Sharma, New Delhis special peace representative in Kashmir, visited the violence-torn region to initiate a dialogue aimed at ending a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 70,000 lives since the late 1980s.

Withdrawal of charges against these youths will allow them a chance to rebuild their lives, instead of languishing behind bars. It indicates that the government is keen to bring back misguided Kashmiris to the mainstream, Ajai Sahni of the New Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management told BenarNews.

But the government should closely monitor the situation on the ground whether or not to drop charges against habitual stone-pelters, he said.

Noor Baba, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said the amnesty program would prove beneficial to the government, which is desperate to gain the confidence of Kashmiris.

The government should consider amnesty to all such youths, both first-time and habitual offenders if there is a considerable improvement in the law-and-order situation. At the same time, it should ensure that jobs are created for such youths to keep them engaged and away from violence, Baba told BenarNews.

Rock throwing or stone pelting at Indian security forces and police is frequent in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a criminal offense that often leads to suspects being charged with various offenses, ranging from assault to attempted murder, depending on circumstances.

Kashmiri separatists have openly refused to engage in a dialogue with the government until New Delhi accepts the Muslim-majority region as a disputed territory. Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan and is divided between the two sides by a de facto border called the Line of Control (LoC).

Irshad Ahmad, 23, who was accused of committing violence against security forces during protests last year in Ganderbal district, said he was thankful to the government for allowing him another chance at life.

Ahmad was among 176 people accused of stone-pelting who were acquitted over the weekend.

He said he applied for a job as a bank guard just one day after he was freed.

I want to lead a simple, honest life. I dont want to get involved in violence again. I was instigated and misguided into believing that Indian forces are trying to harm the Kashmiris and that we should fight them, Ahmad, a school dropout, told BenarNews.

I hope I will get the job, as my character certificate that has been issued to me by the police confirms that I have never been involved in any criminal offense, he said.

Nazir Ahmad, 21, another Ganderbal resident who was acquitted, said the governments move had paved the way for misguided youngsters like himself to rebuild their lives.

Character verification from the police is mandatory for any government job and even if you want to take advantage of the governments welfare scheme. My acquittal means I can start my life afresh, said Nazir, who was arrested for stone-pelting in July 2016.

For more than a year I was begging the court to show me some leniency, as that was the first time I was involved in stone-pelting. I am relieved I have finally been spared, he told BenarNews.
Journalist Utpal Das meets his mother following his release after being allegedly held by kidnappers for more than two months, Dec. 20, 2017.

A Bangladeshi reporter missing since October contacted relatives and other journalists early Wednesday to tell them he was alive, saying his captors had blindfolded him and taken him for a long drive before leaving him at a gas station.

Utpal Das, a senior correspondent for the online portal Purbo Pashchim, was reported missing on Oct. 10. About two weeks later, his father told local media that his son likely had been abducted.

I am at a filling station in the Adhuria area, Utpal Das told BenarNews shortly after his release on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday night, some people took me on a microbus blindfolded. After three to four hours, they dropped me near the filling station.

While pushing me out of the microbus, they ordered me dont look back. We will shoot if you look back.

Utpal is one of about a dozen people in Bangladesh who vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2017, but he is one of few victims of suspected abductions who resurfaced after being found at a public place.

Bangladeshi police had said they were investigating all these cases, but others suspect that some of the abductions may have been so-called enforced disappearances  cases in which people vanish at the hands of local authorities. The government has denied such allegations.

Utpals family and coworkers celebrated his release.

I have got my son back  this is my greatest pleasure. We will not file any case [with police], Utpals father, Chittaranjan Das, told BenarNews

Pir Habibur Rahman, editor of Purbo Pashchim, said he was ready to move on.

Utpals recovery removed a huge block of stone from my chest, he told BenarNews.

Learning that Utpal was freed, Razu Ahmed, a former general secretary of the Dhaka Reporters Unity, a union representing journalists, said he and others headed to greet their colleague at the police station in Bhulta, in central Narayanganj district, where Utpal was found.

We do not know who whisked him away and who dropped him, Shahidul Islam, the officer in-charge of the station, told BenarNews.

Ahmed described the reunion.

Utpal hugged us and started howling. He kept repeating brother I am alive. Though Utpal was in good health, he looked devastated, Ahmed said.

From there, Utpal headed for his ancestral home in Raipura to meet his parents and other family members.

I have a new lease of life. I am grateful to the journalist leaders, my fellow colleagues and others. I will be grateful all my life. Possibly, I survived because of the voices in the street, Utpal said.

Everybody tried. I do not want to blame anyone. I do not want to file any [police] case, nor do I want to look back.

Manjurul Ahsan Bulbul, president of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists, called for the abductors to be caught and prosecuted.

The masked people should be unmasked. The fear will prevail unless police detect the perpetrators responsible for the abduction, he told BenarNews. The law enforcing agencies must find them, even if family members are reluctant to file a case.

This is a big challenge for the law enforcing agencies. This is the responsibility of the state to guarantee the safety of its citizens against those who are trying to challenge the state through spreading fear. This must be fixed, he said.

Imprisoned in a shed

Utpal said he was standing outside the Star Kebab restaurant in Dhanmondi, a residential area in Dhaka, and talking to a friend on his mobile phone when he was abducted on Oct. 10.

Before I could understand anything, four to five people came out of a microbus and dragged me inside, blindfolded, Utpal said.

The microbus drove for around four hours. Then they confined me at a tin-shed room in a jungle, he said. I used to sleep on the floor. I was given food through a narrow space under the door.

He said his abductors wanted ransom money.

The abductors did not torture me too much. They used to slap me, Utpal said. They did not interrogate. They used to say You have a lot of money. Give us money.

They threatened to kill me if I did not pay them. I could not see any of the masked man other than their eyes, he said.

In the end, the abductors showed a bit of kindness.

They returned my mobile phone and 350 taka (U.S. $4.21) they took from me at the time of my abduction, he said.

Hundreds missing

Utpal is the second missing person to resurface this month. The first is a Catholic priest who disappeared just days before Pope Francis visited Bangladesh.

Father Walter William Rosario, who was reported missing Nov. 27, was found alive on Dec. 1 at a bus station in the northeastern city of Sylhet, about 420 km (261 miles) or a 10-hour drive from his hometown of Natore in the countrys western region.

Three days later, a retired diplomat disappeared while on his way to the Dhaka airport to meet his daughter, who was returning from Europe. 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, according to his daughter, Samiha Zaman.

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 the items. Maroof Zamans car was found parked in a street 4.8 km (three miles) from the airport.

During the past decade, as many as 545 people have been victims of enforced disappearances, according to NGO Ain-O-Salish-Kendra. The bodies of 78 people were recovered, while 51 people were found alive. More than 400 are missing.

Security analyst and retired Brig. Gen. Sakhawat Hossain is concerned that so many of the victims do not want to relive their abductions.

The victims cannot say anything after their release. This is not a good for any of us  the government, security agencies and common people, he told BenarNews.
People gather at a multi-purpose building where rescued passengers from the Mercraft 3 were taken after it capsized off Quezon province, Dec. 21, 2017.

At least four people drowned and seven others were missing when a passenger ferry capsized Thursday after it was battered by rough seas off Quezon province south of the Philippine capital Manila, the civil defense office said.

Traveling from Ungos port in Real town east of Manila to Polillo Island, the Mercraft 3 was carrying 251 people when it went down off the coast of Infanta town shortly after noon. The ferry was licensed to carry up to 286 people.

The coast guard, assisted by local fishermen, responded to the disaster, rescuing 240 from the ferry. Many suffered slight injuries.

Area navy chief Commodore Adelius Bordado said strong winds stirred huge waves.

The coast guard scrambled rescue helicopters to fly over the sunken ferry and to conduct aerial reconnaissance, but weather conditions forces the helicopters to return, the civil defense office said.

Before the ferry set sail, the ship master had expressed concern about bad weather but was given the go-ahead by the coast guard, survivor Donel Jade Mendiola said.

The weather was bad earlier, the coast guard was worried, but allowed us to leave. We were given life vests before we left, and while in the middle of the journey it started going down, Mendiola told a local radio station.

Mendiola said the incident happened within minutes, and that he saw an old woman wading in the water while others were scattered about. The rain was heavy, he said.

The official cause of the sinking has not been determined.

Ferry accidents are common in the Philippines, an archipelagic country where travel by sea is a preferred method of travel.

In 2008, at least 800 people were killed when the Princess of the Stars capsized during a storm in the central Philippines. A 1987 collision between ferry Dona Paz and an oil tanker killed more than 4,300, in what is believed to be the worlds worst peacetime maritime disaster.

Felipe Villamor in Manila contributed to this report.
For Immediate Release, December 21, 2017 Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121, bhartl@biologicaldiversity.org Analysis for 2017: Congress Attacked Endangered Species Every Six Days Wolves, Sage Grouse, Elephants Targeted Most WASHINGTON Anti-wildlife members of Congress introduced 63 separate legislative attacks on endangered species or the Endangered Species Act during 2017  an average of one every six days, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. Gray wolves, greater sage grouse and elephants were the most assailed species. Nearly every legislative assault was introduced by a Republican member of Congress. The most recent attack came on Monday and was snuck into an emergency funding bill designed to address damage from catastrophic hurricanes and fires in 2017. Section 2029 of H.R. 4667, introduced by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), would exempt the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Endangered Species Act, and would allow it to approve risky developments in flood-prone areas even if it destroys critical habitat or kills endangered species like sea turtles, Pacific salmon and Florida Key deer. Republicans in Congress continue to attack the Endangered Species Act despite overwhelming support from Americans of all political stripes for this landmark conservation law, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center. These attacks are designed to reward special interests that would plunder our natural resources even if it causes wildlife to go extinct. The Endangered Species Act has been in the crosshairs since 2011, when the Republicans gained majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Since then, nearly 300 attacks have been launched against the Act and individual species. Gray wolves have been a primary target. Republicans have repeatedly sought to undermine the Acts science-based decision-making requirements by prematurely removing protections for wolves through overturning court decisions that found wolves still need protection in places like the western Great Lakes. The Endangered Species Act has been more than 99 percent effective at saving species under its protection from extinction and has put hundreds more on the road to recovery. According to a 2015 poll, nine out of 10 Americans support the Act and want it either strengthened or left unchanged by Congress. These radical attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act are totally out of step with what the American people want, said Hartl. They want our government to do more to help species recover, not speed up their path to extinction.
KAMPALA, Uganda - A Ugandan court on Tuesday released eight editors and directors of one of the country's most popular newspapers, who were charged with treason last month, effectively stalling the tabloid's operations.

The eight men -- five directors and three editors -- were arrested during a police raid on offices of the privately owned English-language Red Pepper and its local-language sister publications.

They were charged with treason over an article implicating President Yoweri Museveni in a plot to overthrow his Rwandan counterpart.

A Kampala court released the men on bail of 20 million Ugandan shillings each ($5,000).

"It has been a month of uncertainty for these journalists as they have been moved from one detention centre to another but to also their families that have endured this ordeal," their lawyer Dickens Byamukama told AFP.

"It's not only these (directors and editors) that have suffered but also the Red Pepper group's readers that have not seen the papers on the streets since the police sealed off and took over the premises," he added.

They will next appear in court on 19 January.

Source: AFP
TUNIS, Tunisia - An online radio station catering for the LGBT community, believed to be the first of its kind in the Arab world, started broadcasting in Tunisia on Monday.

The outlet -- set up by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights group Shams -- aims to tackle deep-rooted hostility in the North African state, where homosexuality is officially illegal.

The slogan of Shams Rad station is "dignity, equality" and its presenters include prominent activists, but those behind it have still reported receiving threats.

It intends "to sensitise the people of Tunisia, ordinary citizens and political decision makers about homophobia in society and to defend individual liberties," said director general Bouhdid Belhadi.

Rights and individual freedoms

The station is meant to be on air daily from breakfast time to midnight and will broadcast programmes on political, economic and social issues, with a focus on the LGBT community.

"We are going to touch, through the subjects we treat, everyone living on Tunisian soil," Belhadi said.

"Our editorial policy is to talk about rights and individual freedoms in general, but the focus will be on the LGBT community."

Among the programmes, for example, is one that will feature stories about the daily lives of LGBT people.

Precarious position

Gay rights activists have emerged from the shadows in Tunisia since the revolution in 2011, but their position remains precarious in Tunisia's conservative Muslim society.

Article 230 of the penal code includes a punishment of up to three years in prison for homosexuality and young men are regularly detained and prosecuted.

While activists have welcomed the launch of the radio station, it has drawn some hostile reactions on social networks and from other media.

Belhadi reported receiving more than 4,000 insults and threats online, including death threats.

Source: AFP
Nigeria's shipping history will forever make reference to how foreign ship owners made record profits in demurrage charges from country during the 1970s and port congestion that trailed massive importation of post-civil war reconstruction materials into the nation.

The inadequacy of the Apapa Port alone to handle the chartered ships resulted in many of them being stemmed at the Lagos anchorage for up to six months! Incidentally, the congestion coincided with Nigeria's oil boom, which made the millions of dollars paid in demurrage relatively easy for the government to offset.

However, the bulk of these monies went to foreigners because Nigeria's indigenous shipping tonnage was largely undeveloped, save for the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), which was the then-national carrier employing hundreds of Nigerian seafarers thereby contributing to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). NNSL subsequently suffered a decline in fortunes and had to be wound up in the 1990s after a number of attempts to revive it failed.

But the good that came from that congestion experience was the building of the Lagos Tincan Island Port, which was commissioned on October 14, 1977. The port had thereafter maintained a consistent second place next to the Apapa Port in terms of volume of goods and gross registered tonnage of vessels it handles annually, thus making significant and consistent year-on-year contributions to the economy.

Shipping always categorised as "other services", not a standalone item

Despite its importance and record contribution of shipping to Nigeria's GDP, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), has always categorised shipping under "other services" and not as a standalone item.

With regards to domestic shipping, the ownership of tankers and offshore supply vessels (OSVs), is still tilted in favour of foreigners despite the implementations of the Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act 2003, and the Local Content Act of 2010. These laws confer on Nigerian citizens the right to building, ownership, management, and crewing of vessels that operate within Nigerian territorial waters. Not a little loss of national income, one could rightly surmise.

Professional training and skills can help alleviate unemployment

At a time like this that Nigeria is battling with a high level of youth unemployment, professional training and skills in any of the fields enumerated above can help alleviate the scourge. Since virtually all these fields are untapped, they provide golden opportunities for Nigerians to earn a decent living and contribute to developing the economy.

Beyond professional training and education, Nigeria needs shipping investors (foreign and local) to increase her maritime asset base. This is a rather touchy issue, as most Nigerians believe that investing in shipping requires breaking a bank vault. But this assumption is often taken too far. Mature maritime nations in Europe, North America, Far East, and Middle-East Asia have made investments in shipping so fluid, flexible and all-encompassing, so much that virtually anyone or group of persons can invest in ships and allied assets. Also, communal savings and funds that do not have immediate use find a good haven of investment in ships.

A good case is the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), which is among the three biggest tanker companies in the world, funded with the pension fund of five million Iranian pensioners. As at 2015, NITC had 42 very large crude carriers (VLCCs), each capable of transporting about two million barrels of oil per voyage. The company transports Iranian crude to export markets, and also engages in cross-trading of crude oil cargoes for some 150 oil majors worldwide, including Royal Dutch Shell, Total SA, Saudi Aramco, and state-run producers in Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi.

With capacity for 11 million tonnes annual average, the NITC generates some $1.5bn yearly in voyage charter freight, and time charter hires for its owners.

The fortune Nigeria is missing out on

Imagine the fortune Nigeria is missing out on by not having as much as a single tanker of its own to lift her crude. Granted that crude lifting contracts are now being given to some indigenous companies, the tanker vessels that lift the crude cargoes are still all foreign-owned and foreign-flagged, while negotiations for their chartering are done with the ship-owners brokers, who are neither Nigerians nor resident in Nigeria. In essence, even the traditional five percent broker's commission is not included in the national income portfolio.

To fully harness this shipping potential, it is important to strengthen the portfolio of the channel management companies - Lagos Channel Management (LCM), and the Bonny Channel Company (BCC), because of their strategic importance as backbones of Nigeria's maritime assets.

Industry watchers agree that the Channel companies have performed quite well, with green deep seaports coming on stream in Lekki, Badagry, Bonny, and Akwa Ibom, and other areas. Nonetheless, capacity building of the channel management companies will help expand their scope of operation to make room for ever larger and more vessels to ply Nigeria's seaports and waterways, from which economic activities will be accelerated.
This year, 81 journalists lost their lives around the globe " a drop from 120 last year, the International Press Institute said.

Image credit: weerapat kiatdumrong - 123RF.com

The institute keeps a tally of journalists who are deliberately targeted and those who were killed while on assignment.

The Vienna-based group has been issuing such statistics since 1997.

"It's a relief to see a drop in the number of annual deaths and we hope it marks an end to the overall global trend in recent decades of increasing deaths," institute executive director Barbara Trionfi said.

"Nevertheless, the brutal killings of so many journalists this year in Mexico and so many other countries tragically show how impunity for journalists' killings begets more killings."

Fewer deaths in sub-Saharan Africa

Trionfi lashed out at governments that failed to bring those who had murdered journalists to justice. She said the murder of journalists was an attack on the fundamental human right to share and receive information and on democracy itself.

Mexico has been singled out as the deadliest country as 13 journalists had perished there. Each of them, according to the institute, had been targeted due to work.

This year there has also been an increase in the number of women who had died. Last year, four women were killed in the line of duty and this year 10 have died thus far.

The Caribbean and Latin America were the deadliest regions. There were fewer deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and none in South Africa. Since 2015, IPI has also included murders that remain under investigation. " TimesLive

Source: Herald via i-Net Bridge.
NEW YORK, USA - YouTube said on Tuesday that it had sealed a licensing agreement with the world's largest music label conglomerate Universal as the video behemoth explores creating a new streaming service.

Image credit: Fancycrave - Pexels

YouTube, which is part of Google, said it reached a long-term agreement with the Universal Music Group, months after a deal with competitor Warner Music.

A joint statement did not specify the terms but hinted that the agreement would address compensation by YouTube, a constant source of irritation within the music industry.

"This important step forward provides our recording artists and songwriters improved content flexibility and growing compensation from YouTube's ad-supported and paid-subscription tiers," Universal chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in the statement.

He said the agreement also advanced "YouTube's commitment to manage music rights on its platform."

The recorded music industry has posted two years of solid growth after years in the doldrums thanks to the rapid growth of subscriptions on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms.

But the industry, led by the IFPI trade group, has long berated YouTube for the rates it pays.

Focus on user-generated content

YouTube argues that it pays a fair price. With the video site's focus on user-generated content, YouTube enjoys protection under United States law that largely absolves internet companies from responsibility for users' activities.

With Google languishing behind in music streaming, several technology sites reported last month that YouTube is preparing the launch of its own streaming service in 2018.

The video site already has a YouTube Music platform and the advertising-free YouTube Red subscriptions, but it is reportedly looking to set up a more elaborate site on the model of the major, on-demand music services.

The licensing agreements would be vital for a successful YouTube streaming service, with music fans unlikely to embrace a platform that has glaring gaps in its catalogue.

Source: AFP via i-Net Bridge.
The Midas Awards announced 2017 shortlist with US agencies leading with 101 shortlisted entries, followed by South Africa with 40 and the United Kingdom with 24.

Image provided.

The 2017 Midas Awards grand jury, comprised of international executives from financial and creative marketing disciplines, shortlisted 242 entries showcasing creative excellence submitted from 21 countries around the globe. The competition expanded its global footprint with entries from Myanmar moving on to the medal round.

The spotlight was on global agencies competing for the number one spot on the Midas Report. The following agencies are top forerunners for the 2017 annual ranking: McCann New York with 31 entries achieving shortlist status; Cullinan, South Africa with 23 entries shortlisted; OneTeam with 19, McCann London with 12 entries moving on the medal round; and R/GA Sao Paulo and MRM // McCann New York each with 10 entries; Havas Dusseldorf and Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney each advanced with 8; and MullenLowe Boston, Fp7/MENA, and McCann Canada moved ahead with 7 entries shortlisted.

Strategic sponsorship and event marketing

Strategic sponsorships provided opportunities for brands to target specific demographics while increasing awareness and consumer engagement. Entries shortlisted from the Sponsorship category include: Playmaker South Africa with The ReadytoWork Absa Premiership campaign for Absa; Quicken Loans Detroit moved forward with Rickie Fowler campaign for Quicken Loans; MRM // McCann New York advanced with A Focus on Optimism  Forbes Womens Summit for OppenheimerFunds; and OneTeam moved to the trophy round with Citi | Proud Global Partner of the Presidents Cup, Proud Sponsor of Progress for Citi. In addition, FCB Africa (Pty) Ltd South Africa advanced withAbsa Premiership Rivalry for Absa; Cullinan South Africa moved to the trophy round with Conquer as One Absa and Give Art Life for Absa/Barclays; McCann Worldgroup London Brit Awards 2017 and Uefa Champion's League Women's Final were shortlisted for client Mastercard; McCann New York advanced with #ArnieWould and Sound of Priceless for Mastercard; and McCann Worldgroup EMEA London moved ahead with Buffon Priceless Surprise Mastercard.

International agencies from around the world utilised high-profile event marketing to gain market share on behalf of prominent brands. Entries advancing submitted into the Events category include: Zulu Alpha Kilo Canadas Flash Box for client Interac Association; Havas Dusseldorf Evil Zero for DWS Investments; Etiket South Africa Harmonograph for FNB - First National Bank; McCann New York for Fearless Girl Eclipse 2017: Through the Eyes of a Child and My First Purchase Exhibit all for MasterCard; McCann Canada Priceless Tables for MasterCard; and Factory Detroit, Inc. Pop Up Dinner for Invite for First Citizens Bank.

Mastercard saw a staggering 57 entries achieving shortlist status from global agencies in 8 countries. McCann New York advanced with an impressive 22 entries shortlisted for client Mastercard. McCann Worldgroup London advanced with 14; McCann Canada saw 7 entries advance; McCann Worldgroup EMEA UK moved forward with 4; McCann Brazil with 3; McCann Worldgroup Australia and McCann Worldgroup Singapore each advanced with 2; Publicis Turkey moved forward with 2 entries; and McCann Worldgroup Japan saw 1 entry advance.

Fearless Girl and Give Art Life

McCann New York moved forward with 9 shortlisted entries for Fearless Girl for their campaign designed to promote State Street Global Advisors SHE fund: an investment fund for companies with more women in leadership. The statue of a young girl standing up to Wall Streets iconic Charging Bull became a powerful piece of city art and a social media phenomenon. In just 12 weeks the campaign achieved 4.6 billion Twitter impressions in 12 weeks, 745 billion Instagram impressions, a 379% increase in State Street share of voice, and a 384% increase in SHE funds traded daily.

Cullinan South Africas Give Art Life had 22 entries advance for client Absa/Barclays. The campaign was launched to inspire young artists in Africa and to create awareness for the Annual LAtelier Art Competition. Cullinan created art pieces employed art and human canvasses to give art life. The results  awareness of the LAtelier was raised substantially with an earned media valued at R13.5m and young artists were given the power to change the world. Conquer as One for Absa also moved forward.

OneTeam had an impressive 19 entries shortlisted for campaigns created for client Citi including 2 entries for The Citi Double Cash Card: Holiday Cards That "Say What They Mean, 2 for The Citi Double Cash Card: Means What It Says, and The Citi Double Cash Card: "Means What It Says" Campaign - Neighborhood 30, The Citi Double Cash Card: "Means What It Says" Mets Campaign, The Citi Double Cash Card: "Means What It Says" Snapchat Campaign, and The Citi Double Cash Card: Holiday Cards That each advanced. Additional entries shortlisted: 2 for Citi Emotion Campaign  Integrated Campaign, 2 for Citi Emotion Campaign - TV Campaign and 1 for Emotion Campaign  Progressive Blue Wave. In addition, ThankYou Rewards Points-illism saw 2 entries advance and Citi | Proud Global Partner of the Presidents Cup, Proud Sponsor of Progress, Citi/AAdvantage 30 Years Of Wow, Dine & Do Good, and Taste of The Nation were each shortlisted.

A variety of strategic initiatives

Global agencies employed a variety of strategic initiatives to engage consumers on behalf of the brand. R/GA Sao Paulo saw 10 entries shortlisted for Next Bank, their campaign for client Bradesco Bank. The campaign promoted the brands entirely new mobile-only bank that empowers digital-savvy millennials while seamlessly integrating into their lifestyle. Fp7/MENAs saw 7 entries advance for their emotional campaign for Byblos Bank, Theres No Home Like Home. The campaign tackled the decline in home loans in Lebanon by targeting Lebanese ex-pats abroad to introduce The Expat Housing Loans. Havas Dusseldorfs saw 8 entries shortlisted for Evil Zero for DWS Investments, the campaign utilised, TV and print, online, promotions, an augmented reality app, giveaways, interactive installations, and guerrilla marketing to attract the attention of potential investors.

In this years Midas Awards competition, the United States took the lead with 103 entries shortlisted. South Africa saw 40 entries shortlisted, the United Kingdom advanced with 24, followed by Australia with 14, Brazil with 13, Canada with 12, Germany with 10, and Lebanon with 7. Agencies from Singapore and Turkey each saw 5 entries shortlisted, Myanmar and the Netherlands advanced with 3, and India and Japan each had 1 entry shortlisted.

Shortlisted entries will move on to the secondary trophy round and will be judged by the executive jury who will award gold and silver Ingots to the highest scoring entries and determine the winner for the Midas Award for Innovation and the Grand Midas Award. The results of the juries are parsed in an annual rankings brief, The Midas Report, a veritable whos who in the world of financial services advertising that includes the 3 individual reports: Agency, Brand and Network.

Prominent international brands in position to be included in the Midas Brand Report, an annual ranking report based on points earned within the Midas Awards competition and celebrates advertisers performance in elevating the financial advertising industry include: Mastercard, Citi, Absa/Barclays, Bradesco Bank, DWS Investments, Byblos Bank, OppenheimerFunds, E*Trade, and State Street Global Advisors.

To view the 2017 Midas Awards Shortlist, click here.
BEIJING, China - When life gave one Chinese company giant panda poop, it decided to make paper - and profits.

sharonang via Pixabay

The Qianwei Fengsheng Paper Company in southwest Sichuan province has teamed up with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda to recycle the animal's faeces and food debris into toilet paper, napkins and other household products, state media reported Wednesday.

The goods, soon to be released on the Chinese market, will be marketed as part of a "panda poo" product line decorated with a picture of the bamboo-eating, black-and-white bear.

"They're taking care of our garbage for us," Huang Yan, a researcher at the giant panda centre, told the Chengdu Business Daily.

Huang told Xinhua state news agency that the 10 kilograms of bamboo poo that adult pandas unleash daily are rich in fibre after absorbing the fructose from the shoots. In addition to their valuable dung, pandas also produce 50 kilograms of food waste every day from the bamboo husks they spit out after chewing.

While the process of turning bamboo into paper generally involves the breaking down of fructose to extract fibre, this step naturally occurs in the pandas' digestive tract, the paper company's president, Yang Chaolin, told Xinhua.

Fengsheng will collect the faeces from three panda bases in Sichuan a couple of times a week. After it is boiled, pasteurised and turned into paper, it will be tested for bacteria before going on sale.

Boxes of "panda poo" tissues will be sold at 43 yuan ($6.5) a pop.

"Pandas get what they want and we do too," Yang said. "It's a win-win."

Source: AFP
Distell, the liquor brands conglomerate controlled by Remgro, called time on its international cognac market strategy by selling its French subsidiary Bisquit for 52.5m.

On Wednesday, it was confirmed that the cognac brand has been snapped up by acquisitive international liquor group Campari - which, aside from its eponymous aperitif brand, holds the Wild Turkey bourbon and Skyy vodka brands. Campari CEO Bob KunzeConcewitz reckoned there would be potential upside in further developing its new business internationally - especially in the US and China.

Under the terms of the sale agreement, Campari will acquire all the shares in Bisquit as well as existing stock, maturing inventory, trademarks and production facilities. The classic range of cognacs includes Bisquit VS Classique, Bisquit VSOP, Bisquit Prestige and Bisquit XO. The deal might surprise Distell shareholders in light of the company's determined push to increase its international earnings base.

Distell - which is one of the largest brandy producers in the world - only bought Bisquit in early 2009 from drinks giant Pernod-Ricard for 31m. At the time, Distell - then headed by Jan Scannel - believed Bisquit would fortify its spirits portfolio with a highly respected international brand.

Distell CEO Richard Rushton said the sale of Bisquit would allow the company to focus on building its core brands - especially in Africa. "The sale will ensure the assets within our portfolio align with our strategy and generate long-term shareholder value," Rushton said.

Distell's growth strategy for Bisquit had largely been premised on breaking strongly into the Chinese and other key markets, he said. "This did not happen, and at the moment we probably are not the best owners for the Bisquit brand. We would prefer to accelerate our growth in other liquor categories," he said.

Distell owns strong-selling brands such as Savanna, Hunters Dry, Fourth Street, Durbanville Hills, Klipdrift, Nederburg, Four Ships, Amarula, Fleur du Cap and Richelieu. Much of Distell's growth in recent years has been driven by its successful niche in the cider market via Savanna and Hunters Dry as well as in the affordable wine market via Fourth Street.

Some market watchers queried the decision to relinquish a brand such as Bisquit, which has international renown and might become even more valuable in the longer term.

However, Opportune Investments CEO Chris Logan felt Bisquit did not fit in with Distell's route to market capability - which focused on Africa and high-volume products rather than the luxury brand niche.

Distell has also recently indicated that a number of its wine brands could be culled in a bid to refocus on best-selling brands.

Source: Business Day
We've all been there. That grudge payment we have to make. And on top of it, to make it, we need to go and stand in a queue that is usually extra-long. Today was no different. I stopped at the traffic department to pay my license, saw the people queuing out the door and decided to come back a bit later (hoping that things would calm down a bit).

Image credit: Brandlove.

When I walked in half an hour later the queue was gone and there were only 3 people in front of me  amazing! A well dressed, friendly and competent looking lady came to me (in the line) to ask if she could check my paperwork and make a copy of my ID so long. And then it clicked  she was making this experience an experience of magic rather than misery. No more surprises when you get to the counter. She was streamlining the process and really just getting the basics right. Something so small had such a huge knock-on effect.

In this, I realised once again that the time spent on creating huge gourmet journey maps, looking at NPS scores and other ROI in the business world to create a business case for awesome customer experience is necessary, but that in that, we are losing sight of what is right in front of us. We are blindsided by the fact that although people aspire to have great, beautiful experiences, they really just want to have businesses get the basics right. They really just want businesses to solve their problem(s)  and do this in a respectful manner.

Back to basics

I think most companies are great at planning journeys. They unpack beautiful customer experience journey maps. They look at NPS scores and voice of the customer results. My question is, how many companies are really travelling  going ON the journey themselves and not just talking about it. How many companies are courageous enough to take the first step towards uncomfortableness. My first boss always said  if you get comfortable get uncomfortable. How comfortable are you with the customer experience journey in your company?

Get back to the basics. Make the experience seamless and that will already be a great experience  in South Africa, it may even be seen as a surprise to most consumers. Only once the basics are right will you be able to innovate and create out of this world, never thought of experiences. But, until that day, focus on the basics. Stop dreaming about great CX and start doing great CX!
LUANDA - Angola's state oil company has announced an investigation into "possible misappropriation" of funds by Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president, during her time as the company's chief executive.

Isabel dos Santos

In recent weeks, several Angolan media outfits have accused dos Santos of ordering suspect transfers and payments worth tens of millions of dollars.

Appointed head of Sonangol by her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos in 2016, dos Santos was replaced last month by Angola's new president Joao Lourenco.

Isabel has flatly denied any misconduct.

"We have established an internal commission of inquiry to investigate the information published," Sonangol spokesman Mateus Benza said.

"We are verifying possible misappropriation, but I can't yet confirm anything."

According to the Novo Jornal and the Jornal Economico, the new leadership at Sonangol had identified a suspect transfer of 57 million euros ($67 million) to Dubai.

Investigators are also probing a monthly payment that began when Isabel became the head of the state oil giant of 10 million euros to a Portuguese company in which she was the principal investor.

It was reported that the new head of Sonangol has written to his predecessor to demand explanations as well as alerting law enforcement agencies.

Prosecutors in the capital Luanda told AFP that they had not received a formal complaint.

Dos Santos has hit back alleging a "campaign of defamation".

"This fake news... doesn't deserve any credibility since their only goal is to cast doubt on the integrity of Isabel dos Santos," she said in a tweet.

Dos Santos is reported by Forbes to be the richest woman in Africa and became a symbol of nepotism under the protection of her father.

Jose Eduardo dos Santos stepped down as president following elections in August after 38 years in power defined by the transfer of wealth to those close to the regime.

His successor has promised to fight against corruption and recently dismissed several leaders of state-run companies who were seen as close to the former president.
Botswana is working hard to diversify its economy, which has historically been based on the production and sale of diamonds. The World Bank's Doing Business Report shows that the country has the highest new business density in Africa with 13.11 new businesses registered, per 1,000 adults.

Photo: Botswana Youth Magazine

Education and entrepreneurship are key drivers of this growth, with women taking the lead in building their own future.

The 2017 pdf Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs tracked the number of female business owners, as a percentage of total business owners, across 54 high, middle and lower income countries. Botswana, classed as an upper middle-income economy, was ranked second in the world at 34.6% (by comparison, Uganda scored highest at 34.8% and Saudi Arabia lowest at 1.5%). The latest data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) also ranks female entrepreneurship in Botswana as the third highest in the region.

Women in senior leadership roles

And its not only the number of female entrepreneurs that is increasing - Batswana women are making headway in formal employment too. According to a 2017 report by Grant Thornton, Botswana has improved significantly in terms of the percentage of senior roles held by women, increasing by 8% from 23% in 2016 to 31% in 2017. Globally, the proportion of senior leadership roles held by women has moved by just 1%, from 24% in 2016 to 25% in 2017. Botswana has also shown a 6% reduction in the percentage of businesses with no women in senior leadership.

Unfortunately, barriers to womens financial empowerment abound, including more limited access to education, employment, entrepreneurship and formal financial markets, as well as different social norms and legal treatment in many countries. The OECDs 2013 report noted that women even more than men need to be sufficiently financially literate in order to effectively participate in economic activities and to take appropriate financial decisions for themselves, their children, and their families.

Financial skills

It stands to reason that if we are to build a bright economic future in Botswana, there will be an enormous demand for skills in the field of finance and accounting. It is only through a solid body of qualified finance professionals both in corporates and in entrepreneurial ventures, that growth can truly be supported in all other areas, says Nicky Fisher, president of the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT).

International Monetary Fund head, Christine Lagarde, said that empowering women is an economic game changer. If you discourage half the population from fully participating in the labour market, you are essentially behaving like an airline pilot who shuts down half his engines in mid-flight. Sure, your plane will likely continue to fly, but it would be such a crazy thing to do.

It seems that Botswanas new economy is not making this mistake.
The Constitution's guarantee of equality in section 9 is not merely concerned with 'formal' equality (equality at law), but endorses a notion of 'substantive' equality.

Martin van Staden

Formal equality is, however, still the root of the provision, and it thus cannot be argued that substantive equality supersedes the former. The law must still apply equally on a non-racial, non-sexist basis.

Substantive equality

Substantive equality means government must in practice venture to make people more equal in terms of material wealth. This has manifested in the form of employment equity, quotas, and general racial-preferencing. There is a lot of debate about whether this is desirable or even possible.

In the first case, is parity really what South Africans should aspire to  rather than aiming as high as they possibly can? In the second case, human nature and the laws of economics have shown repeatedly that with the divergences of culture, individual interests, capabilities, etc., complete equality is impossible. The only type of plausibly-achievable equality is equal protection of the law.

Other than desirability or possibility, however, is the question of legality, and how the notion of substantive equality has manifested in South African society.

Constitutional amendments

Section 1 of the Constitution  part of the Founding Provisions  occupies a special place in South African law. It, unlike the rest of the Constitution, can only be amended with a 75% majority in the National Assembly, rather than a two-thirds majority. It provides the basic structure  the character  of the Constitution. Its provisions permeate every other provision in the Constitution, meaning that no right in the Bill of Rights or any other provision can be interpreted or applied without having due regard to the influence of the Founding Provisions.

Section 1 provides for the imperative values upon which South Africa is founded, and these include non-racialism, non-sexism, and the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law.

The essence of the rule of law can be summed up as an aversion to arbitrariness: It mandates, among other things, that the law will apply equally, that discretionary power will, if at all, be exercised according to strict objective criteria, and that the law must be knowable, accessible, and rigid.

Affirmative action must be non-racist

Furthermore, section 9(1) of the Constitution, which is the basis of the constitutional right to equality and spans four other provisions as well, provides that everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. It is this provision which is often disregarded by dishonest proponents of substantive equality.

What they, many of whom found their way into South Africas highest courts, also ignore is the constitutional commitment to non-racialism, which permeates the right to equality itself.

When they say that any kind of affirmative action is sanctioned by section 9(2), which obliges the State to take legislative measures to ensure those categories of persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination can also enjoy all the rights and freedoms in the Bill of Rights, they act as if the Founding Provisions and section 9(1) do not exist. This is a jurisprudentially untenable position to hold.

The Constitution, without dispute, endorses affirmative action. What it prohibits absolutely, however, is racial or sexist affirmative action. The commitment to non-racialism is not in the Bill of Rights and thus cannot be limited by section 36, which limits the rights in the Bill. Non-racialism and the Rule of Law are Founding Provisions, and not available to limitation.

Affirmative action in South Africa must be non-racial, and based on the socio-economic status of beneficiaries exclusively  not the colour of their skins.

South Africans have, for too long, deferred to a dishonest interpretation of the Constitution, without thinking for themselves. In the United States, Britain, and other jurisdictions, there is healthy debate about the pronouncements of courts and about how constitutional principles function and should be applied in society. In South Africa, there is no such debate: When a court establishes an arguably-incorrect constitutional principle, we acquiesce.

This must stop.

The Constitution belongs to all South Africans, and we should thus not too easily allow it to be misinterpreted and misapplied when a more appropriate, common-sense, and arguably correct, interpretation is more likely to lead to prosperity and freedom.
South African tech-based learning institution WeThinkCode_, which offers free education to the software industry, will open its new Cape Town campus in January 2018.

WeThinkCode_ opened its first campus in Johannesburg in January 2016, where it currently trains 300 students, and with the addition of the second campus, it plans to welcome 320 students across the country in 2018.

WeThinkCode_ has partnered with the V&A Waterfront to establish the new campus in at Workshop17, with the expansion made possible through the partnership with its growth sponsor, BCX, which works with WeThinkCode_ to invest in the next generation of South African talent in the ICT sector.

We are dedicated to empowering our youth with skills to design world-changing solutions for the digital era. We believe strongly in partnering with organisations such as BCX and the Waterfront to drive the development of world-class tech skills in South Africa. Our expansion to Cape Town signifies an exciting new chapter for WeThinkCode_, and we are excited to expand our search for top tech talent, said Arlene Mulder, managing director and co-founder of WeThinkCode_.

Applications to join the 2018 cohort in both Cape Town and Johannesburg are currently open. Applicants will be required to complete three online tests and if they pass, they will be invited to a four-week bootcamp. Thereafter, the top candidates will be selected to join the two-year programme. Cape Towns first-ever cohort will comprise of 120 students, while the Johannesburg campus has 200 spaces available.

This article was originally published on www.disrupt-africa.com.
The third annual DevConf, to be staged in both Johannesburg and Cape Town next year, will feature internationally and locally renowned speakers such as keynote David Hussman, Devjam's agile guru and international speaker.

Hussman will speak on What developers can do to make the world a better place and leave a lasting impact beyond their code.

Also on the extensive lineup across five tracks, Amy Codes Chen, a software engineer at Rancher Labs, will talk on Kubernetes, the de-facto standard for container orchestration; JavaScript preacher Chris Nwamba will examine the need to build offline apps for the next billion users; Griffiths Sibeko, Windows client team lead at Zapper, will outline a .net standard future for everyone; and .NETdeveloper and Mensa member Gerard de Jong will demonstrate how to break into a WPA2 secured wireless access point live on stage.

Nigerias Neo Ighodaro, CTO at Hotels.ng, will talk on Building for the bad guys; UK-based software consultant Daniel Irvine will outline the secrets of successful mentoring; idwork.co.za founder Arjun Khoosal will talk delegates through making the magic happen in a startup; and Rebecca Franks, engineering lead at DVT, will present a testable approach to Android development. In line with its successful formula, DevConf serves to inspire software developers with a range of topics applicable to software development - from keeping up to date with the latest technologies and trends to tackling the challenges of working in large enterprise systems. See the full agenda here.

DevConf organisers Robert MacLean and Candice Mesk report that the 2018 event is well on track to exceed its target of over 850 developers participating, with early bird tickets already sold out for both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Sponsorship opportunities are still available.

DevConf Johannesburg will be held at the Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre on 27 March 2018, and DevConf Cape Town will be held at The River Club on 29 March 2018. For more, go to www.devconf.co.za or follow @devconfza.
In South Africa, we have a well-known word, or concept if you will, called Ubuntu . It means 'humanity to others' or in other words I am what I am because of who we all are.

We are all connected in this world and through Ubuntu we believe that by doing our part, however small, we can make life better for others and ultimately for ourselves. It is Desmond Tutu who said:

Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put all together that overwhelm the world.

It is in this spirit of Ubuntu that Tozer Events & Marketing decided to do their little bit of good by spending time with and donating supplies to 15 babies at Door of Hope, a non-profit organisation that gives abandoned babies a second chance at life and the gift of hope.

This year Tozer Events & Marketing, an agency that specialises in corporate brand building for local and international clients, used the funds that wouldve otherwise been spent on Christmas gifts for their clients to give to Door of Hope. On 15 December 2017, they also held a special photoshoot for the 15 babies between four and 12 months at the Glenvista house in Johannesburg to create memories for their photobook which they can take with them to their forever families. Through this the team at Tozer Events hopes to raise awareness of the important and necessary work Door of Hope does and hopefully build a strong and ongoing relationship in the years to come.

The Door of Hope Childrens Mission is a non-profit organisation established in 1999 by the Berea Baptist Mission Church. Still to this day poverty is a very real challenge countless people face in South Africa. Because of it many mothers do not feel emotionally or financially equipped with the challenge to raise a child and they will often abandon their babies in dustbins, open fields and public toilets. It was under these circumstances and under the leadership of Pastor Cheryl Allen, that the church made a hole in their wall and a Baby Bin was installed.

It allowed mothers to leave their babies in safe environment any time, day or night, for the church to take care of them. The moment a baby is placed, care workers on duty receive an electronic signal alerting them. The baby is taken in and the anonymity of the donor is ensured.

News quickly spread and other babies have been brought personally by their mothers or have come through other means such as the police, community members, hospitals or clinics to Door of Hope.

Today there are three houses that employ 56 permanent staff members. Here they take care of the babies and toddlers and they work hard to restore their hope and help them find their forever families. To date they have been able to help more than 1500 babies and assist with over 650 adoptions. With assistance from Door of Hope and social workers some babies are returned to the care of their mothers while others find a home and family at the Door of Hope Village  a community of moms, dad, uncles, aunties, uncles, grannies, grandpas and cousins to love and cherish them.

In the future, the Tozer Events Team would like to grow this initiative into a longstanding relationship with Door of Hope through the help of their clients. If you would like to learn more about what you can do to help Door of Hope or get involved, please contact Inken Gartrell: az.oc.rezot@nekni

Tozer Events & Marketing would like to thank their clients for their support throughout the year and for helping them give these babies the gift of hope.

For more information about:

Door of Hope

Tozer Events and Marketing

A full list of the donated supplies:

Nan formula



Baby cereals



Purity



Nappies



Baby wipes



Bum cream



Hair and Body wash



Miltons sterilising liquid



Hand sanitiser



Hygiene hand soap



Washing powder



Dish Liquid



Domestos



Handy Andy



Toiletpaper and tissues



Toilet spray

Special thanks to:

For more information, please contact Tozer Events on +27 10 590 5537, email az.oc.rezot@nekni or visit www.tozer.co.za/services/events.




Mark your calendars for 3 March 2018 - when Hauwei and Kfm 94.5 set the stage for 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.

The 2018 line-up includes:

Mi Casa



AKA



Matthew Mole



Shekinah



Timo ODV



Locnville



Craig Lucas



Youngsta CPT



Jimmy Nevis



DJ Kent



Gangs of Ballet



G&T



Freshlyground

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: https://online.computicket.com/web/event/huawei_kday/1200809971/0/83644359.

Stay tuned to Kfm94.5 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

Social media hashtag: #HuaweiKDay




Following extensive renovations by Engen, Fairvale Secondary School in Durban will welcome in 2018 with a modern, fully furnished science lab. The company invested R650,000 in the project, which includes eight new computers.

Engens corporate social investment manager Mntu Nduvane says this improved learning environment will empower learners to excel in the sciences.

In particular, the science lab will ensure that learners are exposed to basic science equipment in an environment that is conducive to learning. By creating this positive experiential learning experience, the subject matter will really come alive for the learners, comments Nduvane.

Despite being situated in a disadvantaged community characterised by high unemployment, Fairvale Secondary School has consistently risen above these circumstances, defying the odds with impressive matric results. Last year, the matric pass rate was 76%, up from the previous year's 74% pass rate.

We are very grateful to Engen for their support. The biggest impact for us will be the reaction from our teachers and students when they see their new facilities. They will be so proud of the new environment in which they can thrive and learn, says Dale Seidle, principal of Fairvale Secondary School.
This year has been a whirlwind of racist expose after sexist expose after "How have they been running a business? Holy sh!t" expose.

So if you think you made poor choices in 2017, grab yourself a bottle of red, slap on a face mask, and lets indulge in the unhealthiest form of self care there is: relishing in the relief of not having made that mistake.

This is Memeburns list of the perpetrators of the dumbest public mistakes of 2017. Part two involves heinous mistakes that mostly tarnished institutions names rather than individuals.

#ICYMI: See Parts 1 and 3 below...

Travis Kalanick

Uber founder Travis Kalanicks terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year started in January, when the first rounds of #DeleteUber hit social media. Users of the e-hailing service were angered by Kalanicks involvement in newly-elected US President Donald Trumps advisory council  as well as some politically charged surge prices.

Users were so angered, in fact, that around 200 000 deleted their accounts.

But this was only the first in a line of scandals. The next month, former engineer Susan J Fowler wrote a blog post on the toxic work environment that protected repeat perpetrators of sexual harassment. The company said it took the allegations seriously, and subsequently released a diversity report.

Then in March, a video surfaced of Kalanick arguing with a driver who was upset about pay. But it still wasnt the end. That same month, the company was found to have used a greyball software to avoid law enforcement in New York. The New York Times also wrote about the apps psychological manipulation of its drivers.

Kalanick eventually resigned in June after pressure from investors. Things quietened down  until November, when it was found that in October 2016, a data breach jeopardised 57 million Uber accounts. The company reportedly paid the hackers a US$100,000 ransom to delete the data, and tracked them down to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

It is alleged that Kalanick, along with then-Uber chief security officer Joe Sullivan, disguised the payment as part of the companys bug bounty program. Uber has since been hit with two lawsuits, and the New York attorney general has opened an investigation into the matter.

Spur

Oh, Spur. Who would have thought a restaurant founded on cultural appropriation would find itself embroiled in racist scandal?

On Human Rights Day in March this year, a video of a white man arguing with a black woman inside a Spur went viral. The altercation was about children in the play area  according to both the man and woman, the others kid had bullied theirs.

CCTV footage showed the man  whom CEO Pierre van Tonder said has anger management issues  grabbing the womans child, and slamming their table towards the seated family.

The video was particularly damning for Spur as it showed no manager stepping in to help, though Spur later said this was because the man kept pushing staff away.

South Africans were outraged, and multiple boycotts popped up  from both those who deemed the mans actions racist and those who believed Spur was wrong to ban him.

And to make matters worse: the company replaced two-for-one Mondays with some boring R50 special. Make a right move, Spur.

Fyre Festival

In April this year, a host of super rich kids willing to pay up to US$12 000 for a music festival ticket found themselves stranded on an island in the Bahamas with refugee tents as their only shelter.

The festival was meant to be a deluxe getaway where attendees could mingle with some of the hottest models, lounge around on beautiful beaches, and enjoy the best in food, art, music, and adventure, according to its promo.

But somewhere everything went wrong  and instead of cancelling the festival before guests arrived, management pushed through, resulting in what one Twitter user called mass chaos.

Attendees were forced into bare refugee tents. They were offered dry cheese and lettuce sandwiches. Their luggage was thrown at them in the dark. In short, the super rich were forced to camp like normal people. The insanity.

Rapper Ja Rule, the events organiser, was facing eight lawsuits by July. His partner Billy McFarland was charged with scheming to defraud investors in his company, Fyre Media.

United Airlines

Not one to be outdone, United Airlines decided to rip the limelight (vomit-coloured light?) away from Pepsi less than a week after its ad controversy.

The American airline landed itself in hot water in April after one of its passengers was violently removed from a Chicago flight because it was overbooked. When no one volunteered to give up their seats, the company picked customers at random  but one passenger, 69-year-old Dr David Dao, refused to budge, and security guards dragged him done the aisle, breaking his nose, and dropping his head.

CEO Oscar Munoz [apologised] for having to re-accommodate these customers, vocabulary that did not go down well with the web.

Nice to know re-accomodate on United now means drag you violently out of your seat,' wrote one Twitter user. Her disdain was widespread, and its estimated that the company lost US$1-billion in value after the incident.

In July, Dr Dao told Daily Mail that he could have permanent brain damage. He said he had trouble sleeping, had little co-ordination and was unable to concentrate. He doubted he could go back to work as a doctor. Oscar Munoz is still CEO.

Huffington Post SA

The Huffington Post SA had a pretty bad Easter weekend.

On the Thursday, the publication posted a blog by one Shelley Garland making an argument for the disenfranchisement of white men. Garland argued that white men still hold too much power, and were the guiding force behind retrograde movements like Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump.

The article was so popular that it was picked up US far-right publication Breitbart by Friday. By Sunday, HuffPo had posted its third response to the debacle.

But Shelley Garland didnt exist  she was instead a pseudonym used by white male Marius Roodt who claims he wanted to make a point about the lack of fact-checking in South African journalism.

In short, Huffington Post made a mess of it when it didnt check any of Garlands credentials  and the publication has since promised to no longer rely on good faith with its contributors.

Racist schools

Last year, South Africa was hit with a wave of high schools protesting racist rules. So youd think that, a year later, other schools would have examined their own institutions to make sure they, too, werent protecting racist attitudes borne out of apartheid.

Nope.

In July, Windsor House Academy in Kempton Park expelled a number of students for braiding their hair, claiming it a violation of its code of conduct. A geography teacher at St Johns College was found to have consistently undermined black students intelligence, labelled Indian students Nawab and called Greek students dirty.

Because being a teenager isnt difficult enough, I guess.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

Feature image: Screenshot
Singapore Airlines (SIA) will be flying to Cape Town, via Johannesburg, on a daily basis from 26 March 2018, boosting its current four flights per week schedule.

Photo: Aviation Voice

The airline will be using its Airbus A350-900 aircraft, which has the capacity to hold 253 customers (42 business class, 24 in premium economy class and 187 in economy class).

This increased frequency will boost air access to Asia, the fastest growing region in the world. Singapores Changi Airport is a major global hub, making it easy to fly to Cape Town from anywhere in the East, says Tim Harris, Wesgro CEO.

The benefits of this connectivity are significant. Making it easier to access Cape Town by air, increases the number of visitors to our shores. This will not only boost leisure tourism, a major economic contributor to the Cape economy, but will also help facilitate investment. Indeed businessman and woman will now be able to come and see for themselves the excellent opportunities on offer in the Western Cape.

Air Access project

"This is the latest in a series of new and expanded direct routes, which have increased international air arrivals by 27% year-on-year. The Cape Town Air Access initiative has played a significant role in boosting air arrivals to our region, and Id like to commend the team for their continued commitment to growing the Western Capes tourism sector, and tourism jobs in our region, Alan Winde, Minister of Economic Opportunities, says.

The Cape Town Air Access projects key objective is to land more direct routes to Cape Town International Airport. Its success has far exceeded expectations. In its two-and-a-half years, it has assisted in landing 10 new routes to Cape Town and now 12 route expansions. This has increased seat capacity into Cape Town International by over 700,000.

Cape Town International Airport has, as a result, shown high international growth figures with passenger numbers up by 23% in the first nine months of 2017. The Asian market is also growing at a doubl- digit figures, with high growth in South East Asia, in particular from Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The Afropunk Festival, annually hosted in New York, Atlanta, London and Paris is now coming to Joburg for the first time welcoming renowned artists such as Solange Knowles, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Laura Mvula, King Tha and more.

The Constitution Hill backdrop will make for the most iconic Afropunk festival yet. Both Afropunk and Constitution Hill have been celebrated for providing a platform for activism and self-expression in their own rights and the partnership of these pioneering organisations will make for a unique and memorable new years eve celebration.

The partnership which also includes a collaboration with the Amacreatives to host: A New Black - a multimedia group exhibition and dialogue focusing on the individual voices of 7 upcoming contemporary artists and how they employ their artistic agency to engage with and interpret the colonial narrative that forms part of their history. Its a call for an artistic protest  a creative riot  to reimagine new definition(s) of blackness. Its a disruption of the status quo; a defiance of stereotypes that continue to shape and frame ideas around blackness.

Raw Johannesburg experience

A New Black is thus, the emergence of a unique calibre of black creatives aiming to shift perspectives on what it means to be a black artist in a constantly changing 21st Century Africa. Selected artists include Loyiso Mkize, Leeroy Jason, Zandi Tisani, Zac Modirapula, Sindiso Nyoni, Yolanda Mazwana and Zanele Mashinini.

The Constitution Hill partnership with the Afropunk festival has given rise to a legacy project, IamJoburg, an online tourism portal, project-managed by Travel Massive Africa. To give Afropunk guests a raw Johannesburg experience, tour operators in Alexandra, Soweto and the city centre are being assisted with developing experiential products and making better use of digital marketing.

If Afropunk is the microphone of thought then Constitution Hill is the stage for action. Designed to restore power to the disempowered, to revive hope in the hopeless, Constitution Hill is the proud host of such a progressive festival of music, art and consciousness.

Constitution Hill December exhibitions programme

During the festive season, ConHill will present art exhibitions that are intended to spark lively and engaging experiences related to Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Democracy.

Looking backward, moving forward is an exhibition curated by the Ifa Lethu Foundation, showing the incredible talent and fortitude of the artists who struggled against the odds, during the apartheid era, to make their art tell the stories which were so often hidden due to the marginalisation of South Africas majority black population. The exhibition will run until end of January 2018.

Umama onesibindi: Mother of courage is a tribute to all the children and women across Africa who have chosen life and stood firm in the face of adversity. For the past ten years, photographer Karin Schermbrucker has travelled the continent on assignment for Unicef, hearing and sharing the stories of women and children who have faced the giant of HIV. In every home, and over every shared moment, one thing was the same regardless of the road name, country, or place: courage. The exhibition opens to the public on World Aids Day and will close on 12 January 2018.

Memories of the Struggle: Australians against Apartheid is an exhibition launched by the Australasian South African Alliance (ASAA), in partnership with the Australian High Commission in South Africa, Brand South Africa and Constitution Hill. This multimedia exhibition is a photographic timeline of events that weave together a narrative of Australias involvement in the fight against apartheid.

Palladium exhibition: Palladium, a well-renowned fashion boot brand is celebrating 70 years of the existence of their trendy urban cultural boot. The exhibition is a showcase of the historical timeline and background on the existence of the Palladium boot and will show, in pictures, the transformative journey that the boot has walked. The exhibition closes in mid-January 2018.

Other festive attractions on the site

ConHills tours will continue to keep tourists spellbound in a walk down SAs historical memory lane of the three unique museums dating from 1883; to the present day iconic Constitutional Court that continues to author South Africas advance into a dawning democratic era (see attached tour programme).

For more information please contact Phetsile Nxumalo at az.gro.llihnoitutitsnoc@olamuxn.p or phone 011 381 3128.
The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today's ruling by a Cameroonian military appeal court that should result in Radio France Internationale radio journalist Ahmed Abba's immediate release from prison.

We are delighted that Ahmed Abba will finally be free, having already spent 876 days in jail too many. Abba was a victim of a monumental travesty of justice and should never have been arrested or charged in the first place, said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal.

He must now be free to pick up the pieces of his life and return to his journalism without further fear of reprisal.

Abbas 10-year sentence was reduced to 24 months, a period he has already served, according to RFI and diplomats present at todays court proceedings. RFI reported that a military court in Yaounde acquitted Abba of laundering the proceeds of a terrorist act, but upheld his sentence for non-denunciation of terrorism.

The news outlet indicated he would be released since he already served 29 months in prison.

Abba, CPJs 2017 International Press Freedom Award honoree , was convicted and sentenced in April this year to 10 years in jail on terrorism-related charges following his arrest on July 30, 2015 for reporting on the activities of extremist group Boko Haram.
Got a question or tip? Contact us at bizmojoidaho@gmail.com.
PR Newswire

TORONTO, Dec. 20, 2017

TORONTO, Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The purpose of the press release is to answer some of the most common questions ANDI (OTC PK: ANDI) / Utopya shareholders have been asking:

Q: What is the current outstanding share number?

A: 2,6B

Q: Will you take on toxic debt?

A: No toxic debt will be excepted PERIOD.

Q: What has been done with old debts?

A: We are negotiating those and they will be settled without diluting the stock.

Q: Will the company do a reverse split?

A: We do not feel that is necessary and with our projections we feel we can see the price per share reflect our value.

Q: Is the name and ticker being changed?

A: Yes, around February 1st because filing for a new CIK could temporarily halt trading and we want to give the shareholders plenty of notice.

Q: Tell me about manufacturing.

A: This is a complex answer but what I can say is that our manufacturing company has been fully vetted and is prepared to scale according to the company's needs.

Q: When will you have the first phone ready?

A: Two-part answer: we expect the phones to be available for purchase through retail channels in mid-late 2018; the first units are currently being tested/vetted.

Q: What will Darryl Green's investment be and what's his involvement?

A: Firstly, we're incredibly excited to have Darryl sharing his expertise with the team. Second, his investment was a private equity transaction and because it was prior to our merger with Andiamo we have chosen to keep this in house for now. Third, Mr. Green has agreed to assist in any way he can but his role is as an advisor.

Q: Does Utopya have a booth at CES?

A: No, each team member has a Vendor Pass and we will be doing private meetings while mixing and mingling with the world's top technology companies.

A closing quote from Mr. Starkweather: "This is an exciting time for the company, and we are overwhelmed and truly thankful for the support. The future is bright and we're thrilled to be able to include shareholders on our journey. On a personal note, I feel blessed to be involved, and can't wait for what comes next. Utopya is all about creating a better world, and something tells me that we're well on our way to doing so."

Contact: Michael Starkweather, [email protected]

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/andi--utopya-question-and-answer-300574259.html

SOURCE Utopya Innovations Inc.; Andiamo Corporation
Reciba en su email: noticias de ultima hora, analisis tecnicos o el cierre de mercado

Email no valido Nombre requerido Recibira las informaciones mas relevantes del dia en tiempo real Que informacion desea recibir? Noticias de Ultima hora Boletin Cierre de Mercado Boletin analisis tecnico Boletin Fundsnews Debe seleccionar un tipo de boletin Acepto la Politica de privacidad Debe aceptar la politica de privacidad Responsable EMPRESAS DEL GRUPO WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Finalidad La remision de informacion, novedades y promociones Establecimiento o mantenimiento de Relaciones Comerciales. Legitimacion Consentimiento del interesado. Interes legitimo en el desarrollo de la relacion comercial Destinatario Empresas del Grupo WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Derechos Acceso, rectificacion, supresion, limitacion, oposicion y portabilidad Informacion adicional Politica de Privacidad de nuestra pagina Web + INFORMACION
The Central Bank has fined investment firm BCP Asset Management 210,000 after an enforcement investigation found nine of the firms retail clients were wrongly categorised as professional investors and afforded a lower level of protection as a result.

The regulator said the factors in deciding the size of the fine included the seriousness of the cases, the length of time of some of the breaches which extended up to four-and-a-half years, and the firms conduct in altering two already signed declarations without the clients consent.
HBAN (Halo Business Angel Network) has announced that investors in its South East Business Angel Network (SEBAN) plan to invest 10 million in start-ups from the region over the next three years.

A joint initiative of Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland, HBANs South East-based syndicate has invested more than 6m in a total of 38 deals.

The syndicate has invested across companies in the ICT, manufacturing and food sectors, with a focus on, but not restricted to companies located in, or connected to, the South East.

SEBAN is part of the National HBAN network, and one of the benefits of joining the syndicate is the access to the best investment opportunities from across the island and in a wide range of sectors.

The syndicate has only five angel investor places left for its regular investor forums and pitching events.

SEBAN is looking to recruit successful business people and entrepreneurs with the knowledge, expertise and insight to enable local start-ups to grow and scale their businesses, and achieve national and international success.

It is inviting interested parties to attend one of its regular investor forums and pitching events.

HBANs South East angels have a wide variety of backgrounds and are interested in companies from a range of sectors including technology, agriculture, food, manufacturing and tourism.

Aidan Shine, HBAN Coordinator for South East Region, said: Among other HBAN syndicates, we have a strong track-record of investing in local companies, with more than 6 million invested to date, and plan to invest a further 10 million in South East-based businesses.

"A key part of our success is the fact that companies that pitch for investment to our angels have been vetted, prepared and confirmed as investor-ready, high potential start-ups by HBAN. We are looking for new members to join SEBAN and access the unique opportunities that HBAN offers its network of angels.

HBAN is on a drive to boost the amount invested in Irish start-ups by HBAN angels to 25 million per year by 2020. Increasing the number of business angels in the six regional Irish HBAN syndicates is essential to reaching these targets.

Angel investors fill an important gap in the start-up ecosystem in Ireland, as this type of investment offers support and guidance as well as funding, so its smart money. Getting new investors is a priority for HBANs South East Syndicate. We would strongly recommend that any potential investors get a real sense of what SEBAN in about by test-driving the experience at one of the regular forums and pitching events.

On Thursday, February 8 2018, HBAN will host its National Conference, Quality deal flow and leveraging the HBAN network, in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

The event is Irelands only angel investment-focused national conference and is targeted at new angels who are looking for structured and quality deal flow.

The event will also be of interest to those looking to invest and create de-risked portfolios with likeminded investors through syndicates.

The conference is open to non-HBAN members who want to see how the HBAN network works, connect with HBAN angels and listen to pitches from high-potential start-ups.

Tickets for the conference are priced at 50 (free for members of HBAN) and are available now at www.hban.org/conference
Commercial property consultants CBRE Ireland today released statistics on the volume of investment spend in the Irish market during 2017.

According to CBRE, more than 2.5 billion was invested in commercial real estate in the Republic during the last 12 months in more than 214 individual investment transactions extending to more than 1 million.
The new US corporate tax regime which is set to be implemented on January 1 will heighten the tug of love between Brussels and Washington over the 13bn in back taxes Apple owes Ireland, a leading tax expert has predicted.

Joe Tynan, head of tax at PwC, said the sweeping changes to the US corporate tax code that President Donald Trumps White House will implement next month  earlier than seemed feasible a few weeks ago  will heighten the clashes between Europe and US over who should tap the international taxes earned by US multinationals overseas.

Apple and the Irish Government are appealing to the European Court of Justice the 2016 decision by the commission that Ireland had a sweetheart tax deal and is owned 13bn by Apple.

The iPhone maker may now argue that from January, it is paying taxes on the monies to the US, inflaming a potential conflict with tax authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr Tynan said from next month US-based companies, including the subsidiaries of Irish giants such as Kerry and Glanbia, will benefit from the reduction to 21% from 35% in the federal profit tax rate.

However, the gains for Irish firms like other companies there may be offset by receiving less in interest cost credits in the US.

The 21% rate will effectively rise to a US-wide average of 26% when state profit taxes are included. Those rates range between 0% in Delaware and 8% in California.

The tax on repatriating the $2 trillion (1.7tn) held by US multinationals overseas will be set at a higher than expected rate of 15.5% but can be paid in over eight years with the clock ticking from January 1.

Mr Tynan said the prospects for the repatriation of the overseas funds was one of the things driving US stock markets to new high this year because investors were anticipating companies would likely fund bigger dividend payouts from the bounty.

Dermot OLeary, chief economist at Goodbody, warned that the flows of US investment into Ireland could be affected.

Ireland is more than just a casual observer in this change given the role US firms play in the Irish economy, he said.

It will take some time for the implications of the new US tax code to become fully known, but one has to at least believe a repeat of the flows of recent years are now unlikely,
Six Irish companies are to receive EU grants worth millions of Euros to advance their innovative ideas.

Pure Fibre Limited and Soapbox Labs, both in Dublin; Eircomposites Teoranta at Inverin Co. Galway; and W1dA Experience in Westport will benefit from the funding under the EU Horizon 20/20 Programme.
The HSE's National Service Plan 2018 has drawn criticism from opposition parties and health organisations.

The Health Service has 14.5bn to spend next year, a rise of 3% on what they spent this year.

Fianna Fail said the Irish public should be fearful for their health system in 2018 as a result of the plan, which was published yesterday.

Age Action has welcomed the increased investment in home care services, while Nursing Homes Ireland acknowledged the increase in the Fair Deal budget.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation expressed disappointment that the HSE placed little emphasis on protecting the front-line workforce of nursing and midwifery.

While President of the Irish Medical Organisation, Dr. Ann Hogan, said the 25m increase in funding for primary care will not have any impact.

She said it would be a "real challenge" to keep services running "at the level they're running at the moment".

There are 1,600 fewer hospital beds than we had ten years despite our population increasing, she added.

The number of people over 75 has also increased faster than the increase in population.

"What is required is a completely new contract for general practice to incorporate the care plans for chronic diseases, that have been developed and are waiting to be implemented," Dr Hogan said.

"If we have the expansion of GP care that is projected in the Slainte care report we will need over 2,000 more GPs by 2025 and I don't see that this kind of money is going to make any kind of meaningful impact on starting to address that situation," she added.

Elsewhere, the cost of going to the pharmacy will fall next year.

43m euro will allow for a reduction in prescription charges for both Medical Card holders and those without them.

This will mean that nearly 500,000 medical card holders under the age of 70 will benefit from savings next year, according to Health Minister Simon Harris.

"We've also reduced the monthly threshold Drugs Payment Scheme by 10 which will see families save up to 120 a year in medication costs," he said.

"When you go to the pharmacy in January, whether you're a medical card holder or a non-medical card holder, the cost of going to the pharmacy will be cheaper for you and your family in 2018," he added.

Digital Desk
Researchers based in Trinity College are to coordinate a project to mass produce scratch and abrasion resistant and anti-reflective surfaces that can be applied on mobile phones, camera lenses, and car components.

Dr Parvaneh Mokarian, Senior Research Fellow at AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland funded materials science centre based at Trinity College Dublin, will coordinate a major European project valued at 8.2m to pioneer the mass production of scratch and abrasion resistant and anti-reflective surfaces.

The teams new generation surfaces will offer enhanced performance to a range of products including anti-reflective surfaces for electronics displays such as mobile phones and tablets, eyewear, video glasses, image sensors, and anti-fingerprint and soft-touch plastic parts for the automotive industry. Industry partners that are involved have committed to pilot the technology after the research project is finished.

The 4-year SUN-PILOT (Piloting of Innovative Subwavelength Nanostructure Technology for Optical and Injection Moulding Applications) collaborative project has been awarded 7.1 million through Europes Horizon 2020 programme, with the remainder of the 1.1 million coming from industry.

The technologies developed by SUN-PILOT will focus on solutions for the Optics and Automotive industries, where these nano-patterned surfaces will have a significant impact. SUN-PILOT involves 13 partners from 6 European countries  5 multinationals, including Coherent (Scotland - the worlds leading suppliers of laser solutions) and Grupo Antolin (Spain - one of the largest players in the car interiors market); 4 SMEs including Irish Precision Optics; 2 universities; and 2 research institutes.

AMBER will receive 2.1m of the total research funding sum, which is the largest amount Trinity has ever been awarded for a collaborative Horizon 2020 project. The composition of this consortium will allow a full research-development-innovation cycle with the scale-up of part production on active pilot lines, including injection moulding for production of car parts and the scale-up of nanomaterials.

Dr Parvaneh Mokarian, Senior Research Fellow at AMBER and Trinitys School of Chemistry said: For many devices, unwanted reflections of light can seriously compromise system performance and effectiveness, particularly with lasers and other optical systems. Current anti-reflection solutions typically rely on thin-film coatings comprising multiple layers of materials deposited onto each and every reflecting surface along the optical path.

"These coatings require careful design and engineering of the thicknesses and refractive index of the thin-films, and batch processes that involve relatively high temperatures. This is not commercially viable with plastic screens used, for example, in tablet and mobile phone screens.

"SUN-PILOT will look to reduce the cost of anti-reflective precision optics manufacture by at least 75% by replacing complex and demanding anti-reflective multilayer coatings with a single nano-patterned surface. We are confident that our research will have a major impact for both the optics industry and in the automotive industry.

"We are delighted to have been chosen to lead on this major multi-million-euro European project and look forward to working with all of the relevant partners over the following 4 years. The preparation of this consortium was lengthy, and the team is incredibly grateful to Enterprise Ireland for their support, particularly through the Coordinator Support grant and their National Contact Points.

SUN-PILOT will develop the new scratch resistant and anti-reflection technologies using the Zeroptica surface nano-patterning process developed and patented by Dr Mokarian in AMBER and which can be applied across a range of materials.

The surfaces will also provide superior wear resistant properties compared to current coated solutions and will offer new self-cleaning and anti-bacterial properties. Dr Mokarian developed the technology with support from Enterprise Irelands Commercialisation funding.

Dr Parvaneh Mokarian continued: AMBERs Zeroptica technology is based on block copolymers (structured molecular units) that deliver self-assembled nano-patterned masks onto any substrate. The advantage of this technique compared to other existing patterning methods is that it is solution based which means it can be applied on curved surfaces (camera lenses) and large areas such as solar cells.

"It is also cheap and doesnt require any expensive equipment. Other available techniques used today either use harsh chemicals for patterning which are not environmentally friendly or require expensive equipment or can only be applied on flat surfaces (lithography).

The global market for antireflection coatings is projected to be worth more than US$6.1 billion per year by 2021.

Antireflection coatings are used in multiple markets including technical optics, eyewear, electronics, architectural, solar, automobile, video glasses, image sensors. Despite the demand and the large market opportunity, these coatings are not common on electronic displays due to the high cost of the current technology and the lack of durability of the coatings in challenging environments.

SUN-PILOT will also benefit the automotive industry, which is a huge user of injected plastic parts e.g. for instrument panels, door panels, lighting consoles. The global injection moulded plastic market is expected to reach US$296 billion by 2022. SUN-PILOT will develop nano-patterning moulds for injection moulding of plastic parts for the automotive industry to achieve functions such as soft touch or enhanced colour. The most demanded finishing in interior parts are either highly bright (like Piano-Black) or soft-touch surfaces. SUN-PILOT will provide anti-fingerprint bright parts and soft-touch parts in the injection moulding process in one step, compared to the multi-step process currently required.

At the recent Trinity Innovation Awards 2017 Dr Parvaneh Mokarian was awarded a prize by Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast in the One-2-watchcategory for her innovation research and entrepreneurship.

- Digital desk
A book of evidence was served yesterday on a man accused of murdering a 22-year-old woman in Cork City last April., writes Liam Heylin.

Detective Sergeant Shane Bergin served a book of evidence on Adam OKeeffe, aged 26, at Cork District Court yesterday.

On the application of Inspector Vincent OSullivan, Judge Olann Kelleher sent the accused forward on the single charge of murder to the Central Criminal Court.

It will now be a matter for that court to set a date for the murder trial.

Judge Kelleher told Mr OKeeffe that if he wished to avail of an alibi defence whereby he might state that he was elsewhere at the relevant time, then certain notices had to be given to the prosecution of any alibi witness on whom he might be relying.

Once again, Mr OKeeffe, wearing T-shirt and tracksuit pants, stared at the floor and was bent over to such an extent that he was barely visible in the dock at courtroom 1 at the Washington St courthouse.

The single count on which Mr OKeeffe was charged last week states that, On the 29th/30th of April 2017, both dates inclusive, at 36 Sheares Street, Cork City, in the District Court area of Cork City, District No. 19, did murder one Amy McCarthy, contrary to Common Law.

The late Ms McCarthy was a mother of an infant son and she was 22 years old when she died.

The late Ms McCarthy was found in a second-floor room in a vacant office block on Sheares St, at the back of the Mercy University Hospital in Cork City, by paramedics at around 7am on April 30 last.

The paramedics had been called after the emergency services were alerted by a man in the derelict office building after he tried to wake Ms McCarthy on April 30 but failed to rouse her.

Members of the late Ms McCarthys family were in attendance at Cork District Court for the brief hearing.

Eddie Burke, defence solicitor, asked for free legal aid to be extended to cover the appointment of junior and senior counsel to represent the accused at the Central Criminal Court.

Judge Olann Kelleher acceded to that application.

This story originally appeared in the Irish Examiner.
Update 5.45pm: Ryanair sincerely regrets receiving notice of a threatened four-hour pilot strike in Germany tomorrow.

In a statement issued by Ryanair, the airline said the disruption is "unjustified and unnecessary".

Ryanair has written to its German pilots this afternoon asking them to work as normal tomorrow to avoid disrupting the travel plans of thousands of German passengers during Christmas week.

Ryanairs Robin Kiely said: Ryanair apologises sincerely to any German customers worried or affected by this threatened four-hour strike tomorrow morning.

"We hope that our German pilots will put the needs of our customers first during Christmas week.

"We advise all customers in Germany to turn up as normal tomorrow, as we plan to operate all scheduled flights, and we will be doing our utmost to minimise any disruptions to the Christmas travel plans of our German customers.

Update 4.35pm: Ryanair is facing a four hour strike by pilots in Germany three days before Christmas.

The Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) trade union confirmed all pilots directly employed by the airline are being asked to join a walk-out from 5.01am until 8.59am (local time) on Friday.

The damaging disruption came after the low-cost carrier narrowly avoided a strike by crew operating out of Ireland.

VC said all Ryanair flights at German airports will be affected.

The union accused the airline's management of disregarding the principles of trade union autonomy and claimed it is not committed to constructive talks.

VC said the dispute deepened after initial negotiations, scheduled for Wednesday, were cancelled at short notice over the presence of two members of its team.

Ingolf Schumacher, head of VC's industrial department, said: "Ryanair's public offer to conduct negotiations with VC can only be classified as a further publicity stunt.

"In the history of the VC, there has never been a case in which the collective bargaining autonomy has been trampled on by an employer as is now the case with Ryanair.

"This makes it clear to VC that the company is not interested in a mutually constructive co-operation, based on trust and equality. Rather, Ryanair is trying to win time and attempting to delay the beginning of collective bargaining."

VC said it regretted the disruption for passengers.

Update 1.04pm: Strike action has been averted at Ryanair once again after the airline wrote to IMPACT setting out its plans to recognise the pilots union.

It follows landmark talks between unions and management on Tuesday when the airline said it would also recognise cabin crew unions as well as those of pilots.

The decision wiped billions off the value of the company as investors reacted to the seismic change in policy.

IMPACT Assistant General Secretary Ashley Connolly confirmed the receipt of correspondence that "accepts and recognises the union for collective bargaining purposes".

"We have also agreed to an invitation for a meeting on January 3 where we will hope to get into agreement of the procedures of what that collective bargaining will look like," Ms Connolly said.

"We do believe today is an historic achievement," she added.

In a statement this afternoon a Ryanair spokesperson said the company had written to the Impact union this morning confirming in writing that it is recognising Impact and its Ryanair Company Pilot Council.

It went on: "Ryanair has also submitted a set of proposals on pay and conditions, procedures and dispute resolution for its Irish based pilots, and looks forward to concluding an early agreement on these issues with its Irish Ryanair pilot company council.

Update 12.04am: Ryanair has written to IMPACT setting out its plans to recognise the pilotsunion.

IMPACT had given the airline a midday deadline saying that strike action could be renewed if an agreement was not delivered.

Ryanair met with pilots and union reps on Tuesday in a massive U-turn on its long-standing policy.

Bernard Harbor from IMPACT said pilots are now considering the contents of the letter

"We very recently received correspondence from Ryanair in response to the meeting we held on Tuesday evening," he said.

"My colleagues are now considering that correspondence. We'll also be talking to the representatives of Ryanair pilots who were also involved in Tuesday's meeting," Mr Harbor added.

"We hope to be able to with more substance before too long," he said.

Update 11.09am: Clock ticking for Ryanair to satisfy pilot union

Ryanair has written to pilots saying it will contact their trade union today about formal union recognition.

Union representatives and pilots met with airline management for the first time on Tuesday in a dramatic shift of its policy not to deal with unions.

It came after pilots threatened a one day strike which could still go ahead if a written agreement is not delivered.

IMPACT has asked for a document confirming Ryanairs commitment to union recognition by midday, which it is expecting it will get before the deadline.

Earlier: Ryanair has until noon to come up with a document to satisfy pilots union IMPACT.

The union met with management on Tuesday in a historic shift for the airline.

But IMPACT says it wants a document confirming its commitment to recognise the union.

On Tuesday members of pilots group, IALPA and its parent union IMPACT sat down with management for a meeting described by the airline as positive.

It followed cancellation of a planned 24-hour strike by Dublin-based pilots.

The union said it was disappointed that management did not put its intention to recognise the union on a piece of paper.

IMPACT has given Ryanair until midday today to come up with a document and said strike action can be implemented in the absence of a timely agreement.

Digital Desk
Update 9.03am: The Minister of State for Defence has admitted that there is a huge shortage of pilots in the Air Corps.

Paul Kehoe said he has been reassured by the chief of staff that they are able to carry out their duties.

Defence force members have repeatedly warned they're having trouble recruiting and retaining staff because of low pay.

They have just agreed to the successor to the Lansdowne Road deal to try to restore wages to pre-crash levels.

Minister Kehoe said he knows it is an uphill battle.

"There is a huge shortage of pilots and we are competing against a huge strong economy when it comes to pilots," he said.

He will join the Taoiseach later as they visit Irish troops spending Christmas on duty in Lebanon.

Leo Varadkar will thank the Irish members of the UN interim force for their service.

Earlier: Defence Forces agree pay deal

The Defence Forces have agreed to a new deal on pay and conditions aimed at returning their wages to pre-crash levels.

The 'Public Service Stability Agreement' is the successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement.

It was accepted after a ballot of soldiers, sailors and aircrew - but they are keen to point out it is not a ringing endorsement.

Photo: Rollingnews.ie

They are still unhappy they are not allowed join with the trade union ICTU for discussions.

They said they are not being treated as well as other public servants who have managed to negotiate their own side deals.

Under the new agreement troops will see the return of a 5% allowance cut in 2010.

They added that they believe they are still owed more.

Digital Desk
The Master of the National Maternity Hospital has blamed the Eighth Amendment for distorting clinical judgements.

Dr Rhona Mahony said she is still reviewing the report of the Oireachtas Committee.

It recommended allowing terminations without restriction up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

The report calls for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment and that abortions should be decriminalised.

It also says abortion should be allowed in the cases of fatal foetal abnormality without term limits.

Other recommendations include access to free contraception, improvements to counselling and support services and there should be more sexual education in schools.

The committee's recommendations will be considered by the Oireachtas when it reconvenes in mid-January.

Dr Mahony said the current criminal consequences are not helping.

"I do believe that distorts clinical judgement. We have good example of that. For example, a High Court case where a woman was kept alive in order to incubate a foetus," she said.

There are claims of bias towards the pro-choice side from the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment.

The Pro-Life Campaign spokesperson Cora Sherlock is calling for an open debate on the issue.

"We feel that the report and the recommendations that have come out from this Committee will be remembered as one of the most biased committees ever in the history of the State," she said.

"The Committee never considered all of the families in Ireland who say that their children are alive because of the Eighth Amendment," she added.

The Committee's recommendations were welcomed elsewhere.

Todays report is an important end to a momentous year. With this Committee and the Citizens Assembly, we have finally had a meaningful consideration on how to reform Irelands harsh abortion laws," said Amnesty International Ireland Executive Director Colm O'Gorman.

"Once again, we have seen that when people have an opportunity to examine abortion in detail, guided by the evidence of legal and medical experts from around the world, expanding access to abortion services in Ireland is the logical, compassionate conclusion."

TAs the Committees report notes, anything other than simple repeal could have a profound, and relatively unprecedented, effect. Therefore anything less than its full repeal could cast serious doubt over future legislations compliance with Irelands obligations under international human rights law.

"Some gaps remain, including in how to address pregnancies with a diagnosis of severe rather than fatal foetal impairment. However, the Department of Health now has a clear blueprint for a new legal framework for access to abortion. It must ensure that these recommendations are reflected in the legislation due to be published early next year, he added.
By Aoife Nic Ardghail

A former Dublin homeless man who set fires in wheelie bins to heat his sleeping bag will be sentenced later for arson at two Ballsbridge locations.

Garda Martin Folan accepted that Dwayne Barry (29) had set the bins alight so he could wrap his sleeping bag around them and that he had tried to put out the blazes when they got out of control.

Barry, with an address at North Circular Road, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to arson at Ardoyne House, Pembrook Park, Ballsbridge, causing 45,000 damage to two cars on January 25, 2016.

He further pleaded guilty to arson at Burlington House, Waterloo Lane, Ballsbridge which caused structural damage of over 18,000 on February 28, 2016.

Barry has 86 previous convictions including thefts, robberies and criminal damage.

Garda Folan told Fiona Murphy BL, prosecuting, that an Ardoyne House resident had a double garage on the premises in which she let her relative park his Porsche and BMW cars.

The court heard that there was a gap between the garage doors and the ground even when locked. The resident was awoken by her daughter about midnight on January 25, 2016 to say that the Dublin Fire Brigade was on site putting out a blaze in the garage.

The Station Officer alerted gardai about a large steel wheelie bin that had been on fire in the vicinity.

Garda Folan said a total of 45,000 damage was done to the garage and the two cars, which were written off.

The garda revealed that he was investigating this incident from CCTV footage of the area when he was called about a wheelie bin on fire in close proximity to Burlington House.

The owner later told gardai that he had to repair air conditioning units, re-plaster the walls, have the gas boiler system serviced, replace glass and repaint the interior as a result of the 18,000 damage.

Garda Folan said about a week later he stopped Barry in the Ranelagh area because he was wearing matching clothes and had a bicycle similar to the person in CCTV footage of the arsons.

Barry was later arrested and interviewed for the offences, and he made full admissions.

He said he was living rough, spending his dole money on drink and the only clothes he owned were given to him by charity.

He also told gardai he set fires in wheelie bins to dry and warm his sleeping bag before spending the night in Herbert Park. He described how he would wander the streets during the day and link in with charities for food.

Garda Folan agreed with Edel Gilligan BL, defending, that her client had made efforts to put out the fires, though these were insufficient. He said he accepted Barrys explanations for setting the wheelie bins alight.

The garda agreed that Barry had been co-operative and had since made genuine efforts to better his life.

Ms Gilligan submitted to Judge Karen OConnor that alcohol was the root cause of her clients problems.

She said Barry had taken steps to address his alcohol problem and was planning to do his Leaving Cert. She asked the judge to adjourn sentencing to allow Barry continue with his courses.

Judge OConnor put the matter back until March and ordered a probation report for the next date.
HSE director general Tony OBrien has described the Kerry University Hospital scans controversy as a serious issue, writes Evelyn Ring.

Mr OBrien said that around 20,000 images had already been checked before the lookback became public and there had been 700 follow-up clinical reviews.

He pointed out that the review of 46,000 patient scans that began in October had found five serious reportable events and five serious incidents.

Mr OBrien described it as a quality assurance process that was being carried out effectively and efficiently and in a way that was in the best interests of the patients concerned.

Mr OBrien said the doctor at the centre of the scans controversy had been referred to the Medical Council, so it was a serious issue.

He believed the hospital group, who would give an update today, had responded appropriately, and in a way that managed the interests of the patients in the best way possible.

At all stages where concerns were identified, they were appropriately escalated right up to highest levels of the HSE in order to provide the resources for this review.

Mr OBrien said he was told about the clinically informed decision to review the scans in October but felt making it public would have caused fear and alarm to the 26,700 patients involved.

He expected that the process would be complete early in January.

Health Minister, Simon Harris, said hospital management had adopted the precautionary principle of making sure that the widest number of possible scans were reviewed.

I am heartened by the comments of clinicians in the Kerry area who have largely welcomed the way hospital management have handled that situation, said Mr Harris.

He felt that if the review had been handled in any way differently, it could have caused unnecessary alarm.

Mr Harris said he was happy that hospital management put in place a very robust procedure to conduct the review.

However, he wanted to support the effort by having additional radiologists involved, which now meant that the review would be completed in about six weeks rather than 10.

This story originally appeared in the Irish Examiner.
Many tears of joy and a surprise proposal were among the reactions as the crew of a naval ship returned home just in time for Christmas, writes Sean ORiordan.

The band of I Brigade played seasonal favourites as the crew of LE Niamh disembarked from the ship to be greeted by hugs and kisses from relatives who had gathered on the pier at Haulbowline Naval Base to welcome them home.

Able Seaman Jordan Culbert, 28, from Birr, Co Offaly, had a special surprise for long-term partner Alison Parsons.

He had purchased an engagement ring while on shore leave in Malta and got down on one knee to propose to her yesterday as their children, Farrah, 6, and Harrison, 3, looked on.

Weve been together for 10 years, but I wasnt expecting this. It was a complete shock, said Alison after accepting the proposal.

She said she was used to Jordan being away  he was on the same ship when it was on migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015.

Back then it was a purely humanitarian mission. The ship saved 4,166 migrants on that mission, which is still a record.

This time out, she saved 613, primarily because of the change from Operation Pontus to joining the EU taskforce Operation Sophia.

Captain of the LE Niamh, Lieutenant Commander Stuart Armstrong, explained that while the crew were involved in rescues, one of its main roles within the taskforce was surveillance and intelligence-gathering designed to disrupt people-smuggling gangs.

The ship was tasked with trying to get information which would prevent the illegal smuggling of oil and weapons into Libya, parts of which still remain lawless as various factions fight for supremacy.

Lt Cmdr Armstrong said he felt they had been very successful in providing vital intelligence on ship movements to the command centre in Italy. Were now part of a bigger mission with a bigger team, he said.

But amid the work there was still some downtime. Nearly 20 birthdays were celebrated on the mission. We ensured there was a birthday cake for all of them.

One of those was a milestone celebration. Able Mechanic Matthew Cummings, from Laois, turned 21 while on the mission and pointed out he was lucky as it fell on a day when they were docked in Sicily and was therefore able to sample the nightlife.

Lt Cmdr Armstrong had an emotional reunion with wife Joy and their eight-month-old daughter, Olivia, yesterday.

Joy, who had travelled from Wicklow, said it had been a particularly tough time for her because her mother had died while Stuart was at sea. But its great to have him home for Christmas, she said after giving him a hug as he was first to step off the ship.

Lt Cmdr Armstrongs parents, Joan and Hugh, were also present to welcome him home.

A first birthday party was postponed for a day so one of the crew could share it with his son, Alfie.

Katie Dowling and her partner, Gary OLoughlin, who both live in Cobh, Co Cork, were going to celebrate Alfies big day yesterday, along with the homecoming.

I really missed Gary, said Katie.

But we were able to speak to him on the phone on a couple of occasions and the calls definitely made things a little easier.

Suzanne Greene is somebody who knows all about being away from home.

As she waited for her husband to alight from the ship, Suzanne, who lives in Dublin, explained that shes a medic in the army.

By coincidence, so too is husband Philip.

He was on LE Niamh to provide medical assistance to any injured migrants.

The couples two children, Eoghan, 7, and Aoibhe, 4, were waving flags and clearly thrilled to see dad back home.

Before we had the children we both served abroad on missions in Chad and the Lebanon, said Suzanne.

For Marie Scott, it was the second time she had turned up to the naval base to welcome home her husband, Chris, who is a leading seaman. He previously served in the Mediterranean in 2015 aboard LE Samuel Beckett.

It doesnt get any easier, said Marie, who lives in Churchtown, Co Cork.

She said her three children, aged 14 to 5, really missed him and that it was great he was home.

This story originally appeared in the Irish Examiner.
A fire has broken out at the Haulbowline naval service base in Co Cork.

The fire broke out at around 8.30 beside the officers mess.
A retired surgeon, who was convicted of indecently assaulting two patients, has been granted bail.

85-year-old Michael Shine of Wellington Road in Dublin was jailed for 20 months for the attacks on two teenage boys in the 70s.
by Ann OLoughlin

Ryanair has lost its High Court action for defamation against three pilots.

A jury found a September 2013 email "Pilot update: what the markets are saying about Ryanair" did mean the airline was guilty of market manipulation.

However, in their majority verdict of nine or more, they found Ryanair had not proved malice by the three defendants, Evert Van Zwol, John Goss and Ted Murphy.

As the court had found the update was published on an occasion of qualified privilege, which is only lost where malice is proven, there was no defamation.

Mr Justice Bernard Barton, on the application of Paul OHiggins SC, for the defendants, dismissed the case and granted costs. He put a stay on the costs in the event of an appeal following an application from Thomas Hogan SC, for Ryanair.

The defendants were congratulated by friends and family who had attended court.

The jury, of nine men and two women (one member was lost on the final day due to illness), had been deliberating from 10.30 on Thursday morning to just before 6 pm.

Ryanair brought its case against the three who are members of the Ryanair Pilot Group (RPG) interim council, as publishers of the update which went to 2,289 Ryanair pilots.

They denied defamation and denied the meaning attributed to the words of the update by Ryanair.

They also said the words had the benefit of qualified privilege whereby a statement published to someone with an interest in receiving such information is protected as long as it is not motivated by malice.

The airline claimed that by publishing that incorrect statement, the defendants were saying, by innuendo or insinuation, the airline misled investors, knowingly facilitated insider dealing by management, was guilty of market manipulation and conspired with management to abuse the markets.

While the jury answered yes to the question of whether the update meant Ryanair was guilty of market manipulation, it said no to questions that it meant the airline had misled investors, knowingly facilitated insider dealing by managers or that Ryanairconspired with managers to abuse the market for its shares.

The court was told Ryanair had in May published its annual results for the end of that financial year (March 31, 2013) saying it had a very profitable year but saying the outlook for the coming year was cautious due to increased costs.

Shortly after those results were out, Ryanair chairman David Bonderman sold 1.5 million shares in the airline he held in trust for his children. Non-executive Ryanair director Michael Horgan sold 25,000 share options.

The sales were during the 28-day quarterly "window" period permitted by the stock market for those connected with a company can sell, and the sales were notified to the airline by the men. There were no meaningful fluctuations in the share price during the two week period in which they sold their shares, Ryanair said.

On September 4, 2013, Ryanair issued a trading update saying notifying investors that profits would come in at the lower end of what had been predicted but no indicators were given to allow management sell off shares.

After the RPG "Pilot Update" was sent the following week, Ryanair sought an apology and retraction from the defendants, as well as details of the RPG membership, but it was refused.

Ryanair said the RPG published the update as part of its campaign to bring about unionisation of its pilots which the airline has always opposed, as is was its legal right. It was an attempt to "outcast management" and set pilots against management, it said.

The case, which went on for seven weeks, heard evidence for the Ryanair side from its CEO Michael OLeary, director of HR strategy and operations, Darrell Hughes, its chief financial officer, Neil Sorahan, and Brian OLoughlin, a professional investment advisor.

The three defendants also gave evidence. While all three were members of the RPG, only John Goss, who spent most of his career with Ryanair, was the only one who worked for it before he was dismissed in 2013 - a couple of months before his retirement - over an interview he gave to Channel 4.

There was evidence from former Ryanair pilots, Italy-based Paolo Cova and Belgium-based Jean Francois Claes. There was also evidence from Martin Duffy, a former Ryanair pilot, who was a consultant to the RPG and who found an email in his records during the trial which had not be produced before it and which the airline said was indicative of the intention behind the pilot update.

In a statement afterwards read by Evert Van Zwol on behalf of the Ryanair Pilots Group, he said from the outset the objective of the RPG was to represent the interests of all pilots flying with Ryanair and assist them to bring issues of concern to the attention of management.

"We wish to dedicate today's victory to all Ryanair pilots who are standing strong for each other around Europe and have through their collective courage succeeded in having Ryan change its long-standing policy of union recognition".

Mr Van Zwol referred to an Irish Independent report of statements made by Ryanair chief operations officer, Peter Bellew, to pilots at Stansted that the airline grew too fast, had a culture where people were discouraged from raising issues, and has become miserable, even at head office.

Mr Bellew also said, among other things, Ryanair needed to start treating people like normal human beings and that there was a very basic lack of trust which had to be restored.

The RPG took this opportunity to echo that sentiment, Mr Van Zwolsaid, and that all staff should be treated with dignity in the workplace. Mr Bellew's comments were a good basis to address concerns of Ryanair pilots, he said.

He also thanked the judge and jury for their dedication and fair-mindedness. He further thanked their legal team of Paul O'Higgins SC, David Whelan BL, and solicitors Simon McAleese and Ciaran Maguire.

Evan Cullen, president of the Irish Airline Pilots Association also welcomed the verdict.
by David Raleigh

Gardai have described the death of a man following a fire at a derelict building in Co Tipperary, as a tragedy and were not treating it as suspicious.

The victim, aged 47, and a native of Eastern Europe was found by firefighters in a disused premises on Kenyon Street, Nenagh, Thursday morning.

A second man who was in the building at the time managed to escape from the blaze. He was being treated at University Hospital Limerick for minor injuries.

A local taxi driver passing the premises at the time alerted emergency services to the scene after seeing smoke emerging from the first floor of the building.

Three fire tenders from Nenagh and Cloughjordan put out the fire after fighting the blaze for 12 hours.

Firefighters discovered the victims body after entering the building which previously operated as a public house.

A Garda spokesman said: A fire was reported at 1:05am today at Kenyon Street, Nenagh. Two males were thought (to be) staying at the premises.

One male was removed to Limerick hospital with minor injuries. The other male (aged in his 40s) is deceased and was removed to Limerick Hospital for a post-mortem today.

The cause of the blaze is under investigation, however a garda spokesman said they do not suspect foul play.

According to a reliable non-garda sources, the victim had been sleeping rough, despite having stayed at an address in the town at an earlier stage.

It was unclear if the man was recorded as officially homeless.

Gardai were still trying to confirm his identity and make contact with any relatives.

He had little or no English, and he was living a hopeless life, moving from one disaster to another. He did live in accommodation in Nenagh at one stage, but he became homeless through his own difficulties," said a source.

I would describe him as a poor unfortunate man, who either came over to Ireland living like this or who ended up in that lifestyle," they added.

Local publican Breda McMahon, who lives across the street from where the fire occurred, said: Its an awful shock to the community; Its very sad."

"It was a miserable, dirty, rainy night last night, and who knows, maybe that man was bedding down in there for the night.

She said the building where the fire occurred had been derelict for the past number of years.

Everyone is saddened. Im sure that man has a mother and a father and a family somewhere. Were all deeply affected by it, especially because it has happened at (Christmas) when we all need love and affection, she said.

- Digital Desk
By Daniel Hickey

Two Cork men who have admitted possessing firearms and ammunition will be sentenced next month at the non-jury Special Criminal Court.

Joseph Walsh (36) of Glengarriff Road, Fair Hill, Co Cork and Michael Gilmartin (46), with an address at Chestnut Drive, Cluain Ard, Newtown, Cobh, Co Cork both pleaded guilty today to the possession of firearms including a magazine suitable for a 9mm parabellum pistol, a 9mm parabellum pistol and a double-barrel sawn-off shotgun at Chestnut Drive, Cluain Ard, Newtown, Cobh, County Cork on September 14th last year.

They also admitted the possession of 14 rounds of 9mm ammunition and eight shotgun cartridges at the same place on the same date.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, sitting with Judge Patricia Ryan and Judge James Faughnan, remanded the two men in custody until January 11th, when they will be sentenced.
Two men remain in custody following a drugs bust in Dublin yesterday.

Almost 3m worth of cocaine, cannabis, heroin and ecstasy was seized.

The raid was carried out in Drumcondra as part of an operation targeting serious organised crime in Dublin.

Cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and cannabis herb and resin were uncovered when two cars were stopped and searched.

The Herald reports gardai had put a taxi under surveillance as it delivered around 5 kilos of cannabis to St Alphonus Road in Drumcondra.

Two suspects aged 25 and 30 were arrested at the scene and taken to Finglas Garda Station.

It is understood one of the men is an associate of a hitman who's currently serving sentences for two murders in 2010.

Digital Desk
There are warnings that Skellig Michael could lose its UNESCO World Heritage status due to its rebranding as a Star Wars site.

An Taisce is urging the Culture Minister to intervene and carry out a report on the impact filming has had.

There were over 16,000 thousand visitors to the site this year despite permits being capped at 11,100.

Ian Lumley from An Taisce explained why they have written to Josepha Madigan about the Star Wars promotions.

"It has brought about a rebranding and change of the image and perception of the site," he said.

"Every time the word Skellig is mentioned, just that branding of the Disney franchise is now inextricably entangled with it," Mr Lumley added.

"The spiritual, cultural and historical significance of the island, the basis on which it was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site is being swamped by that commercial rebranding," he said.

Tourism Ireland saw a 3.7% growth of 330,000 additional overseas visitors for January-November 2017, meaning it is set to be a record year for Irish tourism.

The latest CSO figures confirm that Ireland welcomed almost 9.25m overseas visitors in the period.

Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons said Ireland has seen "exceptional results from North America", as well as welcome growth from Australia, Mainland Europe including Germany, France and Spain.

There have been two million visitors from North America so farthis year, up +16.6% on the same period last year.

Increases in direct air access, plus our market diversification strategy, have been key factors," he said.

The decline in visitor numbers from Britain continues to be a concern, down -5.2% for the January to November period.

"The fall in the value of sterling has made holidays and short breaks here more expensive for British visitors and has made Britain more affordable for visitors from many of our top markets," he added.

"In 2018, Tourism Ireland will continue to place a greater focus on our culturally curious audience, who are less impacted by currency fluctuations," Mr Gibbons said

Tourism Ireland has a number of campaigns under way right now, to kick-start our promotional effort for 2018.

Digital Desk
Irish newcomer Ferdia Shaw has been selected to play Artemis Fowl in Disneys live-action adaptation of Eoin Colfers bestselling fantasy book series Artemis Fowl.

Ferdia Shaw successed the 1,200 candidates who auditioned for the role and will make his onscreen debut in the title role.

He joins fellow Irish actor Lara McDonnell, Academy Award winner Judi Dench, Games of Thrones Nonso Anozie and the voice of Frozens beloved Olaf, Josh Gad, in the live-action adaptation.

Ferdia will play the 12-year-old genius Artemis Fowl, a descendant of a long line of criminal masterminds who finds himself in battle against a powerful, hidden race of fairies who could be responsible for his fathers disappearance.

Lara McDonnell is cast as the elf hero Captain Holly Short, Judi Dench takes on the role of leader of the fairy police Commander Root, Nonso Anozie takes on the role of Artemis Fowls bodyguard Butler and Josh Gad is to play dwarf Mulch Diggums.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh and produced by Branagh and Judy Hofflund, the movie will be released in Irish cinemas in 2019.
US vice president Mike Pence has made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to meet the countrys leaders and visit US troops.

Mr Pence arrived in Afghanistan four months after President Donald Trump outlined a new strategy to break the stalemate in Americas longest war.

The surprise visit is the first to the war-torn country by either Mr Trump or the vice president.

Mr Pence landed at Bagram Air Base under heavy security on Thursday.

He met Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, as well as US troops and US military leaders.

Mr Trump released his new strategy for ending the 16-year war in Afghanistan in August.

The president said US troops would "fight to win" by attacking enemies and crushing terrorists.

Vice Pres. Mike Pence to U.S. service members in Afghanistan: "From the first family, from my family, from families all across America: Merry Christmas." https://t.co/qzjbOb0CUr pic.twitter.com/ozk1MHuv0J  ABC News (@ABC) December 21, 2017

Mr Pence told Mr Ghani that the US is "here to see this through" as they discussed Mr Trumps new war strategy.

He joined Mr Ghani and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah for a Thursday evening meeting at the presidential palace in Kabul.

Mr Pence arrived by helicopter after landing at Bagram Air Base.

Mr Ghani offered Mr Pence his thanks on behalf of a grateful nation and pointed to their common bonds.

Mr Pence said the two countries have been "on a long road together" and have sacrificed much during the 16-year war.

But he said the US is committed to helping Afghanistan achieve peace and security.

The discussions were expected to focus on the implementation of Mr Trumps new Afghanistan strategy, and on upcoming parliamentary elections and the countrys presidential election in 2019.
What we know about Melbourne railway station attack

A white Suzuki SUV struck a number of pedestrians in front of Flinders Street Station just after 4.30pm local time on Thursday

The driver of the vehicle and a second man have been arrested and are in police custody

19 pedestrians were injured

Police believe it was a "deliberate act"

Update 7.30: One Irish person has been injured after a car was driven into a crowd of pedestrians on a busy street in Melbourne.

The Department of Foreign Affairs have confirmed consular assistance has been offered to the family.

Earlier: Driver held in Melbourne incident had history of drug and mental health issues

A driver arrested after a car was driven into pedestrians in Melbourne was a 32-year-old Australian of Afghan descent with a history of drug use and mental health problems, police have said.

Victoria Police chief Shane Patton said a second man, aged 24, who was arrested after he was seen filming the incident was found to have a bag containing knives.

Investigators have found no evidence to suggest a link with terrorism and Mr Patton said they had not established any relationship between the two men.

Some 19 people were injured, four critically, when a white car was driven "in a deliberate" act at crowds outside Flinders Street station at around 4.30pm on Thursday.

The driver of the car was detained by an off-duty police officer, who was later taken to hospital with injuries not believed to be critical.

Mr Patton told a press conference the driver had resisted arrest and there had been "somewhat of a fight between them".

He added: "We have reviewed the footage and are satisfied that he was driving the car without anyone else present.

"He has be taken to hospital as a result of the incident, as has the police officer.

"He is a person known to Victoria Police. He has historical assault matters an has a history of drug use as well as mental health issues.

"We understand that was on a mental health plan and receiving treatment."

He added: "We do not at this time have any intelligence to indicate that there is a connection to terrorism."

Update 10.55am: Second man arrested in Melbourne attack carrying bag of knives

A second man, aged 24, who was arrested in close proximity to the scene in Melbourne was discovered to have a bag containing knives after he was seen filming the incident, police said.

Update 8.15am: Crash which injured 14 people was 'deliberate act', Australian police say

Fourteen people have been injured, several critically, after a car struck pedestrians in Melbourne, Australia, in what police described as "a deliberate act".

Witnesses say the car made no attempt to slow down.

Australian Police on Melbourne car incident: "At this stage, we believe it is a deliberate act, however, we do not know the motivation" https://t.co/HTnZN0hNyd pic.twitter.com/baRx2gs7uT  CNN (@CNN) December 21, 2017

Witnesses described "people flying everywhere" as a white car was driven at crowds outside Flinders Street station in Melbourne just after 4.30pm (5.30am GMT).

Officers said several people are in a critical condition, adding it was "early days" in the investigation and the motivation was unknown.

Commander Russell Barrett said: "Police arrived at the scene within minutes and arrested two men. At this stage we have 14 people injured and several are critical. At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation and it is still the early stages of the investigation.

As many as 19 people have been injured after a car drove into a crowd in central Melbourne pic.twitter.com/bn9abCILdY  Sky News (@SkyNews) December 21, 2017

"Police and emergency service will remain on scene for the foreseeable future. The crime scene will be in place for a considerable amount of the time."

Images from the scene showed a number of people receiving medical attention, while a white Suzuki SUV appeared to have crashed to a stop.

A woman called Sue told 3AW radio: "As it (the car) approached this intersection... it just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere."

Social media images appeared to show a young man in jeans and a T-shirt being arrested by three police officers on the steps of the station, although it was unclear if he had been in the car.

Sky News said the driver of the SUV was of Middle Eastern appearance and that he was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed following the crash.

Lachlan Read told the Herald Sun the whole incident lasted about 15 seconds.

"It was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other.

"The last bang the car stopped," the 20-year-old said. "There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.

"It is definitely something you don't expect to see on Flinders Street."

As our federal & state police & security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them. https://t.co/JkUM9TuIQe  Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) December 21, 2017

It was the first week of school summer holidays in Victoria, and the area was busy with Christmas shoppers.

Elton Hindoli, who works at an off licence by the scene of the incident in Elizabeth St, told the Herald Sun that a man who was pulled from the car appeared to be unconscious.

"A girl came into the shop and she was very upset," he said.

"She said a guy in a big car had hit about six people.

"It wasn't clear if the driver was hitting them on purpose or not.

"He hit the people then crashed into the tram area in the middle of the road."

As you will know, there's been a horrible incident on Flinders St. Police have secured the scene and will provide info as it's confirmed. Please avoid the area. Trains running but trams affected. Stay safe. Check on your loved ones. And thank you to our brave emergency services.  Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) December 21, 2017

A man who was working in a nearby shop and was at the scene before emergency services arrived told the Australian Associated Press: "There was no screaming, just people lying there."

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull tweeted: "As our federal and state police and security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the emergency and health workers who are treating them."

The incident follows a spate of attacks in major cities in Europe and the US in which terrorists have used vehicles as a weapon again innocent people.

Eighty-six people were killed in Nice in July 2016 when a lorry was driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day.

Twelve people died in December last year when a truck was driven at crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Four pedestrians and a police officer were killed by Khalid Masood in the Westminster Bridge attack in March.

In June, eight people were killed and 48 injured when three terrorists ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge then went on a knife rampage in Borough Market.

Thirteen people were killed when a van was driven down Barcelona's Las Ramblas in August, and in October, eight died in a truck attack in New York.

Update 7.53am: Two men have been arrested after a car ploughed into crowds of pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne.

More than a dozen people are in hospital including a young child with head injuries.

Police said victims have a "range of injuries".

Earlier: Fifteen injured, two men arrested after car collides with several pedestrians in Melbourne

Police in Australia are investigating after a car collided with several pedestrians outside Melbourne's main railway station.

Emergency crews said 15 people have been injured.

Thirteen of those injured have been taken to hospital - including a child with head injuries.

Police are currently attending an incident on Flinders Street between Elizabeth and Swanston streets where a vehicle has collided with a number of pedestrians. Police have arrested the driver of the car. Extent of injuries are not known at this stage. (1/2)  Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) December 21, 2017

Two more people are being assessed by paramedics at the scene.

Police said they have arrested the driver of the car in the city centre.

Police are asking all vehicular and pedestrian traffic to avoid the area.

PA and Digital Desk
Update 10.45pm: The party of ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has claimed victory for the separatist bloc in the regional election.

Agusti Alcoberro, vice president of Catalan National Assembly, said: "We can say that pro-independence forces have won the elections."

He told a crowd gathered in Barcelona's Maritime Museum that "we demand the restitution of the (Catalan) government and the release of the political prisoners".

Spain's government deposed Catalonia's regional government after the Catalan parliament made an illegal declaration of independence on October 27.

A judge also imprisoned the then president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sanchez.

He resigned his post to run in the election.

Update 10pm: Pro-independence parties looked set to regain their majority in Catalonia's parliament after 50% of the votes had been counted.

The regional electoral board said the anti-independence Ciutadans (Citizens) party, led by 36-year-old lawyer Ines Arrimadas, is likely to win the highest number of votes for a single party, and 35 seats in the 135-member chamber.

But it said the pro-independence ticket led by fugitive former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont would garner 34 seats for the Together for Catalonia group. In third place would be the pro-secession leftist republican ERC party with 32 seats.

With the help of the radical pro-independence radical CUP party, which could get four seats, the pro-secession bloc is set to regain a majority in parliament.

The regional election is being closely watched in and outside Catalonia as a crucial test of strength for the region's powerful secession movement.

Earlier: Voting has finished in a crucial election in Spain's Catalonia region, as polling stations closed at 7pm.

The regional election is being closely watched in and outside Catalonia to see if support for a separatist push will grow, fuelling much political tension with Spain.

Catalan authorities said voting turnout was up by more than five percentage points at 6pm, with 68.3% of Catalan voters having cast ballots, compared to 63.12% in the last election in 2015.

Surveys in recent weeks had predicted record turnout numbers.

The day passed off without any major incident beyond lengthy queues at polling stations at peak times of the day.
Mexican authorities are investigating the murders of six people, four of whom were hung from highway overpasses, near the twin beach destinations of Los Cabos in Baja California Sur state.

The state's murder rate of 50 per 100,000 residents now ranks third in Mexico, trailing only Colima and Guerrero. Violence has surged over the past three years as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels battle for territory in the state.

The bodies were found early on Wednesday hanging from three overpasses, two of which were above highways running to the airports in La Paz and Los Cabos, raising the question of whether organised crime was specifically trying to hurt the tourism sector, which generates about 90% of the economic activity in Los Cabos.

These were the first known cases of bodies hung from bridges, a public terror tactic seen in other cities such as Nuevo Laredo and Mexico City. The killings raised fears that cartel violence could affect tourism as it has to devastating effect in Acapulco in Guerrero state.

On Thursday, Rodrigo Esponda, managing director of Los Cabos Tourism Board, tried to allay those fears saying that the public and private sectors have invested heavily in security.

"We are confident that the destination will remain safe," Mr Esponda said.

He outlined several measures taken in Los Cabos in recent months to confront the violence: creation of a rapid response network to share information among hotels and businesses about security issues; expansion of surveillance cameras to 250 by the end of year from the current 40; construction of a new marine base as the military presence expands; formation of a hotel security committee to discuss security measures; and, implementation of international security training protocols for hotels and businesses.

Mr Esponda said that tourist visits were up 16% despite the fact that the state's murder rate has doubled this year. According to federal government statistics, investigations into more than 400 murders between January and October have been opened.

State prosecutor Daniel de la Rosa Anaya said the four bodies were discovered before dawn in three different locations: La Paz, San Jose de Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. The victims had not been identified.

In many cases, the violence has been focused away from Baja California Sur's tourist enclaves, but there have been exceptions. In July, the bodies of three people were found shot inside a car in the car park of a condominium in Cabo San Lucas' hotel zone.

In August, there was a shootout at the entrance to crowded Playa Palmilla, a popular beach next to San Jose del Cabo. Three men were killed and two people were wounded.

In October, the US State Department issued a warning that included Los Cabos, noting that bystanders had been wounded in daytime shootings.

The Caribbean beaches around Cancun have also been impacted by shootings this year.

AP
A Conservative MPs chief of staff wiped tears from his eyes as he was acquitted of raping a young parliamentary worker in his bosss Westminster office.

Samuel Armstrong, 24, was accused of attacking the woman when she fell asleep after a night drinking in the Houses of Parliament.

The victim, who is in her 20s, said she "felt like a hostage" when she was raped twice by South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlays senior aide.

But Armstrong, who was arrested after the woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster in tears in the early hours of October 14 last year, insisted they had consensual sex.

On Thursday, a jury of seven women and five men at Southwark Crown Court found him not guilty of two counts of rape, one of sexual assault and one of assault by penetration, after a two-week trial.

Jurors took more than five hours to return verdicts.

Armstrong, from Danbury in Essex, who has been suspended from his job since the allegations arose, had tears in his eyes as he left the dock before he was comforted by his father.

Armstrong attended a grammar school and joined Mr Mackinlays permanent staff after graduating with a politics and history degree from Nottingham University.

The Tory MP, who was not in Westminster on the night of the incident, previously told the court he and his aide were like "father and son".

On the evening of October 13, Armstrong and the complainant drank in a bar on the parliamentary estate, watched Big Ben chime on its terrace and sipped wine in the leaders office in the Lords before going to Mr Mackinlays office.

Prosecutors alleged Armstrong "abused his position" once they were alone, before sexually assaulting her and raping her twice.

The woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster until she found a cleaner, who said she was "shaking and crying", holding on to him until police arrived.

Armstrong said he felt like he had been "punched in the stomach" when he was arrested early on the morning of October 14.

He was described by his barrister Sarah Forshaw QC as "earnest, a little geeky, awkward".

Giving evidence, he told how they danced to jazz music, began kissing, then joked as they had consensual sex in Mr Mackinlays office in the Norman Shaw building.

Ms Forshaw suggested the woman panicked and made the allegations after becoming distressed as she tried to leave the Palace of Westminster at around 2am - then was caught in the lie.

The court heard she was reluctant to hand her phone to police after sending a message to her boyfriend hours after the alleged attack saying she had given the story to a journalist.

Armstrong told jurors he regretted having sex in his bosss office and said: "It was foolish. It was an act of enormous foolishness and as a consequence I have had the worst year of my life."

He said the allegations had cost him his "dream job" adding that he would "never, ever, ever" get his career back.

"While what I did is foolish, the point is Im innocent of this and for whatever reason somebody is trying to make a horrible, horrible, horrible allegation," he said.

"The point is on this allegation, somebody is trying to send me to prison for a very long time for something I didnt do."

- PA
Authorities are still working to

The use of cars, vans and lorries has emerged as a major challenge for security services and counter-terror agencies around the world.

The potential for vehicles to inflict mass casualties was laid bare in July last year when a lorry drove through crowds gathered to celebrate Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring scores more.

In December 2016, an attacker drove a lorry into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, leaving 12 people dead.

This year vehicles have been involved in three attacks in Britain - at Westminster, London Bridge and Finsbury Park - as well as in Stockholm, Barcelona and New York.

Security experts say the tactic is difficult to prevent, while the flurry of incidents prompted suggestions in the UK that van rental could be subject to more stringent checks.

British police have appealed for vehicle hire and haulage firms with suspicions to come forward.

Earlier this year the UK government said the Department for Transport was working with the police and industry to explore what could be done to prevent "malicious" use of hire vehicles.

Reports suggested one option could see rental firms share drivers' data with authorities so the information can be checked against terror watchlists.

In the UK, physical security measures have also been stepped up at locations such as bridges and city centres in response to the threat, while guidance for armed police has been tweaked to take account of the trend.

Previously, firearms officers had the option of shooting at a moving vehicle, but this was discouraged as it was felt it could increase the risk to the public.

The approach was revised so that firing at a car, van or lorry when it is on the move is an accepted tactic for such incidents.

PA
latest news

October 31, 2022

Buddy TV

In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options...
Most shows have entered their winter hiatus but production hasnt halted completely. With the break in shows airing comes news of casting. The 100 has added another baddie to season 5. Meanwhile NCIS, The Originals and Supergirl are adding mysterious new characters with possibly huge implications. Lastly, Law & Order: SVU has landed some familiar faces for a buzzworthy episode.

Fans React as The 100 Season 5 Premiere Date Remains Up in the Air>>>A New Prisoner Joins The 100

The mysterious Eligius ship spotted at the end of The 100 season 4 is beginning to come into clearer focus. Deadline reports that Powers Mike Dopud has joined The 100 season 5 as one of the prisoners aboard the ship.

Dopud will play Vinson, who looks more like a professor than a hardened criminal. His appearance is just a ruse, however. Vinson is a terrifying serial killer who will keep everyone on their toes during season 5.

Jaime Murray Joins Originals as Mysterious Vampire

Jaime Murray is expanding her genre TV resume. After appearances on Once Upon a Time, Dexter and Defiance, TVLine is reporting that the actress is joining the final season of The Originals. Murray will play Antoinette, a beautiful old-school vampire who will have a connection to Elijah.

Murray will first appear in the third episode of The Originals season 5. She meets Elijah shortly after he loses his memories. Its unclear what exactly Antoinettes goals are but shes described as having dark secrets and a painful past.

Gabrielle Carteris Signs on to NCIS for a Big Twist

She wont be a part of the cast for a long time but 90210 alum Gabrielle Carteris is set to have a big impact on NCIS. TVLine reports the actress has signed on for a guest star spot in a January 2018 episode of the long-running series.

She will play Julie Hart, the mother of a suspect thats involved in one of the teams cases. Carteris character is described as being fiercely loyal to her daughter and that will set up a big twist at the end of the episode. The content and context of that twist is being left a mystery, for now.

Supergirl Casts New Character with a Connection to Reign

The key to bringing down Reign in Supergirl might lie with a new character. TVLine reports that Krys Marshall, who most recently appeared on This Is Us, has signed on to recur in the second half of Supergirl season 3.

12 Best Musical Moments Worth Revisiting from 2017>>>

Marshall will play Julia Freeman, a young musician who lives near National City and holds clues to Reigns true identity. Viewers already know that Samantha Arias is Reign but Kara remains unaware for now. Its possible that Julia will uncover that secret for Kara but its more likely that her role will be more important than simply taking off Reigns mask.

Law & Order: SVU Casts Guest Stars for Harvey Weinstein Themed Episode

The Law & Order franchise frequently grabs real-life stories for inspiration. SVU season 19 will be no different. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show has lined up two guest stars for an episode that looks to tackle the Harvey Weinstein scandal and all the accusations of sexual assault that followed.

Homeland actor Martin Donovan will be playing a commercial airline pilot, while Quantico actress Yasmine Al Massri will play his co-pilot, who is accusing him of sexual assault. The show was already working on the episode before the news of the Weinstien scandal broke but now theyve moved things around to make it even more relevant.

Want more news? Like BuddyTVs Facebook page!





(Image courtesy ABC)
Safety and security solutions provider Allegion UK has appointed Karen Trigg as Business Development Manager for the South East.

Trigg joins Allegion UK following 23 years of experience working with architects, contractors and end users. She has worked for industry-leading companies like Capital Architectural Ironmongery, Beaver Architectural Ironmongery and VL Architectural Ironmongery.

In her role as Business Development Manager, Trigg will primarily be involved with extending Allegions customer base by liaising with architectural ironmongers. Furthermore, Trigg will be engaging in project-lead work across all sectors.

Marc Lengahan, commercial director of Allegion UK and Ireland, said: Karen will be working closely with our customers to provide them with specification support for door hardware in their buildings, and will be focusing on accelerating growth in new accounts, whilst also developing relationships with existing accounts. Were thrilled to welcome her to the team!.

Karen said: Its a pleasure to have been accepted as part of the team at Allegion. The brands under Allegions umbrella  Briton, LCN, CISA, Legge, to name a few  are all leading industry brands in fire safety and security. My passion is to see that not only are the architects and contractors confident with the products Allegion can supply, but that the end users have products that stand up to their expections.

Allegion develops and manufactures a full range of door hardware and furniture, from door closers, locks, door furniture and exit devices through to fully integrated electronic access control solutions.
01

/

11

Surf, sand and beer: in the grand tradition of Aussie pub culture, the team behind two of Sydney's favourite dining venues introduces a new watering hole today

If there's no shortage of pubs in Australia, it's for one fact alone: we simply adore them. (Just ask Merivale, who is happily snapping up every ailing pub in Sydney). That said, it's safe to say they're not the only ones - it seems the team behind Icebergs Dining Room & Bar and Dolphin Hotel are just as keen to make their mark on Sydney's ever-expanding drinking and dining scene.

With a grand opening scheduled for today, Bondi Beach Public Bar (BBPB for short) is the latest drinking hole to open its doors on the famous Sydney shores, with the simple aim of creating an all-inclusive public bar, modelled around the rough-and-tumble spirit of '70s and '80s pub culture. Featuring a punk-inspired decor with lots of concrete amid a black, white and grey palette, co-owner Maurice Terzini explains the look as "Rick Owens goes to Palm Springs via Bondi." Nice. And with a 23-metre art installation taking up one area, we can safely say this is prob a little more contemporary than your average local.

Simplicity is the order of the day at BBPB, with a mix of Italian and Australian wine, freshly squeezed juices and crowd-favourite cocktails like Negronis, Harvey Wallbangers and White Russians. Capping off the offering is a stellar line up of Italian-Australian pub food like pizza, burgers, fried chicken, crumbed chicken schnitzel, steak and chips and a selection of delicious bar snacks. Expect to dine to the tunes of surf rock, protopunk and classic Australian rock while you're at it, too.

The Bondi Beach Public Bar opens its doors (just in time for summer) on Wednesday, December 20 and is located at 203/180 Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach. Visit bbpb.com.au for more details.
After trying Reiki for the first time, Yeong Sassall recounts her experience with the energy healing therapy

Let me start by saying, until a few years ago I had absolutely no idea in hell what Reiki even was. It was introduced to me by a friend of a friend who was studying to be a practitioner, and as she tried to explain about shifting energy, I was, admittedly, intrigued/confused. While I wouldn't call myself overly New Age-y, nor a total sceptic, my belief in that whole kind of other realm (alternative therapy, mysticism, astrology etc) can be summed up as "Hey, I'm curious and I'd give most things a try, at least once". So when the opportunity to experience Reiki first-hand came, I went in with no expectations and no idea really what was going to happen.

Below, a summary of everything I learned and experienced during my Reiki session.

1. Officially, Reiki can be categorised as a healing technique that basically just shifts energy in the body.

If that seems like a really vague, mumbo-jumbo sentiment, bear with me. My Reiki healer Tania Dobbie explains it as universal energy. "The difference between Reiki and other healing techniques is your receive no treatment," she says. "When we do Reiki we actually receive Reiki and the energy comes through us. It's whatever your body is ready to process it will be how your session goes."

2. The practice of Reiki has its roots in Japan.

"It all goes back to doctor Mikao Usui," says Tania. "He hurt himself on a mountain in Japan, but then the universal energy came through him and healed him." According to Usui, there are five principles of Reiki, which are:

- Just for today do not be angry

- Just for today do not worry

- Just for today be grateful

- Just for today work hard

- Just for today be kind to others

3. Anyone can benefit from Reiki.

"It's basically used to balance emotional, mental and physical energy. It helps to heal the body, reduce stress and provide relaxation," explains Tania. It was reportedly used after the Hiroshima bomb went off in Japan in 1945. "[Mikao Usui] attuned a lot of people - he came and helped with the healing and the trauma. Even in America Reiki is used in hospitals for cancer patients - it's actually recognised as healing."

4. Many people have regular Reiki sessions.

"It's like massage, you'll know when you need to come," says Tania. "I have a person that comes and sees me once a month. Every session is completely different."

5. Like yoga, there's a focus on your breath.

Why? "I like to think of the body is a house, everything that we feel, we take a breath," says Tania. "[With] prominent things in our life, whether it's fear, joy, excitement, grief - we usually take a breath and that breath fills up the body. We don't remember everything; it's our coping mechanism... But your body remembers everything."

According to some reports, some people experience difficulty breathing during their session. "Whatever you experience it will pass, just breathe," suggests Tania. "Sometimes you feel like you can't breathe, like you're choking, just keep focusing on breathing and it will release the energy.

6. So, what happens during a session?

During your session, your Reiki practitioner will lay you on the table and ask you to focus on breathing normally. Your healer will then go to work, moving their hands (but never touching) above different parts of your body. "What your body is ready to release, it will release," says Tania. While people's Reiki experiences vary wildly (more on that later), a Reiki master healer will be able to pick up on the energy they feel in your body.

"When I put your hands on you I can usually feel pain and you might feel an emotional response - sadness, joy, laughter," says Tania "You might feel very hot, very cold, you might have some memory come through the tissue. I don't talk to you at all during the session, otherwise it becomes about me and it's all about you."

7. Once the Reiki session is over, your master healer will then discuss what they felt.

"I'll talk to you at the end of the session about what I feel and then I'll talk to you about what you felt. You'll definitely feel very relaxed [afterwards]. You might feel very tired because emotional release, energetic release is more intense than physical release. And also, we're not always aware of what we're carrying."

For me, this is where things got personal... and eerily accurate. While I'll refrain from going into the private stuff, there were lifestyle matters that Tania picked up on almost immediately. While I didn't have any problem breathing, at one point during my session, when Tania passed her hands over my head and neck, I felt a tingly, electrical sensation. As we discussed what happened afterwards, Tania asked me if I worked around a lot of computer screens and did I have two monitors. Working in an open plan office where I am literally surrounded by computers and being the only member of my team with two screens, this kind of freaked me out. Apparently she could feel a buzzing, electrical energy - likely from the computers, phones and electronic devices I constantly surround myself with. Hmm.

Tania also sensed intense baby energy around me - also weird, because my I'd just visited by brother's newborn the day before. (Freaky or clever coincidence? You decide.) And then there were the personality traits, family history and other random bits and pieces... Being slightly cynical, I tried not to reveal too much about myself in the beginning, but it was certainly interesting seeing what Tania picked up without a word from me.

8. Everyone experiences Reiki differently.

I spoke to friends who also visited Tania and had their own Reiki experiences and we all compared notes. While we were mixture of cynics and believers (as in, the kind to see a psychic), we all had markedly different reactions. One person felt the aforementioned choking sensation, another was completely freaked out by the experience, and another reportedly had a deceased family member watching over her during the session. Some of us were surprised by what Tania brought up and others were shaken; but we all left feeling that something had definitely happened during our session.

For me personally, I ended my Reiki session feeling calmer than when I went in, and left thinking about how to tackle all the personal and lifestyle-related issues we had talked about. To this day, I can't quite explain even what happened during my session, but I'm definitely intrigued enough to try it again.

Tania Dobbie practises Reiki at the Face Plus Medispa at Bondi Beach. To book or for more info, visit faceplus.com.au
Remember these names: the Australian Fashion Foundation has announced the winners of its annual internship program

The Australian fashion industry flocked to Pier One Sydney overnight (December 19) to celebrate the best of fashion's up-and-comers. Fashion designers Lucy Dickinson of RMIT and Mikala Tavener Hanks of UTS were announced as the 2017/18 winners of the Australian Fashion Foundation Scholarship Award. Each were awarded a financial grant of $20,000 as well as a six month internship at a global fashion house in the USA or Europe.

The awards were judged by Alison Veness (10 Magazine); Kellie Hush (Harper's BAZAAR Australia); fashion designer Nicky Zimmermann; fashion designer Dion Lee; fashion consultant and former VOGUE editor Nancy Pilcher, Kara Hurry; and AUSFF Co-Founder Malcolm Carfrae.

"Both designers had a strong vision with collections feeling very innate and personal," said, designer Dion Lee. Nicky Zimmerman said "Mikala's collection was so refined and showed such restraint. You can see it on the floor in Barneys."

Based in New York, the Australian Fashion Foundation was launched in 2008 by Carfrae and Julie Anne Quay to help and support emerging Australian designers, photographers, stylists, writers and art directors gain international experience.

Remember these names as there's a chance we'll be seeing their designs on the runway in the coming years. Watch this space.
Soon after a special CBI court acquitted all those accused the 2G spectrum allocation case, Somesh Jha spoke to DB Realty Managing Director Vinod Goenka at the crowded Patiala House premises. While most politicians, bureaucrats and corporates preferred to study the order before giving their comments, Goenka was among the few who spoke up about how his business was impacted by the 2G case. Edited excerpts:
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has conditionally allowed Bharti Airtel to conduct e-KYC verification of mobile subscribers up to January 10 if Rs 138 crore of the cooking gas subsidy transferred into its subscribers payment bank accounts is reverted to other bank accounts held by them.
Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.

Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.

Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.

Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.

26 years of website archives.
Sachin Bansal, the co-founder and former CEO of India's most successful venture capital-backed firm Flipkart is putting together a team of data scientists and artificial intelligence engineers to build smarter solutions for customers and stay ahead of rival Amazon.



Flipkart, which claims to have over 100 million customers on its platform, is sitting on one of the largest piles of consumer data the country has ever seen. To utilise this data for making better recommendations, improving speed delivering and increasing operational efficiencies, the company wants to utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).



While artificial intelligence and machine learning are said to be disrupting pretty much every business sector globally, given the lack of technology penetration in India, their use could be revolutionary. For this, Flipkart says it has put in place a five-year vision where it harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to solve complex problems that are unique to India.



"In Indian retail and commerce, the overall use of technology is very low right now as we're still reliant on traditional practices. It's not just in the front-end where the use of technology is low and scattered, but even areas like manufacturing and distribution...So, I think, the impact of technology will be even greater in India than other places," said Sachin Bansal, in an interview that appeared on Flipkart Stories on Thursday.


on Thursday said it has raised $1 billion to create a real estate fund that would invest in affordable and mid-income housing projects in the top 15 cities of the country.

In 2016, HDFC's arm Advisors had raised $450 million in its first fund for affordable housing and it has now raised $550 million in the second fund, taking the total size to $1 billion, making it one of the biggest fundraising exercises in this segment.

HDFC is the sponsor of the fund and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) is a major investor.

Advisors has successfully achieved the initial close of second affordable housing fund 'HDFC Capital Affordable Real Estate Fund 2, HDFC said in a statement.

The second fund will be combined with the HDFC Capital Affordable Real Estate Fund1 raised in 2016 to create a $ 1 billion platform targeting affordable and mid-income housing.

Commenting on the development, HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh said: "These funds will play a significant role in progressing towards the 'Housing for All' by 2022 objective of the government".

The affordable housing would not only act as a growth driver for the real estate industry in India but will also be a catalyst for GDP growth, he added.

Parekh said the current lack of flexible, long-term capital is one of the key challenges facing developers of affordable and mid-income housing in India and added that this fund will focus on providing leading developers access to financing at attractive rates and on flexible terms.

When contacted, HDFC Capital Advisors CEO Vipul Roongta said these funds have been raised from ADIA and HDFC.

"We have raised $ 550 million in our second fund. In the first fund, we raised $ 450 million. So, now the total fund size is $ 1 billion. This is one of the largest fundraising for affordable and mid-income housing in India," Roongta said.

ADIA has invested $ 900 million, while HDFC has put in $ 100 million in form of equity and mezzanine capital, he added.

"We have already invested $ 250 million in about 6 projects. The remaining $ 750 million would be deployed over the next two years," Roongta said.

The objective of this platform is to provide long-term equity and mezzanine capital to marquee developers at the land and pre-approval stage for the development of affordable and mid-income housing.

HDFC will be the sponsor and HDFC Capital Advisors will be the investment manager for the second fund.

HDFC Capital Advisors provides investment advisory services for real estate private equity financing.

The developers are currently facing the challenge of lack of flexible and long-term capital.

HDFC Vice Chairman & CEO Keki Mistry said: "Affordable housing is a critical component of quality urban infrastructure as also a growth driver for the real estate industry in India."



Both the funds would look to partner developers to form long term platforms focusing on affordable and mid-income housing, he added.

Renu Sud Karnad, MD, HDFC, said: "These funds will help address the demand-supply gap in affordable housing in India."



The two platforms would ensure that flexible financing is provided to quality developers to meet their capital requirement, she added.

KhademAlRemeithi, Executive Director of the Real Estate & Infrastructure Department, ADIA, said: "India's housing market presents a compelling investment opportunity driven by the country's continued economic growth and backed by supportive government initiatives".
The countrys largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki has said governments intervention in the form of incentives is needed to make electric vehicles affordable for the masses. The company, which would start producing electric cars in the country by 2020, will also set up charging stations.
Bombay Hemp Company (Boheco), India's first startup studying the medical use of cannabis, has raised a seed round of Rs 6.25 crore from marquee investors including the chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata and Google India's managing director Rajan Anandan.
The Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) on Thursday announced the sale of its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission. The deal, valued at Rs 13,251 crore, is one of the biggest asset monetisation moves the Reliance ADA group has undertaken so far.
In the long-pending tender issued by the Gujarat government for projects discovered a new low tariff of Rs 2.43 per unit. Leading players, including Actis Energy fund-backed Sprng Energy quoted Rs 2.43/unit, French electric company ENGIE, UKs EDF Energy, Gujarat based K P Energy and Powerica Limited, which quoted Rs 2.44/unit for different capacities, were declared winners.
CBI Special court on Thursday acquitted all accused in the 2G Spectrum scam that caused huge losses to the public exchequer and had been dubbed as the biggest telecom scam in India. The court, in its judgement, said that the prosecution failed miserably to prove any charges in the case. With this, former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others have been given a clean chit.



What experts say:



Senior Advocates, former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi





The lawyer of Swan Telecom promoters, Vijay Aggarwal





Athar Khan - A Raja's lawyer

2G case has completely collapsed because the lower court as per our judiciary the lower court fixes the framework. If the framework does not exist, then it's very difficult to prove that any other court's judgement was wrong.

the 2G case was a political game. CBI will decide after reading the judgement. It was only a notional loss. It was completely distorted by the CBI. Kapil Sibal has been proved right. Justice has been done and the episode is now over. The basic tenet of law is that criminals are not decided on the basis of public sentiment.

Kapil Sibal, Congress



"There was never any corruption in the 2G spectrum issue; We stand vindicated; Have been saying there has been no scam"



BJP created an atmosphere of suspicion. The telecom sector is in dire state thanks to Vinod Rai and BJP

I was not the telecom minister at that time. But when I took over, I told everyone that A Raja has done nothing wrong. "There was never any corruption in the 2G spectrum issue; We stand vindicated; Have been saying there has been no scam"



P Chidambaram:





Shashi Tharoor, Congress



Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country



Mahesh Agarwal, counsel for the accused



What will CBI do now?

CBI has been properly advised. The trial went on for six years and now the CBI will think ten times before approaching the higher court.



"The case was bogus. For seven years, people have gone through an unfair trial."



Other experts:



It's a shot in the arm for people who thought 2G scam did not exist. But, there will be an appeal "2G case is a scam that never took place"Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country

Vijay Aggarwal, Lawyer of Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and others



"The Court said that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of its charges. Thus all accused are acquitted"



All about the 2G scam case "The Court said that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of its charges. Thus all accused are acquitted"

The alleged scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08 which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, loss of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore. Special CBI judge O P Saini is scheduled to pronounce today the judgements in separate cases lodged by the CBI and the ED in the scam which rattled the former prime minister Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.

Two cases have been filed by the CBI and another one by the ED.

What is the allegation?

The allegation relates to the fact that Telecom Minister A Raja, who after taking office in May 2007, sold licenses/2G spectrum to a handful of arbitrarily selected (120 out of 575) companies in January 2008 at a bargain basement 2001 price. In doing so, he not only violated the law, committed several improprieties, but caused a loss to the exchequer of at least Rs 40,000 crore. The Supreme Court earlier agreed that the process Raja followed was polluted and cancelled all the licenses he had issued.

In the process he was said to violate the TRAI Act and other settled law:

1. B. Prabhakar Rao Vs State of AP (1985) SUPP SCC432

2. DS Nakara Vs Union of India (1983) 1SCC305

3. Monarch Infrastructure Pvt Ltd 2000 (v) SC287

4. K. Manjusree Vs State of AP (2008) 3SCC512

5. Union of India Vs S Tel, 1 July 2009, Justice G S Sistani, Delhi High Court

6. Union of India Vs S Tel 24 November 2009, Delhi High Court, Honble Chief Justice Dr S Murlidhar
Carlo Allegri/Getty Images(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) -- The Memphis City Council voted to sell two public parks containing Confederate monuments on Wednesday in a move that cleared the way for the statues to be torn down. The state had denied the council's bid to remove the statues earlier this month.



The city unanimously voted to sell the Health Sciences Park and Memphis Park to a private entity, Memphis Greenspace Inc., which immediately took down the controversial monuments.



Health Sciences Park contained a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early member of the Ku Klux Klan. Memphis Park had a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.



Both statues were removed by Wednesday evening, according to Mayor Jim Strickland.



"History is being made in Memphis now," said Strickland, who spoke at a press conference Wednesday night. These statues no longer represent who we are as a modern diverse city with momentum.



Its worth remembering that this is another step in a yearslong journey of which many Memphians have been a part of, he added.



Strickland said support for the removals skyrocketed in August in the wake of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally -- which began in protest of the planned removal of a monument of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee -- left one dead and 19 injured after a car-ramming attack.



Memphis Greenspace, which purchased the parks for $1,000 each, has agreed to maintain the parks and keep them open to the public, Strickland said. He said the monuments would be preserved in an undisclosed location.



Reaction to the sale and subsequent removal were mixed.



Its a wonderful thing, and its something that we should celebrate, Earle Fisher, a Memphis area pastor, told local news outlet WREG-TV Wednesday night. We know we have more work to do, but its always nice to get a win.



I think all of us who have fought to try to make sure that these racist relics no longer stand are trying to take it in right now, he added.



Meanwhile, there were those who called the removal illegal and shameful.



"It is a deliberate attempt to avoid the state law, and the city is breaking the law," Lee Millar with Sons of Confederate Veterans told WREG-TV on Wednesday.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A special court on Thursday acquitted all the accused in the alleged 2G scam, giving a major relief to former Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi who were jailed on charges of taking kickbacks to issue the telecom spectrum and licences in 2008 at throwaway prices. Special Judge O.P. Saini said the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the charges against 33 persons named in the case that contributed to the Congress-led UPA' electoral loss in 2014. A war of words broke out between the UPA and the NDA immediately after the 2G case verdict was out on Thursday. Former PM Manmohan Singh said that the court's verdict has proved that the 2G scam was a "massive propaganda against the UPA", while finance minister Arun Jaitley slammed Congress for treating the as a badge of honour.
The CBI Special Court's verdict to acquit all the accused, including senior DMK leaders, may trigger a political realignment in Tamil Nadu. Following the verdict, the 2G scandal, which loomed over DMK's political ambition is cleared now.
Congress leaders are taking court judgement in 2G scandal as some kind of a badge of honour and a certification that it was an honest policy but in reality it was a corrupt and dishonest policy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday.
Pronouncing its verdict in the so-called Rs 1.76-lakh-crore 2G spectrum scam, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court of judge O P Saini on Thursday acquitted all the 17 accused, including former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) member Kanimozhi, as the prosecution failed to prove the case against them.
A special court led by judge OP Saini on Thursday acquited A Raja, DMK member Kanimozhi and several others in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases. The scam relates to the 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08 which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The trial began in 2011 after the court had framed charges against 17 accused in the CBIs case for the offences which entails punishment ranging from six months in life imprisonment.
A Special Court on Thursday morning ruled that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had failed to prove charges of corruption, abuse of position, conspiracy, and money laundering against former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, industry captains, including Essar promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia, and former bureaucrats in the so-called second generation or 2G spectrum allocation scam.





ALSO READ: 2G verdict: Telcos, investors may move arbitration courts to seek damages
Arab nations here have sought India's support ahead of a rare emergency UN General Assembly session on Thursday that will vote over Jerusalem being recognised by the US as the capital of Israel.

Diplomatic sources here told IANS that representatives of the Arab diplomatic community have met senior officials of the External Affairs Ministry seeking New Delhi's support in Thursday's crucial vote.

The latest development followed 18 Arab Ambassadors' meeting with Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar last week to seek India's support in this regard.

The emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly on Thursday will take up Trump's decision on Jerusalem after the US vetoed a Security Council resolution criticising it.

General Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak is convening the special session at the request of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab Group at the UN, his spokesperson Brenden Varma told reporters at the UN headquarters on Tuesday.

On Monday, US Permanent Representative Nikki Haley vetoed the Security Council resolution introduced by Egypt seeking to express "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status

All the other 14 members of the Council voted for the resolution.of Jerusalem" and asking other countries do not follow Washington and move their embassies to the city considered holy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Unlike in the Council, there is no veto in the Assembly and a resolution criticising the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move its embassy there is expected to pass easily because even Washington's allies broke ranks with it and supported the Egyptian resolution.

Technically, Thursday's meeting is a continuation of the emergency special session that last met in 2009, Varma said. Its theme is "Illegal Israeli Actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory", and it first convened in 1997, he added.

Unlike the regular annual sessions of the Assembly which end after a year, an emergency special session can continue indefinitely and be reconvened periodically even after a gap of several years.

Following US President Donald Trump's statement recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the External Affairs Ministry said in a 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."

Trump's announcement came ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expected visit to India early next year.
The stay on a Delhi government order canceling the license of Max hospital in Shalimar Bagh triggered a war of words between the AAP and the BJP with mutual allegations of "deals" with the healthcare group to protect it.

Ruling Aam Aadmi Party also dragged the Lieutenant Governor into the controversy, saying his role in "protecting" Max Hospital has "clearly been established".

The order canceling the license of the hospital was stayed by the Court of Financial Commissioner, following which the facility resumed its operations today.

AAP's Delhi unit chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj told a press conference that the Finance Commissioner is appointed by the LG and exercises powers delegated to him.

"The role of the BJP Central government-appointed L-G in protecting Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, has clearly been established," he said.

AAP's spokesperson Dilip Pandey alleged that the BJP leadership is "conniving" with the hospital "behind closed doors" and conspiring against the people of Delhi.

"What is the deal between Manoj Tiwari and Max Hospital," he asked.

The office of Lt Governor Anil Baijal said in a statement that a "misinformation campaign" was launched by "vested interests" over the issue.

"The office of Lt Governor at no stage is involved in this matter," it said.

Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari hit back at the AAP government, asking if there was any "deal" which was why the cancellation of hospital's license was stayed by its officer.

Tiwari said he was not surprised by the stay. "The Finance Commissioner who stayed the order comes under Delhi's Finance minister Manish Sisodia. I am not surprised. It was a drama by the AAP government to strike a big deal. It is clear now with stay on cancellation of license of the hospital."



"Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should tell the people what was the deal that the licence cancellation order stayed," he said.

The Delhi Congress alleged that the AAP government put up a "weak defence" before the appellate authority, resulting in the stay order.

"The government was not serious and ample loopholes were left for the hospital to get a stay over cancellation of its licence," Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said.

The DGHS of the Delhi government's health department had canceled the license of the hospital for multiple instances of alleged medical negligence, including a case in which one of the twins was found alive after being declared dead by the facility.

The hospital group had on December 13 filed an appeal in the Financial Commissioner's court against the cancellation of the license.
The channel  which cannot be named but rhymes with How Now Brown Cow  has given us the mother of all exposes  watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi at a cinema in New Delhi, a mere six hours after his partys loss in the Gujarat elections. A mere six hours later! Is there no shame?



What could be more damning proof of his political dilettantism, wonders the channel in a lather of righteous indignation. Its 247 hard-working hashtag generators whose salary and promotion depend on how outrageous they can come up with a stinger far more lethal than any lightsaber  #AreYouSeriousRahul.
Special CBI Judge O P Saini on Thursday rued that despite having "religiously" devoted seven years to 2G scam cases, no "legally admissible evidence" was placed before him by the CBI.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners on whose plea a CBI probe was ordered in 2G case, today said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.

Former Telecom Minister and DMK leader A Raja, his party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special CBI court in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases.

"The government should appeal in the high court against acquittal of all the accused," Swamy told PTI outside court premises.

Later, Swamy also tweeted that the government must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in the High Court.

In the tweets, he also made reference to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's DA case in which she along with her close aide Sasikala Natarajan was acquitted by the Karnataka High Court which was finally overruled this year by the Supreme Court.

"Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here," he said in the tweets.
A confident A Raja entered the already packed Patiala House Courts complex early morning on Thursday, wearing a big smile, almost an hour before the CBI special court was to deliver its verdict in the 2G spectrum case. This courtroom, that has been the scene of action ever since the alleged 2G scam broke out almost eight years ago, was unusually filled as it was about to witness the much-awaited judgment in the case.
A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted all the accused in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupee 2G spectrum scandal.

Special Judge O P Saini acquitted all the accused, including then Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimohi, in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
The Maharashtra Assembly on Wednesday passed a bill to amend the Maharashtra Self-Financed Schools Act, 2012, which proposes to allow private companies to open schools, amid opposition by the Congress and the NCP.

The bill will be discussed in the Legislative Council before being finalised.

So far, only private trusts, registered societies and government bodies were entitled to run self-financed schools in the state.

The amendment bill was introduced by Education Minister Vinod Tawde.

It allows companies registered under section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, to set up schools.

It essentially means that corporates who are registered as non-profit firms can only open schools across the state.

"These schools will have to comply will all other rules and regulations like any other school in the state," Tawde said.

During the discussion on the bill, Opposition Congress and NCP raised objections over allowing private .

"Primary Education is not a business model, but it is a responsibility of the government. While we promote privatisation, this kind of privatisation in the field of primary education will destroy the education system of the state," senior Congress leader and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said.

Former deputy chief minister and NCP MLA Ajit Pawar too raised questions on allowing private companies in the field of education.

"What we can say from our experience in the past government that such move will create enormous number of fake schools throughout the state for the sake of profit. This may further lead to demand of seeking a government bail-out package," Pawar said.

The proposed amendment to section 3 of the Act also reduces the space required to open a school in Mumbai to 500 square metres, and in other areas to one acre from two.

"In Mumbai, the space required earlier was 2,000 square metres," Tawde said.

"In such cases, we have asked the schools to tie up with local governing bodies to make arrangement for playgrounds. We will not allow any private company to set up a school without such tie-ups," he said.

Replying to the discussion, Tawde said all rules and regulations required for opening schools currently will remain the same.

"We are only introducing one additional entity, which can open the self-financed schools. These companies will strictly be registered as non-profit companies and therefore cannot be opened just to make money," he said.

The BJP is the single largest party in the 288-member Assembly.
A member of the Indian parliament wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urging him to cap the prices of 20 medical devices to bring down hospitalisation costs and make healthcare more affordable.

The letter follows government decisions earlier this year to cap prices of two other medical devices - knee implants and cardiac stents - which did not go down well with many in the healthcare industry.



Several foreign manufacturers, which command a majority share of India's $5 billion a year medical-technology industry, have opposed price controls, saying they hurt innovation and investment decisions.

Public health experts, however, point to India's high out-of-pocket spend and lack of health insurance as reasons for tighter control of drug and medical device prices.

"Currently, there are no restrictions on the healthcare charges in the country," Dharam Vira Gandhi, a doctor and member of the parliament from India's Punjab state, said in the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. He called for more price controls to be imposed "at the earliest".

Bhupendra Singh, Chairman of the Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) - the agency that imposed previous price controls - declined to comment on the letter.

The agency has previously expressed the need to cap prices of more devices such as balloons -- commonly used to prop open blocked arteries during surgeries. It says its actions have been geared towards bringing down treatment costs.

But ensuring hospitals comply with the price caps has been a challenge, and the NPPA has earlier disclosed cases where hospitals were found to be overcharging, despite price caps.

Some in the industry, including the Medical Technology Association of India (MTaI) that represents many foreign medical device companies such as Johnson & Johnson, have questioned if previous price cap decisions have been successful in reducing cost to patients.

The MTaI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday, but in previous statements it has called for price caps on knee implants -- imposed in February -- to be reconsidered.

Gandhi, in the letter, pushed for more price caps, citing government data that showed nearly a quarter of Indian families borrow money to meet their healthcare costs.

"This would save millions of families in the country from financial hardship and debt trap emanating from the huge healthcare costs," he said.
Brisk polling was underway here on Thursday at the Radhakrishnan Nagar (RK Nagar) constituency to fill the vacancy in the Tamil Nadu Assembly caused by the death of the late J Jayalalithaa.

According to Election Commission officials, 7.32 per cent voters have cast their ballots since polling began at 8 am.

The major contenders are AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan, DMK's N Marudhu Ganesh, Dinakaran -- contesting as an Independent -- and Bharatiya Janata Party's K Nagarajan.

There were reports of malfunctioning of an electronic voting machine (EVM) at one polling booth, the officials said.

Over two lakh voters are eligible to decide the fate of 59 candidates in one of the smallest constituencies in Tamil Nadu.

The by-poll was necessitated following the death of AIADMK leader and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016, who represented the seat.

The counting of votes will take place on December 24.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made with around 15 companies of para-military forces and over 2,500 security personnel and several closed circuit television cameras, flying squads and static surveillance teams being deployed.

Although the poll was first scheduled to be held in April, it was cancelled due to complaints of large-scale voter bribing by a candidate.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis today blamed the banks for making mistakes in names and account numbers in the loan waiver scheme.

Speaking in the Assembly, Fadnavis said, "The banks made mistakes in the account numbers and names of account holders. It leads to confusion as names of a Shiv Sena MLA and a former NCP MP were listed as beneficiaries."



In both the cases, the persons had not applied for loan waiver, he said.

"Our parallel system of getting farmers to register themselves on "Aapale Sarkar" portal helped us to expose such errors," Fadnavis added.

He was speaking on the floor of the House after opposition leaders raised objections over mistakes in the loan waiver scheme.

The CM said that some banks were aware of the discrepancies in account numbers and actual names but had failed to inform the government.

Fadnavis said, "Shiv Sena MLA Prakash Abitkar did not apply for the loan waiver scheme but his name appeared instead of actual beneficiary Prakash Sutar. The list issued by the state government showed Abitkars name and his bank account number."



Fadnavis also explained how the name of a former MP from Jalgaon appeared on the list of beneficiaries.

"Latabai Suresh Patil was actually the beneficiary of loan waiver scheme of Maharashtra government. But because of the bank's mistake, the name of Vasantrao More, former Member of Parliament appeared in the list," he said.

"These mistakes were revealed because the Maharashtra government had a parallel list of beneficiary farmers and their bank account details," said Fadnavis.

He added that banks have been asked to transfer the amount into the beneficiary bank accounts and to validate the account post the transfer.

"This provision is done to fix the responsibility of the banks," said Fadnavis.

He said that the primary verification of 47,87,995 bank accounts has been completed.

"Out of these, 34 lakh accounts are for waiver and one-time settlement scheme while another 14 lakh accounts are eligible for incentive scheme where a regular payee gets a rebate of up to Rs 25,000," said the CM.

"The cumulative figure of loan waiver is Rs 23,300 crore so far. We have transferred money into 26.50 lakh bank accounts as on December 20. The state machinery has picked up momentum and we are speedily clearing the fresh accounts," he said.

Fadnavis announced that the repayment deadline under the one-time settlement scheme has been extended until March 31 from December end.
After Padmavati's indefinite postponing due to protests from fringe groups, another Bollywood movie finds itself amid controversy, barely two days before its release after Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has threatened to stall upcoming Salman Khan-starrer 'Tiger Zinda Hai' if prime time theatre slots for Marathi film Deva are not made available.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in New Delhi will on Thursday pronounce its verdict in the Rs 1.76-lakh-crore 2G spectrum allocation scam of 2008. While a resolution to the long-running case seems close in sight, it would be pertinent to see how the infamous case and key moves in it by the court and the national auditor changed the country's telecom landscape significantly.
The CBI Special Courts decision to acquit all the accused in the 2G scam  including Andimuthu Raja and MK Kanimozhi, daughter of M Karunanidhi - is essentially a big win for crony capitalism. Or rather, crony socialism, since the whole justification for giving spectrum in 2008 at 2001 prices was post facto justified by the need to make telecom prices affordable. This was the crux of former Communication Minister Kapil Sibals zero-loss theory.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard.
In a move aimed at combating stashed abroad, India signed an agreement with Switzerland on Thursday that would allow automatic sharing of tax-related information from January 1 next year, the CBDT said.

"With the completion of the parliamentary procedure in Switzerland and signing of mutual agreement, India and Switzerland are set for automatic exchange of information for the period beginning from January 1, 2018," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.

The policy-making body for the Income Tax Department said the agreement was signed by CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra and Swiss Ambassador to India Andreas Baum at the North Block here.

A joint declaration for the implementation of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) was signed last month between the two sides here and it provided that both countries would start collecting data in accordance with the global standards in 2018 and exchange it from 2019 onwards.

While Switzerland has conformed to the global standards on automatic exchange of information with the signing of the declaration, India, on its part, has promised to safeguard the confidentiality of the data.

"It will now be possible for India to receive from September, 2019 onwards, the financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland for 2018 and subsequent years, on an automatic basis," the government earlier said.

Switzerland, which has always been at the centre of the debate on allegedly stashed by Indians abroad, used to be known for very strong secrecy walls till a few years ago around its banking practices.

A huge global pressure has resulted in Switzerland relenting on the tough secrecy clauses its local laws gave to the banks.

Official sources said that several information requests on details about Indians who had accounts in Swiss banks were still pending.

The AEOI conforms to a norm set by global economic body he Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for tax transparency.
The central government raised the import duty on two varieties of pulses, chana (chickpea) and masoor (red gram) to 30 per cent. And, hiked the Minimum Support Price for toria, a variety of oilseed grown largely in Rajasthan, by around 9.5 per cent to Rs 3,900 a quintal.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who is now among the Bharatiya Janata Partys star campaigners, is set to unleash his charm offensive in Indias financial capital Mumbai, tomorrow.
Voters in Tamil Nadus prestigious RK Nagar constituency, the seat vacated by J Jayalalithaas death last year, are casting their ballots once again today to settle the dispute over the late chief ministers political legacy within the AIADMK. It was earlier scheduled for April 12 earlier this year, but was cancelled following allegations that sums of money were distributed in a vote-for-cash scam.
It was a year for bitcoin, technology stocks and the power consolidation of Chinas Xi Jinping. Those were some of the most popular topics for people boning up on issues important to and business through Google searches in 2017.
State-owned said it will offload 4 per cent stake in its housing subsidiary Canfin Homes Ltd (CFHL).

After the transaction, the bank's holding in CFHL will come down to 26 per cent, it added.

"The bank proposes to offload 4 per cent stake in Canfin Homes Ltd through empanelled merchant bankers/investment bankers," the bank said in a regulatory filing.

However, it did not provide further details.

CFHL had registered a net profit of Rs 74.99 crore during the second quarter ended September of this financial year, up 36.2 per cent from a year ago.

Total income rose to Rs 383.86 crore during the quarter, against Rs 332.37 crore earlier.

Canara Bank's stock closed 0.81 per cent up at Rs 368.35 while Canfin Homes surged 7.47 per cent to Rs 509.15 per cent on BSE today.
The on Thursday called on the Indian government to restructure state-run and reduce its stakes in them, as part of a series of recommendations issued after conducting a financial system stability assessment.

India's banking sector has been reeling under $156 billion of stressed loans that are widely seen as delaying the credit growth needed to revive private investment.

Most of the bad debt is held by state-run lenders, which are suffering after years of bad lending decisions.

In its report, the IMF welcomed the government's plan to inject about $32 billion to recapitalise state-run lenders, which was announced in October, as an important step to "support effective resolution of nonperforming assets".

But the organisation said the injection needed to be accompanied by steps to restructure state-run banks, as well as action to improve corporate governance, and a reduction of the government's stakes in the lenders.

The IMF's financial stability report also recommended India undertake "a cautious reduction" in the minimum amount of investment in government securities that are required to hold, in what is known as the statutory liquidity ratio.

Undertaking these steps "would boost the system's capacity to support credit to the economy, while reducing moral hazard and contingent fiscal liabilities", the IMF said in the report.

When announcing its $32 billion recapitalisation plan, the government had pledged to announce a series of reforms of the state-run lenders, though it has yet to disclose details.

The IMF also called for greater independence and more supervisory powers by law for the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, to supervise and regulate state-run lenders.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel has also called on the government to undertake reforms at the state-run lenders, saying doing so was necessary to avoid repeating the bad lending decisions that have led to the current woes in the sector.
Group of students from Manipur call on MoS (Home) Shri Kiren Rijiju

A group of 18 students from Bishnupur district of Manipur attending the National Integration Tour, organised by the 42nd Assam Rifles, called on the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju here today. The tour is being organized from December 14-26, 2017 to the National Capital and Agra.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Rijiju complimented the Assam Rifles for organizing the National Integration Tour under the Operation Sadbhavna, giving children from the remote region an opportunity to visit the national capital and other historic cities to discover the grandeur of India.

While interacting with the students, Shri Rijiju said that the National Integration Tour is a good initiative taken by the Assam Rifles since this is the first visit outside the state for a majority of these students.

He called upon the children to share their experiences with family and friends back home.

The aim of the National Integration Tour is to promote harmony and awareness. The tour is aimed at integrating the students with the nation and promoting concept of unity in diversity. The students are visiting landmarks like the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, forts in Agra and Delhi, Rajghat, India Gate, National Museum, Pragati Maidan and Delhi Metro.
Judge Advocate Generals Department celebrates Thirty Fourth Corps Day

The Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) Department celebrated its 34th Corps Day on 21 December 2017. To mark the occasion, a Wreath Laying ceremony was held at the Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate.

Wreaths were laid by Lt Gen Ashwani Kumar, Adjutant General and Colonel Commandant of JAG Department along with Maj Gen VC Chitravanshi and other serving officers, soldiers and veterans.

The JAGs Department is the judicial and legal wing of the Army which deals with disciplinary cases and litigation. The Department is actively involved in assisting all ranks in observing Human Rights and the rule of law.

The origin and evolution of JAGs Department, is linked with the evolution of Military Law in England and traces its history to British Article of War-1385". It was on this day in the year 1949 that the Bill for the enactment of the Army Act was introduced in the Parliament.

Manoj Tuli

APRO (Army)
NFHS shows decline in Child Marriages from 47.4% in 2005-06 to 26.8% in 2014-15

As per National Family Health Survey, the percentage of women (in the age group 20-24 years), who were married before legal age, has reduced from 47.4% in 2005-06 to 26.8% in 2014-15. Further, as per analysis of Census 2011 data by NCPCR, nil marriages were reported in the age group of 0-9 years for both boys and girls. Marriage at a young age is detrimental to both girls and boys, and the Ministry is taking steps to end this practice. For girls, child marriage has particular health effects as it leads to an increased fertility span resulting in early pregnancy, birth complications, delivery of low birth-weight babies, increased maternal and infant mortality rate.

As per census 2011, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and Jharkhand are among the top states reporting the highest percentage of child marriage among both boys and girls. The Government of India has enacted the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 in order to prohibit child marriages rather than only restraining them.

The States/UTs from time to time are being regularly pursued for effective implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. The practice of Child Marriages is largely due to the prevailing social customs, tradition, illiteracy, poverty, low status of women in society and lack of awareness. These issues cannot be tackled by legislative interventions alone. This is a continuous process and Government undertakes media campaigns and outreach programmes to address this.

This information was given by Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Dr. Virendra Kumar in reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.
The Vice President of India and the Chairman, Rajya Sabha, Shri. M Venkaiah Naidu has said that terrorism and radicalization remain common challenges for India and Mali, and the whole world. He was interacting with a delegation lead by Mr. Abdrahamane Niang, the President of the High Court of Justice along with two other Members of Parliament of Mali, here today. The Deputy Chairman, Rajya Sabha, Dr. P.J. Kurien, the Secretary General, Rajya Sabha, Shri Desh Deepak Verma and other dignitaries were present on the occasion..

.

The Vice President said that India stands ready to extend Lines of Credit in projects of renewable energy sector in Mali adding that India has already extended Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme to Mali and Indian importers are availing the benefits. India is committed to further strengthen its developmental cooperation partnership with Mali, he added..

.

The Vice President said that the World Heritage Site of Timbuktu with its repository of invaluable Islamic scriptures and manuscripts is a unique cultural asset for the entire world. He further said that India, shall keenly look forward to the early inauguration and opening of the Exhibition Taj Mahal meets Timbuktu" in India. .

.

The Vice President congratulated the Government of Mali on the establishment of G-5 Sahel Joint Force which will contribute to unity, peace, development and prosperity of Mali and the region. .

.
Two-day Regional Conference on 'Good Governance and Replication of Best Practices' begins in Guwahati tomorrow .

A Regional Conference on 'Good Governance and Replication of Best Practices' begins in Guwahati tomorrow. The two-day conference is being organized by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Government of India in collaboration with the Government of Assam. Chief Minister of Assam, Shri Sarhanand Sonowal will inaugurate the Conference tomorrow and address the delegates..

.

The Conference is an effort to create a common platform to share experiences in the formulation and implementation of citizen centric governance, improved public service delivery, Good Governance Index, PM awarded initiatives and awareness on State Collaboration Initiative scheme of DARPG..

.

There will be six sessions during the conference. The themes of the various sessions are 'Responsive Public Delivery', 'State Collaboration Initiatives in Administrative Reforms', 'PM awarded Initiatives 2017', 'Presentations from North Eastern States on Governance Initiatives by Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya and 'Developing a Good Governance Index for ranking of states' followed by Panel Discussion on 'Connectivity- a prerequisite for e-Governance'..

.

The Chief Secretary, Government of Assam, Shri Vinod Kumar Pipersenia and the Secretary, DARPG, Government of India, Shri K.V. Eapen will address the Valedictory Session on December 23, 2017..

.

Delegates from 36 States and UTs will participate in the conference..

.
A US woman has successfully delivered a baby with a 25-year-old frozen embryo -- the longest known frozen human embryo.

Frozen as embryo on October 14, 1992, Emma Wren was born to Tina Gibson on November 25, 2017, weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces and measuring 20 inches long.

"Do you realise I'm only 25? This embryo and I could have been best friends," Gibson, a resident of East Tennessee, was quoted as telling CNN. "I just wanted a baby. I don't care if it's a world record or not."

Previously, the oldest known frozen embryo that came to successful birth was 20 years old.

When Gibson got married seven years ago, her husband had cystic fibrosis, a condition that can make men infertile.

The couple decided to adopt a child. In the meantime, they would foster several children.

Then, last year, her father told them about embryo adoption, where an embryo will be implanted in the body helping them to carry a baby.

In August 2016, Gibson submitted an application for the adoption, and by spring had three embryos from the same anonymous donor transferred into her uterus.

After a series of medical examinations to see whether her uterus would be physically capable of receiving an implanted embryo, she was declared eligible for implantation in January.

It was only when she was preparing for the transfer that the doctor explained that the embryos Gibson had could lead to a "world record", she told CNN. How social media reacted to the news

I'm in awe. (I looked for a link that wasn't wonky. And still am not sure I believe it yet.) "'Do you realize I'm only 25? This embryo and I could have been best friends,' Tina Gibson said." https://t.co/zG3i0sxah3  mackenzian (@mackenzian) December 19, 2017

People say, oh its science, but no I think its a gift from the Lord. Its a gift from the Lord, for sure, Tina Gibson https://t.co/hopJNSG6xX  Arturo Flores (@ARTurOFWAR) December 20, 2017

This Tennessee born baby's name is Emma Wren Gibson. What's so special about her? She was frozen as an embryo on 14th October 1992. But on 25th November 2017, almost 25 years later, she is born. A world record created for the oldest frozen embryo birth. Her mom was born in 1991!! pic.twitter.com/XHflinO4oM  Kiran Kumar S (@KiranKS) December 20, 2017

Wait... Her mom was born in 1991 but she was frozen as an embryo in 1992.. pic.twitter.com/0KEkU8IctU  tom bout. (@SheDoughpe) December 20, 2017
At least 29 people were killed and 26 injured today in a major blaze at a fitness centre building in the South Korean city of Jecheon, officials said, in one of the country's deadliest fire disasters.

The fire broke out around 4:00 pm local time and quickly engulfed the entire eight-storey building, leaving many trapped inside.

Twenty victims were found at a public sauna and elsewhere in the building that houses a fitness centre, public bath and restaurants, the National Fire Agency said.

"The fire produced so much toxic smoke so quickly, leaving many people unable to evacuate," an agency spokesman said.

Many victims appeared to be unaware of the fire raging outside the bathhouse until it became impossible to flee, he added.

The death toll may rise further as firefighters continue to search the building, the spokesman said.

Television footage showed the building consumed by orange flames and issuing dark plumes of smoke, as several people stood waiting to be rescued from an outdoor terrace.

Some were seen jumping from the building onto air mattresses laid out on the ground as dozens of fire trucks and more than 100 firefighters rushed to the scene.

The blaze -- believed to have started in a parking lot on the first floor -- has been mostly put out, the fire agency said.

Jecheon is in central South Korea, about 120 km southeast of the capital Seoul.

The disaster forced organisers of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics to cancel a planned torch relay event at the city tomorrow, Yonhap news agency said, citing the organisers.

"We decided to cancel the event to mourn the victims," an unnamed official at the organising committee was quoted as saying.

The fire is South Korea's worst since 2008 when a blaze at a warehouse in the city of Jecheon killed 40 workers.

President Moon Jae-In expressed regret over the accident and urged officials to make "utmost efforts" for rescue and search operations, his office said.

The worst fire ever to hit modern South Korea was an arson attack on a subway station in the southeastern city of Daegu that left 192 people dead and nearly 150 injured in 2003.
The US Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to approve a potentially path-breaking smoking device by Philip Morris Inc. With a decision expected next year, former employees and contractors have described to Reuters a number of irregularities involving clinical trials that underpin the tobacco giant's application to the agency.

By heating tobacco instead of burning it, the company says the device, known as iQOS, avoids subjecting smokers to the same levels of carcinogens and other toxic substances found in a regular cigarette. The company has spent more than $3 billion developing new smoking platforms like iQOS. As part of that initiative, Philip Morris has published extensive scientific findings, based in part on clinical studies.

Tamara Koval, who worked at the company from 2012 to 2014 and helped coordinate clinical trials for the device, questioned the quality of some of the researchers and sites contracted to carry out those experiments. Koval was a co-author of the company's protocol used to run the studies globally. When she highlighted an irregularity in one of the studies, Koval said, Philip Morris excluded her from meetings.

Reuters also found irregularities during interviews with some of the principal investigators contracted to conduct the trials for the company. One principal investigator said he knew nothing about tobacco. Philip Morris had to jettison the experiment that investigator performed after it emerged he hadn't followed a basic procedure for obtaining informed consent from participants during clinical trials.

A second investigator submitted urine samples that exceeded what a human being is capable of, according to two former company employees, and then initially refused to acknowledge there was a problem. A third said he doesn't hold such company-sponsored clinical trials in high regard, describing them as "dirty" because their purpose is more commercial than scientific.

After reviewing Reuters' findings, Philip Morris said in a statement that "all studies were conducted by suitably qualified and trained Principal Investigators." The company said it understands that "FDA inspectors have already audited some facilities" involved in the trials. Philip Morris also said it had taken steps to address "any reported irregularity in our studies."

"Our policies encourage speaking up about suspected violations of law or our policies and we do not tolerate retaliation against those who speak up," the company said.

In addition to former Philip Morris employees involved with the iQOS program, Reuters interviewed six of the 11 principal investigators who were responsible for five of eight clinical trials the company submitted to the FDA. Reuters also reviewed hundreds of pages of publicly available Philip Morris study reports and FDA filings.

That reporting identified shortcomings in the training and professionalism of some of the lead investigators, as well as their knowledge of the study results.

A group of tobacco research and policy experts reviewed detailed summaries of Reuters' reporting and Philip Morris' response. The experts, including a former head of the FDA and two former scientific advisers for the agency, said those findings raise concerns about Philip Morris' clinical trial program.

"Taken as a whole, it's clear they do not have the sophistication to carry out adequate and well-controlled clinical trials," said David Kessler, the FDA's commissioner from 1990 to 1997, referring to the company. "I am not inferring any malicious intent here, just that they lack sophistication because this is not their bread and butter."

If the FDA has already audited some of the trial sites used by Philip Morris, the agency "should carefully review its audits and possibly expand them," said Kessler, a former dean of the medical school at Yale University.

'THE FDA SHOULD AUDIT'

Tom Eissenberg, who served on the FDA's tobacco products scientific advisory committee until earlier this year, said: "The FDA should audit."

Reuters did not find any evidence that the outcome of the experiments presented by the company to the FDA was manipulated or falsified.

The new insights into the company's clinical trial program for iQOS come at a crucial time for Philip Morris. The world's largest publicly traded tobacco company by market value and maker of Marlboro cigarettes has applied to the U.S. FDA to be able to sell iQOS in America, and also for permission to market it as a modified-risk tobacco product. That designation could mean that Philip Morris is allowed to market iQOS as presenting less harm or risk of disease to users than traditional tobacco.

For now, the FDA is evaluating the company's studies. Reuters outlined its findings about the iQOS trials to the agency. The FDA said it cannot comment on a pending application.

Philip Morris says the device, which heats small tobacco inserts, is meant for smokers who would not otherwise quit. Its chief executive officer, Andre Calantzopoulos, has told investors and media alike that he intends to one day replace cigarettes with products like iQOS. So far, iQOS makes up a fraction of the company's $75 billion revenues and Philip Morris continues to market conventional cigarettes across the globe.

Internal Philip Morris documents reviewed by Reuters show the significance of iQOS goes beyond its profit potential. The device is now sold in more than two dozen nations after it was first launched in Japan and Italy during late 2014.

The company has a 10-year plan for what it calls "normalization" of the tobacco industry, according to a 2014 strategy document. The industry has been shunned over the past two decades for producing and marketing products that kill people and previously lying about it. Under a section on "strategies and actions" to achieve that goal, the document lists, among other things, new smoking devices such as iQOS and the scientific research involved in developing them.

Told about that document, Philip Morris said: "The suggestion that the purpose of our development of IQOS and our scientific research program is to 'normalize' the tobacco industry is false."

That previously undisclosed document and others can be found in a searchable repository published by Reuters, The Philip Morris Files. (http://reut.rs/2sT51xF)

'I JUST DON'T READ THEM'

As part of its submission to the U.S. FDA, the company said the results of its research showed the device significantly reduced the level of certain harmful substances that users were exposed to compared with cigarettes and satisfied their nicotine cravings. "In fact the level of reduction is so considerable, it approaches 95% of the levels measured in smokers who quit altogether," the company said in a statement to Reuters.

Taken along with the company's laboratory studies, Philip Morris said, the research program "in its entirety demonstrates that IQOS is likely to reduce the risk of smoking related diseases."

Philip Morris is responsible for the majority of the science that has been published about iQOS. "Those who criticize us should probably look at our science," said Tommaso Di Giovanni, a company spokesman, during a tour of Philip Morris' research and development headquarters in March.

The eight clinical experiments that Philip Morris submitted to the FDA were conducted between 2013 and 2015. For one study, scientists in Texas and Florida did not respond to messages left by Reuters. Other scientists, in Belfast and Tokyo, declined to talk. Half of the eight studies were done in Japan.

FDA guidelines for conducting clinical studies say a trial should adhere to standards such as Good Clinical Practice. That best-practices document says investigators "should be qualified by training and experience and should have adequate resources" to properly conduct a trial.

Masayuki Sugimoto, the principal investigator who oversaw testing at one facility used by Philip Morris to conduct a trial, said his Tokyo clinic is "heavily in the red."

Sugimoto said he generally has little confidence that all the participants in experiments like the one he ran for Philip Morris on nicotine tell the truth about their smoking history - that is, whether they smoke.

Speaking about the final study report from the Philip Morris trial, Sugimoto said in an interview that he generally doesn't have time to read such things in detail. He said he probably signed a document indicating he had received the final report. Sugimoto gestured with his thumb and forefinger to indicate a thick document: "I just don't read them."

Philip Morris said that it "did not receive any such comments or statements from the PI," or principal investigator. Sugimoto's study, it said, was completed "without any issues." The company said the study data was reviewed and discussed with the investigator throughout the trial.

The Japanese company hired to monitor studies in the country, CMIC Holdings Co Ltd, said in a statement that researchers confirmed that trial participants were smokers by using urine tests.

Asked about the tests, Sugimoto said he thought they would prevent non-smokers from joining the trial but added, "I don't know whether they were done that rigorously."

Told of Sugimoto's doubts about the honesty of study participants, Eissenberg, who served on the FDA's tobacco products scientific advisory committee from 2011 to 2017, said "it raises a great deal of concern."

A principal investigator "is required to make sure that the participants meet the inclusion-exclusion criteria that are in the protocol," said Eissenberg. He was referring to the fact that clinical trial subjects' backgrounds - such as whether they are smokers - should meet the parameters of the experiment for the data to be valid. "And a PI should have confidence in that," he said.

DATA DISCARDED

At another laboratory in Japan, issues with how the study was carried out were so acute that data from 56 participants was thrown out, raising questions about the competence of the principal investigator. Philip Morris halted the study at that location.

In the company's study documentation released by the FDA, Philip Morris recorded the reason for discarding the data as non-compliance with good clinical practices, specifically "failure of the site to meet sample collection procedures and data recording procedures."

Kishor Lad, who was Philip Morris' data manager on the study, said the site crossed a line of what's allowed during such trials: It collected samples before getting informed consent forms signed by the volunteers. "Completely a no-no in the GCP world," Lad said, using the acronym for good clinical practice.

Philip Morris confirmed to Reuters that "informed consent was not obtained prior to execution of a study procedure" - specifically, the collection of urine samples. The problem was identified by CMIC, the contract research group, during a routine monitoring visit, Philip Morris said. A subsequent round of audits, it added, "led to prompt discontinuation of the study at the Seishukai Clinic." The incident, the company said, was properly logged in the study report and the submission to the FDA.

"It suggests the investigator had no idea, did not understand or just didn't care what his responsibilities were in conducting the study," said Greg Koski, a former director of the U.S. federal Office for Human Research Protections, which advocates for research subjects. "This is such a flagrant violation, that investigator shouldn't be doing clinical studies."

Mamoru Oki was the principal investigator at the time at the facility, the Seishukai Clinic in Tokyo. Reached by phone, Oki said: "My specialty is urology and I don't know anything about tobacco, so I cannot talk."

Told of that remark, Philip Morris said: "Dr. Oki was qualified and trained specifically on the product."

Dorothy Hatsukami, a member of the FDA's tobacco products scientific advisory committee from 2010 to 2013, said a principal investigator's professed lack of knowledge about tobacco is not ideal.

"For any tobacco-related clinical trial, an investigator with a background in tobacco product research would have better qualifications to evaluate the study results than a novice," she said.

The study continued at a parallel site, the Tokyo Heart Center.

During an interview at the center, principal investigator Masahiro Endo said repeatedly that he had no idea what the results were from his study.

"We did medically safe and accurate blood samples but were not told the results. So even if we are asked questions, we won't be able to answer," he said. "We were paid, it ended there."

But in a statement signed last year and submitted by Philip Morris to the FDA, Endo said he had read the clinical study report from the company and confirmed "that to the best of my knowledge it accurately describes the conduct and results of the study." Principal investigators in all of the Philip Morris clinical trials signed the same statement.

A day after speaking with Reuters, Endo sent an email clarifying that after checking his records he saw that he'd signed a receipt saying he received a report on the results and acknowledging that he'd be listed as the principal investigator. He had spoken during the interview "with a fuzzy memory," Endo said.

'LESSER OF TWO EVILS'

Clinical trial experts interviewed by Reuters said it's not uncommon for principal investigators to be unaware of test results sent to a third party specialty laboratory for analysis. But they also emphasized that if want better science, they need the investigators to be more involved with all aspects of a study.

"It seems like the investigator here is in the role of a technician, not as a principal investigator," said Kessler, the former FDA commissioner.

Kessler said it's hard to understand how such investigators could have signed off on the clinical study report "when they clearly were not versed in the study results."

Other principal investigators described their work differently.

Fumimasa Nobuoka, a principal investigator on one of the trials in Japan, said he read the Philip Morris study report: "I thought it was well done, well written."

James Borders, who was the principal investigator for a study held in Lexington, Kentucky, said the experiments in his trial were done ethically and followed the sound scientific practice.

Borders, who became the chief medical officer at the Baptist Health Lexington hospital, said such studies help consumers make an informed decision. His decision to be involved with the study, he said, hinged on the proposition that a device like iQOS could be the "lesser of two evils."

Philip Morris said that while it sponsored the clinical trials, the experiments were "performed by reputable research facilities" and monitored by contract research organizations - used to oversee such studies. It hired U.S.-based Covance Inc to serve as its global contract research organization, according to an internal Philip Morris 2013 assessment plan. Covance, a unit of Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, declined to comment.

CMIC, the company hired to monitor the Japan studies, said in a statement: "All the clinical trials you referred to were conducted in accordance with GCP guidelines" - good clinical practices - "and we believe that the results of the trials are scientifically trustworthy."

As part of her job coordinating between Philip Morris and those contracted to run its clinical trials, Koval, the former company scientist, conducted medical safety training across the world for principal investigators and others involved with the iQOS studies.

During one study training session in Tokyo, Koval said, she realized some of the researchers could not speak English well and she was unable to communicate with them. Koval said she does not speak Japanese and there was no interpreter present.

"I was like, Jesus, what are we doing here?" she said. At dinner later, Koval said, she saw two of the men, and they were unable to describe in English what their jobs were.

When asked about Koval's session, Philip Morris said it was a meeting with its contract research organization and others. It added that "all PIs and team members with active roles in the study were fluent in English."

But Sugimoto, one of the Japanese principal investigators, told Reuters in an interview, "I can't speak English."

And Endo, another of the lead researchers, said that when Philip Morris executives visited his site someone was present who helped translate "questions like whether to cut the crusts off bread" when giving food to study subjects.

CMIC said, "All the principal investigators received adequate training in Japanese before the trial began."

URINE SAMPLES

In Poland, some urine samples collected as part of one Philip Morris clinical study exceeded the limits of what a human being is capable of producing in a single day, according to Koval and Lad, the former clinical data manager.

Lad, who worked at Philip Morris from 2012 to 2015, said he didn't think anything "malicious" had happened. Maybe urine samples were swapped or there was a mistake with the containers used to collect the urine, he said.

But when the principal investigator for the Polish site was asked about the results, she would not admit there was a problem, Lad and Koval said. Instead, they said, the scientist explained that the test subjects were large Polish men.

Philip Morris said that "a few participants" in an early stage of the trial "produced unusually large volumes of urine." Because medical tests showed no problems with the subjects, the company said, the investigator did not initially consider the samples to be "adverse events."

After discussion with the medical monitors of the study as well as Philip Morris, the investigator "ultimately decided to mark these incidences as adverse events," the company said. An investigation at the site confirmed that researchers had followed study protocol and good clinical practices, the company said.

The principal investigator running the study in Poland for Philip Morris, Katarzyna Jarus-Dziedzic, declined to discuss what happened with the urine case at her site, citing confidentiality.

Koval said that after she raised concerns about the Polish study with Philip Morris executives in Switzerland she was excluded from meetings.

Philip Morris said in a statement that Koval was "part of the team" that followed up on the urine samples. In fact, the company said, she was "an active member" of the group that finalized the data set from the studies for further analysis.

Koval confirmed that she was part of the team and involved with the data set. But she stood by her account that she was shut out of conversations and meetings about the urine samples.

In 2014, Philip Morris terminated her contract, Koval said. She said she returned to the pharmaceutical industry a few months later and now works for Swiss drugs giant Novartis AG.

After leaving Philip Morris, Koval was given a certificate of service that said, "Tamara drove clinical program development activities." It said she had demonstrated "professionalism" and "unwavering commitment" to her work.
A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea on Thursday, crossing on the western side of the border, without any exchange of fire between troops from both sides, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The low-ranking North Korean soldier appeared in front of a South Korean border guard post around 8.04 a.m., a Defence Ministry spokesman told Efe news.

The soldier crossed to the South at a point of the "western slope" of the DMZ, the militarised border that divides the two countries.

This is the fourth North Korean soldier to defect to the South this year and the first one following the dramatic desertion of a soldier who was shot five times by the North Korean Army last month during his flight through the Joint Security Area (JSA), the only border area where soldiers of the two Koreas are stationed face to face.

However, in this case the South Korean troops have detected "no unusual movements" of the North Korean Army, according to the spokesman.

In a separate development, the Unification Ministry on Thursday announced that two other North Korean civilians defected to the South on Wednesday by boat.

After the vessel was detected by a Navy patrol in the Sea of Japan, its two crew members expressed their desire to defect.
Here in Santa Claus Village, near the Arctic Circle, is the self-anointed official Santa, a Finn who refused to give his real name, insisting he was actually Mr Claus.
The Swiss Federal Council said Wednesday it does not support "burqa ban" initiative that called for a nationwide ban on face-covering headgear.

Instead it issued a counter-proposal that no woman should be forced to hide her face, Xinhua cited Swiss news agency ATS as saying.

The council said it has the backing of the major political parties, except for the Swiss People's Party.

The Federal Council, the national executive of the government, a group made of representatives of major political parties, recommended that voters reject the "burka ban" initiative.

The "burka ban" initiative was handed in with enough signatures to have a referendum on it by its promotors, the Rightwing, Swiss People's Party (SVP), in September. No date has yet been set for the vote.

The SVP initiative wants face-covering headgear to be banned in public places all over Switzerland apart from a few exceptions, such as for health reasons.

The initiative of the Federal Council on the other hand contends that "No woman should be forced to hide her face."

The government plans to include its proposal in the penal code that it is punishable to compel a person to hide his or her face.
President Trump issued a threat on Wednesday to cut off American aid to any country that votes for a resolution at the United Nations condemning his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
President today praised his Indian-American UN envoy Nikki Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be "taken advantage" of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

Haley as American representative vetoed against the draft resolution.

A similar resolution is being moved in the UN General Assembly too, where there is no veto provision.

Praising Haley for her stand in support of his policy, Trump said the countries would "potentially" vote against the US at the General Assembly.

"They take hundreds and millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then vote against us. We are watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We will save a lot of money," said the US President in his possibly last Cabinet meeting of the year.

Trump said people were tired of the US being taken advantage of.

"We are not going to be taken advantage anymore," he said.

Holding the Cabinet meeting in the backdrop of his major legislative victory on the Congressional passage of his sweeping tax reform bill, Trump said this meeting would be one of celebration.

He said this is a historic victory for the American people.

"It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hardworking Americans," he said adding that the tax reforms "brings overseas corporate profits back" to the US.

Trump said the US had unleashed its military might on ISIS and today the coalition to defeat the terror group has captured nearly 100 per cent of the territory held by the outfit in Iraq and Syria.

"We are making it very difficult for them," he said.

In his remarks, Trump reiterated that he was ending chain migration and diversity visa lottery.

He also spoke briefly about the Bangladeshi immigrant Akayed Ullah responsible for the latest New York terrorist attack.

"We will get rid of chain migration and the visa lottery programme," he said.

People coming from the lottery programme bring in "some very bad" people.

"We do not want this group of people anymore," he said.

People who met him in the neighbourhood said he was horrible, nasty, mean, would not talk to people, he said.

"They could see it coming," he said.

Trump said the entire world can see America is coming back, rapidly and strongly.

"One of the great things, we are bringing back perhaps four trillion dollars into our country," he said in an apparent reference in the changes in the tax codes that would help companies bring back their money stacked abroad.
India has failed to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling on solar power, the United States will tell the WTOs dispute settlement body (DSB) next month, triggering a fresh round of litigation, according to an agenda issued on Wednesday.
Shares of Sanjay Chandra-controlled Unitech and Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications (RCom) along with Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra)  accused in the Rs 1.76-lakh crore 2G spectrum allocation scam  have not been able to regain lost glory since August 2007, when the government (Department of Telecom) initiated the process of allotment of 2G spectrum along with Unified Access Services (UAS) licences.
Shares of construction companies were in focus with most of the stocks from the sector trading higher by up to 7% on the BSE in otherwise subdued market.
surged 10% to Rs 589, also its 52-week high on the BSE in intra-day deal, after the company announced that its board has approved a proposal to sign an agreement to acquire PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt.'s previously franchised sub-territory in Jharkhand along with manufacturing facilities and franchise rights for Chhattisgarh.
Social activist Anna Hazare on Thursday refused to comment on the verdict of the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases and said we are no one to judge the court's verdict adding whatever they decide is correct and rightly done.

Speaking to media here, Hazare said "We cannot comment much on the Court's verdict. Whatever they decide is correct and rightly done. We are no one to judge on the verdict".

"The court will only look for evidence and if no proof were found on the accused then, nothing can be done," he added.

The verdict was announced on Thursday morning, nearly seven years after the first arrest was made by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2011.

As soon as the verdict was announced, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) supporters burst into celebrations.

The alleged scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08 which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer.

The scam was among the major corruption scandals that came to light during the second term of the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who unearthed the 2G spectrum case, on Thursday, snubbed the verdict in the multi-crore scam while saying that the government needs loyal officers, not sycophants.

All accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases - including former telecom minister A Raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi - were, earlier in the day, acquitted by a Special CBI court.

Speaking to media, the BJP leader also slammed former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for welcoming the verdict and said such people should not be made law officers.

"Mukul Rohatgi has welcomed this judgement. When he was appointed Attorney General, I had written to the Prime Minister opposing his appointment, as Rohatgi was an advocate of many of the accused companies, including Unitech. These people should not be made law officer because a wrong signal will go that we are not serious about corruption," he said.

BJP leader said that today's judgment was bad and that it has to be appealed to the High Court.

"The corruption agenda has been derailed, but it can be put back on track again. We just need some honest and straightforward law officers and good lawyers, not those who do 'chamchagiri' to the ministers. We need somebody who has got stature and we need to put them together to have a team and within three months we can reverse whatever has happened," Swamy said.

He further called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a lesson from this and "set up war council for fighting corruption."

"The Judge says earlier there was a lot of enthusiasm, but later it became worse and worse. Judge also said counsels were lackadaisical. This is a big condemnation of the government controlling of the case. This is not a setback at all. It is an aberration as the law officers were not serious on fighting against corruption... We must now fight corruption on a war footing," he said.

He further said that a special team should be set up, which would set aside this judgment.

The verdict was announced nearly seven years after the first arrest was made by the CBI in 2011.

The alleged scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08, which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer.

It was among the major corruption scandals that came to light during the second term of the UPA government headed by former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
The 69th Indian Pharmaceutical Congress and Exhibition (IPCE) to be held from December 22-24 here, is expected to focus on flag its concern over India's dependence on import of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients(API), the crucial raw material for manufacturing drugs.

According to Dr.Shailendra Saraf, Chairman of the Local Organising Committee of the IPCE 2017, India has emerged as a key supplier of generic and affordable medicines for the world market, but it's overwhelming dependence on China for API to the extent of over 65 per cent of the requirement, is a major worry.

The discussions on API will take place in backdrop of recommendations of a committee headed by V.M. Katoch, Former Secretary of Department of Research, who has suggested the setting up of mega parks for API or bulk drugs manufacturing.

It was brought to light that India has traditionally been focusing on process patents, but from 2005 onwards, importance of having product patents has come into limelight.

"There has been a paradigm shift in this area as India is number 2 only to USA in applications for product patents with the USFDA. The Congress will have discussions by key speakers on the strides being made in this direction of discovering new drug molecules," said Dr. Saraf.

"I am very glad to state that out of 2450 abstracts received, 1950 abstracts have been selected through peer review by expert committee for the presentation in various sessions. I would also like to proudly mention that around 10000 delegates are expected to participate in the Congress. There will be 68 speakers and 30 out of these will be from abroad." said Dr.Dhirender Kaushik, Organising Secretary,LOC, PCI 2017.

"Forums like IPC provide a unique opportunity to pharma educationalists to interact with industry and regulatory professionals and allow them to acquaint themselves with recent technologies through technical sessions and pharma expo. It would help academicians to look into their curriculum and incorporate content beyond syllabus as per the current need of the industries," said Madhu Chitkara, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University.

"The Congress will be inaugurated by the Governor of Punjab, V P Singh Badnore, on December 22. Mr. Brahm Mohindra, Minister, Punjab, will also be there. We will be having technical sessions by industry bigwigs during the three-day Congress. In fact, Prof. B Suresh, President, Pharmacy Council of India(PCI) and Dr. G N Singh, Drug Controller General of India, will be attending the inaugural session from 11 a.m. onwards on Dec 22. The theme of the Congress is 'Skill and will to make quality pill', and the discussions will be centred around three main tracks- pharma education, pharmacy practice and industry-cum-regulations," said Dr. Saraf.

The experts from pharma manufacturing industry, top pharmacists and academicians will discuss threadbare the importance of good quality and safe medicines. Focus of the current Congress would be on exploring new avenues in capacity building, critical monitoring and evaluation of pharmaceutical products to produce quality and safe medications.

This year's Congress is being coordinated by Association of Pharmaceuticals Teachers of India(APTI) and Dr. Swarnlata Saraf, Vice President, Association of Pharmaceuticals Teachers of India (Central Zone) also partcipated in the press meet.

New innovations of pharmaceutical machinery and laboratory equipment etc. from India and overseas will be showcased and run concurrently alongside the technical sessions.

"We will be adopting a resolution on the final day which will be submitted to the Central Government for appropriate action," concluded Dr.Saraf.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 17 militants belonging to the Taliban insurgent group were killed in a joint operation by the Afghan air forces and ground forces in southern Helmand province.

The Tolo News quoted the local officials, as saying on Thursday, that the operation was carried out a day before in which 17 Taliban insurgents were killed and five others were injured.

Provincial governor spokesperson Omar Zwak said, "The forces have also seized weapons during the operation."

Taliban has not commented on the incident so far.

Last week, at least 14 policemen were killed in a Taliban attack on two security check posts in the province.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three people were killed and six others were wounded in an explosion in Herat province on Thursday evening, local officials confirmed.

Herat Police spokesman Abdul Ahad Wali said that the blast took place in Jebraeel area in Herat City at around 5:30 pm.

The explosives were hidden in a three-wheel motorbike and were detonated in a crowded place in front of a shop, Afghanistan's Tolo News Agency reported.

Mohammad Rafiq Shirzai, a spokesman for Herat Zonal Hospital, said that the injured were taken to the hospital, following the explosion.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
California-based production house NeuAsia Studios is all set to make a movie on Delhi's organ harvesting operation racket, starring actors Rakshak Sahni and Jason Statham.

According to NeuAsia Studios statement, "NeuAsia Studios announces the launch of a 30 million dollars film revolving around organ harvesting set in India and the US. The plot has an American cop who joins forces with an Indian cop to investigate the disappearance of his niece and its connection to a New Delhi crime syndicate's global organ harvesting operation.."

"Staying true to the setting, the film will star an Indian actor and an American actor in the lead as cops who are attempting to bust the racket," it added.

The script is written by Mansur Ahmed and reportedly Jason Statham, the 'Transporter's fame, has been finalised as Genova, the American lead.

The Indian lead is going to be played by TV actor Rakshak Sahni, known for playing in 'Kavyanjali' and 'Kasauti Zindagi Ki' in India.

The film is currently titled 'Eastern Crimes'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hours after a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court acquitted all the accused in the 2G spectrum allocation cases, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday said that the Congress is trying to cover up their fault.

Speaking to ANI, Union Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan said, "Congress is looking for excuses to cover up their fault. What does it have to say about the auctions which were done then?"

Earlier in the day, the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court acquitted all the accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi, involved in the scam.

The verdict was announced nearly seven years after the first arrest was made by the CBI in 2011.

After the verdict was pronounced, the Congress party said that the verdict of special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on the 2G spectrum allocation cases proved the innocence of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

The alleged scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08, which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer.

It was among the major corruption scandals that came to light during the second term of the UPA government headed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Meanwhile, the CBI had announced that it would challenge the verdict in the 2G spectrum allocation case as the court may have had not appreciated the evidence in its proper perspective.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Despite facing major casting issues, the production for highly-anticipated 'Fantastic Beasts

Taking the announcement to Twitter, the second of five adventures, penned by 'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling, has finally been completed.

Alongside a video clip of the production, a caption read, "That's a wrap on #FantasticBeasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald production! See you in 2018. #MagicInProgress #FantasticBeasts #WizardingWednesdays."

Following on from the end of the first film, the sequel - which is set in 1927 - sees the Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald [Johnny Depp] escaping from the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA).

Now the wizard is gathering followers to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.

In order to stop him and his plans, a young Albus Dumbledore [Jude Law] enlists the help of Magizoologist Newt Scamander [Eddie Redmayne], who agrees to help, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Even though it was a cute announcement, netizens were still debating over Johnny Depp's involvement in the film as the villain, Gellert Grindelwald.

The actor still had several fans who expressed excitement to see him on the big screen, while many continued to react negatively to his role.

The cast also includes Jude Law, Ezra Miller, Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston in pivotal roles.

The flick is slated to release on November 16, 2018, in the US.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today said terrorism and radicalisation remain common challenges for India and Mali, besides other parts of the world. He was interacting with a three-member delegation led by Mr. Abdrahamane Niang, the President of the High Court of Justice.

Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Dr. P.J. Kurien, the Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha, Desh Deepak Verma and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

Vice President Naidu said India stands ready to extend Lines of Credit in projects of renewable energy sector in Mali, adding that India has already extended the Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme to Mali. Indian importers are availing the benefits. India is committed to further strengthen its developmental cooperation partnership with Mali, he added.

He said the world heritage site of Timbuktu with its repository of invaluable Islamic scriptures and manuscripts is a unique cultural asset for the entire world. He further said that India shall keenly look forward to the early inauguration and opening of the Exhibition "Taj Mahal meets Timbuktu" in India.

Naidu congratulated the Government of Mali on the establishment of G-5 Sahel Joint Force which will contribute to unity, peace, development and prosperity of Mali and the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Central Government on Thursday has agreed to facilitate the travel of Sri Lankan pilgrims, through a ferry from Kankesanturai, near Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka to Chennai.

The pilgrims, who are devotees of Lord Shiva, have expressed their desire to visit the Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram town in Tamil Nadu. They will participate in the 'Maarkazhi Thiruvaathirai' (Aarudraa Dharshana Festival), which will be held from December 24, 2017, to January 3, 2018.

A Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official said: "In response to their request, we expect this will permit a large number of Sri Lankan Tamil pilgrims to undertake this important and auspicious pilgrimage."

The temple festival is celebrated and also considered sacred by both Indians and Sri Lankans.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman, who will be next seen in the upcoming movie 'The Greatest Showman', has revealed that he is planning to take a career break really soon.

According to Contactmusic.com, the 49-year-old actor is looking forward to take some time off to be with his loved ones and "reassess" what the future holds for him.

While speaking at the Sydney premiere of the movie, he said, "It's been an amazing year for me. I'm really proud of everything I've done. But I want to catch up with my mates. I want to just take a little time to reflect, just reassess and see where I head from here."

The 'Logan' star, who insisted he is a "quieter person" than people think, will enjoy having time to relax and indulge in his hobbies.

"I love to read and I like the outdoors. I like to cook and I like the theatre. I love sport," noted Jackman.

Recently, Jackman revealed that she rejected the role of James Bond because he felt the scripts had become "unbelievable and crazy".

Jackman will be next seen in 'The Greatest Showman' alongside Zac Efron, Zendaya, Michelle Williams and Rebecca Fergusson.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The historic first batch of Indian Military Academy (IMA), which was commissioned after Indian Independence, met here on Thursday to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of their commissioning from IMA Dehradun on the same day in1947.

45 Pakistan Army officers also studied with them, who later went to Pakistan.

Nonagenerarians of IMA's 2nd course gathered at around 1 pm to celebrate the occasion.

11 Gorkha Rifles Band was also present during the event.

71 years ago, on August 5, 1946, 249 young men reported at the Academy, brimming with confidence and hopes.

Half way through the course, 45 Pakistani cadets left on October 14, 1947. Hence, concluding the course concluded on December 21, 1947 with 189 gentlemen cadets being commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants on a Passing out Parade under the supervision of Sardar Baldev Singh, the first Defence Minister of a free India.

The commissioning of this batch coincided with the division of erstwhile British Indian Army and the birth of the Indian Army of free India.

These young men then went on to lead the regiments and units of the new Army to victory through four wars against Pakistan and a number of insurgencies.

The batch also set very high standards of achievement, with 12 of them attaining the rank of Lt Gen (including five achieving the penultimate rank of Army Commander), 20 Major Generals, 26 Brigadiers, 25 Colonels and 45 Lieutenant Colonels.

Like the first batch of new officers, they also laid the foundations of an apolitical Army and sanctified the principle of the army's subservience to civil control, in marked contrast to the emerging nations of Asia and Africa.

The officers of this course were also the standard bearers as officers of the newly merged Gorkha regiments, hitherto exclusively governed by the British.

All in all, the 2nd course IMA is rightfully recognized as a setter of new trends and high standards.

The first course passed out before the Independence.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said that both India and Pakistan are engaged in working out the modalities of the meeting of former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav with his wife and mother.

MEA Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, "Modalities of this meeting are still being worked out and who goes when, how do they go, how does the meeting takes place, these are the things both countries are engaged in."

Yesterday, Pakistan issued visas to the mother and wife of Jadhav, who is in a Pakistani jail on charges of spying.

"Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today," Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal tweeted.

The visas have been issued to Jadhav's wife and mother for their Pakistan visit to meet him on humanitarian grounds.

The Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan will also be allowed to accompany Jadhav's family during the meeting.

Earlier this month, Pakistan had agreed to facilitate the visit of Jadhav's mother and his wife and also assured their safety, security and freedom of movement in the nation.

Jadhav was arrested in Pakistan's Balochistan Province over charges of alleged involvement in espionage and subversive activities for India's intelligence agency - the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he had business interests after retiring from the navy.

Jadhav was sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan this year in April.

However, the International Court of Justice on May 18, 2017, stayed the hanging after India approached it against the death sentence.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taking cognisance of the mushrooming menace of terrorism across the world, India, in a veiled attack, chastised Pakistan and China for mainstreaming and supporting world-recognised terrorists.

India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has said the Sanctions Committees were failing to make progress due to narrow political and strategic concerns of few states, while others were supporting terrorists.

Akbaruddin was referring to United Nations-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, who was recently released from house arrest after a Pakistani court cited lack of evidence against him in the case.

He further tore into Pakistan for letting Saeed foray into the mainstream and allowing him to run for office in Pakistan in 2018.

"Where Sanctions Committees have designated terrorists, there are states who venture to mainstream UN-designated terrorist individuals into their political process, in total disregard of international law, thus putting our common security in peril," he said.

This remark comes after the Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist, who is wanted by India for his role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives, recently announced he would contest the general elections in Pakistan in 2018 under the banner of the Milli Muslim League.

Akbaruddin also trained his guns at China, which is considered an ally of Pakistan, and said the country was falling victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in certain issues.

"It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," Akbaruddin said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Thursday violated ceasefire at around 5

The Indian Army retaliated and firing from the both sides stopped at around 6:30 pm.

Meanwhile, security forces have launched a cordon and search operation in Bandipora's Hajin in Jammu and Kashmir.

Last month, ceasefire was violated in Naushera sector itself which continued for an hour.

(Further details awaited).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
North Korea on Thursday rejected the United States' (US) claims of initiating the treacherous WannaCry ransomware attack globally.

A spokesperson for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has officially rejected the claims.

It said, "As we have clearly stated on several occasions, we have nothing to do with cyber attack and we do not feel a need to respond, on a case-by-case basis, to such absurd and wild allegations of the US," the spokesman said, according to the North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"However, we can not condone the fact that the US is daring to take a stand on our country with the problem of cyber attack," added the spokesperson.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump's homeland security advisor, Thomas P Bossert, had made the announcement in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

"The [WannaCry] attack was widespread and has cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible. We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either," he said.

"North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious. WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless," Bossert added.

Ever since Trump came to power in November last year, he has been at loggerheads with North Korea over alleged conducting of nuclear tests.

Amid the tension between the nations, which has put the on alert of conflict, Trump referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a "little rocket man", while his rival has previously called him a "mentally deranged dotard" and an "old lunatic" respectively.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A low-ranking North Korean soldier defected to South Korea on early Thursday morning across the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between the two countries.

No shots were fired during the defection

The soldier was spotted in front of a guard post just after 8 am on Thursday after crossing through the DMZ, Yonhap News Agency reported, quoting the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The news agency further reported that the South Korean military fired 20 warning shots at border guards from North Korea looking for the defector.

CNN has quoted a South Korean Ministry of Defence official, as saying, that the soldier was in custody and authorities would investigate the reason for the defection.

This was the second defection across the heavily guarded border in less than two months. Another North Korean soldier was shot multiple times while dramatically escaping to the South on November 13.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 60 people on Thursday were arrested for their suspected links with the Islamic State (IS) group, during the counterterrorism operations across Turkey.

A police source said that anti-terror squads were formed and had conducted simultaneous operations at 12 locations in seven districts of Istanbul.

During the operations, the police apprehended 45 people of different nationalities, who were allegedly planning to carry out attacks across the country, Anadolu News Agency reported.

The police also seized a number of documents and digital tools from the suspects.

Also, ten suspects were caught in western Izmir province, during simultaneous operations in the city.

The arrests came after Izmir Chief Public Prosecutor's Office issued arrest warrants for 11 suspects.

Elsewhere, security forces arrested two Syrian nationals in western Bursa province and three Syrian and two Iraqi nationals in southern Kahramanmaras province.

Turkey has been embroiled in a state of emergency since last year, as the dreaded terror organization has repeatedly targeted civilians in suicide bombs, rocket and gun attacks.

Turkish security forces have been involved in a long-running campaign to stop such attacks.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated various developmental projects in north-eastern states of Mizoram and Meghalaya, concerning the region's overall growth in various sectors including rail, road, tourism and improvement in power transmission.

The North-east has topped the agenda of development for the current central government as it is considered as one of the important regions where strategic growth of New Delhi is based.

The region is acknowledged as the eastern gateway of India's 'Look East Policy'.

During his visit to the hilly states, Prime Minister Modi visited capital Aizawl in Mizoram and inaugurated the Tuirial Hydro Power Project in the state that will produce 251 million units of electrical energy every year and boost the socio-economic development of the state.

It is the first ever central project that has been successfully commissioned in the state of Mizoram.

After inaugurating the long awaited project, he said, "With the commissioning of the project, Mizoram becomes the third power surplus state in the northeast after Sikkim and Tripura."

Blaming the previous government, he added, "The project was first declared at Mizoram by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee way back in the year 1998, but got delayed."

Besides generating electricity, the reservoir water is also going to open new avenues for navigation which will provide connectivity to remote villages.

People from all walks of life from the landlocked state of Mizoram gathered in number to witness the developmental strategies put forth by PM Modi for the region's economic growth.

The prime minister also interacted with Self Help Groups of Mizoram who put up a special exhibition of various products ranging from organic to handloom and handicrafts.

From Aizawl, PM Modi arrived in Meghalaya's capital Shillong and inaugurated the much needed 261-km long two laning of Shillong Nongstoin section of highway 106 and Nongstoin Rongdeng section Highway 127 B.

On the occasion he told that the road would serve as an east-west corridor for Meghalaya.

"It will boost economic activity in the state. It will also establish our direct link between the two most important towns in the state- Shillong and Tura," he said.

The move of linking the highways will reduce the travel time by almost half to only eight hours instead the earlier 15-16 hours.

He also told the gathering that his government's motto was 'transformation by transportation'.

Ensuring full-fledged growth of connectivity in the region in the coming years, Prime Minister Modi enlightened the gathering about the government's decision to invest Rs 60,000 crore under Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in the north-east and Rs 30,000 crore under Bharat Mala in the next two to three years to build a network of highways and roads in the north-east region.

"The Centre will be providing Rs 5,300 crore to NE states under the scheme over the next three years. The lack of connectivity is the biggest hurdle in the part of development of the NE region. We aim for a transformation by transportation through investment in infrastructure in the region," the prime minister informed.

"The Union Government has sanctioned over 3,800 km of NH with an investment of Rs 3,200 crore within the last three years, out of which nearly 1,200 km of road has already been constructed," he added.

PM Modi's visit to the north-eastern states gave momentum to BJP's campaign ahead of the assembly elections in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura early next year.

He also opened the new BJP Meghalaya office unit and addressed a public rally in the Polo ground, kick-starting his party's campaign ahead of the assembly election next year.

People of the region have hopes from the prime minister as they claim that no government has ever reached out to them.

"When Shillong became the capital of Meghalaya there was no such development in the state. Even in the 11 districts, the road infrastructure was really bad. Meghalaya is a hill state and tourism is the only livelihood but if roads are not good, tourism cannot develop further," said a local resident.

"So now the BJP has stepped in the state for the first time and PM Modi has visited for the first time. We have seen and heard that whatever PM Modi promises, he fulfills it and the consequences are seen. So people in the state are hopeful for a change," he said.

To bring north-east in the railway map, Prime Minister Modi also reiterated that the government was executing 15 new rail line projects of 1,325 km length at the cost of Rs 4,700 crore.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday informed that Prime Minister Narendra modi had a telephonic conversation with Nepal's communist leaders and Prime Minister Sher Bahadu Deuba.

MEA Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a telephonic conversation with Nepal communist leaders Khadga Prasad Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba."

After securing massive victory in the recently concluded general elections in the country, Nepal's Left alliance has claimed to develop relations with the neighbouring countries on the basis of independent foreign policy.

"As per the directions made by the constitution of the Nepal, we will develop the relation with friendly nations especially the neighbouring countries and the international unions and organizations on the basis of independent foreign policy", the Left alliance of Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-MC) said in a press statement released after a press meet organised in Kathmandu on Sunday.

The alliance of the CPN-UML and the Maoist Center, which fought the elections of November and December, have secured a majority in the Parliament and is poised to lead the next government expected to be formed in January.

"We (CPN-UML and the Maoist Center), the left power are committed to form a stable government and fulfill the promises which we made before," the statement added.

KP Sharma Oli is set to become the next prime minister of Nepal with over 50 percent majority clinging to the Left alliance.

Previously, KP Oli held the post of prime minister after the promulgation of the constitution at the time when the Madheshi movement was on the rise.

With Oli set to become the next premier of the nation, people in Nepal expect some differences in the diplomatic policy than that of previous one that favoured China more.

"I expect a policy that will enhance relationship of Nepal with neighbouring countries India and China. The enhanced relationship means working on economic area so that Nepal gets benefitted from both the countries," Chandra Pathak, permanent residence of Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha residing temporarily in Kathmandu told ANI.

"Also, Nepal should always enhance relationship with India because without good relation with India, growth of Nepal is not possible due to the geopolitical situation. But in the name of enhancing relation, Nepal should not bow to any other countries. It should always try to make stand on the issues of country's interest," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As producers, Bollywood actor Riteish Deshmukh and his wife Genelia are "extremely thrilled" to be honoured with the 'Best Marathi Film' award for their movie 'Faster Fene'.

The 39-year-old actor took to his Twitter handle and thanked the jury of Zee Cine Awards 2018 for honouring the crime mystery thriller film.

He wrote, "@geneliad & me are extremely thrilled as producers as Faster Fene gets the prestigious Best Film (Marathi) & @amey_ameyjwagh bags the Best Actor at the #ZeeCineAwards2018."

"We thank the audience & the jury for this honour. @mfc @TheZeeStudios @AdityaSarpotdar @GirishPKulkarni," he added.

The film stars Amey Wagh in and as 'Faster Fene' and based on the character created by Bhaskar Ramachandra Bhagwat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Shiv Sena on Thursday called on the ruling Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre to initiate talks with Pakistan over reports of Sikhs being forced to convert to Islam in the Hangu district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The editorial published in Shiv Sena's mouthpiece, Saamana, also lashed out at the 'secularists' of India for keeping mum on this crucial issue of religious conversions.

"The Sikhs of Pakistan are in danger presently. When the Hindus were in trouble, the Sikhs came forward and fought for their rights. Now is the time for the Hindus and the secularists to come and fight for the rights of these minority Sikhs in Pakistan. The Government of India should take this up with the Pakistan Government," the article read.

Earlier on Saturday, a report surfaced in regard to Pakistan's Sikh community that alleged they were "being forced to convert to Islam" by a government official.

A delegation of Akali Dal, led by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal, met the Pakistan High Commissioner on Wednesday over the issue.

Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh also took to Twitter to apprise External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj of the alleged forced conversions, urging her to take up the matter at the highest level with Pakistani authorities.

Swaraj then expressed concerns over the reports and has said she would take up the matter with Pakistan government at the earliest.

The Sikh community members of Pakistan had lodged a complaint with the Deputy Commissioner of Hangu district, Hangu Shahid Mehmood regarding the same.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers Ananth Kumar on Thursday said that the government will be tabling a bill on triple talaq in parliament next week.

Talking to media, Kumar said 'The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2017' will be tabled in parliament next week and the draft of the bill has been circulated.

After the Supreme Court declared the practice of instant divorce 'void, illegal and unconstitutional', the Narendra Modi Cabinet on December 15 approved the bill that makes instant triple talaq illegal.

Earlier in the day, it was assumed that the government was likely to table the bill on Friday after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued a whip to all its MPs to attend the parliament session.

Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will table the bill in the Lok Sabha.

The draft bill says that "any pronouncement of talaq by a person upon his wife, by words, either spoken or written or in electronic form or in any other manner whatsoever, shall be void and illegal".

There is also a provision of imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and fine for violators.

The draft bill also envisages entitling divorcee Muslim women for maintenance.

"Without prejudice to the generality of the provisions contained in any other law for the time being in force,a married Muslim woman upon whom talaq is pronounced, shall be entitled to receive from her husband such amount of subsistence allowance for her and dependent children as may be determined by the Magistrate," says the draft bill.

It also has a provision for the divorcee Muslim women to have the custody of their minor children.

"Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, a married Muslim woman shall be entitled to custody of her minor children in the event of pronouncement of talaq by her husband, in such manner as may be determined by the Magistrate," the draft bill says.

The offences under the purview of this bill will be cognizable and non-bailable.

It shall extend to the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized for his actions after the country's ethics watchdog ruled that he violated some provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act when he vacationed on a private island belonging to the billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader Aga Khan last year.

"I'm sorry I didn't, and in the future I will be clearing all my family vacations with the commissioner," the local media reported Trudeau as telling reporters.

Conflict of Interest Commissioner Mary Dawson said that Trudeau violated a rule on gifts when he accepted a family vacation at Bells Cay in December 2016, a trip organized by his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau.

While Trudeau maintains that Aga Khan is a family friend, Dawson found the exception for gifts from friends did not apply.

"The vacations accepted by Trudeau or his family could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence Trudeau in his capacity as Prime Minister," Dawson said.

Trudeau also breached the rules when he and his family travelled in the Aga Khan's private helicopter last December and also when his family travelled on a non-commercial aircraft chartered by the Aga Khan in March 2016, Dawson said.

In addition to this, she also found that the Canadian leader breached the part of the act when he didn't recuse himself from private meetings with the spiritual leader in May 2016.

However, Trudeau did not discuss any parliamentary business with the Aga Khan or his representatives, the report said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United Nations high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, a staunch critic of United States President Donald Trump has stated that he will not seek a second term.

"After reflection, I have decided not to seek a second four-year term," the New York Times quoted Al-Hussein as saying in a statement emailed to his staff and shared with the paper.

He penned down, "To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice - which is your voice."

His four-year term expires next September.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric confirmed Hussein's plans to leave after his term expires.

According to the report, "The high commissioner informed the secretary general last week of his intention not to seek another term," Dujarric said in an email.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India's first and only design university, World University of Deisgn opened it campus at Sonipat, Haryana.

Promoted by Om Parkash Bansal Educational and Social Welfare Trust of Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab, having more than two decades of presence in higher education, the university is currently located in a sprawling lush green picturesque campus with the state-of-the-art infrastructure and world class facilities.

The campus is situated on NH1 in Rajiv Gandhi City (NCR), Sonipat, the largest planned integrated city for in India.

The university has international collaborations with foreign universities like UWS, University of West Scotland, VFS, the Vancouver Film School, and IAAD, the Italian University of Design.

Many other collaborations are in the pipeline including that with Huddersfield University, UK; Oxford Brookes University, UK; Emily Carr University, Canada.

Some of the prominent names in the industry are on the advisory board of the university, AG Krishna Menon, Payal Jain, Peter D'ascoli, Amardeep Behl, Neha Kirpal.

WUD offers country's largest creative course catalogue - 23 specialized UG and PG programs in various design arenas such as design, fashion, communication, visual arts, design and retail management, and architecture.

The university follows a unique curriculum that encourages research, academic excellence, industry preparedness and social innovation.

Experienced faculties qualified from the best institutions of India and the world such as 'FIT' New York, 'LCF' London, NID, NIFT, SPA and TVB to name a few.

"Contemporary Design not only creates value and contributes to competitiveness, prosperity, and well-being of a nation but also enables collaboration, hyper-specialization and moving beyond the limits of future thinking and existing technology. We constantly work to empower youth to take ownership of the journey towards a sustainable economy and a future led by innovation," said Director General of WUD, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

"WUD will be a strategically critical platform for providing youth with the tools they need to drive India's future development. Education is changing and as we increasingly face the growing challenges of a complex socio environment, high quality trans-disciplinary education with a design foundation and thinking, becomes more critical than ever," he added.

WUD is India's first university dedicated to education in the creative domain; WUD underlines the movement of design from being purely vocation-oriented to becoming academic-oriented; and from certificate & diploma stage to degree, postgraduate degrees, research and doctoral programmes.

World University of Design offers design education through a unique teaching pedagogy, advanced interdisciplinary research and international collaborations in the areas of architecture, design, interior, textile, communication, fashion, fine arts, management and many others design related courses.

Students have access to facilities including high-tech labs and workshops - model making workshop, Apple iMAC based CAD rooms, fully functional Machine shop, print making, pattern making, garment construction and sewing workshop; air-conditioned studios, well-stocked library, state of the art material museum and an exclusive art gallery; a wide range of indoor and outdoor sporting opportunities is available to students at WUD.

The University offers residential campus with air-conditioned, Wifi Hostel facilities.

Hostel's mess facility designed by a master chef and managed by a renowned institutional caterer.

WUD has a 1000 capacity open-air theatre and several smaller venues to host and hold cultural performances.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said nothing can be expected from the Karnataka government as Chief Minister Siddaramaiah himself gives approval to the consumption of beef, which depicts going against nation's ethics.

Speaking to media here, the Chief Minister said, "Karnataka Chief Minister himself has allowed the consumption of beef. What else we can expect from this government!"

Further responding on the celebration of Tipu Sultan's birth anniversary, the Chief Minister said, "Karnataka is known for its spirituality and cultural ethics. That very state is celebrating the birth anniversary of Mohammad Adil Shah and Tipu Sultan. This is very unfortunate and is expected from the Congress Party".

He added that discrimination on the basis of caste and religion will not be tolerated in the nation, instead development and nationalism are the prime focus.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is moving forward with the same ideology as we can witness the victory in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh," Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister asserted.

Meanwhile, Karnataka Education Minister Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, hitting out at Chief Minister Adityanath's remark, said the latter should concentrate more on the law and order of Uttar Pradesh instead of other states.

"Yogi Adityanath has come to Karnataka and tried to create a rift in the society, which is typical of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He should concentrate more on Uttar Pradesh and analyse the situation of law and order there as he is not able to do justice in monitoring administration there," Patil pointed out.

Adityanath's statement comes on the heels of Karnataka Assembly elections, scheduled to be held in 2018.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the extension of term of the Commission to examine the issue of sub-categorization of Other Backward Classes, by twelve weeks i.e. upto 2nd April, 2018. The extension of tenure will enable the Commission to submit a comprehensive report on the issue of sub-categorization of OBCs, after consultation with various stakeholders.

The Commission was constituted under article 340 of the Constitution with the approval of President on 2nd October, 2017 and it was stipulated that it would submit its report within twelve weeks from the assumption of charge by the Chairperson.

Background:

The Commission, headed by Justice (Retd.) Smt.

G. Rohini commenced functioning- on 11thOctober, 2017 and has since interacted with all the Stats/UTs having reservation for OBCs, and the State Backward Classes Commissions. The Commission has requisitioned data from 197 Higher Education Institutions regarding admission of OBCs to higher education courses during the last three years and has also sought data regarding recruitment of OBC persons in Government jobs during the last three years in Government Departments, Public Sector Banks and Financial Institutions as well as in the CPSEs, with a view to determine the inequitable distribution of benefits of reservation among the castes/communities included in the Centre List of Other Backward Classes.

Keeping in view the voluminous data involved and the time required for its analysis to prepare a comprehensive report, the Commission had sought extension of its term by twelve weeks.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pidilite Industries said that its board will meet on 26 December 2017, to consider the proposal to buyback the fully paid-up equity shares of the company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 20 December 2017.

United Bank of India said that the Reserve Bank of India has prescribed certain additional actions under the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) Framework, in view of high net non-performing assets (NPAs), low leverage ratio and requirement to raise capital, based on the assessment of the bank's position as on 31 March 2017. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 20 December 2017.

The action points focus on profit retention, capital augmentation, provision coverage, diversification of credit portfolio, rationalization of expansion and cost control and are well complimenting to the steps already taken by the Management in these directions. The regulatory action is not likely to have any material impact on the bank's performance and will contribute to the improvement of the internal control and intrinsic strength of the bank. The normal banking activities viz acceptance of deposit, credit disbursement and treasury function remain unaffected and unaltered, the bank said in a statement.

IVRCL said it has entered into share purchase agreements with Cube Highways and Infrastructure Pte (Cube) for sale of the entire stake in two subsidiary companies viz. Salem Tollways (STL) and Kumarapalayam Tollways (KTL). The value of IVRCL's stake in STL and KTL shall be computed on the basis of enterprise value of Rs 342.95 crore for STL and Rs 383.23 crore for KTL subject to adjustments on account of financial indebtedness and working capital and expenses for upcoming major maintenance of each of the project. The expected date of completion of sale is before September 2018 quarter. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 20 December 2017.

Shriram Transport Finance Company said that the allotment committee of the company, at its meeting held on 20 December 2017, allotted 100 non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating to Rs 10 crore on private placement basis. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 20 December 2017.

Varun Beverages said that its board approved entering into a binding agreement to acquire PepsiCo India's previously franchised sub territory in Jharkhand (20 districts) along with manufacturing facilities and franchisee rights for Chhattisgarh, subject to the satisfactory completion of due diligence and final approval of PepsiCo. Upon completion of this acquisition, the company will be a franchisee for PepsiCo products across 20 states and 2 Union Territories of India. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 20 December 2017.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shares of the companies whose managements were accused in 2G spectrum scam spurted at 11:09 IST on BSE after a special CBI court reportedly acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum scam.

Reliance Communications (up 7.12% at Rs 18.50), Unitech (up 15.82% at Rs 8.20) and DB Realty (up 19.89% at Rs 43.70), edged higher.

The S&P BSE Sensex was up 14.41 points, or 0.04% at 33,791.79.

According to media reports, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court of judge O P Saini today, 21 December 2017, acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum scam, as the prosecution failed to prove the case against them.

Among others in the long list of accused in the case were some of the key executives of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance group, former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura and former personal secretary to A Raja, R K Chandolia.

The scam relates to the 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-2008 which caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The trial began in 2011 after the court had framed charges against 17 accused in the CBI's case for the offences which entails punishment ranging from six months in life imprisonment.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Thursday said the 2G court verdict has "exposed the conspiracy hatched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, Vinod Rai and other BJP leaders" to defame the party-led previous UPA government in order to come to power.

The party said through the court verdict "truth has come to light" and that Modi, former CAG Vinod Rai and BJP leaders, including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, should give an explanation to the country for "levelling false allegations, spreading lies and hatching a conspiracy" and demanded an apology from them for defaming the UPA government.

The party also slammed Jaitley for saying that Congress should not wear the court verdict as a "badge of honour", Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said: "Jaitley is a master of lies. Will his government take note of the three scams brought out by the CAG report and probe it?"

"He is questioning the judgment of the special CBI court. This does not behove a country's Finance Minister," Surjewala said.

Earlier after the court verdict, the party leader said: "The BJP has been exposed today -- It tried to insult the country and came to power by doing business out of false allegations.

"Truth is for the country to judge and see as the special CBI Court rejected every allegation of corruption, wrongdoing, criminal conspiracy and breach of trust. Will Modiji and the BJP come forward to own up to the sinister maligning machinations and apologise to the nation.

"The lies have been exposed and the BJP's conspiracy to defame the Congress party has been exposed. It is a victory for truth," said Surjewala.

"The conspiracy, which was hatched by Modi, Jaitley, Rai and other BJP leaders, has been exposed today. The truth has come to light that no one is guilty in the 2G spectrum case.

He asked if "all these people, who were resorting to lies for all these years to come to power", apologise to the country?

"Isn't it true that spreading lies and to hatch a conspiracy are in the DNA and character of the BJP."

"Shouldn't they be held responsible and give an explanation in the Parliament for the lies. Shouldn't the PM, Jaitley and BJP apologise to the nation publicly," he asked and said those who termed 2G a scam and moved up the ladder of power should give an explanation and be held responsible.

Surjewala said: "The BJP should give a reply in the Parliament for the conspiracy hatched against the UPA government and defaming the country."

The Congress said that it will also seek an explanation from Modi, Jaitley, BJP President Amit Shah and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for stalling parliamentary proceedings for three years during the UPA rule and tarnishing the image of the country.

"The manner in which they hatched a conspiracy with Rai, due to which country's economy was hit and losses incurred, the BJP and Modi have to give an explanation for this," said Surjewala.

Special Judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused, including then Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi, in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate in the 2G case.

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
The Governing Body of AIIMS will set up an internal committee to evaluate the rotation policy of department heads in the institution after the matter was discussed at its meeting on Thursday.

The decision was taken in the presence of Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, who chaired the meeting.

"The governing body, during its meeting, discussed the rotation policy of heads of the departments and hence a decision was taken to constitute a committee to evaluate the enforcement of the scheme," said a senior faculty in knowledge of the matter.

Rotation policy was a recommendation of the MS Valiathan committee which was formed to improve the functioning of All India Institute of Medical Sciences during the United Progressive Alliance-1 tenure.

The governing meeting was called on the direction of the Health Ministry, within two months of the last governing meeting held.

Sources said that even if the rotation policy was discussed during the meeting, several faculty members of AIIMS were against the implementation of the scheme.

--IANS

rup/him/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted all the accused in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupee 2G spectrum scandal.

Special Judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused, including then Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK MP Kanimohi, in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

--IANS

akk-gt/ksk/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Australian tourist was killed and four others injured on the Yamuna Expressway on Thursday when a series of vehicles collided owing to poor visibility due to dense fog, police said.

The accident happened at Dankaur in the Gautam Buddha Nagar district.

Superintendent of Police, Rural, Suniti Singh said that a roadways bus rammed into a truck which in turn hit a bullet bike on which the Australian tourist Mathew along with his friends Ian Bog and Cowalt was going to Agra.

Mathew was rushed to the Kailash hospital in Noida where doctors declared him dead owing to head injuries. Four others traveling in a mini bus were also injured in the pile up.

In a related incident, dozens of cars rammed into each other on the Delhi-Allahabad national highway at Kanpur, resulting in injuries to six persons.

Dense fog in the countryside has hit vehicular and train traffic in a big way in Uttar Pradesh in the last few days.

--IANS

md/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the air quality across the National Capital Region (NCR) worsened to "severe-plus or emergency", which is expected to prevail for some time, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on Thursday imposed "severe" category restrictions, while directing the authorities to stay prepared for implementing the Odd-Even scheme.

The closure of brick kilns, hot mix plants and stone crushers, generator sets, along with other restrictions under 'severe' category will be effective till January 31, 2018, in the wake of the Asean summit to be held in Delhi between January 19-30, 2018, officials said.

Calling for "zero tolerance" against unauthorized industrial activities, a pollution control task force headed by member secretary CPCB also ordered closure of coal based industries, like Badarpur Power Plant from January 15-30, 2018, in view of the Asean summit.

However, the NCR would anyway see the "sever-plus" category restrictions under Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) by Saturday onwards if the air quality remains under "emergency" category, officials said.

"Odd-even scheme, ban on construction and truck entry will be implemented in case the severe-plus situation prevails for 48 hours. We are observing the timeline. However till then severe category restrictions will stay in place anyway, at least till January 31," A. Sudhakar, member secretary, CPCB told IANS.

Delhi and surrounding regions had been reeling under "severe-plus or emergency" level air pollution since at least 2 a.m. on Thursday morning, since the major pollutant PM2.5 crossed the 300 unit barrier at all the locations across NCR.

"We have to control the ground level activities to control pollution because the meteorological activities are anyway not in our favor nor do we have any control over it. This is the best we can do," D. Saha, scientist CPCB, told IANS.

The task force has thus ordered NCR authorities to be ready to implement Odd-Even traffic rationing scheme if required.

CPCB has also ordered the NCR governments to intensify public transport services and increase frequency of water sprinkling and mechanized sweeping.

"Non operation of Diesel Generator sets along with other actions to be strictly ensured," task force ordered.

The CPCB's directions came after a task force meeting here that is entitled to implement the restriction under the GRAP.

As per the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Delhi received low wind speed, with moderate to dense fog towards the morning. The density of pollutants is expected to rise over time, officials said.

"The mixing height is very low but because the wind speed is also very low, the density of pollutants is suppose to increase over time," Shambhavi Shukla, a researcher at the Centre for Science and and EPCA member, told IANS.

Delhi's Air Quality Index (AQI) was 469 on Thursday, considered "severe", a sharp decline against 359 considered "very poor" on Wednesday. The AQI of Ghaziabad was 500, on a scale of 0 to 500.

The major pollutant, PM2.5 or particles with diameter less than 2.5 micrometers across 21 regions in NCR was 301 units, while acoss 16 regions in Delhi it was 319 at 8 p.m., both "severe-plus".

Meanwhile, at 8 p.m. PM2.5 was most concentrated at Anand Vihar (478 units) in east Delhi, Vasundhara (493) in Ghaziabad, Sector 125 (475 units) in Noida, Delhi Technical University (427) in north Delhi, Punjabi Bagh (424) in west Delhi and R.K. Puram (337) in south Delhi -- about 19 times higher the international safe limit.

The international safe limit for PM2.5 is 25 microgrammes per cubic meters while the national standards keep the safe limit at 60 units.

--IANS

kd/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Voting was being held in the bypoll for the Sabang assembly constituency in West Bengal under tight security on Thursday, amid reports of sporadic clashes between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP. Polling began at 7 a.m.

The Bharatiya Janata Party accused the Trinamool of not letting its polling agents into certain polling booths. The Trinamool, however, denied the allegation and charged the BJP with making false claims to hide its organisational weakness in the area.

Eight companies of central forces has been deployed for an electorate of 2,45,259, who are eligible to vote in 306 polling booths. Around 40 booths have been identified as sensitive.

More than 100 CCTV cameras have also been installed outside the booths for surveillance.

The bypolls were necessitated by the sitting Congress legislator Manas Bhunia's resignation after he crossed over to the Trinamool. He is now a Rajya Sabha member of his new party.

For the bypoll, the Trinamool has nominated Bhunia's wife Gita Rani Bhunia, the Congress has opted for a local leader Chiranjib Bhowmick, Rita Mondal is the Left Front nominated Communist Party of India-Marxist aspirant, while the BJP candidate is Antara Bhattacharyya.

There is also a Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist contestant.

--IANS

mgr-ssp/him/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The West Bengal government will set up an Other Backward Class (OBC) Advisory Council to monitor their social, cultural, educational and economic development, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced here on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after the first meeting of the state Scheduled Caste Advisory Council, she said: "We are the first state in the country to set up this council. Now we will set up a council for the Other Backward Classes."

Banerjee, who presided over the advisory council meeting, called the interaction "positive and fruitful".

"We had a good discussion. So many people gave so many proposals. The community needs to know what all schemes and projects they can avail of. They don't get loans from the bank.

"From now on, the council meeting will be held every six months, an d the development work undertaken for the community's benefit will be reviewed," she said.

Chief Secretary Malay Dey, and West Bengal Backward Classes Welfare Minister Churamani Mahata were among those who attended the deliberations.

Banerjee had in March announced the government's decision to set up the Scheduled Caste Advisory Council, which is slated to function on the lines of the existing tribal advisory council.

There are 66 assembly seats in Bengal reserved for the scheduled caste candidates.

--IANS

ssp/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Voting will take place on Thursday in a closely watched regional election called by Spain following October's controversial independence referendum.

The snap election pits parties who want Catalonia to be an independent republic against those who wish it to remain a semi-autonomous part of Spain, the BBC reported.

All indications are that the result will be very close.

The Spanish daily El Pais said on its front page on Wednesday that one million undecided voters could have the last word.

An aggregate of polls published earlier this week by El Pais suggested that the pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) will lead the polls, slightly ahead of Ciudadanos (Cs), which wants unity with Spain.

The pro-independence JxCat party of ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont was predicted to come third. That would mean no parliamentary majority in favour of independence and possibly lengthy negotiations to form a government.

Separatists who dominated the Catalan parliament declared independence on October 27 after a controversial referendum deemed unconstitutional by Spain, the BBC reported.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy then sacked the Catalan government, imposed direct rule and called the December 21 election.

Prosecutors accused 13 Catalan separatist politicians of rebellion and sedition, including Puigdemont and four others who fled to Belgium.

Other pro-independence politicians are in Spanish prisons.

As a result, campaigning has led to some unusual scenes, with Puigdemont addressing rallies via a videolink from Brussels.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 5 million Catalans headed to the polls on Thursday to vote in the regional elections, which could prove decisive for the future of Catalonia, where parties in favour and against independence are vying for a majority in the regional parliament.

The elections were called by the Spanish government after the regional government was dissolved following the illegal declaration of independence on October 27, reports Efe news.

The heads of the two major pro-independence parties - former regional president Carles Puigdemont and his former vice president Oriol Junqueras - have not been able to campaign in Catalonia.

Puigdemont, head of JxCat (Together for Catalonia, centre-right pro-independence party), has been living in exile in Belgium, along with four other members of his former government, while Junqueras - head of the ERC (republican left) is in pre-trial detention along with two other candidates.

The Ciudadanos (Citizens) party and the Socialists are the parties that are against independence.

Polling booths opened at 9 a.m. and are due to close at 8 p.m. to allow the 5,554,395 eligible voters to elect 135 representatives to the regional parliament.

Surveys predict a turnout of around 80 percent even though the election is on a working day, something that has not happened in Spain since the general elections in 1982.

This is the fourth time in seven years that general elections have been held in Catalonia after 2010, 2012 and 2015.

--IANS

ksk/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Central Board of Film Certification is likely to appoint a panel of historians to watch "Padmavati", after the makers of the movie stated that it was partially based on historical facts, according to sources.

The "Padmavati" team, which was hoping to get a quick censor clearance after the Gujarat elections may be in for disappointing news.

A source at the censor board said that the makers of "Padmavati" had "unnecessarily complicated its case" with an ambiguous disclaimer in its application for certification which stated that the film was partially based on historical facts.

"The content will now have to be scrutinised for authenticity," the source said declining to be named. The film had earlier been sent back to the producers after it was found that the column for stating whether it was a work of fiction or was based on historical facts was left blank.

There were protests against the movie by some fringe Hindutva outfits which said it was "insulting to Rajput pride." Several politicians then weighed in saying they won't allow the release of the movie in Rajasthan.

The source in the CBFC said that "Padmavati" could only be certified in January since December was almost over. "We have not scheduled the film. There are at least 40 feature films in different languages waiting in the queue before "Padmavati"," the source said.

Because of the year-end, some board members were on holiday and a few others had called in sick. "Forget about appointing a panel of historians, we don't even have a normal Examining Committee to view all the films," the source said.

"Even by conservative estimates, the film won't be certified before the second week of January. I don't think they can release the film before March or April. That is, provided the CBFC clears the film without any objection," the source said.
Foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan will meet in Beijing on December 26 for discussions on development and security, an official said on Thursday.

"It will be the first meeting of its kind since the three countries agreed to establish a trilateral dialogue mechanism in June," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a news briefing.

"Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts will have an in-depth exchange on political mutual trust and reconciliation, development and connectivity, security cooperation and counterterrorism," Hua was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

"China hopes this meeting will help improve Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, promote trilateral cooperation and contribute to regional peace, stability and development," she added.

--IANS

soni/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Thursday accused the Central government of working for corporates and mismanaging the economy, and asked how much black money had been unearthed in the past over three years.

Participating in a discussion on supplementary demands for grants (second batch) for 2017-18 in the Lok Sabha, Congress leader M. Veerappa Moily said that India was missing out on global revival in economic growth.

"The number of stalled projects have increased for the fourth straight quarter. The target on (reducing) fiscal deficit may not be met," he said.

Referring to a report which said that India's top one per cent earners received 22 per cent of the national income in 2014, Moily said "inequality has increased".

He said that labour participation percentage has come down steeply and such figures raise doubts if India can be considered a developing country.

"That is why you are accused of being for corporates only," he said.

Moily said perhaps the Congress should have kept its description of the Goods and Services Tax as "Gabbar Singh Tax" for the later part of the Gujarat election campaign as it would have prevented the Bharatiya Janata Party from making amendments and passing on concessions.

"The Gujarat election became a blessing in disguise for GST," he said.

On the government's claims of curbing black money, Moily asked how much illegal money had been recovered by the National Democratic Alliance government during its rule.

--IANS

ps/him/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress members protested in the Lok Sabha again on Thursday over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's insinuations against his predecessor Manmohan Singh of colluding with Pakistan, and staged a walkout after they were not given permission to speak.

As soon as the House met, Congress members trooped near the Speaker's podium, urging Sumitra Mahajan to allow party leader Mallikarjun Kharge to speak on the issue.

However, Speaker Mahajan went on with the Question Hour, even as Congress members raised slogans standing near her. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi was present in the House and was seen interacting with party members as they protested.

Halfway through Question Hour, Mahajan said she would not allow the issue to be raised in the House.

"I have said I will not allow matters of election campaigning to be raised in the House," the Speaker said.

Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia meanwhile alleged the the voice of opposition was being muffled in the House, and questioned if the Government would decide what issues can be raised in the Lok Sabha.

Other opposition parties had so far kept away from supporting the Congress on this issue. But on Thursday, Communist Party of India-Marxist MP Mohammed Salim and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Jay Prakash Narayan Yadav also came out in support of Congress.

The Speaker however did not permit the issue to be raised, and proceeded with routine business.

Congress members then staged a walkout in protest, with party leader Kharge saying the walkout was being done to "preserve the dignity of the country".

Modi, during the Gujarat Assembly polls, had claimed that during a dinner meeting at Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's house, Manmohan Singh discussed the Gujarat polls with Pakistan's High Commissioner to India and former Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri.

--IANS

ao/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest decision-making body, will meet on Friday to welcome new party President Rahul Gandhi and will discuss the current political issues, especially in the wake of the 2G spectrum case verdict acquitting all accused.

The Congress party said it stands vindicated after the verdict on Thursday as the 2G spectrum case was over spectrum allocation during the UPA regime and had given the opposition ammunition to attack the government with over alleged corruption, leading it to lose the elections in 2014.

This will be first CWC meeting after Rahul Gandhi took charge as Congress President on December 16 from his mother Sonia Gandhi, and he will be felicitated by the members.

The party is also expected to discuss the economic situation in the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's allegations against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Modi had insinuated that Singh along with others were hatching a conspiracy with Pakistan's support to ensure that BJP lost Gujarat polls.

The party is also expected bring in organisational changes as Rahul Gandhi had recently said that his plan was to transform the Congress from bottom upwards and he will like to bring in many new, young, exciting and dynamic faces.

The party will also discuss its future strategy after the Gujarat elections, where it managed to restrict BJP to 99 seats.

The party has to prepare to face the challenge of the next round of assembly polls in 2018 -- first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh -- that will be crucial for Gandhi and the party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

--IANS

sid/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
DMK leaders on Thursday hailed the decision of a Delhi court to acquit all the accused in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupee 2G spectrum scandal.

The accused included DMK leaders -- former Telecom Minister A.Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, the daughter of party President M.Karunanidhi.

Cadres assembled at the party headquarters and celebrated the verdict.

Special Judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The alleged scam on the issuance of licenses and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

DMK leaders Duraimurugan and Rajya Sabha MP P. Siva expressed happiness at the judgement.

Congress leaders too expressed happiness at the verdict.

Welcoming the verdict, Puducherry Chief Minister and Congress leader V. Narayanasamy told the media that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained political milegage due to its false campaign against Congress and DMK.

Tamil Nadu Congress leader S. Thirunavukkarasar told a television channel that truth has won finally.

He said the BJP came to power at the centre by its false campaign and this is a first step in DMK's future victories.

--IANS

vj/ksk/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Billu Ustaad", billed as India's first feature film which discusses how innocent children are lured and misused for terror activities, will release in India on February 16 next year, said its director Suvahhdan Angre.

Inspired by the work of Bhanupratap Barge, Head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Pune -- who fought the Pakistani terrorists during the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes -- the film looks at the disturbing trend among extremist organisations who identify and recruit minor children from orphanages.

"Such organisations are known to brainwash, indoctrinate these young minds and deploy them for committing terror acts. 'Billu Ustaad' tells the story of one such organisation which recruits children from an orphanage to become 'live-bombs' and strike terror in public places," Angre told IANS here on Thursday.

The plot revolves around how a nondescript orphanage gets involved in terrorist and criminal activities, while the ATS fights to save the gullible children from being dragged into terror acts, said producer Shantanu Singh.

The main protagonist Billu, played by child actor Mihir Soni, is convinced by the ATS how helping terrorists was ruining their lives, society and mankind, after which he helps them save his other orphan friends from the clutches of the terror group.

"Billu Ustaad" focuses on some media reports indicating how some terror groups in India and abroad have been hiring such children to commit terror and that Jammu and Kashmir is among the worst-hit by terrorism.

Additionally, the film inspires children to learn self-defence techniques along with their academics and keep away from such groups having malafide intentions, Angre explained.

The film also stars Priyanshu Chatterjee, Akhilendra Mishra, Mithila Naik and Neel Bakshi.

--IANS

qn/nn/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More former child actors have come forward accusing Hollywood producer Gary Goddard of sexual misconduct.

Following "ER" actor Anthony Edwards' allegation that Goddard sexually assaulted him when he was 12, seven others from his Santa Barbara theater group are accusing Goddard of molesting or attempting to molest them in the 1970s, reports variety.com.

Actors Linus Huffman, Bret Nighman and Mark Driscoll are among those who have claimed that Goddard sexually abused them.

Nighman said Goddard had attempted to molest him four times by the time he was 16.

Barbara Costa, who looked after the cast during the touring production of California Youth Theatre's "Peter Pan", said she was suspicious of Goddard, who slept among the boys during the overnight trips.

Following a get-together in 1990, when the six friends from the Santa Barbara theater group discovered that they had all been abused by Goddard, Driscoll said they drove to their former mentor's house and confronted him. Goddard apologized.

Goddard had denied the allegations in the past. He also took leave from his own company in November in the wake of the claims.

The producer was accused in 2014 of sexually abusing actor Michael Egan III when he was 16. The suit was later dismissed.

--IANS

ks/nn/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a shocking incident, a youth set afire a girl in full public view here on Wednesday, police said on Thursday.

The incident occurred in Lalaguda area in the evening when the 23-year-old girl was returning home from work. Sandhya Rani sustained 80 per cent burns and she was rushed to government-run Gandhi Hospital, where her condition is stated to be critical.

The attacker is suspected to be a jilted lover of Sandhya, a graduate, who was working in a commercial establishment for about a year.

Quoting eye-witnesses, the police said she was returning home when the youth on a motorcycle met her. They discussed some matter for about 10 minutes.

During a heated argument, the attackers sprinkled petrol, set her on fire and escaped before people could raise an alarm.

On a complaint by girl's brother, police picked up a youth, who allegedly resorted to the ghastly crime as the girl had spurned his advances.

--IANS

ms/sku/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Tom Hanks says he would turn down an invitation from the White House to screen his new movie "The Post".

Hanks portrays editor Ben Bradlee in the Steven Spielberg directorial. The film is about the Washington Post defying threats from then-President Richard Nixon to publish the Pentagon Papers stories in 1971.

Hanks, 61, said he would turn down an invitation to the White House because of Donald Trump's attacks on the free press and parallels between the world now and what is documented in the film, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

"I don't think I would. Because I think that at some point -- look, I didn't think things were going to be this way last November. I would not have been able to imagine that we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville and jokes about Pocahontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers," said Hanks.

"And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts. You don't take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things. You may think: 'You know what? I think now is the time.'

"This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions. We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go," he added.

The actor said that one of the reasons why he was attracted to the project was the similarities between then and now.

"I said: 'Well, look, this is ridiculously timely, and the even better part of it is: this is the story of the week that (Washington Post publisher) Katharine Graham became Katharine Graham. It had a very human element to it. I felt immediately that this was not just going to be a museum piece, but it was going to get into very, very human details of essentially these two people -- Graham and Ben Bradlee," said Hanks.

"He had a love for the woman, because he had this great empathy for what she had been through. He had great respect for the class that she demonstrated through her entire life. But he also had a very strict determination of what a newspaper's job was. Ben knew the role of the Fourth Estate in society," he added.

"So, all that stuff put together, I thought, was a pretty prescient story. It had an awful lot of parallels to 2017."

--IANS

ks/nn/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gauhati High Court on Thursday quashed the detention of Assam's farmer leader and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi under the National Security Act (NSA) 1980, ordering his immediate release.

The court has also asked the Assam Chief Secretary to conduct a detailed inquiry involving all the persons who had a role, either constructive or advisory, in the process leading to the order of the petitioner's preventive detention.

Justice Achintya Malla Bujar Barua passed the judgment which stated he was entitled for immediate release if not arrested in any other case.

Gogoi had been in Assam's Dibrugarh jail since September 13. The Assam Police arrested him on the charges of sedition and instigating the people of the state to take up arms. On September 24, Gogoi was booked under the NSA.

"Upon such inquiry being conducted, a proper analysis be made as to where and why such serious lapses have occurred and upon doing so, effective corrective measure be taken that such lapses and lacunas do not occur in future," said a senior advocate quoting the court order.

"It is a requirement of the Constitutional process that the state government authorities educate all the authorities connected with the process of making and sustaining an order of preventive detention as regards the Constitutional requirements, more particularly under Article 22(5) and put in place an effective monitoring system to ensure that the requirements of the Constitution is duly followed and implemented."

"In the instant case, from the records, it cannot be ascertained as to whether any officer of the government who assists or advises on facts or law had appeared before the Advisory Board with a view to justify the order of detention," the order said.

"In view of such absence of any material to conclude as to whether any officer of the government had appeared before the Advisory Board to justify the order of detention or as to whether such officers had merely carried the records, this court refrains itself from giving a conclusive view as to whether the petitioner was prejudiced by the refusal to be assisted by a legal counsel."

Gogoi, who heads the farmers' body Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, while addressing a public meeting in Moran had said if Hindu migrants from Bangladesh were forced upon Assam, people here would be compelled to take up arms.

--IANS

ah/him/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The journey of Indian enterprises to Cloud, especially towards Hybrid and Public platforms, is gradually gaining momentum, but finding the right mix is what holds the key for them and Cloud players are now offering customised services to clients.

The Indian Cloud market is growing exponentially. According to the apex industry body Nasscom, the domestic cloud market is projected to reach $16 billion by 2020.

The Public Cloud services market in India is projected to hit $1.9 billion by the end of this year -- an increase of 42 per cent from 2016 -- predicts market research firm Gartner.

Business leaders across industries are increasingly adopting Cloud technology, says Mohit Pande, Country Manager-India, Google Cloud, because they understand it helps solve real challenges like teams working better together, data becoming useful to make smart decisions and companies creating new values to stay competitive.

"We are committed to offering and investing in technology that leaves the choice to customers. Customers don't want to be locked in. They are making sure that their workloads can be managed by containers that run on any platform," Pande told IANS.

A container is a piece of software that includes everything needed to run it -- code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings, etc.

Google has been running its services in the Cloud for over 14 years. The company hosts seven Google applications, each with more than one billion users.

"Over the last few years, a large number of Indian enterprises have chosen Google Cloud to grow their businesses. We are excited by the growth of paid Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers in India, many of whom are leveraging our Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities," Pande added.

Google offers solutions like "Kubernetes", an open source technology for managing containers which allows customers to run across multiple Clouds. Google "Stackdriver" provides power monitoring, logging and diagnostics across Clouds.

According to Gartner, the highest growth in India will continue to be driven by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) services, projected to grow 42 per cent, followed by 33.5 per cent in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and 33.3 per cent in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

"In 2017, enterprises who looked at creating new value with Cloud evaluated three major steps while building their strategy: Decide which IT and business functions to deliver through Cloud, identify and address challenges in adopting Cloud and realise operational, financial and innovation benefits," Vikas Arora, Country Manager, IBM Cloud, India/South Asia, told IANS.

For Prasad Rai, Vice President, Cloud Applications, Oracle India, the new model of business applications delivery, which is SaaS, will actually meet the customers' objectives much more appropriately in the country.

"Over the last two-three years, we have seen a significant shift in the customers' mindset towards the SaaS-based solutions on Cloud. Everyone is today looking at embracing SaaS and this is something that we've seen across industries in India," Rai told IANS.

The Indian enterprises today want more than just productivity and cost-saving perks.

"For them, Cloud as a technology is an enabler to turn increasing volumes of structured and unstructured data into easily accessible insights and help them continually improve customer experiences and applications by infusing cognitive and AI," Arora explained.

With over 50 million SMBs, India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

"India's workforce is already ahead of the curve from being mobile-first to largely avoiding the costly hurdle of transitioning legacy systems. Google has a local team of seasoned enterprise and developer experts connecting with start-ups, SMBs and large corporations to understand their needs and offer solutions accordingly," Pande added.

Google recently launched its own Cloud Platform region in Mumbai which offers several services, including Compute, Big Data, Storage and Networking.

"With the India region, enterprises will be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by GCP (Google Cloud Platform) services. Further, Indian customers will now be able to buy these services directly in the local currency," Pande emphasised.

Hosting applications in the new region, Pande added, can improve latency from 20-90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and, of course, Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region which is Singapore.

According to Arora, IBM has announced multiple new innovations on IBM Cloud that will help enterprises further derive value from their Cloud.

This has opened more options for the organisations that are not only relying on Cloud to enhance internal efficiencies but also target more strategic business capabilities.

"The customers are looking at Cloud to provide them access to new-age technologies like IoT, Blockchain and Mobility services, coupled with strong security, compliance and regulatory features. Besides large-sized enterprises, we have started to see a huge demand coming from SMEs and start-ups," Arora added.

(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)

--IANS

na/vm/sac

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian airlines have collectively phased out 84 foreign pilots during 2017, parliament was informed on Thursday.

The foreign pilots were phased out by airlines such as Jet Airways, Air India, SpiceJet and IndiGo.

"All the operators or airlines have been directed to develop their in-house strength to minimise the dependency on expatriate pilots," Minister of State of Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in a written reply during question hour in the Lok Sabha.

"Accordingly operators train and upgrade the inducted Indian pilots to reduce the number of expatriate pilots and submit the phase out programme to DGCA on a regular basis," the minister said.

There are still 249 foreign pilots employed by the various segments of the domestic industry as of December 1, 2017, he added.

--ians

rv/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In 1923 he became principal of the Queensland Agricultural High School at Gatton and later took up a concurrent appointment as foundation professor of agriculture at the University of Queensland.

In 1916 he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, serving in France before undertaking post-war agricultural studies and being demobilised in 1920.

He graduated from Sydney University just after the start of World War I with bachelors degrees in agricultural science and arts and, after service with the Sydney University Scouts, a diploma of military science.

Murray later wrote he found it impossible to pay an adequate tribute to her. His mother saved the money that enabled him to enter St Joseph's College at Hunters Hill in Sydney in 1904.

His parents separated when he was two and his mother supported him by working as a domestic servant.

SYDNEY - Sir Jack Keith (JK) Murray OBE [1889-1979] was an agriculturalist, a soldier and an administrator  and he excelled in every field.

This article was first published in PNG Attitude on 13 September 2007

The severely run down Gatton was transformed under his direction and Murray became a leading figure in Queensland affairs.

In 1940, at the age of 51, he rejoined the Army as Colonel and was given command of the 25th Battalion, Darling Downs Regiment, spending the next three years administering army training establishments.

He looked the part too: fit, wiry, of middle height and upright bearing. He wore a full moustache, clipped at the ends.

In February 1944, Alf Conlon appointed Murray as chief instructor at the School of Civil Affairs in Canberra, the precursor to the Australian School of Pacific Administration, ASOPA, where he trained personnel to administer Australia's territories.

As Papua and New Guinea returned to civil control after the war, Minister for External Territories Eddie Ward wanted an Administrator who would pursue his reformist aims for the territory. Murray was sworn in on 16 October 1945.

Murray dealt with problems of reconstruction, paying special attention to the plight of the people in villages devastated by war.

Each year he spent months visiting outlying districts, talking with village leaders and missionaries, encouraging his staff and restoring peoples confidence in the Australian administration, a confidence that had been shaken by the war.

Murray obtained from Canberra neither policy direction nor decisions. He believed action could best be taken in Port Moresby.

In pursuit of a 'new deal' for Papua New Guineans, Murray supervised the establishment of village courts, village councils, cooperative societies, extension courses in agriculture, aid posts, training of indigenous medical officers and orderlies and moved the workforce from an indenture system to one of free labour.

The local white establishment found Murray's attitude to Papua New Guineans scandalous. When the Murrays invited Papuans to functions at Government House, whites boycotted them and Murray was dubbed 'Kanaka Jack'.

As a Labor appointee, Murray was regarded with suspicion when Robert Menzies was elected in 1949 and a major rift occurred in 1950 when Murray disagreed with an order from Canberra that Papua New Guineans should not speak directly to a visiting mission from the United Nations.

Sir JK Murray in 1954

In 1952, new Territories Minister Paul Hasluck dismissed Murray, not offering him the opportunity to retire or resign, and replaced him with Liberal Party operative Donald Cleland.

Murray lived in retirement at St Lucia, Brisbane. He was a member (1953-68) of the senate of the University of Queensland. In 1959 he was appointed OBE and he was knighted in 1978. He died on 10 December 1979 at Jindalee in Queensland.

JK Murray focused and epitomised reform in post-war PNG. While he was Administrator, change was the central issue. By the time he was removed from office, the pattern had been set, and the best policies of the following decades flowed from those he had supported and proposed.

Source: Brian Jinks, 'Murray, Sir Jack Keith (1889 - 1979)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 15, Melbourne University Press, 2000
The 105th Indian Science Congress (ISC), to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Osmania University here on January 3, has been postponed indefinitely -- apparently in view of the security situation on the campus.

This is the first time an ISC, the largest congregation of Indian scientists, has been postponed.

"Vice Chancellor of Osmania University has informed that they are not in a position to host 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled January 3-7 due to certain issues in the campus," read a brief statement on the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) website.

ISCA is expected to decide the new date and venue of the Congress on December 27.

Over 2,000 scientists including 15 Noble laureates from different countries were expected to participate in the ISC.

The university officials did not specify the reason but the prevailing security situation due to recent protests apparently forced the authorities to postpone the prestigious event.

The campus witnessed violent protests by student groups over the suicide of a student earlier this month.

The student groups alleged that the post-graduate student ended his life out of fear of not getting a job due to the wrong policies being adopted by the Telangana government.

Last week, the campus saw another round of protest by Adivasi students over the demand to remove Banjara Lambada community from the Scheduled Caste list.

--IANS

ms/him/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A bill on making Triple Talaq a punishable offence and another one to give constitutional status to the backward classes panel is set to be introduced in the Lok Sabha next week, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said on Thursday.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, provides for three-year imprisonment and fine for men who orally divorce their wives and also gives such Muslim women the right to seek maintenance.

The Constitution (123rd Amendment) Bill pertains to conferring constitutional status on the National Commission for Backward Classes.

The bill, passed by the Lok Sabha in April, was sent to the Rajya Sabha which passed the bill with amendments. Hence, the government will now reintroduce the bill.

"In case of a constitution amendment bill, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha cannot differ. So the bill has to be reintroduced," the Minister said.

Government sources said some minor changes were made to the bill.

--IANS

ao/tsb/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, Dec 21 (IANS/AKI) Italian authorities have deported a 37-year-old Moroccan national who is accused of being an Islamist extremist, the Interior Ministry said.

The suspect was expelled from Italy aboard a flight from Milan's Malpensa airport, bringing to 103 the number of alleged religious extremists deported this year, the Ministry stated.

The Moroccan came to the attention of Italian investigators in 2016 after he was expelled from a Muslim association in Alessandria for his ultra-extremist views and for allegedly intimidating the association's chiefs for failing to apply the radical interpretation of the Quran which he espoused.

--IANS/AKI

soni/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, Dec 21 (IANS/AKI) Italy's nascent peacekeeping mission in Africa's Niger will soon be presented to parliament and will "contribute to creating a pillar of security in the Sahel region", Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said on Thursday.

Pinotti was speaking during a videoconference with Italy's 35 peacekeeping missions in 22 countries, which was also attended by President Sergio Mattarella and Chief of Defence Staff Claudio Graziano.

Italy's military missions around the world "have allowed key successes such as the defeat of the Islamic State (jihadist group) in Syria and Iraq," Pinotti said.

Matarella said that soldiers deployed in Italy's 35 peacekeeping missions around the world are "fully upholding the principles and values of the Constitution".

He thanked the soldiers "for what they do and for the quality of the work they carry out, fully upholding the principles and values of the Constitution."

Mattarella also paid tribute to the Safe Streets Operation to which 7,500 soldiers have been deployed to guard sensitive sites in Italy.

He hailed Italy's newly established military mission to Niger, calling it "extremely important" for the security and stability of the Sahel region.

--IANS/AKI

vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The historic city of Gwalior, the birthplace of music maestro Tansen, a court musician during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar in the 16th century, is set to host over 57 Indian and international artistes at the 93rd edition of the Tansen Music Festival that begins on Friday.

Also known as Tansen Sangeet Sammelan, the festival will be held over a span of five days. It will be a blend of Carnatic music, Hindustani classical music and traditional classic music from countries like Sweden, Iran, Brazil and Spain.

While some performances will take place near Tansen's burial site, which is situated in the Behat region of Madhya Pradesh, other shows will be held at the Gwalior fort.

Organised every year jointly by the Ustad Alauddin Khan Kala Evam Sangeet Academy and the Madhya Pradesh government's Department of Culture, the fest will kick-start on Thursday with 'Gamak', an ornamentation that is used in the performance of Indian classical musical. However, the extravaganza will officially begin on Friday.

Manoj Shrivastava, the Principal Secretary in the Department of Culture, said the experiment of having international artistes as participants in the fest along with their Indian counterparts got "great reviews" when it started two years back.

"It is perhaps the first and the only international music fest in India where we not only celebrate Indian classical music but also have artistes from other nations performing their respective genres and classical music," Shrivastava told IANS.

"We started this as an experiment and we have got great reviews and encouragement from viewers, so in continuing the journey, we have invited different countries to celebrate the spirit of music, and this cultural amalgamation will take Tansen festival to new heights," he added.

While musician Shruti Johari, hailing from Chennai, will hold a discussion on 'Indian Classical Music in Contemporary Era', Prasanna Rao, known for playing Carnatic music on the guitar, will hold a session on 'An Effort to Connect Young Generation to Humanity and Ethics'. There will also be a session on 'Music Therapy'.

"We are trying to make this festival more interesting and informative so that we can spread awareness about our cultural heritage. For that, we have started lectures and discussions in the segment called 'Vadi Samvadi'. Apart from this, we are giving a platform to encourage next generation musicians in the presence of thousands of music lovers," said Shrivastava.

Hindustani classical vocalist Ulhas Kashalkar will be honoured with the National Tansen Samman for 2017 at the fest.

The line-up also includes European guitarist Johannes Moller, Belarus' Maxim Shchedrovitzki on oud and Ben Arie Dagovich, who hails from Greece, on the hang, Brazilian guitarist and vocalist Luiza Sales, pianist Pedro Carneiro Silva from Rio de Janeiro and Iranian musician Fakhroddin Ghaffari on the tombak and daf.

Indian musicians who will enthrall classical music lovers, include dhrupad player Sarda Naad Sangeet Vidhyalaya, tabla players Vinayak Shukla and Vijay Seth, flautist Chetan Joshi, vocalist Pushkar Lele, sarangi player Murad Ali Khan, violinist Ankur Dharkar, and drummer Aditya Dutta.

A photo exhibition on the past editions of Tansen Music Festival will also be held. In addition, musical scripts titled "Dharohar" will be displayed at one of the venues.

(Kishori Sud's visit is at the invitation of the Madhya Pradesh government. She can be contacted at kishori.s@ians.in)

--IANS

ks/nn/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Manipur Assembly on Thursday passed a resolution to demand disclosure of the contents of a pact signed between the central government and the NSCN-IM in 2015 which some states fear will affect their territorial integrity.

Cutting across party lines, the ruling BJP and opposition Congress members demanded that the territorial integrity of Manipur be maintained and sought the disclosure of the contents of the Framework Agreement.

A four-member committee was also set up to prepare a memorandum to be submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue.

Congress leader Okram Ibobi Singh, who was Chief Minister for 15 long years, disclosed for the first time that some central leaders had asked him not to oppose the agreement but no one took him into confidence on its contents.

Ibobi said the Chief Ministers of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh called on senior central leaders soon after the agreement was signed by New Delhi with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah faction (NSCN-IM).

But the central leaders refused to disclose anything saying that it was an agreement between the Centre and the NSCN-IM and the three chief ministers were not involved in it.

Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh fear that the NSCN-IM may be granted a Greater Nagaland by slicing off parts of the three states where Nagas live in large numbers.

Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said: "Since the formation of a BJP-led government on March 15, there have been seven assembly sessions during which discussions were held and resolutions taken on the issue. This time a clause ought to be added demanding disclosure of the contents of the agreement."

K. Joykishan of the Congress had planned to table a calling attention motion. However, in view of the urgency of the issue, 10 members demanded a short duration discussion.

A memorandum of all political parties in Manipur is with the Chief Minister for submission to the Prime Minister.

--IANS

il/nir/mr/him

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday had a telephonic conversation with K P Sharma Oli, who is poised to become Nepal's new Prime Minister and is viewed as leaning towards China.

Modi also spoke with former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and with current Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress.

"Prime Minister had a telephonic conversation with K.P. Sharma Oli, Chariman, Communist Party of Nepal-UML, also with Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and also with Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress and the present Prime Minister," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in his weekly media briefing here.

Kumar could not share details of what transpired in the conversation.

Oli is set to become Prime Minister after the Leftist alliance mustered two-thirds majority in the parliamentary and provincial elections in Nepal.

On Tuesday, Oli had paid a surprise visit to Nepal's border with China in Rasuwagadhi and inspected the only trade and transit point between the two countries. During his earlier stint as Prime Minister in 2015, he had been critical of India and was seen as close to China.
As Congress members refused to relent and continued their protests on Thursday, Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu condemned their behaviour and asked them to maintain the dignity of the Upper House.

"Follow 'maryada' (dignity)...follow the rules...I condemn your behaviour...I have to...Don't force me to do that..You go to your seats...go back," Naidu remarked during Zero Hour when the Congress members trooped near the Chairman's podium protesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's allegations against his predecessor Manmohan Singh.

The Congress members also raised the issue of acquittal of all accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case, saying the court judgement vindicated UPA's stand that there was no scam in the allocation of spectrum and licences to telecom companies.

After laying the papers, Naidu allowed Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad to raise his matter.

Azad while seeking clarification from the Prime Minister over his remark that Manmohan Singh and others, at a dinner meeting, discussed the Gujarat Assembly election with Pakistani diplomats, also raised the issue of acquittal of all accused in 2G spectrum allocation case.

Naidu urged Azad not to raise the matter as he has not given any notice.

"You can't raise any issue without giving a proper notice. I can't go beyond the rules. House functions according to rules. If there is something serious the House will take it as priority," Naidu said as the agitating members trooped near the Chairman's podium.

"This has become a habit of a few people. The three-fourth of the House wants discussion but there are few who don't want. This is not fair. You want to disturb the House by making allegations. There should be discussion rather than shouting," Naidu said quoting from the remarks of former President and former Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma.

He urged Azad to ask his party members to return to their seats.

The Congress members, however, returned to their seats but Anand Sharma from his seat rose to speak amid the din.

Responding to him, Naidu said, "I tried to find out a way and asked you to sit together. What more can I do. Please respect the democratic principles."

"You (Congress members) ruled the country for so long...You have experience...Your behaviour is not good. You people are not ready to listen so I am adjourning the House till 2 p.m," Naidu said and adjourned the House.

--IANS

bns/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
To push its search for life in alien terrains, NASA has developed a new spectroscopy instrument designed to detect compounds and minerals associated with biological activity more quickly and with greater sensitivity than previous instruments.

Although no evidence of life outside of Earth has yet been found, looking for evidence of present or past life on other planets continues to be an important part of the NASA Planetary Exploration Programme.

The new system, detailed in the journal Applied Optics, improves on an analytical technique known as micro Raman spectroscopy.

This technique uses the interaction between laser light and a sample to provide chemical composition information on a microscopic scale.

It can detect organic compounds such as the amino acids found in living things and identify minerals formed by biochemical processes on Earth that might indicate life on other planets, the study said.

"Our instrument is one of the most advanced Raman spectrometers ever developed," said M Nurul Abedin of NASA Langley Research Center who led the research team.

"It overcomes some of the key limitations of traditional micro Raman instruments and is designed to serve as an ideal instrument for future missions that use rovers or landers to explore the surface of Mars or Jupiter's icy Europa moon," Abedin said.

The new system, called the standoff ultra-compact micro Raman (SUCR) instrument, was developed by NASA in collaboration with the University of Hawaii.

Size and weight were important to consider when designing the SUCR instrument for space exploration.

"We had to make sure the instrument was very small and light so that it could travel aboard a small, fuel-efficient spaceship that would make the nine-month journey to Mars or the six-year journey to Europa," said Abedin.

"The instrument must also work with other instruments aboard a rover or lander and be unaffected by the harsh radiation conditions found on other planets," Abedin said.

--IANS

gb/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Republicans are celebrating the passage of a $1.5 trillion tax plan  the first legislative victory for the GOP since President Donald Trump took office in January.

The Senate passed the bill early Wednesday. The House approved the legislation Tuesday afternoon, but had to vote again Wednesday after some provisions were removed to allow for the Senate to consider the plan.

The Senate vote was 51-48 along party lines. The second House vote was 224-201. No Democrats voted for the bill. There were 12 Republicans, including five from New York, who opposed the measure.

The tax bill will lower income tax rates for most Americans until 2026 and the corporate tax rate will be slashed from 35 to 21 percent. The standard deduction will be doubled for single filers and married couples. But the personal exemption and most other credits and deductions will be eliminated.

One of the four Republicans who voted for the bill was U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney. She supported the legislation, in part, because she believes the nation's current tax policy is broken.

"Our tax code will now reflect the values of fairness and hard work," Tenney, R-New Hartford, said. "Without these tax cuts, our economy will continue to be stagnant and American competitiveness will continue to suffer."

Supporters of the bill touted other provisions that they say will help taxpayers and boost the economy. The child tax credit will be expanded from $1,000 to $2,000 and a new 20 percent deduction will be available for pass-through businesses.

The legislation increases the exemption for the alternative minimum tax and doubles the amount exempted from the estate tax.

But critics note that the bill will largely benefit the wealthy and large corporations. And while the corporate tax cut is permanent, the income tax cuts are not. That could set the stage for a tax increase in 2026 if Congress doesn't act.

There were provisions in the House or Senate bills that were either left out or modified in the final tax bill. House Republicans wanted to calculate tuition waivers for graduate students who are research or teaching assistants as taxable income. This would have raised taxes on graduate students by thousands of dollars.

The final bill doesn't include this provision. The graduate student tuition waivers will not be considered taxable income.

House Republicans also wanted to eliminate the historic preservation tax credit. The final bill modifies the credit so that the benefits will be paid out over a five-year period instead of a one-year payment.

For New York Republicans, an issue that divided the delegation was the state and local tax deduction. Earlier proposals called for the complete elimination of the ability to deduct state and local income, property and sales taxes.

A compromise was reached to allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 of state and local property taxes. That was expanded in the final to include income and sales taxes.

While the agreement was enough to secure some support, other Republicans opposed the final bill.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a North Country Republican, cited the changes to the state and local tax deduction as a main reason why she voted against the tax plan.

"While progress has been made during the conference committee, the final bill does not adequately protect the state and local tax deduction that so many in our district and across New York rely on," Stefanik, R-Willsboro, said.

After the final passage of the bill Wednesday, Republicans gathered at the White House to celebrate the legislative feat. Tenney and U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, a western New York Republican, were among those who attended the event.

Trump did not sign the tax bill Wednesday. He may wait until January to sign the legislation, according to reports.

Here is how the New York congressional delegation voted on the GOP tax plan:

YES

Rep. Chris Collins (R), Rep. John Katko (R), Rep. Tom Reed (R), Rep. Claudia Tenney (R)

NO

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D), Rep. Yvette Clarke (D), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D), Rep. Dan Donovan (R), Rep. Eliot Engel (D), Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D), Rep. John Faso (R), Rep. Brian Higgins (D), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (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. Elise Stefanik (R), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D), Rep. Paul Tonko (D), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R)
Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray".

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function here on Thursday evening.

"It's truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture," said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius

The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amidst a thunderous applause. The film is scheduled for release on January 23, 2019, the 93rd birth anniversary of Thackeray.

Terming Bal Thackeray as "an unparalleled leader of the masses," Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences.

"I had spent much time with Balasaheb, and have been associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film," he said.

In his address, Amitabh recalled his long association and memories with Bal Thackeray spanning over more than four decades, till his final moments on November 17, 2012.

"When we first met, he somehow developed a liking for me and treated me as a family member, which was an honour for me. And he continued like that, always standing behind me, through thick and thin, helped and guided me for so many years," he said.

Big B recalled how in 1973, when Thackeray heard of his marriage, he "summoned" him and his bride Jaya to 'Matoshree', the political family's residence in Bandra east.

"When we entered the home, Aai (Thackeray's wife, Minatai) accorded a loving welcome to Jaya, just like she would have welcomed her own daughter-in-law. We were moved and indebted by their warm gesture," he said.

The 75-year old actor recounted his near-death encounter in 1982 during the shooting of "Coolie" and he was shifted to Mumbai from then Bangalore for advanced treatment of his injuries sustained on the sets.

"When the flight landed in Mumbai, there was torrential rain and there was no transport to rush me to the Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. But, a Shiv Sena ambulance was there and it braved the weather to shift me to the hospital on time, or my health could have deteriorated further," he said.

Amitabh, who was among the handful of visitors permitted by Uddhav Thackeray to visit Thackeray in his last days, said that he was taken aback to see a picture of himself in a corner just beside the bed on which Thackeray was lying and "this was another indicator of how much love and affection he had for me".

Bal K. Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national for over five decades.

Feared and revered in equal measure, he held sway over the entire state and national political scenario as the champion of Hindutva or "Hindu Hridaysamrat" till his demise on November 17, 2012 aged 86.

The brief teaser released on Thursday depicts a scene from the two-phased riots which bloodied Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993 in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque and a grim Thackeray (Siddiqui) preparing to address his customary annual Dassehra Rally at Shivaji Park before a sea of saffron flags.

--IANS

qn/vd

(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.)
Pakistan on Thursday refuted media reports that some Sikhs in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were forcibly converted to Islam.

"Misinformation is being spread about an incident in Hangu," Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, adding that some shopkeepers including Sikhs got into a row with a local official.

The spokesperson said the concerned official was immediately suspended and a formal inquiry was ordered into the incident.

Faisal said Pakistan remained committed to the freedom of religion and protection of the rights of all minorities.

Earlier, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressed concern over the reported conversion and promised to take up the issue with Pakistani authorities.

--IANS

ahm/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, Dec 21 (IANS/AKI) Italy is committed to upholding a bilateral treaty with Austria that grants the German-speaking population in the province of Alto Adige the right to autonomy and to preserve their cultural identity and customs, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said on Thursday.

"The Italian government is committed to continuing along this path," Alfano told his new Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl in a phone call in which he congratulated her on her appointment.

Alfano was referring to the 1946 Gruber-De Gasperi agreement signed by Austria's then Foreign Minister Karl Gruber and Italy's Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in September 5, 1946. The accord also recognised German as an official language in Alto Adige - or Sudtirol - where more than half of the population speaks German as their first language.

Vienna sparked alarm in Italy after the newly-appointed coalition government suggested German-speaking Italian citizens in Alto Adige could soon obtain an Austrian passport. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Tuesday that the proposal to allow ethnic German residents in the region two passports came from a request from the inhabitants of Trentino-Alto Adige themselves.

Kurz said relations with Rome were "excellent" and the plan would only be implemented "in close cooperation with Italy and the Rome government".

At this, Alfano said: "Austria's determination to cooperate with Italy reassures us that the new Austrian government will only take initiatives based on these principles.

"In the spirit of mutual trust and staunch collaboration that mark relations between two European Union member states, Minister Kneissl and I have decided to set up a meeting in the next few weeks."

--IANS/AKI

vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI-M on Thursday urged the government to pursue legally the 2G spectrum allocation case after a court here declared that none of the accused was guilty.

"The judgement of the CBI special court on the 2G spectrum case raises more questions than answers," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement.

"It was well-established that the allocation of 2G spectrum had caused a big loss calculated to be Rs 1,76,000 crore by the CAG. The Supreme Court had indicted some of the telecom companies involved for misuse of the allocations and cancelled the licences of concerned companies.

"Since the CBI case and prosecution has proved inadequate, steps must be taken immediately to pursue the matter legally so that those who are guilty are punished," it said.

--IANS

mr/ahm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Telecom Minister A. Raja "did not misrepresent facts" to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on policy matters related to allocation of 2G spectrum licences, a court said on Thursday while acquitting all accused in the case.

"It is clear that complete facts were not placed before the then Prime Minister by his own office, for which A. Raja cannot be faulted," Special Judge O.P. Saini said.

The court turned down the prosecution case that the facts were misrepresented to the then Prime Minister by Raja as it observed that Manmohan Singh had seen the letter written by Raja informing him of the decision of Department of Telecommunication (DoT) and for issue of Letters of Intent for new licences, treated it as urgent and had discussed the matter with the Principal Secretary.

"However, there is no record as to whether this letter was examined by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) or not," the court said.

"It was not Raja, but (senior PMO officials) Pulok Chatterjee, in consultation with (then Principal Secretary) T.K.A. Nair, as he had suppressed the most relevant and controversial part of the letter of Raja from the then Prime Minister."

By the letter dated November 2, 2007, Raja had specifically informed the then Prime Minister about processing of large number of applications in the backdrop of inadequate spectrum, clearly mentioned availability for 2G services and had also categorically recorded that auction of spectrum was considered by TRAI and Telecom Commission and auction was not recommended.

In another letter written by Raja on December 26, 2007, he had mentioned about his discussion with the then External Affairs Minister at great length as well as with the then Solicitor General of India.

Regarding issue of new licences, Raja had explained that it is a three-stage process -- issue of LOI, issue of licence and grant of wireless licence.

This letter was examined by then senior officials of PMO, Pulok Chatterjee on December 31, 2007 and was marked to then Principal Secretary T.K.A. Nair who signed it on January 7, 2008 and marked the file to then Prime Minister.

The officials wrote a note after examination of Raja's letter where they discussed issues related to spectrum availability but did not consider at all the issue of new licences.

The court observed that the note marked to then Prime Minister by its officials only contain a partial view of the whole issue and ignored the "most important and controversial issue of new licences."

"Moreover, the note suffered from the vice of excessive length and technical jargon", the court said.

"It is lengthier than the letter of Raja. Prime Minister is a busy executive. Wherefrom would he find time to read such lengthy notes."

The court opined that the Prime Minister is "not expected to be immersed in files".

The court also observed that somebody from the PMO had given the go-ahead to the DoT for issuance of new licences and most probably it was Pulok Chatterjee himself, as his note records that he had spoken to the Secretary.

Raja had justified the changed criteria, but this important issue was not placed before the then Prime Minister at the right time. This was done only when the controversy broke out after the issue of LOIs on January 10, 2008, the court observed.

--IANS

akk/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a rebuff to the US, the UN General Assembly on Thursday, passed by two-thirds majority, a resolution criticising President Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move Washington's embassy there.

India joined the overwhelming Assembly majority to vote for the resolution that demands that the US comply comply with Security Council decisions against changing the status of Jerusalem.

Defying Trump's threats to cut off aid to countries that voted for the resolution, 128 countries voted for the resolution, while nine countries joined the US and Israel in voting against it.

An unusually large number - 35 countries - abstained, showing that Trump's threats had some effect.

The resolution was sponsored by Yemen on behalf of the Arab Group in the UN, and by Turkey on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

It followed the US veto on Monday of a similar resolution in the Security Council introduced by Egypt.

While the Assembly resolutions do not have the legal clout of the Council resolutions, they carry political clout.

Both sides - the US against the Assembly resolution and Islamic and Arab countries for it - mounted a strong campaign.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

al/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Rajasthan government on Thursday urged its striking government doctors to resume work.

Health Minister Kali Charan Saraf said the Ministry had worked on the doctors' demands so that all the 18 issues raised by them were fulfilled at the earliest.

He was apparently referring to the agreement signed between the doctors' association and the government in November.

Saraf said innocents were bearing the brunt of the doctors' adamant attitude, "which is wrong".

"Most of their demands have been fulfilled and the remaining ones have also been sent for approval."

The resident doctors are demanding the implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations with retrospective effect, from January 2016. This request had also been sent to the Finance Department for approval, the minister added.

Demands such as installation of CCTV cameras in medical institutions, disbursement of rural allowance to those working in rural areas and increase in the post-mortem allowance had already been fulfilled.

"Orders have been issued for providing vehicles to 10 Chief Medical and Health Officers. Also, their demand for increase in internship allowance has also been looked into," he added.

He said Rs 127 crore had been spent by the ministry. "A cell has also been formed to check the working of quacks in state."

Asked whether he would be contacting the doctors and calling them for a discussion, he said that their mobile phones were switched off. "How can we talk to them when their whereabouts is not known?"

--IANS

arc/nir/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of Women Child Development (WCD) has approved proposals and projects amounting to Rs 2,644 crore under the Nirbhaya Fund, an official statement on Thursday.

In wake of the December 2012 Delhi gang rape, the Central government had set up a dedicated fund called "Nirbhaya Fund" in 2013 for implementation of initiatives aimed at enhancing the safety and security for women in the country and the total fund allocated for the project is Rs 3,100 crore.

According to the ministry, Rs 553 crore has been alloted to the Ministry of Home Affairs for eight schemes like Emergency Response Support System (ERSS), Cyber Crime Prevention against Women and Children (CCPWC), Delhi Police Special Unit for Women and Children and others.

For the Railway Ministry, a fund of total Rs 50 crore has been approved for the project Integrated Emergency Response Management System (IERMS) while for the Information Technology ministry, Rs 2 crore has been alloted.

The ministry also said that Rs 6,762 lakh has been approved for the WCD scheme One Stop Centre, Rs 2,142 for the Women Help Line scheme, Rs 1,067 lakh for the Mahila Police Volunteer scheme and a total of Rs 162 crore for various other projects.

--IANS

som/him/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Moscow is preparing a response to a new set of US sanctions, the Kremlin and the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The US Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned Russia's Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and four other people for human rights violations under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act, Xinhua news agency reported.

"It is highly likely that reciprocity principle will be implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying.

He declined to name possible targets of the countermeasures.

"Unfortunately, we are again forced to confirm our position, which boils down to the fact that these steps will be followed by retaliatory measures," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a weekly briefing.

It is said that a number of US political groups still have a desire to follow the path of destroying relations with Russia, Zakharova added.

She said that currently around 200 Russian citizens and 402 legal entities are under various US sanctions.

Former US President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which was named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, in December 2012, imposing sanctions on Russian officials allegedly responsible for the 37-year-old lawyer's death in a Moscow prison in 2009.

Russia fought back by passing a law in January 2013, barring US citizens from adopting Russian orphans and banning Americans suspected of human rights violations from entering Russia.

--IANS

sku/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Korea on Thursday fired warning shots towards North Korea as Pyongyang's forces were trying to locate a soldier who crossed the border and defected to the South earlier in the day, a Defence Ministry spokesman said here.

The South Korean military first issued a warning through its loudspeakers when it saw a group of North Korean border guards approach the Military Demarcation Line, the effective border line between the two countries, the spokesman told Efe news.

As North Korea apparently ignored the warning, several shots were fired, the spokesman said, adding that North Korea's border patrol then decided to back down.

Shortly afterwards, the South Korean troops heard several warning shots coming from the North.

The North Korean soldier appeared in front of a South Korean border guard post at 8.04 a.m. after having crossed the western side of the border.

This is the fourth North Korean soldier to defect to the South this year.

The soldier was the first one since the dramatic defection of a trooper who was shot five times by the North Korean army on November 13 during his escape through the Joint Security Area, the only border area where soldiers of the two countries are stationed face to face.

The defections have triggered tensions along the border line of the two countries.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Eight New York members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. John Katko, want an important health insurance program for children renewed in a year-end spending bill.

The representatives sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi requesting a five-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage to 9 million children.

Congress hasn't acted to renew the program that expired Sept. 30. While New York officials say there is enough funding to keep the state's program funded into early 2018, other states have warned residents that benefits will end soon if CHIP isn't reauthorized.

In New York, more than 300,000 children receive coverage through the Children's Health Insurance Program.

"Congress must take immediate action in order to ensure continuous coverage for the roughly 9 million children benefiting from this program nationwide," Katko, R-Camillus, said.

The House and Senate must approve a continuing resolution to fund the government before the end of the week. If an agreement isn't reached, a government shutdown is likely.

The letter to Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Pelosi, D-California, was signed by five Republicans, including Katko, and three Democrats. The other GOP members who signed the letter are U.S. Reps. Dan Donovan, Peter King, Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin.

U.S. Reps. Sean Patrick Maloney, Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi were the Democratic members who signed the letter.

The New Yorkers also urged action on two other health care-related provisions  funding community health centers and Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital payment reductions. Like the Children's Health Insurance Program, funding for community health centers expired this year.

The Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital payment cuts could result in New York hospitals losing $800 million in federal funding. The members of Congress asked for a two-year delay in the payment cuts to ensure hospitals are able to provide services to patients.

"While there are several important matters pending before Congress at present, these three issues are of particular importance to the state of New York," the members wrote. "We urge you to address these matters as promptly as possible to ensure essential healthcare services are delivered."
The Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) on Thursday urged the government to reduce GST rate on batteries used in EVs.

According to the nodal body of domestic manufacturers, the GST rate on batteries used in EVs should be brought down from 28 per cent.

"The body sees unreasonably high GST as one of the key impediments... in achieving the electric-green vehicle adoption target as visualised in Government of India's Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles policy rolled out two years back with much fanfare," SMEV said in a statement.

--IANS

rv/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 13-year-old student in Tamil Nadu's Vellore district was killed by his classmate, to whom he had sold his mobile phone, after they quarrelled over the payment, police said on Thursday.

The incident came to light after P. Santhosh's body was found near his school in Vellore, around 140 km from here, on Thursday morning.

"On Wednesday, Santhosh did not reach home. His parents contacted his school authorities. On enquiries, it was found out that Santhosh was last seen with his classmate," a police official told IANS over phone.

The police official said that Santhosh had given a phone to his classmate, and there seems to have been a fight between the two boys on Wednesday in which Santhosh was hit and lost his life. Investigations are on, the official added.

--IANS

vj/him/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Software major Tech Mahindra on Thursday announced a partnership with global management consulting firm Gao Feng Advisory Company to set up a joint Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab in Shanghai.

The lab will work in the areas of futuristic digital technologies including AI chatbot Services, smart process automation, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), image recognition and processing, Machine Learning (ML) and Predictive Analytics.

"China has become breeding ground for the adoption of new technologies and innovation. We are operating our engineering services business for more than 15 years in China with over 500 engagements and feel that we can provide solutions to the complex problems of our customers," said Karthikeyan Natarajan, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Integrated Engineering Solutions, Tech Mahindra.

The lab will combine Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies to develop solutions for manufacturing industry and reduce maintenance cost, accelerate manufacturing automation and digital manufacturing initiatives.

"Our AI Lab in Shanghai will enable customers to reduce their product development cost through Agile/Devops process methodologies and AI-based testing and automation frameworks," Natarajan added.

The lab will leverage Tech Mahindra's RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and IoT frameworks and ecosystem to develop AI chatbot for customer applications.

Gao Feng Advisory Company is a global strategy and management consulting firm with strong roots in China.

"The partnership with Tech Mahindra and setting up of AI lab allows Gao Feng to offer our clients a broad set of capabilities beyond those typically found among strategy consultancies, leveraging deep expertise in the area of Artificial intelligence, IoT and Predictive Analytics," noted Dr Edward Tse, Founder and CEO of Gao Feng.

Tech Mahindra is part of the $19 billion Mahindra Group that employs more than 200,000 people in over 100 countries.

Tech Mahindra itself is a $4.5 billion company with 115,850 professionals across 90 countries, helping over 864 global customers including Fortune 500 .
Tension continued to prevail at the Banaras Hindu University campus on Thursday, a day after violence broke out over the arrest of a student leader.

Extra police force and Provincial Armed Constabulary have been deployed inside and outside the Uttar Pradesh varsity, an official told IANS.

Officials said that they were maintaining a strict vigil and were identifying the people involved in the violence.

Irate students had vandalised and damaged university property, set on fire some vehicles, ransacked some shops near the Kashi Vishwanath temple and damaged an ATM late on Wednesday after fellow student Ashutosh was arrested over charges of extortion and other criminal activities.

Ashutosh belongs to a party affiliated to the Samajwadi Party.

--IANS

md/him/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three persons were arrested on Thursday after five workers died and eight others were injured in a boiler blast at a sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj district, officials said.

The arrested include the mill's owner Mahmud Ali and his two sons, said a district police official.

Taking note of the incident, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered a high level probe into it and announced a compensation of Rs 4 lakh each to the victims families.

"The blast occurred on Wednesday night at the mill in Sadamusa when workers were on duty," a police official said. All the injured were admitted to hospitals.

Angry over the deaths, hundreds of locals protested and set ablaze vehicles of the mill owner parked in the premises on Thursday.

Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, whose home district is Gopalganj, expressed grief over the incident and appealed to the people to maintain peace.

--IANS

ik/him/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 1,000 retailers of tobacco products on Thursday protested outside the Union Health Ministry office here, demanding reduction in the size of the graphical health warnings on cigarette packets.

According to the retailers, protesting under the banner of Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh representing around 75 lakh retailers across India, the smuggling of tobacco products has increased in the country ever since the graphic pictorial warnings came into existence as smuggled cigarette packets do not carry such warnings.

"Since the introduction of picture warning in India in May 2009 the smuggling has been increasing, as smuggled products are more appealing as they do not have warnings. We have observed that since May 2016, when the size of the health warnings on tobacco products have become larger i.e. 85 per cent on front and back of the pack, we have seen a huge spurt in the availability of smuggled cigarettes. The smuggled cigarettes have no picture warnings and give the impression to consumers that they are safer," said a statement from the Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh.

The protest comes days after the Karnataka High Court struck down the 2014 amendment rules that mandated pictorial health warnings to cover 85 per cent of tobacco product packages.

Earlier, farmers body Federation of All India Farmers Association had appealed to the government to bring down the pictorial warning from 85 to 40 per cent.

As part of the anti-tobacco policy, on September 22, the Union Health Ministry sent an advisory to the Rajasthan government preventing shops selling tobacco products from dealing in other products such as toffees, candy, chips, biscuits and soft drinks -- products essentially meant for children.

The advisory says if tobacco vendors are found selling these products, their licence might get cancelled.

During the demonstration, the retailers from across the country silently protested outside the Nirman bhawan and later submitted a memorandum to the Union Health Minister J.P Nadda seeking roll back of pictorial warnings and order on preventing sale of non tobacco products.

"The anti-tobacco policy is being driven by vested interests promoted by various NGOs who are receiving huge sums of money from International players and who are also hand-in-glove with large retailers. The have also been targeting us, small retailers, to stop selling other items, pushing our customers to their large shops, closing out all our sources of earnings," said Ram Ashrey Mishra, President, Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh.

--IANS

rup/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Tripura Gramin Bank (TGB), one of India's 56 regional rural banks (RRBs), posted net profit of Rs 35.98 crore up to September in current fiscal (2017-18). The bank has been notching profits successively for the past 17 years, the bank's chairman said here on Thursday.

According to the TGB chief, the bank is the only RRB in the northeastern region, comprising eight states, that has been making profit successively.

Supervised by United Bank of India (UBI), the TGB, which is celebrating its 42nd anniversary on Thursday grew its volume of business (up to September) to Rs 7,803 crore, which is 14.27 per cent more than the corresponding period of last financial year.

"The bank achieved a profit of Rs 35.98 crore up to September this year. This is 57.60 per cent higher than the corresponding period of last fiscal," the TGB Chairman Mahendra Mohan Goswami told the media.

Accompanied by the bank's general manager Dipankar Ambuly, the bank chief said: "The bank currently has 157 branches including 13 ultra small branches (USB) across Tripura. The TGB's per branch business has gone up to Rs 54.19 crore in the current fiscal against Rs 47.42 crore in the previous period. Per employee business has also gone up to Rs 9.48 crore (up to September in 2017-18 fiscal) against Rs 8.80 crore in the previous period."

Goswami said the bank's Credit Deposit Ratio (CDR) currently stood at 36.79 per cent against the national banks' (functioning in the state) CDR of 43 per cent.

According to the official, the TGB's CRAR (Capital to Risk Assets Ratio) has gone down to 19.66 per cent against 20.76 per cent in 2016-17. However, this CRAR is much higher than the Reserve Bank of India's stipulated ratio of 9 per cent.

The bank, which has over 70 per cent branches in rural areas, also has Aadhaar-enabled 225 micro ATMs and 190 business correspondents to hand out money and other banking services at the doorsteps of customers.

The TGB is the first RRB in India to have been accorded permission by the RBI to start treasury function of the Tripura government and open a currency chest.

The bank official said that to encourage entrepreneurship among the rural youth and avoid guarantor system in getting loans from the bank, since 2015-16 the Gramin Bank has started forming Joint Liability Group (JLG), and so far 4,084 such groups were formed involving 17,170 people.

The TGB, which has opened 383,123 bank accounts so far under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, is the first such bank in eastern India, has introduced several customer friendly services including Aadhaar Payment Bridge System.

--IANS

sc/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off American aid to any country that votes for a resolution at the UN condemning his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

At a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said he would be "watching those votes" in the General Assembly when it meets in emergency session on Thursday over the US Jerusalem decision that has come under widespread flak, the Washington Post reported.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us," he said. "Well, we'll be watching those votes. Let them vote against us; we'll save a lot. We don't care.

"But this isn't like it used to be, where they could vote against you, and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing."

Trump ended by asserting: "We're not going to be taken advantage of any longer."

The President's remarks came after Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, warned on Twitter that "the US will be taking names" of countries that support the resolution.

And in a letter she sent to more than 180 UN ambassadors of member nations, she said she would report back to Trump on how they voted. "We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," she wrote.

The UN General Assembly will meet for a rare emergency session to discuss the status of Jerusalem on Thursday after the US vetoed earlier an Egypt-drafted request asking Washington to withdraw its decision to recognize the city as Israel's capital.

The US on Monday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem.

All other 14 members of the Security Council voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted text. But as the US, a permanent member of the Security Council, has veto power, the draft resolution failed to be adopted.

Washington's threat to cut aid was swiftly criticized by Turkey, which accused the White House of further isolating itself through its threats.

"We expect strong support at the UN vote, but we see that the US, which was left alone, is now resorting to threats," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said before leaving Istanbul for New York.

"No honourable, dignified country would bow down to this pressure."

Derek H. Chollet, who served in the Obama administration, said: "This is an empty threat. Some of the countries Trump professes to be most admiring of would be caught in the cross-hairs of this."

--IANS

soni/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Uttar Pradesh government will withdraw 20,000 political cases slapped on various people for reasons like staging a demonstration and holding sit-ins, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced on Thursday.

Speaking on the UPCOCA debate in the state assembly, he said that his government, after due deliberations, had decided to do this. Officials said there were many instances where cases had been slapped for political and other considerations to victimize political opponents and law had been misused in a big way in the past.

Adityanath also sought the support of the opposition parties, bitterly opposed to the legislation, to come join hands with the state government to weed out criminals and make Uttar Pradesh a peaceful and investor-friendly state.

A firm hand towards crime and criminals was necessary, he added while pointing out that his government had been mandated by the people to turn UP into a peaceful state.

He also allayed fears of opposition benches and the media that the law would be misused to muzzle their voice or to hound minorities or political opponents. "It is must to break the backbone of organized crime, which has thrived with the support of politicians and officials", the Chief Minister said.

--IANS

md/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Clarifying its position on the disruptions in both Houses of Parliament by its members, the Congress on Thursday said that it wants to see Parliament function but Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "raj hatt" (royal obstinacy) was making it impossible.

The Congress has demanded that Modi apologise in Parliament for his allegations against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others.

"We want to see the House run. That is why, when the government offered to talk with us, we readily accepted it and participated in the proceedings on Tuesday. Even two bills were passed. We had expected that the Prime Minister, sensing the gravity of the situation, would leave his 'raj hatt'," Congress leader Anand Sharma said.

"But we are disappointed. We have been told that the Prime Minister is not ready to apologise or accept his fault. The opposition has a lot of important issues such as Rafale deal scam, Jay Shah matter and economic slowdown due to demonetization to raise in Parliament as it is the only forum left where we can speak.

"But it seems government doesn't want discussion on these issues. Otherwise this is not such a complicated matter that can't be resolved," Sharma added.

He said that it was the "duty" of the incumbent Prime Minister to "restore the dignity" of the office of Prime Minister by taking his allegations against his predecessor back.

Sharma said that it was the Modi government that gave visa to Khurshid Kasuri and others.

Asked why then the Congress MPs participated in the Lok Sabha proceedings on Thursday, Sharma said that they were participating in discussion on the Supplementary Demands for Grants, which is a "constitutional necessity" and that his party "respects the Constitution".

Modi, during the campaign for the Gujarat Assembly polls, had claimed that during a meeting at Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's house, the guests including Manmohan Singh, discussed the Gujarat polls with Pakistan's High Commissioner to India and former Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri.

--IANS

mak/rn

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A bill unveiled Thursday by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik would require members of Congress to reimburse the Treasury Department for any sexual harassment settlements paid out on their behalf.

The legislation, the Responsible Settlements for Victims and Taxpayers Act, would also allow funds from the Congress member's federal retirement account to be used if they fail to repay the settlements within a 180-day period.

Stefanik, R-Willsboro, introduced the bill with U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, a Texas Republican. The measure aims to address the recent revelation that millions of taxpayer funds have been used to settle sexual harassment allegations against members of Congress.

"Taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for lawmakers' inappropriate behavior," Stefanik said. "This commonsense legislation addresses the recent and shocking reports of abuse by some on Capitol Hill, and it protects hard-earned taxpayer dollars."

The Office of Compliance, which oversees workplace rules for members of Congress and congressional staff, paid out more than $17 million over a 20-year period to settle complaints, including sexual harassment cases.

The House Administration Committee released information this week showing the Treasury paid $174,000 to settle sexual harassment claims against Congress.

While Olson and Stefanik believe victims should receive "just compensation," they also believe that the members of Congress, not taxpayers, should be required to pay the settlements.

"The notion that any claims of harassment have been settled at taxpayer expense is simply indefensible," Olson said.

He also explained why the provision allowing federal retirement account funds to be used to reimburse Treasury was added to the bill. He expressed concern that members of Congress could resign in an attempt to avoid any consequences, such as paying settlements.

If the bill is adopted, the funds from the federal retirement account could be taken to pay claims if the member of Congress leaves office.

"The wonderful staffers who come to Capitol Hill to serve the American people deserve a safe work environment," Olson said. "If that safety is breached, they deserve compensation from the person who harms them, not the American taxpayers."

This is the latest in a series of bill aimed at addressing sexual harassment in society.

Stefanik is supporting a bipartisan bill that would end forced arbitration in sexual harassment cases. The legislation seeks to eliminate the practice, which is often used to privately settle cases and keep those who filed the complaints quiet.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing for changes to how Congress addresses sexual harassment complaints. One reform she is pursuing is improving the process by which employees can report sexual harassment to the Office of Compliance.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has honoured the Jagdguru Kripalu Parishad (JKP) Trust for its contribution to the of girls, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds.

The award was given as part of an event organised here by Zee TV Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand channel that was also attended by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Yoga guru Baba Ramdev.

JKP Trustee Ram Puri, who received the award, said the trust has taken "the initiative of elevating the social, educational and economic level of the rural girl child in the Mangadh region".

The trust has established three educational institutes in Kunda, Pratapgarh district - the Kripalu Mahila Mahavidyalay, Kripalu Balika Intermediate College and Kripalu Balika Primary School - which together provide free to almost 6,000 girls.

JKP President Dr Vishakha Tripathi said the institutions aimed to give the girls self-respect and also make them self-reliant, adding that students were enrolled irrespective of caste, creed or religion.

--IANS

sac/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The decision of the CBI special court to set all the accused in the 2G spectrum case free, is most startling to say the least. I remember distinctly that Business Standard was the first to raise the issue in 2008 in its various editorials when there was no air of the scam in general public. The court strictly would have gone by the evidence produced before it.
As US President Donald Trumps administration throws sharp elbows in trade negotiations and systematically rescinds regulations introduced by President Barack Obama, one casualty is likely to be efforts to fight the global epidemic. Left unchecked, rapidly rising rates could slow or even reverse the dramatic gains in health and life expectancy that much of the world has enjoyed over the past few decades. And by forcing its food culture on countries such as Mexico and Canada, the United States is making the problem worse.

One of the paradoxes of modern global capitalism is that whereas more than 800 million people in the world do not have enough to eat, an estimated 700 million people (including 100 million children) are obese. Of course, the two are not necessarily directly related. A considerable proportion of world hunger occurs in countries suffering from domestic strife or severe government dysfunction.

The epidemic, however, has a much broader footprint, affecting advanced economies and most emerging markets. Although there is some connection between obesity and poverty within countries, it is notable that obesity rates in rich countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are among the worlds highest.

Recently, the US Centers for Disease Control estimated that a stunning 40 per cent of all Americans are obese (defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher), a figure that includes 20.6 per cent of adolescents (12-19 years old). According to the CDC, the average weight of an American woman today is greater than the average weight of an American man in 1960 (166 pounds, or 75 kg).

Back in 1960, the average weight of an American woman was 140 pounds or 63 kg, while the average weight of an American man today is 195 pounds, or 88 kg. (Over the same period, the average height of Americans increased by only one inch, or 2.5 centimeters.) This same dynamic is playing out worldwide, with obesity rates soaring in Europe, Latin America, and even in China.

Although it is difficult to gauge the long-run health consequences, there is abundant evidence that obesity contributes significantly to higher rates of type II diabetes, heart attacks, and certain types of cancer. The health costs are staggering, estimated to be close to $200 billion per year in the US alone. And with rising childhood obesity rates worldwide portending significantly greater health problems in the future adult population, the costs are likely to rise considerably.

The causes of obesity are manifold and complex. Nevertheless, a growing body of evidence suggests that a culture emphasising processed food and a generally sedentary lifestyle lies at the centre of the problem. In emerging markets, rapid urbanisation is another important factor, as well as a desire to emulate Western lifestyles.

Many governments have launched initiatives to improve nutrition education. Unfortunately, industry advertising typically dwarfs these efforts, as do US trade lobbyists own efforts to push processed and fast food on the rest of the world.

It is hard to ignore the fact that Mexicos adult obesity rate has soared since the adoption in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement. While there are many causes, post-NAFTA direct foreign investment in the processed food industry and a surge in advertising are important contributors.

Mexican consumption of sugary beverages nearly tripled between 1993 and 2014, and a new tax on sugary drinks has muted demand only slightly since then. The other NAFTA partner, Canada, has similarly experienced a rise in obesity, partly because US imports have led to a sharp decline in the price of fructose.

It is unfortunate that government regulators have been so slow to try to reverse these trends by, for example, helping to educate the public on the science of nutrition. And, for too long, most government anti-obesity education has focused on mechanically regulating calorie intake, without taking into account that different foods have dramatically different effects on appetite (as David Ludwig, a professor at Harvard Medical School, emphasises in his excellent new book Always Hungry).

Sceptics may point out that nutrition guidelines always seem to be morphing, with last years sin food becoming this years superfood, and vice-versa. Though there is some truth to this, the fact is that nutrition research has made significant progress in recent decades.

The government has other tools at its disposal, besides education, for affecting peoples eating habits. They can and should place greater restrictions on advertising to children, as the UK, France, and several other countries have done; obesity in early years can lead to lifelong problems. Beyond that, Ludwig, Tufts Universitys Dariush Mozaffarian, and I have proposed instituting a tax on processed food, much the same way that tobacco is taxed. Proceeds from the tax could be used to subsidise healthier alternatives.

It is perhaps fantasy to expect the current US administration to consider any kind of anti-obesity strategy while it is still busy dismantling Obama-era policies. But that is all the more reason why countries entering new trade agreements with the US (for example, the post-Brexit UK, or post-NAFTA Canada) must be wary of any provisions that tie their hands in the war against obesity.



The writer, a former chief economist of the IMF, is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017

www.project-syndicate.org
Emboldened by the court verdict in the telecom spectrum allocation case, the Congress party on Thursday said it would not let Parliaments winter session transact any business until Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologised for misleading the country and maligning the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.
Thursdays is bad news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it prepares for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It not only weakens its anti-corruption plank against the second term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, but also strengthens the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), currently an ally of the Congress.
As the voting in RK Nagar Assembly constituency, which was left vacant after the death of former chief minister of Tamil Nadu J Jayalalithaa, ended, 73.45 percent turnout has been recorded on Thursday.

The polling at the constituency, which had been vacant, since December last year, had begun earlier in the day.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Karu Nagarajan and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) candidate N Marudhu Ganesh have also cast their votes.

Speaking to media after casting his vote, Ganesh expressed confidence of sweeping the polls and said, "Whether it is Rs 6000 or Rs 60,000, we are going to win. The voters of RK Nagar will teach a lesson to AIADMK this time."

Chief Minister K Palaniswami and deputy Chief Minister O Pannerselvam, DMK working president M K Stalin and sidelined DMK leader TTV Dhinakaran had left no stone unturned to ensure victory for their respective candidates.

The by-poll were earlier scheduled for April 12, but was cancelled following allegations that sums of money were distributed in a vote-for-cash scam.

Counting of votes will be held on December 24.
The CBI special court of justice O P Saini on Thursday gave its verdict in the so-called 2G scam, and acquitted all the accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK Rajya Sabha MP, M K Kanimojhi. The court made some strong observations in its 1,522 page judgment.



Here are some of the highlights of the judgment:
A car ploughed into a crowd in Australia's second-largest city today in what police said was a "deliberate act" that left more than a dozen people injured, some of them seriously.

Witnesses said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle, which did not appear to be trying to stop as it "mowed everybody down".

Victoria state police said they had arrested the driver of the car after it "collided with a number of pedestrians" in downtown Melbourne at a busy intersection just after 4.30pm local time (0530 GMT).

A second man was also arrested



"We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act. The motivations are unknown," Victoria Police's Commander Russell Barrett told reporters in Melbourne.

Paramedics were "treating and transporting to hospital" 13 people, with some seriously hurt, ambulance officials said.

Sky News Australia reported that a pre-school child with a head injury was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Citing witnesses, Sky said a white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd, with no signs the vehicle made an effort to slow down.

Local media showed photos of one man wearing a long- sleeve top being dragged from a car, while a bearded second man wearing a red checked shirt was seen handcuffed and sitting on the ground.

In a tweet, police appealed to members of the public to upload any images they might have of the incident to a cloud address to help assist with their investigation.

A witness, named only as Sue, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that she heard screams and saw "people flying everywhere".

"We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said.

"People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere."



Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw a "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys - and I hope not prams," he said.

"I've really never seen anything like this before and I haven't stopped shaking."



The intersection is one of Melbourne's busiest, a local shop owner told national broadcaster ABC, and is particularly crowded at this time of the year ahead of the Christmas break, with school holidays under way.

The incident came months after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne's busiest mall in January, killing six people.
Fourteen journalists were arrested in Chhattisgarh in the last 11 months, the state government informed the Legislative Assembly today.

It includes freelance journalist Vinod Verma, arrested in connection with an alleged sex CD scandal.

In a written reply to a question by Leader of Opposition T S Singhdeo (Congress), Home Minister Ramsewak Paikra said, "Fourteen journalists were arrested between January 2017 and November 29, 2017 in the state.

"Cases had been registered against these journalists before the arrests," the reply added.

Vinod Verma (51), accused of involvement in the circulation of a 'sex CD' allegedly featuring a state minister, is among the arrested journalists, the reply said



Verma was apprehended by the state police from Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) on October 27 this year. He was arrested following a complaint lodged by Prakash Bajaj with Pandri police in Raipur under section 384 (extortion) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, the reply added.

Overall, three journalists were arrested in Kondagaon district, two each in Durg and Raipur districts and one each in Surajpur, Koriya, Sukma, Mungeli, Gariaband, Bilaspur and Kanker.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 17-year-old girl was allegedly abducted and raped by her cousin here, police said today.

The victim's family, in their complaint, alleged that the cousin took the girl, who was going from her home to school, to Surat on October 13 and allegedly "raped her for a few days", officer-in-charge Durgvijay Singh said.

However, the girl's statement is yet to be recorded, he said.

The girl has been sent for medical examination, he said, adding that a case has been registered in Banda district.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is once again calling for reforms to New York's electoral system, but there are some new additions to the agenda this year to address concerns about cybersecurity and entities funding political communications.

Cuomo, a Democrat, announced the proposals Thursday. The comprehensive agenda is part of his 2018 State of the State address, which he will deliver Jan. 3 in Albany.

Electoral reform

As he has in past years, Cuomo wants to allow early voting in New York. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 37 states and the District of Columbia have some form of early voting system. Supporters of early voting say it could help boost voter turnout in New York, which has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country.

Cuomo's plan would require every county to open at least one polling location during the 12 days prior to Election Day. The polling site must be open at least eight hours on weekdays and five hours on weekends. There should be one early voting site for every 50,000 residents in the county.

Another proposal is automatic voter registration. For example, if you fill out a form at the Department of Motor Vehicles, your information will be relayed to the county Board of Elections and you will be automatically registered to vote. There will be an option if you do not wish to register to vote.

Cuomo is also pushing for same-day voter registration. The state doesn't allow voters to register on Election Day. Same-day voter registration is permitted in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Election infrastructure improvements

With concerns about cybersecurity and the integrity of voting systems, Cuomo unveiled a four-point plan to bolster New York's election infrastructure.

A collection of agencies will form the Election Support Center to provide expertise and help develop cybersecurity regulations. The center will be tasked with relaying best practices to county boards and distributing threat information to local officials.

Cybersecurity is a concern for local and state election officials. Russian hackers targeted election software used by four counties, including Cayuga, in 2016. While there didn't appear to be a breach, it led to a greater focus on securing election systems.

Cuomo's other proposals to boost security include:

 Creating a cybersecurity toolkit that will provide county boards with access to log analysis, network monitoring, distributed denial of service defenses during elections and voter registration times and change-detection software to monitor voter database changes. The toolkit will be updated annually.

 Counties will be required to notify the state Board of Elections and the New York State Police if there is a data breach that could expose private voter or election data. The state Board of Elections will be required to release an annual election security report to the governor and state Legislature.

 To assist county election boards, the state Information Technology Services Office will provide vulnerability assessments to ensure the protection of voting machines. The state will also provide a free disaster recovery service.

"What we saw during the last election was a systematic effort to undermine and manipulate our very democracy," Cuomo said. "With these new safeguards, New York  in the strongest terms possible  will combat unscrupulous and shadowy threats to our electoral process, as well as break down fundamental barriers that for far too long have prevented New Yorkers from being heard and from exercising their right to vote."

Digital ad transparency

There is a push at the federal level to ensure greater disclosure of the entities paying for digital political advertisements. The legislative effort stems from the revelation that Russians funded political ads on social media platforms that were viewed by millions of Americans.

An estimated 126 million Americans viewed Facebook ads paid for by Russia during the 2016 election. On Twitter, there were 131,000 messages linked to more than 36,000 Russian accounts.

Cuomo's proposal is to amend the state's definition of political communication to include internet advertisements. Current law is limited to advertisements that appear in newspapers or on radio or television. Online ads aren't covered.

Under Cuomo's plan, digital election-related messages must include a disclosure of who paid for the ad. Anyone who doesn't abide by this requirement could be forced to pay a fine of up to $1,000.

Cuomo also wants to require digital platforms to create a public file of all political communications purchased by an individual or group related to state elections. The file would consist of a digital copy of the ad, a description of the audience targeted by the ad, the number of views generated, the dates and times of publication, the rates charged for the ad and the contact information of the purchaser.

Lastly, Cuomo wants to require online platforms to ensure foreign individuals and entities will not secretly fund ads that seek to influence New York elections. A person or entity seeking to buy digital ads would be required to register as an independent expenditure committee. Foreign entitles will be blocked from forming an independent committee.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee and the sponsor of the Honest Ads Act, praised Cuomo for taking action at the state level to increase transparency in digital election ad campaigns.

"The federal government and states must work together to stop foreign influence and improve accountability in online political advertising," Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said. "The American people deserve nothing less."
The acquittal of all the accused in the 2G case by a special court today triggered a major political slugfest between the BJP and the Opposition with the Congress saying "truth" finally prevailed and the ruling party asking it not to treat the verdict as a "badge of honour".

Alleging that the BJP, which was in opposition then, had spread a "propaganda", the Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP apologise to the nation for doing so.

On the other hand, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners in the case, said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.

DMK MP Kanimozhi and former telecom minister A Raja, two of the accused in the case, hailed the verdict and said justice has been delivered.

Congress veteran Manmohan Singh, who was the prime minister when the alleged scam took place, reacted saying the verdict made it clear that the "massive propaganda" against the UPA was without any foundation.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh told reporters.

Former Union minister P Chidambaram echoed Singh's view, saying that the allegations of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was "never true and not correct" and the verdict established that.

Attacking the BJP, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, "The BJP has been exposed for its untruth and propaganda against the Congress. The prime minister, (Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley and the BJP should apologise to the nation," Surjewala said.

Congress MP and former telecom minister Kapil Sibal also demanded apology from former CAG Vinod Rai and the BJP, asserting that he has been saying from day one that there was no loss. "I have been vindicated today. In fact it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation," he added.

Jaitley hit back, saying the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour".

The party's "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, he added.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, Jaitley asserted.

"The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012," he told reporters.

Swamy, who was one of the petitioners on whose plea a CBI probe was ordered in 2G case, told PTI outside the court premises that the government should appeal in the high court against acquittal of all the accused.

"Congis (sic) and allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here," Swamy also tweeted.

Raja and Kanimozhi and all other accused were acquitted in the politically-sensitive 2G spectrum allocation scam cases by the special court which held that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove the charges.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the top court on February 2, 2012.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian missions abroad have received 3,328 complaints from Indian women about marital disputes with their NRI spouses since 2015, the government informed the Rajya Sabha today.

Of the 3,328 complaints, 3,268 were addressed by way of providing the women counselling, guidance and information about procedures, mechanisms for serving judicial summons on the overseas Indian husbands, V K Singh, the Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, said in written response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

The missions received 796 complaints in 2015, 1,510 in 2016 and 1,022 until November 30 this year.

Singh said assistance is also extended in filing a case against the husband in India, issuing a lookout circular, impounding and revocation of the Indian passport of the husband, and getting access to lawyers and NGOs empanelled with Indian missions and legal and financial assistance, Singh added.

The government, since 2014, has provided assistance to 88,302 Indians residing abroad in the times of emergency and conflict, Singh told the Rajya Sabha.

"Since 2014, an increasing number of women are approaching the government through the social media for assistance. Use of social media is quick and every minute the people are increasingly using this route hence very dynamic," Singh said, adding that the external affairs minister herself receives a large number of requests on her Twitter handle.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan and Sri Lanka have 681 Indian fishermen in their custody, the government informed the Rajya Sabha today.

In written response to a question in the Upper House, V K Singh, the Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, said 537 fishermen were in jails in Pakistan while 144 were in Sri Lankan jails.

Pakistan has 1,000 boats and Sri Lanka has 144 boats of Indian fishermen in their custody.

Singh, however, said that Pakistan has not acknowledged the number of Indian fishermen and boats in their custody.

"The state of bilateral relations between India and Pakistan impinges on the release and repatriation of Indian fishermen. Even in the absence of a structured bilateral dialogue, both sides have released fishermen," Singh said.

He added that in 2017, India secured the release and repatriation of 363 Indian fishermen, of which 245 were released in the last six months.

Following the 2+2 initiative when the foreign and fisheries ministers of India and Sri Lanka met last year, it was agreed that the ministers of fisheries from the two sides will meet every six months.

The 3rd meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) and the 2nd Ministerial meeting was held on October 13 and 14 in New Delhi.

"As a result of sustained diplomatic efforts, the government has so far secured the release of 347 fishermen from Sri Lankan custody," he added.

In response to another question on the Rohingya issue, Singh said during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Myanmar, the matter was raised with the Myanmerese leadership and the two countries agreed that the only lasting solution to the problem lay in overall development of Rakhine state.

In order to meet the pressing relief needs of the displaced persons, India has supplied essential regiments to about 30,000 people in Bangladesh and about 15,000 people in Myanmar in October and November, Singh said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
About 74.89 per cent was recorded in today's by-election to West Bengal's Sabang assembly constituency, where ruling TMC is locked in a high voltage fight with BJP and the CPI-M.

According to the Election Commission sources 74.89 per cent votes were recorded till 3 PM.

With the polling continuing till 5 pm the final vote percentage is awaited.

The EC said the election was by and large peaceful and it is looking into complaints by the opposition parties.

Polling in the constituency is being held amid tight security with eight companies of central forces deployed, he said.

The opposition CPI(M) and BJP have accused the ruling Trinamool Congress of driving away their election agents from the polling booths, which was denied by TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh criticized TMC for resorting to terror during the polls.

"The election results will not reflect the real mandate of the people. The people of Sabang could not vote freely and fairly due to the terror tactics of TMC," he said.

Ghosh's view was echoed by CPI(M) and Congress.

"The TMC has been doing this in each and every election. They know that they will lose Sabang and that is why they resorted to violence," Leader of opposition and state Congress leader Abdul Mannan said.

The TMC, however, denied the allegations and said the people have voted in favour of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's developmental .

"The allegation made by the opposition parties is completely baseless. Voting is peaceful in the constituency," Bhunia said.

TMC has fielded Gita Rani Bhunia, wife of Manas Bhunia, a former Congress MLA who had defected to the Mamata Banerjee-led party earlier this year necessitating the byelection.

Bhunia had won the seat in last year's assembly polls.

The BJP has nominated Antara Bhattacharya, while the Congress has fielded Chiranjib Bhowmick, a local leader. Rita Mandal of the CPI(M) is contesting as a Left Front candidate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An estimated 84.5 per cent votes were cast in today's by-election to West Bengal's Sabang assembly constituency, where ruling TMC is locked in a high voltage fight with BJP and the CPI-M.

According to the Election Commission sources about 84.5 per cent votes were recorded at the end of polls which passed off peacefully.

Polling in the constituency was held amid tight security with eight companies of central forces deployed, the sources said.

With opposition CPI(M) and BJP accusing the ruling Trinamool Congress of driving away their election agents from the polling booths, the EC said it is looking into the complaints.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh criticised TMC for resorting to terror during the polls and said "The election results will not reflect the real mandate of the people. The people of Sabang could not vote freely and fairly due to the terror tactics of TMC."



He was echoed by the Congress and the CPI(M).

"The TMC has been doing this in each and every election. They know that they will lose Sabang and that is why they resorted to violence," Leader of opposition and state Congress leader Abdul Mannan said.

The TMC, however, denied the allegations and said the people have voted in favour of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's developmental .

"The allegation made by the opposition parties is completely baseless. Voting is peaceful in the constituency," TMC Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia, who is a former Congress MLA said.

TMC has fielded his wife Gita Rani Bhunia in the seat.

Manas Bhunia, had won the seat in last year's assembly poll on a Congress ticket but had defected to the Mamata Banerjee-led party earlier this year necessitating the byelection.

Antara Bhattacharya is the BJP candidate, while the Congress fielded Chiranjib Bhowmick, a local leader. Rita Mandal of the CPI(M) contested as a Left Front candidate.

Counting of votes for the by-election will be held on December 24.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gujarat debacle notwithstanding, the Aam Aadmi Party is gearing up to contest assembly elections in Karnataka.

AAP's observer for Karnataka and party's political action committee member Sanjay Singh today visited Bengaluru and discussed with the state team about the possibility to contest the elections.

"Today Sanjay Singh had a discussion withthe team and saw the ground realities", AAP's state convener and central corecommittee member Prithvi Reddy told PTI here.

AAP may not have a popular face in the state but it has decided to invite all like-minded people to join the party.

"Leadership will automatically evolve. Just becauseyou don't have a face that doesn't mean you should not fight election. It is not necessary to have a face to fight an election," Reddy said.

Reddy said the AAP was open to welcome dissident Ravi Krishna Reddy, who quit the party about two years ago.

If he chooses to come back, the party would definitely consider it. It was time for good people to come together, Reddy said.

Social activist Santosh Nargund hasjoined the party and will contest against BJP heavyweight andformer chief minister Jagadish Shettar in Hubballi.

In the just concluded assembly polls in Gujarat, AAP had failed to make any impact with all the 27 candidates fielded by it losing their deposits.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP veteran L K Advani today seemed unhappy at the din created in the Lok Sabha due to protests by Congress members seeking an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his remarks against former premier Manmhan Singh during Gujarat election campaign.

Advani was seen pointing towards Congress members, protesting in the Well during the Question Hour, while talking to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar.

Kumar was also seen pointing at the Congress members while talking to Advani.

During the 2016 Winter Session, Advani had expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Parliament was being disrupted, saying neither the Lok Sabha Speaker, nor the Parliamentary Affairs Minister was running the House.

The BJP veteran is a member of the party's Margdarshak Mandal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Air India's operational profit rose to Rs 215 crore and net losses narrowed to Rs 3,643 crore in 2016-17, according to the government.

To revive the loss-making national carrier, the government is working on the modalities for its strategic disinvestment while Ernst & Young LLP has been appointed as the transaction advisor.

According to provisional figures mentioned in a written reply given by union minister Jayant Sinha in the Lok Sabha, the airline has increased its operational profit to Rs 215 crore in the last financial year.

In 2016-17, the airline had a net loss of Rs 3,643 crore while operating profit rose to Rs 215 crore, the provisional figures showed.

Air India incurred a net loss of Rs 3,836.77 crore even as it managed to eke out an operational profit of Rs 105 crore in 2015-16.

"As per the provisional figures for the financial year 2016- 17, the total loans of the company as on March 31, 2017 are around Rs 48,877 crore," Sinha said.

To a question on whether the government has consulted all stakeholders, including workers' unions before the disinvestment, he replied in the negative.

On June 28 this year, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave its in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment of Air India and its five subsidiaries.

An Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, is working on the modalities.

The On-Time Performance (OTP) of Air India flights is monitored at the highest level by the top management of the airline as well as the civil aviation ministry, Sinha said in another written reply.

Various measures, including initiatives to increase the availability of resources in terms of crew and aircraft, are being taken to improve the OTP, he added.
The Gauhati High Court today termed as illegal the detention of RTI activist and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti leader under the National Security Act (NSA).

Justice Achintya Malla Bujar Barua passed the judgment on Gogoi's detention and that accordingly he was entitled for immediate release if not arrested in any other case.

Gogoi was arrested on September 13 on charges of sedition and 11 days later he was booked under the NSA.

While addressing a rally in Moran town on September 12, Gogoi had said if Hindu migrants from Bangladesh were forced upon Assam people from the state would be compelled to take up arms. He was arrested the next day.

The detention was challenged before the High Court in a writ petition.

The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti leader has been lodged in Dibrugarh jail since his arrest.

Gogoi has been leading an agitation against the government's handling of the farming crisis in Assam, the building of dams, land mafia and corruption in public life.
Two new youth programs will come to the Auburn YMCA in January.

The Teen Leadership Program, for ages 13 to 16, will meet from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays beginning Jan. 9. The Tween Leadership Program, for ages 10 to 12, will meet from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursdays beginning Jan. 11.

The two community service-based programs help teens discover their potential as leaders by participating in life skills workshops, service learning, recreation and academic support.

The programs are free, but preregistration is required. They take place at the Auburn YMCA, 27 William St., Auburn.

For more information, call (315) 253-5304 ext. 115 or email joshua@auburnymca.net.
Ali Anwar, who was disqualified from the Rajya Sabha recently, today moved the Delhi High Court seeking restoration of his membership.

Anwar said in his plea he was not given any chance by the Rajya Sabha Chairman to be heard before he disqualified him and former JD(U) president Sharad Yadav on December 4.

The high court had refused to grant an interim stay on the disqualification of Yadav as a Rajya Sabha member on December 15 but allowed him to draw his salary, allowances and perks, and retain the bungalow.

The plea by Anwar, seeking an interim stay on the decision of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, was mentioned before a bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal today for urgent hearing.

The bench listed the matter for hearing tomorrow.

Anwar, who had rebelled against the official JD(U) faction led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after the latter joined hands with the BJP, has termed the RS chairman's order as "perverse, contrary to the rules of the natural justice and is also tainted with malafides".

The plea stated that the filing of an application before the Election Commission of India by the Yadav-led faction for recognition as the real JD(U) cannot lead to the inference that he voluntarily gave up his membership of the party.

"The dispute before ECI was in respect of which faction constitutes the JD(U) and, therefore, any adjudication by the ECI on a petition filed by the supporters of the petitioner cannot be termed as anti-party activity by any stretch of imagination," the plea said.

Anwar was elected to the House in year 2012 and his tern was scheduled to expire early next year.

Naidu, while disqualifying the two, had accepted the JD(U)'s contention that they had "voluntarily given up" their party membership by defying its directives and attending events of opposition parties.

The JD(U) had sought their disqualification on the ground that they had attended a rally of opposition parties in Patna in violation of its directive.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Allahabad High Court today quashed a decree of divorce based on instant triple talaq, setting aside a family court order.

A family court in Bareilly had passed a decree in March in favour of Mohammad Farooq alias Farooq Khan and held that by pronouncing talaq thrice, the husband had divorced his wife, Arsey Jahan.

The High Court bench, comprising Justice Arun Tandon and Justice Rajiv Joshi, passed the order, allowing an appeal filed by Jahan in which she challenged the family court's judgement.

The bench while setting aside the decree of divorce stated that instant tripal talaq has already been deemed illegal by the Supreme Court in the case of Shayara Bano.

According to the facts of the case, Farooq married Arsey Jahan in 2009. He was employed in the Indian Army.

While he was on duty, his wife lodged an FIR against him and his family, alleging dowry harassment.

She also stated that she was not ready to live with her husband.

On August 17, 2011, Farooq divorced his wife by pronouncing talaq thrice in the presence of two witnesses, which was later communicated to her by a registered letter.

The husband filed a case before family court seeking a declaration be issued that he has divorced his wife, Arsey said.

She then filed her plea in the High Court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After setting up the first Scheduled Caste Advisory Council in the country, the West Bengal government will now formulate the Other Backward Class (OBC) Advisory Council to look into the development of their social, educational, economical and cultural aspects, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said today.

"We will formulate a council for the Other Backward Classes soon," Banerjee said.

The first meeting of the Scheduled Caste Advisory Council of West Bengal was held here during the day under Banerjee and decided to meet every six months, officials said.

"It was a very fruitful meeting held today. We had a very good discussions at the first meeting," the chief minister said.

Besides, Banerjee, Chief Secretary Malay Dey, West Bengal Backward Classes Welfare Minister Churamani Mahata were among those present at the meeting.

The state cabinet had decided in October to set up the council to look into the development of people belonging to the scheduled castes in the state.

"The people belonging to SC classes do not know the facilities due to them or ways to avail bank loans. The SC Advisory will look into these problems," she said.

The council will look into the development of the social, educational, economical and cultural matters of the scheduled castes in the state and function on the lines of the existing tribal advisory council, the officials said.

Out of the total 295 assembly seats in Bengal there are 66 reserved for scheduled caste candidates.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) has become a major driver of art and culture in India and bolstered Kochi's global reputation as a vibrant place for cultural pluralism, says a report.

The biennial event, which began in 2012, has built infrastructure for culture, triggered economic spin-offs in the tourism sector and spawned jobs, according to the report by professional services firm KPMG.

The report is about the 108-day-long third edition of KMB, organised during the period December 2016-March 2017, a statement here said.

The 44-page report was prepared based on a comprehensive survey of visitors, artists, volunteers, business owners, vendors and local residents, it said.

"Through the celebration of international contemporary art, KMB invokes the historic cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi and its legendary predecessor, the ancient seaport of Muziris," the findings said.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who formally released the report yesterday here, has described KMB as "The gateway between Kerala and the world, with diverse expressions of international art and culture moving freely and being brought together under one umbrella."



Finance Minister Dr TM Thomas Isaac and Tourism Minister Shri Kadakampally Surendran were also present at the function.

As knowledge partners, KPMG in India reviewed the economic contribution of the arts and culture in Kochi along with the impact of investment that the state government provided in support of arts and cultural facilities during the three months that the event was underway.

Over three editions, KMB has established itself as one of the most important art exhibitions in the world, the report said adding that Aspinwall House, the mother venue, has become synonymous with Kochi Biennale, just as the Giardini and the Arsenale are with the Venice Biennale.

In particular, Biennale 2016, which featured 97 artists from 31 countries, gave an impetus to tourism, the report noted.

"KMB 2016 can be termed as a crowd puller with nearly 600,000 visitors arriving for the event, and around 62 per cent of the international tourists were visiting Kerala for the first time," it said.

"The biennale has truly become a transformative event, impacting the way people think about art, culture and ideas," President of Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), Bose Krishnamachari said.

"By showcasing the best of contemporary art, it has provided a unique content to the city of Kochi that thrives on its historic pluralistic traditions," he said.

KBF Secretary Riyas Komu said the biennale has become a brilliant signpost of the contemporary international art and a robust affirmation of the creativity of local talents.

KPMG in India Chairman and CEO Arun Kumar said, "It is exciting to see how the biennale has rapidly become one of the leading global festivals of contemporary art along the lines of its European counterpart, the Venice Biennale."



The event also garnered huge support on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

Within the first ten weeks of the first edition of KMB, it gained 12.3 million hits on Facebook and has 90,274 followers as on 18 May 2017 on this social media site, the report added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Normal life was affected in parts of Bihar today on account of a shutdown called by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to protest against the sand-mining policy of the Nitish Kumar-led government.

Protesters tried to disrupt road traffic in the morning and forced vendors to close their shops in several districts.

In the state capital, the bandh evoked mixed response as many commercial establishments remained open but downed shutters for brief periods during visits by RJD supporters.

Senior RJD leaders, including MLAs Tejashwi Yadav, Tej Pratap Yadav and Bhola Yadav, were detained at the Dak Bungalow Road crossing when they were staging a demonstration atop a tractor, a senior police officer said.

They were taken to Kotwali police station nearby and let off a couple of hours later after they signed bonds, he added.

The RJD leaders have been accusing the state government of putting stringent restrictions on sand mining.

The opposition party claimed that construction activities have come to a standstill in the state and thousands of workers have been rendered jobless due to the restrictions.

The party had, however, kept the Patna City and the bypass area out of the bandh purview to avoid causing inconvenience to the Sikh pilgrims who had converged in the area to attend the "Shukrana" (thanksgiving) ceremony as part of the 350th Prakash Parv (birth anniversary) celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh.

Despite pleas by the top RJD leaders to allow free movement of emergency services during the bandh, ambulances were seen stranded in traffic jams here.

The bandh supporters blocked road traffic in Begusarai, Aurangabad, Samastipur and Siwan. In Maner, in the outskirts of Patna, led by MLA Bhai Virendra RJD members burnt tyres on the highway, disrupting movement of vehicles on the busy Patna-Ara road for several hours.

The bandh drew flak from the JD(U)-BJP government.

State minister and BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said, "The behaviour of RJD activists reminded everybody of the lawlessness that prevail in the state whenever the party has been in power."



JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar accused the RJD of being "in cahoots with the sand-mining mafia" and questioned the rationale behind calling a bandh "despite an announcement made by the Chief Secretary yesterday that sand mining will continue, for the time being, as per old provisions".

RJD national vice-president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, however, said the chief secretary's announcement was just an eyewash.

"The Patna High Court had categorically directed the state government, after staying its policy, to allow sand mining as per unamended provisions," he said.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad remained conspicuous by his absence at the demonstrations staged by his party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over a thousand supporters of the Rashtriya Janata Dal were detained today for trying to enforce a shutdown in Bihar to protest against the sand-mining policy of the Nitish Kumar-led government.

A top police officer said protesters tried to disrupt road traffic in the morning and forced vendors to close their shops in several districts.

In the state capital, the bandh evoked mixed response as many commercial establishments remained open but downed shutters for brief periods during visits by RJD supporters.

"A total of 1,734 persons were held across the state for disrupting public order, while trying to enforce the bandh," Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) S K Singhal told reporters.

He said 18 FIRs have been lodged at various police stations in the districts in connection with the incidents reported during the day.

Senior RJD leaders, including MLAs Tejashwi Yadav, Tej Pratap Yadav and Bhola Yadav, were detained at the Dak Bungalow Road crossing when they were staging a demonstration in a tractor, police said.

They were taken to the Kotwali police station nearby and let off a couple of hours later after they signed bonds, they said.

The RJD leaders have been accusing the state government of putting stringent restrictions on sand mining.

The Opposition party claimed that construction activities have come to a standstill in the state and thousands of workers have been rendered jobless due to the restrictions.

The party had, however, kept the Patna City and the bypass area out of the bandh purview to avoid causing inconvenience to Sikh pilgrims, who had converged in the area to attend the "Shukrana" (thanksgiving) ceremony as part of the 350th Prakash Parv (birth anniversary) celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh.

Despite pleas by the top RJD leaders to allow free movement of emergency services during the bandh, ambulances were seen stranded in traffic jams here.

The bandh supporters blocked road traffic in Begusarai, Aurangabad, Samastipur and Siwan. In Maner, in the outskirts of Patna, led by MLA Bhai Virendra RJD members burnt tyres on the highway, disrupting movement of vehicles on the busy Patna-Ara road for several hours.

The bandh drew flak from the JD(U)-BJP government.

State minister and BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said, "The behaviour of RJD activists reminded everybody of the lawlessness that prevail in the state whenever the party has been in power."



JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar accused the RJD of being "in cahoots with the sand-mining mafia" and questioned the rationale behind calling a bandh "despite an announcement made by the Chief Secretary yesterday that sand mining will continue, for the time being, as per old provisions".

RJD national vice-president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, however, said the chief secretary's announcement was just an eyewash.

"The Patna High Court had categorically directed the state government, after staying its policy, to allow sand mining as per unamended provisions," he said.

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad remained conspicuous by his absence at the demonstrations staged by his party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On a day a court acquitted all the accused in the politically-sensitive 2G spectrum scam case, former Union minister Prithviraj Chavan said a "negative perception" created by the BJP on the issue had hugely hurt the Congress' performance in the 2014 elections.

He also said the Congress was subjected to a "media trial" over the perceived corruption in the allocation of 2G spectrum to telecom companies.

A special court in Delhi today acquitted former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi along with fifteen other accused and three companies in the case.

Chavan, who had served as the Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office during 20042010 before he was made chief minister of his home state, blamed the BJP for spreading "falsehood" on the issue.

"The BJP created a huge negative public perception against the Congress on 2G issue and spread bogus allegations without proof," Chavan said addressing reporters here.

He said the BJP's "false propaganda" and the "media trial" adversely affected the Congress' electoral prospects in 2014.

"The government (prosecution) could not provide any admissible evidence in the case before the court," Chavan said referring to the acquittal.

In an oblique reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim of a Pakistani hand in Gujarat polls, Chavan said, "the NDA government is still levelling false allegations against former prime minister Manmohan Singh without providing any proof and is misguiding the people".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Buoyed by the 2G spectrum case verdict, the Congress today said that truth has finally prevailed and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley apologise to the nation for the BJP's alleged "propaganda and lies" on the issue.

The Congress also said that accountability should be fixed against those including former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai who dubbed it a scam, after all the accused were acquitted in the case today by a special court as the prosecution failed to establish any charges.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose UPA-II government was rocked by the 2G scam, said the court judgement needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government was without any foundation.

"We respect the court's judgement. I do not want to boast (about) anything. I think the court's judgement has to be respected.

"I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously that all this massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation," Singh said.

Asked about allegations that lies were spread against his government, he said, "Well, the judgement speaks for itself."



Former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said, "One thing is clear... the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never true and not correct and that has been established today."



Congress communications incharge Randeep Surjewala accused the BJP of spreading lies and propaganda for years to come to power and said "today is the day for fixing accountability and responsibility".

"Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power, apologise to the country," he told reporters.

Surjewala said the BJP "stands exposed today before the country" and alleged that "speaking lies, hatching conspiracies is the real DNA and nature of the BJP".

"Will all such conspirators, whose 'sardars' (leaders) including prime minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and their "pichhlagu and pitthu" (stooge) Vinod Rai, should their accountability not be fixed," he asked.

Alleging that the BJP stands exposed for conspiring against the Congress, Surjewala said Modi, Jaitley and the BJP should publicly apologise to the 125 crore people of the country.

"Today the entire country, after what this Supreme-Court monitored CBI court said, asks why accountability of those who dubbed 2G spectrum a scam be not fixed. Today is the day for demanding accountability and responsibility," he said.

Former Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said, "After the 2G judgement by the Special Court. Zero gain for BJP. My position is vindicated."



He said, "today my words have been proved right. There was no corruption, there was no loss. If there was any scam, it was a scam of lies, the opposition's and Vinod Rai's lies. Vinod Rai must apologise."



The CAG had estimated a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in 2008 2G spectrum allocation.

In his comments following the CAG report, Sibal had claimed zero loss to the government.

Sibal today claimed a lot of NPAs are on account of the telecom companies whose licences were cancelled. "They had to borrow money from banks and could not return and that is how many of the NPAs were accumulated," he said.

He said the telecom sector is "in dire straits, thanks to Vinod Rai and thanks to the (then) opposition and its leaders".

"If you create an atmosphere of suspicion and that everything the UPA did was wrong and the opposition gets on to the bandwagon the entire atmosphere is vitiated...then you have positions like this," he said.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said "the truth has been revealed by the special CBI court".

"The truth ultimately has prevailed. It has been proved now that the BJP speaks lies and propaganda to win elections," he alleged.

Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said the 2G verdict will remain a "black mark" in the history of CAG and ex-CAG Rai should be prosecuted.

"You know the CAG chief is today one of the strong advisors of the government, posted on various boards and organisations, and is being rewarded for what he has done. That will remain a black mark in the history of CAG," Vadakkan said.

"He (Rai) should be prosecuted by the law of the land for creating such kind of excuses and cover-ups. I think he should be prosecuted," the Congress spokesperson said.

"In this Parliament session, they have a lot of questions to answer. How can you do this to any political party? People are watching this very closely. This is going to echo across the country," Vadakkan said.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case. Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Catalans voted today in a crucial election that could mark a turning point for their region, just two months after a failed secession bid triggered Spain's worst political crisis in decades.

Record turnout is expected in a vote pitting leaders of the wealthy northeastern region's separatist movement against parties that want to remain in Spain.

Will voters again hand victory to pro-independence parties that tried to break Catalonia from Spain, one of whose candidates is in jail and the other in self-imposed exile in Belgium?



Or will they lose the absolute parliamentary majority of 72 seats they won in 2015?



Catalans on both sides of the divide saw the day as a potential moment of truth for their region, following weeks of upheaval and protests unseen since democracy was reinstated following the death in 1975 of dictator Franco.

While the independence question is far from new, it was the referendum on October 1 -- and a heavy police crackdown on voters -- that focused the world's attention on the region.

Some 5.5 million people are registered to vote in Thursday's election which is likely to see seven parties winning mandates in the 135-seat regional parliament.

Even before polling stations opened in Barcelona, people had formed long queues to cast their ballots.

In the seaside town of Calafell, Joan Rafael Nunez Margalet, a 56-year-old fisherman, was among the first to vote.

"We had to vote today, we couldn't have stayed home," he said, adding that he was voting for the pro-unity camp.

The vote is widely seen as a plebiscite on the independence question in Catalonia, whose autonomy Spain stripped in an unprecedented move after a failed independence declaration on October 27.

Crucially, however, even if the pro-independence camp wins, it is not expected to attempt another breakaway from Spain but rather try to enter into negotiations with Madrid.

In the staunchly pro-independence town of Vic, the sun shone feebly on a small line of voters waiting in the freezing cold outside a day centre for the elderly, their polling station.

One man wore a yellow ribbon -- a symbol used by separatists demanding their leaders be freed from detention.

Posters advocating independence were plastered all over the nearby walls, one of which had a picture of someone's hands tied behind their back, which read: "Help Catalonia".

Following the controversial October referendum, which went ahead despite a ban by Madrid, the crisis came to a head later that month when the regional parliament declared unilateral independence.

The move infuriated the Spanish government but also rattled a Europe still reeling from Britain's decision to leave.

The secession bid was short-lived, though, as Madrid sacked Catalonia's government, dissolved its parliament and called snap elections.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The fall months have been filled with the hustle and bustle of Christmas concert preparation, field trips, science projects and book reports. Were settling into our one-room schoolhouse nicely, taking the time to develop and nurture our mission. Mrs. McNabb has kept the children busy reading, writing and presenting while they travel around the world.

The trip commenced by finding a seat in the Parthenon and interviewing Athena, Narcissus, Medusa and Pandora. The students took note of their simple garments before barraging them with questions. Narcissus wanted to go first and last. Medusa frightened the children with her killer coif and Athena outsmarted them all. Following interviews, Mrs. McNabb took them on a guided tour of Greece, showcasing all her favorite things from her actual visit years ago, specifically, Athens, Pompeii and the Christian courtesy of the people.

After leaving Greece, the class witnessed the Roman soldiers engaging in battle after battle. The courage and bravery of Horatii and Curiatii were exemplary. Instead of giving up the plans of his comrades, the left-handed Mucius sacrificed his right hand by thrusting it into the kings flame. Behold how little we Romans care for pain when it is to defend our country!

Next, the class put a fulcrum in place, reached for a lever and moved the world with Archimedes. The beauty and force of mathematics were experienced by all. Socrates disciplined questioning led to Platos astronomical theories, which ultimately ushered in Aristotles reckoning with reason.

The final leg of our trip focused on the toppling of 200 years of Roman kings. The people shouted, No more kings, much like the American patriots would centuries later. The first republic was born. With this, our class landed back home, at The Faatz-Crofut Home, for our Christmas concert. This year, we chose a variety of elements that related to history, literature, public speaking, music and community outreach. Mrs. McNabb was able to put her skills to work as a writer, director and playwright, while Mrs. Angotti and Mrs. Flynn created the set, costumes and props, and I prepared their singing voices. Dressed in colonial attire, the children showed off their ability to sing in a slower tempo (adagio), then a faster tempo (allegro) with the Presidents Song.

After singing, we ventured a brief history of our first 16 presidents. We began with the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, the sound sense in the Federalist Papers, the magnitude of the Monroe Doctrine, the sad journey of the Trail of Tears and the divisive history accentuated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act that led up to the Civil War. We ended with Abraham Lincoln reciting his Gettysburg Address. Our JPII young ladies talked about the brilliant Abigail Adams, the fortitude of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the strength and courage of Sacagawea, and the determination of Sojourner Truth. They praised the incredible perseverance of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Next, we galloped away with Paul Revere. This poem brought to life Henry Wadsworth Longfellows journey, commemorating the actions of an American patriot. In a mini play, we rode through Massachusetts down the artful path created by Grant Wood, treading on to warn Samuel Adams, John Hancock and the Sons of Liberty, culminating in the illumination in the belfry alerting the arrival of the British. The Declaration of Independence skit brought delegates to the table. The Committee of Five, led by Thomas Jefferson, was driven by their resolve and guided by their trust in God. These great minds would never fully know the beauty of the document they penned.

Bringing peace, reconciliation and joy, the evening transitioned with glory to our Lord by singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. A final lesson was provided by a song marking the persecution of our Christian ancestors. The Twelve Days of Christmas brought alive the joy of giving. Drummers were drumming, swans were swimming and the partridge was perched with the pears. Lords were leaping, ladies were dancing and the trumpet announced the golden rings.

Over the past few years, we have had the pleasure of developing a relationship with our friends at The Faatz-Crofut Home. Thanks to Barbara Feek and Tamara Angotti, we have carved pumpkins, gone trick-or-treating and sung Christmas carols with the residents. One of the seven corporal works of mercy is to visit the sick. Share with the Lords people who are in need.  Romans 12:13.

This Christmas, let us remember the great gifts we have already received: faith, hope and love.
The first trilateral meeting of Foreign Ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan - a Beijing's initiative to reduce friction between Islamabad and Kabul over terrorist attacks - will be held here next week.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who conducted shuttle diplomacy earlier to forge peace between Afghanistan and Pakistan over Kabul's allegation of increasing attacks from Taliban militants from across the border, will attend the meeting along with his Afghanistan and Pakistan counterparts Salahuddin Rabbani and Khawaja Muhammad Asif respectively.

"As a neighbour and friend of Pakistan and Afghanistan we always support friendship between the two countries and their common development," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters while announcing that the meeting will take place in Beijing on December 26.

The Foreign Ministers' trilateral mechanism was formed after Wang's visit to the two countries in June.

"This is the first dialogue of its kind and the three countries will exchange on political mutual trust, reconciliation and developing cooperation and connectivity as well as security cooperation and counter terrorism," Hua said.

"We hope the meeting will promote our cooperation and enhance peace and stability of the region," she said.

Afghanistan has blamed Pakistan in the recent months for sheltering Taliban militants and violent attacks in different parts of the country.

Pakistan, however, has denied the charge and accused Afghanistan of moving closer to India.

Earlier, China conducted a meeting of top Foreign Ministry officials of the three countries on issues related to cooperation in counter-terrorism.

China has stepped up efforts to forge peace between Pakistan and Afghanistan after US President Donald Trump announced his new South Asia policy in which he blamed Islamabad for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and India.

The new policy which gave importance to India and invited New Delhi to play a bigger role in reconstruction of Afghanistan has raised eyebrows in Beijing and Islamabad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China today rejected India's assertion that moves at the UN to list JeM leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist were blocked due to narrow political considerations, saying it acted in a "candid way" over the issue based on rules and procedures.

China has been consistently blocking moves by India, the US, the UK and France to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the 1267 Sanctions Committee by putting technical holds.

India's Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin during an open debate yesterday in the Security Council criticised some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism.

"It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," he said.

Responding to Akbaruddin's remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that on Azhar's issue China had "acted in a candid way with ease".

"So what we do is nothing to do with the narrow minded political considerations as you mentioned," Hua said.

The issue of China blocking the listing of Azhar at the UN is expected to come up in tomorrow's 20th round of India- China border talks in New Delhi.

The talks will be held between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi. Besides the border related issues, the two top officials also has the mandate to discuss all issues between the two countries.

"We have stated our position multiple times about the listing issue 1267 committee to the media queries and dealt the questions in a sincere way on different occasions in the past," Hua said.

She said China "firmly" backed crackdown on various international terrorist groups.

Defending China's move to block the moves against Azhar who is accused by India of being the mastermind of the Pathankot terrorist attack, Hua said "on this issue, we make our own judgement based on the merit of the matters themselves".

She said the "relevant move" by China in 1267 committee was based on its rules and procedures.

"We will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international communication," Hua said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China urged other governments today to "constructively help" Myanmar and Bangladesh resolve the fate of Rohingya Muslims "instead of complicating the issue" after Myanmar blocked a visit by UN human rights official.

Events in Rakhine state, where more than 630,000 Rohingya fled a military crackdown, are an internal affair for Myanmar that "contains complicated historical, national and religious factors," said a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

"We think the international community should constructively help Myanmar and Bangladesh to solve the issue instead of complicating the issue," said Hua at a regular briefing.

The UN official, Yanghee Lee, said yesterday that Myanmar's government barred her from the country.

She said officials told her that was in response to her criticism of official restrictions on her movement when she visited in July.

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed last month that some Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh could start returning on about January 21. A Bangladeshi official said on Tuesday that might be delayed.

Human rights groups warn the Rohingya may face more violence if they are sent back.

The government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar has refused to accept Rohingya Muslims as a minority group, though they have lived in the country for generations. Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship in 1982.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress today asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shed his "raaj-hatth" (stubborness) and clarify in Parliament his 'conspiracy with Pakistan' remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh to end the stalemate and enable a discussion on issues such as the Rafale deal.

With no end in sight to the current impasse on the issue, the proceedings in Parliament continued to be disrupted.

Congress leader Anand Sharma held the "obduracy" of the prime minister and the attitude of the government as being responsible for the impasse in Parliament, that continued with a washout of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha for a fourth day today.

He also accused the government of wanting to continue the standoff so that issues of critical concern to the people are not taken up.

Sharma alleged that the government does not want the opposition to raise issues of acts of "commission and omission" and the wrong decisions of the prime minister.

He said that the government does not want that it is exposed on the floor of the House on issues such as the Rafale scam which the opposition wants to discuss.

"It is the responsibility of the PM to clear doubts regarding his accusations. It is his duty to restore the dignity of the office and in the interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock comes to an end," Sharma told reporters.

"We urge the prime minister to shed his 'raaj-hatth' (stubbordness) and clarify his remarks against Singh and Ansari, which he made to win Gujarat polls," Sharma said.

The stalemate, he said, continues primarily because of the attitude of the government and obduracy of the prime pinister, who refuses to register the seriousness of the situation resulting from his "baseless and unwarranted aspersions" for electoral gains.

He said, as one who is occupying the constitutional office, it is the duty of the prime minister to restore the dignity of the office of the institution.

Whatever is said in politics, never before a prime minister has pointed any finger of suspicion on the commitment to the country of former prime ministers or former vice presidents or even the former Army chief.

"It is in national interest, in interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock is brought to an end.

"It is unfortunate that prime minister has still not apologised for his ill-thought accusations against the former PM Manmohan Singh who was PM for 10 years and dedicated his life for this country," he said.

Sharma, however, said it is being conveyed by government that the prime minister is not willing to take back his words.

He "disappointed" the opposition today when it was his day for the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress leader said.

Sharma said the opposition also wants to raise other issues concerning the economy and job losses.

The Indian economy has suffered losses due to some "wreckless" decisions of the prime minister, he alleged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rahul Gandhi's elevation as party president has brought about a "resurgence" in the Congress, its Karnataka unit today said, expressing the hope that his "charm" will work in the state Assembly polls after Gujarat.

Referring to the Gujarat poll outcome, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President G Parameshwara said he hoped Karnataka, too, would back Gandhi's leadership.

"The change has started from Gujarat," he said.

The BJP won a sixth straight-term in Gujarat, though it registered a fall in the number of seats won. While it bagged 99 seats in the 182-member Assembly, the Congress improved its tally to 77, up by 16 seats.

The KPCC chief also claimed that GST and demonetisation had "dented" the BJP in Gujarat.

"The change has started from Gujarat. Demonetisation and GST have played their roles to dent the BJP in Gujarat. This is one aspect, and the other aspect is the change in the leadership from Sonia Gandhi to Rahul. This has brought about the resurgence of the Congress," Parameshwara told PTI here.

The KPCC chief is setting out on a tour beginning today across 100 Assembly constituencies where the Congress was defeated in the last polls.

Assembly elections are due in Karnataka early next year.

"It is the people's decision. I hope they will back Rahul's leadership in the next Assembly elections in Karnataka, going by Gujarat poll results, where Congress lost by not a huge margin. I hope his charm will continue during Karnataka polls," he said.

The Congress could not form a government in Gujarat, but increased its vote share from 33 per cent to 41.4 per cent, Parameshwara said.

"We should have formed the government, but unfortunately we did not get the numbers in a few districts in Gujarat. Nevertheless, our percentage of vote share has gone up, from 33 per cent to 41.5 per cent. Otherwise, many had written the Congress off," he said.

Parameshwara said he believed Rahul Gandhi could take Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team on in the Karnataka elections.

Replying to a query, he said there would be no "Modi wave" in Karnataka and elections would be fought on state issues.

Asked about the electoral impact of a promise made by the Janata Dal (Secular) that it would install a member of the minority or Dalit community as the state's deputy chief minister, Parameshwara said it was just an election gimmick.

The JDS, he said, didn't stand a chance to win the polls.

"As far as we are concerned, Congress does not make such decisions prior to the elections. Once the party comes to power, the Congress Legislature Party will decide and the High Command would give it a stamp of authority," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress should not be elated over the 2G scam verdict as the matter of prosecuting "criminal conspirators is still open," Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar said today.

He said he was not "disappointed" with the acquittal of former Telecom minister A Raja andDMK Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi.

"Also Congress should not be so much elated,because the matter of prosecuting criminal conspirators isstill open as the investigating agencies, CBI and ED, havealready decided to move courts," the MP told PTI here.

He said though the CBI court has not been able to establish criminal conspiracy cases against the acquitted persons, it has not overruled the Supreme Court's February 2012 verdict terming the allotment of spectrum as illegal.

"The Supreme Court has already established wrongdoings of the then UPA government in allotment of 2G spectrum in 2012. So, what the CBI court judge is saying is that CBI and ED, have been unable to create a enough legitimate case against the accused," he said.

"That could mean many things - that the investigating agencies have not furnished the evidence and prosecuted the case properly. I don't think matter of prosecuting the criminal conspiracy is over," he said.

The apex court also had cancelled the licenses of the companies too, he said.

Chandrasekhar, in 2007, had raised the issue and questioned the then UPA government's decision to allot 2G spectrum without calling for tenders.

To a query on Congress leaders demanding apology from prime minister Narendra Modi for BJP's "propaganda" against the party following the acquittal, the MP said it should be the Congress who must apologise to stakeholders and others.

"Hundreds of employees, banks and other stakeholders should stand in front of the Congress office and demand apology from them for illegally allocating 2G spectrum which affected their businesses and jobs," he said.

The MP said the Congress expects people to forget the apex court judgment in February 2012



"They expect people to forget everything about this scam, including the windfall gains companies got. This is not going to happen. We have a very active media and social media, and they would get to the truth, any how," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress contestants who fought the recent Gujarat polls may move the high court against the Election Commission over the functioning of the EVMs during the election process, a senior party leader said today on the concluding day of the party's introspection meet in Mehsana.

On the second and concluding day of the 'chintan shivir', party leaders expressed doubts over the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines and claimed the party's performance would have been better had ballot papers been used in the polls.

"Defeated candidates raised doubts over EVMs and said the party could have won more seats had ballot papers been used in polls," Gujarat Congress unit chief Bharatsinh Solanki told reporters.

The meet, aimed at analysing the electoral outcome and discuss the roadmap in view of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, began yesterday.

The party's new president Rahul Gandhi will interact with the newly-elected MLAs as well as leaders from state's four zones - north, south, central Gujarat, and Saurashtra - separately for four hours in Ahmedabad on Saturday, before addressing a gathering of party workers in the evening.

"Many candidates said the party suffered due to EVMs. We have discussed the matter with technical experts. We are seeking a legal opinion on this," Solanki said.

He said the candidates who have raised doubts over the functioning of the EVMs may file a petition in the high court, challenging the EC.

Solanki said the conclave also discussed the "misuse" of the government machinery by the ruling party during polls.

On Tuesday, a day after the Gujarat election results were declared, a senior official of the election machinery had said there was a "100 per cent match" in a random vote count on EVMs and paper trail slips carried out by the Election Commission in the 182 polling stations in the state.

Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer B B Swain had said that the vote count through the EVMs matched with the VVPAT in all the constituencies where the paper trail slips were counted.

In the elections, the Congress could not wrest power from the BJP even though its tally increased to 77 seats from 61 last time.

Congress ally Bharatiya Tribal Party won two seats, and along with an independent backed by it winning his seat, the tally of the Congress-led alliance stood at 80, 12 short of the simple majority in the 182-member Assembly.

The BJP retained power for the sixth time, though with a reduced score of 99 seats against 115 in 2012.

The Congress performed well in rural areas of Gujarat but failed to make a significant mark in the urban pockets.

According to Solanki, it was for the first time that the Congress held an introspection meet immediately after an election.

"The aim of the meeting was to ensure that the connection with the public remains intact and any issues with the party are addressed," the senior leader said.

During the conclave, Congress workers from 33 districts in Gujarat discussed the poll results with senior leadership. They also raised issues like allotting tickets to "outsiders" and use of "money power" by the BJP government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The corporate sector and individuals have donated more than Rs 666 crore since 2014 in the Swachh Bharat Kosh (SBK), the government informed parliament today.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi informed about the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds the government has received to achieve the objectives of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).

"In the year 2014-15, the government has received an amount of Rs 15,961.19 lakhs, in the year 2015-2016 an amount of Rs 25,324.64 has been received, in the year 2016-17 donation received was Rs 24,504.86 and for the year 2017-18 the government has received an amount of Rs 877.01 till now," Jigajinagi said in a written reply to a question.

Informing the house, the minister has said that Rs. 633.98 crores has been spent from Swachh Bharat Kosh towards SBM.

He added the SBM guidelines allows association of different groups in the implementation of the programme which includes individuals as well as corporates.

Jigajinagi also informed that the ministry approaches the corporate sector to contribute towards the SBK as part of their CSR contribution.

"Apart from the SBK, the Swachh Iconic Places project under the SBM aims to achieve high level of cleanliness in and around the iconic sites across the country having historical, religious and cultural significance. The project entails association of the corporate partner which render financial and technical assistance," the minister pointed out.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
From Essar to Unitech, all corporates named in India's biggest graft case today hailed their acquittal saying their position of no wrongdoing in the 2G telecom spectrum allocation case has been vindicated.

While billionaire Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group issued a very short statement that it "welcomes court verdict", Unitech's Sanjay Chandra -- who is in jail on orders of the Supreme Court for failure to allocate flats to owners - said his companies continue to pay the price for a "fraudulently" foisted case.

A special court acquitted former telecom minister A Raja and business executives on charges of corruption and cheating in the alleged below-market-price sale of lucrative telecom spectrum licences in 2008 due to lack of evidence.

The case had led to Supreme Court in 2012 cancelling 122 licences sold to 8 companies, including the local joint ventures of Norway's Telenor ASA, UAE's Etisalat and Russia's Sistema, calling the 2008 allocation as flawed and influenced by those with money power.

"We are thankful to the Hon'ble Court for the judgement since it vindicates our stated position, and the Hon'ble Court has accepted it," an Essar spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Reliance and Essar group were accused of violating rules by having stakes in telecom companies while bidding for the licences. It was alleged that the new companies they floated were a front to secure new spectrum licences and resell them at a profit due to the boom in telecom sector. The companies consistently denied the charges.

"Reliance Group welcomes court verdict," a group spokesperson said in a statement.

Unitech Wireless, a subsidiary of real estate group Unitech, had got a pan-India telecom licence in early 2008 by paying the government Rs 1,658 crore under the infamous first-come, first-serve policy. In October that year, it sold 67.25 per cent to Telenor of Norway for Rs 6,120 crore.

"There was no wrongdoing on my part or on the part of my companies," Unitech's Chandra said in a statement. "However the damage suffered by me and the companies continues to affect the health and financial status of my company and they continue to pay the price for this case having been foisted on us fraudulently and without any basis."



Stated that the group had placed a robust defence rebutting each and every charge against, Chandra said he will use the opportunity to rebuild the company and "focus on delivery to all our home buyers".

Besides letting of Reliance ADA Group officials Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara, Essar Group promoters Anshuman and Ravi Ruia, the court had also acquited two promoters of D B Realty Ltd, Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka.

Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat bought a 45 per cent stake in Balwa's Swan Telecom for about USD 900 million in September 2008, renaming it Etisalat DB the following year.

DB Realty in a statement said its managing directors and key managerial personnel, Goenka and Balwa have been released from all allegations.

"The company has in the past clarified that the company was not connected with the same, though the matter involved one of the telecom companies wherein promoters of the company held the stake," it said.

Goenka said" "Justice has been done".

In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012. The CAG had put the loss to the exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Shares of companies affected by the case rose after the verdict. Reliance Communications Ltd gained as much as 13.3 per cent before closing at Rs 17.97 on the BSE, a gain of 4 per cent over previous day closing.

DB Realty jumped nearly 20 per cent to close at Rs 43.70 while SUN TV Networks Ltd rose as much as 6.8 per cent before closing at Rs 982.10, a gain of 4.5 per cent over previous day close.

Others who were acquitted included Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan, her husband I P Khaitan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI(M) today demanded from the Centre a package of Rs 7,400 crore for Kerala, parts of which were ravaged by Cyclone Ockhi this month.

A delegation of state MPs met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to press for more funds for the state that has been hit by the natural calamity, CPI(M) MP from the state P Karunakaran said.

He stressed on the urgent intervention from the Centre and stated that the paddy and banana farmers have suffered enormous losses.

The CPI(M), which heads the government in Kerala, has demanded a package of Rs 7,400 crore for the state, according to Karunakaran.

CPI(M) MP Mohammed Salim said his party wanted Modi to clarify the comments made by him against his predecessor Manmohan Singh and said if he cannot do so then the prime minister should tender an apology.

The lawmaker from West Bengal insisted that he wants discussion on damages occuring in natural calamities such as Ockhi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
AUBURN  The Cayuga Community College board of trustees will begin its meetings at a new time in 2018.

The board agreed Wednesday to change the start time for meetings from 6 to 5 p.m. While most sessions will continue to be held at the Auburn campus, the trustees decided to move three monthly meetings to the college's Fulton campus.

The meetings at the Fulton campus will be held in April 2018, September 2018 and January 2019. Videoconferencing will be available for every meeting.

The time change originally proposed that night was for 4 p.m. Melina Carnicelli, secretary for the board, read the resolution.

John Camardo, vice chair of the board, said he didn't approve of the 4 p.m. time, arguing that as a public institution, the college should ensure meetings are accessible to the public, and that a 4 p.m. start time would make it harder for people to attend. Camardo thanked members of the public who always attend, including members of the Educational Support Professional union.

Trustee Pat Mahunik agreed, suggesting an amendment to change the proposed time to 5 p.m., deeming it more reasonable. He said many people get out of work between 4 and 5 p.m. He said those who want to address the board should be able to.

"It's not a huge shift, but it's kind of meeting everybody in the middle," Mahunik said.

Camardo seconded the amendment.

Pam Heleen, the college's executive assistant to the president, said that when polling board members about times, 5 p.m. received the second-highest amount of votes.

The amendment passed, with all trustees present approving the change except Stephanie Hutchinson.

Debbi Purcell, vice president of the professionals union, said she was fine with the change to 5 p.m.

"The 4 o'clock (time change) would prevent us from going as a public entity," Purcell said after the meeting.
Actor Christian Bale feels that "culture will be richer" when white men are not the only ones in charge of everything.

The "Dark Knight Rises" actor batted for a more inclusive Hollywood which can benefit everyone during a panel discussion with AOL Build to discuss his new film "Hostiles".

"Our culture will be so much richer the day that we stop saying, 'Hey, it's all white dudes who are running things,'" Bale said.

"Whether that be Hollywood, whether that be Washington, you know. We're going to get, in Hollywood, so much better films and so much more interesting stories being told and America will become the America that the rest of the world sees it as, that makes it unique," he added.

The British-born actor also talked about his love for America, which he called "such a beautiful, brilliant country", and moving his family there.

"It's the reason I moved here, it's the reason my kids have American accents. It's because it is that, it's a country of inclusion and invitation," Bale said.

Directed by Scott Cooper, "Hostiles" also features Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Jesse Plemons, Adam Beach, Rory Cochrane and Ben Foster.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government was unlikely to implement the e-way bill mechanism under the Goods and Services Tax as Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today said the AAP dispensation was not in favour of the new system.

Addressing representatives of GST Support Market Committees, Sisodia said the e-way bill system violates the 'one nation, one tax' concept, for which the GST was envisioned.

"In the GST Council meeting, we have said the Delhi government is not in support of e-way bill. It is in violation of the 'one nation, one tax' concept," he said.

He said that if traders in the city say they may face problem due to e-way bill, the Delhi government will not implement it.

According to officials, the e-way bill system, which is scheduled to be launched in the country from February 1, is for intra-state movement of the commodities under the GST.

They said it will be applicable to the goods worth above Rs 50,000 and are bound for sale beyond 10 km.

This system will give powers to tax officials to check the e-way bill code at any point during the transportation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's nuclear command body today voiced concern over what it termed as the "destabilising actions" in the "neighbourhood" that threatened the strategic stability in South Asia, in an apparent reference to India.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi chaired the 23rd meeting of the National Command Authority (NCA), which was briefed comprehensively on the strategic environment, said a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

It said that the NCA took stock of the regional security environment and "noted with concern certain destabilising actions in Pakistan's neighborhood, which undermine the objective of maintaining strategic stability in South Asia."



"These include the massive arms build-up in the conventional domain, nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean Region and plans for the development/deployment of Ballistic Missile Defence system," it said.

While expressing full confidence in Pakistan's capability to address any form of aggression, the NCA reiterated Pakistans policy of developing and maintaining Full Spectrum Deterrence, in line with the policy of Credible Minimum Deterrence and avoidance of arms race.

It appreciated the technological sophistication demonstrated during the tests of Babur III submarine-launched cruise missile and Ababeel Missile System.

The NCA took a detailed review of the Nuclear Security Regime and expressed full confidence in command and control systems and security measures in-place to ensure comprehensive stewardship and security of strategic assets and materials.

It said that as a responsible nuclear state, Pakistan would continue to contribute meaningfully towards the global efforts to improve nuclear security and nuclear non- proliferation measures.

The NCA asserted that Pakistan desires peaceful co- existence in the region and will endeavor to work with its neighbors to ensure strategic stability in South Asia.

It noted with satisfaction, the implementation of national comprehensive export control measures, which are in line with international export control regimes.

It reiterated that Pakistan has the requisite credentials to become part of various non-proliferation regimes, including the Nuclear Suppliers Group, for which Pakistan seeks adoption of a non-discriminatory criteria based approach.

The NCA was also briefed on National Space Programme



2047 and 'Nuclear Power Programme' for peaceful uses of nuclear technology, to meet growing energy needs. It fully endorsed both programmes.

The role of nuclear applications in the fields of health, agriculture, medicine and industry was deeply appreciated.

The NCA reiterated Pakistan's interest in expanding international cooperation in these areas and play a positive role towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The meeting was attended by the ministers of Defence and Interior, Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Director General Strategic Plans Division, Director General Inter- Services Intelligence and other senior officials.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tamil Nadu's main opposition DMK today hailed as 'historic' a Delhi court's verdict acquitting its leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum cases even as its arch-rival, the ruling AIADMK, said it was a fit case for appeal.

As the about the CBI special court's verdict came, DMK cadres broke into celebrations across Tamil Nadu, bursting firecrackers and distributing sweets.

"A historic verdict has been delivered," DMK working president M K Stalin told reporters.

Expressing relief and joy, Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha member and daughter of DMK chief M Karunanidhi, said "I have been waiting these last six years for this day."



Dubbing her last six years as "harrowing and excruciating", she said in a statement that as the 2G episode was behind her she will do all she can to strengthen the party and work for the people of Tamil Nadu.

Stalin tweeted, "Today's verdict has demolished the concerted, vicious campaign built upon a pile of lies against DMK by vested interests and now DMK stands vindicated."



DMK allies, including the Congress and IUML, welcomed the verdict, while BJP's state president Tamilisai Soundararajan said it should be viewed as just another court verdict.

AIADMK said the verdict warranted an appeal.

"It is not a final verdict. It is a fit case for appeal... when it is done, we hope we will get a good verdict,", senior AIADMK leader and Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar said.

The court order evoked a surprise response from sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, who said he was happy as Raja and Kanimozhi were from Tamil Nadu.

"Personally I am happy. I don't want to comment anything politically. I knew Raja as a minister from Tamil Nadu when I was an MP," he said.

Stalin, accompanied by party general secretary K Anbazhagan, called on DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi at the latter's residence to apprise him of the judgment and said his father expressed happiness over it.

Stalin said it was a "planned (attempt) to insult and finish off a party (DMK)".

"It is a matter of joy that all of them have been acquitted," he added.

Stalin also distributed sweets to party workers.

DMK workers and supporters burst crackers and distributed sweets across the state, especially in Raja's native Perambalur and Nilgiris district from where he unsuccessfully contested for a second term in Lok Sabha in 2014.

They raised slogans hailing Karunanidhi and Stalin.

Former Minister T M Anbarasan said this case was misused by political rivals to malign the DMK.

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee chief Su Thirunavukkarasar said the verdict proved there was no corruption in the previous UPA government. "Truth has won, dharma has won," he said.

Chief of Viduthalai Chiruthailgal Katchi (VCK), a DMK friendly party, Thol Thirumavalavan said the verdict proved that the case was foisted on the accused.

Speaking to reporters in Coimbatore, Tamilisai said there could not be a second opinion on the verdict given by a judge.

The BJP's stand is that corruption should be totally wiped out from politics, she added.

The judgement came on a day when bypoll is being held for the RK Nagar Assembly seat, which fell vacant following the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Stalin, while replying to a question, said the verdict would not have any impact on the outcome of the bypoll, which the DMK will win.

The verdict has come as a shot in the arm for the DMK, which has been training its gun on the ruling AIADMK over a host of issues, including corruption, and claiming the E K Palaniswami government would fall soon.

The 2G spectrum case was perceived to have adversely impacted the DMK's prospects in the 2011 Assembly elections and also the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, both of which the AIADMK swept under the leadership of Jayalalithaa.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today called on UN member states not to be swayed by US leader Donald Trump's threat to cut funding, during a key vote on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars," he said in a televised speech in Ankara.

Trump threatened to cut funding to countries that backed the motion to be voted today at the UN General Assembly.

The US decision on December 6 to recognise the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly will decide today on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favour.

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

Erdogan accused Trump of making "threats".

"How do they call America? The cradle of democracy. The cradle of democracy is seeking to find will in the world that can be bought with dollars," he said.

"Mr Trump you cannot buy with dollars Turkey's democratic will. Our decision is clear," he said.

Erdogan said he believed that "the world will teach a very good lesson to America today.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Essar Group today welcomed the judgement of the special court acquitting its promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia in a case arising out of the probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

"We are thankful to the court for the judgement as it vindicates our stated position and the court has appreciated it," an Essar spokesperson said in a statement.

Besides Ruias, the court also acquitted Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors, Loop Telecom Promoters I P Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan, three companies-- Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile (India) Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd.

While the court had earlier charged them with the offence under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) read with section 420 (cheating) of IPC, substantial charge of cheating was made out against Saraf.

The CBI had named them in its charge sheet on December 12, 2011, alleging they had cheated the Department of Telecommunication by using Loop Telecom as a "front" to secure 2G licences in 2008.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Farmers in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur and Morena districts today took to the streets seeking fair prices for milk and better irrigation facilities.

In Sheopur, farmers staged a protest at Patel Chowk, demanding that a canal from Chambal river be routed to 35 villages in the area.

In Morena, farmers dumped milk on roads in Salabgarh area, demanding fair prices.

Kishore Maheshwari and Bupendra Baghel, protesters' leaders, said big dairy product manufacturers were asking farmers to sell the milk at Rs 35 per litre instead of Rs 50, following the imposition of the GST.

"We are going to stop the milk supply from tomorrow to intensify our protest," the farmer leaders announced.

The state had witnessed an intense farmers' agitation in June this year. Five farmers were killed in police firing on June 6 in Mandsaur district.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Malayalam movie 'S Durga' and Marathi film 'Nude' were dropped from screening at the IFFI recently as they did not fulfil the criteria of being certified by the censor board or having exemption certificate from the government, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

The ministry had overruled the recommendation of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) jury and pulled out the two films from screening at the festival. The festival was held between November 20-28 in Goa.

In a written reply, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore said some members of the India Panorama feature film jury showed concern over the exclusion of the movies from the festival.

However, he said, mere selection of a film by the jury is not sufficient for ensuring its exhibition in the festival.

"The film must either be certified by the Central Board of Certification for public exhibition or an exemption from certification from the government is required. Both these films did not meet the requirement," the minister said.

To another query, Information and Broadcasting minister Smriti Zubin Irani said the ministry and censor board have received some representations from social organisations and the general public regarding "misrepresentation" of historical facts in the film 'Padmavati' and demanded not to issue the film certificate for its release.

"Primarily the apprehensions raised are with regard to distortion of historical facts and disrespectful representation of Rani Padmavati in the said film," she said.

She said the home department of the Uttar Pradesh government had intimated the ministry about probable law and order situation that could arise if the film was released.

References from the Uttar Pradesh governor, the Rajasthan government and some of the members of the Parliament have also been received, she said.

Irani said the application for certification of the film 'Padmavati' in its 3D version was submitted to CBFC on November 28.

The film is under the process of certification in accordance with rules and guidelines, she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Five persons were killed and 10 others injured, two of them seriously, when a boiler exploded at a sugar mill in this district early today, police said.

After the boiler explosion, angry workers set afire vehicles parked inside the premises of the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill, blaming the accident on the owner's "failure" to get the machinery repaired despite complaints, police said.

The owner has been arrested along with his two sons.

"Five bodies have been recovered from the site of the incident. Identity of one of the deceased could not be established while the remaining four have been identified," the Station House Officer (SHO) of Kuchaykot police station, Awadhesh Kumar said.

"The deceased are Kripa Yadav, Kanhaiya Sharma and Vishwakarma Yadav - all residents of nearby Khajuri village - and Shamsuddin Ansari from Padrauna in Uttar Pradesh", he said.

Taking serious note of the incident, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a compensation of Rs four lakh to the next of the kin of each deceased and also dispatched teams of the National Disaster Relief Force and the State Disaster Relief Force to the site of the incident for carrying out relief work.

The chief minister also ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. He directed principal secretary, Sugarcane Industries, S Siddharth and principal secretary, Labour, Deepak Kumar Singh to personally visit the site of the incident and carry out an investigation.

The Kuchaykot SHO said out of the 10 persons admitted to Gopalganj Sadar hospital with burn injuries, condition of two is critical and they have been sent to the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH).

According to Superintendent of Police, Gopalganj, Mrityunjay Kumar, the explosion took place at around 2 am.

He said rescue operations were disrupted as angry workers indulged in arson, setting fire to the vehicle of the mill owner and a tractor, both of which were parked inside the mill premises.

"The angry workers alleged that the boiler was in need of repair for long but the owner paid no heed. The owner, Mehmood Ali, and his two sons Rinky Ali and Siksy Ali have been arrested", the SP added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A dominant Indian team is expected to maintain its stranglehold on a miserable Sri Lanka and wrap up the three-match series when the two mismatched teams face off in the second Twenty20 International here tomorrow.

There seems no end to the woes of the visitors, who slumped to a heavy 93-run defeat in the series-opener in Cuttack.

While the Indian youngsters have put their hands up to deliver the goods, the Lankans are going through a terrible phase of transition during which they are badly in need of reliable performers.

The result has been a lack of contest and one-sided results, prompting many to question the very logic of India playing such a weak side again and again.

This series has hardly proved to be a good preparation for the challenging South Africa tour that awaits India next month, considering the home team's domination in the absence of a good opposition in favourable conditions.

The Indian batsmen have made merry against a toothless attack. Runs and wickets always give confidence to the players but there is a question mark over how much these performances will count in the South African conditions.

Absence of regular skipper Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan and a transformed Bhuvneshwar Kumar has not given any respite to the Sri Lankans, who overtly rely on seniors such as Angelo Mathews.

However, even the senior Lankan players have struggled to counter the Indian bowlers and batsmen.

A robust domestic structure coupled with Indian Premier League (IPL) has prepared a good bench strength for the hosts.

Players such as Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have managed to carve a niche for themselves immediately after making their International debuts.

Sri Lanka need captain Thisara Perera, Upul Tharanga and Mathews to lead by example. They have been part of the side for long and only strong performances by them can infuse life and hope into this dejected side.

Players such as Dusmantha Chameera and Dhananjaya De Silva have shown promise and need guidance to be consistent.

India does not need its best team to prevail over the current Sri Lankan combination, yet it is imperative that they keep performing well.

They may not get big credit for success but failure against weaker opponents would surely put them in negative light.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whose finishing prowess has been under the scanner for some time now, got some runs under his belt after being promoted to number four in Cuttack and is likely to continue in the same position so that he gets enough overs in match situation before the ODI and T20 challenge in South Africa.

Shreyas Iyer, who scored 24 in Cuttack, would also look to get some substantial runs in the absence of Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan.

KL Rahul is in good touch and Indian bowlers are also in fine rhythm since the beginning of this tour. It won't be a surprise if they continue to dominate the Lankan batsmen.

Squads:



India: Rohit Sharma (C), K L Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj, Basil Thampi and Jaydev Unadkat.

Sri Lanka: Thisara Perera(C), Upul Tharanga, Angelo Mathews, Kusal Janith Perera, Danushka Gunathilaka, Niroshan Dickwella, Asela Gunaratne, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Dasun Shanaka, Chaturanga de Silva, Sachith Pathirana, Dananjaya De Silva, Nuwan Pradeep, Vishwa Fernando and Dusmantha Chameera.

Match starts at 1900Hrs IST.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Carl Wiezalis is already thinking spring, but not for pleasant reasons.

A representative of the Central New York Waterways Inc., Wiezalis owns property on Cross Lake. With flooding an issue this summer and again in late fall (Wiezalis said he had to hire divers to pull his lift out of the lake), he's dreading what spring freshets could bring.

"We're filled to the brim now, and all we need is snow pack and the result of that melting and anticipating more flooding next summer or spring," he said at a Cayuga County Water Quality Management Agency meeting earlier this month.

Wiezalis asked if there was any project afoot around the draw-down of the bigger lakes that could help those downstream in the spring and summer.

The Citizen posed the question to the state Canal Corp. Though there are many different entities that control water levels in the Oswego River Basin  about 5,100 square miles that includes the Clyde and Seneca rivers, and lakes from Canandaigua to Oneida  the Canal Corp. manages Cayuga and Oneida lakes and 33 miles of the Seneca River including Cross Lake.

"While flood control is not part of the Canal Corporation's statutory mission, it continually works to minimize impacts of high water along the Canal, including Oneida Lake, Cayuga Lake, the Seneca River and Cross Lake," said Steven Gosset, manager of media relations for the New York Power Authority, in an email. "The Canal Corporation closely coordinates with its stakeholder water management partners in the Oswego River Basin to accomplish this goal. This will continue to be a priority."

The corporation, Gosset added, communicates weekly with other water managers on lake levels and projected water releases and trends. During extreme weather events, communication can be increased to daily, but the corporation "lacks the authority to direct other agencies how to operate."

According to a U.S. Geological Survey fact sheet, "management strategies of this system have been controversial for nearly a century because the users desire differing water-level-management results."

To bring about a kind of compromise among the different water bodies, managers are supposed to follow a rule curve, targeting water levels for different seasons.

"They're supposed to be followed, but it's really complicated because there's not one agency that controls (the levels)," said Cayuga County Environmental Health Director Eileen O'Connor at the WQMA Dec. 7 meeting. "So many different people are involved."

Wiezalis said many on Cross Lake have this picture of a huge system that "lacks coordination."

The Canal Corp. did have recommendations for those downstream. They include keeping track of the weather and water level conditions, keeping property secured and out of reach during high water periods, boating safely and trying to minimize wake damage, and signing up for notices to mariners on condition updates and events. The corporation also has a daily voicemail with updates on water levels, gate positions and releases. That number is (315) 423-2094.
France's foreign minister has urged Libya's unity government to act on a United Nations plan for 2018 elections and a national dialogue to stabilise the war- torn country.

"This calendar is the indispensable political solution for Libya and it must be implemented now with the utmost speed," Jean-Yves Le Drian said after talks in Tripoli with Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the Government of National Accord.

Oil-rich Libya has been wracked by chaos since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Sarraj's GNA, the product of a 2015 deal aimed at restoring stability to Libya, has failed to impose its authority across much of the country, particularly the east where a rival government backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar holds sway.

A plan presented to the UN Security Council in September by international envoy Ghassan Salame seeks to negotiate a new political deal that would be accepted by authorities in the east.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted a meeting in July between Sarraj and Haftar, at the time announced a deal to hold elections in the spring.

Le Drian said he and Sarraj had a "total convergence of views" on the UN plan and on "the need to move quickly".

In Tripoli, he also visited a detention centre for migrants waiting to be repatriated to their home countries.

The minister travelled on to Benghazi, 1,000 kilometres east of the capital, to meet Haftar, who said this week that the GNA had lost any legitimacy since its mandate expired on December 17 under the 2015 accord.

Le Drian said he delivered a message to Haftar: "There is no other alternative to the accord, also for you. You have a recognised international image. Place it at the service of your country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP MP Maheish Girri raised the issue of inadequate strength of Delhi Police in Parliament today, and said an increase in the number of its personnel would help minimise crimes in the national capital.

The East Delhi MP also lauded Delhi Police for its "excellent performance", said a statement from Girri's office.

"It has been brought to our knowledge through media that the numbers of Delhi Police is inadequate. The crimes would be effectively brought under control if the number is raised," it said.

Girri also expressed concern over "more crimes in East Delhi as compared to other parts of the city" and claimed that the strength of police force was "lesser" there.

"East Delhi has a large population and the crimes are high due to less number of police personnel," the statement claimed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Following a meeting with Karnataka BJP leaders, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar today said that Goa was ready to give "reasonable and justified" amount of the Mahadayi river water to the neighbouring state for its drinking needs.

Karnataka BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa and other leaders met Parrikar in the presence of party president Amit Shah in Delhi over the Mahadayi river water sharing issue yesterday.

In a letter written to Yeddyurappa today, Parrikar said Goa will not oppose giving water to Karnataka for its drinking needs.

"However, the same needs to be discussed bilaterally as suggested by the Honourable Tribunal (Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal)," Parrikar said in the letter, copies of which were distributed at his press conference here.

Goa and Karnataka are locked in a two-decade-old dispute over the river as Karnataka is planning to build a dam on it. The river originates in Karnataka before flowing into Goa where it is called Mandovi.

Yeddyurappa, the former Karnataka chief minister, had also written a letter to Parrikar yesterday over utilisation of 7.56 TMC water from the Mahadayi for drinking water needs of drought-prone north Karnataka.

Parrikar, in his letter to Yeddyurappa, said though the issue of drinking water is one of the matters pending before the Tribunal, "In principle, the state of Goa would not oppose the reasonable and justified quantum of water meant to be utilised for drinking".

"The government of Goa understands that access to the drinking water is a basic human need....on humanitarian ground, the Government of Goa is willing to consider the request to work out an amicable settlement strictly restricted to drinking water only to the drought-prone areas," it said.

The discussion shall be without prejudice to the rights and contentions before the Tribunal, Parrikar's letter said.

Talking to reporters, Parrikar said "how much water Karnataka would receive would be worked out through the talks".

The Tribunal too had suggested that the two states reach an "out of court" understanding, he added.

The chief minister also said that "Goa does not trust the Congress chief minister (Siddaramaiah) of Karnataka, hence the letter was sent to Yeddyurappa".

Earlier in the day, Vinod Palyecar, Goa water resources minister, who belongs to the Goa Forward Party, a BJP ally, said the stand of the coastal state remained unchanged.

Palyecar was reacting to the meeting between Shah, Parrikar and Yedyurappa.

"Our @Goaforwardparty & my WRD depts stand remains unchanged on #Mhadei. We are committed to protect our mother #Mhadei & protect each drop of water," Palyecar tweeted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The water resources ministry is working on a Rs 6,000 crore worth 'Atal Bhoojal Yojana' for water conservation.

The scheme would seek to bring in innovative and successful practices to revive water bodies, improve ground water levels as well as conserve water, Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari said in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

He said the ministry was working on the Rs 6,000 crore 'Atal Bhoojal Yojana', for which approval has been sought from the Finance Ministry.

The government would also consider getting funds from the World Bank for the project, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui said today that he is grateful for getting the opportunity to play the role of Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray in a biopic.

Starring Nawazuddin in the titular role, the biopic penned by Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, will be directed by Abhijit Panse.

Speaking at the launch of a teaser of the film on Thackeray, Nawazuddin said, "It's an important day for me today as the teaser of the film is launched. I have got the opportunity to play the role of great personality like him, I think any actor would have agreed to play his role."



The teaser was launched here by superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

"I am thankful and grateful to Sanjay Raut, Uddhav Thackeray, Abhijit for the film and Bachchan sir for launching the teaser. I am sure Abhijit and we would take this biopic upto the mark," Nawazuddin, who is shooting in Mauritius, said via video conference.

"Everyone would be thinking, how can I speak Marathi, let me tell you, Bal Thackeray sahab would be giving me inspiration and would be showering his blessings (on me) to play the part," he said, in Marathi.

Bachchan said he was grateful for being invited for the teaser launch. He said a three-hour film will be too short to bring Thackeray's illustrious life on-screen.

"I don't think Balasaheb's life can be shown in three hours. I wish there is a series made on him of three-four hours, for his personality, work, life is much beyond a film. I feel it should be shown in a web series of many episodes. I congratulate and wish Sanjay Raut the best for this film.

"If I am required for the film I would love to be part of it in any capacity. I will always be ready to contribute to this film, in every way possible," Bachchan said.

Bachchan said he looked at Thackeray as a father figure.

"We were very close to each other, we were more like family. I respect him a lot," he said.

The "Pink" star recalled that when he got married, Thackeray had called him saying he wants to meet his newly wedded wife Jaya Bachchan.

Bachchan said Thackeray stood by him in his tough times.

"I was hurt during the shoot of my film 'Coolie' and was hospitalised in a critical state in Bengaluru and when I was being brought to Mumbai, days weren't good due to monsoon. I did not get an ambulance at that time, due to rain, but Balasaheb's Shiv Sena ambulance was available. If this did not happen, I could have been more in danger," he said.

"There were instances in my life when there were some allegations on me, Balasaheb used to often call me and ask if it is true or not, he used to call me home, saying I want to talk to you.

"One such incident happened when there were allegations on me and my family and Balasaheb called me at his home and asked what is the truth, I told him I am talking truth, he told me don't be afraid, I am with you. No one stood by me as much as he did," the veteran actor recalled.

The "Piku" actor said he was saddened to see Thackeray on deathbed and was praying some miracle happens so that he could be saved.

"I got an opportunity to meet him. I was there with Uddhav, Aditya (Thackeray) and another person. We were only praying for him because we wanted him to live long with us. I never wanted to see him in this state, it was a tough time to see him like that.

"I was surprised to see my picture in his room, next to his head. I was stunned and that moment has been captured for life," Bachchan said.

The biopic will release on January 23, 2019.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI(M) today urged the Indian government to establish close relations with Nepal without interfering in the internal affairs of the neighbouring country.

Reacting to the recent victory of Left parties in Nepal, former general secretary Prakash Karat said the development should lead to a "re-thinking and change in Indias attitude to Nepal".

In an editorial in the forthcoming edition of party organ 'People's Democracy', he said relations between the two countries should be based on equality.

"The important political development in Nepal should lead to a re-thinking and change in Indias attitude to Nepal. The Modi government should strive to establish close relations of cooperation based on equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of Nepal," Karat wrote.

It said the big victory of the Communist alliance would have its "repercussions in South Asia too", and observed that the "Indian government should recognise the reality that Nepal would like to maintain cordial relations with both India and China its two big neighbours".

India should not view Nepals assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion, it said.

"Like the rest of South Asia, Nepal too intends to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. India should not view Nepals assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion but work towards strengthening the natural affinity historically and culturally ordained between Nepal and India," Karat emphasised.

The editorial also criticised the Modi government's moves in 2015 relating to an economic blockade sparked by the Madhesi agitation in Nepal.

The Centre should take positive measures to assist Nepals economic development and build on the two countries' common cultural heritage, he said.

Extending full support to the Nepali Communists, he said the Left alliance government in Kathmandu has the "golden opportunity" to implement a Left-oriented programme for economic and social progress to provide a better life to the people of Nepal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Allahabad High Court today reserved its order on a writ petition filed by the vice- chancellor of a state university in Allahabad in an alleged illegal transfer of the institute's land.

The bench comprising justices B K Narayana and Vijay Lakshmi, while reserving the order, made it clear that till the delivery of the order, no coercive action shall be taken against the Sam Higginbottom University vice-chancellor R B Lall.

The high court also directed Lall to cooperate in the investigation.

On December 11, an FIR was lodged accusing Lall and two others of illegally transferring land of the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (Shuats) to Yeshu Darbar trust and several others without taking the Uttar Pradesh's government permission.

Notably, the Shuats is mired in many controversies, including an alleged misappropriation of funds.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two 'sadhvis' have accused four babas, including the head of a ashram, for allegedly raping them at the ashram in Uttar Pradesh's Basti district, the police said.

An FIR was lodged last evening against six persons -- the head of Sant Kutir ashram, Sachidanand alias Dayanand, Param Chetanand, Vishwas Nand, Gyan Vairagyanand as well as two women. A search is on for the six, all of whom are absconding.

The two 'sadhvis', who had joined the ashram in 2008, alleged they were assaulted by the head priest and his three colleagues with the help of the two women associates, at the Sant Kutir ashram here, about 200km from Lucknow, said Sankalp Sharma, superintendent of police (SP).

Police have interrogated the manager of the ashram, which has its main branch in Delhi. The 'sadhvis', who belong to Chhattisgarh, have been sent for medical test, the SP added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An HRD Ministry-appointed panel tasked with drafting a new National Policy has sought an extension of three months till March 2018.

Headed by former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan, the panel was set up by the human resource development (HRD) ministry in June and it was supposed to submit its report this month.

According to sources, the committee is still holding consultations with various stakeholders and has sought an extension of three months to come up with the draft policy.

The existing National Policy was framed in 1986 and revised in 1992. A new National Policy was part of the manifesto of the BJP, which now governs the country.

Apart from Kasturirangan, the committee has eight members including mathematician Manjul Bhargava and former IAS officer K J Alphonse.

Other members of the panel are Ram Shankar Kureel (VC of Baba Saheb Ambedkar University of Social Sciences, MP), Vasudha Kamat (ex-VC of SNDT University, Mumbai), M K Shridhar (ex-member secretary of Karnataka Innovation Council and Karnataka Knowledge Commission), T V Kattimani (VC of Tribal University, Amarkantak), Mazhar Asif (professor at Guwahati University), and Krishan Mohan Tripathi (ex-director of education, Uttar Pradesh).

The panel will also take into account the report of a panel headed by former cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian, formed by the HRD ministry during the tenure of Smriti Irani.

The T S R Subramanian panel submitted its report to the government in May 2016, suggesting measures to strengthen the education sector that caters to over 300 million students.

However, the government decided to have more consultations and use it as an "input" for the future draft and not as a final draft report, and set up the panel headed by Kasturirangan.

Kasturirangan headed Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) between 1994 and 2003 and was awarded the country's second highest civilian honour -- Padma Vibhushan -- in 2000.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) today said that its researchers have developed a low cost, artificial electronic skin (e-skin) which mimics the functionality of the human skin.

It stated that this "e-skin" is beneficial for acid attack and burn victims in cases where the skin is permanently damaged and loses functionality.

According to a release from IITH, Professor Sushmee Badhulika, Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering was last week honoured with the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) Young Engineer Award in this connection.

Prof Badhulika said, "The e-skin mimics the functionality of the human skin in terms of sensing even minor pressure and strain variations. It is based on natural rubber which is low-cost and biodegradable."



She elaborated that these devices can be adapted in applications where cost, resources and energy are limited.

The IITH release said that the award was in recognition of her notable contribution in the field of flexible and wearable nanoelectronics and eco-friendly paper-based electronics.

It added that the award is presented annually by the academy to young engineers for outstanding contributions in the field of engineering research and technology development.

It consists of a cash prize of Rs.1 lakh, a citation and recognition as an INAE Young Associate till the awardee attains 45 years of age, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
AUBURN  A Queens woman was sentenced to a year in jail for trying to bring a package of narcotics into Cayuga Correctional Facility.

Cassie L. Rodrigues was arrested in September 2016 after state police found 10 bags of heroin and 56 strips of Suboxone  a prescription medication used to treat opiate addiction  in her purse. And in October, Rodrigues pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted promoting prison contraband, a class E felony.

During her plea, Rodrigues said she intended to give the drugs to an inmate she was visiting. However, the 29-year-old later recanted her story, claiming she did not know she possessed narcotics.

In Cayuga County Court Thursday, Judge Thomas Leone said he was "not happy" with what he read in her presentence report, in which Rodrigues seemed to step back from her plea. Her defense attorney, Rome Canzano, also expressed frustration.

"I, myself, get tired of the ignorance," he said, noting that an inmate had a package delivered to Rodrigues in Queens, which he told her to bring to him in prison. "You're clearly not bringing a candy bar or something legal into a prison like that."

When asked if she had anything to say to the court, Rodrigues apologized.

"My words were misleading," she said, crying. "I knew it was drugs."

As a condition of her plea of guilty, Leone had initially agreed to sentence Rodrigues to nine months in Cayuga County Jail. But after hearing she changed her story, he decided to tack on an additional three months for a total of 12 months in jail.

Also in court:

 An Auburn woman has admitted to violating an order of protection and the terms and conditions of her probation.

Joelle Wells, 22, of 35 Catlin St., pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of first-degree criminal contempt, a class E felony. Wells admitted that she violated an order of protection against a woman in September when she met the victim with the intent to harass her.

Wells was previously sentenced to three years probation in 2015 for fourth-degree tampering with a witness, a misdemeanor. Leone said he planned to resentence her to five years probation in February. He also said he might order Wells to spend the first six months in the Cayuga County Jail.

Wells could face up to four years in prison for the crime and violation. She remained out on bail and was ordered to return to court for sentencing Feb. 8.
A team from the International Monetary Fund today wound up a mission to the Republic of Congo by expressing concern at debt and corruption before considering any bailout.

"Congo's economy continues to suffer from the effects of low oil prices, unsustainable debt, and significant governance weaknesses," mission leader Abdoul Aziz Wane declared at the end of the visit.

"A deeper recession of the non-oil economy in 2017 -- with growth estimated at -9.2 percent -- is hurting the most vulnerable segments of the population," he added in a statement.

The visitors to the central African country, whose main export is oil, distantly followed by diamonds and tropical timber, had talks with Prime Minister Clement Mouamba and Finance Minister Calixte Nganongo, among a slew of senior officials including foreign diplomats.

"The authorities will need to take bold and immediate governance reforms to anchor expectations of a positive change in the management of public resources. In that regard, the IMF team welcomed the government's intention to approve in early 2018 a governance study that will guide future reforms" -- reforms that should include the creation of independent anti- corruption bodies, suggested the text.

"The IMF team will continue to support the authorities as they work in the coming weeks in several areas, including on restoring debt sustainability, strengthening governance, and ensuring adequate program financing," the statement said.

"Once this work is completed, a financial arrangement to support Congo's economic program would be discussed at staff level before being proposed for the IMF Executive Board's consideration.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government has given "in- principle" approval for 19 greenfield airports, of which some would be developed through Public Private Partnership (PPP), the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said the country's civil aviation sector was growing leaps and bounds but the safety of air passengers will never be compromised.

Emphasising that air travel is growing leaps and bounds, Raju said during Question Hour that the number of aircraft in the country was around 548 compared to about 395 in 2014.

Since the government came to power in 2014, around 50 aircraft is being added every year, he said.

Responding to a query whether shortage of skill was affecting the aviation sector, Raju said there is a problem and mismatch of skill.

The minister asserted that safety of passengers was "never compromised and will never be compromised", adding that safety and security was paramount for the government.

When a member expressed concern over air safety against the backdrop of incidents involving Pratt & Whitney engine- powered aircraft, Raju said, "passenger safety is never put at risk".

Out of the 19 greenfield airports for which "in- principle" approval has been granted, some are to be developed through the PPP model.

"Mopa in Goa, Navi Mumbai and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, Bhogapuram and Dagadarthi in Andhra Pradesh, Hasan in Karnataka, Kannur in Kerala and Dholera in Gujarat" would be through PPP model by the respective state governments with a total investment of around Rs 27,000 crore, Raju said.

The responsibility of implementing these projects rests with the state governments concerned, he noted.

To a query, the minister said, "we like more airports to come," and the government would work with the states in this regard.
India said today that it attaches a lot of importance to its ties with the Maldives and hoped that the country will be sensitive to its concerns.

Replying to questions on an anti-India editorial in a Maldivian newspaper, Spokesperson in the External Affairs Ministry Raveesh Kumar said it should not be taken seriously.

The Maldives recently signed a free trade agreement with China, which is seen as Beijing's growing influence over the island nation.

"We have to see our relationship with Maldives in a broader perspective. It is an important country. We do attach lot of importance to our relationship with the country," Kumar said.

At the same time, he said India expects and hopes that the Maldives will be sensitive to New Delhi's concerns.

On the FTA between China and the Maldives, he said India was trying to understand its implications.

"We should look beyond these developments and we should have diplomatic discussions between the two sides to address any issue between the two countries," said the MEA spokesperson.

He said much attention should not be paid to things which are going around.

Kumar also referred to a tweet by Maldivian Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim few days back in which he called the India-Maldives ties time-tested.

"Relations with #India is time-tested and is based on people to people contact & cooperation in several sectors. We remain committed to further enhancing and strengthening existing ties," Asim had tweeted.

Meanwhile, asked about the the visit of the mother and wife of Indian death row convict Kulbhushan Jadhav to Pakistan to meet him, Kumar said the modalities of the trip were being worked out.

"The modalities of the meeting are being worked out and who goes when, how do they go, how the meeting takes place, I think this is something the two countries are engaged in discussion," said Kumar when asked about media reports quoting Pakistani officials that the mother and wife of Jadhav will be flying to Islamabad than taking the road trip via Wagah.

Asked about the comment of a Pakistani official that Islamabad may allow the two women to interact with media if India does not have any objection, Kumar did not give a direct reply, saying, "We will see."



To a separate question, Kumar said Pakistan is under international obligation to protect the minorities in the country.

On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said that India will take up at the highest level in the Pakistan government reports of Sikhs being forced to convert to Islam by a government official in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Her reaction came after leading Pakistan daily The Express Tribune published a story about the Sikh community raising serious concerns after being forced to convert to Islam by the government official in the Hangu district of K-P.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India today joined 127 other countries to vote in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of a resolution opposing the recent decision of US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Nine countries voted against the resolution, while as many as 35 countries abstained.

India's decision to vote against American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital comes a day after Trump warned countries against opposing the US position.

India did not speak on the floor of the Assembly in New York, but after Trump recognised the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it had said that its Palestine position was independent and consistent.

In her intervention at the NAM ministerial meeting on Palestine on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said the path to Israel-Jerusalem peace clearly lay in an early negotiated solution between Israel and Palestine based on mutual recognition and security arrangements.

The UN General Assembly resolution moved by Turkey and Yemen stressed that Jerusalem was a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations.

It demanded that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognise any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

In his address to the UN general Assembly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Trump's decision was an outrageous assault to all universal values.

"The Palestinians have the right to their own state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

"This is the main parameter and only hope for a just and lasting peace in the region. However, the recent decision of a UN Member State to recognise Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as the capital of Israel, violates international law, including all relevant UN resolutions," Cavusoglu said.

The eight countries that joined the US in voting against the Turkish resolution were Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.

Among the major countries who abstained the voting were Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Columbia, Hungry, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland and Uganda.

Strongly supporting Trump's decision US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the US may strip funding of those countries that voted against its Jerusalem move.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to, once again, make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations," Haley told the General Assembly.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the UN," the top American diplomat said.

Trump had warned against cutting funds yesterday.

"Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot. We don't care. This isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing," Trump told reporters at White House yesterday.

Early this week, the US had vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council. The resolution passed by the General Assembly has no legal implications on the UN member countries.

Trump praised Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body yesterday and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be "taken advantage" of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India and Sri Lanka managed to keep their relationship warm in 2017 with high-level exchanges and signing of pacts despite New Delhi's concerns over China's forays in the island nation, including its acquisition of the strategic port of Hambantota.

Though issues over a proposed economic and technology pact, poaching by fishermen in each other's territorial waters and China's influence in the island nation remained, President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have kept the relationship warm by persisting with top-level engagements.

Historically, India-Sri Lanka ties have witnessed ups and downs. In the 1980s, the Tamil question dominated relations and more recently differences have sometimes erupted over poaching by fishermen and Sri Lanka's increasing dependence on China for investment.

But the ties have showed signs of maturity, breaking away from the past towards an era of synergy and understanding.

"We have had another good year of excellent relations (with India)," a foreign ministry official here told PTI.

One of the key moments in bilateral ties this year came when Sri Lanka turned down China's request to dock one of its submarines at the Colombo port.

Under the previous dispensation of then president Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka had allowed a Chinese submarine to dock at the Colombo port, drawing protests from India.

The year began with Sri Lanka vowing to immediately release 51 Indian fishermen from its custody following a high- level meeting between the two countries on the vexed issue.

Both sides also agreed to a set up Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to expedite the release and handing over of fishermen in each other's custody on completion of respective legal and procedural formalities.

Coast Guards of the two countries decided to set up a hotline for better coordination between the two maritime security forces.

In April, Indian Railways secured its largest export order from Sri Lanka Railways for the supply of 10 broad gauge diesel locomotives and six DMU (diesel multiple units) train sets worth Rs 680 crore.

India and Sri Lanka signed an MoU for "Cooperation in Economic Projects", to boost economic ties after wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremsinghe in New Delhi.

The Indian leadership expressed the hope that the island nation will complete its reconciliation process within the two-year deadline.

Both the sides also agreed to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) to discuss the development of a port, petroleum and other industries in the Lankan city of Trincomalee.

Modi visited Sri Lanka in May on his second visit to the country in two years. His visit was mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China was seeking to make inroads in the island nation.

He participated in the Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists, and assured India's support to Sri Lanka for the island's nation-building endeavours.

He said that the Sinhala and the Tamil communities in Sri Lanka should strengthen unity and harmony as he assured India's full support to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of minority Tamils in the country.

The Indian Navy carried out a joint hydrographic survey of Sri Lanka's Weligama Bay and southern coast, in a reflection of the growing cooperation between navies of the two countries.

Sri Lanka, while sealing its debt-equity partnership with China on the strategic southern port of Hambantota, has not upset India which was curious to know if the Sino-Lanka relationship would hamper India's regional interests.

Cash-rich China has invested millions of dollars in Sri Lanka's infrastructure since the end of a brutal civil war in 2009.

Sri Lanka owed China USD 8 billion, then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake had said last year. The Sri Lankan government had signed a USD 1.1 billion deal in July to sell a 70 per cent stake in the Hambantota port to China.

Sri Lanka received USD 300 million as the initial payment under the 99-year lease agreement.

The opposition and trade unions in Sri Lanka have dubbed the port deal as a sell out of the country's national assets to China.

"India would be more likely to pressure Sri Lanka on issues that concern its own national security," said Dr Jehan Perera, a noted political commentator.

"Sri Lanka has consciously sought to follow a foreign policy that considers India to be an ally and assuages India's concern over its closeness to China, which could have geo- political consequences, which are adverse to India," he said.

Modi's engagements have been the cornerstone of the flourishing relationship. His trip to the island nation in May underscored his commitment to enhancing the relationship.

Modi was the chief guest at the event marking the Vesak Day, which commemorates Buddha's birth, enlightenment and the death.

"Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy," Modi had said, touching the heartstrings of the majority Buddhists.

Modi became the first Indian prime minister to reach out to 30,000 Indian Tamils in the central tea plantations.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishanker had said India "will henceforth" give "special consideration" to Indian Tamils in view of their special needs and their willingness to join the island's political mainstream.

The Indian government was quick to assist Sri Lanka when floods hit the country, killing more than 200 people in May.

The Indian Navy deployed three ships and over 300 personnel to assist Sri Lanka in its rescue and relief efforts for over 500,000 people.

Some observers even said that Modi was deliberately enhancing India's engagement with Sri Lanka at a time of China's growing influence in the island nation.

Despite Wickremesinghe's presence at the inauguration of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which India skipped, both India and Sri Lanka showed that the relationship could move on while understanding each other's concerns.

Showing India's long-standing interest on the issues of Tamils, Jaishankar met with the members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA).

Perera said: "Like the rest of the international community, they (India) would be oriented to give more time to the Sri Lankan government to resolve the outstanding Tamil issues.

Sri Lanka's option of moving closer to China has meant that India has stopped pressuring Sri Lanka with regard to its ethnic conflict despite Sri Lanka's failure to implement transitional justice measures".

Most observers believe that despite Sri Lanka's courtship with China, India's importance to Sri Lanka can never be discounted.

India, which is Sri Lanka's largest trading partner, has provided development assistance worth over USD 2.5 billion.

Over 70 per cent of the cargo handled at the Colombo port is transshipment cargo to and from India.

Sri Lanka is keen on the new trade pact, the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA), which would enhance commercial ties with India's fast-growing southern states.

The Sri Lankan government may find some serious political opposition to ETCA as opposition parties have never missed opportunity to provoke anti-India sentiments to achieve domestic political gains.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India is likely to become an exporter of urea by 2030, as the government is giving incentives to manufacturers to increase capacities in order to eliminate imports, according to a report



In order to double farmers' income by 2022, the production of fertilisers will have to be increased as it will help in the productivity of land and farm produce, Care Ratings said in its report.

According to the New Urea Policy, manufacturers are incentivised to produce more than the reassessed capacity of the plant, it added.

"We also believe that with the newer capacities of urea plants being added and old defunct ones revived, India could not only achieve its aim of eliminating urea imports but could possibly also become an exporter in the future by 2030," the report said.

Import dependence (imports as a proportion of production plus imports) came down from 26.3 per cent in to 18.5 per cent in FY17, while the share of domestic production increased from 73.7 per cent to 81.5 per cent during this period indicating that India is moving towards self-sufficiency of urea production, it said.

Presently India mainly imports Urea from China, Oman and Iran, it said.

The government also has planned to clear the fertiliser subsidy backlog before the implementation of the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme next year.

This backlog subsidy is estimated at Rs 35,000 crore and the payment delays has impacted the working capital situation for the concerned companies affecting their finance costs and profits, it said.

The main challenge will be to make sure the new system works before implementation of the scheme, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India-Palestine Solidarity Forum, a city-based organisation, today condemned the declaration made by US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

It also asked the Indian government to make clear its stand on the issue.

Social activist Teesta Setalvad, addressing a press conference here, compared "Trump declaration" to the Balfour Declaration whereby Britain "gifted Palestine to the Jewish people" a century ago.

The Forum called Trump's decision as another glaring instance of US' arrogance.

It goes against an international consensus and framework of UN resolutions and international laws, it said.

National General Secretary of the Forum Feroze Mithiborwala said they were more concerned by the "utter silence" of the Narendra Modi government on the issue.

"PM Modi's affinity to Israel may see a further diminishing global role for our country, as India moves deeper into the US-Israeli camp. This will be a betrayal of all that India stands for, a betrayal of the legacy of our anti-colonial freedom struggle and the moral values on which modern India was built," Mithiborwala said.

Communist leader Prakash Reddy said on this occasion, "The Trump Declaration on its part is leading to tectonic shifts across the region and therefore."



The US now stands isolated, and the decision has weakening the US' role in the Middle-East and across the world, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian was among 19 people injured today when a speeding SUV ran down pedestrians at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne in what the Australian police said a "deliberate act".

A white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd at the intersection just after 4.30 pm local time (0530 GMT), injuring 19 people including Rohit Kaul, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir.

Quoting eyewitnesses, the local media said that people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle.

The attack was an "act of evil and an act of cowardice", Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters here.

He said the condition of four people hit was critical. Fifteen others were stable.

The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car.

"My husband was talking to my son Avi and crossing the intersection. Suddenly, my husband's phone fell down and we could hear loud noises and people screaming on the other side before the line went dead," Kaul's wife told PTI.

"We tried to call him on his mobile but there was no response. We soon got a call from a fellow Indian who said my husband was injured and was being taken to a hospital," she added.

Her husband suffered leg injuries and will undergo a surgery this evening. "He is stable," she said.

"The driver was waiting for the red light and when people started crossing the road, he jumped the red light and crashed into them," she said, adding that it was a "deliberate act".

A pre-school child who suffered a head injury is not in a critical condition.

Acting Commissioner Shane Patton said that the police do not believe what happened is terror related but will continue to investigate.

He said police will allege the man "intentionally drove into the pedestrians".

The driver of the car has been arrested and is receiving hospital treatment, Patton said.

The driver, identified as a 32-year-old of Afghan descent, was known to police in relation to minor traffic offences and a minor assault in 2010.

"We believe he's driven down the tram tracks and he crashed into a tram-stop on the other side," Patton said.

A 24-year-old man was also detained at the scene after he was seen filming the incident on a phone. He was also carrying a bag that contained knives but police said it was probable that he had no links to the incident and say the driver was alone in the car, the Age reported.

The car was registered to a family member and police said was not stolen.

Victoria police appealed to people to upload any images they might have of the incident to a cloud address to help assist with their probe.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 37-year-old Indian was arrested in Nepal after he was allegedly found in possession of a huge quantity of banned drugs here, police said today.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of Narcotics Control Bureau on Monday intercepted an SUV bearing an Indian number plate in Kalanki on the outskirts of Kathmandu and nabbed Ramesh Kumar.

Kumar, a permanent resident of Motihari in Bihar, was found with 1,200 ampoules each of buprenorphine and diazepam besides 1,100 ampoules of phenargan from him, according to a press release issued by the police headquarters.

The drugs were wrapped in newspapers and kept in a plastic bag, it said.

According to the initial probe, police said Kumar is a drug lord and has a good network of dealers.

"He bought the controlled pharmaceutical drugs from the India-Nepal border and sold them in the main cities across the country," the police statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian-origin driver is among 10 members of a so-called "white van group" jailed for a total of 31 years for smuggling drugs and money across the UK.

Daljeet Singh Juttla from west London had been stopped by Scotland Yard officers with 90,000 pounds of drugs money couriered by one of the other gang members.

Yesterday, Liverpool Crown Court handed the 42-year-old Juttla a 20-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, and 200 hours of unpaid work for the money laundering charge.

"Established trafficking routes like these present a complex and troubling threat to the UK. With well worked-out logistics a criminal group can turn its hand to anything from gun running or drug smuggling, expanding their own operations or hiring out their services to others," said Jane Lloyd, branch commander at the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), which conducted the UK-wide investigation.

"The NCA officers are alert to the tactics criminals use to shift commodities and hide their activity and are equipped with the skills and tools needed to bring them to justice," she said.

The officers exposed the gang in an investigation that ran from October 2014 to January 2016.

Officers from the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside police provided support to the long- running operation.

The group was led by Jamie Hughes and operated out of the north west of England.

Members delivered bulk loads of drugs to clients in locations from Scotland to London in vans with hidden compartments.

Hughes was imprisoned for five years and four months after pleading guilty to his role in the conspiracy.

Hughes, whokept a stun gun disguised as an iPhone, installed a CCTV system to monitor his driveway.

This provided NCA officers with key evidence against his network as footage showed various members of the conspiracy exchanging packages or leavingHughes's address with parcels.

In addition to cash seizures and damning emails, evidence used against the group included traces of ketamine found in the floor concealment of a white Peugeot Partner van and a hidden compartment in the rear of a white Vauxhall Vivaro van.

Both concealments were skilfully constructed and operated by switches in the cabs, the NCA revealed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 105th Indian Science Congress, which was to be held at the Osmania University here from January 3 to 7 next year, has been indefinitely postponed, the university said today.

The Indian Science Congress Association said on its website that the university's vice chancellor has expressed inability to host the event due to certain issues on the campus.

The university's vice chancellor, S Ramachandram, said though they were fully prepared to host the event, the decision to postpone it had to be taken due to things beyond their control.

"We were fully prepared. (We had to take this decision) keeping in view the recent incidents on the campus," he said.

Notably, a 20-year-old student had allegedly committed suicide on December 3 on the campus. The body of the first-year student of MSc Physics at the university, was found hanging in the washroom of one of the hostels on the campus.

Protests were held on the campus after the incident.

The university said it hopes the event would be held in the near future after holding further discussions with the the Indian Science Congress Association.

The university, in all its earnestness, was fully prepared to conduct the event. Several committees worked for the past three months tirelessly to ensure smooth conduct of the event, it said.

"In fact, the university changed the examination schedule for this purpose. At one point in time, the university was flexible and was willing to have the inaugural event outside the campus and the remaining sessions on the campus even if it meant incurring more expenditure and inconvenience," the release said.

In a release, the Varsity said, "The Indian Science Congress Association has indefinitely postponed the conduct of the 105th Indian Science Congress in the university".

"The vice chancellor of the Osmania University has informed that they are not in a position to host the 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7, 2018 due to certain issues on the campus," the association said.

The Indian Science Congress is an annual event usually held in the first week of January.

The last Science Congress was held at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh in January this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Israel's envoy to the United Nations vowed today that his country would never be "driven" from Jerusalem as UN member states prepared to vote on rejecting Washington's recognition of the Holy City as its capital.

"No General Assembly resolution will ever drive us from Jerusalem," Ambassador Danny Danon told an emergency session of the 193-nation assembly.

A draft resolution rejecting the US move was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 23-year-old Israel national was arrested for allegedly possessing a satellite phone, which is banned in India, at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here, a police official said today.

Based on a complaint by the officials of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Sahar police arrested Tsamret Ido, an ex-Army man from Israel, on Tuesday, she said.

After Ido landed at the Mumbai airport, the CISF, during security check, found a satellite phone in his luggage following which he was apprehended and later arrested, the official said.

Ido, who was in India on a tourist visa, was scheduled to go Goa from here through a connecting flight.

An offence was registered against him at the Sahar police station under relevant sections of the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, she said.

The man was yesterday produced before a local court which granted him bail on a surety of Rs 25,000.

According to sources, Ido told the police he was not aware that satellite phones are banned in India.

Notably, the handlers of the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists had apprently used these phones during the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation also issued a circular in 2012 to all airports in the country to detain passengers carrying satellite phones, the police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Tuesday rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of would be having the last meeting with him on Monday, saying the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.

Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

"Let me assure you that the Commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."



He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."



Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy.
JP Morgan Chase's Swiss unit "seriously breached anti-money laundering regulations" in its dealings with Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, the Swiss financial markets watchdog found today.

The US bank's subsidiary "failed to adequately identify the increased money laundering risks in some of the business relationships related to this case", the FINMA body said, referring to a money-laundering scandal that has shaken the Malaysian political establishment.

"The bank seriously breached anti-money laundering regulations by failing to screen adequately transactions and business relationships booked in Switzerland associated with the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB and one of its business partners," FINMA said in a statement.

Despite its findings, FINMA said it would not seek legal proceedings against any individuals and there would be no fines against JP Morgan.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that USD 4.5 billion was looted from 1MDB in an audacious campaign of fraud and money-laundering.

The scandal has rocked the administration of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, the founder of 1MDB, who must call elections by mid-2018. He has responded by purging critics from his government and curbing domestic investigations.

Celebrities have been sucked into the scandal, with the Justice Department alleging stolen 1MDB money was used to buy jewelry worth millions of dollars for Miranda Kerr as well as gifts for Leonardo DiCaprio.

Authorities in several countries as still investigating the complex deals involving the Malaysian fund and other entities.

In April 2016 1MDB defaulted on USD 1.75 billion in bonds after missing an interest payment of USD 50 million.

While JP Morgan Chase's Swiss unit has escaped fines, FINMA said Thursday it will now conduct an in-depth review of the bank's anti-money laundering systems.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A parliamentary investigation into allegations surrounding the private life of Britain's longest-serving Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz has been "suspended for medical reasons", a report said today.

The 61-year-old Labour party MP was hit by newspaper allegations last year that he had paid male escorts.

The Goan-origin politician had issued a public apology to his wife and children at the time and stepped down as the head of the influential House of Commons' Home Affairs Committee.

The UK's Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Hudson had opened an investigation to determine whether Vaz was guilty of a conflict of interest, as he was chair of the Home Affairs Committee's review of vice laws at the time of the allegations.

The suspension of the investigation was revealed on the UK Parliament website today, without any further details.

"Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP - Alleged breach of paragraphs 10 and 16 of the Code of Conduct - suspended for medical reasons," the website notes.

The watchdog's probe under the parliamentary Code of Conduct also covers whether the former minister caused "significant damage" to the reputation of Parliament.

In December 2016, Scotland Yard had dropped an investigation into Vaz over alleged drug offences linked with the newspaper revelations around male escorts.

"During the investigation, new information was received and additional advice obtained from the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], following which the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] has made the decision to close the investigation with no person being charged," the Met Police had said in a statement.

A 'Sunday Mirror' article on September 4, 2016, had claimedVazhad been secretly recorded offering to pay for cocaine, a banned drug, if it was brought to a future meeting, though he stressed that he did not want any himself.

He was also accused of encouraging others to use poppers, an illegal party drug.

Vaz has since returned to active political life, and was re-elected to one of the Labour party's key executive bodies



the National Executive Committee (NEC) as its Black Asian and Ethnic Minority (BAME) representative in August this year.

"I am looking forward to continuing the vital work that I have been carrying out in the position for the last decade," said the Labour MP from Leicester East.

The National Executive Committee is the governing body and administrative authority of the Labour Party that oversees the overall direction of the party and the policy-making process.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia today branded US sanctions against Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov "illegal and unfriendly" after Washington accused the key Kremlin ally of involvement in murder and torture.

Yesterday, the US Treasury hit the Chechen leader with financial sanctions under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, accusing Kadyrov of personal involvement in repression, torture and extra-judicial killings.

"We consider these sanctions to be illegal, we consider them unfriendly, we disagree with them," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Asked whether Moscow will respond to the move, Peskov said: "With some certainty, we can assume that the principle of reciprocity will be observed."



He did not provide further details.

The Russian foreign ministry struck a similar note.

"This all looks very grotesque because it is not rooted in reality," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"These steps will lead to reciprocal measures," she added.

"It is sad that a number of groups in the United States still have an obvious desire to pursue the path of destroying bilateral ties."



Kadyrov, 41, is one of the most prominent Russian officials to be added to the sanctions under the Magnitsky Act.

A former rebel turned Putin loyalist, Kadyrov has his own militia army and rules with an iron grip the North Caucasus region that was the scene of two separatist wars.

Critics have accused him of amassing vast personal wealth and abusing his political post.

The new penalties, which also target other Russian officials, expose the difficulty of a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow expected by many since US President Donald Trump's election last year.

Relations between the two former Cold War adversaries hit a new low following a US investigation into accusations of Russian interference during the 2016 US presidential election and suspicion of a possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's campaign team.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Realty major Lodha Developers has revived plans to launch an initial public offer (IPO) and will soon approach market regulator Sebi with a fresh prospectus as it looks to raise Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000 crore including by pre-IPO placement of shares.

The Mumbai-based developer had filed draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with Sebi in September 2009 to raise about Rs 2,800 crore. The company got the Sebi nod in January 2010, but later shelved its plan to launch the IPO due to bad market conditions post the global financial crisis.

According to sources, Lodha Developers is in process of appointing merchant bankers.

The company is targeting to raise between Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 6,000 crore through IPO and pre-IPO placement of shares, they added.

A Lodha spokesperson declined to comment.

In July-end, Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha had told PTI that the company is reviving IPO plans.

"We are aiming for listing in calendar year 2018 and shall approach Sebi in the next 6-9 months," Lodha Group Managing Director Abhishek Lodha had said, but refused to share amount it wanted to raise.

The group achieved sales bookings of about Rs 8,500 crore last fiscal from both domestic market and London despite slowdown in the real estate market.

Recently, Lodha group raised an additional USD 125 million through bonds to pre-pay its costlier debt and reduce interest expense.

Lodha groups subsidiary Lodha Developers International Ltd had raised $200 million in March 2015 through issue of bonds with maturity in 2020.

In July, Abhishek Lodha had said its Indian debt stood at Rs 14,500 crore, while the debt of the London business was about 300 million pounds.

Privately-held Lodha Group is currently developing around 41 million sq ft area and has 31 ongoing projects in London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.

The group had forayed into the London realty market in 2013 and acquired two prime sites in central London for an investment of about 400 million pounds.

In London, the Lincoln Square project was launched last year and the second project No 1 Grosvenor Square, located in the heart of Mayfair, was launched in June this year.

Lodha UK is eyeing a sales revenue of 1.5 billion pounds (over Rs. 12,000 crore) in the next three years from two ongoing housing projects in central London.

(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.)
German carrier Lufthansa clinched EU approval today for its scaled back bid to snap up assets of bankrupt Air Berlin, a European Union statement said.

Responding to signals that the EU would veto its initial plans, the German behemoth last week ditched its bid to buy Air Berlin's Austrian unit Niki, focusing instead on the acquisition of the failed airline's smaller LGW subsidiary.

"Our job is to make sure that mergers do not make European consumers worse off," EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

"Lufthansa has put forward improved remedies that make sure the effects of its LGW acquisition on competition are limited," she added.

Lufthansa also accepted to forgo some of Air Berlin's prized Duesseldorf airport slots in order to win the greenlight from Brussels.

"This regulatory approval of our acquisition of LGW is an encouraging development," said Thorsten Dirks, a Lufthansa Group board member.

"And I am especially pleased that we can offer our new employees promising prospects within Europe's fastest-growing airline," he said.

The more modest offer, which won the EU's backing, will see Lufthansa acquire the operations of LGW, a regional carrier employing hundreds of people.

Air Berlin CEO Thomas Winkelmann said the approval was "good news" as "more than 800 employees of LGW now have stable employment with the Lufthansa group".

The deal includes taking over the roughly 30 planes flown by LGW but leased from other companies, a source familiar with the bid has told AFP.

The European Commission, the EU's anti-trust authority, earlier this month approved the purchase of Air Berlin's operations at the German capital's Tegel Airport by British low-cost carrier easyJet.

Under the deal, easyJet will spend some 40 million euros (USD 47 million) to enter into leases for up to 25 aircraft and take over slots in Berlin.

The fire sale began in August when Air Berlin suddenly lost a cash lifeline from main shareholder Etihad Airways after years of losses, triggering bankruptcy proceedings.

In the ensuing carve-up Germany's second-biggest airline, it was Lufthansa's attempt to claim the lion's share of the assets that most worried competition authorities.

Lufthansa - which already owns low-cost Eurowings as well as Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines - initially set its sights on scooping up 81 aircraft from Air Berlin's 140-strong fleet, including all of Niki's planes plus its valuable slots.

But fearful of the dominant position that the deal could give Lufthansa on some routes, the Commission stated "deep competition concerns" about the Frankfurt-based carrier's plans and the effect on ticket prices.

Lufthansa then announced last Wednesday that it was dropping its plan to buy Niki.

The shock move meant Niki lost the bridge financing that had kept it flying in anticipation of the Lufthansa acquisition, forcing it to file for insolvency.

Lufthansa is also eyeing a chunk of struggling Alitalia's fleet, in the latest sign of consolidation in the industry.

The German group's strategy of offering both low prices and high-end services has impressed investors, sending its share price past the 30-euro mark, more than double the level at the start of the year.

Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr was this month named "strategist of the year" by financial daily Handelsblatt, which described him as "tough but fair".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress and the NCP today expressed an apprehension in the Maharashtra Assembly that the BJP-led state government may divert more water to neighbouring Gujarat from the proposed Damanganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada projects.

However, State Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan denied the charge.

Stating that the BJP could form government in Maharashtra in 2014 due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, NCP MLA Ajit Pawar said, "We do not want to see Modi influencing the project and taking more water to Gujarat from Maharashtra. The National Water Development Authority is preparing a detailed plan of the project".

The Damanganga-Pinjal project proposes to divert the surplus water of the Bhugad and Khargihill reservoirs in the Damanganga basin to Mumbai, via the Pinjal dam on the Pinjal river in the Vaitarna basin.

Bhugad village is located in Nasik district of Maharashtra near the border of Valsad district of Gujarat.

The project is expected to provide 909 million cubic metres of water to Mumbai for the city's domestic and industrial requirements.

The Daman Ganga river flows through Maharashtra and Gujarat states, as well as the Union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Leader of Opposition and Congress MLA Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said the state government should protect the interest of the people of Maharashtra as far as the river-linking projects are concerned.

"Godavari command area is known as a scarcity region. With river linking projects such as the Daman Ganga-Pinjal and the Par-Tapi-Narmada, the state government should protect the interest of our people as well as the state," Vikhe Patil said.

The Par Tapi Narmada Link proposes to transfer water from the water surplus regions of Western Ghats to the water deficit regions of Saurashtra and Kutch. The link project includes seven reservoirs proposed in north Maharashtra and south Gujarat.

The water from the seven proposed reservoirs would be taken through a canal, which would save Sardar Sarovar water. That water will be used to extend irrigation in Saurashtra and Kutch region.

"The state government should not give lame excuses such as an inability to lift water to level as high as 600 meters. Maharashtra has already implemented lift irrigation schemes like Tembhu, Mhaisal in Sangli district. It is possible to lift water from Gujarat to Maharashtra," Vikhe Patil said.

Allaying the concerns raised by the Opposition leaders, Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan said "not a single extra drop" of water will be given to Gujarat.

He said Maharashtra's interest and desired requirement of water will be protected by the government.

"The Damanganga-Pinjal river link project proposes to provide additional drinking water to Mumbai. The total cost of the project is Rs 2,746.61 crore," the minister said,



Referring to Union government sanctioning Rs 10,800 crore to the Gujarat government for the Par-Tapi-Narmada project, Mahajan said, "We demanded similar allocation for the Maharashtra as well. The Centre has also approved our demand and given funds for the river linking projects".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Committee to Protect Journalists earlier this month released its yearly report on incarcerated news reporters around the world, and the results are disturbing.

For the second year in a row, the total number of jailed journalists hit a new global record. This year's 262 reporters in custody eclipsed last year's mark of 259, according to the committee's analysis.

The totals represent people the committee determined were incarcerated by the government as a result of their reporting activity. It doesn't include people held hostage by terrorists and other non-governmental groups. The count is a point-in-time snapshot; in this year's case, the census was taken on Dec. 1. Reporters who were taken into custody and released earlier in the year are not part of the count.

The committee works to promote freedom of the press around the world, and it's been doing the important work of carefully tracking jailed journalists cases for more than two decades.

From this year's report, two related trends stand out for me. The first is that more than half of the cases of imprisoned news reporters come from just three countries: Turkey, China and Egypt.

While all of those nations certainly have authoritarian leadership, none are isolated from the engaged global community of nations. They have active working relationships with the rest of the civilized world, including the United States.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world  including the United States  has done little to discourage the way Turkey, China and Egypt treat journalists.

"In a just society, no journalist should ever be imprisoned for their work and reporting critically, but 262 are paying that price," the committee's executive director, Joel Simon, said in a press release. "It is shameful that for the second year in a row, a record number of journalists are behind bars. Countries that jail journalists for what they publish are violating international law and must be held accountable. The fact that repressive governments are not paying a price for throwing journalists in jail represents a failure of the international community."

Regarding the United States' role in this situation under the President Donald Trump administration, a case can be made that hostility toward the concept of a free press is being fomented around the globe.

One of Trump's signature terms has been "fake news," which he frequently uses to describe coverage that he thinks is unfair or unflattering. Rarely does he actually dispute the facts in such reports; he just knows that if he labels something as a "fake" and tries to portray himself as a victim of a smear campaign by the news media, a good portion of his supporters will dismiss the information.

A large segment of the American public sees through this act, but how is it playing beyond our borders? One piece of information from the jailed journalists report provides a disturbing answer. In 2017, the number of cases of reporters put behind bars on charges of "false news" doubled to 21.

"U.S. President Donald Trump's ... insistence on labeling critical media 'fake news' serves to reinforce the framework of accusations and legal charges that allow such leaders to preside over the jailing of journalists," the committee wrote.

As we move into 2018, we need more of the people Trump sometimes listens to  Republicans in Congress  to speak out against the policies and rhetoric that are contributing to these troubling trends.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today dubbed the BJP's efforts to resolve the Mahadayi river water sharing issue with neighbouring Goa as a "political gimmick" ahead of assembly elections in the state early next year.

Questioning as to how BJP state President B S Yeddyurappa can make an announcement on the matter, he said either Goa Chief Minister has to communicate to the state government any decision taken by them or they have to submit an affidavit informing the tribunal, which is seized of the issue.

"Who is Yeddyurappa to make the announcement ... this is just a political gimmick" keeping in mind the assembly elections, due early next year, the CM said.

Stating that he welcomes any attempt to resolve the issue, Siddaramaiah said he was still ready to participate if Prime Minister calls a meeting of Chief Ministers of all three riparian states -- Maharasthra being the other -- to resolve the issue.

"Let the Prime Minister immediately call the meeting of Chief Ministers. I'm also ready for the meeting with Goa Chief Minister," he said at Vijayapura in north Karnataka.

A BJP team led by Yeddyurappa, which met Goa Chief Minister Parrikar in the presence of party President Amit Shahin Delhi yesterday, has termed the discussions as "satisfactory".

Yeddyurappa has also said he would make an announcement on the outcome of the deliberations at a party convention in Hubballi today, after receiving final communication from Goa.

Siddaramaiah said Yeddyurappa's claims about the outcome of delebrations in resolving the issue cannot be believed.

Karnataka is seeking release of 7.56 tmcft water by Goa from the river for the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project, being undertaken to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and districts of Belagavi and Gadag in the state's northern region.

The Karnataka government had earlier petitioned the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal which in its July 27 last year interim order rejected the state's plea citing various grounds, including ecological damage the project may cause.

Challenging this, the state government has filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court.

Siddaramaiah said BJP leaders were silent when he hadled a delegation to the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.

"These leaders were silent all these days. As the assembly elections are nearing they are trying to playpolitical gimmick," he charged.

Karnataka has for long been advocating out of court settlement of the issue and had sought Modi's intervention.

In September last year, the tribunal had asked Chief Ministers of all the three riparian states to resolve the dispute amicably by holding discussions, following which Siddaramaiah also wrote to his Goa and Maharashtra counterparts for an amicable solution.

Goa, which had earlier expressed its opposition to theout of court settlement of the dispute, did not respond positively for the proposed meeting of Chief Ministers.

The Kalasa-Banduri Nala (diversion) project involves building barrages across Kalasa and Banduri, tributaries of Mahadayi river, to divert 7.56 tmcft of water to the Malaprabha river which supplies the drinking water needs of the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maharashtra government is keen on reducing the no-development zone limit in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) area to 200 metres from the coastline, against the existing 500 metres, it said today.

The state would be sending a proposal in this regard to the Centre, it said.

minister Ramdas Kadam, speaking in the Legislative Assembly here, said the purpose was to encourage development of ports in the state.

As per CRZ norms, no development is permitted in areas less than 500 meters from coastline.

"We want to develop ports, and because of CRZ norms, we can not do it. If we could revise the distance limit up to 200 meters, it will be helpful for infrastructure development.

"We will send the proposal to the Union government for its approval," Kadam said, while replying to questions related to .

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mahindra Powerol, a unit of the Mahindra Group, today said it is in talks with a number of global and domestic players for a technology tie-up to launch high power diesel generator sets in 500 kVA and above category in the next two years.

The company is also looking to increase exports revenue of its generator business to 25 per cent in the next financial year from the existing around 16 per cent.

"We plan to roll out diesel generators in higher category of 500 kVA and above in the next two years. The industry is moving towards that segment.

We are now working on that," Mahindra & Mahindra Vice President (Retail and International Business-Powerol) Sanjay Jain told PTI here.

The company is currently in discussions with a number of firms rolling out the high powered generator sets, he added.

"We are working on it. We are talking to many companies, both domestic and foreign for a tie up. It may be for the technology. But nothing has been finalised yet," Jain said.

He did not share any other detail regarding development of the product such as investment for research.

Talking about its business, Jain said: "In 2016-17, we recorded a revenue of Rs 1,250 crore and it is likely to be Rs 1,350 crore in this fiscal. Out of that, around 16 per cent or Rs 200 crore came from the exports and it is likely to go up to 17-20 per cent in this fiscal."



In 2018-19 financial year, the company is looking to increase its exports revenue from generator sets to 25 per cent of the total turnover, he added.

The company today launched its new 250 kVA and 320 kVA diesel generators for the North Eastern market, priced between Rs 12.5 lakh and Rs 16 lakh, excluding GST.

Jain informed that the size of the Indian generator set market is 1,17,200 units with a value of Rs 6,394 crore as per last fiscal.

"We are a dominant player in the lower category generator set market. The North East market size is around 3,000 units and we enjoy 35-40 per cent share of the market," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The family of the twin babies, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, today demanded a CBI probe into the case after an appellate authority stayed the Delhi government order cancelling the hospital's licence.

At a press conference held here, 48-year-old Kailash Kumar, grandfather of the baby boy, who later died at a nursing home in Pitampura while his sister was still born, alleged that the family was not even "informed" about the stay order.

"We tried to silently protest in front of Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, but police asked us to move from there. The Delhi government had taken the decision that would have served as a warning to other hospitals.

"But, now the cancellation order has been stayed. We are running for justice. We want justice and so we demand a CBI probe into the whole case so that things get clear," Kailash told reporters.

He said they have hired an advocate to pursue the case and claimed that today a plea was filed by him in Rohini court for a status report in the ongoing investigation in the case.

The Court of Financial Commissioner stayed the cancellation order issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) till January 9, when the next hearing will be held.

Rishi Pal Singh, counsel for the aggrieved family, said "if the appellate authority summons us, we will present our case or else we may move the high court".

Meanwhile, the father of the babies, Ashish Kumar, and about 10 other family members, picketed on a dusty pavement right across the facility in Delhi's Shalimar Bagh, demanding justice.

"We'll not move and we'll not relent, till we get justice," asserted Ashish Kumar, 24, father of the infants, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by the hospital on November 30, where they were born.

"We are demanding a CBI probe because we feel that is the only way we will be able to get justice," he said.

The premature baby boy had died on December 6 at a nursing home in Pitampura after battling for life for nearly a week since he was found alive on the way to be cremated by family members.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The grandfather of the twin babies, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, today demanded a CBI probe into the case after an appellate authority stayed the Delhi government order cancelling the hospital's licence.

At a press conference held here, 48-year-old Kailash, grandfather of the baby boy, who later died at a nursing home in Pitampura while his sister was still born, alleged that the family was "not even "informed" about the stay order.

"We tried to silently protest in front of Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, but police removed us from there. The Delhi government had taken the decision that would have served as a warning to other hospitals.

"But, now the cancellation order has been stayed. We are running for justice. We want justice and so we demand a CBI probe into the whole case so that things get clear," Kailash told reporters.

He said they have hired an advocate to pursue the case and claimed that today a plea was filed by him in Rohini court for a status report in the ongoing investigation in the case.

The Court of Financial Commissioner stayed the cancellation order issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) till January 9, when the next hearing will be held.

Rishi Pal Singh, counsel for the aggrieved family, said "if the appellate authority summons us, we will present our case or else we may move the high court".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Meghalaya government will invest Rs 50 crore for setting up nine community colleges to make higher accessible to students, especially those from rural areas.

Addressing reporters after a Cabinet meeting here today, Chief Minister Mukul Sangma said the one-time capital expenditure for the colleges will be Rs 50 crore, while recurring expenditure would stand at Rs 53.11 crore.

There are two categories of community colleges - Ground Field (existing colleges which will get one-time investment of Rs 2 crore) and Green Field (newly set-up colleges at Rs 10 crore each).

In the first phase, colleges falling under the ground field category include Nongstoin College, Tirot Sing Memorial College, Ri Bhoi College, Shangpung College and Jaintia Eastern College, Khliehriat.

New community colleges to be set up under green field category are Tura, Ampati, Chokpot and Rongjeng, he said, adding, these colleges will have science, commerce and arts streams.

Stating that the new model of colleges was conceptualised to relieve the burden on the state capital, Sangma said, "The establishment of the community colleges will address the demand and supply gap in providing seats to students who aspire to take up higher ."



This is one of the best models to ensure that students from rural areas have a dedicated college at their own backyards, the CM said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Microsoft India will continue to partner Assam to enable better e-governance services in the state, the tech giant has said.

The company was the first global public cloud service provider to be accredited by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), it said in a release.

Microsoft technologies currently power several core e-governance and critical projects in Assam, the release said.

The tech major is engaged with Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd for their initiatives in the field of internal workplace modernisation, and is also associated with departments such commercial tax and treasury, it said.

During a digital conclave in the city yesterday, the company discussed its focus on better e-governance services in Assam, in alignment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' mission.

"We believe the next step of growth will be to move beyond just the Internet and leverage the power of the cloud, artificial intelligence, IoT and data; and are very keen to partner with Assam on this journey," said Ashutosh Chadha, Group Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Microsoft India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bureaucrats must realise that an elected representative has to be at the helm of affairs of a government department as a minister is responsible not only to his electorates but Parliament as well, the special 2G court said today.

Special judge O P Saini, while noting that if a minister does not perform he risks being "eclipse of his political career", said that former telecom secretary D S Mathur was "bent upon" to not let then telecom minister A Raja do anything.

He referred to the statements of one of the senior officers of the Department of Telecom (DoT) who had deposed before the court that he had seen Raja shouting at and arguing with Mathur in December 2007.

"What a Minister shall do with such an obstructive and dithering secretary, except to shout at him? A Secretary must realize that as per the constitutional scheme of things, an elected representative has to be at the helm of affairs of a Government department," the court said.

"A minister is a hard core politician, who is responsible to his electorates as well as to Parliament. He has also to retain the faith of the Prime Minister to stay in council of Ministers. He has to perform to the maximum within the time at his disposal," it said.

The judge said that if Raja was working against the government policies, Mathur could have informed the Cabinet Secretariat or the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) about it.

"Nothing of this sort was done by D S Mathur. A secretary is a secretary to the Government of India and not to his ministry alone," the court said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Xenophobic sentiments against the minority Chakma community by the Mizos threatened peace and harmony in 2017 in Mizoram, which also did not see much forward movement on the Bru refugee issue.

Trouble began when four Chakma students were selected to study in medical colleges under the quota of native Mizos with the student bodies holding rallies which turned violent on July 20 in capital Aizawl.

The state government agreed to withdraw the names of the Chakma students from the lists, pacifying the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), the state's apex student body, which then cancelled its indefinite bandh call.

The Bru refugee issue, however, continued to haunt the state government. Its decision to undertake the physical repatriation of over 32,000 Brus lodged in six relief camps in North Tripura district from the second week of February could not take off due to legal reasons.

Officials who conducted the identification in the Tripura camps last year identified 32,857 people from 5,413 families as bona fide residents of Mizoram and for physical repatriation.

However, the Supreme Court instructed the Mizoram government not to go ahead with the proposed repatriation process.

The Brus are lodged in the camps since 1997 following exodus from Mizoram due to communal tension triggered by the murder of a forest official by Bru militants.

The state government made a fresh proposal for commencement of physical repatriation from the first week of March next year but the actual implementation of the process would depend on availability of funds from the Centre.

Mizoram received unprecedented heavy rains during monsoon leaving at people died and 11 injured with the toll being the highest in the past 40 years.

Rains-induced landslides left a trail of destruction across the state while floods in the low-lying areas created havoc to the human settlements and cultivation areas, cutting off many places from the rest of the world.

Resumption of peace talks between the Manipur-based Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) faction led by H Zosangbera on April 28 was a positive step towards a solution to the vexed Hmar political imbroglio.

However, the talks were delayed due to various reasons including the state government's efforts to rein in another HPC (D) faction led by Lalhmingthanga Sanate, which fizzled out due to pre-conditions for parleys set by the militant group.

The faction continued its demand for establishment of a separate autonomous district council for the Hmar community under the sixth schedule of the Constitution by carving out the area adjoining Manipur and the participation of a senior central government official in the talks, which were rejected outright by the state government.

When the next round of parleys resumed on September 21 and 22 in Aizawl, both the parties could finalise the framework agreement which was sent to the government for final approval.

The next round of talks would be a political level one with both the sides reaching an agreement to sign the memorandum of settlement which was expected to give more political and financial autonomy to the Sinlung Hills Development Council (SHDC), proposed to be rechristened as Sinlung Hills Council (SHC).

Alleged gangraped of a woman and murder of her friend, both belonging to the Chakma community, by two BSF constables at the Mizoram-Bangladesh border created a furore across the state. The two constables were arrested by police.

With elections to the 40-member assembly due by the end of next year, political alliances were forged while new political parties emerged during the year.

A new group called Zoram Exodus Movement (ZEM), formed by retired priests, retired government officials and senior journalists, announced an alliance with the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZN) and the Mizoram People's Conference (MPC) under the banner of Zoram People's Movement (ZPM).

Anti-corruption watchdog People's Right to Information and Development Implementation Society of Mizoram (PRISM) converted itself into a political party as People's Representation for Identity and Status of Mizoram and retained its abbreviated form - PRISM.

The Maraland Democratic Front (MDF), earlier an ally of the opposition Mizo National Front (MNF), merged with the BJP on October 25 along with its two members of district council (MDCs) in the Mara Autonomous District Council.

With strict directions from the Centre, vigil was maintained along Mizoram's international border to ensure that no Rohingya Muslims enter the state.

Several Myanmarese nationals, mainly Zakhai and Khumi communities, entered into southernmost Mizoram's Lawngtlai district due to the Myanmarese army launching a massive crackdown on the Arakan Army militants near the Mizoram border with Chin Hills.

The Lawngtlai district administration provided relief camps, health facilities and food to the displaced people while the local people and NGOs of the district also rendered all possible assistance.

President Ram Nath Kovind's maiden two-day visit to Mizoram after assuming office was another important event of 2017. He addressed the state legislature on November 30 and became only the second Indian president to do so after A P J Abdul Kalam.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also visited the state on December 16 when he inaugurated the 60-megawatt Tuirial Hydro Electric Project.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former TRAI chairman Nripendra Misra, who is now the principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was today applauded by the special 2G court for his commitment in seeking implementation of recommendations of the telecom regulator.

However, the court was critical of the then senior officers of the Department of Telecom (DoT) for passing the buck on others and discarded their testimonies in the case.

Discussing roles and deposition as witnesses of several high-profile bureacrats, it said Misra's efforts deserve "appreciation".

Special Judge O P Saini said several letters were written by Misra to then telecom secretary D S Mathur but the latter did not send any reply to them.

"This shows the attitude of Mathur towards other government functionaries as well as his official duties. The irresponsible and callous attitude of Mathur is reflected by his conduct in not replying to the letters of Misra, who was also at one time, Secretary (Telecom)," the court said.

It said, "On the other hand, the record reflects the earnestness and commitment of Misra with which he was seeking the implementation of the recommendations. Had Mathur heeded to the advice of Misra, things would not have gone so bad leading to the registration of instant criminal case.

"The efforts of Misra for ensuring proper implementation of TRAI recommendations deserve appreciation."



Regarding A K Srivastava, then deputy director general (Access Services) who was a key prosecution witness, the court said his oral testimony was contrary to the official record which was rejected and he was "inconsistent" and "blowing hot and cold at the same time".

"His evidence indicates how a very senior officer endeavoured hard to disown and discredit the official record created by him alone and to malign the minister (A Raja)," it said.

The court said that the record showed that Mathur was "largely responsible for the mess" in the DoT and it seemed that was awaiting his impending retirement on December 31, 2007 and that he could have awaited his retirement in a more graceful manner.

"If Raja was working against the policies of the Government, he (Mathur) could have informed the Cabinet Secretariat or the PMO. Nothing of this sort was done by Mathur. A Secretary is a Secretary to the Government of India and not to his Ministry alone," it remarked.

Regarding the then member (Telecom), K Sridhara, the court said his statement was of no use to the prosecution.

It also concluded that Nitin Jain, then director (ASI), deposed contrary to official record and he testified in a hesitant and roundabout manner and his deposition was not trustworthy.

Misra, Mathur, Srivastava, Sridhara and Jain were among the many key prosecution witnesses in the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On December 19, Zhang Jindong, president of Suning Commerce Group Co.,ltd (Suning Commerce) announced that the group plans to expand its physical stores to over 20 thousand in the following three years with more than 20 million square meters.

Sun Weiming, vice president of Suning Commerce, elucidates the next three years' development planning in some key businesses. Specifically, it will open 20 automobile supermarkets in 2018, 40 stores in 2019 and 2020 respectively. By the end of 2020, the total will reach 101.

At the opening ceremony of the first automobile supermarket, Liu Donghao, president of Suning.com Auto Company (Suning Auto), said, This is just a beginning. Next, we will plan to open over 100 automobile supermarkets across the country. Like he said, Suning Auto has put this plan on the agenda.

A source said that the second automobile supermarket will be opened before the Spring Festival of 2018 in Jinan. Besides, preparations in other cities, like Xi'an, Chongqing, Chengdu, Tianjin, are in full swing. As the operation of auto supermarkets becoming increasingly mature, the one-hundred-stores plan may be accomplished ahead of schedule.

Sun Weiming also revealed other directions that Suning Auto will head for in future. He said, On one hand, we will devote more energy on electric vehicles. on the other hand, we need do a better job in automobile service ."

Suning Auto has built a cooperative relationship with BYTON. Reportedly, the first concept vehicle and drivable prototype vehicle are expected to show up in January, 2018. In the business of automotive finance, Suning Financial Service works with E-charger to step into the field of vehicle-sharing .

According to Liu Donghai, 2018 is a crucial year for Suning Auto to expand its businesses. In addition to the expansion of automobile supermarkets, Suning Auto still has new plans on the second-hand vehicle market, automotive service market and automotive finance. This may affect the transformation and advancement of the whole industry to some degree.
An MoU for setting up a Rs 1,800 crore petrochemical park at Kochi, with the aim of making the port city a hub in the petrochemical production chain, was inked by the Kerala government and fertiliser major FACT, owned by the Centre.

It will come up in 481 acres of land owned by the Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore, the state government said.

The park was aimed at making Kochi a hub in petrochemical production chain on par with Jurong in Singapore and industrial complexes in South Korea, it said.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed in the presence of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan by FACT Chairman and Managing Director S K Lohani and Additional Chief Secretary (Industries and Power) Paul Antony on behalf of the Kerala government here yesterday.

The project, which will be developed by Kerala Infrastructure Developemnt Corporation (KINFRA), will foster an for industries that use the by-product of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), the Chief Minister's Office said in a Facebook post.

The Kerala government will facilitate funds for the project through KIIFB (Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board).

About 150 acres of land will be acquired at the rate of Rs one crore an acre and 331.79 acres will be acquired at the rate of around Rs 2.4 crore per acre, totalling Rs 977 crore, the post said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba has reviewed 'Operation Sahayam', the search and rescue operation carried out by the Navy in the high seas in the aftermath of Cyclone Ockhi.

Admiral Lanba held extensive discussions with senior officers of Southern Naval Command and reviewed 'Op Sahayam', the SNC's search and rescue operation following the Very Severe Cyclonic Storm 'Ockhi', a defence release said today.

He left Kochi today after his three-day visit on completion of the silver jubilee seminar of the Flag officer Sea training (FOST) organisation, it said.

The Navy chief was the chief guest for the seminar which had international participation from 18 delegates from countries such as Malaysia, Sri-Lanka and UAE.

During the visit, the Admiral also held discussions with the Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy, Vice Admiral Sirimevan Ranasinghe, who was also invited for the FOST silver jubilee celebrations, the release said.

He also inaugurated the 'New Vajra Enclave'- an officers residential complex of the Officer's Mess of SNC and laid the foundation stone for a state-of-the-art Navigation and Direction (ND) simulator at Navigation and Direction School yesterday.

Besides this, the Navy chief visited all the latest facilities developed at the naval base in recent times such as newly constructed Modern Dive Training Facility (Chiman Singh Block) at Diving School, the Observer School and the Naval Aircraft Yard (NAY).

Earlier, the foreign delegates, who joined on the second day of the seminar yesterday, were welcomed by Vice Admiral AR Karve, the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief (FOC-in-C) Southern Naval Command.

According to the release, Admiral Lanba complimented the speakers as well as the moderators during the international seminar- which was themed 'Operational Sea Training: Sharing Best Practices'- for presenting their perspectives on issues of immediate and topical interest to the Navy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The NCP today alleged that Maharashtra Animal Husbandry Minister Mahadev Jankar and some officials tweaked the tender procedure to award a contract for suppling vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease found in milch animals.

"Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister Mahadev Jankar and some officials from his ministry tampered with the tender procedure to award the contract to Biovet Private Limited company," Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde said.

FMD can affect milk production in animals and could also be fatal in certain cases.

Jankar is slated to answer the allegations tomorrow.

The vaccine was supposed to be distributed to prevent FMD and it is to be given twice a year.

However, the government has suspended distribution of the vaccine after the state Industries department termed a short-tender for the same as void.

"Due to this mess up, there is no supply of vaccine since January this year, as a result of which many animals have contracted FMD," Munde told the Upper House.

Meanwhile, a senior Animal Husbandry department officer said that Hyderabad-based Indian Immunologicals Ltd (IIL), an arm of the National Dairy Development Board, selected distribution of vaccines was rejected on the grounds that it had quoted a higher price per unit in Maharashtra and a lower price for the same in neighbouring Telangana.

"This (no supply of the vaccine) has deprived 2.07 crore animals in Maharashtra of vaccination since May this year," the officer said.

Another official said that and it competes in every state for vaccine supply.

"The IIL had won the contract last year for the supply of vaccine in 2017. However, the IIL tender was cancelled due to an adverse remark mentioned by a Deputy Secretary of Animal Husbandry and Dairy department, as the company had supplied the vaccine to Telangana at lower rates," he said.

As per rules, no vaccine company is supposed to supply same vaccines to other agencies at lower rates in Maharashtra.

"IIL has not violated this rule but its tender was cancelled by Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister Mahadev Jankar on the basis of the remarks made by the deputy secretary," the official said.

Due to cancellation of the tender, milch animals in Maharashtra could not be administered the shot since January this year.

"After IIL won the contract (initially), the state government negotiated the price with the company for vaccine supply. But a deputy secretary from the same department made an adverse remark against IIL and forwarded it to secretary," sources said.

"However, the secretary rejected the remark and stated that the procedure was as per the rules. The principal secretary of Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development department also upheld the concerned secretary's remarks. However, Mahadev Jankar struck down the remarks of both the officials and cancelled the work order," they said.

Meanwhile, some milch animals contracted FMD and the ministry decided to go for a short-tender process to expedite the supply of vaccine and in this process, Biovet Private Ltd was awarded the contract to supply vaccine.

"The IIL complained to Maharashtra Industries department about the short-tender procedure used for awarding the contract to Biovet Private Limited. After studying the complaint, the state industries department termed its short-tender void on November 22," sources said.

Biovet Private Ltd had quoted a rate of Rs 7.70 per dose in Maharashtra and Rs 6.25 per dose in the current year in Punjab, Haryana and West Bengal.

"If same rule is to be applied, Biovet's contract should have been cancelled. Why are there different rules for Biovet and IIL?" asked the official.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Asian nation Nepal, today invited Indian businessmen to explore investment opportunities.

The Himalayan nation offered all possible support in potential areas of cooperation in the realm of tax structure, infrastructure, special rights and exemptions and redressal of single window grievances.

"It's an opportune time to invest in Nepal with bilateral trade on the upswing and we assure Indian industry that our government would provide all possible support to investors," Embassy of Nepal Charge d'Affairs Bharat Kumar Regmi said here.

Regmi was speaking at a seminar on 'Indo-Nepal Trade and Investment Opportunities' organised by FICCI to identify and promote emerging business opportunities between the two countries in the potential areas of cooperation.

Bilateral trade between India and Nepal has grown from USD 3631.94 million in 2012-13 to USD 5892.72 million in 2016-17 and Nepal is keen that Indian businesses invest on a large scale, especially at a time when the Himalayan Kingdom is witnessing the last leg of the transitional period, he said.

Krishna Hari Pushkar, minister-economic, embassy of Nepal, outlined the expanding business opportunities in Nepal in hydro-power, infrastructure, tourism, agro-based industries, health, mining and minerals, education, IT, manufacturing, construction.

Addressing the gathering, the cultural counsellor from the Nepal Embassy, Krishna Prasad Pantha, highlighted the need to strengthen people-to-people links between the two countries and deepen the multi-cultural relations between India and Nepal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Newly-appointed Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basaria today presented his credentials to President Mamnoon Hussain, who said Pakistan is sincerely working for regional peace, stability and development.

Hussain congratulated the envoy and expressed hope that he will play important role in improving the bilateral ties, according to a statement issued by the President House.

"Pakistan is sincerely working for regional peace, stability and development," the president told Basaria.

Pakistan's economy prospered due to prudent policies of the government, Hussain said, adding that Pakistan is the best country for investment.

Ambassadors of China and Vietnam also presented their credentials today.

Basaria last week arrived in Pakistan through Wagah Border. He is 25th Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan.

He arrived at a challenging time as relations between Pakistan and India have touched new low due to ongoing tension.

His first major task would be the handling of a meeting between Kulbhushan Jadhav and his family on Monday.

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan had agreed to facilitate a meeting of Jadhav with his mother and wife in Islamabad on December 25.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Contractual employees working under the National Health Mission (NHM) scheme in Jammu and Kashmir today staged a protest here demanding regularisation of their services.

Hundreds of employees, including doctors, paramedical staff and technicians of the health department, who are working on contractual basis under the NHM, from different districts of the Valley assembled at the Pratap Park in the commercial hub Lal Chowk here and started protesting, officials said.

They said the protesting employees shouted slogans against the state government and demanded their services be regularised.

The employees demanded they should also be included in the list of 60,000 employees who are to be regularised as recently announced by the government, the officials said.

They said the employees warned the government of severe agitation if their demand was not met.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia were today acquitted in a case arising out of the 2G scam probe by a special court which said there was no evidence to suggest that they controlled Loop Telecom Ltd, an alleged beneficiary of the spectrum allocation.

Special judge O P Saini, who acquitted all 17 accused including ex-telecom minister A Raja in the main CBI case holding that there was no scam, also let off Loop Telecom promoters I P Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan saying there was no material on record to indicate that bogus transaction was carried out for securing 2G licences.

"The weight of the evidence, both oral and documentary, is that I P Khaitan was the man behind the entire events alleged in the instant case. Evidence is on record to the effect that I P Khaitan owns his own group of companies known as 'Khaitan group' and it is separate and independent from Essar group. When two groups are independent, there can be no violation of Clause 8.

"The witnesses examined by the prosecution itself deposed that BPL companies were acquired by I P Khaitan and it was I P Khaitan on whose instructions the applications for 21 UAS licences were filed. In these circumstances, there is no material on record to indicate that it was a sham or bogus transaction. Evidence referred to above is almost crystal clear and the same is against the prosecution," the court said.

Immediately after the verdict, Essar Group in a statement, said, "We are thankful to the court for the judgement as it vindicates our stated position and the court has appreciated/vindicated it."



The Ruias, the Khaitans; Essar Group Director (Strategy and Planning) Vikash Saraf, had faced trial in the case, along with three telecom firms Loop Telecom, Loop Mobile India and Essar Tele Holding.

CBI had listed the accused in its charge sheet on December 12, 2011, alleging that they had cheated the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) by using Loop Telecom as a "front" to secure 2G licences in 2008 in violation of Clause 8 of the Unified Access Service License (UASL) Guidelines.

According to the Clause 8 of the UASL guidelines "No single company/legal person, either directly or through associates, shall have substantial equity holding in more than one licensee company in the same service area for Access Services namely; Basic, Cellular and Unified Access Service".

The court was critical of the conduct of the DoT and said if it felt that spirit of clause 8 was being violated by means of "excessive debt funding" by one licensee company to another then it was free to amend its guidelines.

"There is no material on record that DoT took any steps to do any of these things. Instead of course correction by taking appropriate administrative action, the DoT started playing victim claiming that it has been cheated by Loop Telecom Limited as it was indebted heavily to a group, which already had more than 10 per cent equity in an existing pan India licensee, i.e, Vodafone Essar Limited," the court said.

It said the prosecution has failed to prove that Loop Telecom Ltd was a company of Essar group or was substantially controlled by it and therefore was not eligible for applying of UAS licences.

Rejecting CBI's contention that DoT was cheated into issuing 21 UAS licences, the court said that when the prosecution has failed to prove that Loop Telecom Ltd was a company of Essar group then there can be no false representation and no ingredients of Section 420 IPC are made out.

"In the instant case, there is no material on record to show that the applications for 21 UAS licences were filed at the instance of Vikash Saraf. There is also no evidence that in the filing of applications Ravi Kant Ruia, Anshuman Ruia or Kiran Khaitan were involved.

"The evidence is to the effect that the applications were filed at the instance of I P Khaitan, which version matches with the record. Thus, there is no evidence indicating any deception of DoT by any of the accused," it said.

The court also refused to agree with the submission that Essar group, which had 33 per cent equity in Vodafone Essar Limited, a pan India licensee, acquired licences in 21 service areas by using Loop Telecom Limited under the guise that it was owned by I P Khaitan and his wife.

"The witnesses have deposed that all the transactions were genuine one. Thus, there is no evidence on record that the transactions were not genuine or were sham or circuitous aimed at controlling of Loop Telecom Limited by Essar group.

"Accordingly, there is no question of lifting any corporate veil. It may be noted that corporate veil is a legal device and is not illegal by itself. It is acquired by a company on its incorporation. It can only be lifted when fraud is committed by taking advantage of the corporate veil. Thus, there is no merit in the submission of the prosecution that corporate veil is required to be lifted," the court said.

The court said that the alleged motive that Essar group acquired BPL companies (now known as Loop) in the name of Khaitan in order to run telecom business after exiting Vodafone Essar Limited could not be proved as none of the witnesses deposed a word about it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government does not allow "any interference" with its right to undertake improvement of infrastructure within the Indian territory, Union Minister V K Singh said today, dismissing Chinese criticism on India undertaking construction projects near the LAC.

In a written reply to queries in the Rajya Sabha, the minister also said that India and China reviewed the situation in all sectors of the border during the 10th round of talks on boundry issues last month.

The two sides agreed that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas is an important prerequisite for sustained growth of bilateral relations, he said.

Militaries of both the countries recently witnessed a stand-off at the Dokalam that lasted for more than two months.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also approved the construction of a standalone road project from Marsimik La to Hot Spring. Marsimik La in Ladakh is about 20 km from the northwest tip of Pangong lake.

In August, China warned that such a development would only worsen the then stand-off in Dokalam.

Singh, Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, said the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry made statements critical of construction of such infrastructure by Indian near the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

"The government gives careful and specific attention to the improvement of infrastructure for the development of border areas in order to facilitate economic development of these areas as also meet India's strategic and security requirements," Singh said.

The minister said that government does not allow "any interference" with the right to undertake such improvement within the Indian territory and keeps a constant watch on all developments having a bearing on India's security and takes all necessary measures to safeguard it.

Singh noted that the tenth round of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) was held in Beijing. The two delegations comprised diplomatic and military officials from each side.

"The talks were held in a constructive and forward- looking manner. Both sides reviewed the situation in all sectors of India-China border and agreed that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas is an important prerequisite for sustained growth of bilateral relations," Singh said.

WMCC was established in 2012 as institutional mechanism for consultation and coordination for the maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has not carried out any study to ascertain whether brought down realty prices, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

In a written reply, Union minister Hardeep Singh said that there was also no study to find out whether the launch of new projects dipped after the announcement of .

To a query whether it is a fact that high currency note ban had helped in reducing real estate prices by 5-10 per cent, Puri said, "No such study has been carried out by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs."



The comments assume significance in the backdrop of media reports stating that the real estate sector witnessed a drop in prices by 5-10 per cent post- .

It was also reported that launch of new projects since January has been less across top 10 cities including Noida, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.

To another query, Puri said there was a dip in Delhi Metro ridership in October which could not be solely attributed to increases in fares but depends on multiple factors like vacation, season and festivals.
Non-disbursal of salaries to teachers of some madrasas in the state figured in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council debates today, with the government assuring the salaries will be disbursed once disputes pertaining to those institutions are settled.

Minorities Affairs Minister Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary said the disputes pertain to management, recognition and building- parameters.

"In Uttar Pradesh, there are 560 government-funded madrasas and the budegt for these has reached the respective districts. In 46 madrasas, the disbursement of salary to 298 teachers and employees is affected owing to various reasons," Chaudhary said during the Question Hour.

The director of the department has been asked to resolve the disputes within a month, he said, adding, once the disputes are resolved, the salary will be disbursed.

Responding to supplementaries, the minister said the government does not intend to block anyone's salary.

"Madrasas are facing various disputes and they were given time twice to resolve them. Once the parameters are complete and disputes resolved, salaries will be disbursed," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An MLA of the ruling coalition partner Shiv Sena today attacked the BJP-led Maharashtra government over a proposed oil refinery in Ratnagiri, saying it would "destroy the beauty" of the coastal Konkan region.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Sena's Rajan Salvi sought to know the state Industry Department's stand on local people's demand that the project be scrapped.

Industry department is headed by Sena's Subhash Desai.

Salvi and other Sena MLAs had protested against the project earlier too, supporting the villagers of Nanar in Ratnagiri district in their opposition.

"This project is going to destroy the beauty of Konkan region. People unitedly protested against the Jaitapur Nuclear power project and the work at that project is stalled. Now the government wants a refinery exactly in the neighbourhood of the nuclear power project," said Salvi.

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had claimed that Shiv Sena MPs too wanted the project in the region.

However, yesterday, Vinayak Raut, the Sena MP from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, made public a letter written by him to Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, requesting the Centre to shift the project out of Konkan.

Sena leader and state minister Ramdas Kadam, who belongs to the same region, has opposed the project.

Fadnavis had said that opposition to the project was the handiwork of some "commercial NGOs", and claimed that the refinery will generate one lakh jobs for local people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Even after two terror attacks and a driver's deadly rampage through Times Square, New York City is on track to smash its modern-era low for homicides in a year.

Through December 17, the city of 8.5 million people, once America's murder capital, had recorded 278 killings. That puts it on pace to end this year with killings down 14 per cent from last year, and well below the 333 in 2014, which was the year with the fewest homicides since the city began keeping accurate crime statistics in 1963.

Those numbers mean a person's odds of getting killed by homicide in tightly packed, diverse New York City this year were about the same as they were last year in Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota.

Crime has been dropping for many years in New York, but 2017 saw substantial drops even in places like Brooklyn's 75th Police Precinct, once among the nation's most violent places.

"You can feel the change. More people are out walking the streets at night, they're out talking to their neighbours, they're not rushing their kids home, you know, with their heads down," said Rashaud Carmichael, 36, a construction worker and father of three who lives in the area.

"I've lived here all my life. And man, I can tell you, it's a different world now."



There were 126 killings in the precinct in 1993. Last year, there were 23. This year, through December 17, there have been 11.

The statistics stand in sharp contrast to the picture of New York City painted by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail a year ago, when he said murders were up because the city's liberal mayor was coddling immigrants living here illegally and abandoning a police tactic that involved stopping and frisking huge numbers of predominantly innocent black and Hispanic men.

"Look what's been done in this city," Police Commissioner James O'Neill said in an interview with The Associated Press. "These are real numbers. I don't think that's something that can be ignored."



New York's death toll was worsened this year by a Halloween attack by a man from Uzbekistan who drove a rented truck down a waterfront bicycle bath, killing eight people. Months earlier, a driver, said by police to have smoked marijuana laced with PCP, mowed down pedestrians in Times Square, striking 21 people and killing one.

No one died this month when a would-be suicide bomber detonated an explosive in the subway system.

Out in the 75th Precinct, residents are still more concerned about gangs and drug dealing than terrorism. "Crime is still here for us. I still see it and I still feel it," said Jessica Franco, 31, who started the Civic Association of Cypress Hills.

"But I think neighbours have to also understand their power to help change this -- and their responsibility to engage with police to help make it better."



Some criminologists say a move away from heavy-handed policing may have helped drive crime lower.

For years, the police department tackled crime hotspots by flooding them with extra officers and arresting large numbers of people for mostly petty crimes.

Violent crime did fall, but it kept falling as police shifted toward an approach of building community relationships and focusing more on serious crimes. Arrests are down about 7 percent this year.

Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan said there were other tactical changes. The department ditched specialised units within precincts and made most officers general assignment.

It ordered more cars so officers with foot posts far from stations weren't spending half their tours walking to their assignments. Officers are assigned to smaller areas. And it created neighbourhood coordination officers, who spend time addressing concerns like cars blocking driveways.

"We're not going to arrest our way out of the problems here," said Sgt. Timothy Cecchini on a recent patrol through the 75th Precinct. "But now, we are getting the space to think about how to do our jobs and really address issues for people and talk to them."



Over the course of one recent afternoon, he shook hands with a bouncer at a bar beneath an elevated subway line and checked on a jittery ex-convict who needed help with his sick dogs but was mistrustful of the police.

Some people at a public housing development waved to Cecchini as he drove by. Others gave him the finger.

Brooklyn resident Barry Riggins, 49, said he hasn't seen a gentler side of the department yet. He said he has been arrested five or six times -- but only once when he deserved it.

"I can honestly tell you, I'm your normal black man," he said. "I'm more afraid of the cops than people in my area." Other big American cities have been having a mixed experience with violence in 2017.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 10,000 applications of migrants from Pakistan's Hindu community seeking long- term visas (LTV) are pending, the Rajasthan High Court was informed today.

Taking serious note of the deficiencies and disposal of the applications, the high court ordered removal of all deficiencies in the LTV applications within two weeks from the date of the order and submit a report in the court before the next hearing on January 19.

The court, which, on December 14, asked the state government to file a report on pending citizenship cases of the Pakistani Hindu migrants, also directed the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) to upload the notification on the concerned web-portal.

The FRRO was also asked to hold camps at appropriate places and remove all the deficiencies in the forms in the presence of the applicants, amicus curiae and the divisional- level committee constituted by the state.

Out of the pending applications, 2,716 applications have already been forwarded to the Union Home ministry, whereas 4,912 pleas are pending before the state government.

The applications pending at the FRRO level in the state are as 2,418.

On September 22, the court had issued the directions that the applications submitted offline for grant of LTV or citizenship by migrants from Pakistan belonging to minority communities shall be positively considered as far as possible within a period of 60 days from the date of order.

But, amicus curiae Kamal Joshi told the court that neither the corrections were done nor the applicants and the divisional-level committee were informed about the deficiencies in the forms.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 3,600 units have come on board Odisha's single-window portal for industries almost a month after its launch.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had on November 16 launched the state government's Single-Window Investor Facilitation and Tracking portal - GO SWIFT.

With its launch, Odisha has made landmark development from a pre-dominantly paper-based system to an end-to-end online system for all major clearances and support sought by industrial units, Industries Minister Niranjan Pujari said.

"The portal has received an overwhelming response and 3,615 industrial units have come into the fold of GO SWIFT within just 30 days of its launch," he said.

The minister said Odisha will be introducing more progressive reforms next year, as well as intensify investor reach-out activities within the country and outside.

"As per ASSOCHAM, we have the highest implementation rate of industrial projects amongst all states. Odisha is today the most preferred investment destination in the country," Pujari claimed.

Using GO SWIFT, new industrial units can obtain necessary information regarding investible projects, applicable incentives and clearances required through an interactive tool called 'Info Wizard'.

The units can also select suitable industrial land on a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based platform, 'GO PLUS'.

GO SWIFT facilitates online approval from the Single Window Authority and Land allotment from IDCO, he said.

"Industrial units can apply, make payment, track the status of their applications and obtain approvals for 32 G2B services from 15 state government Departments. The Industries Department is in the process of bringing more services under the ambit of GO SWIFT," Pujari said.

Existing industrial units in the state can also apply to regulatory agencies for renewal of licenses, take advantage of risk-based synchronised inspections using 'GO SMILE' and avail post-land allotment services from IDCO using APAA (Automated Post Allotment Application), among other facilities.

"GO SWIFT has seamlessly integrated all existing technological applications of the Industries Department via the Single Sign-On (SSO) Framework to provide unmatched facilitation to new as well as existing industries in the state," Industries Secretary Sanjeev Chopra added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, the BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

Gen Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between Gen Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the Army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan today said it will release 291 Indian fishermen on humanitarian grounds in two phases starting from next week.

"Pakistan has decided to release and repatriate 291 Indian fishermen in two phases on December 29, 2017 and January 08, 2018 via Wagah Border as a goodwill gesture on humanitarian grounds," Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said.

Pakistan had released 68 Indian fishermen in October.

Faisal said Pakistan has always maintained that humanitarian issues should be facilitated and not politicized.

A spokesman for Pakistan's Maritime Security Force (PMSF) last week said that the authorities have arrested 400 Indian fishermen this year.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats lack the technology to avoid being drifting away.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Expelled RJD MP Pappu Yadav today sought the Centre's intervention in ensuring action against the alleged sand mafia in Bihar.

Raising the issue in Lok Sabha during the Zero Hour, he said appropriate action should be initiated immediately against the sand mafia in the state and labourers working there should be tasked to run the sand quarries.

"The Centre must intervene in removing the sand mafia. It is a major issue confronting the state and I demand immediate action against those involved in illegal activities," Yadav said.

He said thousands of daily wage workers were rendered jobless in the last few months due to arbitrary action of the sand mafia.

Earlier this month, Bihar's main opposition party RJD had blamed the "faulty" sand mining policy of the state government for the "crisis" of sand and rendering thousands of labourers jobless.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A delegation of Congress MPs from Punjab led by state party chief and Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar today raised the issue of alleged "forced" conversion of Sikhs in Pakistan with External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

Delegation members including Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu said that they were concerned about the "forced" conversion of Sikhs to Islam in Pakistan and solicited the ministry's urgent intervention to protect the identity of the Sikh community settled there.

Jakhar, in a party release here, said that after Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh raised the issue, the Centre has already directed the Indian High Commission in Pakistan to take it up at the highest level with Islamabad.

"However, we believe the matter to be extremely grave, therefore, it should be taken up personally with the Pakistani authorities without delay by the minister herself," he said.

He added that media reports suggested that a government official was involved in spearheading the conversion campaign in the Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

"In such circumstances, there is a dire need for the Indian government to engage directly with the government in Pakistan instead of routing it through the Indian High Commission," he added.

Jakhar said unless immediately nipped in the bud, the alleged forced conversions have the potential of escalating out of control, which would have a disastrous effect on the future of the Sikhs settled in the neighbouring country.

He said that in the long run, it could lead to total annihilation of the Sikh identity in Pakistan, which could also trigger a cascading impact on Sikhs living in other parts of the world.

The delegation asked the MEA to intercede on a personal basis and pressurise the government in Islamabad to take strong steps to put a stop on the conversions and provide all necessary protection to the Sikh community the, release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British Prime Minister Theresa May today expressed concerns over the release of confidential information by police which led to the sacking of one of her closest allies Damian Green from the UK Cabinet.

Green was forced to resign as First Secretary of State and effective deputy Prime Minister last night after a parliamentary investigation found he had breached the ministerial code of conduct.

During a tour of Poland today, Theresa May said she wanted an inquiry into the leak of information about a Metropolitan Police inquiry dating back nine years by a former officer.

"I share the concerns about the comments from a former Met officer and those concerns must be taken seriously and properly looked at," she said.

May had also criticised police conduct in her formal response to Green's resignation letter.

"But I shared the concerns raised when your [Green's] Parliamentary office was raided when you were a shadow home office minister. And I share the concerns raised at comments made by a former officer involved in that case," she wrote.

The "former officer" is believed to be a reference to the intervention of former Met Police computer expert Neil Lewis, who spoke out in support of claims by former assistant commissioner Bob Quick concerning pornographic images found on Green's official computer when he was a shadow minister in 2008.

The Metropolitan Police, which had referred the case to the UK's data regulator, confirmed today that the pair is under investigation over the "apparent disclosure to the media of confidential material gathered during a police investigation in 2008".

"These are serious allegations and we are investigating to determine whether the law has been broken and what further action is necessary including potential criminal prosecution," said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.

Green stepped down after it was found that he made "inaccurate and misleading" statements about what he knew about claims that pornography had been found on a computer in his House of Commons office nearly nine years ago.

"I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point," he said in his resignation letter.

Green's departure marks the third high-profile ministerial exit from Theresa May's Cabinet within the space of two months, after former defence secretary Michael Fallon over allegations of sexual misconduct and former international development secretary Priti Patel over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials.

Green, who campaigned for Remain in last year's European Union (EU) referendum, had been a leading voice in the UK Cabinet for a "softer" Brexit.

As a friend of May since their Oxford University days, he was believed to be her strongest ally in an increasingly turbulent Cabinet and his exit from her front bench is seen as a major blow to her personally.

The former minister has denied suggestions he made unwanted advances to a female journalist Kate Maltby in 2015 and viewed pornography on a computer in his Commons office in 2008.

Butan official report by the UK Cabinet Office found that statements he had made about being unaware of pornographic material found on his computer were "inaccurate and misleading" and as such fell short of the ministerial code.

The report also found that although there were "competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings" between himself and Maltby, "the investigation found Ms Maltby's account to be plausible".

In his letter, Green said he accepted statements he made about what he knew about the pornography investigation could have been "clearer", conceding his lawyers had been informed about the original discovery in 2008 and the police had raised the matter with him in a phone call in 2013.

"I am overwhelmed by the number of friends, colleagues (on all sides) and constituents who have sent supportive messages this morning," Green tweeted today.

According to Downing Street, May might decide not to appoint a new First Secretary of State but a replacement for Green's parallel role, as Cabinet Office minster, will be announced in the New Year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary today said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should issue a clarification on the allegations he made against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat election campaign.

The Congress has been demanding an apology from Modi over the prime minister's comments.

"During the session of the Lok Sabha, if the opposition is raising an issue related to Prime Minister Modi, he himself should come forward and give clarification," Chaudhary said.

People are "angry" over what happened in Gujarat and the type of language used, he claimed.

Chaudhary also said that there were violations of the code of conduct during Gujarat elections.

Referring to the opposition by a group to celebration of Christmas in schools, he said, that a handful of BJP activists were creating turmoil.

"It is part and parcel of their strategy under which the prime minister would rebuke them after the damage has been done," he alleged.

He also claimed that the law and order situation in UP had not improved.

The way Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath says outlaws would be shot is nothing but an inhuman act and for which Human Rights commission has issued notice to government, he added.

If the outlaws would be killed this way, what are the courts for, he asked.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
From Jan. 9-14, Chamber Music Sedona will host its fifth annual Sedona Winter Music Festival. The six-day celebration of the performing arts will entertain and engage attendees with a variety of special events, including masterclasses for students and a salon musicale at a private home. The festival will culminate on Jan. 14 with a concert held at the Sedona Performing Arts Center. This concert will feature performances of famous works by a quartet of world-renowned musicians: violinist Arnaud Sussmann, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein and pianist Adam Golka.

Praised for his bravura and hypnotic sounds that are reminiscent of vintage recordings, Arnaud Sussmann has performed alongside numerous leading artists and orchestras around the world. He has won several international competitions and received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant Award in 2009. Based in New York City, Sussmann has been a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2006.

Nicholas Canellakis has been hailed as one of the most talented and innovative cellists of his generation. He recently made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut, and as an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, regularly performs on international tours. In addition to his exceptional talent as a musician, Canellakis has directed, produced and starred in several music videos and short films.

Regarded for his ability to combine impeccable technique with a rich, soulful tone, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein has dazzled audiences worldwide with his many performances alongside prominent artists and orchestras. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Fiterstein is an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In September 2017, he began an appointment as Clarinet Professor at the Peabody Conservatory.

Adam Golkas career as an award-winning pianist began when he won first prize at the second China Shanghai International Piano Competition at the young age of 16. Since then, he has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras around the world, as well as at leading festivals as a chamber musician. Golka made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2010 and currently serves as Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

At the Sedona Winter Music Festival, these four artists will perform Beethovens Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11, Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano by Paul Schoenfield and Antonn Dvoraks Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65.

As the grand finale of the festival, this concert will be held on Jan. 14, at 2:30 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center, 995 Upper Red Rock Loop Road, Sedona. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit chambermusicsedona.org/sedona-winter-music-festival/.

Art show features artists with developmental disabilities

Artists with developmental disabilities step into the limelight and claim their place in the world of contemporary art during a collaborative art show merging the artist and interest of Art Enables, Creative Trails, Hozhoni Foundation, Imagine That!, MOSA-Museum of Special Art, N4th Gallery, Sophie's Gallery and Suzi Cappa Art Center. Together they celebrate the talents of persons with developmental disabilities and help them forge an emotional response in others with their art. Featuring the artwork of 24 individual artists, The Road Ahead exhibit will travel the country for over a year stopping in eight cities, including Flagstaff. The opening reception for the show will be tonight, Thursday, Dec. 21, from 4-6 p.m., at the Hozhoni Foundation Inc, 2133 N. Walgreens St. The reception is free and open to the public.

There will also be a free card making workshop from 4-5 p.m., during the reception.

For more information, visit hozhoniartists.org/.
Pope Francis has once again used a Christmas greeting to dress down Vatican colleagues, denouncing the "cancer" of cliques and how bureaucrats can become "corrupted" by ambition and vanity.

"Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Egyptian sphinxes with a toothbrush," Francis told cardinals, bishops and priests who work for him on Thursday. "You need patience, dedication and delicacy."



Francis acknowledged that there were plenty of competent, loyal and even saintly people who work in the Holy See. But he also said there were others chosen to help him reform the Vatican's inefficient and outdated bureaucracy who had shown themselves not to be up to the task.

When these people are then "delicately" removed, Francis said "they falsely declare themselves martyrs of the system, of an 'uninformed pope' or the 'old guard,' when in fact they should have done a mea culpa."



Francis has a tradition of giving the Curia a tough-love Christmas greeting, inviting the Vatican bureaucrats who help govern the 1.2-billion Catholic Church to a Jesuit-style examination of conscience before the new year.

His most blistering critique came in 2014, when he listed the "15 ailments of the Curia" that some suffered, including the "terrorism of gossip," ''spiritual Alzheimer's" and of living "hypocritical" double lives.

Today's speech was tamer, and promised to focus mostly on the Vatican's relations with other countries and faiths.

But Francis spent a good chunk of his remarks on in-house business, making reference to a number of controversial and mysterious exits of Vatican officials in 2017 that once again raised questions about his ability to reform.

Some of the major heads to roll this year included the Vatican's first-ever auditor general, the respected No. 2 in the Vatican bank and the Vatican's hard-line orthodoxy watchdog.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind would visit Hyderabad next week, a Telangana government official said here today.

The visit would be from December 24 to 27, the official said.

It is customary for the President to visit Hyderabad on an annual 'southern sojourn'.

The President stays at 'Rashtrapati Nilayam' here, one of the Presidential Retreats, during the visit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle today released a set of intimate photographs marking their engagement last month.

The 33-year-old fifth in line to the British throne is seen hand-in-hand with the 36-year-old American actress on the grounds of Frogmore House in Windsor in photographs taken by fashion photographer Alexi Lubomirski earlier this week.

The series includes a black and white portrait of the couple embracing, with Meghanin a sweater by designer Victoria Beckhamwrapped in Prince Harry's Burberry coat as she holds his face and they both smile.

A colour photograph shows the prince and his bride-to-be, dressed in a flowing black dress with gold detailing, sitting on the steps at Frogmore House.

The prince is dressed in a blue suit and the couple have their heads pressed together and are holding hands in a way that shows off Markle's engagement ring, which was designed by the prince.

"Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have chosen to release official photographs to mark their engagement. The photographs were taken by Alex Lubomirski earlier this week at Frogmore House, Windsor," Kensington Palace said in a statement.

Lubomirski thanked the couple for allowing him to take the official engagement portraits.

"Not only was it an incredible honour, but also an immense privilege to be invited to share and be a witness to this young couple's love for each other. I cannot help but smile when I look at the photos that we took," he said.

New York-based Lubomirski is a former assistant to famous photographer Mario Testino, who created some of the most famous images of Prince Harry's mother Diana, Princess of Wales.

A second black and white image, shared by the couple via social media site Instagram as a "candid" shot shows them walking in embrace along the grounds of Frogmore House near Windsore Castle, the venue of their wedding set for May 19 next year.

"Thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments following the release of Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle's engagement photographs. The couple are so grateful for the warm and generous messages they have received during such a happy time in their lives," Kensington Palace said with the release on Instagram.

"As a way to say thank you, they have decided to share this candid photograph from the day of their portrait sittings directly with all of you," it adds.

The pictures follow Markle's official meet-up with Harry's extended family at the annual pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace hosted by his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II yesterday.

The British monarch traditionally hosts a festive lunch for her family in London before leaving for her private Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, where she spends the rest of the Christmas period.

In a break from royal tradition, Markle has also been invited to join the festivities at Sandringham this year despite not being officially married to Harry as yet.
Rahul Gandhi will chair a meeting of the Congress Working Committee tomorrow, his first as Congress president.

The CWC will accord a warm welcome to the new president and likely discuss the current political situation, including the ramifications of the Congress's strong performance in the Gujarat Assembly polls for the party in future.

Party sources said the 2G spectrum case judgement acquitting all the accused is also likely to be discussed. The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had used the alleged scam to the hilt while mounting a fierce campaign against the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Alleged corruption under UPA II was widely believed to have led to the defeat of the Manmohan Singh government.

The meeting, sources said, would also discuss the situation arising out of the continued face-off between the government and the main opposition Congress over Modi's remark against Singh suggesting that he colluded with some current and former Pakistani officials to influence the Gujarat polls.

The Congress, sources said, wants to take the 2G issue to the people for which it is likely to formalise a plan soon. The CWC, the party's highest decision-making body, is also likely to adopt a resolution to this effect.

The agenda for the meeting was, however, not officially disclosed.

Though Rahul Gandhi has chaired CWC meetings in the past in the absence of his mother Sonia Gandhi, it will be for the first time that he will preside over it as Congress president.

Gandhi was elected unopposed as Congress chief on December 11 and assumed the party's reins on December 16.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Agitating government doctors in Rajasthan continued their strike today despite high court's direction asking them to resume their duties in hospitals where services have taken a hit.

The in-service government doctors went on an indefinite strike on December 16 against the arrest of some of their fellows under the Rajathan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA). The act was invoked after the doctors threatened that they would go on strike.

The Rajasthan high court had on Tuesday directed the doctors to resume their work and assured them that no doctor would be arrested.

The doctors, however, continued their strike.

As many as 86 doctors had been arrested before the high court's directive on Tuesday.

Doctors are accusing the government of not executing the promises made to them last month. They also accuse it of taking vindictive action against them.

The strike has hit the health services across the state and the patients have been left on god's mercy. Major operations in various district hospitals had to be postponed due to the strike.

Services at the SMS hospital in Jaipur also remained affected.

Dr Ajay Chaudhary, president of the All Rajasthan In- Service Government Doctors Association, accused the government of taking oppressive measures against the doctors.

He also claimed a threat to his life.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Medical and health services remained crippled in parts of Rajasthan where agitating in-service government doctors continued their strike for the sixth consecutive day today despite warning by the high court to resume work.

Health minister Kalicharan Saraf also asked the doctors to call off the strike and resume work, saying that the demands of the doctors have already been "addressed".

He, however, refused to withdraw transfer orders of doctors, saying transfers are a routine process in the government.

Saraf claimed that the government has accepted the demands of doctors and appealed to them to join their duties.

To a question why government is not taking strict action such as cancelling the registration of the doctors, he told reporters, "We do not want to get strict as they are also our family members. The doors are always open for discussion; the doctors can come and talk to us."



To another question that why are not the doctors joining their duties despite the Rajasthan high court's order, he said "We will ask the court of what steps to be taken."



He said the dynamic accelerated career promotion, installing CCTV cameras at health facilities, increasing rural allowances of doctors, increasing post-mortem allowance to doctors, approving post for a legal assistant at joint director zone offices, vehicles to chief medical and health officers in phased manner and other demands of doctors have been accepted.

The doctors are accusing the government of not fulfilling the promises made last month and are against the transfer of 12 doctors, including the president of all Rajasthan In- Service Government Doctors Association, Dr Ajay Chaudhary.

The high court had on Tuesday directed the doctors to resume their work and assured them that no doctor would be arrested.

As many as 86 doctors had been arrested before the high court's directive on Tuesday.

The strike has hit the health services across the state and the patients have been left on god's mercy. Major operations in various district hospitals had to be postponed due to the strike.

Services at the SMS hospital in Jaipur also remained affected.

The agitating doctors have gone underground and could not be contacted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Special CBI court today acquitted former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and all other accused in the 2G scam case that had rocked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II government, holding that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove any of the corruption and money laundering charges.

The stunning verdict came as an anti-climax in a case that had been repeatedly highlighted by the BJP during the 2014 general election campaign as the hallmark of corruption in the then UPA regime. The BJP turned the arbitrary award of radio frequency to telecom providers into a major political issue and put the UPA-II government on the mat.

"I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused," Special CBI Judge O P Saini said in his verdicts in three separate cases related to the 2G scam in a packed courtroom at the Patiala House premises.

Dealing a body blow to the CAG's and CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences, judge Saini in his 1,552- page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people "artfully" arranged few selected facts and created a scam "when there was none". In all, there were 17 accused, including Raja and Kanimozhi, both leaders of Congress ally DMK, in this case that also included three corporate entities.

The three judgements, which together ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed out of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

The ED and the CBI said they will challenge before the Delhi High Court the verdicts, which also unleashed a political slugfest between the BJP and the Opposition. There were 19 accused in the ED chargesheet some of whom figured in the CBI chargesheet filed in its main and offshoot case.

Buoyed by the verdicts, the Congress and the DMK said "truth" has finally prevailed and that justice has been delivered while the ruling party asked the Congress not to treat them as a "badge of honour".

The Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders apologise to the nation for their alleged "propaganda and lies" on the issue.

Manmohan Singh said the court judgement needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government was without any foundation.

"Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power, apologise to the country?" asked Congress communications incharge Randeep Surjewala. "Today is the day for fixing accountability and responsibility."



In a counterattack, Finance minister Arun Jaitley said the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour."



The party's "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, he added.

A number of supporters of DMK leaders Raja and Kanimozhi, who were anxiously waiting outside the jam-packed court room, broke into loud cheers as soon as the verdict was pronounced.

"There is no evidence against me and justice has been delivered," Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, told reporters. A beaming Raja said, "You see everybody is happy."



In a statement in the evening, Raja said the court acquittal showed that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was "cooked-up". He also debunked the presumptive loss theories in the allocation.

Raja, who was the Telecom minister in the Congress-led UPA government when 122 spectrum licences were issued to 8 companies in 2008 on first-come-first-serve basis, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

Raja remained in jail for over 15 months while Kanimozhi was in prison for six months before they were granted bail. Other accused persons were also in jail for varying terms.

The trial in the three cases relating to the 2G scam began after the then Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai in his report alleged 122 2G licences were given to telecom operators at throwaway prices when the UPA was in power and pegged at Rs 1.76 lakh crore the loss to the national exchequer.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court court on February 2, 2012.

Former telecom minister Kapil Sibal demanded an apology from Rai, saying his stand on loss from the 2G spectrum allocation stands vindicated. Sibal had contradicted the CAG report, maintaining there was "zero loss" to the Government as a result of giving 2G licences to new players in 2008.

The verdict also echoed in the Lok Sabha where senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily demanded that Rai quit all posts. Rai heads the Supreme Court-appointed four-member panel of administrators to run the affairs of the BCCI and is also the Chairman of the Banks Board Bureau.

Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, the other accused who were given a chit in the main CBI case included former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd, film producer Karim Morani, Sharad Kumar, Director of Kalaignar TV were also acquitted in the money laundering case.

Three companies--Swan Telecom, Unitech Wireless(Tamil Nadu) limited and Reliance Telecom limited--listed as accused in the main case were also acquitted.

The acquittal of all the accused brought to end the trial that lasted nearly seven years in one of the most controvesial corruption cases that involved politicians, bureaucrats and a host of businessmen and corporate executives accused of conspiracy in the allocation of spectrum or radio waves used to offer mobile servies.

Raja and Kanimozhi were also let off in another case lodged by the ED under the money laundering law arising out of the 2G scam.

Saini, whose court came into being on March 14, 2011 for hearing 2G cases exclusively, also acquitted Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia and six others in a separate CBI case arising out of the 2G scam probe.

Besides Ruias, Loop Telecom Promoters I P Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan and Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors, Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile (India) Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd were also acquitted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two sons of a Rajasthan minister, along with others, allegedly abducted and thrashed a man in Alwar district, police said today.

The incident occurred last evening when Surendra Bhadana and Hitesh Bhadana, sons of General Administration Department (GAD) minister Hem Singh Bhadana, along with 10 others, allegedly abducted one Tej Singh Yadav and thrashed him, they said.

"Yadav was admitted to a local hospital for treatment. He said 12 persons, including Surendra and Hitesh, abducted and thrashed him," Vinod Samaria, SHO of the Shivaji park police station, said.

"Reasons behind the incident are not clear yet," he said, adding that the investigation is underway.

No arrest have been made so far, Samaria said.

The minister could not be approached for his comments.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Director Omung Kumar believes Randeep Hooda should have won awards for his gruelling physical transformation in "Sarbjit".

The film was based on the life of Sarbjit Singh, an Indian prisoner who died in a Pakistani jail after being brutally assaulted.

It focused on his sister Dalbir Kaur's (played by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) fight for over 20 years to free her brother.

"Justice was not given to Randeep. People appreciated his role and the way he did it, but it did not transform in terms of awards. He should have been nominated. It is sad considering the amount of hard work he had put in," Omung told PTI.

"Everyone knows he was the best performer and he was not even nominated and it disturbed me. His work for the film was something else and it all went unnoticed," he added.

Omung says both Randeep and Aishwarya were his first choices for the film.

"The way he transformed no other actor could have done that. He is a dedicated person. He has lived that world. I wanted a mature person and someone who would transform herself from a young beautiful girl to a 54-year-old lady and Aishwarya did a fabulous job. The transformation is there to see."



Sony MAX, the Hindi movies channel from Sony Pictures Networks, will screen "Sarbjit" tomorrow.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government's decision to remove stockholding limits on sugar dealers to keep prices in check, is expected to ease pressure on sugar prices and improve sugar demand at trader and dealer levels, according to a report.

Last Tuesday, the government lifted stockholding limits imposed on dealers in sugar season (SS) 2016-17, owing to softening of sugar prices over the course of the first two and a half months of SS 2017-18 and the government's expectation of a balanced demand-supply scenario and stable sugar prices in SS 2017-18.

The removal of stockholding limits on sugar dealers will improve sugar demand at trader/dealer level and ease pressure on sugar prices, India Ratings said in its report here.

The government had imposed stockholding limits at both miller and dealer levels to keep sugar prices in check in SS 2016-17. While the stockholding limits on sugar millers was valid up to October 2017, the limits for dealers was extended up to end-December 2017.

While the arrival of the new season's sugar was expected to result in a slight moderation in the sugar prices, the sluggish off-take on account of of the imposed limits played a major role in decline in average ex-mill prices to about Rs 34/kg in December 2017 from Rs 36.5/kg at the beginning of the crushing season.

With the expectation of normal sugar production, and crushing starting early in some of the major sugar producing states in SS 2017-18, the production in the country increased about 30 per cent to 6.94 million tonnes as of December 15 than the corresponding period of SS 2016-17.

Further, the possibility of sugar surplus in SS 2018-19 and prospects of sugar imports from Pakistan also led to the softening of sugar prices.

Ind-Ra believes it is too early to comment on production expectations for SS 2018-19, and said it would be prudent to do so once the initial government estimates regarding the cane acreage is available.

The threat of subsidised sugar imports from Pakistan into India also remains a key monitorable.

Ind-Ra pointed out that high import duties of 50 per cent and high cost of production for Pakistan-based millers just about shields the domestic sugar millers from imports.

However, any adverse movement in prices resulting in sugar imports from Pakistan becoming cheaper than domestic prices will impact the Indian sugar millers, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Snow geese are like pearls, standing out from other species by their snow white coloring that ends in black-tipped wings, Christina Vojta said.

The birds have been spotted at the Kachina Wetlands south of Flagstaff, but only rarely, said Vojta, who is the Northern Arizona Audubon Societys official steward of the wetlands area.

They're such precious sightings for us, she said. You never know when youre going to get lucky but when you see it, its such a thrill.

Opportunities to see the birds are fleeting, in part, because theyre among a handful of species in northern Arizona that make a cross-country journey each year to and from the pristine coastal plain of Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Millions of birds representing more than 200 species migrate there from across the world to feed and reproduce in the expansive tundra habitat.

The area has been off-limits to energy development for decades, but no more.

A provision in the $1.5 trillion tax bill passed by Republican legislators on Wednesday contains a provision that will open 1.5 million acres of the refuge to oil and gas development. Its an environmentally devastating prospect in the eyes of some of the countrys largest conservation organizations as well as local birders like Vojta.

Phyllis Kegley, another Flagstaff birder and a member of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society, called opening ANWR to energy development a disaster in the making.

Besides birds, the area is home to landscape-defining species like musk ox, moose, bears, wolves, caribou and polar bears.

Supporters of drilling point out that it represents a domestic energy source and cite the revenues extraction would generate. The Congressional Budget Office estimates oil and gas leases covering up to 800,000 acres in the coastal plain would generate $1.1 billion over the next decade.

Environmental groups like the National Audubon Society say those economic benefits arent worth the risk of permanently damaging one of the last untouched areas of arctic coastal plain.They point to the vast web of well pads, roads and pipelines that has already crept across other parts of Alaskas North Slope.

Such development slices up and paves over bird habitat and creates dust and noise that affects sensitive species, said Nils Warnock, executive director of Audubon Alaska. Roads act as mini-dams that affect the way ice melts and water pools, changing the hydrology of the area, while the influx of human food and infrastructure attract animals like foxes and ravens that prey on birds nests, Warnock said. After energy infrastructure is built, the area faces the lasting risk of an oil spill.

That was really the only protected piece of arctic coastal plain, Warnock said.

Loss of habitat, combined with melting sea ice, rising sea levels and shifts to the arctic food web that are happening because of climate change, make it more and more challenging for the birds to survive, Warnock said.

And those effects can ripple outward to the birds that end up at marshes, ponds and lakes around Flagstaff, 4,000 miles away. One of those species is the green-winged teal, with its cinnamon-colored head marked by a band of iridescent emerald, Vojta said. She said the small dabbling duck shows up at places like Frances Short Pond and the Kachina Wetlands and breeds in areas of the northern United States, Canada and Alaska, including the states northern coastal plain. The small long-billed dowitcher, another species that has been spotted near Flagstaff, has an even smaller slice of the Alaskan coastal plain where it breeds.

The fact is it spends another half of its year somewhere else, and if that other somewhere else is damaged it won't be here on the pond, Vojta said about the birds.

Warnock said Audubon would be fighting the expansion of drilling to ANWRs coastal plain area every step of the way, but didnt detail specific actions, citing uncertainties around the legalities and next steps with the issue.
A BJP member in the Lok Sabha today urged the government to reverse its order which seeks to limit the educational reimbursement for the children of martyred and disabled soldiers.

Kirron Kher raised the issue during the Zero Hour, saying that by limiting the educational reimbursement, the government would save a mere Rs 5 crore.

She said as per the order, the reimbursement, which was unlimited, has been restricted to Rs 10,000 which was not sufficient.

Recently, Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had appealed to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to reverse the order.

Admiral Lanba, who is also theChairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, had written that "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."



P K Biju (CPI-M) said while the government is consolidating the banks, it was leading to a situation where the number of branches and ATMs were going down.

Bhawna Gawli (Shiv Sena) said Bt cotton crop in Maharashtra has failed to resist pest attack and demanded action against Monsanto, the firm which had developed the Bt cotton seed.

There were sharp exchanges between Shobha Karandlage (BJP) and some Left members when the former alleged that some "jihadis" were stabbing Hindu youths in coastal Kerala and Karnataka. She also displayed some photographs.

Vinod Sonkar (BJP) referred to the reported killing of a Sikh in Pakistan who allegedly refused to get converted.

Taking a dig at the Congress, he said the party of those who had visited temples and worn the sacred thread should move a resolution condemning the incident and the entire House should adopt it.

Congress members were not present in the House as they had staged a walk-out a few minutes before Sonkar spoke.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Reliance Infrastructure today signed an agreement to sell its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission for a total consideration of Rs 18,800 crore.

Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) announced the signing of a Definitive Binding Agreement with Adani Transmission (ATL) for 100 per cent stake sale of its Mumbai power business, which includes integrated business of generation, transmission and distribution of power, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing today.

According to the statement, the deal value is at Rs 13,251 crore. This comprises business valued at Rs 12,101 crore and regulatory assets approved so far of Rs 1,150 crore.

In addition, it said, regulatory assets under approval estimated at Rs 5,000 crore and net working capital on closing pegged at Rs 550 crore will flow directly to RInfra.

The company said the total consideration is estimated at Rs 18,800 crore.

RInfra will utilise the proceeds of this transformative transaction entirely to reduce its debt, becoming debt free and garnering up to Rs 3,000 crore as cash surplus.

Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, said:"The acquisition marks our foray into the distribution sector in India. We see distribution as the next sunrise sector as India embarks on its mission to achieve 24x7 power for all."



He further said, "We see a massive growth opportunity and will look at both organic and inorganic opportunities to build a market leading distribution company. With this acquisition, Adani Transmission will enjoy benefit of scale and of being an integrated distribution and transmission business in India."



The company claimed that this is the largest ever debt reduction exercise by any corporate, saying this monetisation is a major step in RInfra's deleveraging strategy for future growth.

Reliance Infrastructure's Mumbai Power business, known as Reliance Energy, is India's largest private integrated power utility, distributing power to nearly 3 million residential, industrial and commercial consumers in suburbs of Mumbai covering 400 sq km.

It caters to a peak demand of over 1,800 mw, with annual revenues of Rs 7,500 crore with stable cash flows.

Going forward, RInfra will focus on upcoming opportunities in asset-light EPC and Defence businesses, it added.

The proposed transaction is subject to customary approvals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The R K Nagar bypoll today witnessed a record 77.68 per cent voter turnout with polling to the constituency, which was represented by the late J. Jayalalithaa, passing off peacfully amid tight security.

Election officials here said there may be some variation in the figure after taking into consideration the polling percentage at some booths where voting went on beyond 5 pm.

The voter turnout is higher than the 68 per cent recorded in the 2016 assembly election,according to officials.

The bypoll is being seen as an acid test for the chief minister K Palaniswami and deputy O Panneeerselvam-led ruling AIADMK which is facing a strong challenge from sidelined leader T T V Dhinakaran and an aggressive DMK.

The DMK is putting up a tough fight to wrest the seat after a hiatus of over two decades.

Of the 59 candidates in the fray, the fight is essentially triangular with the key contenders being ruling AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan, main opposition DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh and Dhinakaran, contesting as an independent.

The ruling AIADMK got back its Two Leaves election symbol back following merger of factions led by Palaniswami and former rebel O Panneerselvam.

The run up to the bypoll saw political parties and candidates holding as many as 152 public meetings and taking out 605 processions with the campaigning ending on December 19.

The 2015 R K Nagar bypoll in which Jayalalithaa was elected by a huge margin of 1.5 lakh votes for the first time in this segment had witnessed a record 75 per cent turnout.

Voting at 258 polling stations passed off peacefully with 2500 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces and 1638 election officers manning the poll process.

Serpentine queues were witnessed in booth after booth, right from 8 am when voting began with women outnumbering men in several of them.

A large number of people were awaiting their turn to vote even at the scheduled close of voting at five pm.

All those who were present inside the polling stations ahead of the 5 pm deadline were given tokens by officials to ensure that they exercised their franchise.

There were, however, sporadic complaints of snag in EVMs, and consequential delay.

Some voters complained that their names were deleted, othes claimed their names were struck off the rolls wrongly categorising them as "dead."



Gun-toting Central Armed Police Force personnel in their trademark green uniforms were stationed at all the polling stations and across the 45 checkposts in and around the Dr Radhakrishnan (RK) Nagar constituency.

Senior poll officials including the district election Officer D Karthikeyan inspected the polling stations.

Several dozens of flying squad teams, static surveillance teams and video surveillance teams were deployed in the constituency.

Election authorities made elaborate arrangements to ensure both hassle free environs for voters and measures for free and fair polling with nine observers, 307 micro-observers and 258 web cameras to monitor the poll process.

Chennai Corporation personnel drafted for poll duty took differently abled persons inside the polling stations using wheel-chairs.

In booths that had a significantly high number of voters, a medical team comprising doctors, and paramedics were stationed.

'Pandals' were put up, and help desks helped people find the right booth to vote. Amenities like drinking water, and toilets were also in place.

R K Nagar, represented twice by Jayalalithaa, has an electorate of 2,28,234, comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

Election officials said 79.21 per cent of women voters exercised their franchise while 75.92 per cent of men cast their votes.

Counting of votes will be taken up on December 24 and the results are expected to be out by afternoon that day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia said today that it had completed negotiations with Turkey for the sale of an S-400 air defence missile system, with delivery scheduled for late 2019.

"Practically speaking, the contract is entering the phase of realisation," said Vladimir Kozhin, a presidential aide who oversees matters of military cooperation. "All parameters, all technologies, the entire deal has been agreed."



"All aspects have been resolved over the past few days," Kozhin said. "The contract will consist of two parts financially: part of it will be paid by Turkey and part through a credit provided by Russia."



"The first deliveries are likely to begin at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020," Kozhin was reported as saying by Russian agencies.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the deal during Putin's visit to Ankara last week.

The agreement to purchase the latest Russian surface-to- air missile defence batteries is Turkey's most significant deal with a non-NATO military supplier, and comes amid strained relations between Ankara and several Western countries.

The deal has been valued at about USD 2 billion according to reports.

Turkey's decision to buy the Russian system has raised eyebrows of other NATO members, with the Pentagon saying previously that "generally it's a good idea" to buy equipment that is inter-operable with the military alliance's other systems.

Besides Turkey, Russia is also in talks to sell the system to Saudi Arabia, with Kozhin saying Thursday that both sides were aiming to finalise the remaining issues on that contract before the end of the year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Voting for the Sabang assembly byelection began on a dull note today with just 15 per cent voters exercising their franchise in the first two hours, an Election Commission (EC) official said.

The opposition CPI(M) and the BJP accused the ruling TMC of driving away their election agents from the polling booths, an allegation which was denied by TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia.

"The allegation made by the opposition parties is completely baseless. Voting is going on peacefully in the constituency," Bhunia said.

The byelection is being held amid tight security with eight companies of central paramilitary force personnel deployed in the constituency, the EC official said.

Altogether 245,259 voters will exercise their franchise for the bypoll, he added.

TMC has fielded Gita Rani Bhunia, wife of former Congress leader Manas Bhunia, who had defected to the Mamata Banerjee-led party earlier this year, necessitating the byelection.

Bhunia had won the seat in last year's assembly polls.

The BJP has nominated Antara Bhattacharya, while the Congress has fielded Chiranjib Bhowmick, a local leader. Rita Mandal of the CPI(M) will contest the fray as a Left Front candidate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
French authorities have filed preliminary charges against the driver of a school bus that collided with a regional train in southern France, killing six children.

The investigation is focusing on whether the crossing barriers onto the tracks were raised or lowered in last week's accident in the village of Millas in the eastern Pyrenees.

The bus driver, a 46-year-old woman who was also injured, said they were raised. But the local prosecutor said initial evidence and witness statements suggest they weren't.

A judicial official said today that the driver is accused of manslaughter and involuntary injury. The driver's lawyer Jean Codognes told broadcaster BFM that she was hospitalised and in deep distress after being questioned by police yesterday.

Funeral ceremonies are being held throughout the week for those killed, all middle school or high school students in the region.

At a memorial today, the region's top government official read a message from President Emmanuel Macron to the children's families and friends.

"All of France is with (you) in sadness and pain," he said. "Today the word fraternity, part of our national motto, takes on its full meaning. The nation should stay at the sides of those who are suffering.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 105th Indian Science Congress, scheduled to be held at the Osmania University here from January 3 to 7, has been postponed due to security issues.

The Indian Science Congress Association said on its website that the university's vice chancellor, S Ramachandram, expressed inability to host the event due to "certain issues" on the campus.

The vice chancellor said though the varsity was fully prepared, the decision to postpone the event had to be taken due to the matters beyond their control.

"Reason is, security... Keeping in view recent incidents on the campus, it was postponed... We were fully prepared (to host the event)," he said.

A 20-year-old student allegedly committed suicide on the campus on December 3. The body of the first-year student of MSc Physics was found hanging in the washroom of one of the hostels. The incident led to protests on the campus.

The university said it hopes the event would be held in near future, after further discussions with the Indian Science Congress Association.

Several committees had worked for the past three months to ensure a smooth conduct during the event, it said in a release.

"In fact, the university changed the examination schedule for this purpose. At one point in time, the university was flexible and was willing to have the inaugural event outside the campus and the remaining sessions on the campus even if it meant incurring more expenditure and inconvenience," it said.

The Indian Science Congress Association has "indefinitely postponed" the event at the university, the release added.

"The vice chancellor of the Osmania University has informed that they are not in a position to host the 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7, 2018 due to certain issues in the campus," the association said.

The Indian Science Congress is usually held in the first week of January every year. The last Science Congress was held at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh in January 2017.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Markets regulator Sebi has imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Oxus Investments, founded by noted economist Surjit Bhalla, for carrying out unregistered portfolio manager services.

The Sebi order named Bhalla, a member of the newly constituted Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister, as a director at Oxus Investments Pvt Ltd.

While repeated queries sent to Bhalla for his comments on the Sebi's order, dated December 20, remained unanswered, he had tweeted on December 14, "...My portfolio investment firm, Oxus Fund Management, ceased operations, closed shop in October 2016".

The tweet was in reply to another tweet, wherein an individual had raised "doubt" whether it was not a conflict of interest as Bhalla was running a portfolio investment firm and was also on the EAC-PM.

Various websites including leading think tank NCAER described Bhalla as "chairman of Oxus Investments, a New-Delhi based hedge fund and emerging markets advisory firm.

An order passed passed by Sebi said yesterday that Oxus Investments continued acting as a portfolio manager even after expiry of its registration.

The company was authorised to provide portfolio manager services from July 16, 2013 to July 15, 2016. After expiry of its licence, it submitted an application for renewal of the PMS registration on July 19 last year.

Moreover, Oxus Investments continued to carry out its activity as portfolio manager three months after the expiry of the registration despite receiving letters from Sebi asking the it to stop the activities.

"The noticee (Oxus Investments) did not provide information sought even after repeated reminders sent through letters and emails, except a letter providing zero AUM and client as on November 24, 2016.

"Further, as no documents are available to substantiate the fact that the clients have been repaid their proportionate funds and no new investors have been taken on board after the expiry of the registration of the noticee," Sebi said.

Under the Sebi rules, portfolio managers need to make an application for renewal three months before the expiry of its licence. If the application is made after the expiry of the registration, it is considered as a fresh application.

"I conclude that the noticee by continuing to carry out the activity of a portfolio manager even after expiry of its certificate of registration, has acted as an unregistered portfolio manager which is in violation of the provisions of ....the PM (portfolio manager) Regulations," Sebi General Manager and Adjudicating Officer D Sura Reddy said.

Accordingly, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has levied a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Oxus Investments.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi today stressed that the 'smart city' project sanctioned by the Centre is implemented with "impeccable integrity, professional acumen and collaboration of the people of Puducherry as true stakeholders."



In a whatsapp message to reporters here, she said, "We should create a whole new work culture to implement the Smart City Project and those associated with the project should be sworn to integrity and love of service."



The project should be completed in time and not left half way and there should be no overruns.

She asked the territorial government to ensure that "a transparent bulletin on the progress of implementation of the projectbe always available through the media and through social networks for the people to know."



The former IPS officer also pointed out in her message firmly that "the smart city project must be scam free."



An independent audit system should be in place open to public scrutiny.

She also contended that "alongside the urban improvement programmes, villages must also be involved by holding early panchayat elections for grass root democracy and development so that Puducherry as a whole becomes smart."



"leadership leading the project must be a committed one," Bedi said in a veiled reference to the recent posting of a new Chief Secretary by the Centre for Puducherry that "with a new leadership in bureaucracy this can be achieved."



She said that Raj Nivas (office of Lt Governor) would hold meetings every fortnight to review progress of implementation of 'Smart City project' and this review would begin from New Year 2018.

The Rs 1800 crore project is jointly-funded by the Centre, the Puducherry Administration and the French government.

Already an implementing agency called 'Smart City Development Limited' which is special purpose vehicle registered under the Companies Acthas been formed to carry out the project in Puducherry, a former French colony.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Legal experts expressed differing views on a special court verdict acquitting all accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases, with one of them saying that it was an example that how battles won in the Supreme Court are often lost in lower courts.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan expressed "surprise" over the outcome of the trial, while former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee refrained from terming the judgement as "good or bad" but was quick to add that it can be challenged in the higher court.

With varying opinions coming on the verdict, one section dubbed the acquittal as "unfortunate" and opined that it would politically raise a serious situation, while another section said that a "bubble was created" which burst due to lack of evidence.

"I am surprised. Have not gone through the verdict yet but this shows how battles won in the Supreme Court are often lost in courts below," Dhavan told PTI.

Sorabjee said this is not a "final verdict" and can be tested in appeals before higher courts.

"It is only a special court verdict which can be appealed against. The CBI can appeal in the High Court. I have not read the judgement so cannot say if it was good or bad," Sorabjee, who was the top law officer during the previous NDA regime, told PTI.

However, senior advocates Ajit Kumar Sinha and Dushyant Dave were forthcoming in their views and questioned the prosecution for the debacle.

While Sinha, a former high court judge, termed the outcome as "unfortunate", Dave said "it shows a botched-up investigation in the matter where the prosecution failed to prove the case" and "this verdict creates serious doubts on the investigating agencies especially premier agency like the CBI".

"Politically it raises a serious situation in the country. We have to see it in the political spectrum in a long way," he said.

Sinha was of the opinion that the acquittal in the cases were surprising as the apex court while scrapping the 122 licences for the 2G spectrum had held that due process was not followed when the radio waves were auctioned during the tenure of A Raja as the telecom minister in the first UPA regime.

He also toed the findings of the special court which said the CBI had started its case with "great enthusiasm and ardour" but at the final stage of the trial, the Special Public Prosecutor and the regular CBI prosecutor moved in "two different directions without any coordination".

"They (the CBI and ED) started on a good note and later it became very very lacklustre and there was no evidence to corroborate nor it was taken with all sincerity and that really led to acquittal of each and every accused and its unfortunate," he said.

However, differing with Sinha and Dave, senior advocate Vikas Singh and former High Court judge R S Sodhi said prosecution did not have enough material to establish its case.

"There was lack of evidence. It speaks volumes of our judiciary. They had the best special public prosecutor in the matter. There was nothing in the matter. A bubble was created and it has now been burst," Sodhi said.

Taking a little different take, Singh maintained that scam was only, if at all, with regard to the eligibility being changed from first-come-first-served.

"However, the prosecution did not have enough materials to establish even that and that is why everybody has gone scot-free in this case," he said.

Further, Singh said that he maintained right from the beginning that this was never a scam.

"This whole decision to give spectrum at those pre- determined prices can never be a scam at all because if the government decides to give infrastructure to people at cheaper rates through these companies, then it can't be a scam," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today exhorted the state government employees to set an example of efficient work culture before the young generation and contribute towards the resurgence of the state's economy.

"If Assam has to become one of the top states in the country and develop its socio-economic condition, then government employees must set an example of work culture for the young generation and they will come forward to participate in the nation building process through hard work and dedication," Sonowal said while laying the foundation stone of Sadou Asom Karmachari Parishad's (SAKP) office headquarter here today.

The chief minister acknowledged the support of the employees in the campaign against corruption and hoped they would continue with it.

Only with the help of its employees the state government can achieve the goals of a corruption-free, pollution-free, illegal immigrants-free and terrorism-free Assam, he added.

Referring to the Global Investors' Summit scheduled here in February, he said the state government has been organising roadshows in different parts of the country and the world for bringing investments to the state.

Sonowal also urged the SAKP to consider starting working hours in government offices from 9.30 am in view of early sunrise in these parts of the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Africa's ruling party says the country's embassy in Israel should be downgraded to a liaison office to show support for the Palestinians.

The African National Congress said late yesterday that delegates to a national party meeting endorsed the proposal to the government for "an immediate and unconditional downgrade" of the embassy in Tel Aviv.

The proposal comes ahead of a UN General Assembly vote Thursday on a resolution urging President Donald Trump to rescind his decision recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

South African media say the ANC endorsed a boycott of Israel at a party meeting in 2012 but the government did not implement it.

ANC delegates this week elected Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa as the party's new leader. President Jacob Zuma remains head of state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A district-level special task force committee has decided to create a mechanism for identifying and deporting undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants from the border areas of the state.

The committee held a meeting, chaired by district deputy commissioner Benjamin Lalzama, at south Mizoram's Lunglei district to discuss ways to tackle the influx of immigrants, an official statement here said.

Top police officers, representatives of the Border Security Force (BSF) and leaders of civil societies were present at the meeting, it said.

Officials posted along the border areas were instructed at the meeting to take care while issuing birth and residential certificates to ensure that no foreign nationals were in possession of such documents, the statement added.

Mizoram has been facing a democratic nightmare due to unchecked flow of Bangladeshi nationals, mainly from the Chakma community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has started recalling two batches of Riomet (metformin hydrochloride) Oral Solution voluntarily from the US market due to microbial contamination.

According to a notification put up by the US Food and Drug Administration in its website, the recall was initiated by the firm under 'Class-II' classification. The notification did not mention the quantity that is being recalled.

"The Riomet (Metformin Hydrochloride Oral Solution) has been found to be contaminated (with Scopulariopsis brevicaulis). The contamination was discovered during sample preparation for the Antimicrobial Preservative Effectiveness Testing (AMPET) being performed as part of the 12 month stability study interval," informed the FDA in a letter.

Riomet (metformin oral solution) is an oral diabetes medicine that helps control blood sugar level.

According to the USA health regulator, Class II recall is a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.

The drug was manufactured for Ranbaxy Laboratories Inc Jacksonville in USA by a contract manufacturer and distributed by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries' subsidiary in Cranbury, New Jersey.

The stock closed at Rs 528.60 apiece on BSE, up 0.28 per cent over previous close.

(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.)
Syria's opposition today said it was more important "than ever before" that Russia push Bashar al- Assad's government towards a political settlement, as new peace talks kicked off in Kazakhstan.

A new round of Syria peace talks backed by powerbrokers Russia, Iran and Turkey began earlier today in the Kazakh capital Astana as major powers seek to revive a hobbled peace process.

Delegations from Russia, Iran and Turkey along with Syrian regime representatives and a 20-strong opposition delegation had all arrived in the Kazakh capital Astana for two days of talks, a Kazakh foreign ministry spokesman said.

The UN's envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is expected to attend the second day of talks tomorrow, the ministry added.

Today, de Mistura will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

In Astana, the Syrian delegation urged Russia to push Assad's government towards a peace settlement.

"We are asking the Russian side, now more than ever before, to put pressure on the regime to push it towards a political settlement," the Syrian opposition delegation said in a statement after meeting with a United Nations team.

"The detainees are the priority for the military delegation. We will focus on this cause with the Russian delegation," the statement added.

The Syrian negotiators will also focus on the reinforcement of the ceasefire, especially in the de- escalation zones, as well as the lifting of sieges on all towns and villages and the delivery of assistance to those in need, the statement said.

Syria's SANA state agency reported that Russia's delegation had "met separately with the Iranian and Turkish delegations."



"After the bilateral meetings, there will be a trilateral meeting between the three sponsor states," it said.

The negotiations should conclude with a plenary session involving all the parties tomorrow.

The eighth round of talks comes after Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian forces during a surprise visit to the war-torn country last week.

Moscow has spearheaded the talks in Astana since the start of the year as it tries to turn its game-changing military intervention in Syria into a negotiated settlement.

The Kremlin also hopes to convene a political congress in the Black Sea resort of Sochi which would bring together regime officials and the opposition to reinvigorate a hobbled peace process.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today there were currently "no dates" for the Sochi congress as of yet.

"The most important thing here is preparedness. No one is trying to artificially accelerate this process," Peskov told reporters.

Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, numerous diplomatic attempts to halt the conflict have stumbled, mainly over Assad's future.

A fragile ceasefire brokered at the end of last year by Moscow and rebel-aligned Ankara has been bolstered somewhat by the negotiations in Astana, which began in January.

Recent rounds of talks in Kazakhstan have focussed on implementing a Russia-led plan for four "de-escalation zones" to stem fighting between government and rebels.

A year on from the devastating and strategically crucial regime victory in Aleppo, Damascus has consolidated control over much of the country, wresting territory from extremist factions not party to the truce, particularly the Islamic State group.

Diplomatic contacts between the major parties in the conflict have intensified in recent months, but there is no sign that Damascus and its armed opponents are any closer to a political settlement.

The Astana talks have run in parallel to negotiations taking place in Geneva with the backing of the United Nations.

Both the Astana and Geneva negotiations have failed to bear much fruit, and the planned Sochi congress appears to be Moscow's attempt to force the pace in a bid for a political settlement.

But representatives of the opposition have expressed fears the congress could prove a distraction from the UN negotiations.

The war has left more than 340,000 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tobacco retailers and traders today staged a protest here to press for reduction in mandatory 85 per cent graphical health warnings on tobacco packages, saying the norm has led to a spurt in smuggling of cigarettes.

Smuggling of tobacco items that have no picture warnings and give an impression to consumers that they are safer has increased after the health ministry's order on pictorial warning, the retailers said.

"Since May 2016, when the size of the health warnings on tobacco products have become larger, we have seen a huge spurt in the availability of smuggled cigarettes," Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh, which claims to represent 75 lakh traders and retailers, said.

The government issued a notification dated September 24, 2015 for mandatory display of new health warnings covering 85 per cent of the principal display area on all tobacco products from April 1, 2016.

Stating that retailers are selling legal products for which there is a demand, the body said: "There is a concerted attempt by vested interests to destroy the domestic industry, which will lead to unemployment of lakhs of people."



Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh and its partner trade associations from all over the country held a demonstration outside the Health Ministry premises.

"The anti-tobacco policy is being driven by vested interests promoted by various NGOs who are receiving huge sums of money from international players," Ram Ashrey Mishra, President, Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh said.
A teenage Hindu girl, who was abducted by gunmen a few days ago in Pakistan's Sindh province, has been forced to convert to Islam and pressured to get married, a media report claimed today.

Quoting the family of the girl, the Dawn said that the 14-year-old girl was abducted from Thar village after three armed men barged into their home and held the family hostage.

The girl's father, Hero Meghwar, said that he contacted some influential people in the area but was told that his daughter had converted and married a person named Naseer Lunjo and there was little that could be done, the paper reported.

The family members alleged that local police too was not interested in recovering the girl. The family demanded that the girl be recovered and produced before a court if she had indeed converted, the report said.

However, senior police official from Thar Ameer Saud Magsi said an FIR had been registered while raids are being conducted to arrest the three suspects.

The police had received a certificate of the conversion, Magsi said, adding that the now-married couple has filed an application in the Sindh High Court, seeking protection.

He said the court had fixed the application for hearing on January 17.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Terrorism and radicalisation are common challenges for India and Mali, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today, calling for greater international cooperation to deal with the menace.

The Vice President and the Leader of a visiting delegation from Mali Abderhamane Niang, parliamentarian and President of the High Court of Justice, Mali, held a meeting and expressed their mutual concerns about the common challenge of terrorism and radicalisation, according to a statement issued by the Rajya Sabha secreteriat.

Naidu thanked the Mali government for ratifying the International Solar Alliance agreement and said that he hopes that the President of the African nation would participate in the inaugural conference of solar alliance in India in April 2018.

Both leaders also discussed the prospects of bilateral cooperation in sectors such as energy, agriculture, food processing and infrastructure.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Directing the much-awaited "Tiger Zinda Hai", starring Salman Khan, was a mammoth task for director Ali Abbas Zafar as he was under pressure to live up to the expectations of the superstar and his fans.

"Tiger Zinda Hai" is the second installment of the 2012 blockbuster action-drama film "Ek Tha Tiger" that was directed by Kabir Khan. The sequel will reunite Salman and Katrina Kaif as secret service agents while Salman and Ali are also working together after the massive success of "Sultan".

Asked if there was a pressure on him, Ali told PTI, "Yes, definitely. He is such a big superstar with a huge fan base. As a filmmaker it's your responsibility that you entertain the audience who are coming to watch the film.

"The pressure isn't only about Salman Khan's stardom. Everyone who spends money to watch the film, is equally important."



With two films in a row with Salman, one would assume that there is a formula that the director has cracked but Ali insists that is not the case.

The director said it was important for him to stay true to the story while also charting out the character in a way that it lives up to the image of Salman.

"As a writer you have to be honest to the character you are writing. Both Sultan and Tiger's characters are author- backed. The idea is, whenever you are working with a superstar like Salman Khan, you create a character which matches his stardom in real life.

"When the audience come and watch the film, they understand that the name is only Tiger or Sultan but it is Salman Khan there! But it has to be done in a real way."



The "realism", Ali said, comes only when one sticks to the story and not give in to the temptation of making things larger-than-life for the sake of it.

"The action in 'Sultan' wasn't defying gravity or physics. Similarly, the idea here is to keep him (Salman) real but at the same time you give him a gun, which once he fires, becomes a 'wow' moment. A lot of his fans will feel this is a 'Salman Khan moment'.

"But it's actually the character who is picking up the gun and firing. The gun has a justification to be in that world because it's a war film."



"Tiger Zinda Hai" chronicles the story of two agents on a mission to rescue 25 Indian nurses taken hostage in Iraq.

Ali has woven real life incidents the abduction of nurses into a fictional setting as he believes the subject immediately becomes more accessible.

"What excites me most is what is happening around me, if I can weave a bit of fiction into it to bring it in front of the audience. Even 'Sultan' was inspired by a lot of real life wrestler stories but was a completely fictional film. If we create something out of reality, it becomes more accessible."



While there is a lot of buzz surrounding the film in India, there were reports that Pakistan may not release "Tiger Zinda Hai" as they had some objections.

Asked about it, Ali said, "Right now, we are not very clear on what has happened. It is still in contention. YRF (Yash Raj Films) is still trying to get through the matter. We will get to know by the next week. There are still things which are going back and forth."



Ali said he is experiencing "a weird feeling of being excited and nervous" as the film is set to be released this Friday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chatuhshrungi police in Pune today arrested three Romanian nationals for allegedly cloning ATM cards and withdrawing money from 138 bank accounts.

The trio stole details of 1,030 cards by installing 'skimmers' in an ATM and withdrew nearly Rs 28 lakh, police said.

Erima Dragos Junete (26), Lazar Alim Christi (22) and Balan Floria Christinel (44) were arrested from Vasai.

Police suspect that they are part of a bigger international racket.

Police also seized 54 ATM cards, a skimmer, two laptops, three mobile phones and Rs 2.44 lakh.

They installed the skimmer -- a gadget that can read and copy details of debit or credit cards -- at an ATM of Punjab National Bank in Pashan Circle area in October and stole details of cards used there, said a senior police officer.

Police started investigation after the bank received several complaints of money being withdrawn without account-holders' knowledge.

The trio first withdrew money from Bengaluru. "When our team reached Bengaluru on December 17, we found the fraudsters had shifted their base to Vasai. We sent a team to Vasai and nabbed them," the officer said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The three-week-old conjoined twins born to a Nayagarh couple have died at the state government-run Sishu Bhawan here while undergoing treatment.

The conjoined twins, who were girls, died on Wednesday night, Dr Saroj Satpathy, superintendent of the childrens hospital said today.

The conditions of the twins deteriorated last night with acute breathing problems and they died around 12.30 am on Wednesday night, he said.

The twins were joined at their chests and shared a single liver and a defective heart, which is considered a rare condition.

The twins were born to Kishor Dutta and Sumitra Dutta of Sharnakula village of Nayagarh district on December 1. They were shifted here to the premier childrens hospital the next day.

Inspired by the successful separation of Jaga and Kalia, conjoined twin boys born to a Kandhamal couple at AIIMS in New Delhi, the state government had announced to bear the entire cost of treatment of the twin girls at the Sishu Bhawan.

"It was really unfortunate that the twins did not survive to undergo a surgery for their separation," said state health minister Pratap Jena, who has been personally monitoring the status of Jaga and Kalia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A three-year old tigress was allegedly killed by poachers in Gehrighat area of Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) yesterday, an official said.

Vivek Jain, the PTR's field director, said that the carcass was found in the Gehrighat area and added that the three-year-old animal had fallen prey to a wire trap.

"It seems that poachers had laid a wire trap for other animals, but the tiger fell victim to it. We have deployed a dog squad at the spot and hope to arrest those behind the act soon," he said.

He added that the viscera was sent for forensic examination and the carcass was consigned to flames.

Earlier this month, the carcass of three more tigers were found in the buffer zone of Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BRT) in Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh.

Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey blamed these deaths to the laxity on the part of the state administration.

He said that the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had in a meeting in New Delhi in March 2016 issued instructions to set up a Wild Life Intelligence Bureau at the state level.

"But MP has yet not set up this bureau. There is immediate need to take steps to control poachers," Dubey said.
Tragedy, sleaze, political clashes and allegations of love jihad shook Kerala in 2017.

Disaster struck in the form of Ockhi cyclone, which hit the state's shores on November 29-30 and left over 70 fishermen dead while more than 100 are still missing.

Sleazy tales scarred politicians both of the ruling CPI (M)-led LDF and Congress-headed UDF and as if this turmoil was not enough, the state also witnessed the abduction and assault of an actress, allegedly by hired goons to settle scores.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi reached out to the families of affected fishermen to give a healing touch.

The year started with the abduction and sexual assault of a well-known actress, who essayed roles in South Indian films, shocking the very conscience of the people of the state.

The incident, which occurred in February, saw several twists and turns in its probe and ultimately ended with the arrest of popular actor Dileep, sending tremors in the Malayalam film industry.

The Pinarayi Vijayan government that entered into the second year in office faced embarrassment as two cabinet ministers resigned -- one over sleaze talk with a woman and the other on charges of land and backwater encroachment.

A K Saseedharan, (National Congress Party), was forced to quit the cabinet after a channel aired an audio clip, purported to be his, in which he is talking in a sexually explicit manner to a woman.

However, months later, a commission report virtually acquitted Saseendran of charges saying that there was no evidence against him. The woman involved in the case also stated that she did not want to pursue the case.

An NRI businessman-turned-politician Thomas Chandy, also from the NCP, who replaced Saseedharan as transport minister, was forced to tender his resignation after being hit by encroachment allegations by his luxury tourist resort in Alapuzha in November.

However, the LDF government came in for praise from different quarters for its revolutionary decision to appoint a Dalit priest in a temple, scripting history.

Similarly, a decision to provide job reservation to economically weak in the forward community in the offices of Devaswom boards that manages temples in the state also won accolades.

On the political point, the state continued to witness a cycle of clashes between the ruling CPI-M and RSS-BJP workers especially in the politically-volatile Kannur district.

BJP chief Amit Shah participated in the 'Jana Raksha' rally, organised by state party unit, and charged that Kerala under the rule of the Left had become a 'fertile land' for the growth of 'jihadi terror'.

The UDF and the LDF also conducted political yatras in the state during the year against the alleged communal agenda of the BJP.

Congress workers in the state received a political boost with the visit of Rahul Gandhi at the valedictory function of 'Padayorukkam' a political yatra here on December 15.

However, the party was left red faced when one of its MLAs A Vincent had to cool his heels in prison for the alleged rape of a housewife.

The case of Hadiya, A 24-year old Hindu woman, who converted to Islam and later married a Muslim youth Shafin Jahan came into national focus after apex court ordered a NIA probe following allegation that the marriage was part of 'love jihad'.

The infamous solar scam continued to haunt the leaders of Opposition UDF with a judicial commission report indicting senior Congress leaders, including former chief minister Oommen Chandy in the scam.

A letter of Saritha S Nair, prime accused in the case, that contained serious sexual allegations against UDF leaders, which became a part of the report of judicial commission, also put the Congress leaders in a spot.

In the sensational murder case of a Dalit law student, justice was done to the victim, when the lone accused, a migrant worker from Assam, was awarded death sentence by a trial court.

The Malayalam film industry lost veteran director I V Sasi, a hit maker, who passed away after battling cancer.

The year also saw Malayalam film actress Surabhi Lakshmi clinching the National Best actor award.

In the infrastructure field, Kerala took a giant leap with the commissioning of the Kochi Metro by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June and in four months, the second phase was opened by Chief Minister Vijayan.

In another political development, JD(U) leader and party state president, M P Veerendra Kumar, resigned from the Rajya Sabha saying he did not agree with party chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to join the NDA fold.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump celebrated with senior administration officials and Republican lawmakers the passage of the most sweeping US tax overhaul in over 30 years by the Congress, which now heads to the White House for the president to sign into law.

Trump, gathered on the South Lawns of the White House along with Vice President Mike Pence, senior members of his administration and top Republican leadership. Scores of lawmakers stood on either side of the stairs to celebrate the occasion.

"We can say "Merry Christmas" again. People are saying "Merry Christmas" again, and we like the sound," Trump said during the bill passage event on the South Lawns of the White House, which wore a festive look on a chilly Wednesday afternoon with marine band playing "Joy to the World" and "Jingle Bells".

The bill now heads to the White House for President Trump to sign into law. However, the White House has not informed on when the President will sign the bill into law.

The House of Representatives passed the USD 1.5 trillion tax reform bill yesterday for the second time by 224 to 201 votes to clear the technical snag in the passage of the bill, which was passed by the Senate and House earlier.

"It's been an amazing experience, I have to tell you. Hasn't been done in 34 years, but actually, really hasn't been done, because we broke every record. It's the largest -- I always say, the most massive -- but it's the largest tax cut in the history of our country. Really something special," Trump said amidst applause from his fellow Republican lawmakers and members of his administration.

As a result of the tax bill, he said AT&T has announced its plans to increase US capital spending USD 1 billion and provide USD 1,000 special bonus to more than 200,000 US employees.

Trump said, as a result of the passage of the tax reform bill, companies are coming back.

"I campaigned on the fact that we're not going to lose our companies anymore. They're going to stay in our country. They have tremendous enthusiasm right now in this country. And we have companies pouring back into our country. That means jobs, and it means really, the formation of new young, beautiful strong, companies. So that's going to be very, very important," he said.

Trump said this will also result in bringing at least USD 4 trillion money that was frozen overseas and in parts of the world back to the country.

"Some of them don't even like us, and they had the money. Well they're not going to have the money long," he said.

Pence said Trump will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the life of US, a day when the Congress answered his call and made history.

"From the first day of this administration, this President championed free and fair trade; he rolled back federal red tape at record levels; we've unleashed American energy," he said.

Trump fulfilled the promise he made to millions of Americans struggling in this economy, to cut taxes across the board for working families and businesses large and small.

America is going to start growing again said Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader.

Such a generation reform could not have been done without the leadership of Trump, said House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Earlier, a senior administration official told reporters that in addition to tax cuts to the middle class and reduction in tax of businesses, one of the significant highlight of the bill is bringing money back from overseas.

"If you look at probably the biggest reforms that are in this bill, it is on the international side. It's kind of changing our international tax system and, for the first time, really putting rules in place that will really stop companies from shifting profits overseas and gaming the system the way they do today," the official said, adding that it is really tax cuts and tax reform.

"If you look at it, there are USD 5.5 trillion of tax cuts in this bill. Of that amount, USD 3.2 trillion go to families and individuals, and then USD 1.8 trillion go to businesses. And there's some for pass-throughs, and then the rest of it estate tax USD 83 billion, the official said.

"On top of that, USD 4 trillion of reforms, and by reforms, that means eliminating deductions, eliminating loopholes and, again, a lot of the reforms on the tax treatment of multinationals. That's how you get to the 1.5 per cent net number," the official said.

Earlier, Trump told his Cabinet members that the heart of this bill is a tremendous amount of relief for the middle class, including a doubling of the child tax credit and a nearly doubling of the standard deduction.

"That's going to be tremendous for people. They're going to start seeing the results in February. This bill means more take-home pay. It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hardworking Americans. I said I wanted to have it done before Christmas; we got it done," Trump said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has spoken with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia to express solidarity after a ballistic missile attack at Salman's residence on Tuesday.

"President Trump expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia following the ballistic missile attack against King Salman's official residence, al-Yamamah palace, on December 19 - an attack enabled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," the White House said yesterday in a readout of the call.

During the call, King Salman updated Trump on the situation and briefed the President on Saudi Arabia's plan to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

"The leaders discussed the importance of engaging the UN to hold Iran accountable for its repeated violations of international law and agreed on the importance of reinvigorating a political process to end the war in Yemen," the White House said.

Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce welcomed the decision of Saudi-led coalition that Hudaydah port in Yemen is open to all humanitarian and commercial goods.

"It's encouraging that Hudaydah port is reportedly now open to all humanitarian and commercial goods, including fuel," Royce said.

"This, along with the movement of four World Food Program cranes to the port to boost the flow of aid, is long overdue. According to the UN, more than 20 million people in Yemen 76 per cent of its population are in need of humanitarian assistance," he said.

"I appreciate the Trump administration's focus on this crisis and its continued efforts to counter the Iranian meddling that is driving this conflict," Royce said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish police confiscated thousands of historical artifacts in a giant operation against smugglers in Istanbul, a media report said today.

Police detained 13 suspects and seized 26,456 artifacts, the private Dogan agency reported.

The agency did not provide details on the artifacts or the suspects.

Turkey has been fighting for the return of stolen pieces at home and abroad.

The issue is crucial to a country that is home to about 3,000 ancient cities from 42 civilisations, and whose tourism industry relies on its rich historical heritage to attract millions of foreigners each year.

In September, Turkey recovered the Roman sarcophagus of Hercules from Switzerland after it had been smuggled from the ancient city of Perge in the southern Antalya province half a century ago.

The sarcophagus which portrays the 12 labours of Hercules is now showcased in the Antalya museum.

The relic was returned to Turkey following an order by a Swiss public prosecutor in 2015.

It was displayed at Geneva University as part of an agreement between Turkey and Switzerland, and then delivered to Turkey under the sponsorship of the national flag-carrier Turkish Airlines.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkey summoned a senior United Arab Emirates diplomat today to complain about a tweet by an Emirati minister that infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media reported.

The Emirates' foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan this week retweeted a post on Twitter in which a user made allegations of historic misdoings by "ancestors of Erdogan".

The tweet alleged that a former Ottoman governor pillaged and kidnapped people from the pilgrimage city of Medina in the early 20th century.

The Turkish foreign ministry summoned the Emirati charge d'affaires in Ankara on Thursday and complained about the post, state agency Anadolu said.

The charge d'affaires was the top UAE diplomat currently present in Turkey as the ambassador was temporarily absent.

The offending tweet was posted by a user called "Ali al- Iraqi", presenting himself as an Iraqi dentist living in Germany.

"Ali al-Iraqi" said Fahreddin Pasha - Medina governor from 1916 to 1919 - "committed a crime against the people of Medina by stealing their money, kidnapping them and putting them on trains that took them to Syria and Istanbul".

The user added: "Those are the ancestors of Erdogan and this is the history that they have with Arab Muslims."



Fahreddin Pasha was governor during the siege of Medina (1916-1919).

Erdogan hit back yesterday, telling the minister to "know your place" as he railed against the twitter user's "slanderous claims".

"Know your place! It means you do not know this country, you do not know Erdogan, you do not know about Erdogan's ancestors," he retorted.

"When Fahreddin Pasha was protecting Medina... where were your ancestors?"



Erdogan went on the attack again yesterday, saying the Emirati minister was "ill-brought up" and "too spoilt by oil and money".

Relations between the UAE and Turkey are filled with distrust as Ankara supports Qatar in a six-month crisis with its Gulf neighbours including the UAE, as well as political groups stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The UAE outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terror" group in 2014.

Turkish pro-government newspapers also routinely allude to UAE involvement in last year's attempted coup against Erdogan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management will be organising a two-day workshop here in connection with the plan to double farmers' income by 2022.

The workshop will start tomorrow with an ICAR-NAARM release stating that the aim was to obtain farmers' views and experiences on the subject.

"Around 200 farmers from 24 states, Assistant Director Generals from ICAR headquarters and directors of over a dozen ICAR institutes will attend the workshop," it said.

The recommendations from the technical sessions would be discussed in the plenary session on Saturday which would be chaired by Union Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the release stated.

The workshop is being conducted as a part of an ICAR project titled 'Farmers FIRST' which stands for Farmers' Farm, Innovations, Resources, Science and Technology, the release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two persons were killed when a car lost control and rammed into a stationary road roller on Vindhyachal-Aurai road, police said today.

The incident took place when Shailendra Chaurasia (35), Ashish Varma (29) and two others were returning from Varanasi yesterday.

The injured have been rushed to hospital, where their condition was stated to be stable.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two Naxals died in separate encounters with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bastar division today, police said.

"While one Naxal was killed in a forest under the limits of Bhejji police station in Sukma district, another died in the limits of Gangaloor police station in neighbouring Bijapur district," a senior police official told PTI.

A joint team of police's special task force, District Reserve Guard (DRG) and Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), an elite unit of the Central Reserve Police Force, had launched an operation in the interiors of Bhejji, around 500 km from the state capital Raipur, he said.

There was an exchange of fire between the patrolling team and ultras in the Dabbakonta village forest. However, the rebels soon escaped from the spot, and during the subsequent search, the body of a Naxal, in uniform, was found, he said.

A .12 bore gun and some other material were also recovered from the spot, he said. The Naxal was identified as Madvi Bandi, a member of the Konta Local GuerrillaSquad of the Naxals, he said.

In the other incident, a Naxal was killed in a gun-battle with a team of DRG in Sawnar-Korcholio forest of Gangaloor (Bijapur), he said. A muzzle-loading gun, a .12 bore gun and some live cartridges were also recovered.

Identity of the dead Naxal was yet to be ascertained, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The gas imports which once helped Egypt avert power blackouts may soon be a thing of the past. Eni SpAs massive "Zohr" natural gas field, the Mediterranean Seas largest offshore field, started production earlier this month. Its huge reserves could prove a permanent remedy to the most populous Arab nations power needs and bring Egypt closer to its goal of energy self-sufficiency.

1. How giant is Supergiant Zohr?

Discovered in August 2015, Zohr is often described as a "supergiant" field because it has estimated reserves of about 30 trillion cubic feet, equal to the reserves of Israel and Oman combined, making it the largest gas discovery in the Mediterranean Sea. The field covers an area of about 100 square kilometers. On Dec. 16, gas from Zohr began to flow to a facility in Port Said city, with initial production of 350 million cubic feet per day. Daily output is expected to rise to about 1 billion cubic feet in June, and then to 2.7 billion by the end of 2019. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has vowed to tackle the energy shortage as a priority. The project could also eventually enable Egypt to return to exporting gas.

2. Why did Egypt end up short of gas?

Previously, Egypt had sufficient supplies to export gas by pipeline to Jordan and Israel. Gas shortages began after the 2011 uprising against then president Hosni Mubarak. The ensuing political struggles scared off tourists and investors, provoking a drop in foreign currency reserves. The North African nation had to give up gas exports in 2014 to meet local demand. Sporadic sabotage of its pipeline in the Sinai Desert by Islamist militants also throttled exports. Repeated power cuts, especially during the summer months, fueled anger against Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi, who was toppled by the army in July 2013.

3. How will Zohr help?

Zohrs output is enough to cover the gap between Egypts total gas consumption, which stood at 4.9 billion cubic feet per day in 2016, and its total daily production of 4 billion cubic feet, according to data from the BP statistical review. Consumption outstripped production in 2015 reversing a trend of more than a decade. Egypt now imports liquefied natural gas, or LNG, at high costs to meet its energy needs. It first purchased the fuel in 2013. It bought a total of 89 LNG cargoes from international suppliers in fiscal year 2015/2016 at the cost of $2.2 billion, according to the oil ministry.

4. What will happen to LNG shipments?

Egypts government will issue another tender for LNG purchases in early 2018 to cover needs for the second quarter. It plans to stop importing the fuel by the end of next year because of gas from Zohr, Tarek El-Molla, Egypts oil minister, said in a November interview. Initial production from the field has raised Egypts gas production to 5.5 billion cubic feet a day, according to oil ministry data.

5. Whats the effect on the imports bill?

Initial production from Zohr is equivalent to three LNG import cargoes a month at the cost of $60 million, according to a Dec. 13 oil ministry statement. It will save the country double that amount, or $180 million a month later on when output will exceed 1 billion cubic feet a day, it said. "Zohr is a game changer for Egypts energy outlook," said Hany Farahat, a senior economist at Cairo-based CI Capital Holding. Zohr, along with BP Plcs West Nile Delta field, which started earlier in 2017, will allow the cheaper locally produced gas to substitute for the much more expensive LNG, he said. "Those two fields can improve Egypts balance of payments by narrowing the current account by approximately $4 billion and encourage" more foreign investment in Egypts energy sector.

6. Could this spur other energy investments?

Development of Zohr shows big projects can be brought on stream in a relatively very short period of time, El-Molla said in the interview. Eni was joined in the field by BP and then Rosneft PJSC. Egypt is planning to seek bids for more oil and gas exploration rounds, El-Molla told an oil conference in Cairo Dec. 18. The government has taken other steps to encourage energy investment. Under a law signed in August, private businesses will be allowed to transport and trade gas using the countrys pipeline network and infrastructure, moving away from a state monopoly. The country has also adopted a flexible gas-pricing formula to encourage investment and boost supply.

7. Is Zohr enough to turn the tide for Egypts economy?

No. The government cannot rely on gas production alone and has to take more measures, including renewable energy projects and the removal of fuel subsidies, according to Mohamed Abu Basha, Cairo-based economist at investment bank EFG-Hermes. Over the past year, Egypt has enacted sweeping reforms, backed by the International Monetary Fund, that have included floating the Egyptian pound, cutting subsidies and approving legislation to attract foreign currency. Foreign-currency reserves rebounded to a record high of $36.723 billion in November 2017 from as low as $13.42 billion in March 2013.

8. What else is Egypt doing to provide more energy?

Earlier this month, the electricity ministry held its first competitive solar energy auction, part of Egypts plan to generate a fifth of its electricity from clean sources by 2022. It currently has a feed-in tariff system and is in the process of building more than 1 gigawatts of solar power, largely in the southeastern Benban region.
The Aadhaar-issuing body on Thursday allowed to conduct eKYC verification for its telecom subscribers till January 10 with stiff riders but maintained its 'suspension' order on Airtel Payments Bank.

Airtel, the India's largest telecom company with 282 million subscribers, got the temporary reprieve with conditions after Rs 138 crore Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) was repaid into 55.63 lakh original accounts of its customers, sources privy to the development told PTI.

The second interim order to this effect has been passed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) keeping in view convenience of customers and also the looming March 31 deadline given by the for mobile SIM re-verification.

The authority will take a view on the issue after it receives a report from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the on January 10.

The has asked both the and the to conduct an audit of systems, processes, applications, documentations followed by "to ensure that the company is in compliance with their license conditions".

" has not allowed Airtel Payment Bank Limited to use eKYC license key and it shall remain deactivated until further notice," the source said citing the latest order.

As per the conditions imposed on Airtel, the company would have sent messages to its customers within 24 hours that their DBT accounts have been reverted to the originally designated bank account.

Airtel will also inform its customers in the next 24 hours that the direct benefit transfers received in their Airtel payment bank accounts have been duly reversed to original bank accounts.

As per another rider, Airtel can use the e-KYC and authentication service only for re-verification and issuance of SIM cards.

It will not be allowed to leverage the same for obtaining consent of the holder for opening bank accounts, wallet, DTH or any other goods or services, the source added.

Both Airtel and Airtel Payments bank came under fire after the the Sunil Mittal-led firm allegedly opened accounts of its mobile phone subscribers without seeking their "informed consent", and worth crores was deposited into these accounts.

The government acted swiftly in the matter and UIDAI, in a strong move late last week, temporarily barred the company from conducting Aadhaar-based SIM verification of mobile customers using eKYC process, and e-KYC of payments bank clients.
India today did not reveal its position on a resolution to be taken up at a UN General Assembly session regarding US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Lobbying has intensified ahead of the UNGA session which will deliberate on the resolution criticising Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

"I think we should wait for the voting to happen. You will get to know in which direction we are going to vote," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told reporters.

He was responding to questions on India's position on Jerusalem.

Kumar, however, did not respond to questions on the Trump administration threatening UN member countries with possible aid cut if they support the resolution.

"I do not think I should comment on it," he said.

Kumar said envoys of Arab states had met Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar on December 11 on the issue.

"Basically the ambassadors expressed their reviews on the US policy of recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And on our part M J Akbar reiterated India's position which was articulated by us a few days ago," he said.

Reacting to the US's announcement on Jerusalem, India had said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent 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," the MEA spokesperson had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The UN Security Council will vote today on a US-drafted resolution ramping up sanctions on by restricting oil supplies vital for Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs.

The United States has been in negotiations with China, Pyongyang's ally, on slapping new sanctions in response to the November 28 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The vote is scheduled for 1:00 pm (local time), diplomats said.

Building on previous sanctions resolutions, the new draft tightens restrictions on crude and refined oil deliveries to North Korea, most of which are supplied by China.

The measure would ban the supply of nearly 90 per cent of refined oil products to and order the repatriation of all North Korean nationals working abroad within 12 months, according to the text obtained by AFP.

US President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping last month to cut off oil to North Korea, a move that would deal a crippling blow to its desperately struggling economy.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have been sent to Russia and China to earn hard currency for Pyongyang, working in what UN rights officials have described as "slave-like conditions."



The draft resolution would cap crude oil supplies to four million barrels per year and require countries to seek UN permission to ship crude to .

Deliveries of refined petroleum products including diesel and kerosene would be capped at 500,000 barrels for next year, according to the measure that would order all countries to report their shipments to the United Nations.

Since last year, North Korea has carried out a nuclear test -- its sixth -- and a series of advanced missile launches which are banned under UN resolutions.
UN member-states will vote today on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with President Donald Trump threatening to cut funding to countries that back the measure.

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly will decide on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favour.

The status of the Holy City is one of the most thorny issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides claiming it as their capital.

Trump's decision on December 6 to recognise the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

But Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us," Trump said at the White House.

"Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."



The draft resolution mirrors the text that was vetoed on Monday, and although it does not mention Trump's decision, it expresses "deep regret at recent decisions" concerning the city's status.

Ahead of the vote, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the UN as a "house of lies," saying Israel "rejects outright this vote, even before it passes."



"The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well - the house of lies," he said.

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain, vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley sent an email to fellow UN envoys to put them on notice that "the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us."



"We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," she wrote in the message seen by AFP.

And on Twitter she said "the US will be taking names" when ambassadors of the 193-nation assembly cast their votes.

"Nikki, that was the right message," Trump said.

But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today said UN member states should not be swayed by Trump's threat.

"I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars," he said in a televised speech in Ankara.

Erdogan said he believed that "the world will teach a very good lesson to America today (today)."



A council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to US pressure, but the motion is all but certain to be approved.

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.

Among the 14 countries voting in favor on Monday were Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine who were expected to do the same at the assembly.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki accused Washington of "threatening" member-states, saying the UN session would show "how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience."



While resolutions by the General Assembly are non- binding, a strong vote in support of the resolution would carry political weight.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."



But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized in 1967 and the draft resolution contains the same language as past motions adopted by the assembly.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Uttar Pradesh Assembly today passed the stringent UPCOC bill, aimed at curbing organised crime and terror, by voice vote after the agitated Opposition staged a walkout alleging that it was a "draconian" legislation.

A united Opposition expressed apprehension that the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crimes (UPCOC) Bill, 2017, could be misused against political adversaries and the press and demanded that it be sent to the select committee of the House for scrutiny.

The bill was tabled by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to enact a law on the lines of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). It also entailed stern punishment for those trying to dislodge the government forcibly or violently.

Opposition members were of the view that there was no need for such a legislation as there were sufficient provisions in the IPC and the CrPC and called it a "black law".

The bill is likely to be taken up tomorrow in the Legislative Council where the ruling BJP does not enjoy majority.

Initiating the debate, the chief minister assured the members against any possible misuse of the proposed law.

"Ever since the day the draft of the bill was approved by the cabinet, I have noticed that the Opposition parties are against it...I can give the guarantee that the BJP has never misused any law and will never do so...we have come to bring development and give security without any bias," he said.

"You have been staging walkouts on law and order and raise finger over the state of affairs so why this opposition to the bill," Adityanath said.

"I assure you that no one will misuse it...it has been brought to break the backbone of those who indulge in organised crimes," he said, adding no one can say that his government has worked with political vendetta in the nine months it has been in power.

The chief minister compared the bill with similar laws in Maharashtra and Karnataka and said it will create terror in the minds of those who have made crime a trade.

Seeking opposition's backing for the bill, he cited its salient features and said it was unfortunate that they wanted to support those who are indulging in organised crime by opposing the proposed law.

The chief minister said that another bill is on the anvil through which about 20,000 political cases will come to an end.

Though the concerted efforts taken by his government in the past nine months have had a positive impact, a need was felt to bring a law to check those involved in corruption, illegal and immoral acts and were creating anarchy, riots and mafia raj, he said.

Tarring the bill as a "black law" and an "undeclared emergency", Leader of the Opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary referred to an earlier attempt by the then Mayawati government in 2007 which had got a similar bill passed but it failed to get presidential assent.

Chaudhary even read the previous speeches of BJP leaders Hukum Singh, now an MP, and MLA Suresh Khanna, who is the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, and stressed that both had opposed the measure expressing fear that it will be used against the opposition parties.

"All rights have been given to the administration and to the police in the bill...the government which had promised to establish Ram Rajya is making provision for capital punishment," he said and stressed that the basic ethos of the Constitution are that no innocent should be punished.

"I request you against creating a 'bhasmasur' (self- destructive demon) ...having the feeling of autocracy in a democracy is not good," Chaudhary said.

Apprehending that the bill has provisions that can also be used against the media, Chaudhary alleged that it is an attack on two main pillars of democracy - the legislature and the fourth estate.

The Leader of the Opposition alleged that the BJP wanted to remain in power for a longer period of time than the Congress "for which they do not want anyone left to oppose them".

"They want to conduct the 2019 (Lok Sabha) polls with no rival to challenge them," he alleged.

Chaudhary pressed for sending the bill to the select committee of the House to scrutinise its provisions and urged Speaker Hriday Narain Dixit to get the "draconian" bill withdrawn.

Lalji Verma and Sukhdev Rajbhar of BSP, SP leader Azam Khan and Ajay Kumar Lallu (Cong) alleged that the bill has been brought to crush the voice of politicans, farmers, social workers and journalists and is against the constitutional right of freedom of expression.

Independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya demanded a secret vote on the bill and asked all party leaders to deliberate on its provisions.

The statement of object and reasons appended to the bill states that the existing legal framework of penal and procedural law and the adjudicatory system were found to be inadequate in controlling organised crime.

To combat organised crime, it was decided that a special law would be introduced, with stringent and deterrent provisions including attachment of properties, remand process, setting up of special courts and special prosecutors for speedy trials and modern investigation processes.

Under organised crime, it listed offences such as kidnapping or abduction, illegal or forcible bidding in government contracts, murdering anyone by taking money or getting someone killed, grabbing of government or individual land, purchase of land on forged documents and collection of protection money.

It included illegal mining or illegal extraction of forest produce or trade in wildlife, money laundering, human trafficking, spurious liquor manufacturing and trafficking in drugs and other banned items.

The bill envisages stringent punishment for convicts. Those causing loss of life can be sentenced to death or be imprisoned for life and pay a minimum fine of Rs 25 lakh.

For other crimes, the punishment could vary between seven years and up to a life term in jail, with a minimum fine of Rs 15 lakh.

The bill also provides for setting up special courts for speedy disposal of cases in consultation with the high court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Launching a new sanctions regime targeting human rights abusers worldwide, the US today slapped sanctions against 14 individuals, including a Pakistani surgeon and a top Myanmar general, who is accused of leading an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.

Maung Maung Soe, in his former role as the chief of Burmese Army's Western command, oversaw the military operation in the Rakhine State responsible for widespread human rights abuse against Rohingya civilians in response to attacks by the Rohingya militants, the Department of Treasury said.

Rawalpindi-based Pakistani surgeon Mukhtar Hamid Shah specialised in kidney transplants who police believe to be involved in kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and the removal of and trafficking in human organs, the Treasury said.

As an owner of the Kidney Centre in Rawalpindi, Shah was involved in the kidnapping and detention of, and removal of kidneys from, Pakistani laborers, it added.

Ahead of the sanctions, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order today declaring a national emergency with respect to serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world and providing for the imposition of sanctions on actors engaged in these malign activities.

As a result of this, all of the assets within US jurisdiction of the individuals and entities included in the Annex to the Order or designated by OFAC are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

"Today, the US is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the US financial system.

"Treasury is freezing their assets and publicly denouncing the egregious acts theyve committed, sending a message that there is a steep price to pay for their misdeeds," said Secretary of the Treasury Steven T Mnuchin.

These actions advance American values and promote the security of the United States, allies, and partners, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

"We must lead by example, and todays announcement of sanctions demonstrates the US will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption," he said.

The sanctions list includes Yahya Jammeh (Jammeh), former president of Gambia; Roberto Jose Rivas Reyes, president of Nicaraguas Supreme Electoral Council; Dan Gertler, an international businessman, and Slobodan Tesic, who is among the biggest dealers of arms and munitions in the Balkans.

Benjamin Bol Mel (Bol Mel), president of ABMC Thai-South Sudan Construction Company Limited; Gulnara Karimova, daughter of former Uzbekistan leader Islam Karimov; Angel Rondon Rijo, a politically connected businessman in the Dominican Republic; Artem Chayka, son of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation; Gao Yan, who was the Beijing Public Security Bureau Chaoyang Branch director; Sergey Kusiuk, commander of an elite Ukrainian police unit, the Berkut; Julio Antonio Juarez Ramirez, a Guatemalan Congressman and Yankuba Badjie from Gambia have also been sapped sanctions with.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vice President Mike Pence arrived on an unannounced pre-Christmas visit to Afghanistan, becoming the most senior Trump administration official to visit troops fighting a 17-year-old conflict that has largely receded from US public view.

Flying secretly through the day and night on a standard unmarked US Air Force C-17, Pence corkscrewed into Bagram Airforce Base, where he thanked some of the roughly 15,000 US personnel still hoping to turn the tide of America's longest- ever war.

The superpower's vexed campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban -- born from the rubble of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, receives ever-less public attention in the United States these days.

Pence's visit is designed to shift the spotlight back on personnel and their mission, however briefly, before Americans turn their focus to turkey lunches, festive cheer and contentious domestic .

Pence's visit also included a perilous helicopter dash from Bagram into the heart of the capital Kabul to meet President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom the United States is counting on to help rebuild this war-shattered country.

"We've been on a long road together" he said. "We've both sacrificed much."



But, he added "we are here to see this through."



Pence's visit comes four months after Trump unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan.

With typical certitude, the 45th commander-in-chief promised a nation "weary of war without victory" a more ruthless campaign, and one without Obama-era exit deadlines or niceties.

"We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists," Trump said in unveiling the strategy at Fort Myer, Virginia in August. "In the end, we will win."



But, the fact that Pence's visit took place in secrecy and under cover of winter darkness is a stark reminder of the difficult security situation even around Kabul and even after a war effort worth more than half a trillion dollars.

His visit from Bagram to central Kabul was in doubt until the last moment, when a White House official said he countermanded a decision that the weather was not clear enough to travel.

Even then, Pence's helicopter flight took place in near total darkness, hovering low and fast and with a heavy phalanx of secret service and special forces.

The White House official said the decision was made "out of respect. To meet with Ghani and Abdullah".

The White House had looked at the possibility of bringing the pair out to Bagram, but that plan was dropped given the political sensitivities about the symbolism of an Afghan leader traveling to meet a US vice president in their own country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shares of Varun Beverages today surged over 9 per cent after the company said it will acquire PepsiCo India's previously franchised sub-territory in Jharkhand along with manufacturing facilities and franchise rights for Chhattisgarh.

The stock soared 9.12 per cent to end at Rs 583.95 on BSE. During the day, it surged 15.74 per cent to Rs 619.40 -- its 52-week high.

At NSE, shares of the company jumped 8 per cent to close at Rs 578.75.

In terms of equity volume, 1.27 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 14 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day.

The board of the company in a meeting held yesterday approved "its intent to enter into a binding agreement to acquire Pepsico India's previously franchised sub territory in the state of Jharkhand (20 districts) along with manufacturing facilities and franchise rights for the state of Chhattisgarh".

However, it also added that it would be "subject to the satisfactory completion of due diligence and final approval of Pepsico".

Upon completion of this acquisition, Varun Beverages will be a franchise for PepsiCo products across 20 states and 2 union territories of India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Scheduled Caste Advisory Council of West Bengal held its first meeting here today under West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and decided to meet every six months, officials said.

Besides Banerjee, Chief Secretary Malay Dey, West Bengal Backward Classes Welfare Minister Churamani Mahata were were among those present at the meeting.

The state cabinet had decided in October to set up the council to look into the development of people belonging to the scheduled castes in the state.

The council will look into the development of the social, educational, economical and cultural matters of the scheduled castes in the state and function on the lines of the existing tribal advisory council, the officials said.

Out of the total 295 assembly seats in Bengal there are 66 reserved for scheduled caste candidates.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maharashtra government today told the Bombay High Court that it would soon take a decision on granting exemption to certain models of taxis from the requirement of fitting speed governors till the time the equipment is not available in the market.

A division bench of justices S M Kemkar and R G Ketkar was hearing a petition filed by the Mumbai Taximen's Union challenging the government's decision ordering installation of speed governors.

The court had earlier this month directed the Union government to consider a letter issued to it by the state government raising the issue of non-availability of speed governors and take appropriate decision.

Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, appearing for the central government, today told the high court that the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued a letter to the state government saying it was empowered to exempt certain models of vehicles from the requirement.

"The Motor Vehicles Act empowers state governments to exempt specific models of vehicles from the requirement of fitment of speed governor till the time the same are made available at competitive rates," the letter said.

The state's lawyer informed the high court that the government would take a decision in the matter in four weeks, following which the bench disposed of the petition.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Beatrice man entered not guilty pleas on Thursday to sexually assaulting a child earlier this year.

Zachary A. Askew, 25, pleaded not guilty to two charges, first-degree sexual assault of a child and third-degree sexual assault of a child.

The first-degree sexual assault of a child charge is a class 1B felony that carries a penalty of 20 years to life in prison, with a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence. Third-degree sexual assault of a child is a class 3A felony punishable by up to three years in prison.

District Court Judge Julie Smith also rejected a request from Askews attorney, Lee Timan, to allow him contact with specified children under 16 years old. Timan said Askew is engaged to a woman with children, and due to the restriction, the two have to live in separate houses, and the alleged victim in the case is not one of those children.

Before denying the request Judge Smith said her concern is for the children.

When I look at the allegations in this case, the allegations relate to the child of the defendant's former live-in girlfriend, she said. I do have concerns with the defendant living in the same house with minors and having contact with minors.

Askew was arrested in May after a woman told police that her 8-year-old daughter said that Askew had been inappropriately touching her.

He also allegedly forced the girl to touch him while all three were sleeping in the same bed.

The victim said she told Askew to stop, and he eventually did.

The victim told her mother, who questioned Askew before contacting police. Askew denied touching the victim, court documents state.

The victim was taken to the child advocacy center where a forensic interview was conducted and she disclosed the details of the assault. Askew was then interviewed, and stated he did not recall sexually assaulting the girl.

A pretrial conference is scheduled for March 1 in the case.
India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki said today that government incentives will be needed to make electric vehicles (EVs) affordable as the country moves towards the eco-friendly solution for mobility.

The company, which plans to launch its first EV in India by 2020, also said it will conduct a study to find consumer insights to prepare for the journey.

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chairman R C Bhargava said affordability is a major challenge that EVs will face and for them to be successful, focus has to be on manufacturing of batteries and other components within the country to bring down cost.

"I think it will be required... My gut feeling is that yes, some kind of intervention would be required but I don't know to what extent," he told reporters when asked if government incentives would be needed to support electric vehicles transition in India.

As electric vehicles are a new development for the Indian auto industry it would be difficult to say in details how much government support would be needed, he added.

The company will conduct a study to understand more about consumer insights on electric vehicles, which will also help in estimating how much of government support will be needed, he said.

"Before that I can't really say with any kind of confidence that this the kind of government intervention is required," Bhargava said.

The aim of the study would be to find out as to what is the ground reality, where people park their cars and charging infrastructure and what is their thinking about EVs, he said.

"It will gauge what average consumer thinks about EVs. This survey is going to provide us the first reliable data from the ground. We will start it within two to three weeks and by about end of February we would have some authentic basis to answer queries on EVs," Bhargava said.

Stressing on the need for cost of electric cars to be within the reach of consumers, he said, "75 per cent of cars are small cars. How to make small cars electrified and affordable?



"I think this is one of the challenges which we will have to face because making an affordable large car is different from making an affordable small car. We need to keep that in mind. So what kind of government support, policy is required needs to be worked out."



The government has set eyes on 100 per cent EVs for public mobility and 40 per cent electric for personal mobility by 2030.

In a white paper submitted to the government, auto industry body SIAM had proposed 40 per cent of all new vehicles sold in the country to be electric by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2047.

When asked about MSI's EV launch plans, he Bhargava said the first one will hit the market by 2020 and the company will also set up charging stations.

On the future of conventional internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles, he said it will continue to grow.

The company has done an assessment, assuming an annual growth rate of 8 per cent between now and 2030, that 71 million cars will be sold, of which 14.4 million will be electric and 56.6 million will be IC vehicles, he said.

"So, conventional cars will continue to be four times that of electrics," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Braving biting cold conditions, an aggrieved family has camped itself on a dusty pavement right across the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh area of Delhi.

The family is seeking justice for their baby - who was wrongly declared dead on November 30 by the private facility.

The baby, one of the twins born at the upscale hospital, died during treatment at a nursing home a week later. The other was a still-born.

The Max Hospital's licence was cancelled by the Delhi government following an uproar by the family members and the general public over the grave mistake by the facility.

But the hospital resumed its operations yesterday, after it got relief from an appellate authority, which stayed the Delhi government's order cancelling its licence.

"We'll not move. We'll not relent," said Ashish Kumar, father of the infants.

He and his father Kailash Kumar, 46, along with eight other family members, who include four women, are protesting against the decision of the appellate authority.

Squatting under the open sky, Kailash Kumar said the family is now seeking help from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"An AAP worker from Haiderpur has helped us securing a meeting with the chief minister tomorrow. I, my son Ashish and a senior member of our family will visit his official residence," he said.

The family members last evening picketed the main gate of the hospital, but protested peacefully, hours after they came to know about the stay order.

The Court of Financial Commissioner, on December 19, stayed the cancellation order issued by the Directorate General of Health Services till January 9, when it will hear the matter.

"We were asked by the police to move across the street, so we did. But, now the police authorities are not even allowing us to put up a 'tirpal' over our head," Kailash Kumar said. "They want us to suffer, but we will not give up until we get justice."



Earlier in the day, the family demanded a CBI probe into the whole matter to bring the "truth out in the open".

"We knew my wife was pregnant with twins, there was so much excitement. We had bought toys and baby pictures and clothes. It was supposed to be double joy for us, but the world came crashing down on us," Ashish Kumar told PTI.

The family today put up two starched white banners with protest messages in bold red.

"My wife is back at home. She is in a state of shock. We are holding the fort here, even though we have to defecate in the open near drains, and there is filth and mosquitoes, but we will not give up," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Youthquake, complicit, fake news, feminism and truth have been named top words of 2017 by several dictionaries and a language monitoring body for being reflective of the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the year and also for emerging as terms of significance.

The Oxford Dictionaries Word defined its word of 2017 'youthquake' as 'a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people'.

"The data collated by our editors shows a fivefold increase in usage of youthquake in 2017 compared to 2016, the word having first struck in a big way in June with the UK's general election at its epicentre," Oxford said.

Youthquake was coined in 1965 by Diana Vreeland, editor- in-chief of Vogue, to describe the youth-led fashion and music movement of the swinging sixties, which saw baby boomers reject the traditional values of their parents.

"As in 2017, the UK was at the heart of the youthquake, with 'the London Look' of boutique street-style individualism taking the high fashion houses of Paris, Milan, and New York by storm to inform a new mass-produced, ready-to-wear fashion directive worldwide," Oxford said.

Other words that made to the Oxford shortlist were milkshake duck, white fragility, unicorn, kompromat, broflake, newsjacking, gorpcore and antifa.

Dictionary.com named 'complicit' as its word of the year.

Complicit means "choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others; having partnership or involvement in wrongdoing." Or, put simply, it means being, at some level, responsible for something... even if indirectly.

"The word complicit has sprung up in conversations this year about those who speak out against powerful figures and institutions and about those who stay silent," according to dictionary.com.

"This year has seen a real awakening to complicity in various sectors of society, from politics to pop culture. Our choice for word of the year is as much about what is visible as it is about what is not. It's a word that reminds us that even inaction is a type of action," it said.

'Fake news' was selected as the word of the year by Collins Dictionary.

"It has been derided by the leader of the free world and accused of influencing elections, but 'fake news' is today legitimate as it is named Collins' Word of the Year 2017. The word saw an unprecedented usage increase 365 per cent since 2016," the dictionary said.

As defined by Collins, 'fake news' means "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of reporting".

Merriam-Webster's chose 'feminism' as its word of the year.

"The word was a top lookup throughout the year, with several spikes that corresponded to various reports and events. The general rise in lookups tells us that many people are interested in this word; specific spikes give us insight into some of the reasons why," it said.

"Feminism spiked following news coverage of the Women's March on Washington, DC in January (and other related marches held around the country and internationally), and follow-up discussions regarding whether the march was feminist, and what kind of feminism was represented by organizers and attendees.

"The word spiked again when Kellyanne Conway said during an interview that she didn't consider herself a feminist. In this case, the definition of feminism was itself the subject of the news story - an invitation for many people to look up the word," the dictionary said.

"More recently, lookups of feminism have been increasing in conjunction with the many accounts of sexual assault and harassment in the news. Many women have come forward to share their stories with journalists and many more women joined in on social media using the #MeToo hashtag to say that they too have been affected by such behaviour.

"The string of breaking news stories regarding the resignations, firings, or dismissals of men who have been charged with sexual harassment or assault has kept this story in the news," it said.

Finally, Global Language Monitor, which tracks the top trending words, announced 'truth' as its word of the year for global English. In addition, the Weinstein Effect was named the top phrase and Chinese leader Xi Jingping the top name of 2017.

Following 'truth' were the words narrative, Opioids, awoke, nuclear option, deep state, robot apocalypse, higher level of fake news, Blessee, and lean into.

"GLM's methodology is to examine the totality of global English with the tools now available to better understand the underlying trends that shape our words and, hence, our world," said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of GLM.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telecoms carrier said on Thursday that there were no irregularities in deals that made it the majority shareholder in a Tanzanian unit, a day after the country's president claimed the company belonged to the state.

President John Magufuli said on Wednesday he had received a report that the state-run Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) owned the local subsidiary of outright but had been cheated out of shares. Magufuli made the comments in a speech broadcast on television. He did not give further details, but ordered the finance minister to investigate.

The Tanzanian government owns a 40 percent stake in Airtel Tanzania, with the remaining 60 percent owned by .

Bharti Airtel said it had not received any notice or communication from the government, but would work closely with the government to resolve doubts to the satisfaction of all shareholders.

"Our acquisition of the said 60 percent shareholding in June 2010 was in full compliance with and following all approvals from the Govt. of Tanzania," the company said in a statement.

Magufuli's state ownership claim on Bharti Airtel's local business will likely further unnerve foreign investors in the country after his government launched a crackdown on mining firms in the country this year.

Last year, Magufuli ordered telecoms to list at least a quarter of their units on the local stock exchange to increase domestic ownership.

Like other African countries, mobile phone use has surged in Tanzania over the past decade on the back of cheaper smartphones, recording a 0.9 percent annual increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers in 2016 to 40.17 million.

Mobile phone operators in Tanzania include Vodacom Tanzania, part of South Africa's Vodacom, Tigo Tanzania, which is part of Sweden's Millicom, Bharti Airtel Tanzania, and Halotel, owned by Vietnam-based telecoms operator Viettel.
(Corrects the Naila ship to being a geophysical vessel, not geothermal, in penultimate paragraph)

By Henning Gloystein and Gavin Maguire

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Surveying the ocean floor for oil and natural gas reserves is gradually emerging from a multi-year slump, everywhere apart from Asia.

That's despite Asia being the world's biggest consumer of oil, having by far the strongest demand growth while seeing its production fall faster than anywhere else.

The reasons for Asia's dearth in offshore exploration and production (E&P) include high costs in Australia's promising waters, declining reserves in production hotspots Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as territorial disputes in the oil- and gas-rich waters of the South China Sea.

"We only have two 3D vessels in Asia-Pacific, since there are fewer opportunities and less activity in that region," said Bard Stenberg, vice president at Norwegian offshore survey company PGS, adding that most of his company's vessels were in the Atlantic.

MISSING OUT

A 2017 and 2018 activity map by geophysical surveillance firm TGS shows the most activity in the North Atlantic.

A similar map by Bernstein Research showed the Asia-Pacific basin to have only four minor offshore developments of under 50,000 barrels per day (bpd). That compares to five major developments (above 50,000 bpd) and 11 minor ones in the Atlantic.

Asia's dearth comes despite the region's huge oil deficit, resulting from booming demand and declining output.

In one of the most promising regions, Australia, the main problem is cost, in part due to a requirement for rigs to pay for Australian crew once in Australian waters.

"Once any foreign-flagged vessel is in Australian waters, the ship operator has to pick up Australian workers... They work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 4 weeks, then get 4 weeks off," said Christy Cain of the Maritime Union of Australia.

When oil prices were high, this was not a big problem, drillers said. But in times of cheaper oil and low profit margins, the added cost deters explorers, several said.

In another promising area, the South China Sea, conflicting territorial claims, especially between China and Vietnam, have hindered E&P activity.

Meanwhile, in Asia's most established offshore oil and gas production basins of Malaysia and Indonesia, recoverable reserves are depleting.

Malaysia's state-owned Petronas, Southeast Asia's biggest oil producer, is increasingly focusing on downstream projects like the Pengerang Integrated Complex (PIC) in the southern state of Johor.

From 2019, PIC will refine crude oil into fuel and petrochemical products. Significant amounts of its crude will come from Saudi Arabia.

With little E&P activity, Asia's oil import bill - which has already more than doubled since 2000 to over $420 billion a year - will rise further, likely above $500 billion in 2017, leaving other regions to cash in on Asia's oil thirst.

COUNTING HELICOPTERS

Gauging the health of the secretive offshore industry is difficult. But dozens of mothballed rigs and support vessels sit idle in southern Malaysia's Johor river delta, waiting to be used or scrapped.

Yet cautious optimism is emerging.

"Activity to support new development projects may increase slightly (between 2018 and 2020), but is unlikely to approach historical high levels (2013/14)," Petronas said in an outlook this month.

Douglas Westwood, which monitors helicopter activity to and from offshore vessels, has a similar view.

"The offshore helicopter market has finally started to recover following three years of decline," Westwood said, although it added that average annual growth between 2018 and 2022 will still only be 1 percent.

"Global utilisation will average 59 percent over the forecast," it said, up from a paltry 54 percent in 2017.

At the root of the industry malaise lies rampant overproduction in the years running up to 2014, which crashed crude prices from over $100 per barrel in 2014 to below $30 in 2016.

E&P companies were among the first to feel the bite of aggressive industry cost slashing.

Firms in the seismic oil surveillance sector, including Polarcus, PGS, and Electromagnetic Geoservices have seen their share prices crash since 2015, in some cases by over 90 percent.

Only a production cut led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has stabilized Brent above $50 a barrel since mid-2017.

With oil demand healthy, the offshore industry hopes companies will start spending on future output again.

"We're hoping that it's going to pick up next year," said Cain of the Maritime Union of Australia.

In a sign that even in Asia-Pacific there may be some more activity, the geophysical surveillance ship Polarcus Naila left Singapore in early December for a seismic mission in the Bonaparte Basin, off Australia's northwest coast.

Speaking to during a visit to Singapore by the ship, one of the Naila's senior crew members said he hoped things would go from "worst to bad."

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein and Gavin Maguire; Additional reporting by Keith Wallis in SINGAPORE, and Sonali Paul in MELBOURNE; Writing by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Claudia Cristoferi and Elisa Anzolin

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian fashion house Valentino plans to list on the Milan stock market sometime from late 2018, with its Qatari owner planning to sell around a quarter of the company in an initial public offering of shares, a source close to the matter said.

The group, founded in 1960 by designer Valentino Garavani in a studio near Rome's Spanish Steps, retains a classic chic which is still popular with actors strutting the red carpet. Its trademark is a bright magenta red, known as 'Valentino red'.

Its current owner, Qatari investment vehicle Mayhoola for Investments has close ties to Sheikha Mozah, the second wife of the former emir. It bought Valentino in 2012 from private equity firm Permira for around 700 million euros ($829 million).

Mayhoola started looking into a possible market listing in late 2015 but hesitated because of a slowdown in luxury fashion last year. It also wants to give time for Valentino's creative director to put his mark on the brand .

Last year Chief Executive Stefano Sassi said there was "too much turbulence to think about a listing".

With the 1.2 trillion-euro luxury industry picking up this year from a sales slowdown, creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli is looking to establish himself as sole designer at the prestigious fashion house, after creative partner Maria Grazia Chiuri left last year for LVMH's Dior, the source said.

In step with the pick-up in fashion, two other luxury Italian brands -- celebrity label Versace and high-end leather goods maker Furla -- are also considering to list, though not before Valentino, other sources have told .

"Next year's (IPO) pipeline is well fed," said Raffaele Jerusalmi, chief executive of the Milan exchange, which expects 20 new listings on the main market next year.

The source said the Valentino IPO process had not yet begun and that a listing would depend on market conditions. There was no plan to boost Valentino's capital by issuing new shares in the IPO, the source added.

"Mayhoola intends to carry out this operation as it wants to accredit itself in the world of finance, bringing to the market a company that is expected to gain even more value once it is floated," the source said.

Valentino would list on Milan's main market, which requires a free-float of at least 25 percent.

Valentino declined to comment. Mayhoola did not respond to a phone call and email requesting comment.

The group reported sales of 1.1 billion euros and core profits of 206 million euros in 2016. Chief Executive Stefano Sassi said in June he hoped for a double-digit growth in sales this year.

($1 = 0.8442 euros)

(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin, Claudia Cristoferi; Writing by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Valentina Za)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India imposed a 30 per cent tax on import of chickpea and red lentils, the government said in a statement on Thursday, as the world's biggest importer of pulses tries to support local farmers.

This comes as the prices of both commodities are trading below the government-set levels in the local market.

The south Asian country imports chickpea mainly from Australia, Russia, and Tanzania, while red lentils, also known massor, from Canada and the United States.
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Reliance Infrastructure, part of Reliance Group, said on Thursday it has agreed to sell its Mumbai power generation, transmission and distribution business to a unit of Adani Enterprises for around 188 billion rupees ($2.93 billion).

The deal will provide Reliance Group controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani with a 30 billion rupees cash surplus, Reliance Infrastructure said in a statement.

Reliance Group has previously announced plans to invest an undisclosed amount in its recently started aerospace defence manufacturing business as well as in its engineering, procurement and construction businesses.

Adani Transmission Ltd, the power distribution arm of Adani Enterprises, will pay an initial 132.51 billion rupees for Reliance's Mumbai power business and 55.50 billion rupees at a later date based on certain approvals, the Reliance statement said.

For the quarter which ended in September, Reliance Infrastructure, also known as RInfra, posted a net profit of 5.44 billion rupees and reported total debt of around 140 billion rupees.

($1 = 64.0850 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; editing by Jason Neely)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Alana Wise

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Wednesday recommended steep anti-subsidy duties on Bombardier Inc's CSeries jets, setting up the next round of a fierce international trade dispute between the United States and Canada.

The U.S. Commerce Department announcement to impose duties of nearly 300 percent stems from a complaint by Boeing Co that Bombardier had been unfairly and illegally subsidized by the Canadian government, allowing the planemaker to dump its newest jetliner in the U.S. market below cost.

"Today's decision validates Boeing's complaints regarding Bombardier's pricing in the United States, pricing that has harmed our workforce and U.S. industry," Boeing said in a statement on the decision, which was generally expected within the aerospace industry.

Delta Air Lines , the second largest U.S. carrier by passenger traffic, has an order for 75 of the 100-to-150 seat CSeries jets.

The aircraft starts at $79.5 million, according to list prices, or some $5.9 billion for the total order, but carriers typically receive steep discounts.

If imposed, the duties would more than triple the cost of a CSeries aircraft sold in the United States, based on Boeing's assertion that Delta received the planes for $20 million each, well below an estimated cost of $33 million and what Bombardier charges in Canada.

Bombardier criticized the U.S. decision as out of touch, citing the Canadian planemaker's plan to team up with European Airbus to launch assembly of the CSeries from a production line in Mobile, Alabama, making it a domestic product for U.S. buyers.

"Unfortunately, the Commerce Department decision is divorced from this reality and ignores long- standing business practices in the aerospace industry, including launch pricing and the financing of multibillion dollar aircraft programs," Bombardier said in a statement.

The U.S. penalty against Bombardier will only take effect if the lesser-known U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) rules in Boeing's favour, as it so far has, in its final decision expected in early 2018.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government will consider its next steps and options for appeal.

"We are steadfast in our determination to defend Canadian companies and workers against protectionism," Freeland said in a statement.

Freeland said Boeing has failed to demonstrate that it is being threatened with injury by the CSeries "in a market segment it exited over a decade ago."

Boeing had called for countervailing duties of 79.41 percent to offset what it described as harmful Canadian subsidies to Bombardier. It also identified a "dumping margin" of 80.5 percent, based on the unpublished prices at which it claims Bombardier sold the CSeries planes to Delta, for a combined border charge of just under 160 percent on the Bombardier jets.

Wednesday's decision is in line with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross' pledge to aggressively police unfairly traded imports to help shrink U.S. trade deficits.

It also coincides with negotiations between the United States, Canada and Mexico to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The dispute between the two planemakers could, however, move to a larger stage as Canada weighs a complaint to the World Trade Organization or through NAFTA.

At a contentious hearing of the ITC on Monday, Canada said that a positive finding of material harm to Boeing by the group could represent a possible violation of international trade agreements and prompt a formal objection.

Canada earlier this month scrapped plans to buy 18 Boeing Super Hornet fighter jets, underlining Ottawa's anger over the trade challenge. Boeing has said it considered all potential risks before deciding to open its trade case.

U.S.-Canadian trade relations have also chilled over disputes about Canadian softwood lumber and U.S. milk protein products.

(Reporting by Alana Wise; additional reporting by Leah Schnurr, Tim Hepher, Tim Ahmann and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By David Morgan and Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

In sealing Trump's first major legislative victory since he took office in January, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while giving mixed, temporary tax relief to middle-class Americans.

The House approved the measure by 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up forced another vote on Wednesday. The Republican-led Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of Wednesday.

"We are making America great again," Trump said, echoing his campaign slogan at a White House celebration with Republican lawmakers. "Ultimately what does it mean? It means jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs."

Trump, who emphasized a tax cut for middle-class Americans during his 2016 campaign, said at an earlier Cabinet meeting that lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent was "probably the biggest factor in this plan."

It was uncertain when the bill would be signed. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the timing depended on whether automatic spending cuts triggered by the legislation could be waived.

The administration expects the waiver to be included in a spending resolution Congress will pass later this week, a White House official told reporters. Cohn told Fox Channel on Wednesday night that Trump could sign the bill as soon as Friday if the resolution was passed by then.

"If not, most likely we'll sign it in the first week of the new year," Cohn said.

BUSINESS FRIENDLY

In addition to cutting the U.S. corporate income tax rate, the debt-financed legislation gives other business owners a new 20 percent deduction on business income and reshapes how the government taxes multinational corporations along the lines that the country's largest businesses have recommended for years.

Wall Street's main indexes were little changed on Wednesday, taking a breather after a month-long rally ahead of the long-anticipated tax vote. The S&P 500 has climbed about 4.5 percent since mid-November, led by a rally in sectors such as transport, banks and others that are expected to benefit the most from lower taxes.

Under the bill, millions of Americans would stop itemizing deductions, putting tax breaks that incentivize home ownership and charitable donations out of their reach, but also making tax returns somewhat simpler and shorter.

The bill keeps the existing number of tax brackets but adjusts many of the rates and income levels for each one. The top tax rate for high earners is reduced. The estate tax on inheritances is changed so far fewer people will pay.

Once signed, taxpayers likely would see the first changes to their paycheck tax withholdings in February. Most households will not see the full effect of the tax plan on their income until they file their 2018 taxes in early 2019.

In two provisions added to secure needed Republican votes, the legislation also allows oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and removes a tax penalty under the Obamacare health law for Americans who do not obtain health insurance.

"We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we'll come up with something that will be much better," Trump said.

Democrats were united in opposition to the tax legislation, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy that will widen the income gap between rich and poor, while adding $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the $20 trillion national debt. Trump promised during the campaign that he would eliminate the national debt.

'PILLAGING'

"Today the Republicans take their victory lap for successfully pillaging the American middle class to benefit the powerful and the privileged," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

Opinion polls show the tax bill is unpopular with the public and Democrats promised to make Republicans pay for their vote during next year's congressional elections, when all 435 House seats and 34 of the 100 Senate seats will be up for grabs.

"Republicans will rue the day they passed this bill," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. "We are going to continue hammering away about why this bill is so unpopular."

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the bill, saying support would grow for after it passes and Americans felt relief. "I think minds are going to change," Ryan said on ABC's "Good Morning America" television program.

A few Republicans, a party once defined by fiscal hawkishness, have protested the deficit spending encompassed in the bill. But most voted for it anyway, saying it would help businesses and individuals while boosting an already expanding economy they see as not growing fast enough.

In the House, 12 Republicans voted against the tax bill. All but one, Walter Jones of North Carolina, were from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California, which will be hit by the bill's cap on deductions for state and local taxes.

Despite Trump administration promises that the tax overhaul would focus on the middle class and not cut taxes for the rich, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, estimated middle-income households would see an average tax cut of $900 next year under the bill, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would see an average cut of $51,000.

The House was forced to vote again after the Senate parliamentarian ruled three minor provisions violated arcane Senate rules. To proceed, the Senate deleted the three provisions and then approved the bill.

Since the House and Senate must approve the same legislation before Trump can sign it into law, the Senate's vote sent the bill back to the House.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Amanda Becker; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Roberta Rampton, Gina Chon, Mohammad Zargham and Susan Heavey; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)

(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.)
Glad Jul. Nollaig Nait Cugat. Kamgan Ukudigaa. Vesele Vianoce. Joyeux Noel. Frohlich Weihnachten. Feliz Navidad. Wesolych Swiat. Glaedelig Jul. Nadolig Llawen. Merry Christmas.

The Homestead National Monument of America is celebrating the winter holidays with Christmas trees featuring decorations from around the world. The Winter Festival of Prairie Cultures, which is on display at Homestead until Dec. 31, celebrates the traditions and cultures that homesteaders brought with them to their new homes.

Each of the trees tells the story of a different cultural group.

Theres the Danish tree, which is decked out with woven hearts made from red and white paper. The Alaskan tree, celebrates the native Aleutian people, and a Welsh tree is decorated with the bright red dragon that graces the Welsh flag. There are trees representing American, English, German, Mexican, Czech, Slovakian, French, Asian, Polish and Scottish cultures.

Also on display are trees that recognize certain time periods in American history, such as the Great Depression-themed tree. It is decorated as it might have been during the 1930s, with images cut from the Sears Catalog and pasted onto the shiny lining of cigarette boxes.

A tree from Nicodemus, Kan. remembers the Christmas of 1882, when the town formed by freed slaves came together to create their own tradition. The tree, made from the branch of a cottonwood tree, was wrapped in cotton batting and held upright in a barrel. The Nicodemus tree is decorated with items like forks, pieces of jewelry and various shiny pieces of metal.

Park Ranger Susan Cook said that many of the first homesteaders were immigrants and brought their cultures with them. The trees are a way to keep those cultures alive, she said, and to share the history they brought with them.

We focus on the prairie states and the immigrants that came here and how they changed and impacted us as who we are today, Cook said.

Theyve been hosting the Winter Festival of Prairie Cultures for about 20 years now, Cook said, and Homestead aims to change things up each year.

Most of the decorations on display are from Bob and Lorine Mares of Wilber, Cook said, but some of the decorations come from other people and organizations from around Nebraska and neighboring states.

New this year is the Santas of Many Countries display. Featuring Santa Claus as he would appear around the world, the exhibit includes sculptures, figurines, carvings and paintings of St. Nick. The display even includes an Australian Santa, complete with a kangaroo and a koala.

Each of the trees has a description beneath it that tells the story of how the culture celebrates its holidays. Some involve the usual Christmas dinners, stockings stuffed with candy and family gatherings by the tree, but some are a little different.

Slovakian Christmas celebrations, for example, feature a visit from Svaty Mikalas, who decends from heaven on a golden cord, accompanied by an angel and a devil. The angel rewards good children with gifts and fresh fruit, while the devilsometimes known as Cert or Krampusgives the bad children onions or raw potatoes. For the really naughty children, sometimes the devil will put them in his bag and take them home to be eaten.

Cook said her favorite part of the yearly tradition is seeing families talk about it. There are a lot of grandparents who will bring in their grandchildren and point out things they remember about their own traditions. Its a good conversation starter, she said.

That's what I like, Cook said. Hearing people talking about how it affects them and actually getting conversation going among family members.

The Winter Festival of Prairie Cultures is open daily at the Homestead National Monument of America until Dec. 31.
In the technical jargon that passes for the 2G scam and amidst figures of gigantic corruption, what is often overlooked is what really started the fire. Because, the scam in a nutshell was spectrum, a scarce natural resource, sold for a song in 2008 at prices prevailing in 2001. How and why did this happen and who were the major players because at the heart of it all was the compulsions of coalition dharma.

Long before A Raja and his party DMK came into the picture, Spectrum pricing which was to be decided by a group of ministers headed by Pranab Mukherjee was finally decided by then telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and he, in consultation with his party DMK, decided to sell spectrum for a song, literally. So, how did he do that?

The foundation of the scam was laid in 2006. A group of ministers, headed by defence minister pranab mukherjee, was constituted to look at various issues of spectrum. Buried amongst the terms of reference was a term "spectrum pricing".

Then Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran saw red when the Terms of Reference were decided. He shot off a letter to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reminding him in no uncertain terms that, "You had kindly assured me that the Terms of reference of the GOM would be drawn up exactly the way we wanted...I am however surprised to note that the GoM as constituted has much wider Terms of Reference, some of which I feel impinge upon the work normally to be carried out by the ministry itself...I shall be grateful if you could kindly instruct concerned to modify the Terms of Reference as suggested by us which are enclosed."

Sure enough, by the end of December 2006 the new Terms of Reference had been drawn up. The government had signed on the dotted line as ordered by the telecom minister. That the UPA could be told to do things in a certain way, literally at gun point is not surprising. The DMK with 18 MPs was crucial in supporting the government that had been formed with a wafer thin majority in 2004. Allocation of scarce natural resources like spectrum and coal were two major decisions taken by the government in 2006-2007, both of which came to haunt it in UPA 2.

Surprisingly, it was the Finance Ministry that was pusing for spectrum pricing to be decided, not by the Telecom Ministry, but by the GoM. File notings of the Finance Ministry have then minister P Chidambaram inquiring whether the issue has been settled or not. Successive finance secretaries, urged by Chidambaram, made a case for spectrum pricing to be done at market rates.

Finance Secretary Ashok Jha even wrote to Cabinet Secretary BK Chaturvedi asking him to intervene. "Spectrum pricing and allocation have far reaching consequences for the economy and need to be debated. The contention fo teh DOT that these issues are within its normal is not entirely correct". Similar requests were made by D Subbarao to then telecom secretary DS Mathur but to no avail.

While A Raja spent time behind bars, Dayanidhi Maran was exonerated in the Aircel Maxis case. The small matter of spectrum pricing remains a matter of policy collectively decided by the Cabinet.
SBI's Economic Research Department (ERD), that advises the banks on economic and financial issues, has said that noise over the draft FRDI bill was "misplaced". The ERD said the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill (FRDI), which aims to form a resolution corporation to prevent financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies, from going bankrupt, was equivalent to the DICGC Act.

There has been a lot of hue and cry over the bill's clauses, especially the 'bail-in' article, which allows restructuring of a bank's debt by adopting different provisions, including usage of depositors' money to take crumbling banking institutions out of bankruptcy. Though there are protections in place for depositors like insurance on the deposited amount, many believe they could lose their hard-earned money when such a situation would arrive.

"We need to discuss whether the concept of bail-in is justified in Indian context. Such strategy is similar to the ones adopted by EU countries like Cyprus, whose per capital income is 14 times higher than India. The average income of a vast majority of Indian depositors is modest, and they rely on interest on bank deposits as sustenance in the absence of a comprehensive social security," said the report.

On December 12, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government would fully protect bank deposits of customers, saying that the government's massive Rs 2.11 lakh crore plan to infuse capital into public sector banks was to strengthen them and there was no question of any bank failing. "If any such situation arises, the government will fully protect the deposits made by customers," he said. But many of the panicked depositors say why include such a controversial clause when the government wanted to protect the interests of depositors.

The ERD report said the deposit insurance cover in India was the lowest across countries. "Even some countries with similar per capita income like India have an unlimited deposit cover. "In India, currently banks pay deposit insurance on the entire assessable deposits, but coverage is limited to only Rs 1 lakh. Our estimate shows that only 30 per cent of the total assessable deposits are insured in India (75 per cent in FY96)," the report said.

The ERD's analysis of the bank deposit base shows that in terms of the number of accounts, 67 per cent of the total accounts are less than Rs 1 lakh while 99 per cent of the accounts are less than Rs 15 lakh. "This shows that a number of small depositors are adequately covered under the draft bill," said the report.

Under the new Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, the proceeds from sale of assets of a bank would first go to insured depositors. In the previous regime, the depositors were insured for only Rs 1 lakh irrespective of the deposit made in a bank. The new bill, however, makes no mention of the maximum amount of insured deposit. There is a possibility of government and the regulator, i.e., Reserve Bank of India, keeping the same limit or lower.

The latest bill also dilutes the powers of the RBI on superseding banks boards, deciding merger and acquisitions, identifying weak banks and also systemically important financial institutions. The bill provides for establishing a Resolution Corporation, which, however, will be an independent authority, it will consult the regulators i.e the RBI for bank-related issues like weak banks or deciding on systemically important financial institutions. So the RBI's exclusive powers will again go to a new corporation having chairperson and members from the RBI, finance ministry, Sebi among others.
Remember the expression about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Well, there was indeed one for 13 public sector banks (PSBs) struggling with bad loans under the provisions of the Indradhanush Plan. But they have missed out on it due to their inadequate performance. By failing to achieve their set targets, the banks have collectively lost out on Rs 6,500 crore.

Under the four-year Indradhanush road map announced in 2015, the government had announced infusion of Rs 70,000 crore out of budgetary allocations in 21 PSBs, which together account for about 70 per cent of the market share. The blueprint envisaged allocating the money in four tranches: Rs 25,000 crore in 2015-16 and again in 2016-17 and Rs 10,000 crore each in the following two fiscals.

In the first tranche of capital infusion during 2016-17, the government had allocated Rs 22,915 crore in 13 public sector banks, of which Rs 16,414 crore or 75 per cent was given upfront. The list of beneficiaries included State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank and Bank of India. In January this year the finance ministry had also said that the allocation of the remaining amount [Rs 6,500 crore] will be linked to performance with particular reference to greater efficiency, growth of both credit and deposits and reduction in the cost of operations.

"However, none of the banks could achieve the set targets and therefore, the remaining 25 per cent of the allocated capital has not been released so far," the finance ministry tweeted on Tuesday night.

Previously, during the 2015-16 fiscal, 21 PSBs had got fund support of Rs 25,000 crore as per the blueprint, among which SBI had bagged the highest amount of Rs 5,393 crore followed by Bank of India at Rs 2,455 crore.

The government has, so far, infused a capital of Rs 51,858 crore in the PSBs, and there's more relief in the offing. In February this year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced the allocation of a further Rs 10,000 crore towards recapitalisation of public sector banks in FY2017-18 while presenting the Budget, adding that additional allocation will be made as and when required. The following month, ministry reportedly chalked out a turnaround-linked ?8,586-crore capital infusion plan for 10 PSBs, including IDBI Bank, UCO Bank, Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank.

But while it was a step in the right direction, the Indradhanush plan was too modest to tackle the huge problem of bank non-performing assets-gross NPAs crossed Rs 8.50 lakh crore at the end of September 2017. Furthermore, in August 2017, a report from S&P Global Ratings claimed that Indian banks may need an additional Rs 1.9 trillion by March 2019 in order to write down losses on non-performing loans and meet regulatory requirements under Basel III.

Hence, two months ago, the government announced an aggressive Rs 2.11 lakh crore capital infusion for the state-owned banks over a period of two years, including Rs 1.35 lakh crore worth recapitalization bonds. Let's see if the PSBs manage to get their act together and make the most of this capital support.

(With agency inputs)


A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all 18 accused including A Raja and K Kanimozhi in 2G spectrum allocation case. The scam came to light almost seven years ago when the Comptroller and Auditor General or CAG in a report held then Telecom Minister A Raja responsible for causing the state exchequer a loss of Rs 1,76,379 crore by allocating 2G spectrum licenses at throwaway prices. But, today the court found that the prosecution failed to prove the charges. This verdict, however, doesn't override the Supreme Court judgement or take away from the fact that the licenses issued during 2G spectrum allocation were illegal.



The charge sheet of the instant case is based mainly on misreading, selective reading, non reading and out of context reading of the official record, Special Judge OP Saini said in his verdict. The charge sheet is based on some oral statements made by the witnesses during investigation, which the witnesses have not owned up in the witness box, Special Judge added.

Here's what Subramanian Swamy has to say:



This is very bad judgement. On appeal, this verdict will be set aside: Subramanian Swamy

On Kapil Sibal's zero loss theory, Subramanian said: "This isn't final verdict. Congress happiness is short-lived."

Special Judge OP Saini in his report said he could not understand what CBI wanted to prove: Subramanian Swamy

Former Attorney General is supporting the judgement. It wasn't appropriate to appoint Mukul Rohatgi as AG: Subramanian Swamy

Here's what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said:



Today, there has been against the accused in the 2G spectrum case a judgement of acquittal. The Congress leaders are treating this as some kind of a badge of honour and a certification that 2G policy was an honest policy. In 2007-2008, spectrum was given by an auction, but on basis of a price discovery made in 2001. So, the spectrum in 2008 was allocated on 2001 prices, said Arun Jaitley.

Even within the policy implementation, there was arbitrariness, cut off date was advanced. First Come First Serve policy was intended to help selected few and the favourite chosen few were informed in advance about the change of policy. The favourites had got bank draft prepared on the previous date before the spectrum allocation, said the Finance Minister

On basis of all this, in February 2012, the Supreme Court cancelled all licenses. Each case of spectrum allocation was squashed by the apex court as arbitrary and unfair. The policy was arbitrary and designed to promote corruption, said Arun Jaitley adding that we have to look at amounts collected by subsequent auctions.

The (UPA) policy was designed to promote corruption. It was implemented in an unfair manner, causing loss of revenue to the government. Auctioning was getting much higher price. I am sure investigating agencies and prosecuting agencies will look into it and decide what to do further in the matter. The Congress should not consider this as some kind of certificate of clean chit: Arun Jaitley.

What K Kanimozhi said:



We are all very happy that the justice has prevailed. It was a harrowing experience to be accused of something I have not done and being accused of corruption which I was not a part of. The whole party has suffered due to this. We feel finally a big weight has been lifted off.

The allegation was that I was Director of Kalaignar TV. I was a Director for 20 days before the launch of the channel. I wasn't present in any board meetings. CBI new all this. I had submitted my resignation in the ROC. There's more to it than meets the eye, Kanimozhi said.

What Former Telecom Minister A Raja said:



I am going to to have elaborative press conference at 5 pm at my residence today: A Raja

LIVE UPDATES

02:30 PM: Reports suggest the CBI will appeal against the acquittal of accused in 2G scam case.



12:30 AM: "Prosecution's main argument was on clause 8, it is a civil issue. It was never an issue of criminality, this is what court also held," says Mukul Rohatgi, former Attorney General: ANI



11:55 AM: Former PM Manmohan Singh said the 2G scam was a massive propaganda against the UPA without any proof.



We respect the court's judgement. I dont want to boast. I am glad that the court has announced unambiguously that the massive propaganda launched against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself", Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh pic.twitter.com/72s0AxQB8N - Youth Congress (@IYC) December 21, 2017

11:45 AM: If the Government has concrete evidence, then they should take the matter to a higher court: Anna Hazare says.



11:30 AM: "Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country," says Shashi Tharoor to ANI.



11:20 AM: Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari in a tweet asked the former CAG chief Vinod Rai to apologise to the nation. He said: "Mr VINOD RAI Former C&G must Apologise to the nation for throwing presumptive sensational Corrosive numbers into public discourse. He was author of imbecile 1.76 thousand crore loss theory that I had destroyed during my cross examination of Rai in JPC. Court has affirmed JPC Report."



Mr VINOD RAI Former C&G must Apologise to the nation for throwing presumptive sensational Corrosive numbers into public discourse.He was author of imbecile 1.76 thousand crore loss theory that I had destroyed during my cross examination of Rai in JPC.court has affirmed JPC Report - Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) December 21, 2017

11:15 AM: Like a good lawyer, I will comment only after reading the full verdict: A Raja.



11:09 AM: Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in a tweet said the government must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in the High Court.



11:05 AM: "One thing is clear that the allegations of a major scam involving highest levels of government was not true or correct," Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said after the acquittal of A Raja and Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum scam case.



11:00 AM: Senior Congress member Kapil Sibal said that the 2G scam verdict was a moral and legal victory for the UPA government. He says that they will ask those who raised allegations to apologise and that the PM too should stop raising this matter now.



10:55 AM: An elated Kanimozhi, outside the court, said, "I would love to thank everyone who stood by me."

Kanimozhi waves at supporters outside Patiala House Court after being acquitted in #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/7uyU9FwDws - ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

All accused including A Raja, K Kanimozhi acquitted in 2G spectrum case. "The CBI has miserably failed to prove all charges against all the accused persons. Therefore, all accused are acquitted of all the charges. And accused are required to submit a security bond of Rs 5 lakh each which is a requirement of section 437-a of CrPC," special CBI judge said in the judgment.

9:30 AM: Former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi reach Patiala House court ahead of pronouncement of verdict in 2G scam cases.

In its report, which was tabled in Lok Sabha on November 16, 2010, the CAG said that A Raja ignored the advice of the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Finance and allocated 'a scarce finite national asset at less than its true value on flexible criteria and procedures adopted to benefit a few operators'. The auditing agency further observed that politicians and government officials colluded with telecom companies to under-charge them for telecom spectrum allocated in 122 licences in 2008.



The act of A Raja and others not only rocked the nation but also made to the TIME magazine's 'Top 10 Abuses of Power' list. Currently, the scam is being probed by two investigating agencies: Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate. Today's judgment will be based on 8000-page charge sheet filed by the CBI. Among the key accused in the case are: then Telecom Minister A Raja, Rajya Sabha MP and DMK leader M Kanimozhi and then telecom secretary Siddharth Behura. If convicted, the accused could be awarded with minimum 6 months of imprisonment to life imprisonment. Special Judge O P Saini will deliver the verdict at 10:30AM.



Here's how the case unfolded:



The CAG audit estimated the loss was Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The CBI filed 80000 page charge sheet and said the loss was Rs 30,985 crore only.



The CBI charge sheet said bribes paid to favour firms in granting 2G spectrum licenses. Accused firms are Unitech Wireless, Swan Telecom, Reliance Telecom, Loop Telecom, Loop Mobile India, Essar Tele Holding and Essar Group.



The CAG said licenses given to ineligible companies and those who had no experience of telecom such as Unitech and Swan Telecom.



In November, 2007, PM Manmohan Singh wrote to telecom minister A Raja asking for transparency in 2G allotment and to revise the licence fee. Raja did not accept the view.



Finance Ministry also wrote to Department of Telecom raising procedural concerns. The letter was ignored.



Case based on a PIL filed by The Centre for Public Interest Litigation against the Union of India alleging irregularities in awarding 2G spectrum & licenses.



The Supreme Court later cancelled 122 licences calling them 'unconstitutional and arbitrary' and asked for a re-bid in February, 2012.



The apex court imposed a fine of Rs 5 crore each on Unitech Wireless, Swan telecom and Tata Teleservices and Rs 50 lakh fine on Loop Telecom, S Tel, Allianz Infratech and Sistema Shyam Tele Services Ltd.



The top court said Raja favoured "some companies at the cost of the public exchequer" and "virtually gifted away important national asset"



Then Union Minister Kapil Sibal rejected the CAG's findings. However, his "zero loss theory" was demolished on August 3, 2012. On the directions of the Supreme Court, the Government of India revised the base price for 5 MHz 2G spectrum auction to Rs 14,000 crore, which roughly gives the value of spectrum to be around Rs 2,800 crore per MHz which is close to the CAG's estimate of Rs 3,350 crore per MHz.



In April 2013, in a 112-page written statement to the joint parliamentary committee, Raja said that he met with P. Chidambaram and Prime Minister Singh several times from November 2007 to July 2008 to inform them of all 2G-related decisions and PM Manmohan Singh agreed with him.



After one year of trial in Nov 2013, 77 of 154 witnesses have been deposed.



There are 2 cases on 2G scam before CBI special court of OP Saini: One by Central Bureau of Investigation under IPC, Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. Second by enforcement directorate, ED, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.



The offences would mean punishment ranging from 6 months of imprisonment to life imprisonment.



Those who have been discharged by court so far:
FILE IMAGE

LOGAN  There are signs that 2018 is going to be a great year for Democrats, according to Cache County Democratic Party Chairman Danny Beus. He said the party will have some great candidates running for office, not just nationally, but also here in Utah and Cache County. Beus said people realize there is a need for change because the one-party system is giving everyone more of the same  crowded classrooms, low minimum wage and more.

And so I think it is time for people to give us a chance, give us a shot, look at us and see what kind of candidates we can put up, he said.  Look at our candidates carefully and decide not based on political party. We all know that Utah Republican Representatives vote with the Republicans. We need people that are going to be independent, study each issue independently and do what is best for Cache County.

Beus said Cache County will soon be electing new leaders and encourages those interested to consider running on the Democratic Party ticket.

There will be at least two open local legislative seats in the State House of Representatives with Ed Redd and Curt Webb both announcing that they will not seek reelection.
As Nebraska's Republican delegation in Congress hailed the passage of a massive tax cut bill as good news for families and businesses, Democratic candidates seized on the issue Wednesday and party activists prepared to take to the streets.

Democratic rallies were scheduled Wednesday evening at Senate and House offices in Lincoln, Omaha and Grand Island, following a final vote in the House on Wednesday.

Sen. Deb Fischer said the bill represents "a once-in-a-generation opportunity" to deliver tax relief to families across the country.

"Because of this legislation, many Americans will have bigger paychecks, our businesses will have more opportunities to invest and grow, and our country will regain our competitive edge in the global marketplace," Fischer said.

Sen. Ben Sasse hailed the legislation's repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate that everybody have health care insurance.

"In practice," he said, "it meant that families were presented with a terrible decision: either pay a federal fine or pay an unaffordable price for one of the crummy choices still available on the (health care insurance) exchanges."

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Lincoln said the legislation "moves money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans, seeks to reignite Main Street entrepreneurial momentum and revives the Made in America label."

Fortenberry pointed to doubling of the child tax credit and enhancement of the deductibility of medical expenses while preserving tuition waiver benefits for students.

Rep. Don Bacon, who represents the metropolitan Omaha congressional district, said the bill will give the typical family of four earning the median income of $73,000 a tax cut of $2,059.

Meanwhile, he said, Nebraska businesses will also benefit from the measure through the delivery of "significant tax relief to Main Street job-creators."

Rep. Adrian Smith of Gering, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, where the bill first took shape, said the measure is "designed to improve the lives of people across the country."

The bill doubles the standard income tax deduction, increases the child tax credit and encourages businesses to "invest, create jobs and raise wages," Smith said.

"I fought hard to enable producers to continue to deduct their full property taxes on agricultural land," the congressman said.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced it will target Bacon in his competitive Omaha district with a digital holiday ad campaign attacking his vote as a Christmas gift to millionaires, billionaires and large corporations.

In a campaign news release, former Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford, who will seek to unseat Bacon in 2018, described the legislation as "a bad deal for Nebraskans."

Repeal of the individual mandate in Obamacare will cause large health insurance premium increases and leave millions of people without health insurance, Ashford said.

Dennis Crawford of Lincoln, a Democratic candidate for Fortenberry's House seat, said the congressman "betrayed his constituents" in voting for the legislation.

It will "blow up the deficit" and raise taxes on many middle-class Americans while delivering a tax cut to special interests and "the top 1 percent" of wealthiest Americans, Crawford said.

Democratic Senate candidate Jane Raybould described the bill as "perilous" and said Nebraskans are just learning about its contents.

"It is in fact a vote that only comes once in a generation because its record-breaking cost will pass at least $1.5 trillion in debt to our children and grandchildren," Raybould said.

Nebraska Democrats planned rallies to target Bacon's office in Omaha, Smith's office in Grand Island and the Lincoln office of Fischer, who will be seeking re-election next year.

"Republicans in the House of Representatives just passed a bill that gives 80 percent of the tax breaks to the wealthy while raising taxes on 80 million middle-class families," Democratic State Chairwoman Jane Kleeb said.
| BY Ricki Green |

Aussie expat Levi Slavin, CCO, Colenso BBDO is joining AdFest 2018 as jury president, Film Lotus and Radio Lotus, which runs from 21-24 March 2018. Here, Slavin tells AdFest how things are going now hes back living in Auckland.

Earlier this year, Levi Slavin left New York to return to Colenso BBDO in Auckland: What cut the adventure short for us was the election of Trump, he admits.

Having left New Zealand in 2014 to take a global creative director role at Anomaly in New York, later joining BBDO New York as VP, group creative director, hes now about eight months into his third stint at Colenso  which he calls the best agency on earth, in the best place on earth.

AdFest: Youre from Perth originally, but when you re-joined Colenso you described it as the best agency in the world, in the best place in the world. How does Auckland inspire you?

Creatively, New Zealand is the most remarkable country Ive ever worked in. Beyond advertising, it always punches above its weightsport, film, music, tech, animation, innovationand kiwis seem to do it with less money, less people, and less fuss. Its very inspiring. You really get a sense that any idea is possible. And if we dont know how to make it, well find a way.

AdFest: Why did you decide to return to NZ this year after a few years in the US?

I genuinely love New York. Whats not to like? Its intense, beautiful, and unstoppable. And I was fortunate enough to work on some of the best work of my career. What cut the adventure short for us was the election of Trump.

AdFest: Colenso is #1 Creative Agency in the World according to The Global Directory Big Won Rankings. How does a little agency on the other side of the world relentlessly produce such great work?

Fearlessness and positivity. And not focusing on your competition.

AdFest: I still think of Trumpet Undies whenever I see a questionable use of swimwear. Can you remember how you came up with the idea for this campaign?

I wrote that ad when I was about 5-years-old. We were on holiday at Rottnest Island in Perth, its a real beach community. I was standing in line at the local grocery store behind a man in his speedos. Nothing else. He paid for his groceries and walked out. Nobody reacted. It made no sense. Who knows where he kept his money.

AdFest: Youre judging Radio at ADFEST. How did you persuade GE to produce a sci-fi podcast? What were the risks, or the biggest challenges?

That was loads of fun to make. At the time, This American Life and Serial were beginning to reach staggering numbers, so we knew there was an opportunity to do something big. Our biggest challenge was that very few brands had succeeded with the podcast format, so we knew our competition would be unbranded shows. Fortunately, we had an unbelievably interesting product to build our story arounda machine that genuinely heals with sound. The pitch was War of the Worlds meets Serial. We thought we had something, but I dont think anyone expected the results we got. It ended up being the number 1 podcast in the country for weeksironically beating This American Life and Serial.

AdFest: Youre from Perth, and have lived in Auckland, London, New York where is home?

Definitely Auckland now. I have been fortunate enough to work in some of the worlds best agencies, in the worlds most exciting cities, with some of the most talented people in the industry. But nothing beats sunshine.

AdFest: What made you accept the invitation to be part of ADFEST 2018?
| BY Ricki Green |

2017 saw creative agencies like ACNE, Karmarama and The Monkeys snapped up by the likes of Deloitte and Accenture  LBBs Addison Capper investigates

As we hurtle towards the end of 2017, the list of top ten biggest agency companies in the world currently includes four consultancies. Accenture Interactive sits at number six, PwC Digital Services at seven, IBM iX at eight and Deloitte Digital is in ninth. It was only three years ago, in 2014, that IBM became the first consultancy to break into the top 10.

[2017 has been] intensely positive, says Accenture senior managing director Brian Whipple. I am extremely proud of our team who deserve all the credit for success.
Nancy Pelosi's legacy: From passing Obamacare to impeaching Trump

Congressional scholars and modern politicians rate Speaker Nancy Pelosi as one of the most consequential legislative leaders in U.S. and House history.
"We understand the data needs to be accurate, but the consumer also needs to be able to have access to good data so they know what's happening in terms of what thy need."
Also during the inquest, rescuers gave a harrowing account of the retrieval, and the choice they faced between leaving Mr Wood in the ice to die or using force to pull him out and risk serious harm.
The two that stand out are John McVeigh and David Littleproud: two Queenslanders (one from the Liberal side of the LNP, the other from the Nationals), who leapt from the backbench straight into cabinet. Not only are the two men first-termers in federal politics, but they have also kept decidedly low profiles since coming to Canberra. It's not a joke that many press gallery journalists had to Google these guys when their names were read out by the Prime Minister on Tuesday afternoon.
Porsche believes 2018 could be the best-selling year for the 911 in the U.S. on record.



Porsche Cars North America chief executive Klaus Zellmer believes that the host of new 911 variants heading to the U.S. market next year will ensure unprecedented sales figures.

911 is going to be very strong because we have the GT models that were not delivering this year but next year. The pent-up demand is enormous there  GT3, GT2 RS. Were going to see huge numbers next year, Zellmer revealed to Automotive News.

Deliveries of the facelifted GT3 are ramping up across the country and early next year, both the GT3 Touring and GT2 RS will land stateside. Shortly after, the 2018 911 Carrera T will reach dealership floors, bringing with it customers looking for a purists car.

This year, Porsche expects to sell approximately 9,000 911s in the U.S. The highest sales year for the current generation 911 was in 2013 when 10,442 examples were sold.

The increased demand for the 991.2-generation 911 range comes despite the fact that the 992-generation model is just around the corner.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Contributed

There is a new variation to a scam that has been making the rounds for a couple of years.

Cpl. Michael McLaughlin said in recent months, Coquitlam RCMP has received a number of complaints about fraudsters who claim to work for either Canada Revenue Agency or the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. In each case, the caller threatens legal consequences including deportation and arrest for unpaid taxes unless a sum of money is paid immediately.

But this time, the scammers are asking to be paid in Bitcoins  an online currency that is hard to trace.

Some criminals prefer using Bitcoin because transactions are very difficult to trace. Chances are that if you send money via Bitcoin you will never get it back, said McLaughlin. If you get a call from a government agency thats asking for a payment in Bitcoin to solve your problem, its a scam.

Here are some tips to protect yourself from fraudsters posing as government workers:

The government does not send you a text message when you owe money

The government will not pressure you to pay a fine in minutes or hours

The government does not accept payment in Bitcoin, gift cards or prepaid credit cards

Government agencies do not demand that you keep a conversation secret from your spouse, your family, or the police

Do not trust the number on your call display. Phone numbers are often spoofed. To make sure that youre dealing with a legitimate organization, hang up and call back using a phone number that you get from a reputable source

Criminals try to bolster their credibility by showing you they already know some of your personal information. Dont share more personal information, including banking information, over the phone.
Photo: Contributed

One man is dead after a car crash in Richmond, Tuesday.

The 2006 Acura sedan was discovered partially submerged in a ditch about 11:30 a.m., after a collision with a power pole in the area of River Road and No. 8 Road.

The driver, a 45-year-old male from Delta, escaped, and his passenger was helped out of the vehicle by witnesses.

Both were taken to hospital, where the 37-year-old male passenger, also of Delta, died.

Alcohol and drugs are not considered factors in the accident.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Richmond RCMP at 604-278-1212.
Photo: Contributed

The snow has fallen and now it is time to clean up.

Walkways and sidewalks need to be shoveled and salted, but by whom?

The City of Vernon is responsible for the snow removal from sidewalks within the municipal boundary along 27th Street, Highway 97, Highway 6 and all paved linear trails as well as sidewalk next to city-owned properties.

The Vernon city Good Neighbour Bylaw states the homeowner is responsible for sidewalks adjacent to their property.



"Every owner or occupier of real property shall remove, or cause the removal of snow, ice or rubbish from every sidewalk or footpath that borders on that real property within 24 hours from the time the snow, ice or rubbish is deposited thereon."
Photo: Google Street View

An elderly man was rushed to hospital in serious condition after being assaulted outside a Costco in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday.

Police officers responded to the altercation on Expo Boulevard about 11 a.m.

Const. Jason Doucette said an 80-year-old man hit his head on the ground after allegedly being punched.

The suspect fled on foot while witnesses performed first aid on the man.

A 57-year-old man was arrested two hours later at his East Vancouver home.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Pit bulls are once again allowed in Montreal as the Projet Montreal administration follows through with an election promise to do away with the controversial bylaw that banned them.

Coun. Craig Sauve, the executive committee member in charge of animal services, said Wednesday the ban will be suspended, as will several specific sections of the city's animal control bylaw pertaining to the breed such as mandatory muzzling and special permits.

"The pit bull-style dog will no longer be considered a dangerous breed in Montreal," Sauve said. "We'll have a global approach that includes all dogs and I believe it's the right approach for Montreal."

A new bylaw will be introduced in the first half of 2018 after extensive consultation.

All current dangerous dog provisions for animals that bite remain intact, minus the elements of breed-specific legislation which "discriminate against owners who have been good owners," he said.

Sauve said the city will consult scientific and animal-behaviour experts as well as dog-owners and people who don't have dogs.

Projet Montreal has said the breed-specific nature of the previous bylaw was based on bad science and that it would proceed with a more humane one focusing on dog-owners and education.

Ex-mayor Denis Coderre's administration passed the controversial bylaw in 2016 and cited the security of citizens after a Montreal woman was mauled to death in her backyard by a neighbour's dog.

Coderre's party, which is now called Mouvement Montreal, said it is "disappointed" with the suspension of the bylaw.

Leader Lionel Perez said the city's own data suggests the number of dog bites related to pit bulls accounted for 40 per cent of the total bites reported in 2016 and 2017, even though they represent just three per cent of canines in the city.

Under the previous set of rules, new pit bulls weren't allowed on Montreal territory and those already on the island had to abide by more stringent rules.

"What the administration is doing today is removing the series of additional protections that the bylaw gave Montrealers, particularly the one that required the absence of a criminal record for owners of pit bulls," Perez said.

Separately, Quebec has tabled its own law to ban dangerous dogs but it's unclear whether it will become a dominant issue with a provincial election coming in October.

The pit bull ban was a key election issue during Montreal's municipal campaign this year, and Projet Montreal promised to repeal it.

"I don't think it's responsible for us to wait until the next election to see what the situation is," Sauve said.

Mayor Valerie Plante said Wednesday she is in favour of a global approach in dealing with dog bites and that her administration has a responsibility to avoid creating a false sense of security among the population.
Comment about snow storm on Dec 19th, anyone else scared to death driving home to Vernon from Kelowna because of road conditions that evening?

It seems road plowing is nonexistent now, is it because individual cities were pushing the responsibility to drivers to buy winter tires? How about the tire sales industry? I know there was some confusion a few years back with two jurisdictions with two different rules.

It was finally settled by ministry of transportation what is legal. Now how about the performance by the plow trucks? I don't think anyone will agree that this was a freak, unexpected storm, that catches everyone by surprise.

The contractors always use the same excuse that some streets get more priority over others. My question is, what has more priority that HWY 97?

Mike Bell
Photo: CTV A woman accidentally gave her diamond ring to a 'man in need' in Nanaimo while giving spare change.

A Salt Spring Island woman, who accidentally lost her diamond ring when she was giving spare change to a man in need, has received a Christmas miracle.

Trinda Gajek dumped change out of her wallet in Nanaimo on Dec. 13 and forgot her diamond ring was inside it.

Members of the homeless community heard about the missing ring and tried to track it down.

Two people named Richmond and Willy drove back to Nanaimo, where a man named Brett had been holding onto the ring in his water bottle for safe keeping.

Brett handed the ring over to the duo, who returned the ring to Gajek.

Its really fascinating and wonderful, and I feel incredibly grateful for all of the people that came together to make it happen,Gajek said to CTV. Its totally amazing that this happened for me, at Christmas time.

 with files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: The Canadian Press Asylum seekers line up to enter Olympic Stadium in Montreal, last summer.

Fewer asylum seekers who entered Canada illegally this year are being granted refugee status.

As of the end of November, the Immigration and Refugee Board says 16,522 asylum claims were received from people who've crossed the border illegally and 2,198 of those have been completed.

Of those finalized cases, updated data show 54 per cent were accepted  down from 60 per cent when the board last reported the data.

Only eight per cent of Haitians  who make up the majority of claims  have been accepted, down from 10 per cent.

Over 43,000 claims in total have been sent to the IRB so far this year, a number not seen since a high of 44,000 claims in 2001.

The board cautions it's premature to draw conclusions about border crossers based on the small number of claims finalized so far. Failed claimants do also have the right to appeal.

But just as the IRB was releasing the new statistics, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen used social media to repeat a point the Liberals have been increasingly making in recent weeks as the data has shown many border crossers' claims are being rejected.

"Canada's refugee system isn't for those seeking a better economic life; it provides protection to refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution," Hussen posted.

Prior to a surge in asylum seekers arriving in Canada last summer, the approval rate for Haitians had been around 50 per cent and the approval rate for all refugee claims was about 63 per cent.

The border crosser situation is driven by an agreement between Canada and the U.S. that prohibits anyone crossing the border at official land entry points from claiming asylum. So far this year, 18,000 have been stopped entering Canada illegally  in 2016, only 2,500 people were apprehended.

Many are believed to be coming north due to changes in U.S. immigration policy, though the federal government has said some haven't spent much time in the U.S. and were just using that country as an entry point into Canada.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Competition Bureau's investigation into allegations of bread price-fixing includes at least seven companies from bakery wholesalers and discount chains to Canada's three major grocers, according to court documents.

George Weston Ltd. and Loblaw Companies Ltd. admitted Tuesday to participating in an industry-wide bread price-fixing arrangement for over a decade and tipping off the country's competition watchdog.

The Competition Bureau executed search warrants at the offices of a number of grocers earlier this fall, but has said there has been no conclusion of wrongdoing and no charges have been laid.

The investigation began on Aug. 11 and was expanded on Oct. 23.

The search warrants and information to obtain them were sealed because of concerns by the watchdog that the release of the information might compromise its investigation. However, the affidavits sworn by a Competition Bureau investigator to have them sealed were unsealed by the court this week.

According to those affidavits, the regulator is also investigating the alleged involvement of Canada Bread, Walmart, Sobeys, Metro and Giant Tiger as well as "other persons known and unknown."

"The bureau is collecting facts to determine the precise time frame of, and the participants in, the alleged conspiracy," Simon Bessette, a senior competition law officer, swore in an affidavit on Oct. 26.

"Analyzing the records the bureau obtains from the search warrants sought in the ITO will take time; however, it would only be after such analysis is performed that the bureau would be in a position to determine whether additional investigative steps are required."

"Should details of the bureau's ongoing investigation be made available to the public, the integrity of the evidence available through further investigative steps and/or court authorizations may be compromised," Bessette wrote.

Metro said in a statement Tuesday that it continues to co-operate with authorities and it has launched an internal investigation.

"Based on the information processed to date, we have found no evidence that Metro has violated the Competition Act and we do not believe that the bureau's investigation will have a material adverse effect on the corporation's business, results of operations or financial condition," the statement said.

Giant Tiger released a statement Wednesday saying they currently "have no reason to believe that Giant Tiger or any of our employees has violated the Competition Act."

Walmart Canada spokesman Alex Roberton said in an email that the company "takes its legal obligations very seriously."
Photo: The Canadian Press Minister of Veterans Affairs Seamus O'Regan

The Trudeau government's long-awaited plan to provide lifelong disability pensions to veterans has been met with confusion and frustration from many of those that it is expected to help.

Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O'Regan unveiled the new pension plan on Wednesday, more than two years after the Liberals promised it during the last federal election  and only days before Christmas.

The plan promises more money to injured veterans than the current suite of benefits, especially the most severely disabled who can't work and continue to suffer from service-related injuries.

Yet it offers only modest increases to those on the other end of the spectrum, and continues to provide many with less than the previous lifelong disability pensions, which were abolished in 2006.

"We were focused in this program on those who are catastrophically injured," O'Regan explained during a news conference at National Defence Headquarters.

"Those who have received a disability or an illness during their service. Those who have a hard time going back to work. Those who have a hard time, as they say, re-establishing themselves."

The plan is expected to cost $3.6 billion over six years, and will take effect in April 2019.

Veterans and support groups were scrambling after the announcement to figure out exactly how the changes would affect them and their clients, citing a lack of detail as a major complaint.

"It's confusing," said Jim Lowther, president of VETS Canada, which support homeless veterans in different cities across the country. "We've been going over this all morning, but it's very vague."

Veterans receive financial benefits and compensation based on the extent of their injuries or disabilities and whether those factors have an impact on their post-military career and earnings.

The existing system, created in 2006, provides a lump-sum worth up to $360,000 for the most severely disabled, in addition to rehabilitation, career training and income support.

While veterans who want the money right away will still be able to choose the lump-sum payment, the Liberals are also giving them the choice of a monthly payment instead worth up to $1,150.

Those with severe or permanent disabilities will also be eligible for an additional new benefit worth between $500 and $1,500 per month. Both benefits are tax free.

Officials said the more than 61,000 veterans who have already received a lump-sum award will be assessed to determine how much they would have received per month. They will also be eligible for the new benefit, which officials said will be retroactive and could result in substantial one-time payments.

The government will also lump together six different benefits for veterans who can't find work or whose post-military careers pay less than when they were serving in uniform.

Yet it wasn't immediately clear who will be eligible for different elements of the new pension plan, or even which of the income-replacement programs will remain in existence after they are merged.

O'Regan guaranteed no disabled veteran will end up with less money, and the department plans to launch an advertising campaign to educate former service members about the plan.

"All of those covered under the (existing) New Veterans Charter will be automatically assessed against the new pension-for-life program," O'Regan said.

"And no individual will be subject to a net-decrease in overall benefit."
Photo: Contributed

The South East Kelowna Irrigation District has issued a boil-water warning for all customers.

The advisory is due to a malfunction in the disinfection system at Hydraulic Creek, after heavy snow Tuesday night caused a power outage.

The O'Reilly Road well is also affected, and residents who use its water should also heed the advisory.

All affected residents should boil any water used for drinking, brushing teeth or washing food.

Owners of public facilities are required to post notices by public sinks and fountains.

The South East Kelowna District Irrigation District has not indicated when they expect the advisory to end. They are flushing the system and will lift the notice when samples indicate the water is safe.

If you're unsure whether your water is affected visit this link.
Photo: RCMP Tayler Verhaegen pleaded guilty to robbing a Kelowna bank in 2014.

A Kelowna judge took a chance on a young bank robber Wednesday, releasing him from jail after he served 164 days of presentence custody.

Tayler Verhaegen robbed the BMO Bank of Montreal in the Capri Centre Mall on Dec. 23, 2014, before his two brothers notified police after seeing security footage of Verhaegen posted on Castanet.

Verhaegen, 23 at the time, was found by police on Dec. 27, 2014 at a poker table at Kelownas Lake City Casino with $1,500 in cash and $219 in casino chips. He was promptly arrested.

On Wednesday, Verhaegen pleaded guilty to robbery, scrapping plans for a jury trial in February.

During sentencing submissions Wednesday, Verhaegen's lawyer, Joseph Deuling, claimed the money Verhaegen had on him when he was arrested wasnt from the robbery and he still has the $3,000 hidden somewhere. But hes agreed to give it back.

He got it into his head that money didn't exist and it didn't make any difference so he thought he would rob a bank and prove it, Deuling said, describing this as a weird, weird explanation.

Justice Michael Brundrett said it showed a lack of maturity.

While Verhaegen has been formally diagnosed with ADHD, Deuling said he may have some other mental health issues swirling around.

While Verhaegen had no criminal record prior to the robbery, he has since been convicted of obstruction of justice after he threatened a witness who was set to to testify at his trial that never ended up occurring.

Verhaegen was sentenced to 238 days in jail for the obstruction conviction in October 2016.

He has dropped several of his defence lawyers over the three years his case took to get to trial, twice right before he was set to begin a jury trial.

Verhaegen says the robbery was the stupidest thing hes ever done, and apologized to the bank tellers he frightened during the robbery.

Im going to ask you to give Mr. Verhaegen a break, Deuling told Justice Brundrett, when asking for a sentence of time already served. Justice Brundrett granted that break, noting Verhaegen appears to be at a crossroads in his life.

Mr. Verhaegen, I'm going to take a chance on you and depart from the normal range of sentencing, Justice Brundrett said. With your family support, with the opportunities that await you and with proper supervision ... it is a reasonable bet that you will not repeat your foolish behaviour going forward.

This is a one-time deal.

Verhaegen was given enhanced credit for presentence custody of eight months and one week.

In addition to time served, Verhaegen was given probation for the next 18 months, which includes a stipulation to seek any psychological treatment directed by his probation officer. He was also ordered to pay back the $3,000 stolen from the bank.

Verhaegen has been accepted into UBC Okanagan and plans to attend in January.
Photo: CTV

The BC SPCA says charges have been laid following one of the largest puppy mill seizures in the province's history.

The society says 66 sick and neglected dogs were seized from a property in Langley in February 2016 after a member of the public reported the situation.

The SPCA's Marcie Moriarty says in a news release that some of the dogs had broken limbs and missing ears and eyes and required several months of care for medical complications resulting from malnourishment and dental disease.

The rescued pups, which have since been adopted, include old English sheepdogs, bernese mountain dogs, wheaten terriers, poodles, and Portuguese water dogs.

Glen Lawlor, Maria Lawlor and James Phoenix have each been charged with two counts of animal cruelty.

The SPCA says the charges send a message that animal cruelty and neglect are not acceptable and the public is encouraged to continue reporting suspicious situations where animals may be in distress.

"A key step in shutting down puppy mills is for those who are purchasing animals to be educated and aware of the signs of unscrupulous operations," said Moriarty.

She said information of how to distinguish legitimate breeders from puppy mills can be found on the SPCA website.
Photo: Google Maps

UPDATE: 7 p.m.

Travellers on Highway 5 should expect delays after a vehicle incident with a tractor-trailer on Wednesday.

DriveBC said "informal reports of a spun out semi truck and trailer."

These reports are unconfirmed at this time.

ORIGINAL: 6:15 p.m.

A vehicle incident has caused delays on Highway 5 near Merritt on Wednesday.

DriveBC reports that the Coquihalla is experiencing delays in the northbound lane three kilometres north of Merritt at about 5:45 p.m.

Crews are en route to deal with the matter.
Photo: Contributed

I had written my MP Report for today, and then we had some breaking news.



We learned, in a report released by Mary Dawson, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been found guilty of four violations of the Conflict of Interest Act.



The various conflict violations are related to a vacation that the Trudeau family and friends took on a private island owned by the Aga Khan in December 2016.



Ultimately, this relates to the fact that the Aga Khan Foundation is a registered lobbyist that receives millions of dollars in funding each year from the federal government. The Conflict of Interest Act is intended to ensure that elected officials do not personally benefit from their position of public office.



With the prime minister and also the finance minister recently being found in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act, I am often asked, what is the penalty?



The penalty for being found in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act is a fine that has a maximum of up to $500.



My question for this week:

Do you believe that the fine for a violation of the Conflict of Interest Act is sufficient at $500 or should it be higher or something else, other than money?

Now, on to my original report.



I would like to take a moment to thank the residents of Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola.



We share a large, diverse and beautiful region. The one constant is the friendliness of the people and the level of interaction and engagement, that from my perspective, is very high.



It is truly an honour to represent you and raise your issues of importance in Ottawa.



Recently, I was able to bring forward the challenges single parents, most often mothers, were having in dealing with the Canadian Revenue Agency in obtaining Canada Child Benefits.

I asked the minister of National Revenue about this in Question Period and have since been interviewed by CBC. This has now become a national story with wide reaching implications.



I credited the ministers office recently for resolving some of these issues, which will ensure some households will have a far more meaningful holiday season.



When an issue can be raised by opposition and the government can respond in a positive manner, it is an example that our democracy is working and for that we shall all be thankful.



On that note, I would like to sincerely wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a safe and enjoyable holiday season.



Best wishes for a prosperous 2018 and a special thank you to our armed forces and first responders for the ongoing work that they do on our behalf.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Alanna Kelly

UPDATE: 10:40 p.m.

The bodies of the victims of the triple murder in Rutland were removed from the house on Bolotzky Court Wednesday night, amongst a flurry of police activity.

A candlelight vigil with several children's stuffed animals and poinsettias has been set up outside the home where Jacob Forman, his wife Clara and their two daughters lived.

Jacob Forman has been arrested and charged with three counts of murder.

He is expected to appear in court Thursday afternoon.

ORGINAL: 8 p.m.

Jacob Forman has been charged with three counts of murder in connection with the three bodies found by police in a Rutland home Tuesday night.

Forman was living at the home on Bolotzky Court, where the bodies were discovered.

Neighbours told Castanet the family had lived at the address for a year and half, and the family's two daughters were about six or seven years old.

Forman, 34, was arrested on Tuesday, but the murders are alleged to have occurred Sunday, according to B.C.'s online court system.

RCMP say they responded to 600 Bolotzky Court about 5 p.m. Tuesday and arrested a man.

An ACE Plumbing & Heating pickup was parked in the driveway of the home. Forman is listed as an employee and residential HVAC supervisor at the company.

Social media accounts have identified Clara Forman as Forman's wife.

Jacob Forman's Facebook account shows several pictures with his wife and two daughters.

Clara is believed to have worked at GoodLife Fitness in Kelowna.

A colleague of Claras said she was one of the nicest people I had ever met.

Clara posted on Facebook saying she moved to Canada to marry Forman.

When I married Jacob Forman I left everything I knew to come to Canada and build a life, she said on Nov. 11, 2015. "10 years later you are still the person I want to grow old with."

Charges against Forman, who has no prior criminal record in British Columbia, were sworn Wednesday, and he is expected back in court Thursday afternoon.

The RCMP Serious Crime Unit, forensic identification specialists and BC Coroners Service are investigating the suspicious deaths.

Police have released few details about the investigation, including any information about the victims.
Photo: Contributed

Winter officially arrives 8:28 a.m. today.

Dec. 21 is also the shortest day of the year.

The total amount of daylight in the Okanagan today will be eight hours, 11 minutes and four seconds  that is one-second less than on Dec. 20.

The days will start getting longer on Friday, but not by much  just three seconds.

Groups around the Okanagan are celebrating the winter solstice in different ways.

A gathering is planned at the Pen Henge standing stone array on Munson Mountain in Penticton. According to its website, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is hoping for a dramatic sunset "at that time the Sun's shadow will extend from the winter solstice stone to the Heel Stone." The meet up begins at 2:45 p.m.

The Okanagan Indian Band is celebrating the solstice and its community by hosting a potluck dinner. There will be singing and drumming from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at the Blue Bird Building on Head of the Lake Road.

And not to be forgotten, in the Shuswap, the Winter Solstice Bonfire NIght in downtown Salmon Arm runs from 4 to 7 p.m. The family friendy event will have singing, roasted marshmallows and hot dogs over the bonfire, free movies and a visit with Santa and the Winter Queen.
Photo: Contributed

It seems to be a bit of an early Christmas gift for drivers in the North Okanagan.

For the past few weeks, the price at the pump has been steadily dropping.

At the time of this article, the price of gas in Vernon was $1.10 a litre at most stations. Compare that to the price at the pump in Osoyoos at $1.18 a litre, and Kelowna at about $1.19 a litre, and drivers in the North Okanagan are seeing significant savings.

However, Vernon does not have the cheapest gas in the province  not even cracking the top 10.

According to Gasbuddy.com, the cheapest price of fuel is at a Prince George station.

Drivers there can fill up for $1.05 a litre. That's followed by three stations in Kamloops with a pump price of $1.07 to $1.08 a litre.
Photo: Simon Fraser University

A British Columbia engineering science professor has developed a high-resolution scanner that he says will revolutionize how eye diseases are diagnosed to prevent vision loss.

Prof. Marinko Sarunic of Simon Fraser University said doctors currently use low-resolution scanners that can assess the cause of patients' dead retina cells.

"Because the resolution is low, they don't detect small changes, they detect big changes," he said. "What we want is to see the changes to the retinal structure before they're obvious in a person's vision."

A scanner built on billiard-sized tables is now used at a few universities in the world for research purposes but it's too big and complicated for routine diagnosis of diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and wet age-related macular degeneration, Sarunic said.

"The problem is the technology is so inaccessible that it's not in a place where it can help. We want to bring the technology to the clinics, to the front lines, where it does have the potential to help."

Compared with the large, hard-to-use research scanner, his is about the size of a shoe box and uses medical imaging, or optical coherence tomography, for 3-D cross-sectional images of the retina, Sarunic said.

The technology is being licensed to a B.C.-based startup company that's working on commercializing it with the help of an American backer.

Only two other groups are working on similar technology, one in Boston and another in Austria, Sarunic said.

"It's very unique, still, worldwide," he said of the scanner he has spent a decade developing as part of his research with ophthalmologists and vision scientists.

It was tested for eight months at Vancouver General Hospital in 2016 and again for about three months this year and has been well received for its ability to produce images of fine capillaries, blood vessels and photoreceptors, the light-sensitive cells in the retina akin to pixels in a photograph.
Photo: The Canadian Press

This holiday season, cocktail hour could really suck for the straw industry.

That's because establishments are ditching plastic straws as public backlash grows against the ubiquitous convenience  a seemingly innocuous tool that has become emblematic of the world's plastic pollution problem.

Customers like 31-year-old Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster are leading the charge, by asking wait staff at the bars and restaurants she visits to not bring her a straw.

She says she's trying to reduce the overall garbage she produces, and believes these little gestures are finally starting to get some traction.

"This year was the first year I feel like a server went, 'Absolutely, we're totally on board with that.' A couple of times I've had that response. And that tells me, 'Oh, they've heard about this, it's now becoming a thing,'" says the Toronto actress, who has also emailed bars she frequents to suggest they limit straw use.

"Sometimes I feel kind of embarrassed about these little choices and I feel embarrassed about coming off as some kind of crazed eco-warrior hippie person."

But she's certainly far from alone in her crusade.

Two years after a video of a sea turtle impaled by a straw turned up on YouTube, the campaign to eliminate straws seems to have hit a new level of mainstream awareness.

Establishments now run the risk of being shamed on social media for serving a glass of water with a straw, and as more businesses make changes, those lagging behind risk appearing out-of-step with the times.

At least one big Canadian franchise has jumped aboard.

Boston Pizza switched to biodegradable straws from plastic straws in January 2017, says spokeswoman Alexandra Cygal, noting it's part of a broader strategy to switch all packaging to more eco-friendly versions.

"Across our 380 restaurants in Canada, each restaurant might go through an average of maybe over 120,000 straws a year. So that's a huge impact," says Cygal.
UPDATE: 12:15 p.m.

RCMP confirm that a skier died Wednesday after going off a 30-foot cliff at Big White.

Ski patrollers recovered the 69-year-old Kelowna man from deep snow in a closed area.

Police believe the man suffered a medical emergency on the hill.

Despite lifesaving efforts, emergency personnel and ski patrol staff were unable to revive the male.

The BC Coroners Service is investigating the incident.

ORIGINAL: 10:30 a.m.

The holiday ski season took a tragic turn on Wednesday after a lone male suffered serious injuries at Big White, the man was evacuated off the ski hill and rushed to hospital.

Big White senior vice-president Michael Ballingall says the man went under a rope line set up to prevent skiers from using that area for safety reasons.

"We got a call from one of our ski instructors at 9:48 a.m., and our ski patrol were on scene within two minutes. Unfortunately, he was completely buried, and when we dug him out, he was unresponsive."

Emergency crews began CPR on the hill, and he was rushed to the Big White firehall, where a doctor attended. From there he was rushed to hospital in Kelowna.

Since that time, Castanet has learned the man has died.

Ballingall says with all the powder the mountain has received over the last week, it is important for skiers to obey safety signs and make sure they use the buddy system.

Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for ski hills, and incidents like this illustrate why following the Alpine Responsibility Code is so important, he added.
Photo: Contributed

CTV Vancouver Island is reporting that Major Heather Hynes has come forward to talk about a sexual relationship with her commanding officer at CFB Esquimalt.

Hynes says she made a mistake when she entered into a sexual relationship with Cmdr. Nord Mensah. Mensah is now retired and Hynes wants to make sure others in the military don't go down the same path.

"I felt trapped intoI do this with him, that he's asking me to do, or I will suffer the consequences," Hynes told CTV News. "My evaluations will be lower, I won't be able to care properly for my son. I felt entirely trapped."

Nord Mensah has been fined and reprimanded for failing to report the sexual relationship with an immediate subordinate to his chain of command. Dec. 4, 2017.

-With files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: Contributed Const. Kelly Brett

The driver of a pick-up truck that hit a cyclist was not at fault in the accident.

Vernon RCMP Const. Kelly Brett said the vehicle in this incident is not at fault and had the green light to proceed through the intersection. The cyclist was at fault on this file and entered the intersection when not permitted.

On Dec. 18 at 7:21 a.m., emergency crews responded to a report of a collision between a cyclist and a pickup truck on Highway 6 and 27th street in Vernon.

RCMP have determined that the cyclist entered the intersection against a red light and was stuck by the vehicle causing serious injuries to the cyclist. No other injuries were sustained by the driver.

The cyclist, a 43-year-old Vernon male, had become trapped underneath the Dodge pickup truck and required extrication by emergency crews at the scene. He was then rushed to the nearest medical facility with what police believe to be serious injuries.

With the winter road conditions, such as ice and snow, RCMP are reminding pedestrians and cyclists to follow the rules of the road and to cross at well light cross walks or intersections, said Brett. With cooler temperatures arriving icy road conditions are prevalent, thus making it harder for drivers to react and stop quickly.
Photo: Contributed

The three children of late-Naramata residents June and Bill June  Bob, Leslie and Lorraine  have donated $30,000 in their parents' names to Penticton Regional Hospital's expansion campaign.

The donation is "honouring their deceased parents' wishes," according to a PRH news release.

The couple moved to Naramata at the end of the Second World War, following Bill's service in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

They lived in the community for more than 50 years before Bill died in August of 2000. June died in July of last year.

June began donating to PRH when Bill's health started to decline, daughter Lorraine said.

As she got older and started using the hospitals services and recognizing that many of her friends also needed those services, she wanted to give more.

Bill and June purchased a five-acre orchard on Naramata Road after the war and slowly acquired more properties, eventually owning and operating 30 acres.

Farming was tough in the '50s, '60s and heck even the '70s. It was a tough way to make a living," son Bob said.

Both parents were active community members  Bill worked with scouts and at-risk youth, while June worked with children at their local church.

Bill was also the president of B.C. Tree Fruits and Sun-Rype products at one point, and a director with the B.C. Fruit Growers Association.

The campaign to fund medical equipment for the PRH expansion has reached 75 per cent of its goal  topping $15 million of the $20 million target.
Photo: Contributed Wayne Mihalicz, City of Vernon recreation facilities coordinator and Crystal Williams, youth coordinator with Independent Living Vernon.

The installation of disabled accessible doors at the Priest Valley Arena & Gym building in Vernon is now complete.

The door upgrade is part of an annual major maintenance program.

This project is an example or our commitment to ensuring that all of our facilities are as accessible as possible, said Wayne Mihalicz, recreation facilities coordinator.

The new doors are located at both the north and south entrances.

I think its great that Priest Valley Arena is more accessible for everyone to use, said Crystal Williams, youth coordinator with Independent Living Vernon.

The project, approved by the City, included replacement of the front lobby doors with automatic sliding doors and the installation of new doors at the players entrance with a push button automatic door opener.
Photo: Skylar Noe-Vak

Emergency crews responded to a two-vehicle accident at Warren Avenue and Channel Parkway in Penticton Tuesday at 11 a.m.

The two cars blocked the northbound lane for about half an hour, but did not appear seriously damaged.

One of the cars had been travelling north on Channel Parkway when the second car hit it while attempting to turn onto Warren.

Those in the vehicles sustained minor injuries.
Chantelle Deacon

A Vernon company has provided many local families in need with a Christmas they deserve.

KingFisher Boats has donated $20,000 worth of gifts and food to families throughout the Okanagan-Shuswap.

We started this initiative a year ago, said Byron Bolton, owner of KingFisher Boats. This year, we are giving 26 Christmas hampers.

Each Christmas hamper has three portions: groceries to make turkey dinner, gifts for the kids and a flat screen television or iPad.

Its very important, Bolton said. We have deep roots in this community, we have over 150 employees that care about those around them and this is a way that our team can get involved in giving back to the community.

There are those that aren't as fortunate and all they need is a leg up at this time of year, he said. They deserve something special through the holiday season.

The social committee at KingFisher Boats holds fundraising events throughout the year, all in support of the Christmas hamper donation fund.
Alanna Kelly

Family members have confirmed that Clara Forman, 33, and her two young daughters, Karina and Yesenia, were killed at their Rutland home.

Relatives in California and Mexico last communicated with Forman on Friday and believe she was killed sometime on Sunday.

Claras biggest joy in life was being a mother to her two young beautiful girls, they said.

The girls are the most beautiful girls you can imagine. (They were) the light of her life, said a cousin. She became a mother on Valentines Day.

Clara lived at the Bolotzky Court home with her husband, Jacob Forman, and their two daughters Yesenia, 7, and Karina, 8.

The girls were raised bilingual, were both in Sparks. Family members would tease and call them the Camexican kids.

Karina means heart, said her cousin. She made sure they were raised as the people you really wanted to have around.

Clara was a fitness instructor at GoodLife Fitness in Kelowna.

We really saw her come alive as an instructor, helping people and coming through with her health, said her cousin.

The family has lived at the home for three years and were dedicated church-goers.

She was an outstanding mother and a devoted wife, said the cousin.

Jacob Forman, a 34-year-old HVAC supervisor, has been charged with three counts of murder in connection to bodies found at the home.

He went to Mexico to become a preacher. The couple met and married in Mexico, where Clara was raised, and moved to Kelowna about 10 years ago.

We really had this picture of a loving family, said the cousin. It was really a great love story. She really loved her family, more than anything.

RCMP have surrounded the home Bolotzky Court since Sunday night and removed three bodies from the home Wednesday.

A small candlelight vigil has been placed outside the home, with flowers and stuffed toys.

Jacob is expected to appear in court this afternoon.

Kelowna's Latin American Community is now rallying in support Clara Forman and her two daughters.

They are urging all residents to walk together against violence towards women next Thursday December 28th at Stuart park between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.
Photo: Oliver Daily News Alex Louie in 2013

A First Nations man who challenged the authority of the court during his trial earlier this year was thrown a lifeline in Penticton court Thursday by a judge hesitant to lock him up for the mandatory minimum.

Alex Louie was found guilty by a jury in October of nine counts for trying to smuggle a pair of handguns across the border at Osoyoos.

Throughout the trial, and again during sentencing, Louie challenged the jurisdiction of the court  citing the lack of treaty between the Crown and his people.

Facing a three-year mandatory minimum sentence, Louie was unfazed Thursday, jumping into an incoherent ramble of legal jargon when given the chance to speak.

I have no idea what hes talking about, Judge Arne Silverman said after cutting Louie off.

Silverman, however, would later bring up a case from the BC Court of Appeal, which questioned the validity of mandatory minimum sentences for Aboriginal offenders.

While Louie stood on the sidelines, Silverman and federal Crown prosecutor Clarke Burnet wrangled over if the judge had the right to throw out the mandatory minimum.

Burnet successfully convinced the judge he could not go lower than the mandatory minimum unless a constitutional challenge was made, something Louie  who is without a lawyer  is not capable of.

Im saying you would get less than a three year sentence but it's possible, Silverman told Louie, urging him again to get a lawyer and make the challenge.

Im trying to help you, sir, an exasperated Silverman said, when Louie fired back about the lack a treaty and authority of the court.

I have an obligation to ensure that you are treated fairly and that you are aware of what your rights are, but youve gone so far out of the way to ignore all these systems, he added.

Louie eventually conceded that although it was against his principles, he would consult with some of his lawyer friends about helping him making the challenge.

Silverman set the issue forward to January 19 for a telephone conference, urging Louie to have a lawyer on the phone with him by then.
$235,200 worth of drugs were seized at the border in a total of four different stops on Wednesday.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, their officers working at the El Paso area ports of entry seized a total of 294 pounds of marijuana in the stops. The estimated street value of the marijuana is $235,200.

The largest of the seizures took place at the Paso Del Notre international crossing in El Paso where a 2001 Ford Explorer entered from Mexico.

A CBP drug sniffing dog alerted officers to the spare tire and undercarriage, where 99 bundles filled with marijuana were found.

The drugs weighed 107 pounds in total.

It is important to note that during this period of exceptionally heavy holiday related traffic CBP officers remain vigilant and are hard at work keeping our communities safe, said Hector Mancha, CBP El Paso Director of Field Operations.

The driver of the Explorer, a 50-year-old Mexican citizen was taken into custody and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement HSI special agents to face charges.
The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority Previous Next

The United States Marine Corps donated over 700 gifts to the Chattanooga Housing Authority as a part of their Toys for Tots holiday initiative. The generous donation will provide over 200 families with gifts for their families this holiday season.

Much like Santas Sleigh, the Marine Corps dropped off a truckload of gifts on Wednesday, just in time for Christmas. The gifts were arranged by age from the smallest of CHAs residents to age 16.

CHA employees and volunteers were working as hard as Santas elves to organize hundreds of gifts for each receiving family. With some families ranging in size from five to nine children, each child in a family will receive three toys as well as stocking stuffers.

We are so thankful for the Marine Corps and Toys for Tots for their incredibly kind donation, said Takeyta Young, Family Sufficiency coordinator. It is important for every child to experience the joy of the holidays, no matter their situation. These gifts are meaningful not only to the recipient, but to all of us as well.

Gifts included stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, Lego sets, Hotwheels, play sets, board games, and much more.

Our staff builds relationships with those living in our communities, said CHA Executive Director Betsy McCright. We know the struggles many of them have and encourage them to work toward a goal of self-sufficiency to better lives for their families. Because of this, we work with parents and grandparents who are working hard to meet basic needs to add to their holiday season. Donations like this truly are a blessing during this special time of year.






BASF and SINOPEC will expand the production capacity of Neopentylglycol (NPG) at the state-of-the-art Verbund site, BASF-YPC Co., Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture in Nanjing, China. The plant (see photo) was established in 2015 with an annual capacity of 40,000 metric tons. Following the expansion, the annual capacity will be doubled to 80,000 metric tons. The expanded capacity will come on stream in 2020.

BASF and SINOPEC will expand the production capacity of Neopentylglycol (NPG) at the state-of-the-art Verbund site, BASF-YPC Co., Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture in Nanjing, China. The plant was established in 2015 with an annual capacity of 40,000 metric tons. Following the expansion, the annual capacity will be doubled to 80,000 metric tons. The expanded capacity will come on stream in 2020.

With this increased capacity, we will support the fast-growing customer demand for high-quality NPG in China and the Asia Pacific region. The expansion is also in line with the trend towards environmentally friendly powder coatings with low volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, said Narayan Krishnamohan, Senior Vice President, BASF Intermediates Asia Pacific. As a globally leading supplier of NPG, we have decades of experience in manufacturing and supplying NPG to our customers across a broad range of industries. Customers will benefit from our regional presence, innovation strength, flexibility and reliability of supply.

The investment further strengthens strategic success between SINOPEC and BASF as we both support the trend of sustainable development. Both SINOPEC and BASF have confidence in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and its future prospects, as an ideal investment destination, Mr Li Cheng Feng, Chairman of Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical Company Limited and BASF-YPC Company Limited.
Boebert continues to lead Frisch on final day of counting

The election is hovering within the threshold for an automatic recount. Here's the latest in the Colorado race between Adam Frisch and Lauren Boebert.
Establishing and Operating a Business in China 2018 (2nd Edition), the latest publication from China Briefing and Dezan Shira & Associates, is out now and available for download through the Asia Briefing Publication Store.

Chinas foreign investment landscaped changed significantly in 2017. The economy is evolving away from manufacturing-centric economy towards a services- and consumption-based economy. GDP growth has slowed and wages have risen, but the economys growth outperformed expectations and more industries are open to investment than ever before. In 2018, strategic investors will find that their options have broadened significantly. Decision-makers considering an expansion to China typically must first examine what type of entity to set up  or whether to set one up at all. Foreign investment into China can be made through several types of foreign-invested entities (FIEs). Choosing the appropriate investment structure for your business depends on a number of factors, including its planned activities, industry, and investment size. Corporate Establishment Services from Dezan Shira & Associates This guide explores the establishment procedures for the Representative Office (RO), and two types of Limited Liability Companies  the Wholly Foreign-owned Enterprise (WFOE) and the Sino-foreign Joint Venture (JV)  along with related business considerations that decision-makers should examine at the pre-investment, setup, and operational stages of the expansion cycle. We discuss the features of a Chinese business license, the requirements on the registered capital, and issues specific to JVs. We cover the procedure of opening a bank account in China, intellectual property considerations, major tax compliances, employers obligations, and foreign currency controls for a foreign-invested entity. Moreover, we walk investors through the complicated procedures of changing or closing down of a foreign business in China.



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.

Managing Chinas Financial System

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. In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we look at the factors that make Chinas tax system unique, and identify steps foreign investors can take to manage its challenges. We first examine the issues that most commonly disorient foreign investors. We then discuss the importance of pre-investment capital planning, within the context of tough foreign exchange controls, before examining the ever-maturing regulations for the transfer pricing system.

Dezan Shira & Associates
A CCTV history program that blends documentary and drama with elements of variety show in the hope of promoting the protection of prized cultural legacies has become a hit since its debut earlier this month.







"National Treasure" is the first Chinese TV program to take this mash-up approach. It consists of 10 episodes airing on Sundays on Channel Three of CCTV.





Each episode showcases three artifacts, each presented by a celebrity and an expert who act as "national treasure keepers." The treasure keepers tell the stories behind the pieces and uncover the mysteries that surround them.





"The show presents the treasures through different artistic methods, and tries to make sense of the stories and history behind each relic, so that audiences can not only come to appreciate their beauty, but also their cultural significance," said Yu Lei, producer and director of the show.





Nine major museums are participating, ranging from Beijing's Palace Museum to Liaoning Provincial Museum.





As for the treasures' selection criteria, Yu said the show strives to take into account "historical, artistic and scientific values."





"The pieces featured on the show may not all be the so-called iconic pieces in these museums, but they should represent some historic periods and reflect an important point in history. What's more, they should have stories behind them which engage the audience."





Tony Leung, Li Chen and Wang Kai play the roles of national treasure keepers in the first episode.





Yu said the crew hopes to reach more people by using these famous actors.





He explained, "Our show is not only for an audience interested in cultural relics and history, we want to reach more people, so we invited celebrities to explore with the audience. Just like the audience, these celebrities don't know much about the national treasures either. So they can see them from the audience's perspective, and as they set out to explore these treasures, the audience will follow them on a journey."




The world's second-largest economy is setting sail toward a new phase of development with Xi Jinping at the helm.

The Chinese economy will focus on quality, a shift from the rapid growth the country has been known for over the past decades since the reform and opening up policy was introduced.

At the country's most important annual meeting on economic work, senior leaders said China's economy will be characterized by more innovative manufacturing, a more secure financial system, a more open and green economy, more affordable housing and better life for the people.

To achieve the goal, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialist Economy with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era will be the key, said a statement released after the Central Economic Work Conference concluded Wednesday.

The three-day conference was attended by President Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

This year's Central Economic Work Conference came after the CPC's twice-a-decade national congress in October, which drew a blueprint for China's development over the next 30-plus years.

The conference, which reviewed China's economic performance over the past five years and mapped out plans for 2018, was special also because 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up policy, which has turned the country into the world's second-largest economy.

China's economy is firming, with its GDP expanding 6.9 percent year on year in the first three quarters, and 6.8 percent in the third quarter, the ninth straight quarter for China to see economic growth of at least 6.7 percent, all adding to evidence the economy is on a steady footing.

The World Bank on Tuesday raised its forecast for China's economic growth in 2017 to 6.8 percent, up from the 6.7 percent it projected in October, citing stronger personal consumption and foreign trade.

Xi's economic thought takes shape

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialist Economy with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era has taken shape, said the statement.

The tone-setting meeting described the thought as the "theoretical crystallization" of the past five years of practice in pushing forward China's economic development, the "latest fruit" of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics, and the "extremely precious spiritual wealth" of the CPC and the country.

The thought "must be adhered to for a long time and developed continuously," said the statement.

According to the statement, the thought is mainly based on the new development philosophy, which was put forward by Xi in 2015 and features innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development.

Under the thought, people are put first in development, while efforts are made to adapt to, manage and steer the "new normal." The market plays the decisive role and the government plays its role better, and supply-side structural reform constitutes the main line of economic work.

High-quality development

"At present and in the period to come, high-quality development is the fundamental requirement for determining the development path, making economic policies and conducting macroeconomic regulation," said the statement.

China must build and improve mechanisms for pushing forward high-quality development, including necessary indicators, policies, standards, statistical and performance assessment systems.

Realizing high-quality development is a must for sustaining healthy and stable economic development and adapting to changed principal contradiction of the Chinese society, it added.

China will continue to deepen the supply-side structural reform as one of the major tasks for realizing such development.

China will develop into a manufacturing powerhouse, with a shift from "Made in China" to "Created in China," the statement said, as the country is striving to evolve from a world factory that churns out low-end products.

Measures to eliminate ineffective supply, foster new growth drivers and reduce costs in the real economy will continue.

The country will improve the long-term mechanisms to ensure stable and healthy development of the real estate market. Both home purchases and rentals will be encouraged.

Three tough battles

The meeting also outlined strategies to win what central authorities have called "the three tough battles," namely preventing and defusing major risks, targeted poverty alleviation and tackling pollution.

China will maintain a hardline stance on irregular and illegal activities in the financial industry to forestall risks.

China's rapidly expanding financial industry is being placed under greater regulatory scrutiny as authorities step up efforts to curb widespread malfeasance in the sector to guard against risks.

To ensure stable economic growth while averting financial risks accumulated over years of credit binge, China has decided to maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy in 2018.

"Prudent monetary policy should be kept neutral, the floodgates of monetary supply should be controlled, and credit and social financing should see reasonable growth," said the statement.

For the battle against poverty, policymakers pledged to work to ensure the quality of poverty reduction efforts under current standards, and focus on helping special groups and eradicating abject poverty.

Pollution control will also be a key battlefield, with authorities aiming for a significant reduction in major pollutant emissions and improvement in the overall environment.

Efforts should be focused on adjusting the structures of industries, eliminating outdated capacity and making the skies blue again, according to the meeting.

All-around opening up

As the major driver and stabilizer of the global economy, China will push forward a new pattern of all-around opening up to pursue mutual benefits with the rest of the world, according to the statement.

China will increase imports and cut import tariffs on some products to promote balanced trade, it said.

Free trade zone pilot areas will be expanded. Effective guidance and support will be given to outbound direct investment.

The country will also push for nationwide implementation of a pre-establishment national treatment system as well as a negative list that determines where foreign participation is prohibited or limited.

The negative list will become shorter and shorter, it said, adding that the country will improve laws and regulations on foreign investment and enhance protection of intellectual property rights.

Chinese leaders have reiterated that the country will not close its door to the world, and that the door will only become more and more open.
You are here: Business

Cutting-edge technology can help transform Guangzhou's economy as the provincial capital of Guangdong opens up to IAB industries.

Next-generation information technology, artificial intelligence and biological medicine make up IAB with the provincial government rolling out preferential policies and funding for the sector.

One company that has benefited from the program has been AI startup Cloudwalk, which specializes in facial recognition technology.

"Local government offered 2 billion yuan ($301 million) to help us grow," said He Xin'an, general manager of Cloudwalk South China region.

Set up in 2015, the company has already become one of the leading players in the industry.

Its facial recognition system is used in the financial sector, as well as security and transportation.

So far, more than 90 banks across the country, including Bank of China Ltd, Bank of Communications Ltd and Agricultural Bank of China Ltd, use Cloudwalk technology.

The system is also in operation at 80 percent of the country's civil aviation airports.

"Our plan is to set up an AI visual image innovation and research center," He said. "We will also establish an AI university in the city."

The IAB sector in Guangzhou has expanded in recent years.

Official data showed that the combined output value of IAB industries has increased from 210.9 billion yuan in 2011 to 472 billion yuan in 2016, which represented a 16 percent annual growth rate on average.

This was 5 percentage points higher than Guangzhou's average industrial growth rate during the same period.

The city is currently in the process of making a five-year plan (2018-22) on promoting the development of IAB industries.

The aim is to increase IAB output value to 1 trillion yuan by 2022.

"We hope to make big breakthroughs in international markets in the coming five to 10 years," said Xiao Xiang, general manager of Guangdong Quantum CTek.

The company specializes in quantum communication equipment and services or the transfer of sensitive information in a secure environment.

"We are focusing on economies involved in the Belt and Road Initiative to establish our networks," Xiao said.

"We also hope to introduce overseas scholars and scientists to work with us to explore the vast field of quantum communication," Xiao added.
China's Alipay, the world's largest online and mobile payment platform, signed a partnership agreement on Wednesday with Cambodia's Pi Pay, allowing customers to use their Alipay wallets to pay at Pi Pay's Point of Sale payment systems across Cambodia.

The partnership will see Alipay become immediately available as a payment option for Chinese tourists across Pi Pay's merchant network in Cambodia, which consists of over 1,400 businesses, including high-end dinning, haute couture fashion, spa treatment, mini-marts and petrol stations, said a joint statement released at the signing ceremony here.

The acceptance points will cover Phnom Penh before being expanded to Siem Reap and Preah Sihanouk provinces in the near future, the statement said.

"With the partnership, Chinese tourists travelling to Cambodia will be able to use the Alipay app for payments wherever Pi Pay QR codes are available," it said. "Cambodian merchants who are partnered with Pi Pay will be able to use their Pi Pay terminals to take payments from Alipay users."

Cherry Huang, general manager of Alipay's cross-border business for South and Southeast Asia, said Alipay aims to enable the smart lifestyle for Chinese consumers and to bring the convenience that they enjoy at home to overseas countries they travel to.

"With Cambodia being a popular destination among Chinese travelers, we are excited to work with Pi Pay as our acquiring partner to benefit our users and at the same time, to provide an effective platform for local businesses in Cambodia to reach Chinese consumers," she said. "Together with Pi Pay, we will be able to provide Alipay users the same convenience they enjoy back home when they travel in Cambodia."

China is the largest source of tourists to Cambodia. According to a Cambodian tourism data, nearly 950,000 Chinese tourists had visited Cambodia in the first 10 months of 2017, up 45 percent over the same period last year. It is expected that about two million Chinese tourists will see Cambodia in 2020.

Pi Pay's chief executive officer Tomas Pokorny said since its launch in July, Pi Pay has rapidly grown to become the go-to-mobile payment options across Phnom Penh, with more than 168,000 downloads of the app and $27 million being spent or transferring by users.

"The partnership will allow Alipay customers to pay for goods and services in Cambodia through Pi Pay terminals," he said. "We're confident that it will add an additional boost to Cambodia's vibrant tourism industry."
When Su Quanke looks out over the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, he does not see only steel pillars, asphalt and cables, but a long dragona symbol of China's engineering prowess.





As the project's chief engineer, Su is familiar with every inch of the vast crossing, which opens next year after the construction of 22.9 kilometers of bridge, four tunnels and four artificial islands.

The 55-km structure is the longest of its kind in the world and is being built with 420,000 metric tons of steel, enough to build 60 Eiffel Towers, he said.

"Yet to me, it is like a huge dragon that is about to take off," Su said. "I particularly like the high bridge towers, which are like Chinese knots, because they combine both high technology and traditional Chinese style."

The HZM Bridge is a marvel of modern engineering, one that is designed to last for 120 yearslonger than any other bridge on the Chinese mainland, he added.

It also may be the most difficult bridge to build. "Construction of the gigantic project has overcome a series of world-class technical problems, including the rapid building of artificial islands and connections using underwater tunnels," Su said.

The bridge has been built above Lingdingyang at the Pearl River Estuary, which has complicated geological and hydrodynamic conditions. It has to be able to resist super typhoons every year. The tunnel section also has had to cross one of the busiest deep-water passages, the Lingding West Channel, as well as waters that are home to Chinese white dolphins, which are under the State's strict protection.

The bridge has helped set construction standards for other bridges and similar infrastructure projects in coming years, Su said.

The undersea tunnel has been designed and built to ensure large vessels can pass through the busy sea channel. More than 4,000 cargo vessels and ocean liners cross the waters of the Pearl River Estuary every day.

"Due to aviation height limitations, the undersea tunnel is constructed to ensure the safety of planes using Hong Kong International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world," Su said.

Xu Guoping, a bridge and tunnel expert, said the bridge's undersea tunnel is designed to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake.

The bridge also is environmentally friendly, with special filter screens installed in every drain to prevent rubbish and oil leaked from vehicles from being directly discharged into the sea, Su said.

Yu Lie, deputy director of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority, said the number of wild Chinese white dolphins has risen over recent years to more than 1,800.

A total of 258 Chinese white dolphin groupswith 1,890 individual dolphinswere counted in the national conservation zone for Chinese white dolphins at the mouth of the Pearl River, according to a report on the ocean environment off Guangdong province released by the province's Administration of Ocean and Fisheries in 2016.

There were about 1,400 Chinese white dolphins when construction of the bridge began in 2009. Construction of the main structure of the bridge is to be completed soon.

Bridge builders were able to reduce the number of piles driven into the seabed and avoid disturbing millions of additional cubic meters of sand and mud on the seafloor after the designs were further improved to protect the Chinese white dolphins, Yu said.

"None of the Chinese white dolphins under the State's strict protection has been found dead while construction of the bridge was going on," he added.

The Y-shaped bridge, which will take more than 105 billion yuan ($16 billion) to build, is expected to start carrying traffic in early 2018 and will cut the land travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from 3 hours to just 30 minutes. It is part of the country's planned national highway network, connecting the western and eastern parts of Pearl River and further integrating the cities in the Pearl River Delta.

On Monday night, a lighting ceremony for the exit-entry checkpoint for the HZM Bridge was held in Macao, indicating it is ready to go into service.

The exit-entry facility, covering 658,000 square meters, is a key project for the bridge and the first to be completed in the three regions.
A South Korean citizen has become the first foreigner in Shanghai to be punished by a court for failing to pay his employees.

The Qingpu District People's Court said on Wednesday that it had sentenced Hong Ki, 65, to five months in prison and fined him 40,000 yuan ($6,000).

Hong operates Mingxin Clothing (Shanghai) Co, which produces women's apparel for the South Korean market, the court said.

On Feb 7, Chinese New Year's Eve, Mingxin's 158 employees lost contact with Hong, who had returned to South Korea. He owed the employees a total of 608,000 yuan in salaries for the previous month.

Chinese New Year is usually a time when people bring home their earnings from the past year and reunite with family members.

On Aug 18, police intercepted Hong when he returned to China in Dalian, Liaoning province. He was "looking for new orders", the court said.

Hong told the court he regretted his actions and paid the wages owed plus additional compensation, which amounted to 3.58 million yuan, but in September authorities decided to prosecute anyway.

Hong said during the court hearing that business was ideal at the company until June last year when the number of orders plummeted and the capital chain broke down.

"I didn't want the employees to lose contact with me but I lost my passport and mobile phone so I could not get in touch with them," Hong said during the hearing, according to a statement from the court.

The prosecutors did not buy his explanation.

"His intention to avoid paying the employees was quite obvious. He was away from China for six months while clearly knowing that he owed money to the workers," prosecutor Zhang Changming said.

Zhang said the case also served to deter any employer-Chinese or foreign-from defaulting on wages as the Chinese Spring Festival approaches.

"Expats who do business in China must strictly obey the laws and regulations of the country and can never dodge legal sanctions by claiming that they do not have a full understanding of the local laws," he said.

Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said this month that governments at all levels should "thoroughly check" any wages that may be in arrears as the Chinese Spring Festival approaches, and set a deadline for employers to clear up the situation.

"Those who disregard the deadline for paying wages for no reason should be severely punished and put on a national blacklist," he said.

Blacklisted employers could face punishments from up to 30 government departments, with sanctions including limited purchasing and bidding ability, loss of government financial support and exclusion from favorable tax policies.
Design work has begun on two new-generation solid-fuel carrier rockets at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, according to a project insider.

Zhang Di, a senior space engineer and chairman of Expace Technology, a subsidiary of CASIC that provides commercial launch services, said on Monday that the Kuaizhou 21 will mainly be tasked with serving State space programs, such as the space station, while Kuaizhou 16 is targeted at commercial satellite makers.

With a diameter of 4.5 meters, Kuaizhou 21 will be the largest and tallest in the Kuaizhou rocket family. The rocket's launching capacity is similar to that of the United States' Falcon 9 Full Thrust, and it will be capable of sending a 20-metric-ton spacecraft to a low-Earth orbit. It also will be powerful enough to transport supplies to the country's future space station or to ferry robotic probes to planets far from Earth, Zhang said.

"Our country's future space station will require a great deal of supply missions from cargo spacecraft, and this will create many opportunities for Kuaizhou 21," he said.

The nation will start building its first space station in 2019, and plans are to put it into operation around 2022. The Chinese space station will consist of three partsa core module and two attached space labs, each weighing about 20 tonsand will operate for at least 10 years, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The Kuaizhou 16, a smaller model, will have a diameter of 3.5 meters and can place large satellitesthose weighing up to 5 tonsinto a low-Earth orbit, Zhang said. Rockets in this category are the most used on the launch market so the Kuaizhou 16 will have bright prospects, he said.

CASIC began to develop Kuaizhou-series solid-fuel rockets in 2009 as a low cost, quick-response rocket family for the commercial launch market. It has launched three of the rocketstwo Kuaizhou 1s and one Kuaizhou 1A.

The State-owned space giant is building the Wuhan National Space Industry Base in the Hubei provincial capital's Xinzhou district. It will cover 68.8 square kilometers.

The company will invest 1.7 billion yuan ($257 million) in the base to build plants to make Kuaizhou rockets. It plans to produce about 20 rockets there annually to take advantage of opportunities from China's burgeoning commercial space industry, according to the company.
China's top health authority is standing by its statement that more than 500 million people had been assigned family doctors as of the end of November, despite a barrage of questions raised by netizens.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission said on Wednesday that the figure was based on data reported by local governments since May. It reiterated that the number of people who accessed family doctor services met the target for the year.

According to a circular from the commission in May last year, more than 30 percent of China's population was supposed to be covered by family doctors by the end of this year.

On Sunday, the commission said residents in more than 95 percent of China's cities can now access family doctors, with the total number exceeding 500 million people, more than 35 percent of the population.

However, the announcement was met with disbelief by some netizens, who said the number was too high, Science and Technology Daily reported.

While the commission said on Wednesday that the number of people covered by family doctors had met the target, it added that coverage varies by area, and quality of service in general needs improvement.

A system of family doctors has been promoted nationwide since May and is in its infancy. Many difficulties exist, including a lack of general practitioners and customized grassroots services, the commission said.

It said it will focus on improving family doctor services next year, so that residents are more satisfied with the services they receive. Measures include more intense training of healthcare workers at the grassroots.

Currently, family doctors comprise physicians mainly working at grassroots medical institutions, such as community health centers and village health facilities.

It is expected that family doctors who serve as health gatekeepers for residents will help solve health challenges such as the increasing number of patients with chronic diseases and soaring medical costs resulting from too many patients going to big hospitals while grassroots medical institutions are ignored, the commission said.

Wang Xin, a family doctor at the Zhongliang Community Health Service Center in Beijing's Shunyi district, said that of all 1,200 residents in the community, about half have signed up with him, the sole family practitioner in the center.

"The biggest difficulty in promoting family doctors in Beijing is lack of enough qualified doctors," Wang said. "In some areas a family doctor may not even have a bachelor's degree and cannot provide medical services; they can only provide public health services or prescribe drugs, so local residents lack trust and still prefer to go to big hospitals for treatment."

The number of people covered by family doctor services reached 7.6 million as of May, accounting for 35 percent of permanent residents in Beijing, according to the city's health commission.

Beijing residents can sign up with family doctors in their communities for free because of subsidies from the city government.
 Flash

The European Commission on Wednesday took an unprecedented step by triggering Article 7, the first time in its history, and launched an unprecedented censure against Poland over a judicial reform dispute.

"The Commission has today concluded that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland," the Commission said in a statement.

Dubbed so-called "nuclear option", Article 7 has never been triggered against any EU member state before. The procedure could eventually lead to Poland losing its voting rights in the 28-member bloc.

In response, Poland regretted the decision to launch Article 7, saying the Commission's decision is "essentially political, not legal in its nature", Poland's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

To make the situation more complicated, Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen said his country will veto any EU's sanction decision on Poland in the future.

Article 7



At issue in Poland is what critics describe as two years of legislation which put the judiciary under the control of the ruling Law and Justice party, compromising independent courts and the rule of law.

"Within a period of two years, a significant number of laws have been adopted -- 13 in total -- which put in serious risk the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers," Commission vice president Frans Timmermans told reporters in Brussels.

"Judicial reforms in Poland means that the country's judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority. In the absence of judicial independence, serious questions are raised about the effective application of EU law," Timmermans said.

Under Article 7, the European Council, or heads of national governments, may declare that there is a risk of a serious breach of European values by a member state.

Such a declaration requires a four-fifths majority and may subsequently involve sanctions against the member state in question. Among other consequences, the country could be stripped of its vote in the European Council.

Many commentators, however, see even the evocation of the measures as a sign that Brussels is taking the issue in Poland very seriously.

According to Wednesday's statement from the European Commission, the EU institution opened a dialogue with Polish authorities in January 2016 under the Rule of Law Framework, going through a three-phase process to resolve potential conflicts between national and EU law.

The Commission has given Warsaw three months to introduce its latest rule of law recommendations, the fourth set it has issued with regard to Poland so far.

"Essentially political"



Poland responded angrily, saying the Commission's decision is "essentially political, not legal in its nature", Poland's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"We are always ready for talks. During the last European summit, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed our will to continue the dialogue at the highest level with the Commission, which was positively welcomed by the other side," it said.

"We hope that soon we will be able to present our position in a direct and open manner," it said.

Morawiecki, who became new prime minister earlier this month, said Poland is attached to the rule of law principle as the EU is, according to Polish Press Agency.

Morawiecki said the judicial reforms were necessary, and suggested that dialogue between Warsaw and the European Commission needed "openness and honesty".

"I believe that Poland's sovereignty and the idea of United Europe can be reconciled," he added.

Poland's judicial reforms have caused many controversies among Polish citizens and among foreign institutions as well. The reforms include changes in the electoral system of the members of National Council of the Judiciary and Supreme Court judges' retirement.

Hungary to veto any santion



Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen termed as unprecedented and incredible the European Commission's decision.

"The decision seriously violates the sovereignty of Poland," Semjen said in an interview with Hungarian news agency MTI.

"It is unacceptable that Brussels put pressure on sovereign states and arbitrarily punish democratically elected governments," he added.

"The Polish-Hungarian friendship and the commitment of the Hungarian government towards the treaties oblige us to oppose the European Commission's decision on all the forums," Semjen stressed.

"The Hungarian government is today and in the future standing by Poland and will continue to protect Poland against an unfair, and conceptual political process," he said.

To MTI's question of whether this could mean that Hungary would veto the decision against Poland, Semjen replied with a firm "yes".

Semjen said that it was unfair that the European Commission did nothing when some European member states failed to comply with European treaties, while it then "politically initiated proceedings against the Polish government".

"This is a typical case of double standards, and what the European Commission is doing now goes against the European values," Semjen underlined.

UK position

Observers will be looking at British Prime Minister Theresa May's planned visit to Warsaw on Thursday, to see whether she will discuss the recommendations from the European Commission, despite Britain's own difficulties with the EU after Brexit.

"We place great importance on the respect for the rule of law and we expect all our partners to abide by international norms and standards," May's spokesman told reporters.

"The prime minister will raise her concerns with the prime minister when they meet tomorrow," said the spokesman.

European commissioners have recommended EU member states issue a formal warning to Poland under the Article 7 procedure, warning Poland's government was putting fundamental democratic values at risk.

Thus far, the UK has remained neutral in the growing rift between Poland's hardline government and the EU, concerned about the optics of Brussels appearing to interfere with a country's domestic affairs.

Having recently reached agreements with Brussels that will allow Brexit negotiations to reach the second phase, however, there is speculation that May might have reason to support the EU position.

"I hope Theresa May will firmly raise this issue in Warsaw," Guy Verhofstadt, European Parliament Brexit negotiator, told British daily newspaper The Telegraph.

"This visit is an important first test of the UK's pledge to defend European liberal democratic values, as we move forward together to build a strong security partnership," he said.
 Flash

The U.S. Congress on Wednesday finally passed the Republican bill to overhaul the U.S. tax code over three decades, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk for signature, amid concerns that the change would widen income inequality and swell public debt.





The House on Wednesday voted 224-201 to approve the 1.5-trillion-U.S. dollar tax cuts package, which would impact nearly every part of the world's largest economy, affecting both large and small businesses, as well as families.

The House passed the tax bill Tuesday afternoon, but the Senate's parliamentarian found several provisions in the bill violated budget rules, forcing lawmakers to strip them out and requiring the House to vote again.

The Senate narrowly passed the revised bill Tuesday midnight with a vote of 51-48. Now the bill, without the support of a single Democrat in Congress, will be sent to Trump's desk for signature within days and to take effect in 2018.

"By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy," Trump said Wednesday in a statement after the final congressional passage of the tax legislation.

The final tax bill, the sweeping rewrite of U.S. tax law since 1986, would cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from the current 35 percent and create a 20-percent deduction for income of pass-through businesses such as limited liability companies.

It would keep the seven individual income tax brackets, while lowering the top individual income rate to 37 percent from the current 39.6 percent. Most of the tax cuts for individuals in the bill would expire in 2025.

Overhauling the tax code is a top priority for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans before next year's midterm elections. They insist that the broad tax cuts for corporations, small businesses and individuals will boost U.S. economic and job growth.

But Democrats have criticized that the Republican tax legislation would mostly benefit the wealthy and large corporations and increase U.S. budget deficit.

While the bill would reduce taxes on average for all income groups, the top one percent of households would receive the largest benefits, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center published on Monday.

The study also found that the top one percent taxpayers would receive an average tax cut of 0.9 percent of after-tax income in 2027, while low- and middle-income taxpayers would see little change.

Economists have argued that the massive tax cuts to the wealthy would do little to boost economic growth but further widen U.S. income inequality.

"U.S. policymakers should be particularly concerned about the effects of any new tax legislation on the incomes of individuals and businesses because of rising income inequality in the United States and the relatively limited U.S. social safety net financed with government taxes," Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote in a recent analysis.

While the Trump administration argued that the tax cuts would pay for themselves with faster economic growth, other analyses from independent think tanks and economists have found that the growth effects from tax cuts would be relatively small and U.S. budget deficit would inevitably increase.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said in a recent analysis that the tax legislation could cost about two trillion to 2.2 trillion U.S. dollars in the next decade, pushing up U.S. public debt to between 98 percent and 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027, compared with 91 percent under current law.

The Republican tax bill has grown more unpopular in the past two months and few people believe it will provide relief for middle-class families, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday.

Overall, 41 percent of Americans in the poll said the tax plan was a bad idea, up from 35 percent in October, while less than one-quarter of people said the bill was a good idea.

The poll, conducted Dec. 13-15, also found that more than two-thirds of respondents said the tax bill was designed mostly to help corporations and the wealthy.
You are here: World

 Flash

China Wednesday expressed "serious concern" over reports of the Republic of Korea (ROK) coast guard firing shots at Chinese fishing boats.





Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at a regular press briefing.



It was reported that the ROK coast guard on Tuesday fired more than 200 shots to expel over 40 Chinese fishing boats in ROK Exclusive Economic Zone after the boats ignored broadcast warnings.

"We hope that the ROK side can properly handle the issue, avoid taking extreme measures that endanger people's safety in the process of law enforcement, and protect Chinese fishermen's safety and legal rights," Hua said.

She added that China always attaches great importance to the management of overseas fisheries and takes effective measures to maintain the order of fisheries.

Hua urged the ROK enhance communication with China and work together to safeguard order of fishery production in related waters.
 Flash

Turkey is imposing "certain limits" on visa applications for U.S. citizens in its diplomatic missions after Washington's move to suspend visa proceedings with Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag said on Wednesday.

Akdag's remarks came one day after the U.S. Embassy in Turkey announced that the earliest date for visa appointments regarding non-immigrant applicants in its diplomatic missions in Turkey is January 2019.

"This matter must be fixed completely. The U.S. stance causes difficulty for U.S. citizens as well," he said, adding "we also have certain limits in terms of visas."

Akdag noted that this meaningless approach "should immediately be put aside."

In October, the U.S. embassy announced the suspension of non-immigrant visa services to Turkish nationals. The move came after the arrest of a local employee working at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Ankara.

On Nov. 4, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey announced visa applications were again being processed on a limited basis at its diplomatic missions in Turkey.

Following the U.S. move, Turkish missions in the United States also resumed processing visa applications of U.S. citizens at its diplomatic and consular missions in the U.S. on a "limited basis."
You are here: World

 Flash

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Wednesday met with Tanzanian Minister for Foreign Affairs Augustine Mahiga and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza.





During the meeting with Mahiga, Yang said China will make efforts to cement contacts with Tanzania in all fields, enhance exchanges on governance experience, strengthen mutual political trust, and advance coordination on regional and global issues.

Mahiga appreciated the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and the common development vision, expressing Tanzania's will to be a good cooperative partner of China.





When meeting with Arreaza, Yang hailed the development of the China-Venezuela relationship, saying China will push forward ties with Venezuela to make the relationship yield benefits to the two peoples.

Arreaza said Venezuela is ready to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and reinforce bilateral cooperation.
Churches such as this

one are often cracked

down on.

(Photo: ChinaAid)

ChinaAid

(TianjinDec. 21, 2017) Government departments are conducting an investigation of Christians in Tianjin and Chinas southern Guangdong and northern Hebei provinces, and some Christians speculate that this probing into religious affairs may soon spread nationwide.

The United Front Work Department of the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics ordered a search into the religious background of all the schools teachers and studentsincluding those from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and all nations not under the control of the Communist Partyin order to record the number of Christians and their names, determine whether there are Christian missionary programs and gathering places on the campus, discover the way the mission work is conducted, and ascertain the number of people attending each mission work gathering. In a notice, the department urged its subordinate committees and Party branches to implement the anti-religious sentiments of the 19th National Peoples Congress and Chinese President Xi Jinpings speech during the National Conference on Religious Work, which promoted the idea of subjecting religion to persecution and censorship in order to tailor it to the Communist Partys agenda.

The notice also calls for all grassroots Party committees to submit a written report of their findings to the United Front Work Department by Dec. 13.

Similarly, an anonymous Christian in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, alerted ChinaAid on Dec. 13 that the local government sent a similar document to elementary and middle schools two months ago, ordering an investigation into the religious background of the students in order to ascertain whether or not their parents are religious.

Next, I think the government will expand the investigation to the entire nation, the Christian said.

In Guangzhou, the in

vestigation shifted its focus, scrutinizing several house churches sources of funding, their staff composition, the names and ages of the Christians attending, and whether or not they had connections to Korean churchs or foreign religious organizations.

In addition, a man surnamed Li, who pastors a church in Beijing, said that officials closed three churches in the capitals Shunyi District recently. Once the churches are found by the police, they are forced to move, because if they refuse, the police will keep visiting and harassing the church members, studying their ID cards, and inquiring about the number of people in attendance.

ChinaAid exposes abuses, such as those suffered by church members, in order to stand in solidarity with persecuted Christians and promote religious freedom, human rights, and rule of law.

ChinaAid Media Team

Cell: +1 (432) 553-1080 | Office: +1 (432) 689-6985 | Other: +1 (888) 889-7757

Email: [email protected]

For more information, click here
UCA News

Ucanews.com reporter, Beijing

China

December 21, 2017





All activities should be halted to resist Western religious culture spreading among the nations youth

One Chinese university has been directed to ban Christmas celebrations this year and another has punished a doctoral student for evangelizing on campus.

The repressive measures come amid wider restraints on religious practice at tertiary institutions as well as nationally across all segments of society.

The notice banning the celebration of Christmas at Shenyang Pharmaceutical University was issued by the powerful Communist Youth League on Dec. 11.

Although not meant to be a public document, it was circulated via the internet.

The notice demanded that all Christmas activities be halted in order to build Chinese cultural confidence and self-awareness.

Chinas leader Xi Jinping has tightened

control of all religions on the mainland,

with stricter measures due to start early

next year. A notice banning the celebration

of Christmas at Shenyang Pharamceutical

University was issued by the powerful

Communist Youth League on Dec. 11.

(Photo: AFP/Image ucanews.com)

This was necessary, the notice said, in order to resist Western religious culture spreading among the nations youth.

The notice complained that some young people were becoming blindly excited by foreign festivities.

Father Joseph, a priest-teacher in China, pointed out that there was an anti-Christmas campaign in 2014 at some Chinese universities.

But he noted that the latest warning was circulated privately to senior figures in university administrations because a public declaration of this type could be legally challenged.

Hong Kong Cable News recently noted that there had been an increasing number of official surveys of students religious beliefs.

A survey at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economy stated that it was being carried out in the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party held in October.

The Congress was seen as cementing tougher controls over religious institutions and practitioners.

Questions in the survey included whether there were any Christian missionaries on campus and if there were Christian gathering points.

Other invasive questioning related to which students and teachers had embraced Christianity.

Still, a priest in Tianjin who did not want to be named, said he thought some officials conducting such surveys did not take them seriously and were just carrying out directions from superiors.

The flurry of activity ahead of Christmas this year comes only two months after officials in Chinas Eastern Jiangxi Province replaced religious images displayed by Christian families with portraits of the countrys leader, Xi Jinping.

And Shou Chenxiao, a PhD candidate at Xiamen University in eastern Fujian province, received a serious warning for evangelizing on the campus, according to a post on the @crossinchina community Facebook page.

The same Facebook page has shown video of crosses being removed from churches in China.

ChinaAid Media Team

Cell: +1 (432) 553-1080 | Office: +1 (432) 689-6985 | Other: +1 (888) 889-7757

Email: [email protected]

For more information, click here
Luxembourg-headquartered Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) is eyeing the booming energy market in China by launching a global energy program, which seeks among other things to set up a responsible battery supply chain in the country and globally.

The international metals and mining company is a major producer of cobalt, a critical element used to make lithium-ion batteries, and plans to become one of the largest suppliers of the metal to China by the end of 2018.

The program, Global Battery Alliance, or simply "Alliance", was launched recently at the World Economic Forum's Sustainable Impact Summit in New York. Together with other co-founders, ERG established the program to ensure that all lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and alternative energy technologies, including solar panels and electric cars, are supplied from reliable, sustainable and ethical sources.
Im taking a break from a strict logical progression in this series because of the holy day were already thinking about this week. I thought it better to discuss the evangelical distinctive that has immediate relevance to Christmas.

Before we explore that topic, let me reiterate the purpose and scope of this series. We continue to receive feedback that this attempt to rehabilitate the term evangelical is foolish, as the term has been irretrievably damaged by our current political ecosystem. This is not, however, an attempt to recover the term as such. My aim is only to explain what we mean by it and the type of Christian and lived Christian faith it has represented and continues to represent in Christian history. And one thing it has certainly meant is a belief in the virginal conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of Marywhat is normally shorted to the Virgin Birth.

This was one of the most-discussed doctrines in 20th-century American evangelicalism, especially in its fundamentalist context. Fundamentalism itself was a response to the skepticism engendered by the rise of historical-critical scholarship coming out of Europe. Many leading Christian scholars were doubting not merely six-day creationism but also classic Christian doctrines like Jesus bodily resurrection and his virgin birth, that is, the miraculous in general. The response of conservative Christians in America coalesced in a book called The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (todays Biola University). It was eventually a 12-volume work that not only defended orthodox Protestant beliefs but also critiqued higher criticism, liberal theology, Romanism, socialism, Modernism, and other -isms.

The core fundamentals of the faith as outlined by other writers and organizations of that era were numbered in various configurations, but all seemed to include these beliefs:

The divine inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture,

The deity of Jesus Christ,

The miraculous stories in the Bible, including six-day creation,

The virgin birth of Christ,

Christs substitutionary atonement on the cross,

Christs literal, bodily resurrection, and

Christs bodily return

For the fundamentalists, the Virgin Birth is a consequence of belief in inerrancy, Christs deity, and the belief in the miraculous. This is one large reason why it was singled it out for defense. A lot depended on this doctrine.

The main lines of liberal argument against it were:

It is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament; Paul, in particular, doesnt ever discuss it. Likewise, it is rarely mentioned in the first three centuries of the churchs existence. Matthew and Luke were using a faulty translation (the Septuagint) of Isaiah 7:14, which in the original Hebrew did not predict that a virgin would conceive a coming messiah, but only a young woman would. Thus they either made up the story or shaped it according to their misunderstanding. It imitates pagan and Jewish myths that credit virginal conception to spiritual heroes. Its not possible for a human being to be conceived outside of intercourse between a man and a woman, and thats the only way God providentially designed humans to be fruitful and multiply.

These were easily countered by fundamentalist authors. They replied:

It was not discussed by Paul and other New Testament writers, nor by writers in the early church, because it was not controversial. There was no reason to argue for it because no one doubted it. The fact that it emerges in the Nicene Creed without argument or debate suggests this was indeed the case and that it was a core belief for Christians.

Article continues below

Biblical prophecies work on many levels, some literally, some metaphorically, and some both. We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies. Besides, Mary was clearly a young woman, which Isaiah foresaw under the inspiration of the Spirit; that she was also a virgin is revealed in the Gospel accounts. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true. It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didnt seem preposterous in that age. More recent science has shown that parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) is possible in plants and some animals, if extremely rare (see Virgin Births Happen all the Time, by Ted Olsen). The fundamentalist reply of the time would have simply been to say, Who says God could not or would not do this?

In fact, the assumptions of 19th-century liberal theologians arose not from indisputable objective starting points but from unprovable assumptions. Most were strict materialists, or close to it, and believed that anything that happened in history had to have a material cause. Fundamentalists countered that the Bible, in fact, has a different starting point: God intervenes in history now and then, and when he does and it defies the laws of nature, its called a miracle.

American evangelicalism as we describe it now rose out of a mid-20th-century rejection of fundamentalism, but that rejection had less to do with core beliefs than with a stance toward culture. Fundamentalists attacked it and urged separation, including separation from those who did not separate from it. Evangelicals wanted to engage culture, if for no other reason than to evangelize it.

But evangelicals still affirmed the fundamentals that birthed fundamentalism. Many evangelicals no longer hold to a six-day view of Creation, but neither are they enthused about the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinism. Those who give credence to Darwin insist, however, that evolution has a providential casteither designed by God to evolve as it has or periodically guided by God to its current state.

Other evangelicals today question the usefulness of the word inerrancy to describe the authority of Scripture, but they are still nonetheless fully committed to the Bible being the final authority in matters of faith and practice.

The other fundamentals have remained more or less unchanged, and one will find them expressed in nearly every statement of faith issued by evangelical organizations and churches. And that includes belief in the Virgin Birth.

I dont believe, however, that most evangelicals believe it because of the rationalistic defense given by early fundamentalists. While encouraged by such arguments, we recognize that this point and counterpoint can go on and on. Nor do we believe that God could not become human in any other way than by the virgin conception. God could have become incarnate in other ways, to be sure. Hes not bound to some set of higher spiritual or physical laws. But it does seem to us especially fitting that he would be born of a virgin, raised in a family, and that he would live in the warp and woof of the life we know.

We think the argument of silencethat is, that it is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament or in the early church precisely because it wasnt controversialmakes a lot of sense. Evangelicals simply assume the reality of the miraculous, in part because many of their own conversions have been nothing less than miracles of grace. We know at an existential level that God interrupts history from time to time. Miracles happen.

So we have a hard time understanding the problem. That is, if one believes that God is mighty enough to create the heavens and the earth and to raise Jesus bodily from the grave, how hard can it be for him to enable a virgin to conceive? We are baffled by Christians who balk at the Virgin Birth and dont blink at the creation of the universe or the Resurrection. It is, to use the words of Christ, to strain out a gnat while swallowing a camel.

Article continues below

Mariology, though, stops there for most evangelicals. That is, we dont give Mary much thought after the birth of Christ. While we are rightly dubious about much Roman Catholic devotion and beliefs about Mary, our near absence of Mary in our preaching and teaching leaves us bereft of the wisdom and example she can give. And so Christianity Today periodically includes articles to give Mary her due (like The Mary We Never Knew by Scot McKnight and The Blessed Evangelical Mary by Timothy George).

Mary is arguably the greatest model of faith in the Bible and certainly the second-most important human being in salvation history. Evangelicals, unlike our Orthodox friends, may not frequently call her the mother of God, but its pretty clear shes the mother of our salvation, which comes to us in Jesus Christ, who in turn came to us because, when told by God what his will was for her, Mary said simply and humbly, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word (Luke 1:38, KJV).

In this event, then, there was another miracle, one more gift of grace: Before Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, Marywithout blinking, without doubt, without a moments hesitationsaid yes.
Once a year, many Christian international anti-poverty nonprofits release Christmas catalogs filled with items they hope youll purchaseonly the gifts arent for anyone you know. Instead, most catalogs sent by groups like World Vision, Heifer International, and Compassion International boast items like livestock and other agricultural products that theyre hoping youll buy for those in need overseas.

But is the strategy the best model to fight poverty? Why not give cash?

We tend to trust our family members with cash gifts, said economist Bruce Wydick. But in the past, at least, weve had much less trust for how people spend cash.

In CTs December cover story, Wydick explores research that suggests giving cash may be one of the best ways to fight poverty.

One of the things thats liberating about this system is that people are accountable to themselves for how they use the money, he said. No one is holding their hand, telling them they should do this or that.

Wydick joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the biblical tension between generosity and accountability, fighting paternalism in development work, and how cell phones connect to fighting poverty.

What is Quick to Listen? Read more

Subscribe to Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts

Follow the podcast on Twitter

Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Mark Galli

Follow our guest on Twitter: Bruce Wydick

Read Bruces blog: Across Two Worlds

Subscribe to Marks newsletter: The Galli Report

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee, Richard Clark, and Cray Allred
The rollicking worship pulsed for nearly an hour in the humid Sanctuary: energetic singing, hundreds of hands raised, prophetic words referencing the Spirits flames, and sparks of spontaneous prayer among strangers from different states and nations.

When the worship ended, the crowd sat down, opened their English Standard Version Bibles and settled in for a 35-minute expository sermon on Galatians from Kings Church London teaching pastor Andrew Wilson, who brought a different kind of fire.

Each night of the Advance church planting networks global conference featured this sort of hybriddoctrinally rich, gospel-focused, Reformed preaching sandwiched between free-flowing charismatic worshipa combination that would make many a Presbyterian (and a few Pentecostals) squirm.

But for the crowd gathered at Covenant Life Church in suburban Washington, DC, including pastors from Kenya, Nepal, Australia, and Thailand, it flowed as naturally as it does in their own Reformed charismatic churchesmore than 70 of them across the globe.

Advance is hardly the only group in the middle of this theological Venn diagram, with growing numbers of theologically savvy, Spirit-filled followers in the United States, Britain, and around the world. Five hundred years after the Reformation, Luthers 21st-century inheritors are embracing the Holy Spirit in new and deeper ways.

Newfrontiers, a network of global apostolic spheres, has planted hundreds of churches over the last 30 years, many of which fit the Reformed charismatic mold. The movements founder, Terry Virgo, a British pastor, serves as a sort of elder statesman of Calvinist continuationists and authored the book The Spirit-Filled Church.

Acts 29, the Reformed church-planting network, has also begun to showcase its charismatic side, holding a conference in London around the theme Reformed & Revived.

Matt Chandler, Acts 29 president and lead teaching pastor of the Dallas-area Village Church, has identified himself as Reformed charismatic. He believes the charismatic gifts are still active and should be pursued, a position somewhat uncommon among Southern Baptists.

Frontline Church, an Acts 29 congregation that has expanded to four locations in the Oklahoma City area over the last decade, combines structured liturgy (creeds, the Lords Table) with planned spontaneity, including small groups of prayer during communion, where congregants pray for each others healing and offer prophetic words to one another (e.g., I believe the Lord wants to say to you . . . ).

Lead pastor Josh Kouri thinks the churchs unique Reformed charismatic focus, 100 percent committed to both Word and Spirit, is part of its appeal.

Some people show up on a Sunday morning and dont know where to peg us, but I think that is actually to our benefit, he said. Its stretching, but it also feels safe to people. I think that commitment to hold in tension things we typically try to resolve . . . thats been a big part of the unique story of our church.

Wilson (also a CT columnist), Chandler, and Kouri, along with pastors Sam Storms (author of The Beginners Guide to the Spiritual Gifts) and Francis Chan, spoke in October at the Convergence Conference in Oklahoma City, an inaugural event focused on Word and Spirit.

Reformation and Revival

Historically, evangelicals of the Reformed and charismatic camps have been on separate ends of a spectrum, suspicious of one anothers views on the role of the Spirits miraculous gifts (e.g., the nine listed in 1 Cor. 12:710) for todays churches.

Article continues below

The mind and the emotions are not rivals. The way God reaches people is through both. ~ Andrew Wilson

The Reformed tradition has tended to be cessationist, either denying or avoiding the continued practice of charismatic gifts like healing, tongues, and prophecy, believing they were only for the foundational era of the church. Charismatics, on the other hand, are continuationists, believing these gifts are still available and valuable.

Cessationists, like Reformed heavyweight John MacArthur, accuse charismatics of being light on biblical truth, often elevating spiritual experience above sound doctrine. As he writes in his 2013 book Strange Fire, MacArthur believes Charismatics downplay doctrine for the same reason they demean the Bible: they think any concern for timeless objective truth stifles the work of the Spirit.

Continuationists like Chan believe many evangelical churches neglect the presence and power of the Holy Spirit (the subject of his 2009 book Forgotten God) and, out of fear of abuses or unwieldy emotionalism, come close to what Paul warns against in 1 Thessalonians 5:1920: Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt.

But in this historic divide, which has tended to pit knowledge of the Word against the experience of the Spirit, is there a third way? Francis Schaeffer thought so. In his 1974 essay, The Lords Work in the Lords Way, he wrote:

Often men have acted as though one has to choose between reformation and revival. Some call for reformation, others for revival, and they tend to look at each other with suspicion. But reformation and revival do not stand in contrast to one another; in fact, both words are related to the concept of restoration. Reformation speaks of a restoration to pure doctrine, revival of a restoration in the Christians life. Reformation speaks of a return to the teachings of Scripture, revival of a life brought into proper relationship to the Holy Spirit. The great moments in church history have come when these two restorations have occurred simultaneously. There cannot be true revival unless there has been reformation, and reformation is incomplete without revival.

The Head and the Heart

Four decades after Schaeffers essay, church planter Dihan Lee saw the restoration the theologian called for, first in his own life and then at his church, Renew Church LA.

It started in a living room with 15 people. About two years later, the congregation leans on the Spirit and the Word to draw a diverse crowd of more than 400 to weekly services.

We are card-carrying Gospel Coalition people, Lee said. Were big fans of Piper and Keller. Im a five-point Calvinist. And yet we are also people who engage with Bethel and IHOP, and I love Sam Storms. I dont see a discrepancy between being a covenantal Reformed guy who loves theology and pursuing all of what the Holy Spirit wants for the church.

As a pastor, Lee doesnt label his preaching Reformed, but its in his skeleton if not on his sleeve. He preaches Gods sovereignty, covenants, and election, but also the prophetic, the gifts, and spiritual warfare.

Its a balance that people find refreshing, where you can have good theology but also freedom in the Holy Spirit, said Lee, who found his charismatic breakthrough at a Christian Healing Ministries conference in Florida after a season of ministry burnout.

Like many Korean Americans, Lee grew up Presbyterian, Reformed, and cessationist, even if he didnt use those terms at the time. His movement in the Reformed charismatic direction began at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School under Wayne Grudem, who hosted healing sessions in class and taught charismatic Reformed theology in a way that was very convincing, Lee said.

Article continues below

At the Florida conference, he ultimately found profound healing, deep repentance, visions, and prophecy that gave life to my theology, he said. It opened doors from my head to my heart in ways Id never experienced before.

Lee doesnt think todays culture is impressed by orthodoxy alone.

So youve got the corner on orthodox faith. Great. Show me how thats going to heal my marriage. Show me how thats going to remove depression and shame out of my life, he said. To engage with a broken city, orthodoxy alone doesnt cut it. You also need power.

Wood and Fire

Just across town from Renew Church LA, Vintage Church, an Anglican congregation in Santa Monica, merged with a Baptist church two years ago. Now, its services blend the expected liturgical elementsprayers of the people, passing the peace, sermon, Communionwith extended periods of contemporary worship.

Lead pastor Ger Jones refers to the front rows as the Holy Spirit splash zone, where worshipers display livelier expressions and sometimes share prophetic words with the congregation during the service.

Jones sees the interplay of Word and Spirit in terms of wood and fire. The Word is the wood, which is necessary to start a fire, but without the spark of the Spirit, it is just dry wood, he said.

A good fire needs good wood, said Jones, but sometimes charismatics try to have fire experiences without good wood, without the sort of meaty, doctrinal teaching that grounds the weekly message at Vintage.

Its like kindling catching on fire, so it doesnt last long, he said. Its connected to a moment but not sustained. Its event-based.

Unlike most churches, where the singing is prior to preaching as a sort of theological tee up, Vintage offers a longer worship set after the sermon, giving space to the Spirit to set the preached Word on fire.

Extended periods of worship and openness to spontaneity are hallmarks of Reformed charismatic churches, but they can create discomfort for congregants and worship musicians who are more used to structure and predictability.

Seeing how the Spirit is moving during a service is still a little disorienting as I can look out into the congregation and see some people really responding to the spontaneity and others upset because there are no words on the screen for them to follow, said Katie Hendrickson, who sings and plays keys during worship at Southlands church in Brea, California, which is a member of the Advance Movement (and this writers home church).

She has come to see the Reformed charismatic worship of Southlands as a beautiful blend of allowing the Word to formulate your response to God while also allowing the Holy Spirit to speak.

The Cross and the Gifts

Oscar Merlo, director of Biola Universitys new Center for the Study of the Work and Ministry of the Holy Spirit Today, researches the movement of the Holy Spirit in the global church.

He believes the doctrinal foundation and biblical teaching of the Reformed tradition plus the energy and growth of global Pentecostalism could be a recipe for revival.

More than ever, the charismatic movement can learn from a more intentional anchoring in the Word, he said. From the other side, Pentecostalism teaches us about the charisma, the gifts of the Spirit, and I think the Reformed tradition can learn from this, that the gifts are for the equipping of the saints for an infusion of evangelism.

Article continues below

Merlo, former executive director of the Alberto Mottesi Evangelistic Associaton, one of the worlds largest Latino evangelical associations, views the Reformed emphasis on the Cross as an important corrective to the charismatic movement, which often emphasizes victory and prosperity more than the cost of discipleship.

The Cross needs to be preached, he said. The Cross, the suffering, is the way of renewal. Its where man is transformed.

On the other hand, the charismatic movements emphasis on worship and joy in God can bring a buoyancy and enthusiasm often lacking in sometimes staid Reformed churches.

I find it helps me be happier in God, Wilson said in a 2017 sermon, Why I am Reformed and Charismatic, delivered at Covenant Life Church.

Reformed theology and charismatic experience both place the greatest possible emphasis on the gifts of God, he said. God is a gift giver. He gives us his presence to enjoy. He gives us the gift of salvation in Christ. He gives the gifts of the Spirit to the church. And that makes me grateful.

Wilson was raised in a conservative Reformed Anglican church (St. Helens Bishopsgate), but he doesnt see the intellectual orientation of his tradition at odds with the emotional, experiential side of charismatic tradition.

The mind and the emotions are not rivals, he said. The way God reaches people is through both. Ive just seen that my whole life.

Rational and Supernatural

Over the past few decades, globalization and immigration have connected the global church and complicated the post-Enlightenment rationalism that pervades Western culture. As the church rises in the global South and wanes in the West, Christians across the world are bound to find a greater affinity for the naturally supernatural elements of their faith.

The reality of spiritual warfare, and how the Spirit equips the church in the midst of it, is already assumed in the African church, said Bulus Galadima, a Nigerian theologian and dean of the Cook School of Intercultural Studies at Biola University.

The more people in the West interact with people in other parts of the world, where there is more openness to supernatural realities, the more they will see the power of God made manifest, said Galadima, who for six years served as president of Nigerias Jos Evangelical Church Winning All Theological Seminary.

Many believers in the non-Western world dont have the sort of wealth and conveniences that can obscure ones reliance on God.

There are people who havent had a meal the whole day. When they are praying and asking God, they are expecting God to do something, he said. Theyre able to see Gods provision and intervention more clearly. And when they tell these stories, they are demonstrating to us the power of God.

Tope Koleoso, a London pastor and Nigerian native, emphasized the supernatural orientation of Christianity during a 2013 Desiring God conference, warning that without the Spirit, the gospel turns into a pragmatic message.

If you sidestep the supernatural, youre selling them something short; much shorter than what Jesus intended, said Koleoso, whose Jubilee Church is affiliated with Newfrontiers. You cannot theologize Satan away. You cannot lecture him away. You cannot hope him away. You need the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a supernatural calling.

The Power and the Glory

Kouri believes the church is in an Ecclesiastes moment in history, an existential crisis wherein the promises of materialism and technology and postmodernitythat we can buy or think or self-actualize our way to spiritual happinesshave not led to the good life. People are hungry for something ultimate and unchanging and true, said Kouri, as well as something experiential and authentic and real.

Article continues below

When you talk about earnestly desiring the gifts, its all about people encountering the love of God, he said. People are hungry to experience the reality of who God is and to encounter the love of God in Christ through the Spirit.

Reformation speaks of a return to the teachings of Scripture, revival of a life brought into proper relationship to the Holy Spirit. ~ Francis Schaeffer

Plenty of other pastors agree that the Word and Spirit combination addresses the challenges of todays cultural moment.

Theres a sense in which our cultural context has been handed over to materialism and secularism, the immanent frame, the disenchanted world, all those things, said Joshua Ryan Butler, an author and associate pastor at Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon. The cracks are starting to appear, though, and there is a sense of Gods redemptive movement breaking out, particularly in urban centers, which seem especially hardened.

Butler believes there is an increasing sense among urban dwellers that something is missing not only on an existential level but also on a communal level. Amid growing racial tension and political polarization, the unifying power of the Spirit is increasingly where the church must turn.

The power of the Spirit is to form reconciled communities, across age or socioeconomic or ethnic lines, said Butler. Its hard to gather a really diverse group of people by ideas . But the power and presence of the Spirit of God in our midst can.

Beyond existential malaise and cultural fragmentation, another reason for the growing reformation and revival hybrid is the simple urgency of mission. There is a sense that the theological groundedness of the Reformed tradition, plus the missionary zeal and powerful worship of the charismatic tradition, could be a powerful missional combination.

Adam Mabry is a self-proclaimed Reformed charismatic pastor who leads Bostons Aletheia Church, a nondenominational congregation that is part of the Every Nation network.

Mabry wrote a 2016 article for The Gospel Coalition entitled Why Charismatics and Calvinists Need Each Other.

I daydream about what could happen if the passion of the Pentecostal for the power of God and the passion of the Calvinist for the Word of God could be combined to accomplish the work of God, wrote Mabry. The world just might see the glory of God.

Brett McCracken is a senior editor for The Gospel Coalition and author of Hipster Christianity, Gray Matters, and the newly released Uncomfortable.

Was this article helpful? Did we miss something? Let us know here.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up.
Both sides are claiming victory after a federal district court released an order Wednesday weighing the case of Atlantas former fire chief, Kelvin Cochran, who claimed he was fired over his Christian views.

In Cochran v. City of Atlanta, the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said that the citys restrictions on non-work speech, which were used to terminate Cochran, do not set out objective standards for the supervisor to employ and do not pass constitutional muster.

Judge Leigh Martin May backed Cochrans claims related to the policys prior restraint and unbridled discretion being in violation of the First Amendment. However, she sided with the city and against Cochran over claims of religious discrimination.

The government cant force its employees to get its permission before engaging in free speech, said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Kevin Theriot, who represented the former Atlanta official.

A spokesperson for the Atlanta mayors office told local news that the judge ruled in the citys favor on all major constitutional issues, and specifically rejected Mr. Cochrans claim that the city violated his due process and other First Amendment rights of freedom of association, free speech, and free exercise of religion.

May heard arguments last month in Atlanta regarding the citys 2015 firing of Cochran. The city terminated Cochran, now a staff member of a Southern Baptist church, after he wrote a mens devotional book that advocated in a brief section the biblical view of marriage and sexuality, including that homosexual behavior is immoral.

Cochran had requested that May issue a summary judgment in his favor, while the city of Atlanta had asked the same for itself. At the November hearing, May indicated a jury trial was likely in the spring on the issues she may not decide in her December ruling, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The case is among of a mounting number involving employees or business owners whose religious convictions about such issues as same-sex marriage and homosexuality clash with the viewpoint of the government.

Southern Baptist religious freedom advocate Russell Moore said Cochrans case should be of concern to every American, not just to those of us who are believers.

The government should not be in the business of firing people from their jobs simply because they have religious convictions, said Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in written comments for Baptist Press. This heavy-handed bullying of Chief Cochran, if let stand, could end up harming countless numbers of people who hold beliefs that are not approved by the government at the time.

Theriot told BP in November, This is a very significant case for all people of faith because if Chief Cochran loses, it means people of all faiths who believe in biblical marriage can be discriminated against by the government.

Theriot, in an earlier written release, had noted, A religious or ideological test cant be used to fire a public servant, but thats what the city did, as the facts of this case clearly demonstrate.

Chief Cochran is one of the most accomplished fire chiefs in the nation, but the citys actions place every city employee in jeopardy who may hold to a belief that city officials dont like, Theriot said.

The city argued that Cochrans viewpoint was not the primary basis for his firing, saying the fire chief violated its policy in publishing the book, according to the Journal-Constitution. However, ADF contends that comments by city officials demonstrate the books viewpoint was the reason for Cochrans termination.

Atlanta City Council member Alex Wan told the Journal-Constitution when Cochran was suspended prior to his firing, First and foremost, I respect each individuals right to have their own thoughts, beliefs and opinions, but when youre a city employee, and those thoughts, beliefs and opinions are different from the citys, you have to check them at the door.

A lawyer for the city said in court that Cochran listed his fire department title in the book without permission and failed to inform the city of its publication, the Journal-Constitution reported. Cochran says a city official verbally approved both the publication of the book and the use of his title in the book, which he wrote on his own time.

The citys requirement that employees obtain approval before writing a book is clearly unconstitutional, Theriot said.

The city conducted an investigation but found Cochran had not discriminated against anyone stemming from his religious beliefs, according to ADF.

ADF was hopeful that May would grant summary judgment to Cochran regarding his free speech and free exercise of religion claims because the city has admitted it considered his religious speech when suspending and firing him, Theriot told BP in November, saying he was confident the judge would issue a very well-reason[ed] opinion.

After the hearing, Cochran said the city is unjustly accusing him of the very thingdiscriminationhe has experienced and been committed to eliminating in his profession.

It is still unthinkable to me that the very faith and patriotism that inspired my professional achievements and drove me to treat all people with love and equity is what the government ultimately used to bring my dream career to an end, Cochran said in written remarks prepared for a post-hearing news conference in November.

In my life I have experienced firsthand the negative attitudes, racial slurs, and discrimination because of the color of my skin, Cochran said. Because of that, Ive lived by the conviction that, should I ever be in a position of leadership, that I would never allow someone to have the same experience of discrimination I did as a minority.

In that vein, Cochran said he created the Atlanta Fire Rescue Doctrine to establish a culture of justice and equity and to seek to remove racism, sexism, favoritism, cronyism, anything that would interfere with a wholesome work environment for any people group within the fire department.

Cochran is chief operating officer of Elizabeth Baptist Church, a multisite church in the Atlanta area.

He served on the Resolutions Committee at the 2016 Southern Baptist Convention meeting and presented a resolution affirming Southern Baptists commitment to biblical sexuality and urging protection for religious free exercise. Messengers approved the resolution.

Cochran was one of the first African Americans to serve with the Shreveport (Louisiana) Fire Department and became its fire chief. He became Atlantas fire chief before President Obama appointed him as US Fire Administrator. He returned to Atlanta and served as its fire chief for five years before his termination.

Additional reporting by Kate Shellnutt

Editors note: An earlier version of this story misstated that the judge had found Cochrans firing itself to be unconstitutional, vs. only the city policy that gave rise to it. CT regrets the error.
Three years ago, my husband and I decided that we would no longer travel for Christmas. Our parents, all of them living in the Midwest, were devastated. When wed moved to Toronto from Chicago, the terms were clear: If we were moving the grandchildren across an international border, we were responsible to bring them home for the holidays. But where was home? Even if our passports declared us strangers, our house in Toronto had begun to feel more like home than the one we had left behindthe one we actually owned.

Ill be home for Christmas, we sing. And its for good reason that Christmas lures us home. As I can attest, waking up in a hotel on Christmas morning and shuffling to the lobby for your first cup of hot coffee does a number on the holiday spirit.

What makes a home a home, then?

For the past several years, IKEA representatives have traveled across the globe to ask people about their domestic experiences and expectations. In 2016, they visited 12 cities and interviewed 12,000 people; in 2017, they traveled to 22 countries, surveying more than 22,000 people. In the first survey, respondents concluded that a home was composed of four intangibles: comfort, safety, belonging, and love.

Even if IKEAs findings (detailed in their annual Life at Home reports) primarily aim to sell us more furniture, lamps, and posters of Paris, they tell us something about the fundamental human longing for home. For Christians, they also illuminate this surprising truth: Neither consumerism nor anti-consumerism defines a true home.

Roy Langmaid, a psychologist cited in the 2017 IKEA Life at Home Report, talks about home as moderns have come to think of itas the expression of personal identity. Identity is a narrative, Langmaid says, and home tells part of the story. If we change the objects, we change the story, which is why some of us find it so difficult to get rid of thingsso difficult, in fact, that 1 in 10 Americans is paying for off-site storage. (In the UK, that number is 1 in 100; in Japan, 1 in 300.)

Despite these emotional attachments, respondents to IKEAs survey admitted that half of their domestic arguments involved the problem of having too much stuff. On the one hand, we feel more and more tied to the objects in our home; on the other, we feel more and more anxious about the physical clutter. In other words, we want to clear our space but cant bear the burden of negotiating what stays and what goes. (Inevitably, Christmas will add to our pile of things wanted and unwanted.)

In Scripture, Jesus didnt warn against excessive accumulation because it was a mental health hazard. In fact, every time Jesus and the New Testament writers warn against material greed, they dont mention the anxiety of physical clutter and the reward of minimalism. Rather, they point forward to a more permanent homeand investment in a more lasting kingdom.

In Luke 12:1321, Jesus tells the story of a rich fool who presumes longevity of life. Ill build bigger barns for all my stuff, he reasons. But his life is demanded of him far earlier than expected, and to his regret, he discovers that he has not been rich toward God.

In Luke 16:1931, we find a similar story. The rich man, clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day, finds his fortune dramatically reversed with the fortune of a beggar, who had lain hungry at his gate every day. In the afterlife, the rich man is humiliated, the poor man exalted. Both men discover the fleeting shadow of this life and conversely, the never-setting sun of eternity.

Paul, too, instructs the rich not to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but rather to be generous. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life (1 Tim. 6).

In other words, the point is not necessarily that were forbidden from owning and accumulating. Rather, its that if our apartments, houses, condos, and rented rooms tell any story, it should be this: Were waiting on a better world.

The gospel tells an old, old story. God wriggled his way through a womb to make his home among us. Taking up flesh, Jesus pitched his tent in our neighborhood. He came as a poor man and owned so little that he didnt have a place to lay his head. On the eve of his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion, he told the disciples about his true home: his Fathers house with its many rooms. If that were not so, he said, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2).

Maybe, then, the best homes we make tell realistic, honest stories about the human condition on this side of heaven. Theyre impermanent and imperfect, no matter how much we seek (or avoid) accumulation. Earthly homes are fleeting stars. Like the Wise Men, we follow them as a way to long for a better countrya heavenly one (Heb. 11:16). If only for a glimpse of the Christ!

Ill be home for Christmas, we sing. And then again, maybe not.

Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place. She lives with her husband and five children in Toronto.
In 2017, many evangelical women joined the #MeToo and #ChurchToo campaigns to draw attention to the prevalence of abuse. Now theyre looking for churches to step up.

A new campaign called #SilenceIsNotSpiritual calls on evangelical congregations and leaders to speak up and act on behalf of victims of gender-based violence, who fear their stories will end up ignored or marginalized.

The campaignorganized by Belinda Bauman, One Million Thumbprints founder, and Lisa Sharon Harper, whose Freedom Road convened the recent Ruby Woo Pilgrimagelaunched Wednesday morning with the backing of 140 prominent Christian women, including Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, Ann Voskamp, and Jen Hatmaker. Within hours, it gathered 1,000 signatures.

This moment in history is ours to steward. We are calling churches, particularly those in our stream of the Christian faith [evangelical churches], to end the silence and stop all participation in violence against women, the statement reads.

We call our pastors, our elders, and our parishioners who have been silent to speak up and stand up for all who experience abuse. There is no institution with greater capacity to create protected spaces for healing and restoration for survivors, as well as confession, repentance and rehabilitation for perpetrators.

Count me in! Because there is no doubt in my mind on this matter that #SilenceIsNotSpiritual! tweeted Bible teacher Beth Moore (who has shared that she suffered sexual abuse as a child).

Earlier this year, LifeWay Research found that most churches underestimate the impact of domestic violence, and arent as prepared as they could be to assist victims. Nearly half of pastors say they dont know if anyone in their congregation has experienced domestic violence, and 45 percent of churches dont have a plan for how to respond if they hear from a victim.

The church, the place I call home, should be the place where healing is happening because we bring the ability to be healing in the midst of trauma everywhereto the workplace, to school, to religion, to politics, all of itand were not doing it, said Bauman. Were not even really willing to do it in our own backyards.

Though many prominent Christian leaders and pastors have explicitly condemned the widespread pattern of harassment, abuse, and violence evidenced by ongoing accusations against male leaders over the past few months, the issue is less likely to come up in church pulpits. LifeWay previously found that 4 in 10 pastors never preach on domestic abuse.

The #SilenceIsNotSpiritual campaign rallies evangelicals to do better. It involves voices from across denominations and positions; organizers were careful to indicate that the problem of abuse and violence isnt confined to any type of church.

The problem exists in all of our churches and in our world because much of our world is one that, for millennia, has been steeped in the culture of patriarchy, said Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel.

The assumption that inside the church these issues are not as prevalent as outside, it actually belies a mistaken view of the church, that the church is separate from the world, she said. Its not. We are Jesus followers who live in the world and come to church.

While #SilenceIsNotSpiritual welcomes Christian men to join as allies, it was conceived as a movement led by women, modeling how individual churches themselves might turn to the survivors among their own in order to prompt and facilitate means of healing.

Within the church, whats most important is that the ones who have survived the violence be the ones who lead the process, said Harper. That is part of what it looks like to honor the inherent dignity of a personto recognize their call to lead.

Article continues below

After having spent several years working with women in conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa, Bauman approaches gender-based violence as both a personal and missional issue. Her experience points to the power of story: the trauma of being disbelieved and ignored, as well as the transformative potential of being heard and supported.

The one place I think healing can come is from listening to the women who experience the violence to try to find the answer to the problem, said Bauman, whose husband was the former president of World Relief. Listening to women who have experienced violence is where we will find our abilityour political will, our religious will, our personal willto stop the violence.

The statement calls on churches to create protected spaces where survivors of violence can offer their stories and to repent where we have failed and to fight both systemic and individual injustices in our midst.

The vast majority of Protestant pastors (87%) believe their church already serves as a safe haven for victims of violence. #SilenceIsNotSpiritual organizers suggest that church leaders might do more to call out such spaces for women, as well as challenge themselves to ask why women have kept silent or didnt come forward sooner.

LifeWay found that, if a church member were to divorce over alleged domestic violence, evangelical pastors were more likely to respond by investigating the claim (68%) than believing it (56%). In another poll, evangelicals were also slightly less likely than Americans on average to believe the misconduct claims levied against figures like Donald Trump, Roy Moore, and Matt Lauer.

Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies, parsed how evangelical affiliation relates to propensity for violence against women in an explainer for CT this month.

While some research shows that patriarchal norms around the world are correlated with domestic abuse, evangelical Protestantism in the US generally doesnt pose additional risks to women; however, frequency of church attendance, religious motivation, and whether spouses share the same faith all play a factor. Wilcox found that nominal evangelical Protestants who attend church infrequently or not at all were most likely to abuse their partners.

The #SilenceIsNotSpiritual statement describes the correlation between race and violence against women, citing the disproportionate numbers of black, Latina, Asian, and Native American women who have suffered violence.

The launch was timed around the United Nations International Human Solidarity Day, December 20, and the campaign will run Christmas through Easter, with a potential expansion to focus on concerns of Christian leaders outside America.

Being woken up sometimes happens in stages  I think there has been a growing attention being paid to violence against women, said Bauman. What I worry about is the attitude of clicking our tongue and shaking our head and saying, Isnt this terrible? and never arresting the moment.

This is a kairos [opportune] moment, she said. Heaven help us if we miss it.
Foundation for Moral Law Applauds Supreme Court Decision to Let Texas Marriage Law Stand Contact: John Eidsmoe, Foundation for Moral Law, 334-262-1245, info@morallaw.org MONTGOMERY, Ala., Dec. 20, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Foundation for Moral Law, an Alabama-based nonprofit corporation, applauded the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to review a decision of the Texas Supreme Court not to extend spousal benefits to same-sex couples.



After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, Houston, TX Mayor Annise Parker unilaterally decided to extend spousal benefits to spouses of Houston city employees even though Texas law prohibits such benefits. Taxpayers Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks sued the City, saying their tax dollars were being used illegally for this purpose. The Foundation for Moral Law joined with the Texas-based Institute for Creation Research to file an amicus brief with the Texas Supreme Court in support of Pidgeon and Hicks.



After the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pidgeon and Hicks, the City of Houston petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review. Earlier this month, the High Court denied their petition, thus allowing the Texas Supreme Court decision to stand.



Foundation President Kayla Moore welcomed the High Court's decision, saying "The brief prepared by the Foundation and the Institute for Creation Research laid the ground work for a sound Texas Supreme Court decision that correctly refused to stretch the Constitution farther than it has already been stretched. The Texas decision is a victory for traditional marriage and for strict construction of the Constitution. We are thankful the U.S. Supreme Court has let the decision stand."



Foundation Attorney Matthew Clark added, "The City of Houston tried to subvert the Constitution and Texas law by extending the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision beyond its limits. The Foundation is pleased to have partnered with the Institute for Creation Research to resist judicial activism and preserve jurisprudence of original intent."



Share Tweet
Forging Soul Cap Co., A Scripture-inspired Hat Company, Launches on Kickstarter



FORT MILL, S.C., Dec. 20, 2017 /



Forging Soul hats are designed to insert the power of scripture into any setting. Each hat features an unobtrusive, scripture-based design associated with a different biblical verse.



The company is inspired by the life and tragic passing of Dylan Pape  who survived cancer, lived with serious medical issues, and who was tragically shot and killed by police in March 2016. The company aims to empower people to overcome adversity through scripture.



"What I admired most about my brother was his faithful and fearless attitude. It wasn't about how many times he got knocked down, but that each time he got back up and kept moving forward. That's the spirit of Forging Soul," said Ryan Pape, Founder & President of Forging Soul. "The word forge in our company name has a double meaning at the core of our message. First, it's that you continue to forge ahead no matter what life throws your way. Second, it's that you recognize life's trials are forging you into the strongest version of yourself."



In addition to its empowering message, Forging Soul is dedicated to making an impact. The company donates 10% of all purchases to support charities that promote mental health in adolescents. It hopes to help eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health in America's youth.



The Forging Soul snapback hat collection is offered for both men and women. The hats are one-size fits most and available in multiple designs and colorways.



Forging Soul hats are available for pre-order via Kickstarter until January 8th. The hats will retail for $31.99 plus shipping, but can be pre-ordered for $25-30 including shipping.



For more information visit Forging Soul on Kickstarter:



www.kickstarter.com/projects/373589209/forging-soul-hats-scripture-inspired-caps-with-a-c/description



Share Tweet Contact: Ryan Pape, Founder & President, Forging Soul Cap Co., 203-561-2606FORT MILL, S.C., Dec. 20, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- Forging Soul Cap Co., a designer and manufacturer of scripture-inspired hats, officially launched its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.Forging Soul hats are designed to insert the power of scripture into any setting. Each hat features an unobtrusive, scripture-based design associated with a different biblical verse.The company is inspired by the life and tragic passing of Dylan Pape  who survived cancer, lived with serious medical issues, and who was tragically shot and killed by police in March 2016. The company aims to empower people to overcome adversity through scripture."What I admired most about my brother was his faithful and fearless attitude. It wasn't about how many times he got knocked down, but that each time he got back up and kept moving forward. That's the spirit of Forging Soul," said Ryan Pape, Founder & President of Forging Soul. "The word forge in our company name has a double meaning at the core of our message. First, it's that you continue to forge ahead no matter what life throws your way. Second, it's that you recognize life's trials are forging you into the strongest version of yourself."In addition to its empowering message, Forging Soul is dedicated to making an impact. The company donates 10% of all purchases to support charities that promote mental health in adolescents. It hopes to help eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health in America's youth.The Forging Soul snapback hat collection is offered for both men and women. The hats are one-size fits most and available in multiple designs and colorways.Forging Soul hats are available for pre-order via Kickstarter until January 8th. The hats will retail for $31.99 plus shipping, but can be pre-ordered for $25-30 including shipping.For more information visit Forging Soul on Kickstarter:
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

(Bloomberg) -- The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backed a measure critical of President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haleys warning that the move could put funding for their nations and the global body at risk.

The nonbinding UN resolution passed Thursday by a vote of 128-9, with 35 nations abstaining. Key U.S. allies backing the measure over Trumps threats included the U.K., France, Italy, Japan and Germany. The U.S. was joined in opposition by countries including Guatemala, Nauru and Micronesia. Abstentions included Australia, Canada and Argentina.

The United States will remember this day when it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly, Haley said at the UN podium ahead of the vote. We will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they often do, to pay even more. This vote will be remembered.

That threat was repudiated by speakers from countries supporting the resolution, which says the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations. A similar resolution had 14 votes in favor in the 15-member Security Council last week, prompting Haley to exercise the first U.S. veto since 2011.

This is Bullying

We were all asked to vote no or face the consequences, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said before Thursdays vote. Some even threatened to cut development aid. This is bullying. It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale.

The debate follows Trumps Dec. 6 announcement, which included a decision to begin moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The announcement prompted criticism across the Middle East and from key U.S. allies in Europe, who said it would harm efforts to foster Middle East peace.

Haley and her team argued afterward that 21 nations not present for the vote -- including Moldova, Zambia and the Caribbean island nations of Saint Lucia and St. Kitts & Nevis -- should be counted as backing the U.S. position.

A U.S. spokesman said the vote breakdown made clear that many countries gave their relationship with the U.S. priority over an attempt to isolate the country over a decision had the sovereign right to make.

Netanyahus Praise

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a similar point, with his office issuing a statement praising the great number of countries that did not vote for the action.

U.S. allies who backed the measure didnt see it that way.

The resolution adopted today only confirms relevant international law, said Francois Delattre, Frances ambassador to the UN. It is more important than ever to rally the international community around the agreed parameters of the peace process, and this of course includes the U.S.

Palestinian officials said Trumps Jerusalem decision disqualified the U.S. from being a mediator in any Israel-Palestinian negotiations.

Read a QuickTake Q&A on the controversy over Jerusalems status

Haleys threat carries weight because the U.S. is the largest contributor to UN operations. Based on a formula agreed to by member nations, the U.S. provides 28.5 percent of the $7.3 billion UN peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the core budget of $2.7 billion. Haley walked out of the General Assembly soon after her speech, though members of the U.S. delegation remind behind, awaiting the vote.

But the very nature of the UN, which depends on compromise and negotiation, will also limit the reach of U.S. threats. Haley is expected to introduce a new resolution to the Security Council on Friday tightening sanctions on North Korea. For that measure to pass, the U.S. will need nations including China and Russia to refrain from vetoing the proposal.

Except for Israel, which supports the U.S. position, most major U.S. allies opposed to Trumps Jerusalem decision stayed away from the podium Thursday. Countries speaking in support of the measure included North Korea, Yemen, Turkey, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, South Africa and Iran. Those nations also came under intense fire by Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon.

Those who support todays resolution are like puppets pulled by the strings of the Palestinian puppet masters, Danon said. If this body were really united for peace, it would pass a resolution condemning Palestinian violence.

Telling Trump

Haley this week warned other countries against supporting the resolution, saying Trump has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us.

Trump weighed in on the Jerusalem vote on Wednesday.

I liked the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations to all of those nations that take our money and then they vote against us in the Security Council, they vote against us potentially at the Assembly, Trump said. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes. Let em vote against us.

(Updates with U.S. reaction and breakdown of vote starting in second paragraph.)

--With assistance from Jonathan Ferziger

To contact the reporter on this story: Kambiz Foroohar in New York at kforoohar@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

What the world needs now is more corruption.

I can only guess that's why Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich, wants to repeal the Securities and Exchange Commission requirement that oil companies report how much they pay foreign governments in taxes, royalties and other fees.

RELATED: Learn from Alstom's bribery mistakes

The government should not be "imposing non-material disclosure requirements that only seem to push a social agenda," Huizenga said.

Dissecting that quote reveals Huizenga's complete disregard for the law and morality.

Whether or not a company is paying a foreign government too little or too much to pump oil and natural gas is material to shareholder interests. After all, paying too little indicates a bribe was paid, and paying too much indicates a kickback is going to be paid.

Engaging in illegal behavior, by the way, is very material to a company's future and something that shareholders care deeply about because it affects profits and dividends.

An Italian judge ruled on Wednesday that Italian oil giant Eni, Royal Dutch Shell and senior executives will face a civil trial over a $1.1 billion bribery scandal in Nigeria. Another European court will determine whether the same companies will face criminal charges over their acquisition of a deepwater oil-prospecting license.

Losing these cases could cost shareholders a billion dollars.

As for social agendas, Huizenga has no problem pushing anti-abortion legislation, which is "a social agenda." So I'm not sure why he has a problem with laws that discourage crimes already on the books.

The real issue, and one that honest members of the energy industry acknowledge, is that U.S. laws that ban them from paying bribes also makes it harder for them to do business with criminals, who sometimes control government decision making.

Dropping the SEC reporting requirement would not legalize paying foreign bribes legal under U.S. law, but it would make it easier to get away with it.

This is part of a disturbing trend under President Donald Trump where special interest groups try to make breaking the law easier by eliminating so-called red tape. You know, the regulations used to enforce laws.

RELATED: Watchdogs will always be needed for business

Recently, I wrote about the electronic logging device requirement for long-haul truckers and said law-abiding drivers should welcome them. The angry response from independent truckers was deafening.

The underlying takeaway from all of the heat, though, was that some truckers hate the federal rules that limit how many hours they drive a day, and when they have to take breaks. Most of them hated the logging devices not because they were unsound, they opposed them because they make it harder to cheat.

Oil companies will claim all day long that they don't pay bribes and don't want to pay bribes. But they also oppose every effort to make it easier for regulators and shareholders to catch them.

There is plenty of red tape to cut in Washington, and I encourage the judicious use of sharp scissors. But beware those who want to gut the regulations that make it possible to enforce truly important laws, like anti-corruption statutes.

Because getting rid of those only serves criminals, not honest companies.
Dear Abby:

I had planned a trip to Europe with my friend "Elizabeth," a friend of hers and Elizabeth's daughter. The plan was I would share rooms with Elizabeth. We paid for the hotels in advance.

Shortly before our scheduled departure I fell, broke my ankle and couldn't go. We tried unsuccessfully to obtain some kind of refunds, and travel insurance paid only if the accident happened while we were traveling.

I was out $2,000. Elizabeth's friend offered me $500. Elizabeth also offered me $500. I think the other woman should give me at least half - not just $500 - because she derived 100 percent of the benefit. Also, she has never reached out to me directly at all.

No money has been received at this point. Should I just write it off? Or am I wrong to expect some of the money back?

Money Woes in the East

Dear Money Woes:

Yes, you are wrong. Nobody owes you anything. Accidents happen, but the broken ankle was your bad luck. It was generous of Elizabeth and her friend to offer you any money at all. My advice is to accept it graciously, write the rest off, and stop looking for someone to be mad at.

Dear Abby:

One of my relatives has bipolar disorder, and as far as I know he takes medicine for it. However, at our Christmas celebration last year he became aggressive and abusive toward a family member who had done nothing to provoke it. It put a damper on the festivities.

I don't want another holiday ruined because of his behavior. Must the rest of us sit on pins and needles hoping he doesn't explode this Christmas? I'd prefer not to invite him until he has better control of himself. Your opinion?

Hoping for Happy Holidays

Dear Hoping:

You have a point. A solution might be to talk directly with your relative and explain that if he's taking his medication - which means there will be no unpredictable outbursts - he is welcome to be your guest for Christmas. If not, however, he should make other plans.

Dear Abby:

On Veterans' Day I visited my family's cemetery plot and noticed my closest uncle does not have a military service marker like his two older brothers do. "Uncle Claude" frequently had mentioned to me how important a service marker was to him. I discussed it with his two out-of-state children several times.

Should I inquire again about this with my cousins, offer to assist them in getting and placing the marker or let it go?

Military Service Marker

Dear M.S.M.:

Discuss this with your cousins once more and ask if they would like you to pursue getting the marker for your uncle.

DearAbby.comDear AbbyP.O. Box 69440Los Angeles, CA 90069Andrews McMeel Syndication
1910: A fire lasting more than 26 hours broke out at the Chicago Union Stock Yards; 21 firefighters were killed in the collapse of a building.

2001: Richard C. Reid, a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, tried to ignite explosives in his shoes. He was subdued, by flight attendants and fellow passengers. (Reid is serving a life sentence in federal prison.)
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A woman who had recently miscarried has been accused of killing an acquaintance so she could abduct the dead woman's newborn and claim the baby as her own, according to Houston police, who arrested her Thursday.

Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez has been charged with capital murder in the stabbing death of Carolina Flores, 33,who police found dead Tuesday in a Greenspoint area apartment. Flores's baby, 6-week-old Shamali, was missing at that time.

Miranda-Alvarez, 28, was arrested about 1 a.m. Thursday at the Woodscape Apartments on South Gessner. Police were in the complex and spotted a suspicious man and woman holding a baby who seemed to be attempting to leave, Police Chief Art Acevedo said. Using pictures, they were quickly able to determine the baby was Shamali Flores.

The 6-week-old infant was taken to Texas Children's Hospital for an examination. At a press conference at HPD headquarters, Acevedo said the baby is healthy and shows no signs of abuse.

"It was a joyous moment for all of us when we saw that little angel sitting there in that apartment," Acevedo said. "When you can find a silver lining in a tragedy as horrible as this, you have to take what you can get."

READ ALSO: Police believe woman abducted missing infant after murder

Now Playing: 06:00:00 Video: Fox10Phoenix

Miranda-Alvarez had been expecting a baby in January but recently had a "miscarriage," Acevedo said. She didn't tell her family or boyfriend about the miscarriage, then pretended to have been at the hospital giving birth, and had told them Shamali Flores was her own baby.

"She was pretending her baby had been ill at the hospital," Acevedo said. "Lo and behold, she shows up December 19 claiming the baby was hers."

Police have questioned the boyfriend, but he has not been charged.

The Texas Department of Public Safety discontinued an Amber Alert for Shamali Flores at 6:15 a.m. after learning that Houston police had located her at the apartment complex.

Acevedo declined to comment on Miranda-Alvarez's mental state, but said she cooperated with police when they approached her.

Police said Miranda-Alvarez was an acquaintance of Carolina Flores's family and had gotten to know the victim through Flores' brother. "She did not break in," to Flores' apartment.

"The real work now continues for our investigators," Acevedo said. "They need to piece together every single piece of this complex puzzle to not only have a charge, but a conviction."

GALLERY: Houston-area children missing so far in 2017

Acevedo stressed the importance of community policing in finding Shamali. Early interviews with people in the apartment complex turned out to be valuable, he said. Investigators were able to put together a theory about the suspect  that it was a woman who recently had lost her own child  quickly.

Houston police cooperated with the FBI to investigate the case, and Acevedo said law enforcement had a heavy presence at the South Gessner apartment complex before Miranda-Alvarez was arrested  including patrol officers, a SWAT team, and FBI agents: "You name a unit, they were there."

Acevedo wouldn't comment on how investigators knew they'd find the suspect at the Gessner apartment complex.

On Wednesday, police investigators had said that a woman who recently lost a child could have been responsible for the slaying.

"Everything our investigators theorized turned out to be true," Acevedo said Thursday. "But a lot of that relied on community policing, community trust."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

It was a hard year and many who wouldn't normally be found on a list needing assistance during the holidays have reached out for help. Liberty County Bikes for Christmas (LCBFC) was there again this year to help struggling families and brighten the holidays.

"Our giving is based on how much we raise," said David Milam, one of the founders of the Liberty County Bikes for Christmas program.

With that in mind, Milam said they begin with the neediest children in the community and work from there.

Milam, who owns Milam Discount Tires in Liberty, understands and knows needy kids - he grew up as one.

"I was raised in boys' homes and I saw needy kids and kids whose parents didn't want them. Early in life I decided if I was ever successful enough, I would do something for children," he said.

He was so moved by his early life experience that he still has a vision to build a boys' home somewhere in Liberty County.

The bikes program began with a program offered by Michelin tires.

"For every four tires we bought, they gave us an American Flyer red, white and blue bike, and we buy a lot of tires," he said.

The bikes began to stack up because his customers weren't taking them and one day, Liberty County EMS executive director Mike Koen came into the store and asked Milam what he was going to do with the bikes.

That year, they organized and gave away 55 bikes. The following years they gave away 150, then 500, and 1,500 the following year at its peak. "We also fed everyone," Milam said proudly.

It turned into a large, three-day event, but during walk in the parking lot that year, they were disappointed to see that many were taking advantage of them.

It was then that they turned to the school counselors, churches, police department, and particularly bus drivers to give them names of children who they saw as needy.

"We knew we had to rein it in and be more focused with the giving," he said.

It was also then that they began inviting participation from the fire, ambulance, and police departments.

"The children only knew them mostly from a crisis situation," Milam said, "and we wanted them to see them in a different light."

In those days and with a flourishing economy, they were able to raise approximately $90,000, but the economy tanked a few years back, and most are still recovering. This year, with the help of their banquet fundraiser, they were able to raise approximately $20,000.

"I don't care how much it is we raise, it's going to go to the children," he said definitively.

His wife Cassie had a different experience.

"I did have a good family life and it's heartbreaking for me to see what I see," she said. "It's remarkable to me to see him come from such a bad place to become so successful and now give back."

Cassie had just returned from a company who had collected some $763 for the children.

"It's touching because it was an uneven amount and I know they gave what they could to help," she said.

This year Cassie was much more involved in the planning and will take the reins of the work next year.

"Amanda Wilson had the reins the last few years and she did a fabulous job but couldn't really help us as much this year. We appreciate her dedication," David said.

Milam said they will do the banquet again next year and hope the community will come out and support the program.

When children arrived last Saturday, Dec. 16, they were in for a treat!

"They will be in a line and so we give them a lot to enjoy while they're here," he said.

They saw elves handing out candy canes, fire trucks and police cars, decorated their own cookies at a cookie station and each received an English or Spanish version Bible.

"After that they took a photo with Santa Claus, received a winter jacket and backpack, and then they pick up their toys," he said.

They are directed out of the main ballroom to the room behind it where they are fitted for their bicycle. As they leave the community center, Dayton Marine Junior ROTC cadets assist them with the loot and also give them a box of food for Christmas dinner with ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows to go on top, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, rolls, a pie, fruit punch, tea, and a bag of sugar.

More than 300 children came through and represented every corner of the county.

A special group of offenders worked to put the bikes together for the charity.

"We had a select group I thought would benefit from a selfless act and they voluntarily came out and put those bikes together for us under the supervision of staff," said Stacy LeBlanc, senor warden at the Hightower Unit outside Dayton.

To keep the inmates in the spirit, the warden piped in Christmas music to help entertain them.

The Hightower Unit has helped out the charity for more than a decade in preparing for their Christmas assistance to the community.

"The prison system out here in Dayton has done an excellent job of helping us out," said Mike Koen of Liberty County EMS.

Prison staff members, specifically from the SORP (Sex Offender Rehabilitation Program) program drove over to the Dayton Community Center to help wrap presents for the children as well.

Christopher Taylor, field boss at the unit, helped supervise the offenders.

"We pulled them out of their units about 7 in the morning to get started on the bikes and we put together about 82 bikes in four-and-a-half hours," he said.

Taylor said their attitude was a little more different versus every day prison life.

"It's healthy for them to be involved doing something like this," he said. "I overheard some of them saying they wish they were at home doing this for their own kids."

The Milams and Mike Koen all wanted to thank donors for helping put a smile on the faces of the children and parents.

"It was gratifying to see them so thankful and grinning from ear to ear," Cassie said.
5 Houston high school playoff games you won't want to miss Several teams from the Houston area have the potential to make a state title run.

'She Said' takes on the downfall of Harvey Weinstein Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star as the journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story.
Liberty Police Department is warning about a scam that is making its way around local businesses. Two separate businesses reported the possible phone scam.

"The caller identifies himself as 'Mr. Edwards' [and] speaks with a Jamaican accent, and he advises that he is with 'Utilities in Liberty' and they are going to cut off the lights within the next 30 minutes due to non-payment. He then gives a number to call for further information," said LPD Chief Thomas Claunch. "When the number is called, no one will answer, but someone calls back a few minutes later. At this point we are not sure how they want payment since both reportees hung up before getting to that point."
In the days after Hurricane Harvey's historic downpour, Jewell Jade, 42, found herself waiting.

She waited for federal reimbursement for her car, where she had been living until just hours before the first raindrop fell. It flooded in the storm and her few belongings destroyed with it. Jade and her son found refuge at a hotel, but they waited for funds to continue their stay there or aid from the government.

After FEMA denied her aid request for hotel costs and denied an appeal, a friend told Jade about Humble Area Assistance Ministries, and she became one of the 8,525 Lake Houston-area residents who have received assistance from HAAM since the storm.

When HAAM staff, two of whom suffered flood damage to their homes, opened their offices on Aug. 30, they found dozens of Lake Houston residents, including Jade, waiting for them.

"We had people camped out in our parking lot," said Millie Garrison, the ministries' executive director. "We're still seeing families five days a week. This is our new normal."

HAAM houses and administers the Lake Houston Area Relief Fund - an endowment created after the storm by Insperity Bank in partnership with HAAM and the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce to match community collections and donations - and has distributed $1.4 million of the $1.6 million raise to community members in need.

The resources HAAM usually provides, Garrison said, were stretched by those seeking help after the hurricane. The organization's work involves aiding the working poor or those in crisis in achieving self-sufficiency through financial support, and life skills assistance.

But after the storm, those who'd lost their cars or jobs or were still camping out in their backyard as the tedious mucking out process began, were looking for supplies - food, linens and vouchers for gas and to cover other basic needs.

Jade, a cosmetologist, needed blankets, underwear, socks and food and gas vouchers - everything she and her 10-year-old son lost.

With the holidays coming up, Jade wants to give her son the Christmas they didn't think they'd have. The few toys she can get, she said, are coming from HAAM's holiday toy distribution.

"He's been doing well, he's a big boy about it," she said. "But I explained to him that this year is going to be hard."

As the holidays approach, HAAM is not only seeing more financial need overall, but many new faces seeking help, said toy distribution head Cheryl Owens.

"You can tell they've never done this before, they don't know what to do." Owens said of the 100 new clients HAAM's toy distribution service has seen this year.

Normally, Owens said, the parents of the 1,700 children served over four days are able to choose two larger toys and several smaller gifts, but they've had to cut back - many former donors are seeking assistance themselves, donations have dropped while need continues to increase.

Still, the work continues, Garrison said. The interfaith assistance organization has helped more than 2,400 households in their recovery from the storm.

After their initial emergency assistance, HAAM connected Jade with a landlord and provided funds for a deposit on the duplex where she and her son live, working slowly to rebuild their lives.

"I think angels are all around," Jade said. "And the people (at HAAM) are angels."

Marialuisa Rincon is a freelance writer.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

As judges for the annual Kingwood Civic Club Holiday Decorating Contest turned down a street in Woodstream Village, they were met with a sight indicative of Kingwood's resilient spirit after Hurricane Harvey.

"A whole street had debris piles out in front and Christmas lights were wrapped around them," said Cindy Higgins, president of the Kingwood Civic Club. "It showed a sense of a community continuing to be strong."

The Holiday Yard Decoration Contest has been a tradition for over 30 years, but after the devastating toll Hurricane Harvey took on Kingwood homes, Higgins said the Kingwood Civic Club considered cancelling it this year.

Now Playing: FOX 26 News Reporter Ivory Hecker Video: Fox 26 Houston

They decided to proceed with the contest in order to provide a sense of normalcy for the community. However, they stressed that neighborhoods should in no way feel pressured to participate.

To Higgins' surprise, all but two of Kingwood's subdivisions participated.

"We had 30 subdivisions," Higgins said. "Honestly, we thought there would be a couple more that opted out. We're happy they decided to do it."

She noted this year that despite recent hardship, the holiday spirit has been even more prevalent in the community as a whole.

"It's amazing to see the community ban together through this," Higgins said. "We hope the community continues to heal and grow together and stay strong."

The Kingwood Civic Club was able to award approximately 180 contest winners for the 2017 contest, with homes in each neighborhood chosen for several decoration categories.

2017 WINNERS

Barrington

Did not participate due to Hurricane Harvey

Bear Branch Village

Best Traditional: 3310 Riverlawn

Best Religious: 2507 Riverlawn

Best Lights: 3306 Riverlawn Drive

Santa's Favorite: 3506 Sandy Forks

Best Doorway: 3426 Tree Lane

Best Block Spirit: 3200 Little Bear

Deer Cove

Did not participate due to Hurricane Harvey

Elm Grove Village

Best Traditional: 3202 Brookdale Dr

Best Religious: Not Awarded

Best Lights: 2918 Brookdale Dr

Santa's Favorite: 3027 Brookdale Dr

Best Doorway: 2907 Clear Ridge Dr

Best Block Spirit: 2900-3000 Brookdale Dr

Fosters Mill Village

Best Traditional: 2114 Golden Pond

Best Religious: 5303 Windy Lake

Best Lights: 5303 Timber Shade

Santa's Favorite: 2214 Long Valley

Best Doorway: 2202 Long Valley Drive

Best Block Spirit: 2200 Block Long Valley

Greentree Village

Best Traditional: 3114 Knoll Manor Dr

Best Religious: 3427 Lakeshade Ct

Best Lights: 3207 Cedar Village

Santa's Favorite: 3627 Glenwood Springs

Best Doorway: 5203 Riverside Oaks Dr

Best Block Spirit: Windy Woods

Hunters Ridge Village

Best Traditional: 2613 Silver Falls

Best Religious: 3650 Clear Falls

Best Lights: 3211 River Valley

Santa's Favorite: 3835 Village Oaks

Best Doorway: 4335 Haven Glen

Best Block Spirit: 3900 Block of Village Oaks

Kings Crossing

Best Traditional: 3630 Cape Forest Dr

Best Religious: 3314 Redwood Lake

Best Lights: 3343 Valley Gardens Dr

Santa's Favorite: 4226 Valley Glade Dr

Best Doorway: 3411 Beecch Point Dr

Best Block Spirit: Not Awarded

Kings Forest

Best Traditional: 2711 Laurel Garden

Best Religious: 2903 Kings Forest Dr

Best Lights: 2406 Kings Forest Dr

Santa's Favorite: 2910 Royal Circle Dr

Best Doorway: 2503 Kings Forest Dr

Best Block Spirit: Not Awarded

Kings Point #1/The Reserve

Best Traditional: 2818 Evergreen Cliff Trail

Best Religious: 2710 Evergreen Cliff Trail

Best Lights: 6003 Hidden Lakes

Santa's Favorite: 2827 Mountain Green Tr

Best Doorway: 2410 Stately Oak Dr

Best Block Spirit: Evergreen Cliff Trail

Kings Point #2/Royal Shores

Best Traditional: 1602 Lake Falls

Best Religious: 1807 Seven Maples

Best Lights: 1618 Lake Wilderness

Santa's Favorite: 5703 Ridge Vista

Best Doorway: 2122 Riverglen Forest

Best Block Spirit: Scenic Mountain

Kings River #1

Best Traditional: 7422 Passing Pine Ct

Best Religious: 7606 Waterwood Trail

Best Lights: 19719 Sage Tree

Santa's Favorite: 20631 Delta Wood Tr

Best Doorway: 19702 Sage Tree

Best Block Spirit: Sage Tree Trail

Kings River #2

Best Traditional: 20810 Water Point

Best Religious: 20714 Great Laurel Ct

Best Lights: 6746 Pacifc Crest

Santa's Favorite: 20818 Kings Clover Ct

Best Doorway: 20719 Great Laurel Ct

Best Block Spirit: Pacific Crest

Kingwood Glen

Best Traditional: 19318 Kristen Pine Dr

Best Religious: 19402 Dee Oaks Dr

Best Lights: 19515 Shinwood Dr

Santa's Favorite: 5534 Enchanted Timbers Dr

Best Doorway: 19806 Pioneer Ct

Best Block Spirit: Oak Branch

Kingwood Greens

Best Traditional: 15 New Greens Ct

Best Religious: 2218 Bens View Trail

Best Lights: 7 Links Ct

Santa's Favorite: 2 New Greens Ct

Best Doorway: 4 Island Green Ct

Best Block Spirit: Island Green Ct

Kingwood Lakes

Best Traditional: 2302 Lake Gardens Dr

Best Religious: 2402 Lake Gardens Dr

Best Lights: 2418 Oakbank Dr

Santa's Favorite: 2303 Lake Gardens Dr

Best Doorway: 2443 Lake Village Dr

Best Block Spirit: Lake Gardens Dr/Lake Gardens

Kingwood Place

Best Traditional: 1506 Sandy Park Dr

Best Religious: 2019 White Oak Hills

Best Lights: 1819 Ridgeway Trail

Santa's Favorite: 2023 Red Magnolia Ct

Best Doorway: 2011 Whtite Oak Hills Lane

Best Block Spirit: Ridgeway Trail

Mills Branch Village

Best Traditional: 5411 Magnolia Falls

Best Religious: 4506 Natural Bridge

Best Lights: 4430 Natural Bridge

Santa's Favorite: 3615 Purple Meadow

Best Doorway: 4302 Echo Falls

Best Block Spirit: Echo Falls

North Kingwood Forest

Best Traditional: 3222 Same Way

Best Religious: 5622 Straight Way

Best Lights: 3406 Any Way

Santa's Favorite: 5702 Straight Way

Best Doorway: 5707 Which Way

Best Block Spirit: Right Way

North Woodland Hills Village

Best Traditional: 2055 Aspen Glade

Best Religious: 2111 Fir Springs

Best Lights: 2031 Little Cedar

Santa's Favorite: 2211 Vista Manor

Best Doorway: 2234 Middle Creek Dr

Best Block Spirit: Oak Shores

Oakhurst #1

Best Traditional: 20914 Kransburg Ridge Dr

Best Religious: 25425 Ramrock Dr

Best Lights: 25620 Tiverton Forest Ct

Santa's Favorite: 21001 Ramrock Ct

Best Doorway: 25438 Ramrock Dr

Best Block Spirit: Southwood Oaks Ct

Oakhurst #2

Best Traditional: 25007 Stillhouse Springs

Best Religious: 20518 Bobigian Dr

Best Lights: 24547 Yorktown Heights

Santa's Favorite: 20724 Sweet Glen Dr

Best Doorway: 25181 Nutley Cir

Best Block Spirit: Sausalito Circle

Oakhurst #3

Best Traditional: 20660 Lavone

Best Religious: 24475 Hanson Springs Dr

Best Lights: 21322 Avett Dr

Santa's Favorite: 24507 German Oak Dr

Best Doorway: 20714 Belvon Valley Dr

Best Block Spirit: No Winner

Riverchase/Riverbend

Best Traditional: 2107 Hickory Valley Ct

Best Religious: No Winner

Best Lights: 2102 Riverway Oak Dr

Santa's Favorite: 2625 Tranquil Oaks Ct

Best Doorway: 2330 Crimson Valley Ct

Best Block Spirit: 2100 Block Prim Water Ct

Royal Brook Village

Best Traditional: 3330 Lockridge Harbor Lane

Best Religious: 5845 Majestic Arbor

Best Lights: 5803 Vineyard Creek

Santa's Favorite: 5814 Vineyard Creek

Best Doorway: 5826 Vineyard Creek

Best Block Spirit: Vineyard Creek

Sand Creek Village

Best Traditional: 4227 Hill Forest Dr

Best Religious: 5907 Rocky Brook

Best Lights: 5815 Spring Lodge Dr

Santa's Favorite: 5419 Sycamore Creek

Best Doorway: 3030 Willow Terrace

Best Block Spirit:Manor Glen

Sherwood Trails Village

Best Traditional: 2107 Meandering Trail

Best Religious: 4007 Marians Hollow

Best Lights: 2631 Sherwood Hollow

Santa's Favorite: 2403 Sherwood Hollow

Best Doorway: 4103 Sweet Gum Tr

Best Block Spirit: 2200 Block Pinecone Dr

South Woodland Hills Village

Best Traditional: 3515 Evergreen Glade

Best Religious: 2207 Riverlawn

Best Lights: 2222 Riverlawn Dr

Santa's Favorite: 1923 Riverlawn

Best Doorway: 2111 Wilderness Point

Best Block Spirit: 3300 Block Lake Haven

Trailwood Village

Best Traditional: 2218 Laurel Hill

Best Religious: 1903 Grove Lake

Best Lights: 1954 River Falls

Santa's Favorite: 1906 Thousand Pines

Best Doorway: 2014 Thousand Pines

Best Block Spirit: Tangle Lake

Woodridge Forest

Best Traditional: 25246 Hobsons Corner

Best Religious: 25209 Forest Ledge

Best Lights: 25203 Falling Leaves

Santa's Favorite: 25216 Forest Ledge

Best Doorway: 25253 Forest Lake

Best Block Spirit: Triangle Ridge

Woodspring Forest

Best Traditional: 2803 Sandberry

Best Religious: 4514 Woodspring Glen

Best Lights: 2708 Crichton

Santa's Favorite: 4731 Pin Oak Creek Lane

Best Doorway: 4607 Mandover Ln

Best Block Spirit: Chrichton Ct

Woodstream Village

Best Traditional: 2934 Apple Forest

Best Religious: 3011 Elm Canyon Ct

Best Lights: 2903 Sycamore Tree Ct

Santa's Favorite: 3015 Elm Canyon

Best Doorway: 2935 Apple Forest Ct

Best Block Spirit: Apple Forest Ct
A Dallas woman accused of taking her son to the doctor more than 300 times for unnecessary surgeries has lost custody of her child, a judge ruled on Wednesday.

The 8-year-old boy's father, Ryan Crawford, will gain custody after a lengthy legal battle which has lasted the child's entire life, the Star-Telegram reports.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with Texas death row inmate Willie Washington, bouncing the decades-old case back to a lower court in light of ongoing claims of bad lawyering.

The Harris County man was out on parole in 1985 when he was arrested for a double shooting in a Houston grocery store, where he gunned down Kiflemariam Tareh and wounded Yemane Kidane.
The Woodlands Township is again being recognized for its efforts in fighting crime through its National Night Out campaign, receiving a first place for communities of its size.

The National Association of Town Watch-the organization that works to make neighbors safer through police and community partnerships and neighborhood participation-has honored The Woodlands Township with the top prize in its 2017 National Night Out campaign for communities with populations of 100,000 to 300,000 residents.

The night is an annual event that's been held every year since 1984 as part of an year-round effort to help reduce crime and increase awareness of community-based law enforcement programs.

The township has come in first place seven times since it began taking part in the campaign in 1990, although the first place honors have been for various categories of population size as the township's population has expanded, said Marian Leck, director of The Woodlands Township Law Enforcement Services.

"It takes a true partnership," Leck said in crediting the work of local law enforcement agencies and strong citizen participation in boosting the township's success in the program. "It's not just one thing that makes it happen it takes several partners to pull it off and make it successful."

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, the Harris County Constable's Office, Precinct 4, and The Woodlands Fire Department all take part in the program. There are also thousands of residents signed up to help out, with Leck saying there are more than 25,000 watch members and over 1,200 watch coordinators in The Woodlands registered to take part in the campaign.

"The old saying in crime prevention 'Is neighbor know neighbor,'" Leck said. "Ultimately you are the first line of defense, if you will."

Gordy Bunch, chairman of The Woodlands Township Board of Directors, also acknowledged the strong law enforcement and community participation in the program.

"These public safety partnerships are an essential part of all township crime and fire prevention programming throughout the year," Bunch said. "We are thankful for our many public safety officials and first responders who help to keep The Woodlands safe."

Beside The Woodlands, the state of Texas and several other Texas communities were given high rankings for their efforts. Texas was the awarded the National Night Out 2017 State Cup, while Arlington placed second and San Antonio came in fourth place for communities with populations of more than 300,000.

For communities with populations between 100,000 to 300,000 people-the category that The Woodlands won-Longview, in the northeast corner of the state, placed 11th.

National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnerships to make communities safer. Organizers say nationwide 38.6 million people participated in National Night Out in 2017.

"It's a party with an important purpose," said Matt Peskin, national project coordinator, in New Spirit, the official publication of the National Association of Town Watch. "On (National Night Out), neighbors and local law enforcement meet, greet, eat and solidify their partnerships."

The Woodlands supports National Night Out through its neighborhood watch program by helping residents to host National Night Out parties, hosting the Community Safety Expo and hosting public safety open houses.

As for next year's participation, Leck is expecting The Woodlands to do well again, but was not willing to make any predictions.

"I'm not jinxing anything," she said.
Former Harris County state district judge Ryan Patrick has been confirmed as the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, which handles one of the busiest criminal dockets in the nation.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Patrick, long considered a front-runner for the seat formerly held by Ken Magidson. He is the son of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a vocal figure on a number of conservative causes.

Patrick declined to comment until President Donald Trump signs his commission. He could be sworn in the next week and a formal investiture ceremony will take place within months.

"Ryan Patrick's record shows a dedication to public service and respect for the rule of law," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement. "I proudly recommended him to the president, and I know he will continue to serve Texas well in this new capacity."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in the same news release that Patrick would do an excellent job in the position.

"He has a distinguished career as a former prosecutor and judge, and I am confident he will continue to honorably serve and protect the people of Texas in this new role."

MORE ON PATRICK: 10 things to know about Ryan Patrick

Patrick, 38, has spent the past year running his own law firm and doing criminal defense work as senior counsel for HooverSlovacek, LLC. He was a district court judge between 2012 and 2016, and before that served as an assistant district attorney in Harris County.

He lives with his wife and three children in Houston.

The Southern District of Texas stretches from the Louisiana border through Houston, Galveston, and Corpus Christi to Laredo. The district sees a massive influx of immigration, drug and human trafficking cases and oversees expansive Medicare fraud and white-collar investigations.

Gabrielle Banks covers federal court for the Houston Chronicle. Send her tips at gabrielle.banks@chron.com and follow her on Twitter.
Houston police are asking the public's help in identifying a man believed to be behind a spree of robberies near the Downtown area.

Authorities said the male suspect is responsible for at least 16 robberies, mostly in west Houston and Montrose.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A Cypress man is missing after purchasing a vehicle in Tyler and police are asking Texas residents for information that could help locate him.

Alberto Arias was last seen purchasing a 2005 white Ford Expedition in Tyler on Dec. 13. His wife Bianca Arias said she expected him to come back home that night but he never showed up.

SHOCKING: Suspect arrested in connection to abduction of baby, slaying of her mother

"He said I'm just going to go see this car, I'm going to be right back," Bianca Arias told Chron.com. "We weren't fighting, we weren't mad at each other."

Bianca Arias doesn't know how her husband found out about the Ford Expedition but said he often bought cars and resold them.

She tried calling him around 8 p.m. the day he bought the vehicle but he didn't answer. Bianca Arias stayed up until midnight that night but her husband still didn't arrive. By 6 a.m. the next day, she called family members, asked if they had seen or heard from him.

Now Playing: 06:00:00 Video: Fox10Phoenix

"I called the man who sold him the car and he told me that my husband made it to Tyler. He said they ate and then he left and he was on the way to Houston," Bianca Arias said.

Bianca Arias visited hospitals and other businesses in Tyler and the surrounding areas on Dec. 14 searching for her husband.

DEADLY: A 17-year-old YouTube star insulted a notorious drug lord. He was found with at least 15 bullet wounds.

By Saturday, she reported her husband missing to the Tyler Police Department. At 11:15 p.m. that same day, Tyler police spokesman Don Martin said the department received a call from the Waskom Police Department near the Texas - Louisiana border.

Alberto Arias' Expedition was found in the parking lot of David Beard's Catfish Village, a restaurant near Interstate 20. Waskom is about 75 miles east of Tyler and about 230 miles northeast of Cypress.

"There's a service station that had a burglar alarm Sunday night and we were checking the area for suspicious vehicles," Waskom Police Chief Westy Meisenheimer said. "We ran the tags on the vehicle and everything came back good on it."

Martin said investigators in Waskom processed the Expedition but there was "nothing in there to indicate there was foul play, no blood." Police in Tyler and Waskom do not know happened to Arias or why his vehicle was found that far east.

Meisenheimer said Waskom police have searched the area for Alberto Arias but haven't come across anything to suggest that he was in the area or that anything was stolen from the service station.

"At this point we have nothing in this case. We don't know about his whereabouts since the day he picked up the vehicle in Tyler," Martin said.

HAVE YOU SEEN HER?: Missing teen last seen at HISD middle school

"It is a mystery at this point. We're certainly keeping our eyes and ears open," Meisenheimer said.

Bianca Arias said she and members of her church are going to Waskom on Friday and Tyler on Saturday to distribute posters about her missing husband.

"I hope to find him, I just want to have him," Bianca Arias said. "I want to show my kids I did everything to find him. I just have to keep praying and hope that we find him."

Anyone who has information about Arias' whereabouts should call Tyler police at 903-531-1000.

Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

What Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter found in a home Dec. 13 would become the most disturbing case of animal abuse he has seen in 32 years.

Two people found the carcasses of 16 dogs caged in a Midland home on East County Road 144 while serving a foreclosure notice, Painter told Chron.com Thursday morning.

The home once belonged to Carly Jo Underwood, 29, who was arrested Wednesday at 1:15 p.m. after getting off a flight from Nevada at Midland International Airport. She faces 16 counts of animal cruelty-torture, each of which carries a maximum two-year prison sentence, Painter said.

JAIL TIME: Fort Worth man sentenced to one year in jail for animal abuse

"This is the worst case I've ever seen," said Painter, who has been sheriff since 1985. "The stench from the feces was horrible. They were just bones and hair."

Now Playing: The Harris County Constable's office is investigating three cases of animal abuse after three dogs with severe cases of mange were dropped off at the Harris County Animal Shelter Monday. Video: Harris County Animal Shelter Volunteers

The last time Underwood had been seen at the house was eight months ago, Painter said.

Underwood was once a board member for Dust Bowl Animal Rescue. She resigned in November 2016.

"Her home was foreclosed on, apparently at some point she left. Not only her house and belongings but her animals," Mesha Randolph, president Of Dust Bowl Animal Rescue, told everythinglubbock.com.

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.


A long-time trustee for the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District who is also running to be a Guadalupe County justice of the peace said he was acting in self-defense during an alleged altercation with his adult stepson that led to his arrest.

Gary W. Inmon, 50, was charged Wednesday with assaulting a family member and impeding breath, according to Guadalupe County records.

RELATED: At least 5 former and current Texas lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct

The Schertz Police Department said officers were called to a home in the 400 block of Frank Baum Drive around 5:30 p.m., for a reported disturbance. Police determined that Inmon had assaulted the caller but that no weapons were involved, officials said.

Now Playing: This is Track Palins second arrest related to domestic violence. Video: Fortune

Inmon said by email that he acted "completely in self defense" to protect himself and his 8-year-old son from his stepson, who he said had a criminal record. He said the incident occurred after he brought his son home from baseball practice.

"My 21 year old stepson, who's had a long history of behavioral issues and is currently on probation for conviction of felony assault of a female, verbally and physically attacked me," Inmon said. "He appeared to be 'high on something' and I had no choice but to protect myself and my little boy as anyone in my situation would have done."

Inmon said he told his stepson he was going to call the police, which would likely result in the revocation of his stepson's probation, but that his stepson said "I'll show you" and called authorities first, reporting that Inmon assaulted him.

"I've never attacked or hit anyone in my life," Inmon said in the email, adding that he has no plans to resign from the school board.

Inmon identified his stepson as Mark James Morgan. Court records indicate that Morgan was sentenced to probation in March 2016 after being arrested on Jan. 1, 2016 for assaulting a family or household member and impeding breath or circulation.

The case originated in California and was transferred to Texas, Inmon said. Online records indicate that a case was opened against Morgan in East County, California in February 2016, but contain no other details.

RELATED: Affidavit details evidence that led police to man who allegedly killed S.A. 3-year-old

Inmon's arrest comes on the heels of his reelection to a fifth consecutive term on the SCUC ISD board's Place 5 seat in November. A trustee since 2000, Inmon has served two stints as board president and two terms as vice president. In addition to his position on the school board, he is also currently running for Guadalupe County justice of the peace in Precinct 3.

In Nov. 2016, the State Bar of Texas suspended Inmon's law license for one year after determining that he had failed to communicate with a former client and return an advance payment made in a divorce case. After the client filed a complaint, Inmon said he immediately returned the $10,000 payment and paid $1,500 in legal fees.

While running for reelection to the SCUC board, Inmon called the situation a "private business dispute" and said he planned to open a law practice in Cibolo as soon as his suspension ended on Nov. 1. A profile of Inmon on the State Bar of Texas' website indicates he is operating a solo law firm, Inmon Law Office, focusing on probate and school law.

Staff researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report. | Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
Five-year-old TyLon Pittman was watching YouTube videos of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in his home in Mississippi when he suddenly became afraid.

He reached for the house phone and called 911 to report an urgent tip.

"I just want to tell you something. Watch for that little Grinch. Because the Grinch is gonna steal Christmas, OK?" TyLon said on the 911 call, which was posted on the Clarion-Ledger website.

The 911 dispatcher asked the child if he was home alone. His father quickly came to the phone and apologized for his son's call to the police in Byram, Miss.

"No, no it's fine," the 911 dispatcher said with a laugh. "He called in saying the Grinch was trying to steal his Christmas."

TyLon's brother and mother were out shopping when it happened and learned about it two hours later when there was a knock on the door about 9 p.m. Saturday.

TyLon's brother, TeDera Graves, a senior airman in the Air Force, answered the door and saw a police officer standing there.

"I cracked the door and saw the uniform, and she explained to me, 'I'm looking for a little boy who was watching the Grinch?' " said Graves, 25. "We called him out and he explained to her what happened."

The officer, Lauren Develle, told Graves that normally police don't respond to these kinds of calls. Graves grabbed his phone and started recording as the officer told TyLon that she'd protect him from the Grinch.

"She said she thought it was the cutest thing," Graves said. "She wanted to pay him a visit to let him know his Christmas will be safe."

Then the police department took it a step further.

They invited TyLon and his family to tour the police station on Monday. When the 5-year-old arrived, they surprised him with a real-life Grinch (really someone dressed in a Grinch costume) who was in a police car. They told TyLon to lock him up.

TyLon took the Grinch by his hand and put him in a holding cell and locked the door. The boy then reluctantly let him out, and the Grinch commended TyLon on his bravery.

Graves said that even before this happened, TyLon wanted to be a police officer, and now he does even more. Graves described his brother as an outgoing kindergartner who regularly makes his family laugh.

Graves said his family has enjoyed the attention the 911 call has brought and thinks the whole episode is pretty amusing.

"We thought it was funny; we were shocked he actually did it," Graves said. "But we had a talk with him about when it's OK to call 911."
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - A three-judge panel declined to certify the recount of a key House race today, saying that a questionable ballot should be counted in favor of the Republican and tying a race that Democrats had thought they had won by a single vote.

"The court declares there is no winner in this election," said Newport News Circuit Court Judge Bryant Sugg, after the judges deliberated for more than two hours.

He said the ballot in question contained a mark for Democrat Shelly Simonds as well as a mark for Republican Del. David Yancey but that the voter had made another mark to strike out Simonds' name.

Election officials presiding over the five-hour recount on Tuesday had discarded that ballot. But Republicans challenged that decision in court Wednesday, saying the voter had selected every other Republican on the ballot and intended to vote for Yancey.

More Information Additional votesfall short for Moore Republican Roy Moore hasn't conceded his 20,000-vote loss to Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama's Senate race, and military and provisional vote totals announced Wednesday aren't enough for Moore to close the deficit. Jones beat Moore on Dec. 12 to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill announced that 366 military ballots were returned from overseas. He also said 4,967 provisional ballots were cast - well short of the 20,000-vote deficit that Moore would need to close the gap. Associated Press See More Collapse

The court's decision leaves the race for the 94th District tied at 11,608 votes each for Yancey and Simonds. And it leaves the balance of power in the state legislature at 49-51, in favor of Republicans - at least for now.

In the case of a tie in a House race, state law says the winner is chosen by lot - essentially, a coin toss.

James Alcorn, the chairman of the state board of elections, said the winner will likely be chosen by drawing a name out of a glass bowl. He said he is conferring with staff to figure out the date and method.

But it doesn't end there. If the loser of the coin toss is unhappy with that result, he or she can seek a second recount.

News of the court decision pulsed through political circles that, just a day before, had been roiled by the notion that Simonds had taken the seat from Yancey by a single vote in the recount, ending 17 years of Republican control of the lower chamber.

As he was leaving the courthouse Wednesday, Yancey said "the ruling today makes certain every vote in this historic election was counted."

Republican leaders said they became aware of the suspect ballot after the recount had been completed Tuesday - and after both Republican and Democratic observers signed off on the process, and Republicans congratulated Simonds.

"During the recount, election officials were presented with an overvote," said a statement from House GOP leaders Kirk Cox, Tim Hugo and Nick Rush. "One Republican official, and a recount observer, believed at the time the ballot was a clear vote for Delegate David Yancey. However, a Democratic official persuaded the Republican official to not count the ballot. This morning, the Republican official wrote a letter to the recount court explaining that he made the wrong decision yesterday, and that he believes the ballot should count for Delegate Yancey."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON  Amid a wave sexual harassment allegations and settlements involving powerful men, a pair of lawmakers, one from Texas, are pushing legislation to hold lawmakers, not their constituents, responsible for victim payouts.

Republican Pete Olson of Sugar Land teamed up with New York Republican Elise Stefanik Wednesday to introduced legislation ensuring that victims of harassment on Capitol Hill receive just compensation for their suffering, but at the hands of the offenders, not at taxpayer expense.

The Responsible Settlements for Victims and Taxpayers Act would require that lawmakers found guilty of harassment reimburse the government for settlements paid out to victims. For lawmakers who resign or retire, it would allow the government to dip into their retirement accounts.

The legislation comes as congressional officials disclosed that taxpayers were on the hook for $174,000 in 15 settlements involving harassment or discrimination claims against House offices between 2008 and 2012.

That disclosure follows revelations that Corpus Christi Republican Blake Farenthold used $84,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a 2014 sexual harassment suit brought by a former spokeswoman in his congressional office. Farenthold denied any wrongdoing, but has agreed to repay the government.

He also has announced that he will not seek re-election.

Another lawmaker, longtime Michigan Democrat John Conyers, reportedly used $27,000 in office funds settle a complaint in 2015 from a woman who alleged she was fired from his Washington staff because she rejected his sexual advances.

Olson's bill would codify repayments from lawmakers' personal funds, rather than their office or government accounts.

"Recent reports of harassment coming out of Capitol Hill are disgusting and wrong on every level," Olson said. "The notion that any claims of harassment have been settled at taxpayer expense is simply indefensible."
A Houston ISD trusteen has sued the Harris County Democratic Party for rejecting her application to run for a Harris County justice of the peace seat in the March primary.

District VIII Trustee Diana Davila said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in state district court that her application to run for justice of the peace Precinct 6, Place 2 in the March primary election was inappropriately rejected by the Democratic Party.

The lawsuit states that Davila had submitted a petition containing 310 signatures that would qualify her to be on the ballot, but had omitted printing the name of the person circulating the petition on one line in the petition.

The name appeared elsewhere on the page and the petition was signed and notarized.

"The only thing that 's important is that this person signed their name before a notary," said Davila's attorney Keith Gross.

The lawsuit states that despite that omission, Davila should be allowed to run in the primary. She would face one challenger in the primary election, Angela Rodriguez.

The case would need to be resolved by Jan. 2 when the county clerk begins the election process, Gross said.

Davila's challenge comes as races heat up for the November 2018 election, and legal challenges to primary ballot listings emerge. The Republican Party of Texas sued the secretary of state last week to keep U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold off of the 2018 ballot after the congressman accused of sexual harassment said he will not seek reelection.

In a statement sent through a spokesman, the Harris County Democratic Party stated that Davila's opponent filed a complaint with the party about Davila's paperwork. The party then followed up on the complaint and rejected Davila's application because "the challenge appeared to be well founded."

"Should the courts determine this candidate is entitled to be on the ballot the Harris County Democratic Party will welcome her as a candidate in the Democratic primary, and should she succeed there, as the party's nominee in the general election," the statement reads.

The party sought guidance from the secretary of state before rejecting Davila's application.

"This dispute is primarily between the two candidates and the party has no preference, one way or the other, for which party wins in the lawsuit or in the primary election," the statement reads.
AUSTIN  An agreement has been reached with federal officials to provide more than $25 billion over the next five years to fund uninsured patients at Texas hospitals, state officials announced Thursday.

Gov. Greg Abbott said the deal that averts a potential health care crisis in the state will extend the life of the so-called "1115 waiver"  a program that safety-net hospitals have relied on for years to serve poor Texans  for another five years.

Medicaid is the largest single item in Texas' state budget.

"I committed to the people of Texas that we would focus on preserving access to care without expanding a broken Medicaid system under Obamacare," Abbott said in a statement. "The new ... waiver ensures that funding will remain available for hospitals to treat and serve people across our state who are in need of top quality health care."

Earlier, federal officials under the Obama administration had indicated a reluctance to continue funding for the program and had suggested that low-income Texans should instead get more health coverage under an expanded Medicaid program.

Texas' extension was slated to expire Dec. 31, officials had said earlier.

Texas Health and Human Service Executive Commissioner Charles Smith and various advocacy and support groups quickly applauded Thursday's announcement.

"With this agreement, we will continue our innovative approach to providing health care to millions of Texas Medicaid clients," Smith said.

State officials said the waiver pays uncompensated care for Texas hospitals and other Medicaid providers at about $3.1 billion each year for the first and second year of the five-year agreement. They said the continued waiver will provide much-needed assistance to safety net hospital providers.

Under the new agreement, officials said the state will transition in three years to a new method of distributing payments to hospitals for the uncompensated care -- a move they said will "provide a more accurate calculation of Texas' uncompensated care costs."

The extension of the waiver will also allow adequate opportunity to expand supplemental payments for nursing facilities and new directed payment programs for hospitals, they said.

"The funds that the waiver provides are vital to hospitals like children's hospitals who are heavily dependent on Medicaid funding," said Stacy Wilson, president of the Children's Hospital Association of Texas. "We look forward to continuing to work with the state on implementing the extended waiver in a way that benefits Texas children who rely on Medicaid."
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.
We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message.
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
AKRON, Ohio - Summit County has joined with Summit County Public Health, the city of Akron and a number of other cities, towns and communities to sue 11 manufacturers and three distributors of prescription opioid products.

The lawsuit accuses drug makers and distributors of repeatedly lying to doctors and engaging in deceptive practices to sell more drugs.

Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro announced the lawsuit at a press conference on Thursday surrounded by representatives from the communities and the public health department,

Shapiro had declared a county state of emergency in October because of the opioid epidemic. She says that Summit County has spent nearly $66 million addressing drug opioid-related issues during the past five years. Shapiro said the county will divert $150 million from other programs over the next 10 years to keep up with the costs of the epidemic.

While no dollar figure is named in the suit, the plaintiffs seek restorative and injunctive relief to prevent the companies named in the suit from "continuing these dangerous and destructive practices."

"It is incumbent on us now to hold the 11 manufacturers and three distributors responsible for the role they played in causing such a loss of time, talent and treasure from Summit County," Shapiro said, referring to Summit County overdose deaths. "While we can never put a dollar amount on the lives we lost we must ask the court to evaluate this the crisis and impose restorative justice. "

The plaintiffs are working on the lawsuit with Brennan, Manna & Diamond LLC and Motley Rice LLC, which has represented other states and the city of Chicago in similar suits. The firms are working at no upfront cost to taxpayers, but would receive 25 percent of award from the lawsuit.

Among many assertions in the 140-page suit, the manufacturers are accused of telling a series of lies to physicians to change the way opioids are viewed to sell more drugs.

The suit asserts manufacturers told doctors that the highly addictive drugs are not addictive when used for short- or long-term pain control, and that people who seemed addicted were not, but just needed more drugs. The suit also says drug makers told doctors they could use "screening tools" to determine which patients were most likely to become addicted.

The suit accuses the following manufacturers of "unfairly, deceptively and fraudulently marketing and promoting opioids:"

Purdue Pharma L.P.

Purdue Pharma Inc.

Purdue Frederick Company Inc.

Teva Pharmaceuticals USA

Cephalon Inc.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Inc.

Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc.

Endo Health Solutions Inc.

Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Insys Therapeutics Inc.

The suit accuses three distributors of providing the drugs in quantities that were far greater than a "legitimate market" and asserts they "ignored red flags of suspicious orders" to benefit financially. They also did not report suspicious buying patterns, which is their duty, the suit alleges. The distributors named in the suit are:

McKesson Corporation

AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation

Cardinal Health Inc.

According to the complaint, through their actions, both distributor and manufacturers:

Created a public nuisance;

Violated the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices and Deceptive Trade Practices Acts;

Acted in gross negligence;

Violated the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act; and

Created injury through their actions.

According to the Summit County executive's office, more people died in Summit County from drug overdoses in 2015 and 2016 than in the entire decade of 2000 to 2009. Fatal heroin overdoses in Summit County have increased from in 153 in 2015 to 225 in 2016.

The Summit County Medical Examiner's office has seen a 209 percent increase in the number of overdose deaths. Earlier this year, a "mobile morgue unit" was used five times, which doubled the number of bodies that could be held.

You can read the complaint here.

In addition to Summit County, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are: Summit County Public Health, the City of Akron, the City of Barberton, the Village of Boston Heights, Boston Township, the Village of Clinton, Copley Township, Coventry Township, the City of Cuyahoga Falls, the City of Fairlawn, the City of Green, the Village of Lakemore, the Village of Mogadore, the City of Munroe Falls, the City of Norton, the Village of Peninsula, the Village of Richfield, the Village of Silver Lake, Springfield Township, the City of Stow, the City of Tallmadge and Valley Fire District.

Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.
BROOK PARK, Ohio -- Brook Park Mayor Tom Coyne participated in his final city council meeting Dec. 19, speaking at length about his political career, personal past and possible future role in assisting President Donald Trump.

Prior to providing his report to council, Coyne was serenaded to the tune of "My Way." He received a plaque denoting his 24 years of total mayoral service and for being the longest serving mayor in the city's history. Coyne originally departed as mayor in 2002, and voters returned him to office in 2014.

The Frank Sinatra song "reflects most of my life, to say the least," Coyne said. He called a 2001 land agreement reached with former Cleveland Mayor Michael White in regard to airport expansion one of his proudest moments. Coyne said many people believe that was "the most amazing accomplishment by a public official in this county."

"It was one certainly that was controversial," Coyne said, noting only his finance director supported him at the time. "Today that single agreement is what sustains this community in keeping its head above water. Without it, the way we live our lives in Brook Park would be drastically different."

He recalled how he persevered over past addiction problems after completing a stint in the Betty Ford Center several years ago.

"I got down on my knees and said if I got my life back together, and my business and career back together, I would give back to those folks who gave to me," Coyne explained. "And I did that with my family and with the city of Brook Park."

He later mentioned a possible future role with President Trump.

"Tom Coyne's time as mayor is done," Coyne emphasized. "I believe that the President is considering me for something. What I'd really like to do is help him provide a program to the nation that will put a lot of people to work in the infrastructure. While I couldn't finish rebuilding a great American city, I can help the President, who I believe still has the greatest domestic program, to make this country greater than it's ever been."
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Located in a tiny strip-mall on Memphis Avenue, Aldo's isn't the kind of restaurant that makes you stop and take notice from the outside.

Step inside, and it's another story. The aromas and warm, welcoming atmosphere will instantly win you over. And that's before you even try Aldo's fantastic, wide-ranging Italian menu.

Opened more than two decades ago by the late Aldo Zappa , the cozy Brooklyn spot is one of the most authentic Italian restaurants in town. Zappa, a native of Roccaraso in Italys mountainous Abruzzo region, brought to town a diverse menu that ranges from his native region to classic southern Italian fare, pizzas and their specialty, seafood.

I visited on a Friday night with my 10-year-old-daugther, sister visiting from out of town and my 7- and 5-year old nephews. Despite its small size and no official kids menu, Aldos is a truly family-friendly restaurant. Diners of all ages are welcomed like long-lost family members, whether its your first or 100th visit (and Aldos does inspire that kind of loyalty).

It wasn't our first visit; we had been to Aldo's many times with my parents growing up and it was one of very few restaurants my Italian grandmother liked. It was however, our children's' first time at Aldo's.

There was a brief wait in the corridor when we arrived despite a reservation- not unusual in this tight space. Noticing our young diners getting restless we were immediately served a complimentary bruschetta and their drink and dinner order were taken as soon as we sat down, allowing us adults to peruse the menu and small but impressive wine list in peace.

We also opted for a more "adult" appetizer, too: the very spicy and wonderfully flavorful Baked Hot Peppers with Hot Sausage ($10.95). It was a kicky start to a relaxed meal. Every table in Aldo's was filled the 90 minutes we were there, and yet service was prompt, friendly and all questions answered knowledgably.

The kids' entrees came first. There is plenty for young diners to like here, without being pandered to with nuggets and fries. My one nephew tried the 8-inch pepperoni and sausage pizza ($8), a well-made pie with a firm homemade crust and zesty sauce. The 5-year-old, meanwhile, went basic with a simple rigatoni in marinara meal (there are several choose-your-noodles-and-sauce options here). A really good Italian restaurant can make even this simplest meal a stand-out, and Aldo's did ($11.95). My daughter went with a white sauce, the rich and creamy angel hair alfredo ($11.95). I usually find alfredo too bland, but Aldo's a had a nice sharp Parmesan flavor amidst the creaminess.

Our entrees were a little more sophisticated. Aldo's has a wonderful way with seafood and has become known for its fresh options. My sauteed scampi over seashells in a white clam sauce ($26.95) was wonderful - the scampi were huge and plump, the shells perfectly al dente and the sauce surprisingy light as it balanced clam and lemon flavor. Other recommended seafood entrees include the zuppa di pesce (seasoned seafood broth) and mussels and calamari over angel hair.

My sister decided to go more old school with her entree, choosing the eggplant Parmigiana ($16.95) from among the chicken cacciatore, veal scaloppini, chicken Marsala and other classics. It was a nicely done version, with the sharp eggplant complemented by the creamy tomato sauce and rich cheese, served in firm layers.

We really didn't "need" to eat dessert, but the options were so tempting - we couldn't help but notice during the three impromptu happy birthday sing-alongs that broke out during the evening - that we ordered one to share. The Neapolitan cake - fluffy yellow cake stuffed with ice cream and topped with drizzled chocolate was a refreshing closer.

Aldo's is decorated with photos of the Zappa family's native Italy, including their native Abruzzo region. Earlier this year, I spent some time in Abruzzo (where, coincidentally, I met a culinary school classmate of Aldo). And though this simple suburban location looks nothing like the tiny ristorantes in centuries-old buildings on mountains streets we ate at back there, Aldo's cuisine is as good as anything we had in Italy. Better than some places, actually.

Address: 8459 Memphis Ave, Brooklyn

Phone: 216-749-7060

Hours: 4 - 9:30 pm Tuesday; 11:30 a.m. - 10 p.m. Wed. - Fri.; 4 - 11 p.m. Saturday; 4 - 9 p.m. Sunday.

Prices: Entrees, $11.95 - $26.95; Appetizers and pizzas, $8 - $10.95.

Reservations: Recommended

Credit cards: All major.

Cuisine: Italian.

Bar service: Nice wine list.

Cleanliness: Very clean.

Kids: No kids menu, but children will like much of the menu.

Quality of service: Warm and welcoming.

Accessibility: Fully accessible.

Rating: * * *

Updated August 2019
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Just imagine being a beautiful tuxedo cat about 9 months old, being stuffed into a box with another cat and left at the Parma mall. Somebody finds the box with two cats in it and takes the box to the shelter in Parma.

After sitting in a shelter cage for three months, the tuxedo cat was deemed unadoptable because of a wound between her shoulder blades that would not heal. Because of her sweet personality, a foster mom named Loretta took her home. Loretta took her to Just Cats hospital to see what could be done with the wound.

Dr. Jessi Pizzuli discovered that the wound was a rare skin condition that she had not seen before. After some research, she decided to try some surgery to reduce the size of this wound. That helped a lot, but not completely. That is where I came into the picture.

My beautiful and charming Siamese cat named Blue had died at the end of last January after a long illness. This veterinarian office was so kind during Blue's illness that I presented them with some flowers on Valentine's Day. Then they said they had a gift for me, too. They said, "We know that it is a little soon after Blue's death." But they thought I needed her. Then a tuxedo cat ran across the floor and curled up around my feet. I just looked down and said I guess I'd better get my carrier.

I was given some special honey and told how to care for the cat's wound and sent home. I named her Jessy. It took three months to heal and she is beautiful. She's the most loving and sweet cat. We are best buddies and friends. I am so glad we met.

Thon Alicia-Burlingame

Cleveland Heights

Do you share your life with an animal that is near and dear to you? Tell us something about your pet - all species are welcome - and send along a photo of the two of you. Be sure to tell us which Greater Cleveland community you live in. Send everything to Linda Kinsey at lkinsey@cleveland.com.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Five men are charged in connection with an afternoon shootout at a Cleveland gas station that ended with two of the shooters wounded and a 7-year-old girl grazed in the hand by a stray bullet.

Eddie Johnson, 18, Stefone Black, 27, and Steve Stewart, 30, are all charged with aggravated robbery and felonious assault in connection with the Tuesday gunfight in Collinwood's Waterloo arts district. Johnson is a suspected member of the East 105 gang in Glenville, according to Cleveland City Councilman Mike Polensek.

They are accused of trying to rob Deangelo Billingsley, 26, and his friend, Clarence Moore, 25. Billingsley is charged with drug trafficking and tampering with evidence as police believe he is a drug dealer. Moore is charged with possessing a gun despite having a felony record.

All five are expected to make their first court appearances on Friday.

The shooting happened about 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Sunoco gas station on East 156th Street and Waterloo Road.

Johnson, Black and Stewart met up prior to the robbery at a nearby home.

Johnson and Stewart walked to the gas station, and Black drove his car and parked behind the business, police reports say.

A few minutes later, Billingsley drove his car to the gas station with Moore in the passenger seat and parked at a gas pump. He walked into the gas station, bought some items and walked out.

Stewart grabbed Billingsley, pointed a gun at him and shoved him up against his car, according to police reports.

Johnson also ran up to the car, along with Black, who was toting an AK-47, police reports say.

Black yanked open the passenger door and Moore immediately shot Black in the stomach, police reports say. Black dropped the AK-47 as he fell to the ground. He fired at Moore, shooting him once in the face, court records say.

Stewart then used Billingsley as a human shield and fired shots at Moore, according to police.

Moore suffered several gunshot wounds in the back and mouth, police reports say. He got out of the car, picked up the AK-47 and fired several shots with his handgun as he ran from the gas station, police reports say.

Moore dropped the AK-47 behind the Sunoco and left a trail of blood as he ran to another gas station a block away, police said. He collapsed inside that gas station with his handgun tucked into the back of his waistband. He was taken to University Hospitals for treatment.

Back at the Sunoco, Stewart shoved Billingsley to the ground, police reports say. He and Johnson unloaded dozens of gunshots as Billingsley crawled through the lot, police reports say.

None of the bullets struck him as he ran away, police reports say.

Johnson ran up to Billingsley's car parked at the pump and rummaged through it, police reports say. Police are unsure if anything was stolen.

As the bullets flew, two rounds ripped through a customer's car. One grazed the 7-year-old girl's middle finger while she sat in her father's car.

Johnson ran off and Stewart drove Black to the Cleveland Clinic for treatment.

Billingsley later returned, got in his car and sped off, police reports say.

A few minutes later, a man who did not take part in the shooting pulled into the parking lot, spotted the AK-47, put it in his car and sped away, police reports say.

Johnson was arrested shortly after on East 156th Street. Black and Stewart were arrested at the hospital. Billingsley was arrested Wednesday during a traffic stop, court records say.

Police stopped his car and learned the car was connected to the shooting, court records say. Officers found heroin, crack, Ecstasy pills and suspected drug money in the car, according to court records. Investigators also seized his cellphone.

All five have felony records, including Black, who is a registered sex offender stemming from a 2014 conviction in which he forced a woman to perform a sex act on him at gunpoint.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 34-year-old Cleveland mother is charged in the death of her 5-year-old son, whose remains investigators found buried in the backyard of their Detroit-Shoreway home.

Larissa Rodriguez was charged Thursday with murder in the death of her son Jordan, who had developmentally disabilities and was unable to speak. She will likely make her first court appearance on Friday.

Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said that investigators will seek additional charges, including felonious assault, when the case is presented to a Cuyahoga County grand jury.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner has not yet officially identified Jordan as the body found Tuesday by the FBI and medical examiner investigators. They have also not determined a cause of death. But court records say the body belonged to Jordan, and that his body had several broken ribs and showed signs of abuse.

Investigators believe she killed Jordan sometime around Sept. 22, according to court records.

Larissa Rodriguez admitted to burying the child and, after initially lying to police, gave the FBI and medical examiner the exact location of where she buried Jordan, according to court records.

Larissa Rodriguez is in the Cleveland City Jail awaiting her first court appearance after her Monday arrest.

In a rare move, Cleveland police asked a judge on Tuesday evening to find probable cause to continue holding her in the city jail past the 48-hour limit for suspects to be held in jail without formal criminal charges. Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine approved the request.

Larissa Rodriguez is accused of killing Jordan and burying his body in the backyard of their home on West 80th Street, between Detroit and Lake avenues. The FBI and Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner unearthed Jordan's body Tuesday after three hours of digging.

Jordan's disappearance went unknown until the brother of Larissa Rodriguez's boyfriend, Christopher Rodriguez's, called Cleveland police from Pakistan, police said.

Christopher Rodriguez is serving a six-month sentence in the Medina County Jail for failing to pay child support. He has not been charged in Jordan's death, but police are still investigating his involvement. His sentence in Medina County Jail will be finished April 18, 2018.

He told police that Christopher Rodriguez called him from jail and told him that Christopher and Larissa both buried the child in the backyard of the home two months ago after finding him unresponsive, according to police reports.

Larissa Rodriguez told police that her son went to Houston, Texas to visit his biological father, police reports say.

She told police that the boy's aunt picked him up on Dec. 2. She was unable to provide contact information for the boy's biological father or the aunt, police reports say.

She also was unable to provide any other information about her son, police reports say.

Police used a cadaver dog to search the backyard of the home Monday, but found nothing. Investigators conducted interviews and got more information about the whereabouts of Jordan's body. The FBI and medical examiner helped dig for the body.

Larissa Rodriguez is a mother of nine children and is pregnant with her 10th child. Social workers noted in court records that her home was in "deplorable and unsanitary conditions," the court records say.

The home was infested with rats and cockroaches, court records say. A social worker noted that one of the children inside the home was eating a cockroach-filled sandwich when they arrived.

The four children who lived at the home were taken into emergency custody by the Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services. Two of Larissa's other children were taken by the county years ago and another lives with their father, a county spokeswoman said.

Social workers opened 13 neglect or abuse investigations in Rodriguez since 1999. The latest was in December 2016. That case was closed in February.

To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
WASHINGTON, D. C. - Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants Congress to kick off the New Year by taking action protecting a group of undocumented immigrants known as "Dreamers" who were brought to the United States as children.

On Wednesday, Kasich joined a bipartisan group of 11 governors in writing a letter that urged Republican and Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate to "support these young American immigrants by quickly sending a signal that we want them to continue to play a productive role in our communities."

11 bipartisan governors once again come together, this time urging Congress to take immediate action on behalf of Dreamers. Read the whole letter here: https://t.co/IRVbrbAI8M pic.twitter.com/rfS4wdbLX4  John Kasich (@JohnKasich) December 20, 2017

In September, President Donald Trump cancelled a program established by President Barack Obama that gave roughly 800,000 unauthorized immigrants who came to the United States before age 16 a chance to stay if they meet certain conditions, which include working toward or obtaining a high school degree or a GED, and avoiding a serious criminal conviction.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would wind down after six months to give Congress time to address the fate of the program's participants. He said the Department of Justice evaluated the policy's constitutionality and determined it conflicts with immigration laws.

The letter from Kasich and the other governors said that more than 12,000 dreamers lost their protected status and became subject to deportation after Trump cancelled the program, and roughly 100 more lose that status every day. Those numbers will rise dramatically without a legislative fix, they said.

"This is not a theoretical peril, but in fact an immediate and urgent one, because more than 100 young people in our cities and towns are losing their protective status every day," the letter said "Those numbers will accelerate dramatically without a legislative fix."

The letter noted that DACA recipients subjected themselves to extensive background and security checks so they could work and attend college in the United States. Without congressional action, it said hard-working, tax-paying DACA recipients may be deported from the only nation they have ever called home.

"We urge you to support these young American immigrants by quickly sending a signal that we want them to continue to play a productive role in our communities," it said. "As a bipartisan coalition of governors, we stand ready to help."

Other governors who signed the letter were Colorado's John Hickenlooper, Montana's Steve Bullock, Pennsylvania's Tom Wolf, Nevada's Brian Sandoval, Massachusetts' Charlie Baker, Vermont's Phil Scott, Minnesota's Mark Dayton, North Carolina's Roy Cooper and Wisconsin's and Scott Walker

On Wednesday, Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake posted on Twitter that a bipartisan bill to legalize DACA recipients will be considered on the U.S. Senate floor in January.

Bipartisan #DACA bill will be on the Senate floor in January.  Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) December 20, 2017

In a Tuesday interview on Fox News, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he expects the Senate will discuss the matter next year.

"The president has given us until March to address that issue," said McConnell. "We have plenty of time to do it."
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- Police say an armed man walked into a hospital Wednesday and immediately began firing, seriously wounding a security guard before taking his own life.

Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac tells the Cincinnati Enquirer the security officer at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center was hit in the shoulder. The unidentified officer's condition was not reported Wednesday night.

The shooting occurred in the psychiatric emergency services department in the hospital, according to WLWT Channel 5.

The gunman entered the building at about 2 p.m. and fired multiple shots. After wounding the security guard, the gunman shot himself. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

There were no reports of other injuries.

The security guard was not armed, the Enquirer reports, and no other officers fired any shots.

The entrance to the hospital has metal detectors and Isaac said security knew immediately that the suspect was armed.

Police are still trying to determine a motive for the shooting, reports say.

To comment on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments page.
In 2002, Alaina Buffalo Spirits only child, John Kalama, was murdered.

The grief almost overwhelmed her, but her grandchildren, then 8 and 10, kept her focused on survival. Keoni and Kahelelani became Buffalo Spirits entire life.

There was something else that also helped her through those troubling times  art.

One day I felt this twinge of loneliness. I sat down and started drawing. The loneliness subsided the longer I did the drawing. I realized that art is truly healing and it can help you through these feelings.

Buffalo Spirit, who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, had always doodled, but after her sons death she began painting, too. She began connecting with her heritage through ledger art.

When I saw ledger art, it drew me in because its so unique. Its a form of storytelling; thats what I like about it, she said.

Ledger art is dominated by male artists, and it often depicts wars and conflicts from the male prospective. It began in the 1860s when Cheyenne tribal members were jailed at Fort Marion, Florida. It was a woman who first snuck ledger paper and colored pencils to the imprisoned warriors so they could express themselves. Buffalo Spirit figured she should tell the story from a female prospective.

I started painting images of women and what they may have been doing. I have one of four women sitting inside a tepee making moccasins, shoes for the family. They were taking care of the children, taking care of the food and taking care of the medicine. That was my first one. I call it "Cheyenne Elegance" because women are not only elegant themselves, but they bring elegance to their families.

Female warriors

Buffalo Spirit was happy to tell the story of tribal women caring for their families, but she also wanted to feature female warriors, like Buffalo Calf Trail Woman who survived the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado Territory in 1864. During the massacre more than 50 women and children were killed by the U.S. Cavalry.

Buffalo Calf Trail Woman was a young girl at the time and her mother handed her a rifle and told her to run and hide. Like others, Buffalo Calf Trail Woman dug a hole to hide from the soldiers. She was one of the rare survivors.

She was adopted by a Cheyenne chief and trained to be a warrior woman, Buffalo Spirit said. She rode into battle with her husband. They think she rode into the Battle of the Little Big Horn. My mother told me that she heard she killed Custer.

Buffalo Calf Trail Woman had earlier saved her brother at the Rosebud Battle in Montana. Buffalo Spirit loved the story and the idea of a female warrior. Her ledger piece of Buffalo Calf Trail Woman is among her colorful ledger paintings and drawings. She exhibits and sells her work at Windy Flats Gallery in Nye, and at Montana cultural events, including the Montana Folk Festival in July in Butte.

In 2016, Buffalo Spirit traveled to Dieppe, France, to be part of the Indigenous People of the World Kite Fest. T.Z. Lee, who organized local kites for the festival, said Buffalo Spirit represented her tribe and Montana well. Montana stained glass artist, Angela Babby, represented her tribe, the Ogalala Lakota in France.

"She has a great presence about her. Alaina is a wonderful speaker and passionate activist," Lee said.

Buffalo Spirit is a self-taught artist who experiments with mixing paints and using colored pencils and ink to create an effect or set a mood. Buffalo Spirit changed her name from Medicine Bull after she found out that her great grandfathers name in the Cheyenne language meant Buffalo God. She chose Buffalo Spirit because it had the closest meaning to Buffalo God.

In 1935 when the U.S. Government wanted to enroll us to document our existence, whoever they used to translate our great grandfathers name was apparently not fluent in the translation of the Cheyenne names.

One of her ledger works honors her Northern Cheyenne homeland where she grew up along the Tongue River. The land was handed down from her grandparents Annie and Willis Medicine Bull for her family and descendants to enjoy. It is on that land where Buffalo Spirit conducts a tepee ceremony or peyote ceremony every June.

Other ledger pieces honor family members, including her granddaughter Kahelelani Kalama whose Cheyenne name is Otseeme, which means Brave Woman, and other women from the tribe. Buffalo Spirit also paints in flowers and other plants because the natural world is such a big part of her tribe.

'Art pulled me through'

One piece, Spirit Rider, shows a Cheyenne woman warrior and a riderless horse representing those who have left the physical world yet their spirit still rides the earth. Another work, We Are All Connected, was commissioned by Buffalo Spirits doctor at Billings Clinic.

He wanted an original titled, We Are All Connected to depict that we as people of all races are connected. The four colors around the sun show the four races that are connected, red, yellow, white and black.

The woman in the piece symbolizes life.

Without a woman, there is no life, Buffalo Spirit said.

It took four years after the death of her son for Buffalo Spirit to start appreciating life.

I started looking around and seeing the green grass and the flowers, she said.

Lupine flowers, echinacea plants and native grasses started being included in her paintings. Friends have helped her along the way, helping to find old maps and ledger paper. She recently acquired an antique Lewis and Clark map from the 1800s. In 2016, Buffalo Spirit got the opportunity to design a Cheyenne themed kite and travel to France as part of a project to highlight Indigenous artwork.

She often thinks of her son when she paints, thanking him for the gift of her grandchildren.

They pulled me through that deep grief and the art pulled me through. I had no idea that painting could help me with my grief.

As Buffalo Spirit battles breast cancer, she looks again to her art as a way of dealing with lifes struggles.

Sometimes I feel that my art comes from the cosmos.
PHOENIX, Arizona -- A 69-year-old woman working as a volunteer at a pet boarding facility died Wednesday after she was attacked by a dog.

The unidentified woman was working at Canine Country Club and Feline Inn as part of a rescue group called Akita Advocates, the Arizona Republic reports.

"She was here potentially to socialize the animal to prepare it for adoption when the attack took place,'' Jose Santiago, a spokesman for Maricopa County Animal Care and Control, tells the Republic. "No one actually witnessed the attack.''

The dog involved in the attack was an Akita, a large breed that can grow to more than 2 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh more than 100 pounds.

According to Fox 10, the woman was found in the dog exercise area of the facility with dog-bite injuries. She was taken to the hospital but died of her injuries.

"Unbelievable," Greg Donahue, the owner of the facility, tells ABC 15. "It's so tragic; a lot of tears today. ... We've never had more than a nip. This is unbelievable -- just unbelievable."

The dog was taken by Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and reportedly will be euthanized Thursday by Akita Advocates.
State Rep. Larry Householder

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At a recent fundraiser, Republican State Rep. Dave Greenspan announced that because he had upset some within his party by picking sides in the next big intramural fight in the Ohio legislature, he likely will have a challenger in the GOP primary this May.

Greenspan, of Westlake, is a key supporter of Gallia County State Rep. Ryan Smith's behind-the-scenes campaign to become the next speaker of the Ohio House. But that has put Greenspan at odds with Tony George, a major political donor from Fairview Park who backs a different GOP speaker candidate, Perry County State Rep. Larry Householder.

Greenspan's likely challenger in District 16? George's wife, Kristine George, or so George said in an interview with cleveland.com earlier this month.

"She's going to run," George told cleveland.com at the time. George said he'd been making phone calls to "common friends" to let them know about her candidacy.

George was unavailable for an interview this week, but in a Wednesday text message, left open that perhaps someone else might emerge to run against Greenspan.

State Rep. Ryan Smith

"He is drawing a challenger," George said.

Regardless of how Greenspan's race shakes out, his situation illustrates how the jostling for House speaker, a position chosen by members of the party that controls the House, looms large over the still-forming races to fill legislative seats across the state. The current speaker, State Rep. Cliff Rosenberger, is barred by term limits from running for re-election.

The next House speaker will play a big role in working with Ohio's next governor -- current Gov. John Kaisch also is term-limited -- in shaping the state's future legislative agenda. So, allies of Householder and Smith are working to line up support from possible candidates across the state, as well as raising money from major donors to demonstrate their fundraising prowess to other members.

"I think the jockeying you're seeing now statewide and locally is going to shape what you have next year," said Jamie Callender, a former state representative from Lake County who is considering whether to run for the District 61 seat currently held by term-limited State Rep. Ron Young.

This work is taking place even though the speaker won't be selected until after the November 2018 general election, and the preparations assume that Republicans hold their majority in the Ohio House. Nonetheless, they are happening, and proxy fights could end up breaking out across the state leading up to the May primary.

In an interview, Greenspan said the possibility of a primary challenge is a fact of life for state legislators.

"We hope that we've earned the constituents' trust to be successful, and we will prepare to aggressively and vigorously defend the seat," he said.

House District 6

Another local race that offers perhaps a more typical preview of what to expect is Ohio House District 6, which includes Cuyahoga County's southern and eastern suburbs.

At least two Republicans have emerged as likely candidates to replace State Rep. Marlene Anielski, who is term-limited.

Michael Canty, the president and CEO of Alloy Bellows, a Highland Heights company that manufactures metal parts, has launched a campaign website for the seat, and said he plans to officially file soon.

While preparing to run, Canty lined up myriad endorsements, including ones from Rosenberger and Smith. Although he's never run for a high-profile elected office, Canty is active in local Republican Party circles, and previously served as mayor of Bentleyville, the tiny village in the eastern part of Cuyahoga County.

"Clearly, I'm realizing how caught up in the speaker's race this is," Canty said in an interview, "which is crazy to me as a businessman, since it's 10 months before the election."

Meanwhile, Jim Trakas, a former state representative and ex-leader of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party, is gearing up his own possible campaign for the seat though he was re-elected last month to Independence City Council.

In a recent interview, Trakas said only that he's "seriously considering" his own run, and downplayed the significance of the House speaker race.

"That part of it is not something I have discussed, and won't," Trakas said when asked who he would back for House speaker if he runs. "The key is to be a representative of the people, and not worry about the Columbus politics."

However, Smith allies see Trakas' job as a lobbyist for Altair Learning Management, a charter-school management company owned by Bill Lager, the founder of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, as evidence of an ideological alignment with Householder, who is an ECOT supporter.

Trakas also has a history with Householder, who is looking to serve a second term as House speaker. Trakas served as a state representative from 1999 through 2006 and spent time on Householder's leadership team.

A letter Canty wrote announcing his candidacy alludes to Trakas' connection with ECOT, and its ongoing fight with the state, which has said the school owes $60 million for misrepresenting its student enrollment.

"I am not running from one elected office to another. Nor am I involved with any lawsuits or ECOT scandals," Canty's letter reads.

House District 61

Callender, the former state representative from Lake County, said he hasn't backed anyone in the speaker's race, in part because some third candidate may end up emerging to win the job. He said he has, however, met with Householder recently as he decides whether to run, and called Householder a "friend."

"Regardless of who's running, I'm not going to make a commitment for the speaker's job until after the general [election]," said Callender, who served in the legislature from 1997 through 2004 and now runs an education-law consulting firm. "It's premature and counterproductive."

Meanwhile, recently re-elected Willoughby Hills Councilman John Plecnik said this week he is running for the seat with backing from Smith as well as from Young, the state representative who currently holds the seat.

"I'm very honored to have his [Smith's] support and his endorsement in running for state representative, and I certainly support and endorse him for speaker of the House," Plecnik said.

Plecnik is a law professor at Cleveland State University who previously clerked for a judge on the United States Tax Court. He has lived in Northeast Ohio since 2010, when he moved here to take the job at CSU.

"I really think the perspective of an educator in Columbus could be valuable, especially one who specializes in tax law," Plecnik said.

Cleveland.com reporter Jeremy Pelzer contributed to this story
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State began the Early Signing Period with the best recruiting class in the country according to 247Sports.com.

But after Emory Jones' decommitment and Jackson Carman's commitment to Clemson, Georgia has taken the top spot.

The Bulldogs landed three five-star prospects and got flips from two four-star corners to move closer to the Buckeyes.

But Georgia got yet another commitment later on Wednesday night when four-star linebacker Channing Tindall announced he was going to UGA.

BREAKING: #Dawgs land yet another big-time talent in four-star LB Channing Tindall. Beat Gamecocks, Auburn out for an @ArmyAllAmerican in Columbia, S.C. https://t.co/Y7mtXqeQue pic.twitter.com/OjrXyqR2d7  Kipp Adams (@KippLAdams) December 21, 2017

With Jaiden Woodbey flipping to Florida State, Ohio State fell even further behind Georgia. OSU was ranked behind Georgia before Woodbey made his announcement.

The Buckeyes are still comfortably ahead of Texas for the second spot.

Important to remember as well is that there is still a second signing period in February, which is the original National Signing Day. Considering Ohio State's average recruit score, getting another commit or two should be enough to take the top spot back.
SOLON, Ohio -- A Reminderville man led several police departments on a high-speed chase Saturday that ended in Macedonia.

Harry Klun, 46, is facing charges of fleeing and eluding, resisting an officer and speeding, police said. He could face additional charges in other police jurisdictions.

Solon police received a call about 3:30 a.m. from Twinsburg police who said Klun was headed into Solon, a news release says.

A Solon officer tried to stop a black car west on Ohio 43 near Clearwater Lane. The driver, later identified as Klun, did not stop and officers chased him until they reached Ohio 91 and Cannon Road, police said.

Officers later spotted Klun's car at a Shell station in Woodmere, police said.

He got gas, rammed into a police cruiser and drove off, police said.

Officers from Woodmere and Orange chased Klun for a short time before they brought the pursuit to an end.

Twinsburg and Reminderville police went to Klun's home, and a Solon officer spotted him again on Liberty Road south and chased him into Macedonia, police said.

Officers laid stop sticks across the road and Klun drove the disabled in the parking lot of the United Methodist Church.

The officers subdued Klun with a stun gun, pepper spray and a K-9 officer, police said.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section.
STRONGSVILLE, Ohio -- Strongsville police are searching for three men who made an unsuccessful attempt to rob a Jared Jewelers Wednesday night.

The robbery attempt happened about 7 p.m. at the store located on Royalton Road location near Howe Road, police said.

Witnesses said three men wearing hooded jackets with their faces covered came in the store with a gun and a sledgehammer, police said. They ran out of the store without taking anything.

Officers established a perimeter near the store and began a search with a K-9 officer. They were unable to locate the men.

Authorities found a sledgehammer near a dumpster behind the jewelry store, dispatch logs say.

A man called police and said he saw a white Chevrolet Impala with a scratched up left rear bumper pull out of the plaza by a nearby Chick-fil-A, the logs say. The restaurant is across the street from the jewelry store.

The car turned left to head east on Ohio 82. The man did not get a plate number.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call Strongsville police at 440-580-3230.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Three international cities, London, Paris and Montreal, are among the most-missed nonstop destinations from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, according to a survey of Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com readers.

Sunny San Diego and West Palm Beach, Florida, round out the top 5, with Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Portland, Maine, also receiving strong support.

Todd Payne, chief of air service development at Cleveland Hopkins, said the airport is working hard to convince airlines to fill some of these gaps in service.

"Ultimately, it is the airlines that choose where and when they fly and at what price they will offer airfares," said Payne, in an emailed statement. "The airport offers both landing fee waivers and marketing funds to the airlines as we are permitted by the FAA."

It's been nearly four years since United Airlines closed its hub in Cleveland, cutting dozens of nonstop destinations. Among the routes eliminated by United: service to Phoenix, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Hartford.

In many cases, other airlines have picked up the slack: Phoenix is now served by Frontier and Southwest; Las Vegas by Spirit, Frontier and Southwest; New Orleans by Spirit and Allegiant; Hartford by Delta.

Indeed, the total number of passengers using Cleveland Hopkins in 2017 may match or exceed the number in 2013, the year before United's downsizing, according to airport officials.

Still, many of United's nonstop destinations remain unfilled, including service to Montreal, Kansas City and Providence.

In a recent Call to Readers, we asked local travelers which routes they missed most. Nearly 1,500 readers weighed in.

Business travelers seem the most dissatisfied with the evolution of Cleveland's airport, where the price of flying to many destinations has plummeted as new airlines have entered the market.

"Being able to fly cheap to see Grandma in Florida is great, but as a business traveler, Hopkins has become a disaster with 90 percent of flights requiring a stop in Chicago or Denver," wrote one unhappy traveler.

Interestingly, the routes that readers said they missed most were, generally, not eliminated by United; they were cut by Continental Airlines, before Continental and United merged in 2010.

Those most-missed Continental routes include service to London, Paris and San Diego, eliminated in 2008 and 2009.

San Diego was brought back briefly by Frontier Airlines this year, but was cut after just six months.

San Diego is Cleveland's largest unserved market, according to the airport, with an average of 142 passengers traveling between the two cities daily.

Payne said Cleveland's two new flights to Reykjavik, which start in May on Wow Air and Icelandair, should satisfy some demand for European travel.

But many travelers said they also want nonstop service to business hubs in Europe.

"I was a frequent user of the old Continental nonstop to London, and miss it greatly," wrote Stephen Fliegel, of Cleveland Heights. "I would love to see the city recruit a carrier who can provide that service. If the U.S. legacy carriers are not interested, why not attract a European carrier? The upcoming service on Icelandair will help, but it requires a stop in Reykjavik. It is really nonstop service that is needed for the business traveler, because it can shave hours off a long flight. London would be my first choice, but Paris or Frankfurt would also be desirable. Nearby cities, such as Detroit and Pittsburgh, offer service to Europe. Why not Cleveland?"

The top 10 most-missed nonstop destinations, according to our survey:

1. London

2. San Diego

3. Paris

4. Montreal

5. West Palm Beach

6. Salt Lake City

7. Kansas City

8. Portland, Maine

9. Richmond, Virginia

10. Providence, Rhode Island; Indianapolis (Tie)

In addition to asking readers about the routes they miss most, we asked travelers about destinations that need additional service.

One of the problems with some of the new, low-cost carriers that have entered the Cleveland market in recent years: Many of their routes are not daily or are offered only during peak travel season. Frontier's popular Cleveland-to-Seattle route, for example, is offered only four times a week and only April through November.

Seattle was the No. 1 destination that readers most want more frequent service to.

Other cities that our readers think need additional service:

* Las Vegas ("on United or another airline that offers first-class service," said one reader).

* Phoenix

* Charleston, S.C.

* Fort Myers ("nonstop to Florida on 'real' airlines," said one reader).

* Austin, Texas

* Portland, Oregon

Payne said the airport is speaking with carriers about numerous destinations on the readers' most-wanted list -- including Montreal, Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Seattle.

"With 143 passengers a day, Seattle is in consideration by more than one airline for year-round service," he said.

Plain Dealer reporter Jo Ellen Corrigan assisted with this story.
UPDATED FORECAST: Chance of Christmas Eve snow could mean slick travel for Northeast Ohio: Christmas weather update

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The forecast is holding steady with a chance of snow in Northeast Ohio on Christmas Eve, which could lead to inclement road conditions for those traveling to see family. While forecast models favor snow in the area, it's still a bit too early to accurately determine who exactly in Northeast Ohio will see a coating, and just how much.

For my Christmas weather update on Friday, however, things should start to become a little clearer as to exactly how the shot at a white Christmas will pan out. What we do know? The snow will follow a warmer, wet start to the weekend.

The current forecast shows:

Friday

A warm Friday for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Temperatures will range from the upper 30s to upper 40s with light winds and a moderate chance of rain throughout.

Saturday

Cooling down from Friday, highs will hit the upper 30s with lows around 30 degrees with breezy winds and that chance of rain continuing throughout the day again.

Christmas Eve

Things cool to pretty frigid after the passing of a cold front Saturday. Temperatures will range from the mid 20s to low 30s and a chance of snow moves in. With northwesterly winds, the snow could be more widespread ,and not just targeted over the lake-effect belt. It's very early so this is a rough estimate, but for now if I had to put a number on it I'd say 1 to 3 inches are possible by early Christmas morning. However, snow estimates are only best two days out max, so look out for my holiday weekend weather update Friday for a more accurate snowfall prediction.

Right now, that chance of snow could lead to some slippery conditions Sunday night as temperatures drop to near freezing, not just for Northeast Ohio, but portions of the Midwest and New England as well.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day, the cool-down continues with chilly temperatures ranging from the upper teens to mid 20s. Some lingering light snow is possible again in Northeast Ohio, but with westerly winds, most of that snow will shift and focus over the lake-effect belt accumulating less than an inch. At most a few flurries could reach Cleveland.

Tuesday

Travel for the day after Christmas is looking pretty ideal for those staying in Northeast Ohio. While there's a slight chance of snow throughout the region, right now the models suggest near nothing should stick from it. You'll want to bundle up even more as the downward temperature trend strikes again leading to highs in the low 20s and lows in the teens.

Check out the full forecast:

Temperatures

Holiday weekend temperatures.

Precipitation chances

Holiday weekend precipitation chances.

Winds

Holiday weekend winds.

Keep checking cleveland.com/weather for daily weather updates for Northeast Ohio, and don't forget to submit any weather questions you may have!

Kelly Reardon is cleveland.com's meteorologist. Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter @KellyRWeather.
A performance by rapper Eminem at the MetraPark at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday?

Not so.

"That would be correct," said MetraPark marketing director Ray Massie. "There is no such thing.

The Facebook event, created by a group ostensibly spreading awareness of prescription drug abuse, attracted the interest of at least 5,000 social media users.

As it turns out, it was all just part of a Billings West High School class assignment. The group, called "Montana: A New Beginning," primarily shared information about prescription drug abuse.

Many commenters saw through the false event's facade. Sharp viewers might have seen the listed phone number, (123) 456-7890, and deduced there is no such area code in the United States.

The group created the Eminem event and scheduled it for a Wednesday morning in November 2018. It promised that 70 percent of ticket proceeds would "go to victims of prescription drug abuse."

It was called the "Slim Shady slamdown," referencing the rapper's other moniker. Some commenters expressed interest. Others were angry. Massie said the MetraPark got several phone calls about it.

The Billings West class assignment was an exercise in online campaigns. One of the group's events claimed the actress Drew Barrymore was coming to West in May to speak about drug use.

West teacher Janna Lind said the intent was to get students online, exploring ways to engage in worthwhile causes. They studied the success of the Montana Meth Project as a community campaign and launched a model campaign of their own.

It totally is a class project," she said. "I just want them on social media and gain awareness for drug use.

The students created events, which would be part of a full-fledged awareness campaign to raise money, Lind said.

Lind said the students made a group and several events because thats how other larger campaigns use the social media site, and she wanted them to make the campaign as realistic as possible. She didn't expect it to catch on with the greater Billings Facebook community.

Fans of Marshall Mathers will still have to travel out of state to catch a show. There's a rumored 2018 tour in select cities, but that likely won't include Billings.
A Billings Police officer pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol while off duty and not stopping at the scene of a crash after hitting another car.

Officer Josh Schoening also allegedly punched the victim after asking him not to call police, according to the arrest report. But, the victim declined to press charges.

After pleading guilty in August, the five-year veteran of the Police Department was placed on unpaid administrative leave for two weeks, transferred to patrol duty and stripped of his specialized positions, including as a member of the local SWAT team, Chief Rich St. John said Wednesday.

Schoening was arrested July 17 at 6:15 p.m., according to the arrest report, after he collided with another vehicle while driving west on the 3300 block of First Avenue North. Schoening continued driving until the driver of the car he hit caught up with him and insisted Schoening pull over, the report states.

Schoening then "pulled over, and the complainant realized the defendant was impaired and called police," the report states. "The defendant requested the complainant not call police and got upset. (Schoening) then struck the complainant."

The arrest report, submitted by Sgt. Matt Chaney, stated that Schoening was "obviously intoxicated" and noted that he was unsteady on his feet, "smelled strongly of intoxicants; had bloodshot, glassy eyes; and was slurring his speech."

After completing field sobriety tests, Schoening refused to submit to further testing, including a breath test.

"I am deeply troubled by the officer's actions," St. John said in a statement provided to the Gazette on Wednesday. "This behavior is not consistent nor a reflection of the high standards and professional conduct exhibited daily by our officers."

However, St. John cited Schoening's previously "spotless record," his success in specialized assignments and his No. 2 position on the sergeant's list  referring to his eligibility for promotion at the time  as mitigating factors that drove the chief's decision to keep him on the force.

Schoening has been terminated, St. John said, but his termination is currently suspended for two years under a "last chance agreement." Under those terms, Schoening must follow all court requirements of his crimes and adhere to department policy, St. John said.

If he violates the agreement within the two-year period, St. John said the city administrator could immediately fire him.

"He made a very, very bad mistake, and I'm confident he will not repeat that," St. John added in a follow-up interview. "He was and is sincere in his apology, and he's taken every step to remedy that. And, again, I don't take the decision lightly. I'm convinced he'll be able to move past this and be a successful police officer."

Asked whether Schoening's convictions could compromise his ability to testify as a witness for future arrests he makes, St. John added, "All of those things are discoverable, and he would certainly have to answer to that on the witness stand. And he's aware of that."

However, he said there is "no question" that the officer's criminal history won't affect Billings' ability to prosecute future crimes.

Schoening pleaded guilty on Aug. 10 to first offenses of driving under the influence of alcohol and failure to stop at the accident scene.

For the DUI, he was sentenced to six months in jail with all but one day suspended, fined $650 and required to complete three months of probation and court-ordered substance abuse classes. For failure to stop, he was sentenced to 20 days in jail, all suspended, and fined $300.
Prosecutors dropped an attempted deliberate homicide charge for a man involved in a 2016 shooting and crash that killed a woman.

Anthony Marcus Costello, 30, pleaded guilty to felony criminal endangerment on Thursday in Yellowstone County District Court. He also entered a no-contest plea to a felony charge of carrying a concealed weapon.

He also pleaded guilty to one count of felony drug possession in a separate case.

As part of a plea agreement, charges of attempted deliberate homicide, assault with a weapon and misdemeanor theft will be dismissed.

Costello fired a gun at a woman during a drug transaction on Nov. 10, 2016, at Mountview Cemetery, according to court documents. She got into a truck and left with another person driving.

When they stopped at a red light on Central Avenue, the driver saw Costello approaching, charges state. The driver ran the red light to get away and caused a multi-car collision.

A woman who was riding in one of those vehicles died weeks after the crash. An autopsy couldn't determine whether the crash contributed to her death. Costello wasn't charged directly for the crash related to the incident.

Costello pleaded not guilty to charges in April and has been in custody since.

Sentencing for the shooting case is scheduled for Feb. 26, 2018. A sentencing hearing in the drug case is scheduled for March 2, and the two hearings may be merged in the future.
A man charged in a rash of theft and burglary cases appeared again in court on Wednesday.

Anthony William Felton, 26, made his initial appearance in Yellowstone County Justice Court on a felony theft charge related to the Oct. 18 theft of ATM cash from a Grand Avenue casino.

Charging documents say Billings police reviewed surveillance footage from the casino, which showed a man pry open the door of an ATM. It doesn't say what he used to open it. Felton allegedly walked out with around $6,800.

On Wednesday, Judge Jeanne Walker ordered a $20,000 bond, which will be in addition to other bonds.

Felton has ongoing court cases related to the burglary of 29 guns from a home in August, a vehicle theft in September and the theft of an ATM machine from a Billings hotel earlier this month.

He's also a suspect in an ATM theft from Oct. 31, police told The Gazette, although charges have not been filed yet.

Felton has posted bail for release multiple times and failed to register for court-ordered GPS tracking, court documents say. He was most recently arrested on Dec. 14 after allegedly fleeing from police.

In the casino ATM case, Felton is scheduled for arraignment on Dec. 27 in Yellowstone County District Court.
A Washington man convicted in a large meth conspiracy that brought an estimated 60 to 65 pounds of the drug to the Billings and Belgrade areas will spend more than 12 years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters of Billings on Wednesday sentenced Juan Ramon Delgadillo-Meza, 41, of Ephrata, Washington, to 12 years and seven months. The sentence includes a $1.3 million money judgement, which was part of a plea deal to be paid jointly by Delgadillo-Meza and his co-defendants.

Delgadillo-Meza pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to possess meth for distribution and to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Delgadillo-Meza was among four people indicted in a drug case in which investigators said they conspired to bring large amounts of meth to Montana for redistribution from 2014 to 2016.

Sources confirmed to investigators that Delgadillo-Meza began traveling to Billings in 2014 and would transport two pounds of meth every two weeks. He sold each pound of meth for about $12,500, prosecutors said.

Investigators identified Delgadillo-Meza as one of those transporting the meth from Washington and that co-defendants Edward Lee Donnes, of Belgrade, and Joel McDermott Morris, of Billings, were local distributors. A fourth co-defendant was Bethany Ann Fairchild of Libby who was sentenced to two years for her conviction in the case.

Donnes was sentenced in January to about 10 years in prison, while Morris was sentenced last year to more than 12 years.
A fire early Thursday morning caused by an electrical failure destroyed a home in the Central-Terry neighborhood of Billings, according to the Billings Fire Department.

No one was home when the fire broke out on the 800 block of Miles Avenue and no injuries resulted from the blaze, Battalion Chief Dave Gilbert said Thursday morning.

It was reported at 1:07 a.m. by a neighbor across the street, he said.

By the time firefighters arrived, the house was fully engulfed in flames, according to a press release from the fire department.

The fire was accidental, Fire Marshal Mike Spini said Thursday afternoon. It was caused by a failure in the building's electrical system, he said.

The home is a total loss, Gilbert said, with an estimated $200,000 in damage caused by the fire.

"The roof is gone, half the walls are gone, and everything else inside is burned up," he said.

It's unknown whether the house or its contents were insured.
1 A Page From Hillary Clinton's Book Sent Twitter Spiraling

One of the major criticisms of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election was that she was just wasn't relatable enough. America simply wasn't ready for the first president who wouldn't be able to pass the Voight-Kampff Test.

PBS Personally, we blame the uncanny valley.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Being rejected on a perceived lack of humanity must be very painful (unless you're a robot, naturally), and was an important element of Clinton's introspective memoir What Happened, a scintillating postmortem of a failed election in which the culprit was identified as every other human being to have ever existed except herself. The book also details many of the tough choices Clinton had to make throughout the campaign, doing things she often considered pandering just to get more votes. For instance, take that time she was campaigning in Oklahoma, a deep red state. In a desperate attempt to appeal to local voters, Clinton remembers sacrificing a bit of dignity by dressing up as a cowboy, firing two revolvers into the air, and, as we all remember, executing a cattle rustler right there on the stage.

Pixelated Boat/Twitter

Pixelated Boat/Twitter

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

It's that this point we should clarify that this didn't happen. The above page was nothing but a bit of surrealist madness from "Milkshake Duck"-termer and Very Funny Twitter Account @pixelatedboat. But you were convinced for a second, weren't you? Admit it.

Barely a day later, Twitter was being flooded with "Is this real?" replies which Boat posted, probably while pinching the bridge of his nose for several seconds. Certainly, the dumber parts of the internet were more than willing to believe Clinton had added another innocent life to her quite impressive body count.

Adam is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history which you should definitely, definitely subscribe to.

What is the internet good for if not making scary things less scary? Like with Pennywise plush dolls, for example.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more check out 7 Celebrities Who Are Hilariously Awful At Twitter and 6 Celebrities Who Are Surprisingly Angry On Twitter.

Also follow us on Facebook, TWIST!
I thought Credit Slips readers might be interested in using some holiday down-time to catch up on a couple of recent comparative insolvency conferences with particularly cutting-edge presentations, some of which are or will be available for viewing online (and many of the papers are available on SSRN or elsewhere).

First, on Nov. 23-24, the Notary College of Madrid offered its spectacular hall to host an international conference on consumer credit information privacy and regulation (day one) and the treatment of insolvency for SMEs and consumers (day two). The second day offered a particularly interesting presentation by one of the leaders of the EU Commission's initiative for a Directive on harmonization of European laws on preventive restructuring and second chance discharge relief (followed by a bit of constructively critical commentary by an American who fancies he knows something about European personal insolvency). Recordings of the entire conference were just posted to YouTube--most of the recordings are in Spanish, but the EU Directive and critical commentary presentations are in English after a short Spanish intro (nos. 8 and 9 of the 10 recordings). Congratulations to the architects of this fabulous event, who also made impressive presentations: Matilde Cuena Casas (Univ. Complutense de Madrid), Ignacio Tirado Marti (Univ. Autonoma de Madrid), and David Ramos Munoz (Univ. Carlos III de Madrid).

Second, the following week offered a special, rare treat with the conference, Comparative and Cross-Border Issues in Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, hosted by the Law Review of the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The line-up of panels on both comparative and cross-border issues was particularly impressive, and we were treated to a keynote by Jay Westbrook refining his latest thinking about cross-border coordination. The conference was live streamed, and the recordings are promised in the near future, but for now, the livestream page still has (scroll down to Day 1) the recoding of Adrian Walters's terrific paper on restrictive English interpretation of the notion of international cooperation. Again congratulations to the organizers of this fabulous event (who, again, gave very impressive presentations of their own): Adrian Walters, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Christoph Henkel, Mississippi College School of Law.
Nearly 200 new cases of influenza across Montana, including 40 hospitalizations, were reported over the past two weeks, the Montana Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday.

There have also been several outbreaks around the state, the DPHHS said in a news release. The number is slightly higher than this time last year, but influenza activity tends to increase in December.

In Yellowstone County for the week ending Dec. 16, 42 cases of influenza, all type A, were reported. That doesn't include people with the flu who haven't seen a health care provider to be tested, said Barbara Schneeman, RiverStone Health's public information officer.

The total number of people in the county who have been hospitalized with the flu is up to 30, she said.

State health officials continue to encourage people to get flu shots as a way to avoid the illness.

The influenza vaccine protects against multiple strains of flu, said Stacey Anderson, who works for the DPHHS Communicable Disease Epidemiology section. Even if the vaccine may not prevent every case of influenza, the evidence shows that getting a flu shot still can prevent severe illness and hospitalization.

Anderson added that its not too late to get vaccinated, even though the influenza season is in full swing.

Schneeman said one population in particular should consider getting a flu shot.

"People with underlying chronic conditions may be more susceptible to the flu, so it is especially important for them to be immunized," she said.
Managed services News

Federal Jury Rules Against DXC; Lawsuit Demanding Overtime Pay Could Force Changes In How IT Workers Are Classified And Paid

Matt Brown

Share this

IT systems integrators and solution providers may be re-reading their HR manuals now that a group of former CSC (now DXC Technology) systems admins has notched a victory in federal court claiming their company willfully misclassified and underpaid its employees.

In a decision that could have repercussions for the way IT services firms classify and compensate employees, a federal jury in Connecticut has ruled that Computer Sciences Corp. denied overtime pay to salaried systems administrators nationwide.

The New Haven, Conn., jury decided Wednesday that CSC had "wrongly and willfully denied overtime pay" to about 1,000 current and former systems administrators, despite the fact that those admins were salaried employees classified as "Professional" or "Associate Professional," according to Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman and Wasow, the firm that represented the plaintiffs in the class action suit filed in 2014.



Hewlett-Packard Enterprise spun off its $19 billion enterprise services business last April and merged it with CSC into the renamed DXC Technology. In a brief statement to CRN, a DXC spokesman said the company intends to appeal the decision.

[Related: DXC Technology's Cost-Cutting Efforts Remain 'On Track' As Company Reduces Workforce By 4 Percent]

"Technology companies across the country should be waking up this morning and looking to see if they have large groups of workers that need to be reclassified," Todd Jackson, an attorney with Feinberg Jackson, said in a statement. "Companies are learning that they can't willfully underpay thousands of workers and hope to get away with it."

As demand for skilled IT workers climbs, the likelihood that those workers will be denied fair compensation diminishes, said Scott Miller, director of data center at St. Louis, Mo., solution provider World Wide Technology.

"As market demand continues to outweigh IT skills, I suspect that people's willingness to put up with that type of bad behavior will be limited," Miller said.



Dan Serpico, CEO of FusionStorm, a San Francisco, Calif.-based solution provider, said labor laws like those CSC was alleged to have violated are complicated, but most firms interpret them in good faith.



"Labor laws can be complex as far as exempt and non-exempt status, which can vary by state," Serpico said. "Good intent and good management of these complex policies will lead to good, profitable businesses and good employee morale, and my guess is that the vast majority of companies strive for both."



The company argued that "professional" and "associate professional" job titles are exempt from overtime pay requirements under federal, Connecticut and California law. The jury, however, found that the workers should have been classified as nonexempt and paid overtime.



The CSC systems administrators do the installation, maintenance and troubleshooting work on IT hardware and software, and are frequently assigned to be "on call" so that clients can be assisted at all times. The plaintiffs in the case argued that because they did not make policy, design systems or do any programming, they are protected by federal and state overtime laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The act requires that nonexempt employees are paid time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours a week. The jury found that CSC had willfully violated overtime laws, which could trigger additional damages.

Determining and awarding damages is the next phase of the case, and could take months. CSC in 2005 agreed to pay $24 million to settle overtime claims brought by about 30,000 tech support workers. Plaintiffs in that case were represented by Oakland, Calif., law firm Lewis, Feinberg, Renaker and Jackson, the predecessor to Feinberg Jackson.
Mobility News

Apple Acknowledges That Older iPhones Slow Down To Deal With Aging Batteries

Lindsey O'Donnell

Share this

Apple has acknowledged that the company slows the operations of older phones to help device batteries continue to perform as they age.

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," the company said in a statement to The Verge. "Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components."

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been under fire from consumers who complain that their iPhones slow down as they upgrade their devices' software  a move seen by many as a way to push customers to buy newer, quicker iPhones.

[Related: Solution Providers Plan Huge Hiring Spree In Wake Of Historic GOP Tax Cut]

A recent blog post from processor benchmarking company Geekbench, which showed that older phones operate faster if they are using older software versions, amplified these concerns.

However, Apple said in a statement to The Verge that it is slowing down processors not to push customers to upgrade to new phones, but because it makes it easier for older batteries in iPhones to continue performing after they started aging. iPhones essentially hit peaks of processing power that the battery cannot keep up with as they age.

"If Apple can show that the slowdowns are relative to the number of cycles that a battery has  which is information that an iPhone likely tracks, since Macs do so already  then there might be some truth to their claims," said Michael Oh, chief technology officer and founder of TSP, a Boston-based Apple partner.

Apple said in the statement that last year the company released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE aimed at "smoothing out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions."

"Weve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future," said the company in the statement.

Apple did not respond to a request from CRN for further comment by publication time.

"I'm not surprised by this Apple is very secretive; people definitely worry that they push them to their newer technologies," said Michael Hadley, CEO of Boston-based Apple partner iCorps Technologies. "For instance, people wonder if they took away the capabilities of iTunes to try to push users onto [Apple Music]. I think they have to be careful."

However, Hadley said that he didn't think the fact that older iPhones slow down would disrupt sales of the newer iPhone 8 or iPhone X models.

"I don't think they'd lose customers [to Samsung]  if you're an Apple love, you're an Apple lover. It's a way of life," he said.
Networking News

AT&T, Comcast Pledge Tax Savings Windfall Will Go Toward Network Investments, Employee Bonuses

Gina Narcisi

Share this

Just in time for the holidays, AT&T and Comcast are promising employee bonuses and laying out substantial business investment plans in the wake of the passage of tax reform.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed by Congress this week. The legislation, which is now on the move to the President's desk to be signed into law, represents the largest one-time tax reduction in U.S. history, cutting an estimated $1.46 trillion in overall tax collections by the government. Specifically, the GOP Act will cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The telecom giants have said that tax reform, coupled with the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of the Net Neutrality regulations last week, will make room for additional investments on employees, as well as network infrastructure and next-generation technologies, such as 5G.

[Related: 6 Things Partners Need To Know About The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act ]

AT&T said in a statement that once the Act is signed into law, it plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States during 2018. The Dallas-based carrier will also pay a $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 U.S.-based employees who are union-represented, non-management, and front-line managers. Moreover, AT&T promised that if the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive their bonus over the holidays.

This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs. In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees, Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chairman and CEO, said in the statement.

For its part, Comcast said it would also dole out "special" $1,000 holiday bonuses to more than 100,000 "frontline and non-executive" employees. The Philadelphia-based cable behemoth also plans on spending "well in excess of $50 billion over the next five years" on infrastructure to improve and extend its broadband plant and capacity, as well as on its television, film and theme park offerings, Comcast said.

"With these investments, we expect to add thousands of new direct and indirect jobs," Comcast's chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in the company's statement.

AT&T could not be reached for further comment on the potential impact of tax reform before publication, and Comcast pointed CRN to its public statement.

In addition to helping larger corporations, the Act will reduce the business income tax rate by 20 percent for smaller "pass-through" companies that run as partnerships, LLCs and S-corporations, which include the majority of solution provider organizations.

Alan Weinberger, a lawyer, and chairman and CEO of The ASCII Group, an organization that provides business-building tools to 1,500 VAR and MSP partners throughout North America, said that the freshly-passed Act will most likely trigger the most business investment and job creation within smaller businesses.

The same may not be true for larger corporations Weinberger, along with many economists, have argued.

"Corporations will most likely look at this windfall to buy back stock or make capital improvements, but not necessarily build employment," he said. "By having higher earnings, stock prices will go up and [corporations] will pay more dividends, so [tax reform] could help stockholders, not necessarily employees of big companies."

However, several corporations in addition to AT&T and Comcast, including Boeing, and Wells Fargo, have already announced plans to use the steep tax savings on employee trainings, raises, and bonuses, or to upgrade their facilities or invest in new technologies to give their companies a more competitive edge.
The Christmas season is a time to celebrate with family and reflect on our blessings. It is also a time to give back to our communities and help those in need. Unfortunately, for many Montana students, the holiday season is not always merry. As those who have ever served in classrooms know, December can bring stress, anxiety, and doubt for some children. Our 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that one out of every five Montana high school students has seriously contemplated suicide. We can and must do better for our youth.

Reflecting on my 23 years of teaching in Billings, academics and education always led the way, but there is so much more in caring for and developing the whole child. Partnering with parents, working hand-in-hand with counselors, teachers, and school leaders, everyone in the school building is embracing the social and emotional well-being of our students. From the crossing guard to the lunch aides to the custodian and secretary, all are supporting the mental health of our students. A school represents not only a learning environment, but often emotional safety, support, warmth and nutrition to a young person.

This is why I developed my Montana Hope initiative, which is the whole child approach to education. Promoting mental health allows students to reach their full academic potential. I appreciate the leadership of our Legislature. Rep. Dennis Lenz and Sen. Edie McClafferty have recently championed legislation which puts suicide prevention and response policies in schools, but also gives local communities flexibility in policy development. As a positive first step, I have initiated the development of the Montana Suicide Prevention and Response Rulemaking Committee this month. The purpose of this committee is to recommend policies aimed at ensuring schools are providing mental health resources to their students.

We must all possess the courage to have open dialogue about mental health and suicide prevention for our youth. This involves community conversations, because supporting students goes beyond the school building. Please join me in starting this conversation in your communities so that we can give all Montanas students the gift of hope this Christmas season.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Since its founding nearly a decade ago, boutique Greenwich financial firm Fieldpoint Private has mostly stayed under the radar, according to chief executive Bob Matthews.

This week, that has begun to change as the firm brought on Landmark Group, which previously managed $700 million for families at J.P. Morgan Securities.

A lot of people dont know about us, so this raises our profile, Matthews told Hearst Connecticut Media. Weve been getting calls all week since the announcement, many from people who didnt know of us before.

Fieldpoint Private, located downtown across from Greenwich Town Hall, launched amid the throes of the 2008 financial crisis. The concept that evolved into the boutique firm originated during a dinner in 2006 attended by titans of business and finance, according to Matthews.

That dinner created the germ of the thought process that something was wrong in the financial services space, he said. They were underwhelmed, themselves as wealthy clients, and though that if they were smart enough to know what was wrong, they were smart enough to fix it.

That same year, the dinner party guests began raising capital and recruiting additional founders. By 2008, the group had grown to include 31 founders representing former leaders of high-profile companies including: Alpine Woods Capital Investors, Deutsche Bank, Home Depot, Merrill Lynch and Co. and Merrill Lynch Ventures, TD Ameritrade, Time Inc. and UBS Financial Services.

Today, Fieldpoints executive team includes the ranks of a former global director of research for Citigroup Global Markets, former chief marketing officer for Smith Barney and Citi Private Bank, former head of wealth planning at U.S. Trust and Matthews, who previously led global wealth advisory services at Citigroup and joined Fieldpoint Private in 2010. Its total employee count has swelled from around 20 to 80, Matthews said.

From the beginning of Fieldpoint, its founders cast a vision for the firm that includes four enduring pillars, Matthews said. Those include the firm remaining a boutique forever, providing a private bank, that its product would be advice and that it would not tolerate conflicts of interest.

They had it up to here with firms selling products that clients didnt know whether they were really the best solutions for them, Matthews said. We want our clients to know that all calls are in the clients best interests. If were not the best solution, well take them to another bank.

Underlying those pillars was the founders expectations that despite being a small, nimble and responsive boutique-sized firm that it would provide the same intellectual capital and quality of services as a large firm, Matthews said, adding our whole leadership team and their resources match up against the big firms. Yet, Fieldpoint is kind of like Cheers, where everyone knows a clients name.

This weeks addition of Landmark Group, whose members join Fieldpoint as managing directors and senior advisers, highlights Fieldpoints balance between small size and competitive resources, according to Matthews.

They have come from the countrys largest financial firm to one of its most intimate, in order to make sure their clients would have the access they deserve to all that they need. This might seem ironic to some, but its incredibly meaningful to all of us, he said in the companys media statement.

Landmark Group represents a perfect philosophic fit for us, Matthews added in an interview, with its size and client centricity, while helping build Fieldpoints brand.

Given Fieldpoint started during the single worst financial climate any of us will ever know, Matthews said, he believes it can withstand any future circumstances.

If youre born in a hurricane, youre built to withstand it, he said. I think that helped make us a better institution.

Photos in this story have been corrected to include the correct name and title of CEO Bob Matthews.

Contact the writer at mbennett@greenwichtime.com; Twitter @Macaela_
Sophie Donelson, editor in chief of House Beautiful magazine, answers questions on hygge and offers ideas on making our homes warm and cozy this winter.

Q: We keep hearing about the Danish concept of hygge . But what is it, a trend, a style or an idea? What are the principles of it?

Sophie Donelson: Hygge (pronounced hue-guh) is a Danish term that relates to a warm atmosphere and a sense of well-being. It can be an experience, like having a cup of hot tea after a brisk walk, or a feeling, like enjoying the company of friends at home after dinner. Its the idea of coziness, but with more depth. To me, the combination of the joyful parts of the holiday season (twinkling lights, wreaths, tartan) combined with the feeling of warmth and togetherness while its cold outside is a starting place. But the idea behind hygge is to enjoy it year-round. Brian Patrick Flynn, a producer and interior designer who splits his time between Atlanta and Iceland, describes a Scandinavia aesthetic where everything around you is something that brings joy, whether its sentimental or something physical like a low-slung chair that greets you when you come home.

Q: What are easy ways to bring a bit of hygge into my home this winter?

SD: Westport-based designer Brooke Crew says it begins with a mindset. I always resist winter, but you have to embrace it, Crew says. Although her clients often have large homes, she encourages intimate floor plans because good feelings come from togetherness, not vast space. Its community, family and connection that gets us through the winter, she says. Crew suggests using occasional chairs or even a lightweight dining chair, which can scoot up close to a sofa or X-benches in front of the fireplace, to encourage warming up. She also recommends buying cotton branches, which feel warm and tactile, but dont need to be watered or fussed over.

Q: A fireplace can be an eyesore when its not lit. What will make it look more like a welcoming hearth? Any ideas for restyling my mantle, which has looked pretty much the same for years?

SD: One classic stylists trick I can never get enough of is stacking a wood-burning fireplace with birch logs when youre not using it. The bright white bark adds a jolt of freshness to that dark place. As for mantles, add some life: small potted houseplants, like ivy, a pair of rosemary topiaries or simple red berry branches in a bud vase makes a dead space alive. Flynn says to group potted white orchids inside an unlit fireplace to add brightness. And the quickest mantel change up is one massive art statement piece thats leaned instead of hung so you can swap it out seasonally for other things like mirrors.

Q: Other than the living room, what are other areas of the home you can foster a hygge mentality?

SD: Its not just stuff, though candles have a home in every room in my house. Try bending the rules a bit to let the hygge flow, Crew says. Let your kids make gingerbread houses and keep them displayed after the holidays. Tack up their artwork on the fridge, just for the winter, or make a point of having hot chocolate at homework time. Think of just small, simple steps to being happiness during those months of darkness.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Connecticut Republicans predict the positives will outweigh the negatives.

That is their take on the GOPs historic overhaul of the nations tax code.

As the victorious GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives was putting the final touches Wednesday on the tax plan, state Republican leaders said corporations and middle-class families alike will benefit.

Overall, taxpayers with middle incomes and lower incomes do better under this plan, said state Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven.

But Democrats warned again that affluent Northeastern states with high property taxes, including Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, are being targeted by the $1.5-trillion bill.

The accompanying deficit also sets up Republicans for their long-sought cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security, Democrats charged, stressing that it favors the wealthy minority at the expense of low-and-middle income workers.

After a 224-201 vote that was necessitated when Senate procedural requirements sent the tax package back again to the House for a redo, Republican representatives cheered, while one Democrat yelled Do over, the Associated Press reported.

More Information What the tax overhaul means for Connecticut 4,000 new jobs and $835 for middle-income families next year - The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. 67,000 children from working families will receive $75 or less in the child tax credit - The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. By 2027, those in the top one-percent, with incomes over $1.3 million, will enjoy a $283 million tax cut, for about $16,190 each, while those with incomes under $196,920 - about 417,810 families - will see tax increases of $99 -- The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. See More Collapse

The bill now heads to President Donald Trump for his first major legislative victory  and the first major changes to the tax code since 1986.

Fasano said that a couple of weeks back, he felt less supportive of the legislation, but in subsequent drafts, provisions to retain deductions for medical expenses and student loans were back in.

I think this bill is a good bill, he said. You cant leave the status quo and expect anything to change. I think it does hit those with high property taxes and high incomes, like Fairfield County, and that is disheartening. Overall, taxpayers with middle incomes and lower incomes do better under this plan. I think as it rolls out, the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Linda McMahon of Greenwich, administrator of the federal Small Business Administration, said she believes the bill will meet the presidents goals.

I am confident that small business owners across the country will see increased opportunities for the development and expansion of their businesses in the upcoming years as a result of this important legislation, McMahon said in a statement.

At the end of the day, tax reform was desperately needed, said J.R. Romano, state Republican chairman. The economy is moving in the right direction under President Trump. This was a chance to jump start the economy even more.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, said the new tax bills reduction and capping of write offs on state and local taxes, enhances his candidacy.

It makes it more important for us to phase-out the income tax over 10 years and redesign state government, Boughton said in a phone interview. If our employers come back from overseas and invest money that is going to create jobs for hard-working men and women, both those working on the building and in the building, it will have a net positive impact.

Tim Herbst, the former Trumbull first selectman who is also seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination likes some parts of the tax plan and not others.

There are parts of this bill that I think are good and parts that are not good, said . When you look at other states in New England that showed job gains when we had job losses, we have to turn the corner. If Im elected governor, Im committed to eliminating Social Security taxes, the estate tax, the unitary business tax, to allow more hard-working people to put money in their pockets and age in place.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said Wednesday that she has been focused on Connecticuts growing budget deficit and the upcoming special session of the General Assembly. Look at what is the benefit to the country as whole, she said. The Northeastern states have concerns, certainly. Nothings perfect, but there have been no changes to the tax code since1986.

I believe that the business reforms will result in additional economic growth as well as job opportunities, and put us in a competitive posture, said David Walker of Bridgeport, the former comptroller general of the United States who is a GOP gubernatorial hopeful.

Democrats, however, said Republicans are benefiting wealthy political contributors and exploiting national divisions over income inequality.

Today we are watching the most-massive assault on the social-safety net under President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, warning that in 2018 the Republican leadership will begin attacking entitlement programs for the elderly and disabled, including Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

This is not tax reform, said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. This does not provide relief to the middle class, but for the wealthiest few. This bill does not even pay for itself, but will add nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt. What this bill does accomplish is a tax cut for the very wealthy and corporations on the backs of working-class taxpayers. It will increase the number of uninsured individuals by 13 million while risking future funding for Medicare and Medicaid.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said as many as 730,000 Connecticut residents will be losers under the legislation.

This whole thing is skewed toward the wealthy and businesses against the middle class, Looney said, adding that the built-in deficit gives Speaker of the House Ryan and other Republicans the justification to pursue their decades-long targets: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The tip-off, Looney said, was the GOP majoritys unwillingness to fund the Childrens Health Insurance Program. Clearly theyre creating the enhanced deficit, so they can seek the hard-core, right-wing Republican agenda theyve been articulating for years, in a strategic move to create a depression of necessity, he said.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON  A delegation of youthful immigrant Dreamers from Connecticut came to the nations capital to push their quest for renewed legal status amid indications a bipartisan deal is percolating behind closed doors.

Im hoping theres going to be a fix, said Jonathan Gonzalez Cruz, 21, a senior at Southern Connecticut State University, brought to this country illegally from Mexico at age 4. And even if it doesnt work out this year, I know our community will push for it until we get it through.

Democrats on Capitol Hill including the Connecticut delegation have been trying to use their leverage to force a renewal of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that President Donald Trump canceled in September.

The policy allowed an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 Dreamers who were brought here illegally as children to leave the shadows and gain legal status. About 8,000 of them live in Connecticut.

Trumps cancellation, a product of his campaign pledge to send illegal immigrants home, raises the specter of deportation to countries many of the Dreamers have never known.

Ive been here 15 years and this is my home, said Patricia Baron of Trumbull, who was brought here at 16 from Paraguay and now works as a nanny.

Could she ever consider Paraguay her home? Not anymore, she said.

Dreamers from Connecticut and elsewhere arrived in Washington this week. On Tuesday, a group staged a more-or-less friendly sit-in at Sen. Chris Murphys office.

Murphy said he considered himself an ally and a friend of the cause but could not commit to conditioning his vote against this weeks spending bill on inclusion of DACA-extension language.

Democratic votes are needed in Congress to pass a bill to avert yet another threatened government shutdown at the end of the week.

I have not said the magic words that you want me to say in part because Im trying to be part of a conversation on whether we are better off with additional leverage in early January, Murphy told them.

But on Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he would not vote for any spending deal that did not include a DACA provision.

Addressing a group of a few dozen mostly Connecticut Dreamers in a tent pitched on Washingtons National Mall on Wednesday, Blumenthal said this issue is about fundamental morality.

Will America continue to keep its promise? he said. Will we continue to be a nation of immigrants (that is) fair and just? Thats who we are. Thats why we cannot go home without passing an agreement.

Blumenthal and other Democratic lawmakers have attempted to force Republicans to accept a DACA extension as part of the agreement necessary for avoiding a holiday-season shutdown.

But Democrats on Wednesday were divided, with those facing tough 2018 re-election battles in states won by Trump balking at the prospect of being viewed as pro-immigrant.

Trump on Twitter already has stigmatized Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as wanting illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked.

But while DACA renewal may not part of the spending bill negotiation, a bipartisan group of senators have been meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly to work out a deal, according to POLITICO.

Any such negotiations could prove problematic. Trump has been adamant that any deal with Democrats has to include stepped-up border security, up to and including the wall along the U.S-Mexico frontier he promised on the campaign trail.

Thats a non-starter for Democrats, although Schumer and Pelosi both have said they are amenable to improved border security short of a wall.

Another potential obstacle is whether those favoring a DACA fix can garner enough votes in both House and Senate. Democrats likely would have to join with moderate-leaning Republicans to freeze out GOP hardliners, particularly the Freedom Caucus in the House.

Blumenthal insisted that, notwithstanding the talks with Kelly, he would still vote no on the spending bill when it comes before the Senate later this week unless the DACA renewal is there.

But failing that, he said, he is open to seeing a deal concluded in the new year.

There is broad bipartisan support for an agreement, he said. We need to seize this moment and to get it over the finish line.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BRIDGEPORT  This will be the first Christmas Jayson Negrons family celebrates without him.

We want to send a message of love, said Jazmarie Melendez, Negrons sister, as she picked up a string of Christmas lights. Its so hard that he wont be here, but we want to send the message that we wont forget about him.

Melendez and other family, friends and community members gathered Wednesday evening at his memorial on Fairfield Avenue. They lit candles, shared stories and decorated a Christmas tree with lights and personalized ornaments with messages to Negron.

On May 9, 15-year-old Negron was shot by Bridgeport Police Officer James Boulay. Connecticut State Police said Negron led local cops on a brief pursuit on Park Avenue in a stolen vehicle before he drove the wrong way down Fairfield Avenue. Bridgeport police said Boulay fired into the car, fatally wounding Negron and injuring the passenger Julian Fyffe, who was 21 at the time.

But Wednesdays gathering wasnt just about Negron.

Jeannia Fu  a member of the statewide activist organization CTCORE-Organize Now!  said the gathering was also to remember others killed by police in Connecticut in 2017.

Fu mentioned Zoe Dowdell, 20, who was shot and killed by New Britain police last week after the vehicle Dowdell was in drove at officers, police said. A 15-year-old and an 18-year-old in the car were also shot. Police said the vehicle matched the description of one used in several violent carjackings.

She also mentioned Vincent Fowlkes, 22, who was killed on Jan. 26 after a fatal crash in Norwalk. Police said that leading up to the crash, Fowlkes and his 19-year-old brother Shawn Bowman, who was critically injured, were in a vehicle attempting to evade police. The officer was cleared in that incident.

Negrons family and several activist organizations have called for Waterbury States Attorney Maureen Platt to release any video footage of the shooting. Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim sent Platt a letter on Dec. 12 requesting video footage and details of the incident be released to the public.

Platt, who is overseeing the state police investigation into the Bridgeport shooting, said she would not release any material from the ongoing investigation. But she said on Dec. 15 that her work was almost done and she hopes to make an announcement in the near future.
MILFORDPolice are crediting a tip from a local resident for thwarting attempts to rob houses and steal cars overnight.

Police were called to the area to check on 2 suspicious males walking yard to yard, Milford police said in a statement on Twitter. The 2 had just stolen a vehicle in Stratford and drove it to the Plains Rd area.

The two suspects were arrested near the scene, and the vehicle recovered, Milford Police spokesman Mike DeVito said.

Both were minors. Theyve been charged with larceny by possession.

Update/Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the arrest of the juveniles and the recovery. An earlier version quoted a police official that said there had not been any arrests.
Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!

Your notification has been saved.

There was a problem saving your notification.

{{description}}

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Custer State Park in South Dakota will reopen to full capacity on Friday, according to a statement from park officials.

Interior road and trails will be available to visitors as workers continue to make fencing, trail and road repairs as well as assessing wildlife. The burros were transferred to an enclosed, off-site facility and will continue to get daily treatment for burns. One burro, who was suffering from organ failure, was euthanized due to his injuries.

The majority of bison have been located. Some deer, elk and buffalo did not survive the fire and some were euthanized due to the severity of their fire injuries. Bighorn sheep and antelope are being monitored as well.

The mountain lion and coyote hunting seasons will open as planned for South Dakota residents on Tuesday, according to park officials. The antlerless elk hunting season has been canceled in the park as these animals have left the area due to the loss of cover and forage.
The North Dakota Department of Health today raised the level of flu activity in the state to widespread.

There were 234 cases of influenza reported during the week that ended Dec. 16, according to the Health Department's weekly influenza summary.

Since August, there have there have been 709 cases of the flu reported.

Public health officials are reporting an unusually high number of influenza cases for this time of the year, and they are expected to continue to increase for the next several weeks at least.

The flu season has started early. In comparison, there were 87 cases of the flu reported at this time last year. Also, last season, widespread flu activity wasn't announced until mid-January.

The number of cases has risen sharply in the past month, according to Health Department data.

There have been 44 influenza-related hospitalizations so far this season, and two reported deaths caused by the flu.

There have been six reported outbreaks of "influenza-like illnesses" in long-term and basic care settings. Outbreaks in schools, assisted living facilities and workplaces are common during the influenza season, according to public health officials.

The flu is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses that infect the nose, throat and lungs, according to the Health Department. Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches and fatigue. The flu virus can spread a day before symptoms develop, and five to seven days after becoming sick.

Public health officials recommend getting the flu vaccine to prevent the flu. The vaccine is recommended for everyone 6 months and older.

Other tips include washing your hands frequently, staying home when you are sick and avoiding touching your hands to your face.

For updates on flu activity in North Dakota, visit www.ndflu.com.
North Dakota attorney general Drew Wrigley says doctors who perform abortions should be able to disclose the patients personal health information as part of their defense to avoid prosecution. North Dakotas abortion ban, which is currently on hold because of a lawsuit, makes the procedure illegal except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger. Doctors would have to prove those exceptions in court in order to be cleared of a Class C felony. The attorney general said he couldnt find any cases that address the scenario and it would not violate the privacy rule.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys engagement photos feature the bride-to-be in a $75,000 sheer couture dress captured by a Hollywood fashion photographer. Royal watchers are remarking on the lack of formality in the pics for a royal.

It was chaos and sheer terror in Melbourne when a car deliberately plowed into a crowd of shoppers injuring at least 19 people just days before Christmas. While no terrorism links were initially found, the investigation continues. Daily Mail Australia Editor Barclay Crawford has this story.

The pharmaceutical billionaire and his wife found dead in their Toronto home may have been involved in a bitter family feud, DailyMail.com has exclusively learned. Police initially considered it a murder-suicide, but now the mystery surrounding their deaths deepens.

In celebrity news, Khloe Kardashian confirmed that she is expecting, but the rings on her left hand in her photo announcement have fans buzzing about a possible engagement. DailyMailTV reveals whats really going on.

Hugh Hefner was known for his raucous parties, but seems to have wanted his four children and wife to keep it clean. His inheritance brings strict rules of behavior and an alcohol ban.

This astounding $4 million 18th birthday party will leave you speechless. Meet the extravagant family whose lavish Texas lifestyle redefines what it means to give your kids every opportunity you can afford.

And, celebs flocked to social media to show off their Christmas cards and we're showing you the best of the best from this season! See how the Kardashians and Kevin Hart spread some holiday cheer.
Wouldnt it be wonderful if politicians could agree that next year they will accept the major role immigration has played in putting pressure on housing, the NHS and schools. Pigs might fly!

They were at it again yesterday during Prime Ministers Questions. Labours Rosena Allin-Khan claimed in sepulchral tones that 2,500 children in her Wandsworth constituency will be waking up homeless on Christmas morning.

I wager it has never occurred to Rosena Allin-Khan for a single second in all of her 40 years that mass immigration has contributed significantly to homelessness. Her stock explanation yesterday was austerity, which she insisted must be ended forthwith.

Theresa May reasonably replied that being homeless did not mean sleeping rough. But she didnt drop the slightest hint that the greatest demographic upheaval in our history has a lot to do with the scarcity of affordable housing. She never does. Nor does any minister.

The housing crisis was once again debated in Parliament yesterday. Theresa May told a Labour MP being homeless did not mean sleeping rough

Then Jeremy Corbyn reprised his familiar routine of claiming the NHS is in crisis simply because the Government has not sunk enough billions into it. The notion that rapidly rising demand on our health services has been partly stoked by unprecedented levels of immigration has not yet penetrated his cloudy mind.

Why is it politicians of both parties, and the BBC and much of the media, will not mention the dreaded I word in relation to the scarcity of resources? It surely cant just be because they are bone-headed or ignorant.

No, I suspect the deeper reason is they are terrified of being thought racist. This is the accusation they most fear. So every ding-dong about the allocation of resources proceeds without anyone mentioning the gigantic, but perennially mute, elephant in the room.

Well, its not remotely racist to suggest that if a country has net migration of around 250,000 every year for ten years, that is bound to place an extra strain on public services and the availability of housing.

Cant we all agree that immigration has been in many ways a great boon for this country, while accepting at the same time that too much of it too quickly is bound to lead to problems? For the life of me, I cant see why this is racist.

Very occasionally a body with a calm and analytical approach, and without any taint of racism, casts some light on a debate normally carried on in complete darkness. One such organisation is Migration Watch, whose figures, I know from experience, are copper-bottomed.

According to a new report by Migration Watch, high levels of net migration have driven the soaring demand for rental properties over the past decade. Young people are paying the price through ever higher rentals, which in turn make it more difficult for them to save for a deposit.

What! Think of all the millions of young people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn in June, partly because they believed (wrongly) he would abolish tuition fees, and partly because they were cheesed off by soaring rents and not being able to buy homes until they are middle-aged.

Jeremy Corbyn claimed the NHS was in crisis due to a funding shortage. But unprecedented levels of immigration have placed further strain on the service

Get a few representatives of this disgruntled tribe in a room and Ive no doubt they would be astonished to learn the housing crisis is in large measure driven by uncontrolled immigration  of which they probably, in most instances, whole-heartedly approve.

No, they would protest. Its the Governments fault for not building enough houses, or the result of greedy and unscrupulous landlords driving up rents. Im sure thats what Jeremy thinks.

But look at the figures  all in the public domain  which Migration Watch has brought together. As supply has failed to keep pace with demand, rents in England have risen 23 per cent over the past decade.

Its even worse in London, where between January 2008 and January 2017 rents have increased by 36 per cent, considerably more than the 21 per cent rise in average earnings.

Over the same period, homes headed by someone born abroad accounted for more than 80 per cent  I repeat, 80 per cent  of the total growth (265,000 out of a 328,000 net increase) of households in Londons rented sector.

The report points out that across England, out of the net increase of just over 1.2 million in the number of new households between 2005 and 2014, more than 1.1 million had a foreign-born head.

What is to be done? Some people simply call for more housing, even if this means building on Green Belt land. But successive governments seem incapable of putting up enough new homes. The annual average of new houses over the past decade is only 130,000, though it is estimated 300,000 a year are needed.

Despite the Governments recent pledge to build more homes, it would take a very wild optimist to think that the huge imbalance between supply and demand is going to be corrected any time soon.

Its only common sense. If the population of a small island increases by the equivalent of a city the size of Portsmouth every year for ten years, there are bound to be new burdens  and not just on housing.

NHS maternity wards are also under severe strain. One factor is a high birth-rate partly fuelled by migration (file image)

A report in todays Mail reveals almost 140,000 errors occurred on NHS maternity wards last year, ranging from harmless blunders to very serious errors which led to brain damage or death.

Maternity wards are evidently under severe strain. The Jeremy Corbyns of this world will, as usual, automatically blame lack of resources, but there is much more to it than that. One cause is a larger number of complex deliveries because of older or overweight mothers. Another factor is a high birth-rate partly fuelled by migration.

According to the Office for National Statistics, more than six in ten babies born in London hospitals last year had mothers who are either immigrants or were visiting from abroad. Is it any surprise these units are under such pressure?

Austerity, austerity, austerity is the unthinking mantra of the Left in response to our often buckling public services. Too much immigration in too short a period of time would probably be a more accurate explanation.

And yet both Government and Opposition and much of the media persist in playing fantasy politics in which no one ever alludes to one major reason for our services being so overstretched.

I cant be alone in finding such ingrained dishonesty very depressing. It shouldnt be beyond the wit of intelligent politicians to extol the enormous contribution which immigrants make to our society while accepting there is sometimes too heavy a social cost.

Of course sensible people  including many recent immigrants  know the real score: the lengthening queues at A&E and in GP surgeries, the pressure on school places and the housing crisis, all of which are at least partly attributable to letting immigration run riot.

And that is why getting back control of our borders, so net migration can be reduced to less than 100,000 a year, remains the cornerstone of Brexit negotiations  and we mustnt let the Government forget it.

Labours solution of ever-greater public spending will never work because there simply isnt enough money. Where is the reputable politician brave enough to tell the truth  which is that lower migration will take some of the strain off housing and give us better public services?
The creators of The Crown have revealed how they make it historically accurate

The Crown is the lavish Netflix drama that has gripped viewers worldwide with its retelling of the Queen's early reign and is the most expensive TV series ever, costing $130 million to make.

So it will come as no surprise that the team behind the hit show put meticulous effort into making sure the show is as historically accurate as possible, even down to the positioning of a brooch on a piece of clothing.

Speaking to Refinery29, the team behind show revealed the painstaking processes involved, including putting together moment-by-moment timelines with corresponding pictures of important events to make sure they're depicted accurately.

And once the team discovered Princess Margaret had worn a hairpiece on her wedding day, they made sure to include it - even though it couldn't be seen beneath her tiara.

The creators have enlisted historians, researchers and experts to ensure that everything viewers see in the drama is rooted in fact.

The Netflix series recreated a strikingly similar dress to Princess Margaret's wedding dress

The Crown's producers have revealed how they make sure the show is accurate by creating timelines with pictures to perfect every detail

The process begins when specialist researcher Annie Sulzberger provides the show's creator Peter Morgan with the facts he needs to write the show.

After writing the script Morgan passes it on to Robert Lacey, the show's historical consultant, to ensure its historical accuracy.

The crew are meticulous, with Lacey recalling how they tweaked costumes worn in the scene when the Queen meets the Kennedys because brooches and watches were in the wrong places.

For huge historical events the team will put together timelines with pictures, which they send to the costume and art departments so they can put them together to accurately cover the day.

Costume designers even had Vanessa Kirby wear a hidden hair piece because Margaret did so on her wedding day

Sulzberger discovered that Princess Margaret had worn a hairpiece under her wedding tiara to make her hair look thicker.

The hair piece wouldn't be seen onscreen, but the costume department added it so Kirby could get into character.

The second season debuted on Netflix earlier this month and proved to be a lot more controversial than the first.

It painted an unflattering portrait of Prince Philip as an oversexed adulterer - with the release just days after he celebrated his 70th wedding anniversary to Queen Elizabeth.

The current series features a storyline about Prince Philip's rumoured infidelities

In one scene the Queen finds a picture of a dancer hidden in her husband's luggage

The series has proved to be a huge hit for the online streaming service and has won multiple awards

The Duke of Edinburgh, played by Matt Smith, is also seen being tempted by Jackie Kennedy as she flirts with him during her visit to Buckingham Palace in 1961.

Meanwhile Elizabeth'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.
There are people with an eye for DIY and then those who take the entire thing to the next level.

Take Jessica Breen and her husband, Sinclair, for instance. The 33-year-old high school sweethearts and parents designed the bookshelf of their dreams after spying an image on the Internet.

Their incredible structure took them weeks of preparation, 16 hours to put together and set them back about AUD $900.

FEMAIL spoke to the creative mother-of-two Ms Breen, who, with Sinclair, is now campaigning to appear on The Block 2019.

Jessica Breen and her husband, Sinclair (pictured with their children), from Brisbane, designed the bookshelf of their dreams after spying an image on the Internet

The creative couple (pictured) spent weeks planning their shelf, 16 hours creating it and AUD $900 on the structure - they now want to be on the TV show, The Block, next year

Ms Breen said they started by measuring their wall space, giving the image and dimensions to a graphic arts teacher - they then bought panels from a manufacturer (pictured) and put the whole structure together on the floor (pictured right)

Ms Breen told FEMAIL that when she and Sinclair - who works as a builder - had finished building their house, she stumbled upon an image of a similar wall bookshelf on Google:

'When I showed Sinclair he almost had a heart attack,' Ms Breen explained. 'We knew we had to try it.'

She added that the couple then 'measured our wall space and gave the image and dimensions to a graphic arts teacher at the school I work at':

'He magically came up with the sizes of all the panels that we got cut from a manufacturer,' Ms Breen said.

The pair visited Aussie Cut for their panels, and Ms Breen estimated that they probably spent around $900 on the custom-made pieces.

'We started making all the boxes, and Sinclair created a fake MDF wall so we could draw the boxes in the right places,' Ms Breen said

Starting at 8am in the morning, the couple finished the lengthy, in-depth process around 12am the next day - the mother added that 'it was a HUGE process', but so worth it

Next, they set to work.

'We started making all the boxes, and Sinclair created a fake MDF wall so we could draw the boxes in the right places,' Ms Breen said.

'Then, we had to fix the wall onto our normal studded wall, and then we screwed the boxes onto the MDF wall.'

Starting at 8am in the morning, the couple finished the lengthy, in-depth process around 12am the next day:

'It was a huge process,' Ms Breen added. 'But it was so worth it.'

Speaking about her DIY tips, Ms Breen said you need to make sure you take the time and avoid cutting corners - she also said Google and Pinterest are great sources of inspiration

Speaking about their creation now it's fully up and running, Ms Breen said her family are huge fans:

'My boys love the seating area and bookshelf,' she said. 'The books along the bottom of the bookcase are all theirs - so they are quite happy to chill for a bit there, read and hang out.

Ms Breen has a few tips for aspiring creatives:

'All good things take time,' she said. 'You need to make sure you take that time, refrain from rushing and don't cut corners.'

The mother-of-two also said the web can be a great source of inspiration: 'Google and Pinterest are really helpful!'.

'My boys love the seating area and bookshelf,' she said. 'The books along the bottom of the bookcase are all theirs - so they are quite happy to chill for a bit there, read and hang out,' Ms Breen said (pictured: the finished product)

Since Ms Breen shared a snap of her incredible creation on the Internet just a few days ago, fans have gone crazy.

Within five minutes, the mum-of-two had amassed over 1,000 likes on Facebook - and at present, she has close to 5,000 appreciative comments.

'Oh my gosh this is my dream,' one person posted.

'How clever is that?,' another added. 'It looks fabulous.'

If you would like to follow Jessica and Sinclair's The Block campaign Facebook profile, please click here.
Socialite Jodie Kidd is giving Christmas an eco makeover this year.

Not only is the 39-year-old, who became a West Sussex pub landlady earlier this year, encouraging people to use less plastic during the festive period, but she has unveiled her own environmentally friendly tree at her family's home, Holders, in Barbados.

Her snap shows an unusual tree made of driftwood and adorned with starfish ornaments.

It was a very different story last year, however, as Jodie recalled sizing up 'thousands of trees . . . to choose the one that would last the longest, so that it's not just a bare twig by Christmas Day'.

Socialite Jodie Kidd is giving Christmas an eco makeover this year. The 39-year-old unveiled her environmentally friendly tree at her family's home Holders, in Barbados

Christmas Carole and her Scandi tidings of joy

Carole Middleton advises in Baby London magazine on how to enjoy Christmas with a new arrival

Now that Pippa Middleton has wed moneybags hedge fund boss James Matthews, we have to rely on her mother, Carole, to provide us with banal seasonal tips.

Writing in Baby London magazine, the former air hostess advises her readers on how to enjoy Christmas with a new arrival.

'Christmas with the children is always a busy but joyous time, and nothing beats seeing their little faces light up as they tear into their Christmas stockings.

'Why not establish a theme to help you plan the menu and decor? I love the idea of a cosy apres-ski-style party, complete with Scandi touches, hot chocolates and faux fur blankets and cushions  and don't forget to have that fire burning!

'Or you might prefer more of a winter wonderland, with white icicle-style lights draped from doorways, glittering snowflakes and cuddly polar bears.'

And let's not forget Pippa's father Michael Middleton, who likes to don fancy dress at Christmas  and once wore an inflatable sumo wrestler's outfit, much to the amusement of the family.

Whitrow will is a work of suspense

Actor Benjamin Whitrow, who died in September aged 80, never gave a bad performance, in the opinion of Laurence Olivier.

But his definitive portrayal was of Mr Bennet in BBC's Pride And Prejudice in 1995, observing the social ambitions of his wife and the contrasting romantic fortunes of five daughters.

So it seems appropriate that his will, bequeathing 814,633, should be a small masterpiece of almost theatrical suspense.

Originally drafted in June 2011, the document lists a bequest of 50,000 to his elder son, Tom, and one of 25,000 to his younger son, Angus, with the residue 'to my wife Catherine'. There is no reference at all to his daughter, Hannah.

Then, in a handwritten codicil added this February, Whitrow stipulated he was leaving 1,000 to actress Margaret Bourgein and, finally, 30,000 'to my daughter Hannah'.

There is no mention of actress Celia Imrie, who, in her early 40s, came to an unusual arrangement with Whitrow  asking him to have a child with her but not live with her.

Their son, Angus Imrie, now better known as Josh Archer in Radio 4's saga about Ambridge, was born in 1994  a half-brother to Tom and Hannah.

It's Albert as Santa's helper

Prince Albert of Monaco competed at five consecutive winter Olympics. But yesterday, at the age of 59, he appeared content to do nothing more strenuous than pull on a festive bobble hat and seasonal tie as he attended the annual Christmas tree ceremony outside Monaco Palace

Prince Albert of Monaco competed at five consecutive winter Olympics in both the two-man and four-man bobsleigh.

But yesterday, at the age of 59, he appeared content to do nothing more strenuous than pull on a festive bobble hat and seasonal tie as he attended the annual Christmas tree ceremony outside Monaco Palace, accompanied by his South African wife, former Olympic swimmer Princess Charlene, 39.

The couple's twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, have just celebrated their third birthdays, though Albert insists that their presents from Santa were carefully rationed  a toy truck for Jacques and a Barbie doll for Gabriella.

Sir Michael Parkinson, 82, regrets that one guest eluded him in all his years as a chat show host. 'I never 'hooked' Sinatra, though I did meet him at a party in New York. 'I went up to him and said: 'Thanks for inviting me. I'll see you in England, hopefully.' And he said: 'Sure thing, David.'

Meghan Markle's love of Soho House knows no bounds Meghan, who met Prince Harry at the exclusive London club in 2016 and was later whisked away by him on a date to Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, had a drink with the club's founder Nick Jones on Monday at Little House in Mayfair. 'He just happened to be there and joined her for a drink,' I am told. What a happy coincidence. Surely the suave Jones, who is marrried to Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young, deserves a royal warrant, if not a royal wedding invite. Advertisement

She normally presents a picture of elegance on the red carpet but, given the choice, Kate Winslet, 42, would like to revive some of the garish trends of the decade style forgot.

Recalls Oscar-winning Kate: 'I remember the smell of kiwi lip balm from The Body Shop at Christmas. And I recall some fun dabbling with electric blue mascara. I loved it.

'And glitter! Who doesn't love a bit of face glitter? It was much more prevalent in the Eighties . . . I even remember spraying it in my hair.'
Crown Princess Mary and her family look set to celebrate a Christmas to remember as the family were spotted en route to Tasmania on Thursday.

Joining the Royal is her best friend and the bridesmaid at her wedding, Amber Petty.

The pair - who have a long-standing friendship spanning 20 years - have already spent much of the Danish Princess's Australian holiday together.

This would seem to quash previous reports by Woman's Day Australia, which claim the Danish palace recently forced Princess Mary to end her friendship with Ms Petty.

Crown Princess Mary and her family look set to celebrate a Christmas to remember as the family were spotted en route to Tasmania on Thursday - she was joined by Amber Petty (all pictured)

The pair - who have a long-standing friendship spanning 20 years - have already spent much of the Danish Princess's Australian holiday together (pictured at the airport)

This would seem to quash previous reports, which claim the Danish palace recently forced Princess Mary to end her friendship with Ms Petty (pictured together at the airport)

Princess Mary's sisters; Jane Alison Stephens and Patricia Anne Bailey; and friend Amber Petty (left), waited for her to arrive at the church

Ms Petty and the Hobart-born Royal have a 20-year friendship under their belt, and the couple have stood by each other through thick and thin (pictured: Ms Petty as bridesmaid)

The publication reported that a Royal source of Queen Margrethe, the ruling head of the Danish Royal family, urged Princess Mary to cut ties with Ms Petty over various 'embarrassing revelations'.

The most recent of these is understood to be Ms Petty's attendance at the Australian Adult Industry awards.

Ms Petty was not only Princess Mary's bridesmaid at her 2004 wedding to Prince Frederik, but has often been photographed with the Princess on her visits home to Australia.

The publication reported that a Royal source of Queen Margrethe, the ruling head of the Danish Royal family, urged Princess Mary to cut ties with Ms Petty over various 'embarrassing revelations' (both pictured)

The pair have been photographed together on Princess Mary's trips home to Tasmania (pictured in Hobart in 2008)

Speaking previously to Daily Mail Australia, Ms Petty revealed her affection for the Royal family in a candid interview on Seven's The Morning Show (pictured: Princess Mary's wedding)

The 47-year-old has always maintained she and the Danish Crown Princess have remained close over the years.

Ms Petty revealed her fondness and affection for the Royal family in a candid interview on Seven's The Morning Show.

'They're a beautiful family and I miss them - as anyone would living on the other side of the world from people you care about,' she told the TV hosts.

'They're a beautiful family and I miss them - as anyone would living on the other side of the world from people you care about,' Amber said of the Danish Royals (pictured together in 2008)

The Danish Royal family's trip to Australia is an auspicious one as it will mark the first time in six years the the Princess has been back to her hometown of Tasmania (pictured: Amber Petty at Princess Josephine and Prince Vincent's christening in 2011)

The Danish Royal family's trip to Australia is an auspicious one as it will mark the first time in six years the the Princess has been back to her hometown of Tasmania.

The stylish mother-of-four, her husband Crown Prince Frederik and the couple's four children - Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine -have been travelling around Australia since December 11.

The 45-year-old, who left Sydney for her home state today with her family in tow, kept her airport attire casual opting for a simple black, dress, tan-hued sunglasses and nude ballet pumps.

She also carried a brown tan handbag, as she stood alongside two large suitcases, one of which was by the world-renowned designer, Louis Vuitton.

They have always been by one another's side (pictured at the wedding)

Similarly to her friend, Princess Mary, Ms Petty also opted for a more relaxed approach to her airport ensemble.

She chose a white sleeveless dress emblazoned with a colourful fruit print.

It's not known whether Ms Petty will be joining the Danish Royal family for their Christmas celebrations.
A woman has spent a staggering 20,000 in a bid to look like a porcelain doll.

Jade Smith, 21, from Wallington, Surrey, has splashed the huge sum on everything from doll-like outfits to shoes, accessories, wigs, key chains and toys - as well as a 20 monthly 'glitter budget'.

Jade wears circle contact lenses to enlarge the appearance of her eyes and admits to getting up at 4am some mornings so she has time to get ready.

The retail worker, who goes by 'Princess Jadette' on social media, said: 'I've spent around 10,000 just on my clothes. I normally get my clothing shipped in from Japan and Korea.

'I have roughly around 40 pairs of shoes and I have around 40 key chains.'The money has also gone into my toy collection.'

Obsession: Jade has splashed the huge sum on everything from doll-like outfits to shoes, accessories, wigs, key chains and toys - as well as a 20 monthly 'glitter budget'

Jade's bedroom is decked out with cartoon linen, dolls, Disney figures, Hello Kitty and My Little Pony figures - and looks more like that of a seven-year-old than a 21-year-old woman

The doll-wannabe was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia - a chronic condition that causes muscle pain and bruising throughout the body - which she takes pain medication daily for.

'It's incredibly painful to live through each day,' said Jade.

But the cutesy 'Lolita' outfits and toys are a form of escapism from the condition.

'It affects me because I can't enjoy as many things as I wish I could,' said Jade.' Walking really hurts sometimes and there are some days where I am just bed bound for a couple of days where I can't actually move.'

Escapism: How Jade's love of toys and clothes help her cope with pain

'The toys and the clothes do help with it because it makes me forget for even just a little while the pain that I am experiencing.

Jade, or Princess Jadette, as she is known on social media, wants to look like a porcelain doll and admits In the future she'd like to have plastic surgery to enhance her doll-like looks

Defending her style inspiration, Jade said: 'Lolita isn't related to the novel at all. It is based on the fashion or style from the 80s from Japan. Lolita means "young girl"'

'I don't believe this is the way for me to hide because this to me is my real self and this is me showing everyone my real side.

'I believe this is the real me because inside I am cute, I am cuddly and I just like to project it to the world.'

Think pink! Jade's haven is decked out with toys

At home, Jade's bedroom is decked out with cartoon linen, shelves of dolls, Disney figures, Hello Kitty and My Little Pony figures - and looks more like that of a seven-year-old than a 21-year-old woman.

Jade still lives with her parents and younger sisters and the family's loft is stuffed with toys and clothes that don't fit in Jade's pink oasis.

Speaking about her pink room, Jade said: 'The toys and the clothes do help with [my condition] because it makes me forget for even just a little while the pain that I am experiencing'

Painful: The doll-wannabe was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia - a condition that causes muscle pain and bruising throughout the body - which she takes pain medication daily for

Pink obsession: If she had her way, Jade would wear pink everyday but working as a retail assistant Jade has to make do with sneaking pink accessories into her black work uniform

If she had her way, Jade would wear head to toe pink everyday but working as a retail assistant Jade has to make do with sneaking pink accessories into her black work uniform.

She said: 'I got in trouble once at work for dressing differently. I have over 20 key chains on my phone and my phone fell out of my pocket during a shift.

'The only casual clothing I own is jeggings, which I wear for work.'

'I would consider surgery': Jade's bid to look like a doll

Jade, or Princess Jadette, as she is known on social media, wants to look like a porcelain doll and admits In the future she'd like to have plastic surgery to enhance her doll-like looks.

Jade said: 'I would probably consider plastic surgery to make myself look younger when I am slightly older - Botox, a nose job and possibly a face-lift.'

Committed: Princess Jadette, as she is known on social media, wants to look like a porcelain doll and admits In the future she'd like to have plastic surgery to enhance her doll-like looks

The retail worker (pictured with a friend) said: 'I would probably consider plastic surgery to make myself look younger when I am slightly older - Botox, a nose job and possibly a face-lift'

Pride and joy: Jade's Cinderella dress, which cost 400 to make, has 14 petticoats to it and 10,000 individual diamantes glued onto it by Jade's own hands

While Jade's pink look attracts a lot of attention when she is out and about, the retail assistant says she enjoys going out in public in her dolllike outfits because of the (mostly) positive reactions she gets.

Instead of being heckled by passersby, they ask to take selfies with her because she's so cute-looking.

She said: 'Quite a few little girls have called me princess and I have to act like a real princess because they don't know the difference and I don't want to ruin their illusion.

'Quite a few people always try to take photos of me sneakily or they do ask for photos sometimes.'

Having fun: How Jade shrugs off attention from strangers

'It's pretty common for me to get things shouted at me,' said Jade. 'The latest one was when I was called a "little Barbie".

Jade (pictured here as a toddler) recalled: 'When I was 11 I got really interested into the Japanese anime scene. I started cosplaying and my first ever convention I discovered Lolita fashion and from then on it has just grown from what it is now'

Jade (pictured here as a youngster) said: 'It's pretty common for me to get things shouted at me,' said Jade. 'The latest one was when I was called a "little Barbie"'

Jade (pictured here as a youngster) first started to dress like a princess  or as she calls it in Lolita style - age 11, when her mum would dress her up in frilly dresses

'Some other comments are like, 'are you on your way to a clown's funeral?' and 'It's not Halloween, you missed it.'

'I would have to say people who don't like this fashion that if you haven't tried it - you won't understand. It's a great fashion to wear and it's really good for making you feel happy.

'Because you get to just be yourself. And you get to have fun and not have to worry about anything.'

Lolita style: Obsession that began when Jade was just 11

Jade first started to dress like a princess  or as she calls it in Lolita style - age 11, when her mum would dress her up in frilly dresses.

She said: 'When I was 11 I got really interested into the Japanese anime scene. I started cosplaying and my first ever convention I discovered Lolita fashion and from then on it has just grown from what it is now.

Jade said: 'I would have to say people who don't like this fashion that if you haven't tried it - you won't understand. It's a great fashion to wear and it's really good for making you feel happy'

he talented seamstress has her own sewing machine and makes many of the elaborate outfits herself: Jade estimates she's mad over 100 pieces, including accessories.

'Lolita isn't related to the novel at all. It is based on the fashion or style from the 80s from Japan. Lolita means 'young girl'.'

'They used to beat me up': Cruel bullies made Jade's life hell

Her unconventional appearance attracted the attention of the school bullies and Jade was subject to constant name-calling and even physically attacks.

'I was picked on for everything: my eye colour, my hair colour, having braces, having glasses. Everything was picked on. I had no proper outlet to express my creativity apart for my fashion and how I dressed,' Jade explained.

'They used to beat me up a lot and they would call me horrible names. One time someone even pushed me down the stairs in the school.'

Brave: Jade's unconventional appearance attracted the attention of the school bullies and Jade was subject to constant name-calling and even physically attacks

Recalling her difficult school years, Jade said: 'I was picked on for everything: my eye colour, my hair colour, having braces, having glasses. Everything was picked on'

The defiant fashion fan said: 'I don't believe this is the way for me to hide because this to me is my real self and this is me showing everyone my real side'

And the more elaborate her look got, the worse the bullying became  but even when Jade tried dressing like the other girls in her class the bullying continued.

Jade said: 'I did try to dress like them so that I get bullied less. But they still bullied me saying that I never truly belonged.

'It completely shattered my self-confidence. When they found out my dreams of wanting to be a model, they would bully me and throw food at me and tell me I was too fat to be a model.'

How cosplay community helped Jade learn to accept herself

Her confidence waning, Jade has found a supportive network in the cosplay community who admire rather than make fun of her dressing up obsession.

Jade said: 'It makes me feel happy because of all my life I was bullied and this is like the one fashion that I feel comfortable in. I feel safer in this look.

'The people who also wear this, they keep you safe.'

As well as dressing up Lolita style, Jade has made character costumes that she wears to cosplay conventions, including Draco Malfoy, Jessica Rabbit and Cinderella.

The talented seamstress has her own sewing machine and makes many of the elaborate outfits herself: Jade estimates she's mad over 100 pieces, including accessories.

Her Cinderella dress, which cost 400 to make, has 14 petticoats to it and 10,000 individual diamantes glued onto it by Jade's own hands.
They're sent thousands of gifts from royal fans all over the world.

But now it has been revealed that Prince George and Princess Charlotte won't be receiving all of the presents that are sent to them to this Christmas.

Many of the gifts are donated to charity, with only a selection taken into the home for the young royals.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are said to be 'very careful' about how many presents their children are given.

This year, George, four, is likely to receive the police car that he requested from Father Christmas, while a doll house is a 'strong contender' for two-year-old Charlotte.

Prince George and Princess Charlotte will not be receiving gifts sent to them this Christmas by members of the public

Speaking to Us Weekly, a source said that spoiling their children too much is Kate and William's 'worst nightmare'.

'Theyre both extremely careful,' the family friend said. 'Receiving that many gifts wouldnt have a good effect on the kids.'

A spokesperson for Kensington Palace confirmed that some presents sent to George and Charlotte are given to charity.

'Some items will be taken into the home and others stored within the Royal Household,' they explained.

Princess Charlotte, two, is likely to receive a doll house this year, according to a family friend

'On occasion, and where appropriate, items may be donated to organisations who can make good use of them.

'Their Royal Highnesses are incredibly grateful for the warmth and generosity that has been extended to their children from members of the public.'

It comes after Prince William presented a letter to Santa from George during a visit to Helsinki at the end of last month.

Despite there being space to list five gifts, the note showed that the youngster only wanted to ask for a police car this year.

Yesterday, George and Charlotte joined their parents at the Queen's annual Christmas lunch

Charlotte, who was dressed in a burgundy cardigan, looked sleepy as she was driven home

And the young prince clearly thinks that he is deserving of the present as at the top of the paper where it asks whether he has been 'naughty or nice' the four-year-old has circled 'nice'.

But George and Charlotte will not have to wait until Christmas Day itself to open their presents, as traditionally the royals exchange presents on Christmas Eve.

Yesterday, George and Charlotte joined their parents at the Queen's annual Christmas lunch held at Buckingham Palace.

Following the family event, the youngsters looked rather sleepy as they were driven home by their father.

Charlotte was dressed in an adorable burgundy cardigan over a floral frock, while her older brother donned an 85 knit from Amaia.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have arrived in Norfolk to kick off their traditional Christmas break, which they will spend on the Royal estate at Sandringham.

Her Majesty, 91, and Prince Philip, 96, travelled from London by train the day after they hosted the entire Royal family for a festive lunch at Buckingham Palace.

The couple ravelled first class on the 10.45 am Great Northern service from London King's Cross to King's Lynn, just a 30-minute drive from the country estate.

Flanked by security guards, the Queen, resplendent in a vibrant magenta coat and silk headscarf, looked to be in excellent spirits as she alighted the train.

Scroll down for video

Home for Christmas! The Queen and Prince Philip travelled from London by train the day after they hosted the entire family for a festive lunch at Buckingham Palace

Flanked by security guards, the Queen, resplendent in a vibrant magenta coat and silk headscarf, looked to be in excellent spirits as she alighted the train

The train is a far cry from the luxury the Queen is used to on the royal train which comes complete with sleeping car, bathroom and a thickly-carpeted saloon and has as many as nine private carriages.

Due to the huge running costs, the train is now only used on very special occasions; by contrast, a single first class train fare from King's Cross to King's Lynn costs 56.40.

In previous years, the Queen has passed the time on the 1 hour 37 minute journey by browsing her iPad mini after being given a crash course by her grandsons William and Harry.

It is not clear whether the monarch had her device tucked away in her Launer handbag on Thursday, but the Duke was clutching a copy of Michelangelo: The Complete Paintings, Sculptures and Architecture by Frank Zollner - which was published earlier this year.

Home for Christmas! The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive at King's Lynn station to kick off their traditional Christmas break, which they will spend on the estate at Sandringham

In previous years, the Queen has passed the time on the 1 hour 37 minute journey by browsing her iPad mini after being given a crash course by her grandsons William and Harry

This year, Harry's fiancee Meghan Markle will join her husband-to-be Sandringham on December 25th - an unprecedented step for someone who is yet to become an official member of the royal family.

The Duchess of Cambridge did not spend Christmas at Sandringham until she and William were man and wife in 2011.

Meghan, who will take British citizenship and get baptised by the Church of England before the wedding, will also attend the Christmas Day service at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, a spokesperson has confirmed.

She and Harry, 33, who are now living together in a two-bed cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, will also take part in the traditional walk to mass by the entire royal family.

On-board entertainment: It is not clear whether the monarch had her iPad tucked away in her Launer handbag on Thursday, but the Duke appeared to be clutching a large hardback book

New addition: This year, Harry's fiancee Meghan Markle will join her husband-to-be Sandringham on December 25th - an unprecedented step for someone who is yet to become an official member of the royal family

Colourful: The Queen finished her festive look with a vibrant silk headscarf, black Launer handbag, patents shoes and black gloves - while Philip looked smart in a grey suit

Family tradition: Sandringham has been owned by the royal family since 1862 when it was purchased by Queen Victoria at the request of her son Edward, then Prince of Wales

The couple travelled first class on the 10.45am Great Northern service from London King's Cross to King's Lynn in Norfolk with the Duke of Edinburgh

Confirming the news today a Kensington Palace spokesman said: 'You can expect to see The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and Ms Markle at Sandringham on Christmas Day.'

Sandringham has been owned by the royal family since 1862 when it was purchased by Queen Victoria at the request of her son Edward, then Prince of Wales.

Since then, the house has been in continuous use by the royal family and it was there that King George VI died on the 6th February 1952.

It is also from Sandringham that the Queen's annual Christmas speech is broadcast.
GRAND FORKS  For the first time in 15 years, North Dakotas population has shrunk.

But the drop is not as sharp as in other states, and the figures should be put in context for interpretation, North Dakotas census official said.

The state, which set population records during its oil boom, had a population decrease of 155 people from July 1, 2016 to July 1 according to estimates released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. That means it has about 755,400 people.

Minnesota saw a jump of 51,556 residents from 2016 to 2017.

The decrease is not a surprise, said Kevin Iverson, manager of the North Dakota Census Office. Depressed oil prices caused a slowdown in the mid-2010s after the state saw flocks of people migrate to North Dakota to tap the boom. After prices lingered around $100 a barrel for most of the first half of the decade, they dropped from $109 a barrel in June 2014 to less than $30 a barrel in January 2016.

The downturn led to a decline in active drilling rigs in North Dakota, as well as jobs leaving the state.

We took a pause, thats for sure, he said of population growth.

The last time North Dakota lost population was in 2002, when it reported a population of 638,168. That was about 900 fewer people than the 2001 estimate of 639,062.

North Dakota, which ranks 47th in total population, was among eight states that saw a population loss from last year, according to a U.S. Census news release. California had the most people with more than 39.5 million residents, according to the 2017 estimates.

Idaho was the fastest growing state. It grew at 2.2 percent, with a total population of 1.7 million people. The U.S. gained 2.3 million residents, growing less than a percent to 325.7 million.

The other states that lost residents were Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Context needed

North Dakota hit an all-time high population last year with 755,548 residents. It previously held the claim to being the fastest growing state in 2015, according to Forum News Service archives.

North Dakota still has the title for second fastest growing state since the 2010 census with 12.3 percent growth, second only to Texas, he noted.

North Dakota did well in the first half of the decade compared with the rest of the country, Iverson said, adding other states have caught up while North Dakota has seen a slowdown in its oil and agriculture industries.

You have to look at it in the context that it has happened, he said.

He noted other oil producing states like Wyoming and Alaska have lost more people compared with North Dakota. Alaska lost 1,727 residents and Wyoming lost 5,595.

Its almost no change at all, Iverson said of North Dakotas numbers. It wasnt a terrible year. It wasnt a good year either, but it wasnt a terrible year.

Illinois saw the greatest loss, shrinking by 33,703 people.

The fact that North Dakotas population essentially held flat through significant downturns in our two largest industry sectors  agriculture and oil  speaks to the strength of our states economy and the resiliency of its people, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said in a statement. The good news is that North Dakota had the largest growth in gross domestic product of any state in the nation during the second quarter of this year, at 8.3 percent, and our administration continues to work closely with communities through the Main Street Initiative to help attract people to fill North Dakotas nearly 13,000 job openings.

Its likely North Dakota could see a period of sustained growth, at least compared to previous years, Iverson said. He noted that oil prices have jumped in recent months. Oil was almost $58 per barrel as of Wednesday.
They say that dogs aren't just for Christmas, and while that might be true, there are hundreds of pooches in need of a forever home this winter.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home has released a series of portraits of dogs who desperately want a new owner.

Some of the pooches have been at the animal shelter for more nearly 100 days already, waiting patiently for a new home.

Eight-year-old Border Terrier Louise has been at Battersea for 94 days, while one-year-old Lurcher Albert has been at the shelter for 93 days.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home has released portraits of dogs who are in desperate need of a new owner. Pictured is Louise, an eight-year-old Border Terrier who has been at the animal shelter for 94 days

One-year-old Lurcher Albert (left) has been at the home for 93 days, while Thelma, a four-year-old Saluki (right) has been there for 94 days

Thelma has been patiently waiting for an owner since being abandoned earlier this year

Over 20,000 pets in the UK will be abandoned this winter, according to Battersea. Pictured are Louise and Albert

Battersea has now launched their winter In From The Cold fundraising campaign in order to help stray pets this winter.

Over 20,000 pets in the UK will be abandoned over the course of this winter with Battersea Dogs and Cats Home looking after 550 dogs at any given time.

It comes after the animal shelter wrote letters to Santa from some of its canines in the hope of making their wish come true, including a missive from Mr Scruffy  a wiry-haired mongrel seeking owners willing to look past his unusual hair do.

Battersea's rehoming and welfare manager Becky Fisher said: 'We do everything we can to make Christmas as fun as possible for our dogs - we give them a special Christmas lunch, decorate the kennels and play carols to get them in the festive spirit.

Irvin, an 11-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, has been at Battersea for 22 days

Kiely, a one-year-old Husky, has been at Battersea for 13 days. The pooch unusually has one blue eye and one brown eye

Virgil, a one-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, has been at Battersea for 14 days

'But it's not the same as being in their own home - and we're hoping these letters will help shine the spotlight on some of our dogs who face spending the festive season at Battersea, without a family.'

London's Mayhew animal home is also looking for caring homes for cats and dogs who have been at the centre for up to nine months, while Dogs Trust also has canines in centres around the country desperate to find loving owners, including crossbreed Jasper who's been waiting two years.

Shelters must go through a careful process to ensure they find the right families to take on the pets and it's unlikely any adoptions can be completed in time for Christmas, but you could still give an animal in need the gift they're longing for - a forever home for the New Year.

Battersea have also written a series of Christmas letters from dogs to Santa. Inseparable duo Daisy and Teddy are looking for a home together. This Chinese Crested pair are a little shy at first, so theyre looking for a home with new owners who are happy to take the time to help them to come out of their shells

Jasmine has been such a good girl since she arrived at Battersea as a stray last month. The Dogue de Bordeaux has got plenty of get-up-and-go, despite being eleven years old and is a real cuddle-bug. She also loves her food and the highlight of her Christmas will definitely be dinner. Jasmine is going to make a great companion to any large dog enthusiast

Mr Scruffy is a Mongrel with big smile and an adorable, shaggy hair-style. He's a high-energy Terrier who has been passed through a lot of homes before he came to Battersea. Mr Scruffy finds the world a bit overwhelming and he's hoping to find a home in the country, with owners who will teach him to be the best dog he can be

Sally has found herself back at Battersea for a second time - through no fault of her own  and this former racer is in real need of a lucky break. She's an affectionate and eager-to-please girl who loves people and hates being left by herself. Despite her gentle nature, this girl is having trouble standing out among the other dogs

Sky is getting lonely in Battersea's kennels, despite the best efforts of the staff to cheer her up. There's still lots of energy left in this seven-year-old and she has many years of love left in her. She loves charging around with tennis balls and she's a very cuddly girl, who lives for human affection

Despite her hand-knitted Christmas jumper, Darcy's finding it hard to get in the festive spirit. She really misses her old home and is hoping she'll soon find new owners to love her. She's a calm and affectionate dog, but she does have a stubborn streak and will need experienced owners to help teach her to mind her manners around other dogs. She's a very smart girl who loves people and she's going to make a wonderful, cuddly companion to whoever is lucky enough to take her home

Marley, a black and white male cat was found as a stray and brought into Mayhew at the beginning of November this year. The three-year-old appeared to have been picked on by another cat so was understandably a little scared of his new surroundings. He has slowly started to come out of his shell and would love a nice quite home where he can receive lots of fuss. He would love a garden and would prefer to be the only cat in the home.

After being left no longer wanted by her previous owners, Maggie was brought into Mayhew by Animal Welfare Officers. The five-year-old Terrier mix is ever such a loving and gentle girl, who enjoys to cuddle up close to you for strokes and company. She has poor eyesight and though she can be nervous in new situations and fearful around strangers, once she gets to know and trust you, she is extremely affectionate

This black female cat was found as a stray by Animal Welfare Officers and brought into Mayhew in October this year. The three-year-old needs a home with someone willing to put in a bit of time allowing her to get to know you and trust you. She is looking for an all adult home and would prefer to be the only cat. She would also love a garden too

Husky and Mastiff crossbreed, Lizzy, was first brought into Mayhew a month ago when her previous owners no longer had time for a dog. The 12-month-old is such an affectionate, friendly girl who gets along well with everyone she meets. She's still very much a puppy, so is super active and playful, and will ideally need an owner with plenty of time on their hands to continue her training and socialisation. She would prefer to be the only dog in the home and can live with children 16 years and older. Lizzy is an active dog who is looking for an equally active owner

Tommy, a seven-year-old male is playful and has the most amazing purr. He arrived at Mayhew more than nine months ago as an injured stray and needed a few teeth coming out as well as a nasty bite behind his leg taken care of. This is now resolved, but you would just need to monitor his leg to see if any lameness might occur in the future. Tommy can live with children, but would like to be the only cat in the home

Two-year-old black and white female Tricks was a stray who had previously been owned. She was brought into Mayhew at the end of October this year and is now looking to settle in and learn to love someone again. Tricks has a slight heart murmur, which has been graded two/three out of six. Heart murmurs need no medication and will be checked out by your vet when you visit yearly. Tricks can live with sensible teenagers, but not other cats or dogs

Seven-year-old cross breed Jake was found as a stray but the team at Dogs Trust Loughborough say whatever he's been through, it hasn't curbed his enthusiasm for life. He is very on-the-go and treats life like one big adventure. He loves to explore new places and loves being out and about. He can be a little anxious if he isn't given space when he wants it. This little chap can live with young adults but no other pets in his new home and would benefit from owners who are happy keeping him active physically and mentally

Two-year-old grehound Snowy lives at Dogs Trust shelter in Evesham. She's a charming girl who is ready to explore and really wants to make friends. Although she can be a little unsure at first, it doesn't take her too long to come round. She really loves to play with her toys and absolutely loves her food. Snowy is looking for a home that can balance plenty of snooze and relaxation time with walks and lots of things to do, where someone is around for most of the day. She she must live with another dog as she is much happier with a canine friend and could live with children aged six and above

Jake may be 15 but this Older Age Pooch still loves life and likes to be a busy boy! Found as a stray in Manchester he is now looking for a comfy retirement home where he can sit back and relax after enjoying a nice walk and playtime with his two-legged friends and his favourite squeaky toys. He can live with older teenagers but would like to be the only dog in the home so he can lap up all the love!

Peanut is a beautiful young girl who was found by as a stray in Glasgow. She has lots of energy and would love to find a family who will help her channel this into her training. Peanut could potentially live with another dog and children over the age of 16 and would prefer not to be left alone in the home for too long

Arriving as a stray at the Dogs Trust Shoreham centre almost two years ago, crossbreed Jasper loves spending time with people and walking in rural locations. Described as 'a great chap with a sensitive nature', this adorable canine has a lot of love to give. Fully housetrained, Jasper is dreaming of a quiet home where he is the only dog, so he gets all the attention, and a garden to call his own. Jasper would prefer to live with teenagers aged 16 years plus, so he can settle and grow in confidence

One-year-old Simbo, an Akita, is very young and was sadly found as a stray, so is more than ready to find his forever home after coming to Dogs Trust Loughborough. As he is a youngster he is full of energy and fun and loves to keep his brain as well as his body busy, so would like his new owners to continue training to help him become a wonderful adult dog. He often forgets his own strength so is looking for a confident owner who loves getting out and about as much as he does. He can live with young adults and a dog but no other pets

Handsome lurcher George, two, loves exploring and sniffing around trying to find anything tasty to eat. He enjoys being the centre of attention and likes a fuss once he knows you. The way to Georges heart is through food or toys and then hell be your best friend. George would like to live with adults only and can be left for up to two hours if built up slowly and kept mentally and physically stimulated. Although George needs to be the only dog in the home, hed like socialising buddies, but he cant live with cats or small furries. George travels well in the car and would enjoy visiting new places with his adopter

Brought into the Whitstable rehoming centre as a stray, terrier cross Chloe, seven, hasnt had the best start in life. Shes a sweet but timid soul, who takes a while to come out of her shell with new people. She adores playing with her toys as much as she loves her food. Chloe is looking for an active yet calm, adult-only home. A smart girl, she learns very quickly and would like to continue her training with her new owner. Chloe needs to be the only pet in the household as she likes all the attention to herself. She will need time to adjust and feel settled in her new home before she can learn to be left alone

If you would like to find more about Sally, Sky, Mr Scruffy, Darcy or any of Battersea's other dogs, visit www.battersea.org.uk or call 0843 509 4444.

For more information on Mayhew's Christmas campaign 'I am NOT an Impulse Buy' campaign, visit www.themayhew.org/notanimpulsebuy

If you think you can give a dog a loving home, please call Dogs Trust on 0300 303 0292 or visit www.dogstrust.org.uk
She is well-known for her love of bright colours - and Thursday was no exception as Queen Mathilde of Belgium met hundreds of excited children wearing a vivid pink coat.

Mathilde stood out in a sea of schoolchildren, all of whom had made paper crowns for the royal visit, as she and her husband King Philippe dropped in at the Huis Perrekes care home in Geel, Belgium.

The couple were paying a Christmas visit to the care centre, home to people living with dementia, and also took the time

Queen Mathilde of Belgium met with excited children during a visit to a local care home

The royal couple were greeted by a band and children wearing handmade paper crowns as part of the festive event.

Wrapped up in her striking jacket, Mathilde carried a small leather clutch bag under one arm. She added a pair of decadent earrings to finish off the look.

Being a mother of five, she seemed to be confident and at ease meeting the children, many of whom were wearing their crowns decorated with Belgian flags.

She wandered around, talking to the children, carrying some of the handmade crowns

After being shown around the care home, the royal couple were offered a Christmas drink at a nearby nativity stall.

The Queen's vibrant coat nipped in at the waist, and she added a pair of contrasting grey stilettos.

She wore a vibrant pink trench coat that nipped her in at the waist. She accessorised with a leather clutch bag

The royals were greeted with a band and and carol singers as a way to start the festive event

Elegant as ever, Mathilde wore her blonde hair swept back from her face.

She posed for photographs with the King, who wore a smart brown overcoat to attend the engagement on Thursday.


Ivanka Trump appeared over the moon this morning as she departed her Washington, D.C. house in the aftermath of her father's administration's success in passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill.

Much like the rest of President Trump's advisers, his daughter was in a celebratory mood as she stepped out around 8 am in a navy blue Carolina Herrera coat and nude pumps.

The first daughter, 36, smiled and waved at the camera as she walked, bare-legged despite the cool D.C. temperatures, to the parked Secret Service vehicle waiting for her.

Joy: Ivanka Trump appeared over the moon this morning as she departed her house in the aftermath of her father's administration's success in passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill

Giddy: Much like the rest of President Trump's advisers, his daughter was in a celebratory mood as she stepped out in a navy blue Carolina Herrera coat and nude pumps

Hues: The former model Ivanka paired her fitted coat with a dark-colored top underneath

Sartorial: She wore her long hair down in a wavy blow-out, and donned a slightly smoky eye make-up with a nude lip

The cold never bothered her anyway: Despite the chilly temperatures, Ivanka stepped out with bare legs in her neighborhood of Kalorama

Happy: Her departure from home came not long after her father's administration passed its tax reform, which Ivanka promoted for several months

Ivanka was all smiles as she headed out in her fitted coat, which she paired with a dark-colored top and her trademark five-inch heels.

She wore her long hair down in a wavy blow-out, and donned a slightly smoky eye make-up with a nude lip.

Later this morning, Ivanka appeared on Fox & Friends for the second time this week, this time to revel in her father's administration's victory as she tuned in from the White House.

The first daughter is now being credited with playing a significant role in passing the reform. She lobbied for months in its favor, traveling around the country and taking several trips to the Hill in order to promote the tax plan.

Ivanka's main goal was to get the child tax credit increased, and the newly passed plan takes it from $1,000 to $2,000, with a refundable part of $1,4000 for those who qualify.

Good morning: Ivanka waved at the camera as she headed towards her parked vehicle

Enjoying herself: The White House adviser smiled as she prepared to hop inside the Secret Service SUV

Reflective: She looked pensive for a few moments as she left her home around 8 this morning

TV: Later this morning, Ivanka appeared on Fox & Friends for the second time this week

Happy: Ivanka didn't hide her delight during her Fox & Friends appearance, thanking the hosts for their congratulations and exclaiming: 'What a day to be here to celebrate!'

She didn't hide her delight during her Fox & Friends appearance, thanking the hosts for their congratulations and exclaiming: 'What a day to be here to celebrate!'

Ivanka presented her father's administration's victory as the result of a team effort, and singled out Senator Bob Corker, who has been accused of changing his 'no' to a 'yes' due to a measure that is likely to benefit him personallya provision in favor of people with real estate income.

'I spent a lot of time on behalf of the administration and with members of the administration, Gary Cohn, Secretary Mnuchin, our whole team at the [Office of Legislative Affairs] on the Hill and talking to different senators,' Ivanka said during the interview.

'I spent a lot of time with Senator Corker as well and he had real integrity around this process.'

Online: The White House adviser also took to social media this morning to express her joy that the measure has been passed

Gearing up: She shared several photos of herself getting ready for her TV appearance

Moment: Ivanka wrote in the celebration she was 'celebrating a historic win for American working families following the passage of sweeping #TaxCuts'

Setting: She added, in reference to the White House behind her: 'P.S. Ill never get used to this beautiful background'

Footage: Ivanka also shared images of her morning on her Snapchat account

Update: She made sure to tell her followers to catch her interview on Fox & Friends

Previously: Yesterday, Ivanka also shared this image of officials assembling on the South Lawn for a bill passage event

Ivanka also took to social media this morning to express her joy that the measure has been passed. She shared several photos of herself beaming while getting ready for her TV appearance and wrote in the caption: 'Celebrating a historic win for American working families following the passage of sweeping #TaxCuts.'

She added, in reference to the White House behind her: 'P.S. Ill never get used to this beautiful background.'

Yesterday, Ivanka donned one of her most beloved prints as she headed out to work in a plaid coat.

The senior White House advise was seen heading out of her house in Washington, D.C. around 7:45 in the morning, getting an early start to her work day.

She paired her gray coat, which had large, white buttons and plaid shoulder flaps, with black pants tucked into leather boots.

Trademark: Yesterday, Ivanka donned one of her most beloved prints yesterday morning as she headed out to work in a plaid coat

Spotted: Later during the day, Ivanka was also seen in the same coat greeting guests during an event to celebrate Congress passing the tax bill

The boots, with a thick high heel, featured laces going up the bottom half of the shoes.

With her plaid coat, the former model returned to a pattern she has often favored, and has worn on tops, dresses and skirts over the past few months.

Ivanka was ready to face the cool D.C. temperatures and buttoned her coat all the way up in addition to carrying a pair of black gloves in her left hand.

She kept her eyes trained in front of her for most of the short walk between her house in the upscale neighborhood of Kalorama to the parked Secret Service vehicle waiting for her at the end of her driveway.

Ivanka and her husband and fellow White House adviser, Jared Kushner, 36, both attended a Cabinet meeting at the White House later in the morning. They sat next to each other and could be seen bowing their heads along with the rest of the attendees during a prayer.

Later during the day, Ivanka was also seen in the same coat greeting guests during an event to celebrate Congress passing the tax bill.

Seasonal: Ivanka cut a festive silhouette as she left for work yesterday in a scarlet pantsuit

On her way out: Ivanka left Fox & Friends on Monday morning in an all-black outfit, and smiled at the few passersby who had gathered to witness her exit

Previously: Earlier on Monday, Ivanka wore a form-fitting blue dress and kept her hair down in a slick blow-dry during the interview, which focused on the GOP's proposed tax plan

The mother of three is currently back in D.C. after traveling to her hometown of New York City on Monday for her first Fox & Friends interview of the week.

She was pictured leaving Fox & Friends in her former stomping grounds, smiling at the few passersby who had gathered to witness her exit.

The senior White House adviser wore a form-fitting blue dress and kept her hair down in a slick blow-dry during the interview, which focused on the GOP's proposed tax plan.

By the time she left Fox's studios in New York City's Midtown, Ivanka appeared to have completely changed her clothes, and cut an all-black silhouette, save for a few details.

She donned a pair of quirky black shoes with kitten heels and straps made out of rows of white pearls, and had a white Peter Pan collar peeking out at the top of her outfit.

Ivanka wore her hair in a low ponytail tied with a long, flowy black ribbon.

She waved as she exited the studios and walked towards her parked car, and acknowledged the handful of children and adults who were taking her photo nearby.

The first daughter appeared to be in a sunny disposition, perhaps excited to be back in New York City, which she left for D.C. after her father became president and she and Jared both took on senior roles in his administration.
A woman and her sister both broke down in tears after she unveiled her incredibly chic new look following a dramatic makeover on the Today show.

Denise Sharp, 51, from Celina, Texas, was visiting New York City with her sister Robin when she was plucked out of the crowd at the Today plaza on Thursday, becoming one of two women who were chosen for ambush makeovers with celebrity hairstylist Louis Licari and style expert Jill Martin.

The sisters visit the plaza whenever they are in New York City, and Robin couldn't stop jumping up and down after she found out about Denise's makeover.

Scroll down for video

Transformation: Denise Sharp, 51, from Celina, Texas, was visiting New York City with her sister Robin when she was chosen for an ambush makeover on the Today show

Overcome with emotion: When Denise stepped on stage modeling a stunning new 'do and a sleek navy suit, Robin started crying tears of joy

'She's my sister and she does everything for me. She's my BFF,' Robin proudly told Jill. 'We come to New York City every Christmas time to enjoy the holiday here before going back home to spend the holiday with family.

'We've been here for many years, and I just love my sister.'

Today anchor Kathie Lee Gifford had to call for tissues before Denise revealed her new look because Robin was already starting to tear up.

While standing outside in the plaza, Denise was bundled up in a puffy winter coat and her long hair in loose waves around her shoulders.

Holiday excitement: The sisters were standing outside in the Today plaze when Denise was plucked from the crowd

Look of love: 'She's my sister and she does everything for me. She's my BFF,' Robin told Today style expert Jill Martin

However, she looked like a whole new woman when she confidently stepped on stage after her makeover.

When she first caught sight of her sister, Robin burst into tears and couldn't stop gushing about how wonderful she looked.

'Oh my god! You were always so beautiful before, but... Oh my god,' Robin said.

Her sister's emotion caused Denise to tear up before she got a chance to check out her transformation for herself, and Kathie Lee encouraged her to stop crying before she turned around to look in the mirror.

Stunning: Denise looked like a whole new woman when she confidently stepped on stage after her makeover

Overjoyed: 'You were always so beautiful before, but... Oh my god,' Robin said

So happy: Denise also started to tear up after she caught sight of herself in the mirror

Denise held to together, but she was also over come with emotion when she looked at herself for the first time since the makeover.

'We need more tissues,' Kathie said, while Louis told Denise: 'The hope for you today was simple [and] chic, and you are the epitome of that right now.'

Louis explained that Denise was given a face-framing cut, and her hair was dyed red to bring out her complexion.

'When you color someone's hair red it should look like it grows out of their head not like they got it from of a bottle, and I think we found that here,' he said.

Natural beauty: Hairstylist Louis Licari explained that Denise was given a face-framing cut, and her hair was dyed red to bring out her complexion

Sweet moment: Denise and Robin shared a big hug after she debuted her new look

Meanwhile, Jill dressed Denise in a flattering, navy blue dress suit, which she noted is a chic alternative to a dress for a cocktail party.

Kathryn Roper, 69, from Enterprise, Alabama, also received a makeover on Thursday while visiting New York City.

The doting mother's son-in-law is currently deployed in Iraq, and she was treating her daughter and two granddaughters to a trip to Manhattan for Christmas.

However, Kathryn was the one who ended up with a treat after she was chosen for a makeover ahead of her 70th birthday.

Then and wow! Kathryn Roper, 69, from Enterprise, Alabama, also received an amubsh makeover on Thursday

Big apple vacation: The doting mother's son-in-law is currently deployed in Iraq, and she was treating her daughter and two granddaughters to a trip to Manhattan for Christmas

Looking good: Kathryn's family was stunned when she debuted her new look

Kathryn told Jill that she wanted a whole new look, and when she was asked what she was hoping for, she joked: 'Uh, a miracle.'

'I'm about to turn a big zero birthday so I would like a new look to go into the new decade,' she explained.

When Kathryn's daughter and granddaughters removed their blindfolds to check out her new look, they were stunned by her incredible appearance.

Today anchor Hoda Kotb insisted that Kathryn looked 'like a model,' and she warned her that she was 'going to freak' when she saw herself in the mirror.

Overjoyed: Kathryn said, 'Hallelujah!' after looking at herself in the mirror for the first time since her makeover

Modern woman: A new cut and style helped her face become more prominent, and she also had her hair color updated

Kathryn threw her hands up in the air and said, 'Hallelujah!' after looking at herself for the first time since her makeover.

Hoda and Kathie Lee were particularly taken with Kathryn hair, and Louis explained that her long locks were overwhelming her face before.

A new cut and style helped her face become more prominent, and they also updated her hair color.

'The color before was nowhere, so I just added more color and highlights and she looks like a million dollars,' Louis said.

Kathryn's daughter pointed out that her father usually does her mom's hair, and they all shared a laugh when Kathryn joked that her husband 'expects compensation for doing it.'
Prince Carl Philip of Sweden and his wife Princess Sofia attended a carol concert

They became parents for the second time with the arrival of Prince Gabriel in August.

And like all parents, royal couples need a little quality time together away from their children every once in a while.

Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, 38, took his wife Princess Sofia for a date night at a Christmas concert held at the Gustaf Vasa Church in Stockholm on Thursday night.

New mum Princess Sofia, 33, wrapped up warm in a chic grey coat as she joined her husband of two years for the festivities.

Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, 38, and his wife Princess Sofia attended a carol concert on Thursday evening

Sofia belted the coat at the waist, which allowed her to show off her svelte post baby figure.

She teamed the jacket with a simple pair of black heels and a matching leather clutch bag.

She wore her brunette tresses in loose curls and kept her makeup simple with a slick of red lipstick and winged eyeliner.

Prince Carl Philip looked dapper in a black suit and a festive looking red tie.

The couple seemed to be in high spirits as they sat amongst the crowds for the festivities

Sofia looked chic as she wrapped up warm in a grey coat, which she accessorised with a black clutch

The royal couple welcomed their second son Prince Gabriel in August after becoming parents to Prince Alexander in April last year.

Earlier this year, Sofia opened up to Swedens Svenskdam magazine about life with Alexander, saying: 'Being a mother is amazing. It changes your whole life.'

She said her first son had a mix of both parent's personalities and is very 'sweet and well-behaved'.

Meanwhile her husband admitted that being a first time parent takes 'some adjustment', but added 'its still absolutely amazing and wonderful'.

The pair seemed to be sharing a joke as they sat in the pews for the concert at the Gustaf Vasa Church in Stockholm, Sweden
She gave birth to daughter Mia Elise on Monday after documenting her gruelling 40-week pregnancy for her legion of fans.

And now global fitness star Emily Skye is taking a well-deserved break alongside her partner and new bub at the luxurious Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast.

'We're out of the hospital now and are staying at the Versace for a couple of days to relax aka feed, change nappies & adapt to no sleep for the next 20 years,' Emily wrote on her Instagram page on Friday.

The 32-year-old fitness personality took time to recover on Thursday, posting a video to social media showing her adorable newborn lying in the lavish hotel suite with an entire king bed all to herself.

Scroll down for video

Australian fitness star Emily Skye (pictured) is taking a well-deserved break with new bub Mia Elise at the luxurious Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast

The 32-year-old fitness personality took time to recover on Thursday, posting a video to social media showing her adorable child (pictured) lying in the lavish hotel suite with an entire king bed all to herself

'Were out of the hospital now and are staying at the Versace for a couple of days to relax aka feed, change nappies & adapt to no sleep for the next 20 years,' she captioned this image

New dad Declan Redmond appeared to be relishing every moment of becoming a parent, as he lovingly placed his hand on Mia Elise with an adoring look in his eyes.

A relaxed and refreshed Emily appeared to be happier than ever, as she giggled and said: 'Look who's here. Do you think this bed is big enough for you Mia, are you happy with it?'

Emily and Declan also took advantage of some room service, while keeping a watchful eye over their resting pride and joy.

New dad Declan Redmond (pictured) appeared to be relishing every moment of becoming a parent, as he lovingly placed his hand on Mia Elise with an adoring look in his eyes

Emily and Declan also took advantage of some room service, while keeping a watchful eye over their resting pride and joy

Emily's daughter was first revealed on Monday, after she posted to her Instagram profile: 'So happy to finally meet my gorgeous girl Mia Elise Redmond born on Dec 18th at 11.53am weighing 7lb 7oz (3.5kg).'

The glowing new mum and her bub wore matching floral outfits as she held her baby daughter and posed for the camera.

Emily told her 2.2 million followers that she and her partner Declan were having 'constant love explosions'.

The Gold Coast-based fitness personality gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl on December 18, giving her bundle of joy a sweetly feminine name: Mia Elise (Pictured is her partner Declan)

Emily told her 2.2 million followers that she and her partner Declan Redmond (pictured) were having 'constant love explosions'

Emily shared this photo on December 14, writing 'Daddy and I are so excited to meet our darling little girl!' - she added she was getting Braxton Hicks

New dad Declan also shared the news to his Instagram, captioning the photo: 'The two loves of my life.'

Emily has documented the entirety of her pregnancy online, gathering praise from her followers thanks to her honest approach to how her body has changed.

At one stage, she shared raw snaps of her changing body and 'cellulite', writing towards the start of her journey:

'Since becoming pregnant I have gained some fat and cellulite and Ive lost a fair bit of muscle - which I'm completely fine with.'

She gave birth at 40-weeks after telling her fans she was more than ready to finally meet her baby.

Emily was recently announced as number three in the Fitness Influencer category by Forbes - she is worth millions of dollars

At one stage, the 32-year-old shared raw snaps of her changing body and 'cellulite', writing: 'Since becoming pregnant I have gained some fat and cellulite'

However, despite being somewhat uncomfortable in her pregnant frame (pictured towards the end of her final trimester)

'My pregnancy hasn't really gone to plan as far as my fitness is concerned,' Emily posted on Instagram towards the end of last month

Later in her pregnancy, Emily commented on how uncomfortable carrying her baby has been, even though she has been looking forward to giving birth:

'My pregnancy hasn't really gone to plan as far as my fitness is concerned,' she posted on Instagram towards the end of last month.

'I thought I'd be able to keep up with my exercise until the end of my pregnancy, but that did NOT happen haha.

'Due to a long term back problem and sciatica I haven't been able to exercise for the past two months as I was just too uncomfortable and it was starting to make my back and sciatica worse.

'I made the choice to listen to my body and stop. It's only short term inactivity and there's always time to get my fitness back later.'

'I thought I'd be able to keep up with my exercise until the end of my pregnancy, but that did NOT happen haha,' she wrote online

However, the fitness influencer intends to get straight back to training when her doctor gives her the all clear - saying she'll work on her posture, balance, pelvic floor, core and glutes

Emily Skye's birth comes just before Christmas, which will see the 32-year-old relax with her young family.

In early December, Emily set some 'fitness goals for next year' on her Instagram profile, which include doing 'some rehab work to get my body working well again after carrying my baby'.

She explained her back has taken a hit throughout the pregnancy:

'I struggle to stand and walk around the house, I was in tears last night because I couldn't get comfortable in bed without it hurting.'

'I'm looking forward to correcting my posture and imbalances, strengthening my pelvic floor, core and glutes, and of course building some muscle back.'

The 32-year-old plans to launch her new FIT programme as soon as 'she gets the all clear from my doc'.

To follow Emily Skye on Instagram, please click here.
A newlywed whose honeymoon passion was blighted by heavy 'menstrual' bleeding, discovered it was a sign of cancer - which is now terminal.

Former occupational therapist Talitha Sargeant, 29, of Midhurst, West Sussex, was disappointed when what she assumed was her period started just days after her church wedding to mental health nurse Mathew, 30, in October 2016.

Hoping to enjoy consummating their marriage, during a four-week tour of the USA, visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii and Las Vegas, instead, she said: 'As soon as we landed in San Francisco, I thought, "Oh, here we go, I'm on my period."

'I was cursing it starting on the first day of our four weeks away. We wanted to do what newlyweds do on their honeymoon.

'My periods had been so up and down in the run up to the wedding, which I'd put down to pre-wedding stress, that I thought it was me finally relaxing and my period was starting.

'We still managed to make love, but there was blood everywhere.'

Talitha and Matthew Sargeant, of West Sussex, enjoyed a fairy-tale wedding

The 29-year-old assumed her regular period had started on her honeymoon

The bleeding was so heavy it 'looked like someone had been murdered'

Then, two days into their holiday, in a swanky bar in LA, she suddenly needed the toilet.

'I felt that something wasn't right and rushed to the loo,' she said. 'But I pulled my dress up and saw there was blood everywhere.

'It might sound a bit graphic, but it looked like someone had been murdered. The blood was dripping down my legs, onto the floor and had soaked through my dress and knickers.'

Concerned, Mrs Sargeant rushed back to her husband and they returned to their hotel.

'I bought loads of sanitary products and put it down to a really heavy period,' she explained.

But just 2 months after marrying soulmate she was told devastating news

Mrs Sargeant was crushed to be told she needed ovaries removing and she'd never be able to have children

'The bleeding became lighter for a while, so I put the worries out of my mind. Then, when we arrived in Hawaii the rushing heavy flow started again.

'I had to rush back to the apartment and this time rang my mum, Rose, 58.'

She booked an appointment for Mrs Sargeant back in the UK, for the day when the pair returned from honeymoon, on November 11, 2016.

Mrs Sargeant recalled: 'It didn't actually put a downer on the holiday. We still had an amazing time and I didn't feel that worried about the bleeding.'

Back home, her GP prescribed hormone tablets, telling her to return in a week if things didn't improve.

When her problems persisted, Talitha was sent for an ultrasound at Horsham Hospital, in West Sussex, where the sonographer saw shading on her cervix, sending her for a colposcopy, to examine it, together with the lower part of the womb and top of the vagina.

'I had the colposcopy on December 21. We were just getting ready for Christmas and I felt really scared,' she said.

'I knew something wasn't right and with it being the festive season, everything felt a lot darker.'

Letter revealing cancer is terminal arrived Christmas Eve last year

Then on Christmas Eve, Mrs Sargeant was dealt a devastating blow.

She recalled: 'On December 24 I received a copy of a letter that was sent to my GP from the colposcopy office.

'As a health care professional, who works with patients with cancer, I was able to read between the lines of the letter and I was devastated.

'It detailed things about the investigation and the results that I had not been told.

'On New Year's Eve 2014, Mathew had proposed in our home.

After gruelling chemotherapy, she was told her cervical tumour had gone

But shadowing was found on her chest and abdomen  the cancer had spread

'But now, thanks to this letter, on Christmas Eve I discovered there was a 7cm mass in my cervix that was most likely to be cancer.

'I was devastated. It felt like I was in a big black hole. Just two months earlier I'd married my soulmate, on the happiest day of my life, and now I discovered I had cancer.'

Trying to enjoy Christmas as best she could, on January 3, 2017, Talitha had a cervical investigation under general anaesthetic at East Surrey Hospital, in Redhill, Surrey.

'Once I woke up, it was confirmed that I had cervical cancer stage 2B,' she said. 'I knew they were going to tell me that, but it didn't make the news any less awful.

'My husband and my parents, Rose, and retired postman Paul, 65, were with me and it hit us all like a bus.'

'I did not expect to be dealing with this in our first year of marriage'

Just two months earlier, on October 15, she and Mr Sargeant, who have been together for five years after meeting on a hospital work placement, had married in All Saints Church in Roffey, West Sussex, in a fairy-tale ceremony.

She said: 'The wedding was absolutely beautiful. I was smiling from the moment I woke up to the moment we went to sleep in the early hours.

'My dress was a perfect fairy-tale gown, nothing like I'd expected to wear, but I really felt so magical in it.

'I never expected us to be dealing with this in our first year of marriage.

'We had a quite traditional wedding vows  'in sickness and in health'  and we're taking them quite seriously.

'We thought we were going to plan for children and save for a house. But it shows us that we can deal with anything and are so right for each other.'



'We appreciate each other more, we've learned about each other more and we love each other more'

Referred to the St Luke's Cancer Centre at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guilford, Mrs Sargeant was told in mid January she would need surgery to move her ovaries, in an attempt to preserve hormone function and fertility.

'I was told I would never be able to carry my own child. This left me feeling robbed and devastated,' she said.

'I was a newly married wife planning on starting a family. Oddly I found this more upsetting than being told I had cancer.

'From there, I started a gruelling seven weeks of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy  a form of radiotherapy.'

Mrs Sargeant told her new husband that she wouldn't have blamed him if he'd left her

After three months, Mrs Sargeant was told her cervical tumour had gone but, tragically, there was shadowing in her chest and abdomen.

'Following a PET scan, I was told on July 14, 2017, that my cancer had, sadly, spread to my lungs and lower back and at this point I was incurable.

'I cannot describe in words how it is to hear that news.

'Mathew could have told me he couldn't cope. I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd left me.

'Instead, we appreciate each other more, we've learned about each other more and we love each other more. '

'I remain positive about the future despite what I have been told'

Given a prognosis of two to three years, Mrs Sargeant is now having palliative care, involving chemotherapy and immunotherapy every three weeks.

She said: 'This whole experience has put things in perspective. I treasure moments more and I love Mathew more.

'I know that with each day a new challenge will arise but whilst we have each other we will succeed. I remain positive about my future, despite what I have been told.'

She said the cancer has made her 'treasure' the moments she spends with her husband more

After giving up work, Talitha plans to travel to Paris, Portugal, Canada and visit their honeymoon stops in America again.

She added: 'I intend to be positive no matter what  even when I'm semi bald and resembling a member of the Addams Family!

'I wish this was not happening to me, but I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, even if I cannot understand it.

'I want other women to know their symptoms  pain and discomfort during sex, an unpleasant smelling vaginal discharge and bleeding.

'Cancer may be inside me but it does not define who I am.'

Mrs Sargeant has been helped by cancer charity, Macmillan. For more information about support at Christmas visit here.
A two-month-old Chinese baby is at risk of losing a toe after a loose strand of hair became tangled around it.

The infant's digit became black and swollen after the hair, which may have belonged to his mother, cut off the blood supply.

It is believed that the strand of hair was trapped around his toe for more than 10 hours before his father, surnamed Fan, spotted it.

Scroll down for video

The infant's digit became black and swollen after the hair, which may have belonged to his mother, cut off the blood supply

It is believed that the strand of hair was trapped around his toe for more than 10 hours before his father, surnamed Fan, spotted it

Doctors in Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province, said necrosis has set in and the toe on the boy's left foot may need to be amputated.

Local reports state flesh on the boy's toe had already grown around the strand of hair when he was brought in.

The baby, whose name is unknown, is now being kept in the city's LA East District 153 Hospital.

Doctors are monitoring him to see whether regular circulation returns, in which case the toe could be saved.

TOE TOURNIQUET SYNDROME: FACTS Toe tourniquet syndrome is a medical condition where a hair or thread becomes tightly tied to a finger, toe or other appendage cutting off circulation and potentially causing amputation. The problem usually affects young babies when hair ends up in their socks and is most common when mothers are shedding hair post-pregnancy. It is identified with magnification and cut away usually with small scissors, the rare condition is missed by some doctors. Advertisement

The baby's father said his wife has not been home in recent days because she is looking after her own father who has been hospitalised following a heart attack.

The task of taking care of the baby and his year-old sister has therefore fallen on his shoulders.

Doctors have repeatedly warned about the hidden danger to newborns' toes and fingers from stray hairs, especially for post-pregnant women suffering from hair loss.

A single strand of hair can wrap itself around a child's toe, cutting off circulation and potentially leading to amputation.

Called 'toe tourniquet syndrome', it can affect all appendages, such as fingers, penises and ear lobes.

Cases are deemed rare. Figures suggest there are around 60 instances of the bizarre syndrome in the UK each year.

Most children who suffer from toe tourniquet syndrome are four days to 19 months old and usually present to doctors in obvious distress.

The hair is wrapped around the digit by a repetitive movement of the appendage in a confined area such as hands in mittens or feet and legs in pyjamas.
The 'feel good factor' of Christmas causes a peak in the number of people having sex  resulting in a 'baby boom' nine months later, a new global study has found.

Researchers discovered a rise in sex-related Google searches over the festive period, which is linked to an increase in births in the late summer months.

Interestingly, the same effect was not seen around Easter or other major holidays such as Thanksgiving in the US.

Experts say the focus on family, love and presents makes people feel more amorous in Christian countries in both the northern and southern hemisphere.

A previous study found that there is also a biological reason you're more likely to conceive in the colder months  men produce better quality sperm in winter compared to summer.

Scroll down for video

A peak in the number of people having sex this Christmas will cause a 'baby boom' next September, say researchers (stock image)

Key findings

The study drew upon data from nearly 130 countries that included sex-related Google search terms from 2004 to 2014 and 10 per cent of public Twitter posts from late 2010 to early 2014.

It found interest in sex peaks significantly during major cultural or religious celebrations  based upon a greater use of the word 'sex' or other sexual terms in web searches.

These increases were linked to a rise in births nine months later in countries with available birth-rate data, according to the scientists at Indiana University in the US and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Portugal.

This was seen during major holiday celebrations of Christmas in Christian-majority countries and Eid-al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, in Muslim-majority countries.

The case of Eid-al-Fitr was significant because the holiday does not occur on the same day each year, but the measured effect still shifts accordingly, following a clear cultural pattern.

The 'feel good' factor of Christmas

COLD TEMPERATURES AFFECT SPERM QUALITY Men have healthier sperm in winter and early spring than in summer, new research has revealed. Israeli scientists studied samples from more than 6,000 men who were being treated for infertility. They found sperm in greater numbers, with faster swimming speeds, and fewer abnormalities, in semen made during the winter. The sperm declined steadily in quality from spring onwards. The researchers say this may explain why there are so many babies born in the autumn. A team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev collected and analysed 6,455 semen samples from men at its fertility clinic between January 2006 and July 2009. One theory why sperm appears to be healthier in winter is that it is affected by warm temperatures. In animal studies, seasonal changes in sperm production and fertility have been linked to factors ranging from temperature, to length of daylight exposure and hormone variations. Advertisement

The researchers suggested the study revealed collectively people appear to feel happier, safer and calmer during the holidays.

Professor Luis Rocha, of Indiana University, said: 'We observe that Christmas and Eid-Al-Fitr are characterised by distinct collective moods that correlate with increased fertility.

'Perhaps people feel a greater motivation to grow their families during holidays when the emphasis is on love and gift-giving to children.

'The Christmas season is also associated with stories about the baby Jesus and holy family, which may put people in a loving, happy, "family mood."'

Past studies tended to focus on smaller geographic areas in the Western and Northern hemispheres.

Professor Rocha added: 'The rise of the web and social media provides the unprecedented power to analyse changes in people's collective mood and behaviour on a massive scale.

'This study is the first "planetary-level" look at human reproduction as it relates to people's moods and interest in sex online.'

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
An 11-year-old girl is lucky to be alive after accidentally swallowing two of the popular magnetic Buckyballs.

Halina Adams was hospitalized for five days after the strong pea-sized magnets became lodged in the sixth grader's intestines.

Buckyballs were banned in 2012 after thousands of children ingested them, leaving some dead. However, they were put back on the market after the company sued and a settlement recalled the magnets in 2014.

Now Halina's father Aaron wishes they weren't as he speaks out about the dangers of the toy to warn other parents who may have purchased them as a Holiday gift for their children.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

A scan shows the two small magnets lodged in the 11-year-old's intestines

The sixth grader accidentally swallowed two Buckyballs, pea-sized strong magnets that have caused thousands of hospitalizations and even death

A friend brought the Buckyballs to Halin's Illinois school on Thursday when she asked to play with them.

According to her father, Halina put the Buckyballs on either side of her lips when the strong magnets broke apart and went to the back of her throat.

She immediately went to the hospital where two colonoscopies were able to remove them.

Dr Biank, who treated Halina told WGN that swallowing magnets is a medical emergency.

'If you perforate the GI track you can get very sick very fast. It would kind of be like a perforated appendix. You can get incredibly ill, almost life threatening ill,' he said.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWALLOW MAGNETS? When two or more high-powered magnets are swallowed, they can attract to one another through the stomach and intestinal walls. This can result in serious injuries, such as holes in the stomach and intestines, intestinal blockage, blood poisoning and death. Gastrointestinal surgery may be required to remove the magnets. A colonoscopy may also be able to to find the magnet are remove them. Advertisement

If left untreated, the balls could connect pieces of tissue together causing tears in the intestines.

This was the case of 19-month-old Annaka Chaffin from California, who died after swallowing seven Buckyballs from a necklace in 2013.

An autopsy showed the magnets had become attached to one another in her small intestine, which perforated her bowel and caused it to become septic.

Some 7,700 other children had been rushed to hospital for accidentally swallowing the magnets or confusing them for candy by 2014.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission first banned the sale of Buckyballs in 2012.

After CEO Craig Zucker sued the CPSC, they came to a settlement where Buckyballs was required to recall the products in 2014.

The magnets cost between $25 and $80 and come in packs of 100 or more.
WASHINGTON  Politicians from North Dakota and Minnesota split their support along party lines for a broad overhaul of the American tax system, with Republicans cheering what they see as a big economic booster. But Democrats questioned its estimated $1.5 trillion bottom line as well as benefits to corporations and America's wealthiest.

"I've been almost begging Republicans to work with me on a bipartisan bill that could serve North Dakota," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a prepared statement. "I held meetings in North Dakota on tax reform, and met with top White House officials, including the president, on the issue. Unfortunately, I never got a seat at the table, nor did many others. As a result, it produced a partisan tax bill that hurts North Dakota and is full of broken promises to the American people."

Heitkamp was joined in opposition by every Democrat in the Senate, including Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, both of Minnesota. Klobuchar echoed Heitkamp's frustration with the bill's drafting process on Twitter, calling for "bipartisan fixes" and criticizing the midnight voting process that led to its passage.

Republicans were far more bullish on the bill. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., lauded the bill as an important set of tax cuts that "lowers rates across the board."

"This tax relief plan, coupled with regulatory relief, will unleash economic growth to grow wages and income, as well as government revenues," he said in a statement. "This tax relief bill is good for America and good for North Dakota."

Most of the criticism of the bill has centered on who will benefit most. The package will make corporate tax cuts that are permanent, though will not do so for individuals, and eliminated a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires people to purchase health insurance. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., argued that some earners will see tax increases if they "face high medical expenses, pay high state and local taxes, or have families with many children."

"This bill was a missed opportunity to promote real economic growth, simplify our tax code and help the middle class," he said in a statement.

Peterson voted yesterday alongside Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., in a House vote that had to be redone after the discovery that some provisions in the bill violate Senate rules. The package passed on a re-vote today, and will head to President Donald Trump's desk for a signature.

"Today's a truly historic moment for Congress, for our country, and for the conservative values of small government that so many of us stand on," Cramer said in a statement. "Putting money back into local economies where it belongs is the best Christmas gift Washington can give, and I was glad to support Congressional Republicans and President Trump in bringing tax cuts to the people of North Dakota."
History

LOST GIRLS: THE INVENTION OF THE FLAPPER by Linda Simon (Reaktion 14.99)

LOST GIRLS: THE INVENTION OF THE FLAPPER

by Linda Simon (Reaktion 14.99)

In the glorious, boozy party after World War I, a new being burst defiantly on to the cultural stage. Skinny, young, impetuous and flirtatious, she wore skirts above the knee, skimpy little dresses and nothing much underneath. Her hair was cut short.

She was flat-chested with the physique of an adolescent boy. She slouched and strutted and refused to marry.

With this engaging paragraph, academic Linda Simon begins her fascinating study of the phenomenon known as the flapper. Who wouldnt want to read on?

Yet it wasnt only the war that had spawned them. Girls, she tells us, had been finding their way out of the Victorian closet for quite a while before then, gradually liberating themselves from the social rules of overbearing men (and parents), while at the same time remaining eager to find a worthwhile mate to marry  a new dilemma then.

They smoked, they chatted up boys and even kissed them without being asked. They adored the cinema, idolised doe-eyed Mary Pickford and naughty Clara Bow and crammed themselves into front-laced corsets to look similarly slim and alluring.

They were a new curiosity young ladies growing up, finding their feet, having their say and sway; adolescents refusing to shift seamlessly from childhood to matronly motherhood without a bit of feistiness, fun and freedom in between.

The hard-edged Thirties saw off the frivolity of the flappers, but the changes they had made in how society saw women  and how women saw themselves  broke the mould for ever.

WINSTON CHURCHILL AND ME by Jonathan Dudley (Skyscraper Publications 7.99)

WINSTON CHURCHILL AND ME

by Jonathan Dudley (Skyscraper Publications 7.99)

Footnotes in books  as in history  are delicacies to be savoured, and that is precisely what this short memoir is, as it tells the story of a shy little boys encounters with Mr Churchill (as he insists on calling him) in that limbo period in the great mans life after he had been voted out of office in 1945.

Jonathan Dudley, whose soldier father was killed in the war, was at prep school with Churchills grandson (confusingly, also a Winston) and was invited to the great mans home in the summer holidays. Dudley was a strange choice of companion, since the two boys seem pretty well to have loathed one another, with Winston Junior constantly humiliating his friend.

But Winston Senior  in his famous navy boiler suit and bedroom slippers  was a different kettle of fish, trying to draw his stammering and overwhelmed eight-year-old guest into conversation as they lunched en famille on Russian caviar; a gift, Churchill boomed, from Stalin.

The person who stuck most in the boys mind, however, was Mrs Churchill.

Clemmie, he realised, was the rock without which WSC could not have functioned as well as he did. Dudley recalls how sometimes Churchill would appear uncertain about whether a point he was making was acceptable or whether it betrayed a flawed moral outlook.

He would look at Mrs Churchill . . . with a beseeching, almost plaintive look that said first how much he loved her, and second how much he needed her thoughts and guidance.

Its a touching insight that tells us as much about the man as a full-blown biography.

TRAIN TO NOWHERE by Anita Leslie (Bloomsbury Caravel 16.99)

TRAIN TO NOWHERE

by Anita Leslie (Bloomsbury Caravel 16.99)

Churchill also turns up in this riveting and very personal account of World War II, though as a bit player, rather than taking centre-stage.

Anita Leslie, as posh and well-connected as they come, was his cousin, and kept being fetched to talk to him when what she really wanted to do was get on with her job at the sharp end of the fighting as a motor mechanic and an ambulance driver in North Africa, Italy, France and then Germany itself.

She was a volunteer, seeking adventure at a time when nice gels normally stayed at home, knitting socks for the troops.

Her naughty, self-confident, giddy nature shines through some of the wars worst times; humour and horror side by side, her joie de vivre improbably triumphing among the wounded, the dying and the rotting corpses.

Train To Nowhere is a racy gallop of a read, perceptive and funny, but never insensitive or uncaring.

In Italy, pouring endless cups of tea and feeling sympathy for the maimed from Monte Cassino and the Anzio beaches, she feels as if shes running a canteen in Dantes Inferno, with the Marx brothers as assistants  which is as good a description of war in the raw as youre likely to find anywhere.

She wrote her account in 1948, not long after arriving home in Ireland, miraculously in one piece. It sold out, was reprinted twice and then forgotten. Seventy years on, Bloomsbury has done us all a big favour by reviving it.

THE GREEDY QUEEN by Annie Gray (Profile 16.99)

THE GREEDY QUEEN

by Annie Gray (Profile 16.99)

A surprisingly glamorous Queen Victoria beams out from our television screens in the shape of petite actress Jenna Coleman in the ITV drama Victoria.

However, from food and dining historian Annie Gray comes a very different take  a plump, gorging, flatulent matron she describes bluntly (and accurately) as The Greedy Queen.

Victoria never made any bones about it  she liked her grub, the taste of it and the sheer pleasure of consuming it.

And with her position and wealth, she had easy access to it, so she unashamedly indulged herself at every opportunity.

She had been this way inclined since the age of 11, when an uncle warned her that a certain little Princess eats a little too much and a little too fast.

She took no more notice of him than she did of slimline Prince Albert later on.

He was a frugal eater, seeing nourishment as a necessity, rather than a pleasure.

But she savoured her multiple courses at the countless royal banquets she presided over as Queen and pigged out in private.

This is a book to feast on  and theres even the bonus of a recipe for boars head, a royal favourite, with aspic jelly.

Procure the head of a hog . . .

THE AGE OF DECADENCE: BRITAIN 1880 TO 1914 by Simon Heffer (Random House 30)

THE AGE OF DECADENCE: BRITAIN 1880 TO 1914

by Simon Heffer (Random House 30)

Surely there could not be a more staid and respectable figure than Stanley Gibbons, whose name is still synonymous with stamp-collecting.

Born in the same year as the Penny Black (1840), the first postage stamp, he was an avid swapper as a schoolboy and then turned his obsession into a highly lucrative dealership.

Stanley Gibbons catalogues, valuing every stamp under the imperial sun, sold like hot cakes.

It comes as a shock, then, to discover that the prophet of this prim pastime had a terrible secret  he was a lust-driven, murderous Bluebeard. He had five wives  four of whom pre-deceased him in dodgy circumstances. Poison was suspected.

When he died in 1913, rumours circulated that it was while in flagrante with a floozy at the Savoy Hotel, and his corpse was smuggled out rolled in a carpet.

His immoral double life  revealed in this scintillating and erudite (if, at 800-plus pages, bulky) account of the late Victorian and Edwardian period  seems neatly to encapsulate Simon Heffers thesis that below the surface of that seemingly upright era before World War I lurked decadence, degeneracy and dirt.

LONG ROAD FROM JARROW by Stuart Maconie (Ebury 16.99)

LONG ROAD FROM JARROW

by Stuart Maconie (Ebury 16.99)

For those cohorts of Corbynistas who are convinced that Britain is gripped by poverty and inequality the like of which weve never before seen, I recommend this very readable trip down memory lane with broadcaster and writer Stuart Maconie.

He follows in the precise footsteps of the 200 unemployed shipyard workers who, in 1936, famously marched the 291 miles from Jarrow, on Tyneside, to London, to petition the Conservative government for work.

People of all classes turned out along the way to feed the Crusaders  who had a harmonica band and sang rousing choruses of Its A Long Way To Tipperary as they marched  with the ironic result that they ate better than they ever had in their own desperately deprived backstreets.

Many even put on weight. One took the ham out of a sandwich hed been given and posted it back home to his hungry family, who hadnt eaten meat in weeks.

Yet  irony, too  the Labour Party nationally distanced itself from the protest, for fear that it was run by communist agitators.

And when the marchers reached London, they were feted as heroes, but then sent on their way.

Their petition was handed in to Parliament, but it disappeared and has never been seen since.

Nothing changed.

It was a waste of time, concluded the last surviving marcher many decades on, but I enjoyed every step.

Maconies is a sobering and thoughtful journey that recalls with sympathy the real hardship of those grim days and relates them to life in 21st-century Britain.

Perhaps we should be a little more calm and reflective about our current schisms and divisions, he writes. England has seen worse.
Biographies

M: MAXWELL KNIGHT by Henry Hemming (Preface 20)

M: MAXWELL KNIGHT

by Henry Hemming (Preface 20)

As far as young naturalists in the Fifties were concerned, Maxwell Knight was the author of books such as Tortoises And How To Keep Them and  for those made of more ambitious stuff  How To Keep A Gorilla.

But Knight was a man with a secret  from 1931 to 1961, he was in charge of running his own section in MI5. He was the original M, spending his working hours identifying, recruiting and running undercover agents.

After a day spent spying, Knight would return to a flat overrun with exotic wildlife  a bushbaby, a Himalayan monkey, even a brown bear called Bessie.

He was married three times, though none of his marriages appears to have been consummated  at night, hed sneak out of his bedroom and go fishing, giving rise to rumours he was a werewolf.

One of the things that makes this such a rewarding read is the way in which Henry Hemming teases out common strands between the spymaster and the naturalist. Both required forensic powers of observation and an enormous amount of patience. As Knight himself once said, at its purest, spying is watching.

ANTHONY POWELL by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton 25)

ANTHONY POWELL

by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton 25)

Anthony Powells A Dance To The Music Of Time is regarded by many as one of the funniest  and most brilliantly characterised  sequences of novels ever written.

A sprawling 12-volume epic set in British upper-class and bohemian circles over the first two-thirds of the 20th century, its publication finally brought Powell the acclaim he had always desperately sought.

Its often assumed that he was as well-heeled as many of his characters. But, as Hilary Spurling reveals in this sympathetic, racily enjoyable account of Powells life, the truth was a lot more complicated.

His father was a hot-tempered Army officer, an incorrigible sponger who always claimed to be broke, but who turned out to have been sitting on a secret fortune all along.

Powell himself was dogged by money problems, as well as insomnia and crippling bouts of depression. Haughty, snobbish and prone to withering put-downs  he once described Graham Greene, one of his close friends, as absurdly overrated, while Evelyn Waugh was dismissed as undernourishing  he may not have been the most likeable of men. But for all his faults he did have  as he said of Shakespeare  an extraordinary grasp of what other people were like.

THE ENIGMA OF KIDSON by James Blackett (Quiller 25)

THE ENIGMA OF KIDSON

by James Blackett (Quiller 25)

For 30 years, Michael Kidson taught history at Eton, where his brilliance and rudeness became the stuff of legend. Pupils who failed to come up to scratch were lambasted in characteristic fashion. One boy was described as a Hebridean cave-dweller, another as about as lively as an inanimate centenarian. As for former Prime Minister David Camerons A-grade in history A-level, that was one of the most inexplicable events in modern history.

Anyone who answered wrongly in class was likely to have a croquet ball hurled at them. Yet, far from being hurt or offended, Kidsons pupils  who included Justin Welby and Jacob Rees-Mogg  adored him.

Written by a former student, this biography does an excellent job of celebrating Kidsons many idiosyncrasies. As its title suggests, there was a hidden corner of Kidson that nobody got to see.

He never married, but doesnt seem to have been gay, and had a number of visits from mysterious lady-friends  one of whom, even more mysteriously, once brought him a cuddly toy as a present.

Perhaps she recognised that, behind his gruff exterior, Kidson was essentially a child at heart  which may explain why he was such a good teacher.

THE GOOD BOHEMIAN: THE LETTERS OF IDA JOHN by Rebecca John and Michael Holroyd (Bloomsbury 25)

THE GOOD BOHEMIAN: THE LETTERS OF IDA JOHN

by Rebecca John and Michael Holroyd (Bloomsbury 25)

In 1901, at the age of 24, Ida Nettleship  beautiful, talented and unconventional  married fellow artist Augustus John, who was already being hailed as the most brilliant portrait painter of his generation.

They settled in rural Essex, but John began to spend more and more time in London, and soon told Ida he had a lover  a woman called Dorelia McNeill. Ever compliant, Ida raised no objection and, for a time, she and John lived with Dorelia in a menage a trois.

Slowly, the rackety lifestyle  and Idas constant pregnancies (she had five babies in five years)  took its toll.

The tone of her letters  once optimistic  becomes increasingly tinged with anxiety and doubt. How will it end? By death or escape? she asks. The answer, alas, was in death. Physically worn out, if still valiantly determined to look on the bright side, Ida died of puerperal fever aged just 30.
Carbon dioxide emissions in the UK have risen for the first time in 14 years, new figures show - and experts say it's because more people are buying petrol cars as they turn their backs on diesel.

The Government has come down hard on the under-fire fuel throughout 2017, as part of plans to reduce harmful emissions being pumped into the nation's air. This culminated in the Chancellor's decision last month to increase first-year tax for anyone who buys a new diesel car from April next year.

But the decision to dissuade drivers from buying diesel might claim an unintended victim, the environment, an investigation has found.

Diesel impact: Declining sales of diesel vehicles this year will prompt the first increase in CO2 emissions in the UK for 14 years, new statistics have shown

Department for Transport figures uncovered by car-selling site Buyacar.co.uk show that the average new car sold in 2017 produces more CO2 than one sold in 2016 - reversing a continuous decline in greenhouse gas emissions on this measure since figures were published by the Government in 2003.

Official statistics for the first ten months of 2017 show that the average new car sold this year produces 121.1g of CO2 per kilometre.

The average CO2 output of new vehicles sold in 2016 was 120.3g/km.

With diesel registrations widely expected to stall further in December, it will spell the end of a 14-year reduction in CO2 emissions, which have declined by 4.02g/km annually since records first began.

Buyacar.co.uk said the increase in average CO2 outputs was due to a 16 per cent slump in diesel vehicle sales this year.

Registrations of new diesels have been hammered by increased taxes as well as the introduction of the T-Charge in Central London, parking surcharges in big cities and the threat of new low emissions zones across the country that would force owners to pay more to use their cars.

Diesel has been under scrutiny since the VW Group's emissions cheating scandal in 2005, when cars were found to be emitting up to 40 times more harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) than official figures suggested.

While diesel sales have slumped on the back of the crackdown - and fears of a greater one to come - petrol vehicles have held up rather than the buyers shifting en-masse to the expensive electric and hybrid models ministers would prefer motorists purchase.

Despite the higher NOx outputs, there's no doubting that diesel cars produce less CO2 - and are more efficient - than petrol equivalents, making them better for the environment, which is why previous governments incentivised motorists to buy them with a carbon-dioxide-based car tax system.

Sales of new diesel cars are 16% down year-on-year, with more drivers shifting to petrol models instead of zero-emissions electric cars. As a result, CO2 outputs are on the rise

Official SMMT figures for the first 11 months of the year show that 193,281 fewer diesels have been sold, while petrol and alternative fuel vehicle sales have increased year-on-year by 28,050 and 28,611 units respectively

According to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), 193,281 fewer diesel had been sold in the UK by the end of November.

On the other hand, petrol registrations were up by 38,050 units while alternative fuel cars - including electric, hydrogen and hybrid-powered vehicles - were ahead by 28,611 compared to the same time last year.

Experts have now warned that the higher number of petrol cars hitting the road compared to diesel threatens to derail the Governments ambitious climate change targets.

Car manufacturers are already under pressure to meet an EU target of cutting average CO2 emissions across their ranges to 95g/km by 2021, but the recent demonisation of diesel has sparked concerns that these objectives won't be met if manufacturers can't even shift low-emissions diesel cars that comply with the existing Euro6 standards.

If industry is to meet challenging CO2 targets getting more of the latest low emission diesels onto our roads is crucial Tamzen Isacsson, SMMT

Tamzen Isacsson, director at the SMMT, said: 'If industry is to meet challenging CO2 targets getting more of the latest low emission diesels onto our roads is crucial, as they can emit 20 per cent less CO2 than the equivalent petrol models.

She blamed 'confusion around government air quality plans and taxation' for plummeting diesel sales, and warned: 'If new diesel car registrations continue on this negative trend, UK average new car CO2 levels could indeed rise this year'.

Matt Freeman, managing consultant at car valuation firm cap hpi, added: 'Hitting the 2021 environmental targets for CO2 reduction would be a significant challenge without the likely decline in diesel. Therefore it is imperative that diesels continue to command a substantial share of the new car marketplace.

'If consumers, with no option of transitioning to hybrid or EVs, switch to petrol the environmental impact is clear - their CO2 emissions would likely rise between 3 per cent and 23 per cent according to model.'

A Department for Transport spokesman responded to the suggestion that carbon dioxide emissions will increase, saying: 'We will seek to maintain ambitious targets and our leadership position, and intervening firmly if not enough progress is being made.

'Our ambitious Clean Growth Strategy includes investing nearly 1.5 billion in accelerating the roll-out of ultra-low emission vehicles by 2020  generating business opportunities and leading to cleaner air and lower greenhouse gas emissions.'

Experts have said that car manufacturers can still reduce CO2 outputs by ramping-up their hybrid and electric-vehicle development

And experts have suggested that car makers can still trim the CO2 outputs of their vehicles even if diesel becomes less popular.

The International Council on Clean Transportation, a research group that has led the campaign against harmful diesel emissions, said that advanced petrol engines, as well as electric and hybrid technology, could cut CO2 emissions significantly.

'Quite a lot of petrol vehicles do not use the latest technologies available and still have higher CO2 emissions than comparable diesel cars,' said Peter Mock, managing director of ICCT Europe.

'However, the - unfortunately often repeated - statement that diesel cars are necessary to decrease CO2 emissions is simply wrong.

'Instead, hybridising petrol vehicles and transitioning to electric vehicles today makes more sense for vehicle manufacturers.'

Monk also blamed the increased sales of SUVs - which are generally less fuel efficient than a hatchback alternative - for the spike in average CO2 outputs.
The UK's premier share index has passed the 7,600 mark for the first time ever after President Donald Trump's tax bill put investors firmly in the Christmas party spirit.

The FTSE 100 finished up 78.76 points at 7,603.98, marking the biggest one-day gain in December and a new record high. The last time that the FTSE 100 hit a record high was in early November when it hit 7,562.28 points.

The Senate passed the $1.5trillion tax cut early in the early hours of Wednesday, with Trump hailing his tax cut victory as the start of 'a very special period of time' in America as he promised the reforms would lead to 'jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.'

The FTSE 100 finished up 78.76 points at 7,603.98, marking the biggest one day gain in December and a new record high

The jump has also been credited to a market phenomenon called the Santa Rally, referring to a surge in stock prices during the final weeks of December that is often linked to investments of Christmas bonuses as well as anticipation of a further rise in prices at the turn of the new year.

David Madden, a market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: 'The FTSE 100 is the standout performer in Europe as it reached a fresh all-time high. The market has cleared the 7,600 mark, for the first time ever.

'Since consumer goods like Reckitt Benckiser, Diageo and Tesco are some of the biggest risers on the day, the Santa rally is certainly under way.'

The UK market outperformed European peers including the French Cac 40 and German Dax which ended the day up 0.6 per cent and 0.3 per cent, respectively.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate gave final approval to the biggest overhaul of the US tax code in 30 years on Wednesday, sending the sweeping bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

As part of that bill, the tax rate on corporations will drop from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. Trump previously called the measure 'rocket fuel' for the economy.

Some of America's biggest companies gave workers the Christmas cheer a little early on Wednesday as they passed on some of their winnings from a dramatic corporate tax cut that was also included in the legislation.

The UK's premier share index has passed the 7,600 mark for the first time ever

AT&T said that it will pay $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 employees - and promised to make $1 billion in new investments in the United States next year - once a tax reform bill approved by Congress is signed into law.

After AT&T's announcement, other companies followed suit.

On the rise: The FTSE 100 has been rising steadily over the past five days

Reform: President Trump with Republican members of the House and Senate following the passing of the tax bill

Comcast NBCUniversal said it would award $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 workers, 'based on the passage of tax reform' and a recent FCC decision to repeal 'net neutrality' rules.

The cable and Internet giant also boasted that it 'expects to spend well in excess of $50billion over the next five years investing in infrastructure.'

Boeing said it would make a '$300million employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation.'
Grounded: A Bombardier C Series passenger jet

US officials have upheld plans to slap a near- 300 per cent tax on imported Bombardier C Series jets, threatening 1,000 UK jobs.

Rival Boeing had complained Bombardier was unfairly undercutting it in the US with the help of subsidies from Canada.

Around 1,000 workers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, make wings for the C Series for Bombardier.

Union Unite said a further 22,000 US jobs were at threat unless the tariff from the US Department of Commerce is overturned. But the US department has confirmed a 292 per cent tariff.
A senior executive who was blasted for wasting taxpayers' money on luxury taxis has joined the board of state-owned lender Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lena Wilson stepped down as head of quango Scottish Enterprise earlier this year after blowing public funds on a limousine company while on a junket in New York.

The 53-year-old is set to join RBS as a non-executive director  eight years after the lender was rescued with 46billion from the state.

Wilson's attitude was attacked earlier this year by Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie, who said: 'Many people will be disgusted that the hierarchy of Scottish Enterprise thought it reasonable to be so profligate with taxpayers' money.'

New RBS exec Lena Wilson stepped down as head of quango Scottish Enterprise earlier this year after blowing public funds on a limousine company while on a junket in New York

She will start at RBS at the beginning of January as part of a wider reshuffle, meaning there will be four women on the bank's 14-strong board.

The bank is 71.5 per cent taxpayer-owned following its bailout.

Chairman Sir Howard Davies yesterday praised Wilson's 'strong public sector and commercial background'.

Meanwhile RBS's senior independent director Sir Sandy Crombie, the 68-year-old former boss of insurer Standard Life, is standing down after eight years.

He will be replaced as senior director by Mark Seligman, 61, a former investment banker at Credit Suisse who joined the board earlier this year.

Fellow non-executive Robert Gillespie, 62, who used to work at SG Warburg bank, is taking charge of the committee which sets the pay of boss Ross McEwan, who earned 3.5million last year.

Wilson was heavily criticised over a trip to the US in April with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon for what the Scottish government called a jobs-boosting exercise.

The quangocrat took five flights across America during the trip, four of which were business class, spending a total of 10,000 on air travel for herself and a colleague.

Along with an aide, Wilson racked up a 1,851 hotel bill, and spent 3,904 in total on cars. This included as much as 622 for a single day in San Francisco.

And another 1,301 was spent for a day in New York with Bermuda Limousine International, which calls itself the city's 'premier chauffeured limousine service'.

It included a 188 tip, which sources claim she was forced to pay because it was mandatory.

They added that her car bill was racked up because security rules required her to follow Mrs Sturgeon around in a separate car.

Wilson, who announced plans to quit Scottish Enterprise in July, also came in for criticism for holding a 69,000-a-year non-executive role with industrial testing company Intertek.

It comes as the Treasury prepares to sell its stake in Natwest owner RBS.

Ministers are hoping to begin selling the shares next year and intend to have sold stock worth 15bn by 2023.

They are not expecting to make back what was handed over by the taxpayer for its bailout.

RBS did not comment.
An aristocratic relative of David Cameron faced a backlash last night over his opposition to a Government crackdown on toxic leases.

William Waldorf Astor IV, the half-brother of the former Prime Minister's wife Samantha, has campaigned against plans announced yesterday to slash ground rent to zero on new houses and flats.

The 38-year-old's fund management company, Long Harbour, has the freeholds of more than 160,000 homes  with investors making money out of the ground rents.

Long Harbour has claimed slashing ground rents on new homes could devastate UK building.

Under fire: William Astor, pictured with is wife Lohralee, faced a backlash last night over his opposition to a government crackdown on toxic leases

But one housebuilding executive told the Mail: 'These people don't represent the industry and they've displayed staggering ineptitude in their desperate attempts to stop the inevitable end of leasehold.'

Announcing plans to ban leaseholds on almost all new-build houses and fix ground rents, communities secretary Sajid Javid said: 'Real action is needed to end these feudal practices.'

One developer that Long Harbour deals with, McCarthy & Stone, which sells the freeholds on homes it builds for the retired, spoke out against the reforms as its shares fell 9.5 per cent.

Other builders saw their shares also dip. The Mail has led the way in exposing abuses of leasehold, including clauses that mean ground rents double every decade.

Retirement developers such as McCarthy & Stone have argued they are a special case, because their ground rents do not rise aggressively and are used to maintain large communal areas for elderly homeowners.

Its chief executive Clive Fenton said: 'The proposal will result in a disruption of housing supply and contradicts the stated objective of seeking new sources of housing.'

But there was little sympathy for investors who buy the freeholds of houses and flats.

Tory MP Andrew Selous said: 'The Government has come to the protection of people who had unfair conditions imposed upon them and I don't think investors have a leg to stand on from these morally questionable investments.'

HOUSING BOSS TOLD TO HAND BACK 130m The boss of one of Britain's biggest housebuilders was last night urged to give up his 130million bonus after profiting from the sale of leasehold homes. Jeff Fairburn, the chief executive of Persimmon, is in line for the payout as part of a package that will see 150 managers share more than 800million. But critics said business has been boosted by the sale of new homes with leases, as well as the Government's Help to Buy scheme that offers taxpayers' cash to secure a mortgage. One in six Persimmon homes has a lease, meaning buyers pay an annual fee to the freeholder. Sebastian O'Kelly, director of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership campaign group, said: 'The best thing they could do is turn down these bonuses and stop being so greedy.' Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'The scale of this bonus is obscene. It is reminiscent of the worst excesses of corporate greed that helped create the financial crisis.'

Long Harbour hired public relations firm Pagefield to lobby across Whitehall, warning that scrapping ground rents would lead to 20,000 fewer homes being built each year across the UK.

Long Harbour director Jack Spearman then emailed property executives this week asking them to sign an open letter to the Government expressing concerns about the shake-up. An industry source said: 'If anything, it hardened the Government's approach.'

Sebastian O'Kelly, of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership group, said: 'There was a bit of last-minute insider lobbying by Will Astor and, thank goodness, it has failed.'

Long Harbour said: 'We have played a co-ordinating role over the past three months to engage with the Government constructively over leasehold reform.

'We have outlined on multiple occasions the impact on UK housing supply if all ground rents were reduced to zero, and the value of an institutional freeholder.'
The FTSE 100 hit an all-time high as traders toasted the pre-Christmas Santa rally.

The blue-chip index hit 7603.98, up 78.76 points, or 1.05 per cent, as it leapfrogged past the previous record of 7598.99 set in June.

The surge was led by hospitals provider Mediclinic, which finished up 7.3 per cent, or 43p, at 630p.

The boost means that as the year draws to a close the FTSE is nearly 500 points higher than its level at the end of 2016  largely driven by a lift given to big firms by the weak pound.

The FTSE 250 also closed higher, up 0.36 per cent, or 72.44 points, at 20,422.73. Sonic the Hedgehog game maker Sumo Digital raced ahead on its first day of trading.

Record high: The FTSE 100 blue-chip index hit 7603.98 points, up 78.76 points, or 1.1 per cent, as it leapfrogged past the previous record of 7598.99 set in June

The firm, which floated on AIM, jumped as much as 19 per cent yesterday, finishing up 14 per cent, or to 114p from its placing price of 100p.

The Sheffield-based company is behind hits such as Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing and Little Big Planet 3.

Refit firm Styles & Wood soared after the founder of Clipper Logistics launched a 42.5million swoop on the business.

It refits properties such as schools and banks, and has been snapped up by Steve Parkin's venture capitalist vehicle Central Square Holdings.

The deal is a 24 per cent premium to Styles & Wood's undisturbed share price before talks began.

STOCK WATCH - CITYFIBRE Shares in broadband infrastructure firm CityFibre nudged up after it secured its biggest public sector project to date. The 16million deal will see it supply broadband cabling across 506 Glasgow council sites including schools, libraries, leisure centres, arts venues and council offices. CityFibre said the seven-year contract will be worth around 6.4million, growing to 15.7million if the agreement is extended to 19 years. Shares rose 0.9 per cent, or 0.5p, to 57.5p as a result.

Central Square Holdings said the takeover will allow it to merge the company with its existing interest in Southerns, a rival property services business, to create a larger entity.

Parkin, 56, is executive chairman of Clipper Logistics, a company he set up 1992. He made 30million from the company when it floated in 2014 and still owns around 30 per cent.

News of the buyout sent shares up 20.7 per cent, or 77.5p, to 452.5p.

Pharmaceutical giant GSK nudged up after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled it no longer had to include a warning label on two asthma drugs.

GSK had previously said on labels of its Advair and Breo drugs that an ingredient potentially increased the risk of asthma-related death.

But the FDA yesterday abolished the need for the label after an earlier trial showed no increased risk, sending the shares up 0.8 per cent, or 10p, to 1320p.

A contract win with Transport for London failed to lift the Christmas spirits of Capita investors.

The outsourcer fell 3.2 per cent, or 13p, to 392.9p despite the 80million contract to provide and manage TfL's internal internet network across its 1,000-plus sites.

Capita had been hit by the tightening of budgets in the public sector due to uncertainty in the market.

Earlier this month it warned that a number of the bids it has in the pipeline are unlikely to be included in its profits in 2018 due to changes in accounting rules.

Also down was investment firm Vela Technologies, which plunged 17.7 per cent, or 0.22p, to 1.05p as investors took profits.

Vela invests in early stage and pre-IPO tech companies with 'disruptive' business models.

Popular investments in its portfolio include the blockchain company BTL and Portr, which is a start-up that checks in luggage for flights.

Ebanking and international payments group FairFX jumped 5.4 per cent, or 4p, to 77.5p after securing a licence to issue Mastercard branded cards.

The cards will be available across Europe, but other regions are set to follow.

Delighted Ian Strafford-Taylor, chief executive of FairFX, said: 'Gaining Mastercard membership is a major step in our stated aim of reducing FairFX's reliance on third parties and providing choice for the business.'
This is the moment a Battle of Britain veteran shook hands with a 'charming' six-year-old who donated his birthday money to the RAF Benevolent Fund.

Stan Hartill, 96, welcomed six-year-old Henry Conway and his parents to his Bournemouth home to personally thank him for his generous donation.

The veteran appears in the charity's latest TV advert titled Show Your Pride, in which he is interviewed while wearing an array of medals.

Little Henry was instantly moved by the footage as he watched with parents Leo and Elizabeth, and said 'Daddy I think we should give them some money'.

His dad then went online to make the donation for the youngster, who lives in Redditch, as part of his birthday present when he turned six.

To give Henry a more personalised thank you, Stan invited the family to his home where the pair chatted about his wartime service and shared stories about school.

'He's a very charming little boy," said Stan.

'He's a very intelligent little boy and it's been quite a pleasure meeting him today.

'I was deeply moved to hear about Henry's donation after seeing me on the TV, so to be able to thank him personally is simply wonderful!'

Battle of Britain veteran Stan Hartill, 96, shook hands with 'charming' six-year-old Henry Conway, from Redditch, who donated his birthday money to the RAF Benevolent Fund

Henry was inspired after seeing the veteran in the charity's latest TV advert titled Show Your Pride, in which he is interviewed while wearing an array of medals

Stan invited Henry and his family to his Bournemouth home where the pair chatted about his wartime service and shared stories about school

Henry said: 'It was really fun to meet the man off the telly. He told me about the war and the Spitfires. I'd like to be a hero like Stan when I'm older.'

Stan, who joined the Royal Air Force as an airframe fitter when he was just 19 years old, was supported by the charity when he was struggling to pay the maintenance charges on his flat.

The financial support meant he could continue to spend his retirement in his own home.

Most recently, the Fund assisted him with accessing benefits through the charity's Advice and Advocacy service.

Stan was able to obtain a 3,000 increase to his annual income, along with 94 weeks of backdated benefits, which resulted in a one-off payment of more than 5,700.

Last year, the RAF Benevolent Fund spent 17.6million supporting more than 65,000 members of the RAF Family

Double amputee Stuart Robinson and widow Jacqui Thompson, whose husband was killed on deployment in Afghanistan, also feature in the moving advert.

The RAF Benevolent Fund supports current and former members of the RAF, their partners and dependents by providing financial, practical and emotional support.

Last year, the Fund spent 17.6million supporting more than 65,000 members of the RAF Family.

Carla Stimson, Direct Marketing Fundraiser at the charity, said: 'We were delighted to hear about Henry's wonderful contribution to the RAF Benevolent Fund in response to our television advert.

'Donations like Henry's make our work possible to help members of the RAF Family who are going through a difficult time and, at six years old, Henry may well be our youngest supporter!

'Bringing the pair together was very moving and a great way to end the year. On behalf of everyone at the RAF Benevolent Fund, thank you both for supporting us.'
Advertisement

China is bringing its well-loved glass-bottomed bridges to a new height. A scenic spot in eastern China is opening the nation's first transparent walkway with special effects.

Situated on the lush mountains of Wuhu, Anhui Province, the see-through floor panels could appear to shatter when tourists stand on them.

In addition, two dragon statues on top of the 590-foot-high bridge could produce smoke, which makes the mythological creatures seemingly fly through the clouds.

Don't look down! A Chinese scenic spot has built a transparent walkway at 590ft high that boasts dramatic special effects

Would you cross it? The 124 glass panels of on the bridge would appear to shatter when the tourists step on them

Vertigo-inducing: Measuring 1,272 feet in length, the 'Flying-dragon Glass Bridge' is situated on the lush mountains of Wuhu

Measuring 1,272 feet in length, the 'Flying-dragon Glass Bridge' is located in the Ma Ren Qi Feng Scenic Spot outside of Wuhu city.

The company said the bridge has passed safety checks from the authority and is due to open on December 23.

Next to the 'Flying-dragon Glass Bridge', another glass-bottomed walkway has been built on the side of a cliff face. Tourists need to go through the cliff-side passageway to reach the thrilling bridge.

Unprecedented: Although many glass-bottomed bridges have been built in China, this is the first with special effects

The bridge has passed safety checks from the authority and is due to open to the public on December 23, said a spokesman

A spokesperson from the Ma Ren Qi Feng Scenic Spot said the bridge consists of 124 glass panels and can bear a maximum weight of 50 tonnes.

It can hold as many as 600 people at the same time, but the scenic spot has put a cap of 300 tourists at any one time, said the spokesperson.

In October, another glass bridge in northern China's Hebei Province shot to fame after a video showed its panels cracking at over 3,800 feet high when a tour guide was walking on them.

The shattered glass turned out to be a special effect installed by the management to make visitors' journey more exciting. The scenic spot on Taihang Mountain claimed its workers inspect the glass floor daily to ensure safety.

Safety measures: A maximum of 300 people will be allowed to stand simultaneously on the bridge which can bear 50 tonnes
While voters easily approved a medical marijuana measure last year, government leaders seemingly havent been in any rush to implement it. The delay could backfire on those skeptical about the use of medical marijuana.

Legislators amended the initiated measure to decriminalize medical marijuana use and to make it comply with federal guidelines. The Legislature also put the North Dakota Department of Health in charge of developing administrative rules for the program. The rules will determine how the product will be transported, packaged and tested, along with a variety of other requirements. The Health Department doesn't plan to accept applications for manufacturing facilities or dispensaries until at least April 1.

Public hearings were held across the state recently to gather public comments on the proposed rules.

In fairness to state officials, theres not a quick way to implement a statewide program like medical marijuana use. It has taken other states a number of years to adopt programs. At the same time, someone seeking legal marijuana for pain relief has to be frustrated by the process. Help is so close, but still months away.

Thats why at one of the hearings state officials were warned that voters might approve a measure to allow recreational marijuana use. The secretary of state has approved the format of petitions to get the measure on the ballot. Supporters hope to get enough signatures in time to place it on the November 2018 ballot.

On the surface it would appear North Dakotans wouldnt favor legalizing marijuana. However, North Dakotans have an independent streak to go along with their conservatism. If November finds the measure on the ballot and state officials are still working on the details of the medical marijuana program there may be enough voters who think the state is taking too much time.

So, if nothing else, officials must convince residents they are working as fast as possible to begin the medical marijuana program. North Dakotans dont like to see their votes ignored.

The Tribune Editorial Board doesnt favor legalizing marijuana. We believe the medical marijuana program will address a major need and should be implemented as quickly as possible. The Legislature also should continue to examine the criminal penalties involving marijuana use. The frustration of those who feel they need marijuana to deal with their illnesses is understandable. State officials should strive to begin the medical marijuana program before November.
A federal judge has barred a southeastern Missouri man, who killed the mother of his triplets amid a divorce, from profiting off a tell-all book about committing the murder that he helped write while behind bars.

The judge ruled on Tuesday that James Clay Waller, 47, of Jackson, Missouri, could not profit from the manuscript he helped write. The book is titled 'If You Take My Kids, I'll Kill You!': The Public Confession of Missouri's Most Notorious Wife Killers.

The judge also added another 35 years to the sentence James is serving for murdering his estranged wife and mother of his triplets, Jacque Sue Waller, in 2011.

James' additional prison sentence is related to a federal charge of interstate domestic violence.

A judge ruled that James Clay Waller cannot profit off a manuscript for book called 'If You Take My Kids, I'll Kill You!' He helped write the book while serving a 20-year prison sentence for murdering his wife, the mother of his triplets, Jacque Sue Waller (right) in 2011

James (in 2013) was also sentenced to an additional 35 years in prison on a federal charge of interstate domestic violence. He admitted that he had traveled from Illinois to Missouri with the intention of killing Jacque Sue and transported her body back across state lines to bury it

Through a plea deal, Waller had previously admitted to digging a grave for Jacque Sue, in 2011 on an island on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. He then spent the night with his girlfriend in Illinois.

James then admitted he traveled across state lines, back to Missouri, the next day with the intention to kill Jacque Sue.

After a meeting at a divorce lawyer's office, James said he lured his estranged wife to his home in Jackson, where he beat and strangled her to death, according to the plea. He then used a boat to transport her body across the Mississippi River so he could bury her in the grave he had dug there, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said.

The Wallers' triplets were five years old at the time.

In exchange for leading investigators to Jacque Sue's body two years later, Waller was sentenced to 20 years in state prison for second-degree murder. The state sentence, which came in 2013, will run at the same time as the federal sentence.

James and Jacque Sue were in the middle of a divorce when he decided to murder her in 2011

The Wallers' triplets (pictured with Jacque Sue in an undated photo) were five years old when their father killed their mother. They are currently being raised by Jacque Sue's sister

When Waller is released from prison, the triplets will be about 38 years old

'Well, of course we wanted life, but since that wasn't available, we'll be happy with this,' Jacque Waller's sister, Cheryl Brenneke, who is raising the triplets, told the Southeast Missourian.

'He would be around 73, and the kids would be about 38 when he gets out, and at that point, they'll be old enough to handle him and his manipulations, and my mom and dad won't be around, so they were good with that.'

Federal prosecutors said in court filings that the interstate domestic violence charge was driven by Cape Girardeau officials' dissatisfaction with the 20-year prison term Waller received as part of the 2013 plea deal.

Prosecutors wrote the interstate domestic violence charge was given to 'protect the citizens from a dangerous, sociopathic and narcissistic murderer.'

Waller's lawyer, John Lynch, had argued that the discovery of the 182-page manuscript prompted prosecutors to try giving Waller more time for the same crime. Lynch said that while the actual author was someone else and that the manuscript was 'in bad taste (perhaps an understatement),' prosecution for it would be a violation of Waller's free speech rights.

In the manuscript, Waller said that his love for his children and his unwillingness to separate from them through divorce was what drove him to kill his wife.
George Johnson, 28, was found dead Friday night on his cell room floor by an officer making rounds

A man has hanged himself in his Maryland prison cell after being sentenced to 123 years for holding hostages at a Burger King during a standoff with police.

George Johnson, 28, was convicted in October of false imprisonment and reckless endangerment for leading police last year on a chase, then holding four people hostage inside a Baltimore Burger King.

Johnson was found Friday night on his cell room floor, unresponsive, by an officer making rounds, a prison spokesperson said.

The cause of death was determined by the medical examiners office to be asphyxiation by hanging, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn sentenced Johnson to 123 years on December 14. the day before he was found dead.

Johnson was convicted in October of false imprisonment and reckless endangerment for holding four people hostage inside a Baltimore Burger King in July 2016

He was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced, which included first- and second-degree assault and use of a firearm in a violent crime.

Johnson had a semi-automatic handgun during the standoff that lasted more than five hours in 2016.

Johnson admitted to fleeing from police because he had a gun in his car, when an officer tried to pull him over while driving a gold GMC Yukon that had been suspected of being associated with a rape that occurred the day before.

Johnson crashed the vehicle, fled on foot, and ended up in the Burger King near North Monroe and Washington Boulevard.

He then forced three employees and a 7-year-old girl into the manager's office, in a standoff that lasted nearly five-and-a-half hours.

First, two employees were released, then Johnson made one employee throw his loaded gun out the window before surrendering and releasing the final employee and the girl.

Johnson was found dead at the Jessup Correctional Institution in Jessup, Maryland.
A California widow faced her husband's killer in court Tuesday and described the difficulty of getting through each day.

Erica Nelson of Monrovia, told the court how the death of her 41-year-old husband, Chris, greatly impacted her life and the lives of their four children, ABC 7 reported.

'The hardest thing for them to give up is their dad,' she said during the hearing.

Eduardo Macias Santibanez, 25, of Pasadena, was driving under the influence when he rear-ended Chris' car at high speed eastbound on the Orange Grove, causing Chris' vehicle to slam into the center median before being hit by a second vehicle.

As part of a plea deal, Santibanez pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and gross vehicular manslaughter.

Erica Nelson (left), of Monrovia, California, confronted the killer of her 41-year-old husband, Chris (right), in court on Tuesday

Eduardo Macias Santibanez, 25 (left), of Pasadena, was driving under the influence when he rear-ended Nelson's car at high speed in February 2016. Erica (right) revealed how the death greatly impacted her life and the lives of their four children

Erica told Santibanez that her four children still asked her where their father was, especially her youngest son, who was 18-months-old at the time of his death and still asks for 'Da-Da' (Pictured, Erica and Chris with their son)

Erica told Santibanez that her four children still asked her where their father was, especially her youngest son, who was 18-months-old at the time of his death and still asks for 'Da-Da'.

She and her sister-in-law, Karen Cockrill, said the children did not look forward to the holidays.

'Every day gets worse. It's 667 days without him. Every day it's painful,' Karen Cockrill said.

Santibanez listened to Erica's statement through tears, after which he apologized for his actions on that February night in 2016.

'I pray for your family every day,' Santibanez told Erica.

The widow added that she believed her husband would be alive today had someone helped him when he was pinned inside his vehicle.

Erica said that the aftermath of her husband's death left her 'financially and emotionally exhausted.' She quit her job and moved with her children to a different home because her old house reminded her too much of Chris (Pictured, Chris and Erica with their fout children)

As part of a plea deal, Santibanez pleaded guilty to 'driving under the influence and gross vehicular manslaughter' (Pictured, the aftermath of the crash)

The widow added that she believed her husband would be alive today had someone helped him when he was pinned inside his vehicle (pictured, the aftermath of the crash)

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help financially support Erica and her four children (pictured). So far, $2,750 has been raised out of a $5,000 goal

'I believe if someone was able to come to his rescue, officer or some kind of first responder, they could have saved my husband's life. That second accident wouldn't have happened and I wouldn't be standing here today,' she said.

Erica said that the aftermath of her husband's death left her 'financially and emotionally exhausted.' She quit her job and moved with her children to a different home because her old house reminded her too much of Chris.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help financially support Erica and her four children. So far, $2,750 has been raised out of a $5,000 goal.

Outside the courthouse, Erica told reporters she hoped others would 'think twice before they drive and drive'.

'I hope people will see the effects that someone's selfish decision has,' she said.
The third person killed in the deadly Amtrak crash has been identified as a convicted sex offender found in possession of child porn while working in IT at a college.

Benjamin Gran, 40, of Auburn, Washington, died of multiple traumatic injuries on Monday when the Amtrak Cascades train 501 plummeted off the rails at 80mph, along a curve south of Seattle, killing three and injuring dozens.

Authorities have revealed that Gran, who was autistic and a huge train enthusiast, was a registered sex offender who was sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release after he was caught with a massive amount of child pornography.

Convicted sex offender Benjamin Gran, (pictured) 40, of Auburn, Washington, died of multiple traumatic injuries on Monday when the Amtrak Cascades train 501 plummeted off the rails at 80mph, along a curve south of Seattle, killing three and injuring dozens

Gran was working as a computer technician at Auburn's Green River Community College, Washington, in 2011 when an investigation identified him as a member of an online pedophile ring.

The probe, dubbed 'Operation Rescue', began in the Netherlands in 2009 but stretched on for years, and across different countries, and ultimately saw 12 suspected child abusers arrested and rescued 100 children.

Agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and Dutch police visited Gran's home in 2011.

The investigation found that Gran had been in communication with the ringleader Robert Mikelsons since 2004 who had claimed the sexual abuse was good for the children, according to court papers.

He was placed on paid administrative leave for months until he pleaded guilty and served two years in prison before his release in 2015. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender.

Gran was among the three passengers who died on the maiden voyage of a faster train route between Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

While his family conceded that Gran had a past, his mother Linda Daniels told Seattle Pi her son had recovered from his 'little blip' and had made a new life for himself.

She described the 40-year-old as her 'autistic, but awesomely autistic son' who was passionate about trains.

He 'was an Amtrak fan to the max,' she added.

Daniels said his death 'left his friends and family shattered beyond belief.'

Local transit employee Zack Willhoite (left in an undated photo) and his friend Jim Hamre (right) were also killed in the crash

The train derailed on Monday and several cars were sent plummeting onto the interstate below

Train enthusiasts Jim Hamre, 61, and Zack Willhoite, 35, died of severe brain and skull injuries from blunt impact on the train. Dozens of others were hurt, some seriously.

Both men belonged to the rail advocacy group All Aboard Washington and were excited to be on board for the inaugural run: Hamre, a retired civil engineer with the state Transportation Department, and Willhoite, a customer service employee at a local transit agency.

'It's pretty devastating. We're having a tough time,' said All Aboard Washington executive director Lloyd Flem.

Willhoite, 35, and friend Hamre were both killed when the train careened off an overpass south of Seattle, spilling cars onto the highway below on Monday. The third victim has not yet been identified.

Friends of the two identified victims say they had just wanted to be among the first on the train's maiden journey.

The engine from the Amtrak train crash onto Interstate 5 two days earlier is checked by workers before being transported away from the scene, Wednesday

A cloud of smoke billows out as a transport vehicle carries the engine from an Amtrak train that crashed onto Interstate 5 on Wednesday

People work at the curve where an Amtrak train derailed onto Interstate 5 two days earlier Wednesday

A damaged Amtrak passenger train car is lifted from the tracks at the site of the derailment of an Amtrak train in Dupont on Tuesday

Willhoite had worked at the Washington-based Pierce Transit since 2008. Hamre previously worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation and was involved in the Washington Association of Railroad Passengers.

'It's heartbreaking to hear that @PierceTransit employee and rail aficionado Zack Willhoite did not survive the derailment,' chair of the transit company's advisory board Chris Karnes tweeted on Tuesday.

'He helped our advisory committee with IT issues, and behind the scenes he was a writer and advocate for better transit for all. He will be missed.'

A friend paid tribute to both men on Hamre's Facebook page, saying: 'As we all knew they would be, Jim and his great friend Zach Wilhoite were on Amtrak Train 501 on the first run over the new route and they were, unbelievably, two of the three killed in the horrible derailment of that train.'

Authorities are investigating the wreck and have said that the train was going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone, derailing south of Seattle and toppling some cars on Interstate 5 below.

Officials have revealed that a second person was in the cab during the deadly Amtrak crash- as investigators look into whether they may have distracted the driver. Pictured: the derailed train dangles over the edge

Local officials had voiced their concerns about the train speeding so fast through bends at a meeting earlier this month

A few motorists were injured when none of the cars came falling down onto the road, but none were killed

National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr has revealed that not only was the train going 50mph above the speed limit, but its emergency brakes only deployed automatically as the fatal derailment occurred. The driver never braked during as he sped round the curve.

'When there is an accident, the emergency brake system goes to place,' she told Buzzfeed. 'It was not something the engineer actually initiated himself.'

One factor that could have potentially slowed down, or even avoided the crash altogether would have been critical speed-control technology. But instead of waiting until the safety system was installed and certified, Amtrak decided to open the new route without the positive train control.

A positive train control system could have detected the speeding and automatically applied the brakes to stop the train, said Najmedin Meshkati, a University of Southern California professor who has studied the technology for three decades.

'It is another layer of safety,' he said.

Dinh-Zarr said it is too soon to say whether positive train control would have prevented Monday's tragedy.

Investigators with the NTSB arrived on the scene of the derailment late Monday night

First responders work at the scene of an Amtrak train that derailed in DuPont, south of Seattle on Monday,

Two semi trucks were damaged in the early Monday morning derailment, in addition to five cars

Work to install the sophisticated, GPS-based technology isn't expected to be completed until next spring on the newly opened 15-mile span where the train derailed, according to Sound Transit, the public agency that owns the tracks.

Amtrak and the Washington Department of Transportation started publicizing the switch to the new route in October. Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said that 'no one wants PTC more than me' but would not directly answer questions about why it is taking so long to get the speed-control technology up and running across the board.

Passengers described the crash as 'like being in an exploded bomb' after the train ran off the rails at 80mph along a curve south of Seattle - sending some of its cars plummeting onto an interstate highway below.

National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to derail and too early to say why it was going so fast.

An investigation is still underway and investigators are speaking to the engineer and other crew members, but it is standard procedure to look at whether the engineer was distracted or incapacitated.

The engineer, whose name was not released, was bleeding from the head after the crash, and his eyes were swollen shut, according to radio transmissions from a crew member. The transmissions mentioned a second person in the front of the train who was also hurt.
An Australian man has been stabbed to death in Sweden just months after moving to the country.

The man, aged in his 30s, was found with multiple stab wounds in Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden, about 4.30am Wednesday local time.

Police reportedly found the man by chance, when they were called to another incident in central Gothenburg.

Police reportedly found the man by chance, when they were called to another incident in central Gothenburg (stock Swedish police)

Swedish police said the man was badly injured when he was discovered.

'We were not there because of him, but a patrol found him,' Swedish police' Morten Gunneng told GP.

'He was in a very bad condition, he was basically unconscious.'

The man was taken to the Sahlgrenska hospital with multiple stab wounds, but died a short time later.

The man was taken to the Sahlgrenska hospital (pictured) with multiple stab wounds, but died a short time later

Police reportedly found the man by chance, when they were called to another incident in central Gothenburg (pictured)

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed the death to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday.

'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian man who died in Sweden,' a spokesman said.

The department will liaise with local and Australian authorities to assist with the man's repatriation back to Australia.
Taxpayers in New South Wales have been slogged with more than $160 million in parking fines this year with an undisclosed number of them being issued in error.

'1,304,202 fines were issued in NSW in the past year, amounting to $164,099,281 in revenue' a spokesperson from Revenue NSW told Daily Mail Australia.

The problem is that 'Revenue NSW is unable to provide the number of parking fines issued in error,' he explained.

'This would require each and every penalty notice that was No Actioned to be manually checked on the system as penalty notices can be No Actioned for many different reasons not just for issued in error' he added.

Taxpayers in New South Wales have been slogged with $164,099,281 in parking fines this year

'Parking fines are issued to help manage parking turnover,' said a City of Sydney spokesperson

1,304,202 parking fines had been recorded across NSW in 2017 with an undisclosed number of them being issued in error

'126,792 review requests have been received by Revenue NSW in the past year.' said the spokesperson

Most fines were upheld (92,558), with a further 24,425 cautioned, 9513 'no actioned', and 296 'not yet determined'.

According to a City of Sydney spokesperson reached by News, only one per cent of all the fines issued by city rangers were withdrawn by Revenue NSW on appeal.

Government of NSW has already taken measures to minimize errors, with city rangers responsible for issuing fines going through different training and auditions.

They also explained that parking fines are issued to help vehicle turnover.

Data shows that Sydneysiders collected the most parking fines, with the CBD alone accounting for 282,762 of the notices issued by the city's council rangers.

Council rangers are now labelled as 'predators' after they slapped a $108 fine on a car while its driver went to print out a ticket to allow him 30 minutes free parking in Rozelle.

On February 20, Shane McCarthy was issued a fine on Darling St for 'park without current ticket displayed' at 10.59am. The ticket he got from the parking machine shows that it was printed at 10.58am.

Data shows that Sydneysiders collected the most parking fines, with the CBD alone accounting for 282,762 of the notices issued by the city's council rangers

The City of Sydney council says it has checks and balances in place to minimise errors, including extensive training and auditing of staff responsible for issuing fines

Anyone who receives a fine they think has been issued incorrectly can challenge it through Revenue NSW

For the 2015-2016 financial year, data from Revenue NSW show that more than 97,600 parking fines were issued by the pre-council merger councils of Leichhardt, Marrickville and Ashfield.

A total revenue of $13,3 million for the NSW state.

But these errors do not apply only to Sydneysiders.

On December 11, Reese Gerhard, who lives in the Sunshine Coast, was slapped with a $94 fine on his car  which was parked in his own driveway.

Mr Gerhard, who lives in the suburb of Birtinya, was issued the ticket for 'restricting access to the driveway,' and was then told by the Sunshine Coast Regional Council he must pay the fine or dispute it in court.

Sydneysiders aren't the only people complaining. Last May, Queensland residents claimed they had been wrongfully issued with illegal parking fines

Aside from rangers errors, NSW residents are being targeted by scammers. NSW Revenue issued a warning about a phone and email parking fine scam

Aside from rangers errors, NSW residents are also being targeted by scammers.

In October, NSW Revenue issued a warning about a phone and email parking fine scam.



'You may have received an email advising they owe money for a fine which provides the details of an infringement number starting with AA,' the warning read.

'You may have received an outbound call received on Sunday, 8 October with the caller stating they are from SDRO and that outstanding debt totalled over $7K.'

NSW revenue warned the community concerned to 'not open its attachments, click any links, or download images'.

They advised recipients to 'delete it (and) please refer to the latest advice on www.staysmartonline.gov.au'.
Democratic Senator Al Franken gave a farewell speech Thursday on Capitol Hill, thanking his family and friends, while lambasting the president and his administration for what he called 'lies.'

The 40 minute speech by the outgoing Senator from Minnesota, who is stepping down amid allegations of inappropriate touching made by multi women, tore into Trump and his fellow Republicans on a number of issues from treatment of LGBT rights to health care and the middle class.

'During his inaugural address, President Trump vowed that 'the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,' Franken said. 'But the Republican tax bill represents a slap in the face to those forgotten men and women. I guess the president forgot about them.'

U.S. Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, in his farewell, lambasted the Trump administration. He officially resigns Jan. 2 after allegations of inappropriate touching by several women

Franken took shots at the Trump administration for its handling of LGBT rights issues and how the tax bill leans towards breaks for the one per cent

On the issue of voter fraud in the 2016 elections, Franken said: 'It's all based on a lie  and not a lie President Trump came up with. Right-wing conservatives have been raising a false alarm about so-called voter fraud for years despite the fact that no credible evidence has ever been [found] demonstrating that it is a real problem.'

Franken also took issue with LGBT policies. 'Lurking behind these policies are lies,' he said. 'Lies that the advocates of LGBT rights want to trample on people's religious freedom. The lie that families led by a gay or lesbian couple don't provide a safe environment for children. The lie that allowing transgender people to use the appropriate bathroom opens the door to sexual assault. President Trump didn't invent these lies. But he and his administration proudly repeat them.'

'We now have enough evidence to conclude that climate change is real and it is man-made and it is a threat to our nation's security and an existential threat to the planet,' Franken said. 'President Trump didn't launch the war on science, but now he's leading the charge.'

Franken, who said on Wednesday he is officially stepping down on Jan. 2, praised his successor, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith.

'I have no doubt Sen. Smith will serve Minnesotans and all Americans well,' Franken said.

AOL News reported Franken concluded his speech on a positive note:

'Politics is about the improvement of people's lives,' Franken said. 'The American people know that to be true. And they fill me with hope for our future.'

The 66-year-old former comedian from Minnesota had been seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party but he had faced growing calls from fellow Senate Democrats to step down as allegations against him mounted.

Sen. Patrick Leahy said this week he regrets calling for Sen. Al Franken to resign instead of waiting for an ethics investigation.

The Burlington Free Press reported the Vermont Democrat released a statement Monday, saying he has 'stood for due process' throughout his career, and that he regrets 'not doing that this time.' He says the Ethics Committee 'should have been allowed to investigate and make its recommendation.'

U.S. Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, announced his resignation on Dec. 7 over allegations of sexual misconduct  but never said when he would be quitting

Franken announced his resignation from the Senate earlier this month following allegations of sexual misconduct. At the time, Leahy and dozens of other senators had urged the Minnesota Democrat to step down.

Franken got a new lease on political life after four of his colleagues have stepped forward to say his promised resignation over groping and sexual harassment allegations should be put on pause.

Politico cited four lawmakers on Monday saying Franken was too quick to throw himself on the live grenade of the #MeToo movement and deserved a second chance.

None of them are women.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin criticized lawmakers who demanded Franken's head on a spit and then embraced him for pledging to quit.

'I hope they have enough guts ... and enough conscience and enough heart to say, 'Al, we made a mistake asking prematurely for you to leave',' he said.

Fellow Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Monday morning on CNN that Franken deserves to stay as long as an ethics panel of his peers clears him

Franken and his wife Franni (left) arrived at the Senate to deliver what amounted to a vague non-apology on Dec. 7 following eight separate charges of sexual misconduct

Accused: After the first allegation by radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden, who produced this notorious photograph, Al Franken had a steady drip of follow-up accusers

Politico cited another unnamed senator's change of heart and reported that Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont has privately told Franken he's in his corner.

But it's Manchin who has been most outspoken.

The West Virginian, a moderate often courted by Republicans for aisle-crossing compromise, told CNN on Monday morning that Franken's slow-motion political hari-kiki was 'most certainly' premature.

'I definitely think he should not resign,' Manchin said. 'I think he should submit himself ... and go through this complete process of an extended ethics review' instead.

Gov. Mark Dayton has already appointed Lt. Gov. Tina Smith as Franken's successor, following an emotional December 7 speech in which the senator said he would quit 'in the coming weeks.

Lindsay Menz (left) claims Franken grabbed her rear end while they posed for this photograph

The fifth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct, Stephanie Kemplin said he groped her during this picture in 2003, during a USO tour event in Kuwait

In the next breath, though, he blasted the 'irony' of his own departure while President Donald Trump remains in office despite his own 'history of sexual assault' and the Senate candidacy of accused teen-fondler Roy Moore in Alabama.

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.

Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith has already been chosen to replace Franken, b ut the changeover is in jeaopardy now that Franken sees an opening to stay

Two more women told the Huffington Post that Franken squeezed their rear ends at political events during his first campaign for the Senate in 2008.

A fourth, an Army veteran, alleged Franken cupped her breast during a photo on a USO tour in 2003.

Franken has apologized for his behavior but has also disputed some of the allegations.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was among a group of female senators who called on Al Franken to resign from the Senate
A man has been found dead at an Army barracks in Adelaide's western suburbs.

Police and paramedics were called to Keswick Barracks on Anzac Highway just after 8am on Thursday after reports a man's body had been found.

Emergency services were seen standing in front of the Royal Australian Navy headquarters.

A man has been found dead at an Army barracks in Adelaide's western suburbs

Emergency services were seen standing in front of the Royal Australian Navy headquarters

South Australia's Ambulance Service initially claimed the death was the result of a medical episode, according to The Advertiser.

Police said it was too early to tell whether the man's death was suspicious, self-inflicted or the result of natural causes.

Investigators will conduct further investigation to determine the cause of the man's death.

Keswick Barracks supports a number of active units including the Army Reserve and the Royal Australian Navy.
Oxford academics have been accused of collective online bullying after writing an open letter condemning a professor who spoke up for the British Empire.

Fifty-eight staff have signed a statement criticising Nigel Biggar over an article in which he said feelings of guilt about colonialism may have gone too far.

The regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at Christ Church wrote that society should take a more balanced view of the Empire rather than simply remembering it with shame.

But yesterday he was attacked by dozens of his own colleagues, who claimed he was breathtakingly politically naive and was engaging in very bad history.

Their letter, which was uploaded to the internet, said they rejected his views because they gave the impression that Oxford celebrated imperialism. They also branded his new research project, Ethics and Empire, as too simplistic to be taken seriously and vowed not to take part in it.

Professor Biggar is the latest in a long line of eminent academics to be shamed online for expressing their views.

Nigel Biggar, pictured here at the Rhodes Must Fall debate last year, wrote an article saying society should take a more balanced view of the Empire

Responding to the letter, he said: Any of the colleagues who have signed this statement could have sought to address me directly and personally, rather than engage in collective online bullying. Not one has had either the courage or the sense of collegial responsibility to do so. The project may or may not be the poorer for their refusal to participate, had an invitation been given them. But their refusal will not close the discussion down. They do not have the right to control how I, or anyone else, thinks about these things.

He added: The Ethics and Empire project will pay careful attention to the historical variety of things that Empire can be, and work out a more sophisticated way of evaluating them morally.

Professor Biggars original article, Dont feel guilty about our colonial history, was published in The Times. It began: Apologising for empire is now compulsory but shame can stop us tackling the worlds problems.

The article acknowledged that atrocities had occurred under colonial rule, but pointed out that it had also provided law and order in other countries which many citizens had valued.

It warned that Britons may become too afraid to intervene in human rights abuses abroad if they saw all past foreign policy as inherently bad. If on the other hand we recognise that the history of the British Empire was morally mixed, just like that of any nation state, then pride can temper shame, it said.

Last week, the article sparked an angry response from Common Ground, a race rights group run by Oxford students, who branded it bigoted and racist. Yesterdays letter was uploaded to The Conversation, a website founded by universities which publishes articles by academics.

Fifty-eight staff signed an open letter criticising Professor Biggar, which claimed he was breathtakingly politically naive and was engaging in very bad history

It said: For many of us, and more importantly for our students, [his views] reinforce a pervasive sense that contemporary inequalities in access to and experience at our university are underpinned by a complacent, even celebratory, attitude towards its imperial past.

The authors of the letter were James McDougall, associate professor of modern history, Erin OHalloran, a doctorate candidate, and two junior research fellows, Hussein Ahmed Hussein Omar and Peter Hill.

Both Professor McDougall and Dr Hill say on the website that they are Labour Party members.

Following the furore over Professor Biggars article, the university stood by him, saying it supported academic freedom of speech.

Commenting on the open letter yesterday, a university spokesman said it eloquently illustrates an alternative perspective on empire taken by other university academics in related but different fields.

Professor Biggar is also a canon of Christ Church Cathedral.

The controversy comes after the failure of a campaign at Oxford to tear down a statue of Cecil Rhodes because of his life as an imperialist. Students at other universities have tried to no-platform academics on their campuses because they dislike their views.
As Damian Green quits, Executive Political Editor JACK DOYLE charts a resignation with its roots in a raid on his Commons office nine years ago.

Damian Green (pictured leaving his home on Wednesday night) was forced to quit after the Cabinet Office probe finds he breached the ministerial code

November 27, 2008

Police raid Damian Green's parliamentary office as part of a probe into leaks of embarrassing material from the Home Office. The probe is led by Bob Quick, then Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. The raid sparks a huge political backlash and allegations the police have been politicised.

December 22, 2008

Quick apologises after claiming the Tory Party was behind an embarrassing story about the wedding chauffeur business run by his wife from their home. It follows a war of words in which he accused the Conservatives of behaving in a 'wholly corrupt way' by attacking his inquiry.

April 9, 2009

Quick resigns after walking down Downing Street inadvertently exposing details of a secret briefing note, which are captured by photographers. It forces a major undercover terror operation involving several arrests to be brought forward.

April 16, 2009

Green is cleared of any criminal activity relating to the leaks by the CPS who conclude the documents leaked were not secret and not a threat to national security.

October 27, 2017

Reports emerge of a list of 'sex pest' MPs drawn up by female staff in Westminster said to include the names of several ministers.

November 1

In an article for The Times, Tory activist Kate Maltby, a family friend of Green's, accuses him of sexual harassment.

She says he 'fleetingly' touched her knee in 2015 and sent a 'suggestive' text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. Miss Maltby said he mentioned that his wife was 'very understanding' and she then 'felt a fleeting hand against my knee  so brief it was almost deniable'.

'He was a university contemporary of my mother. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested.

'It was not acceptable to me at the time and it should not be acceptable behaviour in Westminster in the future.' He flatly denies making sexual advances, calling the claim 'untrue and deeply hurtful'.

A Cabinet Office probe is launched. On the same day, Sir Michael Fallon resigns as Defence Secretary over claims about his conduct with women.

November 5

The Sunday Times reports that police found 'extreme pornography' on Mr Green's office computer during the 2008 raid, a story sourced to Quick. Mr Green calls the allegations 'completely untrue'  appearing to deny the suggestion porn was found.

He calls Quick a 'tainted and untrustworthy source' and the allegations 'false disreputable political smears'. Quick denied he approached the paper and says they approached him about the story.

November 12

After The Sunday Times reports that Sir Paul Stephenson  then Met Commissioner  was told of the porn find, Mr Green changes his tune. Instead of denying there was pornography, he now denies having been told about it. 'I reiterate that no allegations about the presence of improper material on my parliamentary computers have ever been put to me or to the parliamentary authorities by the police.' That and the earlier statement came back to haunt Green as his lawyers were told in 2008 and the police raised it with him in a phone call in 2013.

November 22

It emerges that Sue Gray, the director-general of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, has asked officials if there is evidence of attempts to access pornography from computers used by Mr Green since he became a minister in 2010.

December 1

Former Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis, who was involved in the original leaks probe, tells the BBC he was 'shocked' by the amount of pornography found on Green's computer. His interview sparks a furious backlash from Tory MPs who accuse officers of releasing private information to undermine a Cabinet minister. Brexit Secretary David Davis weighs in behind Green.

December 20

Mr Green is forced to quit after the Cabinet Office probe finds he breached the ministerial code with his misleading statements about the pornography found on his computer.
[Note: This is the final post in a series highlighting some of the financial aspects and broad economic lessons of Frank Capras holiday classic, Its a Wonderful Life. You can find part one here and part two here.]

Economist Don Boudreaux outlined ten foundational lessons that should be learned in every well-taught principles of economics course. Examples of nearly all of the ten lessons can be found in Capras Christmas classic, but for the sake of brevity Ill merely highlight two of them.

Principle 1: The world is full of both desirable and undesirable unintended consequences  consequences that are largely invisible but that even a course in mere principles of economics gives us great vision that enables us to see.

This holiday film may be attributed to Frank Capra, but it could have just as easily been called Frederic Bastiats Its a Wonderful Life. The central theme of the film is a creative example of Bastiats That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seenwhich is (as both Boudreaux and I claim) the most important essay in economics.

In the opening line of his essay, Bastiat writes,

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause  it is seen. The others unfold in succession  they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference  the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee.

The film, of course, shows the effect not of laws or policy, but of people. When Ma Bailey gave birth to George she also gave birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects.

George was able to see the effect of his existence on his own life but he did not have the foresight to truly see the effect he had on others. Thats where Clarence comes in. He may be a guardian angel but he helped George by being a good economist and showing him the unseen effects of his life. Youve been given a great gift, George, says Clarence. A chance to see what the world would be like without you.

Because of his life, George not only affected the people of Bedford Falls but affected the lives of people across the United States. As Clarence explains, if George wasnt around to save his kid brother Harry, Harry wouldnt have been around to save the hundreds of men who would have died on the troop transport in World War II.

The film teaches us that we often have an effect on the lives of others that are not seen. What we should also remember is that the effect people have can sometimes be mediated through laws and policies. That is why we need to constantly ask not only what unseen affect we are having on the lives of others, but what unseen effects the policies and laws we advocate for will have that we may not have considered.

Principle #2: Our world is unavoidably one of trade-offs and not solutions.

Whenever we make a decision about how we will spend our time, money, or other resources, we are making a trade-off, giving up one thing for another. This trade-off creates an opportunity cost, the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action.

For example, George makes a trade-off in deciding to stay and work for the family business while his younger brother goes to college. He later makes a similar trade-off by agreeing to stay with the company so that his brother Harry can take a job in a more promising field. The opportunity cost for George is the college education he had to forgo and the jobs for adventurers (Venezuela oil fields  wanted, man with construction experience. Heres the Yukon, right here  wanted, man with engineering experience.) hell never get to take by staying in Bedford Falls.

For most of the film, George is faced with nothing but trade-offsones hed prefer not make. The opportunity costs he faces (such as turning down a job from Mr. Potter that would have paid $20,000 a year$365,904 in 2015 dollars) are costly, both in terms of money and self-fulfillment. And yet he repeatedly make trade-offs that and benefit others more than him.

As Ive written before, what makes George one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in modern popular culture is that he continually chooses the needs of his family and community over his own self-interested ambitions and desiresand suffers immensely and repeatedly for his sacrifices.

Although sentimental, Capras movie is not a simplistic morality play. Its true that the movie ends on a happy note late on Christmas Eve, when George is saved from ruin. But on Christmas Day hell wake to find that his life is not so different than it was when he wanted to commit suicide.

Nothing much will change because there are no perfect solutions to what George should do with his life. He may have avoided the current crisis but another will arise again in the future. He will continue to face trade-offs in the future, some which are likely to require great sacrifices from him. But by the end of the film he has realized that the trade-offs he has made to benefit others are worth the opportunity cost he had to pay. That lesson, one we often need to learn for ourselves, is a key reason Its a Wonderful Life endures both as a holiday classic and an exemplar of economics in film.
Theresa May last night condemned the retired police officer who leaked the highly sensitive information that piled pressure on Damian Green.

Accepting Mr Green's resignation, the PM said she 'shared concerns' at ex-Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis's disclosures.

The computer expert had given an interview accusing the de-facto deputy prime minister of browsing pornography online for hours.

His actions sparked a police review as Met Commissioner Cressida Dick made it clear the police duty of confidentiality was for life.

In her reply to Mr Green last night, Mrs May said: 'I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks.

Video footage shows police officers in Damian Green's Westminster office during a raid in 2008

'I am glad that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has condemned that, made clear that police officers' duty of confidentiality endures after they leave the force, and that the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made.'

Police have been accused of a vendetta against Mr Green because of an ill-fated inquiry into Home Office leaks in 2008, which led to senior officer Bob Quick losing his job.

Mr Lewis, 48, is now at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry and could yet face prosecution for going public with the personal information.

He was one of the 30 officers from the Met's counter-terror command involved in the raid on Mr Green's parliamentary office as part of a probe into leaks of Home Office material. It was led by Mr Quick, then Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner.

Earlier this month Mr Lewis said that, during the raid, he seized and examined a laptop used by the then shadow minister.

He accused Mr Green of being responsible for 'thousands' of pornographic thumbnail images retained in its memory. Mr Lewis admitted he had gone public to support his former boss, Mr Quick.

It was the appearance last month of Mr Quick's draft statement to the Leveson inquiry into Press standards that threw Mr Green into the spotlight.

Excerpts were quoted in a Sunday newspaper, but Mr Quick denied responsibility.

It said police had found porn on Mr Green's computer during the raid and a police officer would have been sacked for having similar material.

Former top terrorism officer Mr Quick was accused of harbouring a grudge against Mr Green after the leaks inquiry left his career fatally wounded.

Theresa May (pictured with Mr Green on Wednesday) has condemned a retired police officer who leaked the highly sensitive information that piled pressure on her friend

Within months he had quit after mistakenly letting slip details of a counter-terror operation outside Downing Street.

But it was Mr Lewis's comments that attracted most criticism, after he revealed keeping a police notebook about the inquiry and a copy of the politician's hard-drive. Chief officers, the police watchdog, legal experts and politicians slammed the gross breach of confidentiality, branding the officer a disgrace.

They warned of a 'police state' if officers were able to selectively make public highly sensitive information.

Mr Lewis remains under investigation for a raft of alleged offences, including data protection and computer misuse crimes, as well as theft.

He could also be subject to a misconduct inquiry but as a retired officer he could not be forced to attend any hearing so there would be no formal outcome. The Met said the review into the Green leaks was ongoing.
Mass migration has helped price the young out of the housing market over last decade, a new report has warned.

High levels of net migration have fuelled demand for rental properties which means young people are paying the price through higher rents.

In turn, this has made it more difficult for them to save a deposit to get on the housing ladder, according to a paper by a think-tank.

Mass migration has helped price the young out of the housing market over last decade, a new report has warned

Migrationwatch accused ministers of indefensibly ignoring or downplaying the fact that migration is a major component driving demand for homes in Britain.

It said: There seems little doubt that population growth, fuelled by immigration is increasing demand for homes and this will be having an impact on house prices which have increased dramatically in England in recent years, pushing them beyond the reach of many young people and others who did not already own property.

In the last ten years net migration  the difference between those leaving and arriving in Britain  has totalled 2.5million.

Many decided to set up home here after Tony Blair threw open the countrys doors to Eastern Europe.

Privately rented homes with foreign-born heads now account for a third of all households in that sector  up from around a fifth in 2000.

Migrationwatch said that as supply has failed to keep pace with the rise in demand, rents in England have risen by 23 per cent over the past decade.

BUY-TO-LET MORTGAGE CALCULATOR Work out your monthly payments Mortgage amount:  Interest rate: % Duration: years Mortgage type: Interest only Repayment ::: Calculate ::: Monthly payment:

In some parts of London, rent ate up 70 per cent of the main householders income.

The report said nine out of ten of the 1.2million new households over the past 10 years were made up of migrant families, which is the overwhelming reason for the pressure to build millions of new homes.

It said the supply of new homes had failed to keep pace with housebuilding across the UK averaging only 130,000 a year in the past ten years.

Spiralling rents have left many young people increasingly unable to buy their own home while developers, landlords and private investors have benefitted financially, according to the analysis.

Higher property prices have contributed to an increase in the number of young people forced to rent  with the share of 25- to 34-year olds in England in digs almost doubling from 24 per cent to 46 per cent over the past decade.

THE TOP 10 RENTAL PRICE CHANGES IN 2017 (YEAR TO DATE) Region Geography YTD % Change Scotland Edinburgh City 4.71% Scotland Clackmannanshire 4.33% East Midlands Leicester 3.40% Wales Isle of Anglesey 3.32% Scotland East Lothian 3.30% Scotland Stirling 3.09% South West Bristol 2.69% Scotland Glasgow City 2.66% East Midlands Northamptonshire 2.55% East England Peterborough 2.45% Source: Landbay

At the same time, the proportion of homeowners in the same age bracket fell from 57 per cent to 38 per cent.

According to Department for Community and Local Government projections, at current levels of net migration a home will have to be built every five minutes just to house new migrants and their families.

The report said: Young people in particular have been negatively affected with many having to stay longer in shared accommodation or remaining in the family home with their parents. This delay in settling down in their own home can lead to other important life decisions being delayed, such as having children.

In the last ten years net migration  the difference between those leaving and arriving in Britain  has totalled 2.5million. Spiralling rents have left many young people unable to buy their own home

Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: The Government are in denial about the massive impact of immigration on the housing market.

While the older generation have been able to sit back and watch their properties shooting up in value, it is younger people who have mainly suffered the consequences with sky high rents and little prospect of owning their own home. This is frankly indefensible.

The time has come for firm measures to address the demand for housing as well as its supply, and to acknowledge and deal with one of the main drivers of demand for housing. Otherwise, we will not only fail to meet demand but our young people will continue to bear the brunt of the housing crisis.
Olive oil prices are on the rise again just days before Christmas.

Supermarkets have ramped up prices of own label and branded olive oils by two per cent in just a week.

Some brands have risen in price by 50p in only seven days, new research revealed on Wednesday.

Sainsburys has lead the way in hiking prices on 21 types of olive oil, from own label to popular brands.

Olive oil prices have risen by two per cent in the space of just a week with some major brands rising by 50p

Its own brand of 250ml olive oil has increased to 1.35, while a two-litre bottle costs 7.20.

A 500ml bottle of Premium Toscano Extra Virgin Olive Oil is up 50p to 6.50.

Filippo Berio olive oil is up 20p to 5.95, while 750ml Napolina olive oil is up 10p to 5.60.

The latest price hikes follow increases by major supermarkets in the UK earlier this year.

Suppliers blame poor harvests and the weakening of the pound.

Sainsbury's leads the way when it comes to hiking prices of olive oil with 21 types including their own brand affected

The wholesale price of Italian extra virgin olive oil hit 4,883 a tonne this year, up from 2,655, according to analysts Mintec.

A Sainsburys spokesman told The Grocer magazine: The cost of individual products is determined by a number of factors and prices can fluctuate both up and down as a consequence.

We remain committed to providing our customers with great quality and value every time they shop with us.

Industry experts forecast a small drop in olive oil prices in the new year as the flow of new season olives starts.

However, prices remain relatively high and will likely stay above 2017 levels due to worries over the Spanish crop, following a lack of rain in the south of the country.
Home buyers can now have properties tested for ice to see if the premises was once used as a methamphetamine lab.

A new testing service for drug residue in houses has been launched in Tasmania by Meth Screen and real estate firm Harcourts Tasmania.

The initiative will reward clean homes with a 'safe living certificate' and be offered regularly to investors to detect ice, as reported by Real Estate.

Home buyers can have properties tested for ice to see if the home was a meth lab

Meth vapour is odourless, colourless and can be absorbed by most surfaces

Data from Holyoake in Hobart identified ice as the number one problem drug with Tasmanians becoming addicted at an alarming rate.

Real Estate Institute of Tasmania president Tony Collidge said testing for residue of the illicit substance was common.

'Damage to a property or loss of rent use to be the big things a property owner had to worry about,' he said.

'These days, it is not an out-there idea to have this sort of service available for Tasmanian property owners.'

Methamphetamine contamination expert Dr Jackie Wright said meth vapour is odourless, colourless and can be absorbed by most surfaces.

A new testing service for drug residue in houses has been launched in Tasmania

Public health scientist Dr Jackie Wright (pictured) says common side-effects of exposure to drug resident include respiratory problems

Many people are often unaware they are living with the residue until their health worsens.

'Common side-effects include respiratory problems, headaches, eye and skin irritation, sleep disturbance and behavioural problems in children,' she said.

Harcourts state property manager Kylie Smart believes it is only a matter of time before meth testing is 'normal practice'.
Some 67 per cent of British Gas non-meter customers on standard variable tariff

Britains two biggest energy firms have been shamed by watchdogs for having the most customers on rip-off tariffs.

Some 67 per cent of British Gas non-meter customers are on its expensive standard variable tariff (SVT).

The tariff is some 284 a year more expensive than the cheapest deal on the market from a rival.

And SSE, which is second biggest supplier, has 71 per cent on its SVT. These customers are paying 315 a year more than the cheapest deal.

Details were revealed by the energy watchdog, Ofgem, who said some energy firms are not doing enough to encourage customers on the SVT to move to a better tariff.

Some 67 per cent of British Gas non-meter customers are on its expensive standard variable tariff. The tariff is some 284 a year more expensive than the cheapest deal on the market from a rival

The findings provide powerful new evidence to support the Governments proposal to impose a cap on the SVT.

The Big Six energy companies  British Gas, SSE, E.ON, EDF, Npower and Scottish Power  say there is no need for an SVT cap because competition between suppliers is increasing and more families are shopping around.

The official figures from Ofgem paint a very different picture with millions of households on expensive SVT deals for years.

Looking at the big six, SSE has 71 per cent of non-prepayment meter customers on the SVT; it is 67 per cent for British Gas, 61 per cent for E.ON, 52 per cent for EDF, 48 per cent for Npower, and 41 per cent for Scottish Power.

Ofgem chief executive, Dermot Nolan, said: Our league table shows which suppliers have the most work to do to get all their customers a better deal.

It is unacceptable that so many are still paying too much for their energy.

The energy watchdog has imposed a cap on tariffs for customers with prepayment meters. It is working with the Government on its plans for a wider cap on SVTs.

SSE, which is second biggest supplier, has 71 per cent on its SVT. These customers are paying 315 a year more than the cheapest deal with other providers

Mr Nolan said: In the meantime, we will continue to press suppliers to get all their customers a better deal.

The managing director of home products and services at Which?, Alex Neill, said: Progress in moving millions of households off expensive standard tariffs has been painfully slow. Energy companies shouldnt be waiting for the price cap, they need to do more to help their customers now.

People overpaying on a poor value tariff should look to switch away to a cheaper deal immediately, as they may save up to 312 a year.

Earlier this week, a senior executive at the British Gas parent company, Centrica, admitted the company could have done more to encourage customers on an SVT to switch.

Details were revealed by the energy watchdog, Ofgem, who said some energy firms are not doing enough to encourage customers on the SVT to move to a better tariff

The managing director UK Home at Centrica, Sarwjit Sambhi, told the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee that the group needed to engage more with SVT customers.

We havent done enough over the last three years, he admitted.

Last year the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published the results of an investigation which found people on SVTs are collectively overpaying by some 1.4billion a year.

Mr Sambhi said: After the CMA report, we had to look in the mirror and see what it is we havent been doing with respect to engagement. Theres a lot more that we can do.

He said the company would look at the frequency it contacts customers, adding perhaps the answer is that we could be contacting our customers once a month.

Energy companies are making plans to scrap the SVT in favour of a new rolling annual default tariff, however critics say this may well be no better

Energy companies are making plans to scrap the SVT in favour of a new rolling annual default tariff, however critics say this may well be no better.

SSE said: While some customers tell us they like the flexibility that SVTs offer, for other customers they have become less popular.

Thats why we recently announced that from April 2018, we will stop automatically rolling customers on to SVTs when they come to the end of their fixed-term contract. Instead customers will be rolled on to an equivalent or cheaper tariff with fixed prices for 12 months with no exit fees.

SSE is committed to maintaining the direction of travel away from SVTs and wants to be part of the solution.
As the orchestra reached its crescendo, Damian Green, peering down from a luxury box in the Royal Albert Hall, could have been forgiven for thinking he had the world at his feet.

Promoted to First Secretary of State in the June reshuffle, the de facto Deputy Prime Minister has a strong relationship with Theresa May dating back to their time as undergraduates at Oxford.

Green and the then Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, who was in the same box  they were guests of a lobbyist named Peter Bingle  joined the standing ovation at the end of Stravinsky's Firebird.

But days later, Green became the highest-ranking politician at that time to be embroiled in the sex harassment scandal which swept through Westminster at the end of October.

Damian Green and Theresa May (pictured together yesterday) have a close relationship after they were both undergraduates at the University of Oxford

Kate Maltby, 32, an ambitious Conservative activist, alleged that Green, 61, a friend of her parents, had behaved inappropriately when they met for a drink in a pub in Waterloo two years ago.

While few at Westminster took the Maltby claims very seriously, they had lit a fuse under Green which was to destroy his Cabinet career.

First to go was Sir Michael Fallon, a fellow Kent MP, forced to quit as Defence Secretary after admitting attempting to kiss a woman journalist more than a decade earlier.

The exit of Fallon made Theresa May even more determined to hang on to Green, despite pressure from her chief of staff Gavin Barwell and chief whip Julian Smith to let him go. For Mrs May this wasn't just about politics. Green was her oldest and closest friend in politics.

In their social group at Oxford was Green's future wife Alicia, a lawyer, and Mrs May's future husband Philip. The four remain close today  though quite how their relationships will stand this morning remains to be seen.

As the Prime Minister said in her letter to Green last night: 'We have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives.'

She will feel the loss of Damian Green particularly keenly. After the botched general election in June she had to dispense with her two special advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who were blamed for the incompetent campaign.

In Green she saw a thoughtful, clever and above all loyal minister who had no ambitions to replace her, unlike most other members of the Cabinet. He was a key figure behind the scenes, chairing no fewer than nine Cabinet sub-committees.

Many Tory MPs thought Green would survive Sue Gray's inquiry not just because of the friendship with the PM, but because every day he attended the daily 8.30am strategy meetings, he sat opposite the PM in Cabinet and last week represented Mrs May at the Privy Council meeting hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Only yesterday, he was in his usual spot next to Mrs May in the Commons chamber for the last Prime Minister's Questions of the year. 'The PM visibly relaxes when Damian is in the room,' said one senior Tory last night. 'She will miss him terribly. There is no new Damian waiting in the wings.'

Green is straight out of the mould of the Theresa May-style Tory. He was born in Barry, South Wales, went to a grammar school in Reading and studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford.

Mr Green (pictured on Wednesday) became the highest-ranking politician at that time to be embroiled in the sex harassment scandal which swept through Westminster in October

He was moderately successful in financial journalism before winning the safe seat of Ashford and becoming an MP in 1997  the same year as Mrs May.

Always on the wet side of the Tory Party, he was a consistently pro-EU MP. In the Tory leadership contest in 2005, he backed David Davis  now the Brexit Secretary and an ardent supporter of Leave  despite their strong differences on Europe. Davis fought hard to keep Green, to no avail.

Green had been promoted to the Tory front bench by David Cameron and after the coalition government was formed in 2010 he became immigration minister and then police minister  under Mrs May as Home Secretary.

Cameron sacked him in 2014, to make way for younger blood. Green sought to reinvent himself as a party strategist, which encouraged Mrs May to see him as a replacement this year for the departed Nick Timothy. Because of his financial background, Green dreamed of becoming Chancellor. But Mrs May had other plans.

He was the obvious person to lead her praetorian guard inside Downing Street. After the botched general election, she made him First Secretary of State based in the Cabinet Office.

It is a job which made him as near to a deputy prime minister as he could be without actually having the job itself.

Given his competence and experience, she knew Green could reach out across the Tory Party and also watch her back.

But now he's gone, a victim of his own misfortune, and after a period of time when Mrs May has rediscovered some of her authority, she will be feeling more vulnerable than at any time since the dark days following the general election.

One of the key figures who persuaded her to fight on then was, of course, Damian Green. Which is why this is positively the worst Christmas present the PM could have wished for.
The man who was fatally gunned down outside a Times Square bar was a good Samaritan and father, police say.

Persues Salichs, 32, was shot in the head during the horrific holiday homicide around 4am Tuesday as the Tonic Bar on Seventh Avenue was closing.

Security footage shows Salichs had been assisting a woman, said to be heavily intoxicated, outside on the sidewalk.

Other bar-goers were smoking outside at the time the victim apparently saw the woman fall down and walked over the help, according to the New York Daily News.

He appeared to ask her, 'Are you OK,' police said of the footage.

Witnesses on the street described the deadly incident as a fight between two men.

Persues Salichs, 32, (shown with daughters on his GoFundMe page) was shot in the head during the horrific holiday homicide around 4am Tuesday as the Tonic Bar at Seventh Avenue

Salichs was the victim in the senseless holiday shooting after a man approached him early Tuesday after the good Samaritan was simply helping a woman who fell down on the sidewalk

It is currently unclear what the fight was about.

'Then a man walks up and shoves him. The victim puts his hands up and steps back. The man pushes him again and then pulls a gun and shoots him.

'It's extremely clear video and shows the actual shooting,' the cop said, according to the Daily News.

Police said the suspect, who was wearing a black skull cap and black jacket, fled the scene on foot, according to the newspaper.

Salichs, a father to three young girls, was departing a holiday work party at the time his life was stripped away in the senseless killing.

It's believed the victim was partying at the bar before the shooting. Police said the suspect, who was wearing a black skull cap and black jacket, fled the scene on foot

Salichs was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he later died.

One witness who works across the street from Tonic told NBC 4 he didn't see an altercation, but that the suspect shot Salichs as he casually left the bar that morning.

'There was no fight or anything like that,' the witness revealed.

'It was so quiet. They just came out of the club and we heard the shot.'

Another witness told the station that people were pouring out onto the sidewalk when the man was shot at closing time.

Police are expected to make an arrest soon.

The late Salichs is pictured with his daughters on his GoFundMe page, created by his 'best friend.'

The individual wrote to the page: 'A senseless act took my best friend, I would like to raise some support for his daughters.'

One witness who works across the street from the bar said that he didn't see an altercation, but that the suspect just shot the victim as the victim walked out of the bar
A two-year-old boy is in a serious condition after being crushed by a tractor on a rural West Coast property in New Zealand.

Emergency services were called out to a 'farm incident' involving a man and the toddler near Nelson Creek in the Greg Valley, north of Greymouth, around 9:30 on Thursday.

West Coast Police acting Senior Sergeant Paul Watson said the tractor had 'gone over a bank and dropped into a gully,' Stuff reported.

A two-year-old boy is in a serious condition after being crushed by a tractor (stock picture)

'As a result, the 2-year-old was pinned underneath the tractor. The child has been removed,' he said.

A police statement said the toddler suffered critical injuries after a spokesperson for St John Ambulance said the child was in a serious condition.

The male is understood to have moderate injuries.

The child was airlifted to Christchurch Hospital and the other patient was airlifted to Grey District Hospital, the spokesman said.

Two ambulances and two helicopters, from Christchurch and Greymouth, were sent to the scene.

The Serious Crash Unit and WorkSafe have been made aware of the incident.
Indonesian police have said they will likely treat an Australian accountant arrested on drug charges as a user, not a dealer.

There were fears Isaac Roberts would face the death penalty if found guilty after allegedly being caught at Bali airport with ice and ecstasy on December 4.

Authorities in Indonesia treat drug users more leniently than dealers, meaning the 35-year-old tourist should face a lighter sentence if found guilty.

Indonesian police have said they will likely treat an Australian accountant (pictured) arrested on drug charges as a user, not a dealer

There were fears Isaac Roberts (pictured) would face the death penalty if found guilty after allegedly being caught at Bali airport with ice and ecstasy in his suitcase on December 4

Authorities in Indonesia treat drug users more leniently than dealers, meaning the 35-year-old tourist should face a lighter sentence if found guilty (pictured are drugs alleged seized by police)

Roberts, a former Liberal Democrats candidate from Toowoomba, was able to meet his mother and his lawyers on Wednesday, Perth Now reported.

He was taken from his cell to a police station where he saw his mother, who is in Bali offer him her support.

Bali police deputy director of narcotics Senior Commissioner Sudjarwoko said Roberts had been classified as a drug user following medical tests and interrogations.

Roberts (pictured), a former Liberal Democrats candidate from Toowoomba, was able to meet his mother and his lawyers on Wednesday

Roberts (pictured) was taken from his cell to a police station where he saw his mother, who in Bali offer him her support

Mila Tayed, a member of Roberts' legal team, said her client was happy to see his mother and was doing fine.

Roberts said he had no reason to feel sorry and nothing to say.

A friend of Roberts said the accountant was a daily ice user, injecting up to a gram of the drug a day, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The friend of almost five years said Roberts became 'hyper-vulnerable' as his drug habit got more serious.

'He was a super-dynamic, colourful, energetic, enthusiastic, optimistic person when I met him,' the friend said.

Bali police deputy director of narcotics, Senior Commissioner Sudjarwoko said Roberts (pictured) had been classified as a drug user following medical tests and interrogations

'He had a real habit  I saw him over the years and each time he was a bit more of a shadow of what he was before. I was worried about him  I absolutely regret now I didn't intervene at the time.

'There is no question about it being a personal thing. He is not a drug mule, he is a drug addict.'

According to the friend Mr Roberts was in a long-term relationship, but it had ended, and that Roberts was having difficulty finding work mid-year.

The chartered accountant had arrived on a flight from Bangkok when he was allegedly caught with the drugs.

The high-flying chartered accountant (pictured) had arrived on a flight from Bangkok when he was allegedly caught with the drugs

Police claim Roberts was carrying 6.22 grams of ecstasy, 14.32 grams of methamphetamine and 22 millilitres of a psychotropic substance.

Details of his arrest were kept secret until Tuesday, when the drug bust was announced by Indonesian officials.

'We have arrested an Australian, IER, for bringing drugs into Bali,' Customs and Excise Officer Husni Syaiful said.

Roberts is being held in jail in Denpasar, Indonesia, and is expected to be transported to Kerobokan prison while awaiting trial.
A surgeon has revealed the strangest objects they have plucked from inside patients' bum.

The Sydney-based surgeon told myBody+Soul Coke bottles, fruit and deodorant cans have been discovered in places they shouldn't be, begging the question: how did they get up there?

'I had one patient recently who had a 1.25L Coca-Cola bottle inside him,' the doctor said.

A surgeon has revealed the strangest objects they have plucked from inside patients' bums (a Coke can inside a patient's rectum, pictured)

They also said they had found a 20-centimetre butt plug up one patient's anus and a flashlight (pictured) inside another

'He'd emptied out the Coke, filled it with warm water and wrapped a condom around the nozzle.

'There was another guy who came in with not one but two red apples up there.'

The surgeon explained that rectums create a vacuum effect which can suck in objects and hold them there.

The surgeon also said they had found a 20-centimetre butt plug up one patient's anus and a flashlight inside another.

Even though most people claim they 'accidentally sat on it', the surgeon said most of the time inserting objects like these would require training, or it could be dangerous.

'If someone did that without building up to it, you'd end up with a punctured bowel and incontinence for life,' he revealed.
The EUs chief Brexit negotiator delighted Eurosceptics yesterday by declaring that Britains transition out of the bloc must be completed by the end of 2020.

Michel Barnier ruled out a lengthy transition period, saying Brussels would not allow it to last for more than 21 months after the UK formally leaves in March 2019.

His intervention was welcomed by Eurosceptic MPs worried that it could take years for the UK to finally extricate itself from the EU.

However, Mr Barnier also delivered a stark warning on trade, claiming that the UK could not rely on the EU to help it continue around 750 EU international agreements  including dozens of free trade deals  during the transition period.

The EUs chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier delighted Eurosceptics yesterday by declaring that Britains transition out of the bloc must be completed by the end of 2020

He said it would not be logical to extend Britains effective membership of the EU beyond December 2020 when the current seven-year budget period runs out.

His stance is a blow to the Confederation of British Industry, which called for a three-year transition. Some Treasury officials have even floated the idea of a transition phase lasting as long as five years.

But Eurosceptic Tory MP Peter Bone said: It is good news. If we need an implementation period then it should be as short as possible.

'The idea of leaving when the budget period ends makes sense and I hope we will hear no more of the idea that we could be locked in for years on end.

Theresa May has previously said that she favours an implementation period lasting for about two years.

Downing Street yesterday described Mr Barniers comments as an opening position, and made it clear that Mrs May reserved the right to seek a slightly longer transition.

Speaking to MPs, the Prime Minister said: We are about to start the negotiations. Obviously what we have seen today is that position come from the EU. We will be quickly into negotiations about what the transition period should cover.

Publishing the EUs negotiating guidelines yesterday, Mr Barnier warned that the UK could not rely on Brussels and the other countries involved to help it roll over, or continue, the 750 EU international agreements during the transition period.

Mr Barnier ruled out a lengthy transition period, capping it at 21 months. Mrs May said she reserved the right to seek a slightly longer transition

He said that Britain should prepare for a huge administrative challenge to renegotiate the wave of deals.

He also indirectly poked fun at Liam Fox, suggesting the Tory ministers international trade department is not yet ready to undertake the diplomatic blitz which could have a significant economic effect.

It will be up to the [European] Council to appraise the feasibility, the value, the need for the UK to be able to continue to benefit during this period from some of these agreements, he said.

The UK needs to prepare as of now to be able to replicate these agreements. They need to ensure that already now they have the administrative capacity to carry out these negotiations to conclude these agreements.

Mr Barnier added: Its always useful to remember that when we talk about red tape here in Brussels, this red tape and bureaucracy works in many areas on behalf of 28 member states. When a country is no longer a member of the EU naturally they need to have that administrative capacity.

But PM leaves door open to putting back quit date Britains exit from the EU will only be delayed in exceptional circumstances, Theresa May said yesterday. The Prime Minister had planned to enshrine the Brexit date in law as March 29, 2019. But she was forced to back down yesterday after pro-Remain Tories threatened to inflict a second Commons defeat on the flagship EU Withdrawal Bill. Rebel ringleader Dominic Grieve had warned that there were no circumstances in which he and other rebel MPs would back an inflexible exit date. The Government backed a compromise put forward by former minister Sir Oliver Letwin, which will keep the date in legislation but allow ministers flexibility to change it. Mrs May was challenged over the climbdown by Eurosceptic MPs. Julian Lewis asked her for assurances that the power to delay Brexit will be invoked only in extremely exceptional circumstances, if at all, and only for a very short period. Mrs May told the Commons: We are very clear that we will be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019 at 11pm. If that power were to be used, it would be only in extremely exceptional circumstances and for the shortest possible time. We are not talking about extensions. Advertisement

The EUs negotiating guidelines also suggest that Gibraltar could be excluded from any transition deal unless Spain gives its approval.

But Mrs May made clear she would never accept a Spanish veto on Gibraltars status, telling MPs: We are not going to exclude Gibraltar from our negotiations from either the implementation period or the future agreement. Mr Barnier warned the UK that it will not be allowed to negotiate transition a la carte.

Instead, he said that the UK must accept all the rules and policies of the EU must continue to be applied.

He added: The transition period is useful and will enable Britain to prepare themselves for the kind of challenges that they will have to face... and to prepare also for the complications of the new relationship.

But Mr Barniers hard-line position, which has angered Brexiteers, was contradicted as the document revealed that the UK would be allowed to negotiate a specific deal on fishing rights during the two-year period.

The outline for yesterdays blueprint spelled out how the UK will lose membership of EU institutions such as the European Council and Commission during the transition period, when it will have to continue to obey EU rules.

But in an effort to ease concerns that the UK will have to blindly follow Brussels rules, the EU said that Britain will be allowed to watch over EU meetings as observers despite having no official vote.
A toddler has died after being run over by a car outside a business inSydney's southwest.

NSW paramedics were called to the scene at Campsie about 10.45am on Thursday after the two-year-old was struck by a reversing Kia at the rear of a small business on Beamish Street.

The toddler was rushed to Sydney Children's Hospital in critical condition but was later pronounced dead.

A two-year-old girl has died after being run over by a car at the rear of a small business in Sydney's southwest (pictured)

NSW paramedics were called to the scene at Campsie about 10.45am on Thursday after the girl was struck by a reversing Kia at the rear of a small business on Beamish Street

The driver, who is of Middle Eastern descent, was also taken to hospital for mandatory blood and urine tests, police said.

A crime scene has been established and an investigation is underway.

Officers warned drivers to always check their surroundings when reversing.
A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea by crossing the border in thick fog, triggering gunfire from both sides this morning.

The 'low-ranking' soldier in his 20s was spotted by South Korean soldiers using surveillance equipment as he crossed the land border near Yeoncheon and made his way to a guard post.

There were no shots at the time but about an hour later South Korean troops fired 20 rounds from a K-3 machine gun to warn off Northern guards who approached the border apparently looking for their comrade.

Two bursts of gunfire were later heard in the North but there were no indications of any bullets crossing the border, a South Korean official said.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Roh Jae-cheon speaks at a news conference, after a North Korean soldier on Wednesday defected to South Korea

Oh Chong Song made his daring dash over the border at the Panmunjom truce village on November 13 (pictured)

Seoul's Defense Ministry says the shootout happened after the North Korean soldier safely arrived at a front-line South Korean guard post on Thursday.

He is now in custody likely being questioned about why he defected.

On Wednesday South Korea's Unification Ministry said maritime police had found two North Korean men drifting in a small fishing boat off the coast

The pair 'expressed their willingness to defect' and their claim for asylum was being investigated, an official said.

These are the latest known defections after a solider was shot crossing the border about five weeks ago.

Another North Korean soldier, Oh Chong Song, 24, suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash on November 13.

He was shot in his knee, arm, back, chest and through his shoulder and surgeons also found that his body was riddled with parasites and Hepatitis B.

But despite his serious injuries, surgeons saved his life and when he woke up at the Ajou University Hospital in South Korea, he told doctors he was craving a Choco Pie.

Choco Pies are a chocolate-coated biscuit and marshmallow snack that has found huge popularity on both sides of the Korean border.

After being smuggled into the North, they became so-popular that a thriving black-market has emerged for them in the secretive regime with people there paying up to $4.80 per cake, despite them costing less than a Quarter in the south.

Furious at his country's love of a product made by his fiercest rivals, leader Kim Jong-un has now ordered that Pyongyang starts producing its own brand of Choco Pie, potentially bringing an end to an issue that sparked an unusual level of dissent among North Korea's brutally oppressed populace.

Former North Korean defectors living in South Korea prepare balloons containing 'Choco Pie' and anti-Pyongyang leaflets before releasing them towards the North (file photo)

When Choco-Pie maker, South Korean snack firm Orion, heard about the defector's craving for the popular snack, it decided to send him 100 boxes to welcome him to South Korea.

He will now receive a lifetime supply of the snacks after his dash over the border at the Panmunjom truce village on November 13.

Oh is believed to be an army staff sergeant who was stationed in the Joint Security Area in the United Nations truce village of Panmunjom, according to Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker of South Korea's ruling party, briefed by the National Intelligence Service.

Footage from his brave dash across the border shows his former comrades opening fire at him as he races on foot over the painted line that divides the two countries.

He was shot at least four times in his daring bid, and was found by South Korean troops slumped in a pile of leaves just south of the border.

After being dragged to safety, he was airlifted to hospital, where he underwent two rounds of emergency surgery.

The latest defection increased to four the number of North Korean soldiers who fled through the land border this year, the Defense Ministry said. About 30,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea mostly via China since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Australia's oldest naval mystery is solved after a WW1 submarine that went missing 103 years ago was finally located.

HMAS AE1 vanished without a trace on September 14, 1914, with 35 British and Anzac sailors on board off the coast of Papua New Guinea while on patrol.

The navy launched a three-day search after losing contact with the vessel but found no sign of the ship, which was just seven months old.

HMAS AE1 (pictured) vanished without a trace on September 14, 1914, with 35 British and Anzac sailors on board off the coast of Papua New Guinea while on patrol

The submarine was finally found this week and photographed by an underwater camera, solving Australia's oldest naval mystery

A $1 million search launched on Sunday finally sighted AE1 using underwater cameras, revealing it suffered a catastrophic failure and sank.

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs said the submarine likely suffered a hull breach after an explosion propelled it into the seabed 300m below the surface.

Likely caused by one of AE1's eight torpedoes fitted with explosive warheads, or a high pressure air cylinder, it would have sunk the vessel very quickly.

Rear Admiral Briggs said the explosion would have caused 'rapid flooding of the submarine, probably near the surface' to have accelerated the vessel enough to cause the damage.

'When the end came for the men of AE1 it would have been very fast, they may well have not known what hit them,' he told The Australian.

Stunning colour photos of the wreck revealed it to be relatively well preserved and still in one piece despite its dramatic sinking

Survey imaging showing the wreck of AE1 300m below the surface of the Pacific Ocean

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs said the submarine likely suffered a hull breach after an explosion propelled it into the seabed

Stunning colour photos of the wreck revealed it to be relatively well preserved and still in one piece despite its dramatic sinking.

Rear Admiral Briggs said the wreck would be forensically examined to find out exactly what happened.

'We have found our lost submariners, but understanding exactly what befell them is a work in progress and will require further detailed examination of the wreck with a different array of instruments and technology,' he said.

However, the submarine will not be retrieved as it was considered a war grave and it was being closely guarded and its location kept secret to prevent rogue salvage.

AE1 was found off the coast of Duke of York Island in the vicinity of its last known position, with the exact site being kept secret to prevent rogue salvage

The explosion would have caused 'rapid flooding of the submarine, probably near the surface' to have accelerated the vessel enough to cause the damage

The crew of the survey ship Fugro Equator held a a small commemorative service to remember the crew and efforts were underway to contact their families.

WHAT WAS AE1? HMAS AE1 was Australia's first submarine and the first to be lost in WW1, disappearing on September 14, 1914 seven months into service The 760-tonne vessel was 55m wide, 7m across and 3.8m deep and could travel at 10 knots underwater It was sent to capture German New Guinea when WW1 broke out, which surrendered the day before AE1 vanished Searches began in 1975 but were unsuccessful until an expedition in 2017 finally photographed it All 35 crew died when the vessel suffered an explosion and sank 300m to the sea bed with enough force to breach the hull on impact Advertisement

Defence Minister Marise Payne said she hoped the discovery would bring peace of mind to descendants of the AE1 crew.

'I truly believe this will bring peace of mind to the family and descendants of the crew who lost their lives on board,' she said.

'We will work closely with the PNG Government in the coming weeks and months to consider a lasting commemoration in recognition of the crew, and, importantly, to preserve the site.'

Several attempts have been made over the years to find AE1 without success until this joint public-private expedition discovered it.

The effort was jointly funded by the federal government and a private consortium put together by Telstra chairman John Mullen.

The underwater autonomous vehicle used in the successful search for HMAS AE1
Britain must raise taxes to balance the books by the middle of the next decade, the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday.

In a stark warning that will alarm millions of families already facing the highest tax burden for 50 years, the global watchdog said spending cuts have gone about as far as they can.

The Fund said preferential VAT rates on goods such as pasties should be removed and called for wealth taxes on property and higher taxes on the self-employed.

Christina Lagarde (pictured) managing director of the International Monetary Fund which has warned the UK that spending cuts have gone as far as they can

It also recommended scrapping the triple-lock that protects pensioner incomes.

The suggestions will prove highly controversial and difficult to implement.

Office for Budget Responsibility figures show the Treasury will collect taxes worth 34.3 per cent of national income in 2020-21  the most since 1969-70.

And attempts to raise taxes on pasties and the self-employed in the past have proved disastrous for both George Osborne and Philip Hammond respectively.

But the report from the IMF underlined the scale of the problem facing Britain as it battles to balance the books.

The IMF said Britain must bring the ballooning national debt under control to prepare for the next shock to hit the economy.

In what was seen as a stark warning of the dangers of a Jeremy Corbyn government, it said reducing the deficit was critical to the health of the country.

The global watchdog praised the massive effort that has been made under the Conservatives to repair the public finances but said there was further work to do to make Britain fit for the future.

The IMF praised the 'massive effort' made by Theresa May (pictured) and her government in trying to repair public finances

The comments, in the IMFs annual assessment of the UK economy, were a clear sign that it believes now is not the time to ditch austerity and turn on the spending taps  as planned by Labour.

The deficit hit a record 152.5billion or 9.9 per cent of national income in 2009-10 under the last Labour government but is set to come in at just under 50billion or 2.4 per cent this year.

The national debt has ballooned from 318billion to 1.8trillion  or 87 per cent of gross domestic product  since Britain was last in surplus in 2001.

The borrowing binge has left the country with little room for manoeuvre when the next disaster strikes.

Speaking at the launch of the IMF report at the Treasury in London, the groups managing director Christine Lagarde said: Significant progress has been made in reducing the deficit since the global financial crisis  probably the most significant reduction in advanced economies in many years.

But the UKs public debt remains high at 87 per cent of GDP. Continuing deficit reduction is critical to create further room to respond to future shocks. Continued deficit reduction is critical to rebuild fiscal buffers against future shocks.

Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, has warned that Jeremy Corbyn (pictured) plans to ditch austerity are not the 'remedy needed'

Mr Corbyn has pledged to end austerity if Labour wins power in a dramatic lurch to the Left that would see vast swathes of the economy nationalised, taxes soar and spending increase.

The Labour leader and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell want to borrow an additional 250billion over ten years to fund national infrastructure.

Day-to-day spending on public services would increase by 17billion a year.

Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: With the Government making precious little progress in eradicating the budget deficit for good, this rhetoric is welcome.

Discarding austerity and spending way beyond our means, as Mr Corbyn promises to do, is far from the remedy needed to return a balanced budget.

Fiscal responsibility should remain a priority for all governments  failure to do so will place a huge burden on generations to come.

The IMF backed Chancellor Philip Hammonds plans to balance the books by the middle of the next decade  although it is feared that this target will be missed and Britain will not return to the black until 2030.

The fiscal framework adopted by the authorities prudently aims to balance the budget by the middle of the next decade, the Fund said in its report.

But the IMF said tax hikes would be needed in future to balance the books as an ageing population puts strain on the public finances by pushing up the cost of health and social care.

In the last few years, this massive effort to reduce the deficit has focused on reducing spending, said Mrs Lagarde. And we believe that there is not that much space for additional spending cuts and that the revenue side of the equation has to be looked at. The UK may in future face difficult decisions about the desired size of its public sector, as well as the mode of delivery and financing of public services.

Appearing alongside Mrs Lagarde at the Treasury, Mr Hammond said: The IMF urge us to on rebuilding our fiscal buffers against future shocks. We have made good progress in repairing our public finances and reducing the highest budget deficit in our peacetime history by three but our public debt is still too high and so we remain committed to our fiscal rules which is set to see debt fall next year. I welcome
The man whose horrific rape and murder of a six-year-old 33 years ago shocked Australia has been jailed for life.

Gregory Keith Davies, 75, drugged, raped and strangled Kylie Marbury after her mother sent her out to buy sugar in Melbourne in 1984.

Davies lured Kylie into his car on Melbourne Cup day, and her body was found in a gutter the next day, 650 metres from his mother's home in Preston.

Scroll down for video

The man (pictured, left) whose horrific rape and murder of a six-year-old 33 years ago shocked Australia has been jailed for life

Davies lured Kylie (pictured) into his car on Melbourne Cup day, and her body was found in a gutter the next day, 650 metres from his mother's home in Preston

He was today sentenced life in prison, and will be eligible for parole in 28 years, meaning he will most likely die in jail, ABC News reported.

Davies provided a voluntary DNA sample to police in 2016, which led to his arrest when it matched semen found on Kylie's underwear.

He provided police with an alibi after the crime, and he was ruled out as a suspect as a result.

Despite his guilty plea at Melbourne Magistrates Court earlier in the year, Davies still insists he cannot remember the rape and murder.

Gregory Keith Davies (pictured), 75, drugged, raped and strangled Kylie Marbury in Melbourne in 1984

Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said he did not believe Davies, and described his crimes as 'simply disgusting'.

'They were terrible offences ... this child did nothing except walk to a shop and at the age of six years she lost her life in the process,' he said.

'You have killed a defenceless child after raping her. You lied to police for a time, you kept what you had done to yourself for 33 years. I wonder how you were able to do that.'

Outside court Kylie's mother Julie Ryan said she was happy she and her family can now move on.

'I'd like to kill him [Davies] myself,' she said.

'To got through it all again each time, today was the worst of it, but at the end of it it turned out good.'

Davies had boiling water poured over his groin in an attack by fellow convicts at Port Phillip Prison earlier this year.
The parents of Tory activist Kate Maltby have praised her for speaking out against Damian Green after Theresa May's deputy was sacked last night over a sleaze inquiry.

Miss Maltby, a family friend of Green's, accused the MP of making inappropriate advances in a London pub, saying he 'fleetingly' touched her knee in 2015 and sent a 'suggestive' text message after she was pictured wearing a corset.

Days after the allegations were published, it then emerged that police had found 'extreme pornography' on Mr Green's office computer during a raid on his parliamentary office in 2008.

The claims appeared in a Sunday Times story, sourced to former Met Police chief Bob Quick, which Mr Green called 'completely untrue'  appearing to deny the suggestion porn was found.

This led to the launch of a Cabinet Office inquiry into the conduct of the First Secretary of State, into both the pornography claims and the allegations of inappropriate advances towards Miss Maltby.

The inquiry, published yesterday, found that Mr Green had failed to tell the truth about pornography found on his computer.

It also found that Miss Maltbys claims were plausible, but said it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of his behaviour.

Miss Maltby last night declined to comment, but her parents, Colin and Victoria Maltby, issued a statement to say they were proud of her.

Scroll down for video

The parents of Tory activist Kate Maltby (left) have praised her for speaking out against Damian Green (right)

They said: We are pleased that the Cabinet Office has concluded its enquiry into the conduct of Damian Green.

We are not surprised to find that the inquiry found Mr Green to have been untruthful as a minister, nor to that they found our daughter to be a plausible witness.

Ms Maltby (pictured) last month accused the MP of inappropriate advances in a London pub, forcing a sleaze inquiry that would eventually lead to his downfall

We have received many supportive messages from people near and far who appreciate Kates courage and the importance of speaking out about the abuse of authority.

We join with them in admiring her fortitude and serenity throughout the length of the investigation and despite the attempted campaign in certain sections of the media to denigrate and intimidate her and other witnesses. We are proud of her.

We have ourselves known of these incidents since they first occurred and have fully supported Kate in the responsible manner in which she has reported them.

In his resignation letter last night, Mr Green said he did not recognise Miss Maltbys account of their meeting in a London pub in 2015, when she claims he touched her knee and made suggestive comments.

But he added: I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise. Mrs May said Mr Green was right to concede this point.

Mr Green, a close ally of Theresa May (pictured), resigned last night after he failed to tell the truth about pornography found on his computer

Last month, Miss Maltby said he told her his wife was very understanding and put a fleeting hand against my knee - so brief, it was almost deniable.

Writing in the Times, she said the encounter with Mr Green left her feeling angry.

Then following the publication of a photograph of her wearing a corset, Mr Green, who was not a minister at the time, text her.

The message read: Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime?

At the time, Mr Green said it was 'absolutely and completely untrue that Ive ever made any sexual advances on Ms Maltby'.

Damian Green tonight was forced to quit as Theresa May's deputy after he was found to have lied over claims porn was found n his computer

Mrs May accepted his resignation and wrote: 'I'm extremely sad to be writing this letter, we have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives

Theresa May's response to the resignation letter from Mr Green, her closest friend in politics

Mr Green is the third cabinet minister to be forced to quit in just six weeks after their careers have been hit by scandal. Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel resigned as defence secretary and international development secretary respectively

Mr Green, a close ally of Theresa May, resigned last night after he failed to tell the truth about pornography found on his computer.

The Cabinet Office investigation said he had issued two inaccurate and misleading statements, denying he knew about the discovery made in a botched police raid on his Commons office in 2008.

Sir Alex Allen, Theresa Mays adviser on ministerial interests, said the lack of candour amounted to two breaches of the ministerial code. This left the PM with no choice but to ask her friend of 30 years and deputy to resign.

His fall from high office is the culmination of a decade-long feud with former Met Police chief Bob Quick, who revealed that 'extreme' porn was found on Mr Green's Commons computer during a raid on his parliamentary office back in 2008.

A friend of Mr Green said the police had got their man after a nine-year vendetta.

His departure is a bitter blow to the PM, who relied heavily on her old university friend. In a letter to him last night, she said she was extremely sad about his

From a Commons raid to a text about a corset and allegations of 'extreme pornography'... a timeline of Damian Green's fall

Damian Green, pictured with his wife Alicia, said the allegations against him have been deeply hurtful to him and his family

November 27, 2008

Police raid Damian Green's parliamentary office as part of a probe into leaks of embarrassing material from the Home Office. The probe is led by Bob Quick, then Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. The raid sparks a huge political backlash and allegations the police have been politicised.

December 22, 2008

Quick apologises after claiming the Tory Party was behind an embarrassing story about the wedding chauffeur business run by his wife from their home. It follows a war of words in which he accused the Conservatives of behaving in a 'wholly corrupt way' by attacking his inquiry.

April 9, 2009

Quick resigns after walking down Downing Street inadvertently exposing details of a secret briefing note, which are captured by photographers. It forces a major undercover terror operation involving several arrests to be brought forward.

April 16, 2009

Green is cleared of any criminal activity relating to the leaks by the CPS who conclude the documents leaked were not secret and not a threat to national security.

October 27, 2017

Reports emerge of a list of 'sex pest' MPs drawn up by female staff in Westminster said to include the names of several ministers.

November 1

In an article for The Times, Tory activist Kate Maltby, a family friend of Green's, accuses him of sexual harassment.

She says he 'fleetingly' touched her knee in 2015 and sent a 'suggestive' text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. Miss Maltby said he mentioned that his wife was 'very understanding' and she then 'felt a fleeting hand against my knee  so brief it was almost deniable'.

'He was a university contemporary of my mother. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested.

Mr Green's fall from high office is the culmination of a decade-long feud with former Met Police chief Bob Quick (shown)

'It was not acceptable to me at the time and it should not be acceptable behaviour in Westminster in the future.' He flatly denies making sexual advances, calling the claim 'untrue and deeply hurtful'.

A Cabinet Office probe is launched. On the same day, Sir Michael Fallon resigns as Defence Secretary over claims about his conduct with women.

November 5

The Sunday Times reports that police found 'extreme pornography' on Mr Green's office computer during the 2008 raid, a story sourced to Quick. Mr Green calls the allegations 'completely untrue'  appearing to deny the suggestion porn was found.

He calls Quick a 'tainted and untrustworthy source' and the allegations 'false disreputable political smears'. Quick denied he approached the paper and says they approached him about the story.

November 12

After The Sunday Times reports that Sir Paul Stephenson  then Met Commissioner  was told of the porn find, Mr Green changes his tune. Instead of denying there was pornography, he now denies having been told about it. 'I reiterate that no allegations about the presence of improper material on my parliamentary computers have ever been put to me or to the parliamentary authorities by the police.' That and the earlier statement came back to haunt Green as his lawyers were told in 2008 and the police raised it with him in a phone call in 2013.

November 22

It emerges that Sue Gray, the director-general of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, has asked officials if there is evidence of attempts to access pornography from computers used by Mr Green since he became a minister in 2010.

December 1

Former Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis, who was involved in the original leaks probe, tells the BBC he was 'shocked' by the amount of pornography found on Green's computer. His interview sparks a furious backlash from Tory MPs who accuse officers of releasing private information to undermine a Cabinet minister. Brexit Secretary David Davis weighs in behind Green.

December 20

Mr Green is forced to quit after the Cabinet Office probe finds he breached the ministerial code with his misleading statements about the pornography found on his computer.
Facebook has been accused of age discrimination after they allowed employers like Amazon and Verizon to exclude millions of older Americans from seeing their job ads.

A joint investigation by the New York Times and ProPublica revealed that the telecoms giant recently posted a recruitment ad for jobs in financial planning and analysis - but restricted the post to Facebook feeds for users aged between 25 to 36, who lived in Washington DC and demonstrated an interest in finance.

That meant that an older yet more experienced financier living in the capital, even one looking for jobs in their field, would never see the ad.

Facebook Careers also posted an ad for jobs in their own engineering department, although only people aged 21 to 55 who live in the United States could see it.

Facebook has been accused of age discrimination after they allowed employers like Amazon and Verizon to exclude millions of older Americans from seeing their job ads. Pictured is the Verizon ad

'It's blatantly unlawful,' said Debra Katz, a Washington employment lawyer who represents victims of discrimination, citing the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits bias against people 40 or older when hiring.

But Facebook has defended the age exclusive ads, saying that they were a common industry practice.

'We completely reject the allegation that these advertisements are discriminatory,' said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

'Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work.'

Verizon did not respond to reporters' requests for comment.

Mark Zuckerberg has previously pledged to improve transparency at Facebook

UPS also targeted an ad for part time package handlers at people 18 to 24 who live in or visited Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Other employers, including Amazon, Northwestern Mutual and the New York City Department of Education, all say they are changing their recruiting policies.

An Amazon spokesman told The Times that they have reviewed the way their ads were delivered on Facebook and found they were 'inconsistent with our approach of searching for any candidate over the age of 18.'

'We have corrected those ads.'

Other companies argue that age targeted ads on Facebook are no different than posting an ad in a magazine like Teen Vogue which aims contents at teens.

But others say that anyone is able to buy such magazines and read the job ad, while an older person on Facebook would never even know about the ad.

'Once you reach your 50s, you may as well be dead,' said Mark Edelstein, a social-media marketing strategist who is 58 and legally blind. 'I've gone into interviews, with my head of gray hair and my receding hairline, and they know I'm dead.'

Edelstein, who is currently looking for work, said that he's been looking for jobs on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, but says he never sees adverts for jobs in his profession on Facebook.

Meanwhile, HubSpot had posted a job for social media director on Facebook, but limited it to people aged 27 to 40, in the United States.

'Hypothetically, had I seen a job for a social media director at HubSpot, even if it involved relocation, I ABSOLUTELY would have applied for it,' Edelstein said.

'It doesn't surprise me a bit. Why would they want a 58-year-old white guy who's disabled?' he added.

A HubSpot spokeswoman defended the job posting saying it also appeared on LinkedIn and other recruitment sites, and said it was open to anyone regardless of age.

Facebook is not a recruitment specialist but it is increasingly being used by recruiters as a way to promote their jobs, over traditional job hunting sites such as Linkedin, because the social network has such a bigger market; two billion monthly active users compared to LinkedIn's 530 million total members.

But it's not the first time that Facebook's targeted ads have come under fire.

The tech giant acknowledged it had found more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia that focused on divisive U.S. social issues and were seen by an estimated 10 million people before and after the 2016 elections.

They told Congress that ads representing 'foreign interference' in America's election system continued after Donald Trump won the White House.

Much of the focus on Russian involvement has come as part of a larger story that suggests Moscow instead sought to help Trump win the White House over Hillary Clinton.

But Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that while his company first spotted the ads in the presidential primary season two years ago, they continued to run 'following the election.'

'We saw this concerted effort to sow division and discord,' Stretch explained. 'In the wake of the election  and now-President Trump's election  we saw a lot of activity targeted at fomenting discord about the validity of his election.'

The ads 'continued until we disabled the accounts,' he said.

Testimony from Facebook reveals that posts generated by a Russian outfit may have reached as many as 126 million users. Pages created by Russia's Internet Research Agency generated 80,000 posts on 120 pages between January 2015 and August 2017.

Possible views reached into the millions after people 'liked' the posts and shared them.

Stretch told the committee that 'we take what happened on Facebook very seriously; the foreign interference we saw is reprehensible.'

'That foreign actors hiding behind fake accounts abused our platform and other Internet services to try to sow division and discord  and to try to undermine our election process  is an assault on democracy, and it violates all of our values,' Stretch said.

Facebook's Goldman said the company is striving for more transparency, and plans to build a new archive of federal election ads on Facebook, including the total amount spent and the number of times an ad is displayed.

The archive, which will be public for anyone to search, would also have data on the audience that saw the ads, including gender and location information. The archive would eventually hold up to four years of data.

Goldman said the company is still building the new features. They plan to test them in Canada and roll them out in the United States by next summer ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

'This is a good first step but it's not at all the last step, there's a lot to learn once we start testing,' Goldman said in an interview.

Facebook already had announced in September that the platform would require an advertiser to disclose who paid for the ads and what other ads it was running at the same time. But it was unclear exactly how the company would do that.

The moves are meant to bring Facebook more in line with what is now required of print and broadcast advertisers. Federal regulations require television and radio stations to make publicly available the details of political ads they air. That includes who runs the ad, when it runs and how much it costs.
A dog rescue volunteer named by friends as Carol Harris, 69, was mauled to death by an Akita at a boarding facility in Phoenix

An Akita mauled a 69-year-old animal volunteer to death on Wednesday at a Phoenix boarding facility where she was trying to prepare the dog for adoption.

Phoenix police officers were summoned to Canine Country Club and Feline Inn at 2.45pm Wednesday after a staffer noticed the Akita running around with what appeared to be blood on its fur, said Maricopa County Animal Care and Control spokesman Jose Santiago.

Responding officers discovered the victim in a dog exercise area with significant injuries consistent with dog bites.

She was rushed to a hospital, where she died. Officials have not released her name, but the rescue group Akita Advocates, of which she was a member, identified the mauling victim as Carol Harris.

Harris was found suffering from fatal dog bites at Canine Country Club and Feline Inn in Phoenix Wednesday afternoon (pictured)

Harris was trying to socialize the Akita to prepare it for adoption when the attack took place

According to the description of a YouCaring online fundraiser the group launched on Wednesday to help Harris' family with her funeral expenses, the volunteer lost her life 'helping rehab an orphaned Akita in the hopes of him becoming adoptable'.

Harris was described in a Facebook post as a founding member of the rescue group Akita Advocates Relocation Team Arizona. She is survived by her husband, Ken Harris.

Akita is a large and powerful breed that originated in Japan (stock image)

Akita Advocates rents space at the kennel in Phoenix. The non-profit organization was started in 2004 to help find homes for displaced Akitas. According to the volunteer group's site, so far they have rescued over 200 dogs.

Harris was trying to socialize the Akita to prepare it for adoption when the attack took place.

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control officials say the Akita Advocates group will put the dog down, reported AZCentral.com.

According to the American Kennel club's website, Akita is a large and powerful breed that originated in Japan.

Akitas, which can weigh as much as 130lbs and grow to a height of more than 2 feet, are not good with other dogs and require supervision with children.

Social media posts on Ken Harris' Facebook page indicate that the couple have been keeping Akitas as pets.
Theresa May was presented with the devastating findings of a Cabinet Office inquiry into Damian Green three days ago - but delayed sacking him until last night.

The Prime Minister spent weeks struggling to find a way to save her closest ally before finally bowing to the inevitable.

But the final announcement was put off until after the pair had put on one last smiling show of unity at PMQs yesterday afternoon.

The premier received the results of the Cabinet Office investigation on Monday, including the conclusions that Mr Green had issued two inaccurate and misleading statements denying he knew about the discovery of pornography on his office computer during a controversial police raid in 2008.

Theresa May shared a warm moment with Damian Green in the Commons chamber just hours before asking for his resignation for breaching ministerial

It was then handed to the PM's independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Alex Allan, to review. Investigating the conduct of ministers is part of his remit and it is unclear why he was not involved earlier in the process.

Mr Green - who is in line for an 18,000 payoff despite being effectively sacked - was alongside Mrs May at PMQs at lunchtime, where the two laughed and joked as she turned in a strong performance against Jeremy Corbyn.

They seemed particularly amused during a question by Labour MP Clive Efford, who recalled a Radio Times interview in which May said she enjoys stuffing her own goose at Christmas.

'Can I suggest to her that in order to extract the maximum pleasure from the message of stuffing her goose, that she names it either Michael or Boris?'

Mrs May quipped back: 'Can I say to him I think Ill be having to resist the temptation to call the goose Jeremy.'

But just before 9pm last night Mr Green's departure was announced. Mrs May will now not face MPs' questions until parliament returns in the New Year.

Green's resignation on Wednesday was the culmination of a nine-year saga involving former Met Police chief Bob Quick, nicknamed 'Bitter Bob' by his former co-workers.

It was Mr Quick who ordered the raid on Mr Green's office back in 2008 as part of an investigation into embarrassing leaks from the Home Office.

Mr Quick arrested Mr Green, then a shadow immigration minister, and held him for nine hours while his constituency office and home was searched.

The episode sparked a huge inquest at the Commons into whether parliamentary privilege should have protected the material held by an MP.

And just a year later Mr Quick quit as a policeman after being photographed heading into No10 with a security briefing about an undercover operation.

Mrs May is in Poland today for talks with the new PM Mateusz Morawiecki. They are expected to hold a press conference later

Mrs May was seen beside Green and she spoke at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, just hours before he was forced to resign

Green's departure comes at the end of a nine-year feud with the Met Police which also ended the career of former Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick. The MP is pictured leaving his London home this morning

The raid became news again last month after a dossier of 'sex pest MPs' was published, prompting Tory activist Kate Maltby to come forward and accuse Green of sexual harassment.

An inquiry launched on November 1 found Miss Maltby's claims were 'plausible', but said it was 'not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness' of his behaviour.

It was during the course of this inquiry that Mr Quick came forward with his allegations, backed up by former Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis.

It was Mr Quick who came forward to say porn had been found on Green's office computer during an unrelated raid in 2008

The discovery had no relevance to the police inquiry at the time, no relevance to the claims made by Miss Maltby, and none of the allegations related to Mr Greens time as a minister.

But his failure to tell the truth about them broke the ministerial code, which requires office holders to be truthful at all times.

His departure robs the Prime Minister of her closest political ally and a key part of her Brexit 'War Cabinet' as negotiations stagger onward.

It also marks the third loss of a Cabinet minister in just two months, following the exits of Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel.

May and Green have known each other since the 1970s, when his then-girlfriend Alicia Collinson was Theresa's tutorial partner.

After graduating from Oxford he worked as a financial journalist for the BBC and Channel 4 before moving into politics.

He won the Tory safe seat of Ashford in 1997, the same year May became an MP, and the pair have followed each other through the corridors of power ever since.

Green was promoted to the front bench under Cameron, despite having backed Davis for the leadership in 2005, and served as immigration minister and then policing minister at the Home Office, under May's guidance.

In 2014 he was unexpectedly fired by Cameron but after May took the reigns of power he found himself promoted to first secretary - deputy in all but name.

But that rise was cut brutally short on Wednesday, as he was forced to resign.

Damian Green tonight was forced to quit as Theresa May's deputy after he was found to have lied over claims porn was found n his computer

Mr Green is the third cabinet minister to be forced to quit in just six weeks after their careers have been hit by scandal. Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel resigned as defence secretary and international development secretary respectively

Theresa May's response to the resignation letter from Mr Green, her closest friend in politics
 DPA Captions Wrongly Blame Israel for Islamic Jihad Deaths | Main | 'Crux' of the Conflict, According to The New York Times 

December 21, 2017

Wheres the Coverage of New Jersey Imams Call for Genocide?

On December 8, MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, translated a sermon given in a New Jersey mosque. The organization summarized as follows:

Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, dedicated his Friday sermon on December 8 to U.S. President Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Imam Elkasaby defied the assumption that Israel is invincible, quoting from the Quran to demonstrate that the Jews are the most cowardly of nations.? So long as the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains prisoner in the hands of the Jews So long as the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains under the feet of the apes and pigs, this nation will remain humiliated,? he said. Towards the end of the sermon, Imam Elkasaby prayed for Allah to grant him martyrdom on the threshold of the Al-Aqsa Mosque? and to annihilate the plunderer oppressors? down to the very last one.

The video with subtitles is available for viewing here.

While one local news outlet originally reported on the antisemitic comments, the AP and several other local news outlets covered the story only after the Imam was suspended, over a week later.

By waiting until the Imam was suspended, these news outlets are able to turn the focus of the story away from the Imams call to kill them down to the very last one.?

Instead of being a story about a call to genocide issued from within the US, the story is now about a mosque that is making amends for its misstep. Further, one wonders whether, if the Imam had not been suspended, these news organizations would have covered the story at all.

Other than local news and the brief AP story, Sheikh Aymen Elkasabys comments have been prominently reported only in Jewish, Middle East, and right-of-center news organizations.

Another sermon with similar themes, given last summer in a Northern California mosque, was prominently covered by mainstream media after that Imam apologized  again, after the focus was turned away from the original, hateful, content.

Meanwhile, similar comments made by Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan of the Tajweed Institute in Houston, Texas have also come to light. Al-Rousan recited the prediction that the Muslims will kill the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.? He then said "All these games in the Muslim and Arab countries are from them. They do not want a Muslim leader.?

Will the media do better this time?



Posted by kabe at December 21, 2017 01:39 PM

Guidelines for posting

This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material.

Post a comment
Chris Tarrant (pictured) was pulled over when he left his local pub in Berkshire

Former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant has appeared in court charged with drink-driving following a tip-off to police.

The 71-year-old television and radio broadcaster was driving home from his local pub in his 60,000 Mercedes when he was pulled over.

It is thought he was approached by officers in Bucklebury, near Reading, Berkshire, after a local phoned 999 when the TV star was leaving the pub.

They phoned 999 as Tarrant left the Bladebone Inn and he had 50mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath - 15mcg more than the legal limit, according to The Sun.

The local resident is said to be unhappy about Tarrant's plans to extend his 2million home.

Tarrant, who presented the hit ITV quiz show from 1998 to 2014, appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court on December 18.

A source told the newspaper that he is 'taking legal advice' and is due to reappear in court on January 18.

A police spokesman told MailOnline: 'A man has been charged in connection with an incident which occurred in Chapel Row, Bucklebury, Berkshire on Saturday December 16.

'Chris Tarrant, aged 71, of Bucklebury, was charged on Saturday with one count of driving a motor vehicle when alcohol level was above the limit.

'He appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court on Monday December 18.'

A local is said to have phoned the police after the former gameshow host submitted plans to extend his home

The 71-year-old had been at the Bladebone Inn in Bucklebury, Berkshire, before he drove his 60,000 Mercedes

Locals in the village said Tarrant missed a carol service on the day he was due in court.

The dispute with a local resident is thought to have started because the star has already extended his seven-bed mansion three times after he bought it in 2004 for 1million.

An application to build a two-storey extension with two beds on the top floor and a utility room and snug on the ground floor was rejected by councillors but overturned on appeal.

Neighbours in Bucklebury, which is the Duchess of Cambridge's home village, objected because the house is in a beauty spot.

And council chiefs said Tarrant had already extended the property as far as planning guidelines allow.

But a successful appeal earlier this year allowed the plans to go ahead.

The bedrooms will both be ensuite and measure 11ft by 8ft and 9ft by 8ft respectively.

On the ground floor, the snug will be 14ft by 11ft and the utility room 10ft by 11ft.

Tarrant's neighbours were traditionally tight-lipped about whether one of them gave a tip-off to the police which led to the star's arrest.

Villagers in Upper Bucklebury, Berkshire - well versed in the ways of the media after years of fielding questions about the Duchess of Cambridge and the Middleton family - said it was 'highly unlikely' anyone would have alerted a police patrol to the fact Tarrant was leaving the local Bladebone public house after drinking there.

A photograph of the property showing the area at the front of the house that is due to be developed

On the ground floor, the snug will be 14ft by 11ft and the utility room 10ft by 11ft, as shown in this floor plan at a scale of 1 to 100

However, one local gave reporters a 'knowing look' when asked if he knew who might have reported the 71-year-old, adding that he did not want to be named or to make any comment.

Police said that there was no indication that officers had made the 2pm arrest following a tip-off from the public, indicating that police had routinely stopped the vehicle.

Local residents said that he was popular and had not caused enough upset for anyone to have tried to take revenge on him by making a call to the police.

Tarrant moved into the village in 2012, after buying the home on Pease Hill near Middleton Manor, and has since extended the building three times.

The bedrooms, shown in this first floor plan at a scale of 1 to 100, will both be ensuite and measure 11ft by 8ft and 9ft by 8ft respectively

Helen Pratt, is clerk to Bucklebury parish council, who led the neighbourhood campaign against Tarrant's extension.

She told MailOnline: 'It's not so much the neighbours who were unhappy as much as it's overdeveloping properties which were built as cottages on the common.

'He's already extended quite extensively, and that was the view essentially at the time. I wouldn't say it's caused anger.'

Mrs Pratt denied the likelihood of a police tip-off being because of anger caused by the redevelopment, she added: 'I would say it's highly unlikely that a neighbour would tip the police that he was allegedly drunk-driving.

'There are issues with motorists around here so it's not unusual to try to do something about it. That's generic across the board.'

It is not suggested that she was the neighbour responsible for the reported tip-off.
Every police force in Britain was under pressure last night to review thousands of rape, sexual assault and child abuse cases.

The Metropolitan Police is already urgently examining 30 sensitive investigations, with 'scores' more to follow.

It comes as DC Mark Azariah, the detective in charge of two collapsed rape trials, was removed from active duty by the Met following the revelation police failed to disclose vital evidence to prosecutors.

Scroll down for video

Isaac Itiary, 24, was remanded in jail for four months after being charged with raping a child under 16 - but has been freed after texts showing his evidence were not released by Met DC Mark Azariah (right) who is no longer working on active cases

Liam Allan, pictured with his mother Lorraine, poses outside Croydon Crown Court after all rape charges against him were dropped

Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the cases are 'appalling failures of the criminal justice system'.

And campaigners and legal experts warned the failures are likely to be far more widespread  and that further cases could be undermined by shocking blunders by officers.



Around 30 cases are already set for trial and are being prioritised, but it is not yet known how many other cases will be affected.

Prosecutor who stopped Liam Allan case over withheld texts says it happens 'every single day and has to stop' The barrister who stopped the prosecution in the Liam Allan after texts proved he was innocent said today it 'happens every day'. Jerry Hayes (pictured), a former Tory MP, said officers are withholding evidence that undermines their case and 'it's got to stop'. He told Radio 4 this morning: 'This is not one rogue officer. This is a systemic, cultural problem with the police. It is enshrined in law that police officers have to be independent. They have to look at all the evidence. They have to log it. 'They are not just building a case to prosecute someone. If there is anything there that undermines the prosecution case they've got to tell you. 'And if there's anything that undermines or rather assists the defence case they've got to tell you too. But that is not happening. You speak to any barrister they will tell you stories that this happens every single day and it has got to stop'. He went on: 'I was speaking to the barrister [in the Itiari case] this morning. They had been asking for these tests [victim's phone records] for months. Now, this is not something that has just been forgotten. Were they deliberately sitting on it? We don't know but these are very, very worrying systemic problems'. Advertisement

It has now opened the door for hundreds of convicted rapists to start appealing their sentences.

It came as: Justice Minister Dominic Raab said the 'basic principle of British justice is at stake', the police watchdog faced urgent calls to conduct a national inquiry, one QC said the 'rigid mindset' of police being told to always 'believe' victims may leave supposedly open-minded inquiries fatally flawed, the prosecutor in one failed case said defence teams should insist on a written guarantee that no material exists which could undermine a trial and Mr Wright ordered a review of disclosure processes, including legislation.

Scotland Yard is at the centre of the growing 'disclosure' crisis after a second rape trial collapsed in less than seven days.

Police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) officials are accused of breaking a key rule by failing to pass on any material they discover to a suspect's defence team.

One barrister branded it a 'systemic cultural problem' in which police are only gathering facts for the prosecution.

Experts added the huge amount of digital information in many cases is overwhelming officers.

On Tuesday Isaac Itiary, 25  who was charged with 11 crimes, including rape, involving an underage girl  walked free after prosecutors offered no evidence.

They had discovered mobile phone messages that supported his claim the alleged victim posed as a 19-year-old.

He had spent four months on remand. Last week, student Liam Allan, 22, was vindicated in similar circumstances.

In response, Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Smith confirmed 30 'priority' cases, which are either due to go to trial or in which the suspect has been charged, are being reviewed urgently and 'scores' more will then be considered with support from the CPS.

He said 'something has gone badly wrong' in Mr Allan's case but the disclosure system worked as it should with Mr Itiary.

Mr Allan, a psychology student at Greenwich University, is planning to sue the police and the CPS for their bungled handling of the case

'Police think every sex attack complainant must be believed', says top QC A top QC says police automatically believe complainants in sex attack cases. Mark George QC says the 'policy' is what got officers in trouble over the case of Liam Allan. Writing on his blog he said: 'The attitude of the police officer who failed to consider that the material easily passed the statutory test for disclosure was engendered by the very idea now written into the official policy of the College of Policing that means that a complainant in a sex case must be believed. 'Any police officer who considered that her or his duty was to investigate the case fearlessly and with a view to seeing if the allegation would stand up in court or was likely to fail should have considered the text messages between the complainant and the accused in this case'. Advertisement

The same sexual offences specialist officer  DC Mark Azariah, who has worked on several high profile cases  was responsible for the evidence in both cases.

He has been taken off 'active investigations' pending a review, but has not been suspended.

The review is being closely watched by the Home Secretary, who could order a national audit if more failings are found.

Mr Raab said: 'The basic principle of British justice is at stake ... What we need to know now is quite how widespread that is and why.

This is not a new thing. It should be made easy by technology.'

The National Police Chiefs' Council said: 'We have been addressing recommendations from criminal justice inspectorates that identified the need for improvement in the way that disclosure is handled.

We are working with the College of Policing and CPS to resolve the issues raised.

As part of this we will consider the findings of the Met's review ... and the impact of the amount of digital material officers now need to analyse, especially in fraud and sex offence cases.'

The PM's spokesman said: 'The two cases ... have obviously raised some serious issues which need to be looked at in greater detail.'

Rape trial shambles is latest sex attack case to end in chaos Leo Mahan and Thady Duff (left) were cleared of rape when it emerged detectives had 'cherry picked' the evidence while Bartolomeo Joly de Lotbiniere, 22, (right) was cleared of rape reported to police 14 months later It comes after a string of rape cases were found to have fallen apart. Friends Thady Duff, Leo Mahon, Patrick Foster, all 22, and James Martin, 20, were charged with gang-raping a young woman following the May Ball at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire in 2014. It was alleged that the violent assault was filmed, and the footage circulated via Snapchat. But the trial at Gloucester Crown Court collapsed after it emerged that detectives had 'cherry picked' and 'airbrushed' the evidence. A study of the alleged victim's phone revealed that she had sent nude pictures of herself to one of the men in advance of the ball and also how she had given inconsistent accounts of a 'threesome' she took part in at an Army barracks five months after the alleged university rape. Shockingly, none of this material was handed over to the prosecution or defence by an investigating police officer. Royal Agricultural University students Mahon, Foster and Duff, and friend Martin, were cleared in 2016 after the prosecution offered no evidence. An IPCC investigation later found that detectives had no case to answer for misconduct. Bartolomeo Joly de Lotbiniere, 22, was accused of raping a geography student at York University after a night out downing cheap spirits and alcopops. His 19-year-old accuser said his advances were unwanted and that she froze in terror as Lotbiniere, also then 19, undressed her and carried her to bed in her halls of residence. But she only reported Mr Joly de Lotbiniere to police 14 months after the alleged attack when he appeared on television in six episodes of the BBC2 quiz show University Challenge. After such a long passage of time there was no forensic evidence, only individual testimonies, accounts from friends and text messages. Mr Joly de Lotbiniere insisted what had happened was a 'two way', consensual one-night stand, saying : 'Drunk or sober I would never rape anybody.' After two trials spread over seven months  the first ended in a hung jury  he was found not guilty of rape and sexual assault in September. Advertisement

Why are rape suspects named in the UK and what are the rules in other countries? Anonymity for men and women accused of rape until conviction was in place for 12 years until 1988 when it was repealed. At the time one of the main reasons given was that the public could not be warned by police if a suspected rapist was on the run, for example, without asking for a judge's permission first. Margaret Thatcher's government also wanted to 're-balance' the system in favour of victims - and in high profile cases encourage other victims to come forward. People accused of rape in Britain can be named and cases involving public figures often attract significant media attention. Parliament has considered the idea of anonymity for those accused of rape on a number of occasions. The previous Coalition Government said it would extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants. However, having undertaken an assessment of the evidence, it concluded in 2010 that there was insufficient reliable evidence to justify a change in the law. Anonymity is not granted for rape defendants in any other common law country, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland. There, a rape defendant's identity can be made public only if they are convicted of rape. Advertisement

Justice minister Dominic Raab told BBC Radio 5 Live's Emma Barnett it was 'absolutely right' for the Met to carry out a review, adding: 'The basic principle of British justice is at stake.'

Prime Minister Theresa May's official spokesman said the attorney general last week ordered a review to look at disclosure processes - including codes of practice, guidelines and legislation relating to sexual offences and other types of crime - which is expected to report back in 2018.

Concerns have previously been raised at the most senior level of the criminal bar that disclosure failures and lack of resources will lead to miscarriages of justice.

Angela Rafferty QC, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, suggested 'unconscious bias' stops the police and the CPS 'impartially and thoroughly investigating and scrutinising complaints in sexual offence cases'.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told the BBC that the use of evidence in other cases was being looked into to reassure the public.

She said: 'We won't be re-investigating all of those, but we we will be reviewing them to make sure that we have discharged our obligations in relation to disclosure - i.e. that everything that should have happened has indeed happened in relation to disclosure.

'So, we have got a team looking at all of those because the public will want to be reassured that we don't have anything similar coming through the system.'

Attorney General Jeremy Wright, who is carrying out a review into disclosure, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: 'We can't look at this solely as a resource issue.

'What I think we need to do is understand that the type of evidence that is being used in criminal trials is changing.'

Referring to the two collapsed cases, he added they were 'obviously appalling failures of the criminal justice system'.
A teenager has been charged with attempted murder and sexual assault after a woman woke up to find him in her house with a knife.

A 43-year-old woman was home alone at her house in Lismore, northeastern New South Wales, when she woke to find an unknown man inside.

The man, armed with a knife, allegedly threatened the woman, and following a struggle, sexually assaulted her.

The 43-year-old woman was taken to Lismore Base Hospital where she was treated for injuries, including a stab wound to her back

He allegedly demanded money and hit the woman on the head with an unknown object, NSW Police said.

The woman's screams alerted her neighbours and the teenage boy fled from the home.

She was treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics for a stab wound to her back, facial injuries and lacerations to her hands and arms.

She was taken to Lismore Base Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

The teenager was charged with a string of offences including wounding a person with intent to murder and aggravated sexual assault - inflicting actual bodily harm - due to face Lismore Local Court on Thursday

A 16-year-old boy was arrested by police from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad at about 7.30pm on Wednesday.

The teenager was charged with a string of offences including wounding a person with intent to murder and aggravated sexual assault - inflicting actual bodily harm.

He was refused bail to appear at Lismore Local Court on Thursday.
The driver of a car which struck and killed a toddler in a driveway in Sydney's southwest was 'hysterical' after the collision.

NSW Police say the two-year-old girl was struck by a reversing Kia behind a mechanics workshop on Beamish Street at Campsie about 10.45am on Thursday.

Superintendent Adam Whyte says NSW police and paramedics responded quickly and administered first aid.

'The driver was absolutely hysterical, as you would imagine,' he said.

'This is a horrific scene for not only the driver but all those involved, particularly for the police and emergency services.'

The driver of a car which struck and killed a two-year-old girl in a driveway in Sydney's southwest was 'hysterical' after the collision (pictured)

NSW paramedics were called to the scene at Campsie about 10.45am on Thursday after the girl was struck by a reversing Kia at the rear of a small business on Beamish Street

The critically-injured toddler was taken to the Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick where she was pronounced dead.

The driver, a 43-year-old woman of Middle Eastern descent, has also been taken to hospital for mandatory blood and urine testing.

'The death of a child is always very, very traumatic,' Supt Whyte said.

'For the emergency services, it's one of those jobs that nobody ever wants to go to.'

Support services have been offered to the officers who were first on the scene.

Crash investigators spent Thursday afternoon speaking with witnesses and combing the site for evidence.

Supt Whyte pleaded with motorists to approach the busy holiday season with caution.

'It is a timely reminder to all drivers, particularly when you're reversing, to be aware of your surroundings,' he said.
Track Palin was approved for house arrest as he appeared in court on Wednesday on assault charges.

The bearded 28-year-old sat silent in yellow prison scrubs as the order was granted. However, his $5,000 bail was not lowered and he remained in custody at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility.

Magistrate Judge Tara Logsdon approved house arrest with electronic monitoring over a third-party custodian and said she expected him to be released on Wednesday.

Track was charged with burglary and assault after allegedly punching through a window to get inside his parents' Wasilla home, and then beating his father, Todd Palin.

His mother, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was there at the time and called police, according to KTVA.

Shortly after his arrest, the Palin family obtained a court order preventing Track from having any contact with his parents and younger siblings who live with them.

Both his parents and Track's grandparents were in court as the order was given. In court on Wednesday, Todd spoke via telephone to say the family was prepared to reestablish contact with Track again, should he be released from jail.

The new development comes on the heels of his sister Willow's engagement to longtime boyfriend Ricky Bailey, who she has been with for the past four years.

Track Palin was approved for house arrest via electronic as he appeared in court on Wednesday on assault charges (pictured) although his $5,000 bail was not lowered

Issues: Track's ex-wife Britta Hanson was granted a short-term order of protection against her former spouse on Monday (Couple above with Sarah and Todd on their wedding day in 2011)

More owes: Track's ex Jordan Loewe (above) also filed an emergency order seeking full custody of their son Charlie

Wedding bells: The news of Track's house arrest came on the heels of his 23-year-old sister Willow's engagement to her longtime boyfriend Ricky Bailey

'On December 16, 2017 at 2036 hours, Wasilla Police responded to a reported disturbance at a residence in Wasilla,' a department spokesperson told DailyMail.com on Tuesday of Track's arrest.

'Following an investigation, Track Palin was arrested for domestic violence burglary in the 1st degree, domestic violence assault in the 4th degree and domestic violence criminal mischief in the 4th degree. Palin was transported to the Mat-Su Pretrial facility.'

An incident report that was included in the young man's charging documents reveals that he broke into his family home through a window after being told by Todd he was not welcome, and then began to hit the man over the head.

Todd had tried to keep his son out by meeting him at the door and pointing a gun at him, but Track was able to disarm the man and 'put him on the floor' before beating him bloody, it is claimed.

Sarah told police her son, 28, was 'freaking out and was on some type of medication.'

After Track allegedly assaulted his father, a bloody Todd fled the home followed by Sarah, and Track engaged in a brief standoff with police.

'Given the nature of actions addressed last night by law enforcement and the charges involved, the Palins are unable to comment further,' said Sarah and Todd's lawyer John Tiemessen.

'They ask that the familys privacy is respected during this challenging situation just as others dealing with a struggling family member would also request.'

Track is not represented by the same lawyer.

'Track stood on the porch,' wrote Officer Adam LaPointe of the Wasilla Police Department.

'Communication was attempted which failed due to Track yelling and calling myself and other officers peasants and telling us to lay our guns on the ground before approaching the residence.'

He then went inside the house before reappearing on the roof of the garage so he could get a look around the entire property according to Office LaPointe.

After that Track again when into the house, where he remained for approximately 15 minutes before reestablishing communication with police.

Track then turned himself over to police, admitting he had a few beers earlier in the night and had gotten into a argument with his father over the use of a car.

'Track said he had been talking to his dad, Todd, about a vehicle,' reads the report.

'Track stated he had a disagreement and that there had been threats made between them. Track stated that he then drove over to Todd's house and when he arrived Todd had a gun in his hand,' reads Officer LaPointe's sworn affidavit.

When Track then looked through the window next to the door he saw 'Todd point a gun at him.'

The eldest son of Sarah and Todd then told his father to shoot him several times before deciding to break a window in order to enter the home.

'Track stated that he went through the broken window and disarmed Todd and put him on the ground,' states the affidavit.

'While Track had Todd on the ground he started hitting Todd in the head. Todd was able to get away from Track and out of the residence.'

Baby Girl: Britta (Track above with their daughter Kayla) filed a petition seeking a long-term order soon after Track was arrested on domestic abuse charges for beating up his father

Baby boy: Jordan (above with Charlie) and Track pair broke up in 2016 after Jordan called police to report that Track had punched her in the face and pointed a gun at her head

Track's ex-wife, Britta Hanson, filed for a protective order on Monday against him. Hanson, the mother of the couple's six-year-old daughter Kayla, will be back in court early next month to try and get a long-term order keeping her ex away from her and possibly their daughter.

At the same time, Track's ex, Jordan Loewe - mother of his son, Charlie - also filed an emergency motion to change the child custody agreement that is in place between the couple.

The Iraq combat veteran was previously taken into custody by police in Wasilla back in January of 2016 after officers arrived at the Palin family home and found Jordan cowering under a bed.

According to Jordan, an intoxicated Track attacked her and pointed an AR-15 rifle at his own head as they argued over her ex-boyfriend and screamed he was going to shoot himself, shouting, 'do you think I'm a p---y? and 'do you think I won't do it?'

The police report stated that the victim was seen with 'bruising and swelling around her left eye' claiming that Track had thrown her phone away when she tried to call 911.

This all happened at Sarah's Wasilla home as well according to court documents, and Track had a 0.189 blood alcohol level according to police.

'I observed that the male had a visible injury to his right eye and the area around his eye,' wrote Officer Andrew Kappler at the time.

'His eyes were bloodshot and I detected a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and person. Upon contacting Palin, he was uncooperative, belligerent, and evasive with my initial line of questions.'

Officers tried to ask the veteran why 911 was dialled by the woman and where she was.

'Palin stated that he didn't know where she was and denied that there was a firearm involved, but did state that there were several spread throughout the residence,' Kappler wrote in his report.

'Due to Palin's escalating hostility, the unknown whereabouts of the female 911 caller, and Officer safety, Palin was placed into handcuffs.'

It was then that officers went into Sarah Palin's family home and discovered Jordan under the bed, crying and hiding.

'She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home,' Kappler wrote. 'Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway. They were screaming and he was calling her names.'

The woman told police that while she had not yet called 911, she had lied to Track and said she had to scare him off.

Apparently this did not work.

'Palin approached (his girlfriend) and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist,' wrote Kappler in the report.

Family ties: Track's children Track and Kayla with Sarah, Todd, Willow and Piper on Thanksgiving (above)

The argument got out of control and Track allegedly reached for his AR-15 rifle and began threatening suicide.

Track's girlfriend ran out of the house after the young man started 'holding onto a gun, yelling 'do you think I'm a p---y?' and 'do you think I won't do it?'

'(She) stated Palin 'cocked the gun' and was holding the rifle out next to him with his right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side,' states the detailed police report.

'(She) was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didn't see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed.'

Track told police the argument began after he learned she had been speaking with an ex-boyfriend.

The two had been to dinner and then visited his sister Bristol's home earlier in the night before the argument began at his mother Sarah's home.

He also claims that the woman elbowed him during the fight, but she was not arrested or charged with any crime.

The Wasilla Police Department said at that time in a statement: 'Palin was arrested and charges of assault in the fourth degree (domestic violence), interfering with a domestic violence report, and misconduct involving weapons in the fourth degree were forwarded to the District Attorney's Office.'

Track posted his $1,500 bail in that case soon after he was arraigned.

He and the rest of his family also had a run in with police a little over a year before that in September 2014 when a fight broke out at a party in Wasilla.

Track reportedly broke a rib in the incident, and during his interview with cops spelled his last name wrong at one point.

Using the military alphabet he told officers it was spelled, 'Papa, Alfa, Lima, India, Mike, Oscar.'

'Palimo?' asked the officer.
A top democratic senator has warned Donald Trump that firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller would be 'a gross abuse of power and could spark a constitutional crisis'.

Sen. Mark Warner, who is on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, denounced attacks on Mueller's impartiality on Wednesday.

Speaking on the senate floor, he urged that the special counsel's investigation of ties between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia must be 'able to go on unimpeded'.

Sen. Mark Warner, (left) who is on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, denounced attacks on Robert Mueller's (right) impartiality on Wednesday

Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump has denied any collusion.

Warner was speaking just one day after the president's son, Don Jr., blasted the investigation for a supposed lack of impartiality after Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok from his team for exchanging anti-Trump text messages with his lover, senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

In them, he suggested that the Mueller probe was an 'insurance policy' against a Trump election victory.

During their exchanges, they described Trump as an 'idiot' and a 'loathsome human' and shared their hopes that Hillary Clinton should win the election.

While Trump's (pictured on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday) political allies have increased their criticism of Mueller, the president said on Sunday he was not considering firing him

'Imagine what would happen if we rolled back the clock to 2008,' Trump Jr. said, and politically biased FBI officials tried to undermine a potential Barack Obama presidency.'

'There would be revolution in the streets. So I'm glad that this is coming out now, because it is good, because real people have to see this,' he said.

While Trump's political allies have increased their criticism of Mueller, the president said on Sunday he was not considering firing him.

Republicans on several House of Representatives committees have also announced their own probes into long-standing political grievances, including the FBI's handling of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Clinton, a Democrat, was Trump's opponent in last year's election.

'Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller's investigation,' said Warner, adding that the attacks were 'seemingly coordinated.'

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has come under fire by Republicans after private text messages between some of his top agents were revealed.

'Firing Mr. Mueller or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this administration's commitment to the truth, but also to our most basic concept of rule of law,' Warner said. 'It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.'

Warner called for Congress to make clear to the president that firing Mueller would have 'immediate and significant consequences.'

'Any attempt by this President to remove special counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities,' Warner told CNN. 'These truly are red lines and simply cannot allow them to be crossed.'

House Democrats had circulated rumors last week that Trump would fire Mueller this Friday, just before the Christmas holiday.

Donald Trump Jr. claimed on Tuesday that a deep-state conspiracy to undermine his father is stopping him from making his agenda a reality

Trump's White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said in a statement on Wednesday that the administration 'willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the special counsel.'

'If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumor, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them,' Cobb added.

Trump may be worried about following in the footsteps of President Richard Nixon who ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox, then the special prosecutor investigating Watergate.

The moment was a huge turning point in the investigation and sparked the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, as Richardson refused and resigned in protest, followed by then-Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, until it was left to solicitor general Robert Bork.
Distraught neighbours who ran to the aid of a toddler run over in a driveway have recounted the horrific moment the little girl's father picked up her bleeding body and begged them for help.

The one-year-old girl was behind the family's sedan at an Avondale Heights house in Melbourne's north-west on Wednesday night when her mother accidentally reversed and struck the child.

While the little girl was undergoing treatment at a Melbourne hospital where she remained in a serious condition on Thursday, next door neighbour Tony recalled the horror in the street the previous night.

The deserted home at Avondale Heights where a toddler was run over on Wednesday night

Paramedics treated the girl outside the Avondale Heights home before rushing her to hospital

Neighbour Tony was watching a show on TV when he heard terrible screaming from next door

Tony was watching one of his favourite Italian singing shows on TV when he heard the screaming about 8pm. 'I heard it - somebody went nuts, crazy,' the grandfather said.

'I saw the husband with the baby in his hands because he didn't know what to do... he was running around.'

The mother was screaming and jumping around. 'She was in a bad way,' said Tony's wife Maria. 'She was beating herself up something bad.'

As the devastated mother wailed 'I ran her over!' her frantic husband picked up the girl, who was bleeding from the head, and desperately sought help from neighbours.

A third neighbour opened their front door to find blood dripped over her porch.

'All of a sudden I heard "boom, boom",' she recalled.

One of the girl's panicked parents had come to the house and was pounding on the door.

The deserted house at Avondale Heights where a toddler was run over on Wednesday night

The injured one-year-old girl was rushed to hospital in a serious condition on Wednesday night

The Avondale Heights toddler used to pick flowers from elderly neighbour Tony's front yard

She saw the father carrying the child in his arms.

'I had blood on my front porch everywhere,' she said. 'I thought someone had been shot.'

The father put the child on the ground while neighbours, including a doctor and a nurse, rushed to help.

The couple, described by Tony as 'nice people', are understood to be Iranian migrants who have not lived at their tidy two-bedroom home for long.

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene.

Tony and Maria brought the toddler's older sister inside and gave her coloured markers to draw with.

'I was trying to keep the little girl occupied,' Maria said. 'Everyone was screaming - it was horrible for her.

A box of coloured markers the toddler's older sister played with after the horrific accident

Neighbours rushed to the toddler's aid before paramedics arrived at the house about 8pm

Two prams in the front yard of the house at Avondale Heights where a toddler was run over

'I was saying "let's draw, let's do this".'

When it was time to leave, the girl wouldn't let go of Maria's hand.

The couple often encountered the injured girl.

Tony recalled: 'She used to like to come here, she'd like to pick flowers.'

'Sometimes the mother would close the gate and I'd say "don't worry about it, leave her".'

On Thursday afternoon, a Royal Children's Hospital spokeswoman said the child remained in a serious condition.

The girl is in hospital with serious injuries after being hit at Avondale Heights just before 8pm on Wednesday

The family's home was deserted, the windows left open and two prams sat in the front yard.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said an investigation into the incident was 'ongoing'.

Meantime, locals are hoping for the best.

'I had a dream about the little thing last night - I just hope she's going to be OK, poor thing,' one neighbour said.

'It's just tragic, it's horrible. You don't see them (little kids) in those big cars.'

On Wednesday, neighbours revealed hearing the mother hysterically screaming 'What have I done? She's so young,' as she lay on the ground next to the girl.
A father has expressed his joy after he was reunited with his missing children, now aged eight and nine, three years after they vanished.

Brisbane man Harry Speath waited by the gates of his children's school in Carindale, in December 2014, but Serena and Thomas never showed.

Three years after their disappearance, Mr Speath's heartbreak turned to elation.

The Australian Federal Police knocked on his door on Wednesday and told him his children had been found.

Taking to Facebook on Thursday, Mr Speath thanked his ongoing supporters and told them the return of his children was 'the best Christmas present'.

Christmas came early for Brisbane father Harry Speath - who was re-united with his two children Selena (left) and Thomas (right) three years after they vanished

The adorable children were allegedly taken by their mother Jane Adare on December 5, 2014 (pictured above in age-progressed images)

Serena and Thomas, now aged nine and eight, were found in the Sunshine Coast hinterland with their mother - some 150 kilometres from where they vanished.

Ms Adare appeared before the Federal Circuit Court of Australia in Brisbane as Mr Speath caught up on three years of missed birthdays, holidays and milestones.

The search was hampered by a string of puzzling setbacks and false sightings.

Mr Speath initially held fears the trio could have been whisked off to Europe with their mother, who holds dual-citizenship in the United Kingdom.

To make matters worse, the children were not enrolled in any school across the state and their Medicare cards had not been used.

But Mr Speath, 61, refused to give up hope and set up a Facebook page dedicated to finding the pair - gathering the support of thousands of parents across the country.

In May, experts from the United States created a photo manipulation to show what Serena and Thomas would look like in 2017.

The images were circulated nationally and efforts to find the missing siblings were intensified.

But Mr Speath, 61, (pictured with his child) refused to give up hope and set up a Facebook page dedicated to finding the pair - gathering the support of thousands of parents across the country

Serena and Thomas pictured together underneath a Christmas tree, before their disappearance

Ms Adare (pictured) appeared before the Federal Circuit Court of Australia in Brisbane on Wednesday as Mr Speath caught up on three years of missed milestones

Mr Speath (centre) never gave up hope, desperately searching for his two children (pictured in front of photo manipulations of the pair of what they would look like in May this year)

Just two weeks ago, Mr Speath took to Facebook with a heart-wrenching post dedicated to his beloved children on the anniversary of their disappearance.

'Today I am reflecting on a monumental milestone in the time line since the abduction of my children by their mother,' he wrote.

'It is three years exactly since the last time I saw my children. It is three years exactly since the last time I have spoken to my children.

'It is three years exactly since I've obtained any news as to their education, health, wellbeing and so many other things that any concerned parent takes for granted.

'It's been three sets of birthdays (both theirs and mine), Christmases, Easters, Father's Days, three years worth of holidays, countless visits to their paternal grandmum, aunt and indeed their half brother's visits from his overseas work assignments. In that time, none of us has had the normal family pleasures taken for granted by normal folks.

'So what can I say to my children on this horrid anniversary? I guess all I can say is that I don't know when I'll see you guys. I hope it's soon. I know you guys don't know what all the above stuff is about, and I don't expect you to  until you are much, much older.

'In the meantime. I love you both very, very much. I'm sending you guys many, many, many hugs & kisses across the miles between us, no matter how far.'

The Australian Federal Police allege the siblings were 'parentally abducted'.

'In the meantime. I love you both very, very much. I'm sending you guys many, many, many hugs & kisses across the miles between us, no matter how far,' the children's father said

The Australian Federal Police allege the siblings were 'parentally abducted' by their mother Jane Adare (pictured)

A lot to catch up on: When Mr Speath last saw his kids they were aged five and four (pictured). Serena (left) is now nine years old and Thomas (right) is eight years old
Yassmin Abdel-Magied may be Australia's 'most publicly hated Muslim' but she seems happy to poke fun at herself.

The activist was mercilessly roasted by comedian Tom Gleeson on Hard Chat about the fallout from her 'disrespectful' Anzac Day Facebook post.

Her seven word missive 'lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)' stirred up so much outrage she left the country for London months later.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied was mercilessly roasted by comedian Tom Gleeson on Hard Chat about the fallout from her 'disrespectful' Anzac Day Facebook post

She appeared to revel in her notoriety when asked if her similar Tweet on Remembrance Day last month was 'just attention seeking'.

'I missed the death threats, they really give you a sense of importance,' she quipped on the segment of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering on the ABC.

Gleeson had a brutal follow up: 'Do you think that every Anzac Day we should have a minute's silence for your career?' after her ABC show was scrapped a month after her post.

Without a hint of irony, Abdel-Magied responded: 'I think that'd be a little disrespectful to the diggers.'

Gleeson awkwardly paused for a few seconds before suggesting she should start a hashtag called #LestWeForgetToWriteStupidS**tOnFacebook next year.

Her seven word missive 'lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)' stirred up so much outrage she left the country for London months later

Gleeson asked her: 'Do you think that every Anzac Day we should have a minute's silence for your career?' after her ABC show was scrapped a month after her post

After joking that she 'looked like a tourist' and asking if she ever felt bad about wearing a hat indoors, Gleeson upped the anti even more.

'When you're in London, do you hang out with Rolf Harris so you're not the most hated Australian?' he said.

The comedian then moved on to Abdel-Magied likening her relationship with Australia to 'dating an abusive guy'.

'What are you doing here? You should leave!' he told her.

When asked if her similar Tweet on Remembrance Day last month was 'just attention seeking', she joked that she 'missed the death threats' that made her feel important

Gleeson pulled out a box of Anzac biscuits and offered his guest one, remarking should could eat them because they were halal

'I mean, I've been told to leave a number of times, but we know how hard it is,' she replied.

'Sometimes you're like 'maybe they didn't mean it', and you come back, and then you're like 'oh, yeah, they're actually d**ks.'

Gleeson nervously chuckled before saying: 'Alright, that should help this go viral.'

Finally, Gleeson pulled out a box of Anzac biscuits and offered his guest one, remarking should could eat them because they were halal.

'Are they though?' she asked with some scepticism.

'Well, I don't know, but I pointed them towards Mecca when I killed them,' Gleeson shot back.

Abdel-Magied earlier forlornly reflected on how she got from being awarded young Queenslander of the year in 2010 (pictured) to her tumultuous past year

Abdel-Magied's reaction to the Hard Chat segment followed forlorn reflections on her tumultuous past year.

'I'm in a place now where they took everything away from me and I'm now someone with nothing left to lose,' she said on The Project.

'That was really bad but at the same time you don't know how strong you are until you go through something really tough.

'I went from being this young Queenslander of the year... I was the good Muslim girl... then everything exploded.'
A transgender film critic has publicly accused comedian and actor TJ Miller of being transphobic, following an alleged email exchange that took place in August.

The accusation comes just one day after a woman accused Miller, 36, of having beaten and sexually assaulted her while they were in college.

Danielle Solzman, 33, of Chicago, Illinois, initially shared a redacted e-mail  which she has since claimed was sent by Miller  with her Twitter followers in September, allegedly showcasing a vitriolic diatribe that she had received the previous month.

At the time, she declined to reveal who sent her the e-mail, 'for fear of legal threats.'

Transgender woman Danielle Solzman, 33, of Chicago, Illinois, has claimed that actor and comedian TJ Miller sent her a transphobic e-mail in August after she pointed out that a transgender slur associated with his personal website was 'very offensive'

Solzman initially tweeted out Miller's e-mail in August, redacting his name it at the time

In the e-mail that Miller allegedly sent, he called Solzman 'Daniel' and said that she was a 'f*****g a*****e' and a 'weird strange terrible man'

On Tuesday morning, after news broke that Miller was accused of sexually assaulting a former college friend, Solzman retweeted the e-mail tweet and said that Miller's 'career is over now'

On Tuesday morning, Solzman retweeted her initial August tweet and wrote that: 'It's safe to say that his [Miller's] career is over now. Nobody ever wants to be on the receiving end of this kind of transphobic abuse. This was the email that found its way to my inbox just one week after the Emoji Movie was released.'

Miller voiced the main character role in the Emoji Movie, which was released in July.

On Wednesday, Solzman gave the unredacted e-mail to the Huffington Post, claiming that Miller had sent the expletive-laden screed in response to an e-mail she had sent him, informing him that a derogatory transgender term appeared in his personal website's metadata search terms.

When searching for Miller's website, the phrase 'Tranny Dumpster Sex,' appeared alongside 'Hot Garbage,' 'Warm Urine' and 'Straight Dumpster Sex.' The term 'tranny' has been used as a slur for transgender people.

Solzman said that since she and Miller had been friends for some time  they met on MySpace in 2005 and in person in 2010, because they attended the same Chicago comedy shows  she wrote to tell Miller about the 'trans slur' and noted that it was 'very offensive.'

In response, Miller allegedly sent a lengthy e-mail that said in part that Solzman was a 'weird strange terrible man' and included a line which read, 'You're not a transgender, you're not a tranny  your [sic] a f*****g a*****e daniel.'

The e-mail also stated Solzman's 'pursuit of transgender identity is nothing more than an opportunity for you to distinguish yourself as someone who is special, but what is really special is how retarded it is that you would ever think to attack me or say that I've been offensive.'

Solzman said that she and Miller had been friends for several years, meeting on MySpace in 2005 and then in person in 2010, because they attended the same comedy shows in Chicago. Solzman said that Miller was supportive when she revealed she was transgender in 2015

Solzman tweeted screengrabs of the e-mail she sent Miller, informing him that the use of 'tranny' in his website's metadata was 'very offensive,' and the tweet she said she saw that first alerted her to the fact that the word 'tranny' was associated with his website

Solzman tweeted out the e-mail she sent to Miller, which she said sparked his diatribe

A close up of the tweet that alerted Solzman to Miller's website's use of the transgender slur

As a defense against transphobic accusations, Miller apparently wrote, 'If you were bothered to look into anything that I've ever done you would find it [sic] not only have I had sex with transgender people, but I have donated widely to organizations that support their freedom.'

The e-mail also included requests that Solzman cease all further communication ended with the words 'Bye Daniel'.

Solzman told the Huffington Post that after receiving the e-mail, she blocked Miller on social media. She also said that she had tried to share the story with media in September. As a result, she received a series of anonymous, threatening text messages.

The messages, obtained by the Huffington Post, said to 'Stop it, Daniel' and warned that 'TJ is getting tired of your games and you are about to blacklisted as a "critic."' The texts also referenced the involvement of lawyers and said that 'I have copies of the emails that you sent trying to get exposure for yourself and defaming TJ.'

The Huffington Post on Wednesday said that they had confirmed that the e-mail Solzman shared had originated from Miller.

One of Miller's representatives told the Huffington Post that the e-mail that Solzman received 'is not about him [Miller] not liking transgender people. It's about a specific issue he has with this person.'

Solzman told the Huffington Post that Miller had been supportive when she had come out to him as transgender in November 2015.

On Tuesday, Miller's former girlfriend  who has not been publicly named  accused Miller of sexual assault, a claim that the actor and and his wife deny, saying that she's just a jealous ex who made up the story to try and break them up.

The alleged victim told the Daily Beast that she and Miller met at George Washington University in 2001, while the two were involved in one of the school's comedy groups.

The woman said Miller beat her and sexually assaulted her on two occasions, punching her in the face during sex and raping her with a beer bottle.

In a joint statement Miller and his wife said that they met Miller's accuser in college and that 'she attempted to break us up back then' and that they 'are confident that a full consideration of accounts from and since that time will shed light and clarity on the true nature of not only this person's character, but also the real facts of the matter.'

The couple also noted: 'Sadly she is now using the current climate to bandwagon and launch these false accusations again. It is unfortunate that she is choosing this route as it undermines the important movement to make women feel safe coming forward about legitimate claims against real known predators.'

Comedy Central announced on Tuesday that it was canceling Miller's television series, The Gorburger Show, in light of the sexual assault claims.
UPDATED

By Christina A. Samuels

On Dec. 21, Congress passed a short-term government spending bill designed to keep the Childrens Health Insurance Program operating through March, but its far from the five-year funding package that advocates for the program were hoping for.

So where would does the lack of a long-term deal leave the 9 million children and 370,000 pregnant women served by CHIP, which is aimed at families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but who cant afford insurance for their children or themselves on the open market?

Advocates offer some worrisome scenarios.

Families would have to scramble to find other insurance programs that they can afford. Many of them would go without insurance, and start to ration health care for their children based on what they can afford. Emergency rooms could feel the strain. And even if the program is funded sometime early in the new year, a lack of faith in CHIPs stability may be hard to overcomestudies have found that once families drop off the CHIP rolls, it can take years to bring them back.

Those were the takeaways that came from a press call Wednesday organized by the Georgetown University Center on Children and Families that included two state CHIP administrators.

The press call took place before participants knew about the government funding bill. But they made it clear that the program needs more than a series of temporary fixes.

Even whats happened so far, I believe, will cause irreparable damage to the CHIP program. It will take us years and years to overcome it, said Cathy Caldwell, who oversees CHIP for the Alabama Department of Public Health. About 84,000 Alabama children are served by CHIP.

Earlier in December, Congress reallocated CHIP reserve funds to states facing immediate shortfalls. But that ended up causing other states to lose money that they had been counting on. As a result, 25 states and the District of Columbia are now projected to run out of CHIP funds by the end of January .

Shifting around more money to patch the system will just leave states with more uncertainty, said Linda Nablo, the chief deputy director at Virginias Department of Medical Assistance Services

A short-term fix without adequate funding is not just useless, its dangerous, Nablo said. Virginia has about 68,000 children and 1,100 pregnant women on its CHIP rolls.

Congress is acting as if the only real issue is when states run out of their last dollar. They totally ignore the fact that these are large health-care systems, and they must be managed, Nablo said.

Theres no disagreement among lawmakers about whether to continue CHIP. A path to reauthorize the program for five years is already on the table. But lawmakers have been relying on reports that indicate that states can keep the program running on reserve funds, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University center. That, and Congresss focus on passing tax reform legislation, has reduced the urgency to act on CHIP.

State administrators are walking a tightrope, and they have no good choices until Congress acts decisively with funding, Alker said.

Caldwell, in Alabama, said her state just started notifiying families earlier this month that CHIP funding may not be there in the new year. Our phones are ringing off the wall. We have panicked families wondering just what in the world they have as options, Caldwell said.

Theres evidence that its hard to regain families who have dropped of the CHIP rolls. The news site Vox reported that in 2003 and 2004, Florida enacted restrictions on CHIP enrollment . Enrollment dropped from 337,000 to less than 200,000. Those restrictions were lifted in 2005, but enrollment in the program was just around 250,000 in 2010, years after the restrictions were lifted.

A similar story took place in Alabama, Caldwell said. The state froze enrollment for several months in fiscal 2004 because of a funding shortfall. That freeze and waiting list were only in place for seven months, she said, but we had people continuing to think we had a funding shortfall and a freeze out there for 10 years. Some of them think the program went away and that they have no options. We joke that that was the most successful message we every put out there.

Home Visiting Also Caught in Funding Limbo

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, known as MIECHV, is caught in a similar funding limbo. Republicans and Democrats say they both agree on the value of the program, but it also lapsed at the end of September.

In this situation, however, there is disagreement on how the program should be funded. The House wants state and local entities to match every federal dollar they receive . Though states do contribute funds for home visiting, a one-to-one match has not been required before. The Senate wants to maintain the current funding scheme.

The program served about 160,000 families in fiscal 2016. Iowa has already announced it wont enroll any new families.

Karen Howard, the vice president of early-childhood policy at the advocacy organization First Focus, said that funding for home visiting and for childrens health insurance could be rolled into a bill meant to keep the government operating until a larger budget is passed.

Put them on for their full term renewal and do not let us hang out there in the wind through January, Howard said. Thats what were hoping and urging them to do, and we see no reason they cant do it.
The US military is reportedly training for a mission that would land them on North Korean soil and remove 'weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict'.

Photos of a recent exercise, named Warrior Strike IX, show a US military unit known as 'The Black Jack Brigade' training alongside their South Korean counterparts at Camp Stanley, in South Korea.

The images, which were shared on the unit's Facebook page, show soldiers training with night-vision equipment, armored vehicles and full-face protective gear, including gas masks.

Descriptions of the event, which took place on December 15, suggest soldiers practiced for eventualities such as transporting injured comrades and capturing combatants.

The US military is reportedly training for a mission that would land them on North Korean soil and remove 'weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict'

Photos of a recent exercise, Warrior Strike IX, show a US military unit known as 'The Black Jack Brigade' training alongside their South Korean counterparts at Camp Stanley, in South Korea

The images, which were shared on the unit's Facebook page, show soldiers training with night-vision equipment, armored vehicles and full-face protective gear, including gas masks

Lt Col Christopher B. Logan, a spokesman for the US military in South Korea, told Business Insider that the US military doesn't 'discuss specific scenarios'.

However, he added that 'exercises are vital to the readiness of the US and our allies, and ensure we are ready and trained for combined-joint operations.'

North Korea is infamously secretive about its arsenal, reportedly hiding a number of weapons in mountains and underground tunnels.

If war did break out between North Korea and the US/South Korea, a key task early on would be seizing control of, or destroying, Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea has frequently threatened nuclear attacks on South Korea and the US, and demonstrated nuclear devices six times.

Both China and Russia have accused the US of escalating tensions with North Korea by increasing the military drills as well as several comments made to irk leader Kim Jong-un by US President Donald Trump.

Lt Col Christopher B. Logan, a spokesman for the US military in South Korea, said 'exercises are vital to the readiness of the US and our allies, and ensure we are ready and trained for combined-joint operations.'

If war did break out between North Korea and the US/South Korea, a key task early on would be seizing control of, or destroying, Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction

North Korea has frequently threatened nuclear attacks on South Korea and the US, and demonstrated nuclear devices six times

Both China and Russia have accused the US of escalating tensions with North Korea by increasing the military drills as well as several comments made to irk leader Kim Jong-un (right) by US President Donald Trump (left)

In the case of the former, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asked on December 12 while speaking to an audience at the 2017 Atlantic Council-Korea Foundation Forum about concerns China could experience a mass influx of refugees in the event of a regime collapse in Pyongyang.

'The most important thing to us would be securing those nuclear weapons they've alreadyd eveloped and ensuring that they  that nothing falls into the hands of people we would not want to have it,' he said.

He added the Chinese have apparently been privy to some of the planning that's been done for this eventuality, which includes the crossing of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), otherwise known as the 38th Parallel.
A father has tragically drowned after heroically swimming out to save his two young sons at a Victorian beach.

Emergency services were called to Skenes Creek beach near the Great Ocean Road on Thursday afternoon after a 41-year-old man got into trouble in rough oceans.

His two children, aged eight and 12-years-old, had safely returned to shore just after 1:20pm.

They have been taken to the Geelong University Public Hospital where they are in a stable condition.

A family member raced to assist the father but he was unable to be revived.

More to come.
This is the astounding moment an excavator demolishes a home and pushes its last wall into the house next door, putting the wheelchair-bound neighbour's life at great risk by trapping her in her house.

The concrete house at Pt Chevalier in Auckland was almost flattened at 7.45pm when the excavator with claw grips touched the last side that was still standing.

The concrete wall crashed into the next-door wooden bungalow of Kate Paterson, crushing a wooden fence beneath its weight.

The light wooden structure offers little resistance and the front bedroom wall of Ms Paterson's house is smashed, but the worst is yet to come for her.

The concrete wall punctured Ms Paterson's bedroom and collapsed on her driveway, but it also smashed against the gas meter outside her house

As the video footage taken by a bystander reveals, the concrete wall also smashed against the gas meter outside her house.

The hiss of the escaping gas can be heard as bystanders yell at the excavator drivers to 'turn his machine off'.

'You idiots,' screams another woman.

Ms Paterson then urged her children to leave the near-century-old bungalow while she was stuck waiting for emergency services.

Work was shut down by WorkSafe, which issued a non-disturbance notice on Thursday morning.

Two investigations are underway into the failed operation.

An apology has been issued to the neighbour whose house is now unlivable as the incident left a deep gash in the home's weatherboards and sectioned the gas supply.

Witnesses to the incident said they warned the owner of the demolished house the operation was unsafe and they should stop it before anyone gets hurt. They also contacted WorkSafe NZ several times.

On Thursday, the Auckland Council said an investigation had started into the work.

WorkSafe NZ had also been notified and was leading an investigation into safety concerns, said a council spokesman.

'It is important all building works be completed safely and up to the building code even when a consent was not required', he added.

The concrete house of Pt Chevalier in Auckland was almost flattened at 7.45 pm when the excavator with claw grips touched the last side that was still standing

On Thursday, the Auckland Council said an investigation had started into the work

Stan Schwalger, who filmed the whole scene, said he could see partway through the demolition process the wall was out of plumb and would fall across the driveway

A WorkSafe spokesman reported two calls on Wednesday concerning asbestos contamination and unsafe demolition practices at the property. They also reported more complaints after the botched operation.

'WorkSafe is making initial inquiries into the matter to determine the next steps', the spokesman told the NZ Herald.

Stan Schwalger, who filmed the whole scene, said he could see partway through the demolition process that the wall was out of plumb and would fall across the driveway.

'We could hear him yelling "No, Les" just before the excavator nudges the side wall.

'He was yelling at them to stop, not to pull the wall over,' added Ms Paterson.

The owner of the Moa St property was asked to come on site and witness for himself the demolition operation. He apologised to Ms Paterson for the damage done.

After the incident, workers blocked the road for two hours to fixed the gas leak and dealt with damaged power supplies.
Danny Masterson's ex-girlfriend has accused him of raping her 'repeatedly'.

On Wednesday night, actress and model Bobette Riales tweeted that she was raped by the former That 70s Show star whom she dated in 2003 - with the New York Daily News claiming she is the fifth woman to accuse Masterson of sexual misconduct.

The date of the incident along with other details of Riales' story are remarkably similar to information shared in the police report filed by one of the four women who had previously accused Masterson of rape.

'I stayed quiet long enough. Danny Masterson repeatedly raped me. All I seek is justice to prevent this from ever happening to anyone else as it has for some time,' Riales, 36, wrote.

'My truth will be heard. I applaud @ChrisseBixler. #metoo #sisters.'

Chrissie Carnell Bixler is one of the women who has come forward to accuse the actor of rape.

Bixler, another former girlfriend of Masterson, accused him of raping her while they were dating in 2001.

On Wednesday night, actress Bobette Riales, Danny Masterson's ex-girlfriend, tweeted that she was raped by the former That 70s Show star, making her the fifth woman to accuse Masterson of sexual misconduct (pictured together in June 2003)

'I stayed quiet long enough. Danny Masterson repeatedly raped me. All I seek is justice to prevent this from ever happening to anyone else as it has for some time,' Riales, 36, wrote

Bixler, another former girlfriend of Masterson who accused him of raping her while they were dating in 2001, congratulated Riales on her courage

Bixler responded to Riales's tweet, writing back: 'You are amazing. I'm so proud of you. He will never do this to another human being ever again.

'He's a thief in the night, but he overlooks some incredibly valuable things we still possess. Our voice.'

The actor's accusers all claim Masterson, 41, violently raped them in the early 2000s.

He has been under investigation by the the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office since 2016.

Due to the mounting allegations against him, Masterson was dropped from his Netflix series, The Ranch, on December 5.

'As a result of ongoing discussions, Netflix and the producers have written Danny Masterson out of 'The Ranch',' a spokesperson told DailyMail.com at the time.

'Yesterday was his last day on the show, and production will resume in early 2018 without him.'

All five women, including Riales (pictured), have accused Masterson, 41, of violently raping them in the early 2000s

Masterson (pictured, May 2017) has been under investigation by the the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office since 2016

Masterson (pictured, left, with Riales in June 2003) has not yet responded to the latest allegations against him but had denied all past allegations

A representative for the actor released a statement to The Hollywood Reporter this past March, suggesting that the allegations against Masterson - a noted Scientologist - were motivated by victims' association with Leah Remini, who left the church.

'We are aware of (the alleged victim's) 16-year-old allegations. It was only after (the alleged victim) was in contact with Leah Remini that she made allegations of sexual assault by Mr Masterson,' the rep stated.

'The alleged incident occurred in the middle of their 6-year relationship, after which she continued to be his longtime girlfriend. Significantly, during their long relationship she made numerous claims that she was previously raped by at least 3 other famous actors and musicians.'

A representative for the actor released a statement to The Hollywood Reporter this past March, suggesting that the allegations against Masterson - a noted Scientologist - were motivated by victims' association with Leah Remini, who left the church (Pictured, Riales)

The statement went on, accusing the victim of continuing to reach out to Masterson after their relationship ended, even going as far as threatening his current wife, Bijou Phillips (Pictured, right, with Masterson in June 2016)

Due to the mounting allegations against him, Masterson was recently dropped from his Netflix series, The Ranch (Pictured, right, in The Ranch with Ashton Kutcher)

The statement went on, accusing the victim of continuing to reach out to Masterson after their relationship ended, even going as far as threatening his current wife, Bijou Phillips.

Bixler claimed she reported the rape to the Church of Scientology, but leaders allegedly ignored her.

The Church of Scientology 'adamantly' denied her allegation.

Masterson has not yet responded to the latest allegations against him but had denied all past allegations.
Advertisement

More than a dozen pedestrians, including a toddler, have been injured with four fighting for life in hospital after a car 'deliberately' ploughed into rush hour crowds in the heart of Melbourne.

A white Suzuki SUV with p-plates, driven by 32-year-old man of Afghan descent, who The Herald Sun have identified as Saeed Noori, crashed into a large group of commuters and shoppers at the corner of Melbourne's busy Elizabeth Street and Flinders Street at 4.41pm on Thursday.

The 32-year-old lone wolf driver was known to police and was arrested at the scene.

The driver, who is an Australian citizen, is under police guard at hospital with shoulder and hand injuries.

Victoria Police said the driver has a history of drug use, criminal history with a minor assault in 2010 and is on a mental health plan.

More than a dozen pedestrians, including a toddler, have been injured after a car ploughed into rush hour crowds (pictured)

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard (pictured) being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle

19 people were injured (one pictured) and taken to hospitals across Melbourne and four of them are in critical conditions

Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews said Thursday night the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders' (pictured)

Victoria Police will remain at the scene through the night until at least Friday morning as they investigate (pictured)

Usually a busy strip in the heart of the city, Flinders Street has become a crime scene (pictured) after the car ploughed crowds

A second 24-year-old man, who had a bag of three knives, was arrested but police believe he had no link to the incident.

'Clarity on the second offender that is in custody, it has not yet been determined whether he was involved, and it is quite probable he was not,' Acting Commissioner Shane Patton said.

The 24-year-old man was seen filming the rampage.

The crash injured 19 people, including the driver and an off duty police officer and four people are in a critical condition while a four-year-old boy was left with serious head injuries but is in a stable condition.

A 25-year-old man, 40-year-old man, 43-year-old man, 45-year-old man, 83-year-old man, two 25-year-old women, 30-year-old woman, 35-year-old woman, 47-year-old woman and a 58-year-old woman were some of the victims injured in the rampage, according to police.

Another three men and two women were injured but their ages are unknown.

Victoria Police believe the incident has no link to terror-related attacks.

'We do not have any evidence to a connection with terrorism,' Acting Commissioner Patton said.

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation.'

Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews said Thursday night the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders'.

'What occurred on Flinders Street this afternoon was an act of evil and an act of cowardice,' Mr Andrews said.

'At a time of the year when so many families are celebrating the end of they year, doing their Christmas shopping ... we have seen a horrific act.'

Two men were arrested at the scene after the white SUV (pictured) crashed into a bollard at Flinders Street Station

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle.

An eye-witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd.

She told radio station 3AW: 'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere.

'We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere.'

Another witness, Jim, told ABC News the driver ploughed through the intersection full of people at speeds up to 100km/h.

'The only thing that slowed him down was him hitting pedestrians,' Jim said.

'There was no braking, there was no slowing down.'

Dramatic footage shows a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passers-by as they wait for paramedics.

Victoria Police dragged the man in a white shirt (pictured) from the white Suzuki to the gutter shortly after the incident

Footage shows the damaged car surrounded by dozens of injured pedestrians while police arrest one man (pictured)

A man was seen talking to police near the scene soon after the car crashed into the tram stop bollard

Dozens of people were hit by the car with witnesses saying they saw the car doing burnouts before the incident

A witness told Nine News they thought the car was travelling at about 60km/h as it drove into busy crowds (pictured)

The white Suzuki SUV (pictured) was forced to stop its rampage when it crashed into a bollard near Flinders Street Station

A car crashed into the crowds at Melbourne 's Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street (pictured) causing dramatic scenes

Ambulance Victoria said paramedics were called to the scene (pictured) at 4.41pm Thursday and several are critical

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was nearby in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

He was on the scene from about two minutes after the car collided and could see the cracked windscreen and Good Samaritans trying to save injured pedestrians.

'A few ladies were screaming but it was calm - there were no sirens, nothing,' Mr Harris said.

'I was here when the other one (the Bourke Street tragedy) happened . you get desensitised.'

Witness Lachlan Vella told Fairfax Media he saw a man dressed in a suit with his 'head busted open' as he was lying on the ground.

Mr Vella said another man 'had blood around his head and was snoring, like atonal breathing,' as a woman came in and out of consciousness.

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was near the crash aftermath (pictured)

The heart of Melbourne's CBD is in lock down after the car ploughed down a number of shoppers and commuters (pictured)

19 people were taken to hospital including a pre-school aged child with serious head injuries who is now in stable condition

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation,' Commander Russell Barrett (pictured) said

Police locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street (pictured)

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife was taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed

A number of injured were taken to the The Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, St Vincent's Hospital and Royal Children's Hospital including the driver of the car (pictured) and a police officer

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife had been taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed.

Police have locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street.

A child at pre-school suffered head injuries and was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but the extent of the injuries are unknown.

Eye-witnesses told 9 News the saw the white SUV being driven at about 60km/h before it smashed into dozens of pedestrians.

Another witness told 3AW there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground'.

More could have been injured if not for the vehicle crashing into a bollard at the tram stop out the front of Flinders Street Station.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Police said the driver of the car and a second man were arrested after what they believe was a 'deliberate' attack in the CBD

A child at pre-school suffered serious head injuries and was taken to Royal Children's Hospital (white SUV pictured)

More could have been injured if the white Suzuki did not crash into a bollard after about '15 seconds' of trauma

Lachlan Read, 20, told The Herald Sun the whole rampage lasted about 15 seconds.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' Mr Read said.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote on Twitter saying the federal and state security agencies would work together to investigate the 'shocking incident'.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the emergency and health workers who are treating them,' Mr Turnbull wrote.

The carnage comes almost a year after six people were killed and 30 injured when a car ploughed through the Bourke Street Mall.

The driver, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, was charged with six counts of murder after he allegedly used a maroon Holden Commodore sedan to run down shoppers during the lunch break.

A child and two adults were amoung those who died following the attack as well as a three-month-old baby boy.

Subsequently, concrete bollards were installed around Melbourne CBD at popular locations to prevent future vehicle attacks.

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated shortly after the incident Thursday

A witness told Melbourne's 3AW radio station there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground' (pictured)

'People were flying everywhere ... people running everywhere' a witness told the 3AW radio station on Thursday (pictured)
A boy who was charged at the age of 11 over the stabbing death of a man following Australia Day celebrations last year could walk free in just two months.

The boy, now 13, was one of eight people to chase and attack Patrick Slater, who was fatally stabbed with a screwdriver in Perth in the early hours of January 27, 2016.

Children's Court president Dennis Reynolds sentenced the boy to four years on Thursday after he was found guilty of manslaughter.

He will be eligible for supervised release early next year because of time already served, the ABC reported.

The boy (pictured left), now 13, was one of eight people to chase and attack Patrick Slater (right), who was fatally stabbed with a screwdriver in Perth on January 27, 2016

Mr Slater, 26, died in hospital after he was attacked with star pickets, screwdrivers and rocks following a 3am brawl near Elizabeth Quay Station

In sentencing, Judge Reynolds outlined the boy's 'chaotic family system and negative behaviour of people within it,' according to Perth Now.

Quoting a report, he said the child was exposed to drug use and domestic violence within his family, while he was often sent to school without food.

'Paddy' Slater, 26, died in hospital after he was attacked with star pickets, screwdrivers and rocks following a 3am brawl near Elizabeth Quay Station.

Police said two large groups were involved in the fight, which involved around 20 people.

CCTV footage showed the then 11-year-old boy leaving the scene carrying a bloodied screwdriver, according to reports.

Eight other people were sentenced earlier this year to between four-and-a-half years detention and life imprisonment over Mr Slater's death.

Police said two large groups were involved in the fight, which involved around 20 people (pictured: footage of the brawl)

'Paddy was a son, a grandson, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin and a friend too many,' a fundraising page for Mr Slater's family reads

Three children were among those charged over the death, aged 11, 14 and 17 at the time of the violent attack.

Mr Slater died from a stab wound to his chest which pierced his aorta.

A GoFundMe page was set up last year to raise money for Mr Slater's family.

'Paddy was a son, a grandson, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin and a friend too many,' the page reads.

'He was a kind hearted man who touched many lives. Paddy's death has left his family completely heartbroken.'
A middle-aged man with a self-proclaimed Tasmanian Devil phobia has accused his father-in-law of menacing him with a wig that resembles the mane of the cartoon character.

Mazen Dayem, 36, had his in-law, Yunes Doleh, 62, arrested last month in Staten Island after a funeral where Doleh violated a restraining order by coming at him with the toupee in hand, police said.

It seems the father-in-law and son have been disputing since 2013 when they got into an argument that turned physical - leaving Dayem with a fractured skull, the lawsuit obtained by everything-pr.com said.

The perturbed Dayem explained the November altercation in further detail while speaking with the New York Post.

Mazen Dayem, 36, (left) had his father-in-law, Yunes Doleh, 62, (right) arrested last month in Staten Island after he menaced him with a wig

Dayem revealed he has feared the Tasmanian Devil for as long as he can remember

'He walked in as I was already there,' he said. 'He removed his wig, made hand gestures.

'It's just a very large fear of mine, his damn wig... him and his hair reminds me of the Tasmanian Devil hair.

'I truly and genuinely have a large fear of wigs now, (and) it's a genuine fear. I have nightmares.'

Dayem said Doleh's taunting about his fear has only made matters worse for their relationship.

Doleh (shown right) has been accused of repeatedly harassing Dayem since he married his daughter

'It always made me very anxious,' Dayem added.

Since Dayem married his daughter, Doleh has been accused of repeatedly harassing him.

The father-in-law has been charged with criminal mischief.

'I believe at the end of the day, the criminal cases will be dismissed and my client [will be shown to have done] nothing wrong,' Dolehs attorney, Matthew Santamauro, said in a statement, according to the Post.

Dayem, a supermarket mogul, revealed he has been living with the fear since he was a boy.
Vice President Mike Pence said the passage of the tax reform bill was a 'middle class miracle' and that he and President Donald Trump are 'just getting started.'

In an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, which was aired Wednesday during 'The Ingraham Angle,' Pence said that it was 'humbling' to have played a part in ushering the tax reform bill through Congress.

'To be here for the largest tax cut in the history of the country  the kind of tax reform we haven't seen for 31 years  and at the same time to repeal the individual mandate in Obamacare and open up ANWR to environmentally responsible drilling is just humbling for me to be a part of,' Pence said in the interview.

Scroll down for video

Vice President Mike Pence sat down with Fox News' Laura Ingraham to talk about the passing of the tax reform bill, which is being touted as the first largest tax cut in 30 years

Pence said that it was 'humbling' to have played a part in ushering the tax reform bill through Congress

The tax reform bill had also included apparently unexpected legislation that would allow oil drilling and other forms of energy development in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, lifting a development ban that had been in place for the past 40 years.

Pence said that he and others felt 'very grateful for the president's strong leadership' in the period leading up to the bill's passing. He said that the 'middle class miracle... was an idea whose time had come.'

Pence admitted he was surprised that the tax reform bill received zero support from congressional Democrats, especially after Trump had taken pains to host Democrats at meals and meetings at the White House.

Pence also revealed that Trump 'would have been happy' to have seen the removal of a provision allowing for a carried interest hedge fund loophole from the tax reform bill, but it stayed in the final bill.

During the interview, Ingraham pressed Pence on what the Trump administration would need to do to convince the majority of Americans that the unpopular tax reform bill will help line their pockets, not empty them.

Pence (with Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump on Wednesday) said Americans will see Trump and others canvassing the country in 2018

Pence said that, 'When the American people start to see more in their paychecks in February, they're going to start to realize that the president's vision... is going to sell itself.'

Regarding rumors that Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan might be stepping down more quickly than anticipated, Pence said that he and Trump wanted him to stay put.

'I think the result of this tax cut really speaks for itself,' Pence said, noting that he and Trump hold Ryan 'in the highest regard and want him to stay in the Congress and continue to lead Congress because were really just getting started.'

Although he seemed to be dismissive of polls showing the administration's low approval ratings, Pence noted that, with midterm elections coming up, Americans can 'count on the fact' that he, Trump and members of the administration will be traveling around the country next year, tub-thumping all year long.
Motorists heading up the Pacific Highway to a beach getaway will cop double demerit points from Friday.

Harsher penalties for speeding, failing to wear a seat belt or talking on a mobile phone while driving come into force from midnight in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia.

So if you're travelling north of Sydney up the busy Pacific Highway, brace yourself for double demerit points on any patch of road up to Tweed Heads.

If you're driving up the Pacific Highway from Sydney to Brisbane (pictured) be aware of double demerit points in New South Wales from Friday

Police highway patrol cars in New South Wales will be looking out for drivers who speed

Double demerit points will be in force on all stretches of the Pacific Highway between Tweed Heads and Sydney

DOUBLE DEMERIT POINTS Exceed the speed limit by 10km/h and under (2 points) Exceed the speed limit by over 10km/h (6 points) Exceed the speed limit by over 20km/h (8 points) Exceed the speed limit by over 30km/h (10 points) Exceed the speed limit by over 45km/h (12 points) Driver not wearing his/her own seatbelt (6 points) Driver penalty for each passenger not wearing a seatbelt (6 points) Rider on a motorcycle not wearing his/her own helmet (6 points) Rider penalty for passenger on a motorcycle not wearing a helmet (6 points) Using a mobile phone while driving (8 points) * Source: NSW Police Advertisement

From December 22 until the final minute of New Year's Day, drivers in NSW and the ACT will incur six demerit points if they exceed the speed limit by 10 kilometres an hour.

Get caught travelling more than 20km/h over the speed limit and you will cop eight demerit points.

Driving and using a mobile phone at the same time is an offence worth eight demerit points.

Motorists will also incur six demerit points for each passenger not wearing a seat belt, with two unrestrained passengers almost enough to cause a driver to lose their licence for three months.

In NSW and the ACT, drivers lose their licence for three months once they've accumulated 13 demerit points, while it's 12 points in WA.

Double demerit points are in force longer in WA, running from Friday until Sunday, January 7.

Motorists will also cop double the punishment for drink driving, running a red light, failing to properly secure a child in a restraint and running a red light.

Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmanian and the Northern Territory don't have double demerit points for public holidays and long weekends.

Drivers in New South Wales will incur double demerit points for speeding in a bid to prevent crashes like this
A woman at the centre of a love triangle who paid a hitman $4000 to shoot her boyfriend in the heart has been found guilty of murder.

Louise Spiteri-Ahern, 27, was found guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Thursday morning following a judge-alone trial, according to Nine News.

She paid hitman Daniel Haile $4000 to kill her ex-boyfriend Raymond Pasnin by shooting him in the heart as he entered a car in the driveway of his mother's home in Pendle Hill, western Sydney in 2013.

Louise Spiteri-Ahern, 27, was found guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Thursday morning following a judge-alone trial

The court heard Ms Spiteri-Ahern was motivated by rejection and vengeance, and was furious that she had begun a relationship with another woman.

She sent text messages to Mr Pasnin saying 'I did everything you asked for' and 'oh boy you deserve everything that is coming for you'.

The crown alleged she conspired to kill Mr Pasnin with another of his ex-partners named April Barber.

However Ms Barber was found not guilty of being an accessory and her husband Amin Zraika was found not guilty of concealing a serious indictable offence.

Lyndal Archibold, the fiancee of murdered man Raymond Pasnin, leaves NSW Supreme Court

Haile, 29, is serving a 24-year sentence for the killing of Mr Pasnin.

Mr Pasnin died in hospital and a post-mortem examination found a .38 calibre bullet had gone through his heart and lungs before lodging in his body, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Haile was paid more than $4000 for the hit.

Mr Pasnin and Spiteri-Ahern broke up in late 2012, before she bombarded him with angry messages.
Alert George Carlin: As you probably know by now, the Center for Disease Control has been told not to use seven words and phrases in its budget request for 2019, which will be officially released early next year, along with the rest of the Trump administrations budget.

Those words are: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based, and science-based. (The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the CDC, disputed the report in a statement to CNN, calling it a mischaracterization.)

So are there certain words that the U.S. Department of Education has been told are no-nos? No, according to a spokesman. In fact, at least three of the words that the CDC has been told are no-gos were included in the Education Departments most recent budget request, released last spring by the Trump administration.

Heres a quick look at a few examples:



Evidence-based

 The Trump administration sought "$370 million for Education Innovation and Research to expand support for evidence-based initiatives to develop, validate, and scale up effective education interventions that help states and districts meet [federal] requirements.



 The budget asks for "$2 million for Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) to provide evidence-based professional development activities and prepare teachers and principals from nontraditional preparation and certification routes to serve in high-need [districts].



The phrase is also used multiple times in the budget for the Institute for Education Sciences, the departments research arm. That includes a description of the agencys mission. The documents say IES works to produce and support the use of evidence-based practices in the field and in the Department. And it says the agency can help states and school districts implement the new [Every Student Succeeds Act] requirements to use evidence-based interventions in schools singled out for extra help.

Vulnerable

 The budget proposal describes both Title I grants for districts and special education state grants as programs benefitting vulnerable students.

Diversity

 The budget notes that charter school grants can be allocated to schools that embrace strategies for increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity.

Want more? Check out this commentary piece from Gloria Ladson-Billings is the president of the National Academy of Education on the potential impact of banned words on schools.

Librarian Holly Peele contributed to this report.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
A picture has emerged of a taxi driver who has admitted killing a British embassy worker in Beirut.

Uber driver Tarek Houchiye has confessed to strangling 30-year-old Rebecca Dykes after picking her up following a night out in the Lebanese capital on Friday night.

The diplomat's body was discovered on Saturday evening, dumped by the side of a motorway.

The grainy driving licence image emerged as a haul of documents reportedly showed Houchiye faked his criminal record papers so he could work as a taxi driver in the city.

Uber driver Tarek Houchiye (pictured) has confessed to strangling 30-year-old Rebecca Dykes after picking her up after a night out in the Lebanese capital on Friday night

The body of Rebecca Dykes (pictured) was discovered on Saturday evening, dumped by the side of a motorway

A security source said that the 29-year-old may have hidden convictions for drugs offences and assault, The Sun reports. Another possibility was that the document was fake, the source added.

Uber told MailOnline this morning that it was aware of the documents but that it was down to the Lebanese government to carry out background checks and hand out licenses.

A spokesman said: 'All drivers that use the Uber app in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record.'

Ms Dykes was last seen alive at a party in Gemmayzeh, a Beirut neighbourhood popular with foreign residents, on Friday night and left in the suspect's car.

Her body was found dumped on the side of a highway north of Beirut early the following evening.

The suspect was arrested on Monday after being tracked down thanks to security cameras, according to the Lebanese National News Agency.

A senior security official had told AFP that strangulation was the likely cause of death and added that Dykes was found with string tied around her neck.

Uber said it was assisting Lebanese authorities in their investigation.

Ms Dykes was last seen alive at a party in Gemmayzeh, a Beirut neighbourhood popular with foreign residents, on Friday night and left in the suspect's car. Her body was found dumped on the side of a highway (pictured) north of Beirut early the following evening

Miss Dykes ordered an Uber taxi at midnight on Friday, just a few hours before she was due to fly back to Britain for Christmas

The 30-year-old diplomat, who worked at the British embassy in the Lebanese capital, was found on the side of a motorway with a rope tied around her throat, and her clothing had been ripped, local police said

'We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victim and her family,' a company spokesman said in London.

The company's driver identification and rating system is seen by many, especially women, as offering better safety guarantees than when hailing a cab off the street in Lebanon.

A Lebanese judicial source told AFP the suspect has a criminal past and was arrested twice for alleged harassment and theft related to customers.

Lebanon's interior minister warned on Wednesday against using Uber in the wake of the murder.

Uber drivers hold placards and their identity outside the company's in Beirut, Lebanon, today during a protest against Lebanon's interior minister Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk after he warned against using the service

Furious taxi drivers in Beirut staged a demonstration after the Interior Minister warned against using Uber

Nohad Machnouk said the driver had a criminal record, without elaborating, but said that should have been an alarm for anyone seeking to hire him. Machnouk urged Lebanese to use 'traditional' taxis, saying Uber is a 'virtual' entity that has no physical representation.

'I urge all Lebanese not to use this means (of transport) because we don't consider it safe,' he said. 'Dealing with Uber is risky and it is better we return to traditional ways.'

Machnouk was speaking at a public dinner organised by the Beirut municipality, where Uber is popular among the expatriate community as well as internet-connected young Lebanese, and provided a competitive edge to the traditional taxis in the congested city.

Lebanon's Al-Nahar newspaper said in a report Wednesday that the 29-year-old driver was sentenced to six months in prison 10 years ago for stealing a motorcycle.

Uber drivers in Lebanon must be licensed taxi drivers. The company says it enrolls drivers with no criminal record but it is not clear if it runs its own security checks.

Also, according to Lebanese law, one's criminal record can be cleared after a certain number of years. One legal expert told the Daily Star that crimes less severe than murder can be erased after three years.
Melbourne is still trying to come to terms with the horrific car rampage which tragically killed six people, including two children, in January.

Dimitrious Gargasoulas is accused of driving through Bourke Street, deliberately mowing down pedestrians before police shot and wounded him.

During the rampage, a child was thrown from a pram which was dragged 100 metres down the street after getting stuck on the bonnet of the maroon Commodore.

The baby's mother watched in horror - as people ran for their lives in the ensuing chaos - and she was heard desperately begging: 'Where is my baby?'

Just shy of 12 months later, the horrific memories of that sunny summer day in the heart of Melbourne came flooding back.

Seven people, including a toddler, have been rushed to hospital and several others are injured after a car once again ploughed into pedestrians on Thursday afternoon.

Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians in the heart of Melbourne

More than a dozen pedestrians, including a toddler, have been injured after the car ploughed into rush hour crowds

A damaged vehicle is seen at the scene of an incident on Flinders Street in Melbourne on Thursday

Chaotic scenes unfolded as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked commuters and shoppers at the corner of Melbourne's Elizabeth Street and Flinders Street at 4.41pm on Thursday

The terrifying scenes unfolded near Flinders Street Station - just a few hundred metres from January's tragedy.

A white four-wheel-drive slammed into 19 people, sending 'bodies flying' and leaving four fighting for life in hospital.

A Flinders Street shopkeeper described the incident as 'more dramatic' than the Bourke Street rampage 11 months ago.

He told The Australian there were 'bodies everywhere' as onlookers desperately tried to help the injured.

'Just holding them and comforting them, not moving them but keeping them comfortable,' he said.

A Flinders St shopkeeper described the tragedy as 'more dramatic' than the Bourke Street rampage

Emergency services attend to injured people near Flinders Street station in Melbourne

Police and emergency services attend to the scene in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon

Footage shows a man in a white shirt (pictured) being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle on Thursday

Lachlan Read, 20, told The Herald Sun the whole rampage lasted about 15 seconds.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' Mr Read said.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'

Paul Cahalane, 25, was walking to a supermarket on Elizabeth Street when he heard a 'bang'.

'The first thing I saw was people sprinting in separate directions, saying ''bomb and this and that'',' he said.

A man sits at the scene of an incident involving a vehicle ploughing into pedestrians at a crowded intersection

The scene of the incident is pictured on Flinders Street in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon

The white four-wheel-drive slammed into 14 people, with 'several' left fighting for their lives

'Straight away I saw about five or six people on the floor.'

He said one man appeared non-responsive and a woman had blood over her face.

The driver has been arrested along with a second man and both are in custody, police said.

Police later said they believed the second man had no links to the incident, but is still assisting police with enquiries.

They said initial investigations suggest it was not a tragic accident.

'At this stage, we believe it was a deliberate act. The motivations are unknown. It's still early days in the investigation,' Victoria Police Commander Russell Barrett said

A pre-school aged child suffered a head injury and was rushed to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition, Ambulance Victoria said.

'Just holding them and comforting them, not moving them but keeping them comfortable,' one witness said

Police and emergency personnel work at the scene of where a car ran over pedestrians in Flinders Street

A wrecked car is pictured at the scene of an incident involving a vehicle on Flinders Street on Thursday

Aerial footage of the scene shows a white Suzuki SUV crashed into a tram stop.

The vehicle ran a red light just after 4.30pm on Thursday, witnesses have told radio station 3AW.

One bystander said the Suzuki was travelling west along Flinders Street at up to 100km/h.

'The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just ploughed through,' he told ABC TV.

CAR HITS PEDESTRIANS IN MELBOURNE: WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR * 19 injured, four critically. * Two men, including the driver, arrested. * No charges laid. * Pre-school child with a serious head injury among those hospitalised. * White Suzuki Vitara crashed through pedestrians about 4.45pm Thursday. * The car crashed into a tram stop and stopped at the intersection of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street * 'At this time police believe this is a deliberate act' - Victoria Police commander Russell Barrett. * 'Stay safe. Check on your loved ones. And thank you to our brave emergency services.' - Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews Source: Victoria Police, Twitter Advertisement

Dimitrious Gargasoulas is accused of driving through Bourke Street, deliberately mowing down pedestrians before police shot and wounded him on January 20

Gargasoulas is alleged to have killed six people during the horrific Bourke Street rampage earlier this year

The wreckage of the car Gargasoulas allegedly used to mow down pedestrians in January

'The only thing that slowed him down was him hitting pedestrians.

'There was no breaking, there was no slowing down. Whether it was targeted or whether he had a heart attack, or was drunk, I don't know.'

Police confirmed a number of people are being treated for a range of injuries.

Thursday's incident on Flinders Street between Elizabeth and Swanston streets has brought parts of the city to a standstill four days out from Christmas.

'Police have saturated the CBD area in the vicinity of Flinders, Elizabeth and Swanston streets to ensure community safety,' police said in a statement.
A masked paedophile hunter was arrested after she confronted a man at an airfield and accused him of grooming a 12-year-old girl.

The woman, known only as Stacey, stormed the man's place of work in Northamptonshire and tried to perform a citizen's arrest.

Stacey, from vigilante group Hunters 25/8, then clashed with his colleagues who called the police when she refused to leave the airfield.

Dramatic video shows her accusing the workers of being 'f****** wronguns' because they 'defended a peadophile'.

Police arrived and took her into custody after she refused to calm down and 'stop swearing in public'. But she was later released at the scene.

The footage of the incident was broadcast live on Facebook yesterday and has been viewed more than 150,000 times.

It shows the group approach the man outside his workplace and accuse him of sending explicit images of himself to one of their decoys posing as a child online.

The female hunter tells him he is a danger to children and says: 'We've come here to expose you for the scum that you are.'

He claims he was 'just playing' and insists: 'It's not children, it's not real.'

The man then gets out his phone but the hunters seize it as evidence.

Paedophile hunters confronted this man at his place of work in Northamptonshire and accused him of being a sex offender

A scuffle breaks out as he tries to snatch it back, screaming: 'I have a right to have my phone.'

He starts sobbing as the hunters pin him against a wall and he cries: 'I have a dead child.'

His colleagues hear the commotion and hurry outside to confront the hunters.

The man filming then threatens to turn the camera on them if they do not stop interfering, but they question his authority and urge the group to release their colleague.

A man claiming to be the airfield manager approaches and says: 'Excuse me, can I ask you to leave the airfield, please?'

The group refuse, saying: 'He's a paedophile.'

The manager replies: 'I don't care. Get in your car and leave.'

Police then arrive and the man's phone is handed over to officers along with chat logs.

But Stacey becomes irate when she notices one of the evidence folders is missing and accuses the man's colleagues of hiding it.

The man denied the accusations but was later arrested on suspicion of causing a female aged 13 or over to engage in sexual activity

She marches towards them, shouting: 'F****** wronguns.' A police officer tells her to tone down her language and arrests her - drawing cheers from the workers.

Sat handcuffed in a police car, the woman blasts: 'You let people look out for a paedophile. I hope you ain't got kids, mate. The nonce in the car in front ain't f****** locked is he? Is he handcuffed? No, he ain't. You know what, you're a d*******.'

The woman was released without charge and the missing evidence file was recovered by police.

But social media users were appalled by the way officers responded and vented their outrage on the force's Facebook page.

Hayley Stimson wrote: 'Totally shocked at the police treatment of Stacey. You should show far more respect for the hunters when they're doing a brilliant job keeping our kids safe.'

Sophie Gallagher commented: 'You've got people trying to help kids and your officers are arresting them. Absolutely disgusting. Should be ashamed of your officers.'

Alison Yeaman added: 'This police force puts the police forces down all around the country. It's a joke. No wonder I've no faith in police.'

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: 'Officers were called yesterday at about 9.10am following reports of an altercation.

'Officers attended the scene and arrested a man and a woman. The woman was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and has since been de-arrested.

'The man, who is aged 29, was arrested on suspicion of causing a female aged 13 or over to engage in sexual activity. He is currently in police custody.'
Four people were killed and 11 others missing after a ferry with hundreds of people on board capsized in stormy weather off the Philippines, rescuers said.

Over 200 passengers and crew were plucked to safety after the Mercraft 3 keeled over in heavy seas en route to a remote island, officials said.

'The wind suddenly picked up and the boat was forced to stop when the bow started taking in water. Passengers ran to the side just before it tipped over,' student Donel Mendiola told DZMM radio.

'Some of us swam, but I saw some old people who were apparently already dead,' Mendiola said.

Over 200 passengers and crew were plucked to safety after the Mercraft 3 keeled over in heavy seas en route to a remote island, officials said

'The wind suddenly picked up and the boat was forced to stop when the bow started taking in water. Passengers ran to the side just before it tipped over,' student Donel Mendiola told DZMM radio

Two men and two women were killed, while the search for those still missing has been suspended for the night, Ron Crisostomo, a civil defence official in Infanta town near Real told AFP

The accident occurred off the town of Real about 43 miles east of Manila as the boat headed from the port towards the remote island of Polillo in rough weather, coastguard spokesman Armand Balilo told a news conference

Two men and two women were killed, while the search for those still missing has been suspended for the night, Ron Crisostomo, a civil defence official in Infanta town near Real told AFP.

'It was rainy and the wind was up. It was no longer safe for the rescuers, but they will continue tomorrow,' Crisostomo said.

Janet Balili, a local council member, told ABS-CBN television 11 people remain missing.

The station aired footage of rescuers taking injured survivors to a hospital. Four body bags were also seen being laid out on the floor.

The boat tipped over between the remote island of Polillo and Real town, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Manila, shortly before noon (0400 GMT), the coastguard said.

It said the ferry was carrying 251 passengers and crew when it left the port of Real for Polillo, a 2.5-hour trip.

'We believe the weather was a big factor' in the accident, coastguard spokesman Armand Balilo told a news conference in Manila.

The ferry sailed as Tropical Storm Tembin loomed over the southern Philippines, nearly a thousand kilometres away.

The vessel, which is licensed to carry up to 286 people, was allowed to sail as there were no storm warnings at or around Real or Polillo, Balilo said.

The boat tipped over between the remote island of Polillo and Real town, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Manila, shortly before noon (0400 GMT), the coastguard said

The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, is plagued by poor sea transport, with its badly regulated boats and ships prone to overcrowding and accidents

The ferry sailed as Tropical Storm Tembin loomed over the southern Philippines, nearly a thousand kilometres away

The government had advised Filipinos planning to return to their home provinces for Christmas to do so earlier than usual to avoid heavy weather forecast to hit ahead of the holidays.

Another storm killed more than 40 people in the central Philippines last weekend.

The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, is plagued by poor sea transport, with its badly regulated boats and ships prone to overcrowding and accidents.

The latest incident occurred 30 years after another Philippine ferry, the Dona Paz, collided with an oil tanker in a pre-Christmas accident that claimed more than 4,000 lives in the world's worst peacetime disaster at sea.

More recently, the Kim Nirvana ferry capsized shortly after departure off the city of Ormoc in the central Philippines in 2015, killing 61 people. The accident was thought to have been due to overcrowding.
This is the terrifying moment a gas bottle exploded at a shopping mall in Melbourne's south-east.

Frantic Christmas shoppers were evacuated from the Bayside Shopping Centre at Frankston after gas cylinders exploded at the Bob Jane T Marts tyre workshop in the complex shortly after 7pm.

Witnesses reported hearing multiple 'bangs' and visible flames, only two hours after a four-wheel drive was driven into pedestrians in central Melbourne.

The gas cylinder explosion at Bayside Shopping Centre at Frankston sparked some panic

A fire and an explosion at the Bayside Shopping Centre at Frankston in Melbourne's south-east has closed down the Frankston train line

'Fire in what looked like the delivery entrance at Frankston mall,' one man said.

'Lots of massive booms, something obviously flammable going up.'

Victoria's Country Fire Authority said it responded to a gas cylinder bottle explosion at Bob Jane T Marts on the corner of Beach Street and Dandenong Road.

'A number of forklift gas cylinders are involved in fire,' it said.

Shoppers at the Frankston mall were evacuated following an explosion and a fire on Thursday

The Bayside Shopping Centre at Frankston in Melbourne's south-east has been evacuated

Victoria's Country Fire Authority said there was a fire at a Bob Jane T Marts tyre workshop

Victoria's Metro Trains service has suspended services on the Frankston line following the explosion

'There is currently no threat to the community, but you should continue to stay informed and monitor conditions.'

Trains were suspended on the Frankston line, with buses replacing trains between Carrum and Frankston.

Frankston station is next to the Bayside Shopping Centre near Port Phillip Bay.

The explosion at Frankston occurred just two hours after a white Suzuki Vitara four-wheel drive was driven into pedestrians at Flinders Street in central Melbourne, injuring 14 people before it crashed into a bollard outside Flinders Street Station.
The National Archives has removed a series of displays and a blog post after being accused of 'anti-British Empire-bashing'.

Retired history lecturer Tony Adler, 69, first complained to the organisation in 2009 after seeing a description of British colonialism as 'profoundly oppressive'.

The caption was part of an exhibition at the Keeper's Gallery museum, where visitors are introduced to historic moments covered by the archive's 11 million records.

The National Archives has removed a series of displays and a blog post after retired history lecturer Tony Adler, 69, accused them of anti-British Empire-bashing

The organisation initially rejected the complaint but then agreed to reword the caption after Mr Adler appealed to their chief executive.

Mr Adler also complained about a blog post discussing the Partition of India, arguing that it took an anti-British stance on the historical event.

He took further issue with curators' failure to mention William Wilberforce's successful campaign to abolish the slave trade.

The organisation also didn't make clear in the caption of a picture of HMS Daphne carrying slaves in the Indian Ocean in 1868 that the vessel was used to police seas and prevent slaving from east Africa and the Arabian peninsula, he said.

And now the archive, a non-ministerial government department based in Kew, west London, have admitted presenting Britain's colonial history without 'due impartiality'.

Responding to criticisms of 'Empire-bashing', it replaced its contentious displays with ones discussing different topics and removed the offending blog post so it could be edited.

Mr Adler complained that the National Archives didn't make clear in the caption of a picture of HMS Daphne carrying slaves in the Indian Ocean in 1868 that the vessel was used to police seas and prevent slaving from east Africa and the Arabian peninsula

'An internal review of the complaint found that, while the majority of the blog did meet our editorial guidelines, there were some parts that required further editorial review,' a spokeswoman told The Times.

Partition of India: The largest mass migration in human history India and Pakistan won independence in August 1947 after a three-decade nationalist struggle It was accompanied by the largest mass migration in human history of some 10 million people Colonial India was divided into two separate states - one with a Muslim majority (Pakistan) and the other with a Hindu majority (India) Source: BBC History Advertisement

'The blog in question was therefore temporarily taken down for review.'

Addressing the use of the phrase 'profoundly oppressive' in the display, she said it was 'more emotive' than other sections of the gallery, but that the archive was committed to its 'overall interpretative approach'.

The internal review, which followed a complaint by Mr Adler in May 2015, found that information on display boards was accurate but should have been expanded and enhanced.

Mr Adler told The Times he was pleased his complaints were taken seriously but still believes the displays are 'unremittingly anti-British'.
Authorities in Memphis, a city steeped in civil rights history, removed two statues of Confederate leaders on Wednesday hours after the downtown parkland where they stood was sold to a private group.

Several U.S. cities have in recent months dismantled monuments to Confederate leaders, which have become focal points for a fraught national debate over race and politics.

The removal of the statutes of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest comes three months before Memphis marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination there of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Confederate General Forrest was a slave trader and a Ku Klux Klan leader.

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to sell the two parks and crews began working right away to remove a statue of Forrest. At the second park, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was later taken down.

Selling the parks to a third party was a way to get around the Tennessee Historical Commission, which had previously denied the city's petition to take the statues down.

Scroll down for video

Statues of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis (above) and Nathan Bedford Forrest were removed from Memphis on Wednesday

Memphis is the latest city to take down statues commemorating Confederate leaders. The statue to Forrest (above) included his remains in the base

The parks were sold to Greenspace Inc. for $1,000 each, The Commercial Appeal reported. Memphis Chief Legal Officer Bruce McMullen said Greenspace can legally remove the statues, which the city was unable to do.

Live video from Health Sciences Park captured cheers as the statue of Forrest was lifted off its marble base and placed on a flatbed truck late Wednesday. Police had cordoned off the area around the statue. The statue of Davis was at Fourth Bluff Park.

McMullen said the statues would be stored in an undisclosed location.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland tweeted that the work in the parks complies with state law.

Earlier this month, the city filed a petition asking for judicial review of the Tennessee Historical Commission's denial of a request to remove the Forrest statue.

The Memphis City Council sold the parks containing the statues to get around the Tennessee Historical Commission, which had previously rebuffed their attempts to take the statues down. Above, the Forrest statue before it was taken down

'I commend Mayor Strickland and the City Council for finding a way to legally remove statues from an era that is not representative of Memphis today and have remained an affront to most of the citizens of Memphis,' U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Memphis, said in a statement.

Cities have tried to remove Confederate monuments after the racially motivated massacre of nine people at a black church in South Carolina and a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Protesters have called for the removal of the Forrest statue, saying it represents racism and bigotry. City leaders have discussed ways to relocate the statue and move his remains, which are buried under the monument.

Forrest was a slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader who became influential in the city's growth after the Civil War.

Supporters of keeping the statue in place say it represents an important part of history. The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Memphis has said such monuments do not represent white supremacy and it would be a mistake to remove them.

'It is a deliberate attempt to avoid the state law and the city is breaking the law,' Lee Millar with Sons of Confederate Veterans told WREG-TV on Wednesday.
A phone scam is conning elderly people out of thousands of pounds by telling them they can pay off debts with digital vouchers and gift cards, the government has warned.

The scammers are cold-calling victims and impersonating tax office officials, telling them that they owe large amounts of money which they can only pay off through gift cards, including those used for Apple's iTunes Store.

Victims are told to buy the cards at a local shop and then read out the redemption code to the fraudster, some of whom keep their victims on the line as they purchase the vouchers.

The conmen then sell on the codes or purchase high-value products, all at the victim's expense.

Conmen are tricking elderly people into buying iTunes vouchers and giving them the codes

The scammers have used intimidation during the calls, threatening to seize the victim's property or involve the police, HMRC said.

Figures from Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud reporting centre, show there have been more than 1,500 reports of the scam between the beginning of last year and August this year, with the numbers increasing in recent months.

The vast majority of the victims are aged over 65 and suffered an average financial loss of 1,150 each.

HMRC said it was working closely with law enforcement agencies, Apple and campaign groups to make the public aware of the scam.

Victims are told to stay on the line while they go the shops to buy the vouchers. File photo

HMRC's director general of customer services, Angela MacDonald, said: 'These scammers are very confident, convincing and utterly ruthless.

'We don't want to see anyone fall victim to this scam just before Christmas. That's why we're working closely with crime fighters to ensure taxpayers know how to avoid it.

'These scams often prey on vulnerable people. We urge people with elderly relatives to warn them about this scam and remind them that they should never trust anyone who phones them out of the blue and asks them to pay a tax bill.

'If you think you've been a victim you should contact Action Fraud immediately.'

Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Lara Xenoudakis, of the City of London Police, said: 'Fraudsters perceive the elderly and vulnerable as easy targets, so we are urging people to be wary of HMRC-related frauds to protect themselves, family members and friends.

'We have received an increasing number of reports in which we have been told that people are being asked to pay fraudsters in iTunes vouchers.

'People should be cautious of unsolicited emails, calls or letters and always check directly with HMRC to ensure they are legitimate before responding.'
An electrician in south-west China has survived after falling off high-voltage power lines which suddenly burst into flames.

He was saved by a safety rope, but footage shows he was left dangling off the burning wires by the waist.

Firefighters had to use a bulldozer to rescue the worker. He is reported to have suffered minor injuries on his face and an arm.

Mr Xia is hanging by a safety rope after a fire broke out on an electric pole he was working on

According to Kan Kan News, the electrician, Mr Xia, was repairing and changing the old power cables in Longdongbao district, Guiyang of Guizhou Province, on the morning of December 18.

A fire broke out on one of the electric poles and the power lines immediately caught fire. Ashes can be seen falling upon Mr Xia.

It's not sure whether or not the man had fallen off from the pole by accident.

An onlooker told Kan Kan News two other electric poles had also caught fire before firefighters arrived to save the electrician.

Two other poles also burst into flames. firefighters had to save Mr Xia and put out the fire

He suffered minor injuries on his face and left arm and is being treated at hospital

Mr Li, a co-worker of Mr Xia, said the rescuers had to put out the fire and take Mr Xia off the cable safely at the same time.

Mr Xia was taken to the ground by a bulldozer and sent to a provincial hospital for treatment.

He had injured his left arm and suffered minor scratches on his face.

'The safety rope has saved my life at that critical moment,' he said.

Longdongbao police and fire department are investigating the cause of fire.
A hero passer-by stopped a potential rape when he rescued a woman from a pickup truck whose mouth had been covered with duct tape by her attacker.

Taylor O'Neill was on his way to work when he stumbled across the suspect's vehicle which was blocking his way.

He heard muffled screams coming from the truck and spotted the victim inside.

O'Neill sprinted over and tried to open the door whilst banging the window and in the fracas the 28-year-old woman was able to escape.

Taylor O'Neill was on his way to work when he stumbled across the suspect's vehicle which was blocking his way

The attacker fled the scene, but not before O'Neill snapped pictures of the white pickup which led to the arrest of the suspect - 27-year-old Jorge Cruz De Armas.

O'Neill told KTLA: 'I saw her with her face duct-taped and him on top of her choking her'.

'That's when I tried to open the door and banged on the window to get her out of there, get her safe, and deal with him later.'

The victim had got in the car after Armas offered her a lift.

He then asked her if she wanted to have sex with him, which she refused.

Santa Ana Police detectives arrested 27-year-old Jorge Cruz De Armas at his workplace after evidence at the crime scene led police to his identity

Unperturbed, he asked for her number, and when she refused again it is alleged Armas attacked her.

A spokesman for Santa Ana Police Department said: 'A Santa Ana man suspected of kidnapping and attempting to sexually assault a 28-year-old woman was arrested in Costa Mesa last night.

'Santa Ana Police detectives arrested 27-year-old Jorge Cruz De Armas at his workplace after evidence at the crime scene led police to his identity.

'On Monday at about 4.30pm, De Armas contacted the victim and offered her a ride.

'The victim accepted the offer and willingly entered his vehicle.

'Moments later, De Armas asked the victim if she wanted to have sex with him and she refused.

'De Armas drove the victim to an alley in the 1600 block of East Palm Street in Santa Ana where he attacked the victim.

'De Armas began to strangle the victim and covered her mouth with duct tape.

'A Good Samaritan heard screaming coming from De Armass vehicle and quickly approached and interrupted the assault.

'The Good Samaritan opened the door and rescued the victim.

'He also took photos of the vehicle as the suspect fled the scene.'
Expanding college savings accounts to include tuition at private K-12 schoolspart of the tax bill now-approved by Congressis the most significant policy victory school choice advocates have notched at the federal level since President Trump took office.

Trump had campaigned on expanding school choice spending by an eye-popping $20 billion . But he and the GOP-controlled Congress have so far failed to deliver on that.

But not all school choice supporters are on board with the idea of allowing families to put aside $10,000 annually in the tax-advantaged 529 savings accounts for private school tuitionincluding some at prominent conservative and libertarian think tanks.

Among them is Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the CATO Institute.

Equity and Government Overreach

One issue that someone in the school choice community is guaranteed to raise any time a federal school choice program is proposed is that of government overreach.

Federal programs inevitably come with federal rulesif not at the programs inception, they will likely be layered on over time, McCluskey said. And choice advocates dont want to see private schools regulated into carbon copies of traditional public schools.

The 529 plan at the very least begins to put the camels nose under the tent, said McCluskey. Maybe someone uses 529 earnings to go to a school that ends up going out of business or all the kids fail math. Its not hard to imagine someone in Congress saying, well, weve seen 529 money misused, so now we have to put regulations on that.

McCluskey is also concerned that 529s will only serve upper-income familiesanother common criticism of the expansion provision.

Meanwhile, Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, fears private schools will benefit at the expense of low-income students. States stand to lose tax revenue from 529 holders deducting their savings from their state taxes, which could translate into less state money for low-income students in public schools. (Read the full explanation of Malkus theory on the Politics K12 blog .)

Homeschoolers Left Out Again

The tax bill was poised to be a boon for homeschoolers, who would have been allowed to use 529 savings on homeschooling expenses. But that was stripped from the bill at the last minute after it was discovered that including homeschooling expenses violated Senate rules for the billan issue raised by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

That move was a blow to William Estrada, the director of federal relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a conservative advocacy and lobbying group that has worked for well over a decade to expand 529s to include home schooling supplies.

Estrada said this underscored a larger issue: The Democratic Party continues to be hostile to homeschoolers, even as the demographics of the nations 1.7 million homeschoolers are changing .



Its not just religious conservative families, Estrada said. You have LGBT families, thats a very fast-growing trend of families who are choosing to home school. ... Home schooling looks very different today than it did 30 years ago.

What Happens Next with Trumps School Choice Agenda?

Some school choice advocates are thrilled with the 529 expansion. One is James Cultrara, the co-chairman of the New York State Coalition for Independent and Religious Schools.

He sees it as a noteworthy effort toward fulfilling Trumps campaign promise to greatly expand school choice.

I think its the most important step thats been taken on a national level in probably the last 20 years, said Cultrara, who is also the director for education at the New York State Catholic Conference.

We havent seen from Congress any nationwide initiative that can benefit this many families in every state. Its not only notable, its a great achievement.

Cultrara said his group is now looking into ways to leverage the 529 plans so low-income families can also take advantage of them. Specifically, he said, they would look into whether donors can contribute to a 529 account on behalf of a low-income student.

Now that Congress has expanded 529s to include K-12 expenses for private schools, school choice advocates are hoping other items on their wish lists may get fulfilled under Trumps watch. Among them: a national tax-credit scholarship program and an education savings account program for military families.

Related stories:

Photo: President Donald Trump congratulates Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., while House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., watches in background, during an event held on the South Lawn of the White House on Dec. 20 to celebrate final passage of tax overhaul legislation by the Republican-led U.S. Congress. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given the 'best early Christmas and birthday present rolled into one' after her lawyer visited her in prison and said her case status has just been moved from 'closed' to 'eligible for early release'.

The British mother of one is currently serving a five-year sentence in Iran over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Tehran government, claims she firmly denies.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe is desperate to get her home for Christmas and today told MailOnline the family was growing more hopeful for her release after the foreign secretary met with Iranian officials earlier this month.

Today, Mr Ratcliffe revealed he had been given renewed hope after a computer database at the Iranian judiciary marked her status as 'eligible for release'

Speaking from his north London home, Mr Ratcliffe said: 'This could be the best early Christmas and birthday present for her big day on Boxing Day all rolled into one.'

'Nazanin is excited. Her lawyer is excited. I'm trying to remain cautiously optimistic as we've had false dawns before. But she's been told that she could be out within a couple of weeks.

'She told me on the phone yesterday. So on the face of it, she might not be home for Christmas as we'd all wanted, but she might just make it home very soon after. It looks like it could be the news we've been waiting for.'

The whole family of the British and Iranian dual national are said to be now standing by after the legal advice was that she could be out 'within a couple of weeks'.

Richard said he been avoiding confronting her not returning home by Christmas or for her birthday on Boxing Day, a day later, as he continued: 'I haven't put up a Christmas tree yet. I wanted for us to do it together as a family once she's freed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella

'I haven't sent her anything for her birthday on Boxing Day. It felt like a signal that I was giving up hope if I did that.

'Then I was worried that she wasn't going to have much of a birthday if she's still there without anything from me to mark it. Now this news might be far better than any present I could give.'

The status change comes after British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson  who could potentially have doubled her sentence on fresh spying charges after wrongly saying that she'd been training journalists in Iran - lobbied for Nazanin's early release on humanitarian grounds during a trip to Tehran earlier this month.

But he declined to comment on the apparent development in Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case when asked today.

Speaking during a visit to Russia, Mr Johnson said: 'I think the best thing I can say is that the truth is we are continuing to work very hard with all the consular cases, particularly the very difficult ones we have in Iran.

'I just don't want to get into a running commentary. There are very good reasons for not saying anything.'

Thomson Reuters Foundation charity worker Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe  who has a three-year-old daughter Gabriella, currently living in Iran with her grandmother - is serving a five-year sentence in the secretive state over charges relating to membership of these organisations.

Mr Ratcliffe admitted it has been a 'turbulent' week for the family, who have a three-year-old daughter, Gabriella

In a statement released by the campaign, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured right, said: 'Gabriella and I keep dreaming - about getting on a flight, and going to see her daddy after such a long time. We still dream of our Christmas tree in London, and the three of us decorating it together'

Her constituency MP Tulip Siddiq called the news the 'perfect Christmas gift' saying: 'It has given Nazanin a real boost of positive energy, and we now wait impatiently to see what happens next.'

An online petition for her release has collected almost 1.5 million signatures.

Richard Ratcliffe, pictured, has written to the Iranian ambassador in London, urging him to make clear to all state bodies in Iran that his wife was not involved in espionage

Mr Ratcliffe appeared on Good Morning Britain to update the public about his wife's case.

Speaking this morning, he said: 'Last night she met with her lawyer. He's actually a lot more hopeful and that's what he told her, because on the judiciary computer there's a database that records the status of cases and it says she is eligible for release.

'That's on the computer, that's in the background - it's not what we've been told but it's a really good sign.

'As far as I understand it is on the computer but it's not like he has been told formally.

'What they have told her still is that they are just going to process the paperwork and that could be a while still.'

Mr Ratcliffe admitted it has been a 'turbulent' week for the family, who have a three-year-old daughter, Gabriella.
Christmas comes earlier in the UK as people start searching the term online as prematurely as August, Google analytics show.

Britons have also searched for the the word 'Christmas' more than any other nationality for the past four years running - making us the biggest festive fanatics.

Surprisingly, the web giant has more Christmas searches in the UK than the US, which has around five times the population.

Interest in searching for topics related to the yuletide season is almost two-thirds less in the US than the UK.

Christmas came early: The UK starts to plan Christmas as prematurely as August according to Google searches

The second most Christmas-obsessed nation is Ireland followed by the US, Australia and then Canada.

Once British interent users started to Google Christmas-related searches the trend rose steeply at the end of October, just before present shopping usually begins.

This is the fourth year running that the UK has had the strongest search interest for Christmas themed topics - previously Ireland was the most Christmas-obsessed.

Brits have searched for the the world Christmas more than any other nationality for the past four years running

Keelby in Lincolnshire has the higest percentage of Christmas related searches in the UK - scoring 100

The Lincolnshire village of Keelby has a higher proportion of Christmas-related searches than any other town in the UK, scoring a maximum 100 on a Google-produced scale, the Daily Telegraph reported.

However some towns were feeling more Christmassy than others as Burnham, Buckinghamshire, had the lowest search rate of five.

The data shows the proportion of Christmas-related searches as a percentage with 100 being the highest possible per cent.

As well as searching for Christmas topics earlier each year the UK also appears to be doing their Christmas shopping in advance, according to retail experts.

UK consumers are making Christmas purchases, such as lights and trees, earlier due to the cost associated with Christmas according to GlobalData Retail.
Darren Osborne, pictured in a court sketch from a previous hearing, faces murder and attempted murder charges

The man accused of carrying out the Finsbury Park terror attack has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.

Darren Osborne is accused of crashing a 80-a-day rented Citroen van into a group of worshippers near the north London mosque in June.

Makram Ali, a 51-year-old grandfather-of-two, was killed in the incident and at least eight others were injured.

Jobless father-of-four Osborne is alleged to have been motivated by 'extreme political views'.

Although the few friends he had in Cardiff said they thought he had 'little interest' in politics.

Osborne, 48, is charged with the murder of Mr Ali and attempted murder on June 19.

The Crown Prosecution Service have confirmed they are treating the charges as terrorism-related.

The charges state he murdered Mr Ali on June 19 and attempted to murder 'persons at the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Whadcoat Street, London' on the same date.

This was the scene after the hired van ploughed into pedestrians near the mosque in June

Osborne appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from Belmarsh jail before Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb.

Wearing a red T-shirt, he spoke only to confirm his identity and enter not guilty pleas.

He was remanded into custody until his trial on January 22 next year at Woolwich Crown Court.

Grandfather Makram Ali died after the van ploughed into the group of worshippers

The area was busy with worshippers attending Ramadan night prayers at the nearby mosque on the night of the attack.

Mr Ali's family said in a statement after his death: 'Our father was a quiet gentle man, he didn't get involved in political or social discussion, he instead took comfort and enjoyment spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren and he was always ready to make a funny joke when you least expected.

'We are distressed about what happened. We know that he had some form of collapse because of his weak leg, a condition he suffers from, before recovering, sitting up and expressing a wish to return home only to then become a victim of this horrific incident.

'An incident made only more tragic as he had only just completed his evening prayers, something he did regularly.

'He took great comfort in the feelings of peace his prayers provided.'

Born in Singapore, Osborne went to primary school in Milton Keynes before moving to Weston-Super-Mare. He later moved to Cardiff with his former partner.

He will next appear at Woolwich crown court on 22 January.
Shocking footage exposes the horrific conditions of rabbit farms allegedly used by some of the most famous luxury brands in the world.

The video has been shot by an animal rights group who went undercover to gain access to three rabbit farms and a slaughter house in southwestern France.

It shows hundreds of rabbits being kept in tiny cages with many suffering sores, injuries and birth defects.

Heartbreaking: A newborn rabbit is seen shaking on the metal bars of its mother's cage

Fending for themselves: The video has been shot at rabbit farms in France reportedly used to source fur for luxury brands

Shocking: Footage shows rabbits kept in tiny cages, suffering sores, injuries and birth defects

The footage was captured by animal rights group L214, who claims that the farms are used to source rabbit fur for high-end fashion brands.

The rabbits are born in the tiny cages, and never see the light of day before they are slaughtered.

The video sees a newborn rabbit, furless and blind, shaking on the floor of the metal cage.

They spend their lives on bare metal bars, meaning that their claws fall in the space between them, causing pain and injury to their paws.

Footage also shows animals with sores on their legs and faces, cramped into barren cages where some step on others to move.

Heartbreaking: A mother bunny licks the fur of her dead young one in one of the tiny pens

Left to die: The animal rights group claims that as many as one in four rabbits die before they are meant to be slaughtered

Hurt: One rabbit is seen having lost its ear, as it sits in its tiny cage

L214 claims that as many as one in four rabbits die in the cages before slaughter.

One heartbreaking sequence appears to show a mother rabbit licking the fur of her dead young.

Footage from the slaughterhouse, showing while albino angoras being prepared for skinning, appears to shed light on flawed practices.

It shows a staff member killing the rabbits by putting their head into a machine, before hanging them by the paws and slicing their throats so they bleed out on a conveyor belt.

Caged: Footage from one of the rabbit farms where the special breed is bred

Pain: The cages have no bottom, so the animals' claws fall between the bars

Grime: The underside of the cages show the lack of cleaning routines at the farm

Several of the rabbits continue to kick and thrash after their head has been put into the machine and they are hung on the belt.

As with most animals, rabbits's muscles and organs would remain functioning for a few seconds after brain death and twitching does not have to indicate that they feel any pain.

However the rabbits appear to kick for an uncomfortably long period of time after being euthanised.

Several high-end luxury fashion brands, including Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi and Dior are known to use rabbit fur, however it is not known if they use any of these farms to source their products.

Slaughter: A staff member kills the bunny by placing its head inside a machine

System: The rabbit is then hung up and has its throat slit, but some of the animals are seen twitching uncomfortably long after they are killed

Several of the rabbits continue to kick and thrash after their head has been put into the machine and they are hung on the belt

The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) has promised to conduct 'an internal inspection mission on site within 48 hours'. If necessary, it guarantees to 'take the immediate corrective measures that would be required'.

The president of the local cooperative told AFP that he was 'quite surprised (...) of the way L214 interprets things'.

He said that the particular breed, the Orylag rabbit, are 'animals that have a certain sensitivity, which are quite fragile and that is why they are given the most comfortable conditions possible to limit mortality and diseases.

'The Orylag is not a rabbit or a pet (...) it has characteristics of its own.It can not put it outside or outside. When it reaches a certain age it is necessary to put it in individual cage, or they fight, 'he adds.

Representatives for fashion house LVMH, which includes Fendi and Dior, and Dolce&Gabbana, have been contacted by MailOnline for comment.
Adele Rennie, 27, was jailed for 22 months after using invented aliases to carry out a series of stalking and sexual offences

Victims who were duped by a nurse who used male aliases to harass and threaten them have spoken out about her sinister cyber-stalking campaign.

Adele Rennie sent victims nude pictures of a man via social media and dating sites, begging for explicit images in return, which she then threatened to share if they tried to end the online relationship.

The 27-year-old was jailed for 22 months and placed on the sex offenders register on Monday after she admitted committing 18 offences between 2012 and 2016.

Rennie, a nurse at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, called her victims using a voice changing app that made her sound male as they shared sexually charged conversations.

One victim said she was scared to go outside in case she bumped into the 'Walter Mitty figure', saying she 'didn't know what Rennie was capable of'.

Another said Rennie used photographs of her own nephew, claiming he was dying of cancer before posting images of a funeral and grave, suggesting he had died.

A 27-year-old victim told The Sun Rennie used a male alias to stalk and intimidate her.

Rennie was finally exposed when she attempted to seduce model and former Miss Scotland finalist Abbie Draper, who had visited the hospital where Rennie was working to see her dying grandfather.

Ms Draper told The Sun today how Rennie was 'always hovering' around her family, and would follow them to the gym and supermarket.

She added: 'My grandad was in the care of this unhinged woman.'

Rennie used this photograph (left) to convince her victims that she was a male doctor. Her web of lies was finally revealed after she attempted to woo model Abbie Draper, who sent an angry barrage of texts to Rennie (right)

Speaking after the sentencing, Ms Draper (pictured) told of her relief that Rennie was behind bars

Rennie used images of male model Craig Dunn (pictured), taken from his Facebook account in an attempt to snare the women

Ms Draper, 27, was contacted on Facebook by Rennie, who was posing as a fake doctor at the hospital by the name of David Graham.

But a friend of Ms Draper became alarmed after seeing they had become connected on the social media site as the same account had been used to contact another friend.

JUDGE SLAMS 'COLD AND CALCULATED' FORMER NURSE As she jailed her for 22 months, Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane told Rennie: 'I hoped your reports would shed some light into your incredibly strange and abusive behaviour  unfortunately it hasn't. 'I've no idea why someone from a good family, job and education would throw it all away inexplicably. 'This was planned with astonishing precision in a cold, calculated manner. 'This caused harm and humiliation to multiple victims, who did not deserve this.' Advertisement

Some of Rennie's victims received flowers from her aliases, which she hand delivered.

Rennie used the names David Graham, David Crolla and Davie, Marco and Matthew Mancini and often reused the same storyline and characters.

And she used images from male model Craig Dunns Facebook account without his knowledge or permission, in an attempt to snare the women.

She would arrange to meet her victims and then cancel at the last moment, often with the excuse that close family were very ill, the court heard.

She also accessed the medical records of one of her victims in an attempt to obtain further details.

Rennie was jailed for 22 months at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court after admitting using a host of invented aliases to carry out a series of stalking and sexual offences, a breach of the data protection act and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane said Rennie's offences were the 'most astonishing' she had ever heard.

Rennie admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice by concealing a mobile phone in a bathroom during a police search of her home.

She also admitted attempting to delete an Instagram account, sending a victim a fake identification card she had made in a bid to prove one of her aliases was a real person and disposing of a mobile phone in a bin.

Rennie was jailed for 22 months at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court after admitting using a host of invented aliases to carry out a series of stalking and sexual offences, a breach of the data protection act and attempting to pervert the course of justice

Rennie's victim Abbie Draper (pictured) said: 'I'm just so glad it's finally over. She's harmed and humiliated so many people and I'm glad she's going to prison for it'

An earlier hearing also heard how Rennie fooled a colleague into believing she was having a five-month relationship with one of the male doctor aliases she had created.

ADELE RENNIE JAILED FOR 22 MONTHS Rennie pleaded guilty to 18 charges when she appeared at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court on November 13. On Monday she was sentenced to 22 months in prison and was made the subject of a non-harassment order and placed on the sex offenders register. She was charges with ten counts of stalking, four of sexual coercion and four of indecent communication. She also pleaded guilty to three charges of coercing someone to look at an indecent image, one of computer misuse, two of attempting to pervert the course of justice and one count of breaching bail conditions. Advertisement

She sent her co-worker a barrage of messages and calls posing as a doctor and persuaded her to send naked photographs.

When the colleague became suspicious Rennie's alter ego 'David Graham' threatened to expose the explicit photos.

While on bail, Rennie accessed a number of dating and social media sites and contacted one of her victims.

Laura Mundell, procurator fiscal for North Strathclyde, added: 'I welcome the conviction and sentence of Adele Rennie.

'Her campaign of stalking and harassment and the invasion of the personal lives of her victim's was wholly unacceptable and caused significant anxiety and alarm.

'Stalking can have a devastating and lasting impact on the lives of victims and we will continue to prosecute stalking offences effectively and appropriately, and use the full powers of the legislation available to us.

'We would encourage anybody who is the subject of this type of behaviour to have no hesitation in reporting what is happening to the police and to be reassured that police and prosecutors take such offences extremely seriously.'

This is another one of the photos the former nurse used to con her victims on social media
As Britons tuck into their Christmas roasts there is a good chance that most of their festive favourites will have been shipped from overseas.

Supermarkets are sourcing food from across Europe - and some times further afield - to satisfy shoppers' Yuletide appetites.

Those looking forward to carving up their roast turkey on December 25 may be chomping into a bird from eastern Europe.

As Britons tuck into their Christmas roasts there is a good chance that most of their festive favourites will have been shipped from overseas

Iceland's Roast From Frozen Perfect Turkey Crown is produced and packed in Romania

Iceland's Roast From Frozen Perfect Turkey Crown is produced and packed in Romania.

While some of Waitrose's veg is also from the EU, with its Ready Trimmed Baby Sprouts from Poland, the majority of seasonally available sprouts are grown in the UK.

Supermarkets have been known to bring in their carrots from closer to home, with Tesco sourcing its organic range from Ireland.

While diners dreaming of a nice crispy roast potato with their dinner, can enjoy Sainsbury's spuds from Cyprus.

A Christmas roast turkey would not be complete without crispy bacon on the top or a dollop of cranberry sauce.

Some of Waitrose's veg is also from the EU with its Ready Trimmed Baby Sprouts from Poland

Tesco sources its carrots from Ireland, while Sainsbury's brings in potatoes from Cyprus

Stores have chosen to look further afield again for these festive staples, with Asda sourcing streaking bacon from Denmark and its cranberry sauce from the US.

The National Farmers Union has urged shoppers to pledge their support behind British produce.

president Meurig Raymond said: 'We know that the public strongly supports British farming with 71% of people buying British food when they can, and Christmas is a great time to do this.

'The NFU always encourages shoppers to look out for the Red Tractor logo on packaging to ensure that food is produced to the highest welfare standards, and can be traced back to British farms.'
Aaron Barley has had his life term of 30 years increased to 34 years and 178 days

A homeless man who stabbed a mother and her son to death in their own home after they tried to help him off the streets has had his life sentenced increased at the Court of Appeal.

Aaron Barley has had his 'unduly lenient minimum term' of 30 years increased to 34 years and 178 days by the Court of Appeal in London.

In October the 24-year-old was jailed for life with a minimum term of 30 years after admitting the murders of Tracey Wilkinson, 50, and her 13-year-old son Pierce and the attempted murder of Peter Wilkinson, 47.

Today, three judges agreed with Solicitor General Robert Buckland that the 30-year minimum term imposed on Barley at Birmingham Crown Court in October was insufficient in 'this most exceptional and grave case'.

Barley had been taken in by the family after Mrs Wilkinson spotted him sleeping rough outside a supermarket in the spring of 2016.

But he armed himself with a kitchen knife when he crept inside the family's home in Stourbridge, West Midlands, in March and stabbed them as they slept in their beds.

Mrs Wilkinson's husband Peter, who was out walking the dog, was stabbed a number of times on his return and was fortunate to survive.

The fourth member of the family, Lydia, was away at university at the time of the attack.

Tracey Wilkinson, 50, and son Pierce, 13, were stabbed in their home in Stourbridge

The fourth member of the family, Lydia (pictured with her father Peter), was away at university at the time of the attack

Barley left Mrs Wilkinson, 50, dead on the floor and Pierce dying in his bedroom. Her husband Peter, 47, managed to ring 999 after he was stabbed six times.

Barley - who had been fed, given a job and provided with accommodation by Mrs Wilkinson after she saw him begging outside a Tesco - later told arresting officers his only regret was failing to kill the entire family.

Their help included supporting him to find a home and a job and inviting him to spend Christmas Day with them.

Lord Justice Holroyde, Mrs Justice Whipple and Mr Justice Goose today substituted his sentence with a minimum term of 35 years, less time on remand - amounting to 34 years and 178 days before he can be considered for release on licence.

Mr Wilkinson and his daughter Lydia, were in court in London today while Barley watched from prison by video-link.

Lord Justice Holroyde said that Barley ended two lives but blighted many more after the family set out their continuing anguish in moving personal impact statements.

Mr Wilkinson spoke of the 'vile, callous, barbaric and cowardly' attack.

He said: 'We cared for Aaron, welcomed him, and showed him love and respect, which he had never received anywhere else.

'The repayment was for him to destroy my family for no good reason whatsoever.'

The judge said that it fell to Lydia Wilkinson to carry out the awful task of identifying her mother and brother.

CCTV footage shows Aaron Barley hiding in the garden of Tracey Wilkinson before sneaking into the back door, picking up a kitchen knife and murdering her and her son Pierce, 13, as they slept

The killer was even seen waiting for Tracey's husband Peter to leave the home before launching his attack

At his sentencing, Mrs Justice Carr told Barley that it was 'a vicious and unprovoked attack' on people who had shown him 'extraordinary kindness and generosity'.

She added that he had shown no remorse, indeed only regret that Mr Wilkinson survived his injuries.

She said that she had decided not to impose a whole-life tariff 'principally because of your youth' - a decision which was overturned today.

Mrs Wilkinson - a former British Latin American ballroom dancing champion - was found naked, not breathing on her bedroom floor. She had been stabbed 20 times.

Barley then attacked Mr Wilkinson as he returned from walking his dog, stabbing him six times.

After leaving him for dead, Barley then stole his Land Rover Discovery and led police on a frantic chase, weaving between traffic and mounting the pavement before crashing into a wall.

Footage from inside the vehicle shows his attempted getaway as he drove onto pavements and weaved in and out of traffic before finally smashing into a wall.

He has refused to reveal his motives but the court previously heard the Wilkinsons cancelled his mobile phone contract just three days before the frenzied attack.

Barley (pictured at an earlier hearing) armed himself with a kitchen knife when he crept inside the family's home and stabbed them as they slept in their beds

Barley drove off in the couple's Land Rover to flee the scene but crashed the vehicle nearby

Just one month before his sickening killing spree, Barley's former foster mother read violent threats on his Facebook page in which he talked about 'taking down' his family and wondered 'how many he could get before he got caught'.

She contacted him and suggested he get help but he refused because he did not want to take medication or risk being sectioned.

The former foster parent was so concerned by the posts she reported them to West Midlands Police, the court heard during his trial.

One read: 'To all my family that haven't spoken to me for years, go f*** yourselves.... You are all going to pay... You cold, heartless, motherf******.'

In another chilling post, he wrote: 'Got (to) try get some help before I go on a killing spree.'

Barley had been taken in by the family after Mrs Wilkinson spotted him sleeping rough outside a supermarket in the spring of 2016

Speaking after Barley was sentenced, Lydia Wilkinson said: 'I am facing life without my best friend, closest confidante, my little brother who I would do anything for.

'My boyfriend rang me at 10.30, I checked the news but never believed this could happen to us. I had to ring the police to see if this was real.

'My life of pain had already begun. I had to wait three hours to find out the extent of what occurred.

'I was informed my father was in a critical condition. I identified the bodies of my mother and brother. The memory will stay with me forever. I was confident and enjoyed life but now grief has taken over. Grief has ruined me.'

She added: 'To see the stairs at home, to walk the last path they took tears me up inside. I have no one to help with school and give advice to.

'I hope Aaron can see what he has done, my parents helped you, cared for you, treated you like a son.

'You repaid them with destruction and heartache. You have obliterated my life, murdered half my family, nearly all of them and for this I will never forgive you.'
Theresa May is set to spend Christmas plotting an overhaul of her top team after Damian Green's dramatic departure.

Downing Street sources have made clear the Prime Minister will not rush to replace her deputy, with a wider reshuffle on the cards for the New Year.

Aides are considering how to regain the initiative after the government was buffeted by the loss of three Cabinet members in just six weeks.

Mr Green followed Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel out of the door.

Theresa May has now lost three Cabinet ministers over the course of just six weeks. Pictured is her team from immediately after the election

Mrs May is in Poland today for talks with the new PM Mateusz Morawiecki. They are expected to hold a press conference later

Defence Secretary Sir Michael fell on his sword on November 1 admitting his behaviour had 'fallen short' of standards after allegations he put his hand on the knee of one journalist and propositioned another.

A week later International Development Secretary Miss Patel was humiliatingly summoned back from a trip to Africa to be told she had to quit over holding secret meetings with senior Israeli politicians.

So far Mrs May has plugged the gaps with minimal moves, worried about upsetting the delicate balance between Leavers and Remainers during the fraught Brexit process.

Crucially the Brexit War Cabinet - which oversees the crunch talks with the EU - has a strict balance of the opposing wings which she will be keen to maintain.

It includes leading Brexiteers Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Trade secretary Liam Fox and their new ally, the recently appointed Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.

On the other side of the argument are Chancellor Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Damian Green.

Theresa May is chair and has the casting vote on decisions.

Damian Green, pictured left at his London home today, was dramatically sacked last night. Penny Mordaunt (right) was installed as Aid Secretary after Priti Patel was forced to resign

Sir Michael Fallon fell on his sword as Defence Secretary on November 1 after admitting his behaviour had 'fallen short' of standards

But Mr Green's departure leaves a gaping hole in this carefully struck balance and will spark calls for him to be replaced with another Remainer.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been tipped to replace Mr Green, although there is no rule that means Mrs May must have a deputy.

Mr Hunt is a Remainer but has also said he would now back Brexit - meaning he should win the support of Leavers too.

Mrs May's Brexit War Cabinet remains divided over how to approach the crunch negotiations, and the PM will be desperate to stop splits spilling out into open warfare while the UK tries to negotiate a new trade deal with Brussels.
An Irishman on a working visa has told of the sheer carnage he witnessed in Melbourne after an SUV ploughed into pedestrians leaving 19 injured.

Demolition worker Paul Cahalane, 25, was walking to the gym - and en route to picking up some chocolate milk - via Flinders Street when he heard what sounded like a bomb.

'I was just going to get chocolate milk and I had my headphones in, music playing, scrolling Instagram when I just heard a bang, a bang behind me,' Mr Cahalane said.

Irishman Paul Cahalane has told of the sheer carnage he witnessed in Melbourne after an SUV ploughed into pedestrians leaving 17 injured and two others fighting for life

Ordinary people rushed to help the victims but Mr Cahalane said there was not much he could do as he did not want to cause more harm

It is beleived 19 pedestrians, including a toddler, were injured after the car ploughed into rush hour crowds

'[It was] a thud, just a solid thud. I really took my headphones out [there was] screaming, people running everywhere.'

He said he saw people scattered all over the road, including a middle-aged woman of Asian appearance covered in blood.

'I didn't even run. I was just in shock. I was just like, what's happened,' he said. 'The first thing I heard - someone's shouted ''bomb''  [there was] just screaming.

'I was just shocked, stood there, there wasn't much to be done'.

Mr Cahalane, 25, was walking to the gym - and en route to picking up some chocolate milk - via Flinders Street when he heard what sounded like a bomb

Police and emergency services attend to the scene of the incident involving a vehicle on Flinders Street

A damaged vehicle is seen at the scene of an incident on Flinders Street in Melbourne on Thursday

Ordinary people rushed to help the victims but Mr Cahalane said there was not much he could do as he did not want to cause more harm.

'I was a lifeguard a few years ago. You try to cater for someone that's injured you can do more damage than good,' he said.

He remembered seeing the smashed front windscreen of the car, air bags having burst open and a man in a dirty white T-shirt being wrestled to the ground.

Mr Cahalane estimated within 75 seconds police and emergency services were converging on the site from all over the city.

Emergency services attend to injured people near Flinders Street station in Melbourne

'I was a lifeguard a few years ago. You try to cater for someone that's injured you can do more damage than good,' Mr Cahalane said

Chaotic scenes unfolded as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked commuters and shoppers at the corner of Melbourne's Elizabeth Street and Flinders Street at 4.41pm on Thursday

'I've never seen such a fast response in regards to emergency services,' he said.

Police started ushering witnesses away. He said he rang family and spoke to his boss in the immediate aftermath and then went to the city's Dohertys 247 Gym to work out.

Standing outside the gym, Mr Cahalane said he was on a working visa.

The 32-year-old driver was arrested by an off duty police officer at the scene and was taken to hospital after resisting arrest.

He is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent who is known to police following a 2010 minor assault matter, with a history of drug use and mental health issues.

Standing outside a Melbourne gym, Mr Cahalane (pictrued) said he was on a working visa

Police and emergency personnel cordon off the street as they work at the scene on Thursday
A 12-year-old boy who went missing has been found safe and well.

An appeal had been issued for Tim Hoyland when he disappeared in the Mansfield area of Nottingham, at around 8am yesterday, Wednesday, December 20.

Tim is white, of a slim build with brown hair.

Police were searching for 12-year-old Tim Hoyland, last seen in Mansfield yesterday

He had last been seen wearing a black coat with orange sections under the arms, dark trousers and trainers. He also wears glasses.

A police spokesman said: 'Timo has been found safe and well.'
Twenty-six states scored in the C through F range in a new report on financial literacy in high schools. Only five states scored an A.

The report by the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College in Vermont looks at high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine how well they are delivering personal finance education.

Utah received the highest grade. The report gives the state an A-plus. To earn an A, a state must require personal finance instruction for a minimum of 60 hours in an academic year as a graduation requirement. Only four states other than Utah were given an A: Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia.

States get their spots at the bottom of the list mainly because they dont require public high schools to teach financial literacy. D.C. and 10 states, including Alaska, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, received Fs.

Washington state improved its grade from an F to a C. Since the last report in 2015, the state has adopted standards requiring its high schools to offer personal finance education as an elective, though not as a requirement of graduation.

Wisconsin may soon pull up its F grade. Gov. Scott Walker recently signed legislation requiring public school boards to adopt financial literacy standards and make personal finance a part of the K-12 curriculum, reports the Journal Sentinel.

One state, according to the latest report, has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Louisianas grade has dropped from a B to a D. The state once required high school students to learn at least some personal finance concepts in order to graduate. Now school districts in the state are directed to offer, but not to require, personal finance instruction.

This chart shows how the 2015 and 2017 report cards compare.

Utah has fared well in the centers report card since it was first released in 2013. How did the state shoot to the top of the class? Liana Heitin (now Loewus) reports in this Education Week article that an impetus for early legislation around financial literacy, which went into effect in 2008, was the states high bankruptcy rate.

In 2014, Utah passed a law adding requirements to its high school financial literacy course. Among other things, the course must address the cost of going to college, student loans, scholarships, and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). State law also requires that students take an end-of-course financial literacy test.

The law also applies to teachers. They must demonstrate expertise in the subject matter, which includes financial planning, credit and investing, consumer economics, and personal and family economics, before they are allowed to teach financial literacy.

Related stories:
Paul Edmunds has been jailed for supplying guns link to a series of crimes around the UK

A rogue firearms dealer has been jailed for 30 years for supplying illegal handguns and home-made bullets linked to more 100 crime scenes, including murders.

Paul Edmunds, 66, imported a Colt pistol used in a fatal shooting at a London nightclub and supplied ammunition used in two other killings and an attempt to shoot down a police helicopter.

A jury at Birmingham Crown Court heard Edmunds, of Hardwicke, Gloucestershire, was arrested at his home in 2015, where he had three armouries and made bullets to fit antique weapons.

The registered gun dealer, who said in an interview he 'didn't give a s***' who he sold to, was found guilty in November of conspiracy to supply firearms and ammunition and smuggling banned Colt handguns into the UK from the United States.

Jurors also convicted the pensioner of possessing a prohibited air pistol and perverting the course of justice by filing down a bullet-making tool to destroy potential evidence

Edmunds said in a police interview that he didn't give a s***' who he sold weapons to

Middleman Dr Mohinder Surdhar sold on guns to criminal gangs for Edmunds

Jailing 'cavalier' Edmunds, Judge Richard Bond told the pensioner: 'You ran roughshod over your legal responsibilities as a registered firearms dealer.'

In wider remarks calling for tighter firearms regulations, directed at MPs, the judge added: 'Unfortunately it takes just one person, as this case shows, to act in breach of the trust placed in them. Death and mayhem follow.'

The judge told Edmunds: 'You were at the top of the chain of supply of handguns and ammunition to criminal gangs.

'Without your actions the numerous handguns and hand-loaded ammunition would not have found their way on to the streets of the United Kingdom.

'Quite simply, you were the lynchpin to this conspiracy and without you it could not have been carried out.'

Edmunds, standing in the dock dressed in a formal white shirt, stood silently and did not react as he was jailed.

A few feet away, sat in the public gallery, were the parents of 18-year-old shooting victim, Kenichi Phillips, killed in Birmingham in March last year.

The 66-year-old built up huge armouries and made bullets at his home in Gloucestershire

Edmunds ran the major gun trading conspiracy from this unassuming detached house

As jurors heard, one of Edmunds' unfired rounds was found at the scene of that murder, which was among 107 crime scenes linked to the pensioner's trade.

A two-month re-trial earlier this year heard Edmunds and middleman Dr Mohinder Surdhar acted together to supply antique revolvers and custom-made ammunition to criminal gangs.

For his part, physiotherapist Surdhar, from Handsworth, Birmingham, admitted conspiracy to supply firearms and ammunition between 2009 and 2015 before Edmunds' trial. The 56-year-old will be sentenced on Friday.

However, father-of-two Edmunds had denied hand-crafting bullets for use in supposedly obsolete vintage weapons, including 19th century revolvers, which he brought into the country legally.

But the jury saw through what the prosecution called a 'multiplicity of deception', also convicting the pensioner of possessing a prohibited air pistol and perverting the course of justice by filing down a bullet-making tool to destroy potential evidence.

As well as importing antique weapons, the gun fanatic also imported hundreds more modern prohibited firearms from the United States, having falsified customs paperwork.

Edmunds's bullets were also used in an attempt to shoot down a police helicopter in Birmingham during the 2011 riots.

Beniha Laing and Wesley Gray were jailed after their gang tried to bring down the aircraft

The judge, in remarks on current gun legislation, said he had been 'aghast' to hear from one legally-registered firearms importer, who gave trial evidence, how packages 'not always checked' by UK border officials.

He said 'this lax attitude', 'means that those who can lawfully bring weapons into this country can do so without them being properly checked'.

Judge Bond said: 'Are the public aware that there is legislation to prevent the sale of scrap metal for cash, whilst an antique firearm can be bought and sold for cash, and the seller is not obliged to keep any record?'

Andrew Fisher QC, prosecuting, told the trial jury 'tell-tale' marks on ammunition found at crime scenes linked the rounds to tools used by Edmunds.

At sentencing, Mr Fisher added that since October 2017, there had been 13 more recoveries of weapons and ammunition linked to Edwards including a .38 calibre Colt pistol, found in Birmingham on November 6.

He added that of 280 guns known to have been imported, there was 'no trace' of 207 of those, adding 'it can be properly inferred they have gone into the criminal market'.

A pistol imported by Edmunds was used to kill Hassan Mohamed Omer Isman (left) who at London's Avalon club (right) on Boxing Day in 2013

Edmunds, a former photographer, had denied unlawfully importing antique firearms into the UK, claiming he had never made and supplied live cartridges for the weapons.

But the court heard how Edmunds, who has two adult sons, supplied guns and live bullets to criminals through Dr Surdhar, who he met at a gun fair.

The jury were told Edmunds' bullets were recovered following the Birmingham murders of Derek Myers in 2015 and Mr Phillips, in 2016.

Detectives discovered that one weapon - imported on November 14 2013 - was used five weeks later in a Boxing Day fatal shooting at the Avalon nightclub in London.

Four of Edmunds' bullets were recovered from the victim's body.

Following the pensioner's arrest, 100,000 live rounds were seized from the armoury inside his garage, while seven wheelie bin-loads of gun and bullet components were recovered from a bedroom and attic.

Photos from inside Edmunds's workshop reveal the scale of his gun-making operation

In all, 17 criminally-linked weapons recovered by police are known to have been imported by Edmunds, while around 1,000 bullets connected to him have been recovered from crime scenes in the West Midlands, London, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, West Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

The crime scenes included around 50 gang-related shootings and premises raided by police between 2010 and 2016.

But police believe many other guns seized by police across the country were sold by Edmunds, who failed to keep accurate records in his firearms register.

He was snared after experts at the National Ballistics Intelligence Service carried out an analysis, uncovering the growing trend of pre-war pistols used in a rash of shootings.

In 2015, four converted antique guns were identified as being used in crime in the UK, but in 2016 that number rocketed to 88, with 61 identified so far this year.
Matt Lauer's wife of 20 years has been meeting with lawyers to try to get a higher settlement out of the disgraced Today anchor if the couple proceed with a divorce.

Dutch former model Annette Roque was seen heading into the law firm Latham & Watkins in Manhattan on Wednesday.

Her meeting with lawyers came three weeks after Lauer was fired by NBC when an unnamed woman accused the 59-year-old journalist of sexual harassment.

Dutch former model Annette Roque was seen heading into the law firm Latham & Watkins in Manhattan on Wednesday, three weeks after her husband Matt Lauer was fired from NBC. She's reportedly trying to get a higher settlement out of the disgraced Today anchor if the couple proceed with a divorce

It's not clear what will happen between Lauer and Roque following the accusations.

A source who worked with Lauer told People Magazine earlier this month that the couple's marriage had been strained for years - and that Roque filed for divorce in 2006.

She claimed that claiming that Lauer performed 'cruel and inhumane' acts against her and demonstrated 'extreme anger and hostility' that endangered her mental and physical wellbeing, according to court documents.

The pair reconciled but the relationship never regained its original luster, with the source saying the two 'lived totally separate lives.'

Lauer was 'essentially living as a single guy' in Manhattan, said the source, while Roque stayed in the Hamptons along with their three children.

An insider opened up about Rogue's visit to the law office on Wednesday to Page Six.

Shortly after his firing, Lauer, pictured on December 6, said he was 'truly sorry' and that 'there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed'. Earlier this week, a former Today show staffer who said she had a brief relationship with Lauer in 2000 detailed the affair earlier this week

They said: 'The post-nup will likely specify how much Annette would get if they divorce, but she is expected to challenge it given Matt's earnings since 2006, and given how he has humiliated her.

'There are also issues over all the property and land they own, both in the Hamptons and abroad.'

Under a contract he signed in 2016, Lauer was being paid $25million a year at NBC.

Lauer and Roque have a 16-year-old son, a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son together.

Shortly after his firing, Lauer said he was 'truly sorry' and that 'there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed'.

Earlier this week, a former Today show staffer who said she had a brief relationship with Lauer in 2000 detailed the affair to Megyn Kelly.

Addie Collins Zinone first told Variety about the month-long affair she had with the already-married Lauer in 2000, when she was just a 24-year-old production assistant at Today.

While Zinone said the relationship was consensual, she says the power dynamics have made her regret the relationship.
Advertisement

An aerial photo shows the chaotic aftermath of the 'deliberate' attack on a group of pedestrians on Melbourne's Flinders Street.

More than a dozen pedestrians, including a toddler, have been injured and four are fighting for their life in hospital after a white Suzuki SUV with P-plates crashed into a large group of commuters and shoppers at 4.41pm on Thursday.

The crash injured 19 people, and two men have been arrested including the 32-year-old driver.

A photo of Flinders Street taken after the crash shows the devastating impact of the incident.

Eight victims can be seen being attended to by paramedics and passersby in the wake of the white SUV.

An aerial photo shows the chaotic aftermath of the 'deliberate' attack on a group of pedestrians on Melbourne's Flinders Street

The 32-year-old Afghanistan immigrant lone wolf driver was known to police and was arrested.

The driver is under police guard at hospital with shoulder and hand injuries.

Victoria Police said the driver has a history of drug use, mental health issues and has a criminal history with a minor assault in 2010.

A second 24-year-old man, with a bag of three knives in his possession, was arrested but police believe he had no link to the incident.

'Clarity on the second offender that is in custody, it has not yet been determined whether he was involved, and it is quite probable he was not,' Victoria Police said.

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

The 24-year-old man was seen filming the rampage.

The crash injured 19 people, two in a critical condition while a pre-school aged child was left with serious head injuries but is in a stable condition.

Victoria Police believe the incident has no link to terror-related attacks.

'We do not have any evidence to a connection with terrorism,' Victoria Police said.

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation.'

Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews said Thursday night the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders'.

'This is a terrible, evil, cowardly act.'

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard (pictured) being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle

Two men were arrested at the scene after the white SUV (pictured) crashed into a bollard at Flinders Street Station

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle.

The second man in a red checked shirt, also with a beard, was arrested a short time later.

An eye-witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd.

She told radio station 3AW: 'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere.

'We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere.'

Dramatic footage shows a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passers-by as they wait for paramedics.

Victoria Police dragged the man in a white shirt (pictured) from the white Suzuki to the gutter shortly after the incident

Footage shows the damaged car surrounded by dozens of injured pedestrians while police arrest one man (pictured)

The second man in a red checked shirt, also with a beard (pictured), was arrested a short time after the 'deliberate' incident

Dozens of people were hit by the car with witnesses saying they saw the car doing burnouts before the incident

A witness told Nine News they thought the car was travelling at about 60km/h as it drove into busy crowds (pictured)

The white Suzuki SUV (pictured) was forced to stop its rampage when it crashed into a bollard near Flinders Street Station

A car crashed into the crowds at Melbourne 's Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street (pictured) causing dramatic scenes

Ambulance Victoria said paramedics were called to the scene (pictured) at 4.41pm Thursday and several are critical

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was nearby in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

He was on the scene from about two minutes after the car collided and could see the cracked windscreen and Good Samaritans trying to save injured pedestrians.

'A few ladies were screaming but it was calm - there were no sirens, nothing,' Mr Harris said.

'I was here when the other one (the Bourke Street tragedy) happened . you get desensitised.'

Witness Lachlan Vella told Fairfax Media he saw a man dressed in a suit with his 'head busted open' as he was lying on the ground.

Mr Vella said another man 'had blood around his head and was snoring, like atonal breathing,' as a woman came in and out of consciousness.

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was near the crash aftermath (pictured)

The heart of Melbourne's CBD is in lock down after the car ploughed down a number of shoppers and commuters (pictured)

19 people were taken to hospital including a pre-school aged child with serious head injuries who is now in stable condition

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation,' Commander Russell Barrett (pictured) said

Police locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street (pictured)

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife was taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed

A number of injured were taken to the The Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, St Vincent's Hospital and Royal Children's Hospital including the driver of the car (pictured) and a police officer

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife had been taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed.

Police have locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street.

A child at pre-school suffered head injuries and was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but the extent of the injuries are unknown.

Eye-witnesses told 9 News they saw the white SUV being driven at about 60km/h before it smashed into dozens of pedestrians.

Another witness told 3AW there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground'.

More could have been injured if not for the vehicle crashing into a bollard at the tram stop out the front of Flinders Street Station.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Police said the driver of the car and a second man were arrested after what they believe was a 'deliberate' attack in the CBD

A child at pre-school suffered serious head injuries and was taken to Royal Children's Hospital (white SUV pictured)

More could have been injured if the white Suzuki did not crash into a bollard after about '15 seconds' of trauma

Lachlan Read, 20, told The Herald Sun the whole rampage lasted about 15 seconds.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' Mr Read said.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote on Twitter saying the federal and state security agencies would work together to investigate the 'shocking incident'.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the emergency and health workers who are treating them,' Mr Turnbull wrote.

The carnage comes almost a year after six people were killed and 30 injured when a car ploughed through the Bourke Street Mall.

The driver, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, was charged with six counts of murder after he allegedly used a maroon Holden Commodore sedan to run down shoppers during the lunch break.

A child and two adults were amoung those who died following the attack as well as a three-month-old baby boy.

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated shortly after the incident Thursday

A witness told Melbourne's 3AW radio station there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground' (pictured)

'People were flying everywhere ... people running everywhere' a witness told the 3AW radio station on Thursday (pictured)
Theresa May smiled as she was accidentally dubbed Madam Brexit today as she held talks with the Polish PM in a charm offensive to drum up support for a swift trade deal.

The Prime Minster was flanked by Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond as she travelled to Warsaw hours after losing Damian Green from her Cabinet in the porn row.

Mrs May held talks with Poland's PM Mateusz Morawiecki, who backed Britain getting a swift free trade deal with the EU after Brexit.

The PM was joined by her closest Cabinet lieutenants on the trip, including new Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

It comes as her premiership was plunged into fresh turmoil back at home after Mr Green was forced to quit after he was found to have lied about claims porn was found on his computer.

But Mrs May and her coterie of Cabinet ministers put on a united front as they travelled to the Eastern European country for talks.

Theresa May sacked Mr Green as her deputy last night, two days after receiving a report into his behaviour. She travelled today to Poland for a major summit with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (pictured)

Mrs May was surrounded by allies on the trip to Poland (pictured with Boris Johnson in a family photo today) today despite the turmoil at home

Members of the Polish and British governments stand together in Warsaw today. The PM made it clear that the EU believe in the rule of law when asked about the controversial changes

Mrs May touched down in the midst of the diplomatic storm in Warsaw this morning as her premiership was plunged into turmoil at home after the sacking of Damian Green, pictured outside his London home this morning. He was sacked after he was found to have lied about claims porn was discovered on his office computer in 2008

And she received a boost from the Polish PM who indicated his support for a swift post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.

Mr Morawiecki said: 'On economic co-operation, there is hard to find closer partners than we are. The UK is a very important trade partner for

'The UK is a very powerful country exporting services, it's obvious for the UK they would like to remain a very strong player in this area.'

He added: 'All the protectionist movements are very dangerous and that's why we really regret losing the UK as our ally in a number of discussions at the EU level where we tried to mitigate and reduce the red tape and a number of regulations.

'But we do believe in this new agreement that will soon be worked out, will soon be negotiated, and we will be able to co-operate with the UK as close as possible.'

Boris Johnson talks with Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski as he joined Theresa May in Warsaw for high level talks with the government as many of the most senior Cabinet ministers travelled to the country for the meeting

Gavin Williamson chatted with Poland's Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz as he joined Mrs May on the tour. He was promoted to the Cabinet last month when Sir Michael Fallon was forced to quit in a sleaze row

Chancellor Philip Hammond talks with Poland's Antoni Macierewicz as he also joined Theresa May on the trip. The Cabinet ministers put on a united front despite the political turmoil raging back home in Britain

Mrs May used the press conference to stress that she wants the one million Poles living in Britain to stay.

And the two leaders pledged closer ties and collaboration - vowing to beef up joint work on taking on the cyber threat posed by Russia.

Mrs May's visit threatened to be overshadowed by an international diplomatic row over controversial reforms to the judiciary in Poland.

Polish ministers are introducing changes that will gave the more powers over judges and the top court.

But the move has been meant with a wave of international condemnation and protests.

Brussels yesterday 'the rule of law is under threat' in Poland and threatened to strip the country of its voting rights because of the changes.

Challenged about the reforms at a joint press conference with the Polish PM today, Mrs May said: 'These constitutional issues are normally, and should be primarily a matter for the individual country concerned.'

Theresa May held talks with Poland's PM Mateusz Morawiecki, who backed Britain getting a swift free trade deal with the EU after Brexit

Theresa May met with her Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw today where they will hold talks . But her visit comes amid international condemnation at controversial reforms to the law courts which critics say is eroding the country's democracy

'Across Europe we collectively believe in the rule of law and I welcome the fact that Prime Minister Morawiecki has indicated that the will be speaking with the European Commission and I hope that will lead to a satisfactory resolution.'

Speaking ahead of the trip, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May would 'raise her concerns' over the changes with her Polish counterpart Mr Morawiecki.

British Prime Ministers have made the visit regularly in recent years to shore up our close relationship with Poland in the face of Russian aggression in the region.

The triggering of Article 7 was widely expected and EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans said that 'we are doing this for Poland, for Polish citizens' so they can rely on a fully independent judiciary in their nation, which is a key underpinning of EU principles.

Mr Timmermans said that despite the measure indicating that 'the rule of law is under threat' he remained open to dialogue with Warsaw to remedy this abuse 'of naked political power.'
Police are urgently appealing for the public's help to find a teenager who has gone missing.

Detective Constable Graham Milner said: 'We are concerned about Tia as she has not gone missing before for this length of time'

Tia Green, 18, was last seen by her mother on Tuesday, December 5 at 4.30pm, after announcing she was going to Eastbourne, East Sussex, with her boyfriend.

Ms Green, from Crawley, Croydon, is white, 5ft 4ins tall, of slim build, and with shoulder-length brown hair.

She was last seen wearing a black bomber jacket, with a black short jumper with white writing on and black ripped jeans.

Detective Constable Graham Milner said: 'We are concerned about Tia as she has not gone missing before for this length of time.

'We believe she may be in Eastbourne. If anyone has seen her or knows of her whereabouts, please get in touch with us.'

On 29 December, Sussex Police issued a statement to say that 18-year old Tia Green returned home safe and well on Wednesday 27 December.
A standards inquiry into Keith Vaz and a rent boy was suspended today for 'medical reasons'.

The Labour MP has been under investigation for 16 months over allegations he broke the Commons code of conduct by hiring rent boys under a false name.

Mr Vaz resigned as chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee over the scandal, in which he was taped discussing buying cocaine.

A standards inquiry into Keith Vaz (pictured at Labour conference in September) and a rent boy was suspended today for 'medical reasons'

After news of Mr Vaz's illness emerged, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told The Sun: 'If that's the case and he is too ill to carry out his duties he should stand down as an MP.'

Mr Vaz, who is diabetic, last spoke in the Commons chamber 10 days ago and was in the voting lobbies last night during debate on Brexit laws.

The veteran Labour MP stood aside from his long-standing role as chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee  which monitors crime, immigration and drugs policy  in the wake of the revelations in September 2016.

Standards Commissioner Kathryn Hudson launched an inquiry into Mr Vaz following complaints from other MPs.

Ms Hudson - who is independent of Parliament - updated the inquiry status on the Parliament website today.

Standards Commissioner Kathryn Hudson (file image) launched an inquiry into Mr Vaz following complaints from other MPs

In the past, Mr Vaz has said he is 'not convinced' men who pay for sex should be prosecuted.

The MP reportedly told the men, 'We need to get this party started' as talk ranged from unprotected sex to pets, according to the original Sunday Mirror report.

In a series of texts, reproduced by the newspaper, he asked them to bring the sex-enhancing drug poppers to the meeting.

Mr Vaz, who fronted a safe sex campaign in his constituency last year, also reportedly texted one of the men saying: 'You. I'm getting very horny', after he was asked what he wanted.

It was reported that he paid the men in cash following the meeting in a 390,000 flat he owns near his 2.1million family home in Edgware, North London. There was no answer at his house today.
This pride of lions clearly subscribe to 'the more the merrier', as six of them were seen climbing into the top of a small tree in Tanzania.

The lions and lionesses were seen climbing up into the tree and somehow managed to all fit onto the branches as two looked on longingly from below.

The incident took place on the Nyati Plains in Grumeti Reserve, Tanzania, earlier this month.

King of the hill: A pride of lions completely take over the small tree in Tanzania

Senior field guide Adas Shemboko captured the moment as he drove across the park with visitors earlier this month.

Mr Shemboko, 45, said: 'It was a wonderful thing to experience. It doesn't happen all that often during the day time when it's hot - lions are very lazy and tend to sleep during the day.

'We didn't go specifically to watch the lions, we were just passing by, but it was an awesome sighting.

'We stayed there an hour watching them climbing and pushing each other, it was great to see.'

He said he spotted the lions from afar as they drove to another part of the reserve and stopped to admire them.

Come join me: One lioness climbs up into the tree and others in her pride come running to join her in the treetop

Room for more? The pride all scramble to get up into the tree and find a space on the branches

Tight fit: While six of the lions manage to get up into the tree, two are left belog

Adas said: 'As I was driving along from afar I could see the lions in the air.

'One of the lionesses decided to move a wonderful tree nearby. I told my guests that she would try and climb the tree so we moved forward to watch.

'It's common behaviour for the lions to climb to avoid the flies that come with wildebeest at this time of year, it's just unusual that they're doing it during the day when it's hot.

'The lions here are used to the vehicles and the people, we respect them and give them a comfortable distance so we're not too close to them.

'I said to the family I was with 'if you want to capture a special Christmas photo, this is it', they really loved it.

'I love to be in the bush, it's been a passion of mine since I was young.'
This is the dramatic moment workers at an ice rink in China rescued their colleagues who had fallen through a frozen lake.

Footage shows the workers trying to pull some 10 colleagues out of the bonechilling water under a layer of thin ice.

It's said that the workers had been sent to retrieve barriers sunken into the water.

The ice rink workers had been sent to a frozen lake to retrieve sunken barriers at a Beijing park

It's claimed that the chained barriers had been submerged by water after ice started melting

Mr Sun, manager of Beijing Shichahai Tourism Development Company, spoke to local newspaper Beijing News.

Mr Sun said about 20 workers had been sent to Shichahai, a lake in Beijing, to pull up the sunken safety barriers on December 18.

'The weather was a bit warm and the ice was melting, so our chained safety barriers had fallen into the lake, and they had be to be retrieved before the weather turned cold again,' said Mr Sun.

He assumed the ice was too thin for a team of 20 men to walk on, half of the workers plunged into the water.

Mobile phone clip shows the workers pulling their colleagues out from the water using safety floats and long sticks.

It's reported that no workers were injured.

Around 10 workers struggle in bone-chilling water after falling into the frozen lake while working (left). Colleagues have to pull them out using ropes and sticks (right)

Workers are quickly dragged out of the water by their colleagues. None of them are injured

Mr Sun explained they wanted to set up the ice rink as soon as possible as he noticed a lot of people were skating on frozen lakes by themselves.

'It's quite dangerous (for them to do so) if there is no safety equipment to protect the ice skaters.

'We would like to open the rink around Christmas Day, so less people would choose to skate on the lake unmonitored,' he added.

However, web users believed that the ice rink company wanted to make money disregarding the weather condition and safety precautions.

'He just wanted to earn money as soon as the lake was frozen, greedy,' said 'yanlier81'.

'It's too early, the ice is not thick enough and they already started setting up an ice rink,' commented 'guodongyouni'.
A widowed mother-of-two was left in tears when a school refused to allow her to watch her daughter's first nativity play because she had was carrying her baby boy.

Gemma O'Reilly, 26, from King's Norton in Birmingham, was told by a teacher she couldn't see her daughter Bella starring as a donkey in the performance because she was with her son Preston, who is 10 months old.

Bella's father Durrell Odusina, 23, passed away due to heart failure in 2014, when she was just two.

Gemma O'Reilly, 26, from King's Norton in Birmingham, was told by a teacher she couldn't see her daughter Bella(right) starring as a donkey in the play. Pictured left: Gemma with Bella, who is holding Preston

When Ms O'Reilly, a care worker, asked for an explanation, she was told Broadmeadow Infant School did not allow children to attend the nativity play.

She broke the news to Bella, five, who burst into tears when she realised her mother would not see her performance.

Ms O'Reilly said: 'I cried myself. I've never missed anything my children do.

'I'm her only parent as her dad isn't around anymore. I try my best to get to everything. This is the first thing I've missed and that's why I cried.'

Ms O'Reilly arrived at the school to watch the play on Tuesday at 9am with Preston in her arms as her babysitter had dropped out at the last moment.

Bella's father Durrell Odusina, 23, passed away due to heart failure in 2014, when Bella(pictured) was just two

She said: 'My babysitter told me that his day job had asked him to come in so he couldn't watch Preston.'

But as she walked into the school hall, a teacher stopped her and told her she wouldn't be allowed to watch the play with Preston.

She recalled: 'The teacher on the door told me that children weren't allowed in.

'I pleaded with her and explained this was the only day I could do due to my job and that my babysitter had cancelled on me.

'I asked her to make an exception but she put her arms across the door and said: "No children, I'm making no exceptions".'

When Ms O'Reilly asked for tickets for another day so her mother could watch Bella, she was told there were none left.

She claimed: 'They told me, 'There are none left'. When I asked for an explanation as to why kids couldn't watch the play, they just said it was school policy.'

Ms O'Reilly broke the news to Bella as she was changing into her donkey outfit in a classroom and Bella began to cry.

Ms O'Reilly broke the news to Bella as she was changing into her donkey outfit in a classroom and Bella began to cry. Pictured: Bella, Preston and Gemma

She added: 'She couldn't stop crying. She had been so excited about me seeing the play. She'd spent hours practising at home.

'I just can't believe a primary school would behave like this at Christmas.'

A spokesman for the school said: 'A policy that no babies and toddlers attend the Christmas nativity play has been in place for eight years.

'This is due to capacity and not disrupting the children performing. There have been no problems with this policy before.'
A pilot who terrified onlookers with a low-level fly-by to mark an airline's final long-haul flight has been cleared of wrongdoing.

The Air Berlin pilot named only as Michel R., 60, was given air traffic control permission before carrying out a lap of Dusseldorf Airport with 200 passengers on board.

He reportedly wanted to mark Air Berlin's last ever long-haul flight, arriving at Germany's third-largest airport in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia from Miami on October 16.

The public prosecutor's office in Dusseldorf confirmed a complaint had been filed for a 'dangerous intervention in rail, ship and air transport'.

A pilot who terrified onlookers with a low-level fly-by to mark an airline's final long-haul flight has been cleared of wrongdoing. the plant is pictured flying low over Dusseldorf airport

The pilot of the Airbus A330 - which was carrying 200 passengers - was allowed by traffic control to do a flyover as it was the last flight operated from the US to Germany

Some witnesses to the landing were reportedly scared by the sudden fly-by as they thought something was terribly wrong.

They blasted the pilots of the Airbus A380 as 'idiots' and said that they should have their licences taken away.

In one of the videos of the event a woman can be heard saying 'What is it doing?' as the aeroplane suddenly seems to accelerate instead of slowing down to land.

The aeroplane then makes a sharp left turn towards the terminal building, with the people on the outside terrace screaming in fear.

The pilot reportedly wanted to mark Air Berlin's last ever long-haul flight, arriving at Germany's third-largest airport in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia from Miami on October 16

An airport employee who watched the dramatic scenes unfold thought at first the aeroplane would crash right into the terminal

An airport employee who watched the dramatic scenes unfold thought at first the aeroplane would crash into the terminal.

She said: 'It was a strange feeling when the A330 came right at us, as we did not know before that it would do an honorary lap.'

However, passengers on board appreciated the honorary flyover and said they did not feel in danger as the pilot informed them about the manoeuvre.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Supervisory Office for Air Traffic Control stated on Tuesday that the authorities have decided that the spectacular manoeuvre was not an offence.

In the video shot from the control tower of Dusseldorf Airport, however, it can be clearly seen that it was a perfectly orchestrated move and that at no point anyone at the airport was in danger

Air Berlin was Germany's second biggest airline after Lufthansa and took part in the Oneworld airline alliance spearheaded by British Airways

The pilots involved were found to have broken no rules and will not be suffering any consequences, financial or otherwise.

There was no suggestion that the unnamed air traffic controller who granted permission for the flyby was ever accused of any offence.

According to local media, at a final Air Berlin farewell party the controversial pilot was 'celebrated like a hero' by the former Air Berlin employees, many of whom were without a job after the airline ceased its operations completely on October 27.

The last Air Berlin flight was from Munich to Berlin. The airline was once the second biggest in Germany but ran into financial difficulties and went bankrupt earlier this year.
In 2017, District Dossier blog readers were captivated by Education Weeks coverage of hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the impact on schools, an examination of the cost of superintendent severance packages, and a deep-dive look into the daily routine of a Maryland principal who also teaches.

Readers also flocked to stories on school secession, corruption in the Chicago public schools, and districts honored for supporting and encouraging their teachers.

Heres a look at the 10 most-read posts of 2017:

10. How a Florida School District Prepared for Multiple Hurricane Irma Scenarios

Through the eyes of the Orange County, Fla., schools chief operations officer, a look at how the district prepared for the devastating hurricane.

9. As Hurricane Irma Lashes Florida, Educators and Schools Offer Refuge

For many Floridians, schools across the state were their only shelter from Irma.

8. More Than 1 Million Students Affected by Hurricane Harvey So Far

More than a million students were affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in some way, according to the Texas Education Agency

7. Topeka Superintendent Tiffany Anderson to Walk Oscar Red Carpet

Topeka, Kansas, schools Superintendent Tiffany Anderson, a 2015 Education Week Leader to Learn From , walked the Oscar red carpet ahead of the 89th Annual Academy Awards.

6. Schools Become Whiter and Wealthier in Communities That Secede From Districts

Since 2000, 47 communities broke away from their old school districts to form new ones, often creating school systems that are wealthier and less racially diverse, according to a report from EdBuild, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that focuses on school funding inequity.

5. What Are the Top Districts for Supporting and Retaining Great Teachers?

The National Council on Teacher Quality names eight school systems as Great Districts for Great Teachers for programs and policies that encourage and support teachers.

4. Students Displaced by Hurricane Protected by Federal Law on Homeless

The vast majority of students who end up temporarily or permanently displaced by hurricanes are entitled to protections under the federal McKinney-Vento Act that covers homeless students.

3. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Former Chicago Schools CEO, Sentenced to Prison

Byrd-Bennett was sentenced to more than four years in prison for her role in steering no-bid contracts to an education consulting company in exchange for kickbacks in a $20 million corruption scheme. For bonus reading, heres a post from this month on another Chicago schools CEO resigning , amid allegations that he repeatedly lied to investigators during an ethics probe and a post from Education Weeks Inside School Research blog on the Windy City leading the country in academic growth .

2. School Boards Give Superintendents Hefty Severance Packages to Quit Early

When school boards offer hefty buy-out packages to get rid of superintendents with whom they no longer see eye-to-eye, do taxpayers get the shaft? It depends.

1. The School District Where Principals Also Teach

For the past 15 years, Dana McCauley has been the principal and a teacher at Crellin Elementary School, in the small Maryland town of Oakland, where she dedicates at least three hours a day to the classroom. For bonus reading, heres a 2016 story on principals working nearly 60 hours per week .

Related Videos
Deputies at a jail facility in Los Angeles saved the life of a 19-year-old inmate after he overdosed on the opioid Fentanyl.

The inmate had stopped breathing after he and four others at the Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles apparently ingested the drug after mistaking it for methamphetamine, authorities said Wednesday.

The incident happened on December 5 when Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies were conducting a welfare check.

The inmate, 19, had stopped breathing after he and four others at the Inmate Reception Center in LA ingested the drug after mistaking it for methamphetamine, authorities said

The incident happened on December 5 when Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies were conducting a welfare check

The five inmates were found unresponsive and disoriented in a cell, the sheriff's department said in a statement.

The 19-year-old inmate had stopped breathing, so deputies and medical personnel rushed in to resuscitate him.

Deputies and medical staff administered the drug Narcan, which blocks the effects of opioids and can save people from dying from an overdose.

Paramedics from the Los Angeles Fire Department also helped with the resuscitation effort.

Video of the lifesaving moment was posted on the sheriff's department's Facebook page.

The sheriff's department said in a statement: 'For more than five minutes, deputies and medical staff worked feverishly to revive the inmate, who continued to show no vital signs, while paramedics were called and responded.'

The 19-year-old inmate had stopped breathing, so deputies and medical personnel rushed in to resuscitate him. Deputies and medical staff administered the drug Narcan, which blocks the effects of opioids and can save people from dying from an overdose

The five inmates were found unresponsive and disoriented in a cell during the welfare check, the sheriff's department said in a statement

It added: 'They intravenously administered an additional dose of Narcan to the inmate and after several seconds the man suddenly came back to life, demonstrating full vital signs.'

All five inmates were taken to hospital after the overdose. Four were released within 12 hours, and the fifth was released 24 hours later after making a full recovery.

Sheriff Jim McDonnell congratulated the staff for helping save the inmate.

He said on Twitter: 'I'm proud of the @LASDHQ Deputies and Correctional Health Services staff that resuscitated an unresponsive inmate after an apparent drug overdose in the jail.

'He is alive today bc of the lifesaving efforts. We must focus on drug prevention, intervention and rehabilitation.'

An investigation into how the inmates came to possess the opioid is still under investigation.

The sheriff's department said the drug had been 'secreted in a body cavity' of one of the inmates.
A jilted man stabbed his girlfriend (pictured in the camo trousers) to death in a shop after she rejected his marriage proposal

A jilted man stabbed his girlfriend to death in a shop after she rejected his marriage proposal.

The killer then turned the knife on himself in a failed bid to commit suicide.

Shocking images show the man writhing in agony while covered in blood on the floor as shoppers and the woman's distraught mother denounce him for his brutal act.

He then begged onlookers: 'Finish me off.'

The 23-year-old woman's body can seen under a freezer in the grocery store. Witnesses said she had been stabbed 17 times.

The man, 26, had followed her into the shop in the oil-rich Russian city of Ufa, in Bashkortostan region.

Earlier he had waited for her near her house and she had tried to flee from him, according to neighbours.

Reports say her parents had been against a marriage between the pair because he had a criminal record.

He had approached her outside the shop with a bunch of flowers and asked her to marry him, but she refused, and said she wanted to end their relationship, according to reports.

She then ran into the store shouting 'Help!'

He followed screaming: 'If I can't have you, no-one else will' before taking out a knife and stabbing her multiple times.

He then plunged the knife into his own chest.

'A man stabbed his girlfriend out of jealousy, because she refused to continue the relations with him,' said a statement from the Russian Investigative Committee, which deals with serious crime.

The killer (pictured) then turned the knife on himself in a failed bid to commit suicide

'The suspect is in hospital in a grave condition.' A murder case has been opened.

A saleswoman at the shop said: 'We are still in shock. What happened here was a nightmare. It was terrible, he began to knife her. And then stab himself. A policeman said she died on the spot.'

In shocking video footage a man holding a camera can be heard saying: 'He just entered the shop. This scum was going to flee, I held him. Scum, Looks like he stabbed himself too?'

He then asks the killer: 'Did you do anything to yourself? Or not? Did you stab yourself? Asshole.'

A woman - believed to be the dead woman's mother - is heard saying: 'He's a convict.'

She then says: 'He wanted my daughter to marry him. And she did not want so he stabbed her. Asshole!'

The man with the camera replies: 'He is a ****** a convict would never do this' before the woman says: 'Check him. There is something in his hand. He stabbed himself.'

The man then adds: 'He's bleeding, he killed himself, he killed himself' as a policeman asks him: 'Did you call ambulance?'

The pair then discuss if the bloody man has a knife before the man filming says: 'I don't know, bro, I just dragged him out of there. When he began to twitch around her... I don't know what happened.'
Donald Trump lashed out at press coverage of the Republican tax cut package on Thursday morning, saying 'fake news' media is doing the Democrats' bidding by writing critically about it.

A bill lowering income taxes for 80 per cent of Americans sits on his desk after the Senate passed it Tuesday night and the House of Representatives gave its final approval Wednesday morning.

But Trump is still angling for his pound of flesh.

'The Massive Tax Cuts, which the Fake News Media is desperate to write badly about so as to please their Democrat bosses, will soon be kicking in and will speak for themselves,' he tweeted on Thursday.

'Companies are already making big payments to workers. Dems want to raise taxes, hate these big Cuts!'

President Donald Trump came out swinging Thursday against critics of the Republican tax cut plan, including 'fake news' media whom he sees as water-carriers for angry Democrats

Wednesday's White House victory lap highlighted the first major federal income tax cut in more than 30 years

The president was ebullient on Wednesday but returned to attack mode a day later

True enough, a handful of giant U.S. corporations pledged Wednesday to deliver bonuses to hundreds of thousands of U.S. employees.

Their tax rate will drop from 35 per cent to 21 per cent in a matter of months, a move that Trump called 'rocket fuel' for the nation's economy on Wednesday.

AT&T said it will pay $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 workers, and promised to make $1 billion in new investments in the United States in 2018.

Comcast NBCUniversal said it would award $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 employees.

Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, Ohio said it will pay $1,000 bonuses to more than 13,500 employees and raise the minimum wage for its workforce to $15 per hour because its tax rate is about to plummet.

Wells Fargo matched that $15 per hour minimum wage hike and said it was prompted by the tax plan. The San Francisco-based bank also said it would make $400 million in donations to nonprofit charities and other community organizations in 2018.

Boeing said it would make a '$300 million employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation.'

Trump also praised 'Fox & Friends' after its trio of hosts were named as the most influential people in media in an annual survey

'Fox & Friends' co-hosts (L-R) Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade have become TV rock stars since the President of the United States began regularly praising their show

Trump's tax-cut speech at the White House included the news that AT&T is responding by paying $1,000 bonuses to all its workers, a message he pushed Thursday as well

FedEx also showed optimism, with its CFO saying during an earnings call that the package shipping giant will likely expand if the tax cuts lead to larger national economic growth.

But the president's chief complaint on Thursday was with the national press corps, which in large part made his argument for him with skeptical headlines and coverage.

'Enjoy your tax cuts while they last,' an NBC News headline blared, forecasting a day in 2025 when this week's individual tax cuts expire unless political pressure drives Congress to renew them.

The New York Times gave its readers a feature article about 'how the "small-business tax cut" would also be a tax cut for the wealthy.'

And The Washington Post reacted to the rare Washington tax relief with a story about how 'Trump stands to save millions' personally.

Trump didn't single out the morning cable TV news shows he loves to hate, including MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' and CNN's 'New Day.'

In a letter to employees, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said the bonuses would be paid to all 'union-represented, non-management, and 1st and 2nd line managers'

Big busness follows: Comcast, which also owns NBC Universal, announced $1,000 each for more than 100,000 staff, Boeing said it would put $300 million into workforce development and Wells Fargo hiked its minimum wage to $15 an hour

But he did go out of his way to praise the Fox News Channel's daily offering after the Mediaite website named its trio of hosts #1 on a list of the most influential people in media.

'Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news? You deserve it  three great people!' the president tweeted.

'The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success!'

AT&T's dramatic move on Wednesday underscored what the White House hopes will be a quick race to economic expansion under the new tax regime.

President Trump posted two pictures to his Instagram Wednesday evening, including this one of himself in the Oval Office with Vice President Mike Pence (right), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (2nd left)

Trump's event on the White House's South Lawn was attended by nearly all the Republican members of Congress; 12 House members who voted against it stayed back along with one senator, Jeff Flake, who has feuded with Trump all year

In a letter to employees, the telecom company's CEO Randall Stephenson said the bonuses would be paid to all 'union-represented, non-management, and 1st and 2nd line managers.'

'If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays,' he added.

Just minutes before AT&T announced its employee bonuses, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer excoriated the company as a greedy corporation that would use its tax cut to buy back its stock and reward its executives.

'Over the last ten years, AT&T has paid an average tax rate of 8 per cent a year. They have 80,000 fewer employees today than they had then,' the New York Democrat complained.

'Tax breaks don't lead to job creation. They lead to big CEO salaries and money for the very, very wealthy.'
Harry and Meghan chose New York based fashion photographer Alexi Lubomirski who is famed for his portraits of Hollywood's leading women.

The father-of-two, who was born in the UK, was a protege of Mario Testino who was beloved by Harry's mother Princess Diana and photographed William and Kate when they got engaged in 2010.

Alexi is also firm favorite with celebrities, and has shot cover stars such as Julianne Moore, Angelina Jolie, Demi Moore, Beyonce, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Lopez, Selma Hayek, Katy Perry, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Emilia Clarke, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman and Scarlett Johansson.

The star photographer is also a prince of the Polish House of Lubomirski, whose royal lineage stretches back 500 years on his fathers side and gives him the title: 'His Serene Highness'.

Alexi said today: 'It was an incredible honour to be asked to document this wonderful event, but also a great privilege to be invited to share and be a witness to this young couples love for one another. I cannot help but smile when I look at the photos that we took of them, such was their happiness together'.

Alexi Lubomirski (left and right) who is famed for his portraits of Hollywood's leading women and a protege of Mario Testino

Harry and Meghan released the official engagement portraits, almost a month after announcing their plans to get married

One of the two photographs of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, taken earlier this week at Frogmore House in Berkshire

Alexi, who was in London this week, said it was an honour to 'witness a young couple's love for each other'

Meghan chose a couture gown by British label Ralph & Russo to pose in her husband-to-bes arms on the steps of Frogmore House, which is understood to have cost an eye-watering 46,650.

It was anything but a safe choice from the star for the couples official portrait, given that the bodice of the dress is entirely sheer. When it appeared on the A/W 16/17 catwalk, the model wore it without a bra underneath.

For a second, close-up photo of the couple embracing, Meghan is wearing a cream jumper understood to by Victoria Beckham, in a huge coup for the Spice Girl turned fashion designer.

Alexi was introduced to star photographer Mario Testino and joined him in Paris as his assistant for four years and has worked regularly for Vogue and Harpers Bazaar

Apparently also keen to support British brands for the special shoot, Prince Harry chose a coat by Burberry for their black and white picture.

The intimate photos of Harry and Meghan were apparently taken in the past week as he posted a photograph of himself at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday.

The couple were photographed at Frogmore House in the grounds of Windsor Castle, where they will marry at St Georges Chapel on May 19 next year.

Last month the couple said they had chosen Windsor because it was a very special place for the prince, and said that he and Meghan had regularly spent time there together during their 16-month romance.

It appears they again chose the beautiful grounds of the Queens Berkshire residence for the new photographs, released today to mark their engagement.

Alexi was born in England to a Peruvian/English mother and a Polish/French father and at the age of eight, he moved to Botswana with his mother and English stepfather.

He was introduced to star photographer Mario Testino and joined him in Paris as his assistant for four years and has worked regularly for Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.

He has also published books including 'Princely advice for a happy life' - a tribute to his two sons - and 'diverse beauty' about models not usually used in fashion magazines and campaigns.

All proceeds from his books are donated to the charity Concern Worldwide - which fights world poverty - of which Alexi is an ambassador.

Harpers Bazaar covers featuring Alexi's photos of Gwen Stefani (left) and Emilia Clarke (right) from Game of Thrones

Demi Moore poses for Alexi Lubomirski in her Hollywood Hills' home for Harper's Bazaar
Theresa May today demanded a 'serious' investigation into whether two ex-detectives broke the law by revealing that pornography was found during a notorious 2008 raid on Damian Green's office.

The Prime Minister said she wanted a 'proper' examination of the allegations after Scotland Yard referred Bob Quick and Neil Lewis to the Information Commissioner for flouting data protection rules.

However, questions have been raised after it emerged the maximum punishment the watchdog can impose is a fine.

Meanwhile, Mr Quick has confirmed that he still intends to sue Mr Green for accusing him of lying about the presence of inappropriate material on his computer.

The deputy PM was dramatically sacked last night after a sleaze probe found he had issued 'misleading' statements denying that pornography was found.

Damian Green (pictured leaving his London home today) was sacked by the PM last night after a seven week inquiry into sleaze allegations

Mr Green has admitted to making two misleading claims in his denials over allegations about porn on his office computer - prompting Mrs May to dramatically fire him late last night

The Ashford MP drove away from his home today (pictured) with his hands raised and without commenting to reporters this morning

Theresa May sacked Mr Green as her deputy last night, two days after receiving a report into his behaviour. She travelled today to Poland for a major summit with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (pictured)

Mrs May was surrounded by allies on the trip to Poland (pictured with Boris Johnson in a family photo today) today despite the turmoil at home

Former Met chief Bob Quick (pictured left) has confirmed that he still intends to sue Damian Green for accusing him of lying about the presence of inappropriate material on his computer. But he and Neil Lewis (pictured right) are facing the prospect of an investigation for breaching data protection laws

Mr Green made the statements after Mr Quick - with whom he has had a long-running feud - made claims to the Cabinet Office inquiry into his conduct.

Mr Lewis, another officer involved in the 2008 raid, also waded into the row by declaring that 'thousands' of images were found and it was 'ridiculous' to suggest the MP had not been viewing them personally.

Scotland Yard commissioner Cressida Dick told LBC earlier this month that the former officers' behaviour had been 'wrong'.

She said police had an ongoing 'duty of confidentiality' and the Met would be considering whether offences had been committed.

'It is my view that what they have done, based on my understanding of what they are saying, what they have done is wrong. And I condemn it,' she said.

However, today Ms Dick admitted the Yard had concluded that the only way forward was to refer the issue to the Information Commissioner.

'We are disappointed to see that it appears that former colleagues have put into the public domain via the media material that they appear to have had access to as part of a confidential investigation,' she told the London Assembly.

'I can say today that, in relation to that matter, having received our advice, we have made a referral to the Information Commissioner's Office as we believe that they are the appropriate people to carry on that investigation into essentially data protection matters.'

The first signs of movement at Mr Green's home today was somebody filming the waiting media outside awaiting the MPs' departure

When he emerged to head to Parliament today (pictured), Mr Green had no comment for the reporters on why he had made misleading statements

The ICO said the penalty for Data Protection breaches could only be a fine, although the amount is not thought to be capped.

A spokeswoman said: 'We can confirm that we have received a referral from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) that explains their belief that offences under the Data Protection Act 1998 have been committed by former MPS officers.

NINE-YEAR GRUDGE MATCH BETWEEN QUICK AND GREEN The Tories put out footage of the 2008 raid on Damian Green's office Damian Green and Bob Quick crossed swords in 2008 when the Met assistant commissioner took dramatic action in an inquiry into leaks from the force. Mr Quick decided to arrest then then shadow immigration minister. The Tory MP was held for nine hours while his Commons office, two homes and constituency office, were searched and computers removed by counter-terrorism officers. The episode sparked a huge inquest at the Commons into whether parliamentary privilege should have protected the material held by an MP. In the ensuing political storm, it emerged Mr Quick's wife was running a car hire firm from their home and details of their address were published on a website. The officer then accused the Tories of being 'wholly corrupt' in leaking the story to intimidate him and his investigation. But he was forced to apologise after then party leader David Cameron said the claim 'Tory machinery' was mobilised against his investigation was 'completely baseless'. Mr Green was later cleared of any wrongdoing. Mr Quick complained bitterly that the investigation cost him his career. He quit in April 2009 after being photographed arriving at Downing Street with documents detailing a counter-terror operation clearly visible. He later claimed he might have survived the gaffe if it had not been for the Green affair. Advertisement

'As the UK's data protection regulator, we'll be looking at whether individuals acted unlawfully by retaining or disclosing personal data.

'These are serious allegations and we are investigating to determine whether the law has been broken and what further action is necessary including potential criminal prosecution.'

Speaking during a visit to Poland, Mrs May said she shared concerns about the way details of the 2008 police inquiry into Home Office leaks had entered the public domain.

'I share the concerns that have been raised across the political spectrum about comments that were made by a former police officer and I expect that issue to be properly investigated, to be taken seriously and to be properly looked at,' she said.

Former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell said Mr Green's breaches of the ministerial code were 'dwarfed by the extraordinary behaviour of the police'.

Friends of Mr Green said the police had got their man after a nine-year vendetta.

Mr Quick previously threatened to sue Mr Green saying he must 'publicly retract' allegations he had lied about the discovery.

Asked today whether he would press on with the legal action, Mr Quick told the BBC: 'I will continue to seek a retraction. The matter is in the hands of my lawyers.'

A legal letter is expected to be sent to Mr Green imminently.

The 2008 raid was highly controversial, as Mr Green - then shadow immigration minister - had been embarrassing the police with a series of leaks.

Mr Quick, who was leading an investigation into the source, decided to arrest then then shadow immigration minister.

The Tory MP was held for nine hours while his Commons office, two homes and constituency office, were searched and computers removed by counter-terrorism officers.

The episode sparked a huge inquest at the Commons into whether parliamentary privilege should have protected the material held by an MP.

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick (file image) has called for an inquiry into why former officers used old evidence to discredit Mr Green

In the ensuing political storm, it emerged Mr Quick's wife was running a car hire firm from their home and details of their address were published on a website.

The officer then accused the Tories of being 'wholly corrupt' in leaking the story to intimidate him and his investigation.

But he was forced to apologise after then party leader David Cameron said the claim 'Tory machinery' was mobilised against his investigation was 'completely baseless'.

Mr Green was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

The allegations about what was found on his computer were only levelled by the former officers after the standards investigation was launched.

And it was not the claims themselves, but Mr Green's response to them that eventually triggered his downfall.

He was found to have 'misled' by denying that any such material had been found, when in fact police had told him about the discovery. He still denies having viewed any pornography at work.

Despite being sacked for lying, Mr Green is entitled to around 17,000 in severance pay under the rules that cover ministers, even though he was effectively sacked.

Theresa May sacked Mr Green as her deputy last night, two days after receiving a report into his behaviour. She travelled today to Poland for a major summit with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (pictured)
A Russian man was brutally murdered by his room-mate after his smoking habit became too much for the killer.

Eduard Assylov, a 37-year-old motor mechanic, was stabbed to death and his head, limbs and genitals chopped off with a knife.

His roommate confessed to the crime and said that had become fed up with Assylov's smoking, and had eventually 'gone berserk' when the mechanic lit up in their home.

Murdered: The mutilated remains of Eduard Assylov were discovered by his horrified neighbours in Moscow, whose roommate confessed to killing him over his smoking habit

Assylov's mutlated remains were discovered by his horrified neighbours in the Russian capital Moscow.

The 37-year-old's head, arms and legs had been severed and his genitals were lying on top of a pillow soaked in blood.

A police spokesperson said: 'The victim was found in the communal corridor of a dormitory where he had been renting a room.

'He had been stabbed nine times in the stomach and five times in the groin.

'In total he was stabbed more than 40 times before being dismembered.'

Shock find: The 37-year-old's head, arms and legs, pictured right, had been severed and his genitals were lying on top of a pillow soaked in blood

Assylov's roommate confessed to 'going berserk' and stabbing him to death and mutilating him in their home in Moscow after becoming annoyed with his smoking habit

He added that the attacker had also cut off the victim's ears and his left hand's middle finger.

Police initially thought the man, who was single, had been the victim of an attack by a love rival, given the severity and nature of the injuries.

But soon after, the victim's 45-year-old roommate, who has not been named, confessed to the killing.

Having moved to the capital from the city of Irkutsk in Siberia to work as a driver, the man told officers he couldn't stand the victim's smoking.

Police initially thought that Assylov had been the victim of an attack by a love rival, given the severity and nature of the injuries

He said the pair had often argued about cigarettes but that on this occasion he had gone 'berserk' after he'd sparked up and had attacked him with a knife.

Stunned internet users were quick to express their horror at the attack.

One calling herself Irina Krot wrote: 'I thought it was just me who hated smokers, but now I see I was wrong. Never thought I could feel pity for any of them.'

While Boris Shkodov commented: 'What a terrible and stupid death!!'

The accused has now been charged with murder and faces life in jail.
Advertisement

As a car ploughed through pedestrians at a busy Melbourne intersection, a man whipped out his phone and began filming the carnage.

Police spotted the 24-year-old just metres from where the white Suzuki Vitara crashed into a tram stop bollard next to Flinders Street Station about 4.40pm on Thursday.

They searched him as a matter of procedure and allegedly found a bag containing three knives and arrested him to investigate if he had any involvement in the incident that injured 19 people including the driver.

A 24-year-old man was arrested after he was seen filming a car plough through crowds near Melbourne's Flinders St Station and police found him carrying a bag with three knives

The alleged driver (pictured) is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent who was wrestled from the car by an undercover police officer who was hurt in the altercation

A man wearing jeans and a Nike t-shirt (pictured) was arrested on the steps at Flinders Street Station shortly after the incident

A man wearing jeans, runners and a Nike t-shirt was arrested on the steps at Flinders Street Station shortly after the incident, according to Nine News.

However, detectives now do not believe he was linked to the 'deliberate' act of the 32-year-old driver who was dragged from the car as he filmed.

'At a significant scene like this, he was taken into custody because of the circumstances so we can explore it,' Acting Commissioner Shane Patton said on Thursday night.

'It may well be that person is exonerated from any involvement in the end, and that is probable at this stage.'

The young man was not known to police and, like the alleged driver, had no known links to extremist organisations. He has not been charged with any crime.

The alleged driver is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent who was wrestled from the car by an undercover police officer who was hurt in the altercation.

The white Suzki Vitara crashed into a tram stop bollard next to Flinders Street Station about 4.40pm on Thursday

A man was seen talking to police near the scene soon after the car crashed into the tram stop bollard

The man had a history of abusing the drug ice, mental health issues, and a criminal history with a minor assault charge in 2010. He was under police guard in hospital for injuries suffered in the crash.

Victims of the rampage included a four-year-old boy with serious head injuries, but in a stable condition and four others still in critical condition.

Others were men aged 25, 40, 43, 45, and 83; two 25-year-old women, and other women aged 30, 35, 47, and 58 along with another three men and two women of unknown age.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders'.

'This is a terrible, evil, cowardly act... At a time of the year when so many families are celebrating the end of they year, doing their Christmas shopping ... we have seen a horrific act,' he said.

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

Witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd, ploughing through people in its path and crashing into the pole.

'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere,' one told radio station 3AW:

Dramatic footage then showed a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passersby as they wait for paramedics.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' another told the Herald Sun.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'
An assistant principal has admitted to sexually abusing and grooming young students using fake money and prizes on 'Superhero' days  where he dressed up as 'Captain Obvious'.

Shane Matthews, 30, pleaded guilty to 56 charges stemming from the abuse of his students at Wattle Grove Public School in Sydney, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Victims and their parents broke down in tears as Matthews entered his pleas at Campbelltown Local Court on Thursday.

Shane Matthews, 30, pleaded guilty to 56 charges stemming from the abuse of his students at Wattle Grove Public School in Sydney

He admitted to sexually abusing and grooming young students using fake money and prizes on 'Superhero' days  where he dressed up as 'Captain Obvious'

Matthews sexually assaulted his young victims  aged between 10 and 12 years old  in his classroom for more than 10 years.

Most of the abuse took place in a classroom during lessons and private tutorials.

He encouraged young boys to perform and receive sexual acts by giving them fake money as a reward.

The money was then used to purchase stationery items at auctions on 'Superhero' days.

Matthews sexually assaulted his young victims  aged between 10 and 12 years old  in his classroom for more than 10 years

Matthews taught at Wattle Grove for seven years before becoming assistant principal at Woodland Road Public School in Campbelltown in 2016.

Before he was arrested a school newsletter from Wattle Grove said Matthews was a 'wonderful asset' who would be 'sorely missed'.

New South Wales child abuse officers arrested the teacher in September 2016.

He was originally charged with 14 offences, but those grew as more victims came forward.

Matthews is in custody and will next face Campbelltown District Court in February 2018.
Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez (pictured) was arrested on Thursday, after police found her with kidnapped six-week-old Shamali Flores

A woman who was hiding a recent miscarriage from her family fatally stabbed a mother and abducted her infant daughter, Houston police said Thursday.

Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez, 28, is charged with capital murder in the death of 33-year-old Carolina Flores, Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference. He said Miranda-Alvarez had known Flores and Flores' brother for about five years.

Miranda-Alvarez concealed her miscarriage from family members and claimed that she had just returned from the hospital after giving birth, Acevedo said.

'The woman was due to have a baby in January and she lost that baby,' he said.

Scroll down for video

The six-week baby girl was found safe on Thursday, two days after her mother was found stabbed to death (mother and daughter pictured)

Shamali Flores (left and right) was found in a southeast Houston apartment, police announced Thursday morning. They would not released any other details about how she was found or who she was found with

The body of Carolina Flores was discovered around midday Tuesday. Police initially said they believed the baby was with her father but he was found late Tuesday in San Antonio without Shamali.

'Investigative efforts' led police to a southwest Houston apartment complex early Thursday where they happened to spot a couple holding a baby, Acevedo said. They questioned the couple and determined Miranda-Alvarez was holding 6-week-old Shamali Flores. The baby was not harmed.

Miranda-Alvarez was being held without bond at the Houston city jail. Online jail records don't indicate she has an attorney who can comment on her behalf. The suspect's boyfriend has not been charged and Acevedo said it appears he wasn't aware of the miscarriage.

Carolina, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, was found stabbed to death at her apartment by her 17-year-old nephew Tuesday morning

Investigators believed the couple was preparing to leave the area with Shamali, he said.

Shamali was evaluated at a hospital and is in the custody of state Child Protective Services.

Police officials at a news conference Wednesday had said the person who took Shamali likely knew her family. They also said it's possible the girl was taken by someone who had lost a child.

Acevedo on Thursday credited Houston police and FBI with using that theory to help direct the course of the investigation.

'Everything our investigators theorized turned out to be true,' he said.

Flores was found stabbed to death Tuesday morning by her 17-year-old nephew in in her northeast Houston apartment.

An Amber Alert was issued for her daughter not long after.

The baby's father, 34-year-old Marcos Mariano Tomas Palacios (aka Thomas Bernardez), was initially a person of interest in the case.

They located him late Tuesday in San Antonio but he didn't have the baby on him.

Shamali's father Marcos Mariano Tomas Palacios - aka Thomas Bernardez (right) - was initially called a person of interest. But police interviewed him and released him

After questioning Palacios, police held a press conference on Wednesday and said the suspect may be a woman who knows the family and may be passing the baby off as her own.

'We really believe based on what we've seen so far that this suspect who has this child is familiar with this family and familiar with this neighborhood,' Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said.

He added: 'The individual who abducted Shamali may be a woman who has or will present the child as their own, and may even indicate the child was recently born. Think about anyone who has a child that you weren't aware they were pregnant. Also think about people that may have lost a child recently. Women or families that may have lost a child recently. That might be someone we may be interested in talking to.

Flores' cousin Jenny Lopez told KTRK that Flores moved to the U.S. from Honduras illegally about five years ago.

'She came out here to get something,' Lopez said. '[She] came out here to provide for her kids and to get something out of life because in Honduras there's nothing.'

Flores two other children, ages seven and 17, who are now in the care of family members. Flores also took care of her niece and nephew.
A grandmother who spent 35 years in jail for a murder she did not commit finally walked free on Wednesday after having her sentence commuted.

Judy Henderson, 68, was jailed in 1982 for the murder of jeweler Harry Klein after luring him to out of town to rob him.

It was her boyfriend, Greg Cruzen, who pulled the trigger but he was never convicted and instead paid witnesses at Henderson's trial to say she had acted alone.

She was sentenced to 50 years in jail without the possibility of parole and had been seeking clemency from the Governor's office for decades.

Her pleas went unanswered until this week when Governor Eric Greitens, who took office in January, took action.

Scroll down for video

Judy Henderson (center) cried as she walked out of the Chillicothe Correctional Center on Wednesday after 35 years inside for a murder she did not commit. She was joined by friends and family and got into a waiting limousine

Henderson wept into the arms of a loved one as she made her way out of the prison

In a touching video of her first steps of freedom that was obtained by The Springfield News Leader, Henderson is seen weeping as she walks out of the Chillicothe Correctional Center.

Through tears, she shouted jokingly to her friends who were still inside: 'That was fun girls!'

In 1981, Henderson and Cruzen lured Klein away from his jewelry store in Springfield to rob him.

She was the bait and convinced him to get into a car with her to drive to the outskirts of town.

Once out of the way, Cruzen shot him three times in an armed robbery. They wanted to steal items of jewelry he had on him.

Both Cruzen and Henderson were later arrested and charged with murder but he lied and told investigators his girlfriend acted alone.

In 1981, Henderson was charged with the murder of a jeweler who she lured to the outskirts of town to rob him. Her boyfriend shot the man three times, killing him, and she was blamed. She is pictured before she was jailed

He then paid inmates in the jail where Henderson was awaiting trial to lie to prosecutors and say she had confessed to carrying out the killing along.

Since being jailed in 1982, Henderson has been fighting for release. She is pictured in one of the many periodic booking photos taken during her 35 year imprisonment

Both Cruzen and Henderson were being represented by the same lawyer, James McCullin.

He sided with Cruzen and never informed Henderson about a plea deal prosecutors offered her which would have seen her spend just 10 years behind bars.

Because of the bought false testimony of the inmates they paid off, Henderson was never called as a witness at Cruzen's trial and he was acquitted.

He is believed to have left Missouri in the early 1990s and has been living in Oklahoma ever since.

McCullin died years ago.

While fighting from behind bars to have her sentence and conviction overturned, Henderson said she became a 'model' inmate.

Henderson, above in a more recent photograph, spent her time behind bars obtaining qualifications

She learned how to train therapy dogs, worked as an exercise instructor and even became a licensed paralegal.

She already had children when she was jailed and she said they were what motivated her to keep appealing for release.

On Wednesday, as she emerged from prison in a new outfit to a waiting limousine, Henderson cried: 'It happened, it finally happened.'

Governor Greitens announced his decision in a press release on Wednesday.

'Commuting Judy Hendersons sentence to time servedmore than 35 yearsis the right thing to do,' he said.

Erven the prosecutor who tried the case in the 1980s welcomed the decision.

'I handled thousands of criminal cases during my time as a prosecutor.

'Judys case is the first time I have supported clemency for someone I prosecuted,' Thomas Mountjoy said.
New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina plans to announce her retirement Thursday, NBC New York reports, citing city government sources.

Farina, 75, has led the nations largest school district for the last four years, helping to carry out Mayor Bill DeBlasios education agenda, including universal pre-k. The city has already started a national search for her replacement, Politico reports.

Education Weeks Denisa Superville profiled Farina in 2014 , noting that she ended the policy of using only test scores to make high-stakes decisions about promoting students to the next grade; started programs for teachers and principals across different schools to collaborate on instructional strategies; created a senior position to oversee English-language learners , who make up about 14.5 percent of the system; and pledged extra supports for those students.

Supporters say that the chancellor, a former teacher, principal, and deputy chancellor in the 1.1 million-student district, has set a new tone for the New York City school system in which parents are seen as assets and morale among teachers is on the rise after years of acrimonious relations between Mr. Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers, she reported.

But her work has been met with some criticism.

Her abolishing of the Bloomberg-era letter-grade rating system for schools and reducing the reliance on test scores drew strong support from some parent groups, the teachers union, and researchers, Superville wrote. But others, such as the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, attacked the changes, arguing that they will diminish transparency on how well schools are serving students.

Photo: New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina. -- Mike Groll/AP-File
Advertisement

An injured off-duty police officer has been hailed a hero for arresting a rampaging driver in Melbourne's city centre during the afternoon peak hour rush.

The plain clothes officer wrestled with the 32-year-old Afghan immigrant moments after he crashed a white Suzuki Grand Vitara four-wheel drive into terrified pedestrians outside busy Flinders Street Station.

As the gallant officer recovered in hospital from a shoulder injury, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews praised the hero for rushing into the SUV just 15 seconds after it crashed into a bollard - which he described as 'an act of evil'.

The driver behind the wheel of the SUV, with P-plates, has been identified by the The Herald Sun as Saeed Noori.

An off-duty police officer (circled) has been praised for wrestling with an Afghan immigrant just 15 seconds after he crashed this Suzuki Grand Vitara four-wheel drive into a bollard outside Melbourne's Flinders Street Station during peak hour

The off-duty police officer (pictured wearing a white shirt) sustained a shoulder injury as he arrested the 32-year-old driver

'The off-duty arresting officer, a member of Victoria police, who was prime in terms of detaining the alleged offender did suffer some injuries and is receiving hospital treatment,' he told reporters.

'We would be right to single him out for special praise for the way in which he instinctively came to the aid of others in the protection of public order and potentially avoiding so much other carnage.'

The 4.41pm carnage on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets injured 19 people, four critically - only 11 months after six people, including a three-month-old boy, were killed in an eerily similar rampage on nearby Bourke Street just four blocks away.

The latest injury toll included a four-year-old boy with head injuries, who remains in a stable condition, and an 83-year-old man, with the other wounded bystanders aged between 25 and 58.

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard (pictured) being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the carnage would have been much worse if it wasn't for the quick-thinking police

The lone wolf driver was an Australian citizen from Afghanistan, who was known to police.

He remains under police guard at hospital with shoulder and hand injuries, after being dragged from the Suzuki by two uniformed police officers.

Victoria Police said the driver has a history of drug use, mental health problems and a criminal history with a minor assault in 2010.

More than a dozen pedestrians, including a toddler, have been injured after a car ploughed into rush hour crowds (pictured)

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

19 people were injured (one pictured) and taken to hospitals across Melbourne and four of them are in critical conditions

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said Thursday night the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders' (pictured)

Victoria Police will remain at the scene through the night until at least Friday morning as they investigate (pictured)

Usually a busy strip in the heart of the city, Flinders Street has become a crime scene (pictured) after the car ploughed crowds

A second 24-year-old man, who was carrying a bag containing three knives, was arrested but police believe he had no link to the incident.

'Clarity on the second offender that is in custody, it has not yet been determined whether he was involved, and it is quite probable he was not,' Acting Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters.

This 24-year-old man was seen filming the rampage.

The crash injured 19 people, including the driver and the heroic off-duty police officer.

Five men, aged 25, 40, 43, 45 and 83 and six women, aged 25, 30, 35, 47 and 58, were among the victims.

Another three men and two women were injured but their ages are unknown.

Victoria Police believe the incident had no terror link with no political motive so far established.

'We do not have any evidence to a connection with terrorism,' Acting Commissioner Patton said.

Two men were arrested at the scene after the white SUV (pictured) crashed into a bollard at Flinders Street Station

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation.'

Victoria's Labor Premier Daniel Andrews said the rampage was an 'horrific act' which targeted 'innocent bystanders'.

'What occurred on Flinders Street this afternoon was an act of evil and an act of cowardice,' he said on Thursday night. 'This is a terrible, evil, cowardly act.

'At a time of the year when so many families are celebrating the end of they year, doing their Christmas shopping ... we have seen a horrific act.'

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle.

A witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd.

'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere,' she told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

'We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere.'

Dramatic footage shows a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passers-by as they wait for paramedics.

Victoria Police dragged the man in a white shirt (pictured) from the white Suzuki to the gutter shortly after the incident

Footage shows the damaged car surrounded by dozens of injured pedestrians while police arrest one man (pictured)

The second man in a red checked shirt, also with a beard (pictured), was arrested but police say he is not linked to the incident

Dozens of people were hit by the car with witnesses saying they saw the car doing burnouts before the incident

A witness told Nine News they thought the car was travelling at about 60km/h as it drove into busy crowds (pictured)

The white Suzuki SUV (pictured) was forced to stop its rampage when it crashed into a bollard near Flinders Street Station

A car crashed into the crowds at Melbourne 's Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street (pictured) causing dramatic scenes

Ambulance Victoria said paramedics were called to the scene (pictured) at 4.41pm Thursday and several are critical

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was nearby in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

He was on the scene from about two minutes after the car collided and could see the cracked windscreen and Good Samaritans trying to save injured pedestrians.

'A few ladies were screaming but it was calm - there were no sirens, nothing,' Mr Harris said.

'I was here when the other one (the Bourke Street tragedy) happened . you get desensitised.'

Irish demolition worker Paul Cahalane, 25, was walking to the gym - and en route to picking up some chocolate milk - via Flinders Street when he heard what sounded like a bomb.

'I was just going to get chocolate milk and I had my headphones in, music playing, scrolling Instagram when I just heard a bang, a bang behind me,' Mr Cahalane told Daily Mail Australia.

Another witness Lachlan Vella told Fairfax Media he saw a man dressed in a suit with his 'head busted open' as he was lying on the ground.

Mr Vella said another man 'had blood around his head and was snoring, like atonal breathing,' as a woman came in and out of consciousness.

Paul Cahalane, an Irish demolition worker on a visa, described hearing a bang behind him as he was walking to the gym

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was near the crash aftermath (pictured)

The heart of Melbourne's CBD is in lock down after the car ploughed down a number of shoppers and commuters (pictured)

19 people were taken to hospital including a pre-school aged child with serious head injuries who is now in stable condition

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation,' Commander Russell Barrett (pictured) said

Police locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street (pictured)

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife was taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed

A number of injured were taken to the The Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, St Vincent's Hospital and Royal Children's Hospital including the driver of the car (pictured) and a police officer

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife had been taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed.

Police have locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street.

A child at pre-school suffered head injuries and was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but the extent of the injuries are unknown.

Witnesses told 9 News they saw the white SUV being driven at about 60km/h before it smashed into dozens of pedestrians.

Another witness told 3AW there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground'.

More could have been injured if not for the vehicle crashing into a bollard at the tram stop out the front of Flinders Street Station.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Police said the driver of the car and a second man were arrested after what they believe was a 'deliberate' attack in the CBD

A child at pre-school suffered serious head injuries and was taken to Royal Children's Hospital (white SUV pictured)

More could have been injured if the white Suzuki did not crash into a bollard after about '15 seconds' of trauma

Lachlan Read, 20, told The Herald Sun the whole rampage lasted about 15 seconds.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' Mr Read said.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the federal and state security agencies would work together to investigate the 'shocking incident'.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the emergency and health workers who are treating them,' Mr Turnbull tweeted.

The carnage comes almost a year after six people were killed and 30 injured when a car ploughed through the Bourke Street Mall only a few blocks away.

The driver, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, was charged with six counts of murder after he allegedly used a maroon mid-1990s Holden Commodore sedan to run down shoppers during their summer lunch break.

A child and two adults were amoung those who died following the attack as well as a three-month-old baby boy.

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated shortly after the incident Thursday

A witness told Melbourne's 3AW radio station there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground' (pictured)

'People were flying everywhere ... people running everywhere' a witness told the 3AW radio station on Thursday (pictured)
President Donald Trump, in a first exercise of his power to commute criminal sentences, cut short the 27-year prison term of a kosher meatpacking executive and rabbi who was convicted eight years ago of bank fraud, the White House said on Wednesday.

The commutation granted to Sholom Rubashkin, 57, marked only the second time that Trump has invoked his clemency authority as president, following the blanket pardon he granted earlier this year to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona.

Unlike the case of Arpaio, whom a judge had found guilty of contempt in a case involving racial profiling, Trumps latest action leaves Rubashkins conviction intact, as well as terms of his supervised release from federal prison and his obligation to make restitution.

The commutation granted to Sholom Rubashkin, 57, marked only the second time that Trump has invoked his clemency authority as president. Rubashkin is seen celebrating his release

President Donald Trump, in a first exercise of his power to commute criminal sentences, cut short the 27-year prison term of a kosher meatpacking executive and rabbi who was convicted eight years ago of bank fraud

Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 of 86 counts of financial fraud that came to light after a government raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, where hundreds of undocumented immigrant workers were arrested.

A father of 10, Rubashkin was the chief executive overseeing the slaughterhouse and headquarters for a family business that was then the largest kosher meat-processing company in the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 refused to hear an appeal contesting Rubashkins sentence, which his lawyers argued was excessive for a first-time, non-violent offender.

His lawyers also contended, to no avail, that he was entitled to a new trial based on evidence of alleged judicial misconduct.

The case sparked an outcry from members of the legal and Orthodox Jewish communities who rallied to Rubashkins defense.

Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 of 86 counts of financial fraud that came to light after a government raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa,

CELEBRATION: The White House authorized Rubashkins release on Wednesday

This picture depicts jubilation of the orthodox community in Brooklyn at Rubashkins release

The White House statement cited letters of support for review of Rubashkins case from more than 30 members of Congress of both parties, including House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and veteran Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.

Trump also pointed to bipartisan expressions of support for review of the case from over 100 former high-ranking U.S. Justice Department officials, prosecutors, judges and legal scholars.

The White House further noted criticism of Rubashkins sentencing as unusually harsh in comparison to penalties imposed on others for similar white-collar crimes.

Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was originally sentenced to 24 years in prison, but a federal judge later shortened his term of 14 years.

The former CEO of Tyco International Ltd, L. Dennis Kozlowski, was sentenced to 8-1/3 to 25 years in prison and was paroled after serving eight.
A killer whale calf is believed to have died in agony after being blown ashore by the ferocious 90mph gales of Storm Caroline.

Tragic images show the young orca's body on a grassy Shetland shoreline almost three weeks after the storm hit.

The three-metre long whale is thought to have died of dehydration or been crushed by its own body weight after becoming stranded.

A killer whale calf is believed to have died in agony after being blown ashore by the ferocious 90mph gales of Storm Caroline

It was discovered by a member of the public on the west coast of Shetland's main island at least 25 metres from the shoreline

The orca was probably separated from its mother by the weather, according to the Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary

Hillswick, the island's only wild animal rehabilitation centre, reported the beaching to the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme (SMAS) who have carried out a post-mortem.

The whale is believed to have died of dehydration or was crushed by its own body weight after becoming stranded. It was found at least 25 metres from the shoreline

A spokeswoman for the sanctuary said: 'It's very sad. We think it was thrown up onto the shore during Storm Caroline while it was still alive.

She added: 'There's not any breeding pods around the Scottish shorelines other than around Shetland and the Norway coastline, so it's very sad to see such a young male.'

The whale, thought to be around two or three years old and in good condition, wasn't spotted until a week after being thrown from the water.

Posting the snaps of the whale online, the animal rescue centre wrote: 'On Thursday we were called out to find a second dead killer whale washed up on Shetland's coastline this year.

The Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary, the island's only wild animal rehabilitation centre, believes the whale was likely separated from its mother and pod by the weather

'This week we came across this juvenile male in Eshaness, washed a long way up the banks by Storm Caroline a week earlier.

'Very sad, as it was one of Shetland's young orcas, and there aren't many young orcas in Europe, let alone the UK.

'We took samples for Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme who are hoping to carry out a full autopsy to establish the cause of death.'

The post has attracted nearly 900 reactions from social media users and over 100 comments.

Annie Davidson said: 'Not another! Desperately tragic to lose another member of the pod, especially a youngster.'

Earlier this year a female killer whale named Lulu died after becoming entangled in a creel rope on the Isle of Tiree in the Hebrides, Scotland.

Researchers discovered she had one of the highest levels of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) pollution ever recorded in the species.

The orca's blubber revealed PCB concentrations - which are linked to poor health and increased risk of cancer - were 80 times higher than the normal threshold.

Although the chemical has been banned since the 1980s, experts say the shocking findings highlight the long-lasting damage of PCBs on marine life.
Harry Styles might not be on the top of every dad's Christmas list but this one became very emotional when his daughter gave him tickets to see his favourite pop star.

Robert Harper, 41, from Texas, was so surprised at the early Christmas present that he could not contain his excitement and almost broke down in tears.

The Harry Styles super-fan had tried to get tickets to a concert just months before but was gutted when he was unsuccessful.

His daughter, Bailey Darnell, hid the sought-after tickets in a Harry Styles photo album which she wrapped up - and then filmed the moment he discovered them.

Addressing the camera she says: 'So it's Christmas and we thought really hard for a long time about what we should get my dad and we decided on something that he really liked and I just wanted to share with y'all.

'Quick reminder that my dad is the biggest Harry Styles fan ever.'

Robert Harper, 41, and his daughter Bailey Darnell, 18, pictured going to a One Direction concert in 2014. Bailey filmed his reaction to getting Harry Styles tickets for Christmas

In the clip, eighteen-year-old Bailey gets her dad to sit cross legged next to the family Christmas tree before handing over her carefully wrapped gift.

The oil worker then falls onto his hands and knees in disbelief before jumping for joy and pacing round the room.

He then sits down and covers his face with his hands - appearing to hold back the tears.

Robert had narrowly missed out to getting tickets to see his favourite pop star but was unsuccessful so his generous daughter decided to surprise him when she got some for his upcoming world tour

Bailey said: 'He's been a fan of One Direction since I started getting into them around 2012. Harry is definitely his favourite.

'I'd say we like Harry Styles about the same but I'm sure my dad would argue that he's the biggest fan.

'We went to 1D in 2014. At one point in the show, he was absolutely certain that when he held up the 'I love you' sign with one of his hands, Harry saw him.

Bailey had her father sit down next to the Christmas tree at their home in Texas to give him the lovingly chosen present which she had considered for a 'really long time'

When the super-fan finds the piece of paper with the tickets on he falls onto his hands and knees before jumping for joy and running around the living room

'Harry did respond by giving the same sign in our direction.

'While I'm unsure if it was coincidence or if Harry truly did see the gesture, my dad is absolutely certain that it was meant for him alone.

'He was so excited about it, he even still talks about it.

A shocked Robert can hardly contain his disbelief and excitement as he thought all the tickets for Harry Styles' 2018 world tour had all sold out

'I decided to get the tickets for him after he was so upset when he couldn't go with me back in October. He had no idea that there were still tickets available for the 2018 tour.

'He opened his gift early because he has to go back to work for a trip and will miss out on having Christmas at home with the family.

'He was kind of down about this but opening the Harry Styles tickets made him feel a lot better about the situation and much happier about what could be a really emotional thing.

Bailey said that he started to like One Direction when she did in 2012 and her dad is determined that he is a bigger Harry Styles fan than she is

'He hasn't stopped talking about it since he opened them.'

Harry Styles' self-titled debut album was released in May and went straight to number one in multiple countries including the UK and the US.

He will be kicking off his world tour in Switzerland in March and will eventually get to Texas in June.
The Government's secret analysis of Brexit on different parts of the economy was ridiculed today after it was finally made public.

After weeks of wrangling and claims Brexit Secretary David Davis was in 'contempt' of Parliament, the 850 pages of reports were released by MPs this morning.

The 39 reports, which MPs have had private access to since last month, includes startling claims that food is a 'vital for consumers' and that the 'parts of an aircraft' include the 'nose, fuselage, wings, engine nacelles and tail'.

A report on the space sector says manufacturing is often 'bespoke', while another report on postal services says the market can be divided into 'letters and parcels'.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady (left) and Brexit Committee chairman Hilary Benn (right) led criticism of the 'shoddy' reports today after they were finally published

Brexit Secretary David Davis was accused of being in 'contempt' of Parliament for resisting publication of the reports, which he described as 'exhaustive' before denying they existed

MPs demanded the reports be published after Mr Davis declared the analysis was 'exhaustive' in its detail.

Ministers fought publication of the reports, insisting they did not exist in the format asked for by Parliament - prompting claims Mr Davis had misled Parliament.

They handed over only edited versions to the Brexit committee after a Commons vote demanded publication.

The Brexit Committee finally published its copy of the reports today, offering a scathing critique of the skinny analysis.

Committee chairman Hilary Benn said he had tried to confirm with Mr Davis whether any meaningful economic analysis of Brexit had been done.

He said: 'We have sought to clarify with the Secretary of State whether there is any specific material in the documents provided that he would prefer the committee not to publish on the grounds that it is commercially, market or negotiation-sensitive information.

'In light of his response, the committee has today decided to publish this material provided to us by the Department (for Exiting the EU).'

Ms O'Grady said the secret reports looked 'like they've just printed off Wikipedia pages on bits of the economy'

John Springford, Director of Research at the Centre for European Reform, said he had reviewed the 'aerospace' analysis and found no useful detail

TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'I see ministers have published their Brexit impact assessments.

'Looks to me like they've just printed off Wikipedia pages on bits of the economy. I know it's the end of term, but we can do better than this.'

John Springford, Director of Research at the Centre for European Reform, said he had reviewed the 'aerospace' analysis and concluded: 'It's entirely descriptive. Zero analysis of Brexit impact.'

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said: 'If a GCSE student turned this in as a summary of key statistics, they'd merit about a B-plus for effort.

'But you'd like to think that senior ministers and their civil servants would be some way above that standard.'

Among the claims in the 850 pages of sectoral analysis is a 'simplistic' description of how aircraft include a nose, fuselage, wings, engine nacelles and tail

The report on food and agriculture says the sector is 'vital for consumers' because it ensures the availability 'of food that is safe to eat'

The postal market report claims the industry can be divided into two markets: letters and parcels

A long report on the space sector reveals a 'complex supply chain' that involves 'bespoke' manufacturing of satellites

The retail sector is described as 'large and very diverse', ranging from 'daily necessities to high end luxury goods'

Eloise Todd, chief executive of the Best For Britain campaign, called for Mr Davis to 'consider his position' over the 'shoddy' work.

She said: 'These reports are the most useless and shoddy piece of work a government department has ever produced.

'Even the Iraq 'dodgy dossier' had some useful information in it.'

Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: 'This is the biggest case of the dog ate my homework the world has ever seen.

'We've been given binders of old information, extracts from Wikipedia, and a few choice quotes, and yet nothing at all on how Brexit will hit each sector.'
An injured dog has been found dumped in a black garbage bag in New York with his mouth taped shut.

The shepherd-mix was found late Tuesday night in Brooklyn when a passerby noticed the garbage bag moving and heard heavy breathing.

NYPD officers immediately responded and cut the bag open to find the injured dog inside with his mouth taped shut.

The dog, who was named Saint Vincent by his rescuers, said he was covered in urine and showed signs of past neglect.

Scroll down for video

The elderly shepherd-mix was found late Tuesday night in Brooklyn when a passerby noticed the garbage bag moving and heard heavy breathing

Saint Vincent had urine scalds all over his body, was barely breathing and was bleeding from the nose when he was found.

Volunteers with not-for-profit rescue group New York Bully Crew helped the officers transport the injured dog to the VERG emergency animal hospital.

Rescuers estimate that he is about 10 to 12 years old.

Veterinarians immediately treated Saint Vincent with IV fluids, pain medication and antibiotics.

They say he is not currently able to move his hind legs, possibly due to a neurological condition. He is set to undergo an MRI and further treatment for his condition.

'It is evident that Saint Vincent has bilateral hip dysplasia and he may have some additional spinal issues, which is why we are transferring him to our north location to see a neurologist,' said Dr Brett Levitzke, medical director of VERG.

The dog, named Saint Vincent by his rescuers, had his mouth taped shut and was bleeding from his nose when he was cut out of the trash bag

Saint Vincent had urine scalds all over his body, was barely breathing and was bleeding from the nose when he was found

Volunteers with not-for-profit rescue group New York Bully Crew helped the officers transport the injured dog to the VERG emergency animal hospital

'His prognosis is currently guarded, but we are hopeful that he will be able to continue with treatment and recover.'

New York Bully Crew have put up a reward to help gather information about the person or people responsible.

'Hopefully we can find the savages who did this to him,' Carla Mohan of New York Bully Crew said.

'He was deliberately put there to die. He's a very large dog... One person couldn't have done this alone.

'He was left there to suffocate.'

The New York Bully Crew has taken responsibility for Saint Vincent and is planning to re-home him after he is medically able to be adopted.

Veterinarians immediately treated Saint Vincent with IV fluids, pain medication and antibiotics
A toddler was found living inside the closet of a feces-infested home in Kay, Texas on Tuesday where police believe methamphetamine was being sold.

The Harris County Precinct 5 Constables Office added that drug and sex peripheral found just a few feet away from where the child was sleeping.

'The home wasn't fit for anyone to live inside, let alone a child,' The Houston Chronicle cited a department spokesperson as saying.

The four-year-old child was found inside a small closet just a few feet away from where drug and sex peripheral was stored

Texas authorities raided the home after they received an anonymous tip about a drug operation there

The boy's mother, who was not on the premises, was later arrested by Katy police, according to the Harris County Precinct 5 Constable's Office

The suspected ring leader of the drug operation was not on the property when police arrived and remains at large

A toddler was found living inside the closet of a feces-infested home in Kay, Texas on Tuesday where police believe methamphetamine was being sold

The home, located in the West Memorial neighborhood a few blocks from Mason Road in Katy, Texas, was raided by local authorities after they received an anonymous tip about a drug operation there.

Upon entering the property, police said they found the boy along with a dog and a kitten, as well as rat feces around the home.

Police noted that a woman inside the house, who was not the child's mother, was arrested following the police search.

Police are still looking for relatives who can take care of the child (Pictured: Home police believe was being used as a meth operation in Katy, Texas)

The suspected ring leader of the drug den was on the premises when police arrived.

The toddler's mother was later arrested on several outstanding warrants, including one for drug possession, and will likely face an additional charge of child endangerment.

The suspected drug dealer, whose identity has not been released, has also had a warrant issued for his arrest.

Precinct 5 said after alerting protective services to the situation, they took the child to the hospital for an examination.

Police are still looking for relatives who can take care of the child, the Chronicle reported.

As comfort, the police gave the child a large teddy bear that was recently donated to the department through a charity drive.

'The home wasn't fit for anyone to live inside, let alone a child,' a Precinct 5 spokesperson said

Police said after alerting protective services to the situation, they took the child to the hospital for an examination

Upon entering the property, police said they found the boy along with a dog and a kitten, as well as rat feces around the home

As comfort, the police gave the child a large teddy bear that was recently donated to the department through a charity drive
A cat from Florida is recovering after being shot with an arrow through the neck and leg, narrowly missing major organs.

Poor little Reese collapsed on her front porch on Sunday afternoon after being deliberately wounded with the 18-inch long weapon that was left sticking out from her body.

Owner, Jane Morris, is now offering a $200 reward for information that leads to the arrest of the person that carried out the cruel act, that may see her having her paw amputated.

A two-year-old cat named Reese survived after being shot with an arrow

The arrow was 18-inches long and went right through the cat's body

Reese's owner, Jane Morris, is offering a $200 reward for information about the attack

'The arrow missed all her major organs which is a miracle,' Morris said to ClickOrlando.

Morris had just walked outside and was heading for the store when the cat ran up onto the front porch, right past her, and collapsed.

She rushed her beloved pet to DeLand Animal Hospital where a veterinarian told her that someone had intentionally shot Reese, a Calico cat, from the front.

The feline is back home recovering after Morris said the arrow broke her shoulder bone and leg.

It's a miracle that the arrow didn't pierce any of Reece's major organs

It's believed the cat was shot at from the front and that the attacker may lives close by also

Morris is now concerned about her family's safety, and that of other pets, people and children in the area

Morris has spent $800 so far on Reese's medical bills and the costs could rise further still if Reese has to have her paw removed.

'Pets are part of our family, you know, so we'll do what we can to save her,' Morris said.

The family believe the archer who shot the arrow lives close by because Reese doesn't typically stray far from her home.

Morris is now concerned about her family's safety, the safety of other pets, people and children in the area.

'What worries me is they start with cats. What are they going to do next?' Morris said to WESH.

Although Morris said she filed a police report, no arrests have been made in the case.
A judge has praised an 'inspirational' woman at the centre of a 60 Minutes defamation case for her 'tremendous resilience and spirit' after a jury accepted her story of kidnap, captivity and forced marriage.

Her divorced parents Mouhammad and Pamela Tabbaa lost their case against the program which they claimed had defamed them in a broadcast in 2014.

In the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday the jury accepted Nadia Tabbaa was kidnapped at 13, held captive by relatives in Syria and forced to marry her cousin.

Nadia Tabbaa (pictured) was the centre of a 60 Minutes defamation case when she shared her story of being kidnapped by her parents, held captive and forced to marry her cousin

Divorced parents Mouhammad (left) and Pamela Tabbaa (right) lost their case against 60 Minutes which they claimed defamed them in a broadcast about their daughter in 2014

Nadia Tabbaa's half-brother, Geoffrey Rodgers (pictured), apologised for helping get her to Egypt before she was taken to Syria to live with her abusive grandmother

The jurors also accepted her numerous other claims, including that she was forced to undergo a virginity test in Jordan and her father threatened to slit her throat after she escaped back to Sydney when she was 18.

The verdicts led Justice Des Fagan to say the now 29-year-old, who was not present in court, had shown 'tremendous resilience and spirit' and had been quite inspirational.

On Thursday, the jury of three women and one man answered a string of questions, which overall meant they accepted Nine's defence of truth, except for a news item contending Mr Tabbaa had 'sold off' Nadia to her cousin's family in Syria.

Mr Tabbaa was not in court for the verdicts, but Pamela Tabbaa left the room swiftly after the judge said the jury clearly rejected her evidence which he said was 'manifestly false from beginning to end'.

But he praised Nadia Tabbaa and her half-brother, Geoffrey Rodgers - the eldest son of Pamela Tabbaa - who were both called by Nine to give evidence during the trial.

Mr Rodgers had apologised in court to his sister for his involvement in getting her to Egypt before she was taken to Syria to live with her abusive grandmother.

Nadia Tabbaa (pictured at 13 on her way to Egypt) insisted having personal freedom from the age of eight or nine in the face of 'very severe repression' which she suffered in Syria

The court heard Nadia Tabbaa's father (left) threatened to slit her throat after she escaped back to Sydney when she was 18-years-old after being forced to do a virginity test in Jordan

Pamela Tabbaa (pictured) left the room swiftly after the judge said the jury clearly rejected her evidence which he said was 'manifestly false from beginning to end'

After the verdicts, Justice Fagan told Mr Rodgers he had presented as a 'very decent unassuming good man' who was drawn into something awful and who then acknowledged his wrong-doing.

This was to be commended, he said.

In relation to Nadia Tabbaa, the judge told the jurors he expected their verdicts 'would be a considerable consolation to her as judgment of her community'.

He commented on her 'tremendous resilience and spirit' which had stuck out as she insisted on being entitled to personal freedom from the age of eight or nine in the face of 'very severe repression' which she suffered in Syria.

The judge said the now 29-year-old (pictured in 2014), who was not present in court, had shown 'tremendous resilience and spirit' and had been quite inspirational

Mr Tabbaa (pictured) was not in the NSW Supreme Court for the verdicts on Thursday

This had been an immense punishment and wrong to her, but her spirit and determination had been 'quite inspirational'.

'The person who has been vindicated by your verdicts has been Nadia,' he said.

Outside court, Mr Rodgers said Nadia would be 'over the moon' with the outcome, but he was torn about his mother suffering.

Nine's lawyer Justin Quill later said the broadcaster would like to thank Ms Tabbaa for her bravery in twice sharing her story - on 60 Minutes and under gruelling cross-examination in court.

'60 Minutes always felt that Nadia's story was an important one and we commend her for standing up against the treatment she endured,' he said.
Ex-con charged: Corey Lofton, 28, of Florida, has been charged with grand theft for allegedly swiping 15-20 gold bars from his next-door neighbors in September

With Hurricane Irma barreling towards Florida in September, an elderly couple asked their next-door neighbor to help them move a cat litter box containing gold bars worth $26,000, which the pair had bought for their retirement.

Cynthia Copley, 70, and her 69-year-husband, Robert, had Corey Lofton move their treasure consisting of 15-20 gold bars from their home in Drummond Avenue in Panama City to a boat on their property.

The storm spared Panama City, and the Copleys breathed a sigh of relief, that is until they discovered their gold was missing about a week later.

They called their 28-year-old neighbor, but Lofton told them he had moved to Jacksonville.

So, they called the Bay County Sheriff's Office on September 15, sparking a three-month-investigation that resulted in Lofton's arrest this week on charges of grand theft and probation violation.

The suspect, who has an extensive criminal history in Florida, was picked up in Jacksonville on DUI and violation of probation charges and was returned to Bay County.

Cynthia and Robert Copley lived on Drummond Avenue in Panama City, Florida, when Hurricane Irma came barreling towards the state, prompting them to evacuate

Mrs Copley told the Panama City News-Herald that they opted to hide their retirement fund in the form of gold bars inside the cat litter box because they were frantic in the face of the approaching hurricane, and they did not think anyone would take advantage of their situation.

In an incident report filed in September, the sheriff's deputy wrote that he contacted Lofton's mother who lives next door to the Copleys.

She told investigators she didn't know where her son was, but that 'he had spontaneously left town over the weekend to work in Jacksonville.'

Lofton had been arrested on a drug charge in May and violated his probation by moving to Jacksonville.

The Copleys invested in gold to help prepare for old age. She said the sheriff's investigators haven't told her whether they recovered any of the booty.

The woman described the experience of likely losing the couple's nest egg as 'crushing.'

'We kind of figured it was long gone. We were hopeful, but since that happened in September, it's pretty much a lost cause,' she said. 'I just want to see him in jail.'

Lofton is being held in Bay County Jail without bond. He is due back in court on February 6.

The suspect's criminal record, which stretches back to at least 2009, includes charges of DUI, marijuana and methamphetamine possession, fugitive from justice and domestic battery.
Policymakers have been focusing intensely on college options that dont lead to a bachelors degree, but new statistics suggest that those arguments arent translating into enrollment increases in those programs.

Data released this week by the National Student Clearinghouse , which tracks college enrollment, shows that bachelors degree programs saw rising enrollment in the fall of 2017, while all other sectors of higher education saw continued declines.

Overall college enrollment declined 1 percent between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2017, according to the NSC. Thats the sixth straight year of declines, according to Inside Higher Ed . Undergraduate enrollment declined by 1.4 percent in the past year, and graduate programs by .9 percent.

But heres how the undergraduate enrollment breaks down by program type:

Associate degree: - 2.3 percent

Certificates and other nondegree credentials: - 10.7 percent

Four-year degrees: + 1.5 percent

A recent study by the American Enterprise Institute urged Americans to get past their fixation on the four-year college degree . U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and other top officials in the Trump administration have repeatedly argued that students should consider postsecondary pathways that dont require the time and debt of bachelors degrees.

Labor-market researchers have pointed out that there are millions of good-paying jobs that dont require bachelors degrees . (And theyve also pointed out that earnings vary widely by field, and have noted that for overall lifetime earnings, the bachelors degree is still the gold standard.)

In that light, the declines in all areas but bachelors degree programs are notable. A number of factors could play into the dropoffs, including a lower birth rate, rising tuition, and an economy that is drawing more young people into the workforce, according to the Hechinger Report.

All types of higher education institutions saw enrollment declines in the past year, but they were most severe at four-year for-profits (7 percent drop). Two-year public institutions saw a decline of 1.7 percent, while four-year public and private schools experienced declines of less than .5 percent.

Enrollment of first-time college students, across all type of higher education institution, declined 2.3 percent in the last year.

Fulltime student enrollment rose 0.3 percent, while part-time enrollment dropped 3.3 percent.

Aside from the rise in enrollment for bachelors degree programs, one of the few other increases in the study was by gender: Four-year public institutions saw a 0.2 percent increase among women. That increase didnt hold among colleges and universities overall: enrollment by women was down 0.7 percent, and enrollment by men was down 1.5 percent. At four-year private schools, female enrollment was flat in the past year.

The biggest growth in students choice of academic focus at four-year institutions came in construction trades (9.4 percent), science technologies/technicians (6.8 percent), computer and information sciences and support services (6.1 percent), transportation and materials moving (5.9 percent), and architecture and related services (5.2 percent).

At two-year institutions, the biggest gains were in science technologies/technicians (17.4 percent), biological and biomedical sciences (15.4 percent), and history (12.4 percent).

See also:

Trump Executive Order Ramps Up Apprenticeship Programs

Art: Getty Images
A beauty queen from Saudi Arabia has been forced to pull out of the Miss Arab World contest after a barrage of online abuse from her own countrymen.

Miss Saudi Arabia Malak Youssef, announced she was dropping out hours before the crowning ceremony after an online backlash accusing her of misrepresenting her conservative Muslim country by taking part.

The 24-year-old has since hit back at internet trolls who wrecked her chances of the title, in a video viewed more than 250,00 times.

Drop out: Malak Youssef, who was taking part in Miss Arab World representing Saudi Arabia, felt forced to quit because of an online backlash

Miss Youssef said: 'If the Saudi people knew me better then they wouldn't have insulted me the way they did.'

'You didn't give me a chance to prove myself, you hurt me with your words and insults. Real beauty is on the inside. You didn't judge me based on my personality and internal beauty, you only judged me on my external beauty.'

'I was very happy for the Saudi people, I was saying how the Saudi people will all support me and say that I am the nation's daughter. However, you mistreated me in a way that I swear to God does not please God nor anyone!'

Some Saudi social media users heaped scorn on Youssef for going against the country's tradition and religious values.

'We are ready to stand by your side but not when you are bringing shame to us and to the women of Saudi Arabia with your indecencies and your choice of entering a stupid competition like this one. God forgive my parents and yours,' said one.

Defence: The beauty queen hit back at internet trolls who wrecked her chances of the title, in a video viewed more than 250,00 times.

Pushed out: Miss Youssef announced she was dropping out of the Miss Arab World beauty pageant hours before the crowning ceremony

Another stormed: 'She should be held accountable over this, along with the organization who gave her this title. How can they crown a beauty queen to represent the kingdom when no one in the country even knows anything about it?'

She was also targeted for vile personal abuse for taking part. 'Every low life now represents us,' said one on Twitter.

Youssef would have been only the second Saudi woman to participate in the Miss Arab World pageant, held in Morocco last weekend.

The last Saudi contestant won the title in 2009. Despite claims by Saudi Arabia's crown prince that he wants to modernise and return to 'moderate Islam', women in the ultra-conservative country are expected to wear an abaya, a robe that covers their body, in public, and will only be allowed to drive next June.

She was criticised online and accused of misrepresenting her conservative Muslim country by taking part in a beauty pageant

Beauty pageants are almost unheard of in Saudi Arabia. In 2014, the female organisers of a four-day pageant in Mecca were investigated by the Commission for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue in Saudi Arabia, which banned the contest.

Youssef was nominated a by Saudi civil society organisation to participate in the pageant.

However, some commentators defended her decision to try for the crown. One said: 'Beauty pageant aren't only about physical appearance. There are other things jury members often take into consideration, like intellect and personality.

'She was nominated because she deserves it; to bully her and make fund of how she looks is simply unacceptable.'

The beauty competition saw candidates from Algeria, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has instructed Justice Department prosecutors to ask FBI agents about a past criminal investigation into a business transaction that put 20 per cent of America's uranium mining capacity in the hands of the Russian government.

Renewed interest in what has become known as the Uranium One deal threatens to embroil Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose personal fortunes and family foundation were enriched by people tied to the transaction.

An assistant attorney general told Congress in November that the DOJ would consider whether appointing a new special counsel was warranted in the case.

President Trump has sought to use the episode to deflect attention from his own Russia-related woes, calling his former election opponent's mini-scandal 'Watergate, modern age.'

Attorney General Jeff Sessions (right) is telling career prosecutors to dig into the infamous Uranium One deal

Hillary Clinton was secretary of state when her agency signed off on an acquisition that delivered 20 per cent of American uranium mining capacity to a Russian government-controlled firm called Rosatom

Bill Clinton got a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian bank engaged in promoting Uranium One's stock, and the Clinton Foundation reaped at least $33.6 million in donations from executives to cashed in on the transaction

He challenged reporters in October to 'cover the uranium scandal' and said: 'That's your real Russia story, not a story where they talk about collusion, and there was none. It was a hoax.'

'The big story,' he said in the Oval Office, 'is uranium and how Russia got 20 percent of our uranium. And, frankly, it's a disgrace.'

Any appointment of a new special counsel, particularly in response to calls from members of Congress or from Trump himself, is likely to lead to criticism complaints about an undue political influence on a department that is meant to function outside of any partisan sway or demand.

But the White House has insisted that Trump is keeping his hands off.

'The president hasn't directed any investigation or the appointment of a special counsel,' press secretary Sarah Sanders said in November.

President Donald Trump has tried to persuade Congress and the media to make more of the Uranium One deal, believing that it has the potential to redirect Americans' suspicions about the degree to which the Kremlin is interfering in America's political life

'In fact, he said publicly that he hasn't been involved with that, and that's entirely up to the Department of Justice.'

Yet Trump has used his Twitter account to prime the pump, challenging Sessions to be more aggressive in investigating the Clinton Foundation.

'Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems.' Trump tweeted in November.

As early as two months into his presidency, he was going after Republican lawmakers and encouraging them to pay attention.

'Why isn't the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia?' he asked in March.

Canadian financier Frank Giustra (left) sold his company UrAsia to Uranium One, which was then chaired by Ian Telfer (right) before Rosatom bought it; Telfer used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation between 2009 and 2013, and Giustra donated $31.3 million in 2006

Eventually, some House Republicans specifically said they want to know more about whether President Barack Obama's Justice Department had been investigating the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company in 2010.

The agreement was reached while Clinton led the State Department and some investors in the company had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and donated large sums to the Clinton Foundation.

Five other congressional inquiries have found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, opened investigations on Oct. 24 into the agreement struck during the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

The committees 'have questions ... about the review and approval' of the sale of Uranium One  which owned 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies  by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, according to the letters.

The committees also want to know if the FBI 'had evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering,' the letters said.

While Clinton was Secretary of State at the time of the sale, her department has only one of nine votes on CFIUS, which is chaired by the Treasury Department and approved the sale unanimously.

In addition, the State Department CFIUS seat was occupied not by her, but by Jose Fernandez, then-assistant secretary for economic, energy and business affairs, who has said Clinton played no role in the decision.

The sale also was approved by Obama and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A Hillary Clinton spokesman dodged a question from NBC News on Thursday about whether she was ever briefed on the Uranium One deal.

'At every turn this storyline has been debunked on the merits,' said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. 'This latest iteration is simply more of the right doing Trump's bidding for him to distract from his own Russia problems, which are real and a grave threat to our national security.'
Samuel Armstrong, an MP's aide, said he could have been wrongly convicted of rape if his defence team hadn't unearthed key evidence days before his trial

A Tory MP's aide cleared of rape today said he could have been wrongly convicted if not for crucial evidence finally disclosed just days before his trial.

Samuel Armstrong, 24, was accused of abusing his position to attack a young woman when she fell asleep in his boss's Westminster office after a night drinking in Parliament.

His defence team is understood to have waited up to nine months for phone and medical records which his accuser initially refused to hand over to police.

In messages eventually recovered from her phone, she said she had contacted a journalist just hours after the incident to secure a 'sympathetic' write-up, while her medical notes revealed details of a history of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.

That information was not handed over to Mr Armstrong's defence team until more than a year after the accuser first made the complaint, and just days before the trial was due to begin, raising questions over why it took the Met so long to get the information.

The CPS denied that its disclosure was late, insisting that the evidence was handed over to the defence a day after the detective overseeing the case first examined it, throwing the spotlight on the police. This evening a Met Police spokesman said the force was 'content with the investigation and our disclosure work'.

A jury at Southwark Crown Court today found Mr Armstrong not guilty of two counts of rape and other offences after a two-week trial.

The failed prosecution comes as the way rape cases are handled is under intense scrutiny, following the collapse of two trials in the past week due to a failure to reveal evidence potentially undermining the accusers.

Speaking outside court, Mr Armstrong said: 'My whole life has been turned upside down. For a year I have not slept or eaten, and I was innocent.

'Were it not for the fact that crucial evidence was disclosed to my defence team just eight working days before trial, there could well have been yet another miscarriage of justice in this case.'

Mr Armstrong's parents Andrew and Amanda have supported him through his ordeal

Mr Armstrong's boss, the Conservative MP for South Thanet Craig Mackinlay, said the verdicts should prompt debate over rape cases

Three cases collapse in the same week December 14 Liam Allan's trial collapsed last Thursday after lawyers discovered his alleged victim texted him suggesting she wanted to have more sex after the alleged attack. The 22-year-old, from Kent, was charged with rape and said he has been 'dragged through hell' for two years. Talking about the moment his trial ended, he said: 'I was relieved, not just for me but for everyone who has been with me every step of the way and everyone this has impacted on.' December 19 Isaac Itiary, 25, was released from prison on Tuesday after it emerged the alleged victim posed as a 19-year-old woman and lied about her age. Police officers had texts which showed the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was lying about her age but only released them last week. Mr Itiary, from south east London, spent the last four months in custody awaiting his trial but was celebrating with his parents after his release. December 21 Samuel Armstrong, 24, was today cleared of raping a woman after a night drinking in Parliament. His defence team is believed to have waited up to nine months for phone and medical records which his accuser had refused to hand over to police. It has raised questions why it took the police to get the information and Armstrong, from Danbury, Essex, said he could have been wrongly convicted if the evidence was not disclosed before the trial.

Advertisement

Mr Armstrong's boss, South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay tweeted: 'I am very pleased for Sam, a young man whose life has been destroyed over the past 14 months.

'Debate now needed over anonymity of those accused, especially in a week where actions of the authorities in such cases have been found wanting.'

Grammar school educated Mr Armstrong, who has been supported by his parents Andrew and Amanda during the trial, wiped away the tears in the dock as he was cleared. He was later comforted by his father.

He said he has been suspended from his 'dream' job in Parliament as a result of the 'horrible allegations'.

Mr Armstrong has been unable to return to Westminster and the role he 'adored' since his arrest.

'While it is embarrassing and I have suffered and I am never ever, ever going to get my career back, that is not the point,' Mr Armstrong said. 'The point is on this allegation somebody is trying to send me to prison for a very long time for something I didn't do.'

It is the third high profile case in the past week which has failed to secure a prosecution - after the trial of Liam Allan was halted while a case against Isaac Itiary collapsed.

Prosecutors denied they handed over the evidence too late, insisting disclosure was 'undertaken properly and in line with our legal obligations'.

It also comes on the same day a 26-year-old man, who was given a four-and-a-half year jail term when convicted of rape, won an appeal after telling judges Facebook messages boosted his credibility.

Danny Kay was jailed in late 2013 after jurors heard a woman had accused him raping her in 2012.

Kay denied rape and said sex had been consensual and challenged the conviction. Today, three appeal judges agreed and quashed his conviction.

Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay (left) told a trial that Samuel Armstrong (right), his chief of staff, was like a son to him

Speaking outside court, he said his life had been turned 'upside down' by the allegations

Referring to Mr Armstrong's case, a CPS spokesman said: 'We disclosed additional material to the defence on 30 November [2017]  only a day after the police officer in charge and the CPS had first examined it.

'The trial went ahead on 11 December and it was not suggested by the defence that there was no case for Samuel Armstrong to answer at the close of the prosecution case. The case was left for the jury to decide and we respect their decision.'

Their response will raise questions over why it the police took so long to get the information from the accuser.

A Met Police spokesman added: 'We are content with the investigation and our disclosure work, which was conducted in liaison with the CPS.

'During the course of the trial there has been no adverse comment from the Judge about the police investigation.'

Mr Armstrong had insisted he and the woman ended up alone in his boss Craig Mackinlay's office in the early hours of the morning and were joking around before having sex.

He said the complainant asked him to play jazz music and sat with him on a sofa, before jumping up and demanding: 'Dance with me.'

Mr Armstrong, pictured with former prime minister David Cameron, denied raping the woman

Mr Armstrong said that they danced in the office and began kissing, before he performed a sex act on her as she sat on the sofa.

'She made all the appropriate noises,' he told the court.

Mr Armstrong said the couple then had sex for several minutes, but the complainant got up to change the music when a 'mood-killer' song came on.

He said: 'After a little while she said, 'some people are going to think that you have taken advantage of m'', but it was in a sort of teasing voice. I responded, 'I'm not sure anyone could come to that conclusion'.'

Mr Armstrong said the woman then sat on top of him and they began to have sex.

While on she was 'bouncing on top' of him he asked her 'how does the size suit the lady?', which he heard a tailor say and to which she replied 'it suits the lady very very well'.

The alleged incident was said to have happened in the Norman Shaw North building

Defence barrister Sarah Forshaw QC said: 'Were you being serious both of you during the course of this conversation?'

He replied: 'We were joshing around and being funny. I was being a bit of a prat.'

Ms Forshaw suggested the woman panicked and made the allegations after becoming distressed as she tried to leave the Palace of Westminster without a pass at around 2am - then was caught in the lie.

Mr Armstrong, from Danbury in Essex, was arrested after the woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster in tears.

Describing how he felt when he was arrested, he said: 'I didn't really know what to think. I thought there must have been some sort of mistake. It must have been that they had got the wrong name.'

He added: 'It was just like somebody had punched me in the stomach. I was winded.'

Mr Armstrong said the couple had sex for several minutes, but the complainant got up to change the music when a 'mood-killer' song came on

Tory MP Mr Mackinlay, who was not in Westminster on the night of the incident, had told the court he and his aide were like 'father and son'.

Mr Armstrong joined Mr Mackinlay's permanent staff in April 2016 after graduating with a politics and history degree from Nottingham University.

The court heard that Mr Mackinlay's wife would tell Armstrong 'she was going to find one of her nieces to marry because he was too nice a young man to be single'.

Claims of delays in handing over evidence will add to fears rape accused are being set up for miscarriages of justice

Today's bombshell verdicts come after every police force in Britain was put under pressure to review thousands of rape, sexual assault and child abuse cases.

The Metropolitan Police is already urgently examining 30 sensitive investigations, with 'scores' more to follow.

It came after DC Mark Azariah, the detective in charge of two collapsed rape trials, was removed from active duty by the Met following the revelation police failed to disclose vital evidence to prosecutors.

Isaac Itiary (lett), was remanded in jail for four months after being charged with raping a child under 16 - but has been freed after texts showing his evidence were not released by Met DC Mark Azariah (right) who is no longer working on active cases

Concerns have previously been raised at the most senior level of the criminal bar that disclosure failures and lack of resources will lead to miscarriages of justice.

The rape trial of Liam Allan was halted last week and the prosecution of Isaac Itiary, accused of raping a child, collapsed on Tuesday. In both cases, the cases were withdrawn after the late disclosure of evidence that could have helped the defendants.

The barrister who stopped the prosecution in the Liam Allan after texts proved he was innocent said today it 'happens every day'.

Jerry Hayes, a former Tory MP, said officers are withholding evidence that undermines their case and 'it's got to stop'.

He told Radio 4: 'This is not one rogue officer. This is a systemic, cultural problem with the police.'

Liam Allan, pictured with his mother Lorraine, poses outside Croydon Crown Court after all rape charges against him were dropped

Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the cases are 'appalling failures of the criminal justice system'.

Campaigners and legal experts have warned the failures are likely to be far more widespread  and that further cases could be undermined by shocking blunders by officers.



Verdicts will fuel row over anonymity for rape accused Today's verdicts will add to calls from those cleared of sex offences for suspects to be given anonymity until they are found guilty. Critics of that idea however claim it can stop other victims of those charged from coming forward. Anonymity for men and women accused of rape until conviction was in place for 12 years until 1988 when it was repealed. At the time one of the main reasons given was that the public could not be warned by police if a suspected rapist was on the run. Margaret Thatcher's government also wanted to 're-balance' the system in favour of victims - and in high profile cases encourage other victims to come forward. People accused of rape in Britain can be named and cases involving public figures often attract significant media attention. Parliament has considered the idea of anonymity for those accused of rape on a number of occasions. The previous Coalition Government said it would extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants. However, having undertaken an assessment of the evidence, it concluded in 2010 that there was insufficient reliable evidence to justify a change in the law. Advertisement

Around 30 cases are already set for trial and are being prioritised, but it is not yet known how many other cases will be affected.

It has now opened the door for hundreds of convicted rapists to start appealing their sentences.

Angela Rafferty QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, suggested 'unconscious bias' stops the police and the CPS 'impartially and thoroughly investigating and scrutinising complaints in sexual offence cases'.

A police doctor today told of fears that medical evidence could become contaminated due to practices by private firm G4S.

Dr Stephen Hopkins wrote The Daily Telegraph saying he was asked by the contractor to take samples from both victims and suspects, raising fears of contamination.

He refused to carry out both examinations, but fears other doctors may have done so.

G4S has denied the doctors carried out both examinations, but Dr Hopkins' claim will add to fears over the safety of rape trials and convictions.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has said disclosure of evidence is becoming 'increasingly incredibly complex and demanding' in the digital age.

Ms Dick said: 'I again speak for the Met and my colleagues when I say the very idea that somebody might find themselves convicted inappropriately when they were innocent through a failing of disclosure is unconscionable and my officers take disclosure very seriously.

'They see themselves as genuinely following the evidence, professional, fair and absolutely understanding in an impartial way the necessity for justice and for justice to be served whatever the emotions there might be around that particular issue or a particular case.'

She said that, while she had publicly apologised to Mr Allan, her review was not complete and nobody knew 'exactly what happened'.

'It is complicated, they always are, and I'm not going to prejudge the results of either of those reviews,' she said.
Advertisement

The UN General Assembly has voted 128 to 9 in favour of a non-binding resolution rejecting the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

That is despite the US President threatening to cut billions of dollars in aid to countries that dared to defy him.

The UK was among those countries to vote against Trump, putting further pressure on the 'special relationship' after the pair got into a war of words when Trump retweeted several Britain First videos earlier this month.

May and Trump did speak on the phone about the Jerusalem issue on Wednesday after Britain opposed America in a similar vote at the Security Council. Downing Street acknowledged after the call that the leaders had taken 'different positions'.

Scroll down for video

The United Nations General Assembly has voted 128-9 to reject Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite threats from the President to withdraw aid

Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands joined the US and Israel in opposing the motion, while there were 35 abstentions and 21 others were absent

The UK was among the countries voting against Trump (pictured, Theresa May in Poland today) after the two leaders spoke yesterday on the phone about their differences

No mention was made of the Britain First videos during the call, according to a transcript released by Number 10.

Trump had said ahead of the vote that 'we're watching' the outcome, while Nikki Haley, his representative, had warned that the US would be 'taking names'.

The resolution, sponsored by Yemen and Turkey, reaffirmed what has been the United Nations' stand on the divided holy city since 1967 - that Jerusalem's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterwards that he totally rejects the "preposterous" resolution.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the resolution, with US Ambassador Nikki Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the US.

But when it came to the vote, major US aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution.

Seven countries - Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands - joined Israel and the United States in opposing the measure.

Among the 35 countries that abstained were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania and Rwanda.

Among the notable abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of US aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close US ties.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

'The United States will remember this day,' Haley told the assembly after the vote.

'America will put our embassy in Jerusalem,' Haley said. 'No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

Nikki Haley, America's representative at the UN, said after the vote that the US 'will remember this day' and that the vote will make no difference to where they chose to place their embassy

The resolution was brought before the General Assembly (pictured) after a similar measure was vetoed by the US when it came before the Security Council on Wednesday

'But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN,' she said.

'When we make generous contributions to the UN we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected.'

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support carries political weight.

The vote, while a victory for the Palestinians, was significantly lower than its supporters had hoped for, with many forecasting at least 150 'yes' votes.

Earlier in the day Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged countries not to sell out their 'democratic will in return for petty dollars'.

Erdogan called on members not to be swayed by Trump's warning and said in a televised speech: 'I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars.'

The US decision on December 6 to recognise the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

Trump has said the US would be 'watching' which side votes were cast on, while Nikki Haley, his representative at the UN, said she would be 'taking names'

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured today) has urged countries not to sell out their 'democratic will in return for petty dollars' ahead of a key UN vote on Jerusalem

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

'They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,' Trump said at the White House.

'Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care.'

The draft resolution mirrors the text that was vetoed on Monday, and although it does not mention Trump's decision, it expresses 'deep regret at recent decisions' concerning the city's status.

Ahead of the vote, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the UN as a 'house of lies,' saying Israel 'rejects outright this vote, even before it passes.'

'The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well - the house of lies,' he said.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley sent an email to fellow UN envoys to put them on notice that 'the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us.'

'We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,' she wrote in the message seen by AFP.

And on Twitter she said 'the US will be taking names' when ambassadors of the 193-nation assembly cast their votes.

The US decision on December 6 to recognise the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries

'Nikki, that was the right message,' Trump said.

Erdogan accused Trump of making 'threats'.

'How do they call America? The cradle of democracy. The cradle of democracy is seeking to find will in the world that can be bought with dollars,' he said.

'Mr Trump you cannot buy with dollars Turkey's democratic will. Our decision is clear,' he said.

Erdogan said he believed that 'the world will teach a very good lesson to America today (Thursday).'

A council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to US pressure, but the motion is all but certain to be approved.

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.

Among the 14 countries voting in favor on Monday were Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine who were expected to do the same at the assembly.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki accused Washington of 'threatening' member-states, saying the UN session would show 'how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience.'

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support of the resolution would carry political weight.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its 'eternal and undivided capital.'

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized in 1967 and the draft resolution contains the same language as past motions adopted by the assembly.
A 36-year-old woman fatally stabbed her husband in the chest after an altercation in their home in an affluent Brisbane suburb, police have alleged in court.

Katie Ann Corben faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Thursday over allegations she murdered Jarred Paul Castel during the argument on Wednesday night.

The 36-year-old remained standing with her arms crossed for her short time in the dock.

Scroll down for video

Katie Ann Corben faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Thursday over allegations she murdered Jarred Paul Castel (pictured) during the argument on Wednesday night

She was remanded in custody to face court again on January 29.

Several people were in court for her appearance but did not speak to media.

Police allege Corben stabbed her 35-year-old husband in the chest during an altercation at their Chapel Hill home about 9pm.

A four-year-old boy, understood to be the couple's son, was inside at the time but did not witness the incident.

He is now being cared for by family.

Mr Castel, a project manager at Pinnacle Commercial Fitouts, was treated by paramedics at the scene.

The licensed real estate agent was then rushed to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, where he died.

Neighbour Ellen Shanahan said the incident seemed to come out of nowhere.

Mr Castel, a project manager at Pinnacle Commercial Fitouts, was treated by paramedics at the scene

'Couldn't have woken to more of a shock ... nobody in the neighbourhood can make sense of what's happened overnight,' she told the ABC.

'I don't hang out with him so I could not make a 100 per cent character assumption but my interactions with him have been very pleasant.'

Honey Tia-Ruaya said on Facebook she would always remember Mr Castel's 'beautiful smile and warm nature'.
Davide Buccheri, 25,(seen outside Westminster Magistrates Court) was working for giant asset manager M&G in central London as a fund managers assistant when he is said to have targeted Rebecca Baker

A City worker stuck pictures of a colleagues head on to the body of female porn stars and posted them on the internet when she rebuffed his advances, a court heard.

Davide Buccheri, 25, was working for major asset manager M&G in central London as a fund managers assistant when he is said to have targeted Rebecca Baker.

The Italian allegedly used the pseudonym Flying Gerbil to post the gallery of mocked-up naked pictures of female porn stars with her head on in a bid to discredit her.

He used the companys whistleblowing scheme to report her to bosses in a bid to discredit her after she rejected his romantic advances when she was working as post-graduate employee, it is alleged.

Prosecutors said that it was a planned and sophisticated approach to cause the Durham University graduate serious distress between 9 September 2016 and 29 May this year.

Ms Baker, 22, had joined the company that is part of the Prudential group as an intern where she met Buccheri, from Bologna, but left and later accepted a post-graduate position.

Bespectacled Buccheri attended Westminster magistrates court today, dressed in a smart black suit with a purple tie to stand trial.

He denies one charge of harassment without violence.

Prosecutor Naomi Ryan said the allegation was that Buccheri had been rebuffed and was acting in revenge against Ms Baker.

He has taken a number of photographs from her social media accounts and uploaded them onto the website, she said.

She added: He has then sent two complaints to his work bosses using the anonymous whistleblowing scheme, thought to be acting in revenge.

Bearded Buccheri, who flew from Italy to attend court, was arrested on 8 August and charged with the offence on 5 October by City of London Police.

The trial could not proceed and was adjourned until March 8 by district judge Richard Blake.

He said: Mr Buccheri, I am sorry this trial has not been able to proceed today - I am sure and as I have mentioned it is stressful for you and witnesses.

Bespectacled Buccheri attended Westminster magistrates court today, dressed in a smart black suit with a purple tie to stand trial

The trial will now be on the 8 March. Thank you very much we will meet again next year.

Three police officers, Ms Baker and another witness are expected to give evidence at the trial.

Buccheris LinkedIn profile suggests that he has worked for the company since he graduated from a 12-month rotational programme.

His profile also states that he graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

M&G is an investment company managing the long-term savings of millions of people across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

According to their website, customers assets currently under their management total 281.5bn as of June 2017.
Tougher sentencing laws are needed for moped gangs and those who carry out acid attacks, MPs have warned.

Sir David Amess told the House of Commons the 'depressing trend' in such crimes suggested harsher rules were needed to stamp them out.

This comes after former Labour minister Stephen Timms revealed some parts of London had become 'no-go zones' because of the terrifying threat of acid attacks.

Stephen Timms (left) has said acid attack threats have made parts of London 'no go areas' and has called on the Government to take 'significant action', while Sir David Amess (right) said the 'depressing trend' in such crimes suggested harsher rules were needed to stamp them out

A gang of 10 moped raiders behind a 1 million crime spree across London laughed in the dock as lawyers took almost an hour to outline the 99 previous convictions they have amassed for 172 offences this week

Laws and sentencing guidelines for acid attacks and moped gangs are 'not fit for purpose', a Tory MP has warned.

During Business questions, Sir David asked Commons leader Andrea Leadsom: 'Will [you] find time for a general debate - I know there was one in Westminster Hall yesterday - on new types of crimes such as moped gangs and acid attacks.

'With this depressing trend it seems that the law and sentencing guidelines are not fit for purpose.'

Ms Leadsom said the Southend West MP had raised 'a very concerning issue', adding the government was 'determined to put a stop to this type of new crime.'

She said: 'The Home Office has been working closely with a number of partners including the motorcycle and insurance industry and the police to develop an action plan and we will be reviewing progress early in the new year.

'On the issue of acid attacks, the Government is consulting on new legislation that would include prohibiting the sale of harmful corrosive substances to under 18s and the Home Secretary also intends to place sulphuric acid on the list of regulated substances.'

This comes after Stephen Timms made told MPs that the UK had 'the highest rate of acid attacks per capita' in the world.

This debate comes after Arthur Collins, the ex-boyfriend of UK reality TV star Ferne McCann, threw acid across a dance floor over two Australian model sisters (pictured). He was handed a 25 year sentence, which included an extended licence of five years

Prosecutors have said a judge should pass severe deterrent sentences on thugs who carried out moped robberies on the streets of London - as captured here on CCTV

MPs debated the response to corrosive substance attacks and he called on the Government to take 'significant action'.

The Labour MP for East Ham said: 'I've had a number of discussions with representatives of moped delivery drivers and they say there are now parts of London where their drivers are not willing to go because of the danger of attack.

ACID ATTACKS: THE LAW IN THE UK Between November 2016 and April 2017 there were 408 attacks, of which about 21% were committed by under-18s. Anyone caught carrying acid can also be charged with possession of an offensive weapon under the Prevention of Crime Act, which carries a maximum penalty of four years in jail. However those carrying out attacks can be charged with GBH with intent which carries a maximum life sentence. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said she intended to ban the sales of corrosive substances to under-18s. If a person is caught twice with acid, they would serve a minimum six-month sentence if over the age of 18, under new government guidelines. Advertisement

'I think all of us would regard it as unacceptable that there are no go areas in parts of London and parts of the UK.

'I think it requires some significant action to deal with the problem'.

Fellow Labour MP Lyn Brown, who secured the debate, called for a toughening of regulations as she said 'people were living in fear'.

Ms Brown told ministers their first steps to crack down on attacks 'had been positive' but added that they were playing catch-up because of a 'red tape bonfire' in 2015.

She said: 'A number of changes were made to the law in 2015 as part of the Deregulation Act, the red tape bonfire.

'The Act scrapped the obligation on sellers of dangerous substances, including acids, to be registered with their local council.

'This was despite opposing advice from the medical experts as well as the Government's own advisory board on dangerous substances.

'I fear that these changes are partly responsible for the rise in acid attacks.'

This is the gang of 10 moped riders who caused chaos across London in a series of violent raids that saw them use an array of deadly weapons to cause damage worth more than 1million

The gang hit targets across London. Prosecutors called for severe deterrent sentences on the thugs after an exponential rise of moped robberies across the capital

DUP MP Jim Shannon called for reforms to ensure that perpetrators of acid attacks were charged with attempted murder.

Arthur Collins (pictured), 25, was jailed for 20 years following an acid attack in a London club

He added: 'We need to change the legislation and need to represent those people who are recipients of attack.

'I sincerely urge that the Government takes all of this into consideration and brings attacks on par with knife violence crimes and ensures that the sentence fits the crime, which leaves a life destroyed.'

Home Office minister Victoria Atkins said she would discuss with officials a proposal to change the minimum age for buying acid from 18 to 21.

Shadow policing minister Louise Haigh also said restricting sales to just under-18s 'was nowhere near enough', with only one in five offences committed by under-18s.

Ms Atkins told Mr Timms: 'I've listened to him with great interest and I will certainly go back and discuss it with my officials.

'If I may leave it there and we'll work our way through that, but I do take the point particularly, sadly, about gang membership.'

Arthur Collins threw acid over revellers at Mangle E8 club in Dalston, west London, on April 17

Elsewhere, Ms Atkins said a set of voluntary commitments for retailers would be announced shortly, with work also under way to improve the response by emergency services.

She added: 'Mentions already been made of the sentence delivered yesterday to Arthur Collins of 20 years' imprisonment, of five years on licence, for his appalling attack in a nightclub.

'May that sentence ring loud across the streets of London that the judiciary will not accept this sort of conduct in their courts.'
Patrick Jiron, 80, and his 83-year-old wife Barbara Jiron were arrested on Tuesday in York, Nebraska with 60 pounds of marijuana

An elderly couple busted with 60 pounds of high grade marijuana during a traffic stop in Nebraska claim they were going to give it away as Christmas gifts.

Patrick Jiron, 80, and his 83-year-old wife Barbara Jiron were arrested on Tuesday after they were stopped by York County Sheriff's deputies on Interstate 80.

Authorities found the drugs stashed in the back of their Toyota Tacoma pickup.

The high grade marijuana had an estimated street value of $336,000, according to the sheriff's office.

The elderly couple told officers they were on their way to Vermont from their home in Clearlake Oaks, California.

They added that the marijuana was for Christmas presents.

The couple were initially stopped when officers spotted their pickup driving over the center line and failing to signal.

About 60 pounds of marijuana was found in the couple's pickup truck. The high grade marijuana had an estimated street value of $336,000

Deputies said they could immediately smell the strong odor of raw marijuana when they approached the truck.

They searched the vehicle and found the drugs stored in the pickup's topper.

The couple were taken into custody on charges of possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver and no drug tax stamp.

Patrick Jiron was charged with the felonies, while his wife was left off with a citation.
Ukraine's state security service SBU detained Yezhov on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said today. Pictured: Groysman (left) with Theresa May at No 10. Behind them, circled, is Yezhov

An interpreter who visited 10 Downing Street in July has been arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of spying for Russia.

Stanislav Yezhov - an interpreter for the Ukrainian cabinet - was detained by the country's police today.

In a shocking Facebook post, Ukraine's prime minister Volodymyr Groysman said that Yezhov had 'long been working in the interests of a hostile government'.

It is not known, however, if he is accused of spying at the time he attended Downing Street in July.

Asked about the man visiting Downing Street, Mrs May told a press conference in Poland: 'I am aware of the reports in relation to a Ukrainian individual who attended Downing Street earlier in the summer.

'The matter is for the Ukrainian authorities.'

Asked whether he would raise the issue of the alleged spy during talks with Mr Lavrov in Moscow on Friday, Mr Johnson said: 'I think that is a matter for the Ukrainians.

'We want Ukraine to go on the right path and we are worried that Ukraine needs more encouragement, more help, to reform, to make sure it isn't captured by the wrong influences.

'I think possibly what this episode shows is the real difficulties and risks that the Ukrainian government is running. They need a lot of encouragement.'

Ukraine's state security service SBU detained Yezhov, 39, on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said today.

'Together with the Security Service of Ukraine, an official in the government's secretariat was found to be working for a long time in the interests of the enemy state. He was detained,' Groysman said on Facebook.

Stanislav Yezhov - an interpreter for the Ukrainian cabinet - was detained by the country's police today

A Downing Street spokesman said: 'Security at Number 10 is kept under constant review.' Pictured left: Alleged spy Yezhov outside Downing Street. Right: Yezhov (highlighted) with Boris Johnson

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: 'We are aware of reporting about the arrest of Stanislav Yezhov in Ukraine.' Pictured: Yezhov on board a plane

Ukraine's state security service SBU detained Yezhov, 39, on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said today. Pictured: Yezhov being led away by police

Mrs May said today that Britain and Poland are concerned about Russian attempts to weaponise information. Pictured: Yezhov hanging his head while being taken away by police

Oleksiy Petrov, head of counterintelligence in Ukraine, told Pryamiy TV: 'The official had access to insider information about the Cabinet of Ministers'. Pictured: Yezhov being led away in handcuffs today

Yezhov's home and workplace are now being searched by Ukrainian security services, they indicated. Pictured: Yezhov in front of a Ukrainian flag

Yezhov was seen being led away in handcuffs on Ukrainian television.

Ukraine's security service said Yezhov acted 'on the orders' of Russia to collect information 'about the activities of government structures', with the help of 'special equipment'.

Yezhov gave data to the Russians through 'electronic channels of communication', the security service said.

His home and workplace are now being searched by Ukrainian security services, they indicated.

A Downing Street spokesman said: 'Security at Number 10 is kept under constant review.'

Oleksiy Petrov, head of counterintelligence in Ukraine, told Pryamiy TV: 'The official had access to insider information about the Cabinet of Ministers.

'He was respected. And he responsibly and diligently worked for the Russian special services.'

He also met then-US Vice President Joe Biden in 2016.

Neither the PM nor the SBU named the position or name of the detained official, but he has been widely named as Stanislav Yezhov.

The SBU said in a statement that the official was recruited by Russian agents while he travelled abroad. It said the official had been collecting information about the activities of the government.

Asked about the man visiting Downing Street, Mrs May told a press conference in Poland: 'I am aware of the reports in relation to a Ukrainian individual who attended Downing Street earlier in the summer. Pictured: May with Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki today

Ukraine and Russia were once allies whose intelligence agencies often worked closely together, but relations deteriorated after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mrs May said today that Britain and Poland are concerned about Russian attempts to weaponise information.

'We have agreed today to bolster our cooperation to counter Russian disinformation in the region .... we are both deeply concerned by Russia's attempts to weaponise information,' she told reporters during a visit to Poland.

The revelation came as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov tomorrow. Pictured: The foreign secretary in Poland today

'The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system and it will not succeed.'

The revelation came as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov tomorrow.

It comes at a time when relations between Moscow and the West are at their coolest for several decades.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: 'We are aware of reporting about the arrest of Stanislav Yezhov in Ukraine.

'We can neither confirm or deny the allegations against him. It is not our practice to comment on legal proceedings in other jurisdictions.'
This is the astonishing moment a gang of armed robbers opened fire on security guards before making off with nearly 200,000 in a 20-second film-style heist.

The eight men fired more than 30 shots at their victims using weapons including a machine gun in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo.

The gang members, who were all masked apart from one who posed as a supermarket shopper to tip off his accomplices, then escaped with their haul.

A guard with the cash tried to make a run for it when the criminals jumped out of two vehicles parked near the Prosegur van and began shooting indiscriminately.

Footage captures the astonishing moment a gang of armed robbers opened fire on security guards before making off with nearly 200,000 in a 20-second film-style heist

The eight men fired more than 30 shots at their victims using weapons including a machine gun in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo as they cornered a security guard and stole the cash

The gang members, who were all masked apart from one who posed as a supermarket shopper to tip off his accomplices (left), then escaped with their haul

But he was quickly cornered and forced to hand over the money before the robbers raced back to their cars and sped off.

The dramatic video, captured on CCTV cameras outside a supermarket, showed the terrifying shoot-out lasted less than 20 seconds from the moment they jumped out of their getaway cars to the moment they began their escape with the money.

The entire footage lasted just 40 seconds. The criminals got away with seven million Uruguayan pesos, the equivalent of just over 180,000.

A mystery man in jeans and a white shirt, filmed carrying a plastic bag in one hand and holding a mobile phone in the other, is believed to have watched the security guards pick up the money from inside the supermarket and leave just before them so he could tip off his accomplices.

A guard with the cash (top right) tried to make a run for it when the criminals jumped out of two vehicles parked near the Prosegur van and began shooting indiscriminately

The dramatic video, captured on CCTV cameras outside a supermarket, showed the terrifying shoot-out lasted less than 20 seconds from the moment they jumped out of their getaway cars to the moment they began their escape with the money

He started firing at the guards with a handgun after finishing his call as he walked past one of the getaway cars as the rest of the gang targeted them with weapons including a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and and other pistols.

Despite the military-style precision of the raid, one of the robbers dropped his phone at the scene and the mobile was today being analysed by detectives in the hope it would lead them to the men responsible.

The breathtaking crime happened around midday on Tuesday outside a supermarket belonging to the Uruguayan chain Devoto in the Sagayo neighbourhood of northern Montevideo.

Miraculously no-one was hurt, despite the fact the heist happened in daylight when many locals were doing their Christmas shopping.

A witness told a Montevideo-based TV station the men in the 4x4s ordered bystanders caught up in the drama to 'throw themselves to the ground' as they jumped out of their vehicles after surrounding the Prosegur van.

The guard was quickly cornered and forced to hand over the money before the robbers raced back to their cars and sped off (pictured)

One, a doctor who asked not to be named, said: 'Around six or seven masked men with what looked like machine guns suddenly appeared from nowhere and told me not to move or they would kill me. It was all very quick. A lot of shots were fired. They told people to get on the ground because they would die if not.'

Another, known only as Mercedes, added: 'People were panicking. It was terrible. I ran to my car and hid inside. I turned the engine on but stalled the car because I was so nervous.'

The Prosegur van was hit by at least 12 bullets. One of the security guards is believed to have fired at the armed robbers in retaliation.

Prosegur General Manager Oscar Ronda said afterwards: 'The most important thing is that no-one was hurt.

'The armed robbery took staff completely by surprise.'

The two getaway vehicles were found near the scene of the attack. One had been gutted using a Molotov cocktail.

Spent shotgun shells were found around the vehicles, prompting speculation the armed robbers may have fired their guns into the air to celebrate after pulling off their daring raid.
An appelate state judge in Utah last week struck down under Utahs constititution a law that made that states board of education partisan. A group of education advocates argued that anyone employed by the states public schools cant run on party tickets according to the constitution, an argument the judge agreed with. The states legislature, which passed the law in 2016, could appeal the ruling.

Across the nation, education is being swept up into the increased polarization of American politics. Public battles over the Common Core State Standards, charter schools, and who calls the shots on state K-12 policy often break down along Republican and Democratic fault lines.

But in most places, the technocrats in charge of educationthe local and state board members and district superintendentsare by and large apolitical.



This tradition stems from a turn-of-the-century effort to flush party politics and its corrupt culture out of school districts.

A growing effort now is sweeping across the nation to reverse course.

Last week, Education Week published my profile of a fight in North Carolina to force candidates for local school boards to run on a party ticket. From my story:

Driving the debate is whether state or local officials should determine how school boards members are elected, whether partisan elections change who gets elected, and whether there is, ultimately, a Democratic or Republican way to run a school district.

North Carolina isnt alone. Legislators in Florida, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee have all asked in some form for their local school board candidates to run on a party ticket.

My colleague Denisa Superville profiled California where a fight is underway to get school boards to better reflect the communities they serve.

I encourage you to check both stories out.

Dont miss another State EdWatch post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox. And make sure to follow @StateEdWatch on Twitter for the latest news from state K-12 policy and politics.
Valentin Krzyzyk, 27, is alleged to have lifted up a woman's skirt and grabbed her bottom in the Cirque le Soir nightclub in London

A puzzled judge had to ask for the definition of a 'thot' as a businessman stood accused of groping a woman at a Christmas party.

Valentin Krzyzyk, 27, had spent over 6,000 on Dom Perignon with friends at the Cirque Le Soir club in Soho, central London, when he was alleged to have lifted his victim's skirt and grabbed her bottom, on December 20 last year.

Krzyzyk, who lives a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace, denies inappropriate touching, at Southwark Crown Court.

However, waiter Labinot Citaku told the court Krzyzyk said he thought the woman was a 'thot', which stands for 'That Ho Over There'.

He said: 'I asked him what had happened and he was telling me that a girl came and stole his drinks on his table.

'He lifted up her skirt, groped her bum and showed her what she should feel like.

'I don't know the word - it is what we call a thot, a table w****.'

Judge Michael Bromley-Martin, QC, said: 'Could we just go back to this thot thing. What was this thot?'

Mr Citaku replied: 'In clubs I work in girls tend to go onto customers tables to have drinks with them, especially the people that buy a lot of drinks.

'These are what people call 'table thots,' 'table w*****,' - where they see lots of drinks going to a table, the girls tend to follow the champagne bottles.'

Judge Bromley-Martin said: 'They follow the bottles, made easier by the sparklers.'

'Thot' has become more prominent since its recent use by African-American Hip-Hop artists, such as Gucci Mane and Uncle Murda.

Mr Citaku described how customers pay thousands for bottles of champagne and vodka, which are adorned with sparklers and delivered with a song of the customer's choice.

Businessman Krzyzyk, who lives a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace, denies inappropriate touching, at Southwark Crown Court

Krzyzyk's barrister Narita Bahra, said to the waiter: 'I am saying that he never said anything to admit any sort of sexual assault.

'You are being asked by the police to give a witness statement, so why didn't you say to police he thought 'Miss X' was a table w***?

'I am going to suggest that he didn't use 'thot', he didn't use 'table w****', he just told you that there had been a woman going to his table and drinking from the champagne bottles.'

The manager of the club, John Common, was alerted after the incident and threw Krzyzyk out of the club.

The alleged sexual assault was reported to the police by the victim on 24 January and Krzyzyk was arrested and taken to Charing Cross police station.

Krzyzyk had been partying with friends at Cirque le Soir when the incident is alleged to have taken place on December 20 last year

In a separate incident a month later, on January 15 this year, Krzyzyk was humiliated in the street outside a nightclub and was stripped to his underwear by the boyfriend of the victim.

Krzyzyk, who is the founder and CEO of several smartphone apps, was known to be a regular at exclusive London nightclubs and to the waiter who confronted him about the incident.

He studied at the European Business School in Paris before he began working in London in 2013 when he set up his own private concierge company, called Indigo.

He was then asked to work as the personal assistant to a billionaire who had noticed his concierge company, but wanted Krzyzyk to work solely for him, travelling all over the world.

After a year and a half he moved to London to work in finance, dealing in bonds and told the court that spending 5,000 or more was a standard night out.

Krzyzyk said: 'I drive a very nice car and live in a very nice neighbourhood - I have pictures on my social media of me on yachts, private jets - a lot of people when they see this they might be feeling jealous or they might be feeling that it is unfair.

'She might have felt it is unfair, that she has to work for one year to make what I spend in a night.'

The trial continues.
Melissa E. Allen, 32, was arrested Tuesday night at a Target in Massachusetts after she was allegedly caught on surveillance video trying to make off with the merchandise

A homeless woman has been caught trying to steal $1,000 worth of items from a Target store that was filled with at least 50 police officers for a 'Shop with a Cop' event.

Melissa E. Allen, 32, was arrested Tuesday night at the store in Framingham, Massachusetts, after she was allegedly caught on surveillance video trying to make off with the merchandise.

At least 50 officers were inside the store at the time for their annual charity shopping spree event with children.

Several officers were waiting in line to purchase items for the children when a Target employee reported the alleged shoplifter.

Allen was questioned in the store but denied trying to steal the items.

Police said she had filled a large bin with items to steal, including clothes, accessories and home goods.

At least 50 officers were inside the store at the time (pictured above) for their annual 'Shop with a Cop' charity event with local children

The police officers were inside the Target store at the time for their annual charity shopping spree event with the local children

The items totaled $1,105.40.

Surveillance video captured her walking past the registers and into the lobby with the goods before she was stopped by the employee.

Police said she resisted arrest and kicked a police car door when officers attempted to put her in the cruiser.

She also initially gave police a fake name and had to be re-booked when officers determined her identity.

Allen was charged with larceny over $250, resisting arrest and giving a false name.
'Cookie monster': Richard Hessic, 31, of Florida, has been charged with domestic battery for allegedly punching his girlfriend in the face after she ate his last cookie

A butcher punched his girlfriend in the face when he discovered she ate the last chocolate chip cookie, police said.

Richard Hessic, 31, of Port St Lucie, Florida was arrested last Thursday night following the snack-related attack on his live-in girlfriend.

When questioned by police, the 6-foot-4 butcher admitted that he became enraged when he discovered that the last of his favorite chocolate chip cookies was gone.

Hessic confronted his girlfriend of three years, a 34-year-old nurse, but he got the feeling that she was 'blowing him off', according to an incident report obtained by The Smoking Gun.

The victim said she tried to make light of the cookie conundrum and joked with Hessic about 'reviewing the surveillance cameras to see who ate the cookie'.

But the illicitly devoured treat was no laughing matter for Hessic.

The girlfriend later told police she did not want to argue over 'something so petty' and offered to buy more cookies as a way to make it up to Hessic.

Criminally delicious: The 6-foot-4 butcher admitted that he became upset when he discovered that the last of his favorite chocolate chip cookies was gone (stock image)

Incensed by the woman's unwillingness to take his cookie grievance seriously, Hessic allegedly followed his girlfriend into the bathroom, ripped down the shower curtain while she was bathing and punched her on the left side of her face.

The responding officer observed in his report that while talking to the victim, he did not notice any swelling or bruising on her face.

Hessic was booked into the St Lucie County Jail on a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery.

He was later released and placed under house arrest with GPS monitoring. A judge has barred the Hessic from contacting his girlfriend.

The 31-year-old is due back in court for his arraignment on December 28.

Records show that the man was previously arrested on charges of battery, fleeing and eluding, child abuse and driving with a suspended license.
White Settlement City Manager Jeff James (pictured)thanked county officials on Monday after they held an hour-long hearing on the matter

The manager of small suburban town in Texas will remain at his post despite being accused of repeatedly using the 'N-word' against some of the community's residents.

White Settlement City Manager Jeff James thanked county officials on Monday after they held an hour-long hearing on the matter and decided not to act on a complaint filed last week.

'The council has decided that no action will be taken at this time,' White Settlement Mayor Ronald A. White declared before adjourning Monday's session.

Former fire chief Russell Shelley brought the issue before the council over the weekend, writing in a letter that James described residents as 'white trash n******' several times during a meeting they held earlier this year.

Shelley claims that the city manager made the comments after expressing frustration with White Settlement residents who didn't appreciate how hard he worked for the town.

Former fire chief Russell Shelley (pictured) brought the issue before the council over the accusing James of using the 'N-word' several times during a meeting

Shelley claims that the city manager made the comments after expressing frustration with White Settlement residents

According to NBC affiliate KXAS-TV, the decision not to pursue an investigation was made behind closed doors when city officials met in private earlier in the day.

James refused to offer a comment on the matter, telling reporters at the hearing that 'If I get into this, it's two wrongs don't make a right.'

'I am not going to justify any of this,' he added.

The hearing in White Settlement, located less than 10 miles outside of Fort Worth, was attended by dozens of residents, most of whom were supporters of James.

'I feel blessed that all these people were here today,' James said. 'I'm happy to be the city manager of the city of White Settlement.'

Shelby, who resigned as White Settlement's fire chief three months ago, said he was disappointed in the decision not to probe the matter further.

It remains unclear what motivated Shelby to resign from his role as Fire Chief of White Settlement.

White Settlement has a population just over 16,000 and houses the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.
A teenage Mexican YouTube star who insulted a notorious drug lord has been shot dead.

Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales posted a video when he was drunk aimed at Nemesio Ocegera Cervantes, also known as 'El Mencho'.

The 17-year-old can he heard saying 'El Mencho can suck my d**k' to Cervantes, 51, one of Mexico's most dangerous drug lords and the leader of the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco.

Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales racked up more than a million followers on Facebook and more than 300,000 on Instagram

'El Mencho' is one of Mexico 's most dangerous drug lords and the leader of the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco

He is one of Mexico's most wanted men and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

While Rosales and his friends partied at a bar in Jalisco, a group of armed individuals burst in and fired at him, the Attorney General of Jalisco, Raul Sanchez Jimenez, told Mexican media outlets.

The teenager died after being hit by 15 and 18 bullet wounds and the authorities were able to identify him by his tattoos.

A 25-year-old employee of the bar was also shot dead during the incident on Monday night.

Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, an area notorious for cartels including notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.

Rosales acquired a YouTube following after making videos of himself drinking until he passed out and cracking jokes

The grisly end: Photos from his murder show his bullet-ridden body

The baby-face star was known as the 'The Pirate of Culiacan' and was famous for drinking as well as mocking his own weight

While Rosales and his friends partied at a bar in Jalisco, a group of armed individuals burst in and fired at him

Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, an area notorious for cartels including notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman (pictured)

Rosales grew up never knowing his father and mother left him with his grandmother as a child.

In a recent interview, he said he left his hometown at the age of 15 without finishing high school, moving to the nearby municipality of Culiacan and washing cars to make a living.

It was in his adopted town that he took on the nickname that would later become known across the internet: 'El Pirata de Culiacan,' or 'The Pirate of Culiacan.'

He acquired a YouTube following by posting videos of himself drinking beer and bottles of whisky often until he passed out.

Rosales was famous for his baby face and sense of humour, often posting pictures poking fun at the fact he was overweight.

At the age of 17, he racked up more than a million followers on Facebook and more than 300,000 on Instagram and his media fame started earning him spots in music videos and at promotional events.




A mother who covered for her sadistic boyfriend after he beat their baby son to death walked free from court today after one of Britain's most senior judges accepted she was suffering from 'battered women syndrome.'

Chantelle Flynn, 25, hatched a callous plan with Craig Dawick to lie to police and doctors after he gave eight-month-old Leyton Flynn a fatal beating for 'crying too much'.

Despite being out on a 40-minute errand at the time of the attack, Flynn falsely claimed she had been cuddling her son on the sofa when he started sweating, went pale and 'made a funny noise'.

She also insisted Dawick was a 'brilliant father' and said any injuries caused to the child were 'accidental.'

Flynn broke down and sobbed in the dock at Manchester Crown Court as she was convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child and perverting the course of justice and was handed a suspended sentence.

Chantelle Flynn, left, covered for violent boyfriend Craig Dawick, right, after he brutally beat their son to death

Leyton, pictured, suffered a 'catastrophic brain injury' and fractured arms and legs after Dawick attacked him for 'crying too much'

The court heard Flynn, pictured with Dawick, told police the baby fell ill on her lap and added Dawick was a 'brilliant father' and any injuries were 'accidental'

Leyton from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was taken to Royal Oldham Hospital but transferred to the paediatric intensive care unit at Manchester Children's Hospital where he was found to have a catastrophic brain injury, fractures to his legs and arms and bruises to his head and body.

He died two days later with experts saying he suffered injuries usually seen in high speed car accidents.

It emerged Dawick, also 25, had previously been violent during the couple's relationship but she took him back sending him texts saying he was 'beautiful' and adding: '"I love you darling, I really do" followed by eight kisses.

Just days after the pair got back together following another bust up, Dawick was left alone with Leyton and when the child screamed and sobbed due to teething and acid reflux, Dawick shouted: 'shut the 'f***' up ' at the youngster before leaving him with injuries 'consistent with being kicked or punched'. He then rang Flynn for help.

She broke down and sobbed as the judge Mr Justice John Royce branded Dawick the 'real villain' and said Flynn was 'completely under his sway.'

Dawick himself was jailed for life with a minimum 21 years after he found guilty of murder in September.

Imposing two years jail suspended for 24 months the judge told Flynn: 'Part of your life for the last ten years have been extremely turbulent.

Flynn, pictured outside court, broke down in tears in the dock as she was handed a suspended sentence

'It seems you would sometimes say you hated Craig Dawick and wanted nothing to do with him and then not long after you you send a text saying how much you loved him.

'It became a pattern of you telling him to leave then having him back. You couldn't live with him and you couldn't bear to live without him.

'He told you lies to conceal what he has done but when paramedics arrived you told them you had been cuddling him on the sofa when Leyton went pale and started making a funny noise. You said that once you started that you didn't feel you could correct it.

'Your deceit continued until you were interviewed and you told them it was Craig who was looking after Leyton at the relevant time.

'It is important to refer to the psychological report which concluded that the abuse you suffered in childhood was likely to have impacted your ability to deal with Craig Dawick.

'You were especially vulnerable and it is a concern that you suffered from battered woman syndrome.

'The report concluded you had extremely low self esteem and your low self esteem keeps women in a perpetuating cycle of violence. You were more susceptible to being controlled and bullied by Craig Dawick.

'I have no shadow of a doubt about you being dominated, controlled and intimidated by Dawick and you had the feeling that somehow his abuse of you was your fault when it was certainly not.

'Your deceit lasted hours not days or months and the real burden in this tragedy was Dawick. You were completely under his sway.'

He added: 'The psychological evidence about your conditions is extremely powerful if not unique.

'Sending you to prison would run the risk of negating the fact that you are making a real effort to live a constructive life. I do not consider you a danger and it is quite clear you bitterly regret this tragedy.'

The murder occurred in September last year just days after Dawick had been violent towards Flynn and caused a scene at their home in which he reportedly threatened to 'break in and batter her to death.'

Prosecutor Neil Usher said: 'She knew her partner was a violent man, as she herself had recently been the victim of his violence. Dawick is an aggressive, sometimes violent man who is quick to lose his temper.

'But despite knowing that her partner had anger management problems which manifested itself in physical violence, she allowed him to remain in the family house, despite the significant risk that she knew, or should have known, he posed of causing serious physical harm.

Flynn told officials Leyton, pictured, stated 'sweating, went pale and "made a funny noise"' on her lap

The court heard Flynn, right, was 'dominated, controlled and intimidated' by Dawick and was 'completely under his sway'

'Their relationship was a tempestuous one, and one in which at times Dawick was physically violent towards Flynn.

'Telephone evidence strongly suggests a pattern in the months leading up to September of the two of them either splitting up, or coming very close to it, largely because of the poor behaviour of Dawick, only for Flynn to almost immediately forgive him and be desperate for him to return to her.'

The court heard on September 1 the couple had a bust up after he walked out on Flynn with 200 of her money and a PlayStation game - leaving a note saying their relationship was over.

Two days later, she sent Dawick a text saying: 'I will make sure I drop all your clothes off. Me and you are over for good' but the following morning he turned up at the family home in a 'highly agitated state.'

Mr Usher said: 'Flynn wouldn't let him in but he started kicking at the locked front door and shouting threats.

'She was sufficiently scared to call the police by dialling 999 and said he had threatened that he was going to 'break in and batter her to death.'

'She added that he had warned her that ringing the police would be 'her worst mistake.'

But by the time the police attended some 20 minutes later Dawick had gone and it seems Flynn had already forgiven Dawick because she sent him a text warning him that the police had arrived.

'When the police spoke to her she declined their offer of help and just five hours later she sent him a text saying "I love you darling, I really do." By September 5 the relationship was well and truly back on track.'

One subsequent text Flynn sent to Dawick read: 'love you so much' followed by eight kisses and when he replied that he loved her too, she texted back: 'Love you more' and in a further message, later the same day she called him 'beautiful.'

That night Dawick stayed over at the house and the following morning was left alone with Leyton whilst Flynn went out on an errand.

Mr Usher said: 'On the morning he received his fatal injuries, Leyton had been crying all morning because he was teething.

'He also suffered with acid reflux. Whilst left alone with a baby who may well have been crying or even screaming that morning, Craig Dawick snapped and deliberately inflicted Leyton's fatal injuries.

'Whilst Flynn was still out, Craig Dawick telephoned her at 8:35am and the conversation lasted seven minutes and 50 seconds and at 9:08 am he called for a second time - again, there was a lengthy phone conversation between the two, this call also lasting over seven minutes.

'Only the defendants can tell you precisely what was contained in those two, lengthy phone calls, but it plainly concerned the fact that Leyton was by now very seriously injured.

Dawick was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years in September for the murder of Leyton

'The truth is that Dawick had telephoned Flynn to inform her that something was seriously wrong with Leyton, and telling her that she should return home.'

Flynn arrived home shortly afterwards and dialed 999 but Dawick then left the house by the back door drove off in his car before exchanging text messages with Flynn as an ambulance crew and police came to the house.

As paramedics treated Leyton as he lay barely alive on the living room floor and spotted bruising to his head and arm, Flynn claimed she had been cuddling her son on the sofa when he started sweating, went pale and started making a 'funny noise.'

Later as police examined the scene and after Leyton had been taken to hospital Dawick returned to the house pretending to know nothing of what happened, it was said.

Flynn was seen to be 'telling him' that Leyton was unwell and had been taken to hospital and Dawick was described as being 'animated and unhappy' about the presence of the officers.

Whilst doctors treated Leyton in hospital, Flynn told a consultant paediatrician the baby had woken at about 7am, screaming and said she had taken her son out on the errand with her.

She said when they returned home, his condition changed, his colour drained from his face and then developed breathing difficulties and she dialled 999.

Flynn admitted getting a panic call from Dawick whilst she was out saying she had to get home quickly and she found Leyton struggling to breathe.

She insisted to police her boyfriend was a 'brilliant father' and said the injuries 'must have been an accident.'

Her lawyer Nick Johnson QC said in mitigation: 'She was in a very very difficult position at the time.

'She clearly does feel a sense of responsibility and she has been substantially punished already.'
Ismael Watson has been jailed for five years

A Muslim convert who became 'quickly radicalised' and fled the UK to 'fight and kill' for ISIS has been jailed for five years after his pregnant wife 'snitched' on him.

Ismael Watson travelled to Turkey and changed his appearance with hair gel to 'look more Syrian' but was stopped and sent back to Britain as he tried to cross the border into Syria, the Old Bailey heard.

He was intercepted by Turkish authorities and deported to the UK after vowing to carry out terrorist atrocities during encrypted chats with undercover MI5 agents.

Prosecutors said the chats showed Watson's 'hatred for Western society' and his determination to fight in a 'holy war against Western oppressors'.

The 27-year-old, who has suffered from a bipolar disorder, had denied preparation of terrorist acts and had opted to represent himself but refused to attend court.

His first trial was abandoned and following a two-day retrial, he was found guilty in his absence.

The defendant, formally known as Jack Watson, came from a non-Muslim family in Liverpool and was described by his mother as 'meek, mild and easily influenced'.

Following his conversion to Islam he was 'quickly radicalised' and in 2015 he married Sharmina Begum at a mosque in Birmingham.

The couple moved into a shared house in Walsall but the relationship broke down by January last year as Watson's views became increasingly extreme from watching IS videos, jurors heard.

Watson, formerly known as Jack, sent an undercover police officer this picture of himself with his hair gelled down (left), which he hoped would make him look 'like a refugee' so he could get across the Syrian border and join ISIS

Prosecutor Oliver Glasgow QC had told jurors how Watson made preparations to join ISIS between January last year and February 23.

He took a flight to Morocco then made his way to Turkey and allegedly sought help to cross the border into Syria via contacts on the internet, not realising he was speaking to two undercover security service agents.

In a conversation on March 30 last year, an officer asked him if he had been 'hot' before he left Britain, and Watson replied: 'Yes I was hot. My wife snitched on me and left. While pregnant [she] told them everything.'

Jurors were told Watson's encrypted chats with undercover agents 'revealed the extent of his hatred for Western society and his avowed intent to take part in terrorist activity'.

Mr Glasgow said: 'There is no doubt that had he succeeded in his attempt to enter Syria he would have joined IS and that he would have fought for them.'

In September 2015 he married Sharmina Begum at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, but he became so radical that she left him in January 2016 after they moved to Walsall in the West Midlands.

'He started to watch IS videos and listening to lectures about jihad,' said Mr Glasgow.

'He started to refer to non-Muslims as kuffars [non-believers] and he spoke of his desire to travel to Syria.'

'Joining Isis and helping them in any capacity, whether it's to fight or anything else would be an act of terrorism,' explained Mr Glasgow.

Messages sent between Watson and the undercover officer were shown to the jury in court

Watson travelled to the Turkish border town of Sanliurfa before he was arrested by authorities

Asked what jobs he wanted to do in Syria, Watson suggested he could help with film-making, proof-reading and cooking.

Watson was detained in Turkey and sent back to Britain in February.

He denied but was convicted of preparing to commit acts of terrorism between 1 January 2016 and 23 February this year contrary to Section 5 Terrorism Act 2006.

Sentencing, Judge Anuja Dhir QC told him: 'The evidence in this case proved that at the time of the offences you held deep and extensive radicalised beliefs that were demonstrated by the large volume of extremist material found on your mobile phone, and your positive and stated support for Islamic State and those involved in jihad.

'You wanted to fight for Islamic State and you demonstrated a willingness to kill for them.'

She ordered Watson to spend an extra 12 months on extended licence.
Advertisement

Buyers looking for the freshest Christmas turkey flocked to York Auction Centre's Dressed Poultry Christmas sale this morning in Murton, York.

Hundreds of people crammed into the warehouse to attend one of the UK's largest poultry sales looking to snap up the centrepiece for their Christmas dinner tables.

Families were spoilt for choice as there were 900 birds up for grabs including 600 turkeys as well as geese, phesants, chickens, partridge and duck.

As well as butchers selling their oven-ready meat savvy shoppers were in attendance to avoid supermarket checkout queues.

The annual event started a little bit later that usual this year as you had to be there at 10.30am to bag yourself a bargain, rather than the usual 7.00am.

Crowds had a chance to peruse what was on offer before the meat was paraded by auctioneers and then sold off to the highest bidder.

This morning butchers and wholesalers offered up their finest poultry to the public in time for Christmas Day. This proud auction assistant held up one of his freshest turkeys that went on auction this morning

These two men were getting ready to parade their birds to the people who had come to buy poultry from the York Auction Centre's Dressed Poultry Christmas sale auction in Murton, York

Buyers looking for their Christmas centrepiece flocked to the auction to purchase turkeys, geese, phesants, chickens, partridge and duck ready for the big day

Sellers put out their display of dressed poultry and then paraded it around the auction centre so that buyers could pick the turkey they wanted to purchase. Before the auction the auction assistants also weigh the birds

As well as butchers selling their oven-ready meat savvy shoppers were in attendance to avoid supermarket checkout queues. The auction gave people the chance to hand pick the freshest turkey or other type of poultry for Christmas Day

Thrifty families and people only wanting to tuck into the freshest of birds on Christmas day also squeezed into the hall to buy their perfect festive food

The annual event started a little bit later that usual this year as you had to be there at 10.30am to bag yourself a bargain, rather than the usual 7.00am

Sold! Auction participants fight it out to purchase the best poultry in time for Christmas. People watch as the auction commences and the bidding begins

Turkeys tied at the leg wait to be presented to the crowds of people who turned up to purchase poultry at the auction which started at 10.30am this moring in York

Before the annual sale commences auction assisstants have to weigh and arrange the birds to make sure that they look presentable to possible buyers

Hundreds of oven-ready birds each have to be laid out before the auction starts by auction assisstants who carefully check over each one to make sure that they are up to scratch

Although turkey is the usual Christmas meat of choice in prior to 1950 was goose and before that it had previously been roast pheasant, peacock and even roast swan

Consumers in the UK reportedly spend over 300 million on turkey alone over the Christmas season

The birds were displayed with tied legs and were defeathered from the neck down presumably to show what the bird will look like on the day it is cooked

After crowds had a chance to peruse what was on offer, the meat was paraded by auctioneers and then sold off to the highest bidder
Cuban President Raul Castro will step down in April after an election to choose his successor.

He was supposed to resign in February but Cuba's National Assembly today voted to push back the election due to disruption caused by hurricane Irma in September.

The vote will now take place on April 19 after which Castro, 86, will hand over power to the president-elect.

Cuban President Raul Castro will step down in April 2018 after an election to choose his successor

Castro, who officially replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president in 2008, has repeatedly said senior leaders should hold office for no more than two five-year terms.

'Although we kept on trying to promote young people to senior positions, life proved that we did not always make the best choice,' Castro said at a Communist Party Congress in 2011.

'We are faced with the consequences of not having a reserve of well-trained replacements... It's really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in more than half a century.'

The 2011 party summit adopted a more than 300-point plan aimed at updating Cuba's Soviet-style economic system, designed to transform it from one based on collective production and consumption to one where individual effort and reward play a far more important role.

Across-the-board subsidies are being replaced by a comprehensive tax code and targeted welfare.

Castro was supposed to resign in February but Cuba's National Assembly today voted to push back the election due to disruption caused by a hurricane in September

Castro has encouraged small businesses and cooperatives in retail services, farming, minor manufacturing and retail, and given more autonomy to state companies which still dominate the economy.

The party plan also includes an opening to more foreign investment.

At the same time, Cuba continues to face a US administration bent on restoring democracy and capitalism to the island and questions about the future largess of oil rich Venezuela with strategic ally Hugo Chavez battling cancer.

The Castro brothers and their generation of leaders have ruled Cuba since they swept down from the mountains in the 1959 revolution.
In an emergency session, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and pledging to relocate its embassy there.

The vote was 1289, with 35 abstentions. Only Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo joined the United States and Israel in opposing the measure. Another 21 countries didn't show up to vote.

The resolution is symbolic and nonbinding, and won't likely change President Donald Trump's course of action. But it declared that 'any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded.'

American ambassador Nikki Haley blasted anti-Israel member nations during a pre-vote debate, warning that there would be a price to pay for standing in President Donald Trump's way.

'This vote will be remembered,' she said as the entire UN General Assembly looked on.

'America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do. And it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that,' Haley lectured from the central podium.

'But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN.'

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS

America's United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley warned Thursday that America will remember who voted against Donald Trump's decision to move a U.S. embassy to Jerusalem when it comes time for other nations ask for ever-increasing funding of the UN itself

But in a 128-9 shellacking, with 35 nations abstaining, the UN voted to condemn Trump's historic pro-Israel move

Riyad Mansour (R), Palestine's Permanent Observer to the United Nations, walked past a glaring Haley on Thursday at the UN in New York City

The UN General Assembly debated in advance of a nonbinding, symbolic vote condemning America's decision to recognize Jerusalem (shown) as Israel's capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv

President Donald Trump had already threatened a day earlier to cut aid funding to countries that vote for the measure, which Ambassador Nikki Haley vetoed Monday in a 14-1 tally.

He ignored a torrent of shouted questions after Thursday's vote as he left the White House for a visit to wounded soldiers at a nearby military hospital.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that 'the UN vote is not the only factor that the administration would take into consideration in dealing with our foreign relations, and countries who have chosen to vote one way or the other.'

Nauert also said she had received a note from the National Security Council at the White House, and insisted that 'the president's foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations. However, no decisions have been made.'

Trump declared this month that the U.S. officially recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people, and that an embassy relocation was in the cards. That sparked a revolt among nations sympathetic to the cause of Palestinians, who regard Jerusalem as the home of some of Islam's most holy sites.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the UN vote in harsh terms.

'Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be,' he said in a video posted online after the resolution passed in lopsided fashion.

'But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theatre of the absurd,' he added.

'Especially I want to again express our thanks to President Trump and Ambassador Haley for their stalwart defense of Israel and their stalwart defense of the truth.'

Just nine nations (in red), including the U.S. and Israel, voted 'no' on Thursday; another 35 countries abstained rather than taking a stand

The stunning vote tally shows an increasingly anti-Israeli trend among nations in Europe, Asia and the Middle East

Haley lectured her peers and said that 'unlike' in some other countries, the U.S. government is 'answerable to its people' and can't spend money on failing institutions

As expected, the Palestinian president welcomed the resolution.

'This decision reaffirms once again that the just Palestinian cause enjoys the support of international law, and no decision by any party can change the reality,' a statement from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman said, stressing it showed 'that Jerusalem is occupied territory under international law.'

'We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and all international forums to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem,' the statement added.

The Islamist terror group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, said it was a blow to Israel's attempts to 'judaise' Jerusalem.

Trump has long complained that the U.S. shoulder's a disproportionate share of the UN's financial burden, compared to some freeloading nations, and said Wednesday at the White House that America will vote with its wallet.

'They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,' he fumed. 'Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care.'

Haley echoed those concerns, suggesting that even allies who vote against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem are risking a financial cost.

'They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,' Trump said Wednesday at the White House

'The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations,' she said.

'And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.'

Haley insisted Thursday that Trump's decision 'does not prejudge any final status issues including Jerusalem's boundaries'

Haley threw jab after jab, saying that 'the United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations,' and that 'unlike in some UN member countries, the United States government is answerable to its people.'

'We have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is being poorly spent,' she warned. 'We have an obligation to demand more for our investment, and if our investment fails we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways.'

She insisted that Trump's decision pertaining to Jerusalem 'does not prejudge any final status issues including Jerusalem's boundaries.'

'The decision does not preclude a two-state solution if the parties agree to that. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts,' she said.

The draft resolution the General Assembly considered on Thursday mirrored the vetoed Security Council measure, reaffirming that any decision on the status of Jerusalem has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

It does not mention Trump's decision but expresses 'deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.'

A council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to U.S. pressure and not support the draft resolution.

ROLL CALL: HOW THEY VOTED 128 United Nations member countries voted to condemn Donald Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. These countries either voted 'no' or abstained: ABSTAINED: Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Australia Bahamas Benin Bhutan Bosnia-Herzegovina Cameroon Canada Colombia Croatia Czech Republic Dominican Republic Equatorial Guinea Fiji Haiti Hungary Jamaica Kiribati Latvia Lesotho Malawi Mexico Panama Paraguay Philippines Poland Romania Rwanda Solomon Islands South Sudan Trinidad and Tobago Tuvalu Uganda Vanuatu VOTED 'NO': Guatemala Honduras Israel Marshall Islands Micronesia Nauru Palau Togo United States Advertisement

Haley on Monday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the embassy-move plan; all 14 other council nations voted 'yes'

Ahead of Thursday's hearing Haley wrote to other ambassadors that Trump, shown here with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would take disrespectful votes 'personally'

He spoke after Haley warned countries on Tuesday that the President will take anti-America votes 'personally.'

'The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us,' Haley wrote to a number of countries in a letter.

'We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,' she wrote to several UN ambassadors. 'As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the President and U.S. take this vote personally.'

On Twitter, Haley posted that 'the U.S. will be taking names' during the vote on Thursday at the 193-nation assembly.

Turkey and Yemen requested the emergency session on behalf of the Arab group of countries and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Egypt had put forward the draft at the Security Council, which was backed by all 14 other members in the vote on Monday.

Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour said he expected 'overwhelming support' for the measure stating that Jerusalem is an issue 'to be resolved through negotiations' between Israel and the Palestinians.

'The General Assembly will say, without the fear of the veto, that the international community is refusing to accept the unilateral position of the United States,' Mansour told reporters.

THE RESOLUTION TEXT Status of Jerusalem The General Assembly, Reaffirming its relevant resolutions, including resolution 72/15 of 30 November 2017 on Jerusalem, Reaffirming also the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, including resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967, 252 (1968) of 21 May 1968, 267 (1969) of 3 July 1969, 298 (1971) of 25 September 1971, 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973, 446 (1979) of 22 March 1979, 465 (1980) of 1 March 1980, 476 (1980) of 30 June 1980, 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980 and 2334 (2016) of 23 December 2016, Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, Bearing in mind the specific status of the Holy City of Jerusalem and, in particular, the need for the protection and preservation of the unique spiritual, religious and cultural dimensions of the city, as foreseen in relevant United Nations resolutions, Stressing that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant United Nations resolutions, Expressing, in this regard, its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard calls upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to Security Council resolution 478 (1980); Demands that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions; Reiterates its call for the reversal of the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution and for the intensification and acceleration of international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference, including the principle of land for peace, the Arab Peace Initiative[1] and the Quartet road map,[2] and an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967; Decides to adjourn the tenth emergency special session temporarily and to authorize the President of the General Assembly at its most recent session to resume its meeting upon request from Member States. Advertisement

Haley posted on Twitter this week that 'the US will be taking names' during the vote on Thursday at the larger 193-nation assembly

Key allies including Britain and France are against Trump's Israel move; pictured are French President Emmanuel Macron (left) and British Prime Minister Theresa May (right)

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, contrary to the council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.

Trump's December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem broke with international consensus, triggering protests across the Muslim world and drawing strong condemnation.

Key U.S. allies Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine were among the 14 countries in the 15-member council that voted in favor of the measure.

After that vote, Haley described the 14-1 vote 'an insult' and warned 'it won't be forgotten.'

The Muslim world has seen widespread protests, and in Gaza City they continued Wednesday ahead of the United Nations special session

Haley's letter explains that 'the U.S. Congress declared that Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel, and that the U.S. Embassy should be located in Jerusalem. President Trump affirmed that declaration by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.'

'The President's announcement did not prejudge final status negotiations in any way, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. The President also made sure to support the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, and did not advocate changes to the arrangements at the Temple Mount./Haram al-Sharif,' she added.

She went further on Tuesday, warning in her Twitter post: 'At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us.

'On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The U.S. will be taking names.'

After the clash at the top UN body, the White House announced that US Vice President Mike Pence was delaying a trip to the Middle East planned for this week.

Israel seized control of the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Middle East war and sees all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital. The Palestinians view the east as the capital of their future state.

Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized during the 1967 war.
This blog is looking for wisdom, to have and to share. It is also looking for other rare character traits like good humor, courage, and honor. It is not an easy road, because all of us fall short. But God is love, forgiveness and grace. Those who believe in Him and repent of their sins have the promise of His Holy Spirit to guide us and show us the Way.
Labour MPs claimed a man watching them debate Russian interference was a Kremlim diplomat today - only for it to turn out he was an American.

Labour's Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant conferred and pointed after apparently seeing him taking pictures and video from the public gallery.

Mr Bryant then alerted the Commons doorkeepers and the man, who was wearing a grey suit and yellow tie, and he was escorted out of the debate.

But in farcical scenes, the anonymous man was let back into the Commons chamber within minutes after claiming he worked for a think tank.

Commons sources told MailOnline the man was in fact an American who took no photos or video of the debate.

Labour's Ben Bradshaw (pictured during today's debate) and Chris Bryant conferred after apparently seeing him taking pictures and video from the public gallery

Commons officials removed a man from a debate on Russian interference in Britain (pictured as the discussion began) today after MPs accused him of being a Kremlim diplomat

He insisted to reporters in Parliament that he worked for a think tank in London and could not have taken pictures even if he wanted to.

Taking pictures or video from Parliament's public galleries is strictly forbidden and until recently phones were entirely banned.

As the bizarre incident unfolded, the MPs could be seen pointing at the mystery man during a debate on Russian interference in UK politics.

However the man, speaking outside the public gallery, expressed his confusion at the accusations.

Speaking anonymously, he said: 'I work for a think tank in London, my phone is taped up over the camera so I can't take pictures.

'I was just here for the day, I didn't know what was happening.'

During the debate, Mr Bradshaw could be heard saying: 'He is from the Russian Embassy. He has been taking pictures.'

After several exchanges with Mr Bradshaw, Mr Bryant approached a door keeper to express concern and the man, who was wearing a grey suit and yellow tie, was temporarily removed from the gallery.

However, he returned several minutes later and remained in his seat for the rest of the debate.

A House of Commons spokesman said: 'A guest in the Public Gallery was using his mobile phone but was not filming.

'His phone was checked by the Doorkeepers and it was confirmed that there was no video footage'.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured in the Kremlin today) is accused of using fake news and propaganda to interfere in western politics

Liberal Democrat former minister Tom Brake, who secured the debate, tweeted: 'Spoken in my debate highlighting Russian interference in UK politics.

'The debate was enlivened by a Russian diplomat filming, against the rules, the debate from the public gallery and being asked to leave.

'He could just have watched it on Parliament TV.'

Mr Bryant also tweeted, saying: 'The doorkeepers have just removed a man from the public gallery for taking photos in the debate on Russia.'

His return prompted Mr Brake to tweet: 'I take it back. The Russian diplomat is still there, but no longer filming or taking pictures. Perhaps he's found the Parliamentary channel.'

During today's debate, Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, also called on Facebook and Twitter to do more to research the activity of fake accounts

During the debate senior Conservative MPs have warned Britain's intelligence services must treat Russian online aggression as one of their number one priorities

Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, also called on Facebook and Twitter to do more to research the activity of fake accounts.

He warned tech companies were waiting to be asked to act by official intelligence rather than being proactive, suggesting both sides needed to do more.

Conservative Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, backed the suggestion for a closer interest in Russian-linked activity as MPs debated Russian interference in UK politics and society.

'Russian spy' in 10 Downing Street: Ukrainian PM's interpreter who attended meeting with Theresa May is arrested on suspicion of being a Moscow spook

Ukraine's state security service SBU detained Yezhov on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said today. Pictured: Groysman (left) with Theresa May at No 10. Behind them, circled, is Yezhov

An interpreter who visited 10 Downing Street in July has been arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of spying for Russia.

Stanislav Yezhov - an interpreter for the Ukrainian cabinet - was detained by the country's police today.

In a shocking Facebook post, Ukraine's prime minister Volodymyr Groysman said that Yezhov had 'long been working in the interests of a hostile government'.

It is not known, however, if he is accused of spying at the time he attended Downing Street in July.

Asked about the man visiting Downing Street, Mrs May told a press conference in Poland: 'I am aware of the reports in relation to a Ukrainian individual who attended Downing Street earlier in the summer.

'The matter is for the Ukrainian authorities.'

Ukraine's state security service SBU detained Yezhov, 39, on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said today.

'Together with the Security Service of Ukraine, an official in the government's secretariat was found to be working for a long time in the interests of the enemy state. He was detained,' Groysman said on Facebook.
A former middle school teacher from California has been sentenced to 120 days in county jail for having a sexual relationship with her 15-year-old former student.

Heather Butts, a 42-year-old mother-of-two from Millbrae, pleaded no contest to a single felony count of lewd acts with a minor in October, more than a year after the Taylor Middle School drama teacher was spotted kissing the 15-year-old girl inside a white van parked near an elementary school.

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors have agreed to dismiss a second felony count and a misdeameanor charge of violating a no-contact order.

Teacher sentenced: Heather Butts, a 42-year-old former middle school drama teacher from California, has been sentenced to 120 days in county jail for having a tryst with her 15-year-old former student

Butts was arrested in August 2016 after deputies received a tip that she was kissing the girl in a parked van in San Mateo (pictured)

On Tuesday, Judge Barbara Mallach sentenced the former teacher to jail time, followed by three years of probation.

Butts also will be required to register as a sex offender and prohibited from being in the company of minors, or going to places frequented by children, including public parks and schools.

Butts was arrested on August 16, 2016, after an anonymous student tipped off sheriff's deputies, saying the woman was seen a day earlier kissing a girl inside a van parked in the vicinity of Lomita Park Elementary School in San Mateo, reported The Mercury News.

When officers arrived, they found Butts in the white van alone and the teenager nearby.

The victim was identified as a former student of Butts who had graduated from the middle school and was now a student at Mills High School.

They had allegedly been seeing each other since she started attending the high school.

Initially, the girl denied anything inappropriate had happened but later admitted she and Butts, a mother-of-two, had been kissing and were in love, prosecutors said.

A search of the girl's mobile phone revealed explicit text messages and an ongoing relationship between the pair, according to prosecutors.

At her sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Butts reportedly characterized the teenage victim as a 'sexually sophisticated partner' and claimed that she had saved the girls life by talking her out of committing suicide, according to CBS San Francisco.

Butts had taught drama at Taylor Middle School since 2004 and first met her lover there

Prosecutor Steve Wagstaffe dismissed Butts' claims concerning the teenager's supposed sexual experience as 'irrelevant', but said he was satisfied with the sentence.

He also noted that the victim in this case, who told police after Butts arrest that the two of them were in love, did not want the woman neither prosecuted nor convicted.

Butts remains free on $85,000 bond. She will receive a one-day credit for time served.
Magistrates found Kerri Graham (pictured outside court) not guilty of hitting a man with her phone in an argument over her fee

A stripper who once gave Simon Cowell a lap dance on Britain's Got Talent has been cleared of assaulting a client and making a false report to police.

Magistrates found Kerri Graham not guilty of hitting a man with her phone in an argument over her fee and not guilty of making a false report of sexual assault.

Ms Graham, from Thurrock in Essex, was acquitted of attacking Rakesh Pathak following a two-day trial.

The 48-year-old broke down in tears as Magistrate Jo King said the prosecution had failed to prove its case against her.

Following the verdict at Brighton Magistrates Court, Ms Graham said: 'I should never have been here in the first place.'

The court heard Mr Pathak had not made a complaint to police following the incident and was not being prosecuted.

He had taken out his penis and was trying to pull her towards it in his car after hiring Ms Graham to perform at his brother-in-law's stag party in March.

The court heard there were considerable inconsistencies in the account of the night given by Ms Graham and they were unable to say if the sexual assault took place.

Ms Graham told the court during her trial she had been too embarrassed to tell police the full story.

Clearing Ms Graham of wasting police time, Jo King said: 'We cannot be sure that the sexual assault claim was false.'

The magistrates concluded the absence of corroboration meant they could not be sure Ms Graham had hit Mr Pathak with her phone and cleared her of assault.'
A group of Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee have been meeting secretly to ferret out corruption they believe exists within the FBI and the Justice Department.

The lawmakers may release a report on any findings they have and try to get information that may substantiate their case into the public domain.

House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes is participating in the meetings, Politico reported, although he initially said he would recuse himself from the full committee's Russia probe.

Sources familiar with the inquiry told the publication lawmakers were frustrated with the Justice Department for failing to share more information about the infamous dirty dossier, which contains salacious information about Donald Trump as well as purported financial connections with Russia

House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes has taken part in secret meetings with other GOP panel members to attempt to ferret out corruption they believe exists within the FBI and the Justice Department

The dossier got handed over to the FBI during the campaign. During oversight hearings, Republican lawmakers have complained that a tainted document could have been the basis for conducting surveillance on Trump associates.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe has obtained guilty pleas from two Trump associates, including former White House security advisor Mike Flynn.

It has charged former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his one-time deputy, Rick Gates.

A Nunes spokesman told DailyMail.com, 'This isnt some secret investigation as reported by Politico. In fact, the Chairman announced it on television two weeks ago.'

The Ethics Committee cleared Nunes of having released classified information gleaned from trips to the White House early in the Trump presidency. Nunes told Fox News of a probe into surveillance of Americans authorized by special foreign intelligence FISA courts .

Lawmakers have blasted funding sources of the infamous dirty dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and wanted to know if it formed the bases for FISA warrants

Lawmakers want to investigated the infamous dirty dossier, its funding sources, and whether it got used to obtain surveillance warrants. Salacious unproven parts of the dossier have been discredited

'I believe we have evidence that definitely abuses have occurred,' he told the network

"I hate to use the word corrupt, but theyve become at least so dirty that whos watching the watchmen? Whos investigating these people? There is no one,' Nunes said.

Lawmakers have blasted funding sources of the infamous dirty dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and wanted to know if it formed the bases for FISA warrants.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, including about his Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russia's former ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak. The FBI is believed to have recorded the conversation. As the ambassador of a foreign government, Kislyak would have been subject to monitoring under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which includes protections for U.S. citizens.

The House GOP's probing of the FBI's actions come amid rising Democratic warnings about efforts to tarnish or even push out special counsel Robert Mueller

The House GOP's probing of the FBI's actions come amid rising Democratic warnings about efforts to tarnish or even push out Mueller as his investigators make their way through key Trump advisors.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia warned on the Senate floor this week: 'Any attempt by this President to remove special counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities.'

Warner added: "These truly are red lines and simply cannot allow them to be crossed.'

"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," he added.
Mr Calvin (pictured) returned home after raising money for Guide Dogs UK to find armed police had smashed his front door open searching for guns

A charity volunteer returned home after raising money to find armed police had smashed his front door open to look for guns.

Mark Calvin was in Welshpool 40 miles away from his house collecting money for Guide Dogs UK, when officers used a battering ram to get into his home following reports of a 'domestic dispute'.

He only found out that the police operation had happened at his house in Dolgellau, north Wales, when his neighbour approached him about the incident in a car park.

Mr Calvin said: 'I am a bit shaken up. The police battered down my door as they believed that there were firearms in the house.

'It turned out to be misinformation and they have completely exonerated me of any wrongdoing.'

At around 3.30pm officers smashed in the door of Mr Clavin's house, as his partner was also absent from the property at the time.

Mr Calvin added: 'I only found out because I was in a car park and my neighbour said the police had broken into my house.

'I walked up and was directed to speak to an officer behind the cordon, and he told me what happened.'

Police arrived at Eldon Square around 11am after receiving reports of a 'domestic dispute' in a flat.

Witnesses said that before the police came they had heard a large bang, which to some sounded like a gunshot.

When Officers could not find the flat's occupants after searching the property, they began looking for them elsewhere.

He only found out that the police operation had happened at his house in Dolgellau, north Wales, when his neighbour approached him in a car park. Police arrived at Eldon Square around 11am after receiving a report of a 'domestic dispute' in a flat

Part of the town was cordoned off and officers who were carrying riot shields and who were wearing body armour searched the streets, whilst a specialist dog unit was put on standby.

Police later released a statement that said 'evidence of firearms' had been found at the flat in Eldon Square, but there was an innocent explanation and no one was injured.

Mr Calvin said that, despite the damage to his property, he does not blame the police for breaking in.

He said: 'The police have been very apologetic and have promised they will make good the damage.

'I seem to have just been an unfortunate piece of the collateral damage.

'The lock to my door was halfway down my hallway so they obviously came in at some force.

Mr Calvin said that, despite the damage to his property, he does not blame the police for breaking in

'My solicItor actually caught the whole thing on camera and you can see that the police did spend some time knocking on the door. Both me and my partner were away so there was no answer and that's when they knocked the door down.

'If the police honestly believed there was a gun at the property, they have a job to do.

'I don't want to have a pop at the police. What else could they have done in the situation?'

Superintendent Nick Evans said: 'The incident was reported to us in good faith by a member of the public who genuinely feared someone had been harmed.

'As it turns out there was an innocent explanation and everyone was safe.

'I'd like to pass on my thanks to the local community for their patience and understanding during the incident and particularly the member of the public who made the call.'
A retired police officer who groped a young woman in an early-hours sexual assault has avoided jail.

Alan Curtis, 52, of Pwllmelin Road in Llandaff, Cardiff, denied putting his hand down the victim's top and kissing her, but was convicted by a jury after a trial at Cardiff Crown Court.

Prosecutor Eugene Egan said the victim was left 'in shock' by what happened.

The court heard the incident occurred in Cardiff in the early hours of Sunday, April 9.

Alan Curtis, 52, of Pwllmelin Road in Llandaff, Cardiff, denied putting his hand down the victim's top and kissing her, but was convicted by a jury after a trial at Cardiff Crown Court

Prosecutors alleged Curtis put his hand down the woman's top, touched her breast and began to kiss her.

Mr Egan said the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, 'recoiled' at his behaviour and did not immediately report the incident.

When her account was put to Curtis during a police interview, the defendant denied touching her breast and kissing her.

Curtis, a retired British Transport Police officer, pleaded not guilty to sexual assault.

His trial earlier this month lasted for three days and was before a jury of six men and six women.

It took them seven hours and 35 minutes to return their unanimous verdict.

Judge Eleri Rees thanked them for their 'careful consideration' of the evidence.

They found that Curtis intentionally touched the woman, the touching was sexual, she did not consent, and he did not reasonably believe that she consented.

The court heard the incident occurred in Cardiff in the early hours of Sunday, April 9. Prosecutor Eugene Egan said the victim was left 'in shock' by what happened

He did not react when the verdict was delivered.

At that hearing, defence barrister Derek Perry asked for an adjournment so a pre-sentence report could be prepared.

On December 20, Judge Rees gave Curtis a 12-month jail term, suspended for two years, and ordered him to complete 45 days of rehabilitation activity.

Curtis must comply with a 16-week curfew, which requires him to stay at home between 8pm and 7am.

He must also pay 3,500 towards prosecution costs, along with 140 to fund victim services.
The Catholic Diocese of Columbus said in a statement Thursday that Reverend James Csaszar killed himself while visiting Chicago on Wednesday

A Catholic priest in Ohio under investigation for 'questionable' communications with a minor and misuse of church funds killed himself Wednesday.

The Catholic Diocese of Columbus said in a statement Thursday that Reverend James Csaszar killed himself while visiting Chicago.

He threw himself from the 82-story Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel hotel.

Csaszar was pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in the Columbus suburb of New Albany.

The diocese's statement says Csaszar was placed on administrative leave November 7 when officials learned of 'excessive and questionable' text and phone communications with a minor.

It's not clear the age of the minor or if they were male or female.

Officials also learned that he may have misused funds while pastor at St Rose of Lima Parish in New Lexington.

He threw himself from this 82-story Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, though it's unclear from how high

Csaszar was pastor of Church of the Resurrection in the Columbus suburb of New Albany. He was under investigation for 'excessive and questionable' text and phone communications with a minor and possible misuse of church funds

In a statement the diocese asked that everyone 'pray for Father Csaszar, his family, friends, and parishioners during this most difficult time.'

'We are reminded throughout sacred scripture that God our Father is loving, merciful, compassionate and forgiving,' the statement said.

'We also know that in his years of priestly ministry Fr. Csaszar did many good things for the people that he served in his parish assignments.'

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation began looking into Csaszar after the diocese learned of the allegations and contacted police in New Lexington, roughly 55 miles southeast of Columbus.

For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255
The father of an eight-year-old Texas boy whose mother forced him to undergo 13 surgeries by lying to doctors about his health has regained custody of the child.

On Wednesday, a judge awarded Ryan Crawford temporary managing conservator ship of his son Christopher.

The decision comes a week after Christopher's mother, Kaylene Bowen, was arrested for felony injury to a child after she admitted to convincing doctors that the boy was severely ill.

Crawford has been fighting for custody of his child for years, arguing in family court several times that Bowen was making up the boy's illnesses.

Ryan Crawford (left) won back custody of his eight-year-old son Christopher (right) on Wednesday, after the boy's mother was arrested last week for unnecessarily making the boy undergo 13 surgeries

But the judges didn't believe him, and one even barred him from seeing the boy in November 2012.

It wasn't until doctors raised concerns about the mother with Child Protective Services in November that the ruse was found out.

While authorities investigated the mother, Christopher and his two half-siblings were taken out of the home and put into foster care.

Following Wednesday's decision, Christopher will soon be going to live with his father.

Crawford had seen his boy twice since his mother's arrest.

'He looked as if nothing had ever happened to him,' he said. 'He's a blessing. God has watched over him.'

Christopher's grandmother, Nelly Crawford, was joyous at the news on Wednesday

'God answers prayers. Weve been praying for eight years,' she said, according to the Star Telegram. '...Were so happy. This is a day well never forget and celebrate. Yall rest assured, hes going to be well taken care of because he is loved.'

Kaylene Bowen, 34, was arrested for felony injury to a child after she admitted to convincing doctors that her son, Christopher, was severely ill

Bowen was arrested for felony injury to a child after she admitted to convincing doctors that her son, Christopher, was severely ill.

Since he was born, she's taken the now eight-year-old child to the hospital at least 323 times. He's also underwent 13 major surgeries since birth after she lied to doctors saying he had a severe milk allergy and needed a lung transplant due to the severe side effects.

Crawford Bowen's arrest was a long time coming and that he hopes she goes to prison for life for what she's done.

He said that he is upset it took so many years for the system to finally figure out that she was lying about their son's illnesses.

'How do you do 13 surgeries? How do you do it?' he asked while speaking to KHOU. 'How do you do 13 surgeries and not question the fifth surgery? The sixth surgery?'

Crawford explained after his son was born, he questioned the medical issues she was claiming he was suffering from.

He said the more he questioned Bowen, the less she was willing to let him see his son.

Crawford said that he tried to explain to Lori Hockett, a family court district judge in 2012, that his son was not sick, but she reportedly believed his ex and stripped him of his visitation rights because he refused to accept that his son was dying.

Since he was born, she took the now-eight-year-old boy on 323 hospital visits

Crawford (left) hadn't been allowed to see his son since 2012

'Every single [time] she went into [the] courtroom, she would say Christopher is dying,' Crawford said.

'The judge stated that I needed to accept that my son was dying and I said, 'No, I'm not going to accept that my son was dying' and she took away from my visitation.''

Then, two years later she hired an attorney to get full custody of their son.

He said he obtained medical records showing he was not sick, but claims the judge refused to even look at the records and dismissed his motion.

'It makes me feel as if the system wants to believe the mother all the time in situations, when the father is there fighting,' Crawford said.

Hockett, who is not currently a judge, told the Star-Telegram that she could not comment on Crawford's allegations.

Crawford said that despite everything, he still continued to pay $600 a month in child support.

The doctors did not find Christopher to be sick, a Child Protective Services caseworker wrote after an investigation last month. The boy is now in foster care with his two other siblings and Crawford is fighting to get him back

The mother said her son was terminally ill and would have problems leading to a lifelong feeding tube

'I was at a club and she seemed like a nice woman. She was pleasant, pretty. She just caught my eye,' Crawford said of when he first met Bowen

He also said he complained to Child Protective Services twice, but a spokeswoman for the agency said they have no record of the complaints.

His coworkers have created a GoFundMe to help him in the difficult process ahead.

'Out of everything that has happened, the worst thing you can do is put my children in foster care with strangers,' he said. 'I need my son in my life and my son needs me in [his] life.'

According to her Facebook page, Bowen publicly broadcasted her son's 'terminal cancer' and started crowdfunding pages to aid in the his medical treatments and operations.

She continually concocted the stories to doctors - who became suspicious two years ago, and contacted CPS. Both doctors confirmed Christopher was not actually sick.

Bowen apparently told doctors during visits that her son would violently 'throw up' every time he drank milk, Crawford told NBC Dallas Fort-Worth.

Mental disorder Munchhausen by Proxy (MSBP) MSBP is a mental disorder 'in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care, such as a child, an elderly adult, or a person who has a disability,' according to WebMB The behavior may stem from 'poor self-esteem, stress, anxiety' or a need for attention Advertisement

'She started explaining to the judge that the doctors stated my son would never walk,' Crawford said.

'And then she stated that he had problems continuing to eat and that he's going to need a feeding tube.'

The now-separated couple started dating in 2009 when they met while at a club.

'I was at a club and she seemed like a nice woman. She was pleasant, pretty. She just caught my eye,' he said of Bowen.

Now, Crawford said he is worried that, rather than his son, Bowen may actually be the one with the medical condition.

He's convinced she suffers from a condition called Munchhausen by Proxy, or MSBP.

MSBP is a 'mental health problem in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care' which is often times a child, according to WebMD.

The crying father said he feels partially to blame for not putting a stop to the visits years ago

'Just so many surgeries that are just unbelievable,' Crawford said. 'He could have died'

The behavior may stem from 'poor self-esteem, stress, anxiety'or a need for attention, the medical website said.

Of her extreme behavior, Crawford said it began eight days after their son was born.

'The issues escalated to eventually she claimed that my son was dying,' Crawford said.

'I was horrified because from what I knew, my son was fine. He just needed -- not even extra care -- he was fine.'

A crying Crawford said he feels partially to blame for not putting a stop to the visits years ago.

'Just so many surgeries that are just unbelievable,' Crawford shared.

'He could have died ... only God saved him.'
Dr. Louis Hebert (above) passed away in 2015, and left $846,648.46 to each of his three children - Lorette Taylor, Marie-Louise Marlow and Louis Paul Herbert

More than 10 month after UPS lost a Canadian family's $846,648.46 inheritance check, the bank said it will finally fork over the cash after initially refusing to do so.

'It's clear to us we didn't get this right along the way and that there was more we could have done to come to a resolution faster,' said TD Canada Trust bank spokeswoman Cheryl Ficker.

The bank had originally told the family it would not refund the money and UPS only offered to refund the $32 shipping along with an apology.

But after the story made headlines last week, the bank said it reconsidered its position and would assist Lorette Taylor and her brother Louis Paul Herbert in getting their money.

'It was a total surprise,' Taylor said. 'Never in my wildest imagination did I think something like this would happen.'

After Dr. Louis Hebert passed away in 2015, Taylor was tasked with finalizing details of his will.

Lorette Taylor (Right) and her brother Louis Paul Herbert (Right) via UPS will finally get their money after waiting 10 months

She along with her two siblings - Marie-Louise Marlow and Louis Paul Herbert - were the benefactors to each receive the nearly six-figure amount, CBC reported.

Back in February, she went to her nearby TD Canada Trust bank and obtained a bank draft, which is similar to a certified check, but the money is taken from a customer's account immediately and held by the bank until the draft is cashed.

TD Canada Trust bank spokeswoman Cheryl Ficker (pictured) said the company made a mistake and have agreed to help the family

Lorette obtained this form of payment after she claims the bank told her it was the safest way to send the large sum of money.

She was assured alongside her husband, John, that the money could be replaced if the draft was lost.

'I was told there were procedures to deal with that,' John told CBC last week during an interview.

He said if the draft was lost, bank officials said they would just, 'fill out some documentation and a new draft would be issued.'

Lorette and her husband sent the money via UPS from her lawyer in Georgetown, Ontario - which is about 270 miles away from her brother.

Once the draft was sent, Herbert traveled to his nearby local UPS store near Cornwall, Ontario expecting to pick up the package but it never arrived.

UPS tracked the package to a parcel distribution center located north of Toronto, but after that they have no other information on it.

'I'm waiting at the UPS store, around 3pm because that's when they said the guys came in, nothing shows up,' Herbert told CBC News earlier this month.

I came back in the evening. Nothing shows up  and I'm wondering, 'What's happened to my inheritance?''

UPS tracked the package to a parcel distribution center located north of Toronto, but after that they have no other information on it.

'While UPS' service is excellent in our industry, we are unfortunately not perfect. Occasionally, the loss of a package does occur,' spokeswoman Nirali Raval told CBC, declining to answer specific questions.

'Our records indicate that our team followed UPS protocol and an exhaustive search for this package was completed by our Operations and Security teams. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate the package.'

UPS refunded Lorette the $32 it cost to mail the parcel and sent her an apology letter.

But since last week's, after the Taylor and Herbert took their story to the media, they have finally been informed that they will be reimbursed by the bank.

The bank informed the family last Thursday afternoon and have formalized their agreement through an indemnity contract that expires in February 2019.

'It looks like the matter will be settled,' Taylor said.
Great-grandfather Dennis Hutchings, 76, had gone to Belfast High Court to win the right to have his attempted murder trial heard by a jury

A dying army veteran has lost a legal battle when he was told he will face a judge-only trial the killing of an IRA suspect more than 40 years ago.

Great-grandfather Dennis Hutchings, 76, had gone to Belfast High Court to win the right to have his attempted murder trial heard by a jury.

But a judge agreed with Northern Irelands Director of Public Prosecutions that the criminal case should be determined by a judge sitting alone because of the risk of jurors being biased.

They said that this could hamper the administration of justice. But Mr Hutchings - who last year said he had been 'thrown to the wolves' over the fatal shooting  expressed anger at the decision.

He said: This is disgusting. It means that in future British service personnel are unlikely to be allowed to have a jury trial. I want 12 people who might not be biased.

His barrister argued that the decision was wrong in law and based on bald assertions about the risk to the administration of justice.

But counsel for the NI DPP Barra McGrory said that the 2007 Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act contains a wide-ranging condition for a non-jury trial.

Any indirect connection with political or religious hostility brings the case into that category, he said.

Ex-soldier Mr Hutchings, of Cornwall, is to stand trial over the shooting of John-Pat Cunningham, 27, in Northern Ireland in 1974

Ex-soldier Mr Hutchings, of Cornwall, is to stand trial over the shooting of John-Pat Cunningham, 27, in Northern Ireland in 1974.

He had been investigated and cleared of the Troubles killing at the time. He then assisted Northern Ireland's Historical Enquiries Team (HET), which reviewed the case in 2011, and was told by investigators that the matter was closed.

But after files were re-examined by a legacy unit set up by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) he was arrested at his home in Cornwall in April 2015 and taken to Northern Ireland.

Mr Hutchings - who has kidney failure and has been given two years to live - was part of a military unit which came across Mr Cunningham, whom they believed was an armed IRA suspect, near the village of Benburb, County Armagh.

As Mr Cunningham ran away across a field, Mr Hutchings was one of two soldiers - the other now dead - who opened fire, killing him. It later emerged that he was innocent and had a mental age of between six and ten.

It has not been established who fired the fatal shot. Mr Hutchings says he was acting lawfully and that the victim was acting suspiciously, was thought to be hiding a weapon and ignored an order to stop.

As Mr Cunningham ran away across a field, Mr Hutchings was one of two soldiers - the other now dead - who opened fire, killing him. Pictured above, the crime scene in 1974

In March, a judge in Armagh said there was 'ample evidence' from which a jury could conclude that Mr Hutchings fired three shots at Mr Cunningham but not enough to show he intended to kill him.

He said the veteran, who served 26 years in the Life Guards, would go on trial for attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to him. But months later Mr Hutchings was told he would stand trial for attempted murder - even though the earlier court ruled the charge should be dropped because of 'insufficient evidence'.

Mr McGrory reinstated the charge. Mr Hutchings's trial is expected to take place later this year.

Up to 1,000 retired troops are being investigated as suspects over actions they took decades ago at the height of the IRA's terror campaign, with growing concerns of a 'witch-hunt'.

Earlier this year a report by the Commons' defence select committee said that British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland have been left in a 'morally indefensible limbo' by the PSNI investigation.
A mother-of-two from Mississippi has been arrested on a child abuse count after allegedly sending someone text messages claiming that she had choked her infant daughter with a car charger and left her in the woods.

Santangela Turner, 26, of Laurel, also allegedly sent photos showing herself pulling a white cord around the neck of her three-month-old baby and the infant crying, as well as a picture of the child lying on her back with a knife pointed at her neck.

In one message, the woman threatened to harm the baby, according to a press release from the Jones County Sheriffs Office. The written threat was accompanied by a photo of the newborn with the cord around her neck.

Mom arrested: Santangela Turner, 26, has been arrested on a felonious child abuse count after sending text messages claiming she had choked her infant daughter with a car charger

Investigators learned of the alleged abuse from Child Protective Services on December 13, and a warrant was then issued for Turners arrest.

The mother-of-two turned herself in to the authorities on Monday and was charged with felonious child abuse.

At her initial court appearance at Jones County Justice Court the following day, Turners family members claimed that she was suffering from postpartum depression and seeking psychological help, reported Fox 23.

A judge set Turner's bail at $10,000 and barred her from being around any children, including her own.

Turner was released from jail on Wednesday afternoon.
Chris Tarrant (pictured) was pulled over when he left his local pub in Berkshire

Chris Tarrant has hit back at suggestion he was over the drink driving limit by claiming he was 'entirely sober' before he arrived home from an afternoon at the pub.

His comments come after the former Who Wants to be a Millionaire? host was breathalysed and arrested.

But today the 71-year-old television personality has claimed he was at home for 'some time' and drank wine and brandy before police arrived.

Mr Tarrant is accused of being over the limit while behind the wheel on November 16 after a pub lunch at the Bladebone Inn in Bucklebury, close to his Berkshire home.

Police were tipped off about his alleged drink driving by a member of the public.

He has been summoned to appear at Reading Magistrates' Court on January 18.

The radio host and former presenter of hit quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

His agent and manager Paul Vaughan said in a statement that Tarrant had 'enjoyed a single drink and something to eat' before leaving the pub 'in an entirely sober state' and driving home.

He continued: 'Once he was at home, as he was not to drive himself again that day, he freely admits he drank a quantity of alcohol - some brandy and later some wine.

'Having been at home for some time, he was called upon by a police officer who approached him outside his house and required him, following information received by a member of the public, to take a breath test.

'This test proved positive and he was formally arrested and taken to the Newbury Police Station.'

The statement said Tarrant's breathalyser reading was 50 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath - the legal limit being 35 microgrammes.

A local is said to have phoned the police after the former gameshow host submitted plans to extend his home

Mr Vaughan added: 'Mr Tarrant was not stopped by police at the roadside, nor was he given a roadside breath test - nor is there any allegation by police that his driving fell below standard.

'Indeed, they did not witness the journey.'

Tarrant intends to plead not guilty at his court appearance, Mr Vaughan said.

It is thought a local phoned 999 when the TV star left the Bladebone Inn.

The local resident is said to be unhappy about Tarrant's plans to extend his 2million home.

Tarrant, who presented the hit ITV quiz show from 1998 to 2014, appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court on December 18.

A source told The Sun that he is 'taking legal advice' and is due to reappear in court on January 18.

The 71-year-old had been at the Bladebone Inn in Bucklebury, Berkshire, before he drove his 60,000 Mercedes

A police spokesman told MailOnline: 'A man has been charged in connection with an incident which occurred in Chapel Row, Bucklebury, Berkshire on Saturday December 16.

'Chris Tarrant, aged 71, of Bucklebury, was charged on Saturday with one count of driving a motor vehicle when alcohol level was above the limit.

'He appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court on Monday December 18.'

Locals in the village said Tarrant missed a carol service on the day he was due in court.

The dispute with a local resident is thought to have started because the star has already extended his seven-bed mansion three times after he bought it in 2004 for 1million.

An application to build a two-storey extension with two beds on the top floor and a utility room and snug on the ground floor was rejected by councillors but overturned on appeal.

Neighbours in Bucklebury, which is the Duchess of Cambridge's home village, objected because the house is in a beauty spot.

And council chiefs said Tarrant had already extended the property as far as planning guidelines allow.

But a successful appeal earlier this year allowed the plans to go ahead.

The bedrooms will both be ensuite and measure 11ft by 8ft and 9ft by 8ft respectively.

On the ground floor, the snug will be 14ft by 11ft and the utility room 10ft by 11ft.

Tarrant's neighbours were traditionally tight-lipped about whether one of them gave a tip-off to the police which led to the star's arrest.

Villagers in Upper Bucklebury, Berkshire - well versed in the ways of the media after years of fielding questions about the Duchess of Cambridge and the Middleton family - said it was 'highly unlikely' anyone would have alerted a police patrol to the fact Tarrant was leaving the local Bladebone public house after drinking there.

A photograph of the property showing the area at the front of the house that is due to be developed

On the ground floor, the snug will be 14ft by 11ft and the utility room 10ft by 11ft, as shown in this floor plan at a scale of 1 to 100

However, one local gave reporters a 'knowing look' when asked if he knew who might have reported the 71-year-old, adding that he did not want to be named or to make any comment.

Police said that there was no indication that officers had made the 2pm arrest following a tip-off from the public, indicating that police had routinely stopped the vehicle.

Local residents said that he was popular and had not caused enough upset for anyone to have tried to take revenge on him by making a call to the police.

Tarrant moved into the village in 2012, after buying the home near Middleton Manor, and has since extended the building three times.

The bedrooms, shown in this first floor plan at a scale of 1 to 100, will both be ensuite and measure 11ft by 8ft and 9ft by 8ft respectively

Helen Pratt, is clerk to Bucklebury parish council, who led the neighbourhood campaign against Tarrant's extension.

She told MailOnline: 'It's not so much the neighbours who were unhappy as much as it's overdeveloping properties which were built as cottages on the common.

'He's already extended quite extensively, and that was the view essentially at the time. I wouldn't say it's caused anger.'

Mrs Pratt denied the likelihood of a police tip-off being because of anger caused by the redevelopment, she added: 'I would say it's highly unlikely that a neighbour would tip the police that he was allegedly drunk-driving.

'There are issues with motorists around here so it's not unusual to try to do something about it. That's generic across the board.'

It is not suggested that she was the neighbour responsible for the reported tip-off.
Callista Gingrich, the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, attended a funeral service for Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former Bishop of Boston who resigned his post after explosive revelations about the church sexual abuse scandal.

Gingrich, who officially assumes her post Friday, was accompanied by her husband, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at the Vatican ceremony where Pope Francis conducted a brief service.

They attended in their private capacity.

The U.S. government also sent its current chief of mission to the Vatican. There were a half dozen ambassadors in attendance.

Pope Francis blessed Law's coffin with incense and holy water and saying a prayer for his 'merciful judgement.'

PRIVATE CITIZEN: Callista Gingrich, the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, attended funeral services at the Vatican for disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former Bishop of Boston. She assumes her post on Friday

'May he be given a merciful judgment so that redeemed from death, freed from punishment, reconciled to the Father, carried in the arms of the Good Shepherd, he may deserve to enter fully into everlasting happiness in the company of the eternal King together with all the saints,' said Pope Francis, reciting a ritual prayer.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the senior-most cardinal, made no mention of the abuse scandal identified with Law.

Callista and Newt Gingrich were seated in pews in a chapel in the apse of St. Peter's Basilica. Callista Gingrich, who formally assumes her post Friday, wore a traditional black head covering.

Ushers stacked up empty chairs before the service, the Boston Globe reported. There were an estimated 200 in attendance.

The Senate confirmed Callista Gingrich to her post in October after her nomination by President Trump.

Gingrich was accompanied by her husband, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

Us ambassador Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt Gingrich attend the funeral for disgraced US Cardinal Bernard Law former Archbishop of Boston at the St. Peter's Basilica on December 21, 2017 in Vatican City

She is a Catholic who sings in the choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

She married the former speaker in 2000. The two met when she was a congressional staffer and had a six-year affair. The former speaker credits her with helping bring him to convert to Catholicism. The two worked on a joint 2010 documentary about Pope John Paul II's 1979 pilgrimage to Poland.

The funeral of Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston 15 years ago after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests, was held in the Vatican on Thursday without a mention of what led to his downfall.

The service was presided over by a senior cardinal, Angelo Sodano. The wooden coffin lay on the floor with an open book of the gospels resting on it.

U.S. ambassador Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt Gingrich attend the funeral for disgraced US Cardinal Bernard Law former Archbishop of Boston at the St. Peter's Basilica on December 21, 2017 in Vatican City

Callista and Newt Gingrich

Pope Francis entered the chapel for a few minutes after the Mass to bless the coffin and conduct a brief service known as the Final Commendation and Farewell - which he does for all cardinals who die in Rome.

"He dedicated his whole life to the Church," Sodano said in his homily in praise of Law, who died on Wednesday.

Sodano listed the stages of Law's clerical life and said the late Pope John Paul had "called him to Rome" to be archpriest of a Rome basilica. But Sodano made no mention of the reason why he left Boston.

"Unfortunately, each of us can sometimes be lacking in our mission," Sodano said.

The pope read out a Latin prayer, part of which reads: "May he be given a merciful judgement".

About 15 cardinals attended, though not Law's successor in Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley. O'Malley said on Wednesday that Law served at a time "when the Church failed seriously in its responsibilities ..."

Law was Archbishop of Boston for 18 years when he resigned on Dec. 13, 2002, climaxing a tumultuous year that sparked the greatest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church.

A succession of devastating news stories by Boston Globe reporters showed how priests who sexually abused children had been moved from parish to parish for years under Law's tenure without parishioners or law authorities being informed.

Celebration for St Joseph, the Holy Virgin Mary's husband. A close-up of cardinal Bernard Francis Law during the mass celebrated by Pope Francis with the rite of the bishop's ordination. St Peter, Vatican City, 19th March 2016

Pope Francis presides over the funeral ceremony for late Cardinal Bernard Law, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. Law, who died Wednesday at age 86, resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston in 2002 after revelations that he covered up for dozens of priests who raped and sexually molested children, moving them to different parishes without telling parents or police

Victims groups have expressed outrage that Law's funeral was being in St. Peter's and that he would be buried in a crypt in a chapel of the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he served as archpriest.

"Survivors of child sexual assault in Boston, who were first betrayed by Law's cover-up of sex crimes and then doubly betrayed by his subsequent promotion to Rome, were those most hurt," SNAP, a victim's group, said in a statement on Wednesday.

After Pope Francis left Thursday's funeral, two nuns in brown robes knelt by the coffin and arched over it to pray.

After the funeral, Cardinal Franc Rode of Slovenia praised Law as "a good man with good intentions".

"All these provisions about paedophilia were not as severe as they are now so one can't say that he made that many mistakes," Rode told Reuters Television, saying it was "another era". He did not elaborate.

About a half dozen ambassadors attended. The United States' official representative was Louis Bono, the current chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican.

Since 1950, more than 6,500 U.S. priests have been accused of molesting children, and the church has paid out $3 billion in settlements.
Track Palin is out of jail in time for Christmas, but it will still be a very lonely holiday for the oldest son of Alaska's former governor.

The 28-year-old veteran walked free on Thursday morning, but court papers reveal that most of the Palin family have received protective orders requiring Track to keep away from them and the family home in the wake of his attack on father Todd Palin this weekend.

That includes his dad, newly engaged Willow and her older sister Bristol but not minor children Piper and Trig who would still like to see their big brother according to courtroom testimony from Todd on Monday.

Sarah also wants to speak with her son.

It was revealed that Kaleb Westfall posted Track's bail, handing over the required $5,000 in cash, and that the oldest palin child will be forced to wear an ankle bracelet while on house arrest.

Scroll down for video

Stay away: Sarah, Todd, Willow and Bristol Palin all got restraining orders against Track in the wake of his attack on his father according to a court filing (Track above in court on Monday)

Fearing for safety: That was revealed in a domestic violence order submitted by Track's ex-wife Britta (above), who is asking for a protective order for her and their daughter Kyla

The Palins: Britta claims that in November Track attacked her in front of their daughter and later three tools at his father's head when he tried to address the situation ( l to r: Todd, Trig, Sarah, Bristol, Tripp, Willow, Piper, Kayla and Track)

Track was taken into custody by police Saturday night but not officially arrested until Wednesday.

It is not just his parents and siblings who want Track to stay away either, as his exes Jordan Loewe and Britta Hanson also both filed orders for themselves and their children with the troubled 28-year-old veteran.

Hanson's filing for a domestic violence order on Monday revealed the Palins had received their own protective orders, while also detailing an incident last month during which she claims Track attacked her in front of their child and later threw tools at Todd's head while threatening to beat him up.

She was granted a short-term order shortly after submitting her petition, which reveled that Track has now been accused of committing domestic violence against multiple people including Hanson, Loewe and his father Todd.

In the section about her daughter, Hanson also wrote 'yes' when asked if domestic violence had been 'committed against the child.' The Blast was the first to obtain a copy of Hanson's filing.

Lawyers for the Palins and Track did not respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com, but Sarah did post a Instagram photo of her backyard this morning, writing: 'Our beautiful 2017 winter solstice morning outside my window. New fallen snow blankets a dry gray ground, representing the fresh start God gives us each new day. Clean slate. Beautiful possibilities. Snow angels await.'

Prior to seeking this order, Hanson gave her daughter a safe word for when she stayed with her father, telling the 6-year-old that she would come pick her up if she said: 'Mom, can you sing me a bedtime song?'

Hanson stated that when she dropped her daughter off at Track's apartment back in November, she immediately became concerned about how 'unkempt' the apartment was and the fact that she did not see her ex's girlfriend.

'It makes me less anxious to know that there is another adult in the house when Kyla stays with him,' wrote Hanson.

When she heard that the woman was out, Hanson said she became 'alarmed' and assumed the girlfriend had been gone for some time because she then 'noticed dead flowers on the table, the shelves were all open and empty in the Kitchener and dirty clothes all over the floor.'

Kyla stayed with her father and Hanson called in to check later, but said she had her conversation cut short before Track gave Kyla a chance to use their safe word.

The attack occurred the following morning when Hanson arrived at 11am to pick up her daughter, just three days after Thanksgiving.

She heard Kyla crying the back room and asked what was wrong, at which point Track allegedly stated he was taking their daughter to his parents' house.

When Hanson pointed out that was not part of the previously discussed agreement, Track allegedly began 'cussing and yelling' at his ex and ordered her to 'get the f*** out of my house.'

Hanson said she told Track that she was not leaving without Kyla and then took out her phone and began to record their exchange since there were no witnesses at the time.

That is when Track allegedly attacked Hanson.

Palin's creek: Britta claims that in November Track attacked her in front of their daughter and later threw tools at his father's head when he tried to address the situation

White wedding: Britta also claims that there have been multiple incidents of domestic violence involving her and Track over the past seven years (Track's wedding above with the Hansons on left and Palins on right)

''He saw me and got mad and grabbed me and pushed me into the wall trying to get my phone away from me,' said Hanson, who responded by telling him not to touch her and attempting to get away from her ex.

'He reached both hands around me and lifted me off the ground pulling me toward the door. My bones in my back all cracked.'

Hanson added: 'I was terrified in that moment that if he had a gun he will kill me.'

When Track then dropped her at the door, Hanson called for Kyla, who was able to run over and give her mother back the phone that Track ripped out of her hands.

Track then grabbed Kyla and put her in the car and threw a piece of ice at Hanson as he drove off, laughing and yelling: 'Get the fuck away.'

Hanson said she followed the car to make sure it went to the Palin family home, and when she arrived immediately went to speak with Track's parents.

Kyla then stayed with Sarah while Hanson, Track and Todd went to talk in Todd's 'shop' in the house.

'Track started screaming at Todd and cursing, "You're going to take her f***Ing side? F*** you. I will f***ing beat you,' reads teh petition.

'Track started throwing tools from the tool bench. Todd remained calm the entire encounter while I was shaking from shock and terror.'

Hanson later noted: I was scared Track was going to hit Todd as he got in his face.'

It was determined in the end that moving forward, Track would only be able to see Kyla when she was brought to his parents' home.

Then, the night before their planned visit on Sunday, Hanson said that Piper Palin texted her about the incident between Track and his father.

Happy news: In some exciting news, Track's sister Willow got engaged on Tuesday to Ricky nelson (above)

No congrats: Track cnnot see his sister however due to a restraining order

Hanson got more details later that night in a group text with Saran and Willow, noting: They said they had all gotten restraining orders against him. We all express how scary and unpredictable he is and how he needs medical intervention and inpatient long-term treatment for anger.'

She also said that in the past seven years there have been 'more incidents of domestic violence with Track and myself,' which seemed to be a suggestion that Track might perhaps have PTSD.

Sarah had said the same thing after Track was arrested for beating up his other ex, Jordan Loewe.

Track is now not allowed near Hanson's home, her daughter's school or able to cal, his ex or daughter.

Hanson states that she will allow one supervised visit a month between Kyla and her dad in the presence of Track's parents of grandparents if he: gets treatment for alcohol and drug abuse, go to a domestic violence intervention program, not use guns and give up all the firearms he owns.

She would also like the judge to ask Track not to commit domestic violence, stay away from drugs, pay child support and be evaluated for a mental disorder.

Hanson will be back in court early next month to see if she can have her protective order extended to one full year.
A man who launched a drunken racist tirade against Jewish people, which included calling them 'rats', has been spared prison.

Anthony Spencer said he had drunk so much he had 'no recollection' why he had travelled to Broughton in Salford, Greater Manchester.

Manchester Crown Court heard the 31-year-old went to Broom Lane and repeatedly hurled vile slurs at passers-by, calling Jewish people 'rats'.

Prosecuting, Duncan Wilcock said Spencer told them: 'We will get you out of here.'

Spencer then shoved a man in the chest, causing him to stumble.

A black security guard who was working in the area was then racially abused by Spencer after he intervened.

Anthony Spencer, pictured here yawning outside Manchester Crown Court, launched a racist tirade against Jewish people calling them 'rats' on a street in Salford, Greater Manchester

Addressing the man, Spencer said: 'I'm not a f****** gorilla. I will see you in the park.'

He then punched the man on the shoulder two or three times, the court heard.

Onlookers called police following the incident on March 17, and Spencer was arrested.

The security guard said in a statement: 'This is the first time I have been subjected to this kind of abuse. I was just doing my job.'

When interviewed by police, Spencer said he could not remember what had happened because he had consumed a 'large quantity' of alcohol.

Mr Wilcock said: 'He said he had no idea why he was in that street, in that particular area, at that particular time.'

Spencer, of Rowden Road, Oldham, has 25 previous convictions, including three racially-aggravated incidents of criminal damage, common assault and a public order offence.

A black security guard who tried to intervene was told by Spencer: 'I'm not a f****** gorilla.' He said he had consumed a 'large quantity' of alcohol. Sentencing was deferred to see whether Spencer can engage with support to counter his addiction problems

In one previous incident Spencer entered a shop he had been banned from, and called the shopkeeper a 'f****** P*** b******'.

Defending, David Morton said Spencer, who sobbed in the dock during the hearing, was 'appalled' by his behaviour.

Mr Morton said Spencer has mental health problems and that he had a difficult upbringing.

Judge David Hernandez said: 'We are living in difficult times and this sort of behaviour has the capability to inflame those being abused and those who may be sympathetic to the sentiments being expressed by the defendant.

'Members of the Jewish community would say they are subjected to this on a regular basis and it becomes very distressing to them.'

The judge deferred sentencing until March, to see whether Spencer can engage with support to counter his addiction problems.

Judge Hernandez added: 'I must admit I thought I was going to have to give you an immediate sentence of imprisonment.

'It may be that you are at a turning point in your life, only you can demonstrate that.

'If you are trying to pull the wool over the court's eyes, we will find out.'

Spencer previously pleaded guilty to one count of racially aggravated beating and another count of racially-aggravated provocation or violence.
Advertisement

An Afghan refugee ice addict accused of 'deliberately' ploughing through a crowd of shoppers in Melbourne's city centre has blamed the horrific attack on Australia's 'poor treatment of Muslims'.

It comes as horrific CCTV footage, obtained by 7 News, captured the exact moment a white Suzuki SUV pulled away from traffic and ploughed into unsuspecting pedestrians outside busy Flinders Street Station on Thursday afternoon.

Shocked bystanders were pointing in disbelief on the street as dozens of people - including a four-year-old boy and an 83-year-old man - were mowed down by the rampaging driver as he hurtled down the tram tracks.

Saeed Noori, the driver behind the wheel of the SUV with P-plates, arrived in Australia as a refugee in 2004 through a resettlement program.

'He came to Australia as a refugee. He did not come with a people smuggler, he came through the appropriate refugee, the normal refugee programs,' Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said.

Speaking briefly to investigators last night as he lay in a hospital bed at St Vincent's under police guard, the 32-year-old made a 'number of utterances' and 'spoke about dreams and voices'.

'But he also did attribute some of his actions to the poor treatment of Muslims,' Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said on Friday morning.

Commissioner Patton said Noori had a history of drug use and mental illness, stressing that investigators had not yet found any extremist or terrorist links to the horror rampage.

Scroll down for video

The Afghan immigrant (pictured) accused of 'deliberately' ploughing through a crowd of shoppers in Melbourne on Thursday, reportedly named Saeed Noori, has blamed the horror rampage on Australia's 'poor treatment of Muslims'

An off-duty police officer (circled) was praised for wrestling with Noori just 15 seconds after he crashed this Suzuki Grand Vitara four-wheel drive into a bollard outside Melbourne's Flinders Street Station during peak hour

At least 19 pedestrians, including a four-year-old boy, were injured after the car ploughed into rush hour crowds (pictured)

'At this stage, because investigations are continuing, apart from that statement, there are no known links to any political issues or any, certainly any links to extremist groups,' Mr Turnbull said.

'Therefore, the position I am advised off at the moment is that no terrorism link has been identified at this stage. I want to stress, there is a mass of material that is being investigated and nothing should be ruled out, nothing should be ruled out.

'Now, whatever the motivation, this was a despicable and cowardly act, but I want to reassure all Australians that this is an isolated incident.'

The injured off-duty police officer who arrested Noori was hailed a hero after footage revealed him wrestling the Afghan immigrant to the ground moments after he crashed.

As the gallant officer recovered in hospital from a shoulder injury, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews praised the hero for rushing into the SUV just 15 seconds after it crashed into a bollard - which he described as 'an act of evil'

'The off-duty arresting officer, a member of Victoria police, who was prime in terms of detaining the alleged offender did suffer some injuries and is receiving hospital treatment,' he told reporters.

'We would be right to single him out for special praise for the way in which he instinctively came to the aid of others in the protection of public order and potentially avoiding so much other carnage.'

The 4.41pm carnage on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets injured 19 people, five critically - less than a year after six people, including a three-month-old boy, were killed in an eerily similar rampage on nearby Bourke Street just four blocks away.

The latest injury toll included a four-year-old boy with head injuries, who remains in a stable condition and improved overnight, and an 83-year-old man, with the other wounded bystanders aged between 25 and 58.

Confronting CCTV footage captures the moment the white SUV pulls away from traffic and accelerates into a crowd of unsuspecting pedestrians - bowling dozens of people over before colliding with a tram stop bollard

The man, who has a history of drug use and mental illness, spoke briefly to investigators on Thursday night after his dramatic arrest (pictured). The 32-year-old 'spoke about dreams and voices' as he lay under police guard in hospital

An off-duty police officer (pictured wearing a white shirt) sustained a shoulder injury as he arrested the 32-year-old driver

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the carnage would have been much worse if it wasn't for the quick-thinking police

The lone wolf driver was an Australian citizen from Afghanistan, who was known to police.

Noori was released from hospital on Friday afternoon and taken to Melbourne Police Station where detectives hope to formally interview him and potentially lay charges after that.

Commissioner Patton said the driver had a 'history of drug use as well as mental health issues'.

'We understand that he is on a mental health plan and receiving treatment for a mental illness,' he said. 'We're working to clarify that.'

He said the driver had missed a medical appointment on the day of the 'deliberate attack'.

'It's horrendous and life-changing for all emergency services who attend,' he added, praising the work of officers who arrived on the scene within 15 seconds of the tragedy.

'It's life changing for victims and for those present. Their lives will be changed forever.'

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

19 people were injured (one pictured) and taken to hospitals across Melbourne and five of them are in critical conditions

A 24-year-old man wearing jeans and a Nike t-shirt (pictured) was arrested on the steps at Flinders Street Station shortly after the incident. He was released on Friday morning and is expected to be charged with cannabis possession

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said Thursday night the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders' (pictured)

Victoria Police will remain at the scene through the night until at least Friday morning as they investigate (pictured)

Usually a busy strip in the heart of the city, Flinders Street has become a crime scene (pictured) after the car ploughed crowds

A 24-year-old man wearing a Nike shirt, who was carrying a bag containing three knives, was arrested on the steps at Flinders Street station but police say he had no link to the incident.

'Clarity on the second offender that is in custody, it has not yet been determined whether he was involved, and it is quite probable he was not,' Acting Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters.

He was released on Friday morning and is expected to be charged with possession of cannabis and a prohibited weapon.

The crash injured 19 people, including the driver and the heroic off-duty police officer.

Five men, aged 25, 40, 43, 45 and 83 and six women, aged 25, 30, 35, 47 and 58, were among the victims.

Another three men and two women were injured but their ages are unknown.

Victoria Police believe the incident had no terror link with no political motive so far established.

'We do not have any evidence to a connection with terrorism,' Acting Commissioner Patton said.

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation.'

Two men were arrested at the scene after the white SUV (pictured) crashed into a bollard at Flinders Street Station

Victoria's Labor Premier Daniel Andrews said the rampage was an 'horrific act' which targeted 'innocent bystanders'.

'What occurred on Flinders Street this afternoon was an act of evil and an act of cowardice,' he said on Thursday night. 'This is a terrible, evil, cowardly act.

'At a time of the year when so many families are celebrating the end of they year, doing their Christmas shopping ... we have seen a horrific act.'

Footage shows one of the men in a white shirt with a beard being pulled to the gutter away from the vehicle.

Another man, who was wearing a red checked shirt with a beard, was previously reported to have been arrested but is believed to have been an innocent bystander who was simply in the company of a police officer.

A witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd.

'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere,' she told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

'We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere.'

Dramatic footage shows a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passers-by as they wait for paramedics.

Victoria Police dragged the man in a white shirt (pictured) from the white Suzuki to the gutter shortly after the incident

Footage shows the damaged car surrounded by dozens of injured pedestrians while police arrest one man (pictured)

A man was seen talking to police near the scene soon after the car crashed into the tram stop bollard

Dozens of people were hit by the car with witnesses saying they saw the car doing burnouts before the incident

A witness told Nine News they thought the car was travelling at about 60km/h as it drove into busy crowds (pictured)

The white Suzuki SUV (pictured) was forced to stop its rampage when it crashed into a bollard near Flinders Street Station

A car crashed into the crowds at Melbourne 's Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street (pictured) causing dramatic scenes

Ambulance Victoria said paramedics were called to the scene (pictured) at 4.41pm Thursday and several are critical

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was nearby in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

He was on the scene from about two minutes after the car collided and could see the cracked windscreen and Good Samaritans trying to save injured pedestrians.

'A few ladies were screaming but it was calm - there were no sirens, nothing,' Mr Harris said.

'I was here when the other one (the Bourke Street tragedy) happened . you get desensitised.'

Irish demolition worker Paul Cahalane, 25, was walking to the gym - and en route to picking up some chocolate milk - via Flinders Street when he heard what sounded like a bomb.

'I was just going to get chocolate milk and I had my headphones in, music playing, scrolling Instagram when I just heard a bang, a bang behind me,' Mr Cahalane told Daily Mail Australia.

Another witness Lachlan Vella told Fairfax Media he saw a man dressed in a suit with his 'head busted open' as he was lying on the ground.

Mr Vella said another man 'had blood around his head and was snoring, like atonal breathing,' as a woman came in and out of consciousness.

Paul Cahalane, an Irish demolition worker on a visa, described hearing a bang behind him as he was walking to the gym

Vince Harris, the manager of the Freechoice tobacconist at Flinders Street Station, was near the crash aftermath (pictured)

The heart of Melbourne's CBD is in lock down after the car ploughed down a number of shoppers and commuters (pictured)

19 people were taken to hospital including a pre-school aged child with serious head injuries who is now in stable condition

'At this stage we believe it is a deliberate act, however we do not know the motivation,' Commander Russell Barrett (pictured) said

Police locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street (pictured)

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife was taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed

A number of injured were taken to the The Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, St Vincent's Hospital and Royal Children's Hospital including the driver of the car (pictured) and a police officer

One witness's husband told Daily Mail Australia his wife had been taken to Melbourne West with other onlookers to be interviewed.

Police have locked down vast areas of the city taking in Flinders Street, Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street.

A child at pre-school suffered head injuries and was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but the extent of the injuries are unknown.

Witnesses told 9 News they saw the white SUV being driven at about 60km/h before it smashed into dozens of pedestrians.

Another witness told 3AW there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground'.

More could have been injured if not for the vehicle crashing into a bollard at the tram stop out the front of Flinders Street Station.

Three people were taken to The Alfred Hospital and three people were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Police said the driver of the car and a second man were arrested after what they believe was a 'deliberate' attack in the CBD

A child at pre-school suffered serious head injuries and was taken to Royal Children's Hospital (white SUV pictured)

More could have been injured if the white Suzuki did not crash into a bollard after about '15 seconds' of trauma

Lachlan Read, 20, told The Herald Sun the whole rampage lasted about 15 seconds.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' Mr Read said.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the federal and state security agencies would work together to investigate the 'shocking incident'.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the emergency and health workers who are treating them,' Mr Turnbull tweeted.

The carnage comes almost a year after six people were killed and 30 injured when a car ploughed through the Bourke Street Mall only a few blocks away.

The driver, Dimitrious Gargasoulas, was charged with six counts of murder after he allegedly used a maroon mid-1990s Holden Commodore sedan to run down shoppers during their summer lunch break.

A child and two adults were amoung those who died following the attack as well as a three-month-old baby boy.

A childcare centre and other buildings along Flinders Street were evacuated shortly after the incident Thursday

A witness told Melbourne's 3AW radio station there were about 'five to seven people laying on the ground' (pictured)

'People were flying everywhere ... people running everywhere' a witness told the 3AW radio station on Thursday (pictured)
Linda Wenzel, 17, ran away from home in 2015 but was arrested in August 2017 and is being held in a prison in Baghdad, Iraq

The teenage girl who ran away to join ISIS boasted to police there would be 'many more attacks' in her native Germany before she was captured in Iraq.

Linda Wenzel, 17, posted a chilling message on social media to her parents which read: 'Because I know that the dear officers for the protection of the constitution and the state police will also be reading this I want to add a few words for those filthy dogs... there are going to be many many more attacks to follow.'

The details of the message came to light as fears were raised that her recent repentance may merely be an attempt to avoid the death penalty.

Linda Wenzel, 17, ran away from home in 2015 but was arrested in August 2017 and is being held in a prison in Baghdad, Iraq.

It is thought she moved from Syria to Iraq during her time with the terrorist organisation.

It is not known when she sent the message or how she accessed the internet.

But the warning recently came to light after her mother Katharina, 53, and sister Miriam were allowed to visit her for the first time.

The reunion was filmed by German broadcaster ARD in which she told her family: 'I was only inside houses. I had never anything to do with weapons.'

Iraq prosecutors are investing the girl, from Saxon, Germany, for being a member of a terrorist organisation.

The girl was arrested in Iraq, in Mosul in a destroyed house. She had been alone and injured when the soldiers found her.

Scroll down for video

Linda Wenzel, from the town of Pulsnitz in Saxony, joined the Islamist terror group at the age of 15. Pictured: The schoolgirl hugs her mother

She had fallen in love with a Muslim man she met online who persuaded her to join him and answer ISIS's call of jihad. She was captured in July in Mosul when it was liberated by Iraqi soldiers

Sources inside German intelligence and security services say the IS schoolgirl is unrepentant of her alleged actions. She is now facing the death penalty.

During the first time she spoke publicly Linda told her mum: 'I do not know how I came up with the stupid idea to go to the Islamic State. I have ruined my life.'

She joined IS at the age of just 15 when she forged her mum's permission to allow her to buy a plane ticket to Istanbul, Turkey, which is close to the border with Syria.

She had fallen in love with a Muslim man she met online, a Chechen fighter from Austria named Abu Usama al-Shishani, and who persuaded her to go to join him and the so-called Islamic State to answer the call of jihad.

He has since died and Linda claims to have been shifted through different women shelters belonging to IS.

She would be facing just 10 years in prison in her hometown, though extradition is reportedly unlikely.

Next month, Linda will face trial in Baghdad, with Iraqi authorities so far refusing to extradite her to Germany. Pictured: Mum Katharina in tears

The mother and daughter's reunion was captured on camera in an awkward exchange earlier this month.

But Linda, wearing a headscarf and dark-coloured Islamic kaftan robe, was seen with a big smile on her face when she saw her mother.

She told her mother: 'I do not know, how I came up with the stupid idea to go to the Islamic State. I have ruined my life.'

The German schoolgirl claims she never fought for ISIS.

She said that after the death of her jihadist husband, a Chechen fighter from Austria named Abu Usama al-Shishani, she was housed in various women's quarters and would hardly ever have come out of the house.

The moment of the reunion at a police station looked uncomfortable and hesitant, however, as mother and daughter stared at each other uncertainly for over five seconds before finally embracing

During their reunion, Katharina gave her daughter a small cuddly toy with a red Christmas hat to remind her of better times in Germany.

Linda fell in love with a Muslim man she met online who persuaded her to join him in Iraq and answer ISIS's call of jihad. She was captured in July in Mosul when it was liberated by Iraqi soldiers.

The filthy, dazed and wounded girl was seen being dragged out of a onetime ISIS stronghold by triumphant troops.

Next month, Linda will face trial in Baghdad, with Iraqi authorities so far refusing to extradite her to Germany.

According to sources inside German intelligence citing Iraqi sources, the former ISIS schoolgirl is unrepentant.

Another problem, according to sources inside Germany's security apparatus, is that there is no extradition agreement between Iraq and Germany.
Boris Johnson has said he hopes Damian Green will one day be able to return to government office, despite his dismissal for lying over pornography found on his computer.

Mr Johnson raised concerns that the former first secretary of state may have been the victim of a 'vendetta', describing the leak of secret details from a police raid of his parliamentary offices as 'a bit whiffy'.

The Foreign Secretary added his voice to calls for further investigation of the way police evidence about the discovery of legal porn on Mr Green's work computer found its way into the press.

Speaking during a visit to Moscow, Mr Johnson said: 'I'm very sad for Damian and I think he has been a fine public servant and done a great job, and hopefully one day he will come back and continue to serve in other ways.

'I think plainly, judging by the exchange of letters, he agreed that he had broken the ministerial code so the result was inevitable.

Boris Johnson has said he hopes Damian Green will one day be able to return to government office, despite his dismissal for lying over pornography found on his computer

The Foreign Secretary (pictured arriving in Russia) added his voice to calls for further investigation of the way police evidence about the discovery of legal porn on Mr Green's work computer found its way into the press

The First Secretary of State (pictured leaving his house today) was 'asked to resign' from the Government by the Prime Minister - who he has been close friends with since they were at university together 30 years ago

Mr Johnson is visiting Russia for talks with his counterparts, the first time a British Foreign Secretary has visited Russia in five years

Mr Green smiled for waiting photographers as he left his London home this morning after being sacked

'But I think it was a bit whiffy, frankly, this business with whatever happened with the information from his computer.

'I don't quite see why that was brought into the public domain in the way it was. I think it needs to be investigated further, as the Prime Minister was saying.

'It had the slight feeling of a vendetta.'

Mr Green made clear he is not going into hiding today despite being sacked for lyingabout claims porn was found on his office computer.

The former deputy PM thanked supporters as he vowed to return to the political fray in the New Year.

His fall from grace - albeit with a 17,000 payoff - is the culmination of a decade-long feud with former Met Police chief Bob Quick- dubbed 'Bitter Bob'.

The once high-flying police officer ordered a notorious 2008 raid on Mr Green's office, and blamed the ensuing fall-out from the raid for torpedoing his career.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson tonight said he hoped to see Mr Green return to the Government in future, claiming a 'vendetta' that was a 'bit whiffy' had finished him off.

Mr Quick raised claims that porn had been found on Mr Green's computer with a Cabinet Office sleaze investigation last month. And Mr Green's public denials that any inappropriate material had been discovered were ruled 'misleading' and a breach of the ministerial code.

Friends of the MP said the police had 'got their man after a nine-year vendetta'.

Another former detective, Neil Lewis, surfaced to insist he had no doubt that the MP had been personally viewing the material.

Mr Green declined to answer questions as he left his West London home this morning, but spoke to thank his supporters in a tweet he sent this afternoon.

Mr Johnson is interviewed by the press pack aboard his flight to Moscow for talks with counterparts

The MP tweeted this afternoon to thank supporters and hinted at a return to the political front line next year

Theresa May is in Poland with ministers including Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured right) today after sacking Mr Green last night

Mr Green said: 'I am overwhelmed by the number of friends, colleagues (on all sides) and constituents who have sent supportive messages this morning.

'My thanks to you all, and a Happy Christmas. See you in 2018.'

Mr Green has known the PM since they were at Oxford University together 40 years ago and his departure is a major blow for the PM.

He continues to deny viewing inappropriate material on the computer, but a Cabinet Office investigation found Mr Green had issued two 'inaccurate and misleading' statements denying he knew about the discovery.

The 61-year-old, who was first secretary of state, became the third Cabinet minister to resign in two months, following the exits of Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the actions of the retired officer 'did not sit happily in a democracy', while a friend of Mr Green said the police had 'got their man after a nine-year vendetta'.

Speaking during a visit to Moscow tonight, Mr Johnson said: 'I'm very sad for Damian and I think he has been a fine public servant and done a great job, and hopefully one day he will come back and continue to serve in other ways.

'I think plainly, judging by the exchange of letters, he agreed that he had broken the ministerial code so the result was inevitable.

'But I think it was a bit whiffy, frankly, this business with whatever happened with the information from his computer.

'I don't quite see why that was brought into the public domain in the way it was. I think it needs to be investigated further, as the Prime Minister was saying.

'It had the slight feeling of a vendetta.'

Boris Johnson (pictured left) is also on the trip to Poland with Mrs May and Mr Hammond

Damian Green today broke his silence over his sacking to say he is 'overwhelmed' by the support he has received after he was forced out of Theresa May's Cabinet

Mr Quick is said to have never forgiven those he believes sabotaged his high-flying career following his investigation into Mr Green nearly a decade ago.

His departure is a bitter blow to the PM, who relied heavily on her old university friend. In a letter to him last night, she said she was 'extremely sad' about the situation.

Sir Alex Allan, Theresa May's adviser on ministerial interests, said the lack of candour amounted to two breaches of the ministerial code.

This left the PM with no choice but to ask her friend of 30 years and deputy to resign - becoming the most senior victim of a political scandal in living memory.

He is entitled to around 17,000 in severance pay under the rules that cover ministers, even though he was effectively sacked.

Mrs May also rounded on the police over the role played by former detectives. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has also condemned the conduct of the ex-officers, which is now the subject of an inquiry.

Damian Green, pictured with Theresa May at PMQs yesterday, has known he PM since they were at Oxford University together and is one of her closest allies in politics. His departure is a major blow for the PM

Former Met Police assistant commissioner Bob Quick (left) claimed he found vast quantities of porn of Damian Green's office computers when he raided his parliamentary office in 2008. An inquiry into Mr Green's conduct was launched in November this year following disputed claims by Tory activist Kate Maltby (right) that he had made unwanted advances on her

Damian Green, pictured with his wife Alicia, said the allegations against him have been deeply hurtful to him and his family

His friend David Davis has made clear he will not be resigning as Brexit Secretary in protest, despite previously suggesting he would.

The inquiry into Mr Green's conduct was launched on November 1 following disputed claims by Tory activist Kate Maltby that he had made unwanted advances on her.

The sleaze inquiry said Miss Maltby's claims were 'plausible', but said it was 'not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness' of his behaviour.

Miss Maltby last night declined to comment, but her parents, Colin and Victoria Maltby, issued a statement to say they were 'proud of her'.

They said: 'We are pleased that the Cabinet Office has concluded its enquiry into the conduct of Damian Green.

'We are not surprised to find that the inquiry found Mr Green to have been untruthful as a minister, nor to that they found our daughter to be a plausible witness.'

In his resignation letter last night, Mr Green said he did not recognise Miss Maltby's account of their meeting in a London pub in 2015, when she claims he touched her knee and made suggestive comments.

But he added: 'I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise.' Mrs May said Mr Green was right to concede this point.

Mrs May is in Poland today for talks with the new PM Mateusz Morawiecki. They are expected to hold a press conference later

Damian Green was forced to quit as Theresa May's deputy after he was found to have lied over claims porn was found n his computer

Mr Green is the third cabinet minister to be forced to quit in just six weeks after their careers have been hit by scandal. Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel resigned as defence secretary and international development secretary respectively

Theresa May's response to the resignation letter from Mr Green, her closest friend in politics

Mrs May accepted his resignation and wrote: 'I'm extremely sad to be writing this letter, we have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has been tipped as a possible replacement as first secretary of state, but government sources last night indicated a reshuffle could be postponed until the new year.

Although Mr Green does not run a ministry he was a central figure, heading a number of Cabinet committees and being a member of Mrs May's inner Brexit 'War Cabinet'.

Mr Green was a leading Remainer and his departure will tip the balance in the Cabinet in favour of the Brexiteers.

Brexit Secretary David Davis had urged Mrs May not to allow the police to claim Mr Green's scalp.

Aides insisted he would not be resigning in protest, but many Tories are furious about what they see as a vendetta by former detectives to destroy a serving cabinet minister.

Mr Green (pictured on Wednesday night) said he has been clear he 'did not download or view pornography' but accepted his initial denial of all knowledge there was any porn discovered on the computer had been misleading

In November Sue Gray (pictured left), the director-general of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, asked officials if there was evidence of attempts to access pornography from computers used by Mr Green since he became a minister in 2010. Kate Maltby is pictured right

Accusations about computer pornography were made by Mr Quick, who ordered the raid on Mr Green's Commons office.

He was later backed up by another former Scotland Yard detective Mr Lewis, who said he had no doubt that Mr Green himself had downloaded the pornography, which he said ran to 'thousands' of images.

The former officer had stashed away old notebooks from the case which he had stored for nearly a decade.

He dug them out when the claims against Mr Green were made public last month - at the height of the Westminster sleaze scandal.

Critics have said Mr Lewis should be investigated and reprimanded hoarding the away official documents and making them public at his whim.

The porn discovery had no relevance to the police inquiry at the time, which was focused on uncovering the source of leaked Home Office material being passed to Mr Green, who was then shadow immigration minister.

It also had no relevance to the claims made by Miss Maltby. None of the allegations related to Mr Green's time as a minister.

But his failure to tell the truth about them broke the ministerial code, which requires office holders to be truthful at all times.

When Mr Quick's allegations were published last month, Mr Green issued an angry statement, saying: 'This story is completely untrue and comes from a tainted and untrustworthy source.'

Mr Green said the police had 'never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer.'

Statements that showed Green lied On November 5, after former police chief Bob Quick claimed pornography had been found on one of Mr Green's parliamentary computers, he said: 'This story is completely untrue and comes from a tainted and untrustworthy source. 'I've been aware for some years that the discredited former assistant commissioner Bob Quick has tried to cause me political damage by leaking false information about the raid on my parliamentary office. It is well known that Quick, who was forced to apologise for alleging that the Conservative Party was trying to undermine him, harbours deep resentment about his Press treatment during the time of my investigation. 'More importantly, the police have never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer, nor did I have a 'private' computer, as has been claimed.' And on November 12, in response to a second story that the Scotland Yard commissioner had been told of the find, Mr Green said: 'I reiterate that no allegations about the presence of improper material on my parliamentary computers have ever been put to me or to the parliamentary authorities by the police. 'I can only assume they are being made now, nine years later, for ulterior motives.' Advertisement

Mr Quick arrested Mr Green, then a shadow immigration minister, and held him for nine hours while his constituency office and home was searched.

The bombshell arrest sparked a huge backlash and debate at the Commons into whether parliamentary privilege should have protected the material held by an MP.

And just a year later Mr Quick quit as a policeman after being photographed heading into No10 with a security briefing about an undercover operation.

And after a decade of bad blood between the two men, the controversial office raid has finally ended Mr Green's Cabinet career.

Timeline of Green's nine-year feud with Met Police chief Bob Quick As Damian Green quits, Executive Political Editor JACK DOYLE charts a resignation with its roots in a raid on his Commons office nine years ago. November 27, 2008 Police raid Damian Green's Parliamentary office as part of a probe into leaks of embarrassing material from the Home Office. The probe is led by Bob Quick, then Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. The raid sparks a huge political backlash and allegations the police have been politicised. December 22, 2008 Quick apologises after claiming the Tory Party was behind an embarrassing story about the wedding chauffeur business run by his wife from their home. It follows a war of words in which he accused the Conservatives of behaving in a 'wholly corrupt way' by attacking his inquiry. April 9, 2009 Quick resigns after walking down Downing Street inadvertently exposing details of a secret briefing note, which are captured by photographers. It forces a major undercover terror operation involving several arrests to be brought forward. April 16, 2009 Green is cleared of any criminal activity relating to the leaks by the CPS who conclude the documents leaked were not secret and not a threat to national security. October 27, 2017 Reports emerge of a list of 'sex pest' MPs drawn up by female staff in Westminster said to include the names of several ministers. November 1 In an article for The Times, Tory activist Kate Maltby, a family friend of Green's, accuses him of sexual harassment. She says he 'fleetingly' touched her knee in 2015 and sent a 'suggestive' text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. Miss Maltby said he mentioned that his wife was 'very understanding' and she then 'felt a fleeting hand against my knee  so brief it was almost deniable'. 'He was a university contemporary of my mother. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested. 'It was not acceptable to me at the time and it should not be acceptable behaviour in Westminster in the future.' He flatly denies making sexual advances, calling the claim 'untrue and deeply hurtful'. A Cabinet Office probe is launched. On the same day, Sir Michael Fallon resigns as Defence Secretary over claims about his conduct with women. November 5 The Sunday Times reports that police found 'extreme pornography' on Mr Green's office computer during the 2008 raid, a story sourced to Quick. Mr Green calls the allegations 'completely untrue'  appearing to deny the suggestion porn was found. He calls Quick a 'tainted and untrustworthy source' and the allegations 'false disreputable political smears'. Quick denied he approached the paper and says they approached him about the story. November 12 After The Sunday Times reports that Sir Paul Stephenson  then Met Commissioner  was told of the porn find, Mr Green changes his tune. Instead of denying there was pornography, he now denies having been told about it. 'I reiterate that no allegations about the presence of improper material on my parliamentary computers have ever been put to me or to the parliamentary authorities by the police.' That and the earlier statement came back to haunt Green as his lawyers were told in 2008 and the police raised it with him in a phone call in 2013. November 22 It emerges that Sue Gray, the director-general of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, has asked officials if there is evidence of attempts to access pornography from computers used by Mr Green since he became a minister in 2010. December 1 Former Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis, who was involved in the original leaks probe, tells the BBC he was 'shocked' by the amount of pornography found on Green's computer. His interview sparks a furious backlash from Tory MPs who accuse officers of releasing private information to undermine a Cabinet minister. Brexit Secretary David Davis weighs in behind Green. December 20 Mr Green is forced to quit after the Cabinet Office probe finds he breached the ministerial code with his misleading statements about the pornography found on his computer. Advertisement

Separate allegations Mr Green behaved inappropriately to a Tory activist Kate Maltby were found unproven, but his actions over the porn claims were considered a breach of the ministerial code.

It makes him the third Cabinet minister to quit from Mrs May's top team in just six weeks- plunging her premiership into fresh turmoil.

The PM will now spend Christmas plotting a Cabinet reshuffle and working out who can replace her closest politcial ally.

Mr Quick claimed he found vast amounts of porn on Mr Green's office computer during the police raid and took his allegation to the Government's standards chiefs in early November at the height of the Westminster sleaze scandal.

Mr Green scrambled to deny the claims - insisting in a statement on November 4 that the 'police have never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer'.

But while he continues to deny claims he viewed inappropriate material on his office computer, he has now admits police did talk to his lawyers about the allegations back in 2008 and again in 2013.

And it is his original statement denying all knowledge of the porn that has been his undoing and forced him to quit from Mrs May's Cabinet.

In a statement, Mr Green said: 'From the outset I have been clear that I did not download or view pornography on my Parliamentary computers.

'I accept that I should have been clear in my press statement that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in in a subsequent phone call in 2013.

'I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.

'The unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations that were being levelled at me were distressing to both me and my family and it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department.'

The departure of Mr Green is a hammer blow to the PM as she was struggling to get her government back on track.

She had fought for weeks to try and find a way to save him, but eventually decided he must go.

Mr Green's letter pointedly stayed that he had been 'asked' to resign - indicating his desire had been to tough out the storm.

The 61-year-old wrote a resignation letter to Mrs May last night and said that he and 'should have been clear' when giving statements about the incident.

He wrote: 'I accept that I should have been clear in my press statement that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013.

'I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.'

Mrs May accepted his resignation and wrote: 'I'm extremely sad to be writing this letter, we have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives.

'From our early days at university, entering the House of Commons at the same election, and serving alongside each other, both in opposition and in government, I have greatly appreciated your hard work and the contribution you have made to my team.'

But she said she asked her de facto deputy to leave the Cabinet after he accepted that statements he put out denying the allegations on November 4 and 11 'were inaccurate and misleading'.

She said this amounted to a breach of the ministerial code.

Mrs May added: 'While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the highs standards which the public demand of minsters of the crown.

'It is therefore with deep regret and enduring attitude for the contribution you have make over many years, that I asked you to resign from the Government and have accepted your resignation.'

It is understood Mrs May asked Mr Green to resign after summoning him to Downing Street on Wednesday evening, and is not planning to replace him until the new year at the earliest.

Miss Maltby's parents - who used to be friends with Mr Green - said they were 'proud' of their daughter for coming forward.

In a statement last night they said: 'We are not surprised to find that the inquiry found Mr Green to have been untruthful as a minister, nor to that they found our daughter to be a plausible witness.

'We have received many supportive messages from people near and far who appreciate Kate's courage and the importance of speaking out about the abuse of authority.

'We join with them in admiring her fortitude and serenity throughout the length of the investigation and despite the attempted campaign in certain sections of the media to denigrate and intimidate her and other witnesses. We are proud of her.

'We have ourselves known of these incidents since they first occurred and have fully supported Kate in the responsible manner in which she has reported them.'

A nine-year feud and a plot to oust Tory minister Bombshell claims about the volume of pornography allegedly found on Damian Green's office computer are the culmination of a nine-year feud between Theresa May's senior Cabinet ally and former police chief Bob Quick (pictured) Bombshell claims about the volume of pornography allegedly found on Damian Green's office computer are the culmination of a nine-year feud between Theresa May's senior Cabinet ally and former police chief Bob Quick. Mr Quick, once Britain's top counter-terrorism officer and who was tipped to become head of Scotland Yard, has never forgiven those he believes sabotaged his high-flying career following his investigation into Mr Green nearly a decade ago. His simmering fury over the circumstances in which he left the police has seen him dubbed 'Bitter Bob' by a number of former colleagues. It was in March 2008 that Mr Quick  the respected chief constable of Surrey Police, one of the country's best performing forces  was promoted to head the counter-terrorism and security department at Scotland Yard, where he had started his career 30 years earlier. But within months, he was facing calls to quit over the hugely contentious decision to arrest then shadow immigration minister, Mr Green, over a series of leaks from Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's private office. Over the previous two years a young civil servant, Christopher Galley, who was working in Miss Smith's private office, had passed on at least 31 separate documents, some restricted, which exposed government failures on crime and immigration. An enraged Cabinet Office called in Scotland Yard and Mr Quick, an assistant commissioner, headed the secret operation. Detectives arrested Galley and searched his home. Mr Green was arrested at his home on November 27, 2008, for 'aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in public office' by Galley. His Commons office was raided and computers seized for examination. The arrest of Mr Green and the raid prompted a political storm over whether the police had overstepped their powers. The Tory MP's lawyers argued that the material seized in the search, including that discovered on his computers, was covered by parliamentary privilege. Mr Green was held for nine hours while his Commons office, two homes and constituency office, were searched and computers removed. The Tories were livid, accusing Mr Quick of 'Stalinesque' behaviour when he approved the arrest of Mr Green. In the weeks following the arrest it emerged that Mr Quick's wife Judith was running a car hire firm from their home and details of their address were published on a website. The Mail on Sunday story carried the implication that Mr Quick, as head of counter-terrorism, was being reckless with his own security. He hit back, saying: 'The Tory machinery and their press friends are mobilised against this investigation in a wholly corrupt way, and I feel very disappointed in the country I am living in. 'It is a very spiteful act, possibly to intimidate me away from investigating Mr Green.' He later retracted his remarks and made an unreserved apology after the Tory leader, David Cameron, demanded he withdraw the 'completely baseless' allegations. The Tories accepted the apology. But the dispute was far from over and Mr Quick, who was badly damaged by the Green affair, would later complain that the investigation cost him his career. He quit in April 2009 after being photographed arriving at Downing Street with documents detailing a counter-terror operation clearly visible. He later claimed he might have survived had it not been for the Green controversy. 'I accepted I wasn't popular in those quarters,' he told the BBC. 'I'd read in newspapers various unattributed comments 'We're going to get Quick'. I guess I wasn't surprised by that.' A few days after he resigned, Mr Green was cleared of any wrongdoing over the leaks. Mr Quick licked his wounds and would later become chief executive of a global risk and security consultancy, which employs a number of former senior Scotland Yard officers. He returned to the public spotlight in March 2012 when he gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards. He alleged that journalists close to the Tory Party had tried to skew his investigation into Mr Green. The now notorious porn allegations against Mr Green were contained in a 'confidential draft witness statement' he made to the public inquiry. Last month, at the height of the sex harassment scandal in Westminster, the Sunday Times reported that 'extreme pornography' had been found on one of Mr Green's office computers back in 2008. Mr Green denied the claim and accused Mr Quick of a 'disreputable political smear'. The former police chief denied being the source of the Sunday Times story but he did supply a statement to the BBC to confirm the discovery, insisting he bore 'no malice'. Mr Quick has since however given evidence to a Cabinet Office inquiry investigating a separate accusation of sexual harassment against Mr Green made by journalist Kate Maltby. A week after the porn controversy broke, Paul Stephenson, who was Met Commissioner between 2009 and 2011, became the second senior officer to confirm he had been briefed about the alleged discovery on Mr Green's computer in 2008. He told the BBC: 'I regret it's in the public domain. There was no criminality involved, there were no victims, there was no vulnerability and it was not a matter of extraordinary public interest.' Earlier this month it was being suggested that Mr Quick had consulted lawyers over the possibility of suing Mr Green, who described the ex-police chief as 'tainted' and 'untrustworthy'. Mr Quick, it was claimed, wants an apology and a retraction for the attack on his reputation. Advertisement

May's anger at retired detective who leaked police notes that piled the pressure on Damian Green

By Chris Greenwood, Chief Crime Correspondent

Theresa May last night condemned the retired police officer who leaked the highly sensitive information that piled pressure on Damian Green

Theresa May last night condemned the retired police officer who leaked the highly sensitive information that piled pressure on Damian Green.

Accepting Mr Green's resignation, the PM said she 'shared concerns' at ex-Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis's disclosures.

The computer expert had given an interview accusing the de-facto deputy prime minister of browsing pornography online for hours.

His actions sparked a police review as Met Commissioner Cressida Dick made it clear the police duty of confidentiality was for life.

In her reply to Mr Green last night, Mrs May said: 'I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks.

'I am glad that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has condemned that, made clear that police officers' duty of confidentiality endures after they leave the force, and that the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made.'

Police have been accused of a vendetta against Mr Green because of an ill-fated inquiry into Home Office leaks in 2008, which led to senior officer Bob Quick losing his job.

Mr Lewis, 48, is now at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry and could yet face prosecution for going public with the personal information.

He was one of the 30 officers from the Met's counter-terror command involved in the raid on Mr Green's parliamentary office as part of a probe into leaks of Home Office material. It was led by Mr Quick, then Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner.

Earlier this month Mr Lewis said that, during the raid, he seized and examined a laptop used by the then shadow minister.

He accused Mr Green of being responsible for 'thousands' of pornographic thumbnail images retained in its memory. Mr Lewis admitted he had gone public to support his former boss, Mr Quick. It was the appearance last month of Mr Quick's draft statement to the Leveson inquiry into Press standards that threw Mr Green into the spotlight.

Excerpts were quoted in a Sunday newspaper, but Mr Quick denied responsibility.

It said police had found porn on Mr Green's computer during the raid and a police officer would have been sacked for having similar material. Former top terrorism officer Mr Quick was accused of harbouring a grudge against Mr Green after the leaks inquiry left his career fatally wounded.

Within months he had quit after mistakenly letting slip details of a counter-terror operation outside Downing Street.

But it was Mr Lewis's comments that attracted most criticism, after he revealed keeping a police notebook about the inquiry and a copy of the politician's hard-drive. Chief officers, the police watchdog, legal experts and politicians slammed the gross breach of confidentiality, branding the officer a disgrace. They warned of a 'police state' if officers were able to selectively make public highly sensitive information.

Mr Lewis remains under investigation for a raft of alleged offences, including data protection and computer misuse crimes, as well as theft.

He could also be subject to a misconduct inquiry but as a retired officer he could not be forced to attend any hearing so there would be no formal outcome. The Met said the review into the Green leaks was ongoing.
A 37-year-old woman who has been released from prison just six weeks after she was convicted in her fiance's 2015 drowning death- was treated to a steak and martini lunch upon her release.

Angelika Graswald was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on Thursday. Her attorney, Richard Portale, addressed reporters before whisking her away to a swanky lunch at Lexington Square Cafe.

'She's going to take a deep breath of fresh air and then enjoy a nice steak,' Portale told the New York Post. The group of two other women and Graswald's two lawyers ordered four martinis.

Scroll for video

Angelika Graswald (right) was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York on Thursday

Graswald's first meal as a free woman was at the upscale Lexington Square Cafe, where she ordered a martini

Killer bride: Graswald pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide over the summer for the kayaking death of her fiance, 46-year-old Vincent Viafore (left)

Graswald ordered her steak cooked medium during the leisurely lunch, and upon exiting Portale told reporeters she enjoyed her first meal as a newly freed woman.

'Reconstructing her life is going to be difficult,' Portale said to reporters outside court, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. 'Her day-to-day, her reality, is much different today than it was 32 months ago when she was in jail.'

After speaking the press, Graswald, Portale, another lawyer and two women went to a surf-and-turf lunch at the Lexington Square Cafe in Mount Kisco.

The New York Post reports that the group ordered four martinis to start, in a private dining room on the second floor.

'She's going to take a deep breath of fresh air and then enjoy a nice steak,' Portale told reporters before they went to lunch.

Six weeks ago, Graswald was convicted in the 2015 death of her fiance Vincent Viafore. After her release, she went to an upscale steak lunch at Lexington Square

She was picked up at the prison by her lawyer, Richard Portale (left), who spoke to reporters. But Graswald herself didn't answer any questions

Graswald pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal negligent homicide in the death of her fiance Vincent Viafore. In exchange for agreeing to plead guilty to that charge, prosecutors dropped the more serious charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

On November 8, she was sentenced to 1 1/3 to four years in prison, and was released after just six weeks because the two-and-a-half years she spent locked up in an Orange County jail after her April 2015 arrest counted towards the sentence.

For the next 16 months, Graswald will be supervised in a women's halfway home.

At the end of that, a judge may decide to deport her back to her native Latvia.

The victim's family members previously slammed Graswald's sentence as an injustice.

Graswald and Viafore went kayaking on a choppy Hudson River near Bannerman Island on April 19, 2015.

Prosecutors said Viafore's kayak started sinking after Graswald secretly removed a drain plug.

For the next 16 months, Graswald (pictured in November) will be supervised in a women's halfway home.

The bride-to-be admitted to hastening her fiance's demise by pushing a floating paddle away from him.

Graswald was originally charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, but took a plea deal in July, just weeks before her murder trial was set to start.

In a statement through her lawyer after the sentencing, Graswald said: 'I loved Vince very much and miss him terribly.'

'I don't believe I was treated fairly. This entire process was incredibly one-sided and unjust.'

Viafore's kayak (pictured) started sinking after Graswald secretly removed a drain plug

Graswald has been at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (pictured) since November 20

But the victim's mother, Mary Ann Viafore, said she doesn't believe a word Graswald says.

'Four years for taking someone's life? No way,' she told CBS. 'My son was a good man and everybody loved him and we miss him very much. I don't ever want to see her again if I don't have to.'

Prior to her sentencing, the victim's sister read a statement to the court saying Viafore didn't deserve to die the way he did.

'When I think of my brother's last moments alive, I think of the pain he must have endured,' Laura Rice said, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

'I visualize him trying to survive hypothermia in the freezing cold river, confused and not understanding why the woman who said she loved him and wanted to marry him did nothing to help him.'
Advertisement

President Donald Trump awarded the Purple Heart to 1st Lt Victor E. Prato on Thursday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the soldier's hospital bed.

Prato, 25, of the 127th Airborne Engineer Battalion, Fort Bragg, North Carolina was injured in November of 2017 while deployed in Afghanistan.

He suffered multiple soft tissue injuries following a vehicle-borne IED blast and motor vehicle rollover. He has served in the Army for two years and is from Somers, New York.

A video shared by the White House on social media Thursday afternoon shows the president presenting the soldier with the medal and shaking Prato's hand before he pins the Purple Heart on him.

President Trump stopped by Walter Reed today to spread Christmas cheer to wounded troops.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

President Donald Trump awarded the Purple Heart to 1st Lt Victor E. Prato on Thursday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the soldier's hospital bed

The president conversed and took selfies with several recovering troops while reporters were present, including a soldier in a wheel chair who he appeared to recognize from a previous visit in April (pictured)

President Trump reacts as retired U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant John Peck turns his wheelchair to reveal a Trump sticker and two Purple Hearts

President Trump stopped by Walter Reed today to spread Christmas cheer to wounded troops

A video shared by the White House on social media Thursday afternoon shows the president presenting the soldier with the medal and shaking Prato's hand before he pins the Purple Heart on him

The President's helicopter Marine One flew through a flock of birds after taking him back from visiting the wounded veterans

The President had paid a visit to the Walter Reed Medical Center and his helicopter returned at dusk

The President waved to reporters on the White House lawn after talking to the wounded service personnel and wishing them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Trump, in his second visit to the military hospital just outside of Washington, planned to wish servicemembers Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The president conversed and took selfies with several recovering troops while reporters were present, including a soldier in a wheel chair who he appeared to recognize from a previous visit in April.

'Unbelievable progress since the last time, unbelievable,' Trump told him.

It was after he passed on from journalists' view that he participated in the Purple Heart ceremony with Prato in the solider's hospital room with military and White House officials standing by.

In brief remarks to reporters on the South Lawn before he lifted off in Marine One, Trump said he wanted 'to say hello to some of the bravest people anywhere in the world.'

'They're great people,' he added. 'We love those people.'

'Unbelievable progress since the last time, unbelievable,' Trump told a soldier in a wheelchair whom he recognized

Trump, in his second visit to the military hospital just outside of Washington, planned to wish servicemembers Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

President Trump is seen stepping off Marine One at the Maryland hospital this afternoon

The president, who had nothing else on his schedule this afternoon, said he planned to be at the Bethesda, Maryland, medical center for awhile before he returns to the White House

The president, who had nothing else on his schedule this afternoon, said he planned to be at the Bethesda, Maryland, medical center for awhile before he returns to the White House.

First Lady Melania Trump did not accompany her husband to the hospital that's dedicated to taking care of ailing servicemembers. She and son Barron have already begun their Christmas holiday.

The Palm Beach Daily News reported Tuesday that the first lady and the 11-year-old had been spotted at President Trump's Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago. The president's eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., was also on site, the local news publication said.

Flight restrictions indicate that President Trump will soon join them, with the Federal Aviation Administration putting out flight restrictions that stretched from Wednesday, Dec. 20 to Jan. 1.

His holiday plans have not been confirmed yet by the White House, but Trump and his family have typically spent their Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in Palm Beach at what is now being referred to as the Winter White House.

In brief remarks to reporters on the South Lawn before he lifted off in Marine One, Trump said he wanted 'to say hello to some of the bravest people anywhere in the world'

First Lady Melania Trump did not accompany her husband to the hospital for wounded service members. She came with him during a previous visit in April (above)

Before Trump leaves town he is expected to sign the GOP's tax cut bill into law. It is unclear whether he will stick around until a spending resolution is ready for his signature, too.

Lawmakers are aiming to approve a bill that extends government funding into the New Year tomorrow. They must pass the legislation by end of day Friday to avoid an ill-timed government shutdown that disrupts the Christmas holiday.

This afternoon, Trump was already in the holiday spirit, wishing the press a Merry Christmas as he left the White House to to visit wounded troops.

After delivering a disciplined statement on his jaunt to the Maryland city that borders Washington, he turned and walked to the presidential helicopter without answering reporters' questions about a contentious United Nations vote on the United States' decision to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

This is his second trip to Walter Reed since taking office on Jan. 20. He and Melania made another visit to the hospital together in April.
Muhammad L. Hasan, 50, was taken into custody on Wednesday on seven counts of sex abuse after two girls under the age of 14 reported him

A Quran instructor in Oregon has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing teenage girls.

Muhammad L. Hasan, 50, was taken into custody on Wednesday on seven counts of sex abuse after two girls under the age of 14 reported him.

The abuse allegedly started in 2016 when the girls were clients of Hasan.

Hasan operates a business called AICQ, which provides private instruction on the Quran out of a storefront office in Tigard near Portland.

The two alleged victims say Hasan kissed them on the mouth on several occasions starting in 2016, according to court documents.

He also allegedly touched one girl's breasts.

Police suspect there may be more victims.

Hasan was arrested without incident at his home on Wednesday.

He has not yet made a court appearance on the charges and no attorney was listed in court records.

Police urge anyone who has information about possible abuse to call 503-718-2677 or email tips@tigard-or.gov.
Security measures in major cities are being ramped-up for Christmas and New year's Eve in the aftermath of the latest car-style attack.

Police in Brisbane are warning residents to expect road closures and say barriers will be erected around the city, while heavily armed police patrol the streets.

Members of the public are being warned to be alert but not alarmed, as police work to prevent the carnage in Melbourne from being repeated in other cities.

Security measures in major cities are being ramped-up for Christmas and New year's Eve in the aftermath of the latest car-style attack (pictured)

Police in Brisbane (pictured) are warning residents to expect road closures and say barriers will be erected around the city

Riot squad police officers are seen at Circular Quay in Sydney in the lead-up to Christmas

Detective Superintendent Tony Fleming, operations commander in Brisbane for New Year's Eve, said police want people to have a good time, he told The Courier Mail.

'Some of that will be through infrastructure changes, some of that will be things like road closures. In some places you will see barriers,' he said.

The erection of barriers and closure of roads is being done in order to allow police to control large crowds, he said, and similar measures are being seen nationwide.

Members of the public are being warned to be alert but not alarmed, as police work to prevent the carnage in Melbourne from being repeated in other cities (pictured are anti-terror bollards being installed in Brisbane)

Detective Superintendent Tony Fleming, operations commander in Brisbane for New Year's Eve, said police want people to have a good time (pictured are police on patrol in the aftermath of the Melbourne attack)

Sydney has installed anti-terror bollards at tourist sites all over the central business district, including in newly-opened areas of George Street.

Superintendent Fleming said public assistance is crucial, and pointing to a number of foiled attacks thanks to tip-offs in recent years,

He said suspicious behavior should be reported, and urged the community to trust their instincts.

'People should feel safe to let us know if they do have that suspicion and following your gut feeling is a good thing.'

The erection of barriers and closure of roads is being done in order to allow police to control large crowds, he said, and similar measures are being seen nationwide (pictured is Martin Place in Sydney)

Police said suspicious behavior should be reported, and urged the community to trust their instincts (pictured is Melbourne)

Sydney has installed anti-terror bollards at tourist sites all over the central business district, including in newly-opened areas of George Street (pictured is Martin Place)

The horrific attack on pedestrians by on Thursday left 19 injured, including a four-year-old boy.

The Afghan immigrant accused of 'deliberately' ploughing through the crowd has blamed the horrific attack on Australia's 'poor treatment of Muslims'.

It came despite measures put in place to prevent similar attacks after a man went on a rampage in his car down Bourke Street in January.

The Victorian capital will be patrolled by an elite squad of police officers with sub-machine guns.

Officers will be equipped with tasers, semi automatic and sub machine guns as they patrol popular areas 24/7.
Spanish police have called off a manhunt for a 37-year-old man after fears he had traveled to Barcelona to carry out a terror attack.

Police were warned to be on the lookout for El Ouakili Abdelhakim, a French citizen residing in Germany, according to an internal memo seen by La Gaceta.

But the search has now been called off because he has left the country, Spain's National Police said in a tweet.

Police in Barcelona have been warned to look out for El Ouakili Abdelhakim, 37, a suspected Islamist who may be planning a knife attack

Abdelhakim is known to have visited websites filled with terrorist material and 'there is information that this individual is going to attack with a knife', the memo said.

An image of Abdelhakim shows him driving a black Kia which has a French licence plate, according to the memo.

The warning was issued late on Thursday as millions of Catalans went to the polls in a tightly contested regional election.

Pro-independence parties won an outright majority with 99 per cent of votes counted setting up a fresh showdown with Madrid and issuing a sharp rebuke to EU leaders who backed the unionist cause.

Separatist parties look set to claim 70 sets in the parliament, while unionists will have 65 seats.

That means the secessionists will be returned to government, provided they can form a coalition.

But complicating matters, Anti-secessionist centrist party Ciudadanos will be the biggest single party with 37 of the 135 seats in the parliament.

Ines Arrimadas, party leader, was also claiming victory on Thursday night, telling supporters: 'The pro-secession forces can never again claim they speak for all for Catalonia.

'We are going to keep fighting for a peaceful co-existence, common sense and for a Catalonia for all Catalans.'

Junts per Catalunya, Mr Puigdemont's party, garnered 34 seats, left-republican ERC came third with 32 and the anti-capitalist CUP won four seats.

Further muddying the waters is the fact that, while the secessionists won a majority of the seats they did not win a majority of the total vote, polling a combined 48 per cent of all ballots cast.

Mr Rajoy's People's Party returned its worst result ever in the elections, holding just four seats.

A record-breaking 82 per cent of Catalans participated in the elections, according to the latest polling data.
Police are hunting an armed bandit who robbed a group of people at gunpoint before brutally bashing an elderly man.

Footage shows the thug point a gun at the heads of his victims during a late-night ambush in Sunshine, in Melbourne's west, on Tuesday.

The bandit sprang from behind a dumpster and tried to force the group to let him into a building before attacking a man in his 70s, leaving him with a fractured skull.

Scroll down for video

Police are hunting an armed bandit (pictured, left) who robbed a group of people at gunpoint before brutally bashing an elderly man

The man was hit in the head, chest and arm with the gun during the brutal attack, and the bandit fled with a mobile phone that was later recovered,The Herald Sun reported.

Police have released CCTV images of the shocking hold-up, and of a car believed to have been used in the robbery.

The vehicle is a 2009 VE Holden Commodore station wagon with New South Wales registration plates.

Detective Inspector Steve Clark said they are hoping to find the car and get the offender off the streets.

Footage shows the thug (pictured) point a gun at the heads of his victims during a late-night ambush in Sunshine, in Melbourne's west, on Tuesday

'We're confident it's connected to this offence. We just don't know where it is,' he said.

'We just need to lock this bloke up. This is unnecessarily violent. It's just unacceptable.'

Police are hunting a man described as Caucasian, 182cm tall, of a thin build, with light-coloured eyes.

He wore a dark-coloured balaklava, dark loose-fitting pants, a dark windcheater, and running shoes.

Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon continues to throw bombs at Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in a new interview  as he fuels his war with the GOP establishment and plots his own political future.

Bannon got pushed out of the White House in August, but has continued to push back on rivals.

'He's like an 11-year-old child,' Bannon joked to a friend in November, Vanity Fair reported.

Of his own contentious White House role after helping guide Trump to the White House, he said: 'I realize in hindsight I was just a staffer, and I'm not a good staffer. I had influence, I had a lot of influence, but just influence.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon speaks in support of U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore during a campaign rally. He blasted establishment Republicans for rallying behind Moore, who was accused of sexually touching young girls

In the spring, when a Bannon-Kushner feud and battle for influence was at its height, the president called Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump into the White House to try to resolve the situation.

The president's daughter blamed Bannon for leaks.

'She's the queen of leaks,' Bannon shot back, according to the story. 'You're a f****** liar!' Ivanka Trump reportedly responded.

Bannon said of Kushner, a wealthy Manhattanite who like Trump was born into a real estate business: 'He doesn't know anything about the hobbits or the deplorables,' a label Trump supporters have embraced. 'The railhead of all bad decisions is the same railhead: Javanka,' he said.

Steve Bannon, a former Trump campaign CEO and former White House chief strategist, is still settling scores in a new interview

Bannon got behind the doomed effort to try to get Roy Moore elected to an Alabama Senate seat. Kushner got behind incumbent Senator Luther Strange, and prevailed, Bannon said.

Trump 'momentarily has lapses when he's convinced by people around him in the White House to do ridiculous things like support Big Luther Strange, another genius move by Jared,' Bannon said. 'But look at how many things he approved right after Alabama to get us back on board. I think the establishment has to understand something. Their day of running the Republican Party is over.'

Bannon took shots at Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in his latest interview

The story also reports that in October Bannon, who has returned to the conservative Breitbart News site, told an advisor he would consider running for president if Trump doesn't seek reelection in 2020.

Bannon has called Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey 'the dumbest political decision in modern political history, bar none. A self-inflicted wound of massive proportions.'

But he also faults Kushner, who supported the move, of contributing to Trump's problems.

'He's taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared,' Bannon said. 'They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That's his maturity level.'

Kushner met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign, the Russian ambassador during the transition, and Russian banker Sergey Gorkov during the transition, he has since disclosed.

Kushner's camp fired back at Bannon. 'Steve Bannon may regret not being in the White House anymore, but that is not an excuse for him peddling false stories about Jared or anyone else,' said his attorney Abbe Lowell.

'The few conversations Steve and the president have had since he was fired this summer have primarily been opportunities for Steve to beg for his job back,' said a White House official.

He said the GOP civil war will go to a 'more intense level,' and blasted Senate Majority Leader MItch McConnell for backing away from Moore when female accusers emerged.

'The G.O.P. establishment would rather have control and give up seats to the radical progressive left,' he said. 'The G.O.P. establishment, as personified by Mitch McConnell, has not done a good job supporting the president's agenda.'
The United States is preparing plans to deliver a 'bloody nose' military attack against North Korea's nuclear program, according to The Telegraph on Thursday.

The Trump administration is 'dramatically' ramping up efforts to confront Pyongyang with military force amid concerns that diplomacy won't deter Kim Jong-Un from carrying out his nuclear threats.

One option is to strike the hermit kingdom's launch sites before it can carry out another missile test, with another proposal seeking to strike its weapon stockpiles.

The United States said it's preparing plans to deliver a 'bloody nose' military attack against North Korea's nuclear program

The aim of the preemptive armed campaign is to show the North Korean leader that the US is 'serious' about stopping his nuclear program

The aim of the proposed preemptive armed campaign, according to the Telegraph, is to show the North Korean leader the US is 'serious' about stopping his stated goal of attaining a nuclear weapon of mass destruction and persuade him to negotiate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (pictured) said the chance of Trump attack North Korea jumps 70 per cent Pyongyang decided to test another nuclear missile

The Telegraph cited three three anonymous officials with the plan, including one current White House official and two former officials close to the President.

'The Pentagon is trying to find options that would allow them to punch the North Koreans in the nose, get their attention and show that we're serious,' one former official was quoted as saying.

The unnamed source said that President Donald Trump isn't afraid to order the use military force if necessary.

He pointed to the President's actions in Syria when he ordered 59 cruise missiles in response to the countrys chemical weapons attack that killed 80 civilians in April.

Last week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he believed there was a 30 per cent chance of Trump using a military option.

He warned that number jumps to 70 per cent if North Korea decided to test another nuclear weapon.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (pictured) offered a pep talk to American troops, urging them to be ready for any contingency including war with North Korea

A senior British official recently told The Telegraph that he was alarmed at the rhetoric coming from the American administration following a meeting with National Security Adviser HR McMaster along with other defense officials.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis offered a pep talk to American troops during rare visit to Guantanamo Bay, urging them to be ready for any contingency including war with North Korea.

Mattis said international efforts to compel North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons are focused for now on diplomacy. He also emphasized that effective diplomacy must be backed by a credible threat of military force.

'We need to keep this in a diplomatic framework for solution,' he said. But he added that in the event diplomacy fails, 'you all have to be ready to go.'

Speaking to a few dozen Marines at a rifle range, Mattis described North Korea as a 'not yet imminent but a direct threat to the United States.'
Eric Schmidt will be stepping down from his role as Google's parent company Alphabet's Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, it has been revealed.

Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 to act as 'adult supervision' for founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, will become a technical adviser to the company while continuing to serve on its board.

'Since 2001, Eric has provided us with business and engineering expertise and a clear vision about the future of technology,' said Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet.

Outside of Google, Schmidt has been fiercely protective over his colorful and complex private life which includes a string of affairs.

In the past few years and despite his marriage to wife Wendy, Schmidt has had relationships with a series of younger women, including a vivacious television host who dubbed him Dr Strangelove,' a leggy blonde public relations executive and a sexy Vietnamese concert pianist.

Attempts to out the notorious 'womanzier' in an expose have fallen flat though according to the New York Post, with one source stating: 'They havent found st. Because there is no sexual harassment. There has never been any issue. They have had nothing. People have looked into it and people have not found anything.'

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 to act as 'adult supervision' for founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, will become a technical adviser to the company while continuing to serve on its board.

Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 to act as 'adult supervision' for founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (pictured, October 2004), will become a technical adviser to the company while continuing to serve on its board

Back in 2013, Schmidt splashed out $15million on a sprawling Manhattan penthouse in the trendy Flatiron District to be close to at least two of his female friends.

He was seeing at least two New York-based women in Lisa Shields, an executive on the Council on Foreign Relations, and Vietnamese pianist Chau-Giang Thi Nguyen.

The glamorous love-nest was featured in Oliver Stones Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps movie as the crash pad for Shia LaBeoufs character.

Meanwhile his wife Wendy remained at one of the couples many homes, a $23million waterfront mansion on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where she focuses on her philanthropic work amid reports that she has accepted their open marriage.

Schmidt has been married to Wendy since 1980, whom he met in graduate school at the University of California Berkeley. They have two daughters, Sophie and Allison.

Some sources have reported that Schmidt's resignation is due to his reported philandering. However, no proof that this is the case has emerged.

'Continuing his 17 years of service to the company, he'll now be helping us as a technical advisor on science and technology issues.

'I'm incredibly excited about the progress our companies are making, and about the strong leaders who are driving that innovation.'

'Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition.'

Schmidt then added: 'The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving,' said Eric Schmidt.

'In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work.'

Schmidt has a current net worth of $13.8billion, most of which is tied to Alphabet stock, according to Forbes.

Before joining Google, Schmidt was CEO of networking-software maker Novell. He also previously worked at Sun Microsystems.

Schmidt joined Google in 2001 to act as 'adult supervision' for founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and will become a technical advisor to the company while continuing to serve on its board.

Schmidt has been married to Wendy since 1980 (pictured together in March 2016), whom he met in graduate school at the University of California Berkeley. They have two daughters, Sophie and Allison.

Schmidt has been linked to both Lisa Shields (left), an executive on the Council on Foreign Relations, and Vietnamese pianist Chau-Giang Thi Nguyen (right)

According to The New York Post, back in 2013, Schmidt splashed out $15million on a sprawling Manhattan penthouse in the trendy Flatiron District to be close to at least two of his female friends (Pictured, with then-mistress Kate Bohner at Burning Man in Nevada in 2007)

Schmidt, who was recruited to the company by Google Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, served as chief executive of the company from 2001 through 2011.

Schmidt was instrumental to growing the company from a Mountain View, California, internet search startup into a publicly traded, global business with multiple products and business units, former Google employees said.

'He helped them mature into the powerhouse business it is today without throwing away the uniqueness that was Google during those early days,' said Joe Beda, chief technology officer of Seattle startup Heptio and a Google employee from 2004 through 2014.

Schmidt came under fire in 2013 for encouraging the company to avoid paying massive corporation tax in the UK and for not doing enough to protect children from internet porn.

While Page and Brin would focus on the company's technology and the product strategies, Schmidt would focus on how to scale every product to a global level, said Bismarck Lepe, CEO of San Francisco startup Wizeline and a Google employee from 2003 until 2007.

'Understanding how to keep and make your customers happy was important, and Eric understood that in spades,' Lepe said.

'He was incredibly smart and incredibly technical which made him a perfect fit in the organization.'
Two Seattle area educators were among the eight Americans killed in a bus crash on Tuesday that left a total of 12 people dead, it was learned on Thursday.

In Washington state, officials said Jody Fritz and her husband Andy Fritz died.

She was an assistant principal at Sand Hill, an elementary school in the small town of Belfair and her husband taught environmental science at Clover Park Technical College near Tacoma for nearly two decades, according to their employers, who were notified by a family member.

Both were 51.

A preliminary manslaughter investigation indicated the driver lost control of the bus and when he tried to get it back on the narrow highway, the bus flipped, struck a tree and landed in vegetation along the roadside, state prosecutor Miguel Angel Pech Cen told reporters.

Two Seattle area educators were among the eight Americans killed in a bus crash on Tuesday that left a total of 12 people dead, it was learned on Thursday. In Washington state, officials said Jody Fritz (right) and her husband Andy Fritz (left) died

She was an assistant principal at Sand Hill, an elementary school in the small town of Belfair

Her husband taught environmental science at Clover Park Technical College near Tacoma for nearly two decades, according to their employers, who were notified by a family member

Both were 51. Jody was a dedicated educator who had recently started work at her school and made a deep impression, said North Mason School District Superintendent Dana Rosenbach

Jody and her husband had recently bought their dream home and moved there to be closer to her mother, Rosenbach said

Andy Fritz 'as an instructor was one of those people who took the extra time needed to make sure concepts and ideas were really sinking for his students,' said Tawny Dotson, Clover Park Technical College's vice president for strategic development

He was committed to the environment and to helping his students learn how best to work in the field prepare themselves to become environmental stewards, Dotson said

Jody Fritz was a dedicated educator who had recently started work at her school and made a deep impression, said North Mason School District Superintendent Dana Rosenbach.

Jody and her husband had recently bought their dream home and moved there to be closer to her mother, Rosenbach said.

Andy 'as an instructor was one of those people who took the extra time needed to make sure concepts and ideas were really sinking for his students,' said Tawny Dotson, Clover Park Technical College's vice president for strategic development.

He was committed to the environment and to helping his students learn how best to work in the field to prepare themselves to become environmental stewards, Dotson said.

'I'm in shock still,' Sand Hill principal Jason Swaser told KOMO-TV.

'I think it's going to take me a while to process this still with how our staff is handling it and kids are handling it, it just seems unreal.'

The Fritzes were known as a friendly couple who shared a passion for running.

'They were easygoing,' said family friend Tim Paul.

'Jody was always laughing and smiling and Andy had a quirky sense of humor.'

'They were non-stop going. Helping people, selfless, never really thinking of themselves... just living life to the fullest everyday...' Swaser said.

The Swedish and Canadian governments confirmed the deaths of their citizens, but the US Embassy in Mexico City confirmed only that there were 'multiple' American deaths and several injuries.

A statement said the embassy had staff on the ground assisting victims and loved ones.

Three generations of a family were among the eight Americans killed in a Tuesday bus crash in Mexico. Anna Behar, 46 (center), her 11-year-old son Daniel, and her 78-year-old mother Fanya Shamis (not pictured) were killed. Anna's husband Moises (left) and their 15-year-old son David (right, muzzed) were injured

The family appeared to be frequent travelers, according to their Facebook profiles. Above, Anna Behar and her husband

Family say they are traveling to Florida to meet Moises and David when they return to the U.S.

About 20 people were injured but only four tourists - one Brazilian and three Americans - remained in local hospitals on Wednesday, according to prosecutors in Mexico's Quintana Roo state.

Eight Americans were among the 12 dead in Tuesday's Mexican bus crash, including three generations of a family.

The family were identified as a Mexican prosecutor spoke out on Wednesday to blame the crash on excessive speed and a negligent driver.

Fanya Shamis, 78, was on vacation with her daughter Anna, Anna's husband Moises, and their sons David and Daniel when a bus they were taking to some Mayan ruins in southeastern Mexico crashed on Tuesday.

Shamis, her daughter and her youngest grandson Daniel, 11, died in the crash, while Moises and the elder boy David, 15, were injured.

Shamis' death comes tragically less than a year after the passing of her husband Arkady, who died last February at the age of 83.

The Behars live in Lorton, Virginia, while Shamis lived in Coconut Creek, Florida.

Also among the dead is Canadian Stephanie Horwood, 42

Relative Israel Franco told WUSA that the family is heartbroken over the three deaths, and is planning to fly down to Florida to meet with Moises and his son when they return from Mexico.

It was previously reported that Moises was hospitalized after the crash.

Earlier in the day, one of Shamis' other grandchildren, Benjamin Shabobo said that Mrs Behar and one of her sons were missing.

'We don't have really concrete information,' Shababo said. 'We're all scared. It's just really scary to process this in my head that possibly something really bad happened to them.'

Anna Behar's mother Berta also spoke to the Sun-Sentinel, saying: 'I don't know what to do. We are going crazy trying to find out. We haven't received any calls from Royal Caribbean to inform us of what happened.'

An online obituary shows that Shamis' husband Arkady passed away in February at the age of 83.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement: 'We express our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this tragedy. We are in contact with local authorities, and will continue to monitor the situation. We have staff on the scene and at local hospitals to assist victims and loved ones.'

The nationalities of the others who were killed include two Swedes, a Canadian and a Mexican - who was the tour guide

The injured include seven Americans, two Swedes and three Canadians. Five of the injured were taken to the hospital and have since been released

Photos from the crime scene show bodies on the road

Also among the dead was Stephanie Horwood, 42, of Quebec, Canada. She is survived by her husband and two daughters who sustained minor injuries.

It's unclear if the driver will face charges or not.

Twelve people on the bus died on Tuesday. Eight, including Shamis, were American. Two were Swedish, one was Canadian and one was Mexican, who was the tour guide. The injured include seven Americans, two Swedes and three Canadians. Five of the injured were taken to the hospital and have since been released.

The bus was carrying tourists from cruise ships docked in the port of Mahahual to Mayan ruins in Cacchoben when it ran off the road for an unknown reason.

The State Department said in a statement: 'We express our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this tragedy. We are in contact with local authorities, and will continue to monitor the situation. We have staff on the scene and at local hospitals to assist victims and loved ones.'

The bus was carrying tourists from cruise ships docked in the port of Mahahual to Mayan ruins in Cacchoben when it ran off the road for an unknown reason

The bus was carrying 31 passengers on a straight stretch of road with little traffic. The cause of the accident was not immediately known

The crash, which left another 18 injured, happened on a highway in the state of Quintana Roo, located on the eastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula and well known as home to the Caribbean resort city of Cancun.

The bus was carrying 31 passengers on a straight stretch of road with little traffic. The cause of the accident was not immediately known.

Twenty-three of the passengers had arrived on the ships Celebrity Equinox and Serenade of the Seas, cruise owner Royal Caribbean Cruises told AFP.

'We are doing all we can to care for our guests, including assisting with medical care and transportation,' the cruise line tweeted.

Both ships docked in Mahahual on Tuesday and left later that afternoon.

Celebrity Equinox was on a seven-night Caribbean cruise and departed from Miami on Saturday. Serenade of the Seas left from Fort Lauderdale on Friday for a seven-night Caribbean cruise as well.

Eight Americans are believed to be among the dead in the Tuesday crash

In video images from the scene, shown by CTV News, the vehicle is resting on its side in vegetation off the two-lane highway, with some survivors lying on the pavement and others walking around.

American cruise ship passenger Chris Brawleym of Haslet, Texas, says he didn't see the accident, but his bus of tourists came upon the scene minutes after the crash.

He says they had been driving about 35 to 40 minutes before the accident.

Brawley says the sky was clear and the road was dry, and he did not see any other vehicles involved.

People receive medical attention after a bus crash at the Chetumal-Mahahual highway

Royal Caribbean Cruises says 27 passengers from the Celebrity Equinox (left) and Serenade of the Seas (right) were on the overturned bus

Landmark: The bus was on its way to the ruins at Chacchoben, about 110 miles south of the popular resort town of Tulum

He did not see the crash, but says that 'the bus clearly lost control somehow as there were swerve marks all over the road surface.'

Costa Maya Mahahual, the bus company involved, said in a statement that the bus was carrying tourists who had arrived to the coastal town of Mahahual aboard a cruise ship.

In addition to the tourists, a guide and driver were aboard the bus, the company said.

Quintana Roo is the Mexican state that receives the greatest number of international visitors, with many headed for Cancun's beaches and legendary Maya ruins.
Advertisement

The man arrested after filming a car ploughing through crowds outside Melbourne's Flinders Street train station has been charged with weapons and drug offences.

Police have confirmed the man, 24, is not believed to have been involved in the carnage that injured 19 including the driver but they hope the footage he took will be useful to investigators.

Victoria Police's acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said the man had now been charged with cannabis and weapons charges.

'He ran, was grabbed, and arrested,' Mr Patton told 3AW. 'We dont believe he was involved in this matter at all. His footage may be valuable.'

Scroll down for video

A man (pictured) was seen talking to police near the scene soon after the car crashed into the tram stop bollard

As a car ploughed through pedestrians at the busy Melbourne intersection on Thursday afternoon, the man whipped out his phone and began filming the carnage

As a car ploughed through pedestrians at the busy Melbourne intersection on Thursday afternoon, the man whipped out his phone and began filming the carnage.

Police spotted the 24-year-old just metres from where the white Suzuki Vitara crashed into a tram stop bollard next to Flinders Street Station about 4.40pm.

They searched him as a matter of procedure and allegedly found a bag containing three knives. Police found no evidence he had any involvement in the incident that injured 19 people including the 32-year-old driver.

Wearing jeans, runners and a Nike t-shirt, he was was arrested on the steps at Flinders Street station shortly after the incident, according to Nine News.

'At a significant scene like this, he was taken into custody because of the circumstances so we can explore it,' acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said on Thursday night.

'It may well be that person is exonerated from any involvement in the end, and that is probable at this stage.'

The young man was not known to police and, like the alleged driver, had no known links to extremist organisations.

The alleged driver is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent who was wrestled from the car by an undercover police officer who was hurt in the altercation.

A 24-year-old man was arrested after he was seen filming a car plough through crowds near Melbourne's Flinders Street train station and police allegedly found him carrying a bag with three knives

The alleged driver (pictured) is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent who was wrestled from the car by an undercover police officer who was hurt in the altercation

The white Suzki Vitara crashed into a tram stop bollard next to Flinders Street Station about 4.40pm on Thursday

He was under police guard in hospital for injuries suffered in the crash.

Victims of the rampage included a four-year-old boy with serious head injuries, but in a stable condition and four others still in critical condition.

Others were men aged 25, 40, 43, 45, and 83; two 25-year-old women, and other women aged 30, 35, 47, and 58 along with another three men and two women of unknown age.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the 'horrific act' was targeted against 'innocent bystanders'.

'This is a terrible, evil, cowardly act... At a time of the year when so many families are celebrating the end of they year, doing their Christmas shopping ... we have seen a horrific act,' he said.

Chaotic scenes unfolded during peak-hour as the white SUV crashed into the group of panicked pedestrians (pictured)

Paramedics at the scene were holding up tarps around the injured (pictured) who lay on the tram tracks of the busy street

Witness described seeing the car hurtling towards the crowd, ploughing through people in its path and crashing into the pole.

'It just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere,' one told radio station 3AW:

Dramatic footage then showed a number of injured pedestrians being treated by passersby as they wait for paramedics.

'He has gone straight through the red light at pace and it was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other,' another told the Herald Sun.

'There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them - it was mayhem.'
The Korean Air heiress whose onboard 'nut rage' tantrum delayed a flight in 2014 will avoid jail as South Korea's top court upheld her suspended prison term on Thursday.

Cho Hyun-ah, who is the daughter of the company's chairman and was the head of the airline's cabin service at the time of the incident, achieved worldwide notoriety after she had an onboard tantrum after a first class flight attendant served her nuts in a bag instead of on a dish.

Infuriated, Cho ordered the chief flight attendant off the flight forcing the plane to the gate at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

Former Korean Air executive Cho Hyun-Ah, seen here in 2015, spent a total of five months in jail for an incident dubbed 'nut rage', which triggered national uproar a year earlier

Cho was previously sentenced to one year in prison. She was released later after a high court shortened the prison term to 10 months and suspended that sentence for two years, confirming some charges but acquitting her of a contested charge of violating the aviation security law.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Cho's suspended jail term, saying a majority of judges ruled that diverting a plane that was taxiing didn't constitute forcing a change in the plane's route, a crime that can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

According to a Supreme Court statement, Cho 'yelled several times' to crew members, ordering them to tell the plane's captain to 'stop the flight immediately' because she didn't want to let in a flight attendant who didn't know about proper service procedures. After being informed of Cho's request and overwhelmed, the captain was forced to return the flight to the gate, it said.

Court officials said Thursday's verdict is final and cannot be appealed.

During her trial, Cho admitted using violence against one flight attendant by pushing her shoulder and throwing an object at her.

A statement from one crew member described Cho as behaving like an 'angry tiger.'

The incident was a lightning rod for anger in a country whose economy is dominated by family-run conglomerates known as chaebol.

The first and second generations of these families were credited with helping to transform South Korea into a developed nation.

But the third generation is often regarded as pampered and entitled, and the public is less tolerant of their excesses.
A sea predator with a 'jackknife' head that hunted the oceans 508 million years ago was the earliest relative of today's crabs and spiders.

The long-extinct species 'Habelia optata' was about two centimetres (0.8 inches) long with a tail as long as the rest of its body.

Scientists have now re-evaluated the 'tiny yet exceptionally fierce' species, finding it belongs to a group of invertebrate animals known as the arthropods.

This means the ancient creature is a 'close parent' of familiar creatures such as spiders, insects, lobsters and crabs.

Scroll down for video

A sea predator with a 'jackknife' head that hunted the oceans 508 million years ago was the earliest relative of today's crabs and spiders. The long-extinct species 'Habelia optata' (fossil pictured) was about 2cm (0.8 inches) long with a tail as long as the rest of its body

HABELIA OPTATA The research illustrates that the well-armoured body of Habelia optata, covered in a multitude of different spines, was divided into head, thorax and post-thorax, all bearing different types of appendages. The thorax displays five pairs of walking legs, while the post-thorax houses rounded appendages likely used in breathing. The head of Habelia contained a series of five appendages made of a large plate with teeth for mastication, a leg-like branch with stiff bristle-like spines for grasping, and an elongate, slender branch modified as a sensory or tactile appendage. The researchers conclude from the outstanding head structure, as well as from well-developed walking legs, that Habelia optata and its relatives were active predators of the Cambrian sea floors, hunting for small shelly sea creatures, such as trilobites. Advertisement

Habelia optata has confounded scientists since it was first discovered more than a century ago.

It lived during the middle Cambrian period around 508 million years ago and comes from the renowned Burgess Shale fossil deposit in British Columbia.

The species was part of the 'Cambrian explosion' - a period of rapid evolutionary change when most major animal groups first emerged in the fossil record.

Like all arthropods, Habelia optata features a segmented body with external skeleton and jointed limbs.

But what remained unclear for decades was the main sub-group of arthropods to which Habelia belonged.

Early studies had suggested mandibulates - a diverse lineage whose members possess antennae and a pair of specialised appendages known as mandibles, usually used to grasp, squeeze and crush their food.

Habelia was later left as one of the unresolved arthropods of the Burgess Shale.

But the new analysis, from experts at the University of Toronto, Canada, suggests that Habelia optata was instead a close relative of the ancestor of all chelicerates, the other sub-group of arthropods living today.

The group is named after the presence of appendages called chelicerae in front of the mouth and used to cut food.

Researchers say this is mostly due to the overall anatomy of the head in Habelia, and the presence of two small chelicerae-like appendages revealed in these fossils.

Study lead author, Dr Cedric Aria, said: 'Habelia now shows in great detail the body architecture from which chelicerates emerged, which allows us to solve some long-standing questions.'

'We can now explain why, for instance, horseshoe crabs have a reduced pair of limbs - the chilaria - at the back of their heads.

Scientists have now re-evaluated the species (artist's impression), finding it belongs to the group of invertebrate animals called arthropods. This means the ancient creature is a 'close parent' of familiar creatures such as spiders, insects, lobsters and crabs

CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION Scientists have long speculated that a large oxygen spike during the 'Cambrian Explosion' was key to the development of many animal species. The Cambrian Explosion, around 541 million years ago, was a period when a wide variety of animals burst onto the evolutionary scene. Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organised into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today. It ended with the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction event, approximately 488 million years ago. Advertisement

'Those are relics of fully-formed appendages, as chelicerates seem to originally have had heads with no less than seven pairs of limbs.'

The researchers analysed 41 specimens in total, the majority of which are new specimens acquired by fieldwork parties to the Burgess Shale.

The research illustrates that the well-armoured body of Habelia optata, covered in a multitude of different spines, was divided into head, thorax and post-thorax, all bearing different types of appendages.

The thorax displays five pairs of walking legs, while the post-thorax houses rounded appendages likely used in breathing.

Dr Aria said: 'Scorpions and the now-extinct sea scorpions are also chelicerates with bodies divided into three distinct regions.

'We think that these regions broadly correspond to those of Habelia. But a major difference is that scorpions and sea scorpions, like all chelicerates, literally "walk on their heads", while Habelia still had walking appendages in its thorax.'

The researchers argue that this difference in anatomy allowed Habelia to evolve an especially complex head that makes this fossil species even more peculiar compared to known chelicerates.

A new analysis suggests that Habelia optata (in red) was a close relative of the ancestor of all chelicerates, the other sub-group of arthropods living today. It had been unclear what the main sub-group of arthropods Habelia belonged to

The head of Habelia contained a series of five appendages made of a large plate with teeth for chewing, a leg-like branch with stiff bristle-like spines for grasping, and an elongate, slender branch modified as a sensory or tactile appendage.

Dr Aria added: 'This complex apparatus of appendages and jaws made Habelia an exceptionally fierce predator for its size.

'It was likely both very mobile and efficient in tearing apart its preys.'

The researchers conclude from the outstanding head structure, as well as from well-developed walking legs, that Habelia optata and its relatives were active predators of the Cambrian sea floors, hunting for small shelly sea creatures, such as trilobites.

Study co-author, Professor Jean-Bernard Caron, added: 'The appearance and spread of animals with shells are considered to be one of the defining characteristics of the Cambrian explosion.

'Habelia contributes to illustrate how important this ecological factor was for the early diversification of chelicerates and arthropods in general.'
We were sitting in a rooftop restaurant, 30 storeys up, overlooking the Empire State building in New York, when my daughter confessed that she thought she was being spied on by a professional network of cyberspooks.

Look at this, said Lois, presenting me with her smartphone, where an advert for a snazzy little instamatic camera was displayed. It had popped up a few seconds earlier, when shed logged on to Instagram.

She met my quizzical so what? face with exasperation.

What were we talking about? Just now? In the street, down there? she said.

Picture perfect: Jen Lewis (left) and the alarmingly similar advert sent on Facebook shortly after

Sure enough, wed been window shopping before our lunch reservation, and spotted a little gadget shop. I remembered Lois had commented on the instamatic cameras on display (dropping a few hints for her forthcoming 21st birthday, I suspected).

Wed had a brief conversation about how they were all the rage in the Eighties, and how one of my memories of Christmas parties at my parents house was listening to that familiar whirrr and watching the wealthier guests flapping about the instant photos, as everyone waited for them to dry.

They were the selfies of their day, and good fun (if you could afford the camera film). How lovely that they were making a comeback, I commented. And we moved on.

Then, less than 20 minutes later, an advert popped up on Loiss phone, for the exact same product. Same colour, same model, same everything.

Theyre listening, theyre watching, she said.

Oh dont be daft, I replied. Whos listening? Whod want to listen to us?

Im serious, said Lois. This keeps happening. This is no coincidence. Someone is listening to our conversations. Advertisers. Theyre listening via our phones microphones.

Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts (stock image)

A little melodramatic and paranoid, you might think. I certainly did. I assumed Lois had simply been researching the product online before we flew to New York, and had forgotten.

We all know targeted advertising has been prevalent for some years now, via our social media apps and search engines. Facebook was one of the first to introduce it four years ago. Its no big secret: go on the John Lewis website and choose a blouse, or Google Nigellas smart eye-level oven, and the next time you log on to Facebook or Instagram, theres a good chance theyll pop up as adverts there.

While it felt a little uncomfortable and intrusive to begin with, weve all sort of got used to it.

Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts.

Peoples electronic markers  known as cookies  from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes and interests (and ones were more likely to buy).

Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising

It is not illegal. Although under the Data Protection Act 1998, a person has to actively consent to their data being collected and the purpose for which its used, few people actually take time to police what they consent to.

The terms and conditions and privacy statements you sign up to when you buy a smartphone or download an app are rarely scrutinised before we tick the box and wade in.

But Lois swore she hadnt Googled an instamatic camera. That was the first time shed ever had a conversation about them. Im telling you, theyre listening, she said, and I admit I stuffed my own phone a little deeper into my bag. Could she be right?

Well, hundreds of other people seem to think so. Stories on Twitter of these blind coincidence adverts are abundant.

And not just restricted to voice snooping either  some are convinced their phones are spying on them via their cameras, too.

Last month, a creepy story swept social media about an American woman called Jen Lewis who was shown an advert on Facebook for a bra  featuring a model wearing exactly the same clothes she was wearing at that moment. The same pink shirt and skinny jeans.

Lewis, a writer and designer, recreated the models pose and posted the near-identical pictures side-by-side on Twitter where they went viral with more than 20,000 likes.

While Facebook insisted the ad was a coincidence, hundreds of horrified social media users commented  many suggesting the ad could have been targeted with image recognition software, using Jens laptop or smartphone camera as a spy window into her life. Seriously, cover up your camera lens, warned one, as stories were swapped of people receiving adverts for wedding planners, minutes after popping the question, and cat food after merely discussing whether to buy a cat.

Peoples electronic markers  known as cookies  from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes (stock image)

One Facebook user is so convinced his conversations are being monitored that he switched off the microphone on his smartphone  and, sure enough, there havent been any more strange coincidences since.

Tom Crewe, 28, a marketing manager from Bournemouth, was immediately suspicious in March when he noticed an advert on Facebook for beard transplant surgery. Only hours earlier hed joked with a colleague about them both getting one, as they remained smooth-faced, despite their age.

I had my phones Facebook app switched on at the time. Within a few hours, an ad came through for hair and beard transplants, he says.

I just thought: Why have I been targeted? Id never Googled hair or beard transplants or sent an email to anyone about it or talked about it on Facebook.

The fact that the ad for beard transplants was so unusual and specific made him suspect his phone had been eavesdropping.

He became convinced when later that month he received an advert to his phone  again weirdly and quite specifically  for Peperami sausages.

Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests (stock image)

Again, it was a casual conversation in the office. Id just eaten a Peperami, and it was a few hours before lunch, and a colleague joked how he didnt think this was a particularly good thing to have for breakfast.

Again, Id never Googled the product or mentioned it on Facebook or anywhere online. Its just something I buy during my twice-a-week shop at Tesco.

Then I get an advert for it. This happened within two weeks of the beard incident.

It so disturbed him that he researched it and saw others talking about it.

I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook apps access to my phones microphone. Ive not noticed it happening since then.

Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising.

A spokesperson said being targeted with an advert for a beard transplant was just an example of heightened perception, or the phenomenon whereby people notice things theyve talked about.

With 1.7 billion users being served tens of adverts a day, theres always going to be something uncanny. Google and WhatsApp also categorically deny bugging private conversations, describing the anecdotal evidence as pure coincidence.

One thing technology experts agree on, though, is that the ability to create technology that can randomly sweep millions of conversations for repeated phrases or identifiable names, definitely exists.

Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests. Whether they are being used by the companies with access to your phone, however, remains unproven.

Not convinced? Consider the Siri or Google Assistant functions, designed to understand your voice and pick out key phrases, and with a huge vocabulary in their grasp.

I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook apps access to my phones microphone. Ive not noticed it happening since then

Its not too big a stretch to think of this technology developed to sweep conversations as a marketing tool. Smartphones are small tracking devices, says Michelle De Mooy, acting director for the U.S.s Democracy and Technology Privacy and Data project.

We may not think of them like that because theyre very personal devices  they travel with us, they sleep next to us. But they are, in fact, collectors of a vast amount of information including audio information. When you are using a free service, you are basically paying for it with information.

As yet, however, theres no concrete evidence that we are being listened to. Any complaints about spying would be dealt with by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), which handles legislation governing how personal information is stored and shared across the UK.

They say no one has complained officially. Tales of cybersnooping havent gone beyond shaggy dog stories on Twitter and Facebook.

When approached by the Mail, an ICO spokesman said: We havent received any complaints on the issue of Facebook listening to peoples conversations.

Businesses and organisations operating in the UK are required by law to process personal data fairly and lawfully, this means being clear and open with individuals about how information will be used.

That law, however, is struggling to keep up with technology, according to Ewa Luger, a researcher and specialist in the ethical design of intelligent machines, at the University of Edinburgh. I think this is a problem ethically, she says. If I had an expectation that this application was recording what I was saying, thats one thing, but if I dont, then its ethically questionable. I may be having private conversations and taking my phone into the bathroom.

This is a new area of research  voice assistance technology. We have only been looking at this for 12 months. It takes a while for research to catch up.

In the meantime, Lois and I have turned off our microphones. Its easy to do via your phones Settings.

To be honest, I dont think there are people with earphones in a bunker, desperate to know what car Im thinking of buying, but Id rather, in this increasingly public world, maintain a bit of privacy. You really dont know whos listening.

 Additional reporting Stephanie Condron
Engineers in Japan have turned to human body for inspiration for a pair of robots capable of performing a range of incredibly life-like movements.

Instead of seeking perfection, experts recreated the intricacies of the skeleton and its surrounding tissue, with all the imperfections that entails.

The result is machines that sweats while doing push ups, playing badminton and other complicated motions in a less mechanical manner than most automatons.

Scroll down for video

Engineers in Japan have turned to human body for inspiration for a new robot capable of performing a range of lifelike movements. Instead of seeking perfection, experts recreated the intricacies of the skeleton and its surrounding tissue, with all the imperfections that entails

KENGORO'S SWEAT This is not the first time that the University of Tokyo lab's work has hit the headlines, with Kengoro making the news last year for its ability to sweat. Kengoro's skeleton, or metal frame, is made of aluminum and each 'bone' was printed using a laser that sintered the powered metal The bones were designed with a porous layers that retain water. As water releases from a pump in the inner porous layer, it travels to a more porous region near the surface of the frame  here it will then evaporate, instead of leaking onto the floor. One cup of deionized water can keep Kengoro powered for half of the day without overheating and it can do push-ups for 11 minutes straight. Advertisement

Researchers at the University of Tokyo built two models of the humanoids, called Kengoro and Kenshiro, recreating the entire musculoskeletal system.

They used aluminium, steel and plastic as a frame, and designed synthetic joints and ligaments to enable the robots to move.

The pair have rib cages and flexible spines, as well as an artificial central nervous system that monitors balance and stability.

Kengoro and Kenshiro have also been equipped with high tech processing power to give them the ability to act and react independently.

In a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, l ead researcher Yuki Asano said: 'For at least the last two millennia, human beings have endeavoured to understand the systems and mechanisms that make up the human body.

'However, a limitation of conventional humanoids is that they have been designed on the basis of the theories of conventional engineering, mechanics, electronics, and informatics.

'By contrast, our intent is to design a humanoid based on human systems, including the musculoskeletal structure, sensory nervous system, and methods of information processing in the brain.

'Our research team has successfully developed musculoskeletal robots.

'They imitate the human musculoskeletal structure, support the flexible body and behaviours of humans, and support human-style muscle actuation using tendon-driven actuators.'

University of Tokyo lab's first hit the headlines last year, with Kengoro making the news last year for its ability to sweat.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo built two models of the humanoids, called Kengoro (right) and Kenshiro (left), recreating the entire musculoskeletal system

The pair have rib cages and flexible spines, as well as an artificial central nervous system that monitors balance and stability

Kengoro's skeletal structure is designed to let water seep through porous layers in its frame, which eventually evaporates to cool its 180 motors.

The robot 'sweats' in order to stay cool, allowing it do push-ups for 11 minutes straight without burning out its motors.

The University of Tokyo team were searching for a strategic way to add a cooling system to their 123 pound, 5 foot 7 inch tall humanoid.

However, this robot was already 'stuffed to the brim with structural components, circuit boards, gears and motors', making it impossible to make room to add an active water cooling system.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo built Kengoro which is a 123 pound, 5 foot 7 inch tall humanoid. It can run at full power longer, letting it do push-ups for 11 minutes straight without burning out its motor

Japanese researchers have designed a robot that 'sweats' in order to cool down, allowing it do push-ups for 11 minutes straight without burning out its motors. One cup of deionized water keeps Kengoro running half of the day without overheating

The team realized the robot's structure could be modified to function as the entire system in a way that would cool it down similar to human skin.

'Usually the frame of a robot is only used to support forces,' lead author Toyotaka Kozuki told IEEE Spectrum in an interview.

'Our concept was adding more functions to the frame, using it to transfer water, release heat, and at the same time support forces.'

Kengoro's skeleton, or metal frame, is made of aluminum and each 'bone' was printed using a laser that sintered the powered metal, reports Evan Ackerman with IEEE.

This process lets developers select the permeability of the metal, as some parts of this humanoid are solid and others are similar to a sponge.

The bones were designed with a porous honeycomb-like layers that retain water.

Water is released when the robot is working hard and begins to overheat.

As water releases from a pump in the inner porous layer of the 'bones', it travels to a more porous region near the surface of the frame  here it evaporates, instead of leaking onto the floor.

Kengoro's bones were designed with a porous honeycomb-like layers that retains water, which will then the seep out and evaporate when the robot's heat levels increase

As water releases from a pump in the inner porous layer of the 'bones', it travels to a more porous region near the surface of the frame  here it evaporates, instead of leaking onto the floor

One cup of deionized water can keep Kengoro powered for half of the day without overheating and it can do push-ups for 11 minutes straight.

But just like humans, this robot needs to keep itself hydrated for the cooling system to function properly.

One cup of deionized water can keep Kengoro powered for half of the day without overheating and it can do push-ups for 11 minutes straight. But just like humans, this robot needs to keep itself hydrated for the cooling system to function properly

The researchers found that this new human-like system works three times better than air cooling and significantly better than just circulating water through the interior channel.

However, the team says it is not as effective as using traditional radiators or fans, which is found in many machines.
These adorable images show newborn twin baby elephant shrews, the first time the creatures have procreated in a European zoo.

The tiny animals, which will weigh just half a kilogram (one pound) when fully grown, have been pictured safely tucked away in an underground burrow at Antwerp Zoo.

They were born on November 14 but have only just emerged from their hiding place, and staff are yet to determine which sex they are.

Scroll down for video

These adorable images show newborn twin baby elephant shrews, the first time the creatures have procreated in a European zoo. The tiny animals were pictured safely tucked away in an underground burrow at Antwerp Zoo, before emerging into the outside world

ELEPHANT SHREWS Black and rufous elephant shrews are small insectivorous mammals, native to Africa. The twins are currently under the care of their parents, Guusje and Olli, and when they are old enough to be weaned, staff will examine them to determine their sex and give them names. Elephant shrews have been recorded to reach speeds of 17 miles an hour (28.8 km/h). They mainly eat insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, and earthworms and use their nose to find prey and their tongue to flick small food into its mouth, much like an anteater. Some elephant shrews also feed on small amounts of plant matter, especially new leaves, seeds, and small fruits. Advertisement

The cute creatures will spend the first four weeks of their lives with their parents, before leaving their territory.

Their mum and dad will then have a new litter to take care of a few weeks later.

A spokesman for the zoo said: 'Mama Guusje and papa Olli kept their children well hidden under the ground, in a hole covered with leaves.

'Once a day Guusje opened the nest to feed the twins.

'But now, four weeks after birth, they have come out and shown their faces.

'They run around skittishly, under the care of mum and dad.

'With their small trunks, they churn the earth in search of mealworms.

'It's a first for Zoo Antwerp because we are the only European zoo where Elephant Shrew have been born.'

Black and rufous elephant shrews are small insectivorous mammals, native to Africa.

The youngsters were born on November 14 but have only just emerged from their hiding place, and staff are yet to determine which sex they are

The cute creatures will spend the first four weeks of their lives with their parents, before leaving their territory

The twins are currently under the care of their parents, Guusje and Olli, and when they are old enough to be weaned, staff will examine them to determine their sex and give them names.

Elephant shrews have been recorded to reach speeds of 17 miles an hour (28.8 km/h).

They mainly eat insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, and earthworms and use their nose to find prey and their tongue to flick small food into its mouth, much like an anteater.

Some elephant shrews also feed on small amounts of plant matter, especially new leaves, seeds, and small fruits.

Females undergo a menstrual cycle similar to that of human females, and the species is one of the few non-primate mammals to do so. They will bear litters of one to three young, several times a year

Black and rufous elephant shrews are small insectivorous mammals, native to Africa. The twins are currently under the care of their parents, Guusje and Olli, and when they are old enough to be weaned, staff will examine them to determine their sex and give them names

Elephant shrews have been recorded to reach speeds of 17 miles an hour (28.8 km/h). They mainly eat insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, and earthworms and use their nose to find prey and their tongue to flick small food into its mouth, much like an anteater

Females undergo a menstrual cycle similar to that of human females, and the species is one of the few non-primate mammals to do so.

They will bear litters of one to three young, several times a year.

The young are born relatively well developed, but remain in the nest for several days before venturing outside.

The Black and rufous elephant shrew is currently listed as 'Least Concern' on the IUCN Red List. It was still listed as 'Vulnerable' in 2008.

However, its numbers are reportedly still under threat from severe forest fragmentation and degradation from human expansion.

Some elephant shrews also feed on small amounts of plant matter, especially new leaves, seeds, and small fruits

The young are born relatively well developed, but remain in the nest for several days before venturing outside
Apple has been accused of being 'racist' after a Chinese boy realised he could unlock his mum's iPhone X using the facial recognition software.

A husband bought his wife the new smartphone, but she was then shocked to discover it could be unlocked by the couple's son.

It seems the family, who live in the city of Shanghai are not the only Chinese users who have been able to open each other's phones.

Increasingly iPhone users in China - a country of more than a billion people - are concerned about their iPhone X's security and privacy features.

Scroll down for video

Apple has been accused of being 'racist' after a Chinese boy (right) realised he could unlock his mum's iPhone X using the facial recognition software

HOW DOES FACE ID WORK? Face ID uses a TrueDepth front-facing camera on the iPhone X, which has multiple components. A Dot Projector projects more than 30,000 invisible dots onto your face to map its structure. The dot map is then read by an infrared camera and the structure of your face is relayed to the A11 Bionic chip in the iPhone X, where it is turned into a mathematical model. The A11 chip then compares your facial structure to the facial scan stored in the iPhone X during the setup process. Face ID uses infrared to scan your face, so it works in low lighting conditions and in the dark. It will only unlock your device when you look in the direction of the iPhone X with your eyes open. Advertisement

The father, identified only by his surname Liu, phoned Apple's customer service hotline to report the problem.

'Our son was using it and didn't know the password', he said, according to Shandong TV Station.

He was told it was a rare, isolated case and was due to the fact his wife and son look very similar.

It is believed the tech giant has now launched a full investigation into the Liu family's claims.

The news come just a week after another Chinese woman realised she could unlock her colleague's iPhone X.

Madam Yan from Nanjing was appalled to discover her colleague Madam Wan could unlock her new phone using Face ID.

This was despite the pair having a number of different features, including different haircuts.

The pair claim the incident occurred multiple times.

When Madam Yan first called Apple's hotline to complain about the problem customer services told her it was 'impossible', writes Asiaone.

The news come just a week after another Chinese woman realised she could unlock her colleague's iPhone X using the facial recognition software

Madam Yan (pictured) from Nanjing was appalled to discover her colleague Madam Wan could unlock her new phone using Face ID

WHAT DID APPLE DO TO PREVENT THIS? Face ID uses facial matching neural networks developed using more than one billion images, writes Gizmodo. In October Apple's vice president of public policy for the Americas, Cyntheia Hogan explained how they make the product accessible to people of different ethnicities. 'We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors', she said. 'We augmented the studies as needed to provide a high degree of accuracy for a diverse range of users', she said. Developers also trained the neural network to spot and resist people trying to unlock the phone with photos or masks. Advertisement

The pair took the phone to the store to prove what happened and found they could unlock all the phones in the store.

Madam Yan was told the camera was faulty and given a new iPhone X but the same thing happened again.

It is not known if she subsequently got a third iPhone X.

'We look quite ordinary. What if someone picks up my phone and opens it?', said Madame Wan.

'Then they could buy stuff through my phone and make payments', she said.

'We don't have any sense of security'.

Many users are now concerned the iPhone X is unable to tell Chinese people apart from one another.

However, Apple has continued to maintain its facial recognition software is near enough fool proof.

The company claims there is only a one in a million chance of someone else's face being able to unlock your phone.

The company worked with people all over the world in order to avoid this happening.

This was despite the pair having a number of different features, including totally different haircuts. The pair claim the incident occurred multiple times

The pair took the phone to the store to prove what happened and found they could unlock all the phones in the store. Madame Wan (pictured) said she had no sense of security

Face ID uses facial matching neural networks developed using more than one billion images, writes Gizmodo.

In October Apple's vice president of public policy for the Americas, Cyntheia Hogan explained how they make the product accessible to people of different ethnicities.

'We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors', she said.

'We augmented the studies as needed to provide a high degree of accuracy for a diverse range of users', she said.

Developers also trained the neural network to spot and resist people trying to unlock the phone with photos or masks.

MailOnline has contacted Apple for comment.
The phenomenon may also has a p

Apple is developing new higher capacity batteries for its iPhones, it has been claimed.

However, users hoping for longer battery life are set to be disappointed - instead, the capacity will allow new features like augmented reality, analysts say.

The new 3D sensing and augmented reality functions expected to come to the iPhone's rear camera in 2019 will require more power consumption - prompting Apple to find ways to increase battery capacity, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities.

Scroll down for video

New AR features such as improved photo filters and augmented reality will use up the extra battery capacity apple hopes to put in new iPhones, analysts say

APPLE ADMITS TO PHONE SLOWDOWN It comes as Apple has admitted it does intentionally 'smooth out' the performance of its smartphones when a battery gets too old. Many claimed it was an attempt to force users to upgrade to the latest model. Apple said the software update is actually prolonging the life of the phone and stopping it from shutting down as the batteries age and becomes less effective. Advertisement

In a note to investors, he forecast that Apple will continue expanding iPhone battery capacity in 2019 and 2020, according to Apple Insider.

He believes Apple will be able to shrink the phone's other components to allow for a bigger battery.

It is also expected to use a new more flexible type of circuit board allowing for better placement of power circuitry.

It comes as Apple has admitted it does intentionally 'smooth out' the performance of its smartphones when a battery gets too old.

A consumer watchdog that evaluates electronic gadgets' performance sparked an outcry after it found that processing power of older models is limited once battery life begins to suffer.

Many claimed it was an attempt to force users to upgrade to the latest model.

Today, Apple said the software update is actually prolonging the life of the phone and stopping it from shutting down as the batteries age and becomes less effective.

Apple intentionally throttles the performance of its smartphones when a battery gets too old, a new study has claimed, including the iPhone 6 and 7, once battery life begins to suffer. This image shows CEO Tim Cook at the launch of the iPhone 6 on September 9, 2015

However, the firm has come under fire for not being more transparent about the software update, or explaining to users when it happens.

The shutdowns are caused when iPhones hit peaks of processor power that the battery was unable to power - causing them to simply shut down.

Apple said its software 'smoothed out' these peaks, allowing the phones to continue operating.

'Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices,' Apple said in a statement.

'Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.'

Geekbench developer John Poole decided to analyse the results of a number of iPhone 6 and 7 models running various versions of iOS. He found an update issued to fix a ' sudden shutdown' issue wit the iPhone 6 was to blame for poor performance

Apple also said it is expanding the programme to more handsets.

'Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions.

'We've now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.'

The drop in performance came to light in benchmark tests, from Toronto-based firm Geekbench.

It found that on certain versions the Apple operating system, phones with older batteries achieved much lower performance scores.

Battery capacity is expected to decrease as they age, but processor performance should stay the same.

However, users with older iPhones with lower-than-expected Geekbench scores have reported that replacing the battery increases their score, as well as the performance of the phone.

Apple said it recently extended the feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and said it plans to add support for other products in the future

Geekbench developer John Poole decided to analyse the results of a number of iPhone 6 and 7 models running various versions of iOS.

He found that an update issued to fix a ' sudden shutdown' issue, when users found their iPhone 6 was turning off when its battery reached half charge, was to blame.

This resulted in the poor performance results observed.

Writing in a blog post, Mr Poole said: 'It appears the problem is widespread, and will only get worse as phones, and their batteries, continue to age.

So it's true Apple intentionally slow down old iPhones. Proof: My iPhone 6 was bought 3years ago and recently got really slow. APP 'CPU DasherX' shows iPhone CPU is under clocked running at 600MHz. After a iPhone battery replacement. CPU speed resumed to factory setting 1400MHz. pic.twitter.com/pML3y0Jkp2  Sam_Si (@sam_siruomu) December 20, 2017

'I believe, as do others, that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point.

'If the performance drop is due to the 'sudden shutdown' fix, users will experience reduced performance without notification.

'Users expect either full performance, or reduced performance with a notification that their phone is in low-power mode.

'This fix creates a third, unexpected state.'

Without this warning Mr Poole believes that the fix will cause users to believe their phone is slow so they should replace it, rather than the battery which is actually at fault.

'This will likely feed into the 'planned obsolescence' narrative,' he added.

Apple's iPhone 6s battery fiasco caused some iPhone 6s handsets to shut down without warning. The issue only affected a 'relatively small batch' of the devices manufactured in 2014

Every time Apple launches a new handset people seemingly flock to Google to ask why their current iPhone or iOS is slow.

This trend has been seen every year since Apple released the iPhone 3G in 2008.

Explanations for the slowness range from Apple's iOS causing problems on older devices to the firm deliberately slowing down old phones to make people buy the new handsets.

This latter explanation is known as planned, or built-in, obsolescence.

This is the idea that manufacturer's deliberately make their products in such a way that they become out-of-date sooner.

By doing this, the companies can encourage customers to buy the latest model of a certain product.

This also stimulates demand for products because people return again and again.

Alternatively, the so-called 'slow iPhone phenomenon' may be psychological, as people believe their phone is being sluggish even if its not.

In a blog post Felix Richter, from analytics firm Statista, said: 'Many of us know the feeling: one day we're perfectly happy with the smartphone we've been using for the past 12 months, the next day, after we've seen a colleague showing off his new gadget, ours suddenly feels inadequate, bulky and slow.

'The good news is we're not alone.'

He continued there are two possible explanations for these spikes.

The first is that it is a psychological phenomenon caused when people convince themselves their old phone is slow in comparison to the latest devices, and this could help them justify buying a new one.

Google Trends data (pictured) shows that searches for 'slow iOS' and 'slow iPhone' significantly peaked on the days after each was released. Explanations range from Apple's iOS causing problems to the firm deliberately slowing down old phones to make people upgrade

The second explanation, which Mr Richter said is much more plausible, is down to the operating system not being compatible with the hardware on older phones.

New operating systems are often designed to work most effectively with the more advanced processing power and RAM seen in the newer models meaning older models can struggle to keep up.

In 2014, a study by Harvard University PhD student Laura Trucco appeared to back up conspiracy theories that Apple deliberately slows down older models of its iPhones to encourage users to buy a new release.

The study analysed worldwide searches for 'iPhone slow' and compared those results with similar searches for the term 'Samsung Galaxy slow'.

Interestingly, it discovered the term was unaffected by new releases from Samsung, but this may be due to the fact Android updates aren't rolled out at the same time like iOS ones are.

While some MailOnline readers said at the time they hadn't noticed a slow down, others claimed Apple sabotages older phones through software updates.

'This is common knowledge,' one reader wrote.

'If you want to keep your iPhone running at the same pace do not do the software upgrade that comes out within six months of a new iPhone release,'

Sendhil Mullainathan, a professor of economics at Harvard, described the results of the study as 'striking'.

But added it does not prove Apple has done anything wrong.

No matter how suggestive, he said, the data alone doesn't allow anyone to determine conclusively whether their phone is any slower.

There are other explanations for why an older model iPhone may slow down, he claims.

For instance, the latest version of the Apple operating system, iOS, is always tailored to the newest device and may therefore not work as efficiently on older models.

'Hearing about a new release makes you contemplate getting a new and faster phone,' he said. 'And you suddenly notice how slow your old phone is.'

Dom Ferkin, managing director of UK-based iOS experts, Creation Application, agrees.

He previously told MailOnline he doesn't believe Apple is doing this intentionally.

'On every hardware release they tend to upgrade the chips and they are faster every time they are released,' he said.

'Each year they release a new iOS. If you're running an iOS 7 on a 5 chip, for example, it's comparable to running Windows XP on a Windows 95 machine.
Physicists have discovered a remarkable semimetal material that they say could pave the way for an entirely new area of physics.

The new type of quantum material, known as Weyl fermions, were spotted during dual studies in Austria and the US; as researchers in one location were measuring its properties, the team across the ocean were theorizing how it could exist.

The quasiparticles are the result of interactions between many particles, which causes them to move extremely slowly  about three millionth of the speed of light  despite having zero mass.

This could one day prove useful for quantum computers, and could even revolutionize electronics, the researchers say, as the system can conduct electrical current with almost no loss.

The new type of quantum material, known as Weyl fermions, were spotted during dual studies in Austria and the US; as researchers in one location were measuring its properties, the team across the ocean were theorizing how it could exist

WHAT THEY FOUND These quasiparticles in a solid state behave somewhat like water in a wave, the researchers explain, where the movement of many water molecules drives the whole. The interconnected nature of the Weyl particles in the strongly correlated electron system means they also have extraordinary properties. This could mean high-temperature superconductivity and new kinds of phase transitions. In the solid state, the researchers found that the fermions move at less than 1000 meters per second, or roughly three millions the speed of light in a vacuum. Researchers say the discovery could one day prove useful for quantum computers, and could even revolutionize electronics, as the system can conduct electrical current with almost no loss. Advertisement

Weyl fermions were first measured back in 2015, nearly a century after they were first predicted.

Now, researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have successfully detected these particles in strongly correlated electron systems.

By the laws of relativity, free particles with zero mass should spread at the speed of light.

But, the Weyl fermions are not free particles.

Instead, theyre whats known as quasiparticles in a solid state, meaning they come about as a result of interactions between electrons.

These quasiparticles in a solid state behave somewhat like water in a wave, the researchers explain, where the movement of many water molecules drives the whole.

Quasiparticles are not particles in the conventional sense, but rather excitations of a system consisting of many interacting particles, says Professor Silke Buhler-Paschen from the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Wien.

The interconnected nature of the Weyl particles in the strongly correlated electron system means they also have extraordinary properties.

This could mean high-temperature superconductivity and new kinds of phase transitions.

The strong interactions in such materials usually led, via the so-called Kondo effect, to particles behaving as if they had an extremely large mass, says Sami Dzaber.

So it was astonishing for us to detect Weyl fermions with a mass of zero in this particular type of material.

Weyl fermions were first measured back in 2015, nearly a century after they were first predicted. Characterization of the Weyl nodes is illustrated above. Figure A shows energy dispersion, with figure B showing the distribution of the Berry curvature field

In the solid state, the researchers found that the fermions move at less than 1000 meters per second, or roughly three millions the speed of light in a vacuum.

Even though our Weyl fermions have no mass, their speed is extremely low, says Buhler-Paschen.

As such, they are even slower than phonons, the analogue to the water wave in the solid state, and this makes them detectable in our experiment.

In parallel studies, researchers at TU Wien measured the properties of the remarkable material as the team at Rice University conducted theoretical investigations.

Physicists have discovered a remarkable semimetal material that they say could pave the way for an entirely new area of physics. It could one day prove useful for quantum computers, and could even revolutionize electronics

Combined, the experiment and theory allowed for better understanding of the newly discovered effect.

And, the researchers say there are a number of things that make it extraordinary.

Even if Weyl fermions were initially found in other materials, it is much easier to control the effect in our strongly correlated materials, says Silke Buhler-Paschen.

Due to their low energy, it is significantly easier to influence them using parameters such as pressure or an external magnetic field.

Eventually, the particles could be used in quantum computers or for more efficient electronics.
Sharing logins for online TV and movie services has become a way of lfe but many - but cable firms want it to end.

Twitter and Facebook often see users asking for a login to watch a show or sporting event, and cable firms say it is costing them billions.

Now they want to limit the number of logins a user has - after finding one with 30,000 people logged in at once.

Scroll down for video

The TV industry's losses from password sharing are expected to rise to $9.9 billion by 2021 from $3.5 billion this year, the research firm Parks Associates estimates.

HOW MANY STREAMS? Netflix allows four streams for its most expensive subscriptions and one at a time for its cheapest plans. HBO lets three people stream simultaneously from one account. DirecTV's satellite customers get five concurrent streams, while its online service, DirecTV Now, allows two. Hulu's on-demand service allows for one stream per account. A Hulu with Live TV subscription allows you to watch videos simultaneously on up to two screens, or there's an unlimited version. ESPN has reduced the number of simultaneous streams that it allows on its app to five from 10 and is considering cutting that to three Advertisement

'There's lots of extra streams, there's lots of extra passwords, there's lots of people who could get free service,' Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications, operates as Spectrum , told a UBS conference this month.

He said one unidentified channel owner had 30,000 simultaneous streams from a single account.

According to Parks Associates, a third of internet users stream cable TV without paying for it by using credentials of someone they don't live with,

The TV industry's losses from password sharing are expected to rise to $9.9 billion by 2021 from $3.5 billion this year, the research firm estimates.

The cable firms say the problem is that pay-TV companies only require users to re-enter their passwords for each device once a year, and many don't monitor the number of people logged into the same account.

Charter has already asked Viacom, which owns Comedy Central and MTV, to restrict the number of concurrent streams on their apps and force legitimate subscribers to log in more often, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said Bloomberg.

Justin Connolly, the executive vice president for affiliate sales and marketing for ESPN and Disney networks told Bloomberg 'It's people consuming something they haven't paid for. It's piracy'.

HOW WIDESPREAD IS SHARING? Earlier this year a Reuters/Ipsos poll found more than one-fifth of young adults who stream shows like 'Game of Thrones' or 'Stranger Things' borrow passwords from people who do not live with them. Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Kit Harington as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones: Many users borrow passwords to watch a specific show, Twenty-one percent of streaming viewers ages 18 to 24 said they had accessed at least one digital video service such as Netflix Inc, HBO Now or Hulu by using log-in credentials from someone outside their household at some time. Overall, 12 percent of adults said they did the same thing. Advertisement

Respondents to the Reuters/Ipsos survey said they borrow passwords to save money on video subscriptions, which can be cheap on their own but add up with multiple services.

Donielle Bradshaw, a live-in nanny in Smyrna, Georgia, said she uses her 28-year-old sister's password for Hulu, and her 32-year-old brother's password for Netflix.

'I feel like since we are family, it's OK,' said the 22-year-old Bradshaw, who estimates she watches four hours of shows on weeknights and 10 hours a day on weekends.

If companies cracked down on password sharing, Bradshaw said she would be willing to pay for her own Netflix subscription but is not sure about Hulu, which is owned by several media companies.

Earlier this year Disney announced it is to pull all of its Disney and Pixar movies from Netflix and start its own streaming service, and now it has revealed Star Wars and Marvel movies will follow

'I binge a lot of shows on Netflix. I don't think I could do without it,' she said.

HBO, a unit of Time Warner Inc, actually encourages younger viewers to use its HBO Now and HBO Go services for free by offering it to about 100 U.S. colleges and universities.

'For us it's more important that at that age where they are not financially independent quite yet, they are habituating to using the product to ultimately aspiring to becoming paid customers,' Bernadette Aulestia, executive vice president of global distribution, said in an interview.

Netflix executives also have said they know some viewers share passwords.

'We could crack down on it, but you wouldn't suddenly turn all those folks to paid users,' Netflix Chief Financial Officer David Wells said at a Goldman Sachs conference last September.

Industry analysts say companies are missing a chance to grow revenue.

An analysis by Parks Associates estimated streaming providers will lose $550 million in 2019 from password sharing.

'There has been this kind of cavalier attitude about it,' Parks Associates analyst Glenn Hower said. 'It hasn't been a priority.'
Advertisement

California's breath-taking Big Sur coastal drive has long been regarded as one of the essential bucket-list trips for many travellers.

But a detour is a must - specifically to an exclusive cliff-top hotel high above the redwood forests, winding roads and spectacular vistas that's so luxurious it offers a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience that feels as though it has come straight out of a movie.

Post Ranch Inn is set in the heart of Big Sur, 1,200 feet above the Pacific Ocean and a 26-mile drive south of Carmel, with jaw-dropping views over one of the world's most dramatic and beautiful coastlines.

Bucket list: California's breath-taking Big Sur coastal drive has long been regarded as one of the essential bucket-list trips for many travellers

Yes-Sur-ee: High above the redwood forests, winding roads and spectacular vistas lies an exclusive cliff-top hotel so luxurious it offers a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience that feels as though it has come straight out of a movie

California's famed Highway 1 re-opened in October  at an estimated cost of $24 million - after landslides the previous winter effectively split the Big Sur in half by closing a segment of the route for eight months.

Now Post Ranch Inn is easily accessible by road once again and just a 45-minute drive from the picturesque coastal town of Monterey.

Offering absolute privacy, peace and tranquility, the hotel's modern, spacious and bright 39 suites are nothing short of architectural wonders.

And relax! Post Ranch Inn is set in the heart of Big Sur, 1,200 feet above the Pacific Ocean and a 26-mile drive south of Carmel, with jaw-dropping views over one of the world's most dramatic and beautiful coastlines

Breathtaking: California's famed Highway 1 re-opened in October  at an estimated cost of $24 million - after landslides the previous winter effectively split the Big Sur in half by closing a segment of the route for eight months

Featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, a roaring fire and our very own sea-view hot tub, our room for the night - the Lower Pacific Suite - was simply unforgettable.

With ultimate relaxation in mind, none of the rooms feature televisions or even alarm clocks. But an early morning call wasn't needed, with nature doing the job for us thanks to a stunning sunrise filtering in to provide a wonderful wake up from our elevated bed.

What the suite didn't offer by way of TV or alarm clock, it more than made up for in other features, including a free (yes, free!) mini-bar stocked with delicious local cheese and wine, a Jacuzzi bathtub with views of the ocean and cosy, yet modern, interior design.

Room with a view: Offering absolute privacy, peace and tranquility, the hotel's modern, spacious and bright 39 suites are nothing short of architectural wonders

Heaven: Featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, a roaring fire and our very own sea-view hot tub, Louise's room for the night - the the Lower Pacific Suite - was simply unforgettable

Idyllic: With ultimate relaxation in mind, none of the rooms feature televisions or even alarm clocks - but an early morning call wasn't needed, with nature doing the job for Louise thanks to a stunning sunrise filtering in to provide a wonderful wake up

In addition to our very own private hot tub outside on our secluded deck, the resort offers two infinity pools with breathtaking panoramic views, as well as a lap pool for the more dedicated swimmer.

If gazing out at the incredible view isnt enough to keep you occupied, the hotel offers a plethora of complimentary daily activities, with a focus on health and wellness.

Daily yoga takes place each morning with all levels of experience welcome, guided nature walks on the property help guests discover the hidden beauty around every corner at the Post Ranch Inn, while stargazing sessions offer amateur astronomers ideal conditions to stare at planets and stars to their heart's desire.

If you go down to the woods today: The suite featured a free (yes, free!) mini-bar stocked with delicious local cheese and wine, a Jacuzzi bathtub with views of the ocean and cosy, yet modern, interior design

Making a splash: The resort offers two infinity pools with breathtaking panoramic views, as well as a lap pool for the more dedicated swimmer

What a view! If gazing out at the incredible view isnt enough to keep you occupied, the hotel offers a plethora of complimentary daily activities, with a focus on health and wellness

If exploring the acres and acres of land on offer by foot doesn't suit your fancy, the hotel even provides use of eco-friendly Lexus Hybrid vehicles for those keen to go a little further afield.

In addition to the daily activities designed to take advantage of the spectacular setting of the resort, a fully-equipped fitness centre, a luxurious spa offering a wealth of rejuvenating treatments and a well-stocked library are all on-site.

Despite the plethora of activities on offer, the only real reason to leave your room is to visit the incredible fine dining Sierra Mar restaurant on-site, offering a sumptuous daily tasting menu made up of local produce and, of course, a floor-to-ceiling view of the ocean.

Post Ranch Inn offers the perfect break for those in need of romance and tranquility in a setting so picture-perfect it takes your breath away. An experience of a lifetime, you'll leave feeling utterly spoilt.

A bite to eat: Despite the plethora of activities on offer, the only real reason to leave your room is to visit the incredible fine dining Sierra Mar restaurant on-site

Al fresco dining: The restaurant offers a sumptuous daily tasting menu made up of local produce and, of course, a floor-to-ceiling view of the ocean

Paradise: Post Ranch Inn offers the perfect break for those in need of romance and tranquility in a setting so picture-perfect it takes your breath away. An experience of a lifetime, you'll leave feeling utterly spoilt
In December 2018 life in London is going to become a lot zippier  thanks to the opening of the Elizabeth line.

New trains will cross the capital, from Heathrow Airport in the west to Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east, with Tube journey times slashed by up to 80 per cent in some cases.

For example the fastest journey from Paddington to Tottenham Court Road - using the Circle Line to Euston Square then walking - currently takes 20 minutes, but on the Elizabeth line this will take just four. And to Bond Street just three, compared to the current quickest, which is 15.

And from the same station to Stratford the journey time comes down from 31 minutes to 18, while it will take just 10 minutes to reach Liverpool Street from the mainline station hub and 17 to get to Canary Wharf.

Another huge reduction will be from Canary Wharf to Liverpool Street. At the moment it takes 21 minutes, but the swish new Elizabeth line trains will get there in six.

Passengers jumping on a train at Abbeywood, which is at the end of the south-eastern section, will be able to get to Heathrow Airport 42 minutes quicker than they can at the moment.

It currently takes 93 minutes.

Passengers there will also see a 20-minute reduction in journey times to Canary Wharf and a 19-minute reduction for trips to Bond Street, which is currently 44 minutes.

Workers at Canary Wharf jetting off from Heathrow will get an extra 16 minutes in duty free, because journey times to the airport will drop from 55 minutes to 39.

And when the line is operational it will only take eight minutes as opposed to the current 25 to get from Farringdon to Canary Wharf, while Farringdon to Bond Street will only take four minutes as opposed to the current 18 minutes.

Its not all positive though.

If you live in Shenfield the Elizabeth line doesnt offer any reductions in journey times to Paddington, Bond Street or Canary Wharf  though you will be able to reach Heathrow 60 seconds faster.
Some advice for the angry mob Sometimes, I get embarrassed for people who show up to speak at city council or township board meetings. Im talking...

Preparing teens for their futures with soft skills Businesses of every size and industry continue to identify labor shortages as a top challenge  across the country and...
Advertisement

A hotel bedroom being large is normally a selling point.

But travellers are flocking to one hotel in Shoubak, Jordan, precisely because its one and only room is absolutely tiny. So diminutive, in fact, that its owner, Mohammed Al-Malahim, claims that it's the smallest hotel in the world. Officially it's actually the Eh'hausl hotel in Amberg, Germany - which measures just 173 square feet - but Al-Malahim is certainly right in pointing out that his accommodation is very little.

It's also extremely quirky, because the hotel is in fact a stripped-out old Volkswagen Beetle that rests on piles of stones.

Mohammed Al-Malahim claims that his VW Beetle, pictured, is the world's smallest hotel

U.S. tourists Stafford Newsome and Kaitlin Taft try out the hotel, which opened for business in 2011

Inside it's furnished with handmade embroidered sheets and pillows.

Guests pay around $75 (40 Jordanian dinars) to stay in the car, which opened its doors for business in 2011 along with a nearby cave that serves as the 'lobby'.

'I wanted to start a project that improves its situation and places it on the tourism map, because it truly overlooks some of the most beautiful scenery in the region,' the 64-year-old Jordanian told CNN.

Another notable tiny hotel is Hotel Central and Cafe in Copenhagen, Denmark, which has just one double room, plus a small bathroom that has a shower.

Guests pay around $75 (40 Jordanian dinars) to stay in the car, which is furnished with hand-embroidered sheets and pillows

Since it is a small space, the hotel says that families should not rent it out because there is not enough floor room for other beds.

Visitors get access to a stocked mini fridge in the room, TV, Wi-Fi and two bicycles to use around the city.

The Central Hotel and Cafe is located in the Vesterbro neighborhood of Denmark, which has recently transformed into a hip area with new bars and restaurants.

The entire building is one of the smallest in the city and the hotel costs 350 ($330/280 euros) per night.

'I wanted to start a project that improves its situation and places it on the tourism map, because it truly overlooks some of the most beautiful scenery in the region,' Al-Malahim told CNN

Al-Malahim prepares breakfast for his guests in a cave, which serves as the lobby

Fuelling up: Newsome and Taft tuck into a hearty traditional breakfast next to Al-Malahim

Al-Malahim offers a souvenir to his guests. Officially the world's smallest hotel is the Eh'hausl hotel in Amberg, Germany
Christoph Waltz has attacked the idea of casting an actress in the role of James Bond.

'Why? Because [Italian feminist journalist] Oriana Fallaci said so? Come on. Have your own movie if you want,' the actor, 61, told Mr Porter.

'Why does it have to be James Bond? What would be her first name? Jemima? My answer is decidedly not.'

Scroll down for video

'What would be her first name? Jemima?' Christoph Waltz SLAMS the idea of a female James Bond... and describes Harvey Weinstein as 'intolerable' and Hollywood as 'corrupt'

The Austrian-German native was described by the magazine as 'playfully incensed' by the suggestion 'that in the post-Weinstein era a female Bond might have some merit'.

Of Harvey Weinstein himself, Waltz said: ' I don't think my contribution or opinion about intolerable behaviour is in any way required.'

He also elaborated on his climb to fame at the age of 53 - nonplussed that he wasn't a young star in Hollywood.

'Its not that these drugs arent available any more, but it takes about a day and a half to corrupt a kid on a movie set,' he remarked.

No thanks! The Austrian-German native was described by the magazine as 'playfully incensed' by the suggestion 'that in the post-Weinstein era a female Bond might have some merit'

Not for him: Christoph Waltz has attacked the idea of casting an actress in the role of James Bond. 'Why? Because [Italian feminist journalist] Oriana Fallaci said so? Come on. Have your own movie if you want,' the actor, 61, told Mr Porter

He went on to say, of the American language: 'Its gruesome. But there are some Americanisms that have such an efficiency of communication. Its proper English, just leaner.

'When you open a paper in England, you can almost hear the hot potatoes in their mouths.'

The Inglourious Basterds actor is known to give a frosty interview, but in fact opened up to the publication about his career - swerving matters away from his personal life.

His next movie is Sideways director Mr Alexander Paynes Downsizing, set for release this week.

Up next: He is next to be seen in Sideways director Mr Alexander Paynes Downsizing, set for release this week

Private: The Inglourious Basterds actor is known to give a frosty interview, but in fact opened up to the publication about his career - swerving matters away from his personal life

He has also been tipped to appear in the next James Bond film, having appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre (2015), the twenty-fourth Bond film.

He denies these rumours, however; yet denied he was involved in Spectre before it hit cinema screens too.

Read the full interview at www.mrporter.com.
She is no stranger to sharing her pride for her family on social media, recently posting a snap of her four children back together.

And Victoria Beckham continued to share family snaps on Wednesday, as she posted a picture of husband David, 42, and son Brooklyn, 18, on her Instagram stories.

The 43-year-old designer shared the snap of her 'handsome boys' rocking dapper matching suits as they attended her brother Christian's wedding at Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire.

Scroll down for video

Looking sharp: David and Brooklyn Beckham were suited and booted on Wednesday as Victoria shared a snap of her 'handsome boys' attending her brother's wedding on Instagram

Both David and Brooklyn looked as smart as ever in the matching three-piece ensembles, even sporting the same flowers pinned to the lapels.

David kept his blonde tresses slicked back out of the way, while Brooklyn showcased his new darker hairdo, and pair bore matching smiles to go with their sharp looks.

Victoria also shared a video from the wedding on her social media, showing her brother Christian and his new wife Emma enjoying their first dance together in a shot taken from above the dancefloor.

The former Spice Girl captioned the post: 'Congratulations @christianadams_79 @emma.strafford.'

Congrats! Victoria also shared a snap of the happy couple enjoying their first dance as husband and wife

Proud sis: Victoria was celebrating the wedding of her younger brother Christian's wedding, (the siblings pictured above with their sister Louise)

Bottom's up: Brooklyn enjoyed a drink with cousin Libby following the wedding ceremony

Brooklyn covered up his ever-growing array of tattoos, but had his brand new hairdo on full display after the aspiring photographer shared his new do with fans earlier this month.

The Beckhams were reunited earlier this week, when Brooklyn returned from studying photography in New York to spend Christmas with his loved ones in the UK.

Victoria shared a snap of all four of her children on social media, Brooklyn, Romeo, 15, Cruz, 12 and Harper, six, with the adorable caption: 'Im so happy!!! All my babies together!! @brooklynbeckham is home!! Xx Love u @romeobeckham @cruzbeckham #Harper kisses x'

New look: Brooklyn continued to showcase his new darker hairdo, which he revealed to fans earlier this month

Back together again: The former Spice Girl is over the moon to be reunited with Brooklyn, 18, on his return to London from the States for Christmas

Reunited! Victoria shared a snap of her four children back together on Instagram earlier this week

On an Instagram Story post captioned: 'Good morning!!!', the proud mother showed her youngest child playing the drums.

Victoria later showed Brooklyn holding a Mars Chocolate Advent Calendar: 'He's home!! Never too old for a chocolate calendar!! X'.

As the day wore on, she put up an Instagram Story post of three partly full wineglasses sitting on what appeared to be a stone-top kitchen island.

Beckham reveille: On an Instagram Story post captioned: 'Good morning!!!', the proud mother also showed her youngest child Harper playing the drums

Holiday treat! A bit afterward, Victoria showed Brooklyn holding a Mars Chocolate Advent Calendar: 'He's home!! Never too old for a chocolate calendar!! X'

Sitting near the glasses was a carafe of red wine and another Screaming Eagle bottle, with the brand clearly being a favourite in the Beckham household.

'Love u @davidbeckham @brooklynbeckham Time to celebrate X,' Victoria wrote.

After posting the photo of all her children on Saturday, Victoria also uploaded a snapshot of some arts and crafts she and her littlest had been working on with freelance illustrater Tatianna Alida.

Drawings of women were attached to a piece of paper with handwriting that said: 'Boys ARE MADE OF slugs & SNAils & puppy Dog tails Girls ARE MADE of Sugar & Spice & all tHINGS NICE'.

Drinks with the family! As the day wore on, she put up an Instagram Story post of three partly full wineglasses sitting on what appeared to be a stone-top kitchen island
Fear of Father Christmas is common in young children and many shopping malls are filled with tearful cries as festive parents take their children to meet the big red man.

And it appears Laura Csortan's daughter Layla Rose is no different.

The one-year-old erupted into a tearful tantrum when her 41-year-old mother took her to Santa's grotto.

'It wasn't pretty!' Laura Csortan's daughter Layla Rose erupts into a tearful tantrum as she meets Santa Clause for the first time

Sharing a picture of her holding the bawling bub to Instagram, the former Miss Universe Australia contestant seemed to take it in good spirits.

Seen with a comedic shocked expression on her face, Laura cradled Layla tightly to her hip while she cried and wriggled.

'Abort Mission!! We pre-booked and everything but when little Layla met Santa it wasn't pretty,' she wrote.

'Sooo this is the closest thing we've got to a Santa pic this year.'

Not a fan of the red man: Layla Rose may be excited for Christmas but she sure didn't like Santa

Many of the model's 23,000 followers left comments on the post, with almost all sharing their own stories of Santa meetings gone awry.

Channel 7's Sydney Weekend presenter Lizzy Lovette wrote: 'Oh no! Same as Ed!!! He can't stand Santa!!! Don't blame them - a big old man in a suit - a bit scary!!!'

Meanwhile, Sea FM radio host Marea Lambert-Barker commented: 'awwww dont worry honey....Matty had a melt down too when he saw Santa.'

Solo parenting: Former pageant winner Laura sent the rumour mill into overdrive when she announced she was pregnant and refused to publicly announce the paternity of her child

Former pageant winner Laura sent the rumour mill into overdrive last year when she announced she was pregnant and refused to publicly announce the paternity of her child.

She is currently raising the bub on her own.

'Several years ago I would never have thought I would be a single mother,' she told Who magazine earlier this year.

'Things don't often work out the way you think they will... So you've just got to go with the flow and do the best you can' Laura said she would never have thought she would be a single mum

'But things don't often work out the way you think they will... So you've just got to go with the flow and do the best you can.'

The model mum added that the most difficult aspect can be feeling isolated.

'I can deal with the lack of sleep and the sore boobs, but the loneliness is the hardest,' she said.

'[But] what far outweighs that is the love you will feel for this little human.'
She's set to return to television screens in 2018 with the recently-announced revival of her hit reality television show Jersey Shore.

But Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi was surprised to see a slew of friends and family during her 30th birthday celebration at STK in New York on Saturday night, according to US Weekly.

The social media starlet looked gorgeous wearing a short crushed velvet black dress for the 'Gatsby-themed' event where former cast members and Real Housewives of New Jersey stars danced the night away.

Scroll down for video

Birthday girl: Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi was surprised to see a slew of friends and family during her 30th birthday celebration at STK in New York on Saturday night, according to US Weekly

Snooki was in total shock to see a host of pals at the star-studded bash, and admitted, 'I did not know about the surprises!'

Shocked by the guest list in attendance, she continued, 'My friends from high school and parents showed up!'

The petite reality television star looked adorable in a black velvet dress lined with lace, which featured a high slit to show off her tanned and toned legs.

Surprise: Snooki looked gorgeous in a velvet black dress for the 'Gatsby-themed' event where former cast members and Real Housewives of New Jersey stars danced the night away

A silver choker with dangling diamonds was perfectly positioned to show off her ample assets.

Her ombre-colored hair was worn in loose waves and she carried a white-and-black purse with a long silver chain across her chest.

Guests wined and dined throughout the evening at the steakhouse, with the celebration featuring a geometrical cake by Carlo's Bakery and a fun photo booth.

Good times: Guests wined and dined throughout the evening at the steakhouse, with the celebration featuring a geometrical cake by Carlo's Bakery and a fun photo booth

Lovely ladies: Deena Cortese opted for a glittering mini dress while Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice covered up with a furry blue coat and Melissa Gorga donned black thigh high boots

Real Housewives of New Jersey stars Melissa and Joe Gorga and Teresa Giudice got in on the action, both donning black outfits, with Teresa opting to cover up with a fluffy blue coat.

Newlywed Deena Cortese donned a tight black and gold mini dress as she showered her friend with love and selfies.

The stunning floral arrangements were provided by Rose of Sharon Florist with the venue covered in festive balloons from the Balloon Saloon.

The married mother-of-two announced her return to television screens in November with the Jersey Shore Family Vacation.

All black everything: Melissa Gorga posed alongside the birthday girl in a tight black dress
She's fuelled rumours she's dating Bachelor In Paradise co-star Jarrod Woodgate, having been pictured spending time together off-set.

And Keira Maguire looked to be pulling all the stops to impress the vineyard manager in a short clip shared to her Instagram Story on Thursday.

The 30-year-old shared a close-up of herself getting a facial, drawing attention to what appeared to be heavy coating of makeup, as well as bold brows, and extra-long lashes.

What's the point? Bachelor In Paradise star Keira Maguire appears to wear heavy makeup for a FACIAL

Raising one arm over her face to capture the best angle, the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star had her blonde locks held back with a white band.

A beautician was seen applying a clear gel to her forehead to exfoliate and improve the texture of one's skin.

It appeared Keira had kept her makeup on, including a coating of foundation, filled-in brows and a set of very full lashes.

Glam: A beautician was seen applying a clear gel to the reality star's forehead, to exfoliate and improve the texture of her skin. It appeared Keira had kept her makeup on, including a coating of foundation, filled-in brows and a set of very full lashes

Loved-up? Meanwhile on Wednesday, the red carpet regular seem to confirm that she's dating Bachelor In Paradise co-star Jarrod Woodgate. Sharing a paparazzi image of herself during her time in Melbourne to see him, Keira wrote: 'When BAE isn't answering'

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the red carpet regular seemed to confirm that she's dating Bachelor In Paradise co-star Jarrod Woodgate.

Sharing a paparazzi image of herself during her time in Melbourne to see him, Keira wrote: 'When BAE isn't answering.'

Keira, who appeared as the Bachelor 'villain' vying for Richie Strahan's heart, seems to have been jetting back and forth to Melbourne since filming on Bachelor In Paradise wrapped.

Ready to go public? Keira seems to have been jetting back and forth to Melbourne since filming on Bachelor In Paradise wrapped. This week, the blonde starlet was seen pulling up outside Jarrod's (pictured) house in a rented Maserati, before heading to lunch with a female pal

Earlier this month, the blonde starlet was seen pulling up outside Jarrod's house in a rented Maserati before heading to lunch with a female pal.

After lunch the pair returned to Jarrod's house, but Keira stayed inside her car.

Jarrod, who was unceremoniously dumped by Sophie Monk on this year's season of The Bachelorette, was seen crouching down and talking to the two girls through the window.

Keira and Jarrod are back in Australia after filming Bachelor In Paradise in Fiji.

Emotional viewing: Jarrod was unceremoniously dumped by Sophie Monk on this year's season of The Bachelorette

While on the island, they were seen on numerous dates and caught kissing during romantic embraces.

On one occasion they were also seen checking into a hotel together.

According to Woman's Day, Jarrod and Keira are the real deal, with an insider having alleged: 'Jarrod is completely smitten and thinks Keira is The One.'
Amber Davies has admitted she feels 'upset, anxious and angry' after splitting from Love Island boyfriend Kem Cetinay.

The Welsh beauty and Essex hairdresser, who won the ITV2 dating show in July, shocked fans by ending their five-month relationship earlier this month.

The 21-year-old has admitted the split left her struggling to cope with her nerves, prompting her to launch a fitness project to take her mind off the heartache.

Scroll down for video

Inner turmoil: Amber Davies has admitted she feels 'upset, anxious and angry' after splitting from Love Island boyfriend Kem Cetinay

'After having a break up I'm going through all the normal things - I get upset, anxious, angry and I get nervous,' Amber confessed. 'All the things that any normal girl would go through.'

The brunette beauty explained that she is creating a fitness website called Strong Not Skinny in a bid to help her through the break-up.

'I thought the best way to get my mind off things and concentrate on myself is to start working out and I couldn't believe how unfit I was,' she said in her Instagram story.

'And then we came up with the idea of helping other girls going through break ups or wanting to get fit or lose weight  something that's not too hard.'

New project: The 21-year-old has admitted the split left her struggling to cope with her nerves, prompting her to launch a fitness project to take her mind off the heartache (pictured, a teaser from her exercise shoot)

It's over: The Welsh beauty and Essex hairdresser, who won the ITV2 dating show in July, shocked fans by ending their five-month relationship earlier this month

Amber also revealed she has 'had enough' of being 'skinny-shamed' and targeted over her weight by vile online bullies.

'Since being in the public eye, and I think I speak for a lot of girls in the media, we get a lot of nasty comments,' she said.

'We get fat shamed and skinny shamed and I've just had enough. There is a lot of girl power too but this project I'm quite passionate about.'

The reality star is following in the likes of fellow Love Islanders Gabby Allen and Kady McDermott with her exercise project.

Heartache: 'After having a break up I'm going through all the normal things - I get upset, anxious, angry and I get nervous,' Amber confessed

Getting fit: The brunette beauty explained that she is creating a fitness website called Strong Not Skinny in a bid to help her through the break-up

She shared a clip on Instagram from a photoshoot, posing in a neon yellow crop top and skimpy gym shorts as a make-up artist adjusts her hair.

Davies wrote in the caption: 'Skinny Shamers back at it again. And now we've got something to hit back with.'

Amber and Kem announced they had parted ways earlier this month, revealing: 'With sadness, we've decided to separate.

'We fell in love in the villa and want to thank all the fans of the show for supporting us. Our schedules made it difficult. We'll remain good friends.'

Moving on: 'I thought the best way to get my mind off things and concentrate on myself is to start working out and I couldn't believe how unfit I was,' she said in her Instagram story

Inspiring others: She added: 'And then we came up with the idea of helping other girls going through break ups or wanting to get fit or lose weight  something that's not too hard'

The former flames have kept a respectable silence since the split, with both parties keeping a low profile as they try to move on.

Amber recently confessed they have maintained a silence since the break-up, in her column for New magazine.

She wrote: 'Kem and I still haven't spoken, but it's getting easier because people aren't talking about it as much.'

Not having it: Amber also revealed she has 'had enough' of being 'skinny-shamed' and targeted over her weight by vile online bullies (pictured last week)

Hitting back: 'Since being in the public eye, and I think I speak for a lot of girls in the media, we get a lot of nasty comments,' she said. 'We get fat shamed and skinny shamed and I've just had enough'

Amber also revealed she's treating herself to a a 70,000 Range Rover as a Christmas present while she tries to move on from the shocking split.

Davies added that she will reunite with her Love Island pals Montana Brown and Georgia Harrison to party at New Year's.

'Mon, Georgia and I have decided to ring in the New Year in Manchester,' she said.

'I've never been out there before and we've all been saying how we always go out in London and Essex, so it'll be something different!'

Sad: Amber and Kem announced their split earlier this month, revealing: 'With sadness, we've decided to separate. We fell in love in the villa and want to thank all the fans of the show for supporting us. Our schedules made it difficult. We'll remain good friends'

Former flames: Amber recently confessed they have maintained a silence since the break-up as they both try to move on
She's been working hard at the gym to hone her post baby body in recent months.

And Lara Worthington (nee Bingle), seems to be thrilled with the results, having treated her new-and-improved self to a DIY photo-shoot during a day at the beach in Hawaii last month.

Sitting on the sand in a black one-piece swimsuit, the 30-year-old Instagram model was spotted pouting towards her camera phone as she made the most of the idyllic tropical backdrop.

But first, let me take a selfie! Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) treated herself to a DIY photo-shoot during a day at the beach in Hawaii last month

After capturing her best angles, Lara peered down at her screen to gaze upon her handiwork.

Once she was satisfied by the calibre of the snaps, Lara was ready to hit the water splash in the tide.

Prancing into the tide, Lara flashed her slender pins and a hint of cleavage in her strapless swimwear, which featured a racy cut-out neckline that revealed a glimpse at her bronzed decolletage.

Say cheese! Sitting on the sand in a black one-piece swimsuit, the 30-year-old Instagram model was spotted pouting towards her camera phone as she made the most of the idyllic tropical backdrop

All in a day's work! Once she was satisfied by the calibre of the snaps, Lara was ready to hit the water splash in the tide

It shows! Lara has been working hard at the gym to hone her post-body figure in recent months

Fun in the sun! Prancing into the tide, Lara flashed her slender pins and a hint of cleavage in her strapless swimwear

Sultry: Her black swimsuit featured a racy cut-out neckline that revealed a glimpse at her bronzed decolletage

Well she is a beauty guru after all! The bronzed starlet revealed her flawless visage by slicking her flaxen locks into a pony-tail

The bronzed starlet revealed her flawless visage by slicking her flaxen locks into a pony-tail, while accessorising her ensemble with an elegant diamond ring.

Later, she was seen emerging from the water and wrapping herself in a blue beach towel.

Scooping up her phone from the sand, Lara once again peered down at her phone- perhaps to contemplate whether she was happy with the selfies she had taken earlier.

Bathing beauty: Later, she was seen emerging from the water and wrapping herself in a blue beach towel

Nothing wrong with a second glance! Scooping up her phone from the sand, Lara once again peered down at her phone- perhaps to contemplate whether she was happy with the selfies she had taken earlier

It comes days after Lara revealed the workout secrets behind her bikini body, telling The Grace Tales that she recently upped the ante when it comes to her gym regimen.

'I have started back with my trainer after a very long hiatus,' she said.

'My routine is all mat work. Lots of sit ups and leg lifts at high repetition at a low weight, no more than five kilos,' she added.

'I have started back with my trainer after a very long hiatus': It comes days after Lara revealed the workout secrets behind her bikini body, telling The Grace Tales that she recently upped the ante when it comes to her gym regimen

'I have two boys under two': The former bikini model has previously said that she didn't work out and instead kept fit by looking after her two sons - two-year-old Rocket Zot and Racer, one

In June, the former bikini model has previously said that she didn't work out and instead kept fit by looking after her two sons - two-year-old Rocket Zot and Racer, one.

'I have two boys under two,' she told the Sun Herald at the time.

Forgot your sunglasses? Lara was spotted squinting into the sun as she departed the beach

'I work out when I can, but I'd like to work out more.'

Lara is married to Australian actor Sam Worthington and is now based in New York City.

The couple secretly tied the knot in 2014.

Loved-up: Lara is married to Australian actor Sam Worthington and is now based in New York City

'Meeting Sam is when things really changed for me': Back in July, Lara could not help but gush of her husband, in an interview with Elle Australia

Back in July, Lara could not help but gush of her husband, in an interview with Elle Australia.

Admitting the actor made her feel more comfortable than anyone else, she said: 'Meeting Sam is when things really changed for me. Until then, I never really trusted anyone entirely.

'When I was younger, I think maybe I'd try to impress a person by adapting to their ways, but with Sam, from the get-go, I was just myself.'
Joaquin Phoenix stayed focus on Wednesday while working up a sweat during karate class in Los Angeles.

The 43-year-old actor showed good form while practicing strikes and kicks in a white karategi with brown belt.

Joaquin had his brown hair swept back and sported a thick salt-and-pepper beard as he worked out with an intense look on his face.

Scroll down for video

Karate class: Joaquin Phoenix was spotted working up a sweat on Wednesday at karate class in Los Angeles

The actor recently was seen portraying Jesus in a new trailer for the upcoming biopic Mary Magdalene.

Joaquin's real-life girlfriend Rooney Mara, 32, stars opposite him in the title role.

The trailer followed the outcast young woman as she searched for a new way of living.

Mary defied her family to join a new social movement led by the charismatic Jesus Of Nazareth.

Kicking it: The 43-year-old actor practiced kicking

Good form: Joaquin showed good form while practicing his karate moves

Mary Magdalene will be released in the UK on March 16 and the US on March 30 to coincide with Easter.

Joaquin and Rooney also starred together in the 2013 sci-fi drama her.

Their romance reportedly started last year while they were filming Mary Magdalene.

Film festival: The three-time Oscar nominee, shown in May in France, stars in Mary Magdalene opposite girlfriend Rooney Mara in the title role

They took their relationship public in May when they stepped out as a couple at the Cannes Film Festival.

Joaquin won rave reviews at the French film festival for his upcoming thriller You Were Never Really Here and took home the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

The drama directed by Lynne Ramsay and also starring Ekaterina Samsonov is scheduled for release on April 6, 2018 in the US.
Amy Smart had her hands full Wednesday - in a good way.

The 41-year-old California native was snapped in Westlake Village, California, in the greater Los Angeles area, grabbing a cake from the ice creamery Baskin Robbins.

The Varsity Blues star - who recently made headlines defending her husband, HGTV star Carter Oosterhouse, amid sexual harassment claims - was a barefaced beauty as she went with minimal makeup as she picked up the enormous cake.

Her husband, Oosterhouse, was also seen Wednesday at a market in Malibu for the first time since the allegations were made public, wearing a frayed grey Henley shirt with short sleeves, with blue shorts and sandals, sporting stubble.

Scroll below for video

Sweet stop: Amy Smart, 41, was snapped in Westlake Village, California, in the greater Los Angeles area grabbing a cake from the ice creamery Baskin Robbins

She wore a grey vest over a long-sleeved black top with black leggings with patterns around the lower leg area, rounding things out with rust brown moccasin boots. She had a large grey leather purse clinging from a strap around her shoulder.

On Saturday, Smart posted a detailed message to Instagram defending Oosterhouse after makeup artist Kailey Kaminsky told The Hollywood Reporter that he'd coerced her into performing oral sex on him when they worked together nine years ago. Smart posted the message - which reinforced her husband's claim that the relationship was a consensual one - along with a shot of herself posed with Oosterhouse and their 11-month-old daughter, Flora.

The Just Friends performer doubled down on Oosterhouse's claim that his sexual interactions with Kaminsky were '100 [percent] mutual and consensual.'

Winter wonderland: The actress was bundled up on the chilly day in Southern California

Barefaced beauty: The star went with minimal makeup as she stepped out for chores

She wrote, 'When you are in a CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIP, then you need to take responsibility for engaging in that and not play victim.'

Smart said 'there are plenty of relationships' she would have 'different choices about' in hindsight, but she'll live with the decisions she made at the time, for better or worse.

'We need to take responsibility,' she wrote, 'and learn from our mistakes and choices.'

Out and about: Oosterhouse was seen Wednesday at a market in Malibu for the first time since the allegations were made public

Got his hands full: The TV personality wore a frayed grey Henley shirt with short sleeves, with blue shorts and sandals, sporting stubble

Stand by your man: Amy posted a detailed message to Instagram on Saturday defending her spouse, HGTV's Carter Oosterhouse, after a makeup artist accused him of past sexual misconduct. The couple posed with their daughter Flora

Breaking her silence: Kailey Kaminsky (pictured) says she was pressured by Oosterhouse into giving him oral sex while working as a makeup artist on his show Carter Can

In defense: Oosterhouse says his relationship with Kaminsky was consensual, and the only intimate relationship he's had with a crew member in his professional career. He was pictured last year in Burbank

Smart said that while the exposure of powerful men accused of sexual harassment and misconduct is 'vital and important' to the culture, the story about Oosterhouse 'is now taking it too far and boundaries are being crossed.

'The article is very damaging and cruel to one of the most kindest, loving, non-aggressive men I have the privilege of knowing,' Smart wrote, 'and I am so sorry for these salacious words being thrown around, they are extremely hurtful.'

Amy, who's been seen this year in films such as The Keeping Hours and Love at First Glance, called out journalists reporting on the ongoing spate of sexual harassment and misconduct scandals aimed at prominent men.

'This type of reporting needs to stop, its so damaging for personal lives and careers and just not fair,' Smart wrote. 'Enough is enough, this is a plea to the writers, outlets and media  [more] due diligence needs to be done before crafting headlines and stories.

'Have discernment when you tell a story and please consider the source and story before just printing anything to get readers and viewers.'

Issuing caution: Smart, pictured in October in LA, warned journalists not to report 'anything to get readers and viewers'

Happy couple: The duo, pictured in LA in September, married in 2011

Smart wasn't completely opposed to aspects of the ongoing #MeToo movement as she said that 'its so wonderful and needed to have women coming forward to break their silence,' and that 'a lot of the stories are horrific and need to be brought to light.'

She said that women need to realize how empowered they are, and 'learn ways to take care of ourselves so we dont find ourselves saying yes when we really need to say no.'

Kaminsky, who worked as a makeup artist on Oosterhouse's show, Carter Can, said she believed her employment would be in jeopardy if she did not acquiesce to his sexual requests.

Kaminsky, who identifies as lesbian, told THR she eventually caved into his requests after his incessant propositioning, adding, 'At that point I was a nervous wreck.

'I was so worn down from his advances, so I did: that day, on that occasion. It was the first time. Then thereafter it was most every time we would shoot -10 to 15 times he put me in this position.'

Warm words: Smart called her husband 'the most kindest, loving, non-aggressive [man she's had] the privilege of knowing.' The tandem was snapped in LA in September

Oosterhouse said that the relationship was consensual.

He told THR in a statement: 'I had an intimate relationship with Kailey 9 years ago and it was 100% mutual and consensual. In no way did I ever feel, nor was it ever indicated to me, that Kailey was uncomfortable during our intimate relationship. I would have never done anything that I was not sure was mutually agreeable.

'The reality is that I knew it was consensual because she initiated it the first time and many of the 15 or so times we had relations thereafter. We were together outside of work and I considered her a friend.'

He continued: 'And as for the fact that she identifies as a lesbian - I didn't know that -all I knew was that she was in a sexual relationship with another guy who worked on the show.

'It's upsetting that she now feels this way, I only wish her the best and truly hope that she can move forward,' Oosterhouse's statement concluded.

Retort: Amy said of her husband's accuser, 'When you are in a CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIP, then you need to take responsibility for engaging in that and not play victim.' The two were snapped last year in Idaho

Throwback: Smart co-starred in 1999's Varsity Blues with actor James Van Der Beek, who opened up in October on Twitter about being sexually harassed as a young man in show business

Kaminsky described the first alleged incident where she gave in, and says after that it became a regular request by Oosterhouse.

They were in Los Angeles in a vehicle together, en route to a project site.

She said, 'He pulled off the road and said, ''Do you enjoy your job?'' I said I did and in fact would like to work more, handling more of his personal appearances outside the show. He said, ''Well, I can help you with that. But you need to do something for me.'''

That is when the make-up artist said she believed her job was on the line. She said after that, the asks would often take the form of non-verbal cues while they were alone on the job.

'It was eye contact; he would look at me and look down,' she said, adding the alleged exchange was not reciprocal and the interactions became increasingly degrading as they continued.

Kaminsky claims 'when he would assault me, he insisted on finishing on my face - every time - knowing that I had to go back out and work. I asked him about that. He said, 'It's just what I wanted to do.''

Oosterhouse told the publication he had never been intimate with any crew or executives in his professional career, aside from Kaminsky.

She adds that after the alleged incidents she went into a depression for which she was hospitalized for. Kaminsky says she's no longer a professional makeup artist.

She adds: 'He took away the joy that I got from doing makeup,' she says. 'I just had no confidence.'
She's a bona fide jet setter.

And Heidi Klum was spotted arriving back to Los Angeles on Wednesday covered up in layers at LAX.

The 44-year-old stunner wasn't going to let a chill in the air affect her as she rocked an eclectic ensemble sure to keep her warm during this holiday season.

Layers: Heidi Klum, 44, was spotted covered up in layers arriving at LAX on Wednesday

The Victoria's Secret Angel alum looked fashion forward in the grey Adidas sweatshirt dress.

Her sporty black and white leggings gave a hint at her gorgeous gams as they were mostly covered by the baggy sweatshirt dress.

The puffy satin navy jacket belied her bikini-ready physique as it enveloped most of her body.

Daring: The Victoria's Secret Angel alum looked fashion forward in the grey Adidas sweatshirt dress.

Leggy: Her sporty black and white leggings gave a hint at her gorgeous gams as they were mostly covered by the baggy sweatshirt dress

With a nod to in vogue athleisure wear, the German-born beauty branded a pair of Adidas high tops.

Throwing caution to the wind, the Project Runway host went virtually makeup free with just a dab of peach lip.

Her trademark sandy blonde tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded over her petite shoulders.

Fly girl: The puffy satin navy jacket belied her bikini-ready physique as it enveloped most of her body

She carried a luxury quilted handbag and covered her youthful face with a pair of retro style sunshades.

The outing comes after Heidi stole the show last week as she headed to the star-studded Cirque du Soleil premier of Luzia in Los Angeles.

Ever the goddess of beauty, she flashed her toned legs in a velvet kimono for the event at the Dodger Stadium.
She's been the subject of controversy in the past over allegations she 'airbrushes' her Insta-perfect social media photos.

And Natasha Oakley faced further criticism this week after posting an Instagram photo of her younger half-sister Sophia, alongside the caption 'Sunday crush'.

Several of Natasha's followers took to the comments section of her A Bikini A Day page to debate whether it was appropriate to share such an image of a 16-year-old.

Scroll down for video

Controversy: Natasha Oakley faced criticism after posting an Instagram photo (not pictured) of her younger half-sister Sophia, 16, (left) in a bikini alongside the caption 'Sunday Crush'

In the photo, Sophia Vantuno is shown sitting on a lounger at a beach destination.

It appears the image was promoting Monday Swimwear, the bikini range founded by Natasha and her business partner Devin Brugman.

The caption read, 'Sunday crush,' alongside the emoji with love heart eyes.

Insta-famous: It appeared the image of Sophia was promoting Monday Swimwear, the bikini range founded by Natasha and her business partner Devin Brugman (left)

'It's not right': Several of Natasha's followers took to the comments section of her A Bikini A Day page to debate whether it was appropriate to share such an image of a 16-year-old girl

Before long, Natasha's followers were divided over the decision to publish the picture of Sophia.

While some claimed the image was 'gorgeous' and 'beautiful', others considered the photo and caption inappropriate.

One comment stated: 'I really don't think you should be posting this type of photo of a 16-year-old.'

Another read: 'Love you girls but it's not right posting pics of Tash's 16-year-old sister.'

The business of bikinis: Born in Sydney, Natasha moved to America and founded the popular swimwear blog A Bikini A Day with her friend Devin in 2012

Daily Mail Australia approached Natasha for a statement on Thursday afternoon.

By Friday morning, several negative Instagram comments had been deleted from Sophia's photo.

Born in Sydney, Natasha moved to America and founded the popular blog A Bikini A Day with her friend Devin in 2012.

Social media sensations: The website helped launch Natasha and Devin's careers as 'online influencers', and they now boast a combined Instagram following of 3.2million

The website helped launch Natasha and Devin's careers as 'online influencers', and they now boast a combined Instagram following of 3.2million.

In 2014, the entrepreneurs launched their own bikini line Monday Swimwear, which they frequently promote on their social media channels.

Besides her own business interests, Natasha has also collaborated with brands such as Bonds and St Tropez Tan.
The Australian actor was recently praised for his 2016 directorial comeback with Hackshaw Ridge and has a string of new roles lined up for 2018.

But 2017 hasn't been kind to Mel Gibson in terms of real estate, with the veteran performer losing a whopping $2.28 million (US $1.751 million) in property sales.

According to Nine Honey Home, his bad luck began when he sold his California Sherman Oaks house for $391,000 less than what he originally paid.

Going, going, gone! Mel Gibson lost $2.28 MILLION in lavish property sales this year as he continues to struggle to attract buyers for two other estates in Malibu and Costa Rica

Mel has bought and sold numerous lavish abodes over his past 35 years in the spotlight, including homes in Australia, the US and exotic locations.

According to the LA Times, The Hacksaw Ridge director sold the property for $2.73 million despite initially putting it on the market for $3.35 million.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home was reportedly the home of his former partner Oksana Grigorieva, which he purchased in 2009 for $3.13 million.

According to Nine Honey Home, his bad luck began when he sold his California Sherman Oaks house (pictured) for $391,000 less than what he originally paid

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home was sold for $2.73 million and was reportedly the home of his former partner Oksana Grigorieva, which he purchased in 2009 for $3.13 million

The publication claimed he is also poised to sell his one-bedroom Los Angeles Agoura Hills cottage for $1.89 million less than he bought it for in 2007.

Rumour is the property will be sold for $912,000 after he originally purchased it for $2.8 million.

The property, built in 1921, is at the ended of a gated road and near the Holy Family Church, a private chapel affiliated with a Gibson-funded nonprofit foundation.

The publication claimed he is also poised to sell his one-bedroom Los Angeles Agoura Hills cottage, built in 1921, for $1.89 million less than he bought it for in 2007

STILL looking for a buyer: Since July, the Braveheart star's five-bedroom, medieval-inspired Malibu estate has been listed for $22 million, after purchasing the home for $15 million in 2008

With just two properties totaling a loss of $2.28 million this year, Mel has also been unsuccessful in seeking buyers for other homes on the market.

Since July, the Braveheart star's five-bedroom, medieval-inspired Malibu estate has been listed for $22 million, after purchasing the home for $15 million in 2008.

The mansion has ocean views and rustic decor, including handmade stone fireplaces, exposed wooden beams and chandeliers.

It also has a guest house, pool house and gym.

Wating for his buyer in shining armour? The medieval-inspired mansion has ocean views and rustic decor, including handmade stone fireplaces, exposed wooden beams and chandeliers

Jungle compound: The publication claimed he has been struggling to offload his Costa Rican jungle hideaway since 2014

Also owning homes in Fiji and Costa Rica, the publication claimed he has been struggling to offload his Costa Rican jungle hideaway since 2014.

The 500 acre jungle compound has three separate luxury villas, just 3km inland from a private white-sand beach coastline.

He originally tried to sell the property in 2010 for $57.09 million but there was little interest, putting it back on the market this year for $38.82 million.

It's uncertain what Mel originally paid for the estate.
On Wednesday, he announced that a 'period of unemployment' started on Thursday.

And Hugh Jackman couldn't have asked for a better first day as an unemployed man, choosing to spend it in the company of his family and loving wife.

At one point, Hugh, 49, took Deborra-Lee Furness, 62, aside for a private exchange that culminated in a very public kiss on the streets of Bondi.

The greatest family man! Hugh Jackman packs on the PDA with wife Deborra-Lee Furness during cute family outing in Bondi

Following a family breakfast, Hugh pulled his wife aside for a chat, while his daughter Ava, 12, kept herself occupied with her phone.

Looking stylish in figure-hugging activewear, Deborra-Lee touched her man's chest as the pair chatted away intently.

Moments later, The Greatest Showman star leaned in for an intimate kiss.

Quick chat! Following a family breakfast, Hugh pulled his wife aside for a chat

Lovers! Looking stylish in figure-hugging activewear, Deborra-Lee touched her man's chest as the pair chatted away intently

Sealed with a kiss! Moments later, The Greatest Showman star leaned in for an intimate kiss

Hugh then put his arm on Deborra-Lee's shoulder, uttering something else to her before returning to the group.

It was unclear from their exchange whether or not the couple were also temporarily saying goodbye, perhaps explaining the slightly pensive tone.

The Oscar winner's wardrobe matched his recent 'unemployment' announcement perfectly, the hunk looking relaxed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

Goodbye? It was unclear from their exchange whether or not the couple were also temporarily saying goodbye, perhaps explaining the slightly pensive tone

One more thing: Hugh then put his arm on Deborra-Lee's shoulder, uttering something else to her before returning to the group

Adding to his 'cool dad' look was the fact he wore his keys on a lanyard around his neck, a definite function-over-fashion move.

His eldest Oscar, 17, appeared to be one of the group set to depart, seen hugging his dad goodbye on the sidewalk.

Unemployed! After announcing his temporary 'unemployment' on Wednesday, Hugh chose to spend his first day as an unemployed man surrounded by friends and loved ones

See you soon! Pictured after a family breakfast, the actor stood on the sidewalk, seeing off some of the friends and family who'd joined him inside

Parent mode! The lovers were back in full parent mode following their chat, spotted laughing and joking with Ava (L)

Top of the crops! Ava wore a Coca-Cola crop top and denim cutoff shorts

The lovers were back in full parent mode following their chat, spotted laughing and joking with Ava.

Dressed in a Coca-Cola crop top and denim cutoff shorts, the teenager looked to be messing with her dad at one point.

Hugging her mother tightly on the footpath, she looked at Hugh with a less-than-happy stare, while Deborra-Lee couldn't help but chuckle.

Go away Dad! The teenager looked to be messing with her dad at one point

Farewell? His eldest Oscar, 17, appeared to be one of the group set to depart, seen hugging his dad goodbye on the sidewalk

On Thursday, the actor sparked retirement concerns, confirming his promo duties for The Greatest Showman will be followed by 'a period of unemployment.'

'I'm really proud of everything I've done,' he told TheFix on Wednesday, 'But I want to just take a little time to reflect, to just reassess and see where I head from here.'

While the 49-year-old certainly didn't announce any plans to retire, it's the first time the actor has sounded so murky on his future.

Retirement? On Thursday, the actor sparked retirement concerns, confirming his promo duties for The Greatest Showman will be followed by 'a period of unemployment'
He's the former Australian Idol winner, who's known to be quite the family man.

And ahead of Christmas Guy Sebastian, 36, was spotted with his wife Jules and their sons Hudson, five, and Archer, three, as they touched down in the star's hometown of Adelaide on Wednesday.

Despite recently upsetting his soon-to-be neighbours with renovations on his swanky mansion in Sydney's Maroubra the popstar cut a relaxed figure as he made his way through the airport.

I'll be home for Christmas! Guy Sebastian (pictured) and wife Jules were spotted arriving with their sons in his hometown Adelaide for the holidays ... after the pair upset new neighbours with 'nightmare' construction

Despite the holiday season, the former X-Factor judge didn't get out of dad duty, and he was tasked with collecting the family's luggage from the airport carousels.

The popstar opted for a low-key, comfortable all-black ensemble, pairing ankle-length pants with a distressed T-shirt.

He added a beanie and a pair of translucent sunglasses to complete the look and he held the hand of son Hudson's hand as they walked briskly through the terminal.



Homeward bound: Former Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian walked hand in hand with son Hudson, 5, through Adelaide airport, where the popstar will visit loved ones

Shy: The popstar's son Hudson held tightly to his musician dad Guy Sebastian

Hudson kept a tight grip to his dad's hand while in the other he held a soft animal-shaped toy.

Guy's wife Jules opted for a comfortable loose-fitting grey dress and sturdy black sandals, while she carried their youngest son Archer.

The youngster looked weary as he cuddled up close to his mother.

Busy: The family joined a number of other travellers making their way through Adelaide airport for the holiday break

Festive: Hudson Sebastian held on to a stuffed toy as he made his way through Adelaide airport with musician dad, Guy

The pair are looking forward to a break in the South Australian capital after it emerged they've upset their new neighbours with ongoing renovations to their new three storey Maroubra mansion.

Daily Mail Australia previously reported the pop star's next door neighbours, a middle aged couple who asked not to be named, were angered by the 'nightmare,' renovation, complaining of dust, noise and damage to an external wall.

The couple claimed the renovations have taken a significant toll on their physical health, with the neighbour allegeding his living room wall was damaged - terrifying his terminally-ill wife.

Travel time: Busy mum Jules held tightly on to their younger son, Archer, 3, as they walked through Adelaide airport

Flight time: The young mother wore a loose-fitting grey dress and sturdy black sandals for the trip to Adelaide

'It was dangerous, if it had been that much lower the (object) would have gone straight through,' he told Daily Mail Australia, pointing to cracks in the brick wall.

'My wife was sitting right inside that window watching television.'

He claimed his wife, who is suffering from serious respiratory problems and is now connected to oxygen 24 hours a day, was shaking when he returned that day.

A spokesperson from SafeWork NSW, which investigated the incident, confirmed the wall had been damaged.

Multi-tasking: Young mother Jules Sebastian checked her camera while walking through the South Australian capital's airport

Festive: Jules Sebastian smiled as she and son Archer, 3, walked through Adelaide airport on their way to visit relatives

'A residential property in Maroubra was damaged when a brick fell from a truck that was being loaded on an adjacent construction site,' the spokesperson said in a statement.

'SafeWork NSW issued a notice to the demolition contractor directing them to cease using the loading zone adjacent to the residential property and use an alternative loading zone.'

The neighbour also complained about dust from the construction - about one metre from his own home - blanketing his car every day and spread indoors.

'We're selling the house. The demolisher put that much dust through the place,' he said, walking through the empty house - devoid of all furniture and fittings.

Luggage: Popstar Guy Sebastian was on dad duty as he pushed the family's suitcases from the baggage carousel

When Daily Mail Australia visited the site this week, the street was closed off to the public and traffic was diverted as a crane slowly moved enormous slabs of concrete.

The neighbour claimed he had tried to speak directly to Sebastian to resolve issues - including his driveway regularly being blocked and construction going on into the night - but discussions had broken down between the pair.

'He's (Guy Sebastian) got a lot of money and we're only little people,' he said.

'He's not building a house, he's building a fortress.'

Submissions sent to Randwick City Council raised further complaints from the neighbour - who claimed his home and fence had been damaged by dust.

A spokesperson from the council said their Regulatory team had investigated the complaints but had no formal comment to make.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Guy Sebastian for comment.

Visiting: The popstar did the heavy lifting as he collected the family's suitcases

Mum duty: Stylist Jules held young son Archer's hand on the way out of the airport
She's the glamorous blonde beauty who shot to fame on the first season of The Bachelor.

And on Thursday, Anna Heinrich showed that she inherited her good looks from her mother after she posted a throwback photo of her 'old school mum' on Instagram.

'Old school mum,' wrote the lawyer-turned-blogger. 'Smokin' (and still is).'

'Old school mum!' Anna Heinrich posted a throwback photo of her mother to Instagram on Thursday

In the image, Anna's mum Judith poses in a pair of trendy sunglasses and chunky gold earrings.

It appears that Anna inherited Judith's sense of style, as she now runs her own fashion and lifestyle blog called Love Always Anna.

The 31-year-old was working as a lawyer when she appeared on The Bachelor.

Working hard! Legal eagle Anna now works as an Instagram influencer, socialite, and fashion blogger

However, these days she seems to be more focused on her new career as a socialite and Instagram influencer.

The glamorous reality star is currently busy with her new gig as an ambassador for Pantene hair care.

'I've partnered with Pantene to help educate women on the importance of UV protection for your hair,' she recently told Who magazine.

Claim to fame: The 31-year-old shot to fame on the first season of The Bachelor

She added: 'For a good year or two I would go out to Bankstown and get a weave put in.

'It was a different length and colour to my natural hair and well, looked hideous. Never again!'

Anna is currently planning to wed Tim Robards, whom she met on The Bachelor.
Christian Bale lead the way Wednesday as his family departed New York City after promoting his latest movie.

The 43-year-old actor wore an all-black ensemble while carrying his three-year-old son Joseph in a car seat as they caught a flight at JFK Airport.

He later pushed a stroller with Joseph in it while daughter Emmeline, 12, strode next to him as they arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

Departing flight: Christian Bale carried his son Joseph as the actor and his family departed JFK Airport on Wednesday in New York City

Christian's wife Sibi Blazic, 47, brought up the rear as they made their way through the concourse at LAX.

The Oscar-winning actor was in New York City promoting his new Western movie Hostiles.

He spoke about the movie at an AOL Build event Monday with co-stars Wes Studi and Rosamund Pike.

Christian in the movie plays Army Captain Joseph J. Blocker who agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief, played by Wes, and his family back to his tribal lands in 1892.

Back home: The actor pushed a stroller with son Joseph in it as his daughter Emmeline walked next to him

Longtime resident: The English actor has lived in the Los Angeles area since 1992

Security check: Christian and his family went through security together at JFK

Man in black: The Oscar-winning actor kept it simple in an all-black outfit

Rosamund portrays Rosalie Quaid, a suicidal widow who undertakes the harrowing and perilous journey after the murder of her family on the plains by Comanche Indians.

Christian also discussed the movie during an interview on CBS This Morning on Monday and described his character as a 'bigoted and hate-filled man'.

'It tells the story of America in many ways,' he said. 'It's raw, it's visceral, but that is American history. It's violent, but that is American history as well.'

Cute couple: Christian and wife Sibi attended a special screening of his new movie Hostiles on Monday in NYC

Western movie: Rosamund Pike joined co-star Christian as they promoted Hostiles on Monday during an AOL Build event at Build Studio in NYC

Coming soon: Rosamund and Christian are shown in a still from Hostiles that will be released on Friday

Hostiles opens on Friday in the US after premiering in September at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

Christian while promoting the Western also showed signs of his recent 40-pound weight gain to portray former US Vice President Dick Cheney.

He will play the 46th Vice President in the upcoming biopic Backseat directed by Adam Mckay, 49, that wrapped filming last week.

McKay also directed Christian in 2015's The Big Short, which was the first film he directed without comedy partner Will Ferrell in the cast.

Fan favorite: Christian stopped to sign autographs for fans after arriving at LAX

Taking time: The actor greeted fans before getting into a vehicle

Autograph seekers: Christian stopped to sign autographs for admirers at the airport
She's the beautiful mother-of-two, who often talks about the struggle to find some downtime in her busy lifestyle.

But Bachelor winner Snezana Markoski, 37, certainly didn't find it when she headed for a day at the beach on Thursday,

The glamorous reality star was forced to battle the wind while setting up a beach tent for her daughter and friends... with hilarious results.

The struggle is real! The Bachelor star Snezana Markoski (pictured) suffered HILARIOUS fail as she tries to set up a beach tent on a windy day... posting the results on Instagram on Thursday

In the humorous series of images posted to her Instagram story, the brunette beauty can be seen attempting to set up a beach shelter, only to wind up with a twisted canvas mess sitting on the sand.

Snez - dressed in a multi-coloured one piece swimsuit - was good-natured about the debacle, writing 'beach shelter FAIL!!!' under a picture of the unassembled tent.

The day ended well for the social media star, with Snez posting a final photo showing her daughter and friends sitting on the sand with a love heart drawn over the picture of them.

Recently, fitness fanatic Snez has been sharing images and videos of herself getting back into shape following the birth of her new daughter, Willow, who was born in October.

Epic fail: The former reality star laughed off the incident, posting a picture of the dishevelled tent with the caption, 'beach shelter FAIL!!!'

Earlier this month, her hunky partner Sam Wood took to praising his partner on social media as she recommenced her workouts, with fitness being a cornerstone of their lives.

'Being a mum is not a full time job its two and one of them is bloody nightshift!' he wrote on Instagram.

In the post, his point was perfectly illustrated by Snezana, who was seen holding a dumbbell in one hand, and pushing Willow's pram with the other.

Good ending: The social media star ended her Instagram Story with a picture of her daughter and friends enjoying a day at the beach

'I never asked Snez when she wanted to start exercising again after Willow was born. I waited for her to ask me,' Sam wrote.

'Getting in shape after a baby needs to be something that is purely driven (or not driven by you).'

He concluded: 'So much respect and admiration for my beautiful strong fiancee and all of the amazing Mums out there.'

Supportive: Fiancee Sam Wood has praised the new mother for her commitment to health and exercise following the birth of their child together

The couple met in early 2015 on Ten's popular reality show The Bachelor, and became engaged in December that year during a holiday to Tasmania.

While the pregnancy forced them to postpone their wedding plans, the pair have previously said they're content because they 'already feel married'.
She's the Bachelor babe who is developing a reputation for flaunting her bikini body.

And Simone Ormesher has taken to Instagram yet again to showcase her enviable physique to her legions of followers during a scorching beachside photo shoot.

On Thursday, the 25-year-old leisurely posed on a set of stairs leading down to Nobby Beach on the Gold Coast.

Worth it! Simone Ormesher has taken to Instagram yet again to showcase her enviable physique to her legions of followers

Going for a mismatched look, she wore white bikini boob tube top, teamed with a coral pink bikini bottom.

In another snap, the aspiring model dug deep and gave the camera her most glamorous pose by leaning back onto the railings with her arm on her forehead.

She captioned the post: 'Trying to contain myself and get a picture whilst the step, in reality was burning the sh** out of my ar**.'

The 25-year-old aspiring model dug deep and gave the camera her most glamorous pose by leaning back onto the railings with her arm on her forehead

Fans of the aspiring model were mesmerised with her revealing post, including one who commented: 'Absolutely gorgeous young lady.'

Meanwhile, others joked about her having a scalded bottom, like one who said: 'Nothing worse than a burnt a**.'

As another fan wrote: 'worth it for the cute pic'

This comes after she took to Instagram over the weekend to flaunt her booty in a black G-string bikini.

'What a Booooty-ful morning it is!' This comes after she took to Instagram to flaunt her booty in a black G-string bikini. In her beachside snap, she showed off her pert posterior and toned legs which were covered in a dusting of sand

In her beachside snap, she showed off her pert posterior and toned legs which were covered in a dusting of sand.

'What a Booooty-ful morning it is,' she wrote in the caption.

Followers of the reality TV starlet enjoyed the view from behind the snap, including an admirer who wrote: 'Yes, it definitely is a very boot-iful morning.'

Meanwhile a fan commented: 'Matty f***ed up bad.'

Saucy: Earlier in the day she posted a series snaps wearing the same barely-there black bikini with a Santa hat on
Her older sister Khloe Kardashian announced she was expecting her first child on Wednesday.

And fans are now calling for Kylie Jenner to confirm whether she is pregnant or not, after months of swirling speculation.

Her followers begged the 20-year-old, who is believed to be welcoming a child with beau Travis Scott in February, to put them out of their misery and reveal whether the rumours are true on social media.

Scroll down for video

'When are you going to announce yours?' Fans are calling for Kylie Jenner to confirm whether she is pregnant or not - after sister Khloe Kardashian revealed she is expecting

Delighted: Her older sister (L) announced she was expecting her first child with boyfriend Tristan Thompson on Wednesday

Khloe, 33, finally confirmed her she and boyfriend Tristan Thompson were having a baby, by posting a sweet snap of her bump to her Instagram page.

While the photo has garnered more than 6 million likes and was flooded with messages of congratulations, many of her followers instead turned their attention to Kylie - and called for her to follow suit.

One wrote: 'So Kylie is pregnant too?' while another added desperately: 'But now waiting for Kylie?!?!'

Put us out of our misery: While the photo was flooded with messages of congratulations, many of her followers instead turned their attention to Kylie - and called for her to follow suit

'Just zoomed on the ornaments to see if there was a bump': Meanwhile other followers instead took to Kylie's most recent Instagram - a photo of her Christmas tree - to probe her further

Another said more confidently: 'Next it will be kylie announcing hers!' while a further fan questioned: 'What about you? @kyliejenner'

Meanwhile other followers instead took to Kylie's most recent Instagram snap - a photo of her Christmas tree - to probe her further on the speculation.

Devoted followers wrote: 'Look I am wondering if the pregnancy rumors are real??' and 'When are you going to announce your pregnancy?'

Another encouraged Kylie to announce the news after the rave reception Khloe received, adding: 'When are you announcing YOUR pregnancy SINCE khloe finally did...'

Laying low: Rumours of Kylie's pregnancy first emerged in September, but she has been been incredibly tight-lipped about the matter, and has cut down her posts on social media

'She wants to focus on her health and happiness': Last month it was claimed the brunette is planning to take six months out of the spotlight, to focus on motherhood

Some fans even went to extremes to search for further clues, writing: 'Just zoomed in on the reflection of one of the ornaments to see if i could spot a bump i need to quit'

Rumours of Kylie's pregnancy first emerged in September, and the brunette has since been incredibly tight-lipped about the matter, and has cut down her posts on social media.

Last month, People claimed the brunette is planning to take six months out of the spotlight, to focus on motherhood.

Baby on the way? She is believed to be expecting with her rapper boyfriend Travis Scott (above in April), with the tot due in February 2018

A source told the magazine: 'Kylie wants to disappear and be out of the spotlight and focus on her health and happiness.

'Kylie isn't going to publicly address her pregnancy until she gives birth. She's not doing any public appearances and just wanted to take six months off.'

The source also revealed that Kylie will not confirm that she is expecting until after her child is born, with her alleged due date sometime in February.

However unlike Kylie, sister Khloe decided to finally reveal her pregnancy news on Wednesday after weeks of speculation.

Exciting: However unlike Kylie, sister Khloe decided to finally reveal her pregnancy news with beau Tristan Thompson on Wednesday - after weeks of speculation

'I can't believe our love created life': Sharing a photo of her beau Tristan, 26, cradling her baby bump, Khloe wrote to followers: 'My greatest dream realized! We are having a baby!'

Sharing a photo of her beau Tristan, 26, cradling her baby bump, Khloe wrote to followers: 'My greatest dream realized! We are having a baby! I had been waiting and wondering but God had a plan all along. He knew what He was doing.

'I simply had to trust in Him and be patient. I still at times can't believe that our love created life!'

The star then turned her attention to her boyfriend of one year, who already has baby Prince with ex-girlfriend Jordan Craig: 'Tristan, thank you for loving me the way that you do!

'Thank you for treating me like a Queen! Thank you for making me feel beautiful at all stages! Tristan, most of all, Thank you for making me a MOMMY!!!'
She's the online blogger who recently lashed out at fans for criticising her for not taking her son on an overseas holiday.

But on Thursday, glamorous WAG Nadia Bartel, 33, shared a special parenting moment when she took son Ashton, two, to visit Santa.

The model mum shared the cutesy snap with son Aston looking a little dumbfounded as he sat on his mother's lap while gently touching her arm.

Father Christmas: AFL WAG Nadia Bartel has shared an adorable family photo of son Aston, 2, sitting with Santa, with the youngster being a bit suspicious of the portly man in red, mum Nadia adding, 'he clenched onto me like a koala'

AFL star dad Jimmy Bartel, 34, sported a cheeky grin as he sat perched on the opposite side of the portly man in the red suit.

Brunette beauty Nadia said the youngster handled the experience much better than the previous year, with the little fella excited over Christmas.

'Ashton has been saying 'santa' non stop for that [sic] last few weeks,' the leggy WAG explained in the caption.

'He is obsessed with everything Christmas, as he understands so much more than last year,' she continued.

'But as soon as I went to pop him on Santa's lap he says 'no', 'no' and clenched onto me like a koala .... At least he didn't cry.'

Critical: AFL WAG Nadia recently got criticised for going on a luxurious holiday to the Maldives with her son, Aston

Last month, the 33-year-old came under fire when she posted a snap to Instagram of herself in the Maldives with her husband, sans their son.

A follower of the model posted: 'Wow how do you guys do it. I could not leave my kid behind and go on holiday' the follower sniped.

'Totally agree with you' added another Instagram user, unimpressed with Nadia's actions.

Hitting back: The glamourous mother-of-one hit back at the criticism, gaining support from a number of her social media fans

It didn't take long for Nadia to lash out at the critique of her parenting decision, writing: 'So you would never go on a trip without your baby? I miss him like crazy but I think it's important to have time with just us too.'

She continued her diatribe: 'This is the first time we have left him in 2 years, but I don't need to explain myself to you as I normally don't reply to fake accounts like yours'.

The model mum's reply elicited a strong reply from fans opposed to the criticism, 'Good on you Nadia! Enjoy your trip! Just as important to have hubby time as parent time! Makes u a better parent in my eyes!'

Married life: The pair said it was important for them to have time for themselves and their marriage
She has been busy filming a number of emotionally charged films for her new flick, Ben Is Back.

And Julia Roberts was seen back on set in New York shooting for further scenes for the drama on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Oscar winning actress looked in her element as she clutched onto a script and a healthy juice ahead of another busy day.

Scroll down for video

On set: Julia Roberts, 50, clutched onto a script and a healthy juice ahead of another busy day of filming for the drama Ben Is Back in New York on Wednesday

Clad in a pretty hot pink printed dress, funky star-print jumper and leggings, Julia looked to be in great spirits in between takes.

While she has been in the business for thirty years, Julia ensured she had her script in her hand just to quickly go over her lines before the director yelled action.

The stunning star shielded herself from the winter sun with a pair of black shades and piled her chestnut brown locks bun.

Movie-star: Clad in a pretty hot pink printed dress, funky star-print jumper and leggings, Julia looked to be in great spirits in between takes

Dark: ,The film is presently filming on-location in New York City

On set: Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges were photographed filming a tense cemetery scene, on the set of Ben is Back

This comes after the American beauty was seen filming an emotional scene at a cemetery on the New York set of Ben Is Back on Tuesday morning.

It seemed to hit a dramatic climax as Lucas Hedges - who plays her son in the film - was seen on his knees while clinging onto the A-lister.

The scene appeared to be emotionally charged as Julia could be seen yelling as she gets into the passenger side of her character's Subaru Outback and opens the door.

She then seemingly forces her 21-year-old co-star out of the vehicle and begins pushing him onto the lawn with the gravestones.

Sad: This comes after the American beauty was seen filming an emotional scene at a cemetery on the New York set of Ben Is Back on Tuesday morning

Uh oh: The scene appeared to be emotionally charged as Julia could be seen yelling as she gets on the passenger side of her character's Subaru Outback and opens the door

Testy: She then seemingly forces her 21-year-old co-star out of the vehicle and begins pushing him onto the lawn with the gravestones

After the emotional embrace, things seemed to have simmered down a bit as they walked back to the car side-by-side after the grave visit.

No doubt it was a chilly day on set as there was visible snow on the ground.

Julia bundled up in a plenty of layers including a long green coat with a fur-lining on the hood, skinny blue jeans, and black leather boots.

She accessorised with a grey beanie and tartan scarf.

Sad: The two appeared to be in the throws of a heated argument

Getting physical: The actors who play a mother and son pushed each other back and forth

Angry: Julia had a disgusted look on her face as she pushed the young actor back

Her signature brunette tresses were tucked into her warm headwear as she let her evergreen looks show with minimal make-up on her face.

Lucas was dressed down in a fleece jacket with baggy jeans, and brown leather workboots.

The film is written and directed by Peter Hedges, who is the real life father to Lucas.

Cooler heads: After the emotional embrace, things seemed to have simmered down a bit as they walked back to the car side-by-side after the grave visit

The story revolves around Lucas' Ben who is described as 'a charming yet troubled man who returns home to his unsuspecting family on Christmas Eve,' according to Variety.

The trade publication adds that Julia welcomes her beloved son back to the family 'but soon learns that he is still very much in harms way'.

Variety reported recently that Courtney B. Vance has been cast to play Julia's husband and Lucas's step-father in the film.
She's been the face of Giorgio Armani's signature fragrance, stunning onlookers with her beautiful campaigns all year.

And actress Cate Blanchett continues to wow as she appears in the Italian brand's holiday 2017 campaign.

Cate, 48, embodies the festive spirit in the newly released snaps, wearing a red strapless gown and sculptural earrings.

Scroll down for video

Cate Blanchett shows off her porcelain complexion in a strapless red gown as she poses for Armani's signature fragrance Christmas campaign

Demure: Cate, 48, embodies the festive spirit in the newly released snaps, wearing a red strapless gown and sculptural earrings

The Oscar-winning blonde impresses in a sleek up-do hairstyle with a smokey eye-shadow offsetting her porcelain complexion.

In the snaps, the Australian gazes wistfully into the distance, before glancing coyly down at the 'A' for Armani that she leans on.

The perfume is described as a luxurious scent with notes of deep blackcurrant nectar, airy florals and musky blond wood.

Cate will be seen in next year's all-female Ocean's 11 sequel - Ocean's 8.

Coy: The Oscar-winning blonde impresses in a sleek up-do hairstyle with a smokey eye-shadow offsetting her porcelain complexion

Warner Bros. released the first poster for the film on Thursday, introducing the eight female master thieves as they prepare to pull off a top-secret heist.

The image seemed to match with Cate's Armani campaign, also designed in a bright festive red.

Under the tagline, 'every con has its pros,' the sequel to Steven Soderberghs Ocean's trilogy stars Sandra Bullock as ringleader Debbie Ocean, the sister of George Clooney's Danny.

After getting out of jail, she recruits seven women - Cate, Rihanna, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, and Helena Bonham Carter - to help her pull off a jewelry heist at the annual Met Gala in New York.

First look: Warner Bros. released the first poster for Oceans 8 on Thursday, introducing the eight fab female master thieves as they prepare to pull off a top-secret heist

The slick new poster shows them lined up in profile, all wearing dark overcoats and shades.

Under the powerfully stylish shots of the eight female stars, it simply reads 'Ocean's 8. Summer 2018'

'Its really fun,' Sandra told EW about filming in an interview posted on December 6

'Imagine all eight of us crammed into a make-up trailer in the morning. You think that it would be disastrous, but it was heaven, all of us just sharing information, all of us doing three jobs with families, our other jobs, the juggling.

On set: Sandra Bullock portrays ringleader Debbie Ocean, the sister of George Clooneys Danny, who is organizing a jewelry heist at the Met Gala in New York (pictured this month)

'And then we get to shoot this movie together.'

And the actress, 53, also said they were all ready to defend their movie against any negative comments from people complaining about its all-femme cast.

'Ill tell you, weve got some feisty women that will fight right back,' she said, comparing their situation with the all-female Ghosbusters reboot, starring Melissa McCarthy, that received a lot of scathing comments last year.

'Its like, lets just take a breath and lets just see if we come up with something fun,' Sandra said.

On watch: Sandra as Debbie and Cate Blanchett, 48, who plays Lou, scope out the Metropolitan Museum Of Art in this scene shot in October

'There should be a moratorium. There should be a rule, youre not allowed to say anything nasty until after it comes out. Obviously thats never going to happen.'

In addition to the lead cast, the movie features cameo appearances from the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Adriana Lima and Anna Wintour.

The Ocean's trilogy - running from 2001 to 2007 - starred the likes of George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, and grossed an incredible $1.1 billion worldwide.

Oceans 8 opens in theaters on June 8, 2018.
Melissa George has revealed that she's ready to move on with her life following her tumultous relationship with ex-partner Jean David Blanc.

Speaking to Vogue Australia, the 41-year-old said: 'Im looking forward to the next chapter.'

She added: 'Maybe love  who knows?'

'Im looking forward to the next chapter': Melissa George has revealed that she's ready to move on following her tumultuous relationship with ex-partner Jean David Blanc

The Aussie actress also revealed that she and Jean David use FaceTime with their two sons, Raphael and Solal, twice a week.

Earlier this year, the star and Jean David were convicted of assaulting each other following an alleged domestic dispute in 2016.

The French businessman later said in a statement: 'Regarding the supposed violence against Melissa George, I strongly contest it and have thus filed an appeal against the judgment, which is not final.'

Still friends? The Aussie actress also revealed that she and Jean David use FaceTime with their two sons, Raphael and Solal, twice a week.

Jean David is famed for founding cinema service organization AlloCine.

He and Melissa first met in 2011 at a BAFTA after-party, before entering into a relationship in 2012.

They welcomed their first child, a son named Raphael, in February 2014 and a second son, Solal, in November last year.

Drama: Earlier this year, the star and Jean David were convicted of assaulting each other following an alleged domestic dispute in 2016

Melissa was previously married to Chilean film director Caludio Dabed.

The Australian actress first found fame on Home and Away, before starring in hits like Alias and Grey's Anatomy.

Her next project is an upcoming TV series with Sean Penn.
She celebrated turning 53 in style this week, posting a racy snap of herself lounging poolside in Florida in a bikini.

And on Thursday Pettifleur Berenger gushed about how grateful she was to receive so many birthday wishes from her fans and followers.

To celebrate further, the Real Housewives of Melbourne star unapologetically shared yet another sultry photo of herself donning the same black and white bikini that appeared earlier in the week.

'It's my birthday and I can flaunt it if I want to!': Ageless Pettifleur Berenger, 53, thanked her fans for their kind words this week by posting ANOTHER sultry bikini shot on Instagram

'Its my birthday and I can flaunt it if I want to!! Its the 21st in America and my birthday morning,' Pettifleur captioned the image.

She continued: 'A massive heartfelt thanks to my Australian gorgeous people and many from around the world for all the birthday wishes yesterday. You all individually touched my heart and put so many smiles on my face. Bless you all for taking the time to put joy into my heart. Love blessings and hugs from me to you'

In a previous snap, Pettifleur had stripped down to a string bikini to reveal her astonishingly youthful figure on her 53rd birthday.

Taking to her popular Instagram page, the vivacious starlet uploaded a snap of herself lounging on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, while revealing her taut torso and prodigious bust in cleavage-baring swimwear.

'Its my birthday!' Pettifleur Berenger didn't disappoint fans when she stripped down to a string bikini to reveal her astonishingly youthful figure on her 53rd birthday this Thursday

'Its my birthday! 53 years young! No place like a vacation to spend your birthday!' she cooed in the caption.

The glamazon completed her post with the hashtags: #nofilter, #tanned, #birthdaygirl, #vacation and #sun.

Pettifleur completed her holiday-going ensemble with a wide-brimmed white sun-hat and a pair of sassy sunglasses that obscured her pouty expression from onlookers.

Lounging about! Earlier this week, Pettifleur shared another scorching snap of herself modelling a bikini on the beach

Fans immediately bombarded her post with well-wishes and compliments, with one writing: 'Happy birthday sexy lady- you are a beautiful person inside out. And dammmm look at you!!!! Hard work pays off!'

'Happy birthday!! Looking fabbo!' another concurred.

Earlier this week, Pettifleur shared another scorching snap of herself modelling a bikini on the beach.

Pictured lounging on a seaside crag, the property developer quipped in the caption: 'The agony of waves splashing and hard rocks for a shameless photo.'
She's no stranger to making political statements and is happy to voice her beliefs in the public arena.

But Olivia Wilde let her sweatshirt do the talking as she stepped out in New York City's SoHo, wearing a garment with a festive anti-Trump message on Wednesday.

The actress, 33, expressed her sentiments through the red holiday number, which boasted small Trump heads in its design and the word 'Impeach' was spelled out in big bold letters.

Loud and proud: Olivia Wilde let her sweatshirt do the talking as she stepped out in New York City's SoHo, wearing a garment with a festive anti-Trump message on Wednesday

Back in August, Olivia led an anti-Trump rally in NYC and has been vocal about her disdain for the President and his policies via her social media channels.

The House star wore a heavy army green parka and a black scarf around her neck to battle the Big Apples chilly weather.

The mother-of-two's hair was piled on top of her head in a half bun and she sported a pair of black leggings.

On her feet were chunky black boots that she wore with tall wool socks.

Stick to your guns: The actress, 33, expressed her sentiments through the red holiday number, which boasted small Trump heads in its design and the word 'Impeach' was spelled out

The actress completed her look with sunglasses to protect her eyes from the winter rays.

Wednesday was a sentimental day for Olivia when her first ever Emmy award arrived in the mail.

The actress received the award for her role as executive producer on Body Team 12, a short documentary film.

She posted a photo on Instagram of her son Otis, three, admiring the golden trophy.

Big achievements: Wednesday was a sentimental day for Olivia when her first ever Emmy award arrived in the mail to the delight of her son Otis, three

When Olivia was a child her mother, Leslie Cockburn, won an Emmy for excellence in news journalism and as a little girl she would often play with the award.

One day she accidentally broke off the circular globe, and since then it's been her lifelong goal to win a replacement.

Her photo caption said: 'Only took me 30 years. This is for her.'

Olivia is now a mom herself to Otis, three, and daughter Daisy, 14 months, who she shares with actor Jason Sudeikis, 42.

The Tron star has been engaged to Jason since January 2013.

Both film sensations have been married before; Jason to screenwriter Kay Cannon, 43, for six years until 2010, while Olivia divorced Italian filmmaker Tao Ruspoli, 42, in 2011 after eight years together.
Lucy Fallon's character Bethany Platt is reportedly set to be embroiled in an upcoming plot which will see her join a gentleman's club aged just 16.

And glamour model Beth Morgan will join Coronation Street for the gripping storyline, after being cast as a lap dancer in the upcoming episodes.

The 22-year-old teased a behind-the-scenes glimpse on Twitter, as she posed in her underwear.

Scroll down for video

Pastures new: Glamour model Beth Morgan will join Coronation Street for a gripping storyline alongside Lucy Fallon, after being cast as a lap dancer in upcoming episodes

'Shooting at Coronation Street today for a lap dancing bar scene! All fun!', she said, posing in a skimpy underwear ensemble.

She previously shared a snapshot of her prior Corrie scene, seen alongside Kym Marsh, writing: 'How cool is that blonde? Me, me, me!'.

Beth- who boasts a 24 inch waist and E cup boobs, works in the glamour industry and posts an influx of her racy posts to her Instagram, saving the most risque for a pay-to-view site.

'How cool is that blonde? Me, me, me!' The 22-year-old teased a behind-the-scenes glimpse on Twitter, as she posed in her underwear

'Shooting at Coronation Street today for a lap dancing bar scene! All fun!', she said, posing in a skimpy underwear ensemble

Controversial: Bethany Platt will take on another questionable story line in Coronation Street as the beautician is set to become a 'secret lap dancer' after her harrowing grooming plot

She will join Lucy Fallon's 16-year-old character Bethany Platt , who was a victim of a sex ring and groomed by Corrie villian Nathan Curtis, for the lastest controversial storyline.

In a bid to emotionally acknowledge her chilling past, an insider told The Sun: 'Becoming a lap dancer is about having control over men for Bethany.'

They continued: 'She feels she has power over the punters she's dancing for because they are paying to watch her but can't touch her.

'She pities them for wanting her and the fact she refuses to take all her clothes off helps her feel like she's the one calling the shots.'

The grooming plot came to an end as Bethany's ex and accomplice were put into prison after she provided evidence for rape.

MailOnline have contacted Coronation Street producers for comment.

Emotional: Played by Lucy Fallon, the 16-year-old character was a victim of a sex ring, and was groomed by Corrie villian Nathan Curtis (Christopher Harper)

Speaking to Fabulous magazine previously, actress Lucy, 22, revealed she was brought to tears when she filmed the horrific rape scene with police officer Neil.

'There have been scenes where I have genuinely cried because they've been so hard to do,' she said.

'Obviously the rape scene with Neil was the hardest and the one with all of the men in the flat because imagining that actually happening to someone is just horrible.'

In recent months, viewers have watched on in horror as Bethany experiences the shocking abuse at the hands of her older boyfriend.

Ofcom have been flooded with complaints by fans of the show who have insisted they are showing too much.

But the actress explained that while there has been a huge uproar from viewers, the story has also been met with a positive response.
For nine years fans have been eagerly waiting a sequel of the hit musical.

Yet as the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again trailer was released on Thursday, fans were left bereft as they believed Donna (Meryl Streep) had been killed off.

The clip did not appear to show any new footage of Meryl, although did reveal that her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant, and showed Cher making her cameo as Sophie's grandmother.

Final scenes? As the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again trailer was released on Thursday, fans were left bereft as they believed Donna (Meryl Streep) had been killed off

Taking to Twitter, concerned fans posted: 'Mamma Mia 2 questions after watching the trailer: 1.why did they kill off Donna? 2. Why has Donnas mother suddenly come back from the dead? 3. Why does some of the scenes look like a remake of the first one ? 4. Why is Sophie now part of the girl band with 60 year olds ?

'donna sheridan dying in mamma mia 2 really would be the perfect representation of how s**t 2017 was'; 'Wake me up when someone from the mamma mia 2 crew confirms the trailer was poorly made and Donna is obviously alive.

'IMMA NEED MAMMA MIA 2 SPOILERS NOW SO ANYBODY WHO CAN CONFIRM DONNA IS ALIVE AND WELL PLEASE STEP FORWARD'; 'well the Mamma Mia 2 trailer has me suicidal. where is Meryl, what have they done to Donna, my heart is broken and I shouldnt feel that way about the sequel to a film that changed my life

'i swear if donna is **** in mamma mia 2 im sueing every single person involved in this'; 'who knew the real movement of 2018 was gonna be the original mamma mia fangirls vs. the writers of mamma mia 2'; 'youre telling me; Ive waited 10 years for mamma mia 2 and they killed off donna sheridan; keep ur goddamn movie I dont care how iconic #2 is gonna be; no meryl, no mamma.'

Following in her footsteps: The clip did not appear to show any new footage of Meryl, although did reveal that her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant

Star quality: The clip also showed Cher making her cameo as Sophie's grandmother

Shock: Meanwhile 68-year-old Streep is coming back as Donna - although some fans believe that her character had died as she was not seen in any new scenes - only flashbacks from the original film

Meanwhile, Cher, 71, makes her grand entrance on a helicopter, much to Sophie's surprise as she 'wasn't invited'.

Sophie's pregnancy is revealed as she calls on her mother's best friends Rosie and Tanya (played again by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) to tell her about what her Donna was like when she was pregnant.

Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth reprise their roles as Sophies three possible dads: Sam, Bill, and Harry.

Meanwhile, Alexa Davies joins the cast as young Rosie, Jessica Keenan Wynn as young Tanya, Jeremy Irvine as young Sam, Josh Dylan as young Bill, and Hugh Skinner as young Harry.

She just doesn't care! Cher, 71, makes her grand entrance as Sophie's grandmother on a helicopter, much to Sophie's surprise as she 'wasn't invited'

Getting advice: Sophie's pregnancy is revealed as she calls on her mother's best friends Rosie and Tanya (played again by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) to help her

Here come the boys! (L-R) Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan reprise their roles as Sophies three possible dads: Sam, Bill, and Harry

It takes two: Lily James was cast to play Donna way before she became Mamma Mia! heroine Sophie's mother, whilst Josh Dylan stars as Young Bill

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again! 'goes back and forth in time to show how relationships forged in the past resonate in the present', according to Deadline.

Lily James was cast to play Donna way before she became Mamma Mia! heroine Sophie's mother, whilst Josh Dylan stars as Young Bill.

Veteran stars Amanda, Meryl and Pierce Brosnan joined forces with new additions to the cast, such as British actress Lily James, to appear in a fun-filled Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again 'It's A Wrap' featurette clip, which was released on Wednesday.

In the action-packed minute-long video, the gang celebrated the last day of filming the forthcoming movie, which is due for release on July 20, 2018.

'It's a wrap': Amanda and Meryl joined forces to appear in a fun-filled Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again 'It's A Wrap' featurette clip, which was released on Wednesday

Excited: There were also several additions to cast, most notably being Lily James who is featured heavily in the new clip

Back in the day: No doubt Lily's character in the film (middle) will be an interesting one as she will be portraying a younger Donna, Oscar-winner Streep's signature role

Three's a crowd: There will also be a younger Tanya and Rosie who are played by Jessica Keenan Wynn (left) and Alexa Davies (right) , respectively

The clip showed scenes from the movie, behind the scenes footage, and social media from the cast.

Meanwhile, other returning castmembers include Julie Walters as Rosie, Christine Baranski as Tanya, and Dominic Cooper as Sky.

Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth all have returned to play Sophie's three possible fathers: Sam, Bill, and Harry.

There were also several additions to cast, most notably being Lily James who is featured heavily in the new clip.

No doubt Lily's character in the film will be an interesting one as she will be portraying a younger Donna, Oscar-winner Streep's signature role.

They're back! Christine Baranski (left) is shown back in her role as Tanya and Julie Walters (right) as Rosie

Fine Wine: Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth - pictured from left to right - all have returned to play Sophie's three possible fathers: Sam, Bill, and Harry

Selfie time! One of the more humorous parts came when Lily attempts to strike a pose with two male co-stars

Uh oh: She quickly realizes that she accidentally smacked one of the men in the face

The upcoming film will go back in time to show how the relationships of the past influenced what is going on present day.

There will also be a younger Rosie and Tanya who are played by Alexa Davies and Jessica Keenan Wynn, respectively.

The three possible fathers in the flick will also have younger versions as Sam will be portrayed by Jeremy Irvine, Bill will be played by Josh Dylan, and young Harry is Hugh Skinner.

The minute-long video begins with Lily saying: 'We had the best time on set and we wanted to share some of our favorite moments with you.'

Friendly wave: Amanda seemed to be having a good time on set as she greeted the camera

Fun times: Amanda is later shown in a selfie video as she says: 'we had a great day on the set of Mamma Mia! 2'

Legend: Pierce Brosnan looked happy to be returning to the film franchise

Flipping amazing: One of the male stars performed an impressive backflip

'Well that's a wrap': Director Phyllida Lloyd made the declaration

'You guys are the best ever!' Lily made a declaration just as filming wrapped

The introduction is followed by several clips including James excitedly saying 'we are starting Mamma Mia!'

No doubt there is plenty of preparation involved in such an ambitious project as footage from song and dance rehearsals were also featured.

Streep is not shown much in the featurette as she is shown briefly sharing a laugh with Pierce Brosnan early on in the video.

Preparation: As there was plenty of work done before actual filming dance rehearsals were shown

Transformation: The trio certainly made quite the transformation into their characters

Ambitious: It seemed to be quite the production

Crowd: There was also a neat shot of several of the chairs for each character on set

Amanda is later shown in a selfie video as she says: 'we had a great day on the set of Mamma Mia! 2.'

One of the more humorous parts came when Lily attempts to strike a pose with two male co-stars and accidentally hits one in the face.

The 28-year-old British star also has a cute moment at the end as filming was wrapping.

She could be seen standing up on a balcony as she yells at the rest of the cast and crew: 'You guys are the best ever!'

Coming soon: Also released on the same day was the first official poster for the comedy/musical as the priminent image is a pair of denim overalls hung over a wooden pole

Also released on the same day was the first official poster for the comedy/musical as the priminent image is a pair of denim overalls hung over a wooden pole.

The first look trailer is to be released on Thursday.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is scheduled for release on July 20, 2018 which is within days of the 10th anniversary of the original feature film.

Highly-anticipated: The first look trailer is to be released on Thursday

Classic: The original Mamma Mia! feature film was released in 2008

Party people: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is scheduled for release on July 20, 2018 which is within days of the 10th anniversary of the original feature film




The mother of Noel and Liam Gallagher has revealed thats she wants Oasis to reform.

Liam, 45, sparked talk of a band reunion when he tweeted on Tuesday that his older brother had reached out to him ahead of the festive season.

'Were all good again,' he wrote, indicating that had finally reconciled with Noel after years of fall outs and fighting.

Scroll down for video

Thumb's up: Peggy Gallagher, the mother of Noel and Liam Gallagher, has revealed thats she wants Oasis to reform (pictured here with Noel in 2000)

But speaking from her home in Burnage, Manchester, their mother Peggy, 74, revealed she was pleased Noel and Liam were on friendly terms again.

Asked whether she hoped they would play together in the band again, she replied: 'Yes.'

But speaking today in the Australian Age, Liam ruled out an Oasis reunion, despite he and his brother calling a truce."

Loggerheads: Liam has been at war with his brother, 50, for well over a decade - and the pair have endured a number of very public rows ever since their band Oasis split in 2009

'Oasis isnt getting back together, not at all. Im doing my thing, hes doing his thing and that is the end of it,' he said.

'Its still the same - its just that Ive called a truce on it and hes called a truce on it and no more slagging. Im gonna not be as naughty as I am on the Twitter and slag him off.'

But speculation continues that Oasis could reform in 2018.

One of those who believes it could happen is Peter Howard, owner of the Sifters record shop and the famous Mr Sifter from Oasis song Shakermaker.

Supportive: Speaking from her home in Burnage, Manchester, their mother Peggy, 74, revealed she was pleased Noel and Liam were on friendly terms again (pictured here with Liam in 2001)

He said hed spoken to Noel around three weeks ago when he visited the shop to make a US TV documentary.

'I think they will reform eventually, even though theyve both got successful solo careers,' he said. 'There will always be fights between because both of them want to be the most important one in the band. But theres millions to be made if they get back together.'

He added that Noel had remained tight-lipped about whether he wanted Oasis to reform.

Hopeful: Asked whether she hoped they would play together in the band again, Peggy (pictured here with Noel and his ex-wife Meg Matthews in 1999) said, 'Yes'

In an interview with the Irish Mirror, Peggy said she thought the split had been positive for her sons:

'I think so because I really think they needed that break away from each other, she said. 'And Liam is doing really well thank God, everything is going just lovely for him now. Both of them are doing their own thing and I think thats a good thing.'

'Theyre happy working separately because when youre in somebodys pocket for 20 odd years brothers dont always get on do they. Every family is like that arent they.'

Making amends: Liam confirmed he has finally reconciled with his estranged brother Noel on Tuesday, after years of fighting

Liam confirmed he has finally reconciled with his estranged brother Noel on Tuesday, after years of fighting.

Taking to his Twitter page, he revealed the pair were on good terms again, after his older sibling 'reached out to him' ahead of the festive season.

Liam has been at war with his brother, 50, for well over a decade - and the pair have endured a number of very public rows ever since their band Oasis split in 2009.

'We're all good': Taking to his Twitter page, the 45-year-old revealed the pair were on good terms again, after his older sibling (right) 'reached out to him' ahead of the festive season

To the delight of fans, Liam wrote: 'I wanna say Happy Xmas to team NG it's been a great year thanks for everything looking forward to seeing you tmorrow AS YOU WERE LG x' (sic)

Fans immediately began to speculate whether team 'NG' referred to his brother and former bandmate, and flooded the post with excitable messages.

Yet after years of clashing, one fan expressed their skepticism by responding: '........Team who? Your not going to have a meltdown on here come Christmas day are you Liam when NG doesnt reach out to you'

However, this led Liam to confirm the happy news once and for all, writing: 'He's already reached out. We're all good again.'

Reconciled: To the delight of fans, Liam wished his brother a happy Christmas, and confirmed the pair were meeting up for the festivities on Twitter

Confirmation: However after years of clashing, one fan expressed their skepticism - leading Liam to confirm the happy news once and for all by revealing Noel had 'reached out' to him

Back on track: He then added a second message to confirm the pair were on good terms again

It was only last month that Liam admitted he missed his brother, and hates taking to the stage without him.

Speaking to FAULT magazine, the Wall Of Glass hitmaker said: 'I dont want to be solo. I dont want to do it on my own - Im not a guitar player or a prolific songwriter.

'I miss my brother the way he was back then and I miss singing those great songs that we all made great.'

He confirmed his desire to reconcile to the Sunday Mirror only a week later, stating: 'I hope we make up. Not just for Oasis but for brothers. Enough is enough now.

Memories: Liam admitted he missed Noel last month, stating: 'I miss my brother the way he was back then and I miss singing those great songs that we all made great' (pictured in 2008)

Don't Look Back In Anger: Liam and Noel are best known for being the front men of Oasis, who split in Paris in 2009 after a slew of fierce rows (pictured in 2008)

'I know I wind him up. I have put it out there enough times, but I think he doesn't want to know. I reckon we would have to meet up and hug it out, as they say.'

The Mancunian brothers have been estranged since 2009 - enduring a number of rows during their time in Oasis before the band finally split that year.

Tensions reached their peak in August when the siblings endured a fierce row backstage in Paris, which reportedly saw Liam throw a plum and smash Noel's guitar.

Their appearance at the Rock en Seine festival that evening was cancelled minutes before it was due to begin, leaving thousands of fans disappointed.

Noel then released a statement on the band's website two hours later, which read: 'It is with some sadness and great relief [...] I quit Oasis tonight.

Impossible: Noel said in a statement at the time that he felt forced to quit Oasis as he 'simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer' (pictured in 2005)

Peacemaker: However, Liam did recently hint at future reconciliation - admitting they had 'unfinished business' to sort, but that he is still fond of his brother (pictured in 2017)

'People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.'

However Liam has never written off a reunion - having confirmed earlier this year he wanted to sort the 'unfinished business' that drove him and Noel apart, both musically and personally.

Speaking to BBC Radio One, he said: 'Everyone knows I love our kid. He doesn't speak to me, we don't speak to each other.

'I'll speak to him some day. It's all very sad, but we'll get over it I guess it musn't be nice for my mum If Oasis ever got back together if they do, they do. If they don't, they don't.

'A lot of people go, 'Oh, leave it in the past, you were great then'. Mate, if we ever got back together, it would be happening. There'd be no dodgy gigs, it'd be bang on. So there is unfinished business there, but we'll see what happens. In the meantime, we're two little solo boys doing our little things.'
She is wrapping up her last week on set for 2017.

And Sofia Vergara certainly ensured all eyes were on her as she strutted her stuff in a seriously sexy ensemble while shooting scenes for Modern Family in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The actress, 45, showcased her incredible curves as she slipped into a tiny black leather mini-skirt, teamed with a perilously plunging cleavage-baring top.

Leather weather: Sofia Vergara certainly ensured all eyes were on her as she strutted her stuff in a sexy ensemble while shooting scenes for Modern Family in Los Angeles on Tuesday

The TV star - who portrays Gloria Pritchett in the ABC family comedy - teamed her raunchy outfit with fishnet tights and vampy thigh-high boots.

The mother-of-one looked a tad flustered as she tried to cover up in a leopard-print coat in the balmy California winter weather.

The sexy siren accessorized her look with a gold necklace and earrings, while also toting around an over-size leather handbag.

Sofia wore her dark tresses gathered up into a half-up half-down ponytail, and accentuated her natural beauty with glam make-up finished with a red pout.

Thigh's the limit: The actress, 45, showcased her incredible curves as she slipped into a tiny black leather mini-skirt, teamed with a perilously plunging cleavage-baring top

Dressed to impress: The TV star - who portrays Gloria Pritchett in the ABC family comedy - teamed her raunchy outfit with fishnet tights and vampy thigh-high boots

The TV star was also seen carrying her iPhone in her hand as she carefully walked down stairs.

The set appeared to resemble a hotel, as Sofia was seen standing alongside hotel baggage carriers.

Later that day, the Colombian-born beauty posted a photo of herself on Instagram with the caption: '#gloriapritchett #setlife'

Soon after her solo shot, she uploaded a photo of her in the same look, posing beside her Modern Family husband Ed O'Neill.

Sexy siren: Later that day, the Colombian-born beauty posted a photo of herself on Instagram

Dynamic duo! Soon after her solo snap, she uploaded a photo of her in the same look, posing beside her Modern Family husband Ed O'Neill

Sofia captioned the photo: 'Ed asked me if he looked like Ricardo Montalvan #setlife #modernfamily'.

The actress had previously uploaded a sweet photo of Rico Rodriguez, who plays Gloria's son Manny.

Sofia wrote: 'Last week of work of the year,' with a string of emoji, the photo showed Rico holding up a paper heart.

Although the 2017 year is soon coming to an end, Sofia has made it a successful one.

In September, Forbes announced she was the highest-paid actress in the world for the sixth year running, with earnings of an incredible $42 million in just 12 months.
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump has approved the sale of more lethal arms to Ukraine as the country fights off Russian-backed fighters in its east -- despite the presidents recent overtures for cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.



But while the latest sale is a new gift to the Ukrainian government, Trump still has not announced any decision on whether to provide a more powerful lethal-aid package that includes anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles -- a proposal recommended by his National Security Council and awaiting his approval for months now.



The newest sale consists of small arms and light weapons sold by American manufacturers to the Ukrainian military, not a direct sale or exchange from the U.S. government, according to the State Department.



The U.S. government is not selling the Ukrainian government these weapons. Under the previous two administrations, the U.S. government has approved export licenses to Ukraine, so this is nothing new, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement to ABC News.



The sale consists of sniper rifles, ammunition and other associated parts and materials, and is estimated to be worth $41.5 million, according to two U.S. congressional sources.



This is not the first sale permitted under the Trump administration, and such sales occurred under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, too. One congressional aide with knowledge of the new proposal called it a continuation of Obama-era policy, adding, We arent so surprised.



As Nauert said in her statement, This is nothing new.



Earlier this year, the Trump administration approved the sale of shoulder-fired rocket launchers by AirTronic, a U.S. manufacturer in Texas, to Ukraine, according to the companys COO. Richard Vandiver told Voice of America that his firm has been selling the weapons since last year, and we are continuing deliveries up until now.



But the real get for Ukraine would be the anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, as the congressional aide put it.



What we are awaiting and have called for is the provision of lethal defense weapons that are more advanced - a larger package that is under consideration right now, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, a Ukrainian official told ABC News. We are expecting this decision and would welcome it.



That proposal has been sitting on Trumps desk waiting for his approval for months, after it was recommended by his National Security Council, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis. Its unclear when Trump intends to make a decision.



The United States has not provided lethal defensive equipment to Ukraine, nor have we ruled out doing so, Nauert said in her statement -- a line several administration officials have had for months as the question continually arises.



Such a sale would mark an escalation in American support for Ukraine as it battles Russian-backed and -led fighters in the countrys east. The conflict there has been frozen in terms of the battle lines for nearly four years, but the war is anything but cold.



In the last few days, monitoring groups from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have recorded over 16,000 ceasefire violations, and as many as eight Ukrainian soldiers have been killed this week.



The death toll stands at over 10,000 people since fighting began in 2014, according to a December report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.



Russia and its proxies are the source of violence in eastern Ukraine, and the Russian government continues to perpetuate an active conflict and humanitarian crisis through its leadership and supply of military forces on the ground, as well as its direct control over proxy authorities, Nauert said Tuesday at the departments briefing. The United States calls on Russia to put an end to the attacks in eastern Ukraine, withdraw its forces and heavy weapons from the sovereign territory of Ukraine and agree to a robust U.N. peacekeeping mission.



But while the U.S. searches for a peaceful solution to the violence, including by possibly providing these lethal defensive arms, Russia is calling that move, in particular, an act of destabilization and violence, and could possibly retaliate.



Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it will once again motivate the hotheads in the Ukrainian government and "unleash bloodshed again." The head of the Russian parliaments defense committee, Vladimir Shamanov, also condemned it as a sophisticated and irresponsible step.



Selling arms to Ukraine could potentially damage relations between the two countries, some observers warn, even as Trump has called for more cooperation and spoken with Putin twice in the last week -- once to discuss the CIAs intelligence sharing with Russia that thwarted a terror attack in St. Petersburg.



Both leaders agreed that this serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when our countries work together, the White House said in a statement Sunday after the conversation.



But the conflict in Ukraine stands in the way of greater cooperation, Tillerson has said repeatedly.



We must address Ukraine. It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do, he told reporters in Vienna on Dec. 7.



While the new sale revealed Wednesday was short of the lethal defensive weapons expected, it still garnered praise from Congresss most vocal Russia hawks.



Im pleased the administration approved the sale of defensive lethal arms to Ukraine, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement, adding the decision reflects our countrys longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression.



I welcome reports the administration has taken the long-overdue step of approving the sale of lethal defensive weapons to help the Ukrainian people defend themselves from Russian aggression, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tweeted. In an accompanying statement, he said the move must only be a first step. I urge the President to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions.



McCain has long called for such arms, vociferously criticizing the Obama administration for not doing so.



The proposal was sent to Capitol Hill on Dec. 13, and members have 30 days to voice objections, otherwise the sale goes through and the State Department grants the licenses to the American manufacturers. It is expected to pass through congressional review without problem.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Tweet

In this October 1993 Freeman essay I summarize the economic insight that reveals that military conscription is hazardous to soldiers health. Its below the fold.

Operation Desert Storm is considered to be one of the American militarys greatest victories. The goal given by the United Nations was to drive Saddam Husseins troops out of Kuwait. Regardless of ones opinion of the scope of this goal or of the propriety of United States military involvement in foreign nations, the fact is that American armed forces accomplished their task. They did so completely, unambiguously, quickly, and with very little loss of life. Americans should be especially grateful for this last fact.

Only 378or .075 percentof the 500,000 Americans serving in the Persian Gulf war lost their lives. This means that not even one in every one thousand Americans fighting in Operation Desert Storm was killed. Operation Desert Storm stands in sharp contrast to the war in Vietnam. The U.S. military in that Southeast Asian war did not achieve its goal of keeping the Communist totalitarians of North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam. And, sadly, this military loss claimed the lives of more than 58,000 of the nearly 8.75 million Americans who fought in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos. The casualty rate in the Vietnam War was just under 0.7 percenta rate nearly ten times greater than the Gulf War. If U.S. servicemen had died in Vietnam at the rate at which they died in the Persian Gulf, we would have suffered only about 6,000 casualties. Can it be that 52,000 Americans lost their lives unnecessarily in Vietnam?[1] Alternatively, if Americans had perished in the Persian Gulf at the same rate at which they perished in Vietnam, more than 3,000 Americans would have been killed in Operation Desert Storm. The homecoming parades of 1991 would surely have been less joyous, and Americas sense of accomplishment more tempered.

Conscription Is Hazardous to a Soldiers Health

There are, no doubt, many potential explanations for this great difference in U.S. military performance in the two wars. One crucial part of any valid explanation is that the U.S. military in Operation Desert Storm was an all-volunteer force. In Vietnam (and Korea), U.S. armed forces were composed largely of conscripts. This single fact plausibly explains much, perhaps most, of the success enjoyed by American troops serving in Operation Desert Storm.

To see why this is so, it is useful to recall the great policy debate of the 1960s which focused on the military draft. In addition to showing that an all-volunteer military would actually be less costly to society than a conscripted military, economists Milton Friedman, Walter Oi, and others argued that conscription reduces the efficiency of military operations. Friedman nicely summarized this part of the argument against conscription:

A volunteer army would be manned by people who had chosen a military career rather than, at least partly, by reluctant conscripts anxious only to serve out their term. Aside from the effect on fighting spirit, this would produce a lower turnover in the armed services, saving precious man-hours that are now wasted in training or being trained. Also it would permit intensive training and a higher average level of skill for the men in service; and it would encourage the use of more and better equipment. A smaller, but more highly skilled, technically competent, and better armed force could provide the same or greater military strength.[2]

It is easy enough to see why a military manned by people freely choosing to join the armed forces enjoys lower turnover and, hence, greater average levels of experience and esprit de corps when compared with a conscripted force. But why does an all-volunteer force encourage the use of more and better equipment? The reason is simple. Conscription gives military decision-makers the power to acquire labor at wage rates below those that the military would have to pay in the absence of conscription. That is, decision-makers for a conscripted military get labor on the cheap. Because labor and capital (for example, tanks, better guns and ammunition, more high-tech airplanes) are substitutes for one another, when the price of labor is kept artificially low, military decision-makers use too much labor and too little capital to produce the desired amount of military power.

Consider a simple example. Suppose the top brass of the military agree that there are two ways of ensuring victory in a particular battle. One way is to have 200,000 troops, each armed with a rifle, storm an enemys stronghold. Another way is to have five troops use five highly sophisticated fighter planes with smart bombs to attack the enemys stronghold. It is not implausible to suggest that the method chosen is the one that will be least costly to military decision-makers (who do, after all, face a finite budget from Congress). Lets say that each fully equipped fighter plane costs $1 billion, and that each pilot costs $100,000 to employ. Thus, the total cost of achieving victory by use of fighter planes is $5,000,500,000. This method will be selected only if it costs military decision-makers less than the cost of achieving victory with the massive-manpower method.

The cost to military decision-makers of the massive-manpower method depends on whether or not conscription is used. Suppose that with conscription the military pays each soldier $5,000 annually, and that rifles and uniforms cost a total of $200 per soldier. At this wage rate, it will cost the military $1,040,000,000 in wages and equipment to achieve victory with the massive-manpower method.[3] Military decision-makers are likely to use the massive-manpower method in battle because it is significantly less expensive to them than using the fighter planes.

But suppose, in the alternative, that conscription is prohibited. Without conscription the military must pay market wages to its soldiers, and market wages will be higher than the wages of conscripts. Suppose that market wages are $30,000 per soldier. The total bill of achieving victory using the massive-manpower method in the absence of conscription would then be $6,040,000,000approximately $1 billion more than the cost of achieving victory by use of the five fighter planes. Clearly, when military leaders are forced to pay market wages they have a strong incentive to economize on the use of labor by using greater amounts of capital equipment in producing military outcomes.

We can now see why the use of more and better equipment is encouraged by an all-volunteer force. Conscription artificially suppresses the price of labor relative to capital and, therefore, military decision-makers will use too little equipment and too many men. The all-volunteer force reverses this unfortunate effect by giving military decision-makers the incentive to use more and better equipment along with fewer men and women.

Because conscription causes a greater number of military personnel to be used on the battlefield, and because too many of these people are not sufficiently dedicated to their tasks, conscription results in unnecessary battlefield casualties. It is important to emphasize that these unnecessary deaths and injuries result both from the militarys use of excessive amounts of labor and from the fact that a conscripted military is less experienced and less dedicated than is an all-volunteer force.

Conscription Never Again

Operation Desert Storm showed just how efficient, effective, and relatively safe an all-volunteer military can be. Instead of sending large numbers of American men and women directly into harms way, U.S. military leaders relied mainly on high-tech machines to do battle with enemy forces. In addition to the effectiveness of this military hardware, a successful enemy hit against one of these machinesunlike a successful enemy hit against a flesh-and-blood soldierdoes not cause tears of grief back home from a parent, a child, or other loved ones. Better a machine be destroyed than the life of a young man or woman.

Whatever the merits of Operation Desert Storm on the diplomatic and political fronts, its merit on the economic front is clear: Operation Desert Storm is powerful evidence that the all-volunteer military is far superiorand far less dangerous to its soldiersthan is a conscripted force. Let us hope that this is a lesson we never forget.
He used to rule the Primrose Hill set alongside his former lover Pearl Lowe and their A-list pals.

And despite his debauched past in the London neighbourhood, Gavin Rossdale looked keen to show his German girlfriend Sophia Thomalla the sights on Thursday.

The loved-up pair bundled up against England's chilly climes as they were dressed in thick coats on their romantic stroll.

Introducing her to the old set? Gavin Rossdale looked keen to show his German girlfriend Sophia Thomalla the sights of Primrose Hill on Thursday

Putting on a dapper display, the 52-year-old wore a grey longline coat, paired with fitted navy trousers as he walked alongside his stunning Playboy model girlfriend.

The 28-year-old model looked sensational as she slipped into a glossy pair of skinny jeans, black hi-top sneakers and her statement feline piece.

Commanding attention in her alarming outerwear, Sophia wore her highlighted mane in a sleek straight hairstyle as she folded her arms.

Budding relationship: Putting on a suave display, the 52-year-old wore a grey longline coat, paired with fitted navy trousers as he walked alongside his stunning Playboy model girlfriend

Since going public with their romance in June, the Bush frontman hasn't been shy about flaunting their love.

Gavin shared a snap of Sophia wearing denim cut-offs in August, which he gushingly captioned: 'Double awesome.'

'Its very early days, but Gavin is really taken by Sophia,' a source old The Sun at the time. 'They met on the touring scene and theres plenty of chemistry.'

Smitten: Since going public with their romance in June, he hasn't been shy about flaunting their love

Baring all: Former The Voice coach Gavin was first spied having an intimate smooch on a street corner with Sophia in April

'Theyre having fun and the relationship has the potential to turn serious if that continues.'

Sophia has also been previously married; she was wed to Andy LaPlegua from Norwegian electronic music band Icon of Coil.

Before that she had a five-year relationship with Till Lindemann, of German hard rock band Rammstein.

It's potentially her links to the music world that saw her cross paths with Gavin.

Gavin has been enjoying some time out after leaving his place as a judge on The Voice UK over the summer.

Singing coach: Gavin has been enjoying some time out after leaving his place as a judge on The Voice UK over the summer

He partly shot to fame as one half of the rock power couple alongside Gwen Stefani.

Gwen, 47, and Gavin first met in 1995 while on tour with their bands; they married in London on September 14, 2002.

The songstress filed for divorce in August 2015 after he allegedly had an affair with their nanny.

Gwen and Gavin are parents to three children together: Kingston, 11; Zuma, nine; and Apollo, three.

The musician is said to be trying for a baby with her boyfriend and Voice co-star Blake Shelton, 41.

Former lovers: He partly shot to fame as one half of the rock power couple alongside Gwen Stefani
They broke up briefly in the spring before reuniting this fall.

And on Thursday, Hilary Duff and Matthew Koma were seen leaving their New York City hotel bundled up in heavy winter coats.

The 30-year-old actress wore her cover up with a luxurious Gucci hoodie and skinny jeans.

Later that same day the duo were seen kissing as they landed back in Los Angeles after their brief trip to the Big Apple.

Keeping warm: Hilary Duff and Matthew Koma were seen leaving their New York City hotel bundled up in their heavy winter coats

Kiss and tell: The duo were later seen landing back in Los Angeles and sharing some PDA

All smiles: The couple looked loved up as can be

The former Disney star flaunted her toned legs in her curve hugging black denim bottoms.

Hilary styled the jeans with an oversized Gucci red, green, black and yellow hoodie that featured the brand's logo.

She stayed warm in her thigh-grazing charcoal coat, adding sneakers, a beanie and chunky earrings.

The mother of one styled her long blonde hair loose with waves.

Natural beauty: The 30-year-old actress wore her cover up with a luxurious Gucci hoodie and skinny jeans

Good looking duo: The former Disney star flaunted her toned legs in her curve hugging black denim bottoms

Hilary finished off her casual winter look with pink lined lips, smoky eye makeup and lightly contoured cheeks.

Matthew, a 30-year-old musician, looked handsome in his graphic T-shirt, jeans, chambray top and khaki jacket.

One day earlier, Hilary posted a cute snap of her and Matthew beaming for the camera; she shared it with her 8.7 million Instagram followers on Wednesday.

Smooches: More kisses were in store

The couple that travels together: They looked to be in sync

Bag lady: Hilary carried a luxury black tote

Bundled up: She was quite a trooper

She snapped the picture earlier in the day while on a stroll in East Village with Matthew.

Hilary looked pretty in her bold pink coat, adding dark wash skinny jeans and a white ruched top.

The mother of one added a blush colored chain link purse to finish off her look.

Earlier in the week, the natural beauty showed off her flawless complexion while posing for a car selfie.

Playful: One day earlier, Hilary posted a cute snap of her and Matthew beaming for the camera; she shared it with her 8.7 million Instagram followers on Wednesday

So in love: She snapped the picture earlier in the day while on a stroll in East Village with Matthew

Happily ever after: Hilary looked pretty in her bold pink coat, adding dark wash skinny jeans and a white ruched top

Hilary recently opened up about getting back with her ex: 'Timing is such a big deal. Third time's a charm!' she said on The Talk.

The former Disney star was originally asked her thoughts on Selena Gomez' decision to rekindle her romance with Justin Bieber while appearing on The Talk.

Hilary told the hosts of The Talk that she knows from personal experience that it getting back with an ex works.

She said: 'It's going so great! I mean, this is like the third time that we've dated and I think that what [Selena] says has so much merit to it. Timing is such a big deal.'

Hilary continued during her appearance: 'Third time's a charm! I think that you have history and a past with someone and love, and just because it doesn't work out the first time, the second time, as long as there's not too much damage done, then, it can always workout again.'

Inseparable duo: Hilary looked pretty in her bold pink coat, adding dark wash skinny jeans and a white ruched top

Stunning: Earlier in the week, the natural beauty showed off her flawless complexion while posing for a car selfie

.
They've spent the past few days enjoying a romantic festive trip to London.

And Paris Hilton and boyfriend Chris Zylka looked loved-up as they arrived back at New York's JFK Airport hand-in-hand on Thursday.

The hotel heiress, 36, and the actor, 32, appeared in separable as they made their way through the terminal ahead of spending Christmas with her family in the Big Apple.

So hot: Paris Hilton and boyfriend Chris Zylka looked loved-up as they arrived back at New York's JFK Airport hand-in-hand on Thursday

The socialite was bundled up against the winter chill in comfortable black sweats and a cozy fur-lined parka.

Paris ditched her heels in favor of black and pink Nike sneakers and wore dark shades as she strolled through the airport.

The reality star wore a warm-looking beanie hat and carried a handbag, as well as a laptop with a Hello Kitty cover in one hand.

Paris appeared to be make-up free for her flight and wore her blonde locks long and loose.

Come fly with me: The hotel heiress, 36, and the actor, 32, appeared in separable as they made their way through the terminal ahead of spending Christmas with her family in the Big Apple

Keeping the chill at bay: The socialite was bundled up against the winter chill in comfortable black sweats and a cozy fur-lined parka

Proving himself to be the perfect travel companion, Chris matched Paris' low-key look with a cozy coat, beanie and sneakers.

The actor was by the socialite's side when she performed a DJ set in Moscow, Russia, on Sunday, before heading to London to enjoy a romantic, pre-Christmas mini-break.

Paris and Chris are now expected to spend the festive season with the heiress' family in New York, with her sister Nicky, 34, unable to fly to the family home in Bel Air due to being in the late stages of her second pregnancy.

Paris recently opened up about her romance with Chris - who she went public with in February - in a cover story for the December issue of Ocean Drive magazine.

Pucker up, baby! The actor was by the socialite's side when she performed a DJ set in Moscow, Russia, on Sunday, before heading to London to enjoy a romantic, pre-Christmas mini-break

She gushed: 'We are so perfect together. He's my everything. I'm so happy and excited to have someone who is my best friend, who I trust. Everything Ive ever wished for came true.

She added: '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.'

The former The Simple Life star explained she is already feeling broody and wants to have three children with her actor beau.

Paris said: 'I definitely want to have more than one [baby]. Two I would be happy with, but three I would be even happier.'

'We are so perfect together': Paris recently opened up about her romance with Chris - who she went public with in February - in a cover story for the December issue of Ocean Drive

Although the couple went public with their romance in February, they met for the first time eight years ago.

She explained: 'The first time we met was about eight years ago at a Chateau Marmont Oscar party.

'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.

'We were friends for years, and then it was actually Art Basel in Miami Beach two years ago, and he was showing his artwork there. 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 LA, and ever since that night, we never left each others side.'
Advertisement

She has been laughing off reports with her Heart FM colleague Jamie Theakston in recent weeks after the pair were pictured holding hands following a charity gala.

Now putting speculation firmly to bed, Jenni Falconer put on a united front with her husband James Midgley as they attended the opening night of hit U.S. musical Hamilton on British shores on Thursday.

The 41-year-old broadcaster looked sensational as she flaunted her slender pins in a beaded mini dress while arriving hand-in-hand with her long-term beau at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London for the biggest West End opening of the year to watch Lin Manuel Miranda's musical.

Scroll down for video

Happy: Jenni Falconer put on a united front with her husband James Midgley as they attended the opening night of hit U.S. musical Hamilton on British shores on Thursday

The radio presenter dazzled in her thigh-grazing garment which featured a plunging neckline that teased at her ample cleavage while she posed for photos with her other half - who she married in 2010.

Her sizzling look boasted a sultry gold zip detailing in the midst of the figure-hugging piece as she entered the palatial venue.

She teamed her skin-flashing look with a pair of sky-high stilettos while her blonde shoulder-length locks were styled into a soft wave and complemented her smokey eye make-up.

Looking equally stylish, 42-year-old James donned a dapper three-piece suit for the occasion, including a velvet blazer that was sure to turn heads.

Dazzling: The 41-year-old broadcaster looked sensational as she flaunted her slender pins in a beaded mini dress while arriving hand-in-hand with her long-term beau at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London for the biggest West End opening of the year to watch Lin Manuel Miranda's musical

Pin-credible: The radio presenter dazzled in her thigh-grazing garment which featured a plunging neckline that teased at her ample cleavage while she posed for photos with her other half - who she married in 2010

Dapper: Looking equally stylish, 42-year-old James donned a dapper three-piece suit for the occasion, including a velvet blazer that was sure to turn heads

Stepping out: Elsewhere on the carpet, Doctor Who's Jodie Whittaker enjoyed some down time as she attended the opening night of hit U.S musical Hamilton

All smiles: Doctor Who actress Jodie Whittaker was excited to watch the hit U.S musical Hamilton

Green with envy: The Broadchurch star looked elegant in her statement emerald green coat

Jenni's appearance comes after he was spotted leaving the Global Make Some Noise Gala held in London late last month with radio pal Jamie Theakston.

The duo were seen holding hands on their exit, before heading home in separate vehicles but have since laughed off the headlines on their radio show.

While they are both happily married to their respective partners - Jenni with James and Jamie with Sophie Siegle, who he tied the knot with back in 2007 - the two stars appeared to be having a great night as they waited for their taxis. MailOnline had contacted representatives for both Jamie and Jenni at the time.

While the pair were pictured holding hands, there is nothing to suggest anything more than friendship between the two.

Man of the hour: Musical maestro Lin-Manuel Miranda (Pictured centre-left) smiled as he posed with director Thomas Kail (far right) and Andy Blankenbuehler (far left)

Delight: Tony-winner Lin couldn't contain his delight at the West End opening in his tweed grey suit (L) alongside British actor Dominic Cooper - who will star in the Mamma Mia 2 sequel

Taking to the stage: Following the performance Lin took to the stage to make a speech

Animated: The actor and writer pulled a number of animated faces as he chatted to an excited crowd

Hugging it out: He hugged cast and crew following the opening night speech

Legends: Lin also posed at the launch with musical legend Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who was behind Hamilton's move to the West End

Jokers: Dominic was also seen posing up a storm with Helen Bonham Carter and her mother Elena Propper de Callejon, along with actress Ruth Negga

Producers across the pond: Cameron was also seen posing with Jeffrey Seller, who produced the Hamilton Broadway show with Lin-Manuel Miranda

Making a splash: Helena Bonham Carter showcased her signature kooky style in a floral maxi dress

Looking chic: Helena and her mother put on a chic display as they posed with Ruth at the theatre in Victoria

Stepping out: Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston seemed eager to watch the hip hop musical in London

Legend: The actor put on a smart display in the classic black suit as he arrived at the premiere, keen to see the show's big West End debut

Star-studded: Brian wrapped up for the occasion as he donned a stylish black overcoat

Jenni has been married to James Midgley since 2010 and together they have a daughter Ella, who they welcomed into the world in 2011. Jamie is a father of two with his wife Sophie Siegle who he married in 2007.

Elsewhere on the carpet, Doctor Who's Jodie Whittaker enjoyed some down time as she attended the opening night of hit U.S musical Hamilton.

The 35-year-old actress - who is taking over from actor Peter Capaldi - looked elegant in a simple ensemble, topped with an emerald-green trench coat.

She paired it with a silky black dress and classic pair of black high heels which matched it her dark nail polish.

Date night: Barbara Windsor with her husband Scott Mitchell (L) attended the star-studded opening while musician Brian May with his wife actor Anita Dobson (R) posed for photos outside the venue

Catching up: Arlene Phillips posed with Brian May, Queen rocker and ex-Eastenders star Anita Dobson

Picture perfect: Barbara Windsor, Helena Bonham Carter and Trinny Woodall (Pictured L-R) arrived in style

Style savvy: Eastenders royalty Barbara donned a monochrome midi dress for the opening gala

Having fun: Actors Zoe Wanamaker and Stephen Mangan attended the thrilling opening

Thrilled: Theatre mogul Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andy Blankenbuehler posed together

She wasn't the only star to attend the press night performance as composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bryan Cranston, Helena Bonham Carter, Barbara Windsor, and Tom Jones were among some of the famous faces in attendance.

The play features songs and rapping to tell the story of U.S Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.

Theatre mogul Andrew Lloyd Webber, American actor Bryan Cranston, Matt Lucas, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Jones, and Sadiq Khan made sure to grab a ticket for the sold-out show.

Andy Blankenbuehler, James Midgley and Jenni Falconer, Barbara Windsor, Arlene Phillips, Brian May and Anita Dobson, Emma Joy Kitchener and Julian Fellowes also flashed their enviable ticket.

Ecstatic: Andrew (L) held onto the programme in his hand while lyricist Don Black (R) smiled for a photo

Not unusual: Tom Jones arrived at the event in a three-piece suit

Wrapped up: Theatre director Laurence Connor donned a suit and wrapped up as he attended the prestigious event in London alongside actor Freddie Fox (R)

Dapper: Stage star Michael Ball, mentalist Derren Brown and actor Matt Lucas (Pictured L-R) came out to support the opening night

Fashion fiends: Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Arlene Phillips (R) showcased their signature style at the gala night

Date night: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan didn't want to miss out on the show's arrival in his mayoral city

Stunning: Miriam-Teak Lee looked stunning in an orange paisley gown as she arrived at the press launch

Shimmering: Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood with his wife Sally Humphreys stepped out for the opening night

High spirits: Theatre director Rupert Goold and his actress wife Kate Fleetwood happily posed for photos at the event

Glittering: Theatre actor Angela Christian and theatre and film director Thomas Kail looked glamorous on the red carpet as they held hands alongside Downton Abbey creater Julian Fellowes and wife Emma Joy Kitchener

Good night: (L-R) Sadiq Khan, Adrian Lester, Lolita Chakrabarti and Saadiya Khan were seen posing together at the launch

Demure: Patricia Macnaughton and Nicolas Kent smiled for photos, along with Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti

Big night: (L-R) Christine Allado, Rachel John, Jamael Westman and Rachelle Ann Go were seen beaming with excitement ahead of their roles in the West End show

The story centres around the eponymous Hamilton who was a founding father of the country.

The aide-de-camp to George Washington and the architect of the nations fiscal system, his face is still on the back of the countrys $10 bill.

Some tickets are rumoured to have already changed hands for up to 2,500 apiece

Waiting: Fans wait outside the theatre hoping for a glimpse of Lin-Manuel Miranda

Warming up: Despite the freezing temperatures, fans appeared in high spirits as they wait for the stars to arrive

Light up: The musical's new British home was awash with excitement for the night

Chit chat: The musical's director Thomas Kail also spoke on stage following the opening show

Stars: Pictured L-R: Obioma Ugoala, Christine Allado, Jamael Westman, Giles Terera and Cleve September

Thrilled: The cast looked delighted with their first efforts at the press night, receiving a stand ovation from the audience

Going for it: Pictured L-R: Obioma Ugoala, Christine Allado, Jamael Westman, Cleve September and Rachel John on stage together

Honoured: The cast were all seen posing with Lin after the performance, with some rocking soldier's get-up for the historical adaptation

Ensemble goals: The cast appeared delighted that Lin, who wrote the original Broadway show, came to see the debut performance

Sensational: The cast stunned with the much-anticipated adaptation of the show, which has received rave reviews from critics

Stunning: The cast were their red carpet finery after the performance, which has been keenly awaited by theatre fans
The pair split earlier this year after she admitted dating her jailed former boyfriend was 'too much pressure'.

And Lauren Goodger looks like she's keen to kick the memory of her jailbird ex Joey Morrison for good by selling something sentimental.

The former TOWIE star snapped up matching his 'n' hers Chanel trainers for the couple last year - but is now trying to flog her pair for 500 on her Depop page.

Scroll down for video

Past it: Lauren Goodger looks like she's keen to kick the memory of her jailbird ex Joey Morrison for good by selling something sentimental

Taking to her sales page, the former TOWIE star wrote: 'Worn once in car perfect condition authentic Chanel trainers tweed style black with white heel and sole brought from Dubai reason for sale to big for me (sic)', accompained with a picture of the snazzy trainers.

She treated her boyfriend to the pair of matching shoes in Christmas last year, which she shared on Instagram: 'His and hers'.

Lauren confirmed that the pair decided to split and go their separate ways after 15 months of them communicating from either side of prison bars in September.

Kicking the habit: The former TOWIE star snapped up matching his 'n' hers Chanel trainers for the couple last year - but is now trying to flog her pair for 500 on her Depop page

Up for sale! Lauren first put up the 500 designer trainers on her Depop page, insisting they were too big for her

For over a year, the television personality has been forced to visit Joey in prison, as he has been in the midst of serving a 16 year violent drugs-related prison sentence.

He was convicted of a string of offences, including possession of a firearm, kidnapping, blackmail and actual bodily harm, and is due for a 2018 release.

In August a representative for the former fiancee of Mark Wright told MailOnline: 'Lauren and Joey haven't officially broken up, but Lauren is questioning her relationship and having doubts.

In prison: Joey was convicted of a string of offences, including possession of a firearm, kidnapping, blackmail and actual bodily harm, and is due for a 2018 release

Former lovers: Lauren confirmed that the pair decided to split and go their separate ways after 15 months of them communicating from either side of prison bars in September

It's not easy being with someone who is in prison especially with all the scrutiny and speculation.'

They added: 'She loves Joey deeply but she needs time to work out if this relationship has legs and whether it will all be worth it in the end.'

The comment came after a source claimed to The Sun that Lauren had confirmed she and Joey are no longer an item.

'It's not easy being with someone who is in prison': In August a representative for Lauren spoke MailOnline on her struggles with being in a relationship with a convict

'She said she is finished with Joey and that the relationship is over,' the insider told the paper. 'It didn't really come as a shock to anyone because people know it wasn't exactly the perfect relationship for her to be in.

The Essex resident appeared on Loose Women in September to set things straight regarding her crumbled dalliance with her ex-boyfriend Joey Morrison, who happens to be locked up in prison.

'He was meant to come out, last year, in November and things were great,' she explained, composed at first. 'But where things got set back, it put strain on us. I couldn't wait no more. It was too much pressure.'
She rushed her 'terrified' daughter Polly, six, to hospital after she was struck with Croup and left 'gasping for breath' earlier this month.

But Kym Marsh proved she had recovered from her little girl's health scare, flashing a wide grin as she attended a charity Christmas carol concert at Manchester cathedral on Thursday.

The 41-year-old Coronation Street actress looked typically chic as she flaunted her toned limbs in a flirty scarlet floral minidress.

Scroll down for video

Looking good: Kym Marsh flashed a wide grin as she attended a charity Christmas carol concert at Manchester cathedral on Thursday

Letting her statement dress do all the talking, the brunette beauty added height with a chic pair of black suede ankle boots.

Styling her glossy dark tresses in polished waves, she framed her pretty features with minimal make-up.

Kym seemed to be in high spirits as she attended the concert, held in aid of the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital charity

Cold Feet star John Thomson hosted the Christmassy affair, with traditional and contemporary readings from celebrity supporters of the charity including Corrie star Samia Longchambon, as well as some festive readings from patients and hospital staff.

All money raised from the event will go towards Royal Manchester Children's Hospital charity's 'One Big Wish' Christmas Appeal to raise funds to help purchase the gift of ten 3D pain distraction unit to ease patients' fears and take their minds off the medical procedures they can dread.

Chic: The 41-year-old Coronation Street actress looked typically chic as she flaunted her toned limbs in a flirty scarlet floral minidress

Double trouble: Kym beamed as she posed alongside her Coronation Street co-star Samia Longchambon

Kym flashed a beaming grin and appeared to be over the drama of last week, when Polly was suddenly struck down with Croup.

She revealed she took Polly straight to Salford Royal Hospital when she was left 'gasping for air' at her family home.

Recalling the 'terrifying' incident, Kym divulged she 'couldn't sleep' in her OK! magazine column when doctors revealed her daughter was suffering from Croup.

Croup is a respiratory infection that is usually caused by a virus, the infection leads to swelling in the windpipe and as a result, it interferes with normal breathing.

Going for gold: Samia tapped into her festive side in a metallic sequinned top teamed with simple skinny jeans

Three's a crowd: The pair were also joined by Cold Feet star, comedian John Thompson

'On Wednesday night at 11.30pm, Polly just started gasping for breath,' the Corrie beauty recalled of the incident.

'I had to rush her over to Salford Royal Hospital. It turned out she'd got Croup. It's something that children of the age of three can get but Polly is six.

'It was horrible and her cough sounded like she was a sea lion. I didn't get to bed until 5am and even then I couldn't sleep. The staff put Polly at ease because she was terrified. It was really horrible to see.'

The doctors sent Kym and Polly home with a course of steroids to tackle the Croup and she is said to be on the mend now.

Health scare: Kym's outing comes after she rushed her 'terrified' daughter Polly, six, to hospital after she was struck with Croup and left 'gasping for breath' earlier this month

Polly's dad Jamie Lomas was not told about her health scare because he was in I'm A Celebrity, sources claimed.

The Hollyoaks actor, 42, reportedly had no idea about the incident as it happened while he is in the Australian jungle.

'He hasn't been told while he's in the jungle,' a source told The Sun. 'Because it happened while Jamie was in the jungle, it's not something he'd know about.'

MailOnline has contacted an I'm A Celebrity representative for comment.
They reignited their on-and-off relationship at 2016's Byron Bay's Fall Festival.

And it's believed Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth are planning a return Down Under for New Year's this year, according to US Weekly.

A source told the publication the Wrecking Ball hit-maker would be 'taking a vacation down there for a while... to spend time with Liam's family.'

Wedding bells? Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth plan to spend an extended holiday in Australia over New Year's... but will their visit include secret nuptials?

Liam has two brothers: actors Chris Hemworth and Luke Hemsworth.

The happy couple spent last New Year's Eve with both their families in the US at a joint party.

Miley's visit marks her first trip to fiance Liam's native country since her Falls Festival appearance with Liam's brother Chris and his Spanish wife Elsa Pataky two years ago.

Happy holidays! It's believed Miley and Liam will spend Christmas in Nashville, before heading back to Australian shores via Los Angeles

'Zero plans of having an actual wedding': Plans for a secret wedding don't seem likely during their getaway Down Under as an inside source claimed they don't want a 'full wedding right now'

It's believed Miley and Liam will spend Christmas in Nashville, before heading back to Australian shores via Los Angeles.

However, plans of a secret wedding don't seem likely.

The insider told the publication: 'Miley and Liam still have zero plans of having an actual wedding.'

'They consider themselves married, but dont want a full wedding right now,' they added.

Daily Mail Australia reached out to Miley and Liam for comment.

'They consider themselves married': A source claimed they already consider themselves husband and wife, after confirming their engagement was back on in January 2016

The duo met while filming Nicholas Sparks' romantic flick The Last Song in 2009.

The We Can't Stop hit-maker initially dated the Hunger Games star for three years before becoming engaged in 2012, but splitting just a year later.

It was revealed in January 2016 that the couple had reunited and that their engagement was back on.
She revealed she suffered a loss recently in an Instagram post last week.

But it appears Tammin Sursok is working through her emotionally-tough period by focusing on the positives in her life.

The Hollywood star has returned to Sydney for the holidays and shared a vibrant post with her family, writing: 'Happiness isnt the destination.'

Scroll down for video

'Life right now couldn't be more perfect': Tammin Sursok appears happy to be home for the holidays... after sharing a cryptic Instagram post admitting she 'experienced a loss'

She added: 'It's moments of joy you find throughout the day.'

The Pretty Little Liars actress also captioned a high-spirited snap with her husband Sean McEwen and four-year-old daughter Pheonix: 'It's never about things...'

Spending the day at The Rocks near Sydney Harbour on Thursday, Tammin took a picture of a wine glass in her hand, writing: 'Life right now couldn't be more perfect.'

Cheers! Spending the day at The Rocks near Sydney Harbour on Thursday, Tammin took a picture of a wine glass in her hand

'It's moments of joy you find throughout the day': The Pretty Little Liars actress posed for high-spirited snaps with her husband Sean McEwen and four-year-old daughter Pheonix

Back home! Residing in Los Angeles, Tammin revealed last week that her family would be travelling 'around the world for 5 weeks'

She married her movie producer beau in 2011, with the pair dating for four years prior.

Residing in Los Angeles, Tammin revealed last week that her family would be travelling 'around the world for 5 weeks.'

Arriving in Sydney soon after, the former Home And Away star hit the beach, writing: 'Australia, we missed you.'

'Last week was the first time Ive experienced loss': On Friday, Tammin Sursok (pictured) shared a cryptic post about a tough emotional experience

On Friday, Tammin shared a cryptic post about a tough emotional experience

'Its been hard for me to be on social media this week. We have been going through something as a family and its hard to mask what we are feeling,' Tammin wrote alongside an image of herself looking away from the camera last week.

While the actress didn't reveal the source of her grief, she disclosed she wanted to be 'authentic' with her followers.

'Last week was the first time I've experienced loss. That's as much as I'm going to say right now but I do want to write about what we have been through at some point to help anyone who is also going through it,' she added.

'We have been going through something as a family and its hard to mask what we are feeling': Tammin opened up about her emotions without revealing all the details about her loss

Continuing sharing details of her emotional state, Tammin admitted to being 'angry' during what is supposed to be a festive time of year.

'The holiday season is beautiful but sometimes you hurt and its messy and confusing and irritating. You become angry and you dont know at who to be angry,' she explained.

'You realize that your anger just stems from pain. So if you are hurting this holiday season, for any reason, know Im with you and I see you. And the only way out is through. Together we got this.'

Family time: Tammin shares her now four-year-old daughter Phoenix (pictured) with husband Sean McEwen (left)

During a recent chat with Jules Sebastian for Tea With Jules, Tammin confirmed she's ready to have a second child in 2018.

The star has been candid about her struggles in the past and in March, took to Instagram to talk about her postpartum anxiety which she said, 'hit me like a ton of bricks after I had my daughter'.
She's rumoured to have found love on Bachelor In Paradise with Jarrod Woodgate.

And Keira Maguire appears to be fuelling rumours that the pair are still together as she continues to hang out in Jarrod's hometown Melbourne.

On Friday, the surgically-enhanced blonde was pictured enjoying a seafood lunch in a Melbourne based cafe with fellow Bachelor alum Laurina Fleure.

Something fishy going on! Keira Maguire joins fellow Bachelor In Paradise star Laurina Fleure for a seafood dinner in Melbourne...but is she really there for rumoured boyfriend Jarrod Woodgate?

The pair both shared images from the meal where they tucked into a plate of mussels and several cocktails.

'My girl is in town!' gushed Laurina in her caption.

However, although it appeared Keira was there to see her gal pal, the reality star has continued to fuel rumours that she is also spending time with Jarrod.

Gal pals: The pair both shared images from the lunch where they tucked into a plate of mussels and several cocktails

On Wednesday, Keira seemed to confirm that the two are together with a picture of herself from her recent trip with the caption: 'When BAE isn't answering'.

Keira, who appeared as the Bachelor 'villain' vying for Richie Strahan's heart, seems to have been jetting back and forth to Melbourne since filming on Bachelor in Paradise wrapped.

Together? On Wednesday, Keira seemed to confirm that the two are together with a picture of herself from her recent trip with the caption: 'When BAE isn't answering'

In recent months, she said she was on a 'date night.'

Sharing a picture of herself on the hotel bed to Instagram, she captioned it: 'Oh hey Melbourne... Wheres the best Peking <duck emoji>???? #datenight'.

This month she was also was seen pulling up outside Jarrod's house in a rented Maserati before heading to lunch with a female pal.

After lunch the pair returned to Jarrod's house, but Keira stayed inside her car.

Jarrod, who was unceremoniously dumped by Sophie Monk just weeks ago on The Bachelorette, was seen crouching down and talking to the two girls through the window.

Keira, who appeared as the Bachelor 'villain' vying for Richie Strahan's heart, seems to have been jetting back and forth to Melbourne since filming on Bachelor in Paradise wrapped

Keira and Jarrod are back in Australia after filming Bachelor in Paradise in Fiji.

While on the island, the pair were seen on numerous dates and caught kissing during romantic embraces.

On one occasion they were also seen checking into a hotel together.

'Jarrod is completely smitten and thinks Keira is The One' Insiders have told several publications that the pair are a couple

According to Woman's Day, Jarrod and Keira are the real deal.

'Jarrod is completely smitten and thinks Keira is The One,' an insider reportedly told the publication.

A source also told the publication that the blonde beauty is considering a move to Melbourne to be closer to her new beau.

Meanwhile, NW recently went as far as reporting that the pair may tie the knot.

Is he smitten? Jarrod - who failed to win Sophie's heart on The Bachelorette this year - is apparently head over heels in love with Keira

'Keira's always wanted a husband and kids... That's the whole reason she signed up for the show,' an insider explained the publication.

Jarrod - who failed to win Sophie's heart on The Bachelorette this year - is apparently head over heels in love with Keira.

'Jarrod truly believed he was in love with Sophie, but after meeting Keira, his whole life has turned upside down,' the source added.
The state's chief scientist has warned NSW could be plunged into chaos in the event of a large-scale "black system" power outage, similar to the one that debilitated South Australia last year.

While finding it was highly unlikely NSW would fall victim to a blackout of that scale, a report released by the Energy Security Taskforce has found NSW was nevertheless ill-prepared.

Taskforce chair and chief scientist Mary O'Kane says the state government needs to adopt a more proactive approach to managing short- and medium-term risks, including during prolonged periods of extreme heat.

"The government must be alive to risks over coming years so that it can manage emerging risks proactively when needed," Prof O'Kane said in a statement.

For Sydneysiders, the report found up to 10,000 people on underground trains would need to be evacuated in the event the state fell victim to an outage.

Meanwhile, public hospitals only have six hours worth of fuel in their back-up diesel generators, the report released on Tuesday, found.

"As we saw in the South Australian event, sometimes these can go on for a while and there is reason to think it would be quite some time in a black event like that for Sydney to come back up," Ms O'Kane told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

The report found the system was vulnerable in times of extreme weather events and made nine recommendations to shore it up.

"The next decade will be a period of transition and disruption for the National Energy Market, and with that comes opportunities for innovation to increase the future reliability and security of the state's electricity system," Prof O'Kane said.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Charles FAMILETTI, Jr., AKA Charles Familetti, Defendant-Appellant. No. 16-2334-cr Decided: December 20, 2017

Before: Jacobs, Sack, and Parker, Circuit Judges. Jessica K. Fender, Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District (with Patrick Egan, Karl Metzner, on the brief), New York, New York, for the United States of America. Jerald Brainin, Esq., Los Angeles, California, for Defendant-Appellant.

Charles Familetti, a former financial executive at HSBC Holdings plc, was a target of an undercover investigation into child pornography and sex crimes on the internet. An FBI sting operation culminated in a lawful search of the appellant's apartment during which (Familetti contends) statements were elicited in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Familetti challenges his conviction on grounds that he was in custody and that the police elicited his offer to cooperate in the investigation as the opening gambit in a two-step evasion of the Miranda rule forbidden by Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). We conclude that the circumstances and phrasing of the pre-warning request for cooperation would have constituted an interrogation under Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980), if Familetti had been in custody, but that under Circuit law, he was not. Because Familetti was not in custody when the FBI conducted a pre-warning interrogation, we affirm the conviction.

BACKGROUND

I

Familetti participated in chat sessions, using a pseudonym, on an online service called GigaTribe. In June 2013, Special Agent Thomas Thompson engaged Familetti in a chat during which Familetti sent child pornography videos to Thompson and expressed interest in a sexual experience with a minor. Thompson offered to arrange an encounter with an eleven-year-old. Special Agent Aaron Spivack, posing as Thompson's online persona, met with Familetti in person, and they contracted for Spivack to deliver a child to Familetti's corporate apartment for $500. At the conclusion of the meeting, Familetti gave Spivak $100 as a down payment. At the agreed time, Spivack arrived at the apartment with a task force led by Thompson, which executed a search warrant.

Familetti suffered an extreme panic attack as the agents entered, and two agents were needed to restrain him, push him against the wall, and temporarily handcuff him. The agents placed him in a chair in his living room, brought him a glass of water, and waited for him to calm down. Agent Thompson then explained to Familetti that he was not under arrest and was free to leave, but that the agents had a warrant to search the apartment and might take some things. App'x at 74. When Familetti's panic subsided, the handcuffs were removed; he was led into his bedroom, and advised again that he was not under arrest. Thompson then told Familetti that the reason why we're here is related to child pornography and that the number one goal is to find those people out there who are raping children and making these type of videos. App'x at 76. Although the record does not reflect the precise exchange that followed, it is undisputed that Thompson asked for Familetti's help with the investigation, and that Familetti stated that he was willing. See App'x at 76 (A: And then I told [Familetti]  maybe he could help us provide some information in finding these people.); Appellant's Br. at 7 (stating Familetti immediately agreed to cooperate); Appellee's Br. at 5 (stating Familetti said that he was willing to talk to the agents).

Thereupon, Thompson advised Familetti of his Miranda rights orally and in writing, and elicited Familetti's waiver. In the ensuing interview, Familetti confessed to using an online account to trade child pornography, storing child pornography on an SD card hidden in his apartment, and making a $100 down payment for sex with a minor.

II

The defense unsuccessfully moved to suppress the oral and written statements Familetti made during the search of his apartment. Familetti argued that his pre-warning statement was inadmissible as the product of a custodial interrogation, and that any subsequent waiver (and confession) was elicited by a deliberate two-step interrogation process, and was therefore neither knowing nor voluntary. See Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 615, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). We review the district court's factual findings on the existence of a custodial interrogation for clear error, and its legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Romaszko, 253 F.3d 757, 760 (2d Cir. 2001).

DISCUSSION

Absent a warning, the prosecution may not use a statement elicited by the police during a custodial interrogation. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 44850, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); see also United States v. Newton, 369 F.3d 659, 668 (2d Cir. 2004); United States ex rel. Hines v. LaVallee, 521 F.2d 1109, 1112 (2d Cir. 1975). By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602. A person must both be in custody and subject to interrogation for Miranda safeguards to apply. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980) ( Interrogation, as conceptualized in the Miranda opinion, must reflect a measure of compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself.).

I

An interrogation occurs when a suspect is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent and his statements are the product of words or actions on the part of the police that were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Id. at 30001, 303, 100 S.Ct. 1682. Familetti contends that he was under interrogation in his bedroom because the agent posed a direct question calculated to draw an incriminating response. The agents informed him that they were there to uncover activities related to child sex and pornography. Thompson testified that he asked Familetti if he could help the agents with their investigation into who was raping children, and that Familetti agreed to do so. The Government responds that no interrogation took place because asking for cooperation is not a manner of questioning reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.

Not all questioning of a suspect by the police amounts to interrogation. Some question[s] [are] necessary to secure their own safety or the safety of the public. New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 65859, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984). Likewise, pedigree questions that pertain to administration or a defendant's basic identification information do not trigger Miranda. See Rosa v. McCray, 396 F.3d 210, 221 (2d Cir. 2005) (noting the general rule that pedigree questioning does not fall under the strictures of Miranda); accord United States v. Kane, 726 F.2d 344, 349 (7th Cir. 1984) ([A] Miranda interrogation violation does not occur when arresting officers question a defendant only to a limited extent for data required as part of the processing normally attendant to arrest and custody.). And [v]olunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the Fifth Amendment. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602.

Along these lines, we have questioned whether a request from the police for cooperation or assistance can be interrogation. In United States v. Guido, we rejected the proposition that a discussion of cooperation is inherently a form of questioning for the purposes of Miranda. 704 F.2d 675, 677 (2d Cir. 1983) (emphasis added). In that case, the defendant was not subject to the functional equivalent of express questioning when the agents discussed the possibility of cooperation while they took him to the police station in a squad car. Id. Engaging defendants with pre-warning or pre-counsel cooperation inquiries is by no means an uncommon technique in this Circuit. See App'x at 76 (in describing his solicitation to Familetti to assist with finding the child pornographers, Agent Thompson responded [t]hat's my typical standard opening line); United States v. Annucci, No. 06 Cr. 982(BSJ), 2007 WL 1310156, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. May 3, 2007); see also United States v. Vado, 87 F.Supp.3d 472, 476 (S.D.N.Y. 2015).

[A]lmost any information obtained from a suspect, however innocuous it appears on its face, may prove to be incriminating  United States ex rel Hines, 521 F.2d at 1112. The Supreme Court has cautioned that the interrogation environment is not to be construed so narrowly as to defeat Miranda's purpose: various techniques of persuasion, no less than express questioning can amount to interrogation. Innis, 446 U.S. at 299, 100 S.Ct. 1682 (internal citation omitted). Interrogation therefore includes engagement short of a formal interview. Just as some safety related inquiries will invade a defendant's Fifth Amendment rights, see Orozco v. Texas, 394 U.S. 324, 325, 89 S.Ct. 1095, 22 L.Ed.2d 311 (1969) (ruling inappropriate pre-Miranda police questioning about whether the suspect owned a pistol and the location of the weapon), a defendant's undertaking that he will help or cooperate in an investigation (or not) can sometimes implicate the defendant in the crime or in that criminal universe. The cooperation inquiry can also result in more significant incriminating consequences as the first step of [t]he technique of interrogating in successive, unwarned and warned phases. Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 609, 124 S.Ct. 2601. [I]nterrogation practices such as the one at issue in this case may disable an individual from making a free and rational choice about speaking, negating the constitutional force of subsequent Miranda warnings. Id. at 611, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 46465, 86 S.Ct. 1602). Thus the cooperation inquiry can become a tool to evade substantive Fifth Amendment protections.

The first principle is that not  all statements obtained by the police after a person has been taken into custody are to be considered the product of interrogation. Innis, 446 U.S. at 299300, 100 S.Ct. 1682. In Innis, the defendant volunteered a damaging statement after overhearing a conversation between two police officers. Id. at 30203, 100 S.Ct. 1682. But courts have been cautious about extending Innis to additional forms of pre-warning conduct in which the police pose direct questions. See United States v. Jackson, 544 F.3d 351, 35860 & n.4 (1st Cir. 2008) (distinguishing Innis from questioning suspect about his involvement in a stolen firearm complaint); United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377, 38586 (7th Cir. 1989) (declining to establish any general rule that questioning defendants about their employment always falls outside the reach of Miranda); United States v. Hunter, 708 F.3d 938, 94748 (7th Cir. 2013) (holding that when detective asked suspect what he would like to tell his parents on the phone after a shooting incident reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response). A blanket rule allowing the police to solicit cooperation prior to Miranda warnings is not inferable from Innis; nor, for that matter, is it dictated by Guido.

Guido does not foreclose the conclusion that a solicitation to cooperate or assist can be inculpatory. The Guido opinion emphasized facts mitigating the likelihood that the defendant would offer an incriminating response. Cf. Jackson, 544 F.3d at 35960 (citing an officer's invitation to cooperate as evidence of interrogation). Guido rejected the idea that an agreement to cooperate is inherently incriminating under Innis; the negative pregnant is that asking a suspect to assist or cooperate can sometimes be incriminating, depending on circumstances. Soliciting cooperation from potential suspects of course has an essential role in criminal investigations; moreover, a confession is not involuntary merely because the suspect was promised leniency if he cooperated with law enforcement officials, United States v. Bye, 919 F.2d 6, 9 (2d Cir. 1990) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). At the same time, a request to help or cooperate in an investigation may be treated as interrogation for the purposes of Miranda if: there is no concern about officer or public safety; the officers have volunteered the specific criminal behavior at issue; the officers have given the defendant good reason to believe that he is suspected of participating in or having special knowledge of criminal conduct; and an undertaking to help or cooperate necessarily bespeaks criminal involvement. Fifth Amendment concerns are especially lively when the behavior alleged is highly antisocial or idiosyncratic, such as (as here) the molestation of minors and the sharing of child pornography. A suspect's agreement to cooperate is incriminating if by that agreement he has placed himself in that world.

Here, the government has stressed Guido to its breaking point. After invading Familetti's apartment to serve a search warrant, the agents informed him that they were looking for perpetrators of child pornography, and asked him for information. They left no doubt that Familetti was suspected of criminal involvement, and his response would more than likely confirm as much. We are therefore persuaded that the FBI agents' affirmative request for Familetti to help them investigate child pornography constituted interrogation.

II

The question remains whether Familetti was in custody at the moment he was asked about cooperation. While the disputed facts present a close case, the testimony credited by the district court establishes that Familetti was not in custody during any pre-Miranda interrogation. See United States v. Badmus, 325 F.3d 133, 139 (2d Cir. 2003).

The ultimate inquiry for determining Miranda custody  is that articulated by the Supreme Court in California v. Beheler [463 U.S. 1121, 1125, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275 (1983) (per curiam) ]: whether there is a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest. United States v. Newton, 369 F.3d 659, 670 (2d Cir. 2004) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). As a formal matter, Familetti had not been placed under arrest when he made the pre-Miranda statements at issue. In evaluating whether the degree of a restraint is custodial, we look to whether a reasonable person in the suspect's shoes would not have felt free to leave under the circumstances. United States v. Ali, 86 F.3d 275, 276 (2d Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see Georgison v. Donelli, 588 F.3d 145, 156 (2d Cir. 2009) (emphasis in original) (evaluating the totality of the circumstances to determine whether a reasonable person would have thought he was free to leave the police encounter). In the absence of actual arrest, an interrogation is not custodial unless the authorities affirmatively convey the message that the defendant is not free to leave, United States v. Mitchell, 966 F.2d 92, 98 (2d Cir. 1992), or that he is completely at the mercy of the police. Newton, 369 F.3d at 675 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

Circumstances identified as indicative cut against finding a restraint comparable to formal arrest in this case.

Familetti was in his own home at the time of initial interrogation. [A]bsent an arrest, interrogation in the familiar surroundings of one's own home is generally not deemed custodial. Newton, 369 F.3d at 675; see also Mitchell, 966 F.2d at 99; United States v. Rakowski, 714 F.Supp. 1324, 1334 (D. Vt. 1987) (Lower courts  almost universally hold that questioning in a suspect's home is not custodial ).

The officers advised Familetti several times that he was not under arrest and was free to leave. Such advice, while not dispositive, is probative in assessing the extent to which a reasonable person would understand any restraints on his freedom. Newton, 369 F.3d at 676; see, e.g., United States v. Palase, No. 11-CR-413 (SLT), 2014 WL 6802560, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 2, 2014); United States v. Bershchansky, 958 F.Supp.2d 354, 38283 (E.D.N.Y. 2013), aff'd, 788 F.3d 102 (2d Cir. 2015) ([T]he court finds that the government agents informed defendant he was not under arrest and was free to leave at the time of the search, factors establishing that defendant could not reasonably understand that he was in custody.). There is no evidence that Familetti ever asked or tried to leave the interview. See United States v. Faux, 828 F.3d 130, 139 (2d Cir. 2016) (noting the suspect did not seek to end the encounter, or to leave the house during questioning); United States v. Lifshitz, No. 03 CR. 572(LAP), 2004 WL 2072468, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 15, 2004).

Familetti argues that he lacked any real option to leave, the agents' assurances notwithstanding. He points primarily to Agent Thompson's testimony; when asked what would have happened if Familetti tried to leave, Thompson said he would have had to consider his options. Appellant's Br. at 17 (quoting App'x at 126). But the inquiry into custodial status is objective, and does not turn on the subjective views harbored by  the interrogating officers. Stansburg v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 323, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994); see Mitchell, 966 F.2d at 98 (custody status determined by the presence or absence of affirmative indications that the defendant was not free to leave).

Nor does the evidence indicate that Familetti was so severely intimidated or coerced while he conversed with the agents in his bedroom that a reasonable person in his position would feel that he was completely at the mercy of the police. Newton, 369 F.3d at 675 (internal citation and quotation marks omitted); United States v. Pollaro, 733 F.Supp.2d 364, 370371 (E.D.N.Y. 2010). The agents restrained Familetti when he was in the grip of his initial panic; but under such conditions a certain level of restraint is acceptable in the course of a reasonable investigative detention. United States v. Nguyen, No. 2:05CR130-3, 2006 WL 2260104, at *8 (D. Vt. Aug. 7, 2006) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)); see also United States v. Cota, 953 F.2d 753, 75859 (2d Cir. 1992) (concluding that the defendant was not in custody where the initial use of guns and handcuffs [were] necessitated by the officer's safety, but the handcuffs were removed as soon as  the perceived safety threat abated). Handcuffs are generally recognized as a hallmark of a formal arrest, and it may be that for several minutes in the living room Familetti was in custody. Newton, 369 F.3d at 676; see also Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 215 & n. 17, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). But even Familetti concedes that the handcuffs came off before Agent Thomson began interrogating him in the bedroom. His initial restraints cannot establish a state of custody for the duration of his interactions with the police. See Bershchansky, 958 F.Supp.2d at 383 (Even the use of handcuffs prior to an interrogation, however, does not automatically render the interrogation custodial.); see also Cota, 953 F.2d at 75859.

Familetti responds that nine agents swarming his apartment was so inherently intimidating that no one would reasonably believe he was free to leave. However, the presence of the agents in Familetti's dwelling to execute the search warrant does not render Thompson's questioning custodial. See Faux, 828 F.3d at 137 (holding that absent other hallmarks of custody, a reasonable person would understand that being accompanied in one's home by agents who are legally present to execute a search warrant is a sensible precaution); cf. Newton, 369 F.3d at 675 (The presence of numerous officers would not, by itself, have led a reasonable person in [defendant's] shoes to conclude that he was in custody.).

Faux is analogous. Approximately ten to fifteen agents executed a search warrant at the defendant's home while she was being questioned for hours at her dining table. Faux, 828 F.3d at 13234. We held that Faux was not in custody while agents swarmed about her home because she was never told she was not free to leave, the tone of the questioning was conversational, and no weapons were displayed. Id. at 13839. Similarly, after Familetti subsided from his initial distress, the agents engaged him in a tone that was (as the district court found) non-confrontational. Familetti was not restrained when the two agents sat with him in his bedroom to discuss cooperation; the agents' weapons were never drawn; and the pre-Miranda interview lasted at most several minutes. See, e.g., Vado, 87 F.Supp.3d at 479 (concluding the suspect was not in custody where the interview lasted no more than 40 minutes, [he] was not restrained, and the agents' weapons were not drawn); Faux, 828 F.3d at 13839 (ruling the circumstances of Faux's interrogation militate against a finding of custody over a two hour interview).

Familetti was thus not under custodial interrogation at any time before he received his Miranda warnings.

III

Because Familetti was not subject to a pre-warning custodial interrogation, we do not reach his corollary argument regarding a deliberate two-step interrogation. See Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 612, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (finding post-Miranda confessions can be involuntary specifically in circumstances where law enforcement elicited a first, unwarned and inadmissible segment of incriminating evidence).

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we hereby AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

FOOTNOTES

. Although the agents suggested the defendant could cooperate with law enforcement, they also told him that he should discuss the possibility [of cooperation] with his attorney, and indicated that [he] would not be questioned about the case at that time. Guido, 704 F.2d at 677.

. When evaluating whether questioning constitutes interrogation, attention is properly paid to the perceptions of the suspect in the questions and answers, rather than the intent of the police. Innis, 446 U.S. at 301, 100 S.Ct. 1682; see also United States v. Zahrey, 963 F.Supp. 1273, 1281 (E.D.N.Y. 1997). Whether the police intend to elicit incriminating information is of no moment so long as they should have known that their actions were likely to do so.

Dennis Jacobs, Circuit Judge:
The Brisbane Heat have weathered a Marcus Stoinis storm to prevail in their Big Bash League opener against the Melbourne Stars at the Gabba.

Chasing 207, the Stars were in all sorts at 3-38 before Stoinis (99 from 51) arrived and gave the visitors a sniff before falling 15 runs short.

Stoinis was run-out going for his 100th run in the final over, in which the Stars needed 24 to win.

He and James Faulkner (47 not out from 38) shared in a 137-run partnership that hushed the 27,433 in attendance, who had cheered their side beyond 200 despite the absence of batting sensation Chris Lynn.

Earlier, the Heat showed they were no one-man team, with Joe Burns (50 from 27) and Alex Ross (51 from 36) ensuring the runs flowed in the middle overs after Brendon McCullum's fast start and Ben Cutting's powerful closing knock.

"My role throughout the tournament will change depending on the situation and that's the way we want to play, as a top six, seven batting group, trying to make as many runs as possible," Burns said of the team's shared effort.

The Stars used eight bowlers, with off-spinner Michael Beer (2-21 from four) and Stoinis (3-38 from four) the most effective.

McCullum (40 from 22) did the damage early, taking to Scott Boland in a third over that netted 24 runs.

Cutting then took over, muscling a quickfire 34 from 18 deliveries to push the Heat beyond 200.

Sharp catches from Mitch Swepson and McCullum to dismiss Ben Dunk (0) and Kevin Pietersen (10) put the Heat in control.

And when Glenn Maxwell (8) hit a Shadab Khan (2-41 from four) long-hop to deep mid-on the Stars were 3-38.

A 22-run Ben Cutting over gave the Stars hope, but Mark Steketee held his nerve in the final over to see the Stars finish 6-191.

Stoinis dedicated the innings to his late father, who passed away after battling blood cancer last month.

"I just miss him and it's weird, it was the only thing I was thinking when I was out there and I'm sure he's watching somewhere," Stoinis said.

"But it's a good start; I've been saying in the media a bit that I'm ready to go and feeling really good so it's good to just do it."

The Heat were struck a blow before the toss, with a minor hamstring strain denying Lynn his return from shoulder surgery.

Lynn is unlikely to play in the Heat's clash with Melbourne Renegades on Saturday, with a return at the Gabba against the Sydney Thunder next Wednesday the more likely scenario.
A Melbourne man who fatally stabbed his ex-wife 16 times in what a judge called "family violence of the most extreme kind" has been jailed for 30 years.

Fernando Paulino, 55, showed no reaction on Thursday morning as Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bell jailed him for a non-parole term of 25 years for the brutal murder of his estranged wife Teresa Mancuso.

The flight attendant, 49, was stabbed at least 16 times in the chest, abdomen and back, and suffered blunt force trauma to the head in the garage of her elderly parents' Reservoir home in 2013.

Justice Bell said Paulino was driven by jealousy, hatred and rage toward his former wife and made threats to kill her, harassed her and blackened her name.

Although Ms Mancuso was terrified of him, she refused to live a life of victimhood, he said.

"This is a very serious example of the crime of murder," the judge said.

"Yet again the court is confronted by family violence of the most extreme kind."

However, the judge said the murder was not in the worst category and Paulino was not beyond redemption.

A Supreme Court jury convicted Paulino of the murder in June.

National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.
One hundred and three years ago the Australian World War I submarine AE1 vanished without a trace.

Now it's been found, ending one of the nation's most puzzling and oldest naval mysteries.

AE1 went missing while on patrol off East New Britain on September 14, 1914, with 35 Australian, New Zealand and British crew on board.

There was no distress call and no witnesses.

It was the first wartime loss for the Royal Australian Navy and the first Allied submarine loss in World War I, according to Defence.

Over the years there have been 13 searches for AE1. One, in 2013 involved a navy minehunter and another in 2014 used multi-beam sonar carried aboard a chartered mining survey boat.

The latest and successful search, which only began last week, used the Dutch-owned survey vessel Fugro Equator.

Most were confined to an area east of Duke of York Island, off the New Britain capital Rabaul.

AE1's final contact with destroyer HMAS Parramatta at 2.30pm, more than a century ago, placed her in this area.

Mioko Island villagers at the time spoke of seeing a "monster" or "devil fish" that appeared and quickly disappeared into the water.

It was always assumed AEI was not a victim of enemy action because only German vessel nearby at the time was a small survey ship.

Because no wreckage, oil or bodies were found it was also believed AE1 sank intact, most likely after striking a reef that punched a hole in the pressure hull.

Whether or not this is what happened is still to be publicly verified.

The primary search depth was 400 metres down. The submarine was eventually found in 300 metres of water. It appears to be well preserved and in one piece.

AE1 was one of two E-class submarines built in Britain for the new Australian navy. It was launched in May 1913 and commissioned into the navy in February 1914.

Commanded by Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, AE1 accompanied the Australian expeditionary forces dispatched at the start of WWI to capture then German-occupied New Britain.

In one of the epic feats of naval warfare, her sister vessel AE2 achieved fame when she penetrated the Dardanelles waterway at the same time Australian troops landed on Gallipoli.

After attacking Turkish shipping in the Sea of Marmara, AE2 came under fire from a Turkish gunboat and was scuttled so she would not fall into Turkish hands and the crew ended up in a Turkish prison camp.

Her wreckage was discovered in 1998.

To remember both vessels and crews, brass commemorative plaques were dedicated in a ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra in 2014.

Dotted around the memorial grounds are more than 200 plaques for Australian military units, but these were the first for Australian navy ships of World War I.

Soon, AE1 will have its own memorial at her final resting place.

And the Australian and British descendants of her crew will finally have the answer to how she came to founder in those cold waters more than 100 years ago.
A teenager has been charged with the sexual assault and attempted murder of a 43-year-old woman in her northeastern NSW home.

The 16-year-old's victim was sleeping at her home in Lismore when she woke to find the teenager armed with a knife after 4am on Saturday, NSW Police said.

The woman was sexually assaulted, stabbed and hit on the head - her screams alerting neighbours and forcing the teen to flee.

She was left with a stab wound, facial injuries and cuts and taken to Lismore Base Hospital.

Police arrested a teenager at a home in Coraki on Wednesday evening.

He will appear in Lismore Local Court on Thursday charged with numerous offences including aggravated sexual assault and wounding a person with intent to murder.
A man who raped and killed Melbourne schoolgirl Kylie Maybury in 1984 will almost certainly die in jail for his "disgusting" crimes.

Gregory Keith Davies, 75, pleaded guilty in May to raping and murdering the six-year-old girl on Melbourne Cup Day, ending a three-decade mystery over her death.

Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry sentenced Davies to life behind bars on Thursday for the violent murder, setting a minimum term of 28 years.

Kylie had walked 140 metres to the shops at suburban Preston East to buy sugar for her mother, but never returned.

Her body was found face down in a gutter the following day, having been raped, drugged and suffocated by Davies.

"This girl did nothing except walk to a shop and at six years old she lost her life," the judge said during sentencing.

"You saw her and chose her at random. Your conduct was simply disgusting.

"Having committed these offences, you lied to police at the time and kept what you had done to yourself for 33 years. I wonder how you did it."

The killer wasn't identified until 2016 when Davies' DNA was matched to semen on Kylie's clothing and genitals.
A Sydney man has been charged with hacking an Australian company's email server which cost the business more than $140,000.

The 43-year-old man from Blacktown was arrested on Wednesday over the hack which happened in April, NSW Police said on Thursday.

The incident allegedly led to an invoice between the design and manufacturing company and one of its clients being paid to an unknown account.

The man was charged with recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime and is due to appear at Blacktown Local Court in mid-January.
Liam Gallagher has made 2017 his year of redemption.

First there was the surprise solo album, then the remorseful content of the album and now a potential truce with his brother Noel.

His debut solo record, As You Were, was a top ten hit around the world including in Australia and Gallagher had some moments of real repentance on the record.

"The songs that I wrote on there I had to dig deep on them," Gallagher told AAP.

"It was an apologetic kind of record but once that's done now I wouldn't want to be going back there next time because you can only say sorry so many times and if people don't get it f*** 'em. Hopefully the next one will be a bit more, like, unapologetic."

Despite the recent rumours of reconciliation with his brother Noel after eight years of feuding, none of those apologies were directed towards his brother.

"There was no sorrys to me brother because I've got nothing to be sorry to him about. Everyone goes 'oh yeah, about Noel?' But f*** him, there's nothing to be sorry about. If anyone should be apologising, it should be him," he said.

He says it's his children, and his mother, he wanted to apologise to.

"I was saying sorry for maybe lots of things. F*****g up.You know, my kids, I've caused them a lot of pain over the years, me Mam and stuff. Just things like that really," he said.

"There was a bit for four years when I didn't see them (his children) for a bit, which was rightly so ... they were probably hearing lots of stuff. But that's been sorted now so now they're back and they know that I'm not a bad person so it's all good.

The album came as a surprise to Gallagher, who was actually considering stepping away from music.

"I was planning on not bothering any more and then all of a sudden, whatever it is that makes you do things in life, whether it's the universe or whatever, I just picked up the guitar and started playing it and a couple of songs came to me," he said.

He's already booked studio time in April to start work on more music but his focus has been on the tour, which has gone down well in the UK.

In a week he'll be in Australia touring as a headliner for Falls Festival and for sold out sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne, but not before a well-earned break.

"If someone asked me to sing now I reckon I'd cry. I'm f****d. I need a bit of a break over Christmas and then I'm on that plane out there and then I think we'll be up for it man, I can't wait."

*Liam Gallagher will perform at Falls Festival around the country from December 30 and will play Sydney's Hordern Pavilion on January 4 and Melbourne's Festival Hall on January 5.
The West Australian government has rejected a proposal to mine iron-ore at the Helena-Aurora Range and will seek to make the area an A class reserve.

The decision comes after the Environmental Protection Authority twice found Mineral Resources Ltd's proposal to develop the Jackson 5 and Bungalbin iron ore deposits within the Helena-Aurora Range, north of Southern Cross, was environmentally unacceptable.

Environment Minister Stephen Dawson said the economic and social benefits of mining the range were found to not outweigh the environmental loss and the WA government would now look at turning the area into an A class reserve.
A 64-year old man has been charged with a child sex offence after allegedly photographing children playing in a Perth park and assaulting a young girl.

Police say the Success man photographed a group of children as they played at the Horse Hire Park in Mala Way between 1pm and 2pm on Tuesday.

The man, who was a stranger to the children, is then accused of approaching an eight-year-old girl and touching her in an indecent manner.

He has been charged with indecent dealing and will appear before Fremantle Magistrates Court on January 12.
Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman has publicly criticised new Liberal National Party leader Deb Frecklington for failing to heed his advice about the direction of the party.

The LNP party hierarchy last week sent Mr Newman a letter asking him to resign for criticising the party.

Mr Newman said he wouldn't resign, and accused Ms Frecklington of not being receptive of advice he had given her over the last term of government ahead of the state election where the LNP failed to topple the Palaszczuk Labor government.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. VICTOR D'ACOSTA BOURNE, Defendant-Appellant, MATTHEW JAMES, GEORGILIO ESTEVEZ, MIGUEL BOZZA, MARIA ALLEYNE, AKA MARIA BOURNE, Defendants. 12-4256-cr Decided: December 20, 2017

PRESENT: JOSE A. CABRANES, SUSAN L. CARNEY, Circuit Judges. RICHARD W. GOLDBERG, Judge.* FOR APPELLEE: Amy Busa and Patricia E. Notopoulos, Assistant United States Attorneys, for Bridget M. Rohde, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, NY. FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: Stephen N. Preziosi, Law Office of Stephen N. Preziosi, P.C., New York, NY.

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION WHEREOF, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court be and hereby is AFFIRMED.

Victor D'Acosta Bourne appeals a judgment convicting him of nine felony counts involving traffic in controlled substances and money laundering. We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal. We discuss each of his grounds for appeal in turn below.

1. Disqualification of Counsel

Bourne argues that the District Court erred by disqualifying his defense counsel of choice. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 10-25. The government responds that Bourne waived or forfeited this claim and that in any case the District Court acted within its discretion. See Br. & App. United States 22-29.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees a criminal defendant the right to choose his or her counsel; however, a district court has discretion to disqualify the defendant's chosen attorney in cases of actual conflict or potentially serious conflict of interest, including cases of multiple representation or prior representation of a witness or codefendant. United States v. Locascio, 6 F.3d 924, 931 (2d Cir. 1993) (spelling modified). The district court exercises this discretion to protect both the defendant's right to effective assistance of counsel and the state's interest in the integrity of legal proceedings. See id. The district court's decision is reviewed for abuse of discretion. Id.

Whether or not Bourne waived or forfeited his right to argue this issue, we do not think that the District Court abused its discretion. Bourne's attorney had also represented Maria Alleyne (Alleyne), a codefendant, in an earlier phase of the proceedings. App. 127. He continued to advise Alleyne even after the District Court had disqualified him from representing her. App. 126. In the District Court's view, the attorney's actions may have violated New York norms of professional conduct. See App. 128. These circumstances provided a sufficient factual basis for the District Court to disqualify Bourne's counsel of choice.

2. Sufficiency of the Evidence

Bourne next argues that the evidence at trial was insufficient to convict him on counts six, seven, and eight of the Superseding Indictment. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 26-37. The evidence was insufficient, he says, because the government failed to prove that he had had the mens rea required by 21 U.S.C.  959(a) (2006). See id.

A court of appeals will reverse a jury verdict for insufficiency of the evidence only if it concludes, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, that no rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979).

At the time of trial, United States Code title 21, section 959(a) provided: It shall be unlawful for any person to  distribute a controlled substance  intending  or  knowing that such substance  will be unlawfully imported into the United States or into waters within a distance of 12 miles of the coast of the United States.

We conclude that the record does not justify reversal for insufficient evidence on these counts. For conviction on count eight, no intent to import or knowledge of importation was required. Count eight charged a violation of 21 U.S.C.  841(a)(1) (2006)which makes no mention of importationnot 21 U.S.C.  959(a) (2006). See Br. & App. United States at GA17. Bourne thus cannot complain that the government failed to present evidence of importation in making its case on that count. For conviction on counts six and seven, we think that a rational trier of fact could have found the required mens rea from the evidence in the record. We note in particular the testimony of witness Hanson. That testimony recounted a telephone call with Bourne in which the transshipment of marijuana from Jamaica in Miami was discussed. See App. 297-98. We also note the testimony of the shipping company representative reporting the information that customers, including Bourne, would receive about the routes of container shipments. See Br. & App. United States at GA74 to -75.

3. Jury Instructions

The jury instructions on counts one, six, seven, and eight were erroneous, according to Bourne, because the District Court told the jury that United States Code title 21, section 959(a) did not require distribution of a controlled substance within the United States. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 38-41. The government argues that Bourne waived his right to appeal this issue by agreeing in the District Court that the instructions were correct. See Br. & App. United States 51. Even if he had not waived this issue, the government says, the instructions were not erroneous. See id. at 48-54.

We are not certain from the record whether Bourne in fact waived his objection to the instructions in question. See id. at GA98 to -99. But whether he waived or forfeited this objection or not, the instructions were not erroneous. Count eight did not charge a violation of section 959(a). See id. at GA17. For the other counts, the instructions correctly stated the law. The District Court instructed the jury: The law does not require that there be an intent to distribute a controlled substance within the United States; just that the defendant intended to distribute a controlled substance knowing that the substance would be unlawfully imported into the United States or into waters within a distance of 12 miles of the United States. App. 356. This instruction restates exactly what the plain language of section 959(a) requires. The statute requires simply that the defendant actually knew or intended that a controlled substance he distributed or manufactured would be illegally imported intonot distributed inthe United States. United States v. Romero-Padilla, 583 F.3d 126, 129 (2d Cir. 2009).

4. Denial of Motion to Suppress Evidence

Bourne argues the District Court also erred by denying a motion to suppress evidence. A federal agent seized the evidence, he says, during an illegal protective sweep of Alleyne's home. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 42-50. The government responds that Bourne lacks standing to make this objection. Br. & App. United States 32-33. In any case, the government argues, the agent found and seized the evidence in plain view while he was in Alleyne's home with her consent. See id. at 34-35.

Under the plain-view exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement of a warrant for search and seizure,  if police are lawfully in a position from which they view an object, if its incriminating character is immediately apparent, and if the officers have a lawful right of access to the object, they may seize it without a warrant.  United States v. Delva, 858 F.3d 135, 149 (2d Cir. 2017) (quoting Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 375 (1993)). The factual basis of a district court's decision on a motion to suppress evidence is reviewed for clear error; its legal conclusions are reviewed de novo. United States v. Bershchansky, 788 F.3d 102, 108 (2d Cir. 2015).

Whether or not Bourne has standing to raise this issue, the District Court's ruling on the motion does not meet the standards for reversal.

The District Court's factual findings are not clearly erroneous. The District Court found that Alleyne had given her consent to the agents arresting her to accompany her into her home. Br. & App. United States at GA69. It also found that the evidence in questiontext in documentswas obviously incriminating and lying in plain sight. Id. at GA69 to -70. There is enough evidence in the record to prevent us from forming a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed, Bershchansky, 788 F.3d at 110 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). See App. 146-48 (testimony recounting Alleyne's alleged consent), 150, 185-86 (testimony describing agents' entry into the home, the character of the documents, and the documents' placement in the front room as agents entered the home).

The District Court's conclusion that the seizure was lawful is also not erroneous. We agree that the plain-view exception applies to the facts as the District Court found them. Federal agents had permission to enter Alleyne's home, and they found obviously incriminating material in plain view as they entered.

5. Alleged Interference with Grand Jury Deliberation

Another source of error, Bourne argues, is a defective indictment. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 51-56. He asserts that a comment from the prosecution to the grand jury interfered with  the grand jury's independent assessment of the evidence, tainting the indictment. Id. at 51.

The parties disagree about whether Bourne has waived the right to argue this issue on appeal. Compare id. at 52, with Br. & App. United States 55-56. But whether or not Bourne waived the issue, the District Court did not plainly err by omitting to dismiss the indictment. We see no information in the record to suggest that the prosecution's comment substantially influenced the grand jury's decision to indict, and we do not have grave doubt that the decision to indict was free from the substantial influence of that comment. Bank of N.S. v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 256 (1988) (internal quotation marks omitted).

6. Sentence

Bourne's last argument is that his sentence is procedurally and substantively unreasonable. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 57-64.

A sentence is procedurally unreasonable if the district court fails to calculate or improperly calculates the Sentencing Guidelines range, treats the Sentencing Guidelines as mandatory, fails to consider the  3553(a) factors, selects a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts, or fails adequately to explain the chosen sentence. United States v. Aldeen, 792 F.3d 247, 251 (2d Cir. 2015) (emphasis, internal quotation marks, punctuation, and citation omitted). A sentence is substantively unreasonable only if the trial court's decision cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions. United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 189 (2d Cir. 2008) (en banc) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

(a) Procedural Reasonableness

Bourne's sentence is not procedurally unreasonable.

Bourne objects to the District Court's consideration at sentencing of conduct underlying charges on which he was acquitted. See Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 58-60. This objection must be rejected because such use is permitted by law. United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148, 157 (1997); see also United States v. Aldeen, 792 F.3d 247, 254 (2d Cir. 2015) (Ordinarily, conduct underlying acquitted or dismissed charges or uncharged conduct may be taken into account in sentencing if the government establishes that conduct by a preponderance of the evidence.).

Bourne objects to several factual findings on which the District Court based its sentencing decision. These findings are not clearly erroneous, however, since none of them leaves us with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed, Bershchansky, 788 F.3d at 110 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Compare Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 59-60 (objecting to the District Court's reliance on testimony of witnesses James and Beckford), with App. 369 (reporting the District Court's factual findings based on the testimony of witnesses James and Beckford), and id. at 320, 324-25, 327 (reporting relevant testimony of witness Beckford).

Bourne raises other procedural objections: that the District Court's grouping calculation was erroneous, see Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant at 61-62; and that the District Court erred by adding offense-level points for gun possession and for obstruction of justice, see id. at 62-64. We reject these objections for the reasons given by the District Court. See App. 369-73.

(b) Substantive Reasonableness

Bourne makes the substantive objection that the sentences for counts thirteen and fourteen are excessive because, he says, both of those counts stem from the same facts and circumstances that occurred on one day, only seven kilograms of cocaine were involved, and he had no prior arrests or convictions. Br. & Special App. Def.-Appellant 60-61. In light of the District Court's discussion of the substance of its sentencing decision, see App. 373-76, we conclude that there was no abuse of discretion.

CONCLUSION

We have reviewed all of the arguments raised by Bourne on appeal and find them to be without merit. We therefore AFFIRM the District Court's judgment of October 23, 2012.

FOR THE COURT: Catherine O'Hagan Wolfe, Clerk

FOOTNOTES

. Abuse of discretion is merely a term of art. It does not imply that the district court committed misconduct. Dinler v. City of New York (In re City of New York), 607 F.3d 923, 943 n.21 (2d Cir. 2010).

. The parties did not submit the transcript of the relevant parts of the testimony of witness James in their Appendix. We think, however, that the submitted testimony of witness Beckford is sufficient on its own to justify the District Court's findings.
SA MID-YEAR BUDGET REVIEW:

* $370m to be cut from government agencies over the next four years, with some back office jobs to go but no reduction in frontline workers.

* Budget surplus to be slashed to $12m in 2017/18 and $14m in 2018/19, down from previous forecasts of $72m and $132m.

* Budget surplus for 2016/17 finalised at $443m, $204 million more than previously forecast.

* The government to continue spending on key infrastructure projects including roads, hospitals and schools.

* The cost of buying the government's emergency generators revealed at $227.2m. The government will also pay $111.5m to lease and fuel them over the first two years.

* Employment growth over the next four years to be stuck at just one per cent.

* Total state debt finalised at $4.9b in 2016/17 but forecast to rise to $6.6b by 2020/21.
Australian actress Lucy Fry had a very strange audition with Hollywood star Will Smith involving an exorcism and a made-up language, all to land a role in the Netflix film Bright.

The fantasy film, directed by Suicide Squad's David Ayer, stars Smith as a cop working alongside an orc played by Joel Edgerton in an alternate version of LA in which supernatural beings live side-by-side with humans.

Fry landed the role of Tikka, an elf, but only after four auditions including that strange one with Smith.

"David Ayer got me to improvise and to scream, so I was yelling and making up words because at that point, for the Elvish, they just got us to speak the English words backwards just to see if we could deal with speaking gobbledegook and making it make sense," Fry told AAP.

"And then after that scene David said 'OK now I need you to perform an exorcism on Will' so I stood up behind him and put my hands over his head and was pretending to pull stuff out of his head."

The exorcism clearly worked and Fry can soon be seen in the film which releases on the streaming platform on Friday.

Before this, she starred in the first series of Stan's Wolf Creek and also in the adaptation of Stephen King's novel 11.22.63 starring James Franco.

But the Brisbane actress says she was starstruck when she first met Smith and found a way to deal with her nerves.

"I was sort of in character the whole time that we were on set. I was so nervous that I thought it would be better if I stayed in character and Joel sort of did too," she said.

Every day Fry spent two-and-a-half hours in the make-up chair to be transformed into her elf character, while it took three hours for fellow Aussie Edgerton to become the orc, Nick Jakoby.

"It brings something else out in you and there's no going back until they take it all off, so I kind of was always in character," she said.

The film may be set in an alternate reality but the actress says the underlying themes are rooted in reality.

"This is set in an LA that's dark and grungy and really messed up but with elves and orcs and humans all living together, and with this great message about diversity and equality," she said.

"For all of us telling this story we're so honoured to be part of something that's so entertaining and action packed but also has a deeper message at the same time."

*Bright is available on Netflix from December 22
Two new cases of dust disease linked to NSW's coal industry have state regulators worried about possible breaches of health and safety laws.

One case related to a worker diagnosed with mixed dust pneumoconiosis after spending much of his career in the coal industry underground, the NSW Resources Regulator said in a statement on Thursday.

The second case relates to a worker who is employed at a NSW mine who has been confirmed to have silicosis. He has previously worked in the mining and tunnelling industries interstate and overseas.

Both cases were detected through health screening provided to all current and retired coal workers.

"The resources regulator's major investigation unit is now investigating each case and will look closely to see if there were breaches of the work health and safety laws," chief compliance officer Anthony Keon said in a statement.

"Ensuring the appropriate management of airborne contaminants has been a key priority for the Resources Regulator and the detection of two confirmed cases of dust diseases is of significant concern."

Coal workers pneumoconiosis and silicosis are preventable diseases if appropriate dust control, atmospheric monitoring and worker monitoring measures are in place at mines.
A boy who was charged at the age of 11 over the stabbing death of a Perth man last year following Australia Day celebrations has been jailed for four years.

The boy, now aged 13, was one of eight people who in the early hours of January 27, 2016 chased and attacked Patrick Slater, who was fatally stabbed with a screwdriver.

Children's Court president Dennis Reynolds sentenced the boy to four years after he was found guilty of manslaughter and he will be eligible for release in February 2020 at the age of 16 with time already served.
The man, who has enjoyed Sydney-Hobart line honours success on three of the four supermaxis in this year's race, says brain power rather than relying on computers is a big key.

Black Jack navigator Tom Addis is searching for a fifth line honours win in the race after returning to Black Jack, the boat he reached Hobart first on in 2009, when it was known as Alfa Romeo.

Addis also notched two line-honours wins aboard Wild Oats XI and last year's victor Perpetual LOYAL.

While the supermaxis are renowned for their on-board technology, Addis prefers to rely on his own grey matter.

"Turn the computer off and think it's one of my big things," said Addis, when asked what was the key to supermaxi success in the race, apart from favourable weather conditions.

"Everyone thinks computers can solve everything and it's all about technology and modelling and stuff and it's really not.

"That stuff helps you big picture; it will help you get to Hobart, but it won't win you races.

"You've got to turn that thing off and look around and think for yourself.

"That's why I do sailing. You've got to fix stuff yourself; you've got to think for yourself.

"The original thought process is well rewarded."

Addis accepted an invitation to join Black Jack after hearing Perpetual LOYAL's owner Anthony Bell was selling it.

"I got a call last January from Mark (Bradford, skipper on) Black Jack, asking me if I'd be interested in joining them for this year," Addis said.

"I knew that LOYAL was going to be up for sale, so it might look like a ship jump, but it doesn't feel like it to me.

"I've got quite a long history with this Black Jack boat.

"We won (Sydney-Hobart line honours) with this boat in 2009 as Alfa Romeo.

"I sailed on it for a few seasons over in Europe as well. I've always had a soft spot for this particular boat."
Celebrated sailor Tom Slingsby has been named the skipper of supermaxi InfoTrack, while another Sydney-Hobart entrant is battling to make it to the starting line.

Slingsby recently agreed to rejoin InfoTrack, on which he sailed in last year's race when it took line honours as Perpetual LOYAL.

The boat was subsequently sold by owner Anthony Bell and bought by technology entrepreneur Christian Beck.

While Beck was initially listed as skipper, he cheerfully admitted to having no ocean racing experience.

Conversely, Slingsby has won an Olympic Laser gold medal and several world titles, the America's Cup and the 2010 male sailor of the year award.

The 39-year-old Checkmate of Hollywood is facing some issues before it can contest its first Sydney-Hobart.

The beautiful 50-foot wooden boat, chartered by Ray Roberts, only arrived in Australia just over a week ago from the United States.

It had a rough crossing from the Gold Coast to Sydney this week and had a number of on-boat and administrative issues to overcome before being a confirmed starter.

The boat needs a new heavy air jib and there also might be a compliance issue with its communication system that could require it being fitted with new radios.

Roberts has also entered his Farr 55 Hollywood Boulevard and will race that boat if Checkmate of Hollywood isn't ready in time.

"We've been behind, playing catch up the whole time, because the delivery perhaps wasn't as quick as anticipated and we lost a few days there," said Roberts' sailing master Michael Spies.

"Unfortunately, we had a few issues on the delivery, just a couple of proprietary things letting us down and some bad weather highlighted that.

"We lost a sail that we're trying to get replaced, but we're reasonably confident we might get there.

"Failing that, we're in a fortunate enough position to be able to fall back on Hollywood Boulevard."

Only one of Roberts' two boats are expected to contest the race.
Australian exporters and tourism operators could face a Chinese consumer backlash if strained relations between Canberra and Beijing worsen.

Chinese government officials are keen to see whether recent comments by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about foreign interference in Australian politics are just rhetoric or represent a fundamental shift in the relationship.

The former, especially in light of the Bennelong by-election campaign, is likely to be seen as a temporary hurdle even though China believes it has been used as a scapegoat for political gain.

But a continuation of what state-controlled publications have criticised as "hysterical paranoia full of racial undertones" could have consequences for Australian businesses taking advantage of the free-trade agreement between the two nations.

Australia's ambassador in Beijing last week was summoned to a meeting with China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to hear concerns about Mr Turnbull's comments.

The ministry was "astonished" Canberra was taking seriously reports of Chinese interference in the media, universities and politics.

Beijing was especially aggrieved about Mr Turnbull's assertion that Australia would always stand up for its sovereignty.

A delegation of Australian journalists visiting China heard the same message during briefings from foreign ministry officials, government-aligned think tanks and academics.

They were told the otherwise valued Australia-China relationship was experiencing a "very bad period".

Australia should not expect a business-as-usual relationship if it continued to make false comments about Chinese interference.

There was a risk China's anger might manifest itself into a consumer-led boycott of Australian goods and services.

It would not be the first time Chinese consumers have vented their anger against another country.

When relations between Beijing and Manila plumbed new depths over territorial claims in the South China Sea, consumers boycotted goods from the Philippines.

While the Chinese government did not want "this kind of situation" to develop against another country, the media delegation was told what consumers did was outside the control of authorities.

Australian agriculture exports - especially dairy, meat and wine - as well as complementary medicines are most at risk from a consumer boycott.

China is Australia's number one export market, its largest source of international students and most valuable tourism market.

Mr Turnbull's "stand up for sovereignty" reference has drawn particular ire across the board in China.

Reference was repeatedly made to the mid-19th-Century Opium Wars, which led to the virtual colonisation of China by Britain and France.

There a bitter memories of an era dubbed the Century of Humiliation that was only brought to an end with reunification under Mao in 1949.

As a result, Chinese sovereignty was regarded as a "shrine" even if the nation suffered because it did not interfere in the affairs of other countries, a government official said.

Australia was also accused of adopting a Cold War mentality towards China, by siding with the United States and forming a new quad-lateral strategic arrangement with Washington, Japan and India.

It was also suggested that while Australia and China enjoyed a good economic relationship, that did not mean the two nations were friends.

Academics argued Australia should adopt a role in the region that was more independent of the US, given the Trump administration's sometimes confusing foreign policy signals.

* The writer visited China with a media delegation sponsored by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.
Four men are expected to face court charged with the violent bashing murder of Clint Starkey on the NSW Central Coast.

Mr Starkey, 42, was the victim of what police called a "particularly violent" attack at the Caltex outlet in Peats Ridge on April 6.

He died in Gosford Hospital two months later having never recovered from his head injuries.

Police have said the assault was the result of a dispute between the Rebels outlaw bikie gang and associates.

A member of the bikie gang and two associates - two aged 25 and one aged 29 - were arrested on the Central Coast on Thursday and charged later that evening with Mr Starkey's murder.

In November, Rebels sergeant-at-arms Adam Symons faced court charged with murder and did not apply for bail.

The trio and Symons are all due to face Gosford Local Court on Friday.
Queensland police has begun filling the three vacant deputy commissioner positions within the service with the promotion of two assistant commissioners.

Governor Paul de Jersey on Thursday signed off on the promotion of Bob Gee and Tracy Linford as deputy commissioners, a week after Brett Pointing announced he was stepping down from the role and ending his 40-year service in the police force.

Mr Pointing is one of three deputy commissioners to leave the role since the start of 2016, with Peter Martin quitting the force in November to become the state's corrective services commissioner and Ross Barnett shifting roles to investigate corruption in racing as the Racing Integrity Commissioner.

Their departures left Steve Gollschewski as only deputy commissioner in the service before Thursday's appointment.

Mr Gee has been with the QPS since 1987, holding roles in ethical standards command before being promoted to assistant commissioner in 2011.

Ms Linford, who was appointed an assistant commissioner in 2015, was formerly with the Victoria Police as a intelligence and covert services expert.

The shake-up elevates the two new commissioners to the list of possible contenders to replace Commissioner Ian Stewart.

Mr Stewart was reappointed to the role for three more years earlier in 2017 but speculation is rife he plans to step down following next year's Commonwealth Games.

Queensland's Police Union president Ian Leavers earlier this year said he had been told the commissioner intends to step down some time after the Gold Coast Games, which will be held in April next year.
Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen's family have taken up the Queensland and federal governments' offer to farewell their matriarch at a state funeral.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's office confirmed on Thursday she and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had agreed to extend the offer of a funeral or memorial service to her family, depending on their wishes.

Son John Bjelke-Petersen thanked the government and said the family would accept a state funeral.

"Mum certainly deserves the recognition by that," he told AAP.

Mr Bjelke-Petersen said the family was working on a date that would suit as many people as possible, but it would be held in the Kingaroy Town Hall, near where she lived for most of her life.

"That's where dad's funeral service was," he said.

The former senator, best known for being the wife of long-serving Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and her pumpkin scones, died on Wednesday aged 97 following complications from a fall she suffered a few weeks ago.

Sir Joh received a state funeral when he died in 2005 and was buried on the family's property Bethany in Kingaroy.
A man has been charged over a carjacking and two police pursuits in the Newcastle region.

Police say the 22-year-old was spotted driving dangerously in a stolen vehicle on Thursday morning and was pursued on the Hunter Expressway. They ended the chase because of safety reasons.

The man was spotted later at Minmi and another pursuit was initiated. It too was terminated because of safety concerns after road spikes failed to stop the man.

After unsuccessfully attempting to steal three different cars at Dora Creek, according to police, he then allegedly stole an Audi while armed and fled on the M1 Pacific Motorway.

He then crashed into an unmarked police car, injuring two officers, and was arrested.
The federal government is set to release information on how effective medical cannabis is for five uses: palliative care, multiple sclerosis, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, chronic non-cancer pain and epilepsy.

It will come with guidance for doctors and the public because the current advice is inconsistent, The Courier-Mail reports.

"GPs, specialists and consumers have been calling for information about medicinal cannabis, and its use and effectiveness to treat certain conditions," federal Health Minister Greg Hunt told the paper.

"These documents will help the patient and doctor make a joint decision about whether medicinal cannabis is the right treatment option for their individual circumstances.

"The decision to use medicinal cannabis products to treat symptoms is made on a case-by-case basis and is not a one-size-fits-all approach."

The information will be available on the Therapeutic Goods Administration's website.
Anxious travellers waiting for flights at Melbourne's airport will get a little bit of Christmas cheer from Santa paws.

In an Australian-first, therapy dogs from the Lort Smith animal shelter will spend Friday morning at the airport to help relieve stressed flyers.

"We know that spending time with a companion animal is linked to a range of amazing health benefits, particularly around lowering stress and increasing wellbeing," chief executive David Herman said.

The therapy dogs will spend four hours at a domestic terminal during rush hour to help passengers cope with the busy Christmas season.

The animals usually help patients at the Royal Children's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and others to provide an emotional connection and outlet during stressful times.
A weekly round-up of news affecting your health

EYES

Drinking hot tea every day has been linked to a lower risk of developing glaucoma, according to a small international study.

Glaucoma causes fluid pressure to build up inside the eye (intraocular pressure), damaging the optic nerve. It is one of the leading causes of blindness and affects 57.5 million people, which is expected to increase to 65.5 million by 2020.

Previous research suggested caffeine could alter intraocular pressure but no study so far has compared the potential impact of decaffeinated and caffeinated drinks on glaucoma risk.

US researchers at Brown University looked at data from the 2005-06 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) - an annual survey of about 10, 000 people.

Among the 1678 participants who had full eye test results, five per cent of adults had developed the condition.

They were asked how often and how much caffeinated and decaffeinated drinks they consumed, including soft drinks and iced tea, during the preceding 12 months.

Compared with those who did not drink hot tea every day, those who did had a lower glaucoma risk, the data showed.

After taking account of potentially influential factors such as diabetes and smoking, hot-tea drinkers were 74 per cent less likely to have glaucoma.

But no such associations were found for caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee, decaffeinated tea, iced tea or soft drinks.

The authors noted this was an observational study so no firm conclusions could be drawn about cause and effect, and the number of those with glaucoma was small.

"Further research is needed to establish the importance of these findings and whether hot-tea consumption may play a role in the prevention of glaucoma," they said.

The study is published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

SMOKING

New research has shed light on the mechanism underlining the protective effect of exercise against nicotine dependence and withdrawal.

The British Journal of Pharmacology study in mice reveals that exercise during nicotine exposure markedly reduced the severity of nicotine withdrawal symptoms, and the effect was accompanied by an increased activation of the a7 nicotinic receptor in the hippocampal region of the brain, which is associated with memory formation.

Evidence suggests exercise decreases nicotine withdrawal symptoms in humans. However, the mechanisms mediating this effect have been unclear.

Researchers in London investigated the effect of exercise intensity during chronic nicotine exposure on nicotine withdrawal severity in mice.

The mice treated with nicotine who performed wheel running exercise regimes displayed a significant reduction of withdrawal symptom severity compared with the sedentary group of mice.

"The findings support the protective effect of exercise preceding smoking cessation against the development of physical dependence, which may aid smoking cessation by reducing the severity of withdrawal symptoms," said senior author Dr Alexis Bailey, of St George's, University of London.

LEARNING

Listening to white noise can increase your ability to learn new words, an Australian study has found.

While it's often thought people should minimise noise when learning or processing information, research suggests some sounds, such as white noise, have the potential to improve performance on some cognitive tasks, says Dr Anthony Angwin of the University of Queensland school of health and rehabilitation sciences.

"This study focused on whether white noise could improve the learning and language processing ability of healthy adults," Dr Angwin said.

The study involved eighty healthy adults who were asked to learn names for different pictures then recall the names.

Half the participants listened to white noise during the learning phase and half completed the learning in silence.

Recall of the learned words was performed in silence by both groups.

The researchers hope the findings will prompt further research on how white noise can be used to improve cognitive performance.

The Australian Research Council funded study was published in Scientific Reports.

SPERM

Australian researchers are recruiting men and their sperm for a fertility study.

The study at the National Institute of Complementary Medicine at Western Sydney University will examine the effects of antioxidant supplements on sperm health.

"When sperm are produced in low numbers, are abnormally shaped, or are not able to move well, this may reduce the ability of sperm to penetrate and fertilise the egg," said Professor Caroline Smith, chief investigator of the Sperm Health Study.

"Antioxidants have been reported to have a protective role in sperm health by improving DNA integrity and sperm mobility," Prof Smith said.

NICM is looking for men who have been told their sperm health could be better to volunteer for the study.

Recruitment is underway in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. For more information visit nicm.edu.au/spermhealthstudy or email hominax@westernsydney.edu.au.
President Donald Trump has billed the Republican tax reform as a Christmas gift to American families

President Donald Trump and his Republican Party are in a party mood as they prepare to enact the most sweeping tax cuts in three decades -- but analysts warn the country may wake up to a hangover.

The centerpiece of the $1.5 trillion legislation is a series of deep cuts for businesses that Republican leaders say will spur productivity and job creation and nudge an already humming US economy even higher.

"Enjoy and create many beautiful JOBS!" Trump tweeted Tuesday, hours before the House approved the package, bringing his administration to the cusp of its first policy triumph in Congress. The measure now heads to the Senate for a decisive vote expected late in the night.

But if history is any guide, some economists say, fiscal realities could soon force the tax plan's proponents to eat their words.

In past decades, policymakers have reversed major cuts as deficits ballooned and economic windfalls failed to materialize.

The Trump administration estimates the cuts will pay for themselves with tax revenues rising as the economy grows, a hotly contested analysis, of which polls show the public remains skeptical.

Yet even outside economists who support the Republican plan do not claim its gains will balance out its costs.

"It won't pay for itself but it would be worth the cost," Glenn Hubbard, a former chief White House economist under president George W. Bush, told AFP.

Hubbard was one of nine Republican economists whose views were touted by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in advancing the claim that the plan would increase GDP growth by 0.3 percent a year over a decade. This faced sharp pushback from Democratic economists, including former treasury secretary Larry Summers.

Major tax cuts enacted in 1981 and again in 2001-2003 ultimately suffered U-turns as policymakers faced a worsening fiscal outlook and politically unpalatable spending cuts.

In 1981, president Ronald Reagan's administration oversaw steep tax cuts, including capital investment write-offs for companies, but agreed to reverse some of these the very next year, unnerved by shrinking tax receipts.

Still, deficits continued to balloon during the 1980s, with federal debt rising more than 60 percent to $2.6 trillion between 1981 and 1988 -- switching the United States from the world's largest international lender to its biggest debtor.

Nevertheless, that year presidential candidate George H.W. Bush uttered six fateful words he quickly came regret: "Read my lips: no new taxes."

- 'You're going to regret it' -

By 1990, with Bush in office, the White House retreated, deciding it had no choice but to accept some painful tax hikes, allowing the top marginal rates and the alternative minimum tax levied on many wealthier Americans to rise, just as the United States was about to slip into recession.

The move immediately opened up a chasm with Bush's own party, sending his political team into disarray and exposing the president to ridicule from rival candidates. The climb-down likely cost Bush reelection in 1992.

"He probably lost his job because of it," Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told AFP.

"The lesson is pretty similar to the lesson that we should have learned in the '80s and again in 2001: If you cut taxes without a flight path to sustainability, you're likely to going to regret it."

Tax cuts enacted under president George W. Bush in the early 2000s met a similar, although less straightforward, fate, according to Gardner.

Between 2001 and 2003, the administration and Congress lowered the top marginal tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent, but after a protracted battle lawmakers allowed it to drift back up again to 39.6 percent in 2013 -- where president Bill Clinton's administration had left it in 1993.

"By late 2001, it was clear to many people that the budget surpluses that had prompted Bush to propose tax cuts as a candidate were really kind of illusory," said Gardner.

The 2017 tax cuts, he added, will have obvious targets -- such as certain privately-owned businesses that are currently taxed at individual rates -- that Democrats could reverse should control of Congress swing back in their favor, he added.

"A lot of these genies can be put back in the bottle," said Gardner.

But with the US federal debt at about $20 trillion, and the debt-to-GDP ratio its highest since World War II, economists of all stripes say a reckoning is in order. The question is where the spending cuts may come from.

As deficits balloon from their plan, Republicans are likely to call for cuts to social spending, exacerbating the effects of tax cuts that already favor the wealthy, according to Jared Bernstein, who served as economic advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden.

"How this plays out is going to have to be the result of future elections," he told AFP.
YouTube said it reached a long-term agreement with the Universal Music Group

YouTube said Tuesday that it had sealed a licensing agreement with the world's largest music label conglomerate Universal as the video behemoth explores creating a new streaming service.

YouTube, which is part of Google, said it reached a long-term agreement with the Universal Music Group, months after a deal with competitor Warner Music.

A joint statement did not specify the terms but hinted that the agreement would address compensation by YouTube, a constant source of irritation within the music industry.

"This important step forward provides our recording artists and songwriters improved content flexibility and growing compensation from YouTube's ad-supported and paid-subscription tiers," Universal chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in the statement.

He said the agreement also advanced "YouTube's commitment to manage music rights on its platform."

The recorded music industry has posted two years of solid growth after years in the doldrums thanks to the rapid growth of subscriptions on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms.

But the industry, led by the IFPI trade group, has long berated YouTube for the rates it pays.

YouTube argues that it pays a fair price. With the video site's focus on user-generated content, YouTube enjoys protection under United States law that largely absolves internet companies from responsibility for users' activities.

With Google languishing behind in music streaming, several technology sites reported last month that YouTube is preparing the launch of its own streaming service in 2018.

The video site already has a YouTube Music platform and the advertising-free YouTube Red subscriptions, but it is reportedly looking to set up a more elaborate site on the model of the major, on-demand music services.

The licensing agreements would be vital for a successful YouTube streaming service, with music fans unlikely to embrace a platform that has glaring gaps in its catalog.
The election of Cyril Ramaphosa as head of the ruling African National Congress and South Africa's likely next president has stoked a wave of optimism

Cyril Ramaphosa's victory in the ANC leadership battle has sparked renewed hope among many in South Africa's Soweto township where he grew up -- and where frustration with the party has been mounting.

"He is a model because he is one person that came out of the township and became a great businessman in this world," said 21-year-old journalism student Charlie Khoza from the Tshawelo district of Soweto.

He was among a group of six young men standing on a street corner bathed in sunlight, drinking canned sodas the day after Ramaphosa's decisive victory in the tight leadership race.

Their optimism for the probable future president and former trade unionist turned businessman was widely shared.

In the less well-off Chiawele district of Soweto, just streets away from where Ramaphosa was born 65 years ago, Niseman Baleyi, 39, was cutting hair to the rhythm of traditional music.

A father of two and a barber for 20 years, Niseman is increasingly struggling to make ends meet.

But he is optimistic that the election of a multimillionaire to lead the African National Congress will mean an economic renaissance for South Africa where more than a quarter of people are jobless.

- 'A lot of promises' -

As well as soaring unemployment, Africa's most industrialised economy has suffered as big companies deterred by political uncertainty have opted to swell their cash reserves rather than investing in expansion or job creation.

Cyril Ramaphosa, who has been elected head of South Africa's ruling party African National Congress, was born in the Soweto township

Tanking investor confidence has led to a spate of credit ratings downgrades that have driven up the cost of government borrowing.

"People are going to look at South Africa in a different way and are going to come to create jobs for the youth," said Khoza.

Many in Soweto are already speaking about Ramaphosa as if he were already head of state -- although Zuma will remain national president until 2019 when Ramaphosa will run for office in nationwide elections.

To have a chance of keeping the ANC in power, Ramaphosa will have a serious task to persuade the many South Africans who feel let down by the storied anti-apartheid party.

"It's been over 20 years and we have had a lot of promises -- and they are not meeting them," said Mzandile Msingo, 34, a mechanic by training but unemployed for three years.

Among the pledges the ruling party has struggled to deliver are free university tuition, quality housing, jobs and the redistribution of wealth to the black majority.

Msingo lives with his wife and children in his parents' home and has been waiting "a very long time" for subsidised housing.

The ANC, in power since the end of apartheid and forever tied to Nelson Mandela's conciliatory, non-racial rhetoric, has seen its influence dwindle as the economy has shrunk, causing its support base to suffer.

- 'Wait and see' -

But Msingo and many others like him in Soweto are adamant that Ramaphosa's election spells the end of Zuma's controversial era.

His time in office has been marked by corruption scandals, abuse of power and repeated censure by South Africa's remarkably resilient institutions including the courts, media and graft watchdog.

Msingo said that he would no longer support the ANC because of the corruption allegations swirling around Zuma who became party leader in 2007 and president in 2009.

"Zuma is doing his own thing instead of doing it for the country... (like) using government money to build his own house," he said while smoking a cigarette.

"With Ramaphosa we are going to wait and see and maybe we are going to see something else from the ANC."

The grinding hardships faced by many black youth are pushing increasingly large numbers of voters into the hands of the populist party of firebrand leader Julius Malema.

His Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party continues to make electoral gains and has convinced many township youth that nationalising the mines and redistributing land will lift them out of poverty.

Ricky Makoala, an unemployed 27-year-old, has been an EFF backer for two years and rules out any return to the ANC fold -- even under Ramaphosa's leadership.

"He is more white monopoly capital than anybody else," he said, repeating a common belief that much of the country's economy is still controlled by a small handful of white-owned businesses.
Emergency workers in protective suits stand near a radiation level checkpoint as part of the drill

Workers in protective suits, decontamination tents and a staged evacuation were part of a large-scale nuclear emergency drill carried out Wednesday on Hong Kong's farthest-flung island, which stands near mainland Chinese reactors.

The drill took place on sparsely-populated Tung Ping Chau, a remote island much closer to the mainland than the rest of Hong Kong and around 20 kilometres away from the Daya Bay nuclear power plant in China's city of Shenzhen.

Around 100 tourists and residents joined 3,000 government staff to create drill scenarios on the rugged island and at ferry piers in Hong Kong's northern New Territories, which received evacuation boats.

Experts from the Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute (IRSN) in France, which specialises in nuclear emergency response and radiation protection, helped design the drill.

Wednesday's exercise measured radiation levels in the air and on the ground and set up pop-up shower tents for people exposed. Actors with mock blood on their cheeks were guided to police boats on a beach to evacuate.

On the second day of the exercise, "patient treatment and decontamination" at a hospital would be tested, the government said in a statement.

The exercise simulating a leak at the Daya Bay plant is held every three to five years to test the efficacy of the Hong Kong government's contingency plan, the security bureau said.

Actors posing as residents and tourists who were evacuated from Tung Ping Chau island are directed towards a radiation level checkpoint by an emergency worker (L) in a protective suit

Plans for Daya Bay sparked huge protests in Hong Kong in the 1980s, when it was still a British colony, with one million people signing a petition against nuclear power.

But there has never been a major incident at the plant, which opened in 1993.
Khayro Moselmani runs a food stall in the formerly rebel-held Kalasseh neighbourhood of Aleppo, where life is slowly returning a year after government forces retook the city but the reminders of war are everywhere

The streets of Kalasseh, a neighbourhood of Aleppo formerly held by rebels, are jammed with traffic again and its pavements are packed with people and overflowing market stalls.

But the rows of flattened buildings flanking them are a constant reminder of the devastating battle that had reduced a city that was one of the jewels of the Middle East to ruins by the time Syrian government forces retook it a year ago on Friday.

"It's crowded... people are coming back," says Khayro Moselmani, a former taxi driver from the neighbourhood.

Miles away in Idlib province, Mohammed Assaf, a supporter of the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad, is still grieving the "tragic" day he had to flee his Aleppo home.

December 22, 2016 was a turning point in the Syrian conflict: after four years of relentless fighting that gutted the city and killed thousands of civilians, government forces retook control.

It was the beginning of the end for the rebels, who went on to relinquish most of their bastions to regime forces backed by Russia, whose formidable firepower tipped the balance.

The eastern part of Aleppo that was the rebels' stronghold was levelled by Russian and Syrian air strikes.

Months of siege left tens of thousands of people starving and in need of medical attention, and eventually led to their evacuation just a few days before the regime took full control.

- Ghost town to bustling districts -

Khayro Moselmani walks down a street lined by damaged houses in the formerly rebel-held Kalasseh neighbourhood of Aleppo where, a year after government forces retook the city, the streets are slowly being cleared of rubble

A year on, life is slowly returning to the city. Water and electricity are back in most areas, the mountains of rubble are being trucked away, the streets cleaned and resurfaced.

Moselmani fled Aleppo in the summer of 2012 as rebels took over the city's east, and moved to Tartus, a coastal town in the heartland of the Alawite community to which Assad belongs.

He returned to his hometown a month after the government took it back and found his home had been destroyed.

"At the time we came back, it was almost unthinkable to see a single person in the neighbourhood," the sexagenarian, who now sells grilled meat on the street, remembered.

"Now, they are coming in and out... Thank god, there is security."

The activity on the streets offers a stark contrast with last year's eerie, post-apocalyptic pictures of deserted districts in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

On one thoroughfare, workers are trying to fill a gaping hole in the side of a building. Further down, some recently returned residents have had to make do with temporary plastic sheeting to replace their collapsed roof.

"At the time of the rebels, it was starvation," said Salah Moghayer, a resident of the Salhin neighbourhood who used to work in a hammam.

Salah Moghayer has worked as a porter since he returned to Aleppo with his three daughters early this year but he hopes to resume his old job in a hammam as soon as it has been restored

Like thousands of other residents, he was evacuated at the end of the siege and returned in early 2017.

"The hammam was destroyed. As soon as it is repaired, I will take my old job back," said the father of three daughters, who now works as a porter.

- 'Tearing your heart out' -

Unofficial estimates say around 500,000 people, about half of east Aleppo's population, have returned.

Fabrice Balanche, a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, warned however that the rebirth of what was Syria's commercial hub is still a long way away.

He said the looting of the industrial zone and the flight of Aleppo's business community has crippled the city.

"They are in Gaziantep (Turkey), where they have rebuilt their factories and brought all their workers with them. They have no intention of returning," he said.

The city was reunited a year ago but the divide has not been erased.

West Aleppo was also damaged but not nearly as much as the city's east, where many residents who lived under the rebels are too scared to come back.

"I haven't made any plans to go back because with a president who is a despot and oppresses people, it's just not possible," said Mohammed Louai. "I would surely be arrested."

Mohamed Assaf, a 22-year-old rebel fighter who withdrew to Idlib province when government forces recaptured Aleppo a year ago, says he would rather not remember that day

The 22-year-old now lives in the neighbouring province of Idlib, where many of Aleppo's routed rebels and their supporters fled.

"It was as if someone was tearing your heart out... We were in shock for six months," he said.

Mohammed Assaf, a young man of the same age, was one of the Aleppo-based rebels forced to relocate to Idlib a year ago.

"We'd rather not remember that day... Even with a one percent chance to free Aleppo, we were happy to stay."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended his ancestors in a speech in Ankara

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit back Wednesday at the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister over a social media post that accused "Erdogan's ancestors" of kidnapping people of Medina in the early 20th century.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan retweeted a post on Twitter this week, in which a user claimed Fahreddin Pasha -- Medina governor from 1916 to 1919 -- was a thief.

The UAE's top diplomat shared the tweet by the user called "Ali al-Iraqi" and presenting himself as an Iraqi dentist living in Germany.

"Ali al-Iraqi" said the former Medina governor "committed a crime against the people of Medina by stealing their money, kidnapping them and putting them on trains that took them to Syria and Istanbul".

The user added: "Those are the ancestors of Erdogan and this is the history that they have with Arab Muslims."

Erdogan told the minister to "know your place" as he railed against the Twitter user's claims.

"Now you see unfortunately those near (Medina) unashamedly, relentlessly are making slanderous claims. First, know your place! It means you do not know this country, you do not know Erdogan, you do not know about Erdogan's ancestors," he thundered.

Fahreddin Pasha was governor during the siege of Medina (1916-1919).

"When Fahreddin Pasha was protecting Medina, hey you wretched slandering us, where were your ancestors?" Erdogan retorted during a speech in Ankara.

Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said on Tuesday the tweet was a "propaganda lie" and the governor had "bravely defended" Medina against the "British plans".

Relations between the UAE and Turkey are filled with distrust as Ankara supports Qatar in a six-month crisis with its Gulf neighbours including the UAE, as well as political groups stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The UAE outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terror" group in 2014.

Since June 5, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have cut all ties with Qatar, accusing the emirate of supporting Islamist extremists and of being too close to Shiite Iran, Riyadh's arch-rival.

Turkish pro-government newspapers also routinely allude to UAE involvement in last year's attempted coup against Erdogan.
The Chattanooga Area Food Bank, the predominant leader in the fight against hunger in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia, announced the difficult decision to cut Sack Pack Programs in eight of the 20 counties they serve due to lack of funding.

"With the help of our partner agencies, we are still able to provide over 12,000 students with Sack Packs to combat weekend hunger for the remainder of the 2017-18 school year, said Gina Crumbliss, Food Bank president and CEO, however, 1,776 students in eight counties will receive their final sack pack this week, unless we can motivate individuals and business leaders to unite and provide funding for this programs.

The cost to underwrite the Sack Pack Program for the remaining 19 weeks of school is $101,907, making it one of the more expensive programs the Food Bank operates. However, the cost per region ranges anywhere from $1,721.40 for Van Buren County to $30,698 for Hamilton County and is based on the number of children enrolled in the program. Other counties affected by the cuts include Marion, Grundy, Sequatchie, Meigs, Polk and Walker.

Our community is one of the most philanthropic Ive ever experienced and one that takes care of its own, said Ms. Crumbliss.

The Sack Pack Program began when teachers noticed attendance rates spiking on Mondays and Fridays, only to learn children were coming to school to eat because they had no food to eat over the weekend.

The decision to eliminate this program for the remainder of the year was not made lightly, stated Food Bank Board Chair John Clark. The board and senior team scrutinized the budget to determine the best way to feed the most people with the current funds available. The Food Bank is still on track to distribute in excess of 16 million pounds of food  the equivalent of over 13.5 million meals  by June 30, 2018.

To make a donation to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank please visit www.chattfoodbank.org or call 622-1800. Every $1 raised provides four meals and 97 of every dollar goes to support food

and programs.






In 2016, Apple stashed more than $200 billion abroad, while its competitor Microsoft parked $100 billion offshore

The sweeping tax cuts adopted Wednesday by US lawmakers while reducing rates on corporations, also aim to encourage multinational businesses to repatriate huge earnings amassed abroad.

US corporations, notably in the tech and pharmaceutical sectors, have for years accumulated profits offshore to avoid the comparatively high US tax rates of 35 percent, although most companies in reality pay much less.

The stockpile of cash now stands at about $2.5 trillion, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

In 2016, for example, Apple stashed more than $200 billion abroad, while Microsoft parked $100 billion, and Cisco, Oracle and General Electric all followed suit.

Some firms resorted to so-called corporate inversions, reverse mergers allowing them to be incorporated in low-tax countries, avoiding the US tax system altogether.

Last year, several inversion efforts, including the merger attempt by drug companies Pfizer and Allergan, drew the ire of American officials.

By dropping the top corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and taxing only profits earned US territory, the reform represents an effort to make the United States more enticing to major corporations.

"Money frozen overseas and in parts of world and some of them don't even like us," President Donald Trump said Wednesday in remarks celebrating the tax bill's passage.

"And they had the money. Now they won't have the money long."

To help encourage earnings repatriation, the tax package includes a one-time, across-the-board tax break for companies that bring the cash back.

- The incentive remains? -

Businesses will have to make a one-time payment of eight percent or 15.5 percent, on repatriated foreign profits, depending on whether the assets are cash or investments. This could bring $220 billion to the Treasury, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

But Eric Toder, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, this particular policy measure would reward overseas investment.

"We are taxing them less on their foreign profits than on their US profits if they invest in low-tax countries," he told AFP.

After the tax bill is enacted, foreign profits will be taxed at a minimum of 10.5 percent -- including amounts collected by local authorities -- a level well below the 21 percent US rate.

Toder said congressional scorekeepers were assuming the lower taxes would result in higher revenues, given the larger volume of repatriated profits.

But this still encourages companies to invest abroad, he said.

"They have an incentive to report and invest income in low tax countries."

Industrial companies, such as makers of semiconductors, an industry prone to off-shoring like many that trade in intellectual property, welcome the new rules.

"We would have preferred lower repatriation rates but overall it's a strong bill for the semiconductor industry," Joe Pasetti, a senior lobbyist at the Semiconductor Industry Association, told AFP.

- Will it work? -

The tax plan also aims to encourage companies to be active again on US soil, in particular those in IP-reliant industries, he explains.

US revenues derived from foreign sales of patented products will be processed for tax purposes as if they were earned by foreign subsidiaries, at a rate of 10.5 percent rather than the new corporate rate of 21 percent.

"It's really competitive, much more competitive than the current system," Pasetti said.

The US Chamber of Commerce believes the benefits will be shared widely following the disappearance of the "outdated" former tax system.

"Our tax system will now welcome capital within our borders for myriad uses such as job creation, wage growth, and investment," Caroline Harris, vice president for tax policy at the chamber, told AFP.

However, critics are skeptical the higher profits will be used for those purposes.

In 2004, under then-president George W. Bush, Congress approved a similar tax break to encourage the repatriation of profits, and companies brought back about $312 billion, subject to a 5.3 percent rate.

But studies showed these funds were in large part used for share buybacks rather than for investments.
AT&T plans to give $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 workers and will issue the checks over the holidays if President Donald Trump signs the tax bill before Christmas

AT&T and Boeing were among the large US companies that announced new spending on their workers Wednesday after Congress approved a sweeping US tax cut.

AT&T plans to give $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 workers and will issue the checks over the holidays if President Donald Trump signs the bill before Christmas.

The company also said it plans to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018 due to the bill.

"This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said.

"In fact, we will increase our US investment and pay a special bonus to our US employees."

The handful of announcements came after the House of Representatives approved the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, sending the measure to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

Democrats criticized the bill as a budget-busting sop that mostly benefits the very wealthy, while Republicans argued it would boost economic growth.

Boeing announced $300 million in additional spending that includes funds for workforce training and to upgrade facilities to the "workplace for the future."

"We applaud and thank Congress and the administration for their leadership in seizing this opportunity to unleash economic energy in the United States," Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said.

"It's the single-most important thing we can do to drive innovation, support quality jobs and accelerate capital investment in our country."

Fifth Third Bancorp said it would boost its minimum wage for all employees to $15 an hour and distribute a one-time bonus of $1,000 to more than 13,500 employees.

Still, many analysts and economists have expressed skepticism the tax bill will boost growth as much as promised.

The tax cut "will improve corporate profits and that in turn will increase share buybacks and dividends more than it actually increases economic activity," said Karl Haeling, portfolio manager at LBBW Asset Management.

"Big companies have a lot of money right now," he said. "If they needed to build a big plant they would not have wait for it before the tax reform. I'm still skeptical that it really does that much."
Emma Wren Gibson was born on November 25, 2017 in Knoxwville, Tennessee, from an embryo that was frozen a quarter century ago

An American woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl from an embryo that was frozen a quarter century ago, in what hospital officials say may be a world record.

The baby, named Emma Wren Gibson, was born November 25, according to the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tennessee, which revealed the birth announcement this week.

The embryo was conceived by another couple and frozen on October 14, 1992.

Tina Gibson, the woman who just gave birth to Emma Wren, was born in 1991, NEDC marketing director Mark Mellinger told AFP on Wednesday.

By some measures, that would make the embryo that became Emma Wren only about a year younger than her mother.

"We could have been best friends," said Gibson, now 26, in an interview with local television WBIR.

Emma Wren Gibson was born on November 25, 2017 in Knoxwville, Tennessee, from an embryo frozen for 24 years

Gibson said she wasn't told by doctors until she was pregnant that the embryo had been frozen more than 24 years earlier.

"I just stared at them, I was like, what? Are you kidding?"

Mellinger said Gibson and her husband selected the embryo based on a profile of genetic characteristics, but was not told how long the embryo had been frozen.

Gibson was implanted with three embryos, and only one survived, he added. There remain two more cryopreserved embryos from the same biological parents.

The case marks the "longest-frozen embryo to successfully come to birth," said the NEDC, citing the research staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library as a source.

However, some experts expressed caution about proclaiming such a record.

US companies are not required to report the age of the embryos, just the outcome of the pregnancies, Zaher Merhi, director of IVF research and development at New Hope Fertility Center in New York, told CNN.

"Nobody has these records," he said.

The previous record-holder was believed to be a baby boy frozen for 20 years, born to a New York woman in 2011.

The embryo was stored by the NEDC, a Christian organization that describes itself as "the world's leading comprehensive embryo adoption program," with 686 babies born to date.

Its mission is to "protect the lives and dignity of frozen embryos that would not be used by their genetic parents and to help other couples build the families they have longed for via donated embryos."

Gibson and her husband were unable to conceive a child on their own, and are thrilled with their new baby.

"Emma is such a sweet miracle," said father Benjamin Gibson in a statement.

"I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago."
Thursday's defection was the fourth across the DMZ this year

A North Korean soldier defected to the South on Thursday across the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, Seoul's defence ministry said.

The "low-ranking" soldier made his way across the central part of the land border, a ministry spokesman said.

It came a month after a rare and dramatic defection by a soldier at Panmunjom, the truce village where opposing forces confront each other across a concrete dividing line.

On that occasion the defector drove to the heavily-guarded border at speed and ran across under a hail of bullets from his own side. He was hit at least four times.

Footage showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the demarcation line.

He has since been recovering in hospital in the South.

Thursday's defection was the fourth by a soldier across the DMZ this year.

The soldier appeared at a guard post in thick fog on Thursday morning, the Yonhap news agency cited the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying.

No shots were fired and no unusual movements of Northern troops had been detected, they added.

Away from Panmunjom, the rest of the 4-kilometre-wide DMZ bristles with barbed wire and is littered with minefields, making any crossing extremely hazardous.
Pangolins in Indonesia are at risk of extinction, a new report says, after finding that 35,000 of the animals were seized by officials in the country between 2010 and 2015

Pangolins in Indonesia are at risk of extinction because of an illicit trade that sees thousands of the critically endangered animals trafficked each year, a study showed Thursday.

More than 35,000 pangolins -- docile, ant-eating mammals with a thick armour -- were seized by Indonesian authorities between 2010 and 2015, exposing the scale of the illegal business, the study by wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic said.

Indigenous to parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, the pangolin is prized as an edible delicacy and ingredient in traditional medicine, especially in China and Vietnam, and is the world's most trafficked mammal.

Rampant poaching is putting Indonesia's indigenous manis javanica species at an "extremely high risk of extinction", the group said.

"Indonesia's wildlife is being drained on an industrial scale to feed the global illegal trade," Kanitha Krishnasamy, acting regional director for Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

"While the relatively high number of seizures speaks to Indonesia's commitment in tackling the problem, it also highlights the relentless poaching."

The study found at least 127 suspects had been arrested in connection with the trade over six years in Indonesia.

Sumatra was identified as a hotspot and served as a key link to smugglers in Malaysia and Singapore, where the animals were most often sent on to China and Vietnam.

Indonesia's government said it could not halt the illegal trade alone and urged recipient countries to crack down on importers.

"Don't just blame Indonesia. It takes two to tango," Bambang Dahono Aji, the conservation director at Indonesia's Environment Ministry, told AFP.

"We are huge archipelagic nation with limited resources to monitor all the sea routes."

In October, more than 100 live pangolins were seized in a fishing boat off the east coast of Sumatra. Two people were arrested for attempting to smuggle the scaly mammals to Malaysia.

That came after more than 223 live pangolins as well as nine large bags of pangolin scales were discovered in a warehouse near Medan, North Sumatra, in June.
Syrian women decorate a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority neighbourhood of Hamidiyeh in the Old City of Homs

The metallic green Christmas tree towers over the bombed-out heart of Syria's third city Homs, where residents are relishing a holiday cheer they haven't felt in years.

They have been busy putting the final decorative touches on the tree in Hamidiyeh, a neighbourhood in the ravaged Old City of Homs, where ferocious street battles pitted regime forces against rebels between 2011 and 2014.

One volunteer hammered a metal platform in place ahead of a choir concert and children's shows, and the futuristic artificial Christmas tree is to be lit up on Thursday.

"In 2014, when we had just returned to this destroyed neighbourhood, our Christmas tree was made of rubble," said Roula Barjour, the executive director of charity NGO Bayti, or "My House," in Arabic.

"But this year, with the return of residents and of life, people are finding cheer again," the 46-year-old told AFP, between delegating tasks to young volunteers.

One stood out: Abdo al-Yussefi was well into his sixties, but the local resident insisted on joining the holiday preparations.

He pulled crates of Christmas decorations up to the tree, already spruced up with curling blue and silver garlands.

"The Christmas tree used to be a joy just for children, but now it's for everyone, young and old," said Yussefi, wiping his brow with a white napkin

"The tree gathers us all around it."

- 'Happiness has come back' -

The scars of the battles that gripped Homs are still visible: partially-destroyed buildings, collapsed or pockmarked walls, and piles of sandbags can be found across the Old City.

When Syria's conflict began in 2011, mass demonstrations rocked Homs, which activists dubbed the "capital of the revolution".

But after years of government siege and bombardment, rebels agreed in 2014 to a deal that brought most of the city under regime control.

A second pact earlier this year put the rest of Homs fully in government hands.

Grinning, Yussefi gestured to the volunteers around him: "As you can see, all the neighbourhood's residents are working together, smiling like little kids."

He asked one to snap a photograph of him near the Christmas tree to send to his children, now living in Germany.

"I want to ask them to come back, because happiness has come back to Homs," Yussefi exclaimed.

Many of its 800,000 residents fled when war erupted, but tens of thousands have trickled back, including to the Old City.

Across the street, construction workers have been repairing damaged homes.

A nearby wall was dotted with posters bearing photos of men, young and old, killed in the Homs fighting.

Some of the posters on the "Wall of Honour," as it is labelled, have been torn and faded by several winters.

But the picture of Dutch priest Father Frans van der Lugt, killed inside Homs's Jesuit monastery by unknown assailants in April 2014, remains vivid.

He was buried at the monastery, which has become a pilgrimage site for Syrians.

- 'End of mourning' -

Homs's Old City had a significant Christian population before the war and is home to several ancient churches, including the celebrated St. Mary Church of the Holy Belt, named after a venerated relic said to be a section of the belt of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Inside the silver-stoned structure, young people erect a nativity scene depicting the birth of Jesus.

"There was always a sadness in past holidays, because of the people that were killed and the destruction of the churches. We'd pray over rubble," said church caretaker Imad Khoury.

"But today, the church has been restored and the decorations are back. Our celebration this year feels like those from before the war."

Clashes heavily damaged part of the Chuch of the Holy Belt and left another section burned, and the road leading to it remains punctured by a huge crater.

But inside, restoration is almost complete, with new wooden benches, a large icon of the Virgin Mary perched in a corner, and decorative red stars dangling from the ceiling.

"We brought back valuable icons that we hid because they were damaged during the war, and also acquired new ones," said another church caretaker, 66-year-old Mikhail Owel.

A Syrian man decorates the Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt (Umm al-Zennar Church) with a Christmas nativity scene in the Christian-majority neighbourhood of Hamidiyeh in the Old City of Homs

The serene tones of a choir practising hymns bounce off the church walls, in preparation for a concert on Christmas Day.

Music was also playing several streets away at the famous Julia Palace Restaurant, which also underwent repairs last year and is now ready for business.

Owner Malek Trabulsi was excitedly counting the restaurant reservations as workers hanged Christmas lights around the grandiose establishment.

"After too many funerals, we're having weddings again. After fleeing during the war years, customers are filling the restaurant," said Trabulsi.

"The painful occasions are over. Today, Homs is safe, and ready to announce the end of its mourning."
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen in mainland China but there are rising concerns that those liberties are under threat

A string of figures critical of China's Communist Party say they have been denied visas to Hong Kong, sparking accusations of a secret "blacklist" that bears signs of Beijing's growing influence over the city.

Taiwanese scholars Wu Rwei-ren and Wu Jieh-min of Taipei's prestigious Academia Sinica, due to speak at a conference in Hong Kong Friday, were the latest to say their visa applications had been rejected without explanation.

Their cases followed a high-profile incident in October when British activist Benedict Rogers, deputy chairman of the governing Conservative Party's human rights commission, was turned away by immigration after landing for what he said was a private trip.

Rogers has previously criticised the jailing of democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, calling it "one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice I have seen."

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland since being handed back to China by Britain in 1997, under a "one country, two systems" deal.

But there are rising concerns that those liberties are under threat.

The city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, stipulates immigration affairs are managed internally, but analysts say decisions over who is allowed in are increasingly arbitrary and non-transparent, sparking concern that immigration is becoming a political battleground.

"Things that were not considered a threat are now seen as threats," said Edmund Cheng, assistant professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.

In a controversial response to media questions over the Rogers case, city leader Carrie Lam refused to provide details about why he was refused entry but suggested that matters of immigration can involve diplomatic considerations, for which Beijing is responsible.

"This redefines some of the boundaries in 'one country, two systems'," said Cheng of Lam's comments.

China banned a cross-party delegation of British MPs from entering Hong Kong in 2014, at the height of the mass pro-democracy Umbrella Movement rallies.

That visit was part of a foreign affairs committee examination of the former colony's relations with the United Kingdom.

Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said she believed Hong Kong was "giving up" its own authority on immigration issues.

"The whole thing was unthinkable 10 years ago, but now it's happening," Mo told AFP.

- Academics targeted -

Protesters rallied to mark the one-year anniversary of Taiwan's Sunflower Movement demonstration last year

Rejected Taiwanese scholar Wu Rwei-ren accused the Hong Kong government of having a "blacklist" which was expanding to academics.

Lawmakers from Taiwan's ruling Beijing-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the island's leading anti-China activists have also previously been rejected from entering Hong Kong.

"Taiwan's academics have actively participated in social movements," Wu told AFP.

He believes Beijing wants to block communication between Taiwanese groups and opposition forces in Hong Kong "to isolate its civil society and render it helpless".

Wu is co-author of a book on Hong Kong nationalism and took part in Taiwan's Sunflower Movement in 2014, which saw a dramatic occupation of parliament to protest a China trade pact.

He said he could not get an entry permit when he applied online to attend a seminar in Hong Kong this month, although he had previously been permitted to visit the city.

The other Taiwanese scholar rejected this month, Wu Jieh-min, is also critical of Beijing and Hong Kong authorities, and participated in various social movements.

Taiwan is a self-ruling democracy with a fully-fledged civil society, but Beijing sees it as part of its territory to be reunified.

Ties have become increasingly frosty since DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen took office as president last year.

Taiwanese academics, campaigners and lawmakers have consistently declared public support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp, and the city's high-profile young campaigners frequently visit the island.

Meanwhile Chinese authorities have issued warnings about challenges to its sovereignty, particularly incensed by an emerging independence movement in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's immigration department said it could not comment on individual cases when asked about the Taiwanese scholars recently rejected, saying only that it would "consider all the factors" when assessing an application.

The department did not respond specifically to queries about allegations of a blacklist.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which deals with cross-strait relations, expressed "regret and dissatisfaction" over the barring of its citizens.

Taiwanese social activist and DPP supporter T.C Chang, who also says he was denied entry at Hong Kong's airport this month on his way to a cultural forum, recalls how he felt "honoured" to edit a magazine in the city in the past and had frequently gone back and forth since.

"It's saddening if I can't go to Hong Kong anymore," he said in a Facebook post, but added he would not be stopped.

"My connection with Hong Kong won't be cut off by you."
The wreckage of Australian submarine HMAS AE1 was found in more than 300-metre deep waters off Papua New Guinea

Australia's most enduring military mystery has been solved after the wreckage of the country's first submarine was found more than a century after it vanished off Papua New Guinea, officials said Thursday.

HMAS AE1, the first of two E Class submarines built for the Royal Australian Navy, disappeared on 14 September, 1914 near the Duke of York Islands with 35 crew members from Australia, Britain and New Zealand on board.

It was the first Allied submarine loss in World War I.

AE1 was found in more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) of water after an expedition -- the 13th such search -- was launched last week using Fugro Equator, a ship also used by Australia to hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

"After 103 years, Australia's oldest naval mystery has been solved," Defence Minister Marise Payne told reporters in Sydney.

"This is one of the most significant discoveries in Australia's naval maritime history... The loss of AE1 in 1914 was a tragedy for our then fledgling nation."

WWI Australia submarine wreck found

Payne said she hoped the discovery would help investigators establish the cause of the sinking.

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs said the most likely cause of the loss "remains a diving accident", The Australian newspaper reported.

"The submarine appears to have struck the bottom with sufficient force to dislodge the fin from its footing," it quoted Briggs as saying.

He said the vessel appeared to have suffered a "post sinking, high energy event" that would have caused the submarine to flood rapidly, probably near the surface.

The newspaper pointed to a possible torpedo explosion or the rupture of a high-pressure air cylinder.

"When the end came for the men of AE1 it would have been very fast. They may well have not known what hit them," Briggs said.

- Progression of technology -

Construction for AE1 started in 1911 and she was commissioned in Portsmouth, England in February 1914. The sub reached Sydney in May with her sister AE2.

At 55 metres long, AE1 displaced 599 tonnes and could reach a top speed of 15 knots on the surface and 10 knots when submerged. She was armed with four 18-inch torpedo tubes.

No caption

AE1 joined naval forces assigned to the capture of the German Pacific colonies and with AE2 took part in operations leading to the occupation of German New Guinea -- the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea.

On September 14, she vanished after a rendezvous off Herbertshohe -- present day Kokopo -- near the Duke of York Islands with destroyer HMAS Parramatta.

Australia's Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, said the submarine was located using a range of technologies, including a magnetometer that measures magnetic disturbances, remotely operated vehicles and a deep-drop camera.

"Each time that we searched for AE1, the progression of technology has allowed for us to learn a little bit more," he said.

Barrett said he hoped the discovery of the vessel and the lost crew would be of comfort to their descendants.

Payne said the government was working with its PNG counterparts to preserve the site and arrange for a commemoration of the sub and its crew.

The search was jointly funded by the Australian government, the Australian National Maritime Museum and two maritime history organisations.

Submarines like the AE1 came to play key roles in WWI. But the first military submersibles had taken to the seas more than a century earlier.

The first naval submarine was purported to be Turtle, a hand-cranked vessel created in the 1770s during the American Revolution.

By the end of the 19th century, the French were developing submarines that used electric motors while Britain joined the underwater race in 1901 followed by Germany in 1905.
Ties between Beijing and Taipei have worsened since President Tsai Ing-wen took office last year

China sentenced 44 Taiwanese to prison on Thursday for telecom fraud following their extradition from Kenya, in a move likely to further sour cross-strait ties.

The Taiwanese were among a group sentenced to between 21 months and 15 years in prison and slapped with fines, the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court said on its official account on China's Twitter-like Weibo.

The question of how to deal with Taiwanese arrested abroad has become a sensitive diplomatic issue, with Taipei protesting that suspects should be returned to the self-ruled island, rather than the mainland.

China and Taiwan split after a civil war in 1949 and the island sees itself as a sovereign nation, but Beijing considers it a breakaway province that is part of its territory -- a stance that most countries around the world recognise.

Ties between Beijing and Taipei have worsened since President Tsai Ing-wen took office last year over her refusal to acknowledge the island as part of "one China".

Taipei has in the past accused Beijing of "abducting" Taiwanese suspected of committing fraud abroad and taking them to China.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng expressed "deep regret and dissatisfaction" over the sentencing.

"We insist that Taiwanese suspects involved in cross-border telecom fraud cases should return to Taiwan to face investigation, trial and serve the sentence according to the law," he said at a regular press briefing Thursday.

"We urge the Chinese side to communicate and negotiate with us for the interests of the people to seek resolutions in terms of joint crime-fighting to eradicate fraud groups."

The council has stated that it has intelligence on "the key suspect behind the crime" and called on China to cooperate with Taiwan security authorities "as soon as possible".

The telecom case is the latest to involve the international deportation of Taiwanese suspects, and analysts see the cases as part of Beijing's bid to pile pressure on Tsai.

A Spanish court said last week it had also decided to allow the extradition of Taiwanese fraud suspects to China despite protests by Taipei, which hoped to take back its citizens.

Since last April, 288 Taiwanese fraud suspects deported abroad have been held in China, the Taiwanese government said.

According to Chiu, no relatives of Taiwanese suspects have been allowed to visit them in the mainland since Tsai's inauguration last year, despite visitation requests from 105 individuals.

Eleven relatives were permitted to visit detainees last April.
An artist's concept obtained from NASA envisions what hydrocarbon ice forming on a liquid hydrocarbon sea of Saturn's moon Titan might look like

NASA on Wednesday announced two finalists for billion-dollar robotic missions -- one to explore a comet and another Saturn's moon Titan -- with a launch by the winner planned in the 2020s.

"These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and is seen as one of the most likely hosts of some form of life in the solar system because of its rivers and lakes filled with methane.

The mission, called Dragonfly, would involve sending a "drone-like rotorcraft that would explore the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites," NASA said in a statement.

The other project would return to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a comet that has already been visited and mapped by the European Rosetta spacecraft.

The mission, called Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR), would aim to return a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to determine its origin and history.

"The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions will receive funding through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts," the US space agency said.

"NASA plans to select one of these investigations in the spring of 2019 to continue on to subsequent mission phases."

NASA chose the pair from a pool of 12 proposed missions, submitted in April.

The competition is part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which has also sent the Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter, the New Horizons spacecraft which surveyed Pluto, and OSIRIS-REx, which launched last year to collect samples from an asteroid.

Each mission selected has a cost cap for development of approximately $850 million, with another $150 million planned for the launch.
Southern Adventist University announces that its School of Education and Psychology received accreditation from the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. This continues the 20-year tradition of Southerns Teacher Education program being accredited by a nationally recognized organization, officials said.



The profession has set a high bar with the CAEP standards, and earning CAEP accreditation validates the work educator preparation providers are doing to meet those standards, said Kim Walters-Parker, chair of CAEPs Accreditation Council and high school teacher in Versailles, Ky. Candidates in CAEP-accredited programs are investing in programs designated as nationally accredited for educator preparation.

According to CAEP, educator preparation providers seeking accreditation must pass peer review on five standards, which are based on two principles: 1. Solid evidence that the providers graduates are competent and caring educators; and 2. Solid evidence that the providers educator staff have the capacity to create a culture of evidence and use it to maintain and enhance the quality of the professional programs they offer.

Southerns School of Education and Psychology was found to meet all five standards, joining 100 other institutions accredited by CAEP.



These institutions meet high standards so that their students receive an education that prepares them to succeed in a diverse range of classrooms after they graduate, said CAEP President Christopher Koch. Seeking CAEP accreditation is a significant commitment on the part of an educator preparation provider.

"The Teacher Education program in Southerns School of Education and Psychology offers a wide variety of degrees, equipping graduates to teach a broad range of topics in kindergarten through high school. It seeks to prepare not only competent professionals but also compassionate individuals who are ready to meet the diverse needs they will inevitably encounter as classroom teachers," officials said.




Philippines

Four people were killed and 11 others were missing Thursday after a ferry with hundreds on board capsized in stormy weather off the Philippines, rescuers said.

Over 200 passengers and crew were plucked to safety after the Mercraft 3 keeled over in heavy seas en route to a remote island, officials said.

"The wind suddenly picked up and the boat was forced to stop when the bow started taking in water. Passengers ran to the side just before it tipped over," student Donel Mendiola told DZMM radio.

"Some of us swam, but I saw some old people who were apparently already dead," Mendiola said.

Two men and two women were killed, while the search for those still missing has been suspended for the night, Ron Crisostomo, a civil defence official in Infanta town near Real told AFP.

"It was rainy and the wind was up. It was no longer safe for the rescuers, but they will continue tomorrow," Crisostomo said.

Janet Balili, a local council member, told ABS-CBN television 11 people remain missing.

The station aired footage of rescuers taking injured survivors to a hospital. Four body bags were also seen being laid out on the floor.

The boat tipped over between the remote island of Polillo and Real town, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Manila, shortly before noon (0400 GMT), the coastguard said.

It said the ferry was carrying 251 passengers and crew when it left the port of Real for Polillo, a 2.5-hour trip.

"We believe the weather was a big factor" in the accident, coastguard spokesman Armand Balilo told a news conference in Manila.

The ferry sailed as Tropical Storm Tembin loomed over the southern Philippines, nearly a thousand kilometres away.

The vessel, which is licensed to carry up to 286 people, was allowed to sail as there were no storm warnings at or around Real or Polillo, Balilo said.

The government had advised Filipinos planning to return to their home provinces for Christmas to do so earlier than usual to avoid heavy weather forecast to hit ahead of the holidays.

Another storm killed more than 40 people in the central Philippines last weekend.

The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, is plagued by poor sea transport, with its badly regulated boats and ships prone to overcrowding and accidents.

The latest incident occurred 30 years after another Philippine ferry, the Dona Paz, collided with an oil tanker in a pre-Christmas accident that claimed more than 4,000 lives in the world's worst peacetime disaster at sea.

More recently, the Kim Nirvana ferry capsized shortly after departure off the city of Ormoc in the central Philippines in 2015, killing 61 people. The accident was thought to have been due to overcrowding.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza lashed out at US President Donald Trump, US and European sanctions, and US interference in Venezuela's internal affairs

Venezuela's foreign minister blamed the US for his country's spiralling debt crisis on Thursday, saying Washington's "permanent attack" had left the economy crippled.

Jorge Arreaza lashed out at US President Donald Trump, US and European sanctions, and American interference in Venezuela's internal affairs at the Venezuelan embassy in Beijing during a three-day official visit.

"Our country is under permanent attack and aggression from the United States of America," Arreaza said at a press conference where he also heaped fulsome praise on China, one of the country's largest creditors.

"Thank God humanity can count on the People's Republic of China to guarantee peace or at least less conflict," he said.

Venezuela is mired in a political and financial crisis.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro has ratcheted up political repression this year as food and basic medical supplies run low and protesters intermittently take to the streets.

Experts say the cash-poor but oil-rich nation owes about $20-$30 billion to China out of a total debt mountain estimated at $150 billion.

Venezuela partially defaulted on its debt last month, striking a repayment agreement with Russia, and Beijing has said it is confident the country can "properly handle" the debt crisis.

However, earlier this month a subsidiary of China's state-owned oil company Sinopec filed a suit in the US against Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA, accusing the firm of failing to pay more than $43 million for steel reinforcement bars.

The two sides have since resolved the issue.

Asked if China and Venezuela had come to an agreement on the larger debt issue, Arreaza said the debt crisis was not the focus of his visit.

China and Venezuela "have always built and designed financial mechanisms in order to exchange investments and cooperation in a just, fair and equal manner," he said.

"Financial questions are always fundamental in order to guarantee our cooperation in other areas," he added.

Arreaza also slammed the Trump administration's first National Security Strategy for its strong criticism of China, Russia and Venezuela.

The 68-page document put out by the White House this week labels China a revisionist power and Venezuela a dictatorship, a conclusion that the foreign minister fiercely disputed.
A Yemeni woman sits next to a malnourished Yemeni child receiving treatment at a hospital in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on December 19, 2017

Food security in the Middle East and North Africa "is fast deteriorating" because of conflicts in countries from Syria to Yemen, the UN's food agency said Thursday.

Violence in nations that also include Libya, Iraq and Sudan are leading to "a widening gap in well-being" compared with other parts of the region, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report.

"The level of undernourishment in the conflict countries is now six times larger than that in non-conflict countries," it said.

Yemen is suffering the worst food insecurity and malnutrition of all the conflict-hit countries in the region, followed by Syria and Sudan, it said.

For more than two years, Yemen has been locked in a devastating civil war between the Saudi-backed government and Huthi rebels who swept into the capital in 2014.

More than 8,750 people have been killed since a Saudi-led coalition intervened on the side of the government in March 2015.

Nearly a quarter of the population of Yemen suffers from severe food insecurity, according to the FAO.

Mark Lowcock, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in November that unless the coalition ends a blockade of the country, Yemen will face "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims".

The FAO said the conflict-hit countries may not have sufficient resources to achieve the UN-adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The goals include to "eliminate hunger, ensure food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture" by 2030.

As "expenditures on violence crowd out other government spending, the likelihood of progress" on targets related to "reducing hunger and food insecurity and malnutrition becomes ever more remote," it said.

Between 21 and 67 percent of the conflict-hit countries' gross domestic product was spent on committing, containing or preventing acts of violence, or on dealing with their consequences, it said.

The FAO reported "elevated levels of stunting" in the region and said many of the poorer countries have severe levels of anaemia in children under five years old.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was hit with US financial sanctions under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, facing accusations he had personal involvement in repression, torture and extra-judicial killings

Moscow on Thursday branded US sanctions against Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov "illegal and unfriendly" after Washington accused the key Kremlin ally of involvement in murder and torture.

On Wednesday, the US Treasury hit the Chechen leader with financial sanctions under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, accusing Kadyrov of personal involvement in repression, torture and extra-judicial killings.

"We consider these sanctions to be illegal, we consider them unfriendly, we disagree with them," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Asked whether Moscow will respond to the move, Peskov said: "With some certainty, we can assume that the principle of reciprocity will be observed."

He did not provide further details.

Kadyrov, 41, is one of the most prominent Russian officials to be added to the sanctions under the Magnitsky Act.

A former rebel turned Putin loyalist, Kadyrov has his own militia army and rules with an iron grip the North Caucasus region that was the scene of two separatist wars.

Critics have accused him of amassing vast personal wealth and abusing his political post.

The new penalties, which also target other Russian officials, expose the difficulty of a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow expected by many since US President Donald Trump's election last year.

Relations between the two former Cold War adversaries hit a new low following a US investigation into accusations of Russian interference during the 2016 US presidential election and suspicion of a possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's campaign team.
A Yemeni child suspected of being infected with cholera cries at a hospital in the coastal city of Hodeida on November 5, 2017

The number of suspected cholera cases in war-torn Yemen has reached one million, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

"Yemen suspected cholera cases has reached the threshold of one million, amplifying the suffering of the country caught up in a brutal war," the ICRC said on its Yemen Twitter account.

The World Health Organization warned in November that some 2,200 people have already died from the waterborne disease, which has propagated rapidly due to deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions.

Marc Poncin, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Yemen, told AFP that cholera mortality rates had been on a downtrend in recent months but that the disease was far from vanquished.

"The vibrio is a very resistant bacteria that can survive in water for a very long period of time," Poncin said, warning that next year's rainy season could bring an uptick.

"As soon as there is a favourable situation for its increase then it's there," he added.

Yemen is in the midst of a bloody war between pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition and Huthi rebels who control the capital.

Coalition air raids killed 43 Huthi fighters in the Red Sea province of Hodeida in the past day alone, amid a push by pro-government forces to advance toward a key port there, medical and military sources said.

Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies intervened in the conflict on the side of the government in 2015 with air strikes and a far-reaching blockade on its neighbour's air and sea ports.

In early November, the coalition tightened that blockade in response to a missile fired by the Shiite Huthis that was intercepted near Riyadh airport.

At the time, the UN aid chief warned the move would exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation.

The blockade was partially lifted three weeks later under massive international pressure, namely over the closure of Hodeida port -- key to humanitarian and commercial deliveries.

The Iran-backed Huthis on Tuesday conducted another failed missile strike against Riyadh to mark the 1,000th day since the Saudi-led intervention.

The coalition said in a statement Wednesday that it would not resort to closing rebel-held Hodeida in the wake of the attack.

More than 8,750 people have been killed since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the government's fight against the rebels, triggering what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dubbed the United Nations a "house of lies" as the General Assembly prepares to vote on a resolution rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dubbed the United Nations a "house of lies" on Thursday, ahead of a General Assembly vote on a resolution rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The State of Israel rejects outright this vote, even before it passes," he said at a ceremony in southern Israel.

"The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well -- the house of lies," he said.

The UN General Assembly will hold an emergency session later on Thursday to vote on a draft resolution that the United States vetoed at the Security Council on Monday after all other 14 council members voted in favour.

On the eve of the vote, US President Donald Trump suggested there could be reprisals for countries that support the draft, put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

"Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build in it and embassies of countries, led by the US, will move to Jerusalem," Netanyahu said, thanking Trump and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for "standing by Israel and the truth."

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether the UN recognises it or not," Netanyahu said. "It took 70 years until the US officially recognised it and it will take many more years until the UN recognises it too."

Trump's December 6 decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv broke with international consensus, triggering protests across the Muslim world and drawing widespread condemnation.
French anti-terror judges have ended an investigation into the missile attack on a plane that killed former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking Rwanda's 1994 genocide, legal sources said

French anti-terror judges have ended an investigation into the missile attack on a plane that killed former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking Rwanda's 1994 genocide, legal sources said Thursday.

The long-running probe has been a major source of tension between the two countries following accusations that a Tutsi militia headed by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame was responsible for the attack on the plane in April 1994.

The missile strike near Kigali's airport sparked 100 days of slaughter of the Tutsi ethnic minority by members of Habyarimana's Hutu ethnic group, leaving an estimated 800,000 people dead.

Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide by supporting the Hutu regime, training the soldiers and militiamen who carried out the killings.

Ties had been on the mend until 2014 when Kagame repeated accusations that French soldiers had been involved in the bloodbath.

The relationship took an even worse turn when the French judiciary decided in October 2016 to reopen an investigation into the attack on the plane, as the French crew were among the victims.

In October, sources close to the probe told AFP that the judges had heard from a new witness who claimed to have seen the surface-to-air missiles used to launch the attack at the headquarters of Kagame's militia.

The testimony corroborates other versions of events that point the finger at Kagame's regime.

French authorities have been investigating the strike as French citizens were among those killed aboard Habyarimana's plane.

A total of seven people have been charged in France over the deaths, including Rwanda's current defence minister, James Kabarebe, and Franck Nziza who allegedly fired the missile.
A long-running US drone war against AQAP has intensified since President Donald Trump took office

The propaganda chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was among six jihadists killed in two separate US drone strikes in Yemen, tribal sources said on Thursday.

The Wednesday evening strikes came as Washington revealed that US forces have carried out more than 120 air strikes against jihadists in Yemen this year as part of a long-running campaign that has intensified since President Donald Trump took office.

Saudi-born Abu Hajar al-Makki and three other AQAP militants were killed when a drone blew up their vehicle in the Wadi Obeida district of Marib province, east of the capital Sanaa, tribal sources said.

A separate strike on a second vehicle killed two other AQAP militants in the same area, they added.

Washington says its strikes have killed a number of senior AQAP figures in recent months, including Mujahid al-Adani, who was killed on November 20.

It considers AQAP to be the worldwide jihadist network's most dangerous branch.

The Sunni extremist group has thrived in the chaos of nearly three years iof civil war between the Saudi-backed government and Shiite rebels who control the capital.

In addition to the air strikes, mostly carried out by drones, US special forces have conducted a number of ground raids against AQAP.

The Pentagon has also been attacking a local branch of the Islamic State group, which it says has doubled in size over the past year.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured with her husband Richard and daughter Gabriella, is serving five years for taking part in mass protests in 2009, which she denies

British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year jail sentence in Tehran for alleged sedition, could be due for early release and possibly home for Christmas, her husband said Thursday.

Richard Ratcliffe told AFP that his wife had received notification from her Iranian lawyer that she was now "marked for early release" following an update on Iran's judicial database.

"I'm reasonably positive. It's not clear how good the news is, but it's definitely good news," he said.

"It's like it's moved another stage. He (lawyer) said there's still paperwork to finalise, but it should be over soon -- days to weeks, not months or years."

On being home by Christmas, he said there was "an outside shot".

"We're not there yet but the tunnel feels a bit shorter."

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson lobbied for Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release on humanitarian grounds during a trip to Iran earlier this month.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, is serving five years for taking part in mass protests in 2009, which she denies.

Tulip Siddiq, her constituency MP in Britain, called the news a "glimmer of hope".

"It has given Nazanin a real boost of positive energy, and now we wait impatiently to see what happens next," she said, after speaking to Richard Ratcliffe.

"Although we do not want to celebrate prematurely, it would be the perfect Christmas gift to see Nazanin released and back with her family where she belongs."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016, after visiting relatives with her young daughter.

Johnson was accused of jeopardising her defence by saying she was training journalists before she was arrested -- something the Thomson Reuters Foundation and her family have strongly denied.

An online petition for her release has collected almost 1.5 million signatures.
Libya's unity government foreign minister Taha Siala (R) holds a press conference with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in Tripoli on December 21, 2017

France's foreign minister on Thursday urged Libya's unity government to act on a United Nations plan for 2018 elections and a national dialogue to stabilise the war-torn country.

"This calendar is the indispensable political solution for Libya and it must be implemented now with the utmost speed," Jean-Yves Le Drian said after talks in Tripoli with Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the Government of National Accord.

Oil-rich Libya has been wracked by chaos since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Sarraj's GNA, the product of a 2015 deal aimed at restoring stability to Libya, has failed to impose its authority across much of the country, particularly the east where a rival government backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar holds sway.

A plan presented to the UN Security Council in September by international envoy Ghassan Salame seeks to negotiate a new political deal that would be accepted by authorities in the east.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted a meeting in July between Sarraj and Haftar, at the time announced a deal to hold elections in the spring.

Le Drian said he and Sarraj had a "total convergence of views" on the UN plan and on "the need to move quickly".

In Tripoli, he also visited a detention centre for migrants waiting to be repatriated to their home countries.

The minister travelled on to Benghazi, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) east of the capital, to meet Haftar, who said this week that the GNA had lost any legitimacy since its mandate expired on December 17 under the 2015 accord.

Le Drian said he delivered a message to Haftar: "There is no other alternative to the accord, also for you. You have a recognised international image. Place it at the service of your country."
The Salvation Army will host the homeless and its McCallie Avenue neighborhood at a Christmas Eve Brunch this Sunday at 10 a.m. in the ReCreate Cafe, 800 McCallie Ave. Christmas presents will be given to the homeless who attend.



Monetary donations are needed to assist with this years increase in Christmas need and to help close the gap from being behind last years red kettle collections, officials said. Donations can be made by visiting www.csarmy.org, by calling 1-800-Sal-Army or mailed to: The Salvation Army, 822 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga, Tn.

37403. Giving can also be made by texting the word donation to 91999.For more information, contact Kimberly Kyriakidis George, director of marketing for The Salvation Army at 423-505-9154.
More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions have been driven from their homes since Syria's conflict erupted with anti-government protests in 2011

The Swiss government said Thursday it had opened a "humanitarian office" in Damascus aimed at improving aid distribution and at monitoring and coordinating assistance programmes on the ground.

Switzerland is thus the fist western country, excluding the European Union, to open such an office since the Syria's devastating conflict began nearly seven years ago.

"We finally have eyes and ears in Damascus," Manuel Bessler, the Swiss government official in charge of humanitarian aid, said in an interview on the SRF radio station.

The new office, which opened a few weeks ago and currently has a single staff member, does not constitute a political or diplomatic presence for Switzerland.

Instead, it aims to "monitor more closely the dialogue to secure humanitarian access to the affected population," a government statement said.

The office will also make it possible to "intensify efforts to improve relief services and to better monitor projects on the ground" in Syria, which currently is the focus of Switzerland's biggest humanitarian operation, it said.

"The humanitarian situation in Syria remains alarming and support is needed from the international community, including Switzerland, now more than ever," the statement said.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions have been driven from their homes since Syria's conflict erupted with anti-government protests in 2011.

Since Switzerland shut its embassy in the spring of 2012, it has mainly carried out its humanitarian efforts through its representations in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and the government said those would continue to play a central role in its work.
Reliance Infrastructure, part of the Reliance Group, said proceeds from the sale would be used 'entirely for debt reduction'

India's Reliance Infrastructure, backed by tycoon Anil Ambani, announced Thursday the sale of its power distribution business to billionaire Gautam Adani for nearly $3 billion, its latest effort to pare its debts.

Reliance Infrastructure, part of the Reliance Group, said in a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange that proceeds from the $2.93 billion sale would be used "entirely for debt reduction".

Reliance is one of several Indian companies buried under a massive debt load it piled up in an expansion boom in the last decade.

As it struggles to service those loans it, and several other companies, is seeking to sell assets to pare back debt.

Adani Transmission, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, will pay 132.51 billion rupees ($2 billion) for the Mumbai-based power business, the statement said.

An additional 55.50 billion rupees will be paid on a later date based on regulatory approvals, it added.

Reliance also said that it would focus on "upcoming opportunities in defence businesses".

The company has previously announced plans to invest in its aerospace defence manufacturing business.

The group had also announced in September 2016 the sale of its mobile phone tower business to Canadian asset management giant Brookfield. It has since said it is renegotiating that deal even as it seeks other potential buyers.

In its latest quarter ended September, Reliance Infrastructure had posted a net profit of 5.44 billion rupees while its outstanding debt stood at 140 billion rupees.
A protester pours fuel on a fire during a demonstration against political corruption in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Rania on December 20, 2017

Hundreds of protesters faced off with security forces in Iraqi Kurdistan for a fourth day Thursday, demanding the resignation of politicians accused of graft.

Police deployed en masse in the town of Rania, where five demonstrators were shot dead and dozens wounded Tuesday amid public anger over an economic crisis partly triggered by an independence vote.

Since Monday, around 20 party offices and a town hall have been set ablaze across the autonomous region as protesters ramped up calls for the government to quit.

Police reinforcements, some with riot gear, deployed Wednesday night including in the centre of Iraqi Kurdistan's second city Sulaimaniyah, an AFP correspondent said.

The protests follow a September independence referendum that triggered an unprecedented crisis between the regional government and Baghdad, which slammed the poll as unconstitutional.

The federal government responded by seizing back swathes of disputed oil-rich territory, gutting the Kurdish region's coffers.

A conflict with Baghdad over federal budget payments has exacerbated the most serious economic crisis in the regional government's history.

Kurdish civil servants have been on reduced salaries for months, while the price of fuel has soared due to demand for winter heating.

Faced with popular fury, the Goran party and Kurdistan Islamic Group announced they were withdrawing their ministers from the regional government.
South Sudan has suffered years of civil conflict, forcing millions to flee their homes in the world's newest nation

As South Sudan's warring parties haggled over a ceasefire deal this week, dozens of refugees streamed into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, fleeing what they said was a fresh government offensive.

The apparent push to recapture the key rebel stronghold of Lasu came as mediators tabled a ceasefire agreement in Addis Ababa, which was signed by major parties to the four year conflict on Thursday and is to go into force on December 24.

However with South Sudanese rebel forces vowing to take back their stronghold of Lasu in Central Equatoria State -- regardless of the ceasefire -- the fragility of the deal was thrown into stark relief.

"I'm not sure the government wants peace. If they wanted peace, why would they attack Lasu so that we have to run again with our children," said Betty Moriba, a 28-year-old mother of five.

Having fled violence twice before, Moriba grabbed her children at the first sound of gunfire and ran towards the DRC, but was unable to salvage any of the family's prized possessions.

She and other witnesses say President Salva Kiir's troops attacked Lasu on Sunday, which has served as the headquarters for the Riek Machar's SPLA-IO, the main opposition movement in South Sudan.

"They came with armoured vehicles and machine-gun-mounted pick up trucks," SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP over the phone from Kampala.

Gabriel said the two sides fought each other for several hours on Monday morning before the rebels withdrew. He has vowed to launch a counter-offensive if government forces do not pull out.

Army spokesman Santo Domic Chol denied troops had launched an offensive on the town, accusing the rebels of attacking a government position as well as looting a village for food -- forcing troops to step in to save civilians.

"We have been ordered not to engage hostilities by pursuing rebels (but) at times we will fight if we are attacked in our positions which is what happened in Lasu."

However it was unclear what government position he was referring to -- as both civilians and an official document released earlier this month indicated the area was under rebel control.

"These government soldiers came from Yei and they were shooting guns and killing people. That's what made us come this way," said James Mana, one of the fresh arrivals in the DRC, near the town of Aba.

Congolese authorities registered more than 200 refugees in the last five days.

Smoke could be seen rising from a village across the border.

- 'Cost and consequences' -

South Sudan this month entered into its fifth year of a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven nearly four million from their homes.

The UN Security Council warned last week that there would be "cost and consequences" for any side who blocks "last chance" peace efforts mediated by the regional authority IGAD, in a bid to revitalise a shattered peace agreement.

The peace deal was signed in 2015 to end 21 months of civil war between Kiir's government and Machar's rebels which broke out just two years after independence in 2011.

However the deal effectively collapsed in July 2016, when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then-first vice president Machar out of the country and his supporters back to battling the government in the bush.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million people to flock to neighbouring Uganda and the DRC in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016, a factor that is likely to further complicate negotiations.

A permanent ceasefire is the first step in negotiations to include a "revised and realistic" timeline to holding elections.

However after numerous failed ceasefires and collapsed peace deals, observers are sceptical.

"The regime is clearly not interested in negotiations or compromise and is the principle obstacle to peace," said Payton Knopf, the head of the South Sudan working group at the US Institute for Peace and former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan.

- 'I don't want to run anymore' -

Rights groups have blamed the government for systematic attacks on civilians in Equatoria, including killings, torture and rape.

As a result, many have sought shelter behind rebel lines, offering opposition fighters food in return for protection. But over the past couple of months, there have also been growing allegations of abuses at the hands of the SPLA-IO, gradually eroding popular support for the rebellion.

For the rebels, weakened by lack of ammunition and infighting, the loss of Lasu is just the latest in a series of military setbacks.

Civilians like Betty Moriba see little point in returning to South Sudan.

"I just want to be in one place, where I can raise my children," she said. "I just don't want to run anymore."
A statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, was removed from a Memphis park

The statue of a pro-slavery Confederate general who joined the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan following the Civil War was removed from a park under cover of darkness in Memphis, Tennessee.

Local television stations broadcast footage Thursday of the monument to General Nathan Bedford Forrest being removed from its pedestal by a crane and driven away on a flatbed truck under a blue tarpaulin.

A statue of Jefferson Davis, who served as president of the Confederacy during the 1861-65 Civil War, was also removed overnight from a separate Memphis park.

Cheers broke out as a crane lifted the statue of Davis off of its base and moved it to a waiting truck to be driven away to an unknown destination.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968

"This is an important moment in the life of our city," Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said at a press conference at City Hall.

"Let us move forward from this moment, committed more than ever to a united and determined Memphis," Strickland said.

Plans to remove the Confederate monuments from the public parks had been stalled for months by legal wrangling.

The removal went ahead after the city council voted unanimously on Wednesday to sell the parks to a private entity, Memphis Greenspace, for $1,000 each, since the statues could not legally be removed from public land.

Debate over removing Confederate icons has been simmering in the United States for years as the country examines its complicated racial past.

The issue was particularly sensitive in Memphis, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

- Fort Pillow massacre -

Forrest, who died in 1877, was a particularly controversial figure in Southern history.

A slave trader and owner of cotton plantations, he joined the Confederate Army as a private and rose to the rank of general.

Forrest's troops were accused of executing hundreds of surrendering African-American Union Army soldiers at the Battle of Fort Pillow in 1864.

Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan following the Civil War, according to some historians, although he later disavowed the group.

Lee Millar, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called the removal of the two statues a "disgusting display."

Millar told WMC TV it was an attempt to "destroy some Memphis history" through a "sham sale of the property."

A woman was killed and 19 other people injured in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August when an avowed white extremist drove his car into a group of anti-racism protestors.

The protestors had gathered to counter a group of neo-Nazis and white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville to oppose to a plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a public park.

In a report published in April 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) -- a civil rights advocacy group -- found that more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy are located on US public lands, mostly in the South.

According to historians and the SPLC report, most Confederate monuments were erected during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and in response to the civil rights movement.

Defenders of preserving the Confederate symbols argue that they serve as a reminder of a proud Southern heritage, and that removing them is effectively a way of erasing history.

President Donald Trump has condemned the removal of Confederate statues as "foolish" and claimed that US culture and history were being "ripped apart."
Witnesses said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle

A car ploughed into a crowd in Australia's second-largest city on Thursday injuring 19 people in what police said was a "deliberate act" but one they did not believe was terror related.

Witnesses said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle, which did not appear to be trying to stop as it "mowed everybody down" at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne.

Victoria state police said the 32-year-old driver, an Australian of Afghan descent, was known to authorities for traffic and "minor assault" offences and had mental health issues.

The car was driven "intentionally" through the intersection and collided with a "large number" of pedestrians, Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters in Melbourne.

The driver "has a history of drug use and mental health issues... At this time we do not have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism" or extremism, he said.

The man was arrested after a tussle with an off-duty police officer.

Investigators were waiting to interview the driver, who was in hospital under police guard.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews called the incident an "evil, deliberate, cowardly act" that left 19 people hurt -- four of them critically.

- 'Thump, thump' -

In a tweet, police appealed to members of the public to upload any images they might have of the incident to help assist with their investigation.

A witness, named only as Sue, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that she heard screams and saw "people flying everywhere".

Victoria state police said the 32-year-old driver, an Australian of Afghan descent, was known to authorities

"We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said.

"People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere."

Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw an "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys -- and I hope not prams," he said.

"I've really never seen anything like this before and I haven't stopped shaking."

The intersection is one of Melbourne's busiest, a local shop owner told national broadcaster ABC, and is particularly crowded at this time of the year ahead of the Christmas break, with school holidays under way.

Among the injured were three South Korean tourists -- two adults who are in intensive care with serious injuries to the lungs and pelvis, and a boy being treated for a leg fracture -- Yonhap news agency said, citing Seoul's foreign ministry.

- Vehicle attacks -

The incident came after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne's busiest mall in January, killing six people.

The driver, whose case is still being heard in court, had been pursued by police prior to the rampage after he had allegedly stabbed his brother.

Canberra has become increasingly worried about homegrown extremism and officials say they have prevented 13 terror attacks on home soil in the past few years.

The car was driven 'intentionally' through the intersection and collided with a 'large number' of pedestrians

The Australian government in August unveiled a strategy aimed at preventing vehicle attacks in crowded public places.

Suggested steps include deterrent options like fencing and closed circuit cameras, and delaying approaches such as trees and bollards to slow down vehicles.

Melbourne has also been installing a public siren system and more security cameras to warn people of a possible terrorist attack or other serious threats.

Andrews said there would an inquiry into the incident, and whether any further changes to Melbourne's security measures needed to be made.

Over the next few days, hundreds more police would patrol the city, he added.

While the circumstances surrounding Thursday's incident were still unclear, there have been several cases of vehicles being used to deliberately maim and kill.

The most deadly such case was in the southern French city of Nice on July 14, 2016, when 31-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed a 19-tonne truck down a beachside promenade, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more.

Other attacks using vehicles have taken place in Berlin, New York, London, Stockholm and Barcelona.

grk-burs/hg/kaf/nla
Gulnara Karimova, fashion designer and daughter of the late Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, has been added to a US list of people to be sanctioned for human rights abuses, corruption, and other serious crimes

The United States blacklisted a rogues gallery of alleged rights abusers and corrupt officials on Thursday, as a new global sanctions law went into effect.

US diplomats and Treasury officials spent a year compiling evidence of the most brutal and cynical crimes by 14 senior figures and dozens of companies.

Then on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking any assets that those exposed on the list might have in banks or property on US soil.

Prominent on the list, Myanmar's General Maung Maung Soe is accused of leading a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against his country's persecuted Rohingya minority.

As chief of the army's Western Command, US officials said, he oversaw "killings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages."

Another notorious figure is Gambia's former president Yahya Jammeh, who stepped down this year but once ran a "terror and assassination squad called the Junglers."

"He ordered the Junglers to kill a local religious leader, journalists, members of the political opposition, and former members of the government," the US Treasury said.

The first woman added to the list was Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the late Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, and allegedly an organized crime boss in her own right.

Karimova has been charged at home with theft and embezzlement and the US statement alleged she has laundered her network's profits in a web of companies and funds.

The blacklist also includes officials and businessmen from Russia, China, Ukraine, Guatemala, Pakistan, Serbia, the Dominican Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Today's actions advance our values and promote the security of the United States, our allies and our partners," US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

"We must lead by example, and today's announcement of sanctions demonstrates the United States will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption."

The global act, based on a previous US law that targeted Russian officials, was passed in late 2016 and officials have spent a year compiling the first list.

Just as the list of Russians under US sanctions has expanded regularly since the Magnitsky Act of 2012, the new global blacklist is also expected to grow.

Under the law, US citizens and institutions are forbidden from conducting business with those on the list, and any assets they hold under US jurisdiction are frozen.

- Corruption and abuse -

In addition, officials said, non-US foreign banks are often loathe to do business with blacklisted individuals in case their own US operations are exposed to prosecution.

"The United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

"Treasury ... will continue to take decisive and impactful actions to hold accountable those who abuse human rights, perpetrate corruption, and undermine American ideals."

Anti-corruption campaigners, who have long argued that graft and physical human rights abuses go hand in hand, welcomed the Trump administration's new stand.

"The United States has used financial pressures for decades against transnational threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism," said Brad Brooks-Rubin of The Sentry, an anti-corruption advocacy group.

"With these designations, the United States now recognizes public corruption and targeting of human rights defenders in this same light," he said.

"Over time, we look forward to robust use of these sanctions to target these threats wherever they occur."
US President Donald Trump's administration has led the drive at the Security Council to tighten sanctions on Kim Jong-Un's North Korean regime

The United States on Thursday presented a draft UN Security Council resolution ramping up sanctions on North Korea by cutting oil supplies vital for Pyongyang's military programs, according to the text obtained by AFP.

The council is expected to vote on the new sanctions on Friday, diplomats said.

The measure would ban the supply of nearly 90 percent of refined oil products to North Korea and order the repatriation of all North Korean nationals working abroad within 12 months, according to the text obtained by AFP.

The United States has been in negotiations with China, Pyongyang's ally, on slapping new sanctions in response to the November 28 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Since last year, North Korea has carried out a nuclear test -- its sixth -- and a series of advanced missile launches which are banned under UN resolutions.

The latest draft would build on previous sanctions that restrict crude and refined oil deliveries to North Korea, most of which are supplied by China.

US President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping last month to cut off oil to North Korea, a move that would deal a crippling blow to its desperately struggling economy.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have been sent to Russia and China to earn hard currency for Pyongyang, working in what UN rights officials have described as "slave-like conditions."

The draft resolution would cap crude oil supplies to four million barrels per year and require countries to seek UN permission to ship crude to North Korea.

Deliveries of refined petroleum products including diesel and kerosene would be capped at 500,000 barrels for next year, according to the measure that would order all countries to report their shipments to the United Nations.

- Seizing ships -

The measure would expand a list of banned exports to include food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone including magnesite and magnesia, wood and vessels from North Korea.

All countries would be authorized to seize, inspect, freeze and impound ships suspected of carrying illegal cargo to and from North Korea, according to the proposed measure.

North Korea's missile and nuclear tests

A total of 19 North Korean officials, most of whom work in banking, would be added to the UN sanctions blacklist along with the North Korean ministry of the people's armed forces, which manages logistics for the army.

The United States has led the drive at the Security Council to tighten sanctions that are aimed at pressuring Kim Jong-Un's regime to come to the negotiating table.

Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the council that the "pressure campaign must and will continue until denuclearization is achieved" as he backtracked from his offer to hold unconditional talks with Pyongyang.

In negotiations on previous sanctions, the United States has first agreed with China on provisions of each resolution before presenting the text to the full 15-member council, which has then quickly voted.

So far, the Security Council has imposed a full ban on supplies of condensates and natural gas liquids to North Korea, capped deliveries of refined oil products to two million barrels a year, and capped crude oil exports at current levels.

The council has also banned exports of North Korean coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, restricted joint ventures and ended the hiring of North Korean workers abroad.

The United States has separately asked the council to blacklist 10 ships, including two Hong Kong-flagged vessels, for carrying banned cargo from North Korea.

The UN sanctions committee has set a deadline of 3:00 pm (2000 GMT) Thursday for council members to raise any objections to a request to ban all 10 ships from ports worldwide.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended his ancestors in a speech in Ankara

Turkey summoned a senior United Arab Emirates diplomat on Thursday to complain about a tweet by an Emirati minister that infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media reported.

The Emirates' foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan this week retweeted a post on Twitter in which a user made allegations of historic misdoings by "ancestors of Erdogan".

The tweet alleged that a former Ottoman governor pillaged and kidnapped people from the pilgrimage city of Medina in the early 20th century.

The Turkish foreign ministry summoned the Emirati charge d'affaires in Ankara on Thursday and complained about the post, state news agency Anadolu said.

The charge d'affaires was the top UAE diplomat currently present in Turkey as the ambassador was temporarily absent.

The offending tweet was posted by a user called "Ali al-Iraqi", presenting himself as an Iraqi dentist living in Germany.

"Ali al-Iraqi" said Fahreddin Pasha -- Medina governor from 1916 to 1919 -- "committed a crime against the people of Medina by stealing their money, kidnapping them and putting them on trains that took them to Syria and Istanbul".

The user added: "Those are the ancestors of Erdogan and this is the history that they have with Arab Muslims."

Fahreddin Pasha was governor during the siege of Medina (1916-1919).

Erdogan hit back on Wednesday, telling the minister to "know your place" as he railed against the twitter user's "slanderous claims".

"Know your place! It means you do not know this country, you do not know Erdogan, you do not know about Erdogan's ancestors," he retorted.

"When Fahreddin Pasha was protecting Medina... where were your ancestors?"

Erdogan went on the attack again on Thursday, saying the Emirati minister was "ill-brought up" and "too spoilt by oil and money".

Relations between the UAE and Turkey are filled with distrust as Ankara supports Qatar in a six-month crisis with its Gulf neighbours including the UAE, as well as political groups stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The UAE outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terror" group in 2014.

Turkish pro-government newspapers also routinely allude to UAE involvement in last year's attempted coup against Erdogan.
US President Donald Trump had warned ahead of the General Assembly vote that "we're watching" and threatened reprisals against countries that back the measure

The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted by a decisive vote of 128 to nine, with 35 abstentions, a motion rejecting the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

President Donald Trump had warned ahead of the vote in the 193-nation assembly that "we're watching" and threatened reprisals against countries backing the measure, which reaffirms that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations.

Seven countries -- Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands -- joined Israel and the United States in opposing the measure.

Among the 35 countries that abstained were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania and Rwanda.

Ukraine, which supported the draft resolution at the Security Council, was among 21 countries that did not turn up for the vote.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

"The United States will remember this day," US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the assembly.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem," Haley said. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

"But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN," she said.

"When we make generous contributions to the UN we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected."

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support carries political weight.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized in 1967 and the resolution contains the same language as past motions adopted by the assembly.
Cleveland State Community College is now accepting applications for its evening Certified Nursing Assistant program.

This is the Tennessee approved Nurse Aide Training class for individuals desiring to become licensed as C.N.A.s in the state of Tennessee. The Nurse Aide is a specially trained individual who works at an entry-level position under the supervision of a licensed nurse. Nurse aides are primarily employed at nursing homes, but may also find employment with hospitals and home health agencies. Nurse Aides perform basic routine patient care which may include assisting with meals or exercise, taking vital signs, personal hygiene and reporting signs and symptoms that may indicate illness. The Nurse Aide Training Course is designed to prepare individuals to function at entry level positions in various health care facilities.

We are excited at Cleveland State to be able to offer a Certified Nursing Program that will be held in the evenings, said Keri Eyeler, Continuing Education coordinator. "We have had many individuals in the community express interest in becoming certified as a CNA, but havent been able to pursue this dream because of conflicts in their daily schedule, such as already working full time during the day Monday-Friday. This evening program will help those individuals to pursue this dream by being able to attend classes and have time to study all while keeping their daily schedules the same or somewhat the same.

The program is divided into three components of learning that include lecture, classroom skills lab and 40 hours of supervised patient care (clinical) in a long-term care facility. Upon successful completion of the course, the individual will be given a Certificate of Completion and will be eligible to take the State Certification Exam for Nurse Aides.

This is a 15-week evening training program that will be on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5:30-9:30 p.m. The program will begin on Tuesday, Feb. 6. Registration for the program is going on now through Monday, Jan. 15, with acceptance interviews being conducted on Tuesday, Jan. 23 and Thursday, Jan. 25. The course fee is $950 and includes tuition, books, scrubs, liability insurance, TB test, background check, drug screen and CPR certification. There is a payment plan available, as well as scholarships through local health facilities.

For more information or to register for the C.N.A. program, contact Continuing Eyler at 473-2270 or email her at keyler@clevelandstatecc.edu.






Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, numerous diplomatic attempts to halt the conflict have stumbled

The main powerbrokers in Syria's nearly seven-year conflict were heading towards a second day of negotiations in Astana as uncertainly loomed Thursday over a Moscow-driven plan to quickly reach a political settlement.

Chief Russian negotiator Aleksandr Lavrentyev told journalists that Russia was forging ahead with plans to host a "National Dialogue Congress" in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to accelerate discussions over a political deal that have sputtered in Geneva.

The United Nations' special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has refused to say if the UN will back a plan promoted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but viewed warily by opponents of his government.

Speaking after the first day of talks Thursday, Lavrentyev said "quite a lot of time" had been spent discussing the congress proposal at negotiations being brokered by Syria's allies Russia and Iran, as well as by Turkey, which supports the rebels.

Lavrentyev also said that the regime in Syria and opposition forces would have to "forget old grievances" if they were to move towards a political deal.

The congress, he said, would be "a platform that offers the different representatives of Syrian society the opportunity to solve matters of political settlement that so far have not been (at talks) in Geneva."

But de Mistura, who was meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Thursday, said peace talks should proceed "one step at a time" and refused to comment further on the congress proposal.

De Mistura, who acknowledged that the recent round of UN-sponsored negotiations in Geneva this month "was not a good meeting", is expected to attend the final day of talks on Friday.

The Astana meeting comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian forces in Syria during a surprise visit to the war-torn country last week.

Syria was also on the agenda as Putin spoke by telephone Thursday with Saudi Arabia's King Salman, whose country has supported the Syrian rebels but also fiercely opposes Iran's efforts to extend its influence in the country.

- 'No dates' yet -

Moscow has spearheaded the rounds of talks in Astana, which began at the start of the year, as it tries to convert its game-changing military intervention in Syria into a negotiated settlement.

At the meeting with de Mistura in Moscow, Lavrov said the talks Friday would focus on which groups and individuals would be invited to the Sochi event.

A 20-member opposition delegation was attending the talks in Astana, along with representatives of the Syrian government and of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were currently "no dates" for the proposed congress.

Opposition delegates have expressed worries that the proposed event could prove a distraction from the UN negotiations.

Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, several diplomatic attempts to halt the conflict have stumbled, mainly over Assad's future.

A fragile ceasefire brokered at the end of last year by Moscow and Ankara has been bolstered somewhat by the negotiations in Astana, where the most recent rounds of talks have focussed on implementing four "de-escalation zones" to stem fighting between government and rebels.

A year after the Syrian government's strategically crucial victory in Aleppo, Damascus has consolidated control over much of the country, wresting territory from extremist factions not party to the truce, in particular the Islamic State group.

Diplomatic contacts between the main protagonists in the conflict have intensified in recent months, but there is no sign that Damascus and its opponents are any closer to a political settlement.

The war has left more than 340,000 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa appealed to fled nationals to return to the country

Zimbabwe's new leader on Thursday appealed to millions of nationals who fled economic decline and political turmoil to return home and help rebuild the nation following the fall of Robert Mugabe.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, took over from the long-time leader who resigned on November 21 following a military takeove. Mugabe had ruled the southern African country for 37 years.

"You are so many here in the diaspora because of in particular economic challenges that beset our country," said Mnangagwa during a speech in Pretoria in South Africa during his maiden foreign trip.

"I appeal to you to come to Zimbabwe," he said exactly a month after Mugabe tendered his resignation under popular pressure and as he faced impeachment.

"Zimbabwe is your home, you are welcome (back)," said Mnangagwa adding the country needed the skills and experience Zimbabweans have acquired in the diaspora.

Millions of Zimbabweans have left the country over the past nearly two decades and the bulk of them are in neighbouring South Africa.

"Whatever offence we committed to you please put that behind you.... forgive.

"I wish to say may we together agree that let bygones be bygones and look in the future with hope.

"The country is ours together, it is not the country of (ruling) ZANU-PF, it is not the country of (opposition) MDC.

"From now on Zimbabwe is now open for business," he told Zimbabwean business people who fled to South Africa.

The new president was a long-time ally of Mugabe, and his critics say he is also a hardliner from the ruling ZANU-PF party with a record of alleged graft and repression in Zimbabwe.

As he spoke, a group of fewer than 20 protesters chanted outside the embassy building over Mnangagwa's role during the early 1980s killings of perceived political dissidents in a campaign known infamously as Gukurahundi.

An estimated 20,000 people were killed by an elite North Korean-trained military unit. At the time Mnangagwa was a security minister under Mugabe.

"How can we work with the killer?" shouted one protester.

Two others carried giant pictures of dead bodies with gruesome cuts and burns.

Another protester yelled: "There's no difference between Mugabe and Mnangagwa."

Mnangagwa met South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and was also scheduled to meet ANC's newly elected leader Cyril Ramaphosa.

The South African presidency said Zuma and Mnangagwa "have undertaken to strengthen economic trade and cooperation between South Africa and Zimbabwe".

Mnangagwa said his government had reviewed investment laws that forced foreign companies to cede a majority stake to local investors and spooked investment.
Embraer was formed by the Brazilian government in 1969 and privatized in 1994 in a process that granted Brasilia "golden shares" with some veto rights

US aerospace giant Boeing and Brazil's Embraer said Thursday they were in talks on a "potential combination" but cautioned there was no guarantee of a deal.

The talks ignited shares of the Brazilian company, which makes commercial, military and executive jets, despite immediate signs of opposition to the transaction in Brazil.

Any deal would need to be approved by the Brazilian government.

A merger between the two companies would build on their existing alliance on the KC-39 military plane and would permit the much-bigger Boeing to fill a gap in its fleet with regional single-aisle planes.

A transaction also would rebut an alliance between Boeing archrival Airbus and Canada's Bombardier to build smaller planes.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the Boeing-Embraer talks earlier Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

The report said the parties discussed a deal that would see Boeing pay a "relatively large premium" for Embraer, but that talks are on hold as the two sides await word on the Brazilian government's view of the deal.

US-traded shares of Embraer shot up following the report, finishing at $24.42, up 22.1 percent. But Boeing fell 1.0 percent to $295.03.

However, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported that Brazil President Michael Temer already ruled out a takeover of the Embraer, one of Brazil's flagship companies.

"Embraer will never be sold under my government," he was quoted as saying at a meeting with the defense minister and head of the air force.

Brazilian officials were reported to have been taken by surprise by the Wall Street Journal story on the merger talks.

Embraer was formed by the Brazilian government in 1969 and privatized in 1994 in a process that granted the Brasilia "golden shares" with some veto rights.

The union at Embraer's Sao Jose dos Campos plant also immediately opposed the deal, saying it would risk the jobs of the 16,000 workers employed in Brazil.

"The possible purchase of Embraer by Boeing... is rejected," the Steelworkers Trade Union of Sao Jose dos Campos and Region said in a statement.

"As a representative of the workers, the steelworkers' union reaffirms its position in favor of a veto over the sale of Embraer."

- Filling a gap -

Embraer in 2016 notched $6.2 billion in revenues, while Boeing had $94.6 billion.

The merger talks come two months after Airbus signed an agreement to take a majority stake in production of narrow-body planes made by Bombardier. Those planes are at the center of an ongoing US trade dispute with Canada sparked by a Boeing complaint against Bombardier.

The US Commerce Department on Wednesday confirmed nearly 300 percent tariffs on Bombardier's C-series aircraft. The decision is subject to final approval by the US International Trade Commission, a quasi-judicial agency, which is due February 1, though it rarely differs from Commerce.

Boeing has argued that Bombardier's order to sell 75 new single-aisle CS 100 planes to Delta Air Lines violated trade laws because of billions of dollars in unfair subsidies provided by the Canadian government.

Bombardier argued that Boeing does not manufacture a direct competitor to the CS 100, and its robust order book of 737 planes proves it has not been adversely affected by unfair trade.

But a link with Embraer would give Boeing a portfolio of planes that could compete for some of the same business as Bombardier.

The Canadian company also noted that the planes for Delta would be built under the Airbus alliance in Mobile, Alabama, meaning they would not be imported.
Human rights groups have regularly denounced the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over alleged abuses

Egypt's judiciary said Thursday it had launched an inquiry after Human Rights Watch accused security services of widespread torture of detainees in a probable "crime against humanity".

The New York-based rights group said in a September report that security services in the North African country used torture as a "systematic practice" against suspected opponents of the government.

The prosecutor's office said Thursday that counsellor Nabil Sadik had ordered the appointment of a senior judicial official "to investigate the allegations mentioned" in the HRW report.

In a statement in English, it said the investigation, which began in late October, aimed to "rightfully stand on the truth and take the necessary legal measures".

Since the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, rights groups have regularly denounced the regime of his successor President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over alleged abuses.

They have been particularly critical of a contentious law to regulate non-governmental organisations, which HRW and other groups in June said would "crush civil society".

The head of the state information service, Diaa Rashwan, said Thursday the HRW report on torture was one of several "unprofessional reports based on impressions".

Rashwan spoke at a conference on human rights where the government also launched a commission to create a "national strategy for human rights".

Ahmed Ehab, assistant foreign minister for human rights, said Egypt needed to reach "the point of balance between the campaign against terrorism and human rights".
Syrians walk with pictures of family members who were killed during fighting in Aleppo, as they march during a government celebration marking the first anniversary of the retaking of the second Syrian city on December 21, 2017

Jumaa Sabbuh lost his son in the violence that battered Syria's Aleppo for years. On Thursday, he was among thousands commemorating the one-year anniversary of the army's recapture of the city.

"Of course I'm sad for my son Ibrahim, but the joy of victory has eclipsed any sadness," said the wrinkled 55-year-old, his face framed by a chequered scarf.

Sabbuh carried a poster of his bright-eyed son, killed in 2014 while serving in Syria's army.

"We gave a lot of martyrs for us to reach safety," said Sabbuh, who has two more sons still in the military.

Thousands of people gathered with flags, pictures of loved ones lost, and pro-army banners in Aleppo's central Saadallah al-Jabiri square on Thursday to mark a year since Syria's government retook the metropolis.

On December 22, 2016, the army formally announced it was in full control of second city Aleppo after a blistering Russian-backed offensive to oust rebel fighters.

The historic Saadallah al-Jabiri square was once a frontline, but on Thursday it was brimming with pro-government support.

Syrian soldiers walk past a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad during a government celebration marking the first anniversary of the retaking of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo

Hundreds of troops put on an imposing military display under a massive poster featuring President Bashar al-Assad against a backdrop of the Syrian government's two-star flag.

"Syria will remain led by Assad, symbol of resistance and victory," read one banner, and another insisted, "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine."

Commemorators came out in the thousands despite the chilly weather, including many dressed in military gear and carrying pictures of young male relatives killed in the fighting.

- 'Nothing is forever' -

Aleppo native Nuhaida Turun said she still deeply missed her son, killed in an explosion targeting an army checkpoint in central Syria.

"The price was high, but whatever we pay is cheap compared to our country," said the 49-year-old housewife.

She said she could now walk the streets of Aleppo safely at night.

The Syrian government's takeover of Aleppo marked President Bashar al-Assad's biggest victory since the outbreak of war, and set off a domino effect of opposition losses elsewhere in the country

"Despite losing our children, despite all the destruction that happened here, our joy at victory is irreplaceable," said Turun, dressed in a long brown coat and black scarf.

"Nothing is forever."

Before Syria's conflict erupted in 2011, Aleppo was the country's commercial powerhouse, with a population of 2.5 million people.

But thousands fled after rebels overran the city's east in the summer 2012, bringing the total population to just 1.5 million with around 250,000 in the opposition-held half.

For years, rebels lobbed rockets on the government-controlled west as regime troops bombed opposition neighbourhoods.

In December, after months of crippling siege, thousands of rebels and civilians agreed to evacuate east Aleppo, paving the way for the army to declare it back in regime hands.

The takeover marked Assad's biggest victory since the outbreak of war, and set off a domino effect of opposition losses elsewhere in the country.

- 'No one left but me' -

Resident Abdulrazzaq Mhanna descended to Aleppo's streets on Thursday with pictures of the three brothers he lost in Syria's nearly seven-year conflict.

"My father had four sons -- Zakariya, Haydar, Tufiq, and me," said the 28-year-old.

"There's no one left but me."

One brother was killed fighting in the army, but Mhanna said he lost two others in bombardment by rebel groups on the city.

Since the Assad regime retook Aleppo, mountains of rubble that once blocked its the city's thoroughfares have been cleared and some streets newly paved

"Victory doesn't come easily. Victory needs sacrifice, blood, and suffering," he insisted, calling on displaced Aleppines to come back and "help us rebuild what's been destroyed."

Much of the east was reduced to rubble by the fierce fighting, although authorities have begun restoring the water and electricity networks.

Mountains of rubble that once blocked Aleppo's thoroughfares have been cleared and some streets newly paved.

While rebels have been ousted from the city itself, they remain entrenched in some of its outskirts and occasionally fire rockets into the urban centre.

Just before celebrations began on Thursday, shelling on the city left two people dead and four civilians wounded, state news agency SANA reported.

That didn't deter 52-year-old Raslan al-Hajj Hussein from coming out.

"We suffered a lot from the shelling on the city, but nevertheless we resisted, and we went to work," he told AFP.

But with 2017 drawing to a close, Al-Hajj Hussein said he hoped to see "the whole country victorious, with every inch of it liberated."
People carry the coffin of Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University PhD student who was found dead bearing signs of torture after disappearing in Cairo, during his funeral in Fiumicello on February 12, 2016

Egypt's judiciary has submitted "new elements" in the investigation of the 2016 murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, prosecutors from the two countries announced Thursday.

"The Egyptian investigation team has submitted accounts and documents containing new elements," Attorney General Nabil Sadek of Egypt and his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Pignatone said in a joint statement.

They said the new elements covered "progress achieved by the company tasked with recovering recordings from metro stations in Cairo", without elaborating.

In January, Egypt authorised Italy to send experts to examine footage from surveillance cameras at a Cairo metro station to shed light on Regeni's final public movements before his disappearance.

Regeni, a PhD student, went missing in the Egyptian capital on January 25, 2015. His body was found days later, bearing torture marks.

Egypt has faced accusations that a member of its security services murdered the student, who was researching trade unions -- a sensitive topic in the country.

Cairo has denied those claims.

Rights groups accuse the Egyptian government of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of dissidents, which spiked after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and cracked down on his supporters.

The government denies such allegations.
In the build up to Thursday's ceasefire agreement there have been numerous protests in Juba, South Sudan, calling for peace

South Sudan's government and main armed groups on Thursday signed a ceasefire agreement during peace talks in Ethiopia, the latest push to end a devastating four year war in the country.

"With effect from 00:01 hours (South Sudan local time) on the 24th day of December 2017, a Cessation of Hostilities (CoH) shall come into force, and the parties shall cease all hostile military actions and operations," read the agreement seen by AFP.

The agreement says all forces should "immediately freeze in their locations", halt actions that could lead to confrontation and release political detainees as well as abducted women and children.

"This is an encouraging first step. You have given a ray of hope back to your people but it is only a small step. Now practical action is needed," said African Union chairman Moussa Faki.

South Sudan's leaders fought for decades for independence, but once they achieved it in 2011, a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar led to all out civil war in 2013.

A peace deal was signed two years later but collapsed in July 2016 when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then first vice president Machar into exile.

The opposition split, with Taban Deng taking over as first-vice president, while Machar's faction returned to battling the government in the bush.

While the initial fighting pitted Kiir's ethnic Dinka against Machar's Nuer, the renewed violence has metastasised with new opposition armed groups forming.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million South Sudanese to flock to neighbouring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

The latest round of peace talks, which the United Nations described as a "last chance" for peace in the country was pushed by the regional IGAD group as a revitalisation of the 2015 deal.

However observers have highlighted that the shifts in the conflict since 2015 will mean taking into account new grievances.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016.

- Thorny path to elections -

A permanent ceasefire is the first step in negotiations to include a "revised and realistic" timeline to holding elections.

The initial peace deal planned for elections in August 2018 -- a date seen as unfeasible by many observers.

Numerous ceasefires have failed over the past years, with even the 2015 peace deal dogged by fighting.

A fresh government offensive that coincided with the peace talks only added to doubts over Kiir's commitment to halting hostilities.

On Sunday, Kiir's troops attacked the town of Lasu in Central Equatoria State, which has served as the headquarters for Machar's SPLA-IO rebels, sending scores fleeing into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"I'm not sure the government wants peace. If they wanted peace, why would they attack Lasu so that we have to run again with our children," said Betty Moriba, a 28-year-old mother of five.

SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP they planned to launch a counter-offensive even if the ceasefire agreement was signed, if the government did not withdraw voluntarily.
Sinclair, the largest US broadcast television group, operates nearly 200 local television stations across the country and is currently attempting to buy stations in dozens more markets from Tribune Media Co.

US regulators on Thursday announced a record $13.3 million fine against a major television company for airing promotional content without telling viewers it had been paid to air it.

The fine against conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting Group would be the largest ever for a violation of federal laws that require broadcasters to reveal when sponsors pay for content that appears like normal programing, according the Federal Communications Commission.

Sinclair, the largest US broadcast television group, operates nearly 200 local television stations across the country and is currently attempting to buy stations in dozens more markets from Tribune Media Co. -- a deal that requires FCC approval.

Democratic lawmakers have accused the FCC of bias in favor of Sinclair and The Washington Post last year said the broadcaster favored President Donald Trump's election campaign.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Sinclair deny those allegations.

According to the FCC, Sinclair aired and supplied other broadcasters with ads that looked like local news coverage about the Huntsman Cancer Institute. The content was dressed up to look independently produced but actually was paid for by the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.

The programming aired more than 1,700 times, and the payment was not disclosed, according to the FCC.

"The FCC's sponsorship identification rules help ensure that consumers know who is trying to persuade them through paid programming," the FCC said in a statement.

The Huntsman Cancer Institute is a cancer research facility in Utah founded by the industrial chemicals magnate Jon Huntsman Sr., whose son Jon Huntsman Jr. is a Republican former diplomat and governor.

The foundation, which raises funds for the institute, said it ended its contract with Sinclair after learning its ads were not properly labeled, according to Bloomberg.

Sinclair has 30 days to contest the fine or pay it.

Last year, Sinclair paid a $9.5 million fine to the FCC over unrelated violations.
" Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be," said sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an English-language video posted online by his spokesman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned a UN vote on Thursday that rejected a US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but expressed satisfaction at the number of countries that didn't vote for the measure.

"Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be," Netanyahu said in an English-language video posted online by his spokesman.

"But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theatre of the absurd," said the Israeli leader.

"Especially I want to again express our thanks to President (Donald) Trump and Ambassador (Nikki) Haley for their stalwart defence of Israel and their stalwart defence of the truth."

The motion was backed by 128 countries and opposed by nine, with Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands joining Israel and the United States in voting against the measure.

But 35 countries abstained including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania and Rwanda.

Ukraine, which supported the draft resolution at the Security Council, was among 21 countries that did not turn up for the vote.

Trump had warned ahead of the vote in the 193-nation assembly that "we're watching" and threatened reprisals against countries backing the measure, which reaffirms that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations.
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas said he welcomes the United Nations resolution riticising the US government's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The Palestinian president welcomed Thursday a United Nations General Assembly resolution criticising the US government's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"This decision reaffirms once again that the just Palestinian cause enjoys the support of international law, and no decision by any party can change the reality," a statement from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's spokesman said, stressing it showed "that Jerusalem is occupied territory under international law."

"We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and all international forums to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem," the statement added.

The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, said it was a blow to Israel's attempts to "judaise" Jerusalem.

In a statement the party called the vote "a step in the right direction, a victory of Palestinian rights and a blow to the Trump declaration."

The General Assembly adopted the motion rejecting US President Donald Trump's December 6 decision by 128 votes to nine, with 35 abstentions.

Trump had warned ahead of the vote in the 193-nation assembly that "we're watching" and threatened reprisals against countries backing the measure, which reaffirms that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favour.
When Emmalie Harrison graduated from Meigs County High School, she initially wanted to go to a four-year university, but her parents encouraged her to stay close to home to take advantage of the Tennessee Promise so she chose to attend Cleveland State Community College.



Now that Im here, I love it, she said. I dont think I could have chosen anywhere better to go! I have had a great experience here. Adjusting from high school to college was a big transition, but CSCC is the closest thing to an easy transition because of the small classes. The atmosphere here is so welcoming, and everyone is so friendly.



Ms. Harrison is involved in the Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) Honor Society and the Student Ambassadors on campus. As a CSCC Ambassador, she has assisted the Recruitment Department with recruiting at Polk County, Walker Valley and McMinn County High Schools during her time at the college.



I love the different interactions with people on campus that I get with the Student Ambassadors, said Ms. Harrison. I enjoy telling high school students about my experience and how I have benefited from CSCC when I give tours.



Out of all of her activities she is involved in at CSCC, her favorite has to be the CSCC Honors program.



I wasnt even aware that CSCC had an honors program until one of my instructors told me about it and encouraged me to joinI love Dr. Bryan (Honors Program Director). I love the relationships I have built through the CSCC honors programthe different opportunities I have had and the effect it has had on me.



Ms. Harrison will complete her honors diploma and graduate in May. After CSCC, she plans to continue her education at Middle Tennessee State University to major in Biology.
Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is part of a push to clamp down on fake news on social media, is to drop the flagging system that marked disputed articles

Facebook said on Thursday it will stop flagging fake news as "disputed," opting instead to offer up contradictory stories containing facts that have been checked.

The change comes as the leading online social network strives to stymie use of its platform to spread bogus information.

Lessons learned thus far in the effort to combat fake news include the fact that dispelling misinformation is challenging, especially if it involves what people are already determined to believe, said Facebook experts Jeff Smith, a product designer, user experience researcher Grace Jackson and content strategist Seetha Raj, in an online post.

"Just because something is marked as 'false' or 'disputed' doesnt necessarily mean we will be able to change someone's opinion about its accuracy," they said.

"In fact, some research suggests that strong language or visualizations (like a bright red flag) can backfire and further entrench someone's beliefs."

Drawbacks to 'disputed' flags include requiring people to click through in pursuit of further information, and needing more fact-checkers than are sometimes available, according to Facebook.

It was found to be more effective to offer fact-checked articles on the same subject before someone clicked a link to a story considered dubious.

Facebook began testing that approach in August.

While click-through rates on hoax articles did not change significantly, Facebook found that they were shared less often on the social network than was the case when 'disputed' flags were displayed, according to the blog post.

"It makes it easier to get context, it requires only one fact-checker's review, it works for a range of ratings, and it doesnt create the negative reaction that strong language or a red flag can have," the Facebook team said.

Last month Facebook joined global news organizations in an initiative aimed at identifying "trustworthy" news sources, in the latest effort to combat online misinformation.

Google, Microsoft and Twitter also agreed to participate in the "Trust Project" with some 75 news organizations to tag news stories which meet standards for ethics and transparency.

Google, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for allowing the spread of bogus news -- some of which was directed by Russia -- ahead of the 2016 US election and in other countries.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg used a quarterly earnings call last month to address criticism of Facebook for allowing disinformation and manipulation during the 2016 US presidential election.

"We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms," Zuckerberg said.

"Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits."
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the 42nd Mukhtars Meeting in Ankara on December 20, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday asked US President Donald Trump to reverse his decision recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital after a UN vote overwhelming rejected the move.

Erdogan had earlier called on UN member states not to be swayed by Trump's threat to cut funding for countries that backed the motion at the UN General Assembly.

"We welcome with great pleasure the UN General Assemblys overwhelming support... We expect the Trump administration to rescind without further delay its unfortunate decision, whose illegality has been clearly established," Erdogan said on Twitter.

"I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars," he had said in a televised speech in Ankara before the vote.

The US decision on December 6 broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

At an emergency session Thursday, the UN General Assembly adopted the motion rejecting Trump's decision by 128 votes to nine, with 35 abstentions.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, though all other 14 council members voted in favour.

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that backed the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

Erdogan accused Trump of making "threats".

"How do they call America? The cradle of democracy. The cradle of democracy is seeking to find will in the world that can be bought with dollars," he said.

"Mr Trump you cannot buy with dollars Turkey's democratic will. Our decision is clear," he said.
South African batsman Temba Bavuma, pictured in October 2017, made 70 off 77 balls with seven fours

Zimbabwes batsmen failed a test under floodlights and face defeat two days into a three-day warm-up match against a South African Invitation team at Boland Park on Thursday.

Trailing by 91 runs after Test batsman Temba Bavuma hit a fluent 70 off 77 balls in the Invitation teams first innings, the Zimbabweans struggled to 120 for seven at the close of play, giving them a slender overall lead of 29 runs.

It was hardly the dress rehearsal the tourists wanted ahead of a one-off day-night Test against South Africa, starting in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday.

There were 40 overs remaining before the close, all to be bowled under floodlights, when the Zimbabweans started their second innings against a team consisting mainly of players from South Africas second tier of first-class cricket.

First innings top-scorer Hamilton Masakadza was bowled by Lizaad Williams off the second ball of the innings. Solomon Mire and Craig Ervine put on 50 for the second wicket but batsmen fell at regular intervals after that pair were separated.

Test bowler Dale Steyn, who tested his fitness in the first innings, did not bowl in the second. Williams led the attack and took three for 27.
Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes was the subject of a hoax autobiography by author Clifford Irving, who died at the age of 87

Clifford Irving, an American novelist who went to prison after his claim to have collaborated on an autobiography of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was exposed as a hoax, has died at the age of 87.

Julie Irving, the author's sixth wife, told The New York Times that Irving died in a hospice in Sarasota, Florida, on Tuesday, just a week after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Irving was a little-known novelist when he made the sensational announcement in 1970 that he had held a series of interviews with the reclusive Hughes for an authorized autobiography.

Irving received a hefty advance from McGraw-Hill for the book and its publication was eagerly anticipated by a public hungry for details about the famously private Hollywood producer and celebrated aviator.

In fact, Irving had had no contact with Hughes and was perpetrating what the Times called "one of the biggest literary hoaxes of the 20th century."

He was exposed when Hughes broke his silence and denied any collaboration with Irving.

Convicted of fraud, "my reward in 1972 for that Hughes lunacy was 16 months in three federal prisons," Irving wrote on his official website.

Richard Gere starred in a 2006 movie about the case called "The Hoax."
A former Embraer executive admitted to US authorities to a scheme to bribe a Saudi official in order to secure orders for his company, in a case that carries a maximum penalty of 90 years in jail

A former executive at Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer pleaded guilty on Thursday for his role in bribing a Saudi official in the sale of three jets, the US Justice Department announced.

Colin Steven, a 61-year-old British national residing in the United Arab Emirates, admitted to charges of foreign bribery, wire fraud, money laundering and false statements over his role in the scheme, which occurred between 2009 and 2011.

Steven's guilty plea follows Embraer's $205 million settlement last year with US and Brazilian authorities over corruption in several countries, including Saudi Arabia.

In an unrelated development, Embraer announced Thursday it was in merger talks with the US giant Boeing but said no deal was guaranteed.

Prosecutors say Steven, a former executive in Embraer's executive jets division with responsibility for sales in the Middle East, agreed in 2009 to funnel bribes to an official of Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company in return for help in securing the sale of three new jets to the company.

Following the $93 million sale in 2010, Steven caused Embraer to pay a South African company more than $1.5 million in sham "finder's fees," almost all of which it then passed on to the unnamed Saudi official.

Steven kept $130,000 in kickbacks, according to the Justice Department, but lied to a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in 2014, claiming this sum was really for an unrelated business venture.

US law criminalized the use of bribes of foreign government officials to win business, and this applies to companies whose stock is traded in or who do business in the United States and to their employees, extending the reach of the US justice system.

Steven is due to be sentenced in June of next year. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 90 years in prison but the sentence is likely to be far lower.
Vice President Pence paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan, flying secretly on an unmarked US Air Force transport plane

Vice President Mike Pence told US troops in Afghanistan Thursday that they have put the Taliban on the run, as he became the most senior Trump administration official to visit the men and women fighting America's longest-ever war.

Flying secretly through the day and night on a standard unmarked US Air Force C-17 transport plane, Pence corkscrewed into Bagram Airfield on the unannounced visit to thank some of the roughly 15,000 US personnel still hoping to turn the tide in the conflict, now in its 17th year.

The superpower's vexed campaign against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- born from the rubble of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington -- receives ever-less public attention in the United States these days.

"The American people deserve to know that with the courage of everyone gathered here, we're making real progress in this fight for freedom in Afghanistan," Pence told the troops.

"We've dramatically increased American air strikes. And together with our Afghan partners, we've put the Taliban on the defensive," he said, also pointing at efforts to target the drug trafficking networks that help fund the Taliban.

"All across this country we've won new victories against the terrorists, no matter what they call themselves or where they try to hide."

Pence's visit included a helicopter dash to Kabul to meet President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah

"And never doubt that your mission -- your mission here in Afghanistan -- is vital to the safety and security of the American people," the vice president said.

Pence's visit was designed to shift the spotlight back on personnel and their mission, however briefly, before Americans turn their focus to turkey lunches, festive cheer and contentious domestic politics.

His visit also included a helicopter dash from Bagram into the heart of the capital Kabul to meet President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom the United States is counting on to help rebuild this war-shattered country.

"We've been on a long road together" he said. "We've both sacrificed much."

But, he added: "We are here to see this through."

- Pakistan on notice -

The vice president also aimed a jab at neighboring Pakistan -- reiterating word for word Trump's warning that it must stop offering cross-border safe havens to Taliban factions and armed jihadist groups fighting US troops and their Afghan allies.

The vice president's visit comes four months after Trump unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan

"President Trump has put Pakistan on notice," Pence said.

"Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with the United States, and Pakistan has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists."

His comments sparked a testy response from the Pakistani Foreign Office, which said they were "at variance" with previous conversations, and added: "Allies do not put each other on notice."

Pence's visit comes four months after Trump unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan, which he told the troops was "already bearing fruit."

With typical certitude, the 45th commander-in-chief promised a more ruthless campaign without Obama-era exit deadlines or niceties.

But the trip comes as Afghan security forces struggle to beat back the Taliban, which has been on the offensive since the withdrawal of US-led NATO combat troops at the end of 2014 and maintains control over swathes of the country.

And the fact that Pence's visit took place in secrecy and under cover of winter darkness is a stark reminder of the difficult security situation even around Kabul and even after a war effort worth more than half a trillion dollars.

- In doubt until last moment -

Later asked by reporters whether the US would consider raising its military presence in the country, Pence demurred.

"That will be a decision for the commander in chief in the days ahead, but again this is... not just personnel," he said.

The trip comes as Afghan security forces struggle to beat back the Taliban

"You know, I said today that bureaucrats don't win wars, soldiers do. And one of the things that you have seen in President Trump, as commander in chief, is he has empowered our battlefield commanders to make real-time decisions," he continued, citing successes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

His visit from Bagram to central Kabul was in doubt until the last moment, when a White House official said he countermanded a decision that the weather was not clear enough to travel.

Even then, Pence's helicopter flight took place in near total darkness, moving low and fast and with a heavy phalanx of secret service and special forces.

The White House official said the decision was made "out of respect. To meet with Ghani and Abdullah."

The Trump administration,like Barack Obama's before, has put enormous hope in Ghani, who is seen by the White House as more competent and less corrupt than his predecessor Hamid Karzai.

But his three-year-old "national unity" government appears to be faltering and parliamentary elections have been repeatedly postponed.

Pence had been expected to visit Egypt and Israel this week, a trip that was delayed amid a crunch vote on tax cuts and deadly protests at Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

burs-st/qan
Members of the UN Security Council voted 15-0 to impose new sanctions on North Korea

With China's backing, the UN Security Council on Friday slapped new sanctions on North Korea that will restrict oil supplies vital for Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs.

The council unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution that also orders the repatriation of North Korean workers sent abroad to earn revenue for Kim Jong-Un's regime.

It is the third raft of sanctions imposed on Pyongyang this year and comes as the United States and North Korea show no signs they are willing to open talks on ending the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

US President Donald Trump Friday hailed the move, saying the international community was pushing for peace with the isolated regime.

"The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 in favor of additional Sanctions on North Korea. The World wants Peace, not Death!" Trump tweeted.

The resolution bans the supply of nearly 75 percent of refined oil products to North Korea, puts a cap on crude deliveries and orders all North Korean nationals working abroad to be sent back by the end of 2019.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, whose country put forward the draft text, called North Korea a "tragic example of evil"

The United States put forward the draft text on Thursday following negotiations with China, Pyongyang's ally and main supplier of oil.

Describing North Korea as "the most tragic example of evil in the modern world," US Ambassador Nikki Haley said the new sanctions are "a reflection of the international outrage at the Kim regime's actions."

The resolution "sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishment and isolation," she said.

The measures are in response to North Korea's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on November 28 that marked an advance in Pyongyang's drive to threaten the US mainland with a nuclear strike.

Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if it attacks the United States while North Korea insists the world must now accept that it is a nuclear power.

Last month, Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to cut off oil to the North, a move that would cripple its struggling economy.

Crude oil supplies were capped at four million barrels per year and a ceiling of 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products, including diesel and kerosene, was set for next year, down from two million barrels in a previous resolution.

US President Donald Trump's administration has led the drive at the Security Council to tighten sanctions on Kim Jong-Un's North Korean regime

If North Korea carries out another nuclear or ICBM test, "then the Security Council will take action to restrict further the export to the DPRK of petroleum," said the resolution.

The United States had initially sought to expel within a year tens of thousands of North Koreans, most of whom are working in Russia and China, but that deadline was extended to two years after Russia objected.

To prevent North Korea from circumventing sanctions, all countries were authorized to seize, inspect and impound ships suspected of carrying illegal cargo to and from North Korea.

- Sanctions only a means -

The measure bans sales of all industrial machinery, trucks, iron, steel and other metals to North Korea and bars exports of food, machinery, electrical equipment, earth, stone, wood and vessels produced in the reclusive state.

Addressing the council, China and Russia condemned North Korea's behavior but made the case for urgently opening diplomatic channels to ease tensions and move towards settling the crisis.

"Sanctions are only a means," said Chinese Deputy Ambassador Wu Haitao. "One should not expect to settle the problems through unilateral sanctions or pressure."

North Korea's missile and nuclear tests

"We all must, we are all duty-bound, to provide opportunities for diplomacy to function," said Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov.

A total of 15 North Korean officials, most of whom work in banking, were added to the UN sanctions blacklist along with the ministry of the people's armed forces, which manages army logistics for the country.

An earlier list contained 19 names, later reduced to 16, but a final version listed 15 North Koreans, who will be subjected to a global visa ban and assets freeze.

Since September last year, North Korea has carried out its sixth and largest nuclear test and a series of advanced missile launches which are banned under UN resolutions.

The United States has led the drive at the Security Council to tighten sanctions aimed at piling pressure on Kim's regime to come to the negotiating table.

French Ambassador Francois Delattre welcomed the new measures, saying "this resolution bites."

"Maximum firmness today is our best antidote to the risk of war," he said.

The European Union said in a statement that it too is planning to adopt tougher sanctions against North Korea early next year.
An online petition demanding the dumping of Matt Damon's cameo in 2018 heist movie "Ocean's 8" has nearly reached its goal of 17,000 signatures

Oscar-winner Matt Damon has alienated friends with remarks over the sexual misconduct firestorm blazing through Hollywood, but enough to become the next male star on the cutting room floor?

An online petition demanding the dumping of his cameo in 2018 heist movie "Ocean's 8" has nearly reached its goal of 17,000 signatures -- signed by more than 16,620 supporters by late afternoon New York time Thursday.

Critics say his inclusion would be particularly galling given its status as an all female reboot of the popular franchise, starring Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter.

The petition calls on "Oceans 8" producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, "to toss Damon's Oceans 8 cameo where it belongs: on the cutting room floor."

It alleges that he "enabled" Harvey Weinstein's conduct by trying to squash a New York Times report in 2004 that detailed instances where the now fallen Hollywood mogul exploited his status as a studio executive to harass and assault women.

Damon denied trying to bury the story and claimed he had no idea of the allegations against Weinstein, who helped catapult him into an international household name.

The actor also came under fire last week, for telling ABC News that there was a "spectrum of behavior" and a "difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?"

His long-time friend, Ben Affleck, with whom he shared an Oscar for best screenplay over 1997 movie "Good Will Hunting" and Affleck's actor brother Casey, have also been accused publicly in recent months of sexual misconduct.

"This behavior is beyond enabling -- it's just gross. Matt Damon should not be in this movie," said the petition.

"Damon's inclusion would trivialize the serious nature of the charges against sexual abusers like Weinstein," and "show massive disrespect" to women speaking out, it said.

Harvard-educated Damon, 47, is the father of four daughters, including a child from a previous relationship of his wife.

"Ocean's 8" is scheduled for release in June 2018 and tells of an attempted heist at New York's annual Met Gala, one of the hottest tickets in the celebrity universe.
Eric Schmidt's stint as executive chairman is to end at a regularly-scheduled board meeting in January 2018, according to Alphabet

Google's parent company Alphabet on Thursday announced that Eric Schmidt will step down as chairman, remaining on the board but shifting into a role as a technical advisor.

"In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work," Schmidt said in a release.

Schmidt's stint as executive chairman is to end at a regularly-scheduled board meeting next month, according to Alphabet.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited the proven businessman and skilled software engineer as chief executive in 2001, bringing a mature hand to the helm of the then three-year-old internet search company.

Schmidt, Page, and Brin were considered a power triumvirate in control of Google. Page replaced Schmidt as chief executive a decade later, but Schmidt remained at the head of the board of directors.

"Eric has provided us with business and engineering expertise and a clear vision about the future of technology," Alphabet chief Page said in a release.

"Continuing his 17 years of service to the company, hell now be helping us as a technical advisor on science and technology issues."

About two years ago, Google unveiled a surprise corporate overhaul, forming a new parent company dubbed Alphabet to include Internet search and a handful of independent companies.

Page became chief executive at Alphabet, a holding company for the tech giant's search products and "other bets" such Waymo self-driving car unit and Google Fiber internet service.

Sundar Pichai was promoted to chief of Google.

Eric Schmidt went from being executive chairman at Google to having the same role at Alphabet.

"Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabets evolution for this transition," Schmidt said.

"The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving."
NEW YORK (AP) - A man convicted of fatally shooting a New York City police officer in 2015 was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Demetrius Blackwell was convicted last month of first-degree murder and other charges in the death of Detective Brian Moore.

"You're a cold, calculating killer," Judge Gregory Lasak said before handing down the sentence. "You realize what you did. You killed a man for no reason."

The 25-year-old officer and his partner were in street clothes in an unmarked car when they tried to stop Blackwell, who was suspected of carrying a gun. The 37-year-old Queens resident opened fire, striking Moore in the head.

Moore died two days later.

The defense argued that Blackwell has severe mental health issues and was not in control of his actions.

Uniformed police officers and plainclothes detectives filled the courtroom during the sentencing.

"We're paid to do this job," Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said after the verdict. "Our families are not. Their courage is overwhelming and gives us all the strength we need to do this difficult job."
Cleveland State Community College appointed Alisha Fox as interim vice president for Finance and Operations and Cindy Dawson as interim executive director of Advancement and the Cleveland State Foundation. These appointments come after Dr. Tommy Wright, vice president of Finance and Advancement / executive director of the Cleveland State Foundation, announced that he will be leaving the college after eight years of service to serve as the president of Southwest Virginia Community College.



Prior to accepting her position, Ms. Fox served in a number of roles at CSCC including assistant vice president for Finance and Operations, interim director of Fiscal Services, director of Procurement, Disbursement and Contract Services and the director of Purchasing and Contracts. Prior to accepting these positions at CSCC, she served as the general m anager for the Chattanooga State Bookstore as well as the General Manager for the Cleveland State Bookstore.

As assistant vice president, Alisha Fox has been very engaged with every aspect of our finance and physical plant operations, said Dr. Bill Seymour, CSCC president. I have complete faith in her ability to lead these areas.



I am excited and honored to be selected to fill this role, said Ms. Fox. I am humbled by Dr. Seymours confidence in my ability to fulfill this role for the campus. I am very grateful to work at a wonderful institution, which encourages and supports employees...I am so happy for Dr. Wright and the Wright family for this opportunity. I know he will make an excellent president. I am appreciative of him originally hiring me and the opportunities he and the campus have provided me over the years.



Ms. Fox received her bachelor of science degree in Business Administration from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, her master's of Public Administration from Valdosta State University, and is currently pursuing a doctorate of Public Administration at Valdosta State with a concentration in Community College Leadership through East Tennessee State University.



Prior to accepting her position, Ms. Dawson served as coordinator of Development and Alumni at Cleveland State, regional development coordinator of East Tennessee for The Next Door, and executive director for Global Women.



Ms. Seymour said, Cindy Dawson has exceptional experience through her previous work in non-profits. In her time at Cleveland State, she has proven herself to be very effective at engaging with alumni, our trustees and donors.



As an alum of Cleveland State, I am especially excited for this opportunity to lead the Foundation and the Advancement Department in providing support for our community college as the stories of our next 50 years are being written. We have a grand vision and large goals to raise funds needed to support the college's strategic plan, and we are extremely grateful to Dr. Wright for his leadership in laying a strong foundation that our Advancement team can build on to reach our goals.



Ms. Dawson received her associate of science degree from Cleveland State in music, her bachelor of science degree in Religious Education and is currently pursuing her masters of Professional Studies in Strategic Leadership from Austin Peay State University.




PATERSON, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey teacher has bought Christmas gifts for her entire school using online fundraising donations and says next year will be "bigger and better."

Jennifer Olawski says she was inspired to buy gifts for the students at Community Charter School of Paterson last year after one student told her she wasn't expecting anything for Christmas.

The school serves students in kindergarten through fourth grade. School officials tell the Record newspaper 90 percent of students come from families living below the federal poverty level.

Olawski raised $2,500 last year to buy each student an art set. She raised $4,500 this year to give each of the 500 students coloring books, slime kits and winter hats and gloves Monday. She says the effort helps teach kids the act of kindness.

Olawski is collecting donations for next year online through GoFundMe .
A medical examiner on Wednesday was working to determine whether the apparent remains of a young child found buried in the backyard of a Cleveland home are that of a missing 5-year-old boy.

The boy's mother originally told police he was in Houston with his father. She has been taken into custody, but she has not been charged, said Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia.

Authorities spent two days searching for the missing child before investigators discovered the remains Tuesday, Ciaccia said.

Officers first went to the home Monday after receiving a tip from a relative who lives in Pakistan that the boy had been buried in the yard, according to a police report.

The mother, Larissa Rodriguez, told the officers she had five children living at the home and that her 5-year-old son had left with his aunt in early December to go to Texas, the report said. She also said that her son is developmentally disabled and unable to speak.

Officers searched the yard with cadaver dogs without finding anything. FBI and medical examiner investigators dug for about three hours Tuesday before finding the body.

Rodriguez was taken into custody in connection with the death after further investigation and interviews, Ciaccia said. It was not clear whether she had an attorney who could comment on her behalf.

The medical examiner will identify the body and determine a cause of death after an autopsy, Ciaccia said. Chris Harris, a spokesman for the Cuyahoga County medical examiner, said the autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday. He could not say when any results would be released.

Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan told Cleveland.com that the county's children and family services agency has a long history with the mother, including removing her two oldest children from her custody several years ago.

___

Associated Press reporter Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) - Should Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World" be measured by the usual critical apparatus or with a stopwatch?

If the latter, Scott's movie wins the race, hands down. "All the Money in the World" has, with remarkably few signs of haste, accomplished its unenviable task of recasting Kevin Spacey's role with Christopher Plummer. Plummer parachuted in a few weeks ago to shoot his nine days of work, and Scott has toiled around the clock to recut and remake his own movie. Like a bank thief covering tracks and wiping fingerprints, Scott has erased all trace of Spacey.

That alone makes "All the Money in the World" a fascinating footnote in the larger ongoing drama of the "Me Too" reckoning. And considering the way things are going, Plummer should keep his bags packed. We may need his services again.

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Christopher Plummer in a scene from "All the Money in the World." (Giles Keyte/Sony Pictures via AP)

But was it worth the trouble? "All the Money in the World," about the 1973 kidnapping of the grandson of billionaire oil tycoon John Paul Getty (Plummer), is, for better and worse, every bit a Scott production: a solidly built, no-nonsense drama, largely without surprise. But its saving grace isn't Plummer. It's Michelle Williams.

She plays Gail Harris, the distraught mother of the kidnapped 16-year-old "little Paul" (Charlie Plummer, no relation). When Getty refuses to pay the kidnappers' demands of $17 million, she's left virtually alone in seeking his release, aside from the inattentive help of Getty's overconfident, former-CIA fixer, Fletcher Case (Mark Wahlberg). As a woman locked inside an oppressively male world, Williams' performance - gripping and glamorous - slides in comfortably with Scott's best female protagonists (Ripley, Thelma, Louise).

Based on John Pearson's 1995 book, "Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty," David Scarpa's script doesn't attempt to show the larger soap opera of the younger Getty generations, many of whom suffered through drugs, depression and worse because of their father's hostility and inattention. Getty married five times and young Paul was one of 14 grandchildren. When he was taken, Getty, then one of the richest men in the world, told reporters: "If I pay one penny now, I'll have 14 kidnapped children."

"All the Money in the World" ought to have aimed more ambitiously for the complete tragedy of the Gettys, or stuck more resolutely to Gail's perspective. Instead, it bounces erratically between its main players and loses steam every time Williams leaves the screen. At times it's preoccupied with studying the astonishing greed of its penny-pinching Scrooge, at others with trailing the thrilling plot of Gail's pursuit of Paul. It doesn't necessarily follow any one character. It follows the money.

Opening with a black-and-white sequence of the kidnapping in Rome, Scott's movie continuously cuts to Paul's travails as the prisoner of Calabrian bandits. Expecting a quick payday, they settle in the mountains of Southern Italy for months, growing increasingly impatient.

Seesawing between the mafia-controlled hills of Italy and the mammoth English estate of Getty's, "All the Money in the World" seeks for a larger portrait of people prioritizing money over basic human decency - of putting the art of the deal above all else, you might say. When first told of the kidnapping, Getty doesn't even look up from the stock ticker.

It's hard not to spend some of the film's running time wondering what Spacey might have brought to the movie. I suspect his performance would have been icier, and perhaps smacked of stunt. (Spacey donned copious makeup and prosthetics to age him into the role.) Plummer, on the other hand, quite naturally feasts on the part, fully embodying Getty's privilege and power.

At 88, Plummer has spent much of his superlative late period playing King Lears presiding over the ends of their empires. Give him a mansion and a backstory, and he'll go to town (just as he did earlier this year in the World War II thriller "The Exception"). But the miserly Getty of "All the Money in the World," so totally focused on his fortune, makes the Grinch look like a philanthropist.

Aside from the audaciousness of its last-minute face-lift, "All the Money in the World" is fairly routine. If Scott was replacing stars, he might as well have yanked Wahlberg while he was at it. The story doesn't suit the action star's considerable gifts, and he's out of place from the start.

Still, the extreme measures taken by Scott are fitting. The restless director is driven by an obsession for work not so different than Getty's. (This is the second film Scott has directed and the 10th project he's produced this year. He's 80.) Only when a crisis took his movie hostage, Scott immediately intervened at an estimated cost of $8 million. The lesson holds: Just pay the ransom.

"All the Money in the World," a Sony Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "language, some violence, disturbing images and brief drug content." Running time: 132 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

___

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Michelle Williams in a scene from "All the Money in the World." (Fabio Lovino/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Christopher Plummer in a scene from "All the Money in the World." (Giles Keyte/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Charlie Plummer in a scene from "All the Money in the World." (Fabio Lovino/Sony Pictures via AP)
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A 34-year-old Florida father is accused of negligence after his 5-year-old son pulled a handgun from the glove box and fatally shot himself while left alone in a vehicle.

Jamal Daniel Todman was arrested Monday following an investigation into the October death of Judah Todman. Records say Todman bonded out of jail. An attorney isn't listed.

Todman told investigators he left Judah in the car while he picked up his younger son at a day care center. When he returned, Judah was slumped over with blood on his head and the gun on the floor.

This photo made available by the Orange County Jail shows Jamal Todman under arrest Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. Todman is charged with negligence in the storage of a fireman and carrying a concealed firearm by a convicted felon. Todman's 5-year-old son killed himself with the gun. (Orange County Jail via the Orlando Sentinel, AP)

The Orlando Sentinel reports Todman told investigators he usually locked the glove box, where he stored the gun.

He is charged with negligent storage of a firearm and carrying a firearm as a felon.
SYOSSET, N.Y. (AP) - A building at the Long Island high school that Billy Joel helped save from closing has been renamed after the performer's mother.

Newsday reports the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer attended a ceremony Tuesday at the newly dedicated Rosalind Joel Conservatory for Music and Theatre, which houses the performing arts programs at the Long Island High School for the Arts' campus in Syosset (seye-AH'-siht).

Students performed for and chatted with Joel, whose mother died in 2014.

He says his mother encouraged his interest in music by paying for his piano lessons and taking him to shows when he was growing up.

The Long Island native pledged $1.5 million last year to help save the school, which had been facing closure because of decreasing enrollment and tuition revenue.

___

Information from: Newsday, http://www.newsday.com
ERIE, Pa. (AP) - A lawyer for an inmate who disappeared 20 years ago from a federal prison in Pennsylvania says his client intends to plead guilty to an escape charge.

Public defender Thomas Livingston tells The Erie Times-News about Ghassan Saleh's plans after the 66-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday. But he didn't say when the plea would be entered.

Saleh was arrested last month after flying into New York City from Lebanon, his native country. Federal officials have said Saleh knew he was wanted when he decided to return to the United States.

Saleh was working on a grounds crew when he escaped from the federal prison near Bradford in 1997. He had been serving a sentence of almost six years after being convicted of cocaine trafficking in Michigan.

___

Information from: Erie Times-News, http://www.goerie.com
BERLIN (AP) - German authorities have arrested an Afghan man accused of being a member of the Taliban.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the 21-year-old suspect, identified only as Jabar N. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested on Tuesday.

He is accused of joining the Taliban in Afghanistan in or before 2011, and taking part in at least 30 battles against the Afghan army, police and later against militants allied with the Islamic State group.

Jabar N. told investigators he left Afghanistan via Iran, Turkey and Greece in the summer of 2015. In the summer of 2017, he fled to France where he was arrested and held until the country deported him to Germany, which had issued a warrant for his arrest.
ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's Foreign Ministry will allow the mother and wife of an Indian naval officer facing the death penalty for espionage and sabotage to visit him in prison.

The ministry said in a statement that visas were issued to the women on Wednesday. They are expected to fly to Islamabad on Dec. 25, where they will meet with Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was arrested in 2016 and later sentenced to death by a military tribunal.

Pakistan and India are bitter rivals that have fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947.

Jadhav's wife, who has not been named publicly, has petitioned for him to be spared the death penalty. Authorities have not issued a final ruling on the sentence.
LONDON (AP) - Actress Meghan Markle has joined her fiance Prince Harry to attend the royal family's pre-Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth II traditionally hosts a festive lunch for the family before leaving for her private Sandringham Estate in Scotland, where she spends her holidays.

Press photos show Harry's car arriving at the palace Wednesday afternoon for the event. Harry, 33, was driving, with 36-year-old Markle in the passenger seat by his side.

Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for the Queen's Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace, London, Wednesday Dec. 20, 2017. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP)

The couple announced their engagement last month, saying they had met through a mutual friend in 2016. They will be married on May 19 at Windsor Castle's St. George's Chapel in a highly-anticipated royal wedding.

Meghan Markle arrives with Britain's Prince Harry for the Queen's Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace, London, Wednesday Dec. 20, 2017. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP)
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man has been sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for repeatedly raping a 3-year-old boy and sharing images of the abuse.

The Pensacola News Journal reports a jury found the 22-year-old man guilty on 36 counts of child sex-related charges on Tuesday. Circuit Judge John Miller handed down the life sentences and tacked on an additional 495 years in prison.

Prosecutors said the man filmed and photographed the abuse of the child for about two months in 2016, until his wife found the child porn on his phone and went to police.

She testified during the one-day trial on Tuesday, telling jurors she recognized the boy and her husband in the photos and screenshots.

Two other men are serving prison sentences for communicating with the man about the videos and photos.
United States Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker on Thursday sent a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) requesting the committee extend Medicare payments that are critical to small, rural hospitals in Tennessee.

We are writing to request that you consider including an extension of the low-volume adjustment (LVA) for hospitals with offsets at the same rate the program was funded before its expiration on Sept. 30, 2017, in the final health care extenders package. Medicare payments such as these are critical to small, rural hospitals in Tennessee and it is important that Congress provide these facilities some certainty that future funding for this program will remain level, the senators wrote.

Tennessee hospitals would lose over $5.4 million in reimbursements over the next five years if the Senate Finance Committees proposed changes for eligibility become law, according to the Tennessee Hospital Association. The Tennessee senators said it is important that Medicare funding is included in the final health care extenders packages because these payments are critical to small, rural hospitals in Tennessee.

The full text of the letter is below, and a link is available here.

December 21, 2017

Dear Chairman Hatch:

We are writing to request that you consider including an extension of the low-volume adjustment (LVA) for hospitals with offsets at the same rate the program was funded before its expiration on September 30, 2017, in the final health care extenders package. Medicare payments such as these are critical to small, rural hospitals in Tennessee and it is important that Congress provide these facilities some certainty that future funding for this program will remain level.

The Senate Finance Committees discussion draft released in October includes a five-year extension of the LVA, but also makes changes to the eligibility threshold for the payment adjustment. According to the Tennessee Hospital Association, this proposal would result in a nearly $5.4 million reduction in reimbursements for Tennessee hospitals over the next five years when compared to pre-expiration funding. Hospitals in rural Tennessee serve as job creators and economic engines in communities, and our state has seen eight hospitals close in recent years.

As you continue negotiations on other health care extender policies, we hope you will consider extending this program at pre-expiration levels to give our rural hospitals stability so they can make long-term, financial decisions to serve the best interests of their patients and communities.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - In a story Dec. 15 about (topic), The Associated Press reported erroneously that a dozen women have accused a producer of "The Florida Project" of sexual misconduct. The Hollywood Reporter stated several people had accused producer Andrew Duncan of misconduct and said it had a dozen anonymous sources who spoke about the allegations.

A corrected version of the story is below:

'Florida Project' producer accused of sexual misconduct

"The Florida Project" producer Andrew Duncan has been accused of sexual misconduct by a dozen anonymous women and is stepping down from his company June Pictures

By LINDSEY BAHR

AP Film Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - "The Florida Project" producer Andrew Duncan has been accused of sexual misconduct by several people and is stepping down from his company June Pictures.

Duncan in a statement Friday disputes the allegations, calling them either distorted or demonstrably false. He accuses rivals of "taking advantage of the news climate" and trying to undermine his financial prospects.

The Hollywood Reporter detailed accounts from multiple women alleging various kinds of misconduct on or around film sets ranging from inappropriate suggestions to kissing and groping without consent. The trade outlet said it spoke to a dozen anonymous sources about the alleged behavior.

Alex Saks is taking sole control of June Pictures in Duncan's absence.

In addition to "The Florida Project," considered a candidate for best picture at the Oscars, June Pictures produced Paul Dano's directorial debut "Wildlife" and "Book Club," with Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda.
LONDON (AP) - British police say they have arrested a Swedish man at Stansted Airport, north of London, on suspicion of terrorism offenses.

The 34-year-old man was stopped by counter-terrorism police officers after he got off a flight from Stockholm early Tuesday.

Metropolitan Police said Wednesday he was arrested on suspicion of possessing "material containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

No other details were available.

The man remains in custody at a police station.
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) - An Oklahoma college town approved a petition to rename a street honoring a Ku Klux Klan leader who was also a prominent professor.

The Norman City Council gave its unanimous approval Tuesday to rename DeBarr Avenue as Deans Row Avenue. Public Works Director Shawn O'Leary told The Norman Transcript that the city plans to make the change within 30 days.

Edwin DeBarr was one of the first professors at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He became a grand dragon in the KKK and was forced from the university in 1923 because of his Klan involvement.

The block-long street named after him is near the campus. City leaders acted based on a petition from property owners after Councilwoman Breea Clark renewed a long-dormant effort to make the change. The University of Oklahoma's student government association also supported the effort.

Clark said the street signs should be kept as a historical reminder of how far the city has come as an inclusive community.

"I want to thank everyone who called, emailed, posted and shared your thoughts on this issue," Clark said. "They did not fall on deaf ears."

The petition's applicants will be responsible to pay the $200 fee to change the name. Clark said she will lead a crowdfunding effort to help raise money to cover the costs.

The new name is meant to honor all University of Oklahoma deans.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Citing the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas, South Carolina's capital city approved a ban on "bump stock" devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to mimic fully automatic guns.

The measure was approved by Columbia City Council on Tuesday night. Mayor Steve Benjamin has said he thinks the city of 134,000 people is the first to ban bump stocks.

"I believe in responsible gun ownership, and I believe in common sense," Benjamin said in a statement. "That's why we've decided to do what our federal and statement governments are either unable or unwilling to do."

FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2017, file photo, shooting instructor Frankie McRae demonstrates the grip on an AR-15 rifle fitted with a bump stock at his 37 PSR Gun Club in Bunnlevel, N.C. Citing the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas, South Carolina's capital city has approved a ban on the use of the "bump stock" devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to mimic fully automatic guns. The measure was approved by Columbia City Council on Tuesday night, Dec. 19. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed, File)

The ordinance makes it a misdemeanor to use bump stocks or a separate device called a "trigger crank," both of which can be attached to guns to increase their rate of fire. A person could legally possess a bump stock if it's not connected to a gun and stored in a separate case.

Officials with the National League of Cities were not aware of any other cities that have banned bump stocks. Spokesman Tom Martin noted in an email Monday that many cities are prevented from passing ordinances that go beyond state law.

South Carolina does not regulate bump stocks. There are statewide bans on bump stocks in Massachusetts and California.

The Columbia ordinance lays out an argument that it fits with a South Carolina law that prohibits local governments from regulating guns or their parts. The city's ban states that bump stocks and trigger cranks do not fall within the definition of a gun or component because a gun can operate when bump stocks are removed.

The state's highest court has previously invalidated a local ordinance that went beyond state law. In 2010, the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down a Myrtle Beach ordinance that required that motorcycle riders wear helmets, with justices ruling the city could not require protective gear in the absence of a state law.

Authorities say the gunman who opened fire on a Las Vegas music festival in October, killing dozens and wounding hundreds of people, had equipped a number of guns with bump stocks. The device, which fits over a semi-automatic rifle stock and grip, allows the weapon to fire at a rate similar to a fully automatic weapon.

The Columbia ordinance references the Nevada shooting, saying: "the carnage in Las Vegas was accomplished due to the rapid fire capabilities of a 'bump stock' attached to the shooter's firearms."
PARIS (AP) - French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says he will "assume responsibility" for spending 350,000 euros ($414,000) on a private flight back from a French territory in the South Pacific.

Philippe said Wednesday on RTL Radio that "it's complicated and expensive to travel as prime minister."

Philippe took a commercial flight to New Caledonia earlier this month. For the return, he rented a roomy Airbus A340 for himself and his 60-member delegation instead of traveling on a French military plane that was available.

FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 24, 2017 file photo, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe arrives for an Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says he will "assume responsibility" for spending 350,000 euros ($414,000) on a private flight back from a French territory in the South Pacific. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, Pool, File)

He said the private flight was his only option for getting to Paris before President Emmanuel Macron's departed for Algeria the same day. Philippe cited an unwritten rule implying that one of them always must be in France.

The flight's cost has been questioned amid government spending cuts.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Latest on a lawsuit filed by Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

USA Gymnastics says a settlement with Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney, who alleged she was abused by the national team's doctor, was legal under California law.

FILE - In this Aug. 17, 2013 file photo McKayla Maroney smiles after competing on the floor exercise during the U.S. women's national gymnastics championships in Hartford, Conn. Maroney says the group that trains U.S. Olympic gymnasts forced her to sign a confidential settlement to keep allegations of sexual abuse by the team's doctor secret. Maroney filed a lawsuit Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017, in Los Angeles, against the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics. The suit also seeks damages from Michigan State University, where the team's doctor, Larry Nassar, worked for decades. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola,File)

Maroney filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles seeking to invalidate parts of the confidential agreement that was reached in December 2016. She argues she was forced to sign the agreement to keep the allegations of abuse by Dr. Larry Nassar secret.

USA Gymnastics says in a statement that Maroney's attorney asked for the confidential mediation process. The sanctioning body says the settlement included a "mutual non-disclosure clause and a mutual non-disparagement clause."

USA Gymnastics says it first learned about the allegations against Nassar in 2015 and reported him to the FBI.

Michigan State University, which was also named in Maroney's lawsuit, said it doesn't comment on pending litigation.

___

2:40 p.m.

The U.S. Olympic Committee says the group that trains Olympic gymnasts said it was contacting law enforcement about a team doctor suspected of sex abuse before it settled with a gold medalist who had been abused for years.

USOC spokesman Mark Jones says they were first made aware of the allegations involving a USA Gymnastics physician in the summer of 2015. Jones says USA Gymnastics told them team officials were contacting law enforcement.

Olympian McKayla Maroney filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that she was forced into a confidential settlement with USA Gymnastics in December 2016 to keep the abuse by Dr. Larry Nassar secret. She's said the abuse started when she was 13.

Jones says the group is hopeful new measures will "help ensure that tragedies like this will never happen again."

___

12:37 p.m.

Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney says the group that trains U.S. Olympic gymnasts forced her to sign a confidential settlement to keep allegations of sexual abuse by the team's doctor secret.

Maroney filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles against USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee. The suit also seeks damages from Michigan State University, where the team's doctor, Larry Nassar, worked for decades.

The lawsuit alleges the settlement was illegal and "for the purpose of silencing a known victim of Nassar."

Maroney says she accepted the settlement in December 2016 after years of sexual abuse and "psychological trauma." The terms weren't disclosed in court papers.

Nassar has admitted to sexually assaulting female gymnasts, possessing child pornography and molesting girls who sought treatment.

USA Gymnastics didn't immediately comment.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the sentence of an Iowa kosher meatpacking executive who had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering, marking the first time he's used the presidential power.

The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country's largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of numerous members of Congress and a long list of high-ranking law enforcement officials, who argued the sentence was far too harsh for a first-time, nonviolent offender.

The action was "encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum, from Nancy Pelosi to Orrin Hatch," the White House said.

FILE - In this June 7, 2010, file photo former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin appears at the Black Hawk County Courthouse in Waterloo, Iowa. President Donald Trump on Dec. 20, 2017, commuted the prison sentence of Rubashkin, a Iowa kosher meatpacking executive sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering - the first time he's used the presidential power. The decision to intervene on behalf of Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country's largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of multiple members of Congress and other high-ranking officials who argued Rubashkin's sentence was too harsh, the White House said. (Matthew Putney/The Courier via AP)

Rubashki was convicted in 2009 for submitting fake invoices to a bank that made Agriprocessors' finances appear healthier than they were so that it could borrow more. His prosecution came after federal authorities raided the plant and arrested 389 illegal immigrants in 2008.

The 57-year-old father of 10 has served more than eight years of his sentence, according to the White House, which stressed the action is not a presidential pardon and does not vacate Rubashkin's conviction.

Trump has used his pardon power just once so far: to spare former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time by wiping away a federal conviction stemming from immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.

Rubashkin's long-time attorney Guy Cook praised Trump's decision, saying Rubashkin "has finally received justice."

"The sentence previously imposed was unfair, unjust and essential a life sentence," he said via email. "President Trump has done what is right and just. The unrelenting efforts on Rubashkin's behalf have finally paid off."

Rubashkin's attorneys last year accused prosecutors of improperly interfering with the sale of Agriprocessors and depressing its sale price by millions. The drop in value left Agriprocessors' bank with a $27 million loss - a figure used to calculate Rubashkin's sentence under federal guidelines. The U.S. attorney's office denied the allegations.

The White House said the president's decision to review Rubashkin's sentence was driven by concerns raised by a bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking law enforcement and Justice Department officials, including multiple former attorneys general, as well as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars.

"Mr. Rubashkin is a devoted husband and father, a deeply religious man who simply doesn't deserve a sentence of this length, or anything remotely close to it," they wrote in a letter that urged Trump to use his "executive clemency power to commute the patently unjust and draconian 27-year sentence imposed upon Sholom Rubashkin_a first time, non-violent offender and father of 10, including an acutely autistic child."

More than 30 current members of Congress also submitted letters to the White House supporting a review of Rubashkin's case.

But former prosecutor Bob Teig, who retired in 2011 after serving as a prosecutor and spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Iowa, said Trump's decision to commute Rubashkin's sentence "makes no sense" given Trump's repeated promises to get tougher on illegal immigration.

Teig said that every court that looked at Rubashkin's sentence had concluded it was fair, and suggested that former Justice Department officials and lawmakers who supported leniency were unaware of the facts of the case.

"The outrage is backwards," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
LEBANON, Ohio (AP) - A man who raped a developmentally disabled woman at an Ohio extended care center has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and classified a sexual predator.

Warren County's prosecutor says 58-year-old Brian Sundin was sentenced Wednesday. Sundin was indicted this year and pleaded guilty to a rape charge in October.

Prosecutor David Fornshell says the 2000 rape case was unsolved for 16 years until the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation tested the woman's diaper and found DNA that matched Sundin's DNA profile.

The woman was non-verbal and required total support at the time she was assaulted. She died in 2011.

Fornshell says Sundin is believed to have entered the facility through an unsecured door.

Sundin's attorney has declined to comment.
SOLANA BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello are teaming up for a musical benefit for victims of the San Luis Rey Downs training track fire this month that killed nearly 50 horses and injured their caretakers.

The event on Jan. 17 at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, a mile from Del Mar racetrack, will be hosted by actress Bo Derek, a former member of the California Horse Racing Board. She and Oscar-winning actress Anjelica Huston will preside over an auction before the show.

Bacharach and Costello teamed on the Grammy-winning album "Painted From Memory" in 1998.

"Horses and horse racing have given me nothing but pleasure for the last half-century," Bacharach said. "The horrible circumstances around the San Luis Rey Downs fire cry out for aid in so many ways. This is my way of giving back to the horse community."

Tickets range from $250 to $1,000, which includes an after-show reception with Bacharach, a horse owner and racing fan of 50 years. Sales began Wednesday.

All money raised will be equally split between the California Thoroughbred Horsemen's Foundation and the California Retirement Management Account. The money will go toward caring for horses, trainers, grooms and stable workers who were displaced by the fire at the training track in Bonsall on Dec. 7.
NEW YORK (AP) - A major New York City landlord who was accused of bullying tenants out of rent-regulated apartments has agreed to pay them $8 million to settle a lawsuit - while he's in jail for mortgage fraud.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Wednesday he had reached an agreement with landlord Steven Croman. In addition to the $8 million restitution fund, the settlement also says an independent property management company will run more than 100 Croman buildings for five years.

"Over and over again, Steven Croman acted as though he was above the law, putting profits before his tenants' safety and wellbeing," Schneiderman, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Croman's company, 9300 Realty Inc., said in a statement it was pleased to end the case and looked forward to "continuing to provide quality rental housing throughout New York City."

Schneiderman also prosecuted Croman in the mortgage fraud case, which accused him of overstating rent revenue to snag millions of dollars in loans. Croman pleaded guilty to charges including grand larceny and was sentenced in October to a year in jail.

The civil suit accused Croman of such tactics as filing baseless lawsuits against tenants and sending an intimidating investigator to accuse them of living in their homes illegally.

The goal was to get them to leave, sometimes for buyouts worth just a few months' rent, and then hike the price for the next tenant, the suit said. New York landlords can sometimes charge triple the rent or more after renovating vacant rent-stabilized apartments and getting them deregulated.

Croman would walk through his office chanting "buyouts, buyouts!" and called investigator Anthony Falconite his "secret weapon," the lawsuit said. It said Falconite, a former police officer, sometimes posed as a delivery worker to get tenants to let him in, confronted them at work and tracked down their relatives.

Falconite continues to deny the allegations against him, his lawyer, Edward M. Spiro, said.

The settlement bars Falconite from interacting with Croman tenants for five years.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi Arabia's King Salman reassured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in their meeting that the kingdom continues to support Palestinian claims to Jerusalem, a government statement said.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that King Salman on Wednesday reiterated to Abbas Saudi Arabia's support for "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital city."

The meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was attended by a number of senior princes and Palestinian officials.

In this photo released by Al-Ekhbariya, Saudi King Salman, right, receives Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after he arrives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017. (Al-Ekhbariya via AP)

The meeting, however, did not include the king's son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who met with Abbas in early November in Riyadh- a month before President Donald Trump formally announced his administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Abbas' visit to Riyadh on Wednesday comes one week after heads of state from Muslim countries met in Turkey to reject and denounce Trump's decision. Saudi Arabia and some of its allies were notably absent from that summit amid reports that the kingdom is privately pressuring Abbas to relinquish Palestinian claims over east Jerusalem in exchange for continued U.S. pressure against Saudi rival, Iran.

The Palestinians and Turks, meanwhile, are accusing the U.S. of intimidation after its ambassador at the United Nations warned countries that Washington "will be taking names" during a U.N. General Assembly vote on Thursday on the Trump administration's Jerusalem announcement.

The U.S. earlier vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have required the Trump administration to rescind its Jerusalem decision.

In this photo released by Al-Ekhbariya, Saudi King Salman, fifth right, receives Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after he arrives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017. (Al-Ekhbariya via AP)
Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s, died after being admitted to hospice care aged 87.

Irving's wife, Julie Irving, confirmed that he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home in Florida, The New York Times reported.

She said he had been admitted there after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier.

Author Clifford Irving is seen as he enters federal court in New York. The author, who's scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s, died after being admitted to hospice care aged 87

A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGraw-Hill publishers into paying him a $765,000 advance for a book about the reclusive Hughes.

This is a less profitable rouse than that of The Hitler Diaries. Konrad Kujau faked sixty volumes of journals that he claimed were written by Adolf Hitler. The books were bought for 9.9 million Deustch Marks (around $4 million) in 1981.

Clifford Irving's elaborate ruse became the subject of the 2006 movie 'The Hoax,' starring Richard Gere.

Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication. The bogus autobiography wasn't published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition.

The scam 'was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure,' Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography 'the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century.' Time magazine dubbed Irving 'Con Man of the Year' in a 1972 cover story.

Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article about the billionaire's eccentric lifestyle.

The deception unraveled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes (pictured), recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irving's manuscript of the autobiography

Hughes' hermit-like obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the 'gorgeous literary caper' would succeed, Irving wrote in 'The Hoax,' his 2006 account of the scheme.

'Hughes would never be able to surface to deny it, or else he wouldn't bother,' he wrote.

At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker. He reportedly lived the final 10 years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, in near-total seclusion, even neglecting personal hygiene to avoid contact with the outside world.

Hughes' intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irving's claims to have interviewed the billionaire.

Irving insisted that he had several clandestine meetings with Hughes. He submitted to a lie-detector test and produced documents purportedly from the billionaire, including a handwritten letter written to McGraw-Hill.

The letter, forged by Irving, was deemed authentic by handwriting analysts hired by McGraw-Hill. At that point, the publisher decided to move forward with the book.

Irving put the cash advance into a Swiss bank account, opened in the name Helga R. Hughes.

The deception unravelled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes, recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irving's manuscript of the autobiography.

Hughes himself then surfaced to conduct a telephone conference with reporters during which he repudiated Irving's story and said that he never met him. His lawyer sued Irving and his publisher.

At the urging of McGraw-Hill, Swiss authorities investigated the Helga R. Hughes bank account and learned that the deposits had been made by Irving's wife, Edith.

Irving and his collaborator, Richard Suskind, were indicted on fraud charges and were found guilty in June 1972. In addition to his prison term, Irving returned the $765,000 advance to McGraw-Hill. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five.

Edith Irving served a total of 16 months in U.S. and Swiss jails for fraud. She left jail announcing her intent to file for divorce.

Born in 1930, Irving grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He attended public schools and his boyhood friends included William Safire, the late columnist and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon

Irving was unhappy with the movie version of his escapades and asked to have his name removed from the credits as a technical adviser.

'Movie Clifford has the energy of a not-too-bright psychopath. If I were that man, I'd shoot myself,' he wrote on his website. 'The movie is best thought of as a hoax.'

Born in 1930, Irving grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He attended public schools and his boyhood friends included William Safire, the late columnist and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon.

He attended Cornell University and stayed on for a year after graduation in 1951 on a creative writing fellowship. Irving worked odd jobs after leaving academia and traveled to Europe, where he finished his first novel, 'On a Darkling Plain.'

He moved in 1962 to an artists' colony on the island of Ibiza off the east coast of Spain. It was there that he wrote 'Fake!', the story of art forger Elmyr de Hory. The reviews of the book were favorable, but it sold fewer than 30,000 copies.

In all, Irving wrote more than a dozen books. In recent years, he and his fifth wife Julie lived in Mexico, Colorado and Florida.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican authorities detained a former official of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party on Wednesday in a corruption case involving a fugitive ex-governor.

Alejandro Gutierrez is reportedly suspected of participating in a scheme to divert about 240 million pesos ($12 million) in public funds for political campaigning.

Gov. Javier Corral of the northern border state of Chihuahua said in statements on social media that Gutierrez was arrested in the morning by federal and state police in Chihuahua.

"This arrest ... contributes to clearing up the crimes of political corruption that have been imputed to ex-Gov. Cesar Duarte Jaquez, who has accumulated 10 arrest warrants against him," Corral said, adding that the case involves the alleged diversion of public money to the 2016 electoral campaign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Duarte was governor of Chihuahua in 2010-2016 and was succeeded last year by Corral, a member of the conservative opposition National Action Party.

Duarte was said earlier this year to have fled to the United States. At the time Corral declared him "a fugitive from justice" and said officials would seek an international arrest and extradition order.

Duarte, who last year denied involvement in any wrongdoing, is one of several PRI ex-governors who fled the country following accusations of corruption in a string of embarrassments for the party.

Former Gov. Javier Duarte of Veracruz, who is not related to Cesar Duarte, was arrested in Guatemala in April, and ex-Gov. Tomas Yarrington of Tamaulipas was arrested the same month in Italy. Both were PRI politicians.
UKHIA, Bangladesh (AP) - Some of the massacre survivors hold precious photos or mementos that belonged to those they lost. Others bear physical scars or painful memories that swirl in their nightmares. A few survived and found the most treasured gift of all, their loved ones.

More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, bringing stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar - including reports of an Aug. 27 army massacre in the village of Maung Nu.

The Associated Press interviewed dozens of survivors of that slaughter and found that many carried reminders of the tragedy with them into exile. Here are the stories of 10:

In this Nov. 25, 2017, photo, Abdul Jabar, 61, holds on to one thing he carries around with him constantly, an identification card belonging to his late son whom he said was slain by members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring civilians in his village Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State, during an interview with The Associated Press in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

___

The Associated Press reported this story with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

SHOT AND LEFT FOR DEAD

Mohammadul Hassan, 18, still bears the scars on his chest and back from being shot by soldiers who tried to kill him.

The soldiers entered Hassan's house and tied him up along with two of his brothers. All three were stripped naked and marched to a house where they were forced to kneel, then shot twice in the back by a firing squad.

When one of the soldiers noticed Hassan was still conscious, he shot him a third time in the chest.

Incredibly, Hassan found the strength to get up and stumble away after the soldiers left. He only received medical treatment two weeks later, after being carried over a mountain range and crossing into Bangladesh by boat.

When he thinks about leaving his brothers behind, he says: "I burn up inside ... Every day I see them."

___

GUNFIRE AND PANIC

Li Juhar, 32, has vivid memories of soldiers arriving in Maung Nu.

"I was at home on Sunday morning when they came," he recalls. "They were shooting into the air, and straight into people's houses. It set off a panic."

Hundreds of people fled to a hillside compound belonging to a pair of prominent businessmen. But the soldiers came there, too, "pointing guns" and shouting "Get out! Get out!"

The soldiers then separated the men and the women, and the massacre began.

Juhar survived by hiding behind a pair of metal fuel drums.

___

BLINDFOLDED AND BOUND

Mohamed Yaha, 18, saw soldiers tying the hands of men and teenagers behind their backs with nylon rope and blindfolding them with masking tape and headscarves ripped off the women.

"They put the men on the ground in the courtyard, face down, and started kicking them while they were on their backs," the high school student says. Then, "they started hacking people to death with long knives."

When Yaha - who was not yet tied up - began running, soldiers fired in his direction.

He escaped, but a bullet grazed his arm.

___

PAINFUL MEMORIES

Shafir Rahman, 50, says he will never forget seeing one of the slaughter's first, horrific moments: a soldier hammering a four-inch nail into the side of a man's head with a rifle butt.

"Until that happened, until that moment, I didn't think they were really going to kill anybody," Rahman says. "Women were crying for their husbands, saying 'don't worry, they aren't going to do anything, they are just tying them up.'"

Rahman, who lost his father, a brother, a 17-year-old son and two nephews, also saw soldiers wrapping corpses into orange and blue tarps and hauling them away with push-carts.

"I don't know where they took them," he says. "I just saw what was left. There was blood everywhere."

___

A WIFE, A HUSBAND AND ONE LAST PHOTO

Kulilla Khatun, 65, has just one photo of her 81-year-old husband, Nazir Ahmed - a laminated image made several years ago.

Khatun says soldiers dragged away him into a courtyard outside the house she was cowering in, and decapitated him with machetes.

"People found his head, but they couldn't find his body," she says, eyes welling with tears.

Khatun spent the rest of the day in a haze, barely able to move.

___

A PRECIOUS IDENTIFICATION CARD

Three months after the massacre, Abdul Jabar, 61, never fails to carry a precious item with him in the front pocket of his shirt - an identification card belonging to his son, who was slain.

Somebody who fled the compound the same day found it and gave it to him, covered in blood. Now, it is the only photo of his son that he has left.

Jabar says he wants to show the photo to people who ask about his son and tell them what happened.

"I keep it with me because I'm afraid it will get lost," he says, running his index finger over the laminated card. "If I look at it for a long time, I cannot control my tears."

___

ESCAPING DEATH

Mohammad Nasir, 32, was tied arm to arm to six other men and marched to the edge of a bank of trees, where he saw the bodies of dozens of people crumpled on the ground.

"I was certain I was going to be killed. Only my final prayers were on my mind and lips," he says. "Everyone was screaming."

The ropes binding Nasir's arms came loose, though, and he began to run. The soldiers opened fire but did not give chase.

Nasir only realized half an hour later that he had been shot in the elbow.

"I want to know what the world has to say about all the people who've been killed," he says. "Why have they killed so many of us, I want to know."

___

A BABY, LOST AND FOUND

Asmida, 20, lost her 9-month-old son when she tried to stop soldiers from dragging her husband away. Troops kicked her until she lost consciousness, and when she woke, the baby was gone and her husband was dead.

After the massacre ended, Asmida - who only uses one name - searched unsuccessfully for the infant and eventually fled to another village, having given up hope of ever finding him alive.

Several days later, a relative brought her a small baby swathed in a blanket, crying with a high fever.

It was her son, Mohamed Umair.

"It was unbelievable," she says of their reunion. "It was like touching the sky."

___

A BOY, A SHIRT AND A BOOK BAG

When Jamila Begum, 35, fled Maung Nu after the massacre, she only had time to take two mementos of the 15-year-old son she lost - a shirt he often wore, and the book bag he always carried to school.

"He used to keep it beside him when he was reading at night," she says of the bag, as tears roll down her cheeks. "He was a good student."

Begum says she had first watched solders hack her husband to death with machetes. But when they tied her son, Jahin Gir, to a tree and prepared to shoot him, she could not look anymore.

"Why did they kill him?" she says. "What did he do?"

___

ONE FAMILY REUNITED

Bodru Duza, 52, is one of the luckiest survivors. After the massacre, he lost track of his wife and children and fled to Bangladesh alone, assuming all of them had been killed.

But in mid-November, there a tearful reunion: the rest of his family joined him in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Despite the happy ending, Duza's family did not emerge from the massacre unscathed. Unprompted, his five-year-old son casually recounts the slaughter he watched, running his hand across his throat to mimic soldiers hacking villagers to death.

In this Friday Nov. 24, 2017, photo, Mohammadul Hassan, 18, is photographed outside his family's tent in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. Hassan still bears the scars on his chest and back from being shot by soldiers who attempted to execute him. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Friday Nov. 24, 2017, photo, Li Juhar, 32, who fled to Bangladesh when members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring his village Maung Nu in Myanmar's Rakhine State, becomes animated, forming both his hands into the shape of guns, when he speaks of soldiers flooding into Maung Nu, during an interview with The Associated Press in a friend's tent in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Monday, Nov. 27, 2017, photo, Mohamed Yaha, 18, demonstrates to The Associated Press in his tent in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh, what he saw when soldiers bound the hands of dozens of men behind their backs with nylon rope and blindfolded them with scarves taken from the women when they massacred his village Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, photo, Shafir Rahman, 50, describes how he saw a soldier hammering a four-inch nail into the side of a man's head with a rifle butt during and interview with The Associated Press in his tent in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Friday Nov. 24, 2017, photo, Kulilla Khatun, 65, holds up a laminated photograph of her late husband Nazir Ahmed, whom she says soldiers dragged away and decapitated with machetes, during an interview with The Associated Press in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Nov. 25, 2017, photo, Abdul Jabar, 61, holds on to one thing he carries around with him constantly, by his heart in the pocket of his shirt, an identification card belonging to his late son whom he said was slain by members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring civilians in his village Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State, during an interview with The Associated Press in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Nov. 24, 2017, photo, Mohamed Nasair, 32 shows off his wounds from being shot by members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring civilians in his village Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State, during an interview with The Associated Press in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Nov. 27, 2017, photo, Asmida 20, kisses her 9 month-old son, Mohamed Umair in a friend's tent in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Asmida lost track of the baby when she tried to stop soldiers from dragging her husband away after they massacred her village, Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State, during an interview with The Associated Press in Jamtoli refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

In this Nov. 26, 2017, photo, Jamila Begum, 35, caresses a favorite shirt and school bag of her late son who was killed by members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring civilians in her village Maung Nu, in Myanmar's Rakhine State, during an interview with The Associated Press in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August, and many have brought with them stories of atrocities committed by security forces in Myanmar, including an Aug. 27 army massacre that reportedly took place in the village of Maung Nu. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to denounce President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, largely ignoring Trump's threats to cut off aid to any country that went against him.

The nonbinding resolution declaring U.S. action on Jerusalem "null and void" was approved 128-9 - a victory for the Palestinians, but not as big as they predicted. Amid Washington's threats, 35 of the 193 U.N. member nations abstained and 21 were absent.

The resolution reaffirmed what has been the United Nations' stand on the divided holy city since 1967: that Jerusalem's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., speaks at the General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The Trump administration made it clear the vote would have no effect on its plan to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterward that he completely rejects the "preposterous" resolution.

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour called the vote a victory not only for the Palestinians but for the United Nations and international law, saying U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley "failed miserably" in persuading only seven countries aside from the U.S. and Israel to vote against the resolution.

"And they used unprecedented tactics, unheard of in the diplomatic work at the U.N., including blackmail and extortion," he said.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the measure, with Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the U.S. Trump went further, threatening a funding cutoff: "Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

But in the end, major U.S. aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution. Egypt received roughly $1.4 billion in U.S. aid this year, and Jordan about $1.3 billion.

The nine countries voting "no" were the U.S., Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo. Among the abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close U.S. ties.

After the vote, Haley tweeted a photo naming the 65 nations that voted no, abstained or were absent, and said: "We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN."

She later sent invitations to the 65 ambassadors inviting them to a reception on Jan. 3 to thank them for their friendship with the United States.

The U.S. is scheduled to dispense $25.8 billion in foreign aid for 2018. Whether Trump follows through with his threat against those who voted "yes" remains to be seen.

But within hours, the Trump administration appeared to be backing away from its funding threats. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said cuts to countries that opposed the U.S. are not a foregone conclusion.

"The president's foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations," Nauert said. "However, no decisions have been made."

During the debate, Arab, Islamic and non-aligned nations urged a "yes" vote on the resolution, which was sponsored by Yemen and Turkey.

Yemeni Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany warned that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem undermines any chance for peace in the Mideast and "serves to fan the fires of violence and extremism."

He called Trump's action "a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world," and "a dangerous violation and breach of international law."

On Wednesday, Trump complained that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by countries that take billions of dollars and then vote against the U.S. Haley echoed his words in her speech to the packed assembly chamber, threatening not only member states with funding cuts, but the United Nations itself.

Haley said the vote will make no difference in U.S. plans to move the American Embassy, but it "will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N., and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N."

"And this vote will be remembered," she warned.

Trump's pressure tactics had raised the stakes at Thursday's emergency meeting and triggered accusations from the Muslim world of U.S. bullying and blackmail.

"It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale," said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. "We will not be intimidated! You can be strong but this does not make you right!"

The Palestinians and their supporters sought the General Assembly vote after the U.S. on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other U.N. Security Council members that would have required Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem.

The resolution adopted by the assembly has language similar to the defeated measure.

It "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded."

___

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Joe Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Mevlut Cavusoglu, right, Turkey's foreign minister, speaks at the General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon speaks at the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour arrives at the General Assembly prior to a vote, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley returns to her seat after speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Mevlut Cavusoglu, right, Turkey's foreign minister, is seated with the country's delegation at the General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) - The central English city of Birmingham will host the Commonwealth Games in 2022.

The announcement was made Thursday in the city.

The 2022 Commonwealth Games were originally given to Durban in 2015, but the South African city was stripped of the event this year because of financial difficulties.

The multisports event, involving countries associated with the former British empire, was last in Britain in 2014 when it was held in Glasgow. Before that, Manchester hosted in 2002.

Gold Coast, Australia, will host the next Commonwealth Games in 2018.
JIECH, South Sudan (AP) - Writhing in agony on the dirt floor of his hut, Bob Wol traced the recent gunshot wounds on his thigh and back with his fingers.

"I was trying to get food and my government tried to kill me," the 29-year-old told The Associated Press.

It's been almost 25 years since more than 1 million people were on the brink of starvation in southern Sudan, a crisis captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a vulture poised near a starving little girl. Today, people in what was known as the "famine triangle" say the situation has only deteriorated.

In this photo taken Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017, a malnourished baby cries at the feeding center for children in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

"Before, only the hunger was killing you," said Lony Toang, who survived the earlier famine in Ayod County. "Now it's worse because we have hunger and we're killing people."

As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. The U.N. warns that if fighting continues famine will spread to several places across the country by early next year and almost half the population of 11 million will be severely food insecure.

During a visit this month to Ayod County, the AP spoke with some who were already hungry.

In a desperate attempt to feed his wife and five small children, who hadn't eaten in days, Wol went in search of help. After six days of walking, eating fruit picked from trees, he reached government-held Ayod town, where he said soldiers wary of rebels ambushed him.

"When I got shot I was just thinking that I didn't want to die before I got food for my family," Wol said, staring despondently at the floor. "We're locked in here and we can't get out."

Ayod is one of two counties in South Sudan currently in catastrophe, with 8,000 people experiencing extreme hunger. During a visit to Ayod's rebel-held headquarters in Jiech town, dozens of residents said that without food aid they would starve to death.

Remote, barren and sealed off from the rest of the nation, the county of roughly 160,000 people in Jonglei State has been devastated by fighting.

South Sudan's army rejected people's accounts of brutality as negative propaganda by the opposition, saying it is not government policy to prevent civilians from reaching aid.

"What sense does it make for the government forces to kill its own citizens looking for food?" said Col. Domic Chol Santo, the army's acting spokesman.

Yet across South Sudan allegations are rife of both the government and the rebels using food as a weapon of war.

On a visit last month to the Equatoria region, the AP spoke with people in Yei and Lainya towns who said the army was arbitrarily detaining, raping and killing civilians trying to cultivate their fields, amid suspicions that they were part of the opposition.

Lainya resident Mary Yata said four government soldiers in September tried to steal cassava when she was tending her fields. "They said if I didn't leave now they'd kill me," she said. Days later she saw the soldiers selling her cassava at the market.

Advocacy groups are calling on the warring sides to stop holding South Sudan's people hostage.

"The civilians are caught in a deadly circle and they're certainly not being protected," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis response adviser.

With nowhere to go, Ayod residents said they will continue relying on handouts by the U.N.'s World Food Program.

At a food distribution last week, the desperation was palpable as 11,000 malnourished people poured in from the surrounding bush. Some had walked overnight to receive bags of sorghum, beans and cooking oil.

Although the WFP has increased its distributions in Ayod from every 90 days to every 60 days, aid workers on the ground say the food is enough for just one month.

"I saw old people collecting grains that fell on the ground out of the bags," said Ewnetu Yohannes, team leader for Catholic Relief Services, the organization overseeing the distribution. "If WFP wasn't here it'd be a catastrophe."

Wiping breast milk from the cheek of her 10-month-old daughter, Jiech resident Elizabeth Nyakoda blamed the hunger on the years of fighting.

Unable to register in time for the aid distribution and too scared to cultivate her fields, the 35-year-old mother of five has been begging her family for food.

She rubbed her hand over her daughter's protruding rib cage as the baby began to wail. Shrugging her shoulders, Nyakoda looked away.

"When the child cries from hunger, what can I do for her?" she said. "There are no options."

In this photo taken Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017, a woman carries food rations and her baby as she walks away from a World Food Program distribution in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In this photo taken Friday, Dec. 8, 2017, Bob Wol, who says he was shot in the back and thigh by government soldiers while trying to get food in a nearby town in order to feed his starving family, sits with his five children outside his house in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In this photo taken Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017, women wait in line to receive food rations at a World Food Program distribution in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, a World Food Program plane drops food aid over the town of Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In this photo taken Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017, people wait in line for food rations at a World Food Program distribution in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In this photo taken Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017, a baby is measured to test for malnutrition at the feeding center for children in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South Africa's ruling party says the country's embassy in Israel should be downgraded to a liaison office to show support for the Palestinians.

The African National Congress said late Wednesday that delegates to a national party meeting endorsed the proposal to the government for "an immediate and unconditional downgrade" of the embassy in Tel Aviv.

The proposal comes ahead of a U.N. General Assembly vote Thursday on a resolution urging President Donald Trump to rescind his decision recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

South African media say the ANC endorsed a boycott of Israel at a party meeting in 2012 but the government did not implement it.

ANC delegates this week elected Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa as the party's new leader. President Jacob Zuma remains head of state.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - The British and Polish prime ministers pledged Thursday to deepen their cooperation in fighting Russian disinformation, as well as on matters of defense and security.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's one-day visit to Poland came at a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain is negotiating terms for leaving the European Union and Poland finds itself in an escalating standoff with the EU's leaders, who say a sweeping judicial overhaul completed this week violates fundamental European values.

May was expected to raise the issue during her visit, but when asked about it by a reporter, she avoided criticizing her host.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, right, and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May shake hands during a press conference after signing a treaty between Poland and Britain on cooperation in the field of defense and security in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

While invoking Europe's "collective belief in the rule of law," May said that the "constitutional issues normally, primarily should be a matter for the individual country concerned."

She said she was reassured by new Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's pledge to speak about the issue with the European Commission. The talks are scheduled for Jan. 9.

The commission on Wednesday invoked what is known as Article 7, essentially putting Poland on notice that it is at risk of contravening EU law. Sanctions could follow, though that's unlikely.

The focus Thursday was on areas of cooperation between Britain and Poland.

"We are both deeply concerned by Russia's attempts to weaponize information," May said.

She said the two sides will "bolster cooperation" to ensure that the Kremlin is not successful.

The countries signed a treaty that would deepen defense and security - including cybersecurity - ties between them. They already cooperate in those areas as part of their alliance in NATO, and there are now some 150 British troops in Poland as part of a Western effort to reassure a region nervous about Russia's resurgence.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, left, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, right, and members of Polish and British delegations after leave after posing for a group photo during Britain's Prime Minister's visit to Poland at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017.(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, left, and Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, center, pose with a veteran as they meet Polish and British soldiers and veterans at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, right, and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May shake hands during a press conference after signing a treaty between Poland and Britain on cooperation in the field of defense and security in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, right, and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May attend a press conference after signing a treaty between Poland and Britain on cooperation in the field of defense and security in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, is welcomed to Poland by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, second left, and Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, left, meet Polish and British soldiers and veterans at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, is welcomed to Poland by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May comes to the meeting with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, second right, is welcomed to Poland by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, is welcomed to Poland by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

A Polish World War II veteran talks with a British soldier during a special meeting at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, is welcomed to Poland by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. May's visit to the Polish capital comes as a politically turbulent time for both countries, as Britain prepares to leave the European Union and Poland finds itself in a escalating standoff with the bloc over a bitterly criticized overhaul of its judicial system. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, second left, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, second right, and members of Polish and British delegations pose for a group photo during Britain's Prime Minister's visit to Poland at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Maciarewicz, sitting right, and Britain's Defence Secretary Gavin Williams, sitting left, sign a military cooperation treaty between Poland and Britain on cooperation in the field of defense and security in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, second left, and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, left, are watching the signing ceremony. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski talk before posing for a family photo during Britain's Prime Minister's visit to Poland at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
LONDON (AP) - The family of a British-Iranian woman detained for months in Iran for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government said Thursday they are hopeful she could come home soon after discovering she has served enough of her sentence to be eligible for early release from prison.

There was no official update on the case of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, who has been serving a five-year prison sentence since she was arrested during a holiday with her toddler daughter in April 2016. Her family denies charges that she was plotting against Tehran, insisting she was only traveling to Iran to visit family.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe's lawyer has discovered that the case has been classed "eligible for early release" on the Iranian judiciary website. It was previously classed "closed."

A photo of Richard Ratcliffe and his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been jailed in Iran, on display at their home in north London on Sunday Dec. 17, 2017. British media on Thursday Dec. 21, 2017 were reporting that British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe detained for months in Iran for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government could be released "within a couple of weeks." (John Stillwell/PA via AP)

Prisoners in Iran are generally eligible for release once they've served a third of their sentences.

While the news didn't mean a decision has been made to release Zaghari-Ratcliffe, her husband said it was a very positive sign and he was "cautiously hopeful."

"It feels the tide has turned. There's every reason to be hopeful," he told The Associated Press.

A former employee of the BBC World Service Trust, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was working for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency. Both her family and Thomson Reuters stress she was not involved in any work regarding Iran while there.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was heavily criticized at home last month after he claimed Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "teaching people journalism" when she was arrested last year. Though Johnson later corrected himself, Iranian state television has made a point to repeatedly highlight them as justification for imprisoning her.

In November Iranian state television aired further allegations against Zaghari-Ratcliffe, raising fears that officials could add more years to her prison term. But Ratcliffe said Thursday he believed there were no more court cases pending against his wife.

Ratcliffe added that he believed there had been "incremental improvement" in the case, including allowing his wife to make more phone calls, since Johnson raised it during a trip to Iran earlier this month.
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.
On a rare visit to the home of the U.S. military's prison for terror suspects, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis offered a pep talk Thursday to American troops - and urged them to always be ready for war.

'I need you to be at the top of your game,' he told an assembly of several hundred troops, citing their roles both as a fighting force and as a positive example to a politically divided America of how to work together.

The unannounced visit was the first by a defense secretary since Donald H. Rumsfeld came here in January 2002 shortly after the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan.

Mattis did not discuss the Trump administration's plans for the detention center, nor did he visit it.

In with the troops: Defense secretary Jim Mattis addressed hundreds of troops based at Guantanamo, telling them that North Korea is a 'direct threat' they should be prepared for

'I need you to be at the top of your game': Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed troops at Guantanamo Bay who asked him about North Korea

No leaving Guantanamo: 'We need this base badly,' Mattis told troops stationed at the facility, which is best known for its detention center for terror prisoners

No safe assumptions: Mattis said that during the Cold War US. leaders had been confident that Russia and China did not want to start a nuclear war. 'That may be an assumption we cannot make,' he said of Kim Jong-Un

But he stressed the importance of keeping the Navy base as a U.S. toehold in southeastern Cuba. He said it will not be abandoned, regardless of the future of the prison.

'We need this base badly,' he said, as a strategic spot to conduct humanitarian relief and other naval operations, as it had before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Mattis spoke to three groups of troops, offering holiday greetings and thanks for their service. He also fielded their questions as he stood in a warm sun, and found that the prospect of war with North Korea was on their minds.

Mattis said international efforts to compel North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons are focused for now on diplomacy. He also emphasized that effective diplomacy must be backed by a credible threat of military force.

'We need to keep this in a diplomatic framework for solution,' he said. But he added that in the event diplomacy fails, 'you all have to be ready to go.'

Speaking to a few dozen Marines at a rifle range, Mattis described North Korea as a 'not yet imminent but a direct threat to the United States.'

At another point, at an outdoor movie theater where troops and civilian staff had gathered, Mattis said that during the Cold War, U.S. leaders had been confident that Russia and China did not want to start a nuclear war.

'That may be an assumption we cannot make' with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, he said.

Mattis was asked if the U.S. has worked out planning for a post-war Korean Peninsula, including the issue of reunifying the North and South. He answered indirectly by saying, 'We're probably not where we need to be' in such discussions with Russia, China and others.

Mattis arrived at Guantanamo Wednesday night and was accompanied by an Associated Press reporter. His overnight stop at Guantanamo comes amid uncertainty over the Trump administration's policy on continued use of the military prison.

Later Mattis was flying to Mayport Naval Station in Florida, and planned on Friday to visit Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Secure facility: The 41 remaining Guantanamo prisoners are held in Camps 5 and 6, which resemble regular prisons on the U.S. mainland

Rare glimpse: Access to Guantanamo is strictly controlled and the only images of prisoners do not show who they are, with military censors approving which photographs are released

Largely empty: The newest detention buildings at the naval base were built for far more prisoners than the 41 who remain there, of whom ten are awaiting trial and five have been cleared for release

Mattis is the first defense secretary to visit Guantanamo Bay since Donald Rumsfeld in January 2002, just weeks after the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan in the early stages of the fight against terrorism. The detention center was set up to hold suspected terrorists shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Forty-one prisoners remain in detention. Ten have been charged by a military commission. Five have been cleared to leave, but their status is in doubt under the current administration.

That leaves 26 in indefinite confinement, though some eventually could be cleared for release, too, or prosecuted. Lawyers are considering filing new legal challenges, arguing that a policy of no releases means the detainees' confinement no longer can be legally justified as a temporary wartime measure.

President Barack Obama tried to close the detention center, but was thwarted by Congress. Lawmakers objected to transferring detainees to confinement facilities in the United States.

Last visitor: Donald Rumsfeld, then defense secretary, visited in January 2002. Since then no defense secretary has been to the naval base

The way it was: The last time a defense secretary visited Guantanamo was in 2002, shortly after pictures of the first detainees emerged

Mattis has said little publicly about Guantanamo Bay since taking office in January. The subject wasn't raised in his Senate confirmation hearing.

In response to written questions submitted to him before that hearing, he said: 'I believe that we should develop a repeatable detainee policy that is appropriate for enemy combatants taken prisoner under such circumstances.'

Asked whether the U.S. should keep detainees without trial, he said: 'Long-term detention is appropriate when an unprivileged enemy belligerent poses a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.'

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited the detention facility in July.

Sessions underscored the administration's support for continued use of the prison. He called it a 'perfectly acceptable' place to detain new terrorist suspects, as opposed to holding them in the U.S. and having his own Justice Department try them in civilian courts.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - State utility regulators have refused to dismiss a request that could lower rates for South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. customers after the company abandoned plans for two nuclear reactors.

The Public Service Commission on Wednesday refused to dismiss two cases against SCANA Corp, parent company of SCE&G, news outlets reported.

Wednesday's decision means regulators could stop SCE&G from continuing to charge ratepayers for the reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County that the company and the state-owned utility Santee Cooper abandoned July 31. Typical SCE&G customers are paying $27 a month for the project.

The Public Service Commission has combined the request from the Office of Regulatory Staff to stop SCE&G from continuing to charge customers for the project with another proposal that would require SCE&G to refund about $1.8 billion collected since 2009.

SCANA attorneys have said either halting the collection of money or requiring a customer refund would bankrupt the company, which provides service to about 700,000 customers in central and eastern South Carolina.

SCANA lawyers said bankruptcy would make it harder for the utility to restore power after a hurricane or other natural disaster.

The Public Service Commission has also asked the Office of Regulatory Staff, another state agency that is supposed to safeguard customers and utilities, to determine whether SCANA's bankruptcy warnings are accurate.

SCANA's stock has dropped by about a third since the project was canceled. The stock closed at $41.32 Wednesday. Its shares are trading near a six-year low.

SCE&G and Santee Cooper largely blame the bankruptcy of lead contractor Westinghouse for the failure of the project, where $9 billion has already been spent.

Wednesday's decision is the first major decision against SCE&G since the project started in 2009. Santee Cooper's rates are determined by its own board, not the Public Service Commission.
BERLIN (AP) - A man in Berlin is under investigation for incitement, slander and resisting police officers after uttering anti-Semitic slurs against an Israeli restaurant owner in a scene caught on video that drew widespread criticism.

Police say the 60-year-old suspect approached restaurant boss Yorai Feinberg outside his premises in Berlin Tuesday. In the scene filmed by a friend of Feinberg, the man said "it's only about money with you" and "no one wants you here," among other things.

Feinberg hailed a passing police car. Officers took the man away, and police said he also insulted them.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas wrote on Twitter Thursday: "This totally unbelievable and inexcusable incident in Berlin shows that we all must face up with determination and courage against anti-Semitic agitation." Israel's ambassador visited the restaurant Thursday.
BOSTON (AP) - There is a new addition to the Kennedy family in Massachusetts.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy and his wife, Lauren, announced the birth of James Matthew Kennedy on Wednesday.

Kennedy said on Twitter the baby was "doing great" and already has received his first gift - a New England Patriots jersey from his grandfather, former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy II.

The congressman missed the final votes in the House this week on the Republican tax overhaul bill to be with his wife after she went into labor. He has been sharply critical of the bill.

It's the couple's second child. A daughter, Eleanor, was born nearly two years ago.
DALLAS (AP) - A woman who was hiding a recent miscarriage from her family fatally stabbed a mother and abducted her infant daughter, Houston police said Thursday.

Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez, 28, is charged with capital murder in the death of 33-year-old Carolina Flores, police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference. He said Miranda-Alvarez had known Flores and Flores' brother for about five years.

Miranda-Alvarez concealed her miscarriage from family members and claimed that she had just returned from the hospital after giving birth, Acevedo said.

"The woman was due to have a baby in January and she lost that baby," he said.

The body of Carolina Flores was discovered around midday Tuesday. Police initially said they believed 6-week-old Shamali Flores was with her father, but he was found late Tuesday in San Antonio without the girl. A statewide Amber Alert was issued as part of the search for her.

Acevedo would say only that "investigative efforts" led police to a southwest Houston apartment complex early Thursday where officers happened to spot a couple holding a baby. They questioned the couple and determined Miranda-Alvarez was holding Shamali. The baby was not harmed.

Miranda-Alvarez was being held without bond at the Houston city jail. Online jail records don't indicate she has an attorney who could comment on her behalf. The suspect's boyfriend has not been charged and Acevedo said it appears he wasn't aware of the miscarriage.

Investigators believed the couple was preparing to leave the area with Shamali, he said.

The baby was evaluated at a hospital and is in the custody of state Child Protective Services.

Police officials at a news conference Wednesday had said the person who took Shamali likely knew her family. They also said it's possible the girl was taken by someone who had lost a child.

Acevedo on Thursday credited Houston police and FBI with using that theory to help direct the course of the investigation.

"Everything our investigators theorized turned out to be true," he said.

___

Follow David Warren on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WarrenJourno .

___

Sign up for the AP's weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas: http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv
The Trump administration hit 13 individuals around the world with U.S. sanctions on Thursday under a 2016 law that empowers the Treasury Department to target people anywhere for human rights violations and corruption.

Those targeted:

-Former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who is alleged to have created a goon squad known as "the Junglers" that terrorized and killed numerous political foes, including religious leaders, journalists and dissidents, during his time in power from 1994 to 2017. Jammeh is also accused of plundering his country's treasury by stealing at least $50 million in state funds.

-Roberto Jose Rivas Reyes, the president of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council, who is accused of massive corruption and being responsible for widespread vote fraud.

-Israeli businessman Dan Gertler, who is alleged to have amassed a personal fortune of billions of dollars through corrupt deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gertler is accused of using his personal relationship with Congolese President Joseph Kabila to siphon off cash from the sale of mineral and oil rights.

-Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic, who is accused of being one of the biggest weapons suppliers in the Balkans and bribing officials and politicians in various countries, including Liberia, and violating UN sanctions.

-Maung Maung Soe, the former chief of the Myanmar military's western command, who is accused of overseeing the army's ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state. The U.S. said it had seen credible evidence that troops under his command carried out widespread extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests and the burning of villages.

-South Sudanese businessman Benjamin Bol Mel, a former adviser to South Sudan's President Salva Kiir. His company Thai-South Sudan Construction Company Limited is alleged to have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in no-bid government contracts.

-Pakistani surgeon Mukhtar Hamid Shah, a transplant specialist who is accused of trafficking in human organs by kidnapping and detaining impoverished and illiterate laborers to take their kidneys against their will.

-Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the late Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, who is alleged to have headed an organized crime syndicate that used government agencies to expropriate businesses, monopolize markets, solicit bribes and run extortion rackets.

-Dominican businessman Angel Rondon Rijo, who is alleged to have bribed his way into major infrastructure construction contracts, including for highways and dams worth billions of dollars.

-Artem Chaika, son of Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, who is accused of using his family connections to unfairly buy state-owned assets and win contracts, as well as harass and interfere with competitors.

-Gao Yan, the former director of the Public Security Bureau in Beijing's Chaoyang Branch, who is accused of mistreating human rights activists, including Cao Shunli, who died from organ failure in his custody after being denied medical treatment.

-Former Ukrainian police commander Sergey Kusiuk, who headed the elite Berkut unit that is accused of beating, and in some cases killing, peaceful protesters in 2014. Kusiuk fled Ukraine and is now believed to be in Russia.

-Guatemalan politician Julio Antonio Juarez Ramirez, who is accused of ordering an attack in which two journalists, one of whom had reported critically on him, were killed.

-Yankuba Badjie, the former chief of Gambia's National Intelligence Agency, who is alleged to have overseen the murder of opposition figures.
CLEVELAND (AP) - Authorities in Cleveland say a suspected gang member who is black walked up to a white woman he didn't know, accused her of being a white supremacist and punched her without any provocation.

Cleveland.com reports police arrested 24-year-old Jermaine Hines Jr. early Thursday on a felony ethnic intimidation charge. Online court records don't indicate whether Hines has an attorney who could comment on the accusations.

Authorities say Hines walked up to a 51-year-old woman on a Cleveland street in August, punched her and knocked her to the ground. Documents say Hines accused the woman of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and called her a white supremacist.

A Cleveland police detective said in court documents that Hines is a member of a street gang.

___

Information from: cleveland.com, http://www.cleveland.com
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's security agency says it has detained a government official accused of spying for Russia.

Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said Thursday the suspect allegedly passed government secrets to his Russian handlers. Ukrainian media reports identified the suspect as an aide to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman who accompanied him on foreign trips.

Groysman thanked the SBU for its "vigilance and professionalism" on Facebook.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on a trip to Warsaw that she is aware of reports that an interpreter for Ukraine's premier who was photographed with her in Downing Street has been arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy.

Russia and Ukraine have been in a tug-of-war following Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
HOUSTON (AP) - The Latest on a Texas infant found by police two days after her mother was fatally stabbed (all times local):

11:45 a.m.

Authorities say a woman who recently suffered a miscarriage fatally stabbed a woman at a Houston apartment and abducted her newborn daughter.

Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference Thursday that 28-year-old Erika Miranda-Alvarez is charged with capital murder in the death of 33-year-old Carolina Flores. Acevedo says Miranda-Alvarez knew Flores, who was killed Tuesday.

He says Miranda-Alvarez hid her miscarriage from family members and was claiming that she had just returned this week from the hospital after giving birth.

He says investigators were at a southwest Houston apartment complex early Thursday when they happened to spot a couple holding a baby. They questioned the couple and determined that Miranda-Alvarez was holding 6-week-old Shamali Flores, who was unharmed.

The suspect's boyfriend has not been charged and Acevedo says it appears he wasn't aware of the miscarriage.

___

10 a.m.

Police have arrested a suspect following the fatal stabbing of a Houston mother and the disappearance of her infant daughter who was missing for two days.

Authorities say they will release additional information about the arrest later Thursday.

The police announcement on Twitter did not say whether the arrest is related to the killing, the apparent abduction of the girl or both.

The body of 33-year-old Carolina Flores was discovered in her north Houston apartment Tuesday and her 6-week-old daughter, Shamali Flores, could not be found.

Police say the infant was found unharmed early Thursday at a southwest Houston apartment.

No other details have been released.

___

7:15 a.m.

The 6-week-old daughter of a woman who was stabbed to death has been found alive in a Houston apartment.

Police announced on Twitter that Shamali Flores was found early Thursday and appears unharmed. She's being evaluated at a hospital.

Police have provided no other details, including who was with Shamali when she was discovered or how police they knew to look for the baby at the southwest Houston home. Police officials said at a news conference Wednesday that the person who took Shamali likely knows her family.

Investigators have not identified a suspect in the death Tuesday of the girl's mother, 33-year-old Carolina Flores. They say the child's father is not a suspect.

Police plan to release more information later Thursday.
DALLAS (AP) - A juvenile correctional center in Dallas for years didn't allow its inmates to go outside for months on end, according to former guards, probation officers and families of incarcerated teens.

The Lyle B. Medlock Youth Treatment Center houses teenage boys who have committed offenses requiring secure placement. The inmates are supposed to receive counseling, life-skills training, drug education and outdoor recreation at the facility.

But Gabriela Garza told the Dallas Morning News that she saw the boys taken outside once in her six months as a probation officer at the center.

"They definitely do not get an outlet for the energy and all that anxiety that they feel," she said.

The newspaper investigated after the facility had come under fire earlier this year with reports that boys were being made to sleep on mattresses on the floor, and that at least five boys engaged in sex acts on several occasions amid a lack of supervision.

The head of the Dallas County Juvenile Department, Terry Smith, said changes have been made since that scandal, and records indicate the boys have been let outdoors more. But Smith still won't guarantee that the teenage inmates receive as much time outdoors as dangerous adults inside maximum-security prisons get.

"I don't want to give a number, a limitation, an expectation, because they have to run their building," Smith said, referring to the facility managers who report to her. "I'm not going to say it has to be four to six times a month."

Experts said time outdoors is important for mental health.

"To experience the wind, the sun, the rain, maybe even the snow, that's just normal human existence," said Dr. Raymond Patterson, a former prison psychiatrist. "When you take that away from people who have trouble integrating with the rest of the world, it just adds another stressor."

The Independent Ombudsman, a watchdog for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, said inspectors have repeatedly warned Smith about the lack of outdoor time. Smith said she didn't see the agency's complaints, but emails obtained by the newspaper show she received the reports.

"That's why we make the reports, so they're aware of what we've seen," said Debbie Unruh, the chief ombudsman. "It's kind of a report card to the administration."

Seniors leaders like Smith were aware that the boys were not let outdoors as routinely in recent years, said Danny Pirtle, the department's former deputy education director.

"It didn't rise to a level of concern for her (Smith)," Pirtle said. "She would be the person to move the ball forward. And she didn't."

___

Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com
CLEVELAND (AP) - In a story Dec. 21 about a woman charged with murder in the death of her 5-year-old son, The Associated Press reported erroneously on why suspect Larissa Rodriguez's boyfriend is jailed. He is serving a jail sentence after being found guilty of failing to pay child support, not over drug charges.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Ohio woman charged in son's death after buried remains found

A woman has been charged with murder in the death of her 5-year-old son after authorities found the apparent remains of a child in the backyard of her Cleveland home

By MARK GILLISPIE

Associated Press

CLEVELAND (AP) - A woman charged with murder in the death of her 5-year-old son told authorities where they could find his body buried in the backyard of a Cleveland home and four of her other children were found living there in squalid conditions, according to an arrest affidavit.

Larissa Rodriguez was charged Thursday in Cleveland. Court records don't indicate whether she has an attorney and she is scheduled to appear in Cleveland Municipal Court on Friday.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office hasn't yet identified the remains found Tuesday as those of Rodriguez's developmentally disabled son, Jordan, and hasn't said how he died. Cleveland police have said Jordan died Sept. 22.

The arrest affidavit submitted by a Cleveland homicide detective Wednesday said Rodriguez "buried the child inappropriately" and led authorities Tuesday to where his remains could be found.

The affidavit said that the "corpse exhibited multiple signs of abuse, including broken ribs."

According to a police report, officers went to the home Monday after receiving a tip from Pakistan from the brother of Rodriguez's boyfriend that Rodriguez and her boyfriend buried Jordan's body in the yard after finding him unresponsive. The boyfriend is currently jailed in another Ohio county after being found guilty of failing to pay child support.

Rodriguez, a 34-year-old mother of nine children, told officers Monday that her son went to Texas with an aunt in early December and was living with his father. She told officers she didn't know how to contact him, the police report said.

Rodriguez lost custody of her two oldest children years ago and two of her children, ages 3 and 8, live with their fathers, said Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan.

The county took emergency custody of her other four children, between the ages of 16 months and 12 years, after Rodriguez was arrested Monday. An affidavit from the county said the children were living in squalid conditions and that the home was infested with cockroaches and rats.

One of the children was seen eating a sandwich that contained cockroaches, the county affidavit said.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - South Sudan's warring factions on Thursday signed a new agreement to cease hostilities and protect civilians in the latest effort to calm a devastating civil war, as diplomatic observers issued sharp warnings against allowing yet another peace deal to fail.

The cease-fire is set to begin first thing Sunday morning, or Christmas Eve.

The warring sides also agreed to grant badly needed humanitarian access to conflict-affected areas after days of talks in neighboring Ethiopia brokered by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development regional bloc.

FILE - In this Friday, April 29, 2016 file photo, the then South Sudan's First Vice President Riek Machar, left, looks across at President Salva Kiir, right, as they sit to be photographed following the first meeting of a new transitional coalition government, in the capital Juba, South Sudan. South Sudan's warring factions on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 signed a new agreement to cease hostilities and protect civilians in the latest effort to calm a devastating civil war. (AP Photo/Jason Patinkin, File)

South Sudan is entering its fifth year of civil war, and no one knows how many tens of thousands of people have been killed in the world's youngest nation. Parts of the East African country are on the brink of famine, and well over a million people have fled abroad, creating the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis.

The U.S. called the deal "the last chance for the implementation of the peace process." Past attempts at peace deals have stumbled amid renewed violence. The new deal is an effort to salvage a 2015 peace agreement.

South Sudan's government is under growing pressure to find an end to the civil war as the U.S. and others threaten further sanctions.

"This is a gift to South Sudanese people to celebrate their Christmas and New Year. This is the most precious gift of all time," Ethiopia's foreign minister, Workineh Gebeyehu, said during the signing ceremony. "But as past experience has showed, implementation is the longer and more difficult aspect . many critical issues lie ahead."

A spokesman for South Sudan's opposition, Lam Paul Gabriel, told The Associated Press that they will respect the agreement but said the rebels were ready to defend themselves of the government did not.

"I doubt if it will hold but we will abide by it as we have always done," he said.

The agreement also calls on the warring sides to release prisoners of war, political prisoners and abducted women and children, who have been victims of widespread sexual violence and recruitment as child soldiers.

"Everyone is tired of the war in South Sudan," the chair of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, told the gathering.

Ethiopia's leader called the deal a "final alternative" and said failing to adhere to it will bring consequences and the rest of Africa and the world "will not sit idly by." Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council warned of "costs or consequences" for South Sudan's government and opposition if they undermine efforts to implement the 2015 peace deal.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir was not present at the signing. The government's lead delegate to the talks, cabinet affairs minister Martin Elias Lomoro, told the AP that rebel leader Riek Machar didn't take part because he wasn't deemed helpful.

The country plunged into ethnic violence in December 2013, just two years after a long-fought-for independence from Sudan, when forces loyal to Kiir, a Dinka, started battling those loyal to his former vice president, Machar, a Nuer.

The U.N. and others have warned against ethnic violence and other abuses.

___

Associated Press writer Sam Mednick contributed.

In this photo taken Friday, Dec. 8, 2017, armed opposition soldiers walk in Jiech, Ayod County, South Sudan. As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)
BERLIN (AP) - Europe could see a surge in "climate refugees" as global warming increases poverty and hardship elsewhere in the world, scientists said Thursday.

Experts have long warned that rising temperatures and extreme weather could increase the number of people in poor countries seeking refuge in richer, more temperate nations, but the phenomenon has previously only been studied at a small scale.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers examined asylum applications in the EU between 2000 and 2014 from 103 countries around the world. This preceded the spike in migration to Europe from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2015 and 2016 that prompted a political backlash against migrants in many European countries.

FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2016 file photo Italian officers rescue a woman from a crowded wooden boat carrying more than seven hundred migrants, during a rescue operation in the Mediterranean sea, about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya. Scientists say climate change could dramatically increase the number of people seeking asylum in Europe. Researchers examined asylum applications in the European Union from 2000 to 2014 and found the number was influenced by temperature anomalies in migrants' home countries. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

"We find a statistically significant relationship between fluctuations in asylum applications and weather anomalies," the U.S.-based authors wrote of the 15-year period.

They concluded that the number of applications increased the more a country of origin's average temperature diverged from 20 C (68 F) - the best temperature for growing crops. Higher temperatures were more likely to increase the numbers than lower temperatures, they found.

"It's the first study that draws a link between temperature and international migration on a global scale, and finds a link," said Jacob Schewe, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany who wasn't involved in the study.

Working from a baseline average of 351,000 applications a year, the study concludes that the number of asylum-seekers to the EU could rise by more than a quarter by 2100 even if global warming slows. However, if emissions of greenhouse gases continue at current rates, asylum request could almost triple to over a million a year by the end of the century.

Although economic hardship isn't usually seen as grounds for asylum in most European countries, the study found an increase in requests being granted to migrants from countries that had experienced weather shocks.

The authors, Wolfram Schlenker and Anouch Missirian of Columbia University, said their study doesn't account for other factors - such as the outbreak of conflicts - that may impact asylum applications. They argue climate change should be seen as a "threat multiplier" that can increase other factors which might cause people to abandon their homes, including war, economic stress and famine.

Schlenker said the impact of climate change on agriculture may also not be immediate.

"It might be that you have a one-year bad weather shock, but if you have some crops stored you can basically overcome that," he said in a telephone interview. "But if it gets permanently hot in the future and you never get a good crop again then you might move."

Schlenker said the findings should be a wakeup call for rich countries that think they are insulated from the worst effects of global warming.

"A lot of people argue that climate impact will mainly hit developing countries, but this shows it will have big spillover effect," he said.

The study received funding from the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy.

___

Follow Frank Jordans on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter

File - In this Aug. 9, 2011 file photo, a pregnant Somali woman sits by a tree trunk at UNHCR's Ifo Extension camp outside Dadaab, eastern Kenya, 100 kms (60 miles) from the Somali border. Scientists say climate change could dramatically increase the number of people seeking asylum in Europe. Researchers examined asylum applications in the European Union from 2000 to 2014 and found the number was influenced by temperature anomalies in migrants' home countries. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, file)

File - In this July 23, 2017 file photo African migrants try to reach a rescue boat from the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, after falling from the punctured rubber boat in the Mediterranean Sea, about 12 miles north of Sabratha, Libya. Scientists say climate change could dramatically increase the number of people seeking asylum in Europe. Researchers examined asylum applications in the European Union from 2000 to 2014 and found the number was influenced by temperature anomalies in migrants' home countries. (AP Photo/Santi Palacios,file)
ASHBURN, Va. (AP) - Now that some of the land has been cleared of brush, the old gravesites are becoming apparent: indentations in the ground marked by weathered field stones where slaves who worked the old Belmont plantation in northern Virginia were buried.

"Everything is here. It's just hidden in plain sight," said the Rev. Michelle C. Thomas, who has led the effort to preserve the burial grounds.

After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a northern Virginia developer agreed to give the three-acre tract to the Loudoun Freedom Center, founded by Thomas, to preserve the site and learn more about it.

In this Dec. 14, 2017, photo, Pastor Michelle Thomas gives a tour of slave burial grounds that rest on a three-acre tract at a busy northern Virginia intersection that once served as a slave cemetery in Loudoun County's, Ashburn, Va. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a northern Virginia developer agreed to give the tract to the Loudoun Freedom Center, founded by Thomas, to preserve the site and learn more about it. (AP Photo/Douglas Graham)

The tract sits at a busy intersection in Loudoun County, one of the nation's wealthiest and fastest-growing counties. Heavy construction work surrounds the land as an overpass is built nearby to carry Belmont Ridge Road over Route 7. Despite the surrounding construction, the freedom center's ownership of the land ensures it will no longer be threatened.

The Belmont and adjacent Coton plantations were owned by Ludwell Lee and Thomas Ludwell Lee, cousins of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The land now hosts a resort and country club, along with housing developments.

Construction over the decades has gashed through parts of the burial ground - a dry pond sits adjacent to some of the apparent gravesites on the now-preserved tract; Thomas said a backhoe ripped through the burial site in the 1950s to fix the land's drainage problems.

Thomas, though, is focused more on what's preserved. She grabs a smooth, shaped rectangular stone left at a site where rocks were quarried from the plantation. It's evident someone was working on the stone, presumably a slave. Thomas wonders what the stone was for as she clutches it.

"Touching this is great. I know I'm close to my ancestors," she said.

Nobody knows exactly how many people are buried on the tract, and it may be impossible to determine. Thomas said 44 graves were mapped before the freedom center took ownership of the property. Since then, the group has cleared some of the land and found another 15 to 20 graves.

They've been able to do some research through well-preserved records at the county courthouse. The center has also entered into a partnership with the Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William and Mary to explore ways to conduct further research in a respectful way.

Michael Blakey, the professor who leads the institute, said what makes the Belmont site stand out is the fact that the community, through the deed to the freedom center, has been able to gain ownership of the land, to do with it as it sees fit.

"Enslaved people were everywhere, so they're buried everywhere," Blakey said. Often, slave cemeteries were built on marginal land that couldn't be easily cultivated. The rocky Belmont site fits the bill in that regard.

In many cases, the burial grounds have been lost to history. The Belmont site might have been as well, but Thomas did some research in 2015 as her church began looking for a building site. She knew the Lansdowne and Belmont communities were built on former plantations. As she continued to research, she learned about the burial grounds, which were referenced in old documents.

There are several options for archaeological research, but Blakey said the institute won't do any research that the community doesn't support, or deems disrespectful to those buried there. The institute is holding public meetings with the community.

"We ask them to tell us what they are interested in knowing," he said.

Thomas said it's too early to say what kind of archaeological excavation might be warranted. In her mind, any digging should be through the various legal records to see what can be learned. Partnerships with the county school system are yielding information through research of court records.

In coming months, Thomas wants to begin walking tours on the site.

"I'm just blessed to be able to tell the story," she said.

In this Dec. 14, 2017, photo Pastor Michelle Thomas stands over a headstone as she gives a tour of slave burial grounds that rest on a three-acre tract at a busy northern Virginia intersection that once served as a slave cemetery in Loudoun County in Ashburn, Va. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a northern Virginia developer agreed to give the tract to the Loudoun Freedom Center, founded by Thomas, to preserve the site and learn more about it. (AP Photo/Douglas Graham)

In this Dec. 14, 2017, photo, headstones in a slave burial grounds on a three-acre tract at a busy northern Virginia intersection that once served as a slave cemetery in Loudoun County's, Ashburn, Va. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a northern Virginia developer agreed to give the tract to the Loudoun Freedom Center, founded by Thomas, to preserve the site and learn more about it.

Pastor Michelle Thomas gives a tour of slave burial grounds that rest on a three-acre tract at a busy northern Virginia intersection that once served as a slave cemetery in Loudoun County's, Ashburn, Va., Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, a northern Virginia developer agreed to give the tract to the Loudoun Freedom Center, founded by Thomas, to preserve the site and learn more about it. (AP Photo/Douglas Graham)
SEATTLE (AP) - The Latest on a lawsuit challenging a Trump administration prohibition on refugee families (all times local):

11:32 a.m.

A federal judge said he would decide before Christmas whether to stop a Trump administration ban on refugees after hearing arguments that the policy is separating families and putting some refugees in danger.

Lawyers from the ACLU and Jewish Family Services asked U.S. District Judge James Robart for an injunction Thursday on a ban the administration has placed on refugees from certain mostly Muslim countries.

Department of Justice lawyers say the ban is temporary and was needed while officials review the vetting process. They said it's a national security issue.

But lawyers for the refugees say the administration failed to follow the law in implementing the ban, which they say is causing irreparable harm.

The ACLU represents a Somali man living in Washington state who is trying to bring his family to the U.S.

Jewish Family Services represents refugees whose lives are at risk. They include two interpreters who worked for U.S. Army troops in Iraq.

___

8:03 a.m.

Lawyers representing refugees who have legally settled in the U.S. are asking a federal judge to stop the Trump administration from keeping the families of the refugees from joining them in this country.

The ACLU, representing a Somali man living in Washington state, will argue in federal court Thursday that Trump's indefinite prohibition on refugee families violates immigration law and the constitutional rights of the legal permanent residents.

The man, using the pseudonym Joseph Doe, fled Somali when he was 10. He spent 22 years in Kenyan refugee camps and after extensive screening, arrived in the U.S. in 2014. His wife and three children remain in Kenya. He filed petitions to bring them over, but the Trump ban has blocked that effort.

The ACLU says the decision to indefinitely halt the "follow-to-join" refugees inflicts irreparable injury and should be stopped.

The government says extra screening is needed for national security.
The 8-year-old daughter of a U.S. literature professor held in Cameroon on allegations he threatened government officials has written to her father, saying his family is proud of him and not to worry if he misses Christmas or her birthday.

Patrice Nganang, a professor at New York's Stony Brook University, faces a Jan. 19 hearing after being detained Dec. 7 while trying to leave his native country. Nganang, who has duel U.S. and Cameroonian citizenship, has been critical of President Paul Biya, in power since 1982.

"Everyone in our family is sad you are gone but happy that you're doing the right thing," said Nomsa Nganang, who will turn 9 on Jan. 29. "We're counting on you daddy!"

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by Stony Brook University, Professor Patrice Nganang is shown. The 8-year-old daughter of the New York literature professor held in Cameroon on allegations he threatened government officials has written to her father, saying his family is proud of him and not to worry if he misses Christmas or her birthday. (Stony Brook University via AP, File)

Nganang's wife, Nyasha Bakare, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday that she waited a few days to tell her daughter about her father's plight, but realized she had to when it became clear he would not be immediately released. It was not immediately known if Nganang has seen the letter.

Bakare said supporters suspect he was detained after criticizing how the government has handled a secessionist movement in some English-speaking areas.

Charges against him include issuing a death threat; insulting constitutional bodies, specifically the military; and inciting violence in a Facebook post, according to supporters including the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Requests for comment sent to the Cameroon embassy in Washington, D.C., have not been returned.

Bakare, who has been married to Nganang for 17 years, said she was waiting for her husband to join her in Zimbabwe when he was detained by authorities at an airport in the capital, Yaounde.

"We were quite devastated by the news," said Bakare, who lives with her husband and daughter in Hopewell, New Jersey. She said the family had been in Africa visiting relatives. "We were expecting him here at the airport to join us for Christmas."

She said Nganang appeared in court in Yaounde on Dec. 15, but the proceeding was adjourned to Jan. 18, to allow prosecutors time to find witnesses. He is now being held at a maximum security prison, where supporters recently brought him a mattress to sleep on, according to his wife.

Bakare said she has only been able to speak with her husband once but says he is in good spirits.

"It's obviously outrageous; he is not a violent man," she said. "He has a long history of dissent against the Cameroonian government but has worked passionately to have a better future for his country and his family there."

Lawyers, journalists, prominent authors, writers, human rights advocates and others have organized to call for his release.

"If the government of President Paul Biya thinks the world does not care about Patrice's arrest, it is in for a surprise," said Angela Quintal, Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The outpouring of support for Patrice has been heartening."

Nganang, 37, has been teaching in the United States since 2000 and at Stony Brook University on eastern Long Island since 2007, according to colleague Robert Harvey. He is scheduled work as a professor at Princeton University next spring. He has published 12 books, scholarly essays, novels and books of poetry.

Spokesmen for Democratic U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey said they are aware of the situation.

___

Follow Eltman on Twitter at @feltman41.
SAO PAULO (AP) - The president of Brazil's top electoral court has ordered the release from jail of the former governor of Rio de Janeiro state who was arrested last month on corruption, money laundering and vote tampering charges.

Judge Gilmar Mendes ordered the release of Anthony Garotinho on Wednesday. The former governor was expected to leave the prison later Thursday and placed under house arrest pending the outcome of the legal process against him.

Mendes, who also sits of the Supreme Court, said he ordered Garotinho's release because there are no indications he plans to commit a new crime, escape the country or jeopardize investigations.
WASHINGTON (AP) - After an exchange between AT&T's CEO and a union representing its workers, the company said it took steps to pay workers a $1,000 bonus in response to President Donald Trump's tax cuts.

The announcement by the company Wednesday had raised questions about whether it was attempting to curry favor with Trump. The president has been a vocal critic of AT&T's proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner, which also owns CNN - the media outlet the Trump administration has treated as a nemesis.

Other companies quickly followed AT&T's lead, including Boeing, Comcast and Wells Fargo. This led to questions among corporate watchdogs about whether this was a coordinated effort to generate public support for a plan that bestows much of its benefits on the wealthy and corporations.

FILE - In this Dec. 7, 2016 file photo, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, while testifying before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner. After an exchange between AT&T's CEO and a union representing its workers, the company says it took steps to pay workers a $1,000 bonus in response to President Donald Trump's tax cuts. The Communications Workers of America had pushed AT&T last month to guarantee workers would receive the $4,000 raise that White House economists said would be the result of the corporate tax cuts. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

But Dallas-based AT&T said its decision to give a bonus to 200,000 workers stemmed from an inquiry by the Communications Workers of America, a union representing many of its workers.

The union sent a letter to AT&T last month asking it to guarantee workers would receive the $4,000 raise that White House economists said would be the result of the corporate tax cuts. Few mainstream economists believe the $1.5 trillion tax cut will lead to annual wage gains of that magnitude.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a phone call with the head of the union that company couldn't do the $4,000 raise but was considering a $1,000 bonus to union and non-union employees, company spokesman Larry Solomon said.

Candice Johnson, a spokeswoman for the union, said Stephenson first discussed the bonus with CWA president Chris Shelton last week.

Solomon said that before announcing the bonus on Wednesday, AT&T gave a quick heads up to members of Congress and the White House, as well as informing the Business Roundtable, an association representing CEOs.

___

This story has been updated to correct the attribution on AT&T giving a heads up to Congress and the White House to Solomon, not Stephenson.
NEW YORK (AP) - Shares of the aircraft maker Embraer soared on Thursday after the Brazilian company confirmed media reports that it's in talks with Boeing regarding a possible deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing Co. would be willing to pay a big premium to buy the company that has a market value of about $3.7 billion.

Boeing would get a bigger footprint in the regional jet industry. That is something that rival Airbus is already attempting to do, with plans to buy a majority stake of Canada's Bombardier Inc.

Embraer, however is highly prized by the Brazilian government, which would have to sign off on the deal. The government has veto power over a change in controlling interest in the company.

Embraer and Chicago-based Boeing said Thursday there is no guarantee that a transaction will result from the talks, and they decline to make any further comments.

The U.S. traded shares Embraer SA rose $4.43, or 22 percent, to close Thursday at $24.42. Boeing's stock slipped $2.87, about 1 percent, to $295.03.
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario (AP) - The children of billionaire philanthropists Barry and Honey Sherman said Thursday they have been terrorized by speculation surrounding their parents' deaths.

Jonathon Sherman, the couple's son, said at a memorial they have had to "navigate through a terrifying maze of non-information and unfounded speculation."

The founder of generic drug maker Apotex and his wife were found dead in their Toronto home last Friday. Police call the deaths suspicious and say both died of "ligature neck compression," but say there were no signs of forced entry and they were not looking for suspects.

A woman cries in the employees section during a memorial service for Apotex founder Barry Sherman and his wife Honey in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The billionaire philanthropist couple were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have cited police sources who say they are leaning toward a murder-suicide theory. The Sherman family has strongly rejected that.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Toronto Mayor John Tory attended the memorial, in addition to thousands of others including Apotex employees and members of the city's Jewish community.

Jonathon Sherman didn't mince words when he began speaking.

"These last few days have been really f - - up for my family," he said.

"As my sisters and I congregated for two days waiting to hear any facts other than through Twitter and the unreliable news media, I kept expecting my parents to walk through the front door and say 'everything will be fine, we've taken control of the situation.' These last few days have been a shocking adjustment to our reality."

Jonathon said two weeks ago, his father was told he had been named to the Order of Canada - one the country's highest honors.

"I don't know what will happen to that award if anything," he said.

The Sherman family previously issued a release slamming police sources who spoke to the news media, and they urged police to conduct a thorough, intensive and objective criminal investigation into the deaths.

Canadian Business magazine recently estimated Barry Sherman's worth at 4.77 billion Canadian dollars ($3.65 billion), making him the 15th richest person in the country.

Sherman founded Toronto-based Apotex Inc. in 1974 with two employees and turned the generic drug maker into a company that now has 11,000 employees worldwide.

At the memorial, Jonathon said the elder Sherman was his hero. He called him a staunch atheist and he took off his kippah when he addressed his late father.

The Shermans were among Canada's most generous philanthropists, and their deaths shocked Canadian high society and Toronto's Jewish community. The couple made numerous multimillion-dollar donations to hospitals, schools and charities and had buildings named in their honor. They hosted Trudeau at a Liberal Party fundraiser in 2015.

Honey Sherman sat on the boards of several civic groups, including Mount Sinai's Women's Auxiliary, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the International American Joint Distribution Committee.

Tory, Toronto's mayor, said he sat between the Shermans at a charity event just two weeks ago.

"Their humanity knew no bounds and their generosity was extraordinary," Tory said.

__

Gillies reported from Toronto.

A woman wearing an Apotex t-shirt stands before the start of a tribute to Apotex founder Barry Sherman and his wife Honey in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The billionaire philanthropist couple were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Mourners watch from their seats as Jonathon Sherman speaks during a memorial service for his parents Barry and Honey Sherman in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The pharmaceutical magnate and his wife were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Jonathon Sherman cries as he and family members walk to the stage during a memorial service for his parents Barry and Honey Sherman in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The pharmaceutical magnate and his wife were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Jonathon Sherman cries as he speaks during a memorial service for his parents Barry and Honey Sherman, as family members look on, in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The pharmaceutical magnate and his wife were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Family members arrive at the memorial service for Apotex founder Barry Sherman and his wife Honey in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The billionaire philanthropist couple were found dead in their Toronto home last week. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)
Attorney General Brad Schimel received legislative authority Thursday to expand his controversial probe into the former Government Accountability Board.

Under a provision in state law that allows either house of the Legislature to request a Department of Justice investigation, the Committee on Senate Organizations 3-2 vote came after the chairman of the state Elections Commission challenged Schimels ability to lead a fair and thorough review.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, Assistant Majority Leader Leah Vukmir, R-Brookfield, and Senate President Roger Roth, R-Appleton, approved an investigation into actions taken in what are known as the John Doe I and John Doe II investigations. Both looked at potential campaign finance and other violations related to Gov. Scott Walkers recall campaign and former Milwaukee County executive office.

Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, and Assistant Minority Leader Janet Bewley, D-Ashland, voted against the measure. Shilling called Schimels investigation an egregious abuse of power that could result in an incredible cost to the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

The Assembly called on Schimel to investigate a leak of records from the John Doe II investigation in December 2016 after the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to appoint a special investigator into the matter. Schimel didnt determine who leaked the records, but he concluded a crime occurred and recommended nine people face contempt-of-court proceedings.

Elections Commission administrator Michael Haas, who previously worked for the GAB but wasnt recommended for discipline by Schimel, sent a letter Thursday to Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos accusing them of slandering him and demanding an apology.

Haas told both legislative leaders, who have called for his ouster, there is absolutely no basis for their comments that he and other GAB staff might have acted criminally during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections.

Your elected offices and leadership positions do not give you license to defame and slander my personal and professional reputation, Haas wrote. I am requesting that you stop trashing my name and reputation.

Question of fair review

Before the vote, Mark Thomsen, a Democratic appointee to the Elections Commission, which replaced the GAB last year, sent a letter to the committee asking that Schimel not be involved in the review to ensure complete impartiality and fairness to the process.

My concern about the ability of the Attorney General to conduct an objective and complete investigation is based on the one-sided and incomplete nature of his reports so far, Thomsen wrote. Based on media reports we know that DOJ investigators failed to interview key individuals and omitted information from the report which could have cleared up the Attorney Generals questions.

This self-serving and partisan report gives me little confidence that any additional investigation by the Attorney General will be useful to the public or lawmakers who want to know the truth, Thomsen added. His efforts so far have only misled elected officials and others into making uninformed and, frankly, absurd claims about the GABs activities.

Dean Knudson, a Republican appointee to the Elections Commission, responded to Thomsens letter, saying the GABs investigation of Walkers campaign was an unconstitutional invasion of the privacy of dozens of Wisconsin citizens and a chilling example of unchecked big government.

It was outrageous that the GAB secretly accumulated the bank statements, text messages and millions of emails of politically involved citizens into a searchable, relational database, Knudson said. This outrage was compounded when we learned in the recent Attorney General report that the collected data was handled in a sloppy, unprofessional manner without even the most basic security precautions.

Knudson said those responsible for permitting the circumstances that led to the leak must be held accountable and called for a state Senate vote on Haas appointment. He said if the Senate doesnt approve the appointment Haas should be removed, though Thomsen has said the Senate doesnt have the authority to force Haas removal.

In a letter to the Wisconsin State Journal this week, retired judge and former GAB chairman David Deininger defended Haas.

He is an outstanding public servant who takes very seriously his responsibility to administer our state elections in a fair, nonpartisan fashion, he said.

Deininger, a former Republican legislator, also defended Ethics Commission administrator Brian Bell, whom Fitzgerald and Vos have also called on to resign.

The GOP-controlled Legislature dismantled the GAB in 2015 and created separate ethics and elections commissions.

Audit of GAB

The State Journal reported Sunday that Schimels report revealed a previously unknown GAB ethics investigation into Republican state employees campaigning on taxpayer time. Schimel referred to it as John Doe III, even though it wasnt a John Doe investigation, a specific type of legal proceeding.

A judge who authorized the release of Schimels report has said he shouldnt have allowed the release. State ethics investigations are supposed to be kept confidential.

Schimels office has since insisted the investigation was a John Doe investigation because it was based on evidence collected in John Doe I, which resulted in six felony convictions, including two Milwaukee County employees for campaigning on taxpayer time. Milwaukee County John Doe investigators forwarded evidence to the GAB.

Schimels report also described the GAB investigation as having no discernible limit, even though it was authorized by the GABs six-member board of retired judges in December 2011 and closed with no charges in March 2013.

Thomsen noted the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau completed a review of the GAB in 2015 and found no significant issues with its investigations. He recommended if another review is needed that it be done by an impartial reviewer or bipartisan body.

Leak of documents

Schimels report was investigating the leak of documents related to the John Doe II investigation, which examined the Walker campaigns coordination with a supposedly independent group during the 2011 and 2012 recalls. The Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down that investigation in 2015 saying the underlying legal theory forwarded by the GAB was invalid.

The Ethics Commission is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the Senates request for an investigation.

A Fitzgerald spokesman declined a request for comment.

Schimels office didnt respond to a request for comment, but said Tuesday if the Senate committee authorized DOJ to investigate the former GAB it would do so with the utmost integrity and professionalism.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A private group headed by a county commissioner and fueled by anonymous donations bought two parks from the city of Memphis at little cost this week, allowing for the swift removal of two Confederate statues that had sparked conflict for years.

Shelby County Commissioner and attorney Van Turner told a news conference Thursday that his group, Memphis Greenspace Inc., is ready for any lawsuits that arise from its deal with the city, which took months of planning to sidestep a Tennessee law that makes it tough to take down Confederate monuments on public grounds.

The law has been criticized by those who say the statues are a reminder of a time when slavery was enforced and bigotry sanctioned in the South. It has been supported by those who say removing the monuments would be like trying to erase history.

File- In this Aug. 18, 2017, photo, a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest sits in a park in Memphis, Tenn. A city council in Tennessee has voted to sell two city parks where two Confederate statues are located and crews have begun work to remove one of them. The Commercial Appeal reports Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said in a tweet Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017, that the parks were sold and that work underway there complies with state law. The city council unanimously approved the sale Wednesday to a private entity. (AP Photo/Adrian Sainz, File)

Turner said he approached the city attorney with the workaround idea, the group was incorporated in October, and its 501(c)(3) application is still pending.

But Turner said Memphis Greenspace wasn't formed just to remove the statues of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

He said he envisions more Memphis-area parks being transferred to the group so it can raise money to revitalize them. In the meantime, he said, the organization will use the donations it has received to run the two parks it bought.

Removing the statues, now kept at an undisclosed location, will help the city focus on bigger issues, Turner said.

"When we wake up tomorrow morning, we still will have issues with education, we still will have issues of poverty in this city, we still will have issues with public safety. This doesn't resolve any of that," Turner said. "What this does is move this out of the way. This is a non-issue now."

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to sell the two parks where the statues were located for $1,000 each and crews began working right away at Health Sciences Park to remove the Forrest statue. People cheered as the statue was lifted off its marble base and placed on a flatbed truck.

At the Fourth Bluff Park, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was later taken down.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the law lets the city sell land to a private entity, and allows the buyer to remove any items it chooses from the land. In September, the City Council passed legislation allowing the city to sell parkland to nonprofit groups for less than fair market value.

State lawmakers and others who want to preserve the monuments claim the city's actions are illegal.

"They are willfully violating the Heritage Preservation act; the City has broken state law," James Patterson, commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Tennessee division, wrote on Facebook. "This has been a well-organized, behind the scenes plan by the city. They deliberately did this after hours to prevent action on our part."

House Majority Leader Glen Casada, a Republican from Franklin, and Caucus Chairman Ryan Williams, a Republican from Cookeville, said they will work with the House speaker, comptroller and other stakeholders to investigate.

"The Tennessee Historical Commission has already voted to deny the city's application to remove these statues and this decision in Shelby County, at a minimum, completely violates both the spirit and intent of state law in protecting Tennessee history," Casada and Williams said in a statement.

An increasing number of cities have tried to remove Confederate monuments after the racially motivated massacre of nine people at a black church in South Carolina in 2015 and a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year.

Forrest was a slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader who became influential in the growth of Memphis after the Civil War. His body and that of his wife are buried beneath his statue.

On Thursday, Turner said the nonprofit is willing to discuss a transfer of the Forrest and Davis statues, possibly for a Civil War memorial.

The group also might be able to move the remains of Forrest and his wife back to a cemetery where they once were kept, but only if the family wants to do so, he said.

___

Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com
JERUSALEM (AP) - Ahead of a dramatic vote at the United Nations on Thursday, the United States made an unprecedented threat to fellow members of the international community: those who vote against President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital risk diplomatic retaliation and losing American financial aid.

But when the dust settled, the biggest recipients of American aid - most of them Muslim or Arab countries - rejected the threat, leaving the White House facing a tricky dilemma as it plots a course forward for the Middle East. Key Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia, all banded together against the U.S.

Yet for Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there were some bright spots in the lopsided vote. Some influential countries, mostly African and Latin American countries courted by Israel in recent years, stepped back from past support for the Palestinians by abstaining or skipping the vote altogether. Still, two of Netanyahu's biggest targets, China and India, came down solidly in favor of the Palestinians.

The results of a vote are posted in the General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. The U.N. General Assembly voted 128-9 with 35 abstentions on Thursday in favor of a nonbinding resolution declaring President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "null and void," a smaller margin than the Palestinians hoped for but also a rebuke to the U.S. which is threatening to cut funding for those who voted "yes." (Manuel Elias/United Nations via AP)

These mixed trends could allow each side to claim a victory of sorts.

Here is a closer look at how key countries and regions voted in Thursday's General Assembly resolution:

___

AID RECIPIENTS

With the exception of Israel, the top recipients of international aid are Muslim, Arab or African countries. Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan all voted to back the resolution proposed by the Palestinians, as did African countries Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Africa. In addition to Israel, the only member of the top 10 aid recipients not to support the Palestinians was Kenya, a close Israeli ally that skipped the vote, according to Foreignassistance.gov.

___

ARAB ALLIES

The Arab world voted across the board with the Palestinians, an expected move given the importance of Jerusalem and the Palestinian cause to the Arab public. Nonetheless, the vote could embarrass the White House, which has sought to cultivate ties with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other moderate Sunni countries to counter rising Iranian influence. It also could complicate attempts by the U.S. to rally support for an expected region-wide peace plan it says is in the works.

___

CLAIMING VICTORY

The Palestinians praised the lopsided majority in their favor, saying it shows "once again that the just Palestinian cause enjoys the support of (the) international community." Yet the Palestinians have long enjoyed widespread support in the United Nations, which is dominated by developing countries sympathetic to their cause.

In a possible cause for concern, the level of support was slightly less than a 2012 landmark vote in the General Assembly to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state. In that vote, 138 nations supported the Palestinians, compared to 125 on Thursday.

___

ISRAELI OUTREACH

Netanyahu has made significant outreach efforts in recent years to countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in a bid to soften support for the Palestinians at the U.N. Those efforts showed some signs of success. After the vote, Netanyahu said he appreciated the growing number of countries that "refused to participate in this theater of the absurd."

Mexico and Argentina, countries that Netanyahu visited earlier this year, both shifted from past support for the Palestinians to abstentions on Thursday. Two Latin American countries, Guatemala and Honduras, even voted against Thursday's measure.

While Kenya skipped the General Assembly vote, Uganda and South Sudan - African countries courted by Netanyahu - also dropped their past support for the Palestinians and abstained.

But a possible concern for Israel could be the apparent support by two countries with poor human rights record - Myanmar, which skipped the vote, and the Philippines, which abstained. Both countries voted with the Palestinians in 2012.

The Indian and Chinese votes also exposed the limits of Netanyahu's outreach.

___

WHITHER EUROPE?

As the U.S. prepares a new Mideast peace push, Thursday's vote at the General Assembly exposed deep divisions with Europe. The three most important countries in Europe - Britain, France and Germany - all voted against the U.S. on Thursday. That could signal trouble if the U.S. seeks European support for its peace plan down the road.

Other European countries with close ties to Israel, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - all with nationalist governments - abstained in the vote.

These divisions within Europe could complicate attempts by the European Union to formulate a joint position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict moving forward.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
WASHINGTON (AP) - After threatening to cut off nations that rebuked him over Jerusalem, President Donald Trump faces a key question about his global credibility: Will he follow through?

Most of the world defied the United States on Thursday at the U.N., voting for a resolution that declares Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital to be "null and void." Only a day earlier, Trump had linked the vote to future U.S. foreign assistance, telling reporters: "Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

Trump's U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, upped the ante further in a speech just before the vote. Not only was foreign aid in the crosshairs, but U.S. funding for the United Nations, too, she said. Haley said the United States would "remember this day" when it was singled out for exercising its sovereignty.

The results of a vote are posted in the General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. The U.N. General Assembly voted 128-9 with 35 abstentions on Thursday in favor of a nonbinding resolution declaring President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "null and void," a smaller margin than the Palestinians hoped for but also a rebuke to the U.S. which is threatening to cut funding for those who voted "yes." (Manuel Elias/United Nations via AP)

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations," Haley said in the General Assembly.

Yet the ultimatums from Haley and Trump did not dissuade almost all the top recipients of the billions of dollars Washington gives each year to help with security, development and other needs.

And within hours of the U.N. vote, the Trump administration started gingerly backing away from its funding threats.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said cuts to countries that opposed the U.S. were not a foregone conclusion.

"The president's foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations," Nauert said. "However, no decisions have been made."

On U.N. funding, Haley's office suggested the Jerusalem vote alone would not lead the Trump administration to cut off the global organization. Under Trump, the U.S. has been conducting a broader review of United Nations funding and has already cut money to some specific U.N. agencies over abortion-related concerns.

"We will use U.N. votes as one factor in our foreign relations," Haley's office, known as the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said in a statement. "It's not going to be the only factor, or even necessarily the number one factor, but it will no longer be ignored."

It was a rare moment of soft-pedaling by the Trump administration, considering the president's aversion to backing down from a fight or falling short on a promise. To the contrary, Trump has often credited himself with restoring America's credibility when it issues threats by following through when U.S. adversaries cross "red lines" that he has set.

In this case, though, there were signs that Trump intended his threat, delivered in a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, more as rhetoric than policy. The warning had appeared to catch the State Department and other agencies off-guard, leading them to seek more details from the White House's National Security Council on how to proceed.

A senior Trump administration official said there was no plan as of Thursday for moving ahead with eliminating aid to countries that rebuked the president. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

In all, 128 countries voted "yes" to rebuke the United States. Nine voted "no," 35 abstained, and 21 didn't vote. Although the U.S. lost handily, the tally was better for the U.S. than many had expected.

Of the top 10 beneficiaries of U.S. assistance this year, only Israel voted "no" - unsurprising, given that Israel's government is overjoyed by Trump's recognition of Jerusalem. All the rest defied Trump by voting "yes," with the exception of Kenya, which didn't vote. Afghanistan, for which about $4.3 billion in U.S. money was set aside in 2017, voted "yes" to rebuke Trump.

The "yes" votes included Egypt, which received roughly $1.4 billion in U.S. aid, and Jordan, which received about $1.3 billion. Although both Arab nations are close U.S. security partners that rely on American dollars, both would risk political upheaval at home if they did not voice opposition to the idea of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Which raises the question: Would the United States, hoping to make a point about Israel, really cut off Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab countries that have peace deals with the Jewish state? It would seem a counterintuitive move given Trump needs those countries' support to succeed in securing the elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal his aides are pursuing.

"The principle of linking bilateral assistance to U.N. votes is a sound one," said David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank focused on the Middle East. "But I wouldn't unveil it here. I don't know if I would inaugurate this policy on a vote about Jerusalem, given its religious resonance in the Arab and Muslim worlds."

___

AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the U.N. General Assembly, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Dr. Riyad Mansour, center. Palestine's observer at the United Nations, talks with members of the General Assembly prior to a vote, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour arrives at the General Assembly prior to a vote, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has raised the stakes in Thursday's U.N. vote and sparked criticism of his tactics, with one Muslim group calling it bullying or blackmail. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Latest on U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's trip to Afghanistan (all times local):

2:50 a.m.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence says "real progress" is being made on the ground in Afghanistan.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence shakes hands with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani upon arrival at the President Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)

Pence is visiting the war-torn nation to meet with its leaders and rally U.S. troops stationed there.

Pence says Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has told him that more senior Taliban leaders have been eliminated this year than in all prior years of the war combined.

President Donald Trump announced a new Afghan strategy in August. Pence says that, because of that decision, the U.S. has been sending more resources and troops into Afghanistan. More important, Pence says, is the new authority Trump has granted U.S. military personnel on the ground to fight more effectively alongside Afghan soldiers.

The vice president says "the results are really beginning to become evident around the country."

___

2:10 a.m.

Vice President Mike Pence has outlined President Donald Trump's strategy in Afghanistan during a surprise trip to Bagram Air Base.

Pence says that Trump has "put Pakistan on notice" and that the country has much to lose if it continues to harbor terrorists.

Pence told hundreds of U.S. troops in a speech in an airport hangar Thursday that too often Pakistan has provided "safe haven" to the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Pence says, "Those days are over."

The vice president says Pakistan "has much to gain from partnering with the United States." But he says, "Pakistan has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals."

Pence says, "Peace only comes through strength." He urged the soldiers to be strong and courageous.

___

2:05 a.m.

Vice President Mike Pence is telling hundreds of U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that President Donald Trump is committed to "staying in that fight" and seeing it "through to the end."

Pence on Thursday delivered a pre-Christmas address to soldiers serving in Afghanistan and pointed to the president's new strategy in the country.

The vice president noted the sacrifice of American soldiers here since the 2001 invasion and told the troops, "I believe victory is closer than ever before."

Pence says after his meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that U.S. armed forces will remain engaged in the country until they eliminate the terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland.

He also wished the soldiers a "Merry Christmas."

___

2 a.m.

Vice President Mike Pence is telling Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the U.S. is "here to see this through" as they discuss President Donald Trump's new Afghanistan strategy during a surprise visit by the vice president.

Pence is joining Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah for a Thursday evening meeting at the presidential palace in Kabul. Pence arrived by helicopter after landing at Bagram Air Base.

Ghani is offering Pence his thanks on behalf of a grateful nation and pointing to their common bonds.

Pence says the two countries have been "on a long road together" and have sacrificed much during the 16-year war. But Pence says the U.S. is committed to helping Afghanistan achieve peace and security.

The discussions were expected to focus on the implementation of Trump's new Afghanistan strategy and discuss upcoming parliamentary elections and the country's presidential election in 2019.

___

1:45 a.m.

Vice President Mike Pence has made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan leaders and visit U.S. troops.

Pence arrived in Afghanistan four months after President Donald Trump outlined a new strategy to break the stalemate in America's longest war. Pence's surprise visit is the first to the war-torn country by either Trump or the vice president. Pence landed at Bagram Air Base under heavy security on Thursday.

He met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, as well as U.S. troops and U.S. military leaders.

Trump released his new strategy for ending the 16-year war in Afghanistan in August. The president said U.S. troops would "fight to win" by attacking enemies and crushing terrorists.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence walks past an honor guard with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, second from right, and Afghan CEO Abdullah Abdullah, third from right, upon arrival at the President Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence meets with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the President Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP)
Restaurant workers, a hotel event booker and a watchdog group who say President Donald Trump has business conflicts that violate the Constitution cannot sue him, a New York judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge George Daniels said it was too soon for the lawsuit to be considered by the courts, particularly because Congress had not considered the issue.

The lawsuit earlier this year alleged that Trump's 'vast, complicated, and secret' business interests were creating conflicts of interest. It claimed the business ties violated the Constitution's ban against taking foreign gifts and money without Congress' permission, including for hotel stays or office leases.

A New York judge has rejected a lawsuit by restaurant workers, a hotel event booker and a watchdog group who say President Donald Trump has business conflicts that violate the Constitution

The lawsuit claimed Trump's business ties violated the Constitution's ban against taking foreign gifts and money without Congress' permission, including for stays at his hotels

Trump had called the lawsuit 'totally without merit' while aides to the Republican president dismissed it as politically motivated.

Justice Department lawyers had argued that the plaintiffs did not suffer in any way and had no standing to sue, and that it is unconstitutional to sue the president in his official capacity.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington originally brought the lawsuit. It was later joined by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United Inc. and two individuals in the hotel industry.

'While today's ruling is a setback, we will not walk away from this serious and ongoing constitutional violation,' said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of CREW. 'The Constitution is explicit on these issues, and the president is clearly in violation. Our legal team is weighing its options and will soon lay out our decisions on how to proceed.'

The lawsuit cited the little-known domestic and foreign emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump has made appearances at his resorts, golf clubs and a hotel in Washington frequently since he was sworn in as president in January.

Other lawsuits have made similar claims, including a lawsuit in Washington by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

In his ruling, Daniels said the intended purpose of the foreign emoluments clause was to prevent official corruption and foreign influence. He said the purpose of the domestic emoluments clause was to ensure presidential independence.

Daniels noted that with Congressional consent, the Constitution allows federal officials to accept foreign gifts and emoluments regardless of its effect on competition.

'There is simply no basis to conclude that the hospitality plaintiffs' alleged competitive injury falls within the zone of interests that the Emoluments Clauses sought to protect,' the judge wrote.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Federal prosecutors are accusing a Pennsylvania doctor who prescribed nearly 3 million opioids during a recent 19-month period of causing the overdose deaths of five people several years ago.

The U.S. attorney's office in Harrisburg on Thursday announced the charges of drug delivery resulting in death against 60-year-old Dr. Raymond Kraynak of Mount Carmel.

Prosecutors say a state monitoring program identified Kraynak as having issued the most opioid prescriptions of any physician in the state over the 19 months that ended in July.

Authorities aren't disclosing the names of the five patients. They died between 2013 and 2015.

A federal public defender who represents him says Kraynak is seeking bail so he can help his patients receive treatment.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - One of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favor with a fictional horror character named Slender Man was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in a mental hospital, the maximum punishment possible.

Anissa Weier, 16, pleaded guilty in August to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but she claimed she wasn't responsible for her actions because she was mentally ill. In September, a jury agreed.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren on Thursday sentenced Weier to 25 years in a psychiatric institution, retroactive to the date of the crime. That means she would be institutionalized until age 37.

Anissa Weier, one of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favor with a fictional horror character named Slender Man, is led into the Waukesha County Court for her sentencing hearing, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, in Waukesha, Wis. She was sentenced to 25 years in a mental hospital, the maximum punishment possible. (Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)

Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner into a wooded park in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb, in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. Leutner survived after she crawled out of the woods to a path where a passing bicyclist found her.

Both Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Man's "proxies," or servants, and protect their families from him. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

Weier apologized in brief comments before her sentencing.

"I do hold myself accountable for this and that I will do whatever I have to do to make sure I don't get any sort of delusion or whatever again," Weier told the judge, as she sat next to her attorney. "I want everybody involved to know I deeply regret everything that happened that day. I know that nothing I say is going to make this right and nothing I say is going to fix what I broke."

Leutner family spokesman Steve Lyons said they were pleased with the sentence.

"They believe that justice was served," Lyons said. "The sentence today allows for some additional closure for Payton and her family and it also keeps both Payton, her family and the community safe."

Leutner's mother, Stacie Leutner, sent the judge a letter this week in which she wrote that the trauma of the attack "has defined our lives" and that her daughter still fears for her life. For months, Payton slept with scissors under her pillow for protection, and she still keeps her bedroom windows closed and locked.

"She will struggle with the events of that day and physical and emotional scars it left for the rest of her life," her mother wrote.

In her letter, Leutner did not ask the judge to sentence Weier to a specific length of time in the mental hospital, but she said her daughter wouldn't feel safe if either of her attackers is released back into the community unsupervised.

"Payton has a lifetime of healing ahead of her and she deserves to be allowed to heal in an environment where she feels safe," her mother wrote.

No one from the victim's family addressed the court during the sentencing hearing, deferring instead to the letter from her mother. Prosecutor Kevin Osborne argued for the maximum 25-year confinement, which the judge granted citing ongoing concerns about her mental stability.

"Considering the nature and gravity of this offense, being supervised until the age of 37 is not all that long ... in terms of the fact that Payton is looking at a lifetime of scars, physical scars and psychological scarring," Osborne said.

Weier's attorney, Maura McMahon, argued that she should not be hospitalized beyond her 25th birthday. She played a video in court with Weier's father, sister and grandparents speaking on her behalf.

"She's grown mentally and physically," her father, William Weier, said. "She knows what she did was wrong."

He asked for forgiveness from the Leutner family.

In a deal with prosecutors, Geyser, who did the stabbing, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide with the agreement that she isn't criminally responsible and shouldn't go to prison. She will be sentenced in February, and prosecutors have asked that she be given at least 40 years in a mental hospital.

Slender Man started with an online post in 2009, as a mysterious specter whose image people edit into everyday scenes of children at play. He is typically depicted as a spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He was regarded by his devotees as alternately a sinister force and an avenging angel.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide, not first-degree intentional homicide.

___

Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAP and sign up for the AP's weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas at http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv .

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2017 file photo, Anissa Weier, listens as former teachers testify during her trial in Waukesha County Court, in Waukesha, Wis. One of the two Wisconsin girls accused of stabbing a classmate, Payton Leuter, in 2014 to gain the favor of a horror character named Slender Man will soon learn how long she will spend in a mental health facility. A judge in Waukesha County Circuit Court on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, is expected to send 16-year-old Weier to a facility for at least three years after she was previously found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. (Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, Pool, File)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - A college student's tweet has led to $190,000 being donated to a Tennessee hospital across the country from her.

The Commercial Appeal reports the Nov. 25 tweet from 19-year-old Danni Messina resulted in her endorsing a check Wednesday morning in Memphis for the donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The Seattle native attending Washington State University had pledged to donate 25 cents for each "like" her tweet received and 50 cents for every retweet.

Messina's plan was to donate $1,000 to the hospital, but the tweet went viral and required a roughly $50,000 donation. A GoFundMe page was created to help, and after St. Jude discovered it, the hospital teamed her up with corporate partner Kmart to raise funds.

Messina says it's been "heart-warming," and "insane."

___

Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com
A man faces trial next summer over an alleged plot to assassinate the Prime Minister in a bomb and knife attack on Downing Street.

Naaimur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, was charged with preparing acts of terrorism following his arrest on November 28.

According to the charge, he conducted reconnaissance of the target location, recorded a pledge of allegiance, purchased a rucksack, delivered a rucksack and bag to be fitted with an improvised explosive device and collected it with a view to committing attacks against persons in the UK.

Rahman is alleged to have planned a bomb and knife attack on Downing Street (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

The Bangladeshi defendant, of Ballards Lane in Finchley, north London, also allegedly assisted 21-year-old Mohammad Aqib Imran in his terror plans.

On or before November 28, he recorded and sent to Imran a sponsorship video in order for him to be accepted by Islamic State, the charge says.

Imran, of Ombersley Road in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham, allegedly tried to join IS and faces a charge of preparing acts of terrorism.

His charge alleges he saved money to pay for a fake passport and travel to Libya, communicated with another online and sent two photos of his passport data to secure a fake passport.

Libyan flag

He made online research into travel options and terrorist publications and had an Islamic State sponsorship video sent by Rahman, the charge says.

He also downloaded How to survive in the West  a Mujahids guide 2015, it is claimed.

The pair appeared before Mr Justice Haddon-Cave by video link from custody for the hearing to set a timetable for the case.

The senior judge set a trial before him at the Old Bailey from June 18.

He estimated the case would last up to five weeks.

A plea hearing will take place on June 4, the judge said.

The defendants, who were produced from Belmarsh jail, were remanded into custody.
A father of five who began a new life as a woman after leaving an ultra-orthodox Jewish community has won the latest round of a legal fight over her children.

The woman had stopped seeing the youngsters after leaving the North Manchester Charedi Jewish community more than two years ago.

She wants to be sensitively re-introduced to them.

But her estranged wife said allowing the children to see their father could lead to them being ostracised by the community.

Earlier this year a High Court judge concluded that the children should not see their father, but should be allowed to exchange letters and cards.

Mr Justice Peter Jackson had made decisions after analysing the case at a private family court hearing in Manchester.

Three Court of Appeal judges have now decided that the case should be reviewed after the childrens father challenged Mr Justice Jacksons decision.

Sir James Munby, who headed a panel of appeal judges overseeing a case involving a father of five now living as a woman (Judicial Office)

Sir James Munby, Lady Justice Arden and Lord Justice Singh had analysed the case at a Court of Appeal hearing in London in November.

They said issues would be reconsidered by another High Court judge.

Sir James said Mr Justice Jackson could not review the case because since making the ruling he had been promoted to a new job.

Mr Justice Jackson was based in the Family Division of the High Court when he analysed the case.

He has since been made a Court of Appeal judge and is now Lord Justice Jackson.

Sir James said Mr Justice Hayden, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court, would re-analyse issues at a fresh hearing.

The family involved has never been identified by judges.

The three appeal judges announced their decision in a ruling published on Wednesday.

They said they had upheld a number of complaints the man had made about Mr Justice Jacksons decisions.

First, the judge, having arrived at his conclusion, did not at that point step back and ask himself what were a number of highly pertinent questions, said Sir James, who is the president of the Family Division of the High Court and the most senior family court judge in England and Wales, in the appeal court ruling.

For example, he should have asked himself: how do I, indeed, how can I, properly accommodate this conclusion with my role as the judicial reasonable parent applying the standards of reasonable men and women today?

Secondly, it is unfortunate that the judge did not address head on the human rights issues and issues of discrimination which arose.

Sir James said there was much force in an argument that Mr Justice Jackson had not sufficiently explained why, given the objections to direct contact, it was feasible to contemplate indirect contact.

He added: (We were) of the view that there was considerable substance in the complaint that the judge gave up too easily and decided the question of direct contact then and there without directing even a single attempt to try and make it work.

The childrens father had been represented by a legal team made up of barristers Alison Ball QC and Hassan Khan and solicitors Colin Rogerson and Anne-Marie Hutchinson, who are based at law firm Dawson Cornwell.

A Dawson Cornwell spokeswoman said after the Court of Appeal ruling: This decision is one that will be welcomed not just by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals living within small religious groups, but by the LGBT community in general.

It sends a clear message that no religious community can operate on their own island but must conform to the law of the land.
This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later!
Plunging temperatures since the start of December have triggered the biggest spending on cold weather payments for five years.

Some 18 million is estimated to have been paid out by the Government so far this month, including 8.4 million to people in Scotland.

A further 8 million has gone to individuals in England while 1.6 million has been paid out in Wales.

Cold weather payments in Great Britain.

The total for the whole of Britain is already more than double the amount paid in 2016/17 (3.1 million) and 2015/16 (3.9 million). But the figure is still well below the 141.7 million paid in 2012/13.

The Governments cold weather payment scheme runs each year from November 1 to March 31.

 Cold Weather Payments for G31,G32,G33,G34,G40,G69&G71 have been triggered for period 8/12 to 14/12.



 If you're on UC, income related employment personal support allowance, income support, income based JSA or pension credit you should receive 25 payment automatically. pic.twitter.com/DKWICcMeOD  David Linden MP (@DavidLinden) December 19, 2017

Payments are triggered by data collected by the Met Office from 94 weather stations around Britain.

A sum of 25 is automatically paid to eligible people in every area where a weather station shows the average temperature has dropped, or is forecast to drop, to zero degrees Celsius or below for seven days in a row.

Many parts of the country have seen temperatures regularly fall below freezing this month.

The night of December 11/12 was the coldest of the year so far, with minus 9.1C (15.6F) recorded in Drumnadrochit in the Scottish Highlands, minus 10.1C (13.8F) in Llysdinam in Powys, and minus 13C (8.6F) in Shawbury in Shropshire.

It's officially the coldest night of the year so far with a freezing minus 13 C at Shawbury in Shropshire #brrrr pic.twitter.com/wMiM1rGv2E  Met Office (@metoffice) December 12, 2017

Todays figures, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, show that so far this month 3.4 million is estimated to have been spent on cold weather payments to 138,000 people covered by the Bishopton weather station in Scotland, which includes the cities of Glasgow and Paisley.

A similar amount has been spent on 134,000 individuals within the area of Albemarle station, which covers the cities of Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland.

Under the scheme, payments go to older people in receipt of Pension Credit, along with disabled adults, families with a disabled child or families with a child under five who are in receipt of one of the following benefits: income-based Jobseekers Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support or Universal Credit.

The money is paid to the recipient within 14 days.
EE and Three have lost separate High Court cases over caps on the amount of mobile spectrum any network can control, a move which opens the door for long-awaited 4G and 5G auctions.

Both companies took issue with Ofcoms plans to cap the amount of mobile spectrum that any operator can own at 37%  a move which BTs EE challenged for being too rigid, while Three was concerned that the allowance was too generous.

BT/EE holds 45% of all usable mobile spectrum, while Three owns around 12%.

The High Court found that Ofcom had engaged in a detailed predictive analysis of how the market would work in the future and consulted economic models which struck a balance between protecting consumers and competition and setting restrictive caps which were not disproportionate to BT/EE.

The balance exercise was sound, the High Court found following a three-day hearing earlier this month.

Ofcom welcomed the ruling, which had delayed its auction of airwaves to support the expansion of 4G and 5G in the UK.

BTs EE challenged the mobile spectrum cap introduced by Ofcom (PA)

A spokesman for Ofcom said: We welcome the High Courts judgment.

Our priority has always been to release these airwaves as soon as possible so customers can get more reliable mobile phone reception.

Well now proceed with the auction as quickly as possible.

Ofcoms cap means BT/EE will not be able to bid for spectrum in the 2.3GHz band and Vodafone can bid for a maximum 160MHz of spectrum across both the 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz bands.

But EE will not be forced to divest any part of its mobile spectrum, as the regulator expects that EEs market share will be diluted over time as new spectrum is auctioned off in the coming years.

However, Three is currently seeking permission to appeal against the ruling.

We are disappointed by the initial ruling of the court as a fairer distribution of spectrum is vital for UK consumers and the digital economy, Three said.

Ofcom does not expect 5G to roll out in the UK until 2019/20 at the earliest, so this will have no impact on the delivery of this new technology.

But Ofcom said Threes potential appeal risked pushing back the auction date.

We believe the High Court judgment is clear and Threes actions may further delay the auction, which is not in the interests of the UK, the Ofcom spokesman said.

Rival mobile network operator O2, which holds around 15% of all usable mobile spectrum, said it was imperative that the industry does everything in its power to avoid further delays.

Chief executive Mark Evans said: Im calling on Ofcom to move forward and set a date for the auction as soon as possible.

This is in the interests of businesses and consumers across the UK.

Some of the frequencies can be used immediately to improve customer experience, boost investment in digital connectivity and deliver economic growth.

There is simply no time to waste.
Meghan Markle was all smiles and Prince Harry waved to the crowds after the couple enjoyed a Buckingham Palace festive lunch with members of the royal family.

Ms Markle may not yet be a member of the monarchy but she was treated like one after sitting down to a Christmas meal with the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh and their extended family.

1 Page 1: 13:04 (with stills) Meghan Markle has joined fiance Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace for the the royal family's Christmas lunch. The Queen traditionally hosts a festive lunch for her family before leaving for her private Sandringham estate, where she spend the holidays. The prince and his fiancee will be married on May 19 at Windsor Castle's St George's Chapel - an event which will be one of the royal highlights of 2018. It has already been confirmed that Ms Markle will be part of the royal party at Sandringham for Christmas. Her appearance at the Buckingham Palace lunch is another indication of how quickly she has been accepted into the monarchy ahead of the wedding. Harry and Meghan got engaged on November 27 (Jonathan Brady/PA)

The monarch and her consort traditionally host a lunch for their family before leaving for their private Sandringham estate, where the couple spend the holidays.

It is a chance for relatives to meet and catch-up  especially those who will not be joining the Queen at her Norfolk home over the festive period.

Harry will have likely introduced his fiancee to relatives like Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Alexandra who are unlikely to have met the US former actress.

Prince Harry drove his fiancee to the palace in a Range Rover (Philip Toscano/PA)

The couple got engaged on November 27 and a few days later a proud prince introduced his bride-to-be to the nation during a series of official events in Nottingham.

It has already been confirmed that Ms Markle will be part of the royal party at Sandringham for Christmas.

The prince drove his partner to Buckingham Palace in a Land Rover Discovery, arriving just before 1pm, and was smartly dressed in a suit, shirt and tie while the former Suits actress wore a Self-Portrait midi dress.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also attended the lunch (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Also among the guests were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who arrived with their two children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, and their Spanish nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were also invited as were Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, and a number of other minor members of the royal family like the Duke and Duchess of Kent.

Lunch probably finished around 2.30pm as guests began leaving 15 minutes later with the prince and Ms Markle driving away at 2.55pm.

Harry and his fiancee will be married on May 19 at Windsor Castles St Georges Chapel  an event which will be one of the royal highlights of 2018.
Voters are returning to the polls in Catalonia on Thursday in a regional election called by the Spanish government as a way out of the areas political crisis.

In Barcelona, the regions cosmopolitan capital, there is no sign of the independent country that Catalonias former leaders proclaimed with great fanfare nearly two months ago.

The Catalan independence movements leaders are in jail or have fled the country after staging a brazen October 1 referendum on secession which was declared illegal by Spains government and highest court.

Ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont appears via video link from Brussels during the electoral campaign for the Catalan regional election (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

Catalonia has been left deeply polarised by this autumns dramatic events.

Friendships have been broken and families split. Many Catalans who had mixed feelings about independence, or did not care about the issue much, now feel compelled to take a position.

Gabriel Brau, a 50-year-old photographer with little interest in politics, said he will vote for the first time since the 1980s, and it will be for one of the parties that favours independence. Or rather, it will be against those who do not, because he finds them complicit in Spains crackdown.

During the October referendum, Spanish police using rubber bullets and truncheons against voters and formed human barriers to keep them out of polling stations.

Mr Brau said: What happened on October 1 affected me in a powerful way.

I was thinking: What if they did that to my son? That is not democracy.  I dont want these people to govern my country.

The other side has also been galvanised.

Catalans who oppose independence previously kept a low profile. Coming out as a unionist, they said, would have resulted in scorn, insults and even accusations of treason from pro-independence friends and neighbours.

Barcelona protest

But in the aftermath of the referendum they gathered for the first time in mass rallies similar in size to those achieved by the independence movement.

Cristina Calaco, 51, said she was so appalled by the way the secessionist leaders unilaterally pushed through the referendum, I wanted to pack my bags and leave Catalonia.

After seeing unionists with Spanish flags on the streets, she was emboldened to publicly display her allegiance to Spain.

These days, when pro-independence neighbours bang pots and pans in noisy balcony protests, she said she opens her window and shouts Viva Espana  long live Spain.

Spains heavy-handed response may have raised eyebrows in Europe, but it did not lead to any significant support for Catalan secession.

No European Union country has recognised the declaration of independence that Catalonias parliament adopted on October 27.

On the surface, independence now seems further away than before the referendum. The Spanish government applied never-before-used constitutional powers take direct control of the region. The plan is to restore autonomy after Thursdays election produces a new regional government.

However, the Catalans supporting a total break-up with Spain now seem more committed than ever, saying the governments tough response showed the true nature of the Spanish state.

They dont realise how many people they converted, said Ana Pousa, 38, who was born in the north-western Galicia region but grew up in Catalonia and now hesitates to call herself Spanish.
A 16-year-old youth has been found guilty of stabbing his former friend to death with a meat cleaver after a row on Snapchat spiralled out of control.

The boy, who cannot be identified, had sent laughing emojis during a group chat on the social media app when 16-year-old Osman Sharif Soufi, claimed he was the toughest  or certier.

The following day, the two boys met up in Tottenham in north London armed with a knife and a hammer, and within hours, Osman was dead.

Snapchat

Following at trial at the Old Bailey, the defendant, who had been hoping to study plumbing at college, was found guilty of his murder and possession of a knife.

The defendant slammed his fists into the dock as the jury convicted him of murder by a majority of 11 to one after more than 15 hours of deliberations.

Adjourning sentencing for reports until January 26, Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC told jurors it was a desperately sad case which had devastated the victims family.

He said: This demonstrates yet again the terrible problem we have with young people and knife crime.

The court had heard how the pair had known each other from around the neighbourhood for about two years before the killing on June 6.

Osman took offence at being mocked in front of the group on Snapchat and the argument rapidly escalated.

The student had allegedly threatened to wet (stab) the defendant, give him a drilling (beat him up) and rise the burning (get a gun), according to another boy.

The following day, the defendant armed himself with a 31cm knife and went to Tottenham Green to confront the Osman, who had a hammer, according to witnesses.

The pair argued and witnesses claimed the defendant was waving his knife around before they split up and went separate ways.

Ten minutes later, they clashed in nearby Tynemouth Road and the youth stabbed Osman in the chest, causing devastating injuries.

The defendant fled to the Broadwater Farm Estate then went to grandparents home and changed his clothes.

But his father called police and reported his son had been in a fight and he was arrested.

Giving evidence, the defendant, who sat in court with his mother, claimed it was an accident and also that he was acting in self defence and did not mean to do him serious harm.
A ferry with more than 250 passengers and crew has capsized in stormy seas off the north-east coast of the Philippines.

About 240 people have been rescued, some with injuries, but at least four people have died and seven others are missing.

The M/V Mercraft 3 sank in the Polillo Strait between Quezon provinces Infanta town and the ferrys destination, Polillo island, officials said.

Passengers climb off a rescue boat in Infanta township, Quezon (DJ Kyle/AP)

A survivor, Donel Jade Mendiola, told DZMM radio that bad weather briefly delayed the ferrys departure, but the weather improved and the vessel then left from Quezons Real town. Strong winds and large waves started to lash it about two hours into the trip, he said.

The vessel came to a halt and started taking on water in the front side. The passengers dashed to one side and the ferry started to sink, Mr Mendiola said. He said the passengers were instructed to don life jackets.

Coast guard boats, navy vessels and fishing boats rescued 240 people, including many who drifted in the rough sea, coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said, adding that the 206-tonne ferry could carry 286 people and apparently was not overcrowded.

Coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo points at an area on the map where the ferry began sinking (Aaron Favila/AP)

Among the survivors taken to a Quezon hospital was a 61-year-old Australian identified by authorities as Roland Kempt, who lives in the Philippines, the coast guard said in a statement.

The dead consisted of two men and two women, Quezon officials said.

Earlier this week, a tropical storm left more than 50 people dead and 31 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines before weakening and blowing into the South China Sea. The storm drenched Quezon province on the southern tip of northern Luzon island, but there were no storm warnings when Mercraft 3 sailed out, officials said.

Rescue efforts will continue after nightfall despite rough waves, Mr Balilo said, adding that a coast guard helicopter tried to fly to the area earlier in the day but was hampered by strong winds.

Many of those rescued were taken to a government emergency hall in Dinahican village in Infanta, where Quezon officials brought clothes, food, water and medicine, Juanito Diaz, who heads Quezons disaster-response agency, said.

Frequent storms, badly maintained vessels and weak enforcement of safety regulations have been blamed for past accidents at sea in the Philippines, including on December 20 1987, when the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the worlds worst peacetime maritime disaster.
Scotlands First Minister has said any lessons from the investigation into a fatal fire at a luxury hotel will be learned.

Nicola Sturgeon gave the assurance in the wake of the blaze at the five-star Cameron House Hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond on Monday.

Guests Simon Midgley, 32, and Richard Dyson, 38, from London, died in the fire while a family of two adults and a child were rescued by ladder.

This is absolutely dreadful news. My heart goes out to the loved ones of those who have died, and to all those affected. My thanks also to our brave firefighters and emergency services. https://t.co/JnIbVs6vHr  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) December 18, 2017

Local Dumbarton MSP Jackie Baillie was reduced to tears as she raised the tragedy in the Holyrood chamber during First Ministers Questions.

Ms Baillie sent her condolences to the families of Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson and praised the emergency services for their actions.

She said: The investigation has yet to start because the building needs to be made safe, but can I ask the First Minister, when the investigation is complete, will she ensure that lessons are learned, whether thats in practice or if there is indeed a need to enhance building standards regulations?

Devastating news about the fire at Cameron House. So terrible to hear of casualties at this time of year. Thanks to the emergency services who have been working all morning to get the fire under control.  Jackie Baillie (@jackiebmsp) December 18, 2017

Ms Sturgeon responded: I want today to convey my deepest condolences to the families of the two young men who died and send my thoughts to all of those who were affected by this tragedy.

This horrific event demonstrates once again how our firefighters so willingly put themselves in the line of danger to assist others on a daily basis and I know the whole chamber will want to send our grateful thanks to our firefighters and to all of our emergency services who responded.

Of course there will be a thorough investigation into what happened at Cameron House and it is important that that investigation is allowed to run its course, but I can give an assurance today that the Scottish Government, with our partners and indeed with the owners of Cameron House Hotel, will make sure that any lessons that emerge from that investigation are learned and fully applied.

Nicola Sturgeon

More than 70 firefighters fought the early morning blaze at the resort, which caused significant damage to the hotel roof.One of the men died at the scene and the other died at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley.
Carl Frampton will take on former four-weight world champion Nonito Donaire in Belfast on April 7.

Frampton is building towards another shot at a world title in the featherweight division and his bout with Donaire will be his second after splitting with Barry McGuigans Cyclone Promotions and his trainer son Shane earlier this year.

Promoter Frank Warren confirmed Framptons opponent at a press conference, screened on BoxNations Facebook page, for Billy Joe Saunders homecoming following his successful WBO middleweight title defence last weekend.

Carl Frampton split from promoter Barry McGuigan earlier this year (Simon Cooper/PA)

Warren said: On 7 April well be in Belfast where Carl Frampton will be fighting Donaire. Its a real cracking fight, a good fight for him and well be giving further details in the new year.

The Northern Irishman was given a stern test by the unheralded Horacio Garcia last month before eking out a points win and will return to the SSE Arena to take on Donaire (38-4, 24KOs).

The 35-year-old Filipino has won world belts in the flyweight, bantamweight, super-bantamweight and featherweight divisions and was at one stage rated among the best pound-for-pound fighters.

He has won six of his last seven bouts and will be seen as a tough test even though he is widely considered to be past his peak.

A good fighter eh? Only average a few weeks back,

Whats changed?

Doubt?

Time will tell ...

#2018 #Andthenew #destined

 pic.twitter.com/hBbRZV5xRU  Josh Warrington (@J_Warrington) December 17, 2017

Victory for Frampton (24-1, 14KOs), who suffered his first professional defeat in January when he was beaten by Leo Santa Cruz in their rematch, could set up an opportunity to fight for a world crown at Windsor Park next year.

Two possible opponents are domestic foes Lee Selby and Josh Warrington, who are scheduled to fight for the formers IBF featherweight title in Leeds next year.

Warren added: Selby-Warrington is a done deal, thats signed, and well be announcing a date for that in the next few weeks. Itll be in Leeds.
BEIJING/TAIPEI, Dec 20 (Reuters) - China has expressed its strong opposition and concern after the Taiwan government began a probe into a tiny but passionately pro-China opposition party for national security reasons, the latest flashpoint between Beijing and Taipei.

Taiwanese investigators searched the homes of four officials from the New Party, which currently has no members of parliament, on Tuesday on suspicion they had violated the National Security Act.

A New Party delegation, including at least one of those whose homes was raided, party spokesman Wang Ping-chung, visited China last week as part of a scheduled trip to meet China's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office.

The New Party has denounced the raids as politically motivated, although Taiwanese prosecutors and the government have not given details of what they are suspected of.

Party chairman Yok Mu-ming, cited in Taiwanese media, wondered how such a small party with no legislators could be considered to have any secrets, and said that they had nothing to fear from the investigation.

In a short statement released late on Tuesday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office praised the New Party for its stance in opposing Taiwan independence and upholding the "one China" principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China.

"Recently, the Taiwan authorities have shielded and connived with Taiwan independent splittists, and taken various moves to wantonly crack down on and persecute forces and people who uphold peaceful reunification," it said.

"We strongly condemn this and are paying close attention to developments," the office said.

The New Party broke off from the Nationalists, who once ruled all of China, in 1993. Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists.

Relations between China and Taiwan have soured since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year. China suspects she wants to push for Taiwan's formal independence.

Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan's security.

The Chinese military has stepped up air force patrols around Taiwan in recent weeks. China has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province under Chinese control. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Jess Macy Yu; Editing by Paul Tait)
KIEV, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund said its board had approved the disbursement of a loan tranche to Moldova worth about $22 million.

The IMF and the ex-Soviet country agreed in November 2016 a three-year loan program worth $183 million, after negotiations had earlier been disrupted by a $1 billion corruption scandal that plunged the country into turmoil.

The fund, in announcing the disbursement on Wednesday, said the Moldovan economy had stabilised since the recent banking crisis and forecast growth of around 3 percent in 2018, but warned that substantial risks remained.

"Moldova continues to make important progress in strengthening macroeconomic and financial stability," said the IMF's deputy managing director and acting chair, Mitsuhiro Furusawa.

"Nevertheless, significant challenges remain for progress to become irreversible," he said in a statement, advising the authorities continue efforts to clean up banks' balance sheets, among other recommendations.

In 2015 Moldova's negotiations with the IMF and the European Union on funding were disrupted by the disappearance of the equivalent of one eighth of national output from Moldova's banking system, which triggered an economic and political crisis.

The shock to the banking sector caused the economy to shrink 0.5 percent in 2015, although it returned to growth in 2016, expanding 4.1 percent. (Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Tom Brown)
MANILA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The Philippines is beefing up cybersecurity measures prior to the expected entry of Chinese firms in its telecoms industry, the president's spokesman said on Thursday, amid concerns that national security could be at risk.

Several senators have spoken out about allowing Chinese state-run firms to build and manage crucial internet and telecoms system, given the two nations' history of bitter mistrust and Beijing's reputation for technological expertise.

"They should not worry because the government is already worried," presidential spokesman Harry Roque told a regular news briefing.

Regulators had been ordered to take all measures to protect the country's cybersecurity with the likely entry of China Telecom Corp Ltd, Roque added.

The Philippines and China now enjoy warm relations under President Rodrigo Duterte, who, unlike his predecessors, has set aside a territorial spat over sovereignty in the South China Sea to tap China for loans, investments, expertise and trade.

Duterte last month offered Beijing a chance to challenge the dominant carriers PLDT Inc and Globe Telecom Inc . He wants a third telecoms player to start operations in the first quarter next year, to break a duopoly and boost competition and service quality.

Beijing has chosen China Telecom, which needs to partner with a Philippine company because of a 40-percent cap on foreign ownership of domestic telecoms firms.

PLDT and Globe declined to comment on Thursday. PLDT announced it had allotted a record sum of at least 50 billion pesos ($997 million) for capital expenses next year as it prepares to take on a competitor. ($1=50.1500 Philippine pesos) (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Clarence Fernandez)
KIEV, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Ukraine's state security service SBU have detained a government official on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said on Thursday.

"Together with the Security Service of Ukraine, an official in the government's secretariat was found to be working for a long time in the interests of the enemy state. He was detained," Groysman said on Facebook.

Neither he nor the SBU named the position or name of the detained official.

The SBU said in a statement that the official was recruited by Russian agents while he travelled abroad. It said the official had been collecting information about the activities of the government.

Ukraine and Russia were once allies whose intelligence agencies often worked closely together, but relations deteriorated after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Alessandra Prentice and Angus MacSwan)
By Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar

MOGADISHU, Dec 22 (Reuters) - A court in Somalia on Thursday released without charge a former minister and government critic who spent two days in jail after being arrested for alleged treason, an arrest which ignited a smouldering political crisis for the fragile government.

Abdirahman Abdishakur was released after the attorney general, who had ordered his arrest, had failed to bring evidence against him, Judge Aweys Sheikh Abdullahi told a courtroom.

He was released at midnight after reconciliation efforts between the government and traditional leaders before Thursday's court ruling, Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman said.

Somali attorney general Ahmed Ali Dahir said he planned to appeal the ruling and criticised the court for not granting him five extra days to investigate as he had requested.

"The case is in its first phase," he told reporters. "The attorney general's office was not given the investigation period it asked for."

Earlier this week, Dahir had described Abdishakur's house as a hub for the opposition and a gathering point for people who wanted to replace the government.

The arrest of Abdishakur, who ran in the February election won by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, followed mounting pressure on the president and his U.N.-backed government to end an Islamist insurgency.

On Wednesday, some Somali lawmakers said they planned to impeach the president. Parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters.

The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency.

Islamist militants al Shabaab have been stepping up pressure on Mohamed's government by staging frequent and increasingly large-scale bombings against both civilian and military targets in recent months in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere.

The group is fighting to expel African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM from Somalia, topple the federal government and impose rule based on its strict interpretation of Islam's sharia law.

More than 500 people were killed in twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu in October while this month a suicide bomber killed at least 18 people at a Mogadishu police academy.

Early on Thursday, al Shabaab militants ambushed three vehicles belonging to the military's U.S.-trained special forces unit Danab on a road between Mogadishu and the town of Wanlaweyn.

The group said it seized the three cars while residents said they saw two burning cars.

Police Major Ahmed Nur told Reuters al Shabaab had targeted the convoy with a roadside bomb before ambushing it.

"We sent reinforcement to the area but we believe many died from both sides," he said.

"We ambushed the so-called military commandos and took their pickups," Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaabs military operation spokesman, said.

Somalia has been locked in lawlessness and violence since the early 1990s, following the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

(Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Alison Williams)
VILNIUS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Software from Moscow-based company Kaspersky Lab is a threat to Lithuanian national security and its products will be banned on sensitive computers, Lithuania's government said on Thursday. It is the latest setback for the software maker.

The software will be removed from computers that control critical infrastructure such as energy, finance or transport including those run by private companies. Government agencies can only continue running it if their computers are not deemed sensitive by the cybersecurity agency.

Kaspersky's anti-virus software was banned from U.S. government networks this year because of concerns the company has close ties to intelligence agencies in Moscow and that its software could be used to enable Russian spying.

This month Britain's main cyber security agency warned British government agencies to avoid using anti-virus software from Russian companies.

The Lithuanian government said in a statement Kaspersky Labs software was "a potential threat to ... national security".

"Information from computers using the software can leak into countries where we don't want it to end up," Rytis Rainys, deputy director at the state cybersecurity agency told Reuters.

"We drew on various sources for the conclusion, including information from our partners and intelligence sources."

Kaspersky Labs was not immediately available for a comment.

The company has repeatedly denied it has ties to any government and said it would not help a government with cyber espionage. It also says it is a scapegoat given tension between Washington and Moscow. (Reporting By Andrius Sytas; Editing by Johan Ahlander and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
By Ece Toksabay

ANKARA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan called the UAE foreign minister impertinent on Thursday after he retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One.

Without naming him, Erdogan said UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan - who shared a tweet accusing Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha of stealing money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916 - was ignorant.

"Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has," Erdogan told an awards ceremony at his Ankara palace.

"When my ancestors were defending Medina, you impudent (man), where were yours? First, you have to give account for this," he added. The UAE charge d'affaires in Ankara was summoned to the foreign ministry over the matter, a ministry official said.

The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan's Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces the UAE opposes across the Arab world.

Relations were further strained by Ankaras support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf emirate in June.

Two months later, Sheikh Abdullah criticised what he called Turkey and Irans "colonial" actions in Syria, though Turkey and the UAE have both opposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Medina, now part of Saudi Arabia, was under Ottoman rule until the empire's collapse at the end of World War One.

On Wednesday, Erdogan said Fakhreddin Pasha, who led the Ottoman forces, had not stolen from Medina or its people but strived to protect the city - where the Prophet Muhammad was buried - and its occupants during a time of war.

"Believe me, this man who insulted us, who disrespected us, wouldn't even know what the holy relics are. They are ignorant like this," Erdogan said. (Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton)
ZAGREB, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Domestic suppliers of indebted Croatian food group Agrokor rejected on Thursday a settlement scheme which would include a debt-for-equity swap and a debt write-off.

Agrokor, which owes roughly 5.5 billion euros ($6.5 billion) to some 5,700 creditors including banks, bondholders and suppliers, aims to restructure its debt into a combination of new sustainable debt and equity.

The biggest employer in the Balkans with around 60,000 staff was put into state-run administration in April and has until July 2018 to reach a final deal with creditors to avoid bankruptcy.

"We reject a proposal presented to us because of its unjust treatment of some creditors. Creditors of Agrokor's retail chain Konzum would get the worst terms which is unacceptable," said Marica Vidakovic from the confectionery producer Kras after a meeting between Agrokor's crisis management and suppliers.

Vidakovic is a representative of major local suppliers in the interim creditors' council.

According to the proposal, the creditors will become 100 percent owners and have full operational control of a new holding and its companies. Final percentages of debt recovery have yet to be determined.

Also, those which gave a liquidity loan to Agrokor last June to be able to survive and continue operations and those which have claims secured by a collateral would be in line for repayment first.

Agrokor's domestic suppliers said earlier this month they hoped for a settlement deal which would involve a haircut of up to 30 percent for them and up to 70 percent for banks and bondholders.

The head of Agrokor's crisis management team, Ante Ramljak, said after the meeting that further talks would follow.

"These are initial positions. It was expected that some creditors would not be happy. We've yet to see to what extent some changes might be possible or not," he said.

The final settlement requires the backing of creditors holding at least 66 percent of the claims.

($1 = 0.8429 euros) (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
By Dmitry Solovyov and Tom Miles

MOSCOW/GENEVA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday he would take part in the latest round of Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday, with a month to go before he hopes to break the deadlock in political talks in Geneva.

De Mistura's Geneva peace process reached deadlock this month, missing what said was a "golden opportunity" to close out almost seven years of war.

Blaming intransigence on both sides, he told the U.N. Security Council he would start 2018 with a proposal to involve a wider constituency in constitutional and electoral reform, since the warring sides were stuck.

He said on Thursday he planned to hold the next round in Geneva in the second half of January.

"I am planning to go to Astana just after this meeting," de Mistura said in Moscow at the start of Syrian talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

U.N. timetables routinely slip, but the presence of many of the global power elite at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Jan. 23-26 could also create some political momentum.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have made big gains on the ground since Russia joined the war in late 2015, but the fighting shows no sign of ending conclusively.

De Mistura's humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said that although fewer people were now under siege or out of reach of humanitarian aid, 2017 had defied expectations by being worse than 2016 in many respects, and fewer aid convoys were going in.

"In December we havent reached a single soul (in besieged areas)," Egeland told reporters in Geneva.

He hoped Astana might bring a cessation of hostilities in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, where Assad's forces are besieging almost 400,000 people. U.N. aid convoys are waiting for Syria's government to give them a green light. Food prices have risen eightfold since August, Egeland said.

"495 people were on the priority lists for medical evacuations. That number is going down. Not because we are evacuating people, but because they are dying."

Russia, Iran, China, Egypt, Algeria and Iraq could all bring their influence to bear, he said.

"If we are going to get out of this quagmire it is because there will be political agreements, really. So I hope that out of the Astana meetings in the next couple of days we will have some kind of impulse for a change on the humanitarian side." (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov and Tom Miles; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Ralph Boulton)
SOFIA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's competition watchdog fined Austria's EVN and Czech CEZ a total of 5.99 million levs ($3.63 million) on Thursday for breaching competition rules.

The Commission for Protection of Competition imposed a combined fine of 3.79 million levs on two Bulgarian power distribution and supply units of EVN. It also levied a combined fine of 2.19 million levs on two units of CEZ.

The watchdog, which opened its investigation in July, said the companies breached the rules by discriminating against independent traders and restricting electricity trading at freely negotiated prices.

Both CEZ and EVN denied any wrongdoing and said they would appeal the fines.

"We will definitely appeal. We do not agree with the sanctions imposed," spokeswoman for CEZ Bulgaria said.

EVN's regional manager for Bulgaria Robert Dick said the fines were ungrounded and warned that the ruling sent a negative signal to foreign investors.

"We find those fines unfair and unjustified," Dick told a news conference. "These penalties are a bad signal about the foreign investors in Bulgaria," he said.

In a separate ruling a few hours later Bulgaria's Commission for Energy and Water Regulation imposed another combined fine of 6 million levs on EVN after clients complained that their electric metres had been changed without notification.

In response, EVN said the energy regulator's sanction was "obvious excess".

"The disproportion of the sanction leads to conclusions about abuse of power and pressure of state institutions against one of the biggest investors in Bulgaria," Kalina Trifonova, deputy chairman of EVN Bulgaria's managing board, said.

The regulator said it would give more details on the its rulings against EVN on Friday.

Electricity bills are politically sensitive in Bulgaria and protests against high prices toppled a previous government in 2013.

The competition watchdog argued that both EVN and CEZ had applied a common strategy and practices to discriminate against traders that did not belong to their energy groups.

The watchdog has also investigated a third power distributor in the Balkan country, Czech Energo-Pro, and said it would publish its findings on Friday.

The competition watchdog had fined the three foreign power distributors in 2015 for charging unreasonably high prices for the use of the low-voltage grid, restricting competition and acting against the interests of consumers.

EVN, CEZ and Energo-Pro have all opened international arbitration proceedings against Bulgaria, seeking hundreds of millions of euros from the country after a series of regulatory decisions linked with the pricing of electricity.

($1 = 1.6484 leva) (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova and Angel Krasimirov; editing by Mark Heinrich, David Evans and Jane Merriman)
Nominations closed yesterday for one of Sri Lankas biggest ever elections to 341 Municipal, Urban Council and Pradeshiya Sabhas. Under the new electoral system and the latest gazette notification on the polls the number of candidates to be elected will virtually double from 4,486 to 8,356.

Sixty percent of them will be elected on a ward basis while 40 percent will be on the old proportional representation system. This mix is widely acclaimed as a good balance and practised in many

democratic countries. More significantly 25 percent of the candidates on the nomination list were reserved for women by law and we hope this would bring about a change because history has shown that without the feminine input, insight and instinct, decision-making could be somewhat unbalanced.



Elections Commissions Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya, top members of the commission and the provincial councils and local government ministrys legal secretary, in a TV debate on Wednesday, clarified various issues regarding the mixed electoral system and other factors. In the audience were students from the Colombo Universitys Law Faculty. While welcoming the move to reserve 25 percent of the seats for women they expressed concern over the calibre of the nominated women amid reports that some parties had virtually forced even apparently incapable women to put their names on the list.

Initially there may be problems like this, but we hope as we go on the women will play an important and skilful role as local council politicians and pave the way for them to come to the national parliament. The most important factor is for the elected women and men also to realise that their primary role is to be servant leaders of the people and not to do business and misuse or abuse their authority as we have seen often in local and national politics.



Mr. Deshapriya and other officials pointed out that with the closure of nominations yesterday, the Election Commission had wide powers including police powers to ensure a free and fair election campaign and polling on Election Day. Mr. Deshapriya specially reiterated the latest rules and regulations which had been blatantly violated in elections held before 2015 with life size cut outs of one candidate being erected in various parts of the country. The Election Commission Chairman said such cut outs, posters and distribution of pamphlets or other propaganda work could be carried out only at the venue of election rallies and anyone or party violating this or other rules would be dealt with severely by the Commission and the police.



It was pointed out in the interview that even in 1972 more than 8000 candidates were elected at countrywide Gamsabha elections. The difference was that those candidates were not paid a big salary and given other allowances from the peoples money. In the February 10 election the local council representatives will be paid and we hope they will work for the common good and welfare of all people and for Sri Lanka to achieve its vision 2025 economic goal with the creation of a just, peaceful and all

inclusive society.



Mr. Deshapriya said he had one big regret. Despite repeated appeals by him, the government had not passed a law to hold local, provincial and national elections on a scheduled day just as in the United States where Presidential and congressional elections are held on schedule on the first Tuesday of November. Congressional polls are held every two years and the Presidential election once in four years.



In Sri Lanka the practice has been for the government to hold the elections at a time apparently beneficial to it and we hope the new electoral system with all its positive features will be made even better with scheduled days being fixed for the polls.
A man and a woman were arrested this morning on the charges of allegedly operating a packaging center for imported intoxicating herbs under the guise of a printing shop, police media division said.

Police said the herb, imported from Zambia was packed as 1 Kg herbal green tea and exported to the USA and the United Kingdom.



The 31-year-old man and the 18-year-old woman were arrested when they were caught red handed packing 542 Kg of the plant.

Police said the plant was imported from Zambia.

The suspects, residents of Kelaniya and Wellampitiya, were produced before the Maligakanda Magistrate today. (Chaturanga Pradeep)
What marks the beginning of the holiday season for you? Is it the streets lined with bright lights, the roadside stalls selling all the Christmas finery, the merry carols playing over the FM or the smell of the dried fruits and spices of delicious Christmas cake? Or could it be the sight of that first Coca-Cola holiday advertisement?

For many of us, Coca-Cola is indeed the brand that comes to mind when getting into the holiday spirit. Truly, Christmas just isnt Christmas without the plump, smiling visage of Santa Claus in his signature red suit, armed with presents, going Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas! bringing a smile to the faces of adults and children alike. While Santa Claus has become synonymous with Christmas, he has also become the face of the worlds best-loved cola, Coca-Cola.

Although the Santa in red image may have been standardized before Coca-Cola adopted it for their advertisements, Coca-Cola had a great deal to do with establishing Santa Claus as an iconic Christmas figure in America at a time when the holiday was still making the transition from a religious observance to a largely cultural celebration. A regular feature in Coca-Colas seasonal advertising over the decades, in many ways, Santa Claus has become synonymous with the beloved beverage across the world.

Coca-Cola helped shape the modern-day image of Santa. In fact, the way most of us see Santa Claus  friendly and plump with a white beard  came from Coca-Cola advertising. Before these ads, Santa was drawn in a variety of ways  even as a scary elf.

A long time ago, Father Christmas was shown in clothes of different colours: green, purple, light-blue, navy blue, brown or red. Some illustrations even depict him as a multicolour figure wearing blue trousers, a yellow waistcoat and a red jacket. In some cases, he even wore brown, black or white furs. On his head, he used to have a mistletoe crown, a hat, a nightcap, a bishops mitre or a hood.

In 1930, artist Fred Mizen painted a department store Santa in a crowd, drinking a bottle of Coke. The advert featured the worlds largest soda fountain and Mizens painting was thereafter captured in print. Coca-Cola was originally consumed only from soda fountains, but in 1928 drinking from bottles began making its way into homes. By 1937, Coca-Cola bottles had truly risen to popularity, so naturally the holiday ad campaign featured a familiar Santa drinking Coke from a bottle in front of the fridge.

It was in 1931 that the Coca-Cola Company made the decision to start running adverts in popular print magazines and Archie Lee, the executive handling the Coca-Cola account at the DArcy Advertising Agency, wanted a holiday campaign that showed a wholesome Santa. Coca-Cola introduced this new friendly, human image of Santa (created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom) in December 1931. Seeking inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moores 1822 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas , more commonly referred to as Twas the Night Before Christmas. Moores description of St. Nicholas depicted an image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and jovial Santa.

He modelled his creation on Moores poem and his neighbour. The result was incredible and soon the world fell in love with this festive new Santa Claus. Even after his neighbour passed away, Sundblom continued to create his Santa imagery, only he stepped into the role of a model as well.

From 1931-1964, Sundblom created holiday ads for Coca-Cola featuring Santa, and those images continue to be used each year on bottles, cans and 12-packs. During the Depression of the thirties, Sundbloms Santa offered just what people needed at that critical time: a welcome display of warmth and generosity.

As Americans were preparing for war (WWII), Coca-Cola used their 1943 holiday ad campaign to support the war effort by way of showcasing Santa with a Coke in one hand and his toy sack over his shoulder filled with toys and war bonds. Until 1964, Coca-Cola adverts showed Santa delivering toys, pausing to read a letter, enjoying a Coke and visiting children who stayed up to greet him.

Today sharing a Coca-Cola with family and friends during the holiday season is part and parcel of annual festivities. Thanks to Sundblom and Coca-Colas beautiful creation, the snowy white-bearded man, with his rosy cheeks and warm smile that radiates happiness, people around the world have grown to love and cherish a powerful image of Santa that has lived on to delight children and adults alike for nearly a century. Coca-Cola and Santa Claus continue to shape popular culture, a bond which strengthens every year and endures for generations.
A female Palestinian protester waves a Palestinian flag as she throws a stone during clashes with Israeli security forces near the Huwara checkpoint south of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. AFP

Pardon me for visiting you with another article on Jerusalem. This is because I believe Jerusalem is more dangerous a flashpoint than the North Korean missile issue.



More than 100 years ago, a series of events loaded with skullduggery and backstabbing laid the foundation for the violence that the Middle East has been witnessing ever since. Of great historic significance were British spy T.E. Lawrences (better known as Lawrence of Arabia) secret meetings with Arab tribal leaders and Britains pledge to offer the Arabs a kingdom extending from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of Iran  an area covering what is today Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and the large parts of the Arabian Gulf region, including what is todays Saudi Arabia. In return, the Arabs were asked to rebel against their Ottoman caliph, a Turk and Muslim, during World War I.



The promise of a mega Arab kingdom was also made in a series of letters in 1915 between Britains Cairo envoy Henry McMahon and Makkahs governor Sherif Hussein, a great-grandparent of the present day ruler of Jordan.



But when the Arabs launched their revolt in June, 1916 and joined in their hordes the British army in what was condemned by Ottoman Islamic scholars as a breach of Quranic injunctions, the Brits had already stabbed the gullible Arabs in the back. A month before the Arab revolt, unknown to the dimwitted Arab tribal sheikhs, Britain and France signed the so-called Sykes-Picot agreement  named after British diplomat Mark Sykes and French diplomat Georges Picot. They threw Lawrences pledge and McMahons letters into the dustbin of history. In terms of this agreement, the two European powers carved up the Arab territory of the Ottoman regime which allied with Germany and faced defeat in World War 1.



In another knife-in-the-back move, in December 1917, Britain made the outrageous Balfour declaration that allowed European Jews to set up a state in Arab Palestine. A month after this declaration, General Edmund Allenby and his Egyptian Expeditionary Force entered Palestine to formally begin the British colonial rule. But they encountered tough resistance from the Ottoman army in what is known as the Battle of Jerusalem. When Jerusalem fell to Allenbys forces, the then pro-Zionist British Prime Minister David Lloyd George called it a Christmas present for the British people. Call it treachery, betrayal, rebellion, Arabism, or whatever derisive or dignified word, the Arabs are paying a bloody price  the Ottoman scholars would call it divine punishment -- for their support to the Brits. Instead of the promised united Arabia including Palestine, the Arab world was divided into dependent nation states incapable of standing on their own feet  incapable of defending themselves without the help of the Western powers.



What an irony, 100 years after the British double crossing and 70 years after the Arabs lost East Jerusalem in the 1967 war with Israel, it took another Ottoman Sultan in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to come to the aid of the Arabs and Palestinians.



To the Palestinians relief, the Organisation of Islamic Countries is headed by Turkey, instead of a pro-American Arab nation like Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt sent only third level representation to the emergency OIC summit in Istanbul last week. Moreover, the Egyptian-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution on Monday did not even mention the United States by name. Egypt may call it diplomacy, but some may see it as subjugation to the United States, the only sponsor of Israels oppression of Palestinian people in occupied territories.



For Saudi Arabia and its allies such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, the bigger worry than Jerusalem is Irans rise as a regional power. Instead of talking peace with Iran and working out a regional peace arrangement, Saudi Arabia and its allies have thrown their collective weight behind the enemies of the Palestinian cause  the United States and Israel, countries which seem to relish on the Arabs fear of Iran.



In their sectarian-driven vengeful campaign against Iran, the Saudis would not even mind friendship with Israel. Israeli media reports point to regular contacts between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It is also alleged that the United States President Donald Trump had obtained the nod of Saudi Arabia well ahead of his Jerusalem declaration and that there was a behind-the-scenes deal for Saudis to promote Trumps new peace plan without East Jerusalem. A December 3 New York Times report said the Saudis had summoned Palestinian Authority President Abbas to force him to accept Trumps peace plan, where, instead of Jerusalem, the neighbouring town of Abu Dis that overlooks the Dome of the Rock mosque was offered as the Palestinian capital. Independent Palestine would be a collection of small territories with no contiguity.



The Saudis have denied the New York Times reports. On Wednesday, they reiterated their position asserting East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Incidentally, the statement came after a meeting between King Salman and Abbas. It was Abbas second or third visit to the Saudi capital in two months and it came ahead of yesterdays crucial United Nations General Assembly vote on a resolution supporting East Jerusalem as the capital of future Palestinian state. Is Abbas, who has rejected the US as a peace broker, being browbeaten to accept the truncated peace plan of Trump or face a Saudi aid cut?



For Palestinians, it is East Jerusalem or death. But Trump also has taken the Jerusalem issue personally and stepped up his offensive.



The US, isolated on Monday at the UN Security Council where it used its veto power to kill yet another attempt aimed at resolving the Palestinian issue in a peaceful manner through the UN mechanism, took to political thuggery in a depraved bid to stop a UN General Assembly resolution that calls on the world body to denounce Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



Ahead of the resolution which was expected to be passed with a huge majority last night, Nikki Haley, Trumps hit woman at the UN, warned nations that she would report back to the US president with the names of those who support the resolution.



Hailing her highhandedness and forgetting the Christmas spirit, Trump -- perhaps acting like a King Harod and his massacre of the innocents during Christmas -- threatened to cut funding to countries which opposed the US stand. All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council and they vote against us potentially at the Assembly Well, were watching those votes, he said at the White House.



Will the American people take notice of the voting pattern and ask why the United States is isolated? Why is the US hell bent on upholding injustice whereas the rest of the world cries for peace and justice?



It is not North Korea that befits the description the most dangerous country. Rather it is Trumps United States. If the eccentric president can ignore world opinion with regard to climate change and Jerusalem, what guarantees do we have that he would not use nuclear weapons?
The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) today said they were vigilant of any threats to Sri Lankans after the ballistic missile fired by Yemens Houthi group towards Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

SLBFE Media Secretary Nalin Rajapaksha said they had made inquiries from the Sri Lankan Embassy regarding the safety of expatriates working in the region and were assured they faced no threat.

Spokesman for the Ministry Maheshini Kolonne told Daily Mirror that Sri Lankan expatriates in Saudi were not threatened by the incident.

Foreign media reported that the Saudi air defense shot down the missile and said there were no reports of casualties or damages. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)
This Christmas though very much late by generations nevertheless would be ideal for Sinhala Buddhists to join in and enjoy with a determined resolution to work towards an alternative approach that can lift their lives out of misery and poverty

They are all-inclusive innocent mindsets that should be promoted and nurtured

Last weekend I read somewhere, the MEP thats in tow with the flower bud (Pohottuwa) Party with Rajapaksa at its helm, has lost one of their strongest Urban Councils with nominations for the Maharagama UC among few others getting rejected.



How does Maharagama become one of the strongest JO election bids? That same newsreport said it was because leaders like Dinesh Gunawardane, had always dominated the Sinhala Buddhist vote that decided Maharagama vote.



Last weekend, I also ran into a huge swarming mob of shoppers in a mighty hurry at Maharagama.

But in Maharagama, they cannot be Christians and Catholics shopping for Christmas, I told driver of the three-wheeler, I was in.



He said they were employees shopping before they left for their villages for the year-end.

Now, most avoid Pettah, using the Southern Expressway to get to their villages conveniently and faster from Maharagama, he told me.



They are from Sinhala Buddhist villages in the South, we both agreed. But shop for Christmas as most Christians and Catholics do?



Last year, children in my all Buddhist neighbourhood, all who routinely attend Sunday Daham Pasal (Buddhist School) were gleefully enjoying Christmas, lighting fire-crackers and shooting sky-rockets into the starry night sky.



It was no doubt parents who bought them for the children. On Christmas evening, few little girls sitting on a neighbouring veranda sang Nanda Malinis beautiful song Jesu Swami Daruwane all on their own.



They would most certainly indulge in such innocent fun this Christmas too.

All inclusive engagements, that in one way or another positively ignore and blur unwanted divisions and demarcations that diversity in this society, does not demand or require in social life.

They are all-inclusive innocent mindsets, that should be promoted and nurtured but is never done.

Instead, divisions and demarcations on ethnoreligious biases are what is promoted and nurtured by the State, through an education system with factually wrong historical school textbooks, most media, most Buddhist temples and by urban Sinhala Buddhist elite, who aspire for political power.

Urban I say, as the larger majority of Sinhala Buddhists have not shown they are rabid dividers of society, as the urban Sinhala Buddhist elites are. Theres much proof of that.



One good enough proof is that political parties like the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) and Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) are an urban phenomenon.



The 2004 April Parliamentary Elections results proved it further. At this election, the JHU fielded an All monk candidate lists in all districts except Hambantota, presenting a very aggressive Sinhala Buddhist stand.

Results were amazing.

The JHU had seven Buddhist monks elected and two from the National List for the 552,724 polled islandwide.



The seven included three from Colombo (190,618), two from Gampaha (102,516), one from Kalutara (56,615) and one from Kandy (42,192) (districts) that are considerably mixed districts in terms of ethnic and religious presence and very urban too.



But none from any of the predominantly Sinhala Buddhist rural districts like Moneragala (2,675), Polonnaruwa (2,413) and Anuradhapura (8,034).

All inclusive engagements that in one way or another positively ignore and blur unwanted divisions that diversity in this society, does not demand or require in social life



Rural Sinhala Buddhist vote nevertheless goes moderate, voting more for the SLFP rather than the UNP.



It is not that the UNP is not Sinhala racist. They have also been playing for the Sinhala Buddhist vote ever since they coalesced with the Sinhala Maha Sabha to form the UNP and win the first parliamentary elections in 1947.



When the first D.S. Senanayake Government disfranchised the upcountry plantation Tamil people in 1948.



When the UNP leadership of Jayawardene-Niyathapala marched against the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact (B-C Pact) in 1957. When President Jayewardene watched the pogrom against Tamil people in July 1983 with Cyril Mathew accused of organising it, using the UNP worker hooligans in their trade union.



That was after President Jayewardene told the British journalist Ian Ward of London Daily Telegraph on 11 July, he was not bothered about what Jaffna people think, adding, .The more you put pressure in the North, happier the Sinhala people will be here.really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.



Then the UNP went on a rampage burning down the prestigious Jaffna Central Library in 1981.

So, was the SLFP from Bandaranaike to Rajapaksa. And MR is right when he asked recently, why the Rajapaksas cannot be what Bandaranaike was in the SLFP.



The SLFP was born and groomed a Sinhala Buddhist political party, put in place by the Sinhala Maha Sabha with Bandaranaikes heading it.



A party that was born on the sidelines of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) led by Gunapala Malalasekera establishing a Buddhist Commission and young Civil Servant N.Q. Dias and journalist D.B. Dhanapala working with both the ACBC and the Sinhala Maha Sabha also helping the SLFP leadership.



It is no surprise, therefore, the Bandaranaike-led SLFP made Sinhala the only official language in 1956. It abrogated its own B-C Pact in 1957 and went on a march led by Madam B in 1968 January 08 against the UNP Governments proposed legislation for reasonable use of Tamil that led to the death of novice monk Dambarawe Rathanasara.



It then did away with the Minority Interest Clause 29 of the Soulbury Constitution and inserting Article 09 that provided Buddhism with a privileged status through the Constitution.



The 1972 first Republican Constitution was drafted and adopted without Tamil representation, brought an ethnically biased geographically based standardisation for university admission, went on a protest again led by Madam B against the Indo-Lanka Accord in July 1987 that led to a bloody insurgency.

Then Rajapaksas pride in finishing off the LTTE at the conclusion of the war in 2009 May, that hyped Sinhala Buddhist supremacist ideology leading to extremist and violent Sinhala Buddhist outfits led by Buddhist monks, all adding into the history of the SLFP and this country too.



All that history has led to deep-rooted anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim sentiments that help keep the Sinhala Buddhist supremacist ideology alive and kicking.



It also keeps evangelical Christian groups on toes, with large numbers of their Churches attacked by Sinhala Buddhist goons.



Violent extremism is so deeply embedded in urban Sinhala society, Attorney-at-Law Lakshan Fernando, who quoted figures of attacks on Churches from a report led to serious threats to him by Sinhala Buddhist elements instigated allegedly by then Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe.

Sadly these goons are given legitimacy by the Catholic hierarchy shamelessly represented by Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, who compromises with the most notorious acts of these extreme violent Sinhala Buddhist leaders.



Thats how crudely and ethnoreligiously divisive we have become ever since independence.

That is how Southern politics have been patronised and allowed to grow with Sinhala Buddhist supremacy.



That is how every generation has become more selfish and racist than the previous generations.

Yet the question that is never asked is, What has the larger majority of the 70 percent Sinhala Buddhists gained over the last 70 years with that Sinhala Buddhist supremacy?



Or in a more understandable language, What has the poor Sinhala Buddhists in the villages gained from this Sinhala Buddhist supremacy?



All Governments they helped bring to power with the bulk of their votes have never addressed their major issues. They still live in a subsistence economy that has never been planned for productive growth.



They live with a dwindling public health service that is almost neglected and with free education that can never match quality and opportunities in Colombo and suburbs. The free market economy they are told can provide all answers to hitherto unanswered problems, leaves them on the periphery struggling to exist.



Despite stories about stoning, nailing and sexual harassments, their young women leave to the Middle East as housemaids for a paltry sum of Rs. 30,000 they cannot earn in the rural economy.

Despite seeking employment in factories with heavy exploitation in the Free Trade Zones (FTZ) and in the apparel industry, young girls still trek to the Western Province seeking employment.

Over the past years, village youth idle without employment they once had during the war in combined security forces and that has led to many other social issues like drug- peddling, child abuse, sexual harassment and rape, growing crime and an alarming increase of underage marriages -in villages.

Should Sinhala Buddhists continue living with this growing chaos and apathy merely to feel proud they have a Unitary Sinhala Buddhist State under which they have pauperised no end?

It is time these divisive and dominating Sinhala Buddhist politics is shunned for good to pave the way for equality in an inclusive national socio-economic development programme.



It is the time the Sinhala Buddhists accept their supremacist thinking has failed them and they need to work for an alternative that can treat and accept all as equals.



This Christmas though very much late by generations nevertheless would be ideal for Sinhala Buddhists to join in and enjoy with a determined resolution to work towards an alternative approach that can lift their lives out of misery and poverty in a united society that upholds Karuna, Meththa, Mudhitha, Upeksha and Ahimsa as noble precepts of governance, equally across caste, class, religion, ethnicity and gender.



Thus to begin the year 2018 demand from all political parties to publicly pledge they would foster the five noble precepts of governance hereafter, in lieu of votes at the 2018 February LG elections.
The Pilots Guild of SriLankan Airlines in continuation of the publicized correspondence between the Chairman of the national carrier and the employees of the airlines asserted that their first proposal in the restructuring process is the stepping down of the Board.

The first suggestion for the restructuring process is that we at SriLankan airlines are of the firm belief that you and the management team have proved to be ineffective and unsuitable for the task at hand, the Chairman of the Pilots guild said in a letter.

In the letter dated December 20th, Ruwan Vithanage the Chairman of the Guild further said that it was the Chairman of the Airline Ajith Dias who had repeatedly contradicted himself in all previous correspondence.

Having written to all employees of the possibility of the closure of the company, you subsequently proceeded to contradict your own written statement by saying we are not going to close this airline, during an interview. Such statements and contradictions by you as the Chairman of the Board of Directors only serves to further justify the contents of the letter jointly sent by the Unions the letter said.

Earlier, the Alliance of Unions insisted on the stepping down of the Sri Lankan Airline board citing incompetence and unwarranted benefits accrued by the board. The letter sent to the Chairman Ajith Dias was in response to the communique to the staff of the airline inferred the imminent closure of the Airline. Chairman Dias thereafter hit back at the unions saying that they were contradicting themselves.

Iterating its assertion of incompetence further, the Pilots said that Dias had caused damage to the Airline by his statements.

Our stance of No-confidence in your board is also further substantiated by the significant defamation and commercial damages caused to our Airline, due to your statement. By your first communique, you have not only given notice to the employees of closure by also notice to our loyal passengers that Srilankan may no longer exist after March It said adding that service providers, employee confidence have ebbed as a result of the statements.

The letter hitting back at the representation by Dias that there was assurance by the Unions to support the process of restructure initially, said that there was no restructuring process presented for such assurances presented at the meeting held on December 6.

We wish to state that there was no restructuring plan presented or discussed with us ( during the 6th December meeting). Therefore, your claims of our confirmation and assurance to make it a success are unsubstantiated as thre was no requirement or opportunity for us to provide the same the letter said. (Hafeel Farisz)
Shilpa Abhimani 2017, International Crafts Festival was held under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo recently.

Sri Lankas foremost umbrella manufacturer Kandurata Umbrella Industries (Pvt.) Ltd was the official umbrella partner of the exhibition which was organised by the National Crafts Council of Ministry of Industry and Commerce with the aim of nurturing and preserving heritage for the sustainable existence. President Sirisena also visited the Kandurata umbrellas exhibition and sales stall where he was presented a custom made umbrella with the Shilpa Abhimani and Kandurata logos printed on it, by Kandurata Umbrella Industries (Pvt.) Ltd Chairman M.T.M. Nawushad.



Also present at the occasion were Industry and Commerce Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, Kandurata Umbrella Industries (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director M.T.M. Naufal and Deputy General Manager Riza Thahir.
In his Among My Souvenirs Regi Siriwardena depicts the flaws and the contradictions that led to the fall from power of the pre-1956 elite. The plot teeters until the end between autobiographical fiction and historical actuality, particularly with respect to the protagonist, David Gunawardene, and his friend, Wije. These two characters, moreover, represent a bifurcation of the authors political beliefs, dangling between the privileged childhood of David and the more plebeian, less insular upbringing of Wije. The story ends with disillusionment for both of them over the murder of a remnant of the pre-1956 elite: Mark, a Westernised Tamil Christian whose education abroad, and whose repudiation of his own privileged upbringing, makes him idealise a society of chauvinists and rhetoricians, the same society that kills him in cold blood.



Mark represents the rebellion against a particular social segment that thrived on (as that old lady, musing on the world that existed before 1956 in their milieu, tells us in Ruwanthi de Chickeras Dear Children Sincerely) dinner parties and unfinished puddings. What is curious to me about this social segment, largely upper class and English educated, is that they were the people and the leaders who failed to prepare the country for the perils that beset us after the election of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. They were not equipped with the proper mindset, the proper attitudes, to take us beyond the chauvinism which 1956 unearthed rather badly. As Siriwardena frequently noted in his essays, being largely a postcolonial elite comprising the descendants of the colonial bourgeoisie, they were too complacent to contemplate productively on the transformation of the country to a nation state unhindered by racial discord.

The majority of this country, before and after 1943, were educated in Sinhala or Tamil



The rift between class consciousness and racial-ethnic consciousness has not, historical texts confirm, always been that easy to sustain. As no less a figure than Professor Nalin de Silva has noted, the proponents of federalism and Tamil chauvinism were by products of the privileged, class bound status accorded to the Vellala caste who formed the bedrock of the Civil Service (before the granting of the suffrage in 1931, bitterly opposed by leaders of that caste-bound community). They were the elite, in other words, predicated on the economic and, by default, the political rather than any racial or religious considerations. Lets not forget, after all, that one of the first private organisations set up to oppose the half-baked reforms paraded as democratic change by the colonialists was the Jaffna Youth Congress, in which the North and the South cohabited in ways which today seem inscrutably idealistic. Had this culture of idealism thrived, it is even possible to contemplate a peaceful transition to the federalist constitution that has got both Sinhalese and Tamil nationalists in a battle for power with, and against, each other today. The idealism, however, soured.



And that idealism today largely flourishes in a context where its greatest proponents and champions come, not from the grassroots, but from the policy elite: the leading members of the NGO intelligentsia, the alternate State sector set up to overlook reforms that delve into the Constitution and ethnic harmony. To me this is a tragedy because it has served to strengthen the (largely mistaken) belief that cosmopolitanism is the preserve of those who are against nationalism. There is much on which I disagree with Jehan Perera, but on one point I agree with him: that Sri Lanka is not a nation, rather a nation of nations, predicated on race and faith. To get those nations together is the difficult task of the government in power, difficult because the government itself, while championing overtly the eventual triumph of a national consciousness over a racial consciousness, covertly caves into the demands of irrational chauvinists.

Had this culture of idealism thrived, it is even possible to contemplate a peaceful transition to the federalist constitution that has got both Sinhalese and Tamil nationalists in a battle for power with, and against, each other today. The idealism, however, soured



The best way for such an idealism to flourish would be this: get the multitude to support it. How does one get the multitude to do this? By a cohesive campaign, conducted entirely in the vernacular, that is different in scope and strength to the anti-Dutugemunu anti-Buddhist a historicism of the campaigns that preceding governments affirmed in the name of championing inter-ethnic harmony, by vilifying each and everyone who stood for the Sinhala Buddhist collective. The Sinhala Buddhists cannot be considered as sacred cows, by any stretch of the imagination, but nor should they be demonised for being who they are: as a global minority, they do not have the luxury of numerical strength which most other collectives do. Its a tentative balance that must be struck, and if the strategy is to succeed, the place to start would not be the parliament, or the media, but the most important part of the public sphere: our schools.



Here I go back to the pre-1956 elite, which Mark and David Gunawardene were harbingers of in Siriwardenas book, to point out an interesting contradiction at the heart of their milieu: educated in elite schools, they believed that the absence or rather absenting of a racial consciousness in their classrooms was synonymous with the ideal of inter-ethnic harmony. In other words, cultural apathy was taken as the password to a racially unhindered world. Siriwardena, in an essay on the potential of our schools to do away with those rifts, argued cogently that this misconception belonged to and was sustained by a specific social strata which, at the time of the Kannangara Reforms in 1943, comprised about one-seventh of the total student population, a paltrier one-fiftieth if we were to consider only those who were completely educated in English (without those who received an education in both English and the vernacular).



Now numbers dont lie. The majority of this country, before and after 1943, were educated in Sinhala or Tamil. The minority (L. H. Mettananda would call them a microscopic minority) who were totally or partially educated in English were apathetic to anything but their milieu, which was tempered by a culture of indifference to ethnic and religious realities. Here I quote Siriwardena: ... they failed to recognise that the common identity which they remember sharing was less a common ethnic identity than a class identity, which transcended their ethnic identity as Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, or Burghers. Fluency in the English language and their Western-style dress were distinguishing marks of that class identity, which was in many ways defined through differentiation from the rest of the nation, the majority of whom, who spoke in Sinhala or Tamil, went barefoot and wore sarong, verti, or cloth and jacket.



This conflation of the particular with the general, i.e. the misconception that their elitist education would prove valid for the country, was a reflection of the attitude of indifference which the leaders from this milieu exhibited even when our polity was overtaken by calls for separatism on the one hand and calls for majoritarianism on the other. The Kannangara Reforms, and the advent of democratisation in the education sector, extending to both schools and Universities, achieved two distinct things: one, the opening up of those elitist institutions to the village boy and girl through an examination that standardised intelligence and merit as the gateway to social mobility, and two, the opening up of Central Schools around the country
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who has openly criticized powerful governments, including the Trump administration, has made the unusual decision to not seek a second four-year term, saying it might involve bending a knee in supplication., the New York Times reported yesterday.

The decision by the official, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince and former diplomat, was conveyed in a short statement that was emailed to his staff early Wednesday and shared with The New York Times. His four-year term expires next September.

After reflection, I have decided not to seek a second four-year term, he wrote. To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice  which is your voice.

Most United Nations officials serve as long as their mandate allows. Of the previous human rights chiefs, not one has served a full four-year second term.

It has been unclear for months whether Mr. al-Husseins boss, Secretary General Antonio Guterres, would support him in seeking a second term or whether the five veto-wielding permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would use their influence to block it. Mr. al-Hussein has been critical of all of them.

He has been outspoken about the Russian-backed government of Syria. He has warned of the prospects of genocide by the Chinese-backed government of Myanmar. And he has called out the Trump administration several times, most pointedly on the travel ban against citizens of Muslim-majority countries and after the demonstrations by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.

Zeid has done a very impressive job, said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School. Hes operated in a very difficult environment and hasnt hesitated to speak on very difficult issues.

Mr. al-Husseins willingness to take on the powerful by name, along with what he has described as the eye-watering stupidity of abusive governments, made him few friends.

In his email to his staff, he said, There are many months ahead of us: months of struggle, perhaps, and even grief  because although the past year has been arduous for many of us, it has been appalling for many of the people we serve.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Mr. Guterres, confirmed Mr. al-Husseins plans to leave after his term expires.

The high commissioner informed the secretary general last week of his intention not to seek another term, Mr. Dujarric said. The high commissioner has always enjoyed the full support of the secretary general.

Mr. al-Hussein proved confounding to many by defying classification: the first human rights chief from the Middle East but a sharp critic of violations by Arab governments; a Muslim who condemned Islamic militants; and a Jordanian prince who discarded his title to take the job and become an advocate for victims.

Even more than his predecessors, Zeid fully embraced the role of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights as conscience for the world, eloquently using his voice to become a sort of nightmare for dictators, demagogues, and anti-democratic foes, said Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, in New York.
The three member delegation from the UN working group on arbitrary detention was in Sri Lanka for a 10 day visit.



During their stay they visited the LTTE detainees only but not the servicemen who were in remand prison on suspicion. They were not allowed to, by the local UN staff, at least to accept a letter written by the daughter of Commodore D.K.P. Dasanayaka, who is in remand for more than 5 months.

All she wanted to ask this team was to visit her father too in prison. The Tamil female employer has first asked her whether it was a LTTE complain and when Miss Dasanayaka answered in the negative, she was practically sent out and was never allowed to meet the team. They kept the UN team inside the room until the Dasanayaka family left the location. This happened at the BMICH in Colombo.

Ben Emerson, the UN representative on Human Rights and Counter terrorism, who came on a 4 day visit to Sri Lanka, threatened the government saying  Implement the Geneva Resolution or face consequence. He further had the audacity to tell that Sri Lanka should not test the patience of the International Community!! Emerson in his report also said that there was very little evidence that perpetrators of war crimes committed by members of Sri Lankan Armed Forces were being brought

to justice.



The special rapporteur on the Independence of judges and lawyers in Sri Lanka, Ms Monica Pinto, came to Sri Lanka, spent 8 days in the country, and concluded that Sri Lankas judiciary is highly politicized, and judges give verdicts favouring the government, hoping to obtain good positions after retirement! She also mentioned that the judges in Sri Lanka are incompetent, incapable, poorly selected, corrupted, cowardly, partial and the Attorney Generals Department is rather lethargic and defends the interest of only the government and not the public and the Bar Association is strongly divided on political lines? None of the legal luminaries in the country objected!.



It is very obvious that all these were pre-conceived/pre-determined observations, influenced by separatist elements to justify foreign judges, lawyers and prosecutors in special courts in Sri Lanka to try our soldiers. Apart from government officials she has spoken only to pro LTTE lawyers and LTTE detainees in the country.

The war against LTTE was won on 19th May 2009 and the first resolution passed in Geneva was a positive one praising the Sri Lankan government for bringing peace and condemning the LTTE for using human shields



On 26th March 2014, the UNHRC by resolution A/HRC/25/1 requested the High Commissioner to undertake a comprehensive investigation into serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes allegedly committed during the period 2002 February to 2011 November, in

Sri Lanka.



The final report of the investigation, widely known as OISL (Office of the United Nations High Commission in Human Rights) report, was released on 16th September, 2015. On 29th September, 2015 the UNHRC by resolution A/HRC/30/1 endorsed without reservation the conclusions and the recommendations of the OISL report. The said resolution was sponsored by USA and co-sponsored by the Government of Sri Lanka and adopted by the council by consensus, without a vote.



The OISL report was seriously flawed and full of contradictions, omissions, and obfuscations. A team from the Global Sri Lankan Forum prepared a rebuttal to all the charges mentioned and handed it over to the HC of the UNHRC in Geneva in March this year. One of the charges was that the government had pursued a policy of deliberately denying humanitarian assistance to the civilians trapped in the conflict zone. Mr.Neil Buhne, the UN Resident Coordinator who was a member of the Consultative Committee on Humanitarian Assistance had commented that the Sri Lankan government should be given a Gold Medal for her commitment in providing aid. Mr. Amin Award, the representative of UNHRC, had expressed the view that Sri Lanka was a Role Model to the rest of the world in the manner in which the government of SL had handled the humanitarian crisis caused by the LTTE using civilians as a human shield in the theatre of war. Ms Emelda Sugumaran, the District Secretary to Mulliativu, had confirmed that they had three months stock of food and medicine at any given time. With all these available information Zeid Al Hussein, in his OISL report, had thought it fit to accuse the government of denying humanitarian assistance to the North and the present government had accepted the report with appreciation and co-sponsored the resolution based on that!

The purpose of the OISL report is to make a case for war crimes against the State. This report was never properly assessed by any professional agency of the UN and it is asserted that the report is deeply flawed and biased against Sri Lanka. Hence UNHRC, in allowing resolution 30/1 to be adopted without a vote and without a debate has been negligent in its duties and obligations under the UN charter and hence illegal.



The investigation against Sri Lanka, authorized by UNHRC in March 2014 itself is again illegal. The councils authorization of the investigation was based purely on a recommendation for such an investigation made by the High Commissioner where she had no rational basis to make the said recommendation at the time she did.



The war against LTTE was won on 19th May 2009 and the first resolution passed in Geneva was a positive one praising the Sri Lankan government for bringing peace and condemning the LTTE for using human shields. This was after 17 nations led by Germany called for a special session, 8 days after the conclusion of the war, and charged the government of committing war crimes and demanding that the perpetrators be punished. But majority of countries in the council, specially the nations in the South, rejected it and adopted a positive counter resolution as mentioned above.



That resolution welcomed the conclusion of hostilities, the liberation of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the terrorists and bringing permanent peace to the country. It was obviously a set back to the separatist Tamil diaspora and other critics, who attempted to recover through

other means.



The then Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki Moon came to Sri Lanka just four days after the defeat of LTTE to look into  accountability . When the LTTE held 350,000 civilians as a human shield in January 2009, Ban Ki Moon never came here to prevail on LTTE to release them. When UNICEF was confirming that LTTE were recruiting child soldiers in large scale he did sweet nothing. But he visited Sri Lanka soon after the war, and wanted the government to initiate an accountability process.

Mr. Ban Ki Moon then appointed the Panel of Experts known as Darusman Committee to appraise him whether war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka. This action of the Secretary General was highly illegitimate and in fact illegal under the UN charter. The Secretary General had appointed three outsiders to the POE committee. But article 100 of the UN charter categorically says that the Secretary General should not receive instructions from any other authority external to the Organization.



As per article 97 and 98 ,the Secretary General is the Chief Admin Officer of UN and should perform tasks entrusted to him by the Security Council or the General Assembly or the Trusteeship Council. None of these organs had given instructions to the Secretary General in this regard but yet he appointed the POE on his own.



The Secretary Geeneral also violated Article 2 (7) of the UN charter which says that, Nothing contained in the present charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under the present charter.



Hence by appointing the POE the Secretary General had violated his own rules!!

The Panel of Experts then concluded that there were credible allegations that violations of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law did occur and recommended an international investigation. The POE then became the basis for the demand for an international investigation in subsequent UNHRC resolutions against Sri Lanka.



The POE report charged the government of war crimes on false evidence from biased and separatist elements. Referring to the POE report of the UNSG, the International legal luminaries, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and Rodney Dixon QC , who have both worked in international tribunals and worked for ICC in Hague, say that the findings in respect of the alleged criminal violations fall well short of the legal standards and all the evidence virtually unsourced. Darusman report very clearly mentions, without any reliable evidence, that 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by the Army during the last stages of war.



The Darusman or the POE report was never placed officially at the HRC and hence the Sri Lankan government never got a chance to officially respond to it. When the Sec Gen first announced that he would commission the report, senior diplomats in a number of prominent countries expressed grave concerns about the dangerous precedence the Sec Gen was about to set. Russia, through its UN ambassador, even raised objections in the Security Council. The Russian Ambassador Vladimir Mikaylov, when asked on what grounds the objections made said  On the grounds that it was not a UN report. On the grounds that it was not done in accordance of the regulations and procedures of UN. From the very beginning it was told that the report was purely for the Sec Gen. So if it was for the Sec Gen why did they have to publish it? 



So based on this illegal Darusman report there were resolutions in 2012 and 2013 and it should be noted that just prior to the March 2013 resolution, a group of 14 nations including Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran made a joint statement expressing their dismay and frustration at what was being done to this country. Referring to mandating the UNHRC to provide advice and technical assistance to Sri Lanka they said such recommendations are arbitrary, intrusive and of a political nature!!.

Finally the resolution 25/1 passed in 2014 , requesting the present High Commissioner to undertake a comprehensive investigation into alleged war crimes. It was hardly a unanimous decision where 23 countries voted in favour, 12 against and 12 abstained. The OISL report of the present High Commissioner is the result of that investigation.
We have not sold anything but only leased out. If you take Hambantota after seventy years we will become the major share holder

The inflows of foreign investments are increasing. The export sector is also now on the correct path. The export of goods and services has increased. Next year it will improve much more

The situation regarding rice would improve, but Coconut scarcity would last some more time

We did not sell the country. It was Rajapaksas who sold the land in Galle Face outright, we took over the power and changed it

During the past two years we were able to pull the country out of the mess. We took over the government with a mountain of loans

The following discussion with Minister of Strategic Development and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama centred around the present political situation of the country.

Excerpts from the discussion

QLet us first discuss about the countrys economy.



During the last two years we laid the foundation and effected the plans for the economic development, and it is now gathering momentum. The inflows of foreign investments are increasing annually. The export sector is also now on the correct path. The export of goods and services has increased compared to the early years. Next year it will improve much more. Our attempt is to increase the pace of economic development. We continue our dialogues with foreign investors, who have shown a keen interest after being satisfied with the action plan of our government.



Therefore, it is evident that those who are now in contact with us would soon commence their investments. This shows our success in the past two to three years.

Yes there are issues. It is common that there are differences in the policies of the UNP and the SLFP. Our attempt is to strike a balance between these two factions. Now everyone is convinced that it is the economic policy of the UNP that could develop the country



QListening to your statement make us believe that very soon the country would turn into a heaven, but when one visits a shop outside to purchase a kilo of rice or a coconut they see stars even during day time.



We accept the fact that the cost of living is on the rise and people are undergoing hardships. There is a reason for it. This issue became serious with the drought the country experienced due to insufficient rains.



Paddy production fell by 53%. The yield of Coconuts also fell. The continuous drought affected both these sectors. We have now come up with alternate solutions, and hope to reduce the cost of living by adopting these measures. The Government had taken steps to import rice and Coconuts, and within the next month or two this problem would ease. We expect the price of Coconuts to come down shortly. We met under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister and decided to introduce control prices to eight essential items. This move has been accepted by traders now.



QAre we going to wait in expectations of everything being imported to the country.



I said earlier this situation was the result of the drought and no sooner the rains come the situation would improve. The situation regarding rice would improve, but Coconut scarcity would last some more time as the yield of the new cultivation needs time to arrive at the market.



QHambantota port was sold, what is your next move.



We have not sold anything. Hambantota harbour is an asset to us, but just because it is an asset we cannot expect to maintain it as it was a loss and the people had to bear. What we attempted was to derive the best from this asset and earn profits. The former Government had no plans of earning a profit from the harbour. We have now corrected this position and now we are earning profits from the Hambantota harbour.

We continue our dialogues with foreign investors, who have shown a keen interest after being satisfied with the action plan of our government



QThis Government came into power saying that the Rajapaksas were selling the country. Isnt it a turn of fate now that you all are selling what Rajapaksas built.



It is a complete canard that we are selling countrys resources. These views had been expressed without knowing the real facts. We have not sold anything but only leased out. If you take Hambantota after seventy years we will become the major share holder.



We did not sell the country. It was Rajapaksas who sold the land in Galle Face outright. When they were planning to sell the port city outright we took over the power and changed it. We have not sold an inch of this country to any one outright.



QRajapaksa says that this Government is unable to take forward the development schemes started by them.



All the projects started by them as development were unable to gain any profit. What we are doing now is showing them how we earn profitably from these projects. The country is now in this state because of Rajapaksas ill planned development projects.



QWhenever the UNP comes into power it is the hope that the economy of the country would blossom. But this time it appears you have failed.



Dont say that. During the past two years we were able to pull the country out of the mess it was in. We took over the government with a mountain of loans. If Rajapaksas were in power the country would have been in really a bad position now.



QDid the investors arrive here during the recent past as expected by you.



The investors were waiting in expectation of what the new government is going to do. This is the usual manner the investors react, and after watching the situation, and built up confidence then only they take further steps.



They are satisfied with our performances. Special emphasis had been made through my Ministry. If this journey becomes successful we can be par with Singapore and Malaysia.

People are now free to demonstrate and engage in protest marches. During the former regime these public out cries were suppressed by guns



QYour anticipated journey towards achievements is hampered by the conflicts within the two groups in the government.



Yes there are issues. It is common that there are differences in the policies of the UNP and the SLFP.

Our attempt is to strike a balance between these two factions. Now everyone is convinced that it is the economic policy of the UNP that could develop the country.



QThe UNP strived very hard to bring Maithripala Sirisena to the Presidency. But those who ridiculed him in the wildest manner are now going on bended knees towards him, and he receives them gladly, it seems that he is leaving the UNP in the lurch.



It is not an issue for us. Our members are with us and they will give their fullest support at any elections, which is sufficient for us and with the change of events many would rally around us.



QWhat I meant was that the President is despising you all even after their dedication shown to him.



No.We never think in that manner and we do not feel sorry about it. There can be issues in the future and it is our expectation to forge ahead.



QWhere are those who spoke about the notorious thieves before 2015 January 8th.



That is something we too are worried. We cannot interfere in legal matters. We are also eagerly awaiting early action on these issues. Even after two years, proving the guilt and punishing them is dragging on. It is our concern as well. We feel frustrated in not being able to punish those who had committed frauds and engaged in corruption.



QThere is an allegation that the Rajapaksas are freely moving about after having entered into deals with the Government.



I say with authority that none of them have any deals with the government.



Q The mini poll is round the corner. Is the UNP ready?



We will await the results. We are ready for the poll. When we get the power of the village also, the Central government would be strengthened. According to our estimates we are confident that the UNP would secure a major win.



QSome are of the opinion that this Government attempts to resolve issues only after they had become complex. The Government is bent on prolonging these agitations with the view of frustrating those who are involved in these actions, assuming that they would give up the fight after being exhausted.



We have offered solutions as and when needed and do not encourage them to be dragged on. People are now free to demonstrate and engage in protest marches. During the former regime these public

outcries were suppressed by guns. We are not inclined in that way. Today anyone is free to step on to the roads demanding their rights. Today even the media is free to criticize the government to whatever extent they propose. But however the government is not bent on suppressing these agitations.

QThis Government which came to power saying that they will catch the thieves, interfered with the Central Bank.



We have to wait for the outcome of the commission report until then we cannot say whether there was a fraud or not but our party is not involved in this matter. On our own we could not arrive at a conclusion therefore a Commission was appointed and the truth will be revealed in due course. We will not interfere in the decision.



QIf you say that there was no irregularity, then why did the best Finance Minister of Asia leave his post.



That is how the Yahapalanaya works. He took the decision to be away from it until the investigations are over and a final decision is arrived at. This is Democracy.



QMahinda Rajapaksa is trying to comeback carrying a Bud with him.



How can he come back. I do not think they would ever get that chance.
New Delhi: Chartered accountants' apex body ICAI on Wednesday said certain provisions in the proposed amendments to the companies law are "very important" for the accountancy profession.

On Tuesday, Parliament passed a bill to amend the Companies Act to strengthen corporate governance standards, initiate strict action against defaulting companies and help improve ease of doing business.

The Rajya Sabha passed the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2017 by voice vote. It was cleared by the Lok Sabha in July this year.

"We are happy that some of the provisions that have been brought through this amendment are very important for the accountancy profession," the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) said in a statement.

These include provisions that auditors are now required to report on Internal Financial Control with reference to financial statements only and rationalisation of penalties such as fines for auditor default linked with audit fees.
Government has set eyes on 100 per cent EVs for public mobility and 40 per cent electric for personal mobility by 2030.

New Delhi: India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki said on Thursday that government incentives will be needed to make electric vehicles (EVs) affordable as the country moves towards the eco-friendly solution for mobility.

The company, which plans to launch its first EV in India by 2020, also said it will conduct a study to find consumer insights to prepare for the journey.

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chairman R C Bhargava said affordability is a major challenge that EVs will face and for them to be successful, focus has to be on manufacturing of batteries and other components within the country to bring down cost.

"I think it will be required... My gut feeling is that yes, some kind of intervention would be required but I don't know to what extent," he told reporters when asked if government incentives would be needed to support electric vehicles transition in India.

As electric vehicles are a new development for the Indian auto industry it would be difficult to say in details how much government support would be needed, he added.

The company will conduct a study to understand more about consumer insights on electric vehicles, which will also help in estimating how much of government support will be needed, he said.

"Before that I can't really say with any kind of confidence that this the kind of government intervention is required," Bhargava said.

The aim of the study would be to find out as to what is the ground reality, where people park their cars and charging infrastructure and what is their thinking about EVs, he said.

"It will gauge what average consumer thinks about EVs. This survey is going to provide us the first reliable data from the ground. We will start it within two to three weeks and by about end of February we would have some authentic basis to answer queries on EVs," Bhargava said.

Stressing on the need for cost of electric cars to be within the reach of consumers, he said, "75 per cent of cars are small cars. How to make small cars electrified and affordable "I think this is one of the challenges which we will have to face because making an affordable large car is different from making an affordable small car. We need to keep that in mind. So what kind of government support, policy is required needs to be worked out."

The government has set eyes on 100 per cent EVs for public mobility and 40 per cent electric for personal mobility by 2030. In a white paper submitted to the government, auto industry body SIAM had proposed 40 per cent of all new vehicles sold in the country to be electric by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2047.

When asked about MSI's EV launch plans, he Bhargava said the first one will hit the market by 2020 and the company will also set up charging stations. On the future of conventional internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles, he said it will continue to grow.

The company has done an assessment, assuming an annual growth rate of 8 per cent between now and 2030, that 71 million cars will be sold, of which 14.4 million will be electric and 56.6 million will be IC vehicles, he said.

"So, conventional cars will continue to be four times that of electrics," he added.
NSE has taken a step towards 'digital India' by announcing an e-mandate facility on its mutual fund platform.

New Delhi: Leading stock exchange NSE on Thursday announced the introduction of e-mandate facility on its mutual fund platform, a move that will facilitate SIP registrations in 2-3 days as compared to 2-3 weeks earlier.

Currently, trading members and mutual fund distributors register paper-based mandates for their investors which is time consuming as it involves obtaining signature of an investor on the form and submission of physical form at service centre for processing.

"NSE has taken a step towards 'digital India' by announcing an e-mandate facility on its mutual fund platform. Implementation of e-mandates is a very significant step towards digitisation of transactions in mutual funds.

"The objective is to offer simple and hassle free alternative to the members, MF distributors in form of e- mandate wherein members/MF distributors can register mandate of an investor online, which will be digitally signed based on Aadhaar based OTP validation," NSE Managing Director and CEO Vikram Limaye said in a statement.

e-Mandate, available for individuals with single mode of holding, is an Aadhaar based functionality, accordingly, registration of mobile number with UIDAI is mandatory for e- signing of mandate.

Currently, maximum limit for e-mandate is Rs 1 lakh. As per UIDAI website, there are about 119 crore Aadhaar numbers, which hold a huge potential for mutual fund industry that currently has 6.2 crore folios only.

NSE has implemented e-mandates through HSBC (sponsor bank for the initiative) along with e-Mudhra as an e-sign service provider.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has witnessed a very encouraging growth in the mutual fund transactions routed through its Platform.

In the current financial year till December 15, about 48 lakh transactions aggregating to Rs 23,345 crore have been processed through its MF platform.

In last two years, the exchange has registered a growth of more than 600 per cent in number of transactions, routed through its MF platform.

Further, the number of Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) accounts on the platform have increased from 0.85 lakh as on March 31, 2015 to 4.45 lakh as on December 15, 2017.
New Delhi: Telecom minister Manoj Sinha said on Thursday that fate of the 122 telecom licences of eight operators that were cancelled in 2012 will be decided based on the investigative agencies take on acquittal of all the accused in the 2G spectrum case. However, since CBI is going to appeal the acquittal in higher courts, these telecom firms are unlikely to get any relief from the government including compensation, said sources. The companies whose licences were cancelled by Supreme Court included Telenor (Uninor), Sistema, Videocon, Etisalat, S-Tel and Loop among others.

Mr Sinha asserted that the process used by the previous UPA regime to allocate spectrum was faulty and dipped in corruption. He said that scarce natural resources is the best allocated through auction and not the policy of 'first-come-first-serve' followed by the UPA regime by basing the spectrum on 2001 prices. He said that Rs 1.09 lakh crore was raised from spectrum auction in 2015, and Rs 65,789 crore in 2016.

Under the UPA regime, this amount stood at Rs 9,407 crore in 2012, Rs 3,539 crore in 2013 and Rs 61,162 crore in 2014. One thing is clear that the 2G spectrum allotment process was faulty and dipped in corruption, he said. The minister said Supreme Court in 2012 quashed all the 122 licences given under the then telecom minister A. Raja as it had held that the procedure followed by the UPA regime was wrong.
New Delhi: Automobile industry body SIAM has proposed all new vehicle sales in India to be pure electric by 2047 while the same for intra-city public transport fleet can be achieved by 2030. In a white paper submitted to the government, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said it is aiming at 40 per cent of new vehicle sales in the country to be pure electric by 2030.

The paper has been brought out in line with the government's vision of 100 per cent electric for public mobility and 40 per cent electric for personal mobility by 2030, it said. However, former power minister Piyush Goyal had in April this year said: The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country.

Proposing 100 per cent pure electric vehicles  battery electric and fuel cell  by the 100th anniversary of Indias Independence in 2047, SIAM outlined a road map that includes 60 per cent of new vehicle sales in the country to employ greener technologies like hybrids and other alternative fuels by 2030. To make sure this vision is realised, the industry, the government and various stakeholders need to collaborate and invest with 100 per cent commitment, SIAM president Abhay Firodia said.
Hyderabad: Tollywood producer Dil Raju and actor Allu Sirish have approached Cyber Crime Police over movie priacy issue on Wednesday. Mr Raju, whose latest film Middle Class Abbayi (MCA) is all set to hit the screens, approa-ched the Cyber Crime Police on Wednesday, requesting them to protect the film from piracy. Sources said he met Cyber Crime additional DCP Raghuvir. Young hero Allu Sirish, whose Okka Kshanam is relea-sing on December 29, accompanied Mr Raju.
Rising awareness about sexuality has meant that young people have also started paying more attention to their body and personal health. While many go for procedures like designer vaginas among several others, bizarre trends emerging over the past few years have come across as extremely harmful for women.

Even as experts in the past have warned women against unhealthy practices related to body image and their private parts, more trends of a similar nature continue to become popular through social media. Here are few such practices which are likely to prove damaging for women.

1. Glitter bombs

The trend that was in the news for a fairly long time was that of women inserting glitter capsules in the vaginas. Introduced by a firm called Pretty Woman Inc, these were sparkalised capsules to be inserted in the vagina an hour before having sex.

Gynaecologists warned against the glitter bombing craze as they said it may damage good bacteria in the vagina causing infections and increasing risk of STI.

2. Yoni oil

Marketed by holistic sellers on several websites, the oil is promised as a way to get at-home vaginal rejuvenation. It has also been described as a cure for vaginal dryness, yeast infections, itching and unpleasant odours.

But experts have warned that it isnt exactly safe to use since like other perfumed products, soaps and gels, it can also affect pH levels and cause irritation. They also said that people with vaginal odours, itching and irritation should visit a pharmacist or medics as it may be due to an infection.

3. Cucumber cleansing

Another much talked about trend involves women inserting a peeled cucumber in the vagina and twisting it around for 20 minutes. It gained popularity among women as bloggers claimed that the high vitamin content of the vegetable can sanitise the vagina and leave a pleasant odour.

But gynaecologists dont think so as they warn that it could increase risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease. One even described it as misogyny disguised as healthcare as vaginas arent dirty and ways to cleanse are capable of doing more harm.

4. Pearls

The bizarre trend of women inserting tea-bag-like balls in their vagina emerged out of a desire to clean the womb. The firm selling them claimed that these pearls contain ancient herbs to clean the uterus.

This too has been contested by gynaecologists who say that the vagina is capable of cleaning itself through natural secretions and doesnt need a detox. What these pearls do is disturb good bacteria protecting the vagina and expose women to risk of infections.

5. Wasp nests

Another disturbing trend in the past year was women increasingly taking to putting wasp nests inside their vaginas. The practice was seen as a natural way to tighten the vagina after childbirth and clean the vagina.

But medics pointed out how it could lead to painful sex, increased risk of HIV and drying of vaginal mucosa causing abrasions during sex.
Chennai: The Mahila court on Wednesday sentenced a 42-year-old person to undergo life imprisonment on a charge of murdering his wife two years ago.

Special public prosecutor Gowri Asokan said Selvam was living with his wife Amutha in Mylapore. Since the wedding 15 years ago, Selvam had been demanding dowry from her family. Soon after the marriage, her parents purchased an auto rickshaw for him. However, he had been demanding more dowry from Amuthas family and harassing her. As he continued to fight with Amutha, her mother P. Vasantha, paid `5.50 lakh for taking a house on rent in R.A Puram and made them stay near her house.

On December 16, 2015, at 2 pm, Selvam developed heated altercation with Amutha. Learning this, Vasantha rushed to their house along with her son P. Srinivasan. They noticed Selvam attacking Amutha with knife profusely after abusing her.

Vasantha and Srinivasan attempted to protect Amutha. However, he threatened them and continued to attack Amutha. With the help of local residents, Amutha, who sustained multiple injuries, was rushed to a private hospital. Later, she was taken to Government general hospital, Royapettah. However, doctors declared that she was brought dead.

On a complaint, Abiramapuram police registered a case against Selvam under section 302 of IPC. On completion of the trial, the special judge, R.N. Manjula said the prosecution proved the case beyond reasonable doubt. Hence, the court sentenced Selvam to undergo imprisonment for life. It also imposed him a fine of `5,000 on him.
Chennai: A day after police recovered the body of a man with slit injuries on his throat off Canal road in Korattur, the identity of the man has been ascertained.

The deceased has been identified as Prabhakaran, a car driver, police said.

Investigations revealed that Prabhakaran was out on bail only 10 days ago. He was serving time in connection with a murder case, police sources said. He was arrested in July after he murdered a man over an illicit affair.

Meanwhile, Prabhakarans dead body was found in a Tasmac outlet near Canal road. Police suspect his rival gang to have lured him for a drinking session and then murdered him.

CCTV footages in the neighbourhood are being perused to find leads, police said.

Police also said that it was also possible that the man might have been murdered elsewhere and his body dumped in Korattur. Further investigations are on.
The police apprehended the culprits from Venkateshwara Swamy Temple in Saroor Nagar. (Representational image)

Hyderabad : The sleuths of Special Operation Team (SOT) Rachakonda on Wednesday busted an infant selling racket by arresting a six-member gang.

The police apprehended the culprits from Venkateshwara Swamy Temple in Saroor Nagar.

The police also rescued a six-day-old baby girl. The infant has been handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC).

The culprits have been identified as Kedavath Ravi, Kedavath Saroja, Vadithyavath Rukka, Mudavath Lakshman, Narsingh and Varithyavath Redya.

According to media reports, the gang trapped a poor tribal couple of Mahboob Nagar District and bought their new born child for Rs 15,000.

The police have also seized one car, four mobile phones and Aadhaar cards.

A suo moto case under section 370(4) of IPC, and sections 75, 81 of Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, has been registered at the PS Saroornagar police station.
A man was allegedly held captive and beaten up by Rajasthan Cabinet Minister Hem Singh Bhadana's son and his friends in Alwar. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Alwar (Rajasthan): A man was allegedly held captive and beaten up by Rajasthan Cabinet Minister Hem Singh Bhadana's son and his friends in Alwar.

The victim's father said, "Some unidentified people verbally abused the minister, and my son was standing there while this happened. Those people fled but he was caught. He was later held captive and beaten up. We had to go to get him freed. We were also threatened."

The victim was later admitted in the nearby hospital under critical condition.

The police, however, have denied commenting on the incident.

"We are not in a position to comment now. As soon as the FIR is lodged, we will begin the legal procedure," Shivaji Park SHO Vinod Samaria said.

Further details are awaited.
The family placed the body at Ambedkar Circle and demanded arrest of the culprits.

BELAGAVI: A day after the horrific gangrape and murder of a ninth standard schoolgirl in Vijayapura, the police are yet to arrest any of the six accused.

Tension prevailed in Vijayapura as the news of incident spread across the city on Wednesday. The family placed the body at Ambedkar Circle and demanded arrest of the culprits.

As the protest stretched on to night, district in-charge minister M.B. Patil met the protesters and family of the 14-year-old victim and vowed to initiate stringent measures to trace the culprits. He also assured to release Rs 5 lakh compensation to the family. The minister urged the police officers to bring all culprits to the book at the earliest.

Earlier on Tuesday night an angry group of people beat up two suspects outside the police station in Vijayapura, when they were brought for questioning with regard to the case.

The crime took place while the girl was returning home from school along with her friend. A group of men chased her on a bike and took her away. Four others who came in an autorickshaw also joined them. They took her to a secluded place near the school, gangraped and killed her.

The girl's friend raised an alarm, teachers and some others rushed the secluded place where the girl was taken away and found that she was lying unconscious.

Although, she was rushed to a nearby hospital, she died on the way. Medical tests revealed that she was raped and the suffocated to death.

A case of rape, murder, kidnapping besides another case under the POCSO Act have been filed against all the accused by Vijayapura police.

Police sources alleged that the culprits were tracking the girl for the past few days.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who was in Vijayapura on Wednesday, condemned the gruesome incident and assured the people that the police would catch the culprits at the earliest and ensure severe punishment.
An NGO has alleged that girls and women were kept at the 'university' for 14 years and more. (Photo: Representational/File)

New Delhi: The police on Wednesday carried out a raid at an ashram in Rohini following the Delhi High Court's order to inspect the institute where girls and women were allegedly kept in illegal confinement.

The court had on Tuesday dubbed the situation in the institute -- Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya -- located in north Delhi's Rohini as being "similar" to that witnessed in Gurmeet Ram Rahim's ashram in Haryana's Sirsa, but without making any direct reference.

An NGO has alleged that girls and women were kept at the "university" for 14 years and more.

While producing one girl in the court, who, the NGO claimed, had managed to get out of the premises, it alleged that she was raped during her stay there, which she has not even disclosed to her parents.

The NGO also alleged that girls confined at the ashram have committed suicide in the past, but the police never registered a case.

The raid, which went on until late in the night, saw the presence of Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Rajneesh Gupta, Delhi Commission For Women chief Swati Maliwal and a group of lawyers.

Ms Maliwal claimed that when they reached the ashram, it took more than two hours to meet the girls and most of them were minors.

"We were also attacked in the ashram and held hostage for one hour," Ms Maliwal said.

She said that in the institute, letters about alleged sexual assault faced by the inmates, were found from a box and also certain injections and medicines were also found in huge quantities.

The Delhi High Court today directed the CBI to investigate the alleged illegal confinement of girls and women in the ashram where they were kept in "animal-like" conditions behind metal doors in a "fortress" surrounded by barbed wire.
The accused have been identified as Manoj, Venkatesh, Dharmaraju, Avinas, Tejas Kumar and a 17-year-old minor. (Photo: DC)

BENGALURU: Six people were arrested by Hennur police while preparing for a dacoity and they have cracked a murder case in Banaswadi police station limits. The gang had fatally stabbed a man for just Rs 150.

The accused have been identified as Manoj, Venkatesh, Dharmaraju, Avinas, Tejas Kumar and a 17-year-old minor.

According to the police, the gang was involved in 10 robbery and attempt to robbery cases. The accused confessed to the murder.

Earlier in October, the gang had attacked a hotel worker, Sanjay Tamang, and when he tried to escape, they stabbed him to death and escaped with Rs 150.

They have been on the run since then. Hennur police have registered a case.
Chennai: The Mahila court, Chennai, has awarded life sentenced to a 32-year old unemployed person on a charge of murdering his sister-in-law.

Special public prosecutor, Gowri Asokan said mason J. Prabu of Vellore lived with his family members in MGR Nagar for over seven years. His younger brother J. Jayaseelan, 32 stayed in his house and searched for a job.

Prabu's wife Vennila developed enmity against Jayaseelan for remaining unemployed. She demanded him to get a job and stay in the house.

After developing heated altercation with Vennila over the issue, Jayaseelan attacked her with a deadly weapon.t, MGR Nagar police has registered a case and arrested Jayaseelan. On completion of the trial, the special judge R.N. Manjula sentenced Jayaseelan to undergo life sentence for murdering his sister-in-law and imposed him a fine of ` 5,000.
New Delhi: A special court here is likely to decide Thursday the fate of former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others in the much-anticipated 2G spectrum allocation scam cases.

Special CBI judge O P Saini is scheduled to pronounce tomorrow the judgements in separate cases lodged by the CBI and the ED in the infamous 2G scam which rocked the UPA government. The court, which is exclusively dealing with the cases arising out of the 2G spectrum scam, has directed all accused, including Raja, Kanimozhi and others to remain present before it tomorrow for the verdict. The trial in 2G spectrum scam started six years ago in 2011 after the court had framed charges against 17 accused in the CBIs case for the offences which entails punishment ranging from six months in life imprisonment. One of the cases in which judgement is likely to be delivered tomorrow involves Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia, Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan, her husband I P Khaitan and Essar Group Director (Strategy and Planning) Vikash Saraf as accused. In the first case filed by the CBI, Raja and Kanimozhi are facing trial along with former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Rajas erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair. Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani are also accused in it.

All the accused facing trial in these cases have denied the allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the ED. The court had in October 2011 framed charges against them under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using as genuine fake documents, abusing official position, criminal misconduct by public servant and taking bribe.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

New Delhi: As Pakistan's army chief pledged his support for better ties, India on Thursday asserted that Islamabad will have to take action against terror groups operating from its soil for improvement in the bilateral relationship.

Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

Reacting to the comments, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups.

"It is important for Pakistan to understand our core concern, which is terrorism. We have time and again asked them to take action against terrorists who are operating from their soil. This is something they (Pakistan) will have to handle if they are serious in cultivating this friendship," Kumar told reporters.

He was asked to comment on General Bajwa's remarks.

"Like any good neighbour, we do desire good neighbourly relations with the country which is next to us," Kumar said.

In a rare move, the Pakistan army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, General Bajwa also said his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

Read Also: Can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war: Pak army chief

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

The military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation for the first time in six years.

The powerful army enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan.
BENGALURU: Starting next academic year, all pre-schools in the state will be brought under the purview of the State Education Department. Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said on Wednesday that the decision was taken as part of the action plan announced by the state government on child safety and security.

All forms of pre-schools, nurseries, daycare centres, kindergartens, Montessori centres and others, should mandatorily register with the education department. Compliance with the norms set by the state government will be looked into from all sides and institutions which fail to keep up to the rules will not be permitted to function, starting next academic year, he said.

Elaborating on the cabinet decision, he said that Home, Women & Child Welfare, Urban Development, Rural Development & Panchayat Raj and Social Work and Education departments will jointly work to ensure the safety and security of children.

Such institutions should also have an area of one square metre per child on rolls, adding them to the land norms mentioned for education institutions as per the Karnataka Education Act, he said.

Land norms for institutions revised

At a press meet at the Department of Pre-University Education office, he also presented the revised land norms required for educational institutions for affiliation. Within the BBMP and other municipal corporation limits, institutions imparting pre-primary (KG) to higher secondary (PU level) education are required to have a minimum land of 2,000 sqm. At the same time, schools which run classes from Grade 1 to 10 should have land of 1,500 sqm, and a minimum land of 1,000 sqm will be required for institutions which impart only primary education or solely secondary education. The norms will be applicable to all institutions which seek fresh as well as renewal of affiliation. Institutions that fail to meet the norms will be given time to shift to new campuses at the first instance and later affiliation will be cancelled, he said.

New online system to avoid ghost students

Clarifying queries related to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) discovering almost one lakh students existing only on paper after the linking of SSLC registrations to Students Achievement Tracking System (SATS), he admitted that the given number over the years were being taken for granted by the department. With SATS in place, all student registrations are Aadhaar-linked, minimising repetition of such instances. A large share of students missing out on exams because of attendance shortage and private enrolments had also contributed to the large number difference between those registered and failing to appear for exams. Issuing hall-tickets online from this year will also curb such malpractices making the entire system fool-proof from now on, he said.
Hyderabad: The World Telugu Conference, meant to showcase the pride of Telugu in the earlier sidelined Telangana region, turned out to be a major hit.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that Telugu would be made compulsory up to Grade XII from the next academic year. This did not appear to be received well from some quarters which felt that Telugu promotion should not be at the cost of English which had come to be a global language.

Thousands of language lovers, pundits and poets from across nations made it to the five-day event which highlighted that Telugu was actually born in this region which had made rich contributions producing several kinds of skills, including Avadhanam (answers to question in poetic form) considered unique.

But the language, when compared with other prominent Dravidan ones like Tamil and Kannada, was way behind, especially as a medium of instruction and guaranteeing employment opportunities. Though a classical language, it got little government patronage over the last few decades. Instead, English was being encouraged as the medium of instruction in educational institutions, scholars said.

Experts highlighted this with the famous Sanskrit saying: Niraasreya Na Sobhante, Panditha, Vanitha, Latha (women, pundits and creepers will not shine without patronage).

Governments were bound by the constitution to take steps to preserve, protect and promote native languages of the State though in reality this was not happening.

Telangana CM Chandrasekhar Rao in response to an observation by Vice-President Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu decided to make Telugu a compulsory language up to Grade XII in all government and private educational institutions from the next academic year.

However, some pundits and scholars said this was not sufficient to promote Telugu and more steps were needed to push the language further. But a section of people outside felt that promotion of any language should not be at the cost of another, especially in the wake of certain sections blaming English for Telugu getting sidelined.

Telugu, termed as the Italian of the East and the third oldest Dravidian language after Tamil and Kannada, was rich in history and patronage in the past till the advent of English medium schools which gave several job opportunities, said scholars at the conference. This resulted in slow dying of Telugu and the culture associated with it.

The pride of Telugu Satakam (100 stanzas) which helped in acquiring vocabulary the much-needed morals could not be taught in other language more conveniently and coherently, it was pointed out. The Telugu Mastaru(teacher) used to be an inspiration for the child during early age, though this was now a thing of the past.

But for government schools, Telugu was not a medium of instruction in private sector ones. Sadly, even in government schools, Telugu was being given least priority, it was alleged. Telugu teacher recruitments were not being made and no incentive was given to Telugu medium students. Telugu was also not mandatory for government service.

After globalisation, English has gained prominence and regional languages, including Telugu, was bearing the brunt. However, several countries were promoting their languages, which was not the case in the country.

Scholars pointed to efforts in neighbouring Tamil Nadu where efforts were being taken to promote Tamil and reserving 20 per cent jobs to those with a degree in Tamil. Karnataka was also going all out to promote Kannada. Telugu States needed to emulate their neighbours and make Telugu the administrative language, they added.
Three years after the completion of this project, this new system will help reduce congestion length by 30 per cent. (Representational image)

New Delhi/Bengaluru: Japan will offer a grant of more than Rs 72 crore to install an advanced traffic information and management system in Bengaluru, the country's embassy in Delhi said on Wednesday.

The Exchange of Notes for the implementation of the project in Bengaluru was signed between Ambassador of Japan to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, and Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, S Selvakumar, on Wednesday.

The project for implementation of Advanced Traffic Information and Management System in Bengaluru includes, signalling system and traffic congestion length measurement sensor in the city.

The grant, amounting to 1.276 billion yen, approximately Rs 72.86 crore, for the project is expected to contribute to strengthening connectivity and industrial competitiveness of the local economy by improving traffic congestion and urban environment, the embassy said in a statement.

"Especially, in 2022, three years after the completion of this project, this new system will help reduce congestion length, currently reaching 550m at longest, by 30 per cent, at interchange facing heavy congestion, and contribute to enhancing the convenience of urban transportation and revitalising the local economy," it said.

In addition, this new system in Bengaluru city will utilise the advanced technology provided by Japan, the statement added.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Uttam Kumar Reddy poses for a selfie with party activists at Jana Garjana meeting at Jedcherla in Mahbubnagar district on Wednesday. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has predicted a landslide victory for the Congress in the 2019 general elections.

Addressing a public meeting Jadcherla Jana Garjana on Wednesday evening in Mahbubnagar district, Mr Reddy said the next Assembly elections would be fought bet-ween the family of Chief Minister K. Chandrase-khar Rao and people of Telangana. He said the Chief Ministers every move went against the people of Telangana.

The TRS government has cheated all sections of the society and now it is creating a wrong impression that it has resolved all problems. Mr KCR is underestimating the power of common people and apparently feels that he could cheat them all the time, Mr Reddy said.

The PCC chief said that the Congress would do a repeat of its performance in the 1989 and 2004 Assembly elections in 2019.

It will be a clean sweep for the Congress in the 2019 elections. People will punish the TRS at each and every booth across Telangana State. Over 30 lakh jobless youth, who were ignored by the TRS government, will ensure that all the TRS leaders become jobless. Lakhs of poor people who were denied promised double bedroom houses will make sure that the KCR family is evicted from Pragathi Bhavan. Stud-ents, who waited endlessly for fee reimbursement, will not let KCR cheat them and their parents again, he said.

AICC Telangana in-charge secretary R.C. Khuntia gave a call for TRS Hatao, Telangana Ko Bachao and said that the Telangana State was not formed to benefit only the KCR family.

Congress senior leaders including TPCC working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, former Union minister S. Jaipal Reddy, Leader of Oppos-ition in Council Shabbir Ali, legislators D.K. Aruna, G. Chinna Reddy, A. Sampath Kumar, A. Revanth Reddy, Dr. Mallu Ravi and Damodar Reddy addressed the meeting.
Kulbushan Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. (Screengrab)

New Delhi/ Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of Kubhushan Jadhav would be having last meeting with him on Monday, saying the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.

Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

"Let me assure you that the Commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."

He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

Read: Pak issues visa to Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife, mother; meet on Dec 25

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy.

Replying to a question regarding China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the spokesperson said it is a plan to fully harness Pakistan's natural endowments by boosting Pakistan industrial capabilities and improving its infrastructure.

He said the projects under this Corridor are under progress and will be completed in three phases with short term projects by 2020, mid-term by 2025 and long term projects by 2030.

Faisal said India had suffered defeat on diplomatic front as its propaganda based terrorist list had been taken off the Heart of Asia Conference declaration upon Pakistans strong objections.

Faisal also said that Pakistan had decided to release 291 Indian fishermen in two phases on humanitarian grounds.

He said the fishermen will be released in the first phase on December 29 and on January 8. He reiterated Pakistan's belief that humanitarian issues should be facilitated instead of being politicised.

Highlighting Pakistan's role in reconstruction activities in Afghanistan, the spokesperson said that Pakistan has established three tertiary care hospitals in three different cities of that country.

He said Pakistan was also imparting training to medical staff and 69 Afghan health professionals completed their training this year.

To a question, Faisal said Pakistan was fully committed to the freedom and protection of rights of all minorities living here and they were proud Pakistanis having representation in all walks of life.

To a question, regarding voting in UN on Jerusalem issue, he said freedom has no price and Pakistan's vote will be principled.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday cautioned BJP leaders against getting complacent ahead of the coming crucial electoral battles in the states, and in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and asked them to strengthen the organisational roots (booth level).

Mr Modi, who was attending the first BJP parliamentary party meeting after the recent electoral victories, also got emotional, thrice, as he recalled how the party had gained electorally as well as organisationally since its inception and how party stalwarts, including patriarch and former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee had groomed young leaders, including himself.

The Prime Minister was given a standing ovation by party leaders for the recent electoral victories in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. In his speech, Mr Modi also pitched for promoting young faces inside and outside the party for a New India, a vision for 2022 promoted by his government. Later, party MPs from Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat also met the PM separately to congratulate and felicitate him.

Asking the BJP leaders not to get affected by the Oppositions disinformation campaign against the party, the PM said that booth-level work, which was the root of a poll campaign, was the mother of an election victory.

It was learnt that he said the Congress under Indira Gandhi had got to rule 18 states but the BJP and its allies were already in power in 19 states now, and the party had achieved such a political feat in its three-and-a-half-year rule at the Centre. He got emotional when he recalled the work of Makrand Desai, Arvind Maniyar and Vasantrao Gajendragadkar, among others, in building the party, known as the Jan Sangh in its earlier avatar, in Gujarat, sources said.

Despite the Congress claiming a moral victory after scoring its highest tally in Gujarat and pushing the BJP to its lowest score in the last many elections, Mr Modi asserted it was a big win for his party in his home state.
President Ram Nath Kovind pays floral tributes at the statue of the Lord Buddha at the Tank Bund before visiting the Raj Bhavan Government School. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: President Ram Nath Kovind, during his short stay in the city, paid a floral tribute to the monolithic Buddha statue at Tank Bund, before visiting the Raj Bhavan Government School on Wednesday.

During his interaction with children from the school, he urged them to learn as much Hindi as they could, as he knew several leaders who found it difficult to communicate with the people of another state because of lack of knowledge of Hindi.

Teachers should take extra care and teach Hindi to students by taking extra classes even if it is an optional subject. During my visit to Arunachal Pradesh, to the remotest places in North Eastern states, I was surprised to know that the people there used to frequently communicate in Hindi. On enquiry, it was found that they learnt the Hindi language from their school days and it is helping them to communicate with people in other states of the country, said Ram Nath Kovind.

The President, who confessed that he always found it difficult to communicate with children at large gatherings rather than adults, said it was because children are sensitive and pure-hearted.

Citing former President Dr Abdul Kalams example, Mr Kovind said there is no substitute for hard work, children have to set themselves goals and strive hard to achieve them.

The President was informed about the efforts made by the Governor to convince the Telangana government to sanction funds to rebuild the Raj Bhavan Government School.
CHENNAI: Chinks in Mannargudi clan came to the fore on Wednesday with V. K. Sasikalas niece Krishna Priya slamming her relative TTV Dhinakaran for the release of Jayalalithaas hospital video by his loyalist P. Vetrivel and demanding his explanation.

Chinnamma had given the video to Dhinakaran for being handed over to the (Justice A Arumughaswamy) Enquiry Commission (probing Jayas death). We want to know how it landed in the hands of Vetrivel. We want Dhinakaran to explain, fumed Krishna Priya, hours after the video that showed Jayalalithaa sipping a drink in her hospital bed went viral.

Interestingly, Jaya TV, now controlled by Krishna Priyas brother Vivek Jayaraman, did not air the video. This development led to widespread speculation about differences in the family since Jaya TV goes to town with every bit of information related to Jayalalithaa.

Krishna Priya said the video was shot by Sasikala and with Jayalalithaas approval when the latter was shifted to a special room in Apollo Hospitals from Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

It was done purely for personal purposes and not for public circulation. Chinnamma had taken the stand she would not release it and betray Jayalalithaas confidence; thats why she did not release it even when allegations erupted accusing her of killing Jayalalithaa, Krishna Priya said.

Krishna Priya first took to Facebook and accused Dhinakaran of stooping low in having the video released. But, she quickly deleted the post on her timeline and quickly replaced his name with that of Vetrivel.

Krishna Priya pointed fingers at him more than once during his five-minute-long interaction with media for releasing the video. She also suggested that Vetrivel could not have released the video without the concurrence of Dhinakaran.

While Krishna Priya said the family was upset with the video release since it showed Amma in poor light, Jayanand, son of Sasikalas brother Dhivakaran, said none can take objection to the videos release since it was done with an aim to clear doubts of millions of AIADMK cadre.

Doubts and suspicion in the minds of cadre have been cleared after the release of the video. No one can take and should take objection to release of the video since it is authentic and was released only to clear doubts, Jayanand said, in a clear rebuttal to Krishna Priya.

Krishna Priya termed the video release a big mistake and betrayal of trust on the part of Vetrivel and said she expected Dhina-karan to act against him.

On the date on which the video was shot, she said it was taken a month or two after Jayalalithaa was hospitalised. First she was in ICU and later she was brought to a room and the video was shot at that time, she claimed.

Police file case against Vetrivel

City police on Wednesday booked expelled AIADMK leader P. Vetrivel of TTV Dhinakaran faction, a few hours after he released a video clip, purportedly of former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa undergoing treatment at Apollo Hospital.

The 20-second video shows the late chief minister on a hospital bed, sipping fluids from a white plastic cup using a straw. The video created a furore among the political circles. Several leaders questioned the veracity and timing of the release of the video clip, especially since the clip has been released a year after Jayalalithaas death.

The Election Commission too responded strongly to Vetrivels act. Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said that a case will be filed against Dhinakarans side and stated that releasing a video related to a leader of political party will be considered as canvassing.

Meanwhile, Chennai police registered a case against P. Vetrivel under IPC section 188 (disobedience of a public servants order) and Section 126 (b) of the Representation of Peoples Act (display to public any election matter by means of cinematograph, television or other similar apparatus).
Stalin earlier distributed sweets after the verdict was delivered even as DMK party workers and supporters held celebrations, especially outside the CIT Colony residence of Kanimozhi. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Chennai: DMK leader MK Stalin on Thursday described as "historic" a special court verdict acquitting his party colleagues A Raja and Kanimozhi besides 17 others in the 2G spectrum allocation case.

Expressing joy over the acquittal of all the accused including his sister Kanimozhi and former telecom minister Raja, Stalin charged that the case was a "planned" attempt at "insulting and finishing off" a political party, referring to his own party.

"A historic verdict has been delivered," Stalin, DMK Working President, told reporters here in response to the special court acquitting all the 19 accused in the case.

Recalling that the case was filed in 2009, he said it was a "planned (attempt) to insult and finish off a party in the political history (of the country)."

"It is a matter of joy that all of them have been acquitted," he added.

Stalin earlier distributed sweets after the verdict was delivered even as DMK party workers and supporters held celebrations, especially outside the CIT Colony residence of Kanimozhi.

Delhi: DMK supporters marching and celebrating outside Patiala House Court after the Court's pronouncement of #2GScamVerdict. All accused have been acquitted. pic.twitter.com/LtLzDbyQ2h  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were on Thursday acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Fifteen others accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.
Kumki elephants Wasim and Vijay, upon their arrival at Ettimoola village near Gudalur. (Photo: DC)

Ooty: It is kumki trouble at Gudalur as both kumki elephants from the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR), which were deployed to drive away stray wild elephants in Gudalur village limits, turned violent. They have suddenly entered the musth stage, a condition where male elephants begin to secrete high amounts of reproductive hormones that make them behave aggressively towards humans. Foresters are looking for other alternatives to manage the situation.

Only a week ago two kumki elephants - Wasim and Vijay, from the MTR elephant camp were brought to Ettimoola village in Gudalur on the Nilgiris border to drive away a wild elephant which strayed into the village. Both kumki elephants have now turned violent, and kumki elephant Vijay attacked and injured its mahout Murugesan on Monday night and remained very aggressive throughout Tuesday.

Forest sources said that on Sunday night Wasim turned violent and from Monday night onwards it was the turn of Vijay.

Elephants in musth discharge a thick secretion on the sides of the head, forest sources added.

While Wasim was chained and sent back to MTR, Vijay was chained and is being monitored in a confined area in Ettimoola. Foresters replaced Wasim with another kumki elephant Bomman from MTR, and are looking for another replacement for Vijay, sources added.

It may take another couple of weeks for these kumki elephants to become normal, sources pointed.
Hyderabad: The State governments interest burden on debts is set to go 10 per cent beyond the stipulated revenue collection this year.

The government has been mobilising massive loans through budgetary and non-budgetary routes to fund its various populist measures like the 2BHK housing scheme, irrigation projects and Mission Bhagiratha.

The interest burden for this fiscal (2017-18) is projected to touch nearly Rs 11,500 crore, which is more than 10 per cent of the projected revenue collection of Rs 79,000 crore.

Despite being revenue surplus, the government was set to lose the opportunity to borrow more under FRBM norms due to increased interest burden next year.

As per FRMB norms, the Centre allowed States to borrow up to three per cent of GSDP. But for revenue-surplus states, it allows up to 3.5 per cent. Only Gujarat and Telangana would qualify for this.

The Centre had allowed Telangana to borrow up to 3.25 per cent of GSDP in 2016-17 and 3.5 per cent in 2017-18 on condition that the debt servicing and interest burden should not exceed 10 per cent of total receipts (revenue collection). However, the recent government statistical year book for 2017 projected interest burden to be Rs 11,338 crore, which would be more than 10 per cent of revenue projection of Rs 79,623 crore. The interest burden was Rs 7,942 crore in 2015-16.

The book projected the total receipts, including revenue receipts (Rs 79,624 crore), non-tax revenue (Rs 6,601 crore) and grants-in-aid and contribution (Rs 26,857 crore) at Rs 1.13 lakh crore during the same period.

Official sources said the higher interest burden was on account of the Rs 20,000 crore secured for irrigation projects and Rs 10,000 crore for Mission Bhagiratha and 2BHK housing scheme.

All these schemes were major poll promises of the TRS government for ensuing 2019 Assembly elections, the government was exploring all the debt options to complete these projects.

However, the government was worried over the Centre declining 3.5 per cent borrowing limit in 2018 in the crucial election year on the ground of interest burden exceeding 10 per cent.

With the Centre increasing borrowing limit this year, the states loan eligibility increased to Rs 25,019 crore from Rs 21,445 crore, which may be not possible next year.

DEFICIT DANGER
Due to non-utilisation for the last 10 years, the new campus wears a deserted look.

HYDERABAD: Even as the state government has decided to take steps to promote Telugu language, the BJP is sceptical about the governments move.

The party highlighted the tardy progress at the new campus of Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University for which 100 acres of land in Bachupally was allocated nearly 15 years ago.

The hostel and publication building were completed in 2005 and one-and-a-half years later, construction of the administration and college building were taken up. But the works had to be stopped mid-way due to paucity of funds.

Due to non-utilisation for the last 10 years, the new campus wears a deserted look. It may be mentioned that the varsity is still operating from its existing campus in Nampally.

Boys are being given accommodation in a hostel in Bachupally. Now, the hostel with nearly 50 rooms is half full. The students have to travel more than two hours every day to attend classes in the varsity.

Mohammed Shakeer, a PG student, said that they are facing problems in the hostel. Shortage of drinking water and lack of roads are some of them.

BJP state president Dr K. Laxman and vice-president Malla Reddy flayed the government for the sad state of affairs in the campus.

Meanwhile, Telugu University vice-chancellor Prof. S.V. Satyanarayana stated that paucity of funds affected the varsity.
Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government, on Wednesday, tabled the controversial Uttar Pradesh Control of Organized Crime Bill 2017 in the UP Assembly.

The bill, which has provisions for stringent laws to check organised crime, was tabled by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The bill is patterned on the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act.

The Chief Minister said that the proposed law would help in controlling crime and reining in criminals, mafia and land sharks.

The bill has a provision of stringent punishment for people engaged in organised crime with capital punishment accompanied by stiff penalty up to Rs 25 lakh and jail terms ranging from three years to life for other crimes, including possession of unaccountable wealth and harboring of criminals.

The bill has 28 additional provisions not present in the Gangster Act. Special courts will be set up to hear cases related to UPCOCA.
Perambalur: The sleepy village of Velur in Perambalur district came alive with renewed hopes as its son of the soil and former Union Telecom minister, Mr Andimuthu Raja and others including DMK MP, Ms. Kanimozhi, were acquitted in the sensational 2-G spectrum allocation case by a special court in New Delhi on Thursday. Mirroring the new optimism of the people of Raja's native district, S Rajednran, DMK's Perambalur district secretary now in Delhi told DC over phone that It is a great victory for the party as well as for Mr Raja. This is a death-blow to those who wished for destroying DMK, he said.
New Delhi: The acquittal of all the accused in the 2G scam on Thursday came as a big relief to Opposition Congress and a major boost to the DMK. The BJP, while in Opposition, had used the controversy to paint the then Congress-led regime as corrupt.

The Congress, which has been at the receiving end over the alleged scam virtually went into a celebration mode with one after another leader, including former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh hitting back at the BJP.

Dr Singh whose government was battered by allegations of corruption, said that the acquittal proves that there was a propaganda of lies.

Dr Singh added, I do not want to boast about anything. The courts judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself.

While the Congress wanted the BJP to apologise to the nation for spreading lies, finance minister Arun Jaitley held ground and said, The Congress treating the judgement as some kind of badge of honour and certification that it was an honest policy.

Mr Jaitley and the Congress leader and senior advocate Kapil Sibal also locked horns over the zero loss theory (propounded by Congress).

As Mr Jaitley rejected the claim, Mr Sibal said, There was no corruption, no loss. If theres a scam, its a scam of lies. A scam of (former CAG) Vinod Rai and Oppositions lies. Vinod Rai should apologise to the nation.

Mr Sibal maintained that the the telecom sector was in dire straits today. Charged over the Gujarat poll verdict, the Congress would now go full steam ahead to project itself as a victim of political propaganda. For the BJP at this juncture, the verdict would severely affect the partys moral high ground, which it had been taken since 2014.

Senior Congress leader, Mr Anand Sharma indicated that the party would raise the issue in Parliament. Incidentally both House, particularly Rajya Sabha are being stalled everyday with the Congress demanding clarification and apology from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for accusing Dr Singh of conspiring with Pakistan to defeat the BJP in Gujarat polls.

Despite the verdict and Congress claiming vindication, the saffron leaders remained somewhat unrelenting with an union minister saying that the judgement will be definitely challenged by the relevant authorities in a higher court.

The BJP also held a meeting with its spokespersons and television panelists to counter the Congress.
Participants from other states who attended the World Telugu Conference here spoke about the plight of Telugu students.

Hyderabad: The government wants to promote and conserve Telugu in other states where there is a significant Telugu population.

Participants from other states who attended the World Telugu Conference here spoke about the plight of Telugu students who want to study Telugu in those states.

Though there are several Telugu schools in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, there are no textbooks and teachers are poorly trained.

A seminar on this subject was held in Ravindra Bharathi on December 19 as part of the WTC.

Telangana Sahitya Academy chairman Nandini Sidda Reddy said, We received several requests and suggestions from Telugu people residing in other states during the WTC. They are concer-ned about other governments ignoring Telugu.

Representatives from Gujarat complained that there are over seven lakh Telugu people in the state and 21 Telugu schools, but no teachers. Tamil Nadu representatives said Telugu schools were losing ground since 2006 when the government made Tamil mandatory.

UP representatives said the state government paid salaries to Telugu teachers once a year and that too, for eight months. In Bengal, Bangla/Hindi is compulsory after Class VIII making it difficult for students. In Chhattisgarh, Telugu teachers are paid less than to others.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao wants to take up these issues with his counterparts in other states and is willing to provide free textbooks, teachers, and training. In return, he will offer similar encouragement for students from other states studying in TS to promote their regional languages.
KOZHIKODE: The piped natural gas project of GAIL underway in the district will not affect the social life of farmers in the locality, say revenue officials and GAIL authorities. Many inhabitants on the premises of the project are convinced of the safety of the project. The authorities have told them that they can continue to use the land based on some guidelines. GAIL deputy general manager M. Viju told DC that only those who failed to bag the compensation due to some anomalies in land documents were protesting now. The issues will be sorted out as soon as the confusion over land documents are rectified.

On the utilisation of land post pipe-laying and completion of the project, Mr Viju said that the land owners can cultivate plants the roots of which would be limited up to 1.5 metrs deep. Vegetables, plantains and other crops are ideal. Even temporary sheds can be made on the land. Permanent constructions can be made five metres from the middle of the pipeline.

A detailed draft of pipeline would be handed over to the local bodies for facilitating this. The GAIL would also issue No objection certificate for permanent constructions after inspecting the spot, he said. Even tractors can be used for farming on the land, he added. An amount of Rs 7.5 crore has been disbursed as compensation, according to GAIL authorities.
The Ranga Reddy district administration issued notices to a few builders threatening demolition of properties falling within GO 111 limits.

Hyderabad: The controversy over the Government Order (GO) 111 prohibiting construction activity within 10-km radius of twin lakes. Himayathsagar and Osman Sagar has flared up again.

The Ranga Reddy district administration issued notices to a few builders threatening demolition of properties falling within GO 111 limits.

Builders alleged discrimination by officials saying several hotels, resorts, farm houses and colleges had come up within those limits, but officials were selectively targeting a few builders.

They argued that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had announced withdrawal of GO 111 several times on the ground that it was obstructing the development of surrounding villages and even appointed a committee with senior officials to examine the issue. They pointed out that GO 111 was issued in the late 1990s when the citys drinking water was solely dependent on the two lakes.

Now, the entire citys drinking water needs were met by water from the Godavari and the Krishna, making the GO irrelevant.

Builder A. Ramesh Reddy, who was issued the notice, said, If officials are really sincere on implementing GO 111, they should first initiate action against hotels, resorts, professional colleges and permanent constructions in farm houses that have come up in the vicinity of these lakes. Instead, they are trying to threaten others who are doing constructions far away from the lakes.

However, Ranga Reddy collector M. Raghunandan Rao said they were going as per the norms laid down in GO 111. Action would be initiated against all constructions that violated the order.
Justice N.V. Ramana of the Supreme Court on Thursday stressed the need to have a bench of the National Company Law Tribunal at Hyderabad.

Hyderabad: Justice N.V. Ramana of the Supreme Court on Thursday stressed the need to have a bench of the National Company Law Tribunal at Hyderabad.

Inaugurating the National Company Law Tribunal Advocates Association here, Justice Ramana suggested that the association members move the Centre for setting up the bench in Hyderabad.

He said that the constitution of appellate tribunals will reduce the burden on High Courts.

Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan of the Hyderabad High Court and judges of the High Court National Company Law Tribunal judicial member V Rajeswara Rao and others were present at the function.
Kalaburagi: Babies being exchanged at birth has provided the basis of many a Bollywood movie plot, but it happened for real at the District Government General Hospital here on December 14 thanks to the carelessness of the nursing staff.

Handing over the babies to their families, they mixed them up. As one of the babies was a boy, the families fought over who he belonged to, depriving the newborns of their mother's milk for a week. It happened soon after the hospital performed five caesarian deliveries, including those of two women, Nandamma and Tajbee almost simultaneously on the fateful day. The nurses took the babies from the operation theatre and handed over the boy to Nandamma's family and the girl to Tajbee's family, when it should have been the other way round.

About half an hour later the nurses realised their error and rushed back to Nandamma's family to tell it that the male baby was actually delivered by Tajbee. But this kicked off a row as the parents of Nandamma, who were rejoicing the birth of a grandson, were sorely disappointed at learning he was not theirs afterall and refused to accept the baby girl that the nurses tried to hand over to them. Despite much pleading, Nandamma too reportedly refused to breastfeed the girl, forcing the hospital staff to take both babies from their parents and feed them milk bought from outside in the ICU. The police was called in to speak to both families and finally on the demand of Nandamma's family, the doctors did a blood test to establish which families the babies belonged to. Even so Nandamma's family was reluctant to accept the girl. So another round of tests was done in a private hospital to satisfy it and the results proved to be the same.

But it took persuasion from the superintendent of police for Nandamma and her family to accept them and the mothers breastfed their babies nearly a week after giving birth to them.

But unwilling to accept the result as final, Nandamma's family demanded a DNA test and the hospital has now been told to do one to put an end to the confusion once and for all.
We will continue to do so, be it a temple, a dargah or a church. (Photo: DC)

Bengaluru: Dropping subtle hints that the party will continue to placate minorities, KPCC president Dr G. Parameshwar on Wednesday asserted that the party leaders will pay visit to darghas and churches along with temples.

He said, It is common for every politician to visit religious places ahead of elections. The Congress has a tradition of sorts to visit religious places ahead of elections. We will continue to do so, be it a temple, a dargah or a church.

Responding to a question, he retorted that if AICC president Rahul Gandhi wishes to visit temples, the party will surely arrange it. As of now, there is no programme fixed. We (Karantaka unit) are planning to host a big convention to welcome him either in Chikkamagaluru or Bengaluru. Once Mr Gandhi gives us the date, we will organise the convention, he said.
The sources said that the party is likely to borrow heavily from its Gujarat manifesto and keep the focus on agrarian crises.

New Delhi: Charged by its success in Gujarat, the Congress party has made its manifesto for the state, a template for all other Assembly elections, including Karnataka, which goes to polls as early as March-April next year. Top leaders told this newspaper that the drafting of the Congress manifesto for Karnataka was in its final stages and would be submitted to the central leadership of the party by January 15.

The manifesto committee, which is headed by senior leader Veerappa Moily, has already covered three zones out of four in the state, top sources said. Karnataka can be roughly divided into four regions namely-- North Karnataka (which is again sub divided into Mumbai-Karnataka region and Hyderabad- Karnataka region), central Karnataka, South Karnataka and coastal Karnataka (Udupi and Mangaluru). Congress is the incumbent and holds 123 seats in the 224 member Assembly, the BJP 44 and JD(S) 39.

The sources said that the party is likely to borrow heavily from its Gujarat manifesto and keep the focus on agrarian crises, farmers loan waivers, job creation and unemployment benefits.

Out of the total 224 seats in the state some 130-140 can be classified as rural. Karnataka has been reeling under a drought for the last almost five years.

In Gujarat, the Congress benefited majorly from rural votes. It pipped the BJP to garner the maximum vote share in rural Gujarat.

The Congress and its allies won 80 seats in Gujarat as against the BJP's 99. Though not a win, the party claimed a "moral" victory in the state which is the home state and stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. The Mr Moily led campaign committee has identified five major local issues as well which could be included in the draft to be presented before the top Congress leadership next month.

However, in lieu with the Gujarat model of campaigning the party was likely to steer clear of issues which might polarise the electorate. The state has witnessed communal tension in Udupi and Mangalore.

Sources in the campaign committee said that some of the other factors which are being considered are communal tension in Udupi and Mangalore.
Bengaluru: BJP president Amit Shah homed in on an issue that could swing a major chunk of the votes in the critical Bombay-Karnataka region in the poll bound state, pulling in Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for a key meeting with state BJP leaders, and promising to end the impasse over the row on sharing of the Mahadayi waters ahead of elections in May.

At a meeting at his residence in Delhi on Wednesday, he directed Mr. Parrikar to consider the drinking water needs of 11 taluks in north Karnataka, telling the Goa Chief Minister that Karnataka's demand for sharing of 7.56 tmc of water for drinking water from the Mahadayi river through Kalasa- Banduri Nala will not affect the interest of Goa.

Sources close to the state BJP told this newspaper that, Mr. Shah called only the top leaders of the BJP for the confabulation, including party Chief Ministerial candidate B.S.Yeddyurappa, former CM Jagadish Shettar, Hubballi- Dharwad MP, Pralhad Joshi and Union Ministers Ananth Kumar, D.V. Sadananda Gowda.

Mr Shah has categorically told Goa Chief Minister that the party should resolve the Mahadayi crisis at the earliest, since the party, out of government since 2014 is going to face public ire in 2018 if it's not resolved as it is BJP-run Goa that is opposed to the move.

Mr. Shah spelled out the tight political situation, the BJP is facing in the state on the issue, with the Congress government accusations that the BJP government in Goa was solely responsible for opposing the project, having a negative fallout for the state BJP unit.

Mr. Yeddyurappa and Ananth Kumar explained that proposed Kalasa-Banduri drinking water project would directly impact 25 Assembly constituencies, across 11 taluks, if the party failed to fulfill its promise to clear the project. BJP leaders said that with an allocation of 7.5 tmc feet of water, drinking water can be supplied to Hubballi-Dharwad, Gadag, Bagalkot and some part of Belagavi districts.

Mr. Parrikar however has not signalled he will be amenable to the request of Central BJP and state BJP leaders and would only say that he will convene an all party meeting and discuss the matter with his state Cabinet. He is reportedly inclined towards waiting for a final award from the Mahadayee water disputes tribunal instead of resolving the issue in an out of court settlement.

Just a gimmick, says CM Siddaramaiah

Speaking at Muddebihal in Vijayapur district on Wednesday, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called the BJP`s sudden move to resolve the Mahadayi water dispute a political gimmick when it had failed to respond to the state`s pleas on it in the past.
Hubballi: With BJP leader, B S Yeddyurappa skipping the Parivarthana rally in Nargund on Wednesday to fly to Delhi to hold talks with Goa Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar on the Mahadayi river dispute, all eyes are on the second leg of the yatra that will take off in the city on Thursday as he is expected to make an announcement on the occasion.

Mr Yeddyurappa is holding talks with Mr Parikkar in the presence of BJP national president, Amit Shah to find a solution to the dispute that is depriving Karnataka's farmers of the water they need from the Mahadayi river that originates in Goa.

Although farmer leaders have welcomed his initiative, most are afraid any announcement could be a mere eyewash to win over the farmers with elections round the corner. But local BJP local are confident Mr Yeddyurappa will be able to persuade the Goa Chief Minister to hold talks with Karnataka to let it utilise 7.56 tmc of the river water for drinking.

"The comprehensive project report of the Kalasa Banduri project was prepared and the foundation stone was laid in 1960. The BJP leaders should first publish a gazette notification on this if they have the political will to implement the project. We will not tolerate it if they make a hurried announcement just with an eye on the votebank," warned Kalasa Banduri Horata Samiti president, Vijay Kulkarni.

Speaking at Muddebihal in Vijayapur district on Wednesday, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called the BJP's sudden move to resolve the water dispute a political gimmick when it had failed to respond to the state's pleas on it in the past.

Meanwhile, with farmers holding a bandh in Navalgund town on Wednesday for an early solution to the Mahadayi dispute, traffic was held up on the Hubballi-Vijayapur National Highway-218. Thousands of farmers took out a procession raising slogans against the state and Union governments for their lethargy in resolving the water dispute and threatened to lay siege to the Hubballi Parivarthana rally if BJP leaders failed to make a worthwhile announcement on the occasion.
Chennai: The 2G scam verdict washed away the hopes of the BJP here which expected the judgment to seal the fate of the DMK while in contrast the Congress chief Su. Thirunavukkarasar, a known BJP baiter since he switched loyalty from the saffron party, seemed to have the last laugh on Thursday.

Declining to comment on the special CBI court exonerating all 19 accused, including former Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi, in the 2G scam case, BJP state president Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan said the judgment should be studied in detail. However, she claimed that the verdict has come like this. The BJP is firm on eradicating corruption and bribery at all levels.



Partys national secretary H. Raja contended that justice will prevail in the end. There are people who celebrated the Qunha judgment (John Michael DCunha, then Additional Judge of Karnataka High Court who convicted late CM Jayalalithaa in the 2016 disproportionate assets case). We looked at the comforts by the Coomaraswamy (Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy who acquitted J. Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case) judgment. Finally, Justice won. In the 2G case, the CBI & ED should appeal. The cancellation of spectrum licences is proof of corruption. Justice will prevail. Wait, Mr. Raja tweeted.

Party MP Subramanian Swamy who was the first private complaint in the 2G case took to Twitter to air his thoughts on the judgment. Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here. This is not a setback at all, its an aberration as the law officers were not serious on fighting against corruption. So I hope the PM takes lesson from this.We must now fight corruption on war footing, he said in another tweet.
CHENNAI: Waiting in long queues to cast votes has always been associated with the elderly but RK Nagar byelection proved that theory wrong on Thursday.

The high profile constituency saw a huge turnout of first time and young voters on Thursday.

While young voters with their friends brought the high-tension polling stations, heavily guarded by paramilitary personnel, with laughs and jokes, first-time voters were excited.

M. Sarathadevi

Almost all polling booths saw steady footfalls of the younger generation, most of them are first-time voters. M. Sarathadevi, a college student and first-time voter said that police and polling officials helped her in voting procedures. Though I am excited to cast my first vote, I have taken a firm decision on to which candidate I am going to vote, she said.

Police and paramilitary presence did not intimidate her, she added.

Another first-time voter, S.P. Ajith Kumar of Washermenpet, who is also a college student, said that he had voted in April byelection, which was rescinded by the election commission. Finally I got the opportunity to vote in the election. This is one of my happiest moment and the ink stain on my finger is a mark of my accomplishment of the duty as a citizen, Ajith Kumar said.

Ajith Kumar

Young voters also expressed bliss as they visited polling booths in groups.

I am casting my vote for the second time. Happy to perform my duty, K. Hariharan of Korukkupet, said.
They fell in love at Jamia Millia Islamia, where they were both students. It was the early 90s, and they were both studying mass communications. It was also the beginning of the private television channel boom. He was Muslim. She was Hindu. Both families opposed the relationship. To escape them, Suhaib Ilyasi, who would one day host the television show Indias Most Wanted, and Anju Singh, eloped to London. There in 1993 they got married. Anju converted to Islam and became Afsan, and everything seemed set for their happily ever after.

Except that there was no happy ending to this love story. When the couple returned to India in 1994, all their troubles were resurrected. Anju couldnt live in Ilyasis house and returned to London. According to her brother, she was very unhappy in the marriage and considered a divorce during that time. But she returned to India and a year later the couple had a daughter whom they named Aaliya. Their problems continued and so did Anjus efforts to leave, this time to her sisters house in Canada. Ilyasi showed up to coax her back, and in 1998 she returned again to India.

That same year, an idea that the couple had come up with together came to fruition. In their first year together in London, Anju and Ilyasi had been inspired by the British show Crime Stoppers and wanted to create an Indian version of the same show. The two shot a pilot of the show, with the striking and beautiful Anju as the anchor. They were able to sell the show to Zee TV but when it finally aired in March 1998, it was Suhaib Ilyasi who would be the anchor. The show, Indias Most Wanted, would make him famous. After its initial run of over 50 episodes, Zee TV renewed the contract. Their idea had been a hit.

Their marriage, however, remained a flop. In 1998, not long after the show first aired, troubles prompted Anju to return to Canada again. The same cycle of separation and reconciliation followed. Relatives alleged that Ilyasi would harass Anju over dowry. In February 1999, Anju returned to India again, convinced this time by Ilyasis promises of a new house. They did buy a new apartment and spent 10 months redecorating and renovating it. The plan was to have a huge housewarming party on January 16, 2000, Anjus birthday. The celebration would never happen.

On the evening of January 10, 2000, police were called to the couples apartment in Delhi. They found Anju stabbed to death. Ilyasi said she had committed suicide and that he had tried to stop her by grabbing the knife. This was the beginning of a murder investigation that would last over 17 years. There would be differing autopsy reports; one insisted that homicide could not be ruled out. There would be divergent evidentiary analysis; one stated that Ilyasis fingerprints could not be found on the knife despite his own admission that he had tried to grab it from Anju as she tried to stab herself to death. Then there was the dubious manner of the death itself; people who commit suicide rarely stab themselves, and they almost never stab themselves twice. Anju had multiple stab wounds.

Last week, Anjus family, which had been subjected to hearing after hearing, arguments, and a custody battle over the couples daughter, finally got some justice. Ilyasi, the host of one of the most popular Indian television crime shows, was declared a criminal himself and found guilty of his wifes murder. The high-profile nature of the Ilyasi murder case has meant that it has received a lot of attention. Many of the factors defining the case, however, are not altogether unknown in Pakistan and India. A couple fall in love and fail to get family support for their marriage. They get married anyway but once married the power dynamic between the two changes. Unlike an arran-ged marriage, this one did not have two families rooting for it and remained fragile and became ultimately murderous. That is not of course to say that arran-ged marriages are not abusive marriages.

All over the world murder by an intimate partner is a leading cause of death for women of childbearing age. High-profile cases like Ilyasis are windows through which we can see the dynamics inside so many homes and so many marriages. Ilyasi, wife killer, may finally be in prison but many others roam free, harassing and beating and intimidating and abusing, in plain sight, while the world looks the other away.
In the many analysis and the noisy war of words thats still continuing in television studios after the Gujarat and Himachal election results, an important aspect that has been conspicuously absent from the discourse is the abysmally low representation of women fielded as candidates by both major players  the BJP and Congress. In Gujarat, the BJP and Congress fielded 12 and 10 women candidates respectively out of 182. In 2012, the strength of women members in the Gujarat Assembly was just 15, now its further down to 13. Similarly, in Himachal, of 338 contestants, only 19 were women. The BJP and Congress together put up nine candidates, of which four won. The total strength of women members in the newly-elected Assemblies is just seven per cent in Gujarat and five per cent in Himachal. Further analysis shows that in the Assembly elections in March 2017, of the total number of 690 seats contested in five states, only 55 are represented by women. The strength of women MPs in the current Lok Sabha is 11.41 per cent, while in the Rajya Sabha its 11.43 per cent, far lower than the global average, and even compared to neighbours like Pakistan and Afghanistan. The depressingly low representation of women both in Parliament and the Assemblies, and in party nominations, underlines the need to bring back the focus on the long-awaited and much-disputed Womens Reservation Bill. Introduced first in 1996 in the Lok Sabha, the bill has generated stormy debates and unruly behaviour inside Parliament. In its turbulent journey over 20 years, the bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010 by the UPA government, but lapsed with the dissolution of the House in 2014. The BJP government, despite its pre-poll promise of passing the bill, hasnt made any attempt to table it in Parliament in the last three years.

An argument against the formalisation of womens representation through the bill is why cant political parties create internal reservations ensuring the fielding of 33 per cent women candidates in every election. The fallacy of this argument is that internal reservations cant be made mandatory, and can easily be breached by any party. And even if internal quotas are made mandatory, if seats are not reserved, most of the women would get the worst seats from which they wouldnt be elected. Pitched against strong male candidates, the chances of such women losing are quite high. As winnability is extremely important in electoral politics, parties shy away from giving tickets to women. All parties must nurture and create women leaders from within their ranks by giving women more responsibilities and sufficient representation within their organisation at all levels so that they can take on anyone, irrespective of gender. But till that happens, its important to ensure a greater degree of womens representation through affirmative action like the reservation bill. This would also encourage more women to join active politics.

Another criticism of reservations is the assumption that there will be proxy candidates like wives and other female relatives fronting for male candidates. Even if thats true, one cant still discount the fact that even these female relatives are women. Despite a large number of such proxy candidates in panchayats and local bodies with minimum 33 per cent quota for women, studies have shown very positive effects of reservation towards the cause of womens empowerment. A large number of women come out of the shadow of their male relatives, and develop and assert their leadership with time. Another argument against reservation is that the proposed rotation of constituencies every five years will act as a disincentive to work in a constituency as no one would have a stake in it. Its also considered not fair that after nurturing a constituency for five years, one has to let it go due to reservations. The same logic would apply to a woman representative as well.

If she fights from a reserved constituency, its certain her constituency would be changed in the next term. A similar system is there in panchayats too, but the stakes for the Lok Sabha and Assemblies are far higher. One way out could be to make the rotation every 10 years rather than every five. Then the current representative will have the chance of renomination from the same constituency. A possible guarantee of 10 years should be more than enough in an ever-changing flux of the world of politics. Various suggestions are made for accommodating women through reservations without hurting the interest of the current setup, like increasing the total number of constituencies through delimitation and others. But to consider and debate these suggestions, it is necessary that the government should initiate the bill first.

The participation of women in electoral politics compared to men is exceedingly low. Politics is a full-time and taxing job. The risk factor is extremely high; and as its difficult to pursue another career while in active politics, one needs financial resources even for mere survival. Women also need support system to supplement her traditional responsibilities at home. Very few women have access to independent sources of sufficient income and support, primarily from her family. The uncertainty makes it even more difficult. A man too may face similar problems. But in a traditional society, families are much more willing to invest in a man getting into politics compared to a woman. Only affirmative action like reservation can incentivise more women, particularly from non-political families, to join electoral politics. The BJP has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha and the largest number in the Rajya Sabha. Mrs Sonia Gandhi had written to the Prime Minister reaffirming her support for the Womens Bill, and Congress president Rahul Gandhi has reiterated that support. If the BJP and Congress join forces, no one can stop the bills passage. But for that the BJP must show political will and introduce it in Parliament as soon as possible.
In a landmark order that may have huge implications for the entire spectrum of contemporary Indian politics, a CBI special court exonerated all 17 accused in the 2G spectrum case, including former communications minister A. Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, the daughter of DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi. Judge O.P, Saini said the prosecution had miserably failed to prove any charge against any of the accused, in the allotment of the national resource of airwaves. While the acquittal of the two DMK politicians and many of Indias telecommunications companies may pertain to the letter of the law and presentation of the case on transgressions against it, what the judgment means for national political alignments is immeasurably more. What must also be reassessed following the verdict is the reputation of the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh, which had, largely on the basis of the 2G and coal scams, been condemned as one of the most corrupt in independent Indias history.

Beyond political implications, the baffling nature of the judgment does little to justify the changed norms under which the licences were given in an orchestrated first come-first served basis and flies in the face of what the Supreme Court itself said about the case in 2012, besides in how the court acted in cancelling 122 licences given spectrum that were illegally allotted. The use of the word well-choreographed chargesheet is perhaps a pointer to how politically inflamed the case was or how it may have been handled by the CBI, an agency whose lawyers have earned a certain notoriety for not being able to substantiate what investigators claim in their chargesheets. Serious issues of whether the Prime Minister was misled by the then communications minister were not even considered by the court simply as no material was placed on record to indicate the PM was misled on the facts or the facts were misrepresented to him.

Regardless of when appeals against the verdict will be pressed in higher courts, the issue shows the failure of successive governments  the UPA authorised the probe by the CBI back in 2011  to place a finger on suspected corruption alleged to have caused a notional loss of a humongous Rs 1.76 lakh crores, at least according to the CAG. Its moot whether the verdict is a total vindication of the UPA because, subsequent to the courts cancellation of licences, a fresh auction process was held which brought in substantial revenue to the government. It would be fair to surmise that there was a loss to the exchequer due to the methodologies of allocation. What hasnt been proved is whether the graft actually reached the politicians or bureaucrats, who are not blameless as a reading of the verdict indicates. The larger question left unanswered is whether our leaders are as clean as the blanket acquittals make them appear.
Politics doesnt run in straight lines, especially when in a developing situation a clutch of contenders fancy their chances. The opposition to BJP rule in the country appeared in a moribund state, and was suddenly sparked to life with the extraordinary Gujarat results, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi leading the campaign against the saffron party. Yet, with the BJP suddenly appearing to lose its shine, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has been first off the block, hinting strongly that she had the best credentials to be the Oppositions face as the challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her party spokesman freely made the case in remarks to the media.

While the Gujarat verdict has dented the BJP even if the saffron party won the election, and politics can well take a new turn, it does seem premature for any party at this stage to press for a pre-eminent position among others that may be rivals for such a claim. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, five Assembly polls, including to three BJP-ruled states, are due in the coming months. If the BJP performs satisfactorily, it will be the Opposition parties turn to be subdued. The Congress will be the main challenger in these states. If this partys performance is convincing, and the governments stock continues to slip, its hard to see how regional secular parties will back Ms Banerjees claim. The West Bengal leaders spokesman also said that Sonia Gandhi, although no longer Congress president, should remain UPA chairperson. This is a pointless observation as Mrs Gandhi is unlikely at this stage to throw her hat into the ring for Prime Minister.
The days of the BJP are numbered: Ashish Dua, AICC member

The BJPs dream of a Congress-mukt Bharat should now go away. Gujarat almost became BJP-mukt Gujarat. The results are an answer to all those who had written off the Congress. The BJP has probably won by a whisker and the Congress has fallen short of just half-a-dozen numbers. We believe that a party that had 41 MLAs and the support of 43 legislators has done exceedingly well and we are grateful to the people. In this election we were able to translate and convey our message to a large number of people, and we will reach out to those we could not reach out to or convey our message. In politics, it is a constant process.

The BJP should now understand that we will fight over the peoples pain and suffering, we will espouse their aspirations, we will restore the politics of dignity and development in this country and we will restore the political discourse to people suffering rather than individual blame-game in this country. We have

lost in Gujarat, and that loss is a lesson for us but a bigger lesson for the BJP.

For the last three months, the entire Congress team led by Congress president Rahul Gandhi was active in Gujarat. Initially nobody was giving an outside chance to the Congress in the state. Under the direct charge of Mr Gandhi we have almost doubled our tally. The Congress campaign in the state steadfastly held on to development. Our issues were unemployment, farmer crisis, tribal issues and problems being faced by fishermen. From the other side there was a stunned silence on these issues.

To make our point, Mr Gandhi was also asking one question a day to the Prime Minister. But unfortunately there was no answer at all. This just goes on to show that the much-touted Gujarat model of development of the BJP is actually hollow. The BJP, including the Prime Minister, Gujarat chief minister and party president, were clutching at straws to attack the Congress.

Half the Union Cabinet along with MPs were permanently stationed in Gujarat, but in spite of that the BJP was reduced to double digits in its own bastion. In the hometown of the Prime Minister, the BJP candidate lost  such is the level of resentment. The strange part of the BJP campaign was that it was not talking about its achievements in the last 22 years. There was nothing on that. Instead, it was constantly focusing on the Congress and Mr Gandhi, it went on to cast aspersions on the internal elections of the Congress too. Now the people of Gujarat saw the hollowness  that is why the Congress increased its tally to 77 seats, plus our allies.

This is the best electoral performance of the Congress after 1985 in Gujarat. Our local units braved through the attacks that were mounted on the Congress. While the central team worked in unison with local teams to improve our outreach, the National Students' Union of India, Youth Congress and Mahila Congress was out in full force to ensure that the message of the Congress reaches all. Since the election is over, it does not mean that the Congress will leave Gujarat. The state unit is having an introspection meeting in the coming days and Mr Gandhi will also be participating.

In the national arena too, the Congress is giving the BJP a tough fight. Just look at the local body election results that have come from Punjab and Rajasthan. The BJP, which is in power in Rajasthan, has lost all the four zila parishads. This is just the beginning with our new president in command; the days of the BJP are numbered because we are here to stay.

Striving to gain power by hook or crook: Praveen S. Kapoor, Delhi BJP spokesperson

A lot is being said about the performance in the just-concluded Gujarat Assembly elections, but to my eye what the Congress has achieved is the maximum you can achieve by spreading negativity and aligning with people playing casteist or emotional cards. For long we have seen the communal appeaser face of the Congress, where the Gandhi family played saviour for a particular religious community, but in Gujarat we saw a new avatar of the Gandhis ready to do anything for a few more votes.

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to work on his agenda of Sabka saath, sabka vikas, in the Gujarat election we saw Congress president Rahul Gandhi trying to surcharge caste equations for petty political gain. Gujarat is a state where the Congress has ruled on the basis of a caste polity game of its leaders in the 1980s, and also destroyed the communal harmony of the state, which witnessed repeated riots erupting due to provocations of those in power. Mr Modi and his predecessor chief ministers of the BJP, after the party gained power in mid-1990s, worked hard to bring people of all castes and religions on a common platform and converted the state into a most peaceful and progressive one. From India to America today, Gujaratis are considered the best entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately, taking benefit of a world-over economic slowdown which hurts Gujarat too, a few caste leaders hyped issues of under-employment on caste lines and succeeded in gaining popularity. A few economic reforms ushered by the Centre too created some fears in entrepreneurs of the state. The Congress, which has lost shine all over the country, specially in Gujarat, having been out of power for 22 long years, saw in it an opportunity to gain political power. The party succumbed to all demands of three caste musketeers  Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mewani  who have gained prominence in their caste communities. Like in the earlier Bihar and Uttar Pradesh polls, it readily agreed to play second fiddle to the newly-glorified caste champions of Gujarat.

The Congress, which under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh had ushered in economic reforms just to politically please Gujarati entrepreneurs, opposed the Goods and Services Tax and other economic reforms of present Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress leadership, during elections, often plays a religious Muslim community appeasement card, but in Gujarat Mr Gandhi dumped Muslims too by trying to project himself as a hardcore devout Hindu. Despite all this farce play of the Congress and a four-cornered campaign of Mr Patel, Mr Mewani, Mr Thakore and a wide section of the Opposition party leaders spread across the country, the people of Gujarat came out to vote in large numbers and by almost a decisive 50 per cent votes rejected the dirty caste alliance manufactured by the Congress.

I really pity Congressmen trying to project Mr Gandhi as the hero of Gujarat. To me, Gujarat has reiterated that it stands by development and for them Mr Modi stands out as a development icon. Even the counting trends period gave a message that the country, specially economic investors, fear instability in the Congress return to power even in one state when the stockmarkets fell with early results showing a lead for the Congress in Gujarat. It is time the Congress ponders about its future instead of making a joke of itself by repeatedly aligning with caste polity players like Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and the three musketeers in Gujarat. Today the country feels the Congress is a party just striving to gain power by hook or crook.
Remember Bipasha? No, not sultry actress Bipasha Basu but the underlying credo of bijli, paani and sadak which gained currency in the 2003 Madhya Pradesh elections  this after a decade of Congress rule under Digvijay Singh, ensuring his defeat. Actually, the BJP used this theme as its bulwark in the 2003 state elections  for the Assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi  as Uma Bharti, Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh all swept into office promising development. It was a unique and gratifying change from the recent politics of polarisation and divisiveness that the BJP had been practicing at the time. Remember Godhra happened in 2002. The BJP chose to cut the umbilical cord to that type of politics by projecting development as its primary plank. Ironically, economics has never been an important issue in the Indian polity. But five years earlier, the same BJP had been torpedoed by the skyrocketing prices of onions.

North India cant do without its onions and the Congress had made it its main poll plank. The BJP, then ruling at the Centre and in Delhi and Rajasthan, suffered a humiliating defeat. Strategists in the party quickly realised that the deep-set and old moorings of Hindutva had to be junked. The message was clear  people were consumed with improving their lives and moving up the food chain. The new India was aspirational, to say the least. It didnt want to remain captive to old mores and mindsets. Ram Mandir and the Uniform Civil Code had to be ditched as basic issues related to ordinary peoples lives became ubiquitous.

A new template was birthed and the BJP chose to go into the 2003 elections with development and governance as its twin poll-plank. It worked. Actually, onions have derailed other governments too in the past. Most notably, burgeoning onion prices contributed to the fall of a reasonably credible Janata Party government in 1980, forcing Indira Gandhi, who made a massive comeback after her dethroning and ignominious exit in 1977, to call it the onion election. Gujarat 2017 has many lessons for both the BJP and the Congress. Many are predicated on economics.

Yes, soft Hindutva on the part of Rahul Gandhis temple run and Hardik Patels grandstanding provided the ballast for a much better Congress performance. The temple run fetched the Congress 18 seats while Hardiks bombast and belligerence helped win 23 Patidar seats. Remember, not since 1985 when it won 149 seats in the Assembly has the Congress done as well. Primarily, economic issues dominated the discourse in Gujarat.

The GST was an incendiary issue and while the BJP smartly cauterised the running sore by changing policy, its impact has been far-reaching. Surat was an epicentre of the trader agitation just as Mehsana was ground zero for the Patidar movement. When the frenzy took over on GST, the BJP brought in the heavy artillery. Textiles minister Smriti Irani was sent to Surat to assuage the hurt of the textile trading community. Other ministers too were parachuted. In the end, policy prescriptions quelled what could have been a staggering reversal. Soon after the GST rollout on July 1, many traders organisations had organised protest rallies; one by textile traders in Surat was especially noteworthy. These traders, weavers and those connected with the embroidery sector, form the countrys largest man-made fabric hub in Surat. Malleability and ductility on the part of the ruling side initiated a mid-course correction. On the backfoot, the BJP realised it needed to focus on its core constituency of traders and arrest the declining sentiment.

Almost overnight, apprehending the hurt and angst, it reduced GST on yarn to 12 per cent from 18 per cent, increased basic customs duty by 25 per cent to curb the import of undervalued fabrics from China, and gave relief in filing of GST returns. The stratagem worked perfectly for in parallel, it cut tax rates on artificial filament yarn such as viscose and rayon, as well as yarn of manmade staple fibres for good measure. These were brought under the five per cent slab from the previous 12 per cent. The sting had been taken out of Rahuls pincer. The results speak for themselves  the BJP, always strong in urban agglomerates in Gujarat, won 15 out of 16 seats in the Surat region and performed admirably in Vadodra and Ahmedabad too.

Conversely, the Congress also plugged into agrarian distress in the Saurashtra-Kutch area. With no redressal coming forth for harried cotton (kapas) farmers, Rahul scored over the BJP, that put in its worst performance in the region in recent elections. Of the 54 seats in contention, the BJP tally was down from 52 in 2014 to 23 in 2017. Saurashtra is the largest grower of cotton and groundnut (peanut is another crop here). The non-remunerative produce and the inadequate procurement process angered the kapas cultivators. They threw out the BJP from three districts (Morbi, Amreli and Gir-Somath) out of 11. Farmers in this water-scarce area cultivate a single crop of cotton and bank on timely procurement of the produce at a minimum support price. Though the state government had, in October, announced a bonus of `500 per quintal over and above the minimum support price of Rs 4,020 per quintal, the amount was considered too little to recover even the input cost. The Congress tied into this emotive narrative  complete failure of the procurement machinery to reach out across the entire region forced growers to sell their produce at very low prices, causing deep resentment and annoyance. The BJP managed to fix what was broken with the textile trade but could not do the same with the harassed kapas kisans.

It cost them dear. While the BJP has traditionally been strong in urban areas, the Congress has its bastions in the rural belt. This divide was further accentuated with the BJP winning 33 out of 39 urban constituencies, the Congress only six; of the 45 rurban seats, the BJP won 26 and the Congress a respectable 18, but the tour de force came in purely rural seats. Out of 98 seats, the Congress won in spades, as many as 55 with its allies against the BJPs 39. The UPA thrived with its welfare economics model, something Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to understand soon after the suit-boot ki sarkar jibe, when he began to veer left of centre. Now, the two examples that I have given cut across the urban-rural faultlines for, while textiles is an urban phenomenon, kapas is clearly a rural case study. Going forward, economics and jobs will play a bigger role in Indian elections. Young India is driven by ambition, Generation X is impatient; it seeks jobs and employment and a better life. In many ways, 2018 will be the year of reckoning for Prime Minister Narendra Modi known as Vikas Purush, his development model will be scrutinised.

He has to start delivering on many of his promises. Young voters have already signalled their impatience in Gujarat; and more Assembly elections beckon  among them are Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (a constant in this narrative) and Chhattisgarh. As India moves from one election to the other, Mr Modi remains the BJPs only vote catcher as he tirelessly and indefatigably marches from one rally to another, conquering hearts and minds of the people; at the core of his demagoguery remains vikas. Will he be progressive or populist in the run-up to the Big One? As a templar of development, he has to push for higher growth through deeper reform, and only then will the dividend of employment come. While he will be focused on that, he has to deal with a rapidly growing farm crisis as despite a food glut, remunerative pricing is missing. The pricing erosion is driving the farmer to deeper indebtedness. Complex meets complicated, for this is the Rubiks cube called India. Transpose the learning from the Gujarat test laboratory.
Of all the prophets before Muhammad, I feel closest to Jesus for he is Ruh Allah, the spirit of God and like Adam carries the breath of divinity. I spent my childhood in an Irish convent boarding school and therefore the closeness to Jesus. I love Mary, Mariam, as in the Arabic language. There is a whole chapter named after her in the Quran and Prophet Muhammad described her as one of the most perfect of all women. At the age of five, Mary was given a cell in the house of worship, where she studied under the scholars and devoted herself to prayer. When Zachariya would visit the cell, he would find Mary with fresh fruits and other provisions. Mary told him that God provided her with sustenance. Inspired, Zachariya prayed for a son in the sacred space and his prayers were accepted. Despite old age and a barren wife, Allah blessed him with Yahya, John the Baptist.

God sent a message through Archangel Jibraeel, Gabriel, to Mary that he had honoured her among the women of all nations and she would give birth to Jesus, to whom God would give a book. Mary asked how that was possible for no man had touched her. Gabriel reminded that Allah creates whatever he wills. The likeness of Jesus before God is as that of Adam; he created him from dust, then said to him, Be: And he was. Today if the followers of Jesus, Moses and Muhammad are at odds, it is not because of the their teachings, but despite their unifying message of the oneness of God. Islam, the last of the three Semitic monotheistic religions, incorporates all the prophets from the lineage of Ibrahim, Abraham; Musa, Moses and Isa, Jesus. According to the Quran there has never been a time when God did not send messengers who did not speak the language of the people. Nothing is said to thee that was not said to the apostles before thee.

Prophet Muhammad said: Both in this world and in the hereafter, I am the nearest of all the people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The Prophets are brothers of the same father with different mothers, and their religion is one. I am the closest in relationship to Jesus, the son of Mary, because there was no prophet between him and me. Jesus will descend. If you see him, then know him. He is a man of a moderately ruddy complexion. He will be wearing two faintly yellow garments. His hair will seem to have drops of water upon it, even though it will not be wet.

Sufis have forever expressed profound reverence for Jesus, regarding him a perfect Sufi master and knower of divine mysteries. Jesus said: It is to those who are worthy of my mysteries that I tell my mysteries. I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; I found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the son of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world. Whoever has come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world. Whoever finds the world and becomes rich, let him renounce the world. Become passers-by. Jesus declared: I am the master, I am the way. As the spirit of God, Jesus is pure compassion, a godly attribute that Sufis seek to manifest in their own spirits. Through the centuries, Jesus and Mary have played significant roles in Sufi thought and poetry. Rumi writes:

The hermitage of Jesus

Is the Sufis table spread

Take heed, O sick one,

Never forsake this doorway.
Muslims are an essential requirement for the BJP to win elections. The results from Gujarat confirm this truth yet again. Why the Congress has done better in the rural areas is because the Muslim population is thinly scattered  not enough to be a cluster or a pole. And Hindutva needs a pole to polarise. Hindutva is also handicapped in rural areas by the continued prevalence of caste identities. These are the identities in which rural folk are secure. Migration to the cities results in dilution and gradual erasure of caste. In the normal course, this would result in a cosmopolitan identity with a talent to accommodate many strands. What disrupts this possible secularisation process is the all-enveloping growth of sects  Narayanswamy, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and so on. Unlike Brahmo Samaj, which reached out like a ballet dancer, the sects popular in Gujarat are inward-looking. From this platform, its not difficult to whip up communal polarisation against those faceless Muslims in old cities and ghettoes  Pakistans fifth column, love jihadis, slaughterers of cows, terrorists. Islamophobia riding a crest of terrorism is not Narendra Modis invention. Mr Modi just happened to be lucky even as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ordered a post-9/11 global order custom-made for Mr Modis machinations.

The American occupation of Afghanistan, accompanied by the worlds biggest fireworks, a televised war, created superb conditions for rampaging Islamophobia anywhere. Mr Modi, who became chief minister on October 8, 2001, exactly the day when the retribution for 9/11 began to be visited upon hapless Afghans, took full advantage. The televised global war on terror reached a crescendo in February 2002. On February 27, 2002 occurred the burning train mishap at Godhara. Ahmedabad was ablaze by way of retribution. Never was an anti-Muslim pogrom mounted on this scale. The global din of terrorism and Islamophobia gave the pogrom a backdrop. The pogrom exorcised the city of another ghost. For decades, an underworld don, Abdul Latif, had terrorised the political establishment in Gujarat on both sides of the aisle. Even though he was killed in a staged encounter some years ago, the scale of the pogrom was for Hindutva an equaliser.

From Aurangzeb to Abdul Latif, Dawood, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar is a rapidly-expanding rogues gallery. In the deepest recesses of their heart, Muslims are on that side. Its against this growing fifth column Hindus must consolidate towards a Hindu Rashtra, in which the past shall be the future. Just imagine  where would the Hindu Rashtra be if the countrys Muslims by some superior incantation disappeared one day, vamoosed. The Hindu caste structure, exposed to electoral democracy, social justice, upward mobility, would be inverted in no time. Overwhelming numerical superiority would bring the base of the pyramid on top. Muslims as a foil is therefore indispensable to the Hindu ruling class purpose. Rahul Gandhi grasped this essential point to good purpose in Gujarat. He realised that the BJP would communally polarise a situation if Muslims were visibly in play on the Congress side. Muslims were therefore advised to steer clear of his line of vision. The Muslim Congress worker who navigated me to the Radisson Blu hotel where Rahul was holding his final press conference would himself not come up. Ahmed bhai (Ahmed Patel) will also not be there, he explained. Rahul was flanked by Ashok Gehlot and Randeep Singh Surjewala. One spotted Rajiv Shukla and Jitin Prasada but no Ahmed Patel, who was however in Ahmedabad.

Even token visits to Muslim enclaves in the walled city or Juhapura were taboo for Rahul. The trick obviously worked. It drove the Hindutva think tank to distraction. They began to invent dark conspiracies with Pakistan. Poor Mani Shankar Aiyar came in handy for no fault of his. His friend, former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, turned up for a wedding at the Nawab of Loharu in Jaipur. That evening ambassador Surendra Kumar organised a high-powered seminar on Pakistan at the India International Centre addressed by Gen. Deepak Kapoor, former high commissioner T.C.A. Raghavan, Sharat Sabharwal, whom Mr Aiyar hurriedly enlisted to ginger up his guest list for Mr Kasuri on his way from the Loharu wedding. Mr Aiyar speaks Hindi but his control on the language can falter. He meant to describe Mr Modi as mean, but the way he used the term neech or low lent itself to the interpretation that he had described the Prime Minister of low birth. There is an irony in the BJP targeting Mr Aiyar as their most hostile Congress critic. Sonia Gandhi has not spoken to Mr Aiyar for the past six years. That Mr Aiyar, out in the cold with his party, had to be resurrected by PM Modi to provide him with contrived themes for communal polarisation shows that Rahuls tactical aversion of Muslims is unsettling the Opposition. Add to this the double whammy of incessant temple-hopping and Rahul is well on the way to stealing the BJPs platform. So, cheer up, Indian Muslims. What will the Congress not do for you?
Indias central tax authority is also surveying bitcoin exchanges to find out whether it can tax any transactions.

Indias capital market regulator is talking with the government and central bank about how to regulate cryptocurrencies, its chairman said on December 20.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), plus officials from the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), are on a panel tasked with determining the legal oversight for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Chairman Ajay Tyagi said.

There has to be a process or law, only then can you take action, Tyagi told reporters on the sidelines of a Confederation of Indian Industry conference in Mumbai.

India currently has no regulation for cryptocurrencies, and like other global policymakers, it is seeking to understand how to supervise a market that many feels are a speculative bubble.

Earlier this month, the RBI said it was concerned about bitcoin. Indias central tax authority is also surveying bitcoin exchanges to find out whether it can tax any transactions.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The Monitors Eye Saver Mode obstructs Blue light wavelengths that stimulate the retina more than what any other colour does, thereby reducing eye-fatigue.

Samsung has announced the worlds biggest curved monitor in India. The 49-inch ultra-wide curved monitor is designed for working professionals and gaming enthusiasts.

The monitor uses Eye Saver Mode and Flicker Free Technology which enhances eye comfort. The Monitors Eye Saver Mode obstructs Blue light wavelengths that stimulate the retina more than what any other colour does, thereby reducing eye-fatigue.

The Easy Setting Box S/W application on the desktop lets user partition the screen into displays of various sizes and functional configurations for smarter multitasking.

With new metal alloy quantum dots, the QLED monitor addresses all major aspects of picture quality, including colour volume, brightness, contrast and viewing angle.

The monitor packs in High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology which offers greater contrast, spectacular depth and range to the colour, allowing dark areas to appear darker and light areas to appear brighter. It also provides a motion picture response time coupled with low input lag, i.e., how fast the screen responds to commands, thereby reducing eye strain and preventing ghosting.

The monitor is available at Rs 1,50,000 on Samsung Shop and will soon be made available at all major retail outlets.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Sony is poised to report its highest-ever profit this year on strong sales of image sensors after years of losing ground in consumer electronics and hopes to develop the technology for use in robotics and self-driving cars as competition heats up.

The results will mark a significant turnaround for the conglomerate, once famed for leading the world in consumer gadgets such as its Walkman music player, but now find a new focus on image sensors and gaming.

Sony (6758.T) forecasts that operating profit in the year through March will more than double to 630 billion yen ($5.6 billion) compared with the year-earlier and expects the chips division, most of which is made up of the image sensors business, to be the conglomerates biggest growth driver.

Executives say a technological breakthrough in image sensors and a sea change in the companys thinking are behind the success. The breakthrough, creating a sensor that captures more light to produce sharper images, coincided with soaring consumer demand for better smartphone cameras for sharing photos on social media.

The breakthrough, which involved reconfiguring the sensor layout and known as backside illumination, allowed Sony to grab nearly half of the market for image sensors.

We knew we wouldnt be able to win if we did what our rivals were doing, said Teruo Hirayama, technology chief of Sonys chip business, recalling initial scepticism around the technology that is now used widely.

Japanese names such as Hitachi (6501.T), NEC (6701.T) and Fujitsu (6702.T), which dominated mainstream chips through the late 1980s, have lost business to Asian rivals such as Samsung Electronics (005930.KS).

Sonys success is really a function of having decided a long time ago to focus on that niche within semiconductors, says Andrew Daniels, a Tokyo-based managing director at Indus Capital, an investment management firm. He declined to say whether his fund owns Sony shares.

The process technology is very much that kind of takumi-no-waza, he said, using a Japanese phrase for the pursuit of manufacturing perfection.

OUTSIDER

The sensor business was also helped by being an outsider within the company. By selling to companies outside Sony, it was insulated from declining sales of the companys own smartphones and other consumer electronics. The sensors, for example, were first sold to All Nippon Airways (9202.T), which used them to broadcast views from the cockpit to passengers.

Sony used to be obsessed with the idea that its technologies should be kept within the group for use only in its own products, said Atsushi Osanai, a professor at Waseda Universitys business school. Selling components outside the firm was out of line with Sonys traditional business model.

The sensor business also got a boost from a shake-up initiated by Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, who called for each division to be more independent and profitable on its own.

It was a great help for us to be told that we should operate independently, Terushi Shimizu, the chief of Sonys chip division, said, rather than just belong to Sony.

REINVENTION

But the company is already bracing for intensifying competition in sensors as rivals, such as Samsung and OmniVision Technologies, step up their game, and is developing new sensor technologies for use in robotics and self-driving cars. Investors say Sony still has a technological advantage that will take time for others to replicate.

Sony has been trying to be ahead, but could face a turning point in a year or two, said Kun Soo Lee, a senior principal analyst with IHS Markit in Tokyo. It is developing sensor technologies that can quickly measure distances or detect invisible light that is expected to be used in autonomous driving, factory automation and robotics, they said.

Time-of-flight sensors, for example, calculate distances by measuring the time it takes for light to reflect from an object and could be used in drones or robotics for gesture and object recognition.

Its clear that we are currently dependent on the smartphone market, Shimizu, the chip business chief said. The markets shift to dual-lens cameras from single-lens is good for us, but how long is this going to last as the market is only growing 1 or 2 percent?

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
It will reduce the cost for a company as human labour will go down once data is managed by robots.

Have you heard of the chatbots? If you havent, then probably you are living under the rock. It is the latest technology that is touted to change the customer service across the world. If you have been following the news you would know how analytical software called chatbots are being created and developed by various companies to enhance their customer support experience. With accumulated data and analytics, these robots are designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner.

Ashish Gupta- Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer, Policybazaar.com, says that in coming days, the artificially intelligent chatbots can help the customer care segment by operating without any human assistance  thus, making life easy for professionals supporting customer care. So how does a chatbot work in enhancing overall customer experience? Simply put, the technology makes use of the data collected over a period of time and processes it to communicate with a customer like a human.

Humans vs chatbots: efficiency

In most customer care jobs, handling the sheer volume of data becomes challenging for a human assistant. When dealing with large volume of data, the response time increases significantly for human assistants, which at times leads to a frustrating customer experience. Whereas, when a chatbot is involved in the process, it processes data at a faster speed and the results are generated in seconds.

For example, if we take a case of human assistant versus chatbot dealing with the customer trying to buy an insurance policy online. Earlier, when a customer used to go online to buy something online, a chat would come in and a customer support person would start responding if he/she had the bandwidth. While, nowadays in the case of a chatbot, immediately when a chat comes in, the chatbot starts responding to the customer, reducing the average response time to 2-3 seconds. When asked a complicated question the robot stops working and the customer support person takes over  so that incorrect information doesnt get passed  thereby, reducing manual work to a great extent.

Implications of chatbots:

When we look at the usage of this technology, there are a lot of benefits that one can see in the long and short-term for a company. Firstly, it leads to better conversions due to smoother chat and customer experience. It also decreases the stress and load on support center team by tackling the initial problems.

For instance, If a company has to follow the usual paradigm  it wouldnt be able to increase its traffic without investing in a large support team but with using chatbots a large amount of work is distributed among machines. A big advantage of machines is that they dont face problems like fatigue and can work faster than humans. Building a large support team for a company can be an expensive and slow process -- every time a fresh batch arrives, the cost of training increases the expenditure for the company. It is a complex operation for trainers to explain the data analysis and execution to every individual for sales and marketing  whereas, a chatbot is pre-fed with information and data which can imitate a human conversation.

Pros, cons, and future of chatbots in India

One of the biggest advantages of using chatbots in customer care segment is to provide a superior experience to users. It will reduce the cost for a company as human labour will go down once data is managed by robots. Processing of data at a faster speed and using it at the right time enhances operational productivity and improves customer experience resulting in more efficient sales for the company.

While, if we look at the disadvantage of this technology, a big concern is that fully automated systems are less accurate contextually. Thus, we cannot fully rely on machines to do all the work for humans. Also, the data needs to be protected very well so that it doesnt get any aberrations due to a virus or technical glitch. And, of course, a chatbot cannot replace the humanitarian aspect that assistants develop with customers over a period of interaction time.

Overall, if we look at the future of chatbots in India it looks like a game-changing technology that can lead to a great customer care experience for users. A completely automated system, especially in a complex product like insurance is some time away, but technology changes so rapidly and usually behind iron curtains that its hard to say.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Nine countries voted against the resolution, while as many as 35 countries abstained. (Photo: AFP/File)

Washington: India on Thursday joined 127 other countries to vote in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of a resolution opposing the recent decision of US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Nine countries voted against the resolution, while as many as 35 countries abstained. India's decision to vote against American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital comes a day after Trump warned countries against opposing the US position.

India did not speak on the floor of the Assembly in New York, but after Trump recognised the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it had said that its Palestine's position was independent and consistent.

In her intervention at the NAM ministerial meeting on Palestine on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said the path to Israel-Jerusalem peace clearly lay in an early negotiated solution between Israel and Palestine based on mutual recognition and security arrangements.

The UN General Assembly resolution moved by Turkey and Yemen stressed that Jerusalem was a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations.

It demanded that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognise any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

In his address to the UN general Assembly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Trumps decision was an outrageous assault to all universal values.

"The Palestinians have the right to their own state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

"This is the main parameter and only hope for a just and lasting peace in the region. However, the recent decision of a UN member state to recognise Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as the capital of Israel, violates international law, including all relevant UN resolutions," Cavusoglu said.

The eight countries that joined the US in voting against the Turkish resolution were Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.

Among the major countries who abstained the voting were Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Columbia, Hungry, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland and Uganda.

Strongly supporting Trumps decision US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the US may strip funding of those countries that voted against its Jerusalem move.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to, once again, make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations," Haley told the General Assembly.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the UN," the top American diplomat said.

Trump had warned against cutting funds yesterday. "Let them vote against us, well save a lot. We don't care. This isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing," Trump told reporters at White House.

Early this week, the US had vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council. The resolution passed by the General Assembly has no legal implications on the UN member countries.

Trump praised Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body yesterday and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be "taken advantage" of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.
Canada: An elderly Canadian man and wife are heartbroken after learning that they will be separated for the first time in seven decades a week before Christmas, BBC reported. Herbert Goodine, 91, was told he must leave the long-term care facility where he lives with his wife Audrey Goodine, 89, and move into a nursing home. The facility in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick, told the couple on Friday that he must move that weekend. Their story has sparked outrage across the country.

When talking to my parents on Wednesday, I listened to my mother weep and I could hear my father in the background, their daughter Dianne Phillips wrote on Facebook. My mother said, Christmas is over for us now and this is the worst Christmas that we will ever have. Why could they not have waited till after the holidays? Mrs Phillips post has since been shared 15,000 times.
Trump said the entire world can see America is coming back, rapidly and strongly. (Photo: AFP/File)

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he was ending chain migration and diversity visa lottery. He also spoke briefly about the Bangladeshi immigrant Akayed Ullah responsible for the latest New York terrorist attack.

"We will get rid of chain migration and the visa lottery programme," he said.

He said people coming from the lottery programme bring in "some very bad" people.

"We do not want this group of people anymore," he said. People who met him in the neighbourhood said he was horrible, nasty, mean, would not talk to people, he said. "They could see it coming," he said.

Trump said the entire world can see America is coming back, rapidly and strongly.

"One of the great things, we are bringing back perhaps four trillion dollars into our country," he said in an apparent reference in the changes in the tax codes that would help companies bring back their money stacked abroad.

Donald Trump praised his Indian-American UN envoy Nikki Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be "taken advantage" of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

Haley as American representative vetoed against the draft resolution.

A similar resolution is being moved in the UN General Assembly too, where there is no veto provision.

Praising Haley for her stand in support of his policy, Trump said the countries would "potentially" vote against the US at the General Assembly.

"They take hundreds and millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then vote against us. We are watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We will save a lot of money," said the US President in his possibly last Cabinet meeting of the year.

Trump said people were tired of the US being taken advantage of.

"We are not going to be taken advantage anymore," he said.

Holding the Cabinet meeting in the backdrop of his major legislative victory on the Congressional passage of his sweeping tax reform bill, Trump said this meeting would be one of celebration.

He said this is a historic victory for the American people.

"It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hardworking Americans," he said adding that the tax reforms "brings overseas corporate profits back" to the US.

Trump said the US had unleashed its military might on ISIS and today the coalition to defeat the terror group has captured nearly 100 per cent of the territory held by the outfit in Iraq and Syria.

"We are making it very difficult for them," he said.
A white SUV sits in the middle of the road as police and emergency personnel work at the scene of where a car ran over pedestrians in Flinders Street in Melbourne on Thursday. (Photo: AFP)

An Indian was among 19 people injured when a speeding SUV ran down pedestrians at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne on Thursday, an incident described by Australia as act of evil and an act of cowardice. A white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd at the intersection just after 4.30 pm local time, injuring 19 people including Rohit Kaul, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir.

According to eyewitnesses, the car driver was waiting for the traffic signal to turn red before he drove his vehicle hitting pedestrians crossing the road. However, the Victorian police maintained that it was not a terror attack, but would continue to investigate. Quoting eyewitnesses, the local media said that people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle. The attack was an act of evil and an act of cowardice, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters here.

He said the condition of four people hit was critical. Fifteen others were stable. The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car. My husband was talking to my son Avi and crossing the intersection. Suddenly, my husband's phone fell down and we could hear loud noises and people screaming on the other side before the line went dead, Kauls wife said.
The issue of China blocking the listing of Masood Azhar at the United Nations is expected to come up in Friday's 20th round of India-China border talks in New Delhi. (Photo: File)

Beijing: China has rejected India's assertion that moves at the United Nations to list terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist were blocked due to narrow political considerations, saying it acted in a "candid way" over the issue based on rules and procedures.

China has been consistently blocking moves by India, the US, the UK and France to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the 1267 Sanctions Committee by putting technical holds.

India's permanent representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin, during an open debate Wednesday in the Security Council criticised some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism.

"It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," he said.

Responding to Mr Akbaruddin's remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that on Masood Azhar's issue China had "acted in a candid way with ease".

"So what we do is nothing to do with the narrow minded political considerations as you mentioned," Ms Hua claimed.

The issue of China blocking the listing of Masood Azhar at the United Nations is expected to come up in Friday's 20th round of India-China border talks in New Delhi.

The talks will be held between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi. Besides the border related issues, the two top officials also have the mandate to discuss all issues between the two countries.

"We have stated our position multiple times about the listing issue 1267 committee to the media queries and dealt the questions in a sincere way on different occasions in the past," Ms Hua said.

She said China "firmly" backed crackdown on various international terrorist groups.

Defending China's decision to block the moves against Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terrorist attack, Ms Hua said "on this issue, we make our own judgement based on the merit of the matters themselves".

She said the "relevant move" by China in 1267 committee was based on its rules and procedures. "We will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international communication," Ms Hua said.
On Wednesday, Pakistan directed its High Commission in New Delhi to issue visas to Jadhav's wife and mother. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday issued visa to Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife and mother to visit Islamabad to meet the Indian prisoner on death row, the Foreign Office said.

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in May.

The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

"Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today," Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal tweeted.

Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today.  Dr Mohammad Faisal (@ForeignOfficePk) December 20, 2017

Pakistan had agreed to facilitate a meeting of Jadhav with his mother and wife in Islamabad on December 25. It also agreed to India's demand that they be accompanied by an official of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

On Wednesday, Pakistan directed its High Commission in New Delhi to issue visas to Jadhav's wife and mother.

Pakistan had claimed its security forces had arrested Jadhav from the restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran. It also claimed that he was "a serving officer in the Indian Navy".

According to India's version, Jadhav, a retired Naval officer, had been kidnapped from Iran where he was in connection with his business.
The acquittal of all 2G telecom spectrum allocation scam accused today found echo in the Rajya Sabha, with the Opposition Congress disrupting proceedings demanding an explanation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



Congress members shouted slogans, drowning the voices of other members and forcing Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to adjourn the proceedings till 2 PM, but not before threatening to invoke rules against them and rapping them for their unruly behaviour.

Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad sought an explanation from Modi for the "false propaganda" on the 2G scam to come to power in 2014.

Congress, he said, has been since the past week seeking an explanation from the Prime Minister over "false" allegations he made against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Today, after the acquittal of all the accused, "we want to ask where did all the allegations (of scam) go," he said.

The BJP had run a propaganda on the 2G spectrum allocation that helped it "move from that side (opposition side in Rajya Sabha) to this side (ruling side) and us from that side (ruling side) to this side (opposition benches)," Azad said.

Naidu said he was not allowing Azad's submission as he had not given any notice, as he asked members to return to their seats. He also said "nothing will go on record".

But Congress members were in no mood to listen and rushed to the Well raising slogans against Modi and the BJP.

Naidu then cited a May 22, 1990 ruling of then Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma that the Chair's ruling on not allowing suspension of a Question Hour or allowing a discussion is final.

"Democracy means working according to rules (and) not shouting," he said.

Stating that he is willing to use his discretion to allow serious matters to be raised, Naidu said "some people have developed the habit of giving notices under rule 267 and then disrupting proceedings."

Notice under rule 267 calls for setting aside of the listed business of the day to take up the issue being raised.

As some slogan-shouting Congress members moved in front of the ruling benches, Naidu castigated them for moving from the opposition side to the treasury side of the Well.

At the persuasion of Azad, the Congress members left the Well and returned to their seats but kept raising slogans, drowning the voices of members whom the Chair had called to raise Zero Hour issues.

Naidu went on to rap the Congress members for the unruly behaviour, saying "3/4ths of the House wants to take up Zero Hour issues".

"Please follow some decorum. I condemn your behaviour," he said, adding "I will have to think about invoking rules. Don't force me to do that. ... The whole country is watching your behaviour."

When deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma tried to raise a point, Naidu snapped back at him saying it was not good for a deputy leader of the party to defy the Chair.

As the Congress members continued to shout slogan, Naidu went on to state that it was not the right tradition to take the names of the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister or political parties.

With Congress members remaining unrelenting, he adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

Normally, the chair in case of disruptions in the first hour of the sitting, adjourns proceedings till 1200 hours. But when Naidu adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm, members were surprised.

Thursday, being the Question day for the Prime Minister's Office, Modi was expected to be present during Question Hour slated at noon.

Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was seen asking the Rajya Sabha officials if he has indeed adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.
The "massive propaganda" against the UPA on the 2G spectrum was without any foundation, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said today after a special court acquitted all accused in the spectrum scam case.



The judgement speaks for itself, Manmohan Singh said.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh said.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners on whose plea a CBI probe was ordered in 2G case, today said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.



Former Telecom Minister and DMK leader A Raja, his party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special CBI court in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases.

"The government should appeal in the high court against the acquittal of all the accused," Swamy told PTI outside court premises.



Later, Swamy also tweeted that the government must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in the High Court.

Govt must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in High Court  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017





In the tweets, he also made reference to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's DA case in which she along with her close aide Sasikala Natarajan was acquitted by the Karnataka High Court which was finally overruled this year by the Supreme Court.

"Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here," he said in the tweets.




Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah lamented that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had refused to mediate a settlement in the Mahadayi river water sharing dispute between Karnataka and Goa.



He was speaking to reporters at Gokak on Thursday afternoon.

"When I met the PM with an all-party delegation, he refused to mediate and settle the dispute. Now that state elections are nearing, (BJP National President) Amit Shah is holding meetings between Karnataka and Goa representatives."

"BJP leaders remain mum during the meeting and Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar has not reacted," Siddaramaiah said.

"We want a written reaction from the Goa state government and a written assurance from them to be submitted to the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal," the CM said.

BJP to 'wait and watch'

Meanwhile, BJP State Secretary C T Ravi said the party is committed to taking up the cause of Karnataka in the Mahadayi dispute.

"But we are waiting to see what stance the Goa Congress takes on the issue," he informed.

Ravi's statement was a reaction to questions on Goa Forward party MLAs' opposition to a proposed compromise between Karnataka and Goa over the river water dispute.

"It is quite natural for any regional party to fight for local issues. Which is why we want to wait for the Goa Congress' reaction. But Karnataka BJP is eager for a settlement with the Goa government and thereby, a solution to the deadlock," he averred.
Demanding apology from former CAG Vinod Rai and the BJP, Congress MP and former telecom minister Kapil Sibal said today that his stand on loss from 2G spectrum allocation stands vindicated.



"I have been saying from day one that there was no loss and I have been vindicated today. In fact, it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation.

"It is (the then) opposition who must apologise to the nation," Sibal told reporters after a special court in the 2G spectrum allocation scam case acquitted all the accused.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case. Fifteen others accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.



"One thing is clear... the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never true and not correct and that has been established," former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said.

The BJP was the main opposition party at the time when the Congress-led UPA government came under fire from it and others over the allocation of the spectrum without auction.

Former Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), Rai had calculated that 2G spectrum allocation in 2008 -- under the UPA regime when Raja was the telecom minister -- led to a notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the national exchequer.

"There was no case from the beginning. In fact, it was a scam of lies, there was no scam on our part. We did it in accordance with a policy prescription that we had at that point in time," Sibal said.

Responding to query on the Supreme Court judgement of February 2012 which cancelled 122 telecom licences that were allocated spectrum in 2008, Sibal said that the apex court passed the judgement in its attempt to do the best it could do in the interest of the nation, and it was a wrong decision.

"That (SC cancelling telecom licences) was also a wrong decision. The fact that the Supreme Court rendered a decision doesn't mean that is necessarily right.

"In fact, the kind of environment created by the media, the opposition, by Vinod Rai... The telecom sector is in the dire state today and this is entirely because of Vinod Rai and opposition (at that time)," Sibal said.

The Supreme Court, after cancelling 122 telecom licences, had ordered the allocation of the spectrum through auction.

The government has held four spectrum auctions till date. However, the industry has been seeking a reduction in the spectrum prices.

In the last auction, DoT had put up 2,354.55 Mhz of spectrum for auction in 2016 across seven bands at a cumulative base price of Rs 5.6 lakh crore. Out of this, bids worth Rs 65,789 crore were received for 964.8 Mhz spectrum.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that there was no anti-incumbent government wave in Karnataka, but an anti-BJP/Modi wave in the state which goes to polls in April-May 2018.



He was addressing a Congress rally in Belagavi on Thursday.

Siddaramaiah said that both Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had an eye on Karnataka, given the upcoming polls.

But Modi charm that was evident in the last Lok Sabha polls had declined.

"The recent Gundlupet and Najanagud bye-elections are proof of the fact the voters now prefer Congress," he asserted.

The CM decried BJP's 'Hindutva' stance and questioned if the party 'solely owned Hindutva'?

Siddaramaiah said that the state government had waived off farmers' loans and the centre had done no such thing though State BJP President Yeddyurappa had gone public stating that he would move the centre to contribute to the effort.

"Former PM Manmohan Singh had waived farmers' loans. Let Yedyurappa gherao the Parliament now, if he wants to," the CM taunted.

Siddaramaiah called upon voters not to allow 'communal BJP or Opportunistic JD(S) to come to power'.
The Karnataka High Court on Thursday asked the police to file an affidavit while hearing a matter on denial of permission to organise a new year event featuring Bollywood actor Sunny Leone in the city.



Justice B Veerappa asked the police to file an affidavit citing the number of clubs in the city that have been granted permission to host new year events.

The judge asked why the police were discriminating against an individual while granting permissions to other new year events in the city.

The matter was adjourned to end of day.
Japan has pledged to provide India with a grant aid of over Rs 72.86 crore to fund a project, which is expected to cut the length of traffic congestion in Bengaluru by 30% over the next five years.



Kenji Hiramatsu, Tokyo's envoy to New Delhi, and S Selvakumar, Joint Secretary in Ministry of Finance in Government of India, on Wednesday signed and exchanged the notes for Japanese Government's grant aid for implementation of Advanced Traffic Information and Management System in Bengaluru.

Tokyo committed a grant aid of 1.276 billion Japanese Yen (Rs 72.86 crore approximately) for installing the Advanced Traffic Information and Management System, including signalling devices and traffic congestion length measurement sensor, in the heart of Bengaluru.

"It is expected that this project will contribute to strengthening connectivity and industrial competitiveness of the local economy by improving traffic congestion and urban environment," the Ministry of Finance said in a press release after the exchange of notes on Wednesday.

The project is expected to be completed by 2019.

The traffic congestion in Bengaluru is currently reaching the length of 550 metres in the worst cases.

A note issued by the Embassy of Japan in New Delhi stated that the Advanced Traffic Information and Management System would cut the length of the traffic congestion in Bengaluru by 30% by 2022 three years after completion of the project particularly at the interchanges currently witnessing worst traffic jams.

The new system in Bengaluru will utilize the advanced technology provided by Japan. A spokesperson of the Embassy of Japan said that the new system would "contribute to enhancing the convenience of urban transportation and revitalizing the local economy".
A Raja is sworn in as telecom minister





DMK leader A Raja takes over as telecom minister after Dayanidhi Maran's abrupt exit.





2007-05-18

,



NGO files complaint with CVC





A telecom-watchdog NGO filed a complaint with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on illegalities in spectrum allocation to Loop Telecom.





2009-05-04

,



2G Spectrum Scam: CAG reports on loss placed before SC





Draft reports of the CAG, which pointed out that the scam on 2G spectrum allocation caused a loss of Rs 1.4 lakh crore to the exchequer, was placed before the Supreme Court.





2010-10-21

,



Raja resigns as Telecom Minister





Under pressure from the opposition, A Raja submits his resignation.





2010-11-14

,



A Raja arrested along with two others





A Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura and Raja's former personal secretary, R. K. Chandolia are arrested in connection with the 2G case.





2011-02-02

,



Kanimozhi goes to jail





Rajya Sabha member M Kanimozhi was arrested and sent to Tihar Jail after a Delhi court rejected her bail application, making her another VIP to be put behind bars in the 2G spectrum case.





2011-05-20

,



CBI files its first chargesheet





The chargesheet indicts A Raja and eight others as the main accused in the 2G scam.





2011-04-02

,



2G Case trial begins





The trial of the 17 accused in the scam begins in the Patiala House special CBI court.





2011-11-11

,



SC cancels 122 licenses issued by Raja





122 licenses issued by A Raja are cancelled by Supreme Court. It was the biggest setback to the UPA government.





2012-02-02

,



ED chargesheets Raja, Kanimozhi





A Raja and M Kanimozhi were chargesheeted along with 17 others by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the 2G scam and a related money-laundering case.





2014-04-25

,



CBI registers disproportionate assets case against Raja





Five years after registering a case in the 2G Spectrum allocation scam against former Telecom Minister A Raja, CBI lodged a fresh case against him for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets worth Rs 27.92 crore during the period of 11 years between 1999 and 2010.





2015-04-19

,



Special CBI court acquits all accused including A Raja and Kanimozhi in 2G case





A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all the accused including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK chief M Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi in the multi-crore 2G spectrum allocations cases. Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.





2017-12-21




The plan to build a grand memorial for B R Ambedkar in Mumbai gained momentum with Shapoorji Pallonji and Co Pvt Ltd being given the contract.



The decision was made at the executive committee meeting of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) held in Nagpur.

The meeting was presided over by Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sumit Mallick, who is the chairman of MMRDA's executive committee.

"The teachings of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar have been a blessing for our generation and will continue to impact future generations as well. It's our privilege that his legacy is furthered by this grand memorial," said U P S Madan, metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA.

The memorial would come up at Indu Mill in Shivaji Park-Dadar. The land is adjacent to Chaityabhoomi, where the last rites of Ambedkar were performed.

On March 25, the documents to transfer 12 acres of land owned by the National Textile Corporation were handed over to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis by Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani and Union Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athawale.

On October 11, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone to the project.

The Ambedkar memorial, which includes a huge statue of Ambedkar called the Statue of Equality, was announced by former prime minister Manmohan Singh on August 18, 2012.

Its main attraction will be a 25,000 sq ft stupa around a pond.

A dome-like structure with 24 stone ribs will be in the middle of the plot.

There will be an Ashoka Chakra covering the memorial structure.

There will also be a 39,622 square feet interactive museum displaying several aspects of Ambedkar's life.

The memorial will have a facility to park around 400 vehicles.
Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.



In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on the security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, the BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

Gen Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between Gen Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the Army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.
Pakistan today rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of Kulbhushan Jadhav would be having the last meeting with him on Monday, saying the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.



Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

"Let me assure you that the Commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."

He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question, Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy.
Rahul Gandhi's elevation as party president has brought about a "resurgence" in the Congress, its Karnataka unit today said, expressing the hope that his "charm" will work in the state Assembly polls after Gujarat.



Referring to the Gujarat poll outcome, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President G Parameshwara said he hoped Karnataka, too, would back Gandhi's leadership.

"The change has started from Gujarat," he said.

The BJP won a sixth straight-term in Gujarat, though it registered a fall in the number of seats won. While it bagged 99 seats in the 182-member Assembly, the Congress improved its tally to 77, up by 16 seats.

The KPCC chief also claimed that GST and demonetisation had "dented" the BJP in Gujarat.

"The change has started from Gujarat. Demonetisation and GST have played their roles to dent the BJP in Gujarat. This is one aspect, and the other aspect is the change in the leadership from Sonia Gandhi to Rahul. This has brought about the resurgence of the Congress," Parameshwara told PTI here.

The KPCC chief is setting out on a tour beginning today across 100 Assembly constituencies where the Congress was defeated in the last polls.

Assembly elections are due in Karnataka early next year.

"It is the people's decision. I hope they will back Rahul's leadership in the next Assembly elections in Karnataka, going by Gujarat poll results, where Congress lost by not a huge margin. I hope his charm will continue during Karnataka polls," he said.

The Congress could not form a government in Gujarat, but increased its vote share from 33 per cent to 41.4 per cent, Parameshwara said.

"We should have formed the government, but unfortunately we did not get the numbers in a few districts in Gujarat. Nevertheless, our percentage of vote share has gone up, from 33 per cent to 41.5 per cent. Otherwise, many had written the Congress off," he said.

Parameshwara said he believed Rahul Gandhi could take Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team on in the Karnataka elections.

Replying to a query, he said there would be no "Modi wave" in Karnataka and elections would be fought on state issues.

Asked about the electoral impact of a promise made by the Janata Dal (Secular) that it would install a member of the minority or Dalit community as the state's deputy chief minister, Parameshwara said it was just an election gimmick.

The JDS, he said, didn't stand a chance to win the polls.

"As far as we are concerned, Congress does not make such decisions prior to the elections. Once the party comes to power, the Congress Legislature Party will decide and the High Command would give it a stamp of authority," he added.
This website is intended for U.S. visitors only.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath made this announcement in the Assembly on Thursday while taking part in a debate on the controversial UP Control of Organised Crime Bill (UPCOCA).

Adityanath sought to allay fears expressed by the Opposition that the law could be used against the BJP's political rivals.

The chief minister said that the withdrawal of cases would benefit all political leaders, irrespective of their political affiliations.

Adityanath said that the state government would ensure that the proposed law was not "misused" and innocent people were not harassed.

Adityanath also accused the Opposition of siding with criminal elements.

The proposed Act provides for seizure and attachment of the properties earned through organised crimes and also the denial of government security to the accused under the Act.

The Opposition lodged a strong protest over the proposed law and urged the government to withdraw the Bill.

"We have strong suspicion that the proposed law would be used against political rivals," said Leader of the Opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary.

Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav also opposed the Bill and said that it was aimed at political opponents.

While the government did not face any problems in getting the Bill passed in the Assembly, it might be rejected by the Council where the ruling party does not have a majority.
The court on Thursday found that the CBI prosecution started its case with great enthusiasm and vigour, but the quality of its work deteriorated by the end, becoming "directionless and diffident".



Senior advocate Anand Grover, appointed as a special public prosecutor by the apex court on September 2, 2014, also received flak.

Special Judge O P Saini termed Grover's stand on filing written submissions "highly unfair".

"The most painful part is that the special public prosecutor was not ready to sign the written submissions filed by him," he pointed out.

The court had to issue written orders to make him sign the documents, the judge said.

The trial court also found that the public prosecutor and CBI inspector pursuing the case were moving in "two different directions without any coordination".

The apex court had appointed Grover as a special public prosecutor after the then senior advocate U U Lalit, who act in the same capacity, was elevated as a Supreme Court judge.
Swamy virtually blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ignoring his warnings about law officers who were not serious about fighting corruption.

Swamy said: "This is not a setback at all. It's an aberration as the law officers were not serious on fighting against corruption...the high court will strike down the verdict."

Led by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, senior BJP leaders held that the government had little role in the choice of special public prosecutors who were appointed by the Supreme Court, which had monitored the case.

"The charge sheet was choreographed by the Congress in 2011 for hiding corruption," said HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, adding that all 2G licences still stood cancelled.

But Swamy's take was different. He held that "there are many officers in the finance ministry who are still loyal to former FM P Chidambaram. The ministry has to be purged. So I hope the PM takes a lesson from this. We must now fight corruption on war-footing."

Swamy pointed out that Special CBI Judge O P Saini, who acquitted all the accused in the case, rued that despite having "religiously" devoted seven years to 2G scam cases, no "legally admissible evidence" was placed before him by the CBI.

Swamy also said former attorney general (AG) Mukul Rohatgi had welcomed the verdict, adding that he had written to Modi opposing his appointment.

"I had written to PM opposing his appointment as AG. Rohatgi had appeared for some of the accused companies."

Refuting the charge, Rohatgi said, "Swamy is in the habit of making wild and false allegations. I had appeared for some of these people at the time of grant of bail in the Supreme Court in 2012. After I became AG, I had nothing to do with the case."
Reliance Infrastructure on Thursday signed an agreement to sell its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission for a total consideration of Rs 18,800 crore.



Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) announced the signing of a Definitive Binding Agreement with Adani Transmission (ATL) for 100% stake sale of its Mumbai power business, which includes integrated business of generation, transmission and distribution of power, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing on Thursday.

According to the statement, the deal value is at Rs 13,251 crore. This comprises business valued at Rs 12,101 crore and regulatory assets approved so far of Rs 1,150 crore.

In addition, it said, regulatory assets under approval estimated at Rs 5,000 crore and net working capital on closing pegged at Rs 550 crore will flow directly to RInfra.

The company said the total consideration is estimated at Rs 18,800 crore.

RInfra will utilise the proceeds of this transformative transaction entirely to reduce its debt, becoming debt free and garnering up to Rs 3,000 crore as cash surplus.

Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, said: "The acquisition marks our foray into the distribution sector in India. We see distribution as the next sunrise sector as India embarks on its mission to achieve 24x7 power for all."

He further said, "We see a massive growth opportunity and will look at both organic and inorganic opportunities to build a market leading distribution company. With this acquisition, Adani Transmission will enjoy benefit of scale and of being an integrated distribution and transmission business in India."

The company claimed that this is the largest ever debt reduction exercise by any corporate, saying this monetisation is a major step in RInfra's deleveraging strategy for future growth.

Reliance Infrastructure's Mumbai Power business, known as Reliance Energy, is India's largest private integrated power utility, distributing power to nearly three million residential, industrial and commercial consumers in suburbs of Mumbai covering 400 sq km.

It caters to a peak demand of over 1,800 mw, with annual revenues of Rs 7,500 crore with stable cash flows.

Going forward, RInfra will focus on upcoming opportunities in asset-light EPC and Defence businesses, it added.

The proposed transaction is subject to customary approvals.
Chinese ride-sharing firm Didi Chuxing said on Thursday it had raised $4 billion from investors, months after a funding round that made it Asia's most valuable startup, as it presses on with a global battle with US giant Uber.



Local and foreign groups contributed to the huge pot, which will be used to fuel Didi's global expansion and support new developments in artificial intelligence and new energy vehicles, the company said in a statement.

Didi, which bought Uber's China operations last year, has nearly half a billion users around the world and handles up to 2.5 crore rides per day. It will see its valuation rise to $56 billion, sources close to the matter told AFP.

It became Asia's most valuable startup in April with a valuation of $50 billion after its previous round of fundraising.

Uber and Didi have been fighting a global turf war since Didi bought out the US firm's China operations.

Didi has been battling for international market share with Uber by working with local firms through investment or partnership, including Southeast Asia's Grab, India's Ola, US-based Lyft, and Europe's Taxify.

Bloomberg News reported in October that Didi was also in talks with Japanese taxi operator Daiichi Koutsu Sangyo to provide riding services for Chinese tourists in Japan.

Japanese telecoms giant Softbank, which already has stakes in the Chinese firm, is among the backers in the latest fundraising round along with Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Capital, the sources said.

More than 2.6 lakh electric vehicles are running on Didi's network now and the firm has also set up a joint venture to build its own charging networks, the firm's chief executive Cheng Wei said last month.
A week after taking over as party president, Rahul Gandhi is set to chair his first meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Friday.



The CWC, the top decision-making body of the Congress, is expected to deliberate on the party's performance in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections. Rahul is also likely to unveil his vision for the party.

After his election as Congress President, Rahul is also expected to announce his new team by holding elections to the 25-member body. The various committees constituted during the tenure of Sonia Gandhi, including the CWC, continue to function in ad hoc capacity pending re-constitution.

At the meeting on Friday, the CWC is also expected to discuss a programme to counter BJP propaganda on 2G spectrum case, which cost it the government in 2014. A decision on holding the plenary session is also expected to be discussed at the meeting.

Earlier, Rahul had chaired the meetings of the CWC in the absence of his mother Sonia Gandhi. Friday's CWC will he his first as Congress President.
After the acquittals in 2G scam case, the Congress feels that its UPA government was a victim of judicial overreach.



The anguish was visible as Congress leaders welcomed the dismissal of the case by a special CBI court.

The Congress said the government had no role in the investigation of the 2G case, which was based on a draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General that was leaked in a section of media.

"The CBI was working under the direct monitoring of the Supreme Court; the special prosecutor was also appointed by the Supreme Court to conduct the trial. The government was nowhere in the picture," Congress leader Vivek Tankha, a former additional solicitor general in the UPA regime, told reporters.

Tankha said the case also took a toll on investments in the country with many foreign companies shutting shop leading to huge financial losses and job cuts.

Former Union minister Anand Sharma said at least three companies owned by foreign governments had threatened to take India to the international court and the WTO as cancellation of 2G licences amounted to violation of bilateral investment protection treaties.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called up and congratulated the leader of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified MarxistaLeninist), K P Sharma Oli, who would soon lead the new government in the neighbouring country.



Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told media-persons that the prime minister called up the CPN (UML) leader. He also called up the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre), Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, and current Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba - the president of the Nepali Congress.

This is the first contact between Modi and Nepal leaders after polling in the neighbouring country.
A Delhi-based elderly couple, who used a novel method to smuggle gold from Dubai, was arrested on Wednesday by customs officials at the Kempegowda International Airport.



Sleuths recovered eight gold biscuits weighing 993 grams and worth Rs 27 lakh from Jugal Kishor (63), having found out that his wife, Radha Rani (64), had brought the gold to India. They later arrested the couple.

Based on a tip-off, customs officials intercepted Radha soon after she landed in Bengaluru from Dubai on an Air India flight via Goa.

During the interrogation, she confessed she had carried gold biscuits from Dubai and kept them concealed in seat no 17C.

When the flight arrived in Goa, Kishor boarded as a domestic passenger and collected the gold to disembark at Bengaluru. As someone traveling only on the domestic leg of the trip, he need not undergo customs' check.

When they checked the couple thoroughly, Kishor revealed he was carrying eight gold biscuits in concealed pockets in his trousers.

Separate cases

In another incident, officials, on December 13, detained three passengers trying to smuggle gold biscuits, weighing 1.2 kg, in their rectum.

The accused - Korambra Meetal Jamsheer (29), Naushad Shareef (34) and Unni Chelapurath (26) - arrived at KIA from Kuala Lumpur by an Air Asia flight.

Based on profiling by the airport customs officers, the passengers were detained and interrogated.

When the officers ran a body check, it was found that they had concealed 400 grams of gold biscuits each in their rectum, totally weighing 1.2 kg. The value of the seized gold is Rs 35.34 lakh in the international market.

In a separate case, customs officials detained a passenger, Sayed Shihab Tangal, a resident of Mangaluru, for smuggling cigarettes on December 17. Tangal had cigarettes and cosmetics more than the allowed commercial quantity, valued at Rs 3 lakh.

The merchandise was detained and further investigations are under way.
A criminal gang robbed Rs 5 lakh from a 63-year-old businessman and disappeared even before the man realised what was happening.



Around 7 pm on December 9, Mangal Chand was heading home after closing his shop at Nagarathpet main road in Cubbonpet. As he approached the Mansarovar Hotel, the culprits, who were walking behind him, snatched his bag and disappeared.

Chand was carrying Rs 5 lakh in a sling bag for his sister, whose daughter was set to get married the following day.

According to Chand, two of the six suspects were watching his movements from near his shop, which is just 50 metres from his residence, while the others followed him.

"They snatched the bag slung on my back," Chand told DH. "I spun around, but two of them blocked my view with a black bag. There was a moment of confusion and then all of them began walking away." Chand rushed to the Halasurugate police station with his son Naveen Jain and lodged a complaint of theft.

Son plays Sherlock

Police complacency in the case prompted Naveen (36) to do his own bit of private investigation. He got hold of two video footage from the CCTV cameras in the area and discovered what had happened.

One footage showed six men walking closely behind his father. While one of them pulled the bag from Chand, two others held a plastic bag close to the businessman's face. After a brief period of confusion, all of them strolled away.

From another CCTV footage, Naveen saw two men keeping an eye on his father as he walked homewards.

Arriving at the scene, the police did not have a pen drive to copy the crucial footage and even bickered over who would buy the device. In the end, Naveen bought one for them.

Several incidents of cash theft in the area go unreported, said Chand, since they are regarded as black money.
Detention Center

The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility Wednesday was 71, with 48 from Platte County and 23 from out of county.

Police

Nov. 27

3:41 p.m.  At 178 17th Ave., Manuel Salazar, 19, 178 17th Ave., was cited for possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Nov. 28

12:32 p.m.  In Columbus, Annie McCoy, 40, 3008 19th St., was cited for second-degree forgery.

Dec. 7

Unknown time  At 340 E. 24th St., Danielle Baete, 33, David City, was cited for theft.

Dec. 11

5:19 p.m.  At the intersection of 23rd Street and 18th Avenue, Angel Ramos-Arciva, 31, 1270 38th Ave., was cited for no operators license.

Sheriff

Dec. 19

2:10 a.m.  Traffic violation at the Platte County Courthouse, 2610 14th St., Diogenes Torres Rodriguez of Florida was cited for no valid registration.

7:51 a.m.  At Lakestop on Monastery Road, Lance Hahn of Columbus cited for failure to yield right of way.

9:45 a.m.  Wanted person at the Platte County Detention Facility, 1125 E. 17th St., Reymundo Reyes of Schuyler turned self in on a Platte County warrant.

11:34 a.m.  Littering at 1514 68th St., Isaiah Ewald of Columbus cited for littering.

2:02 p.m.  Wanted person at the county courthouse, Oscar Leon of Columbus turned self in on a Platte County warrant.

2:32 p.m.  Traffic violation north of the intersection of 83rd Street and 48th Avenue, Jerald Schreiber of Columbus cited for speeding.

Fire

Dec. 18

8:19 a.m.  In the 2800 block of 40th Avenue, medical.

6:23 p.m.  At the intersection of 235th Avenue and U.S. Highway 81, medical.

10:13 p.m.  In the 3000 block of 38th Avenue, medical.
The city police have lost track of nearly 2,021 history sheeters of 9,490, a Crime Records Bureau (CRB) report has revealed.



According to the CRB-2017 report, 6,340 repeat offenders have responded to police calls for inquiry, while 1,129 reprobates were in judicial custody. The remaining 2,021 lawbreakers have absconded.

Based on the crimes committed, the police maintain the list of offenders in A, B or C categories with their backgrounds and residential addresses. They control the criminals by keeping an eye on them.

If the criminals are active in their own areas, they would be categorised as A, while those committing crimes in different police limits would fall into the B category.

If the individual is violent and shows signs of growing into a criminal in his own right, the person finds himself in the C category. His name will be in the list for one year and would be removed if his behaviour remains good. In the event that the person commits even one crime, he will be moved to either A or B category.

If criminals in the A or B list continue with their violent activities, despite warnings by the police, they are sent to jail under the Goonda Act (the Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum Grabbers Act, 1985).

The police have booked seven repeat offenders in 2016 and 15 in the first 11 months of this year.

Police officials said there are 239 history sheeters - a list of criminals who continued to break the law despite serving a prison sentence - in the city.

According to them, there are 3,622 A-listed criminals, 4,081 B-listers and 1,787 C-listers.
Hundreds of BWSSB employees have opposed the board's decision to get them to contribute towards the health scheme when they are still in service.



At least 250 employees have written to the chairman of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, asking him to drop the affidavit that they must fill to declare their interest in the health scheme.

According to the regulations of the scheme, which will come into force in January 2018, retired employees have to contribute a one-time sum depending on their cadre. Rs 100 will be deducted from their pension towards the scheme.

Jagadish K H, chief accounts officer, BWSSB, said the employees were opposing the contribution clause since the money would be taken out of their salaries.

"We just wanted to increase the amount of contribution to make the health scheme more effective. We still need to discuss the matter," he said.

The BWSSB has collected over Rs 2.48 crore as employees' contribution and added Rs 60 lakh to the corpus fund.
Seagull USV Debuts in Israel-UK Naval Exercise



The page you requested is only available to subscribers.





1. If you are a Premium Service subscriber, please log in here to access this story:



Log-in : Password :



2. If you are not a subcriber, you can:



-- buy access to this page: unlimited access for seven days costs 3.00 EUR + VAT (at 20%) if applicable.



Clicking on the "Ok" button below will place the item in your shopping cart and return you to our home page, where you will be able to select additional stories.





-- select additional stories and services from our home page and pay for them at the same time.





-- see your shopping cart. You can also see the contents of your shopping cart at any time by clicking on the "Order" tab on the navigation bar at the top of any page, or by clicking on the "Your order" light blue link in the top right-hand corner of our home page, immediately under the log-on box.




ALBION  Zion Lutheran Church in Albion recently accepted a memorial gift from the family of Tena and Bob Warnke and Eno and Tina Saathoff to upgrade the television production, closed-circuit television and audio-visual equipment.

This gift will improve the quality of the broadcast on cable Channel 21, as well as the quality of in-house overflow video, said Pastor David Frerichs.

Zion Lutheran Church worship services are broadcast in nine counties and 22 communities served by Eagle Communications. Sunday worship is broadcast at 8 and 10:30 a.m. on most Sundays throughout the year.

Eno and Tina Saathoff were longtime residents of Boone County, living in the Loretto area until relocating to Albion in 1951.

For many years, Tena, the second-youngest Saathoff child, and her husband Bob Warnke resided in the Closter area. They relocated to Florida in 1973. The Warnkes were both baptized at Zion and were active members of the North Branch congregation in rural Boone County for many years. After Bobs death, Tena moved back to Albion and became a faithful and active member of Zions congregation until her death in February.

Family members making the donation noted: This gift is given in recognition of the important role the church played in the Saathoff familys life. For over seven collective decades, beginning in 1916, a Saathoff family member has been associated with the church. When Eno first joined the church, family records indicate he donated $50 to the construction of the church building at Fifth and State; with the exception of the oldest children, all of the Saathoff children were baptized and confirmed at Zion Lutheran Church. The church also provided comfort and support at the time of several family members passing, including Eno, Tina, their sons Harvey, Herman and most recently Bob and Tena."

The donors also noted the gift is given to honor the spirit of giving and faith exemplified by their Saathoff ancestors.

Services can be viewed on Eagle cable in the following communities:

Boone County: Albion, Cedar Rapids and St. Edward.

Greeley County: Spalding.

Madison County: Newman Grove.

Nance County: Fullerton and Genoa.

Platte County: Humphrey, Platte Center, Monroe and rural Columbus.

Merrick County: Central City, Palmer and Silver Creek.

Polk County: Osceola, Polk, Shelby and Stromsburg.

Butler County: Rising City and Bellwood.

Colfax County: Richland and Schuyler.
About a week after introducing legislation designed to give women a greater defense from sexual harassment, state Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, joined the ranks of those calling on state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, to resign from the Legislature.

Leach announced he would be taking a step back from his congressional campaign against U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-7, of Chadds Ford as other Democrats from Gov. Tom Wolf to Delaware County Democratic Chairman David Landau called for him to withdraw from the race. Wolf has also called on the senator to step down from his state Senate seat.

A weekend Philadelphia Inquirer story outlined alleged instances of Leach either inappropriately touching women or making sexually charged jokes that left some feeling uncomfortable. One of those accusations has come from Aubrey Montgomery, a former Leach finance director who in the past has contributed to Dan Muroff, another Democratic candidate in the 2018 7th District primary.

Leach denies the allegations.

On Tuesday, Krueger-Braneky joined the governor in calling for her colleague to resign.

The allegations are disturbing and Sen. Leachs reactions to the Inquirers report and subsequent #MeToo stories are deeply alarming, she said. Attempting to attack the character of the women in the article, as well as those who have come forward with stories since it broke, is conduct well beyond the pale for an elected official. That is why I am calling on Daylin Leach to resign from the Pennsylvania Senate, effective immediately.

Leach has not indicated he will resign and said he would work to address the allegations.

I am taking a step back from the congressional campaign to focus on my family and work with Senate leaders to address these allegations and fully cooperate as they are all vetted, he said. I will continue to do all that I can to advance progressive causes in the Senate and represent my constituents with honor.

Last week, Krueger-Braneky introduced the #MeToo Pennsylvania General Assembly Act, HB 1965 to reform procedures for the investigation and resolution of allegations of sexual harassment.

Her bill would ban non-disclosure agreements and prohibit lawmakers from using taxpayer funds for accuser settlements. At the time, she cited seeing Philadelphia Sheriff Jewel Williams using $30,000 of taxpayer money to settle a claim of sexual misconduct.

It is now even more evident that clear protocols must be established to secure a safe and inclusive work environment for all in state government, she said. I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to quickly send this legislation to Gov. Wolfs desk.
Commentary: HTC faces new challenges after Google deal

HTC, which built the world's first Android-based smartphone, the HTC Dream, in 2008, is facing new challenges after it signed a US$1.1 billion deal to hand over its ODM team or half of its R&D unit to Google.

It is generally considered as a good buy for Google to spend only US$1.1 billion to scoop up a hardware team as compared to the company's generous offer of US$12.4 billion to purchase Motorola's mobile business in 2012.

On the other hand, HTC is expected to book a one-time non-operating gain of US$1.1 billion when the deal is completed in the first quarter of 2018, translating into an EPS of NT$40 for the quarter.

The deal will help enhance HTC's financial structure given that the company had only a cash position of about NT$25 billion (US$827.3 million) at the end of the second quarter of 2017, down from NT$41.5 billion of a year earlier.

HTC CFO Peter Shen also said that the sale of its ODM unit, or the "Powered by HTC" team, will help the company save its operating expenses by 30-40%.

But based on HTC's financial results for the past six quarters, a 30-40% reduction in operating expenses is not sufficient enough for the company to make a turnaround.

Cher Wang, chairperson and CEO of HTC, said that the company can utilize the new funds to continue to build its VR ecosystem, to grow its Vive business, while investing in other next-generation technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G products.

However, Wang did not mention that a substantial cut of its R&D team will also undermine the company's R&D capability needed for its strive to develop IoT, VR, AR, AI, 5G products.

As a short-term impact, HTC is expected to see its revenues continue to wane, particularly after the first quarter of 2018, as the "Powered by HTC" team currently serves as a major source of income.

While HTC has said it will continue its branded smartphone business, the handover of half of its handset engineers to Google certainly is not smart strategy that will improve the prospects of its beleaguered smartphone business. And helping Google become a smartphone maker that may compete with HTC's own brand in the future is hardly a smart strategy.

In the long term, weakening R&D capability and diminishing market share is likely to force HTC to phase out from the smartphone market or transform itself into a white-box smartphone vendor.
Save my User ID and Password

Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site.

Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site.
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE (AP)  Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a consumer protection lawsuit against a company that owns Value Village, saying the company has deceived thousands of Washington consumers and donors for more than a decade.

The suit, filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court, alleges that TVI Inc., of Bellevue, has used deceptive marketing that led consumers and donors to believe that Value Village is a nonprofit or charity and that all types of donations and purchases benefited charity.





. . .
Subscriber content preview

SALEM, Ore. (AP)  An Idaho judge has ordered a county clerk to file a petition from a group seeking to ask voters to stop a development planned on irrigated farmland and grazing land north of Boise.

The Ada County clerk had rejected the petition by the Dry Creek Valley Coalition that aimed to start the referendum process, the Capital Press reported .





. . .
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE  Citywalk Apartments, at 1130 N. 115th St., have sold for $26.8 million, according to King County records. The seller was BEXAEW Citywalk LP, which acquired the property in 1988 for almost $5.4 million.

The buyer was RISE Properties (Citywalk) LP, which is associated with RISE Properties Trust, a Canadian REIT with an office in Seattle.





. . .
The new year is a time when people take part in sponsored swims in support of many charitable causes but this year Irish Water Safetys message is Get In, Get Out and Warm Up'.

Irish Water Safety says charity swimmers at this time of year can occasionally find themselves left without sufficient strength to climb out of the water due to the cold.

Cold winter waters can cause cold shock and hypothermia can set in within minutes, overwhelming the fittest of swimmers.

Irish Water Safety is also advising that if sea conditions deteriorate then the charity swim should be cancelled and if you see a person in difficulties do not attempt a rescue for which you are not trained.

Instead, make use of any nearby rescue equipment such as a ringbuoy and in the event of an emergency call the emergency services at 112. No alcohol should be taken before the swim.

Organisers should provide comprehensive details of each event to the Irish Coast Guard and local Gardai.

Each event should have a Safety Officer appointed, who will advise those concerned on safety and have the ultimate responsibility for making decisions in relation to the swim being on or off on the day.

If the seas are rough and weather deteriorates, they should defer the event to a more suitable day without question  do not take a chance on running the event.

Many participants will not have swum since the summer and the temperature of the water has now dropped considerably.

It is a fallacy that alcohol will keep you warm when entering the water; in fact it has the reverse effect and could kill you.

Irish Water Safety strongly recommends that no alcohol be taken either before the swim or immediately after the swim and also remind people that they may be in breach of the drink driving laws when driving to or from the event.

Cold water can cause cold shock and hypothermia in minutes, because the temperature of the water at this time of year will be below 50F/10C.

Ensure that you have safe access and egress with appropriate shallow shelving or ladders as appropriate.

Elderly people should be mindful that steps leading into the water might be dangerous due to the increased growth of algae in wintertime.

Organisers should ensure that slipways or steps have been cleaned of slime, weed and algae.

Contact your Local Authority to have this completed.

Swimmers remaining in the water for extended periods in a gesture of bravado is not acceptable. The message is Get In, Get Out and Warm Up.

For more information on staying safe in the water this over the holiday period visit www.iws.ie
A young Donegal man is about to achieve the ambition of a lifetime when he takes up an offer to study at the one of the world's most famous colleges of music at the turn of the year.

Connor Wilson Crumlish from Moville has secured a scholarship for the Berklee College of Music in Boston, America.

Founded by Lawrence Berk in 1945, it was the first US school to teach the popular music of the time, jazz. In the 1960s, it recongised guitar as a principal instrument, and rock music duly hit the campus.

Berklee's mission is to educate, train and develop students to excel in music as a career.

The 24-year-old is understandably excited at the prospect of heading Stateside in January.

"I start my two-year scholarship on January 10th and I'm really looking forward to it," Connor says.

"The plan then is to set up a band and get touring," the talented guitar player adds.

While Connor has an array of interests, music has always been top of the list.

He acquired his first instrument, a piano, when aged 7. Five years later, he finally got what he always wanted - an electric

guitar. Connor followed up with three guitar lessons and was deemed to be proficient and comfortable with his Fender Squire

Guitar.

During his secondary school days in Moville, Connor learned through guitar magazines, DVDs and listening to CDs . Taking part in school shows and being in a band gave him further inspiration to follow the dream to becoming a full-time musician.

"Music has always been such an important part of my life and I feel

so lucky to have secured a scholarship to Berklee," he says.

During a family holiday to California, they made a surprise visit to the world famous Guitar Centre on Hollywood Boulevard. Connor availed of the opportunity to try out the many guitars on display, but couldnt stop playing a Gibson SG standard in cherry red.His parents, Paul and Josephine, duly surprised him with the six-

string.

This certainly proved a fruitful investment as eight years later he's still playing it.

During his final years of secondary school there weren't enough students to run a music class. Consequently, this left Connor having to get his notes of a friend in the neighbouring secondary school and self teach the course.

In his final exam, however, he still managed to obtain an A grade - a superb achievement, given the circumstances.

When secondary studies were progressing Connor visited the iconic Marshall factory at Bletchley in Milton Keynes in the UK.

"The team at Marshall were extremely kind and introduced me to the Marshall founder, Dr Jim Marshall," Connor recalls.

To this day Connor is afforded continued kindness from Marshall UK. After he completed his secondary studies he went on to study Science in Dublin - he went to NUI Maynooth to specialise

in pharmaceutical and biomedical chemistry - before moving to study jazz music at Newpark Music Centre, Blackrock, Dublin. Connor achieved his Diploma at Newpark in 2016.

"Through all my schooling, I never lost sight of my ambition and would have sacrificed so much to achieve the opportunity I've

secured," he says.

Connor lists Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher, BB King as his biggest influences, with AC/DC, Guns n Roses and Pink Floyd being his favourite bands.
Tributes have been pouring in following the news of the death of Grainne MhicGeidigh, the first woman ever to be elected to the board of Udaras na Gaeltachta.

Ms. MhicGeidigh,59, who was exceptionally well known and respected throughout the county and further afield passed away on Tuesday.

Grainne made history in April 2005 when she became Sinn Fein's first ever elected member to the board and also the first ever woman of any party to do so.

She vocalised her views on the Irish language and culture with passion and devotion during her seven years on the board.

A native of Ranafast and a member of the well known family Clann Ui Dhuibheannaigh, Grainne moved to Gaoth Dobhair in 1983 and lived in Dunlewey. She and her husband Edward had four of a family, two daughters and two sons.

Michelle Gildernew said: On behalf of the Republican community in Fermanagh South Tyrone I offer our sincere condolences to Grainnes family, friends and comrades in Donegal. She was an absolute lady, kind, generous, great craic and had the most beautiful Irish.

Others described Grainne as a lovely woman and a beautiful person.

The Chief Executive of Udaras na Gaeltachta, Micheal O hEanaigh, described Grainne as being an ardent and determined promoter of the Irish language during her tenure on the board.

An tUasalO hEanaigh paid his heartfelt condolences to her immediate and extended family and all those who knew her.

Grainne is survived by her husband Edward, her two daughters, two sons and five sisters.

Her remains will repose at her late residence from Wednesday, December 20th.

Removal from there on Friday, December 22nd at 10.30am for 11am funeral mass at the Sacred Heart Church, Dunlewey, with burial afterwards in the adjoining graveyard.

Ar dheis De a raibh a hanam dhil.
Telemedicine Triage to Lower ER Overcrowding

Share Tweet

By Mandi Nowitz

Web Editor By Mandi NowitzWeb Editor

You have an incident where you're aware that an emergency room trip is in order but the thought of sitting in an overcrowded waiting room is so unappealing, youd actually rather suffer. There is one hospital in Florida that will tell the ER wait time on a giant highway billboard, which seems to be a step in the right direction. But, the concept of telemedicine triage seems to be a more productive and efficient step that eight hospitals have begun implementing this method.





EmOpti, a Wisconsin-based startup, is a virtual visit option that can be found in Wisconsins Aurora Health Care, MedStar in D.C., Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia, and Charlotte, North Carolinas Carolina HealthCare.

Patients come to the ER but, if it is too crowded, they go to a remote command center where, via videoconferencing, they are examined by a doctor or physicians assistant. On-site triage nurses assist in the process and can order the necessary tests or medications, if need be.

Its a change in how you triage patients, Paul Coogan, president of emergency services at Aurora, which has three hospitals using the telemedicine service, told Xconomy. There was initially some resistance. The nurses thought it was going to add a lot of time to triage. [But] I think they appreciate having some extra help.

The overabundance of people who come to the ER can heavily outweigh what the staff can handle and that is why this telemedicine triage is a game changer. Between 1995 to 2010, the amount of visits to the ER went from 97 million to 130 million. Unfortunately, the number of ERs went down by 11 percent. Now, the time waiting in an ER has dropped thanks to EmOpti; the three Aurora hospitals have seen stays drop by 45 minutes.

Were able to put this in front of a patient within 10 minutes, Mike Rodgers, the health systems director of strategic innovation, told Xconomy. We ask patients for feedback and have so many quotes. [They say], Im going to come back here because I actually see a doctor.

Would you be willing to see a doctor via video?

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Article comments powered by Disqus

Edited by Erik Linask
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.




Agtech startup FluroSat has secured $1.5 million in funding for its crop health monitoring technology from CSIRO Main Sequence Ventures, AirTree Ventures, and strategic agricultural investors lead by CRDC.

In addition to the equity funding, Flurosat has also secured several grants with the help of deep tech startup Cicada Innovations and its Growlab accelerator program. To help farmers grow more with fewer resources, the company uses remote sensing technology, including hyperspectral cameras on satellites and drones, to monitor crop health from space.

Founder and CEO Anastasia Volkova said that while the funding would enable rapid growth, she was most excited about the depth of experience of the investors supporting us.

She continued, These investors have experience and knowledge in each of the major parts of FluroSats business: deep tech, crop health science, data analytics, and machine learning  as well as direct contacts with growers of high-value crops. This is almost as important as the financial injection.

Volkova said the future of agriculture is in AI-assisted farming, where insights and suggestions gathered from satellite and weather data on a paddock level are served to farmers daily each morning to guide their decision making. She said FluroSats technology will also keep farmers abreast of long-term changes to yield sustainability, allowing them to adapt activity accordingly.

We believe that receiving the actionable insights required to manage a farm should be as easy as viewing your morning news feed, she said. Our goal is to give growers and agronomists the cues to make decisions that directly affect ROI.

Michael Zimmerman, Partner at Main Sequence Ventures, said: Australia is a world leader in innovation for the agriculture sectors, tracing all the way back to CSIROs origins over 100 years ago. We are thrilled to be leading the investment in Flurosat, who are bringing together advances in remote sensing, machine learning and crop science to deliver a much-needed solution for industry.

John Henderson, Partner at AirTree Ventures, said: The future of farming is precision agriculture. Identifying the perfect blend of water, fertiliser and/or herbicide on an individual plant-by-plant basis is a perfect challenge for computer vision and machine learning. The result will be hugely improved crop yields. We are excited to be supporting Anastasia and the Flurosat team as they build the toolset for tomorrows farmers.

Petra Andren, CEO of Cicada Innovations: Flurosats groundbreaking research will have significant impact on our crucial farming and agricultural industries, which is exactly the type of outcome were looking for in the start-ups and scale-ups we nurture within our uniquely tech-focused incubator. The funding injection will also further ensure its vital work and world-leading research can be commercialized, so ends up exactly where it will have the greatest impact  on Australian farms.
Page Content

From 13 to 15 December 2017, an international conference on Entrepreneurship and Development in Western Greece was held in Patras, the regional capital. Prokopios Pavlopoulos, the President of Greece, officially opened the conference, stressing the need for strengthening alliances in Europe and highlighting the importance of cohesion. Markku Markkula, first Vice-President of the CoR, praised the strong partnership spirit of Western Greece's strategy in support of entrepreneurship that helped the region win the EER label and improve the business environment.

initiative identifies and annually rewards up to three EU regions or cities which present an outstanding, forward-thinking and innovative entrepreneurial and SME policy strategy. The region of Western Greece was awarded the title of European Entrepreneurial Region 2017 , alongside Extremadura (Spain) and the region of Lower Austria. The EER identifies and annually rewards up to three EU regions or cities which present an outstanding, forward-thinking and innovative entrepreneurial and SME policy strategy.

The CoR's first Vice-President Markku Markkula, who delivered an opening speech, acknowledged the difficult situation the region has been in due to the financial and economic crisis and encouraged it to benefit from the award in the future: "There are 24 EER cities and regions, as diverse as Europe itself, and this community offers a broad platform for exchanging good practices and other ways of cooperation. I would like to encourage Western Greece to continue to take advantage of this great opportunity."

According to Apostolos Katsifaras, Governor of the region, the success was strongly supported by the Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Development in Western Greece, an informal partnership of nowadays 32 stakeholders from the region. The alliance aims to boost the entrepreneurship in the region through the joined implementation of concrete measures to support small and medium sized businesses. Those included the establishment of an SME support office, the provision of information about the COSME, Horizon 2020 and LIFE programmes and ESIFs, the setting up of a microcredit fund or the organisation of seminars and trainings, among others.

The 3-day international conference was also attended by representatives of other EER regions, including Northern Ireland (EER 2015), Helsinki-Uusimaa (EER 2012), Extremadura (EER 2017) and Central Macedonia (EER 2018), providing opportunities for interregional experience exchange and cooperation.

Further information:
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.
(Photo: REUTERS / Erik De Castro)Pupils sing a religious hymn "Hosana," meaning Savior, as they throw confetti from a truck during Palm Sunday in Mogpog town on Marinduque island in central Philippines April 13, 2014. Filipino Roman Catholics flock to churches with palm fronds as they observe Palm Sunday, marking the start of Holy Week.

Philippines Department of Tourism has launched a farm- and faith-based tourism program as part of the agency's plan to entice sector-specific foreign and domestic tourists.

The southeast Asian nation is known for its Roman Catholic roots, where Catholics make up for more than 80 percent of the 104 million people, with Muslims accounting for five percent of the population.

Then there is a growing number of evangelical Christians and members of the homegrown Iglesia ni Kristo.

"Farm tourism is not only about the farm produce but more importantly the experience in the farm," Tourism Assistant Secretary Eden Josephine David said at the launch of two programs at the Marriott Hotel in Pasay City.

David said that farm tourism aimed to showcase the best crops of the country, while faith-based tourism planned to attract visitors interested in the Philippines' religious diversity, the inquirer.net reported.

"Farm tourism is the practice of attracting visitors and tourist to farm areas for production, educational and recreational purposes," David explained.

The initial farm tour projects unveiled at the launch were for Davao City fruits, focusing on durian, pomelo, banana and cacao with the support to local tourism and business groups.

One of the packages unveiled was the "City Chocolate Tour Overload" developed by Cacao Industry Development Association in Mindanao Inc. and Visit Davao Consortium.

Travelers can visit cacao farms to join in the harvesting of cacao fruit and help process the produce into chocolate.

Marissa Diploma, DOT director for the faith-based tourism unit, said that the country's budding faith tourism programs seeks to develop the Philippine tourism product "from the pilgrim's eye."

There are already prominent pilgrimage sites in the country such as Basilica Minore del Sto. Nino and Magellan's Cross in Cebu; Padre Pio Shrine in Sto. Tomas, Batangas; Divine Mercy Shrine in Cagayan de Oro City; Our Lady of Manaoag Church in Pangasinan; and Shrine of Our Lady of Piat in Cagayan.

Initial faith-based tour packages include Paoay Church, a Unesco-recognized heritage site; Kamay ni Hesus in Lucban, Quezon; and Shrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus in Ramos, Tarlac, and Monasterio de Tarlac in San Jose town.

Tour operators in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea have already expressed interest in promoting faith tours in the Philippines.

Diploma said that the Department of Tourism will next focus on developing faith tours for Muslims, non-Catholic Christians and even indigenous faiths.

Agribusiness groups have also expressed interest in developing coffee farm tours in Cavite and "coffee crawls" in urban centers.
All would agree that the year 2017 was a significant one for educators across Australia.The year began with an alarming report on principal health and well-being , which found that working conditions for school leaders continues to worsen in most states  in some cases dramatically.However, in the months ahead, some states, such as Victoria and NSW , took a proactive approach in dealing with these issues by announcing more support for principals.In June, a landmark moment arrived for schools when the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, commonly referred to as Gonski 2.0, passed Parliament and paved the way for an extra $23.5bn to schools over the next decade.However, not all school sectors celebrated the milestone, with some claiming they were short-changed under the new funding model.Another big issue for the Australian education sector in 2017 was the level of support being given to vulnerable students, particularly those with a disability.According to one report , funding for public school students with disability in five states and territories will be cut by the Federal Government in 2018.Student outcomes and educational standards were also in the spotlight.The NSW Board of Studies overhaul of HSC standards was welcomed by the states principals, who said the reforms will strengthen the highly regarded credential.Under the new rules set out by the NSW Board of Studies on 19 July, the states HSC students will now require a pass mark in numeracy and literacy in order to gain the qualification.Meanwhile, the Federal Government has been working to improve teaching standards across Australia to lift the quality of teaching being done in classrooms  an area that Federal Education Minister Birmingham believes is showing progress.Good progress is being made in terms of the Coalitions reforms to initial teacher education and training. This is evidenced by the significant take up now of the new literacy and numeracy standards test for university students before they graduate, Birmingham told The Educator.There is active work underway, led by AITSL in reaccrediting initial teacher education programs across different universities to ensure that they are delivering the type of quality we expect.Birmingham said that with these reforms underway in initial teacher education, the focus shifts to how the government works to effectively support the existing teacher workforce in their ongoing skills and professional development.Through The Educators coverage of the past years events, your support has gone a long way to helping us provide the kind of quality and professionalism our readership expects.As the year draws to an end and 2017 dawns, The Educator would like to wish you all a restful holiday, a Merry Christmas and happy New Year.
To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.


By ABC News , Dec 21 , 2017





South Korean soldiers fired 20 warning machine gun rounds Thursday, turning back North Korean soldiers apparently pursuing a comrade who had dashed across the rivals' shared border, officials said. It is the fourth time this year a North Korean soldier has defected across the world's most heavily armed border.



South Korean military officials said they heard gunfire from the North after South Korea fired its warning shots, but it wasn't clear if the firing was retaliatory. Neither side immediately reported casualties.




Copper thieves are targeting Kentucky Power facilities in eastern Kentucky despite the risks and low scrap value of the stolen metal. Thieves cut fencing around the Beckham substation in Knott County on Tuesday and stole about 900 feet of copper wire from spools leftover from recent construction.

"Anytime you go into a substation, you're dealing with high voltage lines," said Everett Phillips, Kentucky Power's managing director distribution region operations. "Stealing copper is extremely dangerous and a foolish thing to do. The theft causes damage to Kentucky Power property, creates hazards for customers and employees, and puts people at risk for fatalities and injuries for minimal gain."

Over the years, Kentucky Power and its customers have been the targets of copper thieves because copper found in electrical sites like substations often are in remote areas where theft detection is difficult. Copper theft often results in power surges that can damage equipment in homes and businesses. This thievery also causes power outages, either at the time of the theft, during repair or both. The cost due to loss of equipment, materials and repairs is high. Still, thieves risk their lives for little gain.

"Kentucky Power pursues legal action against all copper theft and vandalism," Phillips said. "We also offer a $5,000 reward for information leading to prosecution. Suspicious activity can be reported to local law enforcement or by calling 1-866-747-5845."

While Kentucky Power still uses copper wire in some applications, much of the wire now used for grounding is copper-clad steel, which combines the strength of steel with the corrosion resistance of copper. While both types of wire look similar, copper-clad has little scrap value compared to solid copper. Copper wire scrap currently sells for about $3 a pound, while copper-clad scrap sells for less than 10 cents a pound. The copper wire stolen Tuesday and fence damage is estimated at about $2,000, Phillips said.

For more on copper theft, see: kentuckypower.com/global/utilities/lib/docs/safety/PublicSafety_FactSheet_CopperTheft-Kentucky.pdf and youtube.com/watch?v=13c5sH6mMnE.

Kentucky Power, based in Ashland, serves about 168,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties: 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 of the American Electric Power system. AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio, serves nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states, including Kentucky.
Search All categories Advertising General Aerospace General Agriculture General Airlines General America - Post 9/11 General Apparel General Apple Products General Architectural General Architecture Architecture Art & Entertainments Books Celebrities Country Music Dance Magazines Movies Museums Music Music Downloads News & Talk Shows Performing Arts Photography Television Web Sites Arts/Culture General Auction General Automotive Aftermarket Classic Autos Consumer Publications General Motorcycle & Bike Racing Recreational Vehicle Repair & Service Trade Publications Blogging & Social Media Blogging & Social Media Business Advertising / Marketing Books Consumer Research Direct Marketing e-Commerce Entrepreneurs Finance Franchise Human Resources Insurance Investment Management Markets Network Marketing Online Marketing / SEO Payday Loans Public Relations Publications Real Estate Retail Stocks Supermarkets Women in Business Careers/HR General Chemical General Coaching / Mentoring Coaching / Mentoring Computers Apple Products Databases Games & Entertainment General Hosting Instruction Linux / GNU "Open Source" Macintosh Microsoft Windows PC Operating Systems Programming Security Software Tablet PCs Utilities Construction General Consumer Gifts and Collectibles Hobbies Web sites / Internet Design Graphic Design Industrial Web E-Cigarette General eCommerce General Economy General Education College / University General Home Schooling K-12 Post Graduate Technical Electronics General Email Marketing General EmailWire Press Releases Press Release Tips Employment/Careers General Engineering General Entertainment General Environment General Events / Trade Shows General Finance General Food General Franchise General Fraud / Identity Theft General Gaming General Government General Judicial Law Enforcement Legislative Local National Public Services Security State Transportation Healthcare General Home and Family Banking / Personal Finance Bereavement / Loss Home Furnishings / Interiors Landscaping & Gardening Marriage / Relationships Money Parenting Payday Loans Pets Taxes Wedding / Bridal Home Schooling General Hotels/Resorts General Household General Industry Aerospace / Defense Agriculture Apparel / Textiles Broadcast Construction / Building Electrical Food Funeral Healthcare Leisure / Hospitality Logistics / Shipping Manufacturing / Production Mining / Metals Oil / Energy Paper / Forest Products Plumbing, Heating & AC Print Media Printing Publishing Radio Restaurants Tobacco Toy Insurance General Internet/Online General Legal General Leisure General Lifestyle Beauty Dating / Singles Diet / Weight Loss Fashion Food / Beverage Health & Fitness Hotel / Resorts Pastimes Restaurants Retirement Travel & Tourism Machinery General Maritime General Medical Addiction Allergies Alternative Medicine Asthma Cancer Cardiology Chiropractic Dental Dermatology Diabetes Emergency Family Medicine General General Geriatrics Hospitals Infectious Diseases Internal Medicine Managed Care / HMO Medical Products Mental Health Neurology Nursing Nutrition OB / GYN Pediatrics Pharmaceuticals Physical Therapy Plastic Surgery Psychology Radiology / Imaging Research Sports Medicine Surgery Vision Military General Mining/Metals General Miscellaneous General Nanotechnology Nanotechnology Non-profit General Occupational Safety Occupational Safety Oil/Energy General Opinion / Editorial Opinion / Editorial Paper Products General Paper/Forest General Pharmaceuticals General Podcasting Announce Tools and Services Politics Politics Print Media General Public Utilities Public Utilities Publishing General Radio General Real Estate General Religion Christian General Islam Jewish Other Restaurants General Retail General RSS & Content Syndication RSS & Content Syndication Science and Research Science and Research Self-Help / Personal Growth Self-Help / Personal Growth Shipbuilding General Society African American Interests Asian Interests Childrens Issues Disabled Issues / Disabilities Gay / Lesbian Hispanic Mens Interests Native American Senior Citizens Social Services Teen Issues/Interests Womens Interest Software General Sports Baseball Basketball Bicycling Boating / Maritime Bowling Boxing Fishing Football Golf Hockey Hunting Martial Arts Outdoors Rugby Soccer Tennis Water Winter/Snow Sports/Fitness General Stocks General Supermarkets General Technology Biotechnology Computer Electronics Enterprise Software Games Graphics/Printing/CAD Hardware / Peripherals Industrial Information Internet Multimedia Networking Public Sector/Government Robotics Semiconductor Software Telecommunications Webmasters Telecom General Wireless Television General Tobacco General Trade General Transportation General Travel General Utilities General Volunteer Volunteer Weather Weather
This June, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Chile as media liaison for the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program, or ACEAP. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this program represents the collaborative effort of several major organizations and observatories that you likely know about if you check our news feed regularly: Associated Universities, Inc., the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the Gemini Observatory.

Each year, ACEAP takes a group of nine astronomy educators and enthusiasts to Chile to experience its astronomy and culture. Applications are now being accepted for the 2018 ACEAP cohort, the fourth such group to participate in the program. Eligible applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents involved in astronomy education or outreach in some way: amateur astronomers, teachers (K through college) who include astronomy as part of their regular curricula, planetarium directors, and other similar educators.

If accepted, youll get the opportunity to visit world-class observatories  including the Gemini South Telescope, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array  for a special behind-the-scenes look at how astronomers take the data and images featured in todays most exciting press releases. This includes many of the labs and computing facilities off-limits to the public, as well as the ALMA high site that houses the arrays antennas at 16,400 feet.

But even more than that, youll get access to the fabulous staff at these facilities, ready and willing to share the many ways in which you can bring astronomy down to Earth for students, astronomy club members, lecture attendees, and more. Youll also see some of Chiles unique beauty and experience its rich culture, because ACEAP is as much about sharing people and connections across borders as it is about sharing science.

What do you give ACEAP in return? Following selection as an ACEAP ambassador, you are obligated to complete seven outreach activities or events associated with the program. These activities can be published blogs or articles, school curricula, public lectures, and much more. Once youve completed your outreach activities, youll receive a stipend of $500. While NSF funding will cover the majority of the trip, ACEAP ambassadors are responsible for the cost of their flights to and from South America, as well as the flights they take within Chile, and any supplemental healthcare coverage they may need to travel.

I had a fabulous time on the trip this year, and I met so many people I will never forget  in fact, Im still in contact with them through follow-up meetings and other aspects of my regular astronomy news coverage. If you want to learn more about my experience, you can check out my blogs from the trip, linked below, or read my upcoming article in Astronomys April issue.

If you think you might be eligible for this opportunity, I strongly encourage you to find more information and apply HERE. You wont regret it!

2017 ACEAP Trip Blogs:

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: We're Here!

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: Santiago & La Serena

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: ALMA Day 1

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: ALMA Day 2

Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program: Toward the Future
HARRISBURG  Gov. Tom Wolf said Wednesday he wants to see changes in a state government self-insurance program that funded a quarter-million-dollar settlement over sexual harassment allegations against a state lawmaker.

Wolf, a Democrat, said he learned this week about the settlement with and payment to a former legislative assistant to Rep. Tom Caltagirone, D-Berks.

Wolf said he wants to prevent using the fund for cases of abusive behavior by elected officials and ordered the Department of General Services to change it.

"Sexual harassment victims deserve protection and elected officials who engage in such awful behavior do not," said Wolf press secretary J.J. Abbott. "He also does not think the program should cover the liability of nonexecutive branch employees."

His comments came a day after The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette first reported that Pennsylvania taxpayers funded the 2015 payment. Wolf on Tuesday urged Caltagirone to resign.

The details of the allegations against Caltagirone, 75, have not been made public, and the veteran legislator has not returned messages seeking comment.

It's also unclear how many other settlements have been made through the employee liability self-insurance program, which requires agencies  and both chambers of the Legislature  to pay into it based on how many employees they have and their level of assessed risk.

The General Services department said Wednesday that its Bureau of Risk and Insurance Management, which oversees the fund, does not get involved in litigation or handling complaints. It determines if a claim is eligible after settlement terms have been negotiated.

A General Services spokesman said a typical claim under the fund would involve a Transportation Department project or damage involving vehicles.

In the matter involving Caltagirone's former aide, House Democratic caucus chief counsel Nora Winkelman told General Services the woman had initially made a $1.5 million claim for "a complaint of discrimination, among other things" under a federal law that bans discrimination based on sex, race, color, national origin and religion.

The agency agreed to pay the woman, described as a legislative assistant in Caltagirone's district office, about $165,000 and her lawyer $82,500. They have both declined comment.

House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, revealed Tuesday that since 2007 his caucus has agreed to pay out $514,000 to settle claims. He said two were for sexual harassment claims against two members, and five involved other types of employment matters.

The state's elected fiscal watchdog, Democratic Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, said he was outraged that the total amount was just now becoming public.

"Taxpayer money should never be used to settle sexual harassment claims against an elected official," said DePasquale, who formerly represented York in the House. "As a former legislator, I know that many members, including myself, were unaware that these payments were made. We need to put a stop to it."
Ask/Answered is a weekly feature for reader-submitted questions. Follow the blog online at www.cumberlink.com:

How do I track where Santa is delivering presents?

Since 1955 the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, has tracked Santa as he makes his around-the-globe journey delivering gifts to children on every continent on Christmas Eve.

The official Santa Tracker can be found by visiting noradsanta.org. The website provides up-to-date information on the whereabouts of the jolly old elf, as well as provides Christmas music, games and an interactive North Pole.

Each Dec. 24, roughly 1,500 volunteers also man telephones and computers keeping youngsters, and the young at heart, apprised on where Santa is sliding down the chimney, according to news release issued by NORAD.

More than 140,000 calls are received each year from children around the world, according to NORAD.

The Santa Tracker can also be found on Facebook and Twitter by searching @noradsanta.

The Santa Tracker began in 1955 when a Sears store in Colorado made a typo in an advertisement for a phone number to call and speak to Santa.

The number rang through to a private line at the Continental Air Defense Command  the precursor to NORAD  Operation Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to NORAD.

Col. Harry Shoup picked up the phone to hear a little boy asking if he was Santa, Shoups children told NPR in 2014.

Shoup was so taken by the little boy that he spoke to him as Santa and later had several other officers man the phones, according to NPR.

On Christmas Eve 1955, Shoup began calling into a local radio station providing hourly updates on Santas whereabouts as he zipped and zoomed from country to country, his children told NPR.

Today, through satellite systems, high-powered radars and jet fighters, NORAD tracks Santa Claus as he makes his Yuletide journey around the world, a news release from NORAD read.

Send us your questions

Need an answer? We can help.

The Sentinel wants to know what you have always wanted to know.

Whether its politics, crime, history or just something youve always been curious about, if you have questions, The Sentinel will look for the answer and provide it in our online blog and as a weekly feature in the Sentinel print edition.

Shoot us an email at frontdoor@cumberlink.com, call 240-7125 or stop by the office to submit your questions.

The best questions will be featured in weekly Ask/Answered columns online and in print.
Missed getting tickets to the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child? Producers have some good news for you.

New Batch of Tickets

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child producers are releasing a new set of tickets to their highly anticipated Broadway production.

"We are eager to make more tickets available for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway as soon as possible," said producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender.

To see the further adventures of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and their children, fans must sign up for the Ticketmaster Verified Fan registration. The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child production team has made it their mission and their preference to have fans buy tickets than scalpers or automated internet bots.

"As producers, we want to do everything possible within current New York state laws to protect our tickets and ticket buyers---especially since we have an unusually large amount of tickets at exceptionally low prices," Said the producers.

West End Success

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is heading to Broadway as it continues to shake up London's theatre district: the West End. The West End production earned nine Olivier awards, which are the British equivalent of the Tony Awards. Oliver award-winning actors Jamie Parker (Harry Potter), Noma Dumezweni (Hermione Granger), and Anthony Boyle (Scorpius Malfoy) are expected to reprise their award-winning roles in the United States. Original cast members such as Paul Thornley (Ron Weasley), Poppy Miller (Ginny Potter), Alex Price (Draco Malfoy), Sam Clemmett (Albus Severus), and Esther Smith (Delphi Diggory) are also expected to join the U.S. production.

Video Game Delights

In addition to the two-part play coming to the United States in 2018, Harry Potter fans can look forward to playing two mobile video games that have received the franchise's beloved creator, J.K. Rowling's blessing.

Video game developer Jam City's Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is expected to transport fans to Hogwarts in the 1980s, where players will attend classes such as Potions and interact with classic characters such as Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Snape. Meanwhile, Niantic Labs, the company behind Pokemon Go, is expected to bring gamers to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Players will be learning spells and face off against dark wizards and witches in public.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and follows Harry Potter's middle child, Albus Severus Potter's, first year at Hogwarts. The two-part play is expected to begin previews on March 16, 2018, and officially open on April 22 at New York City's the Lyric Theatre.
Tom Hanks has preemptively declined an invitation from the White House for a screening of his upcoming film with Meryl Streep, The Post.

Tom Hanks To Decline Trump's Invitation

In a recent interview, Hanks was asked whether he would be open to the idea of screening The Post at the White House if President Donald Trump asked and the actor responded by saying he would decline the invitation.

"This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go. I would probably vote not to go."

The Bridge of Spies actor added that he never imagined living in an America where neo-Nazis are conducting torchlight parades in Charlottesville and the President is cracking Pocahontas jokes during a ceremony held to honor the Navajo Code Talkers.

"Individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts," he said.

'The Post' Plot

Hanks takes on the role of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in the upcoming Steven Spielberg film. Hanks stars alongside Meryl Steep who portrays the character of the newspaper's publisher, Katherine Graham. The film also stars Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Bob Odenkirk, and Sarah Paulson among others.

The film follows the publication's 1971 struggle to publish the Pentagon Papers, a confidential document that exposed the truth behind the U.S. government's involvement in the Vietnam War. The paper ultimately decided to publish the documents despite pressure from the Nixon administration.

The film's timing is nothing short of perfect given Trump's treatment of the media. He calls media outlets "fake news" and has also tweeted saying major publications should lose their broadcasting licenses.

Not A Trump Fan

The Oscar-winner's preemptive rejection of Trump's invitation does not come as a surprise as he has been very vocal about his dislike for Trump since his election as the 45th President of the United States.

In October, the 61-year-old actor referred to Trump's disastrous phone conversation with a Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson as "one of the biggest cock-ups on planet Earth."

Earlier this month, the actor also said that Trump was "monkeying around" with the American Constitution when asked about the President's attacks on the press.

The Post is scheduled to open in select theaters on Dec. 22 before a nationwide release on Jan. 12, 2018.

Check out the film's trailer below.
Asbestos has been forbidden for some years in many countries around the world. Yet the peak of mortality related to asbestos-related diseases will take place in the next decade, as it takes a long time to develop the disease. Researchers from the Italian national research council (CNR-Nanotec) (Rome, Italy) hope that by studying the interactions between asbestos with host organisms can lead to develop more efficient medical treatments or prevention policies. They are on ID16A looking at the nanoscale at the elements making up the coating developing around asbestos once in the lungs.

I started with this project when I was living in Torino, where two of the biggest factories of asbestos in Europe were based in the past. I met a professor who was studying the subject and I thought it was fascinating, explains Fabrizio Bardelli, researcher at CNR-Nanotec. We all think that asbestos is something from the past, but we still suffer the consequences today, he adds.

Indeed, asbestos fibres can enter in living organisms by inhalation and, due to its high bio-persistence, can manifest its toxicity after long (20 to 40 years). For these reasons, since the 1990s asbestos started to be banned in many countries and, with a few relevant exceptions (Russia, China, Canada, and Brazil), it is almost abolished today.

Fabrizio Bardelli (with stripy top) and Francesco Brun on ID16A and in the lab. Credits: C. Argoud.

Exposure and contamination to asbestos can originate from several diverse sources, such as asbestos products plants, steel plants, shipyards, and asbestos mines. In the lungs, iron-containing asbestos fibres irritate the tissue, causing minerals and proteins to cluster around the foreign fibres, in a process known as biomineralization. The resulting clusters are known as asbestos bodies and are typical of mesothelioma, a deadly cancer of the lung lining, and of other asbestos-diseases, such as asbestosis.

Bardelli and his colleague, researcher Francesco Brun are now spending a week testing samples of lung tissue affected by asbestos. It is the second part of an experiment that started last year on ID16A: The first experiment went very well, but it was only a small number of samples. We want to increase the samples so that we can compare them all and have better statistics, explains Brun. During this beamtime they will be running 24h long scans, so no sleepless nights for them. The tricky part of this experiment is the preparation of the sample and the mounting, once it is done it isquite straight forward, he adds.

(a) Optical microscope image (500x) of an asbestos body. (b) Elemental distribution map of Fe of the same asbestos body (the color bar indicates the concentration of Fe), done in a previous experiment on ID21. (c) RGB color combination showing the distribution and colocalization of Si, Fe, and P.

Extensive research on asbestos interaction with host organism is essential to better understand the pathogenesis, and, in this way, to develop more efficient medical treatments or prevention strategies. Bardelli says that the benefits of their research go beyond this: our research on the mechanisms inducing the chain of events leading to mesothelioma can help to foresee the toxicity of new man-made nanofibers, such as metal-oxide or carbon nanotubes, which are becoming of more and more widespread use in electronic devices.

This research project received European funds through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship action (BiominAB-3D, H2020 - GA707905; http://biominab3d.altervista.org)

Text by Montserrat Capellas Espuny
In November, the Eastern Partnership summit convened for the fifth time. This was a key moment for a great transformation of the Eastern Neighborhood policy that most EU member states have seemed ready to attempt at achieving. While few analysts expect a dramatic reinvention of the policy at this moment, the EU should try to move away from a status quo plus approach, which draws on the existing activities and relationships.

The main objective of the Eastern Partnership is to bring about reform in its six participating states, but this has proved a Sisyphean task. In Ukraine, for example, critics say that the government is trying to do a sweet counter-revolution against reform efforts. At the same time, Russias conflict with Ukraine is still on, including the status quo in Crimea, where the conflict has already claimed 10,000 lives as of this year.

Tensions have also spread to Armenia and Belarus and fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno Karabakh could flare up again anytime. Moldova, in contrast, which was once seen as an Eastern Partnership success story is now quite the opposite. Since the beginning of the Eastern Partnership in 2008, the program has evolved in response to the circumstances but it still falls short of a transformative project that could properly serve both Brussels and reform-minded forces in partnership states.

The rise of populism inside the EU and a resurgent Russia have quieted talks of EU expansion. A further eastern expansion is seen particularly undesirable among EU nationals. In the spring 2017, according to Eurobarometer, only 40 percent of respondents were in favor of further enlargement of the EU to include other countries in future years, while 49 percent were against.

Ukraine is arguably the most important Eastern Partnership country and the EU can achieve more consistent progress on the reform path here by putting more emphasis on different forces at work inside the country. It is also important to physically connect Ukraine to the EU and therefore Brussels should push for cheaper travel and no roaming charges in Ukraine. It is also important to help the country achieve energy independence by softening its approach to unbundling Naftohaz Ukrainy and by integrating Ukraine into ENPSOG (gas) and ENTSO (electricity).

Importantly, the EU should stay focused on the Eastern Partnership by frontloading as many beneficial policies as possible and communicating the merit of these to the nations of the region in a more effective way than it was done in the past. It is important to get the language right and thus find warmer expressions of solidarity with the six states of the initiative as well as involve them in internal EU decision-making.

Partners for Life: Europes Unanswered Eastern Question  Research Paper by Andrew Wilson  European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

(The Research Paper can be downloaded here)
Back in October, four members of the US Special Operations forces were killed and two were wounded in an attack in western Niger  a new hot spot of Islamist extremist activity. If the rumors of ISIS responsibility were true, this would be the first known incident of a direct attack on US soldiers in the Sahel. Western civilians have, however, died in a series of recent attacks by Islamist extremists in regional African capitals. Still, these groups that conduct occasional attacks on Western civilians regularly target local targets: their focus includes government officials, schools, prisons, and the individuals accused of counter-terrorism operations including peace-keeping missions.

An often-overlooked factor in analyzing the regional security environment is the French economic interest in the region. This includes gold, uranium, coltan, manganese, lithium and rare earths. Mehdi Taje of the Institut de recherche strategique de lEcole Militaire in Paris argues that the geographical reality in this region allows certain states to position themselves militarily to better control the (mineral) wealth of the Maghreb and West Africa. One should also keep in mind the immediate effects of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Western led destruction of the Gaddafi regime in 2011. The interventions resulted in the creation of armed resistance groups, which found it convenient to join the Islamists, while in Iraq, many former officers of Saddam Hussein helped form ISIS.

Beyond Mali and Niger, terrorist attacks have spread across the region with Nigeria-based Boko Haram being the most prominent security threat. Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world  military coups, rebellions and food security crisis are common and recurrent. Some observers have asserted that Nigers security challenges have served as an alibi for the administration of President Mahamadou Issoufou to restrict freedoms and civil liberties. Boko Haram is thriving on the misery and corruption so characteristic of governments in the region.

Nigers troops take part in the Nigeria-led Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to fight Boko Haram while five Sahel countries known as the G5, including Niger, have formed a similar joint force to pursue Mali-based terrorist groups and improve boarder security. The United States have been supporting the capacity building of Nigers security forces to counter terror and generous funding has been provided to boost the countrys counter terrorism equipment, training and strengthening the agricultural sector. Interestingly, most Americans do not even know their country has a growing military presence in the area.

The United States is supportive of the French military operations and both countries cooperate on increased military presence but local African troops do most of the fighting. They are, however, often accused of violations of human rights while the region is rife with tribal, political, and economic grievances. Both countries  the US and France  are thus trying to enhance security in the region of which American public knows close to nothing and by which France has been accused of exploiting its lack of security for neo-colonial gains.

France and Americas Murky War in Africa  Opinion by Francis Ghiles  Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

(The Opinion can be downloaded here)
Hi Guys,



My name in passport is in the below format



Surname: Blank

Given Name : first name, last name



Through out the skill select and EOI process i had filled both my 1st name and last name in both family name and given name places like below:

Family Name : first name, last name

Given Name : first name, last name



During the visa lodge should i change it? keep the given name blank and put all my name in family name?

will this be a problem and result to visa rejection?



Regards
Hi All,in regards to the visitor visa application I have some questions.. please help!...My wife has applied under apply for somebody else And we completed all of the steps up until book an appointment that is where we got stuck..When selecting Rabat city and then a standard appointment and then all the other options there are no appointments available.The only appointments available appear when we select the student appointment option PBS Tier 4 studentsHas anybody else selected the student option to get an appointment in the Rabat office? And if yes did you manage to finish your visitor visa successfully?as we are applying under category "standard visitor visa" can we select an appointment from student visa?It seems the only way to select an appointment and perhaps it is a system flaw?Please help!another question concerning the accommodation evidence of the visitor visa application?!Ok.. so.. I have put details that Ill be staying in the home of my wifes parents (providing her parents home address)However we will in reality be renting a studio for my visit for privacy etc!So I want to know if anybody else put the address of their spouses parentsAnd if the visa people ever checked this in real depth..or need proof of accommodation?Sorry if this seems a bit over the place but we are under stress being far away from each other so we really want to be together while we are waiting to be eligible to apply for the spouse visa.Any help would be highly appreciatedthank you
Hi all,



I am an American who resides in Bretagne. I currently have a titre de sejour and am able to work on that permit, inside of France. It expires Feb 2. I'm married to a French national and have had the same residency here for nearly 2 years.



I have engaged in consulting work as a micro-entrepreneur, but recently ended this status as I failed to find more than a single client and have not earned any revenues in 3 quarters. My time here as a tech guy has been brutal.



There is an opportunity in the Netherlands that I would like to take advantage of, as a consultant. My question is as follows:



a) If I register an LLC back in the United States, can I engage a client in the EU inside the Schengen visa area on my US passport? I will be traveling from France and not crossing any frontier, so any contact with immigration would be initiated from me. Would this get the client into trouble in an audit?



b) If I went forward and registered a SARL or SAS in France, how does the visa work in that case if I'm working on-site at the client? My assumption is that the client will cover the 20% VAT.



I'm a software engineering manager by trade. There is a chance that the client might hire me permanently and sponsor me on a highly skilled and talented visa in the NL, but the time being I'm on my own.



I'd be extremely grateful for any advice as I'm long past broke and have really run out of options financially. I've obtained H1-B visas for others when I was working back in the states. the EU seems so much more complicated, and I'm feeling a bit lost as to how to proceed. All of the work I'm finding is outside of France. Thanks in advance



-Tom
Lets send a big fat congratulatory shout out to former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones for capturing the Senate seat in Alabama, the first Democrat to be elected to that Yellowhammer State position since Richard Shelby won a second term in 1992, but then switched allegiances to the Republican Party two years later. Which, to be perfectly honest, is cheating.

Democrats are hailing Jones upset victory over twice removed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore as a rebuke to President Donald Trumps agenda and anticipate transformative midterm elections next year on the order of replacing all the hounds of hell with baby kittens. Or at least a simple impeachment-indictable majority.

The goal is to take the House and put a stop to the GOP corruption, malfeasance and trampling of the middle class, and replace it with their own corruption, malfeasance and trampling of the middle class. Which is the same, only with healthier snacks.

To nurture this dream they willfully ignore their own suspicions that this is an isolated incident. To call Roy Moore a flawed candidate is like referring to the use of balsa-wood sledge-hammers to smash concrete as dodgy. Going swimming with the sharks in a raw meat wetsuit  not the best of ideas. Baking cookies in a 650-degree oven  a tricky proposition.

Were talking about a man who was kicked out of the Alabama Supreme Court twice, and the Gadsden Mall Food Court once. While Trumps ratings are mired in the low 30s and Congress hovers around the 20s, Roy Moore was dipping into the teens.

The 70 year-old Republican West Point graduate wasnt a slam-dunk even before numerous accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior erupted.

It was, as they say, a binary choice, between an accused pedophile and a Democrat. And the Democrat won by the whopping margin of 1.5 percent. It was so close that if some of Roy Moores accusers had been older and voted, they might have turned the tide. Roll Tide.

With this unexpected pickup in the Senate, Democrats are partying like Oprah just handed them a fleet of cars. The party hasnt been this optimistic since Hillary Clinton was a dead solid lock 13 months ago.

Curiously, Republicans didnt cry too many tears and appear semi-relieved they dont have to defend this electoral albatross in every district next year. Just a series of unconscionable endorsements.

Democratic leaders went so far as to force Minnesota Sen. Al Franken to resign so they could assume the moral high ground in the area of sexual harassment. A ground that is not very moral and only considered high by the vertically challenged.

So, the big question is, how will Democrats screw this up? Because they will. These guys could fall off of a raft and miss hitting water. They possess the killer instinct of butterscotch pudding. Have the unique ability to blow a 20-point lead with less than a minute to go.

The smart move would be to make sure that Steve Bannon stays healthy for 2018. Because if anybody can unearth more Republican US Senate candidates who are also accused child molesters, hes their guy. They should consider shipping him a large package of supplemental vitamins for Christmas. Itd be downright neighborly.
Well, I've been in France for 17 years, I'm French tax resident. Only twice have I been asked about my criminal record, and that was when I was asked to be a candidate in local elections....And that was for a criminal record in France . I was, and still am, a Brit by nationality.



Under EU rules the free movement of people does not, I think, involve criminal records. After Brexit that MAY be a different question.



I would imagine that criminal records might come up if you apply for French nationality....but that is a very different kettle of ball games.



Perhaps others have different experience?



DejW
This is in no way meant to be political, just a discussion. I read a very interesting article on the best and worst countries for successful resources mining. Philippines was 2nd worst.

The article took into account the amount of resources and the political and administrative hurdles the miners have to jump. There is an Australian company taking the Philippine Government to Court for compensation after they closed their gold mine 12 months or so ago. The article related to gold mining but it also applies to many other resources.

The 'tree huggers' are loud and long and DU30 is a supporter, one of the few things that I don't agree with him on. I base that on the poverty that permeates this country. I knew it was quite bad but now 6 months down the track I realise it is even worse than my beliefs. Yesterday and last night a total of 5 'buskers' at my door with pots and pans, drums, violins played badly etc. Whilst I have great sympathy for their lot in life, I have no desire to join them in giving away what little funds I survive on.

So so my philosophising laying in bed last night, I just can't get my head around the failure to pursue as much revenue the Government can lay its hands on to try to lift living standards here?

I am aware that apparently in the past the mines that did exist were environment vandals with no sensible safe mining practices and of course, run for the benefit of the already rich. But that is a matter of legislation policy (yes I hear you, give yourself an uppercut) but it can be done and I think DU30 is the first guy that is in there batting for the less fortunate.

I would be interested in the views of other members on this.
WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court on Thursday declined to delay a requirement that the U.S. military begin enlisting qualified transgender men and women for the first time starting Jan. 1.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit refused to grant the Trump administration's request to temporarily block an earlier order that the military accept transgender recruits, potentially propelling the issue to the Supreme Court in the coming days.

The ruling was another legal blow for the president, who surprised military leaders when he announced in July in a series of tweets that the U.S. government "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."

His order reversed an Obama-era policy allowing transgender people to serve openly and receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery. That order was promptly challenged in federal court by active-duty transgender service members who say it violates their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection.

The one-page order from the 4th Circuit upholds a preliminary injunction issued by a lower court judge in Baltimore, one of three judges to rule against the administration's policy. The government has emergency appeals pending in the two other cases from D.C. and Seattle, but the injunction from Baltimore applies nationally.

To get around the 4th Circuit order from Judges Diana Gribbon Motz, Albert Diaz and Pamela A. Harris, the government would need to prevail at the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration's plan that was set to take effect in March would have blocked military recruitment of transgender people, barred military funding for sex-reassignment surgery and possibly forced the dismissal of current transgender service members.

Justice Department lawyers have said the lawsuits are premature because the policy is on hold pending a review by the Defense Department, and they say no decisions have been made about whether to discharge active-duty service members solely because they are transgender.

In asking the court to delay the Jan. 1 start date, government lawyers said the timetable imposed by the lower court would be too burdensome on the armed forces and require training for thousands of recruiters and personnel responsible for providing medical screenings.

Even as the Justice Department has appealed the series of unfavorable rulings, the Defense Department on Dec. 8 issued detailed policy guidance to military recruiters for how to enlist transgender men and women.

Attorneys and advocates for transgender service members said in court filings that the memo undercuts the administration's assertion that it is struggling to prepare.

In the D.C. case, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly initially issued a preliminary injunction in October finding that the challengers were likely to prevail in asserting that the president's order violates equal-protection guarantees in the Constitution.

In her subsequent ruling this month declining to postpone the start date for accepting transgender recruits, Kollar-Kotelly said the government has had nearly a year and a half to prepare to enlist transgender men and women.

In the Maryland case, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis went further than Kollar-Kotelly by blocking the administration's ability to deny funding for gender reassignment surgery. In his ruling, Garbis wrote that transgender service members have "demonstrated that they are already suffering harmful consequences."
A smuggler working for the Zetas cartel who was wanted in San Antonio and Dallas has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges.

Israel Rale de la Cruz Sotelo, from the border state of Coahuila, was charged in the same San Antonio federal drug conspiracy case as Marciano Chano Millan Vasquez, who earlier this year received seven life sentences for his part in a series of murders in Mexico.

De la Cruz was not accused in the same violent acts as Millan, but was charged with being part of the same drug-trafficking conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged he was a mid-level Zetas operative who oversaw the shipment of marijuana to Texas.

In San Antonio, de la Cruz had been charged with marijuana smuggling and gun running. During Millans trial last year, witnesses testified that Zetas traffickers were expected to provide firearms from the U.S. to their drug suppliers in Mexico. As part of de la Cruzs plea deal with prosecutors, they agreed to transfer the San Antonio pot smuggling charge to Dallas, where he also faced marijuana and methamphetamine smuggling charges.

In the San Antonio case, de la Cruz admitted Tuesday that U.S. law enforcement officials in 2010 and 2011 in Carrizo Springs and Eagle Pass seized several hundred pounds of marijuana from smugglers working for him. In the Dallas case, de la Cruz admitted that in 2012 he sent a courier to Dallas to purchase three ounces of methamphetamine.

He faces up to life in prison on the meth charge and up to 40 years in prison on the pot charge when hes sentenced at a later date, but those terms will run concurrently.

The Zetas are now fractured and less powerful than they were several years ago, but from 2010 to 2012, the period de la Cruz admitted to smuggling for them, the gang was at the height of its powers.

During the trial last year of Millan, de la Cruzs co-defendant in the San Antonio case, witnesses testified about a series of atrocities the gang committed in Coahuila, the state that borders Texas from Laredo to the Big Bend. Millan took part in whats known as the Allende Massacre, a mass killing in Piedras Negras and the surrounding towns, in 2011 and in 2013 brutally murdered a 6-year-old girl in front of her father, part of a two-week killing spree, according to witnesses.

jbuch@express-news.net

Twitter | @jlbuch
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Antonio is celebrating its 300th birthday, but the heart of the local government  City Hall  is just a youngster.

Some 127 years after it was first constructed, City Hall is due for a major upgrade. The City Council is expected to select a contractor in 2018 for a $38 million restoration project thats supposed to begin in the summer and last for at least 15 months.

City Hall has become increasingly fraught with structural issues, and officials say the patchwork of bandages routinely slapped on to address the structures myriad maladies is no longer sufficient.

During a presentation on the renovations this fall, Transportation and Capital Improvements Director Mike Frisbie detailed to the council many of the issues they experience in the aging but historic structure.

The building is porous from every angle, he said. The roof and walls leak and the basement routinely floods. Sewage backs up. A fourth-floor window recently fell out of the building. There are holes through ceilings and floors allowing passage for plumbing and electrical systems. Some of the electrical upgrades date to the 1960s.

And the building is rife with asbestos.

Originally a three-story structure with a basement and an ornamental dome, City Hall opened its doors in Military Plaza  just west of San Fernando Cathedral  in 1891, some 173 years after the establishment of Mission San Antonio de Valero, known now as the Alamo. That moment three centuries ago is at the heart of the 2018 Tricentennial celebration.

At the briefing, officials noted City Hall was constructed at a cost of $200,000. What they didnt say was that the original bid to construct the building was for $120,000. A newspaper article from the late 1800s said the bid, even at the time, seemed too low.

Mr. Ed Braden, the contractor, is one of our oldest, and has been for more than a quarter of a century, one of our most active citizens, being engaged in contracts for the government and city, said the article, titled Our New City Hall. Mr. Braden has never yet found an undertaking too great to prevent his undertaking it. His bid for the city hall was considered too low to admit of fulfillment, but if there is any man in the state who could build it for $120,000, it is Ed Braden.

Ultimately, he could not deliver on the price hed bid.

Early on, great difficulty arose in getting the proper stone for the job, so Braden purchased an open quarry near Boerne. According to the newspaper article, immense slabs of rock were quarried and lifted onto train cars by steam derricks that had been used in the construction of the Texas Capitol.

City Hall was designed by architect Otto Kramer in a Second Empire style of the French Renaissance.

Aedicule window openings, entablature courses, balustrades and mouldings are also of richly hand-carved limestone, according to a report housed in the office of City Clerk Leticia Vacek. Eighty six Texas pink polished granite Corinthian columns lined the entrance porticos and balconies; smaller granite columns supported the double window arches throughout the exterior of the building.

According to the late Pat Osborne, the citys historic preservation officer from 1974 to 1993, the construction of City Hall put an end to the open air market, the chili queens and the rowdy activities of the cowboys, cattlemen and gamblers who frequented the plaza outside the early Old Spanish Governor's Palace and Bat Cave jailhouse.

Now, much of City Manager Sheryl Sculleys executive staff works in City Halls basement. But when the building first opened, the underground space served as the city jail (along with housing the structures mechanical services). The first floor, which now houses the mayor and city managers offices, a media briefing room and an office for the citys chief spokesman, originally provided space for the Police Department, a courtroom and a public hall for meetings.

The Feb. 2, 1892, edition of the Express described the new building.

The first council meeting in the handsome chamber of the city hall designed for that purpose was held yesterday. Heretofore the board of aldermen has assembled weekly in the large room on the first story of the new municipal building which was intended for the recorders court, the article said.

The council chamber, the story said, was a handsome room in the north end of the second story of city hall. ... The ceiling supported on lofty iron, is frescoed in rich colors after the style of the Munich school.

According to the clerks report conducted for a City Hall Facade Restoration project, the walls were originally covered in varnished pine and the first, second and third floors were covered in black-and-white checkered marble squares.

The construction of the facility in Plaza de Armas was approved by voters in 1887 when they gave a nod to a $150,000 bond election.

According to the clerks report, there was a drastic transformation of the original City Hall in 1927.

The plan consisted of transforming this building into a Spanish Mediterranean exterior and literally demolish all interior spaces, including the octagonal rotunda which extended from the basement level to the roof. On the exterior, the four turreted corner roofs were removed and the cornices and balustrade parapet on the roof were demolished, the document states.

Research done at the time showed that ordinances passed to permit the remodeling called for constructing two floors, which would have made it a five-story building with a basement. Only a fourth floor was added, though the researchers reported that they found no information explaining why the plan for the fifth floor had been jettisoned.

The project took nearly a year and cost $250,000  about $2.8 million in todays dollars. The expected $38 million renovation project is some 13.6 times more costly.

Its clear that renovations are sorely needed, officials have said. But theres still some question about what, exactly, will happen. The council is expected to vote in the coming months on hiring a contractor for the massive job, which will displace everyone from the building for an expected 15 months or more.

But when the council discussed the matter in the fall, with particular attention to historic preservation, Councilman Clayton Perry suggested the city consider removing the fourth floor and adding back an octagonal dome  restoring the structure to its origins, instead of the 1920s renovation.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at that meeting that Frisbies team should look at how Perrys suggestion might impact the budget, and its not clear that it would increase it. Hes since asked the staff to make another presentation for input on different ideas. Nirenberg said recently hes also asked for input from the San Antonio Conservation Society.

Josh Baugh is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | jbaugh@express-news.net | @jbaugh

COMING FRIDAY: Frontier Justice in Bexar County.
As 2017 draws to a close and we look forward to the opportunities and challenges the new year will bring, I urge Gov. Tom Wolf to provide additional funding support in his proposed 2018-19 state budget for Pennsylvanias 14 community colleges and the students, employees and communities they serve.

State funding increases for K-12 education have helped bring Pennsylvania students to the door of their future. However, sufficient support is needed at the post-secondary level in order for these students to achieve an associate degree or earn a certificate from a community college to enter a workforce where they can earn family-sustaining wages.

Specifically, HACC, Central Pennsylvanias Community College, and the 13 other community colleges across Pennsylvania are seeking the governors support in the 2018-19 state budget with the following resources:

A $10.6-million increase in the community college operating appropriation

Level funding for the community college capital appropriation at $48.869 million

An additional $15 million to support career pathways at community colleges to develop and expand pathways that prepare students for careers or future postsecondary study

Pennsylvanias community colleges remain the largest sector of postsecondary education in the state, serving as the bridge between K-12 education and the workforce. In 2015-16, for example, the community colleges enrolled 326,786 students in both credit and noncredit classes. HACC, which is Pennsylvanias first and largest community college, enrolled 52,955 students in credit and noncredit classes at its five campuses and community locations during the same period. Additionally, Pennsylvanias 14 community colleges trained 104,000 workers and served nearly 2,000 companies. HACC accounted for the training of nearly 11,000 of those workers and served 708 companies in the Colleges 11-county footprint.

Community colleges are at the front line of providing accredited training to help fill the job skills gap faced by Pennsylvanias manufacturers as their older workers retire. In Pennsylvania, and specifically in Central Pennsylvania, manufacturing is alive and thriving  from fruit and vegetable canning, poultry and food processing to pharmaceuticals and durable goods. The challenge is finding people to fill the jobs associated with these occupations.

The skills gap is not new to the U.S. manufacturing industry. With an aging, retiring workforce and no dedicated pipeline of ready-to-work individuals, manufacturers in Central Pennsylvania and across the country are realizing there will likely be approximately 2.7 million jobs (22 percent of the existing workforce) that remain unfilled over the next decade.

According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce:

There are currently more than 30 million good jobs in the U.S. that pay well without a bachelors degree.

The growth of good jobs is greatest for workers with an associate degree.

Approximately 63 percent of jobs in Pennsylvania will require more than a high school diploma by 2020.

Pennsylvanias community colleges are working toward a postsecondary attainment goal of 60 percent of Pennsylvanians with a postsecondary credential by 2025.

At HACC, for example, we are approaching the skills gap by working with manufacturers to design apprenticeship programs to train the workforce of the next generation. HACC registered the first Integrated Manufacturing Technician Apprenticeship Program in Pennsylvania in February 2017 and will launch more apprenticeships in 2018. This 18-month program is designed to teach entry-level individuals how to set up, operate, monitor and control production equipment. Additionally, HACCs Workforce Development and Continuing Education team visits with Pennsylvanias manufacturers to brainstorm creative solutions to assist companies with attracting and retaining qualified workers.

An investment in Pennsylvanias community colleges is an investment in a stronger future for its citizens. Pennsylvanias return on investment in our community colleges reaps the following benefits:

Students who complete their credential at a community college enter a career path with good salaries and increased potential for upward mobility.

These students also are able to transfer to four-year institutions to pursue bachelors degrees and beyond required for some careers.

Individuals, employers and their communities all receive benefits.

Ultimately, the state realizes dividends in the form of increased economic activity, reduced spending on social services and increased civic engagement.

I again urge Gov. Tom Wolf to provide the additional requested support for our community colleges in his 2018-19 proposed state budget to enable us to accomplish our shared mission.
By Karen Braun

November through January is typically the least active period for Brazilian soybean exports, but that quiet time has lately been getting louder - and possibly at the expense of the United States.

Record-large crops were harvested earlier this year in Brazil, the No. 1 and No. 2 soybean and corn supplier, respectively, though fewer total shipments are scheduled within the next month or so than was the case two years ago.

Soybeans are not the culprit. According to shipping agency Williams, more of the oilseed is on deck to leave Brazils ports than ever before during mid-December.

But while corn shipments should be near peak, the current port lineup is only half as heavy as the 2015 record for the month, reflective of bloated world supplies.

Brazils exports exploded in the final three months of 2015 as farmers had reaped bumper crops and the prices were especially favorable for international buyers. Corn plus soybean shipments in that period totaled 21.3 million tonnes - most of which was corn  dwarfing 2013s high of 13.1 million.

Corn and soy output in 2017 was 30 million tonnes larger than in 2015, but lower profit potential has discouraged active selling by Brazilian farmers as both domestic and global stockpiles have swollen. Still, combined shipments are down only 9 percent from two years ago in the months of October and November.

But Brazils soy export program is as healthy as ever for the time of year. Mid-month port lineups show 2.4 million tonnes of the oilseed on the docket, some 1 million tonnes more than the same date in 2015. ( reut.rs/2Bf8SgS

Meanwhile, the United States appears to be falling short of its lofty bean export ideas. As of Dec. 14, port inspections for the oilseed were down 13 percent from the year-ago record, although the government is expecting a 2 percent increase in annual shipments.

Brazil has 4.5 million tonnes of corn in the mid-December lineup, much smaller than the 9.4 million at the same point in 2015. However, the country amassed record-shattering shipments in July through September, earlier than the usual time frame. ( reut.rs/2B3hWRu

Brazils export program has been running more smoothly than in years past partly owing to the technological and logistical improvements at the major ports, along with the increased use of ports in Northern Brazil. Traffic outside the major port of Paranagua in early December was nearly 90 percent lighter than two years earlier. ( reut.rs/2yYcXQj

Use of the smaller ports has especially supported the soybean volumes. Ten of Brazils major 11 ports had soybeans on their mid-December schedule compared with six at the same point in 2016 and just four in 2015. The early 2016 drought clipped the countrys output for soybeans and particularly corn, so its exports in the second half of that year and early 2017 were greatly reduced.
Over the past five years, the government, through its National Landcare Program, has spent more than $5 million funding biodiversity and sustainable agriculture projects in partnership with the regions landowners
Charles Sturt University, parasitologist Dr David Jenkins, from the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, said most of the commercial losses from sheep measles were borne by the processors, so the vaccine would need to be marketed so that farmers would want to use it.
Dear Editor:

Our Congress is considering a major overhaul to our tax laws. The last one took many weeks to work out by both established parties. Today we have one party trying to enact a unilateral plan thrown together at midnight in just a few weeks, with almost no Democratic input.

Its not an auspicious start. The U.S. has tried something like this before with extremely bad results: 100 years ago Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, known as Prohibition. We know how badly that worked. My concern is that Prohibition itself lasted from 1920 to 1933 before it was repealed, a total of 16 YEARS after the Congress which originally approved it left office.

We have 535 representatives and senators who are supposed to work for the other 350 million of us and who can do a decent job when they try. However, the current tax reform is being rammed through by about half that number, and it appears that it only benefits a few thousand of us. Can 270 of them only make laws for a few thousand (wealthy) citizens?

They may get what they want; and 12 or so years from now our children, Republicans and Democrats alike, will be paying when the bill for the tax package comes due. Meanwhile, in about 2025 middle class tax cuts stop and taxes rise. And of course well have that $1.5 trillion additional debt to pay off. Maybe the GOP should add a go fund me clause to the package.

Let your elected representatives know how you feel. E-mail, social media, telephone, anything works. And, if they vote for it, think about if you want to re-elect them on Election Day.

John Sacrison

Carlisle
Only subscribers with PAID Print or E-Edition subscriptions enter here to gain access. If you are not a Current Paid subscriber do not go through this portal. Please return to the subscription page to purchase one of our offers. Thank you!
A former sales executive of Embraer S.A. pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in New York City for bribing a foreign official in exchange for help selling jets to Saudi Aramco.

Colin Steven, 61, a UK citizen living in the United Arab Emirates, was charged with one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA.

He was also charged with one count of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of conspiracy to launder money, and one count of making a false statement.

No sentencing date was set.

Brazil-based aircraft maker Embraer paid $205 million to the DOJ and SEC in October 2016 to resolve FCPA violations.

Embraer admitted bribing officials in Saudi Arabia, the Dominican Republic, and Mozambique.

Steven was a vice president of sales and marketing in Embraers Executive Jets Division.

In his plea Thursday, he admitted arranging the Saudi bribe. He also took a kickback and lied about it to U.S. investigators.

The bribe was $1.5 million, the DOJ said.

In early 2010, Saudi Aramco awarded Embraer a $93 million contract for three new aircraft.

Steven disguised the bribe as commissions to a South African company that was partly owned by his friends.

The South African company transferred most of the money to the foreign officials intermediary, the DOJ said. The rest of the money went to Steven.

The DOJ said Thursday that Embraer has cooperated since its FCPA settlement last year. Eleven individuals have been charged in the case in Brazil for misconduct in the Dominican Republic, the DOJ said.

Two other individuals have been charged in Saudi Arabia.

The DOJ said it had help from authorities in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Switzerland.

___

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
For the past three years, the fourth grade Character Council at Washington-Franklin Elementary has been hosting an annual door decorating contest to help raise money for a few Washington-Franklin families in need that have not been able to receive help for Christmas, pay a bill, or provide a special Christmas meal with all of the fixings for their family.

This year the fourth grade Character Council members began mentoring the third grade members. The Character Council sponsors worked with each student on how to greet community members - such as, shake their hands and extend a welcoming invitation while personally hand-delivering letters and inviting local business leaders and community members to tour Washington-Franklin Elementary to vote on their favorite doors through cash donations.

The community tour took place on Dec. 18, and was a huge success. Our guest were warmly welcomed into the building, offered coffee provided by Belgrade State Bank/Wise Grounds Coffee Shop, and given a guided tour by the fourth grade members while the third grade members sang carols in the hallways.

Through the generous donations of our area business leaders and families, Washington-Franklin was able to raise approximately $1,200 to help the selected families.

The work of the Character Council members didnt end there, however. Armed with a list of clothing sizes and a wish list, each of the Character Council members and their sponsors went on a shopping adventure to gather the needed items. Once the shopping was done, the crew returned to school and began wrapping the presents to surprise the receiving families.

Washington-Franklin Elementary wants to express their gratitude to the community for their overwhelming support in this worthwhile endeavor.
The Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control added four Russians and a Chechen to its list of those sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act for alleged human rights abuses.

The most prominent name on Wednesdays list was the head of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Hes a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. authorities accused Kadyrov of overseeing disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

With the names added Wednesday, OFAC has now publicly listed 49 people subject to travel bans and asset freezes under the Magnitsky Act. Most on the list were implicated in the jailing and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The U.S. adopted the Magnitsky Act in 2012. It imposes sanctions on those responsible for the 36-year-old lawyers detention, abuse, or death. It also reaches those who concealed his mistreatment, or were involved in or benefited from the criminal conspiracy he uncovered.

Magnitsky died in custody in 2009 after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud against the Russian treasury. His evidence implicated a number of government officials and mobsters. The Russian government has said Magnitsky died of natural causes while in jail.

OFAC published the initial Magnitsky sanction list in April 2013. It included 18 individuals. A second list of individuals banned from entering the United States was classified, the State Department said. OFAC added five more names to the list in February 2016 and five more in January 2017.

In September 2013, the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture action against the assets of nine companies that own real estate in Manhattan. The complaint named firms that allegedly laundered a portion of the $230 million stolen through the tax fraud that Magnitsky uncovered.

In December 2016, the U.S. Congress adopted a broader version of the Magnitsky Act. The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act gives the President the power to punish human rights violators and corrupt leaders from any country by banning them from travel to the United States and freezing their U.S. assets.

* * *

Here are the names OFAC added Wednesday to the Specially Designated Nationals List under the Magnitsky Act:

KADYROV, Ramzan Akhmatovich (a.k.a. KADYROW, Ramzan Achmatowisch); DOB 05 Oct 1976; POB Tsentoroi, Chechen Republic, Russia; nationality Russia; Gender Male (individual) [MAGNIT].



KATAEV, Ayub Vakhaevich (Cyrillic: ,  ) (a.k.a. KATAEV, Aiub; a.k.a. KATAEV, Ayubkhan Vakhaevich (Cyrillic: ,  )); DOB 01 Dec 1984; alt. DOB 01 Dec 1980; nationality Russia; Gender Male (individual) [MAGNIT].



MAYOROVA, Yulia (Cyrillic: , ) (a.k.a. MAYOROVA, Yulya); DOB 23 Apr 1979; nationality Russia; Gender Female (individual) [MAGNIT].



PAVLOV, Andrei (a.k.a. PAVLOV, Andrei Alexeyevich; a.k.a. PAVLOV, Andrey; a.k.a. PAVLOV, Andrey Aleksandrovich); DOB 07 Aug 1977; nationality Russia; Gender Male (individual) [MAGNIT].



SHESHENYA, Alexei Nikolaevich (Cyrillic: ,  ) (a.k.a. SHESHENYA, Alexey), Novokosinskaya Street 38, Building 3, Apartment 3, Moscow 111539, Russia; DOB 16 Apr 1971; citizen Russia; Gender Male; Passport 4506550500 (Russia) (individual) [MAGNIT].

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
Switzerlands financial regulator said Thursday that JPMorgan Chase & Co. seriously breached anti-money laundering regulations in its dealings with Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority or FINMA said JPMorgan also failed to manage PEP risks related 1MDB.

The agency appointed a monitor to review JPMorgans controls on an ongoing basis. It didnt impose any financial or other penalties on the bank.

JPMorgan credited hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars from 1MDB to the personal account of an individual with close ties to a business partner of the sovereign wealth fund, FINMA said.

The bank also accepted incomplete or inconsistent information from clients without examining it further or documenting it, the Swiss regulator said.

More than $4.5 billion was allegedly looted from 1Malaysia Development Berhad from 2009 through 2015 by high-level officials of the fund and their associates, the U.S. DOJ said.

The DOJ has filed forfeiture actions against nearly $1.7 billion in assets linked to 1MDB.

Last year Singapore seized property and bank accounts worth about $177 million linked to money allegedly diverted from 1MDB.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore stripped BSI Bank and Falcon Bank of their licenses because of money-laundering violations related to 1MDB.

MAS also fined DBS Bank about $720,000, Standard Chartered Bank $3.7 million, and Coutts & Co $1.73 million.

MAS sanctioned ten individuals for 1MDB-related offenses.

Tim Leissner, the former chief of Goldman Sachs (Southeast Asia), was banned from the Singapore financial sector for ten years.

In October this year, Wall Streets independent regulator banned Leissner from the U.S. securities industry after he said he wouldnt cooperate with the regulators investigation.

Leissner didnt respond to requests from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for documents and other information related to his departure from Goldman Sachs in 2016.

Switzerlands FINMA said Thursday:

J.P. Morgan failed to adequately identify the increased money laundering risks in some of the business relationships related to this case. In other relationships, while the bank correctly identified the clients as politically exposed persons (PEPs), it managed the increased risks arising from these relationships inadequately.

FINMA has brought a total of seven cases in Switzerland in relation to 1MDB. It said Thursday without elaborating that one case remains open.

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
Meghan Markle pulled crackers and shared jokes with Prince Charles at the Queen's annual Christmas lunch on Wednesday (20.12.17).

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

The royal family were reportedly determined to make the meal seem as normal as possible for the 36-year-old actress, as the brunette beauty was feeling "nervous" about being introduced to her fiance Prince Harry's relatives at Buckingham Palace.

However, the former 'Suits' star, who is set to marry the 33-year-old prince in May next year, was made to feel comfortable and the guests, including several members of the wider royal family, thought she was "delightful".

An insider told the Daily Mail newspaper: "Everyone wanted to meet Meghan and welcome her to the family and she didn't disappoint.

"She was obviously a bit nervous at first but she soon relaxed with Prince Harry's help as he introduced her to everyone and then she really enjoyed it.

"Harry was clearly very happy and very proud of her and everyone thought she was delightful. It was your typical Christmas lunch in spite of who was there - turkey, crackers ... the lot. "

Meanwhile, Meghan has agreed to celebrate the festive season with the royal family at Sandringham House in Norfolk, England.

Kensington Palace confirmed the couple will also enjoy the festivities with Harry's brother William, Catherine and George and Charlotte.

The loved-up couple are expected to attend the traditional morning service at St Mary Magdalene Church on December 25.

Meghan will probably be among the select few of the royal family to speak with the public before and after the service and receive bouquets of flowers.

The Royals will then return to Sandringham House for a lavish Christmas lunch before watching the Queen give her famous speech to the nation in the afternoon.

But there will be no exchanging of gifts that day as the family swap presents on Christmas Eve (24.12.17) - keeping in with German tradition.

Meghan will become the first royal fiancee to spend Christmas with Queen Elizabeth as it is said that usually the royal family only accept married couples to join them for Christmas, but they are making an exception this year for Harry and his partner.

The pair, who will tie the knot in May 2018, will then jet back to the States to ring in the New Year with Meghan's family.
The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) and the Centre of International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an organisation affiliated to the US Chamber of Commerce, have recently signed an agreement that will help over 2,000 small businesses in Nairobi, Mombasa and Vihiga counties venture into the US market by December next year.Kenyan small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can export fruits, fish, coffee, leather products, curios, textile and artifacts, a Kenyan newspaper reported citing the memorandum of understanding.

The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) and the Centre of International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an organisation affiliated to the US Chamber of Commerce, have recently signed an agreement that will help over 2,000 small businesses in Nairobi, Mombasa and Vihiga counties venture into the US market by December next year. #

The KNCCI chapters of Nairobi, Mombasa and Vihiga will improve their governance, financial resources and service to members through training, technical assistance and small grants. More county chambers will join the initiative later.Vihiga and Mombasa County chambers will also use the partnership to grow their membership services and enhance policy development to support businesses in their respective counties.Kenya is the 85th largest goods trading partner with the United States, with a total of $1.5 billion worth of products exchanged between the two countries in 2015, according to the Office of US Trade RepresentativeKenya exports woven apparel, knit apparel, coffee, tea, edible fruits and macadamia nuts. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Jeddah-based International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), a member of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Group, recently signed a euro 107-million agreement to finance the cotton sector in Burkina Faso in the 2017-2018 season under Islamic regulations. SOFITEX, the countrys national cotton company, will be the executing agent.The agreement was recently signed by ITFC CEO Hani Salem Sonbol and SOFITEX CEO Wilfried Yameogo on behalf of Burkina Fasos minister of economy, finance and development, according to an ITFC press release.

Jeddah-based International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), a member of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Group, recently signed a euro 107-million agreement to finance the cotton sector in Burkina Faso in the 2017-2018 season under Islamic regulations. SOFITEX, the country's national cotton company, will be the executing agent.#

The agreement will support the purchase of seed cotton from farmers and cooperatives and aims to have a positive impact on the income of the farmers and improve their living conditions.Burkina Faso has benefited from more than $925 million of financing since ITFCs inception in 2008. The transaction follows a $ 450-million agreement signed with the country in May 2017 for the next three years. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Over 10.685 million bales of cotton have arrived in 2017-18 season at various ginneries in Pakistan, as on December 15, 2017, up 5.30 per cent compared to arrival of 10.147 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 increased by 1.63 per cent year-on-year to 6.549 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 11.70 per cent to 4.136 million bales as on December 15 during the ongoing cotton season 2017-18.

Of the total arrival of 10.685 million bales at various ginneries in Pakistan, 10.074 million bales were pressed by ginners, of which 9.062 million bales were sold, leaving an unsold stock of 1,011,614 bales with the ginners, as on December 15, according to the data.

Over 10.685 million bales of cotton have arrived in 2017-18 season at various ginneries in Pakistan, as on December 15, 2017, up 5.30 per cent compared to arrival of 10.147 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 8.849 million bales, while another 213,630 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 15, a total of 597 ginning factories were operational in Punjab compared to 359 ginneries that were operational during the same time last season. Similarly, 229 ginning units were operational in the Sindh region, compared to 161 operating units during the corresponding period last year. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Expressing serious concern over suspension of the supply of system gas quota of two-day per week to Punjab industries from December 7, All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Punjab unit chairman Ali Pervaiz recently said the government had extended this quota last year to reduce the cost of business and address the inter-provincial disparity.Industries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Sindh provinces continue to be supplied system gas for seven days a week, a statement issued by Pervaiz said.

Expressing serious concern over suspension of the supply of system gas quota of two-day per week to Punjab industries from December 7, All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Punjab unit chairman Ali Pervaiz recently said the government had extended this quota last year to reduce the cost of business and address the inter-provincial disparity. #

Pakistans textile industry is predominantly located in Punjab and the industry there was getting 28 per cent system gas under the government quota and the rest was being met through more expensive imported regasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG).With the complete suspension of system gas supplies now, the industry in Punjab will rely solely on RLNG, whose price is almost double of system gas, Pakistani media reports quoted Pervaiz as saying. The industry in the province can neither survive nor prosper using such an expensive fuel, he said.Pervaiz has appealed to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif to ensure sustainable and affordable energy supply for the textile industry in the province. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Peru's culture ministry recently received 79 finely-weaved textile items from the pre-Inca Paracas culture as repatriation from Sweden. These were part of the second shipping agreed upon by the two sides in 2014 for the recovery of textile pieces that were acquired by the Municipal Museum of Gothenburg back in 1935. The first batch had arrived in June 2014.Representatives from the Peruvian ministry and the Swedish Government were present at the return ceremony, which featured the symbolic return of five Paracas textiles dating from the 500 BCE to 200 CE period, according to a Peruvian news agency report.

Peru's culture ministry recently received 79 finely-weaved textile items from the pre-Inca Paracas culture as repatriation from Sweden. These were part of the second shipping agreed upon by the two sides in 2014 for the recovery of textile pieces that were acquired by the Municipal Museum of Gothenburg back in 1935. The first batch had arrived in June 2014.#

The batch includes mantles, uncus (tunics), cloths and shawls characterized by their unique value, composition, colours and weaving techniques using cotton and vicuna wool.The items will be kept by the ministrys general directorate of museums for conservation and display in 2018. Sweden is due to return an additional 60 textile items by 2021. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The US Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting anti-dumping (AD) duties on imports of fine denier polyester staple fibre (PSF) from China, India, Korea and Taiwan. This follows preliminary anti-dumping determinations by the US department of commerce that producers and exporters from the 4 countries are selling merchandise at less than fair value.

The amount of anti-dumping duties will be equal to the preliminary anti-dumping margins in each country, and importers will be required to post duty deposits beginning on the date of publication of US department of commerces determinations in the Federal Register, in approximately one week.

The preliminary anti-dumping margins on fine denier PSF imports from China would range between 63.26 per cent to 181.46 per cent. The duty applicable on import form Jiangying Huahong Chemical Fiber Co. Ltd. will be 63.26 per cent, separate rate companies will be 122.36 per cent, and all other companies including Jiangyin Hailun Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. will be 181.46 per cent.

The US Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting anti-dumping (AD) duties on imports of fine denier polyester staple fibre (PSF) from China, India, Korea and Taiwan. This follows preliminary anti-dumping determinations by the US department of commerce that producers and exporters from the 4 countries are selling merchandise at less than fair value.#

Likewise, fine denier PSF imports from Indian producer/exporter Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Co. Ltd. will attract anti-dumping duty of 21.43 per cent. Import from all other Indian companies, including Reliance Industries Ltd., will attract 2.66 per cent duty.

Similarly, fine denier PSF import from two Korean companiesDown Nara Co., Ltd. and Huvis Corporationwould attract anti-dumping duty of 45.23 per cent, while all other companies would attract duty of 35.15 per cent, with the exception of Toray Chemical Korea Inc. which will not attract any anti-dumping duty.

For fine denier PSF imports from Taiwanese producer Far Eastern Textile Ltd, the anti-dumping duty would be 48.86 per cent, while all other Taiwanese companies will attract duty of 24.43 per cent, with exception of Tainan Spinning Co. Ltd., which will not attract any anti-dumping duty.

These preliminary anti-dumping cash deposit rates for China and India will be applied to fine denier PSF imports from these two countries in addition to the preliminary countervailing duty (CVD) rates calculated for Chinese and Indian subsidised producers/exporters. The affirmative CVD determinations were announced by the US department of commerce on October 31, 2017, and those CVD rates are in effect since November 6, 2017.

We are pleased with the overall strong anti-dumping duty determinations in each of these four cases. The margins support what the domestic fine denier PSF industry has experienced for years  the growing presence of dumped merchandise from China, India, Korea, and Taiwan in the U.S. market, said Paul Rosenthal, of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, counsel to the petitioning US producers, namely DAK Americas LLC, Nan Ya Plastics Corporation, America, and Auriga Polymers Inc. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Global cotton consumption in 2017-18 is projected to increase 4 per cent to 119.6 million bales, according to the US department of agriculture (USDA). This will be the largest year-to-year growth rate since 2009-10 when mill use rose over 8 per cent. Cotton mill use is expected to rise in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Turkey.

The improved global economic outlook and a more favourable price relative to synthetics is responsible for the largest global cotton consumption estimate in a decade, the Economic and Research Service of the USDA said in its latest report on Cotton and Wool Outlook.

Mill use in China, the leading spinner of raw cotton, is estimated to reach 39 million bales in 2017-18, four per cent above the preceding year and the highest since 2010-11. China is the largest supplier of textile and apparel products to the world, and it is expected to benefit from the expanding global economy this season.

Global cotton consumption in 2017-18 is projected to increase 4 per cent to 119.6 million bales, according to the US department of agriculture (USDA). This will be the largest year-to-year growth rate since 2009-10 when mill use rose over 8 per cent. Cotton mill use is expected to rise in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Turkey.#

Increased mill use of cotton is also forecast in India, Pakistan and Vietnam, due in part to their continued yarn shipments to China. Indias cotton mill use is projected at 24.75 million bales, up 3 per cent from 2016-17 but similar to 2015-16. Pakistan is expected to spin 10.4 million bales of cotton in 2017-18, up slightly from a year ago and the highest in 3 years.

Meanwhile, Vietnam continues to experience significant growth in its cotton consumption. In 2017-18, mill use in Vietnam is projected to reach a record 6.1 million bales, 13 per cent above the previous season, the report said.

In addition, cotton mill use is expected to increase in Bangladesh and Turkey, where gains of approximately 7.5 per cent are expected in 2017-18. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/20/17 -- Editors Note: There are five figures associated with this press release.

ICC Labs Inc. ("ICC Labs" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: ICC), a fully licensed producer and distributor of medicinal cannabinoid extracts, recreational cannabis and industrial hemp products in Uruguay, is pleased to announce the details of two recently completed milestones and its goals for fiscal 2018.

Successful Indoor Harvest

ICC Labs completed its first indoor-grown and fully organic harvest of medicinal cannabis at the Company's 21,528 sq. ft. greenhouse situated on company-owned land in the Department of Canelones, Uruguay. This achievement demonstrates ICC Labs' ability to execute its goals and successfully ramp up its operations in anticipation of becoming a leader in the production of cannabinoid extracts in Latin America and the world.

Alejandro Antalich, Chief Executive Officer of ICC Labs, commented: "Our goal is to take care of every detail in the production process, from seed to sale, to ensure that our end products are 100% traceable, of excellent quality and suited for intended use.

Further, the successful completion of ICC Labs first indoor harvest sets us up for a great 2018, as we expect ICC Labs' medicinal operations to mature from their development stage. This harvest of 4,000 plants also provides the raw material to start producing the Company's first 30-millilitre bottles of its branded cannabidiol ("CBD") oil, 'Bidiol', in a temporary laboratory situated in Uruguay's free trade zone "Science Park", which the Company will use until it completes construction of the first permanent CBD extraction laboratory in South America.

Sowing of Outdoor High-CBD Varieties

ICC Labs is a first-mover in the nascent outdoor medicinal cannabis production industry in Latin America. It is currently in the process of sowing 400 acres of seeds of high-CBD cannabis varieties in Uruguay in accordance with the Company's authorizations from the Uruguayan Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries.

The Company believes that 400 acres of planted high-CBD cannabis varieties will provide sufficient feedstock (up to 150,000 kg of dried CBD flowers) for the Company to operate its permanent extraction laboratory, once constructed, at full capacity for one year.

Alejandro Antalich, the Chief Executive Officer of ICC Labs, commented: "Our long-term vision for ICC Labs is that of a supplier of medicinal cannabinoid products to the greater Latin American market. As such, we are seeking to lay the foundations that will allow us to supply a potential market comprised of more than 400 million people in Latin America.

Our recently revised emphasis on the medicinal cannabinoids market coincides with a momentous year in certain Latin America countries as the liberalization of the medicinal cannabis market continued. This year alone, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Paraguay joined Brazil, Uruguay and Chile in approving important pieces of legislation that will allow the use of medicinal cannabis."

ABOUT ICC LABS INC.

The Company has operations in Uruguay, and is focused on the licensed production, development and sale of medicinal cannabinoid extracts, recreational cannabis and industrial hemp products in Uruguay. For more information, please see the Company's filings on www.sedar.com and www.icclabs.com.

Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Certain statements in this press release constitute forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release, including, without limitation, those regarding the Company's future production and sales, results of operations, strategy, plans, objectives, goals and targets, and any statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words "believe", "expect", "aim", "intend", "plan", "continue", "will", "may", "would", "anticipate", "estimate", "forecast", "predict", "project", "seek", "should" or similar expressions or the negative thereof, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts but instead represent only the Company's expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from what is expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking statements.

Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially include, but are not limited to: the Company's ability to complete the construction of its cannabinoid extraction laboratory in a timely fashion and in accordance with requisite regulatory requirements, or at all, to obtain all requisite regulatory approvals for the production and export of cannabinoid based products, to produce various cannabinoid based products in a cost-effective manner, or at all, and to successfully grow and harvest sufficient outdoor hemp crops to operate its prospective CBD laboratory near fully capacity. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators, and available at www.sedar.com. Management provides forward-looking statements because it believes they provide useful information to investors when considering their investment objectives and cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, the Company. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by law.

To view the figures associated with this press release, please visit the following links:

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20171220-1106162_1800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20171220-1106162_2800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20171220-1106162_3800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20171220-1106162_4800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20171220-1106162_5800.jpg

Contacts:

ICC Labs Inc.

Alejandro Antalich

Chief Executive Officer

598-2900-0000

ir@icclabs.com




Toyota Motor Corporation Public Affairs Division Global Communications Department Tel: +81-3-3817-9926

TOKYO, Dec 21, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Toyota Motor Corporation announces its decision to merge its wholly owned subsidiary Toyota Fleet Leasing Co., Ltd. (TFL) with its wholly owned second-tier subsidiary Toyota Tokyo Rental & Leasing Co., Ltd. (R Tokyo) to establish a new company, Toyota Mobility Service Co., Ltd., on April 1, 2018. In addition to aiming to strengthen the existing corporate automobile leasing and rental car businesses, Toyota intends to plan and provide new mobility services in anticipation of a mobility society.Toyota is aware of customers' diversifying needs, which not only includes conventional vehicle ownership, but also the growing need for shared utilization, such as car sharing, in which people use things only whenever and for whatever period they would like. The company has determined that it is important not only to respond to changing needs but also to provide value-added services that uncover potential needs. Many corporations operating across Japan are based in Tokyo, where the earliest expansion of the mobility service society is expected to occur. Consequently, Toyota plans to establish the new company there in order to quickly and flexibly respond to changing uses and needs for cars in this once-in-a-century revolutionary period in the automobile industry.The new company will work with Toyota, as well as with Toyota Group vehicle manufacturing companies including Toyota Connected Company in the connected area, Toyota Finance Corporation in finance, and Toyota Usec in the used car business, mobilizing the combined strength of each company to meet a wide range of customer needs. In the future, Toyota aims to become the leading company of a mobility society by developing and offering mobility services adapted to a connected society.Specific initiatives of Toyota Mobility Service Co., Ltd. include:1. Collaborating with Toyota's in-house companies and Toyota Group vehicle manufacturers, gathering the needs of corporate customers, and promoting the making of ever-better cars by providing feedback for products2. Developing and providing new mobility services including solution services for corporate customers, connected services using in-vehicle communication equipment and car sharing, in cooperation with Toyota's Japan Fleet Business Division and a new organization, the Mobility Service Planning Division (to be established in January 2018 as part of Toyota's Japan Sales Business Group)3. Constructing a high-quality maintenance network in cooperation with Toyota dealers so that long-range, long-running, high-performance corporate vehicles can be used safely and with peace of mind4. Proactively collaborating and forming tie-ups with external companies with high levels of expertise and ambition that already operate in the automobile leasing and sharing fields to provide attractive services toward a future mobility societyAbout ToyotaToyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is the global mobility company that introduced the Prius hybrid-electric car in 1997 and the first mass-produced fuel cell sedan, Mirai, in 2014. Headquartered in Toyota City, Japan, Toyota has been making cars since 1937. Today, Toyota proudly employs 370,000 employees in communities around the world. Together, they build around 10 million vehicles per year in 29 countries, from mainstream cars and premium vehicles to mini-vehicles and commercial trucks, and sell them in more than 170 countries under the brands Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino. For more information, please visit www.toyota-global.com.Source: ToyotaContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
TechnipFMC (Paris:FTI) (NYSE:FTI) (ISIN:GB00BDSFG982) (NYSE: FTI) (PARIS: FTI) has been awarded an Engineering, Procurement Construction (EPC) contract by Statoil for the Snorre Expansion Project.

The Snorre Expansion contract covers the delivery of subsea production systems and includes 6 subsea templates and subsea production equipment. Snorre is located in the Tampen area of the North Sea and has been producing oil and gas since August 1992.

Hallvard Hasselknippe, President Subsea Projects at TechnipFMC, commented: "TechnipFMC has delivered subsea equipment to Snorre since the field started production. We are happy to continue supporting Statoil on the Snorre field, extending the production for another 20 years."

Important Information for Investors and Securityholders

Forward-Looking Statement

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The words "scheduled," "estimated" and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which are generally not historical in nature. Such forward-looking statements involve significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from our historical experience and our present expectations or projections. Known material factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements include the Company's ability to successfully deliver, and Statoil's acceptance of, the subsea products ordered. For additional information regarding known material factors that could cause actual results to differ from projected results, please see our risk factors set forth in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which include our Registration Statement on Form S-4, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K.

We caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any of our forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.

About TechnipFMC

TechnipFMC is a global leader in subsea, onshore/offshore, and surface projects. With our proprietary technologies and production systems, integrated expertise, and comprehensive solutions, we are transforming our clients' project economics.

We are uniquely positioned to deliver greater efficiency across project lifecycles from concept to project delivery and beyond. Through innovative technologies and improved efficiencies, our offering unlocks new possibilities for our clients in developing their oil and gas resources.

Each of our more than 40,000 employees is driven by a steady commitment to clients and a culture of purposeful innovation, challenging industry conventions, and rethinking how the best results are achieved.

To learn more about us and how we are enhancing the performance of the world's energy industry, go to TechnipFMC.com and follow us on Twitter @TechnipFMC.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171220006094/en/

Contacts:

TechnipFMC

Investor relations

Matt Seinsheimer, +1 281-260-3665

Vice President Investor Relations

Matt Seinsheimer

or

James Davis, +1 281-260-3665

Senior Manager Investor Relations

James Davis

or

Media relations

Christophe Belorgeot, +33 1 47 78 39 92

Vice President Corporate Communications

Christophe Belorgeot

or

Delphine Nayral, +33 1 47 78 34 83

Manager Public Relations

Delphine Nayral

or

Lisa Adams, +1 281-405-4659

Senior Manager Digital Communications

Lisa Adams
SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Honor, a leading smartphone e-brand, announced on its 4th Anniversary that Honor X series, including smartphones from Honor 4X to Honor 7X, achieved overwhelming sales performance with over 40 million units sold in the global market. Honor X series offers latest premium features at an accessible level for users worldwide. The latest Honor 7X demonstrates this commitment by marking a successful global debut of the latest bezel-less smartphone which offers great value to consumers.

Honor 7X boasts an 18:9 edge-to-edge, bezel-less screen which enhances viewing and gaming experience significantly. The new flagship device is powerfully configured to perform seamlessly, making it an ideal companion for users whenever they work, communicate and play.

Honor 7X launched in China in October 2017, and is also made available to users worldwide recently. In China, the new smartphone achieved remarkable sales results during "Singles' Day", the most important annual shopping festival, on 11 November this year. 300,000 units of Honor 7X were sold within the first two hours of Singles' Day on Tmall.com, China's largest online retail platform operated by Alibaba, making the smartphone at the top of overall bestsellers in the price range of RMB 1,000 to 1,999.

The new smartphone also received positive user feedback and sales results globally. Compared to Honor 6X, Honor 7X sales doubled in the first two weeks of its global launch in London, on 5 December.

In India, Honor 7X received overwhelming response from consumers. Three rounds of flash sales with limited number of Honor 7X were announced in India right after the global launch, and 20,000 units were sold out in one hour of each flash sales.

In Russia where Honor is a top-three smartphone brand, the sales of Honor 7X was triple that of Honor 6X in the first two weeks of the global launch, accelerating the already strong momentum in the country.

In the United States, Honor 7X achieved a 250% growth in pre-paid orders from 5th Dec to 14th Dec compared to the sales of Honor 6X during the first 10 days of its debut.

The smartphone is also available for purchase in selected markets, including Europe (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ukraine and Turkey), Russia, United State, Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Iran), India and Malaysia.

With an unparalleled full-screen viewing experience at an extremely competitive price point, Honor 7X wins supports from consumers across the world. For more information of Honor 7X, please visit http://www.hihonor.com/global/products/mobile-phones/honor7x/index.html.

About Honor

Honor is a leading smartphone e-brand under the Huawei Group. In line with its slogan, "For the Brave", the brand was created to meet the needs of digital natives through internet-optimized products that offer superior user experiences, inspire action, foster creativity and empower the young to achieve their dreams. In doing this, Honor has set itself apart by showcasing its own bravery to do things differently and to take the steps needed to usher in the latest technologies and innovations for its customers.

For more information, please visit Honor online at www.hihonor.com or follow us on:

https://www.facebook.com/honorglobal/

https://twitter.com/Honorglobal

https://www.instagram.com/honorglobal/

https://www.youtube.com/honorglobal

For media enquiries, please contact:

Burson-Marsteller Hong Kong

Reed Li

+852 2963 6719

reed.li@bm.com



Alice Du

+852 2963 6767

alice.du@bm.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/622152/Honor_X_40_million.jpg
Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-3215-5259 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

Lisbon, Portugal, Dec 21, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Today the 3GPP TSG RAN Plenary Meeting in Lisbon successfully completed the first implementable 5G NR specification. AT&T, BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, KT Corporation, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, MediaTek Inc., NEC Corporation, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom, Sony Mobile Communications Inc., Sprint, TIM, Telefonica, Telia Company, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone, and ZTE have made a statement that the completion of the first 5G NR standard has set the stage for the global mobile industry to start full-scale development of 5G NR for large-scale trials and commercial deployments as early as in 2019.On February 27, 2017 in Barcelona, global mobile industry leaders announced their support for the acceleration of the 5G NR standardization schedule, which introduced an intermediate milestone to complete the first implementable specification for Non-Standalone 5G NR operation. As a result of this announcement, the schedule acceleration was agreed at the 3GPP RAN Plenary Meeting on March 9 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This first specification was completed as part of 3GPP Release 15.This standard completion is an essential milestone to enable cost-effective and full-scale development of 5G NR, which will greatly enhance the capabilities of 3GPP systems, as well as facilitate the creation of vertical market opportunities. 3GPP plans to continue to develop Release 15, including the addition of support for Standalone 5G NR operation also agreed upon by 3GPP in Dubrovnik. The 5G NR lower layer specifications have been designed so that they can support Standalone and Non-Standalone 5G NR operation in a unified way, to ensure that 3GPP benefits the global industry with a large-scale single 5G NR ecosystem. We express our appreciation for the tremendous efforts that 3GPP has dedicated to accomplishing this challenging standardization schedule.AT&T"We're proud to see the completion of this set of standards. Reaching this milestone enables the next phase of equipment availability and movement to interoperability testing and early 5G availability," said Hank Kafka, VP Access Architecture and Analytics at AT&T. "It showcases the dedication and leadership of the industry participants in 3GPP to follow through on accelerating standards to allow for faster technology deployments."BT"BT welcomes the first significant step to 5G deployment and we remain excited about the further innovations that 5G will bring." said Neil J. McRae, Chief Architect at BT, "We are proud to have played a part in this and BT is committed to continuing to drive further 5G standardisation at pace to benefit our customers and communities."China Mobile"The first version of 5G NR not only provides a NSA solution for 5G deployment but also completes the common part of NSA and SA, which lay a solid foundation for a global unified 5G system with global market scale. We believe the next important milestone that is SA standard providing end to end 5G new capability could be completed by June of 2018, which is very crucial to enable the operators to explore the enterprise and vertical markets. China Mobile is actively working with industry partners for 5G commercialization in year of 2020 and providing various services to customer." said Zhengmao Li, EVP of China Mobile Group.China Telecom"China Telecom is proud of being part of the 3GPP standard efforts that led to the completion of the first implementable 5G new radio specification. We expect that this important milestone, together with the SA part to be completed later, will promote and accelerate the development of 5G products, trials and commercial deployment in the coming years," said Liu Guiqing, EVP of China Telecom. "With this successful completion of the 5G new radio standard, China Telecom plans to lead the 5G effort by launching field trials in many major cities in China as early as 2018, and prepare for the possible commercialization thereafter."China UnicomGuanglu Shao, EVP of China Unicom Group, said: "It is the significant step for both 3GPP and the whole industry. This first version of 5G NR standardization provides essential functionalities for NSA and SA deployment, which are equally important for operators. We believe in that the industry could joint together further to make 5G more advanced for both human and vertical societies. We welcome the 5G era's coming, and will continue collaborate with industry partners to make successful 5G commercialization."Deutsche Telekom"We view both the Non-Standalone and Standalone modes of New Radio as equally important for the completeness of the 5G standard specification. This timely finalization of NSA is one important step on that journey and in the development of the 5G ecosystem," said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO Deutsche Telekom. "It is crucial that the industry now redoubles its focus on the Standalone mode to achieve progress towards a full 5G system, so we can bring key 5G innovations such as network slicing to our customers."EricssonErik Ekudden, CTO at Ericsson, said: "3GPP has done a tremendous job to complete the first 5G specifications according to industry demand and expectations. As a prime contributor to 5G standardization, Ericsson has worked with industry partners in the evolution of mobile technology to a global network platform for consumers and enterprises. Our research team has worked on 5G since 2010 including early 5G testbed efforts created together with these industry partners. The open contribution-driven specification work and the rapid completion of the first 5G standards for global deployment demonstrates the strength of the 5G eco-system."FujitsuMasayuki Seno, EVP and Head of Network Products Business Unit at Fujitsu, said: "I'm very pleased that the first 5G NR standard has been completed today. Fujitsu will accelerate development of 5G NR products based on the first 3GPP 5G NR specifications and provide them to worldwide markets to support our customers' trials and commercial deployments."HuaweiYang Chaobin, president of Huawei 5G product line, said: "As one of the key players, Huawei has committed to develop a single global 5G standard. With the a successful cooperation and join efforts with global organizations including governments, regulatory agencies, research organizations, academia, industries, and many more sectors, 3GPP 5G NR standardization Phase 1 has been completed with great progress. Huawei will keep working with global partners to bring 5G into the period of large-scale global commercial deployment from 2018."Intel"We are pleased to work in cooperation and close alignment with global mobile industry leaders to support the new 3GPP Non-Standalone 5G NR standard and to accelerate the first NR trials," said Asha Keddy, Intel vice president and general manager, Next Generation and Standards. "As part of this coordinated effort, Intel will continue to play a leading role across the network, cloud and client devices; and with our first commercial 5G modems, we will help the ecosystem lead the way to 5G deployments worldwide."KT CorporationDongmyun Lee, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Institute of Convergence Technology, KT said: "As one of the 5G leaders, we are greatly excited to witness the first ever release of 5G NR NSA specification that the whole industry including KT has endeavored to achieve in recent years and therefore make a strong commitment to finally bring full-scale services of the true 5G standards to commercial market as early as 2019. KT expects that such 3GPP's efforts meeting the market needs will further accelerate the realization of the 4th Industrial Revolution for telecommunication industry."LG ElectronicsI.P. Park, Chief Technology Officer, said: "LG Electronics is pleased to be one of key contributors to the first global 5G NR standard completed in a timely manner, which will play a pivotal role in enabling innovative IoT services and expediting the convergence of diverse industry sectors. Along with continued contributions to evolved 5G standards, we will make all the efforts to introduce new innovative 5G convergence products and services in the market."LG UplusJoosik Choi, Head of 5G Strategy Planning, said: "We would like to thank to 3GPP and all companies for great effort on initial 5G NR NSA standard which will accelerate promising future. As one of the big contributor for RF analysis on LTE band, 3.5GHz and 28GHz dual connectivity operation, LG Uplus will keep endeavor for bring 5G NR deployment and advanced standard into industry for this ecosystem."MediaTek Inc."The milestone reached is significant as it is an important step towards making 5G NR a commercial reality," said Dr. Kevin Jou, Corporate Sr. Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, MediaTek. "As a leading baseband chip provider, MediaTek has actively contributed to the standardization of 5G NR and will continue to do so. With the standard becoming stable, our focus is now on delivering viable commercial solutions that will enable the use of 5G NR technology to its full potential."NEC CorporationAtsuo Kawamura, executive vice president and head of the Telecom Carrier Business Unit at NEC Corporation, said: "Completion of Non-Standalone 5G NR standardization is a significant milestone for the realization of full-scale 5G services. NEC is strongly committed to driving the progress of standardization for a global mobile system, and believes future 5G services will benefit society in an unprecedented manner by utilizing advanced information and communications technologies. NEC is creating secure and intelligent technologies to realize such services."NokiaMarcus Weldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs and chief technology officer, Nokia, said: "This is a key milestone in bringing 5G to market, and one in which Nokia is proud to have played a significant role. 5G will advance new possibilities for the role of wireless technology in society, leading to dynamic innovation in mobile broadband and in industrial automation for industry 4.0, enabling the creation of exciting new applications that connect and control our physical and digital worlds."NTT DOCOMODr. Hiroshi Nakamura, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, NTT DOCOMO said: "I would like to express my deepest gratitude for 3GPP's great effort to successfully complete the first release of 5G NR specification six months ahead of schedule. NTT DOCOMO has made tremendous contributions to the standardization as a world-leading mobile operator. We have been collaborating with various partners across industries to co-create 5G services through '5G Trial Sites' since this May. This completion will accelerate these activities and we will launch 5G services with Non-Standalone 5G NR by 2020."OrangeArnaud Vamparys, SVP Radio Networks said: "Orange welcomes this inaugural first release of a worldwide standard for 5G. With subsequent 3GPP releases expected from mid 2018 that will accelerate application and IoT development, Orange sees a myriad of opportunities to deliver a differentiated and high quality network, and is therefore fully committed to working with the industry to roll out 5G."Qualcomm Technologies, Inc."We are excited to be part of this significant milestone, and to once again be at the forefront making the 5G vision a reality in 2019," said Cristiano Amon, executive vice president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and president, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. "We look forward to continue working with our mobile industry peers to bring 5G NR commercial networks and devices in 2019 in smartphone and other form factors, for both sub-6Ghz and mmWave frequency bands, and to continue developing 5G technologies to connect new industries and enable new services and user experiences in the years to come."Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.DJ Koh, President and Head of IT and Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics, said: "As a global leader in the mobile industry, Samsung has been collaborating with the whole industry to achieve this milestone in 5G standards. With the completion of 5G NSA NR standard, we will be able to expedite 5G commercial deployments including chipsets, devices and network equipment. Samsung will continue making every effort to deliver complete Rel-15 NR standards. Rel-15 NR and its further evolution will be a key milestone for the industry to meet the increasing global demand for enhanced mobile broadband services and exploring new business opportunities and services inspired by 5G."SK Telecom"Having global 3GPP 5G NR standard by 2017 is one of key milestones to bring 5G into early commercial service in 2019", said Jinhyo Park, EVP, Head of ICT R&D Center, "SK Telecom isproud to be one of key contributors to the accelerated 3GPP 5G NSA-NR standardization. We will continue to work on further development of 3GPP 5G NR to ensure readiness for early 5G commercial deployment."Sony Mobile Communications Inc.Mr. Izumi Kawanishi, Director, EVP, Sony Mobile Communications Inc., said: "Sony has been part of the 5G NR and NSA standardization and recognizes the progress in 3GPP to reach this important milestone with features targeting evolved mobile broadband and ultra low latency communications. Sony Mobile is ready for full-scale development of 5G NR smartphones to take benefit of the opportunities offered by the new standard."Sprint"We're excited to help usher in the next generation of wireless networks that will drive new levels of innovation and progress around the world," said Dr. John Saw, Sprint CTO. "We congratulate 3GPP and its delegates on this important milestone, and we look forward to working with our industry partners to deploy 5G NR in our 2.5 GHz (NR band n41) spectrum."TIMMr. Giovanni Ferigo, CTO, said: "TIM has already defined a sound track towards 5G and is collaborating with key industry players, municipalities and public Institutions to unleash the full potential of 5G for people and vertical markets by 2020 expanding the footprint of LTE-A. The extraordinary work done in 3GPP in a few months to keep the promise of a first set of standards coping with the strict requirements of a new radio interface is a fundamental step in this roadmap. We are looking forward to contributing to the next 3GPP milestones which will complete the work on Release 15."TelefonicaMr. Enrique Blanco, Telefonica's Global Systems and Networks Director, said: "Telefonica greatly appreciates the efforts made by the industry for completing this major milestone towards 5G. Telefonica acknowledges the full potential of 5G, and encourages the industry to keep developing ambitious ideas in order to deliver outstanding connectivity and bring the best possible experience to our customers. Telefonica is fully committed to working with the industry in this direction."Telia Company"We are happy to see that the acceleration of 5G standardization that we and the whole industry called for in February has been achieved. This allows for the early commercial deployments needed to open up for innovation and new business opportunities that our customers expect from us", says Mauro Costa, Director Network Architecture & Strategy, Telia Company. "In order for the industry and society to take advantage of the full potential of 5G, it is vital that the standardization now continues with a focus to complete also the stand alone version."T-Mobile USA"This is an important moment and a crucial development toward making 5G NR happen," said Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer for T-Mobile US. "At T-Mobile, we're committed to drive a 5G rollout across the US in 2020, and the efforts of 3GPP will help us to realize this great win for our customers."Verizon"Verizon is delighted that the 3GPP is moving quickly to release a global standard for mobile 5G," said Ed Chan, Chief Technology Architect and Network Planning. "With this important 3GPP milestone, Verizon is once again well positioned to deliver next-generation technology to customers just as we did with 4G LTE."VodafoneLuke Ibbetson, Head of Vodafone Group R&D said: "Completion of the 5G standard six months earlier than originally anticipated is a significant milestone that should enable compliant network infrastructure and phones to be delivered in line with our requirements. This first version of 5G will build on the success of 4G, providing fast and highly efficient mobile broadband services to our customers and setting the foundation for the Gigabit Society."ZTEMr. Xu Huijun, CTO of ZTE Corporation, said: "The completion of the Non-Standalone 5G NR standardization is a critical milestone in the industry. I really appreciate 3GPP's efforts in meeting this challenging schedule. As one of the contributors to the 5G standards-making process, ZTE will partner with the fellow mobile industry players to commit to accelerating the 5G NR large-scale trials and deployments."About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.* Please see this press release, with images, at:http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Babcock International has announced the retirement of Bill Tame, the engineering services group's chief executive of global growth and operations. Tame will leave Babcock at the end of June 2018 after 17 years at the company. He joined in 2001 as finance director and helped guide Babcock's growth from a small-cap company to a member of the FTSE 100. After Babcock bought Avincis, an aviation services business, in 2014 Tame took on his current job with responsibility for integration, business ...

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.
Mitsubishi Corporation Telephone: +81-3-3210-2171 Facsimile: +81-3-5252-7705

TOKYO, Dec 21, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) today announced that it is entering into a business alliance with Vegetalia, Inc., a start-up venture which specializes in the provision of information and communication technology (ICT)-related services for the agricultural sector. MC is also providing Vegetalia with a third-party investment in the amount of 500 million yen.In line with overall demographic trends, Japan's farming population is aging and decreasing rapidly, and the next few years, it is projected, could see the largest drop ever in the number of agricultural producers. In order to remain competitive in agriculture, including catching up with trends in upscaling and supplementing the insufficiency of successors, Japan will need to increase productivity and efficiency on the fields, ensuring that industry know-how is adequately passed on to future generations, while at the same time honing the skills of up and coming farmers. Through its investment in Vegetalia, a solution-driven ICT company utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) in farming, MC aims to tackle challenges in agriculture, integrating agricultural ICT with its network and knowledge in agribusiness.Vegetalia is a next-generation food and agriculture venture that utilizes the latest plant science and ICT to provide solutions for the agricultural sector. Solutions offered by Vegetalia include: "Field Server," an IoT tool that allows farmers to monitor their farm lands using sensors; "Paddy Watch," a water management system for rice fields; and "agri-note," a cloud-based system that supports farm management and reporting through the use of maps and aerial photos. Vegetalia has also opened the "Vegetalia Plant Clinic"(1), a service that integrates expertise of plant science specialists, the first private sector initiative of its kind in Japan. Overall, Vegetalia is a pioneer in the use of ICT in Japan and has established itself as a leader in creating innovation in the agricultural sector. Going forward, Vegetalia intends to work with agricultural producers and agribusiness enterprises(2) to put the data accumulated through these solutions to use, leveraging Big Data to build a mutually beneficial agricultural ICT platform.MC holds a diversified business portfolio in the agricultural sector, spanning from inputs such as fertilizers and agricultural chemicals, to equipment and agricultural produce. The new alliance is a function of this background, whereby MC leverages its wide customer base and industry knowledge developed over the years to help expand the reach of Vegetalia's ICT solutions. By facilitating the generation of Big Data and promoting new alliances with agribusiness enterprises, MC will accelerate the formation of the ICT platform. Joining forces with Vegetalia, MC will utilize AI/IoT to comprehensively extract and visualize information such as soil, farm activity, and plant growth, facilitating the transformation of the agricultural sector into an information industry.Through optimizing agricultural practices, improving profitability for agricultural producers, and enhancing capabilities to procure and provide agricultural produce in accordance with consumer needs, MC aims to further strengthen its agribusiness operations, and contribute to the larger realization of sustainable growth in agriculture.(1) Vegetalia Plant Clinic is a registered trademark of the University of Tokyo(2) Agri-business enterprises include manufacturers of agricultural materials and farming equipment, agricultural products retailers and food manufacturers.About Mitsubishi CorporationMitsubishi Corporation (MC; TSE: 8058) is a global integrated business enterprise that develops and operates businesses across virtually every industry including industrial finance, energy, metals, machinery, chemicals, foods, and environmental business. MC's current activities are expanding far beyond its traditional trading operations as its diverse business ranges from natural resources development to investment in retail business, infrastructure, financial products and manufacturing of industrial goods. With over 200 bases of operations in approximately 80 countries worldwide and a network of over 500 group companies, MC employs a multinational workforce of nearly 60,000 people. For more information, please visit www.mitsubishicorp.com.Source: Mitsubishi CorporationContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 ("MAR"). Upon publication of this announcement, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

21 December 2017

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc

("Conroy Gold" or "the Company")

Strategic Financing and Business Update

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc (AIM: CGNR) the gold exploration and development company focused on Ireland and Finland, is pleased to announce a strategic financing and business update for shareholders.

Highlights:

Strategic Financing with a conditional subscription to raise 1,000,000 (before expenses) through the issue of 7,843,137 new ordinary shares of 0.001 each in the capital of the Company ("Ordinary Shares") at 12.75p per share ("Subscription Shares"), the market mid-price at the time of the financing agreement (the "Subscription");

Completion is conditional on all resolutions being passed at the Company's forthcoming Annual General Meeting ("AGM") on 21 December and admission to trading of new subscription shares to AIM;

Financing terms agreed by all parties to ensure that funds raised will be predominantly focused on commercialisation of key projects through investment in asset development and associated ground exploration;

Each Subscription Share has an attaching warrant to subscribe for a further new ordinary share at 22p ("Warrants"), with warrant accelerator available to the Company should the volume weighted average Ordinary Share price of the Company exceed 75p for five days or more;

Should all Warrants be exercised the total amount of new capital raised for the Company through the Subscription and Warrant exercise would be approximately 2.7 million;

Strategic Financing undertaken with SI Capital and a small group of high net worth investors, including Value Generation Limited, the family company of Paul Johnson , which has subscribed for 100,000 of Subscription Shares and Gervaise Heddle who has subscribed for 50,000 of the Subscription Shares;

, which has subscribed for 100,000 of Subscription Shares and who has subscribed for 50,000 of the Subscription Shares; Financing enables the Company to proactively recommence business development with a focus on commercialisation of key business interests and proactive ground exploration of significant gold targets.

Professor Richard Conroy, Chairman of Conroy Gold commented: "I am pleased to report that with this Strategic Financing the Company is now able to move forward and into what we trust will be a brighter and more collaborative 2018 business development programme.

The differences between the Board and certain shareholders have been resolved and an agreement reached to enable the business to move forward, the first step of which is this Strategic Financing.

The money raised will predominantly be focused on commercialisation of our business interests and an active ground exploration programme. We have a considerable business opportunity, launching now from a position with Clontibret, where we published the Updated Mineral Resources of 517,000 ounces of gold on 28 July 2017. Of note, this JORC compliant resource is from just 20% of the Clontibret geochemical target area and remains open at depth and along strike.

Clontibret underpins the Company however, our potential upside opportunity is amply demonstrated by the size and scale of the 40 mile (65km) gold trend covered by our licence interests and including the major targets of Clay Lake, Clontibret, Glenish and Slieve Glah. As announced on 31 March 2016 at Clay Lake/Clontibret alone the Company has a conceptual exploration target of 5 million gold ounces.

Following this Strategic Financing the Company will have a market capitalisation of approximately 2.6 million (based on the placing price of 12.75p), which the Board believes offers shareholders and new investors considerable upside potential.

To this end we will provide further updates to the market early in the New Year outlining our plans and a potential pathway to commercialisation. With the increased interest being shown in Irish mining from companies and investors across the world, the time to take the next steps forward could not be better.

I would like to thank shareholders for their support during the past year and express my appreciation that we have reached an agreement to take the company forward in this driven, collaborative and proactive manner."

Additional Information

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc has conditionally raised 1,000,000, prior to expenses, through the Subscription for 7,843,137 Ordinary Shares at a price of 12.75p per Subscription Share.

The Subscription is conditional, inter alia, on the passing of all resolutions at the Company's forthcoming AGM on 21 December 2017 in Dublin, Ireland and admission of the Subscription Shares to trading on AIM.

The Subscription Shares will rankpari passuwith the existing issued Ordinary Shares.

Each new Ordinary Share in the subscription will be accompanied by one Warrant to subscribe for a further ordinary share at a price of 22p at any time until 30 June 2019, with a warrant accelerator applying whereby should the volume weighted average Ordinary Share price trade for 5 consecutive days at 75p or greater, the Company will have the right to issue Warrant holders with a one week notice to exercise their Warrants. Unexercised Warrants would be cancelled and for Warrants exercised under this notice provision payment must be made to the Company within two weeks of exercise.

The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Subscription to fund the advancement of the Company's gold assets, in particular the development of the Clontibret deposit and increased exploration at the Clay Lake Deposit. Additional exploration will be focused on the Slieve Glah and Glenish gold prospects and other targets within the 40 mile (65km) Armagh- Monaghan- Cavan gold belt and for working capital generally.

Application will be made to AIM for the Subscription Shares to be admitted to trading. It is expected that admission will become effective on or around 3 January 2018.

Following the issue of the Subscription Shares, and for the purposes of the Disclosure and Transparency Rules, the Company's total issued share capital on Admission will consist of 20,056,674 Ordinary Shares.

The above figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the Company, under the Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE INFORMATION IN IT, IS RESTRICTED, AND IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION, RELEASE OR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, JAPAN OR THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT ITSELF CONSTITUTE AN OFFER FOR SALE OR SUBSCRIPTION OF ANY SECURITIES IN THE COMPANY. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT HAS BEEN ISSUED BY AND IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE COMPANY.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT AN OFFER FOR SALE OR SUBSCRIPTION IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL UNDER THE SECURITIES LAW OF ANY JURISDICTION. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT AN OFFER OF OR SOLICITATION TO PURCHASE OR SUBSCRIBE FOR SECURITIES IN THE UNITED STATES.

Contacts:

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc Tel: +353-1-479-6180

Professor Richard Conroy, Chairman

Allenby Capital Limited (Nomad) Tel: +44-20-3328-5656

Virginia Bull / James Thomas / Nick Harriss

Beaufort Securities (Broker) Tel: +44-20-7382-8300

Jon Belliss / Elliot Hance

Lothbury Financial Services Tel: +44-20-3290-0707

Michael Padley

Hall Communications Tel: +353-1-660-9377

Don Hall

Visit the website at:www.conroygold.com
DEAR ABBY: I am estranged from my sister, whom I love dearly. The reason goes back many years. When I was 13, her husband got me drunk and molested me. While I never forgot, I did repress it -- possibly due to my age.

Time went on, I thought I had moved on and life would continue as usual. Well, five years ago the trauma erupted inside of me. My therapist thinks that possibly what triggered it was becoming a grandmother.

I cannot talk to my sister's husband, let alone look at him. The sight of him makes me physically ill, which is obvious to everyone. Exposing him would devastate my sister, her family and our extended family.

I am praying for guidance and the strength to forgive him, but it's not working, and neither is therapy. I am now regarded as the "bad guy" and left isolated with no one except my amazing husband. My own kids are skeptical and think I am destroying our family. Advice, Abby? -- SO LOST IN THE MIDWEST

DEAR SO LOST: Because keeping quiet and talking to a therapist haven't helped you, I will suggest another route for healing. Call your family together. Tell them exactly what happened when you were 13 and that you can no longer keep quiet about it.

At the same time, contact a rape crisis center because at 13, even if you were drunk and consented to what your brother-in-law did, you were underage and a victim of statutory rape. If your family accuses you of making this up, invite them to some of your counseling sessions with the rape counselor. With the help of that person, you may be able to help them see the light.

DEAR ABBY: I was a professional musician most of my life and loved every second of it. While I still do production work and an occasional performance, I no longer tour or need the money from the shows.

I own several instruments that are my most prized possessions, and have many precious memories associated with them. They are worth several thousand dollars. I cannot think of anyone to leave them to who might appreciate them.

None of my heirs are musical, and I'm estranged from my only child, a son in his early 40s. If he inherited them, he'd sell them and squander the money before the last chorus. The same is true of my only grandchild.

I'm in my early 60s, healthy, active and don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon. But eventually -- when I do -- I want these most important items to go where they will be played well and appreciated. -- QUARTER NOTE QUANDARY IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR Q.N.Q.: How about donating your instruments to a program that keeps music alive in schools with underfunded music programs nationwide? An organization to consider is the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. It gives economically disadvantaged youth access to the benefits of music education, and helps them to be better students and express their emotions and creativity through playing music. The foundation also has a fund called Music Rising that helps school music programs after natural disasters. The website is mhopus.org. If you check it out, I'm sure you will find it interesting.

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: 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: 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
Center to monitor and manage all passive network components of cell towers remotely

HYDERABAD, India, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Cyient, a global provider of engineering, manufacturing, geospatial, network, and operations management services to global industry leaders, today announced the opening of its global Tower Operations Center (TOC) at the company's headquarters, in Hyderabad, India. The TOC was officially inaugurated by senior members of the Cyient Communications' leadership team and one of its clients, a leading global communication service provider in the Asia Pacific region.

The IoT-enabled TOC provides 24/7 surveillance and remotely monitors all passive assets in cell towers across multiple locations. Its solution architecture enables communication between sensors and an integrated, cloud-based analytics engine to extract and analyze asset data for actionable insights. This results in increased tower uptime, reduced operational costs, improved site security and intrusion detection, and ensures efficient energy and power management. Additionally, integrating trouble ticketing, along with field force management, will improve the efficiency of field operations and optimize asset utilization.

"We are excited to unveil the new Cyient IoT-enabled Tower Operations Center," said Sanjay Krishnaa, Senior Vice President, Communications, and President, Asia Pacific at Cyient. "This integrated TOC solution facilitates tower and infrastructure companies to perform real-time monitoring of all active information from remote sites. Field engineers can now pro-actively manage network assets by utilizing data analytics and digital technologies, such as IoT, cloud, and mobility. Further, the TOC helps tower and infrastructure companies centralize real-time monitoring of alarms and manage key performance indicators of the critical passive infrastructure of cell sites. This solution has garnered significant interest with global CSPs," 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.

Follow news about the company at @Cyient.

For further media inquiries, please write to press@cyient.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/289359/cyient_logo.jpg
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.
In connection with AP Alternative Assets, L.P.'s ("AAA"; Euronext Amsterdam: AAA) equity investment in Athene Holding Ltd. ("Athene"; NYSE: ATH), AAA, the largest shareholder of Athene, informs its investors that Athene has issued a press release on its website at www.ir.athene.com announcing a significant transaction. For additional information regarding Athene, please visit www.athene.com.

About AP Alternative Assets

AP Alternative Assets was established by Apollo Global Management, LLC and its subsidiaries ("Apollo") and is a closed-end limited partnership established under the laws of Guernsey. Apollo is a leading global alternative investment manager with 27 years of experience investing across the capital structure of leveraged companies. AAA is managed by Apollo Alternative Assets, L.P. For more information about AP Alternative Assets, please visit www.apolloalternativeassets.com.

This announcement does not constitute or form part of an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to future events and circumstances. Such statements are based on currently available operating, financial and competitive information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from the historical experience and expressed or implied expectations of AAA. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and AAA does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements unless required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005352/en/

Contacts:

AP Alternative Assets, L.P.

Gary Stein (New York), +1-212-822-0467
Hamburg (ots) - Auf Basis der finale Anleihebedingungen des EUR 832 Mio. umfassenden Emissionsvolumens hat Euler Hermes Rating am 14. Dezember 2017 fur die Projektanleihe der Borkum Riffgrund 2 Investor Holding GmbH ein BBB Emissionsrating vergeben.Haupteinflussfaktoren sind moderate Projektrisiken durch attraktive Einspeisetarife und ein bewahrtes Betreiberkonzept, moderate Finanzrisiken durch einen begrenzten Verschuldungsgrad und eine adaquate Risikotragfahigkeit sowie auch die weitgehende Begrenzung der Bau- und Projektierungsrisiken.Weitere Informationen hierzu verfugbar unter https://www.ehrg.de/veroeffentlichungen/Die Euler Hermes Rating GmbH (Euler Hermes Rating) wurde 2001 als unabhangige europaische Ratingagentur der Euler Hermes und Allianz Gruppe gegrundet und fokussiert sich auf das Rating von Emittenten und Emissionen. Euler Hermes Rating ist gema der Verordnung (EG) Nr. 1060/2009 des Europaischen Parlaments und des Rates als Credit Rating Agency (CRA) registriert und wird als External Credit Assessment Institution (ECAI) bei der European Banking Authority (EBA) gefuhrt. Euler Hermes Rating ist eine Tochtergesellschaft von Euler Hermes (ELE:PA), dem weltweiten Marktfuhrer im Kreditversicherungsgeschaft. Die Moody's Gruppe halt eine Minderheitsbeteiligung an Euler Hermes Rating.Weitere Informationen zu diesem Rating finden Sie unter www.eulerhermes-rating.com. 2017 Euler Hermes Rating GmbH ("EHRG") and/or its licensors and affiliates. All rights reserved.CREDIT RATINGS ISSUED BY EHRG ARE EHRG'S CURRENT OPINIONS OF THE RELATIVE FUTURE CREDIT RISK OF ENTITIES, CREDIT COMMITMENTS, OR DEBT OR DEBT-LIKE SECURITIES, AND EHRG'S PUBLICATIONS MAY INCLUDE EHRG'S CURRENT OPINIONS OF THE RELATIVE FUTURE CREDIT RISK OF ENTITIES, CREDIT COMMITMENTS, OR DEBT OR DEBT-LIKE SECURITIES. EHRG DEFINES CREDIT RISK AS THE RISK THAT AN ENTITY MAY NOT MEET ITS CONTRACTUAL, FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS AS THEY COME DUE AND, IN THE CASE OF ISSUANCE-LEVEL CREDIT RATINGS, ANY ESTIMATED FINANCIAL LOSS IN THE EVENT OF DEFAULT. CREDIT RATINGS DO NOT ADDRESS ANY OTHER RISK, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: LIQUIDITY RISK, MARKET VALUE RISK, OR PRICE VOLA-TILITY. CREDIT RATINGS AND EHRG'S OPINIONS INCLUDED IN EHRG'S PUBLI-CATIONS ARE NOT STATEMENTS OF CURRENT OR HISTORICAL FACT. CREDIT RATINGS AND EHRG'S PUBLICATIONS ARE NEITHER A PROSPECTUS NOR A SUBSTITUTE FOR INFORMATION ASSEMBLED AND PRESENTED BY COMPANIES OR ISSUERS FOR INVESTORS REGARDING THE PURCHASE OF A SECURITY OR FOR ASSESSING THE CREDITWORTHINESS OF A RATED ENTITY. CREDIT RATINGS AND EHRG'S PUBLICATIONS DO NOT CONSTITUTE OR PROVIDE INVESTMENT OR FINANCIAL ADVICE, AND DO NOT PROVIDE RECOMMENDATIONS TO PURCHASE, SELL, OR HOLD PARTICULAR SECURITIES. NEITHER CREDIT RATINGS NOR EHRG'S PUBLICATIONS COMMENT ON THE SUITABILITY OF AN INVESTMENT FOR ANY PARTICULAR INVESTOR. EHRG ISSUES ITS CREDIT RATINGS AND PUBLISHES ITS PUBLICATIONS WITH THE EXPECTATION AND UNDERSTANDING THAT EACH INVESTOR WILL, WITH DUE CARE, CONDUCT ITS OWN INDEPENDENT ANALYSES, CREDIT ASSESSMENTS AND OTHER VERIFICATIONS AND EVALUATIONS OF EACH SECURITY THAT IS UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR PURCHASE, HOLDING, OR SALE. EHRG'S CREDIT RATINGS AND EHRG'S PUBLICATIONS ARE NOT INTENDED FOR USE BY RETAIL INVESTORS AND IT WOULD BE RECKLESS AND INAPPROPRIATE FOR RETAIL INVESTORS TO USE EHRG'S CREDIT RATINGS OR EHRG'S PUBLICA-TIONS WHEN MAKING AN INVESTMENT DECISION. IF IN DOUBT YOU SHOULD CONTACT YOUR FINANCIAL OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVISER. ALL INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS PROTECTED BY LAW, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, COPYRIGHT LAW, AND NONE OF SUCH INFORMATION MAY BE COPIED OR OTHERWISE REPRODUCED, REPACKAGED, FURTHER TRANSMITTED, TRANSFERRED, DISSEMINATED, REDISTRIBUTED OR RESOLD, OR STORED FOR SUBSEQUENT USE FOR ANY SUCH PURPOSE, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN ANY FORM OR MANNER OR BY ANY MEANS WHATSOEVER, BY ANY PERSON WITHOUT EHRG'S PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT.All information contained herein is obtained by EHRG from sources believed by it to be accurate and reliable. Because of the possibility of human or mechanical error as well as other factors, however, all information contained herein is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. EHRG adopts all necessary measures so that the information it uses in assigning a credit rating is of sufficient quality and from sources EHRG considers to be reliable including, when appropriate, independent third-party sources. However, EHRG is not an auditor and cannot in every instance independently verify or validate information received in the rating process or in preparing the EHRG publications.Please note that summaries of contracts, laws and other documents contained in any EHRG publication, rating report or other materials cannot replace careful study of the relevant complete texts. EHRG and its directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, licensors and suppliers disclaim liability to any person or entity for any indirect, special, consequential, or incidental losses or damages whatsoever arising from or in connection with the information contained herein or the use of or inability to use any such information, even if EHRG or any of its directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, licensors or suppliers is advised in advance of the possibility of such losses or damages, including but not limited to: (a) any loss of present or prospective profits or (b) any loss or damage arising where the relevant financial instrument is not the subject of a particular credit rating assigned by EHRG. The limitations do not apply to the extent that fraud, intent or any other type of liability cannot be excluded and/or limited under applicable law.EHRG and its directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, licensors and suppliers disclaim liability for any direct or compensatory losses or damages caused to any person or entity, on the part of, or any contingency within or beyond the control of, EHRG or any of its directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, licensors or suppliers, arising from or in connection with the information contained herein or the use of or inability to use any such information. The limitations do not apply to the extent that fraud, intent or any other type of liability cannot be excluded and/or limited under applicable law.NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PUR-POSE OF ANY SUCH RATING OR OTHER OPINION OR INFORMATION IS GIVEN OR MADE BY EHRG IN ANY FORM OR MANNER WHATSOEVER.The dissemination and use of an EHRG rating report may be prohibited by law in certain jurisdictions. Any persons who come into the possession of such information should inquire about and comply with any prohibitions that may be in place. EHRG assumes no liability of any kind with respect to such dissemination and use of any rating in any jurisdiction whatsoever.Euler Hermes Rating GmbHOTS: Euler Hermes Rating GmbH newsroom: http://www.presseportal.de/nr/56312 newsroom via RSS: http://www.presseportal.de/rss/pm_56312.rss2Pressekontakt: Presse/Euler Hermes Rating GmbH: Ralf Garrn - ralf.garrn@eulerhermes-rating.com Friedensallee 254 22763 Hamburg Tel.: 040 8834-640 Fax: 040 8834-6413 www.eulerhermes-rating.com
BLACKROCK FRONTIERS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC (LEI: 5493003K5E043LHLO706)

All information is at 30 November 2017 and unaudited.

Performance at month end with net income reinvested.



One

month

% Three

months

% One

year

% Three

years

% Five

years

% Since

Launch*

% Sterling: Share price 5.3 5.6 29.5 52.9 141.6 103.6 Net asset value 0.0 -1.3 19.7 42.8 108.1 88.5 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) -0.8 -0.5 21.2 24.7 82.5 56.5 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) -1.7 -1.7 22.6 38.4 48.3 37.5 US Dollars: Share price 7.3 11.0 40.2 32.3 104.4 77.3 Net asset value 1.9 3.7 29.6 23.5 75.9 63.9 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) 1.2 4.5 31.3 7.8 54.2 35.9 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) 0.2 3.3 32.8 19.6 25.3 19.4

Sources: BlackRock and Standard & Poor's Micropal

* 17 December 2010.



At month end

Ordinary Shares US Dollar Net asset value - capital only: 197.20c Net asset value - cum income: 202.60c Sterling: Net asset value - capital only: 145.67p Net asset value - cum income: 149.66p Share price: 164.50p Total assets (including income): 270.5m Premium to cum-income NAV: 9.9% Gearing: nil Gearing range (as a % of gross assets): 0-20% Net yield*: 3.2% Ordinary shares in issue: 180,766,108 Ongoing charges**: 1.4% Ongoing charges plus taxation and performance fee: 1.6%

*The Company's yield based on dividends announced in the last 12 months as at the date of the release of this announcement is 3.2% and includes the 2017 final dividend of 4.20 cents per share declared on 4 December 2017 and payable to shareholders on 9 February 2018 and the 2017 interim dividend of 2.70 cents per share announced on 25 May 2017 and paid to shareholders on 30 June 2017.

**Calculated as a percentage of average net assets and using expenses, excluding performance fees and interest costs for the year ended 30 September 2017.



Sector

Analysis Gross assets(%)* Country

Analysis Gross

assets(%)* Financials 40.5 Argentina 22.1 Consumer Staples 11.1 Kuwait 13.3 Energy 11.0 Vietnam 9.2 Health Care 8.6 Romania 8.1 Telecommunication Services 8.4 Kazakhstan 8.0 Materials 8.0 Egypt 6.7 Real Estate 7.1 Nigeria 6.1 Industrials 6.7 Morocco 6.0 Utilities 4.0 Sri Lanka 4.6 Consumer Discretionary 3.4 Bangladesh 4.1 Information Technology 2.2 Ukraine 4.1 ----- Kenya 3.7 Total 111.0 Columbia 3.5 ----- Philippines 2.7 Short positions -3.8 Estonia 2.1 ===== Slovenia 2.0 PAN-Asian 1.6 PAN-Middle East 1.5 Tanzania 1.2 Eurasia 0.4 ----- Total 111.0 ----- Short positions -3.8 =====

*reflects gross market exposure from contracts for difference (CFDs).

Market Exposure



31.12

2016

% 31.01

2017

% 28.02

2017

% 31.03

2017

% 30.04

2017

% 31.05

2017

% 30.06

2017

% 31.07

2017

% 31.082017

%

30.09

2017

% 31.10

2017

% 30.11

2017

% Long 108.4 115.0 115.8 112.1 108.9 105.0 103.9 106.6 107.9 107.7 113.4 111.0 Short 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.5 3.8 Gross 108.4 115.0 115.8 112.1 108.9 105.0 103.9 106.6 107.9 107.7 115.9 114.8 Net 108.4 115.0 115.8 112.1 108.9 105.0 103.9 106.6 107.9 107.7 110.9 107.2



Ten Largest Equity Investments

Company Country of Risk % of gross assets The National Bank of Kuwait Kuwait 3.8 Grupo Financiero Galicia Argentina 3.7 Halyk Savings Bank Kazakhstan 3.1 Equity Group Kenya 3.1 Pampa Energia Argentina 2.8 MHP Ukraine 2.8 Zenith Bank Nigeria 2.7 Irsa Inversiones Argentina 2.7 Mobile Telecommunications Kuwait 2.6 Burgan Bank Kuwait 2.4



Commenting on the markets, Sam Vecht and Emily Fletcher, representing the Investment Manager noted:



In November, the Company's NAV rose by 1.9%* on a US Dollar basis with net income reinvested. For reference, the MSCI Frontier benchmark rose by 1.2%*, while the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose by 0.2%* on a US Dollar basis, over the same period.

Most notable during the month was the substantial rise in the Vietnamese market, up 17.5%. The market was driven by net foreign inflows of $458m, with average daily volume $310m, nearly double the previous month volume of $169m. Year to date net foreign inflows have been $1.1bn. The State Capital Investment Corporation's (SCIC) divestment of a further 3.3% of their stake in Vinamilk to Jardine Cycle and Carriage, at a 24% premium to current market prices helped to bolster prices in the largest index name. The trust benefited from participating in the listing of Vincom Retail, the largest mall operator in Vietnam which closed the month up 21% from the transaction price. Listed brokerage firm, Saigon Securities, rose 19% as investors expected them to benefit from increasing trading volumes and rising valuations. However, our underweight position to Vietnam detracted from relative performance during the month.

Despite the opposition boycott of the election re-run, the Kenyan market rallied 8% as Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in for a second term as President. The Trust benefited from its holding in equity bank, which rose 13% during the month. Whilst political tensions remain, we expect investor focus to return to operational metrics in 2018.

Off-benchmark positions in Egyptian healthcare names Cleopatra Hospital (+9%*) and IDHC (+20%*) performed well, the latter of which reported results showing a stronger than expected uptick in patients from both contracts and walk-ins. The Egyptian current account deficit narrowed to a three year low in the third quarter of 2017 as the positive trajectory following the devaluation in November 2016 continued to be felt. The trade deficit narrowed 5% year-on-year, particularly benefiting from an increase in domestic gas production, the services balance was boosted by a 250% growth in tourism revenues and remittances jumped 37% year-on-year to $6bn. We continue to have a positive outlook for the Egyptian currency, especially as the Central Bank moves to reduce usage of the repatriation mechanism.

Filipino conglomerate, LT Group, gained +11% supported by an improving pricing environment for the company's tobacco business following the Japan Tobacco acquisition of local competitor Mighty. Kuwaiti positions detracted from performance. The market fell 13% peak to trough from mid-November before recovering somewhat to end the month down 5% on increased political tensions across the Middle East. Whilst the market suffered given its lower liquidity, we remain confident in our positions.

We took leverage down over the month, through introducing a number of short positions. On the other hand, we participated in two Initial Public Offering (IPOs): Argentine cement company, Loma Negra, in line with our positive Argentine macro view as well as Asian clothing manufacturer, Crystal International, where we think valuations are attractive.

Frontier Markets continue to exhibit strong GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth and low government debt levels, and represent an opportunity to invest in companies with strong cash flow and high dividend yields, on some of the lowest valuations in the world

*Source: BlackRock, as at end November 2017

20 December 2017

ENDS

Latest information is available by typing www.blackrock.co.uk/brfi on the internet, "BLRKINDEX" on Reuters, "BLRK" on Bloomberg or "8800" on Topic 3 (ICV terminal). Neither the contents of the Manager's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on BlackRock's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement
ForgeRock to develop, host and manage key application for demonstration and testing of the Open Banking capabilities LONDON, 2017-12-21 13:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ForgeRock, the leading platform provider of digital identity management solutions, today announced that it has been selected by the Open Banking Implementation Entity to provide a Reference Bank Application, which will be used by leading banks and third parties to build their own applications in accordance with Open Banking standards. A major milestone in the Open Banking movement, this announcement highlights the completeness of the ForgeRock Identity Platform in solving complex requirements of global enterprises. Open Banking is an ambitious endeavour, by and for financial services organizations, to embrace technology that will give customers greater freedom and control in how they interact with their financial services providers. It intends to enable individual consumers and small businesses to share their data securely with other banks and with third parties, allowing them to compare products on the basis of their own requirements and to manage their finances without necessarily having to use their bank. ForgeRock becomes a key enabler in making Open Banking a reality. In being selected to develop, host and manage the Reference Bank Application, ForgeRock will deliver the cloud- based application that will drive the demonstration and testing of the Open Banking API ecosystem, much more than just a simple front-end. Built to API specifications (see https://www.openbanking.org.uk/read-write-apis/), the ForgeRock Reference Bank Application provides the agreed standard for testing the functionality of Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs). In this way, organizations in the Open Banking ecosystem will gain the ability to build their own web and mobile applications for Payment Service Users, such as personal and business banking customers. The API specifications are now in the public domain and third- party providers are registering with Open Banking, so once their applications and endpoints are developed they can be used in a production environment. Once an ASPSP (Account Servicing Payment Service Providers), PISP or AISP is authorized, they will be able to join the Open Banking Directory; all digital identities and certificates are then provided which enable organizations to securely connect and communicate via the Open Banking Security Profile. Mike Ellis, CEO of ForgeRock, said, "ForgeRock is pleased to partner with Open Banking to deliver the Reference Bank Application as a service. It will be the true foundation for helping to ensure success with this wide-ranging set of regulations. ForgeRock already has experience in working with CMA 9 banks, so it's fitting that we were selected. As banks work to deliver new and differentiating services to attract and retain customers, they can continue to rely on ForgeRock." The latest release of the ForgeRock Identity Platform introduced a variety of new capabilities to the market that brought ForgeRock's flagship offering into compliance with both PSD2 and Open Banking. To purchase the ForgeRock Identity Platform, or access a free trial version, visit the ForgeRock website: https://www.forgerock.com/platform/how-buy/ About ForgeRock ForgeRock is the Digital Identity Management company transforming the way organizations interact securely with customers, employees, devices, and things. Organizations adopt the ForgeRock Identity Platform as their digital identity system of record to monetize customer relationships, address stringent regulations for privacy and consent (GDPR, HIPAA, Open Banking, PSD2, etc.), and leverage the internet of things. ForgeRock serves hundreds of brands, including Morningstar, Vodafone, GEICO, TomTom, and Pearson, as well as governments such as Norway, New Zealand, and Belgium, among many others. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, ForgeRock has offices in Austin, London, Bristol, Grenoble, Munich, Paris, Oslo, Singapore, Sydney and Vancouver, Washington. ForgeRock is privately held, backed by leading global venture capital firms Accel Partners, Foundation Capital, Meritech Capital and KKR. For more information and free downloads, visit www.forgerock.com or follow ForgeRock on social media: Facebook |Twitter |LinkedIn Press Contact: Dave De Jear ForgeRock Communications dave.dejear@forgerock.com Sepia Communications forgerock@sepiacommunications.com


SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Major U.S. employers engaged in age discrimination by placing recruitment ads on Facebook targeting specific age groups, according to a lawsuit filed by a communications industry labor union on Wednesday.



The federal lawsuit in San Francisco, filed by the Communications Workers of America, alleges that Amazon.com Inc., T-Mobile US Inc and several subsidiaries of Cox Enterprises Inc. imposed age limits on who could see recruitment ads, denying older workers job opportunities.



A joint investigation by the New York Times and ProPublica had revealed that Facebook allows employers to place job ads targeting specific age groups. The new report shows that major U.S. employers including Verizon, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Target, and Facebook itself use the social network's data tools to target certain age groups.



The practice is said to be in conflict with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits discrimination of people over 40 in hiring or employment.



Facebook's micro-targeting is a process that has allowed advertisers to choose who sees their ads based on age, interests, race and other characteristics.



As per the filing by the union, these companies used Facebook ad-targeting technology to routinely exclude older workers from receiving their job ads on Facebook.



'This pattern or practice of discrimination denies job opportunities to individuals who are searching for and interested in jobs, reduces the number of older workers who apply for jobs with the offending employers and employment agencies, and depresses the number of older workers who are hired,' the complaint stated.



In the court papers, plaintiffs included several examples of the ads, including one from Facebook itself, that allegedly used the targeting technology to make job ads invisible from older Facebook users.



Meanwhile, Facebook defended its targeting, noting that 'Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work.'



The social network earlier announced that it would no longer allow its advertisers to exclude specific ethnic or racial groups from receiving certain ads on the site.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
BERLIN, GERMANY -- (Marketwired) -- 12/21/17 -- Rail technology leader Bombardier Transportation and Mercitalia Rail, a major freight rail operator in Italy, have signed a contract for 40 innovative BOMBARDIER TRAXX DC3 (direct current) locomotives and 16 years of fleet maintenance to be carried out by Bombardier Transportation Italy's Services division. Based on list price, the contract is valued at approx. 210 million euro (249 million USD). It also includes options for up to 20 additional locomotives and maintenance services, as well as an option for additional eight years of maintenance on the whole fleet. Locomotive delivery is scheduled to start in the 4th quarter of 2018.

Luigi Corradi, Chief Country Representative Italy, Bombardier Transportation, emphasized, "The solution's optimized features make this vehicle the most advanced DC locomotive in Europe. The 16 years service contract with Mercitalia Rail, managed by our Services division in Italy will ensure superior operational availability of the vehicles. We are proud that Mercitalia Rail, the market leader for rail freight traffic in Italy, has chosen the TRAXX DC3 locomotive to modernize its fleet, and will be the first customer to benefit from this innovative product."

The DC version of the TRAXX 3 platform belongs to the most modern four-axle locomotive platform in Europe. It consists of the TRAXX AC3 (alternating current), the TRAXX MS3 (Multi-System, for all main currents in Europe) and the TRAXX DC3.

Bombardier Transportation Italy employs more than 700 people at their Vado Ligure manufacturing plant or at a dedicated rail control signalling and urban transport engineering center in Rome. As of today, Bombardier Transportation Italy produced a total of 728 E464 locomotives, 50 ETR1000-V300ZEFIRO trains and 191 TRAXX DC locomotives, approximately 90% under Bombardier full service maintenance contract. Overall almost 2,000 locomotives have been produced in Vado Ligure site; the site has a long experience in the development of state of the art DC traction units and in major overhaul and revamping of rolling stock. More than 200 locomotives, 17 trams and 50 very high-speed trains are under Bombardier Transportation Italy Services maintenance contracts.

The Italian production site in Vado Ligure celebrated its 110th anniversary in 2015. Bombardier's site in Rome is responsible for the implementation of signaling and control systems for rail and metropolitan traffic; in Italy more than 3,000 km of the railway network is equipped with Bombardier systems. The headquarters in Rome is also the center of excellence for rail signaling systems in the Mediterranean region with projects completed and ongoing in Croatia, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Algeria, Ethiopia and Morocco.

About Bombardier Transportation

Bombardier Transportation is a global leader in rail technology and offers the broadest portfolio in the industry. It covers the full spectrum of rail solutions, ranging from trains to sub-systems and signalling. The company also provides complete transport systems, e-mobility technology and maintenance services. As an innovation driver, Bombardier Transportation continuously breaks new ground in sustainable mobility. It provides integrated solutions that create substantial benefits for operators, passengers and the environment. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Bombardier Transportation employs around 37,150 people and its products and services operate in over 60 countries.

About Bombardier

Bombardier is the world's leading manufacturer of both planes and trains. Looking far ahead while delivering today, Bombardier is evolving mobility worldwide by answering the call for more efficient, sustainable and enjoyable transportation everywhere. Our vehicles, services and, most of all, our employees are what make us a global leader in transportation.

Bombardier is headquartered in Montreal, Canada and our shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (BBD). In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, we posted revenues of $16.3 billion. News and information are available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier.

Notes to Editors

For news releases, related material and photos, visit our media centre at www.bombardier.com/en/media-centre.html. Please subscribe to our RSS Feed to receive press releases or follow Bombardier Transportation on Twitter @BombardierRail.

Bombardier, TRAXX and ZEFIRO are trademarks of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries.

You can also contact one of our worldwide contacts for specific press inquiries.

Contacts:

Gian Paolo Collacciani

Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA

Direzione Centrale Brand Strategy e Comunicazione

+39 0644106042 - FS: 26042

g.collacciani@fsitaliane.it



Group Media Relations

+49 30 98607 1687

press@rail.bombardier.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/21/17 -- Terra Firma Capital Corporation (TSX VENTURE: TII) ("Terra Firma" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the closing of two first mortgage loans (the "Loan(s)") to separate and unrelated borrowers in the U.S. totaling US$21.1 million (CDN$27.1 million). The Loans comprise a US$12.5 million (CDN$16.1 million) first mortgage loan secured by development land located in Santa Barbara County, California and a US$8.6 million (CDN$11 million) first mortgage loan secured by development land located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Both Loans closed on December 20, 2017 through a combination of available cash balances and funds from syndicate investors. The Santa Barbara County loan was fully funded on closing and the Phoenix loan was partially funded with an initial advance of US$2.9 million (CDN$3.8 million) with the remainder expected to be funded over the next 8 months subject to meeting certain conditions. The full impact of the deployment of this capital is expected to be positively reflected in the earnings of the Company beginning in 2018. "We are very pleased with the record level of originations in 2017 in the U.S. with US$102.7 million (CDN$130.1 million) which will serve us well moving into 2018," said Glenn Watchorn, President and CEO. "We have now firmly established ourselves in the U.S. with over US$152.5 million (CDN$194.3 million) of loans originated since we expanded our operations in 2015, and with over US$ 55.0 million (CDN$70.7 million) having been repaid with zero loan losses we now have demonstrated a proven track record of success."

The Company also announces that pursuant to the terms of its share option plan, it has granted 340,000 options to its employees, including 200,000 options to its officers (other than the Chairman, CEO and Executive Vice Chairman), to purchase an aggregate of 340,000 common shares of the Corporation at a price of $0.67 per share. Each of the option grants shall vest in equal instalments on a quarterly basis over a three-year period and shall expire in seven years from the date of grant.

In accordance with TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") rules, the aforementioned 340,000 share options are subject to applicable TSXV acceptance.

About Terra Firma

Terra Firma is a full service, publicly traded real estate finance company that provides real estate financings secured by investment properties and real estate developments throughout Canada and the United States. The Company focuses on arranging and providing financing with flexible terms to real estate developers and owners who require shorter-term loans to bridge a transitional period of one to five years where they require capital at various stages of development or redevelopment of a property. These loans are typically repaid with lower cost, longer-term debt obtained from other Canadian financial institutions once the applicable transitional period is over or the redevelopment is complete, or from proceeds generated from the sale of the real estate assets. Terra Firma offers a full spectrum of real estate financing under the guidance of strict corporate governance, clarity and transparency. For further information please visit Terra Firma's website at www.tfcc.ca.

The TSX-V has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. The TSX-V does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

Contacts:

Terra Firma Capital Corporation

Glenn Watchorn

Chief Executive Officer

416.792.4702

gwatchorn@tfcc.ca



Terra Firma Capital Corporation

Y. Dov Meyer

Executive Vice Chairman

416.792.4709

ydmeyer@tfcc.ca



Spinnaker Capital Markets Inc.

Ali Mahdavi

Managing Director

416.962.3300

am@spinnakercmi.com




Kaz Minerals has confirmed plans to double capacity to 50m tonnes per year at its Aktogay copper project in east Kazakhstan by 2021. The FTSE 250 company's board has given the green light to the $1.2bn addition of a second sulphide concentrator at Aktogay, where an initial 25m tonnes-per-year processor began commercial production in October. The second processor, which is expected to come on stream in the second half of 2021 and ramping up the year after, comes as Kaz eyes an increase in ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Cobalt is a key component of lithium-ion batteries, with cobalt sulfate the preferred feedstock for the cathodes in these batteries. During 2017, the spot price of cobalt has seen an upward trend, surging more than 120 percent on the London Metal Exchange (LME) since the beginning of the year to a nine-year high (http://nnw.fm/f38iT). Predictions are that 2018 will see growing demand for cobalt in line with the increased production of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide and the increasing adoption of lithium-powered mobile technology in developing countries, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that the shift toward these batteries will continue to increase, sending demand for cobalt up an astounding 30-fold by 2030 (http://nnw.fm/dArn3 ).Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B) (QBOT Profile) is gearing up to take advantage of this surge in demand for the metal by developing its cobalt interests in North America. With recent significant exploration results, Quantum is pacing alongside other companies looking to scale up their exploration, development and production endeavors, including Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (TSX-V: KBLT), First Cobalt Corp. (TSX-V: FCC) (OTC: FTSSF), eCobalt Solutions Inc. (TSX: ECS) (OTC: ECSIF) and Katanga Mining Limited (TSX: KAT).

The biggest market for electric vehicles is China, where the number of EVs sold in 2016 was double the amount in Europe and triple the amount in the United States. Sales of electric vehicles are likely to increase exponentially on the back of China's requirement that one in five cars sold by 2025 must be powered by alternatives to fossil fuels. France and Britain have also announced their intention to ban combustion engines for vehicles by 2040. As signatories to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, more countries will follow suit, leading to an even higher expected global demand for cobalt. Lithium-ion batteries account for a third of the cost of producing an electric vehicle. To date, battery prices have made EVs cost-prohibitive, but the price fell by 35 percent in 2015 and has continued to decrease each year since. Bloomberg reported on a prediction that EVs will be as affordable as combustion-driven vehicles by 2022, and that EVs will account for over a third of all new vehicle sales by 2040 (http://nnw.fm/bc0hI).

While impressive, these predictions are saddled with worrisome controversy. Today, China generates 80 percent of the world's cobalt products; a large percentage of its feedstock is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where more than 50 percent of the world's cobalt is mined despite a long history of volatile political instability and serious ethical concerns. To say circumstances in the DRC are "troubling" is putting it mildly. Human rights activists and NGOs are ramping up their efforts to abolish forced labor, child labor and financial corruption concerns in the DRC, while industry leaders Apple and Tesla - both of which heavily rely on cobalt for their lithium batteries - are walking away from "Conflict Cobalt" and looking for alternatives supplies outside of the DRC (http://nnw.fm/ay9B1 http://nnw.fm/2AmMj).

Increasing global awareness also has many cobalt producers pursuing opportunities to develop safer alternatives in North America rather than risking their investments in the DRC. And herein lies the opportunity for Canada.

Well-aware of the shifting supply scene, Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B) is focusing its attention on developing its mining interests in Canada (http://nnw.fm/0uPqp), where the company owns three properties tucked into the core of Ontario's cobalt belt.

Quantum earlier this week announced significant results from an exploration program at its wholly owned Kahuna Property near the town of Cobalt. At Kahuna, the exploration program focused on prospecting, geological mapping and geochemical sampling included 166 soil samples and 28 grab samples. According to the press release (http://nnw.fm/B4Vhp), Kahuna produced assay samples as high as 10.59 percent cobalt. Keep in mind that the discovery of 2 percent cobalt is considered "high grade" - samples at 10.59 percent put Quantum in a favorable position to consider its options to produce cobalt from the historic workings to potentially capture its share of surging demand for cobalt.

Quantum also recently published the results of assays from its exploration program at its Nipissing Lorrain mine (http://nnw.fm/2LX5n), reporting that from 28 grab samples collected and 15 submitted for analysis, the average grade at the pile was found to be over 2.33 percent cobalt, with a peak value of 8.33 percent. Based on these positive results, the company says it is considering options to produce cobalt from the historic workings.

Quantum in late November acquired the Nipissing Lorrain Project, which includes two separate claims in land packages around the mining town of Cobalt, a historically mined area with rich deposits of cobalt, nickel and silver, and easy access to infrastructure, power and road transport. Past production at this property included over 16,500 pounds of cobalt and 5,500 pounds of silver.

Located in the epicenter of past producing cobalt mines in Ontario, Quantum is gearing up to breathe life into Canada's supply line, potentially providing investors and automakers an alternative outside the ethically-crippled DRC. With Tesla alone pushing to roll-out 500,000 electric vehicles by the year 2020 - which would require roughly 6 percent of cobalt produced worldwide annually - global demand is rapidly outpacing supply, triggering what many are calling a modern-day "exploration rush."

Leading Quantum's aggressive push forward is CEO Greg Burns, who has more than two decades of corporate and technical experience in mineral exploration. He is also currently the director of M&A for Capital Investment Partners, an investment bank headquartered in Western Australia. Burns previously was the previous managing director of Xenolith, which was taken over by Cline Group in 2015, and was also formerly the director of White Canyon Uranium before the company was taken over by Denison Mines in 2010. He has also held senior operations roles with Goldstream Mining, Adamus Resources Limited and Platinum Australia Limited.

With Burns at the helm, this CAD$45+ million mining company is gaining ground on its larger counterparts.

Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (TSX-V: KBLT) is one of the few pure-play companies in the cobalt sector. The company holds physical cobalt stock and is focused on developing a portfolio of revenue streams, royalties and direct interests in cobalt mineral properties through acquisitions. It has a high-quality management team and advisory board experts in the fields of mining, investment management and streaming/royalty companies. Cobalt 27 holds just over 2,160 tons of physical cobalt, consisting of 1,488 tons of premium grade and 672 tons of standard grade cobalt. It does not intend to actively speculate with its physical holdings, which are stored at secure warehouses certified by the LME. Cobalt 27 provides an investment alternative for investors interested in direct cobalt investment without the risks associated with exploration and processing companies.

With a market cap of over $232 million, First Cobalt Corp. (TSX-V: FCC) (OTCQB: FTSSF) is in the process of completing mergers with Cobalt One Ltd. and CobalTech Mining Inc., which will enable it to control over 10,000 hectares of prospective land and 50 historic mining operations around the town of Cobalt, Ontario. Currently, the company owns 4,300 hectares that include the historic Keeley-Frontier, Drummond, Silver Banner and Bellellen mines. These mines historically produced more than 3.3 million pounds of cobalt and 19.1 ounces of silver. First Cobalt's mission is to build the largest pure-play cobalt exploration and development company in the world. On Dec. 7, 2017, the company announced that it had purchased four contiguous mining claims located near the historically producing Caswell Mine within the Cobalt Camp.

eCobalt Solutions (TSX: ECS) (OTC: ECSIF) has interests in base and precious metals, as well as uranium projects, in Canada, the United States and Mexico. It has made a conscious decision to distance itself from the risks associated with unethical mining operations in the DRC. The company has focused its cobalt efforts on its wholly owned Idaho Cobalt Project, which is one of the few predominant cobalt deposits in the world. This means that mining feasibility is unaffected by the nickel and copper markets. Engineering studies have indicated that this project has the potential to produce high-purity cobalt and is at advanced-stage, near-term production.

Katanga Mining Ltd. (TSX: KAT) is a well-established mining company that began exploring opportunities in the DRC in 1997. It operates a large-scale copper-cobalt project with substantial high-grade mineral reserves and integrated mineral processing operations. In January 2008, the company merged with Nikanor PLC and also holds a 75 percent stake in two joint ventures with Gecamines, a DRC-owned mining company. Although it conducts all its operations in the DRC, Katanga Mining is fully committed to the socio-economic development of the community within its sphere of influence.

Due to the surge in demand for cobalt and expectations for a continuing trend, industry experts predict a looming cobalt deficit, which would likely push the price of the metal even higher. These companies are scaling up their efforts in exploration and development to take advantage of this rising global demand.

For more information on Quantum Cobalt Corp., visit: Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B)

About NetworkNewsWire

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) NetworkNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge.

Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer



DISCLAIMER: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with NNW or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by NNW are solely those of NNW and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable NNW and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. NNW and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security.



The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author, and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, NNW, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment.



NNW & FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.



This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and NNW and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements.

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is affiliated with the Investor Based Brand Network (IBBN).

About IBBN

Over the past 10+ years we have consistently introduced new network brands, each specifically designed to fulfil the unique needs of our growing client base and services. Today, we continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients.

Please feel free to visit the Investor Based Brand Network (IBBN) http://www.InvestorBasedBrandNetwork.com



Corporate Communications Contact:

NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

New York

+1-212-418-1217 Office

Editor@NetworkNewsWire.com

Media Contact:

FN Media Group, LLC

NNW@FinancialNewsMedia.com

+1(954)345-0611



http://www.NetworkNewsWire.com
An EPLI Policy is Designed to Protect Business Owners from Potential Liability in the Event of a Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / The founders of EK Insurance, a company that specializes in providing general liability insurance quotes, are also able to help business owners get quotes for Employment Practices Liability Insurance.

To learn more about Employment Practices Liability Insurance, which is also known as EPLI, please check out https://ekinsurance.com/employment-practices-liability-insurance.html.

As a company spokesperson noted, although numerous stories involving sexual harassment in the workplace appear on the news every day, many business owners are unaware that there is insurance available that can help pay the costs to defend them from unfair claims. The EPLI insurance policy protects from a potential sexual harassment claim, as well as claims regarding on the job discrimination, or if an employee says they were improperly dismissed or disciplined for any reason.

"Due to the sheer fact that as a business owner, you are always under a potential threat where a disgruntled employee might attempt to sue you, or claim you were irresponsible in dealing with them - for example, due to issues with termination or discipline such as suspending them - it is worth your while to consider purchasing an EPLI insurance policy to protect your business," the spokesperson noted, adding that for business owners in the state of New York, they are typically able to purchase this type of insurance for as little as $37 a month.

To watch a short YouTube video that illustrates how and when an EPLI policy may be needed, as well as explains more about this type of liability insurance, please visit https://youtu.be/5FZMDFR7Pnc.

To help fully understand what EPLI insurance is all about, business owners are welcome to visit EK Insurance to read up on this type of policy and understand the various EPLI policy terms.

Business owners who are interested in getting a quote for an EPLI policy are also welcome to visit the user-friendly EK Insurance website at any time. There, they can fill out and submit a short form that will quickly provide them with free quotes.

About EK Insurance:

At EK Insurance, they come to work every day because they want to protect their clients from the risks they face in life and business. The goal at EK Insurance is to make the insurance purchasing experience as quick and painless as possible. They provide professional and direct insurance advice to their clients. EK Insurance is a licensed professional insurance agency in California, Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. They care about their clients and know that their success is their success. For more information, please visit https://ekinsurance.com/.

EK Insurance

99 Wall St. #1234

New York, NY 10005

Contact:

Ethan Kosmin

info@ekinsurance.com

484 800-1000

SOURCE: EK Insurance
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - December 21, 2017) - Ten times more powerful than its predecessor, the world's largest and most powerful plasma injector has begun operation at General Fusion's facilities in Vancouver, Canada. This new machine (PI3) recently generated its first plasma, marking a significant step forward in the commercialization of the company's technology -- a technology that will transform the global energy industry. General Fusion's commercialization program has moved forward rapidly, building on plasma performance milestones achieved in its smaller plasma injectors. The company has developed and tested 18 increasingly sophisticated plasma injectors over the past decade, culminating in PI3, which is the largest and most powerful such machine ever developed.

"This is an important milestone for the company, successfully translating the knowledge gained and technology developed from over 150,000 plasma experiments into a machine that is of comparable scale to what is needed for a commercial fusion power plant," said General Fusion CEO Chris Mowry.

"Our PI3 test program takes the record-breaking performance achieved on our smaller plasma injectors and scales it up to a size and power similar to that which we'll be deploying as part of our fusion demonstration plant," said Chief Technology Officer Michael Delage. "General Fusion's plasma injector technology will deliver plasma fuel into a compression chamber where it can be rapidly heated to ignition conditions, releasing energy. This is analogous to a diesel engine, but in our case, the hydrogen fuel coming out of the injector is 5 million degrees Celsius and will be heated by compression to 150 million degrees Celsius, the temperature required for plasma to burn in a fusion reaction." PI3 will demonstrate the plasma injection part of the process, and its performance will be fine-tuned over the coming months to meet the specifications required for the demonstration facility.

Industry leading General Fusion is the only company currently developing a facility to demonstrate the complete end-to-end capability to produce electricity from fusion energy. This machine will be power plant size in order to confirm technology performance at commercial scale, but without the complexity of being a power generation facility. The company's demonstration plant will combine both the plasma injection and the compression aspects of General Fusion's unique technology solution. The facility is intended to demonstrate fusion energy conditions and refine the economics of overall power production using the company's technology -- the critical transition milestones to full commercialization.

Plasma, a superheated and ionized gas, is what gives neon signs and fluorescent light bulbs their glow. The unique properties of plasma enable it to be efficiently heated to extremely high temperatures and harnessed to produce fusion energy.

Fusion energy has the potential to safely provide carbon-free and economically competitive electricity, on-demand, anywhere in the world. Once commercialized, fusion power plants will play a vital role in meeting the need for new energy generation over the coming decades -- a need which is forecast to increase 45% and constrained by global commitments to mitigate the impact of climate change.

About General Fusion

General Fusion is pursuing the fastest and most practical path to commercial fusion energy, and is based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada and Washington D.C., USA. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers, including: Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Cenovus Energy, Growthworks, Braemar Energy Ventures, BDC, Entrepreneurs Fund, SET Ventures, and Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com.

Follow General Fusion

generalfusion.com

twitter.com/generalfusion

instagram.com/generalfusion

linkedin.com/company/general-fusion

facebook.com/generalfusion

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/12/11/11G148688/Images/Pl3_Image-e5f22a726e77b10fb4cb009a22ccbf48.jpg

For more information:

Paul Sullivan

Office: +1 604 685 4742

Mobile: +1 604 603 7358

paul.sullivan@generalfusion.com
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / SeeThruEquity, a leading independent equity research and corporate access firm focused on small-cap and micro-cap public companies, today announced it has issued an update on Amarantus Bioscience Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: AMBS).

The report is available here: AMBS December 2017 Update Note.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Amarantus Bioscience Holdings, Inc. (OTC: AMBS, "Amarantus") is a biotechnology company developing treatments and diagnostics for diseases in orphan neurologic, regenerative medicine and ophthalmic therapies, through three wholly-owned subsidiary companies. The company's Elto Pharma subsidiary has development rights to eltoprazine, a Phase 2b-ready small molecule indicated for Parkinson's disease levodopa-induced dyskinesia (PD-LID), Alzheimer's aggression and adult ADHD. Amarantus has also acquired the rights to the Engineered Skin Substitute program (ESS), a Phase 3 ready regenerative medicine-based approach for treating severe burns with full-thickness autologous skin grown in tissue culture, which is being pursued by its subsidiary Cutanogen Corporation. Amarantus' subsidiary MANF Therapeutics, Inc. is developing pre-clinical products as treatments for brain and ophthalmic disorders, which were discovered by CEO John Commissiong, PhD using its proprietary discovery engine PhenoGuard. AMBS also owns approximately 80 million shares of Avant Diagnostics, Inc. (OTC: AVDX) via the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary Amarantus Diagnostics, Inc. that occurred in May 2016.

Highlights from the update note include:

We are updating our coverage of Amarantus following recent events, which included a plan for recapitalization plan and clinical update covering the company's most advanced programs. Highlights of recent activities include:

Amarantus has disclosed a plan to move forward, restarting company activities in January 2018 with an aim to monetize its subsidiary companies through Reg A+ listings on Nasdaq CM or NYSE American, beginning with Elto Pharma, or other strategic transactions.

Amarantus has reached an agreement with holders of its senior secured convertible debt and convertible preferred securities to forbear the default provisions in these instruments and temporarily cease conversion of common shares.

As part of the agreement Amarantus will deliver to old debtholders its 80mn shares of Avant Diagnostics (AVDX) in a special purpose vehicle to be liquidated in an orderly fashion.

AMBS' Elto Pharma subsidiary is preparing to restart its Phase 2b clinical trial for small molecule Eltoprazine for Parkinson's disease levodopa-induced dyskinesia (PD-LID). Elto Pharma also has a Phase 3 ready program for Eltoprazine for treatment of agitation in dementia and in adult ADHD.

The company estimates the combined market opportunity for these two programs is in excess of $8 billion per year, based on the patient population and prices of comparable drugs on the market.

Updating Price Target to $0.65

We are updating the price target of AMBS following recent developments at the company. The target is based on the potential value from advancing candidates at Elto Pharma and Cutanogen, taking into consideration the liabilities at the AMBS level. We see the AMBS as a high risk, high potential reward company emerging from distressed status.

Please review important disclosures on our website at www.seethruequity.com.

About Amarantus Bioscience Holdings, Inc.

Amarantus Bioscience Holdings (AMBS) is a biotechnology company developing treatments and diagnostics for diseases in the areas of neurology, regenerative medicine and orphan diseases through its subsidiaries. AMBS' wholly-owned subsidiary Elto Pharma, Inc. has development rights to eltoprazine, a Phase 2b-ready small molecule indicated for Parkinson's disease levodopa-induced dyskinesia, Alzheimer's aggression and adult ADHD. AMBS acquired the rights to the Engineered Skin Substitute program (ESS), a regenerative medicine-based approach for treating severe burns with full-thickness autologous skin grown in tissue culture that is being pursued by AMBS' wholly-owned subsidiary Cutanogen Corporation. AMBS' wholly-owned subsidiary MANF Therapeutics, Inc. owns key intellectual property rights and licenses from a number of prominent universities related to the development of the therapeutic protein known as mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor (MANF). MANF Therapeutics, Inc. is developing MANF-based products as treatments for brain and ophthalmic disorders. MANF was discovered by the Company's Chief Scientific Officer John Commissiong, PhD. Dr. Commissiong discovered MANF from AMBS' proprietary discovery engine PhenoGuard. AMBS also owns approximately 80 million shares of Avant Diagnostics, Inc. via the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary Amarantus Diagnostics, Inc. that occurred in May 2016. www.Amarantus.com.

About SeeThruEquity

Since its founding in 2011, SeeThruEquity has been committed to its core mission: providing impactful, high quality research on underfollowed smallcap and microcap equities. SeeThruEquity has pioneered an innovative business model for equity research that is not paid for and is unbiased. SeeThruEquity is the host of acclaimed investor conferences that are the ultimate event for publicly traded companies with market capitalizations less than $1 billion.

SeeThruEquity is approved to contribute its research reports and estimates to Thomson One Analytics (First Call), the leading estimates platform on Wall Street, as well as Capital IQ and FactSet. SeeThruEquity maintains one of the industry's most extensive databases of opt-in institutional and high net worth investors. The firm is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

For more information visit www.seethruequity.com.

For more information visit www.seethruequity.com.

Contact:

SeeThruEquity

info@seethruequity.com

SOURCE: SeeThruEquity
Seattle, Washington--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2017) - CFN Media Group ("CannabisFN"), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces publication of an article covering Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: PVOT) (CNSX: PVOT) (OTCQB: PVOTF) and why it's well positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for cannabis-infused products, which has become an area of increasing interest for food and beverage companies.

Cannabis Infused Products

Canada's cannabis industry is projected to reach $22.6 billion in size over the coming years, according to Deloitte, driven by the legalization of recreational marijuana. While dried marijuana has been the primary area of focus, cannabis oils and extracts are the fastest growing subset of the burgeoning industry. The legalization of these products has expanded the market to non-smoking consumers and further legislation surrounding edibles could do much more.

The interest in cannabis-infused edibles is underscored by Constellation Brands Inc.'s recent acquisition of a minority stake in Canopy Growth Corp., a leading licensed producer of medical cannabis under Health Canada's Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). Constellation Brands is a leading international producer and marketer of beer, wine, and spirits with operations around the world.

Cowen & Co. has found evidence that the craft beer markets in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State have been impacted by the legalization of recreational marijuana. The volume of craft beer sold in these states fell 2% in 2016 despite a 0.5% increase throughout the rest of the United States. In Denver, these volumes were down over 5% in 2016. The cannabis industry has also eclipsed the craft beer industry in size, making it an appealing diversification.

Pivot Pharma Enters the Space

Pivot Pharma recently announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire ERS Holdings LLC, a privately-held California company that has developed a patented Ready to Infuse Cannabis technology ("RTIC") that enables the transformation of cannabis oil into powder and designed to be infused into a variety of food and beverages. In particular, the technology converts cannabis oil into tasteless powders that can be infused into products like K-Cups, stick packs, baked mixes, shots, shakes, topicals and bottled beverages.

"Pivot believes that the anticipated changes in cannabis regulations in Canada and California will provide an opportunity to launch multiple products into the healthcare and recreational markets in 2018," said Pivot Pharma CEO Dr. Patrick Frankham. "We are delighted that Ross Franklin and Pat Rolfes from ERS have chosen Pivot to help transform their patents and processes into therapeutic customer goods."

Pivot previously acquired three other technologies that address the problems inherent in the delivery of cannabinoids. These include an oral solution (Solmic Solubilisation), a transdermal approach (BiPhasix Transdermal Drug Delivery Platform), and nanotechnology for topical applications (Thrudermic). The newly acquired powder technology extends the company's capacities while also complementing its existing assets, as the powder could potentially be integrated into Pivot's other delivery mechanisms.

Pivot Pharma is already engaged in discussions with several Canadian licensed producers and licensed dealers to accelerate the commercialization of its large pipeline of technology-driven products. If it doesn't find a joint venture, management plans to seek a Licensed Dealer designation from Health Canada and begin building its own production facility. A Licensed Dealer can house, research, test, develop and sell products associated with cannabis and other drugs in ways that companies holding Licensed Producer permits cannot.

Looking Ahead

The global food and beverage market is worth nearly $100 billion, according to Statista, and continues to experience tremendous growth. The cannabis industry could have an outsized impact on certain segments of the adult beverage market, such as the adult recreational and functional foods sectors, given the similarity in demographics. This has led some companies to acquire ownership stakes in cannabis companies, but others could pursue joint ventures or licensing agreements with cannabis firms.

Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: PVOTF) (CSE: PVOT) is well-positioned to capitalize on these dynamics following its letter of intent to acquire ERS Holdings LLC. In combination with its plans to partner with or acquire a Licensed Dealer, the company will be capable of producing a variety of cannabis-infused products targeting the massive food and beverage industry. This could create opportunities for joint ventures or other favorable events down the road.

Please follow the link to read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/pivot-pharma-moves-acquire-cannabis-infusion-technology/

For more information, visit the company's website at www.pivotpharma.com.

About CFN Media

CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.

Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company/

Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8

Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com

Disclaimer:

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/

CFN Media

Frank Lane

206-369-7050

flane@cannabisfn.com
Seattle, Washington--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2017) - CFN Media Group ("CannabisFN"), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces publication of an article covering International Cannabrands (CSE: JUJU.A), its exclusive sixty year world wide right to the Julian Marley-inspired JuJu Royal cannabis brand, and why branding is important as the cannabis industry develops.

Importance of Branding

The retail and wholesale cannabis industry is projected to reach $22.8 billion by 2020 with approximately 22 million customers in the United States alone. As cultivation operations and dispensaries proliferate, the market for growers, extractors, edible manufacturers and other producers will likely begin to see some saturation as the product becomes increasingly commoditized. The newness of the market means that there aren't any nationwide brands that have established themselves - the market remains fragmented.

The most popular cross-state cannabis brands include JuJu Royal, Chong's Choice, Leafs by Snoop, Marley Naturals, Whoopi & Maya, and Willie's Reserve. In general, these brands leverage cannabis celebrities as a means to draw in consumers. The Marley family is well known for the rastafari lifestyle, while rappers like Snoop Dogg are often associated with cannabis, which helps inspire trust among consumers. That being said there has never been anyone who has been so closely associated with cannabis as Bob Marley. Although Marley passed away almost forty years ago he is still the fifth highest earning deceased celebrity, ranking just behind Elvis Presley.

As with virtually all consumer products including the wine and spirits industry, branding is the most effective way to offset the effects of commoditization as a market matures. High quality brands attract premium prices and preserve margins for everyone along the supply chain - from growers to retailers. The incentive to license these premium cannabis brands will increase as supply continues to come into the market, which means investors may want to consider investing in some of these brands.

The Juju Royal Brand

International Cannabrands (CSE: JUJU.A) is a brand licensing company that owns the worldwide name and personality rights to Julian Marley for all products associated with cannabis for 60 years. The company's JuJu Royal brand name was created for and inspired by Julian Marley, reggae musician and son of the world famous Bob Marley. Since 2014, the company has licensed the brand to growers, edible manufacturers, oil extractors, and producers of ancillary products.

The company's products are currently available in California, Washington, Colorado, and Puerto Rico, while CBD-only products are sold throughout the United States as well as online. In October 2017, the company signed a deal to expand its product lines across Canada and Western Europe through a partnership with Maricann Group Inc., a licensed producer of medical cannabis under Canada's ACMPR program.

In the near-term, the company plans to expand its presence into the State of Nevada where adult-use cannabis was recently legalized. The team has also started a breeding project to create proprietary strains and genetics to separate itself from the competition, create demand, and have a product that can only be purchased through its partners. International Cannabrands also plans to develop its own line of Julian Marley / JuJu Royal stores.

Looking Ahead

International Cannabrands (CSE: JUJU.A) is well positioned to capitalize on the burgeoning cannabis industry with the exclusive rights to the Julian Marley name and personality. For investors, brand licensing companies tend to generate high-margin revenue and the company's ambitious expansion plans could help accelerate these revenues over the coming months. Investors might want to take a closer look at the stock ahead of these potential catalysts.

In the long run, according to CEO Jeffrey Britz, the company anticipates that once cannabis becomes federally legal in the United States the large pharma, wine and liquor, and tobacco companies will invest heavily in the industry. These companies tend to buy brands rather than develop their own as they can come to market quicker. Management believes that it can develop a leading brand in the industry and garner a significant sale price. Constellation Brands acquisition of a 10% interest in Canopy Growth, a Canadian licensed producer with a valuation of $2 billion, is an indication of where the acquisition trend of cannabis companies is headed.

Please follow the link to read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/international-cannabrands-looks-build-global-cannabis-brand/

For more information, visit the company's website at www.intlcannabrands.com or its consumer site at www.jujuroyal.net.

About CFN Media

CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.

Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company/

Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8

Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com

Disclaimer:

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/

Contact

CFN Media

Frank Lane

206-369-7050

flane@cannabisfn.com
Friday Night Inc. Announces LOI to Acquire Body & Mind Inc. In All Stock Transaction Valued at CAD $115 Million

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Friday Night Inc. (Friday Night) (CSE: TGIF) (FWB: 1QF) (OTCQB: TGIFF) Friday Night Inc. ("Friday Night") and Body & Mind Inc. ("BAM") are pleased to announce an all-stock acquisition valuing BAM at approximately CAD $115,000,000 based on the recent closing price of Friday Night. Transaction highlights:

Merger is expected to be immediately accretive to cash flow.

With approximately 130,000 square feet of facility projects under development, will make Mergeco among the largest cultivation and production companies in Nevada.

Per unit costs to become among the lowest in Nevada due to economies of scale.

Enhanced product lines will better service clientele.

Increased product volumes will warrant investment that drives efficiencies such as packaging systems, extraction, dosing, testing, distribution and marketing.

Purchase price represents an approximate 50% premium over BAM's recent closing price, on a fully diluted basis.

Brayden Sutton, Friday Night Inc. CEO, commented, "This transaction helps advance Friday Night into a leading position in what many believe is one of the best cannabis markets in the world. We welcome the Body & Mind shareholders and staff to the Friday Night family and are excited about having Robert Hasman head up the expanded organization as President."

Robert Hasman, Body & Mind President, commented, "This is a meaningful win for our stakeholders but is only the beginning of consolidation here in Nevada. The financial strength of a combined entity will enable us to continue to do more transactions at a rapid pace with the ultimate goal of driving down costs, expanding product lines, and servicing our customers. I would like to thank our staff and shareholders and the overwhelming support from the investment community for this transaction."

The transaction is expected to be structured by way of an amalgamation between BAM and a wholly owned Nevada subsidiary of TGIF, in which the shareholders of BAM will receive common shares in the capital of TGIF (the "TGIF Shares") in exchange for their shares of BAM ("BAM Shares"). TGIF will issue 115,000,000 TGIF Shares for all of the BAM shares (the" Exchange Ratio"), The final structure of the transaction will be subject to advice from BAM and TGIF tax, financial and legal advisors. The parties anticipate completing the Transaction on or about March 31, 2018. The agreement is subject to closing conditions normal for a transaction of this type, including due diligence, BAM shareholder and CSE approvals.

About Friday Night Inc.

Friday Night Inc. is a Canadian public company, which owns and controls cannabis and hemp-based assets in Las Vegas Nevada. The company owns 91% of Alternative Medicine Association, LC (AMA), a licensed medical and adult-use cannabis cultivation and production facility that produces its own line of unique cannabis-based products and manufactures other third-party brands. Infused MFG, also a 91% owned subsidiary, produces hemp-based, CBD products, thoughtfully crafted of high quality organic botanical ingredients. Friday Night Inc. is focused on strengthening and expanding these operations within and outside of the state.

About Body and Mind Inc.

Body and Mind Inc. ("BAMM") is a Nevada corporation which is publicly traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange. The Company was an early State of Nevada applicant in 2014 and was awarded one of the first state medical marijuana licenses for both cultivation and production. BAMM produces flower, oil extracts and edibles in its current facility and expects within the latter part of 2018 to be managing operations in facilities providing approximately 50,000 square feet.

For further information, please contact:

Joe Bleackley, Corporate Communications

604-674-4756

Joe@FridayNightInc.com

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release .

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate," "continue," "estimate," "expect," "may," "will," "project," "should," "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including the inability of the Company to obtain shareholder and exchange approval, or to raise additional equity as well as the various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents, which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. Friday Night undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law or the Canadian Securities Exchange.

SOURCE: Friday Night Inc.
Increases Yield at Higher Quality with More Consistency

LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / CLS Holdings USA, Inc. (OTCQB: CLSH) "CLS," a development stage diversified cannabis company operating as Cannabis Life Science, is pleased to announce its plans to deploy the company's proprietary extraction and conversion technology upon completion of its pending acquisition of Oasis Cannabis. The proprietary process differs from others who typically use ethanol. The resulting finished product is cleaner and provides for more Delta 9 THC.

Ben Sillitoe, CEO and Co-Founder of Oasis Cannabis, commented, "As we move forward with the expansion of our facilities the opportunity to implement this technology is exciting. Our goal at Oasis is to supply our customers with a superior product that is in high demand."

Jeff Binder, Chairman and CEO, stated, "We have spent years developing this technology and with the previously announced pending acquisition of Oasis it is our belief it will add value to the Oasis customers and CLS shareholders."

About Oasis Cannabis (https://oasiscannabis.com)

Oasis Cannabis has operated a cannabis dispensary in the Las Vegas market since dispensaries first opened in Nevada in 2015, and has been recognized as one of the top marijuana retailers in the state. Its location, within walking distance to the Las Vegas Strip and Downtown Las Vegas, in combination with its delivery service to residents allows it to efficiently serve both locals and tourists in the Las Vegas area. The company recently commenced wholesale offerings of cannabis in Nevada with the launch of its City Trees brand of cannabis concentrates and cannabis-infused products in August 2017. An expansion of its cultivation and production facility is currently underway and is expected to be completed during the second quarter of 2018.

Disclaimer

CLS Holdings USA, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Oasis Cannabis, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. See CLS Holdings USA, Inc.'s filings with the SEC for additional details.

About CLS Holdings USA (https://ir.clsholdingsinc.com)

CLS Holdings USA, Inc. (OTCQB: CLSH) plans to become a diversified cannabis company and is shifting its corporate strategy to becoming a fully licensed integrated cannabis producer and retailer in Nevada and other western states. Its strategy and business model will be similar to Canopy Growth (WEED.TO), Aurora Cannabis (ACB.TO) and GB Sciences (GBLX).

CLS stands for "Cannabis Life Sciences," in recognition of the Company's patent pending proprietary method of extracting various cannabinoids from the marijuana plant and converting them into products with a higher level of quality and consistency. The Company's business model includes licensing operations, processing operations, processing facilities, sale of products, brand creation and consulting services.

Twitter: @CLSHusa

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to anticipated future events, future results of operations or future financial performance. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to whether certain transactions will be completed, the terms of such transactions, the descriptions of the companies and the business that any potential target companies could bring to CLS Holdings. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "intends," "expects," "plans," "goals," "projects," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are only predictions, are uncertain and involve substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, levels of activity or performance to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity or performance expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. We cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity or performance and we cannot guaranty that the proposed transactions described in this press release will occur. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date that they were made. These cautionary statements should be considered together with any written or oral forward-looking statements that we may issue in the future. Except as required by applicable law, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements to conform these statements to reflect actual results, later events or circumstances or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

CLS Holdings USA has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Oasis Cannabis, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. See CLS Holdings USA filing with the SEC for additional details.

Contact Information

Corporate:

Chairman and CEO

Jeff Binder

jeff@clsholdingsinc.com

888-438-9132

Investors:

Hayden IR

CLSH@haydenir.co

917-658-7878

SOURCE: CLS Holdings USA, Inc.
Country

Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Canada Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cuba, Republic of Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Haiti, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Jamaica Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Mexico, United Mexican States Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
LONDON, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Impact Investing World Forum (IIWF), world's leading community for the global impact investing professionals based in London, today announced 'Impact Investing World Forum Scholarships' for The 'Master of Studies (MSt) in Social Innovation' programme at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Ahsan Zaman, founder of 'Impact Investing World Forum' and Cambridge Judge Business School alumnus, has shown his support for future students by announcing two new partial scholarships to the MSt in Social Innovation programme.

The 'Impact Investing World Forum Scholarships' will support two students in next two years.

"As an alumnus of a CJBS I have not only added tremendous value to my professional and personal growth, but also used the Judge Business School's vast network to explore endless new business opportunities," said Ahsan, who is also the Executive Director of London based publishing house WORLD MEDIA ONLINE LTD.

"It was whilst studying Executive MBA at CJBS (Cambridge Judge Business School), that I founded the Impact Investing World Forum (IIWF) in 2016. I therefore hope that the ' Impact Investing World Forum Scholarships ' would encourage more alumni to take interest in school's efforts to support the exceptional and promising social innovators and bright students, who want to make a social impact globally."

Dr.Neil Stott, Director of the MSt Social Innovation programme commented, "Ahsan's timely and generous gift will enable promising students to study at Cambridge Judge Business School and go a long way to make a positive social impact on society, both locally and globally. I hope that Ahsan's vision to support future generations of social innovators will inspire generosity amongst our alumni networks, particularly as we have recently launched our programme in 2016."

The Master of Studies (MSt) in Social Innovation is a part-time graduate programme which welcomed its first cohort of 30 students in October 2016. The programme is delivered part-time over two years and includes online delivery and four residentials of a week each in Cambridge - three residentials in the first year and one residential in the second year.

About Impact Investing World Forum (IIWF)

The Impact Investing World Forum (IIWF) is one of leading social impact investment communities in the world. It aims to foster debate on social impact of all types of investments including social impact bonds (SIBs), stocks, ESG, social finance, sustainable investing, private equity, investment banking, venture capital, wealth management, venture philanthropy, sustainability, family office as well as impact of emerging technology areas such as fintech, blockchain, money future, cryptocurrency and crowd funding. At the heart of IIWF's agenda is the UN's (United Nations) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how to measure and manage them. For more info please visit:http://iiwforum.org





Media Contact:

media@iiwforum.org


Technavio's latest market research report on the global ballistic composites marketprovides an analysis of the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2017-2021. Technaviodefines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005330/en/

Technavio has published a new market research report on the global ballistic composites market 2017-2021 under their chemicals and materials library. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 7%. One of the key factors resulting in the growth of the ballistic composites market is the growing demand from aerospace and defense industry. Ballistic composites are extensively used in vehicle armors and body and engines of aircraft due to their superior properties over metals and alloys. Furthermore, these materials can withstand higher temperatures and are lighter than metals and alloys.

This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing

Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free

The three emerging market trends driving the global ballistic composites market according to Technavio research analysts are:

Use of nanocomposites

Increasing LEAP engine demand in aerospace industry

Demand from transmission and distribution industry

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Use of nanocomposites

Continuous improvements in nanotechnology have resulted in innovations in the nanocomposites market. Nanocomposites are gaining popularity as they are recyclable and can be processed at low costs for several applications ranging from drug delivery to corrosion prevention of metals. The thermal stability and mechanical properties of nanocomposites can be enhanced by controlling the nano-sized second phase dispersion and optimizing the fabrication process, which will result in an improved final product.

According to Kshama Upadhyay, a lead analyst at Technavio fortextile, fiber, and composites, "Nanocomposite materials contain fillers on a nanometer scale dispersed in the resin. The dispersion of these fillers can improve flame retardancy and rigidity of the resin. Nanocomposites are increasingly being used in the aerospace and defense industries. Apart from this, they are also used for biomedical applications such as hip prostheses due to their lightweight and high tensile strength. They are also used to manufacture industrial equipment and electronic and automobile parts. Thus, the demand for nanocomposites technology in the global ballistic composites market is expected to increase during the forecast period."

Increasing LEAP engine demand in aerospace industry

In the last two years, the LEAP engine manufactured by GE has set off the demand for ceramic matrix composite (CMCs) in the aerospace industry. The LEAP program involves the manufacturing and supplying of CMC-based jet engines by GE Aviation, a subsidiary of GE. The program has already attracted more than 5,100 orders and aims to achieve a target of 1,720 engines by 2018.

CFM International, a joint venture between Snecma and GE Aviation, is developing a high-bypass turbofan engine by using high-performance composite materials. The use of turbo engines can decrease the fuel consumption by 15%. For instance, COMAC has planned to use the LEAP engine in its new aircraft COMAC C919. This initiative has also benefited the key players in the aviation sector such as Boeing and Airbus.

Demand from transmission and distribution industry

Countries such as Brazil, Paraguay, and India are moving towards an industrialized economy. In 2014, India launched the "Make in India" campaign to boost industrialization. An increase in the number of industries will lead to an increase in the power demand. This demand for electricity will further create the demand for transmission and distribution cables made from metal matrix composite (MMCs).

"The global investment in the transmission and distribution industry is expected to be approximately USD 8.4 trillion by 2040. More than half of the transformers and transmission lines in North America are exceeding their useful life. Therefore, in 2016, the US planned to invest around USD 50 billion in replacements, expansion, and upgrading activities. The development of smart cities will also lead to major renovations. This will create a high demand for conductors and transmission cables. Thus, this growing demand for metal matrix composites will fuel the growth of the ballistic composites market during the forecast period," says Kshama

Browse Related Reports:

Global Fiberglass Electrical and Electronic Products Market 2017-2021

Global Coated Fabrics Market 2017-2021

Global Carbon Composites Market 2017-2021

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005330/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Flight Inspection (FI) Market by Solution (System, & Services), End User (Commercial Airports, Defense Airports), Services Type (Commissioning, Routine, Special Inspection), System Type (Fixed, Mobile, Ground-based) & Region- Global Forecast to 2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The Flight Inspection (FI) market is projected to reach USD 5.57 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 4.31% from 2017 to 2022

The growth of the market can be attributed to the increasing air passenger traffic across all the countries. The increasing air passenger traffic is leading to an increase in infrastructure development at existing airports and new airport developments across the globe.

The flight inspection market has been segmented based on solution, end user, and region. Among solutions, the system segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. It is also projected to lead the flight inspection market during the forecast period. The system segment is further subsegmented into fixed systems, mobile systems, and ground-based systems. Factors such as the increasing number of new airport development programs and increasing spending by emerging economies on airport infrastructure are the factors driving the growth of the flight inspection market.

Based on end user, the flight inspection market has been segmented into commercial and defense airports. The defense airports segment is projected to lead the market during the forecast period owing to the increasing number of tactical forward airbases and defense airports due to the increase in the spending on military infrastructure.

The Americas accounted for the largest share of the FI market in 2017, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The largest share of the Americas is attributed to increasing passenger traffic in countries such as Mexico and Brazil and the development and modernization of airports in the US and Canada. In Americas, the US is leading the overall market in the region. The reason for the dominance of the US in this market is predominantly due to the airport expansion programs and presence of flight inspection system manufacturers in the country.

The major challenges that the flight inspection service providers face are mostly related to the technical aspects of flight inspection procedures. At present, adapting to new procedure for validation & calibration of GPS enabled navigational procedures and in approach procedures for vertical guidance satellite based augmentation system (SBAS) is a challenge for the flight inspection service providers.

The major players in the flight inspection market are Textron (US), Bombardier (Canada), and Norwegian Special Mission (Norway). The manufacturers and service providers mostly adopted new product launches and penetration in emerging markets by acquiring long-term contracts in respective regions as their key growth strategies. Norwegian Special Mission (Norway) is the leading company in the flight inspection market.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Introduction



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Premium Insights



5 Market Overview



6 Flight Inspection Market, By Solution



7 Flight Inspection Market, By End User



8 Regional Analysis



9 Company Profiles



Aerodata

Airfield Technology

Bombardier

Cobham

Enav

Norwegian Special Mission

Radiola Aerospace

Saab

Safran

Textron

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vfp368/global_flight?w=5

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716
Prince William County congratulates ZESTRON Corporation (ZESTRON) on its 25th global anniversary and tenth anniversary of doing business in the county. Headquartered in Ingolstadt, Germany, the company is the leading global provider of high precision cleaning products, services; and training solutions in the electronics, manufacturing and semiconductor industries. In 2007, the company opened its Prince William County operation a 36,000 square foot state-of-the-art production facility and a 15,000 square foot state-of-the-art technical center. The facility houses the latest in cleaning equipment technology, reflow ovens and analytical equipment.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005723/en/

(Photo: Business Wire)

"We congratulate ZESTRON on achieving this most commendable milestone," said Jeff Kaczmarek, Executive Director, Prince William County Department of Economic Development. "Their decision to locate their only facility in the Western Hemisphere in Prince William County is a testament to the valuable business proposition the county offers, one that is capitalized on by a broad spectrum of companies including international ones. In fact, a number of our local businesses are subsidiaries of international companies or have some international affiliation," he added.

ZESTRON's history dates back to 1975 with the founding of its parent company, Dr. O.K. Wack Chemie GmbH in Ingolstadt, Germany. Following the success of that business, ZESTRON was established in 1992 and is dedicated to developing and providing innovative precision cleaning solutions for the electronics industry. Today, the company operates regional technical and analytical centers across the globe including Germany, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

"We are proud to be long-standing members of the Prince William County business community" said Harald Wack, President, ZESTRON Corporation. "In our line of business, it is imperative that we are able to easily source highly-skilled, specialized employees and our Prince William County location allows us to do just that," he added. "Our ZESTRON team is considered the best in the industry primarily because we have assembled the most experienced global team of engineers who allow us to provide consistent, excellent service to each and every one of our clients. With the assistance of our engineers, we allow our customers the opportunity to specify and evaluate cleaning processes as well as substrate cleanliness assessments, in order to ensure a successful and seamless transition within their manufacturing process. As a result ZESTRON can handle the most critically sensitive electronics cleaning challenges and we pride ourselves in exceeding the needs of our customers," he added further.

ZESTRON has become a thought leader and innovator in its field with research and development being a defining part of its operations. The company continues to research the latest technologies for improving the performance, efficiency and life span of critical circuitry in high-reliability applications such as aerospace, telecommunications, automotive, medical, and military. ZESTRON's innovative breakthroughs include dramatically reducing cleaning agent concentrations, effectively cleaning underneath low standoff components and introducing the world's first and only true pH neutral cleaning agents. Furthermore, their engineers continue to perfect traceability tools for accurate automatic concentration management and process lifecycle analysis.

ZESTRON is also leading the industry through its educational initiatives. Through its ZESTRON Academy, its engineers share expert electronics precision cleaning knowledge for seasoned professionals and offer foundational educational opportunities for new and emerging engineering professionals.

Want more Prince William County? Check out our latest video, sign-up for newsletters or visit us at: www.PWCEconDev.org or @PWCDED.

About ZESTRON

ZESTRON is a global leader in high precision cleaning products and services for the electronics and semiconductor manufacturing industries where reliability is mandatory. Headquartered in Ingolstadt, Germany, ZESTRON operates seven technical centers across the globe with Prince William County being home to its only facility in the Western Hemisphere.

Visit ZESTRON to learn more.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Located less than 20 miles from the nation's capital, Prince William County encompasses a total area of 348 square miles.

75% of Northern Virginia's 1.5 million workers live within a 30-minute one-way commute to the center of Prince William County during rush hour.

Prince William County provides access to an outstanding talent pool of highly-skilled, culturally diverse labor; 44% of the workforce has a college degree.

Prince William County carries a AAA bond rating from all three of the major credit ratings agencies (Fitch, Moody's and S&P).

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005723/en/

Contacts:

Prince William County, Virginia

Department of Economic Development

George Harben

Main: 703-792-5500

Office: 703-792-5507

gharben@pwcgov.org
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Jadestone Energy Inc. (TSX-V: JSE) (the "Company") announces that Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority ("NOPSEMA") has accepted the Company's revised Environment Plan ("EP") to operate the Stag Oilfield, offshore Dampier, Western Australia.

"As a new operator in Australia, we're delighted to have our EP accepted by NOPSEMA, our team having worked very closely with the regulator over the last six months to achieve this. Jadestone's EP clearly demonstrates how the Company will reduce environmental impacts and risks to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) and an acceptable level, in consultation with our stakeholders, all of which is supported by our business management system," said Mark Robertson, Jadestone's General Manager in Australia.

The EP was revised in accordance with Australia's Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009. Since becoming titleholder and operator of the Stag Oilfield on July 10, 2017, Jadestone has been operating under an accepted EP developed by the previous operator.

Paul Blakeley, President and CEO, commented, "The acceptance of our revised EP marks another major milestone for Jadestone. Australia's regulatory environment is stringent, and we have a great team that is able to thrive in this challenging environment. We continue to find ways to reduce waste by improving Stag's efficiency, including increasing production rates by 40% and reducing unit operating expenses by 20% to date. Acceptance of our EP underscores the depth of experience and operating credentials the Jadestone team brings to managing second phase assets."

For further information, please contact:

Media and General Enquiries

Email: contact@jadestone-energy.com

Phone: +65 6342 0359

Investor Enquiries

Email: IR@jadestone-energy.com

Phone: +1 (403) 975-6752

About Jadestone Energy Inc.

Jadestone Energy Inc. is a TSX-V listed oil and gas company headquartered in Singapore. The Company is currently engaged in production, development and exploration and appraisal activities in Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Following a recent strategic review, the Company is focusing on acquiring assets with production in the near term, and where significant follow-on reinvestment opportunities exist to enhance value, as well as undeveloped discoveries which may be rapidly brought to production.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Jadestone Energy Inc.
Advisory Board comprised of world-renowned international gene therapy and lysosomal disease experts

Discussed design of pivotal trial in MPS IIIA and clinical trial development plans in GM1

Provided valuable insight concerning expectations of therapy and the urgent need to address the neurological component of MPS IIIA

Clinicians support the feasibility of Lysogene's direct-to-CNS trial design and recruitment strategy in MPS IIIA

Regulatory News:

Lysogene (FR0013233475 LYS) (Paris:LYS), a leading, biopharmaceutical company pioneering gene therapy technologies to treat central nervous system (CNS) diseases, today announced the first meeting of the Clinical Advisory Board (CAB), held on December 8, 2017 in New York (US).

The CAB is comprised of world-renowned international gene therapy and lysosomal disease experts and is chaired by Professor Roberto Giugliani (University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil) and Professor Frits Wijburg (Academisch Medisch Centrum (AMC), the Netherlands). The CAB was established to provide strategic advice to Lysogene on its clinical development programs and commercialization strategy for its orphan gene therapy candidates to treat CNS diseases, beginning with LYS-SAF302 for Mucopolysaccharidosis Type IIIA (MPS IIIA) and LYS-GM101 for GM1 Gangliosidosis (GM1) patients, for which there is currently no treatment.

Lysogene has obtained Orphan Drug Designation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Rare Pediatric Designation by the FDA for both programs.

At the meeting, the CAB confirmed that "Lysogene's Pivotal clinical trial [in MPS IIIA] appears to be in a unique and advantaged position because it entails a method of administration that is known to be more effective [in the CNS] than study medication administered intravenously. Additionally, Lysogene has selected clinical endpoints and assessment tools that have been agreed amongst experts for measuring clinically relevant outcomes."

CAB members were impressed with the quality of Lysogene's Natural History Study data in MPS IIIA, which will be used as the comparator for the LYS-SAF302 Pivotal trial as discussed with the FDA and EMA. The group agreed that the data confirm that the disease predominantly involves the CNS. Children with MPS IIIA suffer neurological symptoms, including developmental delay, difficulty sleeping, hyperactivity, and issues with motor function. Symptoms and severity may vary between children, and there is a need to compare treated children with matched controls using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development third edition (BSID-III), the only tool to have international consensus and validation as appropriate1. The CAB proposed significant support in Lysogene's patient recruitment plan.

Leading international gene therapy and lysosomal disease U.S. and European centers will participate in the pivotal study of LYS-SAF302.

LYS-SAF302 is a rAAV vector serotype rh.10 carrying the gene coding for SGSH. This in vivo gene therapy offers the possibility of a one-time treatment by inserting a healthy copy of the SGSH gene and allowing the body to start making the missing enzyme, therefore slowing or halting disease progression. Lysogene's gene therapy is delivered directly to the CNS during a neurosurgical procedure. By delivering the missing SGSH gene, Lysogene believes MPS IIIA patients will be provided a permanent source of functional enzyme in the brain that reverses phenotypic abnormalities of CNS cells.

Lysogene holds an exclusive license for the use of the AAVrh.10 in MPS IIIA.

About Lysogene

Lysogene (www.lysogene.com) is a global biopharma leader in orphan CNS disease research and development. Lysogene has generated five non-cumulative years of clinical safety data to show the efficiency of a direct delivery route to the CNS with its initial gene therapy trial for MPS IIIA. Lysogene has recently completed the enrollment for the first multi-national observational study in MPS IIIA which will function as the non-concurrent control for the first pivotal trial for MPS IIIA in H1 2018. Lysogene also plans a clinical trial for GM1 Gangliosidosis in 2019.

Lysogene is listed on the Euronext regulated market in Paris (ISIN code: FR0013233475). For more information: www.lysogene.com.

1 Van der Lee et al (2017) Cognitive endpoints for therapy development for neuronopathic Mucopolysaccharidoses: Results of a consensus procedure. Mol Genet Metab

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005536/en/

Contacts:

Media:

Europe

NewCap

Annie-Florence Loyer

+ 33 6 88 20 35 59

+ 33 1 44 71 00 12

afloyer@newcap.fr

or

North America

RooneyPartners

Marion Janic, 1 (212) 223-4017

mjanic@rooneyco.com

or

Investors:

LifeSci Advisors

Chris Maggos, +41 79 367 6254

chris@lifesciadvisors.com
Regulatory News:

Eurofins Scientific (Paris:ERF) (EUFI.PA), a global leader in bioanalytical testing, announces that it has acquired Pasteur Group ("Pasteur"), a leading player in clinical diagnostics in greater area of Santos, Sao Paulo state.

Pasteur is located in the seaside of Sao Paulo state, where the largest port in Brazil and several important industries are located. As the leading clinical diagnostics testing group in the seaside of Sao Paulo, Pasteur expects to generate revenues in excess of BRL 25m in 2017. The company employs 190 staff.

Pasteur provides Eurofins an entry into the dynamic and growing clinical diagnostics market in the most populous Latin American country. This represents a new business line for Eurofins in Latin America, and provides a platform with significant organic and inorganic growth potential.

Comment from Dr. Gilles Martin, Eurofins CEO: "We are extremely pleased to welcome Pasteur to the Eurofins Group. Pasteur strengthens Eurofins' offer and footprint in the attractive clinical diagnostics testing market in Latin America. In return, Pasteur will gain access to the full range of services, companies and knowledge of the Eurofins Group, which should strengthen their analytical portfolio for the benefit of the patients and medical practitioners it serves. This transaction is another demonstration of Eurofins' commitment to expand its global network of analytical services laboratories across all geographical regions where it anticipates significant growth."

For more information, please visit www.eurofins.com

Notes for the editor:

Eurofins a global leader in bio-analysis

Eurofins Scientific through its subsidiaries (hereinafter sometimes "Eurofins" or "the Group") believes it is the world leader in food, environment and pharmaceutical products testing and that it is also one of the global independent market leaders in certain testing and laboratory services for agroscience, genomics, discovery pharmacology and for supporting clinical studies. In addition, Eurofins is one of the key emerging players in specialty clinical diagnostic testing in Europe and the USA. With over 30,000 staff in 400 laboratories across 42 countries, Eurofins offers a portfolio of over 150,000 analytical methods for evaluating the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, origin and purity of biological substances and products, as well as for innovative clinical diagnostic. The Group objective is to provide its customers with high-quality services, accurate results on time and expert advice by its highly qualified staff.

Eurofins is committed to pursuing its dynamic growth strategy by expanding both its technology portfolio and its geographic reach. Through R&D and acquisitions, the Group draws on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology and analytical chemistry to offer its clients unique analytical solutions and the most comprehensive range of testing methods.

As one of the most innovative and quality oriented international players in its industry, Eurofins is ideally positioned to support its clients' increasingly stringent quality and safety standards and the expanding demands of regulatory authorities around the world.

The shares of Eurofins Scientific are listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN FR0000038259, Reuters EUFI.PA, Bloomberg ERF FP).

Important disclaimer:

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and estimates contained herein represent the judgment of Eurofins Scientific's management as of the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees for future performance, and the forward-looking events discussed in this release may not occur. Eurofins Scientific disclaims any intent or obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements and estimates. All statements and estimates are made based on the information available to the Company's management as of the date of publication, but no guarantee can be made as to their validity.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005831/en/

Contacts:

Investor Relations

Eurofins Scientific

Phone: +32 2 766 1620

E-mail: ir@eurofins.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 12/21/17 -- Canadian Metals Inc. (The "Company") (CSE: CME)(CSE: CME.CN)(CNSX: CME) is pleased to announce that the Company has received the results of its preliminary investigation of the La Chesnaye Lake 11km north of Baie-Comeau, in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Highlights:

-- Exploration target of 2.5 to 3.5 Million tonnes of high silica Quartzite near surface with grade ranging from 98.34% to 99.0% SiO2 -- Lidar Survey completed

Note: the potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature, that there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and that it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.

Our consultant has been able to carry grab surface sampling and short surface diamond drill holes prior to heavy snowfalls. A total of 4 small core holes, six grab and four mini-bulk samples have been taken. Samples were sent to ALS Laboratory in Val d'Or for whole rock analysis. The SiO2 grade ranges from 97.23% up to 99.13 %. The grab samples are selected samples and are not necessarily representative of the mineralization hosted on the property.

A preliminary geological model has been prepared with the historical holes (15 diamond drill holes (565 m)) and the potential is defined with the 3D envelope and the 2017 surface samples which connect to the geological units used in the volume calculation. A density of 2.7 is used to convert volume to tonnage.

"This is a positive first step on the La Chesnaye Lake property, the company is looking forward carrying additional exploration works in 2018 after meltdown." said Hubert Vallee, President & CEO of Canadian Metals Inc.

Quality Control / Quality Assurance (QA/QC) - Preparation

The samples were prepared by at the independent laboratory at ALS Chemex Val d'Or and analysed at their Vancouver facilities. The samples are dried, crushed to have 70% passing 2mm and afterward riffle split to have 250grams which is pulverized with an Agate mill pulverizer to have a pulp 85% passing 75 microns. Afterward an XRF borate fusion with 14 element and LOI analysis was done. At this stage the QP relies on laboratory QA/QC which are in line for this public disclosure as no blank or standard were introduced by GoldMinds.

Qualified Person

Claude Duplessis, Eng. of Goldminds Geoservices, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for the La Chesnaye Lake Silica exploration program and has approved the technical information contained in this news release.

About Canadian Metals

Canadian Metals is focused on the development of its Langis project, a high-purity silica deposit located in the province of Quebec. The Company is rapidly positioning itself as a supplier of high purity silica and silicon alloy in North America. Silicon based materials can be formulated to provide a broad range of products from more durable, faster building materials with smarter electronic devices, solar panels and more efficient wind turbines. We expect to become a global supplier for a number of industries and applications but without limitation: glass, ceramics, lighting, oil and gas, paint, plastic and rubber. We also want to become an integrated supplier to metallurgical industries including foundries, and participate in a wide range of civil, industrial, environmental and related applications. These target markets are an integral part of the lives of millions of people every day.

Website: www.canadianmetalsinc.com

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements included herein may constitute "forward-looking statements". All statements included in this press release that address future events, conditions or results, including in connection with the pre-feasibility study, its financing, the hybrid flex project, job creation, the investments to complete the project and the potential performance, production and environmental footprint of the silicon plant, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may", "must", "plan", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "think", "continue", "should", "will", "could", "intend", "anticipate" or "future" or the negative forms thereof or similar variations. These forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by management in light of their experiences and their perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors they believe are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those mentioned in the Corporation's continuous disclosure documents, which can be found under its profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Many of such risks and uncertainties are outside the control of the Corporation and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In making such forward-looking statements, management has relied upon a number of material factors and assumptions, on the basis of currently available information, for which there is no insurance that such information will prove accurate. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. The Corporation is under no 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, except as expressly required by applicable law.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Canadian Metals Inc.

Hubert Vallee

President and CEO

hvallee@canadianmetalsinc.com



Canadian Metals Inc.

Stephane Leblanc

Chief Investment Officer

sleblanc@canadianmetalsinc.com

www.canadianmetalsinc.com




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., has indicated he is willing to bring an immigration bill to the floor by the end of next month if lawmakers can reach a compromise on the legislation. McConnell noted in a statement on Wednesday that a bipartisan group of Senators are negotiating a bill that would include protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. President Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in September and Democrats have repeatedly called for a fix to protect the immigrants known as Dreamers. McConnell suggested that the bill would also include provisions to improve border security and interior immigration enforcement. 'If negotiators reach an agreement on these matters by the end of January, I will bring it to the Senate floor for a free-standing vote,' McConnell said. He added, 'I encourage those working on such legislation to develop a compromise that can be widely supported by both political parties and actually become law.' The statement from McConnell came a day after a bipartisan group of Senators met with White House officials regarding immigration policy. 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.
RICHMOND, BC / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Liberty Biopharma Inc. ("Liberty Biopharma" or the "Company") (TSX-V: LTY) today announced that it has received conditional approval from the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V") of the proposed acquisition and share exchange transaction (the "Transaction") with Cloud Medical Group Inc. ("CMGI").

CMGI is a healthcare technology company founded in 2014, with exclusive licensing agreements with Seven Stars Medical Inc. ("Seven Stars Medical"). Seven Stars Medical is focused on the development of a medical platform as a service (MPaaS), which is a business that has revenue, marketing and operational interests in a network of high-end medical and diagnostic clinics for regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy, oncology, immunotherapy, virtual reality consultations, and preventative medicine and treatment decision-making utilizing Big Data Cloud from Tencent.

Seven Stars Medical was founded by Bruno Wu, the Chairman and CEO of Seven Stars Cloud Group, Inc. (SSC) the global leading next-generation artificial intelligence and blockchain-powered financial technology company that offers supply chain and digital finance solutions for the energy and commodities industries. Mr Wu is also the founder, co-chairman and CEO of Sun Seven Stars Media Group Limited, one of the largest and most diversified private media and investment companies in China.

As part of the CMGI acquisition, Liberty Biopharma will work with the Seven Stars medical clinical team for access to MPaaS partner health clinics in China, Macau and Hong Kong for the implementation of its proprietary adipose stem cell isolation technology for anti-aging, osteoarthritis and medical aesthetics. Effective immediately, Dr. Michael T. McNamara will be appointed to Liberty Biopharma's medical advisory committee.

Dr. Michael McNamara is the Co-CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Seven Stars Medical. Dr. McNamara leads a unique specialty of preventive health practice using the most sophisticated modalities of diagnostic imaging and blood analysis. He founded the first hospital-based MRI department in Europe in 1986 at the Princess Grace Hospital in Monaco. Dr. McNamara developed the world's first preventive Total Body Scanning program, for the early detection of cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, cancer, and degenerative abnormalities. He has prior experience implementing regenerative medical treatment programs. He has served on the Medical Advisory Boards of General Electric Medical Systems, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Nycomed Laboratories, Bracco Diagnostics, Akloma Biosciences, The Angiogenesis Foundation, and uBiome, Inc. Dr. McNamara received his M.D. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA.

CMGI's "MPaaS" system will be integrating virtual reality, artificial intelligence, cloud-based mobile delivery, blockchain financial fulfilment and big data informatics from Seven Stars Cloud Group, Inc., for a royalty of 2% of revenues derived from the MPaaS system. CMGI also has a 49% beneficial interest in Medisun Healthcare (China) Limited ("Medisun"), a Hong Kong cell therapy and marketing joint venture in which the 51% joint venture partner Medisun Holdings Limited signed a master healthcare agreement in 2015 with the Mayo Clinic to carry out a multifaceted, innovative collaboration advancing healthcare delivery and establishing a jointly affiliated hospital network system under the Mayo Clinic Care Network in Hong Kong and China, offering telemedicine, training programs in hospital management and specialist technologies in regenerative medicine and oncology.

CMGI also has cooperation arrangements with i) Meinian Onehealth Healthcare (Group) Co., Ltd (Shenzhen Stock Exchange: 002044) to expand MPaaS and marketing services to over 300 health clinics in China ii) Centre Testing International Group Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen Stock Exchange: 300012) to expand the marketing of medical services and Lumenis cosmetic laser applications in China and iii) LDG Labor Deutschland (known as Laboratories Dr. Gansauge) for the marketing and delivery of oncological dendritic cell therapy and cancer vaccines in China, Macau and Hong Kong with over 6,000 patients treated globally (FDA & EMEA approved). CMGI also has a 70% beneficial interest in Guiyang, China - a flagship demonstration-sharing clinic for executive health in preventative medicine, gene sequencing, gene detection and cell therapy, medical imaging and big data informatics with segregated cash reserves of $3,800,000.

The CMGI vendors have direct access to marketing influencers through key media personalities that have access to over 40 million Weibo users, 1 million WeChat users, and other social media groups and apps, along with full media coverage on major media platforms such as Tencent, iQIUI, Netease, Yizhibo, and Huajia.

The Transaction is expected to close on Friday, December 22, 2017, pursuant to which the Company will issue 50,000,000 common shares as consideration for the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of CMGI. These shares will have a three-year escrow. The initial 10% will be released on the close of the Transaction and 15% will be released every 6 months thereafter. After the first 12 months following the closing of the Transaction, any remaining shares in escrow may become subject to an accelerated release from escrow should Liberty Biopharma's share price trade at or above $0.50 per common share for a minimum of 10 trading days. A further 20,000,000 common shares will be reserved for issuance to the vendors as performance shares. Should Liberty Biopharma attain an annual audited revenue primary threshold of $5,000,000, 10,000,000 common shares will be released. A further 10,000,000 shares will be released upon a secondary threshold of an incremental $5,000,000 in audited annual revenues being attained. Any Performance Shares remaining and not released under this Agreement by June 30, 2020 shall expire and be cancelled by Liberty Biopharma. All shares issued will be at a deemed value of $0.20 per common share.

As a condition of the Transaction, one of the shareholders of CMGI will subscribe for a private placement for 1,000,000 common shares at $0.15 for total consideration of $150,000 in Liberty Biopharma.

No new insiders or control persons will be created as part of this Transaction. The Transaction is subject to approval by the Board of Directors of each of Liberty Biopharma and CMGI.

The acquisition has been filed pursuant to policies of the TSX-V as an Expedited Acquisition and remains subject to regulatory approval.

About Liberty Biopharma Inc.

Liberty Biopharma is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing and commercializing regenerative stem cell technologies and therapeutic solutions for independence and quality of life. The Company's focus is on significant areas of unmet clinical need, such as wound management, osteoarthritis, musculoskeletal injury, cardiovascular diseases, and autoimmune diseases.

About Cloud Medical Group Inc.

Cloud Medical Group Inc. is a healthcare company focused on the delivery of cell therapy and e-healthcare solutions, increasingly deploying artificial intelligence-augmented applications. Initial areas of focus include i) preventative medicine, ii) dynamic oncology-based data analysis, iii) genetic analysis, and iv) insurance and financial payment for healthcare using next-generation artificial intelligence and blockchain-powered technology.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the Policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

Cautionary Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could," "intend," "expect," "believe," "will," "projected," "likely," "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risk that Liberty Biopharma may not successfully transition to a clinical stage company and successfully execute its development and commercialization activities. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in the forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to Liberty Biopharma. Readers are cautioned that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof and Liberty Biopharma 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.

For further information, please contact:

Liberty Biopharma Inc.

Alan Tam, CPA, CA

Chief Financial Officer

Telephone: (604) 604-377-7575

SOURCE: Liberty Biopharma Inc.
Fera's addition bolsters Aprimo's leadership in providing customers tailored marketing solutions to meet unique industry challenges CHICAGO, 2017-12-21 20:25 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Aprimo announced the addition of Mark Fera as Senior Vice President of Industry Solutions. With over 25 years of experience with proven results across multiple key industries, including retail, lifestyle sciences and CPG, Fera will play a pivotal role in providing dynamic solutions that are tailored to each industry's unique needs. "Aprimo's leading position as a global pioneer in cloud based, digital marketing operations is a testament to our client's success," said Mark Fera, Aprimo Senior Vice President of Industry Solutions. "I look forward to joining this world class team and helping provide market defining advantages to current and future Aprimo customers by creating individualized digital marketing solutions that evolve their brand, spur aggressive growth and generate long-term revenue." Under his leadership, Fera will lead a team of global experts that help organizations and address the most pressing needs of CMOs, CIOs and CFOs across the digital marketing spectrum, including managing and optimizing marketing spend, increasing marketing reach to consumers, driving campaigns into market with limited resources and protecting and extending digital properties, and lowering the overall cost of managing the marketing infrastructure. Fera will work collaboratively with Aprimo's Americas Region, International Regions and Global Alliances. "Mark's addition continues Aprimo's commitment in providing today's business leaders a distinct competitive advantage," said John Stammen, CEO of Aprimo. "As industries face unique business and marketing challenges, Mark's addition enhances our ability to provide customized solutions that address the most pressing needs facing today's businesses across all industries. We are very excited for Mark to join the team." Prior to joining Aprimo, Fera was Executive Director in Ernst & Young's Advisory Practice where he led the practice in bringing innovative solutions to market, with a focus on growing the consumer packaged goods and life sciences industries with Fortune 100 clients. Fera also spent nearly a decade with Accenture, where he held a number of solution management and client leadership positions with Fortune 100 clients. Fera earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Fera's addition will help continue Aprimo's customers achieve success across multiple verticals. For more information on past Aprimo success stories, please view past case studies featuring Dell, Philips, Xerox and Bank of America. About Aprimo Aprimo's performance driven Marketing Operations and Digital Asset Management technology gives marketers the advantage to govern and grow their brand. Aprimo delivers the advantage with its innovative Marketing Operations Hub. We allow marketers to manage budgets, data, people, and content throughout the ideation, workflow and campaign delivery of the brand experience while maximizing provable ROI. For more information, visit www.aprimo.com. Media Contact Michael Grimm Finn Partners for Aprimo aprimo@finnpartners.com 312-329-3975


JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - Member States in the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution criticizing the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Thursday



The resolution, which expresses 'deep regret' over the decision concerning the status of Jerusalem, was adopted by a vote of 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions.



Togo, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Palau, Honduras and Guatemala joined the U.S. and Israel in voting against the resolution.



The vote in the general assembly came after the U.S. used its veto to block an attempt by the U.N. Security Council to adopt a similar resolution on Monday.



Ahead of the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley accused the general assembly of singling the U.S. out for attack for the very act of exercising its right as a sovereign nation.



'We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations,' Haley said.



She added, 'And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.'



President Donald Trump announced the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel earlier this month and said the U.S. would also begin preparations to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.



Trump said he determined that the move is in the best interests of the U.S. and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.



However, the decision by the president drew widespread criticism and sparked protests and violence across the Middle East.



The resolution adopted by the general assembly demanded that 'all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.'



The resolution further affirmed that 'any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.'



Nonetheless, resolutions adopted by the general assembly are non-binding and do not carry the force of international law as do measures approved by the Security Council.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Chelsea's Newest Wine & Spirits Retailer Offers Winery Direct Savings to Customers

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Empire State of Wine, a modern wine retail experience, opened its doors earlier this month in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, at 111 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Its ambiance pulls in the streets of New York with an industrial influence, along with lively hues, exposed racks, and stacked shipping containers to heighten the decor. The playlist and vibe are emblematic of the colorful people that inhabit the city.

With the majority of products sourced from personal winery relationships and cleared through service companies, owner Eddy Le Garrec is able to offer a hand-selected array of award-winning wines that significantly over-deliver on price. The winery-direct model allows Empire State of Wine to pass on savings to its customers, while the critically acclaimed and curated selection makes for a simplified shopping experience.

"I wanted to bring a different experience to New York City," states founder Eddy Le Garrec. "I saw a market where consumers not only wanted to purchase great products but also learn about them at the same time."

Empire State of Wine patrons have access to a focused and hand-picked lineup of fine wines and craft spirits. The store highlights a "Best Under $15" category, classified by flavor and style to give shoppers confidence in their purchase, and a "100 Point Room," where customers can access the best in class for the best value. At Empire State of Wine, customers can discover wines such as Bodega Virgen de la Sierra, which is rated 91 points by Wine Advocate and featured at $14.99, or Clos du Roy Fronsac, rated 92 points and featured at $19.99. In addition, the craft spirits section boasts an eclectic group of carefully chosen brands, none of which are considered the usual suspects. The goal is to offer a value-driven luxury for each spirit category.

A daily newsletter amplifies new wine releases and promotions, singular to the Empire State of Wine online and in-store shopping experience. Customers can easily stay connected to learn about new products, sale specials, and latest events. Empire State of Wine is set to host tastings with engaging themes, such as "Burgers & Bordeaux," to advance one's comfort-level in the subject of wine.

With a quick-chilling service, online ordering, delivery or pick-up, Empire State of Wine provides a bespoke shopping experience. The company has free delivery in Manhattan on any order over $99; online orders are shipped throughout NY state and to select markets. In addition, Empire State of Wine offers Corporate Gift Giving services.

About Eddy Le Garrec

With 25 years in the wine business, Eddy Le Garrec's experience spans from France to Los Angeles, where he was part of the growing wine rush in the 1990s. As a wine educator and business owner, Eddy opened "W Wine Boutique" in Miami, becoming the #1 retail store in Florida for wine over $75. After a three-year non-compete, Eddy has recently evolved his business concept into a New York space, creating Empire State of Wine.

Empire State of Wine is open Monday-Sunday at 111 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. For more information, please visit www.empirestateofwine.com. Phone: (212) 888-2297.

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Andrew Matthews

Foundations Marketing Group

amatthews@fmg.nyc

T: 212.537.9363

SOURCE: Empire State of Wine
LUXEMBOURG CITY, LUXEMBOURG / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / Due primarily to lower oil and commodity prices, there is a common misconception that Africa's fortunes have dwindled. In the second quarter of 2016, foreign direct investment in the continent dropped by 46 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, Africa's strong fundamentals point to building momentum - the International Monetary Fund projects it will have the world's second largest economy within the next few years. A panel of globally recognized trading experts from Q Smart Limited recently discussed several exciting investing opportunities.

With a population of more than one billion people that is expected to double by mid-century, Africa offers an enormous potential market. And while the rest of the world is aging, Deloitte reported that some 200 million citizens, about 20% of the continent's population, are between the ages of 15 and 24. By 2030, that figure is expected to rise to 321 million. As a result, in a few year's Africa's workforce will reach 1.1 billion, surpassing that of China and India. The young demographics point to economic strength, in that a working-age population is associated with favorable rates of GDP growth. The young consumers also want the latest products, services, and technology. Today, African citizens and businesses spend a total of 4 trillion USD on commercial goods. By 2025, McKinsey projects that household consumption will reach $2.1 trillion and corporate spending $3.5 trillion - a total of $5.6 trillion in investment opportunities. In addition, 58 percent of consumers are brand loyal and many are willing to pay a higher price for a modern, quality shopping experience.

While the Q Smart Limited panel noted that growth has slowed among oil exporters, the rest of Africa is continuing to move forward with positive rates. Countries not dependent on resources for growth, typically with smaller economies, are driving progress with economic reform and increased competitiveness. Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda posted average GDP increases of 5.8% a year between 2010 and 2015. In addition, many countries are beginning to diversify beyond commodities and working to attract investment. Two, in particular, have shown positive growth based on ambitious diversification strategies: Morroco is accelerating global innovations exports and Ethiopia has implemented an advanced industrialization strategy. Across the rest of Africa, energy, technology, healthcare, and tourism are just a few of the sectors that hold great potential for investors, and those with foresight and a long-term view will be in a great position to capitalize on them.

Q Smart Limited is a market leading supplier of Contracts for Differences (CFDs) on trading stocks, commodities, and indexes. Created by a joint effort of financial professionals and experts in online commerce, Q Smart has been a pioneer in online trading for more than 17 years and has offices in Hong Kong, Oslo, Wellington, and Sao Paulo.

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
The nursing education market in the US is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 20% during the period 2017-2021, according to a new market research study by Technavio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005591/en/

Technavio has published a new market research report on the nursing education market in the US 2017-2021 under their education library. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The report categorizes the nursing education market in the US by course (postgraduate courses and graduate courses) and by end-user (hospitals and home healthcare services).

This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing

Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free

Market driver: growing geriatric population and chronic illness

One of the key drivers contributing substantially to the growth of the nursing education market in the US is the continuously increasing geriatric population. Most of the aging population or the older adults suffer from at least one or more chronic health conditions. Owing to this, there is an increasing demand for nurses in hospitals as well as home healthcare services. Despite being one of the fastest-growing professions in the country, the demand for nurses is outpacing its supply. Therefore, there is a considerable rise in the need to increase the number of nurses across hospitals in the country.

According to Jhansi Mary, a lead analyst at Technavio for K12 and higher educationresearch, "The continuous aging of the baby boomer population in the US is another factor resulting in the growth of home healthcare services. This is further creating the demand for travel nurses and other registered nurses who can provide healthcare facilities. Subsequently, this will result in the need to encourage more nurses to enroll in specialized nursing courses. As a result, there will be a rise in the demand for universities and schools offering innovative programs and courses on nursing."

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Market trend: rising use of social learning

Many learners willing to pursue nursing education are increasingly adopting social media to learn and create communities. This is creating more awareness about learning concepts through social media. Many students come from middle-class working families, with increased motivation to advance their professional potential and knowledge to move up the hierarchy at their workplaces. Continuous changes in the healthcare technology and patient care have created an increasing need for additional certifications and degree among learners to gain a competitive edge over other counterparts. This has resulted in the creation of learning communities or networks on social media with groups of learners discussing curriculum-related content and problems.

Market challenge: higher setup costs

Nursing education is specific to the nature of its profession and involves continuous practice in real-time scenarios. For this, nursing schools or colleges providing courses give enough opportunities to learners to get hands-on practical lessons on concepts taught in classrooms. Therefore, often schools need to establish simulation labs or clinical sites to establish a platform for the students. This incurs significant costs to colleges. These costs are further added to the overall fee charged by the students.

Is your business on track for a successful future? Learn how Technavio can help

Technavio helps businesses anticipate changes in their marketplace, make proactive adjustments, and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

Key vendors in the market

Duke University

Johns Hopkins University

University of Pennsylvania

University of California

The nursing education market in the US is fragmented with several already established nursing colleges that provide a range of graduate, undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and certification programs and courses to promote and strengthen nursing education among the keen learners and healthcare professionals. With the growing demand for nursing professionals for the geriatric population and other patients, the competition is expected to increase considerably during the forecast period.

Get a sample copy of the nursing education market in the US report free of cost

Access Technavio's continuously growing K12 and higher education research library and find expert analysis on hundreds of markets.

About Technavio

Technaviois a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005591/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
MONTE CARLO, MONACO / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2017 / From the silver galleons that financed the Spanish Empire to the iron and copper exports that are rebuilding China, Latin America's natural resources have helped move the world economy for centuries. Today, the development of renewable energy across the region is creating a new economic phenomenon that is resulting in colossal domestic growth. Financial expert Vicente Izquierdo Munoz is confident that Latin America's huge strides in wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel resources has a host of countries on the cusp of energy revolutions that will reshape infrastructure and create myriad business opportunities.

While Latin America is still known for its vast oil resources, technological innovations have increased efficiency and reduced costs, boosting the competitiveness of renewable energy. However, Vicente Izquierdo Munoz noted that according to a December 2016 World Economic Forum report, solar and wind are outcompeting fossil fuels in Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts solar will be cheaper than coal by 2025, earlier in places like Brazil that have limited deposits and a carbon tax. As demand continues to grow over the next five years, renewables will remain the fastest growing source of electricity. With 54 percent of generation capacity from renewables, Latin America is already leading the global green energy movement. In 2016 Costa Rica ran purely on clean power for months at a time, and Uruguay generated 92.8 percent of its electricity from sustainable sources.

The advancements made last year have carried over to 2017. Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri, issued a decree to significantly develop his country's energy sector, and Google Chile announced that 100 percent of its electricity is now renewable. In addition to supplying Google's data center and offices, the El Romero solar plant - one of the largest photovoltaic projects in the world -- will produce enough clean power for 250,000 homes while avoiding approximately 475,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal fired plants. Brazil, Chile and Mexico - followed closely by Argentina - rank among the top ten of Ernst & Young's renewable energy country attractiveness index (RECAI). Countries are evaluated based on their clean power targets, fiscal incentives, and legislations such as Mexico's energy transition law, which is designed to create a favorable business climate and boost investor confidence in the long-term market for renewables. Recently, Latin American leaders joined other pioneers from around the world to reaffirm their commitment to the Paris climate agreement. The continent's commitment to clean energy and climate change is increasingly becoming an example to be followed.

Vicente Izquierdo Munoz is a globally recognized financial authority and the co-founder of the market leading broker of Contracts for Differences (CFDs). With over 17 years of experience in the international trading and foreign exchange industry, Vicente and his team provide advanced technological solutions and expert advice on market dynamics for clients in over 180 countries.

Vicente Izquierdo Munoz - Co-Founder of a Leading Brokerage of CFDs: http://vicenteizquierdomunoznews.com

Vicente Izquierdo Munoz (@vicenteimunoz) - Twitter: https://twitter.com/VicenteIMunoz

Vicente Izquierdo Munoz - Professional Profile - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicente-izquierdo-munoz-854154155/

Contact Information:

VicenteIzquierdoMunozNews.com

contact@vicenteizquierdomunoznews.com

http://vicenteizquierdomunoznews.com

SOURCE: Vicente Izquierdo Munoz
Washington, DC--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2017) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Gerald W. Hodgkins, an Associate Director of the Division of Enforcement, will leave the agency at the end of this year for private practice.

During his tenure of two decades at the SEC, Mr. Hodgkins has overseen more than 100 enforcement actions covering the full breadth of the agency's jurisdiction, including issuer reporting and disclosure fraud, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and misconduct by entities regulated by the agency. Since being appointed as Associate Director in 2010, Mr. Hodgkins also has served as a founding member of the SEC's Claims Review Staff, which makes recommendations to the Commission concerning when and how much to award whistleblowers under the SEC's whistleblower program. He also has served as a member of the SEC's National Labor Management Forum.

"Jerry embodies what it means to be a dedicated public servant," said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "He will be missed terribly by all of us in the Enforcement Division, but most especially by the scores of lawyers he has mentored and supervised over the years."

"Jerry has been an insightful and innovative leader of the SEC's enforcement program, and his contributions will have lasting impact," said Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division.

Mr. Hodgkins said, "I am grateful for the opportunity to have served U.S. investors for much of my professional career. It was a pleasure and privilege to work alongside the dedicated and talented staff at the SEC, whose commitment to public interest has never wavered."

Under Mr. Hodgkins' leadership, the SEC has brought enforcement actions addressing a wide variety of misconduct, including charges against:

WorldCom, Inc., which agreed in 2003 to pay a $750 million civil penalty - the largest penalty in SEC history for issuer reporting and disclosure fraud - as well as against WorldCom's former CEO, Bernard J. Ebbers, CFO, Scott D. Sullivan, and controller David F. Myers;

MRI International and Edwin Fujinaga, for conducting a massive Ponzi scheme targeting Japanese citizens and against whom the SEC obtained over $580 million in monetary remedies on summary judgment in a civil action filed in 2013;

William W. McGuire, M.D., the former CEO and Chairman of UnitedHealth Group Inc., who agreed in 2007 to pay $468 million in what was the first and still largest settlement involving Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; and

Daimler AG, which agreed in 2010 to pay more than $185 million to resolve parallel SEC and U.S. Department of Justice investigations related to its violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Mr. Hodgkins also spearheaded a settlement in 2008 with a large financial institution that provided 5,500 individual investors, small businesses, and small charities the opportunity to sell back up to $4.7 billion in auction rate securities (ARS) they purchased before the ARS market collapsed in February 2008.

Mr. Hodgkins, 52, joined the SEC in 1997. He became a Branch Chief in 1999, an Assistant Director in 2007, and an Associate Director in 2010. Before joining the SEC, he served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Charles R. Richey of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He also was a litigation associate in private practice in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University.
Conning Adds Best-in-Class Capabilities in Emerging Market Debt and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing

Accelerates Global Evolution's Expansion into North America and Asia Pacific

Conning, a leading global investment management firm, and Global Evolution, a premier specialist investment manager of emerging and frontier market debt strategies, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Conning to acquire a 45 percent stake in Global Evolution. The transaction is expected to close in early 2018, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221006109/en/

"We are very pleased to welcome Conning as a new shareholder in Global Evolution. This is a significant milestone in our firm's development one that recognizes the strength of our business and emphasizes our reputation as a leader in emerging and frontier markets," said Sren Rump, Chief Executive Officer of Global Evolution. "Conning is the ideal strategic partner and has made a significant commitment of resources, including enhanced global distribution and capital, that accelerates our growth and enhances the experience for our clients."

Following the closing, Global Evolution will continue to operate as an independent boutique and founders Sren Rump and Morten Bugge will continue as CEO and CIO, respectively. Employees will continue to hold a majority ownership interest in the firm, with Conning increasing its position in Global Evolution over time through a series of staged investments designed to provide complete stability for the business, and continuity in service and performance for clients.

"Emerging market debt is increasingly being accepted as a strategic asset class for investors globally, and given this trend we are pleased to be able to provide Global Evolution's world-class investment expertise to our clients," said Woody Bradford, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Conning. "We look forward to working with Sren, Morten and the Global Evolution team as we build our business, serve clients, and pursue new opportunities together."

"This transaction is beneficial to our clients, employees and business. With the support of Conning's resources, Global Evolution is well positioned to accelerate innovation in emerging and frontier market investing," said Morten Bugge, Chief Investment Officer of Global Evolution. "This transaction ensures that the investment team can focus on what is most important, namely delivering high quality emerging and frontier market products to investors."

Magnusson Denmark Advokatpartnerselskab served as legal advisor to Conning on this transaction. Spencer House Partners LLP served as financial advisor and Kromann Reumert served as legal advisor to Global Evolution.

ABOUT CONNING

Conning (www.conning.com) is a leading global investment management firm with approximately $120 billion in global assets under management as of November 30, 2017.* With a long history of serving the insurance industry, Conning supports institutional investors, including pension plans, with investment solutions and asset management offerings, award-winning risk modeling software, and industry research. Founded in 1912, Conning has offices in Boston, Cologne, Hartford, Hong Kong, London, New York, and Tokyo.

*As of November 30, 2017, represents the combined global assets under management for the affiliated firms under Conning Holdings Limited, and Cathay Securities Investment Trust Co., Ltd. ("SITE"). SITE reports internally into Conning Asia Pacific Limited, but is a separate legal entity under Cathay Financial Holding Co., Ltd. which is the ultimate controlling parent of all Conning entities.

ABOUT GLOBAL EVOLUTION

Founded in 2007, Global Evolution (www.globalevolution.com) is a dedicated, leading emerging and frontier markets investment manager, committed to impact investing. With US$6.6 billion in assets under management as of November 30, 2017, the firm invests globally on behalf of a wide range of institutional investors through pooled funds and segregated accounts. Its clients are supported by a long-tenured group of investment professionals, and its founders have worked together for more than two decades. Global Evolution is known for its innovative approach to investing in emerging and frontier markets. Global Evolution has its head office in Kolding, Denmark, and offices in Zurich and New York.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221006109/en/

Contacts:

Conning

Myra Lee, +1 860-299-2278 (direct)

Myra.Lee@Conning.com

or

Stanton Public Relations Marketing

Doug Allen, +1 646-502-3530

dallen@stantonprm.com
Carbon, a Redwood City, Calif.-based digital 3D manufacturing company, held the first closing in a total raise of $200m in Series D funding.

Backers included:

 Baillie Gifford (Scotland),

 Fidelity Management & Research Company (U.S.),

 ARCHINA Capital (HK),

 Hydra Ventures (the corporate venturing arm of adidas),

 GE Ventures,

 JSR Corporation,

 Emerson Elemental (the environmental practice of Emerson Collective),

 Sequoia Capital,

 Silver Lake Kraftwerk, and

 Reinet Investments.

Other investors are expected to be disclosed in early 2018.

disclosure 09/01/2018: Johnson & Johnson Innovation is an investor in the round.

The company will use the additional capital to continue to expand operations and its development efforts as well as its business reach.

Founded in 2013 by Dr. Joseph DeSimone, CEO, Carbon provides a digital 3D manufacturing platform, which fuses light and oxygen to produce polymeric products from a pool of resin. The companys subscription-based model closely aligns it to its customers businesses  with every-six-week software updates, continuous education and training programs, and one-to-one customer service.

The platofrm has applications across a variety of industries, including automotive, consumer products, dental, and medical.

FinSMEs

21/12/2017
Framer, an Amsterdam, The Netherlandsbased design startup, secured $7.7m in Series A funding.

The round was led by Accel with participation from Foundation Capital, Designer Fund and AngelList.

The company intends to use the funds to ramp up product development, hire across every team, and invest in design education and training.

Co-founded in 2013 by Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk, Framer provides a complete prototyping and developer handoff tool and a has just launched a fully integrated visual design studio aimed at graphic designers.

FinSMEs

20/12/2017

PRESS RELEASE

Amsterdam, Netherlands  December 20, 2017  Framer (www.framer.com), a complete prototyping and developer handoff tool, today announces the launch of a fully integrated visual design studio aimed at attracting the largest segment of their target market  graphic designers. This rounds out a year of releases for Framer, making it a full-service screen design tool and the first to consolidate the designer toolkit. Its now possible to design everything from detailed icons to high-fidelity interactive apps directly in Framer, putting the former code-only prototyping app in the same league as industry heavyweights like InVision, Sketch and Figma. In addition, Framer has secured a Series A funding round of $7.7 million led by Accel and joined by existing investors Foundation Capital, Designer Fund and AngelList. This financial investment will be used to ramp up product development, hire across every team, and invest in design education and training.

In 2017, Framer increased its enterprise accounts by tenfold, onboarding tech giants like Google, Twitter and Facebook as well as agencies such as Huge, Work & Co. and Frog Design. The app is also steadily gaining popularity in Asian markets, such as South Korea and China. The launch of this built-in screen design tool allows Framer to claim a larger piece of the workflow at top product designs teams worldwide. The app now offers the same specs as graphics tools like InVision, Sketch and Figma directly within their own interface. Fire up the tool today and youll see a an interface that looks much like any of their competitors, though thats mostly intentional.

Were betting on something that our competitors arent  that designers will want a tool which does both high-fidelity design and prototyping. We were already the best prototyping tool on the market, so we spent this year integrating a complete visual and graphic design interface into the same app, said Framers cofounder Koen Bok. We looked at the other screen design tools on the market, honed in on the features that made sense and perfected them. Our goal was to build something that looked and felt familiar, but with smarter decision-making happening on the back end. Now everything you design in Framer is responsive by default, so you need only to design something once. Based on that, were able to accurately reshape and resize your original design across any device.

This same line of thinking applies to the tools vector editing feature. While it resembles what youd find in Figma or Sketch, Framers vector tools really shine when it comes to the end product. As a browser-based app, Framer is able to offer perfect SVG output, meaning designers are guaranteed that anything they design in the app will look exactly the same on every screen, and in every browser. Given the rise of retina and high-res displays, this feature presents a major selling point. The obvious upside of having a vector-based toolkit means that now anyone can design illustrations, graphics, and icons directly in Framer, no code necessary. But the real game plan is much more future-facing  Framer wants designers to come for their smarter, more intuitive screen design workflow and stay for the powerful prototyping feature set.

The Framer team has already done an amazing job of building the industrys go-to interactive tool, said Luciana Lixandru, Investment Partner at Accel. With the launch of this completely integrated visual design studio, theyve further cemented their place as the all-in-one design tool of choice for todays most ambitious companies.

To start using Framer today, please visit: www.framer.com

About Framer

Framers cofounders Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk worked at their first company, Sofa, together in 2009. After winning multiple Apple Design Awards, Sofa was acquired by Facebook in 2011. After two years of helping launch major product features at Facebook, Bok and van Dijk realized that the design workflow lacked a tool that allowed designers to create and communicate an end-to-end product experience. The pair moved back to Amsterdam and co-founded Framer in 2013, a high-fidelity prototyping tool used by companies all over the world. To date, Framer has raised $9.3 million in Series A funding from Accel, and seed round investors Designer Fund, Foundation Capital and Greylock Partners.
Inzmo, an Estonian insurtech startup, received a single-digit million funding round.

Helvetia Venture Fund made the investment.

Inzmo offers a digitalized B2B2C insurance platform covering all the key stages, including taking out cover, managing contracts, partnerships and claims reporting via a mobile app or in the stores of partner retailers.

The startup is currently working on insuring assets such as bikes, electronics, glasses and watches.

The funds of the investment will be used to build on this partnership.

FinSMEs

21/12/2017
The NAGA Token Sale, which was backed by the German FinTech company The NAGA Group AG, concluded last week, successfully raising over $50 million USD.

The Token Sale Ends

The NAGA Token Sale came to its conclusion last week and the final numbers are in. Thanks to the 63,000+ backers who participated in the token sale, more than 50 million USD was raised, shattering the projects original target goal of 30 million USD.

The project was advised by renowned blockchain experts such as Roger Ver (Founder & CEO Bitcoin.com), Mate Tokay (COO Bitcoin.com), Miko Matsumura (Limited Partner Pantera Capital), and Guy Ben-Artzi (Co-Founder Bancor).

The community interest and support for NAGA was tremendous. The number of active users in the projects popular Telegram channel grew to more than 11,600 members and over 42,000 followers, fans, subscribers, and readers were attracted across all social media platforms.

And now the Real Work Begins!

Now that the token sale has ended, The NAGA Group are preparing to distribute participants tokens and get everything ready for the debut of NAGAs NGC token launch on the HitBTC exchange on December 22, 2017, at 12:00 PM CET.

In addition, the NAGA team are hard at work finishing the development and testing of the NAGA wallet, which is scheduled to launch in April 2018. Other important upcoming milestones include:

 Integration of NGC as the SwipeStox base currency

 Launch of the NAGA debit card

 Integration of NGC as an accepted currency within Switex

About NAGA

The NAGA Token Sale was backed by The NAGA Group, which is a publicly listed, EU-regulated German Fintech company with trading platforms for financial markets and virtual goods. After launching one of Germanys fastest IPOs in the last fifteen years, The NAGA Group was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on July 10, 2017. Since then, the companys share price has gone up by nearly 500%. They have a market cap of more than 200 million Euros, millions in reported revenues, and over $4 billion in trading volume every month.

The NAGA Group is a growth-driven international FinTech company with an accomplished team of more than 120 people. They hold various EU financial licenses, including an asset management license, and are backed by one of Chinas largest private investment conglomerates, FOSUN. They are further supported and backed by other prestigious investors, institutions, and advisors, including Hauck & Aufhauser, one of the oldest private banks in Germany.

For more information about NAGA and the post-token sale development process, please visit the NGC website and join the NGC Telegram channel to stay in touch.
New Delhi: Domestic carriers reported a total of 1,000 technical snags in 2017 with the Air India accounting for more than half of the glitches, according to data shared by the government in Parliament on Thursday.

The divestment-bound national carrier witnessed 581 technical glitches across its fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

It was followed by the SpiceJet with 259 snags reported across its fleet of Boeing and the smaller Bombardier Q400 aircraft. The Jet Airways saw 80 technical problems in its fleet of Boeings, Airbuses and ATR planes.

Market leader IndiGo reported 37 cases of malfunctions in its planes.

These figures were shared by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha in the Lok Sabha.

The national carrier, comprising Air India, Air India Express and Alliance Air, has the largest fleet size of 155 aircraft. The IndiGo has the second largest number of planes at 150.

The Jet Airways currently operates a fleet of 115 aircraft and SpiceJet has 57 planes.

The Go Air, which has 32 planes, reported 17 technical problems. The AirAsia has 13 aircraft and faced 16 glitches, while the Vistara, with 17 aircraft, witnessed 3 malfunctions.

However, most airlines registered a significant decline in technical malfunctions in 2017 as compared to 2016.

But IndiGo, which bore the brunt of snag-ridden Pratt and Whitney engines on its A320 Neos, saw a 54 percent rise in glitches, up from 24 last year to 37 this year.
New Delhi:The Cabinet on Wednesday approved a new Consumer Protection Bill that seeks to establish an authority to safeguard consumers rights and has provisions for penalty and jail terms in case of adulteration and misleading ads by companies.

Celebrities endorsing misleading ads are also liable for fine and ban of up to three years.

According to sources, the Cabinet has approved introduction of the Consumer Protection Bill, 2017, which will result in withdrawal of a bill brought in 2015.

In August 2015, the Centre had introduced the Consumer Protection Bill in the Lok Sabha to repeal the 30-year-old Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

A Parliamentary Standing Committee had also submitted its recommendations in April last year.

The consumer affairs ministry has brought this bill as there were many amendments to the bill introduced in 2015.

On misleading ads, the bill provides for fine and ban on celebrities. In case of first offence, the fine will be up to Rs 10 lakh and a one-year ban on any endorsement. For the second offence, the fine will be up to Rs 50 lakh and up to three years ban.

However, for manufacturers and companies, penalty is up to Rs 10 lakh and up to two years jail for the first offence. The fine will be up to Rs 50 lakh and five years jail for subsequent offence.

The bill also provides for penalty and up to life term jail sentence in case of adulteration.

"The Bill has provisions for misleading ads and e- commerce trade," Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had recently said.

Sources said the new bill seeks to enlarge scope of the existing law and make it more effective and purposeful.

It seeks to establish a Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to protect consumer rights. It has provisions for post-litigation stage mediation as an alternate dispute resolution mechanism. The bill also provides for product liability action.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently said that consumer protection is the governments priority.

"We are in the process of bringing a new law on consumer protection keeping in mind the need of the country and business practices here," he had said.

He had announced that a Consumer Protection Authority would be formed with executive powers for immediate redressal.

"The stress is being given on consumer empowerment. Strict provisions are being contemplated against misleading advertisements," Modi had said.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Thursday said the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour".

The party's "zero loss theory" was proved to be wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, the minister said after a special court acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum scam allocation case.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, the minister asserted.

"The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012," Jaitley told reporters.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi were on Thursday acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case. All other accused and three companies were also acquitted in the case.
New Delhi: In a move aimed at combating black money stashed abroad, India signed an agreement with Switzerland on Thursday that would allow automatic sharing of tax-related information from 1 January next year, the CBDT said.

"With the completion of the parliamentary procedure in Switzerland and signing of mutual agreement, India and Switzerland are set for automatic exchange of information for the period beginning from 1 January, 2018," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.

The policy-making body for the Income Tax Department said the agreement was signed by CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra and Swiss Ambassador to India Andreas Baum at the North Block.

A joint declaration for the implementation of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) was signed last month between the two sides here and it provided that both countries would start collecting data in accordance with the global standards in 2018 and exchange it from 2019 onwards.

While Switzerland has conformed to the global standards on automatic exchange of information with the signing of the declaration, India, on its part, has promised to safeguard the confidentiality of the data.

"It will now be possible for India to receive from September 2019 onwards, the financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland for 2018 and subsequent years, on an automatic basis," the government earlier said.

Switzerland, which has always been at the centre of the debate on black money allegedly stashed by Indians abroad, used to be known for very strong secrecy walls till a few years ago around its banking practices.

A huge global pressure has resulted in Switzerland relenting on the tough secrecy clauses its local laws gave to the banks.

Official sources said that several information requests on details about Indians who had accounts in Swiss banks were still pending.

The AEOI conforms to a norm set by the global economic body The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for tax transparency.
Ratan Tata, former chairman of Tata Sons who is widely known for backing entrepreneurs, and Rajan Anandan, Google India managing director, have funded Bombay Hemp Company (Boheco), Indias first cannabis startup for medical research, according to a report in The Economic Times.

The medical research startup was set up with an aim to explore ways for finding many uses of the narcotic drug for medical purposes. To realise that goal, Boheco roped in the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research as a partner.

The company which is based out of Mumbai has raised Rs 6.25 crore from Tata and Anandan in first round of seed funding. In tandem with CSIR, it will grow cannabis in Jammu & Kasmir. The companies plan to study and later find out in what way the hemp will be useful for treatment of epilepsy, breast cancer and palliative care.

We already have our first batch of cannabis plants cultivated in Jammu, within the CSIR framework," Avnish Pandya, co-founder of Boheco, has been quoted in the ET report. Interestingly, in its initial years of being set up, Boheco sold clothing and nutritional foods.

The company further says it will use the proceeds from the recent seed funding for hiring scientists from India as well as foreign nations. For that purpose, The Netherlands has already been in its crosshairs.

All the products that the company will come up in near future will be in sync with Indias regulatory framework governing use of cannabis particularly for medical purposes. Pandya adds the first product that will come to the market will be for palliative care. A palliative care is extended to people with serious illness and that also focuses on providing relief from symptoms.

Cannabis use in India



Cannabis was legally sold in India until 1985 mainly for recreational use. In the early 1960, the United States had started a massive campaign against use of all drugs for non-medical purposes. India had at that time opposed the drive but changed its stance later. In 1985, the Rajiv Gandhi government enacted the strict Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances popularly known as NDPS Act. This act bans carrying, consumption of narcotic drugs of all kinds.
New Delhi: Reliance Infrastructure on Thursday signed an agreement to sell its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission for a total consideration of Rs 18,800 crore.

Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) announced the signing of a Definitive Binding Agreement with Adani Transmission (ATL) for 100 percent stake sale of its Mumbai power business, which includes integrated business of generation, transmission and distribution of power, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing on Thursday.

According to the statement, the deal value is at Rs 13,251 crore. This comprises business valued at Rs 12,101 crore and regulatory assets approved so far of Rs 1,150 crore.

In addition, it said, regulatory assets under approval estimated at Rs 5,000 crore and net working capital on closing pegged at Rs 550 crore will flow directly to RInfra.

The company said the total consideration is estimated at Rs 18,800 crore.

RInfra will utilise the proceeds of this transformative transaction entirely to reduce its debt, becoming debt free and garnering up to Rs 3,000 crore as cash surplus.

Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, said: "The acquisition marks our foray into the distribution sector in India. We see distribution as the next sunrise sector as India embarks on its mission to achieve 24x7 power for all."

He further said, "We see a massive growth opportunity and will look at both organic and inorganic opportunities to build a market leading distribution company. With this acquisition, Adani Transmission will enjoy benefit of scale and of being an integrated distribution and transmission business in India."

The company claimed that this is the largest ever debt reduction exercise by any corporate, saying this monetisation is a major step in RInfra's deleveraging strategy for future growth.

Reliance Infrastructure's Mumbai Power business, known as Reliance Energy, is India's largest private integrated power utility, distributing power to nearly 3 million residential, industrial and commercial consumers in suburbs of Mumbai covering 400 sq km.

It caters to a peak demand of over 1,800 mw, with annual revenues of Rs 7,500 crore with stable cash flows.

Going forward, RInfra will focus on upcoming opportunities in asset-light EPC and Defence businesses, it added.

The proposed transaction is subject to customary approvals.
New Delhi: Banks will need to take a 'haircut' of up to 60 percent on their bad loans to resolve the issue of massive non-performing assets (NPAS) accumulated in the Indian banking system, which is holding up higher economic growth, rating agency Crisil said on Wednesday.

According to the American agency S&P-owned Crisil, tepid investment growth and the high level of NPAs are the two uncertain factors clouding the outlook on India achieving a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of over 7 percent in the next fiscal.

"Banks will need to take a haircut of up to 60 percent to resolve the issue of NPA," Crisil Chief Analytical Officer Pavan Aggarwal said at an editors meet organised here by the company.

"The top 50 NPA accounts constitute 50 per cent of all bad loans of banks in the country and account for Rs 4,25,000 crore of NPAs," he said.

"The critical element for the economy now is a speedy resolution of these cases which will bring down the level of gross NPAs," he added.

Pointing out that the credit growth of banks would improve on a resolution of the NPAs issue, the Crisil analyst said that their capacity to take haircuts had been bolstered by the massive recapitalisation recently announced by the government for state-run banks.

The government has embarked on a two-pronged strategy in this regard, he said.

On the one hand, the government has brought in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code which provides for a time-bound insolvency resolution process. The Reserve Bank of India has already identified 12 accounts adding up to 25 per cent of the NPAs for insolvency proceedings. Another 29 companies also identified by the Reserve Bank of India are set to head to the bankruptcy court.

On the other hand, the Union Cabinet, in October, approved a Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation plan for state-run banks. Of this, Rs 1.35 lakh crore will be raised through recapitalisation bonds and the remaining through budgetary support and market borrowings.

The accumulated NPAs in the Indian banking system have crossed a staggering Rs 8 lakh crore.
Thank you for reading!

To read this article and more, subscribe now for as little as $1.99.
Earlier this week, the government released some interesting data on direct taxes which are essentially composed of corporate and personal income tax. They also include tax collected through the income tax amnesty schemes launched by the governments over the years.

How have these taxes done over the years? Has the Narendra Modi government managed to collect more direct taxes than the earlier government's (as is often said)? The recently released data provides the answers.

Take a look at Figure 1. It basically plots the direct taxes to the GDP ratio over the years.

Figure 1:

Source: http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Documents/Direct%20Tax%20Data/Time-Series-Data-2016-17.pdf

What does Figure 1 tell us? It tells us very clearly that the direct taxes collection as a proportion of the GDP, has remained flat over the last few years, including the three years of the Modi government. It also tells us very clearly that whenever a politician talks about the collection of direct taxes (or for that matter any other tax) going up, it should be in the context of the size of the economy (i.e. the GDP).

If that is not the case, then he or she is clearly bluffing or does not understand how taxes are reported. As I said earlier, the direct taxes are comprised of personal income tax, corporate tax and other direct taxes. First and foremost, lets take a look at how things look if we ignore the other direct taxes. This is important for the year 2016-2017, when the government managed to collect a significant amount of tax, through two income-tax amnesty schemes, one launched before demonetisation, and one after it.

Figure 2:

Source: Author calculations based on data taken from http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Documents/Direct%20Tax%20Data/Time-Series-Data-2016-17.pdf

Unlike Figure 1, which curves up at the end, Figure 2 is more flattish, once we adjust for the other direct tax. This matters in a year like 2016-2017, when the government collected Rs 15,624 crore as other direct tax, much of which was collected from income tax amnesty schemes. Once adjusted for this, the direct taxes to GDP ratio in 2016-2017 falls to 5.49 percent. In 2015-2016, it was at 5.46 percent of the GDP. This is much lower than the 6.30 percent achieved in 2007-2008. Hence, the direct taxes to GDP ratio has fallen over the years.

It is important to take a look at how does the situation look for corporate tax and personal income tax, as a proportion of the GDP, the two most important constituents of direct taxes. Lets take a look at Figure 3, which plots the corporate income tax as a proportion of GDP.

Figure 3:

Source: Author calculations based on data taken from http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Documents/Direct%20Tax%20Data/Time-Series-Data-2016-17.pdf

Figure 3 tell us very clearly that corporate income tax to GDP ratio has been falling over the years. It has fallen from a peak of 3.88 percent of the GDP in 2007-2008 to 3.19 percent in 2016-2017. One reason for this has been the slow growth in corporate earnings over the last few years. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has talked about lowering corporate income tax rates, but that hasnt really happened. Whether lower taxes lead to higher collections remains to be seen.

Now lets take a look at Figure 4, which plots to the personal income tax to GDP ratio.

Figure 4:

Source: Author Calculations based on data taken from http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Documents/Direct%20Tax%20Data/Time-Series-Data-2016-17.pdf

Figure 4 makes for an interesting reading. While, personal income tax to GDP ratio like the corporate tax to GDP ratio also fell, it has managed to recover over the years. Basically, the loss of income tax from the corporates has been covered by getting individuals to pay more income tax, on the whole. One reason for this lies in the fact that the number of individual assessees have risen at a much faster rate over the years, than the number of corporate assessees. And this jump has basically ensured that the tax collections of the Narendra Modi government have continued to remain flat. They would have fallen otherwise.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of Indias Big GovernmentThe Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us)
The Rs 2000 bills, which were introduced after the note ban shocker in November 2017 have always been a nightmare to the common man as it was difficult to transact using those pieces (smaller denomination notes were not available easily around to break it). After one year of demonetisation, why we dont see too many of these pink notes around? An SBI research report may have an answer to this conundrum. According to the report authored by SBI group chief economic advisor, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, the Reserve Bank may have stopped printing the Rs 2,000 notes altogether or may be printing far less numbers focusing on smaller currencies.

First, lets look at how did the SBI report arrive at this conclusion. It first cites the information given by the Ministry of Finance in the Lok Sabha that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has printed 16,957 million pieces of Rs 500 notes and 3,654 million pieces of Rs 2,000 notes as on 8 December. Total value of such notes translates into Rs 15,787 billion.

Now it takes another set of data (from RBI) which is the currency in circulation on the same date (8 December) and subtract the value of small value notes up to March, 2017 provided in the RBI annual report from it (Rs 16,825 billion-Rs 3501 billion). Thus, it arrives at the value of high denomination notes in circulation at Rs 13,324 billion as on 8 December.

Now, taking the difference of the value of total printed high denomination currency as on 8 December (Rs 15787) and the total value of high denomination notes in circulation, the SBI reports arrives at a figure of Rs 2463 billion, which may have been printed by the RBI but not supplied in the market. According to the report, even this Rs 2,463 billion may be on the lower side.

As a logical corollary, as 2000 denomination currency led to challenges in transactions, it thus indeed seems that RBI may have either consciously stopped printing the 2000 denomination notes/or printing in smaller numbers after initially it was printed in ample amount to normalise the liquidity situation. This also means that the share of small currency notes in total currency in circulation now may have touched 35 percent in value terms, the report says.

One catch here is that high-vale notes also include Rs 500, not just Rs 2,000 bills. Even then it offers an indicative picture since, in value terms, the latter is more significant. Now, one must remember that after the Rs 2,000 notes came into circulation, there were reports that RBI has stopped printing or is considering pulling out these notes. A 26 July report in Mint said the RBI has stopped printing Rs 2,000 notes early this year.

From the very early stage of demonetisation, it appeared that the idea was to eventually phase out the Rs 2,000 notes. These bills were easy tools for both the government and the RBI to infuse a large amount of cash into the system within minimum time. This was necessary since after the demonetisation exercise severe cash-draught gripped all quarters of economy, paralysing the rural and informal economy in particular. It wasnt feasible for the government mints to do this job with smaller denomination notes. Hence Rs 2,000 bills took an avatar as an easy solution. Its role is more or less done now with smaller denomination notes entering the financial system.

Will the death of the Rs 2,000 notes, if it happens, not cause much grief to the common man? Unlikely. In the months that followed the note ban, the Rs 2,000 pink notes never really helped the common citizen for daily transactions as there wasnt enough change available (even after seven months of demonetisation, there were still reports of cash shortages in ATMs). About 90 percent of his daily transactions  purchase at retail shops, paying cabbies or small vendors  can be carried out with lower denomination notes of Rs 50, Rs 100 and Rs 200 and available coin denominations. For majority of Indians, there is hardly any use of Rs 2,000 notes in daily life. Most activities get done with lower denomination currencies. The government need not put a stop to Rs 2,000 notes in a hurry though. It can be done over a period without sending shock waves to people like in the case of the demonetisation episode.

As this writer argued in an earlier column to kill illegal cash deals, the RBI needs to make Rs 100 and Rs 200 notes (which was introduced recently) the top denominations and scrap Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 bills. This will also help society to migrate to cashless payments when it comes to high-value transactions.

Globally, most major economies have had to bring down the high denomination cash component in the system at some point to become more transparent and move to cashless transactions. Developed countries like the US, Australia and the UK have their most popular highest currency denominations at 100 or less. Most daily transactions happen there with cards. In India too, there is no logic why Rs 500, Rs 2,000 notes should continue.
With an upcoming film with the legendary Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt seems to be enjoying quite a high phase of her career. The Udta Punjab actress, who will be seen sharing the screen space with Bachchan in Ayan Mukerji's Brahamastra, recently shared her excitement of working with the veteran.

At a recent media gathering, that she was all praise for the senior actor. As Brahamastra goes on floor next month onwards, the actor said she is a bit nervous yet she believes that Amitabh Bachchan is someone who would never throw his weight around the co-stars and rather, would make things comfortable for them.

DNA quotes her as saying, "Amit ji is such a warm person, he tries to make everyone feel comfortable. He won't intimidate intentionally but of course you're working with a legend so something will happen. I am very excited. Every time we met, we used to wonder when we will work together. Finally, the day has come."

At the same event, Alia also denied confirming or denying reports of her being cast opposite Ranveer Singh in Simmba. "I am starring opposite Ranveer in Gully Boy, which I am starting in January," Alia said during her appearance at the Zee Cine Awards.
The trailer of Ali Abbas Zafar's spy thriller Tiger Zinda Hai established it that the film stands for world peace. Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, two agents from the intelligence agencies of India and Pakistan, set out to rescue 25 Indian nurses from the hostage of a militant organisation.

Both the stars, along with Salman's mentor Girish Karnad, are seen mouthing heavy duty dialogues all for world peace. But amidst the high octane action and tall claims to restore world peace, what this writer found glaringly missing was the love, which was the soul of the first part  Kabir Khan's 2012 blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger.

In that film, Salman and Katrina's characters of Tiger and Zoya did not take it upon themselves to change the world. While both of them were extremely driven by their respective individual professional ambitions and loyalty for their motherlands, they eventually fell prey to love, which is presumed to play spoilsport in one's service for the country.

But here, the case was different. Tiger and Zoya led by example when they showed how love is the only way to bridge the symbolic wide gap between the neighbouring countries of India and Pakistan. In the second half of the film, they were merely two individuals holding on to love while eloping from the clutches of their warring countries.

Rather than making verbal claims of one upmanship or vowing to achieve world peace, they actually set an example of how love at micro level can permeate the globe. Their endless absconding also showed how difficult it is to love in times of hostility.

In fact, the intelligence agencies of the two countries, whose eventual aim was to maintain world peace, end up targeting their own men as they are wary of confidential strategic details being compromised with. They harden their steely exteriors to such an extent that the most humane concept of love becomes alien to them.

Towards the end of the film, both R&AW and ISI become so desperate that they are seen dishing out bullets at Tiger and Zoya as they stand next to each other. Soon, they stare into each other's eyes that are popping out of disbelief. In their attempt to detain two 'traitors', they found themselves on the same side of the battle.

This is how Kabir presented an interesting contrast between the micro and macro stakeholders of world peace. While Tiger and Zoya found harmony in love, their respective nations found harmony in hate, or fear. This intelligent juxtaposition is what drove the second half of Ek Tha Tiger, rescuing the film from its mundane first half.

But the creative intelligence of Tiger Zinda Hai should not be discounted just on the basis of the trailer. Because the trailer of Ek Tha Tiger was all about bubblegum romance, banking on the onscreen reunion of Salman and Katrina. But as is history, the film turned out to be much more, thanks to the second half.

Similarly, the positioning of Tiger Zinda Hai might seem to have taken an unwanted detour from its first part but if given the benefit of doubt, it may turn out to be yet another marketing strategy to pull the audience into theatres and surprise them with something new. And if not, I am all for world peace.
More former child actors have come forward accusing Hollywood producer Gary Goddard of sexual misconduct.

Following ER actor Anthony Edwards' allegation that Goddard sexually assaulted him when he was 12, seven others from his Santa Barbara theater group are accusing Goddard of molesting or attempting to molest them in the 1970s, reports variety.com.

Actors Linus Huffman, Bret Nighman and Mark Driscoll are among those who have claimed that Goddard sexually abused them. Nighman said Goddard had attempted to molest him four times by the time he was 16.

Barbara Costa, who looked after the cast during the touring production of California Youth Theatre's Peter Pan, said she was suspicious of Goddard, who slept among the boys during the overnight trips.

Following a get-together in 1990, when the six friends from the Santa Barbara theater group discovered that they had all been abused by Goddard, Driscoll said they drove to their former mentor's house and confronted him. Goddard apologized.

Goddard had denied the allegations in the past. He also took leave from his own company in November in the wake of the claims. The producer was accused in 2014 of sexually abusing actor Michael Egan III when he was 16. The suit was later dismissed.
by Sharanya Gopinathan

Have you been seeing the amazing hashtags #FeminichiSpeaking, #OMKV and #StandUpStars on your Twitter feeds this week and wondered what on earth is going on? It all began with a case of what in school we would have gleefully called guilty conscience.

Close on the heels of winning Best Actress at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Malayalam actor and all-round rockstar Parvathy was speaking at an open forum at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Sunday. She discussed misogyny in movies, the need for more women to get into filmmaking, and the urgent and obvious need for the film industry to create better working conditions for women.

She referenced a film she had the bad luck to watch recently, and said that, with all respect to the makers, the film disappointed [her], as it featured a great actor spitting totally misogynistic dialogues.

Now, note that Parvathy didnt even mention the movie, Kasaba, or the star, Mammootty, by name until she was encouraged to do so by filmmaker Geethu Mohandas, even though she would have been perfectly within her rights to scream this from the rooftops right from the get-go. She did take the time to mention that she gives the filmmakers all respect, but this lone, highly justified comment about Kasaba was enough to bring all the creeps crawling out of the woodworks, and boy, were they in a hurry to out themselves.

Self-aware fans immediately came to Mammoottys defence, and trolled her viciously in response. Kasaba had faced flak from several quarters back when it was released in July 2016, because it depicted superstar Mammootty verbally abusing various woman characters, including grabbing a policewoman by the belt and threatening to punch her so severely that it would apparently result in immediate menstruation.

And unlike when Tamil superstar Vijay recently stepped in and asked his fans to stop trolling The News Minute founder Dhanya Rajendran after she said she didnt like his movie Sura, Mammootty has remained stonily silent and appears to have nothing to say to his clearly loyal and toxic fans.

Maybe its because it wasnt just anonymous online trolls who attacked Parvathy in the week since she made her excellent comments, but also several notable and even hitherto respected Malayalam film industry insiders.

Kasaba director Nithin Renji Panicker took to the films official Facebook page to say that this was Parvathys attempt to become popular by shaking a big tree. But its fairly clear, from her cool body of work, independent rise in the industry and the fact that she became the first Malayalam actor to ever win a silver peacock at IFFI where she bagged the Best Actress award just this November, that she needs to shake no trees to get famous or be recognised for her talent.

The movies producer, Joby George, said with all the creativity of troll commenters on feminist websites, If Geethu aunty and Parvathy aunty tell me the dates of their birthday, I will show Kasaba in full house as my birthday gift."

Then there was film director Jude Anthany Joseph  respected by nobody ever since he was comically arrested earlier this year for abusing Soumini Jain, the mayor of Kochi. On Monday, Joseph tried his hand at veiled insults without naming names, but it became fairly clear to the public and the media that he was referring to Parvathy as he began speaking about circus monkeys who worked in industries that they now cry exploited them, and that they should have just stayed in the forest the whole time.

Veteran actor Siddique attempted an elegant neither-here-nor-there on Facebook on Monday, but ended up very firmly there amongst the misogynists and trolls. He announced that it was clear that those trolling Parvathy were on the wrong side of the debate, but that it is Parvathy who paved the way for this situation, so the responsibility to control them or react to them is also on her.

Victim blaming 101, basically.

Its so strange to hear an actual adult saying that the statement I watched a sexist movie recently is an invitation to be brutally harassed and trolled. He also decided to play the Self-Effacing Senior card, unnecessarily admitting that he doesnt have Parvathys talent or English-speaking abilities, but that he still requests her as a veteran actor to look at the film industry as us and not them. I dont know English as well as you by the way, is a polite way of saying you are a snobbish upstart and Im the real deal in Kerala.

This request from an established male actor to a young female actor to look at the film industry as us, and not them, is particularly rich coming from the Malayalam film industry at the end of 2017.

While this year has seen a sort of global reckoning with sexism and sexual harassment ever since the Harvey Weinstein revelations broke in October, Kerala has been in a unique flux since February 2017, when a popular Malayalam actor was abducted and assaulted, allegedly at the behest of another Malayalam superstar, Dileep.

Until he was kicked out of the organisation the day after his arrest (at a meeting held at Mammoottys house), the largest existing body of Malayalam film actors, the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA), had publicly announced that both Dileep and the assaulted actor were its children, and that it stands by both of them.

How does any woman include herself in a film fraternity that believes that sexual assault victims, and those who finance sexual assault, are worthy of equal support?

It was in response to the Malayalam film industrys known inability or unwillingness to meaningfully address womens issues, and the knowledge that most film fraternity organisations were headed and controlled by powerful and misogynist men like Innocent and Dileep, that this year witnessed the creation of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC). Its founding members include Manju Warrier, Bhavana, Rima Kalingal, Anjali Menon and Sajitha Madathil.

The WCC had a stall at the IFFK, and this years edition of the film festival even had a section for womens cinema deliberately and tellingly named after the movement the WCC created around the assaulted actor, Avalkoppam (Im With Her).

The fact that the Women in Cinema Collective was formed at all, let alone that it was so joyously received, and managed to make its mark in this saucy way at the IFFK with an entire section named after Avalkoppam, is bound to have sent new chills down the spines of powerful men in the industry.

For decades now, men in the Malayalam film industry have been comfortably ruling the roost, absolutely secure in the fact that all the major unions and groups were headed and populated by them alone, and that no one else had the clout to stand up for rights that men didnt think were necessary. Now, the WCC, helmed by the industrys leading women, is making its presence known, calling out the sexism it sees on the daily and even sending out powerful, meaningful messages by influencing the organisation of major film festivals like IFFK.

Against this backdrop of women finally speaking up for their rights this year, its hard to think that the vitriolic reaction to Parvathy from within the industry is anything but the actualisation of the famous anonymous saying, When youre accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Which means that the only thing left to say to these men has already been said, by Parvathy herself, no less. In response to all the insults, Parvathy on Monday took to Twitter to silence trolls with the single best tweet of the year.

#OMKV of course, stands for Odu Myre Kandam Vazhi: run away the paddy field way, you pube.

The Ladies Finger (TLF) is a leading online womens magazine
Sai Pallavi, who rose to immense fame with the sensational rom-com Premam, has been signed to play an important role in Suriya's next untitled film with ace filmmaker Selvaraghavan. Fondly called by fans as Suriya 36, the movie will be produced by Prabhu SR's Dream Warrior Pictures which has earned respect among cinephiles for bankrolling 2017's best films such as Maanagaram, Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru and Aruvi.

Sai Pallavi's Tamil debut has been a long due prospect. After the fantastic run of Premam in Chennai for more than 200 days, Mani Ratnam was in talks with Sai Pallavi to play the female lead in the rom-com Kaatru Veliyidai. But she could not sign the film owing to prior commitments and Aditi Rao Hydari went on play the role. Later, Sai Pallavi signed director Vijay's emotional drama Karu, which is produced by Lyca Productions. Pallavi's first Tamil release is expected to be Karu, which is slated to hit screens sometime in February. A few weeks ago, Pallavi was signed to play the lead heroine role in Dhanush's Maari 2, which will be directed by Balaji Mohan and produced by Wunderbar Films. Suriya 36 marks Sai Pallavi's third film in Tamil after Karu and Maari 2.

The shooting of Suriya 36 is expected to kickstart sometime in January after a formal pooja (prayer) in the city. The makers were earlier in talks with Rakul Preet Singh to play the lead role. Now, whether Rakul has opted out of the film or Sai Pallavi is playing an additional character is anybody's guess.

The makers are planning to release the film on Diwali 2018, a crucial festival date which two other important projects  Thala Ajith director Siva's Viswasam and Thalapathy Vijay and AR Murugadoss' Thalapathy 62  are also targeting.

Selvaraghavan is currently busy with the post production work of Santhanam's Mannavan Vanthanadi and will start shooting for Suriya 36 from January 2018.
By Nisha Susan

The moment I decided I liked Soha Ali Khans memoir The Perils of Being Moderately Famous was when I realised she had needlessly devoted 2.5 pages to a sedate discussion of the German cartographer Mercator just to get to the point that Hindi movie stars think they are the centre of the world.

This leisurely set-up to a universal truth brings a certain relaxed hilarity to the reader too. Its consistent with the note with which Khan begins the book. She warns that she is not going to get into what Bhai really meant when he talked about the difference between nepotism and eugenics then and, two pages later, says that she wrote the book because she couldnt think of anything else to do at the time.

In 2014, Anne Helen Peterson, then a 30-year old professor in a rural college in the US became world famous on the internet and widely envied because Buzzfeed offered her a job based on her PhD in celebrity gossip. Peterson already had a following because of Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, the blog she maintained on her down time. Peterson, who was much-admired for her superb essays such as Jennifer Lawrence and the History of Cool Girls, has argued that no form other than the modern celebrity profile seamlessly constructs the necessary components of celebrity, exploiting the desire to see our idol as both just like us and nothing like us... It is, in other words, spectacularly banal.

Because the truly famous are too well-managed to tell us anything really real. Especially the stuff that celebrities write when they are keeping it real.

To Peterson, wed like to say this week that perhaps only the moderately famous celebrity should write their own stories. We have come to this massive generalisation after reading Soha Ali Khan's memoir.

Or perhaps, only Soha Ali Khan should write a memoir. Because what other woman, even on the peripheries of contemporary Bollywood, would get away with writing that her husband frequently "does something that makes me want to get up and punch him in the face." This follows a sentence where she is half-admiring, half-mocking husband Kunal Khemus arms which are so sinewy that she can see his muscles flex when he types something into his phone.

Early on in the book, Khan writes that her father was a frugal man because he just had that one imported Jaguar two-seater. Then just as your lips are pursing sourly into check your privilege, yo, Khan says, when he went shopping in London to replace a pair of socks he would buy just that, turning a blind eye (pardon the pun) to all other consumerist temptations.

Pardon the pun! This lack of pressure to display filial piety feels as wickedly enjoyable a luxury as the above-mentioned car. Khan does write affectionately about her father and admiringly about her parents. But never so admiringly that you feel your last meal rising in protest, as is the case with many celebrity profiles and memoirs. Her chapter about her unlikely adventures in love, for instance, begins with her mother Sharmila Tagore telling the 17-year-old Khan as she prepares to go off to college that "just because you have sex with someone, doesn't mean you have to marry them." In her chapter about life at Oxford, she has an excellent bit about going to her graduation ceremony in her fathers socks.

Most chapters in this book have the easy quality of early 2000s personal blogs. And if ever Khan had a noble mission in writing this memoir, it is frequently sidelined by her desire to make a joke. Observe this footnote about Bengali daak naams. For instance, we all know the President of India at the time of writing as the Honble Pranab Mukherjee but to his family and friends he will always be Poltu! Frequently the jokes are about herself. Like discovering as a full-fledged adult but half-baked Bengali that the Kolkata journalist who referred to her mother as Sharmila Thakur was not wrong; she was just not using the anglicised version, Tagore.

One time, a few days after being heavily trolled on Twitter, Khan says, she posted a picture of herself in a dress with green leaves and captioned it, Leaf and Let Leaf. She won my heart by adding, Its entirely possible that no one made the connection but I felt pleased with myself.

Sometimes the jokes are throwaway anecdotes. Such as when Khan calls her maternal grandmother who is about to have an eye operation to ask her what happened. I was watching Salaam Namaste in the theatre. The heroines voice was so shrill I dislocated my retina. I giggled. (Then I googled. Stars of Salaam Namaste? Brother Saif and Preity Zinta. More giggling. Poor Preity who I love. I would read her memoir.)

Being wealthy, good-looking and moderately famous rarely makes someone useful to the world except to provide sumptuous photography. While few of the dozens of photographs in this book fall in the sumptuous category (except for some wedding photos) they are all fun and most come with comical captions. In 2009, Khan shot a song in Paris for a movie called Chemistry, which she describes as such a heady cocktail of bad writing and amateur direction that true to its name, it spontaneously combusted pre-release. A photograph from the song of a glum Khan walking in Paris dressed in bright orange overalls, broom in hand is captioned, after being turned away from the Louis Vuitton store in Paris. The caption of an innocuous photograph of Khan and her sister as children seated with their mother goes, my dress is leftover upholstery from the sofa.

Back in that essay, Petersen had argued that the banal and dull celebrity profile serves a crucial industrial function: it sells the media products in which the celebrity appears; it sells the magazine that publishes the profile; but, most important, it sells the celebritys image and the values that image is made to represent.

Perhaps its because Khan is not selling anything right now that the book has this bright, genial and extremely enjoyable quality.

The Ladies Finger (TLF) is a leading online womens magazine
With Tiger Zinda Hai, Salman Khan is back  as the central part of an engaging action film that has its emotions and patriotic sense in the right place.

Getting back together with Salman after the successful Sultan, Ali Abbas Zafar takes the plunge to concoct a rewarding blockbuster that treats it's star as importantly as it's script.

Also read: Tiger Zinda Hai movie review LIVE: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif pulls off action sequences with conviction

As a sequel to Ek Tha Tiger, Tiger Zinda Hai picks up where it left off, plot wise. RAW is forced to seek their superhero, as the situation at Iraq gets out of hand: 40 nurses (25 Indian and 15 Pakistani) get trapped in a hospital, and need immediate help. In comes Tiger (Salman) to rescue the innocent from the claws of an aggressive baddie.

While the rest of the story is fairly predictable, what makes one sit through the film comfortably is Zafar's skillful binding of the core plot, a little bit of romance, longing emotions and a strong Indo-Pakistan angle. The action in Tiger Zinda Hai is spot on.

Salman Khan, undoubtedly, is the centrifugal force of the film, never losing a single opportunity to throw around his Hulk-like image and own the screen.

It's his film totally, and he aces his part comfortably. On the other hand, Katrina Kaif, in a rather straight-faced role, doesn't have much to do other than being a part of the proceedings. But it would be accurate to say she's not in the scheme of things; she does turn in a surprise in the 'Tera Noor' number, one of the best moments in the film.

It's also great to see Paresh Rawal back with Salman Khan on screen, and the rest of the supporting cast including Angad Bedi and Kumud Mishra  who have a scene to score each.

Tiger Zinda Hai boasts of hotshot technical wizardy, which is an added asset. As a must-have for a film of this magnitude, the cinematography, the cuts and the music have been meticulously worked on. Kudos to Julius Packiam's background score, which helps in upping the ante during both the tense and the explosive parts of the film.

Though Tiger Zinda Hai is not as deep as Zafar's earlier outing Sultan, in terms of it's strong message, it does have a significant load of style coupled with a belligerent star in Salman Khan.

Go watch Tiger Zinda Hai if you're a fan of large-scale action entertainers, with probably just the right amount of logic. Salman Khan has well and truly arrived (again) with a potential blockbuster that has enough to keep you pinned. Good fun while it lasts.

Siddarth Srinivas is a Dubai-based engineer-turned-film journalist.
This week, the box-office sees a plethora of south Indian releases in all the major languages  Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam  vis-a-vis the much-awaited Bollywood flick Tiger Zinda Hai starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif.

Tiger Zinda Hai



What's it about: As per the trailer, it looks like another collaboration between Indian RAW agent Tiger (played by Khan) and Pakistani intelligence agent Zoya (played by Kaif) as they venture on a rescue mission. It is a sequel to the 2012 Kabir Khan directorial Ek Tha Tiger.

Who is in it: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Paresh Rawal, Angad Bedi

Why it may work: The previous installment Ek Tha Tiger was a massive blockbuster. Be it the songs, the action sequences  the film was widely appreciated. Now, building on the expectations from the franchise and the chemistry between Khan and Kaif, there are a lot of hopes riding on Tiger Zinda Hai.

Tiger Zinda Hai is directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.

Hello



What's it about: Hello is expected to be a content-driven film instead of a more common run-of-the-mill plot. The film is mainly a romantic action-drama and is touted to be Akhil Akkineni's big comeback film.

Who is in it: Akhil Akkineni, Kalyani Priyadarshan, Ramya Krishna

Why it may work: The pre-release business statistics say the Akhil-starrer could expect an impressive outing. The buzz around the film has been really good and Akhil's (the next Akkineni successor) performance in the film is expected to a major highlight.

Hello is directed by Vikram Kumar.

Masterpiece



What's it about: The film revolves around Edward Livingston (played by Mammootty), an English professor at the Travancore Maharaja College. He takes on the onus to restore order in a college that has been been divided into two groups which are always at loggerheads.

Who is in it: Mammootty, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Unni Mukundan, Maqbool Salman

Why it may work: Mammootty's action sequences in the film happen to be a major highlight of the film. Seeing the Malayalam actor as a strict teacher is also a point of major excitement among numerous cinegoers.

Masterpiece is directed by Ajai Vasudev.

Vimaanam



What's it about: Vimaanam's story revolves around the life of Saji Thomas, a differently-able man from Kerala. The film depicts how Saji, who has a speech and hearing impairment, fought all odds and built a lightweight aircraft from recycled materials without any external support, as mentioned in IMDB.

Who is in it: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Durga Krishna

Why it may work: Watching Prithviraj in a challenging role has created a major buzz among his many fans. The film will reportedly feature him in two different looks. It also has a major use of VFX as it travels through two time period. Prithviraj has pulled down considerably for the role and has also trained in flying courses.

Vimaanam is directed by Pradeep M Nair.
Yash Raj Films' upcoming venture Tiger Zinda Hai  starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif  is the latest addition to the array of films that have received threats from political parties in India. While Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati had to bear the brunt to an extreme level as the whole controversy catapulted to a national level, Salman's Tiger Zinda Hai is facing opposition by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

According to a report by Economic Times, Yash Raj Films has now agreed to compromise as per the demands raised by MNS.

It was reported earlier that MNS came out in protest of Tiger Zinda Hai's release as they alleged that YRF had "arm-twisted" multiplex owners to screen the Salman-Katrina starrer for all their shows. It is also to be noted that two Marathi films  Deva and Ek Atrangi  are slated to release at the same time with Tiger Zinda Hai. The business of these Marathi films would have hampered to a great extent, had the multiplex owners complied to the alleged demands of YRF. Hence, they decided to take some help from MNS.

"If Yash Raj Films arm twists multiplex and theatre owners from showing Marathi movies then we would not just stop their movies from being screened but also stop their filmshoots that happen in Mumbai," says Amey Khopkar, Head, MNS film union, as reported by ET.

A sequel to the 2012 Kabir Khan's Ek Tha Tiger, Tiger Zinda Hai also stars Angad Bedi and Paresh Rawal. This sequel has beeb helmed by Sultan director Ali Abbas Zafar. It is slated to release this Christmas on 22 December.
Mumbai: A sessions court in Mumbai on 20 December released, on bail of Rs 25,000, the businessman charged with molesting a teenage Bollywood actress on a New Delhi-Mumbai flight last week.

Vikas Sachdeva, 39, was arrested by Sahar police the day after the actress complained and was charged under sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 and the Indian Penal Code.

The National Award winning actress had complained, in a social media post, of the incident which happened on the Vistara Airlines flight on 10 December, creating a nationwide furore.

She said she was travelling in the business class when the male passenger behind her (Sachdeva) rubbed his foot along her neck and back when she was half asleep.

She also claimed that though she informed the flight crew, they did not help her. However, the airline had later tendered an apology and ordered an enquiry into the incident.

She narrated and broke down in a self-shot video which went viral, drawing widespread condemnation from all over India.

"I just landed, the whole irony of this that I yelled... and this is not done... this is not how you should be treated or made to feel. This is terrible. This is how they will take care of girls? No one will help us if we don't decide to help ourselves and that is the worst thing," she said.

The Maharashtra State Women's Commission, the Shiv Sena, the Bhumata Ranragini Brigade and others condemned the incident and demanded action against the accused, while the Civil Aviation Ministry has threatened to put Sachdeva on a no-fly list if he is convicted.
The 2G spectrum scam was billed as the second biggest scam after Watergate by Time magazine. One also got a foretaste of what was to come in the criminal case after the Supreme Court in 2012 cancelled all 122 licences issued on the basis of the dubious first-come-first-served (FCFS) policy. But Thursday's judgment acquitting A Raja, then telecom minister and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi among others bears out more the I-said-so smug comment of the former finance minister P Chidambaram that 2G was a scam that never was!

To be sure, the Supreme Court was seized of the policy issue and not the criminal conspiracy aspect of the issue when it cancelled the licences, but the reason it gave its thumbs down to FCFS was that it was potentially mischievous  lending itself to abuse in the wrong hands besides depriving the exchequer of the best price possible.

The relevant part of the CBI chargesheet exemplifies and brings out the nub of the issue to prove that the potential loss indeed was actual loss too:

though the foreign direct investment limit was raised from 49 to 74 percent in December 2005, there was no lock-in period or restriction imposed on the sale of equity or issue of additional equity. As a result, M/s Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd, which paid the Department of Telecom (DoT) Rs 1,537 crore for the UAS licences for 13 circles, offloaded its 45 percent equity to M/s Etisalat of the UAE for Rs 4,200 crore. Similarly, M/s Unitech Wireless (a group of eight companies), which paid the DoT Rs 1,658 crore for UAS licences of all 22 circles, offloaded its 60 percent equity to M/s Telenor of Norway for Rs 6,100 crore. These stakes were sold by the said companies even before the rollout of services by them. The estimated loss to the government by grant of licences to these two companies alone comes to Rs 7,105 crore)."

The ebullient Kapil Sibal, the then law minister in the UPA government mocked the charges saying they were a figment of the imagination and that there was in fact, zero loss to the exchequer. His colleague Chidambaram called the profit made on the sly by front companies, some of whom had nothing to do with telecom, as smart business dealings, when it was evident that the scam was carefully scripted and the revenue loss was foretold.

In the event, the 2G criminal case verdict was keenly awaited. The politicians in the dock, Raja and Kanimozhi, were also public servants. The Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 that seeks to punish corruption at high places with its reverse jurisprudence  the onus of proving innocence is on the accused public servant  squarely applies to them both and in fact, they were tried under it as well.

In the event, it is curious that the trial judge OP Saini has used the same touchstone to every accused when he perhaps ought to have applied the more rigorous touchstone of guilt under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The CBI was obviously unsuccessful in establishing the money trail leading to these politicians and their mentors, although money did slosh around from the front companies.

The prime reason it was stymied was because of the institution of benami that DMK politicians in particular have been alleged to be experts at using. It is only recently that the Narendra Modi government has given teeth to the prohibition of benami transactions law by empowering the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to confiscate properties suspected to be held under fictitious names.

Kanimozhi in particular had to satisfactorily explain how Kalaignar TV, promoted by her with her family, got Rs 200 crore as a loan from one of the front companies from a bank in Seychelles. Perhaps, the judge let her off on the grounds that even under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the accused does not have to prove innocence beyond reasonable doubt (VD Jhingan versus State of UP AIR 1966 SC 1762).

Obviously, the judge found this strange back-to-back transfer of money to be a genuine commercial transaction, as explained by the TV channel. Of course it is the CBIs fault that it did not prove a direct link between the favour shown to the front company and the munificence in the form of back-to-back loans.

The NDA government ought to amend the Prevention of Corruption Act and turn it less frightful to upright officers and more menacing to politicians.

Follow all the LIVE updates from the 2G spectrum case judgment here
A special court on Thursday acquitted 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.

While announcing the verdict, special judge OP Saini said, "I have no hesitation in holding that record is not sufficient and the prosecution has miserably failed in proving charges. All accused are acquitted." He further added, "In the beginning, the prosecution started with the case with great enthusiasm and ardour. However, as the case progressed, it became highly cautious and guarded in its attitude making it difficult to find out as to what prosecution wanted to prove. The quality of prosecution totally deteriorated and it became directionless and diffident."

While the ED was also involved in the prosecution, these words were harsh indictment of the CBI which had asserted in its chargesheet that kickbacks were given in lieu of allocation of 2G spectrum to Swan Telecom.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time the CBI's efforts have been criticised.

Arushi murder case

The CBI's investigation into the Aarushi murder case was called a goof-up and court described its theory "patently absurd". In its 273-page verdict acquitting dentists Nupur and Rajesh Talwar in the murder of their daughter Aarushi and Hemraj, it also said the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove that the Talwars had destroyed material evidence and added that the finding recorded to the contrary by the trial court could not be maintained.

Ajay Kumar writing for Firstpost said that the CBI's failure to establish a sequence of events compelled the Allahabad High Court to acquit the Talwars. One of the key failures in the CBI's case was that they failed to establish a clear chain of events that were backed up by evidence. They failed to establish how the murder could have been committed and also failed to establish the links between the inception of the motive for the murder and the actual act. There was nothing but circumstantial evidence to prove that they saw Aarushi and the house help in a compromising position.

Bofors arms deal case

In another government-related scam, the judiciary questioned its decision to drop the case against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Bofors pay-off scam, saying there were "certain malafide intentions". The accused was let off by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the high profile Rs 1,500 crore Bofors arms deal case citing lack of evidence.

Quattrocchi had fled India in 1993 before the CBI could question him in the 1986 Bofors kickback scam. The controversial Italian businessman was allegedly the conduit of the Bofors scam and close to the Gandhis.

On 20 January, 1990, the CBI had filed a criminal case to find out who were the beneficiaries of kickbacks from Bofors deal. Two charge sheets were filed by the CBI in this case, on 22 October, 1999 and then on 9 October 2000. However, in 2003 and 2007, the CBI had failed to extradite Quattrocchi who was named as the main accused back to India. Finally, in 2009, it first removed the red corner notice against Quattrocchi and then sought permission to withdraw prosecution against him.

After 20 years and a loss of Rs 250 crore to the exchequer, a Delhi court in 2011 accepted the CBI closure report against Quattrocchi in the Bofors pay-off case. The case had led to the defeat of the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989 amidst charges of political corruption.

Coal scam case

In the other big scam which rocked the UPA government, the CBI was tasked with investigating coal block allocation scam cases. However in August, the Supreme Court expressed its displeasure over the non-completion of investigations in the cases.

The apex court observed that it has repeatedly asked the CBI to complete the ongoing investigations in these cases but it doesnt seem to come to an end." "We have been requesting the CBI from time-to-time to expedite the ongoing investigations, but it doesnt seem to come to an end," a three-judge bench had said.

Dow bribery case

In January, a CBI special judge discharged De-Nocil Crop Protection (presently Dow Agro Sciences India, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical of the US) in a case involving bribing an Indian official to get their products registered, reported Hindustan Times. The blame was laid on the CBI as it had failed to attach oral or documentary evidence while filing the supplementary chargesheet. The court said that as the chargesheet was not supported by evidence, it was bad in law and the court could not take cognisance of it.

"Independent" witnesses

Also in January, the agency was pulled up by a Delhi court for falsely implicating a police officer in corruption by producing a fake witness, according to India Today. The court had observed that Maan Singh, who has testified as an independent witness for the CBI on 27 occasions in various cases, was not even present at the scene when a trap was laid to catch the cop.

The report detailed a bribery case where Singh was produced as witness. However, during the trial the defence counsel submitted through an RTI reply that Singh was the CBI's "stock witness". The documents showed that Singh had deposed as a witness for the agency 27 times in several cases.

1984 anti-Sikh riots

In 2015, the CBI filed a closure report in a case against senior Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in connection with 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The filing of the closure report by the investigating agency was protested by the victim's counsel, who asked why was this done "secretly". CBI had said it has conducted further probe in the case, as directed by a sessions court, and filed a closure report in the matter. In April 2013, CBI was directed by a sessions court to further investigate the case as it set aside its earlier closure report.

Tytler had earlier got a clean chit twice from the CBI, which had closed the case.
The much-awaited judgment in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupees 2G spectrum scandal came as a big blow to the Central Bureau of Investigation as the court acquitted all 19 accused in what is being touted as biggest scam to rock Independent India.

CBI special court judge OP Saini, who has been hearing two separate cases related to the alleged corruption in allotment of 2G spectrum licenses, heard the final arguments on 26 April. However, the case was deferred a few times as the judgement was not ready.

Among the big names associated with the case are former telecom minister A Raja, and the then Department of Telecom secretary, Siddartha Behura, as well as Rajas former personal secretary RK Chandolia. Rajya Sabha MP and daughter of DMK chief M Karunanidhi, Kanimozhi is also accused of corruption in the case in what was termed the second biggest political scandal in world after the Watergate scandal by Time magazine.

As reactions pour in from everywhere, here is a recapitulation of the multi-million rupees scam that's recounted as one of the biggest scandals in the telecommunication industry.

What is the scam all about

The scam dates back to mid 2000's when the then UPA government decided to allocate the airwaves to mobile service operators on a first-come-first-served basis. However, the scandal only gathered steam in 2010 when the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in a report quantified and pegged the scam loss to Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

The government announced the distribution of 2G spectrum licenses in 2007 and according to the order, eight new companies were to be given telecom licences to start mobile services. The licences were issued at the prices fixed in 2001 to keep tariffs low. The idea behind the policy was to provide cheaper services to the customers.

But the major loophole, a point which was exploited by the companies later, was the lack of clarity on the terms and conditions applicable to the firms applying for licence and their shareholding pattern. Some successful bidders availed their licenses at lower prices and then sold them off at huge profits. Some companies were suspected to be proxies propped up by bigger players. Most of the players sold a majority of their shares immediately after availing the licenses.

The flawed policy pointed to the complicity of the Department of Telecom itself. For instance, Swan Telecom bagged licence for 13 circles for Rs 1,537 crore and then offloaded 45 percent of shares to UAE based Etisalat for Rs 4,500 crore. The CBI later linked back the company to Reliance ADA Group, alleging that Reliance Telecom had merely used Swan Telecom as a front company to get the 2G licences and the costly radio waves, The Times of India reported.

That is just one example of the complex web of shell firms allegedly involved in the corruption scandal that shook the entire telecom industry.

The scam was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate. The Enforcement Directorate has filed a separate case related to money laundering, alleging that a conspiracy was hatched by Raja, Kanimozhi, Ammal and others and that Rs 200 crore was the proceeds of the crime.

Essar Group and Loop telecom are another set of firms named in the scandal.

The CBI alleged that the promoters of the Essar Group were the real investors and beneficiaries of the spectrum and licences were issued to Loop Telecom, a front company of Essar to acquire 2G licences and spectrum in 2008.

Essar and Loop promoters are facing trial for hatching a conspiracy to cheat the government for obtaining spectrum licence.

Aftermath of the scandal: Who lost what?

According to a report by The Wire, of the eight companies which lost licences after the scam broke out, only Idea Cellular survived the telecom sector storm. "The cancellation of licenses resulted in the closure of most of the companies with thousands of employees losing jobs. Banks are still grappling with the loans granted to these companies to buy equipment and licenses and spectrum," the report said.

The companies that lost their licenses included: Unitech, Sistema, Loop Mobile, Videocon, Etisalat-DB (Swan), Idea, S-Tel, and Tata Tele. Not to mention that the accused languished in jail for some time before they were let off on bail. The scandal cost Raja his ministerial portfolio as he was the then telecom minister.

Allegations of inflated numbers

The CAG report which pegged the losses at Rs 1.76 lakh crore was also caught up in a controversy. CAG based its estimates on the loss from 2G allocations in 2008 on the 3G spectrum allocations of 2010 and sought to prove by implication that spectrum was deliberately underpriced by the government to favour a few firms. However, subsequent auctions revealed that the government raised a mere Rs 9, 407 crore against an ambitious target of Rs 40,000 crore. Had it been a successful auction, the gains for the government still would not have been anywhere close Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

In CBIs March 2011 chargesheet, the total loss was pegged at Rs 30,000 crore even though the agency's then director AP Singh claimed that the agency had not calculated the total loss. In 2009, the CVC had put the number at Rs 22,000 crore. The TRAI on the other hand, claimed that it was impossible to calculate the total loss to the exchequer as the auction was done on first come first serve basis.

Many names scorched in the heat of the scam

The CAG report directly blamed Raja for taking arbitrary decision while allocating the spectrum.

The CAG had said 2G licenses were issued to telecom operators at throwaway prices. It said licences were issued to ineligible applicants who had deliberately suppressed facts, disclosed incomplete information, submitted fictitious documents and used fraudulent means to get access to spectrum.

Then telecom minister Raja of the DMK  a constituent of the ruling UPA  became the face of the scam amid allegations that he bent the rules of auction to benefit a few and selective telecom players. Raja was arrested on 2 February 2011, and charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating, abuse of office and forgery. However, others in the government did not remain untouched.

Kanimozhi and DMK party supremo M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal are also accused of corruption. The CBI says that a Rs 200 crore bribe paid by a telecom to Raja was deposited in a TV channel in Chennai that is owned in part by Kanimozhi. However, she claimed that the amount was not a payoff but a loan that was to become equity, but the deal didnt go through for various reasons. Dayalu Ammal was later let off because the CBI stated that she only speaks Tamil and thus could not be involved in the scam.

Raja and Kanimozhi were close party colleagues, and the latter is alleged to have lobbied to get Raja into the ministry after the 2009 election.

Then finance minister P Chidambaram also could not remain untouched. Former president Pranab Mukherjee who took over the finance portfolio from Chidambaram later allegedly sent a note to the prime minister suggesting Chidambaram could have prevented the illegal 2G spectrum allocations. It was widely speculated that while the bidders were selling off their shares to foreign companies, those sales were actually overseen by the finance ministry at that time. The matter was, however, dismissed by the Supreme Court, saying that no case could be made out against Chidambaram.

Other accused

Behura has been charged with cheating and abuse of office. Chandolia has been charged with cheating and abuse of office as well. On 8 February 2011, the CBI also arrested Shahid Usman Balwa, director of Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd, on charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery. Asif Balwa, brother of Shahid Balwa and and Rajiv Agarwal from Kusegaon Fruits & Vegetables Pvt Ltd, were also arrested by the CBI.

The other persons who were arrested in the case were Sanjay Chandra director, Unitech, Gautam Doshi, group MD, Reliance ADAG, Hari Nair, company secretary, Reliance ADAG and Surendra Pipara, senior VP, Reliance ADAG charged with abetment to cheating, bribing government servants and forgery. Sharad Kumar, the managing director of Kalaignar TV was also arrested on the same charges. Ruias of Essar group and Bollywood producer Karim Moran are also accused in the case.

All the accused are out on bail and are to be present on the day of the final verdict in the court. The accused have denied the charges.
New Delhi: Buoyed by the 2G spectrum case verdict, the Congress on Thursday said that truth has finally prevailed and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley apologise to the nation for the BJP's alleged "propaganda and lies" on the issue.

The Congress also said that accountability should be fixed against those including former comptroller and auditor general (CAG) Vinod Rai who dubbed it a scam, after all the accused were acquitted in the case on Thursday by a special court as the prosecution failed to establish any charges.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose UPA-II government was rocked by the 2G scam, said the court judgment needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government was without any foundation.

"We respect the court's judgment. I do not want to boast (about) anything. I think the court's judgment has to be respected.

"I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously that all this massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation," Singh said.

Asked about allegations that lies were spread against his government, he said, "Well, the judgment speaks for itself."

Former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said, "One thing is clear... the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never true and not correct and that has been established today."

Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala accused the BJP of spreading lies and propaganda for years to come to power and said "today is the day for fixing accountability and responsibility".

"Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power, apologise to the country," he told reporters.

Surjewala said the BJP "stands exposed today before the country" and alleged that "speaking lies, hatching conspiracies is the real DNA and nature of the BJP".

"Will all such conspirators, whose 'sardars' (leaders) including Modi, Jaitley and their "pichhlagu and pitthu" (stooge) Rai, should their accountability not be fixed," he asked.

Alleging that the BJP stands exposed for conspiring against the Congress, Surjewala said Modi, Jaitley and the BJP should publicly apologise to the 125 crore people of the country.

"Today the entire country, after what this Supreme Court-monitored CBI court said, asks why accountability of those who dubbed 2G spectrum a scam be not fixed. Today is the day for demanding accountability and responsibility," he said.

Former telecom minister Kapil Sibal said, "After the 2G judgment by the special court, zero gain for BJP. My position is vindicated."

He said, "today my words have been proved right. There was no corruption, there was no loss. If there was any scam, it was a scam of lies, the Opposition's and Rai's lies. Rai must apologise."

The CAG had estimated a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in 2008 2G spectrum allocation. In his comments following the CAG report, Sibal had claimed zero loss to the government. Sibal on Thursday claimed a lot of NPAs are on account of the telecom companies whose licences were cancelled. "They had to borrow money from banks and could not return and that is how many of the NPAs were accumulated," he said.

He said the telecom sector is "in dire straits, thanks to Rai and thanks to the (then) Opposition and its leaders".

"If you create an atmosphere of suspicion and that everything the UPA did was wrong and the Opposition gets on to the bandwagon the entire atmosphere is vitiated...then you have positions like this," he said.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said "the truth has been revealed by the special CBI court".

"The truth ultimately has prevailed. It has been proved now that the BJP speaks lies and propaganda to win elections," he alleged.

Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said the 2G verdict will remain a "black mark" in the history of CAG and Rai should be prosecuted.

"You know the CAG chief is today one of the strong advisors of the government, posted on various boards and organisations, and is being rewarded for what he has done. That will remain a black mark in the history of CAG," Vadakkan said.

"He (Rai) should be prosecuted by the law of the land for creating such kind of excuses and cover-ups. I think he should be prosecuted," the Congress spokesperson said.

"In this Parliament session, they have a lot of questions to answer. How can you do this to any political party? People are watching this very closely. This is going to echo across the country," Vadakkan said.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were on Thursday acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case. Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.
Hours after the special CBI court acquitted all 19 accused in the alleged 2G spectrum scam, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said they will move to a higher court against the trial court's verdict. The high-profile case dubbed as one of India's biggest political corruption scandals, saw former telecom minister A Raja and DMK chief M Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi as accused, along with several other bureaucrats and business executives.

The agencies, which usually take months to study court orders before proceeding to file an appeal in higher court, declared within hours of the verdict that it has been prima facie examined. The judgment, which ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed from the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

The ED has decided to challenge the acquittal of the 19 accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case on the grounds that money laundering is a "standalone" crime, adding that the court cannot throw out ED's evidences, gathered through independent investigations under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), just because the scheduled offence being probed by the CBI has been found baseless and is being shut.

The CBI, on the other hand, argued that the court heavily relied on the oral evidence produced by the accused rather than the written and documentary evidence provided by the agency. CBI sources told CNN-News18 that usually the written evidence takes preference over witness accounts.

The court heavily criticised the investigative agency for its 'lackadaisical approach' and lack of enthusiasm, as the judge noted that some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few facts. "A huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none."

The Congress and DMK have meanwhile celebrated the order as a vindication of their stand. Congress leaders have sought an apology from the former Comptroller Auditor General Vinod Rai, some even suggesting he must be prosecuted and his role should be probed.

The BJP has remained guarded in its comments with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley suggesting that the Congress should not treat the verdict as a "badge of honour".

CBI, ED's argument for filing appeal

The ED had registered money laundering cases in the 2G case based on CBI FIRs. The central probe agency said the special CBI court "failed to appreciate a number of factors which, inter alia, position the offence of money laundering as standalone offence." It said the same court had "appreciated" the evidence put forth by the agency investigators at the time of framing of charges in this case. But, it said, the same material "appears to have not been considered while deciding the prosecution complaint (charge sheet) under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) and the accused persons have been acquitted from the offence of money laundering only on the basis of no commission of offence and not the occurrence of criminal activity."

The special CBI Judge OP Saini ruled in the ED case that, "In view of acquittal of accused in the case relating to scheduled offence (2G), there are no 'proceeds of crime'. "Proceeds of crime is the foundational fact for the offence of money laundering. Since there are no proceeds of crime, there can be no offence of money laundering, as nothing remains to be laundered. "Thus, the very base of the instant case is gone and the alleged offence stands wiped out."

Referring to the outcome of the main case, the court said, "The very basic fact required for constitution of an offence of money laundering, that is, proceeds of crime, is knocked out".

The agency, however, stressed that the thrust of the stringent and criminal provisions of PMLA is on the proceeds of crime, generated during the commission of the offence, and it only considers the "criminal activity instead of commission of an offence." "The acquittal by the court in PMLA prosecution by interpreting the term criminal activity to the extent of commission of an offence appears to be erroneous," it said.

The CBI, meanwhile, said that the evidence provided by has not been "fully appreciated in its proper perspective" by the court.

However, the court was highly critical of the ineffective prosecution.

The judge said, "For the last about seven years, on all working days, summer vacation included, I religiously sat in the open Court from 10 am to 5 pm, waiting for someone with some legally admissible evidence in his possession, but all in vain. Not a single soul turned up. This indicates that everybody was going by public perception created by rumour, gossip and speculation."

He also rapped the investigative agency for its lackadaisical approach in case.

"In the beginning, the prosecution started with the case with great enthusiasm and ardour. However, as the case progressed, it became highly cautious and guarded in its attitude making it difficult to find out as to what prosecution wanted to prove. However, by the end, the quality of prosecution totally deteriorated and it became directionless and diffident.

However, later and also in the final phase of the trial, no senior officer or prosecutor was willing to sign these applications or replies and the same used to be signed by a junior most officer Inspector Manoj Kumar posted in the court. This shows that neither any investigator nor any prosecutor was willing to take any responsibility for what was being filed or said in the court."

Congress jubilant, DMK hails 'historic verdict'

Buoyed by the verdict, the Congress and the DMK said "truth" has finally prevailed and that justice has been delivered while the ruling party asked the Congress not to treat them as a "badge of honour". The Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders apologise to the nation for their alleged "propaganda and lies."

Manmohan Singh said the court judgment needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government without any foundation. "Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power apologise to the country?" asked Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala. "Today is the day for fixing accountability and responsibility."

Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said Rai should tender an apology to the country, resign from all posts he is holding and return all the awards, Trinamool Congress leader Saugata Roy sought that the former CAG chief should be probed on the issue.

The former CAG's report, published in 2010, was largely the basis of the scandal and the probe. It pinned the estimated loss to exchequer at 1.76 lakh crore. However, Rai has since been accused of giving an inflated account of the numbers. In CBIs March 2011 charge sheet, the total loss was pegged at Rs 30,000 crore even though the agency's then director AP Singh claimed that the agency had not calculated the total loss. In 2009, the CVC had put the number at Rs 22,000 crore. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on the other hand, claimed that it was impossible to calculate the total loss to the exchequer as the auction was done on first come first serve basis.

The court too, dealt a body blow to the CAG's and CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences. Judge Saini in his 1,552-page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people "artfully" arranged few selected facts and created a scam "when there was none".

The DMK, meanwhile, also questioned the media coverage. "I humbly request the media persons present here spread the message of DMK's innocence to the general public with the same eagerness they showed in talking about the scam and piling on the blame," party's working president MK Stalin said.

Earlier, the Supreme Court took cognisance of the 2G scam, which is why it cancelled the allocation of 2nd generation waves (122 licenses) in February 2013 and asked the government to start the process anew.

By doing so the court agreed with the CAG as far as the loss is concerned, although it differed with the quantum of notional loss, as explained this Firstpost article. This was followed by a fresh auction process which brought revenue to the exchequer. The CBI court verdict doesnt vindicate the stance of the former UPA-government stance, the article argues. It's verdict simply acquits the key accused in the criminal aspect of the case which was taking bribes, transfer of monies. Here, the investigation agencies have been unable to prove the money trail. Thus the accused were allowed to go scot-free, the article concludes.

The special court acquitted 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in the ED's case. Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, the special judge also acquitted Shahid Balwa, Vinod Goenka, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal, Karim Morani, P Amirtham and Sharad Kumar.

In its charge sheet, the ED had also named DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case. In its final report, the ED had named 10 individuals and nine companies as accused and listed them in the charge sheet for the offences under the PMLA.

With inputs from agencies
At least five labourers were killed and nine others were injured in Bihar's Gopalganj district on Wednesday after an explosion ripped a boiler at Sasamusa sugar mill, said media reports.

#UPDATE: Death toll rises to 5 in Gopalganj boiler blast #Bihar  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

#Visuals from boiler blast site at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj; three laborers killed, many others injured. pic.twitter.com/RRUKvPpPme  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

According to The Indian Express, the mill owner has been arrested. Nine critically injured workers sustained more than 90 percent burn injuries, Gopalganj district government hospital superintendent Shashikant Mishra said.

According to ABP News, the death toll is likely to mount as many workers are still trapped inside the mill.

Work was in full swing when the boiler exploded, causing serious burn injuries to workers. Initial reports suggest the boiler exploded due to overheating. At least 100 workers were on duty at the time of the incident.

Relatives of one of the dead workers told News18 that the owner of the mill ignored timely inspection of boiler by engineers and kept the mill running.

On 1 November, in a massive explosion at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district, 43 were killed and over 100 were injured, The News Indian Express had reported.

The explosion took place in a 500 MW boiler unit on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when the fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult.

The Centre had ordered a probe by the NTPC's executive director into the incident, while the state administration ordered a magisterial probe.

The National Human Rights Commission had issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the deaths.

With inputs from agencies
A woman patient breathed her last in an ambulance stuck in a massive traffic jam during the Bihar bandh called by Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Thursday.

When asked about the incident, senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad said: Such incidents happen during agitation. Some people also die sometimes.

Somari Devi, 35, who was critically ill, was being taken from Mahnar in Hajipur to a Patna hospital, but the ambulance was caught in traffic on the Mahatma Gandhi Setu, which connects North Bihar to Patna and is considered a life line for northern districts, due to the 'chakka jam' by RJD workers.

Her in-laws pleaded with workers and policemen but no one was able to help.

The RJD called a day-long bandh to protest the state government's new mining policy and alleged deterioration of law and order.

Even though the state government decided to withdraw the policy on Wednesday evening, the RJD went ahead with the call for bandh. RJD workers forcefully closed shops and traffic and disrupted traffic on all the bridges, which caused inconvenience for the common man.

In Bhagalpur, agitating workers smashed window panes of cars and damaged many two-wheelers. One of the injured, coming from Gopalganj, where a boiler exploded in a sugar mill, was also stuck in traffic, but the police managed to clear the way.

The ruling Janata Dal (United) and even RJD ally Congress reacted sharply to the bandh call as the state capital Patna is welcoming Sikh devotees on the occasion of 350th birth anniversary of Guru Govind Singh.

When the government agreed to continue the old mining policy, then why did RJD press ahead with the bandh call? Violence is in their DNA and they are just demonstrating the same, JD(U) spokesman Ajay Alok said.

Senior Congress leader Ashok Chaudhary also criticised the bandh call saying, Their timing was wrong.

Meanwhile, Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav led a march in Patna and courted arrest.

He, along with his elder brother Tej Pratap, were taken to Kotwali Police station where they were freed after completing formalities. 
New Delhi: The government has given "in-principle" approval for 19 greenfield airports, of which some would be developed through Public Private Partnership (PPP), the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said the country's civil aviation sector was growing leaps and bounds but the safety of air passengers will never be compromised.

Emphasising that air travel is growing leaps and bounds, Raju said during Question Hour that the number of aircraft in the country was around 548 compared to about 395 in 2014.

Since the government came to power in 2014, around 50 aircraft are being added every year, he said.

Responding to a query whether the shortage of skill was affecting the aviation sector, Raju said there is a problem and mismatch of skill.

The minister asserted that safety of passengers was "never compromised and will never be compromised", adding that safety and security were paramount for the government.

When a member expressed concern over air safety against the backdrop of incidents involving Pratt & Whitney engine-powered aircraft, Raju said, "passenger safety is never put at risk".

Out of the 19 greenfield airports for which "in-principle" approval has been granted, some are to be developed through the PPP model.

"Mopa in Goa, Navi Mumbai and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, Bhogapuram and Dagadarthi in Andhra Pradesh, Hasan in Karnataka, Kannur in Kerala and Dholera in Gujarat" would be through PPP model by the respective state governments with a total investment of around Rs 27,000 crore, Raju said.

The responsibility of implementing these projects rests with the state governments concerned, he noted.

To a query, the minister said, "we like more airports to come," and the government would work with the states in this regard.
New Delhi: The CPM on Thursday demanded from the Centre a package of Rs 7,400 crore for Kerala, parts of which were ravaged by Cyclone Ockhi this month.

A delegation of state MPs met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to press for more funds for the state that has been hit by the natural calamity, CPI(M) MP from the state P Karunakaran said.

He stressed on the urgent intervention from the Centre and stated that the paddy and banana farmers have suffered enormous losses.

The CPM, which heads the government in Kerala, has demanded a package of Rs 7,400 crore for the state, according to Karunakaran.

CPM MP Mohammed Salim said his party wanted Modi to clarify the comments made by him against his predecessor Manmohan Singh and said if he cannot do so then the prime minister should tender an apology.

The lawmaker from West Bengal insisted that he wants discussion on damages occuring in natural calamities such as Ockhi.
New Delhi: India said on Thursday that it attaches a lot of importance to its ties with the Maldives and hoped that the country will be sensitive to its concerns.

Replying to questions on an anti-India editorial in a Maldivian newspaper, Spokesperson for the External Affairs Ministry Raveesh Kumar said it should not be taken seriously.

The Maldives recently signed a free trade agreement with China, which is seen as Beijing's growing influence over the island nation.

"We have to see our relationship with the Maldives in a broader perspective. It is an important country. We do attach a lot of importance to our relationship with the country," Kumar said.

At the same time, he said India expects and hopes that the Maldives will be sensitive to New Delhi's concerns.

On the FTA between China and the Maldives, he said India was trying to understand its implications.

"We should look beyond these developments and we should have diplomatic discussions between the two sides to address any issue between the two countries," said the MEA spokesperson.

He said much attention should not be paid to things which are going around.

Kumar also referred to a tweet by Maldivian foreign minister Mohamed Asim a few days back in which he called the India-Maldives ties time-tested.

"Relations with #India is time-tested and is based on people to people contact & cooperation in several sectors. We remain committed to further enhancing and strengthening existing ties," Asim had tweeted.

Meanwhile, asked about the visit of the mother and wife of Indian death row convict Kulbhushan Jadhav to Pakistan to meet him, Kumar said the modalities of the trip were being worked out.

"The modalities of the meeting are being worked out and who goes when, how do they go, how the meeting takes place, I think this is something the two countries are engaged in discussion," said Kumar when asked about media reports quoting Pakistani officials that the mother and wife of Jadhav will be flying to Islamabad than taking the road trip via Wagah.

Asked about the comment of a Pakistani official that Islamabad may allow the two women to interact with media if India does not have any objection, Kumar did not give a direct reply, saying, "We will see."

To a separate question, Kumar said Pakistan is under international obligation to protect the minorities in the country.

On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said that India will take up at the highest level in the Pakistan government reports of Sikhs being forced to convert to Islam by a government official in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Her reaction came after leading Pakistan daily The Express Tribune published a news story about the Sikh community raising serious concerns after being forced to convert to Islam by the government official in the Hangu district of K-P.
New Delhi: The grandfather of the twin babies, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, on Thursday demanded a CBI probe into the case after an appellate authority stayed the Delhi government order cancelling the hospital's licence.

At a press conference held, 48-year-old Kailash, grandfather of the baby boy, who later died at a nursing home in Pitampura while his sister was stillborn, alleged that the family was "not even "informed" about the stay order.

"We tried to silently protest in front of Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, but police removed us from there. The Delhi government had taken the decision that would have served as a warning to other hospitals.

"But, now the cancellation order has stayed. We are running for justice. We want justice and so we demand a CBI probe into the whole case so that things get clear," Kailash told reporters.

He said they have hired an advocate to pursue the case and claimed that on Thursday a plea was filed by him in Rohini court for a status report of the ongoing investigation in the case.

The Court of Financial Commissioner stayed the cancellation order issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) till 9 January, when the next hearing will be held.

Rishi Pal Singh, counsel for the aggrieved family, said: "if the appellate authority summons us, we will present our case or else we may move the high court".
New Delhi: As Pakistan's Army chief pledged his support for better ties, India on Thursday asserted that Islamabad will have to take action against terror groups operating from its soil for improvement in the bilateral relationship.

Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

Reacting to the comments, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups.

"It is important for Pakistan to understand our core concern, which is terrorism. We have time and again asked them to take action against terrorists who are operating from their soil. This is something they (Pakistan) will have to handle if they are serious in cultivating this friendship," Kumar told reporters.

He was asked to comment on Bajwa's remarks. "Like any good neighbour, we do desire good neighbourly relations with the country which is next to us," Kumar said.

In a rare move, the Pakistan Army chief briefed the Senate  the Upper House of the Parliament  on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Bajwa also said his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

The military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation for the first time in six years.

The powerful army enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of Kubhushan Jadhav would be having the last meeting with him on Monday, adding that the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.

Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

"Let me assure you that the commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."

He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the ministry of foreign affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the ministry of foreign affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question, Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on 3 March last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said it will release 291 Indian fishermen, held for allegedly violating its territorial waters, as a goodwill gesture.

The fishermen will be released in two phases on 29 December and 8 January via Wagah Border, Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said.

Earlier on 27 October, Pakistan released 68 Indian fishermen.

According to an official report released early in December, more than 500 Indians, mostly fishermen, are languishing in various jails in Pakistan.

The Interior Ministry said there were a total of 996 foreign nationals, including 527 Indians, in Pakistani jails. They have been imprisoned for alleged involvement in various crimes, including terrorism, murder, drug smuggling, and for entering the country illegally.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently taken into custody for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats, used by them, lack the technology to avoid drifting away.
A man was allegedly beaten up and held captive by Rajasthan Cabinet minister Hem Singh Bhadana's son and his friends in Alwar on Wednesday, said media reports.

The victim was later admitted to a hospital under critical condition and is being treated.

Rajasthan: Man allegedly held captive and beaten up by state Cabinet Minister Hem Singh Bhadana's son & his friends in Alwar yesterday, admitted in hospital under critical condition. pic.twitter.com/AhG7EKZEZQ  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

The victim's father told ANI that some unidentified people were verbally abusing the minister while his son was standing there. "Those people fled but he was caught. He was later held captive and beaten up. We had to go to get him freed. We were also threatened," the victim's father was quoted as saying by ANI.

According to DNA, a case of abduction and assault has been registered against the two sons of Bhadana. The report added that the accused allegedly took the victim, Tej Singh Yadav, a student of Law, to a secluded place and used a sharp weapon to inflict injuries on him.

Yadav, in the complaint, said that Bhadana's sons threatened his family members when they showed up to rescue him.
New Delhi: It has been several days since 17-year-old Nurankis, mother of two, has heard from her husband after he left for Agra to look for a job.

Nurul Salam lost his job in Delhi after the Indian government termed Rohingya-one of the world's most persecuted minorities - as a "security threat".

"I have been cooking only rice and potato for the past couple of days. That too, only twice a day. I have about Rs 20 left. We have nothing else," Nurankis told IANS while sitting in her dark, one-room shack of blue tarpaulin and cardboard at the Shram Vihar slum of south Delhi.

IANS found several cases of Rohingya being fired from jobs in Delhi, Jammu and Punjab because of their identity, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government asked "state governments to identify and deport the Rohingya".

The government's decision was later challenged in the Supreme Court and its judgement is awaited.

"One day, they (the employer) said 'there is no work from today for people from Burma'," Nurankis said about how Salam lost his job at Allana, a Ghazipur meat processing company in east Delhi.

Following this, Salam boarded a bus to Aligarh, about 150 km from Delhi, to look for a job, leaving behind his four-year-old son Ubaib and three-month-old daughter Rubina. "He called from Aligarh and said people were asking for Aadhaar Card for hiring him," Nurankis said. "I do not know where he is now."

People who lost their jobs after the government crackdown said it had become difficult to pay rent or even eat and in some cases were forced to relocate, leaving behind what little they owned.

Rohingya, mostly Muslims, are an ethnic minority from Buddhist majority Myanmar, who have been denied citizenship and have been facing brutality from the Myanmar military.

More than 8,00,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar in the last five years as a result of violence, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and there are around 21,500 Rohingya in India.

At a tea shop near Nurankis' shack, 22-year-old Sayedul Amin remembered the day when Salam, he and around 30 other refugees lost their jobs.

"It was a normal day and we were working when the contractor came and told us that from that day there would be no jobs for people from Burma," Amin said.

When the refugees asked for a reason, they were told that the government might deport them any time and the company would face problems for employing them.

"I do not know how I'm going to pay this month's rent," said Abdul Raheem, 30, one of the refugees fired from the company.

The company laid off between 25 and 40 Rohingya refugees, according to one of Allana's security guards.

When reached for a comment, an Allana spokesperson said that Rohingya were contract employees and they were laid off as a "pro-active measure" after the government's move.

However, he said only seven or eight refugees were fired.

In Punjab, Mohammad Jubair and other Rohingya refugees were asked to leave from work.

Jubair sold his cycle, gas cylinder and parts of his shack and boarded a train to Hyderabad, where he is yet to find a job or build a shack.

In Jammu, Ashik Khurana, a 17-year-old Rohingya refugee, who used to work as a cleaner at the Jammu Tawi Railway Station with about 30 other refugees, said they were asked for Indian identity cards to continue.

After gathering all refugee workers, the in-charge said: "From today all workers from Burma who do not have an Aadhaar Card won't be allowed to work here."

Khurana said: "Where will I go for an Aadhaar Card? The UN had told us not to make any Indian ID card. "Most of us left (the job) after that."

At a Rohingya settlement in Kanchan Kunj of Delhi, Mohammad Saleem, 35, leader of the camp, said: "It (settlement) was like a job market, but now hardly anyone comes here to call us for work."

"When Modi is talking like this, people would obviously see us differently," Dil Mohammad, 60, leader of Shram Vihar settlement, said, adding: "It's better that the government rounds us up here and shoots us."
In a controversial decision, the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) on 20 December stated that the 16-year-old teenager accused of killing Pradyuman Thakur, a seven-year-old boy, on the premises of Ryan International School will be criminally tried as an adult. The JJB had also rejected the bail plea of the teenager last week.

The decision of the Board was based on the recommendations of a committee comprising of a psychologist from PGI Rohtak. The committee prepared a report on the behavioural, sociological and psychological aspects of the juvenile and this formed the backbone of the Board's pronouncement. The Board recognised that the accused was mature enough to understand the consequences of his actions.

Pradyuman's killing is deemed to be a heinous offence as it falls under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, that provides for imprisonment for life or death. Heinous offences are those that are punishable by imprisonment of seven years or more.

Pradyuman was brutally killed on the premises of Ryan International School on 8 September. Initially, the police had booked a bus conductor but when the CBI took over the case, it found out that the juvenile had slit Pradyuman's throat. Sandeep Aneja, the juvenile's counsel, states that he had committed the crime to postpone exams. "This shows how immature the juvenile was, which is why he shouldn't be treated as an adult," Aneja said.

A review of the Board's decision brings two questions to mind. Firstly, does India have the systems to implement the Juvenile Justice Amendment of 2015? Secondly, and more importantly, is it ethical to try children as adults given India's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child?

To answer the first question, it is imperative to understand that lines between juvenile and adult justice systems have increasingly blurred since the Juvenile Justice Amendment Act, 2015 came into force. In fact, the JJ Board is able to take such a decision in the Ryan International School case at this juncture because of this amendment.

The amendment of 2015 allows children aged between 16 to 18 years and in conflict with the law to be tried as adults in cases of heinous offences. It came into force from 15 January, 2016. The amendment replaced the JJ Act of 2000 which had a "reformative approach towards juveniles under 18 years, irrespective of the severity of their crime".

Under the amended laws, juveniles between 16 to 18 years of age, who the JJB finds guilty of heinous crimes through a preliminary inquiry, will be sent to a children's court that can pronounce him/her guilty. Thereafter, the juvenile is detained in a "place of safety" until they turn 21. If the juvenile has not been reformed by the age of 21, they can be sent to jails that house adults.

However, the law does not define the monitoring and evaluation for understanding the reformation of juveniles  a yardstick significant as it decides whether the juvenile can be sent to an adult jail after attaining the age of 21. Secondly, most Indian states do not have a designated borstal (place of safety) and use regular jails to house juveniles.

When India passed the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, the idea was to create a system for justice for juveniles where persons up to the age of 18 would not be subjected to imprisonment, an important part in the adult justice system, but go through community service, counselling, admonition or be sent to a remand home. This approach of the Act was founded on the doctrine of parens patriae, where the state assumes the role of a parent, in order to allow flexibility in criminal laws, where the emphasis is on the diagnosis of the child's character and lifestyle, instead of on the crime committed.

It also adhered to the jurisprudential values of the 'best interests of the child' doctrine. However, JJ Amendment, 2015, as well as the verdict of the JJ Board in the present case, completely upturn these principles when the juvenile is tried as an adult. When the lines between juvenile and adult justice systems are blurred to this extent, the welfare of the child is no longer the priority of the state.

Trying a child as an adult is based on the assumption that the child has the knowledge of wrongfulness and understands the magnitude of his/her misconduct, but the development of a child's psyche is complex and should not be reduced to the arbitrariness of a JJ Board.

Moreover, the Indian criminal system is not equipped to handle the nuances of a reformatory mechanism that the JJ Amendment of 2015 brings forth. There are not enough institutional changes to introduce the existence of "places of safety". In 2016, Anant Asthana, a juvenile law expert, stated that in states such as Odisha, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, juveniles are sent to regular jails, since these states did not set up borstals. The current framework in India does not provide a rehabilitative atmosphere for juveniles who are then tried as adults, thereby defeating the purpose of the juvenile justice system.

Secondly, according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, all state parties are required to "recognise the right of every child accused of a crime to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child's sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the childs respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the childs age and the desirability of promoting the child's reintegration and the childs assuming a constructive role in society."

Moreover, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a state party, requires all proceedings against juveniles to take into account their age and the desirability of promoting their rehabilitation. By declaring juveniles to be tried as adults, India is in contravention of several internationally accepted juvenile justice standards including the Beijing Rules (the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice), the Havana Rules (the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty), the Riyadh Guidelines (the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency) and the Economic and Social Council Guidelines for Action on Children in the Criminal Justice System.

So, by declaring that the teenager in the Ryan International School case be treated as an adult, the Indian criminal justice system is violating the juvenile's rights and this shows its reluctance to use policy to recognise the deeper issues in society that contribute to criminal behavior in children, and form a rehabilitation framework for juveniles in conflict with the law.
Anti-woman

hypocrite
New Delhi: Pledging support to a proposed private member bill for making stalking a non-bailable offence, Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor said, he would try to introduce it in the Lok Sabha in the Budget Session next year.

The draft of the bill is being prepared under the aegis of an online portal, guided by a team of lawyers, activists, and feedback obtained from people through a campaign 'Talking Stalking' launched since the Varnika Kundu case in August.

Tharoor, a senior Congress leader, at an interactive session hosted in New Delhi on Wednesday, as part of the campaign, said, he pledged his support because there was a need to "really crackdown on stalking, not just as a crime in itself, but as a possible precursor to worse crimes".

"The impunity many offenders have is compounded by the fact that the offence is bailable," he rued.

As per the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, stalking is a punishable offence under Section 354D of the IPC, with imprisonment of up to three years for the first time offenders.

The private member bill also proposes to make the offence "gender-neutral".

"I assure you that at the beginning of the Budget Session (of Parliament), which follows very quickly, on the heels of this session, we will have it queued up first in the line," Tharoor said, when asked if he would raise it in the Lok Sabha.

"It just needs amending a national law, pass it and we can expect the state governments to implement it," he said.

A senior official of The Quint, the portal helming the campaign, said Supreme Court advocate Karuna Nundy, advocate Kamini Jaiswal, and several other people have lent their support to this cause.

The Thiruvananthapuram MP suggested the team to collect all the material, draft related to the bill, the online petition by Varnika, the feedback obtained from people, and "pitch it to Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi".

"Your team should go to her and ask would her government be willing to sponsor the bill.... If yes, I will be more than willing to step aside and support them. It will be more effective if the government takes the ownership," he said.

Asked will the BJP show up, he said, "If the government chooses not to adopt it (proposed bill), they will not show up."

"Whether we have the willingness on part of the government to amend the existing laws, especially just four years after it was passed, I don't know. But the only way is to try, and I'm willing to stick my neck out for it," Tharoor said.

He also referred to some lyrics in Bollywood films, which sort of suggest that pursuing a woman is commonplace.

"When I was a teenager, I used to hear songs like  'Tera Peech na chhorunga soniye...' and somehow, the society accepted it as normal. It is time, we say it is not ok... Stalking is a bailable offence, so many a time offenders' misbehaviour extends to acid attack and other cases, and in one or two cases, to rape and murder," he said.

He alleged this Lok Sabha has been "more regressive".

"One of the troubling things, unfortunately, is that this Lok Sabha has been heading in a more regressive direction on many of the issues. We have already seen the juvenile justice bill, again a political reaction... decision to try children as adults," he claimed.

Varnika Kundu, the 29-year-old daughter of an IAS officer, who was allegedly stalked at night in August by the son of an influential politician, also shared her story at the event. Laxmi Saa, an acid attack survivor, urged all women to speak up and fight for their rights.
New Delhi: Terrorism and radicalisation are common challenges for India and Mali, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said on Thursday, calling for greater international cooperation to deal with the menace.

The vice-president and the leader of a visiting delegation from Mali Abderhamane Niang, parliamentarian and President of the High Court of Justice, Mali, held a meeting and expressed their mutual concerns about the common challenge of terrorism and radicalisation, according to a statement issued by the Rajya Sabha secretariat.

Naidu thanked the Mali government for ratifying the International Solar Alliance agreement and said that he hopes that the President of the African nation would participate in the inaugural conference of a solar alliance in India in April 2018.

Both leaders also discussed the prospects of bilateral cooperation in sectors such as energy, agriculture, food processing and infrastructure.
New Delhi: With protests in and outside Parliament, Trinamool Congress Members of Parliament on accused the Central government of violating people's rights to privacy by linking Aadhaar card with bank accounts.

The party raised the issue in the Lok Sabha during the Zero Hour.

In the Rajya Sabha, Trinamool Congress (TMC) member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy gave a notice for a short duration discussion on the matter.

With placards in their hands, TMC Members of Parliament staged a protest in front of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament premises.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien told PTI that 34 party MPs took part in the dharna.

West Bengal chief minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had earlier accused the BJP of unleashing an "autocratic rule and destroying the federal structure" of the country and opposed the linking of Aadhaar with mobile phone numbers.

In a TMC Parliamentary party meet, Banerjee had directed party MPs to keep raising the issue to corner the government.
A Muslim family in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut district was allegedly prevented from taking possession of a house purchased from a Hindu man and were accused of committing 'land jihad', according to several media reports.

The incident reportedly took place on 17 December, when Usman Ahmad, a software engineer purchased a section of the two-storeyed building in the Hindu-dominated Maliwara locality from a Hindu businessman, reported The Indian Express.

According to media reports, Sanjay Rastogi, a businessman had sold his house to Usman's family for Rs 28 lakh. Days after the property was registered in the name of Usmans elder brother Nauman, their family reached the new home on 17 December.

When Rastogi reached his house to give the possession of the property to Nauman, residents of the area objected to it and staged a protest, reported Hindustan Times. The report further said that the local police rushed to the spot immediately and tried to resolve the matter.

However, the matter aggravated when the local residents protesting against the Ahmad family's entry were supported by politicians, including the corporator of the area.

According to the Hindustan Times report, Deepak Sharma, general secretary of the BJP's youth wing BJYM, claim that Hindus are continuously selling properties Muslims are buying them. The Indian Express quoted Sharma as saying that their 'culture, thoughts and way of life are different from ours' and said that with time, the area would be dominated by Muslims.

Usman was quoted by The Indian Express as saying that the family bought the house in Maliwara as it was close to the school where his father works.

However, according to ANI, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Maan Singh Chouhan said that the issue was a minor one and that it was resolved. He was quoted by ANI as saying, "The issue was not a big one and was resolved after talking to both the parties."

A day after the incident, the Bajrang Dal convenor for Meerut province, Balraj Dungar released several statements said that the minority community in several areas in Meerut have done this to dominate the area.

He was quoted by The Times of India as saying that there is a 'sinister conspiracy' by minority communities to buy houses in Hindu-dominated areas. Dungar said that this would lead to an exodus of Hindu residents, and that this 'comes under land jihad.'
Editor's Note: A special court is likely to decide the fate of former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others in the much-anticipated 2G spectrum allocation scam cases. This article is only a summary. For detailed account of A Raja's modus operandi see this story by Shalini Singh.

Perhaps the most damning and least-known aspect of the Rs 1.76 lakh crore 2G spectrum scandal of 10 January, 2008, as it has now come to be known, is that the modus operandi of the scam-to-be was foretold by me in a series of well over 20 articles in The Times of India.

The 2G expose became the poster boy of a corrupt nation by showcasing corruption across a full 360 degrees; administrative and political culpability in violating government policies to rob the exchequer for private enrichment, (led to the Supreme Court judgment of 2012 cancelling all the "illegal" telecom licences), a corrupt media in collusion with big business and the PR industry (Radia Tapes) and the role of government law officers (Solicitor General Ghoolam Vahanvati) in facilitating rather than preventing the breaking of the law.

A Raja took over as Telecom Minister in May, 2007. At the time, I was assigned the telecom beat, in addition to several other ministry beats. Inadvertently, through the coverage of routine telecom events, the modus operandi of a scandal so massive, it would go on to rock the nation and de-stabilise the political fortunes of the ruling UPA government, began to unfold.

Policy violations detailed from October 2007

For the telecom beat, it began dramatically, with stories on the "gold rush": an ever-growing pile-up of licence applications in Sanchar Bhavan based on common knowledge that 2G licences in 2008, would be awarded at 2001 prices.

But it wasn't just about that. In granting licenses to favoured companies, Raja also helped them jump the queue. This, through illegally advancing the cut-off date and designing a bespoke first-come-first-served (FCFS) policy while ostensibly snubbing the then prime minister Manmohan Singh, law minister H R Bhardwaj, the finance ministry and his own senior officials advice to opt for fair and transparent auctions. Much of this now finds mention in the crucial section 70 (I  vii) of the Supreme Court judgment delivered in 2012 which cancelled all the 122 illegally awarded licences by Raja.

Raja ran amock, twisting every rule in the book. And every single deviation was documented in great detail.

But Raja was unstoppable. He and his team went ahead as per plan, immune to the fact that their intent and modus operandi to eventually loot the nation to the extent of Rs 1.76 lakh crore in full public view had already been detailed in one of the countrys leading national dailies.

The very first article, indicating that the Rs 1,651 crore entry fee was ridiculously low and could attract an army of bounty hunters was written on 3 October, 2007  a month before Raja revealed his devious plans to Manmohan Singh on 2 November, 2007 and 3 months before the scam. Articles on 11 October, 2007, DoT gets 575 applications for mobile licenses, on 24 October, 2007, Spectrum policy flawed, on 27 October, 2007, Auctions most transparent way of distributing 2G spectrum, on 5 November, 2007, DoT grapples with spectrum woes, on 6 November, 2007, Auctions unfair, Raja tells PM, on 9 November, 2007, DoT asked to process license applications, on 12 November, 2007, DoT may leave 26 applicants in lurch and on 7 December, 2007, DoT ready to offer LoIs.

The article Ministries dont buy DoT argument identified the fact that Raja was about to illegally advance the cut-off date from 1 October to 25 September, 2007, to place a cap of 121 licenses out of 575 applications while intending to claim that he would follow the TRAI recommendations of no cap. The articles also laid out the controversy of changing the order of priority by manipulating the FCFS policy of the government. This was done nearly three weeks before the scam through an article on 24 December, 2007 titled, Fee payment date key for telecom license seekers. I also exposed the dissent within Raja's team on December 27, 2007, DoT wing warns Raja on LoIs.

Further, as soon as the Swan and Unitech transactions yielded windfall gains, I was the first to point out on 30 October, 2008, Valuations reveal loss of government, and on 1 November, 2008, Telco deals show enterprise value: DoT experts say they are for spectrum. These articles estimated the loss at Rs 45,000 crore from the Swan and Etisalat transactions. Following this expose, Raja on 5 November, 2007 decided to prohibit sale of promoters equity. Two years later, the CAG, in its report, independently arrived at the same figure of loss from the 122 licenses arising out of the Swan and Unitech deals. Similarly, immediately post the 3G auctions, my detailed article of 31 May, 2010, Not auctioning 2G spectrum cost government over 1 lakh crores, indicated a loss of roughly Rs 1,02,511 crore at 3G prices. Again, the CAG independently arrived at this figure six months later.

The 2G scam - simply told

Raja sold spectrum, a scarce national resource, at a fraction of its value to private companies, causing a staggering Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss to the exchequer. There is no law or power that restricted him from seeking an open, transparent auction in 2008 at a time when investors were queuing up for licences and spectrum in India.

There are many allegations against the minister apart from favoring a 2001 price of Rs 1,651 crore for pan-India spectrum. He also used a first-come-first-served (FCFS) norm to give away spectrum to select companies in January, 2008. Barely 10 months later, some new licensees struck lucrative equity deals at seven times this price without a single penny being invested in infrastructure.

The minister's modus operandi was worryingly simple. A few companies with unknown credentials and a few realtors with no telecom background filed for telecom licences/spectrum after he took office in May 2007.

Suddenly, on 25 September, 2007, he said the window for applications would close on 1 October. This ensured that no global firms could apply. Clearly, three days are not enough to find a partner, get FIPB clearance, or bring in paid-up capital.

Later, the minister made 25 September, once the date of announcement of cut-off, the actual cut-off. This helped him to arbitrarily hand-pick nine out of the 46 companies that had applied for 575 licences. No explanation was given for these decisions. The then prime minister, Manmohan Singh and then finance minister P Chidambaram conveniently looked the other way.

Then, on 10 January, 2008 with just a few hours' notice, Raja allocated 120 licences for roughly Rs 9,200 crore. The FCFS rule ensured that telecom companies had to engage in fist fights to secure a priority position in the spectrum queue.

The minister took refuge in a 2003 cabinet decision by the NDA government and a single paragraph from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) 178-page recommendations of 2007 in defending himself. Raja says these documents favour FCFS while his critics, including TRAI, point to a clear vote for auctions in the same documents. Later TRAI's guidelines on mergers and acquisitions were suitably amended. While pretending to ban windfall gains for new licensees, a strategic opening for acquisitions was left open. This allowed new licensees to profit by wooing those very foreign companies that were strategically denied entry as a result of the arbitrary 25 September cut-off date. Money that rightfully belonged to the exchequer went into the pockets of rich industrialists.

Countless letters to Manmohan Singh appealing for accountability and redress went unanswered.

A PIL against the minister's alleged wrongdoings was admitted in the Delhi high court in 2008.

The courts hearing the PIL eventually dug out the real issues from the heap of obfuscating material and lies that the telecom ministry provided, including parading the decisions taken as high policy.

In February 2012, the Supreme Court cancelled all the 122 licences awarded in 2008 for a paltry Rs 9,200 crore, ruling that these licences and subsequently, all natural resources should be allocated through auctions/a fair bidding process alone. Spectrum auctions from 2010 to 2016 have yielded Rs 3.6 lakh crore to the exchequer. This is when the stock markets were not at their best performance.

Had auctions taken place on January 10, 2008, when the stock markets were at their peak, the staggering premiums realised by a couple of upstart firms would have flowed into the government's coffers.

For the courts, the 2G scam became an opportunity for a landmark judgment  to deliver both law and justice by adjudicating, without favour or political pressure and a fight for the rights of consumers and citizens versus the might of government and large business.
New Delhi: A bill which seeks to criminalise the practice of instant triple talaq has been listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha on Friday.

'Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Bill', prepared by an inter-ministerial group headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, makes giving instant triple talaq "illegal and void" and provides for a jail term of three years for the husband.

The bill was cleared by the Union Cabinet last week.

Though the bill has been listed in Lok Sabha's agenda papers for Friday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the bill would come up for introduction next week.

According to the provisions, the husband could also be fined and the quantum of fine would be decided by the magistrate hearing the case.

The bill is being introduced as the practice still continued despite the Supreme Court striking down 'talaq-e-biddat' (instant triple talaq).

The proposed law would only be applicable to instant triple talaq or 'talaq-e-biddat' and it would give power to the victim to approach a magistrate seeking "subsistence allowance" for herself and minor children.

The woman can also seek the custody of her minor children from the magistrate who will take a final call on the issue.

Under the draft law, triple talaq in any form, spoken, in writing or by electronic means such as email, SMS, and WhatsApp, would be bad or illegal and void.

According to the draft law, which would be applicable to the entire country except for Jammu and Kashmir, giving instant talaq would attract a jail term of three years and a fine. It would be a non-bailable, cognisable offence.

After the Supreme Court order striking down the practice, the government was of the view that the practice would end.

But it continued and there have been 177 reported cases of instant talaq before the judgment and 66 after the order this year. Uttar Pradesh tops the list.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has decided to ignore superstition and visit Noida on 25 December to receive prime minister Narendra Modi for inauguration of the Noida-Kalkaji Metro line.

Officials confirmed to IANS that the chief minister has given his go ahead for the programme and has shunned advice for not doing so, as many of his predecessors had apparently lost their chair after visiting Noida.

His immediate predecessor Akhilesh Yadav never visited Noida in his five year tenure and inaugurated projects and roads by remote control from his official Kalidas Marg residence in Lucknow.

Barring Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati who visited Noida four times and incidentally lost power too, no chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has visited Noida in 29 years.

Chief Minister Veer Bahadur Singh visited Noida in 1988 and was ousted of power soon after. A similar fate awaited his successor Narayan Dutt Tiwari of the Congress in 1989, Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1995, Kalyan Singh in 1999 and Mayawati in 2012.

Senior police officials of Noida confirmed that the final programme of Adityanath has been received by the district authorities. A spokesman of the ruling BJP, Chandramohan said while the chief minister was a deeply religious man he did not subscribe to superstitions, and he was only inspired by development and welfare of the people of Uttar Pradesh.
Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath will hold a "roadshow" in Mumbai on Friday for captains of industry seeking their participation in the "Investor's Summit 2018" to be held in Lucknow in February next year.

The "roadshow" will be held at Hotel Trident in south Mumbai.

Anup Chandra Pandey, Uttar Pradesh's industrial development commissioner, said, "This roadshow will seek the participation of leading industrialists operating in Maharashtra. Prominent industrialists including Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, Subhash Chandra, Ashok Hinduja along with several Bollywood personalities have been invited."

The Uttar Pradesh government is organising the "Investor's Summit 2018" on 21-22 February next year in Lucknow to attract industrial investment in Uttar Pradesh.

Awanish Awasthi, principal secretary and director-general of the department of tourism, Uttar Pradesh, said, "The UP (Uttar Pradesh) government is committed to establishing a strong industrial infrastructure to provide employment opportunities to the youth."

He added that by implementing the new Industrial Investment and Employment Promotion Policy 2017, Information Technology policy and policies regarding startups, food processing, and agriculture, the Uttar Pradesh government was creating an atmosphere conducive for the industry.

Industrial development minister Satish Mahana and Chief Secretary Rajive Kumar will lead a delegation of senior officers from Uttar Pradesh, Awasthi said.
Noted Indian Carnatic vocalist and Ramon Magsaysay prize winner TM Krishna is known for pushing the envelope with every performance. However, his biggest contribution to the domain of arts and culture has perhaps been the breaking of social barriers and inclusion of marginalised musical communities into the so-called 'tradition system'. His collaborations with these musical communities have often raised eyebrows, but they've also created a magic that cannot be denied.

On 16 December, Krishna collaborated with Kattaikkuttu (a traditional movement-based musical theatre form from the interiors of Tamil Nadu) artistes, in a concert at Mumbai's St. Andrew's Auditorium, under the banner of First Edition Arts' Karnatic Modern II Series. The performance was conceptualised by the Kattaikkuttu playwright, performer and composer P Rajagopal, his wife and scholar Hanne M De Bruin along with Krishna and Carnatic musician Sangeetha Sivakumar. Including the above four, the whole performance brought together around 17 musicians and actors on stage.

The premise of the performance was the disrobing of Draupadi and the 18th day from the Mahabharata. Devina Dutt of First Edition Arts, mentions in her review that one of the highlights of the performance was a musical dialogue between Rajagopal and Krishna where they discussed (musically) the concepts of labour, knowledge, language and caste. "While Rajagopal sang his own verses, Krishna sang verses from the Bhagvatapurana, Kanaka Dasa and Perumal Murugan," she says.

Firstpost interviewed TM Krishna about this collaborative performance. Edited excerpts follow:

First, it was the Jogappas, now you are collaborating with Kattaikkuttu artistes. Your choice of projects brings notice to and appreciation for an art form. At the same time, with every performance/concert, you open up a discussion that makes one think. Is that a conscious decision?

I do not think the intention has ever been to make people take notice, but there is a conscious internal drive within me that constantly asks questions of my own perceptions, predispositions and fixations. These are social, cultural and aesthetic challenges. Therefore whether it is singing a Carnatic concert or collaborating with artists from other art forms, I am trying to dispassionately reflect  and that is the way I keep myself alive.

You have time and again stressed that 'classical' forms of art have always been at the disposal of the privileged/upper class/caste. While many have supported your stand, some have also expressed displeasure over the same. Does that bother you?

I do understand the displeasure and I know that two decades ago, I might have felt the same way. But what has surprised me is the inability of people within the community to even acknowledge that there is a problem. They seem to be living in some warped reality where socio-politically we are near perfect, if not perfect. The ignorance of sociology or understanding of cultural and social movements is abysmal. This has saddened me. The defense arguments have been so fallacious that if accepted, it is equal to declaring that there is no discrimination in any sphere of human activity. After all, haven't there been women, African Americans, Dalits, ethnic minorities and religious minorities who have made a mark in so many fields? Only the upper-caste/class has the luxury to believe that society is caste-less or class-less? But I have one request to the nay-sayers: disagree with my methods, and find your own way of addressing these issues  but get out of this rabbit hole.

Recently, your remark on MS Subbulakshmi having 'Brahminised herself' became a huge point of discussion on social media. How do you raise important/bold questions knowing that it might not go down well with listeners?

The questions I raised about MS Subbulakshmi are not new or earth-shattering This has been spoken and written about by scholars, sociologists, historians, writers, thinkers for decades. This is probably the first time a person who belongs to the inner-wheels of Carnatic music expressed these ideas. Whether or not someone agrees with me is not is not my concern. It is the seriousness-ness of the idea that forces me to speak or write. This is not just about Carnatic music, these are questions of class, caste, gender and marginalisation. It is important that these are raised in all spheres of living. About my own inquiries, I can only say this: I might be wrong, but I am never disingenuous.

Living in times when freedom of expression is a contentious issue altogether, what motivates you? How can arts tackle non-secularism, fundamentalism and elitism when the existing art (mode) is a by-product of the same?

Art and artists can make a difference in society only if they are honest enough to fight the fundamentalism within their own sphere of work. Every art form is embroiled in its own mess and this needs to be addressed aesthetically and socially. The larger political discourse will emanate from this core, only then does it have a centering.

How do you respond to criticism about how Carnatic music should not be part of (events like) NH7 Weekender, considering the general atmosphere of such a music festival and the fact that alcohol is consumed there? What was your experience of performing at NH7 like?

NH7 was absolutely fantastic and I am so happy that Carnatic music found its voice there. The concert also proved that the younger generation is open to all music, we have to just take it to them. It is important that art forms are moved away from the comfort zones and placed in new environments. This will make them accessible to diverse people. To the critics, I have nothing to say.

In today's digital world, when everything is 'on the go', do you think the pursuit of arts has also become 'nibbly'? How do you think the generation of today should understand and approach Indian classical (both Hindustani and Carnatic) in the fast-paced world around them?

I do not agree with the presumption that this or the next generation does not have the time to drench themselves in the arts. To believe that previous generations were more serious about art is just nostalgic old people talk! Every generation has had art nibblers! It is just that social media today reveals their identity to us. I have faith that the next generation will take to art with dedication and commitment, many have already. The path they choose may be entirely different from ours and we may be in disagreement, yet they move ahead. But it is our job to make them critically thinking ethical artists. I am never bothered about numbers, diversity interests me; that we need to work on.

Do you think the future of classical music is bright? Given the amount of technology that has seeped into the production of arts, how do you think a complicated form like classical music will fare in the coming days?

All art forms are complicated. So let's stop adding these adjectives to only the classical. By doing so we are alienating it from people and placing it on a pedestal. Both can be avoided. Like every art form, the classical traditions will find a way to tap into technology in musicality and in the way the music is shared. But technology by itself can do nothing unless the people within begin asking difficult questions about the art and its nature. If we do not, technology will only help in furthering our exclusivity.

 

In one of your recent demo-lectures, you had talked about how the new crop of Carnatic musicians has benefitted a lot from the youth awakening during the mid-1980s. How do you think the two major Indian classical music forms  Hindustani and Carnatic  benefit from each other? Is a confluence possible? Or should they remain in their perceived water-tight compartments?

Both art forms have always spoken to each other, they have never remained in water-tight compartments. But in the last 50 years, we have become parochial and insular, looking at each other as competitors rather than partners. Maybe we need to ban jugalbandis for a while. In my opinion (barring the rare beautiful experiments), by and large, such events have successfully perpetrated misnomers about each other's forms. The truth is, very few Carnatic and Hindustani musicians actually know the other music. It is always a game of one-upmanship, with Carnatic and Hindustani musicians claiming the superiority of their own tradition. It is ironic that I am saying this, but we musicians need to learn to listen!
New Delhi: The 2G verdict will remain a black mark in the history of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the former CAG chief Vinod Rai should be prosecuted, the Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said.

"A blind man can see. You know the CAG chief is today one of the strong advisors of the government, posted on various boards and organisations and is being rewarded for what he has done. That will remain a black mark in the history of CAG," Vadakkan said.

"He (Vinod Rai) should be prosecuted by the law of the land for creating such kind of excuses and cover-ups. I think he should be prosecuted," the Congress spokesperson told a private channel after the special court's verdict acquitting all the accused in the cases of 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Rai had said that there was a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in the allocation of the 2G spectrum during the erstwhile UPA regime.

The Congress also attacked the ruling-NDA government saying this was a false charge made against the UPA government headed by a very honest prime minister.

"This was the beginning of a fraudulent government which was trying to bid for power creating a cover and blaming us of corruption. Now this is a reality that this government has to face. And that has come right bang on their face. "In this Parliament session, they have a lot of questions to answer. How can you do this to any political party? People are watching this very closely. This is going to echo across the country," Vadakkan said.

Follow all the LIVE updates from the 2G spectrum case judgment here
Obama Administration Will Be Formally Investigated for 'Potentially Criminal' Act Involving Hezbollah, IranObama sold out our country. He gave our secrets, money, and military cover so they could destroy, and cause terror all over the world. Obama continues to lie to the American people saying he's a Christian. Obama is a POS traitor Muslim who did everything he could to destroy our country
Nagpur: A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all 19 accused in the controversial 2G spectrum case, which had sparked off widespread criticism of the UPA government. Reacting to the verdict, senior Maharashtra Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan said that the BJP 'lies have been exposed.'

Speaking to Firstpost, Chavan said, "When the UPA government was in power, massive agenda-driven propaganda was carried out against us. The Bharatiya Janata Party benefited from this propaganda. The court verdict in the 2G case has proved the Congress and the UPA government's innocence."

Prithviraj Chavan is a former chief minister of Maharashtra and was the Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) when the alleged scandal broke out, and when the controversy became the subject of political slugfests. He is presently in Nagpur for the Winter Session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

"Today's court verdict has reiterated that no such corruption took place during the regime of former prime minister Manmohan Singh. That is why all 19 accused in the case have been acquitted," Chavan said.

Chavan said that the BJP used the issue to level allegations of corruptions against the Congress, because of which the latter lost the Lok Sabha elections.

"The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)a constitutional authorityallowed the BJP to mislead the nation. The BJP played the role of a highly irresponsible opposition. But now, due to this judgment, the people have come to know of the real scenario regarding to 2G spectrum," he remarked.

The CAG, headed by Vinod Rai, had estimated that the 2G spectrum had led to a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, an allegation which was vociferously contested by the UPA.

Chavan said that in the UPA era, multiple forces, including the BJP, the Anna Hazare-led movement and other political forces like Arvind Kejriwal, levied allegations against the Congress, due to which it faced defeat. "We were not able to adequately respond to the charges levelled by the BJP and other parties, due to which we suffered in the elections despite not having indulged in any corruption."

"The fact remains that there is no substantial material on record to prove the allegation which have been made. If the BJP has any evidence, why has it not produced the same in court after the Modi government came to power?" Chavan said.

The former minister of state said that the government's priority needs to be that of revenue maximinsation. "This was a policy that we took forward from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era," he said, adding that spectrum and coal allocations have put a 'tremendous strain' on the public sector.

Prithviraj Chavan also responded to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's assertion that the CBI court's judgment does not mean a 'clean chit.' Jaitley has said that the Congress should not consider the verdict as a 'badge of honour.'

Chavan said, "We respect the verdict of the court. On what basis is Jaitley speaking about this case? He should apologise, as the BJP has not been able to produce any evidence in the last 42 months. The case is a black mark in the history of the CAG."

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were among the 19 people who were acquitted by the special CBI court on Thursday.

Other prominent accused acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG)  Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.
In a huge relief for the Congress and DMK, former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were on Thursday acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Raja and Kanimozhi were among 19 accused acquitted by the court.

Others acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG)  Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani have also been acquitted in the case.

Besides them, three telecom firms  Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL), Reliance Telecom Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd  were also accused and acquitted in the case.

Special CBI Judge OP Saini pronounced the judgement in the 2G scam which had rocked the UPA government.

Saini decided the fate of the accused by saying, "I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused".

A number of supporters of DMK leaders Raja and Kanimozhi, who were anxiously waiting outside the jam-packed court room, broke into loud cheers as soon as the verdict was pronounced.

Besides the accused and their advocates, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and few journalists managed to get inside the court room.

The judge first pronounced the judgement in the cases lodged by the CBI and the ED against Raja and others.

After these accused vacated the court room, the promoters of Essar Group and Loop Telecom along with one other accused who were facing trial in the case arising out of the 2G spectrum scam probe entered the court room after which the judge pronounced a separate order.

Family members of the accused were also present in the court.

DMK supporters were seen bursting fire crackers outside the court complex and showered Raja and Kanimozhi with flowers as soon as they stepped out of court.

In its chargesheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, the CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on 2 February, 2012.

All the accused facing trial in these cases had denied allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the ED.

The court had in October 2011 framed charges against them under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using as genuine fake documents, abusing official position, criminal misconduct by public servant and taking bribe.

The verdict on Thursday created a political storm as politicians from both the ruling and opposing parties reacted strongly to the verdict.

"I would love to thank everyone who stood by me...I think justice has prevailed. Finally, our innocence has been proved. I'm sure this will enthuse the DMK cadre," said Kanimozhi after the verdict. "We welcome the verdict. We are very happy with the court's decision," said Raja.

"My position and my prime minister (Singh)'s position has been vindicated. It was a scam by Vinod Rai. Even the online trolls should apologise because they still hurl insults at me," said Congress leader Kapil Sibal.

However, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley lashed out at the Congress. "Congress party leaders are treating this judgment as some kind of badge of honour and a certification that the 2G policy was an honest policy. In 2007 and 2008, (telecom) spectrum was being given not by an auction, not by a market mechanism, but on the basis of a price discovery that was made in 2001," he said.

With inputs from PTI

Follow live updates here
All hell broke loose in the Indian political circles after a special court on Thursday acquitted former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Sixteen other accused and three companies were also acquitted in the case.

Here are the prominent political reactions:

Kanimozhi (DMK): I would love to thank everyone who stood by me...I think justice has prevailed. Finally, our innocence has been proved. I'm sure this will enthuse the DMK cadre.

I would love to thank everyone who stood by me: Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha MP #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/3plOl0RlLE  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

A Raja (DMK): We welcome the verdict. We are very happy with the court's decision.

Manmohan Singh (former prime minister): I don't want to boast about anything. I think the court's judgment has to be respected. The judgment speaks for itself. This was false propaganda against the UPA.

Kapil Sibal (Congress): My position and my prime minister (Singh)'s position has been vindicated. It was a scam by Vinod Rai. Even the online trolls should apologise because they still hurl insults at me. If you create an atmosphere of suspicion and that everything which the UPA did was wrong, you will have positions like this. The telecom sector today is in dire straits because of Rai. It is most unfortunate that the country had to go through this.

Aaj meri baat siddh ho gayi, koi corruption nahi, koi loss nahi. Agar scam hai to jhooth ka scam hai, vipaksh aur Vinod Rai ke jhooth ka. Vinod Rai ko desh ke saamne maafi maangni chahiye: Kapil Sibal,Congress #2Gverdict pic.twitter.com/nHTCTyiziC  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

P Chidambaram (Congress): Allegations of a major scam involving the highest levels of government were never true and never correct. And that has been established.

Allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of Government was never true, was not correct and that has been established today: P Chidambaram,Congress #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/bfVgL14ES9  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Subramanian Swamy (BJP):

Govt must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in High Court  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017

Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here.  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017

Shashi Tharoor (Congress): We accept the court verdict acquitting all in the case. Clearly, the court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work. In our country, justice is the responsibility of the courts.

Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country: Shashi Tharoor, Congress #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/MK8IEYHVuV  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Milind Deora (Congress):

As a former minister for Telecom & IT, I refused to pass judgement on the 2G scam. I wish CAG & the press had done the same, that the special court delivered justice sooner & that CBI & other agencies are held accountable for serious acts of omission  Milind Deora (@milinddeora) December 21, 2017

I continue to believe that a governments priority neednt be revenue maximisation. Dont forget, spectrum & coal auctions have put a tremendous strain on PSU banks. Teledensity & affordable power for all are far more prudent policy priorities  Milind Deora (@milinddeora) December 21, 2017

The CAG report allowed BJP to mislead the nation & play the role of a highly irresponsible opposition. This won them an election, but hurt Indias competitiveness & straddled banks with 4 lakh crore of debt resulting from license cancellations & auctions  Milind Deora (@milinddeora) December 21, 2017

Manu Sundaram (DMK): All the accused cooperated. This is one of the fastest trials in recent history. In comparison, Jayalalithaa's trial took 18 years. This verdict doesn't come as a surprise because our party always believed this.

TKS Elangovan (DMK): This proves that the CAG's case was politically motivated.

Durai Murugan (DMK):

Victory begins now. With political motives this case was put in us. Conspiracies were hatched against us but all have been blown away now: Durai Murugan, Senior DMK Leader pic.twitter.com/UfWzwmIO5y  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Anna Hazare (social activist):

If the Government has concrete evidence, then they should take the matter to a higher court: Anna Hazare #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/wkTmT9JJm3  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Arun Jaitley (BJP): "This was a corrupt policy intended to support corruption. There is nothing in this (judgment) which Congress should consider as some kind of certificate. Congress party leaders are treating this judgment as some kind of badge of honour and a certification that the 2G policy was an honest policy. In 2007 and 2008, (telecom) spectrum was being given not by an auction, not by a market mechanism, but on the basis of a price discovery that was made in 2001. Per licensee, the spectrum value was placed at Rs 1,734 crore. The first-come-first-serve policy was intended to serve only a select few. On the basis of all this, in February 2012, the Supreme Court quashed this policy. That this was a corrupt, dishonest policy has already been upheld by the Supreme Court. Each and every case of spectrum allocation was quashed by the Supreme Court as arbitrary and unfair. The government was directed to have a fresh policy by which the auction would take place.

Congress leaders are treating this judgement as some kind of a badge of honor & a certification that it was an honest policy: Arun Jaitley #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/Y6fWNXVW5t  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Ashutosh (Aam Aadmi Party):
The socialite who derisively expanded DMK to 'Delhi Money for Karunanidhi' can eat crow. So can former Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, Vinod Rai who majestically declared that the loss to the exchequer due to the 2G scam was an astounding Rs 1,760,000,000,000. Or Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The number of zeroes was enough to taint the then UPA government and label it as a corrupt regime  a charge from which it never quite recovered. And its telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, a representive of Congress ally, the DMK, was the fall guy, seen as a courier boy to arrange funds for his political masters in Chennai.

Judge OP Saini's verdict acquitting everyone in the 2G case means 'No One Stole Spectrum'. That it was all hawa-hawai by the then Opposition, certain members of the bureaucracy and the media. The acquittal of Raja, Kanimozhi and the rest means the 2G scam, that the CBI miserably failed to establish in court, never happened.

But given the high-profile nature of the case and the dirt that was flung around, people will find it difficult to believe there was no hanky panky. Such is the distrust for the political class, especially those in the non-NDA cluster, that the UPA's critics will point that it is at best, a technical victory. But legally speaking, for now, Raja's veshti is spotlessly clean. The verdict has given a political lease of life to the DMK. Its effect, in the short term will be felt in the RK Nagar Assembly constituency where polling is on at the time of writing. The DMK already fancied its chances in the election, but with the wind of the positive 2G verdict behind it, it will look to score an emphatic victory.

For the better part of this decade, the 2G case has been used to push the DMK and the Congress on to the back foot. Late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa would taunt the DMK as a corrupt party, marking out the Karunanidhi family for special mention since Kanimozhi had to go to Tihar Jail in the case. To therefore win in Jayalalithaa's erstwhile constituency would be sweet revenge. MK Stalin will see the judgment as payback time and will use it to use it to tell the world that the family and the party was targetted for political gains.

Expect a more aggressive Congress now coming out to take on the BJP that was at the forefront of the political war over the 2G scam. The court has given it a handle to ward off charges that the UPA years  especially between 2009 and 2014  witnessed the loot of the exchequer. If the verdict had indeed been delivered on 5 December, as it was originally meant to be, it could have altered the electoral narrative in the last week of the Gujarat campaign. The Congress will rue the missed opportunity.

With the state of flux in Tamil Nadu, the DMK will have its nose ahead in the electoral battle for Lok Sabha in 2019 and the Assembly elections, whenever the present AIADMK arrangement collapses under the weight of its internal squabbles. While the Congress would assume the DMK will stick by the UPA, the BJP  that is looking at Tamil Nadu to make possible gains  could woo the Dravidian majority as well.

Which is why one suspects Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the first move last month when he surprised everyone by calling on an ailing M Karunanidhi at his Gopalpuram residence and spending time with Stalin and Kanimozhi. Although relations between the DMK and the BJP are not too warm, nothing can ever be ruled out in politics. Modi's visit was the first step, with 2019 in mind.

Stalin, in all probability, use this verdict to drive a hard bargain with the Congress to get maximum seats in both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, whenever they are held, to try and establish himself as the strongman south of the Vindhyas. This judgment has presented him with an opportunity to emerge out of Karunanidhi's shadows.

But in case the next Lok Sabha throws up a fractured verdict, the DMK's numbers  should it do very well, as the expectations now would be  will become extremely significant. Stalin then will become the man to watch out for. Remember, the DMK in the past has done business with both NDA and UPA.

It would be a stretch to say the 2G verdict has given the Congress a foot in the door to New Delhi but certainly it has to an extent, opened up 2019.

Follow all the LIVE updates from the 2G spectrum case judgment here
So nobody made money in 2G scam, nobody flouted norms, nobody was complicit while laying down an arbitrary first come first serve policy on antiquated pricing. In the end, the special CBI court verdict on this case, which stirred national conscience for years and led to demise of UPA-government, is like the verdict in Jessica Lal murder case and Aarushi and Hemraj murder case: No one killed Jessica, no one killed Arushi and Hemraj, and now no one caused 2G scam.

What makes the lower court order even more curious as it comes over five-and-half-years after two-judge bench of Supreme Court said, while cancelling 122 licences that A Raja "virtually gifted away the important national asset at throw away prices".

Armed with special CBI court order acquitting all accused in the 2G scam, the Congress was back to claiming zero sum loss, and also demanding explanation from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP for having made it an issue against UPA.

In Congress' thought process, the verdict has given them an opportunity to claim vindication and charge the BJP with a conspiracy to label the erstwhile Congress regime as neck deep in corruption or the most corrupt government ever.

The Congress chest thumping has another angle: It wants to convey a message to the its ally, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, that it was the BJP and not the Congress which was responsible for their plight where two of its top leaders, A Raja and Kanimozhi, had the ignominy of being lodged in Tihar Jail for a prolonged period.

A Raja was in jail for 15 months and Kanimozhi was in jail for six-and-half-months. The partys eagerness to strike a fresh fraternal bond with DMK was heightened by Modi's surprise visit to DMK chief Karunanidhis home in Chennai.

The prime minister's visit broke the ice that was there for past decade and half between the BJP and DMK. Almost all family members, including MK Stalin, Kanimozhi and Karunanidhi's two wives gave a warm welcome to Modi. The visit had the potential to alter political alignment ahead of the 2019 general election.

In its enthusiasm to claim vindicationto quote Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the Congress was treating the lower court verdict as a badge of honour, the Congress and its top leadership seems to be experiencing some kind of amnesia.

Let us consider the facts: The 2G scam, which occurred during UPA-I, came to the fore during UPA-II after a 2010 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report alleged arbitrary allocation of spectrum to telecom companies by the government led to a whopping loss of 1.76 lakh crore to the state exchequer.

Vinod Rai, the then CAG, an IAS officer of impeccable credentials, was appointed by the Congress-led UPA government. Prior to that, he served as secretary in finance ministry. It was not the BJP but the UPA  forced by CAG report, public anger and tough stance taken by the Supreme Court  which initiated the CBI inquiry.

It was the UPA and not the BJP which sacked then telecom minister A Raja. It was also during the UPA regime that A Raja, Kanimozhi, and a whole lot of other people were sent to jail and denied bail for a long time. It was also during the UPA rule that charge sheet in the case was filed and Supreme Court gave a series of stinging observations.

It must also be noted that during that period, when 2G scam was being furiously debated in media and all other public forums, thereby raising political temperature and stirring popular psyche, Narendra Modi was nowhere in picture, at least on the national stage.

The BJP was then accused of not doing anything on its own, but simply latching on to what was said in CAG report and indictments made by the Supreme Court. The BJP would have failed in its duty if it had not raised the issue with the force with which it did.

The larger question, which Thursday's verdict and Congress' claim of fair play raises is: If there was no scam and nobody was guilty, then why did Supreme Court cancel all 122 licences allocated by the government and order auction of the same?

Remember, the Supreme Court in its 2 February, 2012 order, while declaring the allocation of spectrum as illegal and cancelling 122 licenses, said that the process followed by telecom ministry under A Raja directions was "wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest apart from being violative of the doctrine of equality" to "favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer".

The apex court also took on the Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI) for its role in the entire episode, saying that the regulator's approach was "lopsided" and "contrary to the decision taken by the Council of Ministers" and its recommendations became a "handle" for A Raja who "virtually gifted away the important national asset at throw away prices".

A bench of Justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguli also held that spectrum was a natural resource and natural resources are vested with the government as a matter of trust in the name of the people of India, and it is the solemn duty of the state to protect the national interest, and natural resources must always be used in the interests of the country and not private interests.

It noted that there was a fundamental flaw in the first-come, first-served principle, inasmuch as it involves an element of pure chance or accident In matters involving award of contracts or grant of licence or permission to use public property, the invocation of the first-come, first-served principle has inherently dangerous implications.

Jaitley indicated that the Modi government would appeal in the high court. "I am sure investigating agencies and prosecuting agencies will look into it and decide what to do further in the matter. The Congress should not consider this as some kind of certificate of clean chit," Jaitley said.

Turning to its political implications: How will the verdict impact politics and political alignments at the Centre? Though the DMK has gone on record to say that it continues to be Congress ally, the fact that the charges were framed against Raja and Kanimozhi when UPA was in power and were acquitted when BJP is in power can make the Tamilian party more amenable towards Modi and BJP in 2019, if it needs to be.

Follow all the LIVE updates from the 2G spectrum case judgment here
New Delhi: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was quick to play the victim after a CBI trial court acquitted A Raja and Kanimozhi among others. The court said the investigation agencies had failed miserably to prove any criminality against the accused. Singh, as indeed the rest of the Congress party, jumped on to this to exonerate themselves of wrongdoing, although they aren't named as accused in the case. The former PM's claim does not hold water for many reasons which will be explained later. But lets first consider what he told TV channels:

#2GVerdict Dr Manmohan Singh tells @NDTv's Sunil Prabhu: ""a massive propaganda was unleashed against my government and now the judgment speaks for itself"  Suparna Singh (@Suparna_Singh) December 21, 2017

And former telecom minister Kapil Sibal termed the courts verdict a moral victory for the Congress party.

But not many saw absence of moral culpability for Singh and his Cabinet. Sanjaya Baru, media advisor to Manmihan Singh in UPA-I, claims he was the first such official to write an account of his years working in the Prime Ministers Office. In his book The Accidental Prime Minister, Baru talks of active morality that Singh practiced for himself and passive morality that he kept for colleagues. This extract seems more pertinent today as Singh is seen to be morally culpable of the alleged spectrum scam.

Baru says in the book Dr Singhs general attitude towards corruption in public life, which he adopted through his career in government, seemed to me to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others. In other words, he was himself incorruptible, and also ensured no one in his immediate family ever did wrong, but he did not feel answerable for the misdemeanours of his colleagues and subordinates. In this instance (reference to 2G scam), he felt even less because he was not the political authority that had appointed them to those ministerial positions. In practice, this meant that he turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of his ministers. He expected the Congress party leadership to deal with the black sheep in his government, just as he expected the allies to deal with their black sheep. While his conscience was always clear with respect to his own conduct, he believed everyone had to deal with their own conscience.

When a colleague got caught, as the DMK Minister Raja finally was, he let the law take its course.... Dr Singhs approach was a combination of active morality for himself and passive morality with respect to others.

So if the allegations of a scam were just propaganda, why did the Supreme Court cancel all the 2G licences and order fresh auctions? There are reports of Raja allegedly negotiating his ministry with a high-profile corporate lobbyist before he landed the juicy communications portfolio. There are also reports about an editors meet that Manmohan Singh conducted as PM, where he allegedly accepted his hand was being forced by coalition compulsions.

Barus book also talks of how the DMK became a coalition partner in UPA-I in the first place, with him further saying that Manmohan Singh was in fact the architect of this alliance.

Initially, Karunanidhis nephew, and the UPA Governments telecom minister, Dayanidhi Maran, was the key interlocutor between Dr Singh and the DMK leader in Chennai. Marans stars plummeted when he got involved in the DMKs fratricidal wars.... On May 11, 2007, Dr Singh and Sonia went to Chennai to participate in a public meeting.... At the venue itself, Karunanidhi informed them that henceforth A Raja would be his key representative in Delhi. That same night, Dr Singh returned from Chennai and implemented Karunanidhis request that the telecommunications portfolio be shifted from Dayanidhi to A Raja. On 13 May, Raja took charge of telecom and, within months, became embroiled in the allegedly corrupt sale of telecommunications bandwidth to certain companies, popularly known as the 2G scandal.

So why did the media or the Opposition sniff a scam during UPA-I tenure? Baru goes on to say that in UPA-I, public opinion did not turn against the PM for this moral ambivalence on his part because the issue had not been prised out into the open. The media focus in his first term was very much on his policy initiatives. But in UPA-II when corruption scandals tumbled out, his public image and standing took a huge hit from which he was unable to recover because there was no parallel policy narrative in play that could salvage his reputation. In other words, there were no positive acts of commission that captured the public mind enough to compensate for the negative acts of omission for which he was being chastised. As his reputation fell, so did that of his government.
Ahmedabad: Newly-elected BJP MLAs of Gujarat will meet in Gandhinagar on Friday to choose the next chief minister, a top party official said on Thursday.

The BJP legislature party will meet to elect its leader in the presence of central observers for the exercise, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and party general secretary Saroj Pandey, the party's state chief Jitu Vaghani told reporters.

State BJP incharge Bhupender Yadav and co-incharge V Satish would also attend the meeting at party headquarters 'Kamalam' on Friday afternoon.

"All the MLAs along with party observers and in-charge leaders would meet on Friday to select the leader of the ruling party (chief minister). All the MLAs have been intimated to remain present in Friday's meeting," Vaghani said.

Earlier on Thursday, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and members of his council of ministers resigned. Rupani, a front-runner for the chief minister's post, has been asked to continue as caretaker chief minister till a new government is sworn in Governor OP Kohli had dissolved the Assembly on Wednesday following the declaration of election results.

In the recently concluded polls, BJP retained power by winning 99 seats in the 182-member Assembly, while the Congress bagged 77. Six seats were won by others
The acquittal by a special CBI court of A Raja, former telecom minister in the erstwhile Manmohan Singh government and DMK MP Kanimozhi in the infamous 2G spectrum scam case has understandably stirred a hornets nest. The verdict is likely to have major political repercussions nationally as well as in Tamil Nadu.

The BJP will be hard put to explain its criticism of the Congress over the controversy. But it would be a grave folly for the Congress to project the judgment as amounting to a repudiation of all charges in the 2G scam. That there was corruption and mismanagement on a big scale under the UPA regime is now a well-accepted truth which can hardly be wished away.

Special CBI judge OP Saini said in his judgement that the prosecution had failed to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. This is a reflection on not only the prosecution which apparently built up a weak case but also on the then Comptroller and Auditor-General of India Vinod Rai whose claim that there was a whopping loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore due to the under-quoting of spectrum prices triggered the whole row. The second generation spectrum licenses for mobile communication and limited data transmission were the bone of contention.

It is most likely that the CBI would go in appeal before the Delhi High Court, but the damage is done. It can only be mitigated if the High Court overturns the special court verdict and convicts the accused, which is a far-fetched possibility.

The prosecutions role in pursuing the case needs to be duly probed to establish whether there were any forces at work to exonerate the accused in the case. Also, it needs to be probed whether there was a nexus of some politicians with concerned businessmen that worked to weaken the prosecution case.

But it can hardly be overlooked that the CAG had said at that point that licenses had been issued to ineligible applicants who had deliberately suppressed facts, disclosed incomplete information, submitted fictitious documents and used fraudulent means for getting licenses and thereby access to spectrum. That the apex court subsequently quashed the spectrum licences was a vindication of the CAGs position at least in part and a censure of the Manmohan Singh governments allocations, which had cost the country hugely as compared to the auctions route.

The CAG report had gone on to say that licence holders had in turn sold significant stakes to the Indian/foreign companies at high premium within a short period of time. The premium earned by these new entrants to the telecom sector was estimated to be the true value of the spectrum. In a free and fair bidding process, these profits should have accrued to the public exchequer. These were weighty observations which can hardly be brushed aside.

Significantly, the Supreme Court had, by cancelling the 122 licences for spectrum allocation on the basis of a first-come, first-served policy indicated that it was irregular and unacceptable. The apex court had indeed called it unfair and intended to cause loss to the Government of India and had directed the government to have a fresh policy. The manner in which the cut-off date for spectrum allocations was advanced was doubtlessly arbitrary and intended to favour a few.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reiterated the claim that the then governments favourites were told in advance about the allocation policy so that they could take advantage of it and that even the first-come first-serve policy was modified to a first-come, first-pay policy to suit the intended beneficiaries.

A well-thought-out appeal to the High Court must be filed at the earliest. There cannot be any doubt that the surfeit of scams during the UPA regime were the result of unbridled corruption and the weak-kneed policies of the Manmohan Singh government. That truth cannot be negated on the basis of a judgement that is based on lack of evidence adduced by the prosecution.

While the Modi government has time to recover any loss of ground since Lok Sabha elections are a year and a half away, the Tamil Nadu government could be in trouble with the DMKs ascendancy.

The Palaniswamy government has a poor grip on the administration, and the ruling AIADMK is riven by factionalism. In the circumstances, the mass appeal of the DMK could get a shot in the arm.

It would be premature to speculate whether this could lead to elections to the Assembly before the scheduled time, and whether the DMK would have the upper hand. But the bell may start tolling for the AIADMK.

Follow live updates here
An FIR was registered against Patidar quota agitation spearhead Hardik Patel and around 50 of his supporters for holding a roadshow on the city outskirts on 11 December without permission, police said. This is the second FIR filed against Patel for organising unauthorised rallies.

The Ahmedabad Police registered the case on Wednesday in connection with the roadshow held in Bopal area.

"Hardik, who heads the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), and his supporters were booked under IPC section 188 for disobeying the police order," Bopal Police Inspector IH Gohil said.

Hardik and his supporters, who were on their bikes, had organised a roadshow on 11 December, despite being denied permission by the district authorities, he said.

"Today, we have lodged an FIR against him and 50 other bikers for disobeying the police notification," Gohil said.

Three days before the second phase of Gujarat Assembly polls, the rally-cum-roadshow on motorcycles and cars was organised, which started from Bopal and culminated at Nikol area on the other end of the city, covering a distance of around 15 kilometres.

While Bopal area falls under the jurisdiction of rural police, Nikol area is under the city police limits.

After the roadshow, Police Commissioner AK Singh had expressed displeasure over Patel's move and said that legal action would be taken for holding the event without permission.

Singh had denied permission to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi as well to hold roadshows in the city during the campaign which the leaders of the two parties had obeyed.

This is the first FIR against Hardik after the state Assembly elections, and second for holding unauthorised rallies, according to The Indian Express. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCB) Deepan Bhadran told the newspaper that a second FIR was filed against Hardik by Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch on 13 December for a similar offence.

I have heard about a separate FIR lodged for this offence by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch. I dont know about that (case), but in our case, the roadshow started from the area (Bopal) under my jurisdiction so we have registered the FIR, he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

With inputs from PTI
If Rahul Gandhi learns the lessons of the Gujarat chapter quickly, the Congress might find itself ahead of the BJP in the next round of elections scheduled in 2018.

Among the states going to polls next year is Rajasthan. Here, if trends are an indication, the Congress and the BJP appear set for a tough fight. And if the Congress plays its cards well, this might be a game it could win.

Two days ago, the Congress won a majority of by-elections for local bodies in Rajasthan's cities, towns and villages. Since the by-elections were held in different geographical regions of the state, they can be considered a good indicator of the popular mood. Before this round of by-elections, the Congress did well in by-elections held six months ago, winning a majority of the seats for local bodies.

Rajasthan, like Himachal Pradesh, has been voting for change since 1985. In every election since then, it has voted out the government by a huge margin (the only exception was 2008 when the Congress fell short of majority but managed to form the government by poaching BSP legislators). So, voter behaviour suggests that the Congress can believe its turn has come. And, trends too, point at a shift in the mood.

But the problem with the Congress is that it still doesn't know who will lead the campaign in 2018. On the ground there are two clear rivals  Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot  for the role, leading to confusion, infighting and fears of sabotage. Both these leaders, in spite of a show of bonhomie, are wary of each other. Both are busy undercutting the other for fear of ceding ground.

Rahul must have learnt from the win in Punjab and the loss in Gujarat that when it comes to Assembly polls, there is no substitute for a capable and acceptable regional leader. Since the Congress president invariably loses the battle with Narendra Modi, his party benefits more by fighting state Assembly elections as a contest between two chief ministerial candidates. It invariably fails when this electoral choice is not presented to voters.

So, the Congress president will have to soon decide who will lead the charge in Rajasthan against Vasundhara Raje. Unfortunately for him, the choice is not so simple because of a variety of factors.

Pilot is part of Rahul's inner circle. He was sent to Rajasthan after Gehlot was humiliated in 2013, with the Congress losing almost 90 percent seats in the 200-member Assembly. But the problem with Pilot is that he is not considered a mass leader and his acceptability within the Congress is lower. Also, the caste dynamics do not favour him.

Pilot is a Gurjar. His community is around 5-7 percent of the electorate. Its electoral clout is further diminished by two factors: One, its population is scattered across northeastern districts of the state. Two, the powerful Meenas: Tribals with a stronger presence in the same regions consider them political rivals. So, in a state like Rajasthan where caste plays an important role in politics, presenting a Gurjar as the face of the campaign could become counterproductive for the Congress.

Ironically, Gehlot too is not an easy choice. His Mali community is numerically also insignificant in the state. Also, the powerful Jats, who are 12-14 percent of the electorate, are historically considered disinclined to vote for Gehlot. There is, thus, the possibility of alienating an important chunk of voters by projecting Gehlot as the leader.

The problem with the Congress is that its choice is limited to Pilot and Gehlot. All other leaders either do not have a base or are unacceptable to high command. CP Joshi, who was once considered close to Rahul and thus a front runner, has lost a bit of his clout and aura. He is now considered to be a Gehlot ally in the internal war against Pilot.

If the Congress has to win Rajasthan, Rahul will have to address the leadership question soon. This is important also because the environment in the state is slowly turning toxic because of efforts to polarise the electorate. Cow vigilantes in Mewat (Alwar) and Hindutva warriors in Mewar (Udaipur) have been running amok.

The risk for the Congress in this environment is this: Once the polity is polarised, it will distract attention from the performance of the Raje government. To ensure that the election is a referendum on the Raje government, the Congress needs somebody to step up and counter the communal narrative.

Rahul needs to act fast and decisively. By-elections to two Lok Sabha seats  Alwar and Ajmer  and Mandal Assembly constituency are scheduled to be held soon. If the BJP wins these elections, it would help it create the impression of acceptability and invincibility. Only a united effort by the Congress under a decisive leader can help the Congress win the by-election and set the tone for the battle in 2018.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) munitions directorate awarded two science and technology experimentation contracts for the first phase of development of a new cruise missile designed to defeat modern, integrated air defense systems (IADS). Under the Gray Wolf technology demonstration program, AFRL awarded $3 million to Lockheed Martin, and $2.8 million to Northrop Grumman to support research and development efforts over the next 18 months. Each company could receive up to $110 million to demonstrate its design  the total funding allocated for the Gray Wolf experiment over the next four to six years.

The secretive program, known as Gray Wolf, seek to demonstrate an affordable sub-sonic cruise missile platform that will employ networked, autonomous operation to enable such weapons to carry out swarm-like operations in highly contested environments (anti-access or area denied  A2/AD) when launched from long stand-off distances, away from the coverage of modern, advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems. IADS are characterized by the use of different types of anti-aircraft and missile defense weapons to the enemy an access to a protected airspace. Typical systems include long range Surface to Air (SAM) units such as the S-400 and S-500. Relying on vehicular assets those air deployable units can defend any location, as was clearly demonstrated in their deployment to Syria in recent years. The S-400 and its successor, S-500 can defeat aerial targets at ranges of hundreds of kilometers, and ballistic missiles fired from ranges of 2,500  3,500 km.

For self-defense, these long-range missile systems rely on other supporting elements that form an IADS. These include radars, datalinks, and command centers that form the operational unit, and self-protection systems, such as electronic warfare, decoys, and short-range air-defense (SHORAD) assets designed to defeat guided munitions (SA-15, SA-22). Protection of maneuver forces is also provided by the use of mobile or deployable air defenses systems (SA-15, SA-17, SA-22, S-350) along with associated radars and command elements.

Those formidable arrays create an airspace too risky for the operation of conventional air power and the support elements necessary for operations. Current techniques used to defeat IADS employ attacks by conventional aircraft, launching guided weapons employed from standoff range, and packs of decoys and cruise missiles used to saturate the defenses. Some of these weapons are designed to fly in coordinated groups, to simulate aircraft formations or deny enemy radars from spotting each individual target. These techniques require massive use of expensive, advanced weapons that can be used only in extreme circumstances.

The Gray Wolf experiment will introduce new, affordable cruise missiles that will be able to operate in an autonomous, networked fashion, and hit targets even in the presence of IADS or challenge those IADS with a cheaper yet effective weapon than those existing today. At their terminal phase, the weapons could employ a variety of means, from decoy and electronic attack to kinetic effects to deny, disable, or destroy specific elements of the air defense networks  fire units, radars and sensors, communications links or command and control sites.

The program is managed as a spiral program that includes the first phase that consists of rapid prototyping elements and follow-on phases that gradually expand the platform and its capabilities. Designed from the outset as an affordable weapon, developers of new cruise missile will employ modern approaches to automated, low-cost manufacturing of the air vehicles, sub-systems, and payloads, enabling the massive use of such weapons, as decoys or in scenarios expected to yield high attrition ratios. Other efforts are also being with decoys or reusable autonomous air vehicles (Gremlins) developed under parallel experiments by the Air Force and Strategic Capabilities Office. The two companies that have won awards have already developed cruise missiles for similar applications. Lockheed Martin developed the AGM-158 Joint Air/Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) while Northrop Grumman developed the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow in the 1980s  a standoff weapon designed for air defense suppression. Another design the Air Force considered in the late 2000s was a downsized JASSM  the Low-Cost Miniature Cruise Missile (LCMCM), designed by Lockheed Martin in the past decade.
"Social Engineering" may replace regional sentiment in the 2019 election in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The upcoming 2019 general election is poised to witness a paradigm shift from regional identity to caste identity in terms of electoral mobilisation in the political landscapes of the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states.

The regional sentiment involving statehood for Telangana and Samaikyandhra (unified state) dominated the scene in the last election in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2014. Political power was transferred from a national party (Congress) to the regional players in the two states as an offshoot of the regional sentiment that proved to be a windfall for the TRS in Telangana and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. The bogey of Samaikhyandhra, spearheaded by the TDP in Andhra, has become a non-issue after the partition of the state. Although pro-Telangana sentiment continues to be alive, the ruling TRS cannot afford to face the next election only with that plank. The TRS emerged on the political scene following the failure of the TDP, a regional party floated with self-pride of the Telugu people as its central philosophy, and the failure of the Congress as well to provide space for accommodating sub-regional aspirations.

Similarly, the regional parties TDP and TRS that came to power in 2014 have empowered only a few dominant upper castes with which they are identified, causing discontent in the other numerically strong communities. The resource-rich Reddys, considered as a political class since Independence, became displaced from power with the bifurcation of the state. Incidentally, the community, which was at the helm in the Congress, presided over the state division. Making way for caste-based electoral mobilisation, Reddys are getting consolidated from across the spectrum post-bifurcation as a formidable force to regain power in Telangana under the umbrella of Grand Alliance.

In a bid to counter the Grand Alliance, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao began wooing the affluent Khamma settler community from Andhra region. In fact, Rao kept the embers of regional sentiment alive during the separate Telangana movement by projecting Khammas as a villain of the piece. Sensing trouble from the Reddys, KCR, in a clever move, too made a U-urn. He admitted former minister Tummala Nageswara Rao, a vocal Khamma leader in the TDP since its formative days, into the TRS and made him a minister in his government. Besides, he appears to be sending overtures to strike an alliance with the TDP in Telangana .

In Andhra Pradesh, support from Kapus, a dominant community spread over four coastal districts, became crucial to the TDP-BJP ruling alliance to win the election in 2014, besides Samaikyandhra sentiment. Naidu, heading the electioneering from the TDP, promised reservations and a deputy chief minister post for Kapus. Besides, he roped in film star Pawan Kalyan from the Kapu community, brother of Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) founder K Chiranjeevi, into election campaign for the alliance.

Even as former minister Mudragada Padmanabham launched a series of protests seeking to pin down Naidu on his quota promise, the latters government passed a bill in the Assembly providing for 5 percent reservations to the community. Kapus constitute 22 per cent of the electorate in Andhra Pradesh and their alignment with Chiranjieevis PRP led to the TDPs debacle in 2009 election. The Backward Classes status for Kapus angered the communities already listed under the category, while triggering similar demands from the Most Backward Communities within the BCs. The BCs, who have been subjugated under the dominance of Reddys in Rayalaseema and Kapus in parts of coastal Andhra, continued to be a major vote bank for the TDP since the allotment of 50 per cent quota by its founder NT Rama Rao in the local bodies.

The history of caste politics in undivided Andhra can be categorised into three phases. Reddys, who predominantly live in Rayalaseema and Telangana, held sway in politics during the Congress-led unipolar politics from 1950s to 1980s. Khammas, basically a business community, emerged as a ruling class with the establishment of the TDP in 1982 by NT Rama Raohimself a member of the community. Bipolar caste politics made way for the multi-party era after film star K Chiranjeevi from Khammas and retired IAS officer N Jayaprakash Narayana in the undivided AP and K Chandrasekhar Rao from Velama community in Telangana shot into politics with their own outfits toward the beginning of 2010.

The Kapu iconic leaders, Mudragada Padmanabham and Pawan Kalyan, are expected to play a key role in caste-based electoral mobilisation in the coming elections. The YSR Congress is finding an ally in Padmanabham even as CM Naidu is at his best taming Pawan, who is keen to emerge as independent entity. According to Srikrishna Committee report, the population of upper castes dominating the political spectrum is on the decline from 29.9 percent to 21.9 percent in the last seven decades from 1931 to 2001. This phenomenon has forced major political players to woo BCs for survival in the present-day competitive politics.
Hubbali (Karnataka): Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government, alleging that the way Hindu and BJP workers are being "brutally" killed signified "a state of anarchy."

Adityanath also asserted at a party rally here that "no one can stop" BJP from forming the government in Karnataka in the Assembly polls, due early in 2018.

He accused the Congress of "insulting" India's rich tradition by showing respect to the 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan, whose birth anniversary celebrations by the government had triggered a huge controversy and sharp divison of public opinion on the issue across the state.

Calling Karnataka "the land of Hanuman" and home of valour and courage which was ruled by the erstwhile Vijayanagara Empire, Adityanath said it was unfortunate that the Congress "instead of worshipping Hanuman and Vijayanagar was worshiping Tipu Sultan."

"This is the difference in mindset, because Congress wants to implement across the country the mafia raj that Rahul Gandhi has inherited. Karnataka has to dismiss this, like Gujarat and Himachal have dismissed," he said, referring to the recent assembly polls in the two states where the BJP won.

"If Karnataka dismisses Congress in one go, no one else will come to worship Tipu Sultan," he said.

Adityanath was speaking at the "Parivarthana Yatra" rally organised by the state BJP as part of its programme to "expose the misdeeds" of the Congress government in the state.

Alleging that there is a law and order problem in the state, he spoke about "brutal killings" of Hindu and BJP workers.

He said "the way in which Hindu and BJP workers are brutally killed and there is always a threat to their lives signifies the state of anarchy that exists in Karnataka under Congress rule."

Speaking about farmers' issues, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said his government had waived loan worth Rs 36,000 crore benefiting about 86 lakh farmers, and they include loans borrowed from nationalised or cooperative banks.

He claimed that the Congress government wants to use farmer's money during elections and that is the reason it is not taking a firm decision on waiving the loan completely.

Pointing out that there is protection to every one and developmental works were happening in all the 19 BJP-ruled states, he said "Congress policy is divisive, aimed at dividing the society."

The people of Gujarat have chosen BJP for the sixth time keeping faith in Narendra Modi's development agenda and disapproving the Congress' "divisive" thinking, Adityanath said.

"We want same thing to be repeated in Karnataka," he said.

"Congress does not believe in development, their belief is in dividing the society in the name of caste or religion," the chief minister said.

Appealing to the people to support BJP for the sake of Karnataka and its development, he said the Congress has always neglected the state by making lesser financial allocations.

"World over leaders want to replicate India's developmental agenda ushered in by Narendra Modi, but Congress which doesn't know what is development is laughing at it and is raising questions about it," he said.

With Congress at the helm, development cannot reach the ground level in Karnataka, Adityanath said.

"BJP alone can do it...look at your excitement, I'm assured that no one can stop BJP from forming government in Karnataka."

"I'm sure that by bringing BJP back to power in Karnataka you will make it clear that in India Hanuman, saints and great spiritual leaders will get worshipped, and not Tipu Sultan," he added.
New Delhi: A BJP member in the Lok Sabha on Thursday urged the government to reverse its order which seeks to limit the educational reimbursement for the children of slain and disabled soldiers.

Kirron Kher raised the issue during the Zero Hour, saying that by limiting the educational reimbursement, the government would save a mere Rs five crore.

She said as per the order, the reimbursement, which was unlimited, has been restricted to Rs 10,000 which was not sufficient.

Recently, Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had appealed to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to reverse the order.

Admiral Lanba, who is also the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, had written that "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."

PK Biju of the CPM said while the government is consolidating the banks, it was leading to a situation where the number of branches and ATMs were going down.

Bhawna Gawli (Shiv Sena) said Bt cotton crop in Maharashtra has failed to resist pest attack and demanded action against Monsanto, the firm which had developed the Bt cotton seed.

There were sharp exchanges between Shobha Karandlage (BJP) and some Left members when the former alleged that some "jihadis" were stabbing Hindu youths in coastal Kerala and Karnataka. She also displayed some photographs.

Vinod Sonkar (BJP) referred to the reported killing of a Sikh in Pakistan who allegedly refused to get converted.

Taking a dig at the Congress, he said the party of those who had visited temples and worn the sacred thread should move a resolution condemning the incident and the entire House should adopt it.

Congress members were not present in the House as they had staged a walk-out a few minutes before Sonkar spoke.
New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi will chair a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on Friday, his first as Congress president.

The CWC will accord a warm welcome to the new president and likely discuss the current political situation, including the ramifications of the Congress's strong performance in the Gujarat Assembly election for the party in future.

Party sources said the 2G spectrum case judgment acquitting all the accused is also likely to be discussed. The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had used the alleged scam to the hilt while mounting a fierce campaign against the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Alleged corruption under UPA II was widely believed to have led to the defeat of the Manmohan Singh government.

The Congress, sources said, wants to take the 2G issue to the people for which it is likely to formalise a plan soon. The CWC, the party's highest decision-making body, is also likely to adopt a resolution to this effect.

AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said the CWC meeting will commence at 10:30 am.

The agenda for the meeting was, however, not officially disclosed.

Though Rahul Gandhi has chaired CWC meetings in the past in the absence of his mother Sonia Gandhi, it will be for the first time that he will preside over it as Congress president.

Rahul was elected unopposed as Congress chief on 11 December and assumed the party's reins on 16 December.
Vociferous sloganeering on Thursday disrupted Sachin Tendulkar's maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha since his nomination. Members of the Opposition shouted "BJP sharam karo" as sloganeering continued in the Upper House of Parliament on the fourth day. Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 11 am on Friday following stormy scenes on the floor of the House.

Uproar in Rajya Sabha over PM Modi's remarks on Manmohan Singh during Gujarat election campaign, as MP Sachin Tendulkar gets up to speak. pic.twitter.com/qbMh0qZ8yp  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Rajya Sabha adjourned till 11 am, tomorrow after sloganeering by opposition.  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu tried to control the situation. "You don't want to respect a person with a legendary record in India, you do not respect sports. I'll leave this to your better sense," Naidu said finally saying that the ruckus in Parliament will not be live telecast and the House was adjourned.

This was Tendulkar's first attempt at initiating a debate in Rajya Sabha where he has been a member for five years and is a year short of completing his term. According to The Economic Times, Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded an explanation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the 2G scam "propaganda" that helped them come to power in 2014.

Earlier on Wednesday, Congress protests over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "conspiracy with Pakistan" remark against his predecessor Manmohan Singh led to a virtual washout of the Rajya Sabha proceedings, even as Chairman Venkaiah Naidu said there was no question of an apology. Congress members also alleged that the treasury benches were directing the Chair and not allowing the Congress leaders to speak.

The lower house, which witnessed two adjournments in the pre-lunch sitting over the issue amid protests by the Congress MPs, was disrupted again as it met at 2 p.m as they gathered near the Speaker's podium raising slogans.

On 19 December, Congress members' protest over Modi's attack on his Singh during the Gujarat polls drew condemnation from the government, which accused it of holding "mock proceedings" in the House in violation of the Chair's rulings. Members of the Opposition party trooped into the Well during the Question Hour after Speaker Sumitra Mahajan disallowed their demand to raise the issue.

It had little effect on the Opposition as they persisted with their protests raising slogans like 'Pradhan Mantri maafi mango' (prime minister apologise), even as Mahajan continued with proceedings in the din.

With inputs from agencies
How often do you see an election where voters openly complain about not receiving money? If you thought this was bad, there is worse. How often do you seen an election where voters admit to having received money from two parties but complain that the third party has not been forthcoming in distributing money, or has given out less cash?

This is the RK Nagar constituency in Chennai, where a song and dance is taking place over electing J Jayalalithaa's successor. No, this is no kingdom or throne being passed down. On offer is the post of the legislator for the constituency, which Jayalalithaa occupied in 2015 and 2016, until her death last December.

Radhakrishnan Nagar, named after India's former president and eminent scholar Dr S Radhakrishnan, is a vast spread in North Madras. There is however, nothing scholarly or intellectual about RK Nagar. It is mainly inhabited by fishermen and workers who toil in different factories around the constituency and is home to a large migrant population.

The roads in most localities are bad, power supply is erratic but the biggest problem is lack of safe drinking water. "Give us nothing else, only Clean drinking water . We drink gutter water now," said Madhavan, a worker who came to cast his vote.

The electorate realises that barring a few roads that replaced the kuccha pathways and some public parks, electing Jayalalithaa did not result in significant benefits for the constituency. And perhaps this is why they chose the more practical path of making hay while the sun shines. If the cancelled election in April got them Rs 4,000 a vote, this time they received Rs 6,000. Other parties were only too keen to match the amount. So if you do the math for a family of four voters, you realise why RK Nagar loves election season.

Which is why the by-election that took place in RK Nagar on Thursday was tainted: Tainted by the vulgarity of cash for votes, where the politicians were one step ahead of the Election Commission's flying squads and knew exactly how to beat the system. If Income Tax raids in April on the state health minister's properties revealed an alleged plot to distribute Rs 89 crore in cash, estimates are that December has seen Rs 120 crore being distributed among 2.2 lakh voters.

Yet, despite appeals by several outfits, including the BJP, to cancel the poll, the Election Commission did not do so. Despite sting operations, reportage and anecdotal evidence revealing large-scale bribery, the poll panel decided to go ahead with the election, as if it wanted to get over with the job it was finding difficult to control.

However, in all of this, the mistake the Election Commission made was to not reprimand the candidates who were responsible for the cancellation of April election. The same candidates from the three main political outfits were in the fray again, and in the absence of any harsh punishment, they knew they could get away with distribution of money.

The situation was only too similar to what happened in May 2016 when elections to three Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu were stopped after allegations of cash distribution. When the poll panel did not do anything about it, in November 2016, the same tainted candidates contested again.

However, this time, the Election Commission reacted strongly when a video, which showed former chief minister Jayalalithaa undergoing treatment was released, asking TV channels to take it off air. But the poll panel's description of the video as "election matter" was strange since it was not canvassing for votes for TTV Dhinakaran (also spelt as Dinakaran). Nonetheless, the timing of the release was highly questionable.

With over 77 percent people coming out to cast their votes, the turnout has been impressive. While the DMK would hope to retain its core vote base of 57,000 that it polled last year, it is unlikely that the 2G verdict, which acquitted two party leaders in a corruption scandal, would have had much impact in the constituency.

On the other hand, Jayalalithaa's video was a major talking point outside polling booths as the late leader's death and the conspiracy theories surrounding it, was a highly emotive issue. The point of the video, perhaps, was to suggest that VK Sasikala could not have had a hand in Jayalalithaa's death.

Meanwhile, E Madhusudanan of the AIADMK was banking on the local connect since he has been a resident of RK Nagar for decades, but at 75, many doubt if he will attract the youth vote.

The political significance of the election for the AIADMK and for Dhinakaran is not lost on anyone. A defeat in RK Nagar could well end Dhinakaran's political career, and should Madhusudanan lose to Dhinakaran, it will split the AIADMK. In that sense, 24 December, the day the result of the bypoll is announced, will be critical for both offshoots of the AIADMK.

Dhinakaran, for now, is showing all signs that he is going to win. Soon after addressing the media after polling ended at 6 pm, Dhinakaran stood in front of a green chroma background and flashed the victory sign. These photographs, one presumes, are for posters that he will get printed in anticipation of a victory on Sunday.
Auto refresh feeds

The high stakes bypoll in RK Nagar constituency is all set to take place on Thursday. The seat, which was twice represented by former chief minister J Jayalalithaa, fell vacant upon her death on 5 December 2016. Campaigning for the bypoll came to an end today, with the election being seen as a litmus test for the AIADMK-led Tamil Nadu government.

People of RK Nagar were aware of her developmental work for the constituency, which was being taken forward by the ruling AIADMK, they said, while pointing out that this was the first hustings faced by AIADMK in her absence.

In a joint statement, the leaders recalled that the late leader served people with a "motherly" attitude and that she had many plans for the constituency as its MLA.

Chief Minister E Palaniswami and deputy Chief Minister O Pannerselvam urged voters to elect Madhusudhnanan to take forward the work initiated by Jayalalithaa.

Many Opposition parties, including the Congress, the VCK and the Left have backed DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh.

The most famous residents of the Poes Garden-Mylapore-Alwarpet area are faraway. While Jaya is dead and Sasikala is in jail. Yet, both are in play in RK Nagar. In Jayas name, much is being promised by all her true followers who tout Jayas pathbreaking welfare schemes now being replicated across other Indian states. Sasikala continues to matter because TTVs treasure chest has always been linked to Sasikalas clout. Clearly, the last years dramatic events have sucked a lot out from those coffers.

Although the resistance to the concept of Tamil Nadu turning saffron continues to dominate politics talk on the street, the alternatives are sketchy, at best. Kamal Haasan? He says something and then disappears. He wants to collect money from public donationsHe wants to replicate the Bernie Sanders model here. In Madras, really?! one voter scoffs. Rajinikanth? The BJP will certainly try to involve him but overall, the BJP will make inroads, theres no running away from that is the grudging admission of even hard core Jaya supporters.

Here is the brief profile of today bypoll

Proof of concept is in the string of events that have pockmarked Tamil Nadus political life the last 365 days. First demonetisation, then Jayalalithaas death followed by a cyclone that tore the capital city apart in one angry swoop. The symbolism wasnt lost on anyone. Just as the state recovered from that body blow, the Jallikattu protests erupted on the Marina beachfront. Within weeks, no matter who was pulling the puppet strings, it was clear that the AIADMK is a diluted, weakened party minus Jayas leadership.

What is the AIADMK promising RK Nagar voters? More of Jayalalithaas pet welfare schemes. Given the chaotic year gone by for Chennai, offering more of the Jaya model aligns neatly with the stark political truth here - for a party in power that is a doppleganger version of itself, doling out more for existing schemes is way less messier than thinking up new schemes from scratch.

RK Nagar has nine EC observers which is among the highest number despatched for a bypoll in a single constituency. But then again, this is no ordinary contest. Its the battle to lay claim over the legacy of a woman who dominated not just a states political equation but oozed effortless and dogged resistance to New Delhi from the region south of the Narmada.

DMK candidate M Ganesh tells News18 Tamil Nadu that the Election Commission must ensure that the bypolls are conducted in a democratic and fair manner.

In 2015, former chief minister J Jayalalithaa won 97,218 votes adding up to 55 percent of total votes polled. Jayas margin of victory was ~ 40000 votes and the total turnout was 1,74,015. Since the BJP is pushing for bigger stakes in the South, lets put those numbers out here: M N Raja got 2928 votes which amounts to almost the same number who voted None Of The Above!

"The people of RK Nagar will not be cheated by Rs 6,000 or Rs 60,000," DMK candidate Maruthu Ganesh tells News18 Tamil Nadu.

Notes wrapped in banana leaves are all the rage in RK Nagar. Semma idea, Madam. Arasiyaleppadi eppadi yosikaraangu! ( Great idea, isnt it, its amazing how creatively they are able to think before an election) says a bingewatcher of the RK Nagar bypoll tamasha. Banana leaves slip easily into the local cultural milieu. A symbol of prosperity and abundance, the banana plant is ubiquotous in South India. Like it grows without much fuss and irrigation, its presence too is all pervasive.

According to revenue officials, 146 FIRs have been filed so far (out of which 126 have been for offenses like misuse of vehicles, 17 against printing presses which havent shown proper account of their expenditure  case registered under Sec 127A).

The AIADMKs worst case soundbite: DMK and TTV joined hands to cut us out. AIADMK has made its worst case soundbite official. The DMK and TTV Dhinakaran are colluding with each other. His (Dhinakarans) ultimate goal is to ensure that the AIADMKs votes are split so that the DMK wins, party officialdom is spouting on vernacular prime time telly. Why so many allies for a byelection? is their other signature crib.

No point pushing this aside  the reason DMK figures so prominently in all talk of the RK Nagar election is that the strongman (or strongwoman) and the state are no longer synonymous after Jayalalithaas death a year ago. O Panneerselvams appeal comes from his being singled out by Jaya, Edappadis authority is born from the sensational and darkly funny resort politics game Sasikala and gang played to perfection this time last year - bundling MLAs away to a kitschy tavern cum inn on the citys outskirts so they couldnt be bought over by the OPS camp.

DMK is the talk of the electorate in Amma's absence

It is a quiet and windy morning at the Jayalalithaa memorial in Marina Beach. Police sources said that there are no extra security arranged for today.

According to The Hindu, there is heavy deployment of security in and around RK Nagar. There are 15 companies of paramilitary personnel in the constituency and about 2,000 officials would be deployed on election-related activities, the report said.

The TTV faction, DMK as well as the ruling AIADMK are giving Rs 20 for each for each votes. We have also complained to the Election Commission but it seems that the poll body is helpless," BJP candidate K Nagarajan tells News18.

Though as many as 59 candidates are in the fray, the bypoll is mainly seen as a fight between the ruling AIADMK, its rival faction led by Dhinakaran and DMK. While veteran ruling party leader and former MLA E Madhusudanan is the AIADMK nominee, Dhinakaran is contesting as an independent for the first time.

Ninety six flying squad teams, 21 Static Surveillance Teams and 20 Video Surveillance Teams have been deployed by election authorities. A total of 45 check points in and around the constituency are also manned by poll officials.

RK Nagar has an electorate of 2,28,234, comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders. Elaborate security arrangements are in place with about 2,000 State police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces, including CRPF deployed across 256 polling stations. The polling process is being monitored by nine observers, considered the highest for a single assembly constituency. This includes general, special, police and expenditure officials.

For Jayas legions of fans who have watched her movies for decades, the jump cut clip that surfaced is not about what is seen but who is seeing (preying, conspiring, filming). Last year, after Sasikala threw money to lock up MLAs in a resort faraway, the word on the street was clear - these guys cant dare go to their constituencies. Theyll get beaten up for their spinelessness. Tamil Nadus voters were willing to be swayed by an MGR and Jaya, a crummy video clip posted on the ether by opportunists is just that - a chunk of red meat and Tamil Nadu couldnt care less.

Special CBI court is set to pronounce the verdict in the multi-thousand crore 2G spectrum scam on Thursday. It is likely to have an impact on the bypolls in RK Nagar.

From behind his tinted glasses, the grand old man of Dravidian politics Muthuvel Karunanidhi 93, waits. For what (all) exactly, we cant say. But at 93, he battles age, ill health and multiple medical complications and continues to make headlines for taking a ride from his home not far from where Jaya lived to the DMK headquarters on Anna Salai. Recently, on doctors orders, MuKa, as he is affectionately called, swapped his signature dark glasses for simpler ones. From behind clearer lenses, DMK's patriarch will witness the result of two biggies today where his children have high stakes - the 2G scam verdict and the RK Nagar result.

Marudhu Ganesh declines to comment on the impact 2G verdict can have on the polls.

As of 9 am, the polling percentage in RK Nagar is 7.32 percent, Tamil Nadu CEO Rajesh Lakhoni was quoted by The Hindu as saying. There are a total of 173 booths in the constituency.

Want to cut the chase on RK Nagar? Bottomline is this: For OPS-EPS, best case scenario is a win and worst case scenario is to finish third. If they end up second, they can still hope to goad the cadre with the line that the winner should not be allowed to mess with the AIADMKs lease on power. If OPS-EPS come third, they cant tilt at windmills and hope their cadre will take them seriously.

BJP candidate K Nagarajan alleges that his name has been pushed to the last in the voting machine. He is also going to the Election Commission to complain about it. Nagarajan further alleged that 178 machines were not blinking/beeping when the voter votes.

For DMK too, best case is a win, worst case is Number 3. For TTV Dhinakaran, best case is a win, almost as good is to see OPS-EPS lose. That OPS-EPS could not pull it off despite having the two leaves symbol is something TTV and Sasikala would be aching for.

According to The Hindu, Independent candidate TTV Dhinakaran visited a booth in Kasimedu, where he raised some issues with machines. Dhinakaran also added that he would be visiting more booths later in the day.

Justice Indermeet Kaur also declined to pass any order directing a CBI probe into complaints and allegations of widespread corrupt practices in connection with the bypoll. With the court refusing to "delve" into the matter as the by-election is scheduled for tomorrow, the petitioner withdrew his plea which was "dismissed as withdrawn".

On the eve of the RK Nagar bypoll in Tamil Nadu, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday declined to pass any order directing the Election Commission to put on hold the election.

Speaking to reporters, Independent candidate TTV Dhinakaran said that he will be talking to media in the evening over the latest video showing former chief minister J Jayalalitha's treatment at the Apollo Hospital.

The Hindu reported that the Tamil Nadu BJP chief Tamilisai Soundararajan has alleged heavy distribution of cash in the constituency. "People have been rolled up and given Rs. 2,000, Rs. 4,000 and Rs. 6,000. I request people to vote for the right candidate," Sounderarajan was quoted as saying.

Speaking to reporters DMK MP Kanimozhi, who was acquitted by the CBI special court in the 2G spectrum scam, said that the verdict would have no impact over the RK Nagar bypoll results as "the DMK is already winning in the constituency."

"Congratulations to all those who have been acquitted," says Independent candidate and disgruntled AIADMK leader TTV Dinakaran.

DMK leader Manu Sundaram told News18, "Regardless of what the judgment was, we were always well poised to win the RK Nagar bypoll, but now with this positive verdict, the margin of our victory will be much more.

2G scam verdict will help improve our winning margin in RK Nagar bypoll, says DMK

The BJP is not seen as a serious player in the contest, but is the punching bag for both DMK and Dhinakaran. Both point out that a vote for Madhusudanan is a vote for the BJP that is hoping to cash in on the resentment against the national party for meddling in the internal affairs of the AIADMK. But given the demographic profile of RK Nagar and the emphasis on cash-for-votes, it is anyone's guess as to how much this will be a factor for the voters.

"I expect a good regime and expect a good candidate to win the election. I am a simple auto driver. I do not know anything about the cash-for-vote scam or late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaas hospital video. I vote for good politics," he says.

Should the AIADMK be unable to retain the seat and worse, lose to Sasikala's nephew TTV Dhinakaran or if the margin of votes between the two is insignificant, it will mean the two leaves symbol achieved zilch for the party. That could set the cat among the pigeons with many wondering if staying invested with EPS will fetch handsome returns in 2019 and 2021.

Why a big win is all that AIADMK may be hoping for

According to The Hindu, only voters are allowed to move freely within 200 meters of any polling station. On the other hand, police restrict vehicle movement near the polling stations.

The video has been released by the TTV Dhinakaran-VK Sasikala camp of the AIADMK party, and comes at the end of what has been a very bitter electoral campaign battle for the prestigious Assembly constituency in north Chennai.

A day before by-elections are to be held in RK Nagar, the one-time constituency of late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, a video has been released purportedly showing the former AIADMK chief spending her last days in Chennai's Apollo Hospital.

On Saturday, in locations including Korukkupet at RK Nagar allegations of cash distribution were made against some men, whose identity was not known immediately.

Election officials on Saturday seized Rs 13 lakh from a premise in bypoll-bound RK Nagar which witnessed chaotic scenes with some men accused of trying to distribute cash to voters being chased by police and DMK cadres.

K Dastagir, 42, auto driver is a traditional AIADMK voter. J Jayalalithaa's death and the subsequent development within AIADMK had left him confused. The video released yesterday, he feels, vindicates TTV and Sasikala. He might go vote for him when he goes to the booth at 2 pm today to cast his ballot. His son, first time voter, wants him to vote for seeman of Naam Thamizhar Katchi though.

RK Nagar constituency registers a total of 41.6 percent voter turnout till 1 pm, says the Election Commission. Tamil Nadu CEC Rajesh Lakhoni said this figure is from 174 polling stations.

The announcement came days after the Madras High Court said it expected the EC to hold by-election in RK Nagar by 31 December. Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar made the observation on a plea of a DMK leader RS Bharathi.

In 1991, Madhusudhanan was convicted in the free sari and dhoti scam,although he was later acquitted in the case.

The report added that in 1991, Madhusudhanan had won the RK Nagar by-election and served as handloom minister during the chief ministership of J Jayalalithaa. Earlier, O Panneerselvam had announced Madhusudhanan as the candidate before the merger with E Palaniswamy.

Madhusudhanan is an MGR loyalist and a long-time critic of the Opposition DMK party. He also enjoys a good rapport with political representatives of all parties.

Should Madhusudanan not put up a credible performance, Dhinakaran could act as the rival Thevar magnet for the fence-sitters from his community. The community realises that it needs a strong leader at the moment to take on EPS and his Gounder support system and the jury is out on whether OPS has the calibre to be that person.

Then, there is the caste angle to the tug of war within the AIADMK as well. Ever since the ascension of EPS to the top job, the Gounder community has come to dominate the politics of Tamil Nadu. That is not music to the ears of the Thevar community that has held sway since the time Sasikala came into Jayalalithaa's life. Both Sasikala and OPS are Thevars, because of which the AIADMK was spoken of as a Thevar party.

Media frenzy ensues as Stalin exits Karunanidhi's house in Gopalapuram. Stalin said he briefed the veteran leader on the 2G verdict. "Injustice will fall and justice will prevail," he said in Tamil.

According to a police official, a complaint has been received from the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission "seeking action against Vetrivel" even as the Commission has started the inquiry as per its terms of reference. The official declined to divulge details of the complaint.

The one man Commission probing the circumstances leading to hospitalisation and medical treatment provided to late J Jayalalithaa till her death last year filed a police complaint today against an aide of TTV Dhinakaran who released a purported video of the late chief minister.

The verdict is also likely to boost the chances of the DMK in the RK Nagar bypoll. Speaking to News18, Manu Sundaram said, "Its not an election issue for this constituency per se, but the verdict vindicated our partys stand and reaffirmed all that the party has said about the case  that the real scam was to have ever called this a scam for political gains."

Now, Modi can go and ally with DMK in Tamil Nadu, was one of the WhatsApp message doing the rounds right now, the report said.

With DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi being acquitted in the 2G spectrum scam, the political fortunes of the DMK might improve in the future, claimed a News18 report. The judicial win on Thursday is also likely to pave way for a strong performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2021 Assembly polls.

2G Spectrum verdict may be a shot in the arm for the DMK

The Times of India is reporting that one Independent candidate ML Ravi is collecting names of voters whose names went missing in the final list. Ravi says that he will be filling a case against the Election Commission.

Between April, when the by-election to this constituency was rescinded because of rampant bribing of voters, and December, the rate for a vote has increased by 50 percent. Going by anecdotal evidence, it has gone from Rs 4,000 for a vote to Rs 6,000.

Christmas has come early to RK Nagar in north Chennai. The only difference is that the Santa Claus here in attired in a white veshti. And the gifts come in the form of Rs 2,000 notes.

Cash is still king in Tamil Nadu politics as bidding war between candidates turns election into auction

According to a police official, a complaint has been received from the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission "seeking action against Vetrivel" on Wednesday even as the Commission has started the inquiry on Jayalalithaa's death, News 18 reported.

"I humbly request the media persons present here spread the message of DMK's innocence to the general public with the same eagerness they showed in talking about the scam and piling on the blame," MK Staling told the media. Image courtesy: DMK

AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran initially took selfies with young voters in Todiarpet polling station but later the Election Commission officials asked him to refrain from interacting with voters, The Times of India reported.

Veerasami P, 62 is a pensioner who has been disabled for five years now. He had to be carried into the booth by his grandson, Saravanan P, who has just turned 18. Saravanan didn't get to vote this time, but he says his loyalty would lie towards the party that can convert his temporary government job into a permanent one. Image courtesy: 101 reporters/ Ayswarya Murthy

Veerasami P and his wife, Jayalakshmi, have consistently voted for the same party over the years though they refused to reveal which one. They continue to vote despite grievances like not having received his pension for 10 months now. Image courtesy: 101 reporters/ Ayswarya Murthy

Veerasami, wife have been voting for same party for 10 years

Petty fights broke out among voters at Chennai High School on Tiruvottiyur High Road after long wait in queues

Three polling centres recorded voting percentage of over 90 as polling ends at RK Nagar.

The Election Commission has said that the voters who got into the queue by 5 pm have been given tokens. The polling is still on in more than 60 booths where tokens have been issued.

"This is was happening across the constituency and we have filed a complaint with the EC," he said.

He alleged that that TTV Dhinakaran's people tried to coerce voters by giving them Rs 20 and a coupon. "They said that if their candidate won, the coupon can be reimbursed for Rs 10,000."

Madhavaram S Sudharsanam, DMK secretary for Chennai north district, said: "We are all very happy about the 2G verdict. I can't know how much it, but I am sure it would have impacted the voting on Thursday. We always had a good chance of winning the seat, which has now increased."

TTV Dhinakaran thanks supporters, says he does not need a video to boost his votes

TTV Dhinakaran says that he as an extended family will not go out of his way to release a video of Jayalalithaa's days in the hospital. However, if the probe commission demands it, he would not shy away from submitting it.

At a press meet after the RK Nagar bypolls, TTV Dhinakaran said neither the video nor 2G would have any impact on the results. He also said he won't respond to the allegations of "clowns" who have said that he had been distributing money and tokens on Thursday morning.He had said earlier on Thursday that he was glad Raja and Kanimozhi were acquitted but he had only made the statement as a humanitarian who wanted justice to prevail. He was disappointed that his statement was construed by some as showing that he was colluding with DMK. - 101 Reporters/ Ayswarya Murthy

TTV Dhinakaran says neither the video nor 2G would have any impact on the results

TTV Dhinakaran said, "It doesn't in any way diminish the prestige of Amma. Instead, Vetrivel had hoped that it was relief some of the pressure on Chinnamma. This emotional action by Vetrivel had backfired by bringing more trouble." He says he doesn't condone Vetrivel's actions, but as a friend he can understand his motivations. He doesn't fear EC repercussions because he had nothing to do with its release, like Vetrivel had admitted. - Ayswarya Murthy

Asked about what he thinks about the exit polls that predicted he would get 35 percent votes, TTV Dhinakaran said he has no confidence in projections or exit polls or surveys. He and his people have been on the ground for 20 days and know the pulse of the public. And they all happy because they know they will win by a huge margin.- Ayswarya Murthy

TTV Dhinakaran thanks supporters, says he does not need a video to boost his votes

TTV Dhinakaran says that he as an extended family will not go out of his way to release a video of Jayalalithaa's days in the hospital. However, if the probe commission demands it, he would not shy away from submitting it.

At a press meet after the RK Nagar bypolls, TTV Dhinakaran said neither the video nor 2G would have any impact on the results. He also said he won't respond to the allegations of "clowns" who have said that he had been distributing money and tokens on Thursday morning.He had said earlier on Thursday that he was glad Raja and Kanimozhi were acquitted but he had only made the statement as a humanitarian who wanted justice to prevail. He was disappointed that his statement was construed by some as showing that he was colluding with DMK. - 101 Reporters/ Ayswarya Murthy

TTV Dhinakaran says neither the video nor 2G would have any impact on the results

TTV Dhinakaran said, "It doesn't in any way diminish the prestige of Amma. Instead, Vetrivel had hoped that it was relief some of the pressure on Chinnamma. This emotional action by Vetrivel had backfired by bringing more trouble." He says he doesn't condone Vetrivel's actions, but as a friend he can understand his motivations. He doesn't fear EC repercussions because he had nothing to do with its release, like Vetrivel had admitted. - Ayswarya Murthy

Asked about what he thinks about the exit polls that predicted he would get 35 percent votes, TTV Dhinakaran said he has no confidence in projections or exit polls or surveys. He and his people have been on the ground for 20 days and know the pulse of the public. And they all happy because they know they will win by a huge margin.- Ayswarya Murthy

AIADMK candidate E Madhusudhanan is confident of winning the RK Nagar bypoll which is currently underway. As of 3 pm, the polling percentage in over 184 polling stations is 59.24 percent, Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said. He said, God and Ammas grace with us. Chief Minister E Palaniswamy and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam are banking on him to bring home the constituency, which was twice represented by former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Madhusudhanan is squaring off against sidelined party leader TTV Dinakaran who is contesting as an Independent, DMK's N Marudhu Ganesh and Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) K Nagarajan.

The high stakes bypoll in RK Nagar constituency is currently underway. The bypoll was first scheduled to be held in April this year, but was cancelled due to complaints of large-scale voter bribery. The seat fell vacant upon Jayalalithaa's death on 5 December 2016.

Campaigning for the bypoll came to an end on Tuesday, with the election being seen as a litmus test for the AIADMK-led Tamil Nadu government. The bypoll will also settle the dispute over the late Tamil Nadu chief ministers political legacy within the AIADMK.

AIADMK coordinator Panneerselvam and co-coordinator Palaniswamy, DMK working president MK Stalin and sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran had hit a blazing campaign trail to ensure victory for their respective candidates.

It is the first election to be held in the 'post Jayalalithaa era', and necessitated following her death last December.

The bypolls will be seen as a report card of the 17-month-old AIADMK government, which itself underwent a tumultuous phase dominated by a rebellion and patch-up involving O Panneerselvam.

Chief Minister E Palaniswami and deputy Chief Minister O Pannerselvam urged voters to elect Madhusudhnanan to take forward the work initiated by Jayalalithaa.

In a joint statement, the leaders recalled that the late leader served people with a "motherly" attitude and that she had many plans for the constituency as its MLA.

People of RK Nagar were aware of her developmental work for the constituency, which was being taken forward by the ruling AIADMK, they said, while pointing out that this was the first hustings faced by AIADMK in her absence.

"Madhusudhanan will aid the government in implementing every other welfare measure with the blessings of Amma", they added.

Jayalalithaa is addressed as Amma, meaning mother in Tamil, by her supporters.

Stalin, on his part, vowed to unravel the 'mystery' behind the late AIADMK supremo's demise and assured to put behind bars those 'found responsible' for her death in the event of DMK coming to power.

During one of his stopovers during the campaign today, he said there was a "mystery on how Jayalalithaa passed away and what kind of (medical) treatment was provided" to her during her 75-day hospitalisation, as he dismissed as an 'eyewash' the inquiry ordered by the state government into her death.

"The first job of the DMK rule will be to find out who is responsible for Jayalalithaa's death and lock them up in prison," Stalin, Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, said.

The campaign saw old rivals Stalin and MDMK founder Vaiko share the stage for the first time in many years. The opposition is putting up a united show in a bid to snatch victory in this city segment. There were also allegations of money distribution, with DMK levelling charges against the ruling AIADMK.

Many opposition parties, including the Congress, the VCK and the Left have backed DMK candidate Ganesh.

Dhinakaran, who fell out of favour with Palaniswami and also lost the battle for the party's 'Two Leaves' symbol to the latter, is fighting as an independent and has expressed confidence that he can spring a surprise against the AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan, as well as the DMK.

With 59 candidates in the fray, the bypoll is virtually confined to old warhorse Madhusudhanan, DMK's greenhorn Ganesh and Dhinakaran.

Polling will be held on 21 December while the votes will be taken up for counting on 24 December.

Meanwhile, with campaigning coming to an end, the Election Commission has now barred all other related activities as is the rule. Liquor shops in the constituency will remain closed from 5 pm on Wednesday till 5 PM on the polling day, as well as on 24 December.

With inputs from PTI
Voting for the high stakes bypoll in RK Nagar Assembly constituency, which fell vacant after the death of late AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, saw 77 percent turnout.

Polling began amid tight security on Thursday, with key contenders being AIADMK, the main Opposition DMK and sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran (also sometimes spelled as Dinakaran). Soon after polling ended, Dhinakaran addressed a press meet where he said neither the video nor 2G would have any impact on the results. He also said he won't respond to the allegations of "clowns" who said he had been distributing money and tokens on Thursday morning.

Asked about what he thought about the exit polls that predicted he would get 35 percent votes, Dhinakaran said he has no confidence in projections or exit polls or surveys. He and his people have been on the ground for 20 days and know the pulse of the public, he said. He added that they were all happy because they knew they would win by a huge margin.

Dhinakaran justified the video of Jayalalithaa in the hospital that was doing the rounds, saying: "It doesn't in any way diminish the prestige of Amma. Instead, Vetrivel had hoped that it was relief some of the pressure on Chinnamma. This emotional action by Vetrivel backfired by bringing more trouble."

He said he didn't condone Vetrivel's actions, but as a friend, he could understand his motivations. He doesn't fear repercussions from the Election Commission because he had nothing to do with its release, like Vetrivel had admitted.

Polling began at 8 am, with people arriving to exercise their franchise across booths in North Chennai, braving the misty conditions. This poll was seen as an acid test for the ruling AIADMK, as it is the first election since the death of former chief minister Jayalalithaa.

Though as many as 59 candidates are in the fray, the bypoll was mainly seen as a fight between the ruling AIADMK, its rival faction led by Dhinakaran and DMK.

While veteran ruling party leader and former MLA E Madhusudanan is the AIADMK nominee, Dhinakaran is contesting as an Independent for the first time.

The Dhinakaran camp is facing flak for the release of a video clip on Wednesday, purportedly featuring late chief minister J Jayalalithaa in a hospital bed. P Vetrivel, a Dhinakaran loyalist released the video, an act denounced by AIADMK, DMK and others.

The DMK candidate Marudhu Ganesh, seen as a dark horse, is a grassroots level party functionary. DMK candidate N Marudhu Ganesh was among the early voters. DMK also has the support of its allies Congress, IUML, MMK and an array of friendly parties, including the Left, MDMK and VCK.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday declined to pass any order directing the Election Commission (EC) to put on hold the RK Nagar election.

Justice Indermeet Kaur also declined to pass any order directing a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into complaints and allegations of widespread corrupt practices in connection with the bypoll.

RK Nagar has an electorate of 2,28,234 voters, comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

Elaborate security arrangements were in place with about 2,000 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces, including CRPF deployed across 256 polling stations.

The polling process was monitored by nine observers, considered the highest for a single Assembly constituency. This included general, special, police and expenditure officials.

Ninety-six flying squad teams, 21 Static Surveillance Teams and 20 Video Surveillance Teams were deployed by election authorities. A total of 45 check points in and around the constituency were also manned by poll officials.

As polling was underway, cases of missing names emerged from RK Nagar. Revathy A, 42, a disappointed voter whose name was present in the list prepared for April was absent in the current list. This is her usual voting booth. Meanwhile, speaking to reporters DMK MP Kanimozhi, who was acquitted by the CBI special court in the 2G spectrum scam, said that the verdict would have no impact over the RK Nagar bypoll results as "the DMK is already winning in the constituency."

According to The Hindu, only voters were allowed to move freely within 200 meters of any polling station. On the other hand, police restrict vehicle movement near the polling stations. RK Nagar constituency registered 41.6 percent voter turnout till 1 pm, says the Election Commission. Tamil Nadu CEC Rajesh Lakhoni said this figure was from 174 polling stations. RK Nagar constituency registered a total of 41.6 percent voter turnout till 1 pm, said the Election Commission. Tamil Nadu CEC Rajesh Lakhoni said this figure was from 174 polling stations.

The Times of India reported that Independent candidate ML Ravi was collecting names of voters whose names went missing in the final list and that he would be filing a case against the Election Commission. Though the polling was largely peaceful, petty fights broke out among voters at Chennai High School on Tiruvottiyur High Road after the long wait in queues.

The Election Commission said that the voters who got into the queue by 5 pm were given tokens. After 5 pm, the polling was on in more than 60 booths where tokens were issued.

The run-up to the poll saw political parties and candidates holding as many as 152 public meetings and taking out 605 processions, campaigning ended on 19 December.

Till Wednesday and starting from November 24, a total of Rs 30,79,382 unaccounted cash was seized and 124 FIRs filed for election violations/offences.

Fifteen persons were remanded to judicial custody, 122 taken into preventive custody and 83 vehicles seized for violations.

Counting of votes will be taken up on 24 December and the results are expected to be out by afternoon that day.

With inputs from agencies
Voting for the Sabang assembly seat began on a dull note on Thursday with just 15 percent electorates exercising their franchise in the first two hours, an Election Commission (EC) official said.

The opposition CPI(M) and the BJP accused the ruling TMC of driving away their election agents from the polling booths, an allegation which was denied by TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia.

"The allegation made by the opposition parties is completely baseless. Voting is going on peacefully in the constituency," Bhunia said.

The byelection is being held amid tight security with eight companies of central forces deployed in the constituency, the EC official said.

The bypoll is being seen as a litmus test for both Trinamool Congress and BJP. The TMC in its campaign tried to woo the voters to wrest the seat regarded as a Congress stronghold, while for BJP the result will be an indicator whether the party is able to make inroads and its victory in the just-concluded Gujarat Assembly election will have any impact in Sabang.

Voting for by-election in West Bengals Sabang, underway. TMC's Gita Bhunia, Congress' Chiranjib Bhowmick, BJP's Antara Bhattacharya and CPI(M)candidate Rita Mandal are among the top contenders pic.twitter.com/PgE2Rn9kWT  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

A total of 245,259 voters are eligible to exercise their democratic choice in the Sabang constituency.

While the TMC has fielded Gita Rani Bhunia, wife of former Congress leader Manas Bhunia who had defected to the Mamata Banerjee-led party earlier this year necessitating the by-election, representing BJP in the polls is Antara Bhattacharya. Congress has fielded Chiranjib Bhowmick, a local leader. CPM's Rita Mandal is also in the fray as a Left Front candidate.

Manas had won the seat in last year's Assembly poll as a Congress candidate securing 59.70 percent votes. Congress had contested the 2016 Assembly polls in alliance with CPM-led Left Front. TMC had then bagged 36 percent votes. The BJP candidate, on the other hand, had polled only 2.6 percent votes in the 2016 Assembly poll.

Altogether eight companies of central paramilitary forces have been deployed for the Sabang bypoll.

Political analysts feel that TMC will have an advantage with Congress and the Left fighting the by-poll separately. A large section of the CPM's district leaders feel that an alliance with Congress like in the last Assembly election would have helped both the parties.

Although dubbed as a "betrayer" by his former party Congress, Manas expressed confidence and said TMC will win the by-poll.

State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has alleged that Manas has betrayed Congress and the people of Sabang for his personal gains.

"The people will give him a befitting reply", he said.

Manas said, "The people of Sabang constituency know what I have done for them during my tenure as an MLA. The TMC will win by a big margin."

Notwithstanding defection of many party leaders to the TMC in the last one year, the Congress is hopeful of retaining the seat.

The Congress in its campaign had shown a video where Manas is seen attacking the TMC regime and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee before the last year's Assembly election for alleged misrule.

The BJP, which has been making inroads into the state, is also leaving no stone unturned to increase its vote share.

"We will win Sabang seat this time. The people of this constituency have seen the double standards of Manas Bhunia and they no longer trust him," state BJP president Dilip Ghosh claimed.

With inputs from PTI
Washington: Describing India as a "leading global power", the US on Monday unveiled its new National Security Strategy (NSS) that said it will "deepen" America's strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region.

With an eye on China's One Belt One Road (OBOR) and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the US administration said it will help South Asian countries "maintain their sovereignty" as China increases its influence in the region.

The NSS also seeks Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorists.

"We welcome India's emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defence partner," said the National Security Strategy unveiled by President Donald Trump.

The 68-page document said the US will seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India.

"We will expand our defence and security cooperation with India, a Major Defence Partner of the United States, and support India's growing relationships throughout the region," the NSS said, noting that its vision for Indo-Pacific excludes no nation.

India-US defence relationship was mentioned in the context of Indo-Pacific region, whereas it gave a very prominent role to India in South and Central Asia.

"We will deepen our strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region," according to the NSS which the White House said sets a positive strategic direction for the US that will restore America's advantages in the world and build upon our country's great strengths.

The NSS said it will press Pakistan to intensify its counter-terrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country's support for militants and terrorists who target a partner's own service members and officials.

"The United States will also encourage Pakistan to continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets," it said adding the US will continue to partner with Afghanistan to promote peace and security in the region.

In an apparent reference to the OBOR and CPEC, the NSS said, "We will help South Asian nations maintain their sovereignty as China increases its influence in the region".

The recent Chinese move in Sri Lanka and Maldives is seen as an effort on their part to encroach eat on their sovereignty with similar fears in Pakistan.

India has objected to CPEC as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The US, it said, continues to face threats from transnational terrorists and militants operating from within Pakistan.

"The prospect for an Indo-Pakistani military conflict that could lead to a nuclear exchange remains a key concern requiring consistent diplomatic attention," NSS said.

US interests in the region include countering terrorist threats that impact the security of the US homeland and its allies, preventing cross-border terrorism that raises the prospect of military and nuclear tensions, and preventing nuclear weapons, technology, and materials from falling into the hands of terrorists, it said.

"We seek an American presence in the region proportionate to threats to the homeland and our allies. We seek a Pakistan that is not engaged in destabilising behaviour and a stable and self-reliant Afghanistan," the NSS said.

Insisting that it is committed to supporting the Afghan government and security forces in their fight against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorists, the NSS said the US will bolster the fighting strength of the Afghan security forces to convince the Taliban that they cannot win on the battlefield and to set conditions for diplomatic efforts to achieve enduring peace.

"We will insist that Pakistan take decisive action against militant and terrorist groups operating from its soil," it said.
The Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency and Hanwha Land Systems yesterday signed a contract for the procurement of 24 K9 Thunder self-propelled 155mm L/52 Artillery Systems. The total worth of the arms package is about 1.8 Billion NOK. (US$287 million). Pre-series of the artillery system will be delivered for initial trials in 2019 with the remaining batches delivered through 2020, forming a combat-ready artillery battalion in 2021.

The contract comprises 24 self-propelled guns combined with designated ammunition resupply vehicles, with the option for another 24 self-propelled guns. These guns will replace two the battalions of M-109A3GN currently in service. Norway will become the third operator of this weapon; the K-9 Thunder is already in service with the armies of South Korea and Turkey. India and Finland have also selected the K-9 along with Estonia that still negotiates their procurement.

The K-9 Thunder SP howitzer is produced in the Republic of Korea by Hanwha Land Systems. According to the Norwegian agency, the SP gun system that was acquired off-the-shelf has satisfied the specific requirements and needs of the Norwegian Army. In addition, Hanwha Land Systems has demonstrated the ability to deliver in compliance with stated time and cost requirements. Hanwha Land Systems was the Competitor with the greatest degree of compliance with the Norwegian Armys requirements. The artillery system will become an important contribution to the Armed Forces operational ability, Head of Norwegian Defence Materiel Agencys Land Systems Division, Brigadier General Morten Eggen stated.

A contract for logistic support, during the useful life of the materiel, together with a contract for the establishment of a Center of Excellence at Bjerkvik Technical Workshop were also signed. Under this agreement, Hanwha Land Systems will provide test equipment and training material and share technical knowledge to support the systems at the Bjerkvik Technical Workshop. The center will offer support services to other military users of the K-9 system.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday assured the Assembly against any misuse of the proposed stringent UPCOC legislation aimed at curbing organised crime and terror, after the opposition parties expressed fears that the "draconian" law may be used to target them and the media.

Urging the Opposition to back the bill, he asked if they wanted to support those who were indulging in organised crime by opposing it.

"Ever since the day the draft of the bill was approved by the cabinet, I have noticed that the Opposition parties are against it. I can give the guarantee that the BJP has never misused any law and will never do so. We have come to bring development and give security without any bias", he said.

The chief minister was initiating a discussion on the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crimes (UPCOC) Bill, 2017, drafted on the lines of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

"I assure you that no one will misuse it.It has been brought to break the backbone of those who indulge in organised crimes", he said, adding no one can say that his government has worked with political vendetta in the nine months it has been in power.

The chief minister compared the bill with similar laws in Maharashtra and Karnataka and said it will not only bring those who have made crime a trade under the law but will also create terror in their minds.

The chief minister said that another bill is on the anvil through which about 20,000 political cases will come to an end.

Though the concerted efforts taken by his government in the past nine months have had a positive impact, a need was felt to bring a law to check those involved in corruption, illegal and immoral acts and were creating anarchy, riots and mafia raj, he said.

Tarring the bill as a "black law" and calling it an "undeclared emergency", Leader of the Opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary referred to an attempt by the then Mayawati government in 2007 which had got a similar bill passed but it failed to get presidential assent.

Chaudhary even read the previous speeches of the then BJP members Hukum Singh, now an MP, and MLA Suresh Khanna, who is the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, and stressed that both had opposed the measure expressing fear that it will be used against the opposition parties.

"All rights have been given to the administration and to the police in the bill. The government which had promised to establish Ram Rajya is making provision for capital punishment," he said and stressed that the basic ethos of the Constitution is that no innocent should be punished.

"I request you against creating a 'bhasmasur' (self- destructive demon). Having the feeling of autocracy in a democracy is not good", Chaudhary said.

Apprehending that the bill has provisions that can also be used against the media, Chaudhary alleged that it is an attack on two main pillars of democracy - the legislature and the fourth estate.

The Leader of the Opposition alleged that the BJP wanted to remain in power for a longer period of time than the Congress "for which they do not want anyone left to oppose them".

"They want to conduct the 2019 (Lok Sabha) polls with no rival to challenge them", he alleged.

Chaudhary pressed for sending the bill to the select committee of the House to scrutinise its provisions and urged Speaker Hriday Narain Dixit to get the "draconian" bill withdrawn.
Reuters

Canadas BlackBerry Ltd beat third-quarter earnings forecasts on Wednesday amid strong enterprise software sales and licensing revenue, sending its Toronto-listed shares surging 12 percent to a four-year high.

The company, which has sought to reinvent itself after the collapse of its smartphone handset business, secured 36 deals with U.S. federal government agencies in the quarter, seven of which were each worth more than $1 million, Chief Executive John Chen said during an analyst call.

We have very good momentum, he said, singling out government sales to the United States, Canada and Germany. It will have a snowball effect. BlackBerry will hire more staff for sales, marketing and leadership positions as it focuses on growth. Its chief operating officer resigned last month.

The company reported adjusted earnings of 3 cents a share in the quarter ended Nov. 30, beating the average analyst forecast for it to break even, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Quarterly revenue fell 25 percent from a year earlier to $226 million, but beat the average forecast of $215.4 million.

Its pretty impressive, beating on both the top and bottom lines, said Ali Mogharabi, an analyst at Morningstar. The growth specifically in enterprise software is good to see. Shares jumped 12 percent to C$15.68 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, its highest since April 2013. U.S.-listed shares were up 10 percent at $11.98.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said enterprise software and services sales jumped 11.5 percent from a year ago to $97 million as it received some 3,000 orders in the quarter from customers such as Deutsche Bank, NATO and the U.S. government.

It had about 3,300 orders in the second quarter. Theyre on a good path, and theyre consistently moving in the right direction, said Nicholas McQuire, vice president of enterprise research at CCS Insight.

Sales in its group that includes QNX software, used in automobiles, were flat at $43 million. BlackBerry recently signed deals for work on next-generation automotive systems with chipmaker Qualcomm as well as technology companies Denso and Aptiv Plc. Supplier Yanfeng Visteon agreed to use BlackBerrys instrument-cluster software with an unnamed Chinese auto maker.

While those deals are considered positive by analysts, Chen said they are not expected to generate revenue until 2019. Revenue from intellectual property and licensing surged 67 percent to $50 million. A jump in that category had provided an unexpected boost to second-quarter earnings.
PTI

India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki said on 21 December that government incentives will be needed to make electric vehicles (EVs) affordable as the country is moving towards an eco-friendly solution for mobility.

The company, which plans to launch its first EV in India by 2020, also said that it will conduct a study to find consumer insights to prepare for the journey.

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chairman RC Bhargava said that affordability is a major challenge that EVs will face; and for them to be successful, the focus has to be on manufacturing batteries and other components within the country to bring down the cost. "I think it will be required... My gut feeling is that yes, some kind of intervention would be required but I don't know to what extent," he told reporters when asked if government incentives would be needed to support the electric vehicle's transition in India.

As electric vehicles are a new development for the Indian auto industry, it would be difficult to say in detail how much government support would be needed, he added.

The company will conduct a study to understand more about consumer insights on electric vehicles, which will also help in estimating how much of government support will be needed, he said. "Before that, I can't really say with any kind of confidence that this (is) the kind of government intervention required," Bhargava said.

The aim of the study would be to find out as to what is the ground reality, like where do people park their cars, charging infrastructure, and what is their thinking about EVs, he said.

"It will gauge what average consumer thinks about EVs. This survey is going to provide us with the first reliable data from the ground. We will start it within two to three weeks and by about end of February we would have some authentic basis to answer queries on EVs," Bhargava said.

Stressing on the need for the cost of electric cars to be within the reach of consumers, he said, "75 percent of cars are small cars. How to make small cars electrified and affordable? I think this is one of the challenges which we will have to face because making an affordable large car is different from making an affordable small car. We need to keep that in mind. So what kind of government support policy is required, (it) needs to be worked out."

The government has set eyes on 100 percent EVs for public mobility and 40 percent electric vehicles for personal mobility by 2030.

In a white paper submitted to the government, auto industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had proposed 40 percent of all new vehicles sold in the country to be electric by 2030 and 100 percent by 2047.

When asked about MSIs EV launch plans, Bhargava said the first one will hit the market by 2020 and the company will also set up charging stations.

On the future of conventional internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles, he said it will continue to grow. The company has done an assessment. Assuming an annual growth rate of 8 percent between now and 2030, 71 million cars will be sold, of which 14.4 million will be electric and 56.6 million will be IC vehicles, he said.

"So, conventional cars will continue to be four times that of electrics," he added.
tech2 News Staff

Microsoft has taken down the Google Chrome app from its Windows Store that directed users to the download link of the browser. According to the company, the Google Chrome app violates its Store policies.

According to a report by The Verge, Microsoft is not looking kindly upon Google's Store app, which can, in fairness, hardly be described as an app. Microsoft issued a statement stating that apps are required to "provide unique and distinct value," and the company is welcoming Google to build a Store browser app that complies with the rules laid down by Microsoft.

The report also points out that it is unlikely that Google will build a Microsoft Store compliant browser app because of Microsoft's restrictive rules for browser apps on the Store. According to the restrictions, any app that browses the web is limited to using the JavaScript and HTML engines that are provided by Windows. This means that Google will have to make a separate version of Chrome browser that follows these guidelines and Google uses Blink, its own rendering engine.

Microsoft's reasoning for these restrictions is understandable. Apps on the Store are expected to run on the crippled Windows 10 S variant of Windows, which is designed to run on everything from ARM-based PCs to regular PCs. Many Store apps are supposed to be compatible with the Xbox One and Windows Phone devices. This portability likely limits the flexibility of the code used. It's also just as likely that Microsoft is pulling an Apple and wants to ensure that its own apps dominate the Store, particularly in the lucrative browser market.

As per The Verge's report, Google can't or doesn't want to port its desktop browser to the Store, and the placeholder app was probably published to combat the menace of fake apps on the Microsoft Store. A problem that Microsoft is still struggling with.

This is not the first time that the companies have clashed over apps or browsers, as reported by The Verge. The companies fought for YouTube app that Microsoft created for its Windows Phone platform after Google did not launch any of its apps for Windows Phone.
Reuters

Nearly a third of Ubers 50,000 drivers in Britain are logged into the app for more than 40 hours a week, whilst just under 8 percent are online for more than 60 hours, the company said in a letter to parliamentarians published on Wednesday.

The app has been attacked by trade unions and lawmakers who say that some of its drivers are working excessively, one of many criticisms it has faced about its business model. A total of 2.6 percent of drivers are logged in for more than 70 hours a week and 0.8 percent for longer than 80 hours, according to the firm.

But Ubers Head of Public Policy in Britain and Ireland Andrew Byrne said being logged on was not the same as the number of driving hours.

Individuals are able to turn the app on and off at any time as well as decide when to take requests  this means that an hour logged into the Uber app is not the same as an hour of work, he said in a letter responding to questions from parliaments business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) committee.

Drivers often do not confirm trips that are sent to them, he wrote. Uber has faced setbacks in Britain this year, losing a case on workers rights, being stripped of its London licence and hunting to find a replacement for its boss.

Byrne said the app was planning to introduce a tool which will limit driving hours in January and would write again to lawmakers. The committee chairwoman said she wanted Uber to provide details of the plans early next year.

Ubers own stats indicate they have drivers who are logged in for more than 70 and 80 hours a week, a fact which would be a matter of concern for anyone potentially booking one of these Uber drivers, said Rachel Reeves. We expect Uber to update the BEIS Committee in the New Year with the specific details on how the driver hour limits will work in practice.
tech2 News Staff

Samsung has announced that it is now starting the production of the industrys first 2nd-generation, 10-Nanometer Class 8-gigabit DDR4 RAM. According to the South Korean giant, this RAM will focus on delivering good performance and energy efficiency and will also have the smallest dimensions as compared to any other 8-gigabit RAM.

The second-gen DDR4 RAM will have an approximate 30 percent gain in productivity over the first-gen DDR4 RAM. Additionally, the second-gen RAM is also expected to have a 15 percent upgrade in energy efficiency and 10 percent increase in performance levels, for which Samsung credits its proprietary circuit design technology.

The RAM operates at 3,600 Mbps per pin as compared to the 3,200 Mbps on the previous generation. For achieving this Samsung says it has used a "high-sensitivity cell data sensing system and a progressive 'air spacer' scheme".

Samsung says the new RAM has a newly devised data sensing system which helps in accurate determination of the data stored in each cell and that in turn increases manufacturing productivity. Samsung has already validated its new RAM with other IT giants and plans on working closely with them to develop more intelligent computing devices.

In more Samsung related news, Samsung India, on 20 December, launched the world's biggest QLED curved monitor for gaming enthusiasts and business professionals for Rs 1,50,000. The 49-inch ultra-wide curved monitor packs 'High Dynamic Range' (HDR) technology which offers better contrast, depth, and range of colours. It also features quantum-dot technology and a wider colour spectrum.
Reuters

If you ever wanted to directly get in touch with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, you just missed your chance. In a Twitter faux pas, Musk has accidentally revealed his private phone number on the micro-blogging site.

The billionaire intended to share the number with Oculus Virtual Reality (VR) Co-founder John Carmack late on Tuesday perhaps as a private direct message, asking him to give a call.

But Musk, who has 16.7 million followers, accidentally tweeted it for all. Musk later deleted the tweet and redirected the number, which now plays a recorded message from the video game God of War, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday.

"By the Gods you've done it," the message begins. "Somehow you've found your way here to me. I offer you my congratulations and my respect." Musk, who hopes to colonise Mars, co-founded PayPal and sold it to eBay in 2002. He now heads the ambitious space company Space X and luxury electric cars brand Tesla Motors, besides an array of other ventures.

Musk earlier this year called for urgent regulation for drones or machines that pose "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation". The tech celebrity joined Twitter in 2009.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held telephonic talks with top Nepalese leaders, including KP Sharma Oli, who is set to become the premier of the Himalayan nation, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

The conversations were the first highest-level contact between the leaderships of the two countries after the Communist alliance of Oli and Prachanda swept the elections in Nepal a few days ago.

"I have just been informed that PM had a telephone conversation with KP Sharma Oli, Chairman Communist Party of Nepal (UML), Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda chairman CPN (MC) and Sher Bahadur Deuba, the present Prime Minister...Since this conversation took place just now, I do not have the details of what transpired in the meeting. At some stage, if there is something to share, we will do that," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Nepal's Left alliance won 116 seats out of a total 165 under the first-past-the-post system while the ruling Nepali Congress bagged 23 seats in the country's recently concluded historic polls that many hope will bring the much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.

Oli's triumph is being widely seen as a victory for the pro-Chinese elements in Nepal.
Washington: A triumphant US President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul on Wednesday as a historic victory for the American people. The American people, however, will need some convincing.

As Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement and the biggest tax changes in a generation some Republicans warned that the party could face a painful political backlash against an overhaul that offers corporations and wealthy taxpayers the biggest benefits and was projected to trigger the loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

There was no hint of anxiety at the White House, though, as the president and congressional Republicans pushed any qualms aside and revelled in a much-needed win at the end of a year marked by GOP infighting and political stumbles.

We are making America great again", Trump declared, personally thanking his little team of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticized.

I dont know if well have bigger moments, but we hope to", said Trump.

The President was expected to sign the bill at a later date for technical reasons. In fact, the signing may be postponed until the start of the new calendar year in order to delay $120 billion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and spare Republicans from having to explain them in an election year.

The tax package provides a deep cut in the corporate rate, from 35 percent to 21 percent. On the individual side, about 80 percent of American households will get tax cuts next year, while about 5 percent will pay more, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Centre.

Some of the Presidents strongest allies conceded that voters may not immediately warm to the new law.

Andy Surabian, a senior aide for a pro-Trump super PAC, likened the Presidents position to that of Ronald Reagan, who struggled through low approval ratings early in his presidential term after Congress passed a tax cut that led to huge Republican losses in the 1982 midterm elections. Reagan went on to a sweeping re-election in 1984 after the economy improved.

People dont understand it, said Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, though he still called passage a massive win for Mr. Trump and the GOP.

Only about 1 in 3 voters have supported the legislation in recent days, according to several polls. About half of Americans believe the plan will hurt their personal finances. And 2 in 3 voters say the wealthy will get the most benefits, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week

Democrats, who unanimously opposed the tax plan in Congress, were furious about the new policy yet upbeat about the potential political fallout in next years elections. They need to flip 24 House seats and just two Senate seats to take control of each chamber.

Asked if the tax bill will help Republicans hold the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leaned into a microphone and said, Let. Them. Think. That.

The bill goes far beyond taxes

While it does not repeal the law known as Obamacare, the legislation finalised by the House on Wednesday attacks a central tenet of the health care system by eliminating the requirement that all Americans have health insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office says elimination of the individual mandate will boost health care costs by about 10 percenr for those with coverage and leave 13 million additional Americans without health insurance in 10 years.

Millions of people will still remain covered under the laws Medicaid expansion and health care exchanges, but Trump cast the package as a shadow repeal.

We have essentially repealed Obamacare", the president declared.

On taxes, the first modest effects will be felt in February paychecks.

People living in high-tax states like New York and California may ultimately pay more. Among those who benefit, the wealthy will make out far better than the working-class voters who fuelled Trumps victory last year.

Trump said on Wednesday the bill will spur economic growth as corporations, flush with cash, increase wages and hire more workers. Democrats questioned, even mocked that prediction.

Reflecting the political risks, some of the nations most vulnerable House Republicans voted against the bill.

All but one of the GOP no votes came from like-minded Republicans facing re-election in 11 months in moderate districts across New Jersey, New York and California.

The road to a Democratic House majority, if there is one, runs through these districts.

All the salesmanship in the world wont change the reality that the tax overhaul overwhelmingly favours the rich, Democratic critics said.

People think its unfair. They want tax reform, they dont want tax cuts for the wealthy, said Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. And I think people will realize theyve been sold a pig in a poke.
The release of United States' National Security Strategy (NSS) has led to a spate of criticism in the US media, which is hardly unexpected during the tenure of a president who is so prone to controversy. Most of the accusations certainly hold water. Analysts argue that the strategy hardly reflects the actions of the president himself  for instance, in its defence of free speech and a free press  or for that matter promoting the rule of law.

Donald Trump has clearly not shone in any of these areas. However, such criticism approaches the issue from a skewed angle. The reality is that while a president certainly gives his imprimatur to a policy document, its contents are not the sole preserve of the president. The NSS is crafted by a whole team of officials with strong inputs from other departments, particularly the Pentagon, and usually the state department.

Certainly, many of these officials are presidential appointees, but they would be hard put to ignore the opinion of vital parts of the government, particularly those dealing with the defence of the country. In addition, certain vital aspects of each national security document that deals with security, economic prosperity and the like, are hardly likely to change significantly from earlier administrations  another accusation that is levelled against the present NSS team.

In short, the basic elements that make such a document remain largely consistent, barring times when severe upheavals have taken place requiring a significant change in the policy direction of the administration  a good example of that being the shift that that emerged following the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent 'war on terror'.

However, what is evident here is a considerable difference in the language of what is, after all, a vital document supposedly setting out the priorities of an administration. Such documents are usually cautious in using adjectives or even the number of references to any particular issue.

For instance, the Barrack Obama Administration, while warning of increased Chinese modernisation, also hailed the huge cooperation with China in various other areas including climate change. The present NSS is blunt in its condemnation of the repressive policies of both China and Russia. The document mentions China 33 times, a long way ahead of the 12 times it was mentioned in the 2015 document. Russia is mentioned alongside almost all references to China, almost as if the US is endorsing an alliance between the two that presently doesnt quite exist.

Both have reacted strongly to this language. China's foreign ministry spokesperson called it an example of "Cold war mentality" while the Kremlin spokesman noted its imperialist character, adding rather peaceably, that Russia did not see itself as an enemy of the United States.

For India, this drawing of new red lines is hardly a propitious development. A Russia-China axis is, in fact, the worst possible development for New Delhi, not just because Russia is now bolstering its relations with Pakistan, but because both are a lot closer to us than the US. Distance doesn't always make the heart grow fonder.

The much-criticised emphasis on terrorism in the NSS is however good news for India. Prominent commentators have criticised the fact that the document has 58 references to terrorists, even while virtually ignoring human rights. The NSS naturally makes a triumphalist statement on having "crushed" the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, at a time when the group is on the run.

Fortunately, it also commits itself to continue operations against the group. Al-Qaeda is mentioned several times, and the document makes repeated references to pursuing threats to their source, including the use of direct action to degrade such organisations. It also warns of states that shelter and support such terrorists, and since everyone in South Asia knows just who does that, it raises hopes of strong action by the US, in economic, military and diplomatic terms against such errant states.

That hope is belied somewhat by the remarks on Pakistan. While stating baldly that the US continues to face threats from transnational terrorists and "militants" based in Pakistan, it also links this immediately thereafter to a possible nuclear conflict between the two neighbours that apparently requires "consistent diplomatic attention". This is a tricky one, and in earlier times would have caused consternation in South Block, given its non-proliferation overtones.

At present, however, the emphasis on India as a major defence partner and a power in the India-Pacific ensures that such language can be reasonably safely dealt with.

However, such statements give Pakistan the space that it needs for its usual sabre-rattling. Hardly surprising then that the Pakistan National Security Advisor reportedly warned of nuclear war and a conventional war in his most recent speech at a function organised by an army-led thinktank.

Pakistan gets further warnings. The document states uncompromisingly that no 'partnership' can survive support terrorists who target the partners' own service members and officials. One would have thought such a country should not be a partner at all, particularly given the US' extreme sensitivity to body bags, but such is apparently the lay of the land when it comes to US national security.

Another negative for Islamabad is the 'encouragement' to ensure that Pakistan continues to show responsible stewardship of its nuclear weapons, even as it is asked to take decisive action against terrorist groups on its soil. The promise is held out of the future trade and investment ties should Pakistan stabilise, is a judicious bait for a country that is getting increasingly alarmed at an overwhelming Chinese presence.

As far as the envisaged role for India is concerned, there is much to please foreign policy mandarins, even if some of the ones with wiser heads on their shoulders are likely to exercise due caution. The references to an increased Indian role in Afghanistan have been made earlier and is primarily aimed at opening Indian purse strings for aid.

The references to India-Pacific and a leadership role in Indian Ocean security are all pleasing in terms of the diplomatic pecking order in the region, but hardly the stuff which the Indian policy establishment is likely to take to unconditionally. The key question is whom the Indian Ocean is supposed to be secured against with Indian help. Any doubts on that score are settled by the very next paragraph, which references China.

The whole strategy is encapsulated in the bold statement in the document, that sustaining a favourable balance of power will require close cooperation with allies and partners, which will, in turn, magnify US power and influence.

The questions for India are therefore primarily two-fold. The first is whether greater US presence in the Indian Ocean adds or detracts to our own national security. With China continuing to show an aggressive face, it seems that such a larger presence will have to be borne with. Ideally, however, New Delhi would benefit the most from a complete absence of big power presence.

A second question is an issue of what favourable power equations the US expects from its other 'partner' in the east. That Pakistan remains a partner is made clear, though its actual utility to the United States remains unclear. Certainly, it provides a source for valuable intelligence on Chinese plans for the region.

New Delhi will inevitably ponder over what is likely to happen when the interests of the two partners are at variance, particularly when one has the unequivocal and weaponised support from China. Future policy documents from the defence department and actual deployment of forces need careful monitoring by the policy makers before reaching any definitive guesstimate.

The central issue is actually far more simple. At a time of huge economic interdependence between the US and China, the question that arises is whether the US will choose the iPhone over India. iPhone addicts in India would provide the answer in an instant tweet.
On the recent visit of HMS Ocean at the port of Haifa, the flagship of the Royal Navy participated in a mine warfare exercise at the Haifa Bay, where Israeli Seagull Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV) acted as pathfinders for the British amphibious support helicopter carrier, sailing in simulated mine-infested waters. The mission was part of a joint exercise between the Israeli Navy and the British Royal Navy in the Haifa Bay. HMS OCEAN has returned to her base-port in HMNB Devonport after completing her final deployment prior to decommissioning in 2018.

During the exercise, the Seagull performed a Mine Counter Measure (MCM) mission, scanning and charting a secure path for HMS Ocean. Once encountering mine-like-objects, the Seagull alerted HMS Ocean to avoid them, thus securing its safe route. The Seagull performed the mission while being remotely operated from a Mission Control Station onshore. Developed by Elbit Systems, the Seagull is a modular USV that can be configured for a variety of naval missions, including mine countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare. In addition to the Israel Navy, Seagull is undergoing evaluations by a number of foreign navies.
Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa contradicted himself during his first appearance before a parliament forum as he urged the country's lawmakers to try to improve relations with India but also appeared to defend Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed.

"The military is ready to back political leadership's initiative for normalisation of relations with India," Bajwa was quoted as saying by The Times of India. He was addressing the Senate Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday.

Though Bajwa's statement was viewed as a "major gesture" by the Pakistani media, it does go against his remark made during the same briefing in defense of Hafiz Saeed, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind.

According to The New Indian Express, when the army chief was asked about Saeed's role in fighting for the country during an 'in-camera session', he said: Like every other Pakistani, Saeed can also take up the Kashmir cause."

Bajwa's statement came days after former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf said that he was Saeed's "biggest supporter".

Musharraf also declared his support for terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, calling them "the biggest force".

"India got them declared as terrorists after partnering with the US. Yes, they (LeT) are involved in Kashmir, but in Kashmir it is between us and India," Musharraf said.

The US has constantly pushed Pakistan to improve its relations with India. In October, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson had said that US was keen on helping Pakistan improve relations with both India and Afghanistan.

Though Bajwa addressed US concern over Pakistan's relations with India, he failed to acknowledge its issues with the release of Saeed.

Saeed was freed on 22 November, months after being placed under house arrest.

The Donald Trump administration was quick to express its displeasure and said that Saeed was designated "a terrorist leader by both the United Nations and the United States".

The JuD chief carries a bounty of $10 million announced by the US for his role in terror activities.
Geneva: The UN's rights envoy for Myanmar said Wednesday the government had banned her from the country, adding her exclusion suggests something "awful" is happening in Rakhine state.

UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee had been due to visit Myanmar in January to assess the state of human rights across the country including in Rakhine, which was plunged into crisis by a military crackdown on the Rohingya minority Muslim community in late August.

Some 655,000 of them have fled for Bangladesh since then, with accounts of arson, murder and rape at the hands of soldiers and vigilante mobs in the mainly Buddhist country.

The UN has accused troops of ethnic cleansing and possible "elements of genocide" against the Rohingya  charges the government vigorously denies as it faces intense global outrage.

"I am puzzled and disappointed by this decision by the Myanmar government," said Lee, who is required to go to the country twice a year in order to report to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

"This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country," she added.

The South Korean academic said she was told the decision was based on a statement she made after her last visit to Myanmar in July, in which she sharply criticised the government's rights record and its treatment of the Rohingya.

At the time the government criticised the statement as "biased and unfair".

The UN confirmed Myanmar had withdrawn all cooperation for the duration of Lee's tenure.

Myanmar's government spokesman Zaw Htay said Lee had been barred because she was not unbiased.

"She is not impartial and objective while conducting her work. There is no trust on her," the spokesman said.

But Amnesty International described the ban as "outrageous".

"It is a further indication that authorities will do anything they can to avoid international scrutiny of their human rights record," said James Gomez, the rights group's director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

"The Myanmar military claim they have done nothing wrong during the past months. If so, the authorities should have nothing to hide  why are they denying access for independent and impartial investigators?" he said in a statement.

Lee, who has visited Myanmar six times since 2014, has consistently sounded the alarm over the persecution of the Rohingya.

The stateless group has been targeted by bouts of violence and systematically stripped of legal rights in recent decades.

But the latest crisis is the worst to rip through Rakhine state in years.

Myanmar has blocked journalists and investigators  including a UN fact-finding team  from independently accessing the conflict zone.

Last week two Reuters reporters were arrested for allegedly possessing documents relating to the security forces in Rakhine, raising fears that fragile press freedoms are being further eroded.

The journalists' families, lawyers and colleagues have not been told where the two are, and have not been allowed any contact with them.

The pair could face a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
United Nations: The United States is in talks with China on slapping new UN sanctions on North Korea and could put forward a draft Security Council resolution soon, UN diplomats said Wednesday.

The new measure is expected to target supplies of oil products to North Korea that are vital for military programs aimed at developing Pyongyang's nuclear strike capacity with advanced missile technology.

The new sanctions would be in response to the 28 November test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that flew 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before splashing down in Japan's maritime economic exclusion zone.

Asked about the US-China negotiations, a council diplomat confirmed "there is definitely stuff going on" but said it was unclear whether China would agree to new sanctions targeting its Pyongyang ally.

"It's a big ask to get the Chinese to agree to a further resolution," he said.

A diplomat said the draft resolution could be circulated to the council this week, but others were skeptical that a deal could be reached so quickly.

In negotiations on previous sanctions, the United States has first agreed with China on provisions of each resolution before presenting the text to the full 15-member council, which has then quickly voted.

Since last year, North Korea has carried out a nuclear test - its sixth - and a series of advanced missile launches.

After the latest ICBM test, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for "additional measures" against North Korea. And last week he told the council that the "pressure campaign must and will continue until denuclearization is achieved."

President Donald Trump asked Chinese president Xi Jinping last month to cut off oil supplies to North Korea, a move that would deal a crippling blow to its desperately struggling economy.

So far, the Security Council has imposed a full ban on supplies of condensates and natural gas liquids to North Korea, capped deliveries of refined oil products to two million barrels a year, and capped crude oil exports at current levels.

China supplies most of North Korea's crude.

The council has also banned exports of North Korean coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, restricted joint ventures and ended the hiring of North Korean workers abroad.

The sanctions are aimed at choking off revenue to Pyongyang's military programs and piling pressure on leader Kim Jong-Un to come to the negotiating table.

The United States has also asked the council to blacklist 10 ships, including two Hong Kong-flagged vessels, for carrying banned cargo from North Korea.

The UN sanctions committee has set a deadline of 3:00 pm (local time) Thursday for council members to raise any objections to a request to ban all 10 ships from ports

worldwide.

Under UN resolutions, North Korea is barred from developing missiles and a nuclear weapons capability, but Pyongyang has argued that the arsenal is needed for self-

defense against the "hostile" United States.
Ericsson together with Qualcomm and in collaboration with 9 leading telecom operators AT&T, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK Telecom, Sprint, Telstra, T-Mobile US, Verizon, and Vodafone today conducted a multivendor 5G interoperability test compliant with the global 3GPP standard for 5G New Radio (NR) Non-standalone (NSA), which also got its specs approved today. This was held in both the Ericsson Lab in Kista, Sweden and the Qualcomm Research lab in New Jersey, USA.

These demos shows companies combined strength in carrying out timely trials that pave the way for commercial launches of 5G standard-compliant infrastructure and devices. Ericssons 5G NR pre-commercial base stations and Qualcomm Technologies 5G NR UE prototypes will enable operators to conduct live tests in their own networks.

The over-the-air Interoperability Development Testing (IODT) was conducted for lower layer data connections operating at both 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz bands.

NSA 5G NR will use the existing LTE radio and evolved packet core network as an anchor for mobility management and coverage while adding a new 5G NR radio access carrier to enable certain 5G use cases starting in 2019.

Commenting on the new achievement, Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks at Ericsson, said:

This milestone builds on years of researching and developing 5G technology as well as on leading and contributing to the standardization work. By working closely with our key partners in early trials and fine-tuning our global portfolio, we ensure that we can bring the standard-compliant technology to the benefits of our customers and their customers.

Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and president, QCT, said:

Achieving multi-vendor interoperability based on the global 5G NR standard is a true testament to our continued 5G leadership, delivering fundamental contributions to the 3GPP standard and driving toward the launch of standard-compliant commercial networks and devices starting in 2019 As we did in both 3G and 4G, we are excited to collaborate with Ericsson as an industry leader to accelerate the path to 5G globally.

Source
Oregon State University has made vaccinations for meningococcal disease mandatory after a sixth student was diagnosed with the potentially deadly infection.

The university already required incoming students age 25 or younger to receive a quadrivalent vaccine that protects against four common strains of the disease and recently expanded that requirement to include a vaccine for strain B, the type that has sickened five students since November 2016 on OSUs main Corvallis campus.

Now all students 25 or younger must be vaccinated by Feb. 15 against meningococcus B.

Were raising the bar on vaccinations, OSU Vice President Steve Clark said Wednesday morning during a joint news conference in Portland with state and local public health officials.

A 21-year-old undergraduate fell ill while home on winter break and was hospitalized on Sunday for treatment, becoming the sixth OSU student infected with meningococcal disease since the outbreak began. Testing is underway to determine the particular strain of bacteria that caused the disease.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, medical director for communicable diseases and immunizations with the Oregon Health Authority, underscored the importance of vaccination in containing the OSU outbreak and urged all students to get shots over the holiday break. He said a statewide alert went out to health care providers on Tuesday urging them to vaccinate OSU students.

He called vaccination the best way to prevent the disease and noted that it can be fatal.

Fifteen percent of people who are struck by this disease will die, Cieslak said, adding that another 15 percent of survivors can expect serious health consequences, which can include deafness, blindness and amputation of the extremities.

Officials have declined to release the names of any of the infected students, citing federal privacy laws.

While not highly contagious, the disease can be transmitted be prolonged exposure to an infected person, especially in group living situations such as dormitories, fraternities and sororities.

OSU and public health officials have worked with infected students to identify and contact anyone who may have been infected and provide them with preventive antibiotics to stave off the disease.

All five of the students previously diagnosed with the disease have recovered or are recovering, noted Charlie Fautin, deputy director of the Benton County Health Department. But he echoed Cieslaks warning that meningococcal disease can have dire consequences.

In 2015, an outbreak at the University of Oregon resulted in the death of one student. And a Corvallis High School student lost both legs below the knee and parts of eight fingers after contracting the disease in 2014.

Fautin stressed the need to seek medical attention immediately if meningococcal disease is suspected.

While the effects of a meningococcus infection can mimic a cold or flu, it is usually accompanied by one or more telling symptoms such as unexplained high fever, headache, stiff neck or rash.

This is very important, Fautin said. This disease can progress from sort of feeling like you have the flu and feeling cruddy to catastrophic very quickly.

Immunization is important not only to protect individual students but also to keep the outbreak from spreading further, the officials pointed out.

This is a public health all hands on deck, Fautin said.
With players in the food industry consistently carving out pathways for flavor and functional innovation, ingredient suppliers offer aid in the discoveries of new and... Read More
Just when you think things couldnt get any worse for cash-strapped, hurricane-ravaged Puerto Ricoit does.

The new GOP tax reform bill could put the island at risk of losing its designation as a tax haven, forcing foreign businesses to leave due to higher tax penalties.

The final draft, which received approval from the House and Senate on Wednesday, clearing the way for President Donald Trump to sign in early January, calls for a 12.5% tax on any income generated from patents and licenses held by foreign companies outside the U.S. Under the U.S. tax code, companies in Puerto Rico are treated as foreign corporations, even if their parent organization is located in the mainland United States and even if they employ U.S. citizens.

[The] tax bill they just squeezed through Congress could drive businesses like drug and medical device makers away from the island, democratic strategist Joel Payne told FOX Business.

The current tax system has allowed Puerto Rico to serve as a tax haven for many drug companies and medical device makers, which can incorporate in the commonwealth as foreign subsidiaries but label their products as made in the U.S.

Before the bill was passed, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello wrote a letter to Congress calling the tax reform legislation a serious setback for the island, which has been struggling to get back on its feet since Hurricane Maria struck in early October.

Rossello told FOX Business that he has been talking to lawmakers in D.C. this week about the inclusion of provisions in the Supplemental that address the penalty of the tax reform against the American citizens residing in Puerto Rico.

We are confident that the members of Congress will ensure that this reform does not threaten the economic development of Puerto Rico, because the PROMESA Act itself enacted by Congress is intended to ensure financial stability and economic development, Rossello added.

When reporters asked House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) about possibly exempting Puerto Rico from the 12.5% tax on Tuesday, Brady said that other measures are in the works to support the island during its recovery and that they are absolutely committed to helping [Puerto Rico] rebuild.

Jack Brewer, CEO and portfolio manager of The Brewer Group, Inc., told FOX Business that he believes Congress will likely consider the majority of Puerto Rico an opportunity zone, which should allow companies to invest in the island and pay limited or no capital gains.

This could offset many of the negative effects of the current tax bill. Puerto Rico is still able to offer companies and individuals their Act 20 and Act 22 Benefits, which allow companies and individuals who move to the island the opportunity to enjoy a 20 years of significant tax exemptions, Brewer said.

However, Brewer added that at the end of the day, no tax bill will address every individual situation but Congress does have an opportunity to help Puerto Rico, which is currently in the worse economic shape than any U.S. state.
Investors' positive feelings about any given stock may wax and wane over time, but for many well-established organizations, dividends are enduring. For such companies, that's what makes them so lucrative: the reliability of the paycheck they dole out even when times get tough. Investors looking for income from their holdings can go on the hunt for such companies in difficult times, as depressed stock prices can mean high yields. These Motley Fool contributors say that three high-yield stocks for the long haul are Ford (NYSE: F), Enbridge (NYSE: ENB), and General Mills (NYSE: GIS).

An automaker down on its luck ... sort of

Nicholas Rossolillo (Ford): The last few years have not been kind to Ford. Shares have tumbled 50% from their high-water mark reached back in 2014 as profitability has slowly declined. That has been a confounding situation for investors because, until just recently, global auto sales have been steadily increasing for years.

Ford rode that wave here in the U.S. with the ever-popular F-150 trucks, Mustang, and SUV models. The story has been different in China, though, where an aging product lineup has consumers shopping elsewhere for a new car. That has also been the case as of late in the U.S., especially in the lagging sedan segment that's losing its luster to crossovers and SUVs.

When you add to that Ford's tardiness in developing electric powertrain vehicles and an autonomous vehicle strategy, the worries over the automaker's fate mounted and have sent the stock on a slow downward spiral.

Ford has begun to right the ship, but transforming a huge manufacturing operation doesn't happen overnight. New models will begin rolling out late this year, a makeover that Ford says will all but eliminate traditional sedans from North America. And electric and hybrid versions of all models should be available in the early 2020s. Ford has also been building its tech muscles by acquisition and launching new services in select markets like ridesharing and cars by subscription.

Changes like that take time to bear fruit, and they cost money. In spite of the concerns, Ford still has a strong balance sheet and generates plenty of cash. That makes the dividend, which is yielding 6.6% as of this writing, an intriguing reason to bet on a rebound for the bludgeoned stock. Ford has been in tough spots before -- automaking is cyclical, after all. While holding through the ups and downs can be unnerving, Ford's dedication to an investor payday via that dividend is a great reason to own this one for a long time.

Love it or hate it, you need it

Chuck Saletta (Enbridge): Few companies inspire such an impassioned debate as energy pipeline companies like Enbridge do. On one hand, many environmentalists hate the fact that they make it easier and cheaper to transport (and thus use) oil and natural gas as sources of energy. On the other hand, pragmatists argue that if you're going to use oil and natural gas, pipelines are generally the safest and most reliable way to get them from where they're found to where they're needed.

And we certainly do use oil and natural gas. Despite increases in energy efficiency and recent increased adoption of electric vehicles, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the net demand across oil and natural gas to increase through at least 2050. That means the need to move that oil and gas around will continue to be strong for decades to come.

As the operator of the world's longest transport system for crude oil and liquids energy, Enbridge is well positioned to continue to thrive as long as the demand for that energy remains strong. From an investor's perspective, that strength has been reflected in a dividend that has been paid for 64 years, and has risen at a better than 11% average annualized clip for the past 20 years.

That dividend currently offers investors somewhere in the neighborhood of a 6% yield, and the company expects to be able to continue increasing its dividend in the near future. With the long-term strength of its business supporting its dividend, Enbridge certainly looks like a candidate for consideration as a potential high-yield investment to buy and hold for the long term.

Durable advantages

Daniel Miller (General Mills): So much in the world can -- and does -- change seemingly overnight, that it's difficult for many companies to keep up. That makes picking long-term stocks difficult. But General Mills has durable competitive advantages that should enable it to deliver its high dividend yield, currently 4.4%, to investors for the long haul.

One advantage General Mills has is its long list of powerful brands, including Haagen-Dazs, Cheerios, Yoplait, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Old El Paso, Pillsbury, and many more. Those powerful brands help retailers across the nation drive store traffic and inventory turnover, and it makes General Mills a valued partner. Through those long-standing relationships with retailers, General Mills is able to retain extremely valuable shelf space, a key factor to maintaining market share.

General Mills also has advantages due to its sheer size. The company generated $15.7 billion in revenue during fiscal 2018, and its wide manufacturing and distribution network lowers its costs compared with smaller competitors. And all that enables it to invest in research and development at a higher rate to adapt more quickly to changing consumer tastes.

One gripe from investors has been a mostly stagnant top line. And while you can argue that General Mills' $8 billion purchase of pet-food manufacturer Blue Buffalo was expensive, it was an intriguing move into nontraditional categories for the company that should support top-line growth, and will be accretive to earnings in 2020.

Ultimately, with its long list of brands entrenching its relationships with retailers, economies of scale due to its sheer size and distribution network, and creative acquisitions to help drive top-line growth, General Mills has a stable business to offer investors. Its 4.4% yield, which the company has paid uninterrupted for 119 years, is simply icing on the cake.

10 stocks we like better than FordWhen 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 Ford 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 August 6, 2018

Chuck Saletta owns shares of Enbridge. Daniel Miller owns shares of Ford. Nicholas Rossolillo and his clients own shares of Ford. The Motley Fool recommends Enbridge and Ford. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
After months of negotiations, lawmakers in Washington finally succeeded in crafting a tax reform package that Republicans could agree on. New tax laws will take effect in 2018, and investors are excited about the huge decline in the corporate tax rate and its potential impact on business profits.

Yet for individual taxpayers, the most important change in the new tax law hasn't gotten a lot of attention. Amid wrangling over tax credits, higher standard deductions, and changes in deduction rules, the biggest change that upper-middle class and high-income taxpayers will see is the elimination of the marriage penalty. That provision by itself will save many married couples thousands in taxes by producing the biggest tax rate drop for individuals in the legislation.

What the marriage penalty is

The marriage penalty has existed for a long time and is a result of the differences among tax brackets for single and joint filers. Under the existing law that will apply to 2017 tax returns, the income thresholds for joint filers in the 10% and 15% brackets are exactly double what the regular single rates are. That ensures that under no circumstances will people in those brackets pay more in tax if they get married than they would if they remained single.

However, higher brackets under existing law aren't set up that way. For instance, the upper end of the 25% bracket for single filers is $93,700. That would imply a bracket top at $187,400 for joint filers in the absence of a marriage penalty, but the actual upper end is at $156,150. That means that more than $31,000 of taxable income gets taxed at the next higher tax bracket of 28%, costing those taxpayers nearly an extra $1,000 in taxes.

What tax reform did to help upper-middle and high-income married taxpayers

The Congressional tax reform package sought to eliminate the marriage penalty for all but the highest-earning taxpayers. Under the proposal, the upper income limits for joint filers in five of the seven tax brackets will be exactly double the limits for single filers.

That yields some particularly big tax benefits for certain taxpayers. Consider the following examples:

A couple with $165,000 in taxable income will have a maximum tax rate of 22%. That's down from the 28% that couple would pay under current law on the final $6,850 of income they earned, on top of the tax rate reductions of three percentage points on the income that used to fall in the 15% and 25% tax brackets.

The biggest winners are couples making between roughly $240,000 and $315,000 in taxable income, because the extension of lower tax rates in that range is the greatest. For instance, take a couple with $300,000 in taxable income. Under current law, that couple would pay 33% tax on more than $62,000 of their income, with 28% taxes applying to another nearly $82,000. The new law, by contrast, imposes a 24% top rate on $135,000 of that income, with the remaining $9,000 getting an even better 22% rate. The savings of as much as nine percentage points on the tax rate -- the difference between 33% and 24% -- amounts to thousands of dollars of savings for those taxpayers.

Those taxpayers with lower incomes won't see a lot of benefit from the new provisions, mostly because they've already had tax brackets that sought to eliminate the marriage penalty. For them, the benefits of tax reform will largely come from the tax rate decreases and higher standard deductions that the legislation provides.

The net impact of tax reform

Married couples in these higher tax brackets won't necessarily get to reap all the rewards of these favorable tax changes, because other provisions might apply to offset those savings. One example is the limitation on state and local tax deductions, which are likely to result in higher taxable income for many couples at these income levels.

Nevertheless, the change could be one of the biggest benefits of tax reform. The savings are big enough that unmarried couples who've held off on tying the knot due to past marriage penalty concerns might want to rethink their life planning in light of the new rules.

The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Google-parent Alphabet Inc. said Eric Schmidt will step down from his post as executive chairman in January and transition to a role as technical adviser.

Mr. Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001 and served as its chief executive until 2011, also will continue to serve on Alphabet's board, the company said in a statement Thursday.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai "and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition," Mr. Schmidt said in the statement. "In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work."
Boeing Co has held takeover talks with Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

More from FOXBusiness.com... Boeing notches win over Bombardier as US confirms 300% tariff

Boeing and Embraer have been discussing a deal that would involve a relatively large premium to the Brazilian company's market capitalization of $3.71 billion, the WSJ reported. (http://on.wsj.com/2Dn6SjQ)

Embraer's shares were up 2.6 percent in Sao Paulo, while its U.S.-listed shares were up about 30 percent.

The talks are on hold as the companies are waiting for the Brazilian government's response on whether it would approve the deal, according to the report.

Boeing is willing to take steps to protect Embraer's brand, management and jobs to help entice the government and is also willing to structure a deal that would protect the government's interest in Embraer's defense business, the Journal said.

Embraer and Boeing were not immediately available for comment.
On Wednesday, Republicans passed sweeping tax reform legislation that is expected to lower tax rates for many Americans, and you should be prepared to adjust your retirement strategy accordingly, one expert says.

Now is not the time to stash all of your money into pre-tax account like a 401(k) or traditional IRA, according to tax attorney and certified financial planner Rebecca Walser, because the combination of tax cuts and economic trends could lead to much higher rates in the future.

[With] pre-tax wealth, the government gets to decide what the tax rate is as you pull that out, she said. This is the time to pay the tax as you earn [the money], put it into the after-tax vehicle and let that money grow your whole life  tax-free.

In a traditional 401(k) or IRA account, money goes in tax-free and is taxed upon withdrawal. In a Roth IRA, taxes are paid at the time of contribution and then the money grows and can be withdrawn tax-free.

Walser identified two distinct economic trends that could spell trouble for pre-tax savings 20 to 30 years down the road. The first is the U.S. debt, which currently totals more than $20 trillion. On top of that, Republicans just passed a bill to cut taxes, potentially tacking more onto that amount over the coming years. As Walser pointed out, 401(k)s were widely rolled out in 1981, at a time when the U.S. debt fell shy of $1 trillion. The government will be faced with a whole new set of economic problems by the time many of todays workers look to pull their funds out of those accounts, which could mean higher tax rates.

Next, the baby boomer generation is beginning to retire en masse. In fact, about 10,000 men and women retire each day, according to the Pew Research and the Social Security Administration. This is a double negative, according to Walser, because not only will they stop paying into the system, they will become net takers from the government.

The amount of pressure that our federal government will face from [these trends]  The 30-year tax picture looks a lot worse.

Finally, over the near-term, tax rates could be on the decline for many individuals now that Congress has approved the GOP tax reform plan. That will allow workers to get a relatively low rate on retirement savings stashed into a Roth account.

It does make a lot of sense to leverage the tax rates being low, Walser added. I dont think we will ever see this again, this is once in a lifetime.

There are additional benefits to Roth IRA accounts. Hans Scheil, president of Cardinal Advisors, pointed out that younger Americans are able to withdraw funds from these types of accounts in order to buy their first homes. Individuals can also withdraw funds to pay off higher education expenses.

Despite the benefits of after-tax savings strategies in the current environment, Walser said you shouldnt completely neglect 401(k) plans as you plot your retirement.

Our general recommendation is not to walk away from free money  [But] beyond the match we would not advise you to [keep contributing to a pre-tax account].
Saudi Arabia paid 2 billion riyals ($533 million) on Thursday in the first monthly installment of a new welfare system for low and middle-income families that make up approximately half of the kingdom's population.

The payments come ahead of the introduction of a 5 percent value-added tax on most goods, like food and services, as well as subsidy cuts that will raise the price of electricity and gasoline next year.

Minister of Labor and Social Development Ali al-Ghafees told the state-run Saudi Press Agency that bank transfers were made to approximately 3 million families, reaching around 10.6 million beneficiaries. He said half of those families received the maximum payment of 938 riyals ($250). The minimum payment is 300 riyals ($80).

Around 20 percent of those who applied for the assistance did not qualify, however.

The payouts come two days after the government announced plans for the biggest budget in the kingdom's history, with plans to spend at least 978 billion riyals ($261 billion) this coming fiscal year. The government already introduced a tax on tobacco products, soft drinks and energy drinks this year, as well as a tax on luxury goods.

The government said it expects to pay approximately 32 billion riyals ($8.5 billion) on the Citizen's Account payments in 2018.

Despite major spending plans, government revenues are expected to reach 783 billion riyals ($209 billion), leaving a 7 percent budget deficit amid continued lower oil prices from their highs in early 2014.

Some 210 billion riyals ($56 billion) are being earmarked for military spending, representing just over a fifth of overall state spending next year. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest military spenders and it's nearly three-year-long war in Yemen has been costly.

The government, meanwhile, has slowed down some of its austerity measures and its timeline for a balanced budget, to give families time to adjust to the price hikes and taxes. A freeze on public sector wage increases and perks was quickly reversed after a public outcry.
Japan's Honda Motor and Nissan Motor are developing all solid-state batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), Kyodo News reported on Thursday.

It was not clear from the report whether the two companies were expected to work together.

Tighter global emissions regulations are forcing automakers worldwide to shift to EVs, and some are tying up to share the high costs of developing batteries for them.

In Japan, Toyota Motor has teamed up with Panasonic to research developing EV batteries.

Honda told Reuters it was looking at the possibility of developing all solid-state batteries but would not elaborate, while Nissan was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
When many people think of CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), they think of an old-school regional U.S. telephone company. As landlines and low-bandwidth copper internet are going the way of the dinosaur, these people probably think CenturyLink will follow suit. Certainly, CenturyLink's 15% dividend is telling market participants that there is danger ahead. In addition, CenturyLink recently reported an ugly 7.9% decline in revenue and a 12.5% decline in adjusted EBITDA last quarter, though that was partially (though not completely) affected by the sale of its co-location business earlier this year.

Yet one analyst, Gabelli's Sergey Dluzhevskiy, thinks the company is misunderstood. Thanks to years of investment and the recent acquisition of Level 3 Communications, the company now has an asset that may prove valuable for future 5G LTE networks -- a global fiber-optic footprint.

Why fiber is important

Fiber-optic cable is the main circulatory system for today's fastest communications. As the need for bandwidth continues to explode, more and more fiber will need to be used. This is true not only for today's fixed broadband connections but also for 5G LTE, which should be coming in the next several years.

5G LTE promises exponentially faster mobile speeds, which will enable future applications not possible today. It will most likely use millimeter wavelengths, as these high-frequency bands are the only bands capable of transmitting large amounts of data extremely fast through the air.

But while these wavelengths will enable speed, millimeter-wave bands cannot transmit data over long distances or go through objects. Therefore, a fiber-optic cable will need to be installed closer and closer to customers wishing for 5G speeds. That means mobile carriers will likely have to partner with large fiber networks (like CenturyLink-Level 3) in order to bring 5G to customers.

According to Brian Lavallee of fiber-optic equipment-maker Ciena (NYSE: CIEN):

Gabelli's Dluzhevskiy thus believes that CenturyLink's 450,000 miles of connected fiber (200k for Level 3, 250k for CenturyLink) will be a huge asset when mobile carriers look to roll out 5G to customers.

Management knows this

The good news for CenturyLink shareholders is that management is keenly aware of this. In fact, despite CentruryLink's declining overall metrics, the company is accelerating capital expenditures this year. By early 2020, the company wants to have over 90% of customers on 40 megabits per second or higher, over 70% on 100 megabits or more, and over 20% passed with a full gigabit of speed.

Said incoming CEO Jeff Storey:

Can it turn around in time?

As I previously wrote, CenturyLink's dividend is currently covered -- though it's not certain that will last. The company has several declining copper-based businesses it must navigate while it ramps up higher speeds and fiber. Of course, most don't expect 5G to be available broadly until 2020 at least, and the hardware standards for 5G have not even been finalized yet. Therefore, CenturyLink will have to manage through this transition with the hope of making it to 5G before it has to cut its dividend.

Fortunately, the Level 3 acquisition will help in a big way. The combined company's network now connects over 100,000 buildings in over 350 metropolitan areas in 60 countries, with over 450,000 route miles of fiber. That's actually the third-largest fiber network in the U.S., according to Dluzhevskiy. At that scale, CenturyLink will no doubt play at least some role in the future of fixed and mobile networks.

Do you feel lucky?

CenturyLink's management is making all the right moves to reposition itself for a fiber-based world. Shareholders must hope these investments pay off, both in the long-term and at least enough in the short-term-term to preserve the dividend.

10 stocks we like better than CenturyLinkWhen 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 CenturyLink 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

Billy Duberstein owns shares of CenturyLink. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 2022 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. FAQ - New Privacy Policy
If you want to know how one of Wall Streets biggest players managed to keep a massive and controversial loophole in the GOP tax bill, just follow the money.

The $2.5 trillion private equity business, comprised of Wall Street behemoths Blackstone Group (NYSE:BX), Carlyle Group (NASDAQ:CG) and KKR & Co. (NYSE:KKR), funneled massive amounts of campaign cash into the coffers of Republican leaders in the House and the Senate as these same lawmakers voted for a tax bill that preserves the so-called carried interest loophole, campaign contribution documents reviewed by FOX Business show.

In 2017 alone, members of the three private equity firms gave a combined $1.31 million to GOP lawmakers in the House and the Senate, compared to just $438,000 to Democrats, documents show.

Public policy groups and some lawmakers have called for eliminating the carried interest deduction as a form of welfare for the rich, since private equity companies and their investors so heavily benefit from the loophole that allows for profits on their holdings to be taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump said he would end the deduction for everybody during his populist push to win the White House while noting that average families pay a higher income tax rate than executives from this industry.

But the private equity business has been successfully fighting to retain the loophole in the tax code for years. Through a combination of lobbying key Congressional leaders, and it appears, targeted campaign contributions to those same leaders, the industry was able to convince the Trump administration and the GOP Congress not to touch its sacred cow yet again in the current tax bill, a move that will save these firms around $2 billion a year.

"People who benefit from carried interest are not suburban families who are living paycheck to paycheck. They aren't on Medicaid, said Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. This loophole protects an industry whose participants contribute a lot of money to campaigns and political efforts in general, and people will be outraged when it becomes a campaign issue.

The private equity industry counters that the loophole and the savings it creates allow companies like Blackstone to create jobs. Private equity funds typically buy up public companies, turn them private in order to revamp businesses and sell them years later at a profit often to public shareholders. The carried interest deduction in the tax bill allows their investors profits to be taxed at a lower capital gains rate as opposed to the higher income tax rate of 37% as long as the private equity firms hold their investment for three years, as they typically do.

Last year alone, the private equity industry invested over $640 billion in the U.S. economy, employing more than 11 million Americans in all 50 states and in every congressional district, said Laura Christof, spokeswoman for the American Investment Council, a lobbying group representing private equity firms. We worked with as many lawmakers as possible to encourage them to support long-term business investment as part of a tax reform package that would lead to economic growth. This tax bill is not perfect for any one industry, including ours, but it will support the kind of long-term investing that industries like private equity, real estate, and venture capital bring to our economy.

Making the loopholes inclusion in the tax bill even more controversial is the closing of other loopholes and deductions, such as the deduction for state and local taxes. Ending that deduction could harm even middle-class taxpayers in some states like New York, New Jersey and California who might pay an effective tax rate that is higher than a private equity investor. And even on Wall Street, which favors lower taxes on business, the carried interest loophole is considered a controversial one. For example, bankers and investors who work at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and perform some as private equity executives do not benefit from a similar loophole. These same executives say private equity firms would still be able to take risk on companies without the loophole, and the profits generated would still be enormous.

The reason for the loopholes survival, Wall Street executives say, comes down to money and the power of the private equity industry in Washington, where it targets key lawmakers for campaign contributions and constantly lobbies the White House on maintaining the favorable tax treatment as good for the economy, even if the data is decidedly mixed.

More from FOX Business AT&T to give employees $1,000 bonuses after Trump signs tax bill

For example, most of the big private equity firms, like Blackstone, are located in New York or, in the case of Carlyle, Washington, D.C. But Blackstone was so interested in the outcome of the 2014 Kentucky Senate race that it plowed $217,000 into Mitch McConnells campaign coffers in order to help the GOP Senate Majority leader keep his seat. Since his re-election campaign, they've continued to be key allies of McConnell with Blackstone employees so far contributing a grand total of $212,000 in 2017, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

That means Blackstone has been a top contributor to McConnell for the past two election cycles, at a time when the Senate Republican leader was among the chief architects of the GOP tax bill. A spokesman for McConnell declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for Blackstone.

But McConnell isnt the only Republican lawmaker from outside of New York to rake in campaign cash from the largely East Coast-based private equity business. Paul Ryan, the GOP House Speaker from a district in Wisconsin, received $68,000 from Blackstone and its executives in 2017 (Ryans second-largest contributor so far this year) and $36,000 from Carlyle Group and its executives, documents show.

Its unclear if Ryan will seek re-election in 2018 when his term ends, but the district trends heavily Republican and he is expected to retain the seat if he does run. A spokesman for Ryan had no comment, and a spokeswoman for Carlyle had no comment.

Other big beneficiaries of private equity campaign cash include GOP Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who received $60,000 this year alone from Blackstone, and GOP House Ways and Means Committee chief Kevin Brady from Texas, who received $25,000 from executives at KKR this year alone. A KKR spokeswoman didnt return calls for comment.

The White House had no comment on the matter, but earlier on Wednesday, Trumps National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn blamed Congresss relationship with big private equity firms and their lobbyists for the carried interest loopholes survival in the final tax bill, stating that the administration tried to get the loophole removed 25 times.

The reality of this town is that this constituency has a very large presence in the House and Senate, Cohn said.

However, others close to the tax bill process say the White House didnt make ending the loophole a priority. They point to President Trumps close relationship with Blackstone chief Steve Schwarzman, a key outside economic adviser, for the administrations poor effort in the matter. A spokeswoman for Cohn had no comment.
The Republican-controlled Congress voted to pass the Republican tax bill Wednesday, giving President Donald Trump his first major legislative victory.

Guy Chemical founder Guy Berkebile and Josephs Lite Cookies President Joseph Semprevivo described how the GOP tax bill will help benefit both of their perspective businesses.

The $1.5 trillion tax bill is the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax system in more than 30 years and will lower the federal top marginal tax rate to 37% from 39.6%.

Weve been paying some of the highest taxes in the world for way too long. My company, Im paying at the federal 39.6% rate when you add in the state and local taxes on top of that, Im paying nearly 50% for every dollar I make back to the government, Berkebile told FOX Business Liz MacDonald on Risk & Reward.

Some Democrats like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) believe that corporations will be the ones that profit from the tax bill at the expense of the middle class.

Pelosi tweeted, Democrats are speaking out after Republicans passed their con-job #GOPTaxScam & raised taxes on 86 million middle class families.

The Guy Chemical founder described the difficulties he faced paying such high taxes as a small business owner.

I did not draw a salary from my company for five years when I started it because the survival of my business in paying my employees was always more important than how much I was making at the time. I mortgaged my house seven times over the years to help pay for financing of my business, Berkebile said. My money goes back into my business and it goes back into salaries, but also bonuses to my employees.

The GOP bill also allows full expensing of short-lived capital investments, which the Joseph Lite Cookies president plans to utilize in order to expand operations.

Our focus is to expand our company and the number one way we are going to do that is by adding equipment like with the immediate expensing and the accelerate depreciation. Well be able to buy a Rotary Dye. Well be able to start producing special cookies and increasing our sales [and] increasing payroll to our team members, Semprevivo said.
Congressional Republicans delivered President Donald Trump a major legislative victory by approving the largest tax code overhaul in thirty years.

It's always a lot of fun when you win. If you work hard and lose, thats not acceptable," Trump said at a ceremony on the White House lawn.

The sweeping tax plan reduces the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, lowers the top tax rate for individuals from 39.% to 37% and doubles the standard deduction and child tax credit. The tax reform bill also reduces taxes for small businesses and eliminates the tax penalty tied to the ObamaCare individual mandate.

The President looks at this as a big win for the country, for the hard-working men and women of this nation. Our job creators, our job seekers and certainly our job holders. They deserve a break, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, told FOX Business Lou Dobbs.

Conway said the GOP tax reform bill was preceded by Trumps push to roll back Obama-era regulations that she says have strained American businesses.

The tax cut and reform package, Lou, is the centerpiece of the overall President Trump economic agenda, and this is a very important centerpiece today, she said.

Despite the tax win, Congress could be heading toward a government shutdown as House Republicans struggle to unite over the spending bill.

We certainly hope that there wont be partisan, petty politics getting in the way of us fully funding the military and other important programs and obligations, Conway said on FOX Business Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Fox News strategic analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.) told FOX Business Trish Regan who he thinks will most likely become the first female president of the United States.

I think Nikki Haley may end up as our first female president, Peters said.

The retired colonel made the comments following U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haleys firm warning to the UN after the general assembly voted to defy President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," Haley said Thursday.

Peters called the UNs 128-9 vote that rejects the U.S. decision on Jerusalem as insignificant and said the government made a misstep in its threat to cut off funding to nations that oppose Trumps decision.

This wasnt an unimportant vote. This was a UN tantrum, he said. We may cut some UN funding. We certainly are not going to cut funding to countries like Jordan or even Egypt at a critical time like this.
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday voted 128-9 against President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley addressed the global body on Thursday, issuing a warning that the United States will remember the countries that voted against Trumps Jerusalem decision.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation, Haley said.

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb said the United States needs to dial back its rhetoric toward the United Nations, before the U.S. begins to hurt its relations with other countries in the Middle East.

I think you have to dial back the rhetoric because while you said you were going to do this, for example if you look at the military and humanitarian aid, which would cut off money to Egypt, which you need to deal with Iran. Were just beginning to send more weapons to Ukraine because of what Russia is doing there, he told FOX Business Neil Cavuto on Cavuto: Coast to Coast.

Korb also said that by declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the U.S. has delayed the peace process, in the region.

The peace process is not where it should be- [Trump] had his son-in-law Jared Kushner that was going to be involved in that, but then when he unilaterally said he was going to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, a lot of the countries in the region didnt want to work with us anymore. Including the Palestinians, they dont want to meet now with Vice President Pence when he makes his trip over there, he said.

Both the U.S. Ambassador and the president have hinted at cutting funding to the U.N. for disrespecting the United States decision.

On Wednesday, President Trump told reporters said that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by the U.N. and also added, Let them vote against us, well save a lot. We dont care.
Months after confirming his battle with throat cancer, Val Kilmer has opened up about how the ordeal changed his outlook on life.

I was too serious, Kilmer told The Hollywood Reporter of his career before cancer. Id get upset when things like Oscars and recognition failed to come my way.

Kilmers desire for awards hasnt changed, though. I would like to have more Oscars than anybody, Kilmer, 57, said. Meryl Streep must feel pretty good, you know? It must feel nice to know that everyone loves her. Its about being loved.

Shortly after Kilmer received his diagnosis in 2015, his 26-year-old daughter, Mercedes, was hit by a car.

We were in the same hospital at the same time, Mercedes said.

I was just, you know, miserable, distraught, sitting next to these two, Kilmers son, Jack, added.

A Christian Scientist, Kilmer said faith got him through the emotional ordeal of his cancer battle and his daughters accident. He also said he underwent chemotherapy to fight it.

This article originally appeared in Page Six.
When Elizabeth Short showed up in Los Angeles during the 1940s, the small-town girl had big dreams of becoming a movie star. However, she would only achieve fame in death.

The 22-year-olds naked corpse was found in a vacant lot on January 15, 1947. Short was scrubbed, cut in half and drained of blood.

The New England hopeful was viciously mutilated and a jokers smile was carved on her face. Short would be nicknamed The Black Dahlia by the press after a 1946 film noir and her killing would spark all sorts of stories and theories that continue to frighten people decades later.

Short's death became the subject of a 2006 film directed by Brian De Palma, starring Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. It also inspired FX series "American Horror Story" in 2011, with Mena Suvari playing Short.

Now, a British lawyer determined to find out how a young girl from Medford, Mass. got caught up in the dark side of Hollywood, believes she may have solved the mystery of Hollywoods most infamous murder.

MANSON'S YOUNGEST FOLLOWER TELLS ALL

In her new book Black Dahlia, Red Rose, Piu Eatwell attempts to shed light on Shorts brutal demise based on legal documents from the case, letters and grand jury testimony. Eatwell even tracked down some of the last living people with direct knowledge of the events at the time, and came up with a theory:

An ex-boyfriend, who was a former mortician's assistant, did it.

She was dependent on friends, boyfriends, people she got picked up by for a meal or just a place for the night  Author Piu Eatwell

In an interview with Fox News, Eatwell said her theory was confirmed by the son of a now-deceased Los Angeles policeman who was involved in the investigation.

The alleged murderer, Leslie Dillon, entered Short's life by way of her landlord Mark Hansen, a shady Hollywood mogul-type who seemed obsessed with the young beauty.

Eatwell claimed that like many girls seeking their big break, Short was lured by the wealthy businessman, who promised a bright future ahead.

He owned a number of movie theaters in Hollywood and he was a multimillionaire," Eatwell said. "He also had a number of rooming houses and his own apartment just off Hollywood Boulevard  He was separated from his wife, who had a house on the Hollywood Hills with their two daughters.

"He had a great lifestyle in his apartment where he would invite girls if he liked their looks he would invite them to stay with obviously a promise that they were going to make it big as movie stars. Sooner or later, they would probably be booted out or end up as dancers in one of his nightclubs.

NATALEE HOLLOWAY'S FATHER SPEAKS OUT

Eatwell claimed Short was one of many girls who resided in his apartment. However, Hansen allegedly became possessive of his latest discovery.

He was known to be very, very jealous of her boyfriends, said Eatwell. In fact, if her boyfriends came to see her, they would drop her off a block away and they would leave because he didnt like to see her with other men She was [also] asking him for money My theory is that he became tired of her and basically [told his entourage], Look, somebody get rid of this girl.'"

Eatwell claimed that legal documents revealed one of Shorts female confidants confirmed Hansen became enraged by Shorts behavior.

There was definitely a cover-up. Even as I was going through the documents, pages were just missing and removed  Author Piu Eatwell

These girls thought [Hansen] had connections, so obviously, they felt under pressure because they thought this was their chance to make it, said Eatwell. [Elizabeth] had a hand-to-mouth existence. She never really had a definite job She was dependent on friends, boyfriends, people she got picked up by for a meal or just a place for the night.

And Shorts final days were anything but glamorous. The Los Angeles Times previously reported Shorts teeth were so badly decayed they were plugged with wax. Hansen later said in 1971, She just asked for trouble. She probably went too far this time, and just set some guy off into a blind, berserk rage.

Eatwell claimed that Leslie Dillon, who worked for Hanson and had allegedly served as a morticians assistant, was Shorts murderer. Her theory was initially explored by chief police psychiatrist Dr. J Paul De River.

Im 99 percent confident on the basis of the evidence I see, said Eatwell. There was definitely a cover-up. Even as I was going through the documents, pages were just missing and removed. And theyre almost always connected somehow to Leslie Dillon or Mark Hansen.

SON OF SAM SURVIVOR DETAILS NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

[Everything] fits together into this picture of someone who has a huge inferiority complex a physical hatred of women  Author Piu Eatwell on suspect Leslie Dillon

"There are very serious questions about Leslie Dillon that cant be answered Her shoes and purse were found dumped in the trash can shortly after the murder by a local cafe owner. And thats actually two blocks from where Leslie Dillon lived The park where she was found is one he knew very well and in fact, used as a shortcut to get to where he lived.

She went on to insist Dillon, an aspiring writer, allegedly preserved newspaper clippings about violence against women. Shorts friend Ann Toth and model Ardis Green reportedly identified Dillon as one of her boyfriends.

Eatwell added, If you look at the examples of Dillons so-called creative writing [his] insecurity is reflected in those [Everything] fits together into this picture of someone who has a huge inferiority complex a physical hatred of women.

"Mark Hansen was very discreet about his private life [Hansen] was also known to have connections with one of the lead homicide officers on the Dahlia case. And if you go through the grand jury case, its obvious the grand jury is very, very suspicious and theyre not happy with the evidence [Hansen] gives at all.

Newspaper clippings obtained by the FBI revealed Dillon was held as suspect number one after he contacted De River, offering to help with a book on sadism due to his interest in psychopathic cases, such as the unsolved Black Dahlia murder.

Police said at the time the then-27-year-old knew "minute details of the slaying of Elizabeth Short, but denies killing or even knowing her. In another clipping, police said Leslie Dillon was familiar with details of the unsolved slaying that never were made public.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1949 that Dillon was released by police due to lack of evidence. He would go on to live a relatively quiet life until his death in 1988 at age 67. As for Hansen, Eatwell claimed he remained on the police suspect list for the rest of his life, but was never charged. He died at age 74 in 1964.

Shorts murder remains unsolved.

There were many of these girls [like Elizabeth] in Hollywood, she said. Showing up in buses from all over the country, hoping to become movie stars and falling in with the wrong people.
Danny Masterson's ex-girlfriend has accused the actor of raping her "repeatedly." She is the fifth woman to accuse the "That 70s Show" star of sexual assault.

Actress Bobette Riales tweeted Wednesday that Masterson raped her multiple times and she wants "justice."

"I stayed quiet long enough," Riales tweeted. "Danny Masterson repeatedly raped me. All I seek is justice and to prevent this from ever happening to anyone else as it has for some time. My truth will be heard."

A rep for Masterson did not immediately return Fox News' request for comment.

Riales also tagged Chrissie Carnell Bixler, one of the first women to come forward with rape allegations against Masterson. The actress wrote that she "applauded" Bixlers strength.

DANNY MASTERSON FIRED FROM NETFLIX SERIES AMID RAPE ALLEGATIONS

In response, Bixler praised Riales' courage and introduced her to her Twitter followers.

"Hey, my Twitter buddies, I just wanted to introduce and ask you to follow and show support to this incredibly brave and strong woman who Ive recently come to know and is now forevermore my sister for life. Bobette Riales Im in awe of you and your strength," Bixler wrote in response.

Bixler told The Daily Beast she can no longer be silent and alleged she reported Mastersons rape to the Church of Scientology but they ignored her claim. Masterson is a lifelong member of the church. Bixler accused the church of downplaying the rape claim.

HOW THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY SEEMINGLY PROTECTED DANNY MASTERSON AMID RAPE ALLEGATIONS

The Los Angeles Police Department [LAPD] has been investigating rape allegations against Masterson since January, and news of the probe went public in March.

Following the fallout, Netflix announced in December that Masterson was being written out of The Ranch.

"As a result of ongoing discussions, Netflix and the producers have written Danny Masterson out of 'The Ranch.' [Monday] was his last day on the show, and production will resume in early 2018 without him," a statement from Netflix read.

Masterson vehemently denied the allegations.

From day one, I have denied the outrageous allegations against me. Law enforcement investigated these claims more than 15 years ago and determined them to be without merit, Masterson said in a statement. I have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. In this country, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, in the current climate, it seems as if you are presumed guilty the moment you are accused.

The LAPD has not filed any charges against Masterson.
A former anchor at NBC News tells Fox News she is in contact with multiple women who are frustrated that NBC News Chairman Andy Lack refuses to hire an outside investigator to review a culture of sexual misconduct at the network.

The women now want to speak with the board of NBC parent Comcast and provide names of specific people who are hostile to women or outright harassers who have not yet been publicly accused.

On Wednesday, Fox News reported that a separate group of anonymous current NBC News staffers planned to contact Madeline S. Bell, Comcasts only female director, asking her to intervene. Shortly after the story was published, the former NBC News employee contacted Fox News to discuss a different network of women who feel that Lack and his embattled deputy, Noah Oppenheim, arent being transparent about the toxic environment at NBC News.

There are other women who have been harassed or assaulted at NBC News who want to join the letter to Comcast demanding an outside law firm be hired to investigate the hostile work environment under Andy Lack, the former NBC anchor -- who for now requested anonymity -- told Fox News.

The former anchor said numerous women began contacting each other when now-disgraced Today star Matt Lauer was fired over inappropriate sexual behavior last month. The group of former and current NBC News employees has stayed in touch and wants to share their stories of when they were harassed, groped or outright assaulted at NBC News, said the former employee, who added that many of the women havent come forward for fear of retribution.

Its our belief that Andy Lack is trying to protect, first and foremost, Andy Lack, she said. And perhaps others.

If we had the chance to speak to Madeline Bell, we would provide names of specific people who are hostile to women or outright harassers. We would also provide details about how this toxic culture came to exist under Andy Lack."  Former NBC News anchor

Once the network of women saw that Lack was refusing to hire an outside law firm to investigate, its members became determined to get the truth out in other ways, according to the source. Some of the women plan to come forward when the time is right, while others are waiting to see how the process plays out because they still work in the industry.

In addition to the Lauer scandal, Lack and Oppenheim have come under increasing fire for sitting on two explosive sex harassment stories: Ronan Farrows investigation of Harvey Weinstein this past fall, and the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump just over a year ago. Both stories were given to other premier news organizations after NBC refused to broadcast them, and Farrows, which ultimately appeared in the New Yorker, is picking up Pulitzer Prize buzz.

In addition to Lauer being fired, MSNBC recently admitted that star Chris Matthews settled in 1999 with a former producer who accused him of sexual harassment; fired Morning Joe regular Mark Halperin for sexual misconduct; and suspended two contributors, Glenn Thrush and Harold Ford Jr., after they were accused of harassment by women.

The NBC News execs have insisted on keeping what they call their review of the sex harassment scandals in house and under their thumb, despite a growing list of calls for more transparency. Even President Trump has taken a shot, urging his Twitter followers to Check out Andy Lacks past and look into MSNBC President Phil Griffin.

The letter that current NBC News staffers planned to send Comcast director Bell  the contents of which were shown to Fox News -- focused on Lack and Oppenheim being unable to conduct a fair investigation because of their close ties to Lauer.

We find it extremely suspect that two executives who are lifelong members of Matt Lauers very small boys club could possibly be objective in this matter -- particularly as they are financially incentivized with millions of dollars in pay a year to maintain this status quo, says a draft of the letter, written by current employees who have asked to remain anonymous.

Bells office would not confirm if she received the letter and she declined to speak to Fox News.

Bell is the sole woman on the 10-person board of communications behemoth Comcast. Bell, the president and CEO of Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, joined nine powerful men when she was added to the board in February 2016. Aside from Bell, the companys board is essentially packed with male bankers, lawyers and entrepreneurs.

If we had the chance to speak to Madeline Bell, we would provide names of specific people who are hostile to women or outright harassers," the former anchor said. "We would also provide details about how this toxic culture came to exist under Andy Lack and sincerely offer suggestions about how the culture could be changed for the better."

Comcast did not respond when asked if it would make Bell available to speak with the group of former NBC employees who say they were sexually harassed but have not yet come forward.

Furthermore, NBC has declined repeated inquiries into whether there have been more complaints about Matthews since the 1999 incident, for which the network confirms he received a reprimand.
Movies playing in mid-valley theaters as of Friday. Complete and updated Movie Scene listings can be found online.

NEW

DARKEST HOUR

3  stars

(Historical biography, PG-13, 125 minutes, playing at the Darkside) This look back at Winston Churchill's leadership during the early days of World War II is filled with authentic touches, large and small. Most authentic of all is Gary Oldman's performance as a flawed but deeply passionate man who summoned all of his courage, all of his oratory skills and all of his love for Britain at just the right moment. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

DOWNSIZING

1 star

(Science fiction, R, 135 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) A rare misfire from director Alexander Payne, this heavy-handed satire is about a mild-mannered therapist (Matt Damon) and his wife (Kristen Wiig), who decide to undergo a process in which scientists shrink people to live in small communities. Its a massively muddled mess of ideas, and Damons bland performance doesnt help. (Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service)

FATHER FIGURES

(Comedy, R, 113 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Owen Wilson and Ed Helms play a pair of brother who learn that their mother (Glenn Close) lied when she told them their father died when they were young. They set out to discover their real father. A strong cast includes J.K. Simmons, Ving Rhames, June Squibb, Bill Irwin and Harry Shearer.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

3 stars

(Musical, PG, 105 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) There were times when I rolled my eyes to the ceiling at the corny and cheesy and shameless sentiment of this musical starring Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum. But then I'd realize my foot was once again tapping in time to the beat of the catchy tunes, at which point I'd acknowledge I was thoroughly enjoying myself, despite all cynical instincts. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

2  stars

(Comedy fantasy adventure, PG-13, 119 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan star in this stand-alone sequel, about four teenagers who are sucked into a video game set in a jungle and take on the bodies of their avatars. Generally entertaining and mostly sweet, if you dont think about it too much. (Lindsay Bahr, Associated Press)

PITCH PERFECT 3

(Comedy, PG-13, 94 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and the rest of the singing Bellas get a chance to reunite for an overseas USO tour. Hailee Steinfeld, Brittany Snow and Anna Camp return, along with John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks.

THE SHAPE OF WATER

3  stars

(Fantasy adventure, R, 118 minutes, playing at the Darkside) Sally Hawkins gives a sweet and moving performance as a maid in a top-secret government facility who falls in love with a mysterious sea creature in captivity there. Gorgeously color-coordinated, this fairy tale from director Guillermo del Toro is one of the most romantic and most breathtakingly beautiful movies of the year. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

CONTINUING

THE DISASTER ARTIST

3 stars

(Comedy biography, R, 98 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Given James Franco's sometimes perplexing resume, he's the right guy to direct and star as Tommy Wiseau in a movie about the making of the infamously bad cult debacle "The Room." Franco's film is breezy, entertaining and even affectionate. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

FERDINAND

3 stars

(Animated comedy, PG, 108 minutes, playing at the Pix in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) John Cena provides the voice of the giant but gentle bull in this new animated offering, based on the 1936 childrens book. Sight gags and humorous bits abound, but what really stands out is the message about friendship, problem-solving and learning to be true to yourself. Kate McKinnon co-stars. (Maricar Estrella, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

3  stars

(Fantasy/sci-fi action, PG-13, 152 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the Regal 4 in Corvallis) Although it doesn't pack quite the same emotional punch as "The Force Awakens" and lags a bit in the second half, this is still a worthy chapter in the "Star Wars" franchise, popping with exciting action sequences and sprinkled with good humor. Surprises big and small abound. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

4 stars

(Dark comedy, R, 115 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) The story of a grieving mother (Frances McDormand) trying to shame the police chief (Woody Harrelson) into solving her daughter's murder provides some of the strongest laughs and most poignant moments of heartbreak of any movie in recent memory. Somehow writer-director Martin McDonagh has taken the bleakest of subject matters and treated it seriously while also serving up one of the best dark comedies I've ever seen. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

COCO

3 stars

(Animated, PG, 104 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) A 12-year-old boy (Anthony Gonzalez) crosses over, while alive, from his village in Mexico to the Land of the Dead, an exciting metropolis populated by deceased humans. The visuals jump off the screen, but the movies flights of imaginative frenzy are too constrained by formula: Coco is a good, but not great, Pixar flick. (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times)

LADY BIRD

4 stars

(Comedy, R, 93 minutes, playing at the Darkside in Corvallis) Greta Gerwig already has made a fine career for herself as an actress, but with "Lady Bird" she has written and directed a film that's smart without being smug and insightful without being condescending. Saoirse Ronan delivers a pure and honest performance as the title character, a high school senior, and the work by Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts as her parents is what greatness looks like. (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

JUSTICE LEAGUE

1  stars

(Action-adventure, PG-13, 121 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany) DCs biggest heroes  Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg  unite to battle a space monster intent on destroying the world. The film had a troubled production, and it shows: The final result is a chaotic, baffling, breathtakingly bad mess. Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill star. (Katie Walsh, Tribune Media Service)

THE STAR

(Animated, PG, 86 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) A small but brave donkey and his animal friends become the heroes of the first Christmas in this new animated flick.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

3 stars

(Mystery, PG-13, 114 minutes, playing at the Regal 4 in Corvallis and the AMC Corvallis 12) Kenneth Branagh stars as Agatha Christies famed detective Hercule Poirot, and runs away with this star-studded remake, with lavish production design and an intoxicating and dazzling display of cinematic style. But the movies sad ending seeps away much of its energy. (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service)

THOR: RAGNANOK

2  stars

(Sci-fi action-comedy, PG-13, 130 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) After being defeated by his evil half-sister Hela (Cate Blanchett), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is imprisoned as a gladiator on a distant world run by Jeff Goldblum. Director Taikia Waititi brings a welcome comedic touch, so this is the most fun of the three Thor flicks, but its still a flawed effort with egregious tonal shifts. (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press)
Gary Sinise surprised United States military members deployed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to spread some holiday cheer. The actor will also visit Iraq before heading back to America at the end of this week.

The Gary Sinise Foundation founder, which serves active military members, veterans, first responders, their families and those in need, posted several snapshots to his Twitter page showcasing his Tuesday visit.

In one shot, he captured the troops enjoying a meal together with a caption that read, "Greetings from Troops, I'm at the dining facility at Bagram Air Base Afghanistan. Thank you to these brave men and women for your service to our country."

He shared another photo documenting his visit to the hospital.

Prior to his departure to the Middle East, the "Forrest Gump" actor shared a post on Instagram about the importance of remembering the troops during the holiday season.

He wrote, "A shot from my first trip to Afghanistan in May of 2006. Heading back Monday, and also to Iraq, for a quick trip to see as many troops as possible before heading back home Friday. Looking forward to seeing our tremendous military service members, letting them know we are thinking of them, we do not forget, and that we are grateful for their service to our country. Merry Christmas folks."
Two weeks after Matt Lauer and his estranged wife Annette Roque were spotted without their wedding rings, the former Dutch model was seen meeting with high-priced lawyers in New York City.

According to the New York Post, a stern looking Roque stepped out of the Manhattan-based law firm Latham & Watkins on Wednesday.

A source told the Post that Roque is meeting with lawyers to try to get a bigger settlement out of Lauer should the pair divorce.

Lauer, 59, and Roque, 52, married in 1998 and she filed for divorce in 2006, accusing the disgraced journalist of "cruel and inhumane" behavior before withdrawing her petition one month later after reaching a private agreement which reportedly including a post-nuptial agreement. They have three children together, Jack, 16, Romy, 13, and Thijs, 11.

The source told the Post "The post-nup will likely specify how much Annette would get if they divorce, but she is expected to challenge it given Matts earnings since 2006, and given how he has humiliated her. There are also issues over all the property and land they own, both in the Hamptons and abroad."

The post-nup will likely specify how much Annette would get if they divorce, but she is expected to challenge it given Matts earnings since 2006  Source to the New York Post

Lauer's salary at NBC was $25 million a year.

The disgraced "Today" host was fired by NBC in November for "inappropriate sexual behavior."

Earlier this week, a former "Today" production assistant detailed her torrid affair with Lauer that took place in 2000. While the former staffer said the affair was consensual, she felt it was an "abuse of power" because she was 24 and Lauer was in his 40s at the time of their relationship.
New York Public Radio fired longtime hosts Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz for violating company standards for office behavior.

NYPR management did not clarify what Lopate and Schwartz were accused of doing. Two weeks ago they were abruptly suspended and there were two separate investigations overseen by outside counsel, according to WNYC spokesperson Jennifer Houlihan Roussel.

These investigations found that each individual had violated our standards for providing an inclusive, appropriate and respectful work environment," she said. "In each investigation, an outside investigator interviewed multiple witnesses as well as Lopate and Schwartz."

WNYC News has spoken with several women who have made complaints about Schwartz and Lopate, Ilya Marritz and Jessica Gould reported back on Dec. 6. In addition, WNYC is conducting mandatory, in-person trainings on harassment and discrimination and offering on-site counseling to all employees.

Lopate has been among New Yorks most recognizable voices, interviewing everyone from President Barack Obama to various Nobel Prize winners. Schwartz, who has been a presence in New York radio since the 1960s, was known for mixing music and talk radio. He won a Grammy for Best Album Notes in 1986.

In Lopate's case, station previously warned Lopate for creating uncomfortable work environment after inappropriate remarks, WNYC said in a statement tweeted by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Schwartz had multiple recent and past complaints over inappropriate behavior that led to disciplinary actions.

"This episode in my life truly is the most hurtful, outrageous and saddest Ive ever experienced -- and more, Schwartz told WNYC earlier this week, while Lopate simply said he was stunned.

Schwartz and Lopate are the most recent media members to be fired for workplace misconduct since now-disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was outed as a sexual predator earlier this year. Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin are among the high-profile broadcasters to lose their jobs, while public radio has been hit with a serious of scandals in recent memory.

"This episode in my life truly is the most hurtful, outrageous and saddest Ive ever experienced -- and more.  Jonathan Schwartz, talking with WNYC earlier this week

NYPR's president, Laura Walker, told WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer in an on-air interview earlier this month that she "deeply regret[s]" the way her media organization handled reported allegations of sexual harassment against one of its top personalities, John Hockenberry, who hosted the news ands talk radio program "The Takeaway." Some WNYC members threatened to stop donating to the radio station and called for her ouster.

The bombshell report to rock the liberal radio network, published in New York magazine, said Hockenberry sexually harassed and bullied colleagues for years before he retired, seemingly out of the blue, in August. The article's author, Suki Kim, said she reported her experiences working with Hockenberry to Walker in February, long before the tidal wave of sexual harassment stories that began with Weinstein began.

"Every day for the last several weeks I have asked myself whether we took enough action," Walker said. "I apologize to ... the women who came forward. I have a huge amount of admiration and respect for these women."

In response to Schwartz and Lopate being fired after an investigation, one user replied to Folkenflik's tweet, So WNYC management and Laura Walker knew that they were problematic in advance?
Seth Meyers doesnt think Donald Trump cares much about being the president of the United States.

The Late Night host slammed Trump during his Closer Look segment and called him the most checked-out president in U.S. history while criticizing the Republican tax plan that the House approved on Wednesday.

We definitely believe that you dont care, Meyers said after playing a clip of Trump saying I dont care when asked about paying more for taxes under the new bill.

Youre by far our most checked-out president, he said.

The host continued, I mean, James Garfield worked harder than you after he was assassinated. You watch more TV than a sixth-grader at home with the flu. Trump watches so much TV were like a week away from him tweeting about 'The Price is Right' - Plinko is obviously rigged and the Wheel is fake news. I guess the price is wrong. Sad!

Meyers then continued to slam Republican lawmakers and mocked the president for referencing the bill as a Christmas present.

"Republicans passed a sweeping overhaul of the tax code that will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the wealthy, amounting to nothing less than a brazen heist of the country," Meyers said.

Meyers said about Trump's "Christmas present" comment: "If you want to bring something back, try Kwanzaa  that thing straight-up disappeared."

The Houses final stamp of approval to the sweeping tax reform package gave Trump his first major legislative victory. "We made a promise to the American people that we would do this if they gave us the opportunity," Ryan, R-Wis., told "The Story with Martha MacCallum." "We made a promise that if elected, this is what we would do. Were keeping our promise."
Hollywood's most famous wizard just pulled off a pretty good trick.

Daniel Radcliffe, celebrated as young wizard Harry Potter in the popular film franchise, has taken on a new surprising role  that of executive producer for a documentary exploring what it's like to grow up in a circus family.

Circus Kid captures the real-life tale of Lorenzo Pisonis unique childhood with The Pickle Family Circus and how it wasnt all fun and games when it came to taking the stage as an entertainer with his performing parents.

Radcliffe met Pisoni during his Broadway debut on Equus in 2008 and was immediately captivated by his fellow performers journey.

We became very good friends, Radcliffe told Fox News. I started learning about his life and then I became the most annoying [person] Like, Oh, you were in the circus?! Can you juggle? It was annoying Im sure, but he was very sweet and humored me."

And while the two men shared similar offbeat upbringings, Radcliffe was more fascinated by their differences and how the spotlight had impacted them over the years.

I think I'd be hard-pressed to find parallels in our families and how we dealt with it all, explained Radcliffe. Lorenzos parents are separated. Im very lucky my parents are still together and are a wonderful team. And Lorenzo went off on his own for a lot of his childhood. I was generally chaperoned by one or the other of my parents But it all just made sense.

When youre living in a life where there really isnt a blueprint for it, theres nobody you can look to.  Daniel Radcliffe on his unique childhood

"When youre living in a life where there really isnt a blueprint for it, theres nobody you can look to, there wasnt a family my parents can go and say, OK, so whats it like when your kid gets involved in a massive franchise? You just have to go, Lets do this ourselves. I certainly wouldnt change anything about my life or how I grew up because it made me the person that I am. Im actually becoming more and more OK with that person.

At age 11, Radcliffe achieved international stardom when he was cast as the lead in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone in 2001, which was based on the beloved best-selling fantasy novel by British writer J.K. Rowling.

Not only did the film become a box-office sensation, but the eight-film series spanned Radcliffes late childhood  and set him up for life. The franchise ended its run in 2011 and skyrocketed the young actor's net worth to nearly $100 million.

Radcliffe managed to escape the child star curse, however, and has gone on to enjoy a scandal-free Hollywood career. He credited his parents for providing a sense of normalcy over the years.

I think my mom and dad were just parenting very instinctively. Not that Im saying Im an amazing person, but I just feel like they did a really good job.  Daniel Radcliffe

From my point of view, I feel like my parents set a ridiculously high bar for me when I become a parent, he admitted. I just look back and go, Man, they really made things easy for me and comprehensible and not scary.' I dont think they were ever thinking, We have to do this. I think my mom and dad were just parenting very instinctively. Not that Im saying Im an amazing person, but I just feel like they did a really good job.

And while Harry Potter has certainly provided Radcliffe with immense wealth, he isnt interested in enchanting audiences on screen with the same magic formula. Instead, Radcliffe is determined to take on diverse roles that showcase his talent.

In 2016s Imperium, Radcliffe starred as an FBI agent going undercover as a white supremacist. That same year he also starred as a flatulent corpse in Swiss Army Man.

Radcliffe is aware some may question his choice of roles, but hes perfectly content with transforming into different characters  even if they wont become his next moneymaker.

I think I wanted to try as many different things as I possibly could, he explained. You know, to find out what youre good at, to find out what you like doing I think this is something Ive become better at [doing] in the last few years [Just] really trusting my instinct.

Im still really enjoying acting and Im finding lots of projects that I really want to do.  Daniel Radcliffe

"Having a good time with the [film] Im doing now is the most important thing for me. Because I dont watch myself back. I might see [the film] once or twice when theyre not finished so I can go and take a note of something my experience of something is going to be the experience that I had making it. Thats ultimately the thing youre left with. Thats my drive now. Will I enjoy this or wont I?

Radcliffe said he can envision himself working more behind the lens in the future.

I would love to direct at some point down the road, he said. Ive been saying this for years. I will get around to it eventually. Im still really enjoying acting and Im finding lots of projects that I really want to do. For the moment, Im very happy to act. Theres no rush.

"I would also love to write. Ideally, I would like to write and direct, but I dont want the first thing I make to be s----y. I want to make sure the script is right. Im going to take my time working on those things.

Still, Radcliffe knows he may never escape "Harry Potter." But rather than shun the iconic persona who has delivered a life of immense wealth and professional freedom with just the wave of a magic wand, he embraces it. In fact, it only motivates him to show audiences what hes capable of.

I think I felt a lot of that pressure in the beginning, said Radcliffe. I dont know what the percentage is, but theres a percentage of people who will absolutely be willing to see me as different characters. Theres a percentage of people, probably smallish, that already do. But theres a percentage of people who will never see me as anything other than Harry Potter. And Im not going to worry about that.

"Im also very happy with that. I loved the part. And if thats the way I will remain in some peoples minds until the end of time, then thats fine The fact that Im able to do stuff that Im proud of, if I just carry on and do the things that I want to make, hopefully they will reach more and more people.

Circus Kid premieres December 21 on Sundance Now.
The life expectancy in the U.S. dropped for the second straight year in 2016 as deaths from drug overdoses rose a staggering 21 percent.

The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.

"This is urgent and deadly," said Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The opioid epidemic "clearly has a huge impact on our entire society."

The highest drug death rates were in ages 25 to 54. Preliminary figures for 2017 showed the rise in overdose deaths continuing.

MICHIGAN CITIES, COUNTIES OPIOID LAWSUIT TARGETS DRUG COMPANIES, PHARMACIES

Last year also marked the first time since 1962  1963 that the U.S. life expectancy fell two consecutive years.

A baby born last year in the U.S. is expected to live about 78 years and 7 months, on average, the CDC said. An American born in 2015 was expected to live about a month longer, and one born in 2014 about two months longer than that.

The nations leading killer was heart disease.

Overall, there were more than 2.7 million U.S. deaths in 2016, or about 32,000 more than the previous year. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government has been counting.

The CDC also reported that West Virginia continued to be the state with the highest drug overdose death rate followed by Ohio and New Hampshire.

MODEL WHO LOST LEG FROM TAMPON-INDUCED TOXIC SHOCK COULD ALSO LOSE THE OTHER

Life expectancy for men decreased to about 76, but held steady for women at 81.

Suicide in the U.S. rose in 2016 and gun deaths also increased for a second year.

The U.S. ranks below dozens of other high-income countries in life expectancy, according to the World Bank. Highest is Japan, at nearly 84 years; the lowest is South Africa at 57.

The infant mortality rate in the U.S. was also low compared to other high-income countries.

The 10 leading causes of infant death in 2016 accounted for 67.5 percent of all infant deaths in the United States, the report stated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Amidst Prince Harry and Meghan Markles engagement, the world has come down with a serious case of Markle fever. For one 25-year-old lookalike, however, the frenzy is all in good fun.

Lukwesa Morin of Washington, D.C. was floored to win a worldwide Meghan Markle doppelganger contest hosted by dating site Beautifulpeople.com, but told Fox News that the crown has been a long time coming.

After submitting her photos, she (fittingly) traveled to London and was declared the winner by celebrity artist Alison Jackson.



MEGHAN MARKLE'S NUDE NAIL COLOR, EXPLAINED

Ive been mistaken for her a couple of times as Im walking down the street or in any public places. This has been going on for two years now. Ive been told I look like her ever since she began starring in "Suits", Morin told Yahoo Lifestyle on Dec. 20. Apparently, acquaintances and strangers alike ask if the two beauties are sisters, or whether shes betrothed to Prince Harry.

While the John Hopkins graduate student and Miss Maryland 2017 contestant is 11 years younger than the future royal, she admits that she does see the resemblance.

THE ONE THING MEGHAN MARKLE NEVER TRAVELS WITHOUT

I sat and examined her features one day and realized that there are very similar attributes. I dont think Im identical, but have very similar prominent features, she said. Like Markle, Morin is of mixed race. Her mother is Zambian and her father is French, according to the Daily Mail.

Though Morin has never met any other Markle look-alikes, she has studied abroad near London and is admittedly a fan of the British royal family.

I love following them through the media and am thrilled for Meghan as she enters the royal family. I think shed be a wonderful addition, she said.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

As the world tunes in to watch the actress and the fifth in line to the throne tie the knot at May 19, 2018 at St. Georges Chapel at Windsor Castle, Morin says shell absolutely be tuned in.

I wish them nothing but the best. Im sure their wedding will be beautiful and highly celebrated.

Safe to say, Morin has a dose of her own Markle sparkle, after all.
In November 2016, middle-class Americans sent a clear message to Washington, D.C.

They were frustrated with stagnant wages. They were fed up with shrinking opportunity. They were tired of watching America lose ground to our competitors overseas.

With this weeks historic vote, Republicans in Congress are sending our reply back to the American people: We heard you loud and clear.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed the Senate on Tuesday and which President Trump will soon sign, is the most sweeping overhaul of our nations tax code in more than 30 years. It includes a host of hard-fought conservative victories that will help families next year while making America stronger for decades to come.

American families have waited long enough. They cannot afford to be burdened any longer by an outdated, unfair, inefficient tax code that takes too much money out of their paychecks.

Our primary goal was to cut taxes for American families. Ten years ago, middle-class Americans in Kentucky and across the country were hit hard by the Great Recession. Job opportunities dried up. Take-home pay stopped growing. It became difficult for families just to get by, much less to get ahead and save for their childrens futures.

For eight disappointing years, Washington only made matters worse. The Obama administrations response to the crisis was to raise taxes on families, pile more regulations on businesses, and micromanage more of Americans lives. The wealthy and well-connected did just fine as a resultbut ordinary American households saw little progress.

Helping them was our first priority. Thats why the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts tax rates across the board, doubles the standard deduction, and significantly expands the Child Tax Credit. Thanks to these and other changes, a typical family of four earning the median family income gets to keep more than $2,000 that they would have otherwise had to send off to the IRS.

That is more than $2,000 of their own money. They earned it. And they deserve to keep it more than Washington does.

The bill goes even further to help families by repealing the unfair individual mandate tax at the very heart of ObamaCare. Under ObamaCare, if Americans didnt buy the kind of health insurance that Washington thought they should buy, they were punished with a tax penalty. But if the plans available under ObamaCare are not affordable or not desirable, the blame lies with the failing law itself. The last people who should be fined or penalized are the working Americans whom ObamaCare is letting down.

Thats why the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminates this key provision of ObamaCare. Its past time that Washington let Americans purchase the health insurance that works for them.

In addition to cutting workers taxes directly, the law puts America on a trajectory towards higher wages and better job opportunities by making our country a better place to do business. It cuts taxes on job creators and Main Street businesses, eliminates incentives for shifting manufacturing abroad, and makes America a more attractive destination for jobs, profits, and investment from around the world.

Reports are already coming in that these changes are making Chinese officials nervous. Id call that a good sign for American manufacturers.

And thats not the only part of this historic law that will give pause to our international competitors.

For almost 40 years, Congress has tried time and time again to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for responsible oil and gas development. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act finally does it. This will create good-paying energy jobs, strengthen Americas global position by increasing our energy independence, and contribute to lowering energy costs for working people across the country who already pay too much to fill up their cars and heat their homes.

American families have waited long enough. They cannot afford to be burdened any longer by an outdated, unfair, inefficient tax code that takes too much money out of their paychecks. Thats why it was so important that President Trump and Congress seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

When the president signs this landmark bill into law, Republicans will have successfully cut taxes for American families, put American businesses on better footing to compete with foreign rivals, repealed a core piece of ObamaCare, and won a decades-long battle to increase our domestic energy production.

Its unfortunate that Republicans had to do this on our own. In the past, including as recently as the Obama administration, prominent Democrats claimed to support many of the pro-growth, pro-worker ideas at the heart of our reforms.

In the 1960s and the 1980s, Democrats voted in significant numbers to cut the American peoples taxes. But times have changed, and now that President Trump is in the White House, my colleagues across the aisle put political obstruction ahead of working families interests and tried to block tax reform at every turn.

Fortunately, my colleagues in the House and the Senate did not let this unprecedented obstruction stand between middle-class families and the tax relief they sorely deserve. The American people have waited long enough for this victory.
At this time of year American Christians are free to celebrate Christmas in any way they like, because freedom of religion is a cherished right in the U.S. for people of every faith. But in many predominantly Muslim nations in the Middle East, the Christian minority is threatened and persecuted 365 days a year.

As an Assyrian Christian who fled my native Iran in 1989 I know about this harassment and persecution from first-hand experience.

And as the founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council I know about this persecution because of the work my nonprofit does to assist persecuted Christians throughout the Middle East and in other nations where they have taken refuge.

The Iraqi Christian Relief Council has been operating since 2007 and last year alone we helped 110,000 displaced Christians. We offer food and medicine, job training, home rebuilding and other services. With more support, we could help many more Christians.

Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit the Middle East in January. His visit would be a good time to speak up about the persecution that his fellow Christians endure and to press nations to do more to protect the Christian minority in the region where the faith first took root some 2,000 years ago.

Such a move by the vice president would be in keeping with Americas role as a beacon of religious liberty and other human rights for people around the world.

In the worst cases, religious hatred has claimed the lives of innocent Christians in the Middle East who want nothing more than to live and pray in peace. For example in April bombings at two Coptic churches in Egypt killed 49 Christians. Another 28 were killed in a bus attack in May. Earlier, in December 2016, a church bombing by ISIS took the lives of 25 Christians in Egypt.

In war-torn Iraq, the persecution of Christians who are indigenous to the land is even worse.

When President George W. Bush mounted his invasion of Iraq he named the deployment Operation Iraqi Freedom. Millions of Iraqis took those words seriously. So did my own community, the Assyrian Christians. We trusted those brave American soldiers to protect our basic rights, including freedom of religion.

But the last two consecutive American presidents made protecting religious freedom in the Middle East a low priority. Iraqi Christians (Assyrians, Syriacs and Chaldeans) paid a bitter price. We pray that the Trump administration will do more.

The collapse of Iraqs central government when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown left minorities vulnerable. Some 1.3 million Iraqi Christians  75 percent of the prewar Christian population  were driven into exile or killed. Most are now still displaced, many in makeshift refugee camps.

ISIS and other Islamic militants cited religious justifications to murder Christian men and boys, and to enslave, rape, and sex traffic Christian women and girls. Is it any wonder that so many Christians fled?

In my work with the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, I have witnessed what sustained religious persecution does to people. It devastates even survivors. Men cannot find work or defend their families against violence. So they slip into depression.

I met one physician in his late 50s, living in Jordan as a refugee. In tears, he asked me: Where will I ever be a doctor again? I am not young. I do not speak foreign languages. All of my studies have gone to waste. You know what that does to a man?

Women who evaded or returned from ISIS captivity now live in shipping containers. They cannot return to their homes, cant cook family meals, work alongside their husbands, hold jobs, or offer their children hope.

The young people cant go to school. Iraqi Christians were once part of a highly educated middle class in Iraq. Now they can hope, at best, for menial jobs in foreign countries, which might well deport them at any time.

Imagine if all that happened to your family because of your religion. With thousands of Americans killed or wounded in Iraq, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, does America want to leave religious persecution of Christians as its legacy?

But humanitarian efforts are just triage. Religious minorities in Iraq deserve a long-term solution that guarantees their rights as citizens. They need local autonomy and a military shield that will protect them the next time sectarian chaos erupts  as sadly seems likely. ISIS may be defeated for now, but the cruel intolerance it preached remains in the hearts of millions.

The 2005 Iraqi constitution states that Christians, referred to in the constitution as the ChaldoAssyrians, have the right to local self-governance and also recognized their Syriac language as an official language in Iraq. In 2014, the Iraqi Council of Ministers in principle accepted the Nineveh Plain (home to many Christians) should be established as an official province.

Therefore, we have high hopes that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Ebadis government will take the proper steps  with the encouragement from President Trumps administration  to give Iraqi Christians and rights and protections they are entitled to.

These indigenous children of Iraq have the right to self-defense in the form of an armed force, the Nineveh Plain Protection Unit. This group needs to be made up of at least 5,000 soldiers, with modern weapons, which the Trump administration could provide.

Theres a bill before Congress that offers real, concrete aid to persecuted Christians called the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act. The measure, passed by the House in June, would provide U.S. funding to faith-based and other groups carrying out humanitarian relief and reconstruction work among the Christian minorities in both Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, the Senate has not acted on measure. The bill deserves bipartisan support.

It is in Americas interest to protect religious minorities, rebuild the middle class and decentralize power in Iraq. Christians and other vulnerable communities are natural U.S. allies  if only America could see it. Free, strong religious minorities can fight ISIS and other radical Islamist terrorists groups in the Middle East, before such groups start targeting Americans at home.

As American Christians prepare for Christmas, please remember your Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East who do not have the freedom of religion you enjoy. We ask for your help and the help of the U.S. government to be true to our faith and live in peace and safety in the region where Christianity was born and first spread.
Within hours of his victory in last year's presidential election, Donald Trump dispatched his lawyers to establish a nonprofit corporation to manage his transition from private life to the presidency. This was done pursuant to a federal statute that provides for taxpayer-funded assistance to the newly elected -- but not yet inaugurated -- president. The statutory term for the corporation is the presidential transition team, or PTT.

In addition to paying the PTTs bills, the General Services Administration, which manages all nonmilitary federal property, provided the PTT with government computers, software and a computer service provider. During the course of the PTT's existence, the folks who worked for it sent or received tens of thousands of emails. The PTT ceased to exist upon Trumps inauguration, and a receiver was hired to wind it down.

Last weekend, a lawyer for the receiver revealed a letter he sent to Congress complaining that special counsel Robert Mueller -- who is investigating whether there was any agreement between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that resulted in the now-well-known efforts by Russian intelligence to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election -- dispatched FBI agents to the GSA looking for copies of all the PTT's emails and that the GSA surrendered them.

How did this happen?

When the FBI is looking for documents or tangible things, it has several legal tools available. They range in their disruptive nature from a simple request to a grand jury subpoena to a judicially authorized search warrant.

The FBI request is the easiest for the government, and if FBI agents ask you for something and you give it to them, you cannot later be heard to complain that your privacy rights regarding the things you surrendered were violated. If they seize your documents pursuant to a subpoena or a warrant, they normally get to use what they have seized.

The issue becomes more complex when the FBI comes calling for documents of yours that are legally in the hands of a custodian -- such as your physician, lawyer, banker or accountant. In the case of Trump's PTT and Mueller's wish for all PTT emails, the sought-after data -- the electronic copies of all the PTT's emails -- were in custody of the GSA.

Anyone who has ever used a GSA computer is familiar with the warning that appears on the screen at the time of each use. It says that there is no right to privacy in the communications sent or received, as the electronic versions of those communications are the property of the federal government. This, no doubt, is the reason Hillary Clinton infamously used her husbands computer servers during her four years at the State Department rather than the governments.

We do not know whether Muellers FBI agents merely requested the electronic data from the GSA or his prosecutors obtained a grand jury subpoena. If it was a simple FBI request and if the GSA simply complied, that was a lawful acquisition by the FBI of the PTT emails, yet in that case, the GSA violated its fiduciary duty to inform the PTT of the request before it complied with it.

If the FBI came calling on the GSA with a grand jury subpoena, that means Muellers team must have presented evidence under oath to a grand jury and demonstrated that the sought-after items would more likely than not be helpful to the investigation. When a grand jury issues a subpoena to a custodian of records -- no matter who the custodian is -- it is the moral and fiduciary duty of the custodian, not the government, to inform the owner of the subpoenaed items that a subpoena has been received.

In some cases, it is also the legal duty of the custodian to inform the owner, but it apparently was not in this case. As far as we can tell, there was no written agreement between the GSA and the PTT requiring the GSA to inform the PTT of any document requests or subpoenas. Had such a request been revealed, the lawyer for the receiver of the PTT would have had an opportunity to challenge the government before a judge. Without that notice, there is no time for the challenge.

Until 1986, it was the duty of the government when seeking documents or tangible things from a custodian to inform the owner, as well as the custodian, of its intent. That fair procedure gave the owner of the records time to challenge the government before a judge. But the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (which has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting privacy), enacted at the dawn of the digital age, did away with that requirement.

Now if the custodian remains silent in the face of an FBI request or a grand jury subpoena, the owner of the documents loses his opportunity to keep them from the government. That is what happened here.

But there is more.

The practical effect of Muellers acquisition of the transition emails could be devastating to White House staff who once worked for the transition. Many of them have been interviewed by the FBI while no doubt being ignorant of the fact that the FBI had read their emails.

Stated differently, the FBI was in a position to lead Trump White House staff members into a lying trap -- just as it did with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn -- by asking them questions to which the FBI already had the answers.

Lying traps are reprehensible, but they're lawful. And they are not unique to Mueller's practices; it is the way the feds work today.

Can the FBI get away with getting the Trump teams emails? In a word: yes. This investigation is not going away soon.
For the past several years progressives have been waging a culture jihad across the nation, turning our nations heritage into a pile of rubble. Theyve been bulldozing our history much like the Islamic Radicals have been doing in Iraq.

Sadly, my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, has suffered a similar fate. Click here to watch the video.

Click here for a free subscription to Todds newsletter  a must-read for Conservatives!

While most of the good citizens of Memphis were attending Wednesday night church services, the mayor and city council were busy finalizing a despicable plot to bypass the law and desecrate a Civil War gravesite.

In October the Tennessee Historical Commission refused to allow city leaders to remove statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis from two city parks. The city initiated mediation with the state, but that too, was unsuccessful.

Instead of following the ruling, the mayor and the city council concocted a nefarious plan to disobey the law and take down the statues in the dark of night.

Heres how it happened:

The city council voted on Wednesday afternoon to sell two public parks to a newly formed nonprofit group chaired by a county commissioner. (Anybody smell a rat?)

The two parks  both prized pieces of real estate - were sold for $1,000 each. What kind of a shady real estate deal is that?

While the city council was voting, heavy machinery and an army of police officers were being dispatched to both parks. Did the nonprofit pick up the tab for the police officers and the heavy machinery? Or were taxpayers forced to foot the bill?

The law allows a private entity to remove items such as statues from its own land, Mayor Jim Strickland told bewildered citizens.

After the city council passed the sham real estate deal, the cowardly mayor issued a notice on social media.

Health Science Park and Memphis Park have been sold, the mayor declared. Operations on those sites tonight are being conducted by a private entity and are compliant with state law.

Within a matter of hours both statues were removed  in the darkness of night.

The City made a decision to willfully violate state law and remove the statues of Forrest and Davis, said Thomas Strain of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This is a direct violation of state law and we must allow the state to pursue this case in a lawful manner.

James Patterson, the commander of the Tennessee division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called it a well-organized, behind the scenes plan by the city.

They are willfully violating the Heritage Preservation Act. The City has broken state law, Patterson said.

Beyond that, the bodies of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are buried in one of the parks. Therefore, it is my contention that the mayor and city council are also guilty of desecration.

My fury has nothing to do with the monuments or the memorials. It has nothing to do with selling off prime real estate at a bargain-basement price. My fury has to do with the flagrant disregard of the law.

Mayor Jim Strickland and the Memphis City Council flouted that law. They violated their oath of office and they desecrated a gravesite.

I urge the governor and the state legislature to launch an immediate investigation of the corruption that has infested Memphis City Hall. The law demands it.

And I look forward to the day when Mayor Jim Strickland and members of the city council are removed from office and hauled out of City Hall in handcuffs.
Analysts, historians and scholars will look back on this week as the moment the Trump administration became truly historic.

The publication of the National Security Strategy report on Monday, followed by the passage of the largest change to the tax code in 31 years, guarantees that President Trump's first year in office will be seen as a remarkable success.

These are two very big achievements, and without the right leadership, focus, and determination both could have easily failed.

The hostile and bitter news media have been  and continue to be  relentless in their mission to mislead the American people about the progress President Trump and Republicans are making.

The media have continuously lied about Trump's foreign and national security policies.

The publication of the National Security Strategy report on Monday, followed by the passage of the largest change to the tax code in 31 years, guarantees that President Trump's first year in office will be seen as a remarkable success.

Similarly, the media have spent the last few months misconstruing reports about tax reform. They have lied about policies and gone out of their way to emphasize anything about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that they view as negative, while skillfully avoiding covering the cuts, credits, and reforms that will benefit hard-working Americans.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have been as relentlessly hostile as the news media. The Democratic leaders have also been more focused on escalating anti-Trump pressure and resistance than working with Republicans and the president to pass positive reforms for the American people.

However, despite facing all of this, the Republican team banded together and worked toward achieving big goals and implementing bold changes. And this week, America saw them succeed.

Two very big, long-term projects came to fruition in a three-day period. One had taken almost a year. The other could be traced back to House Speaker Paul Ryan's call for tax reform in December of 1998  before he was even sworn in as a freshman House member from Wisconsin.

In fact, the tax reform legislation could be traced back 25 years to Ryans work for two other Republicans  Sen. Bob Kasten of Wisconsin and later former Rep. Jack Kemp of New York on supply-side economics and job creation.

Both of this weeks historic achievements reflected candidate Trump's campaign pledges.

During the campaign, candidate Trump articulated a stronger and stronger critique of the existing national security and foreign policy consensus. By the South Carolina primary, he was repudiating President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Throughout the campaign, his contempt and hostility for President Obamas policies were intense, resolute and unhesitating.

The new National Security Strategy report is an extraordinary break with the globalist elite model of a "New World Order" that had defined U.S. foreign policy from the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union made the Reagan Doctrine outmoded  because it had worked.

The explicit linking of economic and technological goals as the long-term foundation for effective national security is a decisive break from the post-World War II pattern of giving away economic advantages in hopes of achieving diplomatic goals.

The definition of a sovereignty-based  or America First  approach to alliances and relationships is a recognition that ensuring our nations safety and preserving America's role in the world depends on a strong, prosperous American economy.

Amazingly, the new central role of economic growth came to fruition the very same week as the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

It is symbolically appropriate that the tax cuts designed to once again make America productive and prosperous passed the same week that the new National Security Strategy report was released.

The key slogan of the Trump presidential campaign was Make America Great Again.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is designed to make America greater by making America more competitive. The two goals of this legislation are to lower individual taxes so that working Americans have more money in their pockets and to lower business taxes so that businesses are incentivized to invest in the U.S. economy and create jobs.

Economist Stephen Moore believes these tax cuts, when combined with President Trump's deregulation effort, could lead to 4 percent economic growth next year.

If Moore is right, the American people will have clear, undeniable proof that Trumpism works  while the lefts anti-Trump deterrence strategy of spreading lies continues to fail.

Furthermore, at 4 percent real growth, our national security requirements will be much easier to fulfill.

This has been a truly historic week for America.
Ever encounter a panhandler, and, motivated by kindness, hand over a dollar? Only to have the beggar berate you for not giving more? Thats the situation the United States finds itself in with the United Nations.

President Trumps not-so-subtle threat to remember which nations voted to condemn his recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital was the ultimate case of speaking truth to power.

The largest  by far  donor to the United Nations, and a provider of foreign aid to dozens of other U.N. member states, America holds a unique, though decidedly not privileged position in the so-called world body.

Yet for decades, it has been stymied by its rivals (China and Russia), by rogue regimes (Iran), and by a U.N. leadership that views America as a source of demonic, not democratic values.

Like a spoiled child who complains its allowance has not be paid on time, recipients of U.S. aid forget that those dollars are largesse, not earned income.

Well and good. But why, then, should the U.S. continue to ante up 22 percent of the U.N.s budget, and fully 28 percent of its peacekeeping effort? When Ambassador Nikki Haley said the U.S. would be taking names, and Trump said well be watching, liberal news outlets reacted as if a Mafia chieftain had just set the price for a kidnapping victims release.

Why the moral outrage? We know our friends. Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo joined the U.S. voting against the resolution of condemnation. Another 35 countries, including our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada, as well as Argentina, Australia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania, abstained.

And now we know who cannot depend on. Egypt, to whom we provide $1.6 billion in aid each year, voted against the U.S. Turkey, which gets $155 million, went against us, with its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan boldly declaring, What is the cradle of democracy doing? They are looking for people they can buy with their dollars. Fine, Mr. President, fine.

Like a spoiled child who complains its allowance has not been paid on time, recipients of U.S. aid forget that those dollars are largesse, not earned income. News outlets like Sky News in the United Kingdom  which voted to condemn Trumps move  had on-air apoplexy about the presidents statement.

Of course, the U.N. is a toothless, almost furless tiger. Its resolutions of outrage and disapproval count for precisely nothing. Trump is not the first president to speak aloud about the ingratitude of the U.N. He may, however, be the first to do something about it.
There is a very distinct possibility there could be a government shutdown after 11:59 p.m. ET Friday.

But first, the House Rules Committee plans to meet Thursday, likely starting at 8 a.m., to prepare a stopgap government spending bill that they can present later Thursday to avoid a shutdown, Fox News has learned.

On Wednesday night, House Republicans unveiled two possible scenarios:

1) An interim spending bill that funds the government at current levels through Jan. 19. It would include defense anomalies and provide some assistance for childrens health insurance. Attached to the package would be a temporary reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA, the controversial domestic spying program. That program would go dark at the end of the year if Congress doesnt reauthorize it. Counterterrorism experts view FISA 702 as a major tool to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Civil libertarians view FISA 702 as a gross intrusion of Constitutional rights.

2) A standalone, non-offset $81 billion supplemental disaster spending bill to cover hurricane damage in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and wildfires in California.

There is a possibility the House Republican brass could merge the two scenarios into one to sidestep a shutdown. But it's been unclear how this will turn out.

A senior House Republican, who was asked about trying to avoid the shutdown, responded: We just passed tax reform. At least give us two to three hours before you murder Santa Claus on the way to Christmas.

What is very unclear here is whether PAYGO waivers -- to avoid cuts in entitlement programs because of passage of the tax bill -- would be included in this package. If not, it is almost a certainty President Donald Trump would wait to sign the tax bill until next year so the potential cuts dont need to be waived until sometime in 2018, not right away.

The House Rules Committee spent much of Wednesday on standby to prepare a rule for a stopgap bill, until calling it quits until Thursday morning. This is remarkable considering that the Rules committee met at 8 a.m. ET Wednesday to prepare the Senate-altered tax bill for the floor.

When asked how the whip went, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said they were still tabulating. He added there was a lot of enthusiasm. Although, for what members were so enthused remained a mystery.

This was one of the most depressing conferences Ive ever set through, said one dour, senior House Republican after GOPers met in the Capitol basement for about an hour Wednesday night. And I was here for the shutdowns in 2013.

That comment  taken by itself  is utterly stunning considering the fact that a GOP Congress just passed tax reform.

One of the biggest issues is adding in some provisions for defense, but not the entire package which funds the military for the entire fiscal year and breaks sequester caps. Fox News is told that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., overplayed his hand, courting the defense hawks, and then never making good on the promise. And, more importantly, that gambit couldnt make it through the Senate.

It was never a real strategy, moaned one lawmaker.

That said, Fox News is told that in the conference meeting, Ryan told rank and file Republicans that Defense Secretary James Mattis supports the strategy of helping fund the Pentagon via anomalies.

Republicans may have to merge the straight spending bill/defense anomalies/FISA 702 with the disaster bill to court the votes of some Democrats. Its unclear if Republicans can carry the freight of the standalone temporary bill solely with GOP votes. And its unclear if Democrats would support a package which adds in disaster relief. To this moment, House Democratic leaders havent been consulted about the plan.

Then there are issues with the Freedom Caucus. Its members are concerned about re-upping FISA 702 and forcing members to vote for it -- just to avoid a shutdown.

We want to change FISA, said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a Freedom Caucus member. We dont want it on the CR, referring to the continuing resolution.

Perry indicated that the Freedom Caucus had votes to torpedo the entire plan if leaders attach the renewal of FISA 702 to the package.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the sentence of an Iowa kosher meatpacking executive who had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering, marking the first time he's used the presidential power.



The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country's largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of numerous members of Congress and a long list of high-ranking law enforcement officials, who argued the sentence was far too harsh for a first-time, non-violent offender.



The action was "encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum, from Nancy Pelosi to Orrin Hatch," the White House said.



Rubashki was convicted in 2009 for submitting fake invoices to a bank that made Agriprocessors' finances appear healthier than they were so that it could borrow more. His prosecution came after federal authorities raided the plant and arrested 389 illegal immigrants in 2008.



The 57-year-old father of 10 has served more than eight years of his sentence, according to the White House, which stressed the action is not a presidential pardon and does not vacate Rubashkin's conviction.



Trump has used his pardon power just once so far: to spare former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time by wiping away a federal conviction stemming from immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.



Rubashkin's long-time attorney Guy Cook praised Trump's decision, saying Rubashkin "has finally received justice."



"The sentence previously imposed was unfair, unjust and essential a life sentence," he said via email. "President Trump has done what is right and just. The unrelenting efforts on Rubashkin's behalf have finally paid off."



Rubashkin's attorneys last year accused prosecutors of improperly interfering with the sale of Agriprocessors and depressing its sale price by millions. The drop in value left Agriprocessors' bank with a $27 million loss -- a figure used to calculate Rubashkin's sentence under federal guidelines. The U.S. Attorney's Office denied the allegations.



The White House said the president's decision to review Rubashkin's sentence was driven by concerns raised by a bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking law enforcement and Justice Department officials, including multiple former attorneys general, as well as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars.



"Mr. Rubashkin is a devoted husband and father, a deeply religious man who simply doesn't deserve a sentence of this length, or anything remotely close to it," they wrote in a letter that urged Trump to use his "executive clemency power to commute the patently unjust and draconian 27-year sentence imposed upon Sholom Rubashkin--a first time, non-violent offender and father of 10, including an acutely autistic child."



More than 30 current members of Congress also submitted letters to the White House supporting a review of Rubashkin's case.



But former prosecutor Bob Teig, who retired in 2011 after serving as a prosecutor and spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, said Trump's decision to commute Rubashkin's sentence "makes no sense" given Trump's repeated promises to get tougher on illegal immigration.



Teig said that every court that looked at Rubashkin's sentence had concluded it was fair, and suggested that former Justice Department officials and lawmakers who supported leniency were unaware of the facts of the case.



"The outrage is backwards," he said.
Two House lawmakers and combat veterans are leading a bipartisan effort urging the Justice Department to open an investigation into the role the Syrian regime, led by President Bashar al-Assad, played in targeting American troops during the war in Iraq.

In a December 7 letter addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions  obtained exclusively by Fox News  Republican Chairman of the Warrior Caucus Steve Russell of Oklahoma and Democratic Chairman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts claimed that from 2003 to 2009 the Assad regime was responsible for assisting terrorist groups to cross from Syria and enter into Iraq specifically seeking to target American troops resulting in casualties and serious injuries.

To this day, American veterans and their families continue to suffer the consequences of the reprehensible actions of these terrorists supported by Bashar al-Assad, the letter states. As such, we write to urge the United States Department of Justice to open a case against the Assad regime for its role in these crimes and violations of international law.

According to Russell and Moulton, U.S. officials  including the intelligence community  have confirmed that the Syrian dictator was directly involved in orchestrating the transfer of both weapons and personnel by Arab and Iranian-supported militias to cross into Iraq from neighboring Syria with the intent to wound Americans.

IRAQI CHRISTIANS IN BAGHDAD NEARLY GONE, BUT SOME SHELTER AT CAMP VIRGIN MARY

While it is yet to be determined how many deaths from the war can be attributed to the regime, it has been widely estimated that at least 11 percent  some 500  U.S. military deaths were at the hands of militias funded by Iran, a close ally of Damascus and fellow neighbor to Iraq.

The letter pointed out that in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell issued statements warning Syria to stop assisting the transportation of terrorist groups and military equipment into Iraq, while retired Army Gen. John M. Keane -- now a Fox News senior strategic analyst -- also stated that Syrian intelligence services facilitated the movement of al Qaeda fighters from Damascus airport to the eastern border of Syria.

Furthermore, the letter illuminates that in 2009 Iraqs Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki also cautioned that 90 percent of foreign terrorists of different Arab nationalities were infiltrating Iraq via Syrian territory.

On the battlefield, we personally experienced the effects of Syrias contributions to the Iraq insurgencys emergence and persistence. During this time, Assad provided the critical infrastructure needed to support the replenishment of terrorist fighters and equipment, the letter continued. There is ample evidence that during the time, the United States lost soldiers and endured serious injuries at the hands of Assad supported Arab and Iranian terrorist fighters in Iraq.

SYRIA'S ANTIOCH CHURCH PATRIARCH: U.S. SANCTIONS ARE HURTING CHRISTIANS TOO

The lawmakers also claimed that even after 2009, the regime continued to work hand in hand with Iranian backed militias, Hezbollahs Iraq affiliate and other militant groups active against U.S. and Iraqi forces operating in close partnership, and vowed that the Assad regime deserved to be held accountable for its heinous support of terrorism.

A representative for the DOJ told Fox News that the department is in receipt of the letter but does not generally confirm, deny, or otherwise comment on the existence of investigations.

A representative for Assad did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the letter.

MATTIS WARNS OF UNSAFE RUSSIAN MILITARY FLIGHTS OVER SYRIA

The Syrian government has routinely denied accusations over the years that it facilitated the transfer of arms and terrorists during the aftermath of the U.S.-led Iraq invasion, and also rebuffed charges that it harbored terrorists and enabled training camps to function in Syrian territory.
From rumors still swirling around the presidential election to a growing number of sexual misconduct allegations, 2017 has been a year rife with controversy.

Read on for a look back at the seven most notable political scandals of the past year.

Sexual misconduct storm

Its a bipartisan issue: the mounting waves of sexual misconduct allegations against lawmakers at the national, state and local levels. Post-Harvey Weinstein, there has been a surge of women  and men  who have stood up against the powerful lawmakers who they said sexually harassed or abused them. Some of these lawmakers have seen their careers ended.

Moores minor problem

A month before the special Senate election in Alabama, GOP candidate Roy Moore was hit with multiple accusations that he had inappropriate relationships with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. One woman said she was 14 when he inappropriately touched her. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.

Now 70 years old, Moore has denied the allegations. He told Fox News Sean Hannity that he generally didnt date women who were teenagers when he was in his 30s and would not date someone without her mothers permission.

After the allegations came to light, several leading Republicans backed away from Moore and called on him to step aside from the race. However, others  including President Trump and Steve Bannon  continued to support him.

Moore lost the election to Doug Jones, the first Democrat to win a national election in the deep red state in more than two decades.

Franken says farewell

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., announced that he would resign his seat on Dec. 7 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, from groping to forcibly kissing.

The former Saturday Night Live performer contended that some of the allegations werent true but said he would resign as he did not believe he would be able to effectively continue with his job based on the nature of the allegations. His announcement came after dozens of Democrats called for him to step aside.

Franken is expected to resign on Jan. 2, 2018.

The congressmen

Multiple congressmen have been accused of sexual misconduct this year, as well.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., announced on Dec. 5 that he would immediately retire from the House after multiple women alleged that he sexually harassed them while he was in Congress. Conyers reportedly settled a complaint with a former female staffer for $27,000, who claimed she was fired for rejecting his advances.

Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona also announced he would resign from Congress due to misconduct allegations against him. Franks said he made some female staffers uncomfortable when he discussed surrogacy issues with him. He reportedly asked two female employees to be a surrogate for him and his wife.

Franks announcement came as the House Ethics Committee said it would probe the matter. He was the third member of Congress to leave in one week due to accusations of sexual misconduct.

The Ethics Committee also announced in December that it was expanding an investigation into Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, regarding sexual harassment claims against him. The Office of Compliance, which settles claims against members of Congress, said it settled a sexual harassment claim for $84,000 that an aide said came from Farentholds office.

Farenthold announced in December 2017 that he would retire.

Rep. Ruben Kihuen, D-Nev., was accused of sexually harassing a former campaign worker. She alleged that Kihuen repeatedly asked her for dates and twice touched her thigh.

Kihuen has apologized for actions that made her feel uncomfortable but added that he doesnt recall any of the circumstances she described.

Coast to coast

Allegations of sexual misconduct arent just rocking those in Washington, D.C.

California Assembly Majority Whip Raul Bocanegra, a top California Democrat, stepped down as majority whip after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate and unwelcome physical contact. Bocanegra ended his reelection campaign and said he would resign from the Assembly next year.

In Ohio, Republican state Rep. Wes Goodman resigned after he engaged in inappropriate behavior related to his state office. The interaction was believed to have been consensual with another male. The Independent Journal Review reported that as many as 30 individuals accused Goodman of sexually inappropriate behavior and messages.

Before Weinstein

Ed Murray was Seattles mayor before he stepped down in September amid multiple accusations of sexual abuse and molestation. Multiple men accused Murray of sexual abuse; Murray has denied the allegations.

ANTHONY WEINERS SCANDALS, FROM POLITICS TO SEXTING

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner rose to fame with an impassioned speech in Congress in 2010, only to be taken down by a scandal that involved "sexting" multiple women for years. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison in September on federal charges of sending sexually explicit messages to a teenage girl.

Russia, Russia, Russia

Its been more than a year since Donald Trump was elected president, but allegations that his campaign colluded with the Russian government to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton persist  and his administration continues to deny them.

Robert Mueller was named the special counsel overseeing the investigation and has already charged four people related to the Trump administration and campaign.

Muellers moves

The Department of Justice announced the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the federal investigation into Russias influence on the presidential election on May 17  following a growing Democratic outcry for someone outside the Justice Department to oversee the investigation.

Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions  who was the first sitting senator to endorse Trump  recused himself from the investigation.

Muellers team has already charged four people related to the probe: Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos.

Comeys firing

Trump sacked FBI Director James Comey on May 9 -- less than two months after Comey announced the agency was looking into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The White House maintained that Comey was let go due to his handling of the FBIs investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. But Trump has alluded to the notion that he was considering the Russia investigation when he fired Comey.

Comey told a Senate intelligence committee that Trump had asked him to drop the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser. The White House said Trump was not attempting to influence Comey.

Manaforts mess

Paul Manafort resigned as Trumps campaign manager in August 2016 amid questions regarding his business dealings in Ukraine.

The special counsel took over the criminal investigation into Manaforts financial dealings  dating back even prior to the presidential election. FBI agents raided his Virginia home earlier this year, and Manafort  along with his associate, Richard Gates  was told to turn himself into federal authorities at the end of October.

Manafort was charged with 12 counts that included: conspiracy against the U.S., conspiracy to launder money and making false statements to the FBI.

All the presidents children

Donald Trump Jr., the presidents oldest son, came under fire this year as it was revealed that he took a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign who claimed to have damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump, an email about the meeting said in part.

Trump Jr. maintained that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not have any information to share and instead wanted to discuss other matters, such as the Magnitsky Act and other sanctions.

Also in attendance at the meeting was Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump.

The Price wasn't right: Trump firings

There was a growing number of people who left the Trump administration in just its first year  a group that includes former press secretary Sean Spicer, chief strategist Steve Bannon and White House Office of Public Liaison staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman.

Prices plane

Tom Price officially resigned from his post as Health and Human Services Secretary in September following widespread criticism for his use of private planes to make work trips.

Price had promised to repay the government for the use of his costly flights and vowed never to take a private charter plane again while in his post as secretary. But Trump had suggested that he was considering firing the former Georgia congressman ahead of Prices resignation.

The Mooch lets loose

Financier Anthony Scaramucci only lasted as the White House communications director for 11 days. But he managed to cause quite the shakeup in his short time in D.C.

In his first weekend as the communications director for the White House, Scaramucci gave interview after interview and promised that it was time for the Trump administration to hit the reset button with the press. And in one particular interview with the New Yorker, Scaramuccis candor went a bit too far.

Using vulgar language, Scaramucci slammed former administration officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon.

Reince is a f---ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac, Scaramucci said during the interview.

Im not Steve Bannon, Im not trying to suck my own c---, he also said. Im not trying to build my own brand off the f---ing strength of the president. Im here to serve the country.

Trump ultimately let Scaramucci go.

Omarosa's season finale

Omarosa Manigault Newman, the White House Office of Public Liaison's communications director, will leave the administration in January, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced in December.

Details of Manigault Newman's departure created some drama as it was reported that she was escorted off the White House grounds after resigning.

In an interview following her exit, Manigault Newman decried what she perceived as the lack of diversity in the Trump administration.

"There was a lack of diversity that I will acknowledge," the former "Apprentice" star told ABC News. "And at times it was very lonely. Because the majority of them were white men who had their own agendas. Many of them had never worked with minorities, didn't know how to interact with them."

Fusion GPS flops

Fusion GPS is the firm behind a controversial and unproven dossier that contained allegations regarding Trumps connections to Russia  as well as other lurid details about the president.

The firm was originally retained during the election by the conservative website Washington Free Beacon, which wanted opposition research on 2016 candidates but apparently was not involved in the dossier.

FUSION GPSS TIES TO THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION: WHAT TO KNOW

But in a bombshell development, it emerged this year that Clinton and the DNC later retained Fusion GPS through lawyer Marc Elias and his firm, Perkins Coie. Then came the Trump dossier.

Clinton reportedly did not know about the dossier until BuzzFeed News published it in January 2017. Democrats have defended it as simply opposition research. But Republicans want to know to what extent it was used to get a surveillance warrant against a Trump associate.

The DNCs dance

For Donna Brazile, 2017 was a year to come clean.

The former interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman was let go as a CNN commentator after leaked emails purported to show that she shared debate questions with the Clinton campaign ahead of the events. She initially denied the accusations, but Brazile eventually admitted in 2017 that the emails she sent to the campaign were a mistake.

But Brazile later addressed rumors -- in a big way -- that the DNC unfairly favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator.

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clintons team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested, Brazile wrote in her campaign memoir, "Hacks," which was first excerpted in Politico Magazine.

By Sept. 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof, and it broke my heart, Brazile said.

Brazile said she found a joint fundraising agreement document between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America from August 2015  just a few months after Clinton announced her candidacy.

The agreement  signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias  specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the partys finances, strategy, and all the money raised, Brazile wrote. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff.

Uranium One returns

Through a 2013 deal, Russia-backed company Rosatom acquired a Canadian uranium mining company which has assets in the U.S.

The deal first emerged in news reports in 2015, raising questions about connnections to the Clintons. But it surged back into the headlines this year when The Hill reported the FBI had looked into the agreement and uncovered that some Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in nefarious dealings, which included extortion, bribery and kickbacks.

Because of the deal, Russia is able to own about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity, although experts estimate that Rosatom only extracts about 11 percent of the uranium in the U.S.

The agreement was approved by nine government agencies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Hillary Clintons State Department was one of those agencies, although the former secretary of state has said that she was not personally involved in the deal.

OBAMA-ERA RUSSIAN URANIUM ONE DEAL: WHAT TO KNOW

At issue is how the deal came to be. Republicans have largely decried the transaction, especially as some investors reportedly donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and former President Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee in Russia and met with Vladimir Putin around the time of the deal.

But according to The Hill, evidence of wrongdoing by Vadim Mikerin, the Russian official overseeing Putins nuclear expansion in the U.S. who was eventually sentenced to prison, was also discovered by the FBI before the deal was approved.

Christie's beached

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made quite the splash this year for a number of his decisions  including when he was caught lounging on a private beach after a government shutdown closed public beaches during the first weekend in July.

That's the way it goes. Run for governor, and you can have the residence, the Republican said in response to critics.

But Christie wasn't the only governor to make a flop this year. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, R, resigned in April following allegations that he used state money to conceal an affair.

Fox News Alex Pappas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
LINN COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT

All arraignments took place at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 20, at the Linn County Courthouse.

Child porn charges  Andrew Duncan Irving, 31, of Lebanon, faces one count of first-degree encouraging child sexual abuse. The charges stem from an investigation through the Linn County Sheriff's Office, which was the culmination of an extensive investigation into the online distribution of child pornography over the Internet from an IP address in Lebanon.

Detectives served the search warrant Dec. 19, when Irving arrived home from work. They say Irving admitted to searching the Internet for child pornography and downloading its contents.

Prosecutor Julia Baker asked for security, explaining to the court that more related charges are likely in the near future. Judge Daniel Murphy ordered Irving released, with the condition that he have no contact with minors and no access to the internet or electronic devices. His next hearing date is set for Jan 8.

Robbery  Kevin Kelley Mawhinney, 33, faces third-degree robbery, fourth-degree assault and third-degree theft. Prosecutor Julia Baker argued that Mawhinney's two failures to appear warranted a security amount. Judge Daniel Murphy ordered him held on $5,000 security, with a hearing date set for Jan. 2.

Car theft  Joshua Patrick O'Sullivan, 23, faces one count of unlawful use of a motor vehicle. He was ordered held on $5,000 security with a next hearing date of Jan. 2.
As President Trump pushes forward with his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, companies competing for the chance to work on the multi-billion-dollar project are facing mounting boycotts from local Democratic lawmakers moving to blacklist the border builders.

Coordinated efforts have been launched in California, Arizona, Illinois, New York and Rhode Island that would prohibit cities and towns from doing any official business with the companies as part of a larger resistance strategy to delay construction of the controversial wall.

Most recently, Berkeleys City Council in California approved an ordinance that would ban it from contracting with companies involved in the construction.

The proposal, drafted by Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Councilmembers Ben Bartless, Sophie Hahn and Cheryl Davila, argues that the wall would harm Californias prosperity.

Arreguin called the border wall a highly impractical response to Americas broken immigration system, and a symbol of hatred that will only further demonize the people of Mexican and Latin American descent.

This follows a March measure approved by the council that would vet contracts to avoid business with border wall-affiliated companies. Earlier this month, the council expanded the policy to prohibit investment with companies involved in the designing, building or financing of the wall. The latest ordinance formalizes those rules.

'This is the worst kind of populism.'  Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America

Our divestment policy is a message that we dont want to do business with companies that seek to profit off of separating families, degrading the environment and heightening tensions with long-time partners such as Mexico, Arreguin told Fox News.

Berkeleys new mandate comes on the heels of a similar economic boycott that passed in Oakland last month.

In that case, the Oakland City Council barred the city from entering into new or amended contracts with companies that work with the federal government to build the border wall.

Construction, engineering, planning and information technology businesses are all subject to the ban. So are subcontractors and financial institutions.

Councilmember Abel Guillen said it is important to put our dollars where our values are.

A December committee proposal in Los Angeles -- still under consideration -- requires anyone wanting to do business with the city to disclose any bids they have made. However, it does not prohibit the city from entering into contracts with border builders.

It so happens that some of the cities boycotting these contractors have the kind of 'sanctuary' policies that the Trump administration is aggressively fighting.

"It's just amazing to me why any city would not want to rid itself of criminals who are also in the country illegally," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said earlier this month.

The Associated General Contractors of America told Fox News it has gone to the White House and Sessions, asking that they apply pressure and sue states and localities trying to deny contractors work based on their involvement building the border wall.

This is the worst kind of populism, Brian Turmail, spokesman for the AGCA, said. Given the fact that this administration has been aggressively pursuing sanctuary cities, this seems like an easy slam dunk.

He also accuses ambitious state and local lawmakers of trying to score political points off of contractors and says it sets a dangerous precedent.

Today, its you dont like the border wall while tomorrow you could have an anti-war mayor who refuses to work with defense contractors, Turmail said.

At the center of the sanctuary city debate is California, which has also considered going after border wall companies at the state level.

Earlier this year, three Democratic state senators introduced a bill that would require Californias pension funds to divest from any company involved in building the wall. It would also require the California Public Employee Retirement System and the California State Teachers Retirement System to liquidate any investments in companies that aid in construction.

This is a wall of shame and we dont want any part of it, Assemblyman Phil Ting said in a written statement. Californians build bridges not walls.

Nearly 100 of the roughly 600 companies interested in bidding on the border project are based in California.

On the East Coast, Rhode Island state Rep. Aaron Regunberg introduced legislation in May requiring the state divest any funds from companies involved in Trumps border wall.

Were saying he shouldnt be creating this symbol of xenophobia and hate using Rhode Island state dollars, Regunberg said.

During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump said he might soon head to San Diego where six construction companies have built eight border wall prototypes for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

I may be going there very shortly to look at them in their final form, Trump told members of his Cabinet.

It remains unclear when the wall might actually go up. Trump campaigned on building it and set an ambitious timetable for construction. But aside from potential funding and political complications, there have been court challenges from geologists.

Critics also say the barrier would be ineffective and costly. On the campaign trail, Trump said Mexico would pay for the bill. Thats not happening. He also said the cost to build the wall would be $4 billion. Estimates have ranged wildly, but have since soared as high as $70 billion, though the actual cost is not clear.
A regional director has resigned from California's Democratic Party following accusations of rape and inappropriate behavior.

Craig Cheslog, 46, allegedly acted in an inappropriate and sexually aggressive manner toward a fellow party member after an executive board meeting Nov. 18, according to a letter sent Nov. 29 by Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman and other leaders to the party's secretary, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The level to which this activity advanced made a number of those in attendance uncomfortable, read the letter, which called for Cheslog to step down, the paper reported.

In addition, another member reported that "Mr. Cheslog raped her at a CDP executive board meeting the previous year," according to the letter. She was not named in the letter.

Maddy Dean later revealed herself to the Times as being the woman who reported Cheslog of rape. She wrote in a Facebook post that she came forward to protect others, so this has always been about more than just me.

Young people deserve an inclusive and safe environment in which to engage in politics. We deserve transparency during these investigations in our workplaces. We deserve to be heard, not silenced, by those who decide our futures, she added.

Following the allegations, Cheslog wrote to party secretary Jenny Bach that he was resigning so he wouldnt become a distraction for the party, adding that he was confident he would ultimately be exonerated, the Times reported.

Chelsog has since been fired from his job at the nonprofit organization, Common Sense Media, and has resigned from a school district's board of trustees, the paper reported.

Ironically, the alleged inappropriate behavior took place during a weekend in which preventing sexual harassment was a main topic of discussion, the Times reported.

Carolyn Phinney, a former party member, claimed in her October resignation letter that Cheslog and other party leaders forced her out after she stopped offering support for Cheslog, the East Bay Times reported.

Editor's note: This story, published Dec. 21, corrects a previous version that appeared Dec. 17, which cited incorrect information from the East Bay Times. That paper later explained that its original story incorrectly identified Maddie Dean as a 23-year-old woman against whom Craig Cheslog was allegedly seen acting in a sexually aggressive manner. But that woman has not been identified. Dean accused Cheslog of sexually assaulting her in San Diego last year, the Times clarified.
The House and Senate Thursday approved a temporary spending bill, avoiding a government shutdown that would have kept lawmakers in the nation's capital for Christmas.

The House approved the legislation, known as a continuing resolution, by a vote of 231-188. The Senate followed just over two hours later, passing the measure 66-32. Senate Democrats from Republican-leaning states provided many of the key votes. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure.

The continuing resolution funds the government through Jan. 19. A two-week continuing resolution passed by Congress earlier this month expires at 11:59 p.m. Friday.

The stopgap legislation means that a number of key issues will face Congress when it returns in January -- most notably the question of what to do about immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children and are enrolled in the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump ended the program in September, giving Congress a March deadline to furnish a legislative fix.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi vowed earlier this month that lawmakers "will not leave here" without an agreement to protect so-called "Dreamers" from deportation. On Thursday, she told the House Rules Committee that the young immigrants in the program "embody the best in our nation: patriotism, hard work, perseverance."

"We should not leave them to celebrate the holidays in fear," Pelosi added.

Trump and Republicans are pushing for additional border security and other immigration enforcement steps in any DACA agreement.

"The vast majority of Republicans want to see a DACA solution," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters. "They just want to see a DACA solution that's balanced."

The continuing resolution -- the third stopgap bill since Oct. 1 -- includes a $2.1 billion fix for an expiring program that pays for veterans to seek care outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system; a temporary fix to ensure states facing shortfalls from the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) won't have to purge children from the program, and a short-term extension for an expiring overseas wiretapping program aimed at tracking terrorists.

GOP lawmakers insisted the legislation was crucial to keep operations running and give negotiators more time to finalize a spending blueprint.



Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said the legislation was essential for the "stability of our economy, and the security and well-being of the American people."

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., called the result "an epic failure of governing," adding "the Republican majority has made a complete mess of the basics of governing."

Among Republicans, opposition to the temporary measure came mostly from the party's defense hawks, who had hoped to enact record increases for the military this year and force the Senate to debate a full-year, $658 billion defense spending measure. But that idea was a nonstarter with the Senate, especially Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will only agree to Pentagon increases if domestic programs get a comparable hike.

The short-term spending bill does contain about $5 billion to upgrade missile defenses to respond to the threat from North Korea and to repair two destroyers damaged in accidents this year in the Pacific.

The legislation also has a provision to turn off automatic cuts to many "mandatory" spending programs, including Medicare, that would otherwise be triggered by the tax cut bill. Democrats had sought to highlight the looming spending cuts in arguing against a $1.5 trillion tax package that passed both houses of Congress without a single Democratic vote.

The House also passed an $81 billion measure to deliver rebuilding aid to hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean as well as fire-ravaged states. However, the Senate declined to take up the bill before leaving for its Christmas recess.

"Democrats want to make sure that we have equal bargaining," said Schumer, "and we're not going to allow things like disaster relief go forward without discussing some of the other issues we care about."

Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
I have sensed for weeks now that some in the media were on the verge of rolling out a contrary take on President Trumps first year in office.

And in the wake of yesterdays final passage of massive tax cuts, that moment has arrived.

The dominant media narrative, of course, is that Trump hasnt gotten much done, that hes in over his head, that he doesnt understand government, that he keeps picking petty fights rather than winning big battles.

But the thing about the pundits is that they get tired of pushing the same line, week after week, month after month. Some inevitably want to seize credit for a new insight, for getting ahead of the pack with a burst of contrarian wisdom.

And that hot take is, hey, maybe Trump has gotten some important things done after all.

Its true that the president had not gotten much from the Republican Congress this year. But a new law that cuts taxes for businesses and individualseven though the measure polls poorly and is not mainly aimed at the middle classputs an end to the verdict that Trump doesnt know how to work the Hill. Like it or not, this is a sprawling piece of legislation that was quickly pushed through the House and Senate in a show of party-line muscle.

Trump hasnt gotten much credit for the record-breaking stock market, but there is now some recognition that Dow-Almost-25,000 cant be completely divorced from his policies. And theres starting to be a greater appreciation for the presidents progress on slashing regulations and appointing judges (even though three nominees recently had to withdraw, one because he couldnt answer a Senate panels questions about basic court procedures).

On Axios, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen stake out the new ground:

"The media often appraises presidencies and politics through liberal-tinted glasses. But the vast majority of the Republican Party like, even love, these policies ...

"We have been saying all year: Watch what he does, not what he says. Until recently, he hasn't done much. But these wins are substantial, with consequences for millions of people and many years to come."



They note that Trump has won approval not just for Neil Gorsuch but for a dozen Circuit Court judges.

And while Trump failed in repeated attempts to scrap ObamaCare, he boasted yesterday abolishing the individual mandatea provision added to the tax billamounts to repealing the health care program. Thats an overstatement, but letting people wait until they get sick to buy insurance could well undermine the exchanges created by Barack Obama.

On foreign policy, there is a telling New York Times piece by conservative columnist Ross Douthat, a harsh critic of Trump. He says the decimation of ISIS has drawn scant media attention:

"There is nothing more characteristic of the Trump era, with its fire hose of misinformation, scandal and hyperbole, than that America and its allies recently managed to win a war that just two years ago consumed headlines and dominated political debate and helped Donald Trump himself get elected president  and somehow nobody seemed to notice."



Its true there was no surrender ceremony and ISIS still exists, but it has lost physical stronghold in Iraq.

Says Douthat: This is also a press failure, a case where the media is not adequately reporting an important success because it does not fit into the narrative of Trumpian disaster in which our journalistic entities are all invested.

But the narrative is changing a bit. While Trump remains quite unpopular, at least according to the polls, the media are reluctantly starting to acknowledge that his presidency is having a significant impact.
Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Thursday, thanking several hundred troops for their service ahead of the Christmas holiday while reiterating to Afghan leaders America's commitment to lasting peace and security in the region.

The trip was kept secret for safety reasons until after he arrived.

Speaking in front of a 40-foot-tall American flag, the vice president told the troops that the United States is making real progress, and that they've put the Taliban on the offensive.

I believe victory is closer than ever before, Pence said. I believe with all my heart that Afghanistan will be free.

Pence landed at Bagram Airfield in an Air Force C-17 at 9:46 p.m. local time, according to a pool report. He then flew by helicopter to the Presidential Palace, where he met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the nation's chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah.

Its a great honor for me to extend greetings on behalf of President Trump and have the opportunity to express our gratitude for the ongoing partnership, for security and prosperity here in Afghanistan, Pence told the Afghan leaders. Thank you for your strong expressions of support for President Trumps South Asian Strategy.

Pence is traveling with staff and security. His family did not join him.
A growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill are demanding answers after an investigative report this week claimed the Obama administration gave a free pass to Hezbollahs drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations to help ensure the Iran nuclear deal would stay on track.

"If the Obama administration failed to use the authorities that Congress has authorized to stop Hezbollah terrorists and their associates from pouring cocaine onto our streets to fund terrorism and acquire weapons of mass destruction, it was a colossal mistake," Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse wrote in a Thursday letter to the Justice, Treasury and State Departments, requesting answers to these disturbing allegations.

Added Sasse: "If the administration did so in order to shore up its foolish nuclear deal with Iran, it was a mistake of historical proportions, a mistake the consequences of which reach from the battlefields of Syria to the streets of Omaha and Scottsbluff."

Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Ron DeSantis of Florida, two Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, also sent Attorney General Jeff Sessions a letter Thursday about the report, asking the Justice Department to turn over documents and other related records.

We have a responsibility to evaluate whether these allegations are true, and if so, did the administration undermine U.S. law enforcement and compromise national security, the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

OBAMA ADMIN UNDERMINED ANTI-HEZBOLLAH TASK FORCE TO HELP SECURE IRAN NUKE DEAL, REPORT SAYS

According to a bombshell expose in Politico on Sunday, an elaborate campaign led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, known as Project Cassandra, targeted the Lebanese militant groups criminal activities.

But when Project Cassandra leaders, who were working out of a DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, Justice and Treasury Department officials delayed, hindered or rejected their requests, according to Politico.

This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision, David Asher, who helped establish Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst in 2008, told Politico. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.

In their letter to the Justice Department, Jordan and DeSantis requested a variety documents, including records related to Project Cassandra and the DEAs law enforcement efforts against Hezbollah.

Since the report surfaced, former Obama administration officials have broadly dismissed the allegations as false.

There are many reasonable critiques of Obama's foreign policy, former Obama official Tommy Vietor tweeted. The idea that he was soft on Hezbollah is not one of them. The story is so manufactured out of thin air that it's hard to push back except to say that it's a figment of the imagination of two very flawed sources.

But Republicans say they want detailed answers.

Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy requesting an investigation this week.

These revelations are shocking and infuriating, Pittenger said in a statement to Fox News. While American soldiers were bravely fighting ISIS terrorists, with some paying the ultimate price, the Obama administration reportedly was protecting Hezbollah terrorists who were funding themselves by trafficking illegal drugs. No wonder President Obama couldnt bring himself to call them Radical Islamist Terrorists.

Gowdy later said on Fox News this week that the allegations are worthy of investigation.

Its an incredible allegation that any administration would ignore one terrorist group because you were trying to curry favor with another terrorist group, the South Carolina Republican said. It is incendiary and it is worthy of investigation.

Gowdy added, If it's true it's a pretty damning indictment of Obama's search for a legacy and his willingness to do anything to get one.

Fox News Frank Miles contributed to this report.
The capital of South Carolina has become the first U.S. city to ban bump stocks, nearly three months after a gunman who apparently used those devices opened fire on an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 and injuring nearly 500.

I shudder to think of these devices being used for bad, Mayor Steve Benjamin told Fox News. Theres no good reason for them to be on the streets of America and its high time that someone decided to step up and speak up and do something about it.

The city of Columbia passed the ordinance on Tuesday making it illegal to attach bump stocks to firearms within city limits, excluding military and law enforcement engaged in training.

We are drawing a line in the sand in our city and hoping that cities and states and eventually the U.S. Congress will also seek to make these devices illegal, Benjamin said.

Numerous bills were introduced in Congress shortly after the Vegas massacre. One bill in the House collected more than two-dozen signatures, but legislative momentum initiated by deadliest shooting in modern history has since stalled.

The newly implemented ordinance does not make it illegal for a resident to possess the attachment. Once you attach them to the firearm and it turns into the killing machine that it is, then we have to make sure that we act on behalf of the public interest, Benjamin said.

Violating the legislation is a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and up to 30 days in jail.

The accessory, found online for as low as $23, causes the stock on a rifle to bounce back and forth between the shooters shoulder and trigger finger, producing rapid fire.

The simple fact is that automatic weapons have been illegal in this country for more than 30 years, Benjamin said in a statement. The only purpose these devices serve is to circumvent that law multiplying firing rates tenfold to approximately 400-800 rounds per minute and turning a semi-automatic firearm into a mass murder machine.

Not everyone in the Palmetto State approves of the regulation. Some believe it is infringing on gun owners rights.

There has not been an issue within the city of Columbia, within Richland County or the state, to my knowledge, gun range owner Sherra Scott told Fox News. I believe they are doing it as a feel-good legislation to make their constituents think they are doing something about violence in general.

Scott argues banning bump stocks will not stop someone with a gun from modifying a weapon to rapidly fire.

You can take any normal item and turn it and use it for evil, Scott said shortly before explaining how something as simple as a rubber band can be used to modify a rifle.

Basically you wrap them around the trigger and the trigger guard in a way that resets the trigger for you, Scott said.

She feels the best solution is for people using guns to be responsible.

You cant legislate evil away and you cant legislate stupidity away, Scott said.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted an order requiring the Trump administration and federal agencies to release internal documents related to the withdrawal of an Obama-era program that offered a deportation reprieve to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

In a unanimous ruling, the high court ordered lower courts to hold off any demands of documents from federal agencies until a ruling is reached on the Trump administration's attempts to dismiss five lawsuits in California that challenge the legality of the order to rescind DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Politico reported.

The lawsuits argue that the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determination to completely rescind the limited amnesty program by March 2018 was unlawful because It violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

After the government provided only 250 pages of documents related to the programs termination, the challengers accused the administration of concealing records, claiming the termination of such program would have created a large volume of documents.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup sided with the plaintiffs and ordered DHS and the Justice Department to turn over more documents related to the DACA reversal. This order, according to the Supreme Courts opinion, was wrong and should have not been made.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the high courts ruling, saying it was a crucially important ruling and vowed to continue to defend the Trump Administrations lawful actions.

The discovery order in the DACA cases was dramatically intrusive and premature, and I am pleased with tonights decision that the district courts order was overly broad, Sessions said.

He added: Make no mistake, this was a crucially important ruling, and the fact it was granted by a unanimous Supreme Court cannot be overstated. We will continue to defend the Trump administrations lawful actions.

But California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who brought one of the five lawsuits challenging the White House over the DACA decision, told Politico that the ruling was not a win for the administration as it left the possibility that the challengers were entitled to more information.

"Today the Supreme Court has essentially told us that no one  not even the president  can hide the facts," he said.

Both the White House and leaders in Congress were working on legislation to address the issue and replace the legally contentious DACA program with a legal status for those who are or were covered by the program, Fox News reported.

It is likely that a bipartisan deal will emerge in January and include border security measures at the request of the White House in exchange for a deal on DACA.
The Trump administration has approved the sale of lethal arms to the western-aligned government of Ukraine for its battle against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern provinces.

Wednesday's move was in stark contrast to the Obama administration, which denounced Russian aggression but refused to sell lethal arms to Ukraine.

Politicians were divided on the move, with some praising it as long overdue, while others raised concerns that it will complicate any efforts to work with Russia.

In a statement to the Washington Post, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., referenced the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which authorized the transaction.

Im pleased the administration approved the sale of defensive lethal arms to Ukraine. This decision was supported by Congress in legislation that became law three years ago and reflects our countrys longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression.

Still, some were concerned that the commercial transaction would be a provocation toward Russia, whose relationship with the U.S. is already strained.

We have crossed the Rubicon, this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming, a senior congressional official told the Post.

Defense Secretary James Mattis brushed off any notions of provocation in August when he said, Defensive weapons are not provocative unless youre an aggressor, and clearly, Ukraine is not an aggressor, since its their own territory where the fighting is happening.

The war in Ukraines eastern province between Russian-backed separatists and government troops has killed more than 10,000 since the conflict began in early 2014. Despite efforts by Russia, France and Germany in 2015 to alleviate tensions, fighting still remains on the eve of 2018.

International observers have raised concerns that fighting has intensified in recent weeks. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a monitoring agency for Ukraine, the number of cease-fire violations increased by 35 percent in the past week compared to a week earlier.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
January 31, 1940  December 13, 2017

Joseph William Morgan, a direct descendant of Miller Morgan, Oregon Pioneer of 1847, passed away in his sleep on Wednesday morning, December 13, 2017 at his home in Albany. He was 77.

Joe was born in Lebanon to Lowell Brandon Morgan and Daphne Moselle (Wilson) Morgan, and was their only child. He lived in Vanport and Monmouth as a child before moving to Berkley, California in 1947 and shortly thereafter to Sacramento where he lived until he went to college in Corvallis. He attended El Camino High School and Sacramento State College in Sacramento and later graduated from Oregon State University in 1962 with a degree in Chemistry and Zoology. He was a member of Delta Phi Omega fraternity.

He first worked as a research chemist for the U.S. Government at the USDA office in Corvallis, then in 1967, fulfilled his dream of owning and operating the familys ryegrass farm established by Miller Morgan in 1850 in Shedd  Morgan Century Farms, Inc. He operated the farm for over 20 years before retiring, but stayed involved in agriculture with a straw bailing operation until the mid-1990s before officially retiring.

He lived on the The Home Place in Shedd from 1967 to 2016  49 years  before moving to Albany last year due to health reasons.

Joe married Virginia Grace Hubbard in 1962 but later divorced in 1979. They had two children; Jon Brandon Morgan and Daniel Wilson Morgan. Joe later married Cheryl Cochran in 1987 and the two remained married until his death.

Joe enjoyed both carpentry and had a life-long interest in restoring classic cars and hot rods, his last being the quintessential car of his era, a 1949 Mercury. He was also particularly proud of a show winning 1915 Model T Speedster he had hand built. He was a member of various antique car clubs over his life and one of the highlights of his life was attending and participating in the 21st annual International Vintage Car Rally which was held in New Zealand that year, driving a Ford Model T.

Joe was preceded in death by his father Lowell, in 1968 and mother Daphne, in 1992.

Joe is survived by his wife Cheryl; his two sons Jon and Dan; his step-children Ron, Robyn, Rob, and Steve; 12 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

No services are to be held although a casual Celebration of Life is planned for 1:30 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, January 14 at the Brownsville Senior Center.

A monument will be placed at the family plot in the Sand Ridge Cemetery outside of Lebanon.

AAsum-Dufour Funeral Home is handling the arrangements (www.aasum-dufour.com).
President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued his first commutation since taking office, freeing the former CEO of an Iowa kosher meatpacking company.

Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country's largest kosher meat-processing company, was convicted of money laundering in 2009.

His prosecution came after federal authorities staged a dramatic raid on the company's Iowa plant in 2008, arriving by helicopter and detaining 389 illegal immigrants, including children.

The 57-year-old father of 10 submitted fake invoices to a bank that made Agriprocessors' finances appear healthier than they were so that it could borrow more.

He has served more than eight years of his 27-year sentence.

Several members of Congress and high-ranking law enforcement officials had argued that Rubashkins sentence was overlong.

Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard professor, told the New York Times that he had urged both President Obama and President Trump to consider commuting Rubashkin's sentence. Obama rebuffed the idea, Dershowitz said.

Trumps commutation is not a pardon, meaning that Rubashkin's conviction is not vacated, and he still must make restitution payments and submit to post-release supervision.

The action was "encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum, from Nancy Pelosi to Orrin Hatch," the White House said.

Trump has used his pardon power just once so far: to spare former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time by wiping away a federal conviction stemming from immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.

Rubashkin's attorneys last year accused prosecutors of improperly interfering with the sale of Agriprocessors and depressing its sale price by millions. The drop in value left Agriprocessors' bank with a $27 million loss -- a figure used to calculate Rubashkin's sentence under federal guidelines. The U.S. Attorney's Office denied the allegations.

Bob Teig, who retired in 2011 after serving as a prosecutor and spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, said Trump's decision to commute Rubashkin's sentence "makes no sense" given Trump's repeated promises to get tougher on illegal immigration.

Teig said that every court that looked at Rubashkin's sentence had concluded it was fair, and suggested that former Justice Department officials and lawmakers who supported leniency were unaware of the facts of the case.

"The outrage is backwards," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted on Thursday to condemn President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The 128 member states of the UNGA voted to condemn Trump's move, with just seven other states joining the U.S. and Israel in voting against the resolution. There were 35 abstentions.

The vote was taken shortly after the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, issued a strong warning to states who support the resolution -- reminding the General Assembly of the financial aid Washington provides to both the UN and many member states.

"We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations," she said. "And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

Haley added that Thursday's vote "will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N. and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N., and this vote will be remembered."

The resolution was co-sponsored by Turkey, chair of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Yemen, chair of the Arab Group at the U.N.

Haley's threats -- both on the floor of the General Assembly and on Twitter -- drew sharp criticism from supporters of the resolution, who accused the U.S. of intimidation.

"This is bullying," Turkey's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said. "It is unethical to think that our votes are for sale."

Cavusoglu added that the U.S. "may be strong, but that does not make you right."

Trumps decision, which he announced earlier this month during a speech ordering the State Department to begin moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, rankled many in the global community. Critics worry that the presidents words will inflame tensions throughout the Middle East and doom any hope of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for control of Jerusalem.

Although Democratic and Republican presidents have long affirmed that Jerusalem is Israel's capital, Trump's declaration to move the embassy to Jerusalem on Dec. 6 departed from decades of U.S. policy, and international consensus, that the fate of Jerusalem should be decided through negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Jerusalem is Israel's capital regardless of the outcome of Thursday's vote.

The Palestinians sought the General Assembly vote after the United States on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other U.N. Security Council members that would have required Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem as Israel's capital and not move the U.S. Embassy there. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to key Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, as their capital.

"In a few days the world will celebrate the birth of Christ," Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki said on Thursday. "But the lights will not be shining in Jersalem."

Despite the condemnation, the Trump administration isnt caving to international pressure, with Haley serving notice that she "will be taking names" on who votes in favor of the resolution Thursday.

The Trump administrations actions recalled to some veteran U.N. diplomats the runup to the Iraq war in 2002 when then-President George W. Bush launched a campaign against France and other opponents of military action who refused to support a Security Council resolution to authorize war. The resolution, which former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was pressing for and the U.S. backed, was withdrawn by Britain because it was certain to be defeated as a result of strong council opposition.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Although pulsars regularly blast out deadly gamma rays and X-rays, alien planets in orbit around them could theoretically be habitable, a new study finds.

However, these pulsar worlds are likely not friendly to humans  according to the study, the planets' environment would be more like the bottom of the sea on Earth.

When a large star explodes in a supernova at the end of its life, it can leave behind a dense core of matter called a neutron star. Neutron star matter is the densest known material  a sugar cube-size piece has the mass of a mountain, about 100 million tons. The mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the sun while fitting into a ball smaller in diameter than London. [Inside a Neutron Star (Infographic)]

Pulsars rotate extraordinarily rapidly, up to thousands of revolutions per second, and they flash like lighthouse beacons  hence their name, which is short for "pulsating star." They regularly blaze with gamma rays and X-rays and spew out energetic particles. According to the new study's researchers, the Milky Way galaxy hosts about 1 billion neutron stars, about 200,000 of which are pulsars.

Despite the violent nature of pulsars, they can still have planets. In fact, the first exoplanets that astronomers discovered orbit the pulsar B1257+12, located about 2,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Three worlds are known to orbit B1257+12, one of which is about one-fiftieth Earth's mass, while the other two are "super-Earths" about four times Earth's mass. Since these three exoplanets were discovered in 1992, astronomers have also discovered one Jupiter-size world around the pulsar PSR J17191438 and another Jupiter-size world around PSR B1620-26, which is a binary system containing a pulsar and a white dwarf star.

Now researchers suggest that life could exist on those pulsar-orbiting planets. "Despite emitting deadly particles and radiation, pulsars might have an habitable zone," study co-author Alessandro Patruno, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Space.com.

Since there is life virtually wherever there is water on Earth, astronomers often judge a world as potentially habitable if it exists in a zone where liquid water could survive on its surface. In the new study, researchers found "habitable zones" could exist around neutron stars.

"Such a habitable zone can be as wide as the one that exists around normal stars," study co-author Mihkel Kama, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England, told Space.com.

The scientists used the Chandra Space Observatory to analyze X-rays from the pulsar B1257+12. Their calculations suggest this pulsar's two super-Earths might be warm enough to have liquid water on their surfaces, Patruno said. [The X-Ray Universe: Chandra X-Ray Space Observatory Pictures]

The researchers noted the habitability of planets around pulsars depended on at least two key findings. For one, atmospheres a million times thicker than Earth's are likely needed to protect any life on their surfaces from pulsar radiation. This would make conditions on these worlds similar to ones found in Earth's deep seas.

"The atmospheric pressure you find on the surface of these planets is comparable to or even higher than the pressure you have in the Mariana Trench," which at 36,000 feet deep (11,000 meters) is the deepest known point on Earth's surface, Kama said.

"However, since we know that life exists in the depths of our ocean, some form of life might certainly exist in these high pressure and warm environments," Patruno said.

Another key finding was that habitable worlds around pulsars are likely super-Earths with masses up to 10 times that of Earth, whose stronger gravitational fields help them hold onto their atmospheres for a billion or so years, the researchers said. The scientists calculated that radiation from pulsars would obliterate the atmosphere of a smaller planet within a few thousand years, leading any liquid water on their surfaces to boil away.

The researchers started this work "expecting to find that it is impossible to have an habitable zone around pulsars," Kama said. "Instead we quickly realized that for super-Earths this is a very solid possibility. Add on top of that the fact that the only multi-planetary pulsar system known has two super-Earths and our excitement skyrocketed."

For worlds in the habitable zones of pulsars, "the high energy particles and radiation will keep the atmosphere warm enough to allow liquid warm water to exist," Patruno said. "Since there is hardly any visible light reaching the planet  pulsars emit almost no visible light  this opens up very unexpected scenarios for exotic habitable environments."

The scientists do note that even a thick atmosphere cannot block all of the high-energy radiation from pulsars. "Some of it might still reach the surface of the planet, which might then be detrimental for any form of life," Kama said.

Patruno and Kama detailed their findings online Dec. 19 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Original article on Space.com.
Scientists have discovered 115 new species in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia including a crocodile lizard and a snail-eating turtle that was spotted in a Thai food market.

The species are revealed in a report, Stranger Species released this week by the Washington, DC-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The discoveries, which were made in 2016, include two fish, three mammals, 11 amphibians, 11 reptiles and 88 plant species in the area around the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

One of the new species is the Vietnamese crocodile lizard, a medium-sized lizard that lives in the evergreen and freshwater forest habitats of South China and Northern Vietnam. The reptile was discovered by Professor Dr. Thomas Ziegler and his research team and even features in a comic-strip designed to educate children on the importance of protecting lizards. The WWF warns that the lizard is so heavily threatened by habitat destruction, coal mining and collection for the pet trade that as few as 200 of the individuals could remain in Vietnam. This is terrifyingly low, said Ziegler, in the report.

DAZZLING BLUE TARANTULA DISCOVERED IN SOUTH AMERICA

The snail-eating turtle was discovered at a local market in Northeast Thailand. Dr. Montri Sumontha noticed the turtle in two different markets and suspected it was a new species. He asked the shopkeepers, who said they caught them in a nearby canal, so he purchased them to check, explained the WWF, in a statement. Sumontha warns that the turtle is threatened by local infrastructure such as dikes and dams, and has called for protection under Thai law.

Other new species include a mountain horseshoe bat, which was found in the evergreen forests of mountainous Laos and Thailand and took 10 years to confirm as a new species. The bats distinctive horseshoe-shaped facial structure has prompted comparisons to one of the characters in the famous cantina scene in Star Wars," according to WWF.

Two new mole species and a vibrantly colored frog were also discovered in Northern Vietnam, as well as a new fish species in Cambodia.

NEW ORANGUTAN SPECIES DISCOVERED, BUT COULD SOON BE EXTINCT, EXPERTS WARN

The new species are just the latest to be found in the Greater Mekong. Last year, a World Wildlife Fund report identified 163 new species in the region, including a Klingon newt.

Between 1997 and 2016, 2,524 new species of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians have been discovered in the Greater Mekong.

More than two new species a week and 2,500 in the past 20 years speaks to how incredibly important the Greater Mekong is to global biodiversity, said Stuart Chapman, WWF-Greater Mekong regional representative, in a statement. While the threats to the region are many, these discoveries give us hope that species from the tiger to the turtle will survive.

163 NEW SPECIES, INCLUDING 'KLINGON NEWT', DISCOVERED

In a separate announcement this week, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society said that a nest of the endangered Asian giant softshell turtle has been found on a Mekong River sandbar in northeastern Cambodia.

The Associated Press contributed to this article. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Typically, ocean waters flow gently westward, in part driven by the massive, slow waves generated by the Earth's spin. Even when whirlpools or eddies pop up, they tend to flow along with the rest of the water. But sometimes two eddies can combine into something called a modon, a massive vortex that can break off from the ocean's regular flow.

Nine of these modons, which were spotted around Australia between 1993 and 2016, were analyzed using satellite imagery and ocean temperature data. The modons  which can resemble massive smoke rings in the water  were found to travel several times faster than the ocean's typical currents, a new study finds.

In the study, which was published Dec. 4. in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists said they didn't see any clear evidence on how the modons formed. However, the strange swirls could result from one of two processes: two opposite-spinning eddies fusing together or one larger eddy splitting off into two pieces that spin in opposite directions, the study said. [In Photos: Travel Australia's Great Ocean Road]

Regardless of how the modon is formed, its overall structure is the same: The modon consists of two vortices spinning in opposite directions of each other, with their tails joining together beneath the surface of the water. In the paper, the scientists described the phenomenon as the bottom half of a smoke ring bisected by the surface of the water. YouTuber "Physics Girl" illustrates the half-ring well in a video where she uses food dye to show how two separate vortices interact and join together.

These massive vortices aren't short-lived. The study found that they can last for up to six months before splitting apart, and then, those individual vortices can spin for several months beyond that. One crossed the entire Tasman Sea, the body of water between Australia and New Zealand, according to the study.

In some cases, the modons broke apart when they collided with a continental shelf; in other cases, the scientists couldn't deduce the reason from the available satellite data.

Still, what stood out about these powerful vortices is that they could travel either east or west at up to 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) per second  a speed that's several times the speed of Rossby waves, which averages 4-8 inches (1-2 cm) per second in the analyzed region. (Rossby waves are waves that naturally result from the Earth's rotation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.) Sometimes the modons would pivot toward the north or south, strengthening whichever eddy was spinning in that direction and weakening the other before balancing out again, the study found.

Because these oceanic smoke rings travel independently and faster than ocean currents, the researchers suggested in the paper that the modons can rapidly transfer water, heat and minerals from one place to another, and even speculated that they could carry small organisms for great distances in their tow.

Original article on Live Science.
Apple has admitted that it intentionally slows down older iPhone models to help preserve battery life in older phones. But now the company is being sued for its admission.

According to TMZ, a new class action suit has been filed against the company by Stefan Bogdanovich, an L.A. man and an iPhone 8 user. Bogdanovich said that Apple's slowing down of older iPhone models is not part of an agreement and thinks it is a ploy by Apple to get people to upgrade to new phones.

Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment from Fox News about the lawsuit.

BUYER BEWARE: THINK TWICE ABOUT PRICEY IPHONE X, MACBOOK PRO MODELS

On Wednesday, the theory that Apple slows down older iPhones to get people to upgrade cropped up again after a post on Reddit and some battery testing done by Primate Labs John Poole put the issue into the spotlight.

In a statement obtained by TechCrunch in response to the theory, Apple said:

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. Weve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.

Apple has further delved into the issue of lithium-ion batteries on its website, which have a limited life span. On the site, Apple notes that the battery designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original charge after 500 charges.

Despite the statement, some iPhone users are not happy with the company, with several taking to social media to express their displeasure.

Others have noted that devices have always been throttled for power management reasons as they get older, but added Apple could have done a better job explaining the situation.

The company released three new iPhone models in September, including the long-awaited iPhone X.

Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
Great things come in small packages and our stocking stuffer gift guide top picks are no exception. We have curated the ultimate gifts that are small enough to fit in Christmas stockings  but are sure to be massive in impact.

From irresistible coffee made by a Special Forces veteran and bottle openers made from fighter jet ammo through to combat flip-flops, whiskey ice bullets and Navy SEAL-created camouflage for hunting, here are seven outstanding stocking stuffers  something for every budget and all with the tactical spin.

Freedom Fuel by Black Rifle Coffee

Black Rifle is bespoke small batch coffee at its best. For conservatives in the know, it has rapidly become the coffee of choice.

Evan Hafer served our country at the most elite level, including in Special Forces soldier and as a CIA contractor. He then applied that same rigorous commitment to excellence to founding Black Rifle Coffee Company and to every aspect of the process. Hafer selects coffee beans in South America and then they are especially blended and roasted in Utah.

US SOLDIERS SET TO RECEIVE NEW HOLSTER AS ARMY DEPLOYS ITS LATEST PISTOL

There are lots of delicious blends to choose, from Snipers Hide Blend, Freedom Fuel Silencer Smooth Blend, AK-47 Blend and Beyond Black Blend. There is also a special limited edition of Holiday Roast, available for $14.99.

Pick one and pop it in the stocking. The unmistakable Black Rifle coffee aroma will lure everyone from their cozy beds Christmas morning.

A 12-ounce bag starts at $12.99.

Chute Vacuum from CamelBak

This is one outstanding, sleek-looking stocking stuffer that is ideal for just about anyone who loves the outdoors, hiking, hunting and shooting, or simply likes hitting the gym.

CamelBak has set the gold standard for hydration in combat and hydration in the toughest, most extreme environments in the world.

The company has taken all that expertise accumulated over all those years and all those war zones and combined it with the latest in their cutting-edge innovation to create must-have bottles.

COOL TECH CONVERTS DIRT BIKES FOR JASON BOURNE-LIKE SNOW SUPREMACY

Perfect size to pop in a stocking, its Chute Vacuum keeps liquids cold for a full 24 hours. On a day hike, it will keep your soup or hot chocolate warm for six hours. This 40 ounce-insulated bottle has a number of smart design features, like a cap that snaps into the handle so it stays out of the way when you pour and double walls to prevent condensation.

Even the opening has been especially tailored to make it ultra-easy to drink from and difficult to spill.

The Chute Vacuum is available for $38.

Bullet Ice Cubes by Bottle Breacher

Whiskey and other spirits are always a classic holiday gift, but this year why not go next level with the tactical twist? Instead of the traditional bottle of a favorite blend, go with the fun special bullets designed to protect the temperature of a favorite bourbon.

The Bottle Breacher Whiskey Bullets are stainless steel bullets that chill whiskey, vodka, eggnog  you name it. They're not just a great conversation piece, they also protect the flavor of that holiday drink since they won't dilute.

They just get popped in the freezer and then popped in the drink, where they will behave sitting at the bottom of the glass.

6 TOP JAMES BOND-INSPIRED TACTICAL GIFTS

These bullets may be small but they are bound to be a big hit. The company recommends one whiskey bullet for every ounce of whiskey poured.

The set comes with six bullets and is available for $49.99. If youd like to go bigger, you could add  under the tree, that is  the Revolver Cylinder Holster that is designed to hold the bullets.

PODCAST: FAITH NOT FEAR - LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR MIND

AS THE BEST WEAPON AGAINST TERRORISTS WITH THIS NAVY SEAL

Rite in the Rain Notebooks

Made in the USA, Rite in the Rain notebooks are ultra-popular with tactical professionals, underwater bomb experts, adventurers, expeditions and more. This is an amazing American company that has created truly weatherproof paper and a waterproof notebook cover.

These notebooks can withstand just about any adventure, anywhere. If it gets hit with water, the all-weather paper wont disintegrate like regular paper  it is just fine. Accidentally left in a pocket and put in a washing machine? No problem. Thrown in the gym bag and hit with sweat and mud? No problem.

Rite in the Rain also makes tailored notebooks for different passions and hobbies, from fishing and hunting through to shooting and birdwatching. They also make fantastic calendars with all the benefits of their extraordinary craftsmanship and quality materials.

NEW F-35A FIGHTER JET GETS A NEW POWERFUL BOMB

The notebooks come in all sorts of shapes, colors and sizes. The pocket-sized ones have a great, tough impact resistant wire binding so whether it is in the back pocket or backpack, it will never lose its shape.

Rite in the Rain also makes phenomenal pencils relied on regularly in combat and expeditions all over the world. The lead won't break. Wont be unsteady. Wont snap off. Wont fall out. It will be the only pencil you will ever need to buy for your student.

Rite in the Rain All-Weather Mechanical Pencil retails for $10.45 but you can now snap one up at a steal of $5.

Pocket top spiral starts at $3.95. The 2018 pocket calendar is available for $9.95.

Combat Flip Flops

Anyone who has been around special operations will tell you flip-flops are very popular with the military's most elite teams. Founders Matthew Griffin and Donald Lee both served as Army Rangers and served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Theyve now created a company to make a difference in war-torn countries.

The men's Floperator in OD green is a must-have and not just because they will become the favorite footwear of your gift recipient. As Combat Flip-Flops says, Bad for running. Worse for fighting. But we know you are going to do what you want with them  which is just about anything.

This is a stocking stuffer that also helps make a difference. Their sandals are made in Colombia to provide jobs to locals there. And each Floperator stocking stuffer spreads Christmas spirit to a girl in need, funding one day of secondary school for an Afghan girl.

They are currently on sale for $24.99.

PODCAST: FIND OUT HOW THIS ARMY RANGER BROKE

INTO HOLLYWOOD + HEAD BEHIND THE SCENES ON A NEW TV SHOW

Predator Warpaint

For the hunter in your family, the very best surprise in the stocking would be Predator Warpaint.

Created by Navy SEAL veteran Nick Norris, this is best in class camo face paint that will also protect your loved ones face from the sun on those long days outdoors. It incorporates bulletproof sunscreen with SPF 50 protection. This scent-free war paint lasts for more than four hours and the colors wont bleed no matter how hot it gets.

Also makes an excellent gift for children who like to do their military maneuvers outdoors.

Made in the USA, the 3-Color Woodland Camo With Bottle Opener is available for $14.95 and the 5-Color Camo Milspec Compact $19.95.

Vintage Brass 20mm Bottle Opener by Bullets2Bandages

How about a bottle opener made from ammunition used by fighter jets like the FA  18 hornet and combat helicopters like AH  1 Cobra? These vintage brass bottle openers are made by Bullets2Bandages from 20 mm casings.

This a truly unique bottle opener that weighs half a pound and is nearly 7 inches long. You can personalize it with custom engraving, making it even more special.

It is also a gift in keeping with the holiday spirit because when you buy any product from this company, founded by two naval EOD officers, 15 percent of the profit is donated to veterans charities.

You can nab one on sale marked down significantly to $25.99 right now.

.308 Bullet Bottle Opener by Lucky Shot

This stocking stuffer is made from a .308 caliber bullet casing. Lucky Shot takes it and turns it into a key ring that opens bottles. It gives the bullet a new life, tackling beer bottles instead of bad guys.

Lucky Shot offers a military discount and the .308 Bullet Bottle Opener can be personalized with an engraving for $7. The key ring comes with a velvet keepsake bag and a care card and is available for $ 8.99.
Should you allow Facebook to access and store your face data?

That's a question people will be asking as Facebook rolls out new tools this week to help users better manage their identity with face recognition.

Powered by the same technology the tech giant is already using to suggest friends that you may want to tag in photos or videos, Facebook said in a blog post that the new tools will help you prevent someone from impersonating you on the site.

The company described the features, which can be activated or deactivated with an on/off switch, in a post on Tuesday.

When photos of you are uploaded, even if you arent friends with the person adding them, Facebook will notify you. It will also alert you if your face is included in a profile picturea feature aimed at preventing catfishing and revenge porn attacks. For users that are visually impaired, there will be an option to listen to audio about whos tagged in images alongside them.

US GOVERNMENT ASKS FACEBOOK FOR MORE DATA ON ITS USERS

According to a blog post from Joaquin Quinonero Candela, the company's director of applied machine learning, you have to authorize Facebook to access, store, and then match your face data with uploads across the site.

Privacy advocates have long called attention to the potential misuse of facial recognition, whether by tech firms, law enforcement or other entities. Perhaps anticipating the criticism, the company also published a blog post titled Hard Questions: Should I Be Afraid of Face Recognition Technology?

Face recognition is every bit as sensitive as geolocation data, or logs of whom you've called, Alvaro Bedoya, founding executive director of Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, told the Washington Post.

The company notes the face technology is being rolled out in most places, except Canada and the European Union, where courts have said that it violates privacy law.

FACEBOOK SAYS IT NEEDS YOUR EXPLICIT PHOTOS TO COMBAT REVENGE PORN

Facebook is also facing a lawsuit claiming that its face recognition technology violates a law in Illinois called the Biometric Information Privacy Act.

Even so, the company seems to acknowledge that not everyone will agree with its choices.

We recognize that there are a lot of different views on this issue and lots of different approaches to providing people with transparency and control, the company said in a statement. We decided, in consultation with privacy advocates and people, that the best approach for this offering was to notify people on Facebook and provide a way to adjust it in their account settings at any time.
A woman in Indiana said she was stunned after she posted a negative review about her bad experience at a hotel  and promptly got an extra $350 charge and a threat of legal action.

Katrina Arthur told WRTV she and her husband stayed at the Abbey Inn & Suites in Brown County  about an hour south of Indianapolis  in March 2016, but claimed that their stay at the hotel was a nightmare.

The room was unkempt, and it looked like it hadnt been cleaned since the last people stayed there. We checked the sheets and I found hairs and dirt, Arthur said. She added that it reeked of sewage and had weak water pressure and broken air conditioning.

When Arthur tried to find hotel employees, she said she came up short and had to clean the room myself.

8 OF THE WEIRDEST HOTELS AND MOTELS IN THE UNITED STATES

So, when the hotel asked Arthur to review her stay at the Abbey Inn, she made sure her experience was heard.

I was honest, Arthur told WRTV. I wanted people to know not to waste their money because I know people save their money for special occasions."

Once Arthur posted her review, she said the hotel charged her $350 and threatened her with legal action. So, she deleted her review.

Arthur said it felt like the hotel was punishing her for being truthful, and she contacted the Indiana attorney generals office.

That office filed a lawsuit on Dec. 15 against Abbey Management Inc.

Andrew Szakaly told Fox News in a statement that he is the president and sole shareholder of the corporation, which hasn't operated the Abbey Inn since Jan. 2017, when new owners assumed control.

The lawsuit reportedly states the Abbey Inn had a policy which allowed them to charge customers the fee for poor reviews, which the state of Indiana alleges violated the states Deceptive Consumer Sales Act, which aims to modify deceptive and unconscionable consumer sales practices.

The lawsuit claimed the policy read: Guests agree that if guests find any problems with our accommodations, and fail to provide us the opportunity to address those problems while the guest is with us, and/or refuses our exclusive remedy, but then disparages us in any public manner, we will be entitled to charge their credit card an additional $350 damage. Should the guest refuse to retract any such public statements legal action may be pursued.

Szakaly confirmed the hotel's policy, which he said was active between fall 2015 and summer 2016 in response to hotel guests checking out without making any complaints during their stay and then demanding a refund or posting negative comments and reviews on social media.

DAD'S INSTAGRAM ABOUT HOTEL CARPETS EARNS HALF A MILLION FOLLOWERS IN A WEEK

The policy could be found briefly on a document on the hotels website, but it wasnt provided to guests or posted anywhere at the inn, according to the lawsuit.

"Its a shame that the actions of a disgruntled guest, taken 22 months ago, will now damage the hard work & devotion of the new, young management couple who had nothing to do with that guest or that policy which has long since been cancelled," Szakaly told Fox News.

Arthur, who said theres nothing wrong with being truthful, said she wants her $350 back from the hotel.

Amanda Sweet, who currently owns the Abbey Inn with her husband, told The Associated Press they were taken "completely by surprise" by news of the lawsuit, and that they do not have a policy that charges guests for negative reviews.

"It's been a horrible 24 hours for us," Sweet said. "We've been pouring ourselves into making positive renovations, bringing this beautiful building back to life. This is our livelihood and we don't want it to go away."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour told an employee who claimed she was sexually harassed that "something like that doesn't happen to someone who looks like you," the accuser told Fox News Wednesday night.

Asmi Fathelbab also told "The Story with Martha MacCallum" that Sarsour warned her "that I will never work in New York City ever again for as long as she lives" if Fathelbab pressed her claims.

The alleged harassment occurred in 2009 while Fathelbab was working at the Brooklyn-based Arab American Association. Sarsour was executive director of the organization for 11 years before leaving her position earlier this year.

Fathelbab told The Daily Caller that Sarsour called her a liar and told her the man Fathelbab accused of harassing her "had the right to sue me for false claims" and "had the right to be anywhere in the building he wanted."

Sarsour responded to The Daily Caller story Monday with a Twitter post calling it "a new low."

"Every woman has a right to her story and I have a right to defend myself, my character and my commitment to women," Sarsour wrote.

Neither Sarsour nor the Arab American Association returned requests for comment from Fox News.

Fathelbab told MacCallum that she had come under attack on social media since The Daily Caller story was published.

"There's more body-shaming. Im being told that Im doing this for attention. Its politically charged, somehow," Fathelbab said. "I'm not really sure how thats possible because Im not doing this for any reason other than wanting my story out there."

Fathelbab added that Sarsour's defenders told Fathelbab she was setting herself "against Islam" by making her claims public.

"Ive studied Islam. Nowhere in there does it say that you cant say anything," Fathelbab said, "and nowhere in there does it say that  youre against the religion if you actually stand up for yourself."

However, Fathelbab said she was not surprised by the backlash.

"Youre re-enacting it, telling me that Im not a good Muslim, this never happened, Im making up stories," said Fathelbab, addressing her social media critics. "Those are [Sarsour's] words during that whole entire ordeal. So now, everybodys just re-tweeting it. Theyre just doing the same thing that she did."
I usually don't write a letter to the editor. However, the letter criticizing Republic Services, Mayor Konopa and Bill Tally failed to see the goodness in our community (Mailbag, Dec. 12).

Mr. Tally picks up trash as he walks North Albany neighborhoods and Highway 20. God bless him! He noticed paper flying out of some Republic Services trash trucks as they head to Coffin Butte to empty there. He contacted the company and has since noticed that they are really trying to do a better job. He said our Mayor Konopa was supportive and helpful.

The writer of the negative letter should instead be so grateful that a large company like Republic Services is responsive to customer concerns, that our mayor is accessible for even small problems, and that that there are still remarkable citizens like Mr. Tally.

There should be joy in knowing all the good in our small town. How lucky we are to live in Albany, Oregon!

Mary H. Rose

Albany (Dec. 18)
Rules cited in the dismissal of an Atlanta fire chief that require city employees to get pre-clearance for outside employment are not constitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

But U.S. District Judge Leigh May ruled in the city's favor on a number of other constitutional issues raised by former chief Kelvin Cochran in a lawsuit filed against the city and Mayor Kasim Reed.

Cochran's dismissal in January 2015 came after he wrote a book called "Who Told You That You Were Naked?" for a men's Bible study. Cochran self-published the book in late 2013 and gave it to some subordinates at work.

The book includes passages that say gay people and those who have sex outside of marriage are "naked," meaning they are wicked, ungodly sinners. Cochran claimed he was fired because of his religious beliefs.

May wrote that the city did not retaliate against Cochran in violation of his rights to free speech or free association. The judge also wrote that the city did not discriminate against him based on his viewpoint, did not violate his right to free exercise of religion, and did not violate his due process rights.

But she ruled that the city's pre-clearance rules could stifle speech unconstitutionally and that they failed to define the standards to be used when judging a potential conflict of interest.

An assistant chief who had been given a copy of the book raised concerns in October 2014 about some of the book's statements on homosexuality, especially since Cochran clearly identified himself in the book as Atlanta's fire chief.

The following month, Reed suspended Cochran for 30 days without pay to discipline him for selling his book without providing proper notice or obtaining written approval, city attorneys have said. The city law department also opened an investigation into whether Cochran had improperly imposed his views in the workplace. Cochran was told not to make public comments on his suspension, city attorneys have said.

But Cochran spoke out, saying publicly that he'd been fired for his religious beliefs. He also helped organize a public relations campaign to challenge his suspension, leading to the mayor receiving more than 17,000 angry emails, some of them using racial slurs, city attorneys have said.

Both sides claimed victory Wednesday.

"The significance of this claim is actually very broad because it has profound implications for other employees in the city of Atlanta," said Kevin Theriot, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Cochran.

May's ruling shows that it's unconstitutional to require a city employee to get pre-clearance to write a book or speak outside of work and to get paid for that effort, Theriot said in a phone interview.

"Now that rule is gone," he said. "So I think from a broad, First Amendment, free speech perspective, this is a very significant ruling for the employees of Atlanta."

Theriot said the parties now need to get together to decide what is owed Cochran in terms of damages on the claims he won and present an order to the judge.

But the city sees May's ruling differently. City attorney Jeremy Berry said in an emailed statement that the city looks forward to demonstrating at trial the need for and propriety of its conflict of interest and outside employment pre-clearance rules.

Berry also said the ruling signifies that Reed acted lawfully and appropriately in firing Cochran. He applauded the judge for deciding in the city's favor on major constitutional issues.

"This lawsuit was never about religious beliefs or the First Amendment," Berry said. "Rather, it is an employment matter involving an executive in charge of more than 1,100 firefighters and tasked to lead by example."
A veterinarian in Louisiana was arrested Tuesday after allegedly shooting her neighbors dog in the back of the head, reports said.

Kelly Folse, who worked at the Abadie Veterinary Hospital, was arrested by authorities in connection to the death of a 15-month-old American bulldog, News Channel 10 reported.

She was reportedly charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, illegal discharge of a weapon near a school and unrelated drug charges.

Folse lived next door to the dogs owner, Stacey Fitzner, and had previously complained through heated text messages about the bulldog, Bruizer, and his barking, News Channel 10 said. She also told investigators that she thought the dog was aggressive, although neighbors discredited that claim, WDSU reported.

SEA LIONS TERRORIZE SAN FRANCISCO BAY SWIMMERS IN SPATE OF ATTACKS

On Dec. 13, Fitzner told News Channel 10 that she left her dog, Bruizer, outside in the yard while she went to work. Later in the day, her mother was reportedly picking up her niece and nephew from a neighboring school when she saw the dog in the yard, not moving.

Her and my nephew found the dog with blood surrounding him, Fitzner told the outlet. Someone had to come up behind him and put the gun to him and shoot him.

After realizing hed been shot in the head, Fitzner and her brother rushed the dog to the vet, which happened to be the one where her neighbor, who was off that day, worked, News Channel 10 said.

DOGS WENT THROUGH DRASTIC LIFESTYLE CHANGES BEFORE VIRGINIA WOMANS DEADLY MAULING, CERTIFIED TRAINER SAYS

While they reportedly thought Bruizer had a fighting chance, vets were ultimately forced to put the young dog down the next day due to his injuries.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office was notified of the incident and considered Folse a suspect because of the text messages, WDSU said. Upon investigating her home, authorities reportedly found two different types of drugs that she allegedly acquired through veterinary prescriptions.

Folses employer confirmed to News Channel 10 that she was fired from her job as a result of the incident.

Were shocked and disgusted of the actions of her, Dr. Scott Abadie said. Its just not something you expect of anybody, especially a vet.
A mom in Texas said she had to call in a favor with Santa after inadvertently baking her kids Elf on the Shelf in the oven.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Brittany Mease told the internet about her Mom of the year award moment when she turned on the oven, forgetting that she put Elfis, the families Elf on the Shelf, in there to hide.

Although shes not a fan of the holiday tradition, Mease said, I suck it up every year for her kids. But this year, Elfis appeared with a broken leg. Seizing the moment, she told her kids that Elfis' leg was in a cast and he had to stay on bedrest for the next 14 days.

[[Mom win, right? she wrote. I just got a free pass to not worry about moving that creepy guy for TWO WEEKS! Heck ya!]]

RESTAURANT PATRONS ARE LEAVING HUGE TIPS FOR THEIR SERVERS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

But after 14 days came and went, Mease said she forgot about Elfis. And eventually, her kids realized.

The other day the kids noticed that it had been longer than 14 days and he hadnt moved so when they werent looking I grabbed him off the kitchen counter and quickly tossed him in the oven until I could move him later and not raise any suspicion, she wrote. I seriously forgot I put the freaking elf in the freaking oven [face palm emoji].

A few days later, Mease said she was heating up food for her kids when she realized what shed done.

I started to smell something REALLY funky and thats when all hell broke loose and I broke my sons heart.

She shouted to her friend for help, saying the elf was in the oven. But she said her son heard and excitedly dashed in the room, happy that Elfis was back, until his world fell apart.

SALVATION ARMY HALTS SOME KETTLE LOCATIONS IN WISCONSIN AFTER WORKERS THREATENED AT KNIFE POINT

Luckily, Mease had another elf and made a phone call to Santa, in front of the kids, to ask him to pick up Elfis for repairs.

Ya know, since he is unable to make it to the North Pole to get fixed because his head literally popped off from being too hot once we pulled him out of the oven and his feet are completely melted off, she wrote.

The situation seemed to end well enough, though. Mease said her daughter, Ily, was glad the elf is gone because now he cant tell on her. And her son came out of the room last night with a note he wrote saying that it would be safest that he stays in one spot, she told KLTV.
Federal prosecutors have charged a dozen reputed gang members with terrorizing suburban New York City, including killing two teenagers.

An indictment unsealed Thursday says the members of a street gang called "The Goonies" or "The Goon Squad" waged turf wars in Mount Vernon, New York, through violence and murder with illegal guns and sold drugs.

They also are accused of wire and bank fraud and have been charged with conspiracy, racketeering, murder and other crimes. They have been accused of killing a rival gang member and another young man, both 13 years old.

According to the indictment, the gang promoted themselves on Facebook and YouTube, proclaiming membership in the gang and photographing themselves with other gang members. They flashed signs and wore certain clothing that said "Goonies" or "GS."
The folks in a University of Minnesota department may be getting a lump of coal in their stockings this year for some Holiday guidelines given to students in the name of inclusivity.

Becket, a nonprofit law firm that defends religious liberty, awarded the universitys College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences Respecting Religious Diversity event as this years lowest (dis)honor, the 2017 Ebenezer Award, for the most ridiculous affront to the Christmas and Hanukkah season.

SANTA, CHRISTMAS TREES NOT APPROPRIATE FOR HOLIDAYS, STUDENTS TOLD AT UNIVERSITY EVENT

The event deemed Christmas trees, Menorahs, and the colors red and green and silver and blue as inappropriate for college campuses during the holiday season.

The document was a conversation piece to facilitate dialogue at a voluntary, internal college event on respecting religious diversity in the workplace, university spokesperson Emma Bauer told Fox News.

It makes little sense to celebrate religious diversity by banning any sense of actual holiday celebration, said Becket Executive Director Montse Alvarado. And what do they have against color schemes, are we living in communist Cuba?

JINGLE BELLS ROOTED IN RACISM, BOSTON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR SAYS

Previous winners include the American Humanist Society, who tried to stop schools from sending care packages to children in need, and the Department of Veteran Affairs which banned employees at its Salem, Virginia facility from saying Merry Christmas to veterans.

A hearty bah-humbug toast to university officials who make Christian and Jewish students feel like second class citizens at a time that should be full of brotherly love and giving, said Alvarado.

SNOWFLAKES AT CHRISTMAS? SOME UNIVERSITIES OFFER NO SAFE SPACE FOR SANTA  OR JESUS

Becket points out that the Supreme Court has long upheld government holiday displays that send a message of pluralism and freedom of belief during the holiday season, including displays that have distinctive religious elements.

Becket believes bureaucrats are to blame for the absurd results.

Although public opinion and the law are on the side of religious holidays, some bureaucrats insist on scrubbing the public square of any religious references.
An old dog who was discovered in Brooklyn tied up in a garbage bag with his mouth taped shut is expected to make a full recovery.

Saint Vincent, believed to be a shepherd mix around 10 years old, was rescued Tuesday after someone found him wrapped in garbage bags next to a garbage can and contacted authorities, according to the New York Post.

He was deliberately put there to die, Carla Mohan, of the animal rescue organization New York Bully Crew, told 1010 WINS. He was left there to suffocate.

The dog, reported to be docile and friendly, wasnt only recently abused, a veterinarian told WABC  he was subjected to a life of it.

"This didn't happen overnight or over the course of a couple of days, this is sustained neglect and abuse, just basically leaving him lying in his own urine and feces to the point that he's developed massive infections," Dr. Levitzke said.

Although Saint Vincent seems to be doing alright after his rescue, when he was found abandoned in the bag, he was barely breathing.

"For anyone to just tape this dogs muzzle shut theyre monsters."  Craig Fields, New York Bully Crew

He was bleeding from the nose, like I said, his mouth was taped up, Mohan told WABC. He was covered in urine. He has complete urine scalds all over his body.

Doctors believe Saint Vincent couldve been stuck with mouth taped shut in the garbage bag for a week.

Hes been laying down for a long time so he has sores on his body, he has urine scald, Dr. Philip Fico, of the Veterinary Emergency & Referral Group where St. Vincent is being treated, told 1010. Were addressing those wounds, weve shaved down the hair taking care of the skin and things that have broken down from the urine.

Craig Fields, also of the New York Bully Crew, told the New York Post Saint Vincents treatment was just straight abuse. I cant even wrap my head around it, how anyone could do this to a dog. For anyone to just tape this dogs muzzle shut theyre monsters. Theres a monster out there right now that did this.

But despite what hes gone through, Dr. Fico says Saint Vincent is doing OK. Hes hanging in there. However, Fields told the Post the dog has tumors and is undergoing medical tests to determine why his back legs arent working.

Its a heartbreaking story to see things like this and I wish we could say that its the first time. You just wonder how someone can do something like that, Dr. Fico said. He had to have been so scared to sit there and have someone do that to him.

INSTAGRAM COMBATS ANIMAL CRUELTY WITH NEW SELFIE WARNING SYSTEM

Rescuers hope those responsible for Saint Vincents abuse are recognized or admit to their crimes so there can be some justice, Dr. Levitzke said.

The New York Bully Crew hopes to erase the horrific thing that just happened to him so that is not his last memory, according to Mohan. He deserves better. He deserves more. He deserves unconditional love.

The Crew also plans to find a loving family for the dog once hes medically cleared.

A reward of $4,500 for anyone with information leading to an arrest of whoever abused Saint Vincent is being offered by authorities.
The Orlando Fire Department was called in to rescue a man from the middle of Lake Eola earlier this month after he ingested too much MDMA, or ecstasy, and paddled out to be with the swans.

L.A. FISHERMAN CATCHES 50-POUND CARP IN MIDDLE OF CITY

Kyle Thurston, 36, had consumed a large quantity of the party drug on Dec. 15 before stealing a swan boat and paddling out to the Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain in the middle of the lake, according to a police report obtained by Orlando Weekly.

Thurston, however, forgot to tie up the boat upon reaching the fountain and soon found himself stranded.

"Before Thurston was transported he explained he ingested a large quantity of Molly (MDMA) and wanted to be with the swans because they didnt judge him," the police report said.

Officers responded when Thurston began calling for help from the middle of the lake at approximately 4 a.m. At the time, he was also wearing a life preserver that he had found on the boat, Click 6 Orlando reported.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Following his rescue, Thurston was transported to a local hospital for treatment.

Orlando Weekly also noted that the Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain doubles as a Pokemon "gym" for players of "Pokemon Go."
Authorities in Cleveland say a suspected gang member who is black walked up to a white woman he didn't know, accused her of being a white supremacist and punched her without any provocation.

Cleveland.com reports police arrested 24-year-old Jermaine Hines Jr. early Thursday on a felony ethnic intimidation charge. Online court records don't indicate whether Hines has an attorney who could comment on the accusations.

Authorities say Hines walked up to a 51-year-old woman on a Cleveland street in August, punched her and knocked her to the ground. Documents say Hines accused the woman of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and called her a white supremacist.

A Cleveland police detective said in court documents that Hines is a member of a street gang.

___

Information from: cleveland.com, http://www.cleveland.com
A homeless man who South Carolina police are praising for jumping into action to assist an officer in an arrest this week said Wednesday things were going to get ugly so something had to be done.

Cray Turmon was captured on video this week tackling a man who was wrestling with a police officer outside a gas station in Columbia.

"She's a woman slammed to the ground and she's an officer...I saw her belongings hit the ground, Turmon told WACH. She'd done everything she could...It was going to get ugly, ya know? Something had to be done.

Columbia Police said the suspect who was arrested, Donald Songster Brown, is accused of punching a woman inside the gas station and threatening to harm her and another person with a knife. The 39-year-old is facing multiple charges, including attempted murder, armed robbery and kidnapping.

"Someone's got to stand up. Someone told me if you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything. So I stood for something yesterday," Turmon, who is living at a local homeless shelter, told WACH on Wednesday. He said he hopes his story can make a difference.

SOUTH CAROLINA OFFICER MAKING A TOUGH ARREST GETS A HELPING HAND

In a video of the incident, the police officer is heard telling the man to get on the ground as she pulls out a taser. The man does not obey and gets a jolt, but continues to tussle with the officer until Turmon steps in.

Turmon is working to get his life back on track after former DUI arrests caused him to lose his drivers license, job and home, WLTX reported.

"Someone's got to stand up. Someone told me if you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything. So I stood for something yesterday."  Cray Turmon

Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook honored Turmon on Tuesday with a certificate for his "extraordinary actions to preserve life and aid public safety.

Often times, when you least expect it, an invaluable gift comes when you need it the most, the department wrote in a Facebook post.
Fred Mills was about 13 miles short of finishing the inaugural Cycle Oregon ride, Salem to Brookings in 1988, when the burning vehicle pulled over in front of him.

It was a van pulling a travel trailer, and the undercarriage of the van was on fire. The panicked driver got out, yelling that his wife was still in the car.

Mills got off his bike and ran to the van. The woman said she couldn't move, so he reached in and pulled her out as the flames licked over his legs.

He managed to get her a safe distance from the vehicle  "Once I got her out, it just exploded," he remembered  and both of them were taken to the hospital.

"I never finished that ride," Mills recalled.

Mills received the Carnegie Medal of Honor for that act of heroism, but he gives the credit to an organization rather than to himself as an individual.

At that point, Mills, then 56, had been involved with the Boy Scouts of America for more than 40 years. He credits his Scout training for kicking in at that moment, helping him show leadership and service in a moment of crisis.

Now closing in on 86 early next year, Mills has just signed up for what will be his 72nd year in Scouting. And he has no plans to step down anytime soon.

In his seven decades of involvement, Mills, of Albany, has earned Scouting's highest honors.

He achieved the rank of Eagle, the highest rank possible as an active Boy Scout and something only about 4 percent of Scouts stay on to do.

As an adult volunteer leader, he has been awarded the District Award of Merit for his continuous service; the Order of the Arrow, which is equivalent to the Boy Scouts' National Honor Society; the Silver Beaver, given to Scouters of exceptional character who have provided distinguished service within a council; and countless"mentor pins" from grateful Scouts he has assisted over the years.

On Tuesday, Scoutmaster Don Whittaker of Troop 100, presented him with yet another award: a Scout coin bearing the motto, "Once an Eagle, always an Eagle."

Tuesday was Troop 100's first reunion party, organized by Whittaker to bring in alumni to reconnect with each other and with current Scouts.

The evening event included skits, socializing and a couple of friendly competitions  four Eagle Scout alums won the outdoor cooking competition, while a father-son team of an alum and a current Scout beat everyone in the lashing competition  but it was also an excuse, Whittaker said, to "sneak in a little bit of recognition for this guy here."

Between 125 and 150 people, including current and former Scouts and families, turned out to Eastside Christian Church on Tuesday for the Troop 100 event. The recognition portion of it was to be simple, but hopefully significant, Whittaker said.

"The number of lives that Fred has had a significant, positive effect on is immeasurable," he told the Democrat-Herald. "Anything we do would pale in comparison to the impact he has had on the community and country."

Mills didn't grow up with Scouting. He joined at age 14 when someone opened a troop in his hometown of Independence and "all my friends disappeared."

It was something new in town, so the boys were intrigued, he recalled. "To get back my friends, I went down and joined the Scout troop."

Unlike some of his friends, however, Mills stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

He stayed through his Eagle ranking, which he received in 1948. He stayed as an assistant troop leader in Klamath Falls while he studied auto body and fender repair at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls in the early 1950s. He continued to work with Scouts there even while also volunteering for the local fire department.

Mills stayed registered but had to put active Scout work on hiatus when the Army came calling after graduation. The Korean war ended during his first week in basic training, but he wasn't free to go just yet.

"The military looked at us and said, 'We gotcha, what do we do with ya?'" Mills remembered. The answer was to send him to Maryland and then to Huntsville, Alabama, where he studied guided missiles, and then to White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, where he worked with the missiles more closely.

"They'd fire one, we'd go out and scoop up the pieces," Mills said.

After White Sands came Fort Bliss, Texas, where Mills continued to work on missiles. He also joined the fire department there, a half-civilian, half-military organization that put the firefighters on standby anytime a missile was to be fired.

After his discharge, however, Mills moved back to Independence briefly and then to Sacramento. He and his wife, Beverly, whom he married in 1955, had a growing family by then and work in the body and fender industry just wasn't enough to keep it going, he said.

In Sacramento, Mills worked for the aerospace industry, right back with missiles. It was the highlight of his working life, and he still loves to see the Titan missiles on display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville.

Sacramento was also where Mills reconnected with Scouting. Sons Marty and Tim were old enough to be involved by then, so Mills was assistant Scout leader for their troops. (They, and younger brother Greg, eventually all would go on to become Eagles, as would four grandsons.)

The Mills family stayed in Sacramento for about a decade, then came to Albany in 1968, where the rare metals industry was just moving into full swing. Mills worked for Gemini, a machine shop that did metal work for Wah Chang, making the tubes for nuclear reactors at Hanford and other plants.

Mills was volunteering with Troop 91 at that point, but it eventually joined forces with Troop 100, which can trace its origins to 1922. The boys met at the former Grand Prairie School for a time, but when it closed, they needed a new place to go.

Mills was part of Eastside Christian Church, which was moving from its own location near what is now Elmer's Restaurant to property it owned on Grand Prairie Road. Mills had agreed to be on the building committee, but when he was asked to serve again after the first building was completed, he said he would if they met a condition.

"I said my Scout troop needs a place to meet. From now on," he told them. "They said no problem.

"We're still there."

And, as it happens, so is Mills. "I just signed up for another year," he said. "Starts in January."

Scouting has undergone changes in the seven decades since Mills first joined. Eagle Scout projects weren't required when he reached his rank, for one thing. For another, the BSA recently announced it will officially invite girls to join Cub Scout packs, something Mills himself doesn't really favor  he'd just as soon the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts kept their own individual identities.

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is what Scouting can bring to a young life, he said.

"I just saw something in it that meant more than just being a kid. I could see something in it," he said.

It wasn't just the outdoor activities, although Mills loved hiking, camping and everything else that went along with being a Scout. It wasn't just the learning of new skills, although he loved that, too, and still believes a person should never stop.

It was the leadership opportunities, he said, and the way Scouting changes mindsets.

"It gave me the confidence in myself to be able to do that little bit extra," he said.

Once, on a hike, he recalled, a fellow Scout had an asthma attack. Mills and his cousin took the boy's backpack, splitting its load between them, and made sure he got back down the trail unharmed.

"That scared me, and we had to react," Mills recalled. "That Scout training: You react to the circumstances."

It was that kind of training that kicked in, he said, when the van caught fire. It's the kind of service Scouts learn to make a priority in their lives, inside and outside Scouting.

It's that training that had a powerful influence on Mills' family, says daughter Jeanie Mowery, herself a lifelong Scouting volunteer and the mother of Eagle Scout sons. "Scouting has been his service all his life," she said of her father.

In Whittaker's opinion, it's that training that helped Mills become who he is, and it's what he wants Scouting to provide for the leaders of the future.

The boys of Troop 100, Whittaker said, "are turning into the folks we all look up to. It's an outdoor laboratory to teach them to be good people."
The ACLU and a law firm filed a lawsuit this week on behalf of a California woman who was detained by immigration authorities despite being an American citizen for nearly 20 years.

Guadalupe Plascencia, 60, of San Bernardino, was arrested in March on a bench warrant for failing to testify in a 10-year-old court case, the Los Angeles Times reported.

When leaving jail the following day, she was arrested by immigration agents. She spent the rest of the day in custody. After her daughter arrived with her passport, she was released.

On Tuesday she filed a lawsuit alleging that she had been detained without probable cause because of her ethnicity and that her release from the detention center had been deliberately delayed so that immigration agents had time to pick her up.

It is against department policy for sheriffs officials to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about a detainees immigration status, San Bernardino Sherriff Cpl. Ruben Perez told the Times.

An ICE spokeswoman said at the time that the agency would never knowingly take enforcement action against or detain someone if there was evidence indicating the person was a U.S. citizen.
An illegal immigrant who came to the United States at 17, then was ticketed for deportation after being convicted of having a stolen or falsified ID, is hiding from the feds in a Colorado church -- the second house of worship to offer her 'sanctuary' from the law.

Ingrid Latorre addressed the media and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder congregation at a news conference Saturday.

Thank you so much for being here today for me, Latorre said through an interpreter, reports the Daily Camera. Thank you for opening the door for me and my family.

Latorre, 33, had been taking sanctuary at a church in Fort Collins, but she told the assembled congregation and press that it was hard because her family lives in west Denver.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CAN RETAIN DACA DOCUMENTS, SUPREME COURT RULES

Now, I can see them every day, she said at the press conference, adding that the previous arrangement was particularly difficult for her oldest son, who goes to school in west Denver.

The group that first offered Latorre sanctuary, Mountain View Friends Meeting, said that she did not know the documents were stolen and they believe she was misled into a guilty plea by her previous legal representation.

We believe she received ineffective counsel at that time, which has affected her negatively and unfairly, David Poundstone, of Mountain View, told the Daily Camera.

Although Latorres attempt to get the conviction overturned failed, as did her request to have Colorados governor grant her a pardon, she has not given up and wants to stay in America.

Now, my focus is really going to be on my case, she said. It's at a little bit of a standstill.

FEDS RELEASE ONE OF TWO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO SOUGHT ABORTION

The church voted to open its doors to immigrants seeking sanctuary in October. Most congregation members supported the decision -- but a preschool that had been leasing space from the church shut down last month, saying parents withdrew more than half of the students due to security concerns.

It is a key part of our religious exercise, Rev. Kelly Dignan told the Daily Camera. "When sanctuary is offered, there is no intent to hide a person's whereabouts. We are open and honest with the authorities regarding our activities and intentions and the fact that we feel we are performing our religious duty.

Congregation member Steve Todd told the Daily Camera that he supports the churchs efforts.

"Our immigration system is a hot mess. We need to fix that. And if this can help [Latorre] personally, then that's a good thing, Todd said. If this can bring about some community awareness and can help inform public opinion about comprehensive immigration reform, then that is also a good thing."
Six people, charged in connection to the violent protests during Inauguration Day events on Jan. 20, were acquitted by a jury Thursday.

The six individuals were the first of more than 150 to face trial in a series of charges filed by the government. They were charged with counts of rioting and destruction of property.

Government attorneys chose to not prosecute the protesters for individual acts of violence or vandalism, but rather attempted to argue that they were guilty of supporting and providing cover as others smashed windows in downtown Washington D.C. and set fire to a parked limo.

HUNDREDS OF PROTESTERS ARRESTED IN INAUGURATION DAY CLASHES

The verdict, reached after two days of deliberations in a Washington Superior Court, was a setback for the government ahead of a series of other similar trials in 2018. Prosecutors utilized a variety of videos, provided by security cameras on the scene, police helicopters and social media posts, as evidence. They also interviewed dozens of witnesses, but none who could identify any of the defendants as perpetrators.

Those acquitted include Alexei Wood, 37, Michelle Macchio, 26, Christina Simmons, 20, Brittne Lawson, 27, Oliver Harris, 28, and Jennifer Armento, 38, according to WTOP and The Washington Post.

Armento told The Post that the jurys decision shows the country that the jury was unwilling to do what the government wanted them to do, which was criminalize dissent.

Harris, who described his trial experience as repeatedly traumatizing, said the outcome was the only just verdict, The Post reported.

ESPNS JEMELE HILL DOUBLES DOWN ON ANTI-TRUMP RHETORIC: I DONT TAKE IT BACK

Before the verdict was reached, presiding Judge Lynn Leibovitz tossed a felony charge of inciting a riot. She determined that the charge, the most serious aimed at the defendants, did not have enough supporting evidence to justify it.

As evidence, the prosecution also used video supplied to them by Project Veritas, a controversial right-wing activist collective.

In the trial, prosecutors showed video from a pre-inauguration protest planning meeting that had been infiltrated by a Project Veritas operative. It showed organizers advising protesters on how to handle confrontations with the police, but contained no evidence of plans to commit violence or vandalism.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The city of Las Vegas has bumped up security along its famed Strip, installing 800 steel posts between the street and sidewalk in an effort to increase pedestrian safety.

Clark County finished the project on Wednesday, installing the bollards at seven different locations between Tropicana Avenue and Spring Mountain Road, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The county plans on adding 7,500 more posts by next year.

The posts can withstand a head-on collision from a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 mph, officials said.

The project comes as attacks on pedestrians have become a popular method of planned attacks across the world.

On Oct. 31, a suspect later identified as Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbekistan-born resident of New Jersey, was accused of killing eight people in an ISIS-inspired attack after driving a truck through a bike path in New York City. Saipov pleaded not guilty in November and awaits further court proceedings.

Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of an attack in Berlin in which a Tunisian asylum seeker, Anis Amri, hijacked a truck and drove it through a crowd of people at a Christmas market, killing 12. Amri was killed by police four days later.
A man heading to work on Monday thwarted an attempted rape after he tapped on a trucks window and spotted a 28-year-old woman in the back with her mouth covered with duct tape and fear in her eyes, leading him to contact police, officials said.

Taylor ONeill told FOX11 LA he was heading to work around 4:30 p.m. Monday when he drove down an alleyway in Santa Ana, but couldnt get past a pickup truck that was blocking the road. ONeill said he honked the horn, but the truck didnt move, prompting him to get out of his vehicle to confront the driver.

"When I tapped on the window [a woman] looked up and I could see the duct tape on her face and the fear in her eyes," O'Neill said.

"As soon as I walked up, knocked on the window, she had her mouth duct tapped and he was on he was on top of her in the passenger seat, ONeill told the 911 operator.

Police arrived and arrested Jorge Alejandro Cruz De Armas, 27, who had earlier offered the woman a ride to a Wells Fargo. Instead of heading to the bank, De Armas allegedly stopped at the alleyway and began attacking the woman after she refused to have sex with him. He began choking the woman and duct-taped her mouth to prevent her screams from being heard  until ONeill interrupted the alleged assault, police said.

The woman jumped out of the pickup truck and De Armas sped away, police said. But ONeill had his phone in his hand and snapped photos of the license plate.

"I had my phone in my left hand and I was able to open up my camera and take photos of his license plate as he drove off and I immediately called 911, ONeill recalled.

Police traced the license plate number and arrested De Armas on several charges, including assault with intent to commit rape. Authorities said they believe there were more victims and are asking anyone with information to come forward.
Family members of a Minneapolis man who has been behind bars for more than four years are hoping for a new trial after two jurors emerged saying that racist comments made during deliberations, casting the man as a banger from the hood, influenced their decision.

The convicted man, Michael Smith of Minneapolis, who previously served more than a decade in prison for third-degree murder, was sent back there in 2013 after he was found guilty of being an armed career criminal in possession of a firearm.

Look, he is a black person with a previous criminal record living in North Minneapolis, one juror said during deliberations years ago, according to the testimony of a foreman who appeared at a federal courthouse in St. Paul on Tuesday, Fox 9 reported. You know hes just a banger from the hood, so hes got to be guilty."

Two jurors said they were influenced by the comments, and Smith wound up in jail for a crime he maintains he did not commit, the station added.

A judge has set a hearing for early next year that could result in a new trial for Smith.

How can you send someone to jail based off the color of their skin? Smith's girlfriend, Nickole O'Neill, asked on Fox 9.

In the 2013 conviction, there was no evidence tying Smith to the gun he was accused of having -- for instance, fingerprints or DNA -- court documents said.

Smiths lawyer had argued that the issue came down to credibility, and whether to believe police or testimony from Smith and a local resident.

Smith was ultimately sentenced to 15 years in federal prison without parole under the Armed Career Criminal Act, City Pages reported. It added that he was convicted of third-degree murder in 2001, and he also served two prison stints from a pair of fourth-degree assault convictions in 2005 and 2006.

The 15-year sentence is the mandatory minimum length under the act, City Pages said.

The foreman said he has felt guilty about the case since the day it ended, and decided to come forward after reading a news story about a similar case in Colorado, Fox 9 reported.
Three masked men broke into the North Carolina home of NASCAR legend Richard Childress, who fired shots at them with his handgun, authorities said Wednesday.

Childress told police that he felt the only reason he and his wife were here today was because of God and the Second Amendment, WCNC-TV reported.

An alarm inside his home sounded when someone broke a window with a doorknob, the Greensboro News & Record reported, citing a news release from the Davidson County Sherriffs Office.

Police said that under the N.C. Castle Doctrine, people have the right to defend themselves against this type of intrusion, WCNC reported.

Officials said it does not appear that any of the suspects were injured, the station reported.

Deputies collected evidence that will be tested for DNA, the News & Record reported.

Childress has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those involved, the report said.
Professional racecar driver Scott Tucker and his accountant have been indicted on federal charges of failing to report millions in income from a payday lending business that has been ruled fraudulent.

The U.S. attorney's office in Kansas said Wednesday that Tucker, 55, of Leawood, Kansas, is charged with filing a false return and the accountant, W. Brett Chapin, 46, of Shawnee, Kansas, of aiding him.

Tucker is accused of orchestrating a sham sale of a payday loan servicing company to the Miami Tribe for $120,000. The indictment says Tucker continued to control the business and a new lending operation, although others were listed as owners.

The indictment says more than $117.5 million in payday lending income was not reported in 2009 and 2010 tax returns. Tucker, a former American Le Mans Series champion, used the payday lending money to fund the Level 5 Motorsports auto racing team.

Two months ago, federal jurors in New York found Tucker and his former lawyer, Timothy Muir, guilty of preying on vulnerable borrowers through a $2 billion payday loan business that charged 700 percent interest or more. Tucker's lawyers argued that the terms of the loans were known to customers.

That verdict followed a 2016 case in Nevada in which a federal judge ruled that Tucker and others deceived payday loan consumers and owed the Federal Trade Commission about $1.2 billion.

Tucker and Muir face as long as 20 years in prison on the most serious charges in the New York case. Tucker's payday lending businesses included Ameriloan, Cash Advance, One Click Cash, Preferred Cash Loans, United Cash Loans, US FastCash, 500 FastCash, Advantage Cash Services and Star Cash Processing.
Relatives of an Australian woman who was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer in July want a more rigorous probe after a prosecutor ripped investigators over the handling of the case.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman last week complained that he doesn't have enough evidence to charge Officer Mohamed Noor in the killing of the woman, Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Noor shot Damond in the alley behind her home in Minneapolis after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault, according to The Associated Press.

"We implore Mr. Freeman and the prosecutors office to continue to pursue a rigorous investigation and examination of evidence of the events leading up to Justine's death," her father, John Ruszczyk, told reporters in Sydney on Thursday. "We will wait patiently while this occurs, but insist that this investigation be done, and done right."

Freeman was captured on video at a Dec. 14 holiday reception expressing his frustration about the case. He said it wasn't his fault that there was not enough evidence to charge Noor, and that investigators "haven't done their job." Noor has declined to speak with investigators.

Ive got to have the evidence. And I dont have it yet. And let me just say, its not my fault, Freeman said in a video that was posted on Facebook. So if it isnt my fault, who didnt do their jobs? Investigators, and they dont work for me. And they havent done their job.

Freeman didn't name the investigators, but the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation. He has since said he didn't know he was being filmed and apologized for discussing the agency's work in a public setting.

Nevertheless, Damond's father applauded Freeman's candid statement. "At the least, Mr. Freeman's comments cast doubt on the description of how Justine's death occurred as it was initially put out by the BCA and the attorney for the officer driving the squad car," Ruszczyk said Thursday.

PROSECUTOR: DAMOND'S DEATH 'DIDN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN'

Ruszczyk added that family members were deeply concerned "about the possibility that the initial investigation was not done properly, and with the greatest integrity or sense of completeness."

The BCA said in a statement after the family's news conference that it is "committed to conducting a fair, impartial and thorough investigation as we gather the facts and evidence in this case." The agency said it will continue to work with prosecutors as needed to provide additional information as the case is being reviewed.

Freeman's office declined to comment on Ruszczyk's statement.

Noor, a Somali-born officer, was lauded by Minneapolis mayor and feted by the local community when he joined the force in 2015.

In the July encounter, he fired at Damond from the passenger seat of a squad car, across his partner and through the driver's window. The BCA said at the time that he was startled by a loud noise.

When she was shot, Damond was standing in her pajamas, talking to an officer on the driver's side of the car.

Noor did not activate his body camera -- as required by the department in all use-of-force scenarios -- and his patrol cars dashcam did not capture the pivotal moments, either.

Damond's death sparked protests and led to a police department shakeup, including the resignation of Chief Janee Harteau.

Local groups in recent weeks have questioned why charges have not been filed yet.

It is outrageous that five months after Justine was killed by officer Noor, her friends and family continue to mourn her loss and continue to wonder if they will ever see justice, but her known killer remains free to enjoy himself and his family, Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, told KMSP.

PROSECUTOR: INVESTIGATORS 'DIDN'T DO THEIR JOBS' IN PROBE OF DAMOND'S DEATH

Flanked by three other family members, and pausing occasionally to compose himself, Ruszczyk also said that after the shooting, authorities in Minneapolis had "looked me in the eye and said they were committed to getting to the truth of the event".

"Now I hear that the Hennepin county attorney, to whom the BCA handed its investigative results, says that the investigation has not been done to the prosecutor's satisfaction, or even to the expected levels of accuracy and thoroughness," Ruszczyk said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities say a NASCAR team owner shot at three people who broke into his North Carolina home.

News outlets report Davidson County Sheriff David Grice says no one was injured and nothing was taken from the house of Richard Childress on Sunday night.

Childress is CEO and chairman of Richard Childress Racing and a former NASCAR driver.

The sheriff's office says the three intruders had their faces covered and appeared to be armed. They broke a window next to a doorknob, activating an alarm.

Childress, who was home with his wife, grabbed his gun and fired at the intruders, who fled.

Grice says it's unclear if Childress was specifically targeted. He says the North Carolina Castle Doctrine permits people to defend themselves against this kind of intrusion.
Hundreds of students from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) are flying out to New York to help launch a global United Nations initiative to offer worldwide support to refugees.

The university has been asked by the UN to take the lead in engaging the higher education sector worldwide to be part of its Together campaign.

It is therefore flying more than 1,000 of its students out to New York to embark on a variety of academic trips and visits around the city, and inviting universities from across the world to a launch event at the UN headquarters on January 9.

The summit will encourage debate on the current challenges for safety and dignity faced by refugees in local communities and universities, led by DMU, will share ideas for practical ways they can use the skills, experience and voluntary power on their campuses to support those in need in their local areas.

A UN Together Action Charter will be created for partner universities to sign at the event.

DMU has been chosen for the work it currently does in its local Leicester community providing support to refugees and people of all abilities and backgrounds across society.

In illustration of this, while out in New York, DMU students are volunteering at the RDJ Refugee Shelter in the heart of New York City to help support homeless refugees and asylum seekers.

They will also help to set up and deliver a childrens party for families in need across Harlem and will put together toiletry kits to be given to refugees at the Catholic Charities Community Services in Downtown Manhattan.

DMU Vice-Chancellor Professor Dominic Shellard said: The Together campaign fits perfectly with DMUs vision and our belief in the important role of universities as a force for public good.

DMU defines itself by its diversity and being welcoming and open to all. We are a university which works for the public good and so we are hugely proud and excited to have been asked to lead this campaign.

We are looking forward to collaborating with universities from across the world to make a real difference to the way refugees are treated.

The UN Together launch on January 9 forms the culmination of a week-long visit by DMU, which will see more than 1,000 DMU students and staff participate in a packed programme of academic activities which will bring the learning on their courses to colourful life.

A total of 30 different courses have prepared tailored itineraries for the students, giving experiences which will enrich their classroom learning and improve their chances of getting the career they want.

Film Studies students will go to the Museum of the Moving Image to learn about the history of cinema, while Advertising and Branding students will visit Times Square to see how the biggest companies in the world grab the worlds eyes.

Forensic Science students will see inside the workings of the New York Supreme Court and Engineering students will get to understand construction on the biggest scale at the Skyscraper Museum and Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum.

Prof Shellard added: DMU has a truly international outlook and this is reflected in the 1,000 students and staff that will be taking part in this #DMUglobal visit to New York.

The trip will provide students on courses from right across the university a unique opportunity to enhance their academic studies with relevant and meaningful experiences at some of New Yorks most iconic locations and industries.

DMU has a proud history of helping less fortunate members of the community. In the last five years, DMUs volunteering programme has grown to deliver more than 120 activities and projects and almost 6,000 students have collectively contributed more than 85,100 hours of their time.
The mother of a Wisconsin girl who survived a stabbing in 2014 by her two classmates aiming to please the fictional horror character Slender Man said her daughter slept with scissors under her pillow following the brutal attack.

Stacie Leutner wrote in a victim impact statement that her daughter, Payton, was a different person following the brutal attack on May 31, 2014, FOX6 reported. Her classmates, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Leutner into the woods at a park in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha and attacked her. Investigators alleged Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on.

Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Mans proxies, or servants, and protect their families from him.

Leutner survived the attack by crawling out of the woods, where she was found by a passing bicyclist. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

PROSECUTORS: KEEP SLENDER MAN ATTACKER IN MENTAL HOSPITAL 40 YEARS

Stacie Leutner wrote in the letter that her daughter has very visible scars following the stabbings and had to undergo multiple surgeries. She said her daughter was reminded of the attack from the scars.

Beach vacations are harsh reminders that swimsuits arent made for young girls with 25 scars, Leutner wrote.

The mother wrote that her daughters emotional trauma would remain with her for a very long time. Leutner said Payton would not speak to anyone but her for months and was afraid to sleep in her own bed. She also said her daughter was afraid of the basement because the last time Morgan was at our house the basement rec room was where they played and slept.

Her daughter eventually slept in her own bed but always locked the windows and slept with scissors underneath her pillow.

WISCONSIN GIRL TO AVOID PRISON IN SLENDER MAN STABBING WITH PLEA AGREEMENT

However, the mother wrote her daughter recovered remarkably fast and participated in various activities and made new friends. Leutner wrote the attack affected her marriage and her son, Caden, was also impacted by the incident.

Leutner concluded the letter by revealing that her family did not object to plea deals for Geyser and Weier because she did not want her daughter to testify again since she has not spoken about the attack. The mother also said Payton felt placement in a mental health facility was the best disposition for both girls, but the girl still feared for her safety.

On Thursday, Weier was sentenced to 25 years in a mental health facility  the maximum punishment possible.

Geyser will be sentenced in February.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The second-largest wildfire in state history burning in Southern California may grow further as strong wind gusts return to the region Thursday, after firefighters spent the past two days trying to contain the gigantic blaze.

The wildfire, which began on Dec. 4., has burned 272,000 acres and destroyed at least 750 homes, is now 60 percent contained but still threatens 18,000 structures.

Firefighters have spent the past two days taking advantage of calmer weather to build containment lines and douse hot spots, but wind gusts from the north nearly 60 mph are expected to create extreme fire danger conditions for Santa Barbara County on Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

Firefighters so far have been able to secure the Santa Barbara side of the fire, Battalion Chief Chris Childers of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said during a community meeting on Wednesday.

The wind test is coming, Childers said. It will be the test to see if we have done everything correct.

Ventura County, where the fire initially began, is forecast to experience 40 to 50 mph winds on Thursday and Friday. Officials have still not determined what sparked the blaze.

THOMAS FIRE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOINS LIST OF DESTRUCTIVE BLAZES IN THE STATE

"If there's an ember that's been there for a day or two that's still glowing, that can be a real risk if the winds start blowing," fire information officer Brandon Vaccaro told the Associated Press.

Fire crews are stationed once again to provide structure protection above Montecito and other hillside communities in Santa Barbara County, where the last round of heavy gusts revived the flames and forced new evacuations last weekend

Some residents watched from afar at hotels and evacuation centers, while others are waiting in their homes and hoping for the best.

Tiffany Fariseo, who returned home Wednesday for the first time in a week, told the Los Angeles Times a power outage had spoiled her food, including two turkeys she had frozen for Christmas dinner.

This really put us behind, she told the newspaper. When you live paycheck to paycheck, this impacts you a lot harder.

SANTA ANA WINDS: WHAT ARE THEY?

Katy and Bob Zappala have stayed in their home in Santa Barbara, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, despite an evacuation order that's been in place since Saturday.

"Our cars are packed, we have all our clothes and jewelry, so we're ready to leave at a moment's notice should we have to," Katy Zappala, 74, told the AP Wednesday.

The Zappalas and their cat, Madeline, haven't left home since the evacuation order was issued because authorities wouldn't allow them back in. They're starting to run out of food and are hoping that if they make it through the next wave of winds, the ordeal will be over.

"You're always nervous when the winds come up," Zappala said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A woman was arrested Thursday after she allegedly stabbed her friend to death in a Texas apartment and snatched her 6-week-old baby girl in an attempt to pass the child off as her own after suffering a miscarriage, police said.

Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez was arrested and charged with murder in the death of Carolina Flores, 33, who was found with multiple stab wounds in a Houston apartment, Police Chief Art Acevedo said in a news conference on Thursday. Shamali Flores was reported missing Tuesday after her mothers body was discovered in their apartment. The 6-week-old was taken from the home.

Alvarez had been friends with Flores, the mother of Shamali Flores, and the family for about five years. Alvarez was pregnant and was due in January before she suffered a miscarriage that she kept a secret. On Tuesday, she allegedly went to Flores home and killed the 33-year-old before taking the infant.

[Alavarez] was pregnant, she was due in January. She lost the baby, she did not share the fact that she lost the baby with anyone. She continued to pretend she was pregnant and at one point she had people believe she had given birth to the baby and she was in the hospital, Acevedo said.

SLENDER MAN STABBING VICTIM SLEPT WITH SCISSORS UNDER HER PILLOW, MOTHER SAYS

Shamali was found in a southwest Houston apartment early Thursday morning and appeared to be unharmed. She was taken to the hospital as a precaution.

"She appears unharmed and is being check at an area hospital as a precaution, police tweeted earlier.

The babys father, Marcos Mariano Thomas Palacios, 34, has been cooperating with police and insisted he was not involved in the murder. He has not been charged in the case.

But Acevedo added, I cant say 100 percent were gonna clear him.

Police initially believed Shamali was with her father after an Amber Alert was issued for the baby.
One of two Wisconsin girls who attempted to kill a classmate in 2014 in an effort to please the fictional horror character Slender Man" has been sentenced.

Anissa Weier, 16, was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in a mental health facility  the maximum punishment possible.

She pleaded guilty in August to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but claimed she wasn't responsible for her actions because she was mentally ill. A jury agreed with her a month later.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Weier to 25 years in a psychiatric institution, retroactive to the date of the crime  meaning she would be institutionalized until age 37.

Weier, along with Morgan Geyser, lured classmate Payton Leutner into a wooded park in Waukesha in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier encouraged her, investigators said.

Leutner crawled out of the woods and a bicyclist found her. All three girls were 12 years old at the time of the attack.

SLENDER MAN STABBING VICTIM SLEPT WITH SCISSORS UNDER HER PILLOW, MOTHER SAYS

Leutner's mother sent the judge a letter this week detailing that the 2014 attack "has defined our lives," and that Leutner still fears for her life.

"She will struggle with the events of that day and physical and emotional scars it left for the rest of her life," Leutner's mother wrote.

Both Weier and Geyser told authorities they felt they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Man's "proxies," or servants, and protect their families from him.

Weier apologized before her sentencing, telling the court: "I do hold myself accountable for this and that I will do whatever I have to do to make sure I don't get any sort of delusion or whatever again."

"I want everybody involved to know I deeply regret everything that happened that day. I know that nothing I say is going to make this right and nothing I say is going to fix what I broke," Weier said.

Weier's attorney argued her client shouldn't be hospitalized past her 25th birthday. She played a video in court in which her father claimed Weier has "grown mentally and physically" and added that "she knows what she did was wrong."

Geyser, the girl who did the stabbing, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide with the agreement that she isn't criminally responsible and shouldn't go to prison. She will be sentenced in February, and prosecutors have asked that she be given at least 40 years in a mental hospital.

"Slender Man" started with an online post in 2009, as a mysterious specter whose image people edit into everyday scenes of children at play. He is typically depicted as a spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He was regarded by his devotees as alternately a sinister force and an avenging angel.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Mexican authorities have detained a former official of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party in a corruption case involving a now-fugitive ex-governor.

Alejandro Gutierrez is reportedly suspected of participating in a scheme to divert about 240 million pesos ($12 million) in public funds for political campaigning.

Gov. Javier Corral of the northern border state of Chihuahua said Wednesday in statements on social media that Gutierrez was arrested in the morning by federal and state police in Chihuahua.

Corral says the arrest "contributes to clearing up the crimes of political corruption that have been imputed to ex-Gov. Cesar Duarte."

He adds that the case involved the alleged diversion of public money to the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 2016 electoral campaign.

Duarte has denied wrongdoing.
Three North Koreans  a soldier and two others  defected to South Korea this week and the South has fired warning shots at Northern guards searching for its latest defector, according to a report out Wednesday.

A low-ranking soldier who defected to the South was spotted in front of a guard post just after 8 a.m. Thursday after crossing through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Yonhap News Agency reported, citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

No shots were fired as the soldier moved across country lines, and there was no unusual movement detected coming from North Korea, according to the report.

However, Yonhap reports that South Korean military members fired 20 warning shots at border guards from North Korea who approached the military demarcation line (MDL) looking for the defector around 9:30 a.m.

Several gunshots were heard from the North roughly 40 minutes after South Korea's warning shots, an official told the news agency.

The soldiers intentions are being investigated.

Two other North Koreans aboard a "non-powered" fishing boat defected to South Korea on Wednesday, a Unification Ministry official reportedly said.

The pair, according to Yonhap, was discovered in the East Sea by a naval patrol plane and the men expressed their desire to defect from the North.

SOUTH KOREA TAUNTS NORTH KOREA OVER DEFECTING SOLDIER BY BROADCASTING NEWS THROUGH LOUDSPEAKERS, REPORT SAYS

The defection comes more than a month after another soldier from North Korea  identified by his surname, Oh  was shot five times when he bolted from his guard post toward South Korea on Nov. 13.

Video footage of Oh's defection shows the 24-year-old soldier sprinting for the South as North Korean soldiers begin running after him. He then falls into a pile of leaves against a small wall before being dragged to safety by South Korean troops.

Oh underwent two surgeries at Ajou University Hospital in South Korea, where it was discovered he had an enormous number of parasites slithering in his body, including an 11-inch long worm entrenched in his digestive tract.

Fox News' Katherine Lam contributed to this report.
Catalans were set to vote Thursday in a highly contested regional election that follows months of unrest and a political standoff against Spain's central government over the region's bid for independence.

But few believe the vote will heal the polarized region.

The new election  to elect 135 representatives to the regional assembly after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked the Catalan cabinet and dissolved the parliament in October  was called by authorities in Madrid as a way to suppress a separatist revolt in Spains northeastern region.

Fugitive and jailed separatist candidates, who are able to campaign only through video calls or calling in to a radio station from jail, will compete against local lawmakers eager to preserve the union and claim to be the only chance for Catalans to return to stability and prosperity.

Yet just two months ago, Catalans believed they had witnessed the birth of a new republic after a shock referendum that showed the majority of people supporting independence from Spain.

The vote, however, plunged the country to its deepest political crisis since its 1978 return to democracy. Some separatist leaders were jailed or fled the country after the referendum was declared illegal by Spains government and highest court.

Multiple pro-independence leaders remain in pre-trial detention for organizing the referendum illegally. Others, meanwhile, face charges of rebellion and sedition, including former Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont, who left for Belgium. He could spend up to 30 years in prison if he returns to Spain.

The events that unfolded since the referendum have further driven the Catalans apart as they saw the central government using rubber bullets and truncheons against non-violent voters trying to cast their ballots in the referendum.

What happened on October 1 affected me in a powerful way, said Gabriel Brau, a 50-year-old photographer with little interest in politics. I was thinking, What if they did that to my son? That is not democracy. ... I dont want these people to govern my country.

Brau said he will vote for the first time since 1980s and support a candidate for one of the parties that favor independence.

They dont realize how many people they converted, said Ana Pousa, 38, who was born in Spain but grew up in Catalonia. She now says she hesitates to call herself Spanish. Hearing myself saying Im Spanish sounds strange. Because now it means something different.

But the referendum has also energized previously quiet Catalans supporting the union with Spain. Previously, opposing independence would have prompted insults and accusations of treason from friends and neighbors, but in the aftermath of the referendum, such Catalans are getting louder and more organized.

Cristina Calaco, 51, said she was aghast the way the secessionist leaders forced through the vote in October. I wanted to pack my bags and leave Catalonia, she said.

The woman has since been emboldened to voice her pro-union views and allegiance to Spain, shouting long live Spain whenever she hears pro-independence activists in protests.

The vote on Thursday is unlikely to heal the divisions in the region, as neither side will show a decisive victory. Pre-election surveys predict parties in both the secessionist and the pro-union blocs will fall short of the majority necessary to form a new government, leaving the region at the crossroads again.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Beijing court has convicted 85 people, including 44 from self-ruled Taiwan, of running phone scams in Kenya and Indonesia that targeted Chinese people. Two Taiwanese were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court on Thursday issued the 15-year sentences for fraud to Taiwanese nationals Zhang Kaimin and Lin Jinde.

The other 83 defendants were sentenced to up to 14 years in prison and fined.

Scores of Taiwanese have been arrested around the world over the past two years in connection with telecoms fraud scams targeting Chinese nationals.

Countries including Malaysia, Cambodia and Kenya have deported Taiwanese suspects to China, in deference to Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory, despite Taiwan's objections.
Close to a quarter-million security forces will stand guard outside Christmas celebrations throughout Egypt next week, following a series of church and mosque bombings that rocked the country earlier this year.

Egypt's Interior Ministry announced Tuesday that a high security alert has been issued, and said 230,000 security personnel were being called to secure the country's Christmas celebrations, which start next week, according to the official state news agency.

"Holidays and vacations were canceled for security personnel and officers at all security directorates across the country," security sources told Middle East News Agency.

Some 2,626 churches across the country, the overwhelming majority of which are Coptic, will be under protection. Security officers will also be deployed to parks and popular tourist sites, according to the news agency.

Security measures will include closed-circuit television and metal detector systems at places of worship, according to The Christian Post.

The heightened security comes after deadly attacks at churches and mosques earlier in the year.

In the deadliest-ever attack by Islamic extremists in Egypt, militants assaulted a crowded mosque on Nov. 22 during prayers, gunning down worshippers and launching rocket-propelled grenades. More than 300 people were killed -- including at least 27 children -- and the assailants got away.

Over the past year, militants have also carried out bombings of churches in the capital of Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians.

On Palm Sunday, suicide bombers struck hours apart at two Coptic churches in northern Egypt, killing several dozen people and turning services into grisly scenes.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the violence.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click to read more from The Christian Post
A frantic rescue effort was underway in the Philippines on Thursday after a ferry carrying 251 people capsized.

At least four people died and 88 others were still missing, according to officials. The coast guard, with help from navy ships and fishing boats, saved 166 people from the sinking Mercraft 3 inter-island ferry, coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said.

The accident occurred east of Manila, in water between Quezon province's Infanta town and the ferry's destination, Polillo island. Seven crew members were aboard the vessel according to reports.

There were conflicting reports regarding the number of people saved.

According to Reuters, 240 people have been rescued.

"Search and rescue operations will continue until all crew and passengers are accounted for," said Balilo, Reuters reported.

Balilo added that two women and two men drowned, Reuters reported.

A survivor, Donel Jade Mendiola, told DZMM radio that the weather was fine when the ferry left port in Quezon's Real town but strong winds and large waves started to batter it about two hours into the trip.

"The vessel came to a halt and started taking in water in the front side. The passengers dashed to one side and the ferry started to sink," Mendiola said. He said the passengers were instructed to put on life vests.

Despite bad weather conditions, Balilo said search and rescue efforts will continue throughout the night, noting that a coast guard helicopter deployed to the area was hindered by the strong winds

The Philippines has a long history of boat accidents, given its frequent storms and bad weather conditions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An American grandmother, an 11-year-old boy, and a couple from Washington state were among 12 people killed in a bus crash in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on Tuesday.

Passengers from Royal Caribbean cruise ships were being transported to the Chacchoben Ruins in Costa Maya, along the eastern coast of Mexico, when the bus overturned.

Authorities have now determined that driver negligence and excessive speed caused the crash. A preliminary manslaughter investigation indicated the driver lost control of the bus and when he tried to get it back on the narrow highway, the bus flipped, struck a tree and landed in vegetation along the roadside, the Associated Press reported.

"We can confirm the death of multiple U.S. citizens in a bus accident in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on December 19, a State Department official said in a statement following the incident. "We are aware of several U.S. citizens injured in the accident."

We express our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by this tragedy. We are in contact with local authorities, and will continue to monitor the situation. We have staff on the scene and at local hospitals to assist victims and loved ones, the official added.

Overall, eight Americans, two Swedes, a Canadian and a Mexican tour guide died in the crash.

Below is what we know so far about the victims.

Fanya Shamis

Fanya Shamis, a 78-year-old grandmother from Coconut Creek, Fla., was among those killed, her grandson, Benjamin Shababo, 18, told the Sun-Sentinel.

He added that other family members were involved in the crash.

We dont have really concrete information, Shababo said. Were all scared. Its just really scary to process this in my head that possibly something really bad happened to them.

Daniel & Anna Behar

Daniel Behar, 11, and his mother, Anna, 46, were both killed in the crash Tuesday.

Anna's mother, and Daniel's grandmother, was Fanya Shamis, who also was killed in the crash.

A family uncle told WUSA that both Anna and Daniel, of Lorton, Va., died when the bus crashed.



Jody & Andy Fritz

Jody and Andy Fritz, both 51 and of South Sound, Wash., were both killed in the bus crash, The Olympian reported.

Jody, who reportedly began working as an assistant principal at an elementary school in September, "was just a down-to-earth person who was committed to the education of children," the school's superintendent, Dana Rosenbach, said.

Andy was an environmental science instructor at a technical college and was "well known in the South Sound running community," the News Tribune reported.

The couple met in Massachussetts and reportedly leave behind their two sons.



Stephanie Horwood

Stephanie Horwood of Gatineau, Canada, was among those killed in the crash. She was a week shy of celebrating her 42nd birthday, CTV Ottawa News reported.

Horwood's husband, Fred Reinthaler, and their two children, ages 9 and 11, reportedly suffered minor injuries in the accident.

Theres honestly so much I can say about her but words would never do her justice, longtime friend Michelle Earle told the Ottawa Citizen of Horwood. She was an incredible person, full of life and love.

Bob Bever

A church in Tennessee confirmed that one of its parishioners, Bob Bever, was killed in the bus crash.

Cecilia Aparicio-Rascon, a bookkeeper at Saint Mary Catholic Church in Athens, Tenn., told a local news station that Bever, 68, was killed. She added that his wife and two daughters were injured in the crash.

Manuel de Jesus Acosta

Manuel de Jesus Acosta, the guide who was leading the excursion to the ruins, also died in the crash, according to ABC News. Additional details about Acosta are not currently available.

Laura & Christopher Couallier

Laura Couallier, 52, and her husband, Christopher Couallier, 55, died in the bus crash. A family member confirmed the deaths to WCVB. Laura, who was originally from Gloucester, Mass., lived with her husband in Florida.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Six bodies were found dangling from three different bridges near a popular tourist resort in Mexico on Wednesday, a grisly discovery that prompted a Mexican governor to condemn the acts of expression of violence.

The bodies of two men were discovered hanging on a bridge above a busy highway near Los Cabos International Airport, Reuters reported. The four other bodies were found on two separate bridges between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, according to local prosecutors.

The identities of the men have not been released and no further details were given, but drug gangs are known to hang the people who they murder from bridges as an intimidation tactic on their enemies.

However, it's unusual for the bodies to be found near Los Cabos' tourist region, the BBC reported.

Carlos Mendoza Davis, the governor of the state of Baja California Sur, tweeted an investigation is being conducted on the incident and condemned the incident.

"I condemn these acts and any expression of violence," Davis tweeted. "Today more than ever [Baja California Sur] must be united to overcome this regrettable situation."

Homicides in the Baja California Sur have more than doubled this year, jumping from 192 people killed in 2016 to 409 murders recorded between January and October 2017, Reuters reported. Mexico is also on track to have the deadliest year recorded in modern history.
A driver of Afghan descent accused of plowing a white SUV into a crowd of pedestrians Thursday in Melbourne, Australia, injuring at least 14 people in a deliberate act has a history of drug use and mental illness and was known to police on historical assault matters, police said.

Two men, including the 32-year-old driver, were taken into custody, police said. The Afghan driver was an Australian citizen. Authorities said there was no evidence or intelligence to indicate that the incident was terror related, but they believe the driver carried out the act deliberately.

"We don't at this time have any evidence or any intelligence to indicate there's a connection with terrorism," said Victoria state police acting commissioner Shane Patton.

The second man arrested at the scene was filming the attack. He had three knives in his bag -- although police believe he is not connected to the attack, Sky News reported.

Mass chaos ensued when a white Suzuki SUV red a ran red light and sped down a crowded street outside Flinders Street train station just after 4:30 p.m. Thursday, causing pedestrians to be thrown like rag dolls, witnesses described to news.com.au. Within 15 seconds, some people were seen flying into the air while others sprinted away to dodge the vehicle.

"I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and heard a thump," one man identified only as David said on ABC TV. He said he turned around saw "people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them."

"Witnesses seemed to response well, as well as police... I cant understand how someone isnt dead. There was speed involved," a Melbourne resident told Fox News.

Acting police chief commissioner Shane Patton said the driver was alone in the vehicle and accelerated along tram tracks near the Flinders Street station, Sky News Australia reported.

At least 19 people were injured. Several of the injured were taken to a hospital and at least two were in critical condition, including a pre-school-aged child with head injuries.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a tweet calling the incident "shocking" and said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and those treating them.

It is the second time this year that Melbourne, regularly ranked one of the world's most livable cities, has been traumatized by a car attack.

The attack took place at a crowded intersection in Australias second-largest city, which was packed with holiday shoppers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Police said two teenagers used the app Offerup to rob unsuspecting customers in Vancouver, the latest in a string of alleged crimes committed using the online marketplace, according to local reports.

SWAT officers arrested the 17-year-olds Wednesday after police linked them to three recent robberies, two of which occurred after they arranged to meet users regarding prospective online sales through the app, Portland's KOIN6 reported.

No one was hurt in the robberies, police said, but the incident rattled the Mill Plain neighborhood.

Now that I know this, I dont think Im going to be using that app anymore, local resident Fredrick Mudong told KOIN6. Because its scary  very scary.

Police in Los Angeles warned residents last December after three robberies involved the Offerup app, which allows users to browse each other's listings, chat, and arrange in-person meetings to exchange goods.

In Florida, at least five people have been arrested on robbery charges in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast in incidents this year related to Offerup, the Palm Beach Post reported.

In September, Palm Beach police said, a man who connected with a victim using Offerup -- purportedly to buy a videogame -- ended up carjacking him at gunpoint.

On its website, Offerup provides safety guidance to buyers and sellers.

Consider meeting at your local police station, the website says, or some other public location such as a cafe or shopping mall.

The app also provides safety features, including one called TruYou, which lets users submit their personal identification to Offerup for verification. Authenticated users are publicly denoted on the platform.
next Image 1 of 2

prev Image 2 of 2

A senior Cabinet official says British Prime Minister Theresa May had no choice but to dismiss her deputy for making misleading statements about a pornography investigation.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC radio Thursday that May had a "heavy heart" when she ousted First Secretary of State Damian Green.

Green was forced to resign Wednesday night after an investigation found he had lied about pornography found on an office computer in 2008.

He was a key ally to May who acted as her deputy and strongly supported her Brexit policies.

Green has denied viewing or downloading the pornography but admitted making misleading statements about his knowledge of the images.

May has lost three Cabinet members in recent months as her government has faltered after losing its majority in June.
A jury Wednesday recommended a 43-year prison sentence for a man who gunned down the husband of his daughters mother during a child-custody exchange in Stafford County last year.

Corey Andrew Terry, 28, was convicted of second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a felony for the May 20, 2016, slaying of 20-year-old Austen Agnor. The sentence suggested by the jury represents the maximum penalty for those offenses.

Terry will be formally sentenced on March 26 by Judge Victoria Willis.

Prosecutors Lori DiGiosia and Ryan Frank had sought a first-degree murder conviction, while defense attorney Mark Murphy argued for manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years. The jury deliberated four and a half hours Wednesday before reaching its decision.

The decision on sentencing came much quicker, as the jurors were out only about 15 minutes before announcing their recommendation.

According to the evidence, Austen Agnor accompanied his wife to Stafford that day to turn over Terrys 2-year-old daughter for a visit. The Agnors had recently moved to Maryland, and chose Stafford as a central meeting place for the court-ordered exchange. Terry lived in the Richmond area.

Terry and Crystal Agnor had a contentious relationship when it came to the custody of their child. Each had been convicted of domestic assault following altercations at other custody-related meetings.

On this day, Crystal Agnor testified that she called Terry repeatedly prior to the exchange to make sure he was going to show up. She taped conversations in which Terry threatened to kill her and her husband, but said she didnt take the threats seriously.

Terry testified that the Agnors were antagonizing him and said he and Austen Agnor had heated exchanges over social media in the past that included racial slurs.

Terry claimed he was speaking out of anger when he made the threats that day and said he had no intention of shooting anyone. But after putting his daughter in her car seat, Terry went some 80 feet back to the Agnor vehicle and shot the victim seven times. The shooting took place at the former Exxon station on Courthouse Road, just down the street from the Sheriffs Office.

Terry told the jurors he had intended to have only a fistfight with Agnor, but panicked after seeing Agnor reaching for something. Terry said he didnt remember anything after the first shot.

Before the jury left to decide on a sentence, family members of the Agnors talked about the devasting effect his senseless death had had on them. Several of them spoke directly to Terry and asked the jury for a stiff sentence.

You took away a son, a husband, a brother, said Mike Phillips, the victims stepfather. Theres no forgiveness in that for me. Not ever.

Terry offered an apology anyway. Im truly sorry. Even though you dont forgive me, I truly apologize.

Prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence. Anything less is an act of mercy this man doesnt deserve, prosecutor Frank said.

Murphy argued the Terrys record is not deserving of the maximum sentence, pointing out that he had no prior felony convictions.
The Virginia State Board of Elections will wait until after Christmas to pick a random winner in a tied House of Delegates race that could decide who controls the House.

Chairman James Accorn said Thursday morning that the three-member board will meet next Wednesday in Richmond, possibly at 11 a.m. Alcorn said officials were still working out some logistical details but expect to post the full meeting details online later Thursday.

With the General Assembly set to convene in Richmond on Jan. 10, officials had considered the possibility of holding an emergency meeting this week, Thursday or Friday. That solution proved unworkable because, Alcorn said, because some board members are already gone for the holidays.

With incumbent Del. David E. Yancey, R-Newport News, and Democratic challenger Shelly Simonds tied after a recount in the 94th District, the state elections board will break the tie through "determination by lot." The board is planning to use the same random drawing method it has used in the past to decide the order in which candidates appear on the ballot. Under that method, officials will write down the name of each candidate on a piece of paper, put each name in a film canister, then draw one canister at random from a bowl or a hat.

The outcome of the random drawing could determine whether the House is split 50-50 or Republicans hold a 51-49 advantage. Democrats flipped at least 15 other GOP-held seats in the Nov. 7 election, erasing what had been a 66-34 Republican majority.

A final recount is scheduled to begin Thursday in the 28th District, a Fredericksburg-area race in which Republican Bob Thomas leads Democrat Joshua Cole by 82 votes. A lawsuit seeking to have the 28th District result thrown out because some voters cast ballots in the wrong House district is also pending in a federal court.
Stafford County Republican Bob Thomas maintained his victory over Democrat Joshua Cole in a recount Thursday for the 28th District House of Delegates seat that has been mired in controversy.

But Thomas lead dropped from 82 votes to 73, and Virginia Democrats continue to push ahead with a federal lawsuit requesting a new election. State Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes recently wrote in court papers that he supports an appropriate federal remedy for the disputed election after revelations that at least 147 voters in the Fredericksburg area received ballots for the wrong House race.

A three-judge panel certified the recount in Stafford Circuit Court, and Thomas ended up with 11,849 votes to 11,776 for Cole.

Next week, the State Board of Elections is scheduled to pick a winner from names in a hat in a tied House race in Newport News that will determine control of Richmonds lower chamber.

That 94th District race ended up tied after a recount. If the Democrat wins, it would give each party 50 House seats.

In a press release from the office of Republican Del. Kirk Cox, Thomas thanked Cole for the hard-fought race and said he looked forward to putting forth legislation that offers practical solutions to everyday issues. Cox, who wants to become House speaker, said in the release that he hopes Democrats will end what he described as fruitless litigation that weakens the General Assembly and delays its work.

The House Democratic Caucus showed no signs of letting up, issuing a press release titled: Recount in irreparably tainted House race narrows margin with lawsuit pending. Democrats filed the federal suit on behalf of three Fredericksburg voters in the 28th District who erroneously got ballots for the neighboring 88th District House race.

This fight is not over until every vote is cast and counted in the proper district, Cole, who requested the state-funded recount, said in a statement. The only way that can happen is with a new election.

A court hearing on the request for a new election is scheduled for Jan. 5 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

After the recount in Staffords Public Safety Building, attorneys for each side went to the nearby Circuit Court to argue over two ballots. An exuberant voter filled in the oval next to Coles name, but also wrote the Democrats name in the write-in slot on one of those disputed ballots, said Cole attorney Jeffrey Breit. On the other, a voter filled in the oval next to Coles name and circled the write-in oval.

The three-judge panel awarded both ballots to Cole.

House Democratic leaders say a new election is the only remedy for the disenfranchised voters in the Fredericksburg region. At least 86 voters in the 28th District erroneously got ballots for the 2nd Districtwhich includes parts of Staffordor the 88th District, Cortes wrote in a report last month. And at least 61 voters in the 88th District incorrectly cast ballots in the 28th District.

But attorneys representing Thomas filed court papers this week opposing federal intervention, saying Cole can contest the results of the election to the General Assembly under state law.
I am a retired newspaperman. I am 69 and live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 45 years, Lou Ann. We grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.

More on who I am is here.

Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com
EIGHT YEARS after enactment, the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) remains a boiling cauldron of controversy.

Part of the problem is that, like much contemporary legislation, it is a verbal matryoshkaa Russian nested doll with law inside of law inside of law inside of law.

As Democrats rushed the ACA toward passage in early 2010, Republicans pointedly asked, Have you read the bill? Then and today, this is a largely empty question.

Practically no one has ever read the law in a meaningful sense. Its not at all clear what read even means.

For an analogy: I recently came upon a Russian expression, written in the original Cyrillic. I know that alphabet, so I could read it aloud: Babushka nadvoye skazala. But that is reading only in the shallowest of terms.

I know babushka means grandmother but havent a clue about the other two words. So, Ive read the sounds, but know only that its something about Grandma.

Google Translate informs me that the passage means, Grandmother said in two.

I know all four English words, so now Ive read the sentence literally, but it still makes little sense.

More research reveals that a better translation is, Grandmother said two things. I read that with no difficulty, but what does it mean? Whose grandmother? Which two things?

Finally, Google tells me this is a Russian folk expression meaning, No one knows for certain. Eureka. At last, I have truly read the sentence.

Reading the ACA is a similar experience, only stretched across a thousand pages of tightly packed legalese. The randomly chosen Section 2001 says:

Section 1902 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1396a) is amended(1) in subsection (a)(A) by striking and at the end of paragraph (72); (B) by striking the period at the end of paragraph (73) and inserting ; and; and (C) by inserting after paragraph (73) 

I can read that passage, but its babushka nadvoye skazala all the waya parade of meaningless sounds. Understanding it means diving into the equally impenetrable Social Security Act, which likely points to equally obscure passages in still more laws.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a challenge to the ACA: NFIB v. Sebelius. Soon afterward, I heard a speech by Mike Carvin, an attorney who argued against the Obama administrations case before the Supreme Court. Carvin said that after oral arguments concluded, he chatted with an attorney for the administration and asked whether he had, in fact, read the entire law.

By Carvins telling, the response was a laugh and an answer along the lines of Are you nuts?

My colleague, Maurice McTigue, notes that when he served in New Zealands Parliament, he and his colleagues faced the same problem. Bills were crafted to be unreadable. Often members voting on themeven the authorscould only guess what the laws would actually do.

Finding this injurious to democracy and the deliberative process, New Zealands Parliament adopted a crucial reform. The front of each bill would include a set of explanatory notes explaining the law and its effects, written in simple, easily understood language.

Importantly, the explanatory notes were written by neutral, nonpartisan clerksprofessionals who wished to be factual, not advocates.

Of New Zealand today, McTigue said, It is normally possible for anyone to pick up a bill and get a reasonable understanding of what it does in about 10 minutes.

Obscurantism is not unique to this law or to one party. But the size and scope of the ACA means that surprises have been popping out of the law for eight yearsespecially problematic in such a critical and controversial piece of legislation.

So even eight years in, can anyone anywhere accurately claim to have read the entire law?

Babushka nadvoye skazala.

Robert Graboyes is a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he focuses on technological innovation in health care. He is the author of Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care, and he teaches health economics at Virginia Commonwealth University. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
THE THREAT of fracking coming to the Northern Neck and elsewhere in the Fredericksburg area has county officials looking hard at their legal and regulatory options to prevent it. Westmoreland County appears to be the first locality to seek a double layer of protection.

Five counties to the east and south of Fredericksburg are situated, all or in part, atop the Taylorsville Basin, a geological formation that holds significant deposits of oil and natural gas. One energy company, Shore Exploration Corp. of Dallas, has leased about 84,000 acres in those counties as potential drilling sites.

At a recent meeting, the Westmoreland Board of Supervisors amended their Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinance to set ground rules that energy companies would have to follow. Fracking is the handy term for hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and gas by drilling through rock and injecting chemicals and water to force it to the surface. The process presents various environmental risks, particularly to groundwater.

Westmoreland set 40 acres, which could include multiple parcels, as the minimum site size for drilling, a use granted by special exception. The county also set resource protection areas, such as wetlands, houses, schools and public and private wells. Drilling operations would need to be from 500 feet to more than half a mile away from these areas.

County officials have spent years drawing up restrictions with the help of county attorney Richard Stuart, who also represents the area in the Virginia Senate and in 2015 had sought the opinion of Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring. He said counties can use zoning regulations to ostensibly ban fracking.

That ran counter to the opinion of Herrings predecessor, Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who said zoning restrictions could not amount to an outright ban.

Having approved the zoning amendments, Westmoreland officials are now looking at a fracking ban or moratorium. If a court struck down a ban, they would still have the zoning restrictions in place.

There are many issues to consider here, including the possibility that companies will never seek permits to drill. Other fracking sites across the country dwarf the Taylorsville Basin both in size and their estimated natural gas reserves.

The 1 trillion cubic feet estimated to be in the Taylorsville Basin compares with 141 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas in the Marcellus Basin, which stretches from New York state, through Pennsylvania and West Virginia into Southwest Virginia.

In addition, Virginia officials have already approved one natural gas pipeline and are looking favorably at another, both of which aim to improve natural gas availability.

And then there is the energy marketplace.

Industry officials say lower energy prices make small-scale fracking unlikely, and that if companies were interested in Taylorsville they would have sought permits long before now. Oil and natural gas prices both peaked in June 2008 at $158 per barrel and about $13 per gas unit. Today, oil is under $58 per barrel and gas is $2.70 per unit.

The portion of Westmoreland County that falls within the Taylorsville Basin is bordered by the Potomac River to the north and the Rapphannock River to the south, both of which empty into the Chesapeake Bay. There are myriad streams and inlets that give Westmoreland its special identity.

It is ecologically fragile, to say the least, and its leaders and residents have reason to be concerned about the environmental implications fracking presents.

The issue may come down to whether energy companies want to force their way in where theyre not wanted. Big oil already has productive wells at huge sites across the country where they can drill virtually as they please.

This is not to say that county officials should relax. Neither Westmoreland nor King George, which also has anti-fracking zoning in place, want to be caught off guard. We would urge the other three Taylorsville Basin counties to follow their neighbors lead.

Having approved the zoning amendments, Westmoreland officials are now looking at a fracking ban or moratorium. If a

court struck down a ban, they would still have the zoning restrictions in place.
Editorial on Medicaid draws wrong conclusion

Medicaid payouts not sustainable in Va. from Dec. 1 is a superficial editorial that comes to the wrong conclusion.

It is not news that Medicaid costs are crowding out other state spending. In fact, this is true in virtually all states and at the federal level. Escalating health care costs is a can that federal and state policymakers have been kicking down the road for years.

What is news is that the rate of growth in health care costs did actually flatten following passage of the Affordable Care Act. Economists are not sure why or how sustainable the trend will be, but it was the first good sign, however small, in a long time.

Nevertheless, health care spending consumes nearly 18 percent of GDP. Despite the high costs of care, many states have Medicaid programs much more generous than Virginias, with eligibility at 200 percent of the federal poverty level or higher. They do not punish their poor and near-poor citizens because health care costs overall are too high.

Surely, health care costs are a problem, but simply declaring Medicaid unsustainable is no solution. Extensive research confirms the health benefits of coverage from publicly financed programs. You can pay for these programs now or you can pay later for sicker people who ultimately cost the system more in emergency department visits or in foregoing care that results in increased morbidity and mortality, lower workforce productivity and generally higher social costs.

Cynthia B. Zimmerman

Fredericksburg
Parents should let educators pick school curricula

On the cover of every copy of Kate Chopins The Awakening that belongs to Riverbend High School, there is a sticker covering a womans partially-exposed breasts.

A few years ago, after a parent complained to a Spotsylvania School Board representative about the cover art, Riverbends English teachers were told to cover up each breast before continuing instruction on the book.

Heaven forbid that students actually read the book, which chronicles a womans artistic, intellectual, andmost scandalous of allsexual awakenings.

The sticker incident was not an isolated one. In early 2016, Virginia HB 516 was introduced to remove sexually explicit content from literature courses. Thankfully, Gov. McAuliffe vetoed the bill.

Floridians, however, were not so lucky: Gov. Rick Scott signed a similar bill into law last June. And last October, a Mississippi school district pulled To Kill a Mockingbird from its curricula.

Each of these efforts to restrict curricular content was started by a parent.

These parents have imposed a private political agenda onto public school curricula. And because deeming certain material explicit is entirely subjective, it is unclear what material would be acceptable if this type of censorship becomes the norm.

Parents should trust their children to be mature enough to participate in difficult conversations, and they should trust their childrens teachers to provide a safe but challenging academic environment that does the material justice.

This type of censorship is so subjective and broad that potentially every piece of literature taught in public schools could be deemed too controversial. Thankfully, though, there arent enough stickers in the world for that.

Kathleen Mann

Fredericksburg
Crook and Olson believe that CDPs, which fold tightly upon themselves like microscopic knots, could be an untapped goldmine for new cancer drugs. The advantage of these tiny protein tangles is that they may be able to go where no chemical drug can go  including wedging themselves in between two tightly attached proteins like TEAD and YAP.

But its really hard to get those little knots to fold correctly in the lab.

Crook and Bradley originally designed their tiny drug-candidate peptide using a computational program that spat out a number of different protein blueprints which, when built and assembled, were predicted to bind to TEAD. To make and test those proteins, they needed a new method.

The technique Crook and Olson developed uses human cells to display thousands of different tiny proteins on their surfaces and a special molecular signaling system that alerts the researchers if one of those tiny proteins attaches to the drug target theyre after, like TEAD. This general method, known as surface display, is not new. Other researchers developed it decades ago, using yeast or bacterial cells, but the existing method hasnt worked to make and test diverse CDPs, Crook said.

Human cells are much better at making and tying the protein knots, it turns out. So the researchers adapted a human cell line derived from kidney cells to work as a drug-discovery platform. They first tested it on 10,000 of these tiny knot proteins that are found in nature to confirm that the method worked. And then they tested it on the engineered peptides. After a round of tweaks, they ended up with one engineered-from-scratch peptide that deftly interrupts TEAD and YAP from binding to each other, even inside cells.

Theres one big hurdle to face, though: It cant penetrate cells by itself, Crook said. Their next rounds of protein design will aim to fix that problem. Then more laboratory testing and refining.

We have a lot of work to do, but it already has a far tighter [binding] to its target than anything else weve seen out there, Crook said.

The National Institutes of Health, the Washington Research Foundation and Project Violet funded this study.
Free Freightnet Membership

List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours.
News

Work at Five Corners to take two more months

KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News A car turns from FM 518 to FM 270 in League City on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. League City and The Texas Department of Transportation have been working on a road that allows drivers to bypass East Main Street (FM 518) when traveling from FM 518 East to FM 270 and vice versa. KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News A sign for FM 270 stands on the side of the new connecting road in League City on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. The new design reduces turning movements through lighted intersections at FM 518 East and FM 2094 as well as FM 518 and FM 270. KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News New barriers are on the new road that will connect FM 518 East and FM 270 in League City on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News Cars drive past the road that will connect FM 518 East and FM 270 in League City on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. The nearly completed Five Corners project will reduce turning movements, which will help the increasing traffic flow as the city grows.

LEAGUE CITY

Contractors will complete work at Five Corners by March, a Texas Department of Transportation spokesman said Wednesday.

The awkward conjunction of FM 518, FM 2094 and FM 270 has been a headache for motorists stuck in traffic since construction began in September 2016.

League City officials in November said crews could complete work at the reconstructed intersection by the end of the year, but now it will be two months before traffic can flow without traffic cones and alternating lane closures.

But progress is coming in stages as the last light poles were put in place this week.

The bypass will be open by mid to late January and the entire project will be substantially complete by late February or early March, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Danny Perez said.

The work is not delayed, Perez said.

We were originally anticipating finishing by early spring, Perez said. If we complete this by late February or early March, we are actually finishing ahead of schedule.

Susan Oyler, engineering project manager with the city, on Wednesday also said the Five Corners project would not be complete until the first week of March.

The project was originally slated to be complete by the end of this year, Olyer said.

However, construction change orders pushed the date back, she said. The change orders were necessary to provide the most efficient traffic flow, Olyer said.

The project is meant to reduce some of the traffic congestion motorists experience at the three lighted intersections at the site.

Part of that plan is the new right hand turn lane off FM 518 onto a bypass that now connects to FM 270.

The new design cuts down the turns needed to get through the acutely angled intersection, city officials said.

The new loop road will bring much needed traffic relief to residents, Mayor pro tem Todd Kinsey said.

After the loop opens, we still need to complete sidewalks and other ancillary items to complete the project, Kinsey said.
On The Water: You might need a bigger boat for Transpac 2023
July 16, 1930 December 9, 2017

She was born Rosetta Cohen in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to Anchel and Minnie, immigrants from Romania and Lithuania. When her mother told Italian nurses to enter Raisa Yita on her birth certificate, they suggested instead Rosetta, meaning little rose. So the Jewish girl received an Italian name.

She had an austere but happy childhood; her father was a baker for Ratners Restaurant on the Lower East Side and she only saw him in the afternoons. She always recalled how loving he was and how he would bite his fist so hard to make it bleed rather than ever lay a hand on her or her brother. She also noted that as a child she only had three blouses, but that her mother kept them continually clean and ironed; this became part of her lesson to her own children about not needing much to be happy, but rather cultivating the responsibility to take care of what you have.

She was raised in a Yiddish speaking household during the Depression and then the rationing of the war years. She graduated from Lafayette High in Flatbush in 1948 and enrolled in Brooklyn College to study business and accounting. She obtained her first job at Macys Department Store and during her employment was asked to grace one of their floats in the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

She married Martin Davison in 1952 in Brooklyn, New York, and they made their home in D.C. Later, he pursued his Doctorate of Podiatry at Temple in Philadelphia, and the couple welcomed their first born there, a girl. Two sons followed in their home in Silver Spring, Maryland, where the family lived for the next 40 years.

When Martin became ill in mid-life, she went back to work at Bloomingdales and was promoted to assistant manager of her department. Although she left the position when Martin recovered, her return to work meant a great deal to her.

But, she saw her grand occupation as raising her children, who each grew to be productive, ethical, happily-partnered people. As adults, each child entered the professions as a librarian, professor, and physician.

Like many women of the greatest generation, she threw herself into being a wife and mother with her entire person. She was a tireless caretaker, nurturer, teacher, and disciplinarian, and growing up, her children had the privilege of never questioning her unconditional love or pride in them.

In her late-70s, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease, and the couple moved to St. Louis, Missouri where their younger son lives. Even though her mind faded, she remained sweet and congenial, and could still recall the lyrics to many songs. During visits, her children would join her in such favorites as Fly me to the Moon or You Belong to Me. Even in her very last years, she never lost her will to live.

She was a rare individual, whose capacity for loving others, kindness, and hard work knew no bounds. Her selflessness, warmth, and down-to-earth sense of humor made her special to everyone who knew her. She taught us how to be compassionate, affectionate, and to understand the human quality in all things. She was a great soul whose ego never overrode her understanding that we each play a part in the wider goal of making the world a better place, and that her role was to be the best mother she could. In her life, we recall the messianic prayer of the Hebrew prophets who remind us that we have not come into being to hate and destroy, but to praise, to labor, and to love.

She was preceded in death by her husband, who passed in 2012.

She is survived by her children, Jan and David Goldenberg of El Dorado Hills, California; Neil and Nadine Davison of Corvallis, and Glenn and Kathy Davison of Chesterfield, Missouri; and seven grandchildren, Michelle and Brian, Daniel and Lara, and Rebecca, Elyse, and Alec.

Donations in honor of her memory can be made to: St. Lukes Employee Crisis Fund, Office of Development, 232 South Woodsmill Road, Chesterfield, MO 63017.
CARSON CITY  Sharon Rigby of Elko began serving on the Nevada Tax Commission this month as the appointed mining industry member.

Rigby was one of two new members to join the commission in November, along with Reno native Randy J. Brown of AT&T.

An attorney with more than 30 years of experience in the mining industry and in taxation, Rigby opened her Elko firm in 2015 to serve Nevadas mining industry with state and local tax and valuation services.

Prior to that, she worked for Ryan LLC from 2011 to 2014, providing tax and valuation consulting to mining operations throughout the United States and Canada.

From 1987 to 2010 Rigby worked for Newmont Mining Corp., where she gained valuable experience in mine accounting, tax, business and litigation. She received the Chairmans Award from Newmonts board of directors in recognition of her successful integration and settlement of tax issues related to a complex merger.

Rigby holds a Bachelor of Business Administration summa cum laude from National University, San Diego; a Master of Business Administration from the University of Nevada, Reno; and a Juris Doctor from the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is licensed to practice law in Nevada, and holds a CMI (property tax) certificate from the Institute of Professionals in Taxation.

She is a member of the Nevada Bar Association, American Bar Association, Nevada Taxpayers Association (board member), Nevada Mining Association, Womens Mining Coalition, Elko County Board of Equalization, Institute of Professionals in Taxation, Elko Rotary Club (board member), and the Elko Chamber of Commerce.

Rigby replaced Elko attorney John E. Marvel on the board.

The Nevada Tax Commission is made up of eight members appointed by the governor to head the Department of Taxation, which administers the collection of nearly $5 billion annually in state and local government revenue from 20 different taxes.

Besides adopting regulations and policies, the commission makes decisions to ensure that the application of taxes is done consistently among taxpayers.
It is time to think whales. A variety of activities will be offered at the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center during Whale Watch Week, Dec. 27-31.

Cape Perpetua is a partner of Whale Watch Spoken Here, a program of Oregon State Parks that promotes whale watching at 24 designated locations along the Oregon coast. Trained volunteers will be on-hand each day from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. to share information and help visitors spot whales.

The public also is invited to attend the free presentation, "Experiencing Gray Whales" by Michael Noack at 11:30 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 30, in the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center.

Noack, a retired chief park ranger and naturalist, has been educating agency staff and the public about the natural world, especially gray whales, for many years. He has trained whale watch volunteers and has been involved with whale research. After the program, Noack will be available to discuss watching techniques that have worked for him.

Visitor center winter hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. The center will be closed Dec. 24-25, and Jan. 1.

A Northwest Forest Pass, Oregon Coast Passport, Federal Recreation Pass or $5 day-use fee is required within the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area. For more information, contact the visitor center at 541-547-3289.
On Dec. 12, the Gazette-Times printed an article by the Associated Press that Bernie Sanders did not support an investigation into the sexual allegations against Trump because it states that it had already been done and the House and Senate don't investigate presidents. What?! The story does not include one quote from Sanders to support the headline, and since when is the president above the law and any investigations by our own form of checks and balances? All this on the very day that Sanders had, in fact, supported an investigation along with Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley into "the allegations."
Corvallis lost a beloved, hard-working and kindhearted resident last week. Mitch Dong deserves to be honored for the man that he was and his contributions to our town. His journey to Corvallis began as a resilient refugee from South Vietnam. He was a graduate of Corvallis High School where he met his wife. They made a new home for themselves here, with their two children. He didnt back down from a challenge or an adventure and was successful in opening several businesses around Corvallis. Any time spent with Mitch and his family revealed their warmth, generosity and love.

Senseless violence is too common in this world. It isnt something you can anticipate and it leaves devastation in its wake. The only way forward is through empathy and support for one another.

We all share the responsibility to acknowledge and respect the humanity behind a story. Its an injustice to restate the details of a crime report knowing full well a family must endure each excruciating detail in open text. Despite numerous emails and calls to omit insensitive content and gratuitous details, this local newspaper has failed to portray compassion or respect for a long-standing community member.

Mitchs legacy of fearlessness, grace and kindness will live on in his children and grandchild and the friends whose lives he has touched. We can all hope to channel some of his intrepid spirit and remember to honor the people who have shaped Corvallis into the welcoming place it is.

Margot Draeger

Corvallis (Dec. 20)
Protest over pay and work conditions : Ryan Air pilots to strike on Friday

Frankfurt The pilots union Cockpit has called for a strike at Ryanair on Friday. 16 flights could be affected. But the union says it will keep its promise not to strike over the holidays.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

From 5am until 9am on Friday morning, December 22, all permanent Ryanair pilots in Germany have been called upon to strike. This can affect all Ryanair flights scheduled during this time period across Germany. According to the union, 16 flights will be affected at 10 different locations.

Giving a reason for the strike, the union said that Ryanair had cancelled scheduled talks in Dublin on Wednesday. Those discussions were to be the starting point in collective bargaining between employee representatives and the low-cost airlines.The union representing the pilots had already announced before the talks that it would not stand for any delaying tactics. They suspect that Ryanair had only announced there would be talks in order to prevent any work stoppages during the busy Christmas period.

Earlier, the union had announced that pilots would not strike from the afternoon of December 23 through December 26. They wanted to avoid problems for customers around Christmas time and reiterated that they would definitely not strike during that time.

The pilots are protesting working conditions and wages that are around 30 to 50 percent lower than pilots at a rival airline. The negotiating position of the pilots has improved significantly in recent months. Many airlines in Europe or the Middle East are expanding and are desperately looking for pilots. "They have not negotiated with the pilots and their unions for around 30 years," says Yvonne Ziegler, aviation expert at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. She added that now Ryanair would have to move towards the unions and negotiate with the unions in the different countries.

Orig. text: Mischa Ehrhardt
Airport noise opponents : Thousands fight expansion of Cologne/Bonn Airport

RHINE-SIEG COUNTY The Noise Protection Association Cologne/Bonn Airport has handed over 14,000 signatures to the district government, expressing opposition to expansion plans for the airport.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

Most of the residents who have expressed opposition to the Cologne/Bonn Airport expansion are from Siegburg, Hennef and Rosrath, according to the Noise Protection Association (LSG). LSG said it was very satisfied with the number of signatures and it has submitted the petition against airport expansion to Birgitta Radermacher, a government official in Dusseldorf.

For the first time, the growing airport has to submit a plan for approval due to a ruling by the Federal Administrative Court. It also means that the public will be involved in the process. Residents in the region had until last Tuesday to submit their objections. Part of the objection has to do with new buildings that would be constructed around the airport to optimize operations. The LSG, the cities of Siegburg, Lohmar and Hennef are concerned that this will increase air traffic and airport noise at night.

Both Siegburg and Lohmar hired FDC Airport Consulting to formulate the objections of the cities. The Hennef environmental committee rejected the airport plans in a statement. In addition, according to LSG, the Bund fur Umwelt und Naturschutz (Friends of the Earth Germany) has also raised serious objections to further airport expansion.

Orig. text: ga.de
The man with the biggest cock in the world survives on government assistance and food banks, because having a big dick is hard, in more ways than the obvious hard-on variety.



The Mexican man Robert Esquivel Cabrera has a 18.9 inch penis - assumed to be the biggest dick in the world.



He has been hoping for his career to take off in the porn industry - because of his career hopes he has refused reduction surgery, however facing previous dismissal from the Mexican governemnt, his massive cock has officially been registered as a disability.
The path overland to Mercer Bay is like something from an Indiana Jones movie. The journey involves ropes and is 90 degrees to the ground in some places. But once you get there, it's worth the reward.
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.
CARSON CITY  Gov. Brian Sandoval and Attorney General Adam Laxalt announced final funding approval of the Battle Born Memorial to Nevadas Fallen Warriors, to be built on the Capitol Complex in Carson City.

Sandoval, Laxalt and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske approved the funds this week and the project will break ground this summer. It is expected to be complete by Veterans Day 2018.

The Battle Born Memorial will be a sanctuary where our heroes stories can be shared and remembered. Etched for eternity, the monument will bear the name of every fallen warrior from our state as an everlasting memorial to their service and sacrifice, said Sandoval. Nevada will never forget the sacrifice of our servicemen and women and their families. I know this memorial will serve as a lasting tribute to those who defend our nation and dedicate their lives in the name of freedom and country.

As an Iraq war veteran, I stand with millions of other Americans in eternal gratitude for the departeds military service to this state and country, said Laxalt. My office is honored to contribute these settlement funds towards a monument that will serve as a lasting symbol of the courage and valor of those who fought and gave their lives for our country, and will continue to support and assist Nevadas military and veterans wherever possible.

During the 2013 legislative session, the Legislature approved Senate Bill 230 authorizing the memorial. At its June 2017 meeting, the Nevada Veterans Service Commission voted unanimously on the design of the memorial, and will be spearheading its construction.

The total cost of the memorial is estimated at $450,000. The Nevada Department of Veterans Services previously committed $150,000 to the project. The Office of the Nevada Attorney General has pledged $300,000 in non-taxpayer settlement monies to fund the monument, a request that earned unanimous, bipartisan approval from the Interim Finance Committee.

The settlement funds are from a multi-state settlement reached in May 2017 with Johnson & Johnson regarding certain over-the-counter drugs.
US Rep. Mark Amodei

Much to my surprise, the conferencing process with the Senate resulted in the overall improvement of this bill in several areas. Based on the average incomes in CD-2, and the percentage of taxpayers currently taking the standard deduction versus those who itemize, all of the data I have evaluated on both sides of this argument leads me to believe this bill will result in widespread tax relief for Nevadans.

These improvements will not only put more money back into the pockets of Nevada taxpayers, but they will also simplify the filing process while giving our nations job creators significant potential for reinvestment and growth.

Finally, for the newborn deficit hawks, you either believe that more money circulating in the private sector increases tax collections  or you dont. Based on my research, and the history lessons weve learned from the Kennedy and Reagan Administrations, I believe it. While only time will tell, Ive never been a fan of anyones predictions regarding the state of our economy a decade from now.

US Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto

To give a giant tax cut to corporations and the top 1 percent, Republicans ignored decades of their own fiscal responsibility gospel. Their reckless vote will harm generations to come and could make Social Security and Medicare the next potential target of Republican fiscal mismanagement.

This partisan bill, drafted behind closed doors without the input of a single Democrat, balloons the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion, provides a permanent tax giveaway to corporations who ship American jobs overseas, and over time, will raise taxes on millions of middle class Americans.

In addition, the GOP tax give away will leave 13 million more Americans without health insurance and send premiums and deductibles skyrocketing. Nevadans deserve better than a temporary tax cut. Our kids will be paying for this ill-conceived corporate giveaway for decades to come.

SBA Administrator Linda McMahon

As the first major update to the tax code since 1986, passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a monumental achievement that can serve as an inspiration for every American who has ever dreamed of opening a small business. As Ive traveled around the country, small business owners have repeatedly told me that they want lower taxes, less burdensome regulations and a simplified tax code. The bill as passed today successfully delivers in these areas and upholds the commitment that the President made to the American people to promote pro-growth economic policies.

I am confident that small business owners across the country will see increased opportunities for the development and expansion of their businesses in the upcoming years as a result of this important legislation. I applaud Congress for their hard work and thank President Trump for placing such a high priority on issues that matter to small business owners.

Battle Born Progress Executive Director Annette Magnus

Last night, Senator Dean Heller betrayed Nevadans and the rest of the country. The Republicans tax bill is not relief or reform, it is a veiled attack on health care and a gift to the wealthy and big corporations.

To pay for permanent corporate tax cuts in the bill, the Republicans will repeal the individual responsibility provision of the Affordable Care Act, which will destabilize markets, strip 13 million Americans of health insurance, and raise premiums 10 percent. They will also now work to strip Medicaid and Medicare from hard working Americans.

To say we are disappointed in Senator Heller is an understatement. We are outraged. Hellers constituents made their voices heard on this scam and he flat out ignored them. Nevadans will remember this vote and Heller will be held accountable for not only supporting this scam but also having helped write it.
WisconSkin Ink will be occupy both sides of the lower half of the building at 1309 Wisconsin Ave. in Grafton. Photo by Mark Justesen
Should Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World" be measured by the usual critical apparatus or with a stopwatch?

If the latter, Scott's movie wins the race, hands down. "All the Money in the World" has, with remarkably few signs of haste, accomplished its unenviable task of recasting Kevin Spacey's role with Christopher Plummer.

Plummer parachuted in a few weeks ago to shoot his nine days of work, and Scott has toiled around the clock to recut and remake his own movie. Like a bank thief covering tracks and wiping fingerprints, Scott has erased all trace of Spacey.

That alone makes "All the Money in the World" a fascinating footnote in the larger ongoing drama of the "Me Too" reckoning. And considering the way things are going, Plummer should keep his bags packed. We may need his services again.

But was it worth the trouble? "All the Money in the World," about the 1973 kidnapping of the grandson of billionaire oil tycoon John Paul Getty (Plummer), is, for better and worse, every bit a Scott production: a solidly built, no-nonsense drama, largely without surprise. But its saving grace isn't Plummer. It's Michelle Williams.

She plays Gail Harris, the distraught mother of the kidnapped 16-year-old "little Paul" (Charlie Plummer, no relation). When Getty refuses to pay the kidnappers' demands of $17 million, she's left virtually alone in seeking his release, aside from the inattentive help of Getty's overconfident, former-CIA fixer, Fletcher Case (Mark Wahlberg).

As a woman locked inside an oppressively male world, Williams' performance  gripping and glamorous  slides in comfortably with Scott's best female protagonists (Ripley, Thelma, Louise).

Based on John Pearson's 1995 book, "Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty," David Scarpa's script doesn't attempt to show the larger soap opera of the younger Getty generations, many of whom suffered through drugs, depression and worse because of their father's hostility and inattention.

Getty married five times and young Paul was one of 14 grandchildren. When he was taken, Getty, then one of the richest men in the world, told reporters: "If I pay one penny now, I'll have 14 kidnapped children."

"All the Money in the World" ought to have aimed more ambitiously for the complete tragedy of the Gettys, or stuck more resolutely to Gail's perspective. Instead, it bounces erratically between its main players and loses steam every time Williams leaves the screen.

At times it's preoccupied with studying the astonishing greed of its penny-pinching Scrooge, at others with trailing the thrilling plot of Gail's pursuit of Paul. It doesn't necessarily follow any one character. It follows the money.

Opening with a black-and-white sequence of the kidnapping in Rome, Scott's movie continuously cuts to Paul's travails as the prisoner of Calabrian bandits. Expecting a quick payday, they settle in the mountains of Southern Italy for months, growing increasingly impatient.

Seesawing between the mafia-controlled hills of Italy and the mammoth English estate of the Getty's, "All the Money in the World" seeks for a larger portrait of people prioritizing money over basic human decency  of putting the art of the deal above all else, you might say. When first told of the kidnapping, Getty doesn't even look up from the stock ticker.

It's hard not to spend some of the film's running time wondering what Spacey might have brought to the movie. I suspect his performance would have been icier, and perhaps smacked of stunt. (Spacey donned copious makeup and prosthetics to age him into the role.) Plummer, on the other hand, quite naturally feasts on the part, fully embodying Getty's privilege and power.

At 88, Plummer has spent much of his superlative late period playing King Lears presiding over the ends of their empires. Give him a mansion and a backstory, and he'll go to town (just as he did earlier this year in the World War II thriller "The Exception"). But the miserly Getty of "All the Money in the World," so totally focused on his fortune, makes the Grinch look like a philanthropist.

Aside from the audaciousness of its last-minute face-lift, "All the Money in the World" is fairly routine. If Scott was replacing stars, he might as well have yanked Wahlberg while he was at it. The story doesn't suit the action star's considerable gifts, and he's out of place from the start.

Still, the extreme measures taken by Scott are fitting. The restless director is driven by an obsession for work not so different than Getty's. (This is the second film Scott has directed and the 10th project he's produced this year. He's 80.)

Only when a crisis took his movie hostage, Scott immediately intervened at an estimated cost of $8 million. The lesson holds: Just pay the ransom.
VANCOUVER, Dec. 20, 2017 /CNW/ - Goldgroup Mining Inc. ("Goldgroup" or the "Company") (TSX:GGA, OTC:GGAZF, BMV SIX:GGAN.MX) announces the appointment of Harry Burgess to the Company's Board of Directors.

Mr. Harry Burgess was a Founding Partner and now an Associate Consulting Mining Engineer of Micon International, Ltd. and is a Member at Professional Engineers Ontario and a Member at The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum. He is on the Board of Directors at Cartier Iron Corp., GPM Metals Inc. and ACME Resources Corp. Mr. Burgess was previously employed as an Independent Director by Champion Iron Mines Ltd., an Independent Director by Treasury Metals Inc., an Independent Director by Tartisan Resources Corp., an Independent Director by Brigus Gold Corp., and an Independent Director by Vena Resources, Inc. He also served on the board at Mag Copper Ltd., Aquiline Resources Inc., Absolut Resources Corp. and Amerix Precious Metals Corp. He has 40 years of experience with mining operations in China, Africa, North America and Australia. He received his undergraduate degree from Imperial College London, an undergraduate degree from The Royal School of Mines and a graduate degree from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Keith Piggott commented: "We are excited to welcome Mr. Burgess to the Company and very much look forward to utilizing his experience on the Board."

For further information on Goldgroup, please visit www.goldgroupmining.com

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Mr. Keith Piggott, Chairman, President and CEO

Tel: 1-520-247-5753

Investor Relations

Toll Free: 1-877-655-ozAu (6928)

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain information contained in this news release, including any information relating to future financial or operating performance, may be considered "forward-looking information" (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities law) and "forward-looking statements" (within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Actual results could differ materially from the conclusions, forecasts and projections contained in such forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements reflect Goldgroup's current internal projections, expectations or beliefs and are based on information currently available to Goldgroup. In some cases forward-looking information can be identified by terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "projects", "potential", "scheduled", "forecast", "budget" or the negative of those terms or other comparable terminology. Certain assumptions have been made regarding the Company's plans at the Cerro Prieto project. Many of these assumptions are based on factors and events that are not within the control of Goldgroup and there is no assurance they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to materially differ from those reflected in the forward-looking information, and are developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors including, without limitation: uncertainties related to actual capital costs, operating costs and expenditures, production schedules and economic returns from Goldgroup's projects; uncertainties associated with development activities; uncertainties inherent in the estimation of mineral resources and precious metal recoveries; uncertainties related to current global economic conditions; fluctuations in precious and base metal prices; uncertainties related to the availability of future financing; potential difficulties with joint venture partners; risks that Goldgroup's title to its property could be challenged; political and country risk; risks associated with Goldgroup being subject to government regulation; risks associated with surface rights; environmental risks; Goldgroup's need to attract and retain qualified personnel; risks associated with potential conflicts of interest; Goldgroup's lack of experience in overseeing the construction of a mining project; risks related to the integration of businesses and assets acquired by Goldgroup; uncertainties related to the competitiveness of the mining industry; risk associated with theft; risk of water shortages and risks associated with competition for water; uninsured risks and inadequate insurance coverage; risks associated with potential legal proceedings; risks associated with community relations; outside contractor risks; risks related to archaeological sites; foreign currency risks; risks associated with security and human rights; and risks related to the need for reclamation activities on Goldgroup's properties, as well as the risk factors disclosed in Goldgroup's Annual Information Form and MD&A. Any and all of the forward-looking information contained in this news release is qualified by these cautionary statements. Although Goldgroup believes that the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on reasonable assumptions, readers cannot be assured that actual results will be consistent with such statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned against placing undue reliance on forward-looking information. Goldgroup expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise, except as may be required by, and in accordance with, applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Goldgroup Mining Inc.
VANCOUVER, Dec. 20, 2017 - Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT; OTC: BRVVF; FRA: 23BA) ("Quantum" or the "Company") announces a flow-through non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") for up to 500,000 flow-through units at a price of $2.00 for gross proceeds of $1,000,000.

Each flow-through unit will comprise one flow-through share of the company and one common share purchase warrant of the company. Each warrant will be exercisable into a common share of the company for a period of 24 months at an exercise price of $3.00 during the 24 months.

CEO, Greg Burns commented "The net proceeds from the non-brokered private placement are intended to further advance the portfolio of properties, and continue our systematic exploration plan of our properties. Furthermore, we look to undertake all necessary steps to process the historical rock pile of cobalt on the Nipsing Property."

QUANTUM COBALT CORP.

"Greg Burns"

____________________

Greg Burns, Director



Forward-Looking Information This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Quantum Cobalt Corp. (the "Company") expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, and continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

SOURCE Quantum Cobalt Corp.







Contact

800 - 1199 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6E 3T5, Tel.: 604.283.1722 / Fax: 1.888.241.5996


TORONTO, Dec. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alexandria Minerals Corp. (TSX-V:AZX) (OTCQB:ALXDF) (Frankfurt:A9D) (AZX or the Company) announced today that, at a meeting of its Board of Directors held on December 19, 2017, the mandate of a Special Committee of the Board was finalized. The Special Committee, which was formed on December 15, 2017, is comprised of Walter Henry, Chair, Priya Patil and Gary OConnor. The Special Committee has been tasked with examining strategic alternatives for the Company which include evaluating and implementing financing alternatives, considering possible joint venture and other strategic transactions, and assessing potential merger and acquisition proposals.



Walter Henry, Chairman of the Special Committee, said, There is a fair amount of speculation about the Company at the present time and we are expecting geological updates within the next 60 days. This is an opportune time for us to start an open and transparent process to determine how we, as a board, can best be responsive to shareholder expectations, and to choose the best path for the Company moving forward.

There is no defined timeline for the strategic review. The review of strategic alternatives may result in a variety of outcomes or no outcome and there can be no assurance that the Company will pursue or execute any specific action or transaction. The Company does not intend to make any further announcements or comments regarding the review of strategic alternatives unless required by law.

In other matters, Eric Owens, President and CEO, in his annual year-end review, stated, We have made tremendous progress this year finding gold, completing 45,000 metres of drilling and expanding our Orenada Zone 4 gold deposit. We expect even greater progress in 2018 as we complete our resource update and build on that with a larger planned 60,000 m drill program.

Further information about the Company is also available on the Companys website, www.azx.ca, or our social media sites listed below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexandriaMinerals

Twitter: https://twitter.com/azxmineralscorp

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/AlexandriaMinerals

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/alexandriaminerals/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/alexandriaminerals

About Alexandria Minerals Corporation

Alexandria Minerals Corp. is a Toronto-based junior gold exploration and development company with strategic properties located in the world-class mining districts of Val dOr, Quebec, Red Lake, Ontario and Snow Lake-Flin Flon, Manitoba. Alexandrias focus is on its flagship property, the large Cadillac Break Property package in Val dOr, which hosts important, near-surface, gold resources along the prolific, gold-producing Cadillac Break, all of which have significant growth potential.

WARNING: This News Release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of up-coming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, 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 statements. Alexandria Minerals Corp. relies upon litigation protection for forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

PLEASE CONTACT

www.azx.ca

info@azx.ca Mary Vorvis

Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations

(416) 305-4999 Eric Owens

CEO/President

(416) 362-9100




Though the most recent trial of four defendants in the April 2014 standoff between armed protesters and Bureau of Land Management agents trying to confiscate Cliven Bundys cattle ended in a mistrial, the case will stand as an historic example of how sweeping secrecy can cast doubt on whether justice is being served.

This past week U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro halted testimony in the trial and sent the jurors home while she heard arguments behind closed doors over whether the prosecution had failed to provide the defense with potentially exculpatory evidence quickly enough. The judge said the prosecutions repeated failure to timely disclose information was sufficient to undermine the confidence in the outcome of the trial, which she said could result in a mistrial. This week she declared a mistrial.

Attorney Maggie McLetchie  representing the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper and Battle Born Media, which publishes weekly newspapers in Mesquite, Ely, Eureka, Sparks and Lincoln and Mineral counties  promptly filed a motion seeking to intervene, which was granted. The newspapers are asking that all documents previously filed under seal be unsealed and that future hearings be conducted in open court.

In July 2016, despite objections from the newspapers, the judge granted the governments request for a protective order that required nearly every piece of paper to be filed under seal due to some vague suspicions that witnesses and law enforcement officers might be subjected to threats or intimidation.

Though the case involves the April 2014 effort by the BLM to impound 500 head of Bundys cattle for failure to pay $1 million in grazing fees over two decades for his Bunkerville ranch, arrests of the original 19 defendants were not made until early 2016. Most remained jailed until recently on charges that include conspiracy, extortion, carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, threatening an officer and obstruction of justice.

The BLM released the cattle rather than risk a shootout.

The complex case, which includes an estimated 1.4 terabytes of electronic evidence, was broken into three trials. The first ended in a mistrial. At retrial two were acquitted and two pleaded to misdemeanors and were released on time served.

The just ended trial was the second and a third is scheduled for 30 days after this one ends, whenever that might be.

In arguing as to why the veil of secrecy should be lifted, McLetchie states that one of the most critical aspects of news reporting is to inform the public as to whether justice is being carried out, quoting a classic Supreme Court aphorism: In short, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

McLetchie goes on to say, This shroud of secrecy is anathema to the presumption under the First Amendment and the common law that all documents filed with a court are presumptively public documents open for review and inspection. Moreover, closing hearings and filing documents under seal has prevented Intervenors from carrying out their constitutionally protected function of reporting the news. This is troublesome given the importance of this case, and the publics right to know about the governments handling of its investigation and prosecution 

One of the documents apparently filed under seal  meaning the defendants cant even discuss it  is an 18-page Nov. 27 memo from a BLM investigator to a Justice Department attorney alleging a widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical, and legal violations by BLM staffers involved in the Bundy case.

The memo was leaked to numerous newspapers. It is a rambling, often redundant, typo-filled diatribe against the agents supervisors and prosecutors.

The agent said he was dismissed from reviewing the Bundy case in February and his files confiscated. Futhermore, he wrote, when I did report the misconduct, ethical, professional, and legal issues, I also became a victim of whistleblower retaliation. He wrote that he feels the prosecutors judgment is likely clouded by extreme personal and religious bias and a desire to win the case at all costs. I feel he is likely willing to ignore and fail to report exculpatory material, extreme bias and act unethically and possibly deceptively to win.

Though it may well be a self-serving effort on the part of a BLM staff member scorned, this is the very thing the public should be allowed to evaluate.

McLetchie notes the tradition of openness serves as a check on the judiciary because the public can ensure that judges are not merely serving as a rubber stamp for law enforcement.

This shroud of secrecy is anathema to the presumption under the First Amendment and the common law that all documents filed with a court are presumptively public documents open for review and inspection.
VANCOUVER, Dec. 20, 2017 - URZ Energy Corp. (TSX-V:URZ) (OTCQ:BURZZF) (URZ or the Company) is pleased to announce the closing of the non-brokered private placement (the Private Placement) announced on November 28, 2017. The Company has issued a total of 2,227,187 units of URZ (Units) at a price of $0.45 per Unit for gross proceeds of CAD$1,002,234.Each Unit is comprised of one common share of the Company (a Share) and one-half of one non-transferable share purchase warrant (a Warrant). Each whole Warrant will entitle the holder thereto to purchase for a period of eighteen (18) months one additional Share (a Warrant Share) at an exercise price per Warrant Share of CAN$0.75 provided that in the event that the closing price of the Companys common shares on any stock exchange is CAD$1.10 or greater per common share during a 10 consecutive trading day period at any time after the Closing Date, the Warrants will expire, at the sole discretion of the Company, 30 days after the date on which the Company provides notice of such fact to the holders thereof. The Company paid a cash commission of $2,047.50 and issued 77,000 Units as finders fees.The Private Placement is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. All securities issuable pursuant to the Private Placement are subject to a four month hold period from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws.The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Private Placement towards the advancement of its Gas Hills Project and for working capital and general and administrative purposes.This news release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and such securities may not be offered or sold within the United States absent U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from U.S. registration requirements.URZ is a uranium exploration and development company that is primarily engaged in the evaluation, acquisition and development of prospective ISR uranium properties in the United States. The Company is led by an experienced management team including Glenn Catchpole as CEO. Mr. Catchpole is a licensed engineer with 39 years of uranium experience, including extensive work with Cameco Company on its Inkai Project in Kazakhstan. Additionally, Mr. Catchpole was the former CEO of Uranerz Energy Company (Uranerz) prior to its US$175 million acquisition by Energy Fuels Inc. in 2015. During his tenure, Uranerz successfully explored, permitted, built, and operated its Nichols Ranch ISR uranium project in Wyoming.The Company owns uranium properties in the Gas Hills, Juniper Ridge, and Shirley Basin as well as uranium properties in Utah and Colorado.Glenn Catchpole, CEO and DirectorTel:1-307-421-7344Email: gcatchpole@urzenergy.comWebsite: www.urzenergy.comNeither 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. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.This news release contains forwardlooking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forwardlooking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forwardlooking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Additional information on these and other factors that could affect the Companys operations and financial results are included in reports on file with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and may be accessed through the SEDAR website (www.sedar.com).NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wolf Wiese, President & CEO of Golden Dawn Minerals Inc. (TSX-V:GOM) (FRANKFURT:3G8A) (OTC:GDMRF) (the Company or Golden Dawn), issues Presidents Letter to shareholders.



Dear Shareholders:

The end of the year is nigh; and your Company, led by a team of dedicated professionals and employees, extends Seasons Greetings to you as our valued shareholders. As spokesman for Golden Dawn, I take this opportunity to report our activities in 2017 to you, and update you on how we managed your investment over the past year.

As of January 3, 2017, our market cap was $23,690,685 and today our market cap has increased to $38,000,000 an increase of 60% over the past twelve months.

In 2017, financing activities brought approximately $10,000,000 into the treasury of the Company including $600,000 through the exercise of warrants.

These funds served to reduce a bridge loan of USD $3,600,000 (CDN$4,600,000) down to USD$800,000 (CDN $1,030,000) which equals a loan reduction of CDN $3,570,000.

The cash cost of the Kettle River Resources acquisition was $1,000,000. The Kettle River lands are comprised of 11,000 hectares, hosting 34 historic mines. This property package is contiguous with the Golden Crown Mine property. All the active and historic mines are located within a radius of 15 km to our 100% owned processing facility. This is the first time in the history of the Greenwood Mining District that all significant historic mines and showings have been consolidated and they are 100% owned by Golden Dawn Minerals Inc.

The Company has strengthened its administrative and technical teams to ensure that our budgets and milestones are adhered to and attained.

Dr. Matt Ball, P.Geo., and COO of the Company, has supervised the following work during and prior to 2017, with Apex Geoscience providing competent geological staff to supplement our staff geoscientist:

Approximately 9,500 meters of surface and underground core drilling on the May Mac property and surface drilling on the Golden Crown properties was completed by our drilling contractor, T-Drilling of Timmins, Ontario, and DMAC Drilling from B.C.

We built a large core storage facility and stored tens of thousands of meters of core in this facility through the construction of numerous large core racks and rearranging core for easy retrieval.

We carried out an extensive prospecting program from late spring to late fall 2017, delineating four high-priority drill targets on four of our properties hosting the Greenwood Precious Metals Project, to explore and potentially increase our in situ ounces. Our existing mining fleet and ancillary mill rolling stock was partially repaired and made serviceable. The interior of the mill was organized. It is now ready for start-up and service to achieve a wet start of the mill.

The Company funded equipment purchases and care and maintenance costs for the mill and tailings impoundment pond. The tailings impoundment pond was dewatered and the liner underwent extensive repairs.

The Lexington mine was dewatered and the decline was rehabilitated to current safety standards.

The east portals ramp has been rehabilitated and access to the stopes is now possible.

The ancillary mine buildings were rebuilt.

Andrea Yuan, our CFO, and I negotiated the option agreement for the J&L Property with the management of Huakan International Mining Inc. The successful outcome of these negotiations presents our Company with an opportunity to own 100% of one of B.C.s largest undeveloped, known precious metal deposits. During the first 18 months of the option agreement, the risks for our Company are entirely manageable, providing Golden Dawn ample time to de-risk the venture substantially, by authoring a new preliminary economic assessment (PEA) within the first six months of the agreement. The conclusions of the new PEA will be the basis of the Companys decision to go forward and develop the sizeable precious metal and base metals deposit contained in the J&L project. The J&L project will be staffed by professionals independent of the Greenwood Precious Metals Project.

We are focused on restarting the Lexington Mine in January 2018 and aim to be in full scale production during the course of 2018. Upon receipt of permits, the restart of the Golden Crown Mine will make it possible to fulfill the June 2017 PEA forecast of Zip mill daily production of 400 tonnes per day by the first quarter of 2019.

The Companys decision to proceed to extract mineralized material from the Lexington and Golden Crown deposits for processing at its facility located at the Greenwood Precious Metals Project is not based on a feasibility study. The Company cautions that, in such cases, there is increased uncertainty and higher economic and technical risks of failure.

The staff, management and Board of Directors of our Company will continue to work diligently to increase shareholder value in 2018.

On behalf of all the members of our Company best wishes to you in 2018.

Kind regards,

Wolf Wiese, President & CEO

Golden Dawn Minerals Inc.

For further information, please contact:

Corporate Communications

604-221-8936

allinfo@goldendawnminerals.com

This press release was prepared by management, who take full responsibility for its contents. 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. This document contains certain forward looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, delays, and uncertainties not under the Companys control which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the results, performance, or achievements implied by these forward looking statements. We seek safe harbor.
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MGX Minerals Inc. (MGX or the Company) (CSE:XMG) (FKT:1MG) (OTC:MGXMF) is pleased to announce that is has closed the second and final tranche of a non-brokered, private placement for 4,079,000 units ("Units") at a price of $1.00 per Unit for gross proceeds of $4,079,000 (the Offering). The aggregate gross proceeds raised under the Offering was $7,137,000 through the issuance of an aggregate of 7,137,000 Units. The Offering was made concurrently with a private placement of flow through units, of which a second and final tranche is also expected to close this week.

Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (each, a Share), and one transferable common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a Warrant), with each Warrant entitling the holder to acquire one common share of the Company (each, a Warrant Share) at a price of CA$1.15 per Warrant Share for a period of 36 months from the closing of the Offering.

The Company will use the proceeds of the Offering for advancement of the Companys lithium and magnesium assets, including continued investment into extraction equipment and PurLucid, property payments and additional acquisitions, engineering studies, permitting activities, and for general working capital.

In connection with the Offering, the Company paid a finder's fee to EMD Financial Inc. (EMD) equal to a cash payment of 8% of the gross proceeds raised from purchasers of the Units introduced to the Company by EMD, common shares of the Company equal to 4% of the total number of Units sold, and non-transferable warrants equal to 4% of the total number of Units sold under the Offering (the Finder Warrants). Each Finder Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at a price of CA$1.15 for a period of 36 months following the closing date.

The securities issued pursuant to the Offering and the other above matters are subject to a hold period of four months and one day.

About MGX Minerals

MGX Minerals is a diversified Canadian resource company with interests in petrolithium, magnesium and silicon assets throughout North America. Learn more at www.mgxminerals.com.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements including the completion of the rights offering (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.



Contact Information



Jared Lazerson

President and CEO

Telephone: 1.604.681.7735

Web: www.mgxminerals.com


Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - GGX Gold Corp. (TSXV.GGX) (the Company or GGX Gold) is pleased to announce that the Companys common shares begin trading today on the OTCQB Venture Market in the United States under the symbol "GGXXF". The Companys common shares will continue to trade under the symbol GGX on the TSX Venture Exchange. The OTCQB Venture Market provides efficient access to U.S. investors, helping Canadian companies build shareholder value with a goal of enhancing liquidity and achieving fair valuation. Through trading on OTCQB, companies can engage a far greater network of U.S. investor, data distributors and media partners, ensuring U.S. investors have access to the same high-quality information that is available to investors in Canada, but through U.S. platforms and portals used to conduct research.

The securities law firm Berns & Berns acts as the Company's OTC Markets Sponsor.

About GGX Gold Corp.

GGX Gold Corp. is a mineral resource company focused on the exploration and development of its 35 square mile Gold Drop precious metals property within the prolific Greenwood gold mining district in British Columbia Canada.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Barry Brown, President,

604-488-3900

office@ggxgold.com

Investor Relations:

Mr. Jack Singh: 604-720-6598 E-mail: ir@ggxgold.com

 We dont have to do this, we get to do this 

The Crew

To view the graphic in its original size, please click here

This News Release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the acquisition of certain mineral claims. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements and Revolver undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as required by law.

Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates, including that: the current price of and demand for minerals being targeted by the Company will be sustained or will improve; the Company will be able to obtain required exploration licences and other permits; general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner; financing will be available if and when needed on reasonable terms; the Company will not experience any material accident; and the Company will be able to identify and acquire additional mineral interests on reasonable terms or at all. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: that resource exploration and development is a speculative business; that environmental laws and regulations may become more onerous; that the Company may not be able to raise additional funds when necessary; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; fluctuating prices of commodities; operating hazards and risks; competition; potential inability to find suitable acquisition opportunities and/or complete the same; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the Companys public filings. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.

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.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/ggxgold12212017.pdfSource: GGX Gold Corp. (TSX Venture:GGX, OTC Pink:GGXXF)

To follow GGX Gold Corp. on your favorite social media platform or financial websites, please click on the icons below.

Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com

Copyright  2017 FSCwire
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - E3 Metals Corp. (TSX-V: ETMC, FSE: OU7A, OTC: EEMMF) (the Company, E3 or E3 Metals) is pleased to announce it has been awarded $40,000 of grant funding from the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) towards the salaries of an Intermediate Chemical Process Engineer and a Junior Geologist for a period of 6 months. The Engineer will be focused on developing and optimizing the E3 Metals extraction flow sheet, a key focus for the Company in 2018. The Geologist will be focused on supporting the technical team to deliver National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) compliant resources, including a new Inferred Resource and upgrading Inferred Resources to Measured and Indicated.

The Company is also pleased to announce it has appointed Liz Lappin as Vice President Project Development. Liz joined the Company in early 2017 as Exploration Manager, and has been responsible for leading the delivery of two NI 43-101 Inferred Resources in 2017 and building collaborative relationships with 11 operators to facilitate the ongoing sampling program. Liz has been an instrumental part of the team over the past 7 months. stated E3s CEO Chris Doornbos. Her determination and drive have allowed E3 Metals to achieve its technical goals. Her new position will allow her to expand into developing the project parameters, coordinating government liaison and continuing with our grant funding; all critical elements for 2018.

Liz Lappins Bio

Liz is a Professional Geologist with a solid background in capturing value from Albertas hydrocarbon and geothermal resources. Leveraging a foundation of technical excellence and creative collaboration between disciplines, Liz is now driving E3s technical group towards the development of lithium brine projects and maximizing shareholder value. Working across Western North America, Liz built a foundation of technical experience with oil and gas majors such as Cenovus, Encana and Suncor. More recently, Liz was the founder and principal consultant at Castle Rock Consulting Ltd., a boutique consulting firm which specializes in geothermal value creation for the energy industry in Canada. She was appointed a Fellow with the Energy Futures Lab in 2017 and volunteers for the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association working on policy initiatives. Liz was honoured to receive a 2017 Young Women in Energy award for her leadership and commitment to pioneering new and innovative initiatives in Albertas energy space.

About E3 Metals

E3 Metals is a publically listed company in the emerging Petro-Lithium space (TSXV: ETMC). E3 has brought together an experienced team that has secured the lithium (and other mineral) rights to over 580,000 hectares (~1.4 million acres) in Alberta covering the prolific Leduc Reservoir. Over 60 years of reservoir data from the oil and gas operators is readily available, and E3 has acquired this data to target its own sampling of the brines from existing wells. This now includes the development of a sizable lithium resource that can be potentially exploited by direct lithium extraction technologies currently under development by industry leaders. More information about E3 Metals can be found our website by visiting: www.e3metalscorp.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS,

Chris Doornbos, President & CEO

E3 Metals Corp.

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.

Chris Doornbos (P.Geo), CEO and Director of E3 Metals Corp., is a Qualified Person a as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has read and approved the technical information contained in this announcement

This news release includes certain forward-looking statements concerning the development of the Companys Alberta Petro-Lithium Project, the Companys intention to establish a mineral resource estimate in respect of its Alberta Petro-Lithium Project and the results thereof, the reliability or accuracy of sampling results, the anticipated results of future sampling programs, the future performance of our business, its operations and its financial performance and condition, as well as managements objectives, strategies, beliefs and intentions. Forward-looking statements are frequently identified by such words as may, will, plan, expect, anticipate, estimate, intend and similar words referring to future events and results. Forward-looking statements are based on the current opinions and expectations of management. All forward-looking information is inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, fluctuating commodity prices, results of current and future testing, competitive risks and the availability of financing, as described in more detail in our recent securities filings available at www.sedar.com. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements and we caution against placing undue reliance thereon. We assume no obligation to revise or update these forward looking statements except as required by applicable law.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/E3Metals12212017.pdfSource: E3 Metals Corp. (TSX Venture:ETMC)

To follow E3 Metals Corp. on your favorite social media platform or financial websites, please click on the icons below.

Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com

Copyright  2017 FSCwire
As a program analyst for the city administrators office in the District of Columbia, Alexandra Caceres works with many agencies and often travels across the congested city for meetings. Every time she does, she has to reserve one of the two vehicles owned by her agency or, if those are being used, reserve a car from the citys shared fleet. In either case, she has to schedule how long shell need the car, pick it up, drive to her destination and face the frustrating search for an elusive parking spot.Well, thats how sheto do it.In June, D.C. launched a new transportation program that makes it much easier for city employees to get around for work. Now, Caceres uses a smartphone app to contact a taxi participating in the citys Vehicles on Demand pilot. Within five to 10 minutes usually, a driver picks her up, checks her employee ID and takes her to her destination.It cuts the transportation time almost in half, she says. Its quicker and easier all around.Matthew Daus, president of the International Association of Transportation Regulators and a former taxi commissioner for New York City, says he knows of no other city in the world that has started something similar.The program is also a boon to the taxi industry, which has been suffering in cities across the country since ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft appeared on the scene and took a lot of their business. More than 150 taxi drivers have signed up to transport D.C.s public servants.The idea that a government employee could hail a for-hire vehicle from their phone seems like a no-brainer, but its a huge leap forward for local government, says Christopher Shorter, director of the D.C. Department of Public Works (DPW), which launched the program in collaboration with the D.C. Department of For-Hire Vehicles (DFHV).So far, this isnt just saving time for employees  its saving money for the city.The cost of using an agency-owned car -- based on acquisition costs, parking, fuel and maintenance -- boils down to $3.18 per mile, according to DPW. The citys fleet-share program is even more expensive, at $4.52 a mile.But the cost of the Vehicles on Demand program comes in around $2.16 per mile. Thats more than 30 to 50 percent in savings.Tips arent permitted, but drivers do get a $2 bonus per trip to make up for the loss of those extra dollars. The average fare so far is $17, compared to $15 for taxi rides to the general public, according to the DFHV.The pilot program is still under evaluation, so the impact on taxi drivers has not been calculated, but Ernest Chrappah, director of the DFHV, which regulates taxi drivers and other for-hire drivers, says the revenue is going up for everyone.The pilot program is currently being tested with 15 of the citys 78 agencies through Sept. 30. If it expands citywide, its expected to reduce the citys fleet size.Generally, were not going to immediately take sedans from government agencies, says Shorter, but in time, there will be more reliance on this kind of program and method of travel.A smaller fleet would also reduce the need for garage and parking lot space, he says.To Daus, New Yorks former taxi commissioner, D.C.s program is innovative not just because it may be a first of its kind but also because it provides solutions to several widely recognized problems.A lot of mayors are looking at ways to help the taxi industry, provide good safe service and save the government money, he says.So, will other cities follow D.C.s lead? Daus believes so.Its brand new, innovative and a great idea, he says. Doing something like this is appropriate and makes sense.
New Mexico state Sen. John Arthur Smith, a Democrat, who is concerned about the part of the GOP tax bill that will cost Western states nearly $1.3 billion in oil, gas and coal royalties. The volatility of the oil market has caused major budget problems in New Mexico and several other states.
With prospects for reauthorizing the Children's Health Insurance Program this year rapidly dimming, 25 states are expected to exhaust their federal funding to provide coverage for 1.9 million low-income children by Jan. 31, researchers at Georgetown University reported Wednesday.Key Republican senators said Wednesday that the CHIP program's future would be decided next year.Congress must pass a government spending bill by Friday night, or trigger a partial shutdown of federal operations. CHIP advocates had hoped the program, whose funding authorization ended Sept. 30, would be reauthorized as part of that legislation.But Wednesday, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate health committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a key player in this drama, said in a joint statement, "It has become clear that Congress will only be able to pass another short-term extension to prevent a government shutdown and to continue a few essential programs."They said their health care proposal, which includes several initiatives including the CHIP funding, would be offered early next year.The funding uncertainty is causing states to limit or freeze their CHIP enrollment and notify parents what to do if they lose coverage.Twenty of the 25 states cited by Georgetown, including California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Washington, have already received nearly $1.2 billion in emergency funding to keep their programs running.The CHIP program, which covers nearly 9 million U.S. youngsters and provides prenatal care for roughly 370,000 expectant mothers, has been in political limbo.A short-term funding "patch" passed by Congress was supposed to provide CHIP funding to states with program shortfalls.But because the emergency money comes from other states' unused CHIP funds, the patch has caused nine additional states to now run low of funds. Five additional states _ Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Virginia _ are now projected to exhaust their funding at the end of January, the report found."Another short-term patch this week would leave states in the dark as to how much funding they actually have," said Joan Alker, Executive Director of Georgetown's Center for Children and Families.Eight children's health and advocacy groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Defense Fund, oppose another round of short-term funding for CHIP."At some point states will reach a point of no return ... and we are reaching that critical point if Congress goes home without taking care of CHIP," said Tricia Brooks, a senior fellow at the center.The Georgetown analysis highlights the tension states are facing as Democrats and Republicans can't agree on the source of the new funding.A policy success story, most lawmakers assumed CHIP would be easily reauthorized. But the issue languished as congressional Republicans this year focused their attention on repealing the Affordable Care Act and passing a tax cut that was sent to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.In early November, the House passed a bill reauthorizing CHIP for five years and funding community health centers for two years. Democrats objected to the funding formula. To pay for CHIP, Republicans proposed shuttering an Obamacare disease prevention fund that provides $1 billion a year to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention _ roughly 12 percent of the CDC's annual budget.House Democrats continue to call this plan a nonstarter. In the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said the House measure is "dead on arrival." Unlike Democrats in the House, Schumer has some leverage, because 60 votes are needed for Senate passage and Republicans control 52 seats.So while Republicans had originally planned to include the House GOP's five-year extension in a short-term government spending bill to be considered by the week's end, Democrats in both chambers have made it clear that's one more "poison pill" that would prevent them from being able to vote to avert a shutdown.By Wednesday morning, Republicans did not seem closer to an agreement on how to proceed.House Republican Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry of North Carolina said Wednesday that CHIP would be dealt with "somewhere" but gave no indication as to which way leaders were leaning _ or when there could be a resolution.House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters that Democrats were to blame for the standoff on reauthorizing CHIP."The Democrats have voted against CHIP twice. We have passed CHIP," McCarthy said. "So I guess the agreement would have to be the Senate would have to bring it up or Schumer would have to let it go through. We've already legislated on CHIP."When asked specifically whether CHIP would be included in the year-end spending bill or advanced as separate legislation in the three days Congress is likely to meet before leaving for the year, McCarthy demurred."I didn't say we're putting it in the (spending bill), I'm saying we've already legislated twice. Democrats have voted against it. I think that's devastating," he said, citing CHIP legislation the House passed earlier this year.On the Senate side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, called addressing CHIP by the end of a year "a priority for me."We need some certainty," he said. But he declined to provide details about how the issue could be resolved this year.
The first 50-50 power balance in 17 years for Virginia's House of Delegates rested on a single vote, from a recount, for less than 24 hours. Now it could literally come down to drawing straws.The election in the 94th District is now a tie after a three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that a ballot that was rejected during Tuesday's recount should have gone to three-term incumbent Del. David Yancey, R-Newport News."Well, I hear my voters," Yancey said after the hearing. "And also we had a lot of people who voted for us, some who I suspected crossed over who maybe were going to vote one way but then voted for me because of what we were able to do for them in the community, working for them," Yancey said.State law says that a certified tie vote must be decided "by lot," or a set of objects that are drawn or thrown from a container to decide something. While judges were in recess, all kinds of suggestions were thrown around in court on Wednesday, including a coin-flip or drawing straws. Some joked it should be a physical contest, or maybe a duel.Virginia Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn tweeted Thursday night that barring some kind of legal challenge, the board could meet as early as Friday to decide. He told The Associated Press the board would probably pick the winner the same way it picks ballot order. He said each candidate's name is placed into a separate film canister. The canisters are placed into a glass bowl and shaken up. The canister containing the winner's name is pulled out at random by a board member.The end result has a serious consequence.On Tuesday, in a stunning reversal of election results, Democrat and Newport News School Board member Shelly Simonds picked up a net 11 votes during a recount she had requested, giving her 11,608 votes and Yancey 11,607. That single vote, if certified, would have meant a House of Delegates divided right down the party line with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats -- 16 of whom were newly elected in a wave of blue votes last month.Recounts are still scheduled in the 28th and 68th Districts. In the 28th District, in the Fredericksburg area, Republican Bob Thomas leads Democrat Joshua Cole by 82 votes. Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit there, asking for a special election because of errors that led more than 140 voters to cast ballots in the wrong district.In Richmond's 68th District, Republican Del. G. Manoli Loupassi is losing to his Democratic challenger, Dawn Adams, by 336 votes.In Newport News Tuesday evening, a recount official appointed by Yancey's team, Kenneth Mallory, told his wife and parents that a vote from the Warwick precinct wasn't counted, and he thought it should have gone to Yancey, according to a letter he sent to the Newport News registrar's office and to Yancey's lawyer. That letter was submitted during Wednesday's final recount hearing in Newport News Circuit Court, starting an hourslong debate over whether it could even be viewed.A copy of the ballot shows that a voter filled in a bubble for Republican candidates Ed Gillespie for governor, Jill Vogel for lieutenant governor and John Adams for attorney general. There is an apparent X marked through the bubble for Gillespie. The voter had also filled in bubbles for both Simonds and Yancey in the 94th District box, but there was a slash through Simonds' bubble.In a recount, a machine does most of the counting but spits out ballots that it can't read -- overvotes, or ballots with too many bubbles filled in; undervotes, those with no bubbles filled in; and write-ins. Recount officials review these ballots individually to see if they can determine what the voter's intent was, like one clear circle around a candidate's name.Each party chooses half of the 16 recount officials.When the ballot in question came up Tuesday afternoon, Mallory wrote that he "initially felt strongly" about it going for Yancey because it appeared to be a straight Republican ticket otherwise. His counterpart at the table, who was appointed by Simonds' side, disagreed, saying it wasn't possible to decide what the voter meant.It was all happening at once, Mallory said, and he got confused. After a back-and-forth that lasted three to four minutes, according to election officials, Mallory agreed to accept the ballot as an overvote, which meant it was not counted. He claims he felt hurried in making the decision."I now question whether we handled this ballot correctly," wrote Mallory, who said he has been an elections official since 2008 but has never served in a recount. "Even before we had finished the day, before we had finished our other precincts, I had questions and reservations about my decision to consider the ballot as an indiscernible overvote. I do not feel like I made the right decision in this case."Ezra Reese, an attorney representing Simonds, argued there's a process for when recount officials can't decide on a ballot: it gets separated from the rest, and the court makes the final call. That didn't happen here.Reese argued that the ballot should either be thrown out or go to Simonds. The voter put an X on Gillespie's bubble and a slash over Simonds' bubble. If one of those is considered a mark of approval, the other one should be, too, he said. However, if the marks aren't enough to show what a voter wants, state law says it should be tossed, as it originally was.Yancey's attorney, Trevor M. Stanley, argued the recount isn't over until the judges certify the votes and they want to make sure every vote is counted.The judges deliberated for several hours over whether they should look at the ballot, whether anyone could be sure which ballot it was and, finally, what the markings on it really meant. In the end, they ruled: yes, yes and Yancey.Democrats later said they had a ballot from the Denbigh precinct that should be reviewed, but the judges said it wasn't submitted in time.Simonds didn't return calls for comment on Wednesday.Electoral board members Sean Devlin and Wendell Barbour, who helped oversee the recount, identified the ballot in court on Wednesday before attorneys and judges viewed it.In an interview later, Devlin said most of the ballots not counted by the tabulating machines were not marked for any candidate. Most of the votes Simonds picked up in the hand-count review of ballots were from people who filled in the "D" to the right of her name, instead of the bubble to the left, which is what the tabulating machines are designed to register, he said.Another team reviewing ballots counted one for Simonds that was marked in the same way as the ballot judges ruled on Wednesday, Devlin said.State law says the recount proceeding is final and not subject to appeal. However, Marc Elias, lawyer for the Virginia House Democratic Caucus, refused to back down just yet."Today's decision by the court was wrong, and Delegate-elect Shelly Simonds should have been certified the winner," Elias said in a statement. "We are currently assessing all legal options before us as we fight for a just result. The Republicans themselves had affirmed that this result was accurate yesterday before changing their minds today. After conceding this seat and their majority, they are now desperately trying to claw both back 'like a snarling dog that won't let go of a bone' " -- a description Elias took from a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial.The House of Delegates' Republican leadership issued a written statement that said, "While it appeared yesterday that Shelly Simonds was elected, it's obvious now that the result will remain unclear for a while longer."As we have said consistently throughout this process, we are committed to an open, fair and honest election in which every lawful vote is counted."State law suggests a couple different things on what happens next.Recount law states that once a court certifies the results of a recount, the local electoral board and the State Board of Elections certifies it.But the part of the state code that talks about tiebreakers says General Assembly races are supposed to go straight to the State Board of Elections. That body "decides by lot which of them shall be declared elected." They're supposed to give candidates reasonable notice of when this will happen.The state code doesn't say what objects are to be used for the drawing or how it should be done. The loser of the draw, according to law, can request a recount -- seemingly restarting the entire process.Ties come up rarely, and when they do, it is generally in small elections where no more than a few hundred votes are cast. In 2014, in the small town of Hillsville, a vote for the Sulphur Springs Ward ended with an 89-89 tie. The Carroll County Electoral Board wrote the names of Bill Tate Jr. and Billy Walls on separate slips of paper, sealed them in separate envelopes, put them into a box and drew one at random.Tate took the seat.
Description

GIS 21 December, 2017: The Peoples Republic of China is extending its support to the Ministry of Ocean Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries and Shipping by donating new IT equipment for further development of Mauritiuss ocean economy. The equipment was handed over by the Ambassador of the Republic of China to Mauritius, Mr Sun Gongyi, to the Minister of Ocean Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries and Shipping, Mr Premdut Koonjoo, on 19 December 2017 at the LIC Building in Port-Louis.

On this occasion, Minister Koonjoo expressed his gratitude towards the Chinese Government for providing its continuous support to the development of Mauritius. He pointed out that the IT equipment donated will be used for information and research as regards the development and the safeguarding of the ocean. He highlighted that this gesture testifies the longstanding relationship between Mauritius and China since 1972.

Government, the Minister emphasised, recognises the potentials of the ocean and is striving to make of the blue economy a major economic pillar of Mauritius. He pointed out that China has made an exemplary progress in the development of the ocean economy by contributing some 9.6% to its Gross Domestic Product.

He underlined that the biggest challenge is to fully tap the ocean economy and at the same time maintaining environmental sustainability. The use of new technologies and appropriate training opportunities will help to set the base for further development of the maritime realm, he added.

Minister Koonjoo underscored that the donation of the IT equipment has been made at an opportune time and is in line with the setting up of a new Ocean Economy Unit to formulate and implement policies as well as strategies for the development of the ocean economy.
The Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit and Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, made this statement yesterday at the handing over ceremony of title deeds to beneficiaries under the Winding up of the Phasing out of Sugar Camps Project, at Holiday Inn, Mon Tresor. Various eminent personalities were present on the occasion.

In his address, the Prime Minister underlined that the aim of the Phasing out of Sugar Camps Project was essentially to improve the working conditions of workers. The vision of Government is anchored in the philosophy of uplifting and enhancing the working and living conditions of the population, he added. In this regards, he underlined that the beneficiaries, some 75 families, are being offered a significant opportunity of becoming land owners, due to their hard work.

Prime Minister Jugnauth recalled that the sugar industry is deeply related to the history of Mauritius as it was once a major pillar of the economy and helped in the socioeconomic development of the country. However, he underscored, over the years, due to daunting challenges and unfavourable conditions, a reform of the sugar industry was imperative for the sector to continue to operate and remain viable.

He recalled that the Voluntary Retirement Scheme has been one of the main components of the Sugar Sector Strategic Plan 2001-2005 to reduce the operating cost of production of sugar in Mauritius. This endeavour has proved to be successful for both workers and entrepreneurs, he pointed out.

Prime Minister Jugnauth highlighted that the development agenda also takes into account social progress wherein Government ensures that the different strata of the society are offered equal opportunities. The working class in particular, he emphasised, have been given extensive support with recent initiatives such as the Negative Income Tax and the Minimum Salary.
ATLANTA  Martin OMalley, the former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore who ranks among the most influential leaders in gov tech, sees reason to be optimistic about the future of government, and he sees it in city halls and on college campuses.

Few are better positioned to see hope in these places than OMalley, who served two terms as mayor and another two terms as governor before running unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. OMalley now chairs the advisory committee of the MetroLab Network , which facilitates collaborative relationships between city governments and academia.OMalley spoke earlier this month at MetroLabs annual summit in Atlanta, taking time during the event to talk withabout the future of gov tech, his own legacy and how this work is reshaping government for the better, as well as the role MetroLab plays.

The Future of Gov Tech

Citizen expectations have been elevated by the private sector in this Uber generation, OMalley said. People expect visibility, they expect transparency, they expect service delivery, and they expect government to be able to deliver with the same proficiency and technical capacity that the private sector does, and who can blame them? Expectations have been raised, and thats a good thing. The better men and women, who are leading Americas cities, have figured out they have more freedom to try new things, to advance innovations and to up the technical capacities of government in ways that 10 years ago might have seemed like a frivolous or risky expenditure.OMalley also sees two concepts steadily emerging from cities and universities in the MetroLab Network: expanded use of sensors and better predictive analytics.

Those things are part and parcel by the movement in government enabled by technology thats moving us from being governments where decisions are made based on hunch or politics, to based on evidence, from the ability to respond to calls for service, to being able to actually anticipate or deploy resources based on alerts or past history, he said.

More cities  including Chicago, Atlanta and Kansas City, Mo.  use the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect data, getting clearer pictures of air quality, traffic and crime. Often with help from universities, they also use analytics to anticipate problems. The data also shows how tax dollars are being spent and the tangible results theyre creating.

Cities are at the forefront of a new way of governing, according to OMalley. One day it will percolate up to states, and then hopefully up to federal government, but cities are at the forefront of a new and better way of government, he said. Its no longer simply command and control, a hierarchy of rank and position, its about collaboration, about doing what works. Its fundamentally entrepreneurial. What technology gives us is the ability to actually see and model the belief space, if you will, that is the physical environment of a city, and to take actions that affect in a positive way the dynamic in a city to become a comfier, safer and more prosperous place.

Reshaping Government for the Better

This idea that innovation is changing the way government functions is taking hold slowly.

Mayors as a group can be hesitant to try something untested because even just one high-profile failure can reduce chances for re-election. Once an idea has been proven, however, it spreads quickly. OMalley said MetroLab is a means of holding up successful partnerships to de-risk ideas for other mayors.

Every mayor wants to be the best at doing something second, OMalley said. In Silicon Valley, if you fail multiple times, but you have one or two big successes, youre hailed as a great entrepreneur. You have a few failures as mayor, especially where technology is concerned  people get fired for that and lose elections. So, its important to de-risk it, because its one thing to make investments with investors money, and certainly you have fiduciary duties there, but people are making investments and theyre taking a risk. When it comes to tax dollars, theres a higher bar of scrutiny that people apply, and rightly so.

For many years, the chief rule of government has been to do things because your boss told you to. With data, however, this is also changing.

Those rules are insufficient anymore, OMalley said. The new rule is do it because I can show you it works. It really does promise a renewal of democracy, of self-governance. Thats really the only way forward. Weve got to stop clinging to the past.

OMalleys Continuing Legacy

There are no official rankings, but one struggles to find an elected leader whose work has inspired more progress in gov tech than OMalley.

Under his leadership, Baltimore developed one of the earliest 311 call centers in the country, as well as one of the first programs that gathers data to track and improve the performance of city workers. The latter program was called CitiStat (modified to StateStat when OMalley was governor), and it has led to a wave of similar initiatives nationwide.

In fact, during the conference a public servant from New Jerseys Department of Children and Families told OMalley her agencys ChildStat program was based on his work. While names and details differ, both 311 call centers and stat programs have spread.

I like to believe our success informed some of that, OMalley said. I used to love when other mayors would take what wed done and use it to get results in their own cities.

One example is a program Baltimore developed to identify where children were at risk for lead poisoning, a program later replicated by St. Louis.

Citing a religious quotation, OMalley says, To do the tough work of public service, you have to approach it with the attitude that if you save just one life, its as if youve saved the world, but at the same time, there is a joy that comes from seeing other people learn from your piece of the experiment and build upon it to save even more lives.
(TNS) - The House is expected to vote Thursday on an $81 billion disaster aid package, a measure that would be the largest single infusion of federal relief dollars yet for areas ravaged by hurricanes and wildfires this year.The House Rules Committee convened an early-morning meeting Thursday to clear the way for a vote on disaster aid and a must-pass spending bill to avert a government shutdown. Republicans unveiled overnight a new, stripped-down spending bill that would fund the government through Jan. 19 and delay battles over the budget and immigration into next month.It should pass and it should be bipartisan, Bryan Rep. Bill Flores, a Republican, said of the aid measure Wednesday.It faces a less certain path in the Senate, however, where lawmakers could punt the issue to January. The Senate is expected, however, to swiftly approve the stopgap spending bill as current funding expires later this week.The disaster aid bill nearly doubles the $44 billion request made by the White House last month a measure that Gov. Greg Abbott and many Texas lawmakers slammed as inadequate.If the $81 billion proposal is approved, it would bring the total dedicated to hurricane and fire-ravaged communities this year to more than $130 billion.The emergency aid would provide $26 billion for community development block grants, which would help Texas, Florida and island territories rebuild, along with Western states recovering from wildfires. It would also direct almost $28 billion to the governments chief disaster aid account  the Federal Emergency Management Agency  $4 billion of which could be used to help cash-strapped governments such as Puerto Ricos stay afloat.More than $12 billion would go to the Army Corps of Engineers, primarily to repair structures damaged by natural disasters. There's also money for schools, small business loans and farmers whose crops were destroyed by storms.On Wednesday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn said he advised his House counterparts to please pass something so that the Senate can quickly take it up. Theres a good chance we can improve it and send it back to the House and get it done, he told The Dallas Morning News.The concern is that the longer we have to wait, No. 1, our needs are not going to be met and No. 2, the opportunities to get a supplemental passed are going to sort of fade away as we get busy doing other things, he said.Still, its unclear whether the Senate would immediately consider the disaster aid bill before lawmakers leave for the holidays. The Senate would likely add to the measure and pass it next year, over the objections of lawmakers from Texas and Florida.Were relying on John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, said Friendswood Republican Rep. Randy Weber, who wants to see the funds approved this month.The measure would be the third major relief package approved by Congress in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and wildfires this year.On Wednesday, Weber was among the Texans concerned that  despite the size of the $81 billion request  the state wouldnt see enough direct federal aid to help rebuild from the August storm.It is unclear, however, what Texas would see in federal assistance as the majority of money will be distributed through a competitive grant process.Were very concerned. When you talk about a geographical area, the number of people with financial impact, Texas was the hardest hit, Weber said.Wed make the argument that Texas should get at least the attention that Katrina got, or Sandy got, he continued, referring to federal funds approved in the wake of the storms that rocked coastal states and the Northeast.Cornyn said both he and Abbott are also concerned about the makeup of the bill because some of it will not be accessible to Texas and some of it is more designed for Puerto Rico.Abbott has asked Washington to approve a more than $60 billion wishlist in Texas Harvey aid, though much of Abbotts 300-page request entailed ambitious long-term flood control projects, instead of just restoring what was damaged by Hurricane Harvey.Last month, he blasted the White Houses $44 billion request last month as "completely inadequate" and said it "does not live up" to what President Donald Trump has pledged in recovery aid.In a statement on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Abbott said the $81 billion top line number is significant but the overall bill is still a work in progress. The governor will continue to work with the Texas delegation to identify strategies and address the needs of Texans."Some conservatives are upset with the price tag of the $81 billion plan, as it is not offset with cuts elsewhere in the budget.Meanwhile, Democrats secured more help for Puerto Rico on Wednesday, according to Politico, as House Republicans need their support in the face of conservative opposition.Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is among the Democrats who say the disaster aid bill should be taken up before lawmakers leave this week.While the passage of time since these natural disasters occurred may make it difficult for some to remember the awful destruction left in their wake, the truth is that millions of Americans in the affected areas are still struggling in the aftermath, she said in a prepared statement.The Associated Press contributed to this report.2017 The Dallas Morning NewsVisit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS)  When Tiffany Fariseo returned to her Ventura home a week after the Thomas fire forced her to flee, a power outage had spoiled her food, including two turkeys she had frozen for Christmas dinner.Money shed saved to buy loved ones Christmas gifts, she said, instead went to groceries and a $130-per-night hotel stay with her 6-year-old son and five pets during their displacement.This really put us behind, said Fariseo, who works as a caregiver. When you live paycheck to paycheck, this impacts you a lot harder.About 16,000 people in Santa Barbara County still cant go home. At assistance centers, case managers meet with evacuees one-on-one to help them once theyre allowed to resettle. One center brought in therapy dogs to keep people in good spirits.Meanwhile, firefighters who have spent more than two weeks trying to control the massive wildfire are optimistic that their days of preparation will keep hot spots from igniting in the face of anticipated powerful winds.The wind test is coming early Thursday, Chris Childers, a battalion chief for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, told residents Wednesday evening at what officials said would be the last community meeting at San Marcos High School. It will be the test to see if we have done everything correct.That included purposefully torching old vegetation to reduce available fuels on the north end of the fire, about 25 miles up Highway 33 outside Ojai. Officials said the Thomas fire has burned 272,000 acres of land and more than 750 homes.That number of acres charred hasnt grown for a day, probably because crews havent been able to conduct a full assessment of any new burn area, said Capt. Brandon Vaccaro of the California City Fire Department.As far as fire activity, were not seeing anything new, Vaccaro said. We havent had anything thats caused a problem for us.If things go as planned, crews hope to start lifting remaining evacuation orders Thursday morning.For Fariseo, small gestures have given her hope. A woman sold her a Christmas tree for $20, less than half its marked price. She was able to get her food stamp card refilled and secured a $100 Walmart gift card from the Salvation Army to help her buy gifts.To bring holiday cheer to her home, she had her son and her best friends children do arts and crafts. One day, they wrote letters to firefighters.We have each other, she said.Gino Mallacino left his home in the Santa Barbara foothills three days after the Thomas fire broke out. Since then, hes bounced around between a hotel and a Red Cross shelter.As a renter, he doesnt know what has happened to his home and fears he has lost everything. Mallacino said spending Christmas in a shelter will be fine, but as a retiree who survives on a modest income, hes worried about what happens after the holiday. He wonders how long the shelter will be open.What concerns me is, where we go from there? he said. Its almost impossible to find housing in Santa Barbara in a normal situation.A contingent of police officers has been patrolling neighborhoods in and around burn zones, watching for looters. On Tuesday night, they arrested a 32-year-old Lompoc man, Adam Smith, on suspicion of residential burglary after catching him inside a Montecito home.Last week, authorities arrested Cesar Flores, 31, on suspicion of entering a disaster area, loitering, possession of a burglary tool and using drugs in public after he was seen prowling on private property in an evacuated part of Montecito.Over the weekend, police officers and firefighters came across a butane honey oil extraction lab in a residence in the hills of Montecito in a mandatory evacuation area.Santa Cruz reported from Ventura, Tchekmedyian from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Javier Panzar, Michael Livingston and Melissa Etehad contributed to this report.nicole.santacruz@latimes.com | Twitter: @nicolesantacruzalene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com | Twitter: @alenetchek2017 the Los Angeles TimesVisit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This issue marks the 30th anniversary ofWe dug up a copy of the inaugural issue, which looks a little different from December 2017.e.Republic CEO andEditor in Chief Dennis McKennas original idea forback in the late 1980s was to take the two most boring subjects  government and technology  and put them together. He went on to build a company around them  at a time when technology leaders in California state government doubted his prediction that one day, all state employees would have computers on their desks.Paging through that first issue brings some predictable reactions. Especially in technology, the biggest takeaway is how very far weve come. This, of course, was pre-Internet, pre-smartphone, when significance was measured by the size of your switchboard and raised-floor data center. The ads inside offer phone numbers and physical addresses as the preferred (and only) means of contact.IT was buried in some other function of government, not a standalone entity. Those who ran these units were IT managers. The idea of a chief information officer in government  especially one that deserved a place at the cabinet table  was novel, even foreign, but it was championed early and often in these pages.What was perhaps a more surprising reaction is how evergreen many of the issues covered actually proved to be. While progress, remarkable in scope and scale, is evident at every turn, so too is the universal nature of many of the biggest challenges in government IT.Case in point: The struggle to create mutually beneficial relationships between the public and private sectors snags a good amount of ink in the 1987 issue. David Lema, then-director of the state of Californias Stephen P. Teale Data Center, urged readers to work toward symbiotic, two-way partnerships in which taxpayers and shareholders alike each rightfully demand a good return on their investment. Another piece suggests vendors ought to invest as much time boning up on prospective government clients as they do potential customers in other markets.The premier issue also looks at the advantages of telecommuting as an antidote to ever-increasing traffic, offering advantages for productivity, absentee rates and making government a more desirable employer. While its a challenge to imagine remote work in the pre-Internet era, the building blocks for a more flexible workplace were being considered, even then. Our recent workforce series proves that CIOs see the benefits, even if some still struggle with policies. The essential nature of a mobile-enabled workforce  for field-based and remote work  is fully accepted today.Evidence of data-sharing, and its inherent challenges, were hinted at in the early days as well. A profile of nonprofit Public Technology Inc., described as the research and development arm of the National League of Cities and the International City/County Management Association, pointed to a payroll upgrade for a California city that benefited from an internally developed tool from a Wyoming municipality. The concept  one jurisdiction benefiting from a solution another built for the same issue  was a novel one at the time, yet it foretold so much of what was to come.The Young Turks of 1987 are now graybeards, what was cutting-edge tech then has aged into legacy and what were then new companies are now incumbents, each negotiating a future with hundreds of gov tech startups that have assumed the vanguard in what seems like an eternal quest to find a better way to do the work of government.These are just a few examples of broad topics from 1987  when a gallon of gas cost 87 cents  that still resonate today. While the specifics of each challenge have evolved, and tales of overcoming them in smart ways are many, the underlying themes still seem worthy of consideration.Hopefully this means were still talking about the right things. Let us know. And heres to the next 30 years of GovTech.
The state of Montana will likely start the new year with a temporary but rather large void in its technology sector.Thats because Dec. 15 was the last day of work for Lynne Pizzini, the states second highest-ranking technology official, as she follows a well-defined path for C-level officials that heads to the private sector.Pizzinis LinkedIn profile already reflects her next move.The former Montana chief information security officer and deputy chief information officer is joining Washington-based Cerium Networks as its cybersecurity director.There, she is expected to help small and medium-sized businesses better incorporate security into their companies, the state said in a news release But the former deputy CIO and CISO spent more than 25 years in the public sector  including 17 years at the Montana Department of Administrations (DOA) State Information Technology Services Division (SITSD)  where she is credited with having helped create, implement and build the states cybersecurity program.Her tenure as deputy CIO and CISO spanned more than nine years. In the process, Pizzini served under six governors, saw the state build data centers from the ground up, and, of course, survived Y2K. One of her favorite memories, the state said, was of working throughout the night on Dec. 31, 1999, as staffers in whats now SITSD braced for a system shutdown that never came.She emphasized the importance of communication during breaches or incidents during a conversation within October.I believe organizations really do need to have a very firm plan on how they're going to carry out any type of notification after an incident, Pizzini said at the time.Lynne Pizzini has devoted her career to security, and the State of Montana has been the great beneficiary of that devotion, Montana Chief Information Officer Ron Baldwin said in a statement.As she retires from public service, I wish her the very best and know that her passion for security will continue to benefit the public sector, our state and our nation, Baldwin added.In an August blog post, Pizzini talked to Splunk, the San Francisco-based big data company, about the crucial nature of data securitization, and how integral technology is to state agencies.Its my job to protect the state citizens data, and its not just the citizens of the state  its my data; its my moms data; its my friends data. So, its my responsibility to make sure their data is protected, and also to ensure that our systems work properly, Pizzini told Splunk.Since most business processes are related to technology in some fashion, its also my job to make sure all of our business processes are working at top efficiency, she added.No stranger to the statehouse, Pizzini addressed the Montana House State Adminstration Commmittee during the 2015 Legislative Session, with an update on IT security; and further information on DOA-SITSDs request for nearly $1.9 million to continue the Data Protection Initiative," aimed at addressing the ongoing need for improvement of data security on state systems.As a result of the Initiative, launched in 2013 with a $2 million appropriation from the 2013 Legislature, the state had already conducted an enterprise risk assessment and created a road map for improvements.John Lewis, director of the State Department of Administration, called Pizzini a valuable and integral part of SITSD and a pillar of public service whose reputation precedes her into the private sector.No additional details were available about her replacement as of press time.
Nicole Galloway

(TNS)  JEFFERSON CITY  Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is investigating Gov. Eric Greitens and his staff, probing whether the governor and his office broke the state's open records law by using an app that deletes text messages after they've been read. The Kansas City Star first reported the app usage earlier this month, raising concerns from open-government advocates who worried that Greitens, a Republican, and members of his senior staff were violating the law by deleting texts potentially dealing with state business.In a letter dated Wednesday to state Sen. Scott Sifton, D-Affton, Hawley concluded that he could investigate the governor, putting to bed concerns that probing the governor's actions could represent a conflict of interest."While my Office currently represents the Governor in ongoing litigation, it represents the Governor in those other cases in his official capacity," Hawley wrote to Sifton, who had requested the probe . "The real party in interest in each of those cases, and the Office's true client, is the State of Missouri."Because my Office does not have a conflict of interest in this case, we have opened an inquiry into the issues you raised in your letter," Hawley said. He added that the attorney general's office would screen employees working on the probe to separate them from the office's representation of the governor in other cases."I am pleased to see the attorney general respond to two weeks of public pressure to move forward with his investigation," Sifton said Wednesday. "We need to ensure transparency in our state's highest office."The governor broke his silence on the matter last week, when he told reporters in Bellefontaine Neighbors that "this is another nothing story thats come from a liberal media outlet that is just desperate for salacious headlines." He did not directly deny the claims made in the report.The Star reported that the governor and members of his staff downloaded the text-deleting app Confide on their personal cellphones. But Hawley, a Republican, has said that just because communication takes place on a personal device does not mean that the text messages may be deleted under the state's open records statutes."We're confident that this review of our records retention policy will show that we follow the law," said Parker Briden, the governor's spokesman. "Under the Governor's Office records retention policy, records related to official business of state government that come into possession of the Governor's office staff are retained."He stated that Missouri law does not require that "transitory documents, drafts, non-decision making documents, records that are not necessary to sustain administrative functions, and materials that lack substantial administrative or operational value" need to be retained.Later on Wednesday, Loree Anne Paradise, Hawley's deputy chief of staff, said that the attorney general's office is also investigating Auditor Nicole Galloway's compliance with the Sunshine Law.The investigation stems from a July lawsuit brought by the Republican-aligned Missouri Alliance for Freedom and a later Sunshine Law complaint filed with Hawley's office.The alliance says that Galloway, a Democrat, has failed to produce any text messages after the group filed sweeping open records requests with her office earlier this year.Steph Deidrick, spokeswoman for Galloway, has said the requests are politically motivated, and that so far Galloway's office has produced more than 24,000 documents to the group.Deidrick said text messages dealing with public business are retained in some form  and are not necessarily in text message format.She said the auditor's office retains text messages for 30 days and that "regardless of the method of communication, information about public business is retained in some form.""In the 24,000 documents that were produced, it would be difficult to differentiate whether content originated in a text message, hand-written note or other form of communication," Deidrick said in an email. "Keep in mind, this office is still in the process of fulfilling the Sunshine requests."She added that processing of the group's original requests has recently been delayed. In November, the Alliance for Freedom submitted a new 13-point Sunshine request to the auditor, requesting that the office process that request first before continuing on with the prior requests.
(TNS)  An independent board made up of Springfield firefighters decided Wednesday to offer $9,000 toward a $105,000 system that would ensure firefighters will see all green traffic lights as they're driving on Veterans Parkway to emergency calls.The amount offered by the Foreign Fire Insurance Board is less than the approximately $52,000 Springfield aldermen were hoping the board would pay for the traffic signal technology that involves putting GPS-based units on four fire rigs and several intersections along Veterans with the intent of speeding up response times.Fire Chief Barry Helmerichs originally asked the Springfield City Council in November for the city to fund the whole $105,000 , with hopes of getting the technology installed before the height of the holiday shopping season, which often brings traffic backups on Veterans Parkway. The council countered by asking if the Foreign Fire Insurance Board would pay for half Fire Capt. Tony Burton, the board's president, said the $9,000 it approved Wednesday would pay for the GPS units for the four fire department vehicles, leaving the cost of outfitting the intersections up to the city. Burton said city infrastructure wasn't within the board's guiding document on how to spend its money."We definitely want to get the program started because it helps with the response times," Burton said.Money to foreign fire insurance boards in Illinois comes from out-of-state insurance companies, which pay a 2 percent tax on policies they sell in Illinois. The tax is collected by the Illinois Municipal League and redistributed back to local boards. Last month, the Springfield's board got a check for about $235,400 for its annual take.The board usually has quarterly meetings where they consider expense requests, often funding supplies for the firehouses and equipment for the department. The seven-member board is appointed by Helmerichs, who, as the chief, automatically has a seat on the board, according to state law.Burton said the board's $9,000 is dependent on the rest of the funds being supplied by the city council and has a deadline for the end of the fiscal year, which is Feb. 28.Helmerichs said he would go back to the city council to ask for the other $96,000."I hope we would just move ahead," Helmerichs said. "The sooner, the better. There's congestion there year-round."
(TNS)  NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio  Commissioners have moved forward with a plan to purchase an $11.5 million radio system for law enforcement and first responders to replace the current system, which will reach its end of life on Dec. 31, 2018.To pay for it, they are asking voters to approve a temporary 0.5 percent increase in the county's sales tax in the May 8 primary election. If approved, the tax would be collected from Oct. 1, 2018, to Sept. 30, 2020, when it would expire.Commissioner Kerry Metzger said that replacing the current radio system is not optional."On Dec. 31, 2018, the system isn't going to just shut down," he said. "But what it does is increase the risk that you have to assume that you're going to have more and more severe outages. That's the problem, and then eventually you're not going to be able to get parts, period. You've got to do it."Added Commission Chris Abbuhl, "It's like a cellphone. It's not going to last for years."The system was last upgraded in 2005.Tuscarawas County will be joining the state system, which is called MARCS (Multi-Agency Radio Communications System). The county owns six towers that are used to transmit radio traffic. By joining MARCS, the county will gain access to six state towers, five of them located in areas just outside the county, according to Sheriff Orvis Campbell."That will give us coverage in dead areas like Atwood Lake and Dundee Falls," he said. "There are a bunch of areas, because of the county's terrain of hills and valleys, with shaky radio coverage. This will fill in just about all those gaps."The county also will gain two additional radio frequencies.On Monday, commissioners signed an 11-year agreement with Motorola for upgrading the system equipment, software and purchasing 1,200 radios for the county and local fire and police departments. The system will be installed by Staley Technologies of New Philadelphia.Through negotiations with Motorola, county officials were able to get the company to reduce the cost by almost $1 million.In the near future, Campbell; Jim Torch, fiscal and human resources manager for the sheriff's office; and representatives of Staley Technologies will be traveling to Motorola's factory in Illinois to finalize details of the project.Campbell said it is important that Motorola begin its work soon so the project will be completed before the current radio system reaches the end of its life.Motorola will provide interim financing for the project, Metzger said. The contract gives the county two years before it has to make its first payment. Tuscarawas County will pay 3.24 percent interest, and will refinance the project after the first payment is made.If the sales tax increase is approved, it would bring in about $6.4 million per year, he said.Commissioners said that money would be used for the purchase of the radios, other equipment and software. It would not be used for salaries or benefits of employees."We have trust in the voters that they'll see the importance in this and see that there's merit to it," Abbuhl said. "We're really getting a pretty good bang for our buck, even though that's a lot of money. Every county across the state has to do it at some point."Commissioners said they will continue to pursue grant funds to assist with the project through such agencies as the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association (OMEGA), the federal Department of Homeland Security and the state's capital budget.
Last month, three former friends of Facebook spoke out against the social media platform and criticized its affect upon humanity and our social interactions. Sean Parker, Roger McNamee and Chamath Palihapitiya were all involved in Facebook during its earlier days. But recently, theyve become unhappy with the turn the company has taken, and theyre making it known.Sean Parker, Facebooks first president, went first. At the beginning of November, he reportedly told the news site Axios that the like and reaction features for posts on Facebooks platform were a social validation feedback loop that exploits how human brains work. He also stated that the company was built as an answer to one question: How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?Not long after Parker spoke to Axios, venture capitalist Roger McNamee, who was an early investor in Facebook as well as Google, wrote an essay forthat contained criticism for both companies. He accused them of using persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry and modern technology to [appeal] to fear and anger and encourage addictive behavior.Lastly, former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya weighed in during a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in November. He said that he has experienced tremendous guilt over his role in building a company that is ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.A Dec. 15 statement by Facebook, viewable here , seems to be a response to these criticisms.
It will get worse

Fertile legal ground?

No trolls

(TNS)  The specter of a lawsuit by a civil rights group has forced some politicians and government officials to address a prickly question: Can they block their critics on social media?It was sparked this week by the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which warned four government officials to stop censoring their critics by blocking access or deleting comments posted on their official Facebook pages.The group targeted the sheriffs of Habersham and Worth counties, the Henry County Police Department and the office of U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson. But any court action would be closely watched across the state and could have implications in the highest reaches of Georgia officialdom.After all, a slew of state leaders use social media as a principle way to communicate with the masses  and are known to keep an itchy finger on the block button.That includes outgoing Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, whose penchant for blocking Twitter users has become a running joke in political circles. And Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican candidate for governor, has come under fire for deleting posts critical of him. The ACLUs letters to each government official includes images of posts that were removed or screen shots of users who were blocked from accessing their pages. Sean Young, the ACLU of Georgias legal director, gave each 30 days to restore those who have been unlawfully blocked or face a lawsuit.Georgia politicians need to be on notice that if they have an official government page, they cant censor comments they dont like, Young said. They should be encouraging more speech and not less. Because speech is central to our democracy, and we shouldnt be discouraging comments critical of our government.He added: Politicians need to catch up to the 21st century and get with the program.Among the posts the ACLU targeted were comments that urged Ferguson to hold more town hall meetings or panned his votes in Congress, plus a series of comments on the Habersham page from members of a marijuana advocacy group criticizing drug-related arrests as a waste of taxpayer spending.The letter to Henry Countys Police Department cited a recent Open Records Act request that revealed authorities had blocked at least 220 people from posting on the Facebook page. The Worth County site, the ACLU said, removed a post critical of the sheriff.Fergusons office responded in a letter saying some accounts that were inadvertently blocked have been restored. He said it was not his intention to silence the voices of my constituents, and his office said his social media policy follows U.S. House rules and recent court rulings.Several of the law enforcement departments declined to comment or did not directly address the legal threat, and its not immediately clear whether they all reversed their positions. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell wrote on Facebook that he would make some changes to the account and expressed frustration about the legal threat in an email.Just shows where our country has gone, he said, and Im afraid it will get worse.The ACLUs attorneys cited a recent court order it said buoyed its position. That July ruling by a federal judge in Virginia concluded that a local politician committed a cardinal sin under the First Amendment by blocking a constituent on social media.Thats provided more fuel for a volley of legal challenges. The ACLU of Maryland and ACLU of Maine are suing governors in each state over the practice. And the ACLU of Pennsylvania has pushed a local council member to stop deleting comments from critics.Some politicians have taken pre-emptive action. In Arizona, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar unblocked a woman on Facebook who filed a lawsuit claiming he violated her free speech rights. She mounted a lengthy protest against him that involved depositing real blocks at his office. And California Gov. Jerry Brown quit restricting people on social media after a free speech advocacy group released documents in September showing he blocked about 1,500 people from Facebook.The most-watched case, however, involves the White House. President Donald Trump is facing a lawsuit from Twitter users blocked by him who say they were unlawfully restricted access to a public forum. The Justice Department warned a defeat could reshape First Amendment law and threaten how officials use social media.In Georgia, several leading politicians have faced similar scrutiny of their social media accounts.Gov. Nathan Deals office said about 150 accounts, largely deemed to be bots or spammers, were banned from accessing his Facebook page earlier this decade.None have been blocked since October 2014, when Deals account was converted to a fan page, said his spokeswoman, Jen Talaber Ryan. Seven accounts have been blocked from his Twitter page, and all were deemed to be bots or spammers, she said.As a rule, Facebook followers are free to comment and post on the governors page unless its hateful or degrading language, Ryan said.Reed has built a Twitter following of more than 414,000 users  more than any other U.S. mayor, he often says, except for New Yorks Bill de Blasio. Hes also aggressively blocked detractors on Twitter, including journalists, political analysts and others who have lobbed critiques about him.His office said he uses the account as a personal platform and not an official one, though the distinction can be fuzzy: The @MayorKasimReed account has had no updates in more than six years while the mayor posts on the @KasimReed account several times a day.Like all Twitter users, Mayor Reed has the right to stop engaging in conversations when he determines they are unproductive, intentionally inflammatory, dishonest or misleading, a Reed aide said.Others take a different tack. Kemp is one of five top Republican candidates in the race to succeed Deal, and he often peppers his posts with incendiary comments aimed at revving up his conservative base, including recent critiques of Hollywood liberals taking aim at his campaign and hyper-partisan politicians in Washington blocking Trumps agenda.Sometimes he has deleted comments he didnt like.A spokesman said he makes no apologies for restricting left-wing radicals who target his social media feed.Hate-spewing trolls from around the country spend countless hours attacking Kemp, reciting debunked conspiracy theories and intimidating Georgia voters, said the spokesman, Ryan Mahoney.Its sad and these people are literally pathetic, Mahoney said. Our social media policy is simple: No foul language. No fake news. No trolls.
Nico Rosberg says he is yet to sign a new deal to be an ambassador for Mercedes in 2018.

Although he suddenly quit the German team and F1 after winning the 2016 title, he has remained on the payroll as a brand ambassador.

But for 2018, he is joining the German broadcaster RTL to replace Niki Lauda as an expert F1 pundit.

Asked if his ambassador role will make it hard to criticise Mercedes, Rosberg told Bild: "My contract as a team ambassador expires at the end of the year, so I will be totally independent.

"It may be that I will become a Daimler ambassador next year, but that will not stop me being completely neutral and commenting critically on the races.

"Niki managed to do it as a member of the team, so in my situation I can as well," Rosberg added.

(GMM)
Team bosses have now come out to defend the concept of 'grid girls' in formula one.

F1 sporting boss Ross Brawn has said the practice of having attractive women fulfil the role as 'grid girls' is under review.

Max Verstappen insisted last week: "The grid girls must stay."

And Nico Hulkenberg added: "It would be a pity if they took the eye-jewellery from the grid."

Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne joined the fray this week by supporting the idea of grid girls, and now his Italian colleague Maurzio Arrivabene says he agrees.

"Grid girls were an integral part of formula one for many years. I think Ross Brawn has more complex and important things to take care of," he said.

Niki Lauda told Austrian broadcaster Servus TV: "The emancipation of women is perfectly right, and in fact they are in the process of overtaking us.

"But why should they not be allowed to stand on the grid anymore?"

Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko said of the proposal grid girl ban: "I just cannot imagine that.

"In America, cheerleaders appear before, during and after every game so I see no reason why this should not be done in formula one.

"I think we have other worries," he said.

(GMM)
A project promoting expansion of Californias electric vehicle charging network to improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light-duty trucks made its debut in Fresno County. Funded by the California Energy Commission and managed by the Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE), the California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project (CALeVIP) works with community partners to develop and implement regional incentive projects that support the installation of charging infrastructure.

The $4-million Fresno County Incentive Project (FCIP) is the first incentive project to be launched under CALeVIP. FCIP will provide cash incentives for the purchase and installation of Level 2 electric vehicle chargers to owners of commercial properties, apartments, condominiums, workplaces and public agencies in Fresno County.

Rebates of $4,000 are available through FCIP to support installation of single-port charging stations, which charge one car at a time. Rebates of $7,000 are available for charging stations capable of charging two cars at a time.

Eligible FCIP applicants also may qualify for incentives available through the Charge Up! Program operated by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. It provides funding for businesses and public agencies in Californias Central Valley to purchase publicly accessible Level 2 charging stations.

CALeVIP and its regional incentive projects are being made possible through a grant by the Energy Commissions Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program, which supports innovations in transportation and fuel technologies.

CALeVIP is currently funded for more than $15 million, with the potential to receive up to $200 million.
China-based Didi Chuxing, the worlds leading mobile transportation platform, completed a new equity funding round of more than US$4 billion. Both Chinese and international institutions joined this latest fundraising round.

With a substantial cash reserve, DiDi plans to scale up investments in AI talent and technologies, to further build up its intelligent driving and smart transportation capabilities, and to bring more innovative and diversified transportation services to broader communities around the world.

The company will also embark on initiatives in building new energy vehicle service networks, as part of the companys efforts to lead the transformation of automobile and transportation industries and work towards global energy interconnection.

In November, Didi announced it had entered a joint venture to build its own charging networks for electric vehicles (EVs). (Earlier post.)
The customers include package delivery services, energy suppliers, trades businesses and individual retailers whose vehicles cover between 70 and 100 kilometers per day, sometimes with each day involving hundreds of starts and stops. These parameters apply to around 85% of the trips made in an urban setting according to analyses performed by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles on more than 210,000 driving profiles with more than 1,500 customers. The e-Crafter has been tailored precisely to these typical city operations and distances with its 100 kW power output, range of around 160 km (99 miles) and top speed limited to 90 km/h (56 mph).

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has handed over the first e-Crafter electric vans ( earlier post ) to major customers from Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden at its headquarters in Hannover. The customers will be testing the new electric vans in everyday use until mid-2018.





The lithium-ion battery of the e-Crafter is completely integrated into the underbody. The entire cargo volume (10.7 m3) is fully usable; the same applies to key dimensions such as its loading width (1,380 mm) and loading height (1,861 mm). The transporters maximum payload is between 1.0 and 1.75 tonnes depending on the version.

At a CCS charging station supplying 40 kW (direct current), the battery (energy capacity 35.8 kWh) can be charged to 80% after just 45 minutes. If an AC wallbox supplying 7.2 kW (alternating current) of power is used, the battery can be charged to 100% within 5 hours 20 minutes. This is generally done overnight.

The electric van is based on the new Crafter. Like Crafter versions with diesel engines, the new e-Crafter will also launch on the market with state-of-the-art driver assistance and convenience systems.

Standard equipment includes: Park Assist with side protection, a multifunctional camera and a rear view camera system. Other standard features include automatic climate control (Climatronic), seat heating, comfort seats, a navigation system, mobile phone preparation module and LED headlights. The e-Crafter will be available in September 2018. By then it will have already been extensively tested by customers in practice and made fully ready for the market.
Extraordinary session in UN (video)

The Palestinian side stated that the United States was no longer a reliable part of the peace process.

Palestinian envoy Riad Mansoor hoped that the resolution would receive adequate support. The resolution, which was presented to the Security Council by Egypt, was blocked by the US veto. Other 14 members of the Council were for the adoption of the resolution. The resolutions of the General Assambly do not have mandatory force but can bring political consequences. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, said before the voting that, according to President Trump's recommendation, she would follow the voting process of all the countries and would report to the President "who voted against the USA." President Trump threatened to dicrease the economic support of those countries which did not support the decision on Jerusalem of the White House. "I liked Nikki's announcement at the UN, addressed to all those countries that take money from us and then vote against us at the Security Council, or, potentially, at the General Assambly. So, we are following the voting. Let them vote against us; we will only save money from it. We are indifferent," said President Trump. The opponents of Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel stated that it contradicted the US policy, according to which the status of Jerusalem should be determined as a result of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.Donald Tramp's administration, in its turn, stated that it continued to adhere to the two-state approach and the embassy's location should not hinder the peace process.
Jacob Anglesey is stuck with his no contest plea to aggravated homicide.

Angleseys plea, initially entered through a plea agreement with the Sweetwater County Attorneys Office, dismisses the original charge of first-degree murder in the 2009 death of two-year-old Konnor Allen.

Angleseys attorneys attempted to convince Third District Court Judge Richard Lavery to allow Anglesey to change his plea last week, citing a desire to change their defense strategy as a result of recently uncovered comments made by Allens mother during a police interview. The interview was inadvertently ex...
The Sweetwater County Commission agrees that Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport is a good name to the rename airport.

During the Sweetwater County Commissioners meeting Tuesday morning, the Commissioners voted unanimously to support the airports proposed name change from Rock Springs/Sweetwater County Airport to Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport.

Commission chairman Reid West informed the other Commissioners that at the Rock Springs-Sweetwater County Airport Joint Powers Board meeting, the board approved moving forward with the name change.

During a previous meeting, airport manager Devo...
Robert Lynn Cudney, 59, of Green River passed away Dec. 17, 2017.

He was born June 30, 1958, in Rock Springs, son of Bobby Joe Cudney and Donna June Lewis. His family moved to Utah and he attended schools in Sunset and Clearfield. He returned to Green River in 1976 where he has lived for the last 41 years.

He began his mining career at Allied Chemical as a shot fire at the young age of 18. Over the years, he often told his kids stories about how much he had enjoyed getting paid to play with dynamite. Over the years, he became certified to operate most, if not all, the underground mining eq...
Anyone looking at the photo collection at the Sweetwater County Courthouse may come across a rather benign looking photo of the Sweetwater County Fairgrounds.

The photo shows a man standing behind a sign next to a line of cars driving into what was then a community park north of Rock Springs.

The sign asks residents if they did their part in supporting the park in big, bold letters.

Taxes have become a dirty word amongst people over the past several decades. The image of an uncaring government squandering someones hard-earned money on a useless endeavor. This concept of government and w...
Counting down the final days of the Trump administration, it cant come soon enough, and Wyoming is in an existential crisis. That is, who and what are we? What do we like and dislike? Do we have any values? Here we are, a well-educated people, we mostly associate ourselves with the ideals of democracy and Christianity and high moral standards. Yet on November 8th of last year, this state overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. 70%, the highest in the nation. Its really perplexing, especially given that we had ample warning. What does this say about Wyomingites? It says a lot....
Green River drama students received All-state honors, multiple honorable mentions and some were offered scholarships at the State Drama competition in CAsper.

On Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 35 Green River High School theater students attended Wyoming State Drama Competition at the Casper College Campus.

This year, we simply allowed students to sign up for categories they were interested in, theater director Bradlee Skinner said.

Next year, we hope to continue building the program to a point where students will have to audition for the categories they want to compete in as each event allows for...
Ucoms mobile customers will benefit from the best internet roaming rate of 8 AMD/MB when travelling to Georgia, Egypt or the UAE

Ameriabank Launches Google Pay and Google Wallet Support for Card Users in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases.

UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

Google Ad

Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Google Ad

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces
RALEIGH  Injured workers would be limited in the amount of opioids they could receive under rules being considered by the North Carolina Industrial Commission.

Commission Chairman Charlton Allen said at a news conference Wednesday he thinks new rules are needed, based on a recent study of workers compensation claims by injured workers and opioid-related deaths.

Allen said the study found that more than 800 people on workers' comp died of an overdose over about four years. He did say it's not known whether or how pain medication prescriptions contributed to the deaths.

The commission is considering nine rules to limit the number of opioid prescriptions a person could receive. It would also encourage alternative treatments such as physical therapy and massage.

The new rules could go into effect in May.
Santa Trump and his elf Nikki were working on his Christmas gift list.

"You've been taking names?" Santa asked.

"Yes, sir," said Nikki.

"Good. We're doing things a lot differently this year, a lot differently."

"Yes, sir."

"No more naughty and nice. It all depends on who's for us and against us."

"Good idea, sir."

"Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

"We do not care, sir."

"So what have you got?"

"Ethiopia is asking for food to relieve their latest famine."

"Are they for us or against us on the Jerusalem vote?"

"They're probably going against us, sir."

"All right. You tell them they can starve. We don't care."

"Done, sir."

"Next?"

"Some West African countries, sir. They want medical aid to prevent another Ebola outbreak. They may vote against us, too."

"If they do, no help. They can keep their Ebola. We don't care. Next?"

"Haiti, sir. They want aid dealing with earthquakes, hurricanes, disease, you name it."

"Are they with us?"

"Usually not, sir."

"Let them know if they aren't with us this time, they can go to hell. We don't care."

"Will do, sir."

"Next?"

"Egypt. They're requesting the usual billions for security."

"Will they support us?"

"No, sir. They say on Jerusalem, they can't go against the other Arab countries."

"Then let the terrorists blow them all up. We don't care."

"Yes, sir. Next is Indonesia. There was a volcanic eruption on Bali last month, and they asked for some assistance."

"I thought you said Indonesia."

"Yes, sir. Bali is part of Indonesia."

"I'll bet no one knew that. How are they going to vote?"

"Probably the wrong way."

"Then let them stew in their own lava. We don't care."

"Yes, sir."

"So, is our new policy changing anyone's vote?"

"It doesn't seem like it, sir."

"Why not? Don't these countries love Santa Trump?"

"Maybe not, sir. It looks like someone else is taking your place."

"What? Who?"

"Santa Xi."

"Well, good! What a loser! We'll save a lot. We don't care."
STAMFORD  Loxo Oncology, which is developing cancer treatments, announced this week the company had started an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its larotrectinib drug.

Company officials described the rolling New Drug Application as a milestone that would advance Loxos goal of treating cancer based on the genetic characteristics of a tumor rather than the cancers location in the body. The firm expects to complete the NDA submission in early 2018.

Larotrectinib focuses on treating cancers with abnormalities known as tropomyosin receptor kinase gene fusions. The patient base would focus on adults and children who require systemic therapy and have either progressed after previous treatments or have no acceptable alternatives.

We are proud of the strong data underlying our application in both adult and pediatric patients and will continue to work expeditiously to complete the submission and bring this potential new medicine to patients with TRK fusion cancers, Loxo CEO Josh Bilenker said in a statement.

Last month, Loxo announced a partnership with pharmaceutical giant Bayer that could be worth more than $1 billion to Loxo.

As part of the agreement, Loxo will receive a $400 million upfront payment. The firm would then be eligible to receive $450 million for regulatory approvals and first sales in certain markets related to larotrectinib and an additional $200 million linked to regulatory progress and initial sales of another drug under development, Loxo-195. Bayer would also pay Loxo double-digit percentage royalties on sales milestones totaling $500 million.

In June, Loxo received about $261 million from a public offering. It is using the proceeds for commercialization activities related to larotrectinib; research-and-development initiatives for other drugs and additional uses that could include acquisitions or investments.

Clinical progress has sparked investor support for Loxo. At the American Society of Clinical Oncologys 2017 annual meeting, held in June in Chicago, a doctor from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer announced larotrectinib significantly shrank tumors in 76 percent of patients participating in recent trials.

We pay a lot of attention to how to get information out into science journals and medical meetings, so that the world can monitor our progress, Bilenker said in an interview earlier this year. To us, thats far more important than what our stock does on any given day.

Founded in 2013, Loxo is based at 281 Tresser Blvd., in the citys downtown. It takes its name from a term in Greek mythology referring to the trajectory of an arrow, a metaphor that company officials said describes their firms approach to developing cancer therapies.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
Lauren Wasser woke up in a hospital bed 80 pounds heavier than she was supposed to be - filled with fluids to try to flush the toxins from her body.

She struggled to move, and her feet felt like they were being lit with a lighter again and again. But the model did not know how dire her situation was - until she overheard a nurse discussing the surgery that would upend her life: Wasser, just 24 years old at the time, would need a below-the-knee amputation on her right leg.

"I just lost it," she recalled in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. "I screamed and cried. I'm an athlete - my legs were everything. I had no idea what my life would be like without them."

Wasser was on her period and using tampons in 2012 when she developed toxic shock syndrome. The rare but potentially fatal condition is typically caused by toxins from the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, or staph.

"Toxic shock syndrome has been associated primarily with the use of superabsorbent tampons," according to the Mayo Clinic. It "can progress rapidly," the Mayo Clinic notes, advising: "Call your doctor immediately if you have signs or symptoms of toxic shock syndrome. This is especially important if you've recently used tampons or if you have a skin or wound infection."

Wasser lost part of her right leg and the toes on her left foot in 2012, but her misery hardly ended there.

"I'm in excruciating pain every day," she said this week.

In the coming months, Wasser expects she's "inevitably" going to have her other leg amputated as well. Wasser requires weekly treatments to manage the damage to her left foot.

Lately, Wasser has been warning women about potential risks associated with tampons and calling for more transparency regarding feminine hygiene products.

"I think this is my purpose and I wouldn't change it for the world," she said.

She has given a TED Talk and posted numerous photos on Instagram, showing her modeling while wearing a prosthetic leg.

She has also been promoting legislation aiming to push the National Institutes of Health to help determine whether certain elements of feminine hygiene products are safe.

Deborah Kotz, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, said that the agency considers tampons that have been approved for marketing to be safe for women.

Kotz said that all tampons, which are class II (or intermediate risk) devices, must receive clearance from the agency to be sold in the United States.

As part of the clearance process, Kotz said, tampon manufacturers are urged to provide the FDA with "a list of component materials (such as chemicals, additives, finishing agents used) and a risk analysis concerning vaginal injury, tissue reactions and infections.

"Manufacturers are also advised to conduct microbiology testing to demonstrate that the tampon does not enhance the growth of certain bacteria or other organisms, including the bacteria known to cause toxic shock syndrome, and demonstrate that tampons meet their claimed absorbency level."

Vice reported in 2015 that Wasser's family filed a lawsuit against the Kimberly-Clark Corp., which manufacturers and distributes Kotex tampons in the United States; the suit also named the grocery stores where Wasser used to buy the products. They were "negligently, wantonly, recklessly, tortuously, and unlawfully responsible in some manner," the suit argued.

When asked about the lawsuit this week, Wasser said she couldn't comment. Kimberly-Clark said only that "the matter has been resolved."

Wasser, 29, shared her story in 2015 with Vice, and retold it in a recent op-ed for InStyle.

"My name is Lauren Wasser," she started, "and the life-changing journey I'm about to share will uncover the truth behind why I lost my right leg and the toes of my left foot - and why a tampon was the cause of it all."

Wasser, from Los Angeles, does not remember much about the moments after she fell ill that Wednesday in October 2012 - she does not remember her fever reaching 107 degrees, or the massive heart attack she suffered, or the days she spent in a medically induced coma after the police called to check on her found Wasser on her bedroom floor, facedown.

She does not remember being rushed to an emergency room still wearing the last tampon that she would ever put in, or testing positive for signs of toxic shock syndrome.

She does not remember being placed on life support, either.

But, Wasser said, she does remember the agony she felt before and for a long time after she lost her leg due to complications from her illness.

In a video interview with StyleLikeU, Wasser recalled the moment she said her surgical team wrote "yes" on one leg and "no" on the other.

"Like 'yes,' this is the one that's going and 'no,' this is the one that we're keeping," she said through tears. "And to see that visually on your leg, and then my mom kissing my leg and knowing that's the last time, it was crazy."

Because her body did not respond well during the surgery, she said, doctors could not give her pain medication for 24 hours after the procedure.

"Immediately I woke up from the amputation and I felt every single thing that happened for 24 hours," she said. "Screaming my head off. Throwing s---. I mean, it was f------ hell. I was miserable. I hated everyone. I hated everything. I hated myself."

She said she no longer wanted to live.

- - -

Wasser wrote in the InStyle op-ed that she wants to be an advocate for other women:

"The letters TSS that I once read in the fine print buried on the bottom of tampon boxes soon came to define me. TSS - Toxic Shock Syndrome: a potentially fatal complication of certain types of bacterial infections. The vagina is the most absorbent part of a woman's body, and you place a tampon in that place that can bring with it chemicals, toxins. They say that it's rare, and for the longest time I felt alone being a victim of TSS. It not only left physical wounds but mental ones. I battled PTSD and fell into a dark depression after what happened. I melted into my bed, and life just sort of stopped.

"It wasn't until my girlfriend, photographer Jennifer Rovero, took hundreds of pictures of me as I recovered from my amputations that things started to change. The process was a sort of therapy for me, which Jennifer coined as 'photo therapy.' I grew to see the beauty and strength in myself and my journey through the lens of her camera. While we were shooting, we often asked young girls if they have ever heard of TSS or if they believed that it's real. The majority of them said no."

In the coming months, she added: "I'm inevitably going to have my other leg amputated."

"I'm in excruciating pain every day," she told The Post, explaining that once she has her left leg amputated, she believes she will be able to run again - pain-free.

"It is what it is," she said, adding that there needs to be more education about TSS. She said her hope it that other women will "be more aware of what they're putting side their bodies."
Court Street Grocers Reuben. Photo: Melissa Hom

To its fans, Saltie is an irreplaceable New York business. But after eight years, as you may have heard, owner Caroline Fidanza announced that she would close the shop at the end of this year. The news elicited moans of RIP Scuttlbutt, and its closing is certainly a bummer. If Saltie has to close, though, its at least good news that there will be a passing of the ceremonial sandwich. Its replacement wont be an overpriced boutique or a bank, but will instead be a new location of Court Street Grocers, another favorite on the Brooklyn sandwich circuit.

Court Street co-owner Eric Finkelstein confirms the news to Grub, saying Fidanza isnt closing Saltie because of a rent issue or some other unfortunate turn. When Fidanza first reached out to Finkelstein and his co-owner, Matt Ross, she told them that she was simply ready to move on. Finkelstein sympathizes with bummed fans  Its easily my favorite sandwich shop in New York, he says  but while he and Ross werent looking to expand, he says they couldnt pass up on the opportunity.

They wont change a lot at their new location, and will buy all of Salties fixtures, likely keep the layout, and they hope retain staff, too. While Fidanza wont be a partner in the new location, there may also be an homage to Saltie on the menu, by way of a Saltie-style sandwich. (Id like to figure out to use that focaccia, too, because its so good, Finklestein adds.) Those details are still being worked out, but the spaces large kitchen means that, Finkelstein suggested vaguely, there are a few things wed like to do that we havent done previously.

Saltie will close at the end of this month, and Finkelstein expects to get access to the space in February. Because everything is already in place, Williamsburg residents  all New Yorkers, really  can expect a quick turnaround, and theyll hopefully soon be able to eat pork-roll sandwiches while waiting for the overcrowded L trains.




Haiti - FLASH : Carnival 2018, the Mayor of Port-au-Prince frustrated and amazed !





Ralph Youri Chevry, the Mayor of Port-au-Prince, has learned with amazement the publication of the presidential decree forming the Carnival Organizing Committee 2018 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23043-haiti-carnival-2018-dates-and-members-of-the-organizing-committee-official.html in which the Town Hall is totally excluded and where it is named "Honorary Member", without having ever been contacted or consulted about it !



Mayor Chevry deplores this act which only weakens, once again, the republican institutions and tries to deprive the Commune of its prerogatives of organization of the Carnival.



He recalled that in a letter to the Ministries of Culture and Tourism, on November 7, the Town Hall had formally invited them to take part in working sessions organized on the Carnival of Port-au-Prince 2018. Of letters that remained unfulfilled...



Ralph Youri Chevry reminds that the organization of the Carnival remains a municipal prerogative and that under this principle, the Port-au-Prince Municipal Administration will continue its planning activities for the Carnival 2018, which began for more than a month, while affirming to remain open to all frank, sincere and respectful collaboration of the established principles.



Mayor Chevry informs the press and the general public that the Municipal Administration met on Tuesday with the DJs and the West Departmental Directorate of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), to plan the activities of the Sundays pre-carnival and another meeting with the walking bands will be held very soon...



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23043-haiti-carnival-2018-dates-and-members-of-the-organizing-committee-official.html



HL/ HaitiLIbre






















Haiti - Diaspora : Project of agricultural villages in border areas





Yesterday Wednesday, Stephanie Auguste the acting Minister of Haitians Living Abroad (MHAVE) and Hervil Cherubin, Country Director of the NGO Heifer International in Haiti signed a protocol of cooperation around a project of establishment of agricultural villages in border areas, in the presence of Yolette Mengual, Director General of the Ministry and mayors of the communes concerned.



This agreement stipulates that "the purpose of this protocol is to establish lasting cooperation between the MHAVE and Heifer-Haiti with a view to encouraging Haitians living abroad to make the best contribution to the development of their region of origin through boosting local economic life [...] The objectives of this cooperation protocol are to encourage nad to incite Haitians living abroad to invest and transfer their skills in the agricultural value chain in Haiti to help create jobs in rural areas, reduce the import of commodities that Haiti has the capacity to produce, reduce the rural exodus of young people, promote quality products that can penetrate the ethnic markets in the host countries, etc..."



In her remarks of circumstance, the Minister Auguste underlined that this protocol is signed with a view to create three agricultural villages respectively in the communes of Ouanaminthe, Anse-a-Pitres and Belladeres.



Specifically, this initiative will make it possible to valorize the lands of the frontier communes which are not exploited and to come to the aid of the populations of these border zones of which some live below the threshold of poverty.



Minister Auguste hopes that this protocol will lead to job creation, agricultural and economic development, and contribute to the reduction of rural-urban migration, a challenge that the Ministry intends to meet by joining the Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development. and of Environment.



For his part the Director of Heifer-Haiti, gave the guarantee that his organization would accompany the MHAVE in the implementation of these agricultural projects.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-3851-haiti-agriculture-$187mm-to-rebuild-the-rural-communities.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : President Moise prepares his 1st anniversary to power





Wednesday, Councilor Antonio Sola, who has participated in more than 450 electoral campaigns, one of the top 5 political strategy consultants in the world, also Haiti's ambassador for investment development, met in the presence of the Prime Minister. Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, with President Moise to prepare the first anniversary of his Government, February 7, 2018.



"We had a long working session during which we analyzed the public opinion data, examined the government's strategic policy and communication proposal, and planned the next steps. I feel very happy to work with him and his team. Haiti is a great country and its people wonderful," said Antonio Sola.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Tourism : Inauguration of a pier at Aquin





Tuesday, as part of the Sustainable Coastal Program including the Integrated Regional Land Use Planning Project in the South (RIAT South, launched in September 2015 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-15031-haiti-tourism-30-tourist-projects-will-start-on-the-south-coast.html ) financed by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), Colombe Emilie Jessy Menos, the Minister of Tourism, accompanied by the Mayor of Aquin Sauvilhorme Mathurin and his deputies, Jean Robert Bosse, of Deputy of the constituency Jean Robert Bosse, Senator of the South, Richard Herve Fourcand, members of the IDB team, inaugurated the pier in the commune of Aquin.



In her speech, Minister Menos declared "We reiterate our desire to carry out all tourism projects with the population and never without it. The inauguration of the dock is a step taken while waiting for the other steps."



Recalling that this pier at the seaside of the city of Aquin responds to the need to provide for the needs of users of this coast who previously were crossing over on a man's back, she added "This dock will help the many fishing activities undertaken by members of the population and increase the flow of tourists possible in the commune of Aquin." Taking advantage of this opportunity, Minister Menos presented the model of the construction of the Place d'Armes of Aquin, which is also included in the list of projects to be executed in this area.



Mayor Sauvilhorme Mathurin thanked the Haitian firm Ecomar engaged in the construction of this jetty for almost a year. He also mentioned projects that await the Ministry of Tourism including the exploration of a set of sites not yet listed, exploitable in terms of tourism.



It should be noted that Aquin, the entry city of the South Department, is the first concerned by the actions of the Ministry of Tourism aimed at providing coastal towns with basic infrastructure in order to exploit their tourist potential.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-15031-haiti-tourism-30-tourist-projects-will-start-on-the-south-coast.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23052-haiti-tourism-inauguration-of-a-pier-at-aquin.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





A mother of 8 children, killed with a machete

Following a family dispute with her husband, a mother of eight children, Simone Antoine (30) was savagely killed with a machete in the community of Arcahaie. Her husband, was arrested and confessed to being the perpetrator of the crime and violently hit his wife with a machete who died on the spot.



Grand Ravine : the State compensates the families of the victims

Wednesday, the Government Commissioner Clame Ocnam Dameus, presented a check for 100,000 gourdes to each of the 9 families of civilians killed during the failed police operation in Grand Ravine on November 13t https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22779-haiti-security-operation-grand-ravine-the-pm-recognizes-police-burrs.html . The parents of the two deceased police officers will also benefit from the same amount, said Commissioner Dameus, stating that this amount is intended to cover funeral expenses.



Moise J-C still resting

Moise Jean-Charles is always at rest since returning from Cuba where he received treatment for an ear infection and facial paralysis, and is currently undergoing treatment. He announced his active return and resumption of anti-government mobilization from January 8, 2018.



250 million Gdes to make PAP cleaner

The Government is expected to spend nearly 250 million gourdes between December 2017 and March 2018 for cleaning and sanitation works in the area of the Champs de Mars and popular neighborhoods become trash zone...



Schedule of the Consulate of Haiti in Atlanta

The Consulate General of Haiti in Atlanta will be closed on Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th December and Monday 1st, Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd January 2018 on the occasion of the Independence of Haiti and the New Year celebrations. The Consulate will be open from December 27 to 29 and will resume its activities on Thursday, January 4, 2018.



Jacmel : Large operation

Last Sunday the Jacmel Town Hall had to close the doors of the Communal Market so that the teams of the City Hall and Public Health can carry out a vast operation of garbage collection, deratting and sewer cleaning... Monday market reopened normally.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Bloomberg links the Jones Act to political contributions and lobbying

by Michael Hansen, Hawaii Shippers Council, December 20, 2017

Bloomberg published,  Still playing with U.S. ports , on December 19, 2017, their third in a planned series of four editorials regarding the Jones Act. The subtitle, The Jones Act survives only because of narrow commercial interests, clearly states the thrust of the piece.

The Bloomberg editors describe the relationship between the Jones Act lobby and the Alaska and Hawaii congressional delegations as perverse.

Key excerpts from Bloomberg :

Who actually benefits from the Jones Act . . . . . ?

The American Maritime Partnership, a lobbying group, will tell you that the act supports nearly half a million jobs and each year generates $10 billion in taxes and $46 billion in additional U.S. output. Even if you take these statistics at face value, they fail to allow for the jobs, taxes and output lost in the rest of the economy.

What about the act's stated purpose -- which, together with other laws such as the 1936 Merchant Marine Act, is to ensure that the U.S. retains a robust merchant marine and advanced maritime sector for domestic commerce and times of war or crisis? That's no more persuasive, once you note the steady decline of shipbuilding and the U.S. oceangoing fleet over the past five decades.

In truth, the Jones Act survives because narrow commercial interests want it to. A protectionist thicket has long surrounded U.S. commercial shipping and shipbuilding. It has gradually hardened into a political wall impervious to economic reason.

Those people are backed by a flotilla of senators and representatives who are failing to put the broader interests of voters first. They include the 60-odd members of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus, one of the bigger and more active of such legislative groups. Filling their coffers and bending their ears are the American Maritime Partnership; the Shipbuilders Council of America; other like-minded industry groups; and scores of individual shipbuilders, shipping lines and labor unions. In 2016, donors associated with sea transport coughed up more than $10 million in campaign contributions -- the most since at least 1990 -- and spent almost $25 million on lobbying.

Nothing seems more perverse, though, than the vocal support given to the Jones Act by the congressional delegations of Alaska and Hawaii. Consumers in states held hostage to relatively expensive U.S. seaborne commerce are the acts biggest losers. Maritime industries drive neither economy: In both Alaska and Hawaii, shipbuilding and repair provided well under 0.5 percent of employment, labor income and output in 2013. Nonetheless, the Jones Act lobby has been a reliable horn of campaign plenty: In 2016, Hawaiis senators and two representatives ranked in the top 20 recipients of sea-transport campaign contributions, as did Alaskas two senators.
The case is closed for the time being, Leena Meri, the chairperson of the Finns Party Parliamentary Group, told YLE on Wednesday .

Teuvo Hakkarainen (PS) is unlikely to face further punitive action despite the emergence of reports of a violent incident between him and Paivi Rasanen (Christian Democrats) outside the Finnish Parliament in 2016.

Hakkarainen was issued a serious warning by the parliamentary group earlier this week after it emerged that he, while intoxicated, had harassed Veera Ruoho (NCP) in the canteen of the Finnish Parliament on 14 December, 2017. He also relinquished his position as the second deputy chairperson of the Finns Party and was reprimanded publicly by Speaker of the Parliament Maria Lohela (BR).

Ruoho has announced her decision to bring sexual harassment charges against Hakkarainen.

The Finns Party Parliamentary Group, however, did not take further action after it was revealed that one year earlier he, again while intoxicated, had physically abused Rasanen outside the Parliament Annex.

Meri argued to Helsingin Sanomat that any punishment for the earlier incident should have been delivered by the previous leadership of the Finns Party. The Finns Party Parliamentary Group was at the time headed by Sampo Terho, who later became the chairperson of the Blue Reform.

This discussion naturally shouldve been had one year ago instead of now, Jussi Halla-aho, the chairperson of the Finns Party, similarly said to Helsingin Sanomat.

Both Meri and Halla-aho also expressed their bemusement at the decision not to inform the parliamentary group of the incident between Hakkarainen and Rasanen. Some, meanwhile, have questioned the decision of Speaker of the Parliament Lohela  also formerly of the Finns Party  not to publicly intervene in the actions of Hakkarainen.

Lohela and Terho, in turn, have pointed out that Rasanen had neither asked that the issue be made public nor made it public herself.

Rasanen wasnt demanding that the issue be made public or that a punishment be delivered, but hoped that Hakkarainen gets support and treatment, Terho explained in an interview with Ilta-Sanomat on Wednesday.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Jussi Nukari  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/
The Gujarat elections can facetiously invoke Charles Dickenss famous quote about it being the best of times and the worst of times. The gestalt switch between the pre-election debates and the narratives after the election results were announced was stark. Rahul Gandhi suddenly could do no wrong. Earlier, he was confident and had opened up new possibilities. After the results, Rahul was dismissed as an amateur. In fact, the nature of commentary during this election was dismal  election commentary across channels was like a dull ball-by-ball commentary without any sense of nuance and the magic of electoral battles.

The facts are clear. The BJP could not achieve the magic mark of 150 and the Congress seems to have performed unexpectedly well. Only one thing was stark: the defeat of almost all its top leaders made one fear for the future of the organisation. Rahul Gandhi, who brought a certain excitement to the last few months of the election, was now seen as passe. Commentators seem to make a distinction between tapping into discontent and the consolidation of interests. Rahuls politics of personalities, the highlighting of Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mewani, seem to emphasise individuals. Amit Shahs politics emphasises a knitting together of interest. Interest and the logic of interests seem to have had the durability that discontent does not. Personalities attract publicity, but it was clear that Hardik and his ilk could not convert discontent into hard votes. Watching this humiliation, commentators criticise Rahul Gandhi for harnessing an ephemeral politics which promised votes only to deceive on election-day. The distinction between the BJP and the Congress is clear. The Congress for all his enthusiasm is presented as a Johnny-come-lately, or a Rip Van Winkle who got up too late from his sleep. Rahul Gandhi represents the excitement of the tactical while Amit Shah and the RSS represent the archetypal organisational men. They can burrow into society and wait for years to reap the benefit of votes. Rahuls recent enthusiasm suddenly seems no match for the organisational acumen of Amit Shah.

The limits of the Congress as a functional organisation are well-known. But mere lack of organisational acumen hardly explains a victory. There are other sociological factors one has to consider. One thing is clear the BJP voter is more and more an urban creature and the party operates with ease among the urban and semi-urban sections. The Congress hold is better in the tribal and farm sectors. The BJPs performance in the cities of Rajkot, Surat and Ahmedabad is revealing. It has captured the new imagination of cities and the new urban man seems to survive contentedly on the BJPs goulash of development, Hindutva and aspiration. It is here that the BJP has been acute in its sociological analysis, suggesting that the Congress attempt to create a commitment around poverty is today a period piece. It is sociologically evident that poverty and absolute terms have declined and the BJP has read that change into a new dream of aspiring constituencies.

Beyond this, one has to understand that the BJP utilises time in a creative fashion. Firstly, its deliberate misreading of history creates a new sense of meaning for the Hindutva middle class. Secondly, the BJP realises that the Congress has not been in power for two decades. There is little memory of Congress achievement. In that sense, Modi seems a durable entity who, as PM and as party boss, can deliver his promises, while Rahul, while exploiting discontent, has little that is durable and tangible to offer. Thirdly, the ephemerality of Rahul extends to the period after the election. It is never clear how much organisational time Rahul plans to invest in any state. He acts more like a visiting professor rather than as a resident chieftain marshalling his forces.

One has to sense that despite the bullying by its leaders, the BJP has a touch of sociological awareness which must be grasped. It operates both at the level of interest and meaning. The middle-class voter, impatient with indecisive politics, does not mind the use of violence, he is psychology aspirational, and his insecurities are channelised and legitimised through Hindutva. In creating a combination which is both politically attractive and has a touch of the sinister, the BJP has tapped deep into the middle-class unconscious, and transformed it into a party of India.

Yet one has to admit that despite the formidable forces arrayed against him, Rahul did appeal to the voters imagination. As a person and a persona, he is clearer. As a leader, he can play both first among equals and team man. It is clear that he appears a leader ready for battle. Oddly, he still creates a sense of anticipation and surprise. What he needs now is to fine hone his leadership with a sense of organisational planning so that his sense of leadership has a personal, rather than seasonal quality. The more Rahul grows, the more democracy develops. The question is the nature of the imagination he brings to the task. The creative Rahul challenging fortress Modi and Shah whets the appetite of the political imagination and makes democracy the unexpected system it always is.

Shiv Visvanathan is professor, Jindal Global Law School and director, Centre for Study of Knowledge Systems, OP Jindal Global University

The views expressed are personal
Tiger Zinda Hai may be just a day away but Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are leaving no stone unturned to tease us about it. The stars have now shared a romantic new advertisement for Splash, a fashion brand, to get their fans excited for the films Friday release.

In the fairytale-like video, shared by Salman on Twitter, the two can be seen dressed in their festive best, waiting for some fireworks on a gorgeous balcony. Fashion ko welcome karo ek naye Swag ke saath . Fashion ka naya beginning . #SplashFashions, he wrote with the video on Twitter.

Fashion ko welcome karo ek naye Swag ke saath . Fashion ka naya beginning . #SplashFashions . pic.twitter.com/422gVq69mp  Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) December 20, 2017

The two have starred together in several videos for the brand. Watch these and making of video here:

Salman and Katrina will be seen together onscreen after almost four years in Ek Tha Tigers sequel, Tiger Zinda Hai. While Salman stars as a RAW agent in the film, Katrina plays a Pakistani agent. In Ek Tha Tiger, the two fall in love during a mission and decide to run away from the security authorities in the two countries trying to keep them apart.

The sequel will see them return to the forefront from hiding and save a group of nurses abducted by terrorists in the Middle East. The action film is directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.

Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan in Tiger Zinda Hai.

Katrina said the she and Salman have immense respect for each other and reuniting with him was a fun experience. Salman and I know each other for now quite some years. Lets put it like that. It has been a few years now and I think we share a really great equation and theres a lot of respect between each other. So, I think thats great, she said in a PTI interview.

Its an incredible story I think Ali (Abbas Zafar, the films director) has taken the story forward in an amazing way. It has been really fun everyday on the set with Ali and Salman. It has been really wonderful, Katrina added.

Katrina will soon also be seen with Aamir Khan in Thugs of Hindostan and an untitled Anand L Rai film with Shah Rukh Khan. Salman will be seen in Race 3.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled Thackeray.

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function in Mumbai on Thursday evening.

Its truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture, said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius.

The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amid thunderous applause.

Terming Bal Thackeray as an unparalleled leader of the masses, Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences.

I had spent much time with Balasaheb, ans associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film, he said.

Bal Keshav Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national politics for over five decades. He died in 2012 aged 86.

Ha ha ha True.. Indeed a Muslim Actor playing Bal Thackeray...It Happens only in Indya.. https://t.co/mgnBjuBCHs  SUDHIR MISHRA (@SHAHSUDH) December 21, 2017

First look of Nawaz as Bal Thackeray. @shilparathnam, let's hope none of the objection obsessed idiots take objection. @CNNnews18



uncanny resemblance. @Nawazuddin_S @AUThackeray pic.twitter.com/oqKgE34xao  Sanket Upadhyay (@sanket) December 21, 2017

Follow @htshowbiz for more
A Madhya Pradesh politician who called Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma unpatriotic for not getting married in India found himself on the receiving end of jokes by celebs and Twitter alike. Kohli and Sharma got married in a resort in Tuscany, Italy, earlier this month in a wedding attended only by close family and friends.

Launching a government scheme in Guna, 214 kilometres north of Bhopal, local MLA Pannalal Shakya had said Kohli and Sharma didnt deserve to be called youth icons because they married in Italy. They earned money and fame in India but they didnt find any appropriate place to marry on the land where Lord Ram got married, Shakya told a gathering. They are unpatriotic for getting married abroad.

Later, speaking to Hindustan Times, he confirmed his comments and added that he was upset with the couple.

Taking on the politician, filmmaker Shoojit Sircar tweeted, Next time @imVkohli hits his unpatriotic 1st sixer out of the park it will be in the name of that patriotic MLA. His tweet was also retweeted by Anurag Kashyap.

Next time @imVkohli hits his unpatriotic 1st sixer out of the park it will be in the name of that patriotic MLA.  Shoojit Sircar (@ShoojitSircar) December 20, 2017

TV actor Karanvir Bohra asked, Sir BJP legislator frm MP,y r u all so narrowminded?What do u guys get by talking inane stuff?What has patriotism got to do with the location of marriage? Then On that note,the mic u were speaking from was invented by an Englishman,does dat prove u r also not a patriot?

Sir BJP legislator frm MP,y r u all so narrowminded?What do u guys get by talking inane stuff?What has patriotism got to do with the location of marriage?

Then On that note,the mic u were speaking from was invented by an Englishman,does dat prove u r also not a patriot? https://t.co/jjJTnMJSBj  Karanvir Bohra (@KVBohra) December 20, 2017

Ok. New rule. Anytime an MLA of no consequence says something incredibly ignorant and stupid...the news channels that carry it and make it trend are fined money. What say?  Vir Das (@thevirdas) December 20, 2017

Comedian Vira Das wrote, Ok. New rule. Anytime an MLA of no consequence says something incredibly ignorant and stupid...the news channels that carry it and make it trend are fined money. What say?
Shares of telecom and related companies rallied sharply after all accused in the 2G telecom spectrum scam were acquitted on Thursday. Unitech Ltd surged as much as 20%, DB Realty Ltd zoomed 20%, Reliance Communications Ltd jumped 13.37%, Sun TV Network Ltd advanced 6%, Idea Cellular Ltd rose 3% while Bharti Airtel Ltd was up 0.2%.

Follow live updates here

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court acquitted former telecom minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader A Raja in a case on alleged irregularities in the 2008 allocation of 2G telecom spectrum and licencesa scandal that contributed to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliances electoral downfall in 2014. All other accused, including DMK leader Kanimozhi, were also acquitted in the case.

The telecom scandal had led cancellation of 122 licenses sold to companies, including the local joint ventures of Norways Telenor ASA, UAEs Etisalat and Russias AFK Sistema.



Read the full story at Livemint
In a movie-crazy country, election victories too are often projected in filmi terms. When I referred to the narrow BJP victory in Gujarat as jo jeeta woh sikandar, a Congress leader responded with a dialogue from the Shahrukh Khan hit film, Baazigar: kabhi kabhi jeetne ke liye kuch haarna bhi padta hai, aur haar kar jeetne wale ko baazigar kehte hain! So were the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo the Sikandars of Gujarat 2017 or was Rahul Gandhi the Baazigar?

The answer to that question depends on which statistics you choose. The BJP could well claim that it has scored a remarkable sixth consecutive victory in Gujarat while the Congress could argue that it has reduced the BJP tally to double digits. Election results may be about arithmetic but the political narrative is often about chemistry. For the first half of 2017, as the BJP swept Uttar Pradesh and prised Goa and Manipur from the Congress, there seemed little doubt that the Modi-Shah combine were an unstoppable juggernaut. When the BJP president boasted of Mission 150 in the 182 member Gujarat assembly, few doubted him. After all, if the BJP could score a whopping three-fourths victory in the countrys most populous and complex state, then surely the home turf of the countrys two most powerful men was a breezy sea-plane ride along the Sabarmati riverfront?

By contrast, Rahul Gandhi and the Congress were down and out after their UP debacle. Rahul was seen as a non-serious politician, flitting in and out of the country, typecast as a non-meritocratic, dynasts, the party was dismissed as a patient in ICU with its Gujarat unit in total disarray. Most political observers expected the Congress to flop badly in Gujarat. But when a student who is expected to fail suddenly gets a first class, he has some reason to celebrate. Conversely, when the one who always gets distinction scrapes through with 60%, the jubilation is more muted.

The BJP made the mistake of taking the Gujarati voter for granted but it would be foolish for the Congress to think that a strong showing in rural Saurashtra means a national recovery. The semi-critical patient has only been given a small dose of fresh oxygen. In Gujarat the BJP was up against 22 years of anti-incumbency, yet the Congress had become hopelessly defunct. Rahuls answer to the crisis was to co-opt populist local caste leaders from outside, encourage new faces in ticket distribution and, importantly, plunge into the election campaign with unprecedented energy. By positioning himself as the underdog challenging the Modi model in its fortress, Rahul was able to garner traction if not always votes. It was an astute strategy, one which almost worked but for the fact that it was pitted against the most formidable election machine in the history of independent India led by a charismatic leader who still enjoys a huge emotional connect with his people.

But the Congresss problems go well beyond the Modi versus Rahul battle. Can the Congress offer a vision that makes it more attractive to the rising aspirations of urban India (remember, the BJP swept urban Gujarat by a substantial margin)? Can it re-define its stand on secularism beyond temple-hopping in an attempt to avoid being stereotyped as pro-minorities? Can it offer substantive solutions to the structural crisis that bears down on the farmer, on the unemployment epidemic or the plight of SMEs? Is there a nationalistic spirit that the Congress offers to challenge the BJPs monopoly over the India First rhetoric? And does the Congress have enough committed foot-soldiers to combat the BJPs panna pramukhs and party workers on the ground?

In Gujarat, the Congress could get away with asking all the questions because it was the BJP that had to deal with anti-incumbency after a long stint in power. But if it wants to position itself as a national alternative to the BJP, the Congress will have to convince enough Indians that the party under Rahul has little to do with a discredited ancient regime; and is actually seeking to build a more compassionate, inclusive India based on the politics of hope not fear, and that it has a better economic agenda for jobs and growth than the BJP. Gujarat has opened a window of opportunity for the Congress but unless it is able to sustain the momentum, it will remain a case of Dilli dur ast.

Post-script: A day before the Gujarat counting, a Hindi news anchor casually asked me: Kya Modi aur BJP ko Gujarat mein harana muskhil nahin, namumkin hai? That dialogue from another Shah Rukh Khan hit film Don suggested that the BJP was invincible in Gujarat. As the Gujarati voter has shown, in a vibrant democracy, invincibility is a myth that can only lead to self-delusion and arrogance.

Rajdeep Sardesai is senior journalist and author

Theviews expressed are personal

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
DEHRADUN: Dr RK Gupta, a Rishikesh-based self-proclaimed epilepsy expert, was a celebrity of sorts. Hundreds of photos of him with celebrities and several articles in news dailies would suggest his position. Patients would reach out for connections to seek an early appointment.

But the halo surrounding Gupta diminished in 2004 after an Uttarakhand government report suggested he was dubious and was allegedly giving medicines laced with sedatives. Gupta went underground but was arrested soon after in Dehradun. In 2000, the Indian Medical Association declared him a quack. The self-proclaimed medical expert remained in jail for 27 months, after which he got bail.

On Wednesday, a Dehradun court sentenced doctor to five years of rigorous imprisonment. Fourteen others were sentenced to one-year jail for rioting and helping Gupta flee from police custody.

The matter came to light after an NRI from Canada, who approached Gupta for his sons treatment, complained against him regarding the use of banned drugs. A team comprising drug controller and police raided his clinic in August, 2004 where prohibited drugs were alleged to have been found in large quantities.

However, after hearing about the raid, a crowd gathered there and allegedly helped Gupta flee from police custody with the help of the staff of his clinic. A crowd had created a ruckus at the local police station, where the team had gone to file a case. The police booked 15 accused, including Gupta, assistant prosecuting officer Yashdeep Srivastava informed the court.

After going through evidence, chief judicial magistrate Vivek Dwivedi handed out five-year rigorous imprisonment to Gupta and imposed a fine of Rs 21,000. Gupta is now at the Dehradun district jail in Suddhowala. But the others managed to secure bail.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
To check forced migration from the hills, the government has initiated a scheme under which Kisan Bazaars are being created in nine of the total 10 hill districts in Uttarakhand so that farmers get better prices of their farm produce.

`Kisan Bazaars and outlets will be set up at village and block levels in the nine hill districts so that farmers are able to market their produce at comparatively higher prices, additional secretary, agriculture, Ram Bilas Yadav told HT. The scheme aims to check forced migration from the hills by ensuring that farm produce fetch better price and income of farmers is doubled compared to the past.

Yadav said hill farmers would be able to sell their produce under two specific brands. They will sell general farm produce under the brand name of Hillance . Organic Uttarakhand is another brand name under which farmers will sell their organic farm produce, he said. People in the hilly areas would get to buy products from Kisan Bazaars, he added.

Kisan Bazaars and outlets have been set up in Dehradun, Bageshwar, Pithoragarh, Rudraprayag and Tehri Garhwal. In rest of the four (hill) districts, the plots for Kisan Bazaars are being identified, he said, referring to Chamoli, Uttarkashi, Pauri and Almora.

The work of establishing Kisan markets in the hill areas will be completed by the end of this fiscal, Yadav said, adding those (Kisan markets and outlets) would be run by all the 130 hill farmers federations. These federations would not just carry out branding, packaging and grading of farm produce. They will also ensure value addition of farm produce so that they fetch better price to farmers. The government will ensure buyers and sellers meet in this regard.

Besides, we are also ensuring linkages of Kisan markets with big-time private buyers operating in Delhi and other places to ensure maximum profit for farmers, Yadav said. We have no such plans right now but we can exercise such an option at a later stage, he said to a query on whether the government planned to equip Kisan markets with cold storage facilities for keeping perishable items such as fruits and vegetables.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A radio-diagnosis centre in west Delhis Janakpuri area was sealed on Thursday after it was found to be illegally training 300 to 400 people on how to operate ultrasound machines without regulatory approval.

The centre, Institute of Ultrasound Training, offered courses in various ultrasound technologies, which can last from just three days to six months. The institute is not recognised by the Delhi government, government of India, Medical Council of India or the University Grants Commission.

These classes could also be taken online in virtual classrooms, says the institutes website, which, however, does not mention charges for taking any of the courses. The institute was founded in 2000.

When a Delhi government Pre-Conception, Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) team, along with members of National Inspection and Monitoring Committee, conducted a surprise routine inspection at the centre on Thursday evening, they found nearly 30 students being trained around 11 ultrasound machine in a single room. The students were trained by JS Randhawa and Sonal Randhawa, proprietors of the centre.

We have sealed all the ultrasound machines under the PCPNDT Act as the institute did not have proper records of Form F. The inspection team did not find any documentation of the students that could confirm what medical course they were doing and whether they were MBBS students who met the criteria to be trained in using ultrasound machines. For all we know, they were not even doctors, said Satyajit Kumar, state programme officer, PCPNDT cell of Delhi.

All sonologists or imaging specialist who possess any one of the medical qualifications recognized under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 or possesses a post-graduate qualification in ultrasonography or imaging techniques or radiology  are monitored under the PCPNDT Act.

Under the PCPNDT Act, diagnostic centres doing ultrasound must fill Form F that lists details of the pregnant woman undergoing ultrasounds, the medical reason for the ultrasound, a summary of the report, and the details of the treating doctor. This helps authorities to track whether the ultrasound was done for medical reasons or for sex-selective abortions.

Sonal Randhawa, one of the proprietors of the centre, said, We are not giving any kind of certification to the people we train, so the institute does not need recognition. Any MBBS doctor can be trained to do an ultrasound by a fellow radiologist.

Illegal ultrasound is one of the biggest contributing factors towards sex-selective abortion and declining child sex ratio in India, which fell from 927 girls for 1,000 boys in 2001, to 919 in 2011.

Illegal sex selection has a tremendous impact on the sex ratio of the country. If something is not done immediately, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where one in five girls of the country will be born, the sex ratio will become worse by 2021, said Sabu George, an activist who has been working to prevent female foeticide for three decades.

Under the PCPNDT Act, a six-month training course for MBBS doctors at a government-recognised institute is essential, which is being. This rule has been challenged in the Supreme Court with demands that MBBS doctors who have experience working with trained medical practitioners be allowed to do ultrasounds without formal training.
For the past 10 days, airport personnel have been on high alert following calls received by Oman Air and Lucknow airport about a potential security threat.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which manages security at 59 airports across the country, is on high alert till December 24 after receiving details of a passenger potentially travelling to Jeddah from Lucknow with explosives. Passengers are being randomly checked with hand-held explosive trace detectors at Lucknow, Hyderabad and sensitive airports like Delhi and Mumbai following the calls.

The first call was received on December 11 at Lucknow airport following which back to back calls were received at the Hyderabad office of Oman Air giving the same information. A Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) was formed and the calls were declared as specific  or serious  and security at airports was enhanced.

The first call was received at 12.30pm on December 11 and as a precautionary measure, random checks were started. A similar call was received at Hyderabad airport where a woman gave the name, travel details and PNR of a passenger claiming that he will carry explosives. The woman called four more times giving photographs and other details of the passenger, a CISF officer said, requesting anonymity.

During the investigation, the manifesto of Oman Air was checked and it was found that the passenger had come from Jeddah to Lucknow via Muscat on October 11 and had a return ticket for December 24.

Though it appears to be a case of mischief and the caller might be wanting to create trouble for the passenger. We will definitely stop him but if nothing suspicious is found, he will be allowed to travel further, the CISF officer added.

Both Lucknow and Hyderabad police are investigating the matter and trying to trace the caller. At some airports, passengers to gulf countries are being checked at ladder point also.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Juvenile Justice Boards decision to treat the 16-year-old accused in Gurgaons Ryan International School as an adult for the murder of Pradhyumn Thakur has reignited the debate on whether juveniles in conflict with law should face trial like adult offenders, as permitted by the amended Juvenile Justice Act.

Pradhyumn, an eight-year-old student of Ryan International School, Bhondsi, was found with his throat slit outside the schools washroom on September 8. His father filed a petition with the JJB on November 15 seeking trial of the boy as an adult.

He found support from the prosecuting agency, the CBI, which too called the crime chilling, horrific, monstrous and serious in nature.

A social investigation and psychological evaluation of the child was done before the board gave its order. However, legal experts feel there cannot be a distinction between delinquent juveniles.

A juvenile will be a juvenile, irrespective of the crime committed, advocate Menaka Guruswamy said.

The amendment in 2015 was done under public pressure. If you have a law to treat juveniles, it should be applied uniformly and consistently, she added.

Advocate Karuna Nandy, who was vocal in her criticism when the changes were brought to the law, feels that the Parliament was wrong in passing the law under public pressure and misunderstanding.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2015 allows for juveniles 16 years or older to be tried as adults for heinous offences like rape and murder. The law was amended following public outrage after one of the offenders in the December 16, 2012, gang rape case was not tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and escaped a jail term because he was a few months short of turning 18.

Nandy says a crime has two components  one is the act of killing and the other is mens rea, which is intention to kill. A juvenile under the age of 7 doesnt have the ability to formulate the mens rea. Between 7 and 18 that ability is growing but all neurological, psychological and credible experts agree that the ability is not completely formulated.

According to her, the law was changed with an incorrect notion that a juveniles mental ability suddenly changes when a heinous crime is committed. This is not the case.

Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde says the present law does not have enough guidelines for the board to decide when a child should be treated as an adult. If you treat the child as a juvenile, you are likely to reform him into a responsible adult. But if you treat him as an adult you will only get somebody who is hardened by a long prison sentence. You will at best have a convict with a life sentence and foreclose the possibility of reformation .

Guruswamy says that the case at hand is of a horrific crime. I am not debating that. But at the end of the day to have an approach differently for a child involved in a heinous crime is not the correct way to treat him. A proper psychological treatment should be given to him.

Nandy feels in the present case the juvenile justice board should have set-up a panel of credible experts before arriving at a decision. In such sensitive cases one should not have random psychologist, but experts such as neurologists and psychiatrists, she added.
A transgender rights activist has complained of sexual harassment by Delhi airport administration. The activist had arrived at Delhi airport on December 17 and went to use the washroom. While she was using it, a cleaning staff opened it as the lock of the washroom was not working properly.

In the feedback form, the activist wrote, I used the disability restroom in Delhi airport Terminal 1C and locked the washroom. The lock doesnt work. There was no under repair sign. The door opened as I was semi nude. This constitutes sexual harassment by airport administration.

An email query sent to airport operator, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) remained unanswered.

The activist has been fighting for the rights of transgender people and women.

The NALSA vs. Union of India judgment of the honorable Supreme Court mandates that transgender people have access to rest rooms of our chosen gender. The Delhi airport staff showed me a very small sticker at the size of my palm or a push or pull sticker stuck on the defunct door. They claimed that the door of the disability washroom was defective for three days and a sticker stuck since. Clearly, neither washrooms for people with disabilities (PwD) nor transgender people are priority for the Delhi airport management, the activist told Hindustan Times over phone.

She had arrived from Hyderabad by Spicejet flight SG 471 at 7.55am on Sunday.

No rest rooms for transgender people, such defective doors of washrooms of people with disabilities and smaller stickers of under repairs for three days actively make the Delhi airport management complicit in perpetrating sexual harassment of historically disenfranchised and marginalized communities, the activist added.

She said that toilet is not a luxury and is a necessity and if separate toilet for transgenders are not available at the capitals airport, condition at other airports and public places can be easily imagined.

No police complaint has been filed in this regard.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The vindication that some political parties, and some of the accused, are expressing in the wake of the 2G judgment acquitting all accused should not be conflated with the Supreme Courts 2012 decision, cancelling all 122 telecom licences at the centre of the scam.

The special courts judgment on December 21 was on three cases that together constitute the 2G scam. One says there was a criminal conspiracy by then telecom minister A Raja and several others to perpetrate the scam; another says Loop Telecom was a proxy for the Essar Group, allowing the latter to bid for licences and spectrum in violation of existing rules; and a third says Raja and his associates laundered Rs 200 crore of scam-proceeds. The first two cases were filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The third was filed by the Enforcement Directorate. It is these three cases that the special court has ruled on. Judge OP Saini said he is acquitting all the accused because the prosecution hasnt managed to present any evidence to back its case. Indeed, in his order he has been severely critical of the prosecutions inability to do so  which, once again, asks the same questions of the investigative processes of the CBI and the ED that have been asked before.

This judgement, though, has nothing to do with the Supreme Courts decision to cancel 122 licences. The Supreme Court can rule on anything, even government policies, and in the 2G case, it decided that there was enough proof to show that there were irregularities in how licences and spectrum has been issued in 2008. Back then, there was a lot of ad-hocism about this, especially the allocation of spectrum, a critical national resource. The apex courts decision was not based on whether or not there was a criminal conspiracy to defraud the exchequer, but on irregularities it saw in the process by which licences and radio waves were allotted. Indeed, in some ways, it was this decision that prompted the move to an auctioning regime for spectrum. This system has been in place for a few years now, and several batches of spectrum, including 3G and 4G radio waves have been allocated on its basis. But irregularities and ad-hocism do not a scam make, which is why Sainis order has to be taken at face value. It is now up to the CBI and the ED to, on appeal, make a better case in the High Court than they did in the lower court.
The Trump administration has banned the US apex health protection agency from using seven words and phrases  including foetus, diversity and transgender  in documents being prepared for the budget and the Congress. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDCs) more than 12,000 employees in the US and around the world have also been forbidden from using vulnerable, entitlement, evidence-based and science-based in official documents. The administration did not explain the thinking behind the ban, but unhelpfully suggested science-based or evidence-based be replaced with CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.

The CDCs raison detre is using science- and evidence-based research to guide US health policy, prevent and control diseases and outbreaks (ebola, H1N1, zika, to name just a few), fund research and train scientists, researchers and public health specialists to save lives. Forbidding the use of these words in policy and budget health documents will virtually exclude vital, often life-saving, information being shared related to birth defects, abortion, sexually-transmitted infections, and disparities and vulnerabilities related in race, poverty and sexual orientation.

Issues related to abortion, sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights have consistently been sidelined since Mr Trump took office. The US also restricted federal funding to organisations that provide abortion information and services overseas, affecting services related to womens health and safe parenthood worldwide.

This is not the first accusation of censorship of federal agencies being levelled against the Trump administration. Environmental watchdogs accuse it of altering language and deleting scores of links to materials on the Environmental Protection Agencys website to play down the effects of global warming and climate change. Among the missing pages were plans states could adopt to curb emissions and adapt to extreme weather, such as Hurricane Katrina, which displaced 600,000 households and resulted in damages worth $108 billion.

Some federal departments  including health and human services, justice, education, and housing and urban development have dropped questions from surveys and website information about and for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Science is evidence-based and cannot be held hostage to the consideration of the community and a presidents wishes.
Emphasising on the importance of teachers and education, vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu recently said Google can never replace a guru because a guru gives not mere academic knowledge but insights as well. What the V-P said is worth thinking about, especially at a time when search engines and social media have a vice-like grip on our lives these days.

However, blaming technology is unfair. It has its positives: Technology today allows access to information to more people than ever before in history. Sitting in India, one can now access courses taught by the top-class faculty at the best universities in the world. Or re-skill oneself by doing a short course offered by platforms such as Coursera.

But yes, as Mr Naidu, said Google cannot replace a guru because a teacher brings something extra to a class. Like a parent, a good teacher is a guiding force for children, mentoring them to negotiate not just their careers but life.

Unfortunately, this is where Indian children, especially those who go to State-run schools, are losing out: The country just doesnt have enough gurus or teachers. Of the six million teaching positions in government schools nationwide, about 900,000 elementary school teaching positions and 100,000 in secondary schoolput together, a millionare vacant, according to an IndiaSpend study. The reasons for the shortage of teachers are lack of regular recruitment, bungled deployment of teachers, lack of specialist teachers for certain subjects, and small schools, which cause available teachers to be thinly spread.

It is not surprising then that the learning levels of students in primary classes are so poor that they stand no chance later in life.

In rural India, the latest edition of the Annual State of Education Report shows that only 47.8% of class V students can read a class II-level text and only 43% of class VIII students can do class V-level arithmetic. In its annual World Development Report, released earlier this year, the World Bank describes this as not just a learning crisis but a moral crisisamplifying inequalities between and within nations. Notably, this learning crisis comes at a time when enrolment levels have increased across the board.

At the university level, the situation is equally challenging. Earlier this year, a parliamentary panel expressed anguish at the acute shortage of faculty members in IITs, IIMs, and universities and asked the government to take steps to fill up the vacancies and to make the teaching profession more attractive. India is operating at more than 30% faculty shortage in the higher education sector.

The V-P has touched on a very important issue. The Centre and the states --- education is on the concurrent list --- must figure out ways to tackle this challenge; investing in infrastructure will not improve our educational levels, which can then seriously impact economic growth and high-priority programmes such as Skilling India. It is imperative we find gurus who can complement Google.
Jadavpur University authorities will discuss with students union representatives, teachers and non-teaching employees the issue of entry of outsiders into the university campus during late evening hours.

There have been reports of outsiders entering the campus at night and being involved in drug abuse. Vice-chancellor Suranjan Das had asked all stakeholders to help in improving public perception of JU and sought the cooperation from everyone to help combat any such activity.

Das had said on Tuesday , We will hear from all sides at the discussion. We will not impose anything, we will not go to the talks with pre-set ideas or agenda. I dont believe in imposing anything.

I am expecting once the issue of entry of outsiders comes up for talks everyone concerned will offer his view and suggest possible measures which will help us to chalk out steps, he added.

Arts Faculty Students Union (AFSU) general secretary Debraj Debnath said, We are positive about the talks. We think there should be discipline and security at the campus. But again we are also in favour of maintaining the liberal space of JU.

A Jadavpur University Teachers Association member said, We will take part in the discussion which will be held in the first week of January after the Christmas vacation.

The meeting will be held after reports surfaced of a young woman accompanied by her friends, all of them outsiders, allegedly misbehaved with the university security officials at around 11 pm on campus last week. The outsiders also damaged some furniture in a room used by AFSU when people tried to pacify the woman.

AFSU members and others on campus said such incidents should not be allowed to happen on campus.
With the citys air quality marked very poor over two consecutive days, the state pollution board is considering implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) if the level of pollution doesnt come down significantly by Saturday.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the citys air quality index (AQI) on Thursday was 359, up from 322 on Wednesday. Even on Tuesday, the AQI was marked poor, at 228.

The increase in the level of pollutants in the city air has evoked concern from weather experts. Officials of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) said that they are in the process of compiling data on the steady rise in the citys AQI figures over the last few days.

The minimum temperature in the city was recorded at 9.7C on Thursday and the maximum was recorded at 23.4C.

We are on alert and the situation is being monitored. We will discuss the citys air quality at the meeting with the CPCB members on Friday. We will discuss what action to take at the review meeting," JB Sharma, regional officer, HSPCB, Gurgaon, said.

Officials of the pollution control department said that the citys air quality over the next 48 hours will be monitored.

The sudden rise in the level of pollutants in the city has a lot to do with the burning of waste in the open to keep warm in winder, the officials claimed.

The citys air quality was marked moderate for a few days because of rain and good wind speed. However, with no rain, so far, this week and no check on incidents of open waste burning, the pollutants are unable to dissipate. This has resulted in a dip in air quality, Shakti Singh, environmental engineer, HSPCB, said.

Read I Gurgaon: MCG, NHAI details steps taken to reduce pollution

Because of the rise in the level of pollutants, the smog has returned to the city bringing visibility down to less than 50 metres, an official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. He said that the visibility is likely to go down further by the next week, as the minimum temperature is likely to fall by 2C.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Police on Wednesday gathered CCTV footage and questioned the staff of the luxury hotel in Udyog Vihar, where father of the dengue death victim claimed to have met representatives of the Fortis Hospital management who offered him money to close the case.

Jayant Singh, father of the seven-year-old who died of dengue in September, had alleged that the Fortis Hospital staff, on the pretext of discussing his daughters treatment, met him in the lobby of a five-star hotel on November 24, and that this meeting could be confirmed by obtaining the CCTV footage.

At this meeting, he (hospital representative) bought with him a cheque of 10,37,899 and made a verbal offer to give me 25,00,000 on the agreement that I promise to remain silent about the criminal offences carried out by the doctors responsible for medical treatment, read Singhs statement in the inquiry report.

Taking to Hindustan Times on Wednesday, Singh said, I have submitted my statement to the police. Hope they will take action against the people responsible for the death of my daughter.

Sushant Lok station house officer Gaurav Phogat said police have procured the CCTV footage from all prime locations, which the victims father had mentioned in his complaint.

We have questioned the staff of the hotel in Udyog Vihar about the meeting which the victims father had mentioned in his statement. We are investigating if the meeting took place in the hotel and if any staffers saw anything, Phogat said.

Singh had alleged that his daughter died because of medical negligence by the hospital.

Controversy erupted after Adyas family said they were charged 16 lakh for the treatment. A government probe indicted the hospital for grave negligence, lapse, unethical and unlawful act, and found it minted very high profit margin in other consumables.

An FIR was lodged on December 9 under Section 304 (2) of the IPC, which carries a maximum punishment of 10 years, against one of the doctors of the hospital who was involved in the treatment of seven-year-old Adya Singh. On December 15, the police added Section 188 in the case against the hospital for failing to report dengue case to the government authorities.

Later, Singh alleged that though he had mentioned 18 names and also the hospital management in his complaint, the police had not included them all in the FIR.

Responding to Singhs allegations that he was offered money to settle the case, the Fortis Hospital had said earlier: We categorically deny assertions or allegations of any bribe being paid to Mr Jayant Singh, father of Late Baby Adya Singh who was treated for Dengue Shock Syndrome at Fortis Memorial Research Institute. Fortis did offer a refund of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the family, in good faith. Furthermore, consequent to articulation of the familys financial position by the father, we offered an additional amount purely as a humanitarian gesture. A written and signed statement has been submitted to inquiry panel.
A gentle winter light is falling on the bookshelves. Here and there, unopened boxes stand on the floor. In one of the book-lined alleys, a silver-haired woman in salwar suit is holding on to her walking stick. She is Bhag Bahri Malhotra, the matriarch of Bahrisons Booksellers, the legendary Khan Market bookshop that will turn 65 next year.

We are in Gurgaons Galleria Market, witnessing the first day of the new Bahrisons shop, a much more spacious affair than the cramped Khan Market original, so beloved of authors, diplomats and expats. It even has a cafe! But waitwhy are they putting up this shelf of handsome Everyman hard-bounds for their new and still unknown customers here in Gurgaon, and not for their long-time loyalists in Khan Market?

An embarrassed staffer sheepishly says, We have no space left in Khan.

Besides Mrs Malhotra, and her daughter-in-law, Rajni Malhotra, the third Bahri woman present in the shop is Rajnis elder daughter, Aanchal, a new author herself. Well have events in this new shop, says Aanchal. We are even planning yoga sessions here!

The three Bahrisons women: Mrs Bhag Bahri Malhotra (middle), daughter-in-law Rajni Malhotra (left) and granddaughter Aanchal. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT)

While a new bookstore nearer their pincodes is good news for Gurgaons book lovers, this is not the first time a Delhi bookstore has opened an outlet here. In 2007, the discount-friendly Midland Book Shop opened in DLF Phase I.

The formula to run the new Bahrisons will still be the same: find the book for the reader through any channel, asserts Rajni. The Gurgaon store is particularly well-stocked with childrens books. It also has an extensive selection of Hindi novels.

At one point, the three women gather in front of an elderly mans portrait, reverently arranged between icons of Ganesha and Krishna. Balraj Bahri, the shops founder, passed away last year. He had arrived in Delhi in 1947 as a 19-year-old Partition refugee, and opened the bookstore six years later. He arranged the initial investment of Rs 800 by selling his mothers single gold bangle. Since then, more than one generation of literary-minded Delhiwallas grew up buying books from him in Khan Market. Some years ago, he passed down the bookshops day-to-day administration to his son, Anuj.

Over the years, Delhi has seen the closure of many landmark bookshopsThe Bookworm, The Book Shop, New Book Depot, Galgotia & Sons, and Fact & Fiction. Bahrisons is a rare independent bookstore that has thrived enough to have created chain stores. Exclaims Aanchal, That makes us sound like Walmart! Call us a family-run chain please.

The Bahri family opened its second outlet--a bookstore in Saket--and a third--a bookshop for children in Khan Markets Middle Lane--in 2010. They are opening another store in Saket in two months. The family runs a publishing house, too. Anuj Bahri, who sits at the Khan Market store, is also a literary agent.

The Gurgaon bookshop has a cafe for readers to relax in. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT )

While surveying the books stacked on the new stores shelf of classics, Aanchal tells us how carefully her grandfather would listen to what his customers wanted to read. He would write down the names of the books on a note pad, and thats how Bade Papa built his fledging bookshops collection, she says. And this is what we shall do in Gurgaon.

As the late morning turns into afternoon, the shops early customers troop in. One of them is a Political Science student who lives nearby. Such a lovely space Im noting down the names of the books I want, says Vidiha Arora, while taking a picture of the Bahri women, which she immediately posts on her Instagram.

Bhag Bahri Malhotra, too, picks up a book. its a recipe book for a friend. She buys it from the counter, like any other customer. The cashier blushes as he hands her the change. The elder Mrs Bahri then slowly walks down the stairs with her daughter-in-law and granddaughter, heading home, in Safdarjang Enclave. Later in the evening, if she feels like it, she might go to the bookstore in Khan Market or to the one in Saket. Its all her empire.

DETAILS

What: Opening of Bahrisons new outlet

Where: R 1, Second Floor, Galleria Market, DLF Phase IV, Gurgaon

Timings: 9:30 m-9:30 pm. Open all days

Nearest metro station: IFFCO Chowk
Brad Pitt was one of the few people who stood up to disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein when he was made aware of his behaviour by then girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow. According to People, Pitt threatened to beat up Weinstein when Paltrow told him about the sexual advances the producer had made towards her.

Weinstein produced Shakespeare in Love, for which Paltrow won an Academy Award.

When Paltrow told Pitt about Weinsteins behaviour towards her, he confronted him at a party in 1995. Brad threatened Harvey, a source said. He got right in his face, poked him in the chest and said, You will not ever do this to Gwyneth ever again.

The source said that Pitt threatened to give Weinstein  a Missouri whooping. Pitt was born in Springfield, Missouri.

The source noted that Pitt was not a big star then, and for him to take on someone as powerful as Weinstein was admirable. He was a young guy in Hollywood taking a chance, the source said.

Paltrow came forward with her story in a piece published in the New York Times in October. I thought he was going to fire me, she told the paper. He screamed at me for a long time. It was brutal. Since the revelations, multiple investigations have been launched against Weinstein, and he has been removed from several groups such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Over 80 women have come forward to allege sexual misconduct against him, with some even accusing him of rape.

Pitt worked with Weinstein in Inglourious Basterds in 2009 and Killing Them Softly in 2012.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
More than 10 crore people in the country are getting water contaminated with excess fluoride, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday.

To deal with the problem, the central government has released Rs 800 crore so that community water purification plants could be set up, minister for drinking water and sanitation Narendra Singh Tomar said during Question Hour.

About 10.06 crore population living in 12,577 habitations in different states and union territories are getting drinking water with excess fluoride, he said.

To deal with arsenic and fluoride contamination, with the recommendation of NITI Aayog, the Government of India has released Rs 800 crore in March 2016 for commissioning water purification plants in 1,327 arsenic and 12,014 fluoride affected habitations so that safe water for drinking and cooking needs is addressed immediately, Tomar said.

In addition, funds to the tune of Rs 100 crore each have also been provided for tackling arsenic and fluoride problems in West Bengal and Rajasthan respectively for last mile connectivity in commissioning surface water-based piped water supply schemes.

He said the ministry had launched the national water quality sub-mission on March 22 to provide safe drinking water to about 28,000 arsenic and fluoride affected habitations over a span of four years.
Telecom minister Manoj Sinha on Thursday said the next course of action on the 2G issue would be decided by the investigating agencies, adding that the 2G spectrum allotment was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt.

He also said the NDA governments realisation through spectrum auction was robust.

Asked what will the government do with the 122 licences that the Supreme Court had quashed on February 2012, Sinha said: The government does not want to comment anything on the court decision now. Investigating agencies will take further decision. The government will ponder on it after that. The Supreme Court had already given its verdict. 2G spectrum auction was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt.

Sinha was speaking to reporters at a press meet at Department of Telecommunications in New Delhi after the special CBI court acquitted all the accused in the case which was decided after seven years.

He said in 2001 the government decided to allot spectrum on a first-come, first-serve basis. But in 2008 they (UPA government) decided to make spectrum allocation as first-come, first-pay.

Sinha added that CVC had criticised the earlier UPA government over the 2G spectrum auction while it had applauded the NDA for the 2015, 2016 auctions.
Political bigwigs, top bureaucrats and high and mighty of the corporate world deposed as witnesses in the 2G spectrum case that saw all the accused being acquitted by a special court on Thursday.

Those acquitted included former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi

Those who deposed on behalf of the CBI included former TRAI chairman Nripendra Mishra, who is now principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former telecom secretary DS Mathur, former Attorney General late GE Vahanwati, former law secretary TK Vishwanathan, former Governor of Reserve Bank of India Dr D Subba Rao, corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, ADAG chairman Anil Ambani and his wife Tina and DMK chief M Karunanidhis wife Dayalu Ammal.

Dayalu Ammals statement was recorded in Chennai, for which the judge, the accused and their advocates travelled to the city after permission from the top court.

In a rare move, two of the accused  A Raja and RK Chandolia  volunteered to be examined as defence witnesses in the case under section 315 of the Criminal Procedure Code. They gave up their right to remain silent provided under the Article 20 (3) of the Constitution.

The trial began on November 11, 2011 when the first evidence was recorded in the case and the last witness deposed on January 30, 2015. In all, the CBI presented 155 witnesses to prove its case in the court. Their statements alone ran into about 5000 pages.

Statement of one particular witness, AK Srivastava, a department of telecom official, ran into over 350 pages.

Final arguments in the case started in 2016 and went on for almost a year before concluding on April 25 this year.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A special court on Thursday acquitted all accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in cases relating to the 2G spectrum scam.

Special CBI judge O P Saini gave judgments in separate cases lodged by the CBI and the ED in the scam that rocked the UPA government. (LIVE updates)

Here are the key findings of the court in the CBI case:

* There is no material on record to show that A. Raja was mother lode of conspiracy in the instant case. There is also no evidence of his no -holds -barred immersion in any wrongdoing, conspiracy or corruption.

* There is no evidence on record produced before the court indicating any criminality in the acts allegedly committed by the accused persons relating to fixation of cut-off date, manipulation of first-come-first-served policy, allocation of spectrum to dual technology applicants, ignoring ineligibility of Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL ) and Unitech group companies, non-revision of entry fee and transfer of Rs. 200 crore to Kalaignar TV (P) Limited as illegal gratification.

* Many facts recorded in the chargesheet are factually incorrect, like finance secretary strongly recommending revision of entry fee, deletion of a clause of draft LOI by A. Raja, recommendations of TRAI for revision of entry fee etc.

Key points from the judgment in the ED case:

* The court said ED case was entirely based on the CBI chargesheet against the accused, particularly in respect of generation of proceeds of crime.

* Proceeds of crime under the money laundering law is a property derived by any person as a result of criminal activity relating to a scheduled offence. Anyone who directly or indirectly attempts to indulge or knowingly assists or is a party or is actually involved in any process or activity connected with proceeds of crime, including its concealment, possession , acquisition or use.

* Proceeds of crime is the foundational fact for the offence of money laundering. Since there are no proceeds of crime, there can be no offence of money-laundering, as nothing remains to be laundered. Thus, the very base of the instant case is gone and the alleged offence stands wiped out, the judge held.

* In view of the acquittal of the accused, the judge also ordered release of Rs. 223.55 crore worth of properties of DB group of companies  owned by accused Shahid Balwa - and its associates that were attached by ED.
A special court acquitted on Thursday all accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases on Thursday, deciding the fate of former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi among others.

Follow Live Updates here

Special CBI judge O P Saini gave judgements in separate cases lodged by the CBI and ED in the infamous scam that rocked the UPA government.

The scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08 which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Here is a detailed timeline of how the case came to light and how it has progressed over the years:

September 24, 2007: Department of Telecom (DoT) issues a press statement, giving companies a weeks time to apply for mobile phone licences. This sets off a mad scramble among prospective applicants

October 1, 2007: As many as 575 applications received as little-known firms jostle with each other to get a slice of Indias booming telecom pie

January 7, 2008: DoT adds a twist to the first-come first- served policy, says those who applied on September 25, 2007, would be eligible for licence and spectrum

January 10, 2008: DoT gives applicants 45 minutes to get a bank draft issued and delivered at Sanchar Bhawan. In all, 122 telecom licences are issued

November 10, 2010: CAG submits report on the 2G spectrum to the government, noting notional loss of R1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer.

November 14, 2010: A Raja resigns as telecom minister

February 2, 2011: CBI arrests Raja for his alleged involvement in the scam

February 17, 2011: Raja sent to Tihar Jail under judicial custody.

March 14, 2011: The Delhi High Court sets up special court to deal exclusively with 2G cases.

April 2, 2011: CBI files its first chargesheet.

April 25, 2011: CBI files second chargesheet and court issues summons to DMK chief M Karunanidhis daughter Kanimozhi, Managing Director of Kalaignar TV Sharad Kumar (Kanimozhi and her mother have major stakes in the channel) and Cineyug Films director Karim Morani taking congizance of the chargesheet.

May 20, 2011: K Kanimozhi, MP and daughter of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, arrested in connection with the 2G scam

June 20, 2011: Supreme Court rejects Kanimozhis bail plea.

July 25, 2011: Arguments on charges begin.

October 9, 2011: CBI files FIR against another DMK leader and former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother.

October 22, 2011: Court put on trial all 17 accused.

November 3, 2011: Trial court rejects bail plea of Kanimozhi and seven others.

November 5, 2011: Kanimozhi and others moves bail in Delhi High Court.

November 23, 2011: Supreme Court grants bail to five telecom executives - Unitech Wireless former MD Sanjay Chandra, Swan Telecoms Director Vinod Goenka and Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Groups executives Hari Nair, Gautam Doshi and Surendra Pipara. They were charged with criminal conspiracy cause criminal breach of trust by a public servant.

November 29, 2011: Delhi High Court grants bail to Kanimozhi.

January 7, 2012: Mr Swamy submits certified copies of documents and concludes his arguments. Court lists Swamys application for arguements on January 21.

January 21, 2012: Delhi court reserves its order for February 4 on Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamys plea seeking prosecution of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in the 2G scam case.

February 2, 2012: The Supreme Court cancels 122 telecom licences allocated to nine companies. Court also says natural resources cannot be allocated on first-come-first-served basis

April 12, 2012: Government moves presidential reference with eight questions, including ones on judicial interference in policy matters and auction being the only mode of allocation

May 9, 2012: Supreme Court grants bail to former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura. Within an hour, A Raja applies for bail.

May 11, 2012: Special CBI judge OP Saini reserves order on A Rajas bail plea

May 11, 2012: The government withdraws review petition in 2G case, preferring to go ahead with the presidential reference

May 15, 2012: CBI special court grants bail to A Raja

July 10, 2012: SC starts hearing on presidential reference by five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia

September 27, 2012: SC says auction not a must for all resources. Government has the right to decide policy, not judiciary, and maximisation of revenue cannot be the sole criterion of consideration in all situations.

January 8, 2013: The Income-Tax department submits the complete transcripts of 5,800 tapped telephone conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover.

February 21, 2013: Supreme Court constituted a six member special team to examine the contents of tapped telephonic conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and politicians, corporate honchos and others.

February 27, 2013: A CBI special court witnesses high drama with main accused and former telecom minister A Raja yelling at attorney general GE Vahanvati, who deposed as a prosecution witness, and calling him a liar.

August 22, 2013: Anil Ambani appears in court answering questions about his companys alleged links with firms facing the CBI probe in the 2G telecom spectrum scam.

August 23, 2013: Tina Ambani appears before a special court as a CBI witness in the 2G spectrum case to explain alleged links of the Reliance Group with some of the companies facing probe.

September 27, 2013: Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram get a clean chit from a parliamentary panel on the 2G scam.

April 25, 2014: Enforcement Directorate (ED) names former telecom minister A Raja, and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi  in a charge sheet filed before a Special CBI judge, accusing them of money laundering in the 2G spectrum allocation case

May 2, 2014: A Delhi court summons former telecom minister A Raja and member of parliament Kanimozhi in a 2G money-laundering case on May 26.

May 26, 2014: A Raja, Kanimozhi move bail applications before a Delhi court.

Oct 31, 2014: A Delhi court rules that former telecom minister A Raja, DMK patriarch M Karunanidhis wife Dayalu Ammal, his daughter and party MP K Kanimozhi and others will have to face trial on charges of money laundering.

March 4, 2015: Special CBI judge OP Saini supplies a draft questionnaire containing 400 questions running into 225 pages to the counsel representing the 19 accused.

April 15, 2015: CBI tells a special court former telecom minister A Raja misled the then prime minister Manmohan Singh on policy matters pertaining to 2G spectrum allocation to benefit ineligible companies.

November 3, 2015: SC rejects the pleas of DMK Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi and Swan telecom promoter Shahid Balwa to set aside the CBI case registered against them for their alleged role in the 2G spectrum scam

Oct 6, 2016: DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi submits before the 2G court here that she was innocent and entitled to be acquitted in the spectrum allocation scam case

April 19, 2017: Special court concludes arguments.

December 21,2017: Special judge OP Saini acquits A Raja, DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi and others facing prosecution.

Compiled By HT InfoCentre
Special judge OP Saini, who oversaw the trial of all 2G spectrum cases since early 2011, said on Thursday that Indias federal investigators could not prove allegations of criminality against the accused in the case.

I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any charge against any accused, Saini told a packed courtroom.

Though the probe agencies, CBI and Enforcement Directorate, have both confirmed they will appeal against the verdict, legal experts said that without any new evidence of criminality, it will be difficult to cut ice with the court.

The case related to irregularities in the allotment of licences and the allocation of spectrum in 2008. In 2012, in response to a public interest litigation related to this, the Supreme Court cancelled 122 licences.

A key ingredient in proving criminality would be evidence of gratification. There were none, senior defence counsel Rebecca John told HT.

In fact, apart from the Rs 200 crore alleged kickback that went through a maze of companies from the DB Realty to DMKs Kalaignar TV, CBI could not establish that any more bribes were paid in the case, which, according to its first chargesheet, caused a loss of Rs 30,000 crore to the exchequer. And even the trail of the Rs 200 crore alleged kickback could not be established.

A top official in the ED said that there are several letters rogatory (LR) or letters of request pending in the 2G case. These pertain to allegations of bribes that changed hands between Raja and the telecom companies he allegedly helped in getting 2G licenses. Answers to them would help the agencies take the case forward.

An LR is a formal request issued by a competent court to a foreign court and processed by the ministry of external affairs on behalf of the investigative agencies to obtain information about individuals and entities.

We have an LR pending with Switzerland. It is to probe if there was a quid pro quo between Reliance Telecom and Raja, said the ED official cited above. He added that their probe has been severely handicapped by the pace of CBIs investigation.

Even the joint parliamentary committee in 2013 had commented on the snails pace at which the CBI was moving.

In 2011 and 2012 CBI had sent a host of LRs but several remain unanswered to this date. Based on answers to the first LR subsequent LRs are filed, this process takes years. Only one query can be answered in one LR, so you can imagine how long one aspect of a probe will take if crucial evidence lies abroad, said a former CBI official who was involved in the 2G probe.

Saini also pointed to several incorrect facts in the chargesheets by the CBI.

I may add that many facts recorded in the charge sheet are factually incorrect, like finance secretary strongly recommending revision of entry fee, deletion of a clause of draft LOI (letter of intent) by A Raja, recommendations of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) for revision of entry fee etc, the judge said.

Since the allegations of irregularity surfaced against the former telecom minister, it has been held by investigators that A Raja misled the prime minister on ways of allocating the 2G spectrum licenses. But Saini is his judgement contradicts this.

It is clear that complete facts were not placed before the then Prime Minister by his own office, for which A Raja cannot be faulted, he said.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka have 681 Indian fishermen in their custody, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

In written response to a question in the Upper House, VK Singh, the minister of state for external affairs, said 537 fishermen were in jails in Pakistan while 144 were in Sri Lankan jails.

Pakistan has 1,000 boats and Sri Lanka has 144 boats of Indian fishermen in their custody.

Singh, however, said Pakistan has not acknowledged the number of Indian fishermen and boats in their custody.

The state of bilateral relations between India and Pakistan impinges on the release and repatriation of Indian fishermen. Even in the absence of a structured bilateral dialogue, both sides have released fishermen, Singh said.

He added that in 2017, India secured the release and repatriation of 363 Indian fishermen, of which 245 were released in the last six months.

Following the 2+2 initiative when the foreign and fisheries ministers of India and Sri Lanka met last year, it was agreed that the ministers of fisheries from the two sides will meet every six months.

The 3rd meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) and the 2nd Ministerial meeting was held on October 13 and 14 in New Delhi.

As a result of sustained diplomatic efforts, the government has so far secured the release of 347 fishermen from Sri Lankan custody, he added.

In response to another question on the Rohingya issue, Singh said during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Myanmar, the matter was raised with the Myanmerese leadership and the two countries agreed that the only lasting solution to the problem lay in overall development of Rakhine state.

In order to meet the pressing relief needs of the displaced persons, India has supplied essential regiments to about 30,000 people in Bangladesh and about 15,000 people in Myanmar in October and November, Singh said.
Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.

Others acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Rajas erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair..

Vijay Aggarwal, lawyer of Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and others, said the court said the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of its charge. Thus all accused are acquitted.

Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha MP, said: I would love to thank everyone who stood by me.

Senior DMK leader Durai Murugan said: Victory begins now. With political motives this case was put on us. Conspiracies were hatched against us but all have been blown away now.

Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani are also acquitted in the case.

Besides them, three telecom firms -- Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL), Reliance Telecom Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd -- were also accused and acquitted in the case.

Special CBI Judge O P Saini pronounced the judgement in the 2G scam which had rocked the UPA government.

In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, the CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

All the accused facing trial in these cases had denied allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the ED.

The court had in October 2011 framed charges against them under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using as genuine fake documents, abusing official position, criminal misconduct by public servant and taking bribe
While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is scrambling to choose its chief minister for Himachal Pradesh after the ignominious defeat of its CM face Prem Kumar Dhumal, the Congress is witnessing a race for the post of leader of opposition.

Rival camps headed by outgoing CM Virbhadra Singh and state Congress chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu have begun lobbying for the post of Congress legislature party (CLP) leader, even as the party plans to undertake an introspection exercise to ascertain the reasons for its rout.

The Congress had once again banked upon its old war horse  six-time CM Virbhadra. But marred by factionalism, the party was able to win only 21 seats while its vote share of 42.8% in 2012 elections fell to 41.7% this time.

In 2012, the Congress had won 36 of the 68 seats in the assembly. Party leaders, particularly the veterans, who lost this time are covertly blaming Virbhadra for their defeat.

Kaul Singh Thakur says the internal bickering and Virbhadras backing to his one-time protege Puran Thakur were responsible for his defeat.

Virbhadras son Vikramaditya Singh made his political debut, but has yet not opened his cards on the issue, while sources close to Virbhadra said that he preferably wants the slot for his loyalist and former industry minister Mukesh Agnihotri.

Meanwhile, All India Congress Committee national secretary and in-charge for Punjab affairs Asha Kumari , who has won from Dalhousie, is also a frontrunner for the post.

Sukhu, considered close to AICC chief Rahul Gandhi, is also keenly lobbying for the post. In case Sukhu prefers to continue to head the party unit, he could throw his weight behind other senior leaders. They could be Harshwardhan Chauhan, who won the Shillai seat for the sixth time, or Ram Lal Thakur, who won the Sri Naina Devi ji seat, defeating BJPs young leader Randhir Sharma.

Rahul has directed AICC in-charge for party affairs in Himachal Sushilkumar Shinde and co-in-charge Ranjeet Ranjan to gather feedback from the party leaders to ascertain reasons for the defeat.

Our leaders will analyse threadbare the reasons for the partys debacle. Party candidates from all the 68 assembly segments will participate in the meeting to be held on December 22, state unit general secretary and media in-charge Naresh Chauhan told Hindustan Times.

They would also meet party legislators to gather their feedback on their choice of CLP leader, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Modi government will unveil a new agricultural exports policy, as it looks for ways to improve sagging commodity prices, a big reason for farmer angst in many states.

There has also been an alarming slide in Indias farm trade surplus: the value of exports, in dollar terms, has been falling vis-a-vis imports. Lower realisation from exports, among other reasons, has hurt farm incomes and also induced domestic gluts, even as the government has set an ambitious target of doubling agricultural incomes in the next five years.

The new trade policy aims to be more open and stable so that there is predictability, an official said. It will contain measures to streamline compliance of international food-safety or phytosanitary requirements, promote promising products such as organic foods and create farm-to-port as well as farm-to-airport cold chains, according to the official cited above. The policy will focus on nearly 25 farm export clusters, along the lines of small and medium export clusters that exist for manufacturing. Clusters tend to lower the per unit cost of solutions due to concentration of a large number of producers with similar problems. India is one of the largest producers of fruits, vegetables, milk and rice globally. Under the new exports policy, our focus will be to ensure our farmers get uninterrupted access to international markets and good prices, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said.

Indias robust trade surplus in farm commodities, in dollar terms, has plunged 55% since 2014-15, mainly on account of low international commodity prices, apart from export disruptions due to non-compliance of phytosanitary norms. Indias trade surplus in agricultural items fell from US$ 27174.2 in 2013-14 to about US$ 7833.8 in 2016-17.

The idea is to link our famers to a value or a supply chain and compliance (with phytosanitary measures), agriculture secretary Shobhana K. Pattanayak said. Most EU countries have now further lowered the permissible residue limits for tricyclazole, a fungicide used in basmati, a major export item, Pattanayak said. Phytosanitary standards denote measures that ensure consumers are supplied with food that is free from contaminants.

Two years ago, the EU had banned Indian mangoes, causing a price crash. Iran had banned Indian rice imports too. On December 6, releasing the governments mid-term review of the Foreign Trade Policy 2015-2020, commerce minister Suresh Prabhus ministry announced incentives of 1,354 crore for farm products and 759 crore for marine products.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Polling was largely peaceful on Thursday in the Sabang assembly bypoll in West Bengal where 83% turnout was recorded till 5pm. The Sabang bypolls are seen as crucial for Mukul Roy, who switched to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress in November.

A total of 2.45 lakh voters were expected to vote in 306 booths. VVPATs were used in every polling station.

Counting will take place on December 24. In the 2016 assembly poll, the constituency witnessed 89.1% turnout.

The main contenders this time are Gita Bhunia from the ruling Trinamool Congress and Antara Bhattacharya of the BJP.

In every polling station there were VVPAT, said Sudip Sarkar, the sub divisional officer of Kharagpur.

The BJP is banking heavily on Mukul Roy, the 63-year-old former railway minister to build the partys grassroots-level organisation that is lacking in Bengal.

For the BJP, Bengal is a focus state for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, where the party wants to secure 22 of the 44 seats. The party expects Roy to help put in place the machinery by the 2018 rural polls that will be a rehearsal for the Lok Sabha elections.

The Trinamool nominated Gita Bhunia, the wife of Manas Bhunia, who won the seat in 2016 for the seventh time by almost 56,000 votes.

In 2016, Manas Bhunia contested as the candidate for the Congress-Left alliance. But later switched to Trinamool. The seat fell vacant when the party nominated Bhunia to the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP candidate, Antara Bhattacharya, was earlier with the CPI(M) and served as the sabhadhipati of the West Midnapore Zilla Parishad from 2008 to 2013

People of the area have immense support for Mamata Banerjee. There is no doubt that our candidate will win by a huge margin. It may be higher than mine, said Manas Bhunia.

Antara Bhattacharya, meanwhile, alleged strong arm tactics by Trinamool supporters.

If they are confident about winning, why are ruling party workers resorting to violence? They prevented our agents from entering polling stations in several booths, and also abducted one of our leaders from Jalchak, she alleged.

The BJP also alleged that their polling agents were forced to move out from several polling stations in Balpai and Bhemua.

Manas Bhunia called it a baseless allegation and said, Why should we create trouble when we are certain of a big victory?

Chandan Guchait, CPI(M) leader in Sabang, said, Our polling agent was beaten up in booth number 160. Three workers were also thrashed.

Tension was reported from Purbobandh booth in Bishnupur following a clash between Trinamool Congress and CPI(M) supporters. Security forces resorted to lathi charge and also fired in the air.

However, the district administration said they did not receive any complaint about unfair tactics.

Both the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP deployed their popular leaders for the bypoll.

While Union minister Babul Supriyo, state president Dilip Ghosh and Roy himself campaigned for the BJP, Trinamool leaders such as MP and Mamata Banerjees nephew Abhishek, education minister Partha Chatterjee, transport minister Suvendu Adhikari, law minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, party general secretary Subrata Bakshi held public meetings in the area.

In the 2016 elections, the BJP got only 2.60 % of the votes -- a marginal improvement on the miniscule 1.3% it secured in 2011.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval to extend the tenure of the committee set up to examine the issue of sub-categorisation of OBCs, by giving it more time till April next year to submit its report.

The committee appointed by President Ramnath Kovind in October to examine the sub-categorisation for a more equitable distribution of quota benefits is headed by former justice G Rohini, and was expected to give its report within 12 weeks of being set up.

The Cabinet has approved extending the deadline for report submission by another 12 weeks, which means the committee will have to submit its report by April 2, 2018. The Committee which has met states where OBCs are given quotas benefits had sought more time to analyse the voluminous data collected by it.

A decision to appoint the committee that has on board JK Bajaj of the Centre for Policy Studies as a member; director of the Anthropological Survey of India and Registrar General and Census Commissioner as ex-officio members; and a joint secretary in the ministry of social justice and empowerment as secretary, was cleared by the union cabinet in August.

It has the responsibility to examine the extent of inequitable distribution of reservation benefits among castes and communities and work out the mechanism, criteria, norms and parameters in a scientific approach for the sub-categorisation within such OBCs.

The committee is also tasked to identify respective castes or communities or sub-castes or synonyms in the Central List of OBCs and classifying them into their respective sub-categories.

The now-scrapped National Commission for Backward Classes in 2015 had recommended three categories for OBCs  extremely backward classes, more backward classes, and backward classes.

It proposed a division of the 27% quota for the OBCs according to the population and the degree of backwardness.
The Congress is planning to launch a social media blitzkrieg to reach out to voters in poll-bound Tripura, where the party is out of power for more than two decades.

For the first time the party has constituted a social media committee in the state, which will go to poll early next year.

Tripura Congress working president Pradyot Kishore Deb Burman, who is also the head of the Manikya royal family, would lead the committee comprising eight members. Deb Burman has also been made convenor of the partys election committee.

Social media is a reality today and we realise the need to reach out to the younger generation. For this, we are going to create a positive digital social media team, which will highlight the aspirations of a young Tripura and shun negative campaign, Deb Burman said.

Vipin Yadav, AICCs national social media coordinator visited the state capital to train youth on how to run the social media campaign

As the AICC emphasised on increasing the partys social media presence, young leaders from different constituencies were given one-day training on how to use the platform to reach millions, Yadav said.

The young leaders were trained how to highlight good works of the party using social media, he said, adding he was hopeful that the campaign would make an impact.

Social media coordinators will be appointed in the states all the 60 assembly constituencies. In turn these coordinators will appoint booth-level coordinators.

We have been entrusted to create awareness about the good works done by the party, highlighting them through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp, said Pujan Biswas, convener of the partys social media committee.

We are on the verge of completing the list of constituency-level coordinators, he added.

The social media campaign would continue until elections.

The party also formed four additional committees to deal with publicity, election manifesto, campaign and other related issues in the state where it recently got a shot in the arm after nearly 1000 party leaders and activists returned to the party fold after a short stint with the Trinamool Congress.

The Congress also swept a by-election in Dhaniacherra ADC village under Pecharthal Block of North District last month.
Reactions have been sharp after a special court on Thursday acquitted all accused in the grant of 2G spectrum telecom licences due to lack of evidence in one of the countrys biggest corruption cases.

The Congress party, which led the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government when the scam allegedly took place, is treating the court verdict as a victory, but the Bharatiya Janata Party said it was no badge of honour. Here is a selection of quotes from political parties.

Congress leader and former prime minister Manmohan Singh

We respect the courts verdict. The courts statement has to be respected and I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously that all this massive propaganda against the UPA government was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself, Singh said.

Congress leader Kapil Sibal

Sibal asked Vinod Rai, the former Comptroller and Auditor General CAG, to apologise. Rai, as CAG, had estimated that bungling in 2G spectrum allocation had caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the nation. I have been saying from day one that there was no loss and I have been vindicated today. In fact, it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation, said Sibal.

Finance minister and BJP leader Arun Jaitley

Jaitley said the Congress must not celebrate because the Supreme Court had rejected the UPA governments telecom policy. Congress leaders are treating this judgement as some kind of a badge of honour and a certification that it was an honest policy, Jaitley told reporters outside Parliament. This was a corrupt and dishonest policy, which has already been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.

DMK leader MK Stalin

A Raja, Stalins party colleague, was telecom minister in the UPA government and he was among the people who were acquitted in the 2G case on Thursday. Stalin said the court verdict had brought happiness to his party. It is now proven that the case was politically motivated to malign one party. It is also now proven that everyone they accused of huge graft was innocent, he said in Chennai.

The 2G spectrum allocation case relates to alleged below-market-price sale of lucrative telecom permits bundled with airwaves in 2008, which a federal auditor said may have cost the government as much as $28 billion in lost revenue.

In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered 122 licences held by eight operators to be revoked, declaring the licences illegal and the process wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest.

It was one of the several scandals that emerged during Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs second term, hobbling policymaking and diverting the governments attention away from pushing forward crucial economic reforms.
The Gauhati high court set aside on Thursday the detention of Assam peasant leader and anti-corruption activist Akhil Gogoi under provisions of the National Security Act (NSA).

The 41-year-old leader of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) has been lodged in jail since September on charges of sedition.

Gogoi was arrested after he urged people to take up arms if those belonging to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan were granted Indian citizenship according to provisions of the amended Citizenship Act.

He was first arrested on September 13 on charges of sedition and spreading religious animosity. Later, he was re-arrested on September 25 and 12 cases under the NSA were lodged against him in various police stations.

Gogoi, who is also an RTI activist, was released by the court on Thursday after it found several technical discrepancies in his arrest and subsequent detention by the Sarbananda Sonowal-led BJP government in the state.

The HC order setting aside Gogois detention shows the Sonowal governments vindictiveness against anyone who opposes its policies, Assam Congress president Ripun Bora told journalists in New Delhi.

Gogoi is expected to be released in the next few days.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
It was in Ketti Palada village, in the picturesque Nilgiris district, that former telecom minister A Raja had moved the peoples court on the 2G spectrum case during campaigning for the general elections in 2014.

I will come out clean from the case, which has nothing in it, A Raja told this correspondent then when HT caught up with him campaigning in the constituency to retain his Lok Sabha seat in April 2014.

I have been made a scapegoat and will come out clean, a confident looking Raja had declared then.

He lost the polls then but came out a winner on Thursday when the special court judge OP Saini in New Delhi acquitted the former telecom minister of all charges in the 2G spectrum scam, which allegedly led to a loss of Rs 3,000 crore to the national exchequer.

Raja, in a press statement on Thursday, said the court judgment vindicated him. Vested interests manipulated public perception by leveraging the media and sensationalising allegations. It has been repeatedly proven that the presumptive loss to the exchequer which formed the basis for the conspiracy theorists to run amok, was cooked-up (sic), he said.

Raja, a lawyer by education, had represented himself in the court several times, debunking claims of the prosecution. He had even refused to take bail initially saying that he had done nothing wrong and had accused the BJP was witch hunting.

Although the 2G case hurt his party, the DMK, badly in the 2014 general elections in Tamil Nadu, Raja remained popular within the party and among the Dalit community, which considers him a hero. DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, whose daughter MK Kanimozhi was also an accused in the case, stuck with the Dalit poster boy of the party throughout.

Born into a poor Dalit family in Velur of Perambulur district on October 26, 1963, Raja was active in student politics and rose quickly in the DMK hierarchy. Since 1996, he was elected to the Lok Sabha four times.

First he entered the Lok Sabha from Perambalur constituency in 1999 and later in 2004. He later shifted to Nilgiris and won in 2009. But, lost in 2014 when the rival AIADMK swept the state.

Rajas ministerial debut was in the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, when he was inducted as the junior minister in the rural development ministry in 1996. Four years later, he was shifted to health ministry, earning praise from then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

When the DMK switched sides after NDAs loss in the 2004 general elections, Raja became the environment and forest minister till May 2007, when he was shifted to communication and information technology in May 2007, following the resignation of Dayanidhi Maran.

It was as telecom minister that Raja was accused of conspiracy in the 2G spectrum allocation following which he had to resign and was arrested in February 2011. He spent 15 months in jail before granted he was granted bail.

I have done nothing wrong. There is no corruption case against me, the Income Tax people have told the court. Finance secretary told court there is no loss to exchequer. You weigh the facts, be the judge and give your verdict, Raja told Hindustan Times in an interview at Nilgiris in April 2014.

Raja had used his picture going to jail as a campaign material to tell his voters that he was innocent.

I have placed my case before the peoples court for their verdict, Raja had said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Gujarati voters were more likely to choose wealthy candidates over less wealthy ones, an analysis of candidate disclosure documents and Mondays poll returns from the states assembly election shows.

In 75 of the states 182 constituencies, voters chose the wealthiest available candidate. Thats about 41% of the time. Second wealthiest candidates won about 38% of the time, while third wealthiest candidates won about 12% of the time. Fourth wealthiest candidates and below won slightly less than 2% of the seats in which they contested.

This is a fact that richer candidates have a better chance of winning than less rich candidates, said Jagdeep Chhokar, founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, an election watchdog group. People who are not very well off, who are not very rich, stand very little chance of winning or being elected.

There is no minimum wealth requirement to compete in Indias democratic elections. In Gujarat, 35 candidates were in debt and another 190 owned less than Rs 1 lakh in assets. None of them won.

Of the 373 crorepatis, on the other hand, 136, or about 36%, won. Candidates worth at least Rs 50 lakh but less than Rs 1 crore won 13.13% of the time, while candidates worth at least Rs 1 lakh and less than Rs 50 lakh won just 1.94% of the time.

In the five state assembly elections that took place in March, the link between candidate wealth and electoral success was nearly as strong. In the nearly 700 constituencies contested in Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, the wealthiest candidate won 33.5% of the time, compared to just 24.6% for the second wealthiest candidate and 17% for the third wealthiest.

Voters often see candidates wealth as a proxy for their ability to deliver public services, said Neelanjan Sircar, a political scientist at the Centre for Policy Research who studies the effects of candidate wealth in Indias elections.

Part of the reason why money matters so much is that the ability to spend money demonstrates a capacity to make it rain when matters, Sircar said.

Candidates who are able to outspend their opponents also have an easier time convincing major parties to give them tickets, which further improves their electoral prospects.

In Gujarat, for example, the median wealth of the candidates nominated by the BJP and Congress was about Rs 2.5 crore and about Rs 1.6 crore, respectively. Of the candidates not nominated by one of those two parties, the median wealth was just less than Rs 7 lakh.

This is not good for democracy, Chhokar said of the advantage wealthy candidates enjoy over less wealthy competitors. It does not allow for what, in cliched terms, is called a level playing field.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
India has hit out at China for protecting Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar by preventing the Security Council from sanctioning him as an international terrorist because of its narrow political and strategic concerns.

On counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns, Indias Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin told the Council on Wednesday without naming China.

On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress, thus putting our common security in peril.

Last month China once again blocked a move by Britain, France and the US to list Azhar, the mastermind of last years attack on the Pathankot air force base, as a global terrorist by using its veto power. He lives in Pakistan, an ally of China.

Speaking during the debate on Complex Contemporary Challenges to International Peace and Security, Akbaruddin said terrorism is a common challenge which requires greater focus by this Council, one where closer international cooperation needs to be, can be and should expanded for common interest.

But, it appears that this common threat and its seriousness to states and societies is not clearly understood here.

The threats to international peace are intensified by the globalization of terror networks, which operate across borders propagating hateful ideologies, sometimes based in deep-rooted perceived grievances, raising finances, getting arms and recruiting operatives.

He questioned the very legitimacy of Council and its credibility in dealing with todays complex challenges.

An instrument that is no longer considered legitimate and has lost its credibility cannot be our hope for salvation, he said. New realities cannot be addressed by using old paradigms.

Making a case for reforming the Council to make it more representative, he said, The reasons for the lack of success of international structures designed seven decades ago in dealing with the complex challenges of today are self- evident. A non-representative Council, designed many long years ago to maintain the balance of power among competing rivals, is simply not equipped to handle the challenges that have changed beyond recognition.
As Pakistans army chief pledged his support for better ties, India asserted on Thursday that Islamabad will have to take action against terror groups operating from its soil for improvement in the bilateral relationship.

Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

Reacting to the comments, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups.

It is important for Pakistan to understand our core concern, which is terrorism. We have time and again asked them to take action against terrorists who are operating from their soil. This is something they (Pakistan) will have to handle if they are serious in cultivating this friendship, Kumar told reporters.

He was asked to comment on Bajwas remarks.

Like any good neighbour, we do desire good neighbourly relations with the country which is next to us, Kumar said.

In a rare move, the Pakistan Army chief briefed the Senate -- the upper house of Parliament -- on the security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa also said his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government, he was quoted as saying.

The military leadership had come to Parliament to brief lawmakers on the security situation for the first time in six years.
An Indian was among 19 people injured today when a speeding SUV ran down pedestrians at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne in what the Australian police said a deliberate act.

A white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd at the intersection just after 4.30 pm local time (0530 GMT), injuring 19 people including Rohit Kaul, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir.

Quoting eyewitnesses, the local media said that people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle.

The attack was an act of evil and an act of cowardice, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.

He said the condition of four people hit was critical. Fifteen others were stable.

The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car.

My husband was talking to my son Avi and crossing the intersection. Suddenly, my husbands phone fell down and we could hear loud noises and people screaming on the other side before the line went dead, Kauls wife told PTI.

We tried to call him on his mobile but there was no response. We soon got a call from a fellow Indian who said my husband was injured and was being taken to a hospital, she added.

Her husband suffered leg injuries and will undergo a surgery this evening. He is stable, she said.

The driver was waiting for the red light and when people started crossing the road, he jumped the red light and crashed into them, she said, adding that it was a deliberate act.

Police and emergency services attend to the scene of an incident involving a vehicle on Flinders Street. (REUTERS)

A pre-school child who suffered a head injury is not in a critical condition.

Acting commissioner Shane Patton said that the police do not believe what happened is terror related but will continue to investigate.

He said police will allege the man intentionally drove into the pedestrians.

The driver of the car has been arrested and is receiving hospital treatment, Patton said.

The driver, identified as a 32-year-old of Afghan descent, was known to police in relation to minor traffic offences and a minor assault in 2010.

We believe hes driven down the tram tracks and he crashed into a tram-stop on the other side, Patton said.

A 24-year-old man was also detained at the scene after he was seen filming the incident on a phone. He was also carrying a bag that contained knives but police said it was probable that he had no links to the incident and say the driver was alone in the car, the Age reported.

The car was registered to a family member and police said was not stolen.

Victoria police appealed to people to upload any images they might have of the incident to a cloud address to help assist with their probe.
A locally made gun is set to undergo crucial trials in January at a time when the army has sharpened its focus on its long-delayed artillery modernisation programme.

The indigenous 155mm 52-calibre Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS), jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the private sector, will kick off winter trials in the Sikkim sector, a senior army officer said.

The ATAGS set a record during trials in Rajasthans Pokhran in September, firing shells to a range of 48 km, against armys requirement of 40 km.

The defence ministry sanctioned the ATAGS project in September 2012 and the DRDO has partnered with Bharat Forge and Tata Power (Strategic Engineering Division) SED to develop two prototypes of the towed artillery guns.

The two prototypes underwent their maiden structural stability trials in December 2016 at Proof & Experimental Establishment, a government test facility at Balasore in Odisha.

A letter of intent has been given to the DRDO for 150 ATAGS, an army source said.

The value of DRDO-developed/upgraded systems inducted into the armed forces during the last three years stands at Rs 1.1 lakh crore, the government told Lok Sabha on Wednesday. These systems do not include strategic weapons.

The armys field artillery rationalisation plan (FARP), cleared in 1999, lays down the roadmap for inducting new 155mm weaponry, including tracked self-propelled guns, truck-mounted gun systems, towed artillery pieces and wheeled self-propelled guns.

The Rs 50,000-crore FARP seeks to equip 169 artillery regiments with a mix of nearly 3,000 guns over the next decade.

The army is looking to induct another indigenously developed 155mm 45-calibre towed artillery gun called Dhanush. But the programme has been delayed as the gun was involved in mishaps during trials. (Here, 155 mm denotes the diameter of the shell and calibre relates to barrel length.)

The force is awaiting a report on an accident involving its new M777 ultra-light howitzer. The BAE Systems-manufactured gun was partly damaged when a 155mm artillery round misfired and exploded in its barrel during a drill at the Pokhran firing ranges in September.

The M777 order is the first contract for artillery guns in almost 30 years after the Bofors scandal unfolded in the late 1980s. India signed the Rs 5,000-crore deal with the US in November 2016 for 145 howitzers.
The National Green Tribunal has quashed the environment ministrys decision to exempt the construction sector from environmental approval and said it violated Indias emission control obligations under the Paris climate deal.

In apparently his last order before retirement tribunals chairperson, Swatanter Kumar stayed the ministrys December 2016 notification exempting real estate projects having built-up area of up to 1,50,000 sq metres from mandatory environmental approval and asked the ministry to restore appraisal of construction projects under the Air and Water Acts.

The ministrys notification was challenged in the tribunal by four petitioners on the ground that the exemption granted would be a huge retrograde step in the area of environment conservation. They also claimed that the notification was in violation of the Environment Protection Act.

The notification also ignores some essential features like source of water, source of raw material, urban ecology, provision of no development zone and construction face impacts. These aspects have a direct bearing on protection of environment and keeping in line with the Principle of Sustainable Development, Kumar said in the order on December 8, while invoking the Paris climate deal agreed by 195 nations in 2015.

The tribunal also accused the government of diluting environment safeguards in the name of ease of doing responsible business under the grab of housing for all without having any mechanism for evaluation, assessment or monitoring of the environment impact of building and construction activity, considered one of the biggest contributors to air pollution.

The construction industry consumes enormous resources and has a significant energy footprint; the sector emits 22 per cent of Indias total annual carbon-dioxide emission, the order read. It reprimanded the ministry for overlooking its own findings of incompetence of local authorities in appraising real estate projects.

The tribunal also said that the notification takes away the powers of the pollution control boards and committees to grant or refuse consent to operate to building and construction projects. It further dilutes the entire environmental assessment framework under the EIA notification 2006, which has been periodically strengthened and amended by the numerous orders of this Honble Tribunal, the order read.

It directed the ministry to re-examine its notification and take appropriate steps to delete, amend or rectify the clauses in light of the judgment.

The environment ministry shall, particularly take care that the laudable social cause of providing Housing to the poor does not get defeated by business, economic profitability with reference to ease of doing business, while particularly protecting the environment, Kumar said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and rural development minister Narendra Singh Tomar  who have been appointed as observers by the parliamentary board  reached Shimla along with party state in-charge and Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey on Thursday evening to hold a discourse on the name of Himachals new chief minister with the newly elected state legislators.

The central observers met the BJPs state unit core group which included former party president and five-time legislator Jai Ram Thakur, party chief Satpal Singh Satti, health minister JP Nadda, former chief ministers Shanta Kumar and Prem Kumar Dhumal besides parliamentarians Anurag Thakur, Virender Kashyap and Ram Swaroop Sharma.

The main aim of our visit is to gather feedback on the formation of government in Himachal. The observation we draw from here will be given to the parliamentary board in New Delhi and the final call will be taken by the high command, Tomar said.

Sitharaman and Tomar will separately meet the partys legislators and Lok Sabha members on Friday morning, state party chief Satti told Hindustan Times.

The party has won 44 seats in the 68-member assembly.

JP Nadda and Jai Ram Thakur have emerged as the dark horses in the race for the CMs post. Nadda, who enjoys proximity to the partys national president Amit Shah, is a key member of BJPs core team. Its likely for him to be retained at the Centre.

The clamour for making Dhumal the chief minister has also gained momentum and three BJP MLAs have reportedly offered to vacate their seats for him.

Race for cabinet berths hots up

Even as the top leadership is deliberating on the names of contenders for the chief ministers seat, legislators vying for the ministerial births have already begun a back-door lobbying for the coveted posts.

The legislators have been visiting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) state headquarters in Shimla, say sources.

The names of Seraj legislator Jai Ram Thakur and Shimla MLA Suresh Bhardwaj are doing rounds for the top positions. From Mandi parliamentary seat, if Jai Ram is escalated to the CMs post, Manali legislator Govind Thakur, Dharampurs Mahinder Singh Thakur, Sarkaghats Inder Singh and Mandis Anil Sharma could be the front runners. Ram Lal Markandey, an MLA from Lahaul and Spiti, is also in the race as he hails from a tribal seat.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Pakistan on Thursday accused India of supporting militant outfits and using Afghan soil for carrying out militant activities in the country.

Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal alleged that India was using Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jamaatul Ahrar (JuA) and others for militancy in Pakistan.

India under the garb of development assistance is colluding with the terrorist groups like TTP, JuA and is perpetrating acts of terrorism inside Pakistan, he alleged.

We urge the Afghan government not to let its soil be used against its neighbours, he said at the weekly media briefing in Islamabad.

He also said that Pakistan was concerned about the health condition of Kashmiri leader Shabbir Shah.

In respond to a question, Faisal said Pakistan feels that its credentials with regard to the elite Nuclear Suppliers Groups (NSG) are second to none.

Responding to India joining the Wassenaar Arrangement, the spokesperson said that being member of one group was not a qualification to join another group.

India was admitted to Wassenaar Arrangement on December 8, a development expected to raise its stature in the field of non-proliferation besides helping it acquire critical technologies.

Faisal said the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects were progressing well and would be completed in three phases.

Talking about the proposal to use Chinese Yaun in trade with Pakistan, he said the two countries aim to promote monetary cooperation between the central banks, implement existing bilateral currency swap arrangements, research to expand the amount of currency swap and explore to enrich the use and scope of bilateral currency swap.

The two sides will actively use bilateral currencies for the settlement of bilateral trade and investment under the relevant arrangements, he added.
Dhaka is investigating whether Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has established any link with Rohingya terror groups, said Obaidul Quader, a senior Bangladesh minister and general secretary of the ruling Awami League.

We have received intelligence inputs about the ISIs link with the Rohingya militant elements. We are investigating it, Bangladeshs road transport and bridges minister said at a reception organised by the countrys deputy high commission in Kolkata on Wednesday.

According to the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR) over 8.59 Rohingyas have taken refuge in Bangladesh fleeing violence in Myanmars Rakhine state, where the army has launched a crackdown after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) reportedly attacked police and army patrols on August 25.

Dhaka is worried that terror elements might sneak into its soil as part of the wave.

Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government earlier blamed Pakistan and its secret service for the terror activities in Bangladesh, including the series of murder of free-thinking bloggers and the attacks on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in July 2016.

Quader also made no bones about his party-led governments prickly relations with Pakistan.

Whenever there is a positive development in Bangladesh, Pakistan reacts negatively. Every time a war criminal of 1971 Liberation War is sentenced, Pakistan makes a negative comment.... They should remember Bangladesh is ahead of their country in all development indicators such as literacy and life expectancy, Quader said.

They are ahead of us only in making a nuclear bomb, he quipped.

On the rights of the minorities in Bangladesh, Quader said the government had a zero-tolerance policy towards any atrocities on them and that it had asked the minorities to put up a resistance against any such attack.

I tell my minority brothers that they are in no way inferior than our Muslim brothers. They should not suffer from an inferiority complex. I tell them that they are citizens of Bangladesh and have been part of the Liberation War, he added.

Describing the ties with India as a time-tested one, Quader said the relations between the two neighbours reached a new high during the tenure of Narendra Modi and pointed out how the two countries signed the historic Land Boundary Agreement to exchange enclaves.

The enclave exchange was extremely important. Prime Minister Modi took an important role in it, he said.

(With PTI inputs)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Voting for the by-election to the high-stakes RK Nagar assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu saw a turnout of more than 77%, amid complaints and allegations of widespread corrupt practices.

AIADMKs E Madhusudhanan, independent candidate TTV Dinakaran and DMKs N Marudhu Ganesh are among the top contenders contesting in the by-election that was necessitated as the constituency fell vacant after the death of AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa in December 2016.

Here are the highlights:

9.30pm: A record 77.68% voter turnout witnessed in the bypoll, say election officials.

5.55pm: Over 60% turnout recorded till the end of voting at 5pm, sources at election office said.

4.15pm: RK Nagar sees brisker polling after 2G verdict, records 58% polling till 4pm.

12.20pm: In Arunachal, voting for the high stakes bypolls in two assembly constituencies  Pakke-Kessang and Likabali  began amid tight security. Around 150 polling personnel have been deployed for Pakke-Kessang seat and 220 for Likabali, joint chief electoral officer DJ Bhattacharjee said.

Former deputy chief minister Kameng Dolo of the Congress locks horns with BJP nominee BR Waghe in Pakke-Kessang, where 7,455 voters are exercising their franchise at 29 polling stations.

10.55am: Meanwhile, a special court acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases, deciding the fate of former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi.

10.34am: TTV Dinakaran, contesting as an independent candidate, refutes BJPs allegation of bribing voters, says people trust me, they are with me.

10am: According to Election Commission officials, 7.32% voters have cast their ballots since polling began at 8 am. Over two lakh voters are eligible to decide the fate of 59 candidates in one of the smallest constituencies in Tamil Nadu.

9.56am: AIADMK candidate E Madhusudhanan casts his vote, says God and Ammas grace is with us.

8.36am: Unprecedented security has been put in place by the election authorities after several complaints of misuse of money power, which at one stage posed the risk of another cancellation of the bypoll. The local BJP unit demanded the cancellation of then bypoll, which is witnessing a high stakes battle with the AIADMKs two factions slugging it out for Ammas legacy.

8.22am: Chennai City Police Commissioner AK Viswanathan says: We will ensure free and fair elections, today. Have deployed additional forces. Over 3,000 police personnel and 15 companies are para military forces have been deployed on poll duty to prevent any untoward incident.

8.15am: DMK candidate N Marudhu Ganesh casts his vote at a polling booth in Chennai. Whether it is Rs 6000 or Rs 60,000, we are going to win; voters of RK Nagar will teach a lesson to AIADMK this time.

8.08am: People queue up to vote in the RK Nagar bypoll in Chennai.

A polling booth at Chennai Girls Higher Secondary School in Tiruvottiyur. (ANI)

8.03am: DMK candidate N Marudhu Ganesh and BJPs Karu Nagarajan reach polling booths in Chennai to cast his vote as polling begins. DMK alleges that a sum of Rs 100 crore is already said to have been spent by ruling AIADMK led by EPS-OPS combine to win the bypoll.

7.56am:

#TopStory RK Nagar bypolls to take place today, the constituency was once held by late TN CM Jayalalithaa. AIADMKs E. Madhusudhanan, Independent candidate TTV Dhinakaran and DMKs N. Marudhu Ganesh among the top contenders (Visuals from a polling booth in #Chennai) #TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/4kxqC6U42O  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

7.50am: A video said to be of late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa was released by a leader of the TTV Dinakaran camp on Wednesday, a day before a by-election to the citys RK Nagar assembly constituency that fell vacant after the AIADMK leaders death last December. (Read more)

(With agency inputs)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Homebuyers are trickling back but the slump in Indias real estate sector continues to pinch businesses, despite high demand for houses, stable property prices and a large inventory on sale.

Developers are trying new tricks to lure buyers, ranging from a slew of price cuts, offers such as no floor rise (the premium buyers pay for apartments on higher floors), zero goods and services tax (GST), payment flexibility and lenient loans. These offers were on ample display at the recent Maharashtra Chambers of Housing Industry (MCHI-CREDAI) realty exhibition in Mumbai.

Still, the market is down.

The biggest challenge now is to transform the mindset of the customer and infuse trust in him. It is too early to predict how sales will shape up after this six-month break, but I would think the recovery in the sector will take another year, at least, said Rajeev Talwar, the chief executive officer at DLF Ltd.

DLF Ltd, the countrys largest real estate developer, suspended home sales on May 1 on a cautionary note due to the new real estate law and resumed only in November. The company clocked zero sales in six months.

The slowdown in property sales started four years ago, propelled by high prices, delays in handing homes and loss of faith in builders not keeping their promise. Regulatory changes such as implementation of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, or Rera, and the GST added to the disruption (although both are fundamentally good measures).

According to property analysts, buyers are back but too few in number to pull the business out of the slump. Most sales are in the lower price range and many developers in larger cities are struggling to offload residential stock.

The good thing is that the market has been able to hold up, but its mainly been in the affordable segment, in the Rs40-lakh range. Builders have committed much more than they have delivered leading to huge pile-up of inventory, said Pankaj Kapoor, the managing director of Liases Foras Real Estate Rating and Research Pvt. Ltd.

Kapoor believes that this is an opportune time for serious buyers as prices have stabilised and developers are offering a range of incentives, particularly for ready-to-move in homes.

Data published by Liases Foras on November 29 show sales across Tier I cities declined with Chennai leading the slump at -13%, followed by Kolkata at -8%, in the July-September quarter compared to the preceding three months.

Roadblocks

The implementation of Rera and GST this year slowed the pace of project launches and sales just when realty firms were recovering from the November 2016 demonetisation drive, which wiped out 86% of the cash in circulation in the country.

The real estate law is designed to protect millions of homebuyers facing harassment because of limited legal options at times of dispute. If the new law forced developers to be more responsible and accountable, the GST pushed back sales with additional levies.

Buying property attracts GST at a net effective rate of 12%, as against around 5.5% of sales tax plus service tax before the new tax regime was enforced this July; theres another 6% stamp duty charge in a city like Mumbai. So for an apartment of ~1 crore, a buyer has to pay another ~18 lakh.

This is a huge burden and buyers feel they can get a home at Rs 18 lakh on the outskirts of Mumbai, said Rajesh Vardhan, director of Vardhman Builders.

The GST input credit tax, which is reimbursed, is hardly around 3%. That means the consumer still has to shell 15% extra as taxes. Vardhman Builders, which has five projects in Mumbai and its outskirts, witnessed a drop in sales by over 75% since GST was implemented.

Pune-based Panchshil Realtys chairman Atul Chordia said home bookings have almost stalled, pulling down sales across the city. Ready projects are selling marginally more as GST isnt applicable on completed apartments with occupancy certificates.

Unsold residential stock in major cities increased marginally in the September quarter with Chennai witnessing a 20% increase, followed by Kolkata at 13%, Mumbai metropolitan region at 8% and Pune at 7%, according to the Liases Foras report.

Property advisory Knight Frank Indias chief economist Samantak Das said the slowdown in the information technology sector has also affected the market, especially in IT hubs such as Pune. He too expects the market to be stagnant for at least 10 to 12 months.

Affordable homes

Indias housing shortage at the beginning of the 12th Five Year Plan, 2012 to 2017, was estimated at 18.78 million units, according to a Union housing ministry report.

Analysts said the demand hasnt waned but affordability is a clincher in a decision to buy a home.

Of the 64,781 homes that sold across top eight cities in the July-September period, 23,493 were priced between ~25 and ~50 lakh. Only 3,658 homes were in the ~3 crore-plus range.

Top developers are increasingly focusing on affordable housing, backed by government incentives. They are also reducing prices on a buyer-to-buyer basis.

Shrikant Paranjape, chairman of CREDAI, said Pune has a substantial inventory between ~20 and ~60 lakh that is attracting buyers. In Mumbai, Indias most expensive property market, builders are launching studio and single-bedroom-hall-kitchen apartments in large numbers to suit the homebuyers budgets. These are in the range of 180 to 400 square feet, priced at ~40 to ~60 lakh.

Price cuts are necessary to maintain sales momentum, said Pratik Patel, the director of Rajesh Lifescapes. The Union cabinets decision this November to increase the carpet area of homes under the governments affordable housing scheme could prove to be good news for middle-income homebuyers.

Jaithirth Rao, executive chairman and director at VBHC Value Homes Pvt Ltd, says: Many investors have exited, leaving serious end-user buyers in the market. They were fence-sitting so far, but that is slowly getting better.
The government is set to increase by an unprecedented 125% the manpower of the Special Security Group (SSG) that provides security cover to highly protected VIPs like Union ministers, the National Security Adviser (NSA), some chief ministers and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief.

The SSG, a wing of the paramilitary Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), is a specialised force like the National Security Guard (NSG) and currently has 1,200 personnel. And the government is going to increase this by 1,500.

Sources in the Union home ministry told IANS that the sanction to increase the force is expected by December-end or by early January.

The decision has been pending with the home ministrys Border Management Division for over a month now after the CISF requested the ministry for the induction of 1,500 more personnel in the SSG wing.

SSG commandos, who are trained at par with NSG personnel, currently provide security to 75 VIPs under Z plus, Z, Y Plus, Y and X categories across India.

Those given SSG security cover include finance minister Arun Jaitley, Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju, minister of communication Manoj Sinha, NSA Ajit Doval, former Union minister and nine-time lawmaker from Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and former Punjab deputy chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal.

CISF officers said the enhanced manpower would come as a relief for the SSG, which will, by 2018-end, take over the security responsibilities of all VIPs who are currently being protected by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

The home ministry asked the CISF on November 23 to take over the VIP security responsibilities from the ITBP and the CRPF.

By 2018-end, only the CISF and NSG will have the mandate of guarding VIPs in the country. The Elite Special Protection Group provides security to the Prime Minister, former prime ministers, President and Vice President and their immediate families.

As per the order, the security of 92 VIPs so far under the CRPF and ITBP will be given in a phased manner to the SSG, which was established in 2006 for the purpose.

Till now, the CRPF provides security to 75 VIPs while the ITBP secures 17 such persons.

After increase in its strength, the SSG will start providing security cover to BJP president Amit Shah, Union minister Nitin Gadkari, Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani, among others. All of them are now under CRPF protection.

It will also have to take over the security of Jammu and Kashmir politicians like chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, former chief minister Omar Abdullah and CPI-M legislator Yusuf Tarigami as well as of some judges protected by the ITBP.

Apart from providing VIP security through its SSG wing, the CISF, which came into existence in 1969, is mandated to provide security to critical infrastructure like nuclear installations, space establishments, airports, seaports, power plants, sensitive government buildings, heritage monuments and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
Bengaluru FC lost 1-0 in the Indian Super League to Jamshedpur FC in a clash of the ISL debutants at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore. Bengaluru FC were on the attack for most of the game but Jamshedpur FC, who have developed into a strong defensive side under Steve Coppell, held firm for the whole game. The match looked likely to end in a goalless draw but Bengalurus Rahul Bheke fouled Sameehg Doutie inside the penalty area in injury time. Trindade stepped up to take the spot kick and made no mistake, thus ensuring the visitors left with all three points. Get full score of Bengaluru FC vs Jamshedpur FC here.

If you are unable to see the full scorecard of Bengaluru FC vs Jamshedpur FC, click here.
Jaipur: Pratapgarh police on Thursday ordered an enquiry into the alleged disruption of a Christmas celebration event in the district on Tuesday after the organisers gave a memorandum to the additional collector.

Shivraj Meena, superintendent of police (SP), Pratapgarh said, that there was no disruption as such at the event but nevertheless, an enquiry has been ordered under the deputy superintendent of police, Pratapgarh.

The two-day Christmas celebration programme was organised by Pratapgarh branch of Masih Shakti Samiti for tribals and began on Tuesday morning. But on Tuesday evening, around 9 pm, police reached the spot along with around 20 locals, who alleged that the event was being done to carry out conversions.

Laxman Meena, secretary of the MSS and one of the organisers, said, that those disrupting the event were members of Hindu outfits and the police was hand in glove with them. The police asked us to stop the event and said that things like this will not be allowed in Pratapgarh, said Laxman, identifying himself as a scheduled caste with faith in Bible.

He further alleged that the disruptors manhandled the persons who had assembled for prayer and also took away their microphone and sound system. A video clip of the incident showed disruptors creating ruckus at the event. HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

The police, however, deny such disruption. The local residents had objected to the event following which the owner of the venue, Samudayik Bhawan, asked the organisers to vacate the place, the SP said.

We received information that religious conversion was going on and so we sent a team. But no evidence suggesting conversion was found at the spot, he added. The police also took two tribals into custody over suspicion of forced conversion and questioned them. They were released late at night after the allegations were found to be false.
Two sons of a Rajasthan minister of the ruling BJP have been booked for allegedly abducting and beating up a man in Alwar on Wednesday after he was found standing near people abusing the minister a day earlier.

Surendra Bhadana and Hitesh Bhadana, sons of minister Hem Singh Bhadana, and their accomplices were booked for kidnapping and assault, police said.

The elder son Surendra was an accused in an eve-teasing case in 2014 but was acquitted during the course of police investigation.

The victim, Tej Singh Yadav, was taken to Rajiv Gandhi General Hospital but shifted to a private hospital as doctors at the government hospital were on strike.

A student of law, Tej is a native of Shahpur village and was living in a rented room in Shivaji Park area.

In a complaint, he said the Bhadana brothers along with 1012 others barged into his room and attacked his head with a sword. They pointed a gun to his chest and took him in an SUV to their house in Veer Savarkar Nagar where they thrashed him.

Minister Bhadana, an MLA from Alwars Thanagazi constituency and in-charge of Rajasthan State Motor Garage, General Administration and Estates in the Rajasthan government, was not reachable for comments immediately.

In a video, the victims father Satish Yadav is heard saying that some persons had hurled abuses at the minister a day before and his son was also standing there. They (ministers sons) noted the number of my sons motorcycle and reached his room. They hit him repeatedly and asked names of those who had hurled abuses, he said.

Satish told police that when he received the information, he rushed to the ministers house and rescued his badly injured son, Shivaji Park SHO Vinod Sawriya said.

Even while I was taking him, they (the ministers sons) threatened us to go straight to home. They said they were ministers sons and would kill us if we did otherwise, said Satish.

In another video, Tej, unable to open his eyes, is heard saying that he did not know why he was targeted. They hit me with a rod. I became unconscious and did not know what they did to me. They tied me up with wires, he said.

He has also stated in the complaint that he and his family were facing threat to life from Bhadana and his sons.
Three persons have tested positive for swine flu in the state on Thursday.

Two students of Sawai Man Singh Medical College and a computer operator of Mahila Chikitsalay tested positive for the respiratory disease.

Director public health Dr VK Mathur said that that two first-year MBBS students at the hostel of Sawai Man Singh Medical College have tested positive. A team was sent to the hostel, which screened 450 students, and gave medicines to 24 students with influenza-like symptoms.

Similarly, a computer operator at Mahila Chikitsalaya tested positive for swine flu on Thursday evening and a team has been sent there too.

He said that 141 people have been tested positive for H1N1 between December 1 and 21 and 14 have died. He said that seven newly-appointed Rajasthan Administrative Service officers undergoing training at the Officers Training School (OTS) had also tested positive. Training has been postponed from Thursday.

Dr Mathur said, Early isolation is important in swine flu and people having Influenza-like illness (ILI) symptoms should isolate themselves so that others are not infected.

The official said from January 1 to December 20 total 3344 people have been tested H1N1 positive and 259 have died.

Health minister Kali Charan Saraf said that directions have been issued to review diagnosis facilities for swine flu and availability of Tamiflu across the state. He directed doctors and officials to remain alert.
The two minors, whose blasphemous Facebook post triggered the most high-profile communal face off in Bengal in recent times, have been released on bail and are now in the custody of a Hindutva outfit in Kolkata.

Leaders of Hindu Samhati that has given them shelter told HT that they will take responsibility of their school that has been disrupted since communal violence broke out in Baduria and Basirhat areas in North 24 Parganas district where they lived.

Read: After the riots: Basirhat plans gala Rakhi, I-Day celebrations for harmony

Dozens of houses and shops of Hindus were vandalised and gutted and nearly a dozen police vehicles were set on fire in the communal violence that started on July 2 and continued for three-four days in extensive areas of North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. A middle aged man was also killed.

The skeleton of a vehicle lies in Baduria after it was set ablaze by a crowd protesting the Facebook post. (Samir Jana)

The minors, both 17, were granted bail on December 16 and released from a shelter for the juveniles in North Kolkata two days later.

They were brought to the house of Tapan Ghosh, founder of far-right Hindutva outfit Hindu Samhati. They will stay at Ghoshs house for the time being.

We strongly opposed their release, especially because we felt their lives could be at risk. I have been instructed to consider moving appellate authorities seeking cancellation of bail, said Bivas Chatterjee, the state governments nodal officer for cases related to cyber crime.

Read: Basirhat clashes: Minor whose FB post triggered Bengal riots in jail against law

Government officials said that the charge sheet against both was filed within 60 days and that the inquiry -- in Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) trials are referred to as inquiry -- have started. The statement of three witnesses have already been recorded.

Following the government pleaders insistence on the concerns related to their security, JJB ordered that they boys will have to stay 50 km away from their home. The house of one of the minors was destroyed and set ablaze by a protesting crowd of Muslims in early July.

We then submitted before the court the address of our leader Tapan Ghosh along with consents signed by their guardians. The JJB approved our plea, said Brajendra Nath Sil, an advocate and member of Hindu Samhati.

Read: Bengal violence: Basirhats Muslim leaders tried to pacify the rioting mob, but couldnt

They can feel at home here, Ghosh told HT. They were initially in a state of shock but nearly six months have passed since the incident and they have largely recovered from the trauma.

While police investigation revealed that the reckless Facebook post that triggered communal clashes that went on for three days was a result of rivalry that grew between the friends, both of whom passed their 10 level exam this year.

At Ghoshs place, the boys are spending time mostly between themselves. They have become friends again.

Bengal-based Hindu Samhati, which is also spreading organisation in Jharkhand and Assam, took up the cause of the boys soon after they were nabbed by the police.

Their families were in shock and under pressure from local authorities for not pursuing legal methods to get the boys released. Had we not intervened, the lives of the boys would have been doomed, said Devdutta Maji, vice-president of Hindu Samhati.

In July the police initially produced both of them in a court, showing them as adults. But later they were shifted from jail to juvenile shelter after Hindu Samhatis lawyer established in court that both were minors.

Members of Hindu Samhati recovered the school leaving certificate of one of the accused from the vandalised house of one of the boys. In court it was furnished as the proof of age.

The JJB has also instructed that immediate steps should be taken to resume education for both. However, since their school is close to their home - they cannot go within 50 km of their home -- arrangements are being made for their admission in some other school.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh is still looking forward to the Teesta water sharing agreement that was discussed during Prime Minister Narendra Modis Dhaka visit in June 2015, Obaidul Quader, minister for road transport and bridges, Bangladesh and general secretary of ruling Awami League said in Kolkata.

Discussion are still going on. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to Bangladesh, he assured our Prime Minister that the waters of Teesta will be shared. We are looking forward to his assurance, remarked Quader on Wednesday. He is also the general secretary of ruling Awami League.

Read: Resolution of Teesta will transform India-Bangladesh ties: Sheikh Hasina

The veteran politician of Bangladesh also said that they are eagerly looking forward to a practical, realistic and reasonable solution to the question.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has consistently maintained that the Teesta does not have enough waters to be shared with Bangladesh. She said there are other rivers, waters of which can be shared with the neighbouring country. (HT Photo)

Speaking in Delhi in April this year at a reception organised by a policy advocacy group, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that her Indian counterpart has reiterated his governments strong resolve to conclude the water sharing treaty at the earliest.

The next general elections in Bangladesh are supposed to be held in late 2018. Clinching an agreement to share waters of the Teesta is politically important for Awami League.

However, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is opposed to the idea of sharing waters of the Teesta with the neighbouring country. Her logic: there is just not enough waters in the river to be shared, and if the agreement is signed the people in north Bengal will suffer badly.

Read: India should stand by ally Sheikh Hasina on the Rohingya crisis

Mamata Banerjee has instead put forward a suggestion that waters of other rivers such as Torsa and Sankosh be shared with Bangladesh.

But Quader refused to be drawn into the alternative that the Bengal chief minister suggested. It is her personal opinion. We are having talks with the government of India. The agreement will also take place with the Union government. The point (of other rivers) should be settled between the two governments of India, he remarked.

Describing the ties with India as a time-tested one, Quader mentioned how the relation between the two neighbouring countries have a new high during the tenure of Narendra Modi. The enclave exchange was extremely important. Prime Minister Modi took an important role in it, he said.

Read: Teesta water deal: One issue where Mamata loses nothing by sitting tight

Quader also said that Dhaka is investigating whether there is a Pakistan hand behind the militant elements among the Rohingyas.

We have got intelligence reports that ISI has a role in the conspiracy of militant Rohingya elements. We think Pakistan has got a hand in it. We are investigating it, he remarked.

The Sheikh Hasina government earlier blamed Pakistan and the ISI for their role in terror activities on the soil of Bangladesh including the series of murder of free-thinking bloggers and the attacks such as the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in July 2016.

Bangladesh opened its borders for the Rohingya refugees on August 25, following which more than six lakh refugees have poured in. Dhaka is worried about terror elements sneaking in as a part of the wave.

Whenever there is a positive development in Bangladesh, Pakistan reacts negatively. Every time there is a decision announcing sentences for the culprits during the 1971 liberation war, Pakistan makes a negative comment.... They should remember Bangladesh is ahead of their country in development indicators such as literacy and life expectancy, quipped Quader.

They are ahead of us only in making a nuclear bomb.
Fresh, green Banarsi chillies that are famous for their pungent taste will now add flavour to dishes in Dubai. For the first time, a two-ton consignment of fresh local green chilies, which are grown in abundance in many rural pockets of Varanasi, has been exported by air from here. The consignment will land in Dubai on Thursday.

Lal Bahadur Shastri international airport (Varanasi) director AK Rai told HT, This will be the first occasion when a consignment of fresh green chillies is being transported by air to Dubai. The chillies were plucked from farms in the evening and brought to the airport by early morning. Rai said no perishable item from the Varanasi area was exported before.

It is an initiative by the central government to give local produce a market abroad especially as fresh green vegetables and green chilies are in demand in Dubai, he said. However, the exporter is a private player. Perishable cargo storage facilities are being built in Varanasi and Ghazipur to enable the export of produce from the region.

The chilies underwent quality check at quarantine plant at the airport. They were then loaded onto a Spicejet flight that took off for Dubai from the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Varanasi, on Wednesday evening. The consignment will reach Dubai on Thursday morning.

Rai and other airport staff expect the step to benefit farmers of Varanasi and neighbouring districts of Ghazipur, Chandauli and Ballia.

Green chilies are grown in abundance in Ramana, Badi Bari, Benipur, Prime Minister Narendra Modis adopted villages of Jayapur, Nagepur and Kakarahia and other hamlets. Besides chilli, a large number of farmers are involved in the cultivation of cauliflower and other vegetables.

A supply chain has already been developed.

Rai said the department of agriculture and farmers welfare set up a plant quarantine office at the airport a week ago. The department examines the quality of vegetables as per the requirement of the country to which the consignment is to be exported.

Soon, a cold storage will also be set up on the premises to maintain the freshness of vegetable consignments, Rai added.

Beans, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, spinach, pumpkin, bitter gourd and gourd are also expected to be exported by air from here soon. Rai said this will help farmers get a good price for their produce.

He also said an integrated cargo complex will be developed at the airport so that fruits like guava, mango, watermelon and muskmelon may be exported from here.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
One of the two accused, allegedly involved in the molestation of a student on Banaras Hindu University (BHU) premises on September 21 that triggered massive protests, was arrested from Lanka area of Varanasi on Wednesday.

The accused, Sunny Yadav used to work at the vehicle stand on the university premises. He was arrested from Seer area of Lanka and sent to jail after being produced before a local court here, police said, adding that a hunt is still on for the other accused.

The sexual harassment case had triggered a series of protests on the campus. On September 23, protesting students, mostly girls, were baton-charged by the police in front of the university gate.

Taking note of the incident, the Yogi Adityanath-led state government formed a two-member committee comprising Varanasi divisional commissioner Nitin Ramesh Gokarn and ADG Vishwajeet Mahapatra to look into the incident.

The committee held the BHU administration, led by the then-vice-chancellor Prof GC Tripathi, responsible for improper handling of the girls complaint.

Later, Prof Tripathi proceeded on an indefinite leave which continued till his tenure ended on November 27.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Wednesday demanded withdrawal of Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Bill (UPCOCB) tabled in the legislative assembly.

Terming the law draconian that can be misused to suppress the Dalits and religious minorities, Mayawati said the BJP would use the law for settling political rivalry as well.

A decade back in 2007 after grabbing power, the BSP government had decided to bring UPCOCA to check organized crime unleashed by gangsters and mafias active in the state. A team of senior officers was sent to Maharashtra to study the implementation of MCOCA.

In March 2008, as the then chief minister Mayawati had tabled the bill in the legislative assembly.

She had then stated that she was doing so to control contract killers, kidnappers, gun-toting contractors, hawala traders, manufacturers of spurious drugs and liquor, the mafia and hardened criminals operating as organised syndicate.

Political observers feel the changed political scenario has forced Mayawati to oppose the law. They feel Mayawati now plans to use UPCOCA to hit at the BJP government and galvanize the support of the Dalits and the Muslims. She has threatened to take a tough stand if the state government fails to withdraw the bill.

In 2008 the BSP government had sent UPCOCA to centre for Presidential nod, but the then Congress led UPA government had opposed the Act fearing that it might be misused against the minority community. Arch rival Samajwadi Party had termed the BSP anti-Muslim. And due to shift in Muslim and upper caste votes, the BSP lost power in 2012 assebly elections.

The BSP grabbed two mayor post and performed well in the Nagar Palika Parishad and Nagar Panchayat elections recently. The party grabbed majority of the seats in the Muslim and dalit dominated areas. So, by opposing UPCOCA Mayawati wishes to consolidate the gain made by the BSP, feel observers.

She says the BJP government is misusing various laws for communal and political reasons. People of particular caste and religion are on the radar of the BJP, she says.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
After Aligarh, the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM) asked Christian missionary schools in Agra not to force Hindu students to celebrate Christmas.

Leaders of the district unit of the outfit claimed to have issued letters to principals of schools in this regard and also threatened protests if their advisory was not complied with.

Amit Chaudhary, Agra unit president of HJM, confirmed this while talking to HT on Wednesday.

We had been receiving complaints from parents of students studying in missionary schools. Hindu students are being asked to buy dresses to appear as Santa Claus and participate in programmes organised to celebrate Christmas on the campus, stated Chaudhary.

On receiving such complaints, we have issued letters to about a dozen missionary schools in Agra and took up the matter with principals at a couple of schools, asking them to desist from such activities otherwise we would come on roads to lodge protest and would have such schools propagating Christianity shut down, he stated while maintaining that schools should focus only on education.

We are not against any festival or religion. But any attempt to propagate Christianity leading to practice of conversion would not be taken lightly, he stated.

It would be a better option if missionary schools celebrate festivals by declaring the day as a holiday as they do in case of Hindu festivals, stated Chaudhary.

Father Moon Lazarus, spiritual director of St Lawrence Seminary, denied HJMs allegations and claimed that Christians running missionary schools are law-abiding citizens.

Who gave them the authority to issue such threats and make baseless allegations against a peace loving community dedicated to the cause of education as charity, stated Father Moon Lazarus who expressed trust in law enforcing agencies to safeguard their interests but also expressed concern over such threats.

Kunwar Anupam Singh, SP (city), stated that no one would be allowed to take law in their hands and the matter was being probed.

We have neither received any such complaint nor any copy of the letter has come to us. But having come across such reports, the matter is being looked into, stated Singh, assuring peaceful conduct of festival in the city of Taj.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
In a bid to destroy the evidence, the two accused threw the revolver in Gomti river after the murder of former BJP MLAs son Vaibhav Tewari, 28, in Gomti Nagar area of Lucknow on December 16. The police however, failed to recover it despite multiple hours of search on Wednesday.

The two accused, Vikram Singh and Suraj Shukla, who are facing three-day police custody remand, revealed during interrogation that they threw the revolver into Gomti while crossing Gandhi Setu when they fled after opening fire at Vaibhav Tewari outside his residence in Kasmanda Apartments in Hazratganj. Tewari, who suffered a bullet wound on chest, had died on the spot.

Inspector of Hazratganj police station, Anand Shahi along with his police team and two divers carried out several hours of search to find the weapon but failed to recover it. He said the police tried recovering the weapon as it is crucial corroborative evidence against the two accused to prove them guilty in court. Although the police had already collected concrete evidences against the two accused, the weapon recovery would have been additional proof. Moreover, there is also an eyewitness of the murder that will be help in proving them guilty, he emphasised.

On December 16, Vaibhav Tewari, a village pradhan and son of former MLA Prem Prakash Tewari, was shot dead when Suraj Shukla, who had remained the latters partner in property dealing and had monetary dispute with him, and Vikram Singh went to meet him over the same issue.

The two accused remained at large for over 48 hours before landing in police net when they turned up to surrender in court on Tuesday afternoon. The incident created sensation in the city as it took place barely 300 meters from the Vidhan Bhawan.
Expert opinion suggests there is a need to reform the police system instead of enacting a new law to check organised crime in Uttar Pradesh as some of provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Bill 2017 (UPCOCB)have the potential of being misused.

AfterChief minister Yogi Adityanath tabled the UPCOCB in the assembly on Wednesday, questions are being raised over the move when a number of laws with nearly similar provisions are there to check crime.

Allahabad high court advocate IB Singh said: Yes, the government could have moved amendments to Gangsters Act etc to incorporate some more provisions. This bill appears to be a mix of all these laws: the Gangsters Act and the Goonda Act with some provisions for action for harbouring criminals apparently incorporated from the TADA that is no more in existence.

Some provisions can be used and misused as well. Instead of enacting a new law there is need to reform the police system, said Singh.

The definition of abet in the proposed law has led to provisions that may cover the media when covering crime or criminal gangs etc. Singh quoted controversial provisions that define abet: (a) abet has the meaning assigned to it in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and with its grammatical variations and cognate expression, includes (i) the communication to or association with any person that facilitates any illegal act with the actual knowledge or having reason to believe that such person is a member of, or is engaged in assisting in any manner, an organised crime syndicate; (ii) the passing on or publication of, without any lawful authority. Any information likely to assist the organised crime syndicate and the passing on or publication of or distribution of any document or matter obtained from the organised crime syndicate; and (iii) the rendering of any assistance, whether financial or otherwise, to the organized crime syndicate.

For his part, the chief minister in his statement of objects and reasons for introducing the UPCOCB, said: It has been noticed that organised criminals have been using modern techniques to commit criminal activities. This law would be an indispensable aid for law enforcement and administration of justice.

Read more: UP CM Yogi Adityanath tables bill to check organised crime

There is reason to believe that organised criminal activities have been operating in the state and thus there is an immediate need to curb such activities, he said.

Besides providing death sentence and life imprisonment in murder cases, the UPCOCB has provisions to deal with those harbouring criminals. For harbouring, concealing or attempts to harbour/conceal there will a punishment with a minimum five-year imprisonment extendable to life imprisonment and a minimum fine of Rs 15 lakh. Anybody holding any property obtained from commission of organised crime will get three to 10-year imprisonment and a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh. Trial of any offence by a special court under the new law will have precedence over the trial of any other case against the accused. It provides for punishment of five years to life imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 15 lakh, to members of the organised crime syndicate.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Taking a selfie near 5, Kalidas Marg  the official residence of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath  may land you in trouble.

The UP police on Wednesday put up a banner at the intersection leading towards the CMs residence, a high security zone warning people that clicking pictures and selfies in the VIP area was a punishable offence and strict action would follow against the offenders.

As the development coincided with the tabling of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Bill 2017 (UPCOCB) in the assembly to control organised crime in the state, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav posted a tweet taking a potshot at the Yogi Adityanath government.

Naye saal mein janta ko Uttar Pradesh sakar ka tohfa, selfie lene par lag sakta hai UPCOCA! (Its a new year gift to the people from Uttar Pradesh government, taking selfies could invite action under UPCOCA, tweeted Yadav.

Formulated on the lines of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), UPCOCA aims at checking the activities of land mafia, mining mafia and organised crimes.

Moments after Akhileshs tweet, the Lucknow district administration pulled down the banner.

Some youths had an altercation with police personnel posted at the security barrier when they were prevented from taking a selfie at the spot as it is a high security zone, SSP, Lucknow, Deepak Kumar told HT.

Subsequently, the local police put up the banner let people know that the area came under a high security zone. I was not informed about this decision, he said.

Kalidas Marg  the VVIP stretch in front of the official residence of the UP CM  has been in news in the past too. During the Bahujan Samaj Party regime, the then CM Mayawati had made it inaccessible to the commuters.

This heavily barricaded stretch remained closed for five years during Mayawatis regime, recalled Sandeep Saxena, a chartered accountant on Park Road.

The restriction was lifted when Akhilesh Yadav took over as the CM in 2012 and the road was thrown open to the public. Yadav even beautified the stretch and developed cycle and jogging tracks for morning walkers, Saxena said. Mohd Khalid, a Lucknow resident whose office is located close to Kalidas Marg, said: We have a PM (Narendra Modi) who is fond of taking selfies with youths and foreign dignitaries and here we are being told we can be punished for the act. Thankfully the banner has been taken off, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Children enrolled in primary schools and madarsas will get variety of potato dishes under the mid-day meal scheme.

This after the state witnessed a bumper potato production and subsequent fall in potato prices.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday said to support the potato farmers, the state government had already announced minimum support price, exempted mandi tax, provided subsidy in export and transportation of potato. Now the state government has decided to include potato in the mid-day meal menu, he added.

Raising the issue during zero hour in the assembly, leader of SP legislature party Ram Govind Chaudhary said due to fall in the potato prices, the farmers were not interested in taking out potato stored in cold storages, which were now dumping the potato in open fields. The state government has announced a scheme for the welfare of the potato farmers but it has not been implemented yet, he said.

He said even if state government procured potato from the farmers there would always be a problem of storage as the cold storages across the state were over flowing with potato.

Yogi said the state government was committed for the welfare of the potato farmers and potato purchased by the state government will be utilized in the meal scheme run in primary schools across the state.

In UP, children are given bread, rice, fruit, pulses, soyabean, vegetable and milk under the mid-day meal scheme in 1,67,565 schools. The aim is to provide nutritious food to the children and increase the enrollment.
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government intends to set up a disaster management university with Japans help. The issue came up for discussion during a meeting with Minister for economic and development in Japanese consulate Kenko Sone with chief secretary Rajive Kumar here on Wednesday.

Kumar directed the officials to conduct a site survey and carry out necessary formalities for establishing the university in collaboration with Japan. Presently, the National Institute for Disaster Management under the Union Home Ministry takes care of relief and other operations in cases of natural disasters and calamities with the help of their state counterparts.

Kumar sought Japanese help and collaboration in setting up educational centres in underprivileged areas of Ambedkar Nagar and upgradation of medical facilities and equipment at Fatima Hospital in UP CMs hometown Gorakhpur.

Kenko told Kumar how Japan was helping in Swachch Bharat and Clean Ganga Action plan and had recently inked Kyoto-Varanasi pact for construction of a state-of-the-art Varanasi Convention Centre after Japanese premier Shizo Abeys meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He said now that Japanese language was being taught in the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), prospects had improved of better coordination and collaboration with IIT (Kanpur) and Tokyo University for technology transfer in the field of infrastructure and overall development. Kumar extended an invitation to the Japanese team to participate in the upcoming UP Investors Meet on February 21 and 22 and invest in States industrial and infrastructure development.
The special court assigned to hear the 2008 Malegaon blast case is likely to decide the fate of the six accused, including Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, on Thursday. It is expected to frame charges against the accused and pave way for the trial.

The accused, booked by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), had been given a clean chit by the National Investigating Agency (NIA).

What the prosecution says According to prosecution, Lt Col PS Purohit floated an outfit, Abhinav Bharat, to establish a separate Hindu rashtra with its own Constitution. He brought RDX from Kashmir during his posting there and stored it in his house. Another army man and explosive expert, Ramesh Upadhyay, helped the group prepare bombs. A bike owned by Sadhvi, alleged to be co-conspirator and a key accused, was used to plant the bomb. Rakesh Dhawde, in the business of antique weapons in Pune, held several training camps for the blast.

Other crucial issues related to the case may also be determined, such as whether the charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999, (MCOCA) are applicable or not.

Thakur was the first arrest made by the ATS after the blast in September 2008, which killed six people and injured 101 others. The ATS holds that the blast was a conspiracy planned by a right-wing Hindu group and targeted Malegaons Muslim population.

It then arrested on duty army officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit and retired officer major Ramesh Upadhyay along with few other accused. In all, the ATS arrested 11 people in October and November 2008.

However, in April 2011, the investigation was transferred to the NIA, which after investigation, gave a clean chit to Sadhvi and five others, observing that the evidence gathered against them was not sufficient for prosecution.

Though out on bail, the six accused have not been discharged from the case. The court has said that it will decide on the discharge plea of the six accused and the plea of the other accused for dropping MCOCA charges when it frames charges.

The accused include Thakur, Shiv Narayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, Pravin Takkalki, Lokesh Sharma and Dhan Singh Chaudhary.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
In a move that could provide a major boost to cadaver organ donation, Maharashtra may soon allow private hospitals with intensive care units (ICUs) and trauma centres to retrieve organs from brain-dead patients. Currently, under the Human Organ and Tissue Transplantation Act, only hospitals with a licence to do so can harvest organs.

The new guidelines would mean that in addition to the 200 centres in the state already licensed to retrieve organs, about 1,500 more centres will be allowed to collect cadaver organs for transplant.

This will most definitely improve the donor pool in the state, said Dr Gustad Daver, who heads the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC).

The state began framing the new guidelines after the Bombay high court, in August 18, expressed concern about non-utilisation of organs from cadavers. The court was hearing a petition filed by Swapnil Raut, a Dadar resident, who stood to benefit from a 71-year-old organ donor but did not get the organs because the private hospital the donor was admitted at did not have a retrieval licence.Though the donor had been declared brain dead, his organs could not be harvested.

The court said: His vital organs could have and should have been utilised for needy patients. It appears that there are no guidelines or mechanism available.

According to data by ZTCC, there are approximately 3,500 patients waiting for a kidney transplant, 285 waiting for a liver and 30 for a heart.

An estimated 1.8 lakh people suffer from renal failure nationally every year; the number of renal transplants undertaken annually is only about 6,000.

It is the same for liver and heart transplants. An estimated 2 lakh patients die of liver failure or cancer annually in India, of which 105 to 15% can be saved with a timely liver transplant, according to NOTTO. While 25,000 to 30,000 liver transplants are needed annually in India, only about 1,500 are performed.

Dr SK Mathur, vice president, ZTCC, told HT that with more organ retrieval centres, more families may get convinced to take up the cause of organ donation, which will eventually shorten the wait for recipients listed for organ transplants.

If the organ retrieval happens at the same place where the patient is admitted, the family does not have to run to another centre where the organs are retrieved, Mathur said.

He said the process of shifting the patient from one centre to another could lead to cardiac arrest, drop in blood pressure, in which case the organs would not be healthy enough for transplant.

A state official, who is closely involved in the process of framing the guidelines, however, said, there is a flip-side to this issue. There is a possibility that organ retrieval may now be undertaken in hospitals with operation theatres and ICUs that are below par, leading to infection in the organs. This is one reason the present laws need the hospital to acquire a retrieval centre licence, which they get only after the premise is inspected by officials from the government, the official said.

Dr Ravi Wankhedkar, president elect of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), says there could be anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 hospitals in Maharashtra with intensive care units and trauma centres.

According to guidelines that will be released soon, these hospitals will only have to inform the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC) or the Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO) of the familys consent in order to proceed with retrieval. The organs can then be transported to transplant centres.

ZTCC or ROTTO officials will allocate the organs to the recipients according to the waiting list, said an official from the Directorate of Health Services (DHS).
To decongest Bandra (West) railway station, the Western Railway will soon allow demolition of its residential quarters for road widening work.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Thursday passed a proposal to release Rs2.25 crore in compensation to WR. The land will be used to widen the road outside the railway station by 10-20 feet, said Vaquar Javed, BMC executive engineer. Work is likely to begin in a month. The BMC has already cleared the station area of encroachments, said an official. Bandra railway station is a Grade-1 heritage structure. As part of the stations beautification project, the BMC will remodel the entire area, tile sidewalks, develope seating areas for passengers, and earmark a dedicated bus lane and an auto stand in next few months

The railway structures will be demolished as soon as the railway authority gets money. We are yet to decide the exact length of the extended road. The project may start in a month, said Javed.

A senior railway official confirmed that the WR had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the BMC, after which the plan got approval from the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee. We have vacated residential quarters across the road. The idea is to extend the road so that passengers have full visibility of the heritage structure, he said.

Local corporator Asif Zakaria, who questioned the proposal, told HT, The BMC should have acquired the land before developing it. The road can also be widened at a cost of Rs1 lakh and the railway authorities must be held responsible for increasing encroachments .

According to rules, it is the responsibility of the BMC to remove hawkers within a 150-metre radius of all stations. Meanwhile, the WR ordered a probe after a catering stall on platform number four of Bandra railway station caught fire early on Thursday.
The state governments move to include slum-dwellers who built hutments after January 1, 2000 in the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and give them homes at subsidised rates has evoked mixed reactions. While it is expected to speed up slum rehabilitation projects, experts said it will also lead to an increase in the number of slums in the city.

The states amendment to the Slum Act comes after authorities said slum-dwellers who were ineligible for houses were a large obstacle to slum clearance schemes.

The move will benefit around 3.5 lakh hutments, in which 18 lakh slum-dwellers live. However, unlike the slum-dwellers who built shanties before 2000 and were thus eligible for new homes, these will have to pay the construction cost before they can get possession of their new houses.

Builders and housing activists said the move would speed up the Slum Rehabilitation Authoritys (SRA) schemes. Ineligible slum dwellers were the SRAs biggest stumbling block. The move will give them confidence and encourage them to come forward, said Bhavesh Sanghrajka, CEO, Shraddha Lifescapes.

For years, builders would accommodate ineligible slum dwellers by manipulating the rules, employing strong-arm tactics or paying them off.

Housing activist Ramesh Prabhu said the populist move would boost revamp schemes, but also encourage the construction of new slum pockets. The state took this step to fulfil its Housing for All goal by 2022. It was important as more than half the population lives in slums, he said.

Town planners said the move would put a strain on infrastructure. There is a burden on infrastructure, which will worsen, said town planner Jeetu Patel.

The SRA scheme started in 1996 has been a slow starter as it has been mired in corruption and host of issues like manipulating slum dwellers, eligible people not making it to the list, fake consents, misleading promises, and inferior quality construction.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
jayprakash.naidu@hindustantimes.com

The Mumbai police crime branch on Wednesday night arrested a manager and two customers on charges of human trafficking for allegedly running a sex racket under the guise of a spa in Meera Tower in Oshiwara, where several IPS officers own flats. The police also rescued five women who were pushed into flesh trade.

However, a crime branch source clarified that a private person, who is wanted in the case, owns the place and he has nothing to do with the society or its members.

The raid was conducted by officials from crime branch unit 9. Acting on a tip-off , the crime branch sent a decoy customer to the spot. Once it was ascertained that a sex racket was being run, officials swooped in and raided the spot.

The five rescued women have been sent to a shelter home. As they are from other states, the police have added section 370 (3) (buying or disposing of any person as a slave) of the Indian Penal Code to the case.

The owner has been shown as wanted in the case. The police also seized about Rs4,650 and the customer entry register of the spa.

An FIR has been registered with the Oshiwara police station under relevant sections of the IPC and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act. The accused were produced before a special court and remanded to police custody. The case has been transferred to Oshiwara police for further probe.
A day after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis indicated that former Congress leader Narayan Rane would get a seat in his Cabinet, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Eknath Khadse expressed his unhappiness at being left out of power and being targeted in his public life.

He also skipped the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) meet meant for all BJP legislators on Wednesday, triggering speculation that the former revenue minister was rebelling against the party.

Khadse later clarified to the media he had skipped the meeting owing to health reasons.

I have worked in the BJP for 40 years. I have contributed to getting the party into power, increasing its base in Maharashtra, besides shepherding the next generation of leaders in the Assembly when we were out of power. Why should I leave the party now? he told HT, when asked during a phone conversation whether he was planning to quit the party.

He, however, did admit that both the Congress and the NCP, in jest and sometimes seriously, have made him offers to join their parties, given his political experience.

This week, a Congress legislator from Amravati, Yashomati Thakur, publicly asked him in state legislature whether he would be willing to join the ranks of her party.

People ask me if I want to join as I have been in politics for four decades now...They also ask me how long I will tolerate the insults and slights, he said.

Khadses remarks come after reports of Rane meeting the CM on Tuesday evening. After this meeting, the CM told reporters that a Cabinet reshuffle would take place soon and that they needed experienced leaders like Rane and Khadse. There is no need for the Shiv Sena to oppose Ranes induction because he would get inducted through the BJPs quota, Fadnavis had said.

I am not unhappy with my party. That is just the medias interpretation. But I have been targeted by allegations that have no substance. It was a systematic attack within my one year of taking over as a revenue minister and it has destroyed 40 years of my political work. There are some people who have been plotting against me , he added.

Khadse said taking him back into the cabinet was solely Fadnavis prerogative as was the tabling of the Dinkar Zoting Commission inquiry report that had probed into his alleged wrongdoing in the land deal.

Khadse, who held the number two position in the Fadnavis cabinet, was asked to resign following allegations of conflict of interest and graft that cropped up against him in a Pune land deal case in 2016. (There were also allegations of disproportionate assets against him and about him having links with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, when he was asked to step down.)

He, however, said the report had little relevance now because the anti-corruption bureau had already initiated an inquiry against him.

I have gone through multiple rounds of the ACB inquiry, besides an income-tax inquiry and they have found nothing so far. That far-fetched allegation about me having a connection with Dawood has also been found to be untrue.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Can old taxies can continue plying in the city without installing speed governors  a speed-limiting device? The state government told the Bombay high court it would take a decision on the matter in two weeks.

According to the ministry of surface transport and highways, the state can invoke provisions of the Motor Vehicle Rules and exempt certain classes of vehicles from being fitted with the otherwise mandatory speed-regulating devices, said additional solicitor general Anil Singh.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the Mumbai Taximens Union, which challenged the governments decision to make the installation of speed governors compulsory for all commercial vehicles  those that ferry the public for a fee.

The Union said several old cars ply as taxies in the city. There were neither speed governors available for them, nor could manufacturers modify the cars engines to accommodate the devices as they are.

The petitioner sought that several taxis, primarily black-and-yellow cabs, be exempted from complying with the rules.

The Maharashtra government conceded that speed governors were unavailable for old cars and some comparatively new models such as VagonR and E-class Mercedes.

In view of this, the high court had directed the central government to consider exempting these vehicles.

The Centre, however, passed the buck on to the state government, asking it to invoke provisions of the Motor Vehicle Rules.
After Maharashtra Navnirman Senas (MNS) threats, multiplex and theatre owners finally gave 295 screens to Marathi movie Deva.

The MNS had threatened agitation after the film was denied screens owing to the release of Salman Khan-starrer Tiger Zinda Hai.

Ameya Khopkar, president, MNS film workers union, said it was a victory for the Marathi film industry. The MNS clout and unity of the Marathi film industry ensured Deva got its rightful place, said Khopkar.

The MNS had accused Yash Raj Films, the producers of Tiger Zinda Hai, of arm-twisting multiplexes to screen their film and deny screen space to Deva.

Khopkar on Wednesday had threatened that the MNS will not allow YRF to shoot anywhere in the state if Deva did not get adequate prime time screen presence. It also warned multiplex and theater owners that the MNS will move the state government to cancel their licences for discriminating against Marathi films.

Actor Vijay Patkar, who is also the director of Akhil Bhartiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal, demanded a permanent solution. Everytime we have to approach someone to get our due rights, as we are given step-motherly treatment. We want separate exclusive screens just for Marathi films in each multiplex, said Patkar.

Patkar debunked that Marathi films do not perform well. Compared to Hindi films, our content is much superior and our films really do well, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
After the recent rescue of three Rohingyas from a brothel in Thane two months ago, anti-trafficking activists have said that more women from refugee camps in Bangladesh and India could have been forced into sex trade in and around Mumbai.

Two women were rescued by Rescue Foundation and one was rescued by Prerna, both of which are Mumbai-based NGOs. Two of the three women are reported to be minors.

The woman rescued by Prerna has been returned to her family in Bangladesh, while the other two are currently staying at the Rescue Foudnations Boisar-based home shelter.

Earlier this year, about 8,00,000 Rohingyas were estimated to have fled Rakhine state in Myanmar, where they are not recognised as citizens.

While most refugees fled to Bangladesh, some have moved into India and south-east Asia.

Members of our NGO are trained to identify women who are forced into sex trade or illegally trafficked from other countries. The Rohingyas were located during one of our operation in Thane, said Triveni Acharya, president of Rescue Foundation.

While the victims initially claimed that they were from Bangladesh, further investigation revealed that they are Rohingyas.

Since we couldnt identify their place of origin through the description they offered, we invited members of a Bangladeshi NGO, which assists Rohingya refugees, to come to Mumbai and speak with the victims. The conversation revealed that the women were from unregistered refugee camps, located at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

Sex trade victims trafficked from neighbouring countries and rescued in India have to undergo a long process of documentation to be sent back to their home countries. The rescue operation is followed by identification of the place of origin, usually based on national documents.

In the case of Rohingya refugees, currently treated as a stateless people, the process of relocating becomes extremely difficult, said Priti Patkar, founder-director of Prerna.
After a major fire broke out at an illegal snack-making unit at Sakinaka in Andheri (East) on Monday, the civic body has decided to give all commercial units a months time to take necessary fire safety measures. This means that shops and eateries using cooking fuel like LPG cylinders, piped natural gas, diesel and wood will have to make improvements as per Fire Codified Requirements or face action including closure of the unit.

Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will set up dedicated fire cells to further make sure they do. According to officials, the fire safety norms will be revised as per the type and amount of cooking material used and this information will be made available to BMCs information centres. Chief fire officer PS Rahangdale told HT, If shops including small-scale units fail to adhere to the safety norms, they will be shut down immediately. While this is a short-term strategy, dedicated cells at 34 fire stations to inspect and send notices across the city is our long-term strategy.

The fire department currently responds to citizens complaints about non-compliant buildings and intimates ward offices. The new cells to be set up under the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Act, 2006, shall ensure fire compliance of buildings and direct coordination between the fire site and building and factory departments.

In the last 3 years, the fire department has inspected 4,647 structures half of which were found to be non-compliant, said officials.

Speaking about the delay in setting up such cells, Rahangdale said, So far we were working on software development and getting new infrastructure. The department now needs more manpower and infrastructure to inspect illegal structures as well. He added that the BMC will get 23 jeep-sized fire tenders by end of December.

According to a senior official, who did not wish to be named, the separate cells to be headed by respective ward officers will be set up within 15 days.
The police investigating the culpable homicide case involving the death of 12 workers in a fire at a farsan shop in Sakinaka, have written to various departments of the BMC to verify what licenses had the owner procured before setting up the shop. Ramesh Bhanushali, the owner of the shop, has been remanded in police custody till Saturday.

Bhanushali had employed 19 workers to make snacks and package them at the shop, the police found. The fire claimed the lives of 12 workers who were sleeping in the same shop early on Monday.

Officials have now written to the construction department, building establishment department and the licensing issuance departments of the BMC seeking a report detailing what licenses did Bhanushali procure. The reports will help us understand the legality of the shop. We are also awaiting the report from the fire brigade which will provide the exact cause of fire, said an officer from Sakinaka police station.

Bhanushalis shop came up in Sakinaka around four years ago. Initially, the shop was located in Mahape in Navi Mumbai.

The police have recorded the statements of seven eyewitnesses, who survived the Monday morning tragedy. In their statements, the surviving workers have told the police that they woke up after the fire had broken out. A few of them first tried to douse the fire but they failed. When the fire started to spread out, seven of them ran out to save their lives. The other 12 ran inside trying to shield themselves from the fire. They may not have found a way out and got left behind. It was only when the fire engulfed the establishment that the survivors realised their co-workers are stuck inside, added the officer.

BMC seized 5,000 cylinders this year

A day after the Mumbai civic body ordered an inspection of small-scale industries across the city, the data from a two-year-old crackdown revealed that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) seized 5,181 illegal cylinders from hotels/restaurants in the city in 2017. The city-wise crackdown was ordered in 2015, after a massive fire in an eatery in Kurla killed eight people.

According to the circular issued in 2015, the team was asked to inspect if the hotels have the requisite no-objection certificate from the fire brigade. The team was also expected to inspect if the designated area is being utilised according to the approved plans and if there are any alterations in the structure post-approvals  something which is significant when it comes to rescue operations. The civic body had then inspected more than 1,200 eateries including actions such as demolition of illegal extensions and seizure of cylinders. BMC is now looking at guidelines to include small scale units.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Bandra police arrested a 30-year-old man on Thursday for allegedly extorting Rs1 lakh from a professional in his 50s by threatening to circulate a sex tape on the Internet.

The complainant paid Rs1 lakh over a period of one year. As the accused, Hafiz Shaikh, started demanding more money, the man filed a police complaint against him.

According to the Bandra police, the complainant works with a private company in Mumbai. Shaikh, a resident Shastri Nagar in Bandra (West), is a tantric and sells amulets (taveez). Earlier this year, the complainant sought Shaikhs help to resolve a marital dispute between his daughter and son-in-law.

After the dispute was addressed, the victim gave Shaikh Rs50,000.

Later, Shaikh told the complainant that the latter had sex with a woman at the formers home, said the police. He also claimed that he had shot the act.

Shaikh started extorting the man by threatening to upload the video on the Internet.

Scared of social defamation, the complainant gave Shaikh Rs20,000.

When the complainant asked Shaikh to show the video but the latter denied.

Over a year, he paid Rs1 lakh to him. Fed up with Shaikhs demands for more money, the professional filed a complaint.

On Wednesday, a first information report (FIR) was registered against Shaikh under sections 384 (extortion) and 385 (putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) of the Indian Penal Code.

A police official said, We have got his custody. We are interrogating him further to find out if he has extorted more people using the same modus operandi.
Three passengers flying between Mumbai and the Middle East were caught trying to smuggle foreign currency and gold at Mumbai airport in a 24-hour period.

On Wednesday, the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) intercepted flier Mustari Shaikh while she was waiting to board a flight to Dubai. After a detailed check of her baggage, we recovered US$60,000, which is around Rs 38.22 lakh, said an officer, who did not wish to be named. Around $5,000 was hidden in clothes inside her handbag, another $20,000 was inside a jam bottle, $2,500 in a plastic bottle, $15,000 in a bread packet, $7,500 in a talcum powder tin and $10,000 was concealed cleverly in two Marie biscuit packets in her checked-in baggage. Shaikh has been arrested.

In another incident on the same day, flier Arif Deshmukh, who was heading to Dubai, was arrested after a search revealed him to be carrying $67,200, or Rs 42.80 lakh, all wrapped in an old English newspaper and kept among his clothes in hand baggage.

AIU officials said that usually, people carry foreign currency to buy gold, which is then smuggled back into the country.

A day earlier, Sudanese citizen Alaaeldin Gasmalla, who arrived from Jeddah, was arrested for not declaring one gold bar and eight gold bangles, which weighed a total of 1,563 grams and were valued at Rs 39.41 lakh; he had concealed the gold on his person.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A 35-year-old worker died after he fell from an under-construction building in Borivli (East) on Wednesday, said the Kasturba Marg police.

The police have booked two site supervisors for causing death due to negligence.

The incident took place at a private builders construction site in Dattapada Road at 12.15pm. The worker, Sattaki Alijuddin Shaikh, lost his balance and fell on the ground from the sixth floor of the seven-storey building, said an officer.

He was taken to a nearby hospital; however, where he was declared dead on arrival, said the officer. The hospital authorities informed the police.

The police said Shaikh was working without any safety equipment. Shaikhs wife, Rafiqa, registered a complaint against two site supervisors for alleged negligence.

The victims wife told the police that all workers safety was ignored. Workers were not provided with safety belts and nets, according to the complaint.

The police will record statements of other workers.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Many people were injured when police opened fire and resorted to baton charge to quell an angry mob protesting against an alleged custodial death of a person who was earlier arrested with liquor in dry Bihars Kaimur district on Wednesday.

A bystander, Rakesh Paswan, 16, allegedly received gunshot injuries and many other people were wounded in a stampede following police baton-charge on the mob that had blocked the Bhabua-Adhaura road demanding registration of murder case against Bhagwanpur police SHO Chandramani and his arrest.

Angry over police action, the mob attacked Bhagwanpur police station, 205 km southwest of state capital, Patna, and indulged in heavy brick-batting. Six policemen, including Bhabua sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Ajay Prasad, were injured in the mob attack.

Kaimur superintendent of police Harpreet Kaur has denied that Paswan was hurt in police firing. She quoted doctors as saying that the boy was wounded by blunt objects. Hospital records, however, said, Paswan had received firearm injury on his left hand.

Kaur said a case had registered for attack on policemen as well as police station. Policemen were trying to identify the attackers with the help of video footage, she said. The Bhagwanpur station house officer (SHO) had been shifted to police lines and sub inspector Dhananjay Kumar Singh had been posted in his place, Kaur added.

The trouble started when and angry mob blocked the Bhabua-Adhaura road at Bhagwanpur to protest the alleged custodial death of physically-challenged Puran Chero. The protestors were demanding action against the Bhagwanpur SHO and compensation of Rs 20 lakh, a government job and an Indira Awas Yojna unit to the victims family.

Chero, a resident of hilly village Parari, was arrested with illegal liquor on Saturday and slipped into coma after suffering a stroke during custody. He was referred to Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi, where he died during treatment on Wednesday.

Family members and villagers of Parari, however, alleged that Chero died due to police assault after his arrest.

When the blockade and traffic jam continued after sunset, a police team, led by the SDPO, used mild force to disperse the mob. This angered the protestors, who indulged in heavy brick batting on the police. The police fired in the air and resorted to baton charge when the mob tried to enter the police station. Many shops and vehicles were also damaged in the police action, locals claimed.

On Thursday morning, shopkeepers blocked a road at Bhagwanpur demanding action against police who allegedly assaulted innocent passersby and traders and compensation for the damage. The blockade was lifted after assurance of appropriate action by the district administration.

The SP, meanwhile, said the post-mortem examination of Chero was videographed in the presence of a magistrate following allegations of police assault.
Satnam Singh, 28, a resident of Punjabs Barnala, reportedly committed suicide by consuming some poisonous substance on Tuesday night. Reason: A woman he married refused to bring him to New Zealand where she is residing.

Satnam of Chhiniwal Kalan village was married to Navdeep Kaur, who belongs to Bhanohar village in Barnala , around two years ago. His family claimed that the entire expenditure on marriage for sending Navdeep abroad was incurred by them.

The victims brother Gurchet Singh, a farmer, said, As agreed between both the families, we had spent around Rs 40 lakh on the marriage of my brother and for sending his wife to New Zealand for studies. My brother had to join her later on.

Finally, when he got his visa three months ago, it was cancelled by the embassy after Navdeep claimed a life threat from Satnam, said Mehal Kalan station house officer Kamaljit Singh.

We have registered a case against Navdeep Kaur, Daljit Singh, Jagmeet Kaur and Lovepreet Kaur under section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code, said the SHO.

The mediator of the marriage, Jasvir Singh, said, Our efforts for a compromise between the families failed.
The PSEB Engineers Association on Thursday hit out at the Punjab government for deciding to close the inefficient units of Bathinda and Ropar thermal plants, claiming this will leave the consumers at the mercy of private players.

Unfortunate decision of Punjab cabinet, citing baseless reason of units being inefficient and based on CEA guidelines is actually based on lies and half truths, the associations General Secretary Devinder Goyal said.

All the engineers employed with state power utilities PSPCL and PSTCL are members of PSEB Engineers Association.

This move will further reduce the share of state power sector vis-a-vis private sector thereby leaving the state power consumers at the mercy of private players, he added.

On Wednesday, the Punjab cabinet approved the closure of the inefficient power units of 460 MW Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant (GNDTP), Bathinda and Unit-1 and 2 (2x210 MW) of 1260 MW Guru Gobind Singh Super Thermal Plant (GGSSTP), Ropar.

It said the move was taken in line with the guidelines of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to retire inefficient and economically inviable power plants in operation for more than 25 years.

The power engineers accused the government of concealing and ignoring facts while taking the call on retiring inefficient units.

They claimed a sum of 715 crore has been spent on extending the life of GNDTP units to 2022-2029.

CEA has nowhere stipulated to retire already renovated units before completion of their extended life.

PSPCL in June 2016 meeting of CEA, on its own informed CEA about retiring of 1 and 2 units of GNDTP and informed that units 3 and 4 which have been renovated will be in operation for next 3 to 4 years, Goyal said.

While PSPCL has started aggressive action to retire Bathinda units (already renovated), no other state has agreed to retire its renovated units, he said.

The association also took exception to the state governments claim of loss of 1,300 crore caused by Bathinda thermal plant, saying it is absurd and baseless.

Government should explain to the public if power is said to be available at 2.50 per unit then why is it being procured from independent power producers (IPPs) at much higher cost.

Further, what is being done about higher fixed cost being charged by IPPs particularly TSPL (1.23), GVK (2.20) and NPL (1.43) in comparison to lower fixed cost of Sasan in MP (0.16) with same technology/design and having been tendered around same time as TSPL, Goyal asked.

Meanwhile, over 1,000 GNDTP employees on Thursday protested in Bathinda against the governments move.

Agitating employees under the banner of Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant Union organised a protest rally and blocked the Malout and Muktsar highway.
A week after the Chandigarh-Bangkok flight was started from Chandigarh International Airport, the customs team seized 450-gm gold worth 12 lakh from passenger who was on the return flight from Thailands capital city.

Ludhiana based passenger was caught on Wednesday. This time the gold was concealed inside stitch button of skirts and jackets the accused was carrying in his baggage. The gold was in shape of ringlets inside the stitch buttons coated in white colour when it was detected by the X-ray machine.

It was definitely a unique way to conceal the gold but it was detected on time, said an official on condition of anonymity.

He said the probe so far revealed that the smuggler was a conduit working for other people. The gold has been seized and further proceedings have been initiated as per the rules.

Earlier this month, a smuggler from Delhi tried to sneak in with nearly 3kg gold by concealing it in a vacuum cleaner.

Smugglers have used coffee mugs, lunch box and even their body to conceal the gold and dodge the checks at the airport.
The spike in births nine months after Christmas, often referred to as the holiday effect, has more to do with festivities than the winter cold, found a new study, which found a similar correlation for Eid-Al-Fitr in Muslim-majority countries.

The analysis, done by researchers from Indiana University and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Portugal, confirmed baby booms after holiday celebrations around Christmas in Christian-majority countries and around Eid-al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan, in Muslim-majority countries.

The correlation with Eid-al-Fitr was more significant because the festival is not celebrated on the same day each year.

The conventional wisdom is that changes in human biology explain the baby boom that follows holidays. We observe that Christmas and Eid-Al-Fitr are characterised by distinct collective moods that correlate with increased fertility, Luis M. Rocha from Indiana University and one of the co-authors said in a release. Perhaps people feel a greater motivation to grow their families during holidays when the emphasis is on love and gift-giving to children.

The analysis showed that interest in sex peaks significantly during major cultural or religious celebrations, which the researchers gleaned from higher frequency of the word sex and other sexual terms in web searches.

The researchers relied on data mined from internet searches from almost 130 countries that included sex-related Google search terms from 2004 to 2014 and 10 % of public Twitter posts from late 2010 to early 2014, to gauge what they call the collective unconscious.

The analysis showed that interest in sex peaks significantly during major cultural or religious celebrations, which the researchers gleaned from higher frequency of the word sex and other sexual terms in web searches and it correlates with birth rate spikes, nine months later.

For India, the top five terms associated with the search term Sex were indian sex, sex videos, free sex, sex stories, hot sex. However, the correlation with birth was not established for India because it is neither a Muslim nor Christian majority country.

A country was classified as culturally Christian if at least 50% of its population identified as Christian and a similar criteria for culturally Muslim.

According to Rocha, the findings were important from a public health perspective as it can guide policymakers on when to launch safe sex campaigns.

The Indian government recently stirred a controversy by issuing an advisory to television channels not to broadcast condom ads between 6 am and 10 pm. The order is being challenged in the Rajasthan High Court.

The study was published in the journal, Scientific Reports on Thursday.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Christmas is one of the best times of the year to be travelling. You can enjoy local Yuletide delicacies, go crazy shooting snowy landscapes, and watch the unique ways in which people celebrate this joyous festival. But if you are tired of the run-of-the-mill, commercialised celebrations, we suggest you head to these places instead:

A massive Christmas tree adorned with more than 7,000 Swarovski crystal ornaments in Switzerland. (Shutterstock )

* Zurich, Switzerland: Europe is known for its tradition of Christmas markets, which are street markets organised during the four weeks of Advent. Zurich, Switzerlands largest city, plays host to Christmas markets in the Old Town, the Romantic Rapperswill market and the Einsiedeln markets. You can shop for knick-knacks and winterwear, enjoy local delicacies like raclette and Basel Lackerli gingerbread and grilled sausages, and sip on mulled wine. The Christmas market from the main train station is one of the largest indoor Christmas markets in Europe. Its hallmark is a massive Christmas tree adorned with more than 7,000 Swarovski crystal ornaments.



Cost: A return trip from New Delhi/Mumbai to Zurich costs around Rs 50,000 (approximately).

* Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: If you like nativity scenes, then Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is the place to be. After all, Brazil boasts of the largest display of full-sized nativity scenes in the world at the annual Crib Festival (Festival de Presepios) in Rio de Janeiro and also has a 278 ft tall floating Christmas tree which is the worlds largest. Oh, and the dazzling metal tree has 3 million lights. You can also check out some dramatic Christmas plays which even feature a woman who tries to steal the baby Jesus. You can also tuck into the traditional Christmas food  panettone, an Italian sweet bread loaf cooked with dried fruits.

Cost:A return trip from New Delhi/Mumbai to Rio de Janeiro costs around Rs1.16 lakh (approx).

El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico. (Shutterstock)

* Taos, New Mexico, USA: For an offbeat Christmas, visit Taos in New Mexico which combines Spanish traditions with Mexican traditions. Carolers re-enact Mary and Josephs search for lodging by serenading a house and asking for shelter while followers come with lit candles. Bonfires line the roads to drive away darkness and warm revellers. You can also watch street performances of New Mexican music. Along the way, tuck into free bowls of posole (a soup from Mexico).

Cost: There are no direct flights to Taos. Instead, you can land at Albuquerque, New Mexico and take a shuttle or a bus to reach Taos. A round trip from Mumbai/New Delhi to Albuquerque costs Rs 94,000 (approx).

The Christmas market in Strasbourg dates back to 1570 and features stalls are filled with hand-painted ornaments, wooden cuckoo clocks and local specialties. (AFP file photo )

* Strasbourg, France: While Paris looks beautiful during Christmas, give a skip to the crowds and instead head to Strasbourg. The citys Christmas market dates back to 1570 and is one of the oldest in Europe. It features stalls filled with hand-painted ornaments, wooden cuckoo clocks and local specialties such as choucroute (sauerkraut with sausages and salted meats) and Baeckeoffe (a French casserole dish made with potatoes, mutton, beef, and pork marinated overnight). Also visit La Petite France, a picturesque area which features Christmas shops and a gingerbread bakery.

Cost: A round trip from Strasbourg to New Delhi/Mumbai costs Rs 37,000 (approx).

Santa Claus office in Finland. (Wikimedia Commons)

* Lapland, Finland: The Finnish think that Lapland, the northernmost region in the country, is the true home of Santa Claus. It boasts of a Santa Claus Village with a post office, elves, and Santa. You can visit Rovaniemi to chase the Northern Lights, hop onto a snow mobile and zoom through snow or visit Koli National Park, known for its beautiful lakes and hills.

Cost: A round trip flight from New Delhi to Rovaniemi costs Rs 68000 (approx), while a return trip from Mumbai to Rovaniemi costs Rs 83,000 (approx).

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
In the heart of old Lisbon, theres a hospital that treats patients who are small and fragile, often mangled and battered, and sometimes more than 100 years old. This rare facility mends the cracked head, broken limb or missing eye of many a childs favourite toy -- their doll.

The loving care given at Lisbons doll hospital has been going on for five generations. We have clients from all over the world and all ages. There are museums which ask us to restore pieces, also private collectors, but the vast majority of our clients are individuals -- people who are sentimentally attached to their dolls, says Manuela Cutileiro, 72, the hospitals owner.

Restored dolls read to be discharged from the hospital. (AFP)

A mannequin is displayed in front of shelves of doll parts. (AFP)

A tag with instructions attached to the feet of a doll waiting to be repaired. (AFP)

Dolls waiting to be repaired. (AFP)

The dolls all have a patient file and are painstakingly restored by the skilled hands of three women surgeons, who give them a new body part or hair, chosen from drawers full of pieces of dolls, a macabre collection of heads, limbs and eyes.

The establishment, known as Hospital de Bonecas, was founded in 1830 and is described in the tourist guides to Portugals capital as one of the oldest doll hospitals still in operation. They say we are among the last in the world to do this work, says Cutileiro, a former school teacher. But she shrugs off accolades. We do our work in our little corner, without worrying about records or statistics.

Some 4,000 dolls can be found inside. There are 100-year-old dolls with porcelain heads, along with dolls dressed in costumes from different regions of Portugal, as well as some modern Barbies. For us a contemporary doll is 20 or 30 years old. The old ones are those which are already centenarians, says Cutileiro, carrying on the family enterprise.

A woman tending to a patient admitted to the hospital. (AFP)

Doll heads inside a drawer at the hospital. (AFP)

Doll heads ready to be reattached to patients at the hospital. (AFP)

Dolls wait to be repaired at the hospital. (AFP)

A picture shows drawers with different doll parts at the Hospital. (AFP)

Cured dolls ready to be despatched to their owners. (AFP)

Doll hands inside a drawer. (AFP)

Its origins go back to the 19th century when a little old lady, Carlota da Silva Luz, would make rag dolls, sitting in front of her herb shop in Praca da Figueira, where there was a large outdoor market. Over time, the aromatic and medicinal herbs gave way to shelves of dolls, which today fill a window display at the entrance to the hospital, with a museum dedicated to them on the first floor.

And it seems as if the pace of times past continues at the doll surgery. No rush procedures here. We make sure that time passes less quickly here than it does outside, says Cutileiro. People have to wait.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
Its December, and winter is already here. But if you prefer spending your time snuggled inside your cosy blanket, it is a criminal waste of great weather. Heres a brilliant way to make the most of these months: Plan an extraordinary journey to witness the finest culture of the country. Goomo, Indias travel tech platform has curated a special list of these lovely mainstream festivals that you must put in your itinerary this holiday season.

Rajasthan

The two-day camel fair in Bikaner will be held on January 13-14, 2018. (Shutterstock)

Camel Fair: Winter brings out the best in some places, and, Rajasthan is one such royal destination that gets prettier with the onset of winter. Apart from visiting the majestic havelis and breathtaking forts of the state, visit the desert land to revel in art, culture and festivals. Catch a glimpse of the spectacular camel performances, intriguing local folklores, extravagant firework display and more at the Camel Fair in Bikaner. The two-day affair scheduled from January 13-14, 2018 will mesmerise you with its splendour and make for a perfect getaway during the winter.

The Jaipur Literature Festival, scheduled from January 24-29, 2018 at the Pink City of India, is the worlds largest free event of its kind. (Himanshu Vyas/HT Photo)

Jaipur Literature Festival: Several literary fests take place in and around India. However, the Jaipur Literary Festival scheduled from January 24-29, 2018 at the Pink City of India is the worlds largest free event of its kind that will see renowned personalities including historians, politicians, humanitarians and business leaders grace attendees with their presence. The literary fest, with its stimulating conversations held in the backdrop of the famous Diggi Palace will offer a unique cultural and intellectual experience.

Desert Festival: Witness the Thar Desert come to life at the three-day extravaganza of Jaisalmer Desert festival. Scheduled from January 29-31, 2018, this is the time when the celebrations of the festival lighten up the desert with colour, enthusiasm, and happiness. The traditional and bright costumes, the folk music recitals, competitions like camel races, tug-of-war, moustache competition, gymnastic stunts along with mouth-watering food and artifacts make it an absolute must-visit destination during the winter.

Sufi Spirit Festival: Rajasthan is definitely much more than its historic forts and palaces. The Sufi Spirit Festival at Nagaur with soothing music, dance and poetry and good food is sure to offer an unforgettable experience. Touted to be one of the most exhilarating music spectacles in the country, the Sufi Festival brings together brilliant artists from across India and around the world in a stunning royal setting. Scheduled from February 12-15, 2018 at the Nagaur fort and from February 16-18 at the Mehrangarh fort, Jodhpur, this event is sure to transport you to a different world altogether.

Kerala

Keralas Theyyam festival will take place between February 23 and 26 in the states Kasargod district. (Shutterstock)

Theyyam: While Kerala is an epitome of tranquility and oozes picturesque beauty, its festivals, too, stand out for their grandeur and uniqueness. One offbeat festival of Kerala is Theyyam that originated in North Kerala. Scheduled to take place from February 23-26, 2018 in the Kasargod district of Kerala, the popular ritual dance, Theyyam represents a host of Gods and Goddesses dancing to the sounds of musical instruments like chenda, elathalam, kurumkuzal and veekkuchenda. The big and bright red headgear, heavy make-up, huge masks and flamboyant costumes make it one of the best visual art forms to be discovered in Gods Own Country.

Gujarat

Rann Utsav: With its ancient temples and wildlife sanctuaries, Gujarat definitely is a treasure trove of architecture and history. Well, give them a miss and head to the desert of Kutch to experience a grand cultural fiesta. The ongoing India Rann Utsav is a melange of music, dance and craft. The white sands and full bloom moon make for picture-perfect scenery, especially in the winter months. Therefore, treat yourself to the cultural performances of traditional dancers, Kutch food, camel-back safari and more at the Gujarats Rann Utsav that ends on February 20, 2018.

Every nook and cranny of Ahmedabads streets and lanes will be full of makeshift shops selling kites of different colours and hues, sizes, and shapes during the Kite festival, scheduled from January 7-15, 2018. (Shutterstock)

Kite festival: From stunt kites, rokkakus, deltas, miniature kites and inflatables, scan the skies during the renowned Ahmedabad International Kite Festival scheduled from January 7-15, 2018. Every nook and cranny of Ahmedabads streets and lanes will be full of makeshift shops selling kites of different colours and hues, sizes, and shapes. Come, witness the marvelous kite flying skills and incredibly artistic kites take to the skies during the festival. Do not forget to shop for beautiful handicrafts, knick-knacks, clothes, and spices sold at the time of the festival. Also, enjoy the local delicacies on offer for visitors, tourists, and locals alike.

Sikkim

You can catch Sikkims famous Losar festival at Gangtok on February 16-18, 2018. (Shutterstock)

Losar: The Northeast states have a medley of fascinating festivals full of colours and that are rich in cultural history. When it comes to Sikkim, a visit to the Tibetan areas in the tiny Indian hill state is a must. In February, the Tibetans celebrate the Tibetan New Year, also known as Losar, with much gaiety and fervour. At the Pemayangste Monastery, tourists can witness the New Year celebrations, where certain special rituals are performed along with traditional dance forms. Catch all the action live at Gangtok for two days, from February 16-18, 2018.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
From fat shaming south Indian actors to calling Sakshi Tanwar cockeyed to mocking Gauahar Khan, Bigg Boss 11 contestant Hina Khan has been attracting controversy during her stint in the reality show. Her recent comments against are against Khatron Ke Khiladi contestants Rithvik Dhanjani and Karan Wahi.

Hina said in a video that has been widely shared online that her former co-contestants on the reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi lacked the mental strength required to win. In the video, she offered her Bigg Boss co-contestants Vikas Gupta and Priyank Sharma tips were they to take part in Khatron Ke Khiladi.

Disappointed in ur POV about my frnds @eyehinakhan I have witnessed everyones journey in #khatronkekhiladi @rithvik_RD and @karan009wahi were my heroes in d show they faught wth earnestness & grace & overcame their fears quite like u and thats what the show was about @ColorsTV https://t.co/ugSjzUSxu6  Ravi Dubey (@_ravidubey) December 20, 2017

Now, TV actor Ravi Dubey has taken to Twitter to slam Hina Khans statements. Disappointed in ur POV about my frnds @eyehinakhan I have witnessed everyones journey in #khatronkekhiladi @rithvik_RD and @karan009wahi were my heroes in d show they faught wth earnestness & grace & overcame their fears quite like u and thats what the show was about, he said.

Ravi was an early supporter of Hinas but like many others from the TV industry his stance has changed in light of her controversial remarks.

Hiten Tejwani, who was recently evicted from the show, said, Hina is fake. She was saying something and doing something else. I think she should practice what she preaches.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
As much as the move to open cinemas in Saudi Arabia seems like a great New Year gift to the people of the ultra-conservative nation known for its dogmatic doctrines, the euphoria the royal decision has caused in the Tamil film industry must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Movies were banned in the Middle-Eastern kingdom in the 1980s under pressure from the radical Muslim clergy, but now with a wave of reforms being spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman  that has even permitted women to drive vehicles  the Tamil movie mandarins feel that their market in West Asia can go up by 25 per cent.

Many countries in MENA or Middle-East North Africa have, since time immemorial, been fond of Indian films. Once, Raj Kapoor was a rage in Egypt, the man today having given way to Shahrukh Khan. But in the Gulf with its huge South Indian population  especially Malayalees and Tamils -- movies from Tamil Nadu and Kerala have been a roaring success. In fact, they open a day earlier, on a Thursday, than they do in India. For the Muslim world, Friday marks the weekend.

With theatres all set to open in Saudi Arabia in March  and with 2000 screens planned by 2030  Tamil films may well add another lucrative feather to its cap  which now stretches far and wide in the Middle-East and South-east Asia. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia with a huge Tamil population (in fact one of the official languages there is Tamil) have been highly profitable for south Indian movies.

Raju Mahalingam, Creative Head of Lyca Productions, said: The overall revenue for a big film production can increase by 30%. Since movies have now begun to open in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu in India, we hope to release them in all three languages in Saudi Arabia too. A new market in West Asia, where a substantial number of Tamil and Malayalees stay, will be a big boost for our movies.

Vishal, actor and president of the Tamil Film Producers Council, averred: West Asia is a huge market for the Tamil movie industry. Saudi Arabia opening its doors will surely lead to an increase in revenue. We are also planning to study how this market is and what kind of films we can show there. We can even co-ordinate with the movie and tourism boards to take our films there.

Rajinikanths 2.0 is likely to be the first major south Indian movie to open in the Saudi Arabian market, and is likely to release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

However, the producer of such hits like Kuttram Kadithal and Jyothika-starrer Magalir Mattum, Christy Siluvappan, sounded the first note of caution. We dont know what kind of restrictions will be placed on the films by the censors in the kingdom,.

But of course. Despite all the prudishness that Indian cinema is forced to live with, there is so much in it that may be totally unsuitable for the tradition-bound, highly conservative Saudi society. Can a Katrina Kaif or a Deepika Padukone be seen wearing the kind of revealing dresses they sport on screen. Even Tamil actresses have now begun to dress with a touch of the provocative. And kisses and smooches and rollovers and scenes even more intimate than these are very common in Indian films. Yes, even in Tamil movies.

Nonetheless, if one were to look beyond these handicaps  imagined or real  I must laud Saudi Arabia for the reforms it has started to push. Let us take the case of Haifa Al Mansour, the first ever woman director from the kingdom. It was at the 2012 Venice Film Festival that I first her. There with her first movie, Wadjda, an extremely remarkable feat for a woman from Saudi Arabia  indeed the first ever by a woman from that conservative country  Mansour had broken all social barriers.

She came to Venice with a work that spoke about a 10-year-old girl, who wants to join a bicycle race and beat a boy. But she does not have a cycle in a country where girls or women are not allowed to ride one. It is considered un-Islamic, but the 10-year old with her mothers help manages to get what she wants to. The mother herself is a liberal, trying to stop her husband from taking a second wife in a culture where men are at liberty to do so.

I remember Mansour telling me at Venice how difficult it was to make the movie. I had sit inside a van and shout instructions to the men on the set, because they were loathe to take orders from a woman.

Obviously, the film left much to be desired. Not very high on production values, but it made a point about how a veiled race of women was trying to peep out to experience the joys of freedom and a life outside confined spaces, minus the chains.

And I saw what such independence can do  especially when a woman has art in her mind. Mansours second movie, Mary Shelly (screened recently at Dubai) in English language this time is miles ahead of Wadjda, in texture, in feel, in just about everything. Like a picture postcard, Mary Shelly captures the magic of 18/19th century England.

Mansour makes an admirable foray into the life of a woman who rebelled to live in sin with a married man, Percy Bysshe Shelly. Mary (played by a stunningly beautiful Elle Fanning) was merely a teenager when she met one of the greatest British writers whose romantic poetry is still considered to be a gem in English literature. The man died early, barely 29, perishing in a boat tragedy, but in those brief years of his, he lived a life of Bohemian passion and remarkable literary genius And Mary, whom he married later, became a perfect companion to him.

Along with Shelly and her stepsister, Claire, on a vacation to Lord Byrons countrys house in Geneva  and in the midst of notorious drinking bouts by the men there  Mary is sucked into a challenge thrown at those gathered on that rainy night to come up with a ghost story. Mary does with her celebrated character, Frankenstein, the seeds of her own misery at her abandonment and the way men had treated her forming the basis of the grotesque but sapient creature created by a young scientist.

Incredible as it may appear that for all the awe and inspiration (and even social revulsion) which Mary evoked in her own days and even later  often serving as an inspiration for women weighed down by male supremacy and rigidity  there has not been a biopic on her till now. And Mansour must be congratulated on giving us the first ever here, as she was once commended for presenting the first ever film, Wadjda, by a Saudi woman. What was more, she shot it entirely in that country!

Finally, it seems strange that while Indian cinema is being pushed into the dark ages, Saudi rulers are beginning to see the joys of the moving medium. And giving it a thrust!

(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and film critic)

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Hundreds of British citizens who returned to the UK from war-torn Syria and Iraq have brought back children brainwashed by the Islamic State terror group with them, a new report warned on Wednesday.

The UK Parliaments influential Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which published its annual report, has warned of the complications of children growing up inside the so- called Caliphate, educated and indoctrinated by Daesh [ISIS].

The reintegration of those who have spent their formative years in such an environment will present a serious challenge for the government and the agencies when they return to the UK, warns the committee made up of senior cross-party British MPs.

We note that the dispersal of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq raises serious questions as to when and where they will resurface, and with what intent, chairman Dominic Grieve said.

There will also be a serious challenge to reintegrate children who have grown up in the so-called Caliphate, Grieve said.

UK home secretary Amber Rudd while giving evidence to the committee admitted this posed absolutely a serious threat.

Families coming back will be potentially having children who are going to be vulnerable, who are going to need protecting; but also potentially fighters themselves who could be a danger to society and could radicalise other people, she said.

Senior intelligence officials told the UKs national security oversight body that more than 850 British citizens of national security concern are thought to have travelled to Syria, Iraq and the region.

They were joined by 6,000 Europeans on the terror front line.

It is believed that around half of those have returned to the UK, more than 300 are thought to remain in Syria, and around 100 have been killed in fighting in the region, MI5, UKs counter-terrorism security service, told the ISC.

British Prime Minister Theresa May reacted to the report, saying she was determined to do what is necessary to keep citizens safe.

Sadly this year has shown that the threat from terrorism cannot always be contained. Too many innocent families lives have been ruined across the UK from international terrorist attacks, she said, in reference to a string of ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks across the UK this year.

UK police and intelligence services recently revealed that they had succeeded in foiling at least nine terror plots this year.

That number is believed to have hit 10 after a series of dawn anti-terror raids by armed officers yesterday to foil what is believed to be a Christmas terror plot.

British Police continue to question the four arrested men, aged between 22 and 41, after the raids in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire.
Damian Green, a confidante of Prime Minister Theresa May since their days at Oxford and effectively the deputy prime minister, was unceremoniously asked to resign on Wednesday night over a pornography scandal, making him the third cabinet-level minister to leave since early November.

Michael Fallon resigned in the wake of sex allegations, while Priti Patel was dropped for her ministerial overreach during a holiday in Israel in August. As Britain winds down for the holiday season, Greens exit is seen as a personal blow to May on Christmas eve.

Green, who was the first secretary of state, was sacked after an inquiry found he had breached the ministerial code by making inaccurate and misleading statements over what he knew about claims that pornography was found on his office computer in 2008.

May wrote after Greens resignation that she was extremely sad to write the acceptance letter, recalling, We have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives - from our early days at university, entering the House of Commons at the same election, and serving alongside each other both in Opposition and in Government.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed on Thursday that Green had been sacked because he lied in his recent statements, which was later assessed by a Cabinet Office inquiry that it amounted to breaching the ministerial code.

Cut-and-thrust politics related to Brexit continues to hover over the holiday season, with the next major round of talks in Brussels due in January.

After a roller-coaster of a year that included losing majority in a general election, May is increasingly seen as a lonely figure after dropping Green.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Two men were arrested in Australia after the SUV in which they were travelling rammed into pedestrians on a busy central Melbourne street Thursday, leaving 14 people injured in what police believe was a deliberate act.

Victoria state police said the driver of the vehicle and a second man were in custody after the incident, which occurred on Flinders Street in the citys central business district just after 4.45 pm when the area was busy with Christmas shoppers.

Commander Russell Barrett told media that while the motive of the incident was not immediately clear, at this stage we believe it was a deliberate act.

Asked if police had ruled out terrorism as motivation, Barrett said only: At this stage its early days in the investigation and the motivation is unknown.

Barrett confirmed 14 people had been injured in the attack. Several were taken to hospitals, and two were in critical condition, including a pre-school aged boy with head injuries. Earlier media reports said up to 19 people had been injured.

Witnesses described horrific scenes from the incident, which started when the SUV ran a red light outside the citys iconic Flinders Street train station and sped up to hit pedestrians crossing the road, striking more than a dozen people before crashing into a traffic barrier near a cable car stop.

I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and heard a thump, one man identified only as David said on ABC TV. He said he turned around saw people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them.

Witnesses said when the car crashed it was rushed by bystanders who started pulling the two men out before police arrived a few minutes later.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a tweet calling the incident shocking and said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and those treating them.

Police said officers have been deployed across the area and the site would be closed-off as a crime scene for some time.

Police will continue to have a strong presence in the Melbourne CBD tonight, Barrett said.

Its the second time this year that Melbourne, regularly ranked one of the worlds most livable cities, has been traumatized by a car attack.

In January, six people were killed and more than 30 were injured when a car was driven up a footpath in Bourke Street, near Thursdays incident. Police arrested the driver, who was known to police for a history of illicit drug use, family violence and mental health problems. Police said the case was not terrorism-related.

There have been a number of car attacks in other parts of the world in recent years, many of them linked to terrorism.

In October a man drove a truck down a New York City bicycle path, killing eight people. The driver is accused of providing material support to the Islamic State group among other charges including murder.

In an August attack, 13 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded when a vehicle rammed into pedestrians on a walking street in Barcelona. London has seen three such attacks this year, two linked to Islamic extremists and another seen as a reprisal attack outside a mosque, killing 13 people altogether.

A vehicle attack on a shopping street in Stockholm in April killed five people, while an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last December killed 12.

The deadliest such attack in recent years took place in Nice, France, in July 2016 when a man drove a refrigerated truck weighing about 20 tons into a crowd, killing 86 people.
Catalans voted on Thursday in a crucial election that could mark a turning point for their region, just two months after a failed secession bid triggered Spains worst political crisis in decades.

Record turnout is expected in a vote pitting leaders of the wealthy northeastern regions separatist movement against parties that want to remain in Spain.

Will voters again hand victory to pro-independence parties that tried to break Catalonia from Spain, one of whose candidates is in jail and the other in self-imposed exile in Belgium?

Or will they lose the absolute parliamentary majority of 72 seats they won in 2015?

Catalans on both sides of the divide saw the day as a potential moment of truth for their region, following weeks of upheaval and protests unseen since democracy was reinstated following the death in 1975 of dictator Franco.

While the independence question is far from new, it was the referendum on October 1 -- and a heavy police crackdown on voters -- that focused the worlds attention on the region.

Some 5.5 million people are registered to vote in Thursdays election which is likely to see seven parties winning mandates in the 135-seat regional parliament.

Even before polling stations opened in Barcelona, people had formed long queues to cast their ballots.

In the seaside town of Calafell, Joan Rafael Nunez Margalet, a 56-year-old fisherman, was among the first to vote.

We had to vote today, we couldnt have stayed home, he said, adding that he was voting for the pro-unity camp.

What next for separatists?

The vote is widely seen as a plebiscite on the independence question in Catalonia, whose autonomy Spain stripped in an unprecedented move after a failed independence declaration on October 27.

Crucially, however, even if the pro-independence camp wins, it is not expected to attempt another breakaway from Spain but rather try to enter into negotiations with Madrid.

In the staunchly pro-independence town of Vic, the sun shone feebly on a small line of voters waiting in the freezing cold outside a day centre for the elderly, their polling station.

One man wore a yellow ribbon -- a symbol used by separatists demanding their leaders be freed from detention.

Posters advocating independence were plastered all over the nearby walls, one of which had a picture of someones hands tied behind their back, which read: Help Catalonia.

Short-lived secession bid

Following the controversial October referendum, which went ahead despite a ban by Madrid, the crisis came to a head later that month when the regional parliament declared unilateral independence.

The move infuriated the Spanish government but also rattled a Europe still reeling from Britains decision to leave.

The secession bid was short-lived, though, as Madrid sacked Catalonias government, dissolved its parliament and called snap elections.

Axed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont fled to Belgium, avoiding detention on charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in the independence drive.

He has since campaigned virtually, holding rallies via videolink.

Today we will show, once again, the strength of an indomitable people, Puigdemont tweeted Thursday.

His deputy Oriol Junqueras remained in Spain and was jailed along with others pending an investigation into the same charges.

Opinion polls suggest Junquerass leftist ERC party could win, and independence supporters in general are rallying to the cause.

I hope we continue with the (independence) process, 40-year-old Anna Papiol said in Calafell as she voted for the separatists.

I want Europe to realise what the people want, she said, after separatist leaders failed to secure the support from the EU that they had sought.

Over on the other side, the centrist, anti-independence Ciudadanos party is close to ERC according to polls and some suggest it could win under Ines Arrimadas, a charismatic 36-year-old.

We have a date with history, these elections will be remembered, she told a cheering crowd in Barcelona to close the campaign Tuesday.

Negotiations likely

At stake is the economy of a region that has seen its tourism sector suffer and more than 3,000 companies moved their legal headquarters since the referendum.

But whatever the result, voters and analysts predict no single party will win a decisive majority, which will force negotiations to form a government.

Both camps consist of three parties that may struggle to join forces -- Puigdemonts Together for Catalonia list, ERC and the far-left CUP party for independence, and Ciudadanos, the Socialists and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys Popular Party against it.

In between is the leftist Catalunya en Comu-Podem grouping, which is against independence but supports holding a legal referendum and could play the role of kingmaker.

Protracted and messy government formation negotiations are likely, predicted Antonio Barroso, deputy research director for Teneo Intelligence.

In an election expected to be very close, Spanish daily El Pais said the final result may be in the hands of a million undecided voters.

According to Catalan daily La Vanguardia, independence (parties) only need to win 45% of the votes in order to preserve their majority.
Dozens of rounds of talks on the border have preceded the one that Indian and Chinese diplomats will hold in New Delhi on Friday under the special representatives (SR) mechanism.

Possibly the first formal discussion on the boundary was held between Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru over a week in April, 1960, in New Delhi.

Late on the night of April 25, Zhou held a press conference in New Delhi after capping nearly a week of discussions with Nehru on the boundary question.

The talks had failed to resolve differences. The conclusion instead was that India and China should start negotiating on the border and clarify their respective positions with evidence and historical documents.

Several Indian and foreign journalists were present at the unusually late night press conference that lasted from 10:45 pm to 1 am.

Zhou took several questions on the boundary dispute, which had emerged as a key point in the increasingly tense ties between the two neighbours.

Earlier in the day, a joint communique had been released on the discussions between Nehru and Zhou.

The two PMs explained fully their respective stands on the problems affecting the border areas. This led to a greater understanding of the views of the two governments, but the talks did not result in resolving the differences that had arisen, the communique said.

The two PMs, therefore, agreed that officials of the two governments should meet and examine, check and study all historical documents, records, accounts, maps and other material relevant to the boundary question, which each side relied upon in support of its stand, and draw up a report for submission to the two governments, it added.

Two more rounds of discussions were held in 1960, one in Beijing and one more in then Rangoon in present-day Myanmar.

The discussions produced voluminous reports which experts from both countries were poring over when in late in 1962, war broke out, stalling any opportunity for formal talks on the border for nearly two decades.

When Zhou flew out of New Delhi on April 26, 1960, he was the last senior Chinese official to do so  till 1981.

Hopes for formal talks were rekindled when Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua visited New Delhi in June, 1981 and met then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

The first round took place in Beijing in December.

The two sides expressed common aspirations for the settlement of the Chinese-Indian border problem and the development of relations between the two countries and reached identical views on procedural matters,'' official news agency Xinhua said in a report on the talks.

Seven more rounds of talks were held between 1981and 1987.

The border negotiations got a boost after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhis visit to China in 1988.

Following his visit, talks resumed under the newly formed joint working group (JWG) mechanism.

As many as 15 rounds of negotiations were held under the JWG mechanism between 1988 and 2003.

The talks were rebooted to the current special representative (SR) mechanism in 2003 after prime minister AB Vajpayees China visit.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dubbed the United Nations a house of lies on Thursday, ahead of a General Assembly vote on a resolution rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The State of Israel rejects outright this vote, even before it passes, he said at a ceremony in southern Israel.

The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well -- the house of lies, he said.

The UN General Assembly will hold an emergency session later on Thursday to vote on a draft resolution that the United States vetoed at the Security Council on Monday after all other 14 council members voted in favour.

On the eve of the vote, US President Donald Trump suggested there could be reprisals for countries that support the draft, put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build in it and embassies of countries, led by the US, will move to Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, thanking Trump and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for standing by Israel and the truth.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether the UN recognises it or not, Netanyahu said. It took 70 years until the US officially recognised it and it will take many more years until the UN recognises it too.

Trumps December 6 decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv broke with international consensus, triggering protests across the Muslim world and drawing widespread condemnation.
Pakistan on Thursday said alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav was not under any threat of immediate execution and his meeting with his wife and mother had been arranged purely on humanitarian grounds.

Let me assure you that the Jadhav is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending, Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said.

Jadhavs mother and wife will meet him in Islamabad on December 25 in the light of Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds, the official said.

Islamabad also said it was awaiting New Delhis decision on Pakistan permitting media interaction with the wife and mother of Jadhav.

The Pakistan high commission in New Delhi on Wednesday issued visas to the mother and wife of the Indian who has been sentenced to death on charges of espionage and terrorism.

Jadhavs mother and wife are expected to arrive in Pakistan on Saturday via the Wagha land border. An Indian diplomat is expected to accompany the two women when they meet Jadhav.

Pakistan had earlier repeatedly rejected Indias plea for consular access to Jadhav, who it says was arrested in Balochistan.

India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the navy.
Former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif has appointed his younger brother and Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif as his partys candidate for the post of prime minister in the 2018 general elections.

The announcement was made as senior leaders of the ruling PML-N party met at Nawazs Jati Umra residence on Wednesday night. According to media reports, Nawaz praised Shehbaz for his hard-working nature and devotion to public service.

We are a democratic political party where everyone is free to voice their mind. Shehbaz has had a difference of opinion over some issues yet his commitment to the party overrules all else, which is why he has never violated the party discipline, Nawaz was quoted as saying.

In July, Nawaz was ousted as premier by the Supreme Court after an investigative panel concluded his familys assets exceeded their income. Initially, reports said Shahid Khaqan Abbasi  who was sworn in after Nawazs disqualification  would only serve as an interim premier, till Shehbaz could contest Nawazs vacated national assembly seat.

However, Shehbazs decision to nominate his son Hamza Shahbaz as the next Punjab chief minister reportedly angered his brother  Nawaz was reportedly looking at his daughter Maryam Nawaz to head Punjab.

There were also rumours that Nawaz was preparing Maryam to take up the premiership post, which created an alleged rift between the Sharif brothers.
China on Thursday said its decision to repeatedly reject resolutions at the UN to sanction Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar wasnt based on political considerations and was taken on the merits of the case.

India on Wednesday had sharply criticised China for apparently shielding Azhar at the UN Security Council. Indias permanent representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said that on counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns.

Chinas ministry of foreign affairs dismissed Indias argument.

You have mentioned the narrow political consideration but we think we have acted in a candid way with ease. We have nothing to do with narrow-minded political consideration, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Thursday.

We should say that we firmly crackdown on various forms of international terrorism and on this issue we make our own judgements based on the merits of the matter.

Like we said, the relevant move in the committee accords with the rules of the procedure of the committee and we will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international community.

China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC, has repeatedly blocked moves to sanction Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee over the past one year. Beijing flatly denies that its close ties with Pakistan is the reason for blocking the move, stating that it has more to do with the process of collecting solid evidence against the alleged terrorist.

In November, Beijing cited lack of consensus among UN Security Council members on sanctioning Azhar under a US-backed resolution.

Signalling its intention to block the resolution, China had said that the UN committee is yet to reach an agreement on the move.
Pakistan has raked up the Kashmir issue again at the UN Security Council, linking it to the Palestinian crisis and asserting that the world continues to watch these egregious situations without addressing them.

Participating in an open debate at the UNSC, Pakistans Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi yesterday said challenges to international peace and security are intensifying at a time when the foundations of global order are fraying.

The Palestinian and Kashmiri people continue to suffer horrific human rights violations at the hands of occupying forces while the world continues to watch without addressing these egregious situations, she said during the debate on Addressing complex contemporary challenges to international peace and security.

The envoy said conflicts continued to rage across the world, from Africa to Afghanistan.

Civil wars and factional fighting in Syria, Libya and Yemen are becoming more vicious and consequential, generating record levels of human displacement, she said.

Efforts to change the status of Jerusalem threaten to drive an already volatile Middle East into further turbulence and chaos, Lodhi said, referring to US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

And as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned, in the Korean peninsula, we may be sleep-walking into a catastrophe. At the same time longstanding, internationally recognised disputes of Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir continue to fester, the Pakistani diplomat said.

All this is compounding the challenges of a more turbulent and volatile world, she asserted.

Pakistan frequently raises the Kashmir issue at various UN forums. However, for the second consecutive year not a single other nation has come out in its support.
Pakistan on Thursday said it will release 291 Indian fishermen, held for allegedly violating its territorial waters, as a goodwill gesture.

The fishermen will be released in two phases on December 29 and January 8 via Wagah Border, Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said.

Earlier on October 27, Pakistan released 68 Indian fishermen.

According to an official report released early in December, more than 500 Indians, mostly fishermen, are languishing in various jails in Pakistan.

The Interior Ministry said there were a total of 996 foreign nationals, including 527 Indians, in Pakistani jails. They have been imprisoned for alleged involvement in various crimes, including terrorism, murder, drug smuggling, and for entering the country illegally.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently taken in to custody for illegally fishing in each others territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats, used by them, lack the technology to avoid drifting away.
The Saudi-led coalition conducted multiple air raids in Yemen on Wednesday, a day after Huthi rebels fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh in an attack Washington said was enabled by Iran.

The Saudi-led strikes killed 11 civilians in the Huthi stronghold of Saada, a tribal chief and witnesses said, while unidentified assailants attacked Huthis guarding the Sanaa residence of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed by the Shiite rebels earlier this month.

US President Donald Trump spoke Wednesday with Saudi King Salman following the ballistic missile attack that targeted Salmans residence.

Trump expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia following the ballistic missile attack against King Salmans official residence... an attack enabled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the White House said.

The US and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of supplying the Huthi rebels with the missile involved in another attack over Riyadh last month, with US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley presenting what she called undeniable evidence that the missile was made in Iran.

Tehran has denied supplying ballistic missiles to the Huthis.

During Wednesdays ground operations against the Sanaa residence of Saleh, an unspecified number of Huthi guards were killed, residents said.

A tribal chief told AFP that 11 civilians were killed and eight others wounded in an air strike on the Huthi rebel stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen.

The pro-Huthi television channel Al-Masirah gave the same death toll and added that women and children were among those killed, while 19 people were wounded.

Witnesses and a security source said other coalition air raids targeted a rebel camp south of Sanaa and a second camp to the west.

The rebel-run Saba press agency said 38 people, including women and children, were killed or wounded in raids targeting different parts of Yemen.

- 1,000th day -

The Huthis said the target of Tuesdays ballistic missile was a large gathering of Saudi regime leaders in Yamamah Palace, where Salman later unveiled the countrys 2018 budget.

An Arab national living in Saudi Arabia was arrested Wednesday for expressing support for the missile attack in a tweet, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Yemen is in the midst of a bloody war between the Huthis and pro-government forces, who were expelled from Sanaa in September 2014.

Rebel chief Abdelmalik al-Huthi said Tuesdays attack was timed to coincide with the 1,000th day of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemens conflict.

On November 4, a missile launch from Yemen targeted Riyadhs airport, triggering a sharp Saudi response -- the full closure of Yemens ports and borders that were already under an extensive blockade.

At the time, the UN aid chief warned that the siege -- namely on the key rebel-held port of Hodeida -- could trigger the worst famine the world has seen in decades.

The blockade was partially lifted three weeks later amid massive international pressure.

The coalition issued a statement Wednesday saying it would not resort to closing Hodeida port.

The coalition leadership announces the port of Hodeida will remain open for humanitarian and relief supplies and the entry of commercial vessels, including fuel and food vessels, for a period of 30 days, said the statement, carried on the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

Britains Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Salman and welcomed the decision to reopen the port.

The Prime Minister strongly condemned yesterdays attempted missile attack on the Yamama Palace in Riyadh, and welcomed the restraint shown by Saudi Arabia in the face of unacceptable Huthi aggression, Downing Street said in a statement.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki, speaking at a news conference in Riyadh, described the continuing missile fire as a serious escalation.

Maliki said that since the coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 over 80 ballistic missiles had been fired at Saudi Arabia and that the alliance had killed more than 11,000 Huthi rebels.

- Hadi terms for dialogue -

Saudi Arabia and America have accused Iran of being behind the missile attacks on Riyadh.

Tehran again denied the charge Wednesday, saying it has no arms link with Yemen.

Yemens President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi on Tuesday raised the bar for dialogue with the Huthis, saying they must surrender their weapons before the start of any peace talks.

We do not have a partner with whom we can reach peace, the exiled president said at a meeting with a number of ambassadors.

Hadi issued stern conditions for dialogue: the restoration of his government to power; the surrender of Huthi arms; and the handover of state institutions.

More than 8,750 people have been killed since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the governments fight against the rebels, triggering what the UN has called the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.

str/mah/wat/mdl
South Korean soldiers fired around 20 warning shots when troops from the North approached the border after one of their comrades defected Thursday, Seouls defence ministry said.

The Northern border guards appeared to be searching for the man, who had earlier crossed the Demilitarized Zone in thick fog to defect to the South, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

The low-ranking soldier was spotted by South Korean soldiers using surveillance equipment as he crossed the midwestern part of the land border in thick fog and made his way to a guard post, a ministry spokesman said.

No shots were fired at the time, he said, but South Korean troops later fired around 20 rounds from a K-3 machine gun to warn off Northern guards who approached the border apparently looking for the man.

The incident came a month after a rare and dramatic defection by a soldier at Panmunjom, the truce village where opposing forces confront each other across a concrete dividing line.

On that occasion the defector drove to the heavily- guarded border at speed and ran across under a hail of bullets from his own side. He was hit at least four times.

Footage showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the demarcation line.

He has since been recovering in hospital in the South.

Away from Panmunjom, the rest of the 4-kilometre-wide DMZ bristles with barbed wire and is littered with minefields, making any crossing extremely hazardous.

Todays defection was the fourth by a soldier across the DMZ this year.

Two North Korean civilians also defected this week after being found drifting in a rickety engineless boat off Souths eastern coast, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North.

They were spotted by a South Korean surveillance aircraft and picked up by a nearby navy vessel, it said.

The developments bring this years total for the number of people defecting directly to the South to 15, a Joint Chiefs of Staff tally showed -- three times as many as in 2016.

Around 30,000 North Koreans have fled repression and poverty in their homeland to reach the South over the decades since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, with 1,418 doing so last year according to Unification Ministry data.

The vast majority go first to China, with which the North shares a long border, and where they face the risk of being repatriated to an uncertain fate if caught. They travel on to the South later, often via another country.

In Novembers Panmunjom incident, footage showed a North Korean guard briefly crossing the border in hot pursuit before retreating.

The US-led United Nations Command said the Norths forces had violated the 1953 ceasefire that ended Korean War hostilities both by physically crossing the line and firing weapons over it.

The North Korean soldier, 24-year-old Oh Chong-Song, underwent multiple operations for his gunshot wounds at Ajou University Hospital in Seoul and was transferred to a military hospital last week, Yonhap said.

He has recovered enough to get to his feet and walk with help, it added, and has written a letter of thanks to the medical staff who treated him.

Oh wants to become a lawyer, said his surgeon Lee Cook- Jong, who gave him a law book.

He said while in the North, he was unable to study much because of his military duty, Lee was quoted as saying. I just hope he will become a good citizen, whatever kind of occupation he chooses.
India joined an overwhelming majority of UN member countries to vote for a resolution criticising the United States for recognising Jerusalem of Israel bucking an international consensus lasting decades.

The resolution was adopted with the support of 128 countries, with nine voting against and 35 abstaining.

The United States faced complete isolation and humiliation in the world body, which disregarded Trumps threat of cutting US aid to countries that backed it, a move that brought the United States further criticism for bullying.

India has long held an independent and consistent position on Palestine, as the ministry of external affairs said earlier this month, and that it is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country. Its explanation of Thursday voted was awaited at the time of writing of this report.

The vote today was consistent with Indias past position on this issues and Palestine, a diplomatic source said on background, where was the question of us not voting for the resolution.

128 countries vote in favor of U.N. call for U.S. to withdraw decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, 9 countries oppose: Reuters pic.twitter.com/qdWmz9nQer  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

The vote is not a reflection on ties with both the united States and Israel  look at who voted for the resolution and who didnt  even their closest allies were not with them.

This was a lost vote from the start, for the American.

The US presidents threat came a day after his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the United States will be taking names as we dont expect those weve helped to target us. She had just vetoed to defeat a proposed resolution in the Security Council asking America to reverse its decision.

The resolution, which is non-binding went through as anticipated given the overwhelming support a similar resolution received in the UN Security Council Monday  14 of its 15 members, including allies Franc, Britain and Italy, voted in favour of the resolution which failed only because the US vetoed it. There are no veto pawers in the general assembly, where all 193 members have the same one vote each.

Let them vote against us, President Trump had said Wednesday, adding, without making any attempt to mask the threat, Well save a lot. We dont care. But this isnt like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

Were not going to be taken advantage of any longer.

Haley echoed the sentiment in remarks on the floor of the general assembly. When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have a legitimate expectation that our good will is recognized and respected. When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization, that nation is disrespected. Whats more, that nation is asked to pay for the privilege of being disrespected.

The United States came in for strident criticism during the general assembly debate not only for recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital but also for threatening UN countries to not vote for the resolution condemning its decision. Such an attitude is unacceptable. This is bullying, said Turkeys foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The draft resolution, which is moved by Turkey and Yemen and co-sponsored by Iran, Pakistan and others, cited past Security Council Resolutions to say that all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the holy city of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Its similar in nature and texture to the resolution vetoed Monday. It was moved by Egypt which could be in real danger of being hit adversely for its vote as recipient of $1.2 billion aid in 2016. Pakistan, another major recipient of US aid, is a co-sponsor of the UN general assembly resolution. United States should decide whether to stand with the world or an occupying force which is the reason for instability and chaos in the Middle East, Pakistans permanent representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi said in statement. Pakistan is among the countries which have co-sponsored this resolution.

Pakistan is already under notice from the United States for not doing enough on counter-terrorism  despite all the money they take, President Trump has said  and its co-sponsorship of the Jerusalem vote is unlikely to go down well in the White House where someone is sitting with a checklist.

Or in New York. As you consider your vote, I encourage you to know the president and the US take this vote personally, Haley said in a letter to UN member nations ahead of the general assembly vote. The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us.
The latest available figures from the CSO show that, on average, women are paid 14% less than men.

This article can only be read with a Premium Account Please Log In or Subscribe to continue reading
The countdown to Christmas is on! And, as we all know, its a perfect time to enjoy Christmas movies as families come together to celebrate, eat, drink and be merry! So, with that in mind, here's a list of popular Christmas-themed comedies that you might want to bing watch during the festivities.

The Night Before

Three best friends decide to end their tradition of wild holiday partying  but not before one final drug-fuelled Christmas Eve in New York.



Last Holiday

Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think! It's advice to follow for shy New Orleans cookware salesclerk Georgia Byrd (Oscarnominee* Queen Latifah) when her doctor informs her that she has less than a month to live. With news like that, it's time to give your life a serious makeover! So Georgia jets off on a dream vacation to live life like there's no tomorrow. Enjoy hearty laughs and rollicking comedic misadventures when Georgia shakes up a glamorous European resort spa while enthusiastically embracing a new look, new moves, and a new attitude!



Uncle Nick

At his brother's traditional Christmas Eve party, lecherous, drunken slacker Nick works hard to make the celebration a raucous disaster.

Christmas Eve

A citywide power outrage traps eccentric New Yorkers in six different elevators on Christmas Eve, forcing them to reconsider their lives.



Scrooged!

High-spirited high jinks on Christmas Eve put Frank Cross (Bill Murray) in a ghostly time warp in this hilarious take-off of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Cross, who has made the meteoric rise from the depths of the mailroom to TV network president, is mean, nasty, uncaring, unforgiving and has a sadistic sense of humor - perfect qualities for a modern-day Scrooge. Before the night is over, he'll be visited by a maniacal New York cab driver from the past, a present-day fairy who's into pratfalls and, finally, a ghoulish, seven-foot headless messenger from the future.



Happy Christmas

Irresponsible 20-something Jenny arrives in Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff, a young film-maker living a happy existence with his novelist wife Kelly and their two-year-old son. Jenny's arrival shakes up their quiet domesticity as she and her friend Carson instigate an evolution in Kelly's life and career. Meanwhile, Jenny strikes up a rocky relationship with the family's baby sitter-cum-pot dealer.



Advertisement

A Christmas Detour

A cynical bartender helps a romantically optimistic bride-to-be make it home to meet her fiances parents when a snowstorm reroutes their flights.

Angel of Christmas

While researching a family heirloom, a jilted news staffer uncovers the ornament's magical past and meets someone special, perhaps not by coincidence.



Once Upon a Holiday

When an actual, honest-to-goodness royal princess runs off from her official obligations and duties for a couple of days around Christmas to see how the other half lives, she winds up falling for a good Samaritan who is unaware of her real identity. Stars Brianna Evigan, Paul Campbell and Greg Evigan.



Hector

En route to London for an annual Christmas meet-up with friends, homeless Scotsman Hector attempts to reconnect with the family he left behind.



All these movies are now streaming on Netflix
Texas security regulators warned consumers about investing in USI-Tech Limited, a Dubai-based firm promoting low-risk, high-return investments tied to Bitcoin, an unregulated form of virtual currency.

The Texas State Securities Board issued a cease and desist order this week against the overseas company for selling investment contracts to mine Bitcoin, referring to the significant computer power and energy consumption it takes to track Bitcoin trading activity. The agency said that USI-Tech and two U.S.-based sales agents are soliciting investors in Texas through Craigslist advertisements, YouTube videos and websites.

Neither the company or its sales agents could be immediately reached for comment.

State regulators allege that USI-Tech claims its Bitcoin platform "consistently provides returns of up to 150 percent per year" and that investment returns do not depend on the underlying value of Bitcoin. The price of Bitcoin, which opened Thursday at $16,454.72, has doubled in value over the past month, according to CoinDesk which tracks prices.

USI-Tech nor the sales agents are registered to sell securities in Texas. The investment is not registered in Texas.

RELATED: EX-BP economist indicted for alleged efforts to extort bitcoin from BP

The state securities board also alleges that USI-Tech is telling potential investors that they can make even more money by convincing others to invest. Investors can earn "up to 35 percent commissions" through its "unique referral marketing plan," according to the securities board.
MOSCOW - The Russian spam kingpin had long been in the cross hairs of the FBI, and agents finally got their shot when the man scheduled a vacation in Spain. At the agency's request, Spanish security officers in April arrested the man, Peter Levashov, who is accused of stuffing untold millions of inboxes with ads for pornography, pills and penny stocks.

But then the Russian authorities sprang a trap of their own, filing an extradition request with the Spanish authorities for a crime they said Levashov had committed in Russia years ago. Currently, he is languishing in a Spanish jail, but soon the authorities will have to decide which extradition request to honor: the United States' or Russia's.

This was by no means the first time that Russia had filed a competing extradition request. Far-fetched as it may seem, the Russians' tactic has in several instances prevented Russians suspected of being computer criminals from being deported to the U.S. while detained in Europe.

The tactic has raised suspicions that the Russian authorities are more interested in derailing U.S. investigations and possibly protecting criminals they find useful than they are in fighting cybercrime.

"People always ask me about this," Timofey Musatov, a Moscow lawyer whose Russian client is the subject of competing extradition requests. "It's the most common question."

In Levashov's case, Russian prosecutors sought his extradition after his detention in Spain when they discovered in August that he had hacked the computers of a hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2014.

Meddling in elections

Three similar cases are pending in courts in Greece, Spain and the Czech Republic. In two of the three, the defendants' lawyers or relatives have said that their cases have some bearing on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election in the United States. While that may be true, they have not provided any proof.

Their theory is that with the politically charged atmosphere in the U.S. over the election meddling, the accused could not get a fair trial there, so they should be returned to Russia.

In accordance with extradition treaties in all three countries, Russian lawyers say, the decision about where to send the accused resides with a government minister. That opens the prospect of the United States being powerless to stop the return to Russia of a suspect who may be able to offer valuable information on Russian meddling in the election.

The Greek police detained Musatov's client, Alexander Vinnik, on a U.S. warrant that accuses him of running a Moscow-based Bitcoin exchange, BTC-e, that laundered as much as $4 billion in illegal funds. Russian prosecutors filed an extradition request on a fraud charge.

The Russian case, Musatov said, surfaced soon after Vinnik's detention in Athens, possibly because the Russian police had read about his client in news reports and decided to investigate him.

Vinnik has no known links to election hacking, Musatov said.

Another of Musatov's clients, Dmitry Zubakha, who at the request of the U.S. was detained in Cyprus in 2012 on suspicion of hacking Amazon, was successfully extradited to Russia.

"This norm is in effect everywhere," said Vladimir Makeyev, a lawyer for another Russian cybercrime suspect, Yevgeny Nikulin, who was detained in Prague while on vacation with his girlfriend.

The United States accuses Nikulin of hacking the computers of LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring. Russia filed an extradition request after a computer intrusion and online theft that occurred in 2010 but came to light only after his detention in the Czech Republic.

Offer by FBI?

Makeyev argues that the U.S. is seeking Nikulin's cooperation in the election-hacking investigation and that an FBI agent from the San Francisco field office, Jeffrey Miller, traveled to Prague to offer asylum in exchange for testimony. The FBI has said the agent was there only to read Nikulin his rights, and it remains unclear how he may have been connected to election hacking.

Levashov, too, has claimed a political motivation for his arrest in Barcelona last spring, though a federal indictment unsealed in Connecticut charges him only with eight counts of computer-related crime and fraud. Levashov's wife, Maria, said in an interview that the Spanish police had told her the arrest was "related to the election."

The U.S. indictment asserts that Levashov, using the nickname Peter Severa, or Peter of the North, ran a spam operation powered by a sophisticated, evolving family of computer viruses called Waledac, and later Kelihos. Levashov's nickname may be derived from his northern hometown, St. Petersburg, or the name of a porn movie star, referring to the pornography promoted by spam email.

Levashov told a Spanish court that the case should be viewed politically because he had worked for United Russia, a political party that backs President Vladimir Putin, and he is an army officer with access to Russian classified information.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON - Students who were defrauded by the for-profit Corinthian Colleges may not get their loans forgiven entirely, the Education Department announced Wednesday, in a reversal of the Obama administration policy of wiping out the debt.

Under President Barack Obama, tens of thousands of students deceived by the now-defunct schools had more than $550 million in federal student loans canceled in full.

But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Wednesday she is putting a new process in place that she says is more efficient and fair. The department will now look at average income for specific programs to determine if the loans should be forgiven fully or partially.

For instance, if a student who attended a nursing program at Corinthian is earning less than 50 percent of what the average income is for graduates of similar programs, he or she will get the entire loan wiped out. But a student earning more than 70 percent of average earnings would get only 30 percent of the loan canceled.

"No fraud is acceptable, and students deserve relief if the school they attended acted dishonestly," DeVos said in a statement. "This improved process will allow claims to be adjudicated quickly and harmed students to be treated fairly. It also protects taxpayers from being forced to shoulder massive costs that may be unjustified."

Corinthian students who had their claims approved in full under the Obama administration, even if the money hasn't been disbursed, will see the payments in full.

The change will affect students whose claims had not been decided by Jan. 20, the date of President Donald Trump's inauguration. The decision will affect more than 20,000 pending claims.

Student advocates criticized the decision.

"It's unfair and it's unlawful and arbitrary," said Eileen Connor, a litigator at Harvard University's Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented hundreds of defrauded Corinthian students. Connor said these students wasted not only money, but time.

Connor said her organization will challenge the decision with lawsuits.

Critics say the Trump administration has deep ties to the for-profit sector and is looking out for industry interests at the expense of students. Earlier this year, Trump paid $25 million to settle charges that his Trump University misled students. DeVos has filled several senior positions at the Education Department with for-profit officials.

But DeVos insists that Obama-era procedures left room for borrowers to abuse the system at the expense of taxpayers.
U.S. employers are paying more than $100 billion for workers to do nothing, according to a study released Wednesday by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

The study, said to be the first measure of the extent of downtime, found that despite widespread conceptions that workers are too busy, 78.1 percent of surveyed employees reported idle time at work, with 21.7 percent of them saying they experienced it on a daily basis.

Of the 1,003 respondents included in the survey results, a worker earning the median U.S. wage of $17.09 an hour was paid $977 a year for either forced or optional idleness. Multiplied out by an estimated 135 million employees working out of their home, the nations cost of idle time really adds up.

The consequences of idle time are costly, and because its in the employees best interest to appear busy, its likely that managers are not aware of the true extent of employee idle time, said Andrew Brodsky, an assistant professor at McCombs who co-authored the story with Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School. Increased transparency and understanding of the amount of time employees spend idle at work can help managers optimize worker productivity and satisfaction.

The study found the extent of downtown was consistent across occupations ranging from call center customer service to management to military service and did not vary significantly according to job type, socioeconomic status or education level. And whatever or wherever the workplace, employees use similar tacticsto avoid boredom or appearing idle.

For example, employees tend to work stretch, cutting their pace to prolong tasks, or engage in dead time, which is slowing down as a task nears completion and is the opposite of the deadline tendency of speeding things up.

You just try and slow down your work so that youre not just sitting there staring at the ceiling and your boss is seeing you do that, Brodsky said in an interview.

Thats not to say employers should look at the study as a directive to slash payrolls, he said.

While there are cases where workers make a choice to procrastinate or surf the internet, in a lot of cases employees are forced into inactivity by malfunctioning equipment or inevitable slow periods. For example, a customer service or internal help desk employee may have a lull between calls. Security guards may spend a lot of time standing around. Brodsky referenced the famous saying in the military of hurry up and wait.

Unfortunately, employees often cant do anything about it, Brodsky said. In many cases, its just as bad sitting there pretending to be busy as it is being very busy because its just not enjoyable. Its really boring.

Brodsky does suggest alternatives, such as allowing workers to surf the internet, take breaks or leave early during slow times so that they can focus on the times when work flow peaks.

When employees expect to be looking at the internet during their idle time they actually work more quickly so that idle time is available, he said.

Ideally, workplaces would strive for an optimal level of arousal or stimulation thats somewhere between being overworked and underworked, he said.

If you asked me what the ideal work situation looks like, its where theres this kind of openness on both sides, where employees feel more comfortable kind of saying, Listen, you know I have nothing to do at the moment, he said. But theres this suboptimal situation where employees are punished for being seen doing nothing  because their intentions are against showing that theres excess time.

lbrezosky@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

H-E-B will open an elevated supermarket in Meyerland Plaza, the sprawling shopping center and retail icon that has served residents in southwest Houston for 60 years.

The new store, to be built at the northwest corner of the center, is a show of confidence for the Meyerland neighborhood, which was inundated for the third time in three years when Hurricane Harvey's storms destroyed homes and businesses throughout the area.

The store will bring an additional grocery option long-desired by residents. For the large Jewish community centered in the area, the new H-E-B will have a kosher bakery serving breads, cakes, cupcakes and even kosher tortillas.

"Talk about fusion food. I think that may be a first in Houston," H-E-B president Scott McClelland said.

The store represents a more than $21 million investment, McClelland said. It is expected open in fall 2019.

The Meyerland area has long been underserved by grocers, in part due to a lack of available space to put a large store, said Ed Page, managing partner of Streetwise Retail Advisors.

"It will tap a much larger customer base," Page said.

The plan to open a store in Meyerland Plaza has been in the works for years, said McClelland and the owner of the shopping center, Houston-based Fidelis Realty Partners.

Since the company bought the property in 2013, it has always hoped to add a grocery component, Fidelis executive vice president Lynn Davis said.

"The area has been begging for a good grocery store but there's no place to put one," she said. "It's all homes."

Longtime Meyerland resident Barbara Kile agreed it will be nice to have an H-E-B in the neighborhood because of its large selection of products. But she expressed concern Wednesday about the additional cars and traffic. She said she often shops at Belden's on North Braeswood nearby.

"I don't want to see the parking lot full every time I come. This time of year I'm here as early as I can get here just because of parking and people," Kile said. "So as much as I'm sure I would enjoy shopping at H-E-B, I do have the concern of just what it's going to do to the shopping center. I live very close and do a lot of shopping here, but if I can't park I'm not going to."

H-E-B has operated a smaller store in Meyerland at South Braeswood and Chimney Rock since the early 1990s, but after flooding in Harvey, the second time in three years, the company decided to close it for good.

Shawna Callaghan was angry when she heard H-E-B wouldn't re-open the store, concerned over how it would affect the area around it.

"We worry that it's actually going to increase crime in the neighborhood and bring down property values in that section," she said.

Even though Callaghan lives closer to Meyerland Plaza, she said she won't shop at the new H-E-B because the company left its other location.

The new 95,000-square-foot store will be built on and around the site of the former BBVA Compass Bank at Beechnut and Endicott.

It will built on stilts with two levels of parking. The first floor will have a curbside grocery pickup area, a store pharmacy and a replacement BBVA Compass Bank. The second floor will connect to the neighboring JCPenney via sky bridge.

Building the store on stilts was the only way to add enough space to the shopping center, Davis said. It was

"To add 95,000 square feet to an existing 900,000-square-foot shopping center is extremely difficult," she said. "There is no space. The only way we could have done that was to put it on stilts and put parking below it."

Davis said the land will have to be built up slightly for the new H-E-B development, and she said the company will comply will all city building regulations and that the project will include additional stormwater detention.

The construction process stands to be relatively complex.

Utilities will have to be rerouted and construction equipment will be housed in different areas at different times in an effort to keep the center operating as usual.

Tenants were recently notified on the construction process and schedule.

By and large the project was welcome news for existing tenants, Davis said.

"There have been things we've had to negotiate, but it's been all very agreeable," she said.

Despite the flooding to some stores in Meyerland Plaza, holiday decorations were hung and the center was busy Wednesday morning.

Leaving Target with a cart full of bags, Yisela Martinez was almost giddy when she learned of the new H-E-B.

"Are you kidding me? I didn't know that," she said. "That's so exciting!"

Martinez is a personal assistant for a Jewish family in Bellaire and she usually shops for them at the H-E-B near South Rice and Bissonnet, though she often has to make trips elsewhere to find everything they need.

When she was told the new store would have a kosher baker, her smile widened.

"Stop it!" Martinez said. "That's gets me even more excited."
Renderings courtesy of H-E-B

H-E-B will build a double-decker supermarket in Meyerland Plaza, the sprawling shopping center and retail icon that has served residents in southwest Houston for 60 years.

The new store, on the northwest corner, is a show of confidence for the Meyerland neighborhood, which was inundated for the third time in three years when Hurricane Harvey's storms destroyed homes and businesses throughout the area.
The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a measure rejecting the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a stunning rebuke of a U.S. decision that allies and adversaries alike warned would undermine prospects for peace.

Despite U.S. threats to cut aid to countries that backed the resolution and even funding for the United Nations itself, 128 countries voted in favor of the measure. Only nine countries - including the United States and Israel - voted against it. Another 35 abstained, and 21 were absent.

The vote in a rare emergency session was a public reproach of an administration that stands alone in the world in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a status other governments say should be left undecided until the final stage of talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The nonbinding resolution on "illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of occupied Palestinian territory" declared actions that predetermine Jerusalem's fate "null and voided." Even countries that abstained offered explanations that distanced themselves from President Donald Trump's Dec. 6 decision.

The vote also underscored the apparent futility of the U.S. campaign to sway votes by threatening to cut funding, which some countries viewed as an effort to intimidate them into submission. Although Trump said Wednesday that he would be "watching" for countries that receive a lot of U.S. aid and voted "against us," the list of co-sponsors grew at the last minute to include Egypt and Jordan, the only two countries besides Israel that receive more than $1 billion in U.S. aid annually.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, set the stage for a future showdown.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out in this assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," she said. "We will remember it when, once again, we are called up to make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and we will remember it when many countries come calling on us to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

Characterizing the United States as "disrespected," Haley said the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem regardless.

"No vote in the United Nations is going to make any difference on that," she said. "But this vote will make a difference in how Americans look at the U.N. and how we look at countries that disrespect us at the U.N. And this vote will be remembered."

Although its significance is purely symbolic, the resolution carries political resonance, particularly in the Middle East, where the U.S. decision has sparked protests and drawn condemnation from Arab governments. Underscoring the U.S. isolation on the issue, even many allies have publicly appealed to the administration to reverse its position and leave Jerusalem's status undecided until Israelis and Palestinians negotiate terms.

On Monday, the United States exercised its Security Council veto to block the same resolution. All 14 other countries on the council, including U.S. allies Britain and France, supported the measure. Yemen and Turkey then submitted the resolution to the General Assembly, where the United States does not have veto power.

None of the countries that voted with the United States and Israel against the resolution are diplomatic powerhouses - Guatemala, Honduras, Togo and the Pacific island states of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau. Among those voting in favor were Russia, China and several U.S. allies, notably Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Japan and Turkey. The abstaining nations included Canada, Mexico, Australia, Colombia, Haiti, Poland and the Philippines.

But many of the countries that abstained said they would keep their embassies in Tel Aviv. Many said they abstained because they thought the resolution did nothing to help push Israelis and Palestinians to negotiations toward a two-state solution.

"Mexico does not see it as positive or useful for a unilateral declaration to have taken place to recognize Jerusalem as the capital," said Mexico's ambassador, Juan Jose Gomez Camacho, adding that it was unnecessary to hold an emergency session to discuss the issue.

Although the vote was lopsided, there were more abstentions than in at least five previous resolutions related to Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. A spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations attributed the shift to Haley's efforts, which included a warning that the administration would be "taking names" and a letter to ambassadors saying she would report the results to Trump.

"All of today's no votes, abstentions and no-shows were in solidarity with the U.S. position, which is a testament not only to those countries' priorities but also to the diplomatic outreach by Ambassador Haley and her team," the spokesman said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that "Israel rejects the UN resolution and at the same time expresses satisfaction with the high number of countries that did not vote for the resolution."

"Israel thanks President Trump for his unambiguous position in favor of Jerusalem and thanks the countries that voted together with Israel, together with the truth," he said.

Palestinians exalted in the display of support at the United Nations. Palestinian Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat called the vote "evidence that the dignified world is united against intimidation and bullying."

Haley had watched with her arms crossed as Yemen's U.N. ambassador, Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany, introduced the resolution and called Trump's action "a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world."

Some of the harshest criticism came from Turkey. "Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted before the debate.

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, spoke directly to the administration when he told the General Assembly: "We will not be intimidated. You can be strong, but this doesn't make you right."

In Jerusalem, however, there was relief that the Trump administration has Israel's back, even if the U.N. showdown accomplishes nothing.

"I think when the leader of the free world recognizes the history of Jerusalem then it is meaningful and in the long term it will make a big difference," said Jerusalem's Mayor Nir Barkat. "Clearly day to day nothing will change. We will continue to build in the city, we will continue to uphold freedom of religion, freedom of movement and the status quo. These are things we do every day anyway.

"The show in the U.N., besides being shameful, proves that it is becoming less and less relevant from our perspective," he said.
WASHINGTON  Amid a wave sexual harassment allegations and settlements involving powerful men, a pair of Republicans is pushing legislation to hold lawmakers - not their constituents - responsible for victim payouts.

Pete Olson of Sugar Land teamed up with Elise Stefanik of New York on Wednesday to introduce legislation for the Responsible Settlement for Victims and Taxpayer Act, which would require lawmakers on Capitol Hill that are found guilty of harassment to reimburse the government for settlements paid out to their victims.

Taxpayers' burden

The act would pass the responsibility of compensating victims for their suffering from the taxpayer to the offender. For lawmakers who resign or retire, it would allow the government to dip into their retirement accounts.

The legislation comes on the back of congressional officials disclosing that taxpayers were on the hook for $174,000 in 15 settlements involving harassment or discrimination claims against House offices between 2008 and 2012.

That disclosure follows revelations that Corpus Christi Republican Blake Farenthold used $84,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a 2014 sexual harassment suit brought by a former spokeswoman in his congressional office.

Farenthold denied any wrongdoing, but has agreed to repay the government. He also has announced that he will not seek re-election.

'Wrong on every level'

Longtime Michigan Democrat John Conyers reportedly used $27,000 in office funds settle a complaint in 2015 from a woman who alleged she was fired from his Washington staff because she rejected his sexual advances.

Olson's bill would codify repayments from lawmakers' personal funds, rather than their office or government accounts.

"Recent reports of harassment coming out of Capitol Hill are disgusting and wrong on every level," Olson said. "The notion that any claims of harassment have been settled at taxpayer expense is simply indefensible."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

John T. Jackson has stacked all his mementos in a box and carted them out to the trunk of his SUV, making it a treasure chest for collectors of NASA memorabilia.

There are signed photos of astronauts, a picture of Jackson flying an F-111 tactical fighter bomber and a proclamation from former Mayor Lee Brown declaring a day in Jackson's name as a thank you for his contributions to the city and the space agency.

After more than 50 years at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jackson will formally retire Friday at age 91.

"NASA's been good to me," Jackson said. "I've worked on a lot of different things."

Jackson started his career at NASA in 1966, five years after President John F. Kennedy announced his commitment to landing on the moon before 1970. He started out in the Apollo program, but has since worked all over the Johnson grounds.

He was an environmental control engineer, worked with Skylab space station and helped write a book outlining human body proportions in relation to the design of clothing and equipment for human space flight. He even managed a program where student experiments were sent into space.

Astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, said Jackson's knowledge and expertise have transcended his changing job titles: he knows everything and everybody.

"If you need something and you phone him and ask him, he knows it and it's accurate and if it isn't in his field, he can tell you who does know and he'll call them," said Bean, who first got to know Jackson when they lived a block apart in Nassau Bay.

"He's a special kind of guy. He just knows people and he's likeable."

Well into his 10th decade, Jackson is sharp and capable. He still drives - his license is up for renewal in January - and his recall of facts, dates and conversations is better than that of many 20-year-olds. But he's decided to finally hang up his space agency hat - and his distinction as the oldest full-time employee at Johnson.

"I've been there long enough," Jackson said. "I'm beginning to feel aged  and it's time I go."

Jackson's life adventures can be summed up by a simple phrase: "I said, 'Well, OK.' "

His ready-for-anything attitude started in 1944, when he joined the Marine Corps at age 17 right after graduating high school.

Less than two years later, Jackson left the military for college. The war was over, he said, and he was ready to move on with his life - a career in the military was never his dream.

'The thought of man in space'

His real dream was to study engineering, but he said Texas Christian University in Fort Worth didn't have a program at the time.

"Well, OK," he said, switching gears to study psychology.

He was working on the flight line at Bell Helicopter while earning his master's degree, he said, when the Fort Worth-based aerospace manufacturer asked him to step in as an electrician.

"Well, OK," he said. "That's great, more money."

He spent time as a probation officer in late 1950s, he said, and then worked at General Dynamics on the Atlas rockets - which helped launch four Mercury astronauts into space, including John Glenn - in California and the F-111 fighter jet in Fort Worth.

America had entered the 1960s by then, a time ushered in by the space race and Kennedy's push to land a man on the moon.

"It was an exciting time," said Jackson's son, who's name also is John. "It was interesting; it was the thought of man in space that drew (Dad) in."

Jackson was approached about working at NASA in the mid-1960s, and gave his typical response.

"Well, OK," he said.

Bees, rats and eggs in space

Jackson's file of the student space experiments he led in the 1980s is more than an inch thick.

His favorites are the ones with funny stories attached, told so often the lines are worn like the pages of a well-loved book.

There was that one time his students sent bees into space on the Space Shuttle, pleading that astronauts not use the fly swatters stashed onboard to ruin their experiment.

Another time, Kentucky Fried Chicken sponsored a student experiment on how eggs fared in microgravity.

And how could Jackson forget the battle he had to wage to get rats on the Space Shuttle for an experiment?

For Jackson, this was the most rewarding part of his time at NASA - not the astronaut training, not his work with Skylab and not the Houston parade he orchestrated for John Glenn following his 1998 Space Shuttle Discovery flight.

The student program "was wonderful," he said. "I'm very much behind the educational aspect of NASA."

Bill Seitz first met Jackson in the late 1980s, during the throes of this student program. Though they didn't directly work together, Jackson's passion for the program was obvious, Seitz said.

"He was always running around and getting things done" for the students, he added.

It would be 20 years before the two actually worked together, but Seitz said it was worth the wait.

As chief of Johnson's Habitability and Environmental Factors Division, Seitz noticed Jackson's ability to get along with everyone and make people happy. He knew the perfect job for someone with that set of skills: Facility Manager for the building they shared.

Essentially, Jackson has been responsible for maintaining the facility, including building systems such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning, electrical, and plumbing, and managing building services including custodial, electrical and handymen.

"People loved him," Seitz said. "He took a lot of initiative."

And it was amazing, Seitz said, to see a 91-year-old zooming up and down the halls, getting things done and telling stories of the old days at Johnson.

Seitz retired from Johnson in March - he just couldn't wait for Jackson to bring his career to a close any longer, he joked.

But Jackson finally is ready. After he removes the last piece of history from his office Friday, he's not sure what he'll do.

He hopes to read more, and watch some TV.

But he also hopes to travel. He's still got a lot of adventure left.

"His sister lived to be 103," his son said. "He's got time left."
Police investigators said Wednesday that a woman who recently lost a child could be responsible for a Tuesday slaying in northwest Houston in which the victim's baby also was abducted.

The mother of a 6-week-old infant was found dead Tuesday morning in her apartment in the Greenspoint area, and the baby girl was missing. The Houston Police Department had issued an Amber Alert on Tuesday night for the child and a man identified by authorities as her father, but he was later questioned and released.

At a news conference outside the crime scene, Police Chief Art Acevedo asked for the public to be on the lookout for women or families who recently lost a child or who might present the baby as their own or as a newborn. The missing infant is named Chamali Flores, police said.

The chief said that is simply a theory at the moment but noted that the nature of the crime is consistent with others in which a baby was abducted by those who have lost children. The chief noted that nothing was taken from the home.

Acevedo also said it appears the person responsible for the killing was familiar with the apartment complex.

Search teams were preparing to canvas the area with bloodhounds Wednesday afternoon, and FBI abduction teams are assisting with the search.

More for you Police search for baby after mom stabbed to death

Acevedo also said the investigation of the slaying has been difficult because of fears of law enforcement among other occupants of the apartment complex, many of whom are Hispanic.

"We're not worried about immigration status," Acevedo said. "We are worried about getting this baby back safely where she belongs."

The child's father, whose name police clarified on Wednesday as Marcos Mariano Tomas Palacios, 34, was sought and questioned by police Tuesday night. Acevedo declined to offer specifics on what he told police, though the chief said Palacios was cooperative.

Carolina Flores, the missing child's 33-year-old mother, was found dead around noon in the 180 block of Goodson, police said. An Amber Alert was issued Tuesday evening for her missing daughter, Chamali.

Authorities initially said they believed that Chamali was taken by her father. The woman's body, which had multiple stab wounds, was found on the floor of her apartment by a family member. Several people apparently lived in the apartment with the woman, police said.

The father did not live in the apartment, and police declined to provide details about their relationship.

Anyone with information about the case is urged to call Houston Police Department at 713-308-3600.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to cut off U.S. aid to any country that votes in favor of a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly denouncing his recent decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump's statement, delivered at his last Cabinet meeting of the year, followed a letter from the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, in which she warned that the United States would take note of any country that votes in favor of the measure.

"All these nations that take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council or the assembly, they take hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars and they vote against us," Trump said. "Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot. We don't care."

Trump added that "people are tired of the United States - people that live here, our great citizens that love this country - they're tired of this country being taken advantage of and we're not going to be taken advantage of any longer."

It is difficult to see how Trump could deliver on his threat to cut financial assistance, since it could involve cutting off aid to a number of strategic allies. The United States has given $77.4 billion in foreign aid to Egypt between 1948 and 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service, including about $1.3 billion in annual military aid since 1987.

The General Assembly is scheduled to vote Thursday on a resolution that would condemn Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, which is fiercely contested by Israelis and Palestinians, and urge other countries not to move their embassies to that city from Tel Aviv.

Trump said earlier this month that the United States would move its embassy to Jerusalem, though administration officials said a move was several years away because of logistical issues in constructing a new embassy complex.

On Monday, the United States used a rare veto to block a resolution in the Security Council calling for the administration to reverse its decision on Jerusalem. The vote on the resolution was 14 to 1, suggesting there would be a similarly lopsided margin against the United States in the 193-member General Assembly.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Houston voters signed off on Mayor Sylvester Turner's landmark pension reforms at the ballot box last month, but the city still is suing the actuarial firm it says helped create the mess in the first place in a blockbuster case that may go to trial next year with at least $430 million at stake.

It just doesn't want you to know all the details.

A federal magistrate agreed with the city Wednesday, denying the actuarial firm Willis Towers Watson's request to unseal an expert's report crucial to Houston's case.

The report used data about individual firefighter pensioners to mirror the work of the actuarial firm - then known as Towers Perrin - to identify errors and estimate monetary damages to the city.

That report, motions related to it and the court hearings at which they have been discussed have been redacted, sealed or closed to the public.

The city and its attorneys, from the law firm Susman Godfrey, maintain the report by actuary Kim Nicholl of Segal Consulting contains "highly confidential" data about firefighters and is exempted from public disclosure by an order negotiated and agreed to among all those involved with the case, including Towers' attorneys.

Towers' lawyers say the report holds no personal or individual data, only collective analysis of that individual data, and asked a federal judge to unseal the documents and ensure all hearings - and the trial itself, which is scheduled to begin in May - are held in open court.

"If the reports are under seal, so is the heart of the city's case and Towers' defenses," says a recent Towers court filing. "After publicly accusing Towers of wrongdoing for four years, the city now wants to hide the actual substance of its case."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy denied Towers' motion Wednesday, saying the protective order the parties negotiated "contemplated, and specifically provided for, the shielding of expert reports."

Towers' broader appeals for disclosure in the public interest, the judge added, did not convince her that the protective order "should be modified at this time."

The city's lawyers had argued in court filings that the need for confidentiality "outweighs the abstract interest Towers purports to assert the public's behalf."

City Council approved the filing of the lawsuit in July 2014, saying Houston officials' reliance on the advice of Towers Perrin led them to boost firefighters' retirement benefits in 2001 and saddle taxpayers with unaffordable pensions costs as a result.

Rather than increasing slightly, as the projections indicated, the city's pension costs spiked, leading Houston repeatedly to fall short on its annual payments to its pension funds. That, along with a recession, created a debt of more than $8 billion that Turner sought to address by shepherding a reform package through the Legislature this year that cuts benefits, prevents the city from continuing to short its payments, and includes a mechanism to cap the city's future pension costs. Voters signed off on that deal by approving a $1 billion pension bond referendum last month.

'Lay  cards on table'

Following Wednesday's ruling, Turner's spokesman, Alan Bernstein, echoed the arguments of the city's lawyers against unsealing Nicholl's report, saying, "A substantial volume of evidence is unsealed and publicly available."

Geoffrey Harrison, the city's lead outside counsel in the suit, agreed.

"The city publicly has filed an enormous amount of evidence about its claims that Towers committed professional malpractice and negligence," he said. "The court today upheld the confidentiality of one report that contains confidential information about Houston's firefighters that the firefighters fund - not the city - designated as confidential information."

Alex Romain, a Hueston Hennigan attorney representing Towers, dismissed those views. In an interview before the judge's ruling, he stressed that the hundreds of pages of filings that are not sealed do not address the key issues of the case.

"The city has alleged that we made errors. What are those errors? And how do we answer the charges against us? None of the publicly available evidence will tell you," said Romain, who declined to comment Wednesday following the judge's ruling.

The judge's ruling ensures that several motions scheduled to be heard on Jan. 16 - including one by Towers' attorneys to exclude Nicholl's testimony and another seeking to dismiss the case entirely - will be discussed in a closed courtroom, as would, presumably, much or all of the trial itself.

"For that much money, you'd think everybody would have to lay all their cards on the table and say, 'This is where we are,' " City Councilman Michael Kubosh said. "I think we ought to be able to see what went wrong and why we had this much damages. My opinion on the whole thing is that it should be open."

Payments skyrocketed

As for the firefighters pension fund - the source of the data at issue and a participant in the negotiations about what should be sealed - spokesman Joe Gimenez said the fund would be happy to weigh in on whether the expert's report contains private information but has not seen a copy.

Court filings show the city has not agreed to share the report with the firefighters, in part because the fund and the city are engaged in ongoing lawsuits not related to the Towers case.

The city's multibillion-dollar pension mess - which Turner hopes the reform package passed by the Legislature and confirmed by voters this year will erase over time - began with a series of 2001 benefit changes.

Towers actuaries then predicted the changes would not greatly adjust the payment rate to the firefighters or municipal workers funds for many years, but the city's payments to both pensions, as well as the police officers' fund, skyrocketed soon after the changes were approved.

Both Towers reports were commissioned by the employee- and retiree-controlled pension boards, and then-Mayor Lee Brown's administration did not seek second opinions.

That history, and former Mayor Annise Parker's inability to make headway in getting legislative support for the sorts of reforms that Turner negotiated this year, helped lead to the 2014 lawsuit.
Logic puzzles aren't part of the STAAR test, but the bureaucrats at the Texas Education Agency could stand to bone up on a few worksheets worth of practice questions. The agency's latest decision on providing relief to students affected by Hurricane Harvey, but not their school districts, simply doesn't make any sense.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath announced last week that fifth- and eighth-graders in Hurricane Harvey-affected areas who don't pass the state tests will not be forced to repeat the grade level this school year ("State mulls schools' accountability rules in wake of hurricane," Page A6, Friday).

That's good, and Morath should be commended for the decision.

What's bad is that districts within the federal disaster area will still be penalized for students' low performance on STAAR tests.

Kids across the Gulf Coast have had their lives upended by Harvey. It can be hard to focus on homework when families struggle to simply find a new home. Burdening students with the strict consequences of a standardized test this year risks doling out grades where F might as well be the scarlet letter that stands for Flood Victim.

However, Morath hasn't yet extended this temporary exemption to the schools themselves. Giving a break to students, but not schools, doesn't remove the pressure to teach-to-the-test during an already interrupted class schedule. Nor does it eliminate the burden placed on teachers and administrators who struggle to deal with student trauma in Harvey's wake, let alone their own Harvey-related financial and mental health problems.

Morath has said that the TEA is still collecting data and will make a decision about accountability in the spring. He is also pursuing waivers from certain federal accountability requirements.

Schools need these exemptions as soon as they can get them. In districts such as Refugio ISD, every single classroom was damaged by Harvey. Not a single student or teacher escaped the rain and floodwaters.

Here in Houston, HISD plans on rebuilding four Harvey-damaged elementary schools - Braeburn, Scarborough, Kolter and Mitchell. Students spending their days shuffled from flooded homes to temporary schools offer little objective measure of a teacher's skill or campus improvement. State accountability tests are supposed to encourage better education quality. Forcing them on districts reeling from Mother Nature only furthers the perception that the tests are unfair and designed to penalize schools and teachers.

The consequences of poorly administered exams won't end with individual campuses. Entire communities could be wracked by an unfairly assessed grade. When a school fails five years in a row, the state can shutter a whole district. HISD stands on the precipice of a potential state takeover because of failing schools such as Kashmere High School in north Houston. If one of these campuses gets a failing grade - and triggers the cascading consequences - it will be difficult to tell whether teachers and students were unsuccessful at their task or if they were simply doing their best given rising waters, ruined homes and lost jobs.

If the TEA is going to make major changes to HISD, people need to be able to trust that the decision was based on a strict and accurate appraisal.

As we've written before on these pages, Hurricane Harvey will be a test for the TEA: Do these school assessments act as a yardstick to measure schools? Or as a cudgel to punish them?

Commissioner Morath needs to listen to the superintendents, teachers and school personnel who help set their communities right after Harvey and make the correct choice.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, came to Texas this month and continued the Trump administration's distortions about the Southwest border.

Without evidence, Nielsen predicted a new surge of illegal border crossers as a way to promote Trump's call for a border wall and thousands of additional border and immigration agents.

This border paranoia may make for good politics in some circles, but it makes for lousy public policy.

As a candidate and now as president, Trump has portrayed the U.S.-Mexico border as a lawless region that needs to be militarized and sealed off with a wall. The truth on the ground is far different.

The Southwest border is well into the second decade of an impressive decline in the number of illegal crossers apprehended by Border Patrol agents. Border communities, particularly in Texas, have far lower crime rates than similar cities away from the border.

The border could be made even more safe through smart investments in technology and through better deployment of existing resources. Instead, the Trump administration pushes to spend billions on a wall and for hiring 15,000 new border and immigration agents.

U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, who represents more of the border than any other congressman, has described the wall as "a third century approach to solve 21st century problems." He proposes an increased use of sensors, radar, drones and other technologies that would cost a fraction of Trump's border wall.

The average Border Patrol agent currently apprehends fewer than two undocumented immigrants a month, a number than in some sectors drops well below one a month. That suggests the agency could better deploy existing resources and raises questions about what thousands of additional agents would be able to accomplish.

The Border Patrol also has long struggled with recruitment and retention issues, and the Trump administration now plans to pay a private company $300 million to help recruit 5,000 new agents.

The administration is spending this money even though the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general last month said DHS's border and immigration agencies haven't been able to justify the need for the additional agents that Trump ordered hired in an executive order.

The Republican-led Congress has been skeptical of some of Trump's plans, particularly with the border wall. Congressional leaders, especially those from border states, are best positioned to develop a rational policy to further enhance security without wasting billions of dollars in the process.

Border bashing plays well at election time, especially in Republican primaries. But it gets in the way of efforts to truly make the U.S.-Mexico border region both secure and economically robust. It's time for a more reasoned and rational approach to border security.
The Republicans are betting big on a parlay.

In gambling, a parlay is a combination bet that only pays off when every part of the wager wins. So if I bet that the Patriots, Cowboys and Dolphins will win on Sunday, I only collect if all three win. The payoff is much greater than making three individual bets because the odds of picking three winners are worse.

Tax reform is a massive parlay.

Republicans are betting that passage of tax reform will have the desired economic effect, boosting economic growth and wages, with (politically) minimal impact on the deficit. They're also betting that passage will dispel the widespread sense that the GOP-controlled Congress can't get anything done. But the biggest bet is that the expected boost to the economy and the renewed sense of GOP competence will not only make this remarkably unpopular legislation popular, but that a roaring economy will have a huge electoral payoff come the 2018 midterms and beyond.

Odds are good that the policy bet will pay off. If slashing business taxes, switching to a territorial tax system and giving roughly 80 percent of Americans a tax cut doesn't stimulate economic growth, I'd be shocked. I'll also be surprised if the deficit doesn't go up, but the deficit hasn't really moved many voters since Ross Perot ran for president in 1992.

The gamble that voters not already in the GOP column will suddenly see the Republicans as a competent and reliable governing party strikes me as somewhat less plausible. The last year has been more than a little chaotic. And passing tax cuts is part of Republicans' basic job description. The fact that this is the only major legislation they could get through - in an ugly process - may not strike many persuadable voters as proof that the GOP can get other things done.

But the last bet is the real long shot. While I certainly think this legislation will become more popular - it couldn't get less popular, given the at times absurd media coverage - it seems highly unlikely that the GOP will reverse the headwinds it's facing in 2018.

First of all, the economy is doing quite well right now, yet President Trump's popularity remains stuck at all-time lows for any president. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that Democrats have overtaken Republicans on the question of who is better at handling the economy.

Even more revealing, despite the fact that a plurality of voters (40 percent) say Trump has made the economy better, voters still don't like him. "A president is getting credit for the economy improving and not deriving political value from it," Republican pollster Bill McInturff told NBC. "We are watching things we have not seen before in my career."

Trump is at 41 percent approval in the WSJ/NBC poll, which is a few ticks above the Real Clear Politics average, which has him hovering around 38 percent. But the theme is clear across polls and recent elections. The suburban, college-educated cadres that make up much of the reliable GOP base as well as the Republican-leaners who often provide the margin of victory, particularly in midterms, are simply fed up with Trump's drama. Those voters either didn't turn out or voted Democrat in elections in Virginia, Alabama and elsewhere, giving Democrats significant and symbolic victories.

Republicans are gambling that James Carville's old mantra of "it's the economy, stupid" will save them. The problem is that the economy decides the election every single time, except when it doesn't. For instance, the polls told Mitt Romney to run against Barack Obama on the economy. But at the end of the day, voters liked Obama more than Romney.

The irony is that Trump won in 2016 by tapping into the Nixonian insight that social issues - as defined by my old boss Ben Wattenberg in his book with Richard Scammon, "The Real Majority" - often decide elections. The GOP did well in the 2002 midterms by running on terrorism, not the economy.

Even the economy, like deficit, is often a stand-in for complicated attitudes about the larger direction of the country. Trump's indictment of "the establishment" and his focus on immigration and crime were inseparable from his economic message.

The president's party almost always suffers in midterm elections. Maybe we'll get a roaring economy and a newfound confidence in the GOP, but, barring a war, I'll be shocked if the GOP is not shellacked in 2018 if the most salient social issue out there remains Donald Trump.

Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online. Readers can contact him by email at JonahsColumn@aol.com.
Thanks to their dog, a Texas County couple is safe and sound after a fire that destroyed their house early Thursday morning on Vollmar Drive north of Raymondville.

{{tncms-inline alignment=right content=<p>That was such a good dog. If it werent for her, we wouldnt be sitting here right now.</p> id=734f046b-2ef9-4dc2-b0f6-8731fb604b7d style-type=quote title=Quote type=relcontent width=half}}

But after alerting its owners to the danger, the dog perished in the blaze.

Raymondville Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mike Jackson said after the call came in at 3:30 a.m., six trucks and 12 firefighters from his department as well as the Houston Rural and Licking departments responded. The house was owned by Billy and Beverly Driesel, who were asleep inside when their female boxer took action.

Following the catastrophe, the Driesels joined family members at a house just down the road.

Beverly woke me up and said, The house is full of smoke! Billy said. That was such a good dog. If it werent for her, we wouldnt be sitting here right now.

Jackson said the cause of the fire wasnt known, but Billy Driesel said it started on a screened-in back porch. He was almost certain it was electrical in nature.

Thats where the flames were coming from when we got up, he said.

The incident marked the third time in recent weeks that a dog has alerted owners to a house fire.

Its amazing how often that happens, Jackson said. They know whats going on.

That was such a good dog. If it werent for her, we wouldnt be sitting here right now.
An Elk Creek man was injured Wednesday night when the vehicle he was driving struck a tree north of Cabool.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol said Joseph A. Patch, 56, was taken by ambulance to Texas County Memorial Hospital with moderate injuries. The accident was three miles north of Cabool on U.S. 63.

Patch was traveling northbound when his 2002 Dodge 1500 left the roadway. The truck was totaled.

The patrol said Patch was wearing a seat belt.

Cabool Fire and Rescue assisted the patrol at the scene.
Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.
As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to.

After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS!

OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK

The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those.
How to Stop Wasting Your Time on Social Media and Make Magic [Cyber PR]

Social media is often the magic bullet that clears the path to success for many artists, but the alchemy behind that firepower is a mystery to most. Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR has created a system for helping to focus your efforts by identifying and engaging the correct audience.

___________________________

Are you ready to create some magic?

Really, you may be thinking social media = magic?

Yes, magic.

I come into contact with way too many brilliant people with incredible ideas or art that they wish to share with the world and they are scratching their heads wondering why others who dont have half of their track records and expertise have what looks like an endless stream of fabulous things happening, gigs booked and people paying attention. These people have figured out their online worlds, when handled and in your control will attract higher numbers, comments, interactions, accolades, and precious leads who will offer you what you want and all that is magic.

Having an online presence is now non-negotiable if you want to succeed as a business, brand, an artist, or anything else.

Your followers and fans now fully expect you to be present on a consistent and relevant basis.

As a person who operates a marketing firm I see everyday that not having a cohesive social media presence will affect a lot of things: for one, if a millennial (or a busy human being of any age) is in charge of booking you to speak at a conference, play a gig, or is looking to hire you in any capacity for that matter having a subpar or confusing presence is not a way to get the gig.

If page one of Google is not killing it neither are you.

It doesnt matter if youre brilliant, went to a top university, and youve published 10 books, and it doesnt matter if you had coverage in the media in the past. One of my star clients has been on Oprah, The Today Show, in Fortune Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and in hundreds of other national and international publications. But, that was a little before the time when every publication was online, and now  still vital with a huge message to share with the world  she is almost invisible to Google and it costs her tremendously.

My musician clients who are frustrated because they cant get the gigs they used to get are being told by top booking agencies, clubs and tours that they were passed over for the band that had 10,000+ likes on Facebook.

If you are looking to get PR and you think that theres some magical publicist who will be able to get you high profile placements if you do not have a cohesive presence that is consistently fed with strategic content, you are absolutely deluding yourself. From time to time, clients hire me for PR and then lag with their socials during the course of their campaigns and they receive have far fewer results and our clients who have an effective strategy.

I have been told countless times by top editors and writers and journalists that they have decided to pass on my clients because their social numbers are just not there.

Is this fair?

No its not.

Is this going to keep happening?

Yes it is.

So its time to get in control.

If these reasons alone have not convinced you to use social media understand that you are leaving the proverbial bread crumb trail straight to you for the rest of your days so, having a relevant thoughtful social media presence are the keys to your future kingdom.

If you dont leave your own bread crumb trail others will leave it for you and this can be dangerous. Many have come to me with a high ranking review that a crazy client or competitor wrote that is hurting their business, or a court case that they were named in that went on public record. All of these first page Google results can sink to pages very few will find if you tune up.

OK  Ill get off my soapbox now. If you are not convinced, theres nothing that I can probably say or write at this point.

I love systems  they have helped me, my clients, and readers of my books to streamline and get seen.

And so, Im thrilled to announce my new book Social Media Tune Up.

It is my system for helping you identify and engage the correct audience and it will stop you from faffing around trying to connect with everyone.

Not Everyone is important online  only the right people are.

The book then gives you an overview of how to lay a solid foundation online, which still starts with your website.

Then, it takes you through all of the social platforms  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and on to Newsletters.

There is a specific check sheet designed for each platform that will help you hone in and focus on the parts you need to tune up.

If youre already rocking Twitter skip that section, if youve already got a Facebook strategy down cold skip that too! Focus on the areas where you struggle the most and use this book as a guide to help you and in the end you will have a much more cohesive strategy.

Lets get tuned up! (In order to do so you will need to purchase my BRAND NEW BOOK!

Share on:
Indie Band The Cheap Thrills On The Importance Of Building Hype

Here Liverpool garage/psych band The Cheap Thrills discuss the challenge of achieving success as an independent band, their reaction to being signed to End Of The Trail Records, and where they're headed next.

_________________________

Guest post from the ReverbNation Blog

The Cheap Thrills are a garage/psych pop band from Liverpool, UK. Their sound is a combination of garage bands from the sixties and a resurgence of bands from the 2000s.

Its that same sound that caught the attention of End Of The Trail Records, who they signed to after submitting to one of our opportunities. According to the label, what attracted them to the band were their songs.

Pop psych at its best we think. At the time of writing they have just had their new single played on BBC Radio 6 by the mighty Steve Lamacq. Which is a great thing for any band in the UK!!!

Check out this interview with The Cheap Thrills where they share the secret to getting promoters to book you, how to build up hype around your band, and whats up next for them.

Tell us a bit about your band. How did you form, how long have you been together, what kind of music do you play, etc.

We are The Cheap Thrills. We are an indie pop band from Orrell Park in Liverpool. We aim to fill your ears with catchy hooks and melodies. We have been a band for over 7 years now, but we have been friends much longer. We all went to Primary School together.

Without the help of a big team what has been the biggest struggle for you as a DIY artist?

Being ignored has got to be one of the biggest struggles as a DIY artist. We have sent countless emails off to people who we would like to work with, whether it be a blog, promoter, or another industry person and received no reply off them. Its disheartening and it feels like youre banging your head against a brick wall at times, but you have to remember no one owes you anything and you have to prove yourself to be heard through the noise. It took us a while to recognise this and we decided to stop asking promoters for shows and starting putting on our own gigs and doing everything ourselves. Youll still find us taking money on the door, booking bands, and creating the artwork for our gigs. After our own shows selling out, promoters are now emailing us asking us to play their night!

How did you hear about ReverbNation and our opportunities for labels and artists? Had you heard of End Of The Trail Records before this opportunity?

We saw the online application so we went for it. Yes, we had heard of End Of The Trail before. Theyve done great work developing artists like ourselves in the past and it was brilliant to be asked to work with them.

What was the submission process like? What was your reaction when you found out that you were picked for this opportunity?

Very easy. Wed advise other bands to do the same! We were all really happy as this was a huge step forward for the band. I think there was also a sense of relief that we finally had someone in our corner to help take the pressure off all other tasks so we an focus on writing music. However, the champagne is still on the shelf and hasnt been opened yet as we know the hard work we have ahead of us. I think thats getting opened after we finish recording our first album.

What are you hoping to achieve with End Of The Trail Records? What are your goals?

We want people to hear our music. We genuinely believe our music is good enough to be on national radio. We would also love to play as many shows as possible and release an album.

Any advice for new musicians just starting out? How do you get your name out there, find new fans, keep fans engaged, get noticed by labels etc?

If we were to start the band again with the experience and knowledge we have now. I would advise ourselves not to release music too early. Write and rehearse as much as you can and record them as demos to build up a back catalogue. Gig as much as you can to gain experience and build up a bit of hype around the band in your hometown. Then, release your best tune.

Whats up next for The Cheap Thrills?

We have studio time booked in to record our release at Parr Street Studios over the Christmas period. Then we play a sold out show in Liverpools famous Cavern Club on the 20th of December. We will finish off 2017 with a special Christmas show at The Castle Hotel Manchester 23rd December.

Share on:
During public comment, the board thanked resident Jeffrey Lefebvre for his 25-year involvement in youth sports.

Adams Has Permission to Demolish Commercial Street Building



Housing court has granted the town the right to tear down a dilapidated structure on Commercial Street.

ADAMS, Mass.  Town Counsel Edmund St. John III said housing court has given the town permission to demolish the 50 Commercial St. building.

St. John told the Selectmen in his report Wednesday that he was recently in housing court and he anticipates receiving an order from the judge to proceed in demolishing the dangerous dilapidated building.

"Today the judge issued an order that the building be demolished, and they will be sending me the written order in the next couple of days," St. John said.

The Selectmen last month ordered owner Charles Ransford to raze the building because it was a direct danger to the public and on the verge of collapsing. Ransford was given 30 days to tear down the building but has failed to do this.

St. John said Ransford did show up in court to ask for more time. He said he had a potential buyer but was not given an extension by the judge.

"He said he had someone willing to buy the property and fix it up, but he had absolutely nothing of substance by the way of a concrete plan or even the identity of that person," he said. "The judge was not convinced."

In other business, the town will hold a special town meeting in mid to late February to clean up some outstanding items including a marijuana establishment bylaw.

"There are a number of small housekeeping types of things that we can address at special town meeting," interim Town Administrator Donna Cesan said. "We also have that marijuana bylaw to address."

Earlier this week, the Planning Board held a public hearing and buttoned up its new bylaw that would only allow a retail establishment by special permit in the downtown if it is 250 feet away from places where children regularly congregate.

Chairman John Duval said a specific date will be set in the new year.

In Cesan's report, she said she hopes to be able to award the Hoosac Valley Tourist Train Passenger Platform project to a contractor in the next few weeks after project designer HDR has reviewed the three bids.

"We are excited, and as you know we have bid this out previously and it is good to have three solid bids this time and this project will be going forward," Cesan said.

She added that once awarded, the contractor will mobilize in the winter months in hopes of completing the platform before Memorial Day weekend when the Berkshire Scenic Railway is in full operation.

Police Chief Richard Tarsa said the department recently emptied its prescription medicine kiosk and disposed of more than 300 pounds. He said the grand total for the year is more than 600 pounds.

"Its better to have them destroyed than out on the streets," he said,
UN Defies US, Passes Jerusalem Resolution

The Fellowship | December 21, 2017 NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 21: The voting results are displayed on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly in which the United States declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was declared "null and void" on December 21, 2017 in New York City. The vote, 128-9, at the United Nations concerned Washington's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocate its embassy there. The Trump administration has threatened to take action against any country that votes against the United States decision to move its embassy. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The United Nations General Assembly continued its long-standing bias against Israel today, voting to condemn the recent American recognition of Jerusalem as the Jewish states capital. The Times of Israels Raphael Ahren reports that 128 nations voted for the motion, 35 abstained, and only 9  including the U.S. and Israel  opposed it:

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday defied warnings from the United States and overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Trump administrations recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital and calling on countries not to move their diplomatic missions to the city.

A total of 128 countries voted in favor of the text, defying the threats  that were forcefully reiterated by US envoy Nikki Haley  to cut aid to countries who oppose the motion.

Nine countries  the US, Israel, Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Honduras  voted against the resolution.

There were 35 abstentions, including a number of countries who had been widely expected to support the move, such as Colombia, Mexico, Malawi and Rwanda.

By abstaining, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic broke European Union consensus on the vote. The EU had previously vehemently rejected any attempt to change Jerusalems status in the absence of a final peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians

Ahren also reports that Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the U.N., defended her nations stand for Israel, a stance being supported on social media by #takingnames:

The decision does not prejudge any final status issues, including Jerusalems boundaries. The decision does not preclude a two-state solution, if the parties agree to that, she said. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts. Rather, the presidents decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy.

The US will move its embassy to Jerusalem, Haley said. Thats what the American people want us to do. And its the right thing to do. No vote at the UN will make any difference on the American decision, she declared. But this vote will be remembered, she vowed, when America is being asked once again to make the single-largest contribution to the UN budget or when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
US Under Fire for Recognizing Jerusalem

The Fellowship | December 21, 2017 US Under Fire for Recognizing Jerusalem

Recently, President Trump made a historic move by announcing that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israels capital. Now, the U.N. is again showing its anti-Israel bias by voting on a resolution criticizing the U.S. decision. The vote is scheduled to take place today, December 21.



All Christians and Jews who love Israel and know that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people should pray that the U.N. will vote down this one-sided, hateful resolution. The U.N.s long history of anti-Israel bias is no match for the power of God and the prayers of those who love His people.



Let us also pray that peace will reign throughout the region, that violence will subside, and that Israels people and all who defend them will be protected. Thank you friends  may you be blessed as you have blessed Gods people, Israel.
Philippine Seven Corporation President and CEO, Jose Victor Paterno (left) and Chevron Philippines Inc. Country Chairman, Louie Zhang (right) as they celebrate the 7-Eleven 100th store opening in Aseana Square.

Game-changing drive

Demonstrating eight years of shared commitment and solid partnership, Philippine Seven Corporation (PSC), the exclusive licensor of global convenience store chain giant 7-Eleven, and Chevron Philippines, Inc. (CPI), the marketer of the Caltex fuel brand, celebrated the recent landmark opening of the 100th 7-Eleven-Caltex store at the Aseana Square along Macapagal Avenue in Pasay City.

The newly opened C-store, which brings to 2,209 the total number of 7-Eleven stores in the country, is expected to further accelerate the aligned growth prospects of PSC and CPI for the coming years. Both PSC and CPI vowed to continue innovative efforts to deliver products and convenient services that will enhance overall customer experience.

Raising the bar of convenience

In his welcome speech, Louie Zhang, the new Country Chairman and General Manager for Philippine Products of CPI, said he is pleased to witness the milestone occasion that reflected the successful and enduring collaboration between the two leading enterprises.

We thank our partners for making this successful opening happen. This is really something important for us. We are committed to making this partnership stronger. Our eight years of partnership has built success and confidence and will continue to inspire us to bring this business to even greater heights. We are looking forward to seeing more joint endeavours, with this milestone serving as a foundation for more successful projects ahead., Zhang said.

For his part, Jose Victor Paterno, President and CEO of PSC, congratulated the team-up of PSC and CPI, acknowledging how it revolutionized the brand of convenience in the country while strategically leveraging the marketing and retail strengths of both organizations. He said the two organizations continue to share a commitment to serve and provide services for customers  from everyday passers-by to motorists in the metro as well as in key provinces and cities in the country.

In other countries such as the US, convenience and fuel go side by side. In the Philippines, while car ownership is still an emerging market, we see this increasing segment as a factor that will help accelerate our expansion, more store openings together with Chevron, said Paterno.

The creation of the 7-Eleven-Caltex store format, according to Paterno, has spawned greater convenience features that allow consumers access to round-the-clock services and grab-and-go food, grocery supplies and fuel refilling --- all in one strategic location.

The value-added offering for customers and motorists, which 7-Eleven stores and Caltex refilling stations have served dutifully in the past eight years, has and still is dynamically reshaping the landscape of modern retail convenience in the Philippines. We are proud to be long-standing partners in the industry. As the pioneers of this concept, we are looking forward to deliver more products, services and exciting deals to our loyal patrons, he said.

Maximizing income potentials

Francis Medina, PSC Business Development Unit Head, lauded the successful alliance between the two industry leaders. Whats unique with the partnership is its franchising approach. The retailers from Caltex were given the first option to franchise. If the retailers are not keen about the option, we (PSC) can operate it as a company-owned store or award it to another franchisee. It ushered a great many advantages. Also, it brought new and diversified customers for both sides. By offering the option to operate a C-store on the same site as a gasoline station, not only did the strategy enhance the standards of convenience but also maximized the income generation for both.

In line with its 2017 expansion target, Medina revealed that the company will continue to scale up its C-store network with the opening of 25 more 7-Eleven-Caltex branches in the provinces, specifically in the Visayas and Mindanao. We are well poised to meet our growth goals as we end 2017, he shared.

These new territories, according to him, will further cement 7-Elevens dominant presence across the country. The company, which is deeply motivated by this milestone along with the momentum that came about from other significant ventures in the recent months, is positively looking to add C-stores. The new territories that will open up hopefully by next year include Region 2, Mindoro (Calapan) and Tacloban (Ormoc), said Medina.

PSC currently operates 1,031 corporate stores and 1,178 franchise outlets. For franchising inquiry, call 0917-9935059 and 0935-3236431 (Visayas); (02) 7269968, 0920-9508651, 0917-8711686 (Luzon) or email franchising@7-eleven.com.ph or visit www.7-eleven.com.ph.
Company cites reputational and revenue impact of a Binding Operational Directive based on media reports, rumor and unsubstantiated allegations

Kaspersky Lab announced today that it is seeking an appeal in federal court of U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) decision on Binding Operational Directive 17-01 banning the use of the companys products in federal agencies.

Kaspersky Lab has filed an appeal under the Administrative Procedure Act to enforce its constitutional due process rights and challenge the Binding Operational Directive prohibiting the use of the companys products and solutions by U.S. government agencies. The company asserts that the DHSs decision is unconstitutional and relied on subjective, non-technical public sources such as uncorroborated and often anonymously sourced media reports, related claims, and rumors. Furthermore, DHS has failed to provide the company adequate due process to rebut the unsubstantiated allegations underlying the Directive and has not provided any evidence of wrongdoing by the company.

The willingness of the company to cooperate with DHSs review has been well documented. Given the companys longstanding commitment to transparency, the trustworthy development of its technologies and services, and cooperation with governments and the IT security industry worldwide to combat cyber threats, Kaspersky Lab reached out to DHS in mid-July, offering to provide any information or assistance concerning the company, its operations, or its products. In mid-August, DHS confirmed receipt of the companys letter, appreciating the offer to provide information and expressing interest in future communications with Kaspersky Lab regarding the matter. However, the next communication from DHS to Kaspersky Lab was notification regarding the issuance of Binding Operational Directive 17-01 on September 13, 2017.

As a result, DHSs actions have caused undue damage to both the companys reputation in the IT security industry and its sales in the U.S. It has unfairly called into question Kaspersky Labs fundamental principles of protecting its customers and combatting cyber threats, regardless of their origin or purpose. In filing this appeal, Kaspersky Lab hopes to protect its due process rights under the U.S. Constitution and federal law and repair the harm caused to its commercial operations, its U.S.-based employees, and its U.S.-based business partners.

Because Kaspersky Lab has not been provided a fair opportunity in regards to the allegations and no technical evidence has been produced to validate DHSs actions, it is in the companys interests to defend itself in this matter. Regardless of the DHS decision, we will continue to do what really matters: make the world safer from cybercrime, said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab.

As evidence of its commitment to trust, transparency, and accountability, Kaspersky Lab launched its Global Transparency Initiative on October 23, 2017. This Initiative will include an independent review of the companys source code, software updates and threat detection rules; an independent review of internal processes to verify the integrity of the companys solutions and processes; three transparency centers by 2020, in Asia, Europe and the U.S.; and increased bug bounty rewards up to $100k per discovered vulnerability in Kaspersky Lab products.
Its Christmas season once again and to give early treat to Mirage and Mirage G4 customers, Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp. (MMPC) recently launched the Mitsubishi Mirage and Mirage G4 Year-End Raffle Promo. A Php 10,000 worth gift certificates from Digital Walker will be raffled-off to lucky customers who will purchase a brand new Mitsubishi Mirage or Mirage G4 from October 11, 2017 to December 29, 2017 in any authorized Mitsubishi Motors dealerships in the Philippines. There will be 3 raffle draws (October purchase, November purchase, December purchase). A total of 1,500 customers will bring home the Php 10,000 Digital Walker gift certificates. The Digital Walker gift certificates may be used for purchases in Digital Walker and Beyond the Box stores.

MMPCs partner in this promo, Digital Walker, is the countrys largest retailer of premium gadgets and accessories. They offer the widest selection of consumer technology products that range from smartphones, tablets, cameras, cases, speakers, headphones, earphones and many more products from different brands.

MMPC will conduct the raffle draw with the supervision of a Department of Trade and Industrys representative in November and December 2017, and January 2018 for the last batch of winners. An individual can only win once per vehicle purchased. Winners will be notified via registered mail and an MMPC representative will call and send e-mail informing that customer that he/she won in the raffle.

With the Mirage and Mirage G4 purchase, you will not only get a great car, but you will also get a chance to win exclusive raffle prize! Contact your nearest dealership for more promo details.




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!
Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Asylum seeker numbers in Europe could rise dramatically due to climate change, even in optimistic warming scenarios, according to new research.

Researchers at Columbia University found a worst-case scenario for climate change could increase the number of asylum seekers in EU countries in 2100 by as much as three times the number seen at the beginning of the century.

The migrant crisis, which came to the worlds attention in 2015, saw increasing numbers of people seeking asylum in Europe.

Many people leave their home countries owing to environmental changes like drought, and such changes are often exacerbated by global warming.

Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Show all 10 1 /10 Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Habib, 22, from Algeria with his friends on an abandoned railway wagon. They boarded a freight train in an effort to cross the Greek-Macedonian border without documents. They were arrested in Macedonia and returned back to Greece Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future A migrant jumps on a freight train in an effort to cross the Greek-Macedonian border in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future An Algerian migrant has a picture of fellow migrants in Macedonia. According to the migrant, his mobile phone was broken by Macedonian police when he was arrested and returned to Greece Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Algerian migrants are seen on a freight train before its departure in the northern city of Thessaloniki Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Anise, 21, an English teacher from Algeria, rests in an abandoned railway wagon used as a shelter by stranded migrants in Thessaloniki Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Algerian migrants lay on the railway tracks as they wait for a freight train to depart Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future An Algerian holds up his injured hand. He was injured in his effort to jump on a freight train Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future Migrants walk between railway wagons in the northern city of Thessaloniki Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future An Algerian smoking inside an abandoned railway wagon used as a shelter by stranded migrants Reuters Migrants ride railroads to seek better future A migrant with his belongings waiting for a freight train to depart Reuters

Europe is already conflicted about how many refugees to admit, said Professor Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University who co-authored the new study, which was published in the journal Science.

He noted that though the direct effects of climate change tend to be felt more in poorer countries in hotter regions, Europe will feel the indirect effects as a result of asylum seekers fleeing those countries.

The study by Professor Schlenker and his colleague Anouch Missirian specifically suggested the less suitable a countrys temperature was for growing crops, the more likely its inhabitants were to migrate.

This meant migration might be particularly pronounced in countries that already have hot climates.

The researchers used past data on weather variations around the world and asylum seekers in Europe to estimate how future climate change will impact the flow of refugees.

The researchers looked at how weather variations in 103 source countries for refugees  ranging from Bangladesh to Eritrea  compared to asylum applications to the EU.

Between 2000 and 2014, there was an average of 351,000 asylum applications per year from people in the countries studied.

Recommended Natural disasters increasingly linked to climate change

The researchers then used projections of future warming combined with asylum application data to estimate changes in the flow of migrants over the course of the century.

They found that even under a slow warming scenario, in which future greenhouse gas emissions go down, asylum applications to the EU could increase by as much as 28 per cent by 2100  an additional 98,000 asylum applications per year.

Under a fast-warming scenario, in which emissions continue to increase, the researchers predicted an extra 660,000 applications per year, amounting to triple the number at the beginning of the century.

It is often argued that climate change is exacerbating existing threats to society as well as generating new ones, said Dr Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved with the study.

This study provides compelling evidence linking past asylum applications received by EU member states to the climate of the country of origin, she said.

Though Professor Schlenker emphasises that there are many factors involved in migration and asylum seeker applications, this work indicates the importance of strategies to reduce climate change.

Specifically, his analysis indicates that the pressures associated with a large influx of asylum seekers could be alleviated if nations work to limit global warming to below 2C, as per the Paris climate agreement.

If you stay within the 2C increase, the increased flow is not as large, he said.

There has been significant backlash in many European countries to the influx of migrants in recent years.

Though nations like Germany have taken in significant numbers of asylum seekers, the unprecedented numbers of people making applications mean nations have often been unprepared for the situation.

Professor Schlenker suggested this kind of work could help develop an early warning system to help prepare for influxes of people.

We will need to build new institutions and systems to manage this steady flow of asylum seekers, said Professor Solomon Hsiang, a researcher working in this field at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in this study.

Professor Hsiang described these findings as an incredibly important wake-up call.

As we have seen from recent experience in Europe, there are tremendous costs, both for refugees and their hosts, when we are caught flat footed, he said.

We should plan ahead and prepare.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

As tension with North Korea continues, the French-Tunisian artist known as eL Seed has unveiled artwork calling for unity at the demilitarized zone dividing the Korean Peninsula.

Installation of the artwork, dubbed "The Bridge," began in November after being commissioned by the Gyeonggi Museum of Art in Ansan, South Korea. It is made up of 43 aluminum laser-cut panels that together form an intricate Arabic calligraphy, spelling out a poem by Kim Sowol, an early modern poet who lived in what is now North Korea.

"I believe that artwork can truly unite and cut through divisions," eL Seed said in a statement. "For me, this artwork is truly symbolic."

As an artist, eL Seed was first inspired to produce large public works in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. He created a number of high-profile works based around Arabic calligraphy that he installed in the Middle East and later Europe and South America.

Among his best known works is a sprawling mural that he installed last year on a number of buildings in Cairo. That artwork paid homage to the Egyptian capital's famed garbage collectors, quoting a third-century Coptic Christian bishop who had said, "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."

Recommended North Korean soldier shot as he tries to defect to South

Attempts to build an artwork devoted to unity in one of the world's most divisive areas - the Korean Peninsula - ran into some hurdles, however. The original plan for "The Bridge" called for an actual bridge-like sculptural work that would curve upward to a height of 65 feet, but stop, dangling, at the midway point. It would remain unfinished until another part could be built in North Korea - a symbol of the hopes for reunification.

The South Korean military had other ideas, however, telling eL Seed that the artwork could not be higher than the 10-foot-tall fence nearby, so as to not become a military target. Initial plans to make the artwork blue were also shelved for fear of attracting too much attention from North Korea. "That's why I made it with a mirror finishing," eL Seed said in an email. "So it blends in with the environment."

The artwork installed along a DMZ fence in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. (TJ Choe)

It took several weeks to produce the work and then a few days to install it. The result is now installed permanently in Gyeonggi Province, clearly visible from the nearby North Korean observatory, eL Seed said. "What is ironic on this whole adventure is that, we installed the art piece while Donald Trump was visiting South Korea," eL Seed added. "It wasn't on purpose at all. Such a coincidence."

EL Seed said that, although the artwork was installed in November, he had first traveled to South Korea in June to get a feel for the DMZ and the area around it. "My perception got twisted totally," he explained, adding that he was able to meet with families divided by the rift between the two Koreas. "One 90-years-old woman, Kim Jae Heum, was married with a man from North Korea who could never go back there," he said. "He left his wife and kids there and never heard from them anymore."

The artist was also able to meet with underprivileged children from all over South Korea through a workshop with the conglomerate CJ Organization. "I was surprised and intrigued that the separation was still a subject that younger generations would relate to even after 60 years," eL Seed said.

Despite the fraught geography, the DMZ has seen a number of art installations nearby in the past, including the Real DMZ Project, which was launched in 2012. It has also become a major tourist attraction for visitors to South Korea, with groups allowed to tour a number of sites of political and historical importance along the DMZ.

Even so, there have been moments of high tension along the border between North Korea and the South recently. Last month, a North Korean defector made a daring dash across the DMZ in a bid to escape from the country: The former soldier, identified only by his surname, Oh, was shot at least five times during his dash to freedom. He is currently making a good recovery.

In the short term, at least, the artwork is unlikely to change the situation much.

"I expect most North Koreans won't hear about it," said Andray Abrahamian, a visiting scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, noting that with current tensions it would not fit into North Korea's domestic propaganda.

However, eL Seed said he hopes soon he will be able to install a corresponding artwork on the North Korean side - something Abrahamian said he thought might appeal to Pyongyang officials because of the "concrete, non-abstract nature" of the work.

EL Seed said he hopes that Kim's poem, written in the style of a romantic folk song before the division of Korea, can offer hope to those on both sides of the border.

"The words are the words of a 'North Korean' (Kim passed away before Korea split, but he is originally from the North) facing South Korea," eL Seed said. "It was initiated by South Koreans but if you look at the art piece you are facing North Korea. This project is the beginning of a conversation, and I am happy that I am one of the actors who are initiating it."

In English, the poem reads:

"You may remember, unable to forget:

yet live a lifetime, remember or forget,

For you will have a day when you will come to forget.

You may remember, unable to forget:

Let your years flow by, remember or forget,

For once in a while, you will forget.

On the other hand it may be:

'How could you forget

What you can never forget?"

 Washington Post
Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Sketches of Meghan Markles wedding dress designs have been revealed.

On November 27, Kensington Palace announced the engagement of Prince Harry to actress and activist Meghan Markle.

It has since been announced that theyre going to tie the knot on May 19 next year at St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Excitement around the royal wedding has been growing around the world, with people latching onto every minute detail that they can find.

Today Kensington Palace released official engagement photos of the happy couple taken by photographer Alexi Lubomirski at Frogmore House Windsor.

There is now speculation that a fashion designer has been chosen to design Markles wedding dress.

Inbal Dror

Inbal Dror, an Israeli haute couture fashion brand, has been contacted by the palace to produce designs for Markles wedding dress.

Dror has designed gowns for a number of celebrities, with Beyonce wearing one of the designs at the Grammys in 2016.

Dror is renowned for her beautiful embroidery and silhouetted figures.

Inbal Dror

Since images of Drors sketches were leaked to TMZ, the brands vice president of marketing Yehuda Katzman sent them to The Independent directly.

Each of the three designs features stunning lacework fit for a bride.

Two of the sketches even include a personal note from the designer herself, writing: For Meghan Markle with love.

Inbal Dror

In a 2015 interview with Brides magazine, Dror spoke about the way in which she works with her clients.

I treat all my brides with the same care and attention, she said. Every bride is a celebrity.

A wedding is such a significant event in a womans life, and its how she feels wearing the dress that emphasises her features, and can make her feel like the queen of the night!
Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

An aspiring model has become the first Miss Maine pageant contestant to wear a hijab on stage.

Hamdia Ahmed was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya and hopes to be scouted by a modelling agent.

She now lives in the US and studies political science at the University of Southern Maine.

The young beauty took part in the annual competition wearing two outfits, both of which were paired with a hijab.

In one of the two photos that she uploaded to Twitter, Ahmed can be seen wearing a long-sleeved gold gown paired with a sparkly pink hijab for the eveningwear segment.

In the second, which she presumably wore for the swimsuit portion of the contest, Ahmed donned a pink and black burkini.

According to Ahmeds Twitter post, which has been liked 7,400 times, the clothes were provided by Modanisa, a reputable fashion e-commerce brand aimed at Muslim women.

Despite not winning first prize - which was awarded to 22-year-old army national guard sergeant Marina Gray - Ahmed was proud to have simply taken part, writing on Twitter: I competed in Miss Maine as the first Muslim girl with a Hijab. I slayed my hijab.

Speaking to The Independent, Ahmed explained that she chose to compete "because representation is important".

"I didn't take the crown, but it was an amazing experience.

"I want to inspire other girls to feel beautiful, confident and follow their dreams no matter where they're from."

The pageant took place in the Holiday Inn in Portland on 27 November.

All contestants were between the ages of 18 and 28.

According to the pageants website, judges spend time with each of the contestants to get a sense of their talents, goals and ambitions.

This forms a crucial part of their judging criteria, in which they assess their poise, charm, confidence and communication skills.

In the swimsuit section, the judges look for physical fitness, beauty and self-confidence.

In the eveningwear section, they examine each delegates sense of style, as they choose the gowns themselves.

The idea is that whoever wins the pageant becomes a spokesperson for community service programmes and local charities while inspiring confidence and poise in young women.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

It has been the biggest savings shake-up in a generation, and a very long time coming.

Way back in 2005  in response to dire levels of retirement saving  the Pensions Commission recommended the launch of a workplace pension that would automatically set aside a proportion of workers salaries, topped up by both employer and government contributions, to help pay for life after work.

It has taken five years to get the full range of UK employers involved, from the global businesses employing thousands to the micro businesses with the weight of our economy on their shoulders.

The effect has been literally life-changing. Around nine million more people are now saving for old age. The number of pensioners living in poverty has dropped from 40 per cent in the 1980s to 14 per cent by 2015.

By the end of this decade, an extra 20bn will be set aside to pay for retirement thanks to the workplace pension.

The latest review of the scheme has now recommended changes to draw more of us into automatic retirement saving, such as lowing the age of enrolment to 18 and removing the lower earnings threshold.

But as the dust has settles over the initial rollout, experts are warning that the headline success figures dont tell the real story.

Missed opportunities

Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, warns that several important opportunities to make real differences to peoples old age have been missed.

The Government has stopped short of making auto-enrolment the social norm for every single UK employee. Those earning less than 10,000 will still need to make an active decision about whether they wish to opt in to their workplace pension scheme and benefit from an employer contribution, she says.

Removing the earnings trigger altogether would have treated them like any other employee.

The automatic right to an employer contribution stops as soon as an employee reaches State Pension Age, as they have to opt in. As many people are enjoying longer working lives, this is a missed opportunity to remove the upper age barrier, she believes.

Backing out

Meanwhile, if employees opt out of pension saving, or chose to pay a lower contribution than the statutory minimum, they lose the right to an employer contribution, effectively taking a pay cut.

Opt-out rates dont tell the full story, Smith adds. Cessation rates, where employees pay pension contributions then leave their scheme are almost double the 9 per cent opt-out rate at 16 per cent, peaking at one to three months after being auto-enrolled. Too many employees are building up micro pension pots.

And the greatest omission of them all is a forward looking plan setting out higher auto-enrolment contribution rates. Despite plans to make more earnings pensionable 8 per cent, this still wont be enough for most employees to build up an adequate retirement income.

Elsewhere, there are still little more than promises to review the plight of self-employed workers, now accounting for 15 per cent of the entire British workforce, who have had no option but to watch lucrative savings incentives pass them by.

Falling through the gap

There are some great ideas in this review, including starting pension saving at age 18 and making sure that every pound that you earn is pensionable. But the proposed pace of change is shockingly lethargic, warns Steve Webb, former pensions minister and Director of Policy at Royal London.

Talking about having reforms in place by the mid 2020s risks leaving a whole generation of workers behind.

"Those who never got to join a final salary pension and who have only recently come into pensions through automatic enrolment need urgent action to help them build up a decent pension pot. This pedestrian pace of reform risks creating a lost generation of people in their late forties and fifties who will simply be unable to afford to retire.

Then what?

Arguably the biggest gap is what happens at retirement, adds Stephen Lowe, group communications director of Just Group.

As other countries such as Australia have discovered, you can put in place policies to get workers saving but you also need to encourage them to make good decisions about what to do with those savings.

The DWPs analysis considers life journeys and the impact on pensions of events such as marriage or divorce, having children, suffering health problems or bereavement. It doesnt include retirement, so is really only a working life journey.

At some point that needs to be addressed, because there is mounting evidence that just because people have built up a pension, that doesnt mean they know what to do with it.

Using the same auto-enrolment principles to default people into receiving pension retirement guidance at a key time in life would be a much more coherent approach than the current situation, which basically seeks to use cleverly designed policy nudges to build up a pension then encourages a total free for all from age 55.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Talking about the special relationship the UK supposedly has with the US in front of workers at Bombardiers factory in Northern Ireland is, I would imagine, a recipe for rapid hospitalisation right now.

This morning, the US Commerce Department, having investigated the financing of the Canadian companys C series jet, has confirmed its view that the plane was in receipt of subsidies from the Canadian and UK Governments.

As such, it has imposed a tariff of 292 per cent on sales to US carriers. That is a few percentage points less than its original proposal, but really, were splitting hairs here.

With the cost having trebled, the C Series is set to remain in the hanger, and US carriers who had ordered it will look elsewhere, probably in the direction of the US based Boeing, which made the initial complaint.

Theres still the lesser known US International Trade Commission to get through, the final verdict of which is expected next year. But given these agencies have taken their lead from the tone at the top, thats a formality.

More than 1,000 workers in the province will now be wondering whether theyll be able to afford Christmas this time next year, with Theresa Mays frantic phone calls to the Oval Office having achieved precisely nothing. Ditto the pow wows with Robert Woody Wood Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets currently serving as Americas Ambassador to the Court of St James, as they like to put it.

Now you know why Pippa Malmgren, the American advising the UK on trade, has said that Mr Trump is hostile to it and why the big and exciting deal the Pres has spoken of gets only fantasists excited

It is just about possible to see this as doing the UK as a whole a favour, at least if youre of the view that Brexit is about the stupidest thing this country has done since... Actually it's hard to come up with something to compare it with.

Yes this is just one specific instance, involving Canada as well as the UK, and no were not yet out of the EU.

But it still helps to nail a number of myths peddled by the Leave side. It shows that America cannot be relied upon to stick by Britain in its hour of need, and certainly not if so doing conflicts with the interests of American corporations. It clearly demonstrates that international trade is not simple. It is complicated and messy and governed by naked self interest. And it makes it quite clear that the British view of free trade will not suddenly be universally adopted if negotiators would just spend a few minutes listening to Boris Johnson and his friends waffling on about it.

Is this in time for the Government to respond to shifting public opinion as regards Brexit, and the evidence of recent polling?

No, probably not. This is just one deal, after all. And its about Canada too. And it's happened with us still in the EU. And we have Liam Stumbledore Fox with his magic wand in the Department for International Trade.

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.

With a dynamic and skilful negotiator like him on our side things will soon look very different.

All hail Britannia!

Oh, by the way, Philip Hammond, would you mind chucking some of the 3bn held back to cover us against Brexit going wrong in the direction for the Democratic Unionist Party to help compensate if those jobs go? That way we can all keep our offices for a couple of years longer. Thanks awfully.


For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

21 December - North Korea is being investigated for possible involvement in a massive cyber-attack on a South Korean currency exchange this week.

The Youbit exchange shut down and collapsed into bankruptcy on Tuesday after hackers stole 17 per cent of its assets.

Youbit was also hit by an attack in April that local media have linked to North Korean hackers.

Police investigators and the Korea Internet and Security Agency are viewing the case as an extension of the April attack, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the investigation. Authorities said they are open to all other possibilities besides the Pyongyang regime, the person said on Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that investigators believed the Youbit attack bore the hallmarks of a North Korean hack.

The price of bitcoin fell from close to $19,000 to around $16,300 on Tuesday after news of the security breach broke.

North Korea has built up an army of hackers, thought to be 1,700-strong. They are suspected of carrying out a range of attacks, including the "WannaCry" malware attack that affected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world and devastated NHS IT systems in May.

The US publicly blamed North Korea for WannaCry earlier this week, while British government ministers have said that it is "all but certain" North Korea was responsible.

The Youbit hack is the latest security breach to hit bitcoin and other cryptocurrency exchanges.

Last week, almost $64 million of bitcoin was stolen by hackers who broke into the NiceHash marketplace in Slovenia.

That followed a $31m theft of rival cryptocurrency tether, last month.

20 December - Cryptocurrency dealer Youbit became a casualty of hackers.

The South Korean exchange will close and enter bankruptcy proceedings after a cyberattack at about 4:35 am local time, its owner, Yapian, said on Tuesday in a statement. About 17 per cent of total assets were lost. The heist follows a previous accident in April, after which Yapian said it encouraged clients to keep their tokens in a safer form.

South Korea 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.

Recommended Bitcoin price surge leads to new computer hacking fears

The craze has spread so far that, in Korea, bitcoin is trading at a premium over prevailing international rates.

There were no additional losses, as other coins were in the cold wallet, Yapian said. While it suspended coin and cash deposit and withdrawals as of 2 pm local time, it said about 75 percent of assets could be safely withdrawn by clients.

South Korea finance ministry official Ko Kwanghee said in telephone interview Wednesday that the government is not taking any countermeasures, noting regulators warnings over such speculation.

A hot wallet is an internet-connected account that potentially can be accessed by hackers. Thats why many people keep their cryptocurrency holdings in cold wallets  typically, physical devices disconnected from the web that can be plugged into a computer when needed.

 What is Bitcoin and why is its price so high?

Thanks to cyber insurance and a possible sale of operating rights, the losses could be less than 17 per cent, Yapian said.

Bloomberg
Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Global disasters in 2017 cost homes and businesses a staggering $306bn (229bn), according to a new study.

Losses made this year from both natural and man-made catastrophes represent a 63 per cent jump compared to last year.

The US saw its most damaging hurricane season since 2005, hit hardest with Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria across the south coast and the Caribbean.

Recommended How bad the snow must be for workers to have right to stay at home

The three hurricanes cost the US an estimated $93bn, leaving power shortages to businesses and closing oil refineries.

Wildfires in California, dubbed the Thomas fire, continued to swell as of Wednesday with 272,000 acres burnt, according to the Californian Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It is on course to become the biggest blaze in Californian history.

Insurance firm Swiss Re said that despite the rise in financial loss, the number of people who died or went missing in disasters remained similar to 2016, at just over 11,000 people.

Insured losses totalled $136bn, more than doubled compared to last years total and the third highest total recorded.

The insurance industry has demonstrated that it can cope very well with such high losses, said head of catastrophe perils Martin Bertogg.

However, significant protection gaps remain and if the industry is able to extend its reach, many more people and businesses can become better equipped to withstand the fallout from disaster events.

Other notable events include three powerful 6.2, 7.1 and 8.1 magnitude earthquakes that hit Mexico in September, killing almost 400 people.

No natural disasters hit the UK, with the closest major disruption to businesses caused by snow in December.
Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Health Check email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Mental health groups have said a significant increase in the number of mental health patients being treated miles away from home is hugely concerning.

Patients who have spent birthdays and Christmas a five-hour drive from their loved ones told The Independent that it made the already scary process of being admitted even harder.

They added it was also a totally counterproductive use of NHS funds as private facilities are generally the only place with spare capacity.

In April 2016 the Government said that by 2020 it would eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements (OAPs) where patients cant be seen locally.

But analysis by The Independent of the first 12 months of NHS reported data shows that it has become more reliant on the practice.

It shows that at the end of October 2017, 710 patients were being treated away from their local trust compared to 504 patients back in November 2017  the first full month of reporting.

But the number of inappropriate placements rose as high as 885 patients in August this year.

In total the NHS in England had 7,615 inappropriate OAPs in the 12 months to October, a significant jump on the 5,876 identified by analysis from the British Medical Association in 2016/17, before reporting began.

This amounted to a total of 215,595 days, sometimes spent away from friends and family, and at a total cost to the NHS of 83m.

While some OAPs occur because patient needs a specialist service, 95 per cent result from a lack of beds locally rather than it being the best treatment option.

Mental health groups warned this can have a negative impact on patients recovery and places an enormous burden on their carers.

This is the experience of 27-year old Laura Nuttall, who has twice been sent more than a hundred miles away for care.

The first time was around two years ago, I live in Lincolnshire and I was hospitalised into an NHS funded bed, in a private hospital in Manchester, she said.

Recommended No one chooses to become mentally ill

But when I was 16 I had to go down to Kent and had to stay there for seven months, I spent my birthday and Christmas there.

Having family nearby is a really important thing, at the time we were really fortunate that it was possible to be admitted  I needed it to stay alive.

But being admitted is such a scary process, knowing that your family cant just come and visit when they want makes that harder.

While the Government has recently announced plans for mental health support in schools, and a four-week wait target for under 18s, the realities of funding put that at risk.

Earlier this year Labour accused the Government of empty promises after NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups figures showed half the groups in England expect to spend proportionately less on mental health.

 Jeremy Hunt claims mental health provision is improving

The October figures show there were also more patients sent more than 100km (62 miles) away; 385 compared to 204 November last year.

Forty patients in October were sent nearly 200 miles away, and more placements lasted more than a month  140 patients, up from 13 last year.

Laura, who has a condition known as schizo-affective disorder, said when she was hospitalised in Kent she needed one-to-one supervision, 24 hours a day, with a nurse or staff member sitting with her while she slept.

The new breed of 'recovery clinics' helping people with mental health problems put their lives back together Show all 3 1 /3 The new breed of 'recovery clinics' helping people with mental health problems put their lives back together The new breed of 'recovery clinics' helping people with mental health problems put their lives back together 3-ireland.jpg Susannah Ireland The new breed of 'recovery clinics' helping people with mental health problems put their lives back together arman2-ireland.jpg Susannah Ireland The new breed of 'recovery clinics' helping people with mental health problems put their lives back together 4-ireland.jpg Susannah Ireland

Alongside her medication this could only happen in a mental health facility, but it also means patients are cut off from their family.

Over Christmas she did spend a few hours with her dad, but this was only possible because he could make the five-hour journey.

Christmas for him was ten hours driving, its not ideal, she told The Independent.

Other patients, from as far away as Ireland, didnt have anyone who could drive to visit them.

Laura is now training as a mental health nurse, and has a YouTube channel where she talks about her experiences, as well as highlighting the help shes had from mental health staff.

She told The Independent that as nurses they are taught the importance of involving families and carers in the decision making and treatment of mental health.

Last month NHS trusts were issued with new national standards to cut out of area placements, these will also place more emphasis on community based care and mental health crisis teams.

Sophie Corlett, director of external relations at the mental health charity Mind, said: With the Government and NHS committing to putting an end to out of area care by 2021 as part of their five-year plan for improving mental health services, its hugely concerning to see the number of people being treated out of area going up and not down.

Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Show all 10 1 /10 Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 30 per cent of people deal with anxiety by talking to a friend or relative, or by going for a walk. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Almost one in five people feel anxious all or a lot of the time. PA Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 22 per cent of women feel anxious a lot or all of the time, compared to 15 per cent of men. Roman Levin/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 45 per cent of people who feel anxious in everyday life cite financial issues as their biggest cause of worry. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report And 26 per cent of people who feel anxious say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with worry. And 26 per cent of people say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with anxiety. Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 27 per cent of people who suffer from anxiety say work issues, such as long hours, are the source of the problem. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report But 16 per cent use alcohol to cope, while 10 per cent turn to cigarettes in the face of anxiety. Unemployed people are more likely to resort to these harmful strategies: 27 per cent use alcohol and 23 per cent use cigarettes. AFP/Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Only seven per cent of people who say they suffer from anxiety seek help from their GP. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report People are thought to be more anxious than they were five years ago. Alessandra/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report The stresses of modern life are thought to have created "The Age of Anxiety". Getty

This was echoed by Dr Ranga Rao, the Royal College of Psychiatrists national lead for acute in-patient care, who said: On the face of it, these figures are worrying.

Patients should only be sent away from their local area for care if it is in their best interests or in exceptional circumstances, otherwise it can have a negative impact on their recovery and place enormous burden on carers.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: It is completely unacceptable for patients to be sent away from their family and friends for treatment  that is exactly why weve committed to end inappropriate placements by 2020.

We have legislated to put mental and physical health on an equal footing and were going to make sure it happens by reforming outdated mental health laws and introducing waiting time targets to improve standards of care.
Zhang Shengliang, better known by his stage name Niu Niu, plays the piano in a recent Beijing event to sign with Universal Music Group. [PHOTO BY ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY]



When pianist Zhang Shengliang, 20, was in Beijing recently ahead of the release of his new album, he showed that he has lost none of his old flair. Chen Nan reports.

The Xiamen-born pianist Zhang Shengliang, better known by his stage name Niu Niu, a derivation of his childhood nickname Niuniu, first showed his music talent at the age of 3 by playing a piece from John Thompson's Easiest Piano Course, without anyone teaching him. And he held his first solo recital a few weeks after his sixth birthday, with a program including a Mozart piano sonata and a Chopin etude.

At age 8, he became the youngest student in the 85-year history of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

And, at 10, he performed Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No 1 at the 2007 Pearl Awards in London in the presence of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.

When he showed up in Beijing recently to sign a contract with global music label Universal Music Group, Zhang, now 20, showed that he has lost none of his old flair.

In his latest album, which is scheduled to be released in February, he performs repertories including Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso in E major, and Schubert's third Impromptu, D 899.

"I've played these pieces many times and I want to convey the journey that I've gone through over the past 10 years," says the pianist.

"As I grow into an older person and become a much more mature musician, I have deeper understanding of the pieces."

The upcoming album was recorded in Berlin and Zhang collaborated with four-time Grammy Award winner, recording engineer Rainer Maillard.

Since 2008, Zhang has released six albums, including a recording of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 and Paganini's Variations with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

Over the past 10 years, he has studied with Chinese-American music educator Chen Hung-kuan, initially at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and later at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Around 1920, an experienced mine worker called Justo Daza and a mining engineer named Fritz Klein, were scrambling over the steep mountainside terraces of Chivor  a legendary emerald site in north-east Colombia. They were breaking rocks apart with long iron poles and explosives packed into drill holes. They were hunting for new emerald veins and not finding any.

Lets move on, Klein said. This area is dead.

No, no, no, Daza insisted. Theres emerald here, I know it.

Klein shrugged: OK, one more shot  but thats it.

They upped the dose of explosives and blasted open a gaping hole that revealed promising glints of a mineral vein. Klein thrust his arm into the hole and began rummaging around. He fished out bits of quartz, feldspar and apatite  a phosphate mineral similar to that found in bones and teeth.

He probed deeper, until finally his hand closed around something big, faceted and thrilling. Without even looking, Klein knew hed struck green.

The prospectors had unearthed what would come to be called the Patricia Emerald: a dazzling 12-sided crystal roughly the size of a soup can, with a weight of 632 carats  more than a quarter of a pound  and a verdant colour so pure and vivid youd swear the stone was photosynthesising.

Klein sold the find for tens of thousands of dollars, while Daza  predictably enough  was given $10 and a mule, said Terri Ottaway, museum curator at the Gemological Institute of America.

Yet the public arguably got the best deal of all. The stone was later donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Today, the Patricia remains one of the largest uncut emeralds in the world, and will be a featured star when the overhaul of the museums gem and mineral halls is finished in 2019.

The Chivor mine, north-east Colombia, is known for its stunning emerald specimens (Youtube)

In its raw, columnar beauty, the Patricia encapsulates an often overlooked feature of gemstones, especially the ones we deem precious  diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds.

We may covet the stones for personal adornment and status flashing; we may imbue them with romance, exoticism and the titillation of the Hollywood jewel heist. But their real power lies in what they reveal about the dynamo that forged them: Planet Earth.

For scientists, a gemstone is a message in a bottle. Except the message is the bottle, a glittering clue to the extreme physical, chemical and tectonic forces at work deep underground.

Moreover, many of the qualities that helped loft the Big Four to prominence in the first place  their exceptional hardness, the depth and brilliance of their colouring, their rarity  are also key to the jewels scientific value.

Precious gems are born of strife: of shotgun marriages between hostile chemical elements, and theyre tough enough to survive cataclysms that obliterate everything around them.

Earth is an incredible, giant chemical laboratory, and its a dirty place to grow crystals, said Jeffrey Post, curator of the Smithsonians National Gem and Mineral Collection. But those impurities grant gems their colour and character, and give us vital information about the crystal structures themselves.

The rules of gem science are not cast in stone. Researchers lately have been astonished to discover that some of the worlds largest and most valuable diamonds, which can sell for hundreds of millions of dollars, originated 250 miles or more below the surface  twice the depths previously estimated for Earths diamond nurseries.

Some diamonds turn out to be surprisingly youthful: a billion years old rather than the average diamonds two billion to three billion years of age. Other researchers have linked ruby creation to collisions between continental landmasses, and propose that the red jewels be called plate tectonic gemstones.

A team at the University of British Columbia analysed newly discovered sapphire deposits in Canadas Nunavut territory, and concluded the stones there were generated by a novel three-part geochemical recipe unlike any described for sapphire formation elsewhere in the world.

You start with limestone sediments containing just the right mineral impurities  nepheline is a must  and you squeeze and heat the rocky mass to 800C. You add fluid and allow to cool. Finally, just when the growing mineral assemblage shows signs of instability, you inject another shot of fluid and lock the crystal into place. Total cooking time: about 1.75 billion years.

If one step is left out, said Philippe Belley, a geologist at the University of British Columbia, you dont get sapphires.

In the past, geologists often dismissed gemstones as baubles and gem science as oxymoronic. Gems were considered crass commercial materials and beneath the dignity of an academic, said George Harlow, curator of earth and planetary sciences at the American Museum of Natural History.

Emeralds from the mountains of Colombia are distinctive for their spectacularly clear green colour (Alamy) (Alamy Stock Photo)

More recently, geologists have seen the refracted light. My colleagues know that a gem course done as an introductory part of an undergraduate education is a really good hook, Harlow said.

When you can show how gems form, or the properties they have, it takes a lot of chemistry and physics to understand that.

Post calls it stealth science. Its a great way to get people in the door, he said. If you put up a sign that says geology, nobody comes. But if you say, This way to the Hope Diamond, then everybody wants to know more.

Harlow suggested that precious gems gained their reputation in part by their association with gold. As insoluble stones, the gems ended up concentrated at the bottom of stream beds, often in the vicinity of similarly insoluble gold.

Long prized for its ductility, beauty and resistance to oxidation, gold was considered the property of rulers and kings  so why not the glittering stones found beside it?

The word diamond stems from the Greek terms for indestructible and that which cannot be tamed, Harlow said, and those attributed metaphysical properties made the ruler seem even more important.

Diamonds are not indestructible, but they are the hardest substances known, given the top score of 10 on the Mohs scale of hardness  that is, resistance to scratching.

Behind a diamonds untameability is its three-dimensional structure, a repeating crystalline lattice of carbon atoms, each one strongly bonded to four neighbours atop, below and to either side. In graphite, by contrast, carbon atoms are bonded together only in two-dimensional sheets, which will flake apart with the simple act of putting pencil to paper.

Persuading large numbers of carbon atoms to lock limbs in all directions requires Stygian whips of high heat and pressure, which until recently could only be found underground.

The Hope is one of the worlds most famous jewels, and a rare example of a blue diamond (Creative commons)

In theory, the Earths mantle, which is thought to hold about 90 per cent of the planets carbon supply, is practically glittering with diamonds at various stages of formation. Getting those jewels to the surface in bling-worthy condition is another matter.

Diamonds must be shot up from below quickly  say, through a volcanic eruption  or theyll end up as so much coal in your stocking. Researchers have discovered diamonds that had blundered crustward slowly enough for their carbon bonds to expand, leaving a stone with the shape of a diamond but the consistency of graphite.

Gareth R Davies, a professor of geology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and his colleagues have recapitulated the reversion process in the laboratory. Yes, we get diamonds and turn them to graphite for research, he said. And my wife wonders why Im such an idiot.

Researchers can also fabricate diamonds in the laboratory, although the results are more often destined for industry than Tiffany. Nor can scientists create anything remotely as celestial as the Hope Diamond: the worlds largest deep-blue diamond, with a back story to match.

The diamond was discovered in India, sold to King Louis XIV of France in 1668, and stolen during the French Revolution. It reappeared 50 years later in the collection of Dutch banker Henry Philip Hope  hence its name  was sold by Hopes bankrupted heir and then passed from hand to sometimes unfortunate hand, picking up an aura en route of being cursed.

After jeweller Harry Winston donated the diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958, blithely sending the massive jewel from New York to Washington through the mail, the diamonds fame exploded. When then-First Lady Jackie Kennedy arranged a one-month loan of the diamond to the Louvre in Paris, Washingtons National Gallery of Art got Da Vincis Mona Lisa in return.

Researchers have since plied the 45-carat diamond with every noninvasive tool in their arsenal, seeking to understand the precise distribution of boron atoms that lend the Hope its steely blue tint and why the diamond will glow, or phosphoresce, a spectral shade of blood orange when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Post suspects the phosphorescence is the result of interactions between boron and nitrogen impurities in the diamonds near-flawless carbon frame.

Colouration mechanics figure more prominently still in the genesis of coloured gemstones. After all, sapphires and rubies are built of the same basic mineral, corundum, a crystallised collaboration of aluminum and oxygen that would be transparent and colourless if not for some artful chemical doping.

With a Mohs hardness score just a point shy of diamonds, corundum becomes a red ruby through the timely addition of chromium atoms. Recent research suggests chromium is shoved up to the crust from Earths mantle when continental landmasses bang together.

A sapphire is a corundum crystal of any colour but red  although many people consider a true sapphire to be blue. In that case, the blue results from electrons bouncing back and forth between near-homeopathic doses of iron and titanium atoms sprinkled throughout the crystal.

Its called intervalence charge transfer, said Harlow. You almost cant measure the amount of iron and titanium, but the small effect produces a dramatic colour.

Emerald is the softest of the precious stones, with a Mohs score between 7 and 8, and at its finest its a piece of fossilised swamp. Its mineral base, beryl, is mostly aluminum and silicon, with a critical infusion of beryllium: a light, rare and extremely toxic element.

If youre thinking of making your own emeralds, dont, said Ottaway. Emeralds form during mountain building, as shale and limestone rocks are uplifted and compressed.

Its a giant squeegee effect, moving hot solutions around, Ottaway explained. Salt dissolves in the hot sludge, turning it to brine, and the brine gets trapped in pockets that then act like wetlands, absorbing organic matter and toxic metals, including beryllium, which is then incorporated into growing crystals of aluminum silicate.

The colouring agents are trace amounts of vanadium and chromium, which may turn a ruby red but in the context of beryls structure reflect green.

For emeralds born in the mountains of Colombia, the green is chromatically, spectacularly clean. Pyrite deposits soak up any iron in the area that might otherwise adulterate the crystal and muddy beryls refractive powers.

Thats why Colombian emeralds are so fabulous, Ottaway said. You can become so absorbed looking at one of these incredible stones.

Forget about the mule or the money, or three wise guys with myrrh: this piece of evergreen is pure holiday cheer.

 The New York Times
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Two police officers who revealed details of pornography found on computers inside Damian Greens parliamentary office could be prosecuted over their leaks to the media.

Bob Quick, former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the media extreme material was found in a 2008 investigation into unrelated Home Office leaks.

Neil Lewis, who was a detective constable in the force, later said he was shocked to find thousands of legal pornographic images on Mr Greens computer that indicated prolific web browsing.

Mr Green denied the claims and alleged they were biased, but was forced to resign on Wednesday night over his inaccurate and misleading statements on the scandal.

Scotland Yard said the officers had been referred to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) over the disclosure of confidential material gathered during a police investigation.

A spokesperson said legal advice had been sought over how best to take action against Mr Quick and Mr Lewis nine years after the original probe.

It was determined that the most appropriate course of action was to make a referral to the ICO to carry out a further investigation in relation to potential Data Protection Act offences, he added.

 Damian Green sacked as First Secretary of State amid computer porn allegations

The Met is clear that confidential information gathered during any police inquiry should remain confidential. That is an enduring confidentiality regardless of whether an officer leaves the service.

Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, confirmed the authority would be investigating under its powers to enforce data protection.

We will be looking at whether individuals acted unlawfully by retaining or disclosing personal data, she added.

These are serious allegations and we are investigating to determine whether the law has been broken and what further action is necessary including potential criminal prosecution.

Mr Green continues to deny downloading or viewing pornography himself but was sacked for breaching the ministerial code by making inaccurate and misleading statements as the scandal broke in early November.

The First Secretary of State and Cabinet Office minister said he should have been clear admitting that police contacted his lawyers on the matter in 2008 and called him personally in 2013.

In his resignation later, he said he was distressed by unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations, adding: It is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Polices professional standards department.

Bob Quick resigned as Britains most senior counter-terror officer in 2009 after making an unrelated security blunder that endangered an operation against an al-Qaeda cell

Theresa May said she expects the leaks to be properly investigated.

Speaking during a visit to Poland, the Prime Minister said she shared concerns about the way details of a 2008 police inquiry into Home Office leaks had entered the public domain.

I share the concerns that have been raised across the political spectrum about comments that were made by a former police officer and I expect that issue to be properly investigated, to be taken seriously and to be properly looked at, she added.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick previously said it was quite wrong for Mr Quick and Mr Lewis to reveal information from an investigation.

If offences have been disclosed and that can be proved, it would be a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service, but there could be a prosecution, Ms Dick said earlier this month.

Appearing before the London Assembly on Thursday, she said the ICO was the right body to carry forward the investigation into their actions.

The Cabinet Secretarys inquiry was initially launched after Kate Maltby, a Conservative activist and journalist 30 years Mr Greens junior, complained he had made inappropriate advances.

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 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

Mr Green said he did not recognise her account of events but apologised for making her feel uncomfortable, while the inquiry found her claims unproven but plausible.

Conservative MPs remain angry at the way confidential information gathered in the course of a police investigation was leaked to damage Mr Green.

The ICO investigation comes amid a separate scandal over the Metropolitan Polices failure to disclose key evidence in two rape cases, causing them to collapse.

Recommended Police officer in collapsed rape cases removed from investigations

The force has suspended around 30 investigations by its Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command and suspended one officer from active duty amid probes into what went wrong.

Judges threw out unrelated rape prosecutions against Liam Allan and Isaac Itiary in the space of one week, with both men acquitted after the discovery of evidence that should have stopped them ending up in court.

Police had downloaded the contents of complainants phones but failed to pass on the information they contained to the prosecution or defence, claiming thousands of messages were irrelevant.

The cases have sparked warnings over a crisis in the system of disclosure spanning all crimes across the country, amid allegations over stretched resources, a lack of basic training and potential bias among police officers.

Ms Mays cabinet has also suffered a barrage of embarrassments. Mr Greens sacking follows the resignation of Sir Michael Fallon as defence secretary, amid Westminster sleaze allegations, and international development secretary Priti Patel over undisclosed meetings in Israel.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The man accused of carrying on the Finsbury Park terror attack has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.

Darren Osborne is accused of deliberately driving a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers leaving Ramadan prayers near the Muslim Welfare House in London.

He is charged with murdering one man, 51-year-old Makram Ali, and attempting to kill other persons at the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Whadcoat Street, London on 19 June.

The 48-year-old of Glyn Rhosyn in Cardiff, he appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from Belmarsh prison on Thursday.

Wearing a red T-shirt, he spoke only to confirm his identity and enter not guilty pleas.

Finsbury Park attack Show all 14 1 /14 Finsbury Park attack Finsbury Park attack Police officers attend to the scene after a vehicle collided with pedestrians in the Finsbury Park, killing one person and injuring eight Reuters Finsbury Park attack The incident is being treated as a potential terror attack Reuters Finsbury Park attack A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder Reuters Finsbury Park attack Police cordon off a street in Finsbury Park AFP/Getty Images Finsbury Park attack A man prays in the street after the attack Reuters Finsbury Park attack Men gather and pray together in the street in the aftermath of the attack AFP/Getty Finsbury Park attack Reuters Finsbury Park attack PA Finsbury Park attack Onlookers gather near a police cordon EPA Finsbury Park attack Forensic investigators arrive at the scene PA Finsbury Park attack A forensic tent stands next to a van PA Finsbury Park attack A police officer talks with residents AFP/Getty Images Finsbury Park attack Onlookers watch proceedings at the security cordon AFP/Getty Finsbury Park attack Local residents react at the scene AFP/Getty Images

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb remanded him on custody until the start of his trial, which is scheduled for 22 January at Woolwich Crown Court.



The incident was one of five terror attacks to hit the UK this year, following the Isis-linked atrocities in Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge.

Additional reporting by PA
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Metropolitan Police officer involved in two collapsed rape cases has been removed from active investigations amid probes into failures to disclose key evidence.

Scotland Yard emphasised that no investigation is carried out by one officer alone after Detective Constable Mark Azariah was named among the officers involved.

Judges threw out unrelated rape prosecutions against Liam Allan and Isaac Itiary in the space of one week, with both men acquitted after the discovery of evidence that should have stopped them ending up in court.

Police had downloaded the contents of complainants phones but failed to pass on the information they contained to the prosecution or defence, claiming thousands of messages were irrelevant.

Mr Itiary had been charged with the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl but messages showed she had claimed she was 19, while Mr Allans alleged victim had told friends she wanted and enjoyed sex she later reported as rape.

Both men are expected to launch legal action and the Metropolitan Police is reviewing around 30 live cases being investigated by its Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command as a precaution to ensure that all digital evidence has been properly examined, documented and shared.

It has been identified that the same officer was involved in the R v Allan and R v Itiary investigations, a spokesperson said.

 Liam Allan says rape suspects should have anonymity until proven guilty

However, no investigation is carried out by one officer alone and all investigations are supervised by line managers.

While the Met's review is ongoing, as a precaution a decision has been taken at this time to remove the detective from active investigations.

Vowing to make sure that we are truly providing justice, Theresa May said the Attorney General had already initiated a review of disclosure before Mr Allan and Mr Itiarys cases collapsed.

Recommended Rape convictions are still unacceptably low

Some lawyers are calling for the responsibility for identifying evidence to be taken away from police officers and passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Robin Murray, former vice chair of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, warned that although rape cases had driven concerns the issues apply to everybody.

There is a serious risk of miscarriage of justice, he told The Independent. I think that there are certain officers who dont understand their job or role  its a training issue.

Then there are some officers who are partisan and instead of looking a case as independent, theyre looking to secure a win and theres a conflict of interest there where they dont want to discover something that undermines their case.

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 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

Mr Murray acknowledged that the resources needed to comb through entire phone downloads  including 40,000 messages in Mr Allans case  are greater than needed for evidence in the past.

But nevertheless it exists, we cant wave a magic wand and pretend the evidence isnt there, he added. I would personally have a lot more confidence if the role of identifying evidence was switched from police to the CPS.

Police are legally obliged to examine evidence from all participants in a case, whether it supports or hinders prosecution, and pass it on to lawyers on both sides.

Angela Rafferty QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, previously suggested that unconscious bias was among the factors driving a crisis in the system.

We fear unconscious bias stops the police and the CPS impartially and thoroughly investigating and scrutinising complaints in sexual offence cases, she said.

It should be remembered that it is not the job of the police or CPS to judge the truthfulness or otherwise of any allegation made.

A report issued in July by HM CPS Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary said even unused items of evidence must be reviewed by police to see whether it is capable of undermining the prosecution case or assisting the defence case and passed on.

Warning of widespread failures by both police and prosecutors, the authority said officers failing to comply with requirements were often ignorant of their disclosure responsibilities.

There are warnings that failed disclosure could cause the miscarriage of justice (Getty)

Non-compliance with the disclosure process is not new and has been common knowledge amongst those engaged within the criminal justice system for many years, the damning report concluded.

Police officers and prosecutors interviewed by inspectors said they believed limited resources and a lack of time were the main causes, even though long-standing problems predate recent budget reductions.

Nigel Evans, a Conservative MP who was acquitted of sexual offence charges in 2014, called on the Government to urgently look at providing resources to meet rising number of sexual abuse reports.

Defence lawyers say they are routinely having to fight to get evidence police should have already reviewed, then putting in hours of unpaid work to examine it themselves at a late stage of criminal proceedings.

Requests from the defence caused the material that destroyed the cases against Mr Allan and Mr Azariah to be released and other trials are believed to be on hold after late disclosures.

The scandal has sparked warnings of a slew of potential appeals from prosecuted rapists and sexual offenders seeking grounds to argue their convictions were unsafe.

Campaigners emphasised that false rape allegations are rare in comparison to the publicity they receive, with the crime believed to be severely underreported.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Conservative MP's chief of staff has been cleared of raping a woman in his boss's office after a drunken night at the Houses of Parliament.

Samuel Armstrong, 24, was cleared by a jury at Southwark Crown Court of two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault by penetration and one count of sexual assault.

Speaking after the verdict, Mr Armstrong claimed he was cleared after crucial evidence was disclosed to his lawyers just days before the trial began.

He was accused of attacking a young female parliamentary worker after she fell asleep in his boss Craig Mackinlays office after a night drinking in the Palace of Westminster.

The complainant, who is in her twenties, claimed she was raped twice by the South Thanet MPs senior aide, who was suspended from his job following the allegation.

But Mr Armstrong, who was arrested after the woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster in tears in the early hours of 14 October last year, insisted the sex had been consensual.

He wiped tears from his eyes after the jury of seven women and five men cleared him of all charges following a two-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, following five hours of deliberation.

Mr Armstrong was comforted by his father Andrew as he left the dock before addressing the media outside court.

My whole life has been turned upside down. For a year I have not slept or eaten, and I was innocent, he said.

Were it not for the fact that crucial evidence was disclosed to my defence team just eight working days before trial, there could well have been yet another miscarriage of justice in this case.

Recommended Met to review sex case investigations as second rape trial collapses

Mr Armstrong and his lawyers refused to elaborate on the nature of the evidence he was referring to, but the court heard the complainant initially refused to give police access to her mobile phone and medical records.

In messages recovered from her phone, she said she had contacted a journalist just hours after the alleged attack to secure a sympathetic write-up, while her medical notes revealed details of a history of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.

Mr Armstrong, from Danbury in Essex, has been suspended from his job since the allegations arose.

Following the verdicts, Mr Mackinlay said on Twitter: I am very pleased for Sam, a young man whose life has been destroyed over the past 14 months.

"Debate now needed over anonymity of those accused, especially in a week where actions of the authorities in such cases have been found wanting.

The Tory MP, who was not in Westminster on the night of the incident, previously told the court he and his aide were like father and son".

Recommended Falsely accused student supports anonymity for rape suspects

Former grammar school boy Mr Armstrong joined Mr Mackinlay's permanent staff in April 2016 after graduating with a degree in politics and history from Nottingham University.

On the evening of 13 October, Mr Armstrong and the complainant drank together in a bar on the parliamentary estate, watched Big Ben chime on its terrace and sipped wine in the leader's office in the Lords before going to Mr Mackinlay's office.

The woman said she felt held hostage by Mr Armstrong, with prosecutors claiming he abused his position once they were alone by sexually assaulting her and raping her twice.

The woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster until she found a cleaner, who said she was shaking and crying, holding on to him until police arrived.

Mr Armstrong, described by his barrister Sarah Forshaw QC as earnest, a little geeky, awkward, said he felt as though he had been punched in the stomach when he was arrested early on the morning of 14 October.

Giving evidence, he told how he and the woman danced to jazz music, began kissing, then made jokes as they had consensual sex in his boss's office in the Norman Shaw building.

Ms Forshaw suggested the woman panicked and made the allegations after becoming distressed as she tried to leave the Palace of Westminster without a pass at around 2am  and was then caught up in her lie.

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 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

Mr Armstrong told jurors he regretted having sex in his boss's office, and said: It was foolish. It was an act of enormous foolishness and as a consequence I have had the worst year of my life.

He said the allegations had cost him his dream job, adding that he would never, ever, ever get his career back.

While what I did is foolish, the point is I'm innocent of this and for whatever reason somebody is trying to make a horrible, horrible, horrible allegation, he said.

The point is on this allegation, somebody is trying to send me to prison for a very long time for something I didn't do.

The Metropolitan Police announced this week they will review 30 rape cases to ensure all evidence is being properly disclosed to all parties following the collapse of two trials.

Recommended Rape trial collapses after police fail to disclose sex messages

The cases under review have all reached the stage where they are under consideration for prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The two cases which collapsed both had the same senior investigating officer, Detective Constable Mark Azariah, who has now been removed from duty.

Student Liam Allan has said he plans to sue the Met after the trial against him for rape collapsed because of the late disclosure of evidence.

Prosecutors this week dropped a case against a man charged with raping a child after police handed over digital evidence which showed the girl, aged 14 and 15 at the time of the alleged offences, had regularly posed as a 19-year-old.

Attorney General Jeremy Wright labelled the two cases appalling failures of the criminal justice system, but denied the suggestion that officers were not doing their job properly and claimed the failures were down to the existence of very large amounts of mostly digital information.

Scotland Yard said its review will make sure all digital evidence has been properly examined, documented and shared with the CPS.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A man killed in a car crash in Birmingham is the victim of a character assassination by the media because of his skin colour, according to those who knew him.

Kasar Jehangir, and five others, were killed after their Audi S3 collided with a taxi on Birminghams Lee Bank Middleway in the early hours of Sunday.

Several publications in the wake of the crash resurfaced the 25-year-olds historic convictions for drug dealing and dangerous driving. In some instances prominently using footage used in evidence during a 2016 court case which showed Kasar speeding.

Recommended Kasar Jehangir is being demonised by the tabloid press

Maz Saleem, a neighbour of the victim, said his past was irrelevant and accused the media of vilifying him because of his ethnicity.

She said sensationalist media speculation was preventing his family from grieving without judgement.

Over the last few days I have realised that to be black, brown, Muslim or foreign today is treated as a crime in itself. Suspicion and false accusations come naturally in the case of all these groups, she wrote in an op-ed piece for The Independent.

 Six dead in Birmingham car crash

Sensationalised media headlines of Kasars past convictions, labelling him as nothing more than a drug dealer, make it feel like a trial is taking place now in the media. But this is a trial in which he has already been found guilty and in which he has no fair representation or voice  because he has been killed in a horrific car crash.

He did the time for his conviction and this news has to differentiate from the crash  as it may have absolutely nothing to do with it.

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

Mohammed Fasha, 30, and Tauqeer Tox Hussain, 26, travelling with Jehangir were also killed. A 22-year-old man, Zakkria Khan, who was in the same car, was seriously injured.

Taxi driver Imtiaz Mohammed, 33, a father of six, also died in the collision, along with sign language interpreter Lucy Davis, 43, and her boyfriend Lee Jenkins, 42.

Recommended Everything we know about Birmingham car crash that killed six people

Kasar was arrested in July last year for driving 120mph on the M6, while occupants of the car threw heroin out of the windows. He admitted dangerous driving and possession with intent to supply Class A drugs in November 2016 and was sentenced to 36 months in jail, but was released on a home detention curfew, which ended on 12 December, The Times reported.

It was unclear what caused the Birmingham crash, and West Midlands police superintendent Sean Phillips said it was too early to speculate.

Its a harrowing scene. There are families involved, these are real people involved. It is very distressing for everyone, he said.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The High Court has ruled that government changes to the disability benefit system blatantly discriminate against people with mental health problems and are in breach of their human rights.

The landmark court case, brought by a woman with mental health difficulties on Thursday, ruled that the regulations cannot not be objectively justified.

An amendment to personal independence payment (PIP) earlier this year introduced regulations limiting the amount of support people with psychological distress could receive for making journeys.

But the judge said the Governments claims that mental health sufferers require less support to travel were in breach of the Human Rights Act, and amounted to no more than subjective opinion.

Because they were discriminatory, the judge also found that the Secretary of State did not have lawful power to make the regulations without consultation, because they went against the very purpose of what the PIP regime sought to achieve.

The case, brought by the Public Law Project on behalf of the woman, could see more than 160,000 people with mental health problems become entitled to additional support from PIP if this ruling stands.

Campaigners and senior opposition politicians hailed it as a significant victory for people with mental health problems, urging that the Government should now compensate all those who have been adversely affected and suffered hardship.

During the course of the trial, the Government accepted that the testing carried out for PIP had not looked at whether the basis for treating those with psychological distress differently was sound or not, and the testing actually done was limited.

The womans claim was supported by evidence from the National Autistic Society, Disability Rights UK, Revolving Doors and Inclusion London, with charity Mind and the Equality and Human Rights Commission also intervening.

In response to the ruling, she said: This judgment is important for a community of people with mental health problems fighting for their lives against discrimination.

Debbie Abrahams, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: This landmark ruling is a damning indictment of the Governments discriminatory approach to PIP support and its refusal to make this support available to people with mental health conditions.

So much for the Prime Ministers commitment to deliver parity of esteem for mental health. When the Government should have been listening to successive court rulings on PIP payments and correcting injustices for people with debilitating mental health conditions, they decided to undermine the legal basis for the judgments and introduce emergency legislation.

Recommended Disabled people wrongly denied PIP benefit at higher rate than ever

Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley said: The courts have ruled that the Governments actions were discriminatory and unlawful. The Government should now compensate all those who have been adversely affected and suffered hardship.

Disabled people shouldnt have to go to the courts to win basic rights which should already be theirs. The Government must not be allowed to go on treating disabled people as second class citizens.

Dr Jed Boardman, the Royal College of Psychiatrists social inclusion lead, welcomed the ruling, saying: We cant accept a benefits system that treats people with mental health difficulties worse than those with physical health difficulties.

The medical evidence I gave to the court was clear, mental health conditions such as agoraphobia significantly impact on sufferers ability to plan or follow the route of a journey.

Im delighted that the court has agreed the Governments decision to change the law to prevent people with mental health conditions accessing the support they need was blatantly discriminatory.

Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said the ruling acknowledged that the regulations discriminate against people with mental health problems and upheld the principle that PIP should look at the impact your condition has on ones life, not the condition itself.

The judgment is clear that the Government has no evidence for its claim that people who experience psychological distress need less support than other disabled people, he added.

The Governments stance on this issue is symptomatic of all the deep concerns that we have about the benefits system as a whole  it just does not understand mental health problems and the impact they can have on a persons life.

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 Government intends to appeal the decision. The regulations will not be quashed until the Court of Appeal decides whether or not the appeal should proceed. A decision is anticipated in early 2018.

A DWP spokesperson said: PIP replaced a system that was less generous for people with mental health conditions and is designed to consider the broader picture of how someones life is affected by their disability or health condition.

We are disappointed the judgment fails to recognise that PIP provides more support to people with mental health conditions than ever before.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe could be released from an Iranian jail within a couple of weeks, her lawyer has said.

The charity workers husband Richard Ratcliffe told The Independent that her lawyer has discovered that on the Iranian judiciarys computer database her case has been moved from closed to eligible for early release.

The lawyer relayed the news to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family in Iran on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Ratcliffe said: Its not the same as a decision having been made to release, but it is a very clear positive sign towards that.

The lawyer also said I think they are just going to finalise the paperwork.

It doesnt mean she is going to be out tomorrow. His [the lawyers] estimate was within a couple of weeks.

Mr Ratcliffe added: It is definitely positive. Its hard to know how positive, but for me, its now a question of when not if.

It marks a dramatic turnaround in the dual British-Iranian nationals case, one that seemed unimaginable little more than a month ago, when comments by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson seemed to have done huge damage to her hopes of freedom.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had become eligible for early release on 23 November, the 600th day of her imprisonment, when she had served a third of a five-year sentence imposed in September 2016 for threatening Iranian national security.

Anticipating this, her lawyer had submitted an application to the Iranian prosecutors office in October, saying she should be considered for early release.

The application was supported by a letter from the head of Evin prison in Tehran which said she had been a good prisoner and emphasised her poor mental and physical health, as well as the effect of her imprisonment on her three-year-old daughter Gabriella.

But on 1 November Mr Johnson told MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been simply teaching people journalism in Iran.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

He was wrong. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday, enjoying the Iranian New Year celebration Nowruz with Gabriella and her Iranian family, and was a charity worker who has never taught journalists in her life.

But the Iranians seized on Mr Johnsons gaffe and portrayed it as an accidental confession that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was effectively a spy.

On the first Iranian working day after the Foreign Secretarys appearance before the FAC, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was hauled before a hardline judge to be told she faced a new charge of spreading [hostile] propaganda.

The new charges seemed to have ruined her chances of early release and threatened to land her with a fresh conviction that would have doubled her jail time.

Mr Johnson faced British MPs calling for his resignation, and Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was pushed to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Assisted by the interpreter sitting next to him, Boris Johnson meets Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Irans Supreme National Security Council, in Tehran earlier this month (AP)

But Mr Ratcliffe told The Independent that Mr Johnsons visit to Iran on 9-10 December, when he had frank talks about the charity workers case, had resulted in incredibly encouraging developments.

Foremost among them was the cancellation of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes court appearance on the new charges, which had been scheduled for December 10.

Just the fact of Boris Johnson going to Iran, says Mr Ratcliffe, meant the trial disappeared.

Nazanin was due to appear in court on the new charge on the Sunday [10 December], while the Foreign Secretary was still in Iran. The court appearance was postponed.

Then on the Monday [11 December] the president of the court announced there was no trial and the foreign media had been wrong in saying there was one.

The dropping of the charges seems to have enabled the Iranian judiciary to consider the early release question.

Gabriella was a 21-month-old toddler when she went to Iran with her mother for what was supposed to be a two-week holiday. Now three, she remains at the Tehran home of her grandparents (Richard Ratcliffe)

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes lawyer did not know when the judiciary marked her case as eligible for early release, but Mr Ratcliffe said: Authorisation for that would have come after the Foreign Secretarys visit.

Mr Ratcliffe said other signs of hope that followed Mr Johnsons visit included the Foreign Ministry promising to go to the judiciary to look for humanitarian solutions that would allow Nazanins case to be progressed.

She has started getting extra visits and extra phone calls, he added. She has been able to telephone me every day since the Foreign Secretarys visit. Propaganda against her on the main evening news disappeared.

Mr Ratcliffe told The Independent that despite the trauma caused to his wife, the controversy over Mr Johnsons remarks might ultimately have helped her cause.

If you had asked me a few months ago what I wanted, he said, I would have said for Nazanin to be in the public eye, for the Government to be trying to bring her home and saying she is innocent.

My greatest frustration was that Nazanin was not being discussed in Parliament, and MPs werent criticising the Foreign Secretary in great numbers.

Now, that has all happened. The Foreign Secretary has had to engage, focus and get on a plane.

Mr Ratcliffe, however, cautioned that it did not appear that all sections of Iranian society would welcome his wifes early release.

It feels like there are still people trying to block, he said.

There had, he explained, been a backlash in some quarters against Mr Johnsons visit.

Mr Ratcliffe said: After the Foreign Secretary visited, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader for Masshad, Irans holiest city, called Boris Johnson a liar, a clown and a womaniser. He didnt name her, but he basically said  in an address that was televised  that Nazanin was a dirty spy who shouldnt be released.

The hardline press has also been saying we shouldnt kow-tow to these foreigners who come and demand we release our prisoners when we are a sovereign country.

Some of the conservative sabre-rattling has even included upping the conspiracy to the point where Nazanin wasnt just training journalists, she was recruiting government officials. That is pretty extraordinary considering that the truth is she came to Iran as a mum on holiday with her baby daughter.

The move towards possible early release also follows unconfirmed reports that money will be paid to settle a legal dispute over 450m that Iran says Britain owes from a 1970s arms deal.

Britain is alleged to have taken money from the Shah up front, before deciding against delivering any more Chieftain tanks after he was deposed in the 1979 Iranian revolution  leading to legal wrangling that has lasted 38 years.

Mr Ratcliffe has previously claimed his wife was being used as a bargaining chip.

He made clear, however, that the Foreign Office insists that the arms deal and his wifes case are not being linked, and therefore he has been told nothing about the current state of the legal dispute.

The only comment he could make, he said, was that Improving relations between Iran and the UK can only help Nazanin.

Mr Ratcliffe revealed that he had already bought Christmas presents for his wife, who has her 39th birthday on Boxing Day, and his daughter Gabriella, who has been living with her Iranian grandparents since Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016.

Mr Ratcliffe said he had decided against sending the presents to Iran because he had been hoping Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Gabriella would be home by Christmas.

He refused, however, to speculate on whether the eligible for early release classification might mean a homecoming during the Christmas holiday period was going to happen.

It is definitely a step forward, he said, But I am trying not to put a target on it [the release date].

The signs that early release was now possible were also welcomed by Mr Ratcliffes constituency MP Tulip Siddiq.

The Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn said: This news is a glimmer of light at the end of a dark tunnel for my constituents Richard, Nazanin and Gabriella.

It has given Nazanin a real boost of positive energy, and now we wait impatiently to see what happens next.

Although we do not want to celebrate prematurely, it would be the perfect Christmas gift to see Nazanin released and back with her family where she belongs.

Also welcoming the news, Kathy Voss, of Amnesty International, said: Being eligible for release when you shouldnt even be in prison in the first place is a bizarre thing to be celebrating, but we have to welcome this as a sign that Nazanins ordeal may be coming to an end.

Ms Voss warned, however: There have already been many ups and downs in Nazanins case, so we have to be cautious about any premature celebrations.

As far as were concerned, this wont end until Nazanin and Gabriella are actually on a plane and heading back to London.

The Iranian government has always maintained that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained due to illegal acts and received a fair trial and fair treatment throughout.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A number of major retailers have been criticised after it emerged they were selling products containing animal fur, despite advertising them as synthetic.

Amazon, TK Maxx, Boohoo and Groupon were among companies found to be selling real fur that was not advertised as such.

Tests undertaken as part of an investigation by the charity Humane Society International and Sky News revealed that customers have unwittingly been buying animal products.

Among the items wrongly described as faux fur were a 5 pair of earrings from online retailer Boohoo that actually contained real mink fur. Other Boohoo products were found to be made from rabbit fur.

Recommended Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo to stop using fur from 2018

Boohoo has an Animal Welfare Policy that it says was approved by animal rights charity PETA. The company has committed to not selling real animal fur.

Other retailers were also found to have mislabelled products. TK Maxx was selling a coat made from real fox fur, despite the product description claiming the material was manmade. The company claims it has not sold real animal fur of any type since 2003.

Customers had even raised concerns that some TK Maxx products appeared to be made of real fur, but were assured by the chains customer services department that they were not. Testing revealed that the product in question was indeed made of rabbit fur.

The revelation prompted calls for the Government to ban the importation of fur from abroad. Fur farming was outlawed in the UK in 2003 but it remains legal to purchase fur from elsewhere.

A special permit is needed to import animal skins and it is illegal to bring into the country the fur of animals caught in leg-hold traps.

However, the fact that real fur is unknowingly being bought by UK shoppers is likely to prompt concern about the origins of the skins and the treatment of the animals from which they come.

Angela Smith MP, who co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, told The Independent: In this day and age, when the cruelty of the fur trade is so well known, I would have thought that manufacturers and stockists would have more sense than to try and smuggle such vile products into the hands of well-meaning customers.

I will be calling on the Government to tighten up the regulations to ensure this kind of flagrant deception does not happen again and to help bring an end to this barbaric trade.

Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party, backed calls for a wholesale ban on the importation of fur.

She told The Independent: Imagine finding out that the socks or hat youve been wearing for months, thinking it was fur free, had in fact been made from rabbit or another animal. Its a deplorable practice and these shops need to end this deception.

At the very least, we need a decent fur labelling law. But that will only fix the problem in the short term. The simplest, most effective thing to do would be not just to maintain the bans on cat, dog and seal fur post-Brexit, but to extend the ban to all species.

Given the UK banned fur farming back in 2000, its completely perverse to be importing tens of millions of pounds of that same cruelty  or worse  from overseas. Debates over the last few months, inspired by the BBCs Blue Planet and the vote on animal sentience, have proven once again that we are a nation of animal-lovers. I urge our government to protect the wellbeing of animals, and take fur out of our shops.

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 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

Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society International UK, said: The amount of fake faux fur online is truly shocking, with even trusted retailers mis-selling real animal fur as synthetic.

It is appalling that British shoppers, who are actively choosing not to buy real fur because of the terrible animal suffering, are being misled into buying the very same fur products theyre trying to avoid.

TK Maxx said customers who had bought the real fur products would be offered a refund, while Groupon said it was reviewing its suppliers and internal processes to ensure this doesnt happen again.

Boohoo said: We are very disappointed that on this occasion our high standards have been breached by the suppliers from who these items have been sourced.

The items in question were immediately removed from sale and the breach of the policy and its standards is being investigated as a matter of urgency.

Amazon said marketplace sellers who dont meet its guidelines faced the prospect of having their account deleted.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Boris Johnson has said the conduct of ex-police officers in revealing information against Damian Green has the slight feeling of a vendetta and said he hoped the now ex First Minister would be able to return to government eventually.

Mr Green, Theresa Mays deputy resigned last night after he was found to have been dishonest in his claims not to know that pornography had been found on his computer.

Mr Johnson raised concerns that the former first secretary of state may have been the victim of a vendetta, describing the leak of secret details from a police raid of his parliamentary offices as a bit whiffy.

The Foreign Secretary added his voice to calls for further investigation of the way police evidence about the discovery of legal porn on Mr Greens work computer found its way into the press.

Speaking during a visit to Moscow, Mr Johnson said: Im very sad for Damian and I think he has been a fine public servant and done a great job, and hopefully one day he will come back and continue to serve in other ways.

I think plainly, judging by the exchange of letters, he agreed that he had broken the ministerial code so the result was inevitable.

But I think it was a bit whiffy, frankly, this business with whatever happened with the information from his computer.

I dont quite see why that was brought into the public domain in the way it was. I think it needs to be investigated further, as the Prime Minister was saying.

It had the slight feeling of a vendetta.

The two police officers who revealed details of pornography found on computers inside Damian Greens parliamentary office could face prosecution over the leaking of the information.

Bob Quick, former Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the media extreme material was found in a 2008 investigation into unrelated Home Office leaks.

Neil Lewis, who was a Detective Constable in the force, later said he was shocked to find thousands of legal pornographic images on Mr Greens computer that indicated prolific web browsing.

Mr Green denied the claims and alleged they were biased, but was forced to resign on Wednesday night over his inaccurate and misleading statements on the scandal.

Scotland Yard said the officers had been referred to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) over the disclosure of confidential material gathered during a police investigation.

A spokesperson said legal advice had been sought over how best to take action against Mr Quick and Mr Lewis nine years after the original probe.

It was determined that the most appropriate course of action was to make a referral to the ICO to carry out a further investigation in relation to potential Data Protection Act offences, he added.

The Met is clear that confidential information gathered during any police inquiry should remain confidential. That is an enduring confidentiality regardless of whether an officer leaves the service.

Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, confirmed the authority would be investigating under its powers to enforce data protection.

We will be looking at whether individuals acted unlawfully by retaining or disclosing personal data, she added.

These are serious allegations and we are investigating to determine whether the law has been broken and what further action is necessary including potential criminal prosecution.

Mr Green continues to deny downloading or viewing pornography himself but was sacked for breaching the ministerial code by making inaccurate and misleading statements as the scandal broke in early November.

The First Secretary of State and Cabinet Office minister said he should have been clear admitting that police contacted his lawyers on the matter in 2008 and called him personally in 2013.

In his resignation later, he said he was distressed by unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations, adding: It is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Polices professional standards department.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc receives Danish Ambassador Charlotte Laursen on December 20th (Photo: VNA)



Congratulating the ambassador on fulfilling her tasks, PM Phuc noted with satisfaction the progress in the Vietnam-Denmark comprehensive partnership in all priority areas, which was greatly contributed by Ambassador Laursen.

Bilateral trade is developing positively, surpassing USD600 million in 2016, he noted, adding that the countries are also promoting cooperation in culture, health care, education, and energy, including wind power - a field that Denmark has strength in.

To help boost Vietnams connections with Denmark and the EU, he asked Denmark to push for the early signing of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.

He also thanked the Danish Government for creating favourable conditions for Vietnamese people in the country, which has also contributed to the sound relationship.

Although a number of encouraging cooperation outcomes have been reaped, they havent been on par with potential, the PM said, expressing his hope that the two sides will expand cooperation in many spheres, especially the fields that Denmark is strong at and Vietnam has demand in.

He suggested that the countries organise regular mutual visits, especially at high levels, to foster bilateral cooperation.

PM Phuc said he hopes with her experience, the ambassador will continue to support Vietnam-Denmark relations. He reiterated that Vietnam treasures ties with Denmark, an important partner of the country in North Europe.

For her part, Ambassador Laursen thanked PM Phuc, the Vietnamese Government, ministries and sectors for providing favourable conditions for her to fulfill tasks during her second term in Vietnam. She also expressed her delight at Vietnams socio-economic development and the thriving bilateral relations, including the establishment of a comprehensive partnership.

She noted that bilateral trade is growing well and about 130 Danish companies are now present in Vietnam. Danish businesses are strong in various fields, and many of them want to engage in trade and retail activities in Vietnam.

The ambassador said Vietnam is facing challenges in some sectors, which are the spheres Denmark has strength in such as green growth, environment, energy, and food. The diplomat said she hopes the two countries will promote affiliation in the coming time. Meanwhile, the cooperation in energy should be expanded to businesses, aside from their ministries and sectors.

Laursen also highlighted collaboration opportunities in labour, culture, health care, and education.

She pledged to continue supporting Vietnam-Denmark relations in the future./.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Secret legal advice which is believed to say that Brexit can be stopped unilaterally by Britain could be revealed, if a Commons vote is won next month.

Theresa May has been accused of suppressing a formal opinion that the Article 50 notification can be withdrawn, even without Brussels agreement.

Now two pro-EU MPs have tabled an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill which, if passed, would force the Prime Minister to publish a summary of that advice, they say.

Recommended Brexit minister apologises for incorrect comments on Article 50

The controversy could be crucial if MPs reject any Brexit agreement she secures in a meaningful vote to take place next year, before the withdrawal process can start.

Chris Leslie, a Labour MP and supporter of the pro-EU Open Britain group, said: MPs and their constituents have every right to know the legal facts about what is and is not possible in the Brexit process.

Ministers have provided no clarity on this so far and its about time they did.

And Chuka Umunna, a fellow Labour MP who has co-tabled the amendment, added: Ministers need to come clean about the legal advice they have received and give a simple answer to a simple question  can Article 50 be extended or withdrawn?

People have every right to know that it can and that they still have a choice at the end of the Brexit negotiations as new facts emerge.

Mrs May has insisted a rejection of her deal would simply mean Britain crashing out with no deal  insisting the Article 50 process is unstoppable.

But Lord Kerr, a former diplomat and the Article 50 author, argued the British Government could withdraw its letter and stop the process if it wished to.

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

Jean-Claude Piris, who served as legal counsel to the European Council for two decades until 2010, backed that interpretation, tweeting: I am on same side as John Kerr.

And a prominent QC said two good sources had told her that the Prime Minister has been advised that the exit notice can be reversed, if MPs judge that to be the best course.

Jessica Simor, from Matrix chambers, has called for the release of the legal advice under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. The Independent has made its own application.

Last month, Lord Callanan, a Brexit minister, was forced to apologise in the House of Lords for telling peers that Article 50 could not be revoked.

In October, Downing Street insisted it never comments on government legal advice, adding: We have always been entirely clear that we are leaving the European Union.

And Michel Barnier, the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, argued the UK could not overturn the decision to leave without the consent of the other 27 EU member states.

Mr Leslie and Mr Umuna said they would table the amendment when the flagship EU Withdrawal Bill returns to the Commons for its report stage, on January 16.

The Bill completed its committee stage this week, but with continuing confusion over the status of the meaningful vote that MPs won, in the only defeat the Government suffered.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

David Davis has been accused of running a Brexit department in a state of chaos, with 140 key posts unfilled as the UK enters the crucial second stage of negotiations with the EU, figures seen by The Independent show.

The vacancies led Labour to criticise the department as utterly disorganised and running an underpowered Brexit operation nine months on from triggering Article 50.

In total, there are 143 empty jobs, almost one in four of the posts at the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU), with economist, finance and project management jobs  as well as 81 policy roles  unfilled.

Recommended Government Brexit analysis published after long battle

It comes after separate figures showed that the department is suffering from a high turnover of staff, with almost one in 10 moving on every three months  a turnover rate normally seen every 12 months in normally functioning Whitehall departments.

An astonishing 44 per cent of DExEU employees plan to leave within the next year, a civil service survey found, suggesting the recruitment crisis is set to worsen.

The picture has emerged as fears grow in Brussels that the Governments stance on the end state it seeks for a final Brexit deal is a muddle, with the Cabinet only beginning to discuss its proposals this week.

The impression of an overstretched department was underlined when secret sectoral analyses of Brexits impact on the economy, drawn up by DExEU, were finally made public  and immediately branded a shoddy mess that a 16-year old wouldnt be proud of and a masterclass in copy and paste.

DExEU has funding for an additional 143 vacant roles, all full time, which we will look to take onboard over the next four months, the department said in the response to the freedom of information request, which was submitted by activist Shaun Davey.

A breakdown of the roles provided by the department showed 81 were in the policy team, 18 in private office, 10 in communications, nine in economics and statistics, eight in operational delivery, six in project management, five in finance, three in human resources, and a further three only identified as other.

Research by the Institute for Government shows that the number of people leaving the 600-person ministry is the highest in Whitehall  other than the special case of the Cabinet Office  and is only set to accelerate.

 Brexit could be delayed in 'exceptional circumstances', Theresa May admits

The Civil Service People Survey found that 44 per cent of DexEU staff plan to leave within the next year, making the task of recruitment even harder and leading to a leakage of accrued expertise. Currently, around 9 per cent of the departments staff are leaving every quarter  compared to an average in the civil service of 9 per cent a year.

Jill Rutter, programme director at the Institute for Government, told The Independent: Theyve also been losing people at a higher rate than any civil service department other than the Cabinet Office.

It obviously makes your task harder of filling up that bucket, its like filling up a bucket with a bit of a leak.

44% Number of DexEU employees who plan to leave in the next year

She added: They may be at steady state in terms of complement now, but the thing is if theyre then losing lots of people, theyll be running quite a high vacancy rate.

But even if they can fill them, finding people isnt necessarily enough because someone whos been doing the job for six to eight months is much more useful to you than someone who was just appointed.

Jenny Chapman, shadow Brexit minister, said: In less than a years time, the Government expects to sign a deal on Britains withdrawal agreement with the European Union. Yet these figures demonstrate how utterly disorganised and underpowered its Brexit operation is.

As every day goes by, we see further evidence of this Governments chaotic approach to Brexit. If Tory ministers wont take these talks seriously, then they should step out of the way and let Labour deliver the jobs-first Brexit this country needs.

A DExEU spokesperson told The Independent: We regularly review headcount to ensure we are appropriately staffed to deal with all aspects of our preparations for leaving the EU.

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

Brussels has set the UK a deadline of next October to finalise an Article 50 separation deal on trade and transition, so that it can be ratified by the EU institutions when Britain automatically drops out of the bloc in March 2019.

After that, if all goes according to plan, there will be a two-year implementation period under existing EU rules that will see the UK make physical preparations for leaving. The European Commissions chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said that that a full free trade agreement will likely be finalised during this transition period.

Talks to finalise the nature of the transition period are set to start after the Christmas break, while full discussions about what sort of trade framework there will be have been postponed until the European Council summit in March.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Almost a quarter of Labour MPs have defied Jeremy Corbyn and voted to keep the UK in the customs union after Brexit.

The Labour leader had instructed MPs to abstain on the issue, but 63 MPs rebelled and voted for an amendment, tabled by Labours Chris Leslie, that would have seen the UK retain its customs union membership.

Three Brexit-supporting Labour MPs  Frank Field, Dennis Skinner and Kate Hoey  also defied the party whip and sided with the Conservatives to vote against the amendment.

Proposing his amendment, Mr Leslie said: New clause 13 would keep open the option for the United Kingdom to stay in the customs union  something that I hope particularly my honourable friends will support.

We have to avoid that hard border, particularly between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We dont want our many industries to be turned upside down with all the jobs, and potentially Brexit austerity hitting our constituents for years to come.

I dont want that on my conscience. We have to act now.

While the amendment was voted down by 320 votes to 114, Labour whips are likely to be concerned that they were unable to convince so many of their MPs to toe the party line.

Among those to rebel were a number of former Shadow Cabinet ministers, including Chuka Umunna, Pat McFadden and Mary Creagh.

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 Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Green Party all backed the amendment, as did two Conservative rebels: Ken Clarke and Anna Soubry.

It came after the Government was forced to accept an amendment that would give Parliament the right to alter the date on which the UK will leave the EU.

Fearing a second defeat at the hands of Tory rebels, ministers backed down and agreed that the date should be enshrined in law as 29 March, but that MPs could delay it if more time is required for negotiations.

In a series of late-night votes, MPs rejected a cross-party amendment that would have legislated for a transition period lasting at least two years, and another that would have forced the Government to commission an independent assessment on the impact of Brexit on the NHS and social care.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Conservative minister who admitted asking his secretary to buy sex toys has been cleared after a Cabinet Office investigation and will keep his job.

There was no evidence that Mark Garnier, the International Trade minister, had breached the expected standards of behaviour, the inquiry decided.

A Downing Street spokesman said: It was not his intention to cause distress, and Mr Garnier has apologised unreservedly to the individual.

On that basis, the Prime Minister considers that a line should be drawn under the issue.

Mr Garnier faced the probe after his former secretary, Caroline Edmondson, told the Mail on Sunday he had given her money to buy two vibrators at a Soho sex shop.

On another occasion, he was alleged to have told her - in a bar, in front of witnesses  You are going nowhere, sugar tits.

Confusingly, Mr Garnier was investigated for a possible breach of the Ministerial Code of Conduct  although the incidents took place in 2010, before he became a government minister.

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 No 10 statement said: The Cabinet Office's investigation primarily considered Mr Garnier's behaviour as a minister, but also heard evidence from before he was appointed to government.

The Cabinet Office concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that Mr Garnier's conduct as a Minister since 2016 had breached the expected standards of behaviour.

The Prime Minister's view is therefore that Mr Garnier did not break the Ministerial Code while holding government office.

It added that an incident that happened before Mr Garnier was a minister, involving a staff member was also investigated.

It found there was no dispute about the facts of the incident, but there was a significant difference of interpretation between the parties, and that the member of staff in Mr Garniers office was distressed by what had occurred.

The statement went on to say that the minister had apologised and that, in the Prime Ministers view, the issue was closed.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theresa Mays ruthless sacking of her close ally Damian Green will convince people she he is the right person to lead the country, a Cabinet colleague claims.

Jeremy Hunt said the dismissal  announced late last night, in an exchange of letters  was further evidence of the Prime Ministers ability to take very difficult decisions.

The Health Secretary claimed it was part of a recent pattern which had seen Mrs May bounce back from incredible pressures to success in the Brexit talks and at Westminster.

I think what is emerging is someone of the most extraordinary resilience in very challenging circumstances, who is capable of taking very difficult decisions about close colleagues like Damian Green  even with all these other things going on, Mr Hunt said.

And I think that is what will reassure people that, in these very challenging national circumstances that we are in, that we do actually have someone who has that ability to lead the country.

Mr Hunts comments will be seen as an attempt to turn the damaging loss of her de-facto deputy to Mrs Mays advantage  by hailing it as evidence of her doing the right thing, whatever the personal cost.

 Damian Green sacked as First Secretary of State amid computer porn allegations

He admitted that Mr Green had been sacked because he had lied, dropping the pretence that he had been asked to resign after what were called misleading statements.

However, the Health Secretary said the police still had questions to answer, over the 2008 raid on Mr Green's Commons office, when pornographic images were found on his computer.

In his resignation letter, from his post as First Secretary of State, he continued to deny unfounded and deeply hurtful claims that he downloaded or viewed the material.

But a Cabinet Office investigation found two statements by Mr Green, which suggested he did not know indecent material had been discovered, were inaccurate and breached the ministerial code.

The sacking means Mrs May has lost three Cabinet ministers in under two months, after Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, and International Development secretary Priti Patel were forced out.

 Damian Green leaves home and refuses to comment after porn sacking

Speaking to BBC Radio 4s Today programme, Mr Hunt said it was clear Mr Green had lied and it was right that Cabinet ministers were held to the very highest standards of conduct.

He argued that a lot of people who understand the context would appreciate why that might have happened, but added: That doesnt make it any more acceptable.

On this occasion, very, very sadly and I know with a very heavy heart, the Prime Minister took the decision that she had to. I am sure that she didn't want him to go.

Jess Phillips, the Labour MP most critical of Mr Greens conduct, welcomed his sacking, but criticised the inquiry for taking longer than it needed to.

And she warned its conclusions might allow Mr Green to escape investigation by the new body Parliament is setting up following the sexual harassment scandal.

The fact that he left for lying, essentially, about pornography on his computer does seem to be the slight get-out to stop potentially the new independent system in parliament that is going to be set up looking into this further, Ms Phillips told Sky News.

It does seem they are trying to protect him from any future claims of sexual harassment.

Meanwhile, a source close to Brexit Secretary David Davis said he would not be quitting in protest at Mr Green's sacking - despite previous suggestions that he would.

Mr Davis was Mr Green's boss as Shadow Home Secretary at the time of the 2008 police raid on his Commons office.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theresa May has refused to criticise Polands slide into authoritarianism on a visit to the country, insisting the concerns are a matter for its authorities.

The European Union has started a legal process that could suspend Polands voting rights on the Council of Ministers, warning the entire structure of the justice system is under threat.

The unprecedented move follows the Polish Governments attempts to fill courts  including tribunals that will decide the validity of election results  with political appointees

Recommended EU eyes sanctions on Poland to stop drift towards authoritarianism

Ahead of the meeting in Warsaw, Downing Street briefed that the Prime Minister would raise her concerns with the [Polish] Prime Minister when they meet.

But, asked about the controversy, Ms May replied: These constitutional issues are normally, should be primarily, a matter for the individual country concerned.

At the press conference, the Prime Minister had tough words for Vladimir Putin, saying: The Kremlin is trying to undermine the international rules-based system. They will not succeed.

But a difference of opinion emerged with the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, over what should happen to the one million Poles living in the UK after Brexit.

Ms May said she wanted them to stay, hailing a provisional deal with the EU  but Mr Morawiecki said he wanted them to return to Poland and its growing economy.

Brussels has cracked down after growing fears of a rising nationalist movement in Poland, operating with the tacit support of the government, led by the right-wing Law and Justice party.

For the first time, the European Commission has invoked Article 7.1, warning that a legal breakdown in one country means breaking down the smooth functioning of the Union as a whole.

Donald Tusk, the European Council President, protested that he had received no response to a request for a one-to-one meeting with Mr Morawiecki.

At the press conference, Ms May hailed the relationship between the United Kingdom and Poland, based on a shared history and a shared tradition.

And, on Article 7 specifically, she added: Across Europe, we have collective belief in the rule of law.

I welcome the fact that Prime Minister Morawiecki has indicated that he will be speaking with the European Commission and I hope that that will lead to a satisfactory resolution.

Mr Morawiecki insisted that deep reform of the Polish justice system was needed in the light of the countrys communist past as a member of the former Soviet bloc.

And he hit back at Germany, arguing that after the fall of communism in the German Democratic Republic, only 35 per cent of judges were positively vetted.

Meanwhile, Ms May welcomed the signing of a landmark defence and security cooperation treaty between the UK and Poland, and said they would counter against Russian disinformation in the region.

There could be no clearer expression of the closeness of the UKs relationship with Poland, she said.

Downing Street said the defence treaty was only the second such agreement the UK has signed with a European ally, after an agreement with France.

It aims for enhanced cooperation in training, information-sharing, defence procurement and joint exercises between the Nato partners.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theresa May is to meet Polands new prime minister a day after the EU took unprecedented action to stop the countrys slide into authoritarianism.

The PM is visiting Warsaw for meetings with Mateusz Morawiecki, who has been in office for less than a fortnight since the resignation of his predecessor Beata Szydlo.

The European Commission on Thursday decided to recommend the invocation of Article 7.1, starting a legal process that could see Polands voting rights suspended on the Europe Council and warning that the entire structure of the justice system was being compromised by authoritarian reforms.

Recommended EU eyes sanctions on Poland to stop drift towards authoritarianism

Over the last two years Polish government has passed 13 laws that would help it stuff courts with political appointees, including tribunals that decide the validity of election results. It comes amid a growing nationalist movement in the country operating with the tacit support of the government

 EU takes unprecedented first step towards sanctions against Poland to stop drift towards authoritarianism

The UK has so far remained neutral in Warsaws dispute with Brussels, but any future vote, expected in March, would be complicated for the UK because Poland is seen as a key ally in Brexit talks.

Asked whether the PMs endorsement so soon after the censure was launched, the Prime Ministers spokesperson said: The Prime Minister will raise her concerns with the [Polish] prime minister when they meet.

"We hope that Poland and the Commission can resolve this through discussion."

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Meanwhile Ms May is expected to announce a new joint UK-Poland treaty on Defence and Security Co-operation, calling it a powerful symbol of our continued close co-operation.

Speaking ahead of the summit, she said: Poland matters greatly to the UK. Our partnership is broad, vibrant and diverse and we both share a steadfast commitment to Europe's security and defence.

I am determined that Brexit will not weaken our relationship with Poland. Rather, it will serve as a catalyst to strengthen it.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Catholic priest has come out as gay in a newspaper article, saying he had been carrying a secret cloaked in silence for years.

Leaders in his church had urged him to keep quiet, said Gregory Greiten, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Since my days in high school seminary in the 1980s, I was taught that homosexuality was something disordered, unspeakable and something to be punished, he wrote in the National Catholic Reporter.

Recommended Gay footballer urges other homosexual players to come out publicly

Students lived in fear, he added.

Since being ordained Fr Greiten has served as a minister for 25 years, he said, but often worried whether parishioners would think of me differently if they knew who I really was.

He struggled with repressing his true self which he said pushed back ever stronger in a desire to be recognised and accepted, particularly over the last year.

In taking the decision to come out, he wrote: By choosing to enforce silence, the institutional church pretends that gay priests and religious do not really exist.

Because of this, there are no authentic role models of healthy, well-balanced, gay, celibate priests to be an example for those, young and old, who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation.

This only perpetuates the toxic shaming and systemic secrecy.

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

Fr Greiten promised the Catholic LGBT community he would be his authentic self, apologising for remaining silent until now.

He said he would help you, whether you are gay or straight, bisexual or transgendered, to be your authentic self  to be fully alive living in your image and likeness of God.

He said he hoped that would make the world a brighter, more tolerant place.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Six defendants facing decades in prison for protesting Donald Trumps inauguration have been found not guilty, in a trial that raised serious questions about First Amendment rights in the age of Trump.

A jury in Washington, DC, cleared the defendants of all seven charges against them, which included rioting and multiple counts of property destruction. The defendants were the first of nearly 200 people due to stand trial for their involvement in the 20 January protests.

Jude Ortiz, a member of the Defend J20 team that mobilised to support the defendants, called the decision a victory for political organising.

Recommended All you need to know about the people on trial for protesting Trump

The prosecutor was trying to claim political organising was conspiracy, Mr Oritz told The Independent. And these acquittals show that that logic is not being bought.

He added: Hopefully that will send a very persuasive message to prosecutors everywhere that theyre not going to get away with criminalising protest organising.

In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President-elect Donald Trump acknowledges guests as he arrives on the platform at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Melania Trump looks on during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice John Roberts after taking the oath at inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as the 45th president of the United States Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump raises his fists after his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets outgoing President Barack Obama before Trump is inaugurated during ceremonies on the Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump resident-elect Donald Trump arrives on the platform of the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Attendees partake in the inauguration ceremonies to swear in Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump US President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address during ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President Donald Trump waves with wife Melania during the Inaugural Parade in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters registered their rage against the new president Friday in a chaotic confrontation with police who used pepper spray and stun grenades in a melee just blocks from Donald Trump's inaugural parade route. Scores were arrested for trashing property and attacking officers AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators protest against US President Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A woman holds a sign before the start of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Anti-Trump protesters prepare banners for a protest against the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, in Berlin REUTERS In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators shout slogans against US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators march, block foot traffic and clash with U.S. Capitol Police at the entry checkpoints for the Inauguration of Donald Trump Alamy Live News In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators display a banner as people arrive for US President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A man displays a placard as people lineup to get into the National Mall for the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump raise their hands as they are surrounded by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A demonstrator wearing a mask depicting Donald Trump protests outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators hold placards as they protest outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush arrive for the Presidential Inauguration at the US Capitol Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden share an umbrella as President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address at the inauguration in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. Vice President Mike Pence takes the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Advisors to President-elect Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon depart from services at St. John's Church during the Presidential Inauguration in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump take cover as they are hit by pepper spray by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump An activist demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump is helped after being hit by pepper spray on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer tries to tackle a protester demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump Reuters/Adrees Latif In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Police arrest and detain a protester in the street in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer falls to the ground as another shoots pepper spray at protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters

The Disrupt J20 march was an anti-capitalist demonstration that occurred alongside Inauguration-Day protests such as the Womens March and the Trump 420 protest in Dupont Circle. Unlike participants in these other protests, however, hundreds of Disrupt J20 demonstrators were arrested for their participation.

In the late morning of 20 January, DC Police surrounded and arrested more than 200 of the participants in a tactic known as kettling. Authorities claim some of the participants had broken windows, thrown chairs, and even assaulted a limousine driver, according to an indictment.

In their opening arguments, however, the prosecution conceded they had no evidence that any of the first six defendants engaged in any of the property destruction themselves. Instead, the state urged jurors to convict based on the defendants participation in the march itself.

Each of them made a choice, and each of them played a role, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff told jurors of the defendants, according to the Huffington Post. You dont personally have to be the one who breaks the window to be guilty of rioting.

 Anti-Donald Trump protests erupt across US as cities declare billionaire 'Not My President'

One of the defendants, Britt Lawson, was a registered nurse who said she attended the event to provide medic services to anyone injured. The prosecution claimed Ms Lawsons bag of medical supplies was evidence that the nurse had come prepared for war.

Another defendant, photojournalist Alexei Wood, said he was reporting on the event when he was arrested. The prosecution claimed his occasional cheers  which can be heard in his own, livestreamed video of the protest  were evidence of his active participation.

After the jury handed down their decision on Thursday, Mr Wood declared the verdict a direct-action push-back against Trumps anti-free-press rhetoric.

I am excited about people being able to speak freely, and being able to report the best they can, he told The Independent.

Multiple people in the courtroom burst into tears when Mr Wood, Ms Lawson, and their four co-defendants were cleared. Several of the 186 other defendants who have yet to stand trial were also in the courtroom that day. While their futures are less certain, observers said many of them celebrated along with the six who were cleared.

Its been rare in 2017 to have tears of joy, Mr Ortiz said. So to hear every not guilty, one after the other....People were just sobbing out of joy and surprise.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a Mecca for cartels and the land of notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Lagunas grew up never knowing his father. His mother left him with his grandmother as a child.

Lagunas left his hometown at the age of 15 without finishing high school, moving to the nearby municipality of Culiacan and washing cars to make a living, he said in an interview in July. It was in this adopted town that he took on the nickname that would later become known across cyberspace: El Pirata de Culiacan, or The Pirate of Culiacan.

He started landing invitations to more and more parties, and soon fell into a life of excessive drinking. He would post videos on social media showing him chugging beer and bottles of whiskey, sometimes getting so drunk he would pass out. The videos started going viral. In the years that followed, the bingeing teenager became a perverse YouTube sensation. At the age of 17, he racked up more than a million followers on Facebook and more than 300,000 on Instagram. His social media fame started earning him spots in music videos and at promotional events.

Recommended At least 12 die after tourist bus flips on highway in Mexico

His baby face, matched with his belligerent, clownish behaviour, entertained the masses. Yet it was easy to forget that he was still a boy. He drew a beard on his chin to look older. He tattooed his arms - a pirate on one, a tiger on the other. He posted pictures on Instagram with large guns, half-naked women and luxury cars.

The drinking age in Mexico is 18, but El Pirata de Culiacan drank as if he had no limits. Like many teenage boys, he lived as if he was invincible, saying whatever he wanted about whomever he wanted. It was all a big game, a big party.

But in Sinaloa, one of Mexico's most violent states, no one is invincible - especially when you mess with the wrong people.

In one recent video posted online, a seemingly intoxicated Lagunas was recorded taking a stab at Nemesio Ocegera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho. Cervantes happens to be one of Mexico's most dangerous drug lords, according to US government officials, the leader of the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco.

El Mencho a mi me pela la verga he said, which means, more or less, El Mencho, peel my cock, according to El Pais.

And on Monday night, while he and his friends partied at a bar in Jalisco, a group of armed individuals burst in and fired at Lagunas, the Attorney General of Jalisco, Raul Sanchez Jimenez, told Mexican media outlets. The teenager died, sustaining between 15 and 18 bullet wounds. Authorities managed to identify Lagunas by his tattoos.

Prosecutors have not determined the identities or motives of those responsible. But they confirmed to news outlets that they are investigating a possible link to the recent videotaped insult towards El Mencho.

El Mencho is one of the last people anyone would want to offend.

His cartel, the New Generation, is relatively new, coalescing less than a decade ago. It stemmed from the remnants of another group, the Milenio cartel, and makes money by selling guns, stealing gasoline, extortion and kidnapping, The Washington Post's Josh Partlow wrote in 2015. It is one of the fastest rising drug cartels in Mexico, operating in several Mexican states and forging underworld ties around the globe.

The group has been linked to thousands of murders, according to a Rolling Stone profile. Many of them have been traced specifically to their leader, El Mencho, who is reportedly a former police officer.

Lagunas' death comes during a year that is on track to become the bloodiest on record in Mexico. In the first 10 months of 2017, 20,878 murders were counted nationwide, an average of 69 murders a day, Reuters reported.

It's a dangerous time and place for anyone, but especially for a teenage boy living recklessly in search of fame.

He opted to make a career as a broken toy of cyberspace, a path he carved out drink by drink and that left him with enemies of flesh and blood, Univision reporter Fernando Mexia wrote in an article titled The poisoned fame of 'El Pirata.'

The YouTube star managed to transcend borders, even landing in Rolling Stone - not for his fame, but for his death. His killing gave him the popularity he never imagined, Mexia wrote.

As the teenager's celebrity rose, activists criticised the musicians, bands and promoters who featured him drinking in music videos. The attention only encouraged his dangerous behaviour and promoted the alcoholism of a minor, critics told Univision.

There are a lot of people who criticise him, but the truth is... that's why 'El Pirata' got started, said one artist, Luis Adame, of Ultimo Escuadron. Everyone in their own way tries to find a way to get ahead.

In recent interviews, Lagunas seemed to come to terms with his vices. He hoped to pursue a singing career, and reportedly had signed a contract with a record label.

Speaking to Pepe Garza, a radio host and producer, in July, Lagunas said he knew he needed to rein in the drinking.

You drink a lot all at once, and the body isn't meant for that, Garza said to him.

People ask me, 'How do you do it? How do you handle drinking so much? the teenager responded. I just laugh, I say 'I don't know how I do it.'

But, he said, they're right... sometimes I go too far.

The host wished him the best with his career, encouraging him to get a grip on the partying, so that he can last many years.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

After hearing the news of his death, fellow Instagram celebrity and promoter Beto Sierra remembered Lagunas as a cheerful, positive, fun friend.

Sierra recalled encouraging him to calm down and control the drinking. He told me that he wanted to change, but on the weekend, there was no lack of bad influences, Sierra wrote on Instagram.

You were living a fast life... you never listened, and I don't judge you, he said. Those who knew you know you were a good person.

The Washington Post
Photo for illustration (Source: VNA)



The President wrote that the Vietnam Peoples Army (VPA) was born from the people to fight for the people. It was founded and has been led, educated and trained by the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh, and lovingly called Uncle Hos soldiers.

Over the past 73 years, the VPA has been developing strongly, joining hands with the entire Party and people to overcome a range of difficulties and challenges, recording many glorious feats of arms, repelling all enemies and contributing to the cause of national liberation and unification as well as national construction and protection.

The VPA also worked with the armed forces and people of Laos and Cambodia to fight against the common enemies for independence and freedom of each country.

After the success of the resistance war against the American imperialists, the VPA entered the fierce struggle to safeguard the countrys border and performed a noble international mission to help the Cambodia people escape the genocidal regime, leaving a beautiful image of Uncle Hos soldiers among Cambodian people.

The glorious triumph of the August Revolution and the victory of the resistance wars against the French colonists and the American imperialists opened a new era for Vietnam - an era of peace, unification, national independence and socialism.

In the new period of revolution, the fine tradition of Uncle Hos soldiers, which was steeled through the resistance wars, has continued to flourish.

Guided by the Party, the VPA has focused on building the revolutionary, regular, battle-hardened and modern peoples armed forces, while firmly protecting national independence, sovereignty, unification and territorial integrity and safeguarding the Party, State, people and socialism.

Together with maintaining preparedness for combat, the VPA has also performed well in mass mobilisation, while helping people in production, poverty reduction, natural disaster prevention and recovery, search and rescue activities and giving people access to educational and healthcare services.

The VPA has been developing political bases at grass-roots levels, reinforcing the steadfast people-based battlefield, especially in remote, border and island areas.

Looking to the future, the nation is eyeing promising prospects, which go along with difficulties and challenges, requiring the VPA in particular and the peoples armed forces in general to uphold their revolutionary spirit, stay vigilant and work harder to build a strong army with high combat capacity./.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Crushed in the subway, barely able to breathe. Somebody is jabbing their elbow in your back. And everyone looks so darned angry.

There are days in America's magical yet maddening largest city, when it feels everyone wants to kill each other.

Yet new statistics show that murders in New York are at a record low. Indeed, the murder rate in densely packed Gotham is the same as it is in Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota.

Data collated by the Associated Press shows that up to December 17 2017, the city of 8.5m million people, a place where homelessness and mental health remain huge challenges and where inequality is stark, recorded 278 killings.

It said that means it is set to end the year with a 14 per cent reduction on last years figures and down on the 333 recorded in in 2014, which was the year with the fewest killings since New York began keeping accurate crime statistics in 1963.

 Port Authority CCTV footage appears to show moment bomb went off during New York rush hour

You can feel the change. More people are out walking the streets at night, theyre out talking to their neighbours, theyre not rushing their kids home, you know, with their heads down, Rashaud Carmichael, 36, a construction worker and father of three, told the news agency. Ive lived here all my life. And man, I can tell you, its a different world now.

The statistics stand in sharp contrast to the picture of New York City painted by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail a year ago, when he said murders were up because the citys liberal mayor, Bill de Blasio, was helping immigrants living here illegally and abandoning a police tactic that involved stopping and frisking huge numbers of predominantly innocent black and Hispanic men.

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

This years death toll included the eight people killed when a man from Uzbekistan allegedly drove a rented truck down a waterfront bicycle bath.

Months earlier, one person was killed and 20 injured after a man drove a vehicle into a crowd of people in Times Square.

No one died in an incident this month when a would-be suicide bomber detonated an explosive in the subway system.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of a kosher meatpacking executive who was serving 27 years in prison for money laundering - the first time the billionaire has used this presidential power.

The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin came at the urging of numerous members of Congress and law enforcement officials, who argued the sentence was far too harsh for a first-time, nonviolent offender.

The move was "encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum, the White House said. A list provided by the Trump administration showed Democrat House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was a supporter of reviewing Rubashkis case.

Rubashki, who ran the Iowa headquarters of Agriprocessors, a family-run business and Americas biggest kosher meat-processing company, was convicted in 2009 for submitting fake invoices to a bank that made the firms finances appear healthier than they were so it could borrow more.

His prosecution came after federal authorities raided the plant and arrested 389 illegal immigrants in 2008. The 57-year-old father of 10 had served more than eight years of his sentence.

The White House said the commutation was not a presidential pardon and did not overturn Rubashkin's conviction.

Mr Trump has used his pardon power just once, sparing former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time by wiping away a federal conviction over illegal immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.

 Mike Pence delivers public praise of Donald Trump after passing tax reform

Rubashkin's lawyer, Guy Cook, praised Mr Trump's decision, saying his client "has finally received justice.

"The sentence previously imposed was unfair, unjust and essentially a life sentence," he said. "President Trump has done what is right and just. The unrelenting efforts on Rubashkin's behalf have finally paid off."

In 2011, lawyers for Rubashkin filed an unsuccessful appeal for a new trial after government documents reportedly revealed the judge who handed down his 27-year prison sentence was involved in the planning of an immigration raid on Rubashkin's plant in 2008.

The White House said the President's decision to review Rubashkin's sentence was driven by concerns raised by a bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking law enforcement and Justice Department officials, including multiple former attorneys general, as well as prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars.

Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Show all 30 1 /30 Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Threatening to shut down Twitter after being fact-checked After the president tweeted that voting by post would be "substantially fraudulent", Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet and referred readers to a site which explained how the claim was "unsubstantiated". Trump then said Twitter was "stifling free speech" and that he may have to shut it down, something which he would not have the power to do AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Flippantly dismissing a serious allegation of sexual assault When author E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her, the president responded: Number one, shes not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Insulting the Mayor of London as he landed in London Just before touching down at Stansted Airport for his state visit, Trump took time out to @ the London mayor Sadiq Khan on twitter. He said that Khan has done a "terrible job"as mayor and that he is a "stone cold loser" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Taking plenty of "Executive Time" The president's official schedule sets aside the hours from 8 to 11am daily for "Executive Time". Further intermittent periods of "Executive Time" are scheduled throughout any given day, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. His duties in these hours have not been officially disclosed, though Axios reports that he spends them watching TV, reading the newspapers and tweeting Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Shutdown the government for over a month in an effort to secure funding for his wall With Mexico declining to pay for the wall, the president has faced difficulty in raising the required $5bn at home. Due to his demand that the money for the wall be included in the budget, and Congress's refusal, the government partially shut down on 22 December 2018. It remained shut for over a month, the longest period in history Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Joking about the Nazi occupation of France to President Macron In this tweet from 13 November 2018, the president mocks Emmanuel Macron's suggestion of a "true, European army" by invoking the conflict between France and Germany in the world wars Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Railing against the Mueller investigation The president has repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is a "rigged witch hunt" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting a US intelligence report on Russian meddling in the presence of Vladimir Putin In the press conference that followed his landmark meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump stated that he saw no reason why Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US election. This contradicted a 2017 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found evidence of Russian interference in favour of Trump Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting his contradiction of a US intelligence report on Russian meddling Following furious backlash in the US, the president claimed that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not have been Russia who meddled in the 2016 US election. As to why he would have intended to use such bizarre phrasing, he did not comment Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Colouring in the US flag wrong The president coloured in the US flag wrongly during a visit to a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added a blue stripe where in tradition, and statute, there have been only white and red stripes AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing a Secretary of State over Twitter The president announced on Twitter that he was appointing Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, much to the surprise of then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Quoting a catchphrase from a reality TV show when discussing police brutality While addressing the issue of black athletes not standing for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, the president made reference to his catchphrase from reality TV show "The Apprentice": you're fired! Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Calling African nations "S***hole Countries" Ever one for diplomacy, the president reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole countries". Asked to confirm this when meeting with Nigeria's President Buhari, Trump stated that there are "some countries that are in very bad shape". Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Defending Russian President Vladimir Putin Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying: There are a lot of killers. You think our countrys so innocent? Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Asking for people to 'pray' for Arnold Schwarzenegger At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump couldnt help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzeneggers show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of The Apprentice  which buoyed Trumps celebrity status years ago Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Hanging up on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Early in his presidency, Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the worst call he had had so far Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... The 'Muslim ban' Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Trumps travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administrations argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Praising crowd size while touring Hurricane Harvey damage After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the president picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... 'Little Rocket Man' During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be little Rocket Man as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Attacking Sadiq Khan following London Bridge terror attack After the attack on the London Bridge, Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticising Khan for saying there was no reason to be alarmed after the attack. Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming presenter Mika Brezinkski was 'bleeding from the face' Never one not to mock his enemies, Trump mocked MSNBCs Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to join him. He noted that she was bleeding badly from a face-lift at the time, and that he said no MSNBC Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming the blame for Charlottesville was on 'both sides' Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Retweeting cartoon of CNN being hit by a 'Trump train' Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Tweeting about 'slamming' CNN Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of fake news Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing head of the FBI, James Comey Trumps firing of former FBI Director James Comey landed him with a federal investigation into Russias meddling in the 2016 election that has caused many a headache for the White House. The White House initially said that the decision was made after consultation from the Justice Department. Then Mr Trump himself said that he had decided to fire him in part because he wanted the Russia investigation Mr Comey was conducting to stop Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Not realising being president would be 'hard' Just three months into his presidency, Trump admitted that being president is harder than he thought it would be. Though Trump insisted on the 2016 campaign trail that doing the job would be easy for him, he admitted in an interview that living in the White House is harder than running a business empire Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Accusing Obama of wiretapping him Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Obama had not, in fact, done so Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming there had been 3 million 'illegal votes' Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.) Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Leaving Jews out of the Holocaust memorial statement Just days after taking office, Trumps White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didnt mention jews or even the word jewish in the written statement Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Anger over Inauguration crowd size Trumps inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didnt, the day was very dreary Reuters

"Mr. Rubashkin is a devoted husband and father, a deeply religious man who simply doesn't deserve a sentence of this length, or anything remotely close to it," they wrote in a letter that urged Mr Trump to use his "executive clemency power to commute the patently unjust and draconian 27-year sentence imposed upon Sholom Rubashkin - a first time, non-violent offender and father of 10, including an acutely autistic child."

More than 30 current members of Congress also submitted letters to the White House supporting a review of Rubashkin's case.

But former prosecutor Bob Teig, who retired in 2011 after serving as a prosecutor and spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Iowa, said Mr Trump's decision to commute Rubashkin's sentence "makes no sense" given the Presidents repeated promises to get tougher on illegal immigration.

Mr Teig said every court that looked at Rubashkin's sentence had concluded it was fair, and suggested former Justice Department officials and lawmakers who supported leniency were unaware of the facts of the case.

"The outrage is backwards," he said.

Rubashkin is an American ultra-Orthodox rabbi belonging to the Chabad-Lubawitch Hasidic group, a spiritual revival movement arising from Eastern Europe.

He was appointed chief executive of Agriprocessors in 1987 by his father, Aaron Rubashkin, and oversaw the progression of the company into one of the 30 biggest beef-packing plants in America.

Additional reporting by AP
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

LGBT and human rights groups groups have slammed Donald Trumps tax bill, the biggest overhaul to Americas tax system in decades, claiming it will detrimentally affect programmes and provisions in place to help marginalised communities, from access to healthcare to support for people on low incomes.

The sweeping legislation, which is expected to make around $1.5tn (1.1tn) in tax cuts, will be voted on later on Wednesday. Republicans argue it will deliver benefits to ordinary Americans, while Democrats say it will hit the middle classes while the rich get even richer.

David Stacy, director of government affairs at the Human Rights Commission, said on Tuesday that the tax bill threatens the healthcare of millions of Americans.

If the Trump-Pence tax scam becomes law, programmes crucial to the LGBTQ community like Medicare, Medicaid, global HIV and AIDS programmes, and the Ryan White Care Act will surely face future efforts to cut their benefits, he said.

The legislation will scrap the individual insurance mandate set out in Barack Obamas health care law, which calls for people to pay a tax penalty for not purchasing healthcare insurance.

The HRC said in a statement that repealing this provision could result in 13 million people leaving the insurance market, causing insurance premiums to soar and leave millions priced out of access to healthcare.

Ahead of Tuesdays vote, Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD, said the bill would have serious consequences for Americas more marginalised communities by directly targeting access to affordable and inclusive healthcare.

She added: Congressional leaders rammed through a highly unpopular and dangerous bill under the false promise of a middle-class tax cut while intentionally ignoring the devastating effects this legislation will have on LGBTQ and low-income communities.

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

Newsweek reported that the individual mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act is used by people living with chronic health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, citing census data showing that gay and bisexual men made up 67 per cent of all HIV diagnoses in 2015.

According to health policy organisation the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicare is now the single largest source of federal financing for HIV care and treatment.

The people set to potentially lose out under the new tax bill are those who rely on the social safety net, while House speaker Paul Ryan has made comments about reforming "entitlement" programmes to tackle the current deficit.

The Associated Press reports that the budget deficit, which registered $666bn (496bn) in the 2017 budget year, is set to soar even higher, fuelled by the tax cuts, a disaster relief total set to breach $130bn (97bn), and long-promised, record budget increases for the military.

Trillion-dollar deficits loom before the end of Mr Trump's term, which has Republicans already planning a pivot to long-promised curbs on government benefit programmes such as food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare.

"There is no way out," Mark Sanford, Republican representative for South Carolina, said on Tuesday. "The tax bill is in essence the nail in the coffin on driving the absolute mathematical necessity of reform to entitlement programmes. You can't have both."

Mr Ryan said in an interview that "even if we get the kind of growth we hope to get (from tax cuts), you still have to reform entitlements if you're going to get this debt under control. You cannot grow your way out of the entitlement problem we have coming."

Christopher Stoll, a senior staff attorney at the National Centre for Lesbian Rights, told Newsweek earlier this month: This bill is a disaster for everyone really, but especially for LGBT [people].

It will result in deep cuts in programmes that LGBT people depend on, he said, adding that LGBT people are more likely to be on middle- to low-incomes.

Members of the LGBT community are particularly economically vulnerable in American, according to the Williams Institute.

Research from the institute released in 2012 showed that 24 per cent of lesbians and bisexual women were considered poor, compared with 19 per cent of heterosexual women, while children of same-sex couples had poverty rates twice those of children in heterosexual married-couple households.

It also showed that transgender people are four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 (7,462) and were twice as likely to be unemployed.

Statistics show that 14 per cent of Americans live in poverty.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights told Reuters last week that the tax reform bill will create the single most dramatic increase in inequality that could be imagined.

Additional reporting by agencies
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The United Nations human rights chief is to step down, suggesting that his re-election would involve lessening the independence and integrity of my voice after his outspoken criticism of world powers  including the US.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein said he would not seek a second four-year term as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, telling staff in an email: To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication.

The Jordanian Prince had reportedly been under pressure to tone down his criticism of Donald Trump, who he has previously described as dangerous and blamed for a surge in discrimination, anti-Semitism, and violence against ethnic and religious minorities.

Recommended UN human rights chief attacks Donald Trump

This week Mr Hussein described the US decision to recognise Jerusalem of the capital of Israel as dangerously provocative and blamed the Presidents announcement for violence in which five people died.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had urged Mr Hussein to ease off his public criticism of the American President over fears it put US support for the United Nations at risk, reported Foreign Policy, which obtained the human rights chiefs email to staff.

In the statement, Mr Hussein wrote: After reflection, I have decided not to seek a second four-year term. To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice  which is your voice.

There are many months ahead of us: months of struggle, perhaps, and even grief  because although the past year has been arduous for many of us, it has been appalling for many of the people we serve.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

He did not specifically mention the US, Mr Trump, or pressure to tone down criticism. But his decision to step down raises questions about the UNs role as a champion of human rights.

Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for Global Advocacy at Human Rights Watch (HRW), described Mr Hussein as a beacon of moral clarity and said it was sad to see he felt that he had no other choice but to step down at the end of his first mandate to protect the integrity of his voice.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of HRW, said Mr Hussein had faced working in a hostile environment.

A spokesman for Mr Guterres confirmed Mr Hussein would depart at the end of his current term in August.

He said: The High Commissioner informed the Secretary General last week of his intention not to seek another term. The High Commissioner has always enjoyed the full support of the Secretary General.

The US ambassador to the UN this week warned she was taking names of UN members who oppose Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The President threatened to withhold billions of dollars in aid from those nations which criticise his controversial decision.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was told by President Donald Trumps administration it could not use seven words in its 2019 budget  last night those words were projected onto the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC.

The words foetus, entitlement, diversity, transgender, vulnerable,evidence-based, and science-based were briefly seen beamed on the front of the building, located near the White House.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a DC-based LGBTQ advocacy group, partnered with artist Robin Bell for the temporary installation as a declaration from the LGBTQ community, the group said.

Recommended This is what experts said over Trump administration plans to ban words

We will not be erased the lighted message read.

A CDC analyst told the Washington Post those in the agency could not believe the limits placed on it by the administration.

It was very much, Are you serious? Are you kidding, said the analyst.

CDC Director Dr Brenda Fitzgerald tweeted that though people may be understandably concerned about recent media reports alleging that CDC is banned from using certain words in budget documents, the words were not banned from agency use.

She posted: As part of our commitment to provide for the common defence of the country against health threats, science is and will remain the foundation of our work.

The Post had reported that it was not a total ban on using all the seven terms.

Instead of science-based or evidence-based, the suggested phrase is CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes, the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered, the newspaper reported.

One former federal official told the New York Times the ban and alternative suggestions did not actually limit what the CDC could say to the American public in research documents and announcements, but that the administration is saying not to use it in your request for money because it will hurt you...Its about a budget strategy to get funded.

The budget documents were also sent to other government agencies and Congress.

That same official called the Trump governments move absurd and Orwellian.

The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the CDC and spokesman Matt Lloyd told the Post his agency strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.

The Food and Drug Administration, also housed under HHS, did not receive any such guidance on language.

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

However, forbidding the seven terms does fit a pattern at HHS.

The agency had eliminated two questions about gender identity and sexual orientation from a demographic survey of elderly Americans back in March.

The survey results are published in a very large and important statistical report that helps the government identify the particular challenges older Americans are facing when it comes to employment, healthcare, housing, and other issues, David Stacy, HRCs Government Affairs Director told The Independent at the time.

The HHS under the Trump administration said in the Federal Register that no changes had been made to the survey, said Mr Stacy.

The agency website was also scrubbed of information about how LGBTQ Americans can adopt children or where to seek help if they are victims of sex trafficking.

The administrations move is also reflective of a government-wide message. Recently the Environmental Protection Agency deleted any mention of the term climate change from its documents and website.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The top Democrat on the US Senate Intelligence Committee has warned Donald Trump sacking Robert Mueller would be a "gross abuse of power" which "has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis".

Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Mark Warner said the Special Counsel's investigation into alleged links between the Republican's presidential campaign and Russian meddling in last year's election must be "able to go on unimpeded."

He denounced "a growing chorus of voices in Congress, the media, and the White House" who he accused of "pushing a coordinated narrative undermining the credibility of the Special Counsels investigation and the FBI itself".

Republican lawmakers have seized on anti-Trump texts by an FBI agent who was involved in the Russia probe as evidence of bias in Mr Mueller's team. The Special Counsel removed the agent from his team after messages describing the President as an "idiot" and "loathsome human" came to light.

Republicans on several House of Representatives committees have also announced their own probes into long-standing political grievances, including the FBI's handling of defeated Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.

Mr Trump has insisted he was not considering firing Mr Mueller, despite increasing attacks on the lawyer from the President's allies.

But Virginia Senator Mr Warner, vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, warned "the Presidents track record on this front is a source of concern". He added he was "certain many of my colleagues believed that he wouldnt possibly fire" James Comey, who was sacked as FBI director by Mr Trump in May during the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller's investigation," said Mr Warner, adding that the attacks were "seemingly coordinated."

"Firing Mr Mueller or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this administration's commitment to the truth, but also to our most basic concept of rule of law," he added. "It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis."

The senator called on Congress to make it clear to the President that firing Mr Mueller would have "immediate and significant consequences."

He added pardoning key witnesses in the probe and sacking other FBI or Department of Justice officials involved in the investigators were "red lines" that "we simply cannot allow.. to be crossed". Mr Trump has refused to say if he will pardon Mr Flynn, who has admitted lying to the FBI.

"Any of these actions would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities," Mr Warner said.

Senator Mark Warner boards an elevator after delivering a speech in the Senate chamber (Getty Images)

House Democrats had circulated rumours last week that Mr Trump would fire Mueller this Friday, just before the Christmas holiday.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement on Wednesday that the administration "willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the special counsel".

He added: "If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumour, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them."
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Vice President Mike Pence has landed in Afghanistan on an unannounced, pre-Christmas trip to the Middle Eastern country, just months after the White House he works under announced that it would pursue a new strategy in the country with the hopes of ending the 16-year-war there.

Mr Pence landed Thursday at Bagram Air Base under heavy security, before being lifted via helicopter to Kabul, where he is expected to hold meetings with Afghanistan President Ashaf Ghani. The surprise trip is the first such trip by either Mr Pence or his boss, President Donald Trump, in Afghanistan. He later returned to Bagram, where he addressed troops and received military briefings from officials, including General John Nicholson, the top military officer in Afghanistan.

The new Afghanistan strategy relies on a regional approach, hoping to develop cooperation with South Asian nations to help weed out al-Qaeda and establish a level of stability there so that American troops may eventually be able to leave the area.

The new strategy is an explicit memo to the Afghanistan government that American troops may not always provide outsized supplies and capital to the country  and ties US involvement with the willingness of the Afghanistan government to cooperate an contribute the fight on terror there.

There are currently around 15,000 US forces in Afghanistan, after Mr Trump decided to send 3,800 additional troops to help the effort this fall. The Trump administration reportedly plans on infusing hundreds more US Army trainers to the country to help in the efforts there, which could bring the number of troops there to 16,000.

Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear Show all 16 1 /16 Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2001 Afghans at the Killi Faizo refugee camp desperately reach for bags of rice being handed out to the thousands who escaped the bombardment in southern Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. (Chaman, Pakistan, December 4, 2001) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2002 Mahbooba stands against a bullet-ridden wall, waiting to be seen at a medical clinic. The seven-year-old girl suffers from leishmaniasis, a parasitical infection. (Kabul, March 1, 2002) All photos Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2003 A mother and her two children look out from their cave dwelling. Many families who, fleeing the Taliban, took refuge inside caves adjacent to Bamiyans destroyed ancient Buddha statues now have nowhere else to live. (Bamiyan, November 19, 2003) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2007 Students recite prayers in a makeshift outdoor classroom in the Wakhan Corridor, a mountainous region in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to China and separates Tajikistan from India and Pakistan. (Northeastern Afghanistan, September 2, 2007) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2007 Bodybuilders in the 55-60 kg category square off during a regional bodybuilding competition. Many Afghan men, like others around the world, feel that a macho image of physical strength is important. (Kabul, August 6, 2007) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2008 A woman in a white burqa enjoys an afternoon with her family feeding the white pigeons at the Blue Mosque. (Mazar-e-Sharif, March 8, 2008) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 Addicts inject heroin while trying to keep warm inside the abandoned Russian Cultural Center, which the capital citys addicts use as a common gathering point. Heroin is readily available, costing about one dollar a hit. (Kabul, February 9, 2009) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 An elderly man holds his granddaughter in their tent at a refugee camp after they were forced to flee their village, which US and NATO forces had bombed because, they claimed, it was a Taliban hideout. (Surobi, Nangarhar Province, February 7, 2009) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 Seven-year-old Attiullah, a patient at Mirwais Hospital, stands alongside an X ray showing the bullet that entered his back, nearly killing him. Attiullah was shot by US forces when he was caught in a crossfire as he was herding sheep. (Kandahar, October 13, 2009). Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2010 US Army Sargeant Jay Kenney (right), with Task Force Destiny, helps wounded Afghan National Army soldiers exit a Blackhawk helicopter after they have been rescued in an air mission. (Kandahar, December 12, 2010) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2010 An Afghan National Army battalion marches back to barracks at the Kabul Military Training Center. (Kabul, October 4, 2010) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Eid Muhammad, seventy, lives in a house with a view overlooking the hills of Kabul. He and millions of other Afghans occupy land and housing without possessing formal deeds to them. (Kabul, November 21, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Razima holds her two-year-old son, Malik, while waiting for medical attention at the Boost Hospital emergency room. (Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, June 23, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Young women cheer as they attend a rally for the Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani. (Kabul, April 1, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Burqa-clad women wait to vote after a polling station runs out of ballots. (Kabul, April 5, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2015 Relatives, friends, and womens rights activists grieve at the home of Farkhunda Malikzada, who was killed by a mob in the center of Kabul. Farkhunda was violently beaten and set on fire after a local cleric accused her of burning a Quran. (Kabul, March 22, 2015) Paula Bronstein

Other top US officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have recently visited Afghanistan as well. Mr Mattis trip there illustrated how strained the situation in Afghanistan has become, after the Taliban launched rockets at the Kabul airport, nearly hitting Mr Mattis plane.

The United States responds with air strikes against the Taliban.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Forty years after the federal government took steps to keep the largest natural reserve in America  if not the world  safe from desecration, Congressional Republicans have quietly stripped away those protections with a little-seen provision on a tax bill that could allow major companies to begin drilling for oil and gas reserves there for the first time.

The provision puts in danger the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: a vast piece of land in Alaska that is considered holy by Native American tribes, and one that plays a crucial role for the continued existence of polar bears, caribou, and millions of migratory birds who flock there every year to mate.

Opponents of the move say the Republican efforts amount to a cynical bow to special interests, and have the potential to wreak havoc on the environment and human rights with little (if any) economic upside.

This was a blatant grab by the oil industry and their backers in Congress to hoodwink the public, and fulfil their political agenda to drive a stake into the heart of one of the most pristine areas left in the world, Franz Matzner, the deputy director for federal campaigns for the Natural Resource Defence Council, told The Independent.

Recommended Republicans vote to allow drilling in Arctic National Wildlife refuge

The refuge was first set aside in 1960 by former President Dwight D Eisenhower, and was later expanded upon by former President Jimmy Carter in 1980, when a portion of the land known as the 10-02 was left potentially open for drilling as the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian revolution led to worries of oil shortages.

The status of the refuge has been at the centre of fierce debate virtually ever since then, but the tax provision this week marks the first time that Republicans have succeeded in passing a piece of legislation on the matter with a sympathetic president in the Oval Office.

Sitting in the pristine and nearly untouched wilderness of north-western Alaska, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) spans some 19.6 million acres of protected land, with 1.5 million acres in bureaucratic limbo due to their 10-02 classification and the fierce battle around them.

The lands are a significant sign of what the world may soon face, and are an essential part of the migration and reproduction patterns of caribou, millions of bird species, and polar bears.

The region, like much of Alaska, has begun to see the devastation that climate change is expected to bring, with melting sea ice, and changing migratory patterns as wildlife tries to adapt to their quickly changing environment  yet another reason why environmentalists say the area shouldnt be opened up for drilling, arguing that more oil needs to be kept in the ground to curb climate change effects,

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Show all 14 1 /14 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 The good life - Daniel Nelson - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Daniel Nelson/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Giant gathering - Tony Wu - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Memorial to a species - Brent Stirton - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 The jellyfish jockey - Anthony Berberian - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Anthony Berberian/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 The ancient ritual - Brian Skerry - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Brian Skerry/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Stuck in - Ashleigh Scully - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Ashleigh Scully/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Contemplation - Peter Delaney - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Peter Delaney/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Palm-oil survivors - Aaron Gekoski - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Aaron Gekoski/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 The ice monster - Laurent Ballesta - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Laurent Ballesta - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Crab surprise - Justin Gilligan - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Justin Gilligan/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Polar pas de deux - Eilo Elvinger - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Eilo Elvinger/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 The incubator bird - Gerry Pearce - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Gerry Pearce/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Tapestry of life - Dorin Bofan - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Dorin Bofan/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 In the grip of the gulls - Ekaterina Bee - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Ekaterina Bee/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

But there are other reasons that Democrats and environmentalists have opposed the provision. For some, opening up the land to drilling is yet another signal, after the recent decision to shrink the Bears Ears national monument, that the Trump administration is uninterested in the rights and heritages of Native Americans.

President Trump has effectively said that he wants to exploit this sacred place, and instead honour the sacred pledge which he and the Republican Party have made to the oil industry to allow drilling there, Sam Alexander, a board member with Gwichin Council International, said in a statement following the tax vote.

The Gwichin tribe considers the land of ANWR sacred, and relies upon the caribou that flock their every year as a main source of sustenance.

It is so preposterous  it is such a compromise of a century of commitment to conservation policy, Mr Alexander added.

Others simply point to what they see as the shaky economics surrounding opening the land up to drilling. Already-low prices of oil could easily mean that oil and gas companies wont bother with leasing in the arctic anyway, as they already enjoy plenty of leases on American public lands where they already have oil and gas extraction operations, they say.

From a tax perspective, the inclusion of the ANWR changes may be small potatoes overall. An analysis of the legislation by the liberal think tank Centre for American Progress found that the proposal would generate roughly $40m (29.9m) over the next decade, even though Republicans claim the figure ranks upwards of a billion in increased revenue.

To put that in perspective, authors of the analysis note, the revenues wouldnt likely be enough to offset even the tax cuts Mr Trump would personally receive.

Environmentalists and Democrats say that the battle to keep ANWR pristine isnt over. Theyre considering their options, including using state or local laws to push back, using shareholder pressure to influence oil companies, and using federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules to try and derail the process.

Theyre up against the likes of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who slipped in the provision to open up federal lands for drilling.

Ms Murkowski, the senior senator from the state, is a close ally of the oil and gas industry, and received $1.4m in campaign donations from the industry during her career, making it the top donor to her campaigns, according to Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP) data.

That support isnt inconsistent with the oil and gas industrys preference for candidates in general, however. During the most recent election cycle, for instance, CRP data shows the industry donated $26.8m to Republicans, compared to just $39m to Democratic candidates.

We need people to stay engaged in this fight. Were not going to walk away from it. It is discouraging, Athan Manuel, the director of the Sierra Clubs Land Protection Project, said.

Its a terrible development for us to have Congress open up this area for leasing and drilling but its certainly not over.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Indonesian police have appealed for tolerance and respect for other people's religious celebrations after an Islamist group threatened to raid businesses to check for Muslims being forced to wear Santa Claus hats or other Christmas garb.

The hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said this week it would conduct "sweeping operations" in the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, and that forcing Muslims to wear Christmas attire was a violation of their human rights.

Indonesia is home to several religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and people who follow traditional beliefs.

The constitution guarantees freedom of religion in an officially secular state though tension between followers of different faiths can flare.

"There can be no sweeping operations... members of the public should respect other religions that are carrying out celebrations," national police chief Tito Karnavian told police during a security exercise in the capital, Jakarta.

The FPI said it aimed to enforce a fatwa, or decree, issued by Indonesia's Islamic Clerical Council in 2016 prohibiting business owners from forcing employees to wear Christmas clothing.

"We will raid businesses in anticipation of them being stubborn about this and we will be accompanied by police," said Novel Bakmukmin, head of the FPI's Jakarta chapter.

Employers forcing staff to wear Christmas clothes were violating their rights.

"Businesses should be aware that there should be no forcing," he said.

The Islamic Clerical Council's decrees are not legally binding but serve as guidelines for Indonesian Muslims.

Christmas is widely celebrated across Indonesia and holiday decorations are ubiquitous, especially at shops, restaurants and malls where many enthusiastic workers - even Muslims - don Santa hats or elf costumes.

The FPI built its reputation with raids on restaurants and bars serving alcohol during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In recent years, it has turned its attention to Christian celebrations.

The group has also said it wants the Jakarta city government to stop sponsoring New Year celebrations, which attract many thousands of people.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

About 90,000 police officers will be on duty cross the country during the end-of-year holidays, in an operation largely aimed at preventing militant attacks.

Attacks on churches in Jakarta and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in 2000, killed nearly 20 people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday.

Reuters
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A North Korean soldier fled to South Korea at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) followed by gunfire from both sides, Seoul has said.

The soldier was spotted in front of a South Korean guard post on Thursday morning amid thick fog, according to state news agency Yonhap.

According to a South Korean joint chiefs of staff spokesperson, the Norths border guards came looking for the defector more than an hour later and approached the military demarcation line (MDL)  the land border between the two countries  before South Korean soldiers fired 20 warning shots from a K-3.

There was also the sound of gunshots from the North, but no bullets were found to have crossed the border, he added.

 Dramatic footage shows North Korean soldier shot at as he flees to the South

The defector was identified as a 19-year-old man who was carrying an AK rifle at the time of his escape. The guard post was located in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province.

The man is now in custody and is likely to be questioned over the reasons behind his decision to flee.

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

It is the second defection across the heavily guarded border in less than two months. Another North Korean soldier was shot multiple times by comrades after he launched a dramatic escape on 13 November.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, the number of North Koreans who attempted to defect dropped by more than 10 per cent in the first part of 2017, compared to 2016.
President Tran Dai Quang and President of Laos Bounnhang Vorachith (Photo: VNA)



Meeting with the Lao leader in Hanoi on December 20th, the President congratulated the Lao Party, State and people on impressive achievements they have made over the past three decades of renewal. He hoped that Laos will reap more successes in its future development.

He expressed his delight at the fruitful bilateral ties in various areas like politics, security and defence, economy, education, culture, science and technology, which are all important to maintain stability and bolster socio-economic development in each nation.

President Quang hailed the close collaboration between the two countries in organising the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017, which is an important event in the bilateral relations.

He asked both sides to continue close coordination to improve existing cooperation mechanisms, further cooperation in security and defence, and promptly address difficulties to ensure the efficiency of bilateral economic and trade ties.

Bounnhang Vorachith, for his part, congratulated Vietnam on the successful hosting of the APEC Year 2017 and expressed his sympathy over human and property losses Vietnam has suffered in recent storms and floods.

He appraised giant strides in the bilateral relations in the past time while informing the Vietnamese leader about the activities held in Laos within the friendship year to mark 40 years of the signing of the Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and the 55th anniversary of the diplomatic ties.

At the meeting, the two leaders stressed that both sides need to exchange information in a timely manner and support each other at regional and international forums, especially the UN, ASEAN and Mekong Sub-region cooperation mechanisms, to maintain regional and global peace, security, stability and development.

The Lao leader invited President Tran Dai Quang and his spouse to visit Laos at an appropriate time, and the later accepted the invitation with pleasure./.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The US has sanctioned a Burmese general accused of leading a murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing that has driven more than 600,000 members of a Muslim minority from the country.

The US Treasury Department announced that Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw the military operation in the northwest Rakhine state, was among 52 individuals and entities who were being sanctioned for alleged alleged human rights violations and corruption.

It 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.

 Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Burma

Among other individuals hit by sanctions were Benjamin Bol Mel, who has served as an adviser to South Sudan President Salva Kiir, former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh, the daughter of Uzbekistans late dictator and the son of Russias prosecutor general.

Experts say the situation in Burma has become incredibly difficult. The UN estimates that up to 650,000 Rohingya are now living in emergency camps inside of Bangladesh.

While the two countries have held talks about returning them to Burma, there is reluctance among Burmese officials to do so and concerns among the international community as to whether their safety could be guaranteed if they do return.

This week, it was revealed that Burma had refused a visa to Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur, who was scheduled to visit in January and prepare a report on human rights issues across the country.

After the authorities in Naypyidaw announced they would not cooperate with her visit, Ms Lee called on the international community to exert more pressure on the Burmese government, whose de facto civilian leader is Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

From what I see right now Im not sure if they are feeling pressured. Im not sure if there is the right kind of pressure placed on the military commanders and the generals, she told Reuters.

Mark Farmaner, director of the Burma Campaign UK, told The Independent the human rights crisis in the country was unprecedented.

We have never had such a serious human rights crisis in Burma nor such a weak international response. Personally, after 20 years at Burma Campaign UK, I have never felt the future of Burma to be a bleak as it is now, he said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Aung San Suu Kyi banning the Special Rapporteur from the country is just the latest is a series of steps she has taken to cover up human rights violations against the Rohingya. No-one anticipated that Aung San Suu Kyi would have such a total disregard for human rights.

Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has been widely criticised for not speaking out against the abuses targeting the Rohingya. Critics believe the former political prisoner does not want to upset potential voters in the Buddhist-majority country now she is a politician.

Others have said the countrys constitution means that even though the country is in the process of transitioning towards democracy, the military still retains control of key ministries, including defence and foreign affairs.

General Soe was last month transferred from his post, but the countrys Ministry of Defence gave no reason for the move.

Todays announcement of sanctions demonstrates the United States will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement.

The sanctions are the first imposed under a US law called the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which was enacted last year.

The action freezes any assets the sanctioned individuals and entities may hold under US jurisdiction and blocks Americans from dealing with them.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Nineteen people have been injured, some critically, after a car was deliberately driven into pedestrians outside a major train station in Australia.

The crash outside Flinders Street station in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) happened at about 4.45pm local time on Thursday.

The driver and a second man have been arrested, police said. Officers called it a deliberate act but said there was no evidence to suggest terrorism as a motive.

Police said the 32-year-old driver was an Australian of Afghan descent who had a history of drug use and mental health problems. The second man, 24, was arrested nearby and found to be carrying a bag of knives while filming the crash, officers said.

Australian media reported that a preschool-aged child was among the injured.

Images showed a white Suzuki SUV that appeared to have collided with a tram shelter. Its front was significantly damaged, however, with the bumper crushed back behind the line of the wheels.

Police and emergency services attend the scene of the crash on Flinders Street (Reuters)

Victoria Police said: Police and emergency services remain on the scene and will do for the foreseeable future. The crime scene is active and will remain in place for some time.

We urge people who can avoid the area, to avoid the area. People may have items or vehicles within the crime scene area, however they will not be able to access these until the area is reopened.

Victoria Police will also continue to provide a strong police presence in the Melbourne CBD tonight.

The white car surrounded by investigators (ABC)

A witness told ABC: I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and I heard a thump.

I turned around and saw the white SUV streaming through the intersection and just seeing people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them. Then it went through the intersection within a second or two and then went ploughing straight into the tram stop where it came to a dead halt.

Melbourne car crash Show all 12 1 /12 Melbourne car crash Melbourne car crash Police and emergency personnel work at the scene of where a car ran over pedestrians in Flinders Street in Melbourne REUTERS Melbourne car crash The white car surrounded by investigators ABC Melbourne car crash A police officer detains a suspected man Twitter/LACHLANVE via Reuters Melbourne car crash People have been injured, some seriously after the crash PA Melbourne car crash Victoria Police Commander Russell Barrett speaks to the media on Flinders Street AAP/Joe Castro via Reuters Melbourne car crash Police and emergency services attend to the scene Reuters Melbourne car crash The white SUV sits in the middle of the road AFP/Getty Melbourne car crash Members of the public stand behind police tape after the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection was arrested Reuters Melbourne car crash Police and emergency personnel work at the scene AFP/Getty Images Melbourne car crash Police and emergency services attend the scene of the crash on Flinders Street Reuters Melbourne car crash The scene where a car ran over pedestrians AFP/Getty Melbourne car crash Police and emergency personnel examine the scene of where a car ran over pedestrians AFP/Getty

We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act, Victoria Police commander Russell Barrett told media in Melbourne. The motivations are unknown.

Flinders Street is a major road that runs alongside the Yarra river. The crash happened in the first week of school summer holidays.

Another witness, Lachlan Read, told the Herald Sun the whole attack lasted about 15 seconds. It was bang, bang, bang. It was just one after the other.

The last bang the car stopped, the 20-year-old said. There were bodies on the ground and people running up to them  it was mayhem.

In January, four people were killed and more than 20 injured when a man deliberately drove into pedestrians at a spot just a few hundred metres away from todays incident. Police said the earlier attack was not terrorism-related.

Australias Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, tweeted: As our federal & state police & security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

An unofficial exit poll in Catalonia's regional election suggests a coalition of pro-independence parties have secured a small majority, Spanish media reports.

Although commentators warned the poll should be treated with caution, if it proves accurate, the result could open up a new and uncertain chapter in the Catalan political crisis following the disputed independence referendum.

The separatist parties are predicted to win 67-71 seats in the 135-seat assembly, the poll showed, with the unionist bloc set to take 55 to 62 seats and the local offshoot of anti-austerity party Podemos taking seven or eight seats.

Published by La Vanguardia newspaper, the poll casts serious doubt over the ability of the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to unite the country following the Catalan referendum in October. He had hoped the election would return the country to what he called "normality" under a unionist government or with a separatist government that will not seek a unilateral split.

The crisis has damaged Spain's economy and prompted a mass exodus of businesses from Catalonia, which has long been the country's economic powerhouse.

The regional election is regarded as an indication of how support for the independence movement has fared since the regional government was sacked by Mr Rajoy following the referendum, which was not legally recognised.

Deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont urged voters to show they back independence by voting him back into office.

Mr Puigdemont is attempting to win back the Catalan regional presidency just two months after he fled to Brussels rather than face police questioning on suspicion of rebellion and sedition, among other possible crimes. He was able to run for election because Spanish law is only able to bar someone from standing if they have criminal convictions.

The exiled politician was hoping that a win at the polls would pile pressure on Spain to allow him to avoid prison if he returns to his homeland.

The turnout was at a record high for the regional election with over 83 per cent of eligible Catalans turning out to have their say at the ballot box.

Recommended Spain withdraws arrest warrant for exiled Catalan leader

In contrast to the violence that boiled over on the streets of Spain during October's referendum, the regional election passed off peacefully.

The exit poll contradicts final pre-election surveys that predicted the separatist parties would lose control of the regional parliament and running neck-and-neck with unionists. If it proves correct, weeks of haggling between parties attempting to form workable coalitions could ensue, although an effective separatist government would be the most likely outcome.

At pro-independence rallies around Barcelona, supporters awaiting the results were tentatively celebrating.

These elections are the closest we'll ever get to a referendum, said Joan Garcia, a 28-year-old computer programmer watching the results come in on a giant screen at one event.

If the independence parties win, the Spanish government will have to listen to us.

The first official preliminary results are expected by 9pm and final results after midnight.

Additional reporting by Reuters
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The election in Catalonia, of profound significance to the region, to Spain and to the European Union, has taken place with little hope of it bringing an early end to a bitter political crisis, but with recrimination over the past and unease for the future instead.

The turnout, after a volatile campaign which had been preceded by violence, was high as had been expected with queues forming outside some of the polling stations from early in the morning and almost half of the 5.5 million of those eligible voting by late afternoon.

None of the half-dozen contesting parties were expected to reach the 68 seats needed for an outright majority on their own. The final surveys indicated that the pro-independence Esquerra Republicana (ERC) and Junts Per Catalunya (JxCat) and the hard left CUP are likely to get between 62 and 66 seats while the unionist parties, Ciudadanos (Cs) the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) and the Catalonian branch of Spains ruling Popular Party (PP) will get between 56 and 61 seats.

Passions have run high in campaigning, with differences not just on policies but among personalities (AFP/Getty)

The polling in this extraordinary election, which may eventually lead to the creation of Europes newest country, takes place after vicious clashes in which hundreds of people were injured when the Spanish government sent in the Guardia Civil on 1 October to try and stop a referendum called by Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and his administration.

Mr Puigdemont is now in exile in Belgium with an arrest warrant issued against him by the Madrid government of Mariano Rajoy, and ERC head Oriol Junqueras in a Spanish jail. Ines Amrimadas, who leads Ciudadanos, has complained to the police after receiving numerous violent threats including one of gang rape.

The acrimony has spread among the parties, with differences not just on policies but among personalities, which may make forming coalitions difficult. Results were expected by late in the evening on Thursday, although they will not be officially declared until 5 January after postal and votes abroad are fully counted. The Catalan Parliament then has approximately a month to elect a speaker and a regional President.

Mr Puigdemont tweeted from Brussels: Today we will demonstrate the strength of an indomitable people. May the spirit of 1 October guide us always. He added later this is not a normal day for democracy. He has not been able to vote as he would have had to go into the Spanish embassy in Brussels to do so. Mr Junqueras said he had sent a postal vote from prison. He sent a note to his wife saying today I wish to be with you and the children for more reasons than ever. The couple will spend their fourth wedding anniversary apart because of his incarceration.

At the last rally of JxCat Mr Puigdemont had given a speech on a video link from Brussels. Nine seats on the front row were left empty with names of jailed Catalan leaders, including Mr Junqueras of ERC, attached. But the two parties have failed to agree to a joint ticket, as they had done in the previous regional election two years ago, and their leaders have been exchanging barbs. I went to prison because I do not hide and I am consistent with my acts, said Mr Junqueras in a radio interview. Mr Puigdemonts response was: I am in Belgium because I also do not hide and I am consistent.

At a polling station in LHospitalet de Llobregat, a Barcelona suburb, Bernat Oliveras, who voted for JxCat appealed for the two leaders to bury their differences and form a coalition: This is a great opportunity, a moment in history for the struggle for independence to be united. It would be really, really irresponsible to let this slip away because of any personal problems people have with each other. The people will never forget this if it happens.

At the town of Arenys de Munt, where a referendum held eight years ago is viewed as the start of the current struggle for independence, Josep Sanchez Camps, chief of operations at the council, stated: I really do worry if we fail to form a government and our opponents like the Peoples Party and the Socialists form one instead. The cause of freedom may be lost for years.

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

Raquel Santiago, volunteering for the ERC in central Barcelona, described how the violence on the day of the referendum had boosted the backing for independence. She works for the Catalan Fire Service whose members, helping at the polling stations, were attacked by some of the Guardia Civil officers.

Those scenes were horrible, people could see the pictures on TV and social media and they shocked people. A lot of people who had been against independence or simply werent interested in politics became supporters of independence on that day, she said.

There had been allegations of vote rigging and Ms Santiago said she was being vigilant at the count: It is the same party which had been doing things like this for a long time. I am quite observant and I am keeping my eyes open for any tricks. We are also watching out to see if they are telling people lies about the independence movement.

But Walter Ziegler, a unionist supporter at the same polling station, charged that it was the separatists who were responsible for lies. One big one is that Catalonia pays so much in tax to the central government and gets nothing back. The figures simply dont support this. A lot of the taxes are local ones set up by the separatist government, he held.

The pro-independence parties may be able to cobble together a coalition, Mr Ziegler, an architect, acknowledged. If we end up in opposition we must be effective in scrutinising what they do, how much public money they spend on propaganda, he wanted to stress. This election is not the end of anything, there will be a lot to fight for in the future.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

An interpreter who once worked at a meeting in Downing Street has been arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of being a Russian spy.

The man, who has been named as Stanislav Yezhov, worked for the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groysman, and accompanied him to a number of high-level meetings, including with Theresa May in Downing Street in July, where he was photographed with the British Prime Minister.

He was also present at a meeting with then US Vice President Joe Biden at the White House in 2016.

Mr Yezhov was detained by Ukraines SBU security service in Kiev on Wednesday. Footage showed him being led away by two officers.

Asked about the issue during a visit to Poland, Ms May said she was aware of the reports of Mr Yezhovs arrest but that it was a matter for Ukraine.

She said: Im aware of the reports in relation to the Ukrainian individual who attended Downing Street earlier in the summer.

The action thats been taken is a matter for the Ukrainian authorities.

Ukrainian security services claimed Mr Yezhov had acted on the orders of Russian intelligence agencies and had used special equipment to collect information about the activities of government structures.

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 information was passed to Moscow via electronic channels of communication, they said.

Mr Yezhovs home and workplace are now being searched by Ukrainian authorities. He will probably face charges of treason, officials said.

Mr Groysman said on his Facebook page that the suspect had worked for a long time in the interests of a hostile state.

The issue could be raised when Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, meets his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow on Friday.

The revelation came as Ms May used her trip to Poland to accuse Russia of weaponising information as she announced a UK-Poland defence treaty.

The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system, and it will not succeed, she said.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: We are aware of reporting about the arrest of Stanislav Yezhov in Ukraine.

We can neither confirm or deny the allegations against him. It is not our practice to comment on legal proceedings in other jurisdictions.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

In a humiliating blow for Donald Trump on the world stage, the United Nations General Assembly has voted by 128 to nine to declare his controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital null and void.

Just days after the US used its veto power at the UN Security Council to block a similar measure, the General Assembly resoundingly condemned the Americas unilateral action, which most observers said would hamper efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.

While the vote has little practical impact  it is not legally binding  it is a considerable embarrassment for the US as it reflects global opinion.

As the US licked its wounds, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbass spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah seized on what he said was a victory for Palestine.

Recommended US declaration of Jerusalem as Israel capital defeated in UN vote

We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation, and to establish our Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Mr Rdainah said.

Thirty-five countries, many in Africa and Latin America, abstained from the vote.

Experts had predicted at least 150 votes in support of the motion. There was speculation that the high number of abstentions was a result of the Trump administrations threat to take names of countries and cut off humanitarian aid funding.

Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Malawi, and several Caribbean and Pacific island nations all abstained. Canada, Poland, Australia, and Mexico also joined them in sitting out the vote, in perhaps a nod to other political pressures from the US.

Britain voted for the motion, as did India and Russia.

 Benjamin Netanyahu calls the UN the 'house of lies' before Jerusalem vote

Ahead of the vote, the USs ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had warned that the US would would be taking names of any countries who supported a resolution criticising Washingtons actions.

The Associated Press said Ms Haley had written to most of the 193 UN members states warning of possible retaliation. She said the President was taking the matter personally.

Speaking to members of his cabinet on Wednesday, Mr Trump said he liked what Ms Haley had spelled out. For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us. They take hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars and then they vote against us, Mr Trump said.

Were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care.

In 2016, the US contributed approximately $13bn (9.7bn) in economic and military assistance to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and $1.6bn to states in East Asia and Oceania, according to the US Agency for International Development.

Ukraine was among the 21 nations that were not present for the vote.

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

Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he completely rejected the preposterous UN resolution.

He said in a video on Facebook that Jerusalem always was, always will be Israels capital. He also said he appreciated that a growing number of countries had refused to participate in the theatre of the absurd.

Mr Netanyahu also thanked Mr Trump for his stalwart defence of Israel. Also joining the US and Israel were Togo, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Honduras.

Despite the disapproval of so many countries, Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Independent the vote is still a win for Trump in a perverse way.

It fits with his tough guy, anti-globalist image. If he had backed down in the face of UN pressure he would have looked hollow to his domestic supporters, Mr Gowan said.

However, it is not a win for Ms Haley in his estimation. She looks diplomatically isolated and a little inept, and has undone the work she has put in to build relationships with diplomats, Mr Gowan noted.

The White House has not publicly commented on the vote as yet, but Ms Haley took to Twitter to appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN, and included a list of all those that voted no and abstained.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea after crossing the heavily fortified demilitarized zone.

A South Korean defence official said the soldier managed to traverse the DMZ that spans the two nations without any shots being fired, taking advantage of what Yonhap news agency described as thick fog.

It marks the second known defection of a North Korean soldier in recent months. Another man who escaped in November was hit multiple times as North Korean soldiers opened fire, according to the South Korean military, and underwent treatment in the South.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, the number of North Koreans who attempted to defect dropped by more than 10 per cent in the first part of 2017 compared to the year prior.

But that came after an unusually high number the previous year, with the ministry estimating that more than 1,400 people defected from North Korea to the South over the course of 2016.

A ministry official told the Wall Street Journal that some said they were leaving not just because they are starving, but for a better life, and for freedom and for their childrens education.

The defections come at a time of soaring tension on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang has repeatedly tested intercontinental ballistic missiles and detonated a powerful hydrogen bomb, threatening its neighbours and drawing global condemnation.

Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters

Both North Korea and South Korea maintain a substantial military presence along the border, and South Korea has conducted joint military drills with the United States that the North has condemned as aggressive provocations.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Americas ambassador to the United Nations has lashed out at the body for disrespecting the US in criticising its policy toward Israel and warned of repercussions.

Noting that America is the single largest contributor to the United Nations, Nikki Haley argued that the country was being asked to pay for the privilege of being disrespected.

We have an obligation to demand more for our investment, Ms Haley told the bodys General Assembly, and if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our investment in more productive ways.

Her comments came as the international body moved to censure America for its recent decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transplant the US embassy there, a move that has drawn condemnations from Palestinians and warnings that the Trump administration was undermining its credibility in the peace process. The host of sites sacred to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Jerusalems status has been disputed since Israel seized the city decades ago in the Six Day War.

Facing a global outcry over the move, the Trump administration is pushing back on its critics and arguing that the status quo in Israel has done little to resolve a long running conflict. Ms Haley warned that the United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very right of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.

We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations, she said. And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.

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 line of criticism echoed Donald Trumps frequent arguments that America has gotten an unfair deal in making larger contributions to international bodies like NATO. The President this week threatened to curtail aid to countries that back the resolution assailing American policy.

This isnt like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars, he said. Were not going to be taken advantage of any longer.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The United Nations held a major vote on the status of Jerusalem  one that could have broad implications.

In many ways, the vote was a matter of America and Israel against the world. It called into question Donald Trumps foreign policy and underscored an uncertain path forward for the Middle East peace process.

Below, we break down some of the paramount questions about the vote.

What did they vote?

The resolution was a reaction to Donald Trump formally recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It emphasises that Jerusalems status must be resolved through negotiations and expresses deep regret at the change, which it also declares null and void. In a reference to Mr Trumps vow to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it urges all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

It wasnt close. The resolution passed in a 128-9 landslide that saw some three-quarters of nations voting yes (another 35 abstained and 21 were no-shows). The countries that sided with the US in voting against the measure were the Central American nations of Guatemala and Honduras; the island nations of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Palau; Togo; and, of course, Israel.

For a point of reference, the 2012 vote to give Palestine observer status at the UN passed 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions.

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

What happens now?

Not necessarily much. Keep in mind this was a resolution rejecting Americas stance, rather than a change in policy or an explicit call to action. That means its value is largely symbolic, though it could have concrete consequences for Americas diplomatic capital and working relationships with other countries.

Americas Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned that America will remember this day when we are called upon once again to make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations and when other nations ask America to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit. That could be rhetorical, or it could mark a real change in how America plans to navigate international relationships and disbursement of humanitarian aid time will tell on this one.

What does this mean for Israel?

For Israel, this vote essentially confirmed the global status quo: while many Israelis view Jerusalem as their undivided, eternal capital, much of the world views Israeli control over the city as an illegal claim to the spoils of war seized in a 1967 conflict known as the Six Day War.

In 2016, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israeli actions aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, singling out the building of settlements and the displacement of Palestinians (the United States abstained). A separate resolution adopted last year by the General Assembly asserted that Israel was violated the Geneva Convention for its actions in Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.

Ms Haley also said earlier this year the US may leave the UNs Human Rights Council over its chronic anti-Israel bias. The 47-member body has repeatedly voted on resolutions to condemn Israel for its perceived mistreatment of Palestinians.

All of this is to say that global condemnation of Israels assertion to sovereignty over disputed territories is nothing new for Israeli leadership. Nor is American backing of Israel that cuts against a global consensus. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lauded Mr Trumps decision and thanked him and Ms Haley for their stalwart defence of Israel.

What about Palestinians?

This was a vindication for Palestinians. It illustrates that they enjoy broad support for their cause, including at the United Nations, an institution that has historically been sympathetic to their struggle. A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed the vote as a victory for Palestine, and suggested that Palestinian leadership views the international body, rather than America, as the better partner in their drive for self-determination.

We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said.

And Trump?

Again, its unclear. From the start, Mr Trump has been skeptical of Americas global obligations as he promotes an America First platform that focuses on domestic issues.

He has assailed what he sees as inadequate contributions by other NATO members, saying America has unfairly been asked to pay well above its share, pulled America from the UN-brokered Paris climate accord and has repeatedly strained longstanding alliances. In formally recognising Jerusalem the capital of Israel, he overrode objections from much of the international community.

He once again took the line that America pays too much to ungrateful allies this week, threatening to withhold aid to nations that backed the resolution, saying this isnt like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollar and were not going to be taken advantage of any longer.

As with Ms Haleys reprimand, we shall see if that does translate into foreign aid cuts. But Mr Trumps words and actions here have been fairly consistent with the America First foreign policy views that have already animated his presidency.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Palestinian leadership is praising a United Nations vote that rejected Americas recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The vote is a victory for Palestine, said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Donald Trumps decision to declare Jerusalem the capital pleased Israeli elected officials but angered Palestinians, many of whom believe a Middle East peace deal must include their claim to sovereignty over part of Jerusalem.

The city contains sites sacred to both Judaism and Islam, and its status has been in dispute for the decades since Israel assumed control over the city during the Six Day War.

After Mr Trump formally announced the change, a prominent former Palestinian negotiator said the President had destroyed the possibility of a two-state solution.

I think President Trump tonight disqualified the United States of America to play any role in any peace process, Saeb Erekat told reporters.

Much of the world had a similar reaction, condemning a move that critics said would stymie the Middle East peace process and undercut Americas role as a neutral mediator.

That broad rebuke translated into a formal UN action, as the body voted overwhelmingly to declare null and void Americas decision.

Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Show all 18 1 /18 Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli forces scuffle with Palestinians at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty Images Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A Palestinian protester hurls stones as tear gas is fired by Israeli troops Reuters Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A Palestinian protester runs during clashes with Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli forces scuffle with Palestinians at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty Images Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Palestinian protesters run during clashes REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli border policemen and a Palestinian protesters clash REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Palestinian protesters react to tear gas REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli border policemen hold on to a Palestinian protester REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Palestinian protesters react to tear gas fired by Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli border policemen and Palestinians scuffle after Friday prayers in Jerusalem's Old City REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A Palestinian protester moves a burning tire during clashes with Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Worshippers chant as they hold Palestinian flags after Friday prayers Reuters Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A Palestinian protester hurls back a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A wounded Palestinian protester is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli border policemen and a Palestinian youth scuffle REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Israeli border policemen detain a Palestinian man REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl stones towards Israeli troops REUTERS Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during 'Day of Rage' Journalists react to tear gas fired by Israeli troops REUTERS

The Trump administration has excoriated the United Nations, with the President threatening to withhold aid from countries that back the resolution.

Ambassador Nikki Haley said the US had been disrespected and will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations.
Catalonia votes in regional elections after independence crisis

Polling stations across Catalonia have opened following a months-long political crisis triggered by a referendum for independence from Spain. Thursday's early regional elections, announced by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government at the end of October, were one of several measures taken by Madrid after the Catalan parliament declared independence from Spain.

GALLERY

Some 5.5 million Catalans are eligible to vote, with observers expecting an unusually high voter turnout of more than 80 per cent.

Madrid (dpa) - Voter surveys point to a neck-and-neck race between Catalan separatist parties and the so-called constitutional camps as Spain waits to see whether pro-independence parties can again win a majority of parliamentary seats and build a coalition government.Some 5.5 million Catalans are eligible to vote, with observers expecting an unusually high voter turnout of more than 80 per cent.Madrid bumped up security in the region in anticipation of violence, with local media reporting that the Spanish Interior Ministry deployed some 15,000 police officers to patrol during voting hours.Catalonia, a wealthy region in Spains north-east with a culture and language distinct from the rest of the country, was until recently led by the government of Carles Puigdemont, who held the independence referendum on October 1 and initiated a process of secession from Spain.The move created a constitutional crisis, leading Rajoys conservative government in Madrid to suspend the Barcelona government, place it under Madrids control and call for new regional elections at the end of October. Catalonias regular legislative period would have lasted until 2019.Puigdemont and four of his ministers absconded to Brussels, while several other members of his administration were placed under arrest.
Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Christmas period is often beset by travel problems, and 2017 is no exception. With rail strikes, grounded flights and long tailbacks expected, travelling over the next week is likely to take longer than normal. Heres everything you need to know about getting home this festive season.

Trains

A strike by rail workers on Virgin Trains on Friday will see a reduced timetable in operation, which could force more people to travel on already congested roads.

Some 260 engineering projects on the railway will also disrupt journeys.

Recommended The busiest winter day for travellers in UK history revealed

Many of Britains mainline routes will be partially shut as Network Rail carries out its biggest ever Christmas investment programme.

Great Western Railway is urging passengers to complete journeys by Saturday at the latest as London Paddington will be closed between Christmas Eve and 27 December.

The West Coast main line will be halted between Preston and Lancaster from Christmas Eve to December 27, with buses replacing trains.

Passengers travelling between London and Glasgow during this time are advised to go via Edinburgh, adding around an hour to journeys.

Southeastern, which serves London, Kent and East Sussex, will not be able to run trains to London Bridge, Charing Cross and Cannon Street between Saturday and January 1.

Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne said: We know that our railway is up to 50 per cent quieter than usual during the festive period so taking on and delivering these huge transformational schemes at this time of year minimises our impact on passengers.

Airports and airlines

Earlier in the week an estimated 20,000 airline passengers had their flights to and from UK airports cancelled because of freezing fog.

On Monday night Manchester airport, Britains third-biggest, saw dozens of cancellations, particularly on Flybe. Services to Exeter, Southampton, Belfast, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh were among those grounded.

Some Ryanair and easyJet flights were heavily delayed or cancelled. Loganairs link from Manchester to Inverness was axed, with some passengers travelling by bus instead. Their estimated arrival time was 4.30am, more than seven hours late.

Recommended More winter mayhem at Manchester and Heathrow airports

At Heathrow, British Airways pro-actively grounded more than 80 domestic and European flights, as well as a handful at Gatwick and London City. But during the day, with delays building, several more were cancelled, including round-trips to Rome and Warsaw.

Departures on Aer Lingus to Dublin and Shannon, Flybe to Edinburgh, Lufthansa to Frankfurt and Munich, SAS to Copenhagen and Stavanger, Eurowings to Stuttgart and KLM to Amsterdam were also cancelled.

The airline said: We agreed in advance with Heathrow airport, air traffic control and other airlines to slightly reduce our short haul schedules.

We recommend that all customers check their flight is operating before travelling to the airport. We are very sorry for the disruption to our customers journeys at this important time of year.

There were talks of a Ryanair pilot strike over Christmas, but this has been suspended after the airline agreed to talks. CEO Michael OLeary said on Friday that the low-cost airline would engage with unions for the first time.

Christmas flights are very important to our customers and we wish to remove any worry or concern that they may be disrupted by pilot industrial action next week, he said.

If the best way to achieve this is to talk to our pilots through a recognised union process, then we are prepared to do so.

Roads

Inrix chief economist Dr Graham Cookson has warned of doubled and tripled journey times on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, particularly on the M25 around London, and the M6 in the Midlands and North-west.

On Thursday afternoon, Inrix predicts that journeys on the M6 southbound could take five times as long as normal, with peak delays from 2.30pm.

People are creatures of habit, and they start journeys in the afternoon, said Dr Cookson. Any time from Wednesday afternoon onwards is going to be bad.

Friday afternoon and early evening is predicted to see the highest density of traffic on Britains roads, when the normal rush at the end of the working week is augmented by people beginning the great getaway.

Dr Cookson advises motorists: Set off in the morning, give yourself plenty of time and have lots of Christmas tunes.

Recommended Congestion expert warns worst Christmas jams will be at Stonehenge

The RAC, meanwhile, expects Christmas traffic to peak between 4pm and 8pm on Friday.

Inrix data shows that the worst non-accident traffic blackspot on the Friday before Christmas 2016 was the A303 at Stonehenge.

There were tailbacks for seven miles when congestion at the notorious bottleneck peaked shortly after 6pm on December 23 last year.

Dr Cookson said: Drivers would be well advised to take alternative routes or avoid driving during peak times altogether.

RAC traffic spokesman Rod Dennis added: Things tend to get worse on the last working day before Christmas, with Frantic Friday this year falling on the 22 December.

We strongly urge drivers planning long journeys to avoid this day if they possibly can.

Highways England is lifting almost 400 miles of roadworks for the festive season, from 6am on Friday 22 December until 12.01am on 2 January. It says almost 99 per cent of motorways and strategic A roads will be free of works.
Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A woman in the US state of Indiana was shocked to discover that she was fined $350 dollars by a hotel after posting a negative review.

Katrina Arthur and her husband stayed at the Abbey Inn & Suites in Brown County, just over an hour south of state capital Indianapolis, in March 2016, reports WRTV.

She claimed the stay had been a nightmare.

Recommended How to spot a hidden camera in your Airbnb

The room was unkempt and it looked like it hadnt been cleaned since the last people stayed there, she said. We checked the sheets and I found hairs and dirt. Arthur added that there was a strong smell of sewage, weak water pressure and broken air conditioning.

After being unable to find a hotel employee, Arthur said she ultimately had to clean the room myself.

Following her stay at the hotel, now permanently closed, Arthur said she felt the need to post an honest review.

I was honest. I wanted people to know not to waste their money because I know people save their money for special occasions.

She deleted her review after being threatened with legal action and charged the extra $350. She contacted the Indiana attorney generals office, which filed a lawsuit against the hotel company on December 15.

Indianas state legislature alleges Abbey Inns policy of charging for negative reviews is in direct contravention of the states Deceptive Consumer Sales act, which aims to protect customers and clarify regulations.

The lawsuit claimed the policy read: Guests agree that if guests find any problems with our accommodations, and fail to provide us the opportunity to address those problems while the guest is with us, and/or refuses our exclusive remedy, but then disparages us in any public manner, we will be entitled to charge their credit card an additional $350 damage. Should the guest refuse to retract any such public statements legal action may be pursued.

President and sole shareholder of the Abbey Inn corporation told Fox News the policy existed between autumn 2015 and summer 2016. It could be found on the hotels website but wasnt provided to guests when they stayed.

The lawsuit has caused problems for Amanda Sweet and her husband, the hotels new owners.

Its been a horrible 24 hours for us, she said. Weve been pouring ourselves into making positive renovations, bringing this beautiful building back to life. This is our livelihood and we dont want it to go away.

Speaking to The Independent, a spokeswoman from the British Hospitality Association said it could not comment on the legality of charges for negative hotel reviews in the UK, but did provide a recently published report concerning fake negative reviews. The report found that 85 per cent of hospitality businesses had been victim to fake online reviews intended to harm, while half said the threat of a bad online review had been used to blackmail them into giving customers a refund.
Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent Nadine White Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter The Race Report Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

The Race Report email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A horrific crash that sadly resulted in the death of six people over the weekend has left the Birmingham community in mourning over the loss of those who died and those who are injured and still fighting for their lives. Four of the people involved were from my hometown Small Heath, an area of Birmingham.

Kasar Jehangir, 25, Mohammed Fasha, 30, and Tauqeer Tox Hussain, 26, were all killed as a result of the crash. A 22-year-old man, Zakkria Khan, who was also in the same car, was seriously injured.

The Audi ploughed into a taxi on Birminghams Lee Bank Middleway in the early hours of Sunday. Taxi driver Imtiaz Mohammed, 33, a father of six, was also killed in the collision, along with sign language interpreter Lucy Davis, 43, and her boyfriend Lee Jenkins, 42.

Over the last few days I have realised that to be black, brown, Muslim or foreign today is treated as a crime in itself. Suspicion and false accusations come naturally in the case of all these groups.

The mainstream media has proven this, with tabloids and social media showing horrific pictures of the crash scene with no respect or regards to the families at all. Disrespectful pictures of dead bodies from the crash have been circulating on Facebook, and there has been anger because Facebook has refused to remove graphic pictures of the tragedy.

 Six dead in Birmingham car crash

What possesses people to photograph someone passed away in a pool of their own blood or trapped under cars? God forbid their family see it. Media outlets and individuals should be sharing images of when the victims were alive and happy, not these.

In addition to the horrific photos showcased, the victims are yet to be buried and already the trashy tabloid has begun to demonise and character assassinate Kasar Jehangir, who was one of the victims in the Audi S3.

This insensitive and grotesque article in the Daily Mirror has led to the majority of the mainstream media following suit and demonising a British Pakistani. The young mans mourning family cannot grieve without people judging them and condemning them.

It has emerged since the tragedy that Jehangir had only recently been released from prison. He was jailed for 36 months for leading police on a chase. Jehangir admitted dangerous driving and possession with intent to supply Class A drugs in November last year. He did the time for his conviction and this news has to differentiate from the crash  as it may have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Sensationalised media headlines of Kasars past convictions, labelling him as nothing more than a drug dealer, make it feel like a trial is taking place now in the media. But this is a trial in which he has already been found guilty and in which he has no fair representation or voice  because he has been killed in a horrific car crash.

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

How can a dead man defend himself? This brings back echoes of Mark Duggans case, where his character was also assassinated by the media. They called him a gangster and a drug dealer.

It is only yesterday the family of an Iranian disabled refugee Bijan Ebrahimi, who was burnt alive by a vigilante after years of abuse, expressed relief that an independent review has vindicated their campaign to expose institutional racism within a police force and council.

The media, the police and politicians are constantly trying to sow discords of hate against some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We must hold them to account for their insensitive reporting with no regards or remorse shown to Kasars family.

Whatever Kasar Jehangir was, we cannot be the ones to judge. We have to show our respect first and foremost rather than make blatant negative judgements about the victim.

Injustice requires those who are killed to go quietly into the night and be stripped of their humanity and dignity. Some outlets provide cheap excuses  they dismiss the pain of the family and have no sympathy for the life taken. We should challenge those that seek to sow division and hate.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Talk about a pre-emptive burial of bad news. Boris Johnsons much-delayed visit to Moscow is being hidden away at the back end of the year in a way that almost guarantees feeble to nil coverage in the UK media.

Who, after all, will be much exercised by the Foreign Secretarys doings in Russia, what with the last-minute panic over shopping and turkey and the news schedules all over the place?

A host of reasons might lie behind the official reticence. One could be sheer embarrassment that the visit has not happened sooner.

When Theresa May became Prime Minister, one of the early phone calls she made was to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in the hope  or so it appeared  of trying to end the long run of generally appalling UK-Russia relations. Concern that President Trump and Putin might actually get along may have been a later consideration, too, given that a US-Russia thaw could have left the UK in the cold.

Then there was the shambolic way in which plans for the visit were handled. First scheduled for early April, it was postponed after a suspected chemical attack in Syria that was blamed on the forces of President Assad  and so, by extension, on his Russian allies. The visit was very soon reinstated, but then cancelled again, after it turned out that the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, would be in Moscow just a day or so later.

This apparent lack of diary coordination between the two closest transatlantic allies is the sort of thing diplomacy is supposed to avoid. It hardly gave the impression that improving relations with Russia was a UK priority.

 Labour MP asks Theresa May if she will name her goose on Christmas Day Michael or Boris

The long postponement, however, has created new problems. The dynamics have changed quite significantly over the intervening months  and not to the UKs advantage. This is partly because Russia is no longer, or much less, in the international dock over Syria. The tentative peace process Moscow initiated in parallel with its military involvement has borne fruit, and the US (if not the UK) has quietly abandoned its more dubious allies in the region. Putins flying visit to Syria earlier this month was his mission accomplished moment, and Russia is now assured of a role in any peace.

Johnson must also navigate the still unresolved US-Russia relationship; if the UK wants to be in the US camp, it will have to keep its options open. Trumps hopes of an opening towards Russia may have been frustrated  even sabotaged  by his enemies in Washington, but recent statements on both sides suggest that both Trump and Putin still harbour hopes of forging a better world together.

Even as lower level officials, and members of the US Congress and the Russian Duma, have been hurling accusations at each others countries, Trump and Putin have largely remained above the fray. Last week, it became known that the CIA had passed on intelligence that may have prevented a terrorist attack in St Petersburg  for which Putin publicly expressed his thanks.

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 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

And there is another change in the dynamics that no one could have foreseen. A crack that appeared in a North Sea gas pipeline had the UK suddenly soliciting extra supplies of gas from the Yamal project in the Russian Arctic which is threatened by US sanctions. The irony of this  especially acute, given that the UK has been a cheerleader for EU sanctions over Ukraine  was not lost on Russia. Putin himself was reported to have overseen the shipment, after inaugurating the Yamal terminal, and the vessel is steaming its way past Norway en route to the Kent depot even as I write.

So there is now an additional topic of mutual interest to be added to the standard list  Syria, Ukraine, sanctions, human rights issues  when Boris and Sergei (Lavrov), his vastly more experienced and cautious Russian opposite number, finally meet in what will be the first UK foreign ministerial visit to Russia for five years. That, in itself, shows how bad bilateral relations have been.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

They were meant to be David Daviss Manhattan Project. The documents, commissioned by him, produced by the Brexit department that would ultimately become death, destroyer of Brexit.

For long weeks, when the Brexit department refused to make the documents public, it was widely assumed that in all their excruciating detail, they combined to produce a devastating, sector by sector critique of the damage Brexit would do. It was a secret the public could not know.

It took a late night Commons vote, forced through by the Labour Party via the revival of an obscure, near-medieval parliamentary device, to compel the Government to reveal the shocking truth.

Recommended Government Brexit analysis published after long battle

Even then, they took steps to maintain their dark secrets. Only Members of Parliament could see them. They had to pass through a metal detector to do so. They were allowed no phone, no photographic or other recording equipment. Just one pen, one notebook with which to do their level best to broadcast this dire warning to the nation.

And then, on Thursday morning, the last working day before Christmas, when huge troves of documents are traditionally dumped in to the public domain, there they were. The secret was out.

Electricity is a fundamental part of modern society, read the one on, well electricity. Residential and industrial users rely on its use to ensure basic and vital needs such as lighting, heating or refrigeration are met on a daily basis.

On construction, we learn: The UK construction products industry is a broad and complex manufacturing industry covering items such as bricks, cement, sand and concrete and can also be considered to include products such as paints, ceramic fittings, cast steel etc.

How about fishing? As an island nation, the UK has been dependent on the sea for its trade and defence throughout history, and strong traditions of seafaring can be traced back hundreds of years.

And where, do you think, might this fishing, take place? Well, There is a concentration of activity in coastal towns.

We also learned that, as far as the aerospace sector is concerned, the manufacture of commercial aircraft is dominated by two companies, one called Boeing, the other Airbus.

To state again, these documents were kept under lock and key. They were deemed too sensitive for your MP to go near whilst in possession of a mobile phone.

Parliament ran late into the night to secure the publication of these documents. The Speaker warned the government that if they were not produced then ordinary procedure would find them in contempt of parliament.

It is crucial at this point to make an important semantic distinction. Since claiming his department had produced sector by sector analysis in excruciating detail on how they might be impacted by Brexit, he has since made clear that, assessing the impact of something does not make it an impact assessment. These documents are in fact sectoral analyses.

An impact assessment, he has now said several times, has a strict definition, as set out by something called the Better Regulation Task Force, and his documents are merely sectoral analyses.

Now that the UK is leaving the European Union, it has very important that the Brexit department has on hand such vital information as the coastal nature of the fishing industry, and the general importance to modern life as electricity.

The usefulness of any kind of assessment of how these industries might be impacted by the most important decision taken by the country in several generations, we already know David Davis considers to be near zero because they always turn out to be wrong.

Loathe though one should always be, to couch Brexit in militaristic terms, it is worth not forgetting, as we are about to engage the enemy in the most crucial battle of all, namely the talks on trade, that Field Marshal Daviss preparations thus far appear to involve having been bounced into a reluctant Wikipedia inspired stock take of his sides equipment.

Still, there may be upsides. The most optimistic actual assessments of the likely Brexit outcome intimate that it might - might - just be possible for the UK to be allowed to copy and paste the EUs trade agreements with the likes of South Korea and Japan after it leaves, and ceases to have any influence of them.

That the department already has such a fine sense of where to find the Ctrl C and Ctrl V buttons may leave it surprisingly well prepared for the future. Albeit by accident.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Damian Green had to resign because he forgot rule one of political scandals: its usually the cover-up rather than the original offence that gets you.

The former Channel 4 journalist should have known better. He should have thought like a journalist rather than a politician and remembered one of the greatest scoops of all time  the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of the US President Richard Nixon in 1974.

The killer facts for Green were two outright (if contradictory) denials he issued last month about allegations that pornographic material was found on a computer in his Commons office in 2008. The investigation by Sue Gray, the civil servant responsible for ethics at the Cabinet Office  the department Green headed  found that his statements were inaccurate and misleading. It discovered that the Metropolitan Police told Greens lawyers about the discovery in 2008 and that Green himself was told in a telephone call in 2013.

Crucially, last months denials were made while Green was a minister, which meant he was covered by the ministerial code requiring ministers to be honest. He was not covered by it in 2008 as he was an opposition spokesman then. The inquiry reached no conclusions on whether Green viewed the porn, which he strongly denies.

If the former Deputy Prime Minister had said nothing last month, it is possible that he could have survived in his post.

The allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards journalist Kate Maltby in 2015 (when he was not a minister) were plausible, the Cabinet Office found. But it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Greens behaviour". On its own, that would have left Green in a grey area; Theresa May might have been able to hang on to her closest political ally. In the end, the inquiry's findings were more clear cut than many at Westminster had expected. The code had been breached, and so May asked Green to resign.

There really was no alternative for the Prime Minister. She took a hard line against Sir Michael Fallon, another loyalist, telling him to resign as Defence Secretary last month when the sexual harassment allegations spread from Hollywood to Westminster. She would have been accused of double standards if she had tried to allow Green carry on; if anything, the case against him was clearer than against Fallon because of his recent misleading statements rather than behaviour several years ago.

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 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

May might get some credit for being tough on sleaze. Even though Green was not found guilty of inappropriate behaviour towards Maltby, his resignation will send a signal to women that May takes such allegations seriously.

Some Tory MPs will feel sorry for Green and regard him as a victim of a witchhunt by current or former police officers - like the former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, who quit after allegedly calling police at the gates of Downing Street plebs, which he denied. But in one sense Green has only himself to blame for issuing statements last month that he now admits were not accurate.

His departure rounds off a rollercoaster year for May. She is lucky that the findings of the Green inquiry did not emerge at a more difficult time for her; there have been many of those. Indeed, there is bound to be a suspicion that the findings have been delayed. As things stand, May has a breathing space after winning a phase one Brexit deal last week.

There have already been several occasions when Tory MPs declared that May is one mistake or crisis away from the exit door. The crises keep coming and yet she carries on; the leader with the kitten heel shoes seems to have nine lives.

As they departed Westminster for the Christmas recess before Greens resignation, the joke among Tory MPs was that May offers weak and stable government. Many a true word.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Theresa May flew in to Warsaw today at a rather inconvenient moment  just one day after the European Commission launched an unprecedented legal process against a government that the British prime minister has been cultivating as a useful partner during the Brexit negotiations.

Yet, while the British Government is keen to enlist Polish support in seeking better Brexit terms, and to have a long-term ally within the EU once the UK leaves, from Polands perspective the aims are rather different, and sometimes contradictory.

Indeed, the Polish government has made clear it would prefer for Brexit not to be happening at all. Its foreign minister stirred anger in British tabloids last year when he said that it is in our interest that Britain remain an EU state as long as possible and pays contributions as long as possible, a refrain he has since repeated.

His words reflect concern in Poland, the biggest net recipient of EU funds, about the departure of one of the biggest net contributors. The City of Londons envoy to the EU recently complained that the Polish government has a myopic obsession with the size of Britains exit fee.

 Theresa May announces new security treaty with Poland

There is already talk in Brussels of reducing Polands share of the next EU budget, perhaps by linking parts of it to respect for the rule of law or willingness to accept refugee quotas  both issues on which Law and Justice (PiS) has been in conflict with Brussels. Brexit provides a useful pretext to further justify budgetary cutbacks.

It will also mean that the ruling national-conservative PiS party loses its most important EU ally. The Tories and PiS are by far the largest members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) grouping in the European Parliament, together making up almost half its MEPs. Once the UK leaves, PiS will be left as the only major party in a minute, motley and marginal faction.

PiS also fears that the loss of the eurosceptic UK will give the likes of France and Germany greater licence to push ahead with moves towards a more tightly integrated EU core, the kind of two-speed Europe that the Polish government has made clear it would find unacceptable.

The Poles have at times been frustrated by a perceived lack of support from Britain in their various conflicts with the EU. When PiS was embarrassingly defeated in its bumbled attempts to stop Donald Tusk, a domestic political rival, being reappointed as president of the European Council, the Polish foreign minister angrily asked, Where was the UK? during the discussions. As an EU diplomat noted at the time, it was a lose-lose situation for Britain: either Mrs May alienates almost all the other member states or she upsets the Poles, who shes spent months and months cultivating.

At other times, however, the Conservatives have voiced support for PiS at EU institutions. The chairman of the ECR, Tory MEP Syed Kamall, has hit out against the EU for ganging up on the democratically elected government of Poland. This has created the bizarre sight of one of Britains most senior Muslim politicians defending a government that deliberately stokes anti-Muslim sentiment. PiSs vice-president of the European Parliament, for example, says that Poland must learn from the mistakes of other countries, who have foolishly allowed in Muslim immigrants (such as Kamalls family, presumably).

Such episodes highlight the tricky balancing act May is facing in securing Poland as an ally while also avoiding offending other parties to the Brexit negotiations, many of whom want to see the Polish government sidelined for its actions over the rule of law, refugees, logging in the ancient Biaowieza Forest and a host of other alleged infractions.

Following yesterdays announcement that Article Seven proceedings have been launched against Poland, Mays spokesman was forced to acknowledge that the Prime Minister would raise her concerns over respect for the rule of law while in Warsaw. However, after the summit had concluded, May told a press conference that this was an internal matter for Poland to deal with alone. The agenda instead focused on the Polish governments priority of obtaining British support in defending against the threat of Russia.

A more telling test will come when, at the next stages of the Article Seven process, the UK and other member states are required to vote on whether to proceed. Then, once again, we will see how Theresa Mays dealings with Warsaw represent yet another moving part in the complex machinery of the Brexit process.

Daniel Tilles is assistant professor of history at the Pedagogical University of Krakow and editor of the Notes from Poland blog.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind, according to that infamous proverb  along with the Book of Hosea and Bomber Harris. But what wind did our favourite Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia think he was sowing when he slammed one of the richest Palestinians in his Kingdom into temporary custody a few days ago?

For by arresting Sabih al-Masri, the Palestinian billionaire and much trusted banker, a few days ago, Mohammed bin Salman created fury in the neighbouring Kingdom of Jordan where tens of thousands of Palestinians  many of them refugees from occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank  have invested millions in the Arab Bank.

And you can see why. Masri is president of the Arab Bank, and the Palestinians  most of whom have absolutely no connection with Saudi Arabia  have collectively invested billions of life savings in the bank. And they knew all too well that our beloved Crown Prince has found a unique way of releasing his hostage businessmen and princes in Riyadh. He asks them to pay back their supposedly corrupt earnings to Saudi Arabia.

Was Mohammed bin Salman about to gouge the Arab Bank, the Palestinians of Jordan asked, in return for Masris release  and seize their life savings in Jordan?

Against the advice of friends, Masri had returned to Saudi Arabia over a week ago to preside over a series of meetings of other companies he controls in the Kingdom. He was questioned, according to his friends, about his companies and business associates, and subsequently released.

And then, with Hariri-like love for his adopted country, he coyly told Reuters that all is well and I am happy and everyone shows me great respect here. I bet they do, I said to myself when I read that.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

But you can see why the Palestinians were worried. Masri is the most influential businessman in Jordan and the occupied territories. He comes originally from Nablus  where his even richer and more influential billionaire cousin Mounib, a philanthropist variously known as the richest Palestinian in the world and the Godfather, owns a pseudo-Renaissance palace  and made a fortune supplying food to US-led coalition troops in Saudi Arabia in the run-up to the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein.

The Arab Bank, with reported assets of $47bn (35.2m), made profits of $533m last year. Last February, Masri and 40 of his business chums bought up shares in the Arab Bank which had belonged to Saad Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister who was himself briefly seized in Saudi Arabia and forced to resign until freed to de-resign in Beirut a couple of weeks later.

You can see why Mohammed bin Salman took a close interest in the Masri accounts. There is no evidence he got his teeth into any Masri money  or tried to  but many Palestinians regard this as a close-run thing. They are all too well aware that at the Islamic summit in Istanbul this month, the Saudi Crown Prince sent a mere under-minister to represent the Kingdom in the Muslim protest against Donald Trumps recognition of Israel as the capital of Israel. Not much political support for the Palestinians there.

Jordan itself regards the Arab Bank as the economic crown jewels of the nation, but 23 per cent of the banks business is believed to be conducted in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

But this isnt the only effect the ambitious Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has been having in recent days. For now we hear that Qatar, sanctioned and isolated by the Saudis and their regional mates (principally the United Arab Emirates), has plans to buy even more French weapons from Jupiter himself, the French President who has a smile for every Arab dictator in the Middle East.

Publicly, the Emir of Qatar  understandably worried that his Saudi brothers may one day try to invade him  has decided to add another 12 Dassault Rafale delta-wing fighter aircraft to the 24 already on order from the French arms manufacturer. According to anonymous folk in the French military, however, the Emir of Qatar has now placed an option on another 36 of the combat aircraft  potentially making him Dassaults biggest export client.

One should note here the Western connections of some of the chaps in this story. The Qatari emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is an old boy of Sherbourne and Harrow (and Sandhurst, of course). Dassault owns Le Figaro newspaper (so no critical comment there on the up-arming of the Qataris). Masris cousin Mounib  who has probably done more for Palestinian unity than any other single Palestinian  has $1.5bn worth of business in London. Saad Hariri holds French as well as Saudi and Lebanese citizenship. Sabih Masri holds Irish citizenship.

But back to the Emir of Qatars hardware. He has already bought 36 American F-15s, and the British Ministry of Defence  ever lovers of Gulf peace  are proposing to sell 24 Typhoons to Qatar. But this creates a bit of a problem. For the tiny emirate may be ready to fight off all aggressors (including the esteemed Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, of course) but Qatar is soon going to have more planes than pilots.

But dont worry, as Frances Le Canard enchaine (the most well-connected French paper when it comes to the Middle East) advised its readers last week: Pakistani, Egyptian and other pilots are already flying for the Qataris. And theyll be more soon.

A problem, of course, if Qatars Pakistani pilots have to fly against Pakistani troops fighting for the Saudis. And poor old Emmanuel Macron also has other planes to sell to his other clients in the Gulf. Including the UAE, Egypt  and Saudi Arabia! At least hes being fair. But it does make Sabih Masris life look a lot less dramatic. And safer.
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
GREENSBOROA man who pleaded guilty to production of child pornography was sentenced Wednesday, Dec. 20, according to Sandra J. Hairston, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.

Stephen Paul Aydelotte, 48, of Charlotte, pleaded guilty on Sept. 14 to one count of production of child pornography. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William L. Osteen Jr. to 25 years imprisonment followed by lifetime supervised release. Aydelotte was previously convicted in Utah of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and twice failing to register as a sex offender, and in North Carolina of failing to register as a sex offender.

In February, Aydelotte alerted authorities that, while living in High Point in 2012, he took photographs of himself sexually exploiting a prepubescent minor. Investigators were then able to recover the photographs from Aydelottes phone.

Aydelotte also admitted to sexually molesting two minor girls in Utah in 1989.

The United States recommended, and Aydelotte received, a degree of leniency in his sentence because he voluntarily disclosed his criminal conduct, which otherwise would have not likely come to light.

This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and Rowan County Sheriffs Office. Both agencies are members of the North Carolina Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet as well as to identify and rescue victims.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, go to www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
Intersection improvements should be coming soon to U.S. 29 and Poplar Tent Road.

Concord City Council at the Thursday, Dec. 14, meeting approved a construction contract for the work, which would install U-turn bulbs to prevent left turns at the intersection and hopefully reduce congestion.

That project has been in the works for years and finally will get started, Concord City Manager said. Anyone who has been on Poplar Tent in rush hour trying to maneuver will understand the benefits.

Hiatt said the city received a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement grant from the N.C. Department of Transportation to make improvements to the intersection. When staff put a bid out earlier this year, however, it came in over budget, so they decided to try again.

This time around, the bids came in within the anticipated amount, and the council selectedpending NCDOT approvalSealand Contractors Corporation at a cost of about $2.4 million.

The work will put in three U-turn bulbs and signals, storm drainage, pavement marking and signs, concrete medians, sidewalks, and a curb and gutter to create a no-left-turn intersection such as the one at Derita and Poplar Tent roads.

Like the intersection at Derita Road traffic traveling on U.S. 29 will still be able to continue straight through the light, as will vehicles going straight from Poplar Tent Road to McGill Avenue.

City Council members also authorized a contract with Ken Griffin Architecture to design a permanent Fire Station #10 on Poplar Tent near Harris Road.

There is already a modular building there, so station 10 exists, but it was known all along that we would do a permanent building on the same property right in front of it, Hiatt said. This was the design of that building.

The contract of $290,000 will go toward architectural and engineering design work for the structure. Hiatt said a possible construction timeline will be set during the budget process.

The board tabled a public hearing on the possibility of designating Coleman-Franklin-Cannon Mill, 625 Main St. SW, as a local historic landmark. The board will hold another public hearing Thursday, Jan. 11.

This is the first time Concord has received a historic landmark request. Such a designation will give the property a 50 percent tax deferment. A clawback provision allows the property owner to reclaim three years worth of the deferment if the site were to lose landmark status.]

Hiatt said council members asked staff to bring more information to the board, including samples of what other area cities have for their historic landmark ordinances.

I think theres a little bit of concern in terms of how it works with the 50 percent tax deferment and what impact that may have in the future for other properties, he said. Certainly they understand this particular property why it is considered historic.

The citys ordinance also requires a report from the Historic Preservation Commission, review by the State Historic Preservation Office and review by the city Planning and Zoning Commission. The Historic Preservation Commission has already held a public hearing.
Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business is working to foster greater diversity among Indianas real estate professionals, and a recent $500,000 gift from community leaders Lacy and Patty Johnson and Al and Shary Oak to the schools Center for Real Estate Studies will help achieve that goal.

Al Oak and Lacy Johnson have been friends and colleagues going on 40 years. When Johnson, a partner at Ice Miller, began representing Oaks architectural design firm Cripe, he realized there are not a lot of African-Americans involved in the commercial or investment side of real estate.

Johnson said most African-Americans involved in real estate work in the residential realm of the business, few are involved in the commercial side and even fewer have a hand in development.

The two men put their heads together; they knew they had to do something about the disparity.

Al and I would talk about this over the years, Johnson said. This became a cause of Als and mine to make a change at IU Kelleys Center for Real Estate.

Oak co-founded the real estate center with Jeff Fisher, a professor, in 1985. Since then, its been his second job.

Johnson and Oak said the support of the Kelley School and knowing the administration is on board with their vision adds value to their donation. Based on statistics from the IUPUI diversity report, the Indianapolis campus has more students of color than the Bloomington campus, so the plan is to use the funds primarily at IUPUI.

We really think we can grow this group. This is where the laboratory of business is. The profile of the students, there are a lot more minorities at IUPUI than the Bloomington campus, said Oak.

Doug McCoy, director of the Center for Real Estate Studies at Indiana University, believes making students aware of the opportunity is the key to growth.

We have to expose (students to the idea) and make them aware of the opportunity. Thats hard to do, but its such an important issue. We really think we can improve and make changes, said McCoy.

James Wimbush, IUs vice president for diversity, equity and multicultural affairs, who has taught in the Kelley School of Business since 1991, said it will be important to make sure students of color are fully aware of everything the Center for Real Estate Studies offers.

The misconception is that real estate is only selling houses, Wimbush said. We want to make sure minorities understand the full breadth of real estate and opportunities they can have.  We want to make sure students who arent aware of this understand they have a chance to be engaged with the center, to have first-hand exposure to people who have been successful in real estate. We see this as a great opportunity.

Oak said providing financial support is one goal of the donation; the other aim is recruitment and retention of minority students.

We have to reach them early before they select their major and reach out to them and tell them wed love to have them in the program, and some will gravitate to that, said Oak.

Through their gifts, the Oaks and the Johnsons also wish to honor three prominent Hoosiers:

 Joyce Rogers, former president and CEO of the Indiana Black Expo and now vice president for development and external relations in the IU Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs

 Sarah Evans Barker, senior U.S. district judge for the southern district of Indiana

 John Tinder, a retired circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) leaders recently overhauled school budgets in a bid to give more money to schools with poor students. At the same time, they quietly sent more than $6.5 million extra to 17 schools  including the districts most affluent campuses.

That money went to special programs that often attract middle-class families in the form of about $700 extra on average per student, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Thats substantially more than the $500 bonus the district gives to schools for each student in poverty.

Those dollars are significant in a district strapped for cash: Spread out evenly, the $6.5 million could send all schools about $250 more per student.

The bonuses also highlight a challenge district leaders often face when trying to make school funding fairer: not alienating families at schools that have long received different resources  and who might otherwise choose private schools or the suburbs.

Critics say the bonuses could work against the districts goal of directing more resources to schools that need the most help.

If you put more money into higher-achieving schools, your budget strategy, whether you will say it out loud or not, is to expand the achievement gap, said Marguerite Roza, a Georgetown University professor who studies school finance.

District leaders defend the extra money as essential for special programs  which have focus areas such as Montessori, the arts, or career and technical education  because they cost more to run and would be harmed if they lost funding.

We did not want to adversely impact the operations of those programs, IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee said.

But giving schools funding based on their programs is one thing that IPS new budget system was supposed to prevent. Until this year, the district awarded funds to schools based on an assortment of reasons, including the programs schools offer. In theory, the new student-based budgeting process, on the other hand, is supposed to funnel money to schools based on the needs of individual students.

The district designed some extra money to be temporary under the new budget plan so that schools wouldnt experience a sudden drop in funding. But officials have not said whether the bonuses to special programs will lessen or disappear over time.

The 17 schools receiving extra money run the gamut. Their demographics vary, and some of the schools are low-performing. But on average, the passing rates on state tests are significantly higher than district averages, while the average poverty rate is far lower  58 percent versus 78 percent. The amount of money they receive also varies widely.

Unlike neighborhood schools, families choose them, and the vast majority accept students by lottery.

Ferebee said he does not see spending more on choice programs as taking money away from other schools. He noted that the district also gives extra money to schools that have historically struggled. Several schools in a district-led turnaround effort called a transformation zone, for example, also get extra funding.

Plus, all families in the district have access to choice programs, he added.

I would be more concerned if we didnt open those programs up to all students, and didnt provide transportation to all students, Ferebee said. But we do.

The district has also worked to make sure less affluent families have access to choice programs. Last fall, the IPS board reduced the number of families who get priority because they live near a school and reserved seats for families who apply later in the year because data showed low-income families were more likely to apply late.

But for now, many of the schools that get extra money for choice programs are far more likely to educate middle-class students.

Thats likely a reflection of a key challenge for IPS and other urban districts. In states like Indiana, where schools get more money for each student they enroll, winning over parents is essential to staying financially viable. But the kind of programming  such as Montessori and International Baccalaureate (IB) schools  that can attract families who might choose private schools or move to the suburbs can be expensive, because it often requires extra staff or training.

Carrie Stewart, cofounder of Afton Partners, which consults with districts on financial strategies, said it is common for districts to give extra funding to schools with special programs.

Schools that offer the IB program, for example, must meet strict staffing and training requirements. Its very hard to run them at the same price tag as a typical school, she said, which means they need more funding.

Is that fair? I mean, I dont know, she added. But if the district doesnt offer the programs at all, it could lose families to private schools, Stewart said. Then everybody loses because the district will lose money.

Chalkbeat Indiana is a nonprofit news website that reports on educational change in Indiana. Find more from Chalkbeat Indiana at chalkbeat.org/in.
Barf Alert

Nikki Haleys Speech to UN on Jerusalem

Video and Transcript



'The United States will remember this day, in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation'

Posted December 21, 2017

To its shame, the United Nations has long been a hostile place for the state of Israel. Both the current and the previous Secretary-Generals have objected to the UNs disproportionate focus on Israel. Its a wrong that undermines the credibility of this institution, and that in turn is harmful for the entire world.



Ive often wondered why, in the face of such hostility, Israel has chosen to remain a member of this body. And then I remember that Israel has chosen to remain in this institution because its important to stand up for yourself. Israel must stand up for its own survival as a nation; but it also stands up for the ideals of freedom and human dignity that the United Nations is supposed to be about.

Standing here today, being forced to defend sovereignty and the integrity of my country  the United States of America  many of the same thoughts have come to mind. The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations and its agencies. We do this, in part, in order to advance our values and our interests. When that happens, our participation in the UN produces great good for the world. Together we feed, clothe, and educate desperate people. We nurture and sustain fragile peace in conflict areas throughout the world. And we hold outlaw regimes accountable. We do this because it represents who we are. It is our American way.

But well be honest with you. When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have a legitimate expectation that our good will is recognized and respected. When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization, that nation is disrespected. Whats more, that nation is asked to pay for the privilege of being disrespected.

In the case of the United States, we are asked to pay more than anyone else for that dubious privilege. Unlike in some UN member countries, the United States government is answerable to its people. As such, we have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is being poorly spent.

Never Miss Another Story Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter

We have an obligation to demand more for our investment. And if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways. Those are the thoughts that come to mind when we consider the resolution before us today.

The arguments about the Presidents decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem have already been made. They are by now well known. The decision was in accordance to U.S. law dating back to 1995, and its position has been repeatedly endorsed by the American people ever since. The decision does not prejudge any final status issues, including Jerusalems boundaries. The decision does not preclude a two-state solution, if the parties agree to that. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts. Rather, the Presidents decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy. There is no need to describe it further.

Instead, there is a larger point to make. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.

America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN. And this vote will be remembered.

Thank you.

====

176 nations at UN call for Palestinian statehood

Seven countries - joined Israel and the United States in opposing the measure . Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands

Haley hints US could pull financial support from UN

Canada Sits Out UN Vote On Trump's Decision To Move US Embassy To Jerusalem

Join the Discussion
UN Defies Trump's Threats by Passing Resolution on Jerusalem

By Kambiz Foroohar

December 20, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backed a measure critical of President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haleys warning that the move could put funding for their nations and the global body at risk.

The non-binding UN resolution passed on Thursday by a vote of 128-9, with 35 nations abstaining. The U.S. vote in opposition was joined by countries including Guatemala, Nauru and Micronesia. Key abstentions came from Australia, Canada, Argentina and Romania.

The United States will remember this day when it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly, Haley said at the United Nations podium ahead of the vote. We will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they often do, to pay even more. This vote will be remembered.

The U.S. threat was repudiated by speakers from countries supporting the resolution, which says the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations. A similar resolution had 14 votes in favor in the 15-member Security Council last week, prompting Haley to exercise the first U.S. veto since 2011.

We were all asked to vote no or face the consequences, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said before voting began. Some even threatened to cut development aid. This is bullying. It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale.

The debate follows Trumps Dec. 6 announcement, which included a decision to begin moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The announcement prompted criticism across the Middle East and from key U.S. allies in Europe, who said it would harm efforts to foster Middle East peace.

Never Miss Another Story Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter

Palestinian officials said Trumps decision disqualified the U.S. from being a mediator in any Israel-Palestinian negotiations.

Haleys threat carries weight because the U.S. is the largest contributor to UN operations. Based on a formula agreed to by member nations, the U.S. provides 28.5 percent of the $7.3 billion UN peacekeeping budget and 22 percent of the core budget of $2.7 billion. Haley walked out of the General Assembly soon after her speech, though members of the U.S. delegation remind behind, awaiting the vote.

Except for Israel, which supports the U.S. position, most major U.S. allies opposed to Trumps decision stayed away from the podium Thursday. Countries speaking in support of the measure included North Korea, Yemen, Turkey, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, South Africa and Iran. Those nations also came under intense fire by Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon.

Puppet Masters

Those who support todays resolution are like puppets pulled by the strings of the Palestinian puppet masters, Danon said. If this body were really united for peace, it would pass a resolution condemning Palestinian violence.

Haley this week warned other countries against supporting the resolution, saying Trump has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us.

Trump weighed in on the Jerusalem vote on Wednesday.

I liked the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations to all of those nations that take our money and then they vote against us in the Security Council, they vote against us potentially at the assembly, Trump said. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes. Let em vote against us."

This article was originally published by Bloomberg -

====

abstaining countries

Countries Bought By U.S.

The full list of abstaining countries was: Antigua-Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, the Bahamas, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Haiti, Hungary, Jamaica, Kiribati, Latvia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda and Vanuatu.

176 nations at UN call for Palestinian statehood

Seven countries - joined Israel and the United States in opposing the measure . Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands

Haley hints US could pull financial support from UN

Canada Sits Out UN Vote On Trump's Decision To Move US Embassy To Jerusalem

Join the Discussion
He publicly disclosed his sexual orientation on Sunday to the St. Bernadette Parish and surprisingly was greeted with an applause and standing ovation from his parishioners, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

I am Greg. I am a Roman Catholic priest, he reportedly told the congregation. And, yes, I am gay!

The priest revealed that since its very rare for priests to come out as gay, he wants to be a role model for others. He said hes helping to break the silence of gay men in the clergy so he could reclaim his own voice.

He also wrote a column that was published Monday in the National Catholic Reporter that reads:

I will embrace the person that God created me to be. In my priestly life and ministry, I, too, will help you, whether you are gay or straight, bisexual or transgendered, to be your authentic self  to be fully alive living in your image and likeness of God. I have decided to stand with the few courageous priests who have taken the risk to come out of the shadows and have chosen to live in truth and authenticity. The churchs silent stance on gay priests perpetuates toxic shaming and systematic secrecy. The church needs healthy role models for priests who are struggling to come to terms with their s3xual orientation.

According to an archdiocese spokeswoman, Greiten met with Milwaukee Archbishop, Jerome Listecki before coming out. The Archbishop said in a statement on Monday:

We support Father Greiten in his own personal journey and telling his story of coming to understand and live with his sexual orientation. As the Church teaches, those with same-sex attraction must be treated with understanding and compassion.

-DailyMail
The former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar told VOA Hausa when he featured on a magazine program on Tuesday that Nigerians will know when he eventually takes the bold move about his intentions to run for 2019 elections.

For now I have not made up my mind, Mr. Abubakar said. When I decide, I will let the world know.

Mr. Abubakars statement is capable of demoralising his supporters, some of whom have already commenced groundwork for his 2019 bid, said Azibola Omekwe, the national coordinator of The Atiku Rennaisance, a political group.

Mr. Azibola said the 2019 ambition of Mr. Atiku has gained considerable momentum in recent weeks, a moving train he said would be difficult to reverse.

Just recently, some people came out to say that they will sue the former vice-president if he fails to join the race, Mr. Azibola said. Thats how serious some of his supporters have now taken his ambition.

Mr. Abubakars spokesperson, Paul Ibe, said the politicians fans should not be demoralised by the comments.

He spoke in the context of his ongoing consultations, but hell eventually make up his mind to run, Mr. Ibe said. Those who have started politicking on his behalf should continue.

Mr. Azibola acknowledged that the final decision on Mr. Atikus political choice in 2019 would be the former vice-presidents to make.

But Im sure he will ultimately decide to run because hes the best option to beat President Buhari, said Mr. Azibola, a former state legislator in Bayelsa. We expect him to do this within the first quarter of 2018.

The last one month had seen Mr. Abubakar resign from the ruling All Progressives Congress to return to the Peoples Democratic Party, under which he served eight years as VP between 1999-2007.

After using his resignation letter to convey his misgivings about President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Atiku granted a media interview in which he accused the president of incompetence.

He also accused Mr. Buhari of stoking ethnic and tribal divisions in the country, saying he will handily defeat the president in 2019.

Mr. Buhari has not openly exchanged words with Mr. Abubakar, but the presidency warned the former vice president to stop disparaging the president.

The reprimand followed allegations that Mr. Buhari was banned from travelling to the United States for 15 years as a consequence of his religious views.

Mr. Abubakar used the purported ban to ward off allegations that he is wanted in the U.S. for fraud.

Mr. Abubakar said he had applied for visa to the U.S. but was denied on administrative grounds.

He, however, failed to present evidence of his claim that Mr. Buhari was also banned from the U.S. despite being challenged by the State House to do so.

Mr. Ibe said Mr. Abubakar will continue sparring with the Buhari administration ahead of his formal announcement.

What has been happening in recent weeks is sparring, Mr. Ibe said. We expect this to continue, but its not the same as a formal declaration of a presidential run.

Source: ( Premium Times )
The Chairman of All Progressive Congress, APC in Kano State, Abdullai Abbas, has stepped down, he indicted in the feud between Governor Abdullai Ganduje and his deputy, Hafizu Abubakar.

An aide to the Commissioner of Information, Faizu Alfindiki, confirmed to news men that Mr. Abbas had resigned.

Although no immediate reason was given for the decision, it adds another twist to the raging controversy in the party in the state.

The deputy governor had recently, in a radio programme, indicated that he would not run on the same ticket with the governor in 2019, citing the fact that he had been sidelined in governance and party affairs in the state. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the removal of his ward chairman.

A rattled Governor Ganfuje immediately ordered that the official be reinstated and urged politicians in the state to respect his deputy in all their actions.

It was learnt that the ex-chairman is scheduled to appear before the state assembly although the invitation has not been formalised.

Source: ( Premium Times )
A viral picture showing a cute little boy photobombing a wedding picture made rounds on the internet, with many applauding the photographer, and adoring the boy for his cheesy attitude.

Recall he shared the photo with the caption: I was about taking a shot when this lil man came right in front of me to pose for a shot,had to suspend my shot to take his first.

Moral lesson for me: Never look down on anyone, no matter how they dress or look. Also remember no one knows tomorrow.

You never can tell this lil man could be Nigeria President someday..

Days after the photo went viral, many folks on the internet called for the boy to be found, so little donations can be made towards his welfare.

He was immediately found of course, by the photographer, and someone even promised to sponsor the boy till University Level!

The photographer, @ayaworanmedia, was at Oluwatobilobas home yesterday where he met with his father who revealed he is separated from the boys mum.

Tobis father alleged that his mum abandoned him when he was a month old.

Food items were given to Tobis family, the photographer then shared Tobis story.

Read below;

He is three years old and a product of failed marriage. According to his father, the boy was abandoned by his mother when he was barely a month old. His father, unable to cater for the boy, sought for a nanny who works in a daycare center, to take custody of the boy.

The nanny has been taking care of the boy since then. Though the father is a graduate of Electrical Engineering, he is jobless.

Though Oluwatobiloba has never seen the four walls of a school, he has a good command of English language considering his age. He speaks and understands English Language.

The father is appealing to well-meaning Nigerians to assists in educating the boy who is passionate, bold and intelligent.

Friends, lets make help in unleashing the potentials of this young boy. Yes, we can!
Troops of the Nigerian Army have rescued over 100 men, women and children abducted by the Boko Haram and forced to work on terrorists farms in the Magumeri Local Government Area of Borno State.

The troops also captured 17 Boko Haram terrorists during the operation and killed 20 others in a shootout.

Our correspondent learnt that the encounter was part of Operation Deep Punch, conducted on the islands and villages around the Lake Chad area by troops of 8 Division.

According to the army, the operation, which commenced about two weeks ago, was aided by air bombardments of about seven villages occupied by terrorists.

Some of the settlements are Kauram, Arena Chiki, Chikun Gudu, Arena Waje, Saada and Juwe.

The Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, and 8 Divisions spokesman, Colonel Timothy Antigha, said the Nigerian Air Force supported the troops with Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance assets and air interdictions.

He said, Our preliminary investigation revealed that a large number of the rescued persons were held against their will and forced to work in the farms under life-threatening conditions and penurious wages. More investigation and interviews will be conducted before the rescued persons are handed over for further action.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
A Facebook user, Obodo Amaka Felicity took to the platform to recount a near life experience she had with a gunman while she was coming back from the market.

According to her, she escaped death after getting shot by the unknown gunman, she felt a sharp blow, like she had been hit with a stone, but had no idea she had been shot until she saw blood dripping down her body.

An x-ray has shown that the bullet is lodged too close to her lungs and because of how delicate this area is, the bullet cant be removed at the moment.
The Police have confirmed the arrest of three workers of Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Limited in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, have been apprehended for their alleged role in the kidnap and murder of their boss, Ubani Onyema.

Onyema was said to be the production manager of the company.

The workers, Nkere Uwam, Okpako Emperor and Adimibe Kanayo, allegedly connived with a kidnap gang, led by one 34-year-old Nduka Alaribe, aka Abiola, to carry out the kidnap.

Other arrested members of the gang were identified as Godstime Eme, 35, a graduate and second in command; Wisdom Chidi, 35; and 32-year-old Ayakazi Woyin-Kuro.

PUNCH Metro learnt on Wednesday that the suspects were rounded up at different locations in Rivers State by operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team, led by ACP Abba Kyari.

It was gathered that the 64-year-old victim was returning home from work when the gang waylaid his car.

They were said to have taken him away with a gunshot injury and abandoned his car.

The manager reportedly died from the gun injury, but the assailants still contacted the company and demanded N100m ransom for his release.

Oblivious of the victims death, the company was said to have negotiated the ransom to N10m, which the suspects collected.

A police source told PUNCH Metro that the family became worried when the manager was not released after the ransom was paid.

He said the incident was brought to the knowledge of the IG, Ibrahim Idris, who ordered the IRT officials to track down the gang.

He said, The IRT operatives deployed in Port Harcourt by the IG swung into action when the hostage was not released after the ransom was paid.

Another source said the suspects were arrested between December 9 and 19, 2017, while one AK-47 rifle and two operational vehicles were recovered from them.

Our correspondent was told that the suspects had confessed to their roles in the incident, while efforts were ongoing to arrest other members of the gang.

The source said, The police arrested seven of the kidnappers. Three of them were workers of the company where the manager worked. They were his subordinates. Their plan was to get N100m so that they could have huge shares of the ransom.

They agreed to the N10m ransom because the victim died on the day of his kidnap as a result of a gunshot injury he sustained during the kidnapping.

The suspects have confessed and admitted that the corpse of the hostage was dumped in a river. The body has yet to be recovered.

According to the police, Alaribe, aka Abiola, the gang leader, organised the kidnap, recruited the hostage keepers, brought the two cars used for the kidnap and led gang members to pick up the ransom.

The second in command, Eme, reportedly purchased a pre-registered SIM which was used in negotiating and monitoring the ransom.

He also monitored the movement of late Onyema on the day that he was kidnapped. Uwam, Emperor and Kanayo were the brains behind the kidnap and they worked in the same company with the victim.

Wisdom Chidi is a notorious leader of Greenlanders cult terrorising the residents of the Ahoda-East Local Government Area of Rivers State. He provided the arms used for the kidnap while Woyin-Kuro assisted in the recruitment of gang members. Items recovered included one AK-47 rifle and the two vehicles used in the kidnap, the source added.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper)
The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, on Wednesday, decorated Ibrahim Danjuma with his new rank of Commissioner of Police after he had been prosecuted and acquitted for the extrajudicial killing of five Abuja traders and a lady in 2005.

Danjuma was among 15 new CPs recently promoted by the Police Service Commission on the recommendation of the IG.

He had been suspended from duty on account of the alleged extrajudicial killing and was subsequently charged to court alongside Othman Abdulsalam, Nicholas Zakaria, Baba Emmanuel, Ezekiel Acheneje and Sadiq Salami as co-defendants for felony.

The trial Judge, Justice Ishaq Bello, of the FCT High Court found Danjuma, who was the first accused person, not guilty and accordingly discharged and acquitted him while Emmanuel and Acheneje were sentenced to death.

Meanwhile, the IG has warned police officers to avoid temptation from political actors as the 2019 elections draw near.

Describing the election year as critical, the police chief urged police personnel to be professional and steadfast.

He made the call during the IG conference with commissioners of police and other senior officers in Abuja.

Reacting to allegations of disobedience of court orders in respect of the unsealing of the Peace Corps headquarters, Idris said the Force had appealed the court order, adding that it had asked the court to stay execution of the judgment on the matter.

Commenting on the re-organisation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, he stated that the unit would now focus on violent crimes.

On the 2019 elections, Idris said, Officers should be aware that from next year, we are entering a critical phase in the political space of this country and this critical phase includes most of the elections that would be conducted.

Officers should be steadfast and obviously do their best to ensure that wherever you find yourselves, that you do your utmost best to ensure that the political situation is handled maturely and orderly.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar left the All Progressives Congress (APC) not for the reasons he claimed but because APC governors had endorsed President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term in 2019, Kaduna governor, Nasiru El-Rufai, said.

Mr. El-Rufai spoke on a Voice of America (VOA) Hausa service programme, Democracy Today.

The governor featured on the programme alongside the former vice president and a former governor of Jigawa state, Sule Lamido.

Mr. El-rufai had also disputed the claims of the former vice president that the ruling APC abandoned him after he sponsored the 2015 campaign of President Buhari.

The governor challenged Mr. Abubakar to show proofs that he gave out money in support of Mr. Buharis campaign.

When asked about his ambition now that he is a full member of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the former vice president said he would let Nigerians know his position about 2019 if he eventually make up his mind.

Prior to his defection to the PDP, Mr. Abubakar was reportedly said to have given conditions before returning to the party, and that included assurance of getting the partys presidential ticket for 2019.

The former governor of Jigawa state, Mr. Lamido, who is also being tipped as a contender for the PDP presidential ticket come 2019, said though the party celebrates the return of Mr. Abubakar, his being in the party would not deter him from actualising his dream of running.

Obviously we are happy that our former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has come back to PDP. It was PDP that made him; so his coming back to his party is our collective joy. We are not talking about him only; as a matter of fact, we want others who left the party like the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, as well as former governors to come back home.

If our interest is to see the progress and development of our dear country, Nigeria, then we should also pray that everyone who left PDP should return home.

Governor El-Rufai said Mr. Abubakars exit from the APC was more about his personal ambition than the interest of Nigeria.

We in the APC were aware of it long ago that Atiku was going to leave the APC back to the PDP in December; but we even thank God that he left in November, said Mr. El- Rufai.

He said the former vice president left simply because it was made clear to him that he would not get the APC ticket following the governors endorsement of Mr. Buhari for a second term in 2019.

Atiku had seen that we in the APC, especially the APC governors, had made up our mind to support President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019, Mr. El-Rufai said. That is why he left APC since he was only looking for where to contest for president.

He argued that even without Mr. Buhari contesting the 2019 election, Mr. Abubakar who was defeated by Kano state former Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to third position in the 2015 APC primary, would not have been the partys ticket bearer in the next election.

Even in the 2015 APC primary election, Atiku didnt come second; he was floored by Kwankwaso. So, even if President Buhari decides not to contest, Atiku knows that the APC ticket is not sure for him. Majority of the APC governors have endorsed President Buhari as our candidate for 2019.

And God has continued to improve the health condition of the President. Each time I see him, I thank God and I still pray that God continues to give him sound health.

So, by 2019, we are waiting to see Atiku contest; we are waiting to contest against him and see what happens. I cannot lose sleep because Atiku wants to contest because, by Gods grace, this is the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari.

It is agreed that in politics if you lose even only one person, it should worry you, but the utterances of the former Vice President that APC used his money; who did he give the money to? For me, I know those that supported us with their money and property that we used during election, and I never heard the name of Atiku that he brought a dime. If Atiku said he brought money, who did he give it to? Let him come and say it and how much did he give and what was it used for?

And, in fact, if Atiku brought money, I ought to know, because I was part of the leadership of the party and during campaign, along with former Governor Rotimi Amaechi. We were at the centre of the presidential campaign. Therefore, we are supposed to know. So, let him mention who he gave the money and how much?

On his opinion about the rumour that large number of politicians are likely to follow Mr. Abubakar in defecting to the opposition PDP, Mr. El-Rufai said Sure, we know that, we cannot rule out the possibility of some greedy people following him; those that are following material things. But, if people will consider how we can work for the progress of our country, everybody knows that you cannot compare Atiku with President Muhammadu Buhari.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
A 20-year-old mother of two in Minnesota has pleaded guilty to fatally shooting her boyfriend during a botched YouTube stunt, believing he would be shielded by a thick book.

Monalisa Perez pleaded guilty last week to second-degree manslaughter and agreed to serve a six-month sentence, according to media reports.

Perez and 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz were recording the stunt in June for their YouTube channel.

Ruiz convinced Perez to shoot him at close range with a pistol, while he held a thick book in front of his chest  believing the book would stop the bullet.

To convince Perez, the man presented another book, with a bullet hole on one side and no exit hole, as evidence that the book he was to hold in front of him would stop the bullet, police said.

Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever, Perez wrote on Twitter prior to performing the stunt. HIS idea not MINE.

With video cameras recording, Perez pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced the book and fatally wounded Ruiz. He died at the scene.

In an agreement with prosecutors, Perez agreed to serve three months in jail in one-month increments over three years, and then serve the other three months under house arrest, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

She will be formally sentenced in February. Although Perez has already agreed with prosecutors to the six month term, at the sentencing hearing the judge can ignore that and impose a longer sentence.

In such cases people usually have the right to rescind their guilty plea and go to trial.

Source : ( AFP )
A man sharing a tenants unit to store items at Kangaroo Self Storage in Loveland, Colo., was arrested on Saturday after the facility manager found him slumped over the steering wheel of a car and later fighting with police. During the altercation, Joseph Abad of Fort Collins, Colo., allegedly slammed an officers finger in the car door and tried to disarm him. He faces two felony counts of assaulting a peace officer, felonies for attempting to disarm a peace officer and driving under the influence of alcohol, misdemeanor charges of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest, and a petty offense for trespassing, the source reported.

The manager called police around 10 a.m. on Dec. 16, believing Abad was passed out. Abad refused to leave the property upon request and wouldnt identify himself to officer Burke Baldwin. Baldwin detected alcohol on Abads breath when he spoke to the suspect through an open window of the vehicle. Abad indicated he hadnt had a drink in eight hours but didnt say how much or what he had been consuming, according to an affidavit.

Once two additional officers arrived, Baldwin tried opening the car door, but Abad allegedly closed it on his finger. After the three officers opened the door, Abad stepped out of the vehicle and grabbed at Baldwins holster, trying to disarm him. Baldwin alerted the other officers and then punched Abad twice in the face, causing the suspect to let go of the gun, the affidavit said.

When the officers took Abad to the ground, he continued fighting and grabbing at their equipment. One officer attempted to apply a pain-compliance pressure point, which had no effect. Baldwin then used a vascular neck-restraint technique to get Abad to relax his hands and allow officers to use handcuffs.

The unidentified owner of the vehicle Abad was driving later arrived at the scene and told police he had permission to use her car and was storing items in the unit with her consent, according to the affidavit.

Investigators found a partially consumed bottle of Kentucky Bourbon whiskey in the vehicle. Abad had four DUI convictions between 1989 and 1999. The day he was arrested was his 54th birthday, the source reported.

Abad is being held at Larimer County Jail. A cash, property or surety bail bond was set at $5,000.
Self-storage properties are constantly changing hands, and Inside Self-Storage is regularly notified of these market transactions. Many are covered in detail on the ISS website and available for viewing on the Acquisitions and Buying topics page. Following are additional acquisitions and sales that werent covered.

Affordable Mini Storage in Harker Heights, Texas, was sold to a limited-liability company (LLC). The property at 1174 S. Amy Lane comprises 31,900 square feet of storage space. The seller, a private investor, was represented in the transaction by Mark V. Diebold, senior associate for Marcus & Millichap (M&M). The buyer was represented by M&M Senior Associate Jon Danklefs.

Airbase Self-Storage II in North Highlands, Calif., was sold for $1.4 million to Will Olsem of Sacramento, Calif. The 6.26-acre property at 3045 Elkhorn Blvd. comprises nine single-story buildings comprising 25,919 square feet of storage in 263 units. It also contains two residences and a managers office. The buyer and the seller were represented in the transaction by Bobby Loeffler, president, and Tyler Skelly, national director, of Loeffler Self-Storage Group (LSSG).

All American Self Storage in Minooka, Ill., was sold to a Chicago-based operator for $2.3 million in an off-market transaction. Built in 2004, the property at 1000 S. Ridge Road contains five buildings on 4.3-acres. It comprises 31,750 square feet of storage space in 213 units. The buyer and the seller were represented in the transaction by Jesse Luke, managing partner of the Self Storage Advisory Group at EquiCap Commercial.

Daffodil Storage in Federal Way, Wash., was sold for $16.35 million to two families. The 4.63-acre property at 34202 16th Ave. S. comprises 91,304 square feet of storage space. It was built in 1991 and renovated in 2015 and 2016. The buyer and the seller, an LLC, were represented in the transaction by Christopher Secreto, an investment specialist with M&M.

Rancier Mini Storage in Killeen, Texas, was sold. The property at 1003 N. 38th St. comprises 46,684 square feet of storage space. The buyer and the seller were represented in the transaction by Danklefs. Michael Laurencelle, first vice president of capital markets with M&M, arranged the acquisition financing.

S&B Mini Storage in Belle, W.Va., was sold for $720,000 to a private investor. Opened in 1996, the 1.24-acre property at 1000 River East Drive includes six buildings containing more than 160 drive-up storage units as well as a 400-square-foot rental office. The seller, Mike Szerokman, was represented in the transaction by Investment Real Estate LLC (IRE).

Space Savers Self Storage in Romeoville, Ill., was sold for $4.4 million to a private investor. The property at 645 S. Weber Road was built in 2005 and comprises 44,000 square feet of climate-controlled and drive-up units as well as portable storage. The buyer and the seller, also a private investor, were represented in the transaction by Sean M. Delaney and Michael A. Mele, investment specialists with M&M.

An eight-property Stop-N-Stor portfolio in Ohio was sold for $31.4 million to an out-of-state investment group. The properties in Cuyahoga Falls, Elyria, Lorain, Northwood, Oregon, Toledo and Stow, Ohio, comprise 391,458 square feet of storage space in 3,050 climate-controlled and drive-up units. The buyer and the seller were represented in the transaction by Gabriel Coe, senior associate, and Brett Hatcher, first vice president of investments, for M&M.

Superior Storage in Shelton, Conn., was sold for $1.7 million to a private investor. The seven-building property at 289 Bridgeport Ave. opened in 1985 and includes more than 165 climate-controlled and drive-up storage units. It also contains 38 vehicle-parking spaces and a 400-square-foot rental office. Three rental houses were included in the sale. The seller was represented in the transaction by IRE.

Headquartered in Saint Charles, Ill., EquiCap is a boutique brokerage firm specializing in the self-storage industry. Its primary focus is in the midwest and mid-south markets.

Since its inception in 1998, IRE has provided brokerage, construction, development and management services to self-storage owners and investors.

LSSG specializes in self-storage real estate in California and Nevada, having closed more than 80 transactions in those states.

Founded in 1971, M&M is a commercial-property investment firm with more than 1,500 investment professionals in offices throughout Canada and the United States.
The ECJ ruling in case (C- 462/16) on Thursday 20 December 2017 is a victory for pharmaceutical companies, who will now be allowed to calculate VAT when providing rebates to private health insurers in the same way as when they do public health insurers. The German tax authorities did not allow pharmaceutical companies to do so, which created a huge financial burden for the sector.

German system

In Germany, pharmacies issue pharmaceutical products to persons with public health insurance pursuant to a framework agreement concluded with the national association of public health insurance funds. The pharmaceutical products are supplied to the public health insurance funds, which make them available to the persons insured. The pharmacies grant discounts to public health insurance funds on the price of the medicinal products. Pharmaceutical companies must then reimburse pharmacies and wholesalers for this discount. For the purposes of VAT, the German tax authorities treat the discount as a reduction in remuneration.

Unlike public health insurance funds, private health insurance funds are not themselves seen as the customer for the medicinal products, but merely reimburse the persons they insure for the costs incurred when they purchase pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical companies are then bound, under national legislation, to grant private health insurance funds a discount on the price of medicinal products. So far, the German tax authorities have refused to treat the discount as a reduction in remuneration for the purposes of VAT. But following the ECJ ruling the German approach will no longer be allowed.

EU-wide impact

The relevance of the case is not limited to Germany. In fact, over the past years all EU member states have been struggling with this matter. As rising drug prices put an ever-increasing pressure on health budgets, governments and health insurers have introduced a variety of price control measures. Many of these measures involve significant discount structures which go beyond the traditional distribution chains that the EU legislator had in mind when designing the VAT system.

In the proceedings the UK had backed up the German tax authorities, arguing that ECJ case law supports the argument that if discounts are to be taken into consideration when calculating VAT, the final consumer must be part of the transactional chain. Like the German tax authorities, the UK was of the view that because individuals are reimbursed for discounts on sales to private health insurers, they cannot be considered the final consumers.

Opinion AG

In July this year Advocate-General Evgeni Tanchev, published his non-binding Opinion, in which he argued against Germanys application of the VAT rules. According to the Tanchev, the reimbursements under the private health system should in principle not be treated differently to the national system for VAT purposes. This, he said, would avoid a situation in which the tax authorities charge an amount that exceeds the VAT paid by the pharmaceutical companies.

The ECJ has now followed the AG by taking an economic, rather than a technical, approach. It ruled that the fact that a private insurance fund is not the direct beneficiary of the pharmaceutical products supplied by the pharmaceutical company does not break the direct link between the supply of those goods and the consideration received.

This article was written for International Tax Review by Jan Sanders, an international VAT specialist who works as an indirect tax manager at RELX.
Top News - Investor Idea

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.

Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea

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

Top AI News - Investor Idea

Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires UK-based Forecasting Innovator Predictive Black To Help SMEs Optimize Cash Management

NEW YORK, NY - November 15, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow (some call SMEs), has acquired Predictive Black Ltd, a UK-based innovator of real-time cash management, financial insights and business wellness for SMEs.

Top Fashion News - Investor Idea

New Fashion Designer Launches this Holiday Season in Kelowna and Online; Sweet Dees Creations  Fun, Flirty and Affordable

Kelowna B.C. - November 14, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A local fashion designer is launching a new women's line at Kelowna markets and online this Holiday Season that will make heads turn with her whimsical and colourful choices

Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas:

Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by

Investorideas.com Newswire:

Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire
In a recent release, Cyient, a provider of engineering, manufacturing, geospatial, network, and operations management services, has announced the opening of a global Tower Operations Center (TOC) at the company's headquarters, in Hyderabad, India. The TOC was officially inaugurated by senior members of the Cyient Communications' leadership team and one of its clients, a leading global communication service provider in the Asia Pacific region.

The IoT-enabled TOC provides 24/7 surveillance and remotely monitors all passive assets in cell towers across multiple locations. Its solution architecture enables communication between sensors and an integrated, cloud-based analytics engine to extract and analyze asset data for actionable insights. This reportedly will result in increased tower uptime, reduced operational costs, improved site security and intrusion detection, and ensures efficient energy and power management. Additionally, integrating trouble ticketing, along with field force management, will improve the efficiency of field operations and optimize asset utilization.

"We are excited to unveil the new Cyient IoT-enabled Tower Operations Center," said Sanjay Krishnaa, SVP, Communications, and President, Asia Pacific, Cyient. "This integrated TOC solution facilitates tower and infrastructure companies to perform real-time monitoring of all active information from remote sites. Field engineers can now pro-actively manage network assets by utilizing data analytics and digital technologies, such as IoT, cloud, and mobility. Further, the TOC helps tower and infrastructure companies centralize real-time monitoring of alarms and manage key performance indicators of the critical passive infrastructure of cell sites. This solution has garnered significant interest with global CSPs."

Edited by Ken Briodagh
Sitting at the intersection of many regions, the location of Afghanistan has exposed it to the tumult of geopolitics as much as it has placed it at the center of flourishing trade routes. Serving as a land-bridge between the present-day regions of Central, South and West Asia, Afghanistan has drawn the interest of regional and global players alike.





Apart from its vital geographical location, its recently discovered mineral riches have made Afghanistan appear to be an even more important proposition for investment. But even as a stable Afghanistan holds a lot of economic promise, the geopolitics of the present, much like the past, have subjected it to regional and global rivalries. These rivalries have in turn created and accentuated fissures within Afghanistan, making stability and security an even more distant dream for this war-afflicted country.





In light of the geopolitical challenges that have beset the restoration of order and security in Afghanistan, it has become imperative to induce impetuses that can enhance its appeal as a roundabout for trading routes. One such recent initiative has been the operationalization of Chabahar Port in Iran. Emerging from trilateral cooperation between India, Iran, and Afghanistan, the rationale behind the establishment of this port is different for each country.





For Afghanistan, the significance of Chabahar Port lies in the potential it has to reduce the countrys dependence on Pakistan for conducting its trade. As a landlocked country, Chabahar Port offers direct access to Indian Ocean for Afghanistan as well as access to the vital sea lanes that give it alternative options to connect to the world. In fact, the port of Chabahar is 800 km closer to the economic center of Afghanistan than both the ports at Karachi (Pakistan) and Bandar Abbas (Iran). Furthermore, the establishment of this port has come along with the development of rail and road networks in the western provinces of Afghanistan. These conjoined national and international infrastructural developments are expected to have positive impacts for the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan.





The building of Chabahar Port has geostrategic importance for India as well. On the one hand, Chabahar Port allows India to bypass Pakistan for trade with Afghanistan, and on the other, Chabahar Port is pitted to compete with Gwadar Port in Pakistan which is being built by China. For Iran, the operationalization of Chabahar Port is expected to increase international interest in its markets. Having been out of the global economic fray for a long time, Irans re-integration with this world can be serviced better with this oceanic port that is capable of handling larger cargo ships.





Enhanced connectivity, and the economic interactions that follow, are built on the faith that interdependence can help overcome reasons for conflict. It is precisely this belief that has driven Afghanistan to weave regional dialogues around its own redevelopment, sending out the message that its stability and security hold the key for greater regional prosperity. Positioning itself as a connector between different regions and their respective member-states, Afghanistans participation in regional dialogues and infrastructural projects is conveyed as being not only essential for itself but also for the growth and stability of the countries around it.





Given its vital geostrategic location between resource-abundant Central Asia and the blossoming market of South Asia, it would make obvious economic sense to redevelop Afghanistan.



The Heart of Asia  Istanbul Process (HOA-IP) has been an effort in this direction. Established in 2011, HOA-IP is a platform that brings together fourteen participating countries from Central, South, and West Asia, and an equal number of supporting countries and supporting organizations from across the world. The purpose of this initiative is to encourage dialogue between these regional actors on matters concerning security, political, and economic cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbors.





The emphasis of HOA-IP is on the belief that greater regional cooperation lies at the heart of the revival of Afghanistan as a stable and secured land-bridge, and that in doing so, the states in neighboring regions can reap the dividends of greater economic growth. Stressing this idea, the recently-concluded ministerial dialogue in Baku was organized around the theme of Security and Economic Connectivity towards a Strengthened Heart of Asia Region. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, Salahuddin Rabbani, has observed that:





Connectivity through Afghanistan will facilitate increased trade, transit, and investment, thereby ensuring economic growth throughout the region. In turn, this will help stabilize Afghanistan and the Heart of Asia region against such major common security threats as terrorism, radicalism, and criminality, which hinder our shared prosperity towards regional economic integration.





Echoing a similar opinion, the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, M. J. Akbar emphasized that a stable, connected Afghanistan is in the interest of all the participating countries alike. Recognizing Afghanistans undeniable potential to emerge as the land-bridge between various parts of the vast and dynamic Eurasian landmass. Akbar reiterated that, for India, the issue for connectivity for Afghanistan is not a mere talking point. However, affected by what he addresses as the incomprehensible ill-will of a certain neighbor, he observed that the best benefits will accrue only when trade and transit agreements involving Afghanistan become fully inclusive, comprehensive and, most importantly, are fully activated.





The importance of regional progress is not lost on any country that  in direct and indirect ways  has been affected by the continuing conflicts and the lack of stability and security in Afghanistan. Given its vital geostrategic location between resource-abundant Central Asia and the blossoming market of South Asia, it would make obvious economic sense to redevelop Afghanistan for its own prosperity and that of the countries in its two immediate regions. To this effect, projects such as CASA-1000, TAPI, Five Nations Railway, and the Asian International Railway Corridor, among others, are expected to facilitate not only the redevelopment of Afghanistan but also ensure greater regional prosperity.





Regional connectivity and the ensuing economic interactions can scatter the apparent political and strategic mistrust that prevails between many countries in the two regions, especially South Asia. The advantages of greater regional cooperation built around the redevelopment of Afghanistan are many. However, the current environment in this part of the world still does not permit its member-states to rise above their short-term and short-sighted goals. The operationalization of a bilateral air freight corridor between India and Afghanistan and the functioning of the trilateral Chabahar Port are certainly happy news.





However, these bilateral and trilateral efforts, loaded as they are with the intent to bypass other nations, will only yield results in a limited manner. For true progress to come to Afghanistan, and through it to the regions it is positioned in-between, it is required that the resistance and roadblocks to a stable and democratic Afghanistan are removed from every quarter.
Spotlight on national broadband plan as Eir sold again in 3.5bn transaction

The spotlight has fallen on the National Broadband Plan following Eirs latest sale to a French investor in a deal which values the company at 3.5bn.

The Department of Communications made no comment what implications the Eir deal might pose for the plan but said the tender process for its management had advanced considerably. Final submissions are due before government early in the new year.

This will ensure that the best solution for high-speed broadband is rolled out to the approximately 542,000 premises which will benefit from the State intervention, a department spokesperson said.

Billionaire French telecommunications entrepreneur Xavier Niel, via two of his companies, has formally agreed to buy a 64.5% stake in Eir for an estimated 1bn.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete during the first half of next year. It will value Eir at about 3.5bn.

Former communications minister and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan cautiously welcomed the Eir deal, saying it brings clarity to the companys ownership and is preferable to it being owned by hedge funds, which are not usually long-term investors.

Mr Ryan said any expertise in introducing broadband in rural France that Mr Niel can bring to the Irish market could be very beneficial.

Mr Niels investment has also ruled out the prospect of another stockmarket flotation of Eir, with him understood to be viewing the investment as a long-term play.

Completion of the deal will also see current Eir chief executive Richard Moat leave the company, after nearly seven years, three and a half of which will have been as boss.

Mr Niels NJJ investment vehicle will own 32.9% of Eir, while French-listed telecom Iliad, 52% of which is owned by Mr Niel, will own 31.6%.

US hedge funds Anchorage Capital and Davidson Kempner Capital will remain as minority shareholders in Eir, the latter with an 8.9% stake.

Anchorage, currently Eirs main shareholder, will see its stake reduce from 42% to 26.6%.

The Singapore-based wealth fund GIC, which has a 20.6% stake, will exit Eir on completion of the deal.

Iliad has the option of buying 80% of NJJs Eir stake in seven years, at a 12.5% discount to fair market value, which would give it a near 59% stake in the Irish telecom.

We want to invest for the future of Ireland and hope to work closely with the Irish government and ComReg to ensure that people across the country have access to world-class super-fast fixed and mobile broadband, Mr Niel said.

Calling Eir an essential part of the Irish economy Mr Niel said he had closely followed the Irish companys transformation over the past five years.

We are a long-term investor in the telecoms sector and bring global know-how to Eir.

In our businesses in France, Monaco, and Switzerland, we have consistently delivered investment in infrastructure, while driving down prices for consumers, Mr Niel said.
The High Court has dismissed an application to grant injunctions sought by a meat factory production manager who claimed he was unfairly suspended by his employer.

Alvaro Carvalho had sought orders against his employer Carrolls Cuisine Unlimited Company, based in Tullamore, Co Offaly which processes and packages meat products for sale in Ireland and abroad.

The company opposed the application and denied his claims.

In her judgment Mr Justice Eileen Creedon said she was not satisfied to grant Mr Carvalho of Harbour Drive, Tullamore, Offaly the injunctions he wanted put in place pending the outcome of his dispute against his employer.

The Judge said he had sought orders including quashing parts of a report complied following an investigation after he was suspended from his job last October on the grounds it was flawed and conducted in the absence of fair procedures.

While Mr Carvalho had raised a fair issue to be tried, the issues raised were best left for the judge hearing the full dispute.

The judge said other injunctions sought by Mr Carvalho including an injunction directing the company to conduct an independent investigation into his suspension were also refused.

The Judge added she was taking into account factors including that Mr Carvalho was not in peril of losing his job, and assurances had been given by his employer that the terms and conditions of his employment had not been altered.

The Judge who reserved costs in the matter, adjourned the case to a date in January.

The court had previously heard Mr Carvalho made a protected disclosure after he was suspended about alleged food safety breaches to Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

The company "strenuously denies" all allegations it has breached food safety standards and says it takes its obligations in that regard "very seriously." It has contacted the FSAI and the Department of Agriculture about the allegations and denied all claims made against it by Mr Carvalho.
by Tom Tuite

A COUPLE are to face trial accused of genital mutilation of their daughter at their home in Dublin.

The man, 35, and the woman, 25, appeared before Judge Conal Gibbons at Dublin District Court on Thursday following their arrest that morning.

The couple, who are from an East African country, listened to the proceedings via an interpreter and swore on the Koran that they would not to apply for travel documents after they were ordered to surrender their passports.

They are accused of genital mutilation of the girl at their home in a south Dublin suburb on Sept. 16, 2016, and another charge under the Childrens Act for allowing a child to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected causing unnecessary suffering or injury.

Det Sergeant Danny Kelly told Judge Gibbons he arrested them at just after 10am and they were taken to a south Dublin Garda station to be charged.

He said the mans reply after caution was: I dont want to say anything until my solicitor is here.

The court heard the woman was charged minutes later and her response to the first charge was: I have told you before when we had an interview here that no one performed mutilation and I did not agree to anyone performing mutilation of the child, she was not mutilated in any form.

She had no comment when the second charge was put to her. The age of the child was not stated during the hearing yesterday/today (THUR).

Det Sergeant Kelly asked for an adjournment until Feb. 1 for a book of evidence to be completed.

He asked the judge to order them to surrender their passports. He told Judge Gibbons that the man, who is unemployed and an asylum seeker, did not have an Irish passport and he had feared that both would leave the country.

He told defence barrister Tom Power that subject to the bail condition being imposed he was satisfied they would show up. The court also heard that the mans passport was already in the possession of immigration authorities.

They were ordered to surrender passports and not apply for any other travel documents, reside at their address, provide the garda with a mobile phone number on which they could be contacted at all times, sign on twice a week and notify gardai of a change of address.

They were also told their mobile phones must be kept operational at all times.

The man in evidence told the court he was giving an undertaking not to apply for any travel documents or a new passport. His partner also gave the same undertaking.

Judge Gibbons said the conditions were warranted and appropriate as he remanded them each on bail in own bonds of 300.

He also cautioned the media that there were reporting restrictions to protect the identity of the child.

According to RTE, it is the first time anyone has been charged in this country with the offence of female genital mutilation.
The recommendations:

It recommends allowing terminations without restriction up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

The report calls for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment and that abortions should be decriminalised.

It also says abortion should be allowed in the cases of fatal foetal abnormality without term limits.

Other recommendations include access to free contraception, improvements to counselling and support services and there should be more sexual education in schools.

The committee's recommendations will be considered by the Oireachtas when it reconvenes in mid-January.

Update 3.55pm: A splinter group of the Oireachtas Committee on abortion says the process for discussing the issue was "unacceptably flawed".

Earlier the committee's final report recommended repealing the 8th Amendment and allowing abortion without restriction for 12 weeks.

Three members have called for a fresh Citizens' Assembly to examine alternatives to abortion, such as adoption.

Fine Gael TD Peter Fitzpatrick said the process had been flawed, and hit out at his party leader Leo Varadkar.

He said: "We're talking about a human being's lifeand I dont think that should go to a referendumI'm disappointed that the Taoiseach of this country stated there should be a referendum even before the committee sat down."

Chairperson of the committee Catherine Noone said that despite the misgivings of some members, they had reached a majority view.

"They're quite entitled (to disagree)," she said. "This report has the majority support of the committee (and) the committee was representative of the members of the Oireachtas overall.

"It is my view that the view we have come to is representative of what the Irish people think too."

Update 3.35pm: The Pro Life Campaign have slammed the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment for presenting their report and recommendations "as though they exhaustively and thoroughly examined the Eighth Amendment".

The campaign have suggested, however, that the the reality is very different and said "this committee will be remembered as one of the most biased official groups ever to convene in Leinster House.

Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign made her remarks outside the Dail following the publication of the Oireachtas committee report recommending the dismantling of the Eighth Amendment.

At the event outside the Dail hosted by the Love Both Project, where a paper chain representing people saved by the Eighth Amendment was displayed, Ms Sherlock went on: To take one example  the Oireachtas Committee never heard from a single parent or family who say that their child is alive today as a direct result of the Eighth Amendment.

"There are thousands of families like this throughout Ireland but the committee showed no curiosity or interest in listening to any real life stories like this that challenged the case for doing away with the Eighth Amendment. Any committee that would behave in this manner cannot claim to be impartial or fair minded.

Ms Sherlock went on to say that in many European and western countries one in five pregnancies end in abortion mainly for social reasons.

"The abortion rate for Irish women (carried out mainly in the Britain) is a small fraction of that, thanks to the Eighth Amendment. There are many stories of mothers who initially contemplated abortion, only to change their minds. Today, they cannot believe they ever entertained the idea of ending the life of the child who now means the world to them.

She continued: The paper chain of people on display here today represent the 5,000+ children born each year, thanks to the Eighth Amendment. It is a conservative estimate based on the actuarial analysis of comparative abortion rates in culturally similar European countries. This independently produced report, commissioned by the Pro Life Campaign, was published in 2016.

The 5,000+ saved annually include children whose parents are given more time to reflect; children diagnosed with disabilities that routinely lead to abortion in other countries; children with life limiting conditions who are welcomed into the world, however briefly; children whose fathers have a say and were given time to offer real support; children of mothers who are persuaded of the value of adoption.

Laws change our attitudes and beliefs. When you legalise something you make it normal. And when you make something normal, you get more of it. Thats why the abortion rate in other countries is so surprisingly high. And thats why there is no such thing as restrictive abortion."

Ms Sherlock wnet on to claim there were lots of other areas that the Oireachtas committee never bothered to examine.

"Ignoring the evidence of lives saved by the Eighth Amendment is just one of them. There is no excusing this omission and it rightly leaves the committee open to the charge of extreme bias and of having a predetermined outcome long before they ever concluded their work.

Update 2pm: Amnesty describes Committee's recommendations on Eighth Amendment as 'important end to a momentous year'

The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment has recommended repeal.

They have issued their final report this afternoon.

The main recommendations are: repeal the eighth amendment, allow abortion without restriction for up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy, and allow abortion in the cases of fatal foetal abnormality without any term restrictions.

The recommendations also say abortion should be decriminalised and should be allowed in circumstances supervised by a medical practitioner.

Committee member Brid Smith said the news is a big step forward.

"I think it is a historic moment to have an opportunity after all of these years to give more than two generations of men and women a say on this constitutional amendment," she said

There have been questions about whether these recommendations would be agreed to in the Dail.

Committee Chair Catherine Noone said it is time to get over divisions and let people have their say.

"I think it is important for the members of the Oireachtas to re-engage with the evidence. I don't think it is helpful to anyone to say 'I'm pro-choice or pro-life'," she said.

"I don't know what that means anymore because I don't know how you could say that somebody who is pro-choice isn't pro-life, or someone who is pro-life isn't pro-choice," she added.

Not all the committee members agree on the report.

Mattie McGrath, Ronan Mullen and Peter Fitzpatrick refused to sign off on it and will issue their own minority report this afternoon.

Labour TD Jan O'Sullivan said their view is very much in the minority.

Welcoming the recommendation of a straight repeal, she added that the she believed "the current situation is simply untenable".

This simpliciter recommendation, which I put forward on behalf of the Labour Party and was accepted by the Committee, recognises that the issue of abortion does not belong in the Constitution," she said.

As someone who campaigned to oppose the amendment in 1983, I believe that the Irish people deserve to have their say on the issue next year.

Government must move quickly and give clarity as to when a referendum will be held, setting a clear roadmap for the New Year regarding the preparatory work that will need to be done.

We in the Labour Party will campaign in a dignified way, respectful of all views, and with womens healthcare needs at the centre," she added.

The committee's report will be debated by the Oireachtas when they return from the Christmas holidays, with a referendum on the Eighth Amendment likely in May or June next year

The move has been welcomed by Amnesty International.

Todays report is an important end to a momentous year. With this Committee and the Citizens Assembly, we have finally had a meaningful consideration on how to reform Irelands harsh abortion laws," said Executive Director Colm O'Gorman.

"Once again, we have seen that when people have an opportunity to examine abortion in detail, guided by the evidence of legal and medical experts from around the world, expanding access to abortion services in Ireland is the logical, compassionate conclusion."

TAs the Committees report notes, anything other than simple repeal could have a profound, and relatively unprecedented, effect. Therefore anything less than its full repeal could cast serious doubt over future legislations compliance with Irelands obligations under international human rights law.

"Some gaps remain, including in how to address pregnancies with a diagnosis of severe rather than fatal foetal impairment. However, the Department of Health now has a clear blueprint for a new legal framework for access to abortion. It must ensure that these recommendations are reflected in the legislation due to be published early next year, he added.

Update 12pm: Committee recommends allowing terminations without restriction up to 12 weeks into pregnancy

The Oireachtas has published the final report of the abortion Committee.

It recommends allowing terminations without restriction up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

The report calls for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment and that abortions should be decriminalised.

Other recommendations include access to free contraception, improvements to counselling and support services and there should be more sexual education in schools.

Earlier: Eighth Amendment Committee to present final recommendations today

The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment will present its final report today.

The report will recommend allowing abortion without restriction for up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

The final report of the committee will outline the recommendations they voted on last week.

They will say the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which recognises the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn child, should be repealed.

The main recommendation was that abortion without restriction be allowed for 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

They voted it should also be allowed in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities and when there is a serious risk to the health of the mother.

Not all the committee members agreed and a minority report will be issued by TDs Mattie McGrath and Peter Fitzpatrick, along with Senator Ronan Mullen this morning.

The Taoiseach says he wants a referendum on the issue in May, but despite the restrictions of collective Cabinet responsibility, he will allow individual Ministers to vote against holding a referendum if they so choose.

The report is being launched at noon and will be debated by the Oireachtas when they return from Christmas holidays on January 16.
Only one in three units identified by NAMA for social housing are being utilised by local authorities.

A parliamentary question from Fianna Fail Housing spokesperson Barry Cowen shows that, as of September, more than 4,000 units are not being used for social housing as planned.

Yesterday,

Read More:

Among them are more than 3,300 children who accessed emergency accommodation services last month.

Deputy Cowen described the figures as a "moral shame".

"The housing crisis has been ongoing for many years now and the Government has simply failed to get to grips with it," he said.

T2here are also 100,000 people stuck on housing waiting lists across Ireland and that number looks set to increase due to Government inaction," Deputy Cowen added.

He described the "underutilisation of NAMA units" as a "damning indictment" of Government strategy.

Local authorities have refused over 4,000 units and even failed to take up almost 400 more that they had identified as suitable for social housing," he said.

"The Government should ensure all remaining available units are now taken up. In addition, the projected 3bn profit by NAMA should be invested in a new social housing provision vehicle as a matter of priority, he added.

The full reply to Deputy Cowen's parliamentary question is embedded below, including a breakdown per county.

Digital Desk
A Dublin man accused of harassing Sharon Ni Bheolain will enter a plea early next year.

The 40 year old from Portmarnock is charged with harassing the RTE news reader at various locations over four months.

Conor OHora, from Heather Walk in Portmarnock Dublin, is charged with harassing RTE news reader Sharon Ni Bheolain at various locations within the State on dates from October 2013 to February 2014.

He is also facing two other charges of possessing child pornography in text communications and images over the same time.

Earlier this month, Mr OHora appeared before the district court in Dublin where he was served with the book of evidence and his case was sent to the higher Circuit Criminal Court.

The case was mentioned this morning where Judge Martin Nolan was told an arraignment date is being sought.

Conor O'Hora. Photo: Courtpix

The case is due back before the courts on February 20 where Mr OHora will enter his plea on the three charges.

Sharon Ni Bheolain was not in court for the proceedings.

Digital Desk
It is only right the people will have their say shortly, writes Political Editor Daniel McConnell.

Of all the things we heard, the phrase that stuck out was the journey.

For the 100-odd journalists, activists, and supporters of abortion reform gathered in the AV Room of Leinster House yesterday for the launch of the report by the committee on the Eighth Amendment, it was all about the journey.

We heard of the journey this country has taken since 1983 when the controversial amendment, which recognises the equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child, was inserted into the Constitution.

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith spoke of the Ireland of 1983 as being a dark place. I remember the 1980s and I campaigned on the amendment. The 1980s were dark days for women in Ireland.

"We had the Kerry Babies, a 15-year-old dying at a grotto, and a woman dying in a hospital in Drogheda because she was refused treatment for cancer [because she was pregnant], she said powerfully.

The Kerry Babies affair, which led to a tribunal, saw Joanne Hayes being wrongfully accused of being the mother of a baby with multiple stab wounds found in the sea off Slea Head  her own baby, which died soon after birth, had been buried on the family farm at Abbeydorney.

The 15-year-old who died was Ann Lovett, whose body was found at a Marian grotto in Granard, Co Longford. She had concealed her pregnancy from her family.

We need to put an end to the shame and the stigma and the silence, said Ms Smith.

Fine Gael senator Catherine Noone, chair of the committee, spoke of her own attitudes changing because of evidence given to the committee.

The abortion pill and their prevalence was a new one on me. My level of ignorance was high on that one, she said.

Other committee members said the evidence in relation to the pills and their increased usage was a gamechanger in terms of their final recommendations.

One was struck by the lack of divisiveness among normally adversarial politicians. Even Fianna Fails Anne Rabbitte, who is pro-choice, felt sufficiently persuaded to lend her support and signature to the report.

In a respectful tone, Ms Smith said: Theres nothing wrong with changing your mind. I see that as a positive.

That is a first, quipped Fianna Fails Billy Kelleher, who was sitting in the front row having missed out on a seat at the top table.

Lisa Chambers, the impressive Fianna Fail TD from Mayo, said she was moved by testimony from those who have felt the sharp end of the Eighth Amendment.I was in the room that day and many people cried listening to the difficult testimony, she said.

Sinn Fein TD Louise OReilly Fein said she was moved by testimony from those linked to the group Terminations for Medical Reasons, who gave evidence of having to use ice packs to keep the bodies of their dead babies cool when returning from the UK on the ferry.

The journey moves on to the Government to decide what happens next.

Senator Ronan Mullen, who co-wrote a dissenting minority report calling for retention of the Eighth, speaks during a protest by the Love Both project after the committee report publication.

Ms Noone said the strength of the committees report is that it follows the work of the Citizens Assembly and is also a cross-party document. This is a powerful tool for Government in terms of the direction from here, she said.

In terms of a referendum, the politicians were adamant the public must be educated as to what is involved before any vote is held.

Ms Smith and Labours Jan OSullivan cautioned about the referendum being taken for granted, adding that it will be a fight to win it.

Others who remember 1983 say it is long since time the people had a chance to have their say on the matter.

Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Ruth Coppinger said this milestone was only reached because of how the 2015 Marriage Equality referendum transpired. This would not have happened without it, she said.

While Ronan Mullen, Mattie McGrath, and Peter Fitzpatrick dissented from the committee majority, that was to be expected.

Starting out, expectations would have been for more, but credit is due to Ms Noone for steering the ship through choppy waters. The report is a credible piece of work based on the evidence heard by the committee and it is only right the people will have their say shortly.

The journey will continue.
Aoife Ni Mhurchu discusses her adventures with MSF on MV Aquarius, which recently

rescued 320 refugees in the Med. Despite the travails, there is still a festive spirit onboard.

I am currently in the Straits of Malta onboard the MV Aquarius, a search and rescue ship run by Medecins Sans Frontieres in collaboration with SOS Mediterannee. The sea is rough, with 3.5m walls of water driven by strong winds slamming into the ship, crashing over the bulkheads and onto the decks. We have 320 rescued people onboard, most of whom have been treated for seasickness among many other conditions in the last 36 hours, and the atmosphere onboard is calm, unlike the wild weather. It has been a busy and intense time responding to boats in distress.

People often tell us they had no other option but to undertake the deadly sea crossing to Europe. They tell us they are fleeing violence, war, persecution, and poverty in their home countries. Almost everyone rescued in these waters has passed through Libya, where they have been held in arbitrary detention for prolonged periods in unsanitary and inhumane conditions. The people have been exposed to alarming levels of violence and exploitation and the burns, wounds, and scars on many of their bodies tell their own story. It is evident that the push factors are strong, and to risk life and limb on the dangerous sea crossing is the only escape.

Aoife Ni Mhurch. Picture: Kevin McElvaney/MSF

Migration in the Mediterranean is very political but MSF, as a humanitarian organisation, cannot stand back and watch from the shore as thousands of men, women, and children drown at sea.

We know that the search and rescue which is facilitated by our partners at sea, SOS Mediterannee, and the Marine crew of MV Aquarius is not the ultimate solution, but is a concrete measure that can save lives and reduce the number of people dying senselessly in the short term.

We also know that current European governments policies of interceptions of migrant boats at sea and returns to Libya is not the solution either. We have had some access to detention centres run by the UN-backed government in Libya and we have seen firsthand the absolutely horrific conditions people are trying to leave behind. Attempts to keep the suffering of refugees and migrants out of sight and out of mind is not the answer.

Operation Sophia, of which Ireland is a part, involves the training of the fractious Libyan coast guard to perform interceptions of migrant boats at sea and return people to Libya where many end up back in the same horrific conditions they have attempted to leave in the first place. This is an inhumane approach to migration management.

We are here to save the lives of people found at sea in the Mediterranean through quality rescue operations, providing medical care, and advocating for the humanity of those rescued people. The workload is intense. With two nurses, a midwife, and a doctor onboard, we are on the go from the crack of dawn and often through the night. We are prepared to provide basic medical care and to respond to life-threatening emergency situations such as drowning, hypothermia, severe dehydration, severe fuel burns, and thermic burns, severe trauma including gunshot wounds and fractures, spinal injuries, obstetric and psychiatric emergencies.

The team recently had a critical rescue whereby a boat fell apart as a rescue was commencing and 40 people were in the sea without lifejackets. One man, who was pulled from the water unconscious, not breathing, was successfully resuscitated by the team and transferred from the ship to a hospital in Italy by helicopter. It can never be anticipated what a given day will bring.

Among the main illnesses that we are seeing in the rescued people are severe skin infections, malnutrition, pneumonia, violence-related trauma, and fuel burns. These are directly related to the overcrowded, unsanitary, and desperate living conditions in places of captivity in Libya, and to the journey undertaken to escape indefinite detention.

All are preventable.

As well as my medical and support activities, I have additional responsibilities as the focal point for vulnerable persons. This involves the flagging, documenting, and referral of those among the rescued population who are defined as vulnerable, such as unaccompanied minors, victims of torture, survivors of sexual violence, disabled people, people with psychiatric illness, or people suspected of being trafficked.

My goal is to identify people who may need particular support once they are on land. I love this aspect of my work as it offers me the privilege of speaking with people from all walks of life, to support them, to be present to listen to their extraordinary and often harrowing stories, and to work towards ensuring additional support for them on land.

On my very first day patrolling international waters, I was woken at 6am to prepare for a rescue. Wearing my personal protection equipment, lifejacket, and helmet, anticipation was high. As the sun rose in the distance and the skies lightened, it was confirmed that the rubber boat we had seen on the radar had capsized. When the Aquarius passed the capsized and deflated boat, it was noted that there was no marking on it to communicate that these people had been rescued.

An indescribable feeling washed over me. It was difficult not knowing the fate of these people. Immediately, we were en route to another boat.

My first rescue involved an inflatable boat with 113 people onboard. Although I had heard a lot about the search and rescue mission, nothing could prepare me for my first experience of seeing so many people in distress onboard an inflatable boat which was unworthy of the sea and of the weather. People were straddled all along the sides and packed deep in the boat. Everybody was wet and terrified.

Nobody wore a lifejacket.

I was struck by the enormity of the journey and the level of suffering that leads a person to take the decision to undertake this dangerous sea crossing in the dark of night.

Within 24 hours we had 454 rescued people onboard, including 79 women, six of whom were pregnant, and 101 children under 18. These people came from 27 nations, including Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Palestine, Eritrea, Libya, and Somalia. I was extremely happy to work around the clock, and to have these people out of the elements and safely onboard.

Picture: Kevin McElvaney/MSF

Christmas came to cabin 11 yesterday as I hung the decorations I bought at the last port call, which has created a lovely Christmas atmosphere in my cabin that reminds me of home.

I managed to send Christmas cards early this year while in the port of Sicily; knowing that by the time of my next port call, it would be too late to send them. The challenge was in finding Christmas cards in November and a postbox close to the dock.

In the mess where the team enjoys meals together, the root of a dodgy looking Christmas tree is held between bottles of cooking oil, the branches fixed to the ceiling with several strands of sellotape, and a finger puppet of a witch with a broom is sitting on top. Christmas carols have been blasting out of the cabin of the midwife when rescued people have disembarked and we are scrubbing the decks.

Yesterday there were mince pies in the mess, again courtesy of our midwife who apparently is in the Christmas spirit.

I have a large family and many friends that I will miss too much this Christmas as I will continue to be at sea on the search and rescue mission. It is not an easy time to be away from home at all. Fortunately, my special family at home understands me well, support me always, and realize that this is a worthy way for me to spend my Christmas. The needs of this population at sea far outweigh my own need to be at home and while I will miss home enormously, it will be a joy to spend Christmas with the team and with the rescued people onboard the Aquarius.

Aoife Ni Mhurchu is a nurse from Cork working with Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, an independent, international medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency medical aid in nearly 70 countries worldwide.

With independent donations, we can quickly deploy skilled teams to the frontlines of wars, disasters, and epidemics while also retaining capacity to respond to forgotten crises. For more information about MSF, visit msf.ie
Theresa May has sacked her lifelong friend and de facto deputy Damian Green after he made "misleading" statements about allegations that police found pornography on computers in his parliamentary office in 2008.

The British Prime Minister is likely to face tricky questions on a Thursday visit to Poland about the departure from her Cabinet of the third scandal-hit minister in two months.

Mr Green leaves his post as UK First Secretary of State continuing to deny "unfounded and deeply hurtful" claims he downloaded or viewed porn on his parliamentary computer.

But an investigation by the Cabinet Office found two statements Mr Green made on November 4 and 11, which suggested he was not aware indecent material was found in a 2008 police raid, were "inaccurate and misleading" and breached the ministerial code.

Mr Green's sacking follows the November resignations of Sir Michael Fallon as defence secretary amid Westminster sleaze allegations, and international development secretary Priti Patel over undisclosed meetings in Israel.

Labour said Mr Green's sacking leaves Mrs May "further weakened" while the Liberal Democrats said the Government was "barely holding itself together".

Mrs May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her close ally to resign but stressed his behaviour "falls short" of the Seven Principles of Public Life.

It is understood the PM received the Cabinet Office report on Wednesday, before consulting the independent adviser on ministers' interests, Sir Alex Allan, who agreed Mr Green breached the ministerial code.

Mrs May then summoned Mr Green to Downing Street on Wednesday evening to ask him to resign.

It is understood she is not planning to replace him until the New Year at the earliest.

The inquiry was triggered after Kate Maltby, who is three decades younger than Mr Green, claimed he "fleetingly" touched her knee during a meeting in a pub in 2015, and a year later sent her a "suggestive" text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in a newspaper.

Reporting the probe's findings, Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood said that with "competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings" it was "not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green's behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015, though the investigation found Ms Maltby's account to be plausible".

In a letter to Mr Green, Mrs May said: "While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of ministers of the Crown.

"It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the Government and have accepted your resignation."

Mr Green said in a letter to the PM: "From the outset I have been clear that I did not download or view pornography on my parliamentary computers.

"I accept that I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013.

"I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.

"The unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations that were being levelled at me were distressing both to me and my family and it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department."

Mr Green apologised to Ms Maltby.

"I deeply regret the distress caused to Kate Maltby following her article about me and the reaction to it," he said.

"I do not recognise the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise."

Mrs May, who has been friends with Mr Green since university, said: "I appreciate that you do not recognise the events Ms Maltby described in the article, but you do recognise that you made her feel uncomfortable and it is right that you have apologised."

Ms Maltby's parents told Sky News they were "not surprised to find that the inquiry found Mr Green to have been untruthful as a minister, nor that they found our daughter to be a plausible witness".

A Labour spokesman said: "It's right that the Prime Minister has finally been forced to sack Damian Green.

"The public deserve the highest standards from ministers which begs questions around the Prime Minister's judgement and why she delayed this decision for so long.

"To lose her number two in Government in such a way, and so soon after two other ministers, leaves her further weakened."

Liberal Democrat chief whip Alistair Carmichael said: "Christmas can't come early enough for Theresa May as her Cabinet continues to crumble.

"Midwinter is going to be especially bleak for a Government barely holding itself together."

PA
Three Maltese men believed to have triggered a powerful car bomb that killed investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have been ordered to stand trial for murder.

A magistrate ruled that evidence including mobile data and DNA results presented during the preliminary hearing were enough to support charges against Alfred and George Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat for the October 16 murder. No trial date has been set.

The evidence against the three includes cell tower data showing all three suspects at the scene of the crime in the days leading up to the bombing, and DNA testing that shows a cigarette butt found at a vantage point overlooking the attack scene had been smoked by Alfred Degiorgio.

Witnesses had reported seeing a suspicious, unidentified car parked at the site in the days leading up to Caruana Galizias killing.

File image.

The suspects, who remain in custody, were arrested on December 4 with seven other Maltese men, who have been released on police bail but remain under investigation in the case.

Investigators believe that the men were working for someone, but no mastermind has yet been identified. Investigator Keith Arnaud gave evidence during the preliminary hearing that the three men refused to answer questions during police interrogation.

Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home. It was a crime that shocked Malta and drew attention to corruption on the EU island nation.

Police believe the phone that sent the bomb detonation instruction was an old Nokia 105 and that the trigger SMS was sent from out at sea.
Detective Sergeant Shane Bergin served a book of evidence on Adam OKeeffe, aged 26, at Cork District Court yesterday.

On the application of Inspector Vincent OSullivan, Judge Olann Kelleher sent the accused forward on the single charge of murder to the Central Criminal Court.

It will now be a matter for that court to set a date for the murder trial.

Judge Kelleher told Mr OKeeffe that if he wished to avail of an alibi defence whereby he might state that he was elsewhere at the relevant time, then certain notices had to be given to the prosecution of any alibi witness on whom he might be relying.

Once again, Mr OKeeffe, wearing T-shirt and tracksuit pants, stared at the floor and was bent over to such an extent that he was barely visible in the dock at courtroom 1 at the Washington St courthouse.

The single count on which Mr OKeeffe was charged last week states that, On the 29th/30th of April 2017, both dates inclusive, at 36 Sheares Street, Cork City, in the District Court area of Cork City, District No. 19, did murder one Amy McCarthy, contrary to Common Law.

Amy McCarthy

The late Ms McCarthy was a mother of an infant son and she was 22 years old when she died.

The late Ms McCarthy was found in a second-floor room in a vacant office block on Sheares St, at the back of the Mercy University Hospital in Cork City, by paramedics at around 7am on April 30 last.

The paramedics had been called after the emergency services were alerted by a man in the derelict office building after he tried to wake Ms McCarthy on April 30 but failed to rouse her.

Members of the late Ms McCarthys family were in attendance at Cork District Court for the brief hearing.

Eddie Burke, defence solicitor, asked for free legal aid to be extended to cover the appointment of junior and senior counsel to represent the accused at the Central Criminal Court.

Judge Olann Kelleher acceded to that application.
Launching their own minority report, TDs Peter Fitzpatrick and Mattie McGrath and Senator Ronan Mullen said they were appalled by the failure of the committee to act in an unbiased fashion during its 12 weeks of hearings.

The three politicians called for the 1983 amendment to be retained, saying it has saved thousands of lives.

Mr Fitzpatrick, a Fine Gael TD for Louth, was deeply critical of his own party leader, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, for committing to a referendum before the committees work was completed. He said, however, he would remain as a Fine Gael TD as the party has granted a free vote.

Mr Mullen and Mr McGrath were deeply critical of how the committees work proceeded during the hearings.

We are actually horrified by the cavalier way the committee voted to recommend widespread legalised abortion partly out of a desire to avoid figuring out complex cases, said Mr Mullen.

We believe the majority of the committee failed to check their bias in favour of abortion and this had an overwhelming effect on the way they selected and treated invited speakers and on the cruel and unjust recommendations which they have embraced, he added.

The committee majority failed at all times to ensure fairness, the three politicians said.

When you think of the proposal that any child can be killed up to 12 weeks in the womb and part of the reason was to avoid dealing with the complex cases people feel concerned about, show how Orwellian the committee and how reckless the committee majority came to be, Mr Mullen added.

They said that when the committee preemptively voted to recommend that the Eighth Amendment be removed or changed, without waiting to hear from all invited speakers, much less to hear from a balanced ticket of speakers, this confirmed that the link between the evidence being heard and the conclusions that the committee would reach would be, at best, loose.

The committees decision to vote preemptively has been defended repeatedly by the chairperson despite its being an objectively hasty, ill-considered and prejudicial move.

We believe that this is unfortunate, the minority report said.

They said the extraordinary imbalance in the list of invited guests in favour of abortion was a problem from the start which was pointed out by pro-life members.

The minority three made four recommendations of their own.

They were:
In a new RTE documentary on the making of one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time, the Pogues frontman says he gets still joy from his life with his long-time partner, Victoria Mary Clarke.

She said they are very like the rowing couple in the festive classic. Weve had lots of fights and screaming at each other in the street, throwing things, breaking up. Were both very aware of each others faults.

But were still like that couple in the song. Were still on the same rollercoaster together. It doesnt matter what happens, youve still got each other.

MacGowan agrees their life has been up and down but adds: Still, weve been lucky. Life brings me joy, she brings me joy.

In the documentary, one of the NYPD officers who appeared in the famous Fairytale of New York video has told how the legendary frontman lived up to his hell-raising reputation on set in the Big Apple.

Detective Kevin McCarthy told RTEs documentary team that the NYPD didnt have a choir but they did have the NYPD Emerald society of pipes and drum band.

Before the release of the Christmas song, he said most of the police band had never heard of the Pogues but MacGowan made a lasting impression.

I was very proud to play a small part in the video for the Fairytale of New York. I think they wrote the song thinking there was an NYPD choir. There is no choir, so I think we were the next best thing. We have a bagpipe band and it has been around since 1960, said McCarthy.

Most of the guys never heard of the Pogues and then the Pogues showed up. Those guys were legless, they could barely stand up.

He said Mac Gowan, who celebrates his 60th birthday on Christmas Day, stunned the officers when he whipped the drum majors marching baton and threw it up in the air.

He said: Shane MacGowan came up to our legendary drum major, Finbar Devine, standing 6ft4, all seriousness. Just something you would never do is touch Finbars mace [marching baton].

Shane is staggering and takes it and throws it up in the air at least two storeys. He was really out there and with just one hand he catches it in mid-air. So, we all got a chuckle out of that.

MacGowan, who calls the song the nastiest Christmas single ever, said he has never got tired of the festive song as it celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

He said: I never got sick of it. Im really surprised I didnt, but I never did. It was a great fucking performance. It was a great recording.

Christmas is a lousy time for most people. Its when all the skeletons come out of the cupboard and people have rows and all the rest of it.

MacGowan said he ended up writing the Christmas song with his bandmate Jem Finer in response to a bet made in a bar in Dublin by their record producer, Elvis Costello.

Elvis Costello bet me and Jem that we couldnt write a Christmas single without going jingly, jangly, fucking Happy Christmas.

The documentary tells how the song took two years to eventually complete and it was finally recorded with Kirsty MacColl as a duet.
Leo Owens, aged 48, was found dead at the foot of the stairs at the building where he lived at Harbour Hill.

Assistant State pathologist Margot Bolster examined the mans remains at the scene on Tuesday night, and a full post mortem was carried out yesterday.

Gardai have said that the death is not being treated as suspicious following the results of the post mortem.

The son of former Workers Party Cobh town councillor Leo Owens Snr, Mr Owens came to national attention when he featured in both the Irish Examiner and RTEs Prime Time due to his ongoing battle against eviction from his home.

In October, the Irish Examiner reported how Mr Owens walked out of a Residential Tenancy Board hearing when it refused to hear his evidence of the conditions in which he lived.

He said his shower and toilet did not work and that he used four buckets to collect water from a leaking ceiling.

The landlord, who acquired the building in 2016, said he was served with a fire safety notice in November of that year and that he needed to vacate the property to conduct upgrade works which could take four to six months.

Despite this, Mr Owens had said he wanted to continue to live in the flat, and resisted attempts to evict him from his home.

This is my home for the last 19 years, he told this paper at the time.

There is nowhere else to live around Cobh.

I will be without a house, definitely, if the landlord forces me out.
The committee has recommended a range of changes, including repealing the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the life of the unborn. TDs have urged their party colleagues to join them on a journey and prepare for a campaign ahead of a referendum which will likely be held next May or June.

Members of the Oireachtas committee examining the amendment launched the report calling for a respectful debate ahead of the vote.

Commenting on the report and the Citizens Assembly, committee chairwoman Catherine Noone said: What is clear to me is that two inclusive processes  one made up of citizens, the other of politicians  have now concluded their deliberations and have both recommended a change in our Constitution, some access to terminations and a greater focus on womens health and their experiences.

The Government and all Oireachtas members will consider the report over the Christmas break before a decision is made on the referendum, the legislation that follows and what if anything would regulate terminations. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said this week that ministers would be free to oppose the Government on the referendum though the Cabinet would have a collective position on the issue.

Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said the Eighth had punished women for years and forced many to go full term with unwanted pregnancies.

Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Brid Smith

Member and Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan said the use of illegal abortion pills here was suspected as the main reason why there were less Irish women travelling abroad for terminations.

However, a number of committee members disagreed with the conclusions.

TDs Peter Fitzpatrick, Mattie McGrath and Senator Ronan Mullen said they were appalled by the failure of the committee to act in an unbiased fashion. They accused the committee of falling victim to a tragic group think.

The three called for the 1983 amendment to be retained, claiming it had saved thousands of lives.

Senator Ronan Mullen

When you think of the proposal that any child can be killed up to 12 weeks in the womb and part of the reason was to avoid dealing with the complex cases people feel concerned about, it shows how Orwellian the committee and how reckless the committee majority came to be, said Mr Mullen.

Meanwhile, Labours Jan OSullivan, also on the committee, warned of the atmosphere ahead of the referendum. She said the 1983 campaign had been horrific.

Orla OConnor, director of the National Womens Council of Ireland, said the committees findings were an historic opportunity.
Mr OBrien said that around 20,000 images had already been checked before the lookback became public and there had been 700 follow-up clinical reviews.

He pointed out that the review of 46,000 patient scans that began in October had found five serious reportable events and five serious incidents.

Mr OBrien described it as a quality assurance process that was being carried out effectively and efficiently and in a way that was in the best interests of the patients concerned.

Mr OBrien said the doctor at the centre of the scans controversy had been referred to the Medical Council, so it was a serious issue.

He believed the hospital group, who would give an update today, had responded appropriately, and in a way that managed the interests of the patients in the best way possible.

At all stages where concerns were identified, they were appropriately escalated right up to highest levels of the HSE in order to provide the resources for this review.

Mr OBrien said he was told about the clinically informed decision to review the scans in October but felt making it public would have caused fear and alarm to the 26,700 patients involved.

He expected that the process would be complete early in January.

Health Minister, Simon Harris, said hospital management had adopted the precautionary principle of making sure that the widest number of possible scans were reviewed.

I am heartened by the comments of clinicians in the Kerry area who have largely welcomed the way hospital management have handled that situation, said Mr Harris.

He felt that if the review had been handled in any way differently, it could have caused unnecessary alarm.

Mr Harris said he was happy that hospital management put in place a very robust procedure to conduct the review.

However, he wanted to support the effort by having additional radiologists involved, which now meant that the review would be completed in about six weeks rather than 10.
The band of I Brigade played seasonal favourites as the crew of LE Niamh disembarked from the ship to be greeted by hugs and kisses from relatives who had gathered on the pier at Haulbowline Naval Base to welcome them home.

Able Seaman Jordan Culbert, 28, from Birr, Co Offaly, had a special surprise for long-term partner Alison Parsons.

He had purchased an engagement ring while on shore leave in Malta and got down on one knee to propose to her yesterday as their children, Farrah, 6, and Harrison, 3, looked on.

Weve been together for 10 years, but I wasnt expecting this. It was a complete shock, said Alison after accepting the proposal.

She said she was used to Jordan being away  he was on the same ship when it was on migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015.

Back then it was a purely humanitarian mission. The ship saved 4,166 migrants on that mission, which is still a record.

This time out, she saved 613, primarily because of the change from Operation Pontus to joining the EU taskforce Operation Sophia.

Captain of the LE Niamh, Lieutenant Commander Stuart Armstrong, explained that while the crew were involved in rescues, one of its main roles within the taskforce was surveillance and intelligence-gathering designed to disrupt people-smuggling gangs.

The ship was tasked with trying to get information which would prevent the illegal smuggling of oil and weapons into Libya, parts of which still remain lawless as various factions fight for supremacy.

Lt Cmdr Armstrong said he felt they had been very successful in providing vital intelligence on ship movements to the command centre in Italy. Were now part of a bigger mission with a bigger team, he said.

But amid the work there was still some downtime. Nearly 20 birthdays were celebrated on the mission. We ensured there was a birthday cake for all of them.

One of those was a milestone celebration. Able Mechanic Matthew Cummings, from Laois, turned 21 while on the mission and pointed out he was lucky as it fell on a day when they were docked in Sicily and was therefore able to sample the nightlife.

Lt Cmdr Armstrong had an emotional reunion with wife Joy and their eight-month-old daughter, Olivia, yesterday.

Joy, who had travelled from Wicklow, said it had been a particularly tough time for her because her mother had died while Stuart was at sea. But its great to have him home for Christmas, she said after giving him a hug as he was first to step off the ship.

Lt Cmdr Armstrongs parents, Joan and Hugh, were also present to welcome him home.

A first birthday party was postponed for a day so one of the crew could share it with his son, Alfie.

Katie Dowling and her partner, Gary OLoughlin, who both live in Cobh, Co Cork, were going to celebrate Alfies big day yesterday, along with the homecoming.

I really missed Gary, said Katie.

But we were able to speak to him on the phone on a couple of occasions and the calls definitely made things a little easier.

Suzanne Greene is somebody who knows all about being away from home.

As she waited for her husband to alight from the ship, Suzanne, who lives in Dublin, explained that shes a medic in the army.

By coincidence, so too is husband Philip.

He was on LE Niamh to provide medical assistance to any injured migrants.

The couples two children, Eoghan, 7, and Aoibhe, 4, were waving flags and clearly thrilled to see dad back home.

Before we had the children we both served abroad on missions in Chad and the Lebanon, said Suzanne.

For Marie Scott, it was the second time she had turned up to the naval base to welcome home her husband, Chris, who is a leading seaman. He previously served in the Mediterranean in 2015 aboard LE Samuel Beckett.

It doesnt get any easier, said Marie, who lives in Churchtown, Co Cork.

She said her three children, aged 14 to 5, really missed him and that it was great he was home.
Responding to the funding details outlined in the HSEs National Service Plan (NSP), published yesterday, the IMO president, Dr Ann Hogan, called for a public debate about the gap between what was being proposed to be spent and what was demanded to provide a reasonable level of health services for a modern country.

The NSP, based on a budget of 14.6bn, an increase of 608m (4.4%) on 2017, contains warnings that the HSE faces significant financial challenges in 2018, as a result of which it needs to make savings of 346m under a new Value Improvement Programme.

This programme will focus on improving value within existing services in acute hospitals, disability services, older persons services and primary care; improving value within non-direct service areas including the costs of corporate and other overhead-type costs that exist at national and local level and strategic value improvement.

Dr Hogan criticised the presentation of the plan for focussing on amounts being budgeted for various activities whereas the real challenge was to measure that proposed spend against the rapidly rising levels of demand.

Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) welcomed the increase in the Nursing Home Support Scheme (Fair Deal) Budget for 2018.

CEO Tadhg Daly said the 961.7m budget allocation is a 2.3% increase on the 940m allocated for 2017.

However he said they provided a cautious welcome as providers are under sustained pressures to meet increasingly high dependency and complex healthcare needs of residents presenting for nursing home care.

We reiterate our call for the review of the Fair Deal pricing mechanism, which was scheduled for completion in June, to be published, he said.

Health Minister Simon Harris said he was pleased that the HSE intends to refocus efforts to achieve the best outcomes and value for money through the establishment of a Value Improvement Programme.

This will consider how to reduce the costs of delivering services without reducing the level or quality of the services provided, he said.

Finian McGrath, the Disability Minister, said additional funding was being allocated to meet the cost of providing valuable supports for school leavers, respite and regulatory compliance costs.

I am particularly pleased that an additional 10m will further enhance respite services, he said, as well as the provision of 12 new dedicated respite houses around the country.

Jim Daly, Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, said priorities in 2018 include improved seven-day response in mental health services, expanded out-of-hours and liaison services for both adults and children.
He said the committee will hold further meetings with the Central Bank and the Ombudsman to seek to find out the extent of the crisis.

He was speaking after the Central Bank delivered its report to Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe that shows more than 33,000 affected cases have been identified.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mr McGuinness said: We will hold further meetings in the new year. It is clear Padraic Kissane was correct. This will get worse and bigger in terms of the numbers affected.

I would urge the banks to get ahead of this and come clean and make sure adequate and fair compensation is given to those affected, which would mean substantial compensation in some cases.

The need for accountability at both the institution and individual senior executive level is imperative, said Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath.

He said: The real story behind todays update is that the lenders did not voluntarily reveal the full extent of the tracker mortgage scandal. It is evident that the Central Bank had to seriously flex its muscles to force the lenders to face up to the scale of this scandal.

The Central Bank should be commended for doing its job and the lenders should be slammed for having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the truth.

Mr McGrath said the absolute priority now is to ensure all 26,600 customers in this current examination get the justice they deserve. This has to include fair and reasonable compensation which takes account of their individual circumstances, he said.

Beyond looking after those affected, this scandal really has to be a watershed in Irish banking. The Central Bank expects that all the main lenders will face enforcement investigations. People will be sceptical about the effects of this. At the end of this process, there simply has to be real accountability  for both the institutions but also for anyone identified within them as being responsible for this in the first place.

It was hardly an accident that all the banks made the same mistake  in their own favour.

Mr Donohoe said he noted the conclusion of the Central Banks report that the banks have made sufficient progress in meeting the targets they agreed to two months ago in terms of rectifying the position of customers adversely affected by the tracker scandal. I also note that compensation payments have begun to be paid to many customers, he said.

Mr Donohoe said the five banks are making compensation and redress payments in line with the Central Banks framework, which ensures fair treatment is assured for customers.

I am keenly aware of the distress that has been caused to very many customers of the banks as a result of this scandal, he said.

Labours Joan Burton said: That Irish banks have now paid out nearly 300m highlights how widespread and deep this scandal is, with a total of 900m set aside by five lenders to cover redress, compensation, and costs.

It is my belief that there now also needs to be an independent investigation into how this happened, and who authorised it, and why it is so widespread across Irish banks. Enforcement action alone is not good enough.
At Ennis District Court, Kevin Sherry, a solicitor for Tusla, the Child and Family Agency (CFA), said the teenager has the learning capacity of a six- to seven-year-old and is suffering from chronic educational neglect.

Mr Sherry said the case is as bad as it gets in terms of the boys parents failing in their legal and moral obligation concerning the educational needs of their child.

There is no defence here to the chronic educational neglect, he said.

Mr Sherry said the teenager has an 82% absenteeism rate from Irish and UK schools since October of last year when the CFA first brought the matter to court.

His 14-year-old sister has an absenteeism rate of 94% during the same period, the court heard.

Judge Patrick Durcan asked the solicitor for the two parents, John Casey: Do they not realise the damage that they are doing to their children?

In reply, Mr Casey said: Neither parent has had much education and I have explained to them that there is absolutely no benefit to the kids and that it is all detrimental to them.

The learning ability of the boy for someone his age is very poor.

Mr Casey added: It is the usual You can lead a horse to water, but cant make him drink  and these people know now what to do.

Judge Durcan had adjourned to yesterday, from earlier this month, the prosecution by the CFA against the couple. He had warned the parents then that they would face jail unless there was 100% school attendance for their two children from December 6.

Mr Sherry told the court yesterday that there has been 100% attendance for the two children since then and that it is the familys intention to return to England in January.

He said the family has been going over and back between the two jurisdictions.

The couple initially faced proceedings from the CFA concerning the non-attendance of their two teenage children from October of last year.

Judge Durcan yesterday accused the parents of playing the system and playing every system under the sun. That is what we are dealing with here.

Judge Durcan fined each parent 1,000 concerning the non-attendance at school of the two children.

Mr Casey said the family returned early for Christmas in mid-November to be with the ill paternal grandfather of the children.

Mr Casey said the family came home too early for Christmas. Mr Sherry said the two were previously registered with a school in the UK and that there were attendance issues there.

Judge Durcan replied: That is my concern.
People are falling over themselves to give. Everyone wants to help. Word gets out were collecting and people just appear, they just climb out of the woodwork, said Kate Durrant, secretary of SVPs Cork food conference, St Fiacres.

The group feeds more than 200 families a week, but they will distribute food parcels to 2,500 homes in Cork City and county over the coming days.

The packages are made up of chicken, vegetables, ham, mince, potatoes, a selection box for every child in the home, as well as a box of fancy biscuits.

The parcel contains enough food to get a family from Christmas Eve through to St Stephens Day.

While the conference uses donations from initiatives such as Food Cloud, BIA, and FEAD, Ms Durrant said people in her area, who become aware of their work, often turn up on her door unannounced with all sorts of items.

There are days you come home and on your porch there would be 20 packs of nappies, childrens toys, and packets of pork chops.

"There are days when you cant get through the door.

Then the quicker you clear it, the quicker its all replaced again. Its honestly like a magic porch.

The St Fiacres conference was created four years ago out of a sense of frustration at the poverty and hunger the volunteers saw in their local communities.

This week, food parcels have been delivered to Castletownbere, Doneraile, and as far as Kenmare.

Packed cooler boxes of meats such as chicken, ham, pork, and beef, loaded by Stephen Looney, John Forrest, and Michael OSullivan, Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal transition-year students. Pic: Jim Coughlan

Tradespeople who use a van for work and have heard about the conference have been offering up their time to make these deliveries.

Id put out a call for a van on Facebook or in some other way and I get a text 10 minutes later with an offer.

"One man went off with his partner to do the deliveries on his only day off between now and Christmas. People really, really want to help, said Ms Durrant .

SVP protects the identities of the people it helps, but those in need come from all walks of life.

There are some houses youd visit and youd never think theyd need help.

"There might be a nice car in the driveway but sometimes that can mean nothing. You can either judge or help, but you cant do both, said Ms Durrant.

All this is is giving a gift of excess to those who havent a sufficient amount. Its not charity, Its not a handout; this is just a sharing out, the making of an inequitable world more equitable. And its what we should all be doing.

There are times they have gone into homes with young children and hard-working parents and the fridges would be empty.

However, for Christmas at least, this group of volunteers is determined to improve as many peoples lives as possible.

These are children we are talking about. Life can be grim all year round. Poverty is very isolating.

"But with a decent parcel, they will be able to close their door for a few days at least and pretend that life is good.

Anyone interested in supporting SVP can contact it on 021 4270444.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, his ministers, and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin are to examine the report and recommendations of the committee over Christmas before taking a stand on the matter.

While remaining silent on his own views, Mr Varadkar has already said ministers will be allowed dissent from supporting the option of repealing the Eighth Amendment once it comes before the Dail for debate and a vote.

The Cabinet will meet on January 9 to discuss the report. While a conclusion may not be reached then, ministers will be expected to collectively agree a position on the referendum and on what regime would exist should the Eighth Amendment be repealed before it can reach the Dail.

Only then will Cabinet members be allowed vote according to their conscience in the Dail.

Mr Varadkar has also indicated that the Government intends on publishing the general scheme of legislation which would replace the current position if the referendum results in a repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Before the committee published its report yesterday, Health Minister Simon Harris suggested the findings be used as the template for next years referendum.

Mr Harris said such a move would be desirable and obviously makes sense.

The report will also be discussed at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on January 15.

The Fianna Fail parliamentary party is also expected to examine the report at its first meeting of 2018.

The Dail will return from its Christmas break on January 16, and politicians will be under pressure to discuss the matter as soon as possible given the tight time-frame.

Legislation to allow a referendum would have to be passed by around the end of January if a public vote is to take place in May.

If a June date for a referendum is to be selected, the Oireachtas would have until around mid-February to pass the required legislation.
I had no idea what a melon baller was until 1989. For Christmas that year, Darina Allen brought to the world her Christmas dinner starter, grape and melon with mint. Her television programme, A Simply Delicious Irish Christmas (with the book of the same name) showed us how to make it.

In thousands of homes on thousands of TVs, Darina peeled no end of grapes and balled up on end of little melon globes. We were hooked and in more ways than one: hooked on the lovely strangeness of the orangey mint syrup for the dinky melons and grapes and hooked on the idea that this needed special tools  a melon baller and a paper clip pulled apart and re-shaped into a hook, for hooking out the grape seeds.

It was hard labour, but we suffered it, skinning the no end of grapes and hooking out the no end of seeds. And it was worth it because this was a special, new and exotic addition to the traditional package of Christmas foods. When it comes to Christmas, we fall under some kind of food spell. We want an element of exotic but also the solace of traditional things.

Try buying a jam swiss roll or a bottle of sweet sherry in the days leading up to Christmas and youll be hard-pressed to find any in the shops. Its as if a collective craving for trifle has descended in a fairy wind and so we wipe the shelves clean of the essential ingredients in our craze to prepare this luscious pudding.

Our attachment to trifle is never as pronounced as it is at Christmas and I suppose thats the power of tradition. It is all about patterns and routines, and to disrupt those makes us feel that were not doing Christmas properly. And Christmas food is all about patterns, routines, and repetitions  turkeys, geese, hams, puddings and pies.

We might be uncertain about what traditional food means for the rest of the year but at Christmas, theres nothing surprising about it, we know what to expect and the rituals make us feel safe. We have good and romanticised feelings about Christmas food. It links us with Christmases past and it lets us indulge in the cosiness of nostalgia.

We aim to have everything about Christmas food just perfect, which leaves us vulnerable to the commercial Christmas-food industry. But then we take comfort in the fact that everyone else is doing broadly the same things with food and this brings us together in a community of shared experience. It makes us feel that we belong to a group but Christmas food also makes us feel that we belong to a smaller family group.

Christmas food is all about the emotion of intimacy, belonging and sharing. So much so that to eat outside a family setting or to be alone at Christmas brings strong feelings of being disconnected and isolated. Nothing says social pariah better than the taboo of Christmas dinner for one.

Our relationship with food at Christmas time, and the rituals that go with it, are powerful symbols of how we manage family, of how we design a feast, of how were faithful to tradition but also of how were tempted by the new. And of how for the twelve days of Christmas, we throw off constraint in favour of excess. Its an all-out blur of food, indulgence, and merriment with a strong sense of carnival about it. Its hedonistic and thats why Puritans banned Christmas, and especially Christmas food, between the 1640s and 1660. Mince pies in the shape of the manger with little lids of pastry to mimic the baby Jesus were just too much for Puritan sensibilities. Plum pottages, the forerunners of puddings, full of sugar, expensive fruit and fat, were just too corrupting and the feasts of meat  roast beef, turkeys, and geese, not to mention the swans, peacocks and cranes, were gateways to sin because meat, in particular, red meat, raised the blood and prompted debauchery.

And nothing was more corrupting than a mince pie with all its elements of excess  minced meat, minced animal suet, luxury exotic spices, sugar from the New World plantations and expensive dried fruits. The mince pie gave the common man and woman a taste of the luxury food of the wealthy and no good could come of that social disorder.

Worse still was its association with Christian and pre-Christian superstition  the belief was that for good luck you ate a pie on each of the 12 days of Christmas. As a survivor from late medieval times, the mince pie sums up all that we still aim for in Christmas food, we want the sense of carnival  we want luxury, fat, and flavour, we want sugar and spice, different meats and we want alcohol both inside and outside the Christmas dishes. But we also want all of this food anchored in the calm domestic bliss of family harmony.

This is the traditional Christmas feast that we have inherited and essentially what we practice is a very English Christmas.

The popular mind likes to see Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol from 1843 as the inspiration behind these customs, but Dickens wasnt really responsible for the invention or re-invention of Christmas. What he did was to frame a particular Christmas menu  a roast goose, applesauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, plum pudding, apples, oranges and chestnuts, which was based on existing traditions and he set it firmly in the context a family-based celebration. This suited Victorian notions of family and respectability. And, as a set menu, it also suited 19th-century trends in the commercialisation of Christmas and the popularisation of Christmas paraphernalia.

But other writers, in particular, the American, Washington Irving, were more detailed in their descriptions of Christmas food. Irvings 1819/20, Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, from which Dickens no doubt took inspiration, has a more comprehensive description of the English Christmas dinner  boars heads, turkeys, geese, sirloins of beef, mince pies, tongues, hams, plum pudding, sugar, and spice. In fact, Irving draws on Christmas food traditions that were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries; the very ones that were denounced as Papist and they have much in common with the great cookery writers of Restoration England that encourage great Christmas meat and fowl feasts. Today, we practice a distillation of this English aristocratic extravagance by having a big bird, a variety of meats, pies, and puddings.

But hidden in there too are elements of other traditions that have lost relevance - the November farm-animal and fowl cull, which gave a supply of meat and cured meats; the mid-winter solstice feasting, and in a Christian tradition, the anticipation for the feast that followed the Advent fasting season.

As we become more removed from these rituals and rhythms, the more uncertain we are of how and where food is produced. In this insecurity, we tend to inflate the importance of the food traditions of the past.

Tradition brings a sense of identity and stability in the face of global food production. In some quarters, traditional food is now as fashionable as local and seasonal food. Indeed, one supermarket chain is even offering marrow bone pies and Tudor pies

for Christmas.

But tradition doesnt really work like that, its a bit more complex: its comforting and set but its also dynamic and ever-evolving. Its accommodating to brussels sprouts and will accept better versions of itself, like plum pudding imitations in the form of caramel bombes and chocolate pudding fondants.

It likes to consider fashion trends and moves around these in funny ways, as from goose to bronze turkey, to white turkey and back to bronze again. And, sometimes it acts in ways we dont like to think of as traditional, like making a one-time exotic like sugar an everyday reality on the back of plantation labour and large-scale trade.
As a subscriber, you are shown 80% less display advertising when reading our articles.

Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services.

These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience  the local community.

It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times.

Close
SUPPORTERS of Age UK Isle of Wight took up the P-P-P-Penguin Plunge in aid of those who have to spend their Christmas alone this year.

Fourteen hardy individuals put their discomfort to one side so that others less fortunate have a more comfortable festive season, by taking the plunge at Appley Beach, Ryde, last Sunday.

After spending a few minutes splashing about in the chilly surf, the swimmers, who wore penguin masks, warmed up with hot drinks at The Dell cafe.

Last year, the inaugural fundraiser raised 1,500 for Age UK Isle of Wight  a figure the charity hopes to match.

This year's event was supported by Red Squirrel property services, Newport.

The proceeds will go Age UK's local No One Should Have No One at Christmas campaign, to support lonely pensioners with companionship, advice and support when they have no one to turn to.

People can donate 3 by texting NOEL44 3 to 70070.
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...
Black, Jewish, Americanmy triple consciousness

When I read the news about Kanye West, I didnt know whether to turn off my phone, or throw it. I knew it would only...

Make your voice heard by voting in the Nov. 8 election

The 2022 Election is fast approaching. Voting will be held on Nov. 8, less than one week from now. Nationally, control of the House and...
SURRY COUNTY  A North Surry High School student was killed in a crash Wednesday afternoon, according to Surry County EMS Director John Shelton.

North Surry High School tweeted Wednesday afternoon that two students were involved in the crash.

The single-vehicle crash happened at 1:20 p.m. in the 800 block of Sparger Road, Shelton said. The car went off the right side of the road, the driver overcorrected and the car went down an embankment and crashed into trees.

A 16-year-old girl, who was a passenger in the car, was killed and another 16-year-old girl, the driver, was injured and taken to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center where she is in stable condition.

Highway Patrol Trooper B.L. Cox identified the deceased Wednesday evening as Kristin Goins.

All planned events at North Surry have been postponed out of respect for the families of the students, the school said.
WASHINGTON -- A senior U.N. envoy who visited Pyongyang this month carrying a pressing appeal for diplomacy was told by his North Korean hosts that it was "too early" for steps that might ease the confrontation over their nuclear program.

"There was no sense of urgency" among North Korean officials, said one source familiar with the Dec. 5-9 journey by Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary for political affairs and a former senior U.S. diplomat. His trip, which has received relatively little attention, was the first to Pyongyang by a high-level U.N. official in six years.

The North Korean reluctance to enter talks now puts it on a potential collision course with the United States. President Trump warned this week: "America and its allies will take all necessary steps to achieve a denuclearization and ensure that this regime cannot threaten the world; ... It will be taken care of."

The exit ramps from this crisis appear to be narrowing in both Washington and Pyongyang, creating new worry, frustration and resolve. North Korea's seeming disinterest in any early negotiations was "convincing diplomatic theater, if it was theater," said one analyst.

Feltman made three requests of the North Koreans during his 15 1/2 hours of talks, sources said. He proposed that they reopen military-to-military channels that were cut in 2009, so that the risk of accidental war might be reduced; he urged them to signal that they were ready to engage the U.S. in talks, following their Nov. 29 proclamation that North Korea had completed its "state nuclear force"; and he asked them to implement Security Council resolutions condemning their weapons programs.

To dramatize his message about the risk of unintended conflict, Feltman gave North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho a copy of historian Christopher Clark's study, "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914." Ri was the most senior North Korean official Feltman met.

Feltman was carrying a letter from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, arguing that Pyongyang's attempt to gain nuclear deterrence could produce the very conflict that it seeks to avoid. Feltman's message was reviewed before the trip by the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, the nations that joined in the "Six-Party Talks" with North Korea in 2003-2009 that sought unsuccessfully to halt its nuclear program.

Analysts interpreted the North Korean response as an indication that Pyongyang plans more missile and nuclear tests to convincingly demonstrate its ability to strike the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile. "They don't feel they are quite there yet," said one source. Such additional North Korean weapons tests might trigger a U.S. response.

The North Koreans engaged in spirited exchanges with Feltman, posing many questions about U.S. decision-making, the sources said. But they were elusive when asked to explain how they wanted the U.S. to change its "hostile" policy toward the regime, and what they meant in the Nov. 29 announcement that North Korea had completed its state nuclear force.

The North Koreans evidently want to bargain, but from a position of maximum strength. They agreed, for example, that a restoration of military-to-military contacts would at some point be necessary, but not yet. They also agreed that denuclearization is the ultimate long-term goal for Korea, but not yet. And they expressed interest in a follow-up meeting, though nothing specific is planned.

One perversely encouraging sign is that after Feltman urged the North Koreans to engage the Security Council more closely, U.N. ambassador Ja Song Nam attended a Council discussion Friday with Guterres and senior diplomats focusing on the danger of accidental war on the Korean peninsula.

In the 10 days since Feltman's mission, concern about the danger of conflict has increased in Washington. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated last week that he wants talks with Pyongyang: "We're ready to have the first meeting without precondition; ... we can talk about the weather if you want." But the White House was displeased, and Tillerson backtracked, saying that Pyongyang would have to "earn its way" to the table, presumably by halting weapons tests. Tillerson's aides say he just wanted "talks," not negotiations.

A chilling warning came last week from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who said that U.N. sanctions against North Korea "might be our last, best chance to avoid military conflict." Asked Tuesday by CBS-TV about the North Korean nuclear threat, McMaster said: "I don't think we can tolerate that risk."

The sleepwalkers of 2017 should consider: On the brink of conflict, you never know just where the edge of the cliff may be.

David Ignatius can be reached via Twitter: @IgnatiusPost.

The Washington Post
The Ukrainian Finance Ministry is hailing the freeze on the assets of the former owners of PrivatBank, Ihor Kolomoisky and Henadiy Boholiubov, as well as six companies they either own or control, imposed by a London court.

"We are hailing the affirmative decision of the British court. The government has spent almost UAH 140 billion increasing PrivatBank's capitalization because money was earlier siphoned off this bank and uncollateralized loans were not being returned," a statement posted on the bank's website with reference to Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk said.

"These UAH 140 billion are the money of every citizen, every taxpayer, and it should absolutely be returned to the state budget. Attempts have been made to disrupt the proceeding and defense of the bank's interests, yet the team of lawyers working on this case has done its professional job and delivered the result," Danyliuk said.

The television news service said Kolomoisky had described the freeze as a conservative attachment.

"This is a conservative attachment for the period of the court proceedings," Kolomoisky said in his statement on the British court's order.

As reported earlier, the London High Court in the UK imposed a temporary freeze on the assets of former PrivatBank owners Kolomoisky and Boholiubov totaling over $2.5 billion.
As real data and anecdotal accounts of a growing economy begin to pile up, it will be interesting to see whether the media gives President Trump even partial credit for the building momentum. And it isnt just a question of whether the media will treat Trump fairly, but also a question of whether giving credit where credit is due will have a positive effect on his approval ratings and lift the Republican Partys prospects for the November 2018 midterm elections. It is important that Trump and Republicans be associated with the robust economy.

Throughout President Barack Obamas reign, the media rarely if ever blamed him for subjecting the American people to years of historically weak economic performance. There was little criticism of his high-tax, job-killing policies, and practically no one dared to question the thousands of burdensome regulations produced by Obamas imperial presidency.

Indeed, Obama was the only president who never had a single full year with 3- percent GDP growth in the post-war period despite adding more than $9 trillion in debt. Yet there was never much analysis by Democrats and their allies in the liberal media of the damage wrought by the hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity that didnt happen. Fast-forward to 2017, however, and there is no shortage of stories suggesting that people will  wait for it  die as a result of the Trump tax cuts. Death by tax cuts? Hmm.

Unfortunately, the dishonesty and sanctimony of the mainstream media dont end there. The prospects of a robust economy have made the Democrats come unhinged. In typical Vox fashion, liberals are running stories with hyperbolic headlines such as Were witnessing the wholesale looting of America. And comically, liberals have suddenly become fixated with the nearly $1.5 trillion that Republican tax cuts might add to the nations debt. In other words, they are sounding the alarm that Republican tax cuts could add to the debt in 10 years what Obama added, on average, every 16 months of his presidency. But back then, doubling the debt and transferring wealth were considered stimulus. Heaven forbid that Republicans try something different.

Anyway, here we are. The economy is revving. For the first time in 11 years, more than half of those polled by the CNBC All-America Economic Survey say the economy is good or excellent. Consumer sentiment is high, and optimism among small businesses is nearing the record set under President Ronald Reagan in 1983. But will Trump get credit?

As much fun as it is to blame the mainstream media and call out its biases, liberal news outlets arent Trumps only problem in communicating his message. The president supplies an endless stream of his own distractions that not only diminish important news about the nations growing prosperity but also alienate voters who might otherwise warm to his stewardship of the economy.

Republicans have always been forced to combat a double standard in much of the media. The press never called out Obama for his poor economic record, and the chances of Trump receiving an attaboy from the mainstream media remain slim. But perhaps voters are going to realize the impact Trump is having on the economy. Lets see whether the media even acknowledges that something positive is happening, much less gives Trump any credit.

Ed Rogers is a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses and several national campaigns.
KEITH WILLIAMS, Winston-Salem

Great integrity

I applaud Rep. John Lewis and other black leaders who boycotted the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson in protest of President Trumps policies (Trump recognizes civil rights heroes, Dec. 10).

Lewis has shown great humility and integrity by turning down a speaking engagement and honors just so Trump could have a photo op. The congressman, who had a front-row seat during Mississippis brutal assault on nonviolent black protestors, placed principles over accolades.

Trump has shown great disdain for equal, civil or law-enforcement rights and seems intent on taking America back to the Dark Ages.

Trump has lied about and disrespected Americas first black president (two terms, by the way), been insensitive to the black widow of a slain soldier and the black representative who supported her, fought with black athletes protesting police brutality and failed to adequately condemn neo-Nazis hate-mongers who want black people back in slavery.

Not to forget Trumps assault on health care, taxes, voting rights and religion, plus his support of Alabamas Roy Moore, a racist and alleged child molester, because Trump thought Moores vote was needed in Congress.

So, yes, I support Lewis and add that we need more black leaders like him. Sadly, there seems to be a shortage of that profile in the black community, where many seem to want money, property and prestige over principles and securing rights that are every man and womans right in America.

***

J. ROBERT ICARD, Lewisville

A lost party

Republicans, Im sad to say, have failed to accomplish anything substantive in nearly a full year. Why? Because of a Republican president who vocally attacks and demeans every person, every government agency and their leadership, his own staff (except for his family), every U.S. ally, every countrys leader (except for some of the dictatorial bullies whose power he envies), numerous portions of our enviable Constitution, and even key leadership in his own party.

And, although he calls most everyone, especially the media, a liar, he is the most prolific liar in the public eye. He must think none of us has any intelligence or insight.

The Republican base is eroding because it cant unify its own party. And it shows no signs of turning around in time to maintain its current thin margin of majority.

This road leads to losing even more elections, and it takes very few losses to make Republicans the minority party. Because Republicans have created a semi-autocratic non-negotiable environment, payback will likely be devastating, thereby continuing the failure of our government to move forward in its role of serving the people.

I encourage your readers to review the qualities of a leader, as opposed to a manager or participant. The Republican Party lacks leadership, which will be obvious come next November.

Is there time or a willingness to turn it around? Will we continue to have government of the party, by the party, and for the party?

Please submit letters online to Letters@wsjournal.com or mail letters to: The Readers Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Letters are subject to editing and are limited to 250 words. For more guidelines and advice on writing letters, go to journalnow.com/opinion/submit_a_letter.
O COME YE, O COME YE: Christmas in the City marks its 10th anniversary today, Dec. 21, from 4 to 9 p.m., at the Benton Convention Center, 301 W. Fifth St. Think of the event as a free city-wide Christmas party, thrown by businesses, churches and arts organizations, with a few thousand friends. There will be lots of music, kids activities and a community meal. This will be the first Christmas in the City at the renovated convention center, which will be sparkling, thanks to the design eye of local designer LaDonna Bost.
Ukrgazvydobuvannia signs contract with Germany's Bentec to supply five drilling rigs for $110 mln

Public joint-stock company Ukrgazvydobuvannia has signed a contract with Bentec GmbH Drilling & Oilfield Systems (Germany) to supply five drilling rigs with a capacity of 450 tonnes (2,000 HP) for $110 million, the press service of the company reported on Wednesday.

The press service said that the first rig will be supplied in October 2018.

Bentec won a two-stage tender. National Oilwell Varco (the United States) and Drillmec (Italy) took part in the tender.

By 2020, Ukrgazvydobuvannia seeks to buy 20 new drilling rigs of various capacity.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Thursday marked [official materials] its official closure with with a ceremony held in the Hague. The event marked the end of the ICTYs 24 year tenure trying those most responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions [text, PDF] committed within the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s.

Since its inception [JURIST news acrhive], the ICTY indicted 161 people [official materials], of which 90 were found guilty and sentenced and 19 acquitted. Over roughly 10,800 days of trial, the court heard from 4,650 witnesses and generated 2.5 million pages of transcripts. The cases against two prominent defendants, Radovan Karadzic and Vojislav Seselj [JURIST news archives] are currently on appeal [official materials] before the residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals [official website].

In remarks [text] delivered at the ceremony, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres [official website] called the establishment of the court a ground-breaking moment, and said that it demonstrated a newfound and serious commitment by the international community that those responsible for perpetrating the most serious crimes of international concern should be held accountable for their actions.

The tribunal was established by the UN Security Council [official website] on May 25, 1993 in Resolution 827 [text, PDF]. The ICTY was the first court established to deal with serious violations of international criminal law since the Nuremberg and Tokyo courts created by the Allies following World War II, and the first international court established by the UN. The Security Council established [S.Res. 995 text, PDF] the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [official website] the following year to prosecute similar violations committed in that East African nation. These so-called ad hoc tribunals, created by the UNSC under its Chapter VII [text] authority to maintain peace and security with fixed temporal, geographical and subject matter jurisdiction, are the hallmarks of a particular era of international concern over mass atrocities. This wholly international approach was later supplanted by hybrid courts, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official websites], that existed as a partnership between international authorities and local governments. The ratification of the Rome Statute [text] of the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] effectively marked the end of the ad hoc era, with new genocide and crimes against humanities charges being brought in a permanent court with broader jurisdiction.
The Ugandan parliament voted on Wednesday to eliminate the presidential age limit [press release] of 75 years.

The controversial Age Limit Bill also extends the terms of office for the president and the parliament from five years to seven years.

The bill would allow Ugandas current president, Yoweri Museveni, to run again for the presidency in 2023. The bill comes at a crucial time for the Museveni administration because Museveni would have been too old to run again by the next election. Under the new age limits, Museveni could effectively serve as president until 2037.

Two legislators were arrested as they tried to access parliament and serve the speaker with court summons. The court orders were filed in order to bring to light the suspension of six opposition parliament members that were not allowed to vote during the age limit debate in parliament. The legislators have petitioned the High Court in order to be let back into parliament to serve their summons.

Opponents have sworn to challenge the amendment [press release], claiming that the change is in violation of the countrys constitution. The opponents say that the bill is against the will of Ugandas people, claiming that 75 percent of the public has voted against the new presidential amendments.
Bullet holes, bloodstains and brain matter marked the walls of an empty barn, a crime scene processed to document the worst crime in Europe since the Second World War: the deliberate killings of more than 7,000 men and boys from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Journalists and human rights researchers had pieced together the horrifying story based on eyewitness accounts from the few who survived; and then investigators from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal built a genocide case by collecting evidence from killing sites and exhuming mass graves.

At the time war erupted amidst the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia in 1991, human rights investigations in Europe largely focused on the rights of political dissidents and minorities within the former Soviet bloc. But with the conflict raging through Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, human rights activists helped put war crimes firmly on the international agenda  with help from journalists who often didnt understand the legal implications of the horrors they reported on every day.

Yugoslavias bloody breakup was most brutal in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, home to an ethnic patchwork of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Croats and others. Ethnically homogenous Slovenia broke away with minimal casualties, and Croatia, where Serb and Croat communities were generally well-defined , divided along ethnic lines, albeit with bloody conflict in areas with mixed populations. But Bosnia could not be surgically split nor easily absorbed into an expanded Greater Serbia or Greater Croatia.

Under orders from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, a career communist turned nationalist demagogue, Yugoslav Army and Bosnian Serb forces besieged and systematically bombarded civilians, razed Muslim areas, expelled entire communities, burned down or blew up houses and mosques, and raped women and girls as a tactic of war. During three years of fighting, Bosnian Croat forces and in some cases Bosnian Muslim forces also committed atrocities against civilians.

Reporters on the ground struggled at first to comprehend what was to become known as ethnic cleansing. That first summer, one group racing to cover the siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, drove through burning villages in eastern Bosnia, negotiating checkpoints guarded by armed men without truly grasping what lay in store. They were so focused on reaching the big story in Sarajevo that they missed the start of the campaign to brutally drive Bosnian Muslims from their homes and communities.

Four months after the fighting started in Sarajevo on April 6, 1992, Human Rights Watch published War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its first report on violations of the laws of war and a horrifying, meticulously researched call for action, for accountability, for a threat of justice tomorrow that might give commanders of today pause for thought.

It was a pioneering attempt to marry real-time field reporting of war crimes with lobbying for an international tribunal to punish military and political leaders responsible for atrocities so severe, said Human Rights Watch, that they raise the question of whether genocide is taking place.

Lotte Leicht, now our European Union director, spent months investigating crimes in a new way on behalf of a coalition of lawyers. We were trying to prove that you could go to an active war zone and uncover facts with such rigor that no one could seriously contest them. And it turned out we were right.

On May 25, 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 827, formally establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This was a step by Western powers that proved to be momentous without the airstrikes many of us thought would be needed to end the war (and the war crimes). Inspired by this, as associate counsel for Human Rights Watch, Richard Dicker, lobbied governments around the world, starting with The Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa, to set up a permanent international court able to investigate and prosecute crimes committed anywhere in the world, not just the former Yugoslavia.

Once the Yugoslav tribunal got up and running, we started sending them our material. We were doing all we could to see that the facts we uncovered made it into the hands of prosecutors with a mandate to launch criminal investigations. Our reports helped lead them to evidence, said Dicker, who went on to set up the international justice program at Human Rights Watch and helped to draft the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The ICTY got up and running in 1993, but global attention did not focus on the court until the trial of Slobodan Milosevic began in 2002. In a moment of high courtroom drama that year, Human Rights Watchs Fred Abrahams recounted our sharing our findings with Milosevics office in Belgrade while Milosevic cross-examined him.: Yes, Mr Milosevic, we mailed our reports to you so that you would know exactly what was happening at the hands of Serbian forces. Under international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, Milosevic was responsible for atrocities committed by his troops if he knew or should have known about the crimes but did nothing to stop or punish them, and Human Rights Watch wanted to ensure he couldnt plausibly claim ignorance.

Sarajevo under siege housed tens of thousands of displaced people, trapped without water, electricity or heating during grim Sarajevo winters, dependent on food packages from aid agencies, threatened by shells and snipers. When the explosions started, civilians would rush to neighboring apartments that faced away from danger. Snipers nested in apartment buildings close to the invisible front line separating the armies, picking off men, women, children, the elderly and sowing terror. For more than three years, photos and video from news crews showed people sprinting across city intersections, across tramlines, dodging through rubble and hiding around corners. The world watched the slaughter on TV, with the lightly armed UN Protection Force powerless to keep Sarajevans safe.

Mortar and artillery shells crashed into apartment blocks, schools, banks, markets, and hospitals, destroying thousands of lives. One victim, 9-year-old Sidbela Zimic, was killed when a Serb shell hit their small playground. She died in her mothers arms just outside her home. Minela, her 11-year-old sister, had just gone inside for an English lesson and survived. Three other girls were killed. We played to forget about the war, Inesa Olovcic, 11, told me at the time.

For many journalists, Bosnia was a transformative experience; many of us felt deeply frustrated to keep reporting without seeing any change. Its no coincidence that so many reporters and photojournalists I knew there  Corinne Dufka, Laura Pitter, Pierre Bairin and Stacy Sullivan  ended up working for Human Rights Watch.

Roy Gutman of Newsday famously broke the story of the Serb concentration camps in Omarska and Keraterm after interviewing survivors. In denying Gutmans account, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic invited British reporters to visit. They did  and filmed prisoners so emaciated they recalled images from Nazi death camps. Gutman went on to edit Crimes of War  What the Public Should Know, to help journalists better understand the legal side of conflict.

A guard at Omarska, Dusan Tadic, was the first person tried by the ICTY  and indeed, the first person since the Nuremberg Trials after World War II to face an international war crimes court. In 1997 he was acquitted of murder but convicted of beatings and persecution, sentenced to 20 years in prison and released early in 2008.

In its first year, the tribunal indicted only lower-level commanders. Then, in the summer of 1995, came Srebrenica. Despite three years of atrocities, it was still hard to believe the fragmented stories filtering out in the days after Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladics troops pushed out the few Dutch peacekeepers guarding the UN safe area of Srebrenica, where more than 20,000 Bosnian Muslims lived under siege. Women and children had mostly been bused across the front line to relative safety in Tuzla  but more than 8,000 men and boys were missing. Family members didnt know if they were alive or dead.

Human Rights Watch hired Laura Pitter, then a reporter, to help investigate what happened and write a report. We knew the men and boys had disappeared but we didnt know what happened to them., said Pitter, now senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch. Then we found the witnesses. Some had seen executions, others dead men by the side of the road. Others had actually survived massacres by hiding under dead bodies for days, then crawling out from under them and walking through the woods to Tuzla.

Srebrenica galvanized global action against the Serbian leadership. NATO airstrikes along with a major Croatian military offensive helped push Milosevic to the negotiating table to sign the Dayton peace accords in November 1995. Within weeks, the court charged Karadzic and Mladic with genocide and crimes against humanity for their ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and their use of snipers to target civilians in besieged Sarajevo. They soon added Srebrenica to the list and the two were excluded from the Dayton peace talks in late 1995.

With NATO troops deployed to police this new peace, reporters and human rights investigators were suddenly able to work in Serb-controlled areas. Over the verdant, wooded hills around Srebrenica we saw the bodies of those who had been desperately trying to flee, unarmed and gunned down by Serb forces. We visited a school where people were held, then trucked to an empty field dug up by bulldozers, lined up and shot. We walked around mass graves that would soon be examined for evidence, the bodies exhumed so that grieving relatives would at least know what happened. They might also hope for justice.

Lacking a police force, the ICTY needed help to secure arrests. But as the peace took hold, NATOs political bosses didnt seem interested in having their troops apprehend Bosnias most wanted. Karadzic moved fairly freely for the first few years, always accompanied by bodyguards, while Mladic was rumored to live under a mountain at military headquarters, and/or to tend a flock of goats named after UN commanders and Western politicians. As a UN spokesman said in 1997, their continued freedom was an insult to the memory of the victims and an embarrassment to the international community.

Thats why Human Rights Watch and other groups set up the Arrest Now campaign in 1997: to put pressure on NATO peacekeepers to arrest war crimes suspects in Bosnia. When NATO claimed their peacekeepers would arrest the suspects if they could only find them, Human Rights Watchs Benjamin Ward created a widely reproduced map showing the location of NATO bases and known whereabouts of the suspects, giving the lie to the idea that they could not be found. After lengthy advocacy meetings with NATO governments and at headquarters, we began to see real progress, including arrests by NATO countries previously reluctant to act.

Human Rights Watch kept digging up the dirt, with forensic analyses of past crimes in several towns, including Foca, a town in southwestern Bosnia infamous for the virulence of its purges of Muslims. One victim was Emina Cerimovic, forced to flee with her family when she was 8. The war took many things from her, including her father. She endured more than two years of war until her remaining family escaped to Sweden, where she lived as a refugee.

Foca was the focus of another ICTY case, a landmark prosecution of sexual enslavement and rape as crimes against humanity. Three Bosnian Serb army officers were sentenced for organizing and running rape camps in Foca, where soldiers had free access to the women and girls, some as young as 12. It was also the first war crimes court to prosecute sexual violence against men and boys.

Despite  perhaps because of  her experience, Cerimovic went to law school, where she learned of Human Rights Watchs work during the war in Bosnia. Ever since, Ive looked up to Human Rights Watch and dreamed of doing what Human Rights Watch investigators did back then, she said. Cerimovic spent a summer helping to exhume mass graves in eastern Bosnia, then worked on national war crimes trials before joining Human Rights Watch. She now works to expose and ease the plight of 21st-century refugees in Europe, particularly those with disabilities.

But in 1998, by the time Human Rights Watch published the Foca report, a new Yugoslav fire was burning: Kosovo.

The Serbian province of Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, held an almost sacred position as the site of an historic battle on June 28, 1389 between Orthodox Christian Serbs and the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Six hundred years later, in 1989, Milosevic used Kosovo as a rallying cry and springboard for his political ascent. By the spring of 1998, the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was at war with the Serbian government.

Human Rights Watch had been reporting on human rights abuses in Kosovo since 1992 and ramped up reporting as fighting broke out. The first report focused on several massacres by Serbian forces, as well as violations by the KLA. The second, written by Abrahams, documented the murder of 21 members of the Delijaj family in September 1998, based on interviews with witnesses and surviving relatives. Two were still missing in mid-October and I watched as local residents hauled the body of Hajriz Delilaj from a nearby well.

After failed negotiations, Western governments decided to take military action and NATO began another bombing campaign (which also caused about 500 civilian deaths). In response, Serbian forces rampaged through Albanian villages in Kosovo, forcibly expelling about 850,000 people. They crossed the borders to Albania and Macedonia, with stories of massacres, rapes, and torture.

I had gone to the Albanian border town of Kukes, overwhelmed by the tide of misery, to report on the endless horror stories. Among the aid tents I found Abrahams, who was there for Human Rights Watch, collecting first-hand accounts. He wrote A Village Destroyed, which detailed what happened in one village in May 1999, and used photographs taken by the attackers and found at the scene to identify those responsible. Years later, Serbian authorities arrested some of these men and they are currently standing trial for war crimes in Belgrade.

As Cuska was ravaged, Milosevic, creator of the bloodstained strategy to create a Greater Serbia, was finally indicted by the ICTY and charged with 66 counts of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Although he was a sitting head of state, Serbian authorities arrested and detained him in Belgrade. And on June 28, Serbias most significant national day, he was surrendered to The Hague.

That moment changed history, Dicker said. Thats real progress: that a president can be brought to a court room and fairly held to account for such serious crimes.

Under Orders, Human Rights Watchs definitive book on Kosovo war crimes, written by Abrahams and Ward, was used as evidence at the trial.

Milosevic pleaded not guilty and, living up to his reputation for arrogance, insisted on representing himself. Abrahams testified in the trial, talking about the murdered Delijaj family and other crimes. But in 2006 Milosevic died unexpectedly, without a verdict, robbing his victims of genuine justice. It was a low moment, a dispiriting end to the trial of the century.

There was better news in the summer of 2008, when Karadzic, on the run for 12 years yet able to carry out an alternative medicine practice, was arrested in Belgrade by Serbian security forces  just as European foreign ministers were meeting to discuss European Union ties to Serbia. He was detained in Milosevics old cell and charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. In 2016, the ICTY convicted him on 10 of 11 counts, including the Srebrenica genocide and for the siege of Sarajevo, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Cerimovic, Pitter and I celebrated the verdict, but for Cerimovic it was a bittersweet moment. It was disappointing that he was only convicted for crimes against humanity in my home town, she said. I wish he had been found guilty of genocide in Foca as well  that would give us the dignity and justice we deserve and hope that maybe we would get an apology. Foca, she points out, is still ethnically cleansed; Bosnian Muslims made up more than 42 percent of the pre-war population but only 7 percent in 2013.

Over its 25 years, the ICTY Processed 151 defendants, including 95 Serbs, 29 Croats and 9 Bosnian Muslims, as well as a handful of Kosovo Albanians, Montenegrins and Macedonians, and a few of unknown ethnicity. One defendant was a woman: Bosnian Serb prime minister Biljana Plavsic. Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim commander in Srebrenica, revered for keeping the enclave alive for almost four years, was convicted and acquitted on appeal; the Bosnian chief of staff, Rasim Delic, died while appealing his three-year sentence. One of the most senior Bosnian Croat generals, Jadranko Prlic, was sentenced to 25 years. In an example of the courts wide reach, the Croatian general Ante Gotovina was arrested in the Spanish Canary Islands on an international warrant.

Still at large 16 years after being indicted was the so-called Butcher of Bosnia: Ratko Mladic, but his time too was running out. In May 2011, he was arrested by special police forces in Serbia and transferred to The Hague. Unlike Karadzic, his partner in mass atrocities, Mladic had a lawyer but he too was convicted. In late 2017 the ICTY convicted him of genocide and crimes against humanity for Srebrenica and Sarajevo, and sentenced him to life in prison.

So the tribunal moved through its remaining appeals, upholding convictions on November 29 for the last six defendants, Bosnian Croat generals convicted for war crimes. In a bizarre final chapter, Slobodan Praljak greeted the appellate ruling by drinking cyanide and dying in the dock and in doing so, inadvertently drew more attention to the Croatian governments own ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The court will formally close on December 21.

Twenty-four years ago, the idea that a court without a police force could bring to the dock those responsible for the most serious war crimes seemed quixotic at best. But years of dogged investigation and relentless advocacy, including convincing the European Union to condition closer ties for Croatia and Serbia on their cooperation, yielded extraordinary results: 161 people indicted, major and undoubtedly lasting developments in international criminal law, and a judicial record of what happened after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

It took years but the Yugoslav court brought down the untouchables, Dicker said. It marginalized the bad actors who likely would have wreaked even more havoc. The process was imperfect, slower than we would have liked and the tribunal made mistakes along the way. But it showed that justice is possible when there is political will. And thats the legacy we should take forward.
Veterans of Kosovo's 1990s conflict called on parliament Wednesday to repeal a law related to a war crimes tribunal aimed at trying ethnic Albanian guerrila commanders suspected of committing crimes against civilians.

The veterans association handed in a petition with 15,000 signatures urging lawmakers to abolish the law on the Hague-based tribunal, which is due to issue its first indictments in the coming weeks.

The former head of political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) President Hashim Thaci is rumoured to be among those prosecuted for the alleged kidnapping and disappearance of around 500 civilians, mostly ethnic Serbs.

"We are against a biased court," said the head of the association Hysni Gucati, adding that the tribunal was set up to try only former independence-seeking KLA members "but not Serbs who committed crimes" during the 1998-1999 war.

A veterans representative Nasim Haradinaj told reporters that former KLA members "expect parliament to call off the law".

The tribunal will hear cases arising from a 2011 Council of Europe report which said that the alleged crimes had represented "a campaign of persecution" against Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborating with the Serbian regime.

Despite being a Kosovo court and operating under its law, the tribunal is composed of international judges and prosecutors and will be seated in The Netherlands.

The conflict between KLA and Belgrade forces controlled by late strongman Slobodan Milosevic ended after a three-month NATO air campaign that forced Serbs out of Kosovo and put it under UN protection. It claimed around 13,000 lives, mostly ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade has rejected the move and still considers the breakaway territory as its southern province.

The parliament is obliged by Kosovo's constitution to debate petitions that are supported by 10,000 or more signatures.
Uber international technological company, the founder of the eponymous mobile attachment for calling taxies, has opened its headquarters for Central and Eastern Europe in Kyiv.

Oleksiy Stakh has been appointed Uber General Manager for the region.

"Some of the employees from Central and Eastern Europe will move to Kyiv and will work here," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.

Stakh said that the region includes Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

According to the company's press release, earlier Stakh was Uber General Manager in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

According to him, in 2017, the service started working in six cities (Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Vinyitsia). The number of downloads of the application reached more than 1.7 million. The average time of delivery of a car (in Kyiv) was reduced to 6 minutes or less; the average rating of the driver in Ukraine fell from 4.8 points in the first half of 2017 to 4.797 points (as of December 20). The average passenger rating in Ukraine at the end of the year was 4.89 points.

Commenting on the increase of tariffs, Stah said that this step allowed the service to attract more drivers, while the company did not notice the outflow of users.

According to Stakh, from December 20, 2017 Uber also launched a new service in Kyiv - uberVAN. In this category, cars with six seats will be available for users.

The cost of the trip with uberVAN will be calculated using the formula: UAH 45 for prroviding a car, UAH 5.8 per kilometer and UAH 1.8 per minute of travel. The minimum cost of the trip is UAH 80. For long distances after 20 km the tariff starts to be UAH 15 per km.

Mercedes-Benz Vito, Volkswagen Transporter, Mitsubishi Grandis and other cars will be involved in uberVAN. One of the conditions of connecting a car to the service is the presence of at least six passenger seats equipped with seat belts in the car.

He also said that in 2018, the company will focus on the development of the region, plans to double the staff in Ukraine.

In addition, it is planned to launch a number of Uber services, in particular, Uber Eats (a food delivery service), announced in July. At the same time, Stakh said that it is not yet planned to launch this service in the cities of the country with a population of less than 500,000 inhabitants.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) under a proposal of the Individuals' Deposit Guarantee Fund has decided to remove a banking license of Rodovid Bank and liquidate the bank, the NBU has said on its website.

Rodovid Bank had the license of the remedial bank and was placed to the list of insolvent banks on February 25, 2016.
National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy bought 20.9 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas in January-November 2017, which is 10.6% or 2 bcm more than a year ago.

The company said in a press release that in particular, the company's imports from the European market over the period grew by 17.1% or 1.2 bcm, to 8.2 bcm, and purchase of gas from Ukrgazvydobuvannia rose by 6.7%, to 12.7 bcm.

In November, Naftogaz bought 1.9 bcm of gas, including 1.2 bcm from Ukrgazvydobuvannia and 0.7 bcm of imported gas.

Almost all this gas was received from Slovakia (8.1 bcm), while supplies from Hungary amounted to only 0.1 bcm.

Ukraine has not imported gas from Russia this year, as well as in 2016, with all imported supplies coming from the European direction.

Naftogaz said that in general, gas imports to Ukraine in January-November 2017 grew 1.4-fold year-over-year, from 9.4 bcm to 13.1 bcm, including from Slovakia from 7.8 bcm to 9.2 bcm and from Hungary from 0.8 bcm to 2.7 bcm and from Poland from 0.8 bcm to 1.2 bcm.
EU Council extends economic sanctions against Russia by six months

The Council of the European Union on Thursday officially resolved to extend sectoral economic sanctions against Russia until July 31, 2018, a communique released in Brussels said.

"On 21 December 2017, the Council prolonged economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy until 31 July 2018," the EU Council document said.

The latest extension was politically agreed on by the EU heads of state and government at their summit in Brussels on December 14.
Minister of Finance of Ukraine Oleksandr Danyliuk has accused the Prosecutor General's Office of hindering an investigation into the actions of former managers and owners of PrivatBank, initiating and actively promoting cases against the incumbent officials of the bank, the Finance Ministry and the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).

"I demand the resignation of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko," Danyliuk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

Danyliuk said that it was possible to get a positive decision of the London court to freeze the assets of former PrivatBank owners Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov "not thanks to the support of the prosecutor's office, as it should have been, but despite all direct attempts by the Prosecutor General's Office to interfere with this process."

While commenting on his accusations, the minister recalled that the nationalized PrivatBank had initiated the opening of five criminal cases, which are now being investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office, in particular, on bringing the bank to insolvency, illegal withdrawal of funds from the bank in various ways, and improper use of confidential information from the bank's servers.

"However, none of these cases have been submitted to court for consideration, because pre-trial investigations in these proceedings are progressing very slowly, and in some cases, investigative actions are not conducted at all," Danyliuk said.

He said that simultaneously the Prosecutor General's Office had opened a number of criminal cases concerning allegedly illegal actions of the officials of PrivatBank, the Finance Ministry and the National Bank of Ukraine, in which investigative actions are actively conducted.

"Criminal cases are opened and actively investigated over the attraction by the bank of advisers who are involved in documenting the scale and schemes of illegal withdrawal of funds from PrivatBank by the former owners/managers of the bank whose performance will be used in court cases both in Ukrainian and foreign jurisdictions," he added.

He believes that the PrivatBank case is a litmus test of the effectiveness of the work of law enforcement agencies, since the state has already spent almost UAH 140 billion on the bank's additional capitalization due to the fact that earlier money was withdrawn from the bank, or insufficiently secured loans that no one returns were provided.

"In this context, an 'accidental' meeting in Amsterdam between Lutsenko and Kolomoisky just on the eve of the trial in London raises even more questions," Danyliuk said.

In his opinion, the prosecutor general discredited himself by attacks on new anti-corruption bodies and the inability to bring important cases to court.

"Thus, he discredits before the Ukrainian people and international partners the president and the parliament, which have entrusted such an important function to him, as well as the authorities as a whole, and therefore he must resign," Danyliuk said.

Earlier on December 21, Lutsenko spoke about the closure of two criminal proceedings opened under a statement from MP Oleksandr Dubinin from the UKROP party, as well as about the embezzlement of money by officials of the National Bank of Ukraine and PrivatBank. He also denied the opening of such cases against Kroll, a company hired by the NBU, as well as against other foreign advisers and consultants.
December 21, 2017

Lincoln, Neb.  University of Nebraska-Lincoln crop production and pest management specialists have scheduled a series of crop production clinics across the state in January to provide the latest research-based information and recommendations for 2018.

Topics will include soil fertility; soil water and irrigation; insect, disease and weed management; cropping systems; and agribusiness management and marketing. The complete agendas are available at http://agronomy.unl.edu/cpc.

The clinics will be the primary venue for commercial and noncommercial pesticide applicators to renew their licenses in the following categories: ag plant and demonstration/research. The crop production clinics also will serve as a venue for private pesticide applicators to renew their licenses. Representatives from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture will be present to verify attendance.

A maximum of six Certified Crop Advisor credits will be available per day in these areas: crop production (two), nutrient management (one), integrated pest management (six), water management (one) and professional development (two).

Pesticide applicator recertification training will be available in these categories: commercial/noncommercial in ag plant, and demonstration/research; and private applicator. Anyone attending the pesticide applicator license recertification sessions will also meet the requirements for dicamba applicator training. Dicamba is now a Restricted Use Pesticide (RUP) in Nebraska and additional training is required for its purchase and use.

Online registration is required for the clinics to provide meals and materials. Register at http://agronomy.unl.edu/cpc. The cost for registration is $80, which includes the 2018 Guide for Weed, Disease and Insect Management in Nebraska, the 2018 crop production clinic proceedings with further information on the topics being discussed, a meal and refreshments.

Check-in each day is from 8 to 8:30 a.m., with sessions from 8:45 a.m. to 4 p.m.

2018 Crop Production Clinic Locations:

Jan. 10, Gering: Gering Civic Center, 1050 M St.

Jan. 11, North Platte: Sandhills Convention Center, 2102 S. Jeffers St.

Jan. 15-16, Norfolk: Lifelong Learning Center, NECC 601 E. Benjamin Ave.

Jan. 18, Lincoln: Embassy Suites, 1040 P St.

Nebraska Crop Management Conference

Jan. 24-25, Kearney: Younes Conference Center, 416 W. Talmadge Road

Pesticide applicator recertification will also be available either day of the Nebraska Crop Management Conference for the same cost as attending one of the clinics. In addition, the conference will offer 27 unique sessions over two days featuring up-to-date information for successful croppy system management. The cost of registration for both days is $150. For more information, visit https://agronomy.unl.edu/NCMC.

For more information about the clinics or the conference, contact Chris Proctor, weed management extension educator and clinic coordinator at 402-472-5441 or caproctor@unl.edu.

Chris Proctor

Nebraska Extension

402-472-5411

caproctor@unl.edu

This article originally appeared on IANRnews.unl.edu:
PrivatBank hires Rothschild's partner in Ukraine to sell 46.5% stake in AS PrivatBank Latvia

Nationalized Ukrainian-based PrivatBank has hired a leading Ukrainian company that is Rothschild's partner in Ukraine to find buyers of PrivatBank's 46.5% stake in AS PrivatBank Latvia, the Ukrainian bank said in a statement.

PrivatBank's supervisory council has given the green light to hiring, the bank said.

The partner will also have to prepare and accompany a future deal.

"Engaging such a financial company will facilitate talks with potential investors and help avoid a conflict of interests with other companies representing the interests of other bank owners," PrivatBank notes.

Interfax-Ukraine has information that it concerns the FinPoint company headed by Serhiy Budkin, which in 2009 entered strategic partnership with Rothschild to support each other's activities on the Ukrainian market or when working with Ukrainian clients.

As reported, Latvian PrivatBank published its financial report in April 2016, saying that the share of Ukrainian PrivatBank in its capital after a securities issue worth EUR 6 million to bring the total sum to EUR86.35 million decreased to 46.54437% from 50.021% of charter capital. At that time, PrivatBank Latvia held 9th place among all Latvian banks in terms of capital and reserves.
LINCOLN  The Nebraska State Patrol has fired a veteran, decorated trooper over his role in the internal investigation of a fatal high-speed chase in 2016.

Trooper Tim Flick of Chadron, whose 20 years with the patrol included being shot three times during an armed standoff in 2012, was one of seven officers who either resigned, retired or were disciplined this week for violating internal policy and procedures. Although Col. John Bolduc declined to name the disciplined personnel Wednesday, multiple sources had previously confirmed Flick as one of the officers placed on paid administrative leave last summer.

The labor union that represents troopers issued a statement Wednesday saying it stands in full support of Trooper Flick and will not rest until this unjust offense against his reputation is reversed in arbitration.

Flick engaged in a high-speed chase in northwest Nebraska last year that resulted in the death of a fleeing drunken driver. Although a grand jury cleared him of criminal wrongdoing in the chase, the recent internal investigation reviewed statements he made to investigators in the wake of the crash.

The termination represented the most severe punishment against any of the officers who have been on leave since June 30, the day Gov. Pete Ricketts fired the patrols superintendent, Col. Brad Rice, for allegedly interfering in two internal use-of-force investigations. One involved the fatal chase; the other involved a trooper who used a state-issued rifle to deliver a blow to a drunken motorist in 2016, also in northwest Nebraska.

Bolduc, hired several months ago to replace Rice, said he knows the discipline he ordered Wednesday could negatively affect morale at the agency, especially among the roughly 450 uniformed officers.

I want you to know I have your back, Bolduc said, directing comments to troopers during a press conference in Lincoln. But having your back isnt a blank check for every error. There must be accountability. Unfortunately there are some mistakes that just cant be tolerated.

Bolduc said the patrols internal investigation division spent more than 1,000 hours over 15 weeks interviewing 46 people and filing hundreds of pages of reports. While he said he doesnt expect his personnel to like the results, he asked them to respect the process.

Confidentiality requirements spelled out in both labor agreements and state personnel rules prevented Bolduc from discussing the investigation in any detail, he said. Pressed by reporters to give a general sense of the violations, however, he said truthfulness emerged as an issue.

The standard isnt perfection, the standard is honesty, he said.

Meanwhile, related investigations into potential criminal wrongdoing at the patrol remain underway. Joe Stecher, a special prosecutor assigned to investigate matters related to the fatal chase in Sheridan County, said this week that he hopes to reach a decision on potential charges as soon as next month.

The matter also has been turned over to the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office in Omaha.

The World-Herald has investigated the two use-of-force cases, which were detailed in stories published prior to and immediately after Rices termination.

The first incident occurred March 4, 2016, in Sioux County at the end of a high-speed chase. A trooper used the butt of his patrol-issued rifle to strike the drunken driver. The man was not seriously injured and the trooper has since resigned.

Then, on Oct. 3, 2016, Flick was involved in the fatal high-speed chase. The trooper initially said he used a tactical vehicle intervention, or TVI, to bump the fleeing vehicle in an effort to cause it to safely spin out.

But the official narrative changed as command staff got involved, and Rice eventually concluded that the fleeing vehicle swerved into the trooper.

In addition to the termination of a trooper, a lieutenant colonel retired and a sergeant resigned, Bolduc said in an email sent to patrol staff that was obtained by The World-Herald before the press conference. A patrol major was demoted to captain and a patrol captain was demoted to sergeant. And finally, one sergeant and one trooper were given administrative penalties but allowed to remain in their current positions.

All but one of the officers  a trooper  had been on paid administrative leave since June 30. A personnel review ordered by the governor and released in August indicated that Rice and the six suspended officers had engaged in conduct that gives rise to a reasonable suspicion of dishonesty and/or dereliction of duty.

The World-Herald has previously confirmed the identities of six officers on leave:

 Lt. Col. Thomas Schwarten of Lincoln, who ranked second in command under Rice. He and Rice both would have had final oversight of the internal investigations stemming from the fatal high-speed chase and the rifle-butt strike. Schwarten had been with the agency for 30 years, which made him eligible for retirement.

 Maj. Mike Gaudreault, who commanded the field services division and was responsible for patrol troopers, carrier troopers, police service dog handlers and pilots. His division includes the field personnel involved in both incidents. He is stationed in Lincoln.

 Capt. Jamey Balthazor of Scottsbluff, who was the top supervisor of Troop E, a region that encompasses 11 counties in the Panhandle. Both of the incidents took place in the region.

 Sgt. Kevin Waugh, with the patrols Chadron office, which is part of Troop E. He supervised troopers involved in both the high-speed chase and the rifle-butt strike.

 Sgt. Travis Wallace, an investigator and accident reconstructionist stationed in Scottsbluff. He investigated the high-speed chase and reached a conclusion questioned by others within the agency.

The identity of the other trooper who was disciplined could not be confirmed Wednesday.

Patrol members who hold the rank of sergeant, trooper or investigator are covered under the labor agreement with the State Troopers Association of Nebraska. Those individuals have a right to appeal the disciplinary actions to an arbitrator.

Dave Domina, an Omaha attorney who represents Flick, declined to discuss any discipline against his client Wednesday. But Domina said the trooper will pursue arbitration.

He has served the state honorably throughout his career, and he will contest this, Domina said.

The union also issued a statement defending Wallace, the accident reconstructionist. It said the sergeant gave his opinion, as he was called to do.

Wallace, the union said, was disciplined for some technical policy violations, and he has accepted responsibility for these. He is weighing whether to appeal.

Gary Young, the Lincoln attorney who represents the troopers union, said that from what he knows about the cases, Wednesdays actions are not justified. And he predicted that they will hurt agency morale.

They are uneasy about whether they will be treated fairly in critical situations, Young said. The actions today will certainly increase their concerns.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a sharp critic of law enforcement, said Wednesday that he was encouraged that the new patrol superintendent showed a willingness to hold his staff accountable. But the senator said that for now he will withhold judgment on whether Bolduc had taken sufficient action.

State Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, whose legislative district includes the counties where the critical incidents occurred, said he wanted more information about the investigation. Without more transparency, neither policymakers nor the public can judge whether the disciplinary actions were fair or even warranted.

Brewer said he personally knows the fired trooper, calling him an outstanding officer. Flick received the agencys Honorable Service Award in 2013.

I think the patrol has taken an extreme action, Brewer said.
Jocelyn M. Nordin, 26, was sentenced by District Judge Karin Noakes to no less than 60 years and no more than 70 years for child abuse. Nordin will serve another 29 years before being eligible for parole and 34 years for mandatory discharge.

The charges against Nordin came from an investigation by the Valley County sheriff of injuries her baby sustained that led to the infants death. On May 2, 2016, Nordin called 911 and reported that her infant wasnt breathing. When the Valley County sheriff investigated the injuries, they were consistent with child abuse. In addition, when Nordin was interviewed, she confessed to shaking the child and dropping her twice.
For the first time since 1972 the number of people behind bars in American prisons and jails in 2015 declined slightly to 2.2 million, down from 2.4 million in 2010. Thats the good news.

Fordham Law School professor John F. Pfaff, however, warns in his new book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, that continued decline in prison populations will not come easily.

While he credits a decrease in the number of people in prison for drug crimes for the recent inmate decline, Pfaff stresses that focusing on drugs will only work in the short run.

He argues that the drug war, contrary to popular belief, is not the primary cause of prison growth. About 200,000 people in state prisons and another 100,000 in federal institutions are serving time for drug crimes and freeing every single person who is in a state prison on a drug charge would only cut state prison populations back to where they were in 1996-1997, well into the mass incarceration period. That reduction would be a big improvement, but it does not go far enough.

If ending the drug war will not, by itself, end mass incarceration, what will? We first need to acknowledge that mass incarceration is primarily a state and local, not a federal challenge. The burden is mainly on state and local officials to put into place reforms restricting the growth of prison and jail admissions.

The real culprit behind our out-of-control prison populations is our 2,000-plus out-of-control state and local prosecutors who are able to coerce plea bargains and avoid trials in more than 95 percent of all cases they decide to prosecute.

Prosecutors, Pfaff tells us, have been and remain the engines driving mass incarceration. Acting with wide discretion and little oversight, they are largely responsible for the staggering rise in admissions since the early 1990s and no major piece of state-level reform legislation has directly challenged prosecutorial power.

Pfaff suggests a number of needed changes while admitting that they are a hard sell.

Toughen the Defense: Too few public defenders and other counsel for the indigent are available to properly represent defendants. Ensuring that all persons charged with a crime are well-defended will level the legal playing field somewhat and limit the wide discretion prosecutors now enjoy in handling cases.

Better Data: There is too little available data to allow the public to meaningfully assess the performance of prosecutors. Are prosecutors, for example, using pleas when a dismissal is warranted or offering weak pleas to avoid an acquittal?

Appoint Prosecutors: In all but three states (Alaska, Connecticut and New Jersey), prosecutors are elected to office. How can voters cast informed ballots in the absence of public information concerning the performance of incumbent prosecutors running for reelection. Appointing prosecutors will both add professional accountability and lessen pressures on prosecutors to cater to suburban voters calling for aggressive prosecution of inner city crimesoften with adverse impacts on targeted neighborhoods.

Guidance. Well-designed state guidelines are needed to restrain decisions that drive up prison admissions. Such guidelines could inform prosecutors when they ought to press charges and risk sending the defendant to prison, or diverting the accused to probationary treatment, or other options.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
CORRECTS SON'S FIRST NAME TO JONATHON -- Jonathon Sherman cries as he speaks during a memorial service for his parents Barry and Honey Sherman, as family members look on, in Mississauga, Ontario on Thursday, December 21, 2017. Seventy-five-year-old Barry Sherman and his 70-year-old wife Honey were found dead in their Toronto home last week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
In this photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, Santa Barbara County Fire Capt. Ryan Thomas hikes down steep terrain below East Camino Cielo to meet with his crew and root out and extinguish smoldering hot spots in Santa Barbara, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017. Officials estimate that the Thomas Fire will grow to become the biggest in California history before full containment, expected by Jan. 7, 2018. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)
U.S. President Donald Trump administration on Wednesday, December 20, approved the sale of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems and associated equipment to the tune of $41.5 million to Ukraine, The Washington Post news website reported.

There has been no approval to export heavier weapons Kyiv is asking for, such as Javelin antitank missiles, the newspaper wrote.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker applauded the Trump administration's decision in a statement to the Post: "I'm pleased the administration approved the sale of defensive lethal arms to Ukraine," Corker said. "This decision was supported by Congress in legislation that became law three years ago and reflects our countrys longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression."

At the same time, CNN reported quoting U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the State Department notified Congress on December 13 that it had approved an export license, which allows Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from US manufacturers. However, the U.S. government is not selling the Ukrainian government these weapons," she said.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., seated at left, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., seated right, talk before speaking at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017, on the passage of legislation that overhauls U.S. tax law. The massive $1.5 trillion tax package affects everyone's taxes but is dominated by breaks for business and higher earners. Democrats call the legislation a boon to the rich that leaves middle-class and working Americans behind. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Baby dinosaurs is the theme for this year's annual "Frost Fest" from 1 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday (Dec. 27-28) at the Kenosha Public Museum, 5500 First Ave.

The event is free. No advance registration is required.

"Frost Fest" gives visitors the chance to conduct experiments, clean real dinosaur bones and discover the completely odd Therizinosaurus.

It arrives as one of the museum's more popular exhibits, "Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies," continues in the Touhy Gallery. The free, interactive exhibit allowing guests a rare look at the life of dinosaurs through their eggs, nests and young.

With all of our exhibitions, we develop programming across the board with our educational programs, special events and things that are themed to the exhibits, said Rachel Klees Anderson, curator of exhibits at Kenosha public museums. We work on these programs sometimes two years in advance.

Tiny Titans includes a cast model of an estimated 100-million-year-old dinosaur embryo named Baby Louie. The fossilized remains were discovered in Henan, China, in 1993 and appeared on the cover of National Geographic. They were purchased by the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis and eventually returned to China.

Last year, visitors participated in a variety of Hawaiian-themed activities during "Not So Frosty Fest." Students made a volcanoes erupt, dissected real flowers, created Polynesian stick maps and learned about coral reefs.
Information spread by ZIK TV Channel about the alleged attempt of the illegal seizure of the TV channel by the couple of MP Hleb Zahoriy and his wife is fiction and slander, the wife of the parliamentarian Kateryna Zahoriy wrote on her Facebook page.

"Our meeting was held at the proposal of Petro Dyminsky [100% beneficial owner of the TV channel] in the city of Athens (Greece) after studying the documents, which were personally brought to our office by a representative of ZIK," she wrote.

Zahoriy insists on the absence of any unlawful actions on her part and on the part of her husband, refuting the information about the alleged demands forwarded to Dyminsky, "especially from the Presidential Administration of Ukraine."

"Since he knows this for sure, I personally appeal to Dyminsky to refute this slander himself. Otherwise, I will take measures to protect our honor and dignity," the wife of the lawmaker, who for a long time headed the Industrial Television Committee, was a member of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting in 2014-2016 and left it at own will.

Zahoriy believes that the businessman deliberately manipulates the situation because of the reluctance to be responsible for participating in a fatal crash.

As reported, on August 18, a car from a motorcade of Dyminsky crashed into an Opel, which was driven by 31-year-old Natalia Trila. The woman died in the accident. Her relatives said that it was businessman Dyminsky who was driving the Mercedes.
Ukraine will join the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin (PEM Convention) from February 1, 2018, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine has said on its website.

The documents on Ukraine's joining the convention were submitted to the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union (EU) on Wednesday.

"Access to the markets of 42 countries and territories will be expanded for Ukrainian goods, which would diversify Ukraine's exports," the press service said, citing Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister, Trade Representative of Ukraine Natalia Mykolska.

The next step should be the introduction of changes to the protocols of free trade agreements that Ukraine signed with signatories of the PEM Convention, the ministry said.

As reported, on November 8, 2017 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a draft law on Ukraine's accession to the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin.

According to the website of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the share of Ukrainian exports to the countries participating in the PEM Convention is 50% of the total figure, of which 40% falls on the EU countries.

Earlier, the ministry reported on the possible accession of Ukraine to the Pan-Euro-Med Convention from January 1, 2018.
The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) will return UAH 45 million that were not used this year to the national budget of Ukraine, SAPO Head Nazar Kholodnytsky has said.

"I want to say that this year, [UAH] 45 million of the funds out of [UAH] 116 [million] are returned to the budget, as those that were not used, because the staff was not fully filled," Kholodnytsky said at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada committee for legislative support of law enforcement activity on Wednesday in Kyiv.
Militants attacked Ukrainian armed forces 15 times on Wednesday, one serviceman was killed, four others were injured, the headquarters of the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in Donbas reported.

Ukrainian army positions came under attack by 82mm mortars in the Luhansk sector, and militants fired heavy mortars and 122mm artillery in the Donetsk sector, the HQ said on its Facebook page.
A man has been convicted of theft after he deceived an individual into paying 2,000 for arranging flights and visas to New Zealand for the victims family.

Niall Minogue with an address at Barna, Woodsgift entered a plea to all five counts of theft on dates including May 23, June 6, June 7 and 8 in 2014, Kilkenny Circuit Court heard last week.

Mr Minogue, 39, is already serving a sentence of four years and nine months for similar matters and has been in custody since November 9 of last year and is due for release in May 2020.

Giving evidence, Detective Garda Patrick Cullen said the victim in this case was looking to work in New Zealand as had been living in Ireland with his partner and child for five years on May 23 of 2014. The court heard he made a decision to leave Ireland.

He searched online and found Quality Global Personal with an address on Patrick Street in Kilkenny and the company serviced visas to Canada and New Zealand plus flights for all the family.

Detective Garda Cullen said an investigation revealed the director of the company to be Niall Minogue.

A meeting was arranged at the Red Cow between Mr Minogue and the injured party which resulted in the victim paying a deposit of 2,000 in cash.

The court heard there were a further four separate transactions on three different days again in June which amounted 2,150 and were paid to a bank account of Quality Global Personal.

In June the victim rang Mr Minogue as he thought it was a scam. Mr Minogue said the injured party would get a full refund but no money has been recovered.

The court heard the victim is still living in Ireland and Judge Brian OCallaghan said he hoped this was by choice. Mr Minogue offered an apology during Garda interview and was fully co-operative and made full admissions.

He has 31 previous convictions with 26 of these relating to theft and similar type offences and is currently serving a custodial sentence.

Defence counsel for Mr Minogue, Patrick ORiordan, said his client has a longstanding pervasive gambling addiction and the majority of his previous convictions relate to similar issues that arose from a company he was running at the time.

Judge OCallaghan said the victim trusted Mr Minogue to a certain extent with his families future and those future plans were dashed.

The Judge said the level of deception was quite glaring.

He added that it was clearly premeditated and planned. Judge OCallaghan ruled that it would not be just or proportional to add to Mr Minogues existing sentence and sentenced him to three years with the final six months suspended provided he entered into a bond to be of good behaviour.

The sentence commenced from December 12. He added that four years and nine months for all offences was proportionate. Judge OCallaghan convicted Mr Minogue under count one for the theft of the 2,000 with the other theft offences taken into consideration.
The late Elizabeth Power

The death has occurred of Elizabeth ( Bessie ) Power (nee Moore)

Clomoney, Goresbridge, Kilkenny.

Deeply regretted by her loving husband Paddy, daughters Ann and Martha, sons Pat and Ken, brother Leo, grandchildren, great - grandchildren,nephew, nieces, relatives and many friends. R. I. P. Reposing at her residence from 4pm to 9pm today (Thursday ). Funeral to arrive at St. Lazerian's Church, Leighlinbridge for requiem Mass at 2pm on Friday. Burial afterwards in St. Lazerian's cemetery. Family flowers only. Donations if desired to The Irish Heart Foundation. Family only on Friday morning please.

The late John Cooney

The death has occurred of John Cooney, ("Sonas", Smithlands North, Waterford Road, Kilkenny and formerly of Ard na Greine, Clonmel on 20th December 2017, peacefully at home, in the loving care of his family, John, former C.E.O. South Eastern Health Board, deeply regretted by his loving wife Elsie, son Emmet, daughter Helen, sister Mary, grandchildren Sofia and Adam, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, nieces Patricia, Regina and Camilla, extended family and a wide circle of colleagues and friends.

Reposing in Johnston's Funeral Home, John's Green, Kilkenny from 4 o'clock on Thursday with Funeral Prayers at 6.30 o'clock followed by removal to St. Patrick's Church. Requiem Mass on Friday at 12 noon. Funeral afterwards to Foulkstown Cemetery. House private please.

The late James Hilary Delahunty

The death has occurred of James Hilary Delahunty, Curraghmartin, Carrigeen, Kilkenny. Deeply regretted by his sisters Della and Teresa, brother-in-law Sean, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

Reposing at Donnacha Doyle & Sons Funeral Home, Grannagh, Kilmacow on Thursday from 5.00pm until 7.00pm. Requiem Mass at St. Kevins Church, Carrigeen on Friday at 11.00am. Burial after in adjoining cemetery.

The late

The death has occurred of John MOORE

Newbridge, Kildare / Lisdowney, Kilkenny



Suddenly at his residence; beloved husband of Esther and loving father to Liam and Alice. Deeply regretted by his loving wife and children, mother Kitty, brothers Bill and Tony, sister Maria, mother-in-law Margaret, aunts, uncle-in-law, sister-in-law, brothers-in-law, niece, nephew, relatives and friends.

Reposing at his mothers residence (Ballyconra, Ballyragget) from 2.00pm on Thursday with Rosary at 8.00pm. Removal to St Brigids Church, Lisdowney on Friday morning for Requiem Mass at 12.00 noon. Burial immediately afterwards in Aharney Cemetery. House private on Friday morning please.

The late Richard Phelan

The death has occurred of Richard Phelan, late of Ballinalina, Kilmoganny, Co. Kilkenny. Former Farmer and cattle dealer. Peacefully in the care of the staff at St. Lukes Hospital, Kilkenny surrounded by family. Deeply regretted by his loving wife Mary, sons Vincent, Dermot and Niall, partners-in-law, grandchildren, brothers bobby, Tom, John, Brendan, Denny, Dominick, Pius and the late Ollie, sisters Ann, Imelda and Theresa, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, relatives, neighbours and friends.

The late Louise Walsh

The death has occurred of Louise Walsh, Moanteenmore, Gowran, Co. Kilkenny and 43 Marble Court, Paulstown, Co. Kilkenny, died 19th December 2017, peacefully at her home. Deeply regretted by her loving parents Caroline and Joe, her children Rian, and Eve, partner Philip, brothers Michael, and David, aunts, uncles, relatives and friends R.I.P. Reposing at her parents residence in Moanteenmore from 4 0 clock on Thursday with removal on Saturday morning to Church of the Assumption, Gowran arriving for Requiem Mass at 11 0 clock. Burial immediately afterwards in the adjoining cemetery. Rosary at 9 o clock Friday night at her parents residence. House private on Saturday morning

Reposing at Walshs Funeral Home, Carrick-on-Suir on Thursday, 21st, from 5.30pm followed by removal at 7.30pm to Tullahought Church. Requiem Mass on Friday, 22nd, at 11am followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery.
Most (85.9%) Ukrainians think the battle against corruption in the country is completely or mostly unsuccessful, according to the results of a poll conducted by the Foundation of Democratic Initiatives named after Ilko Kucheriv and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).

Survey results released at the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Thursday show 60.2% percent of respondents believe the battle is completely lost, 25.7% mostly lost, but with some successes, 7.8% mostly successful, but with numerous unsolved problems. Only 1.2% of those polled said the battle against corruption is a success.

More than half of those surveyed blamed failure to punish corrupt official on the president  60.%, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine  36.9%, courts  29.5% or on newly established anti-corruption agencies, including the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO)  25.5%.

More than half of respondents (60.5%) said they had not given or been asked to give a bribe in 2017, while 14.4% declined the answer to the question. Some 10.1% of those polled answered in the affirmative, with 7.1% saying they gave money, presents  5%.

The survey was conducted from October 23 through November 5, 2017 and paid for by the United States Agency for International Development. Some 1,614 people 18 years and older took part in all parts of Ukraine, except Crimea and occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The theoretical margin of error is estimated not to exceed 2.6%.
MAPUTO, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Global miner Vale said on Monday it would not pay bonuses demanded by its workers in what it called an illegal strike at the Moatize coal plant in Mozambique.

Workers downed tools on Friday demanding two bonuses including a 14th salary and a retention bonus, Vale said.

Vale in Mozambique employs 2,500 direct workers and about 7,000 indirectly. The Moatize mine, where the workers have staged a strike, produced 5.5 million tonnes of metallurgical and thermal coal in 2016, the company's annual report said.

Vale said in a statement there was "no provision for any payment" to meet the demands of the striking workers, and called the action illegal.

"We advise our workers to return to their jobs, so that this type of issue is dealt within the competent forums," it said, adding that pay was calculated based in performance.

In 2016, Vale increased the salaries of its workers by up to 9 percent and in 2017 raised it 15.6 percent.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Editing by Edmund Blair)
(Kitco News) - Indian weddings are known for their display of gold, but this young couple asked guests to give them bitcoin as a wedding present instead.

The Indian wedding season is usually a great occasion to buy gold, sometimes even influencing the precious metals prices around the world. But, is this tradition going to be threatened with the rising cryptocurrency craze?

The latest example is Prashant Sharma and Niti Shrees wedding. A tech-savvy couple, which founded a digital start-up in India, asked all their friends for bitcoin as their main wedding present.

We thought of merging technology with gifting for the future, Sharma told BBC. We explained it to our parents and they were very receptive.

Friends and family attending the wedding, which took place on December 9, respected the couples wishes, with only 15 out of 200 guests giving traditional gifts.

It was estimated that the couple received 100,000 rupees ($1,563) worth of bitcoin during the wedding.

One guest said: The concept is good. I am sure its acceptance will improve, though many governments may not like it now.

This year, bitcoin rose from just under $1,000 in January to an all-time high of nearly $20,000. The digital currency was last seen trading at $16,182, down 1.48% on the day, according to Kitcos aggregated charts.

The unprecedented surge led to an explosion of demand as well as warning calls of a classic bubble.

India raised its concern over the cryptocurrencies as well, with the countrys central bank issuing the third warning to investors in December, advising against buying bitcoin.

But, Sharma is optimistic, saying that bitcoin is a present they will store, not sell.

If you buy something to sell it later then you are creating a bubble. We bought Bitcoin because we wanted to see how this technology moves forward, he said. Bitcoin is not the only thing that has potential. Blockchain technology is the real deal.
By Krishna Merchant

SINGAPORE, Dec 21 (IFR) - The Republic of the Philippines is heard to have hired six banks for a potential offering of US dollar bonds early next year, according to a market source.

The six are Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank and UBS, though the Baa2/BBB/BBB rated sovereign has yet to confirm the mandate.

However, Philippines treasurer Rosalia de Leon has said the sovereign plans to head for the market early next year to sell global dollar bonds.

In January, the Philippines raised $2 billion from 25-year dollar bonds at 3.75 percent.

The size and the tenor of the upcoming offering are expected to be similar to the January 2017 trade, according to the source.

Last week, Fitch upgraded the Philippines to BBB from BBB- in a major agency's first upgrade for the sovereign since 2014, citing consistent macroeconomic strength.

(Reporting by Krishna Merchant; Editing by Dharsan Singh and Daniel Stanton)
By Nikhil Nainan

Dec 21 (Reuters) - Indonesian shares rose nearly 1 percent on Thursday, bouncing back from a drop in the previous session, after Fitch raised the country's credit ratings by a notch to their second lowest investment grade.

The ratings agency said the direction of macroeconomic and monetary policies has made Southeast Asia's largest economy resilient to external shocks. The Jakarta SE Composite Index was headed for a seventh session of increases in eight with financials leading the gains.

Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero) Tbk PT gained 2.6 percent and Bank Mandiri (Persero) Tbk PT climbed 2.4 percent.

An index of the country's 45 most liquid stocks rose 1.1 percent.

Meanwhile, most other Southeast Asian stock markets were sluggish in lacklustre trade, in line with Asian peers as investors have already factored in the benefits to company bottom lines from U.S. tax cuts. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature. Thai shares were slightly higher after six straight sessions of gains, on upbeat investor sentiment with customs-cleared annual exports rising for a ninth straight month in November.

Exports, a key driver of Thailand's growth, increased 13.4 percent in November from a year earlier, handily beating a Reuters median forecast of a 6.4 percent rise. Philippine shares extended falls into a third session, weighed down by losses in financial and real estate stocks.

Ayala Land Inc fell 1.2 percent, while BDO Unibank Inc dropped 0.7 percent. Telecom company PLDT Inc declined 1.9 percent as news of a third telecom provider to challenge the existing duopoly gains steam. Singapore shares dropped for a sixth straight session, hitting a two-week low, dragged down by financial and real estate stocks.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp declined 0.9 percent, while CapitaLand Commercial Trust dropped over 3 percent. For Asian Companies click; SOUTHEAST ASIAN STOCK MARKETS: CHANGE AT 0339 GMT Market Current Previous close Pct Move Singapore 3389.52 3394.87 -0.16 Bangkok 1740.34 1738.16 0.13 Manila 8330.99 8362.61 -0.38 Jakarta 6160.622 6109.482 0.84 Kuala Lumpur 1746.68 1746.63 0.00 Ho Chi Minh 956.15 953.51 0.28

Change so far this year Market Current End 2016 Pct Move Singapore 3389.52 2880.76 17.66 Bangkok 1740.34 1542.94 12.79 Manila 8330.99 6840.64 21.79 Jakarta 6160.622 5296.711 16.31 Kuala Lumpur 1746.68 1641.73 6.39 Ho Chi Minh 956.15 664.87 43.81 (Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
HANOI, Dec 21 (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 0404 GMT.

December 21 USD/VND mid-point 22,430 USD/VND interbank 22,710/22,715 USD/VND unofficial 22,745/22,760 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.30/36.52

Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.5-1.1

1 week 0.7-1.2

1 month 2.0-2.5

3 months 4.3-5.0

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)
* Vietnam's discount at $50-$70 to London's March contract

* Demand falls across markets before holidays

* Indonesia's premium at $150 a tonne vs March

By Mi Nguyen

Dec 21 (Reuters) - Asia's main coffee exporters saw thin trading as demand fell ahead of Christmas break, while harvesting in Vietnam was going good on favourable weather, traders said on Thursday.

Harvest in Vietnam's coffee belt Central Highlands was 80-85 percent completed as steady sunshine helped the drying process, but low prices have discouraged some farmers from selling beans, traders said.

In Vietnam's major coffee-growing province Daklak, farmers quoted coffee beans at 36,500-37,000 dong per kg, little changed from last week's range 36,000-37,000 dong, tracking London prices.

The London ICE March robusta coffee settled flat at $1,713 a tonne on Wednesday. "Due to low prices, some farmers did not want to immediately pick beans from coffee trees. But this would lead to a larger proportion of ripe beans in harvest, ensuring high cup quality," said independent analyst Nguyen Quang Binh.

Traders quoted the 5-percent black and broken grade 2 robusta at a discount of $50-$70 per tonne to the ICE March futures contract, compared with a discount of $50-$75 per tonne a week earlier.

Delivery of coffee beans from the Central Highlands had been slow as farmers could not hire enough transport, said another trader, based in Ho Chi Minh City.

"Delivery slowed to 400-500 tonnes a day from around 1,000 tonnes before," he added.

A trader in Lampung said that in Indonesia, robusta coffee was traded with a $150 premium to the March contract.

Trading activities remained light as the market heads to holidays, but there were some transactions for March contract on Thursday, the trader said

Coffee harvest in some areas of Indonesia's Sumatra island usually falls around April.

(Reporting by Mi Nguyen, Additional reporting by Mas Alina Arifin in Bandar Lampung; Editing by Vyas Mohan)
CAIRO, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Average yields on Egypt's six-month and one-year treasury bills fell at an auction on Thursday, data from the central bank showed. The yield on the 182-day bill fell to 18.743 percent from 18.923 percent at the last similar auction, and the yield on the 364-day bill fell to 17.580 percent from 18.059 percent at a similar sale.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Alison Williams)

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.
Gold remains roughly 10% higher for the year, while palladium is the big winner in the precious-metals sector with roughly a 50% rise, says Commerzbank. Gold rose early in the year, driven up by political uncertainty after U.S. President Trump took office and ahead of the presidential elections in France, Commerzbank says while recounting the year. The metal peaked in late summer just shy of $1,360 per ounce, which was a gain of 18% since the start of the year. This was due primarily to the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, which was suffering from Trumps unpredictability, and falling Fed rate-hike expectations, Commerzbank says. As stock markets soared to ever new record levels, and the U.S. tax reform began to take shape, interest in gold dwindled in the autumn. As a result, gold shed some of its gains again and is up by only approximately 10%. Silver has lagged gold. Palladium has been this years high-flyer, however, Commerzbank says. Having soared by more than 50% to a 17-year high of just shy of $1,040 per troy ounce, palladium has left not only the other precious metals but also all of the commodities we track far behind. Its price has been driven by robust demand for cars with gasoline engines, which was further increased by the diesel scandal. In fact, palladium has had a premium over sister metal platinum since September, which had not happened since 2001. As of 8:02 a.m. EST, spot gold was down $1.05 an ounce at $1,264.20, compared to $1,151.55 at the end of 2016.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

MKS: 200-Day Average Key Pivot Point For Gold Prices

The 200-day moving average lies just above the gold market and is offering chart resistance, points out Sam Laughlin, senior metals trader with MKS (Switzerland) S.A. The metal was bid up early in the Asia-Pacific region before running into selling. The on-shore premium in Shanghai remained elevated around $12 relative to London pricing, he says. Price action remained buoyant throughout the afternoon, knocking against $1,268, however [was] unable to make headway through the figure, Laughlin says. The tide turned once European names began to filter in late in Asia, sending gold sharply lower toward opening levels to pare back the earlier gains. The 200 DMA around $1,269.50 is currently weighing upon any attempts higher, and this level will act as an important pivot point over the near term. As of 8:02 a.m. EST, spot gold was down $1.05 an ounce at $1,264.20 after a high for the day of $1,268.30.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

SP Angel: Gold Prices May Get Geopolitical Lift

Gold, underpinned lately by a pullback in the stock market after congressional passage of U.S. tax cuts that had already factored into markets, may get a boost from geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, says commodity brokerage SP Angel. The rising precious metal may factor in geopolitical tensions as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, SP Angel says. The presidents decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital not only violates several United Nations Security Council resolutions, but also desecrates 70 years of American policy in the Middle East. Rejecting any claim from Palestine has exacerbated tensions across the Muslim world at the expense of U.S. geopolitical and economic interests.
JERUSALEM, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Three Israeli banks have asked a court to liquidate Eurocom Communications, the controlling shareholder of Bezeq Israel Telecom , a move that could lead to the sale of Israel's largest telecoms group.

Eurocom is owned by Shaul Elovitch, who is under investigation by Israel's securities regulator fraud.

In November, the Israel Securities Authority (ISA) said it had found enough evidence to support bringing criminal charges against Elovitch, who has stepped down as Bezeq's chairman, and senior officials at Bezeq. Elovitch has denied any wrongdoing. Eurocom owes nearly 1 billion shekels ($286 million) to three of Israel's largest banks, Hapoalim , Israel Discount and First International , which also filed a motion to appoint observers to oversee Eurocom's operations.

The court, Bezeq said on Thursday, will consider the matter on Dec. 25.

Eurocom said it was examining the implications of the legal proceedings and would agree to the appointment of observers subject to the approval of the Communications Ministry.

Should the court force the liquidation of Eurocom, it could lead to the sale of Bezeq, which dominates Israel's telecoms sector. Last month, four funds said they were interested in buying control of Bezeq, according to media reports. ($1 = 3.4922 shekels)

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Tova Cohen)
Yezhov worked for Russian special services for at least two years - Gerashchenko

The Ukrainian interior minister's adviser, People's Front MP Anton Gerashchenko, has said that Stanislav Yezhov, an assistant and interpreter of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who was detained on December 20 on suspicion of cooperation with the Russian special services, spied for Russia for at least two years.

"He worked for the Russian special services for at least two years," Gerashchenko told journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.

He specified that Yezhov was recruited a few years ago while working at the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States.

"Today it is known that he was recruited by the Russian special services during his work at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington several years ago," he said.

Gerashchenko noted that Yezhov's spouse is a Russian citizen and suggested that he could have been intimidated by "some issues related to his wife's relatives" or compromised before his family or civil service and thus obliged to cooperate.

"But it will all become known during the investigation," he said.

He also said that there were "a lot of Russian agents" in the Ukrainian authorities who work for the Russian special services.

"First and foremost, these are our Armed Forces, National Police, government and law enforcement agencies, as well as security and defense bodies," Gerashchenko said.

As reported, late on December 20, counterintelligence officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) exposed an official from the Ukrainian Cabinet's secretariat for activities in the interests of the aggressor country's special services, the SBU press center has reported.

"Law enforcement agents found that the official had been recruited by the Russian special services during an extensive trip abroad. The SBU agents documented that the official followed Russian supervisors' instructions and collected information about the Ukrainian government's activities, using special equipment," the report said on Wednesday evening.

The collected information was delivered to the supervisors via electronic communications channels.

The Russian-hired agent was detained in his office, the SBU's press center said. The operation took place with the assistance of top Ukrainian government officials.

Criminal proceedings were opened pursuant to Part 1 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (high treason, that is, an act intentionally committed by a citizen of Ukraine to the detriment of Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capacity, state, economic or information security of Ukraine: defection to the enemy's side when martial law is in effect or when there is an ongoing armed conflict, as well as espionage, assistance to a foreign state, a foreign organization or their representatives in conducting subversive activities against Ukraine). The punishment is imprisonment for a period from 12 to 15 years, with or without confiscation of property.
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):

MPC MINUTES The central bank is due to publish minutes from the December meeting of the Monetary Policy Council at 1300.

ARTICLE 7 PROCEDURES

Investors do not believe that the Council of the European Union will vote to impose sanctions on Poland after the European Commission started procedures to suspend Poland's voting rights in the European Union after two years of dispute over judicial reforms, the daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reports.

STOCK EXCHANGE

Good macroeconomic data has helped the Polish stock markets register significant gains this year, the daily Rzeczpospolita reports, which should result in higher share prices for companies reporting good results.

JSW The Polish miner JSW will most probably adopt its new long-term strategy for 2018-2030 this week, business daily Parkiet reports, citing analysts as saying that the document lacks a thorough forecast of production costs and coal prices.

****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 (Reporting by Warsaw Bureau; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)
(Adds chairman comments, details)

Dec 21 (Reuters) - Belgian tanker operator Euronav said on Thursday it had agreed to buy U.S. peer Gener8 Maritime in an all-stock deal worth about $490 million.

Euronav said in a statement the deal would create a tanker operator with an estimated market capitalisation of about $1.8 billion that would provide economies of scale.

"The financial strength of the Combined Entity together with a strong leadership team will make it well placed to navigate the tanker cycle," Euronav Chairman Carl Steen said.

Under the terms of the deal, which will make Gener8 a wholly-owned subsidiary of Euronav, the Belgian company said it would issue about 60.9 million new shares at an exchange ratio of 0.7272 Euronav shares for each share of Gener8.

Based on a Reuters calculation, the deal is worth about 413 million euros ($490 million).

Euronav said the deal represented a 35 percent premium to Wednesday's share closing price. The stock closed at $4.37.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Thyagaraju Adinarayan; Editing by Edmund Blair)
(Adds details, background)

By Mariya Gordeyeva and Olzhas Auyezov

ALMATY, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The Bank of New York Mellon has frozen $22 billion in assets held by Kazakhstan's National Fund over a lawsuit launched by Moldovan businessman Anatolie Stati and his companies against the Kazakh government, a source familiar with the case said on Thursday.

The National Bank has in turn filed a lawsuit against BNY Mellon. A British court is due to deliver a judgment on that case on Thursday, the source told Reuters.

The National Fund is replenished from oil export revenue and may be used as an emergency state funding tool.

The amount of the funds frozen account for around 40 percent of the fund's total.

Kazakhstan's central bank and justice ministry could not be reached for immediate comment.

The Bank of New York Mellon was also not available for immediate comment.

The legal row between Stati, his son Gabriel, two family-controlled companies and the Republic of Kazakhstan has dragged on for years in various courts.

The Moldovan businessmen, who invested in Kazakhstan's oil and gas industry, have asserted that they were subjected to significant harassment from the Kazakh state, with the ultimate purpose of forcing them to sell their investments cheaply.

They have said that the value of their investments was affected negatively by the harassment, because Kazakhstan was hoping to take over the fields owned by them and was therefore trying to bring the price down.

Kazakhstan denies the allegations.

In October, Kazakhstan filed a civil racketeering lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, against Anatolie and Gabriel Stati and two of their companies - Ascom Group S.A. and Terra Raf Trans Traiding Ltd., often collectively referred to as "the Stati Partners".

The lawsuit followed an international arbitration award of around $500 million that the Stati Partners won in an international arbitration court.

Kazakh currency the tenge strengthened by 0.6 percent on Thursday.

(Reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva and Olzhas Ayuezov; writing by Olzhas Ayuezov and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; editing by Katya Golubkova and Jason Neely)
(Adds Italian reaction)

BRUSSELS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - European Union competition supervisors ordered the Italian government on Thursday to recover about 84 million euros ($100 million) from steelmaker Ilva after ruling that two loans it made in 2015 constituted illegal state aid.

Other support measures for Ilva were found not to be state aid, the European Commission said in a statement. Among these were more than 1.1 billion euros transferred from Ilva's owners to the company in June to help clean up pollution around the Taranto plant.

The Italian government expressed "enormous satisfaction" with the decision, saying in a statement that the Commission had looked into measures worth more than a combined 2 billion euros.

The Commission added that its decision had no impact on an EU legal case over the existing pollution, nor on the Commission's separate investigation of an acquisition bid for Ilva by a consortium led by ArcelorMittal , the world's biggest steelmaker. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in the statement: "The best guarantee for a sustainable future of steel production in the Taranto region is the sale of Ilva's assets at market terms -- it cannot rely on artificial state support...

"This does not change the fact that, in the right hands, Ilva has a sustainable future ... Essential de-pollution work should continue without any delay to protect the health of Taranto's inhabitants."

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome; Editing by Robin Emmott)
* Fitch raises Indonesia rating to BBB from BBB-

* Govt and central bank welcome the move

* Stock index rises nearly 1 pct

* Fitch Indonesia rating matches that of Philippines

(Adds central bank, analyst comments)

By Fransiska Nangoy

JAKARTA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings raised Indonesia's credit ratings a notch above its lowest investment grade on Thursday, saying economic and monetary policies have made Southeast Asia's largest economy resilient to external shocks.

The rating was raised to BBB from BBB-, with a stable outlook. The upgrade means Indonesia has a higher rating from Fitch than from S&P Global Ratings and Moody's Investors Service.

Investors welcomed the news, with the rupiah strengthening 0.2 percent in early trading and the benchmark stock index rising 1 percent.

For Fitch, Indonesia is now on par with its ratings for the Philippines and Italy.

"Monetary policy has been sufficiently disciplined to limit bouts of volatile capital outflows during challenging periods," the agency said in a statement.

"Macro-prudential measures have helped curb a sharp rise in corporate external debt, while financial deepening has coincided with improved market stability," it said.

Fitch said the focus on macro stability is also evident in credible budget assumptions in the past few years.

Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Agus Martowardojo said the upgrade puts Indonesia's credit rating at the highest since 1995.

BI "will continue its commitment in maintaining macroeconomic and financial system stability to support a strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive economic growth," Martowardojo said.

Luky Alfirman, a senior Finance Ministry official, said the Fitch upgrade will help Indonesia attract more foreign and domestic direct and portfolio investment.

In December 2011, Fitch restored Indonesia's sovereign rating back to investment grade after nearly 14 years. In May this year, S&P became the last of the three big agencies to again give the country an investment grade rating.

"STRUCTURAL WEAKNESSES"

The Fitch upgrade comes at a time of some concern about possible impact on Indonesia from the U.S. Federal Reserve's balance sheet normalisation and expectations of further U.S. rate hikes in 2018.

In a bid to lift economic growth, BI unexpectedly cut its key policy rate in August and September, triggering some selling of Indonesian government bonds.

"Fitch's upgrade should be considered a good sign of confidence for Indonesia," said Taye Shim, head of research at brokerage Mirae Asset Sekuritas in Jakarta.

Shim added that the upgrade is "meaningful step in stimulating other rating agencies to potentially upgrade Indonesia's sovereign rating."

Moody's upgraded Indonesia's outlook in February to positive from stable.

Over the past three years, President Joko Widodo's government has focused on cutting public spending, reducing investment bottlenecks and boosting the tax take through a tax amnesty programme.

Still, Fitch cautioned that the government's revenue intake is "very low" and that the economy remains hampered by "some structural weaknesses".

Indonesia has seen a rebound in exports this year, but tepid private consumption has hampered policymakers' efforts to lift growth well above 5 percent a year.

Fitch forecast that Indonesia will grow 5.4 percent next year, in line with the government's target.

(Editing by Ed Davies and Richard Borsuk)
(Adds quotes, details)

ATHENS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Greece's foreign creditors need to clarify whether the country will benefit from a support programme after its bailout expires next August, its central bank said on Thursday.

Greece has relied on financial handouts from international creditors since 2010 but has said it is aiming for a clean exit from the programme when the current rescue package - its third -- ends.

That would leave it to finance itself from the markets.

The central bank said a "precautionary support framework" would however help boost investor confidence and drive down borrowing costs, assisting an economy that is gradually returning to growth after losing about a third of its value over the last seven years.

"To consolidate confidence over the medium term, it is equally important to ... clarify the form that post-programme support to the Greek economy will take," it said in a scheduled report on monetary policy.

Clarification would also help banks in the event that the country's credit rating had not improved by the time the programme ended, the central bank said.

Greek bonds would continue to be accepted as eligible collateral by the European Central Bank and would be included in the ECB's quantitative easing programme whether in its planned duration or during the reinvestment period.

In the meantime, it was "urgently necessary" that Greece continued to implement reforms mandated under its bailout, speed up privatisations and prepared for the timely conclusion of its final bailout review next year.

It added that the focus of economic policy should be on tackling the problem of banks' non-performing loans, removing obstacles to investment and addressing a public debt overhang.

"These actions ... would facilitate the return to financial normality, the full abolition of capital controls and the sustainable recovery of the economy after eight years of sacrifices."

The bank reiterated its growth projection for this year. It said the economy is expected to grow by 1.6 percent in 2017, 2.4 percent in 2018 and 2.5 pct in 2019.

(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Writing by Renee Maltezou; editing by John Stonestreet)
(Adds Putin's quote, details)

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he had ordered bonds denominated in foreign currency to be issued next year to enable businesses to repatriate funds from abroad.

Reuters reported earlier this month that wealthy Russians facing the prospect of targeted U.S. sanctions next year had floated the idea of a special treasury bond to help create favourable conditions for them to bring their cash home. Putin told a meeting of top businessmen and government officials that the central bank and the government had been working on the issue.

"I have given an order to define the necessary conditions and parameters to issue such papers for Russian investors and to ensure their circulation as soon as next year," Putin said.

Sources had previously told Reuters that it was crucial, unlike with bank accounts, that future holders of such bonds be able to remain anonymous.

Putin described the bonds as a "national external borrowing bond denominated in foreign currency", phrasing typically used to describe Eurobonds.

A source close to the Russian finance ministry told Reuters that the possible size of such a bond issue could total $1 billion to $3 billion.

The finance ministry currently envisages issuing new Eurobonds worth $3 billion next year.

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Additional reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Hugh Lawson)
(Adds quotes from senior research analyst)

By Jennifer Ablan

NEW YORK, Dec 21 (Reuters) - U.S.-based equity funds posted $22.2 billion of outflows in the week ended Dec. 20, the largest cash withdrawals for 2017, according to Lipper data on Thursday.

U.S.-based equity mutual funds posted $12.2 billion of outflows in the week ended Wednesday, extending weekly cash withdrawals for most of 2017. And U.S.-based stock ETFs posted $10 billion of outflows in the week ended Dec. 20, the largest cash withdrawals in 2017, Lipper said.

Investors' risk aversion spread to bonds. U.S.-based high-yield "junk" bond funds posted $1.1 billion of outflows in the week ended Dec. 20, the group's second consecutive week of cash withdrawals, according to Lipper.

"Money leaving high-yield bonds and equity funds - as well as going to investment-grade corporates - are risk-off strategies," said Pat Keon, Thomson Reuters Lipper's senior research analyst. "Also, both groups have struggled all year - equity mutual funds net outflows of negative $141 billion, high-yield bond funds at negative $22.1 billion."

U.S.-based investment-grade corporate bond funds attracted $1.14 billion of inflows in the week ended Dec. 20, extending the group's weekly inflow streak since late September, Lipper said.

Equity ETFs stole the spotlight, however. Equity will have record net inflows of $265 billion this year and "this current week's net outflow broke a streak of 10 straight inflows," Keon said.

"While it is a high number, unless a multiple-week trend takes hold, I would not find it too concerning," Keon said.

"Despite the run-up in the Dow and the good economic numbers we're seeing lately, we don't always see it reflected in net inflows for funds. We speculate that fund investors appear to be overly cautious waiting for a market correction and/or a geopolitical or internal political crisis to worsen."

U.S.-based money market funds posted $21.2 billion of outflows in the week ended Dec. 20, following six weeks of inflows, Lipper data showed.

The following is a breakdown of the flows for the week, including mutual funds and ETFs: Sector Flow Chg Pct of Assets Count

($ blns) Assets ($ blns) All Equity Funds -22.221 -0.35 6,452.399 12,076 Domestic Equities -18.597 -0.43 4,347.903 8,601 Non-Domestic Equities -3.624 -0.17 2,104.496 3,475 All Taxable Bond -3.250 -0.12 2,608.002 6,031 Funds All Money Market -21.209 -0.79 2,653.279 1,039 Funds All Municipal Bond 0.251 0.06 399.695 1,471 Funds (Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by James Dalgleish)
* Concern about U.S. sanctions list due end-January

* Moscow wants the business executives to repatriate their money

* Special bonds to return funds may worth up to $3 billion

(Re-leads, adds details of new bonds, Finance Ministry comments)

By Denis Pinchuk and Darya Korsunskaya

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Russia plans to adjust the terms of a sovereign Eurobond issue planned for next year so that businesses can repatriate funds in a way that would protect them from being damaged by potential new sanctions on Moscow.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a new package of sanctions in August. One of the provisions asked the U.S. Treasury Secretary to submit a report on the impact of expanding sanctions to cover Russian sovereign debt, with an outcome expected as early as February. Reuters reported earlier this month that wealthy Russians facing the prospect of targeted U.S. sanctions next year had floated the idea of a special treasury bond to help create favourable conditions for them to bring their cash home. President Vladimir Putin on Thursday told a meeting of top businessmen and government officials that he ordered the new bonds to be placed in 2018 and that the central bank and the government had been working on the issue.

"I have given an order to define the necessary conditions and parameters to issue such papers for Russian investors and to ensure their circulation as soon as next year," Putin said.

The central bank declined to comment.

Sources had previously told Reuters that it was crucial, unlike with bank accounts, that future holders of such bonds be able to remain anonymous.

Putin described the bonds as a "national external borrowing bond denominated in foreign currency", phrasing typically used to describe Eurobonds.

Putin also said that the business people earlier this year had floated an idea of "mechanisms to repatriate the capital," adding the proposal included the use of external sovereign debt denominated in foreign currency.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told Reuters after the meeting that the Finance Ministry had considered issuing the Eurobonds up to a total of $3 billion, confirming the earlier plan for the next year.

"In line with the instruction of the president, the Finance Ministry will consider the parameters to issue the Eurobonds that the Russian investors willing to repatriate the capital will be able to buy", the Ministry said in a separate statement.

"We will create such an opportunity for them within the existing sovereign external debt programme without increasing its volume", the ministry said.

The new sanctions package drafted by U.S. lawmakers is expected to include a list of individuals with close links to Putin.

People on the list will not automatically be hit by personal sanctions, such as the freezing of foreign assets and bans on travel or access to foreign bank accounts. But many Russian business people have said they believe it will. (Reporting by Denis Pinchuk and Darya Korsunskaya; additional reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh and Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Jane Merriman) Keywords: RUSSIA PUTIN/BONDS 2018
(Adds comments from SNB chairman and pictures)

By John Revill

ZURICH, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The Swiss National Bank has bought a majority stake in a maker of special paper for banknotes and passports to guarantee production of its new banknotes.

In its first acquisition in decades, the central bank said on Thursday it was purchasing a 90 percent stake in Landqart AG after the company -- which makes the polymer material used in new 10-franc notes -- got into financial difficulties.

Buying the company was the best solution to avoid interruptions in the production of the Durasafe paper, described by SNB Chairman Thomas Jordan as "integral" to the safety of new notes.

"In case the Swiss National Bank was not ready to .. buy the company we would have had the risk of liquidation of the company, that would have been orderly or less orderly," Jordan told a press conference.

"The risk would have been an interruption of the production of Durasafe which (would) be very problematic for our bank note issuance that takes place at this moment."

The SNB said the remaining 10 percent would be bought by printing and publishing company Orell Fuessli Holding , which prints the SNB's notes, with the two companies paying a combined 21.5 million francs for Landqart.

The deal came about after an overseas customer unexpectedly cancelled an order with Landqart, which employs 260 people, leading to a big drop in sales and cash flow problems.

The company reduced workers' hours to deal with the crisis, which the SNB said posed a "direct and existential threat" to Landqart's survival.

The company, which was a subsidiary of Canada's Fortress Paper, is important to the SNB because it makes the Durasafe substrate used in the latest series of Swiss bank notes.

The paper allows special security features like a transparent Swiss cross and ultraviolet fibres to be incorporated into the notes to make them difficult to counterfeit.

The substrate is a three-layered paper which is used to print the new 10, 20 and 50-franc bank notes in the past 18 months as part of its redesign of the currency. It is due to launch new versions of the 100, 200 and 1,000-franc notes in the next two years.

The SNB said Landqart would be provided with enough funds to ensure its survival, with between 5 and 15 million francs earmarked for the project.

Chairman Jordan said the SNB would look to reorganise the business but had no interest in printing its own money or keeping a paper business in the long term.

The SNB had the obligation to supply Switzerland with bank notes as part of its mandate, Jordan said.

"As long as the public wants to have bank notes, we will provide them with bank notes," he said. "As long as this is the case we have the ambition to provide state of the art and very safe bank notes."

($1 = 0.9861 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi and Ralph Boulton)
Ukraine's Chief Military Prosecutor's Office has launched criminal proceedings against 79 people, including 49 Russian citizens, since the beginning of the anti-terrorist operation (April 2014) over the cases of Russian armed aggression.

According to a report posted on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO) on Wednesday, December 20, 43 indictments against 46 people (including 20 Russian citizens) were sent to court, and 32 people are on the wanted list.

The courts sentenced 30 people to imprisonment for a term of 3 to 15 years, among them 11 Russian citizens, including three regular servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces.

"These court decisions recognized the fact of Russia's waging aggressive war against Ukraine," the report says.

In addition, the courts considered 26 criminal proceedings opened for high treason, for crimes against public security, and for waging an aggressive war.

In 24 proceedings, convictions were issued against 24 persons, with real imprisonment for a term of 3 to 12 years. Military prosecutors currently consider 90 proceedings for these crimes, of which 78 persons have already been notified of suspicion.
Switzerland has allocated 500,000 Swiss francs (about $507,000) to prepare residents in eastern Ukraine for the winter season, Swiss Ambassador to Ukraine and Moldova Guillaume Scheurer has said.

"We urged the participating states engaged in alleviating the humanitarian consequences of the conflict, and we decided as well to give a special new contribution for the UNICEF winterization program. There are some special needs in winter, and all agencies are coming with their special appeals, Switzerland responded with CHF 500,000 to this appeal in favor of UNICEF winterization efforts," he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to the diplomat, many people, including those living along the contact line and those living on both sides of the contact line, are directly affected by the conflict, as well as at least 1.5 million people inside the country.

The ambassador also said that Switzerland plans to keep assistance to Ukraine at the level of previous years.

"We will not diminish our aid, but keep it at the same level or maybe even increase it a little bit. This is precisely the moment when the consequences of the conflict are still active, and donors participating from other states need to continue showing solidarity with the population... The conflict is still a humanitarian tragedy, and I think it is important for all of us to do everything we can together with the Ukrainian authorities, of course, to reduce the suffering of the people," Scheurer said.

At the same time, he noted that the appeals of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and UN agencies do not receive due response from international donors.

"What have we done in 2017? It's roughly what you can achieve in Ukraine in the field of humanitarian assistance with not too much money. The Swiss donation is a little bit more than CHF 3 million a year, but divided into several main objectives. One of them is water," the ambassador said.

Scheurer also said that Switzerland had helped provide access to drinking water for about 3.9 million people on both sides of the contact line.

"What we delivered concretely was a little bit less than 2,000 tonnes of chemicals for water treatments, because water has to be purified to be drinkable," the diplomat said.
The Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) recommends that the Cabinet consider the creation of a State Agency for the Development of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises.

This recommendation is contained in an NBU Council decision dated December 13, the NBU said on its website.

Also, the NBU Council recommends that the government ensure priority compensation of funds for loans and interest on them to small- and medium-sized businesses and introduce single rules for the approval of state loan reimbursement programs.

Banks should have "the fullest possible access" to state registers for obtaining complete information about borrowers, the NBU Council recommends. In particular, these are a database of customers' financial statements and databases of the State Register of Enterprises and Organizations of Ukraine.
Travelers line up for departure at the Incheon International Airport in May. / Yonhap



By Park Hyong-ki



All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.



If this saying is true, then this country must be full of Jacks or Jacquelins, given the average person was only able to take 9 days off from work last year.



That's just five days if not counting the weekends.



Koreans are hard, fast workers.



Instead of finding joy and relieving their stress through vacations, they would rather refresh with booze and cigarettes day in and day out.



Statistics back this up.



Koreans work the longest hours after Mexicans. Korea has one of the highest smoking rates, as well as alcohol consumption.



But these are not really good ingredients for a person to feel therapeutically good after a hard day's work. Just consider Korea's high suicide and accident rates that come with them.



Who's to blame for creating a nation of workaholic, alcoholic and smoking Jacks and Jacquelins to keep up being an economic powerhouse?



The good news is the government wants people to relax, take more vacations, find a work-life balance, enjoy outings and while they're at it, help the tourism sector out of its deep deficit.



It came up with yet another tourism policy, not much different from the ones by former administrations.



Visa deregulations, travel coupons, better infrastructure and services tailored to the needs of locals and foreigners, more support packages for tourism startups, promoting medical tourism.



This time, it wants people to take 12 days of vacation a year.



The list seems to go on and on without any distinctiveness from previous tourism policies.



Like every administration's policy for labor, innovation and tourism, they all seem to miss this big but easy-to-ignore picture that needs a major makeover to steer Korea in the uncertain future.



And it is not the economy. It is the culture.



The government can lay out all the policies it wants to boost innovation, tourism, labor and everything else that relates to the economy to help it make extra buck for its gross domestic product and maintain its global ranking.



Who wouldn't want to get off work early on Fridays, take longer vacations and go to less-traveled places?



It can introduce all the fancy tools for people to start their own companies, or reduce unemployment.



But without the culture of creativity and risk taking, the policy would be worthless.



The same goes for tourism.



Ask any economists or investors, they would agree Korea has one of the best infrastructures for business and traveling. It has high-tech airports, roads, subways and startup incubators.



But the minds are so settled in the old ways of doing things, taking orders from top to bottom with a work ethic dating back to the 1970s  work and study harder, go to college and find a stable job preferably at a conglomerate.



It worked then when Korea had nothing to lose, and when it was so caught up in trying to catch up to the advanced countries.



Times have changed. The economy has to change with it.



But it is the culture that makes the economy sustainable.



How do we recreate the culture that would be more suitable for the new age  or a paradigm shift  thinking that longer guiltless days off can raise efficiency and improve creativity, and risk taking can be more rewarding?



A lot of suggestions say it should start with education.



No one has the answer unless one knows what the real problem is and tackles it.



But scientist Thomas Kuhn's theory could guide Korea that a shift can be achieved by revolutions not accumulation.



Perhaps, a revolution, not innovation, is what this country needs to reinvent the culture needed for the envisioned economy.


Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku speaks during a press conference at the Government Complex in Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Nam Hyun-woo



Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Choi Jong-ku expressed a lukewarm attitude Thursday to some key recommendations proposed by a financial administration renovation committee. They included private financial firms having employee-recommended executives on their boards.



In a year-end press conference at the Government Complex in Seoul, Choi said the FSC will "do its best to fully abide by the recommendations" that the committee had announced. But he added, "it will control the speed in following the advice due to concerns from the market." The government launched the committee, comprised of 13 experts, in August to regain public trust in financial administration. It issued 70 recommendations.

Causing most debate was the proposal for public financial institutions to have board members elected by employees.



Also, the committee advised the FSC to impose heavy taxes and fines on "borrowed name" accounts suspected to belong to Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee. And it asked the financial regulator to reconsider the principle of separating banking and commerce regarding online-only banks.

In addition, the committee wants a fresh investigation into the heavy investment losses through so-called knock-in-knock-out currency options in 2008.



Choi said the FSC will follow the direction on having labor-backed executives at public institutions, but said a social consensus was required regarding private companies.



"I agree to the cause of having labor-recommended executives on board, but Korea's legal structure and the labor culture are different from that of European countries that have introduced the system," Choi said. "A social consensus on the issue should come first."



Regarding borrowed name accounts, Choi said "it will be appropriate to impose fines, and fines will be necessary." He added that the topic should be addressed with new laws.



On separating banking and commerce, Choi said that an exemption may be necessary to maximize the favorable effects coming from online-only banks.



To prevent conglomerates from controlling financial firms, the country's Bank Act separates financial and industrial capital and prohibits non-financial firms from possessing more than 10 percent of bank stocks or 4 percent of voting stocks. Because of this rule, online-only banks, which info-tech companies are supposed to lead, are having trouble in increasing such firms' shares in them.



With regard to the knock-in-knock-out fiasco, Choi said it would be impossible to launch a new investigation because the Supreme Court has already ruled on related cases.


Stanislav Yezhov, an assistant and interpreter of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who was detained on suspicion of high treason on December 20, collected information about foreign trips of the Ukrainian prime minister on the instructions of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has said.

"The [SBU's] main investigation department, in the course of criminal proceedings, documented the activities of an employee of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, who, in fulfilment of the tasks of representatives of the Russian special services, namely the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, collected official information of the Cabinet of Ministers, in particular, regarding foreign trips and foreign negotiations of the Ukrainian prime minister, which, during personal meetings and using e-mail, he transferred to representatives of the Russian special services," the deputy head of the SBU's main investigation department, Vitaliy Mayakov, said in a video released on the SBU's Youtube channel on Thursday.

At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that the detained official had been charged with high treason (Part 1, Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), rather than espionage.

"This form of high treason, unlike espionage, does not foresee that the information that is transferred to foreign special services must contain state secrets," Mayakov said.

As reported, late on December 20, counterintelligence officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) exposed an official from the Ukrainian Cabinet's secretariat for activities in the interests of the aggressor country's special services, the SBU press center has reported.

"Law enforcement agents found that the official had been recruited by the Russian special services during an extensive trip abroad. The SBU agents documented that the official followed Russian supervisors' instructions and collected information about the Ukrainian government's activities, using special equipment," the report said on Wednesday evening.

The collected information was delivered to the supervisors via electronic communications channels.

Criminal proceedings were opened pursuant to Part 1 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (high treason). The punishment is imprisonment for a period from 12 to 15 years, with or without confiscation of property.

According to the Ukrainian media, Yezhov was accompanying Groysman to every international meeting and on every trip. The media also said that Yezhov used to work at the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States, the Ukrainian presidential administration and the Verkhovna Rada office.
Police investigate Youbit hacking earlier this week



By Kim Yoo-chul



Police began an extensive investigation into the closure of the Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit after the operator announced it had filed for bankruptcy due to hacking attacks.



"We've asked police to conduct a thorough investigation of the latest system shutdown at Youbit, which resulted in the loss of 17 percent of its cryptocurrency. As far as we know, an investigation is underway," said an official at Yapian, which owns the Youbit exchange, Wednesday.



An official at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and its cyber security division sent officials to Youbit headquarters in Seoul to check its computer servers.



"We are checking the amount of total losses and further details. It's too early to say who might have been behind the latest Youbit attack," said an official from the agency.



Youbit ceased trading and filed for bankruptcy after it was hacked for the second time this year. The latest hacking occurred in the early morning of Dec. 19. Yapian didn't say whether the theft involved bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.



The earlier attack, which happened in April this year, saw 4,000 bitcoins stolen. The exchange was used to buy and sell cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ethereum.



After the hacking, Yapian immediately disabled trading and froze investors' accounts, blocking withdrawal to minimize additional losses. Later Wednesday, the operator said it would allow investors to withdraw up to 75 percent of their assets held in the exchange before the bankruptcy process.



This is the first time a Korean cryptocurrency exchange has filed for bankruptcy due to external factors.



While the country's internet and security agency maintained the earlier attack on Youbit was due to cyber-spies working for North Korea, some claim the latest hacking might have been related to insurance fraud, pointing to the fact that Youbit had subscribed to an insurance policy at DB Insurance which covers up to 3 billion won from any damages associated with cyber attacks.



"We are collaborating with the local police regarding the allegations," said an official at DB Insurance without elaborating further.



Youbit is a small firm in Korea's cryptocurrency market, with one of the world's busiest cryptocurrency exchanges Bithumb taking up about 74 percent of the country's market share. About 30 more cryptocurrency exchanges have been set for public trading, according to cryptocurrency operators.



Experts say cryptocurrency exchanges are becoming more vulnerable to various types of cyber crime as their valuations soar. For example, bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency product, traded as high as $18,759.67 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday (Hong Kong time).






Novelist and artist Lee Oi-soo smiles at a facility in Gamseong Village in the county of Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, in this June 6, 2017, file photo. Lee has lived in housing in the park for a decade and is under pressure to leave the facility. / Korea Times
By Jun Ji-hye



A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea across the mid-western border Thursday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).



"A low-ranking soldier defected to our GP (guard post) across the mid-western border at 8:04 a.m.," a JCS official said, asking not to be named.



The latest defection came about 40 days after another North Korean soldier fled to the South through the Joint Security Area (JSA) at the truce village of Panmunjeom.



The JCS said the GP occupants identified the soldier coming toward the South through surveillance equipment, adding that the soldier carried an AK-47 assault rifle.



"Relevant bodies will conduct an investigation into how and why the soldier defected to the South," the official said.



No shots were exchanged between the two Koreas during the soldier's defection; but South Korean troops fired 20 warning rounds from K-3 machine guns at 9:24 a.m. when North Korean border guards approached the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) while searching for the soldier who defected.






Gov't submits motion to ratify Hague Adoption Convention



By You Soo-sun



The National Assembly has been stalling on ratifying the Hague Adoption Convention, which seeks to minimize inter-country adoption and establish safeguards for children.



The Ministry of Health and Welfare submitted a motion for approval of the convention on Oct. 18. The convention, which enforces stricter requirements for inter-country adoption and calls for protections against related abuses such as child trafficking, came into effect in the international community in 1995.



Since then, 96 countries have ratified the convention; South Korea signed the convention in May 2013, but has yet to ratify it.



If the National Assembly approves the motion, it is expected to reduce the number of inter-country adoptions and change the practices surrounding the system.



Specifically, it maintains that inter-country adoptions should be made in the best interests of the child and that each state should take measures to enable the child stay with their biological family  such as by providing aid to single-parent households and encouraging domestic adoption.



It calls on the government to take more responsibility and imposes stricter requirements on adoption agencies to prevent the abduction, sale of, or trafficking of children.



Additionally, it seeks strengthened cooperation between the countries involved in the process to ensure the basic rights of children.



This will curtail the roles private adoption agencies play in Korea, primarily the Holt Children's Services in Korea, Eastern Social Welfare Society and Social Welfare Society, which have served as the prime agents facilitating the process.



Many adoptees have criticized the system's loopholes in ensuring the naturalization of all adoptees, managing of birth and adoption records, and following up with adoptees abroad. They argue that of the 167,000 Koreans adopted abroad over the past six decades, about 19,000 were not naturalized in their adopted countries.



Some adoptees questioned the efficacy of the convention in ensuring adequate safeguards for children.



"I think the Hague Convention serves to facilitate adoption rather than protect children and preserve families. The Korean government should step up after such a long history of being the largest exporter of children," said Simone Eun-mi Huits, international public affairs manager at KoRoot, an NGO supporting overseas Korean adoptees.



Huits also called for more fundamental reforms with an implementation plan.



"Korea does not have an implementation plan in place, so it seems they are doing it more for the outside world, so that it looks good, rather than to really improve the system and work on family preservation and child protection."



"The government should include adoptees' voices  while they are talking, my people are dying," she said, adding over six Korean adoptees have committed suicide this year alone.



"Korea could be such an important player in the children's rights movement  but will it step up?"


South Korean coast guards warn a Chinese vessel fishing illegally in waters near Gageodo Island in Sinan-gun, South Jeolla Province, on Dec. 19. / Yonhap







By Ko Dong-hwan



The South Korean coast guard fired a machine gun to scare off 44 Chinese vessels fishing illegally in Korean waters Tuesday, in a confrontation that lasted over five hours.



The Korea Coast Guard's West Sea division spotted the large group of 60-80 ton vessels flying Chinese flags 98 kilometers west of Gageodo Island in Sinan-gun, South Jeolla Province, early Tuesday.



The boats were illegally fishing in Korea's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and four coast guard patrol boats were called in to deal with them.



Korean coast guards used loudspeakers at 9:15 a.m. to warn off the Chinese boats. Most were illegal and non-registered and had their names erased. But the Chinese vessels, in groups of five to six, did not budge. Some were shielded by iron gratings.



The coast guard then fired water cannon and non-lethal sponge bullets to shift the boats, without success. Six of the vessels then motored toward a 1,500-ton Korean patrol boat in an apparent hostile move.





Forty-four Chinese vessels were fishing illegally in South Korean waters. / Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji

A group of North Korean soldiers retreated after South Korean guards fired warning shots in the central-western part of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the four-kilometer-wide inter-Korean border, Thursday morning.

The North Korean soldiers were likely searching for a soldier who defected to the South at 8:04 a.m. The South Korean guards fired 20 rounds from their K-3 machine guns at the soldiers.

It is not clear whether the North Koreans fired back but no casualties were reported.

The ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said a northern soldier defected and was in custody.

The incident came a month after a North Korean soldier's dramatic defection at the truce village of Panmunjeom. North Korean guards shot the soldier several times as he escaped. He has since recovered.












By Kim Rahn



President Moon Jae-in urged unions to join the government's labor reform drives aimed at creating jobs, reducing irregular positions and boosting job quality.



Moon had a meeting with representatives of civil servants' unions and state organizations at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday, to express his gratitude for their donation of financial incentives to improve the working conditions of irregular workers.



"The government firmly believes the labor sector is a partner in state management," Moon said. "And one of its goals is to realize a society where labor is respected. But it cannot be achieved only through government efforts; if the labor sector joins us, we can achieve a lot more."



Toward that goal, the President said management also needs to join, and all related parties  the government, labor and management  need to compromise by making concessions and sharing burdens. "Without compromise among the three parties, sustainable development is impossible."



He said the government would play a responsible role in invigorating talks among the three. "We'll try to resume the halted tripartite talks system. I don't mind the form of the talks as long as all related parties can communicate and build solidarity," Moon said.



His remarks were virtually targeting the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the nation's two umbrella unions. The two had refused to participate in talks at the tripartite Economic and Social Development Commission, to protest the government's labor policies.



In October, the FKTU expressed its intention to return to the commission talks, but the KCTU is still refusing to do so.



"Both labor and management, please trust the government and support it. If you do so for one year, the government will prove its economic and labor policies will benefit both sides," Moon said.



The President also said the government will be an "exemplary employer" in the public sector, saying more and more state- and local government-run agencies are upgrading workers' status from irregular to regular.



In the meeting, Moon praised the joint move by civil servants' union and state organizations to create "funds for co-existence and solidarity," which were raised from incentives workers received last year.



In January last year, the Park Geun-hye administration presented a plan to adopt a performance-based incentive system for civil servants, saying they did not have competitiveness with the previous pay system, in which their wages rose automatically annually.



Civil servants protested, saying it was difficult to evaluate their performance in contrast with other occupations. But the administration pushed ahead with the plan, and 120 ministries and state-run organizations introduced the incentive system in June last year, with a combined 160 billion won being provided in incentives at the end of the year.



But the succeeding Moon government scrapped the performance-based system in June this year. And the civil servants' unions decided to donate the money to improve the working conditions of irregular workers in the public sector.



"The donation was the best example of talks and compromise," Moon said. "The labor sector proposed the idea first. Management, civic groups and academia discussed how to realize it. And finally a foundation to manage the funds was established through the participation of the government, management, labor, civic groups and academia."


People's Party Chairman Ahn Cheol-soo, center, salutes the national flag during a meeting of the party's Executive Committee at the National Assembly, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Choi Ha-young



Bareun Party Chairman Rep. Yoo Seong-min Thursday welcomed People's Party Chairman Ahn Cheol-soo's decision a day earlier to put to a party-wide vote whether to merge the two parties.



Yoo said he will set up a team for negotiations with the People's Party on the proposed merger.



The People's Party has 39 seats and the Bareun Party has 11 in the 299-member National Assembly. If the parties are combined, however, more than 20 lawmakers opposing the merger could leave, observers say.



"We welcome Ahn's future-oriented decision to reform politics," Yoo said during a party meeting. "I will promptly make up a team for negotiations between the parties."



He appointed Reps. Oh Shin-hwan and Jeong Woon-chun as lead negotiators for the anticipated merger process. "I hope the People's Party will confirm the people in charge of negotiation," Yoo said. "I've exchanged views with Ahn in direct and indirect ways regarding the merger."



Yoo's remarks are in response to Ahn's Wednesday press conference.



To push for the merger, Ahn declared to carry out a vote of confidence by all party members about his leadership. He said he will drop out of the post if a majority of party members oppose his merger attempt.



Otherwise, he will spur the merger drive, which is likely to result in the defection of anti-merger representatives mostly based in the Jeolla provinces.



The People's Party continued its internal feud over the party's merger with the minor conservative party, Thursday.



Ahn has sought the liberal party's merger with the conservative party to create a centrist party. However, some Jeolla-based lawmakers are furious about the bid, claiming the merger will harm the liberal values of the People's Party  which is primarily based in the Jeolla region, the liberals' home turf.



The party's 75-member executive committee decided to put Ahn's merger proposal to a vote. "The People's Party will start the voting process next week and wrap it up by the end of this month," Ahn said after the committee.



"Party members have repeatedly shown their strong support for the merger through surveys. The outcome is in stark contrast with some of the Jeolla lawmakers' stances and it's impossible to reach an agreement through debate," Ahn said in the committee. "The vote by all party members is the only way to end this time-consuming and destructive controversy."



However, there is another obstacle before he can accomplish his goal  party congress. As anti-merger lawmakers point out, the congress is authorized to finalize the party's merger.



In the middle of the committee, anti-merger lawmakers revealed their hostility toward Ahn. "The merger, despite the desperate opposition in the party's core support base, is meaningless," Park Joo-sun, a four-term lawmaker based in Gwangju, told reporters.



During the closed-door committee session, Ahn's supporters rallied to back up the chairman's bid, slamming the anti-merger lawmakers. To prevent a confrontation, the event was held amidst strict security.


More than two million lights decorate the atrium of Gaylord Texan Resort, the second-largest non-gaming convention center hotel in the U.S., located west of Dallas. / Courtesy of Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center



By Jane Han



DALLAS  Here in the U.S., it's that time of the year again  Black Friday sales, chaotic shopping trips, busy social calendars and then, of course, the perennial debate over Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays.





U.S. President Donald Trump's big push for making Merry Christmas great again goes all the way back to his campaign trail, but just as much as the president is fired up with the war on Christmas, it turns out many Americans don't care about it as much.





"It can be tricky, but I just say, 'Merry Christmas.' I have yet to see anyone express that they're offended by this greeting. It is Christmas. It is what it is,'' says Joe Ecklund, 43, the fish market manager at Kroger, a major grocery chain, in the suburbs of Dallas.





Nina Hart, 38, who was doing last minute gift shopping at a nearby Costco, says, "The media seems to talk about it more than what the reality is. It's Christmas for goodness sake. How about just not getting political at all at least during this time of the year?''









Not political, that's what the American people are leaning toward, a new poll shows.

The Pew Research Center found that 52 percent of U.S. adults said it simply didn't matter how they're greeted in stores over the holidays, up from 46 percent who didn't care five years ago.





The survey of 1,503 men and women said nine in 10 Americans celebrate the biggest holiday of the year in some way or fashion, but the number of those who perceive it as a religious holiday versus a cultural celebration continue to decline.





Meanwhile, Trump made his point and ditched the catch-all "Happy Holidays'' greeting for ''Merry Christmas'' in this year's White House presidential holiday card that reads, "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.''





In October, he lamented, "They don't use the word Christmas anymore because it's not politically correct. You go to department stores, and they'll say, 'Happy New Year' and they'll say other things. And it will be red, they'll have it painted, but they don't say it. Well, guess what? We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again.''





But despite the unpopular president's efforts to stir up people over the decades-old focal cultural debate, the general public seems to be losing interest in whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa as long as it's merry.
















By Doug Bandow





For Washington, South Korea, and Japan, the most satisfactory solution to the North Korea problem would be Kim Jong-un's surrender. Complete and abject.



Maybe that will happen. We can dream. But it wouldn't be wise to count on that outcome. Yet that appears to be the Trump administration's approach to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.



Kim says a nuclear deterrent is necessary for his nation's defense. The president insists that he will loose the dogs of war before the North develops the capability to hit the U.S.

So, if the administration is serious, war seems inevitable.



Alas, this would be no "cakewalk," a la Iraq. Unfortunately, retaliation is highly likely. Estimates of potential casualties routinely break a million, and could go far higher if the North dropped nukes on Seoul and Tokyo.



If not war, then negotiation is necessary. Yet the world recently watched the unseemly gelding of Secretary of State (for a little while longer, at least) Rex Tillerson over precisely this issue. He suggested initial talks about talks, or other stuff, without preconditions, with the DPRK.



But after being publicly reprimanded by the president, the secretary abased himself and announced that the North had to "earn" its way back to the negotiating table by ending missile and nuclear tests (receiving nothing in return) and agreeing to give up its nukes and missiles (with only the exact terms of surrender to be determined).



The bizarre spectacle made serious negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea less likely.



The North first must wonder with whom it could talk. Secretary Tillerson obviously doesn't speak for the president and isn't likely to be around much longer.



Second, President Donald Trump demonstrated that he is interested only in the North's virtual surrender. He previously labeled talks a "waste of time" and abandoned his earlier proposals to engage Kim.



More generally, Washington cannot be trusted. The Obama administration took advantage of the Moammar Gadhafi government's elimination of its nuclear and missile programs to impose regime change in Libya, resulting in the regime's destruction and Gadhafi's gruesome death.



President Trump certainly would have to do more than whisper a few sweet nothings into Kim's ear. But the North Korean leader isn't likely to get much more if he begins any negotiation by accepting America's position, as Washington insists.



In short, diplomacy appears to be a dead end. Which brings us back to a war which would be mad to contemplate.



No one outside of Kim, anyway, wants the DPRK to have a nuclear arsenal. But there is no evidence he is suicidal. And the prospect of the much larger People's Republic of China, led by the even more radical Mao Zedong, possessing nuclear weapons was more fearsome.



Likewise, the Soviet Union under America's chief Cold War bete noire, Joseph Stalin, was far scarier than the North. Despite proposals for preventive war, Washington responded by containing and deterring the new nuclear powers.



This should be the starting point in confronting Pyongyang. The DPRK should know that to start a war means defeat. Which is precisely why the North did not renew its takeover attempt over the last 64-plus years.



Next, the U.S. should talk to Pyongyang. Negotiation is communication, not concession.



The lack of relations with China in 1950 contributed to Beijing's fear of America's plans in Korea and prevented the PRC from effectively warning Washington against sending American troops to the Yalu.



In the short-term the U.S. should concentrate on slowing the North's rush to develop its missile and nuclear capabilities. For instance, trading a freeze on new tests for suspension of U.S.-South Korean military exercises, as proposed by China and Russia, would buy time during which the potential combatants could step back, take a breath, and look for peaceful solutions.



In the longer-term Washington should engage the PRC over what the latter needs to toughen sanctions. The U.S. and its allies should develop a package of benefits, backed by China, in return for North Korean denuclearization. Finally, Washington and the North's neighbors should confront a future in which the DPRK might possess a serious nuclear arsenal.



Today the Trump administration essentially hopes something magical will happen to denuclearize the peninsula. If not, threatens the president, he will plunge the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia, and America into war. Instead, the administration must find a peaceful path out of the current impasse.





Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World" and co-author of "The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea."


The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) says it has identified a lieutenant colonel within its ranks whom it suspects of having worked for Russian security services.

"As we speak, the illegal activity of yet another Ukrainian citizen who acted to the detriment of the nation's interests in favor of Russian intelligence agencies is being documented. Unfortunately, it is one of our officers, who holds the rank of lieutenant colonel," the SBU's chief investigator, Vitaliy Mayakov, said in a video posted on Youtube by the SBU on Thursday.

An SBU spokesperson also said that a senior expert consultant at one of the SBU's central offices was exposed of collaborating with Russian intelligence.

"SBU operatives established that the lieutenant colonel passed official information to the aggressor state's representatives. He also assisted Russian intelligence services with carrying out spying-subversive activities in detriment of the national security of Ukraine," the SBU said on its website.

SBU searches at the fixed and temporary home addresses led to the discovery of laptops and tablets containing evidence of correspondence with and transfer of information to Russian security services.

SBU officers "also seized a TT pistol, two F-1 grenades, and over 700 cartridges of varying caliber," the SBU spokesperson said.

This is the second such case in the past 24 hours. Yesterday, it emerged that Stanislav Yezhov, an assistant and interpreter to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, has been detained on suspicion of treason. According to the SBU, Yezhov gathered information on his boss's foreign trips for the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
LG Electronics' levitating speaker, PJ9 / Courtesy of LG Electronics



By Lee Min-hyung



Innovation is the only way for a company to survive the competition, especially in an industry reaching saturation.



The audio and speaker industry is one of the markets faced with growing competition, and for this reason companies will not stay in business by simply developing high-end sound systems. They need something else their counterparts have never tried.



In this regard, LG Electronics' PJ9 floating speaker shows how the company successfully blended its tech expertise with one differentiating "fun factor." By taking advantage of magnetism, the company launched the innovative product which consists of two devices - the bottom woofer speaker and another one levitating over the former.



Honestly, the device is not a reasonably priced option to meet the appetite of people from all walks of life. The PJ9 sells at 369,000 won ($338.53) here. But those who put priority on design and innovation combined with quality sound output would be able to confidently say the device is worth it.



When operating the 480-gram woofer bass station, it generates powerful and well-adjusted low-pitched sound. The bass sound is heavy enough for a user to feel the vibrations through the floor around the device.



Tuning the device with the upper floating and circling speaker, the two devices offer balanced audio experiences for users to enjoy low- to high-pitched sounds clearly. The self-circling upper speaker is satisfactory not just as a visual effect, but the 360-degree balanced sound output.



To meet the "floating" hype, the Seoul-based appliance manufacturer enabled magnetic levitation by placing the electromagnet at the upper center of the woofer station. When the floating speaker runs out of batteries, it automatically drops down to the woofer station and charges itself. The device boasts 10 hours of battery life.



The fun element is in line with the global electronics industry trends for "lifestyle" products. This reflects the fact technological specifications do not matter much more in any home appliances - encompassing TVs and audio - than before.



The PJ9 can, in this respect, be a great option, as its sleek white design and slowly circling floating speaker look to be able to mingle well with other home appliances in most people's houses.



The levitating speaker is also rated to an IPX7 water-resistant standard, allowing users to enjoy the device in outdoor spaces without concerns about possible water damage in areas such as bathtubs or campsites.


By Kang Seung-woo



The trade minister said, Wednesday, China's economic retaliatory measure against Korean-made electric vehicle batteries will be lifted.



Since Korea decided to deploy the U.S. missile defense system on the Korean Peninsula in July 2016, the Chinese government has refused to certify electric cars powered by batteries made by Samsung SDI and LG Chem, which excludes them from state subsidies.



"China is penny wise and pound foolish on the battery issue as they prevent Korean companies from making massive investments there," Paik Un-gyu, minister of trade, industry and energy, said in a press conference in Seoul.



His remarks came after he met with China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei in Beijing last week.



According to Paik, the Chinese minister said there was no government-led retaliation against the batteries due to the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.



"I think the battery case is purely done by Chinese carmakers who believe using Korean products _ despite the THAAD issue _ runs counter to Chinese public sentiment," Miao was quoted as saying.



Paik said he also discussed the issue with Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan.



"The commerce minister said the battery issues will be settled and investors' difficulties will be eased when the relations between Korea and China get back on track," Paik said.



In November, President Moon Jae-in asked Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang to stop China's discrimination against Korean firms, but Samsung and LG failed to make the government subsidy list earlier this month.



According to Paik, the Chinese government's ban on group tours to Korea is likely to be eased soon. The travel suspension took effect in March.



"The commerce minister said the tour ban issue would be addressed soon," he said.



However, the Chinese government has reportedly reinstated the ban on tour groups to Korea _ less than a week after President Moon Jae-in made a state visit to China and held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.



Zhong is scheduled to visit Korea next month to resume talks on liberalization of trade in services and investment under the free trade agreement (FTA) between Korea and China.



"China seemingly wants to finish the negotiations as soon as possible and renew the relationship between the two nations," Paik said.



Meanwhile, he said the government will decide whether to approve LG Display's plan to build a factory for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels in China, next Tuesday.



The plan came to light in July, but the government has been reluctant to approve it, citing technology leaks. OLED is designated as the nation's key technology, so government approval is required when building a factory overseas.



However, there is speculation that the THAAD-sparked diplomatic row was the biggest reason for the delay.



The U.S. THAAD battery has been stationed in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, to ward off growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, but China claims that the system's radar can be used to spy on its military activities.


The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO) regards a statement by Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk as a desire to avoid criminal liability for tax evasion, the prosecutor general's spokeswoman, Larysa Sarhan, has said.

"The PGO considers a statement by Finance Minister Danyliuk as a banal desire to avoid criminal liability for non-payment of taxes established by the State Fiscal Service, in the amount of UAH 746,343.84," Sarhan told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, in turn, told the LB.ua news outlet: "I consider his statement as a banal desire to avoid criminal responsibility ... The State Fiscal Service carried out a check and confirmed the non-payment of UAH 700,000 of taxes by Danyliuk. Danyliuk should either pay taxes or be imprisoned," Lutsenko said.

Earlier on December 21, Danyliuk accused the Prosecutor General's Office of hindering an investigation into the actions of former managers and owners of PrivatBank, initiating and actively promoting criminal cases against the incumbent officials of the bank.

"I demand the resignation of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko," Danyliuk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

Danyliuk said that it was possible to get a positive decision of the London court to freeze the assets of former PrivatBank owners Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov "not thanks to the support of the prosecutor's office, as it should have been, but despite all direct attempts by the Prosecutor General's Office to interfere with this process."

While commenting on his accusations, the minister recalled that the nationalized PrivatBank had initiated the opening of five criminal cases, which are now being investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office, in particular, on bringing the bank to insolvency, illegal withdrawal of funds from the bank in various ways, and improper use of confidential information from the bank's servers.

"However, none of these cases have been submitted to court for consideration, because pre-trial investigations in these proceedings are progressing very slowly, and in some cases, investigative actions are not conducted at all," Danyliuk said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland have agreed on further steps to promote the initiative to deploy a UN peacekeeping force to the entire occupied territory of Donbas, including the uncontrolled section of the Ukrainian-Russian state border.

"To promote the peace settlement, further steps were coordinated to promote the initiative to deploy a UN peacekeeping mission throughout the entire occupied territory of Donbas, including the uncontrolled section of the Ukrainian-Russian state border. Freeland also informed [Poroshenko] about close coordination of approaches with the U.S., in particular at aa meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on December 19," the press service of the head of the Ukrainian state reported after a meeting between Poroshenko and Freeland in Kyiv on Thursday.

The sides also agreed to continue to make joint efforts to free Ukrainian hostages in Donbas and political prisoners illegally held in Russia and the occupied Crimea.

Poroshenko thanked Canada for support in carrying out reforms and countering Russian aggression, a clear indication of which was the recent decision by Ottawa to include Ukraine in the Automatic Firearms Country Control List.

The sides discussed the dangerous development of the situation in Donbas provoked by the violation of the ceasefire by pro-Russian militants, including cases of shelling of civilian facilities. Special attention was paid to Russia's intentions to undermine the implementation of the Minsk agreements, in particular, by withdrawing from the Joint Center for Control and Coordination.

In addition, Poroshenko noted Ottawa's important role in promoting the Crimean resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly. Poroshenko also called on Canada to join the formation of a group of friends on de-occupation of Crimea.

The Ukrainian president congratulated Canada on the upcoming responsible mission - chairmanship of the Group of Seven, expressing confidence that Ukraine will be among the priority issues on the agenda of this important forum.
Kyiv City Council has approved the city's deficit-free budget for 2018 with UAH 49.1 billion, or $1.76 billion, in revenue, which includes UAH 45.7 billion allocated for the general fund, which is 6.1% and 8% up on 2017, respectively.

The budget was backed by 95 Kyiv City Council members, who gathered for an extraordinary plenary session on Thursday, December 21, the agency said.

Kyiv's general fund spending in 2018 is planned at UAH 36.4 billion, and that of the special fund at UAH 12.6 billion.

"The deficit of the special fund is set at UAH 9.2 billion and will be balanced at the expense of the UAH 9.2 billion surplus of the general fund," head of Kyiv City Council's standing commission on budgeting, social and economic development Andriy Strannikov said.

As was reported, Kyiv's budget January through November 2017 was fulfilled by 94.5% in terms of revenue. Its earnings were 26.8%, or UAH 9.24 billion, up year-over-year.
Poroshenko sees extension of sanctions against Russia as adequate response to escalation in Donbas

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has stressed the strengthening of the international front on countering Russian aggression after the decision by the Council of the European Union to extend economic sanctions against the Russian economy until July 31, 2018.

"I welcome the EU Council decision to extend the economic sanctions against Russia until July 31, 2018 as a symbol of firm transatlantic unity and solidarity with Ukraine," Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.

According to him, together with the Crimean UNGA resolution, decisions of the U.S. and the Canadian administrations regarding the possibility of providing Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons, "the international front to counter the Russian aggressor is getting stronger."

"It is an adequate response to the Kremlin for escalation of the conflict and the targeted undermining of the Minsk arrangements," Poroshenko wrote.

Earlier on Thursday, the Council of the European Union officially resolved to extend sectoral economic sanctions against Russia until July 31, 2018, a communique released in Brussels said.

"On 21 December 2017, the Council prolonged economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy until 31 July 2018," the EU Council document said.

The latest extension was politically agreed on by the EU heads of state and government at their summit in Brussels on December 14.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk has requested law-enforcement agencies to provide him with state security protection, a source in Ukraine's Finance Ministry has told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

"The minister has asked for protection, but he has not received it yet," the source said.

Danyliuk said that since the summer of 2017 an active campaign was being waged against him and he did not rule out criminal proceedings might be brought against him on charges of alleged tax evasion. He also said that a number of fake accounts had been set up in social media on his behalf. He also reported about grossly fabricated falsification of alleged sexual harassment.

Danyliuk on Thursday accused the chief of Ukraine Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), Yuriy Lutsenko, of blocking investigations into improprieties at PrivatBank and demanded Lutsenko's resignation.

The finance minister linked the smear campaign against him to the introduction by his ministry of a transparent system of value-added-tax (VAT) reimbursements, blocking corrupt VAT obligation schemes, his refusal to increase financing of the PGO, reforms at Ukraine's State Fiscal Service and investigations of the service's Kyiv offices, as well as the active position of the ministry involving the liquidation of the tax police and creation of the State Financial Investigation Service.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak has said he hopes that the ceasefire in Donbas during the New Year holidays and winter holidays will be respected.

"I would very much like to believe that on New Year's Eve we, the military, will be able to fulfill our functional duties and tasks not under shelling of artillery or launch rocket systems. I would like the civilian population living along the contact line to feel the New Year. We hope very much that this truce will be respected," Poltorak said in a video address released on Thursday.

At the same time, he said that truce agreements had been often violated by the enemy. According to the minister, almost 15,000 ceasefire violations by terrorist groups were recorded this year.

Poltarak recalled that the Trilateral Contact Group agreed in Minsk on December 20 that a ceasefire in Donbas begins from midnight on December 23 and will last until the end of the winter school holidays.

He also said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were ready for possible escalation of the situation in eastern Ukraine.

"The Armed Forces are in such a condition today when they can react to the worsening of the situation," he said.

According to him, huge work has been done in recent years, and the Ukrainian army has a reserve and an understanding of the situation not only in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but also on the Ukrainian border.

"We are preparing and are ready to change the situation, and if, God forbid, there is an escalation, we are ready for adequate work," Poltarak said.
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...
Tigers tame Legends in AA Final, 36-10 With seven straight appearances at Highmark Stadium, it has become somewhat of an expectation for the Legends to appear in...

Five Lancers sign national letters of intent Last Wednesday marked another big day for the St. Marys of Lancaster athletic department as five students signed national letters...

First Teamers were vital to their squads success  All-Bee Boys Soccer 

While there is no I in team, there certainly are individuals whose skill at their respective sports help improve the...
PRESS RELEASE

Canada To Host Foreign Minster Summit on North Korea

Dec. 20, 2017 (EIRNS)U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a press conference with Canadas Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa on Tuesday. Freeland announced that the United States and Canada will co-host a Jan. 16 meeting of foreign ministers from around the world in Vancouver, British Columbia, to discuss North Korea.

White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Tillerson, in separate statements, contradicted each other on what President Trumps intention was regarding talks with North Korea. McMaster said:

"The President has made very clear that on North Korea, for example, now is not the time to talk. And what he means is, there cant be negotiations under these current conditions.... The problem is now that their programs have advanced so far we dont have time to do that again, and so we cant repeat the failed pattern of the past."

(In fact, it is the policy of refusing to talk to North Korea which is the "failed pattern of the past," namely, Obamas "strategic patience," a policy intended to encourage the Norths weapon program to justify a military buildup around China.)

Tillerson, on the other hand, said that the white House has "not rejected diplomatic talks" with North Korea. "What the White House has merely observed is North Korea has not exhibited a willingness to talk." He said that there should be a pause in testing weapons and missiles, but repeated that the United States is willing to then have talks with no preconditions.

On Monday, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said the United States believes North Korea was behind the "WannaCry" cyber-attack against hospitals and businesses around the world in May, but offered no new evidence (even Forbes headlines: "U.S. Blames North Korea For WannaCryBut Are Trumps Cybersleuths Wrong?"). Bossert said that the United States had "used just about everything you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea to death."

South Korean President Moon Jae-in confirmed that he had asked the U.S. military to postpone the scheduled joint military exercises in March until after the Olympics, and that the American command in Seoul said it was considering the request. He told CBS yesterday: "It is possible for South Korea and the U.S. to review the possibility of postponing the drill," but adding that it depended on North Korea not testing in the meantime.
Exclusive interview with Swiss Ambassador to Ukraine and to Moldova Guillaume Scheurer for the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency

To what extent do violations of the 'silence regime' in Donbas affect the implementation of humanitarian projects there?

In Switzerland humanitarian assistance to Ukraine has been already priority since the beginning of the conflict in 2014 till now, of course if we speak only about humanitarian assistance and we don't speak about cooperation elements of the strategy that we have for Ukraine for 20 years. But following the conflict and difficult humanitarian situation immediately after the beginning of the conflict we started humanitarian assistance program. Today is already 4 years of humanitarian assistance. What we see is on the one hand a conflict that is continuing, ongoing. Its not a forgotten conflict but nevertheless we see many donors getting away from the urgent needs that we see in Ukraine. That's a problem. We see that appeals made by the ICRC, the UN agencies are not well responded.

We still have a very difficult situation, the needs are still too high unfortunately. The needs are not going down but the capacity of agencies to react is limited.

Then new crisis that have made the media to put an emphasis on new problems, also dramatic, for example Syria, Africa, others. Some of those catastrophes are made by men, some of them made by nature but they have caused less readiness by donors to give money.

Locally in my case the readiness of the Swiss government to continue to play an important role is still the same, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs Cassis mentioned. We urged to pay greater attention to, and to take seriously into consideration the plight of the civilian population affected by the conflict in Ukraine and we urged the participating states engaged in alleviating the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and we decided as well to give a special new contribution for the winterization program of UNICEF. There are some special needs in winter and all agencies are coming with their special appeals and Switzerland responded with 500,000 CHF to this appeal in favor of UNICEF winterization efforts. At the same time, we also indicated, and this is a trend which is good for Switzerland, that we will not diminish our aid, but keep it at the same level or maybe even increase a little bit humanitarian assistance. Because this is precisely moments when the consequences of the conflict are still active that donors participating from other states need to continue showing solidarity with the population. So the conflict is ongoing, very hot. The population not only along the contact line but certainly the population that lives on both sides of the contact line is directly affected by the conflict but also at least five million people inside the country are also affected directly by the conflict, I mean of course the internally displaced people (IDP). So the conflict is still a humanitarian tragedy and I think it is important for all of us to do everything we can together with Ukrainian authorities of course to reduce the suffering of the people.

Are you satisfied with the cooperation between Ukrainian authorities, in particular the Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Perons?

We are very satisfied frankly speaking in particular with Minister Chernysh. He has facilitated to a very great extent the delivery of humanitarian of assistance. So it's a very good concrete cooperation that helps in important transit, regulations, and duties. There has been a very big help from Minister Chernysh himself very often and certainly from the whole Ministry as such. So are all ministers that have been involved. So government reaction to the Swiss humanitarian assistance is very good.

In your opinion, what steps should the Ukrainian government take to resolve the conflict in Donbas?

The road is clear - it's the Minsk process. It's also clear that there are several parties in the Minsk agreements. And I think everybody has to play a correct role in the Minsk process to be successful. The obligation of the Ukraine government and obligations of other parties to the agreement are clear. They just have to be fulfilled but the first condition is certainly on both sides is the ceasefire that needs to be respected. Without a ceasefire it will be just impossible for the Minsk process to go on and for the next steps to be followed.

But some politicians criticized the Minsk process for inefficiency

Peace is difficult. If you look at all the peace processes of the last years outside Ukraine, you will see that peace needs a lot of concession, a lot of efforts, and a lot of very global comprehensive future views. I just give you an example of the peace process in Colombia that took many years. The government at one point has to make a first step of trust that has to be reciprocated of course as it was the case in Colombia. There were many moments where we thought the peace process will collapse where it stopped, where it even went back a few steps a few years. Some people were desperate but in the end you will always see the light in the end of the tunnel  very strong leaders that were ready to carry the peace process further. So the peace process is never easy.

I'm not saying there is no alternative to the Minsk process but it's a good agreement, I think. But it has to start with ending the exchanging fires to give a chance to Minsk process.

What is the volume of humanitarian aid provided to Ukraine in 2017, in particular in the field of drinking water purification??

The main idea of Swiss humanitarian assistance is to support as directly as possible the population on both sides of the contact line. At the same time, when you give humanitarian assistance it is important that authorities on both sides call to respect all principles of international humanitarian law. In particular it's connected with infrastructure: water, pipelines, energy stations and so on. That has been on purpose targeted. This is something that cannot be accepted it's against international humanitarian law and this is something we also advocate. It's not only direct actions towards the population but we also try to raise the responsibility for breaking international law. Its something that is very important.

What we have done in the 2017? It's roughly what you can achieve in Ukraine in the field of humanitarian assistance with not too much money. The Swiss donation is a little bit more then 3 million CHF a year, but divided into several main objectives one of them is water. That's the key. We know that without water there is no life. In addition in winter without water very often you don't have heating system. So we work with the Voda Donbasa in particular. Switzerland has helped to secure access to drinking water for some 3.9 million people on both sides of the contact line. This company is very important. What we delivered concretely was a little bit less than two thousand tons of chemicals for water treatments, because water has to be purified to be drinkable.

Then special mobile units that can in different places of the water pipeline check the quality of the water to avoid infection. We also gave technical equipments for checking leaks, special lab equipment to enhance operational capacities of Voda Donbasa. So water was the main issue in 2017 as well as it was in 2016 and we will continue to donate to this field.

The other priority is medical equipment. People are suffering, and the hospitals on both sides of the contact line need medical equipment, in particular something very vital is cardiographs and something quite unique that was able to be made by Switzerland it was devices for testing tuberculosis. It is very important because tuberculosis is a highly contagious disease and equipment that they had was destroyed because of the conflict. So nowadays they have new equipment that can detect tuberculosis in 24 hours and not two or three months as it was the case of the previous equipment. 12 hospitals were equipped with medical equipment in Mariupol, Kurahovo, Donetsk and Luhansk.

How do you work with the non-controlled territories?

We go directly. We cross the contact line at official check points with very good cooperation of the Ukrainian government. We cross often with trucks when we bring 2000 tons of chemicals. This is very important for humanitarian reasons and also for political reasons because it's something that reconnects the two sides.

We also work in the field of demining. It is also very important to work with unexploded ordnance. We see very often victims of mines along the contact line. We will certainly continue our support in 2018.

What is your assessment of the decentralization reform in Ukraine?

Frankly speaking we are very pleased with the excellent cooperation with the ministers in charge. There are many positive reforms in Ukraine and certainly decentralization is one of them. It's not too much spoken about because it's a little bit less visible sometimes, especially here in Kyiv. But it's something going more through the regions and you don't feel it like you do with health reform or pension reform. We see excellent results of decentralization by the feedback from the regions. The fact that they have more financial autonomy is really good. We see the municipalities have really excellent understanding about their new financial capacity that they are receiving and put money directly into actions, for example for new schools, roads, clinics and so on. We still see a lack of action by some municipalities. Sometimes they dont know what to do with this money that they are receiving directly. This is something we are working on. But those are exceptions; the high majority has excellent results. I think that citizens realize that decentralization is positively influencing their everyday life.

There's still much to do to strengthen the system, make it better. But if you think what has been done in less than two years, you understand that a lot has been achieved.

Ukraine has passed legislative acts required for launching the healthcare reform. What is your opinion on this reform?

We work very efficiently with the acting minister Suprun and the whole Ministry of Health. We are absolutely convinced in the reform she started, that has been adopted by the Rada. We think this reform goes in the right direction. There is no other alternative. It's a very good reform.

Healthcare reform is also generally speaking a priority for Switzerland since we have started our technical cooperation with Ukraine. First part of the program that is basically ending now was very much focused on women and young children, pregnancy. That is what we can do without the reforms, some actions that you can do outside the main political reform, and this was for many years a Swiss priority - working with the doctors, nurses and hospital managers to help pregnant women and children. And in this sphere a lot of things have been achieved. I just would like to mention one thing: in Ukraine the mortality of children by the age of one year has been strongly decreasing over the last years. Of course it's still high by international standards: it's 7 out of 1000 children. But before it was 14. So it's a very good result. It's not everything due to the Swiss commitment, of course, but we really worked together with Ukrainians and I think our part was in a way important. We don't have a top-down approach; we work jointly in a very cooperative manner together with Ukraine.

We also put an emphasis on education. Over the last years, we had centers of education all over the country, specifically for doctors, nurses and medical managers to teach how to improve the quality of services for children and women. Its continuing working.

Frankly speaking, very often the doctors don't speak very much with the nurses and with the managers; managers don't speak with the nurses, everybody was working in isolation. We cut those walls, so they started to speak. We have an excellent result. These people are the trainers now. Next, we have a ripple effect. Region to region.

We also decided to focus Swiss priorities on non-communicable diseases, basically healthy lifestyle. It is also an important part of preventive medicine. Today non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer are responsible for 90% of annual deaths in the country. Preventing and controlling these diseases requires greater public awareness of health, less tobacco and alcohol dependence, and better health services. A specific priority of Swiss cooperation in Ukraine is the prevention of non-communicable diseases. Promoting healthier lifestyles, along with preventive measures, will help curb diseases such as cancer and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

And we also continue our work in the field of information, education.

Could you point out Ukraine's failures and successes in the field of energy efficiency? What needs to be done?

We strongly believe in the importance of the energy efficiency for all countries, in particular for Ukraine. 2 out of 3 Ukrainians cannot afford to pay their energy bills. We believe that Ukrainian households could slash their energy bills by investing in energy efficiency measures such as window replacements or roof insulation. Under a Swiss initiative, more than 250,000 households were offered loans to invest in more energy-efficient homes. Globally we are the fifth biggest bilateral donor in Ukraine. It's a good result.

We understand that our money not big enough to change the whole country but we try to identify people or regions that have real willingness and capacity to change. For instance, we work with Vinnitsa, because it's a medium-sized city, where we saw the reaction of local authorities that want to implement our ideas and come up jointly with us. So we have Vinnitsa energy-efficiency project. Over the last 7 years we have given more than 21 million CHF for this project. We started with giving 160 trams for the city from Zurich. The idea was to reduce the traffic, to have better transportation system. Then we decided also to support the rehabilitation of the heating system of Vinnitsa. So we built, reconstructed, and co-financed three boiler houses, six new gas fire boilers, three wood fire boilers... Basically the whole heating system of Vinnitsa has been re-thought, re-built and re-put into practice. So now, 80% of the project is complete. But the result is that the city has become the first Ukrainian city to receive the European energy award. It's very difficult award to get, not many cities in Western Europe have it. It's becoming trendy to receive it.

The result: 27% of gas consumption has been reduced. It represents also a reduction of twenty thousand tons of CO2. It's important for the environment.

The same project we have in Zhitomir. It started later in 2014. And we expect Zhitomir will be the 2nd city in 2018 to receive this European energy award. The commitment for Zhitomir is 15 million CHF per year. Probably after the project we'll finish, we might choose a third or fourth city.

We also have a smaller project for only 6 million CHF for buildings and private houses.

We also have two projects with our international partners, like EBRD and Germany in Poltava and Chernivtsi.

What obstacles do Swiss investors see in Ukraine? How can they be removed? Do you have some success stories?

Yes, we have both: successes and problems. Switzerland is a very important, top-9 most important foreign direct investor. So, Swiss companies are present and active in Ukraine. What's very happy and proud that basically no Swiss company left Ukraine in the bad years: 2014-15. These were very difficult years for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Nobody left, everybody said: ok, lets go through it and we'll stick to Ukraine, to the commitments to the workers, to the clients, to the customers, and well continue working. Basically now, in 2016-2017 they are very happy that they have stayed. Globally they are making good business, could always be better, could be fewer problems to solve on a regular basis.

For instance, there is a production facility of Swiss company Vetropack producing glass bottles, very close to Kyiv. Its working 24/7, two lines of production and if you see its really amazing. They are producing bottles, all colors and shapes.

Another company, a little bit further, called Geberit. It produces instruments for bathroom. It also works 24/7. Very successful production but of course they have problems like that they could have in any country. Doing business is not an easy task. There are some problems you cannot avoid in business activities. But some problems could be avoided. Sometimes you have overregulation, overbureaucracy, corruption. Corruption is still really an issue.

I have heard stories you know about direct and indirect corruption. But the point is certainly the compliance of Western companies is really high. I really believe that western companies, Swiss and others, they obey to a zero corruption system. They have really strict rules all over the world that they have to respect.

But what I heard for example about fire alarm systems. An inspector comes and says that your system is not according to the laws and regulations. The Swiss company says OK, we will make it according to the regulations. There's a margin of interpretation into regulations. But the inspector is always pushing for something more, so the Swiss company will obey and will pay the full system. It's a big money that doesn't go into the production but goes into the fire system. It is necessary to protect the workers and Swiss company will do it. The problem is sometimes they push the limits too high at the same time you see another company around the corner that has only a fire extinguisher and a bucket of water. So one company is investing hundreds thousands of dollars and another company is investing $5. And the playing field is not level. So one company receives, and that's an indirect corruption incentive to reduce the price, because probably they pay the fire inspector some money not to have the correct fire system. And this is the thing that I heard back from the companies. It's not a problem only for Swiss companies but also for German, Italian, French and others.

Ukrainian

Oh yes and Ukrainian. Exactly. But certainly the message here is that corruption is an issue. The rule of law is an issue. Its the fact that respect for the rule of law is not given yet. Those are the two elements where many business people are a little bit hesitant to come to Ukraine. They can deal with competition, with business issues, production problems but those two issues and they're have little way to interact positively. And they don't like this because they're in the hand of the local authorities, or judges, or inspectors, or whoever. So the message is: please change that, protect and help those companies that are already in Ukraine to stay. It's necessary of course to attract more companies and the efforts of the government are very good. But the first priority would be to protect companies that are already in Ukraine, after that you will attract more additional companies, because they speak together.

Last year we had a problem with a Swiss company having an artificial problem created by an inspector. At one point the problem became grave, and it's not the first time. After that headquarters decided: OK, price to continue is too high. We leave. Its impossible to do business in those circumstances. We will close the office.

Luckily the reaction of the central authorities was very fast and positive: to cancel all the administrative decisions that have been taken.

You know it's a big company with contacts all over the world. If they leave, the message is catastrophic for Ukraine. Because everybody will realize who is leaving.

Luckily the responsiveness is good but we should prevent those problems from the beginning.

I think a very useful initiative is a business ombudsman founded by EBRD with also the Swiss money for instance and other donors. The ombudsman is doing a very good job, he has very good lawyers working with him, very efficient and they can really interact with the ministries on an eye-to-eye basis, so they help us a lot. I think this is something that improves the business environment in Ukraine and companies also understand his good actions.

What is the level of cooperation between Switzerland and Ukraine in the identification and arrest of assets obtained illegally in Ukraine and transferred to Switzerland?

Switzerland has reacted immediately after the departure of Mr Yanukovych and all the assets of people connected with the previous government were frozen. It's not so much and I don't think it's billions, it's roughly 70 millions CHF but it's important money. So this money has been frozen in 2014, but for the legal system it's a little bit of a problem. We understand that most certainly this money was illegal but you have to prove it or the other one has to prove that they are legal. Money was frozen for 3 years until 2017, now we decided to prolong the freeze of course because we work well with Ukrainian authorities. We received a lot of information we requested. There are many exchanges between Swiss and Ukrainian authorities, but it is complex because the schemes used to channel the money to Swiss banks accounts were very difficult. It goes via the other banks, other countries, other companies, names, people, dates You have to follow the tracks of the money to clearly prove that it was illegal.

We will continue freezing the money until you go to the court, after that we will defreeze the account and give the money back to Ukrainians. That we were doing before with other countries.

A few months ago we gave back money to Nigeria that had been stolen by the president of Nigeria 15 years ago. The process took 15 years, but assets were frozen in the banks to the moment when we gave them back. We have the patience and strength, willingness to go through as long as cooperation with Ukrainian authorities continues to be the same. I have no doubt it will go successfully to the end but we need to go to the court, because it takes a legal decision. We have to apply the rule of law in all the cases.
Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and activist who in 2011 revealed that he unknowingly entered the U.S. with false documents as a child, will publish his debut memoir with HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books.

Vargas book will be titled Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.

Vargas, a member of the team that earned a Pulitzer for reporting on the Virginia Tech shooting for the Washington Post in 2008, was born in the Philippines, where he lived until he was 12. In 1993, he moved to the United States to live with his American grandparents, initially unaware that he was living in the country illegally.

Advertisement

He disclosed his immigration status in 2011, writing in an essay for the New York Times Magazine, I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. ... It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful.

Vargas is the founder of Define American, a nonprofit immigration advocacy group that supported the so-called Dream Act, a bill that would grant permanent residency to some immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. The bill was first proposed in 2001, but has never become law.

In 2012, President Obama implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which aimed to protect the young immigrants who might have been covered under the Dream Act. President Trumps administration rescinded the policy in September.

In 2014, Vargas was recognized with PEN Center USAs Freedom to Write award

Vargas has directed two documentaries: Documented, about his own story as an undocumented immigrant, and White People, a 2015 film about the impact of white privilege.

After finding out I didnt have the right legal documents to be in this country, Ive always wanted to write my way into America, he said. But Dey Street executive editor Julia Cheiffetz has been encouraging me to write a book for years, and Im excited and terrified to finally put my full story on the page.

Cheiffetz, who negotiated the book deal, said that there is a gaping hole when it comes to memoirs about immigration in the United States.

Jose speaks to the experience of being an undocumented immigrant with an activists strength, and a poets heart, she said. His story is almost impossible to believe, yet it is the story of 11 million people in this country.

The publication date for Dear America has not yet been announced.
Tesla Inc., Californias only major automaker, satisfies its car buyers better than any other brand, according to Consumer Reports.

The electric-drive Tesla Model S sedan topped the list of cars whose buyers are satisfied with their purchase after three years of driving. The Model X finished eighth.

And across all models, the Elon Musk-led automaker  based in Palo Alto  ranked No. 1 on the list of vehicle brands whose owners feel satisfied.

Advertisement

The satisfaction rankings, released Thursday, arent a measure of build quality or reliability. Instead, Consumer Reports said, cars that meet owner expectations tend to top the list.

Although Teslas Model X crossover continues to suffer from quality problems, owners are otherwise happy with it, according to Consumer Reports.

The survey asked about driving experience, comfort, value, styling, audio and climate systems.

10 Most Satisfying Cars

 Tesla Model S

 Porsche 911

 Chevrolet Corvette

 Lincoln Continental

 Ford F-350

 Mazda MX-5 Miata

 Toyota Prius

 Tesla Model X

 Honda Odyssey

 Dodge Challenger

10 Least Satisfying Cars

 Dodge Grand Caravan

 Fiat 500

 Ford Transit Connect

 Infiniti QX60

 Dodge Journey

 Nissan Versa sedan

 Chevrolet Trax

 Acura ILX

 Nissan Sentra

 Mercedes-Benz GLA

10 Most Satisfying Brands

 Tesla

 Porsche

 Genesis

 Chrysler

 Audi

 Mazda

 Subaru

 Toyota

 Honda

Lincoln

russ.mitchell@latimes.com
The Federal Communications Commission has leveled a $13.4-million fine against Sinclair Broadcast Group for failing to identify sponsored content that aired on its TV stations.

The fine announced Thursday is the largest ever proposed by the commission for such a violation and comes at a delicate time for the Baltimore-based company, which is seeking Justice Department and FCC approvals for its proposed $3.9-billion acquisition of Tribune Media.

The FCC said Sinclair created 60- and 90-second spots that promoted the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah and aired them on its local newscasts, or as free-standing half-hour programs.

Advertisement

But the company did not identify the spots as sponsored content paid for by the Huntsman Cancer Foundation. Other non-Sinclair stations that were supplied the programs and segments were also not informed about the sponsorship, the FCC said in a statement.

The segments and programs were shown more than 1,700 times, according to the FCC.

The FCCs sponsorship identification rules require that paid programming be identified as such to provide a clear distinction for viewers between commercials and news coverage or editorial content.

The commission said it determined that Sinclair had been in violation of its rules following an investigation based on an anonymous complaint made in April 2016. In a statement, Sinclair denied any wrongdoing and said it will contest the fine.

Any absence of sponsorship identification in these public service segments was unintended and a result of simple human error, Sinclair said in a statement.

Sinclair has already been widely criticized among television news professionals for forcing its stations to run segments with conservative-leaning points of view or commentaries on its local newscasts. However, those segments do not run afoul of FCC regulations.

Sinclair is currently the largest owner of TV stations in the U.S., and the merger with Tribune would give it 233 broadcast outlets reaching 72% of the country.

The proposed merger has been opposed by both liberal and conservative advocacy groups who believe it will create too much consolidation of power in the media business.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
Mattel Inc. laid off 70 employees earlier this month, according to a California Employment Development Department report.

Mattel had 32,000 employees as of last December, according to its Security and Exchange Commission filings.

The cuts, which were effective Dec. 8, come during a time of financial struggle for the El Segundo-based toymaker, whose brands include Barbie, Fisher-Price and Hot Wheels. The company has been looking into cost-saving measures since the third quarter of 2017.

Advertisement

Cost reduction and efficiency enhancing plans for Mattel include outsourcing the production of certain brands, eliminating underperforming retail locations and prioritizing ad spending, according to securities filings.

These cost saving initiatives were identified through a systematic, company-wide process  and challenged all aspects of how Mattel does business, Mattel said in its report.

Mattel said in the filing its sales would suffer this holiday season because some of its brands are underperforming. Toys R Us, one of Mattels major customers, filed for bankruptcy protection in September and owes Mattel $136 million.

The toymaker predicted a decline in sales of a percentage in at least the mid-to-high single digits compared with 2016. It also expected to incur $200 million in severance and restructuring costs until 2019.

alejandra.reyesvelarde@latimes.com

Twitter: @r_valejandra
Basic steps to prevent infections  such as washing hands, isolating contagious patients and keeping ill nurses and aides from coming to work  are routinely ignored in the nations nursing homes, endangering residents and spreading hazardous germs.

A Kaiser Health News analysis of four years of federal inspection records shows 74% of nursing homes have been cited for lapses in infection control  more than for any other type of health violation. In California, health inspectors have cited all but 133 of the states 1,251 homes.

Although repeat citations are common, disciplinary action such as fines is rare: Nationwide, only 1 of 75 homes found deficient in those four years has received a high-level citation that can result in a financial penalty, the analysis found.

Advertisement

The facilities are getting the message that they dont have to do anything, said Michael Connors of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, a nonprofit in San Francisco. Theyre giving them low-level warnings year after year after year and the facilities have learned to ignore them.

Infections, many of which are avoidable, cause a quarter of the medical injuries Medicare beneficiaries experience in nursing homes, according to a federal report. They are among the most frequent reasons residents are sent back to the hospital. By one government estimate, healthcare-associated infections may result in as many as 380,000 deaths each year.

The spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other antibiotic-resistant germs has become a major public health issue. While Medicare has begun penalizing hospitals for high rates of certain infections, there has been no similar crackdown on nursing homes.

As average hospital stays have shortened to 4.5 days in 2012 from 7.3 days in 1980, patients who a generation ago would have fully recuperated in hospitals now frequently conclude their recoveries in nursing homes. Weaker and thus more susceptible to infections, some need ventilators to help breathe and have surgical wounds that are still healing, two conditions in which infections are more likely.

Youve got this influx of vulnerable patients but the staffing models are still geared more to the traditional long-stay resident, said Dr. Nimalie Stone, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions medical epidemiologist for long-term care. [That] kind of care is so much more complicated that facilities need to consider higher staffing.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees inspections, has recognized that many nursing homes need to do more to combat contagious bugs. CMS last year required long-term care facilities to put in place better systems to prevent infections, detect outbreaks early on and limit unnecessary use of antibiotics through a stewardship program.

But the agency does not believe it has skimped on penalties. CMS said in a statement that most infection-control violations have not justified fines because they did not put residents in certain danger. For instance, if an inspector observed a nurse not washing his or her hands while caring for a resident, the agency said that would warrant a lower-level citation unless there was an actual negative resident outcome, or there was likelihood of a serious resident outcome.

In November, CMS waived penalties for 18 months against facilities that violate the new stewardship rule. The industry had said nursing homes needed more time to prepare. (The moratorium does not affect Californias antibiotic stewardship requirement, which took effect last January.)

Holly Harmon, the senior director of clinical services at the American Health Care Assn., a nursing home trade group, said the industry has made strides in combating infections through better training and encouragement for staff members to look for gaps in infection control and to speak up about them. The percentage of nursing home residents with urinary tract infections  the only type of infection all nursing homes must report to Medicare  has dropped by more than half since 2011.

Infection prevention control is a priority, Harmon said. The path really is focused on continuous improvement.

James Morris said he did not see such dedication when his mother, Georgina Morris, entered Astoria Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Sylmar in October 2015. Workers were coming in and out without washing their hands, he said.

While there, Georgina Morris, 86, fell ill to a particularly virulent strain of Clostridium difficile, known as C-diff. Morris said he insisted his 86-year-old mother, who was severely dehydrated, be sent to the hospital, where she stayed for 10 days. She has had subsequent flare-ups of the infection that required rehospitalization and, later, a fecal transplant, in which doctors transferred stool from a healthy patient into her bowels, a procedure that can treat the infection by introducing bacteria that counter the C-diff germs.

James Morris complained about Astoria to health authorities shortly after his mother left. Records show inspectors waited 18 months, until a regularly scheduled review in May 2017, before investigating her case. Such delays are common: California Department of Public Health cases remain open, on average, for nearly 20 months.

Although inspectors faulted Astoria workers for not cleaning their hands while treating Georgina Morris, they could not definitively determine whether she contracted the infection there or before she arrived. But the inspection found other infection-control lapses throughout the home. A housekeeper cleaned a wall with the same cloth used to wipe a toilet. A patient had a dirty intravenous line left in longer than necessary. The inspector watched as a worker failed to wash her hands after delivering a breakfast tray to a contagious resident in isolation.

It was the second consecutive year inspectors cited the home for substandard infection control that had the potential to harm residents. Both citations were below the level that could trigger fines.

Astoria did not respond to requests for comment.

Elsewhere, health regulators are similarly reluctant to assert that nursing home errors led to patient infections or put patients in imminent danger. Only 161 homes among the 12,056 that violated infection-control rules were cited at those higher levels since 2014, according to Kaiser Health News analysis.

The value of lower-level citations as deterrents is questionable: Authorities have cited 7,045 homes more than once over infection-control lapses, including 942 that racked up four or more violations, the analysis found.

Perhaps a bigger stick might be more helpful, said Joseph Rodrigues, Californias long-term-care ombudsman.

Inspection records show nurses and aides are often not familiar with basic protocols, such as wearing protective clothing when coming into contact with contagious residents and isolating them from others in the home and visitors. Others are not trained properly on how to clean patients. Still others, in a rush and understaffed, take shortcuts that compromise sanitary precautions.

Weve always been shocked at how often weve personally witnessed people providing care in facilities and not washing their hands, which has got to be the most basic thing in infection control and prevention, said Sherry Culp, who as Kentuckys long-term-care ombudsman advocates for aggrieved nursing home residents.

Another recurring problem stems from nurses and aides infecting residents because they come to work ill knowing they would not get paid for the sick time, said Dr. David Nace, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

During a norovirus outbreak in January at Fir Lane Health & Rehabilitation Center in Shelton, Wash., at least six infected employees returned to work without waiting the minimum 48 hours after their symptoms abated. Inspectors discovered the virus ultimately spread to 32 employees and 43 residents  more than 40% of those living in the home. Fir Lane did not respond to requests for comment.

They have these draconian policies for taking off, Nace said, speaking broadly about the nursing home industry. And if you dont have the draconian policies, then everyone takes off. That plagues the entire healthcare industry.

Rau is a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent publication of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Data journalist Elizabeth Lucas contributed to this report.

jrau@kff.org
The $1.5-trillion Republican tax plan headed to President Trumps desk puts new limits on how much households can deduct in state and local taxes if they itemize.

Beginning in 2018, couples filing jointly will be limited to an annual combined deduction of no more than $10,000 in state and local income, sales and property taxes.



For the record: An earlier version of this article said that if you want to pay your property taxes early, you should contact your county tax assessors office. You should contact your county treasurer-tax collectors office.

The bill prohibits people from prepaying 2018 state or local income taxes this year and claiming them as an itemized deduction for 2017, but is less clear on whether that strategy might work for property taxes.

Advertisement

How could I be able to pay property taxes early?

Property tax bills generally go out in the fall, with half the taxes due by early December and the other half due by April. Its possible to pay the whole thing when the bill first arrives or pay the second installment early.

Paying the entire bill this year presumably would allow you to deduct your entire property tax bill from your 2017 federal taxes. Thats important if you expect your state and local taxes will be greater than $10,000 next year, which means not all could be deducted.

What should I do first?

First and foremost, talk to your tax advisor, said Darien Shanske, a tax law expert at the UC Davis School of Law.

There are a lot of complexities to the tax changes to sort out before deciding whether paying early would be a prudent financial move, Shanske said.

You shouldnt go into credit card debt to pay these things, Shanske said. There is potential to save a little bit of money by prepaying, but just dont wing it.

OK, so Ive talked to my tax advisor and decided to pay early. How do I do so?

If you pay your property taxes yourself, contact your county treasurer-tax collectors office.

L.A. County homeowners can visit L.A. Countys Property Tax Portal to pay online or get information on how to pay by mail, in person or over the phone. People with questions can also call the office of L.A. Countys treasurer and tax collector at (888) 807-2111.

If your mortgage servicer pays your property taxes for you from an escrow account, it might not be possible to pay earlier. In such a case, you should contact your servicer.

Will this definitely work?

No, said Shanske, who said hes still researching the bill and said the IRS could interpret it in a way that would block such a move.

Robert Kalonian, a spokesman with the Los Angeles County Office of the Assessor, agreed that paying the entire bill now is a possibility to avoid a higher federal tax bill, but also isnt positive it will work.

We are still trying to get our arms around it, he said. It is going to be a little unclear for now.

Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera contributed to this report.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

Follow me @khouriandrew on Twitter.
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.

Advertisement

But as the tax legislation worked its way through Congress and now heads to Trumps desk, that postcard has largely disappeared  it was nowhere to be seen at Wednesdays White House celebration  as have many of the changes that were designed to simplify the federal tax code.

Deductions that House Republicans planned to eliminate were added back into the bill. A plan to reduce the seven existing tax brackets to four was abandoned. The complicated alternative minimum tax for individuals, which the House bill proposed to axe, was kept in place.

And in the case of so-called pass-through businesses, which pay taxes through the individual code, the overhaul adds new complexities in how they classify their income.

This is not about simplification, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said this week in urging his colleagues to vote down the nearly 11,000-page bill and accompanying report. It was going to be on a postcard. You are going to need to carry a billboard around with you to understand what is in this actual bill.

Experts said that the new tax code wont be much different than the existing code.

For some taxpayers it will be a little simpler, for some it will be more complex, but overall it will be familiar and folks wont think of it as some drastic change, said Joseph Rosenberg, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. On net, its not going to be any simpler.

The biggest simplification is a nearly doubling of the standard deduction  to $12,000 from $6,350 for individuals, and to $24,000 from $12,700 for couples. That will sharply increase the number of Americans who do not need to itemize because the value of their total deductions wont exceed the new standard deduction.

Just doubling the standard deduction means 9 out of 10 people can  I wish I had it with me  9 out of 10 people can file their taxes on a form like a postcard, Ryan said last week, patting his pocket but no longer carrying one of the postcards.

The Tax Policy Center said those figures are roughly correct. They estimated that the number of people who itemize will drop to about 19 million from about 46 million after the bills changes take effect.

Not having to itemize would reduce the time and cost of filing taxes. A study by Youssef Benzarti, an assistant economics professor at UCLA, estimated that filing taxes costs Americans about $200 billion a year.

The figure has been rising since the 1980s in part because of the increase in the number of forms filed by each taxpayer, the study said.

But many people who wont have to itemize still will have to calculate their deductions to determine if they exceed the new standard deduction, Rosenberg said.

Just like under current law, you have to know what your itemized deductions are to know if youre better off with the standard deduction, he said.

And while no longer having to itemize deductions simplifies tax filing, the bill also eliminates some breaks that helped people reduce how much they send to Washington, said Edward Kleinbard, a USC professor and former chief of staff to Congress Joint Committee on Taxation.

My experience is that taxpayers are willing to accept a good deal of complexity if doing so saves them money, Kleinbard said.

He pointed to the deduction for state and local taxes, which the bill caps at $10,000 for couples filing jointly. There is no limit in existing law.

The average state and local deduction taken by the 6.1 million California residents who claimed it in 2015 was $18,438, according to the Tax Policy Center. That was the third-highest average of any state, behind New York and Connecticut.

For them, it may be a simplification, but its not a happy one, Kleinbard said.

The alternative minimum tax, which forces some upper-income earners to calculate their taxes twice to see if it applies, will remain in place, although it will apply to far fewer people.

The Tax Policy Center estimated that the higher exemption level in the bill for the alternative minimum tax will mean the number of filers who have to pay it will drop to about 200,000 from 5 million. So for many of the people who now pay it, the bill will simplify tax filing.

But just as with itemized deductions, some people who will not have to pay the alternative minimum tax still will have to go through the calculations to determine if it applies to them.

From a simplification standpoint, youd prefer no AMT to any AMT, Rosenberg said.

Pass-through businesses  which include mom-and-pop operations and large partnerships such as law firms and hedge funds  will find tax filing more complicated because of new provisions designed to cut the tax rate on their income.

Under the bill, 20% of pass-through income can be deducted, while the rest is taxed at regular individual rates. The deduction is limited to the first $315,000 in income for couples filing jointly and phases out above that level.

The deduction for pass-through income could entice some people to reclassify their tax status to take advantage of it.

Taxpayers are going to jump through a lot of hoops, some of them highly suspect as a tax law matter, to shoehorn their income into this new category, Kleinbard said. In a sense, it injects a tremendous amount of complexity.

Some of the need for simplification has disappeared with tax preparation software and online calculators, he said.

But the broader question, Kleinbard said, is whether eliminating deductions, such as one the House bill initially planned to scrap for large individual medical expenses, is fair to taxpayers.

The basic problem is you cant be both simple and fair at the same time, he said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera
Analyst Spencer Levy has tracked the latest tax legislation through Congress, keeping a watchful eye on its potential impact on people who invest and work in the commercial real estate industry, a multitrillion-dollar driver of the U.S. economy.

Levy took time out from his vacation in Sausalito, Calif., on Wednesday to talk to the Los Angeles Times about the likely impacts of the tax bill on the business he tracks as head of research for the Americas at CBRE Group Inc., the Los Angeles-based global real estate giant.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In a broad sense, how does commercial real estate fare under the new tax legislation?

Advertisement

We ended up in what I consider a good place  a neutral-to-positive impact on commercial real estate. The objective winners are retail and multifamily.

So suffering mall owners and other retail property landlords can be expected to benefit?

Yes. People who earn under $100,000 a year are going to save about $500 to $2,000 per person. People near the median income (of $59,000 annually) or below spend about 100% of their income. Their cash benefit will be spent on consumables, which will positively impact the retail business.

How do apartment owners stand to prosper? Do they benefit from the new limits on mortgage interest deductions on single-family homes or the increase in the standard deduction?

At the margins, yes  the high end and low end of the housing market. With the mortgage interest deduction capped at $750,000 of debt, wealthier families might find owning a home less attractive. The greater impact is at the lower end of the market. If fewer people itemize their taxes to achieve mortgage deductions, renting looks more attractive.

What happened to 1031 property exchanges, which many real estate investors use to defer capital gains taxes by immediately buying property after a sale? Those were on the chopping block.

They survived for commercial real estate. Thats a very significant non-change in the tax code. The exchanges are an important equity preservation tool. There was concern that losing them would have reduced transaction volume, especially in the range of $10 million and below.

Many people buy stocks in real estate investment trusts. Will the new tax rules for pass-through entities affect REITs and their shareholders?

They do. Dividends from REITs were historically treated as ordinary income. Now as a pass-through entity, they have a lower tax rate on the dividends they pay out. That lowers the effective tax rate on them by several percentage points. REIT dividends become more valuable.

So investors who hold real estate through other pass-through companies such as partnerships and S corporations also stand to benefit?

Yes, it will reduce the effective tax rate for those folks who own real estate in a pass-through entity, which is most commercial real estate.

Depreciation has been an important deduction for owners of commercial properties. Will that allowance continue?

It will, and there are two key elements to those deductions. One is for real property and the other is for improvements to real property. If you are in the real estate business, you can continue to deduct interest payment on mortgages without limitations.

Those who continue to choose to do that, though, will not be eligible for some of what they call bonus depreciation for certain property improvements. But if youre not in the real property business, you would be eligible for bonus depreciation for most improvements.

This will become a key provision in landlord and tenant negotiations over who pays for tenant improvement allowances, such as the cost of retrofitting office space for a new occupant. The landlord is under more depreciation restrictions than a tenant who is not in the real property business.

Do the new limits on state and local tax deductions stand to diminish commercial property values in California?

There are a couple of mitigating factors in the [legislation] that will make the SALT impact not quite as dramatic. First, they lowered the marginal rate of federal income taxes so people at the top benefit from that and the new pass-through rules.

Second, the ability to attract talent to a state is a key factor in commercial real estate value and California has terrific infrastructure for that in world-class universities and job-creating companies.

What gives you the most concern about the new tax legislation?

In the last seven years, we have seen an abundance of liquidity and low-cost capital. The mechanism by which this bill is going to work is giving us more liquidity and more low-cost capital. So the economy has not been limited by the supply of capital, its been limited by demand.

The ability to stimulate demand and capital expenditures will be the key to the success or failure of this legislation.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Twitter: @rogervincent
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.

Advertisement

Asked by The Times to clarify the connection on Wednesday, Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist said there was none.

As it relates to team members, minimum pay is a topic that we continue to review as part of our efforts to attract and retain talent, and we have been on a path to increasing the minimum hourly rate, having most recently increased it in January 2017, Gilchrist said in an email in response to an inquiry from The Times.

Asked directly to confirm that the pay raises were not a result of the tax bill, Gilchrist said, That is correct.

On Thursday, Gilchrist backtracked.

We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to raise our minimum hourly pay to $15 as a result, he said after The Times article appeared online.

He would not comment on the reason for the earlier statement or whether Wells Fargo would have raised its pay if the tax bill had not passed.

Arati Sontakay Randolph, a Wells Fargo senior vice president, said that Gilchrist had misspoken Wednesday.

Our spokesperson made a mistake, and we apologize for this, she said Thursday. Our announcement was directly related to the passage of tax reform.

AT&T Inc., Boeing Co., Comcast Corp. and Fifth Third Bank all said Wednesday they would boost U.S. investment or worker pay, or both.

AT&T plans to increase U.S. capital spending $1 billion and provide $1,000 special bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. employees. And thats because of what we did, so thats pretty good, Trump said to applause from Republicans during a celebration of the tax bills passage at the White House on Wednesday.

Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst for financial services firm Raymond James, said the similarity of the announcements, including the same $1,000 employee pledge in several of them, indicated this was a coordinated public relations move designed to curry favor with Trump and congressional Republicans.

What this administration has shown is the president very much pays attention to the headlines and kind of likes companies showing that his legislative actions and his regulatory actions can have a positive benefit for their employees, Mills said.

He also noted that banks and telecommunications companies are highly regulated in Washington.

The most regulated industries always value goodwill in D.C., Mills said.

AT&T in particular is facing regulatory challenges after proposing an $85.4-billion takeover of Time Warner Inc., the owner of HBO, CNN, several other cable networks and the Warner Bros. film and television studio. Last month, the Justice Department sued to block the deal on antitrust grounds.

Wells Fargo also could use a boost to its reputation in the wake of the unauthorized-accounts scandal that led to sharp criticism from lawmakers.

In its Wednesday announcement, the bank said it was pledging the following actions once tax reform is signed into law.

The first was raising the minimum hourly rate for U.S.-based employees to $15 an hour from the $13.50 rate the company announced in January.

Wells Fargo also said it was targeting $400 million in donations to community and nonprofit organizations in 2018 and would target contributions of 2% of after-tax profits for corporate philanthropy beginning in 2019.

We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to take these immediate steps to invest in our team members, communities, small businesses and homeowners, Wells Fargo Chief Executive Tim Sloan said in the news release.

Gilchrist said about 36,000 employees will get a pay raise. He would not say how much the pay raises would cost the bank or how much it anticipates saving because of the tax cuts and other changes in the legislation.

Raymond James estimates that the corporate tax cut will boost earnings for the average U.S. bank by 18%. In 2016, Wells Fargo had $21.9 billion in profits, which was down 4% from the previous year because of the fallout of the unauthorized accounts scandal.

Times staff writer Tracy Lien contributed to this report.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera

UPDATES:

1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from Arati Sontakay Randolph, a Wells Fargo senior vice president.

11:10 a.m.: This article was updated with Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist saying Thursday the pay raises were a result of the tax bill.

This article originally was published at 9:50 a.m.
The Republican tax bill, to be signed into law by President Trump any day now, is a study in missed opportunities.

Conservative lawmakers said the bill would simplify tax returns. It doesnt. They said it wouldnt favor the wealthy. It will. They said its the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. It isnt.

Republicans say the tax bill will more than double the economic growth rate, create lots of new jobs and prompt businesses to give all employees raises.

Advertisement

No serious economist believes any of that, even if some PR-minded companies quickly announced one-time-only bonuses.

But heres one missed opportunity you probably didnt know about: The tax bill could have lowered prescription drug prices.

While the legislation was still being shaped largely in secret by GOP lawmakers, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri crafted an amendment that would have eliminated the drug industrys deduction for direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription medicines.

Such advertising  now a staple of American TV  is widely seen by healthcare experts as a key component of rising drug prices and a waste of money that otherwise could go into research and development.

The American Medical Assn. has called for a ban on direct-to-consumer drug ads, saying the multibillion-dollar marketing campaigns significantly increase the cost of meds and boost demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate.

The United States is one of only two countries worldwide that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. The other is New Zealand.

McCaskills amendment was titled Eliminate the advertising deduction for big PhARMA and was intended to get rid of the advertising cost deduction for pharmaceutical companies.

Needless to say, the amendment was treated as radioactive by Republicans and kept well away from their corporate-welfare legislation.

McCaskill was unavailable for comment. But a spokeswoman said the amendment was offered as part of a constructive attitude toward trying to improve the bill. Like other Democratic proposals, the spokeswoman said, the changes were rejected along party lines.

Deducting the cost of marketing isnt a special perk for drugmakers. Section 162 of the tax code outlines the various deductions all businesses can make  employee salaries, for example, and travel expenses. (Charmingly, the tax code actually has to spell out that illegal bribes and kickbacks are not tax deductible.)

Section 162 basically allows a deduction for all the ordinary and necessary expenses incurred by a business, including marketing, which companies can convincingly argue is a needed part of their interaction with customers and positioning in the marketplace.

The thing about direct-to-consumer drug ads is that they werent an ordinary and necessary part of pharmaceutical companies operations until 1997. Thats when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its guidelines for information that had to be imparted to consumers when pitching a prescription med.

In essence, federal officials allowed drug companies to skip all the fine print when advertising on TV, getting by instead with a hurried recitation of warnings and an admonishment to ask your doctor.

That opened the floodgates for a deluge of campaigns showing happy people whose lives have been vastly improved through high-priced, patented chemicals.

Annual spending on direct-to-consumer drug ads went from a few million dollars prior to the FDAs policy change to more than $1 billion within a year. Spending on drug ads is expected to top $6 billion this year.

In a recent report, the National Academy of Sciences said drug companies now spend substantially more on marketing and administration than on research and development that could lead to new drugs.

It called on Congress to disallow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs as a tax-deductible business expense as a way to refocus manufacturers priorities.

I reached out to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industrys main lobbying group, to discuss the matter. They steered me instead to the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, a grouping of advertising and media companies that defends drugmakers right to reach out to consumers.

John Kamp, the organizations executive director, said any attempt to remove the tax writeoff for direct-to-consumer drug ads would be an assault on free speech and the 1st Amendment.

He also insisted that drug ads actually lower prices because they increase the size of the market and increase competition.

That, of course, is nonsense.

A recent study by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assn. found that even though generic drugs account for the vast majority of drug sales in the United States, the soaring cost of branded drugs represents 78% of total pharmaceutical spending by patients  the same proportion as in 2010.

Moreover, so-called single-source drugs  patent-protected drugs with no generic equivalent  are rising in cost by an average 25% a year, the study found. Typically, those are the drugs most heavily advertised to consumers.

Kamp acknowledged that prior to the FDAs 1997 decision, direct-to-consumer drug advertising didnt happen very often.

Nevertheless, he said the practice is clearly an ordinary and necessary part of drug companies operations and thus qualifies for the Section 162 tax deduction.

Theres nothing new about marketing drugs to consumers, Kamp said. It just increased significantly in 1997.

Democratic lawmakers have long recognized the disingenuousness of that argument and have introduced various bills seeking to end the industrys tax benefit. The drug industry has lobbied aggressively to kill all such legislation.

McCaskills amendment was the latest to die an untimely death.

But dont worry. While the Republican tax bill does nothing to address high drug prices, it does allow U.S. businesses to repatriate at reduced rates gobs of money stashed overseas.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of that provision: drug companies.

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co.s stock took a dive Thursday after the utility company announced it will suspend quarterly cash dividends on its common stock, citing uncertainty over potential liabilities associated with the October wildfires in Northern California.

The suspension will take effect this quarter, the company said. It will also suspend dividends paid out on companys preferred stock, beginning with the three-month period ending Jan. 31, 2018.

PG&Es stock was trading at $43.19 about 8:40 a.m. Pacific Time. That was down 15.5% on the day and down 37.3% from its closing price Oct. 6, the last trading day before the fires began.

Advertisement

Although investigators have not determined the cause of the October fires, which swept through Northern California destroying or damaging some 14,000 homes and inflicting more than $3 billion in losses, power lines and electrical equipment are a leading cause of California wildfires, and courts have been known to hold utility companies liable for damages.

Regulators in the past have hit the states investor-owned utilities with tens of millions of dollars in fines related to wildfires. Southern California Edison faced a $37-million penalty related to the 2007 Malibu fire; San Diego Gas & Electric, $14.4 million related to the Witch, Rice and Guejito fires the same year; PG&E, $8.3 million related to the 2015 Butte fire.

PG&E Chairman Richard C. Kelly said in a statement that given the uncertainty over whether PG&E will be held liable for Octobers fires, suspending cash dividends is prudent with respect to cash conservation, and is in the best long-term interests of the companies, our customers and our shareholders.

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien
Every week, dozens of people walk into Petals N Wax, a Marina del Rey gift store, to return items they bought from online retailers.

They bring in blouses from Eloquii, shorts from Chubbies and bags from Everlane.

Instead of telling them to buzz off, Evelyn Taplin, who runs Petals N Wax, gladly takes their items and issues refunds to their credit cards.

Advertisement

The practice would be totally bizarre were it not for the fact that Petals N Wax is partnered with Happy Returns, a Santa Monica start-up trying to make money by making it easier for people to send back e-commerce purchases.

The company sits at a unique intersection of frustrations: Customers who buy things online dont like the arts-and-crafts experience (packing tape, shipping labels, boxes) of online returns. Online-only retailers, feeling pressure from the likes of Zappos and Amazon to offer free returns, are bleeding cash to do the same. And bricks-and-mortar stores losing foot traffic to online competitors are struggling to entice people back.

Happy Returns frames itself as a solution to each of those problems.

If you give consumers a choice of returning something via mail or in person, they overwhelmingly prefer to return in person, said David Sobie, who co-founded Happy Returns with Mark Geller.

About 8% of items bought in the U.S. end up being returned, according to the National Retail Federation. In 2015, this translated to $260.5 billion in goods returned, not including the cost of processing and shipping. In online retail, the retail federation estimates that the figure for returns is 15% to 30%. For some online clothing retailers, it can be as high as 40%.

Despite the considerable number of e-commerce returns, online retailers have struggled to make returning items as easy as buying them.

Happy Returns is among the first to build a business off returns. The start-up has so far partnered with 20 online retailers and has 50 return bars across the country that include the concierge desks at malls operated by Westfield, Simon and Macerich, Taplins Petals N Wax store in Marina del Rey, and three Eloquii stores in Ohio, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Under the Happy Returns system, customers can take items theyve bought from partner online retailers (such as Everlane or Chubbies) to a partnering mall or bricks-and-mortar store. The refund is processed on the spot. The partnering mall or store then bundles together returned items and ships them to Happy Returns warehouse in Santa Monica, where the companys 25 employees sort and ship the goods back to the e-commerce seller. Online retailers pay Happy Returns a fee per item returned. Sobie and Geller declined to reveal how much the company charges, but said its cheaper than if online retailers were to handle returns themselves.

Alexis Valdez waits for customers who wish to return online purchases at a Happy Returns return bar in Santa Monica. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times )

Happy Returns doesnt pay the bricks-and-mortar stores and malls it works with, but store owners like Petals N Waxs Taplin arent complaining: Since partnering with Happy Returns in August, she said, shes seen a 10% increase in her own stores sales. She estimates that of the 20 to 50 people who come to her store each week to return goods via Happy Returns, nearly 50% end up buying something from her store.

The whole transaction takes us two to three minutes, Taplin said of the returns. Happy Returns provided her store with an iPad, training and tech support. The company also provides return bags and shipping labels. UPS visits her store once a day to pick up the returns.

Happy Returns doesnt yet have direct competitors, but Amazons recent acquisition of Whole Foods signals that online retailers are increasingly interested in obtaining a bricks-and-mortar presence to handle both pickups and returns, according to venture capital investors. And whereas start-ups such as Shyp pick up, package and ship items  removing some of the hassle of online returns  customers have to pay to use the service. Happy Returns is free for customers.

Returns are the next battleground for the next generation of commerce, said Greg Bettinelli, a partner at Los Angeles venture capital firm Upfront Ventures, which along with Lowercase Capital, Maveron, Brilliant Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners and other private investors has helped Happy Returns raise $14 million.

These returns are driving foot traffic, and the foot traffic is converting into sales, he said. Most retailers are killing to get more traffic into their stores.

Theyre also proving popular with shoppers.

Fashion retailer Eloquii, which has three bricks-and-mortar stores and does most of its sales online, partnered with Happy Returns when the service launched in early 2016. In that time, its volume of returns has remained steady, but the number of customers returning items through Happy Returns has increased twentyfold.

More than a third of all of the calls and emails Eloquii used to get were about returns, according to Chief Executive Mariah Chase.

People would ask, Wheres my return? When am I going to get my refund? How do I track my return package? Chase said. Its a pain point for us, and working with Happy Returns eliminated that pain point.

Happy Returns declined to discuss its revenue, but Geller and Sobie said the volume of returns handled by the company has doubled every two months this year, and it plans to expand into more locations with more partners in 2018.

Free shipping is now table stakes, Sobie said. We see the same things happening with in-person returns. This will become the expectation everyone has, whether you have a store or not.

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien

UPDATES:

6:21 a.m.: This story was updated to say Happy Returns now has 50 return bars nationwide.

This story was originally published at 3 a.m.
When director Matt Reeves was assembling a crew for 2008s Cloverfield, there were two top contenders to design the sound: Douglas Murray and Will Files.

So we both could have gone into competition with each other to get the job, but we have very complementary skill sets, said Murray. So I approached Will and said, What if we go after it together as a team? 

It made perfect sense to me, said Files.

Since then, theyve teamed up to create the sound for three additional films directed by Reeves: 2010s Let Me In, 2014s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and their latest collaboration, War for the Planet of the Apes.

Advertisement

On War for the Planet of the Apes, how did you create the apes voices?

Murray: Matt made the point early on and throughout that he really wanted us to honor the original performances of the actors on the set and their vocal interpretations of the ape voices for the film above all else.

Files: We tried to preserve the emotional intent of those performances as much as possible, even if we were adding things to it or twisting it around in various ways or processing it to make it sound more ape-like.

How did you achieve that?

Murray: The location recordist used tiny mics that were hidden in the motion-capture suits. We had a separate track for each character. But these mics dont get a lot of chest resonance, even if it was there in the actor, so we had to augment that in many cases. Will came up with a great idea of playing the sound into a djembe drum and then mic-ing it. We did it through a software device to make it more convenient, but thats effectively what was happening. And a djembe drum is just a wooden drum with a skin over it that gave a resonant sound of the right timbre for the gorilla and the orangutan characters. We also added a lot of breaths and ape-like grunts and things.

Files: There are a lot of scenes with hundreds of apes. It was a huge amount of work, because not only did it have to be convincing, but it had to be emotionally correct and emotionally successful. For example, in the scene after the big battle in the beginning of the film, Caesars walking through the remnants of his army, and theyre all hurt and injured and sad. And that whole scene plays out with no music and very little talking for quite a while. And then when they do start talking, its very sparse. And so much of the emotional support of that scene comes from the off-screen apes, almost like a Greek chorus. Most of that material was added 100% in post-production, because there werent any on-set recordings to base it off of. So in that case, that is actually much more leaning on the sounds of real ape recordings. Doug flew all around the country recording different primates at different zoos. We have a huge library of monkeys.

Murray: You see chimps. You see orangutans. You see gorillas. And we focused on those types of apes. There are some other ape sounds that occasionally we used, because theyre similar voices, but more extreme emotions. We used some baboons screaming for wounded apes. We used some other monkeys. And then we used some gibbons for their beautiful cries as background textures in some scenes.

How do you place those sounds into the context of the film?

Files: The first part of that process is that you try to remove as much of the acoustic signature as you can, especially when sounds are recorded in places like zoos  big cement rooms with ugly sounding echoes. So we try to remove as much as we can to start at a neutral point, and then we add layers of different types of reverbs and echoes to the sounds to try to make them sound real.

Whats your favorite part of your job?

Murray: I love working with the director and the picture editor and the other members of the sound team to create a way to focus the attention of the audience on whats important now in the movie. Sound is such a big part of that focusing and evolving and changing, and its so dynamic throughout a film.

Files: I love the secretive nature of how sound has this wonderful way of sneaking in the side door of your brain and suggesting all these things and making you feel certain ways, without you ever even understanding that thats whats happening. It would be very hard to be moved by a film with the sound turned off. Its a richer experience because of the sound.

See the most read stories this hour 

calendar@latimes.com
Its a small world but not if you have to clean it. That adage, from the work of artist Barbara Kruger, could describe Downsizing. In Alexander Paynes new film, opening Friday, people volunteer to shrink themselves down to five inches tall in order to save the planet from humanitys worst excesses, and also -- in the U.S. at least -- to get a bigger bang for their buck. Paul Safranek, played by Matt Damon, does just that, ending up in Leisureland, a world of big little mansions and normal-sized greed. But even in this ostensibly ideal environment, somebody has to do the dirty work.

Actress Hong Chau plays Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese dissident who was forced to shrink against her will. She escaped her country, lost a leg in the perilous journey, and now finds herself with a bad prosthetic and a worse job  as a maid for the petite and petty rich folks of Leisureland.

Ngoc Lans own living conditions are squalid, as are those of hundreds of laborers warehoused all around her, doing the jobs nobody else notices. She spends her free time trying to help those folks with food and medical care. When she meets Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and learns that he is a physical therapist, she insists he come with her to make the rounds, the closest thing to a doctor these working poor will ever see.

Advertisement

WATCH: Video Q&As from this seasons hottest contenders 

As selfless as Ngoc Lan is, she is no saint. She is loud, demanding and relentless. Its so nice to play a character like this, who is a brave and selfless person, but is still very complicated and complex and multifaceted, Chau says. Sometimes with characters who are martyrs, it can be a little bit reductive and simplistic, and not emotional, and doesnt touch you in the way that this character does.

Growing up, Chau was surrounded by people in her family and community who were driven by necessity, not unlike her character. When you see something that needs to be done, you do it. She was born in a Thai refugee camp after her parents fled Vietnam in 1979. A family in New Orleans then sponsored her family to move there.

We were refugees, we needed public assistance, I went to public school and I needed lunch assistance, I needed Pell grants to go to college, and I worked at PBS my first job out of college, she says. So its wild, I feel like Im the personification of all of these things that were seeing in the news right now. And so is Downsizing. As a film, it touches upon climate change and consumerism and immigration and all of these things.

Hong Chau (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

Chau is 5-foot-1 and has a tiny baby voice as she puts it, so that talking with her in the lobby of a Hollywood PR company means leaning in very close. She only started taking acting classes in college to try to counter her shyness. Usually, I get asked to be a little bit sweeter, more adorable, and Alexander asked me to not be any of those things.

She calls Ngoc Lan the kind of role thats long been missing in cinema. I didnt think anybody would crack how to do this character in a way that was authentic, but also still enjoyable and not problematic in being a caricature or being offensive, she says. We have seen glimpses of this character but only in the background, so to give a character like this the screen time and the attention and the complexity is what I have been waiting for, as not just an actor, but as a person who loves film.

She notes that actors often exult about getting to act with their whole body. But for me, I got to act with my whole body and my whole face, because usually for female characters, especially if youre a love interest, theres a certain placidity that takes place, and I dont get it, I dont understand it, because in life, we make a lot of faces.

Chau learned how to portray a woman who lost her leg by working with an amputee consultant, going to her rehabilitation center to learn how to move correctly. I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. Thats 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.

So I hope that, in addition to people seeing this role and being inspired that shes an Asian woman, theyre also inspired that shes a person with a disability, and I hope that inspires them to write more stories.

Hong Chau (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times )

calendar@latimes.com
Luca Guadagnino didnt have to work too hard to convince Michael Stuhlbarg to join the cast of his latest film, Call Me by Your Name, and not just because the 49-year-old character actor was already a fan of Guadagninos I Am Love.

James Ivory had written the script, it was being shot in Northern Italy and the role seemed complicated, weighty and loving, says Stuhlbarg, in his soft, precise voice. All that seemed amazing to me.

Luca said something to us at the very beginning of the process, which was he wanted us to tell this story with love and lightness as if it was one of the most ideal summers, Stuhlbarg said, adding that it gave him kind of freedom to, to have a si

Advertisement

WATCH: Video Q&As from this seasons hottest contenders 

In Call Me, Stuhlbarg plays Mr. Perlman, a gentle professor and parent to a teenage son (Timothee Chalamet) who swoons over his fathers older, visiting grad student (Armie Hammer). On paper, Stuhlbargs is a typical supporting role, the parent who appears to be unaware of the burning affair thats unfolding. But his quietly delivered advice at the films end is the kind of hard-to-forget soliloquy of which every actor dreams.

When you first heard about Mr. Perlman did you think it was a nice, ancillary Dad role? Or had you been tipped off to the existence of a pivotal speech?

Actually, Id been warned a little bit by my agent. She said, Theres a speech at the end of this. Just go through it.

When the script arrived did you flip straight to the good part?

No. I read it in order and I was quite taken with it all.

Whats it like to play a character who appears oblivious but is actually quite perceptive?

I didnt think of him as being oblivious  I thought of him as being quite liberal in terms of keeping his distance. He loves his son deeply. But hes doing that fragile balancing act of raising a young man who will be leaving home soon. So hes giving him free range of his own world, encouraging him to spread his wings.

From your bristly mustache in Fargo to your tidy whiskers in Boardwalk Empire, facial hair transforms you. How did you arrive upon Mr. Perlmans unkempt beard?

Luca handed me a bunch of wonderfully diverse photographs when I first arrived, all which suggested an essence of who the man was, the life he lived and the world in which he functioned. Id been growing my beard out just in case. We talked about making it neater but Luca loved that it had grown up my cheeks and was going down my neck, that it was free-form.

The film was shot in the tiny town of Lombardy. Did that inform your performance?

The town is plaintive, quiet and yet it comes alive on the weekends. People promenade around the center in their nice weekend garb. But its quite small and it kind of casts its spell on you. You put on a different pair of shoes, that affects you. I found myself wearing Mr. Perlmans plain, brown Sperry Top-Siders wherever I went, feeling the cobblestones under my feet and wandering through the streets and how quiet and peaceful it was. Stepping out into the morning air, it seemed automatically how life should be lived.

Does Mr. Perlman have a first name?

We called him Sam, or Samuel. Once someone called out, Sammy! But Im not sure [he has a name] in the book.

In a way, Sammys supportive final speech is as much about revealing things about himself as it is about comforting his son.

It does suggest that. You get glimpses of the road not taken  or perhaps the road that was taken away from him. Hes content within his own family but also, as we grow to learn, hes made some choices in his own life. He doesnt elaborate on it, although perhaps someday maybe he will.

In the sequel that Luca Guadagninos been talking about?

Well theres 50 pages at the very end of the novel in which it leaps forward 20 years and you find out some things that have happened. I think its something hes seriously interested in exploring.

You really manage to avoid the cliches of the brilliant American academic abroad. Did you think about that at all?

No, I didnt! What are those? Perhaps if you were to see the rest of the scenes, maybe those cliches are all there. [laughs] Maybe Luca helped me [by editing them out]. I probably fell into all of them.

calendar@latimes.com
Every year, Hollywood assembles a series of awards shows to bestow prizes on a number of leading and supporting actors. And every year, the Envelope takes note of several actors who may have been on-screen for only a few minutes, but whose performances jumped off the screen. We singled out three actresses this year, and its no surprise that they were in three of the years most acclaimed films.

Betty Gabriel: Georgina, Get Out

Get Out, Jordan Peeles hit horror film, is chock-full of alarming moments, but few match the encounter between boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and family maid/Georgina in the middle of the film. Apologizing stiffly for unplugging his cellular phone, she starts crying as she talks about how much she loves her job. The two parts of her being  old white grandmother, young black victim -- battle it out on her face.

Advertisement

WATCH: Video Q&As from this seasons hottest contenders 

To research the concept of being trapped, Betty Gabriel listened to author Martin Pistorius talk about suffering from locked-in syndrome and being trapped in his body, unable to move or communicate for 12 years.

She also found inspiration on-screen. I went back and watched a lot of really old horror movies in preparation. And when I saw Bride of Frankenstein, I was like, Oh, Im feeling everything shes doing. She is this creation, this experiment, and perhaps not all the wires were connected quite right. So she gave Georgina some tiny physical glitches. Gabriel was a dancer before attending Juilliard to study acting. I really loved exploring the physicality of her, she says.

Its such an absurd premise, its so out there, that I felt the freedom to explore in any kind of way. But at the same time, the story was deadly serious. At the root of it was the tragically horrific reality that this is a person completely and utterly lost. A huge part of her was taken out and whats left is fighting to come to and connect with Chris. That definitely grounds this into a very dark reality of being imprisoned and enslaved.

Vella Lovell: Khadija, The Big Sick

Vella Lovell of The Big Sick. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times )

The Big Sick centers on the true love story between Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, who plays himself in the movie. (Gordon is played by Zoe Kazan.) Vella Lovell plays Khadija, one of a string of women Kumails mother presents to him in an effort to find him a prospective Pakistani bride. The scenes are funny, at first, but Khadija proves to be nobodys punchline. When Kumail finally admits hes not interested in an arranged marriage, she lights into him in a small but fervent explosion of anguish and anger, turning the tables on Kumail -- and the audiences expectations.

It felt so human to me, and so clear, says Lovell of playing the scene. Everyone has experienced those emotions of being rejected, being embarrassed, humiliated, but also, Then why did you waste my time?

She gives props to the writers for letting Khadija add another layer to their film. By creating this character that was so three-dimensional, they complicated their love story.

Lovell, who costars on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, is often mistaken for South Asian. This isnt the first time Ive played a different ethnicity than I am, says Lovell, who calls herself mixed (My father is African American and my mom is a big mutt herself -- Eastern European and European and Moroccan. I just got my 23 and Me [DNA test] and Im kind of like the world). Ultimately, I get to step into different shoes in a way that I do feel lucky to be able to do, especially when it meant that I got to be in the same room with all of those Big Sick people.

She was on set for only two days of shooting, and didnt even realize the scenes impact until she watched the completed film. Kumail has to grow up, and it weirdly starts with that scene.

Samara Weaving: Penelope, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri

Samara Weaving of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

Nobody is safe from Frances McDormand as Mildred in Three Billboards. Her abusive ex-husband, played by John Hawkes, is a deserving target of her venom. His 19-year-old girlfriend, Penelope, played by Samara Weaving, takes a load of collateral damage as well. Yet she chooses to see the best in everyone anyway.

Weaving waxes rapturous over writer/director Martin McDonaghs ability to convey character. His writing is just so good, the words pop off the page and suddenly youre a completely different person.

But in the audition, she still wasnt quite sure how to play Penelope. She was sort of pleading, Like me, like me; she just wanted to be validated by everyone. Shes so wide-eyed and taking everything in, but also cant quite see the big picture. So the actress took on a perpetually wide-eyed look to match.

She was so good at being a naif, McDonagh asked the blond actress to dye her hair brown. And I think that makes it funnier, she says. Theres something endearing about her as a brunette. You felt a lot of empathy for her rather than judging her. I dont know if its the hair or the writing.

Weaving, who has been acting since she was 14 in her native Australia, is also on screen playing the eponymous role in The Babysitter, and costars on the HBO series SMILF. But she has a special place in her heart for Penelope. Shes kind of deep in this whimsical naive way. She teaches Johns character life lessons, which I think is really sweet.

calendar@latimes.com
Here are the 2018 SAG Awards nominees reactions to their nods

The on-camera talent recognized during the 24th Screen Actors Guild Award nominations on Wednesday shared their excitement and gratitude for the special honor bestowed upon them by the acting community.

The SAG Awards serve up laurels for actors and ensemble casts working in television and film as voted by their peers. The awards show, hosted by The Good Place star Kristen Bell, will take place on Jan. 21.

LIST: The 2018 SAG Award nominees

In statements to the Los Angeles Times, several nominees repeatedly thanked their drama families, particularly the casts and crews of their respective projects. Heres what some of them had to say about the recognition:

Alison Brie. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Alison Brie, GLOW

It is such a great honor to be recognized by my fellow actors with this nomination. I am so proud to be part of a show that celebrates the craft of acting, with all its pitfalls and glories, and to be able to work with such a diverse group of insanely talented women. GLOW has meant the world to me and Im deeply thankful for this recognition for me and the cast. Thank you SAG-AFTRA!!

Millie Bobby Brown. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things

Screen Actors Guild! Thank you SO much for recognizing me and our cast for the second year in a row! This means the world coming from you, our peers. I am so lucky and honored to have the privilege of playing Eleven  a strong, powerful, badass, strange, wonderful character! Cant wait to celebrate with my Stranger Things family!

Timothee Chalamet. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

What an incredible morning! This nomination is very close to my heart because its from the actor. When we made Call Me By Your Name, we had no idea what it would turn into. The experience in making the film with Armie [Hammer] was so special, and yet, we just didnt know. Simply put, Ive been blown away by the response this film has received. And, to be included in ensemble along with my Lady Bird family (congrats, Saoirse [Ronan]!) makes this recognition that much more special.

David Harbour. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

David Harbour, Stranger Things

If it isnt wildly apparent by now, Ill say it directly  I love actors! To be recognized by my peers in such distinguished company gives me a special joy. And Millie [Bobby Brown] and the show! Beyond.

When I act, when I create, I feel alive, full to bursting, and I feel of service to the mysterious goodness that firmly exists in this world. I have been rewarded with a life that indulges in the primacy of self, but at its core and at its purest and its best, it is a life of service. A service to audiences. To prod and poke when necessary, to comfort and entertain when times seem dark, to ever expand the human experience, to offer a reason to live, to celebrate to the gods the great gift and scourge that is consciousness. Sometimes it means expressing iron intellect and rigorous truth that bonds us all in the achingly profound wisdom of no escape. Sometimes it means revealing the intimate moments of endurance, of unexpected kindness, unasked for love. And sometimes it simply means making a fierce and joyful noise, to spin, to twirl, to throw your hands up with the relentless dips and climb aboard this roller coaster of life. Ya know, to dance. *insert Hopper dancing gif*

Thank you for recognizing me, as it might mean itll be easier to get more jobs doing it.

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

I am beyond thrilled to have received the honor of this nomination. And to receive it from fellow colleagues is huge to me. Guillermo [del Toro], this film and the entire cast and crew hold a very special place in my heart and always will. Each and every one of them made me better. I am truly delighted more than I can really express in words but my heart is fit to burst with pride for us all. Thank you dearest SAG members. Thank you for your embrace.

Sean Hayes. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Sean Hayes, Will & Grace

I am so honored to be recognized in this category with these extraordinary actors. I love acting because I love actors. I also like to bake sometimes.

Richard Jenkins. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water

I am thrilled and humbled to be nominated by my peers for a SAG Award. This union is very close to my heart. Well, the SAG card is in my wallet, so its a little further south.

Zoe Kazan. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Zoe Kazan, The Big Sick

Thank you to SAG for honoring The Big Sick ensemble with a nomination. It means so much to us, especially from our acting peers. I am deeply proud to be a part of this film and to have brought Kumail [Nanjiani] and Emily [V. Gordon]s story into the world, especially at this time. We are particularly moved to have been recognized as an ensemble, as this was such an extraordinary collaborative experience Im excited to be reunited once more with my movie family, and to share this with Kumail, Holly [Hunter], Ray [Romano], Zenobia [Shroff], Anupam [Kher], and Adeel [Akhtar] and everyone else who helped bring The Big Sick to life.

Nicole Kidman. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies

What an amazing morning! Thank you to SAG-AFTRA for recognizing Big Little Lies in such a significant way. Ive been acting since I was 14 and have dedicated an enormous amount of my life to my craft so to be acknowledged by my acting family is the most incredible honor.

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Laura Linney, Ozark

I am so proud to be included in a list of such wonderful actresses who have raised the bar so high. What an amazing year for women in television. And I am especially proud to be representing Ozark with my TV spouse, the ever deserving Jason Bateman! Thank you SAG-AFTRA!

Marc Maron. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Marc Maron, GLOW

I am stunned and excited to be recognized by other actors in this way. I really never thought this was possible in my life. It helps to be surrounded by amazing actors and to have such a defined and well written character as Sam Sylvia and to be on a show as unique as GLOW. I am just a small part. So, thanks SAG for recognizing me and the mind-blowing ensemble that is GLOW.

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, The Big Sick

We are so lucky to have been graced with the enormous talents of every single member of our cast. They each put a piece of themselves into our story and we are thrilled at being recognized. Thank you. And a special shout out to Holly Hunters individual nomination!

Now we have to go tell our real parents that they arent actually nominated.

Bob Odenkirk. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul

I am thrilled to get this nomination from my fellow actors! At Better Call Saul I am surrounded by an ensemble of excellence  Michael McKean, Rhea Seehorn, Jonathan Banks, everybody raises my game. Thank you to SAG-AFTRA.

Gary Oldman. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Gary Oldman, The Darkest Hour

No actor could ever deny the special satisfaction that comes from being recognized by your fellow artists  we all share the same challenges, insecurities, and uncertainties, chief among them, the question am I any good? this nomination, and in the wonderful company of the other nominees, is so very satisfying.

Margot Robbie. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Margot Robbie, I, Tonya

Im so incredibly moved and excited to be nominated by my fellow actors. I feel very fortunate to be able to have had the opportunity to bring Tonyas story to the big screen. Thank you to Steven [Rogers] for his brilliant and unique script, to Allison [Janney] and Sebastian [Stan] for being such incredible screen partners and to Craig [Gillespie] for his amazing direction and perfectly capturing the tone and essence of the film. Im so honored to be recognized among the truly powerful and wonderful women in the category. I cant wait to celebrate with everyone.

Sam Rockwell. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

It is such an honor to be nominated by your fellow actors, I have been a proud member of the Screen Actors Guild for as long as I can remember. To share it with this wonderful ensemble whom I have had the pleasure to work with over the years and others I got to collaborate with for the first time is truly special. I want to thank Martin McDonagh, our director and writer, for crafting these characters, as well as Woody [Harrelson], Fran [McDormand] and the rest of the cast who brought the town of Ebbing to life on screen. I am thrilled.

Ray Romano. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Ray Romano, The Big Sick

This is awesome but I wont believe it till the recount.
Agatha Christie is having a moment, which is a very good thing when the filmed adaptations are as juicy and twisty as Gilles Paquet-Brenners Crooked House, starring Max Irons, tangling with a matriarchy of man-eaters in postwar Britain. The French director teams with writers Julian Fellowes and Tim Rose Price, as well as cinematographer Sebastian Winter, for this gorgeous adaptation trafficking in the delightfully wicked dirty laundry of the landed gentry.

Irons slips easily into the role of Charles Hayward, a private detective engaged by former flame Sophia de Haviland Leonides (Stefanie Martini) to quietly look into the death of her grandfather, a Greek catering magnate, Aristides Leonides, as she suspects foul play.

Crooked House is a bit like a game of Clue, as the Leonides estate is filled to the brim with prime suspects. Was it Aristides young American second wife, Brenda (Christina Hendricks), a former Vegas showgirl? Or was it one of the adult sons or their wives  failed actress Magda (Gillian Anderson, divinely campy), and chemist and toxicology expert Clemency (Amanda Abbington)?

Advertisement

As Charles conducts his investigation, drawn further and further into this battle of wills over the actual will, hes aided by the precocious Josephine, scribbling in a notebook, imagining him as Watson to her Holmes. And then theres the grande dame, Lady Edith (Glenn Close), a shotgun-wielding aunt who pops up every now and again to elucidate some themes with glorious double entendres.

Running beneath the murder mystery is a delicate subtext about personal publicity and how to harness it. Charles could certainly stand to drum up some business, while Magda and her husband, Phillip, are trying to get their screenplay funded. All the while, the familys trying to keep the scandal out of the papers  in this story, we can see the nascent tabloid culture rearing its head, alongside the more insidious self-promotion. Its fascinating when coupled with the central question: Who does this murder truly benefit?

The sumptuous production design and cinematography are a feast for the eyes, with each characters space distinguished visually, from the stark bright white quarters of Clemency, to Brendas pink, jazz-soaked palace. An eerie score composed by Hugo de Chaire featuring swooning strings and unsettling drums conveys the off-kilter anxiety that pervades the environment.

Irons more than holds his own at the center of this swirling mystery, and Martini proves an enchanting leading lady, but the real draws are Close and Anderson, who bring a ferocious zest to their over-the-top characters. The twists and turns of the story keep you on your toes until the very end, never giving anything away. The verbal blows drop as fast as the bodies, and if British aristocrats fighting over money, beautifully, is your thing, Crooked House will more than satisfy, it will thrill.

-------------

Crooked House

Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Rating: PG-13, for thematic material and some sexual content

Playing: Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

Movie Trailers

calendar@latimes.com
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, except perhaps in the films of the Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke, where domestic misery tends to express itself as a series of repetitive, even ritualistic patterns. He has, in effect, turned this repetition into a kind of joke; in most of his films you are likely to encounter the names Georges and Anne (or Georg and Anna), and maybe the face of his frequent on-screen muse, the brilliant French actress Isabelle Huppert.

The forces bedeviling these families vary in nature  an apocalyptic disaster in Time of the Wolf, inexplicable suicidal urges in The Seventh Continent, memories of past transgressions in Cache  but see enough of them and you will soon realize that every tormentor is a front for Haneke himself. Nearly all his films are predicated on a home invasion of sorts, some of them explicit, as in his twin versions of Funny Games, and some of them metaphorical, as in his 2012 masterpiece, Amour, in which the lethal intruder turns out to be time itself.

No locks get broken and no ominous packages are delivered in Hanekes Happy End, an unhappy-family drama every bit as devious as its poker-faced title. This is a more playful, slippery version of a story that Haneke has never really stopped telling: Steadily and ruthlessly, he chips away at an upper-class Western family whose members are ensconced in their own privilege, deaf to the guilty howls of conscience and oblivious to the suffering in their midst.

Advertisement

The Laurents are a multi-generational clan living in a large house in the French coastal city of Calais. The patriarch is Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Amour), a widower just shy of his 85th birthday. His brittle, exceedingly competent daughter, Anne (Huppert  told you), runs the familys construction business and tries to groom her volatile man-child son, Pierre (Franz Rogowski), for a prominent role in the company. Annes weaker-willed brother, Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), is a doctor with a wife, Anais (Laura Verlinden), and an infant son.

We meet the Laurents in the wake of two serious crises. A wall collapses at one of the companys construction sites, injuring an employee. Thomas 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Eve (Fantine Harduin), comes to live with them after her mother falls gravely ill.

Both inciting tragedies are shown, or at least suggested, by a secondary camera  security footage of the construction accident, a series of eerie videos shot on Eves phone  and that sense of chilly, detached observation persists inside the Laurents home, where no tragedy seems capable of disrupting the familys routine.

Unfolding as a series of brisk, meticulously composed, perfectly acted scenes held together with little or no exposition, Happy End is diffuse in its storytelling  no single character emerges as the protagonist  and elegantly serpentine in its construction. A single cut can propel the movie forward by untold days or weeks, but the overall narrative progress feels disquietingly circular. The unblinking gaze of the camera, often taking in the action from a deliberate distance, lends even seemingly banal activities a queasy, hypnotic power. (The superb digital cinematography is by Hanekes regular collaborator Christian Berger.)

Again and again, the director sows seeds of dread and disaster, only to uproot them before they can blossom into full-on horror. Tension convulses the picture whenever Eve, a disaffected teen played with breathtaking poise by Harduin, finds herself alone with her baby brother. But if Happy End is something of a bad-seed nightmare, it turns out to be an unpredictable one, marked by unexpected flashes of warmth, sympathy and blistering humor. (Its been a while since a Haneke movie left me cackling in horror rather than reeling in it.)

A curious bond develops between Eve and her grandfather, Georges, one predicated not on love or affection but rather on a mutual disdain for the adults around them, as well as a shared suspicion that life might not be worth living. That suspicion might be nursed in turn by Pierre, a born troublemaker and teller of ugly truths, who briefly exorcises his demons with a jaw-dropping karaoke performance of Sias Champagne.

That leaves it to the older Laurent siblings to keep up appearances. Anne goes into exasperated damage-control mode with every fresh setback, conducting business and romance over the phone with her British attorney, Lawrence (Toby Jones). Thomas, meanwhile, plays the hardworking family man even as he hides the affair hes having with another woman, as we see in regular glimpses of their online correspondence. Haneke has long been fascinated, at least since Bennys Video (1992), by the insinuating, alienating effects of contemporary technology, but here his clever integration of Facebook messages and smartphone apps doesnt feel like a facile anti-internet screed; its symptomatic of a deeper malaise.

When Hanekes movie premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, it was dismissed by many as a feeble effort from an auteur rifling through his greatest hits, among them The White Ribbon, with its unsparing view of teenage sociopathy, and Amour, which, as Georges hints at one point, may well be this movies prequel.

More meaningfully, the repressed ghosts of Cache and Code Unknown are evoked by the African refugees who walk the streets of Calais (an intense focal point of the ongoing migrant crisis), and also by the hardworking, painfully well-behaved Moroccan couple that serves the Laurent household. Tellingly, we notice these characters only when the family does; they are otherwise as invisible to us as they are to Georges, Anne and the rest of their viperous brood.

Haneke has often been dinged as both a punishing moralist and a perversely withholding storyteller, and so its fitting that his masterstroke in Happy End, delivered almost with a shrug, is the withholding of punishment. A more redemptive, politically righteous movie might have held its characters to account for their callous indifference, the way Haneke did in Cache, but its as if he doesnt see the point: Up until the movies ghastly, hilarious final tableau, these characters exist beyond the reach of shock, guilt, shame or retribution. Only in a Haneke film, perhaps, could such a reprieve wind up feeling like the most damning judgment of all.

------------

Happy End

In French and English with English subtitles

Rating: R, for some sexual material and language

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Playing: Laemmles Royal Theatre, West Los Angeles

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

Movie Trailers

justin.chang@latimes.com

@JustinCChang

ALSO

Mudbound tops Mark Olsens 10 best films of 2017

Call Me by Your Name, The Florida Project lead Justin Changs 12 best films of 2017

Kenneth Turans best films of 2017 include The Shape of Water and The Post
Once feared dead but found instead only sleeping, the western has sprung back to strong and compelling life with the intense, involving Hostiles being the latest case in point.

Written and directed by Scott Cooper and powered by a dynamic trio of interwoven performances by Christian Bale, Wes Studi and Rosamund Pike, Hostiles grabs you by the throat and holds on for the duration.

Like the years previous tip-top examples of the genre, the contemporary Wind River and the classic era The Ballad of Lefty Brown, Hostiles does not so much modernize the western as concentrate on character psychology and dramatic tension, creating a force field of emotion from start to finish that is as enveloping as anyone could wish for.

Advertisement

While the protagonists and what they go through can sound familiar, Cooper, working from unfinished material by the late Donald E. Stewart (Missing and a trio of Tom Clancy adaptations) has made sure that what we see surprises us, not just in terms of plot but also in who his characters are and how they act.

A tale of physical, emotional and even moral survival, Hostiles deals in people pushed to their limits and then some, individuals marked in the deepest way by the violence of the frontier.

More than that, and this is key, each of the films central figures, though still alive, has reason to feel his or her life is as good as over.

Cooper, a former actor, directed Jeff Bridges to an Academy Award in Crazy Heart and Johnny Depp to one of his best performances in Black Mass. As a filmmaker he has a matter-of-fact approach that works especially well with incendiary material.

The films title gives an immediate sense of what is to come. On the most obvious level, western fans know that hostiles is the descriptor the U.S. Cavalry traditionally used when talking about armed and dangerous Native American opponents.

The word, however, has a more specific meaning here, referring as well to two implacable enemies, Joseph Blocker (Bale), a captain in the U.S. Cavalry, and Yellow Hawk (Studi), a war chief from the Northern Cheyenne who has been an Army prisoner for seven years.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these men completely despise each other  they are intractable enemies of long standing whose mutual hostility is based not on philosophical differences but concrete actions both men have taken that neither one regrets in the least. That is not the end of Hostiles, however, just the beginning.

Before either man is met, the film opens in 1892 with shattering catastrophe overtaking frontier wife and mother Rosalee Quaid (Pike) at the hands of a band of terrifying Comanche (the same tribe that figured in the classic The Searchers).

The thickly mustachioed and goateed Capt. Blocker, for his part, is introduced listlessly overseeing the sadistic roundup of the last of the remaining Apache opposition outside his Ft. Berringer, N.M., post.

A hard-bitten career soldier who we experience as having been hollowed out by years of violence, Blocker hates his opponents with a passion he feels is justified.

Taunted by a journalist back at the fort for having taken more scalps than Sitting Bull, Blocker stoically maintains he is just doing his job, no emotions, no regrets.

About to retire, Blocker, who over the years has learned Yellow Hawks Northern Cheyenne dialect, is given one last assignment, very much against his will.

The chief is dying of cancer and the president, as much as a public relations gesture as anything, is allowing him and his family, including his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), to return to their ancestral lands in Montana. The captain is to lead the escort party.

Impeccably played by the veteran Studi, perhaps best known as the dangerous Magua in 1992s The Last of the Mohicans, Yellow Hawk is no misunderstood pacifist.

Though ill and past his prime, he has as long a history of violence as the captain does, and he has no second thoughts about defending his land and his people by any means necessary.

Its a given that Blocker and his soldiers (including a cameo by Call Me by Your Names Timothee Chalamet) will run into the traumatized, nearly catatonic Rosalee Quaid and take her along, but not much else about the films intricate plot line plays as predictable.

As in Coopers previous films, the acting  including an unexpected Peter Mullan as a lieutenant colonel and the always compelling Ben Foster as a sergeant  is excellent across the board. And having key dialogue between Blocker and Yellow Hawk take place in subtitled Northern Cheyenne adds a kind of resonance to those sections.

Its period and plot line mandate that the nature and consequences of prolonged violence is one of Hostiles strongest themes. The key question it poses is not one of responsibility, however (Were all guilty of something, one character says), but whether we have to continue to be prisoners of what weve done in the past.

------------

Hostiles

Rating: R, for strong violence and language

Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

Playing: AMC Century City

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

Movie Trailers

kenneth.turan@latimes.com

@KennethTuran

ALSO

Mudbound tops Mark Olsens 10 best films of 2017

Call Me by Your Name, The Florida Project lead Justin Changs 12 best films of 2017

Kenneth Turans best films of 2017 include The Shape of Water and The Post
Its no coincidence that several recent period dramas have included in their narratives Europes colonization of the Middle East, Africa or India.

Imperialism could equal the reckless redrawing of borders and servitude for the people of those regions, and those ugly truths were often left out of history books and historical dramas. Recent domestic tragedies, however, have compelled Western storytellers to explore the roots of terrorism  and the global conflicts that spawned such horror.

Season 2 of The Crown unpacked Englands role in the early stages of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Indian Summers intertwined its love stories with the decline of the British Empire and the rise of modern India in the 1930s. Versailles looked at the politics behind Frances 17th century conquest across Africa.

Advertisement

The Last Post, a six-episode series out Friday on Amazon Prime, focuses on the final days of Britain as a colonial power.

The BBC/Amazon Originals production opens in 1965, in Yemens port of Aden, where Britains Royal Military Police struggle to maintain a centurys worth of rule over an increasingly hostile population.

The shows creator, Peter Moffat (HBOs The Night Of and BBCs Criminal Justice), based the series on his childhood memories of his familys life on a military base in the region in the1960s. That experience surely lends to the authentic feel of the environs  rough, arid terrain thats as beautiful as it is brutal  and the transplanted characters painful steps toward, or away from, assimilation.

Though gorgeously shot and replete with a whos who cast culled from top-tier British television shows, the first three episodes available for review suffer when they step gingerly around colonial politics, appearing as uncomfortable as its mid-century characters are in exploring those messy intersections between peacekeeping and oppressive foreign occupation.

The Last Post follows freshly arrived newlywed Captain Joe Martin (Jeremy Neumark Jones) and his bride, Honor (Jessie Buckley) as they acclimate to life on the base, where other families of the Royal Police try their best to hold onto tradition in a very foreign place.

For example, Alison Laithwaite (Jessica Raine of Call the Midwife), becomes an old hand at slaying scorpions with one swift slap from a thick Vogue magazine. A young police officer teaches a local nanny the names of Santas reindeer. Scenes like these are wonderful examples of cultures colliding.

But not all is well on the base. Alison drinks too much and sleeps with men who are not her very serious, very dedicated husband Ed (Stephen Campbell Moore). Nanny Yusra Saeed (Ouidad Elma), who works for commander Harry Markham and his wife Mary (Ben Miles and Amanda Drew), has dark secrets that lead to an international incident.

The Last Post provides compelling human drama, especially in depicting life on the base. But it feels untethered from history, or perhaps context, without a larger commentary on how events back then got us to where we are today.

The shows early episodes dont try all that hard to explain the motives of the insurgency from the perspective of the locals. While its clear the story is being told through the eyes of the royal forces and their families, putting a human face on the other side would go a long way in lending this series more depth and background.

Instead, the desert militias behead and kidnap children and appear to suffer no personal or moral conflict. And in the souk, random swarthy men threaten British interlopers in scenes that recall stereotypes from the Indiana Jones series. Its a glaring credibility gap compared with the other nuanced and layered interactions between the servicemen and their families.

The cynical American reporter Martha Franklin (Essie Davis) who follows the police on a mission is likely meant to be the bridge between the motives of royal forces and the Gulf fighters, but in the first half of the series, she serves more as a tantalizing vixen than a window into dueling narratives.

The Last Post is worth watching for its depiction of the era, or more specifically, the naive and arrogant idea that an oil-rich Middle East might easily fall into subservience of the crown.

The Last Post

Where: Amazon Prime

When: Any time, starting Friday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

lorraine.ali@latimes.com

@lorraineali
For Helene Henderson, Instagram has become synonymous with the dining experience at Malibu Farm. Henderson owns the farm-to-table restaurant on Malibus pier and credits Instagram with transforming the once quiet, seaside shack  which opened in 2014  into a busy destination.

A meal that is not photographed probably did not happen, Henderson said. Instagrammers can be a boost for restaurant check averages when more dishes are ordered than necessary, just for the perfect photo op.

The Mason jars featuring the Malibu Farm logo are frequently shared on Instagram. The colorful jars, in conjunction with the restaurants scenic backdrop, make the ideal combination for photographers. Though the jars were originally designed for a more practical purpose, Henderson sees their popularity on Instagram as a business-boosting strategy. The restaurants account, @malibufarm, has more than 21,000 followers.

In recent years, the social media app has become much more than an outlet for selfies. Restaurants in Los Angeles and elsewhere are experiencing firsthand how Instagram has changed the way the culinary industry operates. The app is now home to 25 million business accounts, the vast majority of which are small businesses. That number has rapidly increased in recent months, expanding by 10 million since July. According to Instagram, more than 80% of users follow a business account, while 200 million users actively visit a business profile every day.

June Quan, co-owner of Shrimp Daddy, the Hawaiian shrimp vendor at the Smorgasburg Sunday market in downtown L.A, has 160,000 followers on Instagram. With her large following, shes considered an Instagram influencer  someone who posts to the app and often gets paid to suggest products and brands to their followers. She believes this experience has helped her design a business with social media in mind. Shrimp Daddys business account, @eatshrimpdaddy, has nearly 30,000 followers.

Using her knowledge of Instagram, and which photos get the most likes, Quan decided to serve one of the two dishes on the Shrimp Daddy menu in a hollowed out pineapple bowl  designed specifically to be photographed and posted.

We have customers who have driven for hours to get one of our bowls, she said, Weve maxed out on how many pineapples we can bring, but the demand keeps growing.

Bryan Leong and Stephanie Wang, owners of Amazebowls, a restaurant that sells artistically designed acai bowls, say they have seen a similar rush of first-time diners, who are presumably hoping for a shot of their acai served in a real coconut shell. Since starting as a food truck in 2014, Amazebowls has expanded to a permanent station at Smorgasburg and brick-and-mortar restaurants in Venice and the Arts District.

Instagrammable food has a way of bringing people together, said Leong. We had a good feeling, but we had no idea our coconut bowls would be so successful.

The promise of a great picture may get customers through the door  but how to get them back?

We have tons of Instagrammers come in after seeing the coconut bowl online and want to try it themselves, Leong said. But if they come back, they want to go for a normal, cheaper acai in a plastic bowl.

The Los Angeles food scene isnt just adapting menus with Instagram in mind. Social media has become a marketing tool, says Jonathan Grahm, owner of luxury chocolate house Compartes. The company, @compartes, has 211,000 followers on Instagram.

A beautiful product compels people to post it, he said. I get excited, because its essentially free advertisement.

Grahm adds he has designed his shops to be reminiscent of art museums, with such embellishments as neon signs, a wall lined with chocolate bars and chocolate on tap to inspire customer photography.

Its a little piece of luxury that doesnt cost a fortune, he said. Weve got the most sharable chocolate out there.

Average posters help spread the word, but those Instagram influencers  with sizable followings, often in the hundreds of thousands  might have the power to reach users who may not find a restaurant on their own. Chris Coombs, co-owner of the Boston Urban Hospitality restaurant group in the Massachusetts city, isnt taking this for granted.

Instagram has revolutionized the way restaurants advertise, he said. It has expanded the reach of the food world exponentially.

Coombs has hired a full-time social media manager to control the accounts of all his restaurants and has made boosting their Instagram presence a priority. Along with posting, the social media manager researches popular hashtags, engages with past and future patrons via Instagram, and tracks social media trends to keep their account on the cutting edge.

Coombss newest restaurant, Boston Chops, in the citys Downtown Crossing neighborhood, has a table specifically intended for food photography. At first glance, it looks like a standard four-person dining table nestled in a private corner of the restaurant. But its reserved for writers, photographers and social media users with many followers. It has its own programmed lighting separate from that of the rest of the restaurant, so that patrons can try for the perfect photo, even in a dimly lighted dining room.

We want influencers to have a seamless dining experience, Coombs said. They also want perfect photos. This way, they get essentially a mini photo studio in real time.

Restaurant owners have started to embrace Instagram as a method of attracting future customers, but many L.A. eateries mention annoyances with the new Instagram culture too.

It can be frustrating when several tables are standing on their chairs to capture their image, said Henderson.

Leong and Wang said they have been pressured by social media users to pay up in exchange for posts about the restaurants on their accounts, adding that they refuse these requests on a regular basis.

We have had people buy one of our ice cream sandwiches, take a picture and then throw it away, said Lucy Danovic, general manager of the Milk Shop (@themilkshop_la), a Silver Lake ice cream shop with 60,000 Instagram followers. The Instagram Effect has taken priority for customers over flavor and taste.

Henderson has had to learn the ins and outs of social media culture on the job, but she still believes it has helped motivate her to be more innovative and improve her restaurant.

You have to be more than a restaurant with good photo opportunities to survive in today's ultra-competitive restaurant market, said Henderson. You need to work daily to make sure the actual experience exceeds the expectations created by Instagram.

food@latimes.com

ALSO:

Sugary spectacles: Desserts that deserve a standing ovation

How local farmers are coping with the devastating Thomas fire

Christmas beer: Holiday brews from Belgium, Germany, Britain and the United States
Airline passengers cope with the stress of flying in different ways. Some zone out to music, some read a book or magazine or scroll through their social media feeds, and others might buy an alcoholic beverage to calm their nerves.

However, Hollywood Burbank Airport recently launched a new program called Travelers Tails, in which service dogs and their owners walk up and down the terminals and allow passengers to de-stress with the furry companions.

On the clock Tuesday afternoon were two Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Zoe and Miss Sherman Oaks, who were immediately bombarded by members of the Yawn family from Moorpark.

Advertisement

Melinda Yawn said she and her family were going to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to board a cruise ship to the Bahamas for their holiday vacation. While waiting at their gate, she and her children couldnt help but give Zoe and Miss Sherman Oaks some scratches behind their ears.

Kaylyn Yawn, Melindas 21-year-old daughter, said she does have some anxiety before she boards a plane and she sometimes has an adult beverage or just takes deep breaths to calm down before and during her flight.

But this is a way better alternative than just freaking out and dealing with yourself, said Kaylyn Yawn as she continued to scratch Zoes head. Shes so soft and calm, and her energy makes me happy. Shes so sweet.

Michael Johnston, the airports business development specialist, said airfield officials had been looking to have a pet therapy program at its terminals for some time and finally had the opportunity to partner with the Alliance of Therapy Dogs, a nonprofit group that works with volunteers who have registered and certified service dogs and schedules them to spend time at different locations, including airports, hospitals and schools.

Johnston added that about 15 volunteers will spend time at Hollywood Burbank, but he hopes to have 40 to 50 volunteers over the coming months.

Though there are currently 15 people and their service dogs signed up for Travelers Tails at the airport, there will be at most three volunteers during a shift.

It was the first shift for Linda Barnfather, Zoes owner, and Candy Malatesta, Miss Sherman Oaks owner, and both said it was heartwarming to see passengers faces light up whenever they approached the dogs.

Barnfather, who has been volunteering with service animals for 18 years, said she loves talking with passengers and hearing about their trips, but also likes to help people when they are in need.

Earlier that day, Barnfather said, she talked to a passenger who told her she had to fly back home to put down her elderly dog. The woman found comfort after talking with Barnfather and petting Zoe, Barnfather said.

We come up to them as strangers, but I feel we leave as friends, Barnfather said.

Carpio writes for the Burbank Leader.
In 1975 when refugees from Vietnam began arriving in America by the thousands, Dominic Luong saw his future.

The freshly ordained priest left the seminary in Buffalo, N.Y., where he was teaching biology and working as a hospital chaplain, and headed to New Orleans  a port of arrival for many forced to flee their homeland after the fall of Saigon.

There he helped found what would be the first Vietnamese-American parish in the U.S., Mary Queen of Vietnam Church. For years he tended to the needs of the refugees and immigrants, those whose lives years later would be uprooted again when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

Advertisement

Luongs work was so tireless and his passion so evident that Pope John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Orange in 2003, making him the first Vietnamese-born Roman Catholic bishop in the U.S. and an immediate spiritual leader in the countrys largest Vietnamese-American community  Little Saigon.

After years of service in Orange County and months of declining health, Luong died Dec. 6. He was 77.

He was someone gentle who drew people to him and to the church. He never judged, said Tai Nguyen, a parishioner who spent more than 14 years working with Luong, sometimes as a personal assistant, occasionally as the bishops chauffeur.

Father Thai Nguyen, director of the Vietnamese Catholic Center in Santa Ana who worked closely with the bishop, said Luong gave so freely it sometimes worried friends and associates.

You had to sort of make a fence around him to protect him, said Thai Nguyen. We have lost a man who was always giving.

Luong seemed to have little use for material goods and often lived in spartan apartments or rooms he rented in the homes of acquaintances. Friends said he preferred to focus his full attention on his faith and community projects. And in Orange County  with 62 parishes and an estimated 1.3 Catholics  he had his hands full.

Bishop Dominic Loung returns to Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans after it was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times )

Luong grew up the second youngest in a family of 11 children. He was born Dec. 20, 1940, in Minh Cuong, more than an hours drive from Hanoi, and came to the U.S. in 1956 as a young seminarian to continue his studies.

He was ordained in 1966 in New York before earning a bachelors degree in physics and a masters in biology and psychology and then returning to junior seminary in Buffalo to teach.

Luongs commitment to immigrants and refugees in New Orleans, where he served as the head of Archdiocesan Vietnamese Apostolate, spurred the pope to give him the title monsignor.

Troubles come to him and he offered solutions, Thai Nguyen said.

Often separated from his family  first during the Vietnam War and then by his immigration to the U.S., Luong sometimes battled loneliness.

He loved having guests. People would visit from Vietnam, yet once here, did not have enough money to fly to see other family or friends out of state and he would just give them the airfare, Nguyen said.

Luong loaned his name and support to social-justice causes, including Education for the Poor, a nonprofit whose volunteers concentrated on improving English skills and boosting academics in rural Vietnam.

If anyone donated to him or gifted him a sum, he would in turn share it with us, remembered Tue Phuong Van, the groups co-founder. Thats his heart. I never heard him say anything unkind.

Luong retired in 2015 but continued to be active at St. Bonaventure Church in Huntington Beach, where the largely Vietnamese-American congregation continued to lean on him for advice and quiet conversations. The man who entered the priesthood because he said it was a great vocation to serve people won distinction as the first Vietnamese priest to take the role of vicar of charities for Catholic Charities Orange County,

In everything I do, I just tried my very best, Luong said in October when he attended ceremonies at Christ Cathedral to congratulate his successor, Thanh Thai Nguyen, who was ordained earlier this week.

I did not grow up in California, but to minister to people it does not matter where you are from, he said. What matters is how you listen.

anh.do@latimes.com

Twitter: @newsterrier
For weather experts, autumn in Southern California is the great race.

The severity of the fall fire season is often determined by what arrives first  the fierce Santa Ana winds or the rains.

This year, however, its been no contest. Autumn has seen excruciatingly little rain, intensely low humidity, record heat and powerful winds that sparked what is so far the second largest wildfire in modern California history.

Advertisement

The result are these near-apocalyptic fires that were seeing, climatologist Bill Patzert said.

Together, the weather conditions that fueled Southern Californias December firestorms offer a window into a future that could include more destructive fires.

There is some evidence that the autumn on average in Southern California is going to be drier as the climate warms, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said.

Less rain in the autumn, along with hotter temperatures, increases the fire risk.

Timing matters. If we had the early season rain, we wouldnt have had the fires we just had, Swain said.

On average, downtown L.A. gets more than an inch of rain in November and more than two in December. But this year, there was only a hundredth of an inch of rain in November and nothing at all in December until Wednesday night, when a weak storm system dropped one-hundredth of an inch of rain on downtown Los Angeles. In fact, there had been no substantial rainfall in downtown Los Angeles since February.

Its part of a larger weather trend for Southern California: Over the last seven years, maximum temperatures during the fall have gotten hotter and there has been less rain. This October and November were the hottest in 122 years of record keeping for the region.

For downtown Los Angeles, this is shaping up to be the driest March-through-December period on record. A paltry 0.68 of an inch had fallen through Tuesday, beating out the 1.24 inches that fell during the same 10-month period in 1962.

This autumn saw dramatic heat records fall. Dodger Stadium on Oct. 24 hosted the hottest World Series game  103 degrees. On that same day, the mercury hit 104 in downtown L.A.  the hottest temperature on record so late in the calendar year. And the high of 92 on Nov. 23 broke a 114-year-old record for hottest Thanksgiving Day in L.A.

Those are pretty eyebrow-raising numbers. All of that heat into the fall  and the fact that it hasnt rained  that combination has brought moisture in vegetation in coastal California to record-low levels for this time of year, Swain said.

A persistent weather pattern has blocked rainfall away from Southern California.

Theres a large mass of high pressure over the West, which is associated with an unusually weak jet stream, said Patzert, a climatologist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. A weak jet stream  a powerful river of air in the upper atmosphere upon which storms ride  can be bad for rain in California when it meanders over the northern hemisphere and results into the development of a powerful mass of high pressure over the West that sends storms away north of California.

The mass of high pressure matters so much because Southern California gets most of its rain and snow from just a small number of storms every year.

Its easy to miss out on just a couple of events and have a dry year, Swain said.

Swain said La Nina  a phenomenon of cooling ocean waters in the tropical east Pacific  is playing a role in the persistence of the mass of high pressure, as is a warming of the western tropical ocean by Indonesia.

Until Wednesdays unexpected light rain, December held the possibility of recording no rainfall at all  a dubious distinction that has occurred only five times since weather records were first kept for downtown L.A. 140 years ago.

Were at 4% of normal, Patzert said.

Record temperatures and unusual heat waves throughout the autumn played a role in the drying out of vegetation.

The record warmth in California is clearly a symptom of climate change, Swain said. The likelihood of seeing record warmth and record heat waves is much more likely due to long-term warming.

The likelihood of seeing record warmth and record heat waves is much more likely due to long-term warming.  Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist

During the worst period of fire weather, humidity sank to extremely low levels  as low as 1%  with low single-digit readings even at the beaches, which are typically damp from moisture from the ocean.

Even during a summer heat wave in Southern California, theres still enough moisture in the air to cause dew to form at 20 to 40 degrees. But the air had become so dry that the temperature would have to have fallen as low as negative 20 degrees to form dew, Swain said.

On top of that has been the unremitting Santa Ana winds this month. Typically, Santa Ana wind events might last for two or three days. But the National Weather Service clocked in a record stretch of 12 consecutive days of red flag warnings that began on Dec. 4, the same day the Thomas fire ignited. The blaze has charred 272,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, destroyed more than 700 homes and contributed to deaths of two people, including a firefighter.

You get Santa Ana winds every year; theyve been particularly persistent this year, Swain said. But the difference this year is the period of record warmth that preceded them, and having an extremely dry start to the quote-unquote rainy season. Were getting the Santa Ana winds at a time we wouldve expected things to be much less dry.

Joe Sirard of the National Weather Service said he remembers the night of Dec. 4, when the Thomas fire broke out in the foothills above Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula.

I could see a wall of flaming glow, Sirard said, and the gusty winds were coming from just the perfect direction to speed flames and embers straight down the Santa Clara River valley between Santa Clarita and Ventura.

It was the perfect confluence of weather elements that night, he said. It was a very bad situation, and it was hard to see those flames move so fast.

Had the wind direction been off by just 10 or 20 degrees, there would have been less.

But on that day, the winds were such that they came right down into Ventura. It was the worst situation possible.

ron.lin@latimes.com

@ronlin
Federal authorities continue to search for the motive that drove a gunman to open fire on country music festival this fall, a bloody rampage that left 58 people dead and hundreds wounded.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday that investigators still couldnt say what made 64-year-old Stephen Paddock begin firing into a crowd of 22,000 at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Oct. 1.

Ours is focusing a large part on the why, OK? Which is what everybody wants to know, Rouse said. He said federal authorities expected to issue a report sometime next year.

Advertisement

Since the shooting, law enforcement officials have been largely quiet about Paddocks motives, and the lack of information has fueled several conspiracy theories in the nearly three months since the massacre.

But Rouse told the Review-Journal that investigators think Paddock acted alone.

I believe that there is one person and one person alone to blame for what happened on 1 October, and that is Stephen Paddock, Rouse said.

He outlined the efforts the agency had undertaken to try to discover a motive for Paddock, including interviewing 400 people about the gunman, using 400 specialists, and following up on 1,500 leads in Las Vegas and an 500 more worldwide.

We didnt leave anything uncovered, Rouse said. And again, the casinos, with their support, let us track down a lot of information of who may have had contact with that person. And it was very helpful to us.

Rouse didnt address Paddocks penchant for gambling, but Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said in an 8 News interview about a month after the shooting that Paddock was going through some bouts of depression and that the gambler was status-driven.

Lombardo said Paddock had been losing money for two years and had been showing signs of depression.

Since September 2015, hes lost a significant amount of wealth, and I think that might have been a determining factor on what he was determined to do, Lombardo said.

Paddock was known to play video poker and gamble large sums of money on the machines, and played at several properties on the Las Vegas Strip as well as at casinos in Mesquite and Reno. Rouse didnt address the state of Paddocks finances at the time he settled into his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and began firing into the crowd at the concert across the street.

Authorities have acted on search warrants at Paddocks homes in Mesquite and in Reno. Several search warrants remain sealed and a hearing is scheduled next month to determine whether the contents of those warrants should be unsealed. Several media outlets  including the Los Angeles Times  have also filed lawsuits seeking the release of the 911 tapes from the night of the shooting.

david.montero@latimes.com

Twitter: @davemontero
Nearly a decade ago, California became the first state in the nation to pass a law requiring that hens, veal calves and pregnant pigs be raised in cages that gave them space to move. The most notable effect of the measure  Proposition 2 in 2008  was to bar the sale of eggs produced by hens jammed into cramped cages. Shortly after that, the state Legislature passed a companion law (AB 1437) mandating that any farmer in the country who wanted to sell eggs in California had to comply with the welfare standards set for hens in the state.

Ever since, farmers and officials from various other states have balked at the requirement, claiming it violates the Constitutions protections for interstate commerce. A federal appeals court panel rejected such a claim last year, holding that AB 1437 wasnt unconstitutional because it applies evenly to in-state and out-of-state producers. More recently, a dozen states have jointly asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the law.

One of the laws most vocal Congressional opponents is Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who represents the largest egg-producing district of the largest egg-producing state in the country. Hes pushing the Protect Interstate Commerce Act (H.R. 3599), which would prohibit any state from setting more restrictive standards for out-of-state agricultural products than the federal government imposes nationally or the producers own state mandates.

Advertisement

No federal law should stop California or any other state from passing measures that protect the health and welfare of its consumers and its farm animals.

Nearly four years ago, King authored a similar measure and persuaded his House colleagues to incorporate it into that years version of the Farm Bill, which authorizes federal farm programs. It didnt make its way into the version signed into law by President Obama, however. Undeterred, King is expected to try to attach his current proposal to the Farm Bill thats scheduled to move through Congress next year.

This is a bad and harmful measure, and the House Agriculture Committee should reject it. Given that it would invalidate laws that California legislators have enacted on food safety and animal welfare, along with the states ability to protect California consumers, we would particularly ask House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy  a Republican from Bakersfield  and the four California lawmakers on the House Agriculture Committee to work to keep Kings proposal out of the Farm Bill.

Its worth remembering why California voters approved Proposition 2 in the first place. An overwhelming majority considered it cruel to keep egg-laying hens their entire short lives in cages so tiny they couldnt even spread their wings. But Kings proposal would not only interfere with the humane standards some states have set for egg-laying hens in factory farms, it would invalidate numerous state laws across the country that govern agricultural production.

For starters, it could interfere with laws forbidding the slaughter of horses and dogs for human consumption. It could have an effect on laws requiring the labeling of farm-raised fish and Marylands state ban on arsenic in poultry feed (which is sometimes added to prevent infections and promote growth in the birds). It could thwart restrictions that states have passed to protect against invasive pests. According to the Humane Society, it could even nullify state laws that bar the sale of puppies bred in facilities that fail to meet the states animal welfare standards.

Ideally, there would be uniform federal standards for consumer safety and animal welfare, not a patchwork of state laws governing agricultural production. But that isnt the case. And in many instances, states are setting more up-to-date standards when the federal government has been unwilling or unable to do so.

Thats one reason why California has a law preventing what is now widely seen as the cruel confinement of egg-laying hens  along with a law that makes all egg producers selling in California, whether they are based in the state or outside it, follow the same standards. While attempts to write uniform, updated national standards for egg producing hens have gotten hopelessly bogged down in politics, several other states  Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Washington  have enacted their own protections for hens. And increasingly, farmers in other states without humane standards for hens will be compelled to convert to cage-free operations as giant companies buying eggs  like Costco, for example  move toward selling or using eggs only from cage-free hens.

In the meantime, no federal law should stop California or any other state from passing measures that protect the health and welfare of consumers and farm animals.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
As President Trumps lawyers were preparing this week to meet with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, their client continued to undermine Muellers investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.

Echoing a complaint by lawyers for his transition team that Mueller had unlawfully obtained tens of thousands of its emails from the General Services Administration, the president on Sunday said: Its not looking good. Its quite sad to see that. My people are very upset about it. A lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad. (A spokesman for Mueller insisted that the emails had been obtained lawfully.)

In response to a question last week about whether he might pardon former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is assumed to be cooperating with Muellers investigation, Trump said: I dont want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn  yet. (Ty Cobb, one of Trumps lawyers, later said: There is no consideration at the White House of any pardon for Michael Flynn. But whom would Flynn be more likely to believe?)

Advertisement

Its incumbent on responsible Republicans in Congress to make it clear to the president that if he menaces Mueller, he does so at his own peril.

If Flynn and other potential cooperating witnesses believe that Trump might pardon them, Mueller would lose much of his leverage  making it unnecessary for Trump to fire the special counsel in order to frustrate the investigation.

Meanwhile, the presidents Amen Corner at Fox News has continued its campaign of vilification against Mueller and the FBI. For example, Sean Hannity has called the Mueller investigation a giant cesspool ... full of corruption, partisanship and unbridled bias and has said that Muellers stooges literally are doing everything within their power and then some to try and remove President Trump from office. This is delusional nonsense.

In a normal presidency, it would be unfair to draw a connection between the rantings of a presidents most feverish cheerleaders in the media and the chief executive. But Trump has made it clear that he and Fox News exist in a sort of feedback loop. (In retweeting a Hannity Thanksgiving greeting the president gushed: A great guy (with great ratings)! Its not paranoid to worry that Foxs highly suggestible First Viewer might be impelled by what he sees on television to move against Mueller.

Perhaps most ominous, some Republican members of Congress increasingly are sounding like Fox News commentators in besmirching Muellers investigation and the FBI and pushing unsupported conspiracy theories. When Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, defended the special counsel in an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio suggested that the Comey FBI and the Obama Justice Department worked with one campaign to go after the other campaign. That is likely to be music to Trumps ears.

Republicans also have grossly exaggerated the importance of the fact that Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who was involved in the Mueller inquiry (and the investigation of Hillary Clintons emails), exchanged text messages critical of Trump. Strzok was transferred, and there is no evidence so far that he was influenced by his political beliefs in the way he performed his duties, either as part of the Mueller investigation or in connection with the Clinton inquiry. (Strzoks activities are under review by the Justice Departments inspector general.)

Trump already has shown he is susceptible to conspiracy theories, especially if they accord with his view that the intelligence services and law enforcement are biased against him. This month he tweeted the absurd assertion that the reputation of the FBI was in Tatters, worst in History!

Several obstacles stand in the way of an effort by Trump to fire Mueller or undo his investigation through the use of his pardon power, including (presumably) the advice of his lawyers and the near-certainty that any move against Mueller would provoke a popular uprising and demands for impeachment.

But anyone who thinks Trump cant act impulsively against his own best interests should remember that he fired James Comey, a reckless act that resulted in Rosensteins decision to appoint Mueller. Its incumbent on responsible Republicans in Congress to make it clear to the president that if he menaces Mueller, he does so at his own peril.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
An epidemic of opioid abuse is ravaging the United States and, as we look for ways to respond to it, some see cannabis as part of the solution, while others see it as part of the problem. This is just one area in which unbiased scientific research is necessary, but outdated federal legislation, having concluded almost 50 years ago that there is no medical value to cannabis, is blocking all meaningful efforts to understand the real benefits and risks of the plant.

There are critical open questions about cannabis, and without research conducted under rigorous scientific standards, we will not find answers. If you think these questions dont really matter in daily life, lets look at three scenarios.

Your friend is one of the 1,125,000 people in California who use medical cannabis. Before going to bed, he drinks a cannabis tea because it helps him go to sleep. The morning after, he feels well rested and doesnt experience any aftereffects. But one day, as he is driving to work, the police stop him for a random blood THC test (this type of test is already in use in Colorado and may be adopted in California). Your friend turns out to be THC positive and loses his drivers license, even though there is no correlation between blood THC levels and intoxication. The same person can have detectable blood THC levels and be perfectly functional, or have undetectable levels and be impaired. We need research to develop objective, unbiased ways of measuring cannabis intoxication, or innocent people will end up paying for a crime they did not commit.

Advertisement

The Controlled Substance Act is the single greatest impediment to increasing our knowledge of cannabis.

Or lets say your grandfather is convinced that cannabis is the only thing that helps him with his arthritis pain. He is not alone in believing this  cannabis use in persons over 50 has tripled in the last 10 years, a phenomenon primarily driven by self-medication for pain and sleep problems. You are happy for grandpa, but then you notice that he has become more forgetful than he used to be. Is this a normal consequence of age, or a side effect of the drug? Will forgetfulness turn into memory impairment? We cant answer this question now, because the effects of cannabis have never been studied in elderly people. Research shows that that in old mice, low doses of cannabis may actually improve memory  but what about in humans?

One last example, which takes us back to the opioid crisis. States in which cannabis is legal have 25% fewer deaths for opioid overdose than states in which medical use of the drug is not allowed. These are credible data, but do not necessarily mean that cannabis is a solution to the opioid crisis. Cannabis reduces many forms of chronic pain in people, but we do not know if it can replace opioids. Nor do we know if the use of cannabis attenuates or worsens the risk of developing an opioid addiction.

Finding the answers to all of the above questions is more than feasible.

Yet the Controlled Substance Act of 1970, or CSA, stands in the way. First, researchers seeking to study cannabis and its chemical constituents (even the innocuous cannabidiol) may only use plant material from a single federal contractor, the University of Mississippi. That cannabis is very different from the cannabis generally available to the public in California and elsewhere, which creates a problem of external validity: what researchers are allowed to study in the lab or the clinic does not tell them much about what happens in the real world. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration must approve any use of the University of Mississippi cannabis, a process that requires researchers to jump through unnecessary hoops.

This is not news. We have known for years that the Controlled Substance Act is the single greatest impediment to increasing our knowledge of cannabis. It matters now because, come January, Proposition 64 (the Adult Use of Marijuana Act approved by California voters in November 2016) will take effect in full and cannabis will be legally available for recreational use in the most populous state in the union.

Californias Bureau of Cannabis Control is working hard to put sensible guidelines in place and regulate its use, but even the most thoughtful regulation cannot replace research. If science does not fill the knowledge void, then interest-driven pseudo-science will. Ideologists and special interests are already pushing hard in that direction.

Proposition 64 calls for and funds research on cannabis. Despite out-of-date federal legislation, it is essential that we implement this key component of the proposition and support the rigorous scientific work needed by medical providers, consumers, law enforcement and entrepreneurs alike.

Daniele Piomelli and Bob Solomon are directors of the UCI Center for the Study of Cannabis.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook.
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.

The House approved the spending bill, 231 to 188, with 14 Democrats joining a majority of the chambers Republicans. The Senate quickly followed, voting 66 to 32 to avert a federal shutdown Friday, with 30 Democrats opposed, including both California senators, largely because the bill failed to resolve the fate of the young immigrants known as Dreamers.

Advertisement

The disaster aid package, the largest in U.S. history, ran into trouble. It passed the House, 251 to 169, on a bipartisan vote, but was blocked in the Senate, where it required 60 votes, under pressure from two directions.

Conservative groups opposed the disaster measure for increasing spending too much, and Democrats said it was insufficient, especially for hard-hit Puerto Rico. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky decided not to bring the measure up for a vote.

Lawmakers plan to try again in the new year.

The stop-gap spending bill would fund three more months of the Childrens Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which provides insurance for nearly 9 million children nationwide. Congress has been deadlocked on a longer-term renewal of the popular program, and several states are on the verge of running out of money to keep it going.

The bill would also extend for a few weeks the National Security Agencys legal authority for domestic surveillance of emails, which is set to expire at the end of the month. The debate over major reforms in the program would be punted, along with many other issues, into the new year.

Among the unresolved issues is protection for the Dreamers, who face the threat of deportation starting in March because of President Trumps decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which allowed them to stay and work in the U.S.

Gaining a permanent legislative fix for the Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children, was a top priority for Democrats, some of whom had promised to oppose any year-end spending bill that did not include it.

More than 1,000 Dreamers and advocates continued protests and lawmaker visits Thursday at the Capitol. In the end, moderate Democrats said they would not risk a government shutdown at this point over the issue. Party leaders promised to fight out the issue in January.

Theres a lot of justifiable anger and disappointment that the Dream Act didnt pass before the holidays, but we remain optimistic that were going to get it done, said Frank Sharry, executive director at Americas Voice, an immigrant advocacy organization.

Passage of both the year-end spending bill and the disaster aid package has been uncertain all week as the Republican majority, particularly in the House, fought over priorities. Defense hawks pushed unsuccessfully for a big boost in military spending. Conservatives opposed the disaster package unless it included offsetting cuts to other programs.

In the House, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) appealed to GOP lawmakers to capitalize on the unified front they had shown in passing the tax cut bill this week, hoping to end the year on a political high note.

Lets stand together, be a team, Ryan urged lawmakers in a private meeting in the Capitol basement, according to a person present in the room who was not authorized to speak on the record. Ryan reminded bickering lawmakers that their divisions only served up opportunities for Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, to leverage their votes for their own priorities.

Trump echoed that message in a morning tweet urging passage of whats called a continuing resolution: House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, dont let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) implored colleagues to support the disaster aid measure.

Here and now, right before Christmas, dont vote against aid, he said. What we do here and now, it has consequences.

The huge disaster aid package signals what experts have warned will be greater expenses for covering natural calamities as the climate changes.

It included $4.4 billion California sought for wildfires earlier this season, but does not include recovery money for the devastating Thomas fire, among the biggest ever recorded. Congressional leaders expect to consider more money for the costs of that fire in 2018.

Even so, conservative groups warned lawmakers to vote against it.

Congress is trying to ram through a huge spending bill with little warning, claiming that offsets are not needed because its an emergency,  said the conservative Club for Growth. This profligate spending needs to stop.

The spending measure will keep most government operations running at existing levels, with some slight boosts for the military  including construction of a missile field in Alaska that is intended to boost defenses against the threat of an attack by North Korea  but not the big increase sought by defense hawks.

CHIP will receive $2.8 billion to continue funding through March, but not the broader authorization governors and advocates have been seeking.

Republicans made good on a promise to shield Medicare and other programs from steep cuts that could result if the just-passed GOP tax plan adds to deficits, which it is expected to do. The stop-gap spending measure would waive so-called pay-as-you-go spending rules, which threatened to cause automatic cuts.

Congress has often waived that rule in the past, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) objected to waiving it again.

Do federal deficits matter? he asked.

Pauls effort to block the waiver, though, was rejected, with only seven other senators, all conservative Republicans, voting with him to allow the automatic cuts.

The waiver was one of the conditions Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) won in exchange for her vote in favor of the tax bill. Collins relented, for now, on other demands to stabilize the Affordable Care Act, which GOP leaders promised her they would address next year.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

@LisaMascaro

ALSO

Dreamers will have to wait until next year for Congress long-promised protections

House and Senate pass GOP tax plan as Congress prepares to deliver Trumps top legislative priority

Is this small-town congressman from New Mexico tough enough to win Democrats the House majority?

More coverage of Congress

More coverage of politics and the White House

UPDATES:

4:45 p.m.: This article was updated with the partisan breakdown of the Senate roll call.

4:15 p.m.: This article was updated with Senate votes.

2:15 p.m.: This article was updated with House passage of the disaster-relief bill.

1:45 p.m.: This article was updated with the House vote on the stopgap money bill.

12:40 p.m.: This article was updated with opposition rising to the disaster aid package.

The article was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
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.

Advertisement

Congressional leaders had hoped to extend the Childrens Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, which provides insurance for some 9 million children nationwide, and pass measures to stabilize the Affordable Care Act. Instead, they appeared resigned by the end of the day to simply avoiding a government shutdown Friday by extending into mid-January the deadline for passing money bills and picking up the legislative battles in 2018.

For Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, many of whom have been protesting for weeks at the Capitol, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chambers second-ranking Democrat, had a simple message: Im sorry.

We have a long way to go, said Durbin, who has led efforts to pass legislation known as the Dream Act in the Senate. Im sorry that what we thought would be a moment and an opportunity did not happen.

At this point it looks unlikely.

Nearly 800,000 immigrants who were protected under President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order are at risk of deportation now that President Trump has announced the end of the program in March. More than 1,000 immigrant advocates arrived in Washington this week pleading with lawmakers to negotiate a legislative solution before leaving town for the Christmas holiday, a deadline for action that Democratic leaders had insisted on earlier this year.

Durbin and others continued to hold out hope that Congress could act on a version of the Dream Act in January. At least one Republican who has been involved in negotiations on the issue, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, predicted a deal was still at hand.

Bipartisan #DACA bill will be on the Senate floor in January, he tweeted.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged Wednesday that he would bring a bill to the Senate floor for a vote that included a DACA fix and border security measures if negotiators can develop a compromise that can be widely supported by both political parties by the end of January  a promise that leaves him considerable flexibility.

Dreamer advocates said they would persist, despite their disappointment. We have never been so close to protection as we are right now, said Greisa Martinez Rosas, 29, the policy director at United We Dream, an immigration advocacy organization. Whether its today or its January, immigrant young people are going to continue to grow our base and fight back. Its about our lives.

The Dreamers have a broad range of allies. Deep-pocketed Republican donors in the business world, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have urged Congress to pass a bill. Charles Koch, the influential conservative billionaire, joined with Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook this week to write an op-ed supporting the young immigrants.

But negotiations to reach a deal have soured in recent days, according to officials involved in the talks. In a meeting with key senators, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly outlined a wish list of immigration law changes that Trump wanted in exchange for backing a DACA replacement. It included strict limits on new arrivals and went beyond the border security measures both sides already had largely agreed to.

Conservative Republicans who back cuts in legal immigration, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), joined the talks as the two sides moved further apart. The group met again on Wednesday.

Dreamer advocates have pressured Democrats to insist on a bill to resolve the status of the young immigrants even at the price of blocking money for federal agencies and provoking a partial government shutdown.

Democrats, although they are the minority party in both houses, have leverage because many conservative Republicans in the House refuse to vote for spending bills, meaning that GOP leaders must rely on Democrats to pass them. In the Senate, spending bills require 60 votes, so the GOP needs the cooperation of at least eight Democrats.

But although some Democrats said they would refuse to vote for any spending bill that did not solve the DACA issue, many moderates, especially in the Senate, made clear they were not willing to shut down the government over the issue, saying they could still resolve it next month.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has been under pressure from Dreamers to deliver, blamed Republicans for spending so much time and effort on their tax plan that other issues have been left undone.

We will get it done, she told reporters. Its shameful that we didnt, because theyve been too busy ransacking the middle class, robbing the childrens future and rewarding the rich.

Meantime, Republicans scrambled to figure out a way forward on the spending and disaster bills, huddling in a basement strategy session late into the evening after celebrating passage of the tax bill at the White House.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) was hoping enough Democrats would join Republicans to approve disaster funds, which include $4.4 billion for California in the aftermath of wildfires.

If you look whats in (it) for California, its very strong, he told reporters.

The spending bill would probably be voted on separately from the disaster bill. It would provide a simple continuation of funds for the next few weeks, without the beefed-up Defense money Republicans wanted or the policy measures Democrats pushed for, including renewal of CHIP.

Also set aside, for now, were votes on measures to stabilize Obamacare sought by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as part of negotiations for her support on the tax bill.

Collins, however, said that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called her Wednesday and told her the House remains committed to passing legislation to provide for high-risk pools and other reinsurance mechanisms similar to the bipartisan legislation I have introduced.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

@LisaMascaro

ALSO

Bannons ouster could boost the powerful Koch network, which has surprising sway in Trumps White House

Chants of protest drown out any caroling this holiday season at the Capitol

Is this small-town congressman from New Mexico tough enough to win Democrats the House majority?

More coverage of Congress

More coverage of politics and the White House
Organizers have stashed bullhorns in apartments and offices near Manhattans Times Square. Theyve stockpiled hot chocolate mix and sleeping bags in Salt Lake City. And theyve started arranging carpools in Houston.

Across the country, activists are making plans, collecting supplies and raising money to swiftly launch hundreds of street protests if President Trump fires Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who has been investigating the Trump administration.

The last thing we want is to be caught unprepared, said Elizabeth Beavers, a Washington-based policy manager for Indivisible, one of several liberal groups involved in the protest plans.

Advertisement

Were on red alert, agreed Zac Petkanas, a Democratic consultant working with the organizers.

Never mind that Trump and his legal team insist theres no plan to oust Mueller or otherwise interfere with the investigation into whether the presidents associates helped Russia meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trumps opponents dont buy the denials, especially as some Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators have escalated demands for Mueller to get the boot.

The presidents lawyers are expected to meet with the special counsels office as early as this week as Trump seeks a public exoneration to remove the cloud over his presidency. Few outside legal experts believe Mueller would offer that promise while the investigation remains underway.

That leaves Muellers fate a potent issue for organizing and fundraising in an era when protest politics have become the norm and midterm elections loom on the calendar.

I went into shock [after the presidential election] and I became politically active almost immediately, said Mary Louise Ochoa, a retired University of Houston staff member who is helping to organize in the city. Theres been no respite since then.

Participants in Womens March Los Angeles fill the streets near City Hall and Grand Park on Jan. 21, the day after President Trumps inauguration. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times )

The protests began on Jan. 21, the day after Trump was sworn into office, when hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington and other cities in a kind of counter-inauguration.

After Trump tried to ban immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries in his first week, thousands of protesters flocked to LAX and other airports. Courts blocked the executive order, although the Supreme Court recently allowed a modified version to take effect.

Next came protests and lawsuits against Trumps immigration crackdown, his attempt to ban transgender people from the military and his rollback of clean air standards. There was a March for Science to oppose cuts to research budgets and environmental regulations, and a March for Truth to support an independent investigation into allegations of Russian collusion.

Indeed, Trump has turbocharged the countrys left-leaning activists. Liberal groups focused on issues such as climate change and the sexual abuse of women have been flooded with new members and money, just as conservative and tea party groups beefed up to oppose President Obamas policies.

In perhaps the most dramatic example, the American Civil Liberties Union raked in $24 million in online donations in just one weekend after Trump took office. That was six times the $4 million it normally raises online each year.

Emilys List, which supports pro-choice Democratic candidates, announced Wednesday that 25,000 women have contacted the organization since the election to discuss running for office. That compares with 920 women in the two years before the 2016 election.

What were seeing now is like nothing weve seen before in our history, said Alexandra De Luca, the Emilys List press secretary. This is building a pipeline for cycles to come.

Organizers said firing Mueller would mobilize Trumps opponents as few issues have done in the past.

This is different from the kind of overreaches weve seen from the Trump administration already, said David Sievers, campaign director for MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group.

So far, Muellers team has filed criminal charges against four former Trump aides. Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his deputy, Richard Gates, have pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy and fraud. Michael T. Flynn, who served 24 days as Trumps national security advisor, and George Papadopoulos, a campaign advisor, have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

As the investigation advances, Republicans have increasingly tried to portray Muellers team as fueled by partisan animus. Fox News talk show host Jeanine Pirro, a former judge and prosecutor, called for a cleansing at the Department of Justice with some officials taken out in handcuffs.

The scathing rhetoric has rattled activists, who remember how Trump boasted that he fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May because of this Russia thing. Top Democrats have suggested Mueller is investigating Comeys ouster as possible obstruction of justice.

History suggests protests are unlikely to affect the presidents decisions, at least in the short term. Hundreds of thousands of Americans regularly protested the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, but U.S. combat troops were not withdrawn until 1973 and U.S. involvement dragged on for two more years.

Protests also erupted during the Watergate scandal when President Nixon tried to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Atty Gen. Elliot Richardson and Deputy Atty. Gen. William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than do so. The acting attorney general, Robert Bork, carried out Nixons order, completing the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.

Follow live coverage of the Trump administration on Essential Washington 

Some protesters gathered outside the White House holding signs that read: Honk if you want him impeached. (Police handed $5 citations for excessive noise to some drivers who honked.) But Nixons use of executive power led to a harsh backlash in Congress and public opinion.

The reaction from the media, the Democrats and even some Republicans was so fast and furious that Nixon backed down pretty fast, and Bork appointed Leon Jaworksi as another special prosecutor, said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University professor who has studied the Watergate era.

Still, Nixon did not resign for another 10 months.

David S. Meyer, a UC Irvine sociology professor who wrote a book called The Politics of Protest, said there are some signs that anti-Trump demonstrators are producing the kind of electoral energy that would be needed for Democrats to retake control of Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020.

The connection between protest politics and mainstream politics is the challenge for people going out into the streets right now, Meyer said. Its always an uphill battle.

But organizers face a challenge waiting for Trump to move on Mueller. For starters, they dont know when or if they will be needed.

We dont actually want this to happen, said Shannon Stagman, 33, who has been preparing a New York protest with Empire State Indivisible. The best-case scenario here is that all of this planning was for naught and we dont need to hold these events.

If Mueller is fired before 2 p.m., protesters would gather at 5 p.m. If it happens after 2 p.m., they would start at noon the next day.

As soon as the news breaks, Stagman said, organizers would hold a conference call to plan next steps. Then theyd collect their bullhorns and tell protesters to beeline to Times Square, where they would march about two miles downtown to Union Square.

Theyll have extra signs ready. But theyre still scrounging up lighting in case their rally happens after dark.

Its going to be kind of last-minute, Stagman said.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

Twitter: @chrismegerian

ALSO:

Trumps lawyers want second special counsel as Republicans turn up the heat on Mueller investigation

President Trump seeks public exoneration as Democrats and Republicans battle over ending Russia probes
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is under pressure from activists and fellow Democrats to withhold support for a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown in exchange for protections for people brought to the country illegally as children.

Feinstein said in October that protections for so-called Dreamers are the most important thing we can get done, but the senator known for her moderate bent said this week that she wont try to block the end-of-the-year spending bill over it, and has not offered an explanation.

UPDATE: In reversal, Feinstein says she wont vote for spending bill unless theres a deal for Dreamers 

Advertisement

Dreamers this week flooded Feinsteins five California offices and her office on Capitol Hill. Two UCLA students refused to leave her Capitol Hill office after three hours Tuesday and were briefly detained by police. On Wednesday, about a dozen students and parents returned and were asked to leave after about 30 minutes of shouting in her office lobby.

No more talk, they chanted. California deserves action, California deserves a fighter. If you are a leader, come out.

About a quarter of the nearly 800,000 Dreamers live in California.

At a Los Angeles rally Wednesday, one of Feinsteins Democratic primary challengers, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, complained that she is AWOL. De Leon has trailed heavily in early polls as Feinstein seeks a fifth full term.

Dont come back to California if you havent demonstrated your leadership and your courage to stand up for these young men and women, De Leon said.

Republican leaders have said they have plenty of time to address Dreamers legal status. Republicans want a fix that includes increased border protections, and many Democrats acknowledge that a solution is not possible by the end of the year.

In September, President Trump decided to discontinue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by March and asked Congress to come up with a solution for Dreamers. Since then, an average of 122 recipients a day have lost deportation protection and work permits.

While there are enough House Republicans to pass a spending bill on their own, Republicans will need Democratic support in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass. Republicans hold just 51 seats.

Feinsteins counterpart, California Sen. Kamala Harris, announced in October that she wouldnt support the spending bill without a fix for Dreamers. Half a dozen Democratic senators have made similar declarations, far short of the number needed to block the bill.

Feinstein is also being lobbied by some California House members.

Rep. Nanette Barragan of San Pedro, whose cousin is among the Dreamers anxiously waiting a resolution, said she called Feinstein Wednesday to urge her to help block the spending bill.

This is an opportunity right now to make Republicans come to the table. They shouldnt need our votes, and frankly in the Senate they do and this is an opportunity to get those protections that they keep telling us they want for Dreamers as well, Barragan said. I hope that she would stand with the Dreamers on this issue. Its a critical time.

One of the protesters in Feinsteins office, Jonathan Paik, 29, of Fullerton, said that with so many Dreamers in California, Feinstein has more responsibility to be a leader.

Even though Feinstein has sponsored one of the legislative fixes being considered, Paik said protesters dont feel like Feinstein is doing all she can.

We will remember, and that is something that I think is very critical to understand .... that in a moment of critical leadership she did not step into that [role] and were going to remember, he said.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics

Times staff writer Jazmine Ulloa contributed to this report.

ALSO:

Trumps decision on the Dreamers is personal for some Californians in Congress

California could flip the House, and these 13 races will make the difference

Updates on California politics
San Francisco is the city everyone loves, even if they hate it.

The stately Victorians, like a gingerbread dream come to life. The majestic Golden Gate Bridge, standing like heavens portal above the fog. The plucky cable cars, scrabbling up its impossible hillsides.

It can almost make you forget the bands of ravaged homeless, the paralyzing traffic, the scent of human waste wafting from sidewalks outside the citys posh eateries and palatial tech headquarters.

Advertisement

San Francisco is getting a new mayor, owing to the sudden death of incumbent Ed Lee. All of the grandeur, and all of the grit, accompany the position.

To say the race is wide open  Lee having passed just about a week ago  is an understatement.

London Breed is the acting mayor, by dint of her role as president of the Board of Supervisors, the citys governing body. Whether she runs to keep the job, agrees to serve as caretaker until a June 5 special election or continues in the role because the fractious 11-member board cant agree on an interim successor are open questions.

Wheels are spinning.

A lot of vacation plans have been altered because the stakes are remarkably high and remarkably immediate, said Alex Clemens, a political strategist who has already held a number of conversations with prospective candidates.

Whoever prevails, California will have a new Democratic star, a national voice on the liberal  pardon, progressive  agenda and a contender sometime down the line for governor, U.S. Senate or some other statewide office, should the new mayor choose to run.

San Francisco has an extraordinary record of producing political leaders of state and national import: Hiram Johnson; Pat Brown and his son, Jerry; Phillip Burton and his brother, John; Dianne Feinstein; Willie Brown, and Nancy Pelosi to name a few.

Feinsteins junior partner in the U.S. Senate, Kamala Harris, is a former San Francisco district attorney. Gavin Newsom, the front-runner to replace Jerry Brown as governor, is the citys ex-mayor.

The close-quarters combat of the citys 47 square miles and its demanding and highly engaged electorate make for an unmatched training ground. San Francisco is a crucible, said Nathan Ballard, a former Newsom press secretary. It chews up and spits out the least talented.

San Francisco politicians also benefit from the mindset of Bay Area residents, who regard the nine-county region more holistically than residents of Southern California see their sprawling home. Goings-on in the city  or The City, as its widely regarded  are chronicled on TV, in the newspapers and in foreign-language media in ways that turn its local personalities into areawide celebrities, or at least familiar names and faces.

Though San Francisco has plenty of detractors, the recognition is a leg-up for any Democrat running in a crowded field. (It helps, too, that voters in the Bay Area typically turn out in higher percentages than Southern Californians.)

The stakes are remarkably high and remarkably immediate.  Alex Clemens, San Francisco political strategist.

Lee, a former city administrator, became interim mayor in January 2011 after Newsom quit to become lieutenant governor. Although he had agreed to be a placeholder, Lee changed his mind. He won a full term in November 2011 and easy reelection in 2015, going virtually unchallenged.

Unlike Feinstein and Newsom, he never set his sights beyond San Francisco. That made him a rarity in a ruling class that oozes ambition.

Those who wish to succeed Lee have until Jan. 9 to get into the race. Whoever wins on June 5 will finish the remainder of his mayoral term, then face another election in November 2019 for a full four years.

The potential field is large.

Along with Breed, City Atty. Dennis Hererra, Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu and Assemblyman David Chiu are believed to be eyeing the race. Former state Sen. Mark Leno declared his candidacy in May, back when the election was supposed to be in 2019. Former Supervisor Angela Alioto announced on Monday, and board member Jane Kim jumped into the race Wednesday.

More are considering the contest.

The fault lines of the incipient campaign are those historically cleaving San Francisco, pitting the business-backed, moderate wing of the Democratic Party, which includes Breed, a Willie Brown protege, against the citys progressives. (Were grading on a curve; a moderate by San Francisco standards, Feinstein, for instance, would be considered unassailably liberal just about anywhere else in America.)

The issues likely to dominate the race reflect the scourges that make this city so vexing: homelessness, street crime, a public school system failing some of its neediest children and, above all, a growing gulf between rich and poor, which gives San Francisco the increasing feel of a Third World country.

None of those problems are new. Feinstein wrestled with similar issues, and she left City Hall nearly 30 years ago. Several mayors have been overmatched since then.

Few cities in the country have been blessed with the natural beauty, exuberance and charm of San Francisco. Any mayor who could bring its quality of living to the same lofty level would forge a legacy deserving of higher office.

Maybe even coronation as king or queen of California.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak on Twitter

ALSO

Tom Steyer has gathered more than 3 million signatures to impeach Trump. Why are Democrats so annoyed?

In Orange County, fear and loathing for the GOPs Screw California tax bill

Heres why Republicans could help send Dianne Feinstein back to Washington  even if they cant stand her
Republicans won the tax fight in Congress by overpowering Democrats. Now the battle begins to retain that power in next years elections. Their celebrated victory could cost them control of the House.

Theoretically anyway.

Democrats need to pick up 24 Republican seats nationally to take back the House and end the GOPs control of Washington.

Seven congressional races in California will be crucial. In all of those districts, voters elected Republicans to Congress last year, but they snubbed then-candidate Donald Trump and voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Advertisement

So the Democratic strategy is a no-brainer. The tax bill is unpopular in California and across the country. Trump is equally disliked in this state. Tie both around the Republican House incumbent and this makes a nice Democratic victory package. Maybe.

How much does voting for the GOP tax bill really hurt vulnerable California Republicans?

The quick and easy answer is that 12 Republicans [who voted for the bill] just committed hari-kari, says Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who publishes the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps congressional and legislative races. But whether thats true or not is unclear. There are an incredible number of unknowns.

No one really knows how the Republican tax plan will play out. Few even seem to know precisely whats in it. One thing is certain, however: Individuals in high-tax Democratic states like California and New York will be worse off than people in lower-tax GOP states because of new limits on state and local tax deductions.

The GOP tax plan passed. Now Democrats have another big issue to use in the midterms 

In the final days of Republicans compromising among themselves, the GOP wisely softened the bills impact on taxpayers who itemize deductions, as a third of California taxpayers do.

The final bill will allow up to $10,000 in deductions of state and local taxes, which is especially important in California. Theres currently no limit on those deductions. And the bill will permit mortgage interest deductions on new loans up to $750,000, rather than $500,000 as originally planned.

Two of the most threatened California Republicans played it smart. Reps. Darrell Issa of Vista and Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa took no chance on a voter backlash and shielded themselves by voting no on the bill.

The bill was improved, but not enough for a significant # of my constituents, Rohrabacher tweeted.

Issa also tweeted that the changes do not go far enough to guarantee tax relief for constituents in my district.

The Cook Political Report, a national tip sheet for political junkies, rates the Issa and Rohrabacher races as toss-ups. Also rated a toss-up is the reelection bid of Republican Steve Knight of Palmdale. Knight joined all the other California Republicans in voting for the tax bill.

Three other Republicans representing districts that voted for Clinton are rated by Cook as leaning their way for reelection. Theyre Reps. Mimi Walters of Irvine, Ed Royce of Fullerton and Jeff Denham of Turlock. A fourth, David Valadao of Hanford, is considered by Cook a likely winner for another term.

But its very early. What happens next November will depend on the quality of candidates and campaigns.

Bombastic Democratic rhetoric  such as Gov. Jerry Brown likening Republican congressional leaders to a bunch of Mafia thugs  probably just drives GOP voters deeper into their party corner.

Theres enough natural California fear of the new tax law and resentment of President Trump to propel Democratic campaigns without hyperventilating.

A poll released this week by the nonpartisan UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed Californias dislike for both the tax plan and the president. Thats a potentially fatal combo for at-risk Republicans who voted for the bill. The tax plan was supported by only 30% of registered voters. It was opposed by 51%, including 42% who disliked it strongly. Opinions broke along party lines  with 60% of Republicans supporting it, 67% of Democrats against. But only one-third of Republicans felt that the bill will have a positive impact on California.

A mere 30% of voters approved of Trumps job performance; 66% disapproved. Again, it was party line: 73% of Republicans approving but 93% of Democrats disapproving.

More from George Skelton 

In much worse shape was Congress: 15% approval, 76% disapproval. Even 70% of Republicans disapproved of the GOP Congress.

Its not a great year to run for reelection to Congress with congressional approval so low, says Mark DiCamillo, the poll director.

Especially for a California Republican.

But Wayne Johnson, a longtime Republican consultant, says his prognosis of the tax bills political impact has changed. Hes now more optimistic.

Asked whether it could hurt Republicans reelection efforts, Johnson replied: The first reaction I had was probably yes. But the more Ive looked at it and got into the details, I really dont think so. I think Republicans have done a terrible job of explaining it.

The effect of doubling the standard deduction [for non-itemizers] is huge, the consultant continued. Nobody is looking at that.

Sragow says: Is it a good day for Democrats? Sure. Theyve got dreams of sugar plums in their heads. Republicans are tossing and turning. But thats just tonight.

The stark reality of the bills effects wont be known until April 2019 when taxpayers file their tax returns for the first time under the new law. And that will be long after next Novembers elections.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter
Wait  did the president really say, Mission Accomplished? By Marc Olson Some are recalling the last time a president declared Mission accomplished, in May 2003 when George W. Bush was talking about Iraq. (Stephen Jaffe / AFP/Getty Images) President Trump on Saturday morning thanked his allies in a tweet that declared the airstrikes on Syria perfectly executed, but he might have wished hed stopped there. Instead, he ended his message with the phrase, Mission Accomplished! Thats a line that might have a previous president shaking his head. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq under a Mission Accomplished banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. That war, which began in March 2003, grew into a prolonged conflict that didnt end until 2011. In 2008, the White House said it had paid a price for the backdrop. A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018 Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Auditor says Pentagon is censoring key data on the war in Afghanistan By Shashank Bengali The Pentagon is blocking the release of data showing how much of Afghanistans territory lies outside government control, censoring a key metric used to gauge progress in the 16-year war, a watchdog agency said Tuesday. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an auditing agency established by Congress, said in its latest report that the Pentagon instructed it not to release unclassified data on how many districts and people are controlled or influenced by insurgent groups. This is the first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked unclassified to the American taxpayer, the head of the agency, John F. Sopko, wrote in a letter. Sopko also said the U.S.-led military coalition, for the first time since 2009, classified information about the size and attrition rates of the Afghan security forces, important indicators of progress in building up army and police forces on which the U.S. already has spent $70 billion since 2002. The decision to withhold more information from congressional oversight and the public comes amid growing violence in Afghanistan and an intensifying combat mission involving a greater number of American troops. Following a series of bombings in Kabul that left at least 136 people dead in 10 days, President Trump signaled on Monday that he was focused on trying to win the conflict militarily, saying, We dont want to talk with the Taliban. But data released by SIGAR since 2015 have shown how the insurgents have gained ground against Afghan security forces. In its previous quarterly report, the watchdog said that only 57% of Afghanistans 407 districts were under Afghan government control or influence as of August 2017, the lowest level of control since it began tracking the statistic in December 2015. The steady decline in government control should cause even more concern about its disappearance from public disclosure and discussion, Sopko wrote. The watchdog also accused the Pentagon of overstating the impact of its efforts to combat drug cultivation and trafficking, among the Talibans main sources of revenue. The Pentagon touted airstrikes that destroyed 25 drug labs in November and December, saying it eliminated nearly $100 million of Taliban revenue. The labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace, SIGAR said. According to some estimates, they only take three or four days to replace. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Women journalists shunted to rear for Pences visit to Western Wall By Noga Tarnopolsky The view from the womens section. (Noga Tarnopolsky / Los Angeles Times) Vice-President Mike Pences 48-hour visit to Israel stumbled into a public storm Tuesday when female reporters covering his final stop at Jerusalems Western Wall were penned behind four rows of their male colleagues. White House officials told stunned journalists that the arrangement emanated from a request made by the Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, and followed Western Wall rules. Some women journalists said they could not recall such treatment in the past. In a statement to Israels Channel 10 news, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said it was exactly as it was during the visit of the U.S. president to the Western Wall last May. Later in the day, in a statement to the newspaper Haaretz, the foundation blamed the United States embassy in Tel Aviv and Israeli security officials for the segregation, and announced they would reexamine the way they handle such events. Women who covered previous VIP visits said the Pence arrangements were significantly more onerous than previous visits, when male and female journalists were separated but not offered substantially different work conditions. LIVE coverage of our male colleagues granted access to cover VP at Western Wall as we are penned into #PenceFence pic.twitter.com/k3svkxfQsa  Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) January 23, 2018 The arrangement reflected procedures at the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site, where on regular days, men have access to two thirds of the area available for prayer. Tal Schneider, the diplomatic analyst for Globes, a financial newspaper, protested that the separation of men and women may be valid for the requirements of Orthodox prayer, but no one is praying here. We are here to work. I dont appreciate being restricted in my ability to work because I am a woman, she said. The discriminatory attitude towards women is infuriating and is unbefitting of a modern country. Yael Freidson, the Jerusalem affairs correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, Israels widest circulation newspaper, said she worried that her editors could choose male colleagues for the next assignment, knowing they would have better access. Before Pence arrived, journalists were herded onto a specially constructed platform in the middle of the Western Walls esplanade, with women guided to the right behind a white fence, and men, many carrying cameras, directed to the left, where they had more than double the space. Towards the end of the vice presidents 10-minute visit, male journalists were permitted into the VIP tent where he received a gift from Rabinowitz, while the women remained in their enclosure. None of the men publicly protested the treatment of their female colleagues. Israels Association of Women Journalists filed a formal complaint with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, herself a woman. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, after his pardon from Trump, says hell run for Senate in Arizona By Kurtis Lee (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who last year was pardoned by President Trump in a case stemming from his enforcement tactics aimed at immigrants, announced Tuesday he will run for the open Senate seat in his home state. I am running for the U.S. Senate from the Great State of Arizona, for one unwavering reason: to support the agenda and policies of President Donald Trump in his mission to Make America Great Again, Arpaio, 85, said on Twitter. Hell enter a Republican primary for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Last summer, Trump pardoned Arpaio, who was convicted in July of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order to stop racially profiling Latinos. It was Arpaios roughly quarter-century as sheriff that gave him a national reputation for his tough treatment of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Repeated court rulings against his office for civil rights violations cost local taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. In the early 1990s, Arpaio directed construction of a tent city for immigration detainees, a measure he said was intended both to alleviate overcrowding and to underscore his aggressive enforcement measures. But it was open to the burning Arizona sun, and drew widespread criticism. After Trump entered the presidential race in July 2015, Arpaio invited him to Phoenix to talk about a crackdown on illegal immigration. He endorsed Trump just before the first votes in the Iowa caucuses in 2016 and frequently spoke out on behalf of Trumps campaign. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

President Trump ends controversial voter fraud commission By Kurtis Lee President Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday ending the voter fraud commission he launched last year as the panel faces a flurry of lawsuits and criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump signed the order disbanding the commission rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by executive order in May with the stated goal of restoring confidence and integrity in the electoral process, has faced a barrage of lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns, as the commission sought personal data on voters across the country. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Congress returns to work with slimmer GOP majority to accomplish Trumps agenda By Lisa Mascaro Congress returns to work this week with unfinished business on spending, immigration and other crucial issues, but with an even narrower GOP majority that will make it tougher to move on President Trumps agenda. The House and Senate will convene Wednesday, swearing in the newly elected Democratic senator from Alabama, Doug Jones, and Minnesotas Tina Smith to replace a fellow Democrat, Sen. Al Franken, who is resigning as the latest high-profile public figure sidelined by allegations of sexual misconduct. The change gives Republicans only a one-seat margin in the Senate. Trump, fresh off passage of the GOP tax cuts bill, is pushing lawmakers to pivot quickly on his new year priorities of infrastructure investment and immigration, as well as his foreign policy agenda. But another legislative victory seems far off. Republicans have struggled to hold their majority together and Congress first must tackle critical stalled agenda items that leaders punted to 2018. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump threatens to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump on Tuesday angrily threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians as punishment for what he called their failure to show appreciation or respect to the United States. Writing on Twitter, the president compared the Palestinians to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally that abruptly drew his ire this week and a similar threat to drastically curtail aid. He accused the Palestinians of recalcitrance in what he described as their refusal to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. Palestinian officials have said they can no longer use Washington as a broker to restart peace talks with Israel following Trumps Dec. 6 decision to overturn decades of U.S. policy and recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and ultimately to move the U.S. Embassy there. The Palestinians also claim part of Jerusalem as the capital of an eventual independent state. Until now, the United States and most of the world agreed the citys political status was a matter to settle in final peace talks. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned any effort to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the Palestinian leadership said it would not meet with Vice President Mike Pence, who had planned a trip to the region. That trip is on hold. [W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDRED [sic] OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect, Trump wrote on Twitter. [W]ith the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? In response to Trumps tweet, Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, issued a statement saying: Palestinian rights are not for sale. By recognizing Occupied Jerusalem as Israels capital Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also singlehandedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israels illegal annexation of the city. We will not be blackmailed, she said. President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions! The United States does not pay large amounts of money directly to the Palestinian Authority, the government that rules over parts of the Palestinian West Bank. Instead, most money goes to the U.N., refugee or aid agencies and even Israel to pay for roads, welfare, schools, security and other Palestinian projects. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said Tuesday that the administration was planning to cut off one of those organizations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, until the Palestinians return to the negotiating table. UNRWA, which receives around $300 million annually from the U.S., for years has been the lifeline to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was not clear if Haley was threatening to cut all U.S. support for the agency. Special correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky in Jerusalem contributed to this report. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

The White House stops short of calling for government overthrow in Iran By Brian Bennett President Trump wants Iran to give its citizens basic human rights and stop being a state sponsor of terror, his top spokeswoman said, but the White House stopped short of calling for a change of government in Tehran. If they want to do that through current leadership, if thats possible, OK, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. Sanders praised the organic popular uprising, which she said the widespread protests in Iran represented. The protests grew out of years of years of mismanagement, corruption, and foreign adventurism have eroded the Iranian peoples trust in their leaders, she said. Earlier Tuesday, Trump called Irans government brutal and corrupt and wrote in a tweet: The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Trump also blamed President Obama for foolishly giving Iran money that he said went to fund terrorism. The money he referred to were funds belonging to Iran that had been frozen by the U.S. and were released as part of the deal in 2015, which blocked Irans development of nuclear weapons. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Retirement of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch clears the way for a Mitt Romney revival By David Lauter The retirement of Utahs senior senator, Orrin G. Hatch, opens the way for a widely expected Senate bid by Mitt Romney, the Republicans 2012 presidential nominee and a frequent critic of President Trump. Although Romney previously served for two terms as governor of Massachusetts (and was raised in Michigan, where his father was governor and his mother ran for the Senate), he comes from a prominent Mormon family with strong ties to Utah. He also served as chief executive of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Hes viewed as a strong candidate for the Senate seat. Romneys criticisms of Trump, however, could prompt a challenge in a Republican primary. Trump was widely reported to have tried to convince Hatch to run for a seventh term, in part to head off a Romney candidacy. Last month, Romney and Trump were on opposite sides of one of the biggest political fights of the fall  the battle over the Senate seat from Alabama. The president strongly supported Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who had been accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Romney called Moore a stain on the GOP. Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation. Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity.  Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 4, 2017 On Tuesday, Romney tweeted praise for Hatch, but did not immediately reveal his own plans. I join the people of Utah in thanking my friend, Senator Orrin Hatch for his more than forty years of service to our great state and nation. Read my full statement: https://t.co/YwjUpjez5y  Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 2, 2018 Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

U.S. calls on Iran to unblock social media sites amid protests By The Associated Press The Trump administration is calling on Irans government to stop blocking Instagram and other popular social media sites as Iranians are demonstrating in the streets. Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein says the U.S. wants Iran to open these sites. He says Instagram, Telegram and other platforms are legitimate avenues for communication. The United States is encouraging Iranians to use virtual private networks, known as VPNs. Those services create encrypted links between computers and can be used to access blocked websites. Goldstein says the U.S. is still communicating with Iranians in Persian through State Department accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. He says the U.S. wants to encourage the protesters to continue to fight for whats right. Goldstein says the U.S. has an obligation not to stand by. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump blasts Democrats in advance of immigration meeting By Brian Bennett The day before a meeting of administration officials and congressional leaders on outstanding legislative business, President Trump accused Democrats of doing nothing to hammer out an immigration deal to protect from deportation people brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA  just interested in politics, Trump wrote in a Tweet on Tuesday morning, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by its acronym. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer along with the Republican leaders, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are scheduled to meet on Wednesday at the Capitol with Trumps legislative director, Marc Short, and budget director, Mick Mulvaney. The White House on Tuesday said the meeting is to discuss separate spending caps on military and domestic programs. Yet the Democrats insist the discussion also must include a variety of legislative issues that Trump and Congress punted into the new year  on immigration, the budget, healthcare and more. That stance reflects Democrats leverage: Republicans need Democratic votes to pass a government-funding bill and avert a federal shutdown when the current funding expires Jan. 19. Democrats especially want separate legislation replacing the Obama-era DACA program; Trump in September ordered a phase-out of the program, beginning March 6, and called on Congress to act before then on an alternative way to address the plight of the group. However, Trump has demanded that any alternative must be part of a package including both money for a border wall and immigration limits. Democrats are opposed. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Pakistan hits back after Trump accuses its leaders of lies and deceit By Aoun Sahi Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies and deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump again cheers on Iran protests By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday  and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size --- were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 The presidents earlier hailing of the protests drew condemnation from Irans government. A Foreign Ministry spokesman called his comments deceitful and opportunistic. Following an overnight report of the first two fatalities stemming from the protests, Trump raised some eyebrows by expressing concern over human rights violations as authorities move to crack down on the demonstrations. During his first year in office, the president has shown scant inclination to press foreign governments to respect the fundamental rights of their citizens. The USA is watching closely for human rights violations! Trump said in his tweet Sunday. Some domestic critics have pointed to the presidents inclusion of Iranian nationals in his travel ban, suggesting he was more interested in bashing the Tehran government than in supporting freedom of speech in Iran. Even some of the presidents allies said that supporting the protesters on social media did not amount to making policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he had urged Trump to give a national address laying out his Iran strategy. President Trump is tweeting very sympathetically to the Iranian people, Graham said on CBS Face the Nation. But you just cant tweet here. You have to lay out a plan. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Australian diplomats tip a factor in FBIs Russia inquiry By Associated Press Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer. (Alastair Grant / Associated Press) An Australian diplomats tip appears to have helped persuade the FBI to investigate Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, the New York Times reported Saturday. Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, during a meeting in London in May 2016 that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the report said. Downer, a former foreign minister, is Australias top diplomat in Britain. Australia passed the information on to the FBI after the Democratic emails were leaked, according to the Times, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians role. The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016, the newspaper said. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment, saying in a statement that the administration is continuing to cooperate with the investigation now led by special counsel Robert Mueller to help complete their inquiry expeditiously. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is a cooperating witness. Court documents unsealed two months ago show he met in April 2016 with Joseph Mifsud, a professor in London who told him about Russias cache of emails. This was before the Democratic National Committee became aware of the scope of the intrusion into its email systems by hackers later linked to the Russian government. The Times said Papadopoulos shared this information with Downer, but it was unclear whether he also shared it with anyone in the Trump campaign. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump offers fresh support for protesters in Iran as demonstrations continue By Lisa Mascaro Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! pic.twitter.com/kvv1uAqcZ9  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2017 President Trump again offered support Saturday for anti-government protesters in Iran, where a third day of demonstrations, the largest in years, spilled across the country amid fears of a crackdown. Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump took a break from playing golf near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to tweet clips from his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September when he called for Iranian democratic reforms. Iranian authorities warned of potential violence as the street demonstrations, which began over economic conditions, swelled into frustrations with the theocratic rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump has maintained a hawkish stance toward Iran, sharply criticizing the landmark nuclear disarmament accord that Tehran reached with then-President Obama and five other nations in 2015. In October, Trump declined to certify the accord to Congress although the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says Iran is complying with it. Several conservative GOP senators signaled their support for Trumps position and backed the protesters in Iran. Others in Congress did not immediately respond, however, amid conflicting reports over who had organized the demonstrations. Even after the billions in sanctions relief they secured through the nuclear deal, the ayatollahs still cant provide for the basic needs of their own people, said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a Trump ally and opponent of the nuclear deal. We should support the Iranian people who are willing to risk their lives to speak out against it, he added. Trump initially tweeted his support on Friday night. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement at that time as protests spread. There are many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regimes corruption and its squandering of the nations wealth to fund terrorism abroad, Sanders said. The Iranian government should respect their peoples rights, including their right to express themselves. The world is watching. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

When it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, it takes two to tango, Kremlin says By Sabra Ayres The deteriorating relationship between the United States and Russia is one of the biggest disappointments of 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman told reporters today. Russia would like to rebuild relations between the two adversaries, but it takes two to tango, Dmitry Peskov said today during a conference call with the press. We want and are looking for good mutually beneficial relations based on mutual respect, mutual trust with all countries, primarily with European ones, including the United States, but it is necessary to dance tango, as they say. Peskov blamed the ongoing anti-Russian Russophobia in Washington for playing a major role in blocking the two countries from moving forward in their relationship. U.S. investigations into the Trump presidential campaigns alleged collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. election and accusations that the Kremlin tried to interfere with the electoral process continue to cast a dark shadow over the relationship, he said. Peskov told reporters that Moscow was perplexed by the investigations. The Kremlin has continued to deny having any involvement with the Trump campaign or doing anything to interfere with the American election. This is definitely a U.S. domestic affair, but in this case it naturally hurts our bilateral relations, which is regrettable, Peskov said. Relations between the U.S. and Russia have been categorized as the worst theyve been since the end of the Cold War. This year, Washington and Moscow have engaged in a diplomatic tit-for-tat in which both sides have been forced to reduce diplomatic staff, embassy properties have been repossessed by the hosting countries and visa services have been interrupted. The U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia shrank from 1,200 personnel, including some Russian local staff, to just over 450 across all its three consulates and embassy in Moscow. In the U.S., Russia was forced to vacate its San Francisco consulate. Moscow has also blamed anti-Russian sentiments on the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian teams from wearing their tricolor uniforms or flags during the upcoming games in South Korea. The international body accused some of the Russian national teams of doping. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

U.S. and Turkey resume reciprocal issuing of visas but frictions remain By Tracy Wilkinson The United States and Turkey began issuing reciprocal visas again on Thursday, more than two months after normal visa service was suspended in a dispute over the arrest of two U.S. diplomatic staffers in Istanbul  the latest friction between the two nominal allies. The State Department said it was lifting the visa restrictions after it was assured by the Turkish government that U.S. Embassy employees would not be arrested when performing their official duties. But the Turkish Embassy in Washington denied assurances were offered concerning the ongoing judicial processes, and suggested that the arrests were legal and justified. It is inappropriate to misinform the Turkish and American public that such assurances were provided, the embassy said in a statement. The dispute has aggravated the already tense relationship between the United States and Turkey, which is a member of the NATO military alliance. The two countries have clashed over U.S. support for Kurdish rebels in Syria and over Turkeys demands that the U.S. extradite a Turkish cleric who lives in rural Pennsylvania. After a failed coup attempt killed more than 250 people in July 2016, Turkeys autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launched a harsh crackdown on his political opponents, arresting or firing tens of thousands of teachers, police, journalists, military officers and others. Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic educator and former political ally, of orchestrating the coup. Gulen, who has lived in a compound in the Pocono Mountains, has denied any involvement. The Justice Department has so far denied Turkeys repeated demands to extradite Gulen. Erdogan raised the issue again at the White House in May, but his visit ended in a public relations disaster when his security guards brutally beat peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassadors residence. Two Turkish employees of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul were arrested this fall for alleged ties to the 2016 coup attempt. The U.S. responded by suspending most visa services at its missions in Turkey in October. The Turkish government reciprocated in November. State Department officials said they have repeatedly demanded more information about any formal charges against the two employees. They reiterated on Thursday that serious concerns about the allegations remained. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump: China caught RED HANDED allowing oil to reach North Korea By Brian Bennett (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) President Trump isnt taking a holiday vacation from Twitter. In one of three tweets early on Thursday from his West Palm Beach golf club, he charged that China was caught RED HANDED allowing oil shipments to reach North Korean ports. Pronouncing himself very disappointed, Trump in effect was acknowledging the failure of his months-long effort to convince China to clamp down further on energy shipments going to the isolated country, which relies heavily on Beijing, as a way to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Caught RED HANDED - very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2017 Trumps tweet came after a South Korean newspaper published what it said were U.S. spy satellite images of Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean ships. The United Nations Security Council, which includes China, has voted repeatedly to restrict fuel shipments to North Korea. Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to cut off North Koreas oil supply entirely, the American ambassador to the U.N., Nikki R. Haley, said at the time. It is unclear if Trumps admonishment of China was based on news reports or classified information he received from U.S. intelligence officials. There was no daily intelligence briefing on Trumps public schedule Thursday. He is expected to return to Washington next week after spending the Christmas holiday and New Years Eve at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

President Trump again falsely claims hes signed more bills than any president By Brian Bennett President Trump visits a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP) After another morning at his Florida golf club, President Trump visited firefighters and paramedics at a West Palm Beach firehouse and praised his own performance as president, including with a false boast. Trump touted his administrations work to roll back government regulations and cut taxes and claimed credit for the stock market hitting record highs. He also said hes signed more bills into law than any other president, which isnt true. We have signed more legislation than anybody, Trump said, standing in front of a rescue vehicle inside the fire station. We have more legislation passed, including  the record was Harry Truman a long time ago, and we broke that record, so we got a lot done, Trump said. An analysis by GovTrack, a website that tracks bills in Congress, shows that Trump has signed the fewest bills into law at this point than any president in more than 60 years, back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trump administration urges Russia to reinstate monitors in Ukraine, lower violence By Tracy Wilkinson Sergei Lavrov (AFP/Getty Images) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Russia on Wednesday to reinstate its military personnel at a monitoring station in eastern Ukraine intended to quell escalating bloodshed. In a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Tillerson also urged Russia to lower the level of violence and underscored the Trump administrations concern over increased fighting in Ukraine, the State Department said in a statement. Russia last week withdrew its monitors from the Joint Center on Coordination and Control, which is tasked with verifying a much-violated ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists. Moscow cited what it called restrictions and provocations from Ukrainian authorities that made it impossible for the observers to do their jobs. Washington has accused the pro-Russia forces of being responsible for many of the truce violations. Late last week, the State Department also announced plans to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, a decision that angered Moscow. The State Department statement did not say whether the weapons deal came up in Tillersons conversation with Lavrov. The two also discussed North Korea, its destabilizing nuclear program and the need for a diplomatic solution to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula, the statement said. Russia has offered to serve as a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang, but direct talks do not seem likely at this point. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

U.S. sanctions two more North Korean officials for ballistic missile program By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday against two more North Korean officials for their alleged role in Pyongyangs expanding ballistic missiles program. The Treasury Department is targeting leaders of North Koreas ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate [North Korea] and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement. The nuclear-armed country tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last month that U.S. officials said appeared capable of reaching New York or Washington, a significant milestone in the countrys growing arsenal. The Treasury Department identified the two North Korean officials as Kim Jong Sik, who reportedly is a key figure in the ballistic missile program and led efforts to switch missiles from liquid to solid fuel (which makes them easier to hide before launch), and Ri Pyong Chol, who was reported to be a key official in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The sanctions block banks, companies and individuals from doing any business with the targeted officials. It also allows the U.S. government to freeze any American assets owned by the officials. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to add more sanctions on North Korea, its third round this year. The new measures order North Koreans working abroad to return home within two years, and ban nearly 90% of refined petroleum exports to the country. In a statement published Sunday by North Koreas state-run KCNA news agency, the foreign ministry denounced the new U.N. sanctions as an act of war. We define this sanctions resolution rigged up by the US and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region and categorically reject the resolution, it said. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Salt Lake Tribune calls on Sen. Orrin Hatch to not seek reelection in scathing editorial Perhaps the most significant move of Hatchs career is the one that should, if there is any justice, end it. The last time the senator was up for reelection, in 2012, he promised that it would be his last campaign. That was enough for many likely successors, of both parties, to stand down, to let the elder statesman have his victory tour and to prepare to run for an open seat in 2018. Clearly, it was a lie. Read the editorial>> Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Christmas Eve, Trump on Twitter: New attacks on FBI official, decrying Fake News By Laura King President Trump launched a Christmas Eve attack on FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom he accuses of favoritism toward his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, and also returned to a longtime favored theme, excoriating the news media for failing to sufficiently extol his accomplishments. .@FoxNews-FBIs Andrew McCabe, in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Thank you President TRUMP!! pic.twitter.com/LKdkT0FL99  oregon4TRUMP (@shawgerald4) December 23, 2017 The Fake News refuses to talk about how Big and how Strong our BASE is. They show Fake Polls just like they report Fake News. Despite only negative reporting, we are doing well - nobody is going to beat us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Trump, who is spending the holidays at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, also sent Christmas greetings to deployed military personnel, praising them for success in the fight against terrorism. The early-morning swipe at McCabe followed a flurry of tweets attacking the deputy FBI chief on Saturday. McCabe, who has been a lightning rod for Republican attacks on the FBI, is expected to retire early in the new year. How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wifes campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 Critics say the president and his allies are in the midst of a systematic campaign to denigrate the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign in Russias attempts to sway the 2016 presidential election. In a pair of statements on Twitter, Trump again expressed scorn regarding news coverage of his administration. For months, the president has been particularly critical of reports regarding the Russia investigation and more recently has repeatedly complained he does not receive enough credit for a booming stock market. In his video conference message to troops overseas, the president made apparent reference to the fight against the militants of Islamic State, who over the last year have lost most of the territory they previously controlled in Iraq and Syria, including former strongholds in Mosul and Raqqah. Were winning, Trump told military personnel deployed in Qatar, Kuwait, Guantanamo Bay and aboard the guided missile destroyer Sampson. Reporters traveling with the president heard his address, but were ushered from the room before he took questions from the troops. The president often breaks with longtime custom and makes politically charged statements at events in which he addresses military personnel. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Trumps Wells Fargo tweet cited in court hearing as reason to remove Mulvaney as CFPB acting chief By Jim Puzzanghera A recent tweet by President Trump about possible penalties against Wells Fargo & Co. was cited during a court hearing Friday as a reason for removing White House official Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The attorney for Leandra English  the bureaus deputy director who has said she is the rightful acting head  said Trumps tweet showed he was trying to exercise improper influence over the independent consumer watchdog. I think that [tweet] shows you this isnt just some hypothetical concern, the attorney, Deepak Gupta, told Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia during a nearly two-hour hearing. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump administration recognizes Honduran presidents reelection By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration on Friday formally recognized the incumbent president of Honduras, conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez, as the winner of a bitterly contested presidential election held last month. In a statement, the State Department congratulated Hernandez while also acknowledging widespread irregularities in the Nov. 26 vote and calling for a robust national dialogue to overcome political discord in the Central American country, a close ally of the administration. The Organization of American States, which monitored the election, said it was so flawed that only a new round of voting could establish a fair and transparent outcome. But the U.S. rejected that determination. Uproar over the contest led to demonstrations in Honduras that left numerous civilians dead after state security forces opened fire on the protests. Activists and others voiced criticism Friday of the administrations decision. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a leading Democratic voice on Central American issues, said he was angry and deeply disturbed by the State Department decision. The recent elections in Honduras were deeply flawed, chaotic and marred by numerous irregularities, McGovern said. U.S.-Honduran cooperation on matters such as drug-trafficking, violence and immigration requires a credible, legitimate government that has the support of its people, in Honduras, McGovern said. Hernandezs victory also was controversial because it was the first time a sitting president was allowed to run for re-election, barred until now by the Honduran Constitution. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says fixing DACA is no emergency until March By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday hes committed to allowing a vote on a bill for so-called Dreamers in January, but sees no rush to resolve the deportation threat posed by President Trumps decision to end a program protecting immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. There isnt that much of an emergency there, he said. There is no emergency until March. Well keep talking about it. Trump called for phasing out by March the Obama-era program that allows the young immigrants, many of them longtime residents, to get two-year deferrals of any deportation threat so they can legally attend school or work. Beneficiaries must be vetted for security purposes. Trump told Congress to come up with a legislative alternative for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Obama created by executive order, to protect those currently eligible. A bipartisan Senate group has been working with the White House, but talks stalled this week amid administration demands for curbs on legal immigration flows in exchange for protecting the DACA recipients. Meanwhile, Dreamers and immigrant advocates stormed the Capitol in recent days pressing for the help promised by Trump and Democratic congressional leaders that failed to materialize in the years final legislation. Advocacy groups say more than 120 immigrants each day are falling out of compliance without DACA renewals, putting them at risk of deportation. The number that is projected to swell to more than 1,000 a day in March. Weve been gridlocked on this issue for years, McConnell said. We want to have a signature. We dont just want to spin our wheels and have nothing to show for it. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

President Trump signs tax bill By Noah Bierman (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump on Friday morning signed a sweeping tax-cut measure  his first major legislative achievement  before heading off for a Christmas vacation at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla. The president also privately signed a short-term spending bill to fund government operations through Jan. 19. Congress approved it Thursday, after Republican leaders were unable to bridge differences in their own party as well as with Democrats to get agreement on funding for the full fiscal year. The stopgap bill punts fights on immigration and other issues to January. The tax bill, approved earlier this week in Congress in largely party-line votes, slashes corporate tax rates from 35% to 21% and also includes a host of other provisions for individuals, all intended to boost the economy. Critics point to nonpartisan analyses showing that the package, including changes greatly reducing the number of estates subject to taxes, steers the bulk of tax benefits to top earners and the wealthy, including Trump, despite his repeated claims that hell take a hit. Trump signed the bill quietly Friday, but held a public ceremony with Republican lawmakers on Wednesday after the bills passage; he also tweeted about the measure extensively. He is expected to hold another public ceremony after the New Years holiday. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Pelosi urges Ryan to prevent Republicans from curtailing Houses Russia probe By Chris Megerian House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin greets House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Friday urging him to ensure the Houses investigation into Russian interference with last years presidential campaign is not cut short. The American people deserve a comprehensive and fair investigation into Russias attacks, wrote Pelosi, of San Francisco, in her letter. Political haste must not cut short valid investigatory threads. The House Intelligence Committee has been probing the issue since March 1, and Democrats have repeatedly warned that Republicans are trying to wrap up its work prematurely. Pelosi said Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, should take urgent action to ensure this investigation can continue. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, said Pelosi simply wants to see this investigation go on forever in order to suit her political agenda. Whether it concludes next month, next year, or in three years, she will say it is too soon, Strong said in a statement. She added, The investigation will conclude when the committee has reached a conclusion. The committees work is led by Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas). His spokeswoman, Emily Hytha, said he remains committed to conducting this investigation as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible. With more interviews scheduled, the investigation shows signs of extending into next year, Bloomberg reported Friday. BREAKING: Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have been sent letters requesting they testify to House Intel panel in early January, per @HouseInSession  Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) December 22, 2017 Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Congress votes to avert government shutdown, but Senate fails to pass disaster aid package By Lisa Mascaro ( (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)) Congress approved a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, but failed to complete work on an $81-billion disaster aid package to help California, Gulf Coast states and Puerto Rico recover from wildfires and hurricanes, as lawmakers scrambled Thursday to wrap up business before a Christmas break. The stopgap measure continues federal operations for a few more weeks, setting up another deadline for Jan. 19. But it left undone a long list of priorities that members of both parties had hoped to finish this year. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Wells Fargo says raises were not linked to tax bill passage  then backtracks By James Rufus Koren Wells Fargo & Co.s move to raise its minimum pay to $15 an hour was part of a long-term plan and not related to the passage of the Republican tax overhaul as the company implied, said a bank spokesman, who later backtracked and stated the hikes were a result of the bills approval. The bank was among several large corporations to publicly announce pay raises or new investments immediately following the final House vote in an apparent public relations offensive to boost the popularity of the tax bill The San Francisco bank had implied the direct linkage to the tax legislation in a news release Wednesday, shortly after Congress passed the tax overhaul, which slashes the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% starting Jan. 1. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Obamacare signups beat expectations, despite Trump administrations opposition By Noam N. Levey President Trump with Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Despite Trump administration efforts to discourage people from signing up, the number of people enrolling for Affordable Care Act coverage nearly hit last years level, the government revealed Thursday. Exchange open enrollment for 2018 coverage ended w/ approx 8.8M people enrolling in coverage. Great job to the @CMSGov team for the work you did to make this the smoothest experience for consumers to date. We take pride in providing great customer service.  Administrator Seema Verma (@SeemaCMS) December 21, 2017 The 8.8 million people who enrolled in the 36 states that use the federal governments healthcare.gov system significantly exceeded most forecasts. The Trump administration stopped most outreach and other efforts this year aimed at getting people to sign up. The president also repeatedly said publicly that Obamacare was dead. Open enrollment continues in California and several other states that run their own healthcare marketplaces. The figures from the federal government indicate that when those states wrap up for the year, the number of people covered by Obamacare will be nearly the same as in 2017. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly condemns U.S. policy change on Jerusalem despite Trumps threats By Tracy Wilkinson The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted Thursday to condemn President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite Trumps threats to punish countries that voted against the U.S. position. The resolution passed in an emergency session at U.N. headquarters in New York with 128 in favor, nine opposed and 35 abstentions. The nonbinding resolution demands that Washington rescind its declaration, which included a plan to transfer the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in coming years. The resolution value is mostly symbolic, showing how isolated the U.S. is in the move. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., warned this week that she would be taking names of countries that opposed the U.S., and Trump on Wednesday suggested he might cut U.S. aid to governments that voted in favor of the resolution. Let them vote against us, Trump said. Well save a lot. We dont care. The U.S. recognition of Jerusalem reversed decades of international consensus on the political status of the divided city. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital in a future independent state. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the U.N. was facing an unprecedented test and that history would remember those who stand by what is right. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Democrats defend Robert Mueller, saying Russia investigation must be allowed to continue By Chris Megerian Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) speaking during a committee hearing earlier this year. (Molly Riley / Associated Press) House Democrats said they will fight Republican attempts to discredit and undermine the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating whether President Trumps associates helped Russian meddling in last years election. There is an organized effort by Republicans, in concert with Fox News, to spin a false narrative and conjure up outrageous scenarios to accuse special counsel Mueller of being biased, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said. Trump has said he has no plan to fire Mueller, but Democrats are alarmed by escalating criticism of the special counsels work. Why is the president afraid of the facts and the truth? Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said. He added, No matter what the facts are, were satisfied if the investigation is complete. A letter of support signed by 171 Democratic members of Congress will be sent to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, and oversees his investigation. Rosenstein has defended Mueller in the face of Republican criticisms. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

U.S. blacklists Myanmar army general who it says oversaw atrocities against Rohingya Muslims By Shashank Bengali The Trump administration on Thursday blacklisted a Myanmar army general who it said oversaw human rights abuses committed by security forces against Rohingya Muslims. Imposing economic sanctions against the general, Maung Maung Soe, was the toughest action the United States has taken in response to a brutal army offensive that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described as ethnic cleansing. In a statement, the Treasury Department said it had examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soes activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages. The Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority of about 1 million people in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, also known as Burma. The United Nations says that more than 640,000 Rohingya have fled the country since August, after the army launched clearance operations in response to attacks carried out by a Rohingya insurgent group against security forces. Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh have described horrific violence by Myanmar forces, including mass rapes, summary executions and children being burned alive. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates that 6,700 people were killed in the first month of the operation. Myanmar authorities deny committing atrocities and say that only a few hundred fighters were killed. Maung Maung Soe was chief of the armys Western Command, which carried out the offensive. He was transferred from his position last month, according to news reports. He was one of 13 individuals worldwide who were blacklisted Thursday under a new U.S. law that gives the Treasury Department authority to target officials for human rights abuses and corruption. Others included former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh; Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the late Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov; and Artem Chaika, son of Russias prosecutor-general. Today, the United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the U.S. financial system, said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The sanctions freeze any assets Maung Maung Soe holds in the United States and bars Americans from doing business with him. It is also a sign of how quickly U.S. relations with Myanmar have soured. Under the Obama administration, the United States forged closer ties with the former military dictatorship and eased economic and political sanctions as the country began implementing democratic reforms. But Myanmar, which does not regard the Rohingya as citizens, has lashed out at the international community over the current crisis. It has jailed journalists, blocked access to affected areas in the western state of Rakhine and this week barred a U.N. human rights investigator from entering the country. Rohingya activists said the U.S. action would not have much effect on a country that survived under economic sanctions for years. It is the whole military institution that has a policy to persecute these people, said Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist and blogger in Germany. According to the U.S.s own definition, the army is carrying out ethnic cleansing. They have a responsibility to protect these people. Sanctions on one person are really not enough. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Dreamers will have to wait until next year for Congress long-promised protections By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)) A promised year-end deal to protect the young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation collapsed Wednesday as Republicans in Congress  fresh off passage of their tax plan  prepared to punt nearly all remaining must-do agenda items into the new year. Congressional leaders still hope that before leaving town this week they can pass an $81-billion disaster relief package with recovery funds for California wildfires and Gulf Coast states hit during the devastating hurricane season. But passage even of that relatively popular measure remained in doubt as conservatives balked at the price tag. Rather than finish the year wrapping up the legislative agenda, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate struggled over their next steps. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Chants of protest drown out any caroling this holiday season at the Capitol By Lisa Mascaro U.S. Capitol Police arrest a man wearing a Santa Claus hat during a protest against the Republican tax bill. (Alex Edelman / AFP/Getty Image) Outside the U.S. Capitol, the lights on a towering Christmas tree are flipped on each evening, giving the Engelmann spruce a festive twinkle; inside the marble halls, wreaths and garlands decorate doorways and alcoves ahead of the holidays. But the spirit of the season has been punctuated by other sights: a Jumbotron parked across from the Capitol reflecting pool broadcasts images of young immigrants who face deportation; Little Lobbyists, children with complex medical needs, were featured in a recent news conference; protesters filed into the visitor galleries to shout against the Republican tax plan. While its beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Capitol, its also shaping up to be a holiday season of protest. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Tax bill simplifies filing for some but complicates it for others  and dont count on that postcard By Jim Puzzanghera A priority of the Republicans tax overhaul was simplification, and they drove home the point this fall with an omnipresent prop: a red-white-and-blue postcard. Were making things so simple that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said last month, pulling one from his jacket pocket as he and Republican leaders unveiled their bill. They gave a couple of the cards to President Trump at a White House meeting a few hours later and flashed them often during news conferences and TV interviews in the coming days. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Top U.N. human rights official reportedly wont seek reelection The top United Nations official for human rights, who has frequently criticized the Trump administration, has reportedly decided not to seek a second term, saying his work had become untenable. Zeid Raad Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, notified his staff in an email that was obtained by several news outlets, including Agence France-Presse. Staying when his four-year term is up for renewal at the end of August might involve bending a knee in supplication, AFP quoted Husseins email as saying. Hussein is a Jordanian prince who has criticized, among other things, President Trumps attempts to ban visitors or refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries. The news comes a day before the U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on a nonbinding resolution condemning the Trump administrations formal declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that went against international consensus. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has warned she will be taking names of those who vote against the United States on Thursday. Trump echoed that sentiment Wednesday, voiced support for Haley and implying to reporters that he would consider cutting off U.S. aid to countries that vote against the U.S. Well, were watching those votes, Trump said. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care. On Monday, the United States lost a Security Council vote 14-1 on a binding resolution that would have required Washington to rescind its declaration. Haley then vetoed the resolution. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Top Democrat warns Trump not to fire Mueller or interfere with his investigation By Chris Megerian Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, one of the top Democrats involved in the congressional inquiries into Russian interference in last years election, said Wednesday that any attempt by President Trump to interfere with the separate criminal investigation would be a gross abuse of power. Warner, who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered his warning from the Senate floor as Republicans escalate their criticism of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents. Some Democrats believe Trump is laying the groundwork to fire Mueller even though the president has publicly denied it. Mueller was appointed in May after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. In the United States of America, no one, no one is above the law, not even the president, Warner said. Congress must make clear to the president that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences. Some Democrats say the White House may try to in effect short-circuit the Mueller investigation by replacing Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who is the only official empowered to fire Mueller. Rosenstein recently told Congress that the special counsel is acting appropriately and that he would not dismiss Mueller without just cause. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump says after tax bill passes By Brian Bennett President Trump at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday at the White House. (Chris Kleponis / Getty Images) President Trump is celebrating Republicans passage of the tax overhaul bill as a two-fer: On Wednesday, in addition to tax cuts, he checked off his promise to repeal Obamacare, pointing to a provision in the bill to end the penalty on Americans who dont get health insurance. We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Other provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act are still in place, and Trump and congressional Republicans failed completely on the replace half of their vow to repeal and replace the program. In Trumps view, however, stripping away the laws individual mandate to get insurance or else pay a tax penalty amounts to repeal of the whole law. Congressional analysts have said that millions of people would lose insurance as a result, either by choice or because they cannot afford it without subsidies, and that premiums would increase for others as younger, healthy people drop coverage. We will come up with something much better, Trump said, adding that block grants to states could be one approach. By his comments, Trump tacitly acknowledged that repeal of the mandate is likely the best he can do following Republicans failure this year to agree on a repeal-and-replace bill. Looking back on his first year, Trump also boasted of his administrations efforts against the Islamic State and increased immigration enforcement. He said he had not given up on funding a border wall or tightening immigration law to limit citizens ability to resettle foreign relatives in the country. He said he would very shortly visit the border with Mexico near San Diego to see wall prototypes that have been built. He didnt answer a reporters shouted question about how he would personally benefit from the tax bill. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

House gives final OK to GOP tax plan, sending it to Trump By Lisa Mascaro Congress gave final approval to the GOP tax plan Wednesday, 224-201, after the House took an unusual do-over vote to clear up differences with the Senate-passed bill. The $1.5-trillion package now heads to President Trump, who plans to sign it into law. The House had approved the tax bill on Tuesday but was forced to take another vote Wednesday because a couple of provisions in the version it approved were found to be in violation of Senate procedures. Those provisions were dropped before the Senate gave its approval early Wednesday. Critics complained the Republicans rushed to pass the sweeping tax plan to deliver Trump a year-end legislative victory, but supporters shrugged off the problems as minor. The tax plan dramatically cuts corporate rates and provides some individual rate reductions, overhauling the tax code for the first time in 30 years. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump administration effort to block immigrant from having an abortion fails By David Savage Scott Lloyd is director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) President Trumps lawyers rushed to the Supreme Court and U.S. appeals court in Washington on Monday evening to file emergency appeals seeking to prevent an immigrant in detention, dubbed Jane Roe in court, from having an abortion. That set the stage for a legal showdown on whether the administration can block pregnant minors in custody from choosing to have an abortion. But the legal clash, which the administration has seemed eager to have, fizzled out Tuesday when the governments lawyers admitted the 17-year-old unaccompanied minor in their custody was actually 19. They said they had obtained her birth certificate and realized she was not a minor after all. As a result, Roe, who is 10 weeks pregnant, will no longer be held in a detention center for immigrant minors, and will not be subject to an administration policy that tries to prevent minors in immigration detention from having abortions. Administration lawyers told appeals court judges Tuesday night that Roe was being sent to a facility for adults and likely would be released until her immigration status can be resolved. In a brief order, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed to put the case on hold, but told government attorneys to confirm that she will be permitted to obtain an abortion. The administration had earlier tried to delay another young woman, referred to in court as Jane Poe, from having an abortion, but officials relented on Monday because she was 22 weeks pregnant and nearing the time limit for a legal abortion. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Senate panel rejects Trumps pick to lead Export-Import Bank, a leader in the effort to shut it down By Jim Puzzanghera A Senate committee on Tuesday rejected President Trumps nominee to lead the Export-Import Bank, extending the chaos at the embattled agency whose job is to help U.S. companies sell their goods abroad. Two Republicans joined all Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee in voting against former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to be the banks president. Garrett had been a vocal critic of the Ex-Im Bank and a leader of a conservative effort that shut the bank down for five months in 2015 by blocking its congressional authorization. He and other bank opponents branded the banks aid as crony capitalism. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Congress proposes $81-billion disaster aid package, including funds for California wildfires By Lisa Mascaro Congress is set to consider an $81-billion disaster aid package that includes wildfire recovery money for California and other Western states as well as hurricane relief with a price tag reflecting a year of record-setting natural calamities. The legislation, the text of which was released late Monday, would provide almost twice as much as the $44 billion the White House sought last month to cover relief efforts along the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. Republican congressional leaders added more money after California lawmakers objected that the administration had failed to include help for areas damaged by wildfires and Democrats protested that the overall amount President Trump asked for was insufficient. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

White House blames North Korea for worldwide WannaCry cyber attack By Noah Bierman The Royal London Hospital, a victim of the unprecedented global cyberattack in May. (Niklas Hallen / AFP/Getty Images) The White House officially blamed North Korea on Tuesday for the cyberattack in May known as WannaCry that infected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries, affecting healthcare, financial services and vital infrastructure. Thomas P. Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, noted in a briefing with reporters that the consequences were beyond economic. He warned that North Koreas malicious behavior is growing more egregious. Bossert did not specify what evidence American officials have to blame North Korea, citing security issues, but he cited the countrys prior attacks as revealing hallmarks of how Pyongyang and its network of hackers operates. He said other allied countries had joined the United States in making the determination. The administration did not announce any penalties on the regime, which is already subject to severe sanctions over its nuclear program. They want to hold the entire world at risk, Bossert said of North Koreas rulers, referring to the nations nuclear and missile provocations as well as its alleged cyberattack. Given its isolation and international sanctions, North Korea is desperate for funds. Bossert said the country did not appear to make much money on the ransom attack, as word spread that paying a ransom did not result in getting computers unlocked. Its primary goal, he said, was spreading chaos. Bossert and Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary of homeland security for cybersecurity and communication, said the United States, through a combination of preparation and luck, escaped the worst of the attack, as a patch to the malware was found before U.S. companies and other interests were severely crippled. However, Manfra said, We cannot be complacent. Bossert added, Next time were not going to get so lucky. Manfra praised Microsoft and Facebook for their efforts to combat WannaCry and to block more recent attempts to hack U.S. systems. She and Bossert urged more cooperation and information-sharing from American and multinational companies, arguing a united front is vital to protecting against bad actors who do not differentiate between government and business. Bossert rejected criticism that the the Trump administration has more aggressively called out North Korean cyberattacks than it has Russias meddling in the 2016 election. He said the administration has continued the national emergency initiated by President Obama. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

GOP lures some mountain bike groups in its push to roll back protections for public land By Evan Halper When their vision of creating a scenic cycling trail through a protected alpine backcountry hit a snag, San Diego area mountain bikers turned to an unlikely ally: congressional Republicans aiming to dilute conservation laws. The frustrations of the San Diego cycling group and a handful of similar organizations are providing tailwind to the GOP movement to lift restrictions on the countrys most ecologically fragile and pristine landscapes, officially designated wilderness. Resentment of these cyclists over the longstanding ban on mechanized transportation in that fraction of the nations public lands presents a political opportunity for Republicans eager to drill fissures in the broad coalition of conservation-minded groups united against the GOP environmental agenda. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Vice president postpones Israel trip a second time in case his vote is needed to pass tax cut bill By Noah Bierman (Ethan Miller / Getty Images) Vice President Mike Pence is delaying his trip to Egypt and Israel for a second time in case he is needed to break a tie in the Senate for the tax bill that is expected to pass narrowly this week. Two White House officials confirmed the changed schedule, which they say is unrelated to to protests in the region over the administrations decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. Pence had initially been scheduled to leave last Saturday. Late last week, the White House moved the trip back a few days to Tuesday night, in case Pence was needed to break a Senate tie. But Monday, they decided to postpone the trip further, to January, given the possibility of a late Senate vote and the coming holidays. He wants to see it through the finish line, said a White House official, referring to the tax measure that is a centerpiece of the Republican legislative agenda. We dont want to leave anything to chance. The mid-January dates will allow Pence more breathing room to merge schedules with embassies and hotels, the official said. Trump still plans to address the Israeli Knesset, a high-profile venue to discuss the Jerusalem decision where it is most popular. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump judicial pick who drew ridicule at hearing withdraws By Associated Press A White House official says the Trump judicial nominee whose qualifications were questioned by a Republican senator has withdrawn his nomination. Matthew Petersen, who was nominated by President Trump to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been the subject of widespread ridicule since he was unable to define basic legal terms during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. A White House official says Petersen has withdrawn his nomination and that Trump has accepted the withdrawal. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the development publicly. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy pressed Petersen, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who testified he had never tried a case, on his qualifications to the bench. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump says McCain will return to Washington if needed for tax vote By Laura King President Trump said Sunday that Sen. John McCain, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, was returning home to Arizona for the holidays but would come back to Washington if needed to cast a vote on the Republicans tax overhaul bill. The Arizona Republicans office announced last week that McCain was receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington for complications from his cancer treatment. McCains daughter Meghan tweeted earlier Sunday that her 81-year-old father would be spending Christmas in Arizona. The Senate is expected to vote early this week on the tax cut legislation, but the GOP appeared to have secured sufficient support without McCains vote. John will come back if we need his vote, Trump told reporters as he returned from a weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Hes going through a very tough time. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Putin calls Trump to thank him for U.S. help foiling terrorist strike By Laura King Vladimir Putin phoned President Trump to thank him for what the Russian president said was CIA help in foiling a terrorist attack, the Kremlin said on Sunday. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the two leaders conversation to reporters. It was the second time that the two leaders had talked in four days; Trump called Putin on Thursday to thank the Russian leader for lauding the U.S. economy. Putin, in his annual year-end news conference, had praised Trump for a strong performance by the U.S. stock market. Perhaps ironically, given his credit to the CIAs recent help, Putin at that news event dismissed as hysteria the consensus among American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. In reporting Putins call to Trump on Sunday, the official Russian news agency Tass said Putin thanked his American counterpart for information shared by the US Central Intelligence Agency that had helped break up a plot to set off explosives in St. Petersburgs landmark Kazan Cathedral and elsewhere in the city, which is Russias second-largest. Russian authorities last week had credited their countrys counter-intelligence service, the FSB, for foiling the attacks. They reported that seven people affiliated with Islamic State had been detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the plot. The FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, announced Friday that the group had planned to carry out the attacks on Saturday, and that one of those in custody had confessed to the cathedral bomb plot. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Mnuchin: Government shutdown unlikely but could happen By Laura King Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said on Sunday that a government shutdown this week was unlikely but possible. A two-week stopgap spending bill passed by Congress earlier this month provided enough funding to keep the government running through Friday. A deadlock on another temporary funding measure would open the door to a possible shutdown. I cant rule it out, but I cant imagine it occurring, Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday, suggesting everyone had an interest in avoiding the government grinding to a halt and federal workers going unpaid, especially in the holiday season. I would expect that both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, understand if they cant agree on this, they need to have another short-term extension to move this to January, the Treasury secretary said. We cant have a government shutdown in front of Christmas. In May, irate over concessions made to Democrats in hammering out a spending measure, President Trump tweeted that a good shutdown might help matters. While both parties agree that a government shutdown involves a degree of disruption that is not beneficial to either side, shutdowns in 1995-96 and in 2013 mainly caused a backlash against Republicans. The latest funding measure is to be taken up after a vote on a massive GOP tax overhaul, expected by midweek. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Trump transition team says sensitive emails should not have been shared with Robert Mueller By Chris Megerian (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) President Trumps transition team is crying foul over how special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained emails for his investigation into Russian meddling in last years campaign and possible Trump campaign complicity. Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the transition team, sent a letter to Congress on Saturday saying there was an unauthorized disclosure of emails. While the Trump transition is long over, the transition team remains a nonprofit organization. Its emails were hosted by the General Services Administration, a federal agency. Mueller reportedly obtained the emails directly from the agency. There are attorney-client communications, Langhofer said in an interview. There are executive-privileged communications. He added, What were asking Congress to do is to take some legislative action to make sure this never happens again. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsels office, defended the process for obtaining emails. When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owners consent or appropriate criminal process, he said. The letter was first reported by Fox News. A request for comment from the General Services Administration was not immediately answered. This story has been updated with a comment from the special counsels office. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Virginia house arrest is ending for Paul Manafort By Chris Megerian (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) A federal judge agreed Friday to end Paul Manaforts house arrest in Virginia, allowing President Trumps former campaign manager to return to Florida while awaiting trial. The decision followed a dispute between Manaforts legal team and prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who accused Manafort of violating a court order restricting public statements about the case. Under the terms of the judges order, Manafort will be allowed to live at his home in Florida as long as he stays within Palm Beach and Broward counties and obeys a curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. If he misses a court appearance, he would forfeit four properties valued at $10 million total. The deal, which includes GPS monitoring, is not as permissive as Manafort originally sought. He had asked to be able to travel freely among Florida, New York, Virginia and Washington. Manafort faces criminal charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

GOP negotiators enhance child tax credit to win over Sen. Rubio By Lisa Mascaro Republican negotiators slightly increased the refundable portion of the expanded child tax credit in their tax plan, raising it to $1,400 in hopes of winning back Sen. Marco Rubios (R-Fla.) support ahead of next weeks vote. Rubio announced Thursday he was withholding support after negotiators ignored his push to make the expanded tax credit, which increases from the current $1,000 to $2,000 in the proposed bill, fully refundable for lower- and moderate-income filers. The refundable portion in the original bill was $1,100. The Florida senator argued that was not enough to help working-class Americans, many of whom already view the GOP plan as tilted toward the wealthy. Rubios office was waiting to see the final text before commenting on whether the change was enough to win him over. We have not seen the bill text, and until we see if the percentage of the refundable credit is significantly higher, then our position remains the same, Rubios spokeswoman said. Negotiators meeting Friday before unveiling the bill said they thought they had the support they needed from Rubio and other holdouts. Im confident both chambers will pass it next week, said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Sen. Marco Rubio opposes GOP tax bill, depriving leaders of crucial support By Lisa Mascaro 20.94% Corp. rate to pay for tax cut for working family making $40k was anti-growth but 21% to cut tax for couples making $1million is fine?  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 12, 2017 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he is currently opposed to the GOP tax plan because it fails to include his proposed enhancements to the child tax credit, leaving leaders without crucial support ahead of next weeks expected vote. Republicans can only lose two GOP senators from their slim 52-48 majority as they push the plan forward under special budget rules to prevent a Democratic filibuster. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday altered his planned Israel trip so he could be on hand, if needed, to cast a tie-breaking vote. Rubio, and GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, have fought to increase the child tax credit, doubling it to $2,000 in the GOP plan, but they also want to increase its refundability. They argue it will lower taxes on middle-income families at a time when the tax plan is being criticized as tilted to the wealthy. Sen. Rubio has consistently communicated to the Senate tax negotiators that his vote on final passage would depend on whether the refundability of the Child Tax Credit was increased in a meaningful way, Rubios spokeswoman said. Lee stopped short of opposing the bill, but his spokesman said Wednesday he is undecided. GOP leaders, though, have said they believe they have the support for passage. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

White House gives Roy Moore a unsubtle shove: Time to concede By David Lauter (Alex Wong / Getty Images) The White House sent a clear signal Thursday to the defeated Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama: Its time to concede. Roy Moore refused to concede the race on Tuesday night when Doug Jones, the Democrat, was declared the winner. Election night results show Jones winning by about 1.5 percentage points, three times more than the states standard for a recount. Although a few absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted, theres no indication they would change the result. On Wednesday, Moore notably did not call to congratulate Jones  even as President Trump and other leading Republicans did. Instead, he released a video declaring the battle rages on. Asked at the daily news briefing whether the White House thinks Moore should concede today, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, It probably sounds like it maybe should have already taken place. Sanders also dismissed the idea, pushed by some Moore supporters, that Jones victory was tainted in some fashion. Asked if the Democrat had won fair and square, she said, I think the numbers reflect that. The states Republican senator, Richard Shelby, offered a similar comment in an interview with MSNBC in which he said he was willing to work with Jones. If I was 25,000 votes behind, its not going to change much, Shelby said. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

House Speaker Paul Ryan says hes not leaving anytime soon By Lisa Mascaro House Speaker Paul D. Ryan shot down suggestions Thursday that he might soon be retiring. Stories often circulate that party leaders, especially the House speaker, are stepping aside. Ryans tenure has been as rocky as that of his predecessor, Rep. John Boehner, who abruptly resigned in 2015 amid GOP infighting. Asked Thursday if he would be leaving, Ryan answered a simple no, as he left his weekly press conference in the Capitol. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who reluctantly took over the speakers gavel after Boehners departure, had just finished talking up the GOP tax plan, which leaders hope to pass next week. He also outlined his sweeping agenda for his longtime goal of entitlement reform of welfare benefits next year. Two stories published Thursday suggested Ryan may soon be out. This is pure speculation, said spokeswoman AshLee Strong. As the speaker himself said today, hes not going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

GOP leaders reach tax deal, cutting corporate rate to 21% and top individual rate to 37% By Lisa Mascaro Republican leaders on Wednesday agreed on a revised plan to cut taxes that would lower the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and drop the top individual rate for the richest Americans to 37%, according to GOP senators and others briefed on the deal. The tentative accord marked a significant step in the Republican push to have a tax bill on President Trumps desk by Christmas. Leaders did not release details of the compromise or the text of a final bill as negotiations continued. Its critically important for Congress to quickly pass these historic tax cuts, Trump said Wednesday, promising that Americans could begin to reap the benefits of the plan as early as February, if passed. Critics, however, said the latest changes  particularly the lowering of the top individual rate from the current 39.6%  only reaffirmed several independent analyses that show the bulk of the savings from the Republican plan would go to businesses and the wealthy. Read More Facebook

Twitter

Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Copy Link URL Copied!

Print

Advertisement

Farenthold to retire from House amid harassment accusations By Associated Press Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold wont seek reelection next year, two Republicans said Thursday, adding his name to the list of lawmakers leaving Congress amid sexual harassment allegations that have cost powerful men their jobs in politics, the arts and other fields. The accusations against Farenthold surfaced in 2014, when a former aide sued him alleging sexually suggestive comments and behavior and said shed been fired after she complained. The lawmaker said he engaged in no wrongdoing and the case was settled in 2015. But the House Ethics Committee said last week that it would investigate Farenthold after congressional sources said hed paid an $84,000 settlement using taxpayers money. Though Farenthold said hed reimburse the Treasury Department, such payments have drawn public criticism from people saying lawmakers should use their own money for such settlements. A House official said Farenthold spoke twice Wednesday to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), while another official said the congressman spoke once with Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) who heads the GOPs House campaign committee. Those discussions suggested that Farenthold may have come under pressure from leaders to step aside. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Last week, three lawmakers facing accusations of sexual harassment announced their resignations. Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) have already left Congress while Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has said he will step aside soon. Mike Bergsma, Republican county chairman in Farentholds home county of Nueces, Texas, said Fare
Chinese PresidentXi Jinpingaddresses the Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held in Beijing from Dec. 18 to 20. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The world's second-largest economy is setting sail toward a new phase of development with Xi Jinping at the helm.

The Chinese economy will focus on quality, a shift from the rapid growth the country has been known for over the past decades since the reform and opening up policy was introduced.

At the country's most important annual meeting on economic work, senior leaders said China's economy will be characterized by more innovative manufacturing, a more secure financial system, a more open and green economy, more affordable housing and better life for the people.

To achieve the goal, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialist Economy with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era will be the key, said a statement released after the Central Economic Work Conference concluded Wednesday.

The three-day conference was attended by President Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

This year's Central Economic Work Conference came after the CPC's twice-a-decade national congress in October, which drew a blueprint for China's development over the next 30-plus years.

The conference, which reviewed China's economic performance over the past five years and mapped out plans for 2018, was special also because 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up policy, which has turned the country into the world's second-largest economy.

China's economy is firming, with its GDP expanding 6.9 percent year on year in the first three quarters, and 6.8 percent in the third quarter, the ninth straight quarter for China to see economic growth of at least 6.7 percent, all adding to evidence the economy is on a steady footing.

The World Bank on Tuesday raised its forecast for China's economic growth in 2017 to 6.8 percent, up from the 6.7 percent it projected in October, citing stronger personal consumption and foreign trade.

XI'S ECONOMIC THOUGHT TAKES SHAPE

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialist Economy with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era has taken shape, said the statement.

The tone-setting meeting described the thought as the "theoretical crystallization" of the past five years of practice in pushing forward China's economic development, the "latest fruit" of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics, and the "extremely precious spiritual wealth" of the CPC and the country.

The thought "must be adhered to for a long time and developed continuously," said the statement.

According to the statement, the thought is mainly based on the new development philosophy, which was put forward by Xi in 2015 and features innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development.

Under the thought, people are put first in development, while efforts are made to adapt to, manage and steer the "new normal." The market plays the decisive role and the government plays its role better, and supply-side structural reform constitutes the main line of economic work.

HIGH-QUALITY DEVELOPMENT

"At present and in the period to come, high-quality development is the fundamental requirement for determining the development path, making economic policies and conducting macroeconomic regulation," said the statement.

China must build and improve mechanisms for pushing forward high-quality development, including necessary indicators, policies, standards, statistical and performance assessment systems.

Realizing high-quality development is a must for sustaining healthy and stable economic development and adapting to changed principal contradiction of the Chinese society, it added.

China will continue to deepen the supply-side structural reform as one of the major tasks for realizing such development.

China will develop into a manufacturing powerhouse, with a shift from "Made in China" to "Created in China," the statement said, as the country is striving to evolve from a world factory that churns out low-end products.

Measures to eliminate ineffective supply, foster new growth drivers and reduce costs in the real economy will continue.

The country will improve the long-term mechanisms to ensure stable and healthy development of the real estate market. Both home purchases and rentals will be encouraged.

THREE TOUGH BATTLES

The meeting also outlined strategies to win what central authorities have called "the three tough battles," namely preventing and defusing major risks, targeted poverty alleviation and tackling pollution.

China will maintain a hardline stance on irregular and illegal activities in the financial industry to forestall risks.

China's rapidly expanding financial industry is being placed under greater regulatory scrutiny as authorities step up efforts to curb widespread malfeasance in the sector to guard against risks.

To ensure stable economic growth while averting financial risks accumulated over years of credit binge, China has decided to maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy in 2018.

"Prudent monetary policy should be kept neutral, the floodgates of monetary supply should be controlled, and credit and social financing should see reasonable growth," said the statement.

For the battle against poverty, policymakers pledged to work to ensure the quality of poverty reduction efforts under current standards, and focus on helping special groups and eradicating abject poverty.

Pollution control will also be a key battlefield, with authorities aiming for a significant reduction in major pollutant emissions and improvement in the overall environment.

Efforts should be focused on adjusting the structures of industries, eliminating outdated capacity and making the skies blue again, according to the meeting.

ALL-AROUND OPENING UP

As the major driver and stabilizer of the global economy, China will push forward a new pattern of all-around opening up to pursue mutual benefits with the rest of the world, according to the statement.

China will increase imports and cut import tariffs on some products to promote balanced trade, it said.

Free trade zone pilot areas will be expanded. Effective guidance and support will be given to outbound direct investment.

The country will also push for nationwide implementation of a pre-establishment national treatment system as well as a negative list that determines where foreign participation is prohibited or limited.

The negative list will become shorter and shorter, it said, adding that the country will improve laws and regulations on foreign investment and enhance protection of intellectual property rights.

Chinese leaders have reiterated that the country will not close its door to the world, and that the door will only become more and more open.
The union representing the Huntington Beach Police Departments captains and lieutenants called for the ouster of Chief Robert Handy on Wednesday, a sentiment that echoes the no-confidence vote the departments rank-and-file officers lodged against Handy this summer.

In calling its announcement unprecedented, the Huntington Beach Police Management Assn. said an overwhelming majority have voted to support an immediate change in the office of the chief of police for the city of Huntington Beach.

As police managers, we have never before offered an opinion on such matters, the association said in a statement. In these challenging times, we are committed to protecting the city we are sworn and entrusted with serving. We must ensure the trust, credibility, management and betterment of the department for all.

The association called the relationship between Handy and most department employees beyond repair.

We believe the city of Huntington Beach should not overlook the problems of morale, frustration, dissension and a lack of integrity between department employees and Chief Handy, the group said.

Handy, who has been chief since 2013, did not respond to a request for comment.

He has faced months of tension over his decisions, such as adding body cameras.

The Huntington Beach Police Officers Assn.  the union for rank-and-file officers  took a no-confidence vote against Handy in August. It has argued that the cameras are costly, place an unnecessary burden on limited police resources and extend the time needed to complete reports.

The officers also have cited low morale, out-of-date technology and recruitment problems.

Handy has been a frequent topic of discussion at recent City Council meetings. For several weeks, residents, officers and others have both decried and praised him.

He has had wide support on the council.

Councilwoman Lyn Semeta said Wednesdays announcement from the management association doesnt change her support for Handy, whom she called a very strong leader and man of integrity.

She noted the outpouring of support he received during Mondays council meeting from business leaders, downtown residents, the Chamber of Commerce and nonprofits.

Many people came out with a strong public display of support telling us how he has improved things, Semeta said.

Councilman Billy OConnell declined to comment Wednesday. The five other council members did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Im committed to this community and Im committed to the men and women of this Police Department, Handy said in August after the officers no-confidence vote. There was a perfect storm of issues that led to this, but were going to get through it and learn from it.

The unions stated lack of faith in Handy comes as they negotiate new labor contracts.

The officers contract expired in September; the management associations expires Dec. 31.

Last year, the Police Officers Assn. sued the city over an ordinance seeking to bring more transparency to the negotiations. The union argued the ordinance was impeding the officers ability to negotiate a new contract.

The legal case is ongoing.

Staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
A Newport Beach activist lost his defamation case against the city because the statement in question  that he owed more than $600 in public records copying fees  was a protected form of free speech.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Delaney ruled in favor of the city of Newport Beach, Councilwoman Diane Dixon and Assistant City Clerk Jennifer Nelson in the case, which activist Mike Glenn filed in small claims.

Dixon made the assertion about him during a City Council meeting earlier this year.

Delaney said Dixons statement was protected because it was made in the proper discharge of her official duty, and in an official legislative proceeding while discussing taxpayer dollars being spent on the city-run Balboa Peninsula Trolley, a topic that Glenn has frequently criticized during public comment sessions at City Council meetings and on his website and Facebook page.

However, [e]ven assuming those statements were not privileged, [Glenn] failed to prove his case by a preponderance of the evidence, Delaney wrote in a decision posted Wednesday.

Glenn, who has been critical of the shuttle and its costs, had just spoken about the service at the April 11 meeting when Dixon told him he owed the city $619.93 for records related to the trolley that he had requested the previous two years and hadnt picked up. Glenn replied that he never asked to pick up copies of the records.

Glenn accused Nelson of committing libel when she sent Glenn an email, copied to two other city employees, telling him that he had not paid for the records.

The courts decision (this week) affirms the First Amendment rights of public officials, Dixon said in a statement. I am pleased with the outcome and personally grateful for the professionalism and diligence of our city attorney and city clerk. This is a victory for the right of free speech for everyone. It is my hope that now we can all get back to what is my real passion as a city council member: maintaining and improving the quality of life for the residents of Newport Beach.

Glenn did prove that Dixons statement was untrue, as he never specifically requested printed copies of the records, Delaney wrote.

That said, [Glenn] failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that he has suffered any damages as a result of the false statement, Delaney wrote. He argued that his reputation as a businessman has suffered in the community, but showed no proof of how his reputation has suffered, nor did he prove that he has suffered any damage as a result of the statement.

No costs were awarded, and the city does not owe Glenn any money.

Delaney had earlier denied the citys motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis that it was a SLAPP suit, or a strategic lawsuit against public participation, which is one intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with legal costs until they abandon their criticism or opposition. California has a law against such suits on the grounds that they may impede freedom of speech.

Delaney rejected the motion Tuesday stating that the lawsuit is a small-claims case, and anti-SLAPP motions are not proper small-claims actions.

He then allowed a trial on the merits of the case to immediately proceed. Dixon and Nelson did not attend. City Clerk Leilani Brown attended as their representative, which Delaney said was improper.

Nevertheless, Delaney said, Glenn still had to prove his case.

Glenn played a clip of his exchange with Dixon at the trial, plus a voicemail Dixon left for Brown asking how much Glenn owes the city for records. He said that showed intent to commit slander.

This case is about truthfulness, he told the judge. If that statement is true that would not be defamation. That statement is not true.

After hearing Delaneys ruling, Glenn said hed accomplished his chief objective  to prove in court that what Dixon said was untrue  but was troubled by the judges conclusion that Dixons rebuke was protected under state law.

The fact that the judge said that State Code 47 allows people to literally lie from the dais without any recourse for citizens who are being slandered by elected officials tells me that we have a very serious problem in the state of California, and while I am happy to be vindicated by a judge from Dixons accusations, I am saddened that Dixon has all the legal ability to espouse as many un-truths as she wants, he said. After all, her entire defense in this case was not that she was telling the truth, it was that she was immune from being held accountable for her very own statements. Thats concerning.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD

UPDATES:

2:50 p.m., Dec. 21: This article was updated with comments from Councilwoman Diane Dixon and activist Mike Glenn.

This article originally published at 6 p.m. Dec. 20.
I walk from my home down to the Corona del Mar Beach a lot, usually several times a week. I like taking photos of people there  the endless supply of folks, mostly from Orange County, but often from around the world. They come to enjoy the fantastic beauty of the place, where the sparkling sea, beach, bluffs and sun meet.

But these are not normal photos, they are all taken with the targets cameras to enable them to take a piece of what theyre enjoying home with them. They frequently pull out their phones to get themselves in the picture, extend their arms and go into selfie mode. I detest selfie mode  inevitably the wrong angle, faces distorted, and the fantastic view compromised or missed entirely.

Can I help take the picture? I ask hopefully. The answers are very often, but not always, Yes, thanks. Sometimes a polite, No thanks, were good, comes along  and thats OK. I quickly move on.

Now Ive been walking this area for 10 years at least and have taken a lot of photos. At 100 a year, thats maybe 1,000 pictures into my mythical album that resides only in my mind; photos I dont have, of people I dont know.

Dec. 10 was one such morning walk. Ever ready to spot targets of opportunity, I noticed a young couple, maybe mid- to late-20s, standing at Inspiration Point, a high bluff looking over sand, sea, sun and sky well below  a terrific view that encompasses the full curve of Big Corona Beach and out to Santa Catalina Island some 31 miles away. Nice.

They were talking intently, close together and then a kiss and a hug. Whoa, way too private a moment for me to mess with. But then it happened  out came his phone, and they tipped their heads into selfie mode. I was done waiting.

Can I help take the picture?

Simultaneously they both turned to me, huge smiles, Oh yes, please do, they both said at the same time  like synchronized swimmers.

Slight pause.

You see, she clarified, he just asked me to marry him!

Wow. Now this was a new one.

I stumbled a bit looking for the proper comeback.

So, I asked her, what did you say?

After the obligatory Yes of course, I borrowed his phone, snapped a couple of photos, offered my sincere congratulations and walked on with a new-found bounce in my step.

In this season of giving, Ive thought a lot about this exchange. About the amazing life arc that put the three of us in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. But more about the meaning of, Its better to give than receive.

My conclusion is that, although the old saying is true, it falls short of pointing out a more profound truth, an improved perspective. When a giving moment comes, and is recognized for what it is, and is executed properly, the event leaves everyone happy, yet a bit confused too.

Exactly who has given what to whom?

Fred Forster

Corona del Mar

Does superintendent really need a bonus?

As a former teacher of 29 years and a taxpayer in Newport-Mesa, I was scandalized by the $34,450 tax-sheltered annuity contribution to school Supt. Fred Navarro, as a bonus for excellent service.

The average California teachers salary is $67,872, according to USC Rossier Online. The Daily Pilot reported that Navarro, pre bonus, received a 2.5% raise, elevating his pay to $282,844, in 2017.

But thats not all. Transparent California records his 2016 salary as $275,945 and total compensation with benefits as $366,051. Wow!

My overriding question is: How can trustee Karen Yelsey, as quoted in the Daily Pilot, say Navarro did a, great job deserving of a bonus?

In 2014, I read the Daily Pilots coverage of a complaint by the districts former director of human resources, John Caldecott, about pension payments under Navarros leadership.

More recently I read of teachers struggles with the $4-million SWUN Math program. Navarro recommended and strongly supported SWUN Math, which has been replaced at added cost to taxpayers.

In 2017, the Pilot reported that trustees spent up to $60,000 for consultants to monitor sewer gases or sewage emanating from walls, sinks and floors. Staff illnesses have been cited as possible results of seven-year inattention to staff/student safety at Estancia High School.

At Mariners School, staff asserted that their former principal misquoted their activities on a Blue Ribbon application. Later, teachers were vindicated by the principals removal.

Four years after Sandy Hook, some schools lack security fencing.

Yet trustees find money for Navarros bonus, while failing to fund necessities for students and staff. Based upon my reading of the Pilots coverage, NMUSD trustees should not rate this superintendents performance exceptional.

In the upcoming 2018 election, I will look for new school board members who are prepared to hold the superintendent accountable.

Carrie Luger Slayback

Newport Beach

How to get published: Email us at dailypilot@latimes.com. All correspondence must include full name, hometown and phone number (for verification purposes). The Pilot reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity and length.
With flames illuminating a darkened showroom and a helicopter appearing out of nowhere, its clear that magic is as popular as ever with Las Vegas visitors. Three new shows recently opened and a fourth is set to launch in late January.

1. Masters of Illusion

The most recent addition, Masters of Illusion, wowed a crowd that included fellow magicians on opening night last Thursday.

Advertisement

The live production, based on the CW television show of the same name, is the first engagement in the Jubilee Showroom at Ballys since the long-running showgirl spectacle closed in February 2016.

In this show, five magicians plus a dozen dancers appear onstage.

We all bring our own personal style to it, magician Jason Bird said in an interview. Weve got one guy who does comedy magic. Weve got big illusions a couple of guys do. My stuff is very theatrical, very storytelling.

Greg Gleason appears to materialize a full-size helicopter before spectators eyes. In his part of the show, Bird uses a drone during a card trick. In another skit, he interacts with a lonely lady who appears to be feeding imaginary birds on a park bench.

I like to get people emotionally involved, he observed.

Masters of Illusion begins at 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. Tickets start at $49.

2. Inferno

Next door at Paris Las Vegas, the internationally acclaimed fire-charged Inferno will arrive Jan. 24.

Full of flaming stunts and pyrotechnics, the show has delighted audiences across Asia and Europe. Swedens Joe Labero, a four-time winner of magics prestigious Merlin Award, brings the gasoline-soaked illusions to life with help from Britains Fuel Girls.

The show will be run Wednesdays through Sundays; tickets from $49.

3. David Goldrake Imaginarium

After performing in 20 countries, Luxembourg native David Goldrake began a residency a few months ago at Tropicana, a bold move since magic legend David Copperfield performs across the street at the MGM Grand.

David Goldrake Imaginarium appears to defy the laws of physics  and a few other sciences  during his show. One bit recalls a trick made famous by Harry Houdini roughly a century ago.

As guests look on, Goldrake, wrapped in a straitjacket and dangling upside down, is submerged in a tank of water. During the feat, he holds his breath for about two minutes before freeing himself from his restraints.

Goldrakes mix of classic and modern magic earned him the Mandrake dOr award in 2010. Other winners have included longtime Las Vegas performers Siegfried & Roy.

Goldrake performs Tuesdays through Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $50.

4. Dirk Arthurs Wild Magic

Off the Strip, magician Dirk Arthur in November landed at Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. His latest incarnation, Dirk Arthur Wild Magic, is tamer than his previous shows, since his big cats (he has performed with tigers and ligers) are missing from this gig.

Arthur performs at 6 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Tickets from $30.

ALSO

Twist named Las Vegas best restaurant of 2017. And Eatt takes the cake for best dessert

Las Vegas best holiday light display: a hypnotists decked-out home

2018 New Years Eve celebrations for $10,000 and up

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
At least 29 people were killed and dozens more injured during a massive fire Thursday at a multistory fitness complex in a central South Korean city, authorities said.

The fire engulfed the eight-story, triangle-shaped building, filling it with deadly smoke and trapping dozens inside. Flames could be seen bursting through the roof as thick smoke billowed out windows and dozens of firefighters sought to contain the blaze.

The incident occurred in Jecheon, about 100 miles southeast of Seoul, and started about 3:50 p.m. Thursday in the buildings parking lot. At least 15 of the dead had been trapped in a second-floor sauna, fire officials in North Chungcheong province told reporters.

Advertisement

Some survivors were plucked from the roof of the 45,000-square-foot concrete structure, located in a residential area. The facility, Noble Fitness and Spa, also housed a workout center, indoor golf facility and restaurants.

Helicopters hovered over the damaged structure throughout the afternoon as thick smoke filled the air. Witnesses reported hearing explosions in the parking structure and seeing at least one person jump from the building to escape, according to an image posted to social media.

The fire is perhaps the largest mass-casualty event in South Korea since the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014. More than 300 people, many of them high school students, were killed when the vessel capsized en route from Incheon to Jeju Island. The governments response to the incident and its handling of the investigation caused widespread anger across the country.

The scale of Thursdays fire prompted quick attention at the highest levels of government, with Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon visiting the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to monitor the firefighting effort.

President Moon Jae-in issued a statement urging fire officials to contain the blaze but to do so safely. He also expressed hope that authorities could identify the dead quickly to give comfort to grieving family members.

The president is very sorry about the loss of multiple lives in the large fire, said Yoon Young-chan, the presidential press secretary.

Fire deaths are less common in South Korea, where multistory buildings are generally equipped with sprinklers and rescue cords for residents, than they are in the United States. The toll from the Jecheon blaze would represent about 10% of the nations annual fire deaths in recent years.

About 280 people were killed in fires last year, according to data provided by the Korean Statistical Information Service. South Koreas population is just over 51 million.

There were 3,300 fire deaths in the United States, population 320 million, in 2015, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Thats a fire mortality rate of 10.5 per million people. South Koreas fire mortality rate in 2016 was 5.5 per million people.

The flames had largely been extinguished by nightfall, but firefighters were searching the building for more victims. Thick smoke and debris were hampering the effort, authorities said.

Details about the building and its history were unclear Thursday night. Citing local residents, news station JTBC said the building had just reopened after the financially struggling previous owner sold it at auction.

Stiles is a special correspondent.

UPDATES:

2:45 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details.

This article was originally published at 9:25 a.m.
Pro-independence parties in Spains Catalonia region jubilantly claimed victory Thursday in regional parliamentary elections, throwing the countrys politics into new tumult and dealing a heavy blow to the Madrid government, which saw a backfiring of its bid to quell secessionist drive.

With more than 99% of the vote counted, unofficial results gave three separatist parties a 70-seat majority in the 135-member parliament  although in order to form a government, they will have to overcome internal bickering that has strained past coalitions.

And the party winning the largest number of votes on its own, the Citizens party, is staunchly opposed to breaking with Spain, pointing to deep divisions in Catalan society over the independence question.

Advertisement

Catalonias deposed separatist president, in self-exile in Belgium, declared the result a slap in the face for Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The Spanish state has been defeated, said Carles Puigdemont, the ex-president.

Citizens party head Ines Arrimadas, however, signaled that efforts to derail a renewed independence push would continue. She vowed to keep fighting for a peaceful co-existence, common sense and for a Catalonia for all Catalans.

The vote  orderly and peaceful, unlike an independence referendum held in October over the objections of the central government in Madrid  pointed to a fractured electorate. The anti-independence Citizens party, or Cuidadanos, appeared to have won a plurality of 37 seats.

Two separatist parties  Junts Per Catalunya, or Together for Catalonia, and Esquerra Republicana or Republican Left  scored 34 and 32 seats, respectively. With four more seats from a smaller pro-secession party, Catalan Unity or CUP, that would give them a combined majority of 70 seats, but infighting could throw them off course to forming a coalition.

Fueled by an after-work surge of balloting, turnout was high, with more than 80% of the 5.5 million-member electorate casting ballots. Pre-election public opinion polls had pointed to a nearly even split among people favoring and opposing independence for the prosperous northeastern region.

Catalonias independence drive has triggered Spains deepest political crisis in decades. An October independence referendum  which was won by the secessionists, but with a turnout of less than half the eligible voters  was branded illegal by the central government in Madrid.

Rajoy, responded to the regional parliaments unilateral independence declaration later that month by dissolving the Catalan government and calling new regional elections  the vote that took place Thursday.

In Barcelona, the regions capital, Carmen Canut stood in line at her neighborhood school to cast a vote for Together for Catalonia.

This is a historic moment, Canut said. I will fight to the end because Spain, for me, is not a democratic country.

It was far from a normal election campaign. Puigdemont, stumped for votes from Belgium, where he fled in October, and it was not clear whether he could return without facing arrest.

Catalonias former vice president, Oriol Junqueras, campaigned from a jail near Madrid. He and other incarcerated separatist politicians could face charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds  making it physically difficult for the separatist bloc to convene.

Under the Spanish regional vote system, people vote for parties, not individual candidates, and the parties then allocate seats from their lists for the four-year parliamentary terms. Parties must win at least 3% of the vote to gain seats in the parliament.

With the balloting taking place on a weekday, a working day for most, some voters hurried in with only moments to spare. Emilio Carrillo, 32, scooted in after spending the day at his consulting job, voting for an anti-independence party.

Like many, he was frustrated over social issues and the economy taking a back seat to the secession question. This is a distraction from other problems, he said.

Even before voting began at 9 a.m., a long queue formed outside the Josep Maria Jujol school in the Barcelona neighborhood of Gracia, a pro-independence bastion.

Olga Navarro Pousa, 63, who was first in line, was going against neighborhood sentiment to cast her ballot for a pro-Spanish unity party.

Like many, Navarro mourned the political rifts that have split families and neighborhoods. We were all friends here, she said. I want to return to what we were before.

Others, including many young people, feared an independent Catalonia would be shunned by the European Union, to which they feel a strong attachment.

Ernesto Lopez Vallez, 21, arrived at his polling place wrapped in an EU flag, intending to vote for an anti-independence party because he wanted Catalonia to stay with Spain and thus remain part of the European Union.

A voting official asked Lopez to shed the flag. I didnt know the European Union was a political symbol, he said.

European leaders have sided with the Madrid government in opposing Catalan independence, fearing that secession would galvanize other separatist movements across the continent.

Some voters at the school looked relieved and smiled after they dropped off their ballots. Others were simply in a rush to get to work, or later, hurrying to get home.

There are so many people, said Candy Exposito as she pushed through the crowd to leave for her human resources job. She voted for a pro-independence party.

The votes orderliness stood in contrast to the chaotic clashes that accompanied Octobers referendum, leaving hundreds hurt. This time, all the candidates had called beforehand for calm.

Special correspondent Bernhard reported from Barcelona and staff writer King from Washington.

UPDATES:

4:35 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction from Catalan political leaders, analysis.

3:05 p.m.: This article was updated with early voting results, updated turnout.

11:50 a.m.: This article was updated with the close of polling, estimated turnout and details from the scene.

This article was originally published at 6:25 a.m.
The number of journalists killed while on the job or in retaliation for their work declined worldwide in 2017, but one country remains increasingly perilous  Mexico.

So far in 2017, 42 journalists worldwide have been killed, compared with 48 a year earlier, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonpartisan group that tracks press freedoms.

Iraq and Syria were the deadliest places for journalists this year, with eight killed in Iraq and seven in Syria. But outside war zones, Mexico is the most dangerous place for journalists.

According to the committee, six Mexican journalists were killed in retaliation for their reporting, often of corrupt government officials or drug cartels. But according to news reports and the group Reporters Without Borders, six additional Mexican journalists died in 2017. The motivation for their slayings remains unclear, but they also often wrote about crime and corruption.

One journalist was gunned down Tuesday. Many of the 12 were killed in public. Some in front of their own children. Often, they were slain in broad daylight. Two were gunned down the same day.

Courtney Radsch, the committees advocacy director, said that Mexicos leaders lack the political will to stop the violence against journalists and have repeatedly failed to provide the resources necessary to track down and prosecute the people behind the killings. Except in two cases there have been no arrests in this years killings.

The murderers of journalists continue to go free, so its open season on Mexican journalists, Radsch said.

We hear from Mexican journalists that they are self-censoring, that theyre having to flee their homes and go into exile, and that it just becomes more and more dangerous for journalists in Mexico.

Here are the 12 Mexican journalists killed this year, in chronological order, with the city and state where they died.

Cecilio Pineda Birto

Killed: March 2

City: Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero

Where he worked: Pineda, a freelancer, had founded La Voz de Tierra Caliente, which stopped publishing in 2016.

What he wrote about: Pineda covered crime and corruption through his Facebook page, which has almost 32,000 followers, and also wrote for newspapers.

How he died: While Pineda was waiting in a hammock at a car wash for his vehicle, at least two armed men on motorcycles shot him about 10 times, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Pineda had been threatened before.

Ricardo Monlui Cabrera

Killed: March 19

City: Yanga, Veracruz

Where he worked: Monlui was a newspaper columnist and the editorial director of El Politico newspaper. He had been a journalist for more than 30 years.

What he wrote about: Monlui often wrote about conflicts between the Veracruz authorities and farmers and workers in the sugar cane industry, one of the regions main economic activities, according to Reporters Without Borders.

How he died: Monlui was leaving a restaurant about 10 a.m. with his wife and son when his attackers rode by on a motorcycle, firing three times. One of the bullets hit Monlui in the head, the Committee to Protect Journalists noted. His wife and son were unharmed.

Veracruz has been a dangerous place for journalists, with at least six journalists from the state killed between 2010 and 2016 in direct retaliation for their work, according to the committees research.

A memorial in Mexico City honors slain journalists Miroslava Breach, left, and Javier Valdez. The title above Breachs photograph says, Enough! (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)

Miroslava Breach

Killed: March 23

City: Chihuahua City, Chihuahua

Where she worked: Breach worked as a correspondent for the national newspaper La Jornada for 15 years and for several local newspapers. Since January, she also had run her own news agency, MIR.

What she wrote about: Breach wrote about drug cartels and corruption, among other things. Shortly before her death, Breach had been threatened for her reporting that alleged links between politicians and organized crime figures.

How she died: Breach, a mother of three, was pulling out of her garage with one of her children in the car when she was shot several times. She died on the way to the hospital. A sign left at the crime scene said tattletale. After her death, the newspaper Norte announced it was closing because the owner said Mexico had become too dangerous for journalists to do their jobs.

Police investigators work on the crime scene where Maximino Rodriguez Palacios was killed by gunmen on April 14. (AFP/Getty Images)

Maximino Rodriguez Palacios

Killed: April 14

City: La Paz, Baja California Sur

Where he worked: Rodriguez was a veteran journalist who had worked for national and regional media outlets. He had previously worked as a spokesman for the state attorney generals office.

What he wrote about: At the time of his death, Rodriguez covered politics and crime in a news blog, Pericu Collective. A few days before he was killed, Rodriguez wrote a column that was critical of a local criminal gang.

How he died: Rodriguez and his wife were in the parking lot of a shopping center when he was shot and killed by a group of attackers in a white SUV. His wife was unharmed. Three suspects have been arrested in connection with the killing.

Relatives of slain journalist Javier Valdez Cardenas, cofounder of Riodoce, stand at a memorial set up at the spot where he was gunned down in Culiacan, Sinaloa. (Enric Marti / Associated Press)

Javier Valdez Cardenas

Killed: May 15

City: Culiacan, Sinaloa

Where he worked: Valdez was a correspondent for the Mexico City-based daily La Jornada and a cofounder of the regional weekly Riodoce.

What he wrote about: Valdez was a well-known journalist and author who had written extensively about Mexicos drug war, corruption and crime. Valdez had spoken openly about the dangers that Mexican journalists faced. When Breach was killed in March, Valdez tweeted: Let them kill us all, if that is the death penalty for reporting this hell. No to silence.

How he died: Shortly after leaving the Riodoce office at about noon, Valdez was dragged out of his car on a busy street and shot at least 12 times.

In 2011, Valdez was awarded with the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award. I dedicate this award to the brave journalists, and to the children and youths who are living a slow death, Valdez said. I have preferred to give a face and a name to the victims, to create a portrait of this sad and desolate panorama, these leaps and bounds and short cuts towards the Apocalypse, instead of counting deaths and reducing them to numbers.

You can watch his speech below, which starts near the 6:30 mark.

Jonathan Rodriguez

Killed: May 15

City: Autlan de Navarro, Jalisco

Where he worked: He worked as a reporter for El Costeno, a weekly newspaper.

What he wrote about: He covered local news, and his family had previously faced threats.

How he died: Rodriguez and his mother, Sonia Cordova, deputy director of El Costeno, were driving when gunmen opened fire on them, killing Rodriguez and wounding his mother.

Salvador Adame Pardo

Killed: Killed between May 18 and June 14

City: Gabriel Zamora, Michoacan

Where he worked: Adame, a 20-year journalism veteran, was owner and director of 6TV.

What he wrote about: Adame covered general news and local politics in southern Michoacan. The Committee to Protect Journalists found in its research that Adame had been a frequent critic of local officials.

How he died: Gunmen abducted Adame about 8 p.m. May 18 near a water-purifying plant in Nueva Italia, forcing him into the back of a black SUV. His body was found June 14, burned, on the side of a road in the municipality of Gabriel Zamora. Police have arrested two men on suspicion of carrying out Adames abduction and killing.

Luciano Rivera Salgado

Killed: July 31

City: Rosarito, Baja California

Where he worked: Rivera Salgado was a TV reporter and an editor for El Dictamen, a news website focused on Rosarito and Tijuana.

What he wrote about: Rivera Salgado covered crime. Mario Rivera, the director of CNR TV, where Rivera Salgado worked for nearly 10 years, told The Times that it was essential that authorities look closely at whether his work played a role in his killing. He often criticized the security situation here, Rivera said. We as a station have been very tough critics.

How he died: Rivera Salgado was celebrating his 29th birthday when he was shot in the head at 1:40 a.m. while at La Antigua Bar in Rosarito.

Edwin Rivera Paz

Killed: July 9

City: Acayucan, Veracruz

Where he worked: Rivera fled Honduras after Igor Padilla, a TV journalist whom Rivera worked with, was killed. Rivera feared he would also be killed.

What he wrote about: Padilla had covered crime and also hosted a humorous television show, and Rivera was his cameraman, the Guardian reported.

How he died: Rivera was shot to death, reportedly in the afternoon by two people on a motorcycle.

Relatives of the Mexican journalist Candido Rios Vazquez mourn next to his coffin. (Angel Hernandez / European Pressphoto Agency)

Candido Rios Vazquez

Killed: Aug. 22

City: Hueyapan de Ocampo, Veracruz

Where he worked: Rios founded a local newspaper and covered crime for a regional paper, El Diario de Acayucan.

What he wrote about: Rios was a crime reporter who wrote about government corruption for years. The threats were constant, Rios editor, Cecilio Perez Cortes, told The Times.

How he died: Rios was outside a corner store with a former police investigator and a local rancher when the three were killed in a drive-by shooting. In 2013, Rios enrolled in a Mexican government program to protect journalists. The program provides reporters with emergency evacuations, police protection and, in some cases, even a panic button that summons authorities.

Edgar Daniel Esqueda Castro

Killed: Abducted Oct. 5, found dead Oct. 6

City: San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi

Where he worked: Esqueda Castro was a freelance photographer for local news websites.

What he wrote about: Esqueda Castro primarily covered local events and crime stories. He had been threatened and beaten by local police, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

How he died: Armed men broke into his home, claimed they were state investigative police and took him away at gunpoint. He was found dead the next day after being tortured and shot.

A newspaper reporting the death of journalist Gumaro Perez carries the headline They killed Gumaro! in Acayucan, Veracruz state, Mexico. (Felix Marquez / Associated Press)

Gumaro Perez

Killed: Dec. 19

City: Acayucan, Veracruz

Where he worked: He founded the online news site La Voz del Sur and also worked for the local government in some capacity.

What he wrote about: Perez covered crime for several local outlets.

How he died: Perez was attending a Christmas party at his sons elementary school when he was shot and killed.

He was enrolled in a state program designed to protect journalists.

jaclyn.cosgrove@latimes.com

Twitter: @jaclyncosgrove
(Xinhua) 07:32, December 21, 2017

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. national security strategy unveiled by President Donald Trump Monday has raised concerns worldwide with the international community calling it confrontational and contradictory and displaying an outdated Cold War mentality.

CONFRONTATIONAL, NOT CONSTRUCTIVE

Instead of promoting cooperation between countries, the new security strategy sparks confrontation in the global community and hampers constructive resolution of pressing international issues, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

"Its key message - 'to preserve peace through strength' - sets the line not for constructive cooperation with other countries on an equal basis and in the interests of a joint resolution of existing problems, but for confrontation," the statement read.

The ministry said the plan of action outlined in the strategy clearly demonstrated Washington's strive to retain its weakened domination and superiority in the global arena by all means.

A Kremlin spokesperson called the strategy "imperial". "There is a persistent reluctance to renounce the concept of a unipolar world, as well as rejection of a multipolar world," spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

"Destabilizing policies and actions by some countries to maintain their hegemony in pursuit of absolute power are responsible for instability in several parts of the world, including ours," the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Selcuk Colakoglu, director of the Turkish Center for Asia Pacific Studies, said the U.S. strategy indicates a more confrontational approach toward Russia, China, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

GAP BETWEEN TRUMP'S STRATEGY AND ACTION

The media and experts pointed out that Trump himself did not seem to be totally buying the new national security strategy himself. The president's viewpoint seemed to differ from that of his establishment-minded foreign policy advisors.

The Atlantic magazine said on Wednesday that's Trump's speech unveiling the strategy "butchered it in a revealing way." The strategy declares that the Trump administration will pursue a "strategy of principled realism." But what Trump said was, "Our new strategy is based on a principle, realism."

Also, the strategy presented Russia as a power bent on undermining U.S. interests and meddling in the U.S. presidential race last year. But in his speech, Trump did not mention the alleged Russian intervention in the election he won. Instead, he talked about a phone call from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, mentioning how the latter had thanked him for providing intelligence to foil a major terror attack in Russia.

"Trump's speech highlighted the gap between his theories and his actions," said Norhan al-Sheikh, professor of international relations at Cairo University. "His speech is contradictory. He seems to be dealing with a hypothetical world."

After calling Russia and China two "revisionist" powers seeking to undermine U.S. influence, values and interests, Trump immediately called for building a "great partnership" with them, al-Sheikh pointed out.

Moreover, Trump demanded that NATO allies contribute more to the cost of protecting Europe, threatening to retreat otherwise. But his administration has been vowing to restore the U.S. presence in the international area, which had diminished under his predecessor Barack Obama.

FROM AMERICA FIRST TO AMERICA ALONE

"Trump's doctrine reveals a zero-sum vision that leads to a zero-sum strategy. It is a vision of an alien world that's hostile to U.S. interests," broadcaster Al Jazeera said in an article on Wednesday. "That's not America first; it's America alone."

China on Tuesday urged the United States to abandon its Cold War mentality and the outdated zero-sum game concept.

"We hope the U.S. side will take China-U.S. relations objectively and rationally, and abide by its commitments," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

Maintaining a healthy and stable bilateral relationship is the correct choice for the welfare of the two peoples and the international community, Hua added.
Overlooking a village near Zhongdian 1995. (Photo/chinadaily.com.cn)

In 1995 Bruce Connolly travelled to to Zhongdian (Shangri-La), a primarily Tibetan upland within Northwest Yunnan. In his previous piece Bruce discovered the fascinating Old Town. Today he explores postcard-like countryside while appreciating friendship at Songzanlin Monastery.
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan (center) said he was not worried about the low public support of the tax cuts. File photo: Hu Zexi

People demonstrate against the new tax bill at the US Capitol in Washington DC.

File photo: Hu Zexi

Washington (People's Daily) - The final version of the GOP tax plan passed both the House and Senate Wednesday noon, and now awaits President Trumps signature before it officially becomes law. Trump had been pushing for an early tax bill pass. And this latest GOP move marks the largest US tax revamp in three decades.

Beginning in December, both houses passed separate versions of the tax bill.

According to US Congress legislative procedure, GOP members of both chambers formed a conference committee to reconcile the differences between the two versions and drafted a final version.

The final version stipulates that corporate tax rates will drop from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Meanwhile, individual income tax will continue to be split into seven brackets, with rates reduced to 10-37 percent and standard deduction almost double.

Partnerships, LLCs and S corporations, like the so-called "pass-through" businesses, will receive a 20 percent deduction for their income.

US companies transferring overseas assets back into the country will only be taxed once for cash assets and fixed assets, with a rate of 15.5 percent for cash assets and 8 percent for fixed assets.

In efforts to maintain GOP party unity, the Republican Conference Committee revised provisions during the tax plans final editing stages.

The final version raised the child tax credit, a move that won favor with former potential holdout Republican Senator Marco Rubio (Fla.).

Internal GOP comprises saw earlier reduced tax rates go from 20 percent to ending at one percentage point higher.

New exemptions to the bill forced GOP members to find cost-cutting solutions in accordance with legislative rules stipulating that the bill not exceed $1.5 trillion.

The new tax bill bundled provisions repealing key parts of the Obamacare and paving the way for Alaska oil drilling. The two provisions are hot-button issues in the US as millions could lose health insurance benefits, while environmentalists prepare to sound alarm bells.

Not one Congressional Democrat voted for the bill. Democrats attacked the bill of being disproportionately favorable to the rich and businesses. Meanwhile, the Democrats also questioned the GOP leaders' hasty legislation practice, emphasizing that the bill lacked public debate and bipartisan discussions. Throughout the legislating process, the GOPs kept adjusting the bills contents in close-door meetings, while Democrats time and again claimed their rights to "read the bill." The Democrats also believe that the GOP tax cut plan will rapidly reduce the federal government's revenue; in order to balance the deficit, the Republican Party may further promote social welfare reform next year.

Studies projected the tax reform bill will provide more benefits to businesses and high-wage earners.

According to a study released by Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan research institute, the proposed tax reform would allow US households to cut taxes expenses by roughly $1,600 for 2018, but high-income families will receive far more reductions than middle-income families.

Households earning more than $1 million a year will have a tax cut of almost $70,000 by the end of next year. which means their household net income will soar 3.3 percent. Families earning between $50,000 and $75,000 a year will have a tax cut of $ 870, marking a 1.6 percent net income increase. Analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation demonstrated that the total $1.5 trillion tax relief would be mostly obtained by enterprises, while only about 10 percent will go to middle-income families. Moreover, the tax cut provisions for corporate is permanent, while most of the individual tax relief provisions will expire in the end of 2025.

US macro-economic conditions are hugely debated concerns by supporters and opponents.

Republicans feel the tax cuts will bring 3 percent growth to the US economy and an increase in tax sources will balance tax cut expenses. It s an assumption Democrats feel is unfounded.

A report from the Joint Committee on Taxation revealed the US economy will see 0.8 percent additional growth in the decade.

Overall, entire tax relief package will add $1 trillion in government debt in 10 years.

Republicans view the passage of the tax reform bill as a major political victory, believing it has finally realized the long-awaited policy objective of tax cuts and repealing Obamacare, for core Republican voters.

Its premature to see how the bill will affect next years midterm elections.

CNN said on Tuesday that over half of all Americans oppose the GOP tax bill, while only 33 percent are in favor.

Some analysts believe that because of the strong opposition to the bill, Democrat supporters and independent groups have mobilized.

GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that when the public eventually finds their after-tax income has increased as a result of the bill, they will start supporting it.
Connect with ustoday!

Considering your options as an engineering student and trying to get a sense of life as part of Lehigh's engineering community? Or maybe you are a member of the community interested in research and educational success around the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter Rossin Connection to stay current with all things Lehigh Engineeringwith updates on student, faculty, and alumni achievement, campus events and programs, and more!

Subscribe to Rossin Connection >>>
A New Jersey man is accused of sexually assaulting a sleeping woman last year in a Hellertown home.

The incident occurred in the early morning of May 1, 2016, and charges were filed against Omar Rojano-Coyotl Nov. 21, 2016, but he was not arraigned in the case until Wednesday.

Rojano-Coyotl, of Galloway Township, New Jersey, is charged with sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault of an unconscious person, and indecent assault of an unconscious person.

The 40-year-old Rojano-Coyotl was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail.

The victim told officers she awoke to Rojano-Coyotl molesting her, with his hands down her pants, according to police. When the woman started to fully wake up, Rojano-Coyotl pulled his hands out of her pants, police said.

The victim had a post-rape exam done at a local hospital, and evidence was collected from her and the crime scene, police said.

Hellertown police said an officer spoke with Rojano-Coyotl on May 1, 2016, where he admitted "possibly" molesting the accuser. Five days later, police said they collected a DNA sample from Rojano-Coyotl. The results came back Oct. 30, 2016, and charges were filed against Rojano-Coyotl.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A New York state man drove to Bethlehem for what he thought was going to be sex with a 14-year-old girl, but was arrested instead, authorities said.

Alexander Davis, of Monsey, New York, is charged with unlawful contact with a minor, statutory sexual assault and criminal use of cellphone.

Davis, who turns 31 on Christmas Day, was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Agents with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office said on Dec. 4 Davis responded to a Craigslist ad and sent a message to a 14-year-old girl, who was in actuality an agent posing as a minor online.

Davis exchanged text messages with the "girl" that were sexual in nature, even after the agent told Davis she was 14 multiple times, agents said.

Davis arranged to meet the minor in Bethlehem for sex, and told her he would bring condoms, prosecutors said.

"Tomorrow is a day to celebrate, everything will be just like your fantasy," Davis reportedly wrote in one chat.

The two planned to meet Wednesday morning near the McDonald's off Wyandotte Street in Bethlehem.

Agents said Davis, driving a car with New York plates, arrived at about 10:15 a.m. and parked on a side street about 25 yards away from the restaurant. Davis allegedly sent a message to the "girl," telling her to walk where he was parked.

Agents arrested Davis. In an interview where he waived his Miranda Rights, agents said Davis admitted knowing the "child" was 14 and that he communicated with her and met with her for sex.

Davis reportedly told agents he knew sexual contact with a 14-year-old was "totally wrong and illegal" and he was "going to spend time in jail."

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
On Tuesday, Chinese social media platform Weibo revealed that a female graduate of Nanchang University, located in Jiangxi Province, had come forward with molestation and sexual abuse allegations against her former vice dean, Zhou Bin.

The womans claims also alleged that Cheng Shuijin, then the dean of the school of Chinese classics, did nothing to help her when she first informed him of the abuse that had endured for seven months.

Cheng even urged her to remain quiet and not to report the incidents to local authorities.

Once the story hit Weibo, local police responded, and university officials helped set up a special investigation.

By the end of Wednesday, Nanchang University officials had announced that Cheng Shuijin and Zhou Bin were no longer employed at the university as both had been relieved of their duties. It was also reported that Zhous classes and academic assignments had been suspended pending further notice.

(Compiled by Lv Feisha)
Jim Corcoran came to firefighting a little later in life than most, but he's made an impact.

Jim Corcoran is the city Kiwanis Club's Easton Firefighter of the Year for 2017. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The 54-year-old who brought the Operation Warm Coats For Kids program to the city department was being honored at 6 p.m. Wednesday as the recipient of the Kiwanis Club of Easton's city firefighter of the year award at Downtown's Grand Eastonian Hotel & Suites.

The award is chosen by a committee of city firefighters.

But Corcoran's taking the ceremony with modesty and grace.

"All I know is I'm going to a dinner tomorrow night," the 18-year member of the city fire department said with a laugh on Tuesday from the South Side station.

Corcoran grew up in Phillipsburg, graduated in 1981 from P'burg High and worked for years as an inspector for the New Jersey Department of Transportation, he said.

As many people do, Corcoran lived at times on either side of the Delaware River and as the new century neared, he got to talking to his Ferry Street neighbor in Easton and city firefighter Joe Cuvo.

"I learned what he did for a living and decided to take the test," Corcoran said about joining the department in early 2000. "It was all brand new to me. Once I got on the list, they sent me to the academy in Allentown."

He rose in Easton Professional Firefighters, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 713 to vice president and learned about a union-supported nonprofit organization that provides outerwear to children, he said.

"We buy brand new American made coats for kids in the Easton Area School District who are in need," he said. Numerous fundraisers are held throughout the year to offset the costs, he said.

In his three years heading the effort locally, more than 600 coats were given out, he said. In the past year, he stepped away from his union duties and younger firefighters have carried the program forward, he said.

But the job is more than that program, Corcoran said.

As a firefighter, "when we show up it's not always the best times in our customers' lives," he said, understanding people go through hard times. "I try and approach the situation with compassion. You help the people out best you can. We're there for people in their time of need."

But firefighting is not an individual endeavor, he said.

"It's nice to be recognized," he said. "But I don't feel any more deserving than anyone else on the fire department. We work as a team. It's the only way to stay safe and get the job done."

The Bethlehem Township resident has recently lost weight and is running and going to the gym daily, he said. He still has two years to go to get to 20 years of service to the city.

"I feel in pretty good shape," he said. "... I would like to stay as long as possible. When I know it's time to go, I will leave."

City fire Chief John Bast said Corcoran understands the bigger picture of community service.

"We are honoring Jim not for a one-time act, but for helping the children of the community as whole live with dignity."

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
After being wished "Happy Birthday," an Easton man was arraigned Thursday on charges he participated in a brutal group attack on two men outside a Wilson Borough gas station.

Quashon "Moonie" Ragland chose his 24th birthday to turn himself in to authorities on charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment.

Investigators believe Ragland was one of the "main actors" in the attack that left Shaheed Alvin and Nigel Douglas seriously injured.

"The same guy who might send you to jail wishing you happy birthday is kind of unorthodox," District Judge Richard Yetter noted in court.

At Thursday's hearing, Ragland's attorney argued for unsecured bail.

Ragland collects social security for a learning disability, he has no prior criminal record, is not a threat to the community, and is diminutive in stature, making him a target in prison, Timothy Prendergast said.

Pre-trial services also recommended unsecured bail for Ragland.

Borough police deferred to the recommendation; Det. Jason Hillis did note the victim's suffered severe injuries.

Yetter gave Ragland $50,000 unsecured bail, and released him to his mother, whom he lives with in Easton.

Prendergast said he had evidence Alvin sent Ragland threatening messages after the attack, and that other people have come to the family's Easton home.

Borough police estimate as many as eight people participated in the group attack Sunday afternoon at the Square One Exxon market, 15th and Northampton streets.

Police said an argument began in the store, then spilled outside, where Ragland is accused of throwing the first punch and then others joined in.

The men stomped on the victims' heads and smashed their heads into the the ground, Chief Steve Parkansky previously said.

The 22-year-old Douglas suffered the most serious injuries, police said. He was transferred to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Salisbury Township, and may require surgery, police said.

Alvin, 20, of Easton, suffered convulsions during the attack and a tooth was knocked loose, police said. He was taken to St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill; police did not have an update on his medical status on Thursday.

Hillis said their is surveillance video of the attack, and encourage those involved to turn themselves in to police.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Drivers planning to do their holiday driving on Friday to avoid the crush over the weekend will not be alone.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is projecting that Friday and Jan. 1 will be the most congested travel days this holiday season, with 650,000 motorists on the turnpike each day.

The lightest travel days are estimated to be Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, with 400,000 vehicles. Christmas Eve is a close second, with 450,000 vehicles forecasted.

Motorists should check out the real-time traffic maps for PennDOT at 511pa.com and NJDOT at 511nj.org.

It's not just cars -- AAA is forecasting a record-breaking 107.3 million Americans will travel by plane, train, car, bus and cruise ship, between Saturday and New Year's Day. That's a 3.1 percent increase over last year.

To help make the drives a little smoother, construction projects on the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be suspended, from 5 a.m. on Friday until 11 p.m. on New Year's Day.

The Delaware River Join Toll Bridge Commission suspended construction along I-78 at the Pennsylvania and New Jersey border on Dec. 15. The commission said the project will re-start at Jan. 8 at the earliest.

If you use LANTA, there will be no service for LANtaBus, LANtaVan or LANtaFlex on Christmas Day or New Year's Day.

On those holiday's, the public may ride Trans-Bridge buses locally for $2 per trip. You can find the Trans-Bridge Christmas service schedule here.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The High Court has dismissed an application to grant injunctions sought by meat factory production manager who claims he was unfairly suspended by his employer.

Alvaro Carvalho had sought orders against his employer Carroll's Cuisine Unlimited Company, based in Tullamore, Co Offaly which processes and packages meat products for sale in Ireland and abroad.

The company opposed the application and denies his claims.

In her judgment Mr Justice Eileen Creedon said she was not satisfied to grant Mr Carvalho of Harbour Drive, Tullamore injunctions he wanted put in place pending the outcome of his dispute against his employer.

These included orders including quashing parts of a report complied following an investigation conducted after he was suspended from his job last October on the grounds it was flawed and conducted in the absence of fair procedures.

While Mr Carvalho had raised a fair issue to be tried, the issues raised were best left for the judge hearing the full dispute, the Judge found.

However the balance of convenience, nor the adequacy of damages did not favour the granting of the injunction on that ground the judge said.

The judge said other injunctions sought by Mr Carvalho including an injunction directing the company to conduct an independent investigation conducted into his suspension were also refused.

The judge said the injunctions sought were mandatory in nature.

The Judge added she was taking into account factors including that Mr Carvalho was not in peril of losing his job, and assurances had been given by his employer that the terms and conditions of his employment had not been altered.

The Judge who reserved costs in the matter, adjourned the case to a date in January.

The court had previously heard Mr Carvalho made a protected disclosure after his suspension about alleged food safety breaches to Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

The company "strenuously denies" all allegations it has breached food safety standards and says it takes its obligations in that regard "very seriously." It has contacted the FSAI and the Department of Agriculture about the allegations and denies all claims made against it by Mr Carvalho.

Mr Carvalho, represented by solicitor Richard Stapleton was suspended on allegations he lacked respect for fellow employees.

He says there is "no substance" to the claims and was not given a chance to deal with the allegations. The suspension was a way to force him to resign, he claims.

He claims the company began to expanded production at the plant, but pressure to increase production "got out of control"

To meet new targets he claims "food safety standards were blatantly ignored" and "normal cleaning and hygiene protocols were compromised,".

He said he was unwilling to be a party to these dangerous practices and resisted them resulting in him being targeted by senior management.

Following his suspension an investigation, which he claims he was denied fair procedures, was carried out in November.

It found the allegations against him did not merit any further investigation at this stage. He claims certain comments in the report are damaging to him.

In early December his suspension was lifted but on his return to work he said "drastic changes" were imposed on him without his consent. He has been off work and is on holiday leave.

The company argued injunction the application was misconceived. It also denies any breaches of food safety standards.

Mr Carvalho's claims including his allegations management instructed staff to increase production to levels where food safety standards were compromised are denied.

Mr Carvalho is not subject to any disciplinary process and there are no adverse findings on his personnel record, it said.

The company said Mr Carvalho did not raise any food safety issues with senior management before his suspension.

Food safety standards at the plant are regularly audited and checked by bodies including the Dept of Agriculture and by its customers. it argued.

The plant was recently audited by the British Retail Consortium, which had verbally confirmed afterwards the plant will continue to hold the A grade status.
One assurance I am unable to give is the matter of our weather. As a government minister, I am unable to do anything about it.

- Minister Charlie Flanagan, addressing the Irish Syrian community in Portlaoise..

Thanks a million again, we had a blast and are feeling the effects of it now but Electric Picnic never disappoints, you made our year.

-Gary Grant, the winner of the Leinster Express Electric Picnic tickets and prize pack.

It is a race to the bottom and it is going to create a price war if the other retailers decide to join in. They have done the same with vegetables and there are very few vegetable growers left in the country at this stage as a result. It is just not economical or sustainable to stay producing milk, vegetable or any perishable foods when they are being sold basically below cost prices.

- Chairman of the IFA National Liquid Milk Committee, John Finn at the IFA protest this week.

"A lad landed upside down in his car in our drive in May. When a car comes upside down in your drive - it's that ad on the telly - this road is lethal,".

-Kilmullen Road resident Alan Douglas at a meeting to demand road safety measures.

I am overwhelmed by the way that people from all over lovely Laois got behind this, it shows county wide community spirit and a great sense of awareness of the homeless crisis in Ireland. People are so thoughtful and generous. Not only are the sleeping bags being returned to me at a rapid rate but people are making great donations too. It just goes to show how nice and thoughtful that people really are.

-Tom Duffy from Portlaoise Action to Homelessness, 1,000 sleeping bags gathered at Electric Picnic were washed by the local community.

It is absolutely fantastic, the whole community got into this competition from day one. Without the whole community pulling together this wouldnt have been possible. Everyone put in a phenomenal amount of work. We are over the moon. This would never have happened without the community spirit in Abbeyleix and all the volunteers who come out every Tuesday night.

-John Joe Fennelly, Chairperson of Abbeyleix Tidy Towns speaking about the Entente Florale Competion.
Just one home has been approved for extensive repairs under the Department of Social Protection flood relief nearly a month after a deluge swamped towns in the county.

This comes as voluntary group Mountmellick Flood Community Support has over 60 households on record who are dealing with the devastating damage in their houses.

The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection confirmed to the Leinster Express that in total, flood relief of just 44,000 has been provided to flood victims in Laois.

PICTURE: Inside Betty Knight's home on Manor Road, Mountmellick one week after the flood.

This 44,000 has been paid out under three different stages. Most of the payments went on immediate relief in the days after November 22.

Stage one was to provide emergency income support payments (food, clothing and personal items) in the immediate aftermath of the event. These payments were made immediately to the families and individuals affected. In total, 67 payments were made to flood victims in this category.

Stage two involves the replacement of white goods, basic furniture items and other essential household items.

It is not until the flood water abates and houses dry out that the full extent of the damage to homes will become known and the Department can begin to make these payments to the people affected. One month on, it has made 14 payments in this category. Four of these payments are pending.

Stage three is to identify what longer term financial support or works are required.

The Department stated:

"It could take some time before the third stage of response commences and this involves a cross Departmental/Agency response. Works carried out can include plastering, dry-lining, relaying of floors, electrical re-wiring and painting."

One Stage three payment has been made to one household affected by the flooding. Six are pending.

In summary, of the 44,000 paid to date there have been 67 Stage One payments, 14 Stage Two payments and 1 Stage Three payment.

There are ten payments still pending of which four are Stage 2 payments pending and six are Stage 3 payments.

In the meantime, while these payments have been pending, Mountmellick Flood Community Support voluntary group has been on the ground with flood victims.

Picture: Mountmellick volunteers with Kathleen O'Neill whose home was still drying out three weeks after the flood.

The support group has collected furniture donations, stored it, delivered it to new homes. It has knocked on the doors of businesses asking for donations and had floors replaced in many homes in Mountmellick already thanks to donations.

It has helped with gutting out homes that were contaminated with flood water, it has brought houses back to their original state.

Over 10,000 has been raised for the Mountmellick flood support group. The volunteers have knocked on doors handing out cheques to people in need.

Edel Watchorne is the Treasurer of the group and she explained how the funds raised will be distributed.

What we plan on doing is offering everybody a standard payment so what we are going to do is not means test it but per household and per occupant so that seems like the fairest way.

We dont actually know what we have in the account at the moment but we are going to allocate for example 50 percent of that for standard payments, 25 percent aside for emergencies and 25 percent for people who havent got insurance and stuff like that," she said.

Leinster Express has been on the ground with the volunteers visiting families affected. One family stayed in emergency accommodation in a hotel for three weeks.

Leinster Express has also learned that Laois County Council is to be refunded 245,000 for the emergency services it provided during the flood and the aftermath including fire and rescue emergency services, sandbags, skips, dehumidifiers and the provision of emergency accommodation.

It is understood this money will be included in the 2018 budget for the local authority.

A fund worth 2 million was approved to help clubs, organisations and small businesses hit by the floods that caused extensive damage.

This 2 million support scheme is for businesses and community/voluntary/sporting bodies affected by the floods.

The Irish Red Cross will administer the Scheme and application forms are available on the website here.

Read more: 'People have lost acres' Rural Laois also affected by flooding say councillors.

Two more 1000 donations for Mountmellick flood victims ahead of Christmas.
Speaking first hand about his own addiction issues, former Olympic boxer and Dublin county councillor, Kenneth Egan addressed a special graduation in Newbridge last month.

On November 24, 13 service users from the Abbey Regional Addiction Services (ARAS) received their QQI Level 5 Certificates in Community Addiction Studies from Minister of State for Health Promotion and National Drugs Strategy, Catherine Byrne.

On the night, two graduates spoke about the impact of completing the course.

READ MORE: Kildare man waiting 20 months for methadone treatment

Cheryl Moorehouse described how engaging with treatment services at ARAS for the past two years helped her to remain alcohol free, move out of homeless accommodation to her own home and engage with a range of vocational and educational programmes at ARAS, including the community addiction studies course.

Cheryl now works on a voluntary basis for a local charity and she hopes to progress a career working with deaf people in the future.

Chairperson of ARAS, Paddy Kennedy, welcomed the Minister to the event, and guest speaker, Cllr Kenneth Egan.

Cllr Kennedy also welcomed Mayor of Kildare, Martin Miley, and Mayor of Newbridge Municipal Council, Sean Power.

He congratulated the graduates on behalf of the Board of Directors and welcomed their families.

Manager of ARAS, Tommy Gilson, presented the Minister with a copy of the external evaluation of the ARAS Community Addiction Studies Course.

The course was delivered by Urrus, a training and education centre based in Dublin, who develop and deliver addiction specific training courses.

Funded by the Adobe Foundation Fund, the course was run over 20 weeks, between January and May 2017.

Mr Gilson, thanked Adobe and their Dublin Office, particularly Carlotta Musu and Kathleen McGowan for their continued support.

The impact of the course was measured through both qualitative and quantitative methods prior to the course commencement, at the mid-way point, and post completion.

Of the 13 course participants, who received the QQI Level 5 qualification, three progressed to further education to complete a Diploma in Community Drug & Alcohol Work through UCD, with another three service users progressing to participate on a certified Recovery Mentor Training Course, also run through ARAS and supported by Adobe.

Minister of State, Catherine Byrne, also congratulated the graduates.

She acknowledged the positive contributions they have made to their communities and commended their commitment to recovery.

Cllr Egan spoke of his own recovery journey and highlighted the importance of community based treatment and rehabilitation services and supports for people affected by substance use problems. He congratulated the graduates for their achievements and wished them well in their progression to further education and employment.

ARAS is a local charity that is funded by the Health Service Executive through the South Western Regional Drug and Alcohol Task Force.

ARAS provides a range treatment and rehabilitation supports to individuals and families affected by substance use problems in the region, through their two full time services in Newbridge and Celbridge respectively.
Kildare and Wicklow Education Training Board (KWETB) is facing a legal bill of 83,000 even though its board members have had difficulty getting access to the advice that was provided.

The board has also not been formally told who engaged the Dublin-based legal firm, Philip Lee. At this mornings meeting of the board, the members were informed of the outstanding bill, and told that Philip Lee is pressing the organisation for payment.

While it was agreed that the bill itself could not be queried in the sense that Philip Lee had in good faith delivered the service it was asked to provide, board members expressed concern at a lack of information being provided to them about it.

Philip Lee is not the KWETBs normal legal advisors and it is understood that the advice was sought in relation to an investigation of the KWETB which was initiated by the Department of Education and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

A KWETB staff member, Joe Kelly, told the meeting that the organisations executive had been asked to provide a list of names of legal firms, which they did.

We are being asked to pay for it, but we dont know what it is, Cllr Jennifer Whitmore remarked at this mornings meeting. It is important that every bit of legal advice is now made available to us, she added.

There was a proposal from the new chairman of the board, Noel Merrick, that he would investigate the matter between now and the next meeting early in the new year.

However Cllr Whitmore said the matter was time-sensitive. And Mr Kelly also expressed concern at delaying the payment of an outstanding bill. He said that the advice was sought in good faith.

Mr Merrick said he had been handed a document moments before the discussion arose with a summary of the legal advice. Reading it, Cllr Whitmore noted that the document was dated October 9 and was addressed to the board, and yet they had never seen it before.

Cllr Fiona McLoughlin Healy commented that the board could not employ professional advisors without a resolution of the board. Who engaged the legal advisors?

Well endeavour to get the answers for that, Mr Merrick responded.

The matter was adjourned to the next meeting.

Read more: BREAKING: Special investigation launched into Kildare and Wicklow ETB

Read more: Kildare Wicklow Education Training Board report delayed
TWO men have appeared in court charged in connection with the theft of a quad bike from a farm in County Limerick earlier this week.

Polish national Maciej Kanai, aged 37, of no fixed abode and Mykola Lastovestskyy, aged 56, who has an address at Coarliss, Charleville, County Cork are each charged with handling stolen property  namely a quad bike  at an address in Charleville on Tuesday.

Mr Lastovetskyy  a Ukranian national  is also charged with burglary and with stealing the quad bike from a farm at Clonroosk, Feenagh the previous day.

It is alleged the quad bike which was recovered by gardai on Tuesday is worth around 8,000.

While the defendants were arrested by gardai from the Newcastle West district, they appeared before a siting of Midleton District Court in East Cork this Thursday.

During a brief sitting, neither applied for bail and both defendants are due to appear before Fermoy District Court again on Friday.

Judge Brian Sheridan was told the State will oppose any future bail application.

A file is being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to the matter.
THE CHILDRENS Ark at University Hospital Limerick is bringing the magic of Christmas to children who have not yet been discharged from the hospital.

The only inpatient facility for sick children in the Mid-West, the paediatric unit is open and its staff is working hard to make the experience as magical as possible for children who find themselves staying in hospital over Christmas.

The Childrens Ark is a purpose-built paediatric unit for children with 49 beds, a high-dependency unit, a cystic fibrosis unit and the Caterpillar day ward.

There is also a school for children staying in hospital so that those that are well enough can keep up with their school work.

December can be a busy time for the unit, with children being treated for respiratory and other winter-related infections and conditions.

However, staff work to ensure that as many children as possible are discharged in the run-up to Christmas.

Only children with the most serious illnesses are kept in hospital at Christmas.

On Thursday, Liam Mulcahy, Santa and members of the Defence Forces from Sarsfield Barracks will visit the Ark courtesy of Sophies Journey.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra is also due to perform in the Ark School and on the wards.

On Friday, Liam and Ben from Wild Encounters will bring their menagerie to the Arks playroom.

On Christmas Day, Santa and Mrs Claus along with a special guest will visit children on the wards courtesy of Des Begley and Jim Keogh.

UL Hospitals Group wishes to thank the musicians, entertainers, charitable partners, communities and volunteers who have visited the Ark to raise spirits over Christmas, as well as those who support the Ark all year round.
During welcome week here at NYU, I heard a girl introducing herself: I'm from Taiwan. I'm Taiwanese. I feel heartbroken every time I hear the word Taiwan, and a part of me was waiting for her to say Taiwan, China. I have to say I was prepared, coming here, knowing that not everyone I meet will share the same view as I do. I was even told not to argue with people about this issue, but it still strikes me hard when I hear people speak of Taiwan without mentioning China. From what Ive learned, both at school and at home, no matter historically or politically, the island of Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. Though this could be a personal issue I'm attached to, it also has political backgrounds.

Later, in my dorm, I read an article by Jane Perlez on The New York Times called China Sees New Ambiguity with Donald Trump's Taiwan Call. The article introduces the cause and effect of a phone call between president-elect Trump and Taiwans leader Tsai Ing-wen. An expert from a university in China is quoted: Mr. Trump broke a Chinese taboo merely by using Ms. Tsai's title. Chinese media refers to Ms. Tsai as the 'leader of the Taiwan region,' to indicate that Beijing regards Taiwan not like a sovereign nation but as Chinese territory to eventually be brought under its control. This is important because the one-China policy, agreed upon by the late US President Richard Nixon in 1978, is relationship bedrock for China-U.S. relations, yet the phone call no doubt challenged this consensus.

Adam Taylor, in his article "With Trump in China, Taiwan worries about becoming a 'bargaining chip, from The Washington Post, concludes, Taipei is pursuing a number of policies that seem [to be] designed [for currying] favor with the Trump administration, including a ban on all trade with North Korea. This develops the matter that China and the U.S. both want the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons program, however, Trump's call diminished the bond between the two countries, thus making it harder for them to work together.

To complicate matters, in article The New York Times op-ed titled "Taiwan feels forgotten. But not by Trump, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian illustrates how Taiwan feels abandoned and ignored, standing from the side of right deviated Taiwanese/standing with Taiwans right deviation. Bethany quotes Tsai, "We are this vibrant democracy, but people always forget about us. But Taiwan cannot be left out by the world, because it is not an independent country, and it can never be neglected within China, because it is a very important region that shapes China as a whole. Bethany's article is not helpful for Americans to understand this complicated matter, and is counterproductive to the progress made in China-U.S. relations. Tsai's political stance as right deviation is wrong and meaningless, because nothing can cut off the bond of blood between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

Historically or politically, there has never been a controversy on whether Taiwan belongs to China or not. In 1885, Taiwan was established as a province of China, after being a city which belongs to Fujian province for many years. Though occupied by Japan during the Second World War, it came back to China with glory after Japan was defeated. Thereafter, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to Taiwan, because they lost the civil war against the Communist Party of China (CPC), and since then, Chinese mainland and Taiwan have developed under different systems. But that doesn't change the fact that Taiwan is still a part of China, and will always be a part of China. Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of Taiwan, tried hard to deepen the connections with the mainland and made great progress in enhancing the relationship. However, as a radical right-deviate, Tsai keeps trying to push Taiwan away from its motherland China.

Why do Taiwanese harbor this belief that they are a separate country?

In my New Student Seminar class, I approached a Taiwanese girl and asked her why some Taiwanese people refuse to acknowledge the fact that theyre a part of China, and this question caught her by surprise. She never thought about it before and after a few seconds told me that all her beliefs are based on how she was raised and what she was taught; Like a religion, she said. The way she described how she gets offended when people mix up Taiwan as a part of China, and how there can only be Taipei, China in the Olympics, was very upsetting, and my feelings get hurt every time a Chinese person from Taiwan tries to separate themselves from Chinese mainland, or when I see a flag of Taiwan sitting next to other country flags. This mutual feeling of anger, sadness, and powerlessness actually places us on the same side.

This complicated feeling we have toward our culture reminds me of Jamaica Kincaid, an American writer. Growing up as a colonial child, Kincaid conveys in her essay On Seeing England for the First Time about how she was forced to see England. When she finally saw it, everything was not like how she was told. She wanted to fight for a change, and let her own people see the real England, and also let the world see what stereotyping did to them. She asked, Who were these people who forced me to think? which indicates that she was angry about being forced to see the world, hurt about losing her own culture over another that was disappointing, and felt powerless because what is done is done and she cannot change the history.

For me, my question is: Who are these people to decide if they want one part of my country to belong to my country or not? I am angry because it is none of their business, hurt because some people who call themselves Taiwanese are pushing Chinese mainland away, and feel powerless because this is a huge political issue that I alone cannot change. When people accuse China of coaxing other countries to agree to the one-China policy, they need to understand that we Chinese are not "coaxing" anything. The problem is that their misinterpretation of "Taiwan Independence" is affecting their judgment. For the majority of people in Taiwan, it only means to have their own system, just like the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region does. In this sense, they already have their independence. People in the world need to recognize the fact that Taiwan, this Mandarin speaking island, is a part of China.

When I was talking to the Taiwanese girl, who is now my friend, we both agreed that it isn't the place for the U.S. to try to decide its fate. Additionally, this historical controversy doesn't prevent us from being friends. In fact, if not for this conversation, we probably would have never talked to each other. I finally understand why I was warned not to argue with people about this matteras a teenager, I should not worry about this political issue, nor could I have done anything to change it. "Keep believing what you believe, but also try not to let this affect your life," my mom told me when I was telling her about this through FaceTime. I believe, historically, Taiwan never left China. I believe, economically, it makes no sense for Taiwan to leave Chinese mainland. I believe, people holding different beliefs can become great friends. I also believe, after all the difficult negotiations and sacrifices made by both parties, Taiwan will eventually realize that it is an inseparable part of China. For I believe in my beliefs, I embrace those with different beliefs, and hope for the best for all.

The author is a student of the New York University.
THE first wave of new tenants at the Lord Edward Street development in Limerick city have been shown around their new dwellings.

As the development of social housing at the former Tait clothing factory edges closer to completion, its first residents were given a tour of their new homes by Limerick City and County Council.

A total of 81 units have been built on a brownfield site close to Limerick city centre comprising of 57 units for elderly residents in a mix of one-and-two bedroom apartments.

The remaining 24 are family homes.

Gerard and Christina Doran, who are both in their thirties, were among the first of the new families who were shown around their new homes over the past two days.

We were nervous coming down, anxious as we didnt know what to expect but this is amazing, so well laid out, Absolutely amazing, overwhelmed to be honest. Its modern day living, unbelievable.

It was an emotional day for the father and mother of one, who had planned to buy their own home.

Gerard said: Weve been living in OMalley Park in Southill for more than 10 years. We had planned to buy a house but I lost my job in the recession so things didnt work out for us.

So this is a new start for us, absolutely fantastic, amazing. Its great to have the opportunity to come down here and look at where we are going to be living. Its a great Christmas present, added a smiling Gerard.

Two of the homes facing the street are already being lived in, while the remaining 79 units will be ready to be occupied by council tenants early in the new year. All are eagerly awaiting keys of their new homes.

Mary Kelly will be one of the Dorans neighbours.

She is moving from Ballinacurra Weston to her new home.

Im amazed, ecstatic, I couldnt be happier. Im delighted. Im in my house now for 14 years and on the transfer list for the past seven years, she said as she stared out the upstairs bedroom window onto the restored Limerick Clothing Factory building, which will now be the areas community centre.

I think my new house is amazing, especially for my daughter as she will have her own room. Its so well done, I couldnt be happier.

More than 18m has been spent on the site, which will also contain retail outlets and a community centre, is part of the government's 'Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homeless'.

The multi-million development, built by JJ Rhatigan Building Contractors, is also linked to the adjoining primary health care centre.

Carmel Kirby, director of social development with the council added: Lord Edward Street is one of the main regeneration housing developments around the city and we are delighted with this reaction from the new tenants.

We want to build and sustain communities and we believe that we will do that in Lord Edward Street.
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.

If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .

Support our mission and join our community now.
THE Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) is appealing for potential witnesses to an incident in County Limerick last month to come forward.

In an unusual move, GSOC has issued a public appeal for information relating to the incident which happened at the Square, Newcastle West, in the centre of the town during the early hours of Sunday November 12, last.

A spokesperson for GSOC has confirmed the incident involved the arrest of a man by a number of gardai at around 1am.

Following the arrest a complaint was made to GSOC.

Its an investigation that our investigators are doing and they know there were a couple of people who were in the vicinity (of the arrest) who were not connected to the incident and they would like to hear from them, said a spokesperson for GSOC.

After receiving the complaint in recent weeks, investigators from GSOC travelled to Newcastle West where they obtained CCTV footage from a number of business premises as part of their investigations.

They have taken statements and all of the usual things and they know that there were a couple of other people who may have been in a position to see what went on, added the spokesperson.

Investigators say they are particularly anxious to speak with a young woman who can be seen on CCTV footage walking out of a fast food restaurant in the area around the time of the incident.

It is understood that efforts to identify her have proven unsuccessful to date.

She had nothing to do with the incident but she may have seen what unfolded, said the spokesperson.

GSOC investigators say they would also like to hear from the occupants of a dark-coloured vehicle which can be seen on the CCTV parked at the Square in Newcastle West at the time of the arrest.

Again, there is no suggestion that those in the car had any involvement in the incident which is under investigation.

Anyone who was in Newcastle West around the time of the incident and who saw what happened or who may be able to assist with the GSOC investigation is asked to contact them in confidence at 1890 600 800.
LESS than 260 patients in Limerick have been affected by an extensive review of files at University Hospital Kerry, the Leader has learned this week.

University Hospital Kerry has confirmed that it is reviewing 46,000 X-rays, ultrasound and CT scans that were overseen by a consultant at the hospital.

This comes after a number of patients, including people with cancer, received an incorrect diagnosis following a faulty reading of scans.

It is understood that UHK has recalled 21 patients to have repeat investigations carried out.

A spokesperson for South-South West Hospital Group said that it is investigating patient safety concerns at University Hospital Kerry. This follows the notification of three Serious Reportable Events (SREs) over the course of the summer.

A total of 26,000 patients are involved in the review of files, dating between March 2016 and July 2017.

A spokesperson told the Limerick Leader this Wednesday that less than 1% of patients with Limerick addresses are among the 26,000.

A look back process with independent oversight is now underway on a portion of radiology investigations carried out between March 2016 and July 2017.

This review is expected to be completed within eight to ten weeks. A clinical co-ordinator has been identified to co-ordinate as necessary with patients, arranging appropriate clinical follow-up. Any patients deemed to require urgent intervention will be immediately contacted before the full audit is complete.

She added: A dedicated information line has been established at UHK.

There is no immediate cause for concern but patients of UHK who have any concerns are invited to contact 1800742900. The helpline is operating between 9am and 10pm from Monday to Wednesday of this week. The operating hours will be reviewed thereafter.
INDEPENDENT councillor Frankie Daly has launched a fresh appeal to recover the Limerick mayoral chain that was stolen from his car.

Gardai at Mayorstone continue to probe the theft of the gold-and-silver chain, worth some 10,000, from Cllr Dalys glove-box.

He was deputising for the metropolitan mayor of Limerick over the weekend and left the chain of office in his car overnight in readiness for an event this Monday.

But he was left reeling after realising the gold-and-silver chain was stolen from the car parked outside his home in the Irish Estates, Corbally.

He has formally reported the theft to the gardai. And the car  a 2003 Toyota Avensis  has had a forensic examination  which found no fingerprints.

Its unbelievable. My heart sank into my boots when I realised it had gone. I was in total shock, Cllr Daly said. This chain belongs to the people: Its an attack on the people of Limerick.

Metropolitan mayor Cllr Sean Lynch called the theft an act of desperation so close to Christmas.

Cllr Daly believes that his car key was cloned, as his vehicle did not appear to have had any damage done to it.

A number of other items were taken from the motor, including Christmas presents given to his wife Kate, and their seven-year-old son Joshuas passport.

The chain was specially commissioned for the merger of Limerick City and County Council and was originally worn by the new authoritys first leader, Cllr Kevin Sheahan.

In recent times, the centuries-old chain has been preferred by Limericks first citizen, with the more modern chain donned by the metropolitan district mayor and his deputies.

Cllr Daly added: Not only did it have monetary value, it had a lot of symbolism as it was commissioned for the two councils coming together. There is gold and silver on this chain. Its quite big and chunky.

Mayorstone Gardai are investigating.
A LIMERICK man who sexually assaulted a student as she slept has avoided a prison sentence.

Ross Ryan, aged 29, who has an address at deValera Park, Thomondgate admitted trying to have sex with the young woman during a house party in the city five years ago.

Limerick Circuit Court heard the victim  who was aged 19 at the time  was asleep in a bedroom having gone to the home of another student following a night out.

The investigating garda told John OSullivan BL, instructed by state solicitor Padraig Mawe, there were a number of other people in the house on the night and that a considerable amount of alcohol had been consumed during the party

The court heard the incident happened sometime after the victim had consensual sex with the student she went home with.

Mr Ryan entered the bedroom in the early hours of the morning and got into the bed with the woman while she slept.

The victim described how she initially thought it was the man she had slept with (earlier) and did not react but that she freaked out when he climbed on top of her and she realised he was a stranger.

After the other people in the house became aware of the commotion, the woman returned home and gardai were alerted.

The defendant, the court heard, was asleep in an attic bedroom with his boxer shorts on inside out when gardai arrived a number of hours later.

He admitted entering the bedroom and spooning and cuddling the woman before engaging in foreplay. He told gardai she wasnt pushing me away and that he believed she was well into it.

Imposing sentence this Wednesday, Judge Tom ODonnell noted there had been a confluence of factors which delayed the matter coming before the courts.

He noted the profound effect the offence had on the victim who developed a deep frustration over the way the case was progressed.

Little did I know that the nerve-wracking and painfully drawn-out process of getting a sexual assault case to court would last almost five years, five years in which I have been stuck in a miserable limbo, waiting for judgment day and unable to move on with my life, said the woman in her victim impact statement.

The woman described how being the victim of a sexual assault continues to colour almost every aspect of my life and that the defendant had stolen the best years of her life from her.

My early twenties, a time that is usually carefree and full of excitement and adventure, she said.

Judge ODonnell was told the victim did not know the defendant and that there was nothing to indicate flirting or anything of that sort prior to the incident.

Lorcan Connolly BL, defending said his client accepts his behaviour was entirely unacceptable and that it was very distressing for the young woman.

He told the court the apprentice electrician has no previous convictions and that he has not come to the attention of gardai since the incident.

He did one very wrong thing five years ago, he said adding there are no difficulties with alcohol or drugs in the background.

Judge ODonnell said the defendants guilty plea was a public acknowledgment of his culpability and wrongdoing and that he spared the victim the possibility of robust cross examination during a trial

He commented that Mr Ryans actions on the night had been reckless rather then intentional and that he unreservedly accepts the error of his ways.

He said he was obliged to consider all of the evidence and that whatever sentence he imposed must be appropriate and proportionate.

He imposed an 18 month prison sentence which he suspended for 18 months.

Given the sentence, Mr Ryans name will not be placed on the sex offenders register.
We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.
(Xinhua) 14:29, December 21, 2017

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China is not seeking global dominance and "we don't think there is a zero-sum game between China and the United States," said Cui Tiankai, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, here on Wednesday.

Cui made the remarks in an interview with CNN two days after the Trump administration released its first national security strategy, touting its "America First" doctrine and naming China and Russiaas "rival powers" challenging American influence and interest.

For any strategy to look truly like a "strategy," it should embody "a truly global outlook," "forward-looking vision" and "a constructive and cooperative approach," said Cui in the interview about the 68-page document revealed on Monday.

"Frankly I think the current strategy could be improved in all these aspects," Cui added.

"China is not seeking global dominance, we believe in today's world all countries are confronted with a lot of common challenges, and we do share growing common interests," said the veteran Chinese diplomat.

"We don't think there is a zero-sum game between any country, especially between China and the United States," Cui said. "What is important for us is to form a wide-base global partnership to respond to the common challenges."

Cui said that the China-U.S. trade relationship has become increasingly connected and interdependent, and both economies and the peoples have benefited from it.

"China will continue to open its door wider to the rest of the world," and the huge and growing Chinese market is providing tremendous opportunities to U.S. business, said the ambassador.

Meanwhile, Cui acknowledged the existence of conflicting views about the bilateral relationship in the United States. "This is not something entirely new, it's been with us for maybe decades, and we have to stress and put emphasis on the growing common interest and mutual needs between our countries."

"The leaders of our two countries have had very good meetings in Mar-a-Lago, in the U.S. state of Florida, and in Beijing, and we have also established high-level dialogue mechanisms which have worked well for both countries," Cui said.

Countries like the United States and China have to follow a very positive, cooperative and constructive approach while "dealing with some possible differences," Cui said.

Cui noted that any trade war or currency war will hurt both countries, saying that China and the United States have to coordinate their positions to "have a full understanding of the concerns and the needs of the other side and try to build a position that will take care of the interests of both countries."

"That will bring a win-win outcome for all of us," the ambassador added.

In the nearly 10-minute interview, Cui also talked about the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, stating that China and the United States have shared goals on the issue.

"We both stand up the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula, we both want to maintain peace and stability, and we both prefer a diplomatic solution to the issue," Cui said.

"Cooperation and coordination between China and the U.S. have played a big part in strengthening international efforts to address this particular issue, and we should continue" in this regard, said the ambassador.
Yang Yang, a 22-year-old man in Atuleer, the village on a cliff in Sichuans Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, has become an online celebrity after introducing changes of the village through live streaming each day, the Beijing News reported.

Yang has been using live streaming to introduce the changes and local specialties of the village since last November, attracting wide attention.

The hard to reach village had received little public attention until May 2016, when media reported that children from the village had to climb a rattan ladder to get to school each day. In August 2016, a steel ladder was constructed for the village.

Thanks to the steel ladder and the governments efforts in poverty alleviation, the transportation, communication conditions of the village and villagers income have all improved, Yang noted.

Yang said that he will continue to publicize the village through live streaming in the hope to attract more visitors.
The Ruins of St. Pauls Cathedral.

Casinos, gambling tables, and roulette wheels might be the first images that come to mind when Chinese mainlanders think of Macao.

Not long ago, a reporter from huanqiu.com, a famous news platform in China was told by a senior Macao official how that wants people to know the city has more to offer than gambling. If a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor wants to open a clinic in Mozambique, it would be wise of him to seek help from Macao.

As a former Portuguese colony, Macao serves as a bridge between China and Portuguese-Speaking countries with its unique language advantage.

The Permanent Secretariat Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation Between China and Portuguese-Speaking Countries is set in Macao.

Portuguese is spoken in many countries throughout the world.

Currently, there are eight countries that list Portuguese as their official language. Through Chinas vigorous promotion of its Belt and Road Initiative, especially on the development of the Maritime Silk Road, Macao plays a strategic role due to its geographical location and international trade capabilities.

The Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute has organized multiple business visits for Chinese entrepreneurs to Brazil, Cape-Verde and other Portuguese-speaking countries in 2017.

Although a former colony itself, Macao is far more peaceful that Hong Kong, even though the latter was returned to China 20 years ago.

Search Why Macao... on zhihu.com, Chinas version of the US Q&A platform Quora, and it wouldnt be too hard to find that question because hundreds, if not more, have already asked it.

A simple comparison reveals the true answer. Several days ago, news of two Hong Kong college graduates refused to stand when Chinas national anthem, March of the Volunteers was played at their graduation ceremony. News of their actions spread on Chinas social and mainstream media platforms igniting heated discussions. But in Macao, the national anthem is played every Monday at schools Chinas flag is raised. Schools also host singing contests where students compete to see who can sing the best patriotic song on National Day.

Flag-raising ceremony at a school in Macao.

In May, Benny Tai Yiu Ting, one of the three infamous "Occupy Central" instigators, tried to disrupt Macaos Legislative Council election. Macao officials said Tais actions represented a provocation against Macao and the one country, two systems policy. But there was no need to fear him as Macau officials knew he was never going to achieve anything. Typically, stunts such as these are nothing more than an attempt to receive Western media attention.

Many people who have experienced both cities feel that the attitude in Hong Kong is mired in indifference, while Macao has an ebullient patriotic vibe.

Visitors to both locales reached the following conclusions:

1. Personality

Macao is practical, congenial, and non-political. Similar to the people of Macao, most Hong Kong people are not radical, or fond of politics and or uproar of any kind. But Hong Kongs peaceful tone has waned over the years.

2. Colonists

In the past, Portugals hegemony was not as large as Britains, nor were the Portuguese as aggressive. Fittingly, governing the former colonies offers unique challenges inherent to their past rulers.

3. History

The battle over Macao occurred months before the battle against the British over Hong Kong emerged.

The 12-3 Incident from 1966 refers to the day Portugal first lost control of Macao, as KMT forces purged Portuguese authorities from the city. Many feel that day marked the beginning of Macaos return to China.

4. Economy

Macao had a typical island economy, and is a low self-sufficiency rate compared with similar economies like the UK, Japan, and Hong Kong, relying on the Chinese mainland for supplies. In 1960, China began supplying fresh water to Macao, another obvious indicator of how much, Macao relies more on China more than Hong Kong.

5. Location

There is a river between Hong Kong and the Mainland, and you can walk to the Mainland from Macao, said the official.

However, it is more important the hearts of Macaos people remain connected to the Motherland.

It is high time for us to stop misunderstanding Macao. There is much more to Macao than gambling.

(Compiled by Li Lei)
The Construction Bank of China has recently introduced facial recognition technology at its automatic teller machines (ATM), according to Xinhua.

The bank limits the daily withdrawal to 2,500 yuan ($380) via the technology. Other banks, such as the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) and China Merchants Bank have also introduced similar technology at their ATMs.

Without a bank card, customers can press the facial recognition withdrawal button, scan their face, enter their phone number or ID number, and enter their transaction amount and password, said a staff of ABC.

The technology eliminates the risk of having bank cards illegally copied and lowers the possibility of cards getting eaten by ATMs, said industry insiders.

The technology is safe, because it also requires ID numbers or phone numbers and passwords. Banks have adopted infrared cameras to lower the risk of illegal activities.

Videos and photos of customers withdrawing money will be encrypted by the banks, in a bid to protect their personal information. Chinese scientists are working on quantum encryption technology to better protect personal information.

Liu Feng, an AI expert, said the risks of personal information leaks are not high, because banks already have mature safety precaution mechanisms, and the photos and videos would not cause very serious consequences even if they were leaked.

ABC reportedly plans to install facial recognition technology at 24,064 ATMs across the country. In 2016, China Merchants Bank expanded facial recognition technology to about 1,000 ATMs in 106 cities.
Terrorism, irregular migration.. two crucial challenges that need international efforts, and in which both Egypt and the European Union struggle to fight. Being on the same side in the fight against both challenges, Eu commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos assures the European Union commitment towards Egypt whom the EU consider as a strategic player to achieve peace and security in the region.

You have visited Egypt more than once so how does the dialogue between the Egyptian and European sides help in creating a framework to face issues regarding migration and combating terrorism?



Egypt is a strategic and crucial partner for the EU on many levels and plays a critical role in the stability and prosperity in the region.



Today, as the world is becoming more complex, issues are increasingly global and inter-related. The EU and Egypt share common challenges, in particular with regards to managing migration on the one hand and fighting terrorism on the other. The EU-Egypt migration dialogue that I have launched together with Minister Sameh Shoukry is a crucial step forward in our partnership.



My meetings in Egypt, including with the President El-Sissi, were very constructive. I would like to praise President El Sissis leadership in addressing the many challenges that Egypt faces today. President El Sissi and I have known each other since we were both ministers of defence of our countries, and I look forward to strengthening our EU-Egypt partnership, and to contribute to more stability and security in the wider region.



How do you regard the Egyptian efforts to face radicalism and terrorism especially that it is a country victim to a series of terrorist attacks?



Fighting terrorism is a global effort, and the EU and Egypt are on the same side in this fight. Egypt and Egyptian citizens have unfortunately endured several terrorist attacks in the last few years, most recently the atrocious attack on innocent worshipers at the Al-Radwa mosque in the Sinai. Terrorism, unfortunately, knows no religion. Muslims today are the primary victims of terrorism today. And I strongly reject those that wish to demonize Islam, because Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Christians and Muslims, we are all united in the joint fight against terrorism. For this reason, we must enhance our cooperation.



After meeting with president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and some Egyptian officials, how did you find the Egyptian response to the European vision to face terrorism?



Terrorism is a transnational threat that needs transnational answers  no country can fight this alone. Egypt is making considerable efforts to fight radicalization and terrorism and is for example working with us and other global partners to raise the global bar on aviation security. We are at a pivotal time and I am glad to see a strong Egyptian commitment to enhance our cooperation in our common fight against terrorism.



Do you find the European policy or plan to counter terrorism is taking into consideration the needs of the neighboring countries such as Egypt to be able to play a part in such plan?



As I have said before, terrorism knows no borders. We need transnational solutions to effectively address this threat. The external dimension is an intrinsic part of Europe's counter-terrorism efforts. Our partnerships with key neighboring countries such as Egypt are essential. Egypt is our close partner and plays a decisive role in our joint efforts to fight terror and bring back security and stability across the region. We wish to establish a deeper cooperation in a spirit of partnership and mutual trust by exchanging best practices and working closely together. We must build on our established experiences, learn from each other, and strengthen each other.



How do you regard the current cooperation between Egypt and the EU to face the challenge of irregular migration? And how can this cooperation be enhanced?



Egypt has already made significant efforts to tackle the challenge of irregular migration. I praise the Egyptian authorities for their work that has produced substantial results in preventing irregular departures and fighting smugglers' networks, promoting legal channels for its migrants and hosting thousands of refugees on its territory. On the EU side, we are already financially and operationally assisting Egypt to address the root causes of irregular migration and strengthen migration governance. For example, in 2017 we granted 60 million euros to Egypt under the EU Trust Fund for Africa to promote a more effective and human migration management by improving protection of migrants rights, supporting host communities and migrants and addressing unemployment of the young population (or youth unemployment), one of the most significant root causes of irregular migration. Now we are also making a decisive step forward by establishing a new EU-Egypt Dialogue on migration. This will enhance our cooperation by promoting mutual understanding, information-sharing and capacity building with regards to all the aspects of the migratory phenomenon. It is an important milestone in the history of the EU-Egypt partnership.



How do you evaluate the European asylum system in dealing with the flows of irregular migrants and their integration in the European societies and how does this system take into consideration security considerations?



Thanks to our collective efforts over the past two years, the European Union has gradually managed to get the situation under control, with a drastic fall in irregular arrivals. Thanks to the work of our EU agencies on the ground, everyone who arrives irregularly in Europe today is identified, checked and fingerprinted. In addition, second line security checks are being carried out by Europol  so security considerations are taken into account. In parallel, we have strengthened the control of our external borders, including through our European Border and Coast Guard and systematic checks on everyone who crosses our external borders.



Now is the moment to build on the opportunity of a situation more under control, to move from a crisis-modus towards a holistic and long-term approach of managing migration and asylum. We have proposed a very comprehensive and balanced reform of the EU's asylum system, to better be able to offer protection to those in need, but avoid abuses and secondary movements. We need to finalise the reform of our common asylum system in order to fully establish a system that will be effective, balanced, humane and fair. We have offered protection to more than 720,000 people in 2016  Europe is and always will be a continent of solidarity and a safe haven for those in need.



How does the European policy respond to the international changes especially in the developing countries that force more challenges for the European countries as well?



Whether it is migration or security issues  these are directly linked to the geopolitical developments and instabilities in the world. We are becoming more globalised and more interconnected. When the situation in the neighbourhood around the EU is volatile, this also has an impact on the European countries, and vice versa. This is why the international and external dimension is an essential element in all our policies. Ultimately, our shared key objectives are working towards when stability, peace and growth in the region.

This is also why the EU has made available 2.9 billion under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to fund projects addressing the root causes of instability, forced displacement and irregular migration, with a focus on North Africa, the Sahel and Lake Chad, and the Horn of Africa. As I have said before, the EU and Egypt are partners in this region and we stand ready to help each other and other countries in need. We do our utmost to contribute with concrete and effective solutions while complying with our international obligations and remaining fully in line with our fundamental values of solidarity, respect of human rights and shared responsibility.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Daesh-affiliated Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis terrorist group claimed on Wednesday its responsibility for a missile attack on North Sinais El-Arish airport on Tuesday, which killed one military officer and injured two other people.

The group released a short statement online saying that it fired a Kornet anti-tank guided missile at a helicopter at the airport.

According to the Armed Forces, at the time of the attack, Minister of Defence Sobhi Sedky and Minister of Interior Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar were in El-Arish city to inspect police and army forces in the governorate.

Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for most attacks against security and army forces in North Sinai in the past three years.

The Egyptian military has for several years been fighting an Islamist terrorist nsurgency based in a a small strip in North Sinai. Terrorists have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen, and hundreds of terrorists the have also been killed in extensive campaigns to root out the insurgency.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Ammunition and tactical gear were stolen from the locked truck of an immigration agents official car in Oakland, the latest in a string of thefts from law enforcement vehicles, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service reported on Wednesday.

The theft, reported to police on Monday, did not involve the loss of firearms, according to ICE service spokesman James Schwab.
Growler USA, a Colorado-based craft beer microbrew pub with 17 locations including one in Katy, plans to open in Friendswood in February. The franchise has leased 2,500 square feet in the Fountain Plaza Center, 2111 W. Parkwood Ave., according to the city of Friendswood. Growler USA offers up to 100 taps of craft beer, hard cider, draught wine, root beer, kombucha tea and a variety of food options.

Amegy has opened a banking center at 17602 Southwest Freeway in Sugar Land. Amegy Bank of Texas has more than 75 locations across Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Frances A. Hall is incarcerated in a state prison for the murder of her trucking magnate husband, killed in a jealous rage in 2013.

The consequences of Bill Hall Jr.s death reverberate more than four years later.

Now, Bexar County Probate Judge Tom Rickhoff must decide whether Frances, 54, is entitled to receive her late husbands half of their community property or if it should be split between their two children, Justin, 30, and Dominique, 34.

Lawyers for Justin were in Rickhoffs court Thursday asking for a ruling declaring Justin and Dominique the beneficiaries of a constructive trust, which would give each of them a half interest in their late fathers portion of the community estate.

Mark Braswell, a lawyer for Justin, said a person who causes someones death should not then benefit financially from their criminal act.

I dont think that she should benefit from her willful or wrongful act, Braswell told Rickhoff. The judge said he would decide the issue by the end of the day Friday.

Frances opposes Justins request, and she has her daughters support even though Dominique stands to benefit if Rickhoff grants the request.

Attorney Keith Miller, who represents Frances, said his client was not convicted of intentionally murdering her husband, a necessary requirement for imposing a constructive trust.

Frances Hall was acting under the influence of sudden passion without the mental ability for cool reflection about what she was doing, Miller said in court.

Bill Hall Jr. died on Oct. 10, 2013, after Frances knocked the motorcycle he was riding off South Loop 1604 with her Cadillac Escalade. Prosecutors said she wanted to kill her husbands longtime lover Bonnie Contreras  who was driving an SUV on the same stretch of highway that day  for ruining their marriage, but ended up killing her husband instead. Bill Hall Jr. was 50.

A Bexar County District Court jury in September 2016 handed the lightest possible sentence to Frances Hall, agreeing with her lawyers that she acted out of sudden passion that fateful day. She is serving a two-year sentence at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, about 40 miles west of Waco. Her projected release date is Sept. 7.

Justin initially agreed with his sister Dominique that their fathers death was accidental and that their mother should be entitled to all of the benefits of Bills half of the community estate.

Braswell said at the time Justin made that declaration he was not receiving the advice of independent legal counsel. Braswell said Justin was represented by attorney Edward Lavin, who also was representing Frances, Dominique and the estate. Lavin had a conflict of interest that Justin was never asked to waive, Braswell said.

Frances Hall and Justin Hall are each suing Lavin for legal malpractice.

More than three years ago, Rickhoff awarded proceeds from multiple life insurance policies on Bills life to Frances after Justin relinquished any rights to the money.

Before the attorneys even presented any arguments, Rickhoff entered the courtroom and told them, I wouldnt have given her the money in the first place if the kids hadnt signed off on it.

This whole family is in a row boat, Rickhoff later said. Ones rowing to the left. Ones rowing forward. Ones rowing backward, and thats where this family is going. They should all be rowing in the same direction for a while.

Bill and Frances community estate was valued at $15.5 million in a 2014 court filing in the probate case. The bulk of the estate was the trucking businesses, worth a combined $13.2 million. At one time, the businesses had a fleet of more than 100 trucks.

Bills share, which was more than $7.5 million, has dissipated by about $6 million, Braswell said after the hearing, citing a valuation presented to the court earlier this year.

Justin has accused his sister, the estates independent administrator, of running the businesses into the ground and improperly transferring trucks, trailers and equipment belonging to Bill Hall Jr. Trucking to her own trucking businesses and another operated by her boyfriend. Two of Bill Hall Jr.s trucking companies filed for bankruptcy, one in November and the other in January.

I just want whats rightfully mine, Justin said after the hearing, adding he isnt seeking a portion of his mothers house.

In March, Rickhoff had the Halls enter into a family settlement agreement for the preservation of the estate, which Braswell said prevents the transfer of any assets belonging to the estate. The judge also appointed a forensic accountant to track estate assets, but she has not yet reported her findings.

In bankruptcy court in San Antonio this month, the U.S. Trustee, part of the Justice Department, filed papers seeking to toss the bankruptcy of Bill Hall Jr. Trucking GP LLC because the company has been in Chapter 11 since Jan. 25 and has yet to file a reorganization plan. The company, which had a previous bankruptcy case dismissed, also failed to file a monthly operating report that was due Nov. 20. The company hasnt responded to the U.S. Trustees motion.

Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd. filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in November 2016. The case was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation in March. Nothing has been filed in the case since August.

Patrick Danner is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | pdanner@express-news.net | @AlamoPD
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A 16-month investigation led to the arrests of eight members of a notorious Bay Area gang who are facing a slew of charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, second-degree burglary, engaging in pimping and intimidating a witness, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Seven members of the Broad Day Klap gang were arrested in the Bay Area and one in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 27 after investigators conducted 11 simultaneous search warrants and multiple prison searches, Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said at a news conference in Martinez.

The suspects appeared in a Contra Costa County court Wednesday for arraignment and are being held at the Martinez Detention Facility.

These gangs need to start looking over their shoulders. We are determined to make sure we bring as much pain as we can to these gangs and make sure they are put out of business permanently, said Jack Bennett, special agent in charge of the FBIs San Francisco field office.

While executing the search warrants, investigators recovered several firearms, including a fully automatic Glock pistol, empty gun magazines, ammunition, over 11 pounds marijuana and gang paraphernalia, Becton said.

The Broad Day Klap gang has been in the Bay Area, mostly in Pittsburg, for about two decades and has evolved over the years, said Pittsburg Police Chief Brian Addington. The gangs name is derived from its preference to commit crimes in broad daylight and the clap a gun makes when fired, officials said.

We believe this is one of the most violent gangs in our jurisdiction, Addington said.

One of the defendants, Giovante Boyd, 22, of Pittsburg, is charged with murder stemming from a March 5 drive-by shooting in Pittsburg in which a 45-year-old man was killed, Addington said.

Boyd allegedly hid a gun under his vehicle, but found it missing when he went to retrieve it, Addington said. He confronted an individual he thought had his gun, but that person denied taking it, Addington said. Boyd returned several hours later and shot at the individuals car, killing his passenger, the chief said.

Boyd, according to authorities, was arrested in Jackson, Miss.

Other arrested were Darnell Keyon Lash, 24; Ezell Tommy Jenkins, 19; Dasheid Keyonta Lash, 21; DVance Jaquez Sumblin, 20; Lester Gene Curry, 21; Larry Darnell Goines Jr., 32; and Javell Cooksey, 19. They were all charged with conspiracy to commit murder, pimping and second-degree burglary, street terrorism and possession of a loaded firearm.

Jenkins also faces a charge of dissuading a witness by using force or threats.

The gang had been investigated for 16 months, and authorities said several killings were prevented during the probe. One includes an incident where police intervened before the suspects could kill an individual, who was not identified, in Pittsburg.

We finally went to that individual and said, Look, this gang is trying to kill you, Addington said.

The individual relocated out of the county, but rejected recommendations by police to enter a witness protection program.

Officials said the investigation is ongoing and they expect the arrests of 26 additional suspects.

Law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation include the Pittsburg, El Cerrito, San Pablo, Concord and Richmond police departments, the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office, the San Francisco Police Departments SWAT team, the Contra Costa County Probation Department, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the California Highway Patrol.

We will not stop, Bennett said. Our message today is clear: Those who believe they are above the law and participate in this type of behavior and endangers the safety of these communities, they will be stopped, and they will be brought to justice.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A Florida high school teacher is facing felony charges after detectives found Sunday that she was having a months-long sexually explicit conversation with, and sending nude photos of herself to, a 15-year-old boy in Texas.

Robin Dunlap, 27, told the Winter Haven Police Department that the boy initially told her he was 19 years old when the two started communicating on Xbox One in September. According to a press release from police, Dunlap and the unidentified teen shifted communication from the video game system to the messaging app Kik and video chat on their phones.

Police say the conversation "slowly progressed to extremely vulgar with sexually explicit language."

SCANDAL: Teacher accused of sex with two students seeks insanity plea

On Sept. 18, the Haines City High School teacher turned herself in to the police after the boy's mother discovered their communications and allegedly contacted Dunlap to tell her that her son is 15 years old, not 19. However, the explicit communications allegedly continued.

On Oct. 29, police said the teen's father reported to Winter Haven detectives that Dunlap was still communicating with the 15 year old through Google Hangouts. Winter Haven detectives worked with investigators in Texas to confirm that Dunlap continued the explicit communications despite being made aware of his true age.

Now Playing: Kim Gersonde blamed her actions on loneliness. Video: WISN

Detectives met with Dunlap at her home on Dec. 17 to question her about her continued conversations with the Texas teen. Dunlap allegedly gave investigators consent to look at her phones that day and police discovered a conversation between her and the teen that lasted from Nov. 26 to Dec. 11.

"Dunlap didn't deny and in fact told investigators that she continued to speak to the victim because he is the only person that she can talk to and the only one who understands her," according to the release.

BAD TEACHER: Cy-Springs High School teacher accused of having sex, smoking pot with 15-year-old student

Dunlap was taken into custody and booked into the Polk County Jail on charges of transmitting material harmful to a minor and using a two-way communication device to commit a felony.

"There is absolutely no excuse for an adult - especially a high school teacher - to continue sexually explicit conversations with a 15 year old long after his real age is revealed," Winter Haven Police Chief Charlie Bird. "The vulnerable age of this victim and the fact that this woman took advantage of him for her own personal needs is inexcusable."

Fox News reports Dunlap was a science teacher at Haines City High School. Dunlap's name has been removed from the Haines City school district's website.

Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter.
Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is set to visit Addis Ababa next week to discuss specific ideas to overcome the stalemate in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dams (GERD) technical negotiations, the ministry has said.

Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid announced the trip on Thursday during an interview on a morning talk show on CBC Extra channel.

Egypt's Minister of Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Ati had said that the tripartite ministerial meeting between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan held in Cairo in Novemebr to discuss a preliminary technical report on the impact of the dam had failed to reach a consensus.

Abu Zeid stressed Egypts keenness to resume talks on the GERD technical negotiations as soon as possible, saying that Cairo is currently assessing if the stalemate is "intentional," or due to differences in point of views on issues between both countries.

The spokesman said there are disagreements on the report issued in October 2017 by the European firms which were agreed upon by the the three sides to assess the impact of the dam on water shares of Nile basin countries.

Egypt is always committed to the references agreed upon by the international committee that established the cornerstone of the GERD technical studies, and the consulting firms should be committed to formulate the method of these studies according to the aspects previously agreed upon, Abu Zeid added.

Abu Zeid also pointed to ongoing preparations for the Ethiopian prime minister visit to Egypt.

Egypt is prepared to address any possible emergent scenarios and has a clear vision to face any challenge related to the technical studies or to the construction of the dam, he said.

The main mission of the consulting firms is to be objective in their studies on the effects of the dams construction from a scientific, not political perspective, he added.

He said that Egypt had never aimed to obstruct the construction of the dam and is interested in its construction and production of electricity, however this all should be without any harm to Egypts share or usage on Nile water, which is a national security issue.

Ethiopia has been constructing the Renaissance Dam since 2011 on the Blue Nile.

Egypt has repeatedly voiced concerns over the construction of the dam on the basis that it would reduce its share of Nile water, which currently stands at 55.5 billion cubic metres per year according to a 1959 treaty.

Abu Zeid said that Egypt considers the declaration of principles, which was signed by the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan in Khartoum in 2015, as the main reference in the matter.

He said that Egyptian-Ethiopian relations had witnessed important developments during the past two years, represented by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisis visit to Addis Ababa and the establishment of a high joint committee between the two nations, in addition to the continues ongoing communication between the foreign ministers to build mutual trust.

We dont want to lose [this trust] after all that we have achieved in building a unique relation between the two countries, Abu Zeid said, describing the GERD issue as highly significant for Egypt and Ethiopia.

In October the Ethiopian government announced that the construction of its 6,450 megawatts dam was 62 percent complete.

During their last meeting in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Shoukry told his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu that Cairo is concerned about the slow progress of technical studies on the dam.

Shoukry expressed Egypt's concern about the inactivity of the tripartite technical committee assigned to study the effects of the dam on downstream countries.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Houston Mod's 2017 biennial Preservation Awards honor projects that include an art exhibit, turning an office building into a boutique hotel, and the preservation of homes that defy some stereotypes of midcentury modern design.

Three townhomes that make up the "Style in Steel" project look more like a school or commercial building than a trio of townhomes. They were designed in 1968 by Wilson, Morris, Crain and Anderson  one of the firms that designed the Astrodome  to consider the use of steel in home construction and as a promotion since the National Association of Home Builders was holding its annual convention at the Astrodome in 1969.

Three families, Diann and Mike Lewter, Penny and James Brown and Michael John Smith and Malcolm Perry were honored for the restoration of their homes in Townhouse Manor, the city's first planned townhouse community.

Another award was given to architect Ben Koush, for the restoration of his East End home. His home represents a little-known chapter of 1950s development, when architect Allen R. Williams Jr. created a company called Century Homes to build homes with interior and exterior concrete tile walls and concrete slab roof pieces as an alternative to wood-frame construction.

Only a handful of these homes were ever made; Koush's has been given City of Houston Protected Landmark status, is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Gary Prosterman, president and CEO of the Development Services Group real estate company, was honored for the adaptive reuse of the former Melrose Building into the Le Meridien hotel in downtown Houston. The early 1950s building designed by architect Hermon Lloyd and William Morgan could be viewed from the brand new Gulf Freeway as travelers made their way into the heart of the city.

As the new Le Meridien hotel, developers restored the building's original spandrels and replaced the clear glass. Interior terrazzo flooring and exterior panels of green marble were also restored.

Tam Kiehnhoff and Randy Tibbits of the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art and Ginger Berni of The Heritage Society, were honored for the exhibit "This WAS Contemporary Art: Fine and Decorative Arts in Houston 1945-1965," a 2016 take on another exhibit nearly 70 years ago.

In 1948, Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum opened with an exhibit called "This is Contemporary Art." Its concept was an outgrowth of the Bauhaus school of thought, that decorative arts were art, and that art should be a part of all aspects of life. While the art in the 1948 show didn't originate in Houston, the 2016 exhibit at the Heritage Society showcased art, decorative arts and furniture made or designed in Houston from 1945-1965.

The nonprofit Houston Mod was founded in 2003 to raise awareness and appreciate of modern architecture and design.
On this date in ...

1917: Two British captains, both of whom had seen service at the front, met at the British recruiting station on State Street in Albany and stared at each other for several minutes trying to remember where they had previously met. Finally it dawned on one of them  either Capt. A.C. Tweedie, commander of the Buffalo office, or Capt. K.G. Strachan of the local branch  "I jolly well remember seeing you before," before explaining that it was at a military club in Montreal more than a year before.
Comedian Katt Williams, in a small role as a chipper hitchhiker, injects about 15 minutes worth of fun into Father Figures, an otherwise mostly dreadful road comedy in which Ed Helms and Owen Wilson play twins searching for a man to call dad.

Too bad Williams, whose character is a voice-of-reason referee between the arguing brothers, can only affect the scenes he is in, and not change the past or future. Because the past in Father Figures  scenes that happen before Williams shows up  includes a moment, set in a highway rest stop bathroom, in hideously bad taste.

Describing this moment probably would make it sound even worse than it is, in moral terms, because of the nouns involved. Attempts to describe it in terms of creativity or Wilsons career also would fail, since new low does not cut it.

Scenes that follow Williams exit from the story also are bad, in different ways. They go on too long, contributing to a sluggish two-hour run time  and the tone shifts wildly among and within them. The movies lighting and cinematography often do not flatter the actors, despite rookie director Lawrence Sher having spent many years as a director of photography.

Figures attributes personality traits to the brothers according to whim. Helms character, Peter, is supposedly a hothead but comes off as a sweetheart. His brother, Kyle, is so self-involved at the films start that he does not know the name of his preteen nephew. Yet Peter later tells Kyle he has the kindest heart of anyone he knows.

The twins reunite, after years without seeing each other, at the wedding of their mother, Helen (Glenn Close, not in the film long enough for it to stick to her reputation), to their new stepfather. After the wedding, Helen reveals that she lied when she told the twins their father died before they could know him. She is not sure who fathered them. It was the 1970s, she explains.

The revelation one expects will follow never comes: the one where Helen tells Peter and Kyle they are not really twins. This would help us believe our eyes, which tell us fraternal does not extend far enough to cover Wilson, 49, and Helms, 43, being the same age.

One assumes at first that Figures is going an absurdist, Step Brothers route in calling them twins. But Helen eventually will lay out the exact circumstances of their births, on the same day, in a scene that tries for poignancy and whiffs.

This would-be serious scene fails partly because it exists in a film that also contains the rest stop scene and that derives a lot of its jokes from the twins being forced to hear what a sexual dynamo Helen once was.

Terry Bradshaw, playing himself, certainly remembers her fondly. After Helen names Bradshaw as the twins possible father, Kyle and Peter travel to Miami to meet him. Bradshaw turns out to be  news flash from 1972  a likable goof. The trail also leads to a dreary sequence involving a less adorable dad candidate (J.K. Simmons).

Wilson and Helms favor Bradshaw in likability. But they are not two hours worth of likable, in a film this flawed.

Carla Meyer is a Northern California freelance writer.

Father Figures

Comedy. Starring Owen Wilson and Ed Helms. Directed by Lawrence Sher. (R. 113 minutes).
Submitted

The Cleveland Rotary Club is well known for its scholarship program, supported by their Annual Fundraiser. Graduating seniors from Cleveland and Tarkington High Schools are selected and receive $1,000 for their higher education.

One such student gave the Rotary members the best Christmas present they could receive. Rotarian Steve Racciato, who is the Director of the Health Center of Southeast Texas (HCSET), welcomed Alejandra Ruiz  guest speaker, employee of HCSET, and winner from Tarkington of a Rotary Scholarship in 2015.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Sheriff Kenny Cotton departed from Pike County, Mississippi, prepared for the long drive ahead of him.

In a vehicle stuffed with toys, Cotton was equipped with everything he needed for his mission: to deliver more than 200 toys to Huffman ISD for children in a community affected by Hurricane Harvey.

"The Pike County Sheriff's Department does a toy drive every year and it's a big deal up there," said Shirley Dupree, executive director of Huffman ISD HR/Communications and Education Foundation. "This year, they decided to do something to help a Harvey-affected community in Texas."

The Sheriff's Department partnered with other local entities to host the toy drive and encouraged citizens of Pike County to contribute.

Toy drive organizers sought a community in need of toy donations for holiday gifts and were eventually put in touch with Huffman ISD.

"They got our district's name, called and said they were doing the drive and asked if we had a need," Dupree said. "I said, 'absolutely.'"

Pike County's toy drive effort for Huffman was already a generous act, but Dupree was astounded when the county sheriff insisted on personally driving the toys down and delivering them to the Huffman ISD Administration Building on Wednesday, Dec. 20.

"For this county to do the toy drive for us and then actually drive here from out-of-state, it's unbelievable," Dupree said. "I can't explain what it feels like to get calls like this. I even offered to meet him half-way, but he wanted to drive it down here."

Approximately 100 children in Huffman are expected to benefit from Pike County's donation. The school district is formulating a distribution strategy, which Dupree said will be posted on the Huffman ISD website and Facebook page.

This donation adds to the growing list of support Huffman ISD has received after Hurricane Harvey from communities near and far, including Louisiana, Arkansas, and now, Mississippi.

"We have been blessed by so many people across the country, and I mean "Blessed" is the word here," Dupree said.

Dupree was nervous in the weeks following the hurricane. While immediate relief was readily given, she was uncertain how long the outpouring of support would last.

"In the beginning, there is that frenzy to help," Dupree said. "We had donations coming in, help with resources. But, in my mind I was thinking, 'We definitely need the help now, but there's going to come a point at which we're going to need help down the road, as people start moving back into their homes.'"

A gesture like the toy donation from Pike County comes as a reassurance to Dupree that communities across the United States have not forgotten about the needs still present in communities affected by Harvey.

"We still have things coming in, which is such a blessing because this is a time of great need for these families," Dupree said.
PARIS - At long last, RT has arrived on French television.

The Kremlin-funded news agency aired its first broadcast Monday, accusing the French government of "supporting terrorism" in Syria and featuring a far-right local politician who waxed poetic about a world where France "regained its independence" from NATO.

For an agency accused of spreading disinformation in the 2016 U.S. election, these might be the predictable stances, especially in a Western democracy that is no stranger to nativist populism. But in a Europe where the extreme right has made significant gains in recent elections, the important question is how many people in France and across the continent will actually see these new nightly broadcasts.

For the moment, not many: RT - formerly known as "Russia Today" - can only be seen online, via its own website or with a subscription to the broadband arm of Iliad, a French telecommunications service provider. The channel will not be readily available in average French households, unlike France's four major news channels, which run 24/7.

This may soon change, as France's two biggest telecommunication providers, Orange and SFR, are still in negotiations with RT, the conglomerates confirmed to the French press earlier this week. If the parties reach an agreement, RT could find wider audiences. The network has sizable ambitions: a reported launch budget of some $24 million, as well as the goal of hiring 150 employees by the end of next year.

"RT is not a journalistic outlet - it's an information weapon," said Ben Nimmo, a research fellow with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and an expert on disinformation and hybrid warfare. "Its purpose is to build an audience to be used for information warfare if necessary."

To that end, Nimmo said, Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor in chief, has regularly described her organization as an "information weapon" and, in the Russian press, has compared it to Russia's Ministry of Defense.

As Simonyan said in a 2013 interview: "It's a weapon like any other. Do you understand? And to say, why do we need it - it's about the same as saying: 'Why do we need the Ministry of Defense, if there is no war?'"

In 2012, Simonyan put it this way: "The Defense Ministry was fighting with Georgia," she said in another interview, referring to the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia. "But we were fighting the information war, and what's more, against the whole Western world."

RT has technically been in France since 2015, although not on television until now. The organization has operated a platform for web journalism that was the object of much anxiety in the 2017 French presidential election, which saw the Kremlin-backed Marine Le Pen, a right-wing extremist, face off against the centrist Emmanuel Macron, who ultimately won in a landslide.

At a news conference in late May, just weeks after his victory, Macron stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin and called RT and Sputnik "organs of influence and propaganda that spread counterfeit truths about me."

"I have always had an exemplary relationship with foreign journalists," Macron said, "but they have to be journalists." To date, RT journalists are not accredited to attend French government events, such as regular Elysee Palace news conferences.

In the United States, RT - which intelligence agencies labeled as "Russia's state-run propaganda machine" in a January report - registered last month as a "foreign agent" with the Department of Justice. The following week, the Congressional Radio and TV Correspondents' gallery revoked RT's credentials to cover Capitol Hill.

Xenia Fedorova, the chief executive of RT France, rejects what she considers the unfair exclusion the network has already suffered in France. "RT stands for news that is not covered by the mainstream media," she told Reuters news agency earlier this week. "We will keep the platform open to perspectives and opinions that are either not covered or silenced."

Fedorova did not respond to a request for comment on RT's French debut.

Since the U.S. presidential election, Western concerns over the international expansion of this particular Russian media outlet have often proved unwarranted.

On RT's British channel, for instance, a controversial program anchored by Scottish Nationalist politician Alex Salmond generated a flurry of media attention when it debuted in November - as well as an almost immediate investigation by Ofcom, the British broadcasting watchdog, as to whether the program "breached our rules on due accuracy."

But the numbers spoke for themselves: Only 16,000 viewers tuned to see the first edition of Salmon, according to Britain's Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB). Statistics from the same week showed the Salmond show had 8,000 fewer viewers than "Whale Adventure with Nigel Marvin."

Although studies commissioned by RT often appear to inflate the size of the audiences reached, especially in the United States, it is unclear how much traction the network carries. In the past, the Nielsen ratings, an industry standard for ascertaining audience size, have not listed RT.

In France, however, broadcast regulators told reporters that they would be "constantly monitoring" the Kremlin-backed newcomer.

"It would be very problematic to ban something like that, because you then open the door to lots of other censorship concerns," said Nimmo. "But awareness is key."
UN member-states will vote Thursday on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with President Donald Trump threatening to cut funding to countries that back the measure.

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly will decide on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

Turkey and Yemen requested the urgent meeting on behalf of the Arab group of countries and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Egypt had put forward the draft at the council which was vetoed by the United States but backed by all 14 other Security Council members in the vote on Monday.

Like the Egyptian draft, the text before the assembly does not mention Trump's decision but expresses "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures" if the Security Council fails to act.

Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories. Thursday's meeting will be a resumption of that session.

Trump's decision on 6 December to recognize the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

The Israeli crackdown on Palestinian protests against Trump's decision has left at least 11 Palestinians killed and more than 3,000 injured in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us," Trump said at the White House.

"Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars", Erdogan said after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut aid to countries that support a draft U.N. resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there (the United nations) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said Thursday in a speech in Ankara.

According to figures from the U.S. government's aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania.

It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID.

Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trump's remarks, but added: "It's the right and responsibility of member states to express their views."

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment on Trump's remarks on Wednesday.

Ahead of the vote, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the UN as a "house of lies," saying Israel "rejects outright this vote, even before it passes."

"The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well -- the house of lies," he said.

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain, vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley sent an email to fellow UN envoys to put them on notice that "the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us."

"We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," she wrote in the message seen by AFP.

And on Twitter she said "the US will be taking names" when ambassadors of the 193-nation assembly cast their votes.

"The first name that she should write down is Bolivia," Bolivia's U.N. Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz said of Haley's message. "We regret the arrogance and disrespect to the sovereign decision of member states and to multilateralism."

"Nikki, that was the right message," Trump said.

A council diplomat said Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic might bow to US pressure, but the motion is all but certain to be approved.

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.

Among the 14 countries in the 15-member council that voted in favor of the measure were the key US allies Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine, who were expected to do the same at the assembly on Thursday.

After Monday's vote, Haley described the 14-1 vote "an insult" and warned "it won't be forgotten."

Meanwhile, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki accused Washington of "threatening" member-states, saying the UN session would show "how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience."

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support of the resolution would carry political weight.

After the clash at the top UN body, the White House announced that US Vice President Mike Pence was delaying a trip to the Middle East planned for this week.

Israel seized control of the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move that has never been recognised by the international community.

The Palestinians have long demanded occupied East Jerusalem for the capital of their future state.

Peace negotiations between the Palestinian authorities and Israel  which have lasted for more than two decades based on the 1993 Oslo accords  have been stalled since 2014.

There are an estimated 4.3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied territories; two million in Gaza, two million in the West Bank and 325,000 in East Jerusalem.

In recent years, Israel has intensified the construction of hundreds of illegal Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, thus creating new demographics that weaken the ability of the Palestinians to build a geographically contiguous state.

Over the past 50 years, the US has repeatedly vetoed resolutions that condemn Israeli aggression or illegal settlement-construction.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Just minutes after crew members aboard the Australian submarine signaled about diminishing visibility, the vessel disappeared into the fog.

During WWI, Australia's first submarine, HMAS AE1, along with its sister ship, AE2, were used to capture German New Guinea. It was a Sunday in September of 1914 when the vessel helped secure the surrender of Rabaul in East New Britain, according to the Royal Australian Navy.

But the next day, the boat and its crew had vanished - leading to a 103-year-old maritime mystery.

"No trace of AE1 was found, not even the telltale shimmer of escaping oil floating on the surface of the water," according to a historical account from the Royal Australian Navy.

"The loss of AE1 with her entire complement of three officers and 32 sailors was the [Royal Australian Navy's] first major tragedy and it marred an otherwise successful operation to seize the German colonies in New Guinea and the South Pacific."

The Australian government could not explain how AE1 disappeared, but it began the first of several new searches in 1976.

Australia's Defense Department announced Thursday that the 800-ton submarine had been found, nearly 1,000 feet below the waves. A search vessel named "Fugro Equator" located it earlier this week in waters east of Rabaul, not far from Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea.

"Australia's first # submarine HMAS # AE1 has been found after 103 years ending Australia's oldest naval mystery," Marise Payne, Australia's minister of defense, said on Twitter. "Congratulations to all involved & proud that Turnbull Government could support the search. Lest We Forget."

Officials said that following the discovery, those on the search vessel held a commemorative service to honor the submarine's crew.

The Australian government plans to work with counterparts in Papua New Guinea to try to preserve the site of the shipwreck, according to the navy.

Brendan Nelson, director of the Australian War Memorial, called the find "one of the most significant and practically meaningful events of Australia's commemoration of the First World War."

According to the Australian War Memorial:

"The first significant Australian action of the war was the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force's (ANMEF) landing on Rabaul on 11 September 1914. The ANMEF took possession of German New Guinea at Toma on 17 September 1914 and of the neighbouring islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in October 1914. On 9 November 1914 the Royal Australian Navy made a major contribution when HMAS Sydney destroyed the German raider SMS Emden."

It added:

"For Australia, the First World War remains the costliest conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of whom more than 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner."

"The Great War, as it is often described, had a deep and lasting impact on our country," Nelson said in a statement after the submarine was found. "The tragedy and loss felt by all Australians was palpable, and instances like the mysterious loss of one of our very first submarines greatly affected us. The successful location of AE1 is extremely important, and the nation should be grateful to all those involved."

"Now we can properly mourn the deaths of those men who served in AE1, and commemorate their sacrifice in a meaningful and fitting way," he added.

---

http://wapo.st/2BtadAB
In the final weeks of the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, Breitbart News strained to discredit Leigh Corfman, who accused Republican Roy Moore of sexually touching her when she was 14 and he was 32. The far-right website published non-scoops - Corfman didn't have a phone in her bedroom! Corfman moved in with her father 12 days after meeting Moore! - as if they somehow made her account less believable.

Now, Breitbart editor in chief Alex Marlow tells CNN that he actually did believe Corfman. Here's an excerpt from Oliver Darcy's report:

"Marlow also stressed that he was personally uncomfortable with the behavior attributed by The Post to Moore, and noted that he did believe the accusations from Leigh Corfman, who said Moore assaulted her while she was 14 - they were 'not perfect,' he said, but had 'a lot of credibility.' "

Marlow described Moore, whom Breitbart defended relentlessly, as a "weak candidate" and a "uniquely terrible candidate."

Marlow's sudden candor suggests that Breitbart's coverage of Moore after the accusations was a grand performance. The site's top editor thought that Moore had indeed preyed on a teenage girl and considered the former Alabama chief justice a lousy politician, yet Breitbart sent the opposite message to its audience.

Why? Here's a bit more from Darcy:

"Marlow said one of the factors in Breitbart's coverage of the allegations against Moore is that, he believes, the news media was trying to use them to set a bar on sexual misconduct 'that President Trump cannot match.' "

" 'I think they want to create a standard where President Trump, either from past or future accusations, will not be able to match whatever standard is now in place for who can be a United States senator,' he said. 'Based off not any sort of conviction or any sort of admission of guilt, but based off of purely allegations.' "

" 'I think that's the playbook here,' he added. 'And I think it's part of the reason why it was so important for Breitbart to continue our coverage of the way we covered it . . . and for Steve [Bannon], in particular, to hold the line the way he did for - I think part of it is because it's not just about Judge Moore, it is not even just about establishment, anti-establishment. It's about what's coming next for President Trump.' "

If we're talking about cold calculations, Breitbart's strategy made some sense. But it was just that - a strategy. Marlow's interview with Darcy is one of the clearest indications that Breitbart, at its core, is more of an advocacy organization than a news outlet.

The site's coverage of Moore was not about evaluating his actions or fitness for office but about helping Trump. The goal was to keep the bar for elected officials' conduct low enough for Trump to clear. Breitbart also positioned itself to defend the president against the "past or future accusations" Marlow referenced; after all, it would appear hypocritical to stand by Trump after abandoning Moore.
American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused an inordinate number of deaths. In 1993, there was a one-year drop during the worst of the AIDS epidemic.

"I think we should take it very seriously," said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the CDC. "If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they're not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up."

The development is a dismal sign for the United States, which boasts some of the world's highest spending on medical care, and more evidence of the toll the nation's opioid crisis is exacting on younger and middle-aged Americans, experts said.

More than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses alone in 2016, a 28 percent increase over 2015. When deaths from drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and benzodiazepines are included, the overall increase was 21 percent.

A multiyear decline in life expectancy is more commonly associated with AIDS epidemics in southern and eastern Africa or wars in Syria and Afghanistan, said Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London who has studied life expectancy.

"The story does come down to young people," he said. "It's the overdose story, to a large extent."

The data a year ago set off alarms when they showed that in 2015 the United States experienced its first decline in life expectancy since that 1993 dip. Experts pointed then to the "diseases of despair" - drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism - as well as small increases in deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes.

The 2016 data shows that just three major causes of death are responsible: unintentional injuries, Alzheimer's disease and suicides, with the bulk of the difference attributable to the 63,632 people who died of overdoses. That total was an increase of more than 11,000 over the 52,404 who died of the same cause in 2015.

Deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids more than doubled from the previous year. Heroin and prescription opioid overdose deaths also rose, but more modestly.

At the same time, a long decline in deaths from heart disease continued a six-year trend of leveling out, Anderson said. The small decrease last year in the rate of the nation's leading cause of death no longer canceled the drug epidemic's impact on life expectancy, Anderson said.

"The key factor is the increase in drug overdose deaths," he said.

Overall, life expectancy dropped by a tenth of a year, from 78.7 to 78.6. It fell two-tenths of a year for men, who have much higher overdose death rates, from 76.3 to 76.1 years. Women's life expectancy held steady at 81.1 years.

The number of people who fatally overdosed on fentanyl and other synthetic opiates soared from 9,580 in 2015 to 19,413 in 2016. Deaths due to heroin were up nearly 20 percent, and deaths from other opioid painkillers such as hydrocodone and oxycodone were up 14 percent.

"It's even worse than it looks," said Keith Humphreys, an addiction specialist at Stanford University. Given that research has shown official figures could be undercounting the true number of opioid deaths by 20 percent or more, "we could easily be at 50,000 opioid deaths last year," he said. "This means that even if you ignored deaths from all other drugs, the opioid epidemic alone is deadlier than the AIDS epidemic at its peak."

And while only limited provisional data is available for 2017, things don't look any better.

"My guess is that when all of the data are in that the [2017] trend line will be at least as steep as for 2016, if not steeper," Anderson said.

While drug mortality has been increasing among all age groups since 1999, it's highest among those ages 25 to 54. Their fatal overdose rate for all drugs was roughly 35 cases per 100,000 individuals in 2016, compared with 12 deaths per 100,000 for people under 24 and six deaths per 100,000 among seniors 65 and older.

Men of all ages (26 deaths per 100,000) are twice as likely to die of a drug overdose as women (13 per 100,000). At the state level, West Virginia stands alone as the epicenter of overdose mortality, with 52 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016. The next two states, New Hampshire and Ohio, each saw 39 deaths per 100,000 last year.

"This is no longer an opioid crisis," said Patrick Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman who was a member of President Trump's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. "This is a moral crisis . . . we know how to answer this problem, but we can't get around our own prejudices."

Kennedy said medication-assisted therapies, including newer injectable drugs that block opioid cravings, are crucial to curbing the crisis. But there is "a bias in recovery circles" against such treatments, with the attitude that "you're not supposed to take medications - that's not called sobriety," he said.

On July 31, the commission recommended Trump declare the crisis a national emergency, a designation that could have made emergency funding available. Instead, the president in October declared a public health emergency; he has since devoted little additional resources to the problem.

"He gave a fantastic speech," Kennedy said of Trump. "But so far he's all talk and no follow-through." The political dithering cost 174 deaths a day from drug overdoses in 2016 - one every 8 1/2 minutes, he said.

The 10 leading causes of death accounted for roughly three-fourths of the 2.7 million deaths last year. Rates for heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, strokes, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease fell, as did the nation's overall death rate.

The 9.7 percent jump in unintentional injuries, which includes drug overdoses, motor vehicle crashes and other kinds of accidents, pushed that category into third place overall among causes of death. Alzheimer's disease deaths rose by 3.1 percent and suicides increased by 1.5 percent.

Last year, some experts attributed the rising toll of Alzheimer's disease to more frequent reporting of it. But Anderson said a second year of substantial increases probably indicates that more people are dying of the disease.

"As people avoid [cancer and heart disease], they're going to survive long enough to die of Alzheimer's," he said.

The report also noted a small but statistically insignificant decline in infant mortality.
WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders moved toward another short-term spending stopgap Wednesday after talks aimed at passing more-ambitious legislation appeared to collapse as a government shutdown deadline approached.

Republicans have pushed for increased military funding and disaster aid for hurricane-ravaged communities in the South. Democrats, meanwhile, want a boost to domestic programs and a solution for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

But with a midnight-Friday shutdown deadline looming, not to mention the coming holidays, GOP leaders in the House and Senate indicated that lawmakers were likely to do the bare minimum - passing another short-term spending bill to keep the government open and then revisiting all these issues in January.

"There's a whole bunch of stuff that's got to get wrapped up and loose threads out there that have to be tied together at some point, and if we end up having to do that all in the first two weeks of January, I guess that's what we'll end up doing," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 3 GOP leader in the Senate.

The path to passing a stopgap remained unclear late Wednesday, however. House Republicans met behind closed doors for more than an hour, airing frustrations over the spending legislation just hours after they sent a landmark GOP tax overhaul to President Trump. They emerged without a clear plan to proceed.

"There's not enough votes to get it done right now," said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

The main roadblock came from advocates of increased military spending, who are frustrated that House Republican leaders abandoned plans to pass a bill delivering more than $600 billion in full-year defense funding after it became clear it could not pass the Senate.

Instead, leaders said they would continue current funding levels through Jan. 19, plus several billion dollars in extra funding to address "anomalies" in the defense budget. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told lawmakers the plan had the blessing of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, but that assurance fell short for many.

"You can't fix a systemic problem with anomalies," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

One potential land mine, however, was defused Wednesday afternoon when Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine - who had conditioned her vote for the tax bill on the separate passage of two health-care provisions - agreed to withdraw her demand that the health-care provisions get attached to the year-end spending legislation.

That demand had threatened to provoke a confrontation with House Republicans, who oppose the health bills that would pay subsidies to insurers that participate in the Affordable Care Act's health insurance marketplaces.

"Rather than considering a broad year-end funding agreement as we expected, it has become clear that Congress will only be able to pass another short-term extension to prevent a government shutdown and to continue a few essential programs," Collins said in a joint statement with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Few Republicans showed any stomach for a spending showdown at Christmas, especially after delivering the tax bill - even though GOP appropriators and defense hawks balked at the prospect of another stopgap.

"I can't think of a bigger act of political malpractice after a successful tax reform vote than to shut the government down," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs. "Talk about stepping on your own message. I mean, how dumb would that be?"

Other lawmakers characterized the 11th-hour wrangling as business as usual for the restive House GOP: "It's going to get a little dirty before it gets clean," said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa.

Several top House Republican leaders said early Wednesday that they were planning to put multiple spending bills on the House floor - a stopgap to keep government operating past Friday, as well as an $81 billion disaster-relief package. GOP leaders dropped plans to combine the two bills after some conservatives complained about the size of the disaster package.

The strategy, aides said, is meant in part to keep the Senate from taking a House bill, attaching the health-care bills or other legislation that conservatives oppose, and sending it back to the House.

The fate of a critical surveillance program that allows the government to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil also hangs on the spending negotiations, after House Republicans abandoned plans to vote on a bill that would have extended the program, with certain restrictions, for eight years. That measure, too, remained in flux late Wednesday.

Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have demanded more restrictions to how law enforcement officers can access the data collected under the program, known as Section 702, to protect the privacy of Americans' whose information might be in the surveillance database.

Democrats represent a key piece of the puzzle because no spending bill can pass the Senate without at least some Democratic votes.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., signaled anew Wednesday that Democrats would not agree to anything beyond a bare-bones stopgap as long as there was no bipartisan agreement on spending, immigration and other sensitive issues.

That spelled a likely end to any attempt by McConnell to add the health-care legislation at Collins's behest because some Democrats would have to support the move for it to overcome a 60-vote Senate procedural hurdle.

"We cannot do a short-term funding bill that picks and chooses what problems to solve," Schumer said. "That will not be fair and will not pass. We have to do them all together, instead of in a piecemeal fashion."

He added: "Whether that global deal comes before the week is out or at a later date in January, it has to be a truly global deal. We can't leave any of those issues behind."

Another encouraging sign for spending talks came as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday that he would allow a vote on a bipartisan immigration plan if a deal materializes in the coming days. Democrats and Republicans have struggled for weeks to craft a solution to protect "dreamers," or the children of young immigrants, who are set to lose their protections when an Obama-era program ends in early March.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., whose support for the GOP tax plan was contingent on the success of the immigration talks, said he and other senators were working on a plan with the White House that should be completed by the end of the year. If that happens, McConnell said he would hold "a free-standing vote" on the plan by the end of January.

Flake said he would prefer to see it added to the spending legislation, but "if it's a stand-alone, that's fine. We'll have the votes for it."
Virginia's Democratic senators will recommend two candidates to the White House for an open federal judgeship in Alexandria: State Court of Appeals Judge Rossie Alston Jr. and Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Giles.

The nominee chosen by President Donald Trump will replace U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, 65, who retired this fall after two decades on the bench. A champion for diversity, Lee worked to help nonwhite law students find footholds at elite levels of the legal profession.

"While presiding over a court with one of the busiest dockets in the country, Judge Lee tirelessly mentored youths in the community and fostered the careers of generations of lawyers from the minority Bar," wrote Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner. "Consistent with these values, we believe both Ms. Giles and Judge Alston would continue Judge Lee's legacy."

Giles is a longtime prosecutor in the Eastern District who has helped put members of the gang MS-13 behind bars for murder and sex trafficking, including in a 2005 case involving the death of a 17-year-old pregnant federal witness. She began her career as a clerk for Lee.

Alston previously served as a Circuit Court and Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court judge in Prince William County. He has also worked at the National Labor Relations Board under President Ronald Reagan and at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, as well as in private practice.

Virginia Republicans tried unsuccessfully to elevate Alston to the state Supreme Court last year to thwart Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had appointed another candidate.

Like Lee, Alston and Giles are African American and active in a camp he runs introducing at-risk boys to the legal system.

The two were among six candidates interviewed by the two senators after recommendations from a committee of lawyers. The others were corporate attorney George Doumar, Assistant U.S Attorney Jay Prabhu and U.S. Magistrate judges Lawrence Leonard and David Novak.

The next judge will sit in one of the busiest courtrooms in the country, where high-profile national security and public corruption cases are often tried.

Trump's judicial nominees have tended to be young and conservative. Nineteen of his 59 nominees for the federal judiciary have been confirmed, including six district court judges. But the collapse of three nominees in the past week has led to increased scrutiny of the White House's choices.

Senators can traditionally hold up a federal court nomination in their state by refusing to sign a "blue slip" of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, has begun ignoring blue slips for appeals court nominees but has thus far indicated that he will respect them at the district court level.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the newly elected leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress, has a tenuous hold on power in the party after his allies fell short of securing outright control over its top leadership body.

A lack of support from a clear majority of the 86 voting members of the ANC's National Executive Committee will limit his scope to drive policy changes and assert his authority over President Jacob Zuma, whose second term as the nation's leader ends in 2019. The NEC is the ANC's highest decision-making body in between its five-yearly national conferences.

The faction led by the candidate he beat in the presidential race, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, probably has the loyalty of about 45 of the 86 NEC's voting members, said Xolani Dube, a political analyst at the Xubera Institute for Research and Development in the port city of Durban.

"Cyril is a very compromised president," Dube said Thursday by phone. "He is not running the administration of the ANC. He has got a serious problem."

The executive committee's composition will constrain Ramaphosa's ability to focus the government's agenda on promoting economic growth, creating jobs and cracking down on corruption. His victory over Dlamini-Zuma for the presidency was by the smallest margin since the ANC came to power in 1994, and only two of the other top-five party officials elected with him are considered certain allies.

The rand weakened as much as 0.5 percent before trading little changed at 12.7142 per dollar by 11:28 a.m. in Johannesburg, bringing its gain since before the start of the ANC conference to 6.2 percent.

In his first speech as ANC president in the early hours of Thursday, Ramaphosa pledged a crack down on graft, which has become increasingly rife during Zuma's almost nine-year administration.

"Corruption has to come to a stop and it must happen with immediate effect," Ramaphosa said. "We must confront the reality that critical institutions of our state have been targeted by individuals and families."

The nation's graft ombudsman indicated that members of the Gupta family, who are friends with Zuma and are in business with his son, had been allowed to influence the awarding of cabinet posts and state contracts. Zuma and the Guptas deny wrongdoing.

Ramaphosa didn't directly link Zuma to wrongdoing in his speech, and instead thanked him for his service to the ANC.

He reiterated the party's resolutions to implement "radical" economic policies to give the black majority a bigger state in the economy and provide free tertiary education to some students. He affirmed the party's decision to seize land without compensation to speed up land reform, but said it would only be done in a responsible manner that didn't harm the economy, agricultural production or food security.

"We must ensure that we do not undermine the economy," he said.

Ramaphosa will need all his skills to negotiate the sometimes perilous eddies of ANC policies.

The lawyer, who co-founded the biggest mining workers union, led negotiations to end apartheid and became one of the richest black South Africans. He also played an important role in the Northern Ireland peace process, carrying out secret inspections of Irish Republican Army arms dumps with former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that helped to push negotiations forward.

Among his backers elected to the NEC were former finance minister Pravin Gordhan, who's dismissal by Zuma in March drew a rare public rebuke from Ramaphosa and resulted in the nation losing its investment-grade status with two ratings companies for the first time in 17 years.

Other supporters who made the cut include parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete and Senzo Mchunu, the former premier of the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province who failed in his bid to become the party's secretary-general.

Dlamini-Zuma, the former wife of Zuma, also secured election to the committee, alongside Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and former central bank Governor Tito Mboweni, who appeared on her faction's list.

Former ANC Treasurer-General Zweli Mkhize won the most votes of the 80 additional members of the NEC, followed by Lindiwe Zulu, the minister of small business development. Their names appeared on both camp's lists.

---

Bloomberg's Amogelang Mbatha, Robert Brand and Sam Mkokeli contributed.
Before the vote, Palestinian FM described Jerusalem as the 'key for both peace and war' in ME; Nikki Haley said the US will not back down on moving embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; most speakers rejected Trump's move

Related UN votes Thursday on Jerusalem after Trump threat to punish countries who will oppose him

The UN General assembly voted on Thursday 128 for, 9 against with 35 abstentions on a non-binding resolution calling on the US to rescind its 6 December decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The 193-nation assembly voted on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status must be rescinded.

Egypt had put forward a draft resolution at the UN Security Council, which was vetoed by the United States but backed by all 14 other Council members in a vote on Monday.

Like the Egyptian draft, the text before the assembly did not mention Trump's decision, but expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

Representatives of member states delivered short statements on the motion, overwhelmingly against the US move.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki told the assembly that "the United states cannot violate international law," and described Jerusalem as the "key for both peace and war" in the Middle East.

Al-Malki said that Israel "does not hide its policies and intentions", accusing it of "killing the dreams of the Palestinians" and criticised the United States for supporting its actions.

The top Palestinian diplomat said there will be no separation between the "Palestinian people, land and history."

Palestine was admitted as an observer member of UN General Assembly in 2012.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that "a vote in favour of Palestine will place us on the right side of history."

Nikki Haley, the US representative at the UN, told the assembly that the US was "singled out for attack" at the United Nations because it now recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and again threatened to cut off aid to countries that vote against the decision.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," Haley said at the General Assembly ahead of the vote.

Israel's representative told the assembly that his country will never leave Jerusalem.

"Those who support the resolution are puppets and marionettes," he added.

Pakistans representative told the assembly that "my delegation believes the US veto [of the Security Council resolution] earlier this week represents a dangerously misplaced strategy."

The UN representative of Indonesia spoke against Trump's decision and in favour of negotiations and a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying his country's "support for the Palestinian people will never cease."

The Venezuelan representative opposed the US decision on Jerusalem and Trump's threats to punish those countries that oppose his decision, saying "the world is not for sale."

The representative of Estonia said a two-state solution would meet the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians and lead to peace.

The representative of Australia said her country does not support any unilateral decision that would hamper negotiations and called on the US to continue in its efforts to mediate a peace solution.

Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures" if the Security Council fails to act.

Israel seized control of the eastern part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move that has never been recognised by the international community.

The Palestinians have long demanded occupied East Jerusalem for the capital of their future state.

Peace negotiations between the Palestinian authorities and Israel  which have lasted for more than two decades based on the 1993 Oslo accords  have been stalled since 2014.

There are an estimated 4.3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied territories; two million in Gaza, two million in the West Bank and 325,000 in East Jerusalem.

In recent years, Israel has intensified the construction of hundreds of illegal Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, thus creating new demographics that weaken the ability of the Palestinians to build a geographically contiguous state.

Over the past 50 years, the US has repeatedly vetoed resolutions that condemn Israeli occupation, aggression or illegal settlement construction.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Washington

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on five Russians, including the leader of Chechnya, under a U.S. human rights law that has been a major irritant between Washington and Moscow.

The five Russians were targeted under the Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress in 2012 in response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He died in prison after exposing a tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials, and the law named after him allows the U.S. to target violators of human rights. All told, the U.S. has targeted 49 Russians under that law.

The latest additions include Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic in southern Russia. The Treasury Department said Kadyrov oversaw "disappearances and extrajudicial killings" and that he's believed to have ordered the killing of one of his political rivals. The rival had accused Kadyrov of personally carrying out torture.

Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been widely believed to have already been on a classified list of U.S. sanctions targets. Until Wednesday, the U.S. had not publicly disclosed his presence on any sanctions list.

The Treasury Department also said it was targeting a Chechen law enforcement official, Ayub Kataev, for alleged involvement in abuses this year against gay men. The United Nations and human rights groups have decried reports that men suspected of homosexuality have been rounded up and tortured in Chechnya and in some instances killed.

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which first reported the abuses, said the men were held in a secret prison in the town of Argun, where Kataev was the head of the police force. A spokesman for Kadyrov denied the reports and insisted there were no gay people in Chechnya.

The other three Russians being targeted are accused of being involved in the criminal conspiracy in Russia that Magnitsky exposed.

Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund owned by British citizen William Browder. After accusing Russian officials of carrying out a $230 million tax fraud, he was charged with tax evasion and put in prison, where he died in 2009 at 37. An official Russian probe blamed a heart attack, but Russia's presidential council on human rights concluded he'd been beaten and denied medical treatment.

"We will continue to use the Magnitsky Act to aggressively target gross violators of human rights in Russia, including individuals responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture and other despicable acts," said John Smith, a top sanctions official at the Treasury Department.

The announcement drew rare praise for the Trump administration from the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. Cardin and Republican Sen. John McCain co-wrote the Magnitsky Act, and Cardin said Wednesday he was pleased Treasury had acted to punish those accused of torturing gays and other rights abuses.

"Today marks a victory for the citizens of the Russian Federation, many of whom strive for a future governed by the rule of law," Cardin said.

The sanctions law became a sore point between the U.S. and Russia after it was signed into law by former President Barack Obama. Shortly after, Putin signed a law banning American citizens from adopting Russian children, in a move widely viewed as retaliation.

Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, has said he discussed the Magnitsky Act and the adoption law with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last year during an unusual campaign-season meeting that has been examined as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with Trump's campaign.

The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals may have in the United States, and also bar Americans from doing any business with them.

In 2016, the Magnitsky Act was expanded to allow the U.S. to target human rights abusers anywhere, not just in Russia. The Trump administration is expected to target additional individuals under that law in the coming days.

Washington

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on five Russians, including the leader of Chechnya, under a U.S. human rights law that has been a major irritant between Washington and Moscow.

The five Russians were targeted under the Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress in 2012 in response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He died in prison after exposing a tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials, and the law named after him allows the U.S. to target violators of human rights. All told, the U.S. has targeted 49 Russians under that law.

The latest additions include Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic in southern Russia. The Treasury Department said Kadyrov oversaw "disappearances and extrajudicial killings" and that he's believed to have ordered the killing of one of his political rivals. The rival had accused Kadyrov of personally carrying out torture.

Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been widely believed to have already been on a classified list of U.S. sanctions targets. Until Wednesday, the U.S. had not publicly disclosed his presence on any sanctions list.

The Treasury Department also said it was targeting a Chechen law enforcement official, Ayub Kataev, for alleged involvement in abuses this year against gay men. The United Nations and human rights groups have decried reports that men suspected of homosexuality have been rounded up and tortured in Chechnya and in some instances killed.

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which first reported the abuses, said the men were held in a secret prison in the town of Argun, where Kataev was the head of the police force. A spokesman for Kadyrov denied the reports and insisted there were no gay people in Chechnya.

The other three Russians being targeted are accused of being involved in the criminal conspiracy in Russia that Magnitsky exposed.

Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund owned by British citizen William Browder. After accusing Russian officials of carrying out a $230 million tax fraud, he was charged with tax evasion and put in prison, where he died in 2009 at 37. An official Russian probe blamed a heart attack, but Russia's presidential council on human rights concluded he'd been beaten and denied medical treatment.

"We will continue to use the Magnitsky Act to aggressively target gross violators of human rights in Russia, including individuals responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture and other despicable acts," said John Smith, a top sanctions official at the Treasury Department.

The announcement drew rare praise for the Trump administration from the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. Cardin and Republican Sen. John McCain co-wrote the Magnitsky Act, and Cardin said Wednesday he was pleased Treasury had acted to punish those accused of torturing gays and other rights abuses.

"Today marks a victory for the citizens of the Russian Federation, many of whom strive for a future governed by the rule of law," Cardin said.

The sanctions law became a sore point between the U.S. and Russia after it was signed into law by former President Barack Obama. Shortly after, Putin signed a law banning American citizens from adopting Russian children, in a move widely viewed as retaliation.

Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, has said he discussed the Magnitsky Act and the adoption law with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last year during an unusual campaign-season meeting that has been examined as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with Trump's campaign.

The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals may have in the United States, and also bar Americans from doing any business with them.

In 2016, the Magnitsky Act was expanded to allow the U.S. to target human rights abusers anywhere, not just in Russia. The Trump administration is expected to target additional individuals.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Al Franken bade farewell to Capitol Hill on Thursday with a lengthy broadside against the policies of the Trump administration and a call for politicians to commit themselves to "honesty in public discourse."

The speech put to rest questions about whether Franken, D-Minn., would follow through on his promise to resign over more than a half-dozen allegations that he had touched women inappropriately.

Until Wednesday, Franken had not announced the date he would leave the Senate, and at least two Democratic colleagues - Sens. Joe Manchin III, W.Va., and Patrick Leahy, Vt., - recently said that he should reverse his decision.

In his farewell address, Franken lamented what he described as the degradation of truth in the national political debate and the hyper-partisan environment this has produced. He will resign his seat on Jan. 2 and his successor, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, D, is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 3.

"As I leave the Senate, I have to admit that it feels like we're losing the war for truth," Franken said in his final speech on the Senate floor. "Maybe it's already lost. If that's what happens, then we have lost the ability to have the kinds of arguments that help build consensus."

As Republicans celebrated the passage of their tax plan in another part of the Capitol, Franken denounced the bill as a means of "showering corporations and wealthy donors with tax breaks and special favors."

"The Republican tax bill represents a slap in the face to those forgotten men and women" mentioned by President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, he said. "I guess the president forgot about them."

Franken is one of seven lawmakers who in the past three months have resigned or decided not to run for reelection after allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment. His departure is a symbol of the wider reckoning taking place over sexual misbehavior among powerful men and the power of women's allegations in the wake of the #MeToo campaign to raise awareness about sexual harassment.

On Thursday, Franken's speech was followed by warm tributes from colleagues who praised his legacy and said they were sad to see him go.

"I'm sorry that he's leaving under these circumstances," said Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "Everyone who has ever lived has had moments they wish they could erase. . . . We all draw strength from the healing power of redemption, and we can take heart in the knowledge that tomorrow is another day."

Franken, 65, joined the Senate in July 2009 and worked hard to distance himself from his prior career as a comedian. Cultivating a reputation as a serious legislator, he emerged as a powerful voice against corporate interests in politics and one of Democrats' most pointed and effective critics of Trump.

The two-term senator had risen as far as to be discussed as a possible candidate for president in 2020, until a woman said last month that he had grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping and forcibly kissed her in 2006. That woman, Leeann Tweeden, was followed by many others who alleged sexual misconduct by Franken.

The drumbeat of allegations proved to be too much. On Dec. 6, a wave of Senate Democrats called for Franken to step aside, and the next day he said he would resign in the coming weeks.

Franken, who apologized in the face of some of the accusations, was defiant as he made his announcement. He has denied some allegations while saying he remembered other situations differently from his accusers. He also sought to turn the tables on Trump, who faces arguably more-serious allegations of sexual misconduct.

"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," Franken said in his Dec. 7 speech.

In his remarks Thursday, Franken did not address the allegations or outline his plans after leaving office. Instead, he took a comprehensive look at his political values and how they are faring under Trump.

With several references to Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., a political mentor who died in 2002, Franken said the Trump administration and the Republican Party have "eviscerated" policies designed to protect racial minorities, women and LGBT people, among other vulnerable groups.

"The policies pursued by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans today could not stand in starker contrast to the values Paul championed," Franken said. "The values propelling the Republican agenda today are about consolidating political and economic power in the hands of corporations and the very wealthy."

As Franken spoke, several Democratic colleagues sat listening. For most of the speech, there was only one Republican - Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., - in attendance.

Franken thanked Alexander for seeking consensus and a shared understanding of the facts as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Franken is a member.

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for when we've done that," he said.

---

The Washington Post's Paul Kane and Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.
South Sudan's government and several armed groups on Thursday agreed to a ceasefire from December 24, the latest push to end a devastating four year war in the country.

"This is an encouraging first step. You have given a ray of hope back to your people but it is only a small step. Now practical action is needed," said African Union chairman Moussa Faki ahead of the signing of the agreement during peace talks in Ethiopia.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Houston's skyline is looking sleeker than ever.

Seven major skyscrapers were completed or came close to completion in 2017, according to building database The Skyscraper Center.

The biggest addition to Houston's skyline is 609 Main at Texas, the new 50-floor headquarters for United Airlines. In second place is one of Bayou City's most talked about buildings, Market Square Tower, a 40-floor residential space with a transparent pool hanging off the skyscraper's edge.

BABY PHOTOS: Houston's favorite skyscrapers as they looked while under construction

Now Playing: After 30 years of vacancy, rumor has it that North Korea has resumed work on the so-called Hotel of Doom. New satellite images show cranes and trucks around the 105-story pyramidal skyscraper officially known as the Ryugyong Hotel. Video: Travel & Leisure

Looking ahead to the new year, six skyscrapers are slated for completion in 2018. Of the six buildings under construction, all are above 350 feet in height, with the tallest, Capitol Tower, measuring 579 feet.

Once completed, Capitol Tower will be the third-tallest building constructed in Houston in the past 10 years.

Above: See a list of Houston's newest skyscrapers  as well as renderings for canceled buildings that never were.

Fernando Ramirez is a reporter for Chron.com and the Houston Chronicle. You can read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Of all the things reportedly stolen from his Dallas home, Mavericks center Charlie Villanueva seemed most distressed about one: his toilet.

According to his Tweets, Villanueva came home Tuesday to find his house had been ransacked.

He took to Twitter Tuesday night when he first discovered the incident.

"Damn my home in Dallas was just burglarized," he tweeted.

The alleged burglars apparently had an eye out for some very specific loot. Villanueva said all his appliances were stolen.

More importantly, he lost his toilet.

RELATED: Family left cleaning up after driver plows through home, severely injuring woman

"I'm still tripping, who steals a toilet? Like why a toilet," Villanueva said.

Villanueva also seemed to be upset with Dallas police's response time, saying they hadn't responded to his home for at least four hours after he called to report the burglary.

Dallas police spokesperson Dedra Webb said police ended up taking the report Wednesday morning because the burglary was initially reported at a time when "several high priority calls were holding and officers were unable to respond to the location."

Webb said Villanueva doesn't live at the location, but it was a house he bought to flip and resell.

Police say there's been a spike in residential burglaries in the area, especially at houses that are under construction or vacant.

Webb said officers "will continue to conduct extra patrols in the areas that have vacant residences under construction."

Villanueva followed up with another tweet early Wednesday morning about the toilet.

"I'm still in shock of the things they stole ... but the one that stand out the most is a toilet," he tweeted. "Bro a toilet, can't get my mind off that."

Click through the slideshow to see Villanueva's tweets about the reported burglary.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
The former treasurer of President Enrique Pena Nieto's party has been arrested as part of an investigation into the illegal use of public money to fuel his party's campaigns in Mexican elections last year, state officials announced Wednesday.

Alejandro Gutierrez is one of several allies of Mexico's president suspected of taking part in an embezzlement scheme to propel his party's chances at a time of deep dissatisfaction with the government, according to former officials connected to the scheme and hundreds of pages of documents reviewed by the New York Times.

The arrest of Gutierrez, a veteran figure in the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is part of a widening inquiry into the enormous corruption that occurred under the previous governor of the state of Chihuahua. The governor was a close friend of Mexico's president and a rising star in the party before he fled to the United States to avoid corruption charges.

Embezzling schemes

The case against him has already ensnared a half-dozen former state officials, some of whom are now cooperating with the authorities.

But the investigation is spreading and threatens to reach the highest ranks of government, according to testimony from the former state officials and financial records obtained by The Times.

Gutierrez is being investigated in connection with what former state officials call a nationwide plan to funnel tens of millions of dollars in public money to help the party's candidates in gubernatorial elections in 2016.

The money was sent to states with friendly governors in the party, who then created a trail of government contracts with fake companies that ultimately sent the money back for use in campaigns, according to the testimony and records.

At the time, top officials in the PRI were worried about losing the state elections in June 2016. The former state officials say the pattern of embezzling money to finance elections occurred in several states where the PRI was frightened of losing control.

The documents obtained by the Times focus largely on the embezzlement scheme in Chihuahua. According to the records, millions of dollars were transferred in January 2016 from the federal government to the state for the purpose of education.

The money was then diverted to four companies used to embezzle money - businesses the nation's tax auditor has blacklisted as front companies, according to the government contracts obtained by the Times.

Those companies, supposedly hired by the state of Chihuahua to provide educational services, received nearly $14 million in their accounts, according to the contracts and the bank records showing that the money had been received.

But the companies provided no such services, according to affidavits from current education officials in the state. Instead, the money was turned into cash and returned to the PRI to be used for election campaigns, according to the former state officials connected to the scheme.

One of them, Ricardo Yanez, the former minister of education in Chihuahua, described the plot in a sentencing document. He is serving a four-year prison sentence.

Some direct deposits

Not all of the money went to politicking, however.

About $230,000 was deposited directly into a business account operated by Gutierrez, the former PRI treasurer, according to officials and witness testimony.

The web of payments suggest a tie between the embezzlement scheme and the party's national leaders.

Contracts and bank records show that millions of dollars went to some of the same phony companies, or companies connected to them, in the states of Sonora and Durango. Bank records also show hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits to some of the companies by the state of Colima. And in their testimony, the former state officials connected to the scheme said it was carried out in the states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

State officials in Veracruz did not respond to repeated requests for comment. And the governor of Tamaulipas, an opposition politician who won his seat in 2016, said a review found no contracts with the four main fake companies.
AUSTIN -- Handgun license holders can carry handguns into churches unless there are posted signs that ban handguns on the premises, Texas' attorney general said in an opinion Thursday as he sought to clarify the state law in light of last month's deadly church shooting.

Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a legal opinion that he interprets state law as allowing handgun license holder to carry their weapon into a church unless the church "provides effective oral or written notice prohibiting the carrying of handguns on its property... as the law allows."

The policy treats churches the same as most other private entities by allowing its leadership to decide their gun policy for themselves.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who leads the state Senate, requested the opinion in the wake of the mass shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs where Devin Patrick Kelley sprayed bullets across the outside of the church before entering the building and shooting congregants, many of whom huddled under pews for protection.

Kelley killed 26 people and injured another 20 before a neighbor intervened, leading the gunman into a shootout that ended in a high-speed car chase. Authorities said Kelley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and that the shooting spree stemmed from a domestic dispute.

Paxton, a Republican, suggested after the shooting that churchgoers should consider bringing their guns to church to protect themselves from such attacks.

The issue reignited gun debates across the country. Democrats are pushing for greater gun control while U.S. John Cornyn has pushed for a stronger background check system.

Paxton also said in his opinion Thursday that churches are exempt from private security fees charged to private institutions in the state. That fee is normally $400 the first year and costs $225 annually.

Andrea Zelinski covers politics and the courts for the Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Send her tips at andrea.zelinski@chron.com.
Egypts current funding portfolio stood at $25.5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2016-17 in June, including both funds that had been received and used for projects, and funds that had been committed.

The amount of the current portfolio which had been used stood at $16.5 billion by June 2017, compared with $7.9 billion by September 2015.

The amount used between September 2015 and June of this year went primarily to support the budget, with $3.5 billion allocated to reduce the budget deficit.

Egypt's budget deficit decreased to 10.9 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2016-17, down from 12.5 percent the year before.

The government is aiming to reduce the total budget deficit to 4-5 percent of GDP by 2022, Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy said in October.

The funding also supported the electricity sector with $1.75 billion, the housing sector with $585.6 million, and the aviation and transport sector with $507 million, between September 2015 and June 2017.

The agricultural sector also received $392.9 million of the funding.

Egypt had received $4 billion of a $12 billion International Monetary Fund loan by July this year; the IMF on Wednesday approved the first batch  worth $2.03 billion  of the second tranche of the loan.

The World Bank also approved this month the disbursal to Egypt of a $1.15 billion loan, the last of three annual loans (2015-2017) called Fiscal Consolidation, Sustainable Energy, and Competitiveness Development Policy Financing loans worth a combined $3.15 billion.

The grants and loans boosted Egypt's foreign reserves, which recorded $36.723 billion at the end of November, up from $36.703 billion in October.

.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
Germany's powerful Cockpit union called on pilots to stage the first-ever strike at Ryanair on Friday as it stepped up the pressure in a Europe-wide battle for recognition from the no-frills airline.

Pilots are asked to hold a four-hour "warning strike" from 5-9am (0400-0800 GMT) at German airports after initial talks with the Irish carrier were cancelled at short notice, Cockpit said in a statement Thursday.

"All pilots directly employed by Ryanair will be called to strike," it said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


RTE2 are searching for brides-to-be to appear on the second series of Say Yes to The Dress Ireland.

The callout is for brides all across the country - so if you know any Longford brides-to-be who would be interested, make sure to let them know.

An RTE2 spokesperson said: "We want to hear from all brides: those with big and small budgets, who are traditional and non-traditional, those whove already searched high and low and those who are only beginning.

"Young, old, short or tall  if youre searching for the ultimate gown and would love to find one while being filmed, then Say Yes to the Dress Ireland wants you to get in touch."

Cameras will follow brides and their entourage through Vows.ie bridal salon, stocked with over 3,000 dresses from all over the world, as they try to find the wedding dress of their dreams.

Viewers will watch the drama unfold as Franc and the consultants attempt to find common ground with the bride's entourage - from the opinionated mums to the best friends who are all convinced that they know best.

All you need to do is click on the following link and apply: www.rte.ie/tv/audienceparticipation

For more information please email dress@shinawil.com

You may also be interested in reading:

Longford ladies selling lip balm with all profits going to North West Hospice

Drummer from Longford band Cronin to play at Shane McGowan's birthday bash
Former County Board Chairman Brendan Gilmore saw his hopes of returning to Longford GAA's top table fritter away at last week's annual convention as both Derek Fahy (Ballymore) and Gerry Hagan (Killoe Emmet Og) were re-elected to their respective Leinster Council representative positions.

Gilmore had been hoping to secure one of the two berths on the Leinster Council 12 months on from losing out to Eamon Reilly in the contest for County Board Chairman.

And, for a short period, at least, the former Longford Town Councillor looked to be very much in the shake-up after a first count left him in second position and two votes ahead of nearest challenger Gerry Hagan.

By that stage, Ballymore's Derek Fahy had already been safely returned to his post when his 50 first preference vote return left him some 21 votes ahead of the quota (29).

Despite Brendan Gilmore's first count showing, the murmurings from a number of eagle eyed delegates on the floor appeared to indicate that the Rathcline club man needed to be further ahead of his Killoe opposite number, Gerry Hagan ahead of the second count.

That assessment was one which was confirmed soon after when those results were read out to a hushed crowd inside Ballymahon's Cooney's Hotel at the Longford GAA Convention.

They showed that Gilmore had managed to secure just four of Fahy's transfers, leaving him on 23 votes and more importantly ten votes behind Hagan.

As the results of the election were confirmed, Brendan Gilmore briefly addressed delegates, saying: Council has spoken and I think it's time to hang up the boots.

It was a short, affecting statement which drew a sustained round of applause from those in attendance.

Both Derek Fahy and Gerry Hagan kept a lid on their own satisfaction at being reinstalled as Leinster Council representatives for a second year by paying tribute to Brendan Gilmore.

Fahy said while he had been somewhat taken aback by his poll-topping exploits, defeating a tireless worker like Brendan Gilmore gave him no great pleasure.

The evening, widely viewed as being one of the more low key of annual conventions, saw a number of questions being drawn at the Co Board's 130,915 net deficit for 2017.

One delegate asked Co Board Treasurer Albert Cooney to explain how players travel and team expenses had risen almost 60,000 in the space of 12 months.

The costs are way down compared to other counties, came the brusque reply from Cooney.

We (Longford GAA) are doing the best to provide the best possible set up for our county teams and I think we are doing a very good job.

There is no money being wasted and we are keeping costs to a minimum.

Albert Cooney, at times, seemed a tad irked by the direct questioning which was coming from one particular delegate.

You were Treasurer and you know yourself, he told him, bridging over his glasses to the floor below.

If you look at other teams, we are in the smaller bracket and even smaller counties are spending more than us.

Leinster Council representatives contest results:

Fahy, Derek 50

Hagan, Gerry 33 (16 first count +17 transfers 2nd count)

Gilmore, Brendan 23 (19 first count +4 transfers 2nd count).
Barclays has agreed a 165 million bank financing facility for the new Center Parcs Longford Forest in Ballymahon.

The bank financing facility represents one of the largest single investments for the midlands .

Barclays acted as Co-ordinator, Agent and Security Agent for the facility which is being provided by Barclays, HSBC and RBS.

The financing facility will support the construction of a 500 lodge forest resort spread across 400 acres of natural woodland, including a Subtropical Swimming Paradise, restaurants, bars and shops, a luxury spa and over 150 leisure activities.

Center Parcs Longford Forest is expected to open in summer 2019 and will be the companys first venture into the Irish tourism market.

The new development's significant positive economic and employment spin-offs have been widely touted for some time during both construction and in the immediate aftermath of its opening.

In what has been a busy few weeks for the UK leisure holiday village giant, confirmation of its first nonconstruction contract has also been made known.

Fagan Office Supplies, based in Mullingar, were chosen last week to be the main office furniture supplier for the site.

Head of Procurement for Center Parcs, Martyn Smyth, said: Where possible Center Parcs Longford Forest are committed to using local suppliers and have already engaged with more than 300 local companies following Meet the Buyers events earlier this year.

This, along with directly creating more than 1,000 jobs, will have a transformative effect on the local economy.

Read next:
Three Longford animal welfare organisations - Hungry Horse Outside, ISPCA National Animal Centre and Longford SPCA - are to receive 473,000 in funding.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed TD, today announced funding awards of 2,560,000 to 111 animal welfare organisations throughout the country involved in protecting animal welfare. The payments will be made with immediate effect.





Longford Allocations

Hungry Horse Outside, Currygranny, Newtownforbes, Co Longford - 75,000

ISPCA National Animal Centre, Kenagh, Co Longford - 375,000

Longford SPCA, Market Square, Longford Town - 23,000

You may also be interested in:

35,436 for Longford youth groups

The Minister said that it gives me great pleasure in awarding this funding which marks the largest allocation of funding by my Department to animal welfare organisations.

The Minister went on to acknowledge that these bodies provide a great service to the community in their work in safeguarding animals. Many of todays recipients provide facilities for neglected animals that sadly in a large number of instances have been abandoned by irresponsible owners and the increased funding being awarded is evidence of my Departments on-going commitment in protecting animal welfare and a recognition of the important role played by the many organisations throughout the country in safeguarding animals particularly pet and companion animals."

The Minister, making the announcement at the Donkey Sanctuary in Liscarroll, acknowledged its great work in donkey welfare and took the opportunity to thank its staff and volunteers and those working with other welfare organisations around the country, and went on to say that we are fortunate in Ireland in having a voluntary sector dedicated to animal welfare and the organisations in receipt of todays funding and their staff and volunteers provide great support and commitment to protecting surrendered, abandoned and at-risk animals."

The workload for many of these organisations has increased over recent years on account of a number of factors including more active enforcement of animal welfare legislation which has been enabled by the enactment and enforcement of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013. Commenting on this, the Minister said that I wish to acknowledge the good work too being undertaken by the DSPCA and the ISPCA Officers that are authorised under the Animal Health and Welfare Act and I welcome the very active role being played by these officers in enforcing and carrying out their duties as authorised officers in applying the Act to domestic animals."

The Minister went on to say that I am greatly concerned with continuing incidences of sheep being terrorised and killed by roaming dogs and the message needs to get out to all dog owners in both urban and rural areas on the importance of knowing the whereabouts of your dog at all times."

In many parts of the country, particularly urban areas, indiscriminate breeding particularly of dogs and cats has led to an oversupply of these animals which has led to an increased abandonment and the Minister went on to say I would remind recipients of funding of the importance of having in place neutering programmes for cats and dogs and all animals being re-homed should be neutered unless veterinary opinion advises otherwise. The Minister went on to mention that those welfare organisations involved in equine rescue should ensure that stallions being re-homed are castrated.

The Minister reminded all recipients on the necessity for good governance, a factor that is stressed in all communications with the welfare organisations. All recipients of funding have been provided with and have signed up to the Terms and Conditions/Code of Practice to be adhered to and the Minister said that these conditions provide a basis for sound welfare and good governance and management practices and must be adhered to in their entirety.

The Minister emphasised the importance of parents, guardians and adults being responsible when considering gifting animals as pets this Christmas time. The Minister said that owning a pet imposes a massive commitment including a high financial cost and while gifting animals may be well intentioned unfortunately the reality for such pets is that they are often abandoned by their new owners once the novelty wears off and it is left to the animal welfare bodies to deal with the consequences of abandoned animals which places unnecessary pressure on their resources."

The Minister urged those who are considering getting a pet this Christmas to consider adopting an animal from one of the many reputable rescue organisations. He advised those considering investing in a pet to heed the advice of the Irish Pet Advertising Advisory Group (IPAAG) and to make themselves fully aware of where their new pet has originated from. IPAAG provide a checklist on their website which members of the public should consult before proceeding to buy an animal. For further information, please visit www.ipaag.ie.

Finally, the Minister also acknowledged the great work undertaken by staff in his own Department on animal welfare matters and stated that he and his officials will continue to work closely with animal welfare groups. He reminded the public of the dedicated email address and helpline in operation in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for members of the public to report incidents of animal neglect and cruelty.

Check out the Longford Leader Farming Section HERE
Egypts Ministry of Antiquities will restore the Al-Sharaybi bathhouse in Islamic Cairo in collaboration with the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation.

Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, director-general of the Historic Cairo Rehabilitation Project, told Ahram Online that the restoration project is funded by a grant from the Prince Claus Foundation.

Abdel-Aziz explains that the restoration project will be executed in two phases. The first will include the removal of all dust and garbage accumulated around the site and the consolidation of the bathhouse walls from inside and outside as well as the oven area, while the second phase will include the restoration of the building and its decorative elements.

The Al-Sharaybi bathhouse was constructed during the rule of Sultan Qonsua El-Ghouri in 1500 AD and is located in the El-Ghouria area. The Moroccan trader Mohamed Dada Al-Sharaybi was the original owner of the bathhouse.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The strategic losses that both the US and Israel may suffer as a result of the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem should convince Washington to repeal its decision

The American decision to transfer its embassy to Jerusalem is an unjust decision and contrary to International Law; it undermines the foundations of peace; it inflames emotions; and it is condemned, unjustified and rejected.

That's how the international community described the American president's decision, and all those descriptions apply to the originator of this dangerous decision.

Just a few days passed before a succession of strategic losses began to emerge on the side of the US and Israel  those who took the decision and the one who instigated it.

The first outcome of this unjust decision was that it once again brought the Palestinian cause to the fore on the regional and international scene.

This occurred after years of wars and struggles in the region, from Syria to Iraq to Libya and Yemen, along with widespread terrorism across the regional map. It follows claims by some that the Palestinian cause has disappeared, no longer occupying the central position it did for decades, being overshadowed by the existing conflicts.

The Palestinian cause  and at its core Jerusalem  have come to the fore once more.

The second strategic loss is the deepening gap in confidence between Europe and the US, with Europe starting to distance itself from the US due to Trump's impulsive policies.

These policies have been built on his 'America First' approach and his antagonism toward even his partners' interests, accusing them of enriching themselves at the expense of his country, accusing Europe and NATO of not meeting their responsibilities, and insisting on extorting them.

A few days ago the German foreign minister gave a speech in which he directed comments at Trump, stating that the US is not behaving as a partner in bearing its international responsibilities.

Among the losses that Israel now endures is this Jerusalemite intifada and its spreading to all cities. Consequently, the confrontation with the occupation forces has returned to the forefront, exposing its existence and its inhuman practices, with its violence and crimes on show once again.

Hence, the ugly face of the Israeli occupation has returned to the main news bulletins, with its scenes revealing the crime of occupation every day.

Another loss is connected to President Trumps miscalculation of the consequences of his decision, putting American national security at risk  and even that of Israel.

For the previous 17 years, every former US president postponed executing this decision every six months, sending a letter to Congress asking to postpone the pledge of moving the embassy for reasons relating to the protection of American national security.

The next strategic loss will be the USs loss of its central role in managing the peace process. This role has given it overwhelming influence over the regions leaders and in the international arena and organisations. Washington was an annual destination for all the regions leaders.

Through its rash decision, America's role will suffer a big jolt and the world might even strip the US of the advantage of being a peace mediator after it has demonstrated its unprecedented bias toward Israel.

One of the positive outcomes of this period is the resulting Arab consensus, and this is definitely among the losses of Israel and maybe the US. For a long time, the Arabs have lacked a unified stance in criticising the US and its president, along with Israel and its prime minister as the main instigator.

The biggest danger is the possible appearance of new regional mechanisms that are antagonistic toward the American and Israeli positions, aiming to appease the region's neighbours, especially Iran and Turkey, in light of Jerusalem's symbolic role in binding together everything Arab and Islamic.

Mechanisms of communication might be set up, opening a door for dialogue and openness, promoting the policy of good-neighbourliness and thwarting plans for a total confrontation in the region that only serves the US and Israel.

Perhaps committees of Wise Men will be formed and subsequently a degree of regional understanding may materialise, beginning a process of bridging the rift, with those two neighbours who infringe Arab national security ceasing to do so.

This would be a meaningful response, and the harshest and most painful blow to those who have had evil intentions toward Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Among the losses for those who took the Jerusalem decision is that it has sparked a search for a new reference point for the peace process  one that moves away from the US. This includes the search for new international mechanisms, elements and intentions that will change the nature and influence of the American role and its extent, amid regional and international distancing from its irresponsible, narrow-minded and impetuous role.

To conclude, Russian President Vladimir Putins visit to Cairo should be added to the strategic losses for the US and Israel, as Russia's role in the region continues to grow. Although the visit is prearranged, its timing cannot be separated from current events. When the Russian bear arrived as a guest in the region and in Cairo, the message was loud and clear in several world capitals.

Washington should re-evaluate its calculations, realise the situation and rescind its decision before it misses the Middle East train.

The writer is the former assistant to the Egypt foreign minister.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


WASHINGTON-The tax reform plan is supposed to be a way to make American businesses more competitive so that companies will turn around and hire more workers and raise wages. Critics of the plan say the massive reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, among other changes favoring business, will mostly lead to more money in the hands of shareholders.

But what are the actual CEOs from some of the 20 largest companies in the Fortune 500 saying? Nearly all have vocally supported the GOP bill. We examined their earnings calls, public statements and did interviews with the chief executives. Many say at least some of the extra money would probably go to shareholders via higher dividends. Other popular plans for additional cash include: looking for other companies to buy and paying down debt. Only two - AT&T and CVS - have made explicit promises to hire workers. Apple and Kroger executives have made vague statements that they would probably hire more people. Not a single company has said it will raise wages, although AT&T announced a one-time special bonus for workers after President Trump signs the bill, which is expected to happen later this week.

AT&T

Plans to invest $1 billion more.

Current effective tax rate: 32.7 percent

AT&T announced Wednesday it will give its 200,000 U.S. workers a $1,000 "special bonus" because of the tax bill, but the company stopped short of raising wages.

Chief Financial Officer John Stephens told The Washington Post: "AT&T is committed to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 if a tax bill with a permanent corporate tax rate of 21 percent is signed into law. Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry domestically creates about 7,000 U.S. jobs, research shows."

Apple

Vague pledge to hire more in the United States.

25.5 percent tax rate

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in November: "I believe that tax reform is sorely needed in this country. The biggest issue with corporations is that if you earn money outside the United States, which most companies increasingly will, the only way you can bring it into the U.S. and invest is if you pay 40 percent [tax]. This is kind of a crazy thing to do, so what do people do? They don't bring it to the United States. . . . In my view, it should have been fixed years ago, but let's get it done now."

When asked by NBC's Lester Holt whether he expected Apple to use residuals to add more jobs, Cook said: "Yeah, I do."

CVS Health

Pledge to hire 3,000 more workers.

39 percent tax rate

CVS Health announced in October it would create 3,000 permanent jobs if corporate tax rates went down. CFO David Denton said in November: "To the degree that we have [tax] relief, there's a lot of investments that we think we can make within our business model that can more rapidly expand our business model across the country and deliver better care and higher quality and lower cost. So we would look to take the benefit of that and invest it clearly."

Berkshire Hathaway

Move would benefit shareholders.

27.5 percent tax rate

Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett said in October: "It would be good for a million shareholders of Berkshire in terms of their net returns."

Exxon Mobil

Priority is dividends.

Negative tax rate last year, although Exxon has paid 33 percent in other years

Exxon Mobil Vice President of Investor Relations Jeffrey Woodbury said in October what the company would do with additional cash: "The first things that are being funded are our dividends and our investment program. And if there's any cash left at that point given that the corporation does not want to hold large cash reserves, it's at that point that we will look for what the next best thing is. And maybe if we have some debt maturing, we'll pay that debt down."

Costco

Vague promise to help shareholders and employees.

34 percent tax rate

Costco CFO Richard Galanti said earlier this month: "I don't think we're going to sit around the table and say, we've got this big bucket of money, what can we do that we weren't prepared to do yesterday...I think you'll see us do what we do well, it's merchandising and driving business and taking care of our employees and ultimately taking care of our shareholders."

Kroger

Vague pledge to add more jobs and give more to shareholders.

33 percent tax rate

Kroger CEO W. Rodney McMullen said in November: "We're very excited about where the tax reform is headed. We believe it will also influence for us to continue to invest in our business, which will grow jobs. And I think what will end up happening is you'll see us doing a balance of everything together. Some of it our shareholders will benefit from, some of it our associates will benefit from, and our customers will benefit from it as well."

Walmart

No specific plans.

30 percent tax rate

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in November: "We haven't done a lot of detailed planning on it yet, but I do think something's going to happen and I'm optimistic that a lower tax rate for individuals as well as for business will help spur the economy and drive more growth. We think the conversation around a territorial system is appropriate. Beyond that, we'll just have to wait and see how the details work out."

General Motors

No specific plans.

21 percent tax rate

General Motors CEO Mary Barra said earlier this month: "We're very supportive of tax reform, and generally the bills before Congress move in the right direction."

McKesson

No specific plans, although company has been looking for M&A opportunities.

24 percent tax rate

McKesson has not commented directly on the tax bill, but CEO John Hammergren said in October: "We do prefer M&A [mergers and acquisitions]. But as you know, we do this in a portfolio way. We're not afraid to do share repurchases. We talked about our share repurchase in the quarter and we clearly talked about our dividend again this press release and we talked about M&A."

UnitedHealth

No specific plans. Company is watching health care reform.

40 percent tax rate

UnitedHealth has not commented directly on the tax bill, but CEO David Wichmann said in October: "I would like to just underscore that our capital deployment philosophies will be consistent with what you've seen in the past. It's important for us to drive strong returns and liquidity for our shareholders. You'll continue to see our dividend move to a market rate, and we'll be balanced about how we managed our debt positions as well."

Ford

No specific plans.

32 percent tax rate

Ford senior economist Bryan Bezold said earlier this month: "I would say it's too early to tell on [taxes]."

General Electric

No specific plans.

Currently paying a negative tax rate

General Electric CEO John Flannery said in November: "So, listen, I would say, I would characterize this and think of 2018 as a reset year."

Verizon

No specific plans, although the company has been raising dividends.

35 percent tax rate

Verizon has not made a direct comment on the tax plan, but CFO Matthew Ellis said in October: "The board of directors demonstrated our commitment to return value to our shareholders when they declared the 11th consecutive annual dividend increase last month."

Fannie Mae

Lower tax rate not helpful to company.

Fannie Mae CEO Timothy Mayopoulos said in November: "As we describe in our filing, a significant reduction in the corporate tax rate would require us to record a substantial reduction in the value of our deferred tax assets. We expect this would result in a significant net loss." [The mortgage giant is in its 10th year of federal government control.]

Heather Long reports for the Washington Post
MARTINSVILLE  A total of 10 Patrick County residents received a big surprise over the last four days when Rebecca Adcock, president of the Patrick County Chamber of Commerce, showed up at their places of employment.

An anonymous donor gave $5,000 with instructions to split the money evenly between 10 hardworking Patrick County citizens in time for the holiday season.

For the second time in its six-year tenure, the Secret Santa Chamber Christmas Bonus included the recognition of fire and rescue workers who live and serve in the area.

As for the fire and rescue volunteers, with the closure of the hospital, it has placed a bigger strain on the volunteer squads, Adcock said. Being able to recognize one of them and give them a little extra at the holidays is a small way of saying thank you.

Other eligible recipients needed to have worked for a Patrick County organization, business or county department for a minimum of 28 hours per week for three years or more at less than $45,000 a year.

Held in the form of a random drawing, employers throughout Patrick County nominated up to 25 of their hardest, most deserving workers to win one of the $500 grand prizes.

Per the Christmas bonus guidelines, only one employee from each employment office could win the prize and business owners were not eligible.

Employers submitted 290 nominations from December 4 to 12, granting nominees an approximately three-percent chance of winning. For 10 residents, the odds were in their favor.

Nancy Belcher with the Patrick County Commonwealth Attorneys Office received one of the $500 prizes.

Shes very active in our community and shes always helping other people, said Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Hynes. Strangers come into the office sometimes, not even on businesses about a case, just to say hi to Nancy. Shes involved in her church youth group and shes always willing to help people.

Herbert Conner with Hardin Reynolds Memorial School received recognition from the Chamber.

He is undoubtedly one of the finest individuals Ive ever met, said Principal Kirk Renegar. He probably takes more pride in his work that anyone Ive ever come across. Hes personable and has a tremendous relationship with the kids and has a high standard for everything that he does.

Douglas King with Ten Oaks won one of the 10 awards.

We value his great attitude, said Terri Birkett. vice president of sales and marketing. He has a smile on his face all the time and hes willing to do the things hes asked to do without complaint.

Elroy Booker with Rural Services received one of the bonuses.

Elroy is a hard worker, said business owner Johnny Marion. This will be a very big help for him and his family. Hes a good guy and is a good daddy.

Mary Ellen Carper with the Patrick County Sheriffs Office also received a prize.

She is a great employee, a dedicated employee and she gives all of herself to citizens of this county, said Sheriff Dan Smith.

Chavez Hines with Shaw Industries, Erica Cipko with the Stuart Volunteer Fire Department, Kim Young with Carter Bank and Trust, Barran Harbour with Stuart Tire and Auto Center and Michelle Corns with Piedmont Community Services also received a $500 Secret Santa Chamber Christmas Bonus.

This county could not run without all the great workers that we have, Adcock said.

Amie Knowles reports for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at
Under the heckling of 10,000 demonstrators on the morning of Monday 18 December, a new right-wing government was sworn in at Vienna, Austria. The coalition of the right-wing, Conservative Party (OVP) and the right-wing Freedom party (FPO) took two months to agree on a 182-page coalition program, which outlines the policy of the bourgeois block government for the next five years and (so they say) for the coming decade.

This government has a comfortable majority of 113 members of parliament out of 183 seats in total. It can also count on the support of the liberal NEOS-party, a moderate split from the Conservative Party, which gives the bourgeois parties for the first time a two-thirds majority in the first chamber, and thus the ability to change constitutional laws without the need to find a compromise with Social Democracy. The outcome of the 15 October election saw bubbly cracked open in the management boards and interested groups of capital, and this celebratory mood found a new zenith with the swearing in of the new cabinet under Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz of the Conservative Party.

Huge demonstrations have been organised all over the country / Image: own work

The nature of political crisis and polarisation in Austria

The sweeping victory of young star Sebastian Kurz, in fact the most long-standing member of various governments since 2007, in the general election of 15 October requires a clarification on the nature of polarisation in the country.

Kurz took over leadership of the Conservative Party in a coup in May of 2017. Before he and his well-organised clique sabotaged the standing party leader Mitterlehner and the grand-coalition government with the social democrats for months. The change in leadership implied a right-wing shift in the party, a defeat for the class-collaborationist wing of the bourgeois against the more radical layers who wished to form a bourgeois block to push back the involvement of organised labour via SPO and trade unions in state apparatus.

The youth have formed the most radical contingent of the 'resistance' / Image: own work

In reality the old grand-coalition was paralysed for years, a whole layer of politicians was forced to step down (SPO chancellor Faymann in May 2016, Conservative leader Mitterlehner in May 2017 and in the same month also the leader of the Green Party) revealing a looming political crisis and heavy tensions. The whole process of the political crisis was delayed by the political and technical problems in the election of a new head of state, a process that dragged all over the year of 2016.

The underlying reason for the tensions in the political caste and the feeling of malaise in society is the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. A grand-coalition was formed to deal with the big issues. In fact, the only thing that was fixed was the state funded bank bailouts, which has landed the tax payer with a 20bn bill so far.

The sluggish recovery lead to stagnating and falling incomes for the working class and a hike in unemployment, which peaked last winter at half-a-million out of work. At the same time there has been a permanent hike in prices, mainly in food and rent.

All the major channels for political and economic protest were closed for more than a decade by the grand-coalition and institutionalised class collaboration, creating a bad mood in all strata of society.

The bourgeois, mainly the industrialists, got nervous because of the sinking production costs in Southern Europe and Germany, fearing their competitiveness on the stagnating European markets. In the absence of big workers protests since 2003 and a yearlong ebb in the youth movement they got big headed and forgot that the ritualised class collaboration only delayed the counter reforms they needed to have to increase their share of profit.

In the working class the mood was not better either. The links between the unions, the shop steward committees and the workers alike were loosened as individuals sought individual solutions to their problems, as a result of the paralysation onto the tops.

The idea of a radical attack on the working class never left the minds of the bourgeoisie. It mainly found an expression in sectors of the industrials who wished to openly attack organised labour, which led to a strike movement in the metal workers sector in 2011. Back then the situation was saved by a joint intervention of the bosses of TUC and the Economic chamber, to the fury of the metal-industrialists who wanted to teach the labour movement a lesson: although the outcome of the spat was far from a clear win for them.

Sebastian Kurz / Image: OSZE 2017 Mauerbach

The will to attack and push back labour found more and more political expression in the Conservative Party. Kurz was chosen as the figurehead for this wing. They correctly sensed he was a characterless poster boy, who stands for nothing but his prestige: they knew his program could be written by anyone who pays the bill. It was the major financial and industrial group, the Raiffeisen-group, that financed his political career and provided him with favourable media coverage through its dominating corporate news outlets. He was carefully protected from any bad news over the years.

His big moment arrived during the refugee crisis of summer 2015. From one day to the next, the liberal poster boy Kurz switched to a bloodthirsty, racist saviour of homeland who openly stated the need to drown the refugees in the Mediterranean. He used his contacts with shady Balkan politicians to close the Balkan route and was celebrated by Boulevard as the saviour of the country. A defiant anti-Merkel stand also helped to shape his demagogy, in a country that historically suffers from an inferiority complex towards its big neighbour Germany.

As a representative of the Ministry of Foreign affairs and Integration (of migrants into Austrian society) he used the so-called crisis to stir up state-orchestrated racism, mainly against Muslims. It was revealed, for example, that he paid off a professor at the University Vienna to produce a fake study on so called parallel societies in the kindergartens of Vienna. In the absence of a terrorist attack, the Boulevard media waxed lyrical about security problems everywhere, portraying Vienna as a city devastated by migrant hordes of thieves, violators and brutes of all sorts.

Kurz demagogically stirred and politically profited from this climate of his own making. It was clear that with his true program of cuts and attacks on living standards he could not win the election. However, class collaboration and falling living standards created a mood of anger in society that then was demagogically directed towards migration.

This analysis is not the product of the superior understanding of the Marxists. Sebastian Kurz and his boys themselves planned their political coups on this understanding. In a leaked document, which contains a detailed plan for seizing power within the Conservative Party, an outline of a winning electoral strategy, and planned cuts and removal of government personnel, we can read:

The mood in the electorate is characterised by insecurity, a fear of falls in living standards (work, education, wealth), feelings of envy, as one half of society lives on the expense of the other () sullenness towards the system, a mood of impasse, we cannot go on like this, the system reached its limit: hatred towards the old parties, distrust for the elites, low opinion of the system a a lack of faith that the system can solve the problems in a long run. Mood = Mood for a change () at this time there is instability in Europe, despite an upswing in economy.

Based on this correct understanding of the situation, Kurz demagogically turned away the anti-elite mood into an anti-migration mood, scapegoating immigrants for the ills of society. This is the classical function of racism, which found a real master in the new Prime Minister.

It was the combination of an ever-shrinking base of traditional well-off voters, plus an influx of the losers of the last decade, that swept OVP into the first place in the election. The Social Democrats came second, as they would only could win optimistic voters (mainly old people), third place went to FPO, who only got pessimists onto the ballot: in that 59 percent of blue collar gave a vote to the nationalists. The Greens dropped out of parliament after 20 years.

It is important to note that the deep polarisation in society is not along class lines, but along attitudes towards migration. The right wing could galvanise around an anti-migration mood, which gave them a comfortable majority in parliament. This was only made possible by the class-collaboration of labour and TU-leaders, who found no measure to stop the sliding living standards in recent years. Working-class identity is a cultural phenomenon but lacks any policy of action. The burden of solving problems, mainly ever-increasing work pressure, has been left to each individual.

But even before this government sets to work, the propagandists of the FPO (the Conservatives have a very small voters base in the industrial proletariat) are shutting up in the factories, to the point they are starting to claim they never called for a vote for the nationalists. This government was not only sworn in while facing demonstrations in Vienna (10,000), Graz (800), Innsbruck (2,000), Linz (1,500 and 4,000), Salzburg (500), but also a shift in the political mood in the fabric of the country and a looming movement in the schools and universities.

Government program

The program of the government is clearly written by the major interest groups of capital. A short list reads as follows:

The central issue is push back against labour organisations, starting from the government but also against collective bargaining, labour institutions (the Labour Chamber, a corporatist state institution controlled by trade unions, a result of the Revolution of 1918) and legal powers (for example in social security insurance). The reintroduction of a 12- hour day and de-bureaucratisation of work security (i.e. attacks on terms and conditions) are other focal points.

In the housing market the landlords should have more rights than tenants in all aspects, rents in Vienna will increase a 10 percent, social housing is to be squeezed.

Social security for the poorest is being cut, increasing the pressure to enlarge and deepen the precarious labour market, which is accompanied by an increasing import of migrant labour bound to all sectors.

Unemployment security is to be cut.

University fees are to be reintroduced and the segmentation of education increased. High-schools will have the right to introduce new barriers to vet the entrance of ten years old. Standardised education checks throughout educational careers will begin at the age of three.

A family will be defined as the unity of man and woman with children, as the natural cell and glue of a functioning society. The natural role of the woman is described as educating, nursing, teaching, economy, environmental care and voluntary work. Tax regulations, child care institutions and so on are to be reshaped along this ideal.

Social security money will be channelled into the starving financial market in Vienna and more state guaranties for venture capital are to be given out to these parasitic people.

The main corporate tax shall be halted.

Internal security will be stepped up, the farmers will get more tax breaks and subventions and state protection against animal rights groups, and passports will be given out to old-Austrians and Sud-Tyrolians, which is not only a stupid expression of historic revisionism, but will also nab potentially 300,000 conservative-nationalist voters for the next elections.

And overall there will be renewed pressure against Islam, which is mentioned no fewer than 21 times.

Resistance!

The slogan of the main movement against the coalition is resistance. The social democratic organisations have produced this slogan to organise their recovery for new elections, and plan to change the government by putting themselves back into coalition. But this orientation lacks any concrete perspective on how to fight this vicious government and in fact  given the state of the social democracy, led by liberal elements  offers no alternative at all.

Der Funke comrades at a demo / Image: own work

The main weakness lies in the leadership of the trade unions. Though TUC president Foglar correctly describes the government as right wing nationalists, whose programme is dictated by the industrialists, he insists on TU political neutrality. Even to the point he calls on unionists not to participate in the protest movement.

The aim of these reactionary policies is to maintain the process of class-collaboration and state-involvement at all costs. The hope is that, by giving a shoulder to the government, it is possible to bargain away the most vicious elements of the push back against organised labour from state participation.

This hope expresses the political orientation of the labour bureaucracy, that once again represents the most conservative element in the political equation.

Der Funke in youth bloc / Image: own work

In the short and mid-term this means that the pressure on the individual workers and the isolated shop steward committees will immensely increase. Because the bosses do not wait. Immediately after the bourgeois election victory, in many sectors the collective bargaining was cancelled, and the bosses openly spited labour leaders: giving them teach-ins on changing sexual behaviour instead of talking about work conditions, as happened to stunned metal worker delegates. This government is not just a bourgeois government, but the spearhead of a bourgeois block, that wants to finish off labour participation in governance.

Der Funke comrade speaking at a demo / Image: own work

But we need to be clear, this government is not fascist, even if very reactionary bastards take office. In their shadow, a rats tail of even worse people and actual fascists reside in the magnificent edifices of imperial Vienna. But liberal and social democratic exaggerations in reality only cover their own political weakness and responsibility for the state of affairs.

The strategy of the bourgeoisie is not to smash labour but to push them back. Learning from the experience of the first bourgeois block government from 2000-2007, which saw the collapse and split of the FPO within three years, they are now careful not to provoke the movement. They are avoiding this by the politics of the stick and carrot, at the moment by offering the TUC to bargain for half a year the demolition of the labour chamber. Behind the scenes there is the stick: they will smash the union leaders by law if they organise any form of non-verbal resistance. The labour leadership eagerly agrees to this arrangement, but the real opposition to this treacherous farce is already mobilising.

Der Funke comrade selling the paper / Image: own work

Also, the provocations over the collective bargaining will go on, and so a situation of permeant tension and debate in the unions and even Social Democratic Party prevails: for now.

We understand that, given the sell-out policies of the tops, it will take time for the labour movement to break through the barriers imposed by the policies of the leadership. But given the general pressure and the aggression of the bosses, at a certain point even spontaneous movements cannot be ruled out in this new era of class struggle.

In order to advance the case of the working class and youth, which can only be based on the general interests of the class and not on the interests of its most privileged sector: the labour bureaucracy, Marxists argue for oppositionist resolutions and leadership candidatures in all labour organisations. Based on the fierce resistance against the bourgeois block we need organisations (the most promising are the youth organisations) and individual leaders that stand for all-out opposition and forming of an uncompromising defensive action on class issues against the bourgeois.

In contrast, the social democratic left (and the left that has broken with social democracy for the moment) are obsessed with creating structures, escaping a clash with the bureaucracy and avoiding a serious debate on the perspectives, program and methods for the movement. This is based on one hand on opportunism in the social democratic organisations. But even in the independent elements, there is a mood of defeat and a sense of enduring a long winter.

Given this momentous stall in the labour movement, it is the youth that has the leading role in the movement. Thought the aforementioned demonstrations had a general character, involving many workers and left-wingers alike, the most vivid element at the demos were the youth, mainly the school students. About 2,000 school students came out on strike on Monday, and the mood in this sector of the demos was of a completely different character than the rest of the protest. The slogans were the most radical, including slogans about bringing down the government (which the Marxists, who played an important role in the preparation of the strike, introduced) and one solution  revolution. This is not only a reflection of youthful energy, but politically the expression of a generation that is unspoiled by past defeats: a heavy burden on the shoulders of even the most militant experienced activists.

In January we will see the process of fermentation at the university will take shape. The introduction of student fees will not go unnoticed by the students, and also here the Marxists will participate right from the start, by adding this question to the upcoming debate on the orientation and method of the students struggle.

Flying the flag of Marxism / Image: own work

The Marxists of the IMT are the most optimistic political force of working-class and youth in the new scenario. We have a clear understanding of the overall situation, the nature of the bourgeois block and the limitations of the resistance movement, but also the potential weakness of a government that was voted in on lies and forgeries. We also have an understanding of our limited material forces, which in a sense is also the result of the defeats of the past decade. But already in these first days of this government we have proved capable of grasping the ear and take a leading role in the movement. The work of the past years, the orientation towards schools and universities and also the toehold we maintain in the factories and unions has made a difference from the governments first day. But above all we are maintain a deep understanding and trust in the power of the youth and working class to (as we as we say in our slogan) bring down the government and struggle for socialism!
(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Ellanje Ferguson

By Ellanje Ferguson | eferguso@masslive.com

Britain's Prince Harry will marry American actress Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018 at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and the couple has had another photo shoot to celebrate their engagement.

The engagement was first announced on Nov. 27, 2017 by Kensington Palace officials.

Don't Edit

On Thursday, December 21, three photos were released on the Kensington Palace's official Instagram account.

This the photo the couple has chosen to release as the official portrait photograph to mark their engagement.

Don't Edit

The photographs were taken by photographer Alexi Lubomirski at the Frogmore House in Windsor.

Don't Edit

Prince Harry is currently fifth in line to the British throne. Upon their marriage, the couple will live at Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace in London.

Don't Edit

(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Want more on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?

Read more about the couple and their engagement on MassLive.com:

Don't Edit
The funeral Mass for Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who headed the Archdiocese of Boston for 17 years until his resignation, in 2002, when he faced possible criminal charges for his role in shielding priests accused of sexual abuse, will be held today at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Once as popular and influential as New York's Cardinal John O'Connor at whose funeral, in 2000, he said the homily before attendees that included President Bill Clinton, Law's death marks the passing of a cardinal whose legacy became one with the Church's failure to protect victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the 90-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals and former Vatican Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II, who accepted Law's resignation, will preside at the liturgy, which itself has brought condemnation from some survivors, along with other cardinals and bishops.

Pope Francis will preside over the final rites and Law will be buried at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where he served as archpriest until his retirement in 2011.

The funeral rites are customary for a cardinal who has been living in Rome, but have drawn criticism from victims of clergy abuse and their advocates, who perceive the Church as still putting its welfare above accountability for victims and protection from sexual predators.

The rites reflect the support Law continued to have among the Church hierarchy like Sodano, who has also been accused of blocking sexual abuse investigations, and even under a pope who promised zero tolerance for those in the church who abuse minors and anyone who would cover up the abuse.

Law, 86, died Wednesday in Rome, where he had lived since 2004 and where he remained an influential figure in the Church.

His biography as a member of the College of Cardinals makes no mention of his resignation and the millions of dollars of lawsuits brought by victims of pedophile priests that raised the prospect of the archdiocese seeking bankruptcy protection, but refers to him as "Archbishop emeritus of Boston."

Members of the College of Cardinals hold that position for life and are entrusted, until they turn 80, with electing a new pope, and serving as advisers to him. They are involved in running the various secretariats, congregations and commissions within the Roman Curia, the Church's central government.

Law was said to have been particularly active in the Congregation of Bishops, involved in the process of appointing new bishops, as well as the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. This latter department opened an investigation into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States, implying their ministries were not adhering to Catholic doctrine, something that prompted protests by lay defenders of the sisters.

Francis expressed condolences to the College of Cardinals over Law's death in a telegram that did not mention Law's role in the Church's failure to hold pedophile priests accountable in the abuse of the minors under their care.

Statements by American bishops, including Springfield's Mitchell Rozanski and Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Law's successor and chair of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, did reference what the victims of clergy abuse have suffered.

Law, who reportedly offered to resign in April 2002 as the Boston Globe investigation unfolded the extent of how many priests had been accused of sexual abuse and diocesan efforts to cover up the scandal, did apologize when his resignation was accepted by John Paul II in December of that year, saying, "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness."

According to the Associated Press, quoting various sources, more than 6,500, or about 6 percent of U.S. priests, have been accused of molesting children, and the American church has paid more than $3 billion in settlements to victims since 1950.

The Harvard-educated Law, once the confidante of presidents and an influential voice in politics, did testify before a criminal grand jury in 2003, but charges were never brought against him in the state's 16-month investigation. Massachusetts did not pass a child endangerment law until 2002.

Thomas F. Reilly, then attorney general in the state, said at the time that as many as 1,000 children had been sexually abused by 250 priests in the Boston archdiocese over a 40- year time period and that Law was aware of the problem even before he came to the diocese.

The scandal became the subject of the Academy Award-winning 2015 movie "Spotlight," which highlights the Boston Globe investigation into the diocesan cover up.

Allegations of sexual misconduct by clergy continue to be made both in this country and abroad.

In June 2002, the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a set of procedures, The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, for dioceses to enact in dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct.
SPRINGFIELD - Members of Massachusetts Gaming Commission praised MGM Springfield on Thursday for its latest progress report, which revealed it remains on schedule with its $960 million casino project and continues to exceed its goals for diversity hiring and contracting.



Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby was among members also praising the quality of the project and MGM's historic preservation efforts. MGM Springfield provided its latest quarterly report, for the period ending Sept. 30, at the commission's meeting in Boston.



"I just have been impressed that your company has made commitments to things -- preservation is one, sharing with the community is a second, and diversity is a third -- that are the kind of things people pay lip service to all the time," Crosby said. "But I get the impression you really do care and really do pay attention to these issues. I take pride in having brought you folks to our state."



The project remains on schedule for an opening in September 2018.



The construction site is essentially sealed from the weather for the winter months as construction work continues, MGM officials said.

The hiring of minorities for the casino project was listed as 22.2 percent as of Sept. 30, 2017, as compared with the project goal of 15.3 percent, according to MGM Springfield. The hiring of women was 9.25 percent as compared with the project goal of 6.9 percent, and the hiring of veterans was listed at 10.16 percent as compared with the goal of 8 percent.

Regarding design and construction commitments, 19.2 percent of the commitments have gone to women-owned business enterprises as compared with the goal of 10 percent. In addition, 8.4 percent of the commitments have gone to minority-owned businesses as compared with the goal of 5 percent, and commitments to veteran-owned businesses was listed at 7.3 percent compared with the goal of 2 percent.



MGM Springfield listed the hiring of 96 companies that are women-owned, minority-owned and veteran-owned through Sept. 30.



Crosby said there were expectations of revenues and economic development from the beginning, but MGM has gone "above and beyond" those factors and expectations.



"It's been a really great relationship," MGM Springfield President Michael Mathis said, praising the commission and MGM's team. "For us, 2017 was a tremendous year. We are looking forward to a great 2018."



MGM is having a great impact and is "changing lives," Mathis said, adding he believes that is what is motivating the team.



Commission members agreed that photographs of the work site, comparing last year to this year, showed dramatic change. They were also impressed with a report about the hotel that is under construction on site, including an interior view of what the hotel rooms will look like, with Crosby saying the view was "really cool."

In other news, the gaming commission decided to take no action on a request for mitigation funds to assist Focus TV Community Television with its future relocation from the MGM site, because the relocation deadline has been extended. Focus TV had applied for $400,000 to assist with its relocation.

Commission members said the costs were not borne in 2017, the application year, but Focus TV can seej the funding again in 2018. Mitigation funds come from casino revenues, needing approval from the commission for specific causes to offset any casino repercussions.

Focus TV initially had a notice to vacate its ground-floor location at 1200 Main St., by November of 2017. However, MGM granted the company at least a one-year extension to vacate from the MGM-owned building or even longer.
CHICOPEE -- A potential Christmas disaster in the form of a sewage flood at Lorraine's Soup Kitchen and Pantry has been averted thanks to an outpouring of community support.

"The community has been brilliant," said Andrea Marion, executive director of the soup kitchen at 170 Pendexter Ave. "They have been amazing to us."

Soup kitchen personnel arriving at the facility Wednesday morning discovered to their horror that a backed-up toilet, left running all night, damaged a majority of the Christmas toys that had been stockpiled in the basement awaiting distribution. At least 150 toys were damaged in the flood, Marion said.

The organization's call for replacement toys, issued on its Facebook page and elsewhere, resulted in a dramatic response.

"The community has really stepped up and helped us quite a bit," Marion said. "Businesses have stopped by, individuals have stopped by to give gifts."

Another major boost came from representatives of the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program, who reached out to Chicopee Police Lt. Holly Davis earlier in the week and said they had some extra toys.

Chicopee police accepted the offer. When disaster struck at Lorraine's, police realized the extra toys could help replenish the food pantry's supply, said Michael Wilk, public information officer for the department.

On Thursday, a Chicopee Christmas caravan to a Holyoke warehouse where the Marines were storing their toys yielded a truckload of replacement toys for Lorraine's and more.

School resource officers, part of the caravan, stuffed their cruisers with toys to take back to the schools. A flatbed truck, provided by Interstate Towing Inc., brought a load of toys to Shriners Hospital for Children in Springfield.

Wilk posted an account of Chicopee's Christmas caravan on the department's Facebook page.

"Our officers truly enjoyed bringing these gifts, knowing that kids will be smiling this Christmas morning," Wilk said. "Again, thank you to the US Marines for their generosity, and thinking of us, so we could deliver these toys."

Marion said the soup kitchen is now in good shape as far as Christmas toys and gifts go. Donations of paper goods - paper towels, napkins, toilet paper and the like - as well as cash are still needed.

For more information, go to lorrainessoupkitchen.com or call 413-592-9528.
SPRINGFIELD -- After setting a June 18 trial date for terror suspect Alexander Ciccolo, government attorneys discussed with a judge possible provisions that may have to be made for what would be this city's first international terrorism case.

Ciccolo, 25, of Adams, was charged in 2015 with illegal weapons possession and assaulting a jailhouse nurse, and later charged with attempted provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. He has been held without the right to bail since his arrest.

Ciccolo had been discussing on social media plans to amass weapons and explosives to launch terror attacks to show his allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to court records. Federal agents arrested him outside his apartment after he collected a duffel bag full of guns from an undercover informant, investigators said.

The FBI released portions of an interview video featuring Ciccolo telling an agent he is a devout Muslin and lauding IS. He has appeared at many hearings in U.S. District Court wearing Muslim headwear.

During a pretrial conference Thursday, Ciccolo's mother came to court wearing a traditional Muslim headdress for the first time in the two-year-old case.

Shelley MacInnes, Ciccolo's mother, granted Boston public radio station WBUR an interview in July, identifying herself as a devout Catholic and defending her son as compassionate and someone "who would not hurt a fly."

MacInnes, of Peru, brought her son to a Walmart in the Berkshires to buy a pressure cooker, according to early court filings.

MacInnes left the courtroom without comment Thursday. David P. Hoose, a lawyer for Ciccolo, did not respond to a request for comment.

MacInnes and Ciccolo's stepfather have attended most court hearings when Ciccolo was present. She told WBUR that her son had become "reclusive and anxious." Ciccolo was dismayed "about the situation ... here in the U.S. and the Middle East, and all around the world -- what was happening to his Muslim brothers and sisters, getting killed, how they're being treated," MacInnes told a producer with the radio station.

Lawyers Thursday hinted that a plea agreement may be in the works, but neither side was more specific.

"Whether we set a trial date or not, we would continue discussing the case with the government," Hoose told U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Regan suggested to the judge that the clerk's office would have to begin planning months in advance to smoothly orchestrate jury selection in a terror case.

"I'd imagine a number of jurors would not want to sit on a case involving international terrorism," O'Regan said.

Attorneys on both sides estimated the trial would last approximately three weeks.

In a recent ruling, Mastroianni denied a defense motion urging the judge to force the government to reveal the identities of six confidential FBI informants and two undercover agents. Federal prosecutors resisted, arguing it was a matter of national security.

O'Regan also raised the possibility for a larger venue outside the courthouse for the initial phases of jury selection.

In 2000, an enormous pool of jury prospects mustered at Symphony Hall to fill out questionnaires in the case of nurse-turned-serial killer Kristen Gilbert, as that was a death penalty case and posed logistical and philosophical challenges. Jury selection in that case took more than a month. Gilbert was convicted and is serving four consecutive life sentences.

Another pretrial conference in the Ciccolo case is set for Jan. 24.
SPRINGFIELD -- Two Springfield residents, both on bail awaiting trial for possession of heroin, were arrested Wednesday afternoon when investigators executed a search warrant at a Grenada Terrace apartment, police said.

Lemanuel Encarnacion, 27, and Karen Garcia, 32, were charged with heroin trafficking, possession of a class B substance and a school-zone violation after police said they found 1,640 bags of heroin, another 15 grams of raw heroin, an unspecified amount of cocaine, and $1,300 in cash.

The suspects were also arrested for heroin possession in May, police said. According to police spokesman Ryan Walsh, Encarnacion is on probation for an earlier conviction for cocaine possession with intent to distribute.

The raid was carried out by the Springfield Narcotics Unit and the Massachusetts State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section.
CHICOPEE - Police seek the public's help as they investigate the theft of approximately $150 worth of steaks from Arnold's Meats late Monday afternoon.

Public Information Officer Michael Wilk posted surveillance video of the suspect on the department's Facebook page.

The male suspect entered the store about 4 p.m., put the steaks in a basket and then ran out and across Grattan Street.

New York strips? Ribeyes? It was not immediately clear.

Those with information are asked to call detectives at 413-594-1711. Or, send a private message to their page.
WESTFIELD - The Salvation Army is still accepting donations to make 1,500 Westfield children's wishes come true this year.

Salvation Army Volunteer Services Coordinator Laurie Matthews said there are 365 families with 1,500 children in need of Christmas gifts this year in the city. And with the holiday just days away, Matthews is hoping the community will continue its outpouring of seasonal joy so that everyone will have a gift.

"In addition to the families that already signed up with us, we found out last week there are families staying at the Quality Inn that were displaced from Puerto Rico that we are trying to get gifts for," Matthews said.

Matthews said they have children of all ages in need, but they especially need gifts for older children.

Across the city businesses, schools, churches and more have participated in the Salvation Army's Angel Tag program. The name, age, gender, size and wish list of a child in need is listed on an Angel Tag and participants fulfill the needs of the child on the tag.

At City Hall, employees fulfilled 35 Angel Tags for the second year in a row.

"We had children up to 14 years-old," said Leanne Cloutier, executive assistant to Mayor Brian P. Sullivan. "Everyone enjoys doing this - staff start asking about it in early November."

Matthews said in addition to the children adopted by City Hall staff, several churches each collected gifts for more than 100 children and the high school adopted 100 angels this year.

For Matthews, the Angel Tag program is a small way to give back.

"This is my eighteenth year as a volunteer," she said. "There was a time when I needed help from the Salvation Army, and they never made me feel 'less than' because I needed help. So, I began volunteering and because of Salvation Army, I returned to school in my 40s and got my degree as a social worker."

Matthews said this is an especially busy time of year, but helping families at the holidays makes it worthwhile.

"We have families who leave in tears because they are so happy their children will have gifts to open on Christmas morning," Matthews said.

This year, Matthews hopes to provide a Merry Christmas to all 365 families on her Angel Tag list, as well as the families from Puerto Rico who relocated here after the hurricane devastated the island.

Anyone wishing to donate new gifts for children can drop off items at the St. Joseph Parish Social Center, 73 Main St., from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. through Friday, Dec. 22.
Montana Department of Commerce Director Pam Haxby-Cote Tuesday announced $318,000 in funding will be awarded through the Indian Equity Fund (IEF) Small Business Grant to support the growth of 28 Native American-owned businesses across Montana.

"The businesses receiving these grants represent a cross-section of the increasingly diverse industries driving our reservations and native communities," Haxby-Cote said. "By supporting Montanas Native American entrepreneurs, the Indian Equity Fund grows prosperity for Indian Country and an even stronger economy for all Montanans."

http://commerce.mt.gov/News/PressReleases/montana-department-of-commerce-announces-grants-for-28-native-american-businesses
Sheridan, Wyoming wasnt the first place on my Wyoming bucket list. Hell, it didnt even make the second or third spot on that list. But thats exactly why I had to go there. You see, this year Ive been making it a point to see those towns that I normally wouldnt. To go beyond those cities that travel writers like me typically cover and discover those places that havent been given the chance that they deserve. So, thats how I ended up in Sheridan. A town that doesnt get any more Wild West thanks to a colorful history, fascinating locals, and almost impossible to get to access. (Seriously, you have to take a very tiny charter plane from Denver  which also stops in Riverton, Wyoming during the flight  just to get there.) But if you think about it, arent these usually the elements of a great destination?

Breanna Wilson

https://www.forbes.com/sites/breannawilson/2017/12/19/36-hours-in-sheridan-wyoming-the-cowboy-states-coolest-small-town/#68739d0a7c4e
Wyomings population has dropped for the second consecutive year, according to data released by the states Economic Analysis Division on Wednesday. In total, the state has lost 6,649 residents since the energy bust began in 2015.

Arno Rosenfeld 307-266-0634, [email protected]

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/wyoming-loses-over-residents-since-start-of-energy-bust-/article_292bd7ba-9f91-5134-94ce-f844488b2907.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
The State Information Technology Services Division (SITSD) of the Department of Administration has a mission to provide shared IT services to support the needs of the state and citizens of Montana. We offer an innovative and collaborative work environment where employees are valued and supported. In addition, our employees have the opportunity to be involved in some of the most exciting and innovative IT projects and initiatives in development within Montana state government.

https://www.dataprivacycareers.com/jobs/2784503-chief-information-security-officer-at-state-of-montana
The UK Government has just announced that from 2020, high-speed broadband will be considered a legal right for all its citizens, meaning service providers must offer access to any person that requests it. The announcement follows a proposal from BT, the UKs largest telecommunications provider, to provide universal broadband coverage to all areas of the UK under a voluntary agreement. The Government, however, felt the importance of universal broadband access required a regulatory hand in the matter.

Rich Haridy

https://newatlas.com/uk-government-internet-access-legal-right/52710/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=811c81e393-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-811c81e393-92465361
The year is 2020, and enough time has past for the Federal Communication Commissions repeal of net neutrality rules to have changed the way we communicate online. Whats it like to use the internet?

Negotiating internet access will feel a lot like negotiating your television cable or cellphone bill. Youll be forced to untangle various packages relating to different sites and services you might use, pay for ISP-branded content you probably dont care about, and get that sinking feeling at the beginning of every month that, one way or another, youre overpaying.

Fred Benenson

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-benenson-net-neutrality-future-20171218-story.html
Get your clients to trust you by using the principle of authority.

By Ken Sterling

https://www.inc.com/ken-sterling/the-best-way-to-build-trust-with-clients-highlight-your-weaknesses-first.html
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York have identified 35 genes that are particularly highly expressed in people with long-term Lyme disease. These genes could potentially be used as biomarkers to diagnose ...
Advertisement

"We have shown that African teams in one of the poorest countries can eliminate human rabies through mass vaccination of dogs. What is needed next is additional funding and a concerted political will," said Zinsstag, an epidemiologist and veterinary public health expert.The investigation was carried out in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad where 1.1 million people live alongside some 30,000 dogs. In 2012 and 2013, 20,000 dogs were vaccinated each year against rabies. Hence, more than 65% of the city's estimated dog population participated in the intervention, "an excellent coverage rate," said Zinsstag. "We mobilised the neighbourhood chiefs and they in turn mobilised the people and their dogs."Swiss TPH is a world-leading institute in the field of human and animal health - increasingly known as "One Health" - and maintains a productive collaboration with Chad dating back to the 1990s. Swiss TPH collaborated with a public-private partnership in Chad, namely the Centre de Support en Sante Internationale (CSSI) and the Institut de recherche en elevage pour le developpement (IRED). An additional player was the Laboratoire Central Veterinaire (LCV) in Bamako, Mali.For the genetic analyses of collected rabies viruses, Swiss TPH was supported by the ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, and by the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. At Swiss TPH, an interdisciplinary team was estab-lished with expertise in molecular diagnostics, mathematical modelling and veterinary epidemiology."The mathematical modelling shows that the reproductive number, that is the number of secondary infections for one rabies-infected dog, fell under one, hence transmission is interrupted, and a molecular analysis shows that the circulating strains disappear," said Zinsstag and Nakul Chitnis, a co-investigator at Swiss TPH.The study is one of the first research projects to apply a rigorous phylodynamic method to dog rabies, and hence, it expands upon the normative phylogenetics (i.e. assessing the genetic relatedness of virus strains) with the dynamics of transmission over time. This made it possible to calculate the reproductive number of rabies among the dogs after the first mass dog vaccination in 2012."Dog rabies was likely re-introduced through the import of dogs by humans from outside N'Djamena after the rabies elimination had been achieved," Zinsstag explains.The phylogenetic analysis supports this finding, since the sequence of nucleoprotein of the new viruses showed a different genetic structure. "The molecular method ascertained the results put forth by the mathematical model through an independent approach," said Zinsstag. "Therefore eliminating rabies is not a technical problem, but a matter of political will and sufficient financial resources."The Swiss TPH study was financially supported by the UBS Optimus Foundation in Switzerland (vaccine, epidemiological field work and laboratory investigations). The Chadian government covered other costs (logistics and personnel).Eliminating dog mediated human rabies by 2030 is part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). "It will be a formidable challenge to reach this SDG goal by then, but we can prevent people from dying from dog-transmitted rabies," said Zinsstag."Our study provides an important proof-of-concept for the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC) and the Pan-african Rabies Control Network (PARACON) that rabies elimination in Africa indeed can be achieved."As a next step, Swiss TPH and its partners plan to extend mass dog vaccination against rabies across Chad. "We have calculated that with 28 million euros, it would be possible to eliminate rabies throughout the country. However, an important challenge is migration: once Chad is free from rabies, the disease might be re-imported from neighbouring countries such as Cameroon and Sudan. We therefore need a concerted Pan Central and West African approach, led by the Economic Unity of West African States ECOWAS and the African Union.This would bring along the additional benefit of promoting peace through cooperation." Zinsstag estimates that in order to free Central and West Africa from rabies, the costs would amount to around 1 billion euro over a 20-year period.Source: Eurekalert
CASS CITY  The local branch of the Michigan Education Association (MEA) said its members are happy that the Michigan Supreme Court has ordered the state to give retirees back their money.

The court, in a 6-0 ruling, said the mandate to contribute 3 percent of pay to keep retirement benefits was unconstitutional.

The law was enacted by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2010 and continued by current Gov. Rick Snyder.

The general feeling is they are very excited and very relieved, said Burt Burleson, who is the local UniServ director for the MEA in Cass City. What a great pre-holiday gift they were given.

While the case is over as far as whether the money could be taken out of teachers pay, the returning of the over $554 million that is currently being held in escrow is still to be determined, Burleson said.

My understanding is the case will be remanded back to the local court, he said, not knowing which court will be the local court. The judge is going to decide how to proceed at that point.

Burleson said this is the third time the Michigan Supreme Court has seen the case.

Our position is justice is finally being served for our hard-working school employees and its been a battle, he said. This is exciting. Its been a long fight. There are people that have retired that it is going to affect. Its got to get back to that local court. But if I was a local judge, I would be irritated with the court that they sent it back three times.

The Michigan Supreme Court said the law violated the contract clauses of both the federal and state constitutions.

The deductions were made between 2010 and 2012. The money was held in escrow and the refunds will not affect the state budget, Snyder said in a statement.

We will not need to raise new revenue or remove funding from other priorities to refund the money that was collected for retirement health care, the statement said.

The court said the law was unconstitutional because it substantially impaired the plaintiffs employment contracts by involuntarily reducing the plaintiffs wages by 3 percent, and the state failed to demonstrate that this measure was reasonable and necessary to further a legitimate public purpose.

A school employee who is making $50,000 a year at the time is due to receive around $3,000 plus interest after the ruling.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
TUSCOLA COUNTY  Those who want to celebrate the holiday spirit with spirits will have to stock up early in Tuscola County.

Tuscola is one of three counties in Michigan prohibiting the sale of package liquor on Sunday. With Christmas and New Years falling on Monday this year, those who want to serve alcohol will have to purchase it on the Saturday before the holiday, or travel to a neighboring county.

For the last few months, the county has been gathering information on the issue and also sought legal advice.

The ban on non-packaged liquor sales in the county is a long standing one. In 1994, voters reinforced the ban on package liquor sales at the ballot box.

However, because the last proposal on the issue was not put on the ballot by petition, the countys attorney suggested the change to allow package liquor sales on Sunday could be done by commissioner approval, explained county Controller Mike Hoagland.

At the last county meeting, retailers asked commissioners to make the change.

Tim Wingert of Wingerts Food Center, Mayville, presented information that he had spoken with 14 other area businesses that sell beer, wine and spirits, and those surveyed are in favor of having Sunday liquor sales.

Wingert estimated the loss of sales for his store because of the countys regulation could be about $300,000 a year.

The ban on Sunday liquor sales especially impacts businesses that are near the border with other counties  like Huron, Lapeer and Sanilac  that allow Sunday liquor sales.

Bridget Palmateer, owner of the Fostoria Grocery, said she has had customers leave her store when they learn of the ban on Sundays sales and to drive the two miles to Lapeer County to purchase the liquor as well as other items.

During discussion on the issue, Commissioner Craig Kirkpatrick expressed liability concerns if the commissioners themselves approved allowing Sunday liquor sales, and Commissioner Kim Vaughan said he had received favorable responses on rescinding the regulation when he talked about it at township meetings. Commissioner Matt Bierlein talked about the financial impact to businesses the ban has.

A motion presented to rescind the ban of Sunday liquor sales failed in a vote of 2 to 3. With that being done, the other option for possible change is gathering enough signatures to place the issue before voters in 2018 elections.

To do that, a petition would need 8 percent of signatures of the votes cast for the Secretary of State to place the question on liquor sales on the ballot, said county Clerk Jodi Fetting. In November 2014, which is the last time the Secretary of State (seat) appeared on the ballot, there was 17,483 votes cast for all candidates for Secretary of State. That means that 8 percent of that would be a minimum of 1,399 signatures needed for it to be placed on a ballot.
UBLY  The Ubly Board of Education voted to enter negotiations on buying the RE-Store Rustic Shabby Chic Furniture And More store on Dec. 11.

But that building contains some lead and asbestos, which originally prevented anyone occupying it.

So the school district will have to take care of the problems before using it as a preschool building, noted superintendent Joe Candela.

NEMSCA (Northeast Michigan Community Service Agency) was looking for a building to house their preschool program, Candela said. They had talked to the owner of the preschool building. There was some lead found in the window framing. So all the windows in the building had to be redone and repainted. I dont know the cost but it was more than NEMSCA wanted to pay.

So NEMSCA approached Candela and signed a one-year lease to have students in the preschool program go to a building Ubly owns.

What we did was allowed them to have a room of ours so they didnt have to absorb the cost, he said. We know that building needs some repairs. But our vision is more than just one preschool program. We also are looking at latchkey. The cost would be significantly lower.

The most recent bond vote would have taken care of some of the repairs, Candela noted.

Part of the 12-classroom bond issue was for that, he said. We wanted to fix that building and we knew that going in.

Candela said the lead and asbestos problems will have to be addressed.

We have some conditions, he said. If we were to come to an agreement, we would have to have conditions before we actually finalize the agreement. There are some rules we have to follow.

Then repairs would have to be made, Candela said.

We knew there was going to be some repairs and we knew it would be cheaper to have the repairs than to have a new building, he said.

Candela hopes to have the building ready for preschoolers before the next school year starts.

If we can make everything work out in the negotiation progress than we would look at hopefully opening up next fall with our preschool center and latchkey, he said. If things dont come together, we will look at other options.
WASHINGTON - Congress passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday, averting a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday but pushing into January showdowns on spending, immigration, health care and national security.

Among the issues still to be resolved is federal aid for victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The House on Thursday passed a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill, but the Senate did not immediately take it up amid Democratic objections.

The stopgap extends federal funding through Jan. 19 and provides temporary extensions of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which has languished politically since it expired in October, a veterans health-care program and a warrantless surveillance program set to expire Jan. 1.

"It is essential that Congress maintain government programs and services for our nation's stability, the stability of our economy, and for the security and well-being of the American people," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., said Friday on the House floor, urging lawmakers to support the stopgap.

It passed the House 231 to 188 and cleared the Senate 66 to 32. Thursday's congressional votes are expected to be the last of 2017.

The votes came after House GOP leaders scrambled Wednesday and Thursday to gather votes to keep the government open, seeking to defuse intraparty squabbling that erupted just hours after Republicans passed a landmark tax overhaul Wednesday.

Between assurances from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pressure from President Donald Trump to avoid a shutdown and the impending holidays, most GOP lawmakers agreed to set aside their misgivings.

"The fact of the matter is, it's Christmas, and we don't need to be shutting the government down. I mean, that's a horrible optic," said Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, who said he was dismayed by the lack of long-term military funding but supported the stopgap.

But some frustrations lingered. While many House Republicans burst into applause after passing the short-term spending measure, not everyone saw cause for celebration.

"That we're clapping for a three-week CR just basically shows we can't do appropriations, we can't take care of our constituents back home, we just have to punt for three more weeks so we can leave for Christmas," said Rep. Thomas Rooney, R-Fla., a member of the Appropriations Committee who has pushed for federal aid for citrus growers devastated by hurricanes. "For some reason, that justifies applause. I don't get it. I don't get this place."

Advocates of increased military spending fumed after House GOP leaders abandoned a plan to attach a defense bill directing more than $600 billion to warfighters through September. Instead, the stopgap spending plan is offering only temporary funding at current levels, save for a $5 billion emergency increase to repair damaged warships and beef up ballistic missile defense systems.

Leaving a House Republican conference meeting Wednesday evening, Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., said he was "bitterly disappointed" by the move and would not support any stopgap that did not make the Pentagon whole. But on Thursday, he and other defense hawks said they had been persuaded to support the stopgap after receiving assurances from Ryan.

"He's going to take a strong position for defense" in upcoming spending negotiations with Democrats, said Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Another tricky issue for House Republicans involved the extension of a program used by U.S. intelligence agencies to collect electronic communications of foreign spy targets on U.S. soil. National security officials warn that the loss of the program Jan. 1 could harm their ability to protect the country; civil liberties advocates, including members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, want the program to be overhauled and resisted a long-term extension.

But the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said Thursday that its members would stand down after GOP leaders promised a full debate next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize the program, known as Section 702.

Trump urged lawmakers to pass the stopgap in a tweet Thursday morning that accused Democrats of forcing a showdown to distract from the tax bill.

"Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!" he wrote, referring to a "continuing resolution," the technical term for the stopgap.

Senate Democrats, who have the ability to block any spending bill if they stick together, waited Thursday to see whether House Republicans could manage to send a bill to the other chamber. Aides of both parties had warned that if the House did not act, the Senate could send the chamber a spending bill of its own that could include measures that House conservatives would find distasteful.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Democrats would agree only to a short-term measure as long as broader disputes about spending, immigration and more remain unresolved.

"We're not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about," he said. "We have to solve these issues together."

But Democrats have split over how far to push for legislation that includes their key priorities - most of all, legislation granting legal status and a path to citizenship for immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, known as "dreamers." Activists and many lawmakers have said they are willing to force a shutdown unless the issue is addressed.

In a stark display of the divide among Democrats about how to proceed, more than a dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus marched from the House floor to Schumer's office across the U.S. Capitol on Thursday afternoon, demanding to see the Democratic leader.

Members of the caucus said they wanted to pressure Schumer and Democratic senators to withhold support for the spending bill unless Republicans commit to holding votes on legislation providing permanent legal protections to dreamers.

Emerging from the meeting, caucus members said Schumer assured them that more Democratic senators would vote against the spending bill than the 14 who did so two weeks ago, the last time Congress temporarily extended government funding.

Several people who attended the meeting, granted anonymity to describe what was expected to be a private exchange, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., - arguably the most outspoken Democrat on immigration matters - unloaded on Schumer, accusing him and Democratic senators of not caring about the fate of dreamers and "throwing them under the bus" in the ongoing spending debate with Republicans, participants said.

In response, Schumer raised his voice, telling Gutierrez not to insult fellow Democrats.

Gutierrez shot back, telling Schumer: "Don't raise your voice."

In a signal of growing frustrations, 29 Senate Democrats voted to oppose the stopgap. Only seven opposed the previous stopgap passed Dec. 7.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., testified at a House Rules Committee hearing Thursday morning, advocating for the inclusion of language that would grant legal status to dreamers, as well as a comprehensive spending agreement that would raise spending on both defense and nondefense programs.

Without those, they said, Democrats would not be able to support the stopgap.

"Unless we see a respect for our values and priorities, we continue to urge a strong NO on the Continuing Resolution," Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats on Wednesday.

As a result, House Republican leaders were under major pressure to assemble enough GOP votes to pass the measure.

The disaster bill, meanwhile, hung by a thread Thursday. Republican leaders sought Democratic votes, inserting provisions late Wednesday directing additional funding to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in response to Democratic leaders' demands.

Democrats indicated that it would not be enough, pointing to various tax and spending provisions.

Disaster funding "may have to slip to next year," Schumer said. "I think we can work it out in a bipartisan way, I certainly do, but just jamming it through without consulting us and not being fair to so many other parts of the country doesn't make sense."

Another controversial provision was also added to the House stopgap Wednesday: a measure waiving mandatory cuts to entitlement programs forced by the passage of the tax bill.

The tax bill slashed revenue by nearly $1.5 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, adding to the federal deficit. That impact triggers a 2010 law that makes automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs if lawmakers increase the deficit.

Democrats opposed the GOP tax bill in part because they said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some said they would not help Republicans by passing the waiver - particularly as many Republicans have vowed to target deep spending cuts to social welfare programs next year. But Democrats - who are typically fiercely opposed to any reductions in Medicare, which would see roughly $25 billion in cuts per year - did not object Thursday.

In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a fierce advocate for lower federal spending, accused his fellow Republicans of reneging on calls to cut spending and forced a separate vote on the waiver.

"We have a spending problem," Paul said on the Senate floor, urging colleagues to vote it down. "We have rules to keep spending in check, and we disobey our own rules."

The waiver passed 91 to 8, averting the mandatory cuts.

- - -

The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe and Damian Paletta contributed to this report.
EAST HAMPTON  A retired police chief has agreed to serve as interim chief as the town begins it search for a new full-time leader of the department.

Town Manager Michael Maniscalco announced Thursday he had hired former Groton City Chief Thomas Davoren to serve in the interim capacity.

In announcing Davorens appointment, Maniscalco said he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the position.

The timing of his appointment is critical: It means there will be an almost seamless transition as Chief Sean D. Cox takes leave of the post Friday.

Davoren will begin serving initially as director of police services Christmas Day, Maniscalco said. He will have to be recertified to meet Police Officers Standards and Training before he will become interim chief.

In the meantime, Cox will use up two weeks of accrued vacation time before he begins a new job in the private sector working in the defense industry. Cox has been chief for the past five years.

Earlier this week, Maniscalco posted a timeline for replacing Cox. The manager hopes to have the new full-time chief in place by April 2.

Davoren served five years as police chief of Groton City, the 6.7-square mile subdivision of the town of Groton, and which is home most notably to the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics.

Prior to that, Davoren had served for more than 25 years on the Connecticut State Police, retiring as a colonel, according to a story in The Day upon his appointment as Groton City chief.

Maniscalco said Davoren brings hands-on policing experience that included assignments as varied as canine handler to serving on the State Police Major Crimes Unit and Business and Strategic Resources Division.

I am confident that Director Davoren will guide our community through our many upcoming projects, including the planning stages of our new police department, which will be part of an $18 million municipal complex, Maniscalco said.

In addition, Maniscalco said Davorens expertise will be critical in dealing with much-needed radio upgrades as well as the upcoming creation of the 2018-19 municipal budget.

His experience will benefit our community as we continue on the path toward effective and efficient community policing in the 21st century, Maniscalco said.

I was looking for someone to get thus through the scenarios we face, meaning the budget, the radio upgrades and the preparations for the new headquarters, the town manager said.

Maniscalco also said he was interested in finding someone to serve as interim chief who was not interested in pursuing the job full-time.

He said Davoren had given him that assurance.

Reporter Jeff Mill covers East Hampton, Portland and Cromwell. Contact him at jeff.mill@hearstmediact.com.
CINCINNATI, OHIO -Fifth Third Bancorp announced plans to raise its minimum hourly wage for all employees to $15 and distribute a one-time bonus of $1,000 for more than 13,500 employees.

Fifth Third, which has 190 branches in Michigan and employs almost 2,600 workers in Michigan, said about 75 percent of its employees will receive a pay increase or bonus. Fifth Third is the largest bank in West Michigan, with more than 1,900 employees.

"We want to invest in our most important asset - our people," said Fifth Third President and CEO Greg Carmichael in an announcement on Wednesday, Dec. 20. "Our employees drive our reputation, our business and our success."

The raise and bonus come in the wake of a new tax code that was adopted by Congress this week. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the legislation this week.

Once the legislation is signed into law, nearly 3,000 hourly employees will see their pay increase to $15 an hour, the announcement said.

The one-time $1,000 bonus is expected to be distributed by the end of the year, assuming the president signs the bill before Christmas. Senior managers and executive leadership are excluded from this compensation, the announcement said.

"It is good for our communities, employees and Fifth Third Bank" Carmichael said. "The higher wage is an important step to help support individuals, their families and the communities in which we operate."

Fifth Third is Michigan's 5th largest bank, with total deposits of $17 billion, and an 8.27 percent share of the market, according to the most recent summary of deposits by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
ANN ARBOR, MI - The city of Ann Arbor and the Michigan Department of Transportation are partnering on a roughly $763,000 project to resurface South State Street next spring.



The City Council voted this week to approve a cost-sharing agreement with MDOT to facilitate federal funding for the project, which includes resurfacing State Street between Ellsworth and I-94, as well as Research Park Drive from State to about 500 feet east.



City Engineer Nick Hutchinson said in a memo construction is expected to last from early May through mid-June.



"The project includes removing the top of the existing pavement, placing hot-mix asphalt, intermittent concrete curb and gutter removal and replacement, constructing minor drainage improvements, restoring disturbed areas, and placing pavement markings," the memo states.



At least one lane of vehicular traffic is expected to be maintained in each direction on State Street during construction. Research Park Drive traffic will be detoured as needed.



The city submitted plans for the project to MDOT in July. MDOT plans to award a contact the lowest qualified bidder and will administer the contract, with the city acting as project engineer.



The total estimated project cost is $762,500, an estimated $557,400 of which is for construction.



The city expects to use $362,500 in federal funds and another $400,000 from the city's major streets fund.
DEXTER, MI - Mill Creek Middle School's most popular employee has four legs, a furry face and a wet nose.

Principal Jami Bronson jokes that she feels invisible when she walks Tank, the school's new "facility dog," through the hallways. The 2-year-old yellow Labrador retriever began spending his days at Dexter's Mill Creek Middle School about a month ago, and the students already look forward to seeing him around the school.

"It's fun. You can play with him. I see him when he's in the hallway," said Tanija Pryor, a seventh grader. "He makes people feel happy."

Within minutes of walking into a French class on Tuesday, Dec. 19, Tank was surrounded by students leaning in for their turn to pet and hug him.

"When I walk into class now, they don't say, 'Hi,' they say, 'Where's Tank?'" Bronson laughed.

Tank is Mill Creek Middle School's second facility dog. The Dexter Rotary Club obtained a dog named Dexter for the school in 2010. Dexter the dog retired two or three years ago and recently passed away, Bronson said.

Tank - who was Bronson's dog - had the temperament to step in as the school's new facility dog. Band director Andy Damman is now Tank's host, meaning he cares for the dog outside of school hours.

The Rotary Club again is covering the cost of the dog's expenses and has worked with local businesses to have items donated for Tank, like veterinarian services from the Village Animal Clinic, food from Canidae and the Dexter Mill, training from Skip Brewster, medication from Dexter Pharmacy and a service vest from Fancy Stitch.

"We know that Dexter the dog was much loved by students at Mill Creek Middle School, and we hope that Tank will also provide a friendly presence to students for many years to come," said Julie Schumaker, president of the Dexter Rotary Club and vice president of the Dexter Community Schools board of education.

Fred Schmid, chair of the Rotary Club's five-person committee that got Tank set up as the school's new facility dog, said he's happy Mill Creek will again have a calming canine presence to help students open up with the school counselor and other staff.

Counselor Trina Gale said she's seen the positive effect Tank has on students, especially children who have anxiety.

"He just really de-escalates the kids I see in my office," Gale said. "He brings joy to them and just is very soothing. They will talk and pet him. They seem to share more when they're just petting him and in that zone."

Some special needs students have time with Tank scheduled into their day, Bronson said. He entertains the students during breaks or as a reward.

During school, Tank spends a lot of his time in Bronson's office - where his bed sits in front of her desk - or Gale's office, when he's not making his rounds through the hallways.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Returning to Ann Arbor teachers part of the $550 million the State of Michigan has been holding in escrow could prove difficult, and it will create more work for the district, according to schools administrators.

Ann Arbor Public Schools officials discussed the issue during a board of education meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 20.

On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court ended a seven-year legal battle and ruled that a 2010 law requiring teachers and other school personnel to contribute 3 percent of their salaries toward their retirement health care was unconstitutional. From 2010 to 2013, about $550 million was collected under that law, and that money has been held in escrow while the legal issues were sorted out.

Now, it's up to local school districts to see that the money is returned to the proper people, said David Comsa, deputy superintendent and legal counsel for AAPS.

"The districts are going to have to distribute the money," he said. "The state's not going to do it."

While the Supreme Court ruling is great news for teachers, it will be a "massive endeavor" for local school districts to handle the refunds, said Superintendent Jeanice Swift.

"It is great news, and I want everyone to know we will be diligently committed to carrying it out as expeditiously as we can while protecting all the parties to make sure the right taxes and the right withholding and all of the hundred questions that need answers (are addressed)," Swift said.

It could be difficult to locate former Ann Arbor Schools employees who are due a share of the refund and no longer work in the district or may no longer be working at any school, said Comsa and Marios Demetriou, assistant superintendent of finance and operations.

"My guess is it's going to take a significant amount of time, and there's still a lot of unanswered questions. ... There are a lot of tax implications that probably no one has the answer to at this time," Comsa said. "The (Michigan Office of Retirement Services) will probably have to issue an opinion letter. It won't be here before the holidays."

Comsa was recognized at Wednesday's meeting for being named the "Outstanding Human Resources Administrator of the Year" by the Michigan Association of School Personnel Administrators.

The trustees noted the additional expense to the school district in having human resources and finance staff dedicate their time to refunding the money.

"We shouldn't be surprised to see some incremental administrative dollars spent making sure this happens, because it probably will require additional resources," said Christine Stead, board president.

Board secretary Jeff Gaynor also pointed out the cost to taxpayers in the form of the state's legal fees. Private attorneys used throughout the case have cost the state at least $196,082, according to an MLive investigation earlier this year.
[December 21, 2017] A.M. Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Nova Casiopea Re S.A.

A.M. Best has affirmed a Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating (Long-Term ICR) of "a-" of Nova Casiopea Re S.A. (NCRe) (Luxembourg). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. Concurrently, A.M. Best has withdrawn the FSR of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of "a-" of Casiopea Re S.A. (CRe) (Luxembourg) as a result of the company no longer continuing to conduct insurance operations. The ratings reflect NCRe's balance sheet strength, which A.M. Best categorises as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. NCRe is a pure captive reinsurer of Telefonica (News - Alert) S.A. (Telefonica), a Spanish multinational broadband and telecommunications provider with operations in Europe, Asia, and North, Central and South America. Operating globally, it is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. In 2017, NCRe replaced CRe as Telefonica's main reinsurance captive and has assumed the run-off liabilities of CRe. A.M. Best expects the company to generate EUR 56 million of gross written premiums during 2017, which is its first year of operation as Telefonica's captive. NCRe is solely dependent on Telefonica for the generation of premium, as such premium volumes are constrained to the operations of Telefoncia. Technical results will principally drive profit generation, supported by small, albeit growing investment income over the medium term. NCRe's operations are managed by the same personnel that have managed CRe's activities for more than 10 years. In A.M. Best's opinion, the proven track record of NCRe's management team has substantially reduced execution risk associated with the new captive. NCRe has implemented a risk management framework commensurae to its risk profile and is integrated closely with risk management activities of Telefonica.



NCRe's balance sheet strength is driven by the strongest level of risk-adjusted capitalisation, supported by an excellent level of liquidity managed through conservative investment guidelines. A partially offsetting rating factor to the balance sheet strength is the level of natural catastrophe risk the company is exposed to, which is likely to cause volatility. However, volatility is mitigated partly by a highly rated retrocession panel. A.M. Best remains the leading rating agency of alternative risk transfer entities, with more than 200 such vehicles rated throughout the world. For current Best's Credit Ratings and independent data on the captive and alternative risk transfer insurance market, please visit www.ambest.com/captive.

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 affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005727/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Thought leaders join to internet of things security event to shed insight on protecting company assets as well as customer data and privacy.

Trumbull, CT  December 20, 2017  TMC and Crossfire today announced the latest group of speakers to join IoT Security 4.0 Conference being held January 22-25, 2018 Disneys Contemporary Hotel in Orlando, Florida. . The conference kicks off with a certification series dedicated to giving attendees practical skills they can take back to their office. Following the certification, attendees will then attend a variety of networking events, high profile keynotes and in-depth session dedicated to shedding insight on how to protect assets, actions and information. Completing the entire four day conference will earn attendees 10 PDU credits from the PMP Institute.

We are excited to welcome this latest group of thought leaders to the IoT Security 4.0 Conference. From Dell to IBM, each speaker brings an important and unique insight, said Carl Ford, CEO, Crossfire Media, executive director of content, IoT Evolution. Keeping your business secure in an increasingly connected world is complex but attendees will leave Florida with invaluable knowledge and skills.

Keynotes include:

Rhonda Dirvin, Director, IoT and Embedded, ARM

Wes Sylvester, Director, Digital Transformation, Cisco Systems

George Mulhern, CEO, Cradlepoint

Veeru Ramaswamy, Watson IoT Platform, IBM

Dipti Vachani, VP Internet of Things Group, Intel

Gary Davis, Chief Consumer Security Evangelist, McAfee

Verizon

Speakers and Panelists include:

Alex Glaser, Vice President, Harbor Research

Allen Proithis, President, North America, SIGFOX US

Bobbie Carlton, Founder, Innovation Women

Carl Ford, CEO, Director of Content, Crossfire Media

Christian Legare, Director, IoT OS Platform, Silicon Labs

Craig Payne, Security & Privacy Officer, Ayla Networks

David Benjamin, President , Global SCV

Dennis Hamann, CEO, Mobelisk

Douglas Humphrey, IoT Cyber Security Executive, Architecture Lead, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

Elise Neel, GM, MapQuest

Erik Giesa, VP of Products, Tempered Networks

Fred Thiel, President, Thiel Advisors, Inc.

Greg Hoffer, Vice President of Engineering, Globalscape

Greg Mischou, Senior Partner & Managing Director, Woodside Capital Partners

Heidi Wilson, IoT & Complex Solutions, Telus

James Brehm, Founder and Chief Technology Evangelist, James Brehm & Associates

James Turino, Managing Partner, Drake Star Partners

John Holleran, Security & Surveillance Solutions Architect, Dell OEM

Laura Phillips, Partner and Chair of Government and Regulatory Affairs Practice Group, Drinker Biddle & Reath

Lawrence Karisny, Director, ProjectSafty.org

Lynne Canavan, Vice President of Marketing, OpenFog Consortium

Mary Clark, Chief Corporate Relations Officer and Chief of Staff, Syniverse

Michael Lenoce, Managing Director, MVP Capital

Mike Walkley, Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Ryan Martin, Principal Analyst, ABI Research

Steve Brumer, Partner, 151 Advisors

Steve Hanna, Senior Principal, Infineon and Trusted Computing Group

Sudhakar S Marthi, Vice President Global Business Development, ZOHO Corporation

Tim Hahn, Chief Architect, Internet of Things Security, IBM

Todd Krautkremer, CMO, Cradlepoint

Tom Gilbert, CTO, Blue Ridge Networks

Tom Lahiff, Chief Legal Counsel and Director of Operations, Cyberbridge Group

Tom Shafron, Chief Technology Officer, Clear2there

Vince Ricco, Business Development Manager, Technology Partner Program, Axis Communications

Speakers, sessions and events are updated daily check back here for frequent updates.

Registration for The Security 4.0 Conference is now open. Security professionals can apply for a free pass to attend here .

For more information, contact Scott Kargman. For media registration, contact Jessica Seabrook. Companies interested in exhibiting, sponsorship or advertising packages should contact Dave Rodriguez at 203.852.6800 ext. 146 or Maureen Gambino 203-852-6800 x 109.

For the latest Security 4.0 Conference news, updates and information, follow the event on Twitter at @IoTSecurity_4

About TMC

Global buyers rely on TMCs content-driven marketplaces to make purchase decisions and navigate markets. This presents branding, thought leadership and lead generation opportunities for vendors/sellers.

TMCs Marketplaces:

Unique, turnkey Online Communities boost search results, establish market validation, elevate brands and thought leadership, while minimizing ad-blocking.

Custom Lead Programs uncover sales opportunities and build databases.

In-Person and Online Events boost brands, enhance thought leadership and generate leads.

Publications, Display Advertising and Newsletters bolster brand reputations.

Custom Content provides expertly ghost-crafted blogs, press releases, articles and marketing collateral to help with SEO, branding, and overall marketing efforts.

Comprehensive Event and Road Show Management Services help companies meet potential clients and generate leads face-to-face.

For more information about TMC and to learn how we can help you reach your marketing goals, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About Crossfire Media

Crossfire Media is an integrated marketing company with a core focus on future trends in technology. We service communities of interest with conferences, tradeshows, webinars and newsletters. Crossfire Media has a partnership with Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) to produce events and websites related to disruptive technologies. Crossfire Media is a division of Crossfire Consulting, a full service Information Technology company based in New York.

Media and Analyst Contact:

Jessica Seabrook

Marketing Director

203.852.6800 ext.170

[email protected]

Edited by Ken Briodagh
Sudarshan Sukhani of s2analytics.com told CNBC-TV18, "Asian Paints which has gone through a deep correction now suggests that there is support coming in. It is a buying opportunity. It is a short-term momentum trade."

"Colgate Palmolive has a much better chart. The stock is finding support repeatedly at lower levels and willing to break higher. It is also a positional trade apart from of course anything on a smaller timeframe."

"Interglobe Aviation is a buy on dip stock and I would expect it to go back to Rs 1,300-1,350 level eventually. Our day trading targets are always more modest. So, three buying ideas. The market is little confusing today which is why the indices also have the same commentary."

"Two short sells - one is Union Bank of India, all the PSU banks have given up all the gains that they had on that one day eventually slowly and steadily," he said.

"The second short sell is SREI Infrastructure. SREI Infrastructure had a big rally, it has given up 25 percent of its value. There is more downside here, but do take the intraday trade on the short side," he added.

"Pidilite Industries is a buy. It is a buy at current level for anyone looking for some days of trade."

"There are two buying opportunities as we start the day. One is Godrej Industries, already in some kind of an uptrend and likely to sustain that move and the other is ONGC."
Manoj Murlidharan of Religare Securities told CNBC-TV18, "Nifty has come to this 10,500 mark almost thrice and every time it comes to this top we see stock specific variation."

"If you see Muthoot Finance from the finance sector, that is one stock where we are seeing huge buying coming this time. We believe that Muthoot Finance at Rs 443 is a very good buy. The stop loss should be Rs 428 and the distribution or the target might be somewhere close to Rs 485."

"We like JSW Energy as well. We recommend buying these in cash market not in any stock future because it is just five days odd when we have the expiry and it might be a positional call. So buy JSW Energy at Rs 83 and the stop loss we recommend is Rs 78. We are seeing a good 12-14 percent move on that. So the target would come somewhere close to Rs 94," he said.

"The same goes with Chennai Petroleum Corporation as well, we like that stock and we recommend buying somewhere close to Rs 429. The stop loss should be Rs 418 and the target or the levels of distribution where some profit booking might come will be closer to Rs 444. So, that happens to be the target on the stock as well," he added.

At 10:35 hrs Chennai Petroleum Corporation was quoting at Rs 435.55, up Rs 6.45, or 1.50 percent. It has touched an intraday high of Rs 437.00 and an intraday low of Rs 429.45.

JSW Energy was quoting at Rs 84.35, up Rs 0.50, or 0.60 percent. It has touched an intraday high of Rs 84.90 and an intraday low of Rs 83.85.
business 2G Verdict: Here's a timeline of the 2G scam It has been seven years since a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) led by Vinod Rai rocked the political landscape of India. The explosive report on the 2G scam left the then UPA government in tatters and eventually led to its downfall. CNBC-TV18s Latha Venkatesh maps out the timeline of the case.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Drug maker Dr Reddy's Laboratories board has given green signal to induct Akhil Ravi, son-in-law of GV Prasad, co-Chairman and CEO of the company into the management.

The decision was taken at the company's board meeting in October and was notified on Wednesday. Akhil Ravi represents the third generation of family leadership of Dr.Reddy's, founded by late K Anji Reddy.

The company is now jointly run by Anji Reddy's son-in-law GV Prasad and son Satish Reddy, 50. The promoters hold 27.66 percent stake in the company. The drug maker ended with sales of little over Rs 14,000 crore in FY17.

Akhil Ravi, who will be joining the company in a mid-senior management role as Director of Business Development and Portfolio, has an impressive academic credentials with a BTech degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay and an MBA from Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.

According to his Linkedin profile, Ravi currently works as an associate with McKinsey & Company, Chennai. He has previously worked with ITC and has also co-founded a start-up called IndiaKhelo, which is into fitness for school children.

Akhil Ravi married GV Prasad's elder daughter Sanjana Reddy in 2013.

Prasad's younger daughter Mallika Reddy works as Design Researcher at Studio 5B of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories.

"Unlike western countries, family run enterprises dominate Indian corporate landscape, grooming successors assures certain stability and business continuity, said Rajesh Tambe, an independent management consultant.

In pharma sector, finding next level of growth could be challenging task for leadership, believes Tambe.

Indian pharmaceutical industry grew at impressive rates in the last two decades on back of generic drugs. However, in last two to three years, companies are increasingly facing pressure on pricing and regulatory expectations.
After a hiatus of more than two decades, Haldiram became Indias largest snack company after overtaking international food and beverages major PepsiCo in sales.

Haldiram finished the year ended September with sales of around Rs 4,225 crore, compared to PepsiCos Rs 3,991 crore. Last year, it posted sales of Rs 3,262 crore, while PepsiCo posted Rs 3,617 crore in sales.

The spike in sales that Haldiram witnessed this year was because of a growing trend of people preferring packaged namkeen over western packaged snacks like potato chips and nachos.

Also, despite being the largest in the industry by sales, Haldirams grew at a rate of nearly 30 percent, beating the industrys pace of 17 percent by a fair distance.

This year marked a major turnaround for the snacks manufacturer, who had reported a sales growth of 10-12 percent between 2012 and 2016.

"There was a sharp increase in raw material prices for several snacking products, especially nuts. However, we maintained our price tag and absorbed losses, which helped us gain share not just from existing players but also the unorganised segment since the price differential narrowed down," Kamal Agarwal, 43, a fourth-generation member of the founding family, told The Economic Times.

Agarwal also pointed out that consumers have started correlating Indian snacks and namkeen with healthy food, while chips and other western snacks are being perceived as unhealthy.

On its part, PepsiCo maintained that a comparison between the two would not be fair since the category of products offered by both companies were different.

A PepsiCo spokesperson said in the salty snacks category, the company continues to hold leadership position in the market.

"In the western salty category, with strong double-digit growth, Lay's has been our fastest-growing food brand in the last year on account of premiumisation and innovation with Lay's Maxx and Shapes. In the nachos category, we scaled our presence with the 'Made in India' Doritos, and the product is seeing strong preference and traction amongst consumers. We have further expanded our salty snacks portfolio last year with Kurkure Triangles, which is also growing in double digits, the spokesperson said.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis blamed the banks for making mistakes in names and account numbers in the loan waiver scheme.

Speaking in the Assembly, Fadnavis said, "The banks made mistakes in the account numbers and names of account holders. It leads to confusion as names of a Shiv Sena MLA and a former NCP MP were listed as beneficiaries."

In both the cases, the persons had not applied for loan waiver, he said.

"Our parallel system of getting farmers to register themselves on "Aapale Sarkar" portal helped us to expose such errors," Fadnavis added.

He was speaking on the floor of the House after opposition leaders raised objections over mistakes in the loan waiver scheme.

The CM said that some banks were aware of the discrepancies in account numbers and actual names but had failed to inform the government.

Fadnavis said, "Shiv Sena MLA Prakash Abitkar did not apply for the loan waiver scheme but his name appeared instead of actual beneficiary Prakash Sutar. The list issued by the state government showed Abitkars name and his back account number."

Fadnavis also explained how the name of a former MP from Jalgaon appeared on the list of beneficiaries.

"Latabai Suresh Patil was actually the beneficiary of loan waiver scheme of Maharashtra government. But because of the banks mistake, name of Vasantrao More, former Member of Parliament appeared in the list," he said.

"These mistakes were revealed because the Maharashtra government had a parallel list of beneficiary farmers and their bank account details," said Fadnavis.

He added that banks have been asked to transfer the amount into the beneficiary bank accounts and to validate the account post the transfer.

"This provision is done to fix the responsibility of the banks," said Fadnavis.

He said that the primary verification of 47,87,995 bank accounts has been completed.

"Out of these, 34 lakh accounts are for waiver and one time settlement scheme while another 14 lakh accounts are eligible for incentive scheme where a regular payee gets a rebate of up to Rs 25,000," said the CM.

"The cumulative figure of loan waiver is Rs 23,300 crore so far. We have transferred money into 26.50 lakh bank accounts as on December 20. The state machinery has picked up momentum and we are speedily clearing the fresh accounts," he said.

Fadnavis announced that the repayment deadline under the one-time settlement scheme has been extended till March 31 from December end.
HDFC Capital Advisors, an arm of mortgage leader HDFC, has closed its second affordable housing fund, creating a USD 1-billion corpus, the lion's share of which is flowing in from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

With the latest round of funding commitment from the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund, and those from HDFC which is the sponsor, the fund has raised USD 550 million as the corpus.

Called HDFC Capital affordable real estate fund-2, it will be combined with the first fund raised in 2016 together creating a USD1-billion corpus targeted at affordable and mid-income residential projects in top 15 cities, HDFC said in a statement today.

The new funds will have a development footprint of 75 million sqft across affordable and mid-income residential projects in the leading 15 cities over the next two-three years, it added.

The main objective of this fund, headed by Vipul Roongta, chief executive of HDFC Capital Advisors, is to provide long-term equity or mezzanine capital to marquee developers at the land and pre-approval stage to develop affordable and mid-income housing.

Earlier this week, HDFC had said it would raise up to Rs 13,000 crore selling almost 5 per cent to investors. This would be the first equity raising by the company in a decade.

The company had also said it was open to inorganic growth in the affordable housing segment and that a portion of the money to be raised would be set aside for this.

The funds align with the government goal of increasing the overall housing supply, including the housing for all by 2022 initiative, HDFC said, adding "the primary investor in both the funds is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority."

HDFC will be the sponsor and HDFC Capital Advisors will be the investment manager for the second fund. Investor and sponsor fund have committed USD550 million so far.

Commenting on the financial commitment for the funds, HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh said, "these funds will play a significant role in achieving the 'housing for all by 2022' objective.

"Affordable housing will not only act as a growth driver for the real estate industry but will also be a catalyst for the overall growth. Since lack of flexible, long-term capital is one of the key challenges facing developers, our funds will focus on providing access to financing at attractive rates and on flexible terms."

Terming the Indian housing market presents as compelling investment opportunity, Khadem Al Remeithi, executive director, real estate & infrastructure department, at the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund, said "our investment aims to meet strong demand for early-stage financing of housing projects and encourage continued growth of the affordable and mid-income residential sector."

HDFC chief executive Keki Mistry said affordable housing is a critical component of quality urban infrastruct ure as also a growth-driver for the real estate industry.

"These two funds will look to partner with developers to form long-term platforms focusing on affordable and mid- income housing," Mistry said.

HDFC managing director Renu Sud Karnad said funds will help address the demand-supply gap in affordable housing apart from ensuring flexible financing to quality developers.

HDFC Capital Advisors gives investment advisory to real estate private equity financing and is the investment manager to these two funds.

Created in 1976,the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has been focusing on long-term value creation and manages a diversified global investment portfolio across over two dozen asset classes.
The Nifty which started higher failed to hold gains and corrected throughout the trading day on Thursday and made a Bearish Belt Hold kind of pattern for the second consecutive day in a row.

A Bearish Belt Hold pattern is formed when the opening price becomes the highest point of the trading day (intraday high) and the index declines throughout the trading day making up for the large body. The candle will either have a small or no upper shadow and small lower shadow.

Formation of Bearish Belt Hold for the second consecutive day in a row suggests a pause in the momentum as index faces stiff resistance around 10,500 levels. The index is trading well above its crucial short-term moving averages which is a bullish sign.

Even though the index formed a bearish candle for the second consecutive day in a row, traders can still remain long with a stop below 10,400 on a closing basis. Bullish momentum will only continue when index surpasses 10,495 levels.

In Thursdays price action, Nifty opened at 10,473 which was also its intraday high. The bears took control to post the opening tick and pushed the index below 10,450 levels. It closed 3.90 points lower at 10,440.30.

The Nifty registered Bearish Belt Hold formation for the second day in a row as it signed off the day with an extreme range bound move of 47 points. However, last two session price behaviour is suggesting that market is slowly slipping out of the clutches of bulls, Mazhar Mohammad, Chief Strategist  Technical Research & Trading Advisory, Chartviewindia.in told Moneycontrol.

Hence, to reclaim their strength back they need to immediately conquer the top of 10494 levels else bears may tighten their grip over the markets in the near term, he said.

Mohammad further added that traders are advised to remain cautious and maintain a tight stop below 10400 on closing basis whereas fresh positions should be considered only on a close above 10494 levels.

India VIX fell down by 0.78 percent at 12.08. India VIX has fallen down by 27 percent in the last three sessions and needs to hold below 13-12.50 zones to get the smooth ride.

We have collated the top ten data points to help you spot profitable trade:

Key Support & Resistance Level for Nifty

The Nifty closed at 10,440.3 on Thursday. According to Pivot charts, the key support level is placed at 10,420.13, followed by 10,399.97. If the index starts to move higher, key resistance levels to watch out are 10,467.23 and 10,494.17.

Nifty Bank

The Nifty Bank closed at 25,554.3. Important Pivot level, which will act as crucial support for the index, is placed at 25,498.83, followed by 25,443.37. On the upside, key resistance levels are 25,619.83, followed by 25,685.37.

Call Options Data

Maximum Call open interest (OI) of 65.36 lakh contracts stands at strike price 10,500, which will act as a crucial resistance level for the index in the December series; followed by 10,600, which now holds 46.03 lakh contracts in open interest, and 11,000, which has accumulated 36.61 lakh contracts in OI.

Call writing was seen at strike price 10,400, which added 2.32 lakh contracts; followed by 10,600, which saw added of 1.46 lakh contracts.

Call unwinding was seen at strike price 10,300, which shed 1.4 lakh contracts, followed by 10,800 which shed 1.29 lakh contracts and 10,200, which shed 0.96 lakh contracts.

Put Options Data

Maximum put OI of 80.11 lakh contracts was seen at strike price 10,000, which will act as a crucial base for the index in December series; followed by 10400, which now holds 56.41 lakh contracts and 10,300 which has now accumulated 50.21 lakh contracts in open interest.

Put writing was seen at strike prices 10,100 (1.35 lakh contracts added).

Put unwinding was seen at strike 10,300, which shed 2.27 lakh contracts, followed by 10,200, which shed 2 lakh contracts and 10,500, which shed 1.21 lakh contracts.

FII & DII Data

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold shares worth Rs 383.99 crore, while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 1,574.3 crore in the Indian equity market on Thursday, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

Stocks with high delivery percentage:

High delivery percentage suggests that investors are accepting the delivery of the stock, which means that investors are bullish on the stock.

84 stocks saw long build-up:

49 stocks saw short covering:

A decrease in open interest along with an increase in price mostly indicates short covering.

49 stocks saw short build-up:

An increase in open interest along with a decrease in price mostly indicates short positions being built up.

30 stocks saw long unwinding:

Long unwinding happens when there is a decrease in OI as well as in price.

Bulk Deals:

Gitanjali Gems

About 14.94 lakh shares were traded by Ashok Gupta in the price range of Rs 69-70.

Mercator

Ivory Consultants has sold 31 lakh shares at a price of Rs 35.02.

Polaris

Kotak Mahindra AMC has sold 6.22 lakh shares at Rs 358.68 apiece.

Analyst Meet/Briefings:

Yes Bank

The bank's representatives attended Citigroup Global Markets' analyst meet on December 21.

Biocon

The company's analyst meet was attended by Exide Life Insurance, Max Life Insurance, Multi-Act Equity Consultancy, PhillipCapital, Reliance Mutual Fund, Renaissance PMS, Saga Tree Capital, Sundaram Mutual Fund, Tata AIA Life Insurance.

IndusInd Bank

The bank held an analysts meet, attended by Quantum Mutual Fund on December 21, 2017.

Stocks in news:

ABB India

ABB India wins Rs 134 crore traction equipment order for Indian Railways

Cadila

Zydus receives final approval from the USFDA for Nifedipine Extended-Release Tablets USP.

Aarti Industries

The company has approved a buyback of 8.2 lakh shares at a price of Rs 1,200 and the buyback size is to the tune of Rs 98 crore.

HDFC

Approved sale of 100% eq cap of HDFC developers & HDFC Realty to Quikr India. Deal to sell capital of HDFC Developers & HDFC Realty For Rs 102 crore & Rs 255 crore respectively.

Canara Bank

Canara Bank proposes to offload 4% stake in Can Fin Homes

Sun Pharma

Recalls two batches of diabetic drug from US market due to microbial contamination.

Wipro

Azim Premji Trust along with nine other promoter entities - who were persons acting in concert (PAC) - offloaded a little over 17.96 crore shares during the buyback that closed on December 13.

Reliance Infrastructure Ltd

Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RInfra) on Thursday said it has signed a definitive binding agreement to sell its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission Ltd for Rs 18,800 crore, said a report.

Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd

Auto component major Motherson Sumi Systems' promoter Samvardhana Motherson International today sold 1.37 percent stake in the firm for over Rs 1,079 crore, through an open market transaction.

Dr Reddy's Laboratories

Drug maker Dr Reddy's Laboratories board has given green signal to induct Akhil Ravi, son-in-law of GV Prasad, co-Chairman and CEO of the company into the management.

Canara Bank

State-owned Canara Bank said it will offload 4 percent stake in its housing finance subsidiary Canfin Homes Ltd (CFHL).

12 stocks under ban period on NSE

Security in ban period for the next trade date under the F&O segment includes companies in which the security has crossed 95 percent of the market-wide position limit.

Securities which are banned for trading include names such as Balrampur Chini, DHFL, DLF, Fortis Healthcare, GMR Infra, HDIL, IFCI, Jet Airways, JP Associates, JSW Energy, RComm and Wockhardt.

DHFL, GMR Infrastructure, IFCI, Reliance Communications and Wockhardt are the stocks which have been added to the ban list by NSE.

Fund Flow Picture:
Praveg Communications (India) Ltd.

A large Mumbai-based pharma company was looking to hire a senior head for their research and development (R&D) team. While the initial mandate given out was to hire someone who was 35 years or below, the firm was unable to find a candidate with the requisite skills in that age group. They have now made a strategy and done away with the age criteria.

Pharmaceutical industry, which is considered one of the most resilient sectors in terms of the ability to withstand economic shocks and in keeping hiring momentum strong, is finding it tough to find younger talent with the skills that are needed for the particular job.

Varun Sinha, Partner & HeadGlobal Key Accounts at Stellar Search, a global leadership advisory firm said that while pharma companies want to hire younger people, there is a dearth of talent.

"Companies have an intent to hire individuals who are young. In commercial functions like sales, companies are able to get people from other sectors. However, in technical functions like manufacturing and R&D while there is a desire to hire younger executives, the talent is not there," he added.

Niche functions that form the core activity of pharma companies not only need solid work experience in that domain, but also requires basic understanding of the regulations that govern the companies.

Though the logical step taken by other sectors has been to hire expat professionals for roles where talent is not available locally, pharma has taken a different stand.

"At this stage of evolution of pharma industry, there is some resistance to hire expats for such roles. Technical and manufacturing roles require interface with the ground staff where firms feel expats may not be the right fit," said Sinha.

On an average, for commercial roles, the average age is early to mid-40s while for technical functions it is early to mid-50s.

A senior human resource official at a mid-size pharma company said that it is not feasible to hire young talent from other sectors for specialised roles.

"If it is pure sales, they can be hired from sectors like FMCG. But if it is a product role, it is extremely risky to get someone who does not have a proven track-record and it is a challenge to find someone young with these skills. One bad hire can damage the reputation of the brand since it is a sensitive sector," he added.

Even globally, Sinha said that companies don't shy away from hiring people who are above 50-55 years if they have the right set of skills and experience.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Mortgage firm PNB Housing Finance today said its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jayesh Jain has resigned from the company.

"Jayesh Jain has decided to step down as the Chief Financial Officer and key managerial personnel of the company. His last working day is January 5, 2018," PNB Housing Finance said in a BSE filing.

PNB Housing Finance, however, did not elaborate.

The stock was trading 0.52 per cent higher at Rs 1,365.65 on the BSE today.
By Durba Ghosh

After a no-bar-holds funding splurge witnessed in 2015-16, this year was relatively mute, especially in the first half for startup investments.

However, the year recorded a number of high profile deals that made it a stellar year for a few unicorns.

According to Grant Throntons PE Deal Tracker report, the investment activity in the country bounced back in November, with startups accounting for 78 percent of total volume of deals recorded.

This year, however, was marked by a significant shift towards profitability and sustainability as a benchmark for investment deals.

This meant that while deal volumes dropped by 5 percent, deal value surged by over 3 times as compared to last year.

Lets have look at major deals in 2017 that shaped the year:

Ola acquires FoodPanda India

Ride-hailing startup Ola, which shut down its food delivery vertical Ola Cafe last year, made a re-entry in the food-tech business with the acquisition of Foodpanda India this month from Germany-based Delivery Hero Group.

Olas acquisition of Foodpanda came just months after its bagged USD 2 billion in new investments from a group of investors, including SoftBank and Tencent.

Ola will also invest an additional USD 200 million in Foodpanda to build it as an effective rival to UberEats, Zomato, and Swiggy.

While Olas arch-rival UberEats delivers in about half a dozen Indian cities, it will also have instant access to over 100 cities through Foodpanda India.

Ola has a running partnership with Zomato for cross-selling services.

Olas re-entry into the food delivery business is expected to heat up the sector with new innovations.

However, food delivery business is a high cash-burning prospect where UberEats has also been struggling to create higher traction.

Axix Bank's acquisition of Freecharge

Digital wallet arm of Snapdeal Freecharges acquisition by Axis Bank was one of the most talked about deals in the fintech sector this year.

Not for the kind of valuation it attracted, but the series of events that preceded it.

Axis Bank bought Freecharge from Snapdeal in July this year for Rs 385 crore in an all-cash deal, strengthening its position in the payments space.

It gave Axis Bank access to FreeCharges customer base of over 54 million users.

Snapdeal had bought Freecharge for USD 400 million in 2015 in order to expand its presence in the payments space.

While Snapdeal gave away Freecharge for a throw-away price to focus on core business, Axis Bank increased its potential in the digital payments and banking space with the acquisition.

However, Axis Bank already has a significant presence in the digital space with integrated mobile wallet LIME, Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payments via Axis Pay, besides point-of-sale terminals and credit cards.

Zomato acqui-hires Runnr

Food technology company Zomato strengthened its food delivery vertical with the acquisition of delivery logistics startup Runnr in September this year.

The deal came in the wake of Swiggy making broad strides in the market with its unique delivery mechanism.

Zomatos move was part of its strategy to tackle competitors and widen the market.

The acquisition is expected to help Zomato to build up a fleet of delivery personnel in-house to pick up food from a restaurant and deliver it to the customer, a delivery model adopted by Swiggy. Zomato, steadily adding to Runnrs fleet, has over 1,500 executives.

For Runnr, its acquisition was a much-needed breather, as the startup struggled to raise funds for expansion despite having investors such as Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.

Runnr was a merged entity that emerged out of hyperlocal delivery startup Roadrunnr and food-ordering startup TinyOwl.

Softbank invests in Paytm

Courtesy: Forbes18

In the largest funding round by a single investor in India, Paytm bagged a whopping USD 1.4 billion from Japans SoftBank Group in May.

The deal valued the company at about USD 7 billion.

Paytm is a significant prospect for SoftBank, which hasnt had many successful investments in India.

The Japanese investor is said to be building Paytm as a success story in line with its investment in Alipay in China.

That bodes well for Paytm, which wants to stave off Alibabas imminent entry in India market.

At the time of funding, Paytm had said that it will use the cash to acquire 500 million new customers and to go deeper in financial services products to complement its payments bank.

Paytm this month also announced acquisition of Nearbuy and Little, two deals platforms that focus on local restaurants as well as commercial establishments.

Nearbuy, which was launched as SoSasta was acquired by Groupon in 2011 and later renamed it Groupon India.

It acquired its current branding after Sequoia Capital India bought a majority stake in 2015.

Little app, on the other hand, was backed by Paytm from the beginning with initial funding coming from the digital wallet major.

Softbank invests in Uber

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick speaks to students during an interaction at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Mumbai, India, January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Picture

After a year of damaging controversies, US-based Uber had a sigh of relief as the companys board approved in November a multi-billion dollar investment by SoftBank Groups Vision Fund.

SoftBank, along with Dragoneer Investment Group will lead a consortium of investors to infuse USD 1 billion to USD 1.25 billion in Uber, and will buy up to 17 percent of existing shares from investors and employees in a secondary transaction.

The funding, which was a month before a formal announcement, was stuck in Ubers board room due to a deadlock between founder Travis Kalanick and a shareholder.

The funding is expected to help Uber move past a slew of controversies that rocked the company this year, including sexual harassment charges, gender discrimination, attacks on Ubers toxic working environment, and a number of federal criminal probes that ultimately led to Kalanicks resignation.

The deal is also being seen as an acknowledgement of the new governance rules that are being implemented within the company based on 40-plus recommendations tabled by a law firm.

Flipkart buys eBay India, ropes in Softbank

BANGALORE, SEPTEMBER 01, 2013 : Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, founders of Flipkart.com poses for a picture at their office in Kormangala. (Photo by Jyothy Karat)

In a mammoth funding round, Indias largest online retailer Flipkart mopped up USD 1.4 billion from Tencent, eBay Inc., and Microsoft in April, which gave the online retailer muscle to compete with deep-pocketed Amazon. However, Flipkart secured the funding at a lower valuation.

Flipkart also bought over eBays India business as part of the deal.

The funding will help Flipkart compete with Amazon, which is close on the heels to acquire the ace position in Indias online retail market. Flipkart has seen Amazon gradually inch up to its leading position, but with latest funding, the company will be able to expand its market with more services. Basically, the battle between the two is about to heat up.

Flipkart, in October, also bolstered its unified payments interface-based payments app PhonePe with a USD 38.7 million fund infusion.

Softbank invests in OYO Rooms

Ritesh Agarwal OYO

Hotels aggregator OYO Rooms also raised a significant funding of USD 250 million in September, from SoftBanks Vision Fund, in a much needed equity infusion.

The investment gave OYO much needed capital for scale up its operations and to expand its premium Townhouse brand.

The aggregator has been facing stiff competition from other large online travel aggregators such as MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, which merged last year.

More recently, a franchise-based online hotels booking startups Treebo and FabHotels, have also been grabbing market from OYO.

OYOs Townhouse is also competing with Treebo and Fab Hotels in a 'premium-budget' stays model.

The company is now looking at expanding geographically in to South-East Asia.

OYO entered Malaysia and Nepal in January and April this year, respectively.

Tencent & Verlinvest back Byjus

Ed-tech startup Byjus mopped up USD 30 million from Brussels-based family office Verlinvest in March, at a time when investor sentiment was riding at its lowest. The funding was purely for expansion.

The company followed it up with another round of undisclosed funding from Chinas Tencent.

The company raised funds to accelerate product development for new markets and create a capital pool for acquisitions.

This year, Byjus also made a couple of acquisitions  TutorVista and Edurite  from global educations services firm Pearson.

The company turned profitable in the April-June quarter this year.

Byjus has till date (excluding the current round) raised about $200 million from investors.

It is backed by Sequoia Capital and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, among others.
December 21, 2017 / 07:03 PM IST

Tamil Nadu's main opposition DMK today hailed as 'historic' a Delhi court's verdict acquitting its leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum cases even as its arch-rival, the ruling AIADMK, said it was a fit case for appeal.



As the news about the CBI special court's verdict came, DMK cadres broke into celebrations across Tamil Nadu, bursting firecrackers and distributing sweets.

"A historic verdict has been delivered," DMK working president M K Stalin told reporters. Expressing relief and joy, Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha member and daughter of DMK chief M Karunanidhi, said "I have been waiting these last six years for this day."

Dubbing her last six years as "harrowing and excruciating", she said in a statement that as the 2G episode was behind her she will do all she can to strengthen the party and work for the people of Tamil Nadu.
Supporters at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's election campaign rally in Kalol taluka of Gandhinagar district. (PTI)

The clean cheat to all accused in the 2G spectrum scam verdict is likely to give the Congress another boost after its showing in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

The successive incidents, which mark a turn of fortune for the Congress, occurred as Rahul Gandhi took over the reign of the party from his mother. Gandhi, the partys president-elect, has been subjected to ample ridicule and many have expressed doubts about his competence after Congress' performance in the 2014 general elections and Uttar Pradesh polls.

Referring to the special Delhi court verdict that acquitted all accused in the case, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said: "The court has pronounced unambiguously that the massive propaganda against the UPA was unfounded.

The alleged scam came to light during the second term of the UPA government. It was about allocating 2G spectrum licence in 2007-08, mishandling of which cost the public exchequer Rs 1.76 lakh crore, as per a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

The CBI had chargesheeted prime accused former telecom minister A Raja, DMK leader Kanimozhi, the then Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura, and Raja's former private secretary R.K. Chandolia along with 10 other persons in the 2G scam case. They were all acquitted on December 21.

The Time magazine included the scandal in its list of Top 10 abuses of power. The case tainted the reputation of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for a long time.

According to Congress leaders, who got a leg up from the special court's judgement, the verdict came as a vindication of the party's stance that there was no scam in the allocation of spectrum.

The 2G spectrum case was followed by other controversial scams which paved the way for an anti-corruption movement in 2011 led by Gandhian activist Anna Hazare and eventually led to the birth of Aam Aadmi Party.

It also helped the opposition BJP to grab the chance to slam the UPA and create an anti-corruption rhetoric to win the 2014 general elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself used the scams as a campaign plank along with other National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties to come to power.

However, anti-corruption crusader Hazare has accepted the verdict of the court. Since the verdict gives Congress a pivotal chance to work its way to a powerful position again and revive an image free of corruption, it has made the ruling party uncomfortable.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said that the government should appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal of all accused.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Kapil Sibal underlined that the spectrum allocation was done on extant policy, which he indicated may have been faulty and told the Economic Times: The judgement vindicates our position that there was no scam, no criminality. It disproves the allegation that the UPA was full of scams.

Sibal had maintained a zero-loss theory regarding the money lost in the alleged scam when he took over as telecom minister post-resignation of Raja.

The latest verdict also came at a crucial time when Congress is gearing up to revive the party under the leadership of Rahul.
The seven-year-long 2G spectrum verdict on Thursday acquitted all the accused in the 2G spectrum case as the Patiala House special court pointed that the prosecution was unable to provide concrete evidence against the accused.

Sources told CNBC-TV 18 that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) will be taking the case to the High Court, challenging the special court's verdict.

Former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi and three telcos were among the accused. The 2G case was first brought to light when the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in 2010 released a report which pointed that the 2G licenses were issued at underestimated prices.

The then-CAG Vinod Rai is now being asked by Congress members to apologise to the nation for the blaming the-then ruling government.

Catch live updates here

Congress member and MP Kapil Sibal told CNBC TV-18, "Vinod Rai must apologise to the nation" and added that "there was never any corruption in the 2G spectrum issue." He also said that he will raise this issue in the parliament.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed its chargesheet back then and pointed that the spectrum auction resulted in a loss of at least Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer.
The biggest economic scandal the country has faced  the spectrum scam of 2008 which was also known as the 2G scam  today had all its accused being acquitted by the trial court over the prosecution failing to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.

The case was built on the Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rais report that pegged the loss to the exchequer at Rs. 1.76 lakh crore and blamed the then telecom minister A. Raja for ad-hoc changes in rules to favour certain corporates.

The accused included Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam supremo M. Karunanidhis daughter Kanimozhi, his wife Dayalu Amma, Rajas personal secretary R. K. Chandolia, the then telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura, Unitech Managing Director Sanjay Chandra, Essar group promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia, DB Realtys Shahid Balwa, three senior executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group  Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara, film producer Karim Morani, Kalaignar TV directors and several others.

The acquittal is a big setback to the countrys premier investigative agency Central Bureau of Investigation which probed the case over the last six years. The case was heard in the court of one-judge special trial court of Justice OP Saini.

It was in 2008 when Raja issued 122 licences to existing and new operators. Uninor  a joint venture of Norways Telenor and Unitech -- was alloted 22 pan India licences, Loop Telecom 21, Sistema-Shyam 21, Etisalat-DB 15, S Tel 6, Videocon 21, Idea Cellular nine and Tata Teleservices three. The licences were issued at the then prevailing entry fees. Clubbed with the licences was 4.4 Mhz spectrum -- the lifeline of any mobile services provider.

The issuance of licences was prima facie questionable on two counts -- one being that the value of the spectrum had skyrocketed by 2008 as an auction of 3G spectrum before that had collected six times the money compared to what the issue of 122 licences got for a higher quantum of spectrum. The other questionable act was the manner in which the licences were granted as the last date to apply for licences was changed without adequate notice to favour a select few.

That some of the promoters who were issued licences soon after sold stake in those companies at a significant premium to other parties gave credence to the charge that the value of the licences was much higher and that Raja and his officials had received gratification at the expense of the exchequer. The licences were issued at 2002 prices when the value of the spectrum was a fraction of 2008 prices.

The SC had cancelled all the 122 licences on February 2, 2012. The cancellation led to loss of thousands of jobs and non-performing assets that the government-owned banks still reel under.

A key fallout of the scam was that spectrum was unbundled from the licences and is now auctioned every time it is given to a company. The spectrum that came bundled with the licences and did not have to be bid for is called administrative spectrum.

Daggers came out quickly after todays judgement with Congress Manish Tiwari asking the countrys former auditor Rai to apologise to the country.

It is almost certain that CBI will approach the Supreme Court against the verdict as the special trial court was set up on the apex courts order which heard the matter originally.

The judgement could throw open new possibilities for alliances in the crucial state of Tamil Nadu which sends 39 members to the Lok Sabha. The DMK was then a member of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently met Karunanidhi in Chennai to enquire about his health.

It may be said here that the hysteria created by the unravelling of the spectrum scam, amidst the anti-corruption sentiment in the country whipped up by Anna Hazare and the civil rights activists, played a crucial role in the throne that Modi occupies today.
India Tourism Development Corporation | The stock has gained 15 percent from Rs 245.15 to Rs 282.35 between November 23 and November 26. In the same time period, we have seen an increase in the volume (from 1,731 to 82,820), and deliverable volume (from 723 to 22,125)

The construction of a Mahabharata-themed museum has begun in Kurukshetra district of Haryana. The building of the new multi-crore project under central governments Swadesh Darshan Scheme is, however, leading to mixed responses across the political circles.

Based in Jyotisar village, which is said to be the site where Lord Krishna delivered the message of Bhagawat Gita to Arjun, the museum - whose boundary wall construction has already commenced - will consist of a meditation centre, exhibition area, shopping complex, and a huge entrance gate.

According to a report by Hindustan Times, the museum will be spread over 19 acres of land on the Pehowa-Kurukshetra road. As per reports, the construction will be carried out by a private construction company that has been entrusted with the task by the Haryana Public Works Department.

While the present project is primarily envisaged by the central government, Haryana state authorities have not left any stone unturned in their attempt to convert the region into a popular spirituality hub.

Large number of temples and religious centres are already concentrated in the Kurukshetra region where land is provided at cheaper rates to religious groups and trusts. The state government has also grabbed headlines for projects linked to Hindu mythology including attempts to revive Saraswati river and another one tied to Gita Jayanti.

Many in the opposition are not impressed with the lavish spending. Former Chief Minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda criticised the ruling BJP government for using these projects to gain political benefits in the Hindu-dominated state.

This BJP government is not a government but has become an event management company and they are just wasting the money for the promotion of religion for their political benefits, he was quoted saying in the report.

Indian National Lok Dal state president Ashok Arora too criticised the policy by alleging that BJP was using these projects to divert the attention of people from development issues. The BJP government wasted crores of rupees over Saraswati river and Gita Jayanti Mahotsav, and now they have started another project worth several crores but have no focus to provide employment to youths.
In a bizarre incident that took place in Chennai, a drunk man took off with a hospital ambulance mistaking it for his own Audi car. The story came to light after the hospital authorities discovered that their ambulance van was missing.

While it is not yet really clear what exactly led to the mistake, a report in the RushLane stated that the discovery of the disappearance of the Maruti Omni Van came to notice only after the hospital staff, who were trying to respond to an emergency call at around 3 AM found out that the vehicle had disappeared. While the police started investigating the matter after the hospital authorities notified them about the theft, a surprising twist occurred.

To the shock of hospital authorities and police officials, a person reached the hospital driving the stolen vehicle and apologised for what he claimed was a mistake done by his boss.

According to the man, his boss - a man in his early thirties - had arrived at the hospital in his Audi car to allegedly drop off a friend but in his drunk condition took off with the ambulance by mistake. He realised his mistake only after reaching his home in Palavakkam, a city suburb and sent his driver to return the vehicle.

While the hospital authorities refrained from pressing the charges after the man reportedly apologised and paid for the minor damage he had caused on the vehicle, few questions still linger about the entire event.

Clear answers to exactly how the staff failed to notice the entire incident and how the driver mistook an Audi that was parked outside with the Maruti Omni that was parked within the hospital still ask for an explanation.
Rahul Gandhi

The Gujarat elections have given fresh momentum to the Congress and revived its political fortunes, says senior party leader Veerappa Moily.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi should now perform "major surgery" on the party and replace Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs and AICC state in-charges who had failed to deliver on the electoral front, he said.

The Congress has not only revived but gained momentum after its performance in the just-concluded Gujarat polls, he said.

"Any next elections, the Congress will be the winner," the former Karnataka chief minister told PTI.

Discussing the new Congress president's challenges in rejuvenating the party, Moily said, "Wherever people have failed in one or two elections... AICC in-charge (in states) he should drastically change them, put new faces in charge."

In states, too, there are people who have consistently been failing in local and assembly elections, he said.

"There is no point in continuing with such PCC presidents," he said.

The party should not lose any more elections because of All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge in states and PCC presidents who have failed to make their mark in polls, Moily stressed.

Moily held various portfolios during the earlier UPA government.

Asked if there was need to overhaul the organisational structure, he said, "Absolutely. He has to do the major surgery. The Congress has great strength and the leader has great strength. And we have to definitely take it forward."
Representational picture

India has hit out at some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism due to their "narrow political and strategic concerns", apparently referring to Pakistan and China.

India's Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said terror networks operate across borders in terms of propagation of hateful ideologies, sometimes based in deep-rooted perceived grievances; raise finances; procure arms; and recruit operatives.

"This is a common challenge which requires greater focus by this Council, one where closer international cooperation needs to be, can be and should be expanded for our common interest," Akbaruddin told the Security Council during an open debate yesterday on 'Addressing complex contemporary challenges to International Peace and Security'.

"It appears that this common threat to states and societies is not clearly understood here. Even on counter- terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council," he said.

Akbaruddin was apparently referring to China's decision to repeatedly block a move by India to designate Masood Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant group, as a global terrorist.

On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to "narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases", he said.

Akbaruddin also referred to the fact that the UN- designated terrorist and Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, was seeking to contest elections in Pakistan.

Saeed had announced that his Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) will contest the 2018 general elections in Pakistan under the banner of the Milli Muslim League, which is yet to be registered with the Election Commission.

"In other cases where Sanctions Committees have designated terrorists, there are states who venture to mainstream UN designated terrorist individuals into their political process in total disregard of international law, thus putting our common security in peril," Akbaruddin said in his address to the Security Council.
Newly-appointed Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basaria on Thursday presented his credentials to President Mamnoon Hussain, who said Pakistan is sincerely working for regional peace, stability and development.

Hussain congratulated the envoy and expressed hope that he will play important role in improving the bilateral ties, according to a statement issued by the President House.

"Pakistan is sincerely working for regional peace, stability and development," the president told Basaria.

Pakistan's economy prospered due to prudent policies of the government, Hussain said, adding that Pakistan is the best country for investment.

Ambassadors of China and Vietnam also presented their credentials today.

Basaria last week arrived in Pakistan through Wagah Border. He is 25th Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan.

He arrived at a challenging time as relations between Pakistan and India have touched new low due to ongoing tension.

His first major task would be the handling of a meeting between Kulbhushan Jadhav and his family on Monday.

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan had agreed to facilitate a meeting of Jadhav with his mother and wife in Islamabad on December 25.
As Pakistan's Army chief pledged his support for better ties, India today asserted that Islamabad will have to take action against terror groups operating from its soil for improvement in the bilateral relationship.

Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

Reacting to the comments, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups.

"It is important for Pakistan to understand our core concern, which is terrorism. We have time and again asked them to take action against terrorists who are operating from their soil. This is something they (Pakistan) will have to handle if they are serious in cultivating this friendship," Kumar told reporters.

He was asked to comment on Gen. Bajwa's remarks.

"Like any good neighbour, we do desire good neighbourly relations with the country which is next to us," Kumar said.

In a rare move, the Pakistan Army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on the security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa also said his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

The military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation for the first time in six years.

The powerful army enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan.
The "massive propaganda" against the UPA on 2G spectrum was without any foundation, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said today after a special court acquitted all accused in the spectrum scam case.

The judgement speaks for itself, Manmohan Singh said.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh said.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.
Polling progressed at a brisk pace in the R K Nagar assembly constituency here, with an estimated 41 per cent of the electorate casting their votes by 1 PM in the prestigious by-election.

Election authorities said 41.6 per cent of the 2,28,234 voters in the constituency exercised their franchise by 1 PM and there were no reports of any untoward incident so far.

A few issues related to Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were immediately sorted out and polling was "brisk", they said.

The by-election is being held to fill the vacancy caused by the death of sitting MLA and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

Earlier, polling began at 8 AM, with people arriving to exercise their franchise across booths in the constituency in North Chennai, braving the misty conditions.

R K Nagar, represented twice by Jayalalithaa, has an electorate strength of 2,28,234 -- comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

The key contenders in the poll are ruling AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan, main opposition DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh and sidelined AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, contesting as an Independent.

The bypoll is being seen as an acid test for the AIADMK, as it is the first election since the death of Jayalalithaa and after it got the 'Two Leaves' election symbol back following the merger of the factions led by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his present deputy and former rebel O Panneerselvem.

Jailed leader V K Sasikala-Dhinakaran camp lost the symbol case before the Election Commission which last month held that the EPS and OPS group commanded majority in the party's organisational and legislature wings.

Though as many as 59 candidates are in the fray including from the BJP, it is mainly seen as a fight between the AIADMK, its rival faction led by Dhinakaran and DMK.

Madhusudanan is a party veteran who hails from the constituency. Ganesh too hails from the area.

Elaborate security arrangements are in place with about 2,000 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces, including CRPF, deployed across 256 polling stations.

The polling process is being monitored by nine observers, considered the highest for a single assembly constituency.

This includes general, special, police and expenditure officials.
Tamil Nadu, one of the favourites among investors, suffered a setback on the industrial front in 2017 on account of political twists and turns. While government projects slowed, investment proposals stalled following the death of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and other political developments, including a jail term for V K Sasikala.

The silver lining, however, came from the push for the aeronautics industry, with the state allocating adequate land to set up the first aerospace park. Tamil Nadu, otherwise home to various automobile and information technology companies, kept its focus on aeronautics, given the available skills.

This is attested by the fact that a number of aero- engineering students pass out from various colleges in the state every year. The point to note is the sudden political vacuum created by Jayalalithaa's demise hindered implementation of business plans.

Investors were concerned about securing expeditious clearance for their proposals from government authorities. "Initially, we were hesitant on future investments in Tamil Nadu, but have been assured that our concerns will be addressed," said a top executive of an automobile company.

Soon after the K Palaniswami government assumed office in February, Finance Minister D Jayakumar announced in the Assembly that an aerospace park is on the way. It is to be set up on 268 acres at the Vallam-Vadagal SIPCOT Industrial Estate in Kancheepuram with an estimated project cost of Rs 350 crore.

The park would see companies setting up operations in manufacturing aerospace components and providing maintenance and repair services, he said. As part of efforts to ramp up infrastructure, the government also plans to set up a plastic industries park in Tiruvallur district at an investment of Rs 264 crore.

According to the minister, the Centre has cleared the decks for setting up the first medical park in the state with an estimated cost of Rs 130 crore on 330 acres in Kancheepuram. On the Global Investors Meet, the state's maiden event that attracted investments of over Rs 2 lakh crore in 2016, a government official said the bi-annual event is on track and will be conducted next year, too.

The first edition kicked off with Jayalalithaa at the helm. To push infrastructure, the state government has decided to undertake the second phase of investment promotion programme, with a Rs 1,295-crore assistance programme from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

"Besides improving the policy environment to make the state investor friendly, this scheme will further strengthen infrastructure for industrial development (in the state)," the state finance minister said.

The Tamil Nadu government, as part of quicker disposal of investment proposals, also released a 'single window clearance' in 2017 to allow faster processing of these applications. With this facility -- available on portal www.easybusiness.tn.gov.in -- eligible investors can avail of 37 government services without any human interface.

The portal is expected to serve as a single point platform for accepting applications and electronically distributing the same to respective authorities and also taking fee payment from enterprises digitally. On the front of tourism and growth, the state unveiled plans for a second parallel runway at the Chennai airport.

The meeting was chaired by Palaniswami and attended by civil aviation secretary and senior AAI officials. The city airport, according to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, needs a modern parallel runway to cater to the growing passenger traffic and the Centre and state have to partner for this cause.

An industry official said the annual passenger traffic at the Chennai airport is set to increase to 35 million in coming years, from the current 20 million. The Centre is working on a plan for a greenfield airport near here, for which around 2,000 acres have to be provided by the state government, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in Chennai recently.

Coming to IT, software export from the state has been on the upswing over the last few years and is expected to hit Rs 1,00,300 crore by 2017, said a government official.

The state has been promoting Information Technology parks in tier II cities and this year, an additional IT park at Sholinganallur and a start-up warehouse in Coimbatore are being set up. With active support of the Centre, the state is taking the initiative to promote an electronic hardware industry hub at Sriperumbudur near Chennai.
Narendra Modi

The Congress today said the truth in the 2G spectrum allocation case had finally prevailed and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should apologise to the nation for its "propaganda" against the party.

A special court today acquitted all the accused in the 2G scam case, which had rocked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II regime.

"One thing is clear... the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never true and not correct and that has been established," former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said.

The truth had finally prevailed and the BJP had been exposed, added Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.

"The BJP has been exposed for its untruth and propaganda against Congress. The prime minister, (Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley and the BJP should apologise to the nation," Surjewala said.

"The BJP stands exposed for conspiring against the Congress," Surjewala told reporters.

Former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were today acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case.

Fifteen other accused in the case and three companies were also acquitted.
New Delhi: A view of Parliament in New Delhi on Sunday, a day ahead of the monsoon session. PTI Photo by Kamal Singh (PTI7_16_2017_000213B)

The acquittal of all 2G telecom spectrum allocation scam accused today found echo in the Rajya Sabha, with the Opposition Congress disrupting proceedings demanding an explanation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congress members shouted slogans, drowning the voices of other members and forcing Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to adjourn the proceedings till 2 PM, but not before threatening to invoke rules against them and rapping them for their unruly behaviour.

Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad sought an explanation from Modi for the "false propaganda" on the 2G scam to come to power in 2014.

Congress, he said, has been since the past week seeking an explanation from the Prime Minister over "false" allegations he made against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Today, after the acquittal of all the accused, "we want to ask where did all the allegations (of scam) go," he said.

The BJP had run a propaganda on the 2G spectrum allocation that helped it "move from that side (opposition side in Rajya Sabha) to this side (ruling side) and us from that side (ruling side) to this side (opposition benches)," Azad said.

Naidu said he was not allowing Azad's submission as he had not given any notice, as he asked members to return to their seats. He also said "nothing will go on record".

But Congress members were in no mood to listen and rushed to the Well raising slogans against Modi and the BJP.

Naidu then cited a May 22, 1990 ruling of then Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma that the Chair's ruling on not allowing suspension of a Question Hour or allowing a discussion is final.

"Democracy means working according to rules (and) not shouting," he said.

Stating that he is willing to use his discretion to allow serious matters to be raised, Naidu said "some people have developed the habit of giving notices under rule 267 and then disrupting proceedings."

Notice under rule 267 calls for setting aside of the listed business of the day to take up the issue being raised.

As some slogan-shouting Congress members moved in front of the ruling benches, Naidu castigated them for moving from the opposition side to the treasury side of the Well.

At the persuasion of Azad, the Congress members left the Well and returned to their seats but kept raising slogans, drowning the voices of members whom the Chair had called to raise Zero Hour issues.

Naidu went on to rap the Congress members for the unruly behaviour, saying "3/4ths of the House wants to take up Zero Hour issues".

"Please follow some decorum. I condemn your behaviour," he said, adding "I will have to think about invoking rules. Don't force me to do that. ... The whole country is watching your behaviour."

When deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma tried to raise a point, Naidu snapped back at him saying it was not good for a deputy leader of the party to defy the Chair.

As the Congress members continued to shout slogan, Naidu went on to state that it was not the right tradition to take the names of the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister or political parties.

With Congress members remaining unrelenting, he adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

Normally, the chair in case of disruptions in the first hour of the sitting, adjourns proceedings till 1200 hours. But when Naidu adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm, members were surprised.

Thursday, being the Question day for the Prime Minister's Office, Modi was expected to be present during Question Hour slated at noon.

Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was seen asking the Rajya Sabha officials if he has indeed adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.
The mystery surrounding Oumuamua, an interstellar object that was discovered to be travelling close to earth may have finally come to an end. The scientists based in Belfast have concluded that the object was a natural body visiting from another solar system covered with ice-like organic layers.

As per a report in the Phys.org, the conclusion was reached by the research team based out of Belfasts Queens University who were investigating the object since it first appeared a few months back. The international team that was led by Professor Alan Fitzsimmons and Dr Michele Bannister, analysed and studied various aspects of the alien object to unravel the mysteries surrounding it.

What made the arrival of Oumuamua so significant was the fact that it was the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system. One big mystery that had emerged surrounding the object was its ability to reflect light which led to rumors that the disc-shaped object could well be an alien vessel trying to observe earth.

However, studies have revealed it was the presence of objects similar to ice that covered the object with a dry crust that led to the phenomenon. This organic-rich layer had been formed after Oumuamua got exposed to cosmic rays for millions if not billions of years.

We have discovered that the surface of `Oumuamua is similar to small solar system bodies that are covered in carbon-rich ices, whose structure is modified by exposure to cosmic rayswe have also found that a half-metre thick coating of organic-rich material could have protected a water-ice-rich comet-like interior from vaporizing when the object was heated by the sun, even though it was heated to over 300 degrees centigrade," Fitzsimmons was quoted saying in the report.

The team had made several other findings about the object and will reportedly publish further details in journals in the upcoming period.
Narendra Modi

Bangladesh minister Obaidul Quader lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his role in strengthening the Indo-Bangla bilateral relations and said his country wanted a "logical, practical and acceptable solution" to the Teesta water-sharing issue.

The emotive issue features prominently in the bilateral relations of the two countries.

"India is our time-tested friend. It stood beside us at the time of crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has played a crucial role in further strengthening the bilateral relations by speeding up the process of signing the Land Boundary Agreement in 2015. The bilateral relations have achieved new heights. It is a constructive partnership," the Bangladesh transport minister and general secretary of the Awami League, the ruling party of that country, said.

About the status of the Teesta issue, he said, "Discussions are on. Modi, during his visit to Dhaka (in 2015), had assured our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and our people are hopeful because of his assurance. We are hopeful about a logical, practical and acceptable solution to the Teesta water-sharing issue."

India and Bangladesh were set to ink a deal on Teesta water sharing during the then prime minister Manmohan Singh's Dhaka visit in 2011, but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had declined to endorse it, citing a scarcity of water in her state.

Banerjee, who is still opposed to the Teesta Treaty, had earlier this year offered an alternative proposal of sharing the waters of the Torsa and Manshai rivers with Bangladesh.

Asked to comment on Banerjee's proposal, Quader said, "It is her personal opinion, we cannot comment on it. It is for the central and state governments to discuss among themselves. We are discussing the matter with the government of India."

Quader said both India and Bangladesh should fight together against the menace of terrorism as it was a common enemy of both the countries.

On military cooperation between the two countries, he said Bangladesh was ready to provide all the help for the sake of its interests.

India and Bangladesh had recently held a field-training exercise -- 'SAMPRITI 2017' -- at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte in Mizoram to strengthen the interoperability and cooperation between the armies of the two countries.
Atrium at WeWork-Galaxy, Bengaluru

The movement towards coworking spaces has taken over the world by storm. With a distributed workforce, easily accessible modes of transport, and a major boom in the start-up economy; a robust and modern way of working is in demand. With the rise in costs of establishing and maintaining traditional offices and with the challenges in the lack of flexibility with leases, shared office spaces are seemingly more convenient.

Hot Desks at WeWork-BKC, Mumbai

Companies that have limited capital or require a workspace for short periods of time, benefit from coworking spaces, as they typically have month-to-month flexibility. For example, WeWork, the 5th largest startup based in New York, has been the leader in the movement towards the future of work. What this movement is all about is that the traditional way of working is no longer the future, as millennials and even large companies are looking for more within their workspace. With their flexible lease options and location benefits, shared office spaces are serving the needs of young entrepreneurs, millennials, start-ups, and large firms who are testing new waters, as they expand across the world. For corporates, however, employee experience in the workplace is a vital factor. For attraction and retention of talent, a shift is taking place to make an office and work less mundane. Employee satisfaction and motivation is a key driving factor for corporates when they move into a coworking space.

In India, the coworking world is expected to receive $400 million in investments by 2018, according to a study by JLL. Particularly in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Bangalore, coworking spaces will lead to lowered costs in the range of 2025% when compared to traditional office spaces. According to another JLL study, the main reasons that drive coworking spaces in India are cost, infrastructure, and networking opportunities, which is why the entrance of WeWork in India is making waves around the country, especially in Bangalore and Mumbai. They are changing the coworking game completely, as they strive to be more than just a workspace. For example, WeWorks global network of workspaces allow companies and people to grow together. One of their aims is to transform buildings into dynamic environments for creativity, focus, and human connection. So more than just office space, WeWork believes in creating spaces where people can connect and create meaning together, while using space more effectively and efficiently. Globally theyve made a name for themselves with their 175,000+ members in 200 physical locations across 20 countries.

Nooks at WeWork-Galaxy,Bengaluru

Following the rest of the world, India as well is changing in how and why people work. More people want to work on the projects theyre passionate about in an energetic environment where others are all on the same page; trying to do their best work. WeWork also strives to connect people through the design of the workplace in order to create a positive energy, an atmosphere that encourages people to feel part of a community; something larger than themselves because the space is essential to peoples everyday experience. Its in the design of their stools and chairs, the lighting, the width of the hallways, the conference rooms  everything you see and everything you feel.

Printing Nook at WeWork-BKC, Mumbai

This feeling of community and working better together, along with lowered costs and lease flexibility is why coworking and shared office spaces are gaining traction around the world. It is anticipated that by 2020, coworking spaces will overtake the traditional office.
a raja 2G scam

The Patiala House Court in Delhi will be pronouncing its verdict on the 2G scam cases Thursday, deciding the fate of a number of politicians, corporate executives and businessmen.

The 2G scam, widely considered to be the biggest scam independent India has ever seen, first came to light in 2010, when the United Progressive Alliance government was in power.

In fact, Time magazine has termed the scam the biggest abuse of power in the world after the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon.

LIVE: Follow the latest updates about 2G spectrum case on our live blog

Special Judge Om Prakash Saini will pronounce the court's judgment on separate cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate.

All accused in the 2G scam cases are expected to be present, following the court's direction. Top India Inc. officials facing charges include the Ruias of Essar Group, officials of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Unitech promoter Sanjay Chandra, and former DB Realty Managing Director Shahid Balwa.

Among the accused are a few politicians and bureaucrats who held office back then, including former telecom minister A Raja, his former personal secretary RK Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura. Current Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha MK Kanimozhi is also facing charges.

A recap of what went down in the 2G scam

The term 2G scam is possibly the most recognisable one to have appeared on television sets in India in the last couple of decades. Such was the backlash that followed its unearthing that 7 out of the 8 companies whose licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court could not survive the resultant turmoil.

The scam was triggered when telecom minister A Raja opted for first come, first served policy to distribute lucrative wireless telecom licences.

Raja is accused of having taken bribes to arbitrarily change the rules to benefit certain companies and individuals. He allegedly changed the cut-off date for the application for a licence and sold the spectrum at price charged in 2001.

Also, while doing so, the minister reportedly ignored the advice of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to defer the allocation of 2G spectrum by a few days.

The matter came to light when the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, then headed by Vinod Rai, came out with a report that said the licences awarded by the telecom department were given away at throwaway prices, resulting in a loss of Rs 1.75 lakh crore to the exchequer of the government.

It was also discovered that some of the licences had been allotted to applicants who had suppressed facts about themselves, disclosed incomplete information and submitted fake documents in order to get access to the spectrum on sale.

In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and the others, the CBI had alleged there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in the allocation of all the licences for 2G spectrum.

In 2012, the Supreme Court of India cancelled all the licenses allotted during Rajas tenure. The minister was already in jail then, having been charged with forgery, criminal conspiracy and various other provisions under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act back in 2010.

In all, 8 companies lost a total of 122 licences as a result of the Supreme Court order, of which only Idea Cellular managed to weather its way out of the storm that followed. Others who lost licenses were Unitech, Swan Telecom, Sistema, Loop Mobile, Videocon, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra, and S-Tel.

A couple of years later, the ED filed a charge sheet against Raja, Kanimozhi and others for alleged money laundering. The ED had listed 19 accused in its charge sheet in April 2014, including Raja, Kanimozhi, Shahid Balwa, and Vinod Goenka, among others.

The charge sheet also included the name of DMK chief M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case, alleging that Rs 200 crore was paid by Swan Telecoms promoters to DMK-run Kalaignar TV.

In its final report, the ED named 10 individuals and 9 companies as the accused and listed them in the charge sheet for offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

(With inputs from PTI)
A Chinese man has been living in the premises of Beijing International Airport for nearly 10 years. Reason: His wife did not allow him to drink at home.

Wei Jianguo, 53, started living on the airport after a series of quarrel with his wife over drinking. He would usually lose control and abuse. He left his home in 2008 and since then has spent every day and night at the different terminals of the second busiest airport in the world.

He has all the lifes bare necessities at his perusalblankets, food bowls, herbs and spices, shoes, an electric cooker which he had brought from home among other things.

Jianguo is jobless and receives around CNY 1,000 as government subsidy every month. He uses the money to buy his food needs. He only leaves the airport when he has to go shopping. Several attempts by the authorities to evict him from the airport has been unsuccessful, according to Pear Video.

Jianguo has developed a habit of living at the airport and despite that he can move out or go back home, he refuses to. He says that the airport is warm and cosy and he can drink and eat at his will here. Jianguo prepares his meals around his sleeping area. Trolleys at the airport have become his storage for his possessions.

However, he is not the first person in the world to make the airport his home. The most famous airport-dweller was Iranian Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years. Terminal 1 of the airport was his home from 1988 to 2006, before he got hospitalised.

He was immortalised in the movie The Terminal where Tom Hanks played his character.

Nasseri was an Iranian refugee who was denied entry in the UK and deported to his last port of departure. The French authorities also refused him entry into the country forcing him to make the airport his home.
NORRISTOWN  The Montgomery County Commissioners, on the advice of the Montgomery County Department of Public Safety, have declared a Code Blue Cold Weather Emergency for Montgomery County based on a review of forecasts from the National Weather Service. The...
Jarrett Coleman goes from school board to statehouse with win in 16th Senate District race
Thanks to Nigel the Nutcracker from The Warehouse, we are granting wishes across the country!
Today was an amazingly beautiful day in western North Carolina. After a productive morning, I got out for a comfortable 6.5-mile hike through OUR public land. Part of my path followed the footsteps of the Over Mountain Victory men and Catawba valley patriot militias of 1780. About two-thirds of the way through my hike, I sat quietly eating an apple while a white-tailed deer stared, wondering what I was.

It is clear to me that OUR public land is worth far more than the commercial value of the timber upon it and the minerals below it. The current Administration and some members of Congress have launched an unprecedented attack upon OUR public lands. For now, the attacks are focused in the west, but no one knows where they will stop. When I got home, I donated my morning earnings to The Grand Canyon Trust, one of the organizations fighting to protect our public lands, everywhere. We hold these lands in trust for future generations and we must protect them. Please join the fight.
The Government has recommended lowering of the auto-enrolment age threshold to 18  setting up thousands of teenagers for a well-funded retirement. Currently the threshold for auto-enrolment is 22. Lowering age threshold would qualify nearly one million workers for auto-enrolment, resulting in an extra 770 million in annual pension savings.

There are still millions of workers who are failing to contribute sufficient amounts

Providing these individuals do not opt out of their workplace schemes, they will be beginning a multi-decade savings journey  half a century of compound interest, pound cost averaging and falling costs resulting in a tidy sum come retirement.

As well as proposing a lower age threshold for auto-enrolment, the Automatic Enrolment Review 2017 from the Department of Work & Pensions also suggested a lower earnings threshold to mean that every pound earned counts towards the contribution limit. Currently the earnings threshold is 10,000, but only 4,124 of that salary counts for the purposes of auto enrolment.

Lee Hollingworth, head of DC Consulting at Hymans Robertson, said that both the reduction of the starting age and lowering the threshold would lead to people saving more for retirement.

Lowering the age to 18, and basing contributions from the very first pound, will significantly increase the retirement outcomes for millions of savers, through the magic of compounding, he said.

But it is disappointing that the changes are not expected to be implemented until the mid-2020s, which will be at a great cost to those who will benefit as they will miss out on many vital years of additional pension contribution.

Saving More, But Not Enough

The Review found that nine million workers are now investing into a workplace pension thanks to auto-enrolment, adding to the near 11 million who were already in a workplace pension.

The report also found that while many savers  and their employers  were contributing more a month than the compulsory minimum requirement of 2% of total salary, made up of 0.8% from employee 0.2% tax back and 1% from the employer. The median employee contribution rate in 2016 was 2.4%, while employers contributed 4% on average.

The vast majority of employers matched higher contribution rates made by their employees: in 2016, nearly 94% of automatically enrolled employees contributing over 3%, received a matching or higher employer contribution rate, the report reads.

However, there are still millions of workers who are failing to contribute sufficient amounts to fund their retirement. The DWP warned that 12 million retirement savers were not putting enough cash into their pension.

Based on existing automatic enrolment rules on coverage and contributions, it is estimated that the introduction of automatic enrolment reduced under-saving from 14 million to 12 million individuals, the report states.

The increase in minimum contribution rates should go some way to fix this; from April 6 2019 the total minimum contribution will be 8%  3% from employer and the remainder from the individual and tax back.

But Hollingworth called for an even greater minimum contribution rate to close the gap of pension poverty.

Next year sees contributions increasing to 5% with a further increase to 8% in 2019, but there is still a long way to go, he said. At 12% we would begin to see a contribution that will have a meaningful impact for employees retirement savings. At that level we can see far greater certainty of them reaching a target income that they can live on in retirement.

Other industry experts have suggested the proposed reforms do not go far enough, in particular they do little to address the concerns that the self-employed are falling through the retirement savings gap.

Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said that auto-enrolment was a bold leap which had been hugely successful but more needed to be done.

This review shows none of the boldness of the original scheme in announcing a few minor tweaks and tentative pilot schemes, he said

The analysis accompanying the report shows 12 million people are under-saving for retirement, including a growing army of the self-employed. It is time for the Government to revert to bold type in building on its past successes.
Asia-focused offerings dominate the list of best-performing investment trusts in 2017 on a total return basis, according to data from Morningstar Direct.

Of the top 20 performers, 12 invest in the region, with seven of those in the top 10. Many have big exposure to Chinese technology duo Alibaba (BABA) and Tencent (00700), which have more than doubled their share prices this year.

Unsurprisingly, equities have dominated bonds over the past 12 months and Japanese smaller companies in particular have performed well. Elsewhere, two technology trusts are in the top 10, as are two global offerings.

JPMorgan Chinese (JMC)

This Morningstar Bronze-rated trust has returned 52.4% in total returns in the year-to-date, thanks partly to its top two holdings, Alibaba and Tencent, which account for almost a fifth of its 218 million of assets.

This year has provided relief for manager Howard Wang, who had seen his trust sitting in the third or fourth quartile of the eight-strong Asia Pacific ex Japan sector between 2014 and 2016 and lagging the sector average.

But Morningstar analyst Germaine Share notes this was due to Wangs growth preference being out of favour, especially last year when value sectors such as energy and materials rallied. The portfolio has overweight exposures to the consumer discretionary and healthcare sectors.

It currently trades on a discount of just under 4.9%, compared to its 10-year average of 8.9% and has an ongoing charge figure of 1.4%.

Independent Investment Trust (IIT)

While this is a global trust and can invest in international quoted securities, it is mainly invested in UK equities. It has returned 48.5% year-to-date and has a five-star performance rating, comprehensively outpacing its benchmark every year since 2012 bar last year.

Manager Max Ward runs a high-conviction portfolio of 30 stocks, with tonic drinks maker FeverTree (FEVR) the largest holding, followed by automation specialist Blue Prism (PRSM).

This pair have returned 88.6% and 178% year-to-date respectively. However, Ward has been taking profits in recent months. The fund bought both early on in their tenures as listed entities so has made more than 10 times its initial investment.

Other top holdings include FTSE 250 housebuilder Redrow (RDW), online travel retailer On The Beach and equipment rental firm Ashtead (AHT).

It currently trades on a premium of 8.5%, compared with a 10-year average of a 7.3% discount. It has an ongoing charge figure of 0.34%.

Pacific Horizon (PHI)

This Baillie Gifford-managed trust can invest across the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan and currently has just over a third in China and a quarter invested in South Korea.

The top two holdings, again, are Alibaba and Tencent. In fact, over half the portfolio is invested in technology names. The third largest is Sunny Optical Technology (02382), a Chinese designer and manufacturer of optical-related products.

Car maker Geely (00175) and e-commerce firm JD.com (JD) complete the top five of Roderick Snells fund, which has returned 47.2% in 2017.

It currently trades at a discount of 6.3%, compared to its 10-year average of 8.4% and has an ongoing charge figure of 1.07%.

Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon (BGS)

Another offering from the high-quality Baillie Gifford stable, Shin Nippon  which means New Japan  is another serial outperformer, having beaten its benchmark for seven of the past eight years.

Managed since 2011 by Praveen Kumar, Shin Nippon has returned 45.6% by investing in Japanese smaller companies.

Internet retailers Yume No Machi Souzou Iinkai (2484) and Start Today (3092) are the top two holdings, followed by outsourcer Outsourcing (2427) and merger and acquisition brokerage Nihon M&A Center (2127).

It currently trades on a premium of 12.9% compared to its 10-year average of -4.5%. It has an ongoing charge figures of 0.96%.

Allianz Technology Trust (ATT)

Managed by Walter Price from his San Francisco base, Allianz Technology has been well placed to benefit from the outperformance of the large tech stocks. Its top holdings include Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOGL), amongst other less familiar names.

Chipmaker Micron Technologies (MU) is the third largest, with mobile payment firm Square (SQ) and IT specialist DXC Technology (DXC) fifth and seventh. US companies account for four-fifths, while it holds relatively small positions in the UKs Sophos (SOPH), Micro Focus (MCRO), Blue Prism and Alfa Financial Software (ALFA).

The trust has returned 43% in 2017 so far, almost double the 27% it gained in 2016.

It currently trades on a small premium of 1.81%, but its 10-year average is a discount of 6.66%. This is the first time since 2013 it has traded on a premium of any sort. The ongoing charge figure is 1.03%.

Best of the Rest

Other top performers in the year include Atlantis Japan Growth (AJG), managed by Tiburon Partners, in sixth with returns of 42.7%.

The ever-popular Morningstar Gold-rated Scottish Mortgage (SMT), the third Baillie Gifford-run trust in the top 10, returned 42.3% to add to its already-impressive long-term returns thanks to investments in the likes of the FANGs and BATs (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent).

The next two were country specific funds, with India Capital Growth (IGC) and Vietnam Enterprise (VEIL) gaining shareholders 42.2% and 42.1% respectively. Vietnams Ho Chi Minh stock exchange has been one of the best performing in recent years, up 140% over the past five years and 43.5% year-to-date.

JPMorgan Asian (JAI) rounds out the top 10.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The two pit bulls suspected of mauling their owner to death during a walk in the woods have been euthanized, police confirmed Monday.

Bethany Lynn Stephens, 22, of Virginia was killed Thursday evening while walking her two dogs, Tonka and Pacman.

In a news conference, Goochland County Sheriff James Agnew described Stephens' chest, face and arm injuries as "extremely gruesome" and said the investigation was made difficult because "the damage was so extensive that there was nothing left to compare bite marks to."

The two dogs were put down Saturday evening with the permission of the family, but Agnew said authorities considered shooting the dogs at the scene.

JAIL TIME: Texas man sentenced after leaving dog to die in empty apartment

Now Playing: A pit bull that was shot in the face by alleged car-thieves in Dover last week is now on the road to recovery. Video: Fox 13 Tampa

"While we were talking about strategies to catch the dogs, we turned and looked, the dogs had gone back over to the body, and I observed, as well as four other deputy sheriffs, the dogs eating the ribcage on the body," Agnew said.

Eventually, authorities captured the dogs with the help of the victim's friend.

Police are still investigating Stephens' death, but Agnew noted the possibility of foul play was unlikely and that the body's damage indicated the 22-year-old was most likely killed by a smaller animal, and not a bear like some suggested.

Above: See the most shocking crimes of 2017.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

His shirt had hung there for five years, but Wednesday morning marked the moment Terry Johnson pulled it out of the closet to wear one last time.

A black shooting-style shirt with a camouflage-printed patch sewn on the right breast and the Show of Support emblem embroidered in tan thread on the left is a memento of tragedy.

This was the shirt I was wearing that night, Johnson said at the dedication of Hero Plaza, built to memorialize the deaths of four wounded veterans who were killed by a train as their parade float was stopped on the tracks.

In the late afternoon of Nov. 15, 2012, Johnsons Show of Support organization was in the process of celebrating wounded veterans just as it had in years past. A parade through town led to the Midland County Horseshoe Arena, where a celebration would take place. On this day, however, the gathering never happened.

At about 4:30 p.m., the second of a pair of parade floats  flatbed trailers pulled by truck-tractors with veterans and their spouses seated atop  advanced slowly across the train tracks at Garfield Street. The float was struck by a Union Pacific locomotive traveling through town. There was little time to escape as the train approached.

Marine Chief Warrant Officer 3 Gary Stouffer, 37; Army Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Boivin, 47; Army Sgt. Maj. William Lubbers, 43; and Army Sgt. Joshua Michael, 34, died. More than a dozen others were injured.

Johnson was at the Horseshoe. In years past, he knew the parade was near because he could hear the sirens blare grow louder while he prepared for his honorees. On this day, their volume faded lower, and he knew there was a problem not far away.

Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter also was at the Horseshoe when the crash happened.

When it came across on the radio, I just couldnt believe that something like that could happen right there, he said after the dedication ceremony. I arrived on the scene, and there were people everywhere screaming and hollering.

It took me back to when I was in Vietnam, Painter said. There were bodies lying everywhere.

Painter, his deputies and Midland Police Department officers worked to calm the calamity and bring order to the scene.

I posted guards to where the bodies lay to protect them. We got them covered up as quickly as we possibly could, Painter said. There were some civilians who were getting out of hand. They just had no respect.

There was nothing you could say to alleviate the pain and horror that these people went through, the longtime sheriff and former Marine said of the victims. These wounded soldiers went through worse. They had been through combat overseas. Its something they were accustomed to, but their family members had never been through it. It was a tragic event, a serious trauma for the family members.

Johnson decided shortly after the tragedy to pay respect to the victims and their families who had lost their loved ones. He also wanted to thank the community for its outpouring of generosity. Hundreds of dollars in gift cards were passed to Show of Support to give to victims and their families so they could buy necessities such as clothing, food and medicine. Hundreds rushed to donate blood. Thousands assembled at Centennial Plaza to pray.

Hero Plaza is located on a small parcel of land in ClayDesta. A bronze statue by Bruce Greene stands at the center. A young man, leaning on a cane, and a young woman, leaning on his shoulder while draped in a blanket with U.S.A imprinted upon its fabric, together hold a baby and gaze upward at the Texas and American flags. In the face of death and tragedy are life and hope, state and country.

Clayton and Modesta Williams, who own the property, offered the site as home to Hero Plaza.

I think its so important to honor and thank these men, Clayton Williams said. He recalled the Vietnam War era, when military members coming home received unkind and often hostile receptions.

Johnson said he, his organization, the victims and the community will never have closure. However, Wednesday marked the realization of his five-year effort to give honor and thanks.

As for the black shirt, its back in the closet, never to be worn again but never to be forgotten.

Editor's Note: This story was corrected on Jan. 2 to show the second float "advanced slowly across the train tracks at Garfield Street."
The Midland Police Department announced it has terminated the employment of officer Michael A. Pool after his arrest Thursday.

MPD reported that Pool, 33, was arrested Thursday afternoon on a charge of official oppression. According to the Midland County Sheriffs Office, Pool was arrested, paid his bond and then released by the afternoon.

The arrest, according to MPD, followed a criminal investigation that began about two weeks ago. At that time, information was received that Pool mistreated a man in custody during a prisoner transport.

An arrest warrant shows that at about 10:10 p.m. on July 7, Pool arrested a person for an outstanding warrant and other charges. Upon arrival at the Midland County Jail, Pool  while acting in the course of his employment as a police officer with the city of Midland  did then and there subject the person to mistreatment through verbal and physical contact.

No other details were provided.

Pool, according to MPD, was employed with the department for seven years.

The criminal investigation was turned over the Midland County District Attorneys Office.

According to the state of Texas, official oppression happens when a public servant acting under color of his office or employment commits an offense if he:

 intentionally subjects another to mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment, or lien that he knows is unlawful;

 intentionally denies or impedes another in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing his conduct is unlawful; or

 intentionally subjects another to sexual harassment.

An official oppression charge, according to the affidavit, is a Class A misdemeanor.

Earlier this year, the Reporter-Telegram reported that three MPD officers resigned from September of 2016 through March 2017. Reported offenses were making inappropriate and unwanted comments to a woman, assault and intoxication.

Attorney Brian Carney said the person allegedly subjected to mistreatment is "still considering the possibility of a civil rights lawsuit given his assault while handcuffed and the Midland Police Department's failure to hold themselves to the same standards that they hold the rest of Midlanders to."










FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)  A judge has ruled a 16-year-old boy arrested in the death of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found in a North Texas landfill will be tried as an adult.

The decision came after a nearly four-hour court hearing Wednesday in Fort Worth.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Benjamin Gran was a train enthusiast, a beloved son and an autism success story. He was also a registered sex offender, having served nearly two years in federal prison for child pornography crimes.

On Wednesday, the world learned that he among the three men killed in the derailment of the Amtrak Cascades train that crashed into Interstate 5 during an inaugural run.

Much was made at SeattlePI and elsewhere of Gran's criminal history in the hours after the 40-year-old's identity was released. Speaking by phone Wednesday evening, though, Gran's mother described her son as an autistic young man caught in a "witch hunt" after being duped by an unrepentant pedophile.

Linda Daniels said her son had recovered from his "little blip" and had made a life for himself.

Now Playing: Investigators probing a deadly train crash in Washington State are due to question the driver and a trainee conductor who were in the cab of the locomotive at the time. They say the possible distraction of the driver is one of the lines of inquiry. Three people died and dozens were injured when the Amtrak train came off a bridge onto a motorway below. The train reportedly took a sharp bend at more than twice the speed limit. Investigators say the emergency brakes were automatically activated during the derailment instead of being manually applied by the driver. In the video above, NBC Correspondent Tom Costello takes a look at the various issues surrounding the investigation. Video: Euronews

"He'd pulled it together," Daniels said by phone.

I am in huge grief, she c1ontinued. But Ben deserves the truth.

Daniels described Gran as her autistic, but awesomely autistic son who loved trains. Gran, she said, was an Amtrak fan to the max.

The days since the deadly Amtrak derailment between Tacoma and Olympia saw two of the three fatally injured victims, Jim Hamre and Zack Willhoite, celebrated for their love of trains. Hamre, 61, and Willhoite, 35, were close friends and volunteers on the board of All Aboard Washington, a rail advocacy organization. Gran shared that love of trains.

"He lived, breathed Amtrak since he was 2," Daniels said by email.

Gran, Hamre and Willhoite died on the inaugural run on a faster train route between Seattle and Portland. Authorities have said that the train was going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone, derailing south of Seattle and toppling some cars on I-5 below. Dozens of others were hurt, some seriously.

The Pierce County coroner's office said Wednesday that Gran, 40, died of multiple traumatic injuries sustained in Monday's crash.

Gran's death came six years after child pornography investigators arrived at his door. He was caught in an investigation into an online forum dedicated to promoting the sexual abuse of children, and ultimately served 18 months of a federal prison term after he was caught with a collection of child pornography videos.

MORE FROM SEATTLEPI: Highway cleared, no estimate on reopening I-5 near crash site

Agents visited Grans home in July 2011 after investigation launched in the Netherlands targeting boylovers identified him as a member of an online pedophile group. Dutch police and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched the investigation  dubbed Operation Rescue  in 2009 aimed at bringing down the forum. Investigators had arrested 12 suspected child abusers and rescued 100 children by the time they came for Gran.

Robert Mikelsons, a Dutch man at the center of the ring and a fellow supporter of the movement to legitimize the sexual abuse of children, had corresponded with Gran directly as early as 2004, according to court papers. Mikelsons and the other forum members asserted molestation was healthy for the children they hurt.

Speaking with KING-TV's Drew Mikkelsen, Daniels described him as "Amtrak's biggest fan."

Benjamin Gran's mother described him as "Amtrak's biggest fan." He was identified as the third person killed in the train crash. He served time for child porn possession, but his mother says he paid his debt to society and was on the right path. pic.twitter.com/neoBnhb2ZJ  Drew Mikkelsen (@drewmikkelsenk5) December 20, 2017

Court papers that would describe Gran more completely remain sealed.

Gran was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison and placed under court supervision for the rest of his life. He was released from federal prison in 2015.

Before his death, he had been working as an accountant for a medical organization related to autism care. His death, Daniels said, left his friends and family shattered beyond belief.

Gran's love of trains was evident in his letters to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which twice published Gran's offerings. In one, he argued for the preservation of a disused Eastside rail line slated to be replaced with a bicycle path.

"The New Mexico Rail Runner has far exceeded ridership expectations, despite serving smaller cities than Bellevue," Gran opined in 2007. "The Eastside line runs within a quarter mile from downtown Bellevue, which needs commuter rail now, not 10-20 years from now."

In messages shared by Daniels with SeattlePI, Gran was described by one family friend as a young man graced with a generous spirit and loving heart. His Special Olympics coaches described him as a dear sweet friend who they considered family.

This young man brought such joy and love to everyone he met, they wrote in the message provided late Wednesday. He was incredibly kindhearted and insightful.

His love of trains, they added, knew no bounds.

He made a mistake that he paid dearly for, Daniels said. Because of his optimism, a team of professionals and his best friends who believed in Ben, he turned his life completely around and was living his life in a mature, contributing manner, and was the happiest he had been in his life.

An investigation into the wreck that killed Gran is ongoing.

This report contains information from The Associated Press.

SeattlePI senior editor Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Mattress Firm chairman Steve Stagner said this week that the Houston-based bedding retailer plans to close 200 stores within the next 18 months in a bid to improve performance as parent company Steinhoff International grapples with a deepening financial scandal.

Steinhoff, which last year acquired Mattress Firm for $3.8 billion, is quickly running out of cash amid an accounting investigation involving the validity of its past financial statements and the value of some $7 billion in assets.

The company recently released an audio recording of a Tuesday meeting with lenders during which it revealed that it did not have "detailed visibility" into the cash flows of its many subsidiaries.

RELATED: Toys R Us may reportedly close up to 100 stores

Now Playing: Tulo offers three levels of firmness. Sunni Goodman, SVP of Communications, says that kind of selection puts the company ahead of direct-to-consumer competitors. She says having physical stores also helps. Video: Cheddar TV

During the meeting, Stagner sought to reassure Steinhoff's lenders of Mattress Firm's ability to turnaround declining sales and boost margins with private-label products. He said the company will need $200 million next year, mostly to terminate store leases and purge Tempur-Sealy mattresses after a split from the manufacturer earlier this year.

The goal, he said. is to boost Mattress Firm's revenue to $4 billion within the next five years, in part by scaling down its chain of roughly 3,400 locations. Many of its stores exist within blocks of each other in cities throughout the country.

There are at least 16 Mattress Firm stores in the San Antonio area, according to its website.

"History has proven that those results will improve to our historical norms," he said.

He acknowledged that the company, which expanded at a breakneck pace through a series of major acquisitions, now has about 300 "underperforming or duplicative" stores across the country. The company has already closed about 90 within the past year, he said.

RELATED: Texas-based Charming Charlie files for bankruptcy protection

Stagner, who started his career at Mattress Firm 22 years ago as a franchisee with one store and $1,300, detailed how the company exploded to become the largest mattress retailer in the U.S. with a 20 percent share of a $16 billion industry. It made 28 acquisitions, adding hundreds of stores at a time by snapping up all of its major competitors.

It now has 2,800 more stores than Sleep Number, the next largest mattress chain.
Houston's Kinder Morgan said Thursday it's ready to move forward with its $1.7 billion gas pipeline from West Texas to the Corpus Christi area after signing on Apache Corp. as a major customer.

The project, expected to be in operation by October 2019, is meant to capitalize off of the ongoing shale boom in West Texas' Permian Basin. While companies are primarily drilling for oil, there's also a lot of associated natural gas produced from the shale rock - even more than initially projected.

The goal is to ship the gas to industrial and port hubs near Corpus Christi and Houston, where the gas can be shipped to power plants for electricity generation, to liquefied natural gas export terminals, or to Mexico, which is increasingly importing more American gas for its power generation.

Now Playing: Latest Oil & Energy News Playlist Video: Houston Chronicle

The 500-mile project is 50 percent owned by Kinder Morgan with the other 25 percent slices of the pie belonging to Houston's Targa Resources and DCP Midstream, which is a joint venture between Houston's Phillips 66 and Calgary-based Enbridge. Construction is expected to start in the first quarter of 2018.

As part of its deal as an anchor customer, Houston-based Apache has the option of buying a 15 percent stake from Kinder Morgan. Apache said the project is much needed to move gas from West Texas and will complement Apache's developing Alpine High fields in southwestern Texas.

RELATED: LNG firm Tellurian proposes $7 billion in pipelines

The pipeline is one of more than 15 proposed projects to expand or construct pipelines that will traverse Texas from the Permian Basin to Houston, Corpus Christi and Beaumont. Most of the pipelines are for crude oil or natural gas liquids.

Competing projects include the planned Pecos Trail pipeline to Corpus Christi, which is proposed by Houston-based NAmerican Partners, a 2-year old venture backed by private equity.

Also, Houston-based Tellurian announced plans this week for the proposed Permian Global Access Pipeline, a 625-mile project from West Texas to southwestern Louisiana, to serve Tellurian's planned Driftwood LNG export terminal and other projects. The pipeline is the biggest part of a $7 billion network Tellurian announced.

As for Kinder Morgan's project, the 500-mile pipeline network would transport 1.92 billion cubic feet of gas a day. Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources also is signed on as a major customer.

The 42-inch pipeline would specifically trek from Waha, Texas to Agua Dulce, which is just west of Corpus Christi. The proposed project can tap into Kinder Morgan's existing Permian-area pipeline network, as well as Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners' new Trans-Pecos Pipeline, which will ship gas from West Texas to Mexico.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The criminal fraud trial of state Sen. Carlos Uresti, the San Antonio Democrat, has been postponed two weeks following the death of a defense lawyers father.

Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra said Wednesday the trial will now start with jury selection Jan. 18 after assistant public defender Kurt May, who represents co-defendant Stan Bates, requested a delay.

Ezra, meanwhile, held off immediately ruling on a request filed under seal by May that Bates be tried separately from Uresti and a third defendant, Gary Cain.

RELATED: Feds dispute Uresti's take on steamy text messages

During a court hearing Wednesday, assistant public defender Angela Saad Lindsey, filling in for May, told Ezra the three defendants previously shared a joint defense but now both Uresti and Cain are shifting responsibility on Bates.

He is not going to get a fair trial, she said of Bates.

Uresti, Bates and Cain in May were indicted by a federal grand jury on a combined 22 felony counts in connection with their involvement in now-defunct oil field services company FourWinds Logistics, which prosecutors have alleged was a Ponzi scheme.

Bates was FourWinds CEO, while Uresti served briefly as its outside legal counsel, held a 1 percent interest in the company and recruited investors. Cain was a company consultant. Each has disputed the charges.

READ ALSO: What we know about Sen. Uresti's connection to FourWinds

Lawyers for the government, Uresti and Cain told Ezra they disagreed that the defenses are antagonistic and would result in Bates suffering prejudice from a joint trial.

Ezra initially said there was no justification for trying Bates separately. But later, saying he wanted to be fair, the judge gave May until Dec. 28 to refile the request for a separate trial.

Ezra noted recent publicity surrounding salacious details of the case would not be a basis for granting Bates a separate trial.

FourWinds investor Denise Cantu, a key witness for the government, has told the FBI she had a sexual relationship with Bates after first denying it.

Prosecutors have alleged that Cantu also had a sexual relationship with Uresti and that he exploited the relationship to convince her to invest with FourWinds, according to a recent court filing by Urestis lawyers. Uresti has denied having an affair with Cantu.

Uresti represented Cantu in a wrongful-death case involving two of her children. She invested $900,000 from a settlement of the case with FourWinds. She ended up losing about $800,000. Separately, she is suing Uresti for fraud.

Ezra told the parties in court Wednesday there would be no more delays in the trial. He previously delayed the trial twice, once on Urestis request after Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session in June and later after Ezra determined Bates previous public defender wasnt prepared to go to trial in October.

Patrick Danner is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | pdanner@express-news.net | @AlamoPD
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BRUSSELS - Mexicans want European customers for their cheese and orange juice. Europes manufacturers hope to sell toothbrushes and marble to Mexicos growing middle class. And if Mexican revelers need some fizz to ring in the New Year, France wants it to be French Champagne.

So much for NAFTA.

With President Donald Trump threatening to tear up North Americas 23-year-old free-trade agreement, Mexican officials are in Brussels this week trying to upgrade a deal with Europe to soften the hit.

Mexico is not the only U.S. ally forced to look for new friends. Since Washington shrugged off its role as globalizations biggest cheerleader, Japan also has worked out an agreement with the European Union that is awaiting a final green light.

And after U.S. trade officials blasted the World Trade Organization at a ministers meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last week, other nations seem to be doubling down on a defiant response: The globalized model the Americans once championed will survive without them.

We hope that over the next few days that we will be able to have a positive outcome on Mexico, said the top E.U. agriculture official, Phil Hogan, who is to meet with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo on Wednesday.

Apart from the European Union, Mexico is bargaining with Argentina, Brazil and Asia. Meanwhile, Europe is flirting with Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. The efforts were turbocharged by Trumps free-trade skepticism after he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pan-Asian deal that was a pet project of the Obama administration and included the E.U., Japan and Mexico.

Officials involved in the negotiations say they have been happy to try to salvage the rubble from Trumps torpedo.

The E.U. is left as practically the only big player in the global arena without the U.S., so its a necessity to conclude agreements, said Alessia Mosca, the E.U. lawmaker overseeing the Mexico deal for the European Parliament. For this reason there has been a speedup to the talks.

Mexico and the European Union already have a free-trade agreement that went into effect in 2000, but that was at the start of the internet era, and officials say it is out of date. The new talks seek to expand and modernize the agreement, adding previously excluded items such as grains, meat and dairy.

Mexicos quest for new trading partners represents an insurance policy against economic harm if the Trump administration decides to end NAFTA, because about 80 percent of Mexican exports go north to the United States. And if new tariffs suddenly boosted the cost of imported corn and car parts, Mexico could turn to South America or Europe.

The strategy is to have alternative suppliers if the U.S. leaves NAFTA, which is not what we want or hope, said Luis de la Calle, an economist and one of the original NAFTA negotiators.

De la Calle said Mexico hopes to sell juice, fruits and vegetables to Europe.

Mexico has already made the decision to independently diversify trade, he said. There is an appetite for trade agreements, and Mexico is taking advantage of that appetite.

For now, the talks are hung up on a few remaining issues, including European insistence about labeling rules for fancy foods such as Parmesan cheese. But officials on both sides say they want to reach a bargain, in part to send a message to Trump.

Still, some analysts caution that there is a limit to trade deals, noting also that the United States is hardly alone in its growing wariness of globalization. Nor did the new skepticism originate with Trump - even his Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, dropped her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the 2016 campaign after seeing the political winds were against it.

We have for the past 10 years been in this strange and difficult situation for many countries that for 50 years broadly followed the leadership of America in global trade policy, said Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Center for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based think tank.

Now America isnt there, he said. And many countries, including those in the E.U., have difficulties to figure out what to do now.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON - The Republican overhaul of the tax code sets the stage for years of politically fraught debate over what the government should provide for its citizens and how much it should demand in taxes.

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are celebrating the $1.5 trillion legislation as a big tax cut for workers and businesses. And for the time being, it is that  80 percent of the country will pay lower taxes next year.

But the short-term gains come with a cost: the legislation also makes the countrys debt problem even worse, in all likelihood forcing policymakers in coming years to make difficult decisions about spending cuts, tax increases or both.

The debate could touch on some of the most value-laden questions facing the nation  what type of financial security to provide the elderly, what safety net services should be offered to the poor, and how much the government should try to shrink economic inequality.

The challenging landscape is partly the result of choices Republicans made with their tax bill and partly the result of deeper economic forces in the economy. The GOP decided to cut taxes without offsetting spending cuts, driving up the deficit.

But the country is also going through a profound demographic shift in which millions of baby boomers are retiring from the labor force and joining the rolls of Medicare and Social Security.

The nation already owes $15 trillion to investors and foreigners. Even before the tax bill, the country was on track to hit $25 trillion in debt in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That would be the highest in modern American history. The tax bill adds another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to the total.

We are just dooming ourselves to a larger tax increase or spending cuts in the future, said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. At some point our leaders are going to look at our finances - or the markets will force them to - and say this is unsustainable.

Republicans are already previewing how they intend to address the debt. They say they are looking as soon as next year to begin an overhaul of the entitlement system - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - in hopes of limiting spending.

They are also seeking to target the safety net, pledging to curb eligibility in an effort to encourage people to seek work instead of relying on government assistance.

We are going to focus next year on people. On getting people from welfare to work, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Tuesday on the House floor.

The GOP is not unified on these questions. Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security, two programs that are popular among his base of working-class white voters.

Democrats, meanwhile, say they expect to roll back significant elements of the tax plan if they gain power in the future. Democrats have taken issue with the plans disproportionate benefits for the wealthy and corporations.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelsoi went as far as to call the bill Armageddon.

I think the bill problem with it is it increases deficits by at least $1 trillion, largely to finance a giant tax cut for the wealthy and corporations, said Lily Batchelder, a tax law professor at New York University and former Obama administration official.

Democrats might not have a chance to do so unless they recapture the White House in 2020, but there is precedent  President Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to end the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in a fiscal pact forged on New Years Eve 2012.

Still, asking Americans to stomach spending cuts or tax hikes can prove difficult. Technically-speaking the tax-cut legislation is supposed to trigger an equivalent amount of spending cuts under a congressional rule enacted in 2010 out of concern for the mushrooming federal debt. Congress is widely expected to wave the rule.

And while Republicans set a significant part of their package - provisions affecting individuals - to expire in 2025, to comply with a Senate rule limiting the impact of legislation on the deficit, they say their expectation is those tax cuts will be extended, bringing the price tag of the tax bill well beyond $1.5 trillion.

For the next eight years, however, the GOP tax bill itself gives the vast majority of Americans a tax cut. Only 5 percent will pay more next year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center analysis of the final bill, and most of those are people earning six-figures who live in major cities like New York and San Francisco.

Its not the kind of disaster many in the media have made it out to be, says economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University. Theres a good chance it will prove popular next year once people see their taxes go down.

Whatever the future holds, its clear the GOPs decision to increase the deficit to cut taxes breaks with recent precedent. Republicans started the year promising to fix Americas corporate tax code, but to do it in a way that was deficit neutral.

A big fiscal deal nearly achieved by Obama and then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would have raised taxes while cutting spending - modeled after the bipartisan Simpson Bowles Commission that had made similar recommendations.

Even President Ronald Reagans tax overhaul in 1986, which many Republicans regard as the gold-standard, was structured to be revenue neutral. The new GOP bill took a far different approach.

The bill is very consistent with Republican ideology that the solutions are all in the private sector, said William Gale, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center and former staff economist at the Council for Economic Advisors under President George H.W. Bush. Businesses, corporations and pass troughs are getting big breaks at the ultimate expense of the governments ability to address any of the pressing social or domestic issues.

Theres widespread agreement that in the short term, the tax bill will grow the economy a bit faster, perhaps eclipsing a rate of 4 percent for a quarter or two.

The question is what happens after the initial bounce. Republicans argue that upswing will continue for many more years, as businesses invest more. If this projection proves accurate, it will alleviate many of the fiscal pressures facing the country, since economic growth itself will help stabilize the debt.

I dont think the tax bill pays for itself, but Im not as concerned about deficit impact as others are, says Glenn Hubbard, dead of Columbia Business School and President George W. Bushs chief economist. We need to raise productivity growth in the U.S. A tax cut on business income is a very big step in that direction.

But if that optimism proves unwarranted, as many analyses predict, it could be present a peril to the nation, especially if an economic downturn or a foreign policy crisis requires the government to step up spending.

I thought it was bad enough we had debt at record levels, says Goldwein. But its going to get worse.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The more time and money Jaireme Barrow spent to keep people from swiping packages off his front porch, the angrier he got.

Hed show police in Tacoma, Washington, crystal-clear surveillance video of porch pirates strolling onto his front yard and then making off with what he could only assume were the Jeep parts and electronics hed paid for. But there were never any arrests.

As he grew more incensed, he realized he wanted more than identities or charges or even the stuff in the boxes.

He wanted revenge.

Then, the 34-year-old had an explosive idea.

I was thinking, how could I scare them and make them drop my package and then never come to my front porch again, Barrow told The Washington Post. And I thought, Getting shot at is scary. Thatll make them think twice. 

With that, TheBlankBox was born.

Although Barrow has been tinkering with his device for nearly a year, interest has peaked this month, as Americans increasingly turn to the internet to buy presents for the people they love but face the added worry that their gifts somehow wont make it.

Americans are shopping online as often as they take out the trash. According to the National Retail Federation, about 58 million Americans shopped only online from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday, while 51 million shopped only in stores. An additional 64 million did both.

And more than 750 retailers participated in Free Shipping Day earlier this month, which one CBS affiliate said was meant to give consumers peace of mind knowing their order is guaranteed to be delivered by Christmas Eve.

Unless, of course, those dreaded porch pirates interfere.

Barrows concept for alleviating that anxiety is both simple and devious - if that word can be used to describe getting back at someone trying to rip you off.

The nondescript dummy box is placed in plain sight. When an unsuspecting thief lifts it, a 12-gauge shotgun blank goes off.

A video surveillance system like Barrows  installed to shame thieves and capture their startled reactions for YouTube  is not included.

Cue the schadenfreude!

Its very loud but technically harmless, Barrow said.

But a police spokeswoman in Tacoma, where Barrow lives, said the device as described to her by a reporter appears to be illegal. There are, however, no open cases against Barrow.

The earliest version of TheBlankBox was a Wile E. Coyote-ish fever dream involving bricks, fishing line, a wooden box, an aluminum carrying vessel and a small plate.

It had to be attached to a doorknob and was impractical for anyone who wanted to make regular use of a door without setting off a minor explosion.

Still, it gave Barrow two things his home security system had never been able to provide: a chuckle and solid evidence about the identity of the person pilfering his package.

The very first guy I did it to, he was so scared he dropped his cellphone in my front yard, Barrow told The Post. I gave it to the cops. Turns out, he lived, like, three blocks away from me. The man wasnt charged, Barrow said.

Since then, the design has evolved. Now its a self-contained device, involves no external strings, and Barrow can use his front door without worrying about explosions. Hes trying to patent TheBlankBox and has built a website, cashing in his savings and going all in.

The cheapest version costs $60. He has also designed some slightly naughty T-shirts.

He says he has sold about 50 dummy boxes and had 477 preorders as of Monday. Barrow says hes shipping them as fast as he can make them, capitalizing on an untapped market as more and more people are becoming reliant on having boxes delivered to their door.

Droves of consumers are forgoing long lines, annoyingly cheery holiday music and the occasional Christmastime mall brawl in favor of online shopping.

But the changing consumer behavior has sparked a new anxiety, especially for people who optimistically choose to have packages left at their front door: Once there, the packages are vulnerable.

Thieves who roam neighborhoods looking for defenseless parcels have even earned a name and an Urban Dictionary entry: porch pirates.

According to USA Today, nearly half of Americans say they know someone who has had a package stolen; 30 percent say it has happened to them.

On the expensive end, smart-lock technology may allow people to grant delivery drivers access to their homes, although that opens up another can of anxieties. And people can always play delivery tag with drivers, but that can erode the convenience that led to the online purchase in the first place.

Barrow acknowledges that potential buyers have brought up some practical considerations with the explosive device he makes in his garage.

Although gun blanks can hurt people, Barrow insists his contraption is completely safe - as long as the blanks are inside the box: They make a loud noise and nothing more.

And what of litigious would-be criminals tempted to sue after taking a stumble down porch stairs?

Barrow suggests tacking up a no trespassing sign and taping a note to the box that warns people to not move packages on the porch. That can inoculate a homeowner from lawsuits. Notifying delivery drivers doesnt hurt, either.

Police in Tacoma say Washington state law forbids people from assembling or shipping explosive devices without a valid license.

Even though its a blank, the way the device is made is actually illegal, said Loretta Cool, a police spokeswoman. Barrow could also be held liable if someone gets hurt on his property during or after an explosion, she said.

Even more than him crossing the line, Im not sure if people realize that, even though this person is stealing something, he cant intentionally set them up to be hurt, Cool said.

She said police are not currently investigating Barrow because nobody has reported this. We have to have a victim.

Barrow, who says he has caught 20 would-be thieves in the act at his home, concedes that his not-quite-exploding box is an imperfect solution on a crowded porch of imperfect solutions.

But he says his device offers something others dont: the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when youve made a terrified thief sprint off your lawn.

On those rare instances when Barrow is at home during the day, he will hear a muffled explosion from his front porch - and smile.

One girl, she screamed so loud - it was instant karma, he said. Someone is trying to commit a crime, and youre able to get back at them instantly. Its a satisfaction I cant describe.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Stephanie Meeks, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington D.C., shot off an enthusiastically worded email Wednesday with the subject line: "Historic Tax Credit Saved!"

The Federal Historic Tax credit developers often use to rehab old buildings had been on the chopping block in an earlier version of the tax reform bill, but it was put back in the package President Donald Trump signed Friday.

RELATED: How the tax overhaul will affect Houston's economy, real estate market

"Its inclusion in the most expansive overhaul of our nation's tax code in more than three decades is a reaffirmation that reviving older and historic buildings is sound federal policy and good for the nation," Meeks wrote to preservationists.

The final version of the bill keeps the historic tax credit at 20 percent but requires that the credit be taken over five years instead of all at once at the project's completion.

"People really don't realize really how many projects in Houston have benefited from the tax credit program, and a lot are projects that might not have been carried out otherwise," David Bush, executive director of Preservation Houston, said.

"Downtown's revitalization is built on a lot of tax-credit projects, going back to the Rice Hotel being converted to lofts," Bush said.

RELATED: Building the perfect prefab on a small scale

Other downtown Historic Tax Credit projects include the Post-Dispatch Building, now the Magnolia Hotel; the First National Bank building, now Franklin Lofts and the Corinthian; and the Southern Pacific Building, now Bayou Lofts.

Two newer downtown projects, the Texas Co. Building, now The Star apartments, and the Melrose Building, now Le Meridien Hotel, will receive the local preservation group's Good Brick Award for 2018.

This story has been updated to reflect that the president signed the tax overhaul measure on Friday.
A Santa Rosa attorney and two former executives of the failed Sonoma Valley Bank were convicted Tuesday of conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and a string of other crimes that cost taxpayers millions of dollars, federal prosecutors announced.

Those convicted after an eight-week trial in U.S. District Court in San Francisco were Sean Clark Cutting, 48, of Sonoma, the Sonoma banks chief executive officer before it failed in 2010; Brian Scott Melland, its chief loan officer; and attorney David John Lonich, who had represented the late Sonoma County real estate developer Bijan Madjlessi, who was convicted of similar crimes before his death in 2014.

The defendants resorted to bank fraud, lies to bank regulators, and other crimes in a multiyear scheme to conceal millions of dollars in failed and failing loans, U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch said in a statement.

The crimes, some of which carry penalties of 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines, were a massive fraud scheme designed to conceal bad loan after bad loan, said Christy Goldsmith Romero, a special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Romero said parts of the scheme were enacted soon after the bank received an $8.65 million bailout through TARP  all of which was lost.

Taxpayers lost more than $20 million, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. lost $11.5 million, prosecutors said.

The verdict sends a strong message that bank executives and attorneys who devise and orchestrate multimillion-dollar bank fraud schemes will be held accountable for their crimes, said FDIC Inspector General Jay Lerner.

Among the crimes, the evidence showed that Sonoma Valley Bank loaned Madjlessi and others more than $35 million between 2004 and 2010, beyond the legal lending limit of $24.7 million set by regulators.

To conceal the excess, Cutting and Melland recommended that the bank approve hefty loans to straw borrowers  though they knew the loans were actually going to Madjlessi and his companies, prosecutors said.

Lonich, Madjlessis lawyer, conspired with Cutting and Melland to mislead Sonoma Valley Bank into lending millions more to Madjlessi, again in the name of a nominee or straw borrower, prosecutors said.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
Fried chicken has returned to Broadway with the reopening Wednesday of the 85-year-old landmark San Antonio diner Earl Abels Restaurant in the former Timbos burger spot.

The move comes after the restaurant closed its Austin Highway location in September.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

It's guaranteed - the year 2017 will figure prominently in future accounts of the history of Pasadena and surrounding communities, thanks to a number of events that produced seismic changes in schools, government and neighborhoods.

The city of Pasadena was forced by a federal judge to restructure its system of council representation after a voting rights lawsuit. Then city voters elected a new mayor and welcomed Pasadena's first Hispanic police chief. Voters in Pasadena ISD approved a $135 million bond package and a 13 cent increase to the district tax rate. Meanwhile, the nearby community of La Porte pulled out all the stops for events celebrated its 125th anniversary.

And Hurricane Harvey caused deaths, flooded schools and scores of neighborhoods and had a lingering impact on local communities.

Changing of the guard

In January, residents reacted with mixed feelings after a federal judge ruled that the city of Pasadena had been trying to mute the Hispanic voice in municipal elections through a 2013 voter-approved change pushed by then-Mayor Johnny Isbell to add at-large members to what had been a council of district representatives. While some Hispanic residents saw an opportunity for change through the ruling, others remained less optimistic, citing a history of being marginalized by the city.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal's decision stemmed from a 2014 lawsuit, filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund on behalf of Latino voters, charging that by changing the election process, the city had attempted to diminish the Hispanic vote and as a result had violated the Voting Rights Act. Rosenthal ordered Pasadena to revert in this year's election to a previous plan in which all eight council members were elected from districts.

In May, after eight consecutive years in office and decades of strong influence on the city's government, Isbell was term-limited from seeking re-election. After a general election in May featuring seven candidates and then a June runoff with John Moon, the post was won by then-City Council member Jeff Wagner, a retired Houston police officer.

Wagner said his win would mean a more united and inclusive Pasadena, a city marked by economic divisions and leadership that to many ignored a growing Hispanic population. In July, the appointment of Al Espinosa as the city's first Hispanic police chief seemed a symbolic move away from the past. Espinoza, a 37-year veteran of the Pasadena Police Department, is the son of migrant workers. Spanish-language interpreters were added at council meetings.

After Wagner's election, the city opted to pay $1.1 million in a settlement agreement to cover the plaintiffs' legal fees and court costs and to drop its appeal of Rosenthal's ruling.

yes to a bond - and tax increase

In November, voters approved two measures proposed by Pasadena ISD touted as guaranteeing years of improvements and expansions throughout the district. One was a rollback election to authorize a tax-rate increase and the other a bond package.

The bond package proposes to address district-wide issues including the rebuilding of two campuses, renovation and expansion of its transportation department and upgrades for technology and security. District officials say voter approval of the package would not affect the tax rate because of an ongoing policy of managing debt through strategic payments.

The increase proposed in the rollback election is expected to put the district's tax rate at $1.48 per $100 of valuation, effectively a 9.6 percent tax-rate hike. That adds up to $130 out of a total annual tax bill of $1,480 on a home with an after-homestead value of $100,000.

While Pasadena city officials had recently backed off a proposed increase of less than 1 cent per $100 valuation in the municipal property tax rate after residents complained about facing a hike right after Hurricane Harvey, the school district's proposal to increase its property tax rate by 13 cents did not prompt similar opposition, with 77.69 percent approving the bond in the November election.

Harvey and its aftermath

When Harvey devastated the region, communities like Pasadena responded, whether it was to help out next door neighbors or displaced evacuees from Houston.

Churches like Golden Acres Baptist Church, South Houston Baptist and school campuses like Dobie High School opened shelters and donation centers.

The city had received nearly 550 evacuees by midweek, with many airlifted by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters to a mobile, MASH-like medical facility at City Hall, where a total of 64 medical personnel worked in shifts around the clock.

"All in all, Pasadena has been a kind of hub for other parts of the area," Pasadena city spokesman Rex Lindberg said at the time. "We've had people here that were picked up off of roofs from places like Scarsdale, Conroe, north Houston and other places."

In December, Pasadena ISD officials were still recovering from the storm damage. Harvey flooded forced the district to move Thompson Intermediate School's students and faculty to the Collaborative Learning Center. At Burnett Elementary School in the Southbelt area, 120 displaced students did not return to the district.

The district suffered its greatest loss from Harvey with the death of four students: Devy Saldivar, 16, Dominic Saldivar, 14, Xavier Saldivar, 8 and Daisy Saldivar, 6, died while traveling with their great-grandparents and an uncle in a van that was swept away by flood waters in Houston during evacuation.

Harvey also claimed the life of longtime city of Pasadena employee Martin Salazar. Investigators believed that Salazar was swept away by flood waters after leaving his vehicle.

The city of South Houston was rocked hard by Harvey. City officials estimated that the community, with a population of just under 20,000, saw damage to 95 percent of its homes. The South Houston community also mourned the death of Alexander Sung, a beloved member of the South Houston community who had run his watch-and-clock repair business for 30 years. He was believed to have been trapped by floodwater in his shop. His body was found in the shop the morning after Harvey's worst flooding.

Influx of new businesses

By the end of the year, the city saw the opening of four eateries at one complex: Razzoo's Cajun Cafe, serving Louisiana dishes; Red Robin, which specializes in burgers, shakes and beers; Chuy's, which has a Tex-Mex menu; and Outback Steakhouse, which serves a variety of food including sandwiches, burgers and steaks.

La Porte celebrates 125th

In May, the City of La Porte staged events including a four-day party at Sylvan Beach to celebrate its founding in 1892. Fireworks, live music from Clay Walker and family fun marked its 125th year.
Zeid Raad al-Hussein isn't afraid to speak his mind.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights has taken on some of the most powerful countries in the world. He has compared populist movements in Europe to the Islamic State, and he called the European Union "inhumane" for its policy of helping the Libyan coast guard intercept and return migrants.

He has suggested that President Donald Trump is a demagogue enabling ethnic nationalism and has denounced his refugee ban as "grossly irresponsible." He has warned that genocide is imminent in Chinese-backed Burma and condemned Russia for its actions in Crimea and Syria.

His fans describe him as brave and tenacious, a strong advocate for human rights at a critical moment.

But it has been a tough battle, one that became even more challenging after Trump's election. Past U.S. administrations have emphasized the importance of human rights, at least rhetorically. Trump, however, has signaled that he is uninterested in prioritizing international norms and commitments, instead advocating for "America First."

Now Hussein is waving the white flag. In an email to his staff, he announced that he will step down after his term ends next summer. He explained that the climate for human rights advocacy had gotten too bad.

"Next year will be the last of my mandate," Hussein wrote in the memo, obtained by Foreign Policy. "After reflection, I have decided not to seek a second four-year term. To do so, in the current geopolitical context, might involve bending a knee in supplication; muting a statement of advocacy; lessening the independence and integrity of my voice - which is your voice."

"There are many months ahead of us: months of struggle, perhaps, and even grief - because although the past year has been arduous for us, it has been appalling for many of the people we serve," he wrote.

The position of high commissioner for human rights was created in 1993. The commissioner is selected directly by the U.N. secretary general. As Mark Leon Goldberg explained at UN Dispatch, that is supposed to protect him from political pressure. The commissioner "is expected to be an independent advocate for human rights around the world," Goldberg wrote. "This often pits the High Commissioner against UN member states."

Hussein's aggressive style, however, ruffled feathers. The New York Times reports that it was unclear for months whether Secretary General Antonio Guterres would support Hussein's second term. (In a statement, Guterres's spokesman said, "The high commissioner has always enjoyed the full support of the secretary general.") The high commissioner has called out every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Hussein's decision has human rights advocates on edge. As Goldberg cautioned:

That he faced this choice at all shows ... that [the] UN human rights system cannot function when the United States so blatantly abandons values-promotion in foreign policy. This does not bode well for the ideal of an empowered UN-backed independent global human rights watchdog defending vulnerable people around the world.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a mecca for cartels and the land of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Lagunas grew up never knowing his father. His mother left him with his grandmother as a child.

Lagunas left his hometown at the age of 15 without finishing high school, moving to the nearby municipality of Culiacan and washing cars to make a living, he said in an interview in July. It was in this adopted town that he took on the nickname that would later become known across cyberspace: "El Pirata de Culiacan," or "The Pirate of Culiacan."

RELATED: Employee of Mexican music group reportedly beheaded by Gulf Cartel

He started landing invitations to more and more parties, and soon fell into a life of excessive drinking. He would post videos on social media showing him chugging beer and bottles of whiskey, sometimes getting so drunk he would pass out. The videos started going viral. In the years that followed, the bingeing teenager became a perverse YouTube sensation. At the age of 17, he racked up more than a million followers on Facebook and more than 300,000 on Instagram. His social media fame started earning him spots in music videos and at promotional events.

Now Playing: Weaponized drones are often deployed by modern militaries, but now appear to have been adopted by Mexican gangs. In the battle for territory in Guanajuato, Mexico, police seized a kamikaze drone packed with explosives, as well as a remote detonator and a gun. Four suspected gang members believed to be linked to a Mexican drug cartel were arrested. The explosives, which were strapped to the drone, can only be sourced from the military. Questions remain as to how the suspected gang members got access to those explosives. Video: Vocativ

His baby face, matched with his belligerent, clownish behavior, entertained the masses. Yet it was easy to forget that he was still a boy. He drew a beard on his chin to look older. He tattooed his arms - a pirate on one, a tiger on the other. He posted pictures on Instagram with large guns, half-naked women and luxury cars.

The drinking age in Mexico is 18, but "El Pirata de Culiacan" drank as if he had no limits. Like many teenage boys, he lived as if he was invincible, saying whatever he wanted about whomever he wanted. It was all a big game, a big party.

RELATED: Here's the leaders of 6 Mexican cartels, according to the DEA

But in Sinaloa, one of Mexico's most violent states, no one is invincible - especially when you mess with the wrong people.

In one recent video posted online, a seemingly intoxicated Lagunas was recorded taking a stab at Nemesio Ocegera Cervantes, also known as "El Mencho." Cervantes happens to be one of Mexico's most dangerous drug lords, according to U.S. government officials, the leader of the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco.

"El Mencho a mi me pela la verga" he said, which means, more or less, "El Mencho, peel my c---," according to El Pais.

And on Monday night, while he and his friends partied at a bar in Jalisco, a group of armed individuals burst in and fired at Lagunas, the Attorney General of Jalisco, Raul Sanchez Jimenez, told Mexican media outlets. The teenager died, sustaining between 15 and 18 bullet wounds. Authorities managed to identify Lagunas by his tattoos.

Prosecutors have not determined the identities or motives of those responsible. But they confirmed to news outlets that they are investigating a possible link to the recent videotaped insult toward El Mencho.

El Mencho is one of the last people anyone would want to offend.

His cartel, the New Generation, is relatively new, coalescing less than a decade ago. It stemmed from the remnants of another group, the Milenio cartel, and makes money by selling guns, stealing gasoline, extortion and kidnapping, The Washington Post's Josh Partlow wrote in 2015. It is one of the fastest rising drug cartels in Mexico, operating in several Mexican states and forging underworld ties around the globe.

The group has been linked to thousands of murders, according to a Rolling Stone profile. Many of them have been traced specifically to their leader, "El Mencho," who is reportedly a former police officer.

Lagunas' death comes during a year that is on track to become the bloodiest on record in Mexico. In the first 10 months of 2017, 20,878 murders were counted nationwide, an average of 69 murders a day, Reuters reported.

It's a dangerous time and place for anyone, but especially for a teenage boy living recklessly in search of fame.

"He opted to make a career as a broken toy of cyberspace, a path he carved out drink by drink and that left him with enemies of flesh and blood," Univision reporter Fernando Mexia wrote in an article titled "The poisoned fame of 'El Pirata.'"

The YouTube star managed to "transcend borders," even landing in Rolling Stone - not for his fame, but for his death. His killing "gave him the popularity he never imagined," Mexia wrote.

As the teenager's celebrity rose, activists criticized the musicians, bands and promoters who featured him drinking in music videos. The attention only encouraged his dangerous behavior and promoted the alcoholism of a minor, critics told Univision.

"There are a lot of people who criticize him, but the truth is . . . that's why 'El Pirata' got started," said one artist, Luis Adame, of Ultimo Escuadron. "Everyone in their own way tries to find a way to get ahead."

In recent interviews, Lagunas seemed to come to terms with his vices. He hoped to pursue a singing career, and reportedly had signed a contract with a record label.

Speaking to Pepe Garza, a radio host and producer, in July, Lagunas said he knew he needed to rein in the drinking.

"You drink a lot all at once, and the body isn't meant for that," Garza said to him.

"People ask me, 'How do you do it? How do you handle drinking so much?" the teenager responded. "I just laugh, I say 'I don't know how I do it.'"

But, he said, "they're right . . . sometimes I go too far."

The host wished him the best with his career, encouraging him to get a grip on the partying. . ."so that he can last many years."

After hearing the news of his death, fellow Instagram celebrity and promoter Beto Sierra remembered Lagunas as a cheerful, positive, fun friend.

Sierra recalled encouraging him to calm down and control the drinking. "He told me that he wanted to change, but on the weekend, there was no lack of bad influences," Sierra wrote on Instagram.

"You were living a fast life . . . you never listened, and I don't judge you," he said. "Those who knew you know you were a good person."
Holiday cheer is in short supply this year in Dickinson, a town battered by Hurricane Harvey, with many residents still displaced from their homes and dozens of businesses shuttered. But a popular toy drive and a million-dollar check from the state government went a long way toward giving a handful of those affected a Merry Christmas.

On the same day that Gov. Greg Abbott presented Dickinson Mayor Julie Masters a $1.25 million check for Harvey debris removal, the Dickinson Police Department hosted its annual Blue Santa toy drive, a welcome lift for parents scrambling to find money for Christmas gifts while also dealing with not having a roof over their heads.

This year, 281 families registered for the toy drive, providing gifts for more than 743 children.

"It means more than you can possibly imagine," Masters said. "I think they have more families than ever signed up this year."

Esther Montalvano, a police department records clerk who has helped run Blue Santa for the past nine years, said they have more toys than they know what to do with this year.

"Due to the fact that we have had so many backers and sponsors, we've had people as far away as New Jersey, Louisiana, Houston, Austin, Stafford, that have been sending us toys," she said.

'Waiting on FEMA'

A trickle of families, the majority of whom are Latino, showed up at the police department on Wednesday afternoon to collect their blue trash bags full of toys.

One woman, Claudia, a mother of three, had a look of relief on her face as she carried out a new tricyle for her 3-year-old son.

Claudia, who asked that her last name not be used, went into premature labor with twin girls when Harvey made landfall. The day after she was discharged, Claudia suffered an infection from her C-section, forcing her to drive back to the hospital through flooded streets, yellow fluid leaking out of her stomach from the infection.

The brunt of the storm passed through Dickinson while Claudia was being treated for her infection, destroying the trailer she and her husband shared, and forcing her to move in with her parents, newborn babies in tow.

"I had a lot of trees around my trailer and one of them fell on my trailer," Claudia said. "One of my rooms is completely lost, and I'm just waiting on FEMA to help me. They gave me $400, but it's not enough to fix my house."

While the $1.25 million check handed out by Abbott won't necessarily help Claudia and other displaced families return to their homes, the mayor said it would go a long way toward covering the city's budget for debris removal. The check is part of an agreement in which the federal government picks up 90 percent of the tab for debris removal, with the remaining 10 percent covered by the affected county or locality. The check to Dickinson is half of the 10 percent covered by the state.

Abbott said on Wednesday that legislative leaders had agreed that the state should cover that 10 percent, with many county and city budgets already stretched thin.

"One thing that we know is the cities and counties have been impacted fiscally in a very, very profound way," Abbott said. "Today we are beginning to take the next step to assist the cities in their financial needs."

Christmas in a hotel

Staring at the check in disbelief, Masters was grateful the state delivered on its promise, but noted that federal checks have been slower to come in and that many Dickinson residents are spending the holidays elsewhere while their homes sit in disrepair.

"It's just slow, and I just feel for those folks that are not back in their homes, especially the ones with kids," Masters said. "Who wants to put up a Christmas tree in a hotel room?"

That was the exact situation facing Aida, a mother of three who also did not want her full name published. She drove to the Blue Santa giveaway from a hotel in Texas City where she and her husband moved their family after Harvey flooded her home. Her eyes welling up with tears, Aida described how her son was disappointed they would not be able to have a Christmas tree this year. After recently paying a visit to their damaged home, Aida was able to salvage enough space to set up a small Christmas tree. Her husband and son decorated the house with lights.

Aida has been waiting months for a loan to start rebuilding their home, receiving only a $400 check from FEMA since the storm hit. Still, in what has been an excruciating three months, she is grateful for the little things: a blue trash bag filled with toys, and the health of her family.
SYDNEY - A sport utility vehicle driven by an Australian man of Afghan descent with a history of mental illness plowed into pedestrians in the city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring at least 19 people, four of them critically, officials said.

While the incident bore similarities to recent terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States, and police described the ramming as a "deliberate act," authorities said there was no evidence of terrorist links.

"We don't have any intelligence or evidence to indicate there is a connection to terrorism," said Shane Patton, the acting police commissioner of Victoria state, of which Melbourne is the capital. "Having said that, we continue to support this investigation with the Counter Terrorism Command to ensure there isn't that connection and there is no ongoing threat."

A second man seen recording the incident on a cellphone was arrested after three knives were found in a bag he was carrying. But Patton said there appeared to be nothing linking the two men.

Witnesses said the white Suzuki SUV did not appear to brake as it plowed through one of the main intersections in Australia's second-largest city, full of Christmas shoppers and commuters heading home. It finally crashed into a tram stop and came to a halt.

"All you could hear was bang, bang, bang, bang," Jim Stoupas, the owner of a nearby doughnut shop, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "The only thing that slowed him down was hitting pedestrians. All you could hear were the sounds of the car hitting people and the screams."

The driver was apprehended by an off-duty police sergeant who held him until police arrived, sustaining injuries in the struggle.

Police said the man, whose name was not immediately released, had a history of drug use and mental health issues and was known to them for traffic offenses and a minor assault in 2010. He was taken to a hospital, where doctors are to determine when he is fit to be questioned by police.

"What has occurred on Flinders Street was an act of evil and act of cowardice at a time of year when people should be out celebrating and doing their Christmas shopping," Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria state, said in a news conference. He said 19 people were admitted to the hospital, four of them in critical condition. Australian media reported that one of those critically injured was a child of preschool age.

Patton said the Australian intelligence agency and federal police had no information indicating that the driver of the SUV was someone to be watched.

"We understand he's on a mental health plan and receiving treatment for a mental illness," the acting police commissioner said without elaborating.

The incident took place in downtown Melbourne during one of the busiest times of the day in front of a train station that is the city's equivalent of New York's Grand Central Station.

The mayhem unleashed on a downtown street filled with Christmas shoppers, as well as late-afternoon revelers, was reminiscent of a string of lone-wolf terrorist attacks in Europe - including Spain, France and Germany - in which attackers used vehicles as deadly weapons.

A long-standing military ally of the United States, Australia has deployed forces to Iraq and Syria to assist with the fight against the Islamic State.

It was the second time this year that Melbourne has been struck by a vehicle attack. In January, a driver killed six people and injured more than 30 when he ran over pedestrians not far from the scene of Thursday's incident. In that case, the perpetrator also had drug and mental health problems, and police found no link to terrorism.

Nevertheless, government officials have warned the public of the likelihood of terrorist violence in Australia, and Melbourne recently decided to install a public address system in the downtown area to warn of an attack, according to media reports.

Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle said two weeks ago that the city faced the threat of an individual inspired by a foreign terrorist organization.

"That's always going to be hard to stop, but so far our intelligence services and our police have done a magnificent job in keeping us safe," he said in an interview published Dec. 7.

Vehicle attacks have become a common choice of Islamic State-inspired terrorists, and they are among the hardest to stop, given the easy accessibility of cars and small vans compared to explosives or firearms.

In the most devastating vehicle attack so far, more than 80 people were killed by a truck in the southern French city of Nice last year.

In London, the driver of a van plowed into a group of people on Westminster Bridge in March. Investigators later found indications that the incident constituted "Islamist-related terrorism."

In October, a pickup truck sped down a bike path in New York City, killing eight people before colliding with a bus. In a handwritten note, the driver had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

On Tuesday, Germans commemorated the anniversary of a vehicle attack on a Berlin Christmas market last year in which 12 were killed and more than 50 injured.

- - -

Schemm reported from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Washington Post's William Branigin in Washington and Rick Noack in Berlin contributed to this report.
Uber isn't merely a digital middleman linking passengers and drivers, but rather an actual transportation service, the European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday, in a pivotal move that may spill over into the broader ride-hailing industry and the future of the on-demand economy.

The decision opens the door for European cities to impose stricter regulations on the ride-hailing company as a taxi operator. That means Uber will have to abandon services, such as UberPop, the equivalent of UberX in the United States, that use nonprofessional drivers and instead abide by local rules governing taxis.

Uber said it operates in most European markets with certified drivers and won't change things much for them. But some experts say the company and smaller competitors that see themselves mainly as digital platforms may soon be faced with new, government-imposed obstacles, which may stymie their growth.

"The ruling certainly dampens the enthusiasm that any platform has for offering transportation service in Europe," said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. "European regulators don't seem to be willing to adapt their structures to accommodate new digital business models."

Uber is perhaps the most prominent company in the on-demand economy, with a valuation of $68 billion and operations in 600 cities worldwide. This new type of business model relies on the ubiquity of cellphones, and allows consumers to summon a broad array of services at the touch of a button, from local transportation to food delivery, housework and home repair. The on-demand economy has transformed the way consumers seek out services and has freed start-ups from the substantial costs of paying a vast network of employees. It's also created a market for workers who, for instance, need a flexible work schedule or supplemental income.

But the on-demand economy has also allowed firms to circumvent long-standing regulations and to avoid the responsibilities generally associated with employers, like providing steady pay with benefits.

In recent months, the British delivery service Deliveroo, and the California-based home rental platform Airbnb, have also drawn scrutiny in Europe. A British tribunal is examining whether Deliveroo workers should be granted employment rights, and the Paris city council ruled that short-term renters on Airbnb must first register their properties with the town hall.

Tech industry critics have argued that powerful platform companies, such as Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit have skirted their responsibilities to the public and to their workers. "Jurisdictions are becoming more assertive and realizing they don't have to take Uber the way it presents itself," said Tom Slee, author of the book "What's Yours Is Mine," a critique of the sharing economy. "I think it's a very healthy step towards a better relationship between the law and technology companies, and particularly Uber. It's going to be a boost to efforts to get gig economy companies to recognize employment rights," he said.

While the ruling only affects markets in the European Union, it could prompt regulators elsewhere to take a closer look at the issue, as they evaluate what to do about contract work, experts say.

Some see a missed opportunity for Europe. Sundararajan said the court could have urged parliament to chart a new path for ride-hailing services, recognizing that the classic employer-employee relationship might not work for innovative business models. What's more, for European cities that have capped the number of professional drivers or that mandate costly requirements for driver certification, the ruling could harm consumers seeking high-quality, low-cost rides, he said. Tighter regulations could also adversely affect other ride hailing start-ups, he added, which lack the resources to shoulder additional costs.

For European cities that have capped the number of professional drivers or that mandate costly requirements for driver certification, the ruling could harm consumers seeking high-quality, low-cost rides, he said. Tighter regulations could also adversely affect other ride hailing start-ups, he added, which lack the resources to shoulder additional costs.

While the ultimate consequences of the Uber ruling remain unclear, industry observers say governments have yet to address the massive societal shift toward independent work, and away from the traditional full-time employment model.

According to a McKinsey study published last year, 20 to 30 percent of the working-age population in the United States engage in some kind of independent work. But industry observers say that Americans are effectively penalized for working outside a typical 9-to-5 job arrangement. "For a country that has such a strong narrative about supporting entrepreneurship, our tax system and our labor market don't deliver on that promise or that narrative," said Diane Mulcahy, author of "The Gig Economy."

Mulcahy emphasized that platform companies like Uber make up only a fraction of the gig economy, which can encompass consultants, independent contractors, freelancers, part-time and on-demand workers. She highlighted the larger question that the Uber ruling did not directly address but remains of significant importance: How will societies secure benefits for workers historically tied to employment, like health insurance, workers' compensation, vacation and sick leave. "The day of reckoning is still coming," she said. "We still have to grapple with this question of how do we do deal with a workforce that isn't made up of full time employees and full time jobs."
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - Control of Virginia's legislature hung in limbo Wednesday after a three-judge panel declined to certify the recount of a key House race, saying that a questionable ballot should be counted in favor of the Republican and tying a race that Democrats thought they had won by a single vote.

"The court declares there is no winner in this election," Newport News Circuit Court Judge Bryant Sugg said after the panel deliberated for more than two hours.

He said the ballot in question contained a mark for Democrat Shelly Simonds as well as a mark for Republican Del. David Yancey, but that the voter had made another mark to strike out Simonds' name.

Officials presiding over the five-hour recount on Tuesday had discarded that ballot en route to a historic reversal of the original election outcome. Yancey had emerged from Election Day with a 10-vote lead in the 94th District, but the recount uncovered enough additional ballots for Simonds to give her a one-vote victory.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Ben Finley/STF Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Joe Fudge/MBO Show More Show Less 3 of 3





That seemed to set up the House for a rare 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats, ending 17 years of GOP dominance and making headlines nationwide.

But Republicans challenged that decision in court Wednesday, saying the voter had selected every other Republican on the ballot and intended to vote for Yancey.

The judges - all of whom were elected by a Republican-controlled legislature - agreed, leaving the race tied at 11,608 votes each for Yancey and Simonds. The balance of power in the House stands at 50-49 in favor of Republicans until the Newport News race can be resolved.

State law says the winner of a tied House race will be determined by lot - leaving the fate of the chamber to what is essentially a coin toss.

James Alcorn, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said the winner will likely be chosen by placing names on slips of papers into two film canisters and then drawing the canisters from a glass bowl (or his bowler hat). He said he is conferring with staff to figure out the date and method.

Complicating the tiebreaking vote is the need to ensure that both a Democratic and Republican representative of the three-member elections board will be available during the holidays.

"We were not planning to get together in the next week," said Alcorn, a Democrat appointed by outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D.

Now Playing: 94th District precincts were counted, Democrat Shelly Simonds held an unofficial one-vote lead after trailing behind Republican Incumbent David Yancey by ten votes post-election. Video: Daily Press

But it doesn't end there. If the loser of the coin toss is unhappy with that result, he or she can seek a second recount.

News of the court decision pulsed through political circles that, just a day before, had been roiled by the notion that Simonds had taken the seat from Yancey by a single vote in the recount.

As he was leaving the courthouse Wednesday, Yancey said "the ruling today makes certain every vote in this historic election was counted."

The turnaround shocked Democrats, who on social media were still celebrating their unlikely rise to power in the House of Delegates. Before the Nov. 7 elections, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in that chamber by 66 to 34. The GOP has a smaller, 21-19 edge in the state Senate, where ties votes can be broken by a Democratic lieutenant governor. With Democrat Ralph Northam set to take over as governor on Jan. 13, the party is primed to flex its newfound muscle.

But the Newport News outcome now leaves things unclear. The House Democratic Caucus vowed to fight the judges' decision, calling it "erroneous," though some legal experts expressed skepticism that the party has avenues for a challenge.

"We are currently assessing all legal options before us as we fight for a just result," said Marc Elias, the lawyer for the Democrats. "The Republicans themselves had affirmed that this result was accurate yesterday before changing their minds today.

"After conceding this seat and their majority, they are now desperately trying to claw both back 'like a snarling dog that won't let go of a bone,' " he said, quoting a recent editorial by the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

But according to lawyers for Yancey, the questions about the recount's lone disputed ballot were a late-breaking surprise to them, as well.

Kenneth Mallory, a paid election official chosen by the Yancey team, had spotted the ballot about halfway through the Tuesday recount. He said he thought the ballot clearly looked like a vote for Yancey, but the other official he was working with - selected by Democrats - disagreed.

"I felt hurried to move on and proceed. I was new to this process, and I was caught up by his argument," Mallory wrote in a letter to the judges outlining his concerns.

The ballot was tossed aside as invalid, the precinct was wrapped up and the recount moved on. At the end of the day, Republican and Democratic officials alike stated that they were satisfied with the process and outcome.

But a volunteer observer working for Yancey - John Alvarado, who also happened to be Yancey's campaign manager - had seen Mallory's discomfort during the recount. State law limits the ability of observers to communicate with election officials during the recount, but afterward, Alvarado sounded the alarm with Yancey's legal team, according to Republican lawyer Trevor Stanley.

Stanley reached out to Mallory Tuesday evening, but Mallory declined to talk until he got assurances from the city's Electoral Board that he was allowed to do so, the lawyer said.

Mallory, meanwhile, said he had been agonizing about his failure to act during the recount. A middle school civics teacher, Mallory, 33, said in an interview that he had wanted to take part in the recount so he could talk about it with his students.

He wrote in his letter that he "lamented" his failure to act on the questionable ballot, and that he shared his misgivings with his wife and parents.

Finally, around 10 p.m. Tuesday, Yancey's team talked with Mallory and heard his concerns. They urged him to write out his thoughts and sign them so they could take them to court in the morning, when the judges would convene to certify the results.

Once the judges read the letter and heard arguments from the lawyers, they spent two hours studying the ballot in question before ruling.

GOP leaders in the House of Delegates, who on Tuesday had conceded the recount and pledged to share power with Democrats in what they believed would be a chamber split 50 to 50, issued a new statement after Wednesday's turn of events.

"While it appeared yesterday that Shelly Simonds was elected, it's obvious now that the result will remain unclear for a while longer," said a statement from House GOP leaders Kirk Cox, Tim Hugo and Nick Rush.

Simonds, who appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday morning as the surprise victor of a tense recount that reset state politics, could not be reached for comment.

It is not clear whether a final decision in the Simonds-Yancey matchup will settle control of the House of Delegates.

Even as the court was considering whether to certify Tuesday's recount in the 94th House District, two other recounts are taking place this week - at least one of which may further reshuffle politics in Richmond.

Election officials on Wednesday evening were finishing a recount in the 68th House District in Richmond, where Republican Del. G. Manoli Loupassi trailed Democratic challenger Dawn Adams by 336 votes, but the outcome appeared unlikely to change.

And a recount is set for Thursday in Fredericksburg's District 28, where the Republican leads by 82 votes. Democrats have also challenged that race in federal court, where they are seeking a new election because more than 100 voters were mistakenly given ballots for the wrong legislative district.

House Democrats were meeting in Richmond on Wednesday night to elect their own leadership for the coming General Assembly session, which starts Jan. 10. They were set to vote on their designee for speaker but held off in light of the uncertainty in the Simonds-Yancey race and in District 28. Otherwise they reelected their current caucus leadership.

House Minority Leader David Toscano (Charlottesville) is vying with his party's longest-serving member, Del. Kenneth Plum (Fairfax), for the speaker position.

After the court's ruling threw the balance of power back toward Republicans, Plum said he thinks Democrats need to be realistic about what's ahead.

"Irrespective of these last-minute backs and forths, it's clear that the people are divided in their choice," he said. "And I think what's incumbent upon us is that we do a power-sharing arrangement [with Republicans] where we can get some work done."
FAIRFIELD  Eight different firms from all over the country  and right here in Fairfield  are vying to create a plan to shape the towns future.

I think were going to achieve the best of both when we ultimately make a selection, John Wynne, chairman of the Strategic Plan Committee told the Board of Selectmen recently. He said they will be reviewing each proposal in detail, and conducting evaluations and reference checks to narrow it down to two or three firms to interview.

According to Wynne, they expect the consultant firm to start work in early 2018 and take about a year to complete the work. The town has budgeted $100,000 for the strategic plan. A strategic plan for a town is a report that defines what a town wants to be in the future combining economic drivers, government structure, social issues and initiatives like private-public partnerships and infrastructure improvements.

The ones we are looking at most intently have all done some sort of strategic planning, Wynne said.

Selectman Kevin Kiley said he agrees the committee should take a look not just outside the town, but also outside the state. It is a fresh voice that we should hear, Kiley said. Sounds like were on a really positive path here.

So, who are the firms looking to win the towns business?

More Information Bids costs for strategic plan BlumShapiro $95,000 Connecticut Economic Resource Center $82,500 Future IQ $85,000 Houseal Lavigne Associates $98,500 Kairos Development Group $80,433 Management Partners $72,990 The Novak Consulting Group $72,990 Seismic $80,960 See More Collapse

The closest is right in the towns Southport section  Seismic Partners, LLC, which also has offices in Charlotte, N.C., and Los Angeles.

It counts Six Flags, Bank of America, Jackson Hewitt, the Charlotte Observer, Readers Digest, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library among its clients.

Two others are state firms, BlumShapiro Consulting out of West Hartford and Rocky Hills Connecticut Economic Resource Center. BlumShapiro lists the city of Hartford as a past client, while the Resource Center, a non-profit corporation and a public-private partnership, has worked with Fairfield before, helping create an economic development plan for the Economic Development Commission. It also states it has worked with more than two-thirds of the states municipalities.

Future IQ, with offices in Minnesota, has done work for more than 300 large and medium-sized cities and counties, across North America and Europe.

Chicago-based Houseal Lavigne Associates states it has worked with over 250 communities, via both the public and private sectors in 16 different states.

One of the eight firms is Kairos Development Group from Philadelphia, with clients that include the Passaic County Workforce Board, and Philadelphias North Broad Renaissance.

Two firms are from Cincinnati, OH  Management Partners and the Novak Consulting Group. Both have worked for different Connecticut cities and towns, including Bridgeport and Greenwich.

Wynne said the selection process should be completed by January, with an eye toward providing community engagement, like workshops, in March. We will work that out with the provider, he said.
The city of Memphis got rid of two Confederate statues Wednesday night, after a Tennessee two-step around a state law designed to prevent just that. It was a surprise maneuver that left the Sons of Confederate Veterans sputtering in anger and proclaiming to all who would listen: "Memphis stabbed you all in the back."

But James G. Patterson, commander of the Tennessee Division of the Sons, advised his compatriots to "stay away" from the city for the night. "I would say that the Memphis police will not tolerate any action around these statues."

Indeed, the flashing lights cutting through the dark from scores of police vehicles provided theatrical lighting for the cranes that showed up for the formal banishment of two Confederate heroesin the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated almost 50 years ago, on April 4, 1968.

The first to go was the equestrian statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, especially loathed by many today because he was also a slave trader and a founder and "Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan. The statue was placed in a city-owned park in 1904 during the Jim Crow era of segregation.

About a mile and a half away and about an hour or so later, a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was hoisted from its base in another city park. The statue of Davis, who lived in Memphis from 1875 to 1878, was erected in downtown Memphis in 1964, at the height of the Civil Rights movement.

Mayor Jim Strickland, in a statement also posted on Facebook, said the city was particularly anxious to get the job done now, in advance of the 50th anniversary of King's death.

"The statues no longer represent who we are as a modern, diverse city with momentum," he wrote. ". . . Our community wants to reserve places of reverence for those we honor."

Memphis was following in the footsteps of numerous other cities which have rid themselves of Confederate symbols over the past few years, a move prompted by the fatal 2015 shooting of nine African Americans in Charleston's Emanuel African Episcopal Church by white supremacy sympathizer Dylann Roof.

While the removals of the Davis and Forrest memorials had been discussed, debated and litigated for a while, their demise came suddenly. It was "quite unexpected and quite extraordinary," Commercial Appeal reporter Daniel Connolly said in a video from the scene.

It was also, legally, rather clever.

The dispute over the fate of the statues had been quietly percolating in the courts after removal was blocked in October by the Tennessee Historical Commission using its powers under the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2016.

That law said that "No statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque" erected "on public property" in honor of certain military conflicts and their heroes may be removed without the permission of 2/3 of the board of the commission. In October, the commission denied Memphis a waiver which would have allowed the city to remove the Confederate statues. The city was challenging the decision in court.

But with the anniversary of King's assassination approaching, an event which will bring worldwide attention and thousands of visitors to Memphis, city officials, including Strickland, were in a rush and decided to work around the law.

Focusing on the law's key phrase, protecting statues on "public property," Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner and others set up a private nonprofit corporation called Memphis Greenspace, Inc.

On Wednesday, without fanfare, the City Council approved a measure authorizing the mayor to sell the two parks with the statues to the private group, for $1,000 each, which he promptly did.

In the morning, they were on public property. By the afternoon, they weren't.

By nightfall, the parks with the statues had been sold to the newly-minted nonprofit, which sent in the cranes.

Patterson was furious.

"This has been a well-organized, behind the scenes plan by the city," he said in a Facebook post. "They deliberately did this after hours to prevent action on our part. State officials have been contacted and will address this immediately."

By then, it was too late.

Council member Janis Fullilove, who favored the removal, called it a "crazy, crazy, crazy night," according to the Commercial Appeal. "It's really going down in history that this is the night they are going to take the statues down. It's a historic moment."

A cheering crowd sang as Davis was placed in the back of a truck at 10:45 p.m. and driven away. Among the songs, according to the Commercial Appeal, was that old standby: "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye."
NASA's newest mission will either land a quadcopter-like spacecraft on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan or collect a sample from the nucleus of a comet.

The two proposals were selected from a group of 12 submitted to the New Frontiers program, which supports mid-level planetary science missions.

The first, called Dragonfly, would be an unprecedented project to send a flying robot to an alien moon. Equipped with instruments capable of identifying large organic molecules, the quadcopter would be able to fly to multiple locations hundreds of miles apart to study the landscape on Titan. This large, cold moon of Saturn features a thick atmosphere and lakes and rivers of liquid methane, and scientists believe that a watery ocean may lurk beneath its frozen crust.

It's "an environment that we know has the ingredients for life," said lead investigator Elizabeth Turtle, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. With Dragonfly, "we can evaluate how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed."

The Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return, or CAESAR, mission would circle back to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was visited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft from 2014 to 2016. After rendezvousing with the Mount Fuji-size space rock, CAESAR would suck up a sample from its surface and send it back to Earth, where it would arrive in November 2038 (mark your calendars!).

NASA has sampled a comet before; the Stardust mission collected dust from a comet's gassy outer envelope, called its "coma." But this would be the first mission to return material from a comet's icy surface.

"Comets are among the most scientifically important objects in the solar system, but they're also among the most poorly understood," said Cornell University researcher Steve Squyres, the lead investigator for the mission. Researchers believe that comets delivered water and organic molecules to early Earth, potentially contributing to the origins of life. Surface samples from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will include precious "volatile" molecules that easily turn to gas but are important for understanding the body's origin and history.

The selection of the two concepts was announced in a news conference Wednesday. The missions now enter a concept study phase, when the scientists involved can further develop their proposals. A final selection will be made in July 2019, and whichever spacecraft is chosen will launch sometime in 2025.

Other New Frontiers proposals included missions to study Saturn, Venus or the asteroids around Jupiter, or probe another of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. Two of those proposals were also selected for further technological development: the Enceladus Life Finder, which would look for markers of biological activity in the geyser plumes shooting out of Saturn's moon, and the Venus In situ Composition Investigations, which would be the first NASA spacecraft to conduct in-depth exploration of Venus in almost 30 years.

NASA has three New Frontiers missions already in flight: New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015; and Juno, which is orbiting Jupiter; as well as OSIRIS REx, a spacecraft en route to the asteroid Bennu that will send back a sample from the rock's surface in September 2023.
A State Department official told VOA Wednesday that the purpose of the suspension in visa services was to minimize visits to the embassy and consulates "while we assessed the commitment of the government of Turkey to the security of our diplomatic facilities and personnel."

The statement added that appointments "are available for January 2019, and applicants can always choose to apply outside of Turkey." F, J and M visas provide for different kinds of academic and vocational studies in the U.S.

The two nations resumed limited visa services in early November, around the time of a visit to Washington by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. In a statement on Twitter this week, the U.S. Embassy said visa appointments "are still limited, but we are prioritizing F, J, M, and petition-based work categories, as well as applicants with medical and business travel."

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced this week that the earliest appointments for applications are in January 2019, more than a year from now. The U.S. suspended all nonimmigrant visa services in Turkey Oct. 8 in response to the arrest of Metin Topuz, a consulate employee in Istanbul, on terrorism charges. Turkey shut down visa services in the U.S. in retaliation.

Turkish citizens wishing to visit the United States will again be able to apply for visas, but not anytime soon.

 Few Details Offered

The State Department declined to elaborate on the reasons for the yearlong delay in visa appointments. But several Turkish citizens tell VOA in Istanbul the more than yearlong wait just to apply for a visa will hurt many Turks.

"How many American citizens come to Turkey in order to make money besides the appointed soldiers and the diplomatic personnel and their families," Murat Akyuzoglu, a lawyer, asked. "But hundreds of thousands of Turks live in the U.S. and all of those people's friends and families live here."

A teacher said the U.S. owes Turks "an explanation" while two students called the waiting period a political and anti-Muslim policy.

The visa spat has been a low point in a long-running deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Turkey, a key NATO ally straddling Europe and the Middle East, and once a Cold War listening post into the Soviet Union.

Relations worsened with an attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016, which the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed on dissident cleric Fethullah Gulen, who now lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S.

Washington has rebuffed repeated Turkish requests for his extradition, saying Ankara has not provided satisfactory evidence of his involvement in the coup attempt. Gulen has denied the accusations. Turkey has accused Topuz, who remains in custody, of being tied to Gulen's network.

The U.S.-Turkish relationship has also been troubled by American support for the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia that played a vital role in the war against Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria. Turkey sees the group as a terrorist organization linked to a Kurdish separatist movement in southeastern Turkey.

Erdogan said last month that President Donald Trump had promised in a phone call to cut off arms shipments to the YPG. But the Pentagon later said any arms shipments would be decided based on needs on the ground.

More recently, Turkey has been angered by the trial in New York of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, deputy head of the Turkish state-owned Halkbank, who is accused of helping to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.

During testimony in late November, Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, the prosecution's star witness who has pleaded guilty in the case, accused Erdogan and his then-finance minister, Ali Babacan, of being aware of the sanctions-evasion scheme. Erdogan has criticized the probe as politically motivated.
KABUL, Afghanistan - Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday for an unannounced visit with U.S. troops, many of whom were just children when war began here more than 16 years ago, and to meet with top Afghan leaders to discuss President Donald Trump's strategy for the conflict.

Pence's journey here was shrouded in secrecy and only a few members of his own staff knew about the preparations. He slipped out of Washington on Wednesday afternoon so that he could arrive at Bagram Airfield near Kabul long after the sun had set on Thursday. He traveled in a nondescript C-17 instead of a traditionally labeled Air Force 2.

In the dark of night, he traveled via helicopter to the Presidential Palace in Kabul - a trip that almost didn't happen because visibility was low. Four helicopters took off not knowing if they would be able to land. After circling over Kabul, there was a brief break in the weather allowing Pence to swoop in.

The U.S. vice president met with President Ashraf Ghani and the country's chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, both of whom he regularly communicates with on behalf of Trump.

"I hope my presence here is tangible evidence" of the Trump administration's commitment to Afghanistan, Pence said in the opening minutes of a meeting with Ghani and his staff.

After meeting for about 45 minutes, Pence returned to the airfield and spoke to about 500 troops for 20 minutes. He opened his remarks by passing along greetings from Trump, who has yet to visit a combat zone as president.

"Under President Donald Trump, the armed forces of the United States will remain engaged in Afghanistan until we eliminate the terrorist threat to our homeland, to our people, once and for all," Pence said in his speech to troops.

In Washington Thursday, Trump made an afternoon visit to visit patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Pence was supposed to travel to Egypt and Israel this week, but aides said he canceled his plans at the last minute so he could stay in Washington in case his vote was needed to break a tie on the tax cut package in the Senate.

That decision, which was announced Monday afternoon, came amid uproar over the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and after several leaders in the region canceled their meetings with him. Pence is now expected to travel to the Middle East during the week of Jan. 14, according to senior White House officials.

Pence departed Washington for Afghanistan late Wednesday. His wife, Karen Pence, a regular travel partner whom he calls his own "commander in chief," did not accompany him on the trip.

Reporters who traveled with Pence operated under the terms of an embargo that did not allow publication until about an hour before he departed early Friday.

Throughout the visit, Pence said the United States is committed to supporting the Afghan government with the goal of defeating the Taliban and terrorist groups in the region.

That commitment marks a shift for Trump, who repeatedly questioned why the United States was still involved in Afghanistan and why it was spending so much money there. During the presidential campaign, Trump called the war a "terrible mistake" but acknowledged that pulling out of the country at this point would lead to its collapse.

In August, Trump announced that the United States would continue its involvement in Afghanistan, saying that his first instinct was to pull out but that he changed his mind because "decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office." In a policy speech, Trump said that the United States "must seek an honorable and enduring outcome" and would do so by focusing on "killing terrorists" in Afghanistan instead of "nation-building" and by pressuring Pakistan to crack down on terrorist organizations.

Trump declined to say how many more troops he expected to send to Afghanistan, although congressional officials have said they were told it would be about 4,000 more than the 8,500 U.S. service members who were already in the region at the time.

As the Afghanistan war has dragged on, it has faded from the memories of many Americans and polls have shown that a majority of Americans just want the conflict to be over. Afghanistan was rarely discussed in presidential debates or campaign rallies, as Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton focused more attention on Syria, Iraq and North Korea.

Within two months of taking office, then-president Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Baghdad in April 2009 and went to Afghanistan a total of four times during his presidency. His predecessor, George W. Bush, made two trips to Afghanistan and four to Iraq. While Trump has made a number of international trips, he has yet to visit Afghanistan or Iraq.

When Pence was in Congress, he traveled with a small delegation in spring 2003 to visit soldiers downrange in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Pence comes from a military family, although he never served himself. His father, Edward Pence, earned a Bronze Star in Korea, while his older brother, Gregory, enlisted in the Marines in college and served in Lebanon. Pence's son is now a Marine Corps aviator based in the United States.
WASHINGTON - Republican senators who worked swiftly last summer to help write legislation protecting Special Counsel Robert Mueller now are showing little urgency to get those measures passed.

The legislation, which would allow a panel of federal judges to review orders to fire the special counsel, was intended to prevent President Donald Trump from pushing out Mueller before he completes his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

But two different bipartisan proposals have been mired in negotiations for months. And despite continuing signs from the president that he is unhappy with Mueller's investigation - which prompted the initial call for the legislation - Republicans appear to be losing their resolve to act.

"We're still having the discussion," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., the co-author of one of the bills, said this week. "It's not driven by any current events."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another co-author of one of the bills, said, "I don't really know," when asked the status of negotiations.

The lack of action has prompted some Democrats to accuse Republicans of intentionally slow-walking the legislation.

"There is a sense that the wagons have been circled," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and co-sponsor of one of the two bills. Blumenthal said his GOP colleagues are under "political pressure" not to cross the president on Russia.

"The question is really whether our Republican colleagues have a sense of emergency that I think befits our present situation," Blumenthal said.

There is not much left to negotiate. Both Democrats and Republicans say the main sticking point between the two bills is a dispute over whether a three-judge review of a special counsel's termination should occur automatically or at the special counsel's request.

But should senators produce a compromise bill, the next hurdle is significant: convincing skeptical Republicans that it is constitutional for a three-judge panel to review a president's termination order, when people in the executive branch serve at the pleasure of the president.

"I've never been convinced they're constitutional," said Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La., a member of the Judiciary committee.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans have not drafted parallel legislation, many of them instead joining forcefully with Trump in criticizing Mueller's investigation. In particular, they have called for a separate independent investigation of political bias within the FBI, following revelations of texts between bureau officials disparaging Trump.

Graham, Tillis, Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Christopher Coons, D-Del., wrote their bills over the summer to protect Mueller after Trump hinted that he might fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a way of reorganizing the Justice Department. At the time, Trump was furious that Sessions, a Trump loyalist, had recused himself from campaign-related matters at the department, leaving oversight of Mueller's probe to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Installing a new, loyal attorney general with direct oversight of the investigation could make it easier for Trump to force Mueller's dismissal.

If anything, Trump's invective against Mueller has escalated since then.

Earlier this month, after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with former Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, Trump launched a Twitter storm criticizing the bureau and its previous director, James Comey.

This week, an attorney for Trump's presidential transition joined the fray, arguing that Mueller improperly obtained the Trump transition team's emails from the General Services Administration rather than from the transition team directly.

The lack of resolution has some Democrats convinced that Republicans are holding off to give Trump wiggle room to fire Mueller if the probe gets too close to the Oval Office for comfort.

In a floor speech Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., accused House Republicans calling for Mueller's ouster of participating in a "seemingly coordinated" campaign to promote "baseless accusations" against Mueller's character and professionalism.

Asked after his remarks, Warner stopped short of charging the White House with actively coordinating the campaign - and also demurred when asked if Senate Republicans were complicit by not doing anything to protect Mueller's probe.

"It's hard for me to imagine that they wouldn't be troubled by what appears to be a coordinated effort to undermine Mueller in many ways - more broadly, even, the FBI," Warner said, excusing the Senate GOP's inaction because of lawmakers' preoccupation with the tax bill that passed along near-party lines Wednesday.

The White House again pushed back on the rumors of a possible firing of Mueller Wednesday evening.

"For five months or more the White House has persistently and emphatically stated there is no consideration of firing the Special Counsel and the White House willingly affirms yet again, as it has everyday this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the Special Counsel," Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing the Russia investigation, said in a statement.

Tillis has said repeatedly over the last few weeks that he wants to strike a deal on legislation to protect the special counsel. But he also noted Trump's statement over the weekend that he has no plans to fire Mueller - and said he believes the president.

Graham echoed that sentiment - and also voice support for a growing effort within the Senate GOP to shift the discussion to the need for separate investigations into bias at the FBI as well as the Justice Department's handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe and a 2010 decision to let Russia assume a significant stake in the U.S. uranium market

"I take the president at his word, he has no intention to fire Mueller," Graham said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said he is waiting to see what negotiators come up with before he even considers putting a bill through the legislative process.

"I suspect there are some Republicans that may not want to pass [the bill]," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the leading Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, though she warned that "nothing would be worse for the GOP" than if Trump fired Mueller.
Relatives made the horrifying discovery - 33-year-old Carolina Flores had been brutally stabbed to death in her apartment in Southeast Texas and her 6-week-old baby girl, Shamali, was nowhere in sight.

Detectives in Houston speculated that the mother may have been killed by a woman who had lost a child and wanted to pass off Shamali as her own.

During a news conference Thursday afternoon, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters everything police theorized "turned out to be true."

Hours after authorities said Shamali had been found alive and unharmed in a different apartment in the city, they announced a suspect, 28-year-old Erika Jisela Miranda-Alvarez, had been arrested and charged with capital murder in the mother's death.

Acevedo said Miranda-Alvarez had recently had a miscarriage, which she had been attempting to hide from her boyfriend, when she killed Flores on Tuesday and then took Shamali.

Police said the district attorney will decide whether to also charge Miranda-Alvarez with kidnapping.

"We mourn for that mom that will never see her daughter grow up, will never see her daughter walk, run the first time - the first time your child tells you 'I love you,' " Acevedo told reporters.

But he added that police had found the child.

"And that's the most important part," he said.

It was unclear whether Miranda-Alvarez has an attorney in the case.

Not long after Flores was discovered dead in her apartment Tuesday afternoon, authorities issued an Amber Alert for her daughter, whose whereabouts were unknown, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The police chief urged members of the community on Wednesday to come forward with information to help find Shamali.

Shamali was initially described by authorities as and 11-month-old girl, but police later confirmed that she is just 6 weeks old.

"This woman deserves justice," Acevedo said at a news conference, holding up a photo of the slain mother. "Her family deserves justice. And her child deserves to be back home with her loved ones."

Acevedo described the mother's slaying as a "brutal homicide" and theorized the killer might be a woman who is familiar with the family and may have hoped to present the infant as her own. The police chief said later the suspect, Miranda-Alvarez, who was an acquaintance of the family, was due to have a baby in January but had miscarried; he said that she continued to fake her pregnancy.

Acevedo added that Miranda-Alvarez did not break in Tuesday when she allegedly killed Flores and then took child.

Less than 48 hours after a frantic search for the missing infant, detectives saw a man and woman holding a child outside an apartment in Houston and determined that the child was Shamali, according to the police chief.

Authorities said Thursday on social media that the infant "appears unharmed & is being checked at an area hospital as precaution."

"We're ecstatic Baby Shamali Flores was found by our dedicated @houstonpolice guardians," Acevedo tweeted that morning. "Although we mourn the loss of her mother Carolina, we celebrate her recovery."

Shamali is currently in state custody, police said.

Authorities said Miranda-Alvarez's boyfriend has not been charged with a crime.

The baby's father, who was initially said to be a person of interest in the slaying, was ruled out as a suspect after he was found in San Antonio, and authorities said he was cooperating with their investigation.
Through all the controversy, threats and noise surrounding the Trump-Russia investigation, one person has been conspicuously silent: special counsel Robert Mueller.

The former FBI director hasn't uttered a single word in public since he was appointed in May to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election despite increasingly combative attacks by Republicans and their allies on the FBI, the Justice Department and the integrity of his probe.

It's an intentional strategy meant to convey the investigation's credibility and seriousness in an age of 24-hour noise, amplified by cable news shows and Twitter, according to current and former U.S. officials who know Mueller personally or who have followed his work.

Instead of press conferences, Mueller has spoken loudly through a series of indictments and plea deals related to various Trump associates.

Mueller's approach is unconventional, both in the current political climate and compared with former FBI director James Comey or previous high-profile public prosecutors like Kenneth Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton.

The vacuum created by Mueller's silence has been filled by GOP critics and conservative media charging the investigation is tainted with bias against President Donald Trump. Several House Republicans have called for Mueller to resign, with Matt Gaetz of Florida going to the House floor last week to accuse him of "fishing in the never-Trump aquarium" in choosing prosecutors and FBI agents for his team.

Trump's lawyers have been trying to build public expectations that Mueller will wrap up soon, but officials say the investigation is ramping up in some ways and is likely to last for most, if not all, of 2018. Areas where the inquiry is accelerating include a close examination of the activities of Trump's son Donald Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, said two U.S. officials who asked to remain anonymous.

"When you're a prosecutor, you put your head down, you do your job, and you try as much as you can to ignore the outside world," said Patrick Cotter, a former U.S. prosecutor who worked in the 1990s with Mueller and others now serving on his team. "This case is not to be tried on cable TV. It's to be tried in a courtroom."

Mueller's approach differs strikingly from Comey's. As Mueller's successor leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Comey often made controversial public pronouncements. He managed to anger Republicans and Democrats alike over his handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

Trump used Comey's words and actions against him -- especially after he proclaimed during a July 2016 press conference that no prosecutor would pursue criminal charges against Clinton. Trump attacked Comey in tweets and then called him "a showboat" and "grandstander" after firing him in May.

Mueller has avoided those pitfalls. He's provided no ammunition to fuel Trump's tweets and given no traction to Republicans who are trying to discredit the investigation of Russian interference in last year's presidential campaign and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it.

His approach is also different both legally and personally from that of Starr, who spoke publicly about his investigation into Bill Clinton, said Stanley Twardy, a former U.S. attorney for Connecticut.

The two investigations can't be readily compared, as Mueller's is more sweeping and international, said Twardy, now a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at the law firm Day Pitney LLP.

"The way Bob has been doing this is out of the prosecutor's rule book 101 as to how you handle an investigation," Twardy said. "There is the court of public opinion, but the court he's playing in is the district court. And he's staying there."

So far, the strategy appears to be working. Republicans have sullied his probe a bit with their attacks, but Mueller has won over key allies who would play instrumental roles should Trump try to force him out. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told House lawmakers during a Dec. 13 hearing that he is fully aware of what Mueller is doing and stands behind him. Rosenstein appointed Mueller and is the only official with the authority to fire him or stop parts of his investigation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said in interviews this week that they support Mueller and would oppose efforts to remove him. Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said he thinks there would be an "uprising" in the Senate if Mueller were fired. That would be "beyond the pale," Corker said.

Mueller's lack of public comment shouldn't be confused with a failure to communicate, said Cotter, who now heads the white collar criminal defense practice at the law firm Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C. in Chicago. Mueller is speaking through legal proceedings, Cotter said.

"He's communicating. He's sending messages," Cotter said. "I don't think his intent is to send a message to the public. It's to send a message to the people in the investigation, and that's what he cares about."

To date, Mueller has indicted Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and another campaign aide, Rick Gates. The special counsel also secured a guilty plea and cooperation agreement from Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians. A low-level foreign policy adviser to the campaign also pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and agreed to cooperate.

Mueller also has kept up a steady back-and-forth with Trump's lawyers, who have refrained from taking any punches at Mueller. White House lawyer Ty Cobb has repeatedly denied all suggestions that Trump is considering firing Mueller. Cobb has taken a public posture of fully cooperating with the special counsel's investigation, turning over documents and arranging interviews with White House staff.

But each day is a test of the relationship between Trump's legal team and Mueller, and that relationship could break down if Mueller probed too deeply into certain areas, such as Trump's businesses. The president's lawyers are set to meet with Mueller's team as early as this week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump took a slight swipe at Mueller this week over a letter his transition lawyer sent to Congress accusing Mueller of inappropriately obtaining emails from the presidential transition period. When asked about the emails, Trump told reporters he was "quite sad to see that. My people were very upset." But he reiterated that he had no plans to fire Mueller.

The episode prompted one of the few public statements from Mueller's team in defense of its tactics. "When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process," Mueller's spokesman, Peter Carr, said in an email.

Mueller's strategy has forced some critics to reorient their attacks, Cotter said. "You can't stand there with a straight face and say there's absolutely nothing here" after the indictments and Flynn's agreement to cooperate, Cotter said.

The new approach by Trump's allies is to try to delegitimize Mueller's investigation, such as by arguing members of the team are biased, Cotter said.

While Mueller is a registered Republican, House Republicans have seized on the disclosure that a top FBI agent assigned to the investigation, Peter Strzok, sent anti-Trump texts in personal exchanges with another FBI official in 2016. Mueller removed Strzok from his team over the summer when he learned of the texts.

"It's a tactical change," Cotter said. "If you convince people that whatever the investigation comes out with is bad, just because of the people who did it, then you don't ever have to deal with the facts."

Cotter doesn't believe the new tactic will fare any better, or prod Mueller into making a mistake. "I can't imagine why Mueller and his people would possibly care," he said. "The bias in law enforcement is always in favor of law enforcement. They don't like criminals."

--Bloomberg contributor: Billy House
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The city and county of Santa Cruz have joined a growing number of communities suing oil companies over climate change, alleging a plot in which the fossil fuel industry concealed the dangers of its products from consumers, much like the tobacco industry did decades ago.

The two lawsuits, filed Wednesday, blame the use and combustion of oil, gas and coal for accelerating sea-level rise and threatening hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the famously serene and much visited Santa Cruz County coast.

While the challenge is similar to other suits recently filed by waterfront communities in California, including San Francisco, the new cases in Santa Cruz County Superior Court go a step further. They seek to recoup not only the costs of rising seas but of other climate-related events, including big storms, wildfires and drought.

We believe enough is enough, said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, who represents the seaside city of Capitola as well as several miles of unincorporated shoreline along Monterey Bay.

These types of weather events are going to become more common and we can expect more of the fires we saw in Wine Country and Southern California, Friend said. It is directly related to fossil fuel-based climate change.

The tactic of suing oil companies over climate change has gained momentum over the past year in California, as regulation of the fossil fuel industry has eased under President Trump and scientists more precisely link the fallout of global warming to fossil fuels.

Though past lawsuits of this kind have had limited success, the newer cases have yet to be taken up by the courts.

Industry leaders criticize the mounting legal drive as counterproductive.

Chevron welcomes serious attempts to address the issue of climate change, but these suits do not do that, company spokeswoman Melissa Ritchie told The Chronicle in September. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement and action.

Chevron, among the 29 companies named in the latest lawsuits, is working to reduce its climate footprint. Other defendants include ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips.

The suits allege that the multinational corporations knew nearly 50 years ago that their fossil fuel products were contributing to global warming, yet hid the threats and worked to undermine support for regulating their activities.

The plaintiffs draw comparisons to Big Tobaccos efforts to cover up the health risks of cigarettes.

Like the other recent challenges to the oil industry, the Santa Cruz County lawsuits argue the companies constitute a public nuisance.

An estimated 930 buildings will be inundated with water in the city and county under a projection of four inches of sea-level rise by 2030, according to the lawsuit. The region is also likely to face increasing costs from wildfires, water shortages and storms, the suit says.

Legal scholars are paying close attention to the climate battles. While some experts say the suits contain solid research on the effects of fossil fuels on global warming, as well as more information on what executives knew about those effects, convincing a judge or jury of a specific connection between an oil companys practices and local damages may be tough.

The communities suing the firms must also show why their complaints arent better addressed through regulation, rather than in the courts.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A long-time trustee for the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District who is also running to be a Guadalupe County justice of the peace said he was acting in self-defense during an alleged altercation with his adult stepson that led to his arrest.

Gary W. Inmon, 50, was charged Wednesday with assaulting a family member and impeding breath, according to Guadalupe County records.

RELATED: At least 5 former and current Texas lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct

The Schertz Police Department said officers were called to a home in the 400 block of Frank Baum Drive around 5:30 p.m., for a reported disturbance. Police determined that Inmon had assaulted the caller but that no weapons were involved, officials said.

Now Playing: This is Track Palins second arrest related to domestic violence. Video: Fortune

Inmon said by email that he acted "completely in self defense" to protect himself and his 8-year-old son from his stepson, who he said had a criminal record. He said the incident occurred after he brought his son home from baseball practice.

"My 21 year old stepson, who's had a long history of behavioral issues and is currently on probation for conviction of felony assault of a female, verbally and physically attacked me," Inmon said. "He appeared to be 'high on something' and I had no choice but to protect myself and my little boy as anyone in my situation would have done."

Inmon said he told his stepson he was going to call the police, which would likely result in the revocation of his stepson's probation, but that his stepson said "I'll show you" and called authorities first, reporting that Inmon assaulted him.

"I've never attacked or hit anyone in my life," Inmon said in the email, adding that he has no plans to resign from the school board.

Inmon identified his stepson as Mark James Morgan. Court records indicate that Morgan was sentenced to probation in March 2016 after being arrested on Jan. 1, 2016 for assaulting a family or household member and impeding breath or circulation.

The case originated in California and was transferred to Texas, Inmon said. Online records indicate that a case was opened against Morgan in East County, California in February 2016, but contain no other details.

RELATED: Affidavit details evidence that led police to man who allegedly killed S.A. 3-year-old

Inmon's arrest comes on the heels of his reelection to a fifth consecutive term on the SCUC ISD board's Place 5 seat in November. A trustee since 2000, Inmon has served two stints as board president and two terms as vice president. In addition to his position on the school board, he is also currently running for Guadalupe County justice of the peace in Precinct 3.

In Nov. 2016, the State Bar of Texas suspended Inmon's law license for one year after determining that he had failed to communicate with a former client and return an advance payment made in a divorce case. After the client filed a complaint, Inmon said he immediately returned the $10,000 payment and paid $1,500 in legal fees.

While running for reelection to the SCUC board, Inmon called the situation a "private business dispute" and said he planned to open a law practice in Cibolo as soon as his suspension ended on Nov. 1. A profile of Inmon on the State Bar of Texas' website indicates he is operating a solo law firm, Inmon Law Office, focusing on probate and school law.

Staff researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report. | Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A man accused in the shooting death of 3-year-old Rene Blancas Jr. was arrested Wednesday afternoon on the Southwest Side.

Eric Trevino, 22, faces a capital murder charge after being arrested in the 1300 block Cupples Road, San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus said.

The boy was fatally shot on Nov. 4 while in the back seat of a car near the intersection of New Laredo Highway and Briggs Avenue, authorities said.

RELATED: San Antonio man accused of showing 6-year-old girl porn, touching her inappropriately

Now Playing: Eric Trevino, 22, is escorted by San Antonio Police Department Officers to a vehicle that will take him to the Bexar County Central Magistrates Office Wednesday, Dec. 20, at the Public Safety Headquarters, 315 S. Santa Rosa Ave. Video: By J. Del Valle

As Trevino was being escorted to a police vehicle, he denied shooting Rene.

Now Playing: San Antonio police say a three-year-old boy was shot while traveling in the back of a family vehicle Saturday night, Nov. 4, 2017. The victim later died at University Hospital. Video: 21 Pro Video

I didnt hurt nobody. I didnt kill no little boy, he said, using explicit language. Yall  got the wrong people.

SAPD released a sketch Nov. 9 asking the public to help identify the suspect and a tip was later called in, police said.

RELATED: Police release sketch of suspect in connection to killing of 3-year-old boy

"We had a tip on the individual and through a number of investigative techniques we were able to connect him with the shooting." McManus said.

McManus said the murder weapon has not been found.

Trevino was arrested on several charges including failure to update his violent sex offender registry, evading arrest, possession of a controlled substance between 14 and 200 grams, according to the Bexar County Central Magistrate.

He was also arrested for possession of a controlled substance greater than 3 but less than 28 grams, court records indicate.

His mugshot was not immediately available because he was still being processed through the magistrate's office Wednesday evening.
With the citys annual New Years Eve party, doubling as the kickoff to the yearlong Tricentennial celebration, just more than a week away, officials are working on contingency plans to ensure inclement weather doesnt spoil the event.

Carlos Contreras, the interim executive director of the the Tricentennial Commission, said Wednesday that current forecasts predict rain in the days leading up to New Years Eve, though theyre not expecting severe weather during the celebration. Ensuring that contingency plans are in place is the prudent way to proceed, he said.

No. 1, the events going to go on rain or shine, he said. No. 2, we are looking at contingencies in the event that we have additional rain forecast and its more than what we anticipate currently.

The event  which includes performances by REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, the Last Bandoleros, Little Joe y Mi Familia, Flaco Jimenez, Bidi Bidi Banda and Sam Riggs  also includes plans for a Ferris wheel and a fireworks show, among other things.

While its billed as rain or shine, the event could be jeopardized by severe weather, Contreras said. The Tricentennial Commission is working with the regional Emergency Operations Center and will take its recommendations on cancellation based on updated weather forecasts, he said.

Contreras said the plan to erect an 80-foot-tall Ferris wheel in Hemisfairs grassy area has been scrapped  though the amusement attraction hasnt. Itll still be there, he said, on firm ground.

Hes assuaged concerns over stages atop soft soil, saying theres a number of ways to address their construction, including using a plywood base. And workers are also taking care of low-lying areas in Hemisfair to ensure the space is as dry as possible for the Dec. 31 event.

He recommended that New Years Eve revelers dress for the weather, whatever it may be.

The event is scheduled to run from 4 p.m. to midnight.

Josh Baugh is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | jbaugh@express-news.net | @jbaugh
Two guards at a privately run federal jail in San Antonio that houses pretrial inmates have entered not guilty pleas to charges that they agreed to smuggle in drugs to inmates.

Abigail Jolynn Abrego, 27, and Jewel Roberto Jefferson, 37, guards at the Central Texas Detention Facility, were indicted last week along with non-employees in separate investigations by the DEA and FBI. The jail, which is run by the GEO Group of Florida, has had a rash of contraband in recent years that includes cell phones, drugs and other prohibited items, court records show.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The tip that led police to the man suspected of killing 3-year-old Rene Blancas Jr. wasn't initially sent to San Antonio police. A local TV station got the letter.

Eric Trevino, 22, was arrested Wednesday evening on a charge of capital murder. He is accused of shooting and killing Rene on Nov. 4 as he sat in a car with his parents and next to his 11-month-old sister.

An arrest affidavit made public Thursday details what police say happened that night and how Trevino was arrested.

RELATED: Man arrested in fatal shooting of 3-year-old in November

Now Playing: Eric Trevino, 22, is escorted by San Antonio Police Department Officers to a vehicle that will take him to the Bexar County Central Magistrates Office Wednesday, Dec. 20, at the Public Safety Headquarters, 315 S. Santa Rosa Ave. Video: By J. Del Valle

The family was traveling eastbound on Briggs Street and the couple said a driver of a Honda Civic drove past them, then made a U-turn to get behind them.

A shot rang out from the car, which struck the trunk and hit the Rene in the back of the head. He was pronounced dead early on Nov. 5, according to the affidavit.

A break in the case came on Dec. 6, when a KENS 5 reporter told police he got a letter that identified Trevino as the suspect. The author of the letter wished to remain anonymous, according to the affidavit, but the content included details not previously released to the public, like the directions the cars were traveling in.

Detectives continued investigating the lead and discovered Trevino had access to a 2008 Honda Civic, which matched the vehicle description, police said.

RELATED: East Side mom says someone walked into her son's room, fatally shot him in head

The car was purchased by Trevino's mother on Oct. 13, according to the affidavit. She suddenly returned the vehicle to the dealership on Nov. 10, saying she no longer wanted it.

Trevino's mugshot was also placed in a photo lineup and Rene's parents identified him as the shooter, according to the affidavit. Trevino was initially brought in on unrelated felony warrants before he was charged with the murder.

He denied shooting Rene while he was brought into custody Wednesday night.

"I didn't hurt nobody. I didn't kill no little boy," he said, using explicit language. "Ya'll ... got the wrong people."

Trevino is charged with capital murder, violating sex offender requirements, three counts of possession of a controlled substance and evading arrest, according to jail records. His bond is set at $1,055,600.

He was previously convicted in 2014 on a charge of possession of child pornography. He spent two years in prison before he was released. He last reported to the Texas Department of Public Safety for his annual sex offender registration on July 15, 2016. According to online TxDPS records, he absconded sometime after that.

Staff writers J. Del Valle and Caleb Downs contributed to this report | Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Dr. Charles Fraser, one of the nation's preeminent pediatric heart surgeons, is stepping down as chief of surgery at Texas Children's Hospital and will continue treating patients only through the spring.

The departure, announced this week in an email to employees, came as a surprise to many. Fraser, widely regarded as an heir to legendary Houston heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, is leaving "to pursue new professional opportunities," according to a hospital news release.

Lindsey Fox, a hospital spokeswoman said she had no additional information about Fraser's future plans or what prompted his decision to step down from the elite heart program, which for the first time ever this year was ranked as the best in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

Now Playing: Health Video Video: Houston Chronicle

Fraser, 59, is on vacation this week, Fox said, and unavailable to be interviewed. He did not reply to an email from a reporter. No other hospital officials were available to comment, she said.

"I am extremely proud of the work I have been able to accomplish at Texas Children's with the help of talented physician, nursing and administrative colleagues," Fraser said, according to the news release. "I am grateful to the patients and families who I have been permitted to serve and look forward to continuing to provide high-quality patient care in my next chapter."

Dr. Larry Hollier, a plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery, will replace Fraser as surgeon-in-chief, and Dr. Jeff Heinle will serve as interim chief of congenital heart surgery while the hospital conducts a nationwide search for a replacement. Those changes will become effective Jan. 15, according to the news release.

Fraser also is a professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and remains on the faculty, a spokeswoman said, referring additional questions to Texas Children's.

Amy Basken, the director of the national Pediatric Congenital Heart Association, was surprised to learn of Fraser's departure.

"His contributions to the community have affected every patient born with congenital heart disease," Basken said.

In what's considered the most difficult, stressful job in medicine  operating on tiny, malformed hearts  Fraser is known as one of the best in the nation for both his technical skill and innovations that have led to improved survival rates.

Fraser is even more highly regarded in Houston and throughout the Texas Medical Center, where his reputation is linked with legends of heart surgery. He was especially close to Cooley, who pioneered many of the surgical techniques used to repair heart defects in infants and small children: Fraser is married to Cooley's daughter, Helen Cooley.

In the news release, Texas Children's president and CEO Mark A. Wallace thanked Fraser for his "dedication and leadership over the past 23 years."

"He helped build a leading transplant program and a state-of-the-art cardiovascular surgical program that has performed more than 16,000 congenital cardiac repairs," Wallace said. "Dr. Fraser has been an integral part of Texas Children's Hospital's success and is well respected by the Texas Children's board of trustees and the Houston community."
AUSTIN -- With the filing period now closed, the slate gunning to be governor, the Texan in the Big Office at the State Capitol, features a field of 17 announced candidates.

That's right -- 17.

Gov. Greg Abbott, 59, the Republican incumbent, has two GOP challengers to his reelection bid, a guy who changed his name to SECEDE because he feels so strongly about Texas leaving the Union and a Plano woman who is little known. Abbott's campaign site

With well over $40 million in the bank and solid popularity in the polls, Abbott so far is the favorite -- over the Republicans and the 10 Democrats who are running against him.

On the Democratic Party side, the announced competition are mostly little-known long shots. Same for the two Libertarians and one Independent.

For the record, Abbott was born in Wichita Falls. Paralyzed from the waist down when a tree fell on him in Houston in 1984 while he was jogging, when he was a 26-year-old lawyer. Served as a state district judge, a Texas Supreme Court justice. Elected attorney general in 2001. Elected governor in 2015. Is a staunch conservative Republican -- fiscal, social and otherwise.

The rest of the field:

REPUBLICANS

Larry SECEDE Kilgore

Party: Republican Age: 52 Hometown: Arlington

Bio: Announced during the summer. Amarillo native. Air Force veteran. Telecommunications contractor. Ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2008, and for governor in 2006 and 2014. Platform calls for Texas to secede from the United States. Also opposes abortion, wants government out of schooling for children, wants to close prisons, end Social Security and cut welfare. Campaign site

Quote: According to his campaign website, Kilgore's "passion for secession is fueled by his enmity and heartbreak towards the evils of abortion, both excessive and unlawful taxation, and social security. His desire to free Texas ran so deep that in December of 2012 he legally changed his middle name to SECEDE and has been fervently advocating for secession ever since."

Barbara Krueger

Party: Republican Age: NA Hometown: Plano

Bio: NA. Republican Party of Texas officials say they have no information on her.

Quote: NA

DEMOCRATS

James Jolly Clark

Party: Democrat Age: 77 Hometown: Austin

Bio: Austin businessman.

Quote: NA

Cedric Davis Sr.

Party: Democrat Age: 50 Hometown: Balch Springs

Bio: Dallas native. Father of five. Desert Storm vet. Former police chief of Wilmer-Hutchins ISD, and chief of security for asset-protection firm. First African-American mayor of Balch Springs, a small town outside Dallas. Works for Garland Independent School District. Ran unsuccessfully for Texas House seat in 2006. Campaign site.

Quote: "I am running for for Governor because it is life long dream since age fourteen to do so, and secondly, to inspire a campaign without hate, a campaign is just another campaign if it does not inspire an inclusive movement, an inspired inclusive movement can ignite a revolution. So people of Texas no matter if you're black, white, brown, red, or blue it's our time to stand as one voice to ignite an inclusive Texas revolution to protect the peoples interest for generations to come."

Joe Mumbach

Party: Democrat Age: 68 Hometown: Houston

Bio: Former Beaumont restaurant owner. Audio-video business owner, Southern Star Satellite and Sound. Great granddaughter born Dec. 11, telling her to call him "Grandpa Governor." Facebook campaign page.

Quote: NA

Adrian Ocegueda

Party: Democrat Age: 42 Hometown: Flower Mound

Bio: El Paso native. Princeton University and Southern Methodist University graduate. Father of two. Former city economic program analyst in El Paso and policy advisor to mayor. Principal of Dallas-based Lone Star Investment Advisers, a private equity firm. Campaign site

Quote: "I am running for Governor because I feel that there are structural problems that need to be addressed in our Government and Economic systems. This will require new leadership that can focus our legislature on both, attending to short-term budgetary sources and uses for education, transportation, healthcare, natural disaster response, etc. as well as on the larger structural issues that need to be examined and repaired in order to develop long-term solutions."

Jeffrey Payne

Party: Democrat Age: 49 Hometown: Dallas

Bio: Announced in July. Louisiana native. Openly gay. Owns a leather bar. Was named Mr. Leather International in 2009. Owns several successful businesses, and says he plans to put $2 million of his own money into the campaign. Says he is running even through the party declined to make him their standard-bearer earlier this year. Campaign site

Quote: "I am tired of politics as usual in Texas . . . We know it's an uphill battle ... in a deeply red state. But a lot of Texans are feeling like they've been left behind with the divisive politics in Texas now. I believe I can change that."

Demetria Smith

Party: Democrat Age: 44 Hometown: Houston

Bio: Houston native. Has worked as a mortgage broker. Classifies herself as an "independent Democrat." Says her theme is "Your constitutional candidate. Rebuild, restructure and create." Campaign site.

Quote: "To promote, execute; justice, accountability & public integrity. I will be a governor that will actually honor, protect, and uphold the United (States) Constitution for the American people . . . I was led to the jump in to this race due to the national unconstitutional and unjustified killings of American citizens in which led me in tears and much frustration each time I saw these events or heard about it. It just pissed me off, so I decided to do something about it to make that change and here I am now running for all of Texas citizens however the unjustified killings just moved me into the direction of holding all public servants leaders accountable. Together we can turn Texas Blue."

Guadalupe "Lupe" Valdez

Party: Democrat Age: 70 Hometown: Dallas

Bio: Announced days before the filing period closed. Openly gay. San Antonio native. Daughter of migrant farm workers. Served as Dallas County sheriff since 2005, and resigned to run for governor. Served in U.S. Army to rank of captain. Worked as a jailer, as an investigator for several federal agencies including the U.S. Customs Bureau where she led a smuggling-buster unit. Retired to become sheriff. Opposes ban on sanctuary cities, supports LGBTQ initiatives. Campaign site.

Quote: ""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. I'm a proud Texas Democrat. I believe good government can make people's lives better, and I intend to do just that."

Tom Wakely

Party: Democrat Age: 64 Hometown: San Antonio

Bio: Announced in July. San Antonio native. Vietnam-era Air Force veteran. Served as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church and once owned a wine bar and jazz club in Mexico. Now runs a hospice business. Self-described progressive populist who supported Democrat Bernie Sanders in last year's presidential campaign. Says he will be like "Bernie Sanders in a cowboy hat." Ran unsuccessfully last year as a Democrat against incumbent U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican. Campaign site.

Quote:"I am running for Governor because the working men and women of Texas have been ignored way too long by both Democrats and Republicans. I am running to change the direction of the Democratic party. If we want to stop losing elections, we must stop putting forth candidates for office who run from the right, candidates like Andrew White who is running for governor and Mike Collier, who is running for Lt. Governor. Nor can we continue to run from the center. The triangulation strategy is no longer a viable strategy and as long as candidates like Lupe Valdez who run for office from the center, we will continue to lose elections. If we want to reach the 62 percent of non-voters and win elections, we must run from the left. We must put forth bold, progressive ideas."

Andrew White

Party: Democrat Age: 45 Hometown: Houston

Bio: Announced in October as likely candidate. Houston native. Son of the late former Gov. Mark White. Entrepreneur. Says he is considering a race to get Texas back on the right track, away from divisive issues such as the bathroom bill that detract from achieving Texas excellence. Promises to bring an outsider, business-oriented focus to state government. "It's easy to create division. It takes a leader to build consensus. Let's take a 4-year break from what divides us and come together as Texans to restore our state's leadership in jobs, education, and prosperity." Campaign site.

Quote: "I've never been elected to anything. So I thought I'd start with Governor."

Grady Yarbrough

Party: Democrat Age: 80 Hometown: Flint

Bio: Born in Smith County. Grew up in Tyler. Father of three. Graduate of Texas College and Prairie View A&M University. Taught school in Chicago, Tyler and San Antonio, where he retired several years ago. Ran unsuccessfully for land commissioner in 1986 and 1990 as a Republican, as a Democrat for state treasurer in 1994, for U.S. Senate in 2012 and Texas Railroad Commission in 2016. Campaign Facebook page

Quote: None.

LIBERTARIANS

Kathie Glass

Party: Libertarian Age: 63 Hometown: Houston

Bio: Announced in September. Native Georgian. Retired lawyer. Ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Libertarian in 2010 and 2014, and unsuccessfully for the Texas Supreme Court last year. Thinks this will be the year she can draw together a coalition of disaffected Republicans and Democrats to win. Campaign site

Quote: "I am a Texan, patriot, wife, mother, lawyer, self-made woman, business owner . . . Washington is broken, and the two party system is corrupt  corrupted by cronyism and special interests. Neither will fix itself. And neither can be reformed from within."

Kory Watkins

Party: Libertarian Age: 34 Hometown: Mansfield

Bio: Announced during the summer. Perhaps best known as an outspoken, Fedora-wearing proponent of an open carry law for firearms who showed up in public places carrying AK-47s and other long rifles. Unable to get a state concealed handgun permit because of a theft conviction when he was 17. Opposes taxation ("Taxation is theft") and supports the legalization of marijuana and transparency in government. Ran unsuccessfully in 2014 for the Mansfield school board, and has served as a Republican precinct chair. Motto is "Love, freedom, innovation." Campaign site

Quote: "I believe property taxes should be eliminated and all other taxes need to be reduced as quickly as possible all the way down to zero. If a service is good enough, people will support it. Good ideas don't require force."

INDEPENDENTS

Byron Bradford

Party: Independent Age: 46 Hometown: Plano

Bio: Born in Corsicana. A 28-year Army veteran, including combat tours in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Small-business owner. Supports increased funding for education, making healthcare affordable and accessible to all Texans, cutting unemployment and improved job training for Texans. Wants to bring "sustainable, long-term employment" to Texas, and wants ensure the citizens of Texas feel safe in their communities." Acknowledges his campaign is a "work in progress," but says, "I'm not a politician, I'm a concerned Texan who wants make a difference." On a recent GoFundMe page, he raised just $345 for his campaign. Campaign site

Quote: "A diverse governor for a diverse Texas . . . In three years (under Gov. Abbott), we've declined in every single area that's vital to our state."

Thor Harris

Party: Unclear Age: 52 Hometown: Austin

Bio: Announced via Twitter in August. LaPorte native. Musician, painter and carpenter. Has listed his profession as 'multi-instrumentalist." His band is named "Thor and Friends" and he plays with the influential experimental rock band Swans. Supports tax breaks for solar, higher taxes for the petroleum industry, has had some choice words for Republican officeholders on his Twitter feed. Endorsed by Texas rock band Explosions in the Sky.

Quote: "Hate has no safe place."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Scientists will study the mysteries of Saturn's largest moon or sample a moving comet for the next mission in NASA's highly competitive New Frontiers program that already has launched missions to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, Jupiter and an asteroid for sampling.

The two proposals were announced as finalists Wednesday from a list 12. The one that's tapped to fly will become the fourth mission in the New Frontiers portfolio.

One proposal, Dragonfly, would send a drone-like craft to Saturn's moon Titan to examine the habitability of dozens of sites there. The other finalist proposed traveling to a comet to take a sample that could help determine how material from ancient stars, for example, contributed to the origins of the Earth's oceans,.

The Titan and comet missions were selected as finalists "based on the outstanding and visionary science" they exhibited, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, during a teleconference Wednesday.

Funding for the selected mission will be capped at $850 million.

Dragonfly would build upon observations of Titan made by the Cassini-Huygens mission, which launched in 1997 as a collaborative effort by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. It arrived at Saturn in 2004, and began making flybys of Saturn's moons, including Titan, according to NASA.

In 2005, the European Space Agency-built Huygens probe landed on Titan. The mission concluded in September, NASA's website states.

Dragonfly would land on Titan by 2034, and the mission would last several years.

"Titan is a unique ocean world ... with lakes and seas of liquid methane," said Elizabeth Turtle, the proposal's lead investigator from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. "We're excited to continue with the mission concept."

The other proposal, Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, dubbed CAESAR, would bring back a sample from a comet previously explored by the European Space Agency, said Steve Squyres the proposal's lead investigator from Cornell University in New York.

"Comets are among the most scientifically important but among the most poorly understood," Squyres said. "They're the primitive building blocks of planets ... the source of water for the earth's oceans."

Squyres chose the so-called Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko because so much data already has been gathered by an ESA mission known as Rosetta that flew alongside the comet before concluding last year.

CAESAR's sample, totaling about 100 grams, would return to Earth by 2038, at which point scientists around the world could study it, Squyres said.

Turtle and Squyres now will begin another year of study on their proposals, Zurbuchen said, ending with a final proposal submission in January 2019.

The proposal selected to fly will be picked in July 2019 and launched in 2025.

The three New Frontiers already underway are:

New Horizons: Launched in 2006, the mission is the first of its kind to get a close look at Pluto and its five moons, about 3 billion miles from earth. It is expected to reach the Kuiper Belt in 2019.

Juno: Launched in 2011, the mission set out to study Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The mission will end next year.

OSIRIS-REx: Launched in 2016, Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer is the first U.S. mission set to bring asteroid samples back to Earth. It will return to earth in 2023.

Alex Stuckey covers NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

At 11:28 a.m. Thursday, winter officially arrives.

And with that comes a forecast with a variety of winter weather that could affect holiday travelers.

On Thursday we will have no weather worries. Skies will be sunny and temperatures in the mid-30s.

On Friday there is a chance of snow. The snow is expected turn to rain in southern Connecticut and continue through Saturday.

However, travelers heading to northern destinations like upstate New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine will have some moderate snow to deal with.

Winter weather advisories have already been posted for Friday for northern New York as well as central and northern Vermont with up to seven inches of snow.

In the Boston area, snow is likely after 3 p.m.

Here are some highlights of the National Weather Services forecast discussion for Connecticut for the days ahead:

Friday night into Saturday precipitation should increase and be all rain, though cannot totally rule out some mixed precipitation Friday evening across interior southern Connecticut.

Rain should be light Friday night, then become moderate during the day on Saturday. As a warm front lifts to the north on Saturday, temperatures in New York City and along the coast should rise to the lower/mid 50s, and to the mid/upper 40s inland.

Mainly dry and colder weather should briefly return for Sunday.

Low pressure is likely to develop off the Mid Atlantic coast Sunday night and bring a variety of weather to the area from then into Monday, primarily rain at the coast, mixed precipitation inland from NYC east, and all snow well northwest of New York City.

That said, all areas may eventually see some snowflakes at some point on Christmas Day as colder air surges in on a blustery northwest flow behind the intensifying low as it passes east of New England.

The forecast

Today: Mostly sunny, with a high near 34. Wind chill values between 10 and 20. Northwest wind 5 to 7 mph.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 22. Light and variable wind.

Friday: A chance of snow between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., then a chance of rain after 1 p.m. Cloudy, with a high near 36. Wind chill values between 20 and 30. East wind 5 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40 percent.

Friday Night: Rain, mainly after midnight. Temperature rising to around 41 by 5 a.m. Wind chill values between 30 and 35. East wind 5 to 8 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 80 percent. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Saturday: Rain. Patchy fog after noon. High near 47. Light and variable wind becoming south around 6 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 90 percent. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.

Saturday night: Rain likely before 9 p.m., then a chance of showers between 9 p.m. and midnight. Patchy fog before 9 p.m. Otherwise, cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around 35. Chance of precipitation is 70 percent. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 39.

Sunday night: A chance of snow before 9 p.m, then a chance of rain, snow, and sleet between 9 p.m and midnight, then snow, freezing rain, and sleet likely after midnight. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 29. Chance of precipitation is 70 .

Christmas Day: A 50 percent chance of snow showers before noon. Partly sunny, with a high near 36.
GOVERNMENT has made drastic cuts to former president Robert Mugabes travel expenditure after the ousted long-time leader and his family flew out of Harare to Singapore last week, nearly a month after his 37-year term came to a dramatic end following a soft military coup.

This comes as it emerged that Mugabe spent US$32,1 million on foreign trips between January and September this year against an annual budget of US$20,6 million. The Office of the President and Cabinet also spent US$1,1 million on domestic travel as of September against a budget of US$650 000.

Officials close to this situation also revealed the former leaders security team at his Borrowdale Blue Roof mansion was also reduced from 85 to 20.

Sources familiar with developments at Mugabes mansion told the Zimbabwe Independent that the nonagenarian was granted the presidential Air Zimbabwe aircraft (AZW1) when his family and security team left the country. Former first lady Grace Mugabe, the sources said, took six security personnel after resisting efforts to reduce her security details to three.

It is also understood the Police Protection Unit, which provides VIP protection, withdrew its team from Mugabes motorcade last Friday. Following last months military intervention, which brought a crashing end to Mugabes authoritarian rule, his family had been scattered across different countries before reuniting last week. It has also got together in Singapore.

According to figures obtained from the 2018 National Budget, the Office of the President and Cabinet spent US$32,1 million on foreign trips, although the trips have yielded little in tangible results for Zimbabweans. The expenditure came at a time Treasury is struggling to pay civil servants as well as finance capital projects and social service delivery.

In a massive decline from the previous years, Treasury allocated US$17 million to the Office of the President and Cabinet for foreign travel and US$700 000 for domestic travel in the 2018 budget.

Treasury figures show that the public sector wage bill currently accounts for 90% of government income, starving other critical sectors of funding.

Mugabe flew to Singapore, where his daughter Bona, son-in-law Simba Chikore and grandson Simbanashe have been stationed since the military take-over.

Bona is expecting her second child.

Mugabes fun-loving sons Robert Junior and Bellarmine Chatunga were staying at their affluent Sandhurst mansion in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, until they came back last week to face reality.

AZW1 departed at 2100hrs with 18 crew and 23 passengers on Monday last week. Mugabe had to compromise by allowing a smaller contingency, as well as a smaller security team, so that Grace could be allowed to travel with a six-member security team for herself. He also reduced the security team accompanying him, although Grace refused to take three security people with her. In the past he would have taken over 80 people, a source said. For Mugabe, he ended up flying out with three security people, although three others had already left before him. The former presidential limousine, the bullet-proof S-Class 600 Pullman, now has ordinary yellow plates and his departure was low-key given the cut in security.

The Independent also has it on good authority that Mugabes successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa has granted his former boss some wing at Zimbabwe House to use as his office during his retirement.

He will use that wing to host visitors who may want to visit him during his retirement. He also has a library space that he may choose to use. Mnangagwa wants Mugabe to be as comfortable as possible during his retirement, a security source said.

The Mugabe family has a multi-million-dollar empire built around numerous farms, prime real estate, various businesses and lucrative tenders which they wrested for self-aggrandisement.

The family also benefited heavily, directly and indirectly, from public funds during Mugabes endless globe-trotting trips and salted away some of the money.

On some occasions, the family also used public funds to acquire private assets, but their empire is now facing collapse. Zimbabwe Independent

Breaking News via Email
ACTING commissioner general of police Godwin Matanga yesterday admitted that there was rampant corruption within the police force and pledged to resolve the problem.

Matanga was appointed to the post of acting commissioner general on Monday following the retirement of Augustine Chihuri, who led the countys police force since 1994. Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander, General Phillip Valerio Sibanda issued a statement on Monday announcing that the former commissioner general of police had started his leave on December 15, pending his retirement from the service.

President Mnangagwa sent Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri packing, a move that received support, as the cops boss had often been accused of failing to instill discipline within the force.

Matanga addressed officers commanding police provinces, chief staff officers and directors for the first time as acting commissioner yesterday. In his address, Matanga said the local police force has been tarnished by corruption.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police has been tarnished through continued acts of corruption by unscrupulous elements in our midst, said Matanga.

The former deputy commissioner general said corruption in the force has been caused by indiscipline and lack of supervision adding that the public had lost confidence in the force.

Our challenges emanate from lack of or inadequate supervision and unbecoming actions by some of our members, which have no doubt eroded public trust, faith and confidence in the Police Service, noted Matanga.

He pledged that the police force would do better going forward, saying measures would be put in place to deal with corruption within the organisation, and that supervisory arms such as the national force development committee could be asked to help reign in the situation.

The Zimbabwe Republic police shall never again work in manners that will make it lose the confidence and trust of the people it serves.

More stringent measures will be undertaken to rid the organisation of corruption. We will not hesitate to resuscitate the national force development committee and to empower the inspectorate unit to enhance supervision of police activities at all levels, Matanga said.

Following general Sibandas statement on Monday announcing the end of Operation Restore Legacy, ZDF members have been withdrawn from policing operations.

Police and the defense forces had been in joint operations since the inauguration of President Emerson Mnangagwa last month. Financial Gazette

Breaking News via Email
Owing to inordinate delays in the appointment of vice presidents, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who leaves for an investors meeting in South Africa today, could be forced to appoint a Cabinet minister to act in his absence.

Unless the 75-year-old politician, who is also a qualified lawyer, appoints his deputies and swears them into office before he leaves, he may make a first in the countrys history by appointing a Cabinet minister to act as president in his absence.

The only other way to escape the knotty power vacuum that may be occasioned by this would be to return from his trip on the same day.

Mnangagwa has so far kept the nation on tenterhooks by deferring the announcement of his two deputies.

Recent events in the military, which played a crucial role in his rise to power, however, betray a re-configuration of forces that puts former army commander Constantino Chiwenga in good stead to become one of the two vice presidents (VPs).

In terms of the ruling partys constitution, Mnangagwa must appoint one of the two VPs in line with the Unity Accord, signed between former president Robert Mugabe (Zanu) and Joshua Nkomo (Zapu) in 1987 to end the disturbances that rocked the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces in the 1980s.

Until recently, that position was occupied by Phelekezela Mphoko who was swept aside by the wave triggered by the military intervention in Zanu PFs internal affairs last month.

Among those leading the race to deputise Mnangagwa on the Zapu side are former minister of State for Mashonaland East province Ambrose Mutinhiri, former War Veterans minister Tshinga Dube and Defence and State Security minister Kembo Mohadi.

Under the current Constitution, there are two provisions that deal with the appointment of an acting president.

The first provision provides that whenever the president is absent from Zimbabwe or is unable to exercise his functions due to illness or some other cause, those functions must be exercised by the first vice president or in his absence, the second vice president.

Under this provision, where there is no vice president, this role is assumed by a minister who is designated by the president for such a scenario or is nominated by Cabinet.

The second provision is s. 14(3) of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which provides that where there are two vice presidents, the president may nominate one of them to be acting president in his absence or where he is unable to exercise his functions due to illness or for any other reason.

Constitutional law expert Lovemore Madhuku said Mnangagwa, who came to power last month after the fall of former president Robert Mugabe, is playing a dangerous game by delaying the appointment of his deputies as provided for in the Constitution.

Under the Constitution, he can appoint a deputy from Cabinet with Cabinet approval. But it is a very dangerous game that he is playing. He cannot continue working without ministers or deputies. Perhaps he would have appointed the deputies before he leaves for South Africa. But if not that, that will be the first time that happens in the country, said Madhuku.

Another constitutional law guru Craig Lennington said the Constitution allows for the president to appoint anyone from his Cabinet to be the acting president.

He can appoint ministers to be the acting presidents if there is no vice president; the Cabinet of which the president is a member can appoint a minister to be acting president, said Lennington.

Mnangagwa is making his first trip to South Africa since he became president late, last month.

He is due to hold an interface meeting with potential investors while in South Africa.

Zimbabwes ambassador to South Africa Isaac Moyo has invited Zimbabweans doing business in the rainbow nation and all business persons with an interest in investing in Zimbabwe to the meeting to be addressed by Mnangagwa. DailyNews

Breaking News via Email
The fall of long-serving former president Robert Mugabe temporarily united Zimbabweans from all walks of life but weeks after the dust has settled, its back to daggers being drawn between the ruling Zanu PF and opposition movements.

And at the heart of the renewal of hostilities is the celebrated military intervention which ended with Mugabe resigning hours before an impeachment process by Parliament had begun.

Mugabe legalised domination as mode of human relations. We need to speak about the issue of violence as we head into elections next year and the involvement of the military.

I think in the Mugabe government, the use of the military was very covert. Whenever he sent out people to communities, there was an element of military involvement but it would evade most eyes. But now, the situation is worse because the use of the military is very open, Civil rights campaigner Maureen Kademaunga told the annual Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) Discussion Forum, held at the firms headquarters in the capital yesterday.

ANZ are the publishers of the inimitable Daily News, Daily News On Sunday and the Weekend Post.

The topic of the Discussion Forum was Challenges and Opportunities for Zimbabwe post Mugabe.

Some of the military personnel are already in government and some have been deployed to the ruling party, Zanu PF and for that, that is what is essentially telling. There has been a military takeover of Zanu PF.

The critical component, which is the commissariat, has been given to former military commander (Engelbert Rugeje), someone whose history is well known, especially his involvement in the post-March 2008 election period, said Kademaunga.

The curtain fell on Mugabe on November 21, when he resigned from the post he had held for 37 years  allowing his longtime aide Emmerson Mnangagwa whom he had fired from both government and Zanu PF  to return to the country from self-imposed exile to lead the former liberation movement and the country.

Mnangagwa took oath of office on November 24, to chart a new path for Zimbabwes politics, but thanks to the military intervention which started with Mugabe being placed under house arrest before a series of other events led to his resignation.

The 75-year-old former spy chief appointed two former military chiefs  Perrance Shiri and Sibusiso Moyo  to his Cabinet in what was widely seen as rewarding the military for its role in clearing his path to lead the country.

At its just-concluded extraordinary congress, Zanu PF named another general, Engelbert Rugeje, as its political commissar.

Former Commander of the Defence Forces and the man largely viewed as the architect of the military intervention  Constantino Chiwenga who retired this week  is hotly favoured to be named as one of Mnangagwas deputies.

So for me, that is a cause for a concern which the opposition and other groups need to talk about because the truth of the matter is that going into 2018, the opposition and other groups are going into this election to contest against the military.

So we took one step forward by removing Mugabe and then took five steps back by legitimising certain things. Military people can now unashamedly join government and take positions in political parties and justify it. We need to speak out these issues without fear, said Kademaunga.

Firebrand independent Norton legislator, Temba Mliswa, who was one of the panellists, said there was nothing amiss with retired army chiefs getting involved in civilian politics.

Mliswa said the army intervention was meant to rescue the Constitution and thwart the illegal usurpation of the State by loquacious former first lady, Grace Mugabe.

Borrowing from former war veterans leader, Jabulani Sibanda, Mliswa said the military intervention was not a coup as some have been claiming, but a reversal of a bedroom coup by Grace.

We had the first lady usurping powers. People talk about a coup done by the military but they dont talk about a coup done by Grace. Which was the first coup?

We want to talk about the so-called second coup, but was it really a coup or it was a move to address the coup that happened first. The whole country agrees that the first lady had usurped powers; she had become the de facto president; that was the coup.

The military came in terms of section 212 of the Constitution, which says that the function of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces is to protect Zimbabwe, its people, its national security and interests and its territorial integrity and to uphold the Constitution, Mliswa said.

The challenge I am putting across is that of constitutionalism. The opposition is blessed with some of the countrys best legal brains, but no one made an application to the courts. Someone else did and it was thrown out.

We cannot talk about a coup when certain people went to the court and challenged and the court ruled that it was not a coup and there was no appeal. They are lazy to make an application against a perceived anomaly, he added.

The High Court has ruled that the military intervention was legal.

Drawing parallels with other countries, including the United States, where former military personnel was involved in politics, Mliswa said the Zimbabwean case should not be treated in isolation.

When General Collin Powell was appointed United States secretary of State, no one ever said there was a general in the US government. If anything, it is a privilege to have them in government and thats what we have.

We should give a chance to Mnangagwa, an operator who realises that three or four sectors should be controlled by disciplined people.

The land reform was becoming chaotic, there was an outcry on the distribution of farming inputs and he realises its best to give it to a military man (Shiri) who is good from both the operational point of view and in logistics, said Mliswa.

You dont win a war without understanding logistics, he is meticulous. You have got Foreign Affairs which has a general and who will do things by the book and who will be the face of this country, he added.

The opposition lacks strategy. The opposition has the army in it, it has security in it. It has Giles Mutsekwa who was in the military and it has CIOs.

The difference is that Zanu PF attracts generals while the opposition attracts constables but they still remain members of the police, he said.

Mliswa believes Mnangagwa and Zanu PFs fortunes will be boosted by the absence of a vibrant opposition.

Zimbabwe is fast becoming a one-party State; in fact it is a one-party State. Zanu PF controls the pace of politics in Zimbabwe while the opposition is obsessed with networking with Washington.

The opposition chooses not to talk to Zimbabweans while the ruling party talks to Zimbabweans. As we head towards the 2018 election, I see more regalia in Zanu PF than ever before, Mliswa said. DailyNews

Breaking News via Email
The under-fire Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has pledged to mend its ways in the wake of sharp criticism over its excesses, which could have influenced Executives decision to retire long-serving police chief, Augustine Chihuri.

Chihuris 24-year-long reign as commissioner-general came to a crashing halt this week when President Emmerson Mnangagwa sent him on leave pending retirement amid thunderous calls for his head from a cross-section of Zimbabweans.

His deputy, Godwin Matanga, replaced him albeit in an acting capacity.

Public confidence in the law enforcement agency has hit its lowest ebb owing to pervasive corruption in the force, partisan policing, and extravagant roadblocks that have become avenues to extort motorists.

The ZRP has also been accused of heavy-handedness in dealing with dissent and being at the beck and call of Zanu PF in suppressing opposing voices.

Motorists have lately been crying foul over the use of spikes, which saw several people dying after being caught up in movie-style chases between automobilists and the police.

Within a week of Chihuris exit, the ZRP admitted to its misdeeds yesterday, pledging to uphold its constitutional mandate and guaranteeing the safety and security of both citizens and visitors alike.

Quite pointedly, there are circumstances that put the ZRP in an unfavourable position, acknowledged Matanga in his address to officers commanding police provinces, chief staff officers and directors in Harare yesterday.

As we acknowledge whatever mistakes or misdeed could have occurred in the past, we need to seriously focus into the future and work hard to rebuild the organisations image and a peaceful and crime-free Zimbabwe.

Matanga, who spoke glowingly about the architects of the just-ended Operation Restore Legacy and its chief beneficiary, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, said the new dispensation should see the rebirth of the ZRP.

This is an opportunity of redeeming the ZRP to its well-known reputation of being the eye of the nation (ziso repovo), he said.

There is a well-known Shona saying that says kugona chivi kuzvituka (you learn from your mistakes). May I therefore urge all of us to self-introspect, accept that our challenges emanate from lack of or inadequate supervision and unbecoming actions by some of our members, which have no doubt eroded public trust, faith and confidence in the police service, added Matanga.

Matanga spoke a few days after incoming Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander Phillip Valerio Sibanda announced the end of Operation Restore Legacy  a military exercise that played a big part in influencing the resignation of long-ruling president Robert Mugabe.

In the same announcement, the army which had also assumed the functions of the police during the month-long intervention, said the law enforcement agency should assume its constitutional duties in full and abide by its client service charter whose vision is to be the leading police service provider in the world by 2020.

In its mission statement, the ZRP pledges to maintain law and order, protect and secure the lives and property of the people and to institute dynamic policing practices that engender effective prevention, investigation and detection of crime.

Notwithstanding, few agree the ZRP has been up to the task.

Not even the Home Affairs minister Obert Mpofu is prepared to give the force a clean bill of health.

Mpofu revealed recently that he has been inundated with complaints about the behaviour of ZRP officers, warning ominously that he would not let it lying low.

This is a peoples police force and it has to abide by the expectations of the people, at the same time maintaining law and order, Mpofu said.

We dont want to compromise our mandate, but we have to do it in a manner that will not destabilise or create discomfort for our people. I am going to address the issue of roadblocks, corruption and all issues people and even some officers have been complaining about.

Yesterday, Matanga was forthright in his assessment of the forces conduct, just coming short of saying we are sorry.

He acknowledged that the concerns of members of the public were now public knowledge, saying most of them arose from the management of traffic enforcements.

Complaints are double pronged. Firstly, they serve as a feedback from the users of our service and secondly they are an indicator of matters to be addressed in our planning and implementation strategies.

That the ZRP, like most modern police organisations derive their legitimacy from the people is beyond doubt. As an organisation, we long accepted this viewpoint and committed ourselves to continuous learning under public scrutiny. Indeed, our code of conduct, the Police Client Service Charter and all our policies emphasise the need for professionalism in the discharge of our policing mandate at all times.

To this end, we are obligated to take heed of matters that are of concern to the public as they have a right to point our mistakes. And at times, do not expect them to use restrained language in doing so. Where need be, our on-going desire should be to use the complaints as a yardstick of reforming and re-engineering our services.

A heavy sense of responsibility, discipline, professionalism and dedication to duty should be the moral and legal guiding principles at all times, said Matanga.

He promised stringent measures to rid the police of corruption, saying the whole objective of Operation Restore Legacy was ridding society of the scourge.

To complement that effort, he said the police will speed up investigations of all cases brought to its attention to build confidence in the new dispensation.

In this regard, the ZRP shall enhance swift justice to perpetrators of corruption and other criminal acts through undertaking thorough and quality investigations, Matanga said.

He said the force will also put more effort to combating crime where safety of citizens and visitors as well as their property remains a priority.

Our presence on the streets in urban areas, in the remote rural areas, at the borders, in the farming communities or wherever, should inspire confidence among communities. Our thrust should forever be aimed at fostering and consolidating police and community relations. As police commanders, you should never insulate yourselves from the people, he said.

Our presence especially in crime-prone areas should be highly visible. We need to rid all corners of Zimbabwe of the fear of crime or the establishment. Consequently, I beseech all officers commanding police provinces to ensure that we have firm deployments that respond to crime trends round the clock.

Visible supervision by all commanders ought to be heightened. This becomes even more compelling as we approach the festive season which normally attracts crime and road traffic accidents. There are a number of occasions where our members have been found wanting or caught on the wrong side of the law. Discipline is the cornerstone of all police work. Regular training coupled with enhanced supervision will ensure our members abide with our disciplinary code, added Matanga. Daily News

Breaking News via Email
Find the newest releases to watch from National Geographic on Disney+, including acclaimed documentary series and films Fire of Love, The Rescue, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth and We Feed People.
A Clonmel woman who is serving with the Irish army on the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights is counting down the days until she returns for her son's Confirmation in February.

Corporal Maria Lee is not only spending Christmas away from home, but will also celebrate her birthday in the Middle East on Christmas Day.

Corporal Lee, who is originally from Elm Park and Boherduff, Clonmel, is based at The Curragh and lives in Athy in Co. Kildare.

She left for her tour of duty on October 3rd last. And while she missed her son Cillian Leahys 12th birthday in early November, shes flying home on February 17th for his Confirmation.

She will then return to her base at Camp Ziouani, Katzrin, Israel to complete the six months tour of duty.

All of Maria's family and friends are thinking of her at this special time of the year and they send her very best wishes for a Happy Christmas.
Imaginea unui esec la granita cu Ucraina. Cum sunt deviate toate TIR-urile din Ucraina prin sate, pe un drum ingust si fara trotuare: Au crapat peretii casei
Leader of Opposition in the Assembly V D Satheesan said reports on the conflict between the State governments and Governors were coming from several parts of the country.
By IANS

MUMBAI: Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray".



Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function here on Thursday evening.

WATCH TEASER:

"It's truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture," said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius.

Bal Thackeray's role to be played by @Nawazuddin_S in the upcoming biopic - here's the first look. https://t.co/auYxADJgub  Twitter Moments India (@MomentsIndia) December 21, 2017



The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amidst a thunderous applause. The film is scheduled for release on January 23, 2019, the 93rd birth anniversary of Thackeray.

Official poster. (Twitter)

Terming Bal Thackeray as "an unparalleled leader of the masses," Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences.



"I had spent much time with Balasaheb, and have been associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film," he said.



In his address, Amitabh recalled his long association and memories with Bal Thackeray spanning over more than four decades, till his final moments on November 17, 2012.

Amitabh Bachchan, MP Sanjay Raut and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray unveil the poster of the film 'Thackeray' a biopic on the life and times of Balasaheb Thackeray in Mumbai on Thursday. PTI

Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray, wife Rashmi Thackeray and MP Sanjay Raut at teaser launch of the film 'Thackeray', a biopic on the life and times of Balasaheb Thackeray in Mumbai on Thursday. PTI

"When we first met, he somehow developed a liking for me and treated me as a family member, which was an honour for me. And he continued like that, always standing behind me, through thick and thin, helped and guided me for so many years," he said.



Big B recalled how in 1973, when Thackeray heard of his marriage, he "summoned" him and his bride Jaya to 'Matoshree', the political family's residence in Bandra east.



"When we entered the home, Aai (Thackeray's wife, Minatai) accorded a loving welcome to Jaya, just like she would have welcomed her own daughter-in-law. We were moved and indebted by their warm gesture," he said.



The 75-year old actor recounted his near-death encounter in 1982 during the shooting of "Coolie" and he was shifted to Mumbai from then Bangalore for advanced treatment of his injuries sustained on the sets.



"When the flight landed in Mumbai, there was torrential rain and there was no transport to rush me to the Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. But, a Shiv Sena ambulance was there and it braved the weather to shift me to the hospital on time, or my health could have deteriorated further," he said.



Amitabh, who was among the handful of visitors permitted by Uddhav Thackeray to visit Thackeray in his last days, said that he was taken aback to see a picture of himself in a corner just beside the bed on which Thackeray was lying and "this was another indicator of how much love and affection he had for me".



Bal K. Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national politics for over five decades.



Feared and revered in equal measure, he held sway over the entire state and national political scenario as the champion of Hindutva or "Hindu Hridaysamrat" till his demise on November 17, 2012 aged 86.



The brief teaser released on Thursday depicts a scene from the two-phased riots which bloodied Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993 in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque and a grim Thackeray (Siddiqui) preparing to address his customary annual Dassehra Rally at Shivaji Park before a sea of saffron flags.

ALSO WATCH: Emotional Big B recalls Bal Thackerays support

Not 'easy' to make film on Balasaheb, says Uddhav Thackeray

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said today that making a movie on his father and party founder Balasaheb Thackeray was not "easy".

Speaking at the launch of a teaser of a film on Balasaheb Thackeray, he said making a movie on his father was difficult because it would not have a hero or a heroine.

The upcoming movie has been titled 'Thackeray'.

"The life and times of Balasaheb was about making the common man a hero - (but) boosting confidence and strengthening the common man," the Sena chief said.

"Many people earlier expressed desire with me to make a film on Balasaheb. But it is not easy, it's a 'shiv dhanushya' and a difficult subject," he added.

Uddhav Thackeray said his father was not in favour of writing an autobiography. "He would say 'I am a man on the field and would not like to be in a book and stay in the book shelf'," he said.

Uddhav Thackeray stressed the need for making movies on personalities who lived for others. He said when poor people came to his father, the "tiger in him" would wake up, shivering the oppressor.

"When 'Sarkar' featuring Amitabh Bachchan was released, everyone said Bachchan was playing Balasaheb. He was not...

Only the issue was same where the character was fighting injustice against weaker sections of the society," he said.

Uddhav Thackeray said Sena leader Sanjay Raut was the most appropriate person to make a film on Balasaheb Thackeray.

"He has not only seen Balasaheb closely but knew his thoughts and views," he said.

Raut said the film will be ready for a worldwide release in 2019 and aim for the Oscars like "Gandhi."

(With PTI inputs)

MUMBAI: Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray". Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function here on Thursday evening. WATCH TEASER: Teaser of #Thackeray, biopic on #ShivSenaPramukh #BalasahebThackeray looks terrific, literally gave me goosebumps! pic.twitter.com/0CGSrhBip7  Shubham Ghatkar (@ShubhamGhatkar_) December 21, 2017 "It's truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture," said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius. Bal Thackeray's role to be played by @Nawazuddin_S in the upcoming biopic - here's the first look. https://t.co/auYxADJgub  Twitter Moments India (@MomentsIndia) December 21, 2017 The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amidst a thunderous applause. The film is scheduled for release on January 23, 2019, the 93rd birth anniversary of Thackeray. Official poster. (Twitter) Terming Bal Thackeray as "an unparalleled leader of the masses," Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences. "I had spent much time with Balasaheb, and have been associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film," he said. In his address, Amitabh recalled his long association and memories with Bal Thackeray spanning over more than four decades, till his final moments on November 17, 2012. Amitabh Bachchan, MP Sanjay Raut and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray unveil the poster of the film 'Thackeray' a biopic on the life and times of Balasaheb Thackeray in Mumbai on Thursday. PTI Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray, wife Rashmi Thackeray and MP Sanjay Raut at teaser launch of the film 'Thackeray', a biopic on the life and times of Balasaheb Thackeray in Mumbai on Thursday. PTI "When we first met, he somehow developed a liking for me and treated me as a family member, which was an honour for me. And he continued like that, always standing behind me, through thick and thin, helped and guided me for so many years," he said. Big B recalled how in 1973, when Thackeray heard of his marriage, he "summoned" him and his bride Jaya to 'Matoshree', the political family's residence in Bandra east. "When we entered the home, Aai (Thackeray's wife, Minatai) accorded a loving welcome to Jaya, just like she would have welcomed her own daughter-in-law. We were moved and indebted by their warm gesture," he said. The 75-year old actor recounted his near-death encounter in 1982 during the shooting of "Coolie" and he was shifted to Mumbai from then Bangalore for advanced treatment of his injuries sustained on the sets. "When the flight landed in Mumbai, there was torrential rain and there was no transport to rush me to the Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. But, a Shiv Sena ambulance was there and it braved the weather to shift me to the hospital on time, or my health could have deteriorated further," he said. Amitabh, who was among the handful of visitors permitted by Uddhav Thackeray to visit Thackeray in his last days, said that he was taken aback to see a picture of himself in a corner just beside the bed on which Thackeray was lying and "this was another indicator of how much love and affection he had for me". Bal K. Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national politics for over five decades. Feared and revered in equal measure, he held sway over the entire state and national political scenario as the champion of Hindutva or "Hindu Hridaysamrat" till his demise on November 17, 2012 aged 86. The brief teaser released on Thursday depicts a scene from the two-phased riots which bloodied Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993 in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque and a grim Thackeray (Siddiqui) preparing to address his customary annual Dassehra Rally at Shivaji Park before a sea of saffron flags. ALSO WATCH: Emotional Big B recalls Bal Thackerays support Not 'easy' to make film on Balasaheb, says Uddhav Thackeray MUMBAI: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said today that making a movie on his father and party founder Balasaheb Thackeray was not "easy". Speaking at the launch of a teaser of a film on Balasaheb Thackeray, he said making a movie on his father was difficult because it would not have a hero or a heroine. The upcoming movie has been titled 'Thackeray'. "The life and times of Balasaheb was about making the common man a hero - (but) boosting confidence and strengthening the common man," the Sena chief said. "Many people earlier expressed desire with me to make a film on Balasaheb. But it is not easy, it's a 'shiv dhanushya' and a difficult subject," he added. Uddhav Thackeray said his father was not in favour of writing an autobiography. "He would say 'I am a man on the field and would not like to be in a book and stay in the book shelf'," he said. Uddhav Thackeray stressed the need for making movies on personalities who lived for others. He said when poor people came to his father, the "tiger in him" would wake up, shivering the oppressor. "When 'Sarkar' featuring Amitabh Bachchan was released, everyone said Bachchan was playing Balasaheb. He was not... Only the issue was same where the character was fighting injustice against weaker sections of the society," he said. Uddhav Thackeray said Sena leader Sanjay Raut was the most appropriate person to make a film on Balasaheb Thackeray. "He has not only seen Balasaheb closely but knew his thoughts and views," he said. Raut said the film will be ready for a worldwide release in 2019 and aim for the Oscars like "Gandhi." (With PTI inputs)
Haven't bought your Thanksgiving turkey yet? A look at local prices.

While farms like Helgers in Tiverton have already sold out of turkeys, there are still frozen and fresh birds for sale at local markets.
A Parade to Float Your Boat

This years Illuminated Boat Parade is set for Friday, Nov. 25 at 6 p.m. Organizers expect 35 to 40 boats to join in the festivities. Best places to view the...

RIDOT to Install Extensive Landscaping for Pell Bridge Project

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation plans to install extensive landscaping as part of the $85.5 million Pell Bridge ramp realignment project, including the area along the new Route 138...

The Pell Hotel Plan Receives Planning Board Approval

The Middletown Planning Board has unanimously approved a new plan to modify The Pell Hotel at 425 East Main Road. The approval, which had already cleared the Technical Review Committee,...

Officials Failed to Disclose $20M Shortfall for New Rogers

Newport school officials failed to disclose a nearly $20 million deficiency in the budget to build the new Rogers High School, despite knowing about the funding shortage for days leading...
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Snow this evening will give way to mostly cloudy conditions late. Low 22F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Snow this evening will give way to mostly cloudy conditions late. Low 22F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%.
Hyundai is one of the foremost car manufacturer when it comes to technological innovations. Its a given fact that under the budget segment of any body-type, Hyundai cars are the most tech loaded vehicles. Two of these cars are the newly launched mid-size sedan Hyundai Verna and the compact SUV Hyundai Creta. Since both the cars are so good in their respective segments, we decided to do a road-trip on both and decide, how good they are on a long weekend getaway.

For our journey, we decided to take a road-trip to the famous Bhakra-Nangal Dam. The Bhakra Dam is a technological pride of India and is located in Himachal Pradesh. It is also one of the most secured locations in India. The Bhakra Dam is situated 362 kms from Delhi and takes about 7 hours to reach the dam location.

The dam was the highest gravitational dam in India when it was built in 1963, standing tall at 740 ft. It is still the second highest dam in the world and supply electricity to 6 states of India. The construction of the dam started in 1948 with the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru putting the 1st bucket of concrete. It took 15 years to start the first leg of the project, which gradually grew to become the Indias largest dam production wise.

With 1500 MW output, it was the biggest dam in India. To visit the dam, one has to take an inner-line permit from the Bhakra board. The dam is fortified and you cant just click there and take photographs. However, the Govind Sagar reservoir, where the dam water is stored offers a surreal experience. On the contrary belief, Bhakra and Nangal are two different dams.

To give us company in this weekend getaway, we had with us the next-gen Verna and Creta. The drive from Delhi to Chandigarh has some really good roads and enough eateries. But it is the last stretch that is scenic and mesmerizing. Both the cars offer their own set of benefits and were fun to drive throughout the journey. Heres a small brief about both the cars-

Hyundai Verna

Hyundai Verna is loaded with many segment 1st features and offers a splendid drive quality. It is powered by a 1.6-litre VTVT petrol engine with 123 PS and 151 Nm of output. Theres also a diesel unit. The engine is mated to a 6 speed manual transmission, however an auto gearbox is also available. The features liked the most were the front ventilated seats, sunroof, eco-coating to keep the odour out, touchscreen infotainment screen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, smart trunk and projector headlights with cornering function and LED DRLs.

Hyundai Creta

The second car to accompany us on the journey was the Hyundai Creta 5-seater SUV. The Creta disrupted the market with its new-age cabin and fluidic SUV design, making it look stand-out of the crowd. The Hyundai Creta we drove is powered by a 1.6-litre diesel engine with 128 PS of power and 260 Nm of torque, mated to a six-speed manual gearbox. Although, it also has petrol engine and automatic gearbox. What we liked about the Creta is the fact that although is very spacious and feels like proper SUV, it drives like a hatchback.

The food is also a reason why our journey proved to be such a memorable affair. We especially liked the fresh fish from the Bhakra reservoir and other street food too.

Overall, the Hyundai Verna and Hyundai Creta proved to be a competent companion for our short 900 km journey from Delhi to Bhakra Dam and back. Not many people consider Bhakra for a road-trip, but it is a worthy place for some scenic roads, awesome food, and surreal experience.

Also Watch:
New Delhi: The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) in its third meeting on Thursday under the chairmanship Dr Bibek Debroy deliberated on issues of employment and agriculture with special focus on coming up with a policy on farm income.

"Farm income which includes providing proper remunerative prices to farmers and ensuring crop security is going to be a primary agenda in the days to come," said a member of the committee under conditions of anonymity.

The NITI Aayog made presentations on options to enhance agri-productivity and the rural minister made presentations on mission Antyodaya for poverty-free panchayats.

PMEAC members also discussed focus areas for upcoming Budget and the next meeting will finalise Budget inputs. They will meet again in early January to finalise Budget recommendations.

Dr Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog made a presentation on Strategic options for enhancing agricultural productivity, income and pro-employment growth in Agriculture and Allied Sectors along with Amarjeet Sinha, Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development making a presentation on the Mission Antyodaya for Poverty Free Panchayats.

After Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, eight other states go for elections next year. The farmer policy assumes importance as there are farmer agitations going on in the country especially during the times of Gujarat elections.

On being asked whether multiple elections next year will affect policies, the member under anonymity said, "it sure will. But that is the party's prerogative, we are an advisory committee. We only suggest in formulation."

Member of PMEAC Rathin Roy, had on 10 December said that the forthcoming budget will not be a populist one and will reflect the commitment of the government to improve quality of expenditure.

The government, Roy said, will come with yet another good budget, which is likely to be presented on February 1. I would not think any populism is permissible. I think the government will present a responsible budget, which will reflect its expenditure quality and commitments. I dont think that the government will use the budget to be populist. I am very confident that political authorities understand this, added Roy.

The Narendra Modi-led NDA government came to power in May 2014 and the next general elections are due in 2019. The government shall be presenting its last full fledged budget on 1 February 2017.
Note: The post contains spoilers for the latest instalment of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

The results are quite clear now, even though the counting is still on. The BJP is set to form the government in Gujarat. But heres the thing, the chase that the Congress gave the BJP wasnt quite expected.

Through the campaigning and the counting, it was one exciting race. And, it almost reminded us of Star Wars. No kidding. The twists and turns in this election were nothing less than the excitement we had watching The Last Jedi.

In the recent Star Wars movie, Rian Johnson, a filmmaking sorcerer sidesteps every predictable beat. For the first time, we didnt know what to expect from a Star Wars film. Gujarat, which had turned into a battle ground for the last couple of months, was exactly that.

There was no way to predict how this would end. The battle had left everyone confused. Who would win? Well, probably even Hercule Poirot wouldnt have the answer. The contradictions would make him scratch his chin and knead his eyebrows.

On the one hand, there was Goods and Services Tax (GST), demonetisation, unemployment and quota demands. On the other, there was Modis Vikas. The Last Jedi begins in battle. Gujarat, was just a battle, throughout.

When the film begins, we are in the middle of a Resistance evacuation. The scene is where the rebels are on their last leg to get away from a First Order Dreadnaught, decimated after the events of The Force Awakens. Does it remind you of something else? Well, just before this election, the BJP was in control of 19 states. It may not have been a Congress-mukt Bharat, but the Grand Old party cant deny the persisting fear that they may become irrelevant in the current times and with the apparent Modi sweep. In Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi and his men were limping, they had to fight the battle on that last leg.

In the movie, the rebels take out the dreadnaught, but their entire bombing fleet is lost in the process. The Last Jedi reminded us that before resistance, theres loss. There were also cracks within the resistance when Poe Dameron, the fan favorite Resistance hero, sees an opportunity to take out one of the enemys biggest weapons and stages an attack in direct opposition to General Leias orders. In the Gujarat battle, the cracks too were strong and evident.

There was Mani Shankar Aiyars neech aadmi barb that got him fired by the newest party chief, Rahul Gandhi. In 2014, Aiyar had dubbed Modi a chaiwala and the heaves burst forth. The saffron party wouldnt let the Congress forget their mistakesso they started bringing up the slurs that were used for the Prime Minister of the country, one after the one. Both of Aiyars remarks, back in 2014 and now became a great faux pas in poll history.

Once back on the Resistance cruiser, Poe is greeted with a slap across the face from Leia, and an immediate demotion from commander to captain. Aiyar is almost Poe, sans the red shirt and the shining armour.

The Last Jedi was all about the myth of heroism and the lessons of failure. The next foolhardy plan concocted by Poe, Finn and Rose leads to an adventure on the gambling planet Canto Bight and an ill-advised mutiny on the Resistance cruiser. They keep failing until they learn from it. Gujarat had similar lessons for both Modi and Rahul, despite who won and who lost.

In the movie, our heroes are no longer recognisable. The impulse for goodness in Luke Skywalker, for instance, had disappeared leaving behind the grey, withered, and angry shell of a once great man. Once again, it was proved heroes are a myth. Heroes change. Heroes dont always remain heroes.

The election results in Gujarat seem like it has been directed by Johnson. It proved how heroes can fall too. The love for Modi may not have been completely lost after 22 years, but theres a sign of it fading. In Prime Minster Modis and BJP President Amit Shahs home state, the Congress admittedly put up a tough fight. The narrow margin of victory, where the party even looked like losing at some point in the counting process just meant one thing: The BJP is vulnerable politically and they may not remain heroes forever.
New Delhi: OP Saini, the judge who acquitted all the 17 accused in the 2G scam case, including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi, is the man in focus.

Saini, 63, was handpicked for the 2G trial and is known as a quiet and hard-working judge in the legal fraternity.

He began his career as a sub-inspector in Delhi Police in 1981. After serving for six years, he appeared for the judicial magistrate examination and was the only one who cleared the exam that year.

Saini who hails from a middle class family in Haryana was chosen for the 2G trial owing to his impeccable reputation. In 2011, after the Supreme Court stated that a special court be set up to hear 2G cases, Saini was selected as the judge.

But he was already built his reputation as a taskmaster. Saini was a judge in important cases such as the National Aluminum Company Limited (NALCO) bribery case and the Commonwealth Games scam case. Saini was the one who had incarcerated Suresh Kalmadi's key aides, Lalit Bhanot, VK Verma, KUK Reddy and others.

The other feather in his cap is the verdict in the Red Fort shootout case where he gave the death sentence to Mohammad Arif, the key accused, and life imprisonment to six others. This attack had claimed the lives of three jawans. Saini had taken up the case after the judge hearing the matter retired.

In the first year of hearing itself, everybody thought that Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, would get bail after serving five months in jail, on grounds of being a woman. But Saini dismissed her bail plea and stated that since she was a powerful politician, witnesses could get influenced if she was released from custody.

He was also not hesitant to question men in power. In 2013, he used his powers under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which is not often used, and had summoned three more accused  Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Asim Ghosh of Hutchison Max and Ravi Ruia of Sterling Cellular.

Even when Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal had pleaded the court to be relieved as a witness owing to medical complications, Saini has refused to do so and summoned her as a witness in the case.

Even Niira Radia who was an important witness in the case was at the receiving end of the judges ire when she tried to evade questions. Saini has asked Radia to answer the questions as she was an "intelligent professional."
New Delhi: Dragging the name of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to nail former Telecom Minister A Raja earned the CBI wrath of the special 2G court, which lashed out at the agency for trying to prejudice the court by dropping the PMs name.

The arguments have been taken up by the prosecution just to prejudice the mind of the court by invoking the high name and authority of Hon'ble Prime Minister of the country, underlined Special Judge OP Saini in his verdict while reproaching the CBI for basing its case on conjectures and speculations alone.

The court held that the CBI had no evidence at all to claim that the DMK leader tried to mislead the then PM regarding the cut-off date to accept applications for the 2G spectrum licences, and also with respect to an opinion by the Law Ministry to let the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) take a call on the procedure.

According to the prosecution, Raja had written two letters to then PM Singh wherein he asserted his authority to process applications as per the existing policy and also rejected the Law Ministrys opinion to constitute an EGoM to decide upon the procedure to accept applications and grant licences.

The judge threw out the CBIs claim about Raja misleading Singh after noting that neither the then PM nor was anyone else from the PMO was examined by the CBI in the court to prove how the letters written by Raja were dealt with.

The Law Minister desired the matter to be referred to EGoM, but Raja was opposed to it and conveyed it to the Hon'ble Prime Minister. Now the question is when the letter was duly discussed and considered by the Hon'ble PM, and no one from the PMO has been examined as a witness nor the relevant files with processing notes have been produced before the court, how can one say that the facts were misrepresented or that the Hon'ble Prime Minister was misled regarding the opinion of Law Minister for referring the matter to EGoM? asked the court.

It noted that there is no material on record to indicate that the Hon'ble PM was misled or the facts were misrepresented to him.

Judge Saini further pointed out that there is no bar against a Minister directly writing such letters to other Minister or to the PM. However, if a Minister writes directly to the PM, that does not by itself mean that the PM would be misled, he added.

Therefore, the court said, that no illegality could be discovered in Raja directly writing to Singh without getting the same processed in the DoT files.

In the end, I do not find any merit in submission of the prosecution that the PM was either misled by A Raja or that the facts were misrepresented to himin the absence of any legally admissible evidence, the prosecution is trying to prove its case merely by arguments across the bar, which is not a correct approach. Their submissions are based on conjectures and speculations alone, held Saini.
New Delhi: It was not only the CBI which incurred the ire of the special 2G court over its faulty probe but the role of a former Cabinet Minister in the UPA government also came under the scanner in the 2G case verdict.

A noting by then Union Law Minister Hansraj Bhardwaj has been questioned by the 2G judge, who noted that a contrary opinion was given by the veteran Congress leader to apparently stall the process of issuing new 2G licenses under A Rajas instructions.

Special judge OP Saini in fact attributed malafide to Bhardwaj and the top officials of the Law Ministry when they opined that an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) should take a call on the right procedure for inviting applications and issuance of 2G spectrum licenses.

The facts and circumstances rightly show that the opinion of Law Ministry, on the face of it, was malafide having been obtained against established procedure of government working It appears that the contrary opinion was aimed not at facilitating smooth disposal of applications by DoT but stalling the process of issue of new licences by it, held Saini.

The judge noted that the when the DoT first sought an opinion, the Joint Secretary (Law) sent back the reference on October 31, 2007 on the ground that full facts were not mentioned in the DoTs request. But on the same day, this Joint Secretary spoke to an official in the DoT and asked for the file again and it was returned unauthorisedly to the Law Ministry without an approval of then Telecom Minister A Raja or other pertinent authority.

When the file had already been returned on the ground of incomplete facts and documents, there was no reason for the Law Secretary to recall the file and again repeat the same thing by using different language to the effect that the issues were too broad and needed refinement. However, instead of returning the file to DoT with this observation, he marked the file to the Law Minister, said the judge.

On November 1, 2007, Bhardwaj recorded that it is necessary that the whole issue is first considered by an empowered group of Ministers and in that process legal opinion of AG can be obtained.

The judge therefore questioned that when the Law Minister agreed that the issues were needed to be refined further, the file ought to have been returned to the DoT, but instead of returning the file, he without any reason suggested that the matter may be referred to EGoM.

2G judge Saini questioned the views of the then Law Minister: There was no proposal from the Law department that the matter should be referred to the EGoM. However, the Law Minister without any proposal from below and without citing any good reason, on his own, all of a sudden introduced this idea of referring the matter to EGoM.

Commenting on the Law Ministrys conduct, the court said that no government department is expected to give two contradictory opinions on the same issue without citing good reasons or change of circumstances because this would be breach of official discipline and protocol and such conduct by senior government functionaries may lead to administrative chaos.

According to the trial court, the circumstances in which this contrary opinion was given were wholly unreasonable and suspicious. It appears that the contrary opinion was aimed not at facilitating smooth disposal of applications by DoT but stalling the process of issue of new licences by it, emphasized the judge.
New Delhi: Just minutes after being acquitted in the 2G scam, DMK leader and daughter of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi, Kanimozhi said the fact that she was dragged into the case showed how much the system could stoop to ensure DMKs defeat in the elections.

In a statement after her acquittal, Kanimozhi said that she had been waiting for the last six years to see this day and it was a harrowing experience.

To be falsely accused in a case for a notional loss of 176 thousand crore rupees to appease the opposition that was stalling the Parliament is atrocious. I was made an accused because I was a director of a company and for only about 20 days, where I had not attended even a single board meeting and where I had not signed a single document. This speaks of the depth to which the system stooped to ensure that I was dragged into (this case) so that DMK is defeated in the election which was hardly five months away, said Kanimozhi.

The DMK MP said she was charge-sheeted with the sole aim to tag my name with a mind-boggling amount to make sure that Kalaignars (Karunanidhis) rule will not continue for the next 5-year term.

She said that she never wanted to amass money, else she would have joined politics much sooner. Kanimozhi said she was not greedy for power too, considering how she refused ministerial position.

Despite all this, I was falsely dragged into this which has left me scarred. Now with this behind me, I will do all I can to strengthen my party and work for the people of Tamil Nadu, she added.

Kanimozhi was charged with criminal conspiracy to cause criminal breach of trust by a public servant and criminal conspiracy (Section 120-B), cheating (Section 420) and forgery (Sections 468 and 471), and booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The CBI in its chargesheet has accused Kanimozhi of being in regular touch with A Raja regarding the launch of Kalaignar TV channels. CBIs investigation showed Kanimozhi was a key stakeholder in the TV channel.
Patna: A woman patient died after the ambulance carrying her was stuck in a massive jam during the Bihar Bandh called by opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Thursday.

RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad said, Such incidents do happen during agitation. Some people also die sometimes.

Critically ill Somari Devi, 35, was on way from Mahnar in Hajipur to Patna for hospitalisation but her ambulance got stuck on the Mahatma Gandhi Setu, which connects North Bihar to Patna, due to chakka jam by RJD workers.

Her in-laws pleaded with the RJD workers and policemen but no one could help resulting in her death.

The RJD has called a day long bandh protesting against the new mining policy of the state government and alleged deterioration of law and order. The Bihar government withdrew the policy on Wednesday evening but the RJD decided to go ahead with the bandh call.

The RJD workers forcefully closed shops and disrupted traffic on all the bridges which caused inconvenience for the common people.

In Bhagalpur, agitating workers smashed window panes of cars and damaged many two-wheelers. One of the injured, coming from Gopalganj where boiler exploded in a sugar mill killing five people, also got stuck in the traffic jam but the police managed to clear the way for him.

The ruling Janata Dal (United) and even RJD ally Congress has sharply reacted to the bandh call as the state capital Patna is welcoming Sikh devotees on the occasion of 350thbirth anniversary (Prakashotsav) of Guru Govind Singh.

When the government agreed to continue with the old mining policy, why did the RJD press ahead with the bandh call? Violence is in their DNA and they are just demonstrating the same, JD(U) spokesman Ajay Alok said.

Senior Congress leader Ashok Chaudhary also criticised the strike saying, They chose timing was wrong.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav led a march in Patna and courted arrest. He along with his elder brother Tej Pratap were taken to Kotwali Police station where they were freed after competing formalities.
Patna: At least five workers died and seven were critically injured when a boiler exploded at the Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihars Gopalganj district early on Thursday.

At least 100 workers were reportedly on duty when the boiler exploded at the mill, located in Ki Chaukor area of the district.

Initial reports said the boiler exploded due to overheating. Relatives of one of the deceased workers told News18 that the mill owner had ignored timely inspection of the boiler by engineers and kept operations going.

A report in The Indian Express said the mill owner has been arrested.

Those critically injured have sustained more than 90 percent burn injuries, Gopalganj district government hospital superintendent Shashikant Mishra said.

The incident comes more than a month after a similar blast claimed 43 lives at a state-run NTPC power plant in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli.
New Delhi: The Congress has said that the 2G verdict will remain a black mark in the history of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the former CAG chief Vinod Rai should be prosecuted.

"A blind man can see. You know the CAG chief is today one of the strong advisors of the government, posted on various boards and organisations and is being rewarded for what he has done. That will remain a black mark in the history of CAG," Vadakkan said.

"He (Vinod Rai) should be prosecuted by the law of the land for creating such kind of excuses and cover-ups. I think he should be prosecuted," the Congress spokesperson told a private channel after the special courts verdict acquitting all the accused in the cases of 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Rai had said that there was a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in the allocation of the 2G spectrum during the erstwhile UPA regime.

The Congress also attacked the ruling-NDA government saying this was a false charge made against the UPA government headed by a very honest Prime Minister.

"This was the beginning of a fraudulent government which was trying to bid for power creating a cover and blaming us of corruption. Now this is a reality that this government has to face. And that has come right bang on their face.

"In this Parliament session, they have a lot of questions to answer. How can you do this to any political party? People are watching this very closely. This is going to echo across the country," Vadakkan said.
New Delhi: After the Aarushi verdict, the 2G case has again thrown the spotlight on the CBI and its investigating abilities.

Terming the probe as "directionless and diffident", Judge OP Saini said the case was all about "public perception, created by rumour, gossip and speculation" and that these "can't be relied in judicial proceedings."

The judge also noted that "in the beginning, the prosecution started with the case with great enthusiasm and ardour. However, as the case progressed, it became highly cautious and guarded in its attitude making it difficult to find out as to what prosecution wanted to prove. The quality of prosecution totally deteriorated and it became directionless and diffident," reads the CBI court verdict.

News18 jots down a few other cases where the court ruled against the CBI and dismissed their cases:

Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj Murder case

On May 16, 2008, 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found murdered in her parents' home in Noida. A CBI team under Arun Kumar, reached a conclusion that Aarushi & Hemraj were killed by the Talwars in a fit of rage after the parents saw them in an "objectionable position." However, in October 2017, Allahabad High Court ruled that the CBI failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

The judges said that the CBI couldn't even establish the motive of the crime, as the controversial theory of "sexual intercourse" between Aarushi and Hemraj stood debunked in court. The bench methodically took apart the entire line of investigation followed by CBI ever since it was roped in by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe the Aarushi case in 2008.

Jessica Lal Murder Case

On April 29, 1999, Jessica was shot at a party in South Delhi. In 2006, trial court acquitted all nine accused, including Manu Sharma, due to lack of evidence against them. In December 2006, the High Court convicted Sharma and awarded him life imprisonment for killing Jessica.

The HC stated, "With very great respect to the learned judge, Judge Bhayana, we point out that this manner of testing the credibility of the witness is hardly a rule of appreciation of evidence. ... Obviously, this reflects total lack of application of mind and suggests a hasty approach towards securing a particular end, namely the acquittal."

Syed Modi Murder Case

India's reigning number one badminton player Syed Modi was murdered on July 28, 1988 in Lucknow. The CBI had named seven accused in its chargesheet, including Modi's wife Amita, the then UP Minister Sanjay Singh and political leader, Akhilesh Singh.

The CBI theory was that the murder was committed by four hired assassins who were recruited by Akhilesh Singh, a Jan Morcha worker and son of a former politician of Rae Bareli who was connected with the underworld. Akhilesh, they claim, organised the crime at the behest of Sanjay Singh who was in love with Modi's wife, Amita, a co-conspirator in the case.

After 21 years in 2009, a Lucknow Sessions court sentenced accused Bhagwati Singh to life imprisonment and gave a clean chit to Amita and others.

Rimpa Haldar Murder Case (Nithari Killings)

On February 8, 2005, Rimpa was raped and murdered at Moninder Pandher's bungalow in Noida's Sector 31. In May 2007, CBI in its charge sheet absolved Pandher and listed his servant Surendra Koli as the main accused.

However, later in February, 2009, a special CBI Court in Ghaziabad found Pandher and Kohli as guilty in the case, leaving the CBI with egg on its face.

Madhumita Shukla Murder Case

Shukla, 24, was gunned down from close range in her two-room Lucknow apartment on May 9, 2003. Initially, the UP police was handed the case and later transferred to the CID.

It was then alleged that police compromised on inquiry of murder of poet Madhumita Shukla to protect Amarmani Tripathi.

Later after CBI probe in 2007 and a trial that spanned more than 8 months, the court of the district and sessions judge at Dehradun on October 24, 2007, convicted four accused persons -- Amarmani, Madhumani, Santosh Kumar Rai alias Satya Prakash and Rohit Chaturvedi -- and sentenced them to undergo life imprisonment.

In 2012, the Uttarakhand High Court upheld the life imprisonment of former UP MLA Amarmani Tripathi, his wife and two others while sentencing another accused, earlier let off by the lower court.
New Delhi: Ever since Judge OP Saini concluded the hearing in April this year, verdict in the 2G spectrum allocation case has been the most awaited so far. As the special CBI Court acquitted all the accused in the 2G case stating that the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, News18 looks at the key arguments put forth by the defence lawyers during trial.

The 2G Scam had rocked the UPA government over alleged irregularities in the allocation of second generation (2G) spectrum in 2008, when Unified Access Services (UAS) licences were issued on a first come, first served (FCFS) basis at a price that was decided in 2001.

In its 80,000 page charge sheet that filled four large trunks and was filed in April 2011, the CBI had alleged that the government exchequer had suffered a loss of Rs 30,984 crore in the allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum.

The main accused in the 2G case was A Raja of the DMK, who was the Minister for Communications and IT in the UPA government.

The case centres around five main allegations, fixation of an arbitrary cut-off date, violation of FCFS policy in issuing Letters of Intent (LoIs), granting of UAS licences to two ineligible companies, cheating the exchequer by non-revision of entry fee and payment of Rs 200 crore bribe to Kalaignar TV Pvt Ltd, promoted by the family of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi.

Judge Saini on Thursday, while acquitting all the accused said, CBI has miserably failed to prove charges against all the accused persons. Therefore, the accused are acquitted of all the charges and they are required to submit a security bond of Rs 5 lakh each, which is a requirement of Section 437-a of Criminal Procedure Code.

A Rajas Defence

Raja had continuously argued that all the decisions that he had take during the allocation of 2G licenses was in public interest. His main ground was that he brought in new players, increased tele-density and lowered tariffs.

He had also submitted that he did not derive any personal benefit. The other defence argument that Raja had put forward was that the old GSM operators were not happy with the entry of the new players. He submitted that there was a cartel among old GSM operators as their interest was being affected by the new entrants.

He had also submitted that all his decisions were defended by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. The advocate appearing for Raja had argued that the government and the Prime Minister were happy with the decisions taken by Raja. He had also dismissed that he was aware of any monetary transaction between DMK-owned Kalaignar TV and the DP group and had argued that CBI had assumed that since he was the DMK leader, he has to be aware of such transactions.

Kanimozhis Defence

Kanimozhi was accused of gaining an investment of Rs 200 crores in the DMK run Kalaignar TV and her counsel argued that her tenure as the director of the channel did not correlate with the allegations levelled against her. She had submitted that she was the director of the channel for just two weeks. She further claimed that she had become aware of certain funding received from Cineyug Films Pvt Ltd, but she was not aware of the details and was no more associated with the organization after June 20, 2007.

Former Telecom Secretary, Siddharth Behuras Defence

Siddhartha Behura, who as the telecom secretary signed the controversial 2G licences announced on January 8, 2008, was incidentally a key officer responsible for the liberalization of the industrial sector in India way back in 1991.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister, pioneered the liberalization process in 1991, it was Behura who as a joint secretary in the department of industrial development successfully formulated Indias New Industrial Policy, 1991. He had worked with A Raja when he was the Minister for Environment and Forests.

Behrua has throughout maintained in court that he did not derive any financial benefits from Raja. During questioning Behrua had claimed in 2008 that former Solicitor General, GE Vahanvati issued a false statement to disassociate himself from the First Come First Serve policy on the basis of which the 2G spectrum was allocated.

Behura had also claimed that the former Solicitor General made a false statement on the draft press release on Letters of Intent (LoI) issued to eligible telecom companies.

Swan Telecom, Reliance Officials Defence

Anil Ambani, who was questioned in the 2G case, had denied that he was responsible for any misdealing. The CBI had claimed that Reliance Telecom Ltd (RTL) invested over Rs 990 crore in Swan Telecom, and Tigers Traders, Zebra Consultants and Parrot Consultants created a facade to hide Swans real owners. However, Ambani had claimed that even though he had seen the documents, he was not aware of any such companies or their existence.

Swan promoter Shahid Usman Balwa, during questioning had alleged that the Tatas and Videocon Groups Venugopal Dhoots brother and RS MP Rajkumar Dhoot misused his Parliamentary position to reserve a place for Datacom executives in the queue to submit the LoI compliance.

The advocate appearing for Balwa had argued that the Tatas also gave Rs 20 crores as charity to a medical college-cum-hospital run by A Rajas trust in his constituency. The counsel argued that regarding allegation of the investment of Rs 200 crore bribe, the gap of 1.5 years between January 2008 and August 2009 was a thing that was a first time in the history.

Unitech MD, Sanjay Chandras Defence

The company argued that older GSM operators were not happy with the entry of new players and hence the scam was drawn up. The counsel of Chandra argued as to why the CBI spared other telecom companies like Tata, Spice or Loop. He also questioned as to why did these big companies prepare their demand drafts in advance which was prepared a day before the Letter of Intent was distributed.
New Delhi: After rejecting 22 consular access requests by India, Pakistan is finally allowing an opening to assess jailed Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhavs condition. Jadhavs mother and wife were granted visas on Wednesday to travel to Pakistan and meet Jadhav. This will be Jadhavs first meeting with his family since he was arrested by Pakistan in March 2016.

India has sought a sovereign guarantee from Pakistan to ensure the safety and security of Jadhavs family while they are in Pakistan. Sources told News 18 that there was apprehension that the Pakistani authorities could use the visit to question the family and hence the sovereign guarantee was necessary.

The Pakistan government has also agreed that an official from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will be accompanying the family at all times during their visit, even while they meet Jadhav in jail.

The family is likely to fly to and from Pakistan for the meeting on December 25. According to Defence Expert Lt Gen (R) Raj Kadiyan, Pakistan is facilitating this meeting as it is under pressure due to the proceedings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The surprise announcement to allow Jadhavs wife to meet him on humanitarian grounds came just a couple of weeks ahead of the due date for Pakistan to submit a written memorial to the ICJ on December 13.

During the oral hearing earlier this year, India made a strong case for Jadhav stating categorically that his detention and military courts verdict to hang him was a gross violation of human rights. India also added that the rejection of repeated consular access requests was a violation of the Vienna Convention.

Pakistan also suffered a setback in the ICJ when the court did not allow it to play a purported confession video of Jadhav. India had already rejected it saying it appeared to have been extracted under duress.

Pakistan claimed to have picked up Jadhav from Balochistan. They accused him of spying and carrying out subversive activities categorizing him as a terrorist. India strongly rejected the charges from day one saying he was an Indian national doing legitimate business in Chabahar port in Iran. In fact, India said it was deeply worried as to how he landed up in Balochistan indicating he was kidnapped.

It was after the rejection of 16 requests for consular access and a hasty and clandestine military country trial that India was compelled to go to the ICJ.
Hyderabad: The 105th Indian Science Congress, which was to be held at Osmania University in Hyderabad from January 3rd to 7th, has been 'indefinitely postponed'. The university cited 'security concerns' as the reason for its inability to conduct the Congress.

The Vice Chancellor of Osmania University has informed the Indian science Congress association that they are not in a position to host the Congress due to certain issues.

Recently, massive protests had erupted on campus after a student committed suicide. The student unions and opposition alleged the suicide was due to rising problem of unemployment in state of Telangana.

The move came as a surprise, as the University officials, for last three months, were making preparations for the event. The University had even changed the examination schedule for the event. The University was even willing to allow inaugural programme outside the campus and other sessions on campus even if it meant more expenditure.

The ISC is traditionally the first public function the Prime Minister addresses at the beginning of each year. Last year, the event was held at the Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupti, Andhra Pradesh.

This year 20 Nobel laureates, along with top scientists and academicians from across the world, were to attend the event.

The Osmania University, which was established in 1917, is celebrating the centenary year and was thus chosen as the venue to hold the event in 2018.

The postponement is drawing criticism from all corners.

Sitaram Yechury, in a tweet, said: "Modi's utterances, his govt and its policies, has meant a hit for Science, Reason and Rationality. Now, even holding the Indian Science Congress on time (first time in over a Century) is not possible?"

A Telangana Congress leader blamed the postponement of the event on the insecurity of the KCR government.

Aditya Reddy, Telangana Congress leader, said: "Events which bring glory to the nation are stalled due to the insecurity of present #KCR Govt. Scared of protests, Chief Minister scraps 105th #IndianScienceCongress which has more than 30,000 scientists in India and @PMOIndia is silent!"

An emergency meeting of the executive council of ISCA has been called on December 27 to discuss the next course of action.
New Delhi: Soon after special CBI judge OP Saini read out the not-guilty verdict in the 2G spectrum scam case on Thursday, DMK MP Kanimozhi called her father and party patriarch M Karunanidhi over the phone.

"I called up my father. He was very happy. It's an emotional moment for us Last seven years were very harrowing," Kanimozhi told CNN-News18.

Karunanidhi and his son MK Stalin were among immediate family members not present in the courtroom for the much-anticipated verdict. Kanimozhis support base in Delhi before the verdict included her mother Rajathi Ammal, husband G Aravindaan, half-brother Alagiri and other DMK leaders who had gathered outside the courtroom.

These DMK cadre, along with journalists, lawyers and some curious bystanders, crowded the verandah outside CBI judge OP Sainis courtroom before the verdict.

Clad in red saree, Kanimozhi walked in around 9:40 am, accompanied by her husband and mother. A Raja followed was spotted soon after.

If the duo was nervous, their demeanor didn't reflect it. Kanimozhi accepted good wishes from people around and said "all the best" to her defence team.

Raja went around shaking hands and asking everyone, "How are you?"

Shahid Balwa, the man who was allegedly favoured by Raja in the alleged scam, appeared equally confident. He and his business partner Vinod Goenka were greeting friends, hugging them. But, Balwa's wife wasn't that confident. Chanting prayers, she only said "Insha Allah" when asked if she was hopeful of an acquittal.

At around 10:30 am, there was chaos when the accused were to be taken inside the courtroom. The POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court next door could not be accessed by Delhi Police personnel who had to appear in a case there.

Similar was the scene in the 2G court which the CBI team couldn't enter as the crowd at the doorway swelled. Judge Saini, too, had to wait as Raja had not made it inside the court when the roll call began.

Two minutes later, when confusion subsided, Saini began proceedings. The prosecution has miserably failed to prove all charges against all the accused persons. Therefore, all the accused are acquitted of all the charges. And accused are required to submit a security bond of Rs 5 lakh each which is a requirement of Section 437-A of CrPC."

The pronouncement lead to hugs inside and rapturous scenes outside the court room. Raja hugged his lawyer Ramesh Gupta, an emotional Kanimozhi went up to her husband and mother.

A trial which went on for almost seven years was over, at least for now.
Lucknow: Sleuths of the Narcotics Bureau has arrested a 27-year-old and is on the lookout for five others for running a drugs racket in Lucknow under the cover of a call centre. The accused was allegedly using a call centre to take orders for sleep inducing drugs or anti-anxiety pills from clients in the US and that too at steep rates.

The Narcotics Control Bureau busted the Lucknow-based drug racket that used to sell controlled drugs to clients in the United States via courier and post. According to police, 27-year-old Shantanu Gupta used to sell medicines like Alprazolam and Dizaepam to clients from the US.

After procuring information about potential customers in the US, the call centre employees working under Gupta made Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls and asked them if they were interested in buying sleep-inducing medicines and other drugs without any prescription.

NCB Lucknow Zonal Director, Birendra Kumar said, A drug smuggling racket was busted in Lucknow. The gang was sending scheduled drugs to the US illegally. I cannot divulge other details as the matter is under investigation.

The NCB first stumbled upon the racket on October 25 when they arrested Shantanu and his two aides from their Rana Pratap Marg office in Hazratganj area. Eight others were arrested from Lucknow and one each from Ghaziabad, Delhi and Dehradun.

The NCB sleuths are now on the lookout for five others in the case and it is estimated that the gang sold controlled drugs worth Rs 15 crore to US citizens from 2013. The NCB was acting based on the inputs sent by the US Drug Enforcement Administration on illegal supply of controlled drugs, which originated from Lucknow.

The accused were selling a strip of 10 pills of 0.50mg Alprazolam for anything between $10 and $15 (Rs 640-960), which they used to procure from the open market for as less as Rs 30 or Rs 40 per strip.

According to sources, Shantanu was selling almost 5,000-6,000 strips to the US in one month. A prescription drug in both US and India, the sedation effect produced by Alprazolam and Diazepam is hypnotic and anticonvulsant.

Shantanu was running the racket along with one Sagar Asthana, resident of New Hyderabad locality in Lucknow and another aide Jitendra from Ghaziabad. The latter was acquainted with the workings of the pharma industry and knew people who worked in drug manufacturing units.
New Delhi: India and China will hold the next round of border talks here on Friday, the first after the 73-day-long military standoff between the two countries in Doklam in summer months.

Issuing a brief statement today, the external affairs ministry said at the invitation of Ajit Doval, the National Security Adviser and the Special Representative on the boundary question, Yang Jiechi, State Councillor and China's Special Representative on the issue will visit India on December 22 to hold the 20th SR-level meeting.

Ahead of the talks, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that this SR meeting is not only a high-level channel for the border issue discussion but also the platform for strategic communication.

"In 2017, China-India relations have maintained a good momentum generally but the Doklam incident posed a major test for the two countries. We should learn lessons from this incident to avoid any further conflict of this kind in the future," Hua said.

Chinese and Indian troops were locked in the border standoff from June 16 when Indian soldiers stopped Chinese personnel from building a key road close to India's 'chicken's neck' corridor.

On August 28, India announced the "disengagement" between the soldiers of the two countries.

The road was being built by China in an area also claimed by Bhutan.
New Delhi: In a tacit indictment of former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai who pegged the loss at Rs 1.76 lakh crore in the 2G spectrum scam, the special 2G court on Thursday said that it was a 'scam' created by some people by exaggerating figures to "astronomical levels".

According to 2G judge O P Saini, the Department of Telecom (DoT) had lost its credibility by the time the news reports about wrongful losses to public money had started pouring in. He said that on account of various actions and inactions of the DoT officials, nobody believed the version of DoT "and a huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none."

The court further held: "These factors compelled people to conjecture about a big scam. Thus, some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels."

This statement by the judge can clearly be seen aimed at Rai's assessment of quantum of loss accruing to the exchequer in the allocation of the 2G spectrum during the erstwhile UPA regime.

The Congress-led UPA government came under fire over the allocation of spectrum without auction in the wake of a damning report released by the CAG.

Rai had then calculated that 2G spectrum allocation in 2008  under the UPA regime when Raja was the telecom minister  led to notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the national exchequer.

The Supreme Court verdict in 2012 had also taken note of this report when it directed the CBI to examine the findings of the CAG report and take necessary actions.

When the apex court was finally hearing the case, Gopal Subramanian, the then Solicitor General had however submitted that the loss indicated in the report of CAG was based on assumptions and hence, the SC should not lend credence to the numbers indicated therein.

After the 2G court's verdict of acquittal on Thursday, Congress leaders have trained their guns against Rai, seeking his prosecution for misleading the country.
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Thursday passed the controversial UPCOCA bill amid walk out by the opposition parties.

The bill has a provision of stringent punishment for people engaged in organised crime with capital punishment accompanied by stiff penalty up to Rs 25 lakh and jail terms ranging from three years to life for other crimes, including possession of unaccountable wealth and harbouring of criminals. The bill is patterned on the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, while discussing the bill in the House, said that this bill will be an important contribution towards improving investment and also the law and order situation in the state.

The UP assured the opposition leaders that this bill will not be used to counter political opposition. He also appealed to everyone to support this bill in the interest of the state.

The opposition, on the other hand, strongly opposed the bill and called it a black bill. The opposition also gave an amendment resolution, which was dismissed, after which the opposition walked out of the Assembly. They termed UPCOCA as a tool to suppress the voice of opposition and against the interest of the common man.

Samajwadi Party leader Ram Govind Chaudhary alleged that UPCOCA will be used particularly against minorities and that is why Azam Khan was not allowed to speak by the BJP leaders. He also alleged that UPCOCA will be used against Muslims if they went to vote.

Former chief minister and national president of the Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav, had said that UPCOCA is a tool to threaten the voices against the government. He said, BJP used to say that encounters of the criminals will improve the law and order situation in the state but nothing has changed. Nothing will change until the government gives charge to able officers. UPCOCA will be used to suppress the voice of the opposition and to threaten them.

Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati also raised concerns against UPCOCA and said that this would be used against Dalits, the poor and minorities. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Mayawati said, BJP is using such laws against Dalits and the poor in the BJP-ruled states for their vested interest. Hence, UPCOCA which is made on the basis of MCOCA will also be misused to suppress the voices against the ruling party.

Congress MLA Lallu Singh also raised concerns over the misuse of UPCOCA.

This government is bringing UPCOCA to threaten people who speak freely in a democracy. Why this sudden need to bring such a law, already there are enough laws. When the government should be bothered about law and order situation in state, the government wants to bring its own law and have no confidence in CrPC and IPC. We oppose such move by the government, he said.
There is no denying the fact that the next generation of stars are far more fashion-conscious than industry seniors were at their age. With the privilege that they are born into and easy accessibility to brands, high-end stores and its products, the young stars-in-the-making are leaving no stone unturned in upping their fashion game, making a style statement and turning into fashionistas even before starting their careers.

Therefore, it would be right to say that this year wasn't just about established Bollywood divas and them flaunting their great fashion sense at every occasion, but also about the would-be ones.

Hindi film industry's gen next stars including yesteryear beauty Sridevi's beautiful daughters Janhvi and Khushi Kapoor, Bollywood Badshah Shah Rukh Khan's pretty girl Suhana Khan, Amrita Singh-Saif Ali Khan's gorgeous daughter Sara Ali Khan and actor Chunkey Pandey's pretty lass Ananya Pandey, all of whom showed off their fabulous fashion sense at several events and made sure that they looked perfect each time they made an appearance.

The pretty ladies, who had quite a few photo-ops in 2017 -- as compared to previous years -- ruled the internet, especially social media, with their stunning photos and impressed fashion aficionados with their sartorial choices.

Let's take a look at some of the appearances that the gorgeous women made and what they wore to impress the fashion police.

Janhvi Kapoor

Soon to debut in Karan Johar produced film Dhadak -- a remake of marathi film Sairat -- Janhvi Kapoor has by now won a million hearts online with one stunning appearance after another.

From sporting a Manish Malhotra ensemble effortlessly, looking chic in Anamika Khanna separates to turning up in a simple yet chic kurta and owning that casual look, Janhvi sure knows how to slay it in style. A fashionista already, Janhvi's fashion sense comes as innately to her as it did to her mother and now even to her younger sister Khushi Kapoor.

Here are some appearances that Janhvi made in 2017 that made people go weak in the knees.

 A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Oct 21, 2017 at 12:18am PDT

Thank you @manishmalhotra05 for making my baby look beautiful  A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Jan 29, 2017 at 6:26am PST

Jhanvi Kapoor at House of Wow Dance Class in Bandra West, Mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)(Photo: Janhvi Kapoor at IFFI 2017/Yogen Shah)[/caption]

Khushi Kapoor

As we mentioned, the Kapoor sisters are born fashionistas. While Janhvi is soon to debut in films, Khushi too seems ready for the movies.

From flaunting her svelte figure in a Moschino crop top and bodycon skirt, looking gorgeous in Manish Malhotra ethnic attire to giving the princess feels in a glittering gown and rocking the retro look, Khushi sure knows how to turn heads every time she steps out.

Take a look.

My angel wearing our favourite @manishmalhotra05 A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Jan 29, 2017 at 6:22am PST

(Photo: Jhanvi and Khushi Kapoor at the Ambani bash/ Yogen Shah)Khushi Kapoor during Sridevi's Birthday Celebration at Manish Malhotra's residence in Mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)

Suhana Khan

Touted as a teen icon at just 17, Shah Rukh Khan's daughter Suhana has time and again taken the social media world by storm with her breathtaking pictures.

From showing off her chic casual style, looking drop-dead gorgeous in a Herve Leger fitted tangerine dress, to glittering in gold for mother Gauri Khan's Halloween party and stealing everyone's thunder each time she makes an appearance, Suhana seems to be the next star in the making.

Suhana Khan looks stunning at the Gauri Khan's halloween party at Taj Lands End hotel in Mumbai on October 27, 2017. (Image: Yogen Shah)Shah Rukh Khan and Suhana Khan pose for photographers upon arrival at the opening of restaurant 'Arth' designed by Gauri Khan. (Image: Yogen Shah)

Sara Ali Khan

Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh's first child, the ever-so-beautiful Sara Ali Khan will soon be debuting alongside actor Sushant Singh Rajput in Abhishek Kapoor's Kedarnath. But even before we can watch and approve of Sara's acting abilities, we know for sure that the star has a great fashion sense and that her sartorial choices are something to look forward to.

The next generation star -- who has been working out in the gym, taking dance lessons etc to prep for her upcoming film -- has made quite a few stunning appearances this year which set pulses racing and the Internet on fire.

Take a look.

Actress Amrita Singh and her daughter Sara Ali Khan at a fashion show in New Delhi on Friday. (Image: PTI)Sara Ali Khan at Ekta Kapoor's Diwali party hosted at her residence in Mumbai on October 17, 2017. (Image: Yogen Shah)

Ananya Pandey

At 19, you can trust Ananya Pandey to amaze you with her refined fashion sense at any given day. Be it at a movie screening or a girls night out, Ananya is at her A-game when it comes to getting her style right. And going by the confidence with she carries herself, it seems like the young lass is indeed ready to embrace the showbiz world.

In fact, Ananya, who recently made her debut at Bal des Debutantes in Paris sporting an off-the-shoulder blue and black shimmery gown, courtesy Jean Paul Gaultier, has already made headlines (quite a few times) for her fashion choices.

Take a look.

#lebal #paris #ananyapanday #ananyapandayfp  A post shared by Ananya Panday Fp | Karen (@ananyapandayfp) on Nov 26, 2017 at 4:17am PST

Ananya Pandey attends the Special screening of 'Judwaa 2' at PVR Premiere on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017, in Juhu, Mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)Ananya Pandey poses for the cameras on her arrival for Deanne Panday's birthday party in Bandra, Mumbai on December 7, 2017. (Image: Yogen Shah)

Shanaya Kapoor

Although she isn't much talked about on social media, Shanaya surely is the star kid one needs to watch out for. A diva in the making, Shanaya is quite a fashionista in her own right. From looking chic in her casual avatar to slaying it in her party looks, the young lady seems to get everything right each time.

Take a look.

Shanaya Kapoor spotted leaving to Alibaug to celebrate Shah Rukh Khans 52nd birthday. (Image: Yogen Shah)Anil Kapoor with Shanaya Kapoor and Jahaan Kapoor during Karva Chauth festival celebration at his residence in mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)

Navya Naveli Nanda

The granddaughter of megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Navya, 19, is already an internet sensation. One of the popular star kids, Navya's has a fan following no less than any star's. And so when the diva makes a public appearance, be it at a party or a casual outing, she makes sure to slay it in style.

Shweta Nanda Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan Navya Naveli and Amitabh Bachchan pose for photographers upon arrival at the 'Vogue Beauty Awards 2017' on Wednesday in Mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)Navya Naveli Nanda was spotted enjoying a stroll in Juhu, Mumbai. (Image: Yogen Shah)
The year 2017 has been nothing if not surprising -- particularly in terms of quirky hair and makeup trends. We take a look at some of the outlandish beauty concepts that went viral over the past 12 months.

Glitter tongue

Glittery makeup ruled this year, but the look peaked over the summer when glitter tongue' took off on Instagram. The sparkly craze saw fans dousing their tongues in glitter for the ultimate disco aesthetic, but the idea met resistance -- for the simple reason that there are obvious health risks with swallowing non-edible glitter.

Squiggle makeup

Wiggly lines became an unexpected beauty hit in September with the birth of Squiggle brows,' a concept that involved crafting the eyebrows into a wavy shape and using makeup to exaggerate the artistry. Hundreds of beauty fans took to social media to show off the results via the hashtag #squigglebrows, spawning the offshoot for Squiggle lips', too.

Glow in the dark hair

One of the first viral beauty trends of 2017 was for glow in the dark' hair, which saw beauty fans use multicolored dyes to create a pattern of neon hues that glowed under UV light. The eye-catching look proved popular on Instagram, with advocates showing off their luminous locks in loose waves, braids and buns using the hashtag #glowinthedarkhair.

Brow crowns

The regally bizarre brow crown' hit the news in November, courtesy of aspiring Danish makeup artist Sofie Petersen. The beauty fan created the look by brushing her brows upwards to form pointed tufts, before adorning the tip of each point with a gemstone sticker for a dazzling result that has received over 12,000 likes on Instagram. The reaction was mixed, but that didn't stop the concept from going viral.

Matchy manicures

Beauty fans began matching their manicures to everyday objects over the summer, in a movement that was sparked by a post earlier in the year by Twitter user @alinamarie____, featuring her new pink nails perfectly color-matching a slice of ham. Social media users took up the idea, and both Twitter and Instagram were soon awash with photos of people matching their nails to everything from Pepsi bottles to subway seats. Apparently the trend has enjoyed a resurgence over the past week, with Refinery29 reporting that fans of Rihanna's Fenty Beauty' line are now matching their nails to her cosmetics.
After calling Africa a country and being accused of wearing borrowed clothes on Bigg Boss 11, Hina Khan's acts has once again come under the radar. The actor claimed on Bigg Boss 11 that her co-contestants on reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi, Karan Wahi and Rithvik Dhanjani, didn't have any mental strength and thereby couldn't make it to the finale.

In an uncut video on Voot, which has been picked up by many fan groups on social media, Hina recalls her Khatron Ke Khiladi journey and boasts about how she's mentally more stronger than "mushtande" Rithvik and Karan. She further says that before participating in the stunt-based reality show, her Bigg Boss inmates can meet her for "excellent tips" and to know what all they should learn before going.

Hina goes on to tell Vikas that he shouldn't participate and says, "Tum mat karna, tumhare bass ki nahi hai."

She continues to demotivate Vikas even as he questions her comment on his hypothetical participation.

#HinaKhan boasting about how she managed to eliminate @rithvik_RD and @karan009wahi in Khatron Ke Khiladi because she is mentally stronger than them Please spread this Video by Retweeting Thank you @realpal12 for sharing the voot clip#BB11 #BiggBoss11 #WeekendKaVaar pic.twitter.com/BIcL3LUytm Jonathan Groff fan (@emocraze) December 20, 2017

Soon after the video went viral, many television actors, who had participated in the show, decided to voice their opinion on Twitter.

Ravi Dubey defended his friends and reminded Hina of what the stunt-based show is actually all about. "Disappointed in ur POV about my frnds @eyehinakhan I have witnessed everyones journey in #khatronkekhiladi @rithvik_RD and @karan009wahi were my heroes in d show they faught wth earnestness & grace & overcame their fears quite like u and thats what the show was about @ColorsTV," he wrote.

Disappointed in ur POV about my frnds @eyehinakhan I have witnessed everyones journey in #khatronkekhiladi @rithvik_RD and @karan009wahi were my heroes in d show they faught wth earnestness & grace & overcame their fears quite like u and thats what the show was about @ColorsTV https://t.co/ugSjzUSxu6 Ravi Dubey (@_ravidubey) December 20, 2017

Karan Wahi took Hina's comments rather lightly and asked Ravi to focus on their upcoming party.

Dubeyyyyyyyy sahab koi na ... disappointment ko maaro goli p filhaal kal ki party par concentrate karo Karan Wahi (@karan009wahi) December 20, 2017

Rithvik, too, laughed the incident off while his girlfriend Asha Negi mocked Hina and wrote, "Guyz you all know where to go for tips and advices before doing fear Factor!!"

Guyz you all know where to go for tips and advices before doing fear Factor!! Asha Negi (@AshaNegi7) December 20, 2017

It'll be interesting to see how Hina clears all the controversies she's created outside with her stint in Bigg Boss 11.
Mumbai: The upcoming Salman Khan starrer mega-budget film Tiger Zinda Hai has run into a political controversy barely two days ahead of its scheduled December 22 release.

While the Maharashtra Navnirman Chitrapat Sena (MNCS) has warned cinema owners against booking all shows for Tiger Zinda Hai and denying slots to two Marathi films, other parties like the Congress and the Shiv Sena also joined the controversy with their own party lines.

MNCS President Amey Khopkar told the media that the screening of the movie should not be at the cost of the Marathi films, Deva and Gachhi, which must be allotted suitable prime time slots.

"We are not against the release of any film, including Tiger Zinda Hai, our objection is why should all the slots be reserved for just one film and all others have no slots to exhibit their films," Khopkar said.

On Tuesday, the MNCS shot off letters to all cinemas, demanding proper prime-time slots for the Marathi films, failing which it would agitate against the Salman Khan film.

Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam has come out in favour of Tiger Zinda Hai, but a party legislator Nitesh Rane has espoused the cause of the Marathi film industry, while the Shiv Sena has also toed a pro-Marathi line in this matter.

Terming the plight of Marathi film-makers "comparable to hawkers", Sena MP Sanjay Raut demanded that they should be given equal treatment in releasing their films.

However, theatre owners are in a quandary since Tiger Zinda Hai is the first mega-budget film after several months, and probably the last this calendar year, after protests and threats pushed back the release of the much-anticipated Sanjay Leela Bhansali film "Padmavati" to 2018.

Khopkar said the MNCS, part of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), would not tolerate "the monopolising of theatres by Yashraj Films in this manner".

"They should not forget that they do all their film shootings in Maharashtra. If this matter is not resolved amicably, we shall be forced to stop even their shoots," Khopkar warned.

He termed it as tragic that Marathi film-makers "have to beg" for screens in their home state because big film companies book all cinema halls in advance for exhibiting their films.

According to MNCS activists, nearly 95 per cent of all shows in all theatres in the state have been blocked for Tiger Zinda Hai for its Friday release, leaving others with unviable options like early morning or late night shows which are poorly patronised.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Yashraj Films has stipulated all theatres to have at least five shows of "Tiger Zinda Hai", hoping to lure cinema buffs and Salman Khan fans in the Christmas holiday season.
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government is going to withdraw around 20 thousand 'politically-motivated' cases registered against ministers, legislators and others in the state, CM Yogi Adityanath said in the Assembly on Thursday. A law to that effect will be brought in soon.

Sources in the government say the process to collect details about such cases which come under the now defined 'political' category has already begun.

The reasoning behind such a move is that the government feels that the cases were slapped because of 'political' reasons.

The law department has been asked to prepare the list of such cases. As per UP Chief Minister's statement in Vidhan Sabha, the list of such cases is expected to around 20 thousand. As per the legal procedure, it's ultimately on the trial court whether to accept government's plea in a particular case or not.

The announcement came on the day the treasury and the opposition members were engaged in heated arguments over the proposed bill for UP control of organised crime act (UPCOCA).

Though Chief Minister's promise saw positive response in Vidhan Sabha, outside political parties are cautious in their approach on the matter.

Congress's head of state Media cell, Virendra Madan, said: "It needs to be seen what government actually means by political cases. Possibility is that the move can be aimed at also bailing out BJP workers and leaders from cases of serious crime."

The CPI wondered if this was an attempt to help criminal politicians.

CPI(M)'s state secretariat member Prem Nath Rai said: "In Principle we agree that politicians are often targeted with false and unjustified cases. But government needs to come out with clear details on the issue. There should be no attempt to help criminal politicians in the garb of this move."

BJP's state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak urged the opposition to not be narrow in their outlook.

"UP government's decision should be welcomed by opposition parties. There is no need to be suspicious about its move. Chief Minister's statement is a proof that BJP government is committed to strengthening democracy and political discourse," said Pathak.
Bengaluru: A few minutes after a special CBI court acquitted all accused in the 2G scam, the polling agents of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) at RK Nagar by-poll started celebrating. One of them even declared that the DMK has already won RK Nagar by-poll. Thursday morning, the 2G verdict was playing out more on the minds of the party leadership, than the by-poll for one seat in Tamil Nadu Assembly.

An impressive performance by the Congress in the recently concluded Gujarat Assembly polls, acquittal in the 2G scam and the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in shambles have boosted the morale of the DMK. But acquittal in 2G case is icing on the cake for the grand old Dravidian party which is now led by M K Stalin.

According to DMK leaders, the 2G case was like a nuclear bomb for the party which had devastating effect on the party fortunes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The cadre was demoralised and the party was being treated like a pariah in New Delhi. The huge legal and moral victory will change all that they say.

Reacting to the verdict, M K Stalin said, There was no scam at all. Our stand has been vindicated. His half-sister and DMK MP M Kanimozhi who had spent months at Tihar jail in Delhi was jubilant. She said justice has prevailed.

The political analysts in Chennai feel that DMK can bounce back once again. The DMK can now go for a hard bargain with other parties, including the Congress. The recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ailing DMK patriarch M Karunanidhis house had led to political speculations over the possibility of a re-alliance with the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Rumour mills are already abuzz with all kinds of theories. Many argue that the visit broke the ice and the DMK is not averse to go with the BJP if it suits the larger scheme of things. The DMK feels that the Congress did not come to its rescue in 2010 and 2011 after the alleged scam shook the nation. It has openly expressed displeasure over the manner in which the UPA government backed by them sent A Raja and Kanomozhi to jail.

After the acquittal, the DMK is not under any obligation to go with the Congress as it has a wide choices open before it. And a personal score to settle.

But the big question is, how will the BJP handle it? The 2G scam had majorly contributed to the decimation of the Congress and the spectacular win of Modi in 2014. Modi himself made it a big poll issue and constantly took jibes at the DMK in his election rallies. The entire BJP was after the DMK and Congress. Joining hands with the DMK once again for political gains in Tamil Nadu might have a ramifications in rest of India.

On the other hand, joining hands with the BJP actually helps the DMK. It can tell the world that even the accuser had to eat his words. MK Stalin and Co. have nothing to lose. Only the BJP has to find a way out.
New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shed his "raaj-hatth" (stubborness) and clarify in Parliament his 'conspiracy with Pakistan' remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh to end the stalemate and enable a discussion on issues such as the Rafale deal.

With no end in sight to the current impasse on the issue, the proceedings in Parliament continued to be disrupted.

Congress leader Anand Sharma held the "obduracy" of the prime minister and the attitude of the government as being responsible for the impasse in Parliament, that continued with a washout of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha for a fourth day on Thursday.

He also accused the government of wanting to continue the standoff so that issues of critical concern to the people are not taken up.

Sharma alleged that the government does not want the opposition to raise issues of acts of "commission and omission" and the wrong decisions of the prime minister. He said that the government does not want that it is exposed on the floor of the House on issues such as the Rafale scam which the opposition wants to discuss.

"It is the responsibility of the PM to clear doubts regarding his accusations. It is his duty to restore the dignity of the office and in the interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock comes to an end," Sharma told reporters.

"We urge the prime minister to shed his 'raaj-hatth' (stubborness) and clarify his remarks against Singh and Ansari, which he made to win Gujarat polls," Sharma said. The stalemate, he said, continues primarily because of the attitude of the government and obduracy of the prime minister, who refuses to register the seriousness of the situation resulting from his "baseless and unwarranted aspersions" for electoral gains.

He said, as one who is occupying the constitutional office, it is the duty of the prime minister to restore the dignity of the office of the institution.

Whatever is said in politics, never before a prime minister has pointed any finger of suspicion on the commitment to the country of former prime ministers or former vice presidents or even the former Army chief.

"It is in national interest, in interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock is brought to an end. "It is unfortunate that prime minister has still not apologised for his ill-thought accusations against the former PM Manmohan Singh who was PM for 10 years and dedicated his life for this country," he said.

Sharma, however, said it is being conveyed by government that the prime minister is not willing to take back his words. He "disappointed" the opposition today when it was his day for the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress leader said.

Sharma said the opposition also wants to raise other issues concerning the economy and job losses. The Indian economy has suffered losses due to some "reckless" decisions of the prime minister, he alleged.
Chennai: Minutes after a CBI court in Delhi acquitted all the accused in 2G scam, political workers in RK Nagar, former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithas constituency where by-poll is underway, were quick to analyse impact of the verdict.

Now, Modi can go and ally with DMK in Tamil Nadu, read one of the WhatsApp messages being discussed outside polling booths.

Political analysts might want to wait for a while before commenting on the future of Tamil Nadu politics, but never before has a by-poll captured national imagination the way RK Nagar has. The constituency has been an AIADMK bastion for long. But this time, with so much infighting within the party, the DMK smelt an opportunity.

And the verdict in the 2G case that came bright and early by 1030, when more than 90 per cent of the electorate was yet to vote, came as a boost to the party. Regardless of todays judgment, we were well poised to win RK Nagar Now with this, the margin of our victory will multiply many times, said DMK spokesperson Manu Sundaram.

Its not an election issue for this constituency per se, but the verdict vindicated our partys stand and reaffirmed all that the party has said about the case  that the real scam was to have ever called this a scam for political gains, Sundaram added.

So will this verdict have a long-term impact on Tamil Nadu politics?

There is still a long time to go for 2021 Assembly elections, but corruption allegations that have so far kept the DMK down will be countered in different language now. The party is no longer untouchable as far as alliances are concerned.

The first sign of it came in archrival TTV Dinakarans welcome of the acquittal of DMK leaders: Even as an opposition party, we didn't want them to go to jail, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already extended an olive branch a few months back when he visited ailing DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi during his Chennai visit.

Could other factions of the AIADMK too cozy up to the DMK? Where will Congress stand in all these dynamics? Its too early to comment but politics, after all, is the art of making things possible.
RK NAGAR BY-ELECTION LIVE UPDATES: Voting in the RK Nagar Assembly bypoll, which has turned out to be a prestige battle for AIADMK after the seat fell vacant last year after party supremo J Jayalalithaas death, is underway. 59% voting was recorded till 3pm. AIADMK candidate E Madhusudhanan is confident of winning the bypoll, saying God and Ammas grace with us. Chief Minister E Palaniswamy and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam are banking on him to bring home the constituency which was vacated last year. Madhusudhanan is squaring off against sidelined party leader TTV Dinakaran who is contesting as an Independent, DMKs N Marudhu Ganesh and Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) K Nagarajan. The result of the high-stakes bypoll will be known on December 24. The bypoll was first scheduled to be held in April this year, but was cancelled due to complaints of large-scale voter bribery. This round of voting is also not devoid of controversy. A Dinakaran loyalist released a video on the eve of the bypoll purportedly showing Jayalalithaa in a hospital few days before her death. Anticipating trouble, 2,000 police personnel and 15 companies of the CRPF have been deployed. The Election Commission had sent nine observers, considered to be the highest for a single Assembly constituency.

Stay tuned as Sanchari Chatterjee brings you LIVE updates:

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
New Delhi: A special court on Thursday acquitted all the 17 accused in the 2G scam case, including DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi. This development may trigger political realignment in Tamil Nadu and may render DMK politically touchable for the BJP.

Here are the possible political ramifications:

> The acquittal in the 2G scam case is a huge moral, political victory for the DMK.

> The verdict puts DMK at a pole position ahead of next assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

> Extricates the BJP of any moral dilemma in aligning with the DMK. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Chennai last month called upon the DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi leading to speculations in political circles about a possible shake-up in the present political alignment.

However, DMK MP Tiruchi Siva ruled out any political realignment."We are very much with the Congress and will continue to be so. Modi meeting Karunanidhi was only a courtesy call, don't read political motive in it," he said.

> The 2G verdict gives a huge leg up to the DMK for the prestigious RK Nagar bypolls in Cheenai. RK Nagar was held by former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

> Kanimozhi, Raja emerge stronger in the DMK. The party in the last five years had tried to resolve the leadership issue with Stalin being projected as the heir apparent. The stiffest challenge thus far has come from the southern town of Madurai, considered the stronghold of Alagiri, Stalins elder brother.

> Blow to a tottering AIADMK under EPS and OPS. The verdict may embolden the TTV Dinakaran camp of AIADMK.

> This comes as a moral victory for the Congress and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in particular. A series of scams under UPA-1 unravelled the Congress-led alliance at the Centre pulversing the Grand Old Party to its worst-ever performance in the general elections in 2014.

> Helps the Congress politically counter corruption charge as it attempts image makeover under Rahul Gandhi.

> The Congress will have to factor in alternative political alignments in Tamil Nadu in case the DMK tilts towards the BJP.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has already set the tone for Karnataka Assembly polls due in April/May, next year. Indias first monk CM addressed a BJP public meeting at Hubballi on Wednesday, asking the voters to choose between Tipu Sultan and Lord Hanuman.

Giving enough hints that Karnataka poll campaign will go the Gujarat way, he said, The people of Karnataka have to choose between Tipu Jayanthi and Hanuman Jayanthi. The ruling Congress is against Hindus and Hinduism. I ask you to teach a lesson to Congress in the coming elections.

Continuing his attack on the Congress, he said that Congress-free India" could be achieved if the voters defeat the party in the elections. He also credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the developmental works in Hubballi-Dharwad twin cities.

He said, Congress has done no development. We have done everything. The UP CM is expected to address several rallies across Karnataka in the coming months.

Hitting back at Yogi Adityanath, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah, who is also touring the northern parts of the state, said he was a better Hindu than Adityanath. Siddaramaiah said, Are the BJP people only Hindus? My name is Siddaramaiah. I have both Sidda and Rama in my name. Has the BJP taken ownership of Hindus? We are also Hindus. But we respect all religions unlike the BJP. We treat all of them equally. This is our culture. This is real Hindutva.

He also accused BJP of encouraging radical elements for the political gains in Karnataka.

Political analysts feel that the BJP will most likely jettison its development agenda for the communal agenda to win Karnataka back in the polls to be held early next year.
The U.S. Republican tax overhaul passed by Congress this week will allow Apple Inc to bring back it's $252.3 billion foreign cash pile without a major tax hit - a long-standing company goal. Other provisions of the bill, namely the cut in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, are also a big boon for Apple. But not everything went the company's way. A critical difference between the Senate version of the bill and the final version could actually raise the amount of cash taxes that Apple pays on profits from patents held abroad, tax experts said.

The treatment of foreign patent profits is important to Apple because shifting those profits overseas was a cornerstone of its tax practices for decades. In effect, the company attributes a large portion of the value of its products to patents and other intellectual property such as trademarks. Apple then assigns some of that IP, proportional to overseas sales, to subsidiaries in countries with low tax rates and assesses substantial patent royalties on sales. Those royalties then flow back to those low-tax locations, like Ireland.

The bill has a pair of provisions designed to make that manoeuvre less alluring. One creates a minimum tax on foreign patent income that is expected to come to about 13 percent, said Gavin Ekins, a research economist with the Tax Foundation. At the same time, a tax break for patents held in the United States will lower the tax on licensing income from the standard corporate rate of 21 percent to 13.1 percent - about the same as if the patents were held abroad.

Congressional Republicans "don't want the tax rate to be a consideration in where you put your intellectual property," Ekins said. "The whole intention (of the measures) is to bring back that intellectual property to the United States." Parts of the scheme are similar "patent boxes" employed in countries like the United Kingdom to encourage firms to generate and keep their innovations at home.

But the final bill omits any explicit way for patents held overseas to be returned to the United States without being taxed. Congress "screwed it up," said Ed Kleinbard, a tax professor at the University of California and former chief of staff of the U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. "It's kind of weird that they created the patent box, but didn't give a pass to bring things back."

For those patents that remain overseas, the minimum tax on foreign patent profits means Apple might actually face higher cash taxes abroad. "I'm willing to bet a dollar that 13.1 percent is higher than Apple's actual non-U.S. tax rate," said Kleinbard. "It's entirely possible their cash tax bill going forward would go up based on this alone." Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said the company intends to bring some overseas cash home, but the company declined to comment on precisely how much or how it would use the funds.

Gary Hufbauer, a fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the tax cut is not likely to spur Apple to start building iPhones in the United States. However, Apple's U.S. suppliers, which the company said it spent $50 billion within 2016, will also see lower taxes. If those suppliers pass their tax savings along in the form of lower prices offered to Apple, it could make them more competitive against foreign rivals and entice Apple to spend more with them, Hufbauer said.

QUESTIONS ON USE OF CASH

The repatriation rules will change the way Apple manages its cash, analysts said. Companies now have to pay a one-time 15.5 percent tax on their overseas cash to bring it back. After that, companies will pay 21 percent tax on U.S. profits and a minimum 10.5 percent tax on foreign profits, but they will be able to deduct foreign taxes already paid on those profits, so in many cases, the foreign profits can be brought home with no additional U.S. taxes paid.

At 15.5 percent, Apple would owe about $39.1 billion on its $252.3 billion in overseas cash. Unlike many other large companies, Apple has already set aside $36.3 billion for that purpose. With the remaining cash, Apple could attack its $97 billion in long-term debt, much of which it has used to fund its dividend and share buy-back program. "The (foreign cash) overhang for Apple is just an enormous issue," Kleinbard said. "Even Apple has finite borrowing capacity. This removes the issue."

Watch: Tech and Auto Show | Ep 24 | Honor 7X, TVS Apache RR 310, Volvo XC60 & More
Warsaw, Poland: British Prime Minister Theresa May was left smirking at a press conference with her Polish counterpart on Thursday after a translator accidentally called her "Madam Brexit".

May was in Warsaw for talks with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, with the discussions inevitably turning to Britain's 2019 departure from the European Union.

Part of Morawiecki's opening speech was translated as: "It's very important for us that this cooperation, even though it will be based soon on different rules and different regulations than it has been so far because of Brexit, because as Madam Brexit said, Brexit is Brexit."

May was then seen smiling as Morawiecki went on, in a moment broadcast on international television.

The two leaders signed a joint treaty on defence and security and spoke about the next phase of the Brexit negotiations, due to begin in the new year.
United Nations: India has hit out at China for protecting Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar by preventing the Security Council from sanctioning him as an international terrorist because of its "narrow political and strategic concerns."

"On counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns," India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin told the Council on Wednesday without naming China.

"On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress, thus putting our common security in peril."

Last month China once again blocked a move by Britain, France and the US to list Azhar, the mastermind of last year's attack on the Pathankot air force base, as a global terrorist by using its veto power. He lives in Pakistan, an ally of China.

Speaking during the debate on "Complex Contemporary Challenges to International Peace and Security," Akbaruddin said terrorism "is a common challenge which requires greater focus by this Council, one where closer international cooperation needs to be, can be and should expanded for common interest.

"But, it appears that this common threat and its seriousness to states and societies is not clearly understood here."

The threats to international peace are intensified by the globalization of terror networks, which operate across borders propagating "hateful ideologies, sometimes based in deep-rooted perceived grievances," raising finances, getting arms and recruiting operatives.

He questioned the very legitimacy of Council and its credibility in dealing with today's complex challenges.

"An instrument that is no longer considered legitimate and has lost its credibility cannot be our hope for salvation," he said. "New realities cannot be addressed by using old paradigms.

Making a case for reforming the Council to make it more representative, he said, "The reasons for the lack of success of international structures designed seven decades ago in dealing with the complex challenges of today are self- evident. A non-representative Council, designed many long years ago to maintain the balance of power among competing rivals, is simply not equipped to handle the challenges that have changed beyond recognition."
Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of US policy on Dec. 6 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump's announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tyres. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.

Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack.

Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of the UN draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States "will be taking names".

Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for "their brave and uncompromising stance". He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington's lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The attitude towards Israel of many countries, on all continents, outside the walls of the United Nations, is changing and will ultimately permeate into the UN - the house of lies," he said.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.

Israel considers Jerusalem 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 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Several senior diplomats said Haley's warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing US voters.
Barcelona: Voters in a deeply divided Catalonia flocked to the polls on Thursday with support for its separatist and unionist camps running neck-and-neck, leaving prospects of an end to Spain's worst political crisis in decades looking slim.

Final pre-election surveys published last Friday showed parties backing the region's independence drive, galvanised by an autumn referendum, could lose absolute control of its parliament but might be able to form a minority government.

That would keep national politics mired in turmoil and raise concerns in European capitals and financial markets, though the secessionist campaign has lost some momentum since the Oct. 1 plebiscite, which Madrid outlawed, and investors gave Thursday's events in the region a muted reception.

Catalonia's pro-independence President Carles Puigdemont, deposed by authorities in Madrid following the region's referendum and a unilateral declaration of independence, rallied supporters from self-imposed exile in Brussels.

"Today we will demonstrate the strength of an irrepressible people. Let the spirit of 1 Oct guide us always," he said on Twitter. He voted through a proxy cast by an 18-year-old, Laura Sancho, at a polling station on the outskirts of Barcelona.

Another secessionist leader, Puigdemont's former deputy Oriol Junqueras, took a more conciliatory tone towards Madrid in comments published earlier this week.

Long queues formed outside voting stations in the affluent region of northeastern Spain shortly after they opened at 0800 GMT.

They will close at 1900 GMT in an election expected to draw a record turnout, which the regional government said had reached 34.5 percent by 1200 GMT.

"I'm not very optimistic that these elections will return a stable government," said 53-year old doctor Miguel Rodriguez, queuing to vote in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a working class suburb south of Barcelona.

"We've had all our rights taken away," said Rodriguez, who voted for independence in October's referendum, irked that the Spanish government had fired Puigdemont's administration.

International investors showed few signs of nerves on Thursday, with Spanish debt and the euro in demand though the Madrid stock market lagged it euro zone counterparts.

"(The election) cannot be ignored going into year-end," said Orlando Green, European fixed income strategist at Credit Agricole in London. "But the secession movement has been significantly diminished and would need a decisive move to revive it."

'NORMALITY'

The independence campaign pitched Spain into its worst political crisis since the end of fascist rule and the return of democracy in the 1970s.

Conservative Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called Thursday's vote after sacking Puigdemont's government for holding the referendum and declaring independence.

The election has become a de facto referendum on how support for the independence movement has fared in recent months.

Rajoy hopes it will return Catalonia to what he has called "normality" under a unionist government or separatist government that will not seek a unilateral split.

None of the six parties in the Catalan parliament are expected on their own to come close to a 68-seat majority.

Offering a different interpretation of "normality", Puigdemont told reporters in Brussels: "Today is not a normal ...democratic day: there are candidates in jail, there is fear ... but we're hoping that by the end of the day we'll be back to some normality."

The past few months' independence crisis has damaged Spain's economy and prompted a business exodus away from Catalonia, its wealthiest region, to other parts of the country.

A new separatist majority might further dampen investor confidence.

However, separatist leaders -- who have campaigned while Spanish courts investigate them on allegations of rebellion for their roles in the Oct. 1 referendum -- have recently backed away from demands for unilateral secession.

In a written interview with Reuters on Monday Junqueras, who has been campaigning from a prison outside Madrid, struck a conciliatory tone and opened the door to building bridges with the Spanish state.

HAGGLING

Analysts expect the next Catalan government to emerge from weeks of haggling between parties over viable coalitions.

"I want a change, because things are going from bad to worse here and it's the young people that carry the brunt of it," said Manuela Gomez, 71, who voted for unionist favourites Ciudadanos, which could emerge as the biggest party but would find it almost impossible to form a governing coalition.

An analysis of polling data by the Madrid daily El Pais published on Tuesday found that the most likely scenario was separatists securing a majority with the backing or abstention of the Catalan offshoot of anti-austerity party Podemos.

Podemos backs the unity of Spain but says Catalans should be able to have a referendum authorised by Madrid to decide their future. At the same time, Podemos favours a left-wing alliance of Catalan parties that both back and reject independence.

In this, analysts say, Podemos is caught between two options it does not particularly like, but would prefer to back the separatists rather than a coalition involving Rajoy's PP.
United Nations: More than 100 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, nine voted against and 35 abstained.

Trump's threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions.

Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated on the world stage as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure.

Ahead of the vote, the United States said it was "singled out for attack" at the United Nations over Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly.

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit, she said.

Earlier this month, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by announcing the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetos an Egyptian-drafted resolution regarding recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, during the United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine, at UN Headquarters in New York City, New York on December 18, 2017. (Photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trumps move. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city.

The vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries. The United States, backing its ally Israel, vetoed the resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told the United States it could not buy Turkey's support in Thursday's vote.

"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there (the United Nations) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of the vote.

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech in the port city of Ashdod.
Islamabad: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, the BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

Gen Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between Gen Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the Army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.
Havana: Cuban President Raul Castro will step down in April 2018 straight after elections that same month to choose his successor, according to a vote on Thursday in the island state's National Assembly.

The vote pushed back the date of the general elections, which were initially to be held at the end of February, because of disruption caused by a hurricane in September.

The elections will now take place on April 19.

Castro, 86, will hand over power shortly afterward to the president-elect.
Istanbul: Turkey told US President Donald Trump on Thursday he could not buy its support in a United Nations vote on Jerusalem, and said the world should teach the United States a "very good lesson" by resisting US pressure.

Trump has threatened to cut aid to countries that support a draft UN resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in Ankara UN member states should not let their decision in Thursday's vote at the UN General Assembly be dictated by money.

"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," he said. "The dollars will come back, but your will won't once it's sold.

"That is why your stance is important."

Trump's announcement two weeks ago that he was recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital broke with decades of US policy and international consensus that the city's status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Last week Erdogan hosted a special meeting of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, which condemned Trump's decision and called on the world to respond by recognising East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognised internationally.

Trump's Jerusalem move led to harsh criticisms from Muslim countries and Israel's closest European allies, who have also rejected the move.

A draft resolution calling for withdrawal of Trump's decision was vetoed at the United Nations Security Council by the United States on Monday. Following that vote, opponents of the US decision called for the vote in the General Assembly.

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said.
Special Judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused, including then Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi, in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED). In this photo, DMK party members are seen hailing the 2G spectrum scam verdict outside Patiala Court in Delhi. (Image: News18)
In naming two prominent Central Virginians  Shannon Valentine and Dr. Dan Carey  to his Cabinet, Gov.-elect Ralph Northam has said loud and clear: Rural Virginia is important to me and my administration.

The Dec. 13 appointment of former Del. Valentine as the commonwealths next secretary of transportation and the Dec. 20 selection of Carey as the next secretary of health and human resources are not just personal coups for the nominees themselves, but big wins for folks in rural Virginia whose voices have become increasingly drowned out as Northern Virginia, the Richmond region and Tidewater have gained political power.

Valentine, who represented Lynchburgs House of Delegates District 23 from 2006 until 2009, has been involved in transportation issues since she arrived in Richmond. Though a freshman Democrat in the Republican-controlled House, she worked closely with the administration of then-Gov. Tim Kaine and her fellow delegates to make expanded Amtrak passenger rail service to Washington, D.C., a reality for Eastern and Central Virginia.

The Lynchburg-to-Washington line, which recently expanded west to Roanoke, had been a long-time dream of civic and business leaders in Central Virginia. But for the longest time, the concept failed to gain traction as doubts about passenger rails viability held sway. When the Lynchburg line went operational in 2009, it was only a matter of months before it was surpassing both passenger and revenue projections, in the process becoming one of Amtraks big success stories. More recently, Valentine has served as the Lynchburg District representative on the Commonwealth Transportation Board, the body that ultimately sets Virginias transportation policies.

Valentines selection means the transportation needs of rural Virginia, which are as great as Northern Virginias or Tidewaters but worlds different, will not be forgotten or shuffled to the backburner in the Northam administration. Aside from strong public education, a modern and efficient transportation infrastructure is key to rural Virginias economic development.

Likewise, Careys selection as health secretary is a boon for rural Virginia. A Harvard-trained cardiologist who is now Centras senior vice president and chief medical officer, Carey is intimately involved with the challenges health care faces today, especially in rural America.

The opioid and mental health crises, Medicaid expansion, strengthening the health care delivery system both fiscally and technologically  Carey has dealt with these challenges and more facing all of Virginia in his career. As a former president of both the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine and the Medical Society of Virginia, he has a unique vantage point to view these issues. Most importantly, as Northam continues to push for Medicaid expansion in Virginia, Careys tenure at a large, rural health group that has had to deal with reduced Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates gives him experience few in Richmond have.

Central Virginia has an immense pool of talent when it comes to public service. Naming Valentine and Carey to these critical posts is a wise move for Northam.
Different leaders, different times

David Hofmanns Dec. 14 letter to the editor, Son definitely not like the father, prompted me to differ and offer these remarks. I do not know the letter writer. I believe his expressed efforts, his criticisms and concerns about Jerry Falwell Jr. fall way short, and he misses an opportunity to make more significant points.

For the record, in my 77 years, I have never had a conversation with any of the Falwells. My information sources include knowledge from retiring in the area the last 10 years, plus attending Thomas Road Baptist Church, and by having two of my grandkids attend Liberty University (one has graduated and one currently a senior), Also, I lived in several Virginia locations in TV range listening to Jerry Falwell Sr. successively use and grow with his television outreach successes. Over the years, I have gleaned and read biographical information, among other publications, about the contributions stemming from Falwell Sr.

Thus, my information and thoughts emanate largely from being a grandfather of students, a 10-year member of the TRBC congregation and as a Virginian who is well aware of many of Falwell Sr.s career contributions and successes as clergyman and citizen.

Hoffman closes his letter by writing Donald Trump is certainly no Ronald Reagan. Nor is Jerry Falwell Jr. proving to be a Jerry Falwell Sr. no matter how hard he tries. So what? It is a mute point and such statements are woefully dated.

I submit Falwell Jr. is not trying to be another Falwell Sr. Nor should he try. Nor will he try in my view. Furthermore, I believe his father is already enormously proud of university president and CEO son and he expects Jerry Jr. to be own man in his time. They obviously experienced different challenges and different futures. Fortunately, both have talents of a complementary different sort.

I believe Falwell Sr. would agree with me and others that Falwell Jr. is better prepared, better educated and equipped to lead and manage LU than anyone, including its founders. His continued improvements, development of physical plant and academic programs are already monumental, historical, effective award winning accomplishments. Liberty University  with a destiny to be more and more recognized as the Notre Dame of the Protestant world is becoming more and more apparent to me, and undoubtedly, noticed by many others.

Hofmann writes in part that Legend has it that Jerry Falwell Sr. expressed his support for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter by allegedly saying that The election was about electing the next president of the U.S.  not a Sunday school teacher. I will assume the so-called legend reference is accurate, but I will differ strongly with the following sentence in the Hofmann letter: The bottom line is Jerry Falwell Jr. took the low road and misused his fathers words to justify Trumps despicable actions and his own misguided and unending support of our nations divider-in-chief  .

In my view, Falwell Jr. took the high road. Many believe and are taught to hate the sin but love the sinner.

Furthermore, I believe using the much used, dated political rhetoric about electing a politician, or a political want-to-be, is obviously an expedient means to emphasize a political point. Now let me state what seems even more obvious to me. All can recall starting in 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump stepped up and presented to all a program of national policies to change the direction of the country. If you believe the country was going in the wrong direction, and many did so, you would support then and now President Trump.

Falwell Jr., is one of my heroes. His support for Trump is an exceptional example doing what you believe is best for your country, given the choices you have at the time. He is high road  big time  and first class. A leader with courage, conviction, character, talent and heart.

CHARLIE CROWDER

Forest

Elect city School Board

The residents of the city of Lynchburg need to elect members of the School Board. The reason is because of transparency. Every time I ask members of City Council, they say that no one would like to run.

I chose to apply for the School Board because something needs to change in the city schools. In 2018, I have one request for City Council: Select three new members. This community will be better for it.

LEWIS LEE JR.

Lynchburg
Idaho Cops:

Actually, There

Could Be a Threat

to the Community
Former meatpacking company exec Sholom Rubashkin will be going home to his 10 children after being the first person to have a sentence commuted by President Trump. The 57-year-old was eight years into a 27-year sentence for financial crimes uncovered after a massive immigration raid on an Iowa plant that provided around 60% of the country's kosher meat supply, CNN reports. In a statement, the White House said many had called the rabbi's sentence "excessive." The White House said a "bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking and distinguished" prosecutors, officials, and legal scholars had expressed concern about the sentence, as had dozens of members of Congress from both parties. The move is not a pardon and does not vacate the conviction, the White House stressed.

Rubashkin was found guilty in 2009 of submitting fake paperwork so that Agriprocessors could borrow more money, the AP reports. He was acquitted in 2010 on state charges of violating state labor laws, and critics of the commutation say he should have been tried on federal immigration charges after the raid on the plant, which led to the arrest of nearly 400 undocumented workers. Former assistant US attorney Robert Teig tells the Des Moines Register that Rubashkin was probably Iowa's largest employer of undocumented immigrants at the time. He "couldnt win legally, factually, or morally, so he had to win politically," Teig says. "Its sad when politics interferes with the justice system." (In his only other use of his clemency powers, Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.)
Even after two terrorist attacks and a driver's deadly rampage through Times Square, New York City is on track to smash its modern-era low for homicides in a year. Through Dec. 17, the city of 8.5 million people, once America's murder capital, had recorded 278 killings. That puts it on pace to end this year with killings down 14% from last year, and well below the 333 in 2014, which was the year with the fewest homicides since the city began keeping accurate crime statistics in 1963, per the AP. Those numbers mean a person's odds of getting killed in New York City this year were about the same as they were last year in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. Crime has been dropping for many years in New York, but 2017 saw substantial drops even in places like Brooklyn's 75th Precinct, once among the nation's most violent places.

"I've lived here all my life," says a local construction worker. "It's a different world now." There were 126 killings in the 75th Precinct in 1993; this year, there have been 11. The stats stand in sharp contrast to the picture of NYC painted by President Trump on the campaign trail, when he said murders were up because the city's liberal mayor was coddling illegal immigrants and abandoning the stop-and-frisk of predominantly innocent black and Hispanic men. "I don't think [these numbers are] something that can be ignored," Police Commissioner James O'Neill says. Some criminologists say a move away from heavy-handed policing may have helped lower crime, though researchers also attribute the NYPD's success to factors such as a flood of wealthier people into NYC and a high employment rate.

(Read more New York City stories.)
Four young teens are in custody and a 22-year-old Michigan man is in critical condition after a sandbag thrown off an overpass onto an Ohio highway crashed through the windshield of the car he was in, People reports. Marquise Byrd was riding in the front seat as a passenger Tuesday night when the sandbag hit the car heading south on Interstate 75. The driver of the car wasn't hurt, but Byrd suffered a serious head injury and was treated at the scene by emergency responders before being taken to an area hospital. Police told a local prosecutor that Byrd may die from his injuries, reports the Toledo Blade. As for the youths accused of tossing the sandbag, one is a 13-year-old and three are 14. All four were charged with felonious assault and booked into the Lucas County Juvenile Detention Center.

People notes they're not being charged as adults and so won't name them, though the Blade does; two of them reportedly have previous criminal infractions. Authorities say other cars were hit with other objects, meaning more charges may emerge, including vandalism or homicide if Byrd dies from his injuries. The bridge the sandbag was thrown from is being renovated, and so sections of fence that normally would prevent anyone from being able to drop anything over the side are missing. The sandbag may have been left by contractors overnight to weigh down items like signage. An Ohio DOT rep warns, however, that even something much lighter than a sandbag could cause serious damage when thrown onto fast-moving vehicles from above. (This kind of overpass "mischief" is no joke.)
For the second time in two months, shots have been fired during a North Korean soldier's defection across the DMZand this time, it was South Koreans doing the shooting. The South Korean military says the "low ranking" soldier was manning a guard post before he walked across the DMZ in thick fog early Thursday, emerging at a checkpoint, the New York Times reports. The military says that South Korean soldiers fired around 20 warning shots when a North Korean search party approached the border. Gunfire was heard from the North around 40 minutes later, though no shots are believed to have crossed the border, the BBC reports. Last month, another defector was shot five times by his fellow soldiers.

A South Korean military spokesman says fog limited visibility at the checkpoint on the center-western frontline to around 100 yards, but the defecting soldier was detected by surveillance equipment before he reached the border. The spokesman said the soldier, the fourth to defect this year, is now "safely secure." He said the North Korean would be questioned to determine his background and his reasons for making the rare and dangerous crossing. Reuters reports that South Korean authorities say two more defectors from the North, civilians in a fishing boat, also arrived in the South on Thursday. There has been no comment from Pyongyang on either incident. (China is reportedly preparing refugee camps in case large numbers of North Koreans flee across the border.)
An animal rescue volunteer who helped rehabilitate Akita dogs was ultimately killed by one. Carol Harris, 69, who worked with rescue group Akita Advocates, was training a dog on the grounds of Phoenix's Canine Country Club and Feline Inn when she was fatally attacked Wednesday, the group says in a Facebook post, per AZFamily.com. There were no witnesses to the attack, but Harris was found with serious injuries from what appeared to be bites after an Akita dog was seen running loose on the grounds, covered in blood, reports the Arizona Republic. Police responded to the scene shortly before 3pm. Harris was rushed to a hospital, but she was later pronounced dead.

"It looks like the dog turned on her,'' says the owner of the facility, which rents space to rescue groups, noting Harris had visited several times a week for years. "We've never had more than a nip. And this is unbelievable." Akita Advocates says Harris had been helping rehabilitate an Akita dogwhich can reach more than 2 feet tall and weigh more than 100 pounds, per Cleveland.com"in the hopes of him becoming adoptable." It adds the animal will now be put down. A rep for a local animal control group says the dog "is being kept in a secure kennel  and no human contact will be made with this dog" until that time. (A woman was just killed by her own dogs.)
President Trump has called the investigations into his campaign's ties to Russia a "witch hunt." This week, Donald Trump Jr. suggested they were part of a "rigged system" of "people at the highest levels of government" working to hurt the president. Some House Republicans apparently agree. According to Politico, some Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have been meeting secretly for weeks "to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperlyand perhaps criminallymishandled the contents" of the Russia dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia. Led by Devin Nunes of California, the group aims to release a report on its findings early next year, in what Politico notes could be used to derail special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Republicans, who refused to discuss the effort, largely argue the Russia dossier contains false accusations. They also question whether the dossier, written by a former British intelligence agent and funded in part by Hillary Clinton's campaign, was used to obtain surveillance warrants on Trump's associates. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says the latest effort is simply a "pernicious" attempt "to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they'll find." Nonetheless, Nunes, who's referred to law enforcement agencies as "dirty," plans to subpoena FBI agents connected to the dossier, per Fox News. Meanwhile, Republican senators appear in no hurry to pass legislation that could protect Mueller should he be fired, reports the Washington Post. (Read more House Republicans stories.)
A prosecutor called Track Palin a "loose cannon" who caused "significant injury" to his father, Todd Palin, after the younger Palin was arrested Saturday on charges of burglary and assault, but an Alaska judge has now granted him house arrest after he posts $5,000 bail, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Track Palin will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet with GPS, stay away from the home of Todd and Sarah Palin and any drinking establishments or liquor stores (he's only allowed to leave his own home for work and doctor's appointments), remove all weapons from his residence, and only take prescription medication as prescribed. He also has to use an alcohol monitoring device several times a day.

Todd Palin phoned into the courtroom Wednesday to say the family still wants contact with Track once he's released, though the judge says Track still can't go near his parents' home. The prosecutor in the case got the judge to mandate that he receive a mental health workup within two weeks of his release, KTUU reports. A bit of good news for the Palins, per Us Weekly: Track's sister, Willow, got engaged this week, with Sarah Palin posting a picture on Instagram on Wednesday of Ricky Bailey proposing to her daughter in Rockefeller Center. (Read more Track Palin stories.)
American taxpayers spend millions of dollars a year on bus tickets out of town for homeless people. New York City alone budgets about $500,000 annually for its homeless relocation program, which can also include expensive plane tickets to places like Nigeria, France, and New Zealand. But despite the money being spent on busing homeless people somewhere else, there's never been a large-scale study on the effectivenessfor cities or homeless people themselvesof such programs. In an eyeopening piece, the Guardian spent 18 months investigating relocation programs, identifying more than 34,000 trips taken by homeless people out of 16 cities and countiesin the western US, Florida, and New Yorkthat have such programs. The results show the outcomes of busing homeless people out of town are all over the map.

A 22-year-old woman was homeless and struggling with alcoholism when she was bused out of Fort Lauderdale and returned to her mother; she credits it with saving her life. But a 49-year-old woman also shipped out of Fort Lauderdale to New York faced nights in a McDonald's, abuse, and a return to the Florida city she left. Homeless people report feeling forced to accept bus tickets, and a man given a ticket out of Key West says he felt the program "stabbed me in the back." Relocation programs say they can give homeless people a chance to return to old support networks in their hometowns and get a new start, but cities aren't necessarily acting purely out of good intentions. For example, bus tickets are cheap compared to the estimated $80,000 each chronically homeless person costs San Francisco on a yearly basis. Read the full story here. (Read more Longform stories.)
The source of a stench that bedeviled the residents of Argyle, NY, this fall has been identified, and it's a grisly one. The Post-Star reports hundreds of pounds of rotting moose meatincluding the animal's headwere the culprit. After tracing the smell to its source, the state Department of Environmental Conservation's detective work led them to a Vermont butcher, who pointed them to Raymond Graham, an Argyle man who had legally shot a 665-pound bull moose in Vermont earlier this fall.

Graham admitted to the "stupid mistake" and said he thought coyotes would make short work of it. "I should have just dug a hole and buried it." Not really: State law dictates unwanted game meat be put in the trash; Graham was ticketed for the violation. (This man invented the "world's worst smell.")
"The US will be taking names," Nikki Haley warned Wednesday ahead of the UN General Assembly's Thursday vote on whether to reject President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It has a lot of names to take: The vote was 128-9 in favor of the nonbinding resolution that demands the US walk back its Dec. 6 declaration. The vote "amount[s] to a collective act of defiance toward Washington," the New York Times reports. The AP reports Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted by tweeting, "We expect the Trump administration to rescind without further delay its unfortunate decision, whose illegality has been clearly established."

How the vote went: There were 35 abstentions and 21 no-shows; one of the abstentions was Canada, which the Guardian reports had been thought to be a vote on the US side. Voting along with the US and Israel were Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, and Honduras, reports the Times of Israel. The Jerusalem Post sees the final tally as demonstrating Israel "has made inroads in Latin America"; it points out both Argentina and Mexico abstained.

The resolution itself: Like the resolution voted on earlier by the UN security council, the general assembly's resolution, drafted by Turkey and Yemen, did not mention the US by name but called out "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem," reports the BBC. It also affirmed that "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded."

Like the resolution voted on earlier by the UN security council, the general assembly's resolution, drafted by Turkey and Yemen, did not mention the US by name but called out "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem," reports the BBC. It also affirmed that "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded." The US stance: Ahead of the vote, Haley reiterated funding-related threats. The Guardian has her key lines: "I must also say today: When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have expectation that we will be respected. What's more, we are being asked to pay for the dubious privileges of being disrespected. If our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our investment in other ways. ... The United States will remember this day." CNN notes that Haley stated the US would move its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the vote's outcome.

Ahead of the vote, Haley reiterated funding-related threats. The Guardian has her key lines: "I must also say today: When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have expectation that we will be respected. What's more, we are being asked to pay for the dubious privileges of being disrespected. If our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our investment in other ways. ... The United States will remember this day." CNN notes that Haley stated the US would move its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the vote's outcome. Significant/not significant: At Slate, Joshua Keating writes that the US funds about 20% of the UN budget, making Haley's threat a "hefty" one. But also an "absurdly disproportionate" one, he writes. "This is a nonbinding resolution against a purely symbolic US action." He points out that the general assembly in its most recent vote condemning the US embargo on Cuba voted 1912 "with little discernible effect."

Meaning here, too: At Bloomberg, Eli Lake warns against "dismissing Haley's threat." Do so, and you'll miss "the significance of Trump's course correction at the United Nations. Trump's predecessor used the UN to validate American foreign policy." Haley has instead made clear that the UN is far more reliant on the US than vice versa, and it hasn't led to "America's isolation at the UN."

At Bloomberg, Eli Lake warns against "dismissing Haley's threat." Do so, and you'll miss "the significance of Trump's course correction at the United Nations. Trump's predecessor used the UN to validate American foreign policy." Haley has instead made clear that the UN is far more reliant on the US than vice versa, and it hasn't led to "America's isolation at the UN." Israel's stance: "It's shameful that this meeting is even taking place," said ambassador Danny Danon in his address, per the Times.

"It's shameful that this meeting is even taking place," said ambassador Danny Danon in his address, per the Times. The Palestinian stance: Ahead of the vote, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki had this to say, per the BBC: "History records names, it remembers namesthe names of those who stand by what is right and the names of those who speak falsehood. Today we are seekers of rights and peace."

(Read more President Trump stories.)
We've all heard of a contact high, but a Maryland fraternity's recent "Tequila Tuesday" was so saturated with booze that it raised the possibility of a contact buzz. USA Today reports that when police raided the Sigma Alpha Epsilon party in November, the very air registered a .01 on a Breathalyzer. Police were called to the party in Bethesda by annoyed neighbors and arrived to find the windows covered with insulation and bottles and cans littering the place. There were approximately 70 people at the partymostly American University students, according to WJLA. Police say eight partygoers locked themselves in a bathroom when officers arrived; another jumped out a second-story window in an attempt to flee.

Police administered Breathalyzer tests to partygoers, who ranged in age from 17 to 20, as they left the frat, WJZ reports. A number of them apparently told police they would never attend another frat party. Six 20-year-olds living at the house were arrested and charged with 126 counts each of allowing underage possession of alcohol and furnishing alcohol to a minor. None would tell police how they got the booze for the party. The six men face up to $315,000 in fines each, though it'll likely be less. (Read about another totally wild teenage party.)
As Jeffrey Willis left a Michigan courtroom prior to sentencing Monday, he blew a kiss to the family of the woman he murdered three years ago, MLive reports. In what the Muskegon County prosecutor calls an "unprecedented" move, Willis chose to return to jail rather than hear his sentenceor the statements of Rebekah Bletsch's family, according to WOOD. "This coward should have been here to listen to us," Bletsch's mother, Debra Reamer, told WXMI. "We deserve our right to tell him exactly how we feel." After Willis left the courtroom, Reamer and Bletsch's sister Nicole Winberg gave statements and the county prosecutor read a letter from Bletsch's husband. Willis was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Sheriff Michael Poulin took it upon himself to make sure Willis didn't start that sentence without hearing from Bletsch's family. He recorded their statements on a CD, and officers transporting Willis to prison on Wednesday played the recording for him five times on the way. "I don't find it that important that Jeffrey Willis heard what the family had to say, but that the family knew he heard what they said," Poulin tells MLive. Bletsch's sister Jessica Josephson agrees. "It brings a little bit of peace, a little bit of comfort," she says. Bletsch, a mother, was shot while jogging after work. Authorities believe Willis wanted to sexually torture her but killed her when she wouldn't get in his van. He will return to court in March to stand trial in the 2013 death of another mother whose body hasn't been found. (Read more murder stories.)
Sorry!

This content is not available in your region
New Delhi:

The Reserve Bank has said gross non-performing assets in the system shot up to 10.2 per cent as of the September quarter, primarily led by private sector lenders, and has warned that the situation will only aggravate from there, elevating the systemic risks.

In the half-yearly Financial Stability Report (FSR) put out late this evening, the central bank, however, said the financial system remains stable overall though it has pegged the bad loans spiking to 10.8 per cent by the March quarter and to 11.1 per cent by September 2018.

The banking stability indicator (BSI) shows that the risks remain at an elevated level weighed down by further asset quality deterioration, the FSR notes.

Overall, the stressed assets, including restructured loans and dud loans increased marginally to 12.2 per cent during the same period from 12.1 per cent. The state-run banks GNPA shot by 100 bps to 13.5 per cent while the same for their private sector peers jumped to 3.80 per cent.

Incidentally, the report says private sector lenders, considered more prudent are the ones reporting the most stress reporting a whopping 40.8 per cent spike in their GNPAs as against 17 per cent by the state-run ones whose lazy banking has been blamed primarily for the mess in the system.

Also Read | Black money: India-Swiss deal inked, data sharing from Jan 1

The overall gross non-performing assets or GNPAs in the system have grown to 10.2 per cent as of the September quarter from 9.6 per cent six months earlier, when the last FSR was released, it said.

It can be noted that all the top private sector lenders, including ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Yes Bank, and even HDFC Bank, have been found to have under-reported their dud assets in the recent RBI supervision, results of which were recognised over the first two quarters of the fiscal.

In what should cause more concern for everyone, a baseline scenario of the Reserve Bank says the GNPAs ratio will slip further to 10.8 per cent in the March quarter and 11.1 per cent by September 2018.

In the foreword to the report, deputy governor NS Vishwanathan warns that overall risks to the system arising from asset quality concerns continue to persist.

He warns that though supporting factors exist on external front like increased consumption, investment and geographical spread, the economy will be able to take advantage of the tailwinds only if the banking sector comes back into good shape.

The central bank notes the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code regime is showing significant progress in dealing with financial and operational creditors to insolvent companies in a market determined and time bound manner.

Corporate governance at the state-run lenders is key to ensuring the success of governments Rs 2.1 trillion bank recapitalisation programme, it says.

On the growth front, the report acknowledges that there has been an uptick after GST and note-ban hiccups, but warns that corporate deleveraging and muted credit growth by state-run banks that account for 70 per cent of the system pose a downside risks.

Investment climate remains challenging as seen from the decline in investment proposals, it says, noting that events like the sovereign rating upgrade from Moodys, progress on stalled projects and efforts to improve quality of state expenditure can help revive the inflows.

The decisive recapitalisation move can provide the much needed fillip to private investment going forward, Vishwanathan notes.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A special court on Thursday acquitted all accused in the alleged multi-crore 2G spectrum allocation scam case saying some people created a huge scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts, when there was none.

In his judgment, special judge O P Saini said the CBI filed a well-choreographed charge sheet against former Telecom Minister A Raja and recorded incorrect facts.

The court said, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) miserably failed to prove any charges against any of the accused in a case that reduced the Grand-Old party Congress to its lowest figure in Lok Sabha.

The special courts judgment has raised serious questions on the integrity and competency of CBI, countrys premier investigating agency.

The case made headlines in 2010 after the then CAG Vinod Rai tabled a report in the Parliament flagging major irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum.

Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report had claimed that the first come, first served" policy of Telecom Ministry for allocating 2G spectrum caused an astronomical loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the state exchequer.

Also Read | Subramanian Swamy, who exposed 2G scam, says verdict a 'lesson' for PM

However, CBIs charge sheet filed in 2011 mentioned only Rs 30,984 crore loss to the country in allocation of licences for 2G spectrum.

The CBI framed several charges against A Raja, Kanimozhi and 15 other accused that included criminal conspiracy, cheating, and bribery. If proved, the charges invited sentences ranging from 7 years to life imprisonment.

But even after seven years of filing the charge sheet, the CBI could prove none of them.

Apart from its sovereignty and competency, the ability of CBI to carry out financial investigations has always been questioned.

There have been several instances when the premier investigating agency had to face embarrassment after failing to prove charges against accused.

In the past as well, political parties accused each other of using CBI as a weapon to blackmail opponents.

Congress party has once termed CBI as captive puppet of BJP and accused the agency of working like govts dirty tricks department.

The judgement of the special court in the alleged 2G spectrum allocation scam has ripped the credibility of CBI and now the premier investigating agency has to look for alternatives to improve its trustworthiness.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum scam case including A Raja and DMK chief M Karunanidhis daughter M K Kanimozhi, saying the CBI miserably failed to prove charges against any of the 17 accused.

In its judgment, the court said, "A huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none...some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels."

In his judgement, special CBI judge O P Saini said, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a well-choreographed charge sheet against former Telecom Minister A Raja and others accused.

He said, There is no evidence on the record produced before the court indicating any criminality in the acts allegedly committed by the accused persons.

Others acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

Verdict a sigh of relief for ex-PM Manmohan Singh

The special courts verdict has come as a huge sigh of relief for ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh under whose tenure the alleged scam said to have taken place.

The 2G spectrum allocation scam case had been repeatedly highlighted by the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and became one of the reasons for Congress partys major defeat in elections across India.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomed the verdict and said, "I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself.

Congress demands PM Modis apology

The verdict also brought huge relief for the Congress party which said the special courts judgment has exposed BJP for its untruth and propaganda.

The party said the truth in the 2G spectrum allocation case had finally prevailed and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should apologise to the nation for its "propaganda" against the Grand-Old Party.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala addressing a press conference said, "The BJP has been exposed for its untruth and propaganda against Congress. The prime minister, (Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley and the BJP should apologise to the nation."

A badge of honour Arun Jaitley taunts

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hit back at Congress and taunted that the party was treating the 2G verdict as a badge of honour.

The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012, Jaitley told reporters.

He said, the partys zero loss theory was proved wrong when the apex court cancelled spectrum allocation in 2012.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, the minister asserted.

CBIs to move Delhi High Court against the verdict

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said the 2G verdict was examined prima facie and the agency will appeal against special courts judgement in the Delhi High Court.

CBI said, Todays judgement has been prima facie examined & it appears that evidence adduced to substantiate charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the learned court. CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter.

"CBI will appeal against special court's verdict in 2G case in Delhi High Court," CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said.

And disappointed Subramanian Swamy, the man who exposed 2G scam

The special CBI courts verdict in the 2G scam case left BJP leader and senior lawyer Subramanian Swamy, who exposed the exposed the alleged multi crore scam, disappointed.

Swamy condemned Modi govts controlling of the entire case and said PM should take lessons from the special court's verdict.

Terming the verdict as a bad judgement Swamy said, This is a big condemnation of the Govt's controlling of the case. I hope the PM takes lesson from this. We must now fight corruption on war footing, Swamy said expressing his disappointment.

He said, the lackadaisical counsels have derailed the 2G spectrum scam case but it can be put back on track again provided we have honest law officers and lawyers who don't do 'chamchagiri' of ministers.

A look back at the entire case

In January, 2008, the former telecom minister A. Raja issued licences and allotted 2G spectrum of 4.4 MHz along with it to six new telecom operators at the 2001 price. The ministry charged only Rs 1,650 crore from an operator for Pan India spectrum.

The 2G scam case gained notoriety in 2010 when the then Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai came out with a report that the 2G spectrum was allocated at throwaway price causing a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the state exchequer.

Interestingly, in its charge sheet CBI has said that the scam caused a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the country.

Click here to read the full timeline of the case.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Six laborers were killed and many others got injured after a boiler burst at the Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj. The initial investigation stated boiler overheating as the reason for the blast.

According to initial reports coming into the incident, many laborers are still trapped at the boiler blast site. Rescue operations were underway. Gopalganj is 160 kilometers away from Patna, Bihar.

The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital; many with over 90 per cent burns. The owner of the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill has been arrested as per the initial reports.



Bihar CM Nitish Kumar announces ex-gratia of Rs 4 Lakh each for next of kin of those who have lost their lives in boiler blast site at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Gopalganj.

More details are awaited on the incident.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said the 2G verdict was examined prima facie and the agency will appeal against special courts judgement in the Delhi High Court.

"CBI will appeal against special court's verdict in 2G case in Delhi High Court," CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said.

A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all accused including former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam case.

On the special courts verdict, CBI said, Todays judgement has been prima facie examined & it appears that evidence adduced to substantiate charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the learned court. CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter.

The judgment brought a huge sigh of relief to the Congress as the party had to face massive outrage over the scam and BJP had used the issue as one of its main weapons against it in 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Read More | 2G verdict: Huge relief for A Raja, Kanimozhi as special CBI court acquits all accused

Former telecom minister A Raja was one of the main accused in the case including DMK chief M Karunanidhis daughter M. K. Kanimozhi and 15 others.

After the courts verdict all of them were acquitted from the charges of corruption.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed the verdict of the court and came out in defense of the UPA Govt by stating that "massive propaganda" against the UPA on the 2G spectrum was without any foundation. The judgment of the Special CBI court speaks for itself.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgment speaks for itself," Singh said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Congress on Thursday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shed his "raaj-hatth" (stubborness) and clarify in Parliament his 'conspiracy with Pakistan' remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh to end the stalemate and enable a discussion on issues such as the Rafale deal.

With no end in sight to the current impasse on the issue, the proceedings in Parliament continued to be disrupted.

Congress leader Anand Sharma held the "obduracy" of the prime minister and the attitude of the government as being responsible for the impasse in Parliament, that continued with a washout of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha for a fourth day today.

He also accused the government of wanting to continue the standoff so that issues of critical concern to the people are not taken up.

Sharma alleged that the government does not want the opposition to raise issues of acts of "commission and omission" and the wrong decisions of the prime minister.

He said that the government does not want that it is exposed on the floor of the House on issues such as the Rafale scam which the opposition wants to discuss.

"It is the responsibility of the PM to clear doubts regarding his accusations. It is his duty to restore the dignity of the office and in the interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock comes to an end," Sharma told reporters.

"We urge the prime minister to shed his 'raaj-hatth' (stubbordness) and clarify his remarks against Singh and Ansari, which he made to win Gujarat polls," Sharma said.

The stalemate, he said, continues primarily because of the attitude of the government and obduracy of the prime pinister, who refuses to register the seriousness of the situation resulting from his "baseless and unwarranted aspersions" for electoral gains.

He said, as one who is occupying the constitutional office, it is the duty of the prime minister to restore the dignity of the office of the institution.

Whatever is said in politics, never before a prime minister has pointed any finger of suspicion on the commitment to the country of former prime ministers or former vice presidents or even the former Army chief.

Also read: PM Modi should have lodged FIR against Manmohan Singh and arrested him if he had proof, says Congress



"It is in national interest, in interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock is brought to an end.

"It is unfortunate that prime minister has still not apologised for his ill-thought accusations against the former PM Manmohan Singh who was PM for 10 years and dedicated his life for this country," he said.

Sharma, however, said it is being conveyed by government that the prime minister is not willing to take back his words.

Also read: PM Modi should apologise to nation: Congress after 2G verdict



He "disappointed" the opposition today when it was his day for the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress leader said.

Sharma said the opposition also wants to raise other issues concerning the economy and job losses.

The Indian economy has suffered losses due to some "wreckless" decisions of the prime minister, he alleged.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Islamabad:

Pakistan on Thursday rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of Kubhushan Jadhav would be having last meeting with him on Monday, saying the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.

Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

"Let me assure you that the Commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."

He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."

Also read: Pakistan allows Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet mother, wife on Christmas



Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on India's appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Also read: Pakistan 'processing' visa applications of Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife, mother



Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The bye-elections for Chennai's RK Nagar assembly seat, the constituency which was once held by late TN CM Jayalalithaa is currently taking place with voting underway from 8 am on Thursday.

AIADMKas E Madhusudhanan, Independent candidate TTV Dhinakaran and DMKas N. Marudhu Ganesh are among the top contenders. It is vital for the AIADMK, which has been directionless since Ms Jayalalithaa died, to establish that Chief Minister E Palaniswami and his team are in control.

The party has fielded a senior leader, E Madhusudanan, who has held the seat before and has influence among Telugu people who have a sizeable presence in RK Nagar. AIADMK's E Madhusudanan is up against TTV Dhinakaran, and the DMK's Marudhu Ganesh, a little-known lawyer but an RK Nagar local who is seen by many as the frontrunner for the seat in today's by-election.

The campaigning ended on Tuesday amid allegations of bribery and circulation of unverified videos of notes distribution. The Election Commission has refused to postpone the by-poll further despite pleas from the opposition DMK. But the Election Commission said there was no proof.

Here are the liveA updates:

#A Chennai: 57.16% voting in RK Nagar ByPoll till 3 p.m.

# 41 per cent voter turnout till 1 PM.

# DMK hopes verdict in 2G scam case may help the party in the RK Nagar bypoll. A special CBI court today acquiited DMK MP and dauther ofA DMK chief M Karunanidhias M. K. Kanimozhi.A N. Marudhu Ganesh is DMK's contestent for high stake RK Nagar bypoll.A A

#A Over 23 per cent voting till 11 am

#A TTV Dhinakaran, contesting as an independent candidate, refutes BJP's allegation of bribing voters; says "people trust me, they are with me" #RKNagarByPoll pic.twitter.com/HDXUWUOV5c

#A AIADMK candidate E. Madhusudhanan cast his vote, says "God and Amma's grace is with us" #RKNagarByPoll #TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/6xadQI66Yj

#"We will ensure free and fair elections, today. Have deployed additional forces" says Chennai City Police Commissioner A.K. Viswanathan

# DMK candidate N. Marudhu Ganesh cast his vote at polling booth no. 134 in Chennai, says "whether it is Rs 6000 or Rs 60,000, we are going to win; voters of RK Nagar will teach a lesson to AIADMK this time"



#People queue up to vote; visuals from a polling booth set up at Chennai Girls Higher Secondary School in Tiruvottiyur



# BJP candidate Karu Nagarajan arrives at a polling booth to cast his voteA



# DMK candidate N. Marudhu Ganesh reaches polling booth to cast his vote

#A Polling begins in RK Nagar constituency

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington :

The US forces have conducted multiple ground operations and more than 120 air strikes against terror groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen in 2017, under a long-running campaign, the Pentagon has said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is one of the terrorist groups most committed to and capable of conducting attacks in America, as assessed by the intelligence and defence communities, while intelligence estimates indicate that ISIS-Yemen has doubled in size over the past year.

"The removal of key facilitators in this region will interrupt AQAP's freedom of movement and likely force the group into a reactionary posture, limiting their ability to challenge Yemeni Security Forces and partnered advances," said Lt Col Earl Brown, a spokesman of US Central Command (CENTCOM).

"US forces also expanded counter terrorism operations in October to encompass both AQAP and ISIS. This parallel targeting effort is required to prevent ISIS-Y from filling the vacuum left by a diminished AQAP footprint or influence in the region," Brown said as CENTCOM released its year-end assessment of the fight against terrorism in Yemen.

Also Read| Yemen leader orders advance on Sanaa as predecessor killed

In November, the US conducted 10 strikes across Yemen governorates al-Bayda, and Marib, including a strike on Mujahid al-Adani, AQAP Shabwah leader. He was killed on November 20 in al-Bayda governorate.

Al-Adani, also known as Mohammad Shukri, was a senior leader responsible for planning and conducting terrorist attacks against Yemeni, coalition and tribal security forces.

He exerted significant influence within AQAP's terrorist attack networks, similarly, maintained close ties and access to the group's other senior leaders.

Al-Bayda AQAP facilitator Abu Layth al-Sanaani and three AQAP associates were also killed in the November 20 strike. Ruwahah al-Sanaani, also an AQAP facilitator, was killed on November 2 in Marib governorate. On October 19, a strike killed Ubaydah al-Lawdari, the Emir of Lawdar, and four associates in al-Bayda governorate.

Also Read| Saudi airstrikes in Yemens capital Sanaa kill at least 35 civilians, rescue operations underway

Al-Lawdari had been known to provide equipment and money in support of AQAP attacks against coalition forces, posing an increased threat to US interests.

Meanwhile, a series of strikes against two ISIS terror training camps in al-Bayda in October 16 killed more than 50 ISIS-Y combatants, disrupting the organisation's attempts to recruit and train new fighters.

According to CENTCOM, ongoing operations pressuring the network have also degraded AQAP's propaganda production, reducing one of the methods for the terror group to recruit and inspire lone wolf attacks across the globe.

The al-Masra Newsletter, previously published three times a month, has not been published since July. Al-Malahim Establishment for Media Production, which produces AQAP's terrorist-inspiring video series, as well as Inspire Magazine, saw a large drop in October.

Unable to produce video series and graphic terror-inspiring magazines, AQAP has resorted to using low-tech audio messages, CENTCOM said.

"US forces have enabled regional counterterrorism partners to regain territory from these terrorists - forcing them to spend more time on survival," said Brown.

"These operations have helped to illuminate terrorist networks, making intelligence-gathering, subsequent targeting and follow-on operations increasingly productive and effective," he added.

"Every strike, every raid and every partnered operation advance the defeat of these violent extremist organisations. US forces will continue to use all effective measures to degrade the groups' ability to export terror," Brown said.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

India on Thursday joined 127 other countries to vote in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of a resolution opposing the recent decision of US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Nine countries voted against the resolution, while as many as 35 countries abstained.

Indias decision to vote against American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital comes a day after Trump warned countries against opposing the US position.

India did not speak on the floor of the Assembly in New York, but after Trump recognised the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it had said that its Palestine position was independent and consistent.

In her intervention at the NAM ministerial meeting on Palestine on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said the path to Israel-Jerusalem peace clearly lay in an early negotiated solution between Israel and Palestine based on mutual recognition and security arrangements.

The UN General Assembly resolution moved by Turkey and Yemen stressed that Jerusalem was a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations.

It demanded that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognise any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

In his address to the UN general Assembly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Trumps decision was an outrageous assault to all universal values.

Also Read | Black money: India-Swiss deal inked, data sharing from Jan 1

The Palestinians have the right to their own state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, he said.

This is the main parameter and only hope for a just and lasting peace in the region. However, the recent decision of a UN Member State to recognise Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as the capital of Israel, violates international law, including all relevant UN resolutions, Cavusoglu said.

The eight countries that joined the US in voting against the Turkish resolution were Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.

Among the major countries who abstained the voting were Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Columbia, Hungry, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland and Uganda.

Strongly supporting Trumps decision US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the US may strip funding of those countries that voted against its Jerusalem move.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to, once again, make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations, Haley told the General Assembly.

America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the UN, the top American diplomat said.

Trump had warned against cutting funds on Wednesday.

Let them vote against us, well save a lot. We dont care. This isnt like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what theyre doing, Trump told reporters at White House Wednesday.

Early this week, the US had vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council. The resolution passed by the General Assembly has no legal implications on the UN member countries.

Trump praised Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body yesterday and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be taken advantage of anymore.

All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council, Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Foreign corporations jump into street-food shops market

VietNamNet Bridge - The Vietnamese street food shop market with products such as steamed rice, banh mi (Vietnam sandwich), pho (noodle soup), banh xeo (Vietnamese crepe) and bun bo (beef noodle soup) is valued at VND47 trillion.









The Vietnamese street food is valued at VND47 trillion









Though the street food market has potential, many chains have not been able to expand. Vietnams stick sandwich, for example, once thrived with 37 percent of the market share, but the figure dropped to 13 percent last year.

But foreign-invested food chains are exploiting the market better than Vietnamese.Director of Banh My Viet JSC Tran Thi Bich Nga said she once dreamed of developing a sandwich chain of shops and making it well known in Vietnam and around the world.She started her business in 2010, which prospered rapidly with four shops. However, the business later met difficulties. Nga recently decided to close all her shops to restructure her chain.She said the banh my chain flashed and faded out suddenly because of the lack of a long-term vision and professionalism.Nga is not alone. Though the street food market has potential, many chains have not been able to expand. Vietnams stick sandwich, for example, once thrived with 37 percent of the market share, but the figure dropped to 13 percent last year.Meanwhile, foreign brands have been prospering. CP Group from Thailand has been expanding Five Star  its street food chain with mobile shops and kiosks selling fried and roasted chicken. The chains market share increased rapidly from 26.5 percent in 2013 to 71.3 percent last year.Other foreign street food brands from South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Singapore have also been flocking to Vietnam. Sources said a Vietnamese investor is seeking to become a franchisee of Old ChangKee, a Singaporean brand.Nguyen Phi Van, a franchise expert, commented that foreign brands have been thriving while Vietnamese have not, as they cannot compete with international rivals.However, Van believes that Vietnamese businesses still have other opportunities to develop street food and franchise street food brands globally.This is a great opportunity which Vietnamese businesses need to grab and do immediately. If Vietnam doesnt have professional food chains and models, it will lose, Van said.She went on to say that the first thing Vietnamese businesses need to do is to change their approach.It is a blunder to think that small business will only require small old-style management policies, she said. There is no big or small management policies, there is only professional and unprofessional management.Meanwhile, Vo Van Quang, a branding expert, commented Vietnam still has many famous street food chains such as Ba Le Banh My, Van Banh My, Sau Minh Banh My and Xoi La Chuoi (steamed rice packed in banana leaf).
The Tokyo metropolitan government and industry groups agreed on Wednesday to open a planned new wholesale food market in the Japanese capital's Toyosu district on Oct. 11, 2018.

The transfer of the functions of the aging Tsukiji wholesale food market in Tokyo's Chuo Ward to Toyosu in neighboring Koto Ward was initially scheduled for Nov. 7 last year.

In summer last year, however, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike postponed the transfer, citing concerns about soil pollution at the Toyosu site, which previously hosted a gas plant.

At Wednesday's meeting, the industry groups demanded that the metropolitan government complete additional work on soil pollution control at the Toyosu site by the end of July next year and that Koike then declare the new market safe to use.

Koike said she will respond to the requests appropriately.

2 201011
Nagoya University Hospital said Wednesday its medical team left gauze inside a woman's body in a 1970 operation and that it stayed there for around 44 years, with the patient complaining of stomach pain for many years.

The thin fabric was found in 2014 when the hospital in central Japan performed an operation on the woman's rectum to remove a tumor. The patient, an Aichi Prefecture resident in her 80s, had been diagnosed with a tumor in her pelvis at the hospital in April that year.

After doctors cut a part of the rectum in the operation, a cloth-like object was found with the tumor, according to the hospital.

The hospital admitted the possibility that the stomach pain or tumor might have been caused by the left gauze.

The woman underwent the 1970 surgery to treat infertility. As she never had an operation afterward until the recent surgery, the hospital concluded there is a high possibility that the doctors forgot to remove the gauze.
I would have understood and sympathized if the members of a new state commission charged with righting Connecticuts fiscal shipwreck had run for the exits, never to return, after hearing just how badly were stuck on the economic shoals.

The group  the Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth  met for the first time Friday at the state Capitol. And the grim numbers they saw and heard could have easily rivaled, say, the condition of The Hartford Financial Services Group back in early 2009 when that company fell below $4 a share and many thought it would not survive as an independent concern.

But these are big girls and boys  including Christoper Swift, CEO of The Hartford, now a stable insurer with 7,000 Connecticut employees, and James Loree, CEO of New Britain-based Stanley Black & Decker, which has grown from $2 billion to nearly $13 billion in revenue in his tenure there, largely under two prior CEOs.

Let the record show, no one ran out the door when they heard the numbers.

I had done my homework prior, so, no, commission member Cindi Bigelow, CEO of the famous Fairfield-based tea company that bears the family name, said as she pointed to a pile of documents at her seat.

Whats coming in Year 3 and and Year 4 is just astronomical ..., Bigelow said. Right now we have a small window to make a difference.

Whats coming is more deficits  and it could be even worse if we have another recession, a better than even bet by 2022. Specifically, were looking at projected budget shortfalls of $1.9 billion, $2.6 billion and $3.1 billion in the three years starting in fiscal 2020.

Thats after significant cutting over the last several years. The states regular, full-time workforce has fallen by 12 percent in seven years under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, though many of his adversaries falsely paint him as a big spender.

And thats after a refinancing of the pension debt and a 10-year deal with state employees that could save the state $20 billion, both in the last year.

Heres just one more stat: The state income tax, which generates $9 billion, or about half the general fund, will bring in $1.4 billion less this year than was projected two years ago for this year. As they say on Wall Street, never try to catch a falling knife.

And yet, thats exactly what this august group is charged with doing  dealing with mandated spending on debt, liabilities, health care and town aid that amounts to 75 percent of the state budget and is growing at more than 5 percent a year as revenues remain flat.

Its genesis was last spring, when Robert Patricelli convened a group of concerned citizens to figure out what they could do.

Its our watch. You dont delegate in a democracy, you dont delegate just to public officials, said Patricelli, who recently retired as CEO of the third health-related company he founded, Womens Health USA in Avon.

Patricelli and James Smith, who is about to retire on Dec. 31 as CEO of Webster Bank and its parent company, is the co-chairman and Patricia Widlitz, a former Democratic state representative from Guilford who co-chaired the General Assemblys finance committee, is vice chair.

So its a high-powered panel, bipartisan. Great, another panel. I heard the snickering in the cafeteria a few feet away, and Patricelli acknowledged it.

In response, he said, the appointed commission members insisted on a twist: Whatever they suggest, by a March 1 deadline, must be voted up or down by the legislature, as amended by the committee process, which I hope isnt a death-knell caveat.

Something has to work. Everyone agrees there are no easy answers despite what you will hear from people running for office. If it were a matter of cutting spending and reducing debt, wed have done that already.

And if anyone thinks its just a matter of special interests winning over Democrats in power, I remind you, Republicans these days cant seem to live with a $54 million-a-year cut in a program to help older people pay for medical services beyond whats covered in Medicare. They may call a special session to reverse that cut made by Malloy.

Its a tall order and thats what we signed up for, but I dont think anyone here is a shrinking violet, Patricelli said.

Nor are they politically naive. The group already started looking at highway tolls and will examine health and social welfare benefits Connecticut offers compared with surrounding states.

We may not have the right to not be competitive with other states when were falling this far behind in meeting our obligations, Smith said.

Both of the giant-company CEOs made clear its not just about cutting.

Were very concerned, said Loree, at Stanley. We saw the exit of General Electric, we saw the exit of Aetnas headquarters and we are sincerely, sincerely concerned about the states ability to grow its economy.

He added, Im going to bring a growth focusand a competitiveness focus.

Im a growth-oriented guy, Swift said to me on a break. Weve got to figure out how to finance growth.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
BROOKFIELD  A bank seeking to foreclose on First Selectman Steve Dunns home filed a court motion this week asking for a default judgment in the case.

The law firm representing the U.S. National Bank Association filed a motion Wednesday saying the court should find Dunn in default owing to his failure to file pleadings within the time required by state statute. The Superior Court has not ruled on the motion.

Dunn did not return several requests for comment Thursday. Attorneys in the Hartford law firm representing the bank, McCalla Raymer Leibert Pierce, also did not return a request for comment.

Dunn, his wife and her late uncle took out a $513,500 mortgage on Dunns Lydenwood Drive home in 2005. According to court documents filed by the bank in March, Dunn owed nearly $480,000 in principal, interest and other payments dating to October 2015.

The case was sent to mediation in April. In June, Dunn said the mediation would wrap up within weeks, adding that I had a number of bills that I didnt realize were coming in and the mortgage company has not been easy.

Dunn later told the News-Times that mediation had resolved the case, but did not supply documents confirming a resolution.

Hunt Leibert, a debt collection firm, wrote the Dunns in March 2016 warning that they were delinquent or in default on their payments, but were eligible for the Connecticut Housing Finance Authoritys Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program. Under this program, eligible homeowners pay a fixed rate lower than their current rate and mortgage companies cannot foreclose on their properties.

The letter said the Dunns had 60 days to request a meeting with their mortgage company and ask for help from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, but they did not do so, according to court records. The bank filed to foreclose on the home in late 2016.
NEWTOWN - One week after the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, a clear majority of American voters say Congress is not doing enough to reduce gun violence, according to a new poll.

A Quinnipiac University poll of 1,230 voters conducted from Dec. 13-18 also found that more women than men support stricter gun laws, and that a majority of Americans favor a ban on gun modifications that render semi-automatic firearms capable of shooting like automatic weapons.

The horror of Sandy Hook still resonates, especially with women, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Q Poll, in a prepared statement. But while Americans are crying out for tougher gun laws, the consensus is that Congress is sitting on its hands.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy agreed.

The only place common-sense gun reforms are controversial is in Congress, said Murphy, a Democrat. Congress should listen to the majority of American people who want us to do our jobs and start passing laws that will save lives.

The poll also asked topical questions, such as whether people think 2018 would be more peaceful than this year - 73 percent said it wouldnt  and seasonal questions, such as whether saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays is a real concern or a made-up one; 76 percent said its made up for political purposes.

But with the passage of Dec. 14 - the date in 2012 when 20 first-graders and six educators were slain at Sandy Hook School  the polls authors highlighted four questions specifically about gun control.

The poll found that:

Voters support stricter gun laws 59-36 percent, with women supporting more gun control, 69-26 percent, while men are evenly split over the issue , 47-47.

Voters believe Congress is not doing enough to reduce gun violence, 67-25 percent, although Republicans in the poll believe Congress is doing enough by 48-38 percent margin.

Voters support a ban on gun modifications that make semi-automatic weapons fire like automatic weapons, 68-27 percent.

By a wide margin, 95-4 percent, voters favor background checks for all gun purchases, including voters from gun-owning homes, 95-4 percent.

An advocate for gun law reform said the poll results confirmed that people wanted more measures to ensure the safe use of firearms.

This information does not surprise me at all, said Po Murray, chairman of the Newtown Action Alliance. There is more support from Americans for gun violence prevention than not, and it is just a matter of time before Congress understands that, or people will demand it and vote Congress out of office.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal agreed.

Americans overwhelmingly support common sense gun violence prevention measures - a fact proven again in this poll, said Blumenthal, a Democrat. Voters are right to be frustrated by Congressional inaction - I am too. Good ideas, when backed by the vast majority of Americans, must ultimately prevail.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Amanda Knox is branching out.

In the decade since she was thrust into the international spotlight as a suspect in roommate Meredith Kercher's murder in 2007, Knox has been a prisoner, an exoneree, an author and columnist, an advocate for those wrongly convicted and the subject of a documentary.

Now, she'll be adding a new title to her resume: host.

Earlier this week Vice Media announced that the 30-year-old Knox would host a five-episode run of "The Scarlet Letter Reports," highlighting women publicly shamed by the media.

According to Variety, the show is one of three Vice shows that will air on the Facebook Watch video platform, joining renovation show "Breaking & Entertaining" and "The Hangover Show," which is about actual hangovers, and not the movie franchise by the same name.

Knox's show will include interviews with people like model and "SlutWalk" founder Amber Rose and rape survivor and victim advocate Daisy Coleman.

"While on trial for a murder I didn't commit, my prosecutor painted me as a sex-crazed femme fatale with magical powers to control men," Knox said in a statement. "I lost years of my life to prison because of two-dimensional and misogynist stereotypes. In 'The Scarlet Letter Reports,' I'm hoping to re-humanize others who have been similarly shamed and vilified, and elevate the standard for how we think and talk about public women."

Now Playing: Why Amanda Knox Is Returning to Italy for the First Time since Her Exoneration for Murder Video: People

In 2009, Knox and boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering Kercher two years earlier, while Knox -- a University of Washington student -- spent a year studying abroad. Knox and Sollecito were then acquitted in a second trial in 2011, and she was able to return to her native West Seattle. The pair was again convicted in 2013, but an Italian high court threw out the convictions after finding "stunning flaws" in the prosecution's case.

Rudy Guede was eventually convicted of the murder, while Knox has gone on to become an advocate for those wrongly convicted of crimes. She wrote "Waiting to be Heard," a memoir, in 2013, and she was the subject of a 2016 Netflix documentary titled "Amanda Knox."

Seattlepi.com reporter Stephen Cohen can be reached at 206-448-8313 or stephencohen@seattlepi.com. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @scohenPI.
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2017 /CNW/ - Adventus Zinc Corporation ("Adventus Zinc" or the "Company") announces that it has closed the previously announced private placement with a syndicate of underwriters co-led by Cormark Securities Inc. and Haywood Securities Inc., and including Red Cloud Klondike Strike Inc., TD Securities Inc., BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., Eight Capital and Raymond James Ltd. (collectively, the "Underwriters") pursuant to which the Company issued 11,363,637 common shares (the "Shares") at a price of C$0.88 per Share (the "Offering Price"), representing total gross proceeds of C$10 million (the "Offering").

The net proceeds of the Offering will be used by the Company to fund the Curipamba project in Ecuador and its Ecuadorian exploration alliance, general and administrative expenses, corporate activities as well as working capital for the Company.

The Underwriters were paid a cash fee of 6.0% of the aggregate gross proceeds of the Offering (1% in respect of president's list purchasers) and were issued an aggregate total of 154,925 broker warrants. Each broker warrant is exercisable to acquire one common share of the Company at a price of $0.88 for a period of 24 months from closing of the Offering. All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a hold period expiring April 22, 2018.

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 Shares in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Shares have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements.

About Adventus Zinc

Adventus Zinc is a unique company focused on zinc exploration and project development globally. Its strategic shareholders include Altius Minerals Corporation, Greenstone Resources LP and Resource Capital Funds, as well as other highly respected investors in the mining business. Adventus Zinc currently has large prospective land packages in both Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and is earning a 75% ownership interest in the Curipamba polymetallic project in Ecuador. In addition, Adventus Zinc has a country-wide generative exploration alliance with its partner in Ecuador. The Company is based in Toronto, Canada, and is listed on the TSX-V under the symbol ADZN.

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.

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "is expected", "scheduled", "estimates", "pending", "intends", "plans", "forecasts", "targets", or "hopes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "will", "should" "might", "will be taken", or "occur" and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking information herein includes, but is not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that Adventus Zinc expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future including the use of proceeds from the Offering. Although Adventus Zinc has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Adventus Zinc undertakes to update any forward-looking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Adventus Zinc Corporation

For further information: from Adventus Zinc, please contact Christian Kargl-Simard, Chief Executive Officer, at 1-416-230-3440 or [email protected]
TORONTO, Dec. 20, 2017 /CNW/ - Roxgold Inc. ("Roxgold" or "the Company") (TSX: ROXG) (OTC: ROGFF) is pleased to announce that it has filed today an updated technical report under National Instrument 43-101 for the Yaramoko Gold Mine pursuant to its November 6, 2017, news release. The report has an effective date of November 6, 2017, and is entitled "Technical Report for the Yaramoko Gold Mine, Burkina Faso" and was prepared by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. A copy of the report is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Company's web site at www.roxgold.com.

About Roxgold

Roxgold is a gold mining company with its key asset, the high grade Yaramoko Gold Mine, located in the Hounde greenstone region of Burkina Faso, West Africa. Roxgold trades on the TSX under the symbol ROXG and as ROGFF on OTC.

SOURCE Roxgold Inc.

For further information: Kelley Stamm, Manager, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, 416-203-6401, [email protected]

Related Links

www.roxgold.com


This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NEW HAVEN  A major apartment complex downtown and a former bank building have been sold as the New Haven market continues to attract investors.

Centerplan Development, which is headed by Robert Landino, sold College Square, a 160-unit apartment building bound by College, George and Crown streets for $70 million.

The property at 80 Elm St., that was owned by Webster Bank, was bought late last month by Spinnaker Real Estate Investments headed by Clayton Fowler, who is looking to build either a small hotel there or apartments.

In addition to the apartments at Landinos College Square, which opened in 2015, there are a number of ground floor retail spaces that are now occupied in that complex.

They include: J.Press, the clothier; a branch of Webster Bank; Jacks Bar and Steakhouse and a new restaurant.

The buyer, Centurion Overseas Ltd, an investment holding company based in Singapore, is a subsidiary of Centurion Corp. Ltd.

In another quick turnaround, Randy Salvatore of RMS Companies, this year sold the Novela at Chapel and Howe streets for $40 million, a 136-unit luxury apartment complex he built in 2015.

Currently on the market is the Corsair, a five-story, 235-unit apartment building on State Street owned by Andy Montelli of Post Road Residentials, a development that opened last year.

The Centerplan sale is good news for the developer who has had legal troubles since it was let go as the developer of Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford last year for being behind schedule and exceeding its budget. Subcontractors have also sued the company, while Centerplan took Hartford to court, charging it was wrongfully terminated.

The company also recently lost its lawsuit against the Hartford Yard Goats and owner Josh Solomon.

On the latest New Haven Spinnaker purchase, Fowler said they plan to raze the 1948, two-story 25,724-square-foot building, which also has an adjacent parking lot.

He said they will use the entire site for a construction project. Building Official Jim Turcio said there will be a 90-day waiting period for review as it goes before the New Haven Historic District Commission, although Fowler questioned if that was necessary.

Spinnaker, headquartered in Norwalk, is about to start construction of a garage on its 3.3 acre Audubon Square property that has been approved for 269 market rate apartments in the first phase and up to 500 total on the large site at Orange, Audubon, Grove and State streets.

The developer, as part of that deal, is building a 716-space garage with 525 spaces dedicated to Frontier Communications which previously owned the large lot.

Spinnaker also owns the property at 630 Chapel St. that was the site of a Comcast service center at the corner of Olive Street.

The company has approval to build 200 apartments on that site, but it has been stalled by multiple lawsuits brought by a subsidiary of PMC Property Group, which owns apartments at the former Strous-Adler Smoothie Garment factory at 78 Olive St. which will be a direct competitor with the new housing.

The lawsuits have all gone in favor of Spinnaker and the city and are seen by city officials as a delaying tactic to stall Spinnaker.

Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said a $70 million sale sends a message to other developers that New Haven is a good market in which to invest for a safe return.

There is so much money available from institutions, sovereign wealth funds that people dont want risk and they are not looking for huge returns. They just want to be able to park their money, he said.

Nemerson said an important factor for New Haven is also having a large healthy anchor institution in the city.

In some ways they (developers) are betting on New Haven, our transportation assets, the new trains that are going in and a great quality of life. But I think they are also betting on an institution with $25 billion in the bank that is going to make sure that everything around it retains its value, the development administrator said, referring to Yale University.

Nemerson said having multiple investments by Spinnaker is also a good omen. Fowler agreed that his investments and the returns by others building here is all positive.

It shows good solid support for the viability of New Haven, Fowler said.

Salvatore agreed. There is an appetite for investment in New Haven, he said. Salvatore is close to starting work on his Hill project for 110 apartments now that the state has approved bonding so 33 of the units will be affordable housing.

Nemerson said the investments are incentives to make sure more urban attractions come here from places to listen to music to restaurants and walkable streets for a growing number of downtown residences.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct Andy Montellis first name.
WALLINGFORD  An Iowa-based for-profit operator of retirement communities is selling one of the five locations it owns in Connecticut to Masonicare, the states largest not-for-profit provider of senior health care and retirement living.

Masonicare has acquired Chester Village West from Life Care Services, which is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, and is the nations third-largest manager of rental senior living communities. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Life Care Services operates four other retirement communities in Connecticut: StoneRidge in Mystic, Pomperaug Woods in Southbury, Meadow Ridge in Redding and Essex Meadows in Essex.

Chester Village West is located on 55 acres in Chester and consists of 105 cottages and apartments. It is considered a Life Plan/Continuing Care Retirement Community, which according to Margaret Steeves, a Masonicare spokeswoman, is an industry term for facilities that allow retirees to live independently as they age but are able to bring a variety of services to help residents.

Jon-Paul Venoit, president and chief executive officer of Masonicare, called the acquisition of Chester Village West a win-win for all.

We have extensive experience in the retirement living arena and our cultures are very similar, Venoit said. We are retaining nearly all of their employees, and we expect to invest in some capital improvements on the campus as well.

Chester Village West has about 70 employees, according to Steeves. Venoits reference to capital improvements, she said, relate to plans Masonicare has to renovate the central activities building at Chester Village West.

There are also some exterior and outside areas that need attention, she said. It is estimated we will be investing up to $3 million in capital improvements over the next 18 months.

Steeves said Masonicare made the acquisition because it regards the lower Connecticut River Valley as a geographically desirable area.

We also found it attractive because this is not a senior living facility that relies on government funding, she said.

The acquisition of Chester Village West represents the second expansion of Masonicares portfolio of Connecticut facilities this year. The organization opened Masonicare at Mystic, a rental complex with 179 independent and assisted living apartments, in April.

Masonicares other senior complexes in the state include the 360-unit Ashlar Village in Wallingford and a facility in Newtown with such services as dementia and Alzheimers disease care.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
MILFORD  Police are asking the publics help identifying a man they said attempted to abduct a teen Wednesday.

Police said that a 19-year-old was on break behind Whole Foods when she was approached by someone driving an older-model white van or sport utility vehicle. Police said the attempted abduction took place at 12:45 p.m. at the Milford Market Place on Boston Post Road.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Connecticuts population had a slight gain over the past year, with 499 new residents calling the Constitution State home.

States prison population lowest in more than two decades

On Wednesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released the latest national and state population estimates.

It showed Connecticuts population in 2017 estimated at 3,588,184, up from 3,587,685.

While Connecticuts population gain is small, it reversed a population decline of 14,434 measured between 2015 and 2016.

Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Vermont, which all lost population in 2016, all made slight population gains this year. Pennsylvania had a 0.1 percent increase with 18,452. Vermont  the least populated state with 623,354 residents, gained 303.

Population growth in Connecticut and Fairfield County is sluggish, but some communities  Stamford, Shelton and Danbury  are enjoying a growth spurt, according to census figures released earlier this year.

Danburys population of 84,922 posted the fastest growth, gaining 335 residents between 2015 and 2016, and growing by 5.1 percent since 2010.

Stamford, with 129,113 people, gained 239 residents and its population grew by 5.3 percent since 2010. Bridgeport, despite a one-year loss, grew by 1.2 percent since 2010.

Norwalk, with 88,438 residents, lost a handful of people between 2015 and 2016, but its population grew by 3.3 percent since 2010, the numbers show.

Shelton, with a population of 41,334, gained 108 residents and is up 4.5 percent since 2010.

The figures released Wednesday showed the U.S. population grew 0.72 percent to 325.7 million. Net international migration decreased 1.8 percent between 2016 and 2017, making it the first drop since 2012-2013. However, net international migration continues to be a significant factor in the population growth of the United States, adding just over 1.1 million people in the past year.

Nationally, eight states lost population between July 1, 2016, and July 1, 2017. Illinois had the largest decline, losing 33,703 people  a relatively small percentage change compared to its population of 12.8 million. Wyoming had the largest percentage decline with 1 percent.

Idaho was the nations fastest-growing state over the past year. Its population increased 2.2 percent to 1.7 million from July 1, 2016, to July 1, 2017.

Following Idaho for the largest percentage increases in population were: Nevada, 2 percent; Utah, 1.9 percent; Washington, 1.7 percent, and Florida and Arizona, 1.6 percent.

States in the South and West continued to lead in population growth. In 2017, 38.0 percent of the nations population lived in the South and 23.8 percent lived in the West.

In addition to the population estimates for the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the new estimates show that Puerto Rico had an estimated population of 3.3 million, a decline from 3.4 million in 2016.
NEW HAVEN  The City Plan Commission has put off a vote on installation of T-Mobile antenna in a church steeple after a consultant the city hired found the plan inadequate.

T-Mobile has an arrangement with Pilgrim Congregational Church in Fair Haven Heights to install six panel antennas within the steeple at the church, which is more than 100 years old.

Also, Anstress Farwell, who heads the New Haven Urban Design League, has sent a letter to Mayor Toni Harp objecting to the appointment of Ernie Pagan to the commission, which she views as a conflict of interest.

Pagan, who is the business representative/organizer for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, attended his first commission meeting as a member on Wednesday.

She feels he will have numerous conflicts of interest with developers who come before the commission. Pagan, asked about this after the meeting, said the developers dont pick the workers, the contractors do.

Im a union rep, but developers are not directly tied to my employment. Im paid to represent my members. My workers work for contractors. They dont work for developers, Pagan said. My workers dont work directly for developers. I dont believe there is a conflict.

Pagan is a member of Local 326, the carpenters union.

Anne Hartjen, senior project manager at City Plan, said while the T-Mobile representative told the commission last month that they did not have a structural report on the steeple, one actually did exist and it has since been forwarded to the staff.

We read it and we were concerned enough that we felt like we needed to have an outside structural engineer take a look at it, she said.

David Carlson of Spiegel Zamecnik & Shah Inc. sent back his analysis on Wednesday.

Suffice it to say it is very detailed and technical language, but he and I both agree that the structural report as submitted to the commission ... is wholly inadequate to the task at hand. They need to address the technical issues, Hartjen told the members of the commission at its regular meeting.

The church is located at 65 East Grand Ave.

Marjorie Shansky, who lives next door to Pilgrim, had pushed for a structural review after pieces of the steeple had fallen into her yard. Photos of the debris have been entered into the record.

Shansky also asked whether Pagan had familiarized himself with the record on the steeple question, which was the subject of a public hearing at the December commission meeting. That hearing was continued at Wednesdays meeting, but now has been extended to the Jan. 17 meeting at the request of T-Mobile.

Edward Mattison, chairman of the commission, said they had just met Pagan two hours before the meeting and he did not think he knew the background.

But we will ask him before the next meeting if you would read the file so that you are at the same point that we all are, Mattison said. Ms. Shansky, for example, spoke at the last hearing and she was eloquent on the subject as to what was going on there so it is important for you to know that.

Shansky said she spoke to the engineer who did the report for T-Mobile and has also gotten the Carlson report.

This application has miles to go. The structural issue is not the only one, she said. Shansky said she will testify at greater length at the January meeting.

Carlson said the plan references concrete masonry walls, but it is unlikely they would be present in an upper level of a historic church.

He said the two existing joists must be checked for rot where embedded in masonry and the steeple timbers supporting the joists not built according to modern engineering practice must be evaluated as constructed and on their current condition.

Carlson said the joists are assumed to be high-strength West Coast wood, but he said they are likely to be East Coast wood.

The joists appear evaluated for a span of a bit under 15 feet, no span dimensions are shown in the analysis. For this span the species and stress modification factors referenced above would change the outcome, Carlson wrote, among other things.

Mattison said they will not move forward with the plan until they have all the technical answers.

Alder Rose Santana, D-13, said the Quinnipiac East/Fair Haven Heights Management Team last month did not feel the T-Mobile project should go foward given the structural questions.

Santana said she also asked about the liability for the city depending on how the company will approach placement of the antennas, such as using scaffolding.

Attorney Jesse Langer said he was representing T-Mobile and would offer testimony at the Jan. 17 meeting.

He said they will have answers to the substantial review offered by Carlson.

T-Mobile wants to make sure that all questions and concerns from the neighborhood and the city are addressed, Langer said.

At the request of several alders, the commission put off until next month a public hearing on single room occupancy (SROs) and the citys policy on making sure these units of housing are available in New Haven. The Legislation Committee of the Board of Alders cannot take it up until February.

The alders approved Pagans appointment on Monday. A lifelong city resident, he has been a carpenter for 14 years.

Farwell complemented Pagan on his labor work, but worried about his role on City Plan.

The NERCC has done some outstanding work protecting carpenters from wage theft and advocating for union jobs. None-the-less, Mr. Pagan's role with the NERCC would present a conflict of interest on many applications coming before the CPC. These conflicts of interest would undermine public confidence in the CPC. Additionally, because it would be appropriate and necessary for him to recuse himself from many CPC votes, the work and schedule of the CPC would be destabilized, Farwell wrote in her letter to the mayor.

She said potential conflicts of interest apparently are not disclosed as part of the application process when a resident wants to be named to a board. After listening to the tape of his testimony before the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, she said he did not talk about his role as an organizer for the carpenters union.
HARTFORD  It doesnt look likely, but Connecticuts congressional delegation is taking every opportunity to remind their Republicans colleagues who control Congress that they should fund the community health centers and the Childrens Health Insurance Program.

The two programs expired at the end of September and Congress has failed to take action.

In 2016, the 16 federally qualified community health centers in Connecticut received $41 million from the Community Health Center Fund and they served more than 375,000 patients.

A majority of those patients had Medicaid and about 16 percent were uninsured.

Without this funding, they will have to look at layoffs and scaling back services, Deb Polun, senior director of policy and outreach at the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut http://www.chcact.org/ , said Wednesday.

She said already the centers have been trying to find savings through staff attrition, which means patients may have had to wait longer to receive medical care.

Since the federal funding is received by the 16 centers at different times, the impact may vary, but starting in January the Charter Oak Health Center in Hartford and Generations Family Health Center in Willimantic, which has three satellite locations, will only get two more months of funding. Three health centers have February start dates and will only get one more month of funding.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy addressed the issue Tuesday during his floor speech.

Many health centers in Connecticut on January 1 will lose more than half of their funding and they will shut their doors to thousands and thousands of people, Murphy said.

He added, In rural America, the slashing of community health center funding will be absolutely devastating, because it is sometimes these community health centers that are the only way for some people to get care, particularly mental health care and addiction care.

Polun said the good news they havent lost the money yet, but the bad news is the delay in congressional action has already created uncertainty and has lead to problems getting access.

The Connecticut Department of Social Services sent out notices last week to parents and caregivers for 17,000 children and teens in low-income households who receive whats called Husky B.

The notice warns parents to enroll their children in new health coverage. Coverage they likely wont be able to afford.

Murphy told the story about Adrianna Bigard of Hamden Tuesday.

He said the single mom is working as a public relations specialist but cant afford the insurance her employer offers for her 6-year-old son.

She is one of the millions of Americans who is working, who is playing by the rules, but is living paycheck to paycheck, Murphy said.

Murphy said Bigard has told his office that If HUSKY B goes away, if CHIP goes away, once all benefits, taxes, et cetera, are paid, I will not have enough money left in my paycheck to pay my rent.

He said that means Bigards holiday season has been consumed with worry about this issue.

He said the inaction by Congress means on January 31, Adrianna will not have enough money to pay her rent or she will have to leave her son uninsured. That will be her choice come Jan 31. Thats a pretty terrible, awful way for her to spend her holiday season.

Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management warned in his monthly budget letter Wednesday that If this program is not reauthorized before the end of January, not only will more than 17,000 children and youths lose health insurance coverage, but services currently reimbursed by the federal government at the enhanced CHIP matching rate will be reduced to the regular Medicaid matching rate, resulting in additional state costs of $20 million.

This story has been modified from its original version. To view the original, visit ctnewsjunkie.com.
ORANGE  The states budget crisis has derailed longtime plans for a train station near Yales West campus off Marsh Hill Road that town officials hoped would provide convenience and an economic boost to the area.

It has fallen a death by the financial problems of Connecticut, a disappointed Orange First Selectman Jim Zeoli said. Its one more whack by the state of Connecticut.

The project, expected to have cost $50 million to $60 million, and around which the state already has spent at least $8 million, Zeoli said, was to be a public/private partnership with Orange Land Development LLC, led by Edward M. Crowley of Branford, former president of nearby Dichello Distributors and founder of Stony Creek Brewery in Branford.

Crowley, who could not be reached Wednesday, was notified of the states position via a letter that he shared with Zeoli.

The short letter to Crowley from an engineering administrator at DOT says, in part, The department is not in a financial position to proceed with negotiations for or participate in the contemplated Orange Transit Oriented Development.

The letter continues, Therefore, as a result, the department will not be advancing the design and construction of the associated Orange rail station (aka The Orange Platform).

Zeoli said the state already has poured $8 million into other projects and items in preparation for the train station, which he said makes it as if the state drove down the road at 60 mph throwing hundred-dollar bills out the window.

Zeoli said hes disappointed, as the train station would have made the community better, because of the convenience factor to commuters and residents overall when they are traveling to New York or Boston.

Republican state lawmakers representing Orange  Minority Leader Themis Klarides R-Derby, and state Reps. Charles Ferraro, R-West Haven, and Pam Staneski, R-Milford, jointly expressed disappointment in a news release.

It is disappointing to see the (Gov. Dannel P.) Malloy Administration reverse their decision to fund the Orange Train Station design, the release says. The mismanagement of transportation funds by Governor Malloy is now showing. ... Governor Malloy should be prioritizing transportation funding.

But Malloy spokeswoman Kelly Donnelly said, This can only be taken as a joke. Anyone who says with a straight face that this governor hasnt prioritized transportation has been living under a rock for the last several years.

By their own admission, this project was moving forward because of the Governors support. But what they conveniently neglect to mention is that their own Republican bipartisan budget fails to sufficiently fund the transportation fund, thereby ultimately jeopardizing this project, she said in an emailed statement. Hopefully, these statements they released today mean that we can all count on the Republicans to put forward a plan to ensure that the fund is shored up-and done so this session.

Zeoli said of the station, It would have been a help to us, including in the area of economic development.

Approval already has been granted near the proposed train station  contingent on the project coming to fruition  for 200 apartment units, a 900-car parking garage and a hotel, but they will now vanish, Zeoli said. The Town Plan and Zoning Commission has spent many hours talking about zoning rules for that area under a new transit-oriented district zone, but for now it will remain light industrial.

But as much as hes disappointed about the station, Zeoli said hes not surprised given the states finances. He predicts other state projects will be halted.

Zeoli said the talk of the train station plan began before he took office 13 years ago.

Crowley, when president of Dichello Distributors, originally brought the idea for a partnership to the state.

The early proposal called for a new train station and four-story parking garage to be constructed on 9 acres on the rear section of the Dichello property.

Crowley said from the start he fully expected most of the money for the project would be provided by his company. It could not be determined Wednesday what that breakdown might have been.

Earlier this year, the state authorized funding to start design work for the train station. That and other infrastructure improvements were included in a budget in September passed by state lawmakers, but the budget was vetoed by Malloy, the lawmakers release states.

Editors note: This story has been updated since it was first posted.




In the early hour of today, Chinedu Eya the national coordinator for WHY IT MUST BE PDP IN 2019(WIMBPDP2019)said that the Ifeanyi Uba's statement is only but a fiction and watery.According to him, every good politician knows that APGA is more of a pressure group than a political party and Ifeanyi Uba as a person is a political whore who is only trying to be relevant in the political arena by Sponsoring the new PDP and presently working for APC due to the charges FG levelled on him. This is because he has seen APC as an umbrella that covers evil men from the sword of the law. After all, Orji Uzor Kalu ran to APC as an umbrella cover after milking Abia state treasury dry and he was absorbed and protected and that has become a safe trick and that is exactly the same thing Ifeanyi Uba is doing.Unfortunately for him, every enlightened Nigerian knows that Ifeanyi Uba is a criminal who uses evil means to romance with each government in power to amaze more wealth for his third generation to come. His action of sponsoring the new PDP faction to weaken our great party(PDP) is dead on arrival because like an adage goes, "Birds of a feather flock together". Those he is working with under the new PDP are his criminal gang whose interest is to have it by all means. That being the case, no well meaning Nigeria will ever take Ifeanyi Uba and his group of blood sucking vampires serious. Since the likes of Rotimi Amaechi, Orji Uzor Kalu and other crooks are safe in APC it is no doubt that APC has become an Association of past criminals and an escape route for evil men after committing heinous crime against God and humanity. APC has therefore become the new trick for criminals and Ifeanyi Uba is not an exceptional. However, APC and her gang of criminals should know that while they may escape and be free from the sword of the law, they can never escape and be free from the wrath of God unless they repent and run to him as the personal lord and saviour.
The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) has been separated from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) has been separated from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).





Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the EFCC, disclosed this when he appeared before the senate committee on anti-corruption and financial crimes on Wednesday.





Magu was at the upper legislative chamber to defend the 2017 budget of his agency.





He said from January 1, 2018, NFIU would begin to operate as an independent organisation.





We have allowed NFIU to go. They are operationally autonomy independent of EFCC, he said.





We have given them financial autonomy. We presented a proposal of N2.9 billion for the takeoff of the agency in the 2018 budget, but the budget office proposed N800 million.





They will start operating as an independent unit from January 1, 2018.





In July, TheCable reported how Egmont Group, a global body which has representatives from 156 countries, suspended Nigeria.





The group provides the backbone for monitoring international money laundering activities.





The suspension, which was announced at the Egmont Group meeting held in China from July 2 to July 7, 2017, was caused partly by the failure of the federal government to pass a law making NFIU autonomous.





The group had warned that if Nigeria failed to comply with its demands for a legal framework granting freedom to the NFIU by January 2018, the country would be expelled.





It also mandated the government to make NFIU autonomous in its funding, operations and management of intelligence.





Less than a week after TheCables report, the senate passed the Nigeria intelligence financial agency (NFIA) bill to remove the unit from the control of the EFCC.





Initially, Magu opposed the move to separate the unit from the EFCC, describing it as corruption fighting back.





I understand the workings of Financial Intelligence Units around the world and they are domiciled in law enforcement agencies based on their credibility, he had told select editors in Abuja.





This is another way of corruption fighting back; people are fighting and pretending to be in support of what is ongoing, but they are not giving a face to the fight against corruption.




Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has exonerated itself and blame the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN ), Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) and Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMA) for the prevailing energy crisis in Nigeria.According to a statement by PENGASSAN National Publicity Officer, Comrade Fortune Obi, the labour centre said fuel scarcity was prevalent before it issued its 7-day strike ultimatum notice to the Federal Government.I wonder why people are blaming PENGASSAN for the current fuel scarcity in the country. The scarcity started two weeks before PENGASSAN issued a 7-day strike ultimatum notice on December 7.The problem of the government (federal) & IPMAN was preeminent when IPMAN threatened showdown with the government over irregular supply of petroleum products. Despite resolving the problem, the scarcity persists.Then PENGASSAN issued a strike notice, which did not even last for 14 hours before it was arrested and called off. Government and NNPC assured that there is enough products to go round during the Yuletide season.Then why the scarcity? The real reasons was not examined but the scarcity has been blamed for wrong reasons.There is scarcity because marketers want petrol price to be increased. They have been arguing that the margin is not profitable and therefore seek increment which the government has been resisting and pegging at N145 per litre.He also stated that another reason for the persistent scarcity is the rivalry among IPMAN, MOMAN and DAPPMA over fuel allocation.The leadership controversy in IPMAN also contributes to scarcity. Hoarding by fuel station owners and panic buying by Nigerians are equally the huge reason for the scarcity, he said.He suggested the way forward by urging the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and other relevant government agencies to go out and enforce sales of products from fuel stations that are hoarding the product.Virtually all (filling) stations have petrol but they are not ready to sell so as to exploit the people, he said.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has invited Chief of Staff to Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger State, Mikail Alamin Shekwoaga, for questioning over some alleged financial malpractices.Specifically, he was said to have been quizzed over a case of obtaining money under false pretense and abuse of office, the first public officer to be so quizzed in the present administration.Vanguard reliably gathered that the invitation of the Chief of Staff by the anti-graft agency was contained in a letter addressed to the Secretary to the State Government, SSG, with reference number CR:0000/EFCC/ABJ/AFF 2/VOL 7/804, entitled Investigative Activities, Letter of Invitation.Besides the invitation of the Chief of Staff, the Executive Director of Niger State Primary Health Development Agency, NSPHDA, Dr. Yahaya Nauzo, was also quizzed for alleged financial irregularities in his agency.The letter read: This office is investigating a case of obtaining money under false pretense and abuse of office in which the need to obtain clarification from your staff has become imperative.In view of the above, you are requested to release the Executive Director, NSPHDA, Dr. Yahaya Nauzo, and the Chief of Staff to the Governor, Mr. Mukail Alamin Shekwoaga Bmitosahi, to interview by the undersigned through the team leader AFF 2 at No. 5 Ademola Crescent, Wuse II, Abuja, on Monday, December 11, 2017 at 10a.m.Efforts to know if the two principal officers have been released proved abortive, just as spokesmen of the governor could not also be reached for comments over the development.
The coalition of Niger Delta militants on Thursday sent a protest letter to President Muhammadu Buhari over his alleged double standards in the handling of security issues in the country.The militants, under the auspices of the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers, slammed the Federal Government for the controversial proposal to deduct $1bn from the Excess Crude Account to fight the Boko Haram insurgents in the North East.They described the plan to withdraw $1bn from ECA as wicked and insensitive, saying it allegedly disregarded the peace accord signed with the people of the Niger Delta region.The RNDA, in an email signed by Major General Johnmark Ezonbi to journalists in Yenagoa, the militants warned the government not to take the present ceasefire agreement for granted.Through the ceasefire, the country is enjoying daily crude oil production of between 2.2 and 2.4million barrels of crude production which amount to billions of naira daily for the Federal Government. It also helped the country to get out of recession. So, the government should not take our patience and silence for granted.We want to state categorically that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government is insensitive and practically negating the principles of natural justice by using resources derived from a neglected region to combat insurgency in the North East in the senseless Boko Haram war to the tune of $1bn from ECA.Why not access the fund from excess account from the sale of agriculture products in the northern part of the country? Why must it be from the creeks of the Niger Delta?The Federal Governments insensitivity to the Niger Delta development has obviously reached its crescendo. We will not take this but resist with our might. This broad day light robbery against the Niger Delta people will not be accepted by us. We are going to resist this perpetual injustice against our long-neglected people in the region.They, therefore, demanded the regions own share of $1bn from ECA for the development of the Niger Delta within four weeks.They warned that the region would witness a massive destruction of oil pipelines if the government failed to accede to their demand.The coalition boasted that in a well-coordinated attack tagged, Cripple the Economy with Zero Crude Oil Production, there would be no more oil funds to finance the 2018 budget.They added, We will ensure that anything that stands in our way will be crushed without mercy. All foreign nationals are hereby advised to leave the region as all our unit commanders have been put on the red alert to resume operation zero oil production on the expiration of the four-week ultimatum.
The Nigerian Navy in Lagos on Thursday said they rescued four Chinese men from kidnappers around Igbokoda area of Ondo State.The Flag Officer Commanding, Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Sylvanus Abbah, told journalists in Lagos that the four victims were abducted aboard a fishing trawler within the Lagos waters on December 14.According to him, operatives of the Nigerian Navy Ship BEECROFT rescued the abducted Chinese nationals from a militant camp in the riverine area of Ondo State.He said that after the abduction, the kidnappers took their victims in a speedboat to Igbokoda, Ondo State, the same day.Naval operatives attached to Forward Operations Base who sighted the kidnappers as they were entering Igbokoda gave them a hot pursuit.The kidnappers opened fire on the naval gunboat. There was a fierce gun battle between the suspects and the naval men and the hoodlums abandoned their boats and fled on foot through the creeks, he said.Abbah said the naval men went after the suspects, who later abandoned the four Chinese men and fled.Presently, efforts are ongoing to arrest the suspects.The Chinese sustained bullet wounds during the gun battle and they have been treated and are in stable condition, he said.Meanwhile, the Acting Chinese Consul General in Nigeria, Mr. Guan Zhonggi, who paid a thank you visit to the FOC, commended the Navy for its prompt intervention.He said the four Chinese men regained their freedom because of the swift action of the naval men.
As the scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) continues to rock many parts of the, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation cannot continue to be the sole importer of the product into the country.Private oil marketers had since last year stopped fuel importation due to shortage of foreign exchange and increase in crude prices, which they said had made it unprofitable to import petrol and sell at N145 per litre.The LCCI advised the Federal Government to stop treating petrol as a social product by encouraging private sector operators to play a bigger role in the nations downstream petroleum sector.The Director-General, LCCI, Mr. Muda Yusuf, in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents on Wednesday, said, Its unfortunate that we are having fuel queues back. But there is a very fundamental problem with our petroleum downstream sector, and the problem is that it is over-regulated. You cannot have a sector as big as that serving our size of population and we expect only the government provider to be supplying fuel. It is not a sustainable model.So, there is an urgent need to push back the role of government in the issue of retailing fuel, importing fuel and all of that. Right now, it is only the NNPC that is importing PMS. Such a thing cannot be efficient; it creates room for all manner of abuses, some of which the marketers cannot disclose because of their own businesses.Describing the current structure as inherently inefficient, he stressed the need to open up the sector to private investors.Yusuf stated, Secondly, we need a more efficient distribution system. Many years ago, we invested heavily in pipelines that would make distribution easy either from the ports or the refineries. But the pipelines have not been maintained; there have been no investment in them. Again, it is because it is government that is sitting on those investments. Now, the refineries are not working well.We need to deal with this issue in a more holistic manner. What we are seeing are symptoms of the structure that is defective. The government cannot continue to treat PMS as if it is a social product; even education, which is a social product, the private sector is playing a big role in it. So, why must you sit on PMS and you have a situation where only the NNPC is importing?He said the private sector should be allowed to play a bigger role in importation, refining, distribution and marketing of petroleum products, and all other activities in the downstream sector.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Thursday, disclosed that it has more than doubled the supply of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol, across the country from about 30 million litres to 80 million litres per day.This was even as the NNPC declared that it can now account for every barrel of crude oil sold by the country, as it has achieved 98 per cent automation of all transactions involving the supply, marketing and sale of the various grades and blends of Nigerias crude oil across the world.Commenting on the fuel crisis, the NNPC, in a statement in Abuja, disclosed that the hike in the product supply became necessary after the current hiccup in fuel supply was noticed few days back, adding that these measures would ensure that the fuel crisis comes to an end this week.According to the statement, Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, disclosed this shortly before the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Corporation and the Benue State Government on the Agasha-Guma Bio-fuels Projects, in Abuja.The biofuels project is expected to create one million direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians on completion and would also produce about 84 million litres of fuel ethanol annually. The NNPC said that it plans to mobilize to site by the first quarter of 2018.Baru blamed the current fuel crisis on the rumour about a planned increase in the price of petrol, which made some unscrupulous marketers, wanting to cash in on the situation, to suddenly start hoarding products.He said, But we swiftly swung into action by doubling our supply nationwide. At the time the rumour started, we had about 30 day sufficiency. The normal daily supply to the nation is 700 trucks, equaling about 27 million to 30 million litres per day.Baru noted that the NNPC had enough products sufficiency that will last up to 30 days, adding that at least a billion litre petrol laden cargoes were heading to Nigeria shores at the end of December, which would return the country to a 30-day-plus sufficiency.Furthermore, speaking on the automation of its crude oil sales processes, Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division of the NNPC, Mr. Mele Kyari, stated that the automation exercise which would be concluded in 2018 had enabled the corporation to achieve an end-to-end monitoring of every barrel of crude oil sold in the country.Today at a click of a button we can tell you how much crude oil is sold, at what price, who bought it and where it has gone to among others, he explained.He stated that the projection was to operate a complete paperless crude oil data management regime in line with the ongoing transformation of the processes which had witnessed sweeping reforms since 2015.He listed the reforms to include the open bid process of customer selection for lifting and purchase of Nigerias crude oil grades; emplacement of efficient crude for product import processes, leading to savings of $1 billion in one year as well as the introduction of improved pricing system, which has evolved into a robust and auditable pricing mechanism.He disclosed that the automation had enabled the country to eliminate the perennial disagreement with its major stakeholder, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on actual production and lifting figures.He also added that the series of reforms had led to the harmonization of Nigerias crude oil data and lifting information, providing access to major internationally recognized reporting agencies like Platts and Argus Media to achieve real time reporting of Nigerias crude oil transactions.
Senate President Bukola Saraki says the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government does not spend funds without due process.

Senate President Bukola Saraki says the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government does not spend funds without due process.

Saraki said this on Thursday after Ike Ekeweremadu, deputy senate president, informed the upper legislative chamber that they were supposed to debate the $1 billion meant to be withdrawn from the excess crude account for the fight against Boko Haram insurgents.





The deputy senate president demanded an explanation on why the matter was not listed on the order paper.





Samuel Anyanwu, senator representing Imo east, had drawn the attention of the senate to the issue on Wednesday.





But Anyanwu was absent when Ekweremadu raised the issue on the floor of the red chamber on Thursday.





Saraki explained that the motion would not be taken because Anyanwu was not around.





He assured the senators that the money would not be spent until they debate the matter.





As you can see, he is not here. So, we have to put it down. Next legislative day is when we resume. It would be the first item on the order paper, he said.





We cannot take it when the person is not here and its a very important motion that needs to be delivered very well.




A former clerk at the Motor Vehicle Commission in Lodi and the owner of a school bus company were among 10 people charged in a scheme in which thousands of dollars in bribes were allegedly exchanged for licenses and permits obtained by drivers who never passed exams.

Rodman Lora, 39, of Ridgewood N.Y., entered passing test scores for more than 220 people who paid him an average of more than $700 each between 2014 and 2016, acting state Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino said.

Rodman's attorney did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Masood Ahmadi, 54, of Lake Hiawatha, owner of Ideal Transportation, which contracts with several schools and school districts in northern New Jersey, allegedly recruited people seeking commercial drivers licenses. Most of his recruits were relatives or were seeking jobs as bus drivers at his company, Porrino said in a press release Thursday.

Ahmadi and the eight other defendants were charged with second degree conspiracy, computer criminal activity and third degree tampering with public records.

Authorities say Ahmadi, Luis Tiburcio, 46, of Passaic; and Carlos Vicuna, 36, of Elizabeth were allegedly "runners" in the scheme.

An attorney for Ahmadi, Manuel B. Sameiro, said his client is innocent and looks forward to his day in court

.

Also charged as co-conspirators were Rosa Vargas, 51, of Lodi, an MVC clerk who allegedly obtained a motorcycle permit without taking the required written exam; and Mark Kingston, 55, of Toms River, a private security guard at the Lodi MVC who allegedly got a commercial driver's permit and license without passing the required test.

Four alleged customers of the scheme were also charged: Wander Jimenez-Villanueva, 25, of Bogota, allegedly got a Class D driver's license after Lora allegedly entered a passing exam grade for him. Jimenez-Villanueva previously failed the exam four times.

Lora also allegedly entered a passing test score for a commercial driver's license for Angel Nunez-Lora, 27, of Parlin. He had previously failed the test once. Jose Lora, 44, of Newark, who is Rodman Lora's brother, and Wilge Rojas, 55, of Clifton, allegedly got a commercial driver's licenses the same way. Rojas previously failed the exam once.

Lora is charged with the second degree crimes of official misconduct, pattern of official misconduct, conspiracy, computer criminal activity and third degree tampering with public records.

The second degree charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $150,000. The official misconduct charges have a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison without parole if convicted.

The indictment was handed up to Mercer County Superior Court Judge Robert Billmeier who assigned the case to Bergen County.

Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonPries. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The three people killed in an SUV crash Monday were all teenagers, one 18-year-old man and two 16-year-old girls, one of whom was pregnant, according to police and family members.

Xzavier Wells, 18, of Burlington City, and Nichole Ross, 16, of Shamong Township, have been identified as two occupants of the vehicle, Sgt. Lawrence Peele, a New Jersey State Police spokesman said.

Peele said identity of the third person was still pending and could not be confirmed Thursday. Philly.com reported that the victim's name was Tatiana Carter, a 16-year-old from Shamong Township and the girlfriend of Wells.

Police said troopers responded to a report of a stolen vehicle from the Pic-a-Lilli Inn, a restaurant in Shamong, just before noon Monday.

Upon arriving, troopers were told that a 1999 green Yukon GMC was stolen from the parking lot. While patrolling nearby on Route 206, troopers saw the allegedly stolen vehicle pass them, and turned to follow it.

The driver, now identified as Wells, "erratically" drove away from police at a high rate of speed. After a short pursuit, the vehicle crashed into a utility pole in Tabernacle Township and caught fire, police said.

Peele said there was no new information about the circumstances surrounding the crash Thursday morning, and that it remained under investigation. He also said that he could not confirm Ross was pregnant, as state police only do so when a pregnancy plays a role in a crash or crime.

But family members wrote that the teen was pregnant in a GoFundMe started to cover Ross' funeral expenses.

"Yesterday I lost my 16 year old pregnant sister in law (sic) Nicole Ross in a fatal car crash," a woman named Marlene Ulloa wrote. "My heart breaks for my mother in law, there no (sic) worse pain than losing a child. Please donate we appreciate anything."

Ulloa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Philly.com reported that Carter had said she planned to find her sister, who was in foster care somewhere in the state. Wells had agreed to help her, Carter's mother, Amber Turner, said.

"Tatiana was driven by ohana," she told Philly.com. "Ohana means family [in Hawaiian], and no one gets left behind or forgotten."

Carter herself had been in a program for homeless and at-risk youth, until she ran away in November, according to the report.

Wells attended Burlington City High School for about two months, and left the school on December 12. The district's superintendent, Patricia Doloughty, confirmed he was a student, but could not say why he left the school.

A GoFundMe account was set up by a woman named Stacy Lynn, who identified herself as Wells' cousin, to pay for his funeral expenses.

She described him as a "sweet, caring young man."

"He didn't deserve this at all. He would give you the shirt off his back," she wrote on the page, which was launched Tuesday. "No matter what he did in his past that don't mean nothing right now. He is a young man that shouldn't have lost his life to something so senseless. HES (sic) very loved by many family members and a lot of friends."

Other family members grieved for him on Facebook as well.

"My nephew Xzavier, he may have done some stupid things in his short time here, but he didn't deserve to lose his life," a woman named Dawn Marie wrote on Facebook early Wednesday morning. "I lost a nephew, my kids lost a cousin, my sister lost her son. My heart is completely in pieces right now. I LOVE YOU XZAVIER TERRANCE WELLS."

Members of Wells' family could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Another family member wrote on Facebook that they planned to hold a candlelight vigil at "the river" for Wells Friday evening. It was not immediately clear exactly where the vigil would take place.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Frank Nucera Jr., the former Bordentown Township police chief charged with a federal hate crime and related charges for the alleged beating of a handcuffed Trenton teenager, was surreptitiously recorded by a fellow police officer -- a lot.

The recordings tally about 100 hours, Nucera's lawyer Rocco C. Cipparone, Jr. said Thursday after his client was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Camden, where he pleaded not guilty.

Frank Nucera Jr.

The number of recordings is an estimation from prosecutors, he said, and he's yet to hear them. But when he does, Cipparone said it will be a vigorous examination.

"It's my understanding that a very small portion contains, allegedly indelicate comments," Cipparone said.

The lawyer has many questions. First, he's under the belief that the officer who recorded Nucera was not under supervision of law enforcement. "He made them on his own," Cipparone said.

Any controls and protocols that would have been put in place had, say, the FBI wired the officer, were absent, he said. Did the officer edit the recordings? When did he start and stop the device?

"These are all questions I have to look at," Cipparone said.

The officer who recorded the chief has not been identified publicly, or in court documents.

Cipparone said the allegations against Nucera are "not pleasant" but they were just allegations.

After his November arrest, federal authorities say Nucera often disparaged African Americans, used the n-word regularly and dishonored his badge.

His alleged behavior came to light during a 2016 arrest in which he is accused of slamming an 18-year-old's head into a doorway while he was handcuffed, federal authorities say.

Bordentown Township officials later identified the teen as Timothy Stroye, of Trenton.

U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick called the assault on the teen a "clear senseless, bigoted, hate-filled," assault of a prisoner in custody.

Court documents allege that Nucera once said: "These (n-word) are like ISIS, they have no value. They should line them all up and mow 'em down."

Recordings alone, Cipparone said, do not capture the person's state of mind, nor do they indicate intent.

He also questioned why after 34 years on the job, and a prior military career, Nucera was "suddenly" accused of making a racially-motivated attack on a person's civil rights.

"That's what I have to look at, and that's what the public should keep an open mind about," he said.

Nucera has been indicted on hate crime assault, deprivation of civil rights under the color of law and making false statements. He's free on bail and his bail conditions were maintained at the Thursday hearing.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
By Karen Yi | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Don't Edit

Associated Human Societies on Evergreen Avenue sits on a dead-end industrial street. The rumble of trucks and the sound of containers being stacked are heard throughout the day.

Inside the shelter near the front desk, 27 cats in cages are there to greet you. Each has food, a water bowl and a blanket.

The Newark shelter, which has been excoriated for its repeated failed health inspections, is reorganizing and vowing to invest half a million dollars to rehab the 100-year old building.

But as anger against the shelter deepens, members of Newark's City Council, which pays the shelter $675,000 a year, are asking: How did we get to this point?

Former employees and current volunteers spoke to NJ Advance Media about their experiences with the shelter. Most declined to be named over concerns about jeopardizing their continued access to the animals. They blamed poor management and lack of oversight for the shelter's ongoing woes.

The problems, according to the former employees and volunteers, are systemic and need a complete overhaul of the shelter's management and board of directors.

Don't Edit

In a joint site visit by local and state Department of Health officials on Aug. 22, inspectors slapped the agency on Evergreen Avenue with 40 violations. (Courtesy: Department of Health)

Since August, three joint inspection reports by state and local health officials have detailed gruesome conditions at the state's largest shelter: Carcasses in bags covered in flies, no water for some animals, dogs held in poorly ventilated conditions and questionable protocols for euthanizing animals.

The Newark shelter was also cited for similar conditions in health inspection reports in 2009 and 2011.

The volunteers and former employees say the pattern is always the same -- problems are identified, fixes are promised and they are never fully delivered.

Leaders of Associated Humane Societies (AHS), which operates three shelters including the one in Newark, said they've corrected the health violations, made physical improvements to the shelter and plan to update the organization's procedures.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

'Exaggerated' allegations by disgruntled employees

AHS's executive director RoseAnn Trezza maintains the welfare of the animals has always been a priority for the shelter. Many of the allegations about conditions in the shelter "were exaggerated" she told NJ Advance Media in an email, in response to specific issues raised by former employees and in inspection reports.

"Most of the alleged accusations were made by disgruntled ex-employees or previous volunteers," she wrote.

Trezza has served as director since 2003, taking over after the state's Commission of Investigation issued stinging findings including "substandard conditions" for animals and a former director's prioritizing profits at the expense of animals.

The 70-year-old Trezza is now facing animal cruelty charges filed by the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She pleaded not guilty to all the charges against her through her attorney, Michael Garcia, in Newark Municipal Court on Tuesday. Garcia asked for more time to review the evidence and possibly consider a plea agreement. A new hearing is scheduled for Jan. 11.

Harry Jay Levin, an attorney for AHS, said Trezza will no longer be involved in the day-to-day operations and will assume a marketing role. Levin said Trezza will likely be forced to resign should she be convicted.

In defending the work of the non-profit Trezza wrote, "Whether it be sick, injured, abandoned, stray or surrendered, every animal is given good, competent care and we try and make a difference in their lives."

"The emphasis of our work has ALWAYS been the welfare animals."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

In a joint site visit by local and state Department of Health officials on Aug. 22, inspectors slapped the agency on Evergreen Avenue with 40 violations. (Courtesy: Department of Health)

Overcrowding

One of the key complaints highlighted by the nine current and former volunteers and employees interviewed for this article is: The place takes in way more animals than it can handle.

The overcrowding, former workers said, led to nicknames like "the inhumane society" and "the house of horrors." They said animals are often crowded into a poorly ventilated basement and there's no protocol for evaluating animals on intake, euthanizing them or ensuring they receive proper exercise.

Volunteers say the dogs in the basement are held in small enclosures and rarely exercised, meaning they poop and pee inside their kennels. A former volunteer said the dogs in the basement had no toys, no blankets and no grassy place to run.

The conditions described by the former employees and volunteers were among the violations cited during an August inspection.

Don't Edit

Too many contracts?

AHS Newark contracts with 14 municipalities to provide animal control and sheltering services. Annually, those contracts rake in at least $1.3 million, the bulk of it from Newark. Belleville, Carteret, Clark, Fanwood, Hillside, Irvington, Linden, Fairfield, Orange, Plainfield, Roselle, Rahway and Winfield also contract with AHS.

The shelter this year also bid on a $1.2 million two-year contract to take over Jersey City's animal control services but lost to Liberty Humane Society.

"They don't really have the facilities to handle the amount of municipal contracts they have," said Randy Tashman, 53, of Long Branch, a former animal control officer for AHS who worked there this year. "It's like a jail in there, some dogs are frightened as hell."

Holly Hansen, a veterinarian who worked at the shelter in 2014, agreed.

"They're taking in way too many animals ... they just keep killing to make room," she said.

Hansen added she tried to implement a cat rescue program and a better vaccine protocol when she worked there in 2014 but was shut down.

Don't Edit

When asked whether the shelter contracts with too many municipalities, Trezza said most of the towns have very low numbers and "it does not put a significant strain on our animal intake system."

Levin, the AHS attorney, told reporters last week the shelter's ability to handle all its contracts has "never been an issue." But when pressed and told former workers had specifically raised the issue, he said they were taking a "fresh look" at the entire operation.

"There's going to be a complete review of monies coming in and monies coming out," he said.

Levin also addressed what he called the higher than average number of euthanized animals.

"The reason why animals are euthanized is because there's only a certain capacity and in order to make room for animals, sick animals and animals that have been approved by the veterinarians will be euthanized. I'm not aware of any problem connected with that."

Don't Edit

Associated Humane Societies sent NJ Advance Media a presentation on the animals they've helped save including these eight puppies. They say not enough attention is focused on the animals they've saved.

"This has nothing to do with the paint on the wall at the end of the day," one volunteer, who declined to be named, said. "The system will continue to fail unless management changes."

Don't Edit

Read more

'Deplorable' conditions at animal shelter have city leaders questioning $675K contract

N.J. animal shelter 'totally out of control' after gruesome violations, critics say

Head of troubled Newark animal shelter charged with animal cruelty

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
The Newark man wanted in the robbery and killing of an Irvington resident gunned down earlier this month in front of his wife and son was captured Tuesday in Pennsylvania, authorities said.

Tashan Green

Tashan Green, 23, was arrested Tuesday in a home in Bethlehem, Pa. by authorities from both states and the FBI, officials said.

Green faces charges of murder, robbery, endangering the welfare of a child and weapons offenses in the Dec. 4 killing of 29-year-old Marco Angarmarca-Yupa, said Essex County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Fennelly.

Angarmarca-Yupa was shot to death outside his apartment on Grove Street in Irvington, as his 8-year-old son looked on.

Green was also charged with conspiracy, and Fennelly said the investigation was continuing with additional arrests possible.

Green now awaits extradition to New Jersey from the Northampton County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, said Fennelly.

"It was an intensive investigation by the Essex County Prosecutor's Office Homicide Task Force," Fennelly said in an interview. "We received valuable assistance from the FBI and the Bethlehem Police Department, for which the prosecutor thanks them."

Fennelly said a lawyer for Green has not been identified.

Angarmarca-Yupa's landlord told reporters that Angarmarca-Yupa was a "good man," who had immigrated from Ecuadoran several years earlier and had been renting the apartment in the pale green multi-family house for several years.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
This file photo shows the Freeport McMoRan Building at 1615 Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans. (Photo by Matt Rose)
Vincent Randazzo, 47, was one of three men who pleaded guilty to the March 26, 2014 burglary at the Bourbon Cowboy nightclub, 241 Bourbon St. On Tuesday (Dec. 19, 2017), Randazzo was ordered to pay $312,000 in restitution, according to the Orleans Parish DA's office.(Orleans Parish DA's Office)
NOPD is looking for information on the woman in this photo who was accused of stealing a victim's purse on Tuesday (Dec. 19)(NOPD)
Parents attended a meeting at ReNEW McDonogh City Park Academy Dec. 19 to learn how they can enroll their children into another school for the 2018-2019 school year.(Wilborn P. Nobles III, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Average life span in the U.S. drops as death rates from opioid epidemic rise: report
Cancer patients need rides to their appointments, and you can help
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.
There are only a few days left to see Santa before he leaves Mall of the Bluffs for the North Pole to get ready for his Christmas deliveries.

This years mall Santa (otherwise known as Santas helper) is played by Howard Covert, a native of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Like Bruce Springsteen, he is all about making people merry with his craft.

I just love the kids, he said. Its part of my life. If I can make one person happy out of all the people that come through here, then Im happy.

He now resides in Carter Lake, where he has lived for the past 12 years. This is his second year playing Santa at Mall of the Bluffs.

He said he got into the Santa business back in 1969, when his son was hospitalized in Philadelphia with a brain tumor. Kids in his ward werent able to travel due to their condition, so Covert assembled the best Santa outfit he could and went to visit them at the hospital. And hes been portraying the jolly St. Nick ever since.

Santa will be seeing kids and families through Christmas Eve. Hell be there from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. through the 23rd with breaks from around noon to 12:45 p.m. and 3:45 to 4:30 p.m.

His final appearance will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve with a break from around 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Photo packages are available to purchase.
A man and a woman were taken into custody around 12:30 p.m. today, ending a standoff with police that lasted for several hours.

Casy Kagy, 43, and Heidi Kopf, 37, were arrested after the standoff in an apartment at 828 Ave. B. According to Council Bluffs Police, the U.S. Marshals Service went to the address earlier in the day to serve a warrant for felon in possession of a firearm on a man that apparently lived there. When they arrived, the marshals heard what sounded like two people who refused to answer the door. Looking through a window, the marshals saw the man and woman leave the front room to go to a back room. According to police, the man for whom the warrant was issued had previously made threats to authorities about arresting him.

Police negotiators were called to assist, and the couple ignored orders to come out peacefully. During the standoff, police learned that the woman was the sister of the man the marshals were looking for. She reportedly had warrants for her arrests, police said.

The man allegedly told the police over the phone that the person they were looking for was inside, which prolonged the standoff. Eventually, the pair surrendered without incident. There were no injuries, according to police.

Authorities arrested Kagy on outstanding warrants out of Lancaster County, Nebraska. Kopf was arrested on suspicion of interference with official acts.

The man for whom the warrant was issued was not at that address and remains at large, police said.
Autopsy results in the fatal school bus crash near Oakland indicate the driver and student died from the fire, not any sort of traumatic injury associated with the crash.

John Kraemer, director of forensic operations for the Iowa State Medical Examiner, said Megan Klindt, 16, and Donnie Hendricks, 74, died from smoke and soot inhalation and thermal injuries.

The manner of death for the two decedents was classified as an accident, he wrote The World-Herald in an email Wednesday.

Klindt and Hendricks died Dec. 12, as the bus Hendricks was driving caught fire and backed into a ditch. Hendricks was backing out of the driveway of the farm home where Klindt lived.
The following editorial was published in The Fort Dodge Messenger on Dec. 15:

This year, the sale of fireworks became legal in Iowa.

The new state law allows communities some latitude in regulating their use.

To address concerns expressed by many in our town, the Fort Dodge City Council has finalized new rules that will govern the use of fireworks in our city.

In the summer, fireworks can now only be used from July 1 to July 4. Fireworks are allowed between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. on those days. Also, fireworks can now only be used from 5 p.m. Dec. 31 to 12:30 a.m. Jan. 1.

Penalties for violating the fireworks ordinance were also stiffened. The new city law imposes a $500 fine on people convicted of their first offense violation of the fireworks rules. Previously, that fine was $250.

Before the City Council acted, the state law on fireworks allowed them to be used between June 1 and July 8 and between Dec. 10 and Jan. 3.

The Messenger strongly supports the City Councils decision to reduce the number of days when fireworks can be used. The new rules should not inhibit anyone who genuinely seeks to celebrate with fireworks the Independence Day or New Years holidays. They will, however, help prevent protracted use of fireworks from becoming a nuisance for local residents.
An Ohio man who murdered a Glenwood teenager in September 2016 is serving life in prison without parole after he was convicted in December 2016 following a jury trial.

Mark Alan Troutman, 27, of Sylvania, Ohio, was found guilty of first-degree murder after he shot and killed Katie Weber, 18.

In February, Troutman was sentenced in Glenwood by Fourth Judicial District Judge James Heckerman.

Assistant Mills County Attorney Tyler Loontjer said the state was pleased with the result of both the conviction and sentencing.

The process went quickly and, hopefully, provides peace of mind for the family and friends of the victim, Loontjer said.

Troutman shot Weber, his ex-girlfriend, outside the Linnwood Estates assisted living facility while she was taking a break from work.

She was pronounced dead at the scene. Troutman was found at the Glenwood motel an hour later and arrested as a suspect.

During the trial, Loontjer told the jury that the writing was on the wall both literally and figuratively in this case.

(Troutman) contemplated murder-suicide, he told a friend, Loontjer said.

The night of Webers death, Troutman wrote a message on the wall inside his hotel room that he couldnt live without her and she shouldnt live without him, Loontjer said.

After the shooting, Webers then-boyfriend told police Troutman was in town, staying at a local hotel, where police apprehended him.

The state said Troutman and Weber began a short relationship online but once he came to visit her, she had broken things off. Troutman still made the journey from Sylvania to Glenwood to see her despite her protests, Loontjer said.

She asked him to leave her alone, but he did not, he said.

After the breakup, Troutman told a friend via text message that he couldnt cope, that he wanted to hurt Weber, Loontjer said.

On Sept. 17, Weber went outside to see two of her tires had been slashed. While she was on break, Troutman confronted her and killed her, Loontjer said.

The defense argued Troutman was too intoxicated to premeditate first-degree murder.

Deputies did not even consider alcohol a factor in this case, Loontjer said. He had a plan, he went through with it.

Troutmans defense attorney Eric Nelson said his client and Weber had talked about starting their lives together.

Mark had a plan to kill himself; to end his life in front of Katie, Nelson said. What happened was not planned. It was not intended.
Former Council Bluffs resident Eddie Doob Spencer came back for a visit in early July from his home in Norman, Oklahoma, but he didnt travel the usual way like in a car or by plane.

He covered the entire 550-mile trip by pure foot power.

The 47-year-old left Norman on June 14 and averaged about 30 miles per day running on trails and highways as his wife, Su, led the way in their car.

On July 1, as Spencer approached Roberts Park, near where his mother lives, 60 of his relatives and friends cheered him. In the background, the musical theme from Rocky played on a loudspeaker as fireworks went off to celebrate.

I was never not going to make it, Spencer said.

While that was a good-news type of story, Council Bluffs was also touched by tragedy the same day as two residents, Michal Weese, 58, and Jerolyn Weese, 59, were killed in a motorcycle accident in Ogallala, Nebraska.

Two other motorcyclists from Bedford, Sheila Matheny, 54, and James Matheny, 61, were also killed. Jerolyn Weese worked in the Council Bluffs School District for over 15 years as a paraeducator.

This years Fourth of July holiday season was the first in more than 80 years that featured legal fireworks in Iowa. While emergency room visits were fairly consistent with recent years, police calls increased compared to 2016.

Police Chief Tim Carmody said on July 6 his department saw an exponential jump in fireworks-related service calls in June, from 22 in 2016 to 82 in 2017.

The Iowa Legislature passed a bill that legalized the sale and possession of fireworks in May, the first time the state allowed fireworks since 1931.

It was noted in early July that Kori Nelson, who was executive director of the Historic General Dodge House for 18 years, had accepted the position of director of development and marketing at Midlands Humane Society. Nelson said she was ready for a change.

I liked being the executive director (at Dodge House), but there were so many tasks in front of you I was unable to really focus on things I wanted to do, she said. It was time for a career change and time to challenge myself again.

In that position, Nelson keeps a record of donors, contacts donors and prospective donors, writes letters and thank-you notes, composes grant applications and posts MHS news on Facebook. She will also help plan events and submit news releases when needed.

Motorists traveling around Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital have surely seen a large city-block vacant area where homes and other structures once stood. The space has been cleared for possible future development by the hospital.

Demolition of homes in the 700 block between East Pierce Street and East Broadway began on July 11. The block included Ambition Salon on the corner of Nicholas Street and East Broadway, an apartment house at 11 Nicholas St., Capel Apartments at 711 E. Broadway and five houses.

After the structures came down within a short period of time, the ground was seeded to grass and will remain so until development plans are announced, said Vince Rew, hospital spokesman.

Also on July 11, local dignitaries honored a downtown Council Bluffs bank building rich in history. They celebrated the 70th anniversary of the building at 509 W. Broadway that today houses the Council Bluffs branch of Great Western Bank.

Completed in 1947, the building was constructed of limestone by the Bank Building Equipment Co. of St. Louis, and it featured in the companys full-page advertisement in the July 1947 issue of Fortune Magazine.

In its early days, the bank had the only drive-through service of any bank between Council Bluffs and Chicago. Still a part of the banking process today are five original vaults, with the main vault constructed of 18-inch reinforced concrete with a 12-inch thick door weighting 15,000 pounds.

The building has been used as a bank since the beginning, first as the State Savings Bank building, followed over the years by the Council Bluffs Savings Bank, First Federal/Tier One Bank and, today, Great Western Bank.

In the early hours of July 14, a major fire began that would eventually destroy several buildings in Exira. One of those buildings housed a long-time favorite area tavern.

Firefighters from 26 departments aided in putting out the fire, with help from local volunteers. By 1 p.m. that day, the fire was under control, but not before destroying the bar, an apartment, a gift shop, coffee shop and a doctors office. No injuries were reported.

Late the following month, the Audubon County Sheriffs Office announced that the fire was being treated as a criminal investigation.

Ground-breaking ceremonies were held on July 17 for a public safety plaza honoring law enforcement and firefighters. The unused green space on the south side of West Broadway between Pearl and Main Streets is the site of the plaza and is the brainchild of Lloyd Marsh and his wife, Debbie, and Ron and Suzanne Mahoney.

The Mahoneys agreed to donate $350,000 for needed landscaping and the creation of bronzes of a police officer, a firefighter, a sheriffs deputy and an Iowa State Patrol trooper that would be featured in the plaza.

Organizers in the ongoing effort to revitalize the South Main Street district in Council Bluffs received a boost in late July  an Iowa Great Places designation from the state Department of Cultural Affairs. The South Main Cultural District runs from Fifth to 16th Avenues and encompasses the area between Third and Sixth Streets as well.

The Haymarket area is encompassed within. A key piece to the designation is that it allows organizers to apply for grant funding on projects related to the vision plan for the district submitted to the DCA. Efforts are underway to develop the Harvester II building on South Main Street into a hub for the arts in Council Bluffs.
State Sen. Mike Groene has announced his plans to seek a second term in the Legislature.

Groene said his decision was for the typical reason: I dont have done what I went down there to do.

The North Platte senator said his focus will remain on three major issues: the NCORPE water project, property taxes and school funding.

He said he will continue to press for a long-range water management plan. Groene supports selling the NCORPE land in Lincoln County to return it to the tax rolls, and said Wednesday he believes progress has been made toward that goal.

Calling property taxes burdensome, he said, I think it whats killing rural Nebraska.

Businesses dont want to locate here; people dont want to retire here because of high property taxes, he said.

On a related topic, he said he is for economic development and free enterprise but against government over-involvement. Thats why he opposes tax increment financing, he said.

Groene, who is chairman of the Legislatures Education Committee, said he will continue his efforts to give teachers control of discipline in the classroom.

One child has only one chance at a good public education, he said. We dont have time to say well solve it five years from now.

Groene said he has heard from people across the state who have asked him to run again.

I think I can make a difference, he said, I think I have.
The 2018 legislative session begins Jan. 3. This being the second year of our biennium cycle, all legislation that was on the floor of the Legislature or in committee is still alive. Senators and committees will be adding 300 or more newly introduced bills, and there is also to be taken into consideration a time-consuming $200 million budget deficit that will have to be addressed  makings for a crowded schedule.

Looming in the background is an upcoming referendum petition drive by the second house of the Legislature (the citizens) to address our regressive and burdensome property tax problem. I am personally going to sign the petition. We need to put the issue on the ballot, if for no other reason but to force action by the Legislature. Once the property tax issue is on the ballot, depending on how the Legislature and governor address the issue between now and next November, come Election Day you can vote against the ballot issue or vote for the issue and against the politicians who refused to listen to you.

Below are most of my bills that have carried over on general file:

 LB 127: Requires newspaper notice of time and location of political subdivision meetings. With the advent of the internet, some entities have forsaken the newspaper as the vehicle they use to announce meetings. Transparency in government should always be a defining tenet of democracy. We are working on a priority vehicle.

 LB 595: Give control of discipline in the classroom back to the teacher. It is becoming clearer to me, once we get past the good or bad influence of the home, the problems we are having in educational outcome and lack of personal responsibility in many of our youth is the atmosphere of the classroom. Yes, all students should have the opportunity to be included in the classroom, but no one has the right to disrupt the classroom to the detriment of others opportunity to learn. As Education Committee chairman, I will continue to prioritize this issue.

 LB 596: Equine massage. This issue is the poster child of overregulation and licensure by government. Due to restrictive practice requirements and expensive educational qualifications, there is not a single licensed equine massage therapist in Nebraska. Since Karen Hough of Arnold brought this issue to me, I have had many individuals  three in Lincoln County alone  contact me saying they would like to start an equine massage business. I have discovered since introducing the bill that in the world of horses, equine massage is commonly used to prepare horses for competitive events. The veterinarians I have talked to believe the overregulation is foolish. We will amend the bill requiring equine massage therapists to register with the Department of Health and Human Services stating their educational training along with identification information. With the registry in place, the veterinarian association will support the bill.

 LB 640: Limit the local property tax portion of public school funding, forcing the state to step up its constitutionally required efforts to fund public education. It was prioritized by Sen. Curt Friesen last year and will remain part of the property tax debate this year.

 LB 218: Transparency requirements on ground/surface water augmentation projects, and to clarify existing law allowing for the sale of the land while maintaining a reservation on water usage and transfer. At the end of last session, we fought off an attempt by special interest to have the bill killed in the Natural Resource Committee. The political climate has now changed; citizens have since gotten involved and created Landowners for a Common Purpose, their mission being to help inform the public and NRD board members of the existing legal ability they have to sell NCORPE land. Recently, the Middle Republican NRD unanimously passed a resolution telling their Sen. Dan Hughes, who is also Chairman of the Natural Resource Committee, to work for legislation to clarify their ability to authorize the sale of the land. LB 218 fits that description.

Barb and I have decided that I will run for re-election. Hopefully to most it comes as a Christmas present. Keep warm and have a blessed Christmas.

Contact Sen. Mike Groene: mgroene@leg.ne.gov or 402-471-2729.
GRIFFITH  A 28-year-old mother told police to keep her 10-year-old son after the boy ran from their apartment naked and injured Wednesday, an official said.

Teamisha L. Martin was arrested on suspicion of felony domestic battery, felony neglect of a dependent and misdemeanor disorderly conduct, police Cmdr. Keith Martin said. The police commander is not related to the defendant.

Griffith police were dispatched about 8 a.m. Wednesday to the 1900 block of Arbogast Street at the Park West Apartments for a report of a child who ran naked from a building, police said.

Officers arrived and located the child's mother, who admitted her son ran out of the building and told police they could keep her son, because she didn't want him anymore.

Police found the 10-year-old boy standing by a pool house, wearing only socks. The boy had blood on his mouth, police said.

An officer wrapped the boy in a patrol coat and led him to a squad car. The boy told police his mother became enraged after learning he'd been suspended from school for fighting, police said.

The mother began undressing the boy to "whoop" him, police said. The boy told police he began to pull away as his mother undressed him, and she punched him twice in the face before he escaped and ran outside.

The mother was uncooperative with officers, pushed an officer, poked him in the chest and screamed at him, police said.

The mother was taken to Lake County Jail, police said.

Police notified Indiana Child Protective Services, which took custody of the 10-year-old boy and a 3-year-old sibling, police said.
CROWN POINT  Jeffrey J. Smar, already accused in four armed robberies in Northwest Indiana, now faces charges in the armed robbery earlier this month of a Pizza Hut in Winfield.

Smar, 47, of Hebron, was charged Thursday in Lake Criminal Court with armed robbery and robbery.

A man with a pock-marked face and dark sunglasses allegedly entered Pizza Hut, 10889 Randolph St., in Winfield, at about 12:30 p.m. Dec. 10, according to a probable cause affidavit. He told the store's manager in a soft voice to empty the register, while armed with a silver-colored handgun.

The manager handed him the register's $1- and $5-bills, and he grabbed a $20 bill, the affidavit states. He then fled the restaurant.

The manager told police she saw a photo of the suspect in the Dec. 9 robbery of La Posh Salon, 7853 E. 108 Ave., and said it was the same man who robbed her restaurant, the affidavit states. That suspect was Smar, the affidavit states.

Smar and a co-defendant, Stephen B. Miller, were charged Dec. 14 in Lake Criminal Court with four counts of robbery in the incident at La Posh Salon.

Smar is also charged in Porter County in the Dec. 1 robbery of the Smoke Shop in Hebron; the Dec. 7 robbery of The Designer's Club salon on Ind. 2 in Center Township; and the Dec. 11 robbery of Country Kitchen in Hebron.

Police determined the license plate of the vehicle used in the Country Kitchen robbery was registered to Smar, the affidavit states. Police used that evidence to obtain a search warrant for Smar's home, where they found a .38 caliber revolver and receipts from La Posh Salon.

Smar and Miller allegedly admitted to police they robbed the salon. Smar said the men needed money to pay drug debts in South Chicago, an affidavit states.

Smar is jailed in Porter County. He is not afforded bond on the charges in Lake Criminal Court, court records state.
CROWN POINT  A man charged with shooting a resident during a Hammond burglary was released from jail Thursday without bond.

Cordell Hall, 30, was scheduled to appear at trial beginning Jan. 8 on allegations he and a co-defendant, Markest L. Hunter, shot a man in the chest and battered his wife during a home burglary in January.

The trial date was vacated Thursday by Judge Diane Boswell, who also ordered Hall's release without requiring he post a $100,000 surety bond.

The judge initially declined to release Hall without bond, noting he was extradited from Iowa in September, but agreed to the bond reduction after a discussion with attorneys at the bench.

Hall told the judge he would live in the Hessville neighborhood of Hammond. He said he worked two jobs, in construction and as a butcher, to support six children.

Hall and Hunter allegedly attacked the couple Jan. 25 at their home in the 300 block of 163rd Place. The couple's 16-year-old son was in the basement during the burglary, but was not harmed.

Hall is charged in Lake Criminal Court with four counts of attempted robbery, two counts of burglary and three counts of felony battery.

Hunter, 29, is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 18.

Hall is next scheduled to appear in court Feb. 9.
CROWN POINT  Lake County Councilman Jamal Washington was released from Lake County Jail Thursday after posting a $5,000 cash bond.

Washington, 44, of Merrillville, walked out of the jail's entrance door at 9:45 a.m. Deputy Police Chief Edward Jenkins said Washington then immediately walked up to Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr.'s administrative office. The sheriff wasn't there. Washington said he was only trying to find a public telephone there. He left minutes later.

Washington said later that morning he is innocent and will resume his public duties as one of seven public officials who oversee the finances of county government at the council's next meeting in January.

"To my naysayers, who say I should step down ... I'm innocent. I have witnesses, I have videotape. This is a political witch hunt to help change the direction of the upcoming election," Washington said.

He has announced he would be running for county clerk in 2018.

County jail officials said Gary City Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade posted the cash for Washington's bond. Washington, who answered Sparks-Wade's cellphone early Thursday, said he doesn't know who posted his bond.

Sparks-Wade couldn't be reached for comment. She and Washington have been political allies and jointly broadcast Facebook Live commentaries about county and Gary city politics.

Washington had been in the Lake County Jail since Merrillville police arrested him Dec. 8 and the prosecutor's office filed felony and misdemeanor charges alleging domestic violence against a female cousin.

He is charged with criminal confinement, intimidation, misdemeanor battery and interference with reporting a crime over a Dec. 5 dispute with his 23-year-old cousin, Kamaria Buckley, in the councilman's home, where she also was living.

Buckley recanted her claims against Washington in an interview with The Times, but the state is proceeding with charges based on her original statement and a search of the councilman's home.

Sarah Kidwell, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Supreme Court, said Thursday the state appellate clerk's office is processing a request for the appointment of a special judge in Washington's case to avoid a conflict between Washington and the local court, whose finances he oversees as one of seven members of the county council.

The state earlier appointed special prosecutors Stanley M. Levco and John H. Meyers to relieve the county prosecutor's office of a similar conflict.

The state also hired a special judge and prosecutor after Washington was charged with battering his wife and a female employee Dec. 3, 2015, at his home in Merrillville.

He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of battering his wife and was sentenced to one year on probation.

The state alleges the new allegations against Washington are a violation of the terms of his probation, and he now could face jail time in last year's case. That case is being handled in Porter County.

Meyers said Thursday there is no court order restricting Washington from contacting his cousin at this point, because a special judge has yet to be named to issue the order.
CROWN POINT  A criminal court judge granted a bond reduction Thursday for a man who claims he was an unwitting accomplice to a nail salon robbery in Merrillville.

Christopher J. Brengel and Sedric A. Smith Jr. are charged in the Nov. 28 robbery of Gina's Nails, 6130 Broadway, in Merrillville.

Brengel, 34, told Judge Diane Boswell at a court hearing Thursday he was neither the robber nor the driver during the robbery, but only stood outside their vehicle waiting for Smith.

Smith, 21, allegedly entered the salon armed at 4:24 p.m. and demanded the store's money. One employee hit a panic button. Other employees fled the salon and waived down a Gary police officer.

The men, who are from Wisconsin, fled the store in a black Honda, but were later arrested by Lake Station police.

Both men are charged in Lake Criminal Court with attempted armed robbery and intimidation.

Brengel requested Thursday his $60,000 surety bond be reduced to $15,000. He said if he were released he would live with his parents in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.

I made a mistake, he told Boswell. I'm going to be more cautious with who I hang out with.

Deputy Prosecutor Maureen Koonce said Brengel had several criminal convictions in Illinois, for both thefts and robberies.

Boswell agreed to reduce Brengel's surety bond to $25,000, or $2,500 cash.

He is scheduled to appear at a court hearing Jan. 25.
MICHIGAN CITY  A recently released inmate from the Indiana State Prison was back in custody Thursday after an officer allegedly caught him trying to smuggle contraband into his old stomping grounds.

A patrol officer was driving in the area of the prison along Woodlawn and Sheridan avenues at about 9 a.m. when he saw a man  later identified as Tyron Kennedy, 37, of Michigan City  on the side of the road, Michigan City police said in a news release.

As the officer got closer, he watched Kennedy, whose moped was parked nearby, throw an object over the fence into the prison grounds, police said in the release.

Prison personnel assisted the officer in retrieving the package that Kennedy allegedly threw over a fence into the prison grounds.

The package contained three cellphones, tobacco and a thin, blue package titled Suboxone, a prescription medication commonly used to combat opioid withdrawal symptoms but can be addictive when misused.

Kennedy was released from prison Nov. 24 after serving time on felony robbery charges, Indiana Department of Correction records show.

Kennedy was then placed under arrest and charged with three counts of trafficking a cellphone, one count of trafficking tobacco and one count of trafficking a controlled substance, all level 5 felonies.
INDIANAPOLIS  A Chicago attorney accused of pocketing insurance checks intended for her Gary clients has voluntarily given up her Indiana law license, rather than face possible disciplinary sanctions by the Indiana Supreme Court.

Ruth Ann Batey acknowledged in her resignation from the state's bar that she is the subject of an attorney misconduct investigation and could not successfully defend herself if prosecuted, according to court records.

Chief Justice Loretta Rush said Batey's resignation terminates the attorney discipline proceedings.

But Batey also now is barred from seeking permission to again practice law in Indiana for five years, and must demonstrate clear and convincing evidence of her remorse, rehabilitation and fitness to practice law to regain her license, Rush said.

Illinois attorney registration records show Batey was last authorized to practice law in that state in 2013.

In June, Batey, 47, was charged in Lake County with Level 5 felony theft for allegedly keeping $88,750 in vehicle accident insurance settlements that were supposed to be paid to her clients, Shane and Robin Bolde, who both are Gary police officers.

Court records show the omnibus hearing for Batey's case has been rescheduled three times. It's currently set for Jan. 16.
Angelica Kasper remembers playing schoolhouse with her friends as a child  and realizing early on what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Now she is prepared to achieve her goals and be a role model for young children. Her years of steady dedication to her dream were rewarded when she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education this month at the Purdue University Northwest commencement ceremony.

As a lifelong resident of LaPorte, Kasper wanted to stay close to home and her family while pursuing her degree and found PNW to be a perfect fit.

She discovered, however, that entering the education program was not a simple task. Required to pass the Indiana CORE Assessment for Educator Licensure exam for admittance, Kasper found herself facing a challenging situation. Struggling to pass, she retook the exam multiple times and contemplated changing her major repeatedly.

Her collegiate career was extended by an additional year as she persevered through the discouraging circumstances until she finally passed and was admitted into the program.

I never gave up on myself and I thank my parents the most for helping me overcome these challenges. I want to become a teacher, and that is what I will do, Kasper said assuredly.

Kasper found her courses on learning how to manage a classroom through traditional and on-site methods to be encouraging experiences. We were able to go to schools to meet local teachers and observe what they were doing, she said.

In addition to the field experience, the courses covered meaningful instruction and lessons on how to build community in the classroom, along with acts of kindness, inclusivity and time management.

She was always very attentive, said Julie Feikes, director of student teaching and field experiences on the Westville campus. When I observed her teaching a lesson, she was so compassionate and creative. She will be an outstanding teacher and she is going to make a difference in this world.

Upon completing her semester as a student teacher at Riley Elementary School in LaPorte, she is gearing up to be a substitute teacher and preparing to take the state licensing tests. She will then be eligible to submit her application to be a fully licensed teacher in the state of Indiana.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed the Republican-controlled U.S. House and Senate without a single Democratic vote, prompted very different reactions from the Republican and Democratic lawmakers representing Northwest Indiana in Congress.

Here's what they had to say about the measure that now goes to Republican President Donald Trump. He's promised to sign it into law.

U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind.

"I voted for pro-growth tax reform that will provide needed relief to American families. This bill is going to create a tax code that is simpler, fairer and that allows Hoosiers to keep more of their hard-earned money.

"The bill also repeals the harmful Obamacare individual mandate tax, allowing families to choose the health care thats right for them.

"When paired with regulatory reform, this tax bill is going to give a major boost to our economy, creating an environment thats ripe for jobs and small business growth."

U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.

"The reasons I oppose this bill are plain and simple, clear and commonsense: Instead of providing a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the middle class, this bill cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans while raising taxes on a majority of families making less than $75,000 in the coming years.

"And instead of protecting American jobs by adopting provisions from my End Outsourcing Act, an effort that President Trump has told me on numerous occasions that he is all-in on and he supports, instead this tax hike bill does zero to claw back tax breaks and incentives awarded to corporations that later decide to outsource American jobs."

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville

"I opposed the Republican tax bill because it is nothing more than a $1.5 trillion tax cut paid for by working class individuals and families.

"This is a bad bill for our health-care system because the elimination of the incentive for individuals to obtain health insurance will create further chaos in the insurance market, increase premiums, the number of uninsured citizens and harm the effectiveness of hospitals and doctors.

"True tax reform should provide greater equity among all taxpayers, encourage productive economic investments and not increase our national deficit. The Republican tax bill meets none of those requirements and instead creates additional financial burdens, uncertainty and instability in the lives of working Americans."

U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Elkhart

"If you believe the rhetoric you hear, you may think this bill means the world is ending. I guarantee you, its not.

"The truth is this tax cut bill means a brighter future for the hardworking Americans who will have more money in their pockets and a better shot at the American Dream.

"People will be able to keep more of the money they earn and spend less time filing their taxes.

"This isnt just a good bill  this is a great bill. This isnt the apocalypse  its a new day in America."

U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Brownsburg

"This historic tax reform is going to help the American people keep more of their hard earned money, create more opportunity and make American businesses more competitive at home and abroad. With President Trumps leadership on this legislation, we are going to unleash our countrys economic potential."
North Korea recently launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that, upon developing a successful re-entry capability, would be capable of hitting any part of the U.S. homeland. This test marks the 23rd North Korean test launch since February, and theres little reason to suspect testing will not continue.

After the launch, leader Kim Jong-un said North Korea had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.

Though the Hermit Kingdom may not yet have a fully developed ICBM capable of launching a nuclear weapon at a targeted city within the United States, that development may not be too distant. To protect against the threat of a nuclear strike, America needs to develop and expand its missile defense capabilities.

U.S. and South Korean officials believe Pyongyang could be able to launch a reliable nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile by early 2018. The United States has not taken the threat lightly, pursuing sanctions, diplomatic overtures toward China and partnering with South Korea on exercises to show military might.

It also has coordinated with South Korea, despite opposition from China, to place the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system in South Korea to protect its ally and the 100,000 Americans who currently live on the peninsula. THAAD, a welcome evolution of missile defense, is capable of intercepting mid-range missiles within a circumference of 124 miles.

The United States also has its Patriot missile defense system in South Korea for intercepting short-range launches. Yet with North Koreas repeated ICBM tests and the looming threat that missiles could soon hit American territory, the United States should focus on protecting our allies and servicemen abroad and a system capable of intercepting ICBMs.

Importantly, the first branch of government is thinking about the long-term consequences of belligerent nations someday using the worlds most destructive weapons. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed Congress and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 12, recognizes the importance of missile defense.

The NDAA authorizes $12.3 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, which represents a much-needed increase from Obama administration funding levels.

While the funding levels set via the recently passed NDAA represent a substantial improvement, Congress will still need to appropriate all of the money it authorizes in the bill. Given the unique and growing threats from North Korea, the possibility of an increasingly powerful nuclear Iran and the nuclear capabilities of our more conventional adversary in Russia, Congress ought not to hesitate in appropriating these funds.

The NDAA allows for expanding existing capabilities and developing new capabilities. As of this year, the United States deploys 36 interceptors for its ground-based missile defense system, capable of intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile in the midcourse phase of its flight, with four interceptors in California and 32 in Alaska. Experts have recommended 44 interceptors as a minimum number sufficient to protect the West Coast, Hawaii and Alaska.

The current GMD system is focused on defending the western parts of U.S. territory, but capabilities should be extended to provide missile defense testing and deployment options in the Midwest and East Coast.

The bill also recognizes the need to develop a robust, multi-layered missile defense system by authorizing development of space-based sensors and interceptors.

While denuclearization is a noble goal with respect to North Korea, it has proved an elusive one. In the meantime, vulnerable homeland assets should be protected by a robust missile defense program.
The evidence Lake County Recorder Mike Brown engaged in a sexual affair with a subordinate government worker  with some interludes occurring within his actual government center office  is becoming too clear, and embarrassing, to ignore.

Brown owes it to his county government colleagues  and most importantly Lake County residents  to resign and stop dragging the rest of us through the embarrassment of his indiscretions.

Earlier this week, Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter met with members of The Times staff, explaining his office would not be filing criminal charges against Brown tied to the sexual encounters.

That decision followed an independent investigation by Indiana State Police, which also noted Brown likely didn't commit any crimes in the matter.

However, the investigation also concluded Brown carried on a sexual relationship with a married subordinate.

Police and prosecutors both concluded there's enough evidence that Brown engaged in the sexual relationship with Estela Montalvo, a former part-time office worker who hoped to become a full-time employee.

Attorneys for Montalvo are pushing forward with a civil lawsuit against Brown, alleging he sexually harassed her and created a hostile work environment.

At the heart of Montalvo's allegations is a premise she expected to solidify and advance her employment through the sexual relationship.

Regardless of any consensual nature of the relationship, it's becoming clear Brown crossed a line of workplace propriety. And he did so while overseeing a taxpayer-funded office to which voters entrusted him.

Carter noted Brown has denied that any sexual encounter of any kind occurred. Brown has not returned Times calls seeking comment.

The evidence compiled by both police and prosecutors indicates Brown is lying.

Having an affair on government time or in a government office may not be a crime.

But its an untenable embarrassment none of us should tolerate.
Record Number of Black Candidates Seeking History During Midterm Elections

While some already are household names like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Val Demings in Florida, and Anthony Brown in Maryland, others like Natalie James in Arkansas, Will Boyd in Alabama,...

Tell the Supreme Court: We Still Need Affirmative Action

One of the great joys of my life is teaching. Im fortunate to teach classes on social justice at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most respected schools in...
A weekly collection of lesson plans, writing prompts and activities from The Learning Network, a site that helps educators and students teach and learn with The New York Times.
Police boss Kale Kayihura has hit back at Kampala Capital City Authority executive director Jennifer Musisi for criticizing the role of police in managing traffic in the city.

There was chaos in the city on Friday evening following the withdrawal of traffic police officers on the orders of Kayihura. Police withdrew the traffic officers after Musisi criticised them for intercepting traffic lights controls, saying it defeats the purpose for the investment.

Musisi made the remark while meeting World Bank officials. She blamed the traffic directorate for the poor functioning of the traffic lights.



"When police intercepts the function of these traffic light, this wastes our heavy investment and also breeds a culture of law breakers yet the police are law makers," reads a tweet on Musisi's official handle.

When the tweet went viral, the Traffic police boss, Stephen Kasiima sought permission from Kayihura to withdraw traffic police, which led to heavy jam in the city.

Jennifer Musisi talking to Kale Kayihura earlier

Kayihura ordered the traffic police to resume work following widespread complaints from motorists.

"People called me complaining and after a preaching where we were told to forgive our critics, I advised them to deploy on traffic lights again," Kayihura said.



Speaking to residents of Kulambiro in Kisasi on Sunday evening, the visibly angry Kayihura said KCCA has joined the bandwagon of those criticizing police since it has become fashionable.



"They sit with World Bank and simply because it's now on fashion to talk badly about the police, they criticize us even where we are doing a good job. That we are disrupting the functioning of their traffic lights, "Kayihura said in an angry tone.



The disagreement between police and KCCA over the management of city traffic is far from over. Peter Kauju, the KCCA spokesperson, says the authority maintains it position that the traffic lights should be left to function as they were intended to do.



"We have been installing traffic lights and they should be allowed to function properly. Police should continue with arresting motorists who don't abide by the traffic lights and those who commit other offenses," Kauju told URN.



Adding that, "No one should be contradicting the traffic lights by stopping vehicles when the lights say go or vice versa."

There was traffic mess when police officers withdrew from the city roads

URN has learnt that police and KCCA have had several meetings about the traffic lights involving others stakeholders like ministry of Works and Transport but failed to harmonise their positions.



Both institutions are mandated by law to handle traffic in Kampala, which is the root of all misunderstandings. Apart from installing traffic lights Section 7(j) of the KCCA act mandates KCCA to install, organize and manage traffic.



Section 22 of the Police Act to stop also mandates police to divert, or otherwise direct and regulate the course of traffic.

There are about ten traffic light points in Kampala, which are yet to be synchronized. There are plans to install traffic lights at 32 other junctions to raise the number to 42.



While the lights are left to control traffic during a bigger part of the day, during peak hours, traffic officers take on the role directing traffic in total disregard of the traffic lights. The officers direct traffic putting into consideration the route with the highest volume of vehicles.
On Monday, Raphael Magyezis Constitution Amendment (No2) Bill 2017 was tabled for the Houses passage.

Two reports; the majority and minority from the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee, which processed the bill, were also tabled for debate.

Outnumbered by the ruling NRM, the opposition appeared ready to filibuster proceedings. But the speaker was ready for them as Sulaiman Kakaire reports.



Speaker Rebecca Kadaga arrived at about 10:15am and promptly issued a stern warning to MPs she suspended during the chaotic September 27 plenary. She warned that if they misbehaved again, she would not hesitate to suspend them for seven sittings.

Magyezi was then given the floor. But even before he got to the microphone, several opposition MPs loudly raised points of procedure. Magyezis voice was drowned out in the din.

Kadaga allowed Kawempe South MP Mubarak Munyagwa to speak but his claim that Kassanda South MP Simeo Nsubuga had told him that the NRM had stashed 19 guns inside parliament was too much for the speaker. Munyagwa was told to sit down.

Then, Cecilia Ogwal wondered whether it was right for a bill to be read for a second time in the absence of the attorney general, his deputy and the constitutional affairs minister. Kadaga ordered that one of the responsible ministers must be present.

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga

She signalled Magyezi to continue. Immediately, Opposition Chief Whip Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda, Allan Ssewanyana, Munyagwa, Gerald Karuhanga, Wilfred Niwagaba and other opposition MPs jumped up. Kadaga ordered them to sit down. They refused; so, she allowed Niwagaba to speak.

Niwagaba wondered whether it was not sub judice for the bill to be discussed when it was the subject of a court dispute.

He cited a case filed by Winnie Kiiza (Leader of Opposition) and others against the attorney general in the East African Court of Justice. He quoted Section 38 (2) of the EAC treaty. Kadaga ruled that the provision had not been tested anywhere, and that she would have to establish whether it binds sovereign legislatures. She again signalled Magyezi to continue. The opposition MPs remained standing.

Ssemujju was allowed to speak. Ssemujju reminded the speaker of her earlier ruling in a matter involving Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kutesa accused of soliciting a bribe from a Chinese official arrested by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations.

He said Kadaga ruled that the House could not discuss the Kutesa matter because it was before court. He wondered whether the speaker was not being inconsistent in allowing debate on the Magyezi bill to continue.

But Kadaga insisted that Magyezi continues. Then Ssemujju said the bill had no certificate of financial implication. A little rattled, Kadaga advised Ssemujju to stop discussing the bill whose report had not been read yet. Ssemujju was ordered to sit down.

Time check was 11am and nothing much had been done.

Magyezi eventually read his bill, and Leader of Opposition Kiiza stood up to speak but opposition MPs shouted that there were strangers in the House. They pointed at some strange men standing behind the speaker. She calmly said those were her new bodyguards.

She invited Jacob Oboth-Oboth, chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee, to read the majority report amidst jeering and cheering.

Then Gerald Karuhanga cited rule 201 (2), which says that a committee report can only be debated at least three days after tabling.

Kadaga told Karuhanga she had asked the clerk to parliament to upload the report to every MPs iPad three days earlier.

And that, she said, amounted to laying the report on table!

Kadaga waved the chairman on. But opposition MPs repeatedly interrupted him. Kadaga had shot down almost all procedural objections until Lwemiyaga MP Theodore Ssekikubo alleged that some MPs had illegally endorsed the Oboth Oboth report.

Ssekikubo triggered rule 154, which provides that an MP cannot not be a member of more than one sessional committee. Ssekikubo said signatories; Rose Lilly Adong and Prossy Akampurira Mbabazi were members of the Defence and Internal Affairs committee.

Some MPs asked Kadaga to order the Clerk to print a list of MPs showing committee membership. Finally she adjourned to 2pm. But she also summarily ordered six opposition MPs not to return for the afternoon session.

These were, Ssemujju, Ssewanyana, Mubarak Munyagwa, Karuhanga, Jonathan Odur and Anthony Akol. The six had been a thorn in Kadagas fresh; so, when plenary resumed at 2:20pm, Oboth-Oboth had a smooth sailing.

Kiiza unsuccessfully pleaded with the speaker to rescind her suspension. She also ruled that by the time the committee report was signed, the two MPs had been re-designated to the legal committee by the NRM Chief Whip.

Kampala Central MP Muhammad Nsereko asked whether it was right for Kadaga to suspend only opposition MPs for standing yet their NRM counterparts were also on their feet. [There were more NRM MPs than seats. So, some of them stood during plenary]

Kadagas sharp retort: NRM MPs are standing on their chairs!

Kiiza had had enough. She led an opposition walk-out. Only Agago MP Ogenga Latigo and NRM rebel Monicah Amoding stayed behind. Kadaga then ordered NRM MPs to occupy the opposition side. An hour later, opposition MPs returned. Despite a spirited fight, debate continued.
A resourceful pickpocket managed to steal 53 smartphones at a concert in Birmingham, England, by using a very unusual accessory  a womens swimming suit. This allowed him to conceal all the stolen phones as he tried to get his hands on even more.

Romanian national Alin Marin, 22, attended a Royal Blood concert at Arena Birmingham on 18 November wearing the black and pink compression suit and a pair of skinny jeans. He made his way to the mosh pit where he was able to relieve dozens of revelers of their phones without them noticing. The pickpocket would stash each of them inside the swimsuit, and move on to the next target. He was kind of like a living, breathing deposit box. At one point, he had 53 phones stashed close to his body.

Photo: West Midlands Police

Unfortunately for Marin, Birmingham police were also mingling with the crowd, as part of a covert operation prompted by intelligence regarding thefts targeting the bands fans at concerts earlier in the year. They arrested Marin on Broad Street shortly after he left the gig, and recovered the phones from a nearby car park.

This was organized pickpocketing. Marin went equipped to steal phones and took advantage of revelers enjoying themselves in the standing area, Birmingham city center Police Sergeant Julia Slater from West Midlands Police said. Many of the phones were taken from front jeans pockets, which people believe is a safer place to carry valuables, but due to the jostling in the mosh pit, they simply didnt realize theyd been targeted. He slipped phones inside the swimsuit and effectively turned himself into a deposit box for the phones, allowing him to carry tens of phones concealed around his body

Photo: West Midlands Police

Birmingham Crown Court charged Marin with theft on Monday 18 December, and he will serve a three-year sentence in jail.
If youve ever wondered why washing your pillow case every once in a while is so important, this case may give you an idea. A Chinese woman who, for some reason, handt washed her pillow case in five years recently turned up at a hospital in Wuhan, where doctors discovered over 100 mites living on her eyelashes.

The woman, known only as Ms. Xu, told doctors that her eyes had been red and itchy for around two years, but that she just simply got used to their condition and relied on over-the-counter eye drops to alleviate the symptoms, instead of seeing an ophthalmologist. It was only when the problem got so bad that her eyelashes and eyelids started getting stuck together that she finally decided it was time to get some professional help.

Photo: Oriental Daily

While examining the womans eyelashes, doctors were shocked to find that they were infected with mites. According to Chinese media, the womans eyelashes were home to over 100 mites, with some hair follicles harboring colonies of 10 eyelash parasites. Obviously, they were curious about how all those mites ended up on the womans lashes, but even though they suspected it might of had something to do with a lack of hygiene, they werent ready for her answer. The woman said that she hadnt washed her pillow curtain in the last 4  5 years.

Ms. Xu was diagnosed with blepharitis and conjunctivitis, inflammation of the base of the eyelashes and of the eye, but she reportedly made a full recovery after receiving treatment at the hospital in Wuhan.

Photo: Oriental Daily

So, yeah, unless you want mites in your eyelashes, try to wash your pillow case at least once a year :).
Penske Media, which publishes titles including Variety and Deadline, has acquired a 51 percent stake in Rolling Stone. Singapore-based BandLabs Technologies retains its 49 percent share of the magazine. Jann Wenner, the magazines co-founder, is staying on as editorial director, and Gus Wenner will keep the positions of COO and president as well as becoming a member of Penskes advisory board. While details of the deal have not been officially disclosed, a report from the Financial Times said that it values Rolling Stone at more than $110 million. Penske Media owner Jay Penske said his goal was to make sure that Rolling Stone continues to ascend for decades across multiple media platforms.



Bill DeBlasio

New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio says that government-supported media might be one solution to the recent woes hitting journalism, the New York Post reports. Do I trust the public sector to create fair and responsive media more than a bunch of rich individuals from multinational corporations?, DeBlasio said in an interview conducted by reporters from the recently shut down websites DNAinfo New York and Gothamist and posted on Medium.com. Of course. DeBlasios comments follow a piece published last month in the New York Daily News, in which New York City Councilmember Rory Lancman wrote its time for New York City to get back into the business of funding local journalism. The city was in that business with radio station WNYC until it was sold off in 1995.



Charlie Rose

The National Press Club Board of Governors has unanimously voted to rescind the Fourth Estate Lifetime Achievement Award it presented to Charlie Rose in 2014. The award goes to a journalist who has achieved distinction for a lifetime of contributions to American journalism. The board concluded the actions described in the charges made against Rose represent neither the values of the National Press Club nor the criteria for the award. In a statement posted on the NPC website, the board reaffirmed its commitment to the right of all journalists to pursue their work free from harassment or discrimination.
Nebraskans with rooms to spare in 2017 cashed in to the tune of $4.3 million by renting out guest rooms, apartments and entire homes through Airbnb.

Annual estimates from the online room-sharing service pegged guest arrivals in the Cornhusker State at about 46,000 this year.

Thats more than double the 22,000 bookings from last year in which people using the online service rented a room or apartment  or entire house  from Nebraskans, a year in which hosts here took in $2.5 million.

Amid the growth, some in the hotel industry say the room-sharing service is an unfair competitor, skirting regulations that they have to comply with, and depriving state and local coffers of revenue, like hotel and motel taxes.

If short-term rentals and the platforms that support them wish to be considered legal players in the lodging industry, they need to follow the rules as does the rest of the industry, the Nebraska Hotel & Lodging Association said last year.

In a report published last year, global hotel consultant HVS listed the total tax rates assessed in 149 U.S. urban centers; it calculated Omahas total tax take at 17.5 percent, tied for No. 3. Those taxes are seen by tourism boosters as a source of revenue for local spending; the taxes arent assessed on Airbnb bookings.

But Airbnb says it can coexist with hotels.

The online service points to growth in local Airbnb bookings that coincides with higher occupancy rates at Omaha-area hotels, according to data from hotel market researcher STR.

Year-to-date occupancy at local hotels through November was 60.3 percent, up 0.1 percent from the same period last year. Actual demand was up 2.4 percent, but a flood of new rooms this year held down occupancy.

As far as Omaha is concerned, theres no direct threat between hotels and Airbnb, says Kristina Phalen, president of the Nebraska Hotel & Lodging Association. Were not feeling any pressure.

The way the online company sees it, higher demand means theres more than enough demand for both hotels and Airbnb.

This indicates that Airbnb is opening up the state to a new slice of prospective tourists by catering to travelers less able to afford hotels, for example, a statement from the company said.

Omaha accounted for about 27,000 of the states Airbnb guest arrivals in 2017. Hosts here claimed more than $2.7 million in income  more than the entire state had from such Airbnb bookings in 2016.

The San Francisco-based service found its start in the depths of the Great Recession as a way for people to turn their greatest expense, their home, into a more fully used asset, it stated in a report earlier this year.

Now, the service is finding a firmer foothold in rural areas, places with a relatively minuscule share of hotel accommodations.

Those locations saw a boom in demand for rooms during the days leading up to the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, for example: More than 1,400 bookings across the state represented a year-over-year increase that exceeded 1,500 percent, the company reported.

But even without the late-summer bump from the eclipse, Airbnb spokesman Ben Breit said 2017 arrivals still are nearly double those in 2016, so the service is clearly and rapidly growing in Nebraska.
WASHINGTON  Midlands lawmakers joined other jubilant Republicans on the White House steps Wednesday to celebrate passage of a massive tax overhaul.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, snapped a photo of President Donald Trump from his perch above the podium, while Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., smiled nearby.

Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, posed for a cheerful selfie with several colleagues at one point.

Reps. Don Bacon and Adrian Smith, both Nebraska Republicans, also were among those basking in the afterglow of their largest legislative victory this year.

Midlands senators hailed the legislation in press releases issued after the Senates middle-of-the-night 51-48 vote in its favor.

We are one step closer to helping hardworking, lower-and middle-income Iowans keep more of what theyve earned, Ernst said. This tax reform package will also strengthen our economy and ensure job creators of all sizes see relief from an overly complicated tax code.

It was a much different atmosphere than the one that followed Republicans failed efforts earlier this year to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Republicans are expected to tout the tax measure as a signature legislative achievement, one they hope will pay dividends in next years midterm elections.

But they have their work cut out for them in selling the legislation to a skeptical public that views the bill as overly tilted in favor of corporate interests and wealthy individuals even as it drives up the budget deficit.

And Democrats will look to translate that perception into votes. Democratic candidates in Nebraska and Iowa issued statements criticizing the legislation.

Jane Raybould, for example, is seeking to challenge Fischer next year. Raybould described the bill as a massive giveaway to the wealthy.

Fischer, however, has embraced the bill and said most Nebraskans will see lower taxes because of it.

Congress is following through on a once-in-a-generation opportunity: delivering tax relief to families in Nebraska and across the country, Fischer said.

Fischer also touted the inclusion of her proposal to create a pilot program offering tax credits to companies that offer their workers paid family leave.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the few senators who were in office when the last major tax overhaul was passed in 1986, was not on hand for the White House celebration but praised the bill.

This historic legislation makes good on a promise to deliver tax relief to Americans from every walk of life and income level, Grassley said. Its passage is good news for working families, U.S. jobs and industry and an economy that was stagnant for far too long.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., was presiding over the Senate at the time of the White House event. His statement on the bill made no reference to the core of the changes to the tax code but instead talked up one particular provision in it  repeal of the Affordable Care Acts individual mandate.

Sasse noted that the mandate required American families to purchase a particular product.

It was crazy and wrong, Sasse said. And in practice, it meant that families were presented with a terrible decision: either pay a federal fine or pay an unaffordable price for one of the crummy choices still available on the exchanges. Not anymore. Republicans still need to keep our repeal and replace promise, but tonight the Senate took an important step to save families from Obamacares worst provision.

Repealing the individual mandate represents one more step in GOP efforts to chip away at the law, but experts predict that it will result in millions more uninsured Americans and contribute to increases in health insurance premiums.

All five GOP House members representing Nebraska and western Iowa supported the bill Tuesday and again Wednesday after a procedural glitch required a revote.

Bacon, who represents the Omaha area, said he was feeling good after voting for the bill and said it will help both individual Americans and the countrys businesses.

I think this is right for America, Bacon said. Its right to get our businesses on a competitive level playing field with the rest of the world so we can expand here, bring businesses back. And I think we delivered on our promises.
NORTH PLATTE  State Sen. Mike Groene has announced his plans to seek a second term in the Legislature.

Groene said his decision was for the typical reason: I dont have done what I went down there to do.

The North Platte senator said his focus will remain on three major issues: the Nebraska Cooperative Republican Platte Enhancement water project, property taxes and school funding.

Groene said he will continue to press for a long-range water management plan. He supports selling the NCORPE land in Lincoln County to return it to the tax rolls, and said Wednesday that he believes progress has been made toward that goal.

He called property taxes in the state burdensome, and said he thinks its whats killing rural Nebraska.

Groene, who is chairman of the Legislatures Education Committee, said he will continue his efforts to give teachers control of discipline in the classroom.
All-Bee Boys Soccer selection process explained The Bees sports staff is once again proud to recognize some of the areas top talent with the 2022 installment...

 All-Bee Boys Soccer  First Teamers were vital to their squads success

While there is no I in team, there certainly are individuals whose skill at their respective sports help improve the...
Coming soon

Scheduled to open in area theaters next weekend is ... nothing. All the big Christmas movies are arriving this weekend, en masse, with plenty to choose from. So keep on choosing. Expect new releases to resume Jan. 5.

Film clips

Coming eventually: A lot of the movies you're hearing about as year-end award contenders have opened in a few markets, for qualifying's sake. But it could be awhile before we see them here in Pantagraphland. Most anticipated, perhaps, is Guillermo Del Toro's inter-species adult fairy tale The Shape of Water, co-starring Golden Globe-nominated IWU theater alum Richard Jenkins (who is next week's GO! section cover story subject by the way, complete with exclusive interview). The film is being released on a staggered basis, with B-N not expected to see it until mid-January. Other talked-about films not arriving until around that time include a trio of high-profile bio-pics: Steven Spielberg's Washington Post-set Oscar contender, The Post, with Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as publisher Katharine Graham; the J. Paul Getty drama from which Kevin Spacey was removed and Christopher Plummer inserted, All the Money in the World; and Gotti, with John Travolta as crime family head John Gotti.

January at the Normal: OK, make that, January and a wee bit o' December, since old and new year straddle next weekend and its offerings. Closing out the 17 is the documentary on screen legend Hedy Lamarr's side gig as scientific genius, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017), Dec. 28 and 30, Jan. 5 and 7, surrounded by two of her vintage films, Ziegfeld Girl (1941), also with James Stewart and Judy Garland, Dec. 29-30, and the "Casablanca"-esque The Conspirators (1944), co-starring "Casablanca's" Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, Jan. 4 and 6 ... All the Queen's Horses (2017), a documentary on the Dixon, Ill., treasurer who pulled off the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history, Jan. 12 and 14 ... and Bill Nye: The Science Guy (2017), a new documentary on the longtime PBS foe of the increasingly popular "anti-scientific thinking" movement, Jan. 18, 20, 26 and 28.
Here is a selection of stories curated by AP editors to keep you informed as you start your weekend.
The political carnage of the Alabama Senate race, in which Democrat Doug Jones upset President Donald Trump's candidate, Roy Moore, in an ultra-GOP state, humiliated the president and has left the Grand Old Party badly in need of a credible old-time establishment leader to take him on. But none is in sight.

Trump, in openly campaigning for the loser, an accused sexual predator of young girls, has tarnished the once-respected party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan.

So have the current GOP congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, in timidly embracing the Trump legislative agenda, including a widely disdained tax reform bill that would make the rich richer and practically everyone else poorer.

McConnell at least offered a nod of resistance to Moore's candidacy initially by suggesting that he withdraw, and indicating that if Moore won he would face a Senate vote to expel him. Among the few Republicans in Congress these days posing some resistance to Trump are Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, but eventually they will be leaving Capitol Hill in retirement.

Of others in their pliant willingness to pursue one success in Congress after nearly a full year of embarrassing failures, they have shelved their own good judgment on the tax reform bill. They have backed a bunch of proposals subject to no committee hearings as they would be under the "regular order" by which Congress customarily has done its business.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, hospitalized again with brain cancer, pleaded during the earlier failed Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare to slow down and follow that customary route. It was to no avail, then or now, in the rush to give Trump something, anything, to boast about.

In a ludicrously transparent White House parade of select family beneficiaries of the tax bill the other day, the president trotted them before television cameras to recite their gratitude to him. But no details were offered on how the bill itself would be paid for in dividing the spoils to be handed to them.

The 15 or so allegedly leading GOP presidential prospects who took on Trump in the 2016 party primaries folded like a deck of jokers then, leaving a barren stable of possible 2020 contenders. Of the bunch, only Gov. John Kasich of Ohio acquitted himself with a semblance of honor and plausible political or policy leadership and governing experience.

The party thus appears at this juncture to face the possibility of more Trump division and chaos, with the best hope for relief in the hands of special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russian collusion in the election that put Trump in the presidency.

The Alabama result dealt a severe blow to Trump's former chief strategist and ultra-nationalist provocateur, Steve Bannon, currently back to running the right-wing Breitbart News website. His open campaigning for Moore was a transparent bid to annihilate and replace the old Republican establishment. It challenged his reputation as a political genius and severely diminished his stature in the party, while Bannon apparently remained in the good graces of his onetime boss.

At the same time, the upset victory of Jones in Alabama may boost Democratic grassroots efforts for the party's House and Senate candidates in the midterm congressional elections next November. But the party of FDR, the Kennedys, the Clintons and Obama may not be in appreciably better shape than the GOP in terms of identifying leadership for the future.

Democratic turnout among African-Americans, white women and young voters rose appreciably for Jones, and the growing "#MeToo" movement of declared female victims of male sexual harassment has also revived the similar accusations against Trump himself, as his approval rating continues to slip.

The quest for a new credible leader thus faces both parties, in a period in which political dissatisfaction plagues them alike. Some Republicans may agree to take another look at Mitt Romney, their previous moderate losing standard-bearer. Some Democrats are musing about another try by former Vice President Joe Biden, despite his current age of 75.

The circumstances seem ready, however, for some fresh face in both major parties, with not much serious talk about whom that might be.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner was able to encapsulate the Alice in Wonderland ecosystem of Illinois politics in a few terse sentences.

After a recent state Farm Bureau conference, Rauner, as he does, came out swinging against his arch-nemesis, longtime Democrat House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago. According to the Chicago Tribune, a reporter asked him that "if the speaker has been around for more than three decades, hasnt the governor been in charge for the last three years?"

Rather than spinning that pointed question, the governor entered what could only be described as a Zen moment, with a dose of patented Rauner-style simmering frustration.

I wish I had. We would have our problems fixed. Illinois would be on a great future, Rauner said. Wed have 200,000 more jobs in this state, we would have lower property taxes in this state, we would have term limits in this state, if I was in charge. I am not in charge. Im trying to get to be in charge.

Whoa.

Lets review what just happened there:

 Rauner has been chief executive for three years.

 Rauner is running for re-election.

 Rauner said hes not in charge.

The wisdom of articulating such a comment in that moment in time  one could hear the ominous attack ads firing up now  is up for debate. Yet Rauner is not wrong in what he said. And that's what makes his apparently off-the-cuff (or maybe brilliantly calculating?) remarks ring true.

Elected in 1971, Madigan has been speaker for all but a couple years since the early 1980s, corralling votes and endorsing or killing legislation as he sees fit.

Madigan is powerful. Too powerful. State government is a complex machine, and theres plenty of blame to go around between the executive and legislative branches for the dysfunction, but Madigans sheer tenure means hes been in the middle of most it since the Nixon administration.

Now 75, Madigan is undeniably unpopular, especially downstate, and has no signs of slowing down. The one clear goal lately is to simply block the Rauner agenda. Solutions about how to fix our state have been limited, to say the least. It is a poisonous relationship.

Rauner deserves credit for pushing on pension reform, trying to fix workers' compensation and lower property taxes and seeking term limits  with very limited engagement from the legislature and the speaker. He also happened to oversee a government that didnt have a budget for two years and has amassed $16 billion in unpaid bills. The conservative National Review magazine called him "The Worst Republican Governor in America.

Rauner faces a primary challenger in House Rep. Jeanne Ives, of Wheaton, and massive spending on the Democratic side, where seven candidates are in the race.

If Rauner loses in November, Madigan will have to work with  or not work with  his sixth governor since ascending to power. Until something changes, the Madigan era continues.
Harvey Weinstein despicable decades-long abuse of actress is still simmering in the news cycle like hot tar, and every Hollywood heavyweight who benefitted from his favor just can't seem to scrub off their association with him.

Meryl Streep is the latest celebrity to come under fire for Weinstein comments, labeling his actions a "gargantuan example of disrespect." Her actress-cum-activist Rose McGowan, who asked Streep recognize Weinstein as a criminal and criticized the award-winning actress for her silence: "You are such a lie," she wrote on Twitter.

RELATED | Rose Mcgowan Comes After Meryl Streep: 'You Are Such a Lie'

Soon after, posters began mysteriously appearing around Los Angeles that featured a black and white image of a smiling Streep and Weinstein, with the words "She Knew" emblazoned on a red stripe across her eyes. It was, in fact, the work of the Unsavory Agents, an alt-right website run by conservative street artist "Sabo", who told The Guardian that he and his team were punishing Streep for her prior denouncement of Trump.

Streep later replied to Rose McGowan via the Huffington Post, clarifying she had no idea of the systematic mistreatment of women in Hollywood by high-powered excutives.



"It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein's crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others," Streep said in a statement. "I wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know. I don't tacitly approve of rape. I didn't know. I don't like young women being assaulted. I didn't know this was happening."

Believe what you will, but perhaps we should turn our attention back to Matt Damon.

Image via Twitter


Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) operatives in Patna on Wednesday took out a 'torch rally' to protest against the state government's new sand and gravel policy and to appeal to people to join them in their 'Bihar Bandh' to be held on Thursday.

The rally began at the party headquarters on Birchand Patel Marg and after passing through Bailey Road and Dak Bungalow Crossing, it arrived at the Patna Junction where it turned into a NDA-bashing meeting.

Demanding immediate withdrawal of the Nitish government's new policies that is billed as the death knell for the sand and gravel mafia in the state, the RJD workers chanted anti-Nitish and anti-Sushil Modi slogans calling the policy an attempt to harm the poor people of Bihar.

Members of the NDA have accused the RJD of opposing the policy because the biggest beneficiary of the previous policy was none other than the party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members who face a host of corruption charges, including selling soil extracted from their private properties and selling it to Patna Zoo without floating a tender to seek competitive prices from various suppliers.

Top party leaders including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Tejaswi Yadav, and Tej Pratap Yadav are expected to participate in tomorrow's Bihar Bandh.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar earlier accused Yadav of trying to sabotage the Guru Govind Singh Prakashotsav that curiously coincides with the proposed bandh.

Amidst criticism, RJD leaders have appealed to their workers not to attempt to shut down emergency services, school buses and roads directly affecting visitors to the Patna Saheb Gurudwara.
Gopalganj: At least seven persons, maybe even as many as ten going by some reports, were killed and scores injured when a boiler exploded at a sugar mill in Gopalganj district on late Wednesday night.

The accident took place around 11:30 pm when more than a hundred workers were inside the plant, sources said.

As reported, more than a dozen people were working close to the faulty boiler at the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill when it exploded like a powerful bomb. Four persons were killed instantly while three other died while being transported to nearby hospitals. Unconfirmed reports said three other died while being brought to Patna via Hajipur when their ambulance got stuck in the Bihar Bandh protest jam on Gandhi Setu.

Injured victims were transported to various hospitals in the area where they were being treated for first to third degree burns.

Angry mill workers and their family members then went on a rampage destroying factory properties and setting the mill owner's car or fire. A number of trucks operated by the factory were also torched as victims' family members demanded compensation for their loss and jobs for the relatives of the deceased.

The protestors also blamed the owners for poor upkeep of the factory saying they were warned of the faulty machinery nearly two weeks ago but they chose to ignore it.

Mahmood Ali, the owner of the mill, denied accusations of poor maintenance saying there was no negligence on their part while welcoming a full enquiry into the accident.

The owner also announced a compensation of Rs. 10-lakh along with a job to the kin of those who perished in the accident and Rs. 5-lakh to those who were injured in the tragedy. He, however, rued that it would take some time for the mill to start operating again since a number of their vehicles and factory machines were damaged by the irate protestors.

Ali and his son were taken into police custody for further interrogation.

Meanwhile, expressing his grief over the accident, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a package of Rs. 4-lakh to the family members of the victims who died in the last night explosion and Rs. 50,000 to those who received serious injuries.

The state government also ordered a high-level probe in the accident saying those found guilty of negligence will be severely punished under the law.
Patna: NDA leaders in Patna on Thursday slammed Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav for today's Bihar bandh saying the protest was organized to protect the 'Sand Mafia' of which Lalu Prasad Yadav is the leader and his family members the direct beneficiaries of it.

"Today's bandh had nothing to do with the building or construction industry. It was organized to protect the leader of the Sand Mafia, that is Lalu Prasad Yadav. None of the children of Lalu and Rabri has ever held a job in their lives or ran a legitimate business. It is obvious where their money is coming from," said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Talking to the media, JD-U spokesperson Neeraj Kumar insisted that the RJD was up in arms as it was heading the sand mafia in Bihar.

"The Chief Secretary, after the High Court order, has already announced the withdrawal of the new policy and continuance of the existing policies so what was the point of today's protest? It is clear that the goal of today's bandh was to disrupt normal life in Bihar and to promote the leadership of Tejaswi Yadav for future elections while also protecting the sand and mining mafia that goes hand in glove with the Lalu family," Kumar said.

BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said today's event was a stark reminder of the famous jungle raj during the Lalu-Rabri regime as the only language the RJD knew was the language of lawlessness.

JD-U leader RCP Singh said today's bandh was a sign of great frustration on Lalu Prasad Yadav's part who still has not gotten over the loss of power in Bihar when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pulled out of the Grand Alliance last July essentially killing the 'livelihood' of Yadav's two sons.

"Lalu Prasad Yadav is going through a phase of extreme frustration and he is using his two sons to promote his own political agenda. Through bandh, he is trying to scare the people. Moreover, it was a clear attempt to send a strong message to the Sikhs all over the world that they better not risk visiting Patna Saheb, the birthplace of Guru Govind Singh, if they cared about their well-being," Singh said.

Another JD-U spokesperson Sanjay Singh said today's bandh was an attempt by Lalu and company to create an environment of extreme confusion before a CBI court in Ranchi delivers its verdict on the fodder scam this Saturday, December 23.

BJP state President and Health Minister Mangal Pandey, also joining the anti-RJD chorus, put the blame for the death of a sick woman being brought to Patna from Hajipur squarely on the shoulder of Yadav and his two sons.

"The family of the dead woman should take Yadav and his party to the court because only they are responsible for this tragic death," Pandey said.
Patna: Normal life across Bihar was thrown out of gear on Thursday when Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leaders and their supporters took to the streets to observe a day-long bandh in protest against the state government's new mining policy designed to end the so-called 'Sand and Mining Mafia' run by men in powerful positions in Bihar politics.

{gallery}newsimages2017/dec/122117{/gallery}Thousands of RJD activists and workers, led by Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav, the two rising stars of the party and the sons of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi, blocked roads and railway tracks in Patna and other parts of Bihar demanding immediate repeal of the new mining policies saying it had hurt the construction industry and people were being forced out of work since no new construction was taking place anywhere.

Carrying the green party flags, RJD operatives forced vehicles off the roads and scuffled with those who were reluctant to down their shutters in support of the bandh. They also burnt tires on many streets filling the air with toxic fume while forcing the public to take different routes.

At least one person was reported dead when an ambulance carrying a sick woman got stuck in the traffic jam in Vaishali.

Reports of sporadic violence and disruption of railway service were received from many districts though at most places the bandh was deemed either a 'lukewarm' or 'failed'.

Interestingly, while senior party leaders like Ramchandra Purvey and Bhola Yadav were seen chanting anti-NDA slogans during the rally and the bandh, party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav or his wife Rabri Devi were conspicuous by their absence.

At Dak Bungalow Crossing, Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav, standing atop a tractor, demanded resignation from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who, they said, was the most corrupt leader in the nation.

"The NDA government in Bihar is gaming the system so its leaders get the maximum benefit from the mining industry. Even the High Court disagrees with this new policy and despite a court order, the government refuses to withdraw the new policy," the former Deputy of Nitish Kumar said.

When repeated attempts to remove the crowd from the busy Dak Bungalow Crossing failed, the police hauled the brothers to Kotwali police station where they were detained and then released on their own cognizance.
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
Weak aftershocks reduced risk of major quake in Iran's capital city Tehran: Official

12/21/17

Source: Press TV

The head of Iran's Seismology Institute says the risk of a major earthquake in the capital city of Tehran has decreased as several weak aftershocks were registered following a magnitude 5.2 tremor, which affected six Iranian provinces. Ali Moradi said seven 2-3 magnitude aftershocks have been registered in Tehran so far, adding, "There is no more concern for larger tremors" after the major quake occurred, IRNA reported on Thursday.

According to the Seismological Center of the Institute of Geophysics of Tehran University, the quake hit the Iranian city of Malard in western Tehran Province on Wednesday at 23:27 local time (1957 GMT) at a depth of seven kilometers.



The epicenter of the tremor was 3 kilometers from Malard, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital.



A magnitude 5.2 earthquake hits city of Malard in Iran's Tehran province.

According to the governor of Malard, Bahman Khatibi, one pregnant woman lost her life and 20 others were injured in the city as they tried to escape the quake in panic.



The quake was also felt in the central and northern provinces of Alborz, Qom, Qazvin, Markazi and Gilan.





Some residents of Tehran spent time outdoors after the quake

(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency) - See more photos here





No destruction has been reported, but there have been several reports of injuries and panic attacks in different parts of Tehran and Qazvin provinces as people rushed to escape the quake.



Meanwhile, police forces, firefighters, rescue operation teams and crisis management bodies in the six quake-hit province are on alert. They have urged people to remain calm, but cautious.



The head of Tehran's Crisis Management Organization, Ahmad Sadeghi, had earlier told reporters that "the earthquake can have more aftershocks. The aftershocks can even be more powerful. The Crisis Management Organization calls on people to stay vigilant and move to nearby safe places."



Universities and state organizations will be closed in Tehran, Alborz and Qom provinces on Thursday.



The quake disrupted phone lines in some parts of Tehran and Alborz provinces. It also caused panic, prompting people to come out on the streets and public places and stay outdoors overnight.



This comes as Iran is still reeling from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, its deadliest in over a decade, which hit the western province of Kermanshah on November 11, killing more than 500 people and causing extensive material damage there.
Iranian Missiles And Fake News

12/21/17

by Eldar Mamedov (source: LobeLog)



Photo: the European Parliament in session in Strasbourg



Apparently even seemingly respectable media outlets occasionally peddle fake news at service of a particular political agenda, with the aim of creating a massive echo chamber that would make it appear to be "real news." Such was the case with the Jerusalem Post's announcement that the European Parliament (EP) has called on Iran to end its ballistic missile program. The "news" was immediately spread by the Trans-Atlantic Institute, which is the Brussels office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

If such language had indeed been adopted, it would have meant a step far beyond the official position of the EU on Iran's missile program. This position-reaffirmed in the Council of the EU Conclusions on October 16, reflecting the views of the 28 Member States-merely expressed concerns about the program, but also reiterated the need to address it outside the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), AKA the Iran nuclear deal. Crucially, in the same paragraph, the twenty-eight foreign ministers stated their readiness "to actively promote and support initiatives to ensure a more stable, peaceful and secure regional environment." This is a clear reference to the view of the EU that the Iranian missiles are part of a broader regional conflagration, and that the role of other players, such as Saudi Arabia, in the region's troubles should not be neglected. In a similar vein, the EP, in its own 2016 strategic report on EU relations with Iran (known as the Richard Howitt report, after the British Labour MEP who authored it), expressed "concern at the development of Iran's ballistic missile tests, which, despite not constituting a breach of the JCPOA, are inconsistent with the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015)." So calling for an end to Iran's missile program would indeed constitute a major departure from the EU consensus position. Even if non-binding, it could be considered an element of mounting pressure for the introduction of new sanctions against Iran in case of non-compliance with this demand.

However, the EP-contrary to the Jerusalem Post's claim-demanded no such thing. On December 14, it adopted its annual report on the implementation of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy covering a broad range of thematic and geographical topics. The report, drafted by David McAllister (chair of the Foreign Affairs committee), dedicated a paragraph to Iran. That paragraph reaffirms support for the JCPOA and notes that its implementation by all sides is key to global non-proliferation efforts and conflict resolution in the Middle East. In a rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to de-certify the agreement and his repeated threats to "terminate" it, the report also highlighted that the JCPOA is a multilateral agreement, endorsed by the UN Security Council, and cannot be changed unilaterally.

On Iran's missile program, an amendment indeed was tabled by a conservative MEP calling to end it. However, negotiations between political groups have resulted in a compromise formula that acknowledged that the missiles were a "security risk," but stopped short of calling for an end to the program, which was neither a requirement of the UNSC nor the EU position. Instead, the EP just repeated its call for Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons," which was exactly the language of UNSC Resolution 2231. Since Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, which blocks its path to nuclear weapons, has been certified multiple times by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this line in fact doesn't add anything new to the EU position.

Iran's missile program, in conjunction with its rhetoric on Israel, is indeed a concern for the MEPs, as was evidenced, once again, during the plenary debate with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on December 12. But so are the multi-billion arms sales by EU member states to Saudi Arabia, in violation of the EU Common Position on arms export control. In fact, the EP has three times called for an introduction of an EU-wide arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, on the grounds of mass violations by Riyadh and its coalition partners of international humanitarian and human rights law in Yemen. Problematic a player though Iran might be, it is simply not credible to blame all of the Middle East's troubles on Iran alone.

Thus, the EP position on Iranian missiles only makes sense if taken holistically, in its regional context, and not through self-serving selective reading, spiced up with fake news.



The views represented here are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the European Parliament



About the Author



Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.
An Islamic Cleric, Numerologist Philosopher and an acclaimed Soothsayer Malam Sham- una -Ustaz Jibril says government must wake up from its slumber and handle some issues spiritually.



The soothsayer claims the recent deaths in Kumasi Academy, H1 N1 flu virus issues and meningitis outbreak at Damango, Bawku Sec/Tech and Tempane are spiritual battles government must fight against.



I predicted and published on all social media on 13th May, 2017 that, there will be a lot of mysterious deaths in our Senior High Schools through out the country and government was advised to critically look at the issue and to handle it Spiritually, if not, the future will be more serious than the past. And government turned death ears to this advice, he told Peacefmonline.com



Malam Sham- una -Ustaz Jibril also named some schools likely to face some calamities in the coming year.



The following schools are in a very dangerous situation, they will be next on board. Accra Girls, Navrongo SHS, Bolgatanga SHS, Nalerigu SHS, Walewale SHS, Tamale SHS, Private Schools, Bolga Girls, Opoku Ware, Yaa Asantewaa, T.I Amass, Wesley Girls, Cape Coast Sec, Koforidua Sec, Kibi SHS, Oda SHS, ST. Pauls, Achimota, Nkwakwa, Berekum, Sunyani SHS, Kintanpo, Salaga SHS, Takoradi, Akatsi SHS, Lawra SHS. Business College Tamale, he said.



Adding that, In addition the pandemic will extent its roots to tertiary institutions, College of Education, Nursing Training college s and Universities across the Country.



He warned government to seek spiritual intervention to avoid nationwide outbreak in future.



The Council of State should be a watch dog in identifying spiritual matters as part of their discussion at council meetings. Witches and wizards must be blamed for these pandemics since they are the major causes. They need lives and blood climaxes their intercontinental festivals at the 21st Century, he said.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Ambrose_wash









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has explained in an interview with Bola Ray that the group Freemason is a platform that nurtures a person morally and not a secret cult as others perceive it.



The Former President who has recently, been appointed a Senior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge of England disclosed that he was not the first in his family to join the Freemasonry.



"Members of my family have been there before me. Some were there even before I was born. I joined this society in 1967...it is not secret cult. It is a good system for character building... Its a society that believes in doing unto others as you want it to happen to you".



He went on further to note that the Freemason as a group believes in the Supreme Being, maker of the universe and does not operate with supernatural powers.



"Its a system that makes a man accept the creator, that is the giver of everything. To be a member, you must first accept, believe and acknowledge that. He observed.



background



Former president Kufuor was appointed a Senior Grand Warden by the United Grand Lodge of England Grand Master, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, who is the longest serving Grand Master.



The United Grand Lodge of England is the governing body for most freemasons within the UK, with lodges in other Commonwealth countries outside the United Kingdom.



The Lodge of England claims to be the oldest Grand Lodge in the world, by descent from the first Grand Lodge formed in London in 1717.



It is headquartered in Freemasons Hall, London and is known to have more than 200,000 members.



President Kufuor is no stranger to distinguished honours as he was previously honoured as a Knight Commander of the Order of Bath of the UK by Queen Elizabeth II and the highest award of the Order of the House of Orange by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, among other international honours.

Source: ghanaweb.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Burkina Faso is banning imports from North Korea to comply with UN sanctions, the AFP news agency quotes the government as saying.



But an inquiry in October by the US - which has been pushing for tougher sanctions - found that Burkina Faso was still trading with North Korea.



Burkinabe Foreign Minister Alpha Barry said:



"Following this inquiry, we conducted a thorough investigation... and found that there were economic operators importing from North Korea.



Instructions have been give to the two ministries to end these importations."



Officials figures show the West African country imports from North Korean, which were mainly petroleum products, amounted to about $6.8m (5m) in 2016.

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
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.
Audio Attachment: Listen to Carlos Ahenkorah

Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Carlos Ahenkorah has sincerely apologized to Ghanaians for engaging in a-near fight with the North Tongu NDC MP, Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa.



According to him, that is not his nature and that I am pleading with Ghanaians to forgive me and "I promise that it will never happen again..."



He said that exchanges that happened on Tuesday shouldn't have happened.



He has also asked Okudjeto Ablakwa to forgive him, adding "we need to continue as brothers from different mothers. . . . "



He spoke on Peace FM's 'kokrokoo' programme in an interview with GJA Journalist of the year award winner, Kwami Sefa Kayi.



Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Carlos Ahenkorah, on Tuesday locked horns with the Minority Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwah in Parliament over alleged money charged expatriates who sat beside the President during the recent Ghana Expatriates Business Awards.



The near fisticuff occurred after the two met in a media interview on the matter, Tuesday, outside Parliament.





Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Remember Freedom Fries? Remember those sneering comments about the French? Because after all, were Amuricans, so we are clearly superior.

Right.

I watched the French election with interest. It was right after Amurica accidentally elected the Orange Ignoramus, and thoughtful observers were worried whether our disastrous electioncoming on the heels of the equally disastrous Brexit vote in Englandheralded a global spread of white nationalist extremism.

Trump, if youll recall, endorsed Marine Le Pen.

Fortunately, Trumps Le Pen endorsement was every bit as effective as his lukewarm endorsement of Luther Strange and his full-throated advocacy for Roy Moore. The French election was won overwhelmingly by Emmanuel Macron. Id been rooting for Macronmy middle sons partner is Parisian and they split their time between Manhattan and Paris, so I had more insight into the French candidates than I would otherwise have had.

My preference for Macron has now been validated. As Reuters recently reported,

PARIS (Reuters)  French President Emmanuel Macron plans to award multi-year grants for several U.S.-based scientists to relocate to France, his office said on Monday on the eve of a climate summit hosted by the president to raise finances to counter global warming. Macron unveiled the Make our Planet Great Again grants after President Donald Trump in June said he was pulling the United States out of an international accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that was brokered in Paris in 2015. Macron repeatedly tried to persuade the U.S. leader to reverse his decision. In a statement, the Elysee Palace said 13 of the initial 18 grants will be awarded to scientists based in the United States.

Meanwhile, our dumb and delusional President just dropped climate change from Americas National Security Strategy, in favor of economic competitiveness. (I assume well be exceedingly competitive when were underfed and underwater..).

Lest you dismiss Macrons offer to the scientific community as simply a (richly-deserved) middle-finger gesture to Trump, Science Magazine informs us that Macrons invitation has already borne fruit:

French President Emmanuel Macrons effort to lure disgruntled foreign climate scientists to Franceespecially from the United Stateshas produced its first harvest. France today announced that Macrons Make Our Planet Great Again initiative has recruited its first class of 18 scientists. Of the new recruits, 13, including a few French nationals, now work in the United States, whereas others are based in Canada, India, and elsewhere in Europe.

Its hard to disagree with the reaction of the liberal website Daily Kos:

Macron is appealing to shunned U.S. scientists with a simple message: Come do your work in France and we will give you grant money and respect you. What France gets out of the deal is a front-row seat for all of the environmental, energy, and other technical innovation that those scientists will now be producing in their new laboratories. Being on the forefront of new technology has been one of the surest ways to ensure your own workforce is highly skilled and earns high wages. You know, that thing that the United States was once famous for. You have to wonder just how Donald Trump justifies his daily presidential existence when, at this point, even allies like France are openly mocking him. Donald said hed be staffing our government with the best people. It turns out we got people like Kellyanne Conway while our best people take job offers in countries willing to respect their work.

Of course, Donald Trump doesnt see any reason to justify his Presidential existence. He wouldnt even understand the question.

America has elected an intellectually-challenged and severely mentally ill Chief Executive (casting serious doubt on the mental/intellectual capacities of American voters, but thats a subject for a different day). Other countriesnot just France, which will at least continue to be our ally during this depressing interlude but China and of course Russia will take advantage of our diminished capacities and our dramatically declining global status.

But hey Trump voters are happy. They got rid of that black President, brown people arent coming here anymore (even as tourists!), and as a bonus, theyre offloading those fancy-shmantsy elitists who do science and facts.

Happy (White Christian) days are here again.

[Originally published at SheilaKennedy.net on December 21, 2017]

Peacock Panache readers:

Sheila Kennedy is a former high school English teacher, former lawyer, former Republican, former Executive Director of Indianas ACLU, former columnist for the Indianapolis Star, and former young person. She is currently an (increasingly cranky) old person, a Professor of Law and Public Policy at Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis, and Director of IUPUIs Center for Civic Literacy. She writes for the Indianapolis Business Journal, PA Times, and the Indiana Word, and blogs at www.sheilakennedy.net. For those who are interested in more detail, links to an abbreviated CV and academic publications can be found on her blog, along with links to her books..

Like this: Like Loading...

Related

We hope you enjoyed reading this article! If you would like to support our ongoing work, please consider buying us a cup of coffee. It's not much, but we don't do this for the money. We do, however, need caffeine to keep going some days!If you do donate, send us a message through our Contact Us page or via social media so we can thank you!
Christopher Garnier walks into the courtroom after a verdict was reached in his murder trial in Halifax on Thursday, December 21, 2017. A jury has found Garnier guilty of punching and strangling Nova Scotia police officer Catherine Campbell and using a compost bin to dump her body. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
A wildfire burns in the boreal forest of Wood Buffalo National Park, June 17, 2014. Canada loses 20 times more forested land to fires and invasive bugs each year than it does to harvesting wood for industry and Canada's lumber association says climate change is making it worse. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Parks Canada - Jonathan Large MANDATORY CREDIT
Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan fields questions at the closing news conference at the Halifax International Security Forum in Halifax on November 19, 2017. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says military commanders are re-assessing Canada's future role in Iraq following declaration the country has been completely liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIL earlier this month after the militant group was pushed from the last pockets of territory that it had occupied in the country. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Governor General David Johnston presents Beatrice Craig of Ottawa with the Canadian Historical Association's Sir John A. Macdonald prize which honours excellence in published academic research during an awards ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on November 19, 2010. The Canadian Historical Association wants to rename an annual writing award so it's no longer associated with the country's first prime minister.The association's elected council wants to change the title of the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize to the CHA Prize for Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., right, shakes hands after presenting a pen to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, left, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., second from left, watches after signing the final version of the GOP tax bill during an enrollment ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Russian activist of the feminist protest group Pussy Riot Maria Alekhina listens in a court room in Moscow, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. Alekhina, member of the punk band Pussy Riot, was detained on Wednesday for a protest outside the headquarters of Russia's main security agency and was sentenced on Thursday to 40 hours of community work. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
Pedestrians walk past as police and emergency services attend the scene of an incident involving a vehicle and pedestrians in Melbourne, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. Police have arrested a driver after a car drove into pedestrians on a sidewalk in central Melbourne. (Kaitlyn Offer/AAP Image via AP)
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis poses for a photo with U.S. Marine Corps troops at a rifle range at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday, Dec. 21. 2017. The unannounced visit was the first by a defense secretary since Donald Rumsfeld visited in January 2002 shortly after the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Robert Burns)
Pro-independence supporters celebrate at the ANC ( Catalan National Assembly ) headquarters after results of the regional elections in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017. The pro-secession bloc won a majority but the anti-independence Ciutadans (Citizens), led by 36-year-old lawyer Ines Arrimadas, won the highest number of votes for a single party. ANC is Catalan pro independence platform promoting the political independence of Catalonia.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
The State Supreme Court this month dismissed appeals by Attorney Fred Triem to continue to represent Appellants in the case of Arlene Bell Hanson, et al. vs. Kake Tribal Corporation.

In September the court allowed Triem to pursue its appeal, on behalf of one or more individual class members, provided that the individual class members confirm in writing that they wish to pursue the appeals and that they wish to be represented on the appeals by Mr. Triem, according to the court order.

Triem submitted the name of Ms. Lillian Feldpausch from Sitka and wrote, An individual class member...
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr./Bloomberg Saudi Aramco embarks on global hunt for natural gas. Saudi Arabia weighs importing gas to feed growing power demand. Exploration wells at home have yielded little new gas

Saudi Aramco is looking for natural gas assets from Russia to East Africa and the U.S. as the kingdom's state-owned energy giant hunts for ways to meet soaring domestic demand.

The comments by Khalid Al-Falih, who's both Aramco chairman and Saudi energy minister, are a tacit admission Aramco has failed to find enough domestic gas reserves despite years of exploration. He's now considering imports of super-cooled liquefied natural gas to bridge the gap with local consumption and cut the amount of crude oil burned in power stations instead of exported for a profit.

Aramco is drawing a very wide net, said Al-Falih, mentioning the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea as other potential target for gas assets.

Saudi Arabia diverts tens of millions of barrels of crude every year into its electricity generation plants, particularly during the peak air-conditioning season in the summer. It doesn't produce enough gas to supply its power stations. Most the gas it does produce goes to its fast-growing petrochemical industry.

Al-Falih wouldn't rule out buying LNG from Russia, which this month opened a new plant in the Arctic, although he cautioned it wasn't the most economical option at the moment.

The question of Russian gas, and being able to export around the world, including potentially to Saudi Arabia, is an intriguing question that it would not exclude," he told Bloomberg Television in an interview in Riyadh after the kingdom presented its 2018 budget.

Is it our lowest hanging fruit? he said. The answer today is not. But I think we are in an interesting moment to talk about the potential to buy LNG from the Russian Arctic.

Al-Falih also said that Aramco has looked at potential to growth its footprint in the U.S. through its subsidiary Motiva -- the largest refinery in the country -- possibly through investing in petrochemcial production.

They are looking for potential integration there if it makes economic sense, he said about Aramco's plans in America.
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
The Comcast Center in Philadelphia is the cable giants headquarters. Read more

About 100,000 Comcast employees will get more than lumps of coal for bonuses this year, thanks to the GOP tax plan.

The cable giant says it will hand out $1,000 bonus checks this year for techs, managers, customer service reps, executives and others  or collectively $100 million.

A windfall for corporations, the Republican tax plan will slash corporate taxes from 35 percent to 21 percent, which will boost profits for corporations. The bill's progress has helped fuel the bull stock market this year.

Comcast CEO Brian Robert also said the Philadelphia company will invest at least $50 billion in capital improvements over the the next five years to "to radically improve and extend our broadband plant and capacity, and our television, film and theme park offerings." He said the investments should lead to thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

A company spokesman said that the $50 billion is more than the company previously estimated it would spend over the five years.

Democratic critics say the GOP tax plan will lead to soaring federal deficits and benefit wealthy individuals and corporations, which Trump disputed in a tweet this morning.
Lynne and William Seligman of Kennett Square are part of a group of Pennsylvania landowners who say shale-gas producers have cut their royalty payments below the 12.5 percent minimum guaranteed by state law. Read more

Lynne and Bill Seligman thought they were protecting themselves in 2008 when they agreed to allow an Oklahoma company to explore for natural gas under their 91-acre Sullivan County, Pa., farm. They even paid a lawyer to help negotiate the lease.

But since Chesapeake Energy Co. drilled a well to capture gas from the rich Marcellus Shale formation deep under that property, the Seligmans, who live in Chester County, have seen their gas income shrink dramatically  and not just because production declined or gas prices fell.

"I just feel they cheated us," said Lynne Seligman, 64, a retired nursing-home consultant. "They made us promises they didn't fulfill, and I guess that's what really irritates me."

Chesapeake has slashed royalty payments to many like the Seligmans, subtracting "post-production costs" from income the landowners said they were promised under the state's Guaranteed Minimum Royalty Act of 1979. The law provides that owners of mineral rights receive a minimum one-eighth share, or 12.5 percent, of the sale price of their oil and gas.

Many Marcellus producers began to deduct post-production costs after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sanctioned the practice in 2010. But Chesapeake, the state's largest producer, has been the most aggressive about billing landowners for the costs.

Last year, Chesapeake reduced the Seligmans' $317.57 royalty share for April and May by 90 percent, mailing the Kennett Square family a paltry check for $30.96 for the two months. The deductions were attributed to the costs of gathering, compressing, and transporting the gas.

Other disillusioned landowners say Chesapeake has reduced royalty payments below zero, essentially docking them for the gas produced on their properties.

Russ Forba, whose siblings share ownership of a large family property in Wyoming County, said Chesapeake assessed them "negative revenue" for 10 months during the last two years, and estimated that the company has deducted $1.5 million from their royalty payments since its wells began producing in 2014.

The most recent check, for production in August and September, amounted to $2,400, a 96 percent reduction from the gross royalty of $55,000, Forba said.

Chesapeake is now defending itself from an onslaught of lawsuits in federal and state courts. On Dec. 15, a Bradford County judge allowed to proceed a state attorney general's suit accusing Chesapeake and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of cheating landowners, and the federal issues appear to be moving toward a settlement, according to court filings.

The landowners are also pressing the state legislature to rewrite the royalty law to limit deductions, affecting all gas producers. But they say they have been frustrated by the powerful gas industry, which argues that the government cannot constitutionally alter existing gas leases, and that the proposed revisions would make Pennsylvania less attractive for energy investment.

"I have no desire at all to do anything to stop the industry from investing in Pennsylvania, but I think it's very, very unfair that they're not paying the landowners the royalties they deserve," said State Rep. Garth Everett (R., Lycoming), who has sponsored legislation for five years to require minimum payments to landowners of 12.5 percent.

In recent years, members of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners have staked out spots in the state Capitol's corridors to buttonhole legislators. Their lobbying efforts have been unsuccessful, though the political neophytes say they've learned a lot about lawmaking.

"It's good to know how state government works, or why it's not working," said Jacqueline Root, a Tioga County landowner who is president of the NARO chapter. She said she hopes the legislature will take up the measure in January, when it reconvenes.

Currently, the royalty legislation is attached to a House proposal to enact a severance tax on natural gas, which has also been stalled for years. The prospects of getting approval for either in the Republican legislature seem remote.

Gas-industry defenders say that not all landowners feel cheated. They portray Chesapeake Energy as the principal villain. It is accused in the lawsuits of shortchanging landowners by overpaying for post-production costs to an affiliated "midstream" company that processes and moves its gas to market.

Chesapeake denies wrongdoing. In federal court filings, the company says the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, as well as landowners, "simply got its facts wrong" about its business arrangements.

The gas industry and its supporters maintain that a resolution is best left to the courts.

"The fix that people are looking for is not a legislative issue," said State Sen. Gene Yaw (R., Lycoming). "It's a contract issue. It's going to be resolved through litigation. There are probably a thousand different contracts out there, and everyone of them is a little different, and to try to fix that issue legislatively is an impossibility."

Many landowners say that their royalty payments are so small, it's not worth hiring a lawyer, and that their leases contain arbitration clauses prohibiting them from suing the gas company or pursuing a class action.

"Litigation is an easy answer you often hear from legislators aligned with the gas-company interests, but realistically, it's not a possibility for most landowners," said Robert Sher, a Philadelphia businessman with real estate and gas interests in Tioga County.

Though industry officials shy away from criticizing Chesapeake publicly, they point out that other producers have paid billions in royalties to landowners since shale-gas development began more than a decade ago, catapulting Pennsylvania into the role of second-largest gas-producing state.

Range Resources has paid more than $1.6 billion in lease bonuses and royalty payments in Pennsylvania, mostly in its core area of Washington County. EQT, based in Pittsburgh, paid $77.4 million in Pennsylvania royalties last year.

Cabot Oil & Gas, the state's second-largest producer, has paid out more than $1 billion in royalties on natural-gas production in Susquehanna County. Cabot subtracts some post-production costs, said company spokesman George Stark, but the reductions do not wipe out the royalties.

"We've all heard the stories about negative checks going out," said Stark. "We don't have that scenario."

Some landowners get no post-production reductions because they are specifically forbidden in the leases or because of longstanding practice.

The biggest landowner, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, saw less than 1 percent of the $80 million in royalties it collected last year deducted for post-production costs, and that was mostly by Chesapeake.

"Our major operators and lessees are not taking deductions," said Arianne Proctor, a DCNR program manager who administers the state leases. "We do have some issues with Chesapeake that we are working on with them to settle out."

DCNR's elaborate leases governing gas extraction on 386,000 acres in state forests require producers to pay royalties based on market price but do not specifically prohibit deductions. "But that's how our leases have always been applied, and we have a long history of operators paying us accordingly," said Proctor.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, the industry trade group, attributes landowners' discontent to the depressed price of natural gas, which is lower in Pennsylvania because of the lack of pipelines to get the gas to market.

"Given these shared commodity-market pressures, it's critical that we remain focused on working together to encourage infrastructure development and other ways to leverage our region's abundant resources to benefit all Pennsylvanians," coalition spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said in a written statement.

For many landowners, the distrust is also founded on the murky way some gas companies calculate and report royalties and deductions, as well as the multilayered ownership arrangements among companies producing the gas.

After the Seligmans signed their lease in 2008 with Chesapeake, the company later partnered with Anadarko to consolidate their Marcellus properties. Chesapeake and Anadarko then sold portions of their interests to other producers. So each month, the Seligmans get royalty payments from four different companies that control the gas produced from their land. Each company reports different market prices, and different deductions.

"It's an incredibly complicated thing to sort out," Lynne Seligman said. She now regrets having signed the lease.

Root, the head of the royalty owners' group, estimated that nearly 200,000 landowners receive royalties from Pennsylvania gas properties. Some are struggling dairy farmers who had counted on the gas royalties to salvage their small holdings. But others, like the Seligmans, are comfortably well off, and the gas income was an unexpected bounty.

"The image is one of our problems," said Root. "We're not starving children here. Sometimes, our case gets portrayed as the greedy royalty owners. But c'mon, this is a lot of people getting ripped off by a big industry. It's a matter of getting something you should be due."
City officials said One Drexel Plaza, seen here in an artists rendering, could accommodate some of Amazons immediate office needs if it chooses Philadelphia for its planned second headquarters. Read more

Philadelphia officials seeking to lure Amazon's planned second headquarters to the city touted the immediate availability of ample office space in desirable locations  including inside 30th Street Station itself.

In a heavily redacted response Wednesday to requests for public records concerning Philadelphia's October bid to Amazon, Mayor Kenney's office vowed that it could satisfy the e-commerce giant's need for 500,000 square feet of space in 2019 at any of the three development sites it has portrayed in the past as compelling locations for the company.

Two of these sites are in University City. The third is the Navy Yard on the Delaware River waterfront in South Philadelphia.

The bid document also notes the availability of 280,000 square feet of offices within the 30th Street Station building, with millions of feet of additional buildable space on vacant and underused properties around the station.

The details make up part of the city's official response to Amazon.com Inc.'s request for proposals from cities and regions hoping to accommodate the Seattle-born company's second corporate campus, which it has been referring to as HQ2. Philadelphia was among 238 entrants that Amazon said had responded by its Oct. 19 deadline for bids.

More than a third of the 108-page document released by the mayor's office Wednesday is blank. Much of the unredacted material consists of background information to support the city's bid, including housing prices, descriptions of area universities, and educational attainment data.

Assistant city solicitor Robert Kieffer wrote in an accompanying letter that details were redacted when exempt from disclosure for such reasons as the protection of trade secrets or strategies to "achieve the successful adoption of a budget, legislative proposal, or regulation."

The document does, however, shed some light on how the city would accommodate the growing tech and retail behemoth within the University City and Navy Yard sites. Amazon has said it could eventually require 8 million square feet of office space at its planned second headquarters, which will employ some 50,000 people.

At the planned Schuylkill Yards development in University City near 30th Street Station, Amazon's immediate need for 500,000 square feet of space would be satisfied in the Cira Centre office building and the former Bulletin newspaper building, which is being redeveloped into what developer Brandywine Realty Trust has named One Drexel Plaza.

Current zoning at the development site can accommodate a total of 8.6 million square feet, but that could grow to 17.4 million feet if land-use changes recommended by city planning officials are adopted.

A few blocks to the east at the development site known as uCity Square, Amazon's initial space needs could be met within existing office buildings, which the document did not identify. The site's current zoning would permit 8.4 million square feet of development, though that could reach 11.9 million feet if planning recommendations are followed.

Around 30th Street Station, sites with redevelopment potential include a surface parking lot north of the station and the current site of the station's nine-story parking garage, as well as a tract of land at the northeast corner of 30th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

Together, those three sites could permit up to about 4.2 million square feet of development, according to calculations based on figures in the document.

Amtrak did not immediately respond to an email after business hours Wednesday asking about the inclusion of its properties in the bid. In October, the transportation agency postponed its search for a developer to remake the area around 30th Street Station as city officials prepared their Amazon bid.

Meanwhile, at the Navy Yard, either of two historic buildings totaling 1.3 million square feet of space could meet Amazon's immediate needs, according to the document. Under the former military base's current zoning, 10 million square feet of additional development would be permitted.

UPDATE: Philly one of 20 finalists for Amazon HQ2
Teachers Stephanie Vance (rear, left) and Sharon Baranov (rear, right) work with girls and boys at The Handwork Studio in Narberth. Read more

Think of a pond. Then think of ripples in that pond. Laura Kelly's business spread like that.

"It's just been a journey of drip, drip, drip," Kelly said. An idea that once fit around the kitchen table of her Main Line home has grown to 10 states and is poised for national exposure through a licensing deal with the sewing-pattern giant Simplicity.

"We've created a seven-figure business teaching kids knitting  kind of crazy," said the 55-year-old founder of the Handwork Studio, based in Narberth.

Now in their 20s, Kelly's children were just toddlers when they unwittingly helped inspire a needle-arts craft studio and camp program designed to give kids, primarily ages 5 to 15, a decidedly technology-free creative experience.

Back then, Kelly had a marketing job on Wall Street with a consulting firm that created back-office systems for banks and financial institutions. Daughter Devon was 1 and son Ryan was 3 when Kelly was motivated to change things up in 1995.

"My nanny and my boss quit within four days of one another, and I took it as a sign," she said. Besides, that six-year corporate job had "reaffirmed the fact that I'm really an entrepreneur at heart."

With husband John a property director at Brandywine Realty Trust, Kelly opted to stay home with the kids. That quickly turned into a day-care gig for a neighbor's daughter, and then into an after-school program for more than a half-dozen children of working parents.

"And then 9/11 happened, and I found myself obsessively watching TV and knew that I needed to be more engaged," Kelly said. She opted for a job as an assistant in a real estate office.

While looking for a preschool for her children, she visited a program in a church basement where "the little ones were stitching woodland animals, and they were playing under hand-dyed silks, and they were grinding their millet for their muffins for their snack. And I said, 'If my kids can't be with me, this is love.' And that really is at the heart of what the Handwork Studio is all about," Kelly said.

Less than two years later, Kelly hired the school's handwork teacher and set out to build a business. It began in Bala Cynwyd at what was then her home, but the plan was always to take it national.

"The marketing person in me said, 'If I feel so strongly about this notion, I think that there's other parents that have to feel this way, too,' " Kelly said. "In the early 2000s, this is really when gaming is becoming popular, and I thought moms would be searching for that alternative to technology. And it's only gotten  even more pervasive."

In no time, 12 kids were taking classes at her kitchen table. So Kelly did some research.

"That's when I really found a hole in the marketplace for kids learning needle arts," she said, citing cuts to home-economics classes decades ago.

The Handwork Studio's North Narberth Avenue location was added in 2004, thanks to a buyer's market (the 800-square-foot storefront, with a two-bedroom apartment upstairs, sold for $165,000) and a $35,000 line of credit from the Small Business Administration.

By then, the Handwork Studio was offering 10 after-school classes a week to 50 to 60 kids. Children's birthday parties and weekend classes followed  the result of customer demand, Kelly said.

So was a summer-camp program, added in 2006 and now responsible for 90 percent of the Handwork Studio's revenue. Mostly offered in affluent markets from Florida to Maine, the camps run from $450 a week to $1,900 for a three-week program, attracting about 3,000 students last summer, Kelly said.

With just four full-time employees, the Handwork Studio hires 80 to 100 creative individuals each summer for its camp programs. The business model involves renting facilities or partnering with schools, recreation centers, and other camps.

Kelly would not disclose the financial specifics of the Simplicity deal, saying only that the Handwork Studio will write patterns exclusively for kids that Simplicity will distribute through its vast retail channels, including Joann Fabric, Walmart, and Hobby Lobby, beginning in April.

"We're ecstatic," she added.

Margaret Pepe, Simplicity's director of brand management, said: "Simplicity has always been committed to educating a new generation, and The Handwork Studio's audience of kids eager to express their creativity is ideal."

Among them is 13-year-old Anna Welsh, the Wynnewood founder of littlebags.BIGIMPACT, who in June started selling the purses she makes  a skill she developed at Handwork Studio camps starting at age 6.

"I'm so happy  more people are becoming aware what great things arts can do for you," said Welsh, who plans to attend Handwork's fashion boot camp next summer.

Sharon Baranov, 17, also of Wynnewood, has taken doll-making and machine-sewing classes at Handwork and now teaches there. She applies her fashion-design skills to building catapults and bridges in physics class at Lower Merion High School, where she is a senior and an aspiring mechanical engineer.

Baranov wrote about those parallels in her college essays, evidently convincingly: Earlier this month, she was accepted into the engineering program at the University of Pennsylvania.
You think you've had a busy holiday season? Try being Delaware County Democratic State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, who  in the spirit of Santa Claus, perhaps  has been flying all over the political map in recent days, speaking up and taking a stand for a fast-spreading revolution in female empowerment that must be gaining some traction if it's actually reached Pennsylvania, the state where women's movements historically go to die.

While you were out hunting down Christmas bargains, Krueger-Braneky has sponsored legislation in Harrisburg that would end the boys-club rules that for decades have helped cover up sexual misconduct by male legislators, stood with Gov. Wolf as he vetoed GOP-passed legislation that would have imposed one of the nation's strictest antiabortion laws on Pennsylvania women, and this week called for the resignation of two fellow Democratic lawmakers whose bad conduct has been exposed in the growing tidal wave of #MeToo.

"I think the #MeToo movement has opened up a broader conversation on the problems that have always been here," Krueger-Braneky told me this week. And No. 1 on that list in Pennsylvania is the stunning lack of female elected officials. We are currently 49th of the 50 states in women holding political office, ahead of only Mississippi. Globally, women get elected at a higher rate in Afghanistan than they do here.

Pennsylvania has never, in its more than two centuries, had a female governor, U.S. senator, or mayor of its largest city, Philadelphia. In the current 18-person delegation in the U.S. House, the rate of women is  hold on, let me take out my calculator  zero percent.

It's a bad look, but the bigger problem is how the lack of diversity  gender and otherwise  makes for bad public policy. "I think we see the impact of the lack of women," said Krueger-Braneky, "on everything from how poorly budget negotiations have gone, with no women at the table, to the ultra-right-wing agenda of the House speaker"  Republican Mike Turzai  "and his colleagues."

Krueger-Braneky noted that while GOP lawmakers in Harrisburg were passing that extremist antiabortion bill despite the certainty of a veto by Democrat Wolf, legislation she's cosponsored to increase access to birth control  the best evidence-based way to actually curb the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions  remains hopelessly bottled up in committee. She said she went to Harrisburg after her surprise win in a 2015 special election hoping to work on economic development, her specialty, but instead has been forced to focus her time fighting what she calls "a constant attack on basic human rights."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Does anyone still remember "the Year of the Woman" in American politics? It was 1992, and it was inspired by arguably the original #MeToo moment in American politics, the charged Senate hearings over allegations that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed his coworker Anita Hill. The episode highlighted not only the issue of workplace harassment but also America's stunning lack of female elected officials, even after the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.

The epicenter of "the Year of the Woman" that followed the Anita Hill case was supposed to be here in Pennsylvania because it was the late Sen. Arlen Specter  then a Republican, facing what had been before all of this viewed as an easy reelection campaign in 1992  who had conducted a fiery cross-examination of Hill. Indeed, a virtually unknown woman named Lynn Yeakel shocked the state's political establishment by running a brilliant ad lambasting Specter's conduct in the hearings and winning the Democratic nomination to oppose him. At the time of Yeakel's nomination, the Keystone State had not only never had a female senator but the only three congresswomen in Pennsylvania history had been widows taking the seats of their late husbands.

But by autumn of that original "Year of the Woman," Pennsylvania had very much reverted to form. Yeakel  like many a woman flying too close to the rarefied air of the great glass ceiling  suddenly saw questions about her "lack of experience" or her "temperament," questions no doubt fueled by the millions that Specter had pulled in from his wealthy donors. She lost by a few percentage points  and that defeat established the sexist playbook for tearing down female candidates that the GOP would use again in 2016 when the next woman to win a Senate nomination was mercilessly hectored as "shady Katie McGinty."

But there's reason to believe that the looming new year really will be different this time around. The headwinds of the Anita Hill affair a quarter-century ago are nothing when compared with the hurricane that's been generated over the last 13 months by the presidential election loss by Hillary Clinton to admitted-female-genital-grabber Donald Trump, the January 2017 Women's March that drew some four million participants, and  not at all coincidentally  the courage of so many women to come forward with their stories of gender harassment and abuse, first to investigative reporters and eventually online. Female voters and their door-to-door activism were linked to a mini-surge in surprise Democratic victories in off-off-year elections in places like Krueger-Braneky's own Delaware County.

Now those sharp winds are even whipping the once-isolated banks of the Susquehanna River. In recent days, great investigative journalism by my Inquirer and Daily News colleagues has exposed allegations of serious misconduct by the departing chair of the state Board of Education and by two lawmakers, State Sen. Daylin Leach and State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone. Increasingly, Harrisburg's small band of female legislators are demanding action  even if it hurts their own party in the short run.

Krueger-Braneky on Thursday called on Twitter for colleague Caltagirone's resignation, stating "it hurts" but that "[w]omen elected officials, staff, and interns deserve better than to find out in the paper that a powerful colleague has a concerning history of harassment claims against him." The Delco lawmaker also said she's drawing bipartisan support for her bill that would reform how the legislature handles future cases, by barring nondisclosure agreements and the use of taxpayer dollars to settle claims.

And that's before what advocates are hoping will be a small tsunami of female candidates, most of them seeking office for the first time, that could radically reshape Harrisburg  assuming, that is, the newcomers can cash in on the same anger that anti-Trump suburban women flashed in the fall of 2017. Krueger-Braneky said Democrats have already seen 31 new women candidates come forward vowing to challenge GOP incumbent state legislators in 2018, and more are expected before the filing deadline in March.

Few fit the bill better than Jennifer O'Mara, a 28-year-old University of Pennsylvania administrator and education advocate from Springfield seeking to challenge GOP incumbent Rep. Alex Charlton in the 165th House District, next door to Krueger-Braneky. Touting her blue-collar upbringing in Prospect Park, working three jobs to become the first in her family to graduate from college, Democrat O'Mara said she entered the race after both seeing the impact of bad policies coming out of Harrisburg and how little the legislature resembles the real Pennsylvania.

"I looked at politics and I was not seeing enough people who looked like me," said O'Mara, who said that includes women but also other groups with little current voice in state politics, such as young people and working-class folks. She said she worked a 10-hour day visiting polling places in the recent November election and met many women voters, some with their children in tow, who told her that putting more females in office was their goal, even ahead of political party. "They say if you're not sitting at the table," she told me, "you're on the menu."

Now female candidates and their advocates are hoping 2018 will be their year for a veritable feast. Hey, it's only been 26 years in the making, but political revenge is a dish best served cold, right?
The Philadelphia Orchestra has had a closer relationship with Charles Dutoit than with any other guest conductor, and the highly regarded Swiss-born maestro, now the orchestra's conductor laureate, was considered more than once for the post of music director, its top spot.

Dutoit, 81, who was accused of sexual misconduct by four women in an Associated Press news story Thursday, has performed 650 concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra since his debut in 1980, including some concerts on tours. He also shored up the orchestra artistically at a delicate time after it parted ways with Christoph Eschenbach.

Asked to respond, Dutoit on Thursday wrote in an email that he had just arrived in Europe from Japan to find out about the allegations, and declined to speak, as he is seeking legal advice.

Read more: AP Exclusive  Famed conductor accused of sexual misconduct

The Philadelphia Orchestra Association released a statement Thursday evening saying it was "horrified to learn of the deeply troubling accusations of sexual misconduct against Charles Dutoit. We had no knowledge of these allegations. The Association is committed to providing a safe and respectful work environment for all of its employees and guest artists."

The statement said the orchestra deplores "the type of behavior described by Mr. Dutoit's accusers and we recognize

our responsibility to be a forceful opponent of abuses of power. The seriousness of the accusations demands a thorough investigation. We offer our sincerest sympathy to those who have been impacted."

Asked if the statement meant the orchestra would undertake an investigation or would revoke Dutoit's laureate conductor title, and if the conductor would ever again perform here, a spokeswoman said those issues were under discussion  though Dutoit's name and photograph were removed late Thursday from the conducting roster on the orchestra's website.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony both said they were severing ties with the conductor, and the New York Philharmonic said Dutoit had withdrawn from January dates with that orchestra.

Joseph H. Kluger, who was the orchestra's president during much of Dutoit's time in Philadelphia and is no longer affiliated with the organization, said Thursday that he was "not aware of any occasion in which anybody brought, certainly not to my attention or anyone else's at the Philadelphia Orchestra, any complaints about his behavior throughout the time I was there."

That said, Kluger, who led the orchestra for 16 years through 2005, said he was "not surprised by the AP story." Kluger said that rumors of what he called Dutoit's flirtatious "inappropriate behavior" were widespread, and that the leadership "made it clear to everyone who worked on staff with the Philadelphia Orchestra to be careful and bring to us any examples of any behavior that was inappropriate. No one did while I was there."

Philadelphia Orchestra members belong to a union and are able to give feedback on guest conductors through committees or principal players, who pass on that feedback to management. Cellist John Koen, who has served as chairman of the Philadelphia Orchestra's members' committee, noted that the dynamic with Dutoit was different than with other guest conductors, since he held titles with the orchestra. Still, he said he knew of no formal complaints regarding Dutoit's behavior with orchestra members.

Dutoit's associations with the orchestra run long and deep. He held the title of chief conductor from 2008 to 2012, and though he did not become music director, no one doubted his artistic authority. He was artistic director of the orchestra's summer season at the Mann Center from 1990 to 1999, holding the same position for 21 years at the orchestra's late-summer home at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. He ended his Saratoga Springs, N.Y., tenure in 2010 after more than 180 concerts there with the orchestra.

Many players have spoken over the years of the easy relationship the ensemble developed with him  a kind of shorthand of gestures and channeled wishes from the podium that made rehearsals efficient and performances exciting and polished. The regard was mutual.

"The orchestra responds to me, or I respond to them, this kind of chemistry has been built over the years, many years," Dutoit said in 2007. "Now I feel like I am driving a Rolls-Royce or playing the organ  where I pull the stops, and so I can choose the colors and they react immediately. And it's an exceptional thing."

In 1991, Dutoit was made an honorary citizen of the City of Philadelphia, and he holds an honorary doctorate from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he occasionally worked with the conservatory's orchestra in guest readings. "You have been a star for Philadelphia for a long, long period of time," said then-Mayor Michael Nutter in a 2011 tribute video to the conductor. "We've enjoyed your music, but more importantly, you've demonstrated to the world why Philadelphia has one of the best orchestras anywhere."

Dutoit last appeared here in March 2017, leading the orchestra in Britten's War Requiem. He is not scheduled to return, an orchestra spokesman said. Musically, Dutoit is highly regarded in a wide variety of repertoire. He once traced his history with the Philadelphia Orchestra to hearing Eugene Ormandy conduct it in Geneva, in his native Switzerland, in the 1950s.

"They opened the concert" with the overture to Rossini's Semiramide, he said. "And you hear this balance  tikitikitikitiki  and the flute on top of it. The 30 violins were the shade of the flute  it was unbelievable, the balance. I remember that as probably the greatest experience in my life. That is the way one should play, the quality one has to achieve."
The contents of this box inspired a series of Robert Pruitt photographs. Both are on display in a 40th-anniversary show at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Read more

For 40 years, the Fabric Workshop and Museum has enabled artists' obsessions.

Nearly all of its exhibitions are the result of a long process in which an invited artist works with the FWM staff to explore materials, processes, modes of expression, or a scale of work that the artist can't achieve working alone. At its best exhibitions, you go in expecting to be surprised, and you are  but in a way you never could have anticipated.

This approach can be fun, but also a bit off-putting. One-artist shows are not so good if you don't respond to the artist. And not all of the artists' experiments work.

"Process and Practice: 40 Years of Experimentation," an anniversary exhibition on view through March 25, seems designed to introduce this unique and adventurous institution to a wider audience. It is a multi-artist show that draws on the museum's permanent collection of about 5,000 works. It includes well-known figures such as Louise Bourgeois, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker, Claes Oldenburg, Chris Burden, and Roy Lichtenstein, along with lesser-known artists who have done remarkable things.

On display with the finished works are the contents of more than 100 boxes the museum asked the artists to assemble as a way of documenting the thinking and the processes that shaped the final work.

The staff asks every artist who exhibits there to do a box, and though the 371 boxes in the archive have been used for scholarly research, this is the first time they have been systematically examined or displayed.

"It was a little like Christmas," said Susan Lubowsky Talbott, Fabric Workshop and Museum executive director and curator of the exhibition. "Every box was a gift  It was also a little bit like archaeology, pulling away the layers and showing how art is made."

The boxes are full of color studies, material samples, books, pictures, clippings, and all sorts of other stuff. One, by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka, contains mostly dried hogs' intestines, some knotted and some stretched, from which, in 1997, he made a columnar light based on the measurements of his own body. The result is dull, not commensurate with the thought and effort that the contents of the box indicate he put into it.

The box Yinka Shonibare assembled for his 2002 work Space Walk, a dramatic sculpture of floating astronauts, contains many record album covers, mostly of Philly Sound performers. Although the space suits are printed with patterns that evoke the artist's West African heritage, they also contain imagery taken from the album covers. You might not notice that, though, unless you had looked into the box.

Similarly, the box that accompanies Renee Green's Mise-en-Scene: Commemorative Toile (1992) complicates the artwork. It is a living room setting, with traditional, store-bought furniture upholstered in what looks like a traditional toile fabric, with matching wallpaper, designed by the artist. If you look harder, you see that the pattern includes scenes of racial violence, including lynchings.

Talbott says that only after she looked into the box and saw an illustrated book on the war for independence in Haiti did she notice that Green shows black people lynching whites. That detail makes this already unsettling work even more complicated.

Robert Pruitt's untitled suite of photographs of a science fiction- and nostalgia-inspired African American "royal family" is funny, scary, and powerful. His subjects wear bicycle-wheel crowns and machine-gun-adorned turbans. The box that accompanies the display is a carefully curated meditation on comic book culture and costume.

This is a sprawling exhibition that takes up much of three floors of the Fabric Workshop's Arch Street building. And though I have been emphasizing works that deal in some way with race, much of what's here is made just for visual pleasure. You (1997) by Jim Hodges, a screen made from silk flowers, was the first of a genre for which the artist has become known. His box, filled with colorful leftovers from the mostly white screen, is almost as pretty as the work itself.

Anish Kapoor has become famous for monumental sculpture, but in 1997, working with red wool and fiberglass, he made Body to Body, a pendulous, somewhat mysterious, but obviously sexy work. Laura Owens' silk-screened and embroidered series of trees on silk, from 2003, is just ravishing.

It seems clear that Talbott sees the opening of the boxes as part of a larger opening of an institution that is moving through a time of great change since the death of its founder, Marion Boulton "Kippy" Stroud, in 2015. Talbott, former director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, came here on an interim basis but is now the Fabric Workshop and Museum's second executive director.

Under Stroud's leadership, what began as a project to involve fine artists in the production of yard goods and clothing became an important center for all sorts of new art in many different media, including performance and installations. At the beginning, exhibitions were a small part of its mission, but in 1996, the Fabric Workshop added the words and Museum to its name, to recognize what had long been part of its mission.

The institution was so closely identified with Stroud that many wondered what would become of it after she was gone. However, she provided substantial continued support for it through the foundation she funded, along with art she bequeathed. Moreover, it has continued to receive substantial grants to continue its program. Talbott describes its status as financially secure. Under Talbott, it has been increasing its public programs and partnerships with colleges and other museums in the area.

At the media preview for the exhibition, Talbott said that although the Fabric Workshop and Museum is well known in the national and international art world, it has not looked toward having an impact in the Philadelphia area, which is something she intends to change.

What she is talking about is risky. One thing that makes the Fabric Workshop and Museum special is that it has never dumbed down to be popular. But this show is a good sign that the current leadership there understands the essential character and quirkiness of the institution, even as it seeks to be friendlier to its potential audience.

The opening of its boxes is a gift to Philadelphians. It's a good way to introduce yourself to a special place.
Actors Mark Wahlberg, left, and Christopher Plummer, right, listening to director Ridley Scott on the set of TriStar Pictures' "All The Money In The World." Scott says he hasn't heard from Kevin Spacey since the decision was made to cut the actor from the film. Read more

Twenty minutes.

That's how long it took All the Money in the World director Ridley Scott, upon hearing that star Kevin Spacey was implicated in a groping scandal, to decide he was going to replace him.

The studio took longer to persuade, but Scott wasn't taking no for an answer, and the executives came to understand that.

"I think they could see the look in my eye. You tell me no, it's a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull," said Scott, who can still snort and paw the ground effectively at 80.

His message: "I've done more movies than you, and I know what I'm doing, so suck eggs. Let's do this. Let's get it done."

Opposition to the idea was understandable, because what Scott proposed had never been done. He wanted to take a complete film, with a marketing campaign in place, trailers circulating, opening date a month a way, and replace one of its most substantial roles with another actor, Christopher Plummer.

Plummer had been one of Scott's original two choices for the role  that of J. Paul Getty, billionaire oilman who in 1979 famously refused to pay a penny of ransom to the Italian criminals who had kidnapped his grandson in Rome.

"He said he'd have to read the script first, but after we started shooting, he admitted he was going to do the role no matter what," Scott said.

The other major players  Michelle Williams as the abducted teen's mother, and Mark Wahlberg as Getty's personal fixer/investigator  dropped their Thanksgiving holiday plans to film key scenes with Plummer.

The reshoots took an astounding nine days, the whole process (including reediting) a month, and the film will be released nationally (and in Philadelphia) on Monday, almost exactly as originally scheduled.

Scott said he was motivated by anger  not at Spacey, with whom he got along during the original production (although he's a bit miffed that Spacey never called to apologize). Scott was angry on behalf of his cast and crew  the large community of artists and technicians (some 400 full-timers on All the Money in the World) whose work would be squandered if scandal destroyed the movie.

"My unit has built up over the years, and I have a great collection of talented people and good friends who help me make movies. And this was my chance to help them. It would be a damn pity of the actions of one person would put all of that effort in jeopardy," he said.

Scott, a veteran of the business, knew what was at stake.

"Once the movie is finished, the studio spends hard cash on advertising and marketing to make sure the film is seen," he said. "Once that money is gone, it's gone. The film gets lost. And that is unacceptable."

Scott said the new version of the film is better  the actors who returned to shoot with Plummer were energized and excited, and that shows in the final product.

And, strangely, the "negative" publicity has helped.

"I think it's helped us in terms of our profile. And that's huge. I've seen too many good films get distributed and not get noticed. Movies that should have played and didn't. You need awareness, and we have that. We've got awareness, and we've got a really good film. I really think we've got something  something that will not get lost in the exhaust fumes of Star Wars."
Decades of public awareness campaigns have convinced patients that screenings are essential. Read more

Elena Altemus is 89 and has dementia. She often forgets her children's names, and sometimes can't recall whether she lives in Maryland or Italy.

Yet Elena, who entered a nursing home in November, was screened for breast cancer as recently as this summer. "If the screening is not too invasive, why not?" asked her daughter, Dorothy Altemus. "I want her to have the best quality of life possible."

But a growing chorus of geriatricians, cancer specialists and health system analysts are coming forth with a host of reasons: Such testing in the nation's oldest patients is highly unlikely to detect lethal disease, hugely expensive and more likely to harm than help since any follow-up testing and treatment is often invasive.

And yet such screening  some have labeled it "overdiagnosis"  is epidemic in the United States, the result of medical culture, aggressive awareness campaigns and financial incentives to doctors.

By looking for cancers in people who are unlikely to benefit, "we find something that wasn't going to hurt the patient, and then we hurt the patient," said Dr. Sei Lee, an associate professor of geriatrics at the University of California-San Francisco.

Nearly 1 in 5 women with severe cognitive impairment  including older patients like Elena Altemus  are still getting regular mammograms, according to the American Journal of Public Health  even though they're not recommended for people with a limited life expectancy. And 55 percent of older men with a high risk of death over the next decade still get PSA tests for prostate cancer, according to a 2014 study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Among people in their 70s and 80s, cancer screenings often detect slow-growing tumors that are unlikely to cause problems in patients' lifetimes. These patients often die of something else  from dementia to heart disease or pneumonia  long before their cancers would ever have become a threat, said Dr. Deborah Korenstein, chief of general internal medicine at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Prostate cancers, in particular, are often harmless.

Patients with dementia, for example, rarely live longer than a few years.

"It generally takes about 10 years to see benefit from cancer screening, at least in terms of a mortality benefit," Korenstein said.

Enthusiasm for cancer screenings runs high among patients and doctors, both of whom tend to overestimate the benefits but underappreciate the risks, medical research shows.

In some cases, women are being screened for tumors in organs they no longer have. In a study of women over 30, nearly two-thirds who had undergone a hysterectomy got at least one cervical cancer screening, including one-third who had been screened in the past year, according to a 2014 study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Even some patients with terminal cancers continue to be screened for other malignancies.

Nine percent of women with advanced cancers  including tumors of the lung, colon or pancreas  received a mammogram and 6 percent received a cervical cancer screen, according to a 2010 study of Medicare recipients over age 65. Among men on Medicare with incurable cancer, 15 percent were screened for prostate cancer.

Although screenings can extend and improve lives for healthy, younger adults, they tend to inflict more harm than good in people who are old and frail, Korenstein said. Testing can lead to anxiety, invasive follow-up procedures and harsh treatments.

"In patients well into their 80s, with other chronic conditions, it's highly unlikely that they will receive any benefit from screening, and more likely that the harms will outweigh the benefits," said Dr. Cary Gross, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

By screening patients near the end of life, doctors often detect tumors that don't need to be found and treated. Researchers estimate that up to two-thirds of prostate cancers are overdiagnosed, along with one-third of breast tumors.

"Overdiagnosis is serious," Gross said. "It's a tremendous harm that screening has imposed.  It's something we're only beginning to reckon with."

A variety of medical specialties  from the American College of Surgeons to the Society of General Internal Medicine  have advised doctors against screening patients with limited time left. For example, the American Cancer Society recommends prostate and breast cancer screenings only in patients expected to live 10 years or more.

In November, a coalition of patient advocates, employers and others included prostate screenings in men over age 75 in its list of the top five "low-value" medical procedures. Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, co-director of the coalition, referred to the five procedures as "no-brainers," arguing that health plans should consider refusing to pay for them.

Prostate cancer screening in men over 75 cost Medicare at least $145 million a year, according to a 2014 study in the journal Cancer. Mammograms in this age group cost the federal health plan for seniors more than $410 million a year, according to a 2013 study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Taxpayers usually foot the bill for these tests, because most seniors are covered by Medicare.

And while cancer screenings generally aren't expensive  a mammogram averages about $100  they can launch a cascade of follow-up tests and treatments that add to the total cost of care.

Most spending on unnecessary medical care stems not from rare, big-ticket items, such as heart surgeries, but cheaper services that are performed much too often, according to an October study in Health Affairs.

A Hard Habit To Break

Many older patients expect to continue getting screened, said Dr. Mara Schonberg, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

"It's jarring for someone who's been told every year to get screened and then at age 75 you tell them to stop," she said.

John Randall, 78, says he plans to live into his 90s. He sees no reason to skip cancer screening.

"I, for one, do not like to hear what my life expectancy is," said Randall, who lives near Madison, Wis. He plans to have his next colonoscopy in January. He feels healthy and walks 2 miles at a stretch several days a week. "No one knows when I am going to die."

Decades of public awareness campaigns have convinced patients that cancer screenings are essential, said Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Her research found that many people see cancer screening as a moral obligation and can't imagine a day when they would stop getting screened.

Such campaigns have convinced many women that "mammograms saves lives."

But those campaigns don't mention that doctors need to screen 1,000 women for a decade in order to prevent one death from breast cancer, said Schonberg.

Yet screenings can have dire consequences. Medical complications during colonoscopies  such as intestinal tears  are almost twice as common in patients ages 75 to 79 compared with those 70 to 74, according to a study published in January in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Colonoscopies, which require extensive bowel cleansing before the procedure, also can leave many older people dehydrated and prone to fainting.

PSA tests can lead to prostate biopsies  in which doctors use needles to sample tissue  that cause infections in about 6 percent of men. These infections send about 1 in 100 men who undergo the procedure to the hospital, according to a 2014 study in the Journal of Urology.

Even removing nonfatal skin cancers can cause problems for older patients, said Dr. Eleni Linos, an associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. Frail patients can struggle to care for surgical wounds and change dressings; their wounds are also less likely to heal well, Linos said. More than 1 in 4 patients with nonfatal skin cancers report a complication of treatment, Linos' research shows.

Yet most of the 2.5 million slowest-growing skin cancers found each year are diagnosed in people over 65, according to Linos' 2014 study. More than 100,000 of these nonfatal skin cancers are treated in patients who die within one year.

Screenings, follow-up tests and treatments can cause emotional trauma as well.

"For a woman of that generation who doesn't have the cognitive ability to understand what's going on, having private parts of their body exposed and pressed against a machine can be very agitating and upsetting," Lee said.

Among older women, about 70 percent report significant stress at the time of a biopsy, Schonberg said. Simply lying on a table for a 45-minute biopsy can cause pain for women with significant arthritis, she said.

Virtually all older women with breast cancer wind up getting surgery, which poses additional hardships, Schonberg said. Many are prescribed hormonal therapies that can cause bone pain, fatigue and increase the risk of stroke.

With prostate cancer, doctors today try to reduce the harm from overdiagnosis by offering men with early-stage disease "active surveillance" instead of immediate treatment. A study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that men are just as likely to survive 10 years whether they choose to be treated or monitored.

Jay Schleifer, 74, of Wellington, Fla., was diagnosed with a low-risk prostate cancer last year. Since then, his doctor has monitored him with additional tests. He'll be treated only if tests suggest his cancer has become more aggressive.

This less aggressive approach aims to spare Schleifer from long-term side effects.

Among men who have had prostate cancer surgery, 14 percent lose control of their bladders and 14 percent develop erectile dysfunction, according to a 2013 study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

In a study published in July in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Richard Hoffman found 15 percent of prostate cancer survivors regretted their treatment decision. Those treated with surgery and radiation were about twice as likely to regret their choice compared with those who opted to monitor their disease.

Men are more likely to regret their prostate cancer treatment decisions if they don't understand the risks beforehand, said Hoffman, director of general internal medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine/Iowa City VA Medical Center.

Harold Honeyfield, 87, said he didn't fully understand the risks when he had prostate cancer surgery 12 years ago. Although he is glad he was treated, the surgery caused irreversible erectile dysfunction, which has caused stress and sadness for him and his wife of 47 years.

"When a man has no erections, that is paralysis," said Honeyfield, of Davis, Calif., who started a support group for other men dealing with prostate cancer. "You've lost the ability to be a man."

A Tough Sell

Doctors have a number of incentives to continue ordering screening tests as people age.

"It's a lot easier to say, 'Fine, get your regular mammogram this year,' than to have the much more difficult conversation that it's not helpful when life expectancy is limited," Gross said.

Schonberg said she tries to be diplomatic when talking to patients about halting screening.

"It's hard to tell people, 'You're not going to live long enough to benefit,'" Schonberg said. "That doesn't go over well."

Many physicians continue screening older people because they're afraid they'll be sued if they miss a cancer, Schonberg said. And she notes that some health systems award bonuses to clinicians whose patients have high screening rates.

In addition, "doing less can be perceived as a lack of caring or as ageism," Schonberg said. "It can be uncomfortable for a physician to explain why doing less is more."

Doctors should prioritize what they can do to help patients be healthier, said Dr. Louise Walter, chief of geriatrics at the University of California-San Francisco and a geriatrician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. For many older patients, screening for cancer is not their most pressing need.

"Instead of spending time and effort on things that are hurtful and never going to help them, why not direct time and energy on things that will help them live longer and better?" Walter asked.

For example, Walter might tell a patient, "'Right now, you have really bad heart failure and we need to get that under control,'" Walter said.

Other key issues for many older people include preventing falls, treating depression and alleviating stress in their caregivers, Walter said. Gross said he urges patients to take steps shown to improve their health, such as getting a flu shot or exercising at least 15 minutes a day.

"These are things that can help them feel better very quickly," Walter said. "Screenings can take years to have a benefit, if at all."

KHN's coverage related to aging and improving care of older adults is supported in part by The John A. Hartford Foundation.
Boyd Gaming Corp. has agreed to acquire the Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia for $280.5 million, the Las Vegas-based gaming company said in a release on Wednesday.

The Valley Forge resort, now held by an ownership group led by Philadelphia investor Ira Lubert, will be Boyd's first Pennsylvania property upon the deal's completion, expected in late summer or early fall 2018.

"The acquisition of Valley Forge Casino Resort is another excellent opportunity to further grow and diversify our nationwide portfolio," Boyd president and chief executive Keith Smith said in the Wednesday release. "With this acquisition, we will expand into the second-largest gaming state in the country, establishing a presence in a densely populated, high-traffic area just west of Philadelphia."

Earlier this week, Boyd announced that it would acquire four properties from Wyomissing-based Penn National Gaming Inc. in Missouri, Indiana and Ohio.

The Valley Forge resort, located two miles north of the King of Prussia Mall, encompasses a 40,000-square foot casino with 600 slot machines, 50 table games, and nearly 500 hotel rooms. The property also has eight restaurants and bars, and more than 100,000 square feet of meeting, convention and exhibit space.

Following the passage of gaming expansion legislation in November, Valley Forge plans to expand its gaming capacity in 2018 with the addition of 250 slot machines, Boyd said. Plans also call for SEPTA's proposed Norristown High Speed Line extension to end at the resort.
David Tanis has always described himself as a restaurant chef who prefers to cook at home. Tanis spent 25 years on and off with farm-to-table/sustainability pioneer Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., before leaving six years ago to write. Simplicity, he says, is key, and it's the recurring theme of his cookbooks (starting with A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes) and his weekly New York Times column, City Kitchen.

Tanis was in Philadelphia last week to host a dinner at Dizengoff, where chef Henry Morgan used Tanis' latest cookbook, David Tanis Market Cooking, as inspiration. The book takes the approach of simple serendipity  buy fresh ingredients that strike your fancy and base your meals on that. Before the Diz dinner, we sat down at Reading Terminal Market.

What inspired this book?

I really wanted to focus on vegetables and I really wanted to focus on the market. The market-cooking concept is so old but so forgotten  you go to the market, see what looks good, you buy it, and you take it home. You didn't necessarily go with the idea, "I'm going down to get a leg of lamb and some green beans." You go down and you say, "Let me go see what looks good at the market and I'm going to get what looks the best and take it home and that will be the meal." We'll make the menu once we get there. Or we'll throw out that other menu plan because suddenly it's going to be turnips instead because the turnips are so beautiful.

What is market cooking?

It's just all about how you shop. The choices that you make. Like, do you want to get in your big car and go to the big-box store and buy a big load of groceries, and take it back and put it in your great big refrigerator, and then do it again the next week? And some people do that, because it makes sense, you know, for their life and their lifestyle and, you know, all the things they need to take care of, and so on and so forth. But let me just use my mind here for a minute. I think it's more enjoyable to do it in small sessions. But maybe there's no farmer's market in your neighborhood or even in your town. There might be a farm stand somewhere, but there might be a little store that sells really beautiful lettuce that's a lot better looking than the lettuce you can get in your supermarket. You can make a little swing around there, and they might also have really great eggs. That's market cooking, too.

And the new book?

I wanted to make a book that was really user-friendly. I didn't want to make a very cheffy book that had beautiful pictures that you would need a crew of five to produce  or it would just sit on the coffee table somewhere looking beautiful. And so I think actually none of the recipes in this book are very complicated. It's the kind of book that you could give to a beginner cook and they would learn a lot and the recipes wouldn't be too difficult to master. But you could also give it to a more advanced cook and they'd find inspiration because, well, there's a whole gamut of vegetables in there. I don't want to have a food stylist. I want to make the food myself and I want it to taste right because I think when it tastes right, it looks better. But I also want it to look real. I want it to look edible. I want it to look natural. I don't want it to be handled too much and prettied up too much. But I want it to look gorgeous and attractive and a feeling. Because I want the book to be inspirational, my fantasy is that people will open the book and flip through, a beautiful photograph will catch their eye, and they'll say, "My gosh, that looks delicious." And then they'll look at the recipe and say, "Huh, that doesn't look so complicated: I think I can make that."

I suppose a simple kitchen setup is perfectly acceptable.

When I lived in Paris, the kitchen was about as big as this table. And we really did a lot of cooking there. One year, we had 45 people for Thanksgiving, and that supports my idea that you don't need all the bells and whistles. You need some fire and you need some surface to work on and you need a sharp knife. And everything else is kind of extra.

Are there any food causes near and dear to your heart?

Anything that falls under the sustainability umbrella, those things are important to me. I think my main mission, really, is to get people to cook at home. And that's my food cause. Because more and more people don't cook at home. Where I live in New York, people don't cook at home. They go out for every meal. Or they order in for every meal. And mostly they order in for every meal. You know, so they're taking a bag of something on the way with the coffee and then they order in for lunch and sit at their desk so they can have some more screen time, and then they go home and turn on the television and order in a pizza. On the other hand, there are some great restaurants in New York, and there's a lot of people that are really interested in the food scene and want to go out and experience it, but there's something different about eating at home and cooking at home and cooking.  You go to a restaurant and you're going to be a little bit on the passive side. And when you're involved in cooking and feeding people, it's more active. And sometimes more nurturing.
SEPTA tokens are on their way to becoming a relic of the past. Read more

It's the beginning of the end for SEPTA tokens.

SEPTA is going to stop selling the long-used coinage at stops along the Market-Frankford and Broad Street Lines, the authority announced Wednesday. The phaseout should begin in mid-January and be complete by March. Tokens are going to still be sold, for now, at SEPTA's headquarters at 1234 Market St., at Regional Rail stops, and at 200 area retailers.

The transit authority has been transitioning to a single-fare tool, the SEPTA Key smart card, since last year. Key card kiosks are now in every subway stop, and the fare card is expected to be introduced through a pilot program on Regional Rail early in 2018. SEPTA is the last major American transit organization to still use tokens as a payment method. New York City did away with tokens in 2003.

SEPTA has been using tokens since 1968, when they were introduced as a fare for students at 10 for $1, according to a history of the token that SEPTA provided. They became available for all riders nine years later, when the fare for a SEPTA trip was 45 cents. SEPTA didn't make tokens a cheaper payment option until 1982, when paying with a token was four cents cheaper than the 75-cent fare at the time.

The metal alloy coins have been more or less the same size since their introduction, SEPTA said. Tokens are now worth $2 each, compared with the $2.50 cash fare.

SEPTA is making official a trend that has been underway for more than a year. SEPTA sold 2.2 million tokens last month, compared with 3.2 million in November 2016. Machine sales have declined by 60 percent since July 2016, and window sales have been halved. SEPTA has been removing token machines from subway stops; now there are only 40 left to take away.

SEPTA has yet to set a deadline for the final demise of tokens in Philadelphia. The 15 million tokens now in circulation will eventually be melted down and sold for scrap.
Ryan Payne stands outside a federal courthouse Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017, in Las Vegas. Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case against Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Payne, a self-styled Montana militia leader. Read more

LAS VEGAS  A federal judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the criminal conspiracy case against rancher Cliven Bundy and three other defendants, saying government lawyers suppressed key evidence that would have been favorable to the defendants' case related to a 2014 standoff with federal agents.

U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro determined that the prosecution suppressed evidence from FBI surveillance cameras recording the Bundy family home and the presence of Bureau of Land Management snipers around the property in the days leading up to the standoff there. Additionally, the prosecution did not provide FBI logs, maps, reports, and threat assessments that said the Bundy family was not dangerous.

Navarro pointed to assessments conducted by the FBI, the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center, and the BLM that said "the Bundy family is not violent" and that they "would probably get in your face, but not get into a shootout."

The court "regrettably believes a mistrial is the only suitable option," Navarro told the packed Nevada courtroom. "A fair trial at this point is impossible."

The case accused Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and Montana militiaman Ryan Payne of conspiring to commit a crime against BLM officers during the armed standoff near the family ranch in Nevada.

Navarro spoke of several reports that were also kept from the defense that showed that the Bundy family's cows  which had been illegally grazing on public lands for more than 20 years when the BLM orchestrated a roundup of the cattle  had "no detrimental impact on Desert Tortoise habitat." The tortoise is listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

Such details cast doubt on the government's portrait of the family as violent, paranoid, anti-government extremists. But Navarro noted to the courtroom that declaring a mistrial does not mean that the men are being found not guilty.

"That is not the court's decision," Navarro said. "It is for a jury to decide."

As of Wednesday evening, Cliven Bundy was still incarcerated, but his attorney, Bret Whipple, said he planned to file an emergency motion to see his client released from jail without conditions. The Bundy family patriarch, along with other defendants, was granted conditional release earlier this month, but Cliven Bundy chose to stay in jail until he was allowed to leave without GPS monitoring, which Bundy said would "acknowledge that he did something wrong," Whipple said.

Both sides have until Dec. 29 to file briefs on whether the judge should allow the government to pursue a new trial.

"I do not think there is a jury in this country that will convict us," Ammon Bundy said outside the courthouse, an arm slung around his mother's shoulders as he spoke to reporters. "The truth is on our side."

The mistrial "does bring a lot of vindication to us," he said, noting that Navarro "talked about our family, my dad, how he wasn't prone to use violence. My dad has said that many, many times. He's not a violent man. He's a man of peace. He only wanted his rights to be protected."

Supporters of the Bundy family streamed to the Nevada desert in the spring of 2014 after videos of BLM agents using a stun gun on Ammon Bundy and throwing his aunt to the ground went viral. The family put a call out for supporters to come to their aid in what they felt was an illegal roundup of their cattle.

A mistrial is, in some ways, the latest in a string of victories for the Bundy family.

Last fall, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, as well as other defendants, were acquitted of nearly identical charges for their 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016, a federal facility they said should be returned to the people of the southeastern Oregon county.

In a separate trial this year over the 2014 standoff, several men were acquitted by a jury.

Ryan Bundy, who represented himself in both Oregon and Nevada, told reporters that the family's decision to stand up against what they saw as federal tyranny was informed by their belief in the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly the "white horse prophecy," which contends that LDS followers will be the final defenders of the U.S. Constitution. The LDS church has continually condemned the actions of the Bundy family and says that the white horse prophecy is not accepted doctrine and more akin to conspiracy theory.

But on Wednesday, Ryan Bundy spoke of the prophecy as truth: "Joseph Smith prophesied that the Constitution would at some point hang as if it were by a thread," he said. "Put it this way: Whether the church calls it doctrine or not, we've got quotes from several prophets reiterating that. . . . I take the words of the prophets both modern and previous ones seriously."

After the mistrial was declared, Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, yelled into a bullhorn outside the courthouse: "Public lands belong to everybody! Not just to people who have the biggest guns!" Around him, Bundy supporters jeered in response.

"There are no public lands!" one woman yelled. "The government has the biggest guns!" another man countered.

"The prosecution and the FBI made some huge missteps," Suckling said afterward. "That shouldn't confuse anybody about what the Bundys had done and their guilt with bringing an armed militia onto public land that belongs to everybody."
Hours before she died, a Burlington County teenager on a mission to find her younger sister in foster care messaged her mother that she would be OK, and included: "I love you."

Early Monday afternoon, Tatiana Carter was killed in a crash in Shamong, Burlington County, that also took the lives of her boyfriend, who was driving a stolen SUV, and a third friend, according to New Jersey State Police. Family members Wednesday were still struggling to understand what happened on that rural road.

The driver was identified by police as Xzavier Wells, 18, of Burlington City. Carter and the third victim, Nicole Ross, were both 16 and from Shamong, police and family said.

The trio were pulled from the green 1999 GMC Yukon, which had veered off the roadway at Flyatt and Carranza Roads with troopers in pursuit. The SUV hit a utility pole and caught fire.

"Tati" Carter's mother, Amber Turner, said Wednesday that she did not know why police initiated a high-speed chase or why Wells lost control of the car. Her daughter, she said, wanted to find her younger sister, who is in foster care in New Jersey. Wells had agreed to help and the three stole the Yukon, Turner said.

"Tatiana was driven by ohana," her mother said. "Ohana means family [in Hawaiian], and no one gets left behind or forgotten."

Turner said her daughter and Ross had run away from Crossroads, a residential program based in Willingboro for homeless, abandoned, and at-risk youth. Both were reported missing by Crossroads, she said. They had been staying in a residential home in Mount Holly. Turner said her daughter left the program in mid-November. Ross left the program about two weeks ago, Turner said. Wells had been a student for a brief time at Burlington City High School.

Michelle Wright, marketing manager for Crossroads, said she could not comment on whether Carter and Ross were part of the program, because of privacy laws.

Turner said she is involved in a custody dispute with the state. She said that her four children were removed from her home based on false allegations and that she had petitioned to have them returned to her. Tatiana Carter feared her younger sister, Jasmine, was being relocated out of state to live with a relative, her mother said. Turner said Tatiana left the foster care program because she was living in poor conditions and "she thought living on the run was better than living in custody" of the state.

"My daughter was killed in a situation so far beyond a car accident and being a teen," Turner said. "She was trying to save her sister."

The two exchanged numerous messages from late Sunday into early Monday as Turner worked the overnight shift at a diner. Her daughter said, "I'll be fine mommy. I love you."

According to state police, troopers had been dispatched to the Pic-a-Lilli Inn on Route 206 in Shamong about noon Monday, when the Yukon was reported stolen from the parking lot. Minutes later, while heading south on Route 206, the officers saw a vehicle matching the SUV's description in the northbound lane.

The troopers turned around, and the SUV driver began speeding and driving erratically, police said. According to some reports, the driver was traveling between 70 and 80 mph. State Police spokesman Maj. Brian Polite said the speed of the SUV and police remained under investigation.

State police also have not said whether troopers activated their lights and sirens.

Family members said Wells did not own a car or have a driver's license, but Turner said he was an experienced driver. Turner said a friend told her the three were dropped off in the area by another friend.

In a GoFundMe page, Wells' cousin Stacy Lynn Snyder said: "He was such a sweet, caring young man. He didn't deserve this at all. He would give you the shirt off his back. No matter what he did in his past that don't mean nothing right now. He is a young man that shouldn't have lost his life to something so senseless." She did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday night.

Citing the investigation, a woman who answered the phone at the Pic-a-Lilli on Wednesday said no one from the restaurant would comment.

Burlington City School Superintendent Patricia Doloughty said Wells, who had been a junior, was no longer attending school in the district. She said he had been "dropped from the rolls" on Dec. 12. Doloughty would not be more specific about the circumstances. Wells had attended the high school for about two months, she said. The school, with 750 students, had counselors available for those who wanted to talk Wednesday.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family," the superintendent said. "It's always hard. It's a tragic loss."

Ross also was identified by family members in a Facebook GoFundMe page. The page is seeking to raise $5,000 for funeral services for the teen, who according to the fund-raising page was pregnant.

The person whose name is on the page is identified as Marlene Ulloa, who posted that she "lost my 16-year-old pregnant sister-in-law Nicole Ross in a fatal car crash. My heart breaks for my mother-in-law." In asking for donations, the post said there was "no worse pain than losing a child."
A Bordentown Township Police patrol car rides along Farnsworth Avenue in Bordentown City shortly after the hate crime charges were announced against former Chief Frank Nucera Jr. Read more

After a former South Jersey police chief pleaded not guilty to hate crime charges in federal court in Camden on Thursday, his lawyer said he may challenge recordings that allegedly capture his client comparing African Americans to ISIS and offering to "be on the firing squad" to shoot them.

The charges stem from a September 2016 incident in which former Bordentown Township Police Chief Frank M. Nucera Jr. allegedly assaulted a handcuffed black suspect and later made a series of chillingly detailed racist remarks.

Authorities said Nucera's sentiments alarmed a fellow officer, who secretly recorded them.

Rocco Cipparone, Nucera's lawyer, said he plans to analyze the 100 hours of recordings made covertly by at least one Bordentown Township officer.

The former chief, who abruptly retired in January amid a federal investigation of his conduct, ignored a request for comment after he entered his not-guilty plea before District Judge Robert B. Kugler in Camden. "Not guilty" were the only words he uttered during the 20-minute proceeding.

In court, Nucera chewed gum and stared straight ahead at the judge. He wore a rust-orange shirt and brown pants, and brought a zip-up jacket.

Nucera, 60, was released to his home in Bordentown on $500,000 in unsecured bonds after his arrest last month. He faces up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines if convicted of charges of hate-crime assault, a civil rights violation against the suspect, and lying to the FBI, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Lorber. He was indicted this month.

Cipparone said he would review the recorded statements that were provided by federal authorities. "The vast majority of them were not done under the direction of law enforcement," he said, and suggested they were "rogue recordings."

Cipparone questioned why someone would record the chief on their own and what the motivation might be. The attorney also suggested the statements could have been taken out of context.

"I don't know if they stopped or started it, or recorded it continuously.  None of those controls were in place," he said. He also said that "what appears to be indelicate comments" were made at the very end of the recordings, and he questioned whether there was improper prodding or editing of the remarks.

Among the comments on tape about African Americans, Nucera allegedly said: "They should line them all up and mow 'em down. I'd like to be on the firing squad, I could do it." Federal authorities said Nucera also instructed officers to use police dogs to intimidate black spectators at high school basketball games.

"The tone in which [Nucera] conducted himself and in what's charged is one of the most disturbing and disgusting events I've seen in over 20 years in law enforcement," acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey William E. Fitzpatrick said after the arrest was announced last month.

Officials in the community said they were surprised to learn of the charges, saying the 34-year career officer had not openly displayed any hostility.

At the arraignment, Kugler set deadlines for completing various trial preparations, including discovery, which could effectively push the trial date into the summer at the earliest.

In the Sept. 1, 2016, incident, Nucera allegedly attacked Timothy Stroye, then 18, of Trenton, who was already in police custody inside the Bordentown Ramada hotel. The chief, who arrived in response to a call for backup, slammed the suspect's head into a metal door jamb as he was being escorted by two officers out of the hotel to a police cruiser, authorities said.

Stroye's arrest began over a dispute over an unpaid bill for a room at the Ramada. In an interview, Stroye said he had been Maced, handcuffed, and placed on the floor of the hotel by two officers when several backup officers arrived, some with their hands on their holstered guns. "I thought they were going to shoot me," he said.

Stroye did not know that one of them was the chief but recalled one officer had slammed his head into the door jamb at the top of the stairs in the hotel, shoved him a second time at the bottom of the stairs, and hit him as he was being placed into the police cruiser.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Stroye was not a threat and was not "kicking or struggling" when Nucera allegedly struck him, causing injuries.

Cipparone said his client "adamantly denies" assaulting Stroye and also said there are no video or audio recordings of the alleged assault.

"It's hard to fathom that this kind of racial animosity would surface at the end of his career," Cipparone said.
Years ago, New Jersey lawmakers would insert last-minute "Christmas tree" items into the annual budget to send pork back to their districts. A federal investigation by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie helped scale back the Trenton tradition.

But lawmakers are back in a gift-giving mood these days, fast-tracking legislation that would sweeten pensions for the mayor of Camden and an unknown number of other elected officials.

If the measure were to become law, as seems likely, Mayor Dana L. Redd's annual pension would increase by more than 50 percent to about $50,000.

Redd, 49, who is leaving office next month, would also be eligible for early retirement and, like other government employees who serve for 25 years, lifetime health benefits. (Public employees who retire early also have to pay a penalty.)

The legislative maneuvering comes in the same month that the Christie administration released a report warning that the pension and health benefits systems for public workers would consume 26 percent of the state budget by 2023.

Redd, a Democrat, has been a key ally for Christie, a Republican, and George E. Norcross III, a South Jersey insurance executive and Democratic power broker. Christie is to be succeeded by Democrat Phil Murphy on Jan. 16.

At issue is a 2007 law that prohibited newly elected officials from enrolling in the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS). After the law passed, elected officials were allowed to enroll in a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan.

Officials who were already enrolled in PERS were allowed to stay in it if they continued to serve in the same position. (An exception was carved out for legislators who moved from one chamber of the Legislature to the other.) When Redd jumped from City Council member to mayor in 2010, her account was frozen.

Lawmakers in Trenton now say that was an unintended consequence they want to fix.

"Going back and reworking these things is always awkward," said Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D., Gloucester), chairman of his chamber's appropriations committee. But, he added, "I look at this as housekeeping."

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester) suggested that this was a drop in the bucket for a pension system for nearly 800,000 active and retired public workers. "It has no impact on the pension," he told reporters in Trenton.

A spokesman for Redd said the mayor was focused on the transition to the incoming administration and had no comment on "any pending legislation." Council President Frank Moran will succeed Redd in January.

Lawmakers say the legislation could affect perhaps a handful of other elected officials. Burzichelli, whose committee advanced the legislation, said he hoped to have a list of names before the Assembly's next voting session, scheduled for Jan. 4.

The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services said it was unable to estimate the cost of the bill.

Under legislation that passed the Senate and Burzichelli's Assembly committee on Monday, Redd would be able to buy back into the pension system and get retroactive service credit for the years her account was frozen.

Her pension would be based on her $102,000 salary as mayor, up from the $92,596.66 three-year average from her highest-earning years as a Camden County employee and City Council member in the mid-2000s, according to the Treasury Department. She enrolled in PERS in 1990.

Under current law, Redd would be eligible for retirement in 2028 and receive a $32,408.88 annual pension, according to the Treasury. The new legislation would boost her pension to more than $50,000.

Previous versions of the bill have failed. In 2014, for example, lawmakers unsuccessfully tied the pension-fix bill to raises for cabinet officials, judges, and various other public officials.

But there's broad support this time around in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. The bill passed the Senate by 23-9 and advanced from the Assembly committee by 8-2, with one abstention.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that New Jersey government employees who serve for 25 years are eligible for free lifetime health benefits upon retirement. A 2011 law signed by Gov. Christie required most new retirees to contribute at least 1.5 percent of their monthly retirement allowance toward their health care, though there were exceptions for workers who had already accrued 25 years of service credit.
State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone (D.,Berks) at a Capitol news conference in this 2008 Associated Press file photo. Read more

HARRISBURG  As calls mounted Wednesday for his resignation, State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone said he would remain in office, insisting that he had not sexually harassed a former legislative employee who was paid nearly a quarter-million dollars to settle her complaint.

"I have denied all accusations from day one," Caltagirone, a Democrat from Berks County, said in a statement. "I wanted my day in court, but counsel implored the parties to settle because of the high cost of litigating any complaint, legitimate or not."

He added: "I will not engage in victim blaming.  I will not resign."

It was the first time Caltagirone had commented on the sexual harassment case that resulted in a 2015 secret payout of $248,000 to a former longtime employee. The case involved allegations of verbal and physical harassment over several years.

The settlement was first reported Tuesday afternoon in the Inquirer and Daily News and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody has declined to be interviewed but has said he cannot discuss details of cases that involve confidentiality clauses. He said, however, that sometimes such payments are necessary because they protect from lengthy and costly litigation.

Within hours of the report, Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, said Caltagirone should resign. Other Democrats throughout the Capitol late Tuesday and throughout the day Wednesday echoed the governor's call.

The 40-year lawmaker defended his record, noting his support for extending the statute of limitations on prosecution of child sexual abuse. "I have introduced legislation to address rape and sexual assault on college campuses, and providing women with free feminine hygiene products so they can maintain basic human dignity while incarcerated," Caltagirone said.

Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky (D., Delaware) said she was "astonished" when she read about the secret settlement,

"The public deserves to know when elected officials have abused their power, period  especially when legal action is involved," Krueger-Braneky said in a statement Wednesday.

She has introduced legislation that would ban nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases involving lawmakers or legislative employees, and prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used to settle such claims.

Krueger-Braneky also signaled that she was disappointed in the way she learned of the settlement  reading it in the newspaper.

"The women legislators, staff, and interns of the General Assembly deserve better than to find out in the newspaper that a prominent elected official has a concerning history of harassment claims against him," she said.

Caltagirone, a longtime chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee, was investigated by the state Attorney General's Office in the mid-1990s after a different female employee said he had at one point exposed himself to her and, after she ran away, brandished a gun while trying to order her to get into a car. The case did not result in criminal charges, over the objections of the grand jury in the case.

Also calling for Caltagirone to resign was fellow Democratic State Rep. Madeleine Dean.

Dean, a candidate for lieutenant governor, said in a statement late Tuesday: "I am disgusted as a state representative, as a taxpayer, and as a woman that taxpayer dollars have been spent to cover up some of these allegations in the past."

This article contains information from the Associated Press.
Doris B. Steinberg, 87, formerly of East Falls, the founder of East Falls Village, a community organization that helps seniors remain in their homes, died Wednesday, Dec. 13, of dementia at Cathedral Village in Andorra.

Mrs. Steinberg resided in East Falls for more than four decades. In 2011, seeing the need for a support system to help older adults age in place rather than move to nursing or retirement homes, she established East Falls Village. The nonprofit has almost 200 members.

Mrs. Steinberg adapted the template of the national village movement begun in Boston in 2002 with the founding of Beacon Hill Village. Currently, there are 230 such villages in the United States. There are two others here: the Northwest Village Network serving Northwest Philadelphia and Penn's Village serving Center City.

Members pay a small fee and are given an on-call number staffed by a volunteer. The members can phone in for help with home repairs and rides to doctors, the supermarket, and medical appointments. The group also sponsors activities such as yoga, walks, tours, and bridge games.

"It was Doris who was the instigator and the inspiration for East Falls Village, which has been so good for all of us," said volunteer Joe Terry.

"She read in the New York Times about the first village in Beacon Hill, Boston. She called some of us, and we held meetings in her dining room.

"She was so well-liked and respected in the community that she got people to join the bandwagon, and that is why we are where we are," Terry said. "She was a wonderful, wonderful person."

Charlie Gay, who took the reins of the organization after Mrs. Steinberg and her husband, Philip, retired to Cathedral Village, said she "was a pleasure to work with and a constant boost to our morale."

Mary Flournoy, cochair of the village's operating group, said Mrs. Steinberg was a natural as a convener. "We really call her the mother of East Falls Village," she said. "We all feel the loss of Doris, even though she and her husband moved to Cathedral Village a few years ago."

The eldest of three children, Mrs. Steinberg grew up in Sellersville, Bucks County. She graduated from Sell-Perk High School in 1947 and often talked of playing the lead role of Emily in the students' production of Our Town. She attended Temple University.

She worked for many years in the development office of the University of Pennsylvania, devoting herself to memorial giving. She retired in 1995.

She was an active supporter of other organizations in East Falls, including the East Falls Library, a branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Mrs. Steinberg loved to read and to share that love with others. She joined several book clubs and enjoyed tutoring elementary-school children in reading.

In the 1990s, Mrs. Steinberg served as chair of the board of directors of Maxwell Mansion, a Victorian house museum in Germantown. The volunteer work she did on the mansion's behalf helped prevent it from closing, her family said.

She was a longtime active member of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where she served on the board of trustees and as chair of a committee that arranged an annual Christmas party for residents of the Presbyterian Riverside Apartments, 158 N. 23rd St. The apartments provide subsidized housing for older adults and the disabled.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Steinberg is survived by daughters Susan Steinberg and Mimi Satterthwaite; four grandchildren; and a brother.

A visitation from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 5, at the McIlvaine Funeral Home, 3711 Midvale Ave., will be followed by an 11 a.m. memorial service Saturday, Jan. 6, at the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, 201 S. 21st St., Philadelphia 19103. Burial is private.

Memorial donations may be made to the Falls of Schuylkill Library, 3501 Midvale Ave., Philadelphia 19129, or to the church at the address above.
It's sad that at the time of the year we celebrate the bright star over Bethlehem that guided the three wise men, we have to be reminded of the dark star that hovers over Harrisburg, and the anything-but-wise men that run that place.

Just days after former staffers of State Sen. Daylin Leach accused him of inappropriate comments and touching, the Inquirer and Daily News revealed details of a financial settlement of another harassment claim against State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone (D., Berks) in 2015. House Democrats paid out nearly a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money to settle a complaint against Caltagirone. They refuse to release details, citing a nondisclosure agreement.

This amount is on top of $30,000 the Democrats paid to stop a harassment lawsuit against then-State Rep. Jewell Williams, who is now the city's sheriff. The Inquirer calculated that House Democrats have paid out $600,000 to settle four claims against lawmakers, two of which were harassment cases.

The money was paid from the state's Bureau of Risk and Insurance Management, which manages the state's self-insurance programs, but it might as well have been from a black box, since no one involved felt it necessary to have explained or revealed the details of the settlement. A year after the secret settlement, Caltagirone was reelected.

Of course there should be a prohibition against using public money to settle such claims; State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky (D., Delaware) is proposing just such a law. Meanwhile, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale offered his audit services to the legislature; he doesn't have the authority to conduct such an audit without being invited. (His recently conducted audit of the Philadelphia Parking Authority was at their behest. If the Parking Authority is able to set a moral example, you know you're in trouble.)

This is an outrageous example of financial abuse of taxpayers. Gov. Wolf called on both Leach and Caltagirone to resign. We say it's time for a taxpayer revolt. And if it's led by females, all the better.

Given the culture of arrested development exhibited by the recent Harrisburg porn scandal, which caught countless elected and unelected officials in its net, it's probably a sure bet that other harassment dominoes are going to fall.

Meanwhile, if there are lawmakers out there who are nervous about whether they will be busted for bad behavior, we have a suggestion:

Call your current and former female employees to a meeting, and invite them to tell you the truth: Have you ever acted in a way that made them uncomfortable? Do they mind your jokes? Are they squeamish if they find themselves alone in a room with you?

If you make it clear you're looking for honest feedback that will carry no negative consequences, we're betting your staffers will tell the truth about whether your behavior is problematic. If it is, or if you are too afraid to do this, that should tell you something. Maybe it's time to get your own lawyer. But make sure you use your own money.
One way to change up your Nutcracker run is to perform it halfway around the world. This holiday season, two Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince couples from Texas Ballet Theater and Australias Queensland Ballet did just that in a fun cross-company exchange. Last week, TBT artists Samantha Pille and Jiyan Dai traveled to Brisbane to debut in the Australian companys Nutcracker performances. Now, Queensland Ballet dancers Yanela Pinera and Camilo Ramos are in Fort Worth for the follow-up shows. They had their first performance last night and are scheduled to dance again December 22.

From left: Queensland Ballets Yanela Pinera and Camilo Ramos with TBTs Jiyan Dai and Samantha Pille. Photo courtesy TBT.

TBT artistic director Ben Stevenson, O.B.E., and Li Cunxin, artistic director for Queensland Ballet, dreamed up the holiday swap hoping to give their dancers a fresh Nutcracker experience. The exchange is particularly meaningful because of the directors shared history. Cunxin (whose autobiography Maos Last Dancer was made into a major motion picture in 2009), danced as a principal under Stevenson during his tenure as artistic director of Houston Ballet. After taking the helm of Queensland Ballet, Cunxin brought Stevensons production of Nutcracker to Australia.

For the dancers, it helped having Stevensons familiar steps as a grounding force. They had to adjust to new sets and costumes, as well as the music. (Queensland Ballet dances to a live orchestra, while TBT uses a recording for Nutcracker performances.) The stage in Brisbane was another factor for Pille and Dai. Its softer than the one we have, so it felt really nice to dance on, says Pille.

Ramos and Pinera in rehearsal at TBT. Photo courtesy TBT.

Dai found subtle variations in the character roles in Brisbane, too. Yes, the choreography is the same, but you really see nuances in the acting sections, says Dai. Each dancer has a slightly different style, so its these little things, the nuances, that can actually look and feel different.

Pille and Dai felt instantly at home at Queensland Ballet. The company was so welcoming and accommodating, says Pille. And a new set of eyes helped them get out of their comfort zone. It was so special to perform for a new audience, but also to see so many dancers from the Queensland Ballet watching us from backstage, she adds. That made it so fun.

An added bonus? Because of hemispheric differences, December is actually a summer month in Australia. Thats why audiences love the snow section, says Pinera. While Fort Worth isnt exactly a wintry place, it has been a chilly performance week for the Queensland dancers. Still, they are excited to be there. Performing the Nutcracker in Bens home is amazing for us, says Pinera. We met him last May when he came to set his Swan Lake, so this is the second time we have met him.

The exchange hasnt all been about dancing, of course. Even though we were only there for five days, we managed a visit to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to see the koala bears and kangaroos, says Pille. Ramos and Pinera have spent their free time this week walking around Fort Worths historic downtown and enjoying the local restaurants. I love the architecture of the buildings, says Ramos. Pinera adds, And we got to see the TBT show, which was really great.

The exchange may seem like a lot of work for two shows across an ocean or two, but the dancers say the experience has been eye-opening. Its such a learning experience to witness another company at work, says Pille. I know it will help us on our career journey.
Hugo Parral-Aguirre (Photo: Humboldt County SO)

The man suspected of shooting a three-year Humboldt County, CA, sheriffs deputy in the left shoulder with a 12-gauge shotgun at a Ferndale dairy farm early Sunday morning was a Mexican national here illegally who was previously deported in 2015, according to Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal.

At a press conference Monday morning, Honsal said both the injured deputy, whose name is not being released at this time, and the suspect Hugo Parral-Aguirre, 30, are in stable condition and are no longer in the hospital. Hugo had three gunshot wounds after two deputies returned fire, Honsal said.

Honsal said the outcome was very lucky because the female deputy who was shot could have been killed if the shot had struck her a few inches away, the Times-Standard reports.

Sundays incident began shortly after midnight after a neighbor reported a dispute between two men in Ferndale, Honsal said. A deputy and a sheriffs sergeant arrived on scene shortly before 12:50 a.m. in marked vehicles and approached a small barn-like structure on the property, according to Honsal. A woman then ran out of the door of the residence saying she had been held against her will by Parral-Aguirre, who was allegedly trespassing, Honsal said. Investigators later learned that Parral-Aguirre had allegedly attempted to shoot the womans boyfriend earlier that evening, according to Honsal.

The deputy and sergeant drew their guns when they saw Parral-Aguirre in the barn, Honsal said. After both ordered Parral-Aguirre to drop his weapon, the suspect allegedly fired one round from a 12-gauge shotgun, striking the deputy in her left shoulder above her ballistic vest, according to Honsal. Both the deputy and sergeant returned fire while finding cover for both themselves and the woman at the scene, Honsal said. Parral-Aguirre was shot three times during the exchange of gunfire, Honsal said.
A Caddo Parish (LA) Sheriff's deputy was injured in a crash with a tractor-trailer truck Tuesday night. (Photo: Caddo Parish SO)

A Caddo Parish Sheriff's deputy, who was injured Tuesday when his patrol vehicle struck a tractor-trailer, is in good condition following surgery, Bill Strother, spokesman for University Health, said Thursday.

Dep. Joseph Fourcade was driving to assist another deputy just after 6 p.m. He was headed south on Bert Kouns when Bryan James, 27 of Shreveport, the driver of the tractor-trailer headed north, turned left onto Julie Frances Drive.

Fourcade's patrol car hit the tractor-trailer's rear axle. Both vehicles had a green light, the Shreveport Times reports.
Jacquen Hunter graduated from the New Orleans Police Department academy Friday (Dec. 15). Her sister, Natasha Hunter was fatally injured last year in a crash. Two of Jacquen's sisters are serving with the NOPD. (Photo: NOPD)

A year and a half after New Orleans officer Natasha Hunter was fatally injured in the line of duty, Hunter's sister, Jacquen Hunter, joined the ranks of the New Orleans Police Department, continuing the family's legacy of service with the agency.

Jacquen Hunter graduated NOPD's academy Friday (Dec. 15) as part of Recruit Class No. 180, according to the department. In a video posted to the NOPD's website, Jaquen Hunter told NOLA.com that she felt the support of her late sister throughout the process of becoming an officer.

In joining the NOPD, Jacquen Hunter becomes the fourth of the Hunter sisters to serve in the department, she said in the video. Two of Jacquan Hunter's sisters still work for the NOPD, she said.

Their sister, Natasha Hunter, 32, was an 11-year veteran of the NOPD when she was fatally wounded in June 2016 while investigating a traffic crash on Interstate 10. According to police, a drunken motorist slammed into the back of her marked police car. She died two days later, on June 7, 2017, leaving behind a 5-year-old daughter.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tore Republicans to shreds on Wednesday, saying the rush to pass a massive tax scam written by their donors is exactly what is wrong with Washington.

The Democratic senator told MSNBCs Chris Hayes that the legislation is proof that Washington is just not working for the rest of America.

Video:

Exactly What Is Wrong With Washington: Elizabeth Warren Shreds GOP For Letting Donors Write Tax Bill pic.twitter.com/L1fsspQkYV  Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) December 21, 2017

Warren put Republicans on blast for crafting this corporate giveaway behind closed doors with their donors:

Lets be completely clear here. They went behind closed doors, locked out the Democrats, would not talk about this with Democrats, and they horse traded among themselves and among their donors. And at the end of the day, they walked out with a package that they could sign off on and their big donors could sign off on. And I dont care how many sympathetic faces they make, thats what the process was all about. It is the ultimate view into exactly what is wrong with Washington. A Washington that works well for those who can spend a zillion dollars on campaign contributions, hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers, a Washington thats just not working for the rest of America.

As Warren said, this rewrite of Americas tax code was essentially bought, paid for and written by GOP megadonors, and it certainly shows in the massive, permanent handouts it gives to billionaires and big corporations.

As if that wasnt enough, those giveaways are funded by kicking 13 million Americans off their health insurance plans, which will have the consequence of raising rates for those who will keep their coverage.

Sure, Republicans and the lobbyists who cobbled this plan together behind closed doors threw temporary crumbs at (some) lower and middle-income folks, but those will dissipate, and the bottom 60 percent of households will be left with a higher tax burden by 2027  while, again, the wealthiest individuals and corporations get to keep their lower rates.

If this disastrous piece of legislation sounds and looks like it was written by big corporations and their lobbyists, its because it was.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) had a blunt warning for Donald Trump that if he tries to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the American people will take to the streets and try to impeach him.

Video:

Lieu was asked on The Beat With Ari Melber what he would do if Trump fired Rod Rosenstein as part of a move to fire Mueller.

He answered,We would take to the streets. We would try impeach are Donald Trump, and look if he wants to follow in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, hes welcome to try, but it will not end well for him.

Rep. Lieus answer might have been the understatement of the century. If Trump is willing to call it a day after getting tax cuts for himself and his wealthy pals, hes more than able to do that, but there is no way that he will stay in office if he fires Mueller.

Trump has always overestimated his political value to congressional Republicans. Now that Ryan and McConnell have fulfilled their tax cuts for the rich dreams, they are free to try to save their majorities in the House and Senate by throwing Trump overboard. Congressional Republicans have zero loyalty to Trump. They view the President as an out of it old man who should be rubberstamping their agenda.

Ted Lieu was right. Trump should try to fire Mueller and see what happens, because the ensuing political firestorm would get Democrats back in charge of Congress and Trump and Pence a one way ticket to impeachment.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Republican hysteria over the ongoing investigation into Donald Trumps ties to Russia reached a new high on Wednesday, with a new report showing that the GOP is going directly after the FBI and Justice Department as Robert Muellers investigation gets closer to Donald Trump.

According to Politico, A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly  and perhaps criminally  mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.

More from the stunning report:

A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committees high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They havent informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the Houses general counsel. The people familiar with Nunes plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence. That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign  or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, lambasted Republicans for their secret committee, calling it an attack on our institutions.

I think what we are seeing in our committee  is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what theyll find and try to discredit them in advance, Schiff said, according to the same Politico report. Its a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions.

As Robert Muellers investigation continues to close in Trump, Republicans have made the short-sighted decision to put politics ahead of the country by going after credible U.S. institutions instead of supporting efforts to hold the president and Russia accountable for potentially working together to undermine American democracy.

The question is no longer whether the behavior of these Republicans is going to cause long-lasting damage to U.S. democracy  its how much damage will it cause.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

In the Netflix series Stranger Things, the school kids who league together live by an axiom that binds them: Friends dont lie. The ethos is essential as they work together to fight the monsters of the upside down world as well as the corrupt government agencies that keep those monsters secret and abuse and experiment on people in the name of science.

That Donald Trump has lied copiously to the American people is not really disputable. David Leonhardt of The New York Times has definitively tracked and cataloged Trumps many lies. I wont rehearse them here.

Obviously, in his plugging of the recent tax bill, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act which just passed through both chambers of congress, he has been caught red-handed once again lying to the American people in a myriad of ways. He touts as a middle-class tax cut what is really a massive redistribution of wealth to corporate America and our nations wealthiest one per cent. He claims the bill is not good for him, even though analysts indicate the bill is especially kind to those involved in commercial real estate. Frankly, there are just too many lies involved in Trumps and the Republicans peddling of this bill to enumerate here.

He is no friend of the middle class, no friend of the American people. We should all know this by now.

In celebrating Congresss passage of the tax bill at Wednesdays Cabinet meeting, however, Trump escalated the lying to a new level.

In bragging that the bill effectively repealed Obamacare, he also boasted that he intentionally refrained from talking about this aspect of the bill and also asked others to keep silent about it because he feared media coverage of it. According to Jordan Fabian, writing for The Hill, Trump said he refrained from playing up that measure because he was worried about how the news media would report it, but added now that its approved, I can say that.

Typically, Trumps m.o. in lying has been to never admit to a lie and to just keep piling them on.

Now he is actually glorying in telling the American people that he intentionally tried to deceive them to smuggle unpopular legislation harmful to the American people through Congress.

If we want to see the proverbial glass as half full, I guess we could say that for once Trump finally came clean with the American people and admitted to his egregious dishonesty and to the fact that he knows his agenda is antagonistic to the interests, needs, and desires of the American people.

Trumps lying has created an upside down world in American politics, and it is hard to imagine a stranger thing in American political history than the Trump administration.

What hopefully becomes clear through Trumps remarkable admission that he intentionally tried to hoodwink the American people out of their healthcare by presenting it as a tax cut is that he is, most definitely, no friend of the American masses. After all, friends dont lie.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

By Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, responding to escalating Republican attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said on Wednesday that if President Donald Trump fires Mueller, it has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Mark Warner denounced attacks on Muellers impartiality and said the special counsels investigation of ties between Trumps presidential campaign and Russia must be able to go on unimpeded.

Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump has denied any collusion.

While Trumps political allies have increased their criticism of Mueller, the president said on Sunday he was not considering firing him.

Republican lawmakers have seized on anti-Trump texts by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who was involved in the Russia investigation as evidence of bias in Muellers team. Mueller removed the agent from his team after the texts came to light.

Republicans on several House of Representatives committees have also announced their own probes into long-standing political grievances, including the FBIs handling of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Clinton, a Democrat, was Trumps opponent in last years election.

Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Muellers investigation, said Warner, adding that the attacks were seemingly coordinated.

Firing Mr. Mueller or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this administrations commitment to the truth, but also to our most basic concept of rule of law, Warner said. It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.

Warner called for Congress to make clear to the president that firing Mueller would have immediate and significant consequences.

House Democrats had circulated rumors last week that Trump would fire Mueller this Friday, just before the Christmas holiday.

Trumps White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said in a statement on Wednesday that the administration willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the special counsel.

If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumor, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them, Cobb added.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
Black, white, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin," sings Prince in "Uptown ." This song and Princes purple "reign" is the pulsating crescendo of Andrea Swenssons book " Got To Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound. "

Swensson, a music reporter and radio host for "The Local Show" on Minnesota Public Radios 89.3 The Current, points out Princes lyric in her final chapter, "Funkytown." It suggests a reaction to a racially divided music scene in Minneapolis, and Swensson carefully notates this scenes insistent rhythms.

The books title references a track recorded in 1976 by The Family, a band Swensson claims pushed "their blackness to the forefront of their aesthetic." The track captured some of Princes first recorded guitar work in a band, where he jammed and sang with frontman Sonny Thompson. Swensson meticulously recounts the many musical motifs that lead to Princes eventual success, a success that grew out of the Sound 80 studio recording sessions that produced "Got to Be Something Here."

The racism of the Minneapolis music scene is at the heart of Swenssons book. Considering the damage done to the predominately black Rondo and North Minneapolis neighborhoods by highway construction, and the exclusion of black bands from downtown clubs, the book introduces a trove of little-known, predominately black jazz, R&B, funk, and soul bands like the Big Ms whose "Silent Lover," recorded in David Hersks basement, has the distinction of being Minnesotas first-ever R&B record.

Features like the Significant Recordings session appendix help the book echo with the sounds of bands like The Amazers, Purple Haze, and the Prophets of Peace, while it reminisces about clubs such as The Blue Note, Solomons Mines, and the Flame. Reaching into the late 50s, this powerful book captures the essence of Minnesotas musical legacy.
Crows make tools. Understand stoplights. Mate for life. Hold funerals. Remember a face. And wreak havoc on our cars and sidewalks. So weve shot them with Airsoft rifles, annoyed them with laser pointers, blasted them with bullhorns, held annual crow hunts, stationed fake owls on our downtown buildings, released "trained attack raptors," hung their dead bodies in trees, and caught them in nets before tagging them and driving them to western Minnesota be released. Cant we all just get along?

If youve ever seen Alfred Hitchcocks 1963 horror classic The Birds, theres an eerie scene that hits a little too close to home.

An hour into the movie, right before the birds begin to lose their minds, a socialite played by Tippi Hedren gazes out upon a jungle gym to discover that a nearby pair of crows has suddenly, stealthily multiplied into five dozen. The iconic birds werent doing anything aggressivenot yet, anyway. But something about their stillness, their inky black plumes, and their silent gathering suggested all bets were off.

To walk the streets of downtown Rochester at dusk in late fall is to awaken a sense of something primalthat your movements are being noted from above. And they are, thanks to the thriving presence and superior air position of corvids, the ornithological category of the 20-30 thousand migrating and regional crows that flock to our well-lit, tree-lined, and open urban areas. Were at least partly to blame, as we build them a perfect environment every time we clear woods to build houses. Our cohabitation with crows seems to deepen with each passing year.

Rochesters crows now roost during winter in a changing array of tree tops and rooflines near the downtown and Mayo Campus, including Second Street SW, the trees in front of Old City Hall, the Foundation House along Fourth Street, historic Central Park, and the chain of tall trees leading southward toward Soldiers Memorial Field. Its a group thing.

The crows around here are like Packer fans in Dooleys. They know that not everyone likes them. But they behave themselves, look out for each other, and never travel in groups of less than three dozen.

ADVERTISEMENT

Crows are our neighbors, in other words. And yet we treat our crows as invisible at best, a nuisance at worst. This is surely inconsistent, given our thing for the other flying friends in our midst. Rochester has been all too happy to brand itself in connection to its tens of thousands of Canada geese. It may be a love-hate relationship, but at least theres the love side. But we shun the waves of fearless crows that clean up our scraps, offer up impromptu aerial showsand occasional shouting matches at odd timesand move in expansive herds that transform the winter into a primeval migration rivaling that of gazelles on the African plains.

This is odd, our weird bias against crows, because while geese may fly in formation, they dont appear to be a bird headed for the gifted and talented program, if you know what I mean.

Crows, on the other hand, are alive. They argue, play, stay active all day. Crows are industriousthey would never waste away a day waddling around the flats of Silver Lake like a certain herd of lobotomized waterfowl that will go unnamed. Crows are, in other words, due for their moment.

Many articles have been written about the crows of Rochester, almost all of them as a, quote-unquote, wildlife management problem. This is not one of these articles. These noble birds, you will now be asked to consider, deserve a proper appreciation. Crows are not only better to us and each other than geese, but they rival the services of cats, and certainly a lot of humans. Crows deserve a place on our new city flag, but I know that would have to make it past the Committee of the Whole. We ought to consider renaming the town. We could call it Crowchester.

The Birds, that was a bad movie," says Kevin McGowan. "It made everyone think of roosting crows as something unnatural, when its the most natural thing in the world. Theyve been doing it for thousands of years. Now they are just doing it in town, instead of out of town."

McGowan is an ornithologist at Cornell and one of the leading experts on crows in North America. He began to study the birds more than 30 years ago. If you are a wildlife biologist, its gratifying to break new ground, and it turns out no one had really studied crows. Once McGowan and others did, what they learned was astounding.

Crows, we now know, are one of three species in the entire animal kingdom that can fashion and use tools (the other two being chimps and elephants).

Its been known since the ancient Greeks that a thirsty crow has the ability to use causal thinking. Aesops fables tell of a crow that drops pebbles in a long-necked jar to raise water within reach of its beak. It knew the pebbles would cause the water to rise. Real-life observation has proven this fable to be true.

ADVERTISEMENT

But crows dont just use tools they find nearbylike pebbles. Crows use tools that they know work. They will not drop items in a jar that float, for instance, only pebbles. And crows will make tools, not just find them. They will sharpen reeds to get a piece of food. They will even sharpen reeds to then get a smaller reed, which they then use to get a piece of food. This is a lot smarter than I was on my college SATs.

Theyve mastered technology, too: You can find all sorts of videos of crows using touch screens for rewards, for those who feel proud of their toddler doing that little trick.

Crows will not only drop a walnut onto the street to break it open, they will wait until the stoplight turns red to retrieve it, ensuring that they will not get hit by cars as they pick up their street-smacked snack. And the biggest surprise about our avian townmates is surely the fact that crows not only pick out individual faces in the crowd who have harmed them, but can spread the word to their friends and relatives to watch out for that person as well.

We know thisthat crows can keep track of threatening individuals in their territorybecause an intrepid crow researcher at the University of Washington named John Marzluff famously wore a primate mask when he netted and banded a crow, then watched how the birds reacted. Years later, long after the crows who first observed him banding a friend had died, the crows in Seattle still cried out a warning and even swooped into Marzluffs path when he put on the mask.

And ornithologist McGowan told The New York Times that he is regularly followed by birds who have benefited from his handouts of peanutsand harassed by others he has trapped in the past.

The crows do all this without an amygdalathe brain region we use to make emotional memories salient. That alone has brain researchers confused.

McGowans research into crows looked at the social networks of the birds, and discovered that crows are, in many ways, better to one another than we are to each other. The birds mate for life, for one thing, while we are at about a 50 percent divorce rate in the U.S.

The children of crows remain near their parents for up to five years of age, moreover, or long after their sexual maturation. This allows families to teach one another lessons and to help raise younger siblings, not to mention enlisting the help of aunts and uncles in the rearing of offspring.

ADVERTISEMENT

Its possible that crows have such strong families because, as much as we stigmatize them, life for a crow is hard. With predators, and cars, and all the other crow hazards, half of the babies die before maturation. The high mortality may explain why, when a crow dies, other crows will hold what can only be described as a crow funeral. Crows mass in silence near the body of a dead bird. They grieve its passing in silence before flying away, wiser about what can be learned from the loss. Crows teach other about everything: they have different warning calls for cats, hawks, and humans, and surely for cars as well.

Crows are, in short, amazing.

So why do we hold them in such low regard?

"Its not true in all cultures," says McGowan. "In Native American cultures the raven was like a god, he was a trickster character that was treated with admiration." McGowan thinks our prejudice toward crows follows from old Europe, where it was duly noted that crows ate dead animals and probably dead peoplethey eat everythingand that with this came the stigma of death. But we need animals that eat other dead animals. "Thats an ecological service," says McGowan. "Crows are the clean-up crew. Theres more disease if the carrion eaters dont get to clean up." And for all the farmers now cursing, crows eat pests in the field, as well.

But I know what youre thinking: What about the crow poop? Turns out its messy but safe. Yes, cars get bombed, sidewalks white-washed, benches splattered. But maybe we should just hose our sidewalks in the morning and count ourselves lucky that concerns in Rochester begin and end with a non-hazardous, biodegradable splatter that accompanies nature in all urban locales. In Japan, where crows have been known to steal coat-hanger wires that they then shape with their wings to build form-fitted nests atop power line connection boxes, crow dispersal teams are sent into action daily to protect the cities from blackouts and trains stopping in their tracks.

"One day care in Rochester spreads more disease than all of its crows," says McGowan.

Mike Nigbur, of Rochester Parks and Recreation, is the point person for the $30,000 annual city outlay to keep the crows from massing in populated areas downtown. Nigbur, whos been called "the crow czar," takes a second shift out in teams during late fall, whereupon downtown corvids are treated to a variety of nonlethal threats. The city uses lasers, noises, and distress calls.

"I think it distresses them," he says. They tried falcons in 2010, but "that did not go very well." Presumably, the manpower-to-crow-misery index was low, with the crow IQ so high. "Theyre very smart birds," concedes Nigbur. "A very beautiful bird," too. Dont worry, he hasnt fallen into the corvids thrall. Theyre trying out a new strobe on them this year.

"My advice to people who are trying to [fight crows] is to figure out whats acceptable in terms of the impact of crows in your downtown and learn to live with that," says McGowan, who supports the Rochester methods, but advises we keep our expectations low. "Crows are like teenagers  you cant keep them apart. You can break up the roosts somewhat and move them around a bit, but if you destroy all of them you wipe out a population of birds that spreads across hundreds of square miles. The moment they move to an acceptable spot, you leave them alone."

Plus, he says, the sight of the birds moving like mother nature herself across the evening sky is a gift that America has in its past spurned, and a loss it has come to regret.

"Passenger pigeons were the most abundant bird on Earth and we killed them all," he says. "They traveled in flocks of a billion birds. Accounts of their sightings from the 1700s say they would darken the skies from horizon to horizon, and pass over for an hour. That must have been an awesome spectacle to behold. Well never see anything like that again. To me, when I watch a roost of crows coming in like a river of birds across the sky, its an amazing thing to watch."

Just dont do it after watching The Birds.
An area man accused of possessing and sharing child pornography has been sentenced to 45 days in jail and placed on probation.

Eric Lowell Saterdalen, 57, of Stewartville, was charged in May in Olmsted County District Court with two counts of disseminating pornographic work and 10 counts of possession of pornographic work, all felonies.

He pleaded guilty in September to four of the possession counts; in exchange for the plea, the remaining eight charges were dismissed.

Judge Carol Hanks on Tuesday handed down the 45-day jail term, with credit for four days already served, and placed Saterdalen on probation for five years.

In addition, he was ordered to complete 100 hours of community work service and attend sex offender treatment, but the online sentencing order contains no mention of registering as a predatory offender.

ADVERTISEMENT

Saterdalen is prohibited from having contact with anyone under age 18 without prior approval, and was fined $1,135.

The investigation began in September 2016, when Yahoo reported a user had uploaded suspected child pornography to his account. A subpoena revealed the account was associated with a phone number belonging to Saterdalen, the criminal complaint says.

More images were uploaded in October 2016; the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's Internet Crimes Against Children unit obtained a subpoena that indicated the internet address was assigned to Saterdalen, the complaint continues, with a service address of 800 Grandview Court SE, Stewartville  Saterdalen's home.

On May 5, deputies with the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant at the residence.

Saterdalen identified his laptop computer and cell phone; a preliminary exam of the computer allegedly revealed a number of images believed to be child pornography, including one with a victim under the age of 1 year, court documents say.
The man involved in a standoff more than three years ago in Stewartville  which prompted all three public schools to go on lockdown, other residents of the building to be evacuated and closed two businesses for a few hours  has had his stayed prison sentence executed.

Coniah Emmerson Horton, 33, of Austin, was originally sentenced in August 2015 to a 33-month prison term, stayed for five years, and was ordered to complete a chemical dependency evaluation and/or treatment, among other conditions.

On Friday, he was re-sentenced to the executed term, with credit for 659 days already served.

The case began with a domestic dispute on Oct. 2, 2014, when Horton threatened a woman and her children over money she allegedly owed him.

Deputies descended on the Stewartville building at 105 S. Main St. but were unable to make contact with Horton immediately. Members of the Rochester-Olmsted County Emergency Response Unit and crisis negotiating team also arrived; they eventually spoke with Horton via cellphone and convinced him to surrender.

ADVERTISEMENT

He was taken into custody without incident at about 12:50 p.m., more than four hours after authorities arrived on the scene. No weapon was found and no injuries were reported.

Horton pleaded guilty to one count of felony terroristic threats in January 2015 in Olmsted County District Court. In exchange, one count of felony stalking was dismissed.
Three people are behind bars today after a search warrant turned up more than a pound of cocaine and nearly that much marijuana, officials said today. Two of the three were on bond after a similar arrest Sept. 26.

Kyle Kirk Peterson, 32, Jennifer Nou, 27, and Cole Peterson, 26, all of Rochester, were arrested Wednesday after a narcotics warrant was executed at 4122 13th Ave. NW.

That search then led to a warrant request for a storage unit on U.S. Highway 14 West.

Authorities recovered 18.5 ounces of powder cocaine; 14.6 ounces of marijuana; 178 tablets of dextroamphetamine; 50 Xanax pills; a gram of MDMA, commonly known as "Molly;" $12,000 in cash and a shotgun, the report says.

The trio face possible charges of felony drug sales and possession, said Capt. John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department.

ADVERTISEMENT

Kyle Peterson could be charged with child endangerment; a 7-year-old child was at the home, Sherwin said.

Cole Peterson could be charged with possession of a firearm by a known controlled substance user.

Nou and Kyle Peterson were arrested after the execution of a search warrant Sept. 26 at 2427 24th St. NW.

Christopher Michael Watson, 28, was also arrested at the house.

Inside the home, investigators found 80 grams of cocaine, 760 grams of marijuana, "a little heroin" and a number of ecstasy and prescription pills, Sherwin said at the time.

They also discovered a loaded .22-caliber handgun, the report says.

Nou was charged in Olmsted County District Court with one count each of aid and abet first-degree controlled substance sale-cocaine; aid and abet first-degree controlled substance possession-cocaine; second-degree controlled substance sale-amphetamine; aid and abet second-degree controlled substance sale-MDMA/ecstasy; aid and abet third-degree controlled substance sale-heroin; aid and abet fifth-degree controlled substance crime sale-Xanax, all felonies; and possession of a firearm by controlled substance user, a gross misdemeanor.

She was released from custody in lieu of $30,000 conditional bond.

ADVERTISEMENT

The day of her release, she reported a burglary at the home, blaming the media, Sherwin said.

According to the police report, someone broke a window to make entry into the home. Nou reported three TVs, a laptop, a jar containing $500 in change and an iPad were stolen.

Also missing was her vehicle, the report says, a 2014 Nissan.

Nou said the media is to blame for the burglary because of the information released after the search warrant and arrests. Sherwin said today that much of the report was false.

The investigation began with a narcotics package intercepted at U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Rochester International Airport.

Kyle Peterson was charged in that case with first-degree controlled substance sale-cocaine; first-degree controlled substance possession-cocaine; second-degree controlled substance sale-amphetamine; second-degree controlled substance sale-MDMA/ecstasy; third-degree controlled substance sale-heroin; and fifth-degree controlled substance sale-Xanax, all felonies, as well as one gross misdemeanor count of possession of a firearm by controlled substance user.

According to court documents, he and Nou were given permission by the court to travel to Paris and Malta in November, and to Mexico in February.

Watson was charged with third-degree controlled substance-possession, a felony, and released on his own recognizance.
Minnesota Academy of Science is seeking judges and volunteers for two of the state's biggest youth science events  the 2018 Minnesota State Science & Engineering Fair, and the North Central Regional Junior Science & Humanities Symposium.

The 2018 Minnesota State Science & Engineering Fair will be April 8-10. The fair is in search of more than 450 judges and volunteers for the event. The program will showcase Minnesota's "best and brightest" students in science, technology, engineering and math.

The North Central Regional Junior Sciences & Humanities Symposium is scheduled for March 24.

Judging shifts include:

 March 24, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Junior Science & Humanities Symposium).

ADVERTISEMENT

 March 24, 1 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (Junior Science & Humanities Symposium).

April 9, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Minnesota State Science & Engineering Fair).

Non-judging, general volunteers are needed both weekends as well.

Judges are typically university faculty and researchers, industrial engineers and scientists, representatives of private and federal research centers, and medical practitioners or researchers, according to the Minnesota Academy of Science.

Judges must have a minimum of six years of experience, or a doctoral degree (including graduate students in the final year of their program). To judge middle school projects, judges must have 2 years of experience, or a bachelor's degree.

For more information, contact Lisa Day, at lisaday@mnmas.org regarding judging, or Jenny Worden at volunteers@mnmas.org with other volunteer questions.
Ninety-two Somalis, including former Mayo Clinic employee Abdoulmalik Ibrahim, sat bound and shackled on an airplane for nearly two days, some urinating on themselves, during a botched U.S. deportation attempt, a class-action lawsuit filed in the United States says.

U.S. immigration agents "kicked, struck, choked and dragged detainees" during the journey that began Dec. 7, the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami says. Some of the Somalis were put in straitjackets. The lawsuits seeks to prevent their deportation, and a hearing is set for Jan. 2.

"It's really difficult to relate, because you're got the horrid conditions on the plane, 48 hours in shackles," said Kim Hunter, the Twin Cities immigration attorney presenting Ibrahim. It "was like a slave ship going away across the Atlantic."

The flight to Somalia from Louisiana reached Dakar, Senegal before sitting on the runway for 23 hours and returning to the U.S. because the relief crew was not rested enough, the lawsuit says.

Lawyers are alarmed that the U.S. is returning a growing number of people to a country that has long been a war zone. "It is not safe for these men and women to return, especially in light of the escalation of terrorist violence in Somalia in the last weeks," said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, which filed the lawsuit.

ADVERTISEMENT

Hunter said that Ibrahim told her that while stranded on the tarmac, the air on the plane became so foul that some Somali passengers began coughing and displaying flu-like symptoms. But when they sought over-the-medication from U.S. immigration agents for relief, their requests were denied.

Their misery became so acute that when agents announced that they returning to the U.S., a group of Somali deportees began to protest returning to the U.S., figuring they would get better treatment in Somali detention than in U.S. custody

"They were more willing to potentially take their chances in Somalia than to be locked up in the U.S.," Hunter said.

Ibrahim, a married man and the father of four children in the Rochester area, was detained three months ago by immigration agents during a check-in with the ICE office. Ibrahim was a Mayo Clinic cardiovascular technician at the time of his detention.

It's unclear how long Ibrahim has lived in the U.S., but he entered the U.S. seeking asylum from his war-torn homeland. Though undocumented and living under a deportation order since 2004, he was for much of that time been under a "protective status" that allowed him to live in the U.S.

The lawsuit says U.S. immigration law forbids sending people home to countries where they could face persecution or torture, and that al-Shabab is known to target those being returned to Somalia from the U.S.

On Tuesday evening, a U.S. District judge ruled that ICE cannot remove the Somalis and set a hearing for Jan. 2, Sharpless said.

The Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist group was blamed for the massive truck bombing in the capital, Mogadishu, that killed 512 in October. Only a few attacks since 9/11 have killed more people. Al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa and the target of more than 30 U.S. airstrikes under the Trump administration, holds large parts of rural southern and central Somalia.

ADVERTISEMENT

A year-end report by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says 521 Somalis were deported this year, up sharply from 198 last year. Somalia by far saw the largest number of citizens deported home among African nations.

"It was not until the very end of 2016 and into 2017 that ICE sought for the first time to detain and then remove Somalis in larger numbers using charter flights," the lawsuit says.

ICE does not comment on pending lawsuits and has denied mistreating the Somalis on the failed deportation flight this month. It also has said more than 60 of the Somalis had criminal convictions.

Hiunter said the Ibrahim and the 91 other Somali citizens were on buses on the way to the airport for what would have been the second attempt to deport them when the judges's order halted the deportation.

"If the judge had not issued the order they would have been deported this morning," she said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We are relieved and thankful that the judge acted in time."

Hunter said the judge's order gives her clients a "couple weeks of breathing room." If the judge rules to extend the order blocking their removal on Jan. 2, that would provide more time to "get our case actually decided."

"I think it really comes down to sort of the American ideal of due process," Hunter said. "I think the fair and right thing to do obviously is to give these the opportunity to make their case."

The Somalis, with family ties in Minnesota and elsewhere around the U.S., are being held in two detention centers in South Florida.

ADVERTISEMENT

There was no immediate comment from Somalia's government.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals may have sided with Goodhue County and, by extension, Circle K Family Farms in the case regarding the conditional-use permit for the proposed hog-finishing facility northeast of Zumbrota, but that hasn't stopped opponents of the project from fighting on.

Katie Doody, a policy organizer with the Land Stewardship Project, said the organization will begin running advertisements in the Farmington Independent and Rosemount Town Pages that try to link Kohlnhofer Agency, a Lakeville-based insurance agency, and Circle K Family Farms, which is owned by Yon, Mike and Jeff Kohlnhofer.

"We're trying to show what he's doing as an employee versus what he is doing as part of the factory farm," she said.

However, Beth Raskovich, who is the Kohlnhofer brothers' sister, said the two companies have nothing to do with one aside from the fact that Jeff Kohlnhofer works part time for her agency.

"He's not a vice president. He's not an owner," Raskovich said. "(Land Stewardship Project has) been sent a cease-and-desist order to stop using our name in their protests."

ADVERTISEMENT

The ad that will run in the Lakeville area newspapers is signed by the litigants who filed a case in the Court of Appeals against the Goodhue County CUP for the hog farm. It mentions that Jeff Kohlnhofer works for the agency and is part of Circle K Family Farms. The ad goes on to claim the hog facility would pollute the air, threaten water quality, and cause illness due to unsafe levels of hydrogen sulfide.

However, readings taken by opponents of the facility at two other Circle K farms last summer showed the hog facilities did not violate Minnesota Pollution Control Agency standards. Further, the MPCA tested one of Circle K's existing facilities in October and found no violations.

In fact, the Kohlnhofers have never been cited for any environmental infraction by the MPCA, according to a spokesperson with the state agency.

During a news conference Monday after the appeals court decision was handed down, opponents to the Zumbrota-area facility said they hoped to persuade the Kohlnhofers to withdraw their plans for the new hog feedlot by convincing them to change their minds.

Raskovich said she does not think her brothers will cave to any public pressure.

"They've been here three or four times," Raskovich said, referring to the protesters. "They came here one time, I served them bacon."

As part of the campaign to get the Kohlnhofers to change their minds, LSP has been conducting a postcard campaign, encouraging its members to write to the Kohlnhofers and express their opposition to the farm.

One postcard was signed by one of the insurance agency's customers. The woman, Raskovich said, had no idea what the battle over the hog farm was about, but simply signed the card because she had bad experiences with hog farms when she'd lived in North Dakota.

ADVERTISEMENT

Despite having no real connection between the insurance agency and the hog farms, Raskovich said she understood why they were protesting at her business rather than in front of a hog farm in Goodhue County.

"It's because I'm in Lakeville and there's more people here," she said. "While they were protesting, they literally said I was the headquarters for Kohlnhofer farms." With a laugh, she added, "If that's true, I should be compensated by my brothers."

The other reason, she said, is for the media coverage. Twin Cities TV stations have covered the protesters in the past, and KSTP sent a news crew again Monday.

"It's unbelievable to me that they can slander me this way," Raskovich said. "They just want to bully and throw tantrums until they get their way."
Is there life out there in the universe?

It's a question that Mayo High School Planetarium Director Paul Larson gets all the time from kids. Larson's answer is always the same. Given the vastness of the Milky Way with its hundreds of billions of planets and hundreds of millions of planets that could support life, not to mention all of the other galaxies out there  "the probability of life somewhere in the universe is very, very high."

Apparently the U.S government is curious, too. This week, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged for the first time the existence of a program dedicated to studying UFOs  unidentified flying objects. The $22 million program, known as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, ran from 2007 to 2012. But officials familiar with the program said some of its efforts have continued.

Larry Mascotti, Mayo's 29-year planetarium director before retiring in 2014, counts himself a skeptic, but was nonetheless intrigued by the news reports. One naval pilot described seeing a flying object in 2004 about the size of his plane and in the shape of a Tic Tac after a break in a routine training mission.

For Mascotti, the fact that the evidence included radar and infrared data of the UFOs  not just eye-witness accounts that can be manipulated and are often unreliable  "makes it a more interesting case."

ADVERTISEMENT

"I think this is a curious one for sure, and it appears to be better documented," he said.

But Mascotti doesn't believe people need to worry about an imminent extraterrestrial invasion. Ever since his mom handed him the book, "Life on Other Worlds," as a child, Mascotti has devoted his life to the cosmic question of whether humans are "ordinary or extraordinary." Fed by pulp magazines and other fare, Mascotti was once an "optimist" on the question of intelligent life on other other planets. But a lifetime of study has made him a Doubting Thomas today.

Mascotti is confident there is life out there. Humans are made of hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen  the "stuff of the stars." Those building blocks are everywhere in the universe. "So there's going to be microbial life, but that question of intelligence, that's the tough one."

"I guarantee you there's life in the universe beyond Earth," Mascotti said. "But whether there's intelligent life, those that want to write E = mc2 and understand what that means, that I think is an extremely low probability."

To create intelligent life on Earth, a mind-boggling array of astronomical, biological and cultural conditions had to align in just the right way  a variable situation captured by the mathematical formula called the Drake Equation. So many dominoes had to fall into place. You had to have a certain type of star. The right kind of planet. Then once life took root, it had to evolve and push its way past the dolphins and the apes. Beyond that, once the mental capacity existed, there had to be cultural appetite to explore and learn.

"The universe isn't on some plan to make us," Mascotti said. "None of us can accept the reality that this outcome wasn't planned. It''s just the world of all these random forces. Obviously, having aliens to share this misery with us makes us feel better."

And even if such intelligent life existed, these extraterrestrials would have to be highly motivated to cover the vast distances to reach Earth. To appreciate such distance: Consider a scale model in which one inch was the equivalent of the distance between the Earth and sun  or 93 million miles. On a mile scale, it would take four and half miles to reach the nearest star.

News of the UFO program makes it the most significant news about government research into flying objects since Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of thousands of UFOs that was shut down in 1969. Project Blue Book failed to find evidence of an "extraterrestrial vehicles," according to the Air Force, though a small portion of the events it studied remains explained.

ADVERTISEMENT

Still, U.S. Navy pilot David Fravor told the Washington Post this week that he had never seen a UFO until he spotted something off the coast of California in 2004. He said the flying object was about the size of a plane, moved rapidly and was unlike any other thing he had ever seen in the air.

"It was a real object, it exists, and I saw it," he said on Monday. "Something not from the Earth."

xxxx

Mike Lynch, an author of astronomy and stargazing books who writes a weekly Starwatch column for PB, said he regards the whole government program with deep skepticism.

He notes the program was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who was the majority leader at time. Most of the money went to an aerospace program run by a billionaire entrepreneur and a longtime friend of Mr. Reid, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.

"I think the whole thing just totally stinks," Lynch said. "Harry Reid got this thing going, and a lot of this money went to this company and one of his campaign contributors. And he came up with some of these things. The whole thing smells.

"I don't think we're in any danger," Lynch added. "We've been hearing this kind of crap ever since the end of the war."
Coming on the heels of Darkest Hour is another biopic of note. Both Paul and I reported a while ago that there was a movie in the works on Ted Kennedys infamous incident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. In September I had an item here about how an early review suggested the film would be very harsh on Kennedy, and the trailer just out makes it appear there may be some of this, especially the very last exchange:

Ted Kennedy: Moses had a temper Aide: Moses had a temper but he never left a girl at the bottom of the Red Sea.

Even if the film is harsh on Kennedy, I doubt it will have the whole story in all of its sordid detail. Still, if the film tells half the story, it will be astonishing. The film is set for general release in April.

What next? Razorbareback: The Bill Clinton Story?
Yesterday Scott and I teamed up to revive our dormant podcast to talk through our divergent opinions about Darkest Hour. I agree with Scott in one major waythat the film takes huge liberties with the facts and interpretation of things, and we spend a good deal of time breaking down some of the historical defects and explaining the deeper story behind some of the truncated and altered scenes. But we agree to disagree overall: judged as a historical film, it is indeed hugely flawed; judged as an artistic film designed to convey the majesty and precariousness of Churchill during those crucial three weeks in May 1940, I think it is more worthy. In any case, we close out the show with a short list of good Churchill books that interested listeners should read.

We did forget to mention one major annoying liberty the filmmakers took in the very last scene. After Churchill closes out the Dunkirk speech in the House, the camera pans up to Churchills nemesis in the film, Lord Halifax, sitting up in the visitors gallery. Why is the foreign secretary sitting up in the visitors gallery and not on the Treasury bench with the rest of the Cabinet? Because as a Lord, Halifax was not allowed on the floor of the House of Commons, which was one reason he was thought unsuitable to be a wartime Prime Minister for an all-party unity government on May 10, when Chamberlain stepped down. Anyway, someone asks Halifax, What just happened? And Halifax replies, Winston mobilized the English language, and sent it into battle.

That is an actual observation about Churchills oratory, but the remark was made in the 1950s by the journalist Edward R. Murrownot Halifax in May 1940. Once again, the screenwriter couldnt resist moving the noted phrase around and putting it in another contexta frequent temptation of many screenwriters who try to capture the fullness of Churchill.

Anyway, you can listen or download the episode below, or access it through our hosts at Ricochet. But everyone should go see the film and make up his own mind.
Atlantic City is leading South Jersey in school breakfast participation, with more than eight out of 10 eligible students being served a free or reduced-price meal, according to a new report from Advocates for Children of New Jersey.

The seventh annual report, Food for Thought, shows participation is up 2 percent from April 2016 to 2017 at the Absecon Island school district, although statewide participation of eligible students is on the decline.

Our district believes that it is of the utmost importance for our students to begin their school day with breakfast, said Atlantic City Superintendent Barry Caldwell. Breakfast is the fuel that gets you going and provides enough new energy for your body to get started and to keep you functioning until lunch.

To that end, the district has been serving breakfast as part of the school day, which Advocates for Children of New Jersey recommends to increase participation.

Many schools have made incredible progress, proving that breakfast after the bell is doable. We must continue that progress  not slide backward and leave more children hungry, said Cecilia Zalkind, president and CEO of ACNJ.

About 5,781 students in Atlantic City, or 83 percent of all students in the district, are eligible for the free and reduced-price breakfast under the federally funded School Breakfast Program. Districts are reimbursed for each meal served.

Of the eligible kids, 85 percent participate in school breakfast, the report states. Only five other districts had higher participation rates, four of which were charter schools.

ACNJ reports that eating breakfast leads to better academic performance, less disruptive student behavior, fewer trips to the school nurse, increased attendance and reduced childhood obesity.

Caldwell said Atlantic City gets the word out to parents and students about the breakfast program through school flyers, online notices and the Parent Resource Centers.

School and district staff encourage students to come to school and enjoy breakfast to begin the school day. Students who arrive late are also offered breakfast so that they may begin their school day in a positive manner, Caldwell said.

In the Wildwood School District, which participates in the Community Eligibility Program that affords all students in the district free meals, breakfast participation is at about 80 percent. Superintendent J. Kenyon Kummings said they have worked with families to customize the breakfast program to encourage participation.

Basic needs are like a three-legged stool. If you kick one leg out, it will collapse. Our students who lack food stability in their lives know that they have a guaranteed meal at the beginning of their day and they highly benefit from the breakfast program. Hungry students are often distracted and off task, and in those cases, a milk and a cereal bar can help them to be ready to learn, Kummings said.

Somers Point School District, which had one of the lower participation rates in Atlantic County at 30 percent in 2017, has been pushing to increase its participation and began this year offering breakfast after the bell, interim Superintendent Thomas Baruffi said.

While we did see an increase of 45 students receiving breakfast, wed like to see that percentage go even higher, Baruffi said.

Baruffi said the district cannot force children to have breakfast in school, but he thinks there are other options to increase participation.

Were hoping that if we continue to educate them on the importance of breakfast and look at ways to make breakfast even more feasible, those numbers can get even better, Baruffi said.

Somers Point is considering moving its breakfast program from the cafeteria to the classroom, although there might be logistical challenges.

If it can be done, we will do it, Baruffi said.

According to the report, this is the first year statewide participation in school breakfast has dropped since the New Jersey Food for Thought Campaign was launched in 2011 by ACNJ and the New Jersey Anti-Hunger Coalition.

In the countywide rankings, Cumberland County placed first in the state for participation in the school breakfast program, up from second place the year prior. At total of 59 percent of eligible students participate in school breakfast at schools across the county.

Cape May placed fifth, with 49 percent participation. Atlantic County placed eighth, at 46 percent participation. And Ocean County placed 14th at 40 percent.

ACNJ reports a steady six-year increase in breakfast participation from 2010 has resulted in a doubling of federal dollars flowing to New Jersey school districts, anticipated at $105 million this fiscal year.

State legislative efforts are also underway to promote school meal programs, including one bill that would require the Department of Education to develop an internet-based online school-meal application for eligible students.

Atlantic City said it will continue its efforts to promote participation, which include encouraging students to attend the districts morning enrichment programs and Saturday STEM program.

We do our best to ensure that students and parents know that attendance at our programs ensures that students will be fed, Caldwell said.
ATLANTIC CITY  The Boys & Girls Club was put on lockdown Thursday after a report of shots fired on Pennsylvania Avenue, authorities said.

Police Sgt. Kevin Fair confirmed to The Press of Atlantic City that officers are investigating multiple shots fired near Drexel Avenue.

Fair said there were no victims, no suspects, and no shell casings located while police were on the scene Thursday afternoon.

Its crazy, said Alisa Howard, 40, who was picking up her three children. We send them here to play because they cant play outside in the neighborhoods, and this happens.

Director of Development Maryann McElroy said shots were fired at about 3:15 p.m., as students were unloading from school buses to the club.

It was right as kids were coming in  they were running into the building when it happened, McElroy said.

Lativa Meghais, 30, held her 8-year-old daughters hand as they left the club.

I got a call from the Boys & Girls Club that said there was an emergency Meghais said she first worried something was wrong with her daughter, Elaysia, but staff told her there was a reported shooting near the building.

I was frightened. The fact there was a shooting, thats scary, but the staff here did everything they could said Maghais.

Staff kept the clubs doors locked until all children were picked up by a parent or guardian.

McElroy said the club could have as many as 160 children attending the after-school programs on any given day.

Anyone with information is asked to call Atlantic City Police at 609-347-5779.
ATLANTIC CITY  The Stockton Gateway Project is the type of project Atlantic City can build its future around, said Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker during a tour of the facility Wednesday.

Anchor institutions, if you look around the country, are incredibly important, because they provide that long-term, solid foundation for the economy, Harker said after the tour of the project.

If you look at the communities that have prospered during the good times and bad times, they usually have one or more great universities, he said. The fact that Stockton (University) is making the commitment to be here is really good news for Atlantic City.

Next fall, Stockton plans to open the 675,000-square-foot, $220 million Gateway  the new headquarters for South Jersey Gas and a campus for the university that includes an academic building, housing for more than 500 students and a parking garage.

Harker on Wednesday toured several Atlantic County locations.

He stopped at the Federal Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center and Atlantic City International Airport in Egg Harbor Township with representatives of the Atlantic County Economic Alliance.

Harker regularly visits communities throughout the 3rd Federal Reserve District, which covers southern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, to engage with stakeholders and learn about economic conditions on the ground.

These assets are an essential part of our strategic plan for economic diversification, growth and stability throughout our region, stated ACEA Executive Director Lauren Moore. Our goal is to establish an aviation industry supported by the airport and technical center as well as the Stockton Aviation Research and Technology Park that is currently under construction on a 58-acre campus adjacent to both.
NORTHFIELD  Claire Moyer has a special connection to Birch Grove Park; not only does she live a stones throw from the park, but the octogenarian won the contest to name it in 1951.

But the day after a brazen daylight attack on a 26-year-old woman in the park Tuesday, Moyer was one of many officials urging added vigilance.

I love the park and I hate saying this, but I never walk the trails by myself. I always felt that a woman is just a little vulnerable out there alone, said Moyer, who is also a member of the Birch Grove Advisory Committee.

I was really upset to learn this had happened. I do not remember anything like this happening before," said Moyer. "I think we have a false sense of security. I have lived here all my life, and to my recollection, this is the first time something like this has happened.

The woman was walking alone on one of the trails, commonly referred to as the outer loop, when a man began following her, according to police Capt. Steve Steinecke.

She told the officers investigating the attack she had passed a white male, about 20 years old and 5-foot-10 wearing a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Once they passed, the male turned and began to follow her. He caught up with her and grabbed her from behind in a bear hug and then reached around, grabbing her crotch. She fought him off, raking his face with keys she held in her hand. He shoved her to the ground and fled the area but not before leaving behind a blue bandana.

Steinecke said the victim was shaken by the incident but did not require medical attention. The suspect may have scratches to his face and neck area.

Mayor Erland Chau, who has lived in Northfield for more than a half-century, does not recall anything like this happening at Birch Grove previously.

Northfield Troop 72 holds sendoff for Scoutmaster Don Edwards NORTHFIELD  The final meeting of the year for Boy Scout Troop 72 was a chance for parents and Scouts to show a little love to their outgoing scoutmaster, Don Edwards.

We have had incidents of mischief, but nothing like this," Chau said. I dont have any fears about the park, and people and families should enjoy the amenities of Birch Grove Park but also be aware of their surroundings."

City Council President Greg Dewees echoed the mayor's call for awareness.

Northfield police are asking residents to check to see whether anyone recognizes the male in the video, Dewees said. The video was shot near the snack bar where there are cameras mounted on the park center/snack bar.

An incident like this makes us all think about safety, and we will be speaking about more cameras in the park in the upcoming weeks with council, he said.

The students at the Northfield Community School use the park for events, races and the sixth-grade outdoor experience, where the kids spend the entire day at the park. Superintendent Pete Bretones said any time the school takes students off campus, it is always with adult supervision.

I do not feel there are any inherent risks at the park, but it does make you double back and reevaluate the procedures in place, Bretones said. Over time, people can get lax, but we have procedures in place, so what is most important is to make sure we are following our own procedures.

Birch Grove Park is a living classroom for Northfield students NORTHFIELD  When sixth-graders at the Northfield Community School headed to Birch Grove Park last week, it was the continuation of a tradition: the first installment of their outdoor education at the park.

Heather Mellon, a member of the Friends of Birch Grove Park for many years, was disappointed to hear of the attack but believes the park is safe. She urged parkgoers to take precautions.

On Wednesday afternoon, the park was empty.

But Moyer, who called a walk in Birch Grove in the sun just delightful, said she doesn't plan to change her routine to take walks there.

Anyone with information on Tuesday's attack can call police at 609-641-2832.
TRENTON  A joint legislative committee advanced bills Wednesday to subsidize nuclear power as it faces stiff competition from cheap natural gas plants.

The bills direct the Board of Public Utilities to set up a Nuclear Diversity Certificate Program, requiring electric public utilities to buy the certificates using funds collected from their customers.

As currently structured, the total subsidy would be about $300 million per year, according to the director for the state Division of Rate Counsel, Stephanie Brand, who opposed the legislation.

It would raise the average residential bill by $31 to $41 per year, according to different estimates.

To get a subsidy, a licensed nuclear plant operator would have to show it contributes to the diversity and resiliency of the states energy mix, contributes to air quality by minimizing emissions, and is in such financial difficulty it will close its nuclear facility.

The subsidy would prevent early closing of Public Service Enterprise Groups (PSEG) Salem & Hope Creek nuclear generating stations in Lower Alloways Creek, Salem County, which supply about 33 percent of the states electricity, supporters said.

The cost of replacing that energy generation would outstrip the cost of the subsidy, they said.

The bills were opposed during the five-hour joint meeting of the state Senate Environment and Energy committee and the Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities committee by a wide range of groups. They included those representing business and industry, the AARP and environmentalists as well as the Rate Counsel.

Opponents said the bills would benefit PSEG at the expense of electricity customers in the state, further eroding the ability of the poor and senior citizens to afford to live here, as well as businesses ability to be competitive.

They encouraged the committees to postpone a vote until independent research is done, saying it would undermine public faith to pass such an important bill so quickly and in lame duck session in the last days of Gov. Chris Christies tenure.

Illinois and New York have already passed similar legislation to subsidize some nuclear plants.

In favor of the bills were laborers groups; the dean of Rowan Universitys engineering school, who said nuclear plants provide internships for his students as well as jobs for graduates; and Atlantic City Electric parent company Exelon, which owns 43 percent of Salem 1 and 2 and all of Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station.

Oyster Creek is due to close by the end of 2019.

The identical bills, S3560 and A5330, were only made public last week. They now will be reconciled and go to a vote in the full Legislature.

I need to stress we do not have evidence in front of us to demonstrate this level of subsidy or any level of subsidy is needed for these plants, said ratepayer advocate Brand, saying the states ratepayers deserve more transparency about PSEGs finances before legislation is passed. We dont want to see these plants close either. All assumptions assume plants going to close. I dont share that assumption.

But PSEG Chairman, President and CEO Ralph Izzo said he knows the companys finances better than anyone, and without financial help they will close.

Not one person who you will hear from today understands the economics of these plants better than I do, Izzo said. I want those plants to stay open for the benefit of New Jersey, our employees and our environment. Make no mistake about our analysis and what current circumstances portend for those plants.
WEST WILDWOOD  Two homeowners escaped and a family pet was rescued Thursday morning as flames ripped through their multistory house in the borough.

A neighbor on the street said the husband and wife ran out of the house with only the clothes on their backs. Firefighters went into the home and rescued the couples dog. Fire Chief Daniel Speigel declined to release the couples names.

The fire quickly got into the attic space and caused the roof to collapse, Speigel said. Windy conditions were causing burning embers to land on nearby structures. The temperature, fortunately, did not cause too many issues for us.

Firefighters were inside the building when the roof collapsed. They were in a safe position and were not in any danger, Speigel said. Firefighters declared the fire under control about 1:45 a.m. Crews were at the home for about two and a half hours, the chief said.

About 70 firefighters from seven fire companies in West Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, Rio Grande, Stone Harbor, Villas and Erma responded at 12:34 a.m. to the home in the 600 block of West Maple Avenue. Firefighters found heavy flames on the second and third floors of the home, said Speigel.

He said no injuries were reported.

Public records indicate the home is owned by David and Julia Hansbarger, a couple from Pennsylvania. The house, which had been raised well above sea level, was assessed at $350,000, according to public records.

The second and third floors of the home sustained severe fire, smoke and water damage.

On Thursday afternoon, the top floor of the house was hollowed out and part of the roof had collapsed. Several cars drove slowly past the house so that the driver and passengers could look at the damage.

Neighbors on the block said the house is the couples summer home and that they had arrived in West Wildwood earlier Wednesday.

Bud Higgins, whose daughter-in-law owns a house next to the one that caught fire, said he and his family came down Thursday morning after they learned about the fire.

The siding on their house was damaged, and by Thursday afternoon they were trying to contact Atlantic City Electric to turn turn the power back on.

Things can be replaced, and its just a good thing that everyone got out of the house safely, Higgins said.

The homeowners got out of the building before firefighters arrived, Speigel said.

A neighbor told The Press of Atlantic City he learned of the fire because his dog was barking and going crazy near the door.

When he walked outside, he saw the house was on fire.

The power was disconnected at the house and a neighbors house during the fire.

The Red Cross was not notified because family and friends are helping the couple with shelter.

Several fire crews operated under heavy fire conditions and contained the fire to the home, Speigel said. The fire burned through power lines causing live, energized power lines next to the building.

The fire quickly got into the attic space and caused the roof to collapse, Speigel said. Windy conditions were causing burning embers to land on nearby structures. The temperature, fortunately, did not cause too many issues for us.

West Wildwood police, operating under the command of Wildwood City, also responded to the scene. Firefighters form Cape May Fire, Green Creek Fire and Town Bank Fire covered the island. Ocean View Fire acted as a Rapid Intervention Crew in case firefighters became trapped or injured while fighting the fire. No firefighters were injured.

The Cape May County Fire Marshals Office is investigating the cause of the fire.
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE  Jeffrey Sutherland, Cape May Countys new prosecutor, was sworn in Thursday in front of more than 100 supporters, friends and family by Judge Mark Sandson in the Historic Cape May County Courthouse.

Sandson, a drug court judge, is a friend, Sutherland said, and thats why the new prosecutor asked him to conduct the ceremony.

I chose Judge Sandson because were close. Ive worked with him on a number of cases, and I wanted the ceremony to be personal, Sutherland said.

That choice may be indicative of the direction Sutherland will take in office. For him, serving the county is personal, and he said that while he will pursue the guilty, it is equally important to work on prevention and education to keep people out of jail.

Sutherland said he doesnt plan to make any changes in the leadership of the Prosecutors Office, praising the work and advice of the former prosecutor, Robert L. Taylor. He also had positive things to say about Rob Johnson, appointed acting prosecutor after Taylors September retirement, and Paul Skill, chief of detectives.

The programs we have in place are moving in the right direction, Sutherland said, referring to the countys drive to stem the opioid crisis. We must address an addiction before it moves into criminal court.

Sutherland said he and the officers will be more visible in the community, and he urged families and friends who know people with drug problems to contact law enforcement for intervention.

It doesnt have to end in a jail cell, he said.

At the swearing-in, Sutherland paraphrased the U.S. Supreme Court case Berger v. United States, saying guilt does not escape, nor innocence suffer. Sutherland said that while its important to prosecute the guilty, it is important that his office recognize the innocent and keep them above the fray.

He also said the last few years have been tough on law enforcement around the country, and that with the current opioid crises, a cops job has transformed to more than law enforcement, with medic and counselor being added to an officers tasks.

Family is important to Sutherland. Attending the ceremony were his mother, Nora Pascht; stepfather, Ed Pascht; father, John Sutherland; uncle Norman Sutherland; wife, Yolanda Sutherland; daughter Lauren Sutherland; son Charlie Nusbaum; and cousin Diana Ojeda.

Yolanda is the heart and rock of the family, and I wouldnt be here without them, he said.

Upper Township school board plans to sue Ocean City over OPRA request denials UPPER TOWNSHIP  A longstanding dispute between Ocean City and Upper Township school boards over transparency and School Choice is at the center of a new lawsuit being filed by Upper Township, school officials said Monday.

Sutherland also referred to as his work families: the men and women from his law office in Linwood; as well as about 50 detectives and assistant prosecutors, new to the family with his appointment.

Sutherland credited both his blood relations and his work families with making it possible for him to be appointed as the countys top law-enforcement officer.

Sutherland was named the chair of the Cape May County Democratic Party last year.

After Taylor retired, Sutherland was recommended to Gov. Chris Christie for the post by atate Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, under a longstanding policy known as senatorial courtesy.
MAYS LANDING  A choir director charged with sexually assaulting a student for more than three years is a flight risk and a community threat, a Superior Court judge said Wednesday. He ordered the man held in jail until his trial.

Atlantic County Superior Court Judge John Rauh made his ruling during a detention hearing for Brian McSee, 53, Port Republic Elementary Schools part-time choir director.

McSee is charged with aggravated sexual assault, official misconduct, criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. The assaults, which authorities said occurred twice a week for three years, involved a student at the Port Republic school.

McSee, who is also a choir director at Port Republics St. Pauls United Methodist and a part-time teacher at Atlantic Christian School in Egg Harbor Township, turned himself in to State Police at the Tuckerton Station on Dec. 13.

Special Victims Unit Chief Assistant Prosecutor John Flammer said McSee, who owns a shotgun, had a physical altercation with the victim two weeks ago after showing up uninvited at his home.

And the juvenile victim has indicated that the defendant can be violent at times, Flammer said, adding McSee lives close to the school and the victim.

But defense attorney Rochelle Rozier, citing her clients lack of prior criminal involvement, argued that McSee had turned himself into State Police when the charges came out.

According to Rozier, McSee lives with the Rev. Frank Brown of St. Pauls United Methodist Church. Rozier said the pastor indicated he was willing to let McSee continue to live with him if he were released.

Brown and his wife were in the courtroom Wednesday but left quickly after McSees hearing. He did not return phone calls for comment.

It is a small community, however my client is heavily involved in church activities, Rozier said. He has no issues with respect to not returning to the school environment; he has no issues with that at all.

Rozier said McSee was is no way running from any of these charges and argued for an order of no contact and ankle-monitoring provisions rather than jail.

Those things dont prevent contact between the victim and the defendant. They simply exist as conditions in the order, Rauh said before ruling for McSees detention for the protection and safety of the community.

Port Republic Board of Education President Joy Hooper said an automated call went out to district parents last week following the announcement of the charges against McSee.

At Wednesday nights Board of Education meeting, after an executive session, the board voted to terminate the contract with McSee Music Venture Inc., effective Dec. 13.

We are moving on, Hooper said.

Community members who attended the meeting were more interested in the meet and greet event with newly appointed district Superintendent Brian Z. London.

Interim Port Republic Superintendent and Principal Carmine Bonanni said earlier Wednesday that McSee was never alone with individual students.

Never was there an opportunity for Mr. McSee to be with the children individually, Bonanni said. He always came in as a choral presentation with large groups of students or full classes in the multipurpose room, so he was never alone with individual students or any private tutoring of any sort.

Officials at Atlantic Christian School said their first indication that something was wrong was when McSee sent a letter of resignation Dec. 13 to Chief School Administrator Karen Oblen. She said McSee did not specify his reason for leaving.

I am still very shocked, Oblen said. I feel very heartbroken for these families and anybody involved. Im certainly praying that nobody else is involved.

Police said McSee was the male students seventh- and eighth-grade choir director at Port Republic Elementary School, as well as the childrens choir director at St. Pauls (also called Port Church).

Bonanni said McSee taught students in the multipurpose room at Port Republic Elementary School once a week, on Mondays. He worked there for four years.

State Police called Bonanni last Thursday afternoon, and Bonanni met with staff Friday morning, he said. The school sent information to parents Sunday evening through its phone system, and Bonanni met with students and staff Monday morning, he said.

The elementary school did not have prior issues with McSee, nor have any other students come forward, Bonanni said. He encouraged students to speak with him if they have issues or concerns related to the alleged incident. He said the school will continue to monitor students commentary, of which there has been very little.

Atlantic Christian School has received a positive response from parents, who said they are grateful the school alerted them, Oblen said. She said Atlantic Christian did not have any prior issues with McSee and is offering counseling to its students. McSee had taught students twice a week since 2011.

Many parents dropping off their children to the Port Republic school Wednesday morning said they did not know anything about the alleged sexual assault and did not wish to speak with a reporter.

Its scary. Plain and simple, said 37-year-old John Surace who has a daughter in first grade and a son in third grade. He declined to comment further.

A pre-indictment conference is scheduled for Jan. 29. McSee has seven days to appeal his detention.

Staff Writer Lauren Carroll contributed to this report.
ATLANTIC CITY  Students at the Texas Avenue School are expected to be back in school Friday after an early dismissal Thursday due to a gas leak, Superintendent Barry Caldwell said.

The 585 kindergarten through eighth-grade students at the Texas Avenue School were dismissed at 12:45 p.m. Thursday after a gas leak was discovered that morning in the boiler room.

We smelled gas this morning and we immediately called South Jersey Gas and the Fire Department, which is our standard procedure, Caldwell said.

Atlantic City Police announced the contained gas leak in the school just before 11 a.m. Thursday.

Sgt. Kevin Fair said the leak in the school had been turned off by South Jersey Gas and the Atlantic City Fire Department.

Caldwell said fire officials determined the district did not need to be evacuated.

Robocalls went out to parents in the district notifying them of the early dismissal, but Caldwell said many parents were at the district already for a holiday show.

He said the schools contractor, Marlee Contractors of Hammonton, was at the school Thursday afternoon to replace a pipeline that fed into the boilers where the leak was found.

Caldwell said he fully expects school to be in session Friday for a previously scheduled half-day before winter break.

Were going to get this resolved, he said.

The Texas Avenue School is more than 60 years old, Caldwell said, but the boilers are inspected annually prior to what he called boiler season, October through April.

This is probably just wear and tear on the boiler, he said.

Caldwell credited Texas Avenue School administrators for their handling of the situation.

He said another robocall was to go out to parents Thursday night to notify them of the progress of the repairs.
Gary S. Laben Will Lead Combined Organization

PLANO, Texas and SHELTON, Connecticut, Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research Now and Survey Sampling International (SSI) announce that their merger agreement has received all necessary global regulatory approvals and has closed. Gary S. Laben, CEO of Research Now, will lead the joint organization as CEO.

The combined company is privately held, with Court Square Capital Partners and HGGC, the current majority owners of Research Now and SSI, respectively, remaining as majority owners of the combined business. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly released.

The company will be known as Research Now SSI. With the merger, it becomes the market research industry's largest provider of online panel data and technology-based research solutions based on opted-in data.

"Together, we are exceptionally well-positioned for growth in our established market research customer base as well as in new, strategic areas that span the entire marketing continuum of data-driven consumer engagement," says Laben. "With our core asset of verified, opted-in data, and an innovative approach to marketing services based on actual voice of the consumer, we can offer existing and new customers new ways to achieve optimized marketing performance."

About Research Now SSI

Research Now SSI is the global leader in digital research data for better insights and business decisions. The company provides world-class research data solutions that enable better results for more than 3,500 market research, consulting, media, healthcare and corporate clients. Research Now SSI operates globally with locations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and is recognized as the quality, scale, and customer satisfaction leader in the market research industry. For more information, please go to www.researchnow.com and www.surveysampling.com.

Editors, for more information, contact:

Barbara Palmer

Research Now SSI

+1 214 918 9933



Andrew Jolls

Research Now SSI

+1 818 827 3440

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/621661/RN_SSI_Dual_Logo.jpg

Related Links

https://www.researchnow.com



SOURCE Research Now Group, Inc.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
United Nations, Dec 16 : Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono has called to urgently revitalise the long-stalled Security Council reform process by adopting a text on which to base the negotiations during the current General Assembly session.

"The reform of the Security Council is an urgent task necessary for the Council to more effectively address threats to international peace and security," he said at a news conference here on Friday.

"It is important to launch text-based negotiations in the Intern-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) of the current session of the General Assembly."

Kono's call for adopting the negotiating text comes ahead of the next IGN meeting scheduled for January 29 and 30, 2018.

Along with India, Japan is a member of the group known as G4, which campaigns jointly for Council reforms. The other members of the group are Brazil and Germany. The four nations also mutually support their membership in a reformed Council.

India has also called for text-based negotiations.

"Japan will continue to work on the early reform of the Security Council in close cooperation with other member states," Kono said.

He announced that Japan will contest the 2022 election for a Council seat. Until the reform is finally achieved, he said, Japan will try to be a non-permanent member of the Council as often as possible.

Japan completes its current two-year term as an elected member of the Council at the end of this year.

The negotiation process for Council reforms has been stalled for more than a decade with the UN's 193 members to even agree on a document or text that would be the starting point for real negotiations on reforms.

Hence Kono's insistence on adopting such a document and moving to text-based negotiations.

The reform of the UN secretariat launched by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that embraces the areas of peace and security, and development and management would be incomplete without reforming the Council, he said.

He drew attention to the unrepresentative character of the Council, pointing out that it doesn't have single permanent member from Africa. That region has 55 nations making up more than a quarter of UN membership.

General Assemby President Miroslav Lajck rebooted the reform process last month, saying: "The time for trying is up; now is the time for action."

He appointed Kaha Imnadze of Georgia and Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates as IGN co-chairs.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
New Delhi, Dec 16 : Keen observers of contemporary Indian literature would recall that a series of memoirs, which came to be known as "book bombs", critical of the then Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, hit the stands just ahead of the 2014 general election. Four years later, it seems that the opposition has learnt its lesson as an array of books by opposition leaders, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, as also Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Salman Khurshid, are slated to release in 2018, ahead of the next general election.

The major political memoirs that released ahead of the 2014 general election were headlined by Sanjay Baru (media advisor to Manmohan Singh), Vinod Rai (the Comptroller and Auditor General who highlighted several scams), Natwar Singh (former Foreign Minister who fell out with the Gandhis) and P.C. Parakh (a bureaucrat) showed the then ruling government in less than favourable light.

While Baru's "The Accidental Prime Minister" was less than kind to Singh and savaged his reputation, "One Life is Not Enough" by Natwar Singh focused on the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi equation, suggesting that a parallel power-centre existed during the UPA regime. Whatever was left was further savaged by "Not Just An Accountant" by Rai and "Crusader or Conspirator?" by Parakh. All of these together unleashed a storm on Manmohan Singh and the Congress party, and tarnished the UPA's image.

Thus, 2018 will be a deja vu of sorts, the only difference being that it is the heavyweight Opposition leaders who will use the "soft power" of literature to counter the narrative of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The timing of these books will be as important as the controversies that they may evoke.

For instance, the new year will open with a book titled "Why I Am A Hindu" by Shashi Tharoor in January, just before the popular Jaipur Literature Festival that attracts thousands of visitors and media coverage across the globe, of which Tharoor is once again a star speaker. Starting with a close examination of his own belief in Hinduism, the book will also look at the myriad manifestations of political Hinduism in the modern era, including violence committed in the name of the faith by right-wing organisations and their adherents.

"He is unsparing in his criticism of extremist 'bhakts' and unequivocal in his belief that everything that makes India a great and distinctive culture and country will be imperilled if religious fundamentalists are allowed to take the upper hand," reads the blurb of the book, accessed by IANS.

Then, there is "The Idea of India" by Salman Khursid, which, he says, it is not just a political narrative but a compendium of what constitutes India's past, present and future. It is not merely an estimate of what India is but an exhaustive account of what India truly stands for. Published by Oxford University Press, the timing of the book's release is currently unclear.

"Economics for Political Change: The Collected Works of Manmohan Singh" by the former Prime Minister documents the evolution of his thoughts over more than half a century as an academic, policymaker, and politician. This multi-volume set will offer insights into the mind of an influential figure in India's political and economic history.

Kapil Sibal will publish "Shades of Truth", where he will reflect on the many actions of the Modi government since 2014 that "revels in the past without seeking to grapple the problems of the present" and the challenges that lie ahead. An examination of "acche din" along with the contributions of his party that, in his own words, "steered India through its Green Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and IT Revolution, and leadership that helped India rise as an economic superpower in the new world order," Sibal's book will be another major political nonfiction offering in 2018.

Manish Tewari's "My Ministerial Years" will tell the story of the struggle to string together a narrative "as the UPA government in its second term faced a barrage of both unwarranted and, more often than not, motivated criticism from an extremely belligerent media driven by corporate imperatives". It will also recount various interesting episodes that defined the UPA years.

Finally, Omar Abdullah's first book -- part memoir, part history and part analysis of the various problems that have beset Jammu and Kashmir in the decades since Independence -- is billed as "one of the most important books to be published about the beautiful and troubled state that was born in fire and blood". It will not only offer the reader unprecedented clarity about the situation in Kashmir today but also rare insights into Kashmiri politics and the Abdullah family that, according to the book, has played a prominent part in shaping the discourse on the region.

What is equally interesting is the absence of BJP leaders in the literary space in 2018. There will be a biography of Mohan Bhagwat by Kingshuk Nag that will chart his rise as the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS. There will again be a book by Vinod Rai titled "Holding to Account," but it appears more of an academic read than a potential "book bomb," like his earlier account.

These books, starting with Tharoor's "Why I Am A Hindu" and a few other "surprises" down the line, are expected to be released one after the other in the run-up to the 2019 general election.

(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
Lucknow, Dec 19 : Three persons were killed in Uttar Pradesh's Basti district early on Tuesday when their car rammed into a parked gas tanker in dense fog and poor visibility.

The accident took place near Ghaghaula bridge. As the car's front was completely smashed, it took much effort from passersby and police to pull out the injured from the mangled chassis.

In another incident, poor visibility caused a pile up of 10 vehicles on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway injuring over a dozen people, an Unnao district official said.

Ten vehicles rammed into each other on the bridge over river Sain between Auraas and Jogikot villages.
Panaji, Dec 20 : A still indicating the scale of an indoor set from the 1938 movie "Vachan"; another of legendary actress Helen rehearsing the cabaret number "Yeh itni badi mehfil aur ik dil, kisko doon"; and, among many others, Meena Kumari leaning on a piano in a dramatic scene from the film "Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai". All these photographs from the black and white era are being exhibited for the first time to trace the roots of Indian cinema's boom.

Titled "A Cinematic Exhibition: Josef Wirsching and Bombay Talkies", the display at the ongoing Serendipity Arts Festival here tells a story of a world across worlds, a story of cultural convergence that brought together Berlin and Calcutta, Munich and Bombay.

It draws from the photographic archives of Josef Wirsching, a German cinematographer, who made India his workplace and home. Wirsching's archive comprises behind-the-scenes photographs of cast and crew, production and publicity stills that give us unprecedented access to the aesthetic decisions and creative communities that were vital to filmmaking in colonial India.

"Cinema happened like a boom," says Wirsching's grandson, named after his grandfather, from whose personal archives he has spent the last decade reproducing the photographs.

"But not many people realise or know that there was an entire movement behind it. It took many years to bring cinema into the consciousness of not only the viewers but also those who later became filmmakers," added Josef, who is now based in Goa.

Elaborating on the rise of cinema in the country, he said Indian artists at the turn of the 20th century actively sought to "forge an aesthetic language that could be simultaneously nationalist as well as modern". Frustrated with European academic canons and colonialist stereotypes, they turned to local artistic genealogies and avant-grade movements outside the British empire.

Germany, with its long history of Indological enquiry, became an ally in this endeavour. Thus, Rabindranath Tagore visited Germany in the 1920s, and, in turn, the Austrian art historian, Stella Kramrisch, joined Shantiniketan and organised a landmark "Bauhaus" exhibition in Calcutta (1922).

This two-way cultural exchange was keenly felt in cinema; the success of "Oriental" films such as "Sumurun" (1920) and "The Indian Tomb" (1921) was met with Indian filmmakers approaching German studios for technical training. Raja Ravi Verma had already popularised German chromolithographic techniques and European approaches to the body through his mass-produced calendar art. In the 1920s, intrepid nationalist filmmakers such as Dadasaheb Phalke, V. Shantaram and Himanshu Rai self-consciously reworked these influences with inspiration from passionate German plays.

And then came the Second World War, which led to a different kind of exchange when Jewish exiles such as Walter Kaufman and Willy Haas moved to Bombay and entered the local film scene. Bombay Talkies Studio, inaugurated in 1934, embodied the cultural dynamism of the moment in its core team led by Himanshu Rai, Franz Osten, Josef Wirsching, Niranjan Pal and Devika Rani.

Josef added that Bombay Talkies played a foundational role in defining India's commercial film form, producing some of the most iconic musicals of the era which focused on urgent issues of social reform. These films borrowed freely from East and West to create a new aesthetic that many called "Swadeshi modernism" -- a heady pastiche that begs us to question easy notions of Indian and foreign, traditional and experimental.

Josef Wirsching's artistic imagination infused Bombay cinema with the psychological depth and stylistic ethos of German Expressionism. At the same time, his photographic archive gestures towards another meaning of what we call "cinematic" -- a term that is commonly used to describe moments in reality that seem elevated beyond the everyday. In these images displayed at the ongoing exhibition, we see the interaction of individuals, objects and environments, framed by a vision that captures the beauty and drama beneath the surface of the laborious work of film production.

Josef said that he had contacted the Indian government and the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), but to little avail. A camera used by his grandfather, rare and vintage in its own right, along with negatives of many films, were given to the Film and Television Institute of India, all of which have disappeared now. His endeavour found momentum after he met the organisers of Serendipity, where the photographs are first exhibited.

The Wirsching Family -- Wolfgang Peter Wirsching, Rosamma and their sons Josef and Georg -- are the only heirs of Josef Wirsching (1903-1967) and are currently the owners of his entire personal photographic collection consisting of more than 6,000 images and the largest collection of photographic evidence of the start of the Indian film industry, which has now acquired the "Bollywood" moniker.

(Saket Suman is in Goa at the invitation of the organisers of the Serendipity Arts Festival. He can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
Washington, Dec 21 : The US Treasury on Wednesday imposed new sanctions on more Russians under a law enacted five years ago following the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The Treasury added five individuals, including Russia's Chechnyan leader Ramzan Kadyrov, to its sanctions list, Xinhua news agency reported.

The sanctions would freeze assets of blacklisted persons under US jurisdiction and ban any US individuals or companies from making business deals with them.

The penalty came as the US State Department presented to Congress its annual report on the administration's implementation of the so-called Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.

So far, a total of 49 individuals have been designated by the US government under the act.

Washington described Magnitsky as a man who uncovered large-scale corruptions among Russian officials. Magnitsky was arrested in November 2008 for alleged tax fraud and died in prison a year later.

The US claimed Magnitsky died because of medical neglect. But Russia said no evidence pointed to his death being caused deliberately.
Johannesburg, Dec 21 : Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader of South Africa's ruling ANC party, has called for unity and put issues such as improving the economy, corruption or land distribution among his main priorities.

In his closing address at the African National Congress's 54th Conference on Wednesday night, Ramaphosa thanked the party members for having overcome the speculations that the movement would collapse due to internal fractures it faced, reports Efe news.

"We are still here, standing almost 106 years later, united," Ramaphosa said, who on Monday beat his rival by a narrow margin in the race for the leadership of the party, the former president of the African Union Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who had President Jacob Zuma's support.

However, Ramaphosa acknowledged that, after 23 years in power, since the arrival of democracy, the old liberation movement is going through a "critical moment" if it wants to continue representing "aspirations, hopes" and "concerns" of the majority of South Africans.

"They want an ANC that uses public office not to serve vested interests, but to build a truly developmental state and a vibrant, inclusive economy that creates jobs and improves lives.

"This conference has resolved that corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality," he added.

His words were aimed at giving a new direction to the ANC, whose image has been damaged by the multiple corruption scandals in which President Zuma was directly involved.

Other issues highlighted by the new leader of the ANC were the fight against gender inequality and AIDS as well as the restoration of relations with its historic allies, the trade unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

On Monday, the ANC chose Ramaphosa, 65, as the new leader in a divided internal election, in which he obtained 2,440 votes against the 2,261 that his opponent Dlamini-Zuma received.

The ANC has won every general election since the arrival of democracy in 1994 with more than 60 percent of the votes, a trend that could lead to Ramaphosa becoming the next President of South Africa when Zuma finishes his mandate in 2019.
United Nations, Dec 21 : Pakistan has once again raked up the Kashmir issue at the Security Council by trying to link it to the Palestinian crisis.

"Longstanding, internationally recognised disputes of Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir continue to fester," Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi told the Council on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming General Assembly emergency session on Jerusalem.

Having failed so far to get any international interest in Islamabad's version of the Kashmir dispute, she brought in the Kashmir reference while speaking of "efforts to change the status of Jerusalem" because of US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise it as Israel's capital and move Washington's embassy there.

"The Palestinian and Kashmiri people continue to suffer horrific human rights violations at the hands of occupying forces, while the world continues to watch without addressing these egregious situations.

"All resolutions of the Security Council must be implemented uniformly and non-selectively," she said in an obvious reference to a 1948 resolution of the Council on Kashmir.

"Selective implementation weakens multi-lateralism and the credibility of the UN."

India maintains that the resolution has been made redundant by the march of history. The plebiscite proposed in the resolution could not be held because Pakistan would not withdraw its troop from areas it occupied, and since then Kashmiris have elected their legislators and leaders.

Moreover, the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan stipulates that all disputes should be settled bilaterally, precluding third party intervention.

India did not respond to Lodhi's comments. It has generally ignored attempts by Pakistan to talk about Kashmir at the UN as all member nations do not take notice of them.

One of those attempts in September after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's speech at the General Assembly backfired when Lodhi held up picture of an injured Palestinian girl claiming she was a Kashmiri.

Amid ridicule, Indian diplomat Paulomi Tripathi pointed out that Lodhi had "callously" exploited the picture of a Palestinian girl "to divert attention from Pakistan's role as the hub of global terrorism".

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
Chennai, Dec 21 : DMK leaders on Thursday hailed the decision of a Delhi court to acquit all the accused in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupee 2G spectrum scandal.

The accused included DMK leaders -- former Telecom Minister A.Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, the daughter of party President M.Karunanidhi.

Cadres assembled at the party headquarters and celebrated the verdict.

Special Judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused in both the cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The alleged scam on the issuance of licenses and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

DMK leaders Duraimurugan and Rajya Sabha MP P. Siva expressed happiness at the judgement.

Congress leaders too expressed happiness at the verdict.

Welcoming the verdict, Puducherry Chief Minister and Congress leader V. Narayanasamy told the media that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained political milegage due to its false campaign against Congress and DMK.

Tamil Nadu Congress leader S. Thirunavukkarasar told a television channel that truth has won finally.

He said the BJP came to power at the centre by its false campaign and this is a first step in DMK's future victories.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : Filmmaker Luv Ranjan says his forthcoming film "Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety" tackles a very relevant issue.

The film's trailer was launched with its cast Kartik Aaryan, Sunny Singh and Nushrat Bharucha on Wednesday here.

Asked why he doesn't have a larger star cast like most of his earlier films, Ranjan said: "I don't think the number of actors matters in the film. I feel my films have been appreciated by the audience because they could relate with the issues shown in those films. This film talks about a new issue which people haven't seen earlier in films."

"We have seen fights between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law most of the times. Earlier, we used to say that a marriage is an amalgamation of two families but in cities, it shows a different picture where marriage happens between two friends circles.

"We used to wonder whether the girl would get along with her mother-in-law or not but now we think whether the girl would get along with the groom's friends or not, so I feel it's a very relevant issue."

The director feels that today youngsters go through a phase where the girl or boy doesn't get along with their spouse's friends but they have to balance it out.

Asked about the film's title, Ranjan said: "I wasn't able to figure out the title for this film. There are three characters in the film, so the main complication in the film is who has more proximity towards whom so that's how 'Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety' came up in my mind, and I thought this would be the apt title for my film."

Has he been in a situation where he had to choose between 'bromance' or romance?

He said: "I feel to a certain degree everyone has gone through this situation. May be not the same degree which we have shown in this film but there must have been times when you had to decide whether you want to go with your friend for a drink or you want to go out with your girlfriend."

The film, set in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, is scheduled to release in February next year.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The government is set to increase by an unprecedented 125 per cent the manpower of the Special Security Group (SSG) that provides security cover to highly protected VIPs like Union ministers, the National Security Advisor (NSA), some Chief Ministers and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief.

The SSG, a wing of the paramilitary Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), is a specialised force like the National Security Guard (NSG) and currently has 1,200 personnel. And the government is going to increase this by 1,500.

Well informed sources in the Union Home Ministry told IANS that the sanction to increase the force is expected by December-end or by early January.

The decision has been pending with the Home Ministry's Border Management Division for over a month now after the CISF requested the ministry for the induction of 1,500 more personnel in the SSG wing.

SSG commandos, who are trained at par with NSG personnel, currently provide security to 75 VIPs under "Z plus", "Z", "Y Plus", "Y" and "X" categories across India.

Those given SSG security cover include Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, Minister of Communication Manoj Sinha, NSA Ajit Doval, former Union Minister and nine-time lawmaker from Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal.

CISF officers said the enhanced manpower would come as a relief for the SSG, which will, by 2018-end, take over the security responsibilities of all VIPs who are currently being protected by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

The Home Ministry asked the CISF on November 23 to take over the VIP security responsibilities from the ITBP and the CRPF.

By 2018-end, only the CISF and NSG will have the mandate of guarding VIPs in the country. The Elite Special Protection Group provides security to the Prime Minister, former Prime Ministers, President and Vice President and their immediate families.

As per the order, the security of 92 VIPs so far under the CRPF and ITBP will be given in a phased manner to the SSG, which was established in 2006 for the purpose.

Till now, the CRPF provides security to 75 VIPs while the ITBP secures 17 such persons.

After increase in its strength, the SSG will start providing security cover to BJP President Amit Shah, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani, among others. All of them are now under CRPF protection.

It will also have to take over the security of Jammu and Kashmir politicians like Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and CPI-M legislator Yusuf Tarigami as well as of some judges protected by the ITBP.

Apart from providing VIP security through its SSG wing, the CISF, which came into existence in 1969, is mandated to provide security to critical infrastructure like nuclear installations, space establishments, airports, seaports, power plants, sensitive government buildings, heritage monuments and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, (Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)
New Delhi, Dec 21 : It is several days since 17-year-old Nurankis, mother of two, has heard from her husband after he left for Agra to look for a job.

Nurul Salam lost his job in Delhi after the Indian government termed Rohingyas -- one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- as a "security threat".

"I have been cooking only rice and potato for the past couple of days. That too, only twice a day. I have about Rs 20 left. We have nothing else," Nurankis told IANS while sitting in her dark, one-room shack of blue tarpaulin and cardboard at the Shram Vihar slum of south Delhi.

IANS found several cases of Rohingyas being fired from jobs in Delhi, Jammu and Punjab because of their identity, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government asked "state governments to identify and deport the Rohingyas".

The government's decision was later challenged in the Supreme Court and its judgement is awaited.

"One day, they (the employer) said 'there is no work from today for people from Burma'," Nurankis said about how Salam lost his job at Allana, a Ghazipur meat processing company in east Delhi.

Following this, Salam boarded a bus to Aligarh, about 150 km from Delhi, to look for a job, leaving behind his four-year-old son Ubaib and three-month-old daughter Rubina. "He called from Aligarh and said people were asking for Aadhaar Card for hiring him," Nurankis said. "I do not know where he is now."

People who lost their jobs after the government crackdown said it had become difficult to pay rent or even eat and in some cases were forced to relocate, leaving behind what little they owned.

Rohingyas, mostly Muslims, are an ethnic minority from Buddhist majority Myanmar, who have been denied citizenship and have been facing brutality from the Myanmar military.

More than 800,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar in the last five years as a result of violence, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and there are around 21,500 Rohingyas in India.

At a tea shop near Nurankis' shack, 22-year-old Sayedul Amin remembered the day when Salam, he and around 30 other refugees lost their jobs.

"It was a normal day and we were working when the contractor came and told us that from that day there would be no jobs for people from Burma," Amin said.

When the refugees asked for a reason, they were told that the government might deport them any time and the company would face problems for employing them.

"I do not know how I'm going to pay this month's rent," said Abdul Raheem, 30, one of the refugees fired from the company.

The company laid off between 25 and 40 Rohingya refugees, according to one of Allana's security guards.

When reached for a comment, an Allana spokesperson said that Rohingyas were contract employees and they were laid off as a "pro-active measure" after the government's move.

However, he said only seven or eight refugees were fired.

In Punjab, Mohammad Jubair and other Rohingya refugees were asked to leave from work.

Jubair sold his cycle, gas cylinder and parts of his shack and boarded a train to Hyderabad, where he is yet to find a job or build a shack.

In Jammu, Ashik Khurana, a 17-year-old Rohingya refugee, who used to work as a cleaner at the Jammu Tawi Railway Station with about 30 other refugees, said they were asked for Indian identity cards to continue.

After gathering all refugee workers, the in-charge said: "From today all workers from Burma who do not have an Aadhaar Card won't be allowed to work here."

Khurana said: "Where will I go for an Aadhaar Card? The UN had told us not to make any Indian ID card. "Most of us left (the job) after that."

At a Rohingya settlement in Kanchan Kunj of Delhi, Mohammad Saleem, 35, leader of the camp, said: "It (settlement) was like a job market, but now hardly anyone comes here to call us for work."

"When Modi is talking like this, people would obviously see us differently," Dil Mohammad, 60, leader of Shram Vihar settlement, said, adding: "It's better that the government rounds us up here and shoots us."

(Nikhil M. Babu can be contacted at nikhil.b@ians.in)
Chandigarh, Dec 21 : The Bharatiya Janata Party had reason to be doubly happy after its electoral victory in the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls. One, it returned to power after five years and, secondly, it got a near two-thirds majority. But there is one man who has left the BJP leadership with a bad taste in the mouth.

Rajinder Rana, the Congress candidate from the Sujanpur assembly constituency, defeated the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal, forcing the saffron party to hunt for a new face.

"I have done a lot of social work in the Sujanpur constituency in the past 15 years. The people of this constituency have blessed me with this responsibility despite the BJP candidate being the party's CM face. I have a personal equation with the people of this constituency. I am there with them for all their happy and sad occasions," Rana told IANS in an interview here after his surprise victory over two-time Chief Minister Dhumal.

"When Dhumal's name was announced for this seat, I had declared that he will lose. Some people from his side had approached me before the election but I had told them to convey to him (Dhumal) not to contest from Sujanpur. I knew that the fight would be difficult. But I knew that I had done good work here -- and it paid off," said Rana, who was once Dhumal's protege but fell out with him in 2009.

Now referred to as the "Giant Killer of Sujanpur", Rana, 51, defeated Dhumal, 73, by 1,919 votes, causing a political upheaval in the BJP and Himachal politics after the poll results were declared on Monday. Rana's victory is all the more important because he managed it at a time when the BJP rode a wave in Himachal elections and won 44 seats in the 68-member house.

"The BJP central leadership got trapped in an electoral miscalculation. They announced Dhumal as the chief ministerial face and fielded him from Sujanpur, thinking that the BJP will win all five seats in Hamirpur district as Dhumal was a well-known leader and the incoming Chief Minister. That gamble misfired. The BJP's internal surveys had shown that defeating me here was going to be difficult," said Rana, a millionaire who is known to contribute from his personal funds to people in the constituency for marriages of girls from poor backgrounds and giving scholarships to students.

Rana had remained with Dhumal from 2003 to 2009. They fell apart in 2009. Rana, who was denied a BJP ticket from Sujanpur, contested as an independent in the 2012 assembly polls and won by a big margin of over 14,000 votes. The BJP finished third in that election.

Despite his victory, Rana does not see any political rivalry with Dhumal.

"There is nothing like political rivalry in my mind. My aim is to serve the people and development of the constituency. In the past five years, (Chief Minister) Virbhadra Singh (Congress) supported me greatly and we did a lot of work in Sujanpur. Even now, the new BJP government should help in the development of this constituency," Rana said.

Dhumal was announced as the chief ministerial face by the BJP quite late and Rana did not agree with reports that his campaign was sabotaged by his own party leadership.

"In this seat, it was a contest between naam (name) and kaam (work). I had conveyed to Dhumal not to get into hot water here. It is a victory of the people of this constituency," said Rana, who has been politically catapulted in the Congress by defeating Dhumal.

(Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in)
Rome, Dec 21 : Italian authorities have deported a 37-year-old Moroccan national who is accused of being an Islamist extremist, the Interior Ministry said.

The suspect was expelled from Italy aboard a flight from Milan's Malpensa airport, bringing to 103 the number of alleged religious extremists deported this year, the Ministry stated.

The Moroccan came to the attention of Italian investigators in 2016 after he was expelled from a Muslim association in Alessandria for his ultra-extremist views and for allegedly intimidating the association's chiefs for failing to apply the radical interpretation of the Quran which he espoused.
Berlin, Dec 21 : Stuttgart have extended the contract of defender Benjamin Pavard ahead of schedule, the "Swabians" announced.

The Bundesliga side and the France international agreed on a one-year contract extension. Pavard will thus stay with Stuttgart until June 2021, reports Xinhua news agency.

"Benjamin has developed very well during his time here at Stuttgart. The nomination for the France national team also underlines his development. We are happy that he decided to extend his contract despite several offers from other clubs," Stuttgart's sporting director Michael Reschke said.

The 21-year-old defender joined the newly promoted Bundesliga side from French outfit Lille in the summer 2016 after penning a four-year deal. Since his arrival Pavard made 38 appearances and provided two goals and two assists to become a key player in Stuttgart's defence.

"I am very happy about the Stuttgart's trust. There have been several requests from other clubs in the past few weeks and months but I never thought about leaving. Stuttgart is a big club where I want to evolve," Pavard said.

Stuttgart occupy the 14th place of the Bundesliga standings. They clash with Hertha Berlin after the winter break on January 13.
Gwalior, Dec 21 : The historic city of Gwalior, the birthplace of music maestro Tansen, a court musician during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar in the 16th century, is set to host over 57 Indian and international artistes at the 93rd edition of the Tansen Music Festival that begins on Friday.

Also known as Tansen Sangeet Sammelan, the festival will be held over a span of five days. It will be a blend of Carnatic music, Hindustani classical music and traditional classic music from countries like Sweden, Iran, Brazil and Spain.

While some performances will take place near Tansen's burial site, which is situated in the Behat region of Madhya Pradesh, other shows will be held at the Gwalior fort.

Organised every year jointly by the Ustad Alauddin Khan Kala Evam Sangeet Academy and the Madhya Pradesh government's Department of Culture, the fest will kick-start on Thursday with 'Gamak', an ornamentation that is used in the performance of Indian classical musical. However, the extravaganza will officially begin on Friday.

Manoj Shrivastava, the Principal Secretary in the Department of Culture, said the experiment of having international artistes as participants in the fest along with their Indian counterparts got "great reviews" when it started two years back.

"It is perhaps the first and the only international music fest in India where we not only celebrate Indian classical music but also have artistes from other nations performing their respective genres and classical music," Shrivastava told IANS.

"We started this as an experiment and we have got great reviews and encouragement from viewers, so in continuing the journey, we have invited different countries to celebrate the spirit of music, and this cultural amalgamation will take Tansen festival to new heights," he added.

While musician Shruti Johari, hailing from Chennai, will hold a discussion on 'Indian Classical Music in Contemporary Era', Prasanna Rao, known for playing Carnatic music on the guitar, will hold a session on 'An Effort to Connect Young Generation to Humanity and Ethics'. There will also be a session on 'Music Therapy'.

"We are trying to make this festival more interesting and informative so that we can spread awareness about our cultural heritage. For that, we have started lectures and discussions in the segment called 'Vadi Samvadi'. Apart from this, we are giving a platform to encourage next generation musicians in the presence of thousands of music lovers," said Shrivastava.

Hindustani classical vocalist Ulhas Kashalkar will be honoured with the National Tansen Samman for 2017 at the fest.

The line-up also includes European guitarist Johannes Moller, Belarus' Maxim Shchedrovitzki on oud and Ben Arie Dagovich, who hails from Greece, on the hang, Brazilian guitarist and vocalist Luiza Sales, pianist Pedro Carneiro Silva from Rio de Janeiro and Iranian musician Fakhroddin Ghaffari on the tombak and daf.

Indian musicians who will enthrall classical music lovers, include dhrupad player Sarda Naad Sangeet Vidhyalaya, tabla players Vinayak Shukla and Vijay Seth, flautist Chetan Joshi, vocalist Pushkar Lele, sarangi player Murad Ali Khan, violinist Ankur Dharkar, and drummer Aditya Dutta.

A photo exhibition on the past editions of Tansen Music Festival will also be held. In addition, musical scripts titled "Dharohar" will be displayed at one of the venues.

(Kishori Sud's visit is at the invitation of the Madhya Pradesh government. She can be contacted at kishori.s@ians.in)
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 2 p.m. on Thursday after Congress leaders asked the BJP to come clear on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh and the saffron party's smear campaign against the UPA in the 2G spectrum case.

A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted all the accused including DMK leaders -- former Telecom Minister A. Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi -- in the alleged multi-thousand crore rupee 2G spectrum scandal in which there were claims it caused the state exchequer a loss of Rs 1,76,379 crore.

Soon after the House met for the day, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the two issues.

"Till yesterday (Wednesday) we had been demanding the Prime Minister's clarification on his remarks against Manmohan Singhji but today another incident took place and now we want clarification on both the issues," Azad said.

"They should now prove on which basis they had alleged that there was scandal of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Through false campaign an environment against UPA was created and was the reason we are here in the opposition benches and you are there in treasury benches," he said.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel said that the Prime Minister could not come in the House if such ruckus continue on a daily basis.

Modi usually comes to Rajya Sabha on Thursdays for a while as questions related to the Prime Minister's Office are listed.

The Chairman asked Azad to stop as he had not given any prior notice over the issue but he continued.

"You can't raise any issue without giving a proper notice. I can't go beyond the rules. House functions according to rules. If there is something serious the House will take it as priority," Naidu said as the agitating members trooped near Chairman's podium.

The Congress also raised the 2G verdict, saying the court judgment vindicated the UPA's stand that there was no scam in the allocation of spectrum and licences to telecom companies.

Naidu asked the agitating members to maintain the dignity of the House and to respect the democratic principles.

"Follow 'maryada' (tradition)... Follow the rules... I condemn your behaviour... Go back to your seats," Naidu remarked.

"This has become habit of few people. The 3/4 the of the House want discussion but there are few who don't want. This is not fair. You want to disturb the house by making allegations. There should be discussion rather than shouting," Naidu said quoting one of the remarks of the former President and former Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma.

Despite several requests, Naidu adjourned the house till 2 p.m.

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
Beijing, Dec 21 : China on Thursday rejected India's criticism that Beijing is shielding Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar out of "narrow political and strategic concerns" and said Beijing's decision at the UN was "candid" and taken with "ease".

India on Wednesday slammed China for repeatedly rejecting resolutions seeking to declare Azhar - chief of Pakistani terror group Jaish-e Mohammad -- at the UN Security Council (UNSC).

Without naming China, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin told the Council that "on counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns".

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing had nothing to with the charges levelled by India.

"You have mentioned the narrow political consideration but we think we have acted in a candid way with ease. We have nothing to do with the narrow-minded political consideration," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said here.

"We should say that we firmly crackdown on various forms of international terrorism and on this issue we make our own judgements based on the merits of the matter.

"Like we said, the relevant move in the committee accords with the rules of the procedure of the committee and we will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international community."

Last month, China again blocked a move by Britain, France and the US to list Azhar, the mastermind of last year's attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base, as a global terrorist by using its veto power.

China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the terrorist who is accused by India of plotting a deadly attack on the airbase in January 2016.

India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar an international terrorist. The listing of Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India.

The issue might come up for discussion on Friday when Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and India's National Security Adviser Ajit Doval meet for the border talks in New Delhi.
Manila, Dec 21 : A ferry with 251 people on board capsized on Thursday off the east coast of the Philippines, the Coast Guard said on Thursday.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) did not provide details on the number of people who have been rescued or were still missing, reports Efe news. A PCG spokesman said a search operation was on.

"Three rescue boats are on the way to the accident site, some eight to nine miles from the shoreline," he added.

He said the ferry left a port in Real town, Quezon, and was on the way to Polilio, an island in the northeastern region which is separated from Luzon island by the Polilio Strait, reports Xinhua news agency.

Authorities are looking into the cause of the accident.
Barcelona, Dec 21 : Over 5 million Catalans headed to the polls on Thursday to vote in the regional elections, which could prove decisive for the future of Catalonia, where parties in favour and against independence are vying for a majority in the regional parliament.

The elections were called by the Spanish government after the regional government was dissolved following the illegal declaration of independence on October 27, reports Efe news.

The heads of the two major pro-independence parties - former regional president Carles Puigdemont and his former vice president Oriol Junqueras - have not been able to campaign in Catalonia.

Puigdemont, head of JxCat (Together for Catalonia, centre-right pro-independence party), has been living in exile in Belgium, along with four other members of his former government, while Junqueras - head of the ERC (republican left) is in pre-trial detention along with two other candidates.

The Ciudadanos (Citizens) party and the Socialists are the parties that are against independence.

Polling booths opened at 9 a.m. and are due to close at 8 p.m. to allow the 5,554,395 eligible voters to elect 135 representatives to the regional parliament.

Surveys predict a turnout of around 80 percent even though the election is on a working day, something that has not happened in Spain since the general elections in 1982.

This is the fourth time in seven years that general elections have been held in Catalonia after 2010, 2012 and 2015.
Beijing, Dec 21 : Foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan will meet in Beijing on December 26 for discussions on development and security, an official said on Thursday.

"It will be the first meeting of its kind since the three countries agreed to establish a trilateral dialogue mechanism in June," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a news briefing.

"Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts will have an in-depth exchange on political mutual trust and reconciliation, development and connectivity, security cooperation and counterterrorism," Hua was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

"China hopes this meeting will help improve Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, promote trilateral cooperation and contribute to regional peace, stability and development," she added.
Beijing, Dec 21 : China on Thursday urged the European Union (EU) to abide by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and avoid abusing trade remedy measures.

The EU has described China's economy as distorted in a recent report, reports Xinhua news agency.

"The relevant report makes irresponsible remarks on China's economy and take unfair measures to China through creating various pretexts but the report does not mention the EU's own actions in violation of WTO rules," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

"It is hypocritical to have double standards... Using zero-sum game mentality to deal with reciprocal cooperation will injure others and harm (the EU) itself.

"In recent years, China's economic development has made historic achievements, providing important material conditions for development and reform in other fields, and making important contribution to the stability and growth of the world economy.

"The socialist economy with Chinese characteristics has a bright future," the spokesperson added.
Patna, Dec 21 : The opposition RJD-called shutdown in Bihar on Thursday to protest against the Nitish Kumar government's sand mining policy saw several trains being forcibly halted and roads blockaded by agitating RJD workers.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal claims the Bihar government's sand policy has led to a sand crisis in the state and an over two-fold increase in the price of sand and also rendered thousands of labourers jobless.

RJD leaders and workers, who claim they were joined by people, particularly labourers, hit hard by sand crisis, protested by blockading roads in the heart of Patna and nearby areas like Maner, Bihta. They also burnt tyres and shouted slogans against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's government over its sand mining policy during the day-long shutdown.

Protests were also reported from Gaya, Jehanabad, Nawada, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Aurangabad, Sheikhpura, Munger, Begusarai districts. RJD chief Lalu Prasad has said that party workers would ensure that Sikh devotees coming for the concluding Prakaash Parv do not face any problems during the shutdown.

The new sand mining policy has resulted in a crisis since July and rendered lakhs of construction workers and others jobless, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Tejashwi Yadav said, terming the policy "anti-labourer and anti-people".

"RJD's shutdown has got overwhelming support of the people as the sand crisis is an issue that affects people," the RJD leader told media here.

After joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party and forming a new government after dumping the RJD and the Congress, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's government announced the new sand policy which it claimed was aimed at ending illegal sand mining and to regulate its sale in the state.

The sand crisis has hit hard the construction sector and labourers for nearly five months. The new sand mining policy has led to an increase in sand prices from Rs 2,500 per trolley to Rs 6,600 to Rs 10,000 now, RJD leaders said.

Early this month, the Patna High Court stayed the Mining Department's orders in connection with sand mining.

On November 27, a division bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Anil Kumar Upadhyay stayed the execution of the Bihar Minor Mineral Rules, 2017, introduced by the state government after the JD-U and the BJP came together on July 27.
Beijing, Dec 21 : China's Ministry of Commerce on Thursday urged the US to work with Beijing to maintain healthy and stable bilateral ties.

"Abandoning the Cold War mentality and hegemony, the world's two largest economies would maintain win-win cooperation and mutual development and together could push prosperity in the global economy," ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a press briefing.

Commenting on the newly released US national security strategy report, Gao said the report had raised global concerns about the stability of the world's economy.

The report, released by US President Donald Trump on Monday, refers to China and Russia as "revisionist powers" and lists them as competitors seeking to alter the status quo that favours Washington.

"As the world's economic recovery remained sluggish, a stable expectation would be crucial for maintaining the recovery momentum," Gao said.

"China has never engaged in, and will never pursue so-called economic aggression policies," the spokesman added.
Kolkata, Dec 21 : Voting was being held in the bypoll for the Sabang assembly constituency in West Bengal under tight security on Thursday, amid reports of sporadic clashes between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP. Polling began at 7 a.m.

The Bharatiya Janata Party accused the Trinamool of not letting its polling agents into certain polling booths. The Trinamool, however, denied the allegation and charged the BJP with making false claims to hide its organisational weakness in the area.

Eight companies of central forces has been deployed for an electorate of 2,45,259, who are eligible to vote in 306 polling booths. Around 40 booths have been identified as sensitive.

More than 100 CCTV cameras have also been installed outside the booths for surveillance.

The bypolls were necessitated by the sitting Congress legislator Manas Bhunia's resignation after he crossed over to the Trinamool. He is now a Rajya Sabha member of his new party.

For the bypoll, the Trinamool has nominated Bhunia's wife Gita Rani Bhunia, the Congress has opted for a local leader Chiranjib Bhowmick, Rita Mondal is the Left Front nominated Communist Party of India-Marxist aspirant, while the BJP candidate is Antara Bhattacharyya.

There is also a Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist contestant.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : "Billu Ustaad", billed as India's first feature film which discusses how innocent children are lured and misused for terror activities, will release in India on February 16 next year, said its director Suvahhdan Angre.

Inspired by the work of Bhanupratap Barge, Head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Pune -- who fought the Pakistani terrorists during the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes -- the film looks at the disturbing trend among extremist organisations who identify and recruit minor children from orphanages.

"Such organisations are known to brainwash, indoctrinate these young minds and deploy them for committing terror acts. 'Billu Ustaad' tells the story of one such organisation which recruits children from an orphanage to become 'live-bombs' and strike terror in public places," Angre told IANS here on Thursday.

The plot revolves around how a nondescript orphanage gets involved in terrorist and criminal activities, while the ATS fights to save the gullible children from being dragged into terror acts, said producer Shantanu Singh.

The main protagonist Billu, played by child actor Mihir Soni, is convinced by the ATS how helping terrorists was ruining their lives, society and mankind, after which he helps them save his other orphan friends from the clutches of the terror group.

"Billu Ustaad" focuses on some media reports indicating how some terror groups in India and abroad have been hiring such children to commit terror and that Jammu and Kashmir is among the worst-hit by terrorism.

Additionally, the film inspires children to learn self-defence techniques along with their academics and keep away from such groups having malafide intentions, Angre explained.

The film also stars Priyanshu Chatterjee, Akhilendra Mishra, Mithila Naik and Neel Bakshi.
Los Angeles, Dec 21 : More former child actors have come forward accusing Hollywood producer Gary Goddard of sexual misconduct.

Following "ER" actor Anthony Edwards' allegation that Goddard sexually assaulted him when he was 12, seven others from his Santa Barbara theater group are accusing Goddard of molesting or attempting to molest them in the 1970s, reports variety.com.

Actors Linus Huffman, Bret Nighman and Mark Driscoll are among those who have claimed that Goddard sexually abused them.

Nighman said Goddard had attempted to molest him four times by the time he was 16.

Barbara Costa, who looked after the cast during the touring production of California Youth Theatre's "Peter Pan", said she was suspicious of Goddard, who slept among the boys during the overnight trips.

Following a get-together in 1990, when the six friends from the Santa Barbara theater group discovered that they had all been abused by Goddard, Driscoll said they drove to their former mentor's house and confronted him. Goddard apologized.

Goddard had denied the allegations in the past. He also took leave from his own company in November in the wake of the claims.

The producer was accused in 2014 of sexually abusing actor Michael Egan III when he was 16. The suit was later dismissed.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : In giving a clean chit to former Telecom Minister A. Raja, a court on Thursday said there was no evidence to suggest that he was the "mother lode of conspiracy" in the so-called 2G scam created "by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels".

Special Judge O.P. Saini noted in his 1,552-page judgment that it was actually a confusion caused by "various actions and inactions" of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) that snowballed into a "huge scam seen by everyone where there was none".

"The genesis of the case lies not so much in the actions of Raja... There is no material on record to show that Raja was mother lode of conspiracy in the case. There is also no evidence of his no Aholds Abarred immersion in any wrongdoing, conspiracy or corruption," Judge Saini said.

Raja, the main accused in the case, spent 15 months in jail for alleged wrongdoings in the spectrum allocation after the CBI accused him of taking kickbacks in the form of Rs 200 crore to allot lucrative radio waves to telecom firms.

The alleged scandal rocked the UPA government led by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2011, majorly costing the Congress-led alliance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The so-called scam hit the headlines after the Comptroller and Auditor General led by Vinod Rai in an audit report alleged that Raja sold spectrum and telecom licences to private firms at throwaway prices, causing a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer.

The judge said the chargesheet by the CBI was based "mainly on misreading, selective reading, non-Areading and out of context reading of the official record".

"There is no evidence indicating any criminality in the acts allegedly committed by the accused persons relating to fixation of cut-Aoff date, manipulation of first-Acome-first-Aserved policy, allocation of spectrum to dual technology applicants, ignoring ineligibility of STPL and Unitech group companies, non-Arevision of entry fee and transfer of Rs 200 crore to Kalaignar TV as illegal gratification."

The judge also pulled up the DoT saying the policy decisions of the department were found to be scattered in different official files and that had made it difficult even to its officials to trace and understand them.

"Policy issues are strewn around here and there in a disorderly manner... leaving scope for controversy. Files are opened and closed too quickly in a haphazard manner even for a small issue and there is no systematic way of dealing with issues in one file in a sequential manner.

"Documents relating to one issue are placed or inserted whimsically in any file without any regard for relevance of the issue."

He said all this had made it "very difficult... to understand the progress of the case from beginning to end.

"This factor greatly contributed to the controversy in the case as the DoT could neither effectively communicate the issues to others nor others could understand the same. The issues got snowballed when media reports started appearing," the judge said.

Judge Saini cited a November 8, 2007 report in a business daily that highlighted that Telecom Ministry had not accepted the recommendations of TRAI and DoT for auction of 2G spectrum which caused a loss of Rs 10,000 crore to the exchequer.

The news was denied by the DoT as "factually incorrect" but "nobody believed the version of DoT", said the judge.

"These factors compelled people to conjecture about a big scam. Thus, some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels."

Judge Saini said the lack of clarity in the policies as well as guidelines added to the confusion.

"The guidelines have been framed in such technical language that meaning of many terms are not clear even to DoT officers. When the officers of the department themselves do not understand the departmental guidelines and their glossary, how can they blame companies/others for violation of the same?

"The worst thing is that despite knowing that the meaning of a particular term was ambiguous and may lead to problems, no steps were taken to rectify the situation. Large part of the controversy relates to interpretation of (a) clause dealing with substantial equity. The terms used in this clause include 'associate', 'promoter', 'stake'.

"No one in the DoT knows their meaning. The interpretation is haunting the DoT. In such circumstances, DoT officers themselves are responsible for the entire mess."
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has written to the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), seeking the necessary steps to display health and pollution-related warning on firecracker boxes, like the ones on cigarette and tobacco packets.

The CPCB move followed environment conservationist Vikrant Tongad's suggestion to the CPCB. The activist in a letter to the officials pointed out the Supreme Court's order banning the sale of firecrackers in the national capital during Diwali in a bid to curb pollution.

"Smoking harms the smoker but the fireworks harm everyone... it has both health and environmental risks, but there is no warning on the firecrackers or its packet. Though doing so would increase awareness amongst people," Tongad pointed out in the letter.

The CPCB has thus raised the issue with the Chief Controller of Explosives, PESO (Nagpur, Maharashtra), saying: "The undersigned is directed to inform that necessary action may be taken with intimation to the office of the undersigned."

Fireworks use highly toxic iron, aluminium sulfur, copper, strontium and others, for bang and colour effects, which are then directly emitted in the air leading to harmful effects.

Recently, a CPCB report showed that due to the apex court's order, the national capital this Diwali saw a drop in the concentration of these harmful elements compared to Diwali 2016.

The elements include aluminium (9.9 per cent drop), sulfur (20.1), chlorides (11.0), potassium (29.9), calcium (37.8), iron (48.1), copper (36.3), zinc (41.1), strontium (64.6), antimony (35.6) and barium (51.7) -- all are used in the firecrackers, either for a louder bang, throttling or colour.

"All the elements except titanium saw a drop, as there was a little bit rise in the titanium which we are still trying to find out why," the CPCB scientists told the media recently.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The CPI-M on Thursday urged the government to pursue legally the 2G spectrum allocation case after a court here declared that none of the accused was guilty.

"The judgement of the CBI special court on the 2G spectrum case raises more questions than answers," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement.

"It was well-established that the allocation of 2G spectrum had caused a big loss calculated to be Rs 1,76,000 crore by the CAG. The Supreme Court had indicted some of the telecom companies involved for misuse of the allocations and cancelled the licences of concerned companies.

"Since the CBI case and prosecution has proved inadequate, steps must be taken immediately to pursue the matter legally so that those who are guilty are punished," it said.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday had a telephonic conversation with K.P. Sharma Oli, who is poised to become Nepal's new Prime Minister and is viewed as leaning towards China.

Modi also spoke with former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and with current Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress.

"Prime Minister had a telephonic conversation with K.P. Sharma Oli, Chariman, Communist Party of Nepal-UML, also with Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and also with Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress and the present Prime Minister," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in his weekly media briefing here.

Kumar could not share details of what transpired in the conversation.

Oli is set to become Prime Minister after the Leftist alliance mustered two-thirds majority in the parliamentary and provincial elections in Nepal.

On Tuesday, Oli had paid a surprise visit to Nepal's border with China in Rasuwagadhi and inspected the only trade and transit point between the two countries. During his earlier stint as Prime Minister in 2015, he had been critical of India and was seen as close to China.
Shimla, Dec 21 : Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar arrived in the Himachal Pradesh capital on Thursday evening as part of a BJP Parliamentary Board team to take a call on choosing the next Chief Minister of the hill state.

The team also comprises state party in-charge Mangal Pandey.

The central team was received by newly-elected legislators, former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and state Bharatiya Janata Party chief Satpal Satti, who both faced defeat in the November 9 Assembly elections.

Five-time legislator Jairam Thakur has emerged as a key contestant in the Chief Ministerial race, with the party expected to take a final call after a meeting of the newly-elected party MLAs with the central observers.

Party sources said that central observers are expected to speak to BJP MLAs individually to ascertain their views and then convey the same to the party's central leadership.

Other names doing the rounds are of Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda and party legislators Suresh Bhardwaj and Rajeev Bindal. The name of Dhumal has not been ruled out either.

Party leaders said the name of the Chief Minister is likely to be announced after a meeting of the party's parliamentary board.

Jairam Thakur won from Seraj constituency by defeating Chet Ram of the Congress.

Meanwhile, Governor Acharya Devvrat has dissolved the state legislative assembly and asked the present government headed by Virbhadra Singh to continue in office till the new assembly is constituted.

The BJP wrested power from the Congress, winning close to two third majority with 44 seats in the 68-member Assembly.
Thiruvananthapuram/Alappuzha, Dec 21 : Malayalam actor Fahad Fazil on Thursday got anticipatory bail from a court near Alappuzha regarding a case where he allegedly got his luxury car registered on a fake address in Puducherry.

During the day, BJP's Rajya Sabha member and popular actor Suresh Gopi was also questioned by the Crime Branch in the state capital on the same charge.

Gopi, who earlier secured anticipatory bail from the Kerala High Court, appeared before the Crime Branch officials as per court directions. A Crime Branch official told IANS that Gopi was present at their office for more than two hours to answer their queries.

The Regional Transport Commissioner's office in Thiruvananthapuram has been cracking down for the past month on the thriving business of Kerala residents getting their high-end cars registered in Puducherry to take advantage of low taxes there.

The only requirement for vehicle registration is that the car owner should have a Puducherry address.

A probe into the Puducherry addresses revealed that some of them were one-room houses and those living there had no clue about how their addresses were used for registration of vehicles.

The Kerala government ordered a Crime Branch probe after the media reported on the matter. The state exchequer losses were estimated at over Rs 300 crore over five years, according to a top official.

Apart from the two, actress Amala Paul approached the Kerala High Court on Wednesday for anticipatory bail.
Chennai, Dec 21 : A 13-year-old student in Tamil Nadu's Vellore district was killed by his classmate, to whom he had sold his mobile phone, after they quarrelled over the payment, police said on Thursday.

The incident came to light after P. Santhosh's body was found near his school in Vellore, around 140 km from here, on Thursday morning.

"On Wednesday, Santhosh did not reach home. His parents contacted his school authorities. On enquiries, it was found out that Santhosh was last seen with his classmate," a police official told IANS over phone.

The police official said that Santhosh had given a phone to his classmate, and there seems to have been a fight between the two boys on Wednesday in which Santhosh was hit and lost his life. Investigations are on, the official added.
Los Angeles, Dec 21 : Actor Sylvester Stallone has denied sexual misconduct allegations made by a woman in a police report and now wants her prosecuted.

A woman filed a report on Wednesday with the Santa Monica police for an alleged act of sexual misconduct against Stallone. The case was set to be investigated despite the incident to have happened in the 1990s. Stallone has denied the allegation, reports tmz.com.

He admits he had spent three days with her during a 1987 movie shoot in Israel. He was single, she was not a minor and he says there was never a rape. Stallone also denied he was seeing her in the 1990s.
Islamabad, Dec 21 : New Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria on Thursday presented his credentials to President Mamnoon Hussain who said his country was sincerely working towards regional peace, stability and development.

The President felicitated the Indian envoy and hoped that he would work for further strengthening bilateral ties.

Bisaria who along with his wife arrived here on December 12 to take up the new position, had a brief meeting with President Hussain and exchanged views on different issues of bilateral importance.

Bisaria's immediate challenge will be to handle the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, with India hopeful that the former Indian Navy officer sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court, would be released.

The Indian government appointed Bisaria as Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan replacing Gautam Bambawale.

Bisaria was ambassador to Poland prior to this appointment. He has been appointed High Commissioner to Islamabad for two years. He is the 25th Indian envoy to Pakistan.

Besides India, the Ambassadors of China and Vietnam also presented their credentials to President Hussain.
Hyderabad, Dec 21 : The 105th Indian Science Congress (ISC), to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Osmania University here on January 3, has been postponed indefinitely -- apparently in view of the security situation on the campus.

This is the first time an ISC, the largest congregation of Indian scientists, has been postponed.

"Vice Chancellor of Osmania University has informed that they are not in a position to host 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled January 3-7 due to certain issues in the campus," read a brief statement on the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) website.

ISCA is expected to decide the new date and venue of the Congress on December 27.

Over 2,000 scientists including 15 Noble laureates from different countries were expected to participate in the ISC.

The university officials did not specify the reason but the prevailing security situation due to recent protests apparently forced the authorities to postpone the prestigious event.

The campus witnessed violent protests by student groups over the suicide of a student earlier this month.

The student groups alleged that the post-graduate student ended his life out of fear of not getting a job due to the wrong policies being adopted by the Telangana government.

Last week, the campus saw another round of protest by Adivasi students over the demand to remove Banjara Lambada community from the Scheduled Caste list.
New Delhi : The CBI Special Court's 1,500 page verdict in the 2G case acquitting all the accused including former Telecom Minister A. Raja and Rajya Sabha MP M.K. Kanimozhi, has raised more questions than answers in the anti-corruption drive. At the center of the verdict lie grave issues of inefficiency, lack of transparency and accountability of stakeholders in the prosecution of the cases and the quality of the anti-corruption legal regime in India.

The quality of prosecution in the case has come in for sharp criticism in the verdict, with the CBI court saying that the prosecution initially started with great enthusiasm but totally deteriorated and became diffident towards the end -- so much so that the prosecution became highly cautious and guarded in its attitude resulting in not being able to put across what it wanted to prove.

The CBI court has further observed that all pleadings on behalf of the prosecution appeared to have been signed off by the junior-most officer, making it amply clear that no senior officer on the prosecution side was willing to be responsible and answerable for what was being filed in the court.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the verdict mentions the complete lack of responsibility and direction of the Department of Telecom (DoT) officers (examined during the prosecution process) who disowned the written official record and instead chose to rely on oral statements on most issues concerning the mess at the doorstep of the DoT in the manner in which UASL applications were handled and subsequently licenses granted.

With hard documentary evidence disowned and replaced by barely verifiable oral evidence by DoT officials on one side and the monumental inefficiency of the prosecution on the other, the accused don't seem to have faced much difficulty in dealing with open ended assertions and allegations of "quid-pro-quo" in the transfer of Rs 200 crore ($32 million) to Kalaiganar TV and assertions of high-level political corruption without sufficiently containing the same to any direct evidence, either oral or documentary.

The verdict mentions "Nil" cross examination of A. Raja by the prosecution, compelling the CBI court to believe that the prosecution had no worthwhile evidence against him to establish that he was involved in parking money in Kalaiganar TV. In the absence of any material linking Raja to the payment of Rs 200 crores, the CBI court has concluded that the payment did not amount to illegal gratification for the official acts of Raja in the grant of UASL licenses and allocation of spectrum.

The prosecution's submissions relating to high-level political corruption without any direct evidence, oral or documentary, also made the CBI court turn to circumstantial evidence. However, with unwilling witnesses refusing to explain the circumstances springing from documentary evidence, the CBI court appears to have had no other choice but to conclude there was lack of sufficient and credible circumstantial evidence.

With such apathy, the CBI court found itself unimpressed and unmoved and refused to hold people guilty merely because the case was high-profile.

Clearly, in the eyes of the CBI court, while all the black dots may exist on the white board, the government officials in the witness box and the prosecution have failed to connect the dots in a way to establish criminality in the wrong doings by mapping the wrong doings with proper connecting evidence.

As India aspires to gallop ahead on the "ease to do business" index, "corruption" remains a major issue of concern.

In addition to the numerous initiatives to ensure zero tolerance to dishonesty and corruption by hitting on the head of black money, it is about time for an over-arching law against corruption covering the public as well as private sector, in addition to public servants.

While the merits of the 2G ruling will continue to be debated and challenged, the anti-corruption baby seems to have been thrown out alongwith the bathwater by the government officials and prosecution involved in the case. This is alarming and a cause of worry.

(Manoj Kumar is the Founder & Managing Partner of Hammurabi & Solomon. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at manoj.kumar@hammurabisolomon.com)
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Doctors at a hospital here gave a British para glider a new lease of life after he suffered severe fractures in head, face and chest during an expedition in Himachal Pradesh.

Anthony Barry Roberts, a 55-year-old trained para-glider with 15 years' experience, was paragliding in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh when he was hit by sudden turbulent weather.

As a result, his face smashed against a rock and he was left suspended by his parachute.

After a Russian para glider, administered first aid, Roberts managed to send a distress SOS from his satellite phone.

He was rescued the next day in an immensely complicated rescue operation and was immediately rushed to a local hospital, where he was detected with six fractured ribs and a ruptured lung.

Due to his severe condition, Roberts was air-lifted to Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi, after two days.

"Roberts had a compound comminuted fracture of the frontal bone in the brain, which means the bone broke into more than two fragments," Rajendra Prasad, Neurosurgeon at the hospital, said in a statement On Thursday.

"He also had extensive facial bones and skull base fractures. It was an intensely complicated surgery which involved repairing the covering of the brain (Dura) and stabilising the frontal and facial bone fractures. It is truly a medical miracle that he is even alive," Prasad added.

Post the surgery, Roberts' condition improved and he was later shifted to the UK, the doctors said.
Jerusalem, Dec 21 : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN as the "house of lies" ahead of a UN vote on Thursday against the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The state of Israel flatly rejects this vote even before it is held," Netanyahu said. "Jerusalem is our capital. We will continue to build in it and foreign embassies, led by the US embassy, will move to Jerusalem. It will happen."

He also thanked US President Donald Trump, who threatened on Wednesday to cut aid to countries that will vote in favour of the UN resolution, Efe news reported.

The UN General Assembly is set to vote on a resolution, calling Washington to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump's announcement on Jerusalem's status on December 6 triggered violent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as widespread international protests.

Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it shortly later, a move which was not recognized by the international community.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray".

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function here on Thursday evening.

"It's truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture," said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amidst a thunderous applause.

Terming Bal Thackeray as "an unparalleled leader of the masses," Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences.

"I had spent much time with Balasaheb, ans associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film," he said.

Bal Keshav Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national politics for over five decades. He passed away in 2012 aged 86.
Karachi, Dec 21 : A teenage Hindu girl who was recently abducted from a village in Pakistan's Sindh province has been forced to convert to Islam and reportedly compelled to get married, her family and relatives claimed on Thursday.

The family of the 14-year-old girl told the media at the Islamkot Press Club that the girl was abducted a few days ago after three armed men barged into their home and held the family hostage, Dawn reported.

Hero Meghwar, the said girl's father, revealed that he contacted local people of influence but was told that the girl had converted and married a certain Naseer Lunjo, hence there is little that could be done.

The family members alleged that local police, too, was not interested in recovering the girl. They demanded that the girl should be recovered and produced before a court if she has indeed converted.

But a senior police official from Thar Ameer Saud Magsi said that a first information report (FIR) has been registered, while raids are being conducted to arrest the three suspects.

Magsi said not only has the police received a certificate of conversion but also the now-married couple has filed an application in the Sindh High Court, seeking protection. He said the court has fixed the application for hearing on January 17 next year.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest decision-making body, will meet on Friday to welcome new party President Rahul Gandhi and will discuss the current political issues, especially in the wake of the 2G spectrum case verdict acquitting all accused.

The Congress party said it stands vindicated after the verdict on Thursday as the 2G spectrum case was over spectrum allocation during the UPA regime and had given the opposition ammunition to attack the government with over alleged corruption, leading it to lose the elections in 2014.

This will be first CWC meeting after Rahul Gandhi took charge as Congress President on December 16 from his mother Sonia Gandhi, and he will be felicitated by the members.

The party is also expected to discuss the economic situation in the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's allegations against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Modi had insinuated that Singh along with others were hatching a conspiracy with Pakistan's support to ensure that BJP lost Gujarat polls.

The party is also expected bring in organisational changes as Rahul Gandhi had recently said that his plan was to transform the Congress from bottom upwards and he will like to bring in many new, young, exciting and dynamic faces.

The party will also discuss its future strategy after the Gujarat elections, where it managed to restrict BJP to 99 seats.

The party has to prepare to face the challenge of the next round of assembly polls in 2018 -- first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh -- that will be crucial for Gandhi and the party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : Acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui will play the title role of the late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray in the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray".

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut attended the glittering launch function here on Thursday evening.

"It's truly a great day for me. I am fortunate to have got an opportunity to enact the role of such a great personality which any actor in the world would love to do. I am sure Balasaheb will inspire and bless me in this venture," said Nawazuddin in a video message since he was unable to attend the function as he is away shooting in Mauritius The first promotional posters of the Hindi biopic - to be directed by Abhijit Panse - was unveiled by Uddhav Thackeray amidst a thunderous applause. The film is scheduled for release on January 23, 2019, the 93rd birth anniversary of Thackeray.

Terming Bal Thackeray as "an unparalleled leader of the masses," Raut - who has scripted the film for nearly four years - exuded confidence that the film would prove popular with the mainstream audiences.

"I had spent much time with Balasaheb, and have been associated with him for nearly four decades. I have a deep knowledge of his life and there are many aspects which shall be brought forth in the film," he said.

In his address, Amitabh recalled his long association and memories with Bal Thackeray spanning over more than four decades, till his final moments on November 17, 2012.

"When we first met, he somehow developed a liking for me and treated me as a family member, which was an honour for me. And he continued like that, always standing behind me, through thick and thin, helped and guided me for so many years," he said.

Big B recalled how in 1973, when Thackeray heard of his marriage, he "summoned" him and his bride Jaya to 'Matoshree', the political family's residence in Bandra east.

"When we entered the home, Aai (Thackeray's wife, Minatai) accorded a loving welcome to Jaya, just like she would have welcomed her own daughter-in-law. We were moved and indebted by their warm gesture," he said.

The 75-year old actor recounted his near-death encounter in 1982 during the shooting of "Coolie" and he was shifted to Mumbai from then Bangalore for advanced treatment of his injuries sustained on the sets.

"When the flight landed in Mumbai, there was torrential rain and there was no transport to rush me to the Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. But, a Shiv Sena ambulance was there and it braved the weather to shift me to the hospital on time, or my health could have deteriorated further," he said.

Amitabh, who was among the handful of visitors permitted by Uddhav Thackeray to visit Thackeray in his last days, said that he was taken aback to see a picture of himself in a corner just beside the bed on which Thackeray was lying and "this was another indicator of how much love and affection he had for me".

Bal K. Thackeray, the charismatic cartoonist-turned-firebrand politician founded the Shiv Sena and had a gigantic presence in Maharashtra and national politics for over five decades.

Feared and revered in equal measure, he held sway over the entire state and national political scenario as the champion of Hindutva or "Hindu Hridaysamrat" till his demise on November 17, 2012 aged 86.

The brief teaser released on Thursday depicts a scene from the two-phased riots which bloodied Mumbai in December 1992-January 1993 in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque and a grim Thackeray (Siddiqui) preparing to address his customary annual Dassehra Rally at Shivaji Park before a sea of saffron flags.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Indian airlines have collectively phased out 84 foreign pilots during 2017, parliament was informed on Thursday.

The foreign pilots were phased out by airlines such as Jet Airways, Air India, SpiceJet and IndiGo.

"All the operators or airlines have been directed to develop their in-house strength to minimise the dependency on expatriate pilots," Minister of State of Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in a written reply during question hour in the Lok Sabha.

"Accordingly operators train and upgrade the inducted Indian pilots to reduce the number of expatriate pilots and submit the phase out programme to DGCA on a regular basis," the minister said.

There are still 249 foreign pilots employed by the various segments of the domestic industry as of December 1, 2017, he added.
Islamabad, Dec 21 : Top Pakistan civil-military leadership on Thursday expressed concern over the stockpiling of nuclear arms and installation of ballistic missile defence systems by neighbouring countries, including India, noting that such destabilising manoeuvres could undermine strategic stability in South Asia.

The National Command Authority (NCA) meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, backed Pakistan's defence forces to hold their own in case of any acts of aggression by the adversaries, but reaffirmed its commitment to Full Spectrum Deterrence - the principle on which Pakistan's nuclear strategy is based, Dawn reported.

The meeting expressed full confidence in security measures in place to protect the nation's strategic assets, and reiterated that as a responsible nuclear state, Pakistan will keep on improving its nuclear security as well as non-proliferation measures.

During the meeting, the high standards of training and operational readiness of the strategic forces to dispel all kinds of threats was also praised.

The meeting was attended by the Federal Minister of Defence and Interior, Chairman Joint Stafs Chief, all three service chiefs, Director General Strategic Plans Division, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence, Secretary Foreign Affairs and other senior officials.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Sahitya Akademi on Thursday announced its annual awards in 24 languages, but the family of late Tamil poet Inqulab has decided not to accept the award.

Inqulab, who was born as Shahul Hameed, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in Tamil for his collection of poems titled "Kaandhal Naatkal".

"My father was not running behind any award. He wrote expecting action by authorities against him and not expecting any award. He had told us that he will decline the Sahitya Akademi award, if he was given one," S. Inqulab, Assistant Professor at Quaide Milleth College near Chennai, told IANS.

"My father would have certainly declined the award if he was alive today. If we accept the award now, it will be an insult to him," he added.

He said the late poet had returned the Kalaimamani Award given by the Tamil Nadu government to protest against the state government's alleged failure to protect Sri Lankan Tamils.

This is not the first time, the awards have stoked controversey in the last few years.

According to the Ministry of Culture, 39 writers have returned their Sahitya Akademi awards during the last three years claiming that the Akademi "kept silent" when their freedom of expression was "under attack".

This year, seven novels, five collections each of poetry and short stories, five works of literary criticism, a play and a book of essays were chosen for the award.

Inqulab was named along with Udaya Narayana Singh (Maithili), Bhujanga Tudu (Santhali), Devipriya (Telegu), Shrikant Deshmukh (Marathi) for poetry.

Authors Jayanta Madhab Bora (Assamese), Afsar Ahmed (Bengali), Rita Boro (Bodo), Nachhattar (Punjabi), Niranjan Mishra (Sanskrit) won the award for their novels, while Shiv Mehta (Dogri), Autar Krishen Rahbar (Kashmiri), Gajanan Jog (Konkani), Gayatri Saraf (Odia), and Baig Ehsas (Urdu) bagged it for the short stories.

While Dai won the award for her English novel "The Black Hill", Ramesh Kuntal got it for his literary criticism 'Vishw Mithak Sarit Sagar" in Hindi.

The writers who won the award for literary criticism are Urmi Ghanshyam Desai (Gujarati), T.P Ashoka (Kannada), Bina Hangkhim (Nepali), and Neeraj Daiya (Rajasthani).
Rome, Dec 21 : Italy's nascent peacekeeping mission in Africa's Niger will soon be presented to parliament and will "contribute to creating a pillar of security in the Sahel region", Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said on Thursday.

Pinotti was speaking during a videoconference with Italy's 35 peacekeeping missions in 22 countries, which was also attended by President Sergio Mattarella and Chief of Defence Staff Claudio Graziano.

Italy's military missions around the world "have allowed key successes such as the defeat of the Islamic State (jihadist group) in Syria and Iraq," Pinotti said.

Matarella said that soldiers deployed in Italy's 35 peacekeeping missions around the world are "fully upholding the principles and values of the Constitution".

He thanked the soldiers "for what they do and for the quality of the work they carry out, fully upholding the principles and values of the Constitution."

Mattarella also paid tribute to the Safe Streets Operation to which 7,500 soldiers have been deployed to guard sensitive sites in Italy.

He hailed Italy's newly established military mission to Niger, calling it "extremely important" for the security and stability of the Sahel region.
Kolkata, Dec 21 : The West Bengal government will set up an Other Backward Class (OBC) Advisory Council to monitor their social, cultural, educational and economic development, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced here on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after the first meeting of the state Scheduled Caste Advisory Council, she said: "We are the first state in the country to set up this council. Now we will set up a council for the Other Backward Classes."

Banerjee, who presided over the advisory council meeting, called the interaction "positive and fruitful".

"We had a good discussion. So many people gave so many proposals. The community needs to know what all schemes and projects they can avail of. They don't get loans from the bank.

"From now on, the council meeting will be held every six months, an d the development work undertaken for the community's benefit will be reviewed," she said.

Chief Secretary Malay Dey, and West Bengal Backward Classes Welfare Minister Churamani Mahata were among those who attended the deliberations.

Banerjee had in March announced the government's decision to set up the Scheduled Caste Advisory Council, which is slated to function on the lines of the existing tribal advisory council.

There are 66 assembly seats in Bengal reserved for the scheduled caste candidates.
Rome, Dec 21 : Italy is committed to upholding a bilateral treaty with Austria that grants the German-speaking population in the province of Alto Adige the right to autonomy and to preserve their cultural identity and customs, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said on Thursday.

"The Italian government is committed to continuing along this path," Alfano told his new Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl in a phone call in which he congratulated her on her appointment.

Alfano was referring to the 1946 Gruber-De Gasperi agreement signed by Austria's then Foreign Minister Karl Gruber and Italy's Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in September 5, 1946. The accord also recognised German as an official language in Alto Adige - or Sudtirol - where more than half of the population speaks German as their first language.

Vienna sparked alarm in Italy after the newly-appointed coalition government suggested German-speaking Italian citizens in Alto Adige could soon obtain an Austrian passport. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Tuesday that the proposal to allow ethnic German residents in the region two passports came from a request from the inhabitants of Trentino-Alto Adige themselves.

Kurz said relations with Rome were "excellent" and the plan would only be implemented "in close cooperation with Italy and the Rome government".

At this, Alfano said: "Austria's determination to cooperate with Italy reassures us that the new Austrian government will only take initiatives based on these principles.

"In the spirit of mutual trust and staunch collaboration that mark relations between two European Union member states, Minister Kneissl and I have decided to set up a meeting in the next few weeks."
New Delhi, Dec 21 : A 20-year-old woman was sexually assaulted on Thursday by five persons, including juveniles, in a north Delhi park, following which the accused were arrested, police said on Thursday.

Police, however, did not say how many of the accused were juveniles.

The accused spotted the woman alone in the Jahangirpuri park Police around 2 p.m. and began to misbehave with her.

They forcibly took her behind some bushes in the park and sexually assaulted her, threatened her with dire consequences if she revealed the crime to anyone and escaped from the spot, Deputy Commissioner of Police Aslam Khan said.

"Her family filed a complaint, following which all the accused were arrested from their hideouts in west Delhi. They are residents of Jahangirpuri," the officer said.
Mumbai, Dec 22 : Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who has shared an emotional bonding with late Shiv Sena founder-president Bal Thackeray, on Thursday promised to contribute his bit in the making of the upcoming biopic titled "Thackeray".

Bachchan was present on the occasion of the teaser launch of the film that features acclaimed Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

Remembering Thackeray, Bachchan told writer of the film Sanjay Raut, "I am glad that you have taken the step to make a film on Bal saab. I wish you all the luck for the successful making of the film. If you need anything, any contribution from my end in whichever capacity, please allow me to know about it. I will be more than happy to be a part of the making of the film."

He also suggested the makers to make a series on Bal Thackeray instead of just one film.

He said, "I want to request you not to limit the larger than life personality like him into a three-hour movie. I think in today's time when we watch so many web series, we can make a series on Bal Thackeray to capture different phases of his life and personality. It will be really interesting for the generation to know a man like him."

Bal Thackeray was one of the iconic politicians who started his career as a cartoonist and social worker. Later he formed a regional political party in Maharashtra named Shiv Sena that ruled the political scenario of the state for around 50 years. He passed way in 2012.

The evening was graced by Bal Thackeray's son Uddhav Thackeray, grandson Aditya Thackeray, along with the writer and director of the film.

Directed by Abhijit Panse, written by Sanjay Raut, 'Thackeray' will release on January 23, 2019 in Hindi and Marathi language.
Hyderabad, Dec 22 : In a shocking incident, a youth set afire a girl in full public view here on Wednesday, police said on Thursday.

The incident occurred in Lalaguda area in the evening when the 23-year-old girl was returning home from work. Sandhya Rani sustained 80 per cent burns and she was rushed to government-run Gandhi Hospital, where her condition is stated to be critical.

The attacker is suspected to be a jilted lover of Sandhya, a graduate, who was working in a commercial establishment for about a year.

Quoting eye-witnesses, the police said she was returning home when the youth on a motorcycle met her. They discussed some matter for about 10 minutes.

During a heated argument, the attackers sprinkled petrol, set her on fire and escaped before people could raise an alarm.

On a complaint by girl's brother, police picked up a youth, who allegedly resorted to the ghastly crime as the girl had spurned his advances.
Northland Laboratories We find many companies are increasingly required to verify the proficiency of their internal analysts as part of an ISO/IEC 17025 or Safe Quality Food (SQF) accreditation or certification, states D.J. Alwattar, President of Northland Laboratories.

Northland Laboratories, a Matrix Sciences company, has announced its successful completion of ISO/IEC 17043 accreditation for proficiency testing providers. This accreditation, based at the Green Bay, Wisconsin location, is an addition to the portfolio of services which supports the requirements of proficiency testing as part of testing performed in house for microbiology or chemistry, and helps to assure that trained analysts in the production laboratory are proficient in the tests they perform.

We find many companies are increasingly required to verify the proficiency of their internal analysts as part of an ISO/IEC 17025 or Safe Quality Food (SQF) accreditation or certification, states D.J. Alwattar, President of Northland Laboratories. With Northland Laboratories expertise in food microbiology and chemistry, we are now able to help companies make sure their analysts are proficient in the testing they routinely perform in process.

This expansion of services continues our commitment to the food industry in providing the most diverse and competitive range of services for food safety and quality, states Robert Wiebe, CEO of Matrix Sciences.

Background:

Northland Laboratories has been serving the food industry since 1949. Northland has built a reputation for providing excellence in both service and scientific know-how. With locations in Chicago and Green Bay, Northland provides a broad scope of services which address the challenges faced by a growing base of customers. In April 2017, Northland Laboratories joined Matrix Sciences as a founding portfolio company.

Matrix Sciences is a full-service solution provider, delivering analytical and consulting support for food safety and related business decisions. In combination, our portfolio companies offer a scope of services and depth of expertise which uniquely address the evolving needs of food companies in bringing safe food to market, growing their businesses and protecting their brands.
Dr. Todd Britten, DMD, MS, offers scaling and root planing to patients with gum disease in his Clearwater, FL periodontal office. I believe in delivering state of the art care with a gentle touch in a lighthearted environment. Scaling and root planing procedures are often our first line of defense against gum disease.

Dr. Todd Britten, DMD, MS, offers scaling and root planing to patients with gum disease. Scaling and root planing is the mechanical removal of dental plaque and calculus (commonly referred to as tartar) from the tooth and root surface, above and below the gum line. The mechanical removal of plaque and tartar will result in a significant decrease in disease-causing bacteria in the periodontal pocket. This is typically done with a topical anesthetic, although a local anesthetic may be required in advanced cases. Ultrasonic scalers and hand instruments are used to remove the mineral deposits of tartar from teeth at or below the gum line. The tooth is then polished so that the gums have a clean surface to adhere to.

Scaling and root planing procedures may take more than one visit and is followed up with a visit with Dr. Britten in four to six weeks to reevaluate the periodontal tissues. Patients with more advanced cases of periodontal disease may still require non-surgical periodontal therapy prior to surgical therapy. This is done so that the overall tissue quality is improved prior to surgery. It may also reduce the extent or area of surgical periodontal treatment needed.

Early stage periodontal treatment may include antibiotic therapy, a bite adjustment (also known as occlusal adjustment) or these scaling and root planing procedures to prevent some of the major problems associated with periodontal disease. Gingivitis is the earliest phase of gum disease and is characterized by the buildup of plaque along the gum line. Gums can become inflamed, sensitive and may bleed when flossed or brushed.

If gingivitis is not treated by scaling and root planing it can grow into the next phase, periodontitis. The jawbone, gum tissues, and fibers that support the teeth are damaged during this phase of the disease and the pocket depths between gums and teeth increase. The final phase is termed advanced periodontitis, and at this point tissue and bone have been destroyed. Teeth can shift in the mouth, which affects the bite, and will loosen and sometimes fall out. Very aggressive gum disease treatment is required if gum disease reaches this phase. Treating periodontal disease early is the best way to prevent the progression of this disease and save the teeth and prevent destruction to the jawbone. In addition to the dental problems that increase as the disease progresses, other health problems such as stroke, pancreatic cancer and low birth-weight babies have been linked to gum disease.

When gum disease has progressed and non-surgical treatments are ineffective, Dr. Britten treat your infection with traditional surgical therapy known as flap and osseous surgery or the Laser Assisted New Attachment Procedure (LANAP). Both procedures will remove bacteria and diseased tissue, leaving your mouth healthier.

Gum recession may be improved with gum grafting or excessive gum growth with gingivectomy. Gum grafting utilizes transplanted tissue while gingivectomy repositions periodontal tissue to restore gum levels. If a patient has severe bone loss surrounding existing teeth, Dr. Britten may recommend a regenerative procedure called Periodontal Regeneration Grafting. These procedures can reverse some of the damage by regenerating lost bone and tissue.

For more information on the progression of gum disease, scaling and root planing procedures, or periodontal surgical treatment options, contact us today at 727-586-2681. Britten Periodontics & Implant Dentistry is a periodontal practice offering patients personalized dental care in implant dentistry in Clearwater, Florida. Dr. Todd Britten received his Bachelor of Science & Doctorate of Dental Surgery from University of Florida, a Masters Degree and Certificate in Periodontology and Implant Dentistry; and completed extensive training at the Institute of Advanced Laser Dentistry. He is one of the only board-certified periodontists in Pinellas County. He is a member of the American Academy of Periodontology, American Dental Association, Florida Association of Periodontists, Upper Pinellas County Dental Association, Hillsborough County Dental Association, Hillsborough County Dental Research Association and Florida West Coast Dental Association.
Although our physical offices are in San Anselmo and in Oakland, we receive many inquiries in San Francisco and are active in litigation in the city.

California Civil Rights Law Group, a law firm specializing in harassment litigation, is proud to announce a new informational page on harassment for San Francisco residents. With San Francisco as both the second most populous city in the Bay Area and the major center of employment, the new page is an outreach to persons living or working in the city who may have experienced harassment at work.

"Although our physical offices are in San Anselmo and in Oakland, we receive many inquiries in San Francisco and are active in litigation in the city," explained Larry Organ, principal attorney at the Bay Area-based law firm. "That said, we wanted to make sure that San Francisco residents or persons who work in the city and may have experienced or be experiencing potential harassment at work are aware of our services and feel comfortable reaching out for a confidential consultation on their issues. Accordingly, we created a simple page on information."

To view the new page on San Francisco harassment including how to reach out for an attorney consultation, visit http://www.civilrightsca.com/san-francisco/. Persons who want to read more about harassment can also visit http://bit.ly/2DgJYus, and anyone who believes they may have experienced harassment at work is urged to reach out for a private consultation. Consultations can occur either in San Anselmo or Oakland, as well as over the telephone.

Harassment Litigation for San Francisco Bay Area Clients

It is no secret that our culture seems to be at a critical juncture when it comes to harassment, and the San Francisco Bay Area is no exception. While the media focuses on high profile allegations and litigation, the reality for most people in California occurs at their place of employment. Employees may feel vulnerable to their employers, and unfortunately, harassment is not always a thing of the past. Even San Francisco, which is the Bay Area's second largest city by population and its leading center of employment, is not immune from harassment problems in employment. Workers may seek to browse the Web confidentially searching Google, Bing, or Yahoo for a harassment lawyer who not only understands the law but fights aggressively for the rights of victims. The new page on San Francisco aims to reach out to these people and help them to take the next step of a confidential attorney consultation to assess their situation and any possible litigation. It should be strongly emphasized, however, that no two situations are alike and that the intersection between the law and the facts of a case cannot be predicted. For this reason, only a confidential consultation with an attorney can determine the first steps towards litigation if it is advisable.

About California Civil Rights Law Group

Headed by renowned trial lawyer Larry Organ, California Civil Rights Law Group (http://www.civilrightsca.com/), is a leading employment law firm with San Francisco Bay Area offices in Oakland, Alameda County and San Anselmo, Marin County, California. Employees experiencing harassment, race harassment, disability discrimination, LGTBQ discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, whistleblower retaliation and/or wrongful termination should reach out for an attorney consultation in either our Oakland/East Bay or San Anselmo/Marin County office.

Media Relations.

Tel. 415-453-4740
"Sitas one of those rare people who blends an intensity in business with a laid-back, fun demeanor. Incredibly approachable, I am thrilled to know that I am handing the reins of my beloved Arlington office over to someone of her caliber, said Eddie Berenbaum, President and Chief Marketing Officer

After starting in the real estate industry in 1996, Sita Kapur built a thriving business of repeat clientele in Arlington, Virginia, the place she knew she wanted to call home. In 2008, Sita struck out on her own and opened Arlington Premier Realty. As the broker and owner, she defined her brokerage as a boutique firm, selling everything from condos to single family homes in the dynamic Arlington market. She wanted to nurture local agents into becoming area experts while offering the very best client experience, from first showing to closing.

Although Arlington Premier Realty became a trusted name in the local market, the demands of both selling real estate and being a full-time broker to her agents became a challenge that ultimately demanded a change. Living near C21 Redwoods Arlington office meant that Redwood was always top-of-mind for Kapur. She quickly fell in love with the offices open environment, the hip decor and the highly visible Courthouse/Rosslyn location. Having always believed that the design and layout of a work environment is a reliable reflection of the personality and priorities of its leaders, she immediately contacted Redwood co-owner Nick Pasquini upon hearing of an opening. The opportunity to manage Redwoods Arlington office was like a beacon calling her to accept her careers greatest challenge.

Now, with the stars aligned, Kapur is excited to carry out her vision of managing an extraordinary team of REALTORS in a work environment that is professional, yet fun-- a space where agents, clients, local businesses and neighbors will come together to work, learn and socialize. She looks forward to maintaining Redwoods culture of success and support and continuing its reputation as a model that others want to emulate.

Eddie Berenbaum, CENTURY 21 Redwoods President and Chief Marketing Officer says, Nick Pasquini and I have known Sita Kapur for more than a decade and have always admired her client-focused attitude and shared passion for the Arlington market. Sitas one of those rare people who blends an intensity in business with a laid-back, fun demeanor. Incredibly approachable, I am thrilled to know that I am handing the reins of my beloved Arlington office over to someone of her caliber.

###

About Redwood AdVenture, LLC

Redwood AdVenture, LLC is a leading real estate firm specializing in the sale of residential real estate through their twelve offices in Washington DC, Northern VA and suburban MD. With proprietary technology platforms and affiliation with the iconic CENTURY 21 brand, Redwoods client-centered, agent-focused brand of real estate provides its clients boutique service with a global reach.

Web: http://www.c21redwood.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/c21redwood

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/century21redwoodrealty
"This can absolutely prevent things from escalating. Theres growing recognition that employees working in isolation are at risk for harassment and/or assault."

Most of the recent conversation about harassment in the workplace has focused on the numerous high-profile individuals who have been the focus of such allegations. While this coverage has served to put an important issue in the spotlight, its equally important to include awareness of those workers  far from the public eye  who are often considered at greatest risk of assault and/or harassment.

For hospitality industry workers, such workplace harassment is all-too-real a concern, especially among those in housekeeping and other roles that call for working alone and in guestrooms. In fact, according to a Washington Post article http://ow.ly/LrVp30hm9h4 detailing the abuse of a hotel maid during the presidential inauguration in D.C. this year, such incidents are all too common in an industry where about half of employees say they have been assaulted or harassed by a guest, according to union surveys. They add that much of the abuse goes unreported as staff fear losing their jobs. Even before the recent onslaught of news reports related to these allegations, the call for addressing hospitality staff security had been gaining momentum, fueled by both industry organizations and newly-passed laws and resolutions in a number of major cities calling for various forms of protection for these at-risk workers.

One form of protection that has been getting a great deal of attention in recent months are mobile panic devices that enable staff to immediately alert security (and send automatic location notification) in the event they feel threatened. For example, RF Technologies (RFT) HELP ALERT Panic Alert System for Hospitality was featured in November in a news story (FOX32-TV, Chicago) highlighting a recently-passed Chicago city ordinance intended to protect hospitality workers from assault and other forms of intimidation and violence in the workplace. Backed by labor unions including Unite Here Local 1, the new anti-harassment ordinance stipulates that employees working alone in Chicago hotels must be issued panic buttons such as RFTs HELP ALERT wireless pendant that would enable them to immediately alert security if they encounter uncomfortable or potentially dangerous situations in guests rooms. The ordinance goes into effect in January 2019, with a requirement for workers to be equipped with the personal panic alarms no later than July 1 of that year.

In discussing the impact of staff being equipped with personal security devices Marina Willis, head of RFTs PinPoint business unit (which oversees the HELP ALERT product line) relates, This can absolutely prevent things from escalating. Theres growing recognition in the industry that employees working in isolation are at risk for harassment and/or assault. If the individual has the ability to promptly and discreetly alert security to a situation while remaining calm, knowing that help is on the way, escalation can be avoided.

Hotel workers are already wearing RFTs HELP ALERT in cities including New York and Washington, D.C. In Seattle, similar protection is included as part of Initiative 124 (also referred to as I-124) under which hotels are required to provide workers with panic buttons. Similar mandates and/or ordinances are in-process and are likely to be adopted soon in areas in California, and elsewhere, where such protection is being requested with increased frequency by staff members and local unions representing hospitality workers.

RFT is pleased to be a part of such an important initiative focused on keeping hospitality workers safe, says Willis. RFT has 30 years of experience keeping people safe in hotels, hospitals, senior living facilities, and the public sector. We agree its time for this issue to come to the forefront, and for action to finally be a priority.

To view FOX32/Chicago feature story, follow this link:

http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/293929523-video

For additional information on this important issue, follow these news links:

http://www.mychinews.com/news/chicago-hotel-workers-may-soon-have-a-panic-button

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-rahm-emanuel-chicago-city-council-0418-story.html

http://abc7chicago.com/news/panic-button-ordinance-proposed-to-protect-hotel-workers/1885056/

Also, a July 2016 report issued by Unite Here Local 1:

https://www.handsoffpantson.org/wp-content/uploads/HandsOffReportWeb.pdf

About RF Technologies

RF Technologies provides safety solutions at over 10,000 senior living, healthcare, education and hospitality facilities nationwide. Life safety solutions such as CODE ALERT Wander Management, QUICK RESPONSE Wireless Nurse Call, SAFE PLACE Infant Security, and HELP ALERT reduce risk for residents, staff, and the facility; innovations such as RFT CARES smartphone application improve caregiver coordination and efficiency. Backed by 30 years of experience in senior living, RF Technologies solutions are UL-certified to meet todays life safety standards. For information visit: http://www.rft.com
Americas Top Negotiator and Woman of Global Change, Eldonna Lewis Fernandez "I am on a mission to empower other women globally to support each other in business, educate each other to be successful and use our platforms to make a difference in other peoples lives." -Eldonna Lewis Fernandez

The Womens Economic Forum Vancouver was held on November 16-17, 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Surrey City Hall. An association of the ALL Ladies League (ALL), the Womens Economic Forum (WEF) is a global conference to foster empowering conversations and connections among women. WEF events promote peer exchange and learning in a diverse and interdisciplinary context across the globe, empowering women to expand their business opportunities and increase their global influence. WEF also welcomes men who support the cause of womens leadership.

The WEF brought international womens business leaders, community leaders and philanthropists to be educated, empowered and connected.

Womens economic equality is good for business. Companies greatly benefit from increasing leadership opportunities for women according United Nations Women. Women owned businesses comprise 38% of registered businesses worldwide and over 50% in the U.S. and half of all college students are women. More women are getting educated and starting businesses at a faster rate than ever before.

Featured speaker Americas Top Negotiator Eldonna Lewis Fernandez stated, Being a woman in business and a military veteran who has traveled to many parts of the world; I am on a mission to empower other women globally to support each other in business, educate each other to be successful and use our platforms to make a difference in other peoples lives.

The WEF Annual conference will be held in New Delhi, India April 26  May 1, 2018. The theme The Economics of Goodness: Empowering Potential, Engineering Change is a catalyst to provide women the opportunities for growth, connection and business education. The WEF provides opportunities for start-ups, speakers and up and coming philanthropists to have a platform to expand their network, promote their cause and gain experience in business.

To find out more about the ALL Ladies League and the great works that they do and their upcoming WEF events go to http://www.aall.in. To find out more about Eldonna Lewis Fernandez and go to http://www.EldonnaLewisFernandez.com

Eldonna Lewis Fernandez, author of Think Like a Negotiator, is a negotiation and contracts expert who has negotiated hundreds of millions in contracts, many in excess of $100 million. CEO of Dynamic Vision International http://www.EldonnaLewisFernandez.com
Clarke celebrates 150 years of teaching children to listen and talk Doug and Valerie bring decades of domestic and international for-profit and nonprofit expertise in management, finance and operations, said Hugh Babowal, Clarkes outgoing Board Chair and Managing Director, Wells Fargo.

Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech today announced the appointment of Douglas Scott and Valerie Martin as CEO and CFO respectively, and effective immediately. The organization, celebrating its 150th year of teaching children who are deaf or hard of hearing to listen and talk, also announced Jason Friedland as the incoming Chair of the Board of Trustees effective January 1, 2018.

Scott and Martin have served as Clarkes interim CEO and CFO since March 2017 and have worked in collaboration with the Board of Trustees and senior leadership on staffing, fundraising and operations initiatives. Friedland, a Partner and Director of Investments at Iron Stone Real Estate Partners in Philadelphia, has been a member of Clarkes Board since 2010 and is the father of two Clarke students.

Doug and Valerie bring decades of domestic and international for-profit and nonprofit expertise in management, finance and operations, said Hugh Babowal, Clarkes outgoing Board Chair and Managing Director at Wells Fargo. They know what successful and sustainable growth looks like in the philanthropic sector and how to get there. When combined with Jasons board experience and depth of organizational knowledge, this leadership team ensures stability and anchors the organization as it focuses on its five-year strategy.

Scott, a principal at Glenmoore Partners, has more than 40 years of strategic business consulting and operating experience. He spent more than 20 years with Phildius Kenyon & Scott leading investments in healthcare start-ups and managing consulting work with companies including DuPont and Kodak. Prior to joining Clarke, Scott was the Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the John Templeton Foundation. Scott has served on the Board of the Philanthropy Network of Greater Philadelphia and received his undergraduate degree and MBA from Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

Clarke is home to some of the top educators, best practices and most recent field research in teaching children with hearing loss to listen and talk, said Scott. I am eager to lead Clarke forward as we leverage this expertise and elevate the organizations national presence.

Martin is a senior operations and financial executive with wide ranging experience in the philanthropic, public accounting and governmental sectors. She is a principal at Glenmoore Partners and was previously the Chief Financial Officer of the John Templeton Foundation and of the Housing Authority of Chester County. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards and committees including the Foundation Financial Officers Group, Philanthropy Network of Greater Philadelphia, and the Brandywine Health Foundation. Martin received her undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Clarke provides world-class services to children at a critical time in a young persons development, said Martin. Clarkes passionate and committed team has made this possible every single day for 150 years. We are privileged to lead this network of nearly 200 full-time, part-time, in-house and field professionals.

A philanthropic champion, Friedland spearheads grassroots initiatives to increase educational choices for children with hearing loss in Pennsylvania; is a finance committee member of SHARE Food Program; a member of the Prints, Drawings and Photographs Committee at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and a member of Childhood Friends of The Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. Friedland received his BA from Washington University.

Ive not only seen, but lived, what Clarke makes possible for children with hearing loss. Clarke gives families expert guidance and children the skills they need to reach their full potential, said Friedland. I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Board of an organization thats changed my life, and the lives of thousands more around the world.

About Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech

Clarke provides children who are deaf or hard of hearing with the listening, learning and spoken language skills they need to succeed. Annually, more than 1,200 children and their families benefit from programs and services at five locations: Boston, MA, Jacksonville, FL, New York, NY, Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. Clarke impacts the lives of children and adults through educational and early childhood programs, hearing services, mainstream services, research, comprehensive educational evaluations, curriculum development and the teachers and professionals trained by Clarke who take their special skills to all parts of the world. Learn more at clarkeschools.org.
Christina Kjaeroe of Personal Risk Management Solutions (PRMS) in New York City, New York has been awarded a Certified Advisor of Personal Insurance (CAPI) designation from the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Chubb.

Kjaeroe is among a group of only 38 agents this year to receive the certification after completing a one-year intensive educational program on understanding the lifestyle and risk management and insurance needs of successful individuals and families. Created by Wharton and Chubb in 2014, the CAPI program is the first of its kind to focus on a specific client segment in the personal insurance marketplace.

The agents who have completed the CAPI program have proven that they have the highest level of skill and expertise required to understand the total family balance sheet and advise successful clients on their complex risk management and insurance needs, said Annmarie Camp, Executive Vice President, Sales and Distribution Leader, Chubb Personal Risk Services.

We are extremely proud that Christina has received the prestigious CAPI designation, said Celia Santana, CEO and President of PRMS. This shows her incredible dedication to the insurance industry as well as her ongoing commitment to serving successful individual and families, who have a unique set of property and liability exposures created by their assets and lifestyle.

Courses are taught by Wharton faculty, Chubb subject matter experts and other professionals. Agents received instruction on the Wharton campus at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and through virtual classes, webcasts, reading assignments and other online activities throughout 2017.

About Chubb

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company, and the largest commercial insurer in the United States. With operations in 54 countries, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: chubb.com.

About the Wharton School

Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates ongoing economic and social value around the world. The school has 5,000 undergraduates, MBA, Executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 10,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and a powerful alumni network of 96,000 graduates.
I believe Hemingways Cuba will take people back to those Havana nights I shared with my family that provided so many great memories.

In what was a lifetime in the making, Tony Fraga, and FIRC Group are proud to announce the grand opening of their authentic Cuban restaurant, Hemingways Cuba. The restaurant is located on the fourth floor of the Cambria Hotel & Suites in Downtown Asheville.

Guests of the restaurant will enjoy a rooftop bar and a menu that features traditional Cuban entrees and small plates with a local flair. The restaurants slogan is the Birth of the Cuban Daquiri in Asheville, and thats exactly what guests can expect to enjoy  along with exceptional meals for both lunch and dinner.

While the restaurant debuts this month, the idea behind it was born decades ago. Havana native and Founder of Hemingways Cuba, Tony Fraga, grew up enjoying meals with his father at El Floridita in Havana. It was widely recognized as a favorite of Ernest Hemingway who announced that they served The Best Daquiri in the World. Today, Hemingways Cuba looks to provide the same exceptional experience to their patrons.

A family trip in 2016 brought Fraga back to Cuba for the first time since the 1960s. He left knowing that the time to bring a true Cuban dining experience was perfect as the construction of the new Cambria Hotel provided the perfect venue.

Fraga explains his excitement about the restaurant saying, I believe Hemingways Cuba will take people back to those Havana nights I shared with my family that provided so many great memories.

Fraga continued, Its Fragas Groups honor to bring that experience to the people of Asheville with every dining experience.

To learn more about the restaurant, guests can visit http://www.HemingwaysCubaAsheville.com.

About Hemingways Cuba Asheville:

Located in the heart of downtown Asheville, Hemingways Cuba provides the birth of the Cuban daiquiri in Asheville. Those looking to book a reservation can call (828) 417-6866.
Kofi Aidoo, a native of Ghana who emigrated to the United States in 1978, became a college-level teacher of English, and is currently researching and writing full time, has completed his new book Of Buds and Weevils: a tale set in a remote Ghanian village that resonates with universal human themes.

When the wealthy Kani learns that his sole daughter has been raped in the bush, his plans for her marriage into royalty are thrown into disarray. In his efforts to avoid the humiliation and disgrace of a scandal, Kani discovers that there are forces beyond his control that shape his affairs. The story skillfully conveys the texture of everyday village life in Ghana and exposes the vulnerabilities of Kani defending his reputation.

Published by New York City-based Page Publishing, Kofi Aidoos book brings the social, political, and interpersonal concerns of its characters to life in this quintessentially African tale.

Readers who wish to experience this potent work can purchase Of Buds and Weevils at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional New York-based full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not bogged down with logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and the like. Its roster of accomplished authors and publishing professionals allows writers to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues to focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Redwood Origins Were proud to be representing one of the most recognisable brands in the UK within the food subscription sector, securing the contract is testament to all the hard work done by the fantastic team we have here

The company believes that face-to-face marketing is the most effective and relevant marketing technique available to brands because it leads to greater customer satisfaction and stronger business relationships.

The firm have recently secured an exclusive contract to work with one of Britains largest food subscription service. The deal comes on the back of a strong 2017. The company will be working with their newly acquired client to help build a strong presence across East Anglia through their face-to-face marketing strategies.

About the firm - http://www.redwoodorigins.co.uk/about/

On the back of securing a high-profile client, Redwood Origins arent content with taking their foot off the pedal. The firm is on the lookout for new business opportunities moving into 2018 and are subsequently ramping up their recruitment efforts.

However, Redwood Origins arent just looking for anyone to join the ranks. The firm is on keen on adding business partners individuals that are highly motivated, demonstrate a strong sense of entrepreneurship and ambition. Furthermore, the firm is looking to bring in those that might be looking for a career change and want to take control of their development.

Redwood Origins are looking to invest their time in those that want to be the best, the firm, however, is a strong advocate for the personal development of all of their staff. The Norwich based firm offer a number of development opportunities. They offer one-to-one mentoring, regular motivational and development workshops, fantastic networking opportunities through organised events and the chance to work with big recognised brands.

Were proud to be representing one of the most recognisable brands in the UK within the food subscription sector, securing the contract is testament to all the hard work done by the fantastic team we have here, however, were constantly looking for growth opportunities and expanding our team with the very best talent around, stated Alex Hartley, managing director of Redwood Origins
Lilian Price, a former German resident and PhD in Germanic studies, has completed her new book Guillotine Education: the recounting of the harrowing tale of the young official disillusioned by the shocking realities of a rogue regime.

According to Price, During (my) time of residency in Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, (I) observed the barbed wire and the guard towers that divided the two Germanys. (I) also took several trips behind the Iron Curtain, where (I) met several individuals who had been negatively impacted by the brutal regime. On one occasion, (I) was interrogated by East German border officials, when (I) accidentally took a wrong highway. Shortly after a twentieth-anniversary observance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, (I) was presented with a manuscript that inspired (me) to tell the world the true story of a case of intense political persecution. After its initial publication by a now defunct publisher, half of the work's initial copies disappeared from bookshelves. For the first time, (my) translation makes the manuscript accessible to an international readership.

Published by New York City-based Page Publishing, Lilian Prices eloquent translation of Guillotine Education details the abusive practices of the former East German State Security (Stasi) as experienced by border guard Manfred Smolka. His temporary cellmate Klaus Schmude recounts the harrowing tale of the young official disillusioned by the shocking realities of a rogue regime.

Pacing his cell, Smolka is stunned by the death sentence he has just been handed. His attorney already knows that the decision by the kangaroo court is a foregone conclusion, yet he still encourages him to appeal the decision to the highest authorities in the land. Smolka then reflects on the circumstances of his illegal apprehension on West German soil, and his hellish months of detention marked by sleep deprivation and seemingly endless good cop/bad cop interrogations. The interplay between the present and the past continues as he recalls his upbringing and the ideological warfare employed by his East German trainers in preparing him for his career as a border guard.

It was when he began to question the validity of Stalinist ideology and its brutal practices that he developed a crisis of conscience. Smolka concluded that his only acceptable choice was to escape to the West, which he successfully managed to do. Upon crossing the border, he was detained and questioned by West German authorities. They, in turn, handed him over to the Americans, who considered him a particularly valuable source of information about East German border installations. His kindly Jewish American interrogator soon released him to enjoy his newly acquired freedom after making a brilliant connection between the brutalities of Hitlers national socialism and Stalinist totalitarian socialism. These brutalities included the occasional beheading of political prisoners with the identical guillotine used by both regimes. After a year of blissful freedom in West Germany, Smolka decided to rescue his wife and daughter from the GDR. Little did he realize that this decision would lead to such fateful consequences.

Readers who wish to experience this historical work can purchase Guillotine Education at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Kobo, Google Play or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional New York based full-service publishing house that handles all of the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not bogged down with complicated business issues like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes and the like. Its roster of authors can leave behind these tedious, complex and time consuming issues, and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Lynne Rifkin, the 2017 JTHS-MIAMI president and a Realtor with Keller Williams of the Palm Beaches. Our first JTHS-MIAMI info session in November drew a standing-room-only crowd of members looking for information on local upcoming commercial projects, said Lynne Rifkin, the 2017 JTHS-MIAMI president and a Realtor with Keller Williams of the Palm Beaches.

Starting in February 2018, the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Council of the MIAMI Association of REALTORS (JTHS-MIAMI) will host regular Palm Beach and Martin County real estate info sessions to help JTHS-MIAMI members learn about the newest projects coming to the area and see how they can utilize the developments to boost their respective businesses.

Our first JTHS-MIAMI info session in November drew a standing-room-only crowd of members looking for information on local upcoming commercial projects, said Lynne Rifkin, the 2017 JTHS-MIAMI president and a Realtor with Keller Williams of the Palm Beaches. Starting next year, we will regularly bring together local municipalities and county speakers to keep our membership updated on whats new in Palm Beach and Martin Counties.

Palm Beach and Martin city officials, public and private zoning and development employees and government officials will make presentations on new area projects every other month on the third Thursday of the month at the JTHS-MIAMI office (2151 Alt A1A in Jupiter), starting February 2018. A specific date hasnt been scheduled. Visit JTHSMiami.com for the latest information.

JTHS-MIAMI Commercial Marketplace, which gathers local commercial practitioners to network and present their listings to each other, will follow the info sessions. The JTHS-MIAMI info sessions and commercial marketplace will be free for JTHS-MIAMI members. Non-members: $10. For the latest information, visit JTHSMiami.com

Standing-Room Only Crowd for Jupiter Projects Update

A standing-room-only crowd of about 50 JTHS-MIAMI members attended a Jupiter Update meeting on Nov. 30 at JTHS-MIAMIs Jupiter office. Marty Schneider, the principal planner for the Town of Jupiter, presented on proposed and approved commercial projects coming to the Town of Jupiter.

JTHS-MIAMI members learned about many new developments, including Jupiters Love Street project. The $30 million outdoor marketplace will include about 18,000 square feet of retail, office and restaurant space on the Jupiter Inlet. Love Street was approved by the Jupiter council last year and has the potential of adding to the Jupiter Inlets reputation as an ecotourism destination.

RCA MIAMIs Successful New and Noteworthy Series Shined in 2017

The REALTORS Commercial Alliance of MIAMI (RCA MIAMI), which was created more than 10 years ago to bring tools, products, education and resources to South Florida commercial practitioners, has excelled in putting together commercial real estate info sessions for its members.

Similar to the upcoming JTHS-MIAMI info sessions, RCA MIAMIs New and Noteworthy series provides city spotlights on many communities throughout Miami and Broward counties. City officials and public and private developers speak about upcoming projects coming to that specific city. RCA MIAMI has hosted popular New and Noteworthy events in Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Fort Lauderdale and more.

About the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound (JTHS-MIAMI) Realtors

The Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Council of MIAMI Association of REALTORS (JTHS-MIAMI) seeks to serve, unify and lead residential members in Palm Beach and Martin counties. With more than 2,500 members in Palm Beach and Martin Counties, the JTHS Council provides members with a legislative voice, education opportunities, a code of ethics, networking opportunities and more. JTHS merged with the MIAMI Association of REALTORS in September 2015. The JTHS official website is http://www.jthsmiami.com.

About the MIAMI Association of REALTORS

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 97 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward Council, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS-MIAMI) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents 46,000 real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S., and has official partnerships with 167 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.MiamiRealtors.com
To fulfill our mission and responsibility, we developed our BDN Program to help learners obtain a BSN degree and secure their future as a nurse.

Nightingale College announces its newest nursing education program: the Bachelor Degree in Nursing (BDN) Program. The program is offered alongside the Colleges Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) and RN-to-BSN Programs.

All of us at Nightingale College are excited to introduce the full pre-licensure baccalaureate-level nursing program to the communities we already serve in several Western states and as we continue expanding our innovative education delivery model throughout the country," said Mikhail Shneyder, President and CEO.

The accredited BDN Program is Nightingales first 32-month program and will be delivered via Nightingales hybrid-virtual model. The program is community and employer focused infused with curriculum designed to prepare learners to not only sit for the state licensure exam but navigate the diverse, ever-changing environment of patient care and chronic illness.

"This new option not only provides learners with a more affordable pathway to a long and rewarding career in nursing, it also assists with bringing the U.S. closer to the Institute of Medicines goal and, ultimately, improving the health of our population, said Shneyder.

The recommendation by the Institute of Medicine for 80 percent of all nurses to hold a BSN degree by the end of 2020 inspired the College to implement a baccalaureate degree program that allows learners to obtain a BSN degree. Because of the recommendation, many nurses are now returning to school to pursue a BSN degree and future nurses look for BSN programs.

As a nursing education college, it is our duty and responsibility to prepare our learners to handle the future of nursing, Sue Jero, Director of Nursing Education, said. We have seen the positive effects of BSN-prepared nurses have on their staff, facility, and community. To fulfill our mission and responsibility, we developed our BDN Program to help learners obtain a BSN degree and secure their future as a nurse.

Nightingales Bachelor Degree Nursing (BDN) Program is now enrolling for the January 2018 semester in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. By joining the Colleges two other accredited nursing programs, the BDN Program will give a new opportunity for those seeking a BSN degree.

ABOUT NIGHTINGALE COLLEGE

Nightingale College creates avenues to accessible nursing programs with its fully accredited distance education associate and bachelors degree nursing programs. Supporting the growing need for nurses and providing strategies to combat the nursing shortage, the Colleges programs work to not only grow but maintain homegrown nurses with the help of local health care systems. Nightingale College emphasizes graduating future nurses who are confident, competent, and compassionate, ready to work in their community. Since its establishment in 2010 in Ogden, Utah, the College has graduated nurses in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. To learn more about the College, its mission, and programs, visit http://nightingale.edu/.
Dental Implants San Francisco Bay Area Making dental implant surgery a positive experience is our number one goal.

San Francisco Dental Implant Center (http://www.sfdentalimplants.com/), under the leadership of oral surgeon, Dr. Rabinovich, is proud to announce a significant review milestone of topping two hundred online reviews, combining Google and Yelp for both the Center and the affiliated Oral Surgery practice. The generally positive reviews speak volumes of the Center as one of the most popular places in the San Francisco Bay Area for dental implant surgery.

Making dental implant surgery a positive experience is our number one goal. My staff and I truly enjoy the work that we do, explained Dr. Alex Rabinovich, chief oral surgeon of SF Dental Implants. These new customer reviews tell us we are making a difference in the lives of our patients and helping them to achieve healthy, happy smiles.

To read the new dental implant reviews on Yelp for San Francisco Dental Implant Center, for example, please visit

https://www.yelp.com/biz/san-francisco-dental-implant-center-san-francisco. Positive responses to dental implant surgery by Dr. Rabinovich have been noted by several patients as well. To learn more about oral surgery and read over one-hundred-twenty reviews for SF Dental please go to https://www.yelp.com/biz/alex-rabinovich-dds-md-san-francisco. Google reviews can be found via a simple Google search for either "San Francisco Dental Implants" or for "Dr. Alex Rabinovich San Francisco."

POSITIVE DENTAL IMPLANT REVIEWS INDICATE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA LEADERSHIP

Here is background to this release. Bay Area locals can have many choices during a normal day. Some decisions may see easy, such as selecting Italian or Mexican for lunch. Other choices can be a little more difficult, such as when to schedule the next dental appointment. If the dental appointment turns into a discussion about removing teeth beyond repair, it may not be a choice. The next decision to bring back a healthy smile may be to consider dental implant surgery. If a San Francisco patient needs to find a top oral surgeon, searching dental implant reviews first could be the right choice.

For this reason, San Francisco Dental Implants has announced a two hundred review milestone on combined Yelp and Google reviews. Selecting the right oral surgeon may help to make an oral surgery procedure a positive one. Previous patients suffering from anxiety over dental surgery have written about top-notch staff and caring attention. One San Francisco patient concerned about surgery has even posted the experience as a cakewalk in one dental implant review. Choosing dental implant surgery may be difficult for a San Francisco native, but an easy read of these two hundred reviews can make identifying best oral surgeon in the Bay Area can help make the choice easy.

ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO DENTAL IMPLANT CENTER

San Francisco Dental Implant Center, under the direction of Dr. Alex Rabinovich, focuses on the placement and restoration of dental implants, making it among the top-rated dental implant clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Rabinovich is a Board Certified Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon specializing in the field of dental implants.

This additional training, along with his years of experience, sets Alex Rabinovich MD DDS apart from the growing number of general dentists offering dental implant treatments. The cost of dental implants in the Bay Area can be easy to manage with payment plans available. San Francisco Dental Implant Center serves the San Francisco Bay Area including Marin county areas such as Tiburon, Sausalito and Mill Valley.

Contact:

San Francisco Dental Implant Center, Media Relations

Email. visage.sanfran(at)gmail(dot)com

Tel. 415-817-9991
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'

GPS and Associates a nationwide background screening corporation has contributed $25,000 toward the hurricane relief in Puerto Rico.

CEO and Founder Andy Gomez of GPS and Associates recently said, "Hey we do work in Puerto Rico and we consider the people of Puerto Rico our brothers and sisters. They have been wronged time and again and now nature takes a toll on this beautiful island and it's people. Although we are a small company - we decided to put our money where our mouth is.

"I hope that we can also contribute some of our manpower in the near future as well, in their reconstruction effort.

"I was delighted to learn the great Elon Musk of Tesla was getting involved." It is truly a great situation with his involvement, for the future of this beautiful island.

Although GPS and Associates is a small "S" corporation, their generosity speaks volumes to their social responsibility. GPS is also working to gather supplies and other needs towards the relief effort.
Advantage Preservation is pleased to announce an exciting development in the IAHistory Project as we further our collaborative effort to preserve valuable state history. Over the next several months, Advantage will work with 13 community libraries in Southeastern Iowa to audit, preserve, and digitize nearly 165 years of archived newspapers for all of Washington County.

Due in large part to a grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation, Advantage will be able to preserve original, high-quality content on microfilm for a period of 500 years. Once the newspapers are preserved, they will be digitized as a result, the countys expansive history will be made easily accessible online at no cost to users. In 2018, these newspapers will be added to the collection of Advantage digitized papers maintained by IAHistory.com.

We are so excited to make our history available to residents both young and old, and to tell our story to the rest of the state, country, and world. Washington Public Library Director Debbie Stanton said. What started out as a small project has gotten bigger with additional communities in our area all eager to participate. Communities participating in this project include Ainsworth, Brighton, Columbus Junction, Crawfordsville, Kalona, Keota, Lone Tree, Richland, Riverside, Washington, Wayland, Wellman, and Winfield. With the help of two large grants, the cost to our communities will be minimal and the benefits will be great, Stanton said.

The addition of the thirteen community libraries from Southeastern Iowa to the IAHistory Project will follow the Cedar Rapids Public Library and the Cedar Rapids Gazette as the first participants in the initiative. We believe this approach is scalable and can lead to a comprehensive project for Iowans across the state. Said Cedar Rapids Gazette Executive Editor Zack Kucharski - We're appreciative of Advantage's approach and understanding for the value of the archive and their willingness to work as true partners.

Iowa has a rich history and Washington County is no exception. said Jeff Kiley, Chief Operating Officer of Advantage. The first newspaper in the county was printed in 1853 and newspapers recorded the history of people, places and events that have impacted Washington County for 165 years. Now that history will not only be preserved for the future, it will be made available to the community in the present. We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with the community on this project

The announcement of Washington Countys participation in the ongoing IAHistory Project reflects the state of Iowas continued pursuit to ensure that the first draft of history is available for current and future generations.

If you are interested in learning more about the Washington County Digitization Project or would like to partake in the mission to preserve your communitys history, please contact us at iahistory(at)advantage-companies.com.
The DiSTI Corporation, the worlds leading provider of 3D virtual training solutions, announces that a team from the Fuerza Aerea de Chile (FACH), Division de Educacion is the first class to receive technical certification on VE Studio, DiSTIs virtual training solution development platform.

DiSTI offers training and certifications that are tailored to the functions and roles involved in virtual training development which include program managers, artists, developers and procedure specialists. DiSTI will be expanding their certification programs across all of their product lines in 2018.

The Division de Educacion is the Chilean Air Force organization responsible for developing training for the Chilean Air Force. Since 2007, the Chilean Air Force has relied on its fleet of Bell 412 helicopter for search and rescue and troop transport missions. In 2015, FACH selected the DiSTI Corporation to develop a virtual maintenance training solution to enable FACH to improve maintenance training processes for the fleet of 412s.

We needed to find a better way to train our aircraft maintainers and decided that 3D virtual technology was the right technology to achieve that goal. However, we did not have the expertise to develop our own solutions and we needed to develop training courses as quickly as possible. So we searched for a partner that had the technology and skills to assist us to build a solution, but who could provide us with the capability to continue to expand the training solution. The VE Studio platform was an ideal solution for us as it enabled us to rapidly develop the training solution while not having to hire a large team of software engineers. With VE Studio, we can use our existing staff to continue to develop the various training courses and do not have to worry about the underlying technology platform. DiSTI Professional Services assisted us with the virtual environment configuration, creating the database architecture and getting us started with our first courses, said Cristian Roman from FACH.

We have been very pleased with the results of this project for the Bell 412 and are looking to expand it to other aircraft in our fleet. Our education team, DiSTI, and their local business partner Altec Ltda have worked together as partners to create the virtual maintenance solution. This certification will help to ensure that our education team has the skills to continue to develop our training capabilities using the best technology available on the market today, said General Jose Miguel Aguirre, head of the Division de Educacion.

We are excited to have the team from FACH to be the first class to receive certification on VE Studio through our DiSTI University technical certification program, said Joe Swinski, CEO DiSTI. We have reached a point where virtual training is becoming widely adopted and customers are looking for standardization and certification to ensure that their staff has the skills and capabilities to develop and maintain their training solutions.
Jobsity Team with Endeavor Panelists Miami becoming an Endeavor entrepreneur is wonderful validation. We believe firmly that, like manufacturing before it, the services industry will continue to globalize, and the Jobsity model is uniquely designed to help companies take advantage of the benefits of high-quality outsourcing

Today Jobsity LLC., a nearshore staff augmentation firm, announced its selection as Endeavor Entrepreneurs. The announcement comes as Jobsity celebrates 6 consecutive years of double digit growth which have included the initiation of operations in New York, Quito, Medellin, and Cartagena. Jobsity LLC. focuses on hiring and developing top-talent developers with strong technical skills as well as soft skills. Jobsity then provides constant training to its outsourced developers to ensure that its dedicated bilingual teams exceed the expectations of its clients.

The announcement comes on the heels of the celebration of Endeavors 76th International Selection Panel held in Miami on the 11th to 13th of December, 2017. Jobsity LLC. joins a cohort of 22 companies that include the 1000th company Endeavor has sponsored.

Remarking on the companys inclusion in the Endeavor program, founder and CEO Andres Garzon noted that, becoming an Endeavor entrepreneur is wonderful validation. We believe firmly that, like manufacturing before it, the services industry will continue to globalize, and the Jobsity model is uniquely designed to help companies take advantage of the benefits of high-quality outsourcing. Our goal is to be transformational both for our clients as well as our employees. Endeavor will be a strategic partner for Jobsity in continuing to scale and reach new heights.

Endeavor is an international network of mentors, investors, and entrepreneurs who work together to mentor emerging businesses across 13 countries. Endeavors rigorous selection criteria and process include examining a companys growth potential, business model, social impact, and leadership. Endeavor Entrepreneurs have generated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenues.

About Jobsity LLC: Jobsity LLC. is a nearshore staff augmentation company with offices in New York, Ecuador and Colombia. Jobsity works on behalf of its clients to identify, hire, and continually train talented bilingual programmers. Jobsitys clients have included companies such as NBC, Walgreens, The Disney Channel, and Bloomberg.
We are very honored to be recognized for our work by Entrepreneur. Being on the Entrepreneur 360 list is a testament to the great team weve built, the hard work weve put in over the years and the flourishing solar market in New York City, said Alex Yackery, Co-Founder, SunPower by Venture Solar.

SunPower by Venture Solar was recently recognized as one of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America by Entrepreneur magazines Entrepreneur360 List, a premier study delivering the most comprehensive analysis of private companies in America. Based on this study forged by Entrepreneur, SunPower by Venture Solar is recognized as a well-rounded company that has mastered a balance of impact, innovation, growth and leadership.



We are very honored to be recognized for our work by Entrepreneur. Being on the Entrepreneur 360 list is a testament to the great team weve built, the hard work weve put in over the years and the flourishing solar market in New York City, said Alex Yackery, Co-Founder of SunPower by Venture Solar.

In 2018, we are also expanding our service footprint to include Nassau County, which will give us a great opportunity to help hundreds more homeowners and business owners join the green revolution by switching to solar, added Alex Giles, Co-Founder of SunPower by Venture Solar.

Our annual evaluation is a 360-degree analysis of top privately-held companies representing and serving a variety of industries, explains Lisa Murray, Chief Insights Officer of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. These businesses are real-world case studies for any entrepreneur who seeks to master the four pillars that can greatly impact the longevity and growth of their businesses. With the Entrepreneur 360, success is measured by achieving balance throughout the entire organization, predicated by revenue.

SunPower by Venture Solar is a premiere solar installation company based in Brooklyn, NY. In the 2 years since its foundation, Venture has installed over a thousand solar systems in New York City, and is now expanding its service footprint to include Nassau County. Established in 2015, the company now employs over a 110 dedicated New Yorkers, who are committed to changing the way the greatest city in the world consumes energy.

The Entrepreneur 360 List celebrates outstanding companies for the value they bring to the world, not just the worth of their company, says Bill Shaw, president of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. The companies on this list exemplify growth, not just in top and bottom line, but in their ability to create a superior value for their customers, build adaptive learning cultures, and drive innovation in their marketplace.

Honorees were identified based on the results from a comprehensive study of independently-owned companies, using a proprietary algorithm and other advanced analytics. The algorithm was built on a balanced scorecard designed to measure four metrics reflecting major pillars of entrepreneurshipinnovation, growth, leadership and impact.

To learn more about SunPower by Venture Solar visit https://venturesolar.com/

For additional details on the E360 List and the companies recognized, visit: entrepreneur.com/360

Contact:

Cynthia Michaud

SunPower by Venture Solar

cynthia(at)venturesolar(dot)com

347-684-6737

###

ABOUT ENTREPRENEUR MEDIA INC.

For nearly 40 years, Entrepreneur Media Inc. has been serving the entrepreneurial community providing comprehensive coverage of business and personal success through original content and events. Entrepreneur magazine, Entrepreneur.com, and publishing imprint Entrepreneur Press provide solutions, information, inspiration and education read by millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners worldwide.



To learn more, visit entrepreneur.com.

Follow us on Twitter at @Entrepreneur and like us on Facebook at facebook.com/entmagazine.
Market Leader and EXIT Realty Corp. International Extend Partnership with Multi-Year Agreement We look forward to continuing to work closely with EXIT Realty and their associates to deliver powerful sales and marketing solutions to help grow and manage their businesses.

Market Leader announced that they have extended their long-standing partnership with EXIT Realty Corp. International, providing sales and marketing tools for real estate professionals via EXIT Promo Shop.

First launched in 2005, EXIT Promo Shop features thousands of professionally-designed templates, automated campaigns, and a robust email, print, and direct mail marketing center. Market Leader is also an EXIT Approved Supplier for the Market Leader suite of tools for agents, teams, and offices.

EXIT Realty has been great to partner with for the last 12 years, and were thrilled to announce our extended agreement, said Scott Smith, President and General Manager of Market Leader. We look forward to continuing to work closely with EXIT Realty and their associates to deliver powerful sales and marketing solutions to help grow and manage their businesses.

We take pride in sourcing products and services that help our brokerages and associates manage their businesses while making it easier for them to focus on their top priorities, and Market Leader has been a great partner for doing such, stated Tami Bonnell, EXIT Realtys CEO. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Market Leader for years to come.

This continued partnership also includes Market Leaders Leads Direct and HouseValues leads products, which deliver a guaranteed number of exclusive leads every month and Market Leaders Professional and Business Suite products, offering lead-generating websites, a robust desktop CRM with mobile app, and marketing tools designed to help agents, teams, and offices master their businesses.

About Market Leader

A pioneer in lead generation and contact management systems, Market Leader (https://www.marketleader.com) provides innovative online technology-based sales and marketing solutions for real estate professionals. Since 1999, Market Leader has helped real estate professionals succeed and grow, and today serves more than 250,000 agents, teams, brokerages, and franchises across the United States and Canada. Market Leader is a part of the Perseus Operating Group which is a division of Constellation Software Inc. Perseus is a provider of software solutions to several vertical markets and is a leading provider of software solutions to the real estate industry through its other businesses Z57, Zurple, Constellation Web Solutions, Sharper Agent, Birdview, Diverse Solutions, and ReloSpec. For more information please visit http://csiregroup.com.

About EXIT Realty

EXIT is a proven real estate business model that has to-date paid out more than a third of a billion dollars in single-level residual income to its associates across the U.S. and Canada. The companys Focus on Good Health initiative promotes wellness at work and home. 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. For more information, please visit http://www.exitrealty.com.
Matson website offer mobile-responsive interface to its clients We need to help our clients stay ahead of their customers digital communication needs."Ken O'Donnell, CEO KO Websites

KO Websites has completed a new WordPress website for Matson Navigation, Truck, Rail & Logistics. As the Pacifics leading shipping company, Matson has a responsibility to provide a high quality website that serves their customers with a wide range of features. To achieve that, Matson teamed up with KO-Websites to create a brand new mobile-responsive website that makes working with Matson easy for their clients: Attractive, easy to navigate, and simple to update.

We need to help our clients stay ahead of their customers digital communication needs, said Ken ODonnell, CEO of KO Websites. Using the new website design and tools, Matson can respond quickly and answer questions and resolve issues in real time.

ODonnell noted that Matson selected KO Websites as their website design and development vendor for three reasons: We have a reliable reputation. We are local and can work closely with them. And, we share a passion for transportation and have great familiarity with the Pacific ocean region.

The launch of Matsons new website makes information more easily accessible to mobile users, allowing them to quickly navigate the sites 240+ pages. KO Websites has meticulously designed each page to be user friendly, using a range of plugins and features available to WordPress website designers, as well as incorporating some custom designed Matson IT plugins.

Matson has two distinct divisions: Shipping and Logistics. Matson Logistics and Matson Shipping divisions now each have their own separate menus to allow for easy navigation to pages related to each side of the business. KO Websites solution integrates these two separate divisions of Matson's business into the new website to make it easy for site users to find the information they need as efficiently as possible.

Matson also requested an interactive shipping route map. KO Websites combined different plug-ins to create a new map with clickable routes that the carriers take to reach their destinations, and also clickable port icons to provide links to information about the regional ports.

Unique features of the newly redesigned, mobile-friendly website include:

Ocean shipment tracking

Access to investor relations information

Various tools for online orders and communications

Estimated pricing

Free mobile app downloads

Online cameras that present live updates on gate activity at ports they serve

Interactive maps which provide links to pertinent pages containing port and route information

About Matson Inc.

Matson is one of the leading U.S. transportation carriers in the Pacific, providing services to Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Micronesia, China and the South Pacific. In addition, Matson Logistics is also one of the top logistics providers within the United States, offering customers domestic and international rail, intermodal services, long haul and regional highway brokerage, supply chain services, and much more. Find more information about Matson at http://www.matson.com/.

About KO Websites, Inc.

KO Websites is an award winning full service website design and hosting company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, KO Websites offers full service digital marketing services, including social media marketing through their sister brand SEOPRO.pro. The company specializes in custom, mobile responsive, WordPress web design, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), PPC Adwords, social media marketing, social media advertising, and video marketing.

For more information, please visit KO Websites.
The unique design and methodology of this study will be exciting to watch!

The Family Centered Treatment Foundation (FCTF) is a nonprofit organization serving over 60 sites across 10 US states. FCTF provides licensing, training, and oversight of the Family Centered Treatment  (FCT) model to human service organizations. Established in 1992, FCTF has been integral in providing best practice and evidence-based services that have improved the lives of over 25,000 families! The FCTFs mission is to enhance the capability of agencies, communities and state systems of care in the implementation of proven evidence-based programs to better address the needs of families in crisis.

The Duke Endowment grant will be used to conduct a randomized control research study in North Carolina that meets the highest levels of scientific analysis. The study will examine numerous factors affecting children and families involved in the child mental health/welfare systems, including short, medium and long-term outcomes of family-stabilization, decarceration, family-functioning, safety, and cost-effectiveness. This study will be conducted in collaboration with the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, the Duke University's Robert J. Margolis, MD, Center for Health Policy as well as multiple Managed Care Organizations across North Carolina.

Two quasi-experimental studies with large sample sizes, along with 25 years of practice-based evidence, have proven the effectiveness and sustainability of FCT outcomes. Nevertheless, there is a critical need for a randomized control trial (study) to evaluate the effectiveness with the child mental health/welfare population.

We are again thrilled to be partnering with The Duke Endowment in our study and research around proven models of service to help families. This generous grant will enable research at the highest scientific standards to further determine how FCT affects the lives of families and youth struggling with a multitude of challenges. Additionally, the unique design and methodology of this study will be exciting to watch.

-Tim Wood, FCTF Executive Director

Based in Charlotte and established in 1924 by industrialist and philanthropist James B. Duke, The Duke Endowment is a private foundation that strengthens communities in North Carolina and South Carolina by nurturing children, promoting health, educating minds and enriching spirits. Since its founding, it has distributed more than $3.4 billion in grants. The Endowment shares a name with Duke University and Duke Energy, but all are separate organizations.

For more information on Family Centered Treatment or how you can support this community effort, please call or email Debbie Foster at (703) 757-6243/ info(at)familycenteredtreatment.org, or visit our website at http://www.familycenteredtreatment.org
Butt Hurt is a card game played among friends that reveals the, sometimes uncomfortable, truth. This game is not designed for sensitive people who get butt hurt easily. It gets personal, very personal.

Spencers Gifts just picked us up to go into their stores Spring 2018.

Radio stations across the nation are playing Butt Hurt Game on air, including nationally syndicated Z100s Elvis Duran & KISS FMs Kidd Kraddick Morning Show in Dallas.

Quote from The Rizzuto Show We love it. People have been going crazy when we play it on air. Our boss said its the best cringeworthy radio hes ever heard.

Sales across the nation are blowing up and we are very proud that its manufactured in the USA out of Michigan.

If any press outlet would like a free Butt Hurt Game for their review, please do not hesitate to hit us up. You can call, text, or email me personally with any questions or for comments.

Currently sold at:

Butthurtgame.com

Amazon

Walmart.com

Spencers

eBay

http://www.butthurtgame.com
Precision Painting & Decorating will begin accepting Bitcoin, the leader in the booming cryptocurrency market As the era of the digital wallet arrives, providing more payment options is simply an extension of our purpose to alter the perception of the contracting world.

Chicago-based Precision Painting & Decorating (PPD), a growing contracting business specializing in commercial and residential painting, will begin accepting Bitcoin, the leader in the booming cryptocurrency market. Attracting mass appeal as a programmable asset, Bitcoin was the first decentralized digital currency in the world.

Gaining momentum both globally and in local markets, the virtual method of payment uses encryption to create and manage the exchange of funds. Aiming to be the first in the industry to accept the virtual currency, Owner Aaron Moore views Bitcoin as a business development initiative and an opportunity for customers to capitalize on their gains.

Traditionally, contractors have favored an incremental approach to modernizing their business. Although virtual currency is an uncommon method of payment in the painting industry, Moore believes that as early adopters of this technology, he will appeal to the growing community of investors eager to use their new currency.

Our industry needs to prioritize adapting to consumer trends, especially preferred payment methods. If we start accepting investment as a form of payment now, we can give Bitcoin investors a practical use for their currency. In turn, we will establish trust and create a distinct competitive advantage in our industry, said Moore.

While Moore cannot guarantee his decision to accept bitcoins will result in new business and increased revenue, he does believe that virtual currencies will continue to see exponential growth. Mobile currencies are part of the global financial system," he continued. As the era of the digital wallet arrives, providing more payment options is simply an extension of our purpose to alter the perception of the contracting world.

As cryptocurrencies continue to go mainstream, PPD will also accept payment from other market leaders, such as Litecoin and Ethereum. With market volatility raising concerns, Moore can select a merchant account to immediately convert the digital currencies to cash. Essentially, the business has the power to control risk while lowering transaction fees.

To learn more about Precision Painting & Decorating, please visit http://www.ppdpainting.com

About Precision Painting & Decorating

Celebrating its 15th year in business, Chicago based Precision Painting & Decorating (PPD) specializes in commercial and residential painting. PPD is equipped with a full-time staff of professionally trained painters, project managers and supervisors. Owners Aaron Moore and the Precision Team are continually recognized in the Chicagoland area for providing exceptional customer service, unparalleled professionalism, and quality craftsmanship. Compliant with strict standards for ethics, quality, health and safety, PPD maintains the Better Business Bureau, Accredited Member, A+ Rating.

https://www.facebook.com/PrecisionPaintingDecorating/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/3166226/
Frank Isoldi

Haute Residence and prominent New Jersey realtor Frank D. Isoldi continue their successful partnership into its 6th year. As part of Haute Residences network of top brokers, Isoldi is the sole real estate agent to exclusively represent the high-end real estate market in Westfield, New Jersey.

In the industry for over three decades, Isoldi has achieved sustained acclaim that rests on his professionalism, insight and commitment. For 12 consecutive years, he has been the top sales associate at the Westfield East office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. In 2016, he attained the highest volume sales among over 3,000 associates at the entire firm.

For the 18th consecutive year, Isoldi has been awarded the International Presidents Premier Award, the highest Coldwell Banker prize.

Native of Westfield, Isoldis deep knowledge of the local market posits him as the go-to broker in the area. His expertise in luxury homes and attention to customer satisfaction have led to some extraordinary deals for both buyers and sellers.

About Haute Residence:

Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the worlds most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners.

The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts.

HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more.

Access all of this information and more by visiting: http://www.hauteresidence.com
Browse Canadian real estate listings on Zolo.ca Being a coast-to-coast Canadian real estate company is a big milestone for us. Now we provide exceptional service to our clients in larger and smaller markets in B.C., Alberta and Ontario and we are welcoming new clients in our newly opened Saskatchewan and Manitoba offices.

As a real estate marketplace, Zolo examined a few of the 2017 highlights from the past year. As one of the biggest brokerage websites in Canada, the 2017-year ushered in new products, an expanded staff roster, loads of new (and happy) clients and an office expansion that continues to help establish the coast-to-coast reach.

In 2017, Zolo's product development team launched new products, providing clients with deeper access to listings available in the Canadian real estate market. This included the addition of commercial listings. The response has been great, said Mustafa Abbasi, President and Broker of Record at Zolo. Abbasi explains that this will help to grow Zolos traffic and leads across the country.

Another update was comprehensive real-time list of open houses in Canadian markets. With these listings available for Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, home buyers are able to stay up to date on the latest properties.

Zolo also opened up new offices in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The opening of these new offices now means that Zolo clients now got access to up-to-date listings in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. This nationwide expansion and the cross-country coverage is extremely valuable to agents working in fast-moving markets, explains Jon Cartwright, a Zolo real estate agent who works in the Greater Vancouver Area. Country-wide coverage means all Zolo agents get access to cutting-edge technology and up-to-date data. This enables Zolo agents to provide seamless help to home buyers and sellers, particularly those moving from one market to another and from one property type to another. Its about getting the best advice in the quickest possible time, says Cartwright.

Zolo plans to continue the nationwide expansion in 2018, with a push east into Quebec and the Maritimes. This means that Zolo will reach into every province and provide comprehensive and full coverage of the Canadian real estate marketplace.

Being a coast-to-coast Canadian real estate company is a big milestone for us, says Abbasi. Now we provide exceptional service to our clients in larger and smaller markets in B.C., Alberta and Ontario and we are welcoming new clients in our newly opened Saskatchewan and Manitoba offices. Like all licensed brokerages, each Zolo office offers access to active board active listings. This access, explains Abbasi, along with our real-time technological approach and our company modelthat allows agents to focus on customer-service rather than marketing for new leadsmeans we can provide home buyers and sellers from B.C. to Ontario with exceptional representation.

By the end of 2017, Zolo had over 500 agents Canada wide. Part of this rapid growth and expansion meant doubling the number of agents working in B.C.

We are starting to see agents transfer over from other brokerages because they realize how advantageous our tech-driven business model is to their success, says Zolo-founder and West Vancouver agent, Barry Allen. Our clients love that we can provide up-to-date data as well as much-needed context and insight about this fast-paced market, explains Allen. It helps build trust with clients and allows Zolo agents to move nimbly in an accelerated market that demands informed action. We provide great information that helps our customers and gives us the ability to provide the kind of answers they need.

While the residential agent roster continues to grow Zolo also launched a commercial division. As of 2017 year-end, six Zolo agents focused solely on growing Zolos commercial real estate listings. Abbasi hopes to expand this team to 10 dedicated agents in 2018. Jezebel Pimentel, Head of Talent & Culture, is excited and continues to headhunt the perfect candidates from across Canada for this ongoing commercial real estate expansion.

Imagine hosting a site and an app where more than four million users start their home search each month. In 2017, the Zolo website traffic rose yet again, prompting more than 20 million properties to be viewed every 30 days. With more than 90% of buyers starting their home search online, it now pays to have a responsive, real-time website that focuses on giving buyers access to the most up-to-date listings. One of our greatest points of pride at Zolo is the number of properties that are viewed each month, says Abbasi. This is often a deciding factor for clients who choose to list on the platform. For sellers, this means getting an MLS listing on a platform that is built to maximize how buyers search.

But its not all about online websites. Zolos app continues to set records, says Abbasi. Currently, the Zolo app is ranked No. 1 for real estate on both the iOs and Google Play stores. This achievement is because of our hardworking team of developers, says Abbasi. Despite more than 300,000 users and an average rating of 4.2, the Zolo developers are still hard at work. The push for us in 2018 is to work on speed improvements and user experience, explains Jason Billingsley, co-founder of Zolo.

2017 was the year Zolo jumped into the world of media. The Zolo News portal launched and with it our more consistent contributions to Facebook and Twitter. The aim is to provide homeowners, buyers, sellers, investors and renters with information about Canadian cities, updates on real estate news and access to all things home ownership related. We want Zolo to become your guide for understanding how to buy a home, sell a property, save your money and make smart real estate decisions, explains Romana King, Director of Content for Zolo, and along the way we hope to elicit a chuckle or two.

King adds, with over one million registered Zolo users, the need for information is thereand we are ready to deliver.
"Weve noticed an increasing need to be close to clientele in CA, and have experienced a higher demand for our boutique and lifestyle design services in key markets" says Lisa A. Haude.

Paradigm Design Group, an award-winning design firm specializing in hospitality projects, announces its new location on the edge of San Francisco, CA which opened Fall 2017. The firm originated in Houston more than 16 years ago and opened a satellite office in Chicago in November 2016 to lead PDG Studios, PDG Licensing and provide support for the Houston office. The West Coast office provides support for both companies and strategically allows PDG to better fulfill clients needs and projects all over the US.

Our work takes us all over the U.S. as well as abroad, said Lisa A. Haude, principal and president of Paradigm Design Group. Weve noticed an increasing need to be close to clientele in CA, and have experienced a higher demand for our boutique and lifestyle design services in key markets. We are excited about the growth happening within the PDG family and felt that it was the right time to expand, as well as bring on some of the great design talent located in the San Francisco area.

Lisa will continue to be based in Chicago and works closely with both teams in Houston and California on all projects

Paradigm Design Group works with some of the worlds leading hotel brands and has won numerous awards for its work. Lisa was recently awarded the 2017 Bronze Stevie award in 2 categories- Women-Run Workplace and Woman of the Year. In 2016, Lisa won a Bronze Stevie award in the Management category  Woman of the Year. The firm is known for being style makers and detail-oriented perfectionists with a unique ability to incorporate local elements into every project. Paradigm Design Group offers a variety of services including interior design, artwork and accessory selections and project styling.

About Paradigm Design Group

Founded in 2001, Paradigm Design Group is an award winning interior design firm that specializes in the hospitality industry. The company has worked on projects throughout the U.S. and abroad for major hotel chains. Developing a meaningful design requires careful research of the location, property and unique story of a space. It is that special consideration that sets Paradigm Design Group apart. The firm has also expanded its capabilities with PDG Studios, a boutique and lifestyle interior design services brand. For more information, visit http://www.paradigm-design.com.

# # #

Contact:

Heather Wood

heather(at)adesignpartnership.com

310-359-6438 ext. 707
We look forward to Transtector continuing to provide the broadest range of high-performance surge protection products supporting industrial, military, transportation, medical and telecommunications applications, said Terry Jarnigan, President and CEO.

Firmly rooted in technology innovation and customer service, Transtector Systems celebrates its 50th anniversary in business this year.

Since its inception in 1967, Transtector has steadily grown into an international manufacturer of superior surge protection devices for critical electronic equipment, providing low voltage power systems and data networks with immunity from failure due to power fluctuations and over voltage.

Transtector founder, Richard Odenberg, started the company to develop and manufacture silicon avalanche suppression diodes to protect new transistor-based equipment from transients. Building upon the companys success with advanced silicon suppression technologies, the company grew into a global presence providing custom and off-the-shelf solutions.

In 2017, Infinite Electronics, a supplier of engineering grade wired and wireless connectivity products, acquired Transtector, adding the companys strong engineering capabilities, world-class manufacturing operations and diversified set of products to the Infinite family of brands. Transtector, a highly successful, global brand, offers great value for our worldwide customers, said Terry Jarnigan, president and chief executive officer for Infinite Electronics. We are thrilled to be celebrating Transtectors 50 years of excellence, and we look forward to the company continuing to provide the broadest range of high-performance surge protection products supporting industrial, military, transportation, medical and telecommunications applications.

Our success and longevity is due in large part to the strength of our employees, said Chad Minden, director of operations and eighteen-year employee at Transtector. We are extremely fortunate that nearly a third of our employees have been with us for fifteen years or more. Whether developing, building, selling, providing expert technical support or responsive customer service for our industry-leading surge technologies and products, their dedication continues to drive our business forward.

The surge suppressors we build really matter and make a difference for our customers, said Nancy Kjos, manufacturing and facilities manager and thirty-five year veteran at Transtector. Whether it is surge protection keeping a rail crossing secure or protecting critical equipment being used in a military deployment, we manufacture our products knowing they are absolutely critical.

Weve worked hard to earn the respect and trust of our customers who rely on our expertise to keep their systems online, said Rick Ribbeck, key account manager, and twenty-nine year employee with Transtector. We stay at the forefront of technology, working with our customers throughout their product development process to ensure our solutions protect and increase the reliability of their critical AC, DC and Data Line equipment from lightning and EMP events."

About Transtector Systems (http://www.transtector.com)

Transtector Systems ensures the reliability of critical AC, DC and data line electronic equipment from power anomalies, surge events and EMP, with the broadest range of high performance products. Transtector serves customers worldwide, supporting industrial, military, transportation, medical and telecommunications applications, backed by responsive customer service, expert technical support and short lead times.

About Infinite Electronics (http://www.infiniteelectronics.com)

Based in Irvine, Calif., Infinite Electronics offers a broad range of RF components, assemblies and wired/wireless connectivity solutions, serving the aerospace, defense, industrial, government, consumer electronics, rail, instrumentation, medical and telecommunications markets.

Operating under the Pasternack, Fairview Microwave, L-com, MilesTek, KP Performance Antenna, Aiconics, Kaelus, PolyPhaser, Transtector Systems and RadioWaves brands, Infinite Electronics serves a global engineering customer base with deep technical expertise and one of the broadest inventories of products available for immediate shipment.
Expway and Mission Critical Open Platform Partners Awarded Grant by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology The MCOP project aims to reduce integration efforts in designing and building MCPTT solutions, by offering the market a plug-and-play open standards-based platform, said Claude Seyrat, Expway Co-Founder and CMO. Expway eBox for Critical Communications is an important piece of the puzzle"

Expway, the LTE Broadcast expert and leader, announced today that it is part of a team that received a grant from the U.S. Commerce Departments National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for its Mission Critical Open Platform (MCOP). MCOPs goal is to meet the challenges of the emerging and complex MCPTT ecosystem. The project will define and develop an open platform with standards-based interfaces between the different technology layers, to reduce integration efforts and speed-up adoption.

Other members of the project are Bittium which makes LTE Broadcast enabled rugged devices, the University of the Basque Country which provides a MCPTT server, and TCCA, the Critical Communications Association which represents TETRA, a long-established mission critical communications voice and narrowband data mobile standard.

Public safety agencies worldwide are migrating to cheaper, more secure, reliable and standardized Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks for their critical communications needs. LTE leverages open standards, is extremely reliable, and provides much needed agency interoperability. In addition, eMBMS allow first responders to efficiently communicate and collaborate with each other through group voice transmissions, real-time high-definition video streams, and large data transmissions.

However, the MCPTT ecosystem is complex due to the number of technologies involved, and the sometimes-conflicting interests of equipment vendors and service providers required to deploy these solutions.

The MCOP project aims to reduce integration efforts in designing and building MCPTT solutions, by offering the market a plug-and-play open standards-based platform, said Claude Seyrat, Expway Co-Founder and CMO. Expway eBox for Critical Communications is an important piece of the puzzle, designed to bring such complex projects quickly to fruition.

MCOP will develop interoperability guidelines designed to ease the making of the standards-based, reliable solutions, safety agencies seek. Researchers, developers, security agencies and equipment vendors will be able to use MCOP to test, evaluate, compare and validate their individual MCPTT solution components. The platform takes into account existing and upcoming Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, current LTE and future 5G network architectures.

The MCOP Project will be using the Expway eBox for Critical Communications, a complete, compact and portable 3GPP compliant eMBMS LTE network for public safety critical communications. Expway already successfully took part in a full MCPTT integration test at the last European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) MCPP PlugTest in June 2017.

About Expway

Expway is the LTE Broadcast expert, enabling mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and content delivery networks to monetize the mobile video-streaming explosion. Expway delivers content efficiently and cost effectively through the last mile, from the mobile carrier antenna to the end-user device, with consistent high-quality-of-experience. Expway is the only vendor to offer a complete end-to-end, open solution, providing both the LTE-Broadcast server and the device middleware. For more information visit http://www.expway.com
We are a local business that understands the importance of giving back to those who need it most. The KID Inc holiday toy drive is the perfect opportunity to get the entire community involved in donating toys to provide local children in need with gifts for the holiday season. - Tommy Smith

All Year Cooling, a local South Florida air conditioning company, is continuing their dedication to their community by hosting their annual Toy Drive. For the first three weeks of December, All Year Cooling has designated their office as a drop-off location for childrens toys that will be donated to the Broward and Palm Beach County Kids in Distress (KID) holiday toy drive.

The KID Inc holiday toy drive benefits many children and families in Fort Lauderdale every year. Each toy All Year Cooling collects will be donated to the drive and will be dispersed amongst various families throughout the community through KID Inc. All Year Cooling has asked its team members, customers, family, and friends to donate new, unwrapped toys and bring them into their Fort Lauderdale office.

In addition to the 2017 KID Inc holiday toy drive, All Year Cooling is running a promotion through December 23 that allows any customer that donates a gift to receive $100 off their air conditioning estimate. All Year Cooling hopes this encourages customers to donate toys to those in need.

All Year Coolings President, Tommy Smith, has always held community service and helping others in the local community close to his heart. We are a local business that understands the importance of giving back to those who need it most. The KID Inc holiday toy drive is the perfect opportunity to get the entire community involved in donating toys to provide local children in need with gifts for the holiday season, Smith said.

Kids In Distress of Broward and Palm Beach counties (KID) is a licensed, nationally accredited agency working for the prevention of child abuse, preservation of the family, and the treatment of abused and neglected children. From their beginnings as a small shelter in 1979, KID programs have expanded into a comprehensive continuum of care that fills the gaps and meets the needs of at-risk children and families in our community. Over the years, they have expanded their scope of service, built a campus, and created a working culture driven by compassion, trust, and safety. Today, KID boasts the 5-acre Leo Goodwin Foundation Campus in Broward County with a satellite office in Palm Beach County; community-based programs such as prevention, intervention, foster care, family counseling; and educational programs such as preschool and aftercare.

Established in 1973, All Year Cooling has completed over 150,000 air conditioner installations in South Florida. Their goal is to provide the consumer with the best overall value and service on new air conditioner installations, maintenance, and repairs. As a family-owned business, Tommy Smith along with his team makes it their mission to provide quality service and remain a trusted part of the South Florida community for their HVAC needs.

To learn more about All Year Coolings involvement in the South Florida community, click here.
(From left), Patty Samuels, Rick Battaglia, Jennifer Kelly, Jessica Sweeney, Jeane Vidoni Coyle, and Adam Pennicuik, of Penn Community Bank, accept the 2017 Economic Impact Champion of Commerce Award. We look forward to many more years of business growth and the collaboration that makes Bucks County a great place to live and work.

Penn Community Bank is proud to announce that it has been honored with the Economic Impact Champion of Commerce award presented by the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce. The annual award was presented at the Chambers 2017 Champions of Commerce event on Nov. 30 at the Pen Ryn Estate on the Delaware in Bensalem.

The Lower Bucks Chamber recognized eight exceptional individuals, businesses and organizations, including Penn Community Bank, in its signature 2017 Champions of Commerce Awards. The Chambers selection committee, which included some of the areas most accomplished business professionals, received numerous nominations of businesses and individuals who are Making a Difference Where We Work, Live and Learn.

It was overwhelming to see the number of impressive nominations received, said Amy M. B. McKenna, President and CEO of the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce. The winners truly exemplify the meaning of champion in their respective categories, as seen by the impact that their dedication, drive and focus has made on the community.

Penn Community Bank was honored for the impact its growth and expansion has had on the economy of Bucks County and the surrounding areas. Over the past two years, Penn Community Bank has added nearly 30 new jobs, a growth rate of 10 percent, and has opened new retail locations in Warminster and Abington, bringing to 24 the number of bank branches across Bucks and Montgomery counties.

In addition to significant job creation, Penn Community Bank serves as a resource for businesses of all types across the region, offering commercial loans that help fuel economic growth and financial advice that enables leaders to make smart business decisions.

Those qualities and more helped Penn Community Bank stand out and be recognized by the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce for acting as a catalyst for positive economic growth throughout the region.

We are proud to be recognized by the Lower Bucks County Chamber with this Economic Impact award, which really is a testament to the dedication of all of the team members at Penn Community Bank who work hard every day to serve our customers and our communities, said Penn Community Bank President and CEO Jeane Vidoni Coyle. We look forward to many more years of business growth and the collaboration that makes Bucks County a great place to live and work.

For more information about the Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce, visit http://www.lbccc.org.

About Penn Community: Penn Community Bank holds nearly $2 billion in assets, employs more than 300 people, and offers banking, lending, insurance and investments at 24 bank branches and two administrative centers throughout Bucks and Montgomery Counties, Pennsylvania. As an independent, mutual financial institution, Penn Community Bank is not publicly traded and operates with its long-term mission in mind: to help businesses grow and prosper, to provide financial resources to individuals and families throughout their lifetimes, to strengthen the local economy, and to partner with local organizations to act as a catalyst for positive growth in every market it serves.
Greg Force, President and CEO I have full confidence that Greg and Willy will continue to lead Tindall towards a long and successful future. - William Lowndes, III

Tindall Corporation, a national leader in precast, prestressed concrete structures, announces the internal transitions of its President and COO, Greg Force to President and CEO and its Vice Chairman, William Lowndes, IV, to Chairman of the Board. This change comes as the previous Chairman and CEO of Tindall, William Lowndes, III, steps down to focus on special projects within the organization.

Lowndes, III, spent the last 54 years leading Tindall Corporation from a six-person company to over 1,300 employees, spanning from Virginia to Texas. He has led with a strong vision and a true commitment to the employees who serve Tindall and to the communities in which it does business.

I have full confidence that Greg and Willy will continue to lead Tindall towards a long and successful future, said William Lowndes, III, of this transition. Besides enjoying strong leadership, our company is pillared by the people who work hard each day to serve this organization.

Force has served as the President and COO of Tindall since 2004 after joining the company in 1988. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University and his MBA from Georgia College and State University. In 2012, he served as Chairman of the Board for the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) and was named a Titan of the Industry in 2014. He is a registered Professional Engineer in ten states and a Fellow of both PCI and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Lowndes, IV, has worked at his familys business since 1977, having served in numerous leadership roles including COO. With respect to his new role, Lowndes stated, I am proud to continue my fathers work of leading the Board of this company that thrives on innovation and is made up of so many capable and dedicated people. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Civil Engineering.

To learn more about Tindall Corporation, visit http://www.tindallcorp.com/

ABOUT TINDALL CORPORATION: Headquartered in Spartanburg, SC, Tindall Corporation is one of North Americas largest precast concrete companies with five locations providing design, manufacture, and installation of precast prestressed concrete structural systems, architectural cladding systems, and underground utility structures. In 2015, Tindall ranked 5th in Engineering News-Records (ENR) Top 20 Specialty Concrete Contractors in the United States list and 77th overall in ENRs Top 600 Specialty Contractors list.
The Claremont Native American Fellowship helps students to earn a California preliminary K-12 teaching credential and a masters degree in education in as little as 15 months. This fellowship allows us to prepare Native American teachers who have the skills needed to promote educational excellence in their communitiesand make sure that these new teachers are not saddled with debt along the way, CGU Department of Teacher Education Director DeLacy Ganley said.

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) announces the Claremont Native American (CNA) Fellowship, a $1-million grant made possible by a partnership between CGU and the US Department of Educations Office of Indian Education to support 100-percent full tuition expenses (including a living stipend) for Native American students who dream of becoming teachers and serving the children in their communities.

Recognizing the need for more educator training in Native American communities across the country, the fellowship helps students to earn a California preliminary K-12 teaching credential and a masters degree in education in as little as 15 months.

We know our public school systems have historically not served all populations equally well; inequities exist, said DeLacy Ganley, director of the universitys Department of Teacher Education. This fellowship allows us to prepare Native American teachers who have the skills needed to promote educational excellence in their communitiesand make sure that these new teachers are not saddled with debt along the way.

In exchange for tuition and living support, Ganley said, CNA Fellows must be employed for at least 15 months in a school serving Native American students. The school does not need to be located in California. If the CNA Fellow doesnt meet this service agreement, the total amount of funds given becomes a loan that must be repaid to the Department of Education. As such, it is imperative that CNA Fellows are committed to the teaching profession.

Candidates are now being sought for this program. The first cohort of CNA Fellows will begin May 1; that means candidates must complete the application process by March 1.

For questions about the fellowship program, contact DeLacy Ganley at delacy.ganley(at)cgu(dot)edu. For questions about the application or to suggest candidates, contact Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Rachel Camacho at rachel.camacho2(at)cgu(dot)edu.

The CNA Fellows page contains further information about eligibility and the application process.

****

Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is devoted solely to graduate-level education with more than 2,000 students pursuing graduate degrees in more than 20 distinct areas of study. The university belongs to The Claremont Colleges in Southern California, which also include Pomona College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, and Keck Graduate Institute. Students are encouraged to look beyond the traditional disciplinary divisions and define their own unique program of studyCGUs transdisciplinary trademark. CGUs other distinctions include serving as the home of the Peter F. Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management and the annual Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.

Media Contact:

Nick Owchar

Executive Director of Advancement Communications

nick(dot)owchar(at)cgu(dot)edu

(909) 621-8396
Ray Malzo & Mark Smith at the Closing George's experience and expertise are unmatched in our industry.

Performance Brokerage Services, a new car and Harley-Davidson dealership broker is pleased to announce the sale of Orange County Harley-Davidson in Irvine, California from Ray Malzo and Bill Taylor to Mark Smith. Established in Santa Ana in 1974, Orange County Harley-Davidson has seen many owners over the years. Eventually the dealership relocated to Irvine where it became the largest Harley-Davidson dealership in Orange County. At one point in time, a part of the dealership was used as a research facility for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. In 1990, cousins and business partners, Ray Malzo and Bill Taylor, acquired the dealership and brought a new wave of modernization. Following the sale of the dealership, Ray Malzo stated, After 28 years of being a Harley-Davidson dealer, we decided to sell Orange County Harley-Davidson. We reached out to George Chaconas of Performance Brokerage Services because they had sold many of my dealer-friends stores. Georges experience and expertise are unmatched in our industry and his communication and honesty were a breath of fresh air. We also want to thank Juan Pardo for his exceptional follow-up and tenacity.

Mark Smith, the new owner of Orange County Harley-Davidson, is bringing tremendous experience to Irvine. A motorcycle enthusiast since 1992 when he built his first Sportster, Mark Smith also owns and operates Stampede Harley-Davidson in Burleson, Texas and Harley-Davidson of Fort Worth, Texas. In 2015, Mark was awarded a new location for a Harley-Davidson dealership in Burleson, which was the first newly added point in 8 years. After the purchase, Mark Smith shared, We had been looking to expand to Southern California and were very pleased to begin talks for Orange County Harley. With the help of Juan Pardo and George Chaconas, we were able to work through a buy/sell and come to an agreement everyone was happy about. I appreciate their constant follow-up and assistance in making this deal happen, and I would highly recommend Performance Brokerage Services if you are looking to buy or sell a dealership.

George C. Chaconas, the exclusive agent for this transaction and the head of the National Harley-Davidson and Powersports Division for Performance Brokerage Services commented, After so many years building such an iconic Harley-Davidson dealership, it brings me great pleasure to have assisted Ray and Bill with accomplishing their goals. I wish them both an enjoyable retirement. I am very excited for Mark as I believe he is going to experience much growth and success with his acquisition of Orange County Harley-Davidson.

About Performance Brokerage Services

Performance Brokerage Services, an auto dealership broker, specializes in professional intermediary services to buyers and sellers of automotive, Harley-Davidson and Powersports dealerships.

The company offers a different approach to the automotive, Harley-Davidson and Powersports industries by providing complimentary dealership assessments, no upfront fees, no reimbursement of costs and is paid a success fee only. Performance Brokerage Services gets paid only after the client gets paid.

With over 25 years of experience, the company utilizes an extensive network of industry related accountants, attorneys, hundreds of registered buyers and enjoys longstanding relationships with most of the auto manufacturers and the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. The intermediaries at Performance Brokerage Services have been involved in well over 600 transactions. Pledging loyal and unwavering representation, confidentiality is vigilantly protected during the selling process and after the transaction closes.

With corporate offices in Irvine, California, six regional offices in Utah, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Alberta and Ontario, and a dedicated Harley-Davidson and Powersports Division, Performance Brokerage Services provides its clients national exposure with local representation. For more information about the services offered by Performance Brokerage Services, visit https://performancebrokerageservices.com.
Morphys realized sales of $35 million within the last year. Within this same time, Julias generated $43 million - a combined gross of $78 million. With this combined total of potential annual sales, Morphys is poised to become one of the largest antique auction houses in North America.

Effective December 14th, 2017, Dan Morphy of Morphy Auctions, proudly announced that he has successfully merged with the renowned international auction company of James D. Julia, Inc., which will become a division of Morphy Auctions.

Morphy Auctions and James D. Julia, Inc. share a common purpose of delighting collectors worldwide with aligned missions and unparalleled customer service standards. Joining forces creates a synergistic team of passionate staff members to better serve our customers and strengthens the antiques and collectibles industry.

Both companies take pride in having the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the industry. One of the biggest advantages to this merger is blending both teams of leading experts to enhance processes, descriptions, and valuations.

Morphy Auctions realized annual sales of $35 million dollars within the last year. Within this same time, Julias generated $43 million dollars in annual sales; for a combined gross of $78 million dollars. With this combined total of potential annual sales, Morphy Auctions is poised to become one of the largest antique auction houses in North America.

President and founder of James D. Julia, Inc., Jim Julia, has been involved in the auction business for nearly 50 years. He began as a small country auctioneer in Maine but grew the company to an internationally renowned business, which currently consists of 3 divisions; Rare Firearms, Lamps, Glass & Fine Jewelry, and Fine Arts, Asian & Antiques.

Morphy Auctions has experienced tremendous growth over the years. The combination of the highly experienced and much acclaimed Julia team together with the outstanding auction team that Morphy has already formed, will make Morphy Auctions the ultimate place to go for rare firearms and important lamp & glass; as well as, toys, dolls, advertising, coin-op, automobilia and petroliana, and all forms of decorative arts.

Dan Morphy, Founder and President of Morphy Auction Company stated, I have literally spent all my life watching and learning from Jim. With nearly 50 years in the industry, Jim has an undisputed reputation and I admire and will emulate his business approach towards his clients and employees. It is an honor and privilege to have this new association with someone I have considered to be a mentor and leader in the industry.

Over the years, Jim Julia crafted an extraordinary team and unique auction company as a result of his philosophy, business acumen and direct, honest approach with his clients whether they be buyers or sellers. I have always tried to incorporate the same approach. In merging with Julias extraordinary team, I intend to make the transition as seamless as possible. The bottom-line is that I not only want to merge Jim Julias company and his people but I want to expand the philosophy of our business to include much of what created extraordinary success for Jim.

Jim Julia, Founder and President of James D. Julia, Inc., shared, I had never considered not being in the auction business and I have, for many years, contended that I, like my father (who passed away at nearly 90 years old this past year), would continue to auction well into my 80s, provided my health allowed it. The limitation in my mind had always been my personal health. But in November of 2016, my wife received a devastating diagnosis of incurable brain cancer. I immediately realized that as much as I loved the people, the antiques, and the excitement of the auction; there was nothing more important in this world to me than my wife, and I elected to devote my time to my wife, Sandy. From November of 2016 until today, my auction company never skipped a beat and has been extremely successful under the leadership of my good friend and CEO, Mark Ford, who continued to lead, improve, and expand our company.

A short while ago, Dan Morphy called to speak with me and asked if I would consider selling the company or doing some sort of joint venture. I explained to him that there were 3 things that were incredibly important to me; first, of course, was what was in the best interest of me and my wife, secondly, my obligation to my incredibly loyal and dedicated team of employees, and thirdly, wanting to do what would best serve all of the wonderful consignors and buyers that the company had developed over the years. The ensuing conversations with Dan, and ultimately the deal we were able to put together, allowed me to cover all three of these factors. The employee concern was a highly important one, and with Dans like-minded philosophy and practice with his current team; it instilled tremendous confidence in my people as they made their new career commitment to Morphy Auctions. As I said, I also had a concern for all the wonderful consignors and buyers that have followed my company for these many years, and I really wanted to see the core philosophy of my business continue and provide my valued customers with a similar special opportunity as they had experienced with Julias. Dans approach to adopting many of the key components of my business philosophy gave me a great sense of assurance, confidence and satisfaction in regards to the fact that my customers now and into the future will continue to have a wonderful auction experience as they have for many years with Julias.

I have always admired Dan, his youth, his energy, his tremendous drive and his success. I knew and did business with Dan before he became an auctioneer and watched him as he entered the auction business and the subsequent dramatic growth he experienced. Dan is a superb leader and this was very clear and obvious during our negotiations about the melding of the two companies.

In transitioning my company to Morphys, I will miss the wonderful friends I have developed with consignors and buyers throughout my auctions. I will miss the incredible camaraderie of my auction team and the thrilling and exciting experience of the actual auction. Most importantly, I will miss the satisfaction I received from a job well done. I must also say, selling my company to Dan is a great relief. It now has removed all of my responsibilities in regards to auctions and overseeing the management of a valued team. Now Sandy and I can focus completely on each other. I will transition to Morphy Auctions as a consultant for Dan and the team. Under the circumstances, I could not imagine a better conclusion for my business and for Sandy.

Both the Morphy Auction Team and the Julia Auction Team will be represented once again at the 2018 Las Vegas Arms Show, January 19th  21st, 2018.

We encourage anyone attending the show to stop by the booths and meet our newly blended and expanded Firearms Auction Team, Dan Morphy concluded.

Julias currently has scheduled a Fine Arts, Asian & Antiques auction in February of 2018 and their spring Firearms Auction which will take place in March. To facilitate a seamless transition, the Julia team will manage and conduct both sales in Fairfield, Maine, as they have in the past. Morphy Auctions will hold all future auctions and accept consignments in their Pennsylvania and Nevada locations.

About Morphy Auctions:

Morphy Auctions, the finest destination for a fresh to the market collectables is headquartered in Denver, Pennsylvania. The company also has a satellite office in Las Vegas, Nevada. A full-service auction house, Morphys presents over 35 premiere auctions annually. The companys three-part mission includes ensuring consignor satisfaction with every auction, offering world class customer service that goes above and beyond the call of duty, and providing relentless buyer support to create confidence for all clients seeking a trustworthy purchasing experience. Morphys team of specialists include the nations finest and most recognized experts in popular collectable collecting categories; including advertising, firearms, fine automobiles, automobilia, petroliana, coin operated machines, antiques and decorative arts, dolls, bears, toys and trains, cast iron toys, marbles, jewelry and wrist watches. Morphy Auctions is owned by President and Founder, Dan Morphy, himself a lifelong and passionate collector of antiques, banks, and numerous other categories. Morphys has been in business since 2004 and has grown from 2 to over 65 employees in a span of a decade.

Morphy Auctions is located at 2000 North Reading Road, Denver, Pennsylvania 17517 and can be reached by telephone at 877.986.8880, Facsimile at 717.336.7115, or Email at info(at)morphyauctions(dot)com. Our Denver Auction Gallery is open 7 days a week, Monday through Friday, 9.00 am-4.00 pm, Saturday and Sunday from 9.00 am-1.00 pm. Our Las Vegas facility is located at 4520 Arville Street, Las Vegas, Nevada 89103 and is open Monday through Friday from 9.00 am-4.00 pm. For more information regarding Morphy Auctions, please visit http://www.morphyauctions.com.
Claremont Real Estate Agent Jon Brunasso - The Associates Realty Group

In the ever-changing world of real estate, having a smart, experienced broker armed with local knowledge is huge plus. Jonathan Brunasso is just that, and his recent addition to the Swodeck Group in The Associates Realty only further cements his value in Southern California helping Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties. Jonathan has been involved in real estate for 10+ years: buying, selling and investing around the local area encompassing local Real Estate Agent in Claremont, Upland, La Verne, Glendora, Pomona, Diamond Bar, San Dimas, Azusa realty etc. He has lived locally in these cities for 30+ years and is well attuned to the local real estate market trends of the area.

As one of the newest members of The Associates Realty Group, Jonathan joins one of the largest realtor groups in Southern California, with 250+ realtors. In the Associates Realty he is part of the Swodeck Group, a team of highly skilled gentlemen with 40+ years of combined experience. It truly is an honor to join such an esteemed group of realtors, and I look forward to incorporate their skills to further help my clients as needed  expressed Jonathan. He continued, saying I am excited by the opportunity, and know that this is a great chance for me to help those looking to capitalize on both ends of the spectrum. Buying and selling homes in Claremont and locally is what I love to do, and we will provide the best experience to the local real estate clientele.

Jonathan is not only very personable, but he brings 10+ years of sales experience to the table. In addition, he is adept at real estate, business, technology, and online marketing. All of these assets have propelled him to a successful career in real estate and provide a considerable competitive advantage for his clients. Being successful in consumer and business sales as well as solar panel sales has allowed Jonathan to get into an industry that he cares about and it passionate about, Real Estate. Last but not least, Jonathan holds a Master of Business Administration from Cal Poly Pomona, and he is personally invested in real estate with multiple rental properties. Being personally invested in real estate himself for over 10+ years, Jon also brings to the table a list of reputable and trusted contractors available to help from mortgage lenders, home appraisal, inspection, general contractors, and more. Jonathan has 5 out of 5 star ratings on his Claremont real estate agent Yelp listing, Google listing, Facebook & Zillow local Claremont based profile pages, plus he is a member of the Claremont Chamber of Commerce.

Jonathan has a wide arsenal of skills to offer, including many years experience with residential solar panels, helping hundreds of homeowners with solar panel installation. The technology not only drastically reduces their electric bills, but helps to cut down on their carbon footprint too, making the world just a little bit greener.

About Jonathan Brunasso:

A dedicated full-time licensed Real Estate Agent, Jonathan Brunasso has lived and worked around Southern California his entire life in Claremont, Upland, and Diamond Bar. He graduated from Claremont Schools, Don Bosco Tech in Rosemead, and holds a Bachelors & Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Jonathan is a licensed Realtor with many years of Real Estate experience. Working with The Associates Realty Group (which has 250+ agents in Southern California), he has many resources to suit the needs of his clientele. Jonathan is known for his wealth of knowledge and networks, including mortgage lenders, home inspectors, and carpet cleaners. Time and time again he has demonstrated his commitment to the highest level of customer service in all aspects of business -- buying, selling, and leasing amazing homes.

For more information, contact Jonathan at: jonbrunasso.com/contact/
Show Floor at The International Surface Event Cooperation between our two events will afford retailers and interior designers with access to Las Vegas Markets 4,000+ furniture, gift and home decor resources, as well as 800+ top floor covering brands exhibiting at TISE.

Las Vegas Market and The International Surface Event announce a new partnership for the upcoming 2018 shows created to benefit the retail and design community.

TISE is comprised of three premier tradeshows  SURFACES, StonExpo/Marmomac, and TileExpo  and is a leading industry marketplace for floor covering, stone, and tile industry professionals. During the parallel days of the Las Vegas Market, The International Surface Event will offer a four-day preview of the newest products, hands-on demos, inspiring trends, key manufacturers, industry suppliers and numerous education and networking opportunities. The collaborative effort provides buyers with free and continuous shuttle service between the two exhibit venues markets  the World Market Center Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay Convention Center  on Tuesday, January 30, and Wednesday, January 31, from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, as well as free access to both events event floors good for the entire span of both events. Qualified registrations are free, although attendees will be required to register separately for each show.

Las Vegas Market is pleased to collaborate with The International Surface Event and its three major floor coverings trade shows  SURFACES, StonExpo/Marmomac and TileExpo  to provide visitors to both events with new shopping opportunities within related merchandise categories, said Dorothy Belshaw, president of Gift Leasing and Chief Marketing Officer, International Market Centers. Cooperation between our two events will afford retailers and interior designers with access to Las Vegas Markets 4,000+ furniture, gift and home decor resources, as well as some 800 top floor covering brands exhibiting at TISE. Additionally, this partnership will bring more visitors to Las Vegas Market, providing our tenants with new potential sources of business, new channels of retail distribution and new connections with buyers. As the leading furniture, home decor and gift destination in the western United States, Las Vegas Market is committed to providing our customers with value-added services that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the market experience.

The partnership between Las Vegas Market and TISE will facilitate cross shopping by buyers in related home product categories and run concurrently in Las Vegas. The Winter 2018 Las Vegas Market runs January 28 to February 1, 2018, at World Market Center Las Vegas, and The International Surface Event runs January 29 to February 1, 2018, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

The International Surface Event is pleased to offer a partnership with the Las Vegas Winter Market, said Amie Gilmore, Show Director, The International Surface Event. This partnership will offer the widest breath of product offerings and inspiration for the interior designers and retailers. We understand that time is valuable to every business professional, and offering this opportunity to expand the buying and sourcing possibilities concurrently between the events in Las Vegas will optimize the experiences and benefit both events attendees. We look forward to hosting Las Vegas Market attendees at TISE 2018.

Each organization will cross-promote the partnership to its attendees, including interior designers, as well as retailers who sell or specify flooring, stone, countertops, surface materials, and home furnishings.

Las Vegas Market  January 28 to February 1, 2018 (Sunday-Thursday)

World Market Center, Las Vegas, lasvegasmarket.com

Las Vegas Market is the nations fastest growing gift and home decor market and the leading furniture marketplace in the western U.S., presenting 4,000+ gift, home decor and furniture resources in an unrivaled market destination. Las Vegas Market features thousands of gift, furniture and home decor lines, allowing for cross-category commerce among these industries. The Winter 2018 Las Vegas Market runs Sunday, January 28 to Thursday, February 1, 2018. For more information, visit lasvegasmarket.com

Permanent Showrooms & Casual Temporaries (Sunday-Thursday):

Sunday - Wednesday, January 28 - January 31, 8:00 am to 6:00 pm

Thursday, February 1, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm (C13 closes at 2:00 pm)

Gift and Home Decor Temporaries at The Pavilions at Las Vegas Market (Sunday-Wednesday):

Sunday, January 28, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

Monday, January 29, 9:00 am to 8:00 pm

Monday, January 29, Cash & Carry Shopping Spree, Pavilion 2, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Tuesday, January 30, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

Wednesday, January 31, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

Thursday, February 1, Closed

B2 Home Furnishings Temporaries

Sunday - Wednesday, January 28 - January 31, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

Thursday, February 1, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm

The International Surface EventJanuary 29 to February 1, 2018 (Monday-Thursday)

Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas intlsurfaceevent.com

The International Surface Event was formed in 2014, bringing the long-standing, successful events, SURFACES and StonExpo/Marmomac, together with the newly formed TileExpo to create an unparalleled opportunity for industry professionals from all sides of the flooring, stone, and tile spectrum to meet, interface, and collaborate in one place. For more information on The International Surface Event or their sponsors and partners, please visit intlsurfaceevent.com

Exhibits: Tuesday, January 30  Thursday, February 1

Hours: January 30-31, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm; February 1, 9:00 am to 3:00 pm

Education: Monday, January 29  Wednesday, January 31

Hours: January 29, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm; January 30-31, 8:00 am to 5:15 pm

Times listed are subject to change.

About International Market Centers, L.P.

Las Vegas Market is produced by International Market Centers, L.P. (IMC), the worlds largest operator of premier showroom space for the furnishings, home decor and gift industries. International Market Centers owns and operates 12.2 million square feet of world-class exhibition space in High Point, N.C. and Las Vegas. IMCs mission is to build and operate an innovative, sustainable, profitable and scalable platform for the furnishings, home decor, and gift industries. For more information on IMC, visit imcenters.com.

About Informa, Global Exhibitions

The International Surface Event is owned and managed by Informa Exhibitions. Informa operates at the heart of the Knowledge and Information Economy. It is one of the worlds leading business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge and events businesses with more than 6,500 employees in over 100 offices across 25 countries. The Dallas Exhibitions team produces a portfolio of 17 trade shows in various sectors of the construction and real estate industry. To learn more, visit informaexhibitions.com
MarketStorm Global set to plan extensive 2018 objectives with an R&R retreat. MarketStorm Global have put in place an extensive number of goal achieving precautions to achieve success in the new year. The firm understands that if a goal isnt trackable, it becomes increasingly more difficult to measure, resulting in it becoming harder to achieve.

The company has recapped their last twelve months and reflected on their successes and setbacks to tackle 2018 with eagerness and a determination to achieve all of their new objectives. The next twelve months will see MarketStorm Global open a number of new offices with the hopes of ending the year on staggering forty-five offices across America. CEO Gavin Walsh has released a statement on the firms expansion plans stating, We want MarketStorm Global to dominate every time zone in the country."

MarketStorm Global have put in place an extensive number of goal achieving precautions to achieve success in the new year. The firm understands that if a goal isnt trackable, it becomes increasingly more difficult to measure, resulting in it becoming harder to achieve. The company are ensuring they are setting smaller goals as stepping stones to help keep them on track for 2018.

About the firm - http://www.marketstormglobal.com/

The firm has a four-day retreat planned for the 17th of January, at the Atlantis Paradise Island based in the Bahamas. The trip is for four of the firms highest performing owners to devise a game plan to achieve their 2018 goals. The R&R session will focus on techniques and tactics to improve the day-to-day running and efficiency of MarketStorm Global along with performance, development and mentorship programmes.

MarketStorm Global is keen to delve into new areas of direct face-face and event marketing, targeting a variety of sectors with an increasing list of diverse and exciting clients. The firm is excited about the future and their successes they are sure to see, thanks to their dedicated business development programme, and dynamic professionals at the company that are excited for all the opportunities 2018 will present across the entire company.

Source: https://www.inc.com/nicolas-cole/if-you-prioritize-your-2018-goals-this-way-youll-reach-every-single-one-of-them.html?cid=search
Gilbane Receives AGC MA Build NE Award  From start to finish, the project was an extremely satisfying and enjoyable experience. John J. Macero, former Superintendent of Winthrop Public School District and current Superintendent Stoneham School District.

Gilbane Building Company was recently honored by the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Massachusetts at its annual Build New England Awards honoring excellence in construction through collaboration.

Gilbane served as construction manager for the new 187,917 Winthrop Middle/High School, a culmination of the communitys vision for a combined school that maintains separate identities. The success of the project was a direct result of a collaborative effort with Winthrop Public Schools, Gilbane Building Company, the owners project manager Skanska USA Building, and architect HMFH Architects.

The scope of the project included first abating and demolishing the existing Winthrop High School to allow for the construction of a new middle/high school on the same site. Serving 970 students in grades 6-12, the interior of the building was designed to focus on interdisciplinary team teaching. The building contains two separate zones for the middle and high schools joined by shared core facilities including the 12,000 SF gymnasium, library, kitchen, and 580-seat auditorium. Select classrooms in both wings have exterior overhead bi-fold doors offering access to outside project areas, classroom and exercise spaces. Specialty spaces include a 100-seat black box theater, vocational fabrication and carpentry space for the unique Viking long ship historically-accurate ship-building program (Vikings are the school mascot), culinary arts cafe, state-of-the-art science labs, and a community pre-school program learning lab.

The collaborative atmosphere that the team fostered and encouraged served to enhance the project from all directions both aesthetically and financially. From start to finish, the project was an extremely satisfying and enjoyable experience. noted John J. Macero, former Superintendent of Winthrop Public School District and current Superintendent Stoneham School District.

Build New England is an awards program designed to recognize exceptional teams that build projects in New England. It was established in 1981 by the AGC of Massachusetts in order to bring public awareness to the positive contributions of the Building Industry. This awards program was one of the first nationally to recognize the entire project team, the owner, the designer, the constructor and key subcontractors for their collective achievements and collaborative efforts.

Pictured in Photo: L-R: Jason Huddock, Griffin Electric; Mike Duffy, Griffin Electric; David Dockendorf, Town of Winthrop;

Tina Stanislaski Architect, HMFH; Dick Lawton, Town of Winthrop; Joanna Kripp, Gilbane; Dave Girard, Town of Winthrop; Tripp McElroy, Gilbane; Chuck Adams, OPM Skanska; Missing from photo  Walt Kincaid, Gilbane

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services  from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, general contracting, design-build and facility management services  for clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 49 office locations around the world.

Gilbane has been a leading Boston construction firm since 1946, serving commercial, institutional, and public clients in the Commonwealth including the University of Massachusetts, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Genzyme, Fidelity Investments, City of Boston-Boston Public Schools and Reebok. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com
Eric Emley, Vice President Global Supply Management, NAI Erics supply chain experience allows him to align NAIs supply chain to support our overall strategy and vision.

In his new role, Mr. Emley will develop new strategies to align NAIs supply chain with the overall business strategies of the company. As a market leader in its field, NAI is known to be nimble and innovative. The new VP Global Supply Management will form the requisite supply chain to accelerate these company traits and maintain the ease of doing business with NAI that customers enjoy today.

To help accomplish these goals, Eric will interface with NAIs plants and external customers to understand their requirements and provide the appropriate supply chain structure to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. He will also develop his growing team of Sourcing Managers to become Subject Matter Experts in cable, connectors, enclosures and other components used in NAI manufacturing operations. Commodity Specialists will support the quote teams to increase turnaround time.

Eric joins NAI with over 20 years of experience in complex global manufacturing. His background includes successful leadership roles in a variety of industries, including heavy construction equipment, telecom, defense contracting, office furniture, white goods, medical, and architectural lighting.

Prior to joining NAI, Eric was the Vice President & General Manager of the Lighting Division of Group Dekko, with full P&L responsibility, where he successfully led Sales & Marketing, Engineering, New Product Development, Operations, and Supply Chain. He was part of the executive team that led the company through a private equity sale and exit.

Eric began his career in Supply Chain at Teco, Inc., a leading manufacturer of aerial lifts and digger derricks, holding positions of increasing responsibility. He gained global supply chain experience at Terex, where he worked closely with A.T. Kearney to help implement a global supply chain structure to support a multi-billion dollar segmented operational footprint, with manufacturing locations throughout the world.

Jon Jensen, CEO at NAI, stated Erics supply chain experience allows him to align NAIs supply chain to support our overall strategy and vision. His track record of establishing strategic relationships with supplier partners, empowering the organizations to make swift decisions and implementing best-in-class processes, will make NAI a partner of choice in the marketplace.

For more information on NAI, please visit: http://www.nai-group.com. Phone: 248-817-4106.

About NAI

NAI has been a global leader in the manufacturing of advanced mission-critical and high-reliability fiber optic and copper cable assemblies and harnesses since 1993. A world class integrated supply chain, expert operations management, and a global manufacturing footprint in low cost regions, combine to provide NAI customers with a unique solution for their connectivity product requirements.

NAI manufactures assemblies across diverse markets including fiber optics, telecom, industrial, medical and aerospace industries. The companys unique ability to service both high mix / low volume and low mix / high volume programs, while complying with complex regulatory requirements, enables us to support the unique business needs of all customers, delivering the confidence and reliability that enable their success.
The enterprise-sized vendors have removed nearly all options for finding an affordable, and effective secure app workspace that allows the full spectrum of productivity application functionality."

SyncDog, Inc., the leading ISV for mobile application security, today announced sponsorship at eight conferences during 2018 including two Microsoft Tech Summits, the HiMSS conference, the North America RSA conference, and four Enterprise Mobility Transformation Exchanges. SyncDog will be providing live demonstrations and product information about their new containerized mobile application security solution, Secure.Systems, at the events. Secure.Systems is the only product on the market that offers an affordable security solution that doesnt sacrifice the functionality and productivity of employees mobile devices.

The enterprise-sized vendors have removed nearly all options for finding an affordable, and effective secure app workspace that allows the full spectrum of productivity application functionality," said Jonas Gyllensvaan, SyncDog CEO and founder. "Managers need this functionality to continue to do their jobs remotely, and they need military-grade security to protect corporate data and IP, and Secure.Systems is the most cost-effective platform for that."

The Microsoft Tech Summits are a free technical learning event for IT professionals to help build cloud skills with the latest in Azure and Microsoft 365 and connect with Microsofts top cloud engineers. SyncDog will be sponsoring the Washington, D.C. conference on March 5-6, and the San Francisco conference on March 19-20.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HiMSS) Annual Conference and Exhibition brings together over 45,000 professionals from around the world for five days of education, innovation, and collaboration to help uncover the promise of health information and technology. For more information click here.

Where: Las Vegas

When: March 5-9

Booth: #12449

The RSA conference is an international conference series on IT security that connects people from around the globe to network, inspire, educate, and help people stay ahead of cyber threats. SyncDog will be sponsoring the United States RSA conference. For more information click here.

Where: Moscone Center | San Francisco

When: April 16-20

Booth: #4429

The Enterprise Mobility Transformation Exchange is an exclusive event for senior executives from leading corporations to participate in peer-level networking, business meetings, and strategic information sharing sessions. SyncDog will be sponsoring the conference Amsterdam event on May 23-34, the Atlanta, GA event on July 10-12, the London event on September 26-27, and the San Diego event on November 27-28.

The Secure.Systems Workspace

The Secure.Systems workspace provides a secure application platform that encrypts and transports data between the enterprise and secure, sandboxed applications running on employees mobile devices. The workspace delivers a highly functional and easy app experience for users, and protects client enterprise networks with secure, partitioned FIPS 140-2 certified* container on both iOS and Android devices. Secure.Systems secures data both on the device and in transit using AES 256-bit encryption. A full suite of mobile-enabled productivity applications is available in the defense-grade container, including SharePoint, Enterprise Chat, Geo-location Services, DropBox, a Personal Information Management (PIM) suite, Office Suite, Office 365, File Sync, and Secure Mobile App Management & Development functions.

Secure.Systems can be deployed via on-premise or through cloud-based managed service. For more information about SentinelSecure deployment via managed service please visit the website.

About SyncDog, Inc.

SyncDog is the leading ISV for building mobile IT frameworks that extend enterprise app functionality to mobile devices while securing networks from mobile-endpoint threat. SyncDog Secure.Systems delivers an unimpeded, fully-functional mobile app experience that supports Microsoft OneDrive, Office 365, Skype for Business, and other Microsoft productivity apps within a NIST-certified, FIPS 140-2 workspace. The Secure.Systems mobile-app mobile workspace is ideal for organizations that want to deliver a rich mobile app experience across BYOD, CYOD, or other device policy. Secure.Systems can be deployed as managed service from https://secure.systems or as an on-premise solution.

Secure.Systems can be found on both the Microsoft Azure and MobileIron marketplace exchanges. For more information about SyncDog, please visit https://syncdog.com.
"We are always grateful when fire departments choose TargetSolutions to help solve their training challenges, said Marc Scheipe, EVP, TargetSolutions. Considering the time of the year, its especially rewarding to partner with the North Pole Fire Department."

TargetSolutions, the leading provider of e-Learning applications for the fire service, received an early Christmas present this week when North Pole Fire Department signed up for online training and performance support management.

The North Pole Fire Department, located in North Pole, Alaska, came on board with TargetSolutions because the platform delivers a one-stop shop for fire department training management. With TargetSolutions, agencies can schedule, deliver, track and report state-mandated EMS continuing education and compliance tasks.

The departments Deputy Chief Chad Heineken said he initially heard of TargetSolutions through his neighboring departments, Steese Fire Department and North Star Volunteer Fire Department.

Honestly, hearing about TargetSolutions through neighboring departments and other departments that use the platform was our reason for choosing it, said Heineken, who oversees training for the department that was established in 1957. We are excited to find out how we can use it and how it can get us organized.

"As TargetSolutions expands its footprint and helps fire departments in the state of Alaska, working with the North Pole fire department will be a privilege," said TargetSolutions Executive Vice President Marc Scheipe.

We are always grateful when fire departments choose TargetSolutions to help solve their training challenges, said Scheipe. Considering the time of the year, its especially rewarding to partner with the North Pole Fire Department. We are committed to provide North Pole and all our customers with outstanding support and innovative technology. We wish everyone a healthy, happy holiday season and look forward to a fantastic 2018.

About TargetSolutions

TargetSolutions, a Vector Solutions brand, delivers award-winning, real-time training and record-keeping solutions to the fire services, emergency medical services, risk pools, cities and municipalities, law enforcement and public works industries. The company provides engaging, accredited online training courses, cutting-edge software applications, and dynamic performance management solutions to help make organizations safer, more capable, and more compliant. For more information, visit http://www.targetsolutions.com. Follow us on Twitter @TargetSolutions and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/TargetSolutions.

About Vector Solutions

Vector Solutions, a leader in eLearning and performance support, provides award-winning SaaS solutions for the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), industrial, facilities management, public safety, IT and education industries. Its brands, RedVector, TargetSolutions, and SafeSchools, deliver continuing education (CE), training, technology and performance management solutions using the latest innovations in learning and technology to create safer, more capable, more compliant organizations. Its extensive online and mobile learning library exceeds more than 5,000 courses written by 200 subject matter experts and reaches over 5 million professionals worldwide. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For more information, visit http://www.vector-solutions.com. Follow us on twitter @VectorPerform and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/VectorPerformance.
Rick M. Deadwyler, Jr., returns to DuPont in its Agriculture business to lead state government and industry affairs efforts across the U.S Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern region.

Deadwyler will be responsible for developing and delivering state government affairs and industry relations activities for the DuPont Agriculture business  including public policy efforts in the region. He will be based in Wilmington, Delaware.

A Delaware native, Deadwylers background includes nearly two decades in industry and government relations in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast  and builds upon more than a decade of previous community investment and philanthropy experience. Deadwyler most recently served as vice president of community engagement for the Delaware Community Foundation (DCF). Prior to joining DCF, he served as director of government relations for the University of Delaware. Deadwylers previous tenure at DuPont included a number of roles spanning corporate philanthropy, crisis management and government affairs. Prior to DuPont, he served as community relations director for the Delaware River and Bay Authority, in addition to work with a number of community and education programs for the state of Delaware.

Rick is a well-respected business and community leader throughout the state of Delaware, said DuPont Vice President of Public Policy and Chief Sustainability Officer Krysta Harden. I am excited to have him on our team representing the company in the Delaware area  a place he knows very well. He brings extensive industry experience and demonstrated commitment to advancing community progress.

Deadwyler received a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Delaware and a master's degree in elementary education from Wilmington University. Deadwyler serves on the board of the Boys and Girls Club of Delaware  lending volunteer support to a broad range of youth-centered efforts and programming statewide. In 2008, he earned a Top 40 under 40 recognition in 2008 by the Network Journal. Delaware Today Magazine named Deadwyler to its list of Most Influential People under 40 in 2009.

About DowDuPont Agriculture Division

DowDuPont Agriculture, a business division of DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP), combines the strengths of DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences. Together, the Agriculture Division provides growers around the world with the most complete portfolio in the industry, developed through a robust research pipeline across germplasm, biotech traits and crop protection. DowDuPont Agriculture is committed to delivering innovation, helping growers increase productivity and ensuring food security for a growing global population. DowDuPont intends to separate the Agriculture division into an independent, publicly traded company. More information can be found at http://www.dow-dupont.com.

# # #

12/21/17
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:

Home Regional News East
News

World news

EPS: Household electricity prices in Serbia to remain below market prices for a long period

AUTHOR: publics.bg



 Camille King, flickr.com



Electricity prices for households are far below what market prices should be in Serbia, according to Serbian public power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) said, Balkan Green Energy News reported. Dragan Vlaisavljevic, EPS Executive Director in charge of electricity sales, said those prices are expected to remain at levels below market prices for a long period. Household electricity prices in Serbia and Kosovo are the lowest in the Western Balkans region, according to Eurostat data.

Our guaranteed supplies are below market prices and that will not change. The guaranteed supplier will continue to supply the guaranteed market for a number of years, he said, adding that the EPS is facing a very competitive market and has to make constant investments. Vlaisavljevic pointed that EPS is the biggest state-owned energy producer, distributor, and supplier in the Western Balkans region and added that the Serbian power company produces enough electricity to meet the needs of the domestic market.

The EPS officials said Serbias electric power links to its neighbors are much better than its natural gas links and that the main flow of electricity is from east to west since Bulgaria and Romania have surplus power production. Some 14 TWh of electricity cross Serbias borders every year which is about 40 percent of the current production in the country, he commented.

Vlaisavljevic said the region suffers from an electricity deficit with power production being reduced in coal-powered plants but with the hydropower production sector remaining stable. He said the biggest importer of electricity is Hungary with 8 to 12 TWh while the biggest exporter is Bulgaria with up to 10 TWh a year. Electric power production capacities from renewable sources in Serbia and the region are being doubled, primarily wind and solar power production and Serbia is expected to get 1 TWh of power from renewable sources, mainly wind farms, by the year 2021, he said.
America has said its final goodbye to the Queen of the Skies. This week, Delta Air Lines operated its final commercial flight using a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet. The retirement of Delta's 747 fleet marks the end of the jumbo's nearly five decades of service with US airlines. United retired its final 747 in November.

Although the 747 will still grace the skies above the US with foreign carriers like Lufthansa and Korean Air or with cargo carriers like UPS and Atlas, the idea that US passenger airlines will no longer operate what is arguably America's most iconic and successful airplane is sad.

Alas, economics trump nostalgia. The reality is that the four-engined jumbo is big, expensive, and thirsty. Especially when compared to twin jets like the Boeing 777 and the Airbus A350. The 777-300ER replaced the 747 at United while the A350-900 took over for jumbo at Delta.

Consumer tastes have also changed. During the 747's heyday, long-haul international flights operated almost exclusively between major hubs and frequently made several intermediate stops. These days, non-stop point-to-point flights are becoming increasingly popular with no stops and no need to fly to a major hub. Hence the popularity of smaller widebody jets like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

But before we let the grand lady of the sky fade into history, let's take a look back at its extraordinary life as the most iconic airplane in the world.

The Boeing 747 first flew in February 1969.

The big jet and the Everett, Washington, factory in which it was built were designed and constructed in just 16 months by a team of 50,000 Boeing employees.

The people involved became known as the "Incredibles."

Joe Sutter, the man who was tasked with leading the plane's engineering team, was generally regarded as the "Father of the 747."

Sadly, Sutter passed away in 2016 at the age of 95.

The 747 was a major gamble for Boeing. The prevailing thinking at the time was that the world was heading toward supersonic travel.

Boeing bet that people wanted to travel in comfort for less money.

As the legend goes, Pan Am boss Juan Trippe told Boeing that he needed a plane twice the size of ...

... the Boeing 707 the airline operated at the time.

To give Pan Am the capacity it was looking for, Boeing added a second aisle to the cabin  thus creating the wide-body jet.

According to Boeing, the 747 could carry 3,400 pieces of luggage and be unloaded in just seven minutes.

With seating for as many as 550 passengers, the 747 truly dwarfs the 707 as well as other workhorse jets of the era, such as ...

... The Douglas DC-8 and England's de Havilland Comet.

When the mighty jumbo jet entered service in 1970 with Pan Am, the public was mesmerized.

In the 1970s, Boeing was joined by a duo of smaller three-engine wide-body jets: the Lockheed L-1011 and ...

... the McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

Boeing followed up the original 747-100 with ...

... a new variant in late 1971 with more powerful engines and greater range called the 747-200 series.

A decade later, Boeing updated the 747 again with newer engines and an enlarged second deck. This version was called the "-300."

The -300 didn't prove to be as popular as Boeing would have liked. So in 1989, Boeing launched the -400. It featured modern avionics, a fully glass cockpit and greater range. It would go on to be the most popular of the 747 variants.

In 2011, Boeing launched the latest version of the jumbo jet, called the 747-8. At 250 feet, it's the longest airliner ever built.

The 747 has been deployed in a variety of ways, including as a firefighting water tanker ...

... a space-shuttle carrier ...

a freighter ...

... and as the official head-of-state aircraft for...

... The world's superpowers.

But the 747 really became a cultural icon when it was the plane to have for the world's major airlines. For many years, it seemed as if you weren't playing in the big leagues unless you were flying the jumbo.

Boeing has sold more than 1,500 747s.

The venerable Boeing jumbo jet has outlasted the supersonic Concorde as well as its subsonic contemporaries like the DC-10. the DC-10's replacement the MD-11, the Lockheed L-1011, and the Airbus A340.

Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that the jumbo jet will survive its latest slew of challengers, which include Airbus' double-deck A380 superjumbo and ...

... the A350XWB twin-engine "mini-jumbo."

The 747 has also lost sales to its corporate siblings, the 777 mini-jumbo and ...

... the 787 Dreamliner.

To compensate, Boeing has slowed down production of the 747 to just one aircraft every two months in an attempt to buy the sales team more time to generate orders.
LONDON  The government has refused to explain to MPs whether Britain's departure from the European Union will weaken national security and make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Members of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) made a formal request for an assessment of the national security implications of Brexit, but were rebuffed by officials.

Members of the committee worry that Brexit could lessen the ability of agencies like MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to defend the UK from threats, including terrorism.

EU member states co-operate in areas like data-sharing, border policing and law enforcement, which can enable them to identify, locate and act against attackers.

According to the committee's annual report, officials from MI5 said that a bad Brexit deal could "affect our ability to operate" in Europe and that GCHQ said there are "big implications" for their work related to Brexit.

The committee said they asked both agencies to expand on these risks, in the form of "a written assessment of the potential national security implications of Brexit"  but that they were blocked from doing so because of the political sensitivity of Brexit.

MPs instead asked the Cabinet Office, which oversees the security services, but had their request turned down.

They criticised the government for its lack of response, saying: "We urge the Government to be more forthcoming with its assessment of the associated risks of the UKs impending departure from the European Union, and the mitigations it is putting in place to protect this vital capability. "

The ISC meets in secret, and only provides an account of its activity in heavily redacted form.

The 2016-2017 report was published in late December, and covers the timeframe to April 2017.

Business Insider contacted the Cabinet Office for comment, which said it had not granted the request because it goes beyond the ISC's remit  a point which the committee disputed. A statement added: "

European and British officials have repeatedly said that they are keen to continue close security co-operation after Brexit, which the ISC report also acknowledged.

However, recent statements from the European Union, including the assertion that Britain will be expelled from the Europol police agency, have raised the prospect that security co-operation could become harder in future.

During the EU referendum campaign, Theresa May herself argued that Britain would be "less safe" outside of European security arrangements.

She concluded: "My judgement, as Home Secretary, is that remaining a member of the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism."

The back-and-forth over the ISC's request follows a similar pattern to an argument over assessments of the economic impacts of leaving the European Union.
More Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016 than in any previous year, according to a report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 63,600 people were killed by opioid painkillers  11,200 more than last year.

There's a clear standout drug in the picture: fentanyl, which is roughly 35 times stronger than heroin. That makes it a cheap substitute to put in fake pills sold illegally as brand-name painkillers like Norco, Percocet, and Xanax.

Fentanyl, which is mostly being manufactured in underground labs in China and Mexico, began making its way to the US in shipments disguised as office supplies around 2013. In the three years since, the number of overdose deaths involving fentanyl has skyrocketed at a rate that outpaces deaths from any other opioid, including heroin, hydrocodone, and oxycodone.

The death rate from those other opioids (light green in the chart above) has continued to rise too, albeit at a slightly slower pace. That could suggest that recent efforts aimed at curbing widespread over-prescribing practices could be having an impact.

Illicit fentanyl is hiding inside fake painkillers

Beginning in 2013, cops doing drug busts encountered a surprise: instead of finding illegal hydrocodone and oxycodone inside pills labeled Norco and Percocet, they found a much stronger drug: fentanyl.

Since fentanyl is so much more potent than other opioid painkillers, drug traffickers only need to pack their drugs with small amounts of it to provide users a powerful punch. But a tiny bit too much can be deadly.

Most of the illicit fentanyl that cops have seized appears to be coming from China and Mexico.

Components from China make their way to Mexico, where drug makers fashion them into large quantities of deadly powder. Traffickers pack up the powder in boxes disguised with harmless labels and smuggle it into the US. In Southern California, authorities recently seized a group of boxes labeled as office supplies that were later found to be part of a drug manufacturing scheme. One of them contained a quarter-ton pill press  used to punch out pills  that had been labeled hole puncher."

Between 2013 and 2014 drug busts that turned up fentanyl rose by 426%.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration may not have adequately prepared for the surge. In a 2015 report on national drug threats, DEA officials stated that fentanyl was "unlikely to assume a significant portion of the opioid market."

It appears that prediction was incorrect. Instead of decreasing or flat-lining, the rate of drug overdose deaths from fentanyl increased 88% every year between 2013 and 2016, according to the latest CDC data.

But not everyone who takes the stronger pills is aware of what they're using.

Music legend Prince, who died last year from a fentanyl overdose, may have unwittingly taken the drug. Pills found in his home were labeled "Watson 385," a stamp used to identify some hydrocodone-based painkillers, but tests revealed that those pills contained fentanyl.

Last year, the news website Fusion anonymously interviewed fentanyl traffickers in Mexico, where a version of the drug is mixed into heroin and called "El Diablito," or the little devil.
A letter sent to Ariadne Capital's creditors on December 18 shows that business rescue company Leonard Curtis took Ariadne Company into administration on December 15. Leonard Curtis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A representative for Meyer said the following: "Ariadne Capital Group Limited always intended to acquire Ariadne London as a going concern not an asset sale, but the actions of its former MD required it to put the company into administration."

Ariadne Capital claimed on its website to have backed companies including Skype, Zopa, Espotting, Monitise, SpinVox, BeatThatQuote and SoundOut.

The company recently faced claims of unpaid bills in Malta, where it also maintained an office.

Meyer moved to Malta in 2016, and established Ariadne Capital as a Maltese technology investment company. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat even spoke at an Ariadne Capital event Meyer held in July.

But The Times of Malta reported in November that a Maltese company had filed a legal request over what it said was 59,600 (52,632) in unpaid services. The newspaper also reported that an events company claimed it was owed money by Meyer, as well as a former employee in Malta.

Since then, The Maltese Independent reported that The Malta Financial Services Authority is looking into Ariadne Capital. And two directors of one the businesses that Meyer acquired in Malta resigned. Meyer told The Maltese Independent that the company had a "virus" and referred to the two men as "ghosts."

Meyer also told The Times of Malta that "I am on Team Malta  My reputation is not being hurt by this negative press on Ariadne; Malta's is." She denied that her company is being investigated by The Malta Financial Services Authority.

Meyer was the public face of the company and regularly spoke at high-profile events, including the Adam Smith Institutes Ayn Rand Lecture, and was a judge for the online version of the BBC television series "Dragons' Den." She was made an MBE in 2011 for services to entrepreneurship.

Ariadne Capital has faced legal battles in the UK

In 2015, Ariadne Capital was taken to court by Startup Loans Company over what it claimed was a failure to distribute money that was intended for small businesses. Meyer, however, claimed that the agreement had left her company out of pocket. She eventually lost the case and was ordered to hand back the 50,000 in loans.
It has, therefore, quashed the decision of the High Court because its jurisdiction was invoked wrongly.

It ruled that Mr Kayera has the right to file fresh writ of summons at the High Court.

The court, however, declared that its ruling did not affect the new governing council decision on the six persons who have been interdicted.

The court also ruled that the Vice Chancellor, Prof Mawutor Avoke, and the Finance Officer, Dr Theophilus Ackorlie, were implicated in financial malfeasance and procurement breaches, therefore, were not fit to come back and continue holding their positions.

READ ALSO: University of Education temporarily shuts down

Afenyo Markin, who represented Mr Kayera at the Supreme Court, said they were going to start the entire legal process through a writ of summons.
He said women from the two countries demand more sex from their male counterparts causing their men to die before their time.

READ ALSO: Kumawood actress releases adorable photos as she mourns her mother

He argued that women from East Africa and the Francophone countries do not make as many demands as their Ghanaian and Nigerian counterparts hence their men live longer.

He was speaking on Accra-based Happy FM

The marriage counsellor had earlier called men who remove their wives brassiere with their two hands stupid.

READ ALSO: 7 Ghanaian celebrities who gave birth in 2017

According to him, brassieres are not supposed to be removed with the two hands, but with two fingers.
Kumawood actress Clara Amoateng Benson popularly referred to as Maame Serwaa has actually shown the meaning of this Akan saying after she lost her mother recently.

We know she misses her mother but she has also shared a beautiful photo of herself to show her strength and faith to carry on.

READ ALSO: 7 Ghanaian celebrities who gave birth in 2017

She captioned the post, One day youll just be a memory to some people. Do your best to be a good one. #RIPTOTHEGONESOULS#MAMAS HEART.

She also posted her mothers picture and thanked all who supported her during the one-week memorial of her mother.

READ ALSO: Inna Patty denies using beauty pageants as sex baits

I Would like to express my profound gratitude to everyone who came out to support and console me during my mums one-week observation over the weekend. Words cant describe how much your words and efforts mean to me. May God richly bless Yall!!!
Pakistani police besieged the house of the marriage broker following a tipoff that Jeetmal Mehar had offered 5,400 to Pathani Mangrios parents to marry her, according to Africanspotlight.com.

READ MORE: Woman writes college exam while in labour

Masmat Nabia reportedly needed the money to settle a 3,400 loan, but just when they were about to sign the marriage contract, police entered the house from nowhere and arrested most of them except the 50-year-old groom who surprisingly escaped.

The police officer investigating the case, Gulzar Mari is reported to have said, On December 19, around 11am we received information that a minor girl was being married to a 50-year-old man.

We took immediate action and raided the house of Muhammad Mehar. He was the broker in this marriage and had taken 340 from the groom and 170 from brides family.

Meanwhile, the man who was performing the abortive marriage, Qazi Haji Solangi said I was approached by Muhammad Mehar for reciting Nikah. I didnt know the girl is only 10 years old as I didnt ask for age of bride and groom.
According to the Ghanaweb.com, the two preachers have been known for exchanging words over offertory by passersby, but it got out of hands that afternoon when they got physical, because one of them was reportedly getting more money than the other.

Some market women who witnessed the embarrassing incident are reported to have attributed the aggressiveness of the preachers to the forthcoming Christmas celebration, saying they needed money badly for the celebration.
The actress started only as a social media fashion muse to many fashion enthusiasts but now celebrated across Africa for her delectable fashion sense which is next to none. Nana Akua Addo in 2017 drew the line between the ace fashionistas and the toddlers in it with her mind-blowing appearances in the year.

The two-time winner of the best dressed Female African Celebrity from Abryanz Style and fashion awards and Africa Magics Viewers Choice Awards respectively knows how to create conversations with her staggering looks. Not forgetting her double accolades for best dressed red carpet for Glitz (2016,2017),

She seem to be ready for the MET GALA 2018 as she has already matched shoulders in stylish ways with some of Hollywoods biggest names. The photos will leave u stunned but will most importantly would make you proud of her.

1. Beyonce

Nana Akua is seen rocking a beautiful skirt by with an African inspired fabric just as the world best entertainer, Beyonce, is. They both beautifully rocked the high waist skirt with minor differences in style. The music legend matched hers with a jersey to create the street style look while the slay queen rocked hers with a white spaghetti top.

2. Nicky Minaj

Lets take it to the street with this Prada eye wear Nana Akua Addo slayed in as much as Nicky Minaj did. They both looked ethereal in their apparel as well with the fur coat thrown on it.

3.Future

The rapper future did what we thought was unimaginable but in a beautiful way, which is rocking a face mask jewelry on the red carpet. But this years All Africa Music Awards 2017, AFRIMA, had Nana Akua do same in a more stunning way ever. She cranked hers up a notch with gold unlike the crystal stone the American rapper used.
The country has been thrown into a state of shock following allegations by the Minority that expatriates were charged as high as $100,000 just to sit by the president during last Fridays Ghana Expatriate Business Awards.

The subject has since generated huge debate among Ghanaians, with certain quarters calling on the Trade Ministry to come clear on the matter.

However, responding to the issue, Director of Communications at the Presidency Eugene Arhin says President Akufo-Addo is not aware that expatriates were made to pay before sitting beside him.

READ ALSO: Weird Police arrest and detain MPs for opposing a bill seeking to make Museveni rule Uganda for life

We want to be clear that we heard it just like almost everybody from the MP for Asawase on the floor of parliament and also through the media, Arhin told Joy FM.

The president had no knowledge whatsoever about the fact that people were being charged $100,000 to sit by him on a table, he had no idea whatsoever.
"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes," he continued.

"Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

Nikki Haley, Washington's UN envoy, had warned countries Tuesday that she would report back to Trump with the names of those who supported a draft resolution rejecting the US recognition.

"Nikki, that was the right message," Trump said.
Jorge Arreaza lashed out at US President Donald Trump, US and European sanctions, and American interference in Venezuela's internal affairs at the Venezuelan embassy in Beijing during a three-day official visit.

"Our country is under permanent attack and aggression from the United States of America," Arreaza said at a press conference where he also heaped fulsome praise on China, one of the country's largest creditors.

"Thank God humanity can count on the People's Republic of China to guarantee peace or at least less conflict," he said.

Venezuela is mired in a political and financial crisis.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro has ratcheted up political repression this year as food and basic medical supplies run low and protesters intermittently take to the streets.

Experts say the cash-poor but oil-rich nation owes about $20-$30 billion to China out of a total debt mountain estimated at $150 billion.

Venezuela partially defaulted on its debt last month, striking a repayment agreement with Russia, and Beijing has said it is confident the country can "properly handle" the debt crisis.

However, earlier this month a subsidiary of China's state-owned oil company Sinopec filed a suit in the US against Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA, accusing the firm of failing to pay more than $43 million for steel reinforcement bars.

The two sides have since resolved the issue.

Asked if China and Venezuela had come to an agreement on the larger debt issue, Arreaza said the debt crisis was not the focus of his visit.

China and Venezuela "have always built and designed financial mechanisms in order to exchange investments and cooperation in a just, fair and equal manner," he said.

"Financial questions are always fundamental in order to guarantee our cooperation in other areas," he added.

Arreaza also slammed the Trump administration's first National Security Strategy for its strong criticism of China, Russia and Venezuela.
Seven countries -- Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands -- joined Israel and the United States in opposing the measure.

Among the 35 countries that abstained were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania and Rwanda.

Ukraine, which supported the draft resolution at the Security Council, was among 21 countries that did not turn up for the vote.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

"The United States will remember this day," US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the assembly.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem," Haley said. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

"But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN," she said.

"When we make generous contributions to the UN we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected."

How Nigeria voted

According to Bashir Ahmad, the New Media aide to President Buhari, Nigeria voted in favor of the UN call for US to withdraw decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support carries political weight.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
During a meeting this week with the Marine Corps rotational force stationed in Norway, the Corps' commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, told Marines that war could be looming and that his command may soon adjust its deployments to meet rising threats.

Neller said he saw a "big-ass fight" in the future, telling members of the US force in the Nordic country to be ready at all times.

"I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming," Neller said, according to Military.com. "You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence."

Marines have been in Norway since January, when a rotation from the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines arrived. The rotation was extended during the summer, and a replacement from the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines arrived in August. The rotation is the first time a foreign force had been stationed in Norway since World War II.

Neller told Marines in Norway that he expects focus to shift from the Middle East to Russia and the Pacific  areas highlighted by President Donald Trump's National Security Strategy and home to three parts of the Defense Department's "4+1" framework: Russia, North Korea, and China (along with Iran and global terrorism).

Marines in Norway have trained with Norwegian and other partner forces for cold-weather operations. Earlier this year, the Marines carried out a timed strategic mobility exercise, organizing the vehicles and equipment that would be needed to outfit a ground combat force.

Norway and the Marine Corps have jointly managed weapons and equipment stored in well-maintained caves in the central part of the country since the Cold War. The commander of Marine Corps Europe and Africa told Military.com this summer that Norway could become the service's hub in Europe.

Places like Norway would become more of a focal point for the Marine Corps, according to Neller, deemphasizing the Middle East after two decades of combat operations there.

"I think probably the focus, the intended focus is not on the Middle East," Neller said in Norway, when asked by a Marine about where the force saw itself fighting in the future. "The focus is more on the Pacific and Russia."

A Marine artillery unit recently left Syria after several months supporting the fight against ISIS there (burning out two howitzers in the process), but Marines remain in the region  including 450 training and advising partner forces in Afghanistan and hundreds more in Iraq, where they recently returned to "old stomping grounds" in western Anbar province to support anti-ISIS efforts.

While Neller admitted that US forces would remain in the Middle East for some time to come, he predicted "a slight pullback" from that region and a reorientation toward Russia and the Pacific.

Countries throughout Europe have grown wary of an increasingly assertive Russia, especially the Baltic states and others in Eastern Europe.

But Norway and others in Western Europe are concerned as well. Norway has publicly discussed ways to counter Russian armor and boosted its defense spending.

Earlier this year, Oslo decided to buy five P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft  a move that tied it closer to the US and UK, with whom it maintained a surveillance network during the Cold War. In February, Norway decided to shift funds from cost-savings programs into military acquisitions. That same month, Norway teamed up with Germany to buy four new submarines  two for each. (None of Germany's subs are currently operational.)

In November, Norway accepted the first three F-35A fighters to be permanently stationed in the country, joining the seven Norway has stationed in Arizona for training. This month, Norway signed a contract for 24 South Korean-made K9 self-propelled howitzers and ammunition resupply vehicles.

US forces have also moved throughout Europe in recent months for training and deployments to bolster partners in the region, but the rotational force in Norway has been particularly irksome for Russia, which shares a 120-mile border with Norway.

US Marines in Norway have been hesitant to link their deployment directly to Russia  going as far as to avoid saying "Russia" in public  but Moscow has still expressed displeasure with their presence.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said relations between Oslo and Moscow were "put to a test" when Marines arrived in January. Moscow warned its neighbor in June that the Marines' deployment could "escalate tensions and lead to destabilization" in the region.

Norwegian officials themselves have also questioned their government about what the Marines are doing there, out of concern that the country's leadership could be shifting its defense policy without debate.
President Donald Trump granted clemency to Sholom Rubashkin, an Iowa slaughterhouse executive convicted in a 2009 fraud case and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Trump commuted Rubashkin's sentence, effectively cutting short the original sentence of which he served eight years.

Rubashkin is the former CEO of Agriprocessors, a large kosher meatpacking company that was raided in 2008. Federal agents arrested hundreds of people in the raid, some of whom were found to be living and working in the US illegally.

According to multiple local and national news media reports about the Agriprocessors raid, prosecutors later accused Rubashkin of falsifying financial documents which he allegedly used to secure a multimillion-dollar credit line. A St. Louis-based bank lost $27 million as a result of the fraud, USA Today reported.

Trump's decision to commute Rubashkin's sentence had bipartisan support, including from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, according to a White House statement released on Wednesday.

More than 100 US attorneys general, judges, and other judicial professionals signed a letter to Trump in February, pleading for clemency on Rubashkin's behalf.

"Mr. Rubashkin is a devoted husband and father, a deeply religious man who simply doesnt deserve a sentence of this length, or anything remotely close to it," the letter read.

The statement added that Rubashkin  a first time, non-violent offender and father of 10  was sentenced for longer than the "median sentences for murder, kidnapping, sexual abuse, child pornography and numerous other offenses exponentially more serious than his."

Last December, a former deputy attorney general who served under President Bill Clinton wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming that Rubashkin's sentence was based on "perjured testimony and prosecutorial misconduct.

Calls for Rubashkin's release were heightened last year after former President Barack Obama granted clemency to 231 inmates in one day.
The British royal family comes from centuries-old money  Queen Elizabeth II has an estimated private wealth of $530 million  but that doesn't mean they flaunt their wealth on every outing.

While both Kate Middleton and the recently-engaged Meghan Markle each have their own unique sense of style  it seems they both agree that sometimes more affordable clothes make for the best outfits.

While Middleton wears a decidedly British-inspired style, and is a fashion icon in her own right, Markle's American fashion sensibility has more recently been placed under the microscope. Below, a look at the lower price point brands that the two have been spotted wearing.

Everlane

Markle has been spotted multiple times wearing the brand Everlane. The direct-to-consumer fashion label, which touts itself on having "

During the Invictus Games in September, she wore the brand's high-rise skinny jeans  which cost $68  and carried their $165 brown leather tote with her.

Sarah Flint

As for her shoes, she rocked Sarah Flint's Natalie flats  which run for $345, and currently have a waitlist. She's also been spotted in the brand's Grear shoe, which are $245.

Aritzia

Often compared to Zara for its price points, Aritzia is another brand Markle has been spotted wearing. Here, during the opening ceremony for the Invictus Games, she wore an Aritzia pleated maroon dress, that retails for $185.

This month, she was spotted again wearing the Canadian brand, accenting an outfit with a $45 black dress belt.

Barbour

Markle has been photographed multiple times wearing various Barbour coats  including the machine-washable $279 quilted utility jacket.

Zara

Kate Middleton has been spotted wearing the Spanish fast fashion brand Zara numerous times. This Zara dress, which she wore to a charity event in 2011, was reportedly retailing for under $100 at the time.

Reiss

Middleton has also been spotted in the brand Reiss on various occasions  including when she met the Obamas during their visit to in 2011.

Reiss, whose dresses are sold from $205 up to $850, have a wide variety of options within the $300 to $350 price range. The dress above, called the Shola dress, has since been discontinued. But the brand's Cristina design, which retails at $345, is similar.

Le Chameau

Le Chameau shoes  made for bearing the snow and rain  are often worn by Middleton during less than ideal weather conditions.

Here, she wears the brand's $179 Verizon Jersey Lined boot during a snowy volunteer training day in 2013.

Topshop

During a 2013 tour of the Harry Potter set at the Warner Bros. studio in Leavesden, England, Middleton wore a polka dot Topshop dress that, at the time, retailed for around $50.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a company that fell from grace more than Under Armour did in 2017.

The sportswear company that was once lauded as the next big thing in apparel suffered a number of high-profile departures, saw its stock fall more than 40%, and reported its first quarterly loss.

Early in the year, CEO Kevin Plank set off a firestorm with comments on CNBC that many saw as praise for President Donald Trump. He later clarified his comments and left Trump's American manufacturing board, but the damage, in the eyes of many, was already done.

Survey data confirmed that the brand didn't have the cachet it once did, and it had become especially unpopular with teens. Headlines proclaiming that "the glory days are over" kept on coming, and analysts downgraded the stock.

Under Armour has suffered as sportswear has declined in popularity. In 2016, Plank said that the company needed to "become more fashion." It never got there in 2017, and it's not looking likely that it will become any more fashionable in 2018. In fact, another year may just serve to highlight the gulf between Under Armour and its more fashionable competitors.

There are reasons to be optimistic heading into the new year. The company is reorganizing its more style-forward lines, its new Curry 4 sneakers already have more buzz than the Curry 3 ever had, and it's rethinking how to deliver to customers.
Many Americans could get a balmier-than-usual winter, with mild temperatures across much of the South and the Northeast. But it may get chillier than folks are used to in a few areas, including the Pacific Northwest through the upper Midwest. The forecast is also suggesting big snow totals in some spots.

Take a look at how your region is expected to fare.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service are predicting "above normal" temperatures across the Southwest  in much of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana.

The warm temperatures could extend as far east as Florida.

The Northeast also has a good chance of higher-than-usual temperatures.

That's especially true in northern New York and the other states that border Canada in the Northeast (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine).

Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island should see a fairly mild season as well, though forecasters warn that if temperatures dip even slightly lower, that could lead to heavy snows.

Predictions suggest above-average temperatures in Alaska, especially above the Arctic Circle.

The region known as the North Slope is especially likely to see a warm winter  which could spell another year of bad news for Arctic sea ice.

In December the

The upper Midwest could be in for a nippy few months.

North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota all have a better-than-average chance of a blisteringly cold season. Washington and Montana will probably also see temperatures dip lower than usual.

There could be lots of snow in the northern Rockies and around the Great Lakes.

Alaska could see higher-than-usual snow totals, too, especially in the western part of the state.

There's also an increased chance of precipitation in Hawaii from December through March.

But that won't come in the form of snow, of course.

Not everyone's going to get pounded with powder or rain. A chunk of the country from the eastern Gulf Coast to northern Florida is expected to be drier than usual this year.

In Georgia, southern South Carolina, and Florida, there's a greater than 50% chance of "below normal" precipitation.

Because weather predictions are based on historical models, however, much of the country's forecast remains up in the air.

Forecasters say places in northern California and Oregon eastward through the central plains and into Wisconsin and Michigan in the Midwest all have roughly equal chances of a cold or warm winter, as conflicting weather models are circulating.

Of course, these are only predictions.
Francis, who is facing strong resistance to administrative and pastoral reforms, has in previous years used the annual speech to launch scathing attacks on corruption and malpractice within Vatican walls.

Vatican officials must overcome that insane and degenerate conspiracy and little cliques mentality which in fact represents despite all justifications and good intentions a cancer that leads to self-servingness, Francis warned.

They must be antennas who faithfully broadcast the will of the pope and of their superiors, he added.

The pope condemned betrayers of trust who let themselves get corrupted by ambition and vainglory.

When they are gently pushed out, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of an uninformed pope, of the old guard, instead of reciting the mea culpa, Francis said, referring to the Latin prayer of confession.

Francis also quoted a maxim from 19th century Vatican statesman Xavier de Merode: Doing reforms in Rome is like cleaning the Egyptian sphinx with a tootbrush.

His remarks could refer to Libero Milone, the chief Vatican auditor who was fired in June and later claimed he was ousted by old powers.
The protesting students took to the street of Abeokuta on Monday, December 18, disrupting vehicular movement in Pansheke area of the state capital.

The protest tagged ''black week'' reportedly turned violent as the students made a bonfire on roads and allegedly attempted to burn properties.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Ogun State, Abimbola Oyeyemi affirmed that the students touched some government properties during their protests.

Also, a policeman was injured during the protest while one of the students fainted on the first day of the protest.

Meanwhile, the arrested students have been charged to court but according to Punch, the court has dismissed the murder charge slammed against them saying the suit against the suspect was not properly instituted.

ALSO READ: Ekiti State University to pay N10m to student expelled over alleged rape

But according to Punch, only five of the twenty suspects are students of MAPOLY as the police also reportedly arrested civil servants and a corp member parading all of them as MAPOLY protesting students.

The Polytechnic crises

Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, MAPOLY academic staff and the state government have been having issues with the upgrade of the polytechnic to a University, while MAPOLY would be moved to another site in Ipokia.

Following the face-off between the staff and the government, the latter cried out in November alleging threat to their lives and then declared an industrial action.
Architecture doesn't feature in such talks because students tend to believe it is not as difficult as many other science courses.

This course in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, ABU is one of the toughest. It is one of the departments that is plagued with the drought of first class graduates in the Faculty of Environmental Design in the University.

Interestingly, whenever dearth of the first-class graduate is the topic, Nigerian students usually drop the blame at the feet of their lecturers, with the belief that some of them are sadists who do not want their students to break or surpass their academic achievement.

While some undergraduates strictly believe in this narrative, this postgraduate student, Raji Adeleye Azeez has a different opinion about lack of distinction students in the Architecture department at Ahmadu Bello University.

Adeleye explains why the department hardly have distinction graduates

The postgraduate student who believes universities need not produce distinction students every time attributes Architecture undergraduates failure to finish with first-class to their poor start and lack of background knowledge in technical drawing.

The postgraduate student explained that most students in the department do not have the background knowledge in technical drawings but find themselves studying Architecture which is basically about designs.

He said, ''a lot of students came into the university saying I want to be an architect without having the background knowledge of technical drawing from secondary. Some of them do not even realize they have to be very good at drawing before they can qualify to become an architect''

He therefore questions how such students would graduate with a perfect grade when they spent their first year learning the basics of the discipline.

This may be one of the factors responsible for the lack of first class graduates problem in the University.
"I am still searching for the sense in this. I am a huge Majek fan, but do I want to see him perform in a church? How did we get here? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought Christian altars are supposed to be sacrosanct...Can a secular musician like Majek perform in a mosque? Have you ever seen an artiste like Majek perform in a Buddhist or Hindu temple?

''Can Majek perform inside the Okija shrine? or the soppona or ayelala shrine? If other religions value their altars and keep them sacred, is it out of place to suggest we do the same? We need to start asking ourselves these questions and we need to start asking them now! ~FRZ#FreeTheSheeple Story from lindaikejisblog.com Philippians 3 [17] Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. [18] For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. [19] Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things,'' he wrote.
The event saw a very excited and professional Stephanie Coker interacting and making the celebrities on the red carpet have a nice experience.

Coker who looked smashing in her outfit didn't show any sign of 'trouble in paradise' apparently just doing her job like the pro we know her to be.

It would be recalled that on Wednesday, December 20, 2017, Stephanie Coker's husband, David Olumide Aderinokun was reportedly held at the Kirikiriprisons following an arraignment related to fraud at the Igbosere Magistrate Court, Lagos.

He was arraigned before Chief Magistrate Olufolake Oshin on an eight-count charge of conspiracy, forgery, stealing and property fraud on parcels of land in Lekki Peninsula, Linda Ikeji reported.

ALSO READ:5 celebrities that got married in 2017

It was alleged that the accused received a sum of N18 million under false pretence from a woman named Jumoke Fola-Alade in February 2016.

The charge against him maintained that he "converted a piece of land measuring approximately 1764.44 square metres situate at Plot 7B, Block CBD.1, Lekki Peninsula Scheme 1, Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State, property of Ocean Trust Limited for your own use and to the use of others, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 287 of the Criminal Law Cap C17, Vol. 3, Laws of Lagos State, 2015."
Liverpool Echo reports that Oni who was described by the prosecutor, David Polglase, as a predatory rapist, abducted the 23-year-old victim on a street in Liverpool, took her to his apartment in Kensington and raped her twice.

Oni, a housing association worker, was said to have targeted the teacher who was drunk on a night out and took her to his home and after raping her, dropped her off the following morning at a nearby McDonalds restaurant in a 'state of shock'.

The victim went to police to report the sexual assault before learning she had been infected with a sexually transmitted disease and was pregnant. She later had an abortion.

During the hearing, Oni argued they had consensual sex but was found guilty after a trial of two counts of rape by a 10-2 jury majority.

At the trial, Polglase told the jury the woman went on a night out with two friends last year but they became separated in Concert Square. Oni had driven into the city centre alone in his silver BMW.

CCTV cameras showed him meeting the drunk woman in Newington, off Bold Street, and picked up the registration of his car. After waking up without any clothes on and being dropped off, the victim rang her mum and a friend, telling them she remembered saying no to the suspect.

Oni has a previous conviction for soliciting prostitutes in 2007 and was jailed for nine months in 2013 for conspiracy to commit fraud.

The judge said he was satisfied Oni knew the woman was 'incapable of consenting to sex' because she was drunk and made an order confiscating his BMW.

Not only was she incapable of consent, but she would never have consented to sex in those circumstances, with a man whom she did not know and whom she had just met.

You were out in the centre of Liverpool alone in the early hours of the morning as the clubs and bars were emptying and there were people affected by drink and/or drugs on the streets.

Your purpose was clear to me; you were looking for a suitable target. You found one in this victim who was acutely vulnerable. You are a clever and cunning man who is forensically astute."
1. Visit the Grand Palace

This beautiful gold-tipped series of buildings are over 200 years old, and Bangkok's most famous destination. The complex's history and grandeur are palpable: since 1782, it has been the official residence of the Kings of Siam (and later Thailand).

2. Try an amazing elephant experience

The elephant is Thailands national symbol and a revered animal, and there are plenty of ways to encounter or work with the animals all over the country.

ALSO READ: 5 sex resorts for the wild ones

The Elephant Nature Park rehabilitates rescue elephants, and your visit helps their work. To combine your elephant experience with luxury accommodation, try the award-winning Elephant Hills; a comfortable tented camp, with opportunities to interact with the animals.

3. Go to the Hill tribe villages

Akha, Lisu, Hmong and Karen tribes are found across the north of Thailand.

Take a break from your conventional tourist trail and spend a day or a few nights with a local family to learn and experience their way of life.

4. Floating markets

The floating market features rickety wooden boats piled high with colourful local produce. Pick a market, and arrive early to avoid crowds and get the best bargains.

5. Ancient ruins and national parks
The festive period is upon us, which means a lot of things would be happening. So many events, concerts, parties and get-togethers.

This means you should keep your personal effects, especially your money safe.

As we are happy about the festive period, which is Christmas and New year, so are the criminals, who are waiting to steal from you.

You need to protect your money and at the same time protect yourself.

Here are ways to protect your money safe from criminals this festive period and be safe at all times.

1. Lock up before going out

Before going out, make sure you lock up all the entrance to your home to avoid being visited by burglars.

You should do this also when you get back home, to prevent robbery attacks in your home.

Though we are not where we want to be with security in Nigeria, you should put all the possible safety measures to not only protect your money and finances but also your lives.

2. Dont carry too much cash around

Make sure as you go about having fun this festive period, you dont carry lots of cash on you.

Before you go for an outing or event, take time to calculate how much youll need for the day, which should include your transportation so you dont get stranded.

ALSO READ: Difference between saving and investing

You might need to take a little extra In case of an unexpected occurrence. You could be an easy target for robbers if you carry lots of money on you.

You might feel how will they know, but trust me these guys know. Dont ask me how.

3. Dont give out your personal and financial details

Im pretty sure everyone in Nigeria has gotten a text message from funny mobile numbers asking for BVN pin to help you with your bank account or emails telling you to click on some links.

ALSO READ: How to make extra cash selling old gadgets

On no circumstance should you divulge your personal and financial information to anyone or click on links. Your bank would never ask you for your security details or ask you to click on links.

These fraudsters have tried and keep trying different ways to get access to peoples bank account. Dont fall victim to their numerous scams.

4. Go around with cash, not card

Not only does going around with cash limit your spending, it is also wise to take cash out instead of the card because that is where your life saving is.

Take for instance you misplace your card or someone steals your card and these days it is easy to get details of someones account even without the pin to the card.

ALSO READ: Why buying in bulk saves more money

It would be so bad if they get into your account and wipe out all your savings or income.

If you really need to go around with your atm card, make sure you just have not so much money in it because robbers have devised a new way of robbing people.

They know people are going cashless and would prefer going around with their atm cards, so they attack you and they take you to an atm machine to withdraw all your money.

Is it not wiser if you have just a little on you than having a lot and getting robbed of it all.

5. Dont stay out late at night

We all know the best time criminals operate is at night. If you dont have access with to a car, then it is advisable to get home early.

Even if you have a car, it is still wise to get home late. You dont want to be a victim of robbery because you went out to have fun and you got back late.
While attributing the poor services of the ATMs to network challenges, the respondents also decried the attitudes of the managements or the operators of the machines to customers.

The queues, which characterised the centres across Benin, started since Tuesday.

However, a bank worker who pleaded anonymity, attributed the poor services to network challenges and appealed for patience from the customers, adding that they were working hard to resolve the issue.

This promise was, however, disputed by one of the respondents who claimed that the situation had become a yearly occurrence experienced by customers which had not been resolved.

According to Mr Andrew Usifo, we are not just hearing this for the first time, in fact, this poor services of the ATMs have become a yearly ritual at this time of the year.

Last December it was like this and they did promise to work on it, just like they are saying now, but what have we this year again.

They need to improve and work on their network, especially against the backdrop of expected high traffic occasioned by the Christmas celebration, he said.

Another resident, James Acha, decried the fact that Nigerians were virtually going through lot of suffering to get what they wanted.

I just cannot understand this; that we worked extra hard to make money and another tortuous process to even keep it in these banks, and another challenge to withdraw the money, he said.

John Ebidah said that he had to wake as early as 5.30 a.m. to use the machine, as most of them were not working because of network issue.

Ebidah stressed that none of the several ATMs on the airport road was dispensing cash as at 8 a.m. on Thursday.
The governor said this in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy, Mr Yomi Layinka, and made available to newsmen in Ibadan on Thursday.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Olori died in the early hours of Thursday at the age of 71.

The governor described the incident as a big loss to the Olubadan and entire people of the ancient city.

I am greatly saddened by the passing away of Olori Kudirat. It is very unfortunate and disheartening.

We were together with Kabiyesi and the royal retinue at the Chief of Army Staff conference, held in Ibadan last week.

Her death is indeed a big loss to our father, the Olubadan and the people of Ibadanland.

May the Almighty grant Kabiyesi, children and loved ones the fortitude to bear the loss, the governor said.

He enjoined the people of Oyo State to pray for the repose of the deceaseds gentle soul and may Allah grant her the highest place in Jannah Firdaus.

NAN recalled that Mr Adeola Oloko, the Monarchs Director of Media and Public Affairs, had earlier on Thursday announced Kudirats death.

Oloko stated that Kudirat, the late Iyaloja of Bolade in Oshodi, Lagos State, would be buried at the Popoyemoja Palace of the Olubadan by 4 p.m.
Though the case is pending in court, Innoson has taken the battle to social media. There have been numerous sponsored social media campaigns against the bank such as #BewareOfGTBank and #WhatIsWrongWithGTBank. The company has also gone Television, with its owner, Dr Innocent Chukwuma granting an interview to TVC, where he claimed he had obtained a judgement of N8bn against the bank. He added that the bank pleaded with him over their inability to pay, and that he graciously offered to accept shares of the bank as payment.

GTBank on their part has chosen to remain silent on the matter, perhaps trusting in the integrity of the legal system as against playing to the gallery. Many attempts by us to get the banks representatives to comment on the story has proven abortive. A staff of the bank who spoke under anonymity, stated Irrespective of the issues we are facing with the company, Innoson remains a customer of the bank and we owe him a duty of confidentiality and to conduct ourselves in a responsible manner towards him. This statement didnt stop us from conducting our own investigations on the matter, and below are our findings, put in bullet points for your optimum understanding.

The obvious:

Innoson is, and still remains, a customer of GTBank.

GTBank not behind Innocent Chukwumas arrest as EFCC states N1.4bn fraud and usage of forged documents to secure tax waivers as reason for arrest

What we discovered:

What we learnt:

What we heard from the Police:

What Innoson did:

What EFCC is Saying

In a statement issued by the Head of Media and Publicity of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Wilson Uwujaren, he said, The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has released Nnewi, Anambra-State born Industrialist, Chief Innocent Chukwuma on bail.

The business man who runs a local auto assembly plant was arrested on Tuesday December 19, 2017 at his Enugu residence, following his refusal to respond to invitations by the Commission, after initially being granted administrative bail by the Commission, while his surety could also not be found.

Unfortunately the industrialist resisted arrest and stirred controversy by bringing six truck-loads of thugs to block the entrance to his Plot W1, Industrial Layout, Abakaliki Road, Emeni, Enugu, home.

This was after he initially misled the Police Command by informing them that his home had been invaded by armed robbers and kidnappers despite the fact that operatives of the Commission duly identified themselves to policemen guarding his home.

His unruly thugs encircled and manhandled operatives of the Commission who had gone to effect the arrest. Consequently, a distress call was sent to the Commissions Enugu Office for reinforcement.

In all of this, the Commissions operatives acted with decorum and civility. No one was manhandled or assaulted by the EFCC team, and not a single shot was fired, despite the provocation.

Chief Chukwuma and his brother, Charles Chukwuma (who is still at large), are being investigated by the Insurance and Capital Market Fraud Section of the Commissions office in Lagos over matters bordering on N1, 478, 366, 859.66 fraud and forgery.

The industrialist, among other infractions, allegedly used forged documents to secure tax waivers.

What GTBank is not saying:

1. In responding to Innosons motion for a stay of criminal proceedings at the Court of Appeal, the Honourable Justice J.S Ikyegh on September 17,2017 dismissed the motion for being unmeritorious and ordered that proceeding in the criminal case against Innson should proceed.
According to Daily Post, Fayose described the situation as Hunger Haram.

Fayose said Every state has its own peculiarities in terms of security. Ekiti has hunger haram where hunger is catching people everywhere. A lot of people are being kidnapped daily.

They (the FG) either vote money for me from the $1billion or we share the money for everyone to go and solve their problem.

I have challenges and I have to be left to handle my challenges. They should give me Ekiti money.

My state, we have approached the court for justice, because it is our legitimate right.

All accruals to the Federal Account must be shared by all the three tiers of government. For me to get justice, I have to go to court, and I have gone to court.

Bayelsa Governor supports $1b withdrawal

The Bayelsa state Governor, Seriake Dickson has said that the Governors Forums decision to grant Federal Government permission to utilize one billion dollars from the Excess Crude Account for security was taken in good fate.

Dickson also noted that the decision was not a political one but meant to strengthen the countrys security apparatus.
They have also called on the government to withdraw the sum of $1b from the ECA for the development of the Niger Delta.

They wondered why the proceeds from the crude oil drilledin the region will be used to develop the North, while leaving the Niger Delta under-developed.

According to Punch, the militants said the plan to withdraw $1bn from ECA is wicked and insensitive.

The RNDA also alleged that the government has broken the peace accord which it signed with the people of the Niger Delta.

The groups spokesman, Major General Johnmark Ezonbi issued a statement saying We want to state categorically that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government is insensitive and practically negating the principles of natural justice by using resources derived from a neglected region to combat insurgency in the North East in the senseless Boko Haram war to the tune of $1bn from ECA.

Why not access the fund from excess account from the sale of agriculture products in the northern part of the country? Why must it be from the creeks of the Niger Delta?

The Federal Governments insensitivity to the Niger Delta development has obviously reached its crescendo. We will not take this but resist with our might. This broad day light robbery against the Niger Delta people will not be accepted by us. We are going to resist this perpetual injustice against our long-neglected people in the region.

Militants give FG ultimatum

The militants also threatened to cripple crude oil supply if the $1b is not withdrawn in four weeks.

We will ensure that anything that stands in our way will be crushed without mercy. All foreign nationals are hereby advised to leave the region as all our unit commanders have been put on the red alert to resume operation zero oil production on the expiration of the four-week ultimatum, they said.
The Flag Officer Commanding (FOC), Western Naval Command, Rear Adm. Sylvanus Abbah, told journalists in Lagos that the four victims were abducted on board a fishing trawler within the Lagos waters on Dec. 14.

According to him, operatives of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) BEECROFT rescued the abducted Chinese nationals from a militant camp in the riverine area of Ondo State.

He said that after the abduction, the kidnappers took their victims in a speed boat to Igbokoda, Ondo State the same day.

Naval operatives attached to Forward Operations Base (FOB) who sighted the kidnappers as they were entering Igbokoda gave them a hot pursuit.

The kidnappers opened fire on the naval gunboat.

ALSO READ:Naval officers reportedly burn down police station in Calabar

There was a fierce gun battle between the suspects and the naval men and the hoodlums abandoned their boats and fled on foot through the creeks, he said.

Abbah said that the naval men went after the suspects who later abandoned the four Chinese men and fled.

Presently efforts are ongoing to arrest the suspects.

The Chinese sustained bullet wounds during the gun battle and they have been treated and are in stable condition, he said.

Meanwhile, the Acting Chinese Consul General in Nigeria, Mr Guan Zhonggi, who paid a thank you visit to the FOC, commended the navy for its prompt intervention.
According to Punch, the governor said this in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy, Mr Yomi Layinka, and made available to newsmen in Ibadan on Thursday.

The governor, who described the incident as a big loss to the Olubadan and entire people of the ancient city, said I am greatly saddened by the passing away of Olori Kudirat. It is very unfortunate and disheartening.

We were together with Kabiyesi and the royal retinue at the Chief of Army Staff conference, held in Ibadan last week.

Her death is indeed a big loss to our father, the Olubadan and the people of Ibadanland.

May the Almighty grant Kabiyesi, children and loved ones the fortitude to bear the loss."

Ajimobi prays for the departed
The Nigerian delegation at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, expressed concern on the adverse effect of corruption on the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The delegation was led by the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations Office and other International Organisations in Geneva, Amb. Audu Kadiri.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Nigeria was recently re-elected into the Council for another two-year term.

Nigeria said it has called for the unconditional repatriation of illicit funds to countries of origin in its several interventions on human rights situations across the globe.

It stressed that repatriating illicit funds to countries of origin would immensely help the countries in achieving their development plans and reform processes.

The Nigerian delegation stated that such measures would create a more conducive atmosphere for the promotion and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

On the issue of migrant workers, Nigeria stressed the need for international cooperation in this regard.

It noted the alarming vulnerability of migrants children and women, and urged transit and destination countries to give priority to saving the lives of vulnerable migrants regardless of their nationalities and immigration status.

It further noted that migrant workers are important contributors to the socio-economic development of both countries of origin and destination.

Nigeria, therefore, encouraged states of origin, transit and destination to enhance cooperation among themselves in the best interest of the vulnerable migrants, particularly women and children.

During the general debate on the Oral Update, the High Commissioner for Human Rights briefed the session on the work of his office.

Nigeria emphasised the need for a global synergy as well as respect for the sovereign equality of nations and non-politicisation, in addressing human rights situations across the world.

It reaffirmed its commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Some of Nigerias interventions focused on the right to development and sustainable environmental management.

On the issue of sustainable environmental management, Nigeria noted the adverse effect of oil pollution in the oil producing Niger Delta region, which has affected the livelihood of the people of the region.

It, therefore, reaffirmed its commitment to the issue of sustainable environmental management.

Furthermore, on the subject of the right to development, Nigeria emphasised the importance of international cooperation and solidarity for the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

It underscored the interconnectivity between the right to development and the 2030 Agenda, and called for concerted effort by states for the realisation of the right to development.

The Nigerian delegation noted that the Human Rights Council had continued to be politicised, as virtually every human rights issue was given a political colouration.

In this regard, Nigeria stressed the importance of upholding the principle of respect and sovereign equality of States, which is the basis for international intercourse.
For a bit of context, El-Rufai and Atiku have little love for the other. Their frosty relationship pans the Obasanjo, Yaradua, Jonathan and Buhari eras.

When Atiku announced his resignation from the APC, El-Rufai went on the offensive again.

And during a Voice of America (VOA) program called Democracy Today on December 21, 2017, El-Rufai went for Atikus jugular like he loves to do.

Here are five El-Rufai punches that may have landed.

1. El-Rufai says Atiku didnt contribute a dime to Buharis 2015 campaign

Atiku tells anyone who cares to listen that he contributed to the presidential campaign of the APC back in 2015.

El-Rufai says thats a big, fat lie.

His words: Agreed, in politics if you lose even only one person, it should worry you, but the utterances of the former vice-president that APC used his money, who did he give the money to?

For me, I know those that supported us with their money and property that we used during election, and I never heard the name of Atiku that he brought a dime.

If Atiku said he brought money, who did he give it to? Let him come and say it and how much did he give and what was it used for?

2. El-Rufai challenges Atiku to name who he gave money to

If Atiku contributed to Buharis presidential campaign like he often claims, El-Rufai wants names of those who received his money.

ALSO READ: Former VP yet to decide on running for President in 2019

And, in fact, if Atiku brought money, I ought to know, because I was part of the leadership of the party and during campaign, along with former Governor .

We were at the centre of the presidential campaign. Therefore, we are supposed to know. So, let him mention who he gave the money and how much?

Tough ask?

3. APC chieftains knew Atiku was going to leave their party before he did

This is the second time El-Rufai would be making this point.

According to the Kaduna Governor, everyone who mattered in the APC knew that Atiku was going to make the jump before he did.

We in the APC were aware from the outset that Atiku was going to leave the APC back to the PDP in December and we thank God that he left in November, he said.

4. Atiku left the APC because he was never going to get the partys presidential ticket

Maybe this has no shock value left in it, but what do we know?

Heres El-Rufai as Captain obvious:

Even if President Buhari decides not to contest, Atiku knows that the APC ticket is not sure for him.

That is why he left APC since he was only looking for where

5. El-Rufai says Buhari will beat Atiku in a head-to-head

El-Rufai has been bullish on Buhari's re-election chances. There was more of that chest thumping on display again.

"So, by 2019, we are waiting to see Atiku contest; we are waiting to contest against him and see what happens. I cannot lose sleep because Atiku wants to contest because, by Gods grace, this is the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Atiku had seen that we in the APC, especially the APC Governors, had resolved to support President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019.
The Adamawa native had recently made a high profile return to the People's Democratic Party (PDP) after resigning from the All Progressives' Congress (APC) with expectations high that he'll run against President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

However, while speaking during an interview with the Hausa service of the Voice of America (VOA) on Tuesday, December 19, 2017, he said his mind is not currently made up about it.

"For now I have not made up my mind. When I decide, I will let the world know," he said.

In reaction to the comments, Atiku's spokesperson, Paul Ibe, said his fans should not be discouraged by his utterance.

He said, "He spoke in the context of his ongoing consultations, but he'll eventually make up his mind to run. Those who have started politicking on his behalf should continue."

Atiku's defection from APC to PDP

In what was a widely-expected move, Atiku resigned as a member of the All Progressives' Congress (APC on November 24, after months of growing discontent.

In his signed resignation letter, the 71-year-old accused President Buhari of neglecting him and condemned the APC for "instituting a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy".

In a live Facebook broadcast on December 3, the former Vice President officially declared his return to the PDP.

In an interview with Dele Momodu, the Publisher of The Boss magazine, Atiku noted that Buhari has wasted his massive goodwill, adding that he will defeat the president in 2019.

History of Atiku as presidential contestant

After serving as Vice President to former President Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 to 2007 under the PDP, Atiku contested the 2007 presidential election as a candidate for Action Congress (AC), losing to the late former President Umaru Yar'Adua.

He returned to the PDP only to lose the party's primary election for the 2011 presidential election to the eventual winner, Goodluck Jonathan.
The Governor cast doubt on the claims that Atiku funded Buhari's campaign with his personal wealth, saying he would have been aware as part of the party's leading members.

He further reiterated his confidence in President Buhari's reelection chances in the 2019 presidential election, saying he can't lose sleep over Atiku's potential candidacy especially in light of the president's improved health.

The governor made these remarks while speaking during an interview with the Hausa service of the Voice of America (VOA) in Kaduna on Wednesday, December 20, 2017.

He said, "We in the APC were aware from the outset that Atiku was going to leave the APC back to the PDP in December and we thank God that he left in November.

"Atiku had seen that we in the APC, especially the APC governors, had resolved to support President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019. That is why he left APC since he was only looking for where to contest for president.

"Even in the 2015 APC primary election, Atiku didn't come second; he was floored by Kwankwaso. So, even if President Buhari decides not to contest, Atiku knows that the APC ticket is not sure for him.

"Majority of the APC governors have endorsed President Buhari as our candidate for 2019.

"And God has continued to improve the health condition of the President. Each time I see him, I thank God and I still pray that God continues to give him sound health.

"So, by 2019, we are waiting to see Atiku contest; we are waiting to contest against him and see what happens. I cannot lose sleep because Atiku wants to contest because, by God's grace, this is the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari.

"Agreed, in politics if you lose even only one person, it should worry you, but the utterances of the former Vice President that APC used his money who did he give the money to?

"For me, I know those that supported us with their money and property that we used during election, and I never heard the name of Atiku that he brought a dime.

"If Atiku said he brought money, who did he give it to? Let him come and say it and how much did he give and what was it used for?

"And, in fact, if Atiku brought money, I ought to know, because I was part of the leadership of the party and during campaign, along with former Governor Rotimi Amaechi. We were at the centre of the presidential campaign. Therefore, we are supposed to know. So, let him mention who he gave the money and how much?"

"We cannot rule out the possibility of some greedy people following him; those that are following material things. But, if people will consider how we can work for the progress of our country, everybody knows that you cannot compare Atiku with President Muhammadu Buhari."

Buhari's reelection status

While the president has refused to officially declare his intention to seek reelection in 2019, he has flirted around the topic in recent weeks.

While meeting with the Nigerian community in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire last month, the president explained that he was accompanied to the meeting by two state governors because it will "be another vote for me in the future."

Also, while speaking during a two-day visit to Kano State a week later, the president said he's confident of winning reelection particularly due to the crowd turnout.

"I am overwhelmed by the sea of people I see, and by what I see today, if elections are contested I will no doubt win it," he said.

Atiku's defection from APC to PDP

In what was a widely-expected move, Atiku resigned as a member of the All Progressives' Congress (APC on November 24, after months of growing discontent.

In his signed resignation letter, the 71-year-old accused President Buhari of neglecting him and condemned the APC for "instituting a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy".

In a live Facebook broadcast on December 3, as expected, the former Vice President officially declared his return to the PDP.

In an interview with Dele Momodu, the Publisher of The Boss magazine, Atiku noted that Buhari has wasted his massive goodwill, adding that he will defeat the president in 2019.

History of Atiku as presidential contestant

After serving as Vice President to former President Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 to 2007 under the PDP, Atiku contested the 2007 presidential election as a candidate for Action Congress (AC), losing to the late former President Umaru Yar'Adua.

He returned to the PDP only to lose the party's primary election for the 2011 presidential election to the eventual winner, Goodluck Jonathan.
Fresh PDP was unveiledon December 20, 2017 at a poorly attended press conference.

The new PDP faction is led by a certain Emmanuel Nwosu who says he stands against the imposition of a unity list on members at the just concluded PDP convention.

Should you take this PDP faction seriously?

Not really. You can pay them as much attention as you would a fly perched on a wall.

Fresh PDP is unregistered at the time of writing and you could regard these guys as a bunch of very aggrieved gentlemen.

Nothing more.

What gave birth to Fresh PDP?

You see, after the PDP elective convention of December 9, 2017, a lot of personsespecially from Nigeria's Southwest regiongot really aggrieved.

There was a unity list that made the rounds on convention day, stipulating select candidates for the different positions, well before the first vote was cast in anger.

Everyone on that unity list became a PDP executive by Sunday, December 10.

Fresh PDP is a fallout of a convention which proved that imposition of candidates and rigging haven't left the PDP.

This splinter party just wants to make enough noise to bring them to the table for appeasement and further negotiations on power sharing.

Its politics, stupid.

Should PDP chieftains lose sleep over Fresh PDP?

Not at all.

Fresh PDP would disappear as fast as it has emerged.

Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has described members of Fresh PDP as a bunch of jobless miscreants..charlatans.

New PDP Chairman, Uche Secondus, says Fresh PDP is the handiwork of enemies or the governing APC.

We are focused, we know the enemy is at work, we know several things have been going on. People predicted that our convention will not be successful and at the end of the day it was successful  so, they are not happy, Secondus said.

The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondinyan, says: The PDP is completely unperturbed by the comical act of some individuals who make outlandish claims in the media regarding our party.

The fact is that we are happy with the efforts of the Governor Seriake Dickson-led Reconciliation Committee, as well as the responses from all the respectable and responsible leaders of our party in that regard.

ALSO READ: 7 things we learnt from PDP convention
President Muhammadu Buhari had on Thursday, November 23, 2017, submitted the names of two Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) nominee to the Senate -- Rufus Akeju and Mahmud Ahmed representing Lagos and Zamfara, respectively.

But, Governor Yari wrote a damning letter to President Buhari to discredit Mahmud.

The governor alleged that the nominee was from Kebbi state and not Zamfara as claimed.

Speaking at plenary on Thursday, December 21, 2017, Marafa said the nominee had served Zamfara state for several years and could deliver a REC nominee for the state.

The lawmaker disclosed that Yaris was not from Zamfara state.

My president in your wisdom when I came with a motion for a passionate appeal to my colleagues to do justice for an innocent Nigerian who was nominated to represent Zamfara state in INEC as a resident electoral commissioner, Marafa said.

You directed that the matter back to the committee for further legislative action. I took that wise counsel from you that the committee will do the needful even when I know that there is nothing they can add to what they have done because their report was quite explicit and extensive, Mr president order 1 (27) says 'in considering the appointment of a nominee, the committee shall not call to witness any person as witness other than the nominee himself.

ALSO READ: PDP Reps stage protest against Speaker Dogara

However, there may be memorandum submitted to committee, if any such memorandum should contain the names of the writer, a verifiable address, a clear and dated signature and it shall be accompanied by an affidavit'

It is very clear that the only opposition to this nominee is coming from the governor of Zamfara state who wrote to the president that the nominee is not from Zamfara state but from Sokoto state. My distinguished colleague from Zamfara north stood on the floor to say the nominee is from Kebbi State.

The committee did a very good job when they said the nominee was born in Gusau, went to school in Anka, he served as the commissioner of justice in Zamfara for four years. The governor wrote a petition, he has a right to write a petition but he cannot violate our order - his petition is not accompanied with an affidavit, therefore his petition is null and void.

I want to state very clearly that the governor has no right, this is senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we are not his boys. I am not his boy and this senate cannot be his rubber stamp we are not hold somebody's future because of the interest of one particular one who is equally guilty.
What exactly does Offers.ng have to offer?

Efritin came at it with everything, and left with nothing. OLX works hard to make sure what happened with the maid doesnt repeat itself. Jiji, on the other hand spends a ton of money on advertising to make sure we never forget them. How does a product like Offers plan to survive this space?

Anjola told Techmoran this;

We do believe that though there are many existing classifieds platforms, the market is still big enough for everyone. We dont see competition, we see opportunities.

He believes they have the ginger to speed up innovation;

To put our strategy in perspective, we already took a leap in redefining the space by being the first e-commerce site to implement the WhatsApp Seller option in Nigeria (which we introduced some weeks before Konga), and there are more where that came from.

One important question remains unanswered.

Security. It has proven to be one of the biggest problems classifieds, and generally e-commerce, suffers in Nigeria.

Anjola said:

Before we launched a beta version of the platform in September, we conducted a market survey to determine currently what are the challenges of users who use classifieds in Nigeria. The findings have really shaped the development of our platform as we found that security issues really ranks high on the list.

We have worked on and developed proprietary security measures that we hope will flag too good to be true ads and spams, with machine learning to improve its efficiency over time. We spend a lot of time plugging in security lapses and building a platform where users can trade with some measure of trust.

In the early part of 2018, we will roll out some additional features that will redefine how people use classifieds site, introducing extra added layers of security.

Asides this, they have also been in touch with Eddy from Safetrade to see how they could integrate their API and are also on the lookout for other platforms to ensure user security and prevent fraud.

About challenges, Anjola believes conversion is one of the biggest;

Not only of the crowd already online but of those currently offline. Whilst the potential is certainly really huge, we do believe that even the heavyweights in the sector have not fully tapped the opportunities in the sector. When people say success online is offline, it is particularly true of this sector.

Were not converted either

And its because as it is, Offers is not particularly offering anything groundbreaking. Even bigger a problem is the lack of the marketing end of things. 10 years ago, this might have been beautiful and exciting even with a lean marketing budget. The market today on the other end, is big on marketing spend and will spend 100s of thousands of dollars on marketing monthly.

The real asset here is not Offers.ng

The real asset here is the team, Anjola, and the the people he works with to build this. According to Anjola, theres three of them. Perhaps, theyd do well with some mentorship with more experienced people, and even if Offers fails, theyd still have the learnings and be better of.

Asked about his recipe for success, he said:

At 19, I have been a college drop out and only just returned to school. Ask me this question in 5 years.
So when Truecaller decided to share data for calling in 2017, we knew it was a good day.

Some interesting Truecaller numbers.

10 billion calls were made using Truecallers dialer. The country that took the lion share of these calls was Somalia. This country made the most calls per person in 2017, with the average person making about 19 calls while receiving 14, daily.

The SMS king though, is Tanzania. The average user sends 10 SMSes per day and receives 16 per day.

The Spam count shot up this year.

They was a spike in the amount of spam calls this year, all over the world. Over 40 million unique spam numbers were detected this year by Truecaller. Bringing it back home, one number connected with a Telco in Nigeria made 38 million calls in a year!

At second position is our Southeast Asian cousin, India, and 31 million calls.

Why do these Telcos make spam calls?

Marketing. Very very annoying marketing. It would be interesting to one day see numbers of how many people actually listen to those calls.

P.S

These numbers are clearly based on Truecaller stats alone. The Swedish company is simply a telephone directory on steroids, but not the ultimate directory of the entire world, at least not yet. And while we don't know exactly what Telco Truecaller is talking about, we have guesses.
But market pressures are driving innovation of the beloved holiday tradition -- not least in Luebeck, the charming port city in northern Germany that is arguably the world capital of marzipan.

"We are anxious to make the image a bit younger and also cater to other target groups."

The delicacy was, according to Luebeck lore, invented in the 15th century and has been savoured by Prussian emperors and praised by cherished writers such as local son Thomas Mann, whose visage carved in marzipan can be seen at a museum on the city's high street.

However, the rising price of almonds has also put a strain on the venerable family businesses that make the product, several of which have gone bankrupt in the past few years.

The Luebeck firm Niederegger, founded in 1806, is one of the oldest German candy companies and occupies a central place in the city, where its products are sold on seemingly every corner.

Part of marzipan's charm is that it can be formed into countless shapes such as snowmen, Christmas trees and pigs.The industry is in the process of widening the variety further in order to remain competitive.

Two years ago, Niederegger launched a successful line of marzipan for men called "Man Stuff" in which the marzipan is tinged with "bitter" flavours like cashews and whiskey and comes in virile packaging like toolboxes.

Eight generations

"Women buy marzipan, but men also like to eat it," Kathrin Gaebel, a Niederegger spokeswoman, explained in the company's bustling factory, where smashed almonds are caramelised in copper pots at a temperature kept secret.

The company even installed a 3-D printer to make little marzipan figures in its packed store in downtown Luebeck, though the machine cannot replicate the delicate shapes crafted in the factory, where replicas of fruit and animals are handmade to order.

Niederegger hopes that such changes may help expand its sales, 60 percent of which occur around Christmas.

Two sisters, Antonie Strait and Theresa Mehrens-Strait, now run the company as the eighth generation of the Niederegger family.

But rising costs of nuts have made their work difficult.

"The hazelnut industry and almond industry have both been suffering," Marcia Mogelonsky, a food specialist at the market research firm Mintel, told AFP.

When the cost of almonds rises, as it does after periods of drought in California, the company must bear far higher costs.

"When you think that we have 2/3 almonds and only 1/3 sugar, you have to think that the price (of the marzipan) would need to double at least," when the cost of almonds quadruples, said Gaebel.

Niederegger refuses to further sweeten its marzipan, even though doing so could cut costs and attract more customers abroad, who currently account for only 20 percent of sales.

Gift for children

Marzipan from Luebeck is protected by the European Union under the same category as Czech beer and French poultry, and companies must adhere to strict rules about the contents of the almond paste.

The rising price of foodstuffs has affected all of the German sweets industry with sales stagnating for the past several years.

But they especially hurt small companies like Niederegger, which employs around 750 people.

Last year the state of Schleswig-Holstein gave Niederegger and another local marzipan company 885,000 euros ($1.04 million) to help promote new and quicker forms of production.

Traditional companies need support to be competitive worldwide, said Harald Haase, spokesman for the regional economy ministry.

A number of small confectionery companies in Germany have been sold to larger corporations or are bankrupt, according to business newspaper Handelsblatt.

Gaebel declined to comment on Niederegger's profits but said "we are lucky that we are a family company."

Starting in January Niederegger will sell an ice cream line throughout Germany and the company, which said it develops 15 new products a year, has experimented with new flavours such as cheesecake and maple syrup.

And despite all the innovation, when it comes to marzipan it may just be its central place in German culture that helps it survive.
Victoria state police said the 32-year-old driver, an Australian of Afghan descent, was known to authorities for traffic and "minor assault" offences and had mental health issues.

The car was driven "intentionally" through the intersection and collided with a "large number" of pedestrians, Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters in Melbourne.

The driver "has a history of drug use and mental health issues... At this time we do not have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism" or extremism, he said.

The man was arrested after a tussle with an off-duty police officer.

Investigators were waiting to interview the driver, who was in hospital under police guard.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews, called the incident an "evil, deliberate, cowardly act" that left 19 people hurt -- four of them critically.

'Thump, thump'

In a tweet, police appealed to members of the public to upload any images they might have of the incident to help assist with their investigation.

A witness, named only as Sue, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that she heard screams and saw "people flying everywhere".

"We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said.

"People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere."

Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw an "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys -- and I hope not prams," he said.

"I've really never seen anything like this before and I haven't stopped shaking."

The intersection is one of Melbourne's busiest, a local shop owner told national broadcaster ABC, and is particularly crowded at this time of the year ahead of the Christmas break, with school holidays under way.

Vehicle attacks

The incident came after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne's busiest mall in January, killing six people.

The driver, whose case is still being heard in court, had been pursued by police prior to the rampage after he had allegedly stabbed his brother.

Canberra has become increasingly worried about homegrown extremism and officials say they have prevented 13 terror attacks on home soil in the past few years.

The Australian government in August unveiled a strategy aimed at preventing vehicle attacks in crowded public places.

Suggested steps include deterrent options like fencing and closed circuit cameras, and delaying approaches such as trees and bollards to slow down vehicles.

Melbourne has also been installing a public siren system and more security cameras to warn people of a possible terrorist attack or other serious threats.

Andrews said there would an inquiry into the incident, and whether any further changes to Melbourne's security measures needed to be made.

Over the next few days, hundreds more police would patrol the city, he added.

While the circumstances surrounding Thursday's incident were still unclear, there have been several cases of vehicles being used to deliberately maim and kill.

The most deadly such case was in the southern French city of Nice on July 14, 2016, when 31-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed a 19-tonne truck down a beachside promenade, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more.
The federal prosecutor in the local town of Chambery, a gateway to the snowcapped Alps, said Wednesday that "all of the worrying disappearances" in the region would be reexamined.

These are expected to include the case of 24-year-old Belgian chef Adrien Mourialme who was working in a high-end restaurant on the banks of the picturesque Lake Annecy before he went missing in early July.

In 2011, another man disappeared at the Elements electronic music festival near the Albertville ski resort and a second partygoer went missing at the same event the year after, French media reported.

Reports suggested investigators might also re-examine a famously unsolved murder case near the Alpine village of Chevaline in 2012 when a British-Iraqi family and a cyclist were gunned down in broad daylight.

No motive has been found by police despite exhaustive investigations in Britain, France and Iraq.

A legal source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said "for the moment, there is nothing to indicate any involvement at all" of Lelandais.

'Not a delinquent'

The cases of 24-year-old missing soldier Arthur Noyer and the disappeared girl, named Maelys de Araujo, have captivated France and were front-page news again Thursday as reporters raked over Lelandais' background.

He has denied all charges against him, either replying calmly to questions while in custody or simply refusing to respond to allegations put to him by investigators.

The skull of the missing soldier was discovered by a hiker in early September, while Maelys' body has not been found despite intensive efforts by hundreds of police, backed by dogs and helicopters, as well as volunteers.

She went missing at around 3:00 am at a wedding in August where Lelandais was a guest of the groom.

The suspect is an unmarried dog lover with no long-term job who drove a black Audi, which has emerged as a crucial piece of evidence allegedly tying him to both murder cases.

The former military man lived with his parents in the village of Domessin and was found by investigators to be a frequent watcher of pornography.

Several women who say they are ex-girlfriends have also come forward to complain about sexually explicit videos he posted of them online.

Analysing his internet searches, investigators found that the martial arts fan and occasional cocaine user had looked up "decomposition of a human body" after the soldier's disappearance.

His lawyer, Alain Jakubowicz, has blasted police and prosecutors investigating the Maelys case for leaking damaging information against his client, while Lelandais' mother has also leapt to his defence.

"He did a few stupid things when he was younger but he's not a delinquent, he's a nice young man. He's not someone who's aggressive, you can ask the neighbours," she told the LCI news channel in September.

The French army has refused to comment to AFP about allegations in the media that he was discharged in 2005 after four years of service because of psychological problems and drug use.

Lelandais, born in Paris, was also convicted for an arson attack on a restaurant in the Alps region in 2009, a crime which he denied.

During interviews about the murder cases, he has been "calm, cold, collected," one source close to the case told AFP, while another talked about him as a "Jekyll and Hyde" character.
The not-so-subtle-subtext, analysts say, is the government does not want a politician more popular than the president in the capital.

The post was won by Antonio Ledezma in 2008, and he won reelection. In February 2015 however he was convicted of conspiring against Maduro. He fled house arrest and now lives in Spain.

Venezuela is in the grip of a long-running political and economic crisis.

Despite international isolation, broad unpopularity and scarce food and medicine in the country, Maduro has strengthened his hold on power by sidelining the opposition and excluding it from recent local and state elections.

Venezuela, once Latin America's richest country, is on the brink of default after a long slide into penury that has seen supplies of food and medicine become scarce and hundreds of thousands emigrate to survive.

Venezuela still has the world's biggest proven reserves of oil.

But because of endemic corruption and a chronic lack of investment, the OPEC member's oil production is falling sharply.
If Peru's Congress sets the impeachment process in motion it would make Kuczynski the highest-profile political figure to be punished in the expanding scandal surrounding Odebrecht, a Brazilian engineering and construction firm that admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes in several Latin American countries to secure public works contracts.

"I will defend my moral capacity," Kuczynski, 79, said of Thursday's congressional session.

"The constitution, and democracy are under attack. We are facing a coup disguised as a couple of supposedly legitimate interpretations of the law," he said, joined by his vice presidents Martin Vizcarra and Mercedes Araoz.

Earlier he lodged a judicial appeal to try to prevent Congress from moving ahead, arguing that "I have been convicted in advance," according to Peruvian media publishing a copy of his challenge. The outcome of the appeal was not immediately clear.

Meanwhile thousands of Peruvians took to the streets in Lima marching against corruption and all those bribed by Odebrecht.

The odds appear stacked against Kuczynski's survival.

The number of lawmakers demanding impeachment on grounds of "permanent moral incapacity" exceeds the vote threshold needed in the 130-seat Congress to pass the motion.

Peru's First Vice President Vizcarra flew back to Lima on Wednesday from Canada, where he is ambassador.

"The president ordered me to return today and here I am, by the president's side," Vizcarra said on arrival.

Political analyst Luis Benavente predicted the center-right head of state's impeachment, telling AFP: "President Kuczynski's luck has run out."

Ecuador's vice president, Jorge Glas, was last week sentenced to six years in prison for taking kickbacks in connection with Odebrecht. Investigations and court cases are taking place in other countries.

- 'I am not corrupt' -

The charges against Kuczynski revolve around $5 million he received from Odebrecht between 2004 and 2013.

For part of that period, Kuczynski was economy minister and head of cabinet for then-president Alejandro Toledo, whom Odebrecht said it paid $20 million in kickbacks to win a contract managing a highway project.

Both Kuczynski and the Brazilian company insist the $5 million was for legitimate consulting fees.

However, payment of fictitious "advisory fees" was one technique the Brazilian company has admitted to using to funnel bribes to officials.

And Peru's president, a former Wall Street banker who took office in July 2016, initially denied that he received any money from Odebrecht.

It was only when the Brazilian company revealed the payments that he acknowledged that he had taken them, but denied any wrongdoing.

"I did not lie. I am not corrupt," Kuczynski has repeated.

He has asked the Organization for American States, a cooperative forum for nations across the Americas, to send observers to monitor the moves towards impeachment. The head of the OAS, Luis Almagro, said on Twitter he was looking to dispatch a delegation.

Analysts warn that the political uncertainty hanging over Peru could deal a "strong impact" to its economy, Latin America's seventh-biggest.

- Odebrecht, a regional powerhouse -

Kuczynski is due to make his defense before Congress at 9:00 am (1400 GMT).

The legislature is dominated by opposition deputies, making it seem all but certain that an impeachment vote would be carried. Such a step requires 87 lawmakers to back it -- and 93 have already called for the process to happen.

One opposition party, the Popular Force, had demanded that Kuczynski resign to avoid being impeached.

However suspicions related to Odebrecht are also leveled at the head of the Popular Force, Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a former president imprisoned for corruption and human rights crimes. She was to have given a statement to prosecutors on Wednesday, but postponed the testimony.

Odebrecht, a Latin American powerhouse, had its own dedicated corporate department to manage the bribes it paid.
Trump threatened to cut funding to countries that backed the motion to be voted on Thursday at the UN General Assembly.

The US decision on December 6 to recognise the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly will decide Thursday on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favour.

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

Erdogan accused Trump of making "threats".

"How do they call America? The cradle of democracy. The cradle of democracy is seeking to find will in the world that can be bought with dollars," he said.

"Mr Trump you cannot buy with dollars Turkey's democratic will. Our decision is clear," he said.
Delegations from Russia, Iran and Turkey along with Syrian regime representatives and a 20-strong opposition delegation had all arrived in Astana for two days of talks, a ministry spokesman said.

On Thursday, he will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow.

The eighth round of talks come after Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian forces during a surprise visit to the war-torn country last week.

Moscow has spearheaded the talks in Astana since the start of the year as it tries to turn its game-changing military intervention into a negotiated settlement.

The Kremlin also hopes to convene a political congress in the Black Sea resort of Sochi which would bring together regime officials and the opposition to reinvigorate a hobbled peace process.

The Astana talks will also focus on shoring up the buffer zones, as well as issues including humanitarian aid and freeing prisoners, the foreign ministry has said.

De-escalation zones

A fragile ceasefire brokered at the end of last year by Moscow and rebel-aligned Ankara has been bolstered somewhat by the negotiations in Astana, which began in January and have continued in parallel to fruitless UN-led talks in Geneva.

Recent rounds of talks in Kazakhstan have focussed on implementing a Russia-led plan for four "de-escalation zones" to stem fighting between government and rebels.

A year on from the devastating and strategically crucial regime victory in Aleppo, Damascus has consolidated control over much of the country, wresting territory from extremist factions not party to the truce, particularly the Islamic State group.

Diplomatic contacts between the major parties in the conflict have intensified in recent months, but there is no sign that Damascus and its armed opponents are any closer to a political settlement.

Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, numerous diplomatic attempts to halt the conflict have stumbled, mainly over the future of President Bashar al-Assad.
"It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation," the prime minister wrote in a letter addressed to Green.

May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her deputy to step down, describing him as a friend since their time at university and throughout their political careers.

The departure of one of her closest aides is the result of an investigation into Green's conduct following newspaper allegations published last month.

The Sunday Times reported that pornography was found on his parliamentary computer in 2008, while a journalist claimed Green acted inappropriately towards her in 2015.

In its report the Cabinet Office said Green had breached the ministerial code when he made "inaccurate and misleading" statements, by falsely claiming he was unaware that indecent material had been found on his computer.

London's Metropolitan Police had told Green about the pornography found, the Cabinet Office noted, without drawing conclusions on whether he had viewed the material.

In a summary of the report findings published by May's Downing Street office, the investigation did not draw definite conclusions on Green's behaviour towards the journalist Kate Maltby.

Scandal at Westminster

In his resignation letter Green apologised for breaching the ministerial code, while denying that he downloaded or viewed pornography in parliament.

He also expressed his regret at the "distress caused" to Maltby, who claimed Green touched her knee and later sent her a suggestive text message.

"I do not recognise the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise," he wrote.

Green's resignation comes as part of a broader scandal over sexual harassment at Westminster, which erupted weeks ago and prompted the departure of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon last month.

Numerous other claims have been made against those working in politics, prompting the prime minister to call for rules on MPs' behaviour to be toughened.

Weakened May

Fallon's resignation was followed a week later by that of Britain's overseas aid minister, Priti Patel, who stepped down over unauthorised meetings in Israel.

The loss of two ministers in a matter of days cast doubt over May's authority, already challenged by divided opinions within her cabinet over Brexit.

May had been left fragile after a snap election in June backfired dramatically, leaving the Conservatives clinging onto power but losing their majority in parliament.

The premier dismissed calls to resign and vowed to lead Britain through its EU departure, although she faced a further challenge last week when a group of Conservative MPs rebelled against her in a key parliamentary vote on Brexit.

Her troubles appeared to have abated somewhat on Friday, when European Union leaders agreed to open talks on a future relationship with Britain.

But Brussels warned that the next phase of talks will be even more difficult than the past six months of negotiations on the country's exit.

While May will enter the new year on unstable footing, the resignation of Green is not expected to mark her imminent departure from Downing Street.

She will however lose an important ally in Green, a former journalist who was first elected to parliament in 1997.

He rose through the ranks to become work and pensions secretary last year under May, before being appointed first secretary of state after the June election.
Aurizons intermodal business was established just over 10 years ago in competition with Pacific National and SCT Logistics. Its profitability has been in question for some time and the decision to quit the business came after a comprehensive freight review earlier this year.

Industry sources suggest that most of the traffic previously carried by Aurizon has migrated to the already-dominant operator on these corridors, Pacific National.

While SCT Logistics has benefitted from some shift in traffic, the business is currently operating near-capacity, especially since it commenced running its own trains on the Melbourne - Brisbane corridor. A spokesman for SCT said that most of the traffic it has gained on the north-south corridor has come from road, rather than from Aurizon.

In addition to its exit from the interstate intermodal business, Aurizon also plans to sell its Queensland narrow-gauge intermodal operations to freight forwarder Linfox and Pacific National - this transaction looks set to be formalised early in 2018.

An interview with Aurizon managing director and CEO Mr Andrew Harding will appear in the January 2018 issue of IRJ.
Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here.

OK
Drug dealer sentenced to life for the first time in Russian history

MOSCOW, December 21 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Regional Court has sentenced head of a drug smuggling gang for life for the first time in the history of Russia, the courts press-service told RAPSI on Thursday.

According to the courts representative, Sherali Tabarov has been found guilty of illegal drug trade and organization of a criminal group. Russian legislation reads that the latter crime may be punished with a life sentence.

The Prosecutor Generals Office believe that Tabarov, along with 15 other persons, transferred nearly 700 kilograms of heroin to Russia in a span of 3 years. The gang leader was captured in 2014 but it took a year to apprehend other members of the criminal group.

Other members of the gang were sentenced to prison terms varying from 6 to 25 years.
Pussy Riot member sentenced to community service for unauthorized protest action

MOSCOW, December 21 (RAPSI)  The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow on Thursday sentenced Maria Alyokhina, a member of the infamous feminist punk group Pussy Riot, to 40 hours of community service for unauthorized protest action near the Federal Security Services (FSB) headquarters, the courts spokesperson Yulia Kotomina told RAPSI.

Alyokhina was found guilty of violating the established order for organizing and holding public events.

As reported earlier, she was arrested along with several other people after an authorized picket near the FSB building on Wednesday.

Alyokhina is known for being a member of feminist punk group Pussy Riot. In February 2012, Alyokhina along with four other young women wearing brightly colored balaclavas staged a punk rock prayer in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. An edited video of their performance was posted on the Internet and caused a public outcry.

In August 2012, the Khamovnichesky District Court in Moscow sentenced Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to two years in a prison settlement for hooliganism. In October 2012, the Moscow City Court changed Samutsevich's verdict to a suspended sentence and released her immediately based on her new attorneys' argument that she had been seized by security guards prior to reaching the altar. In December 2013, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were pardoned under the amnesty dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution.
In the midst of the largest power outage in modern history, Puerto Rico is reeling. More than three months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall, reliable power is still a far-distant reality for millions of Puerto Ricans, and the lack of power on the island continues to impede timely and urgently necessary relief and recovery efforts.

Prior to the recent hurricanes, Puerto Ricos power grid was notoriously dysfunctional and in disrepair. Years of mismanagement, combined with a lack of basic maintenance and modernization, left the grid uniquely vulnerable to disruption. Hurricanes Irma and Maria proved just how vulnerable. To help move the island forward, we must critically assess which energy solutions will be best suited for the island so that Puerto Ricans never again have to experience this level of electrical disruption.

Today, Congress is continuing to review the ongoing recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and has indicated that it will be exploring more resilient energy solutions. Puerto Ricos government and their local utility, PREPA, have indicated the same thing. While this spells good news for the future reliability of Puerto Ricos energy infrastructure, it is imperative that energy recovery strategies are set into motion quickly, and that they are reliable, flexible, affordable and resilientand utilize the energy sources that are indigenous to the island.

Let us not forget that Puerto Rico has an abundance of one natural resource in particularthe sun. Accordingly, solar, coupled with energy (battery) storage, is an obvious choice as Puerto Rico looks to rebuild.

The time to take action is now, and the urgency of the situation cannot be stressed enough.

At this point, it is clear that the future of the power industry and energy infrastructure in Puerto Rico will look vastly different than it did before. Distributed solar is an incredibly resilient energy source and it does not depend on fragile transmission and distribution lines to provide energy to end users. It would, therefore, make sense for Puerto Rico to include the sun, an abundant resource on the island, more prominently in its energy portfolio.

In order to assist Puerto Rico during this humanitarian crisis, it is imperative that we quickly incentivize critical private and public investments to move forward with implementing renewable energy solutions on the island. One option is to turn the Investment Tax Credit for renewable energy into a grant for any U.S. territories recovering from natural disasters. Providing a grant, rather than a tax credit, for solar and storage, would help leverage an infusion of private capital into a market that desperately needs it, while at the same time strengthening the islands energy infrastructure and helping prepare it for the next storm.

Puerto Rico has the opportunity to show the rest of the world what the future of resilient and reliable energy looks like, and now is the time to implement a strong, long-term energy infrastructure strategy grounded in distributed generation. If done successfully, Puerto Rico could become the inflection point for positive transformation across the entire global energy industry.

But first, we must act.

William J. (John) Berger is the Chief Executive Officer of the Sunnova Energy Corporation.
Property details:

3.55 Acres of Vacant Land in Grainger County, Tennessee located on Jackson Hollow Road, Thorn Hill, TN. Indian Creek runs through one end of the property. The GPS and Google Map Coordinates are 3624'17.2"N 8321'25.1"W. Average elevation is about 1,600 feet above sea level.This is a wooded, buildable lot that is zoned residential and is very valuable. Other properties in the area are selling for $4,000 to $10,000 per acre, but I am retired and urgently need the money so I am starting with a m...

Price: $ 450 Seller State of Residence: Alabama Property Address: Jackson Hollow Road State/Province: Tennessee City: Thorn Hill Zip/Postal Code: 37881 Zoning: Residential Type: Recreational, Acreage Location: 378**, Thorn Hill, Tennessee

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby Recreational, Acreage
Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale

Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada.

Search Real Estate
A clear message was that the ongoing seven-decade-old model of agriculture, based on extensive reliance on subsidy by the government at every stage, was not going to work, said NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar.

NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar says the Gujarat election has sent out a message that youth is unsatisfied, as what is being achieved is probably not in sync with their aspirations.

I am not saying they are unemployed or else they wouldnt have come out in such large numbers on motorcycles to election rallies.

"But, clearly, they are not satisfied as their aspirations might have grown, Kumar told Business Standard.

He said the government should anticipate future skill requirements, which existing strategies were not capable of doing, and greater focus should be placed on apprenticeship.

There is a 1962 Act which mandates that companies keep a portion of their workforce as apprentices and the government gives subsidy of Rs 1,250 (per head) through two schemes.

"My suggestion is to raise this amount and give the assurance to the employer that this does not mean an extra inspector for them, the NITI Aayog vice-chairman said.

He said poverty estimates were just theoretical exercise, without much practical relevance to policy-making.

A better idea would be to focus more sharply on human development indices, as it served the purpose of addressing the deprived sections of the population much more than merely estimating poverty.

He said the Gujarat electoral results were a vindication of the governments commitment to reforms.

The fact that urban Gujarat voted in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party meant that all those who were expected to be hurt by the twin reforms of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax havent been impacted much.

The results also show that the business and trading community, rightly expected to be hurt by both demonetisation and GST, clearly dont fear getting into a formal economy, at the same time, they would also like implementation issues to be addressed.

The polls were also a message that traders and businessmen liked the fact that the governance was becoming transparent, accountable and less discriminatory.

At the same, the results also pointed towards a bigger issue in agriculture. A clear message was that the ongoing seven-decade-old model of agriculture, based on extensive reliance on subsidy by the government at every stage, was not going to work.

The government should focus on addressing the issue through a new approach, he said.

The NITI Aayog vice-chairman said a few things should be done first to revive agriculture.

Foremost was that the composition of agriculture output should to brought in sync with consumption of agriculture commodities, which was changing dramatically.

The mismatch would be solved when India moved to high-value agriculture.

This is where you need a different approach than just raising MSPs as MSPs encourages production of particular commodities and, therefore, we need to move to a system of price-based farmer support to income-based farmers support, maybe through a social security net, to the farmers directly rather than the price support that distorts market and production.

Also, farmers should be made a participant in the value chain rather than being reduced to a mere producer of primary commodities.

We should replicate the Mother Diary model or the Maharashtra sugarcane model nationwide which make growers a participant, Kumar added.

Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
At present 100% FDI is allowed, of which up to 49% investment in a company can be done through the automatic route

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

The government is finalising a plan to allow 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) for telecom services through the automatic route, which allows firms to attract foreign funds without its approval, sources said on Wednesday.

The proposal is likely to be considered by the Telecom Commission (TC), the apex decision-making body of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), at its meeting scheduled for Thursday, they said.

The TC is likely to consider raising FDI limit up to 100 per cent for all telecom services, including infrastructure, through the automatic route, a source said.

At present 100 per cent FDI is allowed, of which up to 49 per cent investment in a company can be done through the automatic route.

The inflow of overseas investment beyond that requires government approval because of security reasons.

The panel is also likely to discuss the relief package recommended by an inter-ministerial group (IMG) for the telecom sector, which is reeling under debt of Rs 7.75 lakh crore at the end of March, of which bank borrowing and liabilities toward spectrum payment to DoT were Rs 5.8 lakh crore.

The DoT has already approved an increase in the time frame for deferred spectrum payment to 16 years, besides a change in calculation of interest on delayed payment.

Thursdays meet will also see a decision on spectrum caps.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has recommended raising the 25 per cent overall spectrum limit to 35 per cent, with removal of a 50 per cent intra-band cap.

Instead, it has proposed a cap of 50 per cent on combined holding in the sub-1 gigahertz bands (700, 800, and 900 megahertz).

Cap relaxation would allow Vodafone and Idea Cellular to retain their airwaves after a (proposed) merger and allow other companies more spectrum in a particular band.

The IMG had asked DoT to seek Trais views on spectrum caps and if the limits should be relaxed.

After the TC approval, the financial measures will be placed before the Cabinet by the end of this month.

The TC had also sought legal opinion regarding adjusted gross revenue applicable on receipts from spectrum trading and this will also be discussed on Thursday.

With Reliance Jios entry last year, there has been an intense rate war.

Older operators have been pointing to pressure on revenue and profit, blaming rock-bottom data rates and free offerings of Jio for the sectors financial state.

Indian Banks Association has asked the government to allow telecom companies undergoing debt restructuring in schemes drawn up by the Reserve Bank of India to surrender liberalised spectrum.

Any excess upfront payment associated with such spectrum should be refunded, it has argued.

Additional inputs from PTI
Sheikh Hasina's government has launched a relentless war against terrorism since the Dhaka cafe carnage in July 2016, but as Bangladesh's terror networks exploit new technologies and new tactics, the challenge to eliminate jihad gets tougher, points out Binodkumar Singh.



IMAGE: Security personnel prepare to storm the Holey Artisan restaurant in Dhaka after five terrorists attacked the popular cafe in July 2016, killing 22 hostages and 2 policemen. Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

In Bangladesh, the radicalisation of a segment of Bangladesh expatriates is a key concern.

Hundreds of Bangladeshi workers living in the West and South East Asia have come under the influence of jihadi ideologies and programmes.

Between November 16 and December 1, 2015, the Singapore police arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers for connections with al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly, Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, also Da'esh) and deported 26 of them.

On August 19, 2016, Peyar Ahmed Akash, a Bangladeshi expatriate, was arrested by the Malaysian police for his suspected involvement in terrorist activities.

On January 19, 2017, two Bangladeshis working as salesmen were arrested in Kuala Lumpur for suspected links with Da'esh.

On July 4, 2017, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi linked to Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh was arrested by the Malaysian police.

On September 22, 2017, a 34-year-old Bangladeshi national was arrested in Merida, Spain, and charged with involvement with IS' technological machine.

Terror financing by Bangladeshi expatriates is another area of urgent concern.

It is estimated that about $7 billion comes to Bangladesh every year via the hundi system, an alternative transfer method akin to the hawala network that persists in West and South Asia.

Investigations into the financial operations of terrorist groups like Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B) demonstrate that a sizeable proportion of its funding comes through this hundi route.

In July 2016, four Bangladeshi workers were convicted in Singapore for financing terrorism back home.

Calling themselves Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB), the four men had been planning attacks in Bangladesh to topple the Awami League government. Their objective was to form an Islamic State in Bangladesh and make it part of the so-called IS Caliphate.

The expatriates' exposure to radical ideology emanating from the Arab world has brought a qualitative change in their approach, lifestyle and operational strategy.

As a result, IS-style terror operations have been engineered or plotted in the country as well.

The most daring incident was the Holey Artisan cafe attack in Dhaka on July 1, 2016, in which 29 people were killed, including 20 hostages (18 foreigners and two locals), five gunmen, two police officers and two cafe staff.

According to the US-based SITE Intelligence Group, IS claimed responsibility for the Holey Artisan cafe attack.

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan denied that IS was involved, saying the jihadis who slaughtered the hostages at the Dhaka restaurant were members of the home-grown JMB terror group and not followers of Islamic State.

Separately, A K M Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, Dhaka city, said members of JMB and the Ansarullah Bangla Team jointly carried out the Holey Artisan cafe terror attack.

Bangladesh has taken giant strides against terrorism and Islamist extremism. In its unremitting effort against terrorist formations in Bangladesh since the Holey Artisan cafe attack, 106 Islamist terrorists have been killed and another 1,404 arrested across the country.

Prominent among those killed are Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the Neo JMB's mastermind behind the Dhaka cafe attack; the JMB's 'military commander' for the northern region Khaled Hasan; the Neo-JMB 'military commander' Jahangir Alam; the JMB's 'regional commander' Tulu Mollah; the JMB 'regional coordinator' Abu Musa; the Neo-JMB's 'military chief' Aminur Islam; the HuJI-B 'chief' Mufti Abdul Hannan; HUJI-B's 'regional commander' Tajul Islam Mahmud (data updated till December 18, 2017).

To expand anti-terror operations to hunt down suspected extremists, Sheikh Hasina's government approved an anti-terrorism unit with nation-wide jurisdiction to combat militancy and terrorism on September 20, 2017.

The 581-member ATU will be headed by an additional inspector general of police. The unit will work solely on terrorism-related issues.

The new unit will have one deputy inspector general, two additional deputy inspectors general), five superintendents of police, 10 additional superintendents of police, 12 assistant superintendents of police, 75 inspectors, 125 sub-inspectors, 140 assistant sub-inspectors, 200 constables, and 10 office staff.

The ATU will have 16 jeeps, two SWAT vans, eight double cabin pickups, one ambulance, one truck, an armored personnel carrier, one water canon van, one prison van and 10 motorcycles.

On October 25, 2017, to curb the controversy regarding the madrasa education system, the government directed the Bangladesh madrasa education board to remove the chapters on jihad.

The new textbooks will not contain any chapters with lessons on jihad, for the first time in nearly four decades.

Since the inception of the board in 1979, chapters on jihad were included in madrasa textbooks from Class 8 to the degree level. Jihad has been defined in madrasa textbooks as a 'struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam.'

On November 7, 2017, the government also shut down the Lakehead grammar school for patronising militancy.

The education ministry observed that the school was inspiring religious extremism, building extremist organisations, and carrying out activities against the nation and its independence.

In a startling revelation at the meeting of the national committee on militancy resistance and prevention in Dhaka on September 4, 2017, operatives from Bangladesh's security agencies disclosed that 440 individuals accused in 331 terrorism-related cases had fled the country after securing bail.

According to the law enforcement agencies, more than 200 suspected terrorists are out on bail since January 2017.

Most of these are members of the Neo-JMB, the old JMB, Ansar al-Islam, HuJI-B and Hizb-ut Tahrir. The delay in investigation and legal proceedings allow the terrorists to take advantage of the system.

In another revelation, on October 1, 2017, ATU officials disclosed that the terrorist outfits have apparently smartened up and become tech-savvy.

The terrorists are increasingly using encrypted communications apps to maintain communication online, making it harder for law enforcement agencies to trace them.

The terrorists initially used Facebook Messenger and Google Hangouts to communicate, but recently shifted to encrypted messaging apps like Threema, Telegram and Wickr to maintain secrecy.

The terrorists also use WhatsApp, Viber, Tango and similar apps as most of them have the encryption facility, but rapidly switch platforms to avoid detection.

The terrorists, security agencies fear, may move to Silent Circle, Signal, Chat Secure, OS Tel or Red Phone, highly advanced and more privacy-conscious messaging apps. If they do this, tracing their online networks will prove even more challenging.

Sheikh Hasina's government has hardened its resolve to eradicate terrorism from Bangladesh after the Holey Artisan cafe attack. It has demonstrated the efficacy of determined and relentless action against terrorist formations over the past year and more.

However, as the terrorists adapt and exploit new technologies and new tactics, the challenge to eliminate terrorism is kept alive.

Bangladesh's War on Terror may not end any time soon.

Dr Binodkumar Singh is at the Institute for Conflict Management where he is involved in research and documentation of conflicts in Bangladesh.
Performance counts more than populist slogans when you are in power, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

IMAGE: BJP workers celebrate at the party headquarters in New Delhi after their victory in the assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/PTI Photo.

Through all the celebrations and condemnations, explanations and excuses, the nation has forgotten to congratulate and thank Gujarat for one of the most peaceful elections in the country in recent times.

Despite the long history of communal tensions, clashes and riots over the past several decades, the much-contested elections went on with clock-work precision, and without any possibility of violence, booth-capturing or worse.

It is this Gujarat model that the nation can be proud of, and try to replicate it.

It also raises the question: With no predictions of tension and violence in the air at any time, why did the Election Commission feel it necessary to conduct two-phase polling?

Considering that the states was a stand-alone election in the neightbourhood, the EC could still have commissioned police and paramilitary personnel almost at will for the polls, even providing for unpredictable eventualities.

As conventional wisdom has it, multiple-phase polling is generally reserved only for large states with a possibility of violence, and the situation is reviewed election after election -- and Gujarat did not fit into the bill since the previous 2012 assembly polls at the very least.

It is also conventional political wisdom that multiple-phase polling helps better-organised, cadre-based political parties even more than their own inherent grassroots-level strengths permit.

No marks for guessing which is the better-organised political party in Gujarat or the rest of the nation, for now, or even in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

All the other parties put together do not hold even the shadow of a candle, leave aside a candle, to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

This too has more than one message for the 2019 elections, depending on which side of the wall you stand, and which side of the wall you want to read from.

Yet, in relatively large states like Tamil Nadu, against a medium-size state like Gujarat, the EC has for long insisted on single-phase polling.

The avowed reason was to check against the migration of political party cadres from one constituency to another during the polling holiday in theirs, for election work (read: election management of the Indian kind).

Extrapolated to Gujarat, it may be saying a lot more than is readable from the straight wall -- and there may be an added message on the result than is already acknowledged.

The election figures speak for themselves, and much has been written about it already.

In a nutshell, the BJPs urban voter-base, dating back to the pre-Emergency days all across north India, seemed to have helped even more than the Modi magic, per se, but the latter was still the overwhelming cause and binding factor.

It was thus that the party bagged 16 out of 21 seats in Ahmedabad, 15 out of 16 in Surat -- where the social media (alone) claimed that traders had staged massive, anti-GST protests only months ago -- nine out of 10 in Vadodara and six out of eight in Rajkot, all adding up to 46 out of 55 urban seats.

This also hides the fact that Modis famous Gujarat model that the party had promised to replicate for the nation in 2014, has not penetrated even in his compact home-state through his continuous terms as the chief minister.

Interestingly, or ironically, most media analyses of the assembly polls now has stopped with comparing the current Gujarat results with the previous assembly poll figures from 2012, inadvertently (?) skipping the LS achievements two years later, which alone showed up Modi for what he is worth it.

True, the voting percentage itself shot from 63.66 to 68.4, or by five per cent, between 2014 and now, yet it was still short of the higher 71.32 per cent from 2012.

In a way, it should show that between 2012 and 2014, a substantial per cent of Gujarat voters had felt disenchanted already, whoever they were, whatever the reason.

Even today, despite the high-voltage, all-round poll campaign, not all of them woke up, or did not want to be woken up.

In terms of BJPs vote-share, the anomaly is even more striking.

After shooting up from 47.85 per cent to 59.1 per cent between 2012 and 2014, it has plummeted by 10 per cent, to 49.1 per cent this time.

Against this, the Congresss 38.93 per cent of 2012 went down to 32.9 in 2014, but has shot up by 8.5 per cent in 2017.

What should worry the strategists of a more systematic, and systems-driven party as the BJP has since become, is the fact that after Uttar Pradesh, where they swept the polls in seat-share and vote-share individually, the party has not crossed the magic, 50-per cent vote-share mark, indicating a temptation for the rest to come together.

In the case of Gujarat, there are not many anti-BJP parties and groups left out of the Congress-led combine, but that would only be a statistical breather for the party, not even a tactical one after a point.

This is because those eight per cent of the voters who did not vote either of the two top parties/groups, too seem to have suffered from anti-incumbency against the long BJP rule in the state, or unimpressed by Modis performance as prime minister, or both.

They may still consider voting against the BJP, a possible option for 2019. But not the other way round.

There is no denying that the Congress losing some of its top-guns in their chosen constituencies. But then the ruling BJP also saw voters rejecting five Cabinet ministers.

Other electoral indicators were also ominous.

The BJP won 25 out of 99 seats by a 500 to 1000 vote-margin, which says a lot about governance and elections, policy success and personality appeal.

Of academic interest is the fact that in seven of these 25 seats, the spoilers Nationalist Congress Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party polled more than the victory margin, which was again in the 500-1000 vote-range, thus denying the Congress rival as many.

If one considered the very fact that every seat won by the Congress thus would have been one lost to the BJP, it could well have meant that the BJP would have got only 92 while the anti-BJP tally could well have gone up from 83 to 90, a difference of only two seats -- thus possibly inviting the governors effective intervention like it happened in Goa and Arunachal Pradesh.

But of course, it is only in the realm of speculation, but it is not so, if one were to consider the possibilities of the losing candidates, not only in the seven but in all 25 seats and more, challenging the results through an election petition in the Gujarat high court.

Considering that all the rival MLAs who crossed over to the BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls too lost, while the BJP nominee in PM Modis home constituency lost even his security deposit, party strategists could have been shaken more than already, if the final figures were not what they ended up being.

It was a Modi election all the way, which won the BJP the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but the Modi magic did not work, as much, this time even in his Gujarat, so to say -- particularly when considered from the task that awaits the power-driven prime minister from the Target-2019 position.

His party boss Amit Shah may have already pricked a hole, by vowing ahead of the Gujarat polls that they were aiming at 150 seats in a total of 182, and could not reach even the two-thirds of his goal (and not the membership of the House, as is often taken).

The election was top-heavy for all parties, and naturally so when no other major state, barring Himachal Pradesh, was going to the polls around the time.

But in the case of the BJP, the poll was being managed exclusively from Delhi, by the Modi-Shah duo, both of them incidentally from the state, and the common voter did not possibly know even the name of his chief minister (Vijay Rupani), leave aside that of the ruling party bosses at different levels, even after the elections are all over and the BJP has hit a sixer, however weak.

Despite face-saving boast of the BJP kind just now, it was a pyrrhic victory, after all, if one considered the kind of campaign that the party and its top-most leaders took to, that too for an assembly election in their own backyard for long.

If anything, the Gujarat voters seem to have voted for Gujarati pride, which when translated should mean not handing over yet another resounding victory to their own prime minister, but to limit it to make sure that they do not carry the stigma of voting out their own prime minister, that too in a state-level election, and the rest of the nation, and the nations high-decibel Hindutva/Sangh Parivar Modi bhakts end up blaming them for it all.

The message for the BJP strategists for 2019 is clear.

That if native Gujarat voters are not ready to buy PM Modis charge of Pakistani intervention in the state, Ayodhya may not do it for the party, especially if one considered the Indian electoral historicity that no same issue has won or lost elections more than once in living memory.

For the Congress and for partys new boss, Rahul Gandhi, the Gujarat results are a morale-booster even when they have both lost a golden opportunity to rock the ruling partys boat in the PMs home state and shock the man into possible silence, at least for a time.

But Gujarat is also where Congress has too many problems, considering that the new, caste-based allies of the party and their youthful, equally inexperienced leaders are not going to keep quiet between now and 2019, even if meant that they may still want to continue the poll alliance but even more on their terms!

Even before coming to head the party formally, which he has done since, Rahul Gandhi was not known as an alliance-builder of the BJP, Vajpayee-Advani and Modi-Shah kind, but only as a possible spoiler.

If he is at all serious about the job on hand, Rahul, even as he yields to the post-anointment, post-Gujarat temptation of wanting to build up the party, he needs to build up a strong opposition alliance across the nation, an impossible task otherwise, but not as impossible if one studied the Janata experiment, however short-lived, in its entirety.

More than populist slogans, performance counts when you are in power. That was the message from 1998, 2004 and 2014, and now from Gujarat 2017.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is director, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
'Whether she will remain CPP chairperson or not, that she will decide.'



IMAGE: Then Congress president Sonia Gandhi with her political secretary Ahmed Patel.

Remember Sheela Bhatt's exclusive interview with Ahmed Patel on Rediff.com five years ago?

It was the first time that Patel -- Sonia Gandhi's political secretary -- had spoken at such length, and the interview created tremors in both the Congress party and its rival Bharatiya Janata Party.

You can read it here: 1, 2, 3.

Sheela has since moved from Rediff.com to the NewsX television network, where she spoke to Ahmed Patel last week after his boss stepped down as Congress president.

We publish the transcript of the interview with kind permission.

The first of a multi-part interview:

Sheela Bhatt: Hello and welcome to NewsX, and India News.

Ahmed Patel is the former political secretary of former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

He is one of the most powerful leaders of the Congress party, but few know him. He rarely speaks to the media. Today we have the privilege to speak to him.

Ahmedbhai, Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

How does it feel today to look back in time?

First of all, I have an issue with words like 'powerful', 'political secretary'.

I was never powerful. As a political secretary, I did whatever work I was given with righteousness.

First of all, tell me how was your journey working with Sonia Gandhi? And how do you feel today about it?

I am glad that I got to work with Soniaji for so many years -- first as treasurer and then as political secretary. One always feels happy working with her.

It is fun. It is also a form of encouragement. I have never faced any problems in working with her.

You remember what happened in 1999 when Mr Sharad Pawar, Mr Tariq Anwar and Mr P A Sangma said Sonia Gandhi is an Italian, she is a foreigner. Can you tell me how you handled that situation and how Soniaji reached where she is today?

It was team work. This question was not just raised by members of the Congress for the first time. The Opposition had been raising this question since forever. So this wasn't new.

You know there is always competition in politics. So when this question was raised within the party by members of the Congress party, it was a little hurtful.

Soniaji felt troubled, other Congress members felt troubled too. But the majority of Congress workers, the common workers, wanted that Soniaji should come into politics, she should become the Congress president, and she should lead us.

So everyone got together -- it was team work. At that time Pranabji (Mukherjee) was with us, other people were also with us.

And since the group of people who had raised the question was very small, we were able to get out of it easily.

How did the transformation in her happen?

It was very difficult for her.

As she said in her speech, after marrying Rajivji is when she learnt some politics. It was a new thing for her.

Still, understanding it as her responsibility towards the party and the country because the Congress was ready to break down.

People were leaving the Congress and it seemed like the Congress would be finished.

Hence, she felt if she did not take up the responsibility -- the Congress people wanted that Soniaji from the Gandhi family should lead -- then the souls of Indiraji and Rajivji, who had been murdered, would be hurt. Their sacrifices would be a waste.

Along with that was her duty towards the nation. The atmosphere that was there was of communalism. She felt if my leadership can help the Congress stay together and fight these challenges, she felt she should come into politics.

Mostly, apart from a small group of people, everyone else helped her and she accepted the responsibility.

A lot of people -- in the Congress Working Committee, the core group in your party -- say that after Sonia Gandhi became party president, she always had it in her mind that she would make Rahul Gandhi Congress president.

This is completely wrong. This isn't true.

Amethi and Rai Bareli are two (Lok Sabha) constituencies. Naturally, Rahul Gandhi contested from one constituency (Amethi). This is how he came into politics and became (Congress) general secretary.

There was no intention at that time that he had to be made the Congress president.

As time passed, she had health problems. She could not do as much work as she wanted to.

So Rahulji took up some of her responsibilities. He started meeting people. Then came a time when the people in the Congress only wanted that Rahulji should become the party president.

Some people met her and she said if you all want and the Congress wants, then I have no objection.

But it was never that she wanted to make her son the Congress president.

I have never met Soniaji neither do I know her personally. It is through reading about her that I am telling you that it was the heart of a mother and the duty of a daughter-in-law of the Gandhi family that has had a strong impression on her.

And if today Rahul Gandhi has become the Congress president, these two things are important in that case as well: A mother's heart and her duty.

I do not agree with this. On the contrary, she prioritised her duties toward the Congress and the country. She said I am getting older, my health isn't up to the mark.

Congress people also wanted that a younger leadership should take over so that he or she can work on the challenges that the country is facing.

There was a controversy after she said she wants to retire. People felt she wants to retire from politics. In the evening a clarification was issued. So what is the truth?

She is a member of Parliament, she is still CPP (Congress Parliamentary Party) chairperson. She is retiring means she is stepping down from the position of Congress president.

What will her role in the Congress be now?

Only she can answer this. How active she will be; whether she will remain CPP chairperson or not, that she will decide.

As her political advisor, which moments have been the most difficult for you?

Political secretary... Of course, the elections of 2004, 2009 and in any such situations where the party lost or where there was need for firefighting or some problem in some state. Along with my colleagues we tried to solve such situations.

What do you consider the most difficult moment? Was it when she said she does not want to become prime minister?

That definitely was one.

Everyone wanted that. (They felt) the mandate was for Soniaji, but she didn't want to be PM. A lot of people felt hurt.

What was your advice?

That I can't say since it is confidential. That will stay with me.

The other challenge we faced when the issue of nuclear voting came up (the motion of no confidence in the Lok Sabha against the Manmohan Singh government over the nuclear deal on July 22, 2008).

The nuclear deal was a tension because we felt maybe the government will collapse.

In retrospect, do you think it was good that instead of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh became the PM?

It was her feeling that instead of her, Dr Manmohan Singh would be a better PM.
Former telecom minister A Raja, who was at the centre of the allegations in India's biggest graft case, on Thursday said a trial court acquitting him of all charges proved that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was 'cooked-up'.

Raja, who was the minister in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government when 122 telecom spectrum licences were issued to eight companies in 2008 on first-come-first-serve basis, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

Bringing competition in the telecom sector had sent mobile call charges to rock-bottom levels.

'My firm belief in the rightfulness of my actions as well as my faith in our nation's justice system has been validated today,' he said in a statement.

He said his decision for allocation of spectrum, or radiowaves that carry mobile voice signals, were in line with the National Telecom Policy and recommendations of the sectoral regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Raja said he had, in fact, brought a 'revolution' in the telecom sector.

"I have felt somewhat vindicated all along even prior to this judgment because the beneficial results of my actions are evident to and being enjoyed by the nation's public (especially the poor)," he said.

Further, Raja debunked the presumptive loss theories in the allocation. In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had put the loss to the exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

"I brought a revolution in the telecom sector. It is not unknown to the history that a person who did a revolution is often termed as a criminal," he said.

Raja, a leader of Tamil Nadu-based DMK party, which was an ally in the Congress-led UPA government, blamed vested interests for propagating the presumptive loss theory.

"Vested interests manipulated public perception by leveraging the media and sensationalising fabricated allegations," he said.

"It has been repeatedly proven that the presumptive loss to the exchequer which formed the basis for the conspiracy theorists to run amok, was cooked-up."

Raja said he had full faith in the judiciary and had cooperated fully with the trial and did not seek even single day adjournment.

"I also had the courage and confidence to step into the witness box and gave evidence and offered myself for cross examination by the CBI, which is very unusual in criminal trials in India," he said.

Raja claimed that the trial court judge had repeatedly observed that his evidence was 'cogent, credible and consistent with the official records, in contrast with the evidence of the prosecution witnesses whose evidence has been rejected as untrustworthy'.

He added: "The learned Judge has held that it is not just a case of the prosecution failing to prove its allegations, but a case where the prosecution case itself was false, which was my submission from the very first day."

He went on to thank his party leader and DMK cadre for their unflinching support during the 'dark period' of his life which include 15 months in jail.

Photograph: ANI
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday cited a Supreme Court verdict to assert corruption in the United Progressive Alliance governments 2G spectrum allocation policy, and mocked the Congress by saying it was treating a trial courts acquittal of the accused in the case as a badge of honour.

With the Congress going on the offensive following the judgment, Jaitley said the verdict held that nobody was guilty in the case and investigation agencies would take an appropriate decision, taking facts and history into account.

The Enforcement Directorate has already said it will appeal against the judgment while a Central Bureau of Investigation spokesperson said it would study the verdict and take a decision over it soon.

Its history is of corruption. Facts have proven it. Congress leaders are treating the judgment like a badge of honour and certification that the 2G spectrum allocation policy was an honest policy, Jaitley told reporters in the Parliament house complex.

The minister said he was reacting to political aspects of the case and cited the details of the allocation policy of the UPA government and the Supreme Court verdict in February 2012 quashing all allocations.

Citing the verdict, he said that it was a corrupt and dishonest policy intended to promote corruption was upheld by the apex court.

Each allocation was quashed as arbitrary and unfair, he said.

The criminal case was launched on the Supreme Courts order, he said.

Jaitley also rejected former telecom minister Kapil Sibals zero loss claim in the allocation, saying it was disproved by the subsequent allocation by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliances government, fetching Rs 1.10 lakh crore in 2015 and Rs 66,000 crore in 2016. Sibal fired a fresh salvo at the BJP following the trial court order on Thursday.

The UPA government had fixed a price of Rs 1,734 crore per licensee, the finance minister said.

Attacking the Manmohan Singh government, Jaitley said it had given licences in 2007-08 on the basis of a price linked to 2001 and there was a huge element of arbitrariness in the implementation of the policy.

Cut-off dates were advanced and the first come first served policy was intended to serve a select few, he said, adding that it was later changed to first come first pay and a select few were informed in advance.

It was proved by the fact that they had got bank drafts prepared on back dates, he said.

The CBI had alleged in a chargesheet filed in April 2011 that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in the allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum, a second-generation cellular technology. The allocations were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

Image: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with other union ministers addressing the media on 2G scam at Parliament House, in New Delhi. Photograph: Subhav Shukla/PTI Photo
India on Thursday joined 127 other countries to vote in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of a resolution opposing the recent decision of United States President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Nine countries voted against the resolution, while as many as 35 countries abstained.

India's decision to vote against American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital comes a day after Trump warned countries against opposing the US position.

India did not speak on the floor of the Assembly in New York, but after Trump recognised the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it had said that its Palestine position was independent and consistent.

In her intervention at the Non-Aligned Movement ministerial meeting on Palestine on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said the path to Israel-Jerusalem peace clearly lay in an early negotiated solution between Israel and Palestine based on mutual recognition and security arrangements.

The UN General Assembly resolution moved by Turkey and Yemen stressed that Jerusalem was a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations.

It demanded that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognise any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

In his address to the UN general Assembly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Trump's decision was an outrageous assault to all universal values.

"The Palestinians have the right to their own state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

"This is the main parameter and only hope for a just and lasting peace in the region. However, the recent decision of a UN Member State to recognise Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as the capital of Israel, violates international law, including all relevant UN resolutions," Cavusoglu said.

The eight countries that joined the US in voting against the Turkish resolution were Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo.

Among the major countries who abstained the voting were Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Columbia, Hungry, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland and Uganda.

Strongly supporting Trump's decision US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the US may strip funding of those countries that voted against its Jerusalem move.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to, once again, make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations," Haley told the General Assembly.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that. But this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the UN," the top American diplomat said.

Trump had warned against cutting funds on Wednesday.

"Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot. We don't care. This isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing," Trump told reporters at White House on Wednesday.

Early this week, the US had vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council.

The resolution passed by the General Assembly has no legal implications on the UN member countries. Trump praised Haley for taking a tough position on Jerusalem at the world body on Wednesday and warned the countries who voted against the US that America will not be 'taken advantage' of anymore.

"All these nations take our money and then vote against us at the Security Council," Trump told his Cabinet members at a meeting at the White House.

He was referring to the isolation of the US in the UN Security Council when all 14 members of the apex body joined hands against Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The acquittal of former telecom minister A Raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazaghams Kanimozhi and the 15 others in the 2G scam case, prompted the Congress to react with former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Kapil Siba saying the judgment spoke for itself.

The massive propaganda against the United Progressive Alliance on 2G spectrum was without any foundation, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said.

The judgment speaks for itself, Manmohan Singh said.

I do not want to boast (about) anything. The courts judgment has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgment speaks for itself, Singh said.

Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal also demanded an apology from former comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai and the Opposition.

I have been saying from day one that there was no loss and I have been vindicated today. In fact it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation.

It is the Opposition who must apologise to the nation, Sibal told reporters after the court acquitted all the accused.

Former CAG Rai had calculated that 2G spectrum allocation in 2008 -- under the UPA regime when Raja was the telecom minister  led to notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the national exchequer.

There was no case from the beginning. In fact, it was a scam of lies, there was no scam on our part. We did it in accordance with policy prescription that we had at that point in time, Sibal said.

Responding to a query on the Supreme Court judgment of February 2012 which cancelled 122 telecom licences that were allocated spectrum in 2008, Sibal said that the apex court passed the judgment in its attempt to do the best it could do in the interest of the nation, and it was a wrong decision.

That (SC cancelling telecom licences) was also a wrong decision. The fact that the Supreme Court rendered a decision doesnt mean that is necessarily right.

In fact, the kind of environment created by the media, the opposition, by Vinod Rai... The telecom sector is in dire state today and this is entirely because of Vinod Rai and

opposition (at that time), Sibal said.
A Special Central Bureau of Investigation court in New Delhi on Thursday acquitted former telecom minister A Raja, Dravida Munnetra Kazagham MP Kanimozhi and all other accused in the 2G scam case that had rocked the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance-II government, holding that the prosecution 'miserably failed' to prove any of the corruption and money laundering charges.

IMAGE: DMK MP Kanimozhi celebrates with her husband G Aravindan and mother Rajathi Ammal after she was acquitted by a special court in the 2G scam case. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

The stunning verdict came as an anti-climax in a case that had been repeatedly highlighted by the Bharatiya Janata Party during the 2014 general election campaign as the hallmark of corruption in the then UPA regime.

The BJP turned the arbitrary award of radio frequency to telecom providers into a major political issue and put the UPA-II government on the mat.

"I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused," Special CBI Judge O P Saini said in his verdicts in three separate cases related to the 2G scam in a packed courtroom at the Patiala House premises.

CBI, ED to appeal

against 2G verdict The Central Bureau of Investigation said it would file an appeal against the 2G scam case verdict by a special court, which acquitted all the 16 accused rejecting the case

presented by the agency. The judgment relating to the 2G scam case of today has been prima facie examined and it appears that the evidence adduced to substantiate the charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the learned court. The CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter, CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said. Asked whether an appeal would be filed in the Delhi high court challenging the verdict, the spokesperson replied in the affirmative.



The Enforcement Directorate has also decided to appeal against the judgment of the special court that acquitted 19 people in the 2G spectrum allocation money laundering case.

Dealing a body blow to the Comptroller and Auditor General's and the CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences, judge Saini in his 1,552-page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people 'artfully' arranged few selected facts and created a scam 'when there was none'.

In all, there were 17 accused, including Raja and Kanimozhi, both leaders of Congress ally DMK, in this case that also included three corporate entities.

The three judgments, which together ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed out of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

The ED and the CBI said they will challenge before the Delhi high court the verdicts, which also unleashed a political slugfest between the BJP and the Opposition.

There were 19 accused in the ED chargesheet some of whom figured in the CBI chargesheet filed in its main and offshoot case.

Buoyed by the verdicts, the Congress and the DMK said 'truth' has finally prevailed and that justice has been delivered while the ruling party asked the Congress not to treat them as a 'badge of honour'.

The Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders apologise to the nation for their alleged 'propaganda and lies' on the issue.

Manmohan Singh said the court judgment needs to be respected as it has 'pronounced that the massive propaganda' unleashed against his government was without any foundation.

"Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power, apologise to the country?" asked Congress communications incharge Randeep Surjewala.

"Today is the day for fixing accountability and responsibility."

In a counterattack, Jaitley said the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a 'badge of honour'.

The party's 'zero loss theory' was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, he added.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

A number of supporters of DMK leaders Raja and Kanimozhi, who were anxiously waiting outside the jam-packed court room, broke into loud cheers as soon as the verdict was pronounced.

"There is no evidence against me and justice has been delivered," Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, told reporters.

A beaming Raja said, "You see everybody is happy."

In a statement in the evening, Raja said the court acquittal showed that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was 'cooked-up'.

He also debunked the presumptive loss theories in the allocation.

IMAGE: Former Telecom minister A Raja gestures after he was acquitted by a special court in the 2G scam case. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

Raja, who was the Telecom minister in the Congress-led UPA government when 122 spectrum licences were issued to eight companies in 2008 on first-come-first-serve basis, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

Raja remained in jail for over 15 months while Kanimozhi was in prison for six months before they were granted bail. Other accused persons were also in jail for varying terms.

The trial in the three cases relating to the 2G scam began after the then CAG Vinod Rai in his report alleged 122 2G licences were given to telecom operators at throwaway prices when the UPA was in power and pegged at Rs 1.76 lakh crore the loss to the national exchequer.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court court on February 2, 2012.

IMAGE: DMK's Kanimozhi said after the acquittal that she felt vindicated and that justice had been delivered in the 2G case. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

Former telecom minister Kapil Sibal demanded an apology from Rai, saying his stand on loss from the 2G spectrum allocation stands vindicated. Sibal had contradicted the CAG report, maintaining there was 'zero loss' to the government as a result of giving 2G licences to new players in 2008.

The verdict also echoed in the Lok Sabha where senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily demanded that Rai quit all posts.

Rai heads the Supreme Court-appointed four-member panel of administrators to run the affairs of the BCCI and is also the Chairman of the Banks Board Bureau.

Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, the other accused who were given a chit in the main CBI case included former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd, film producer Karim Morani, Sharad Kumar, Director of Kalaignar TV were also acquitted in the money laundering case.

Three companies--Swan Telecom, Unitech Wireless(Tamil Nadu) limited and Reliance Telecom limited--listed as accused in the main case were also acquitted.

The acquittal of all the accused brought to end the trial that lasted nearly seven years in one of the most controversial corruption cases that involved politicians, bureaucrats and a host of businessmen and corporate executives accused of conspiracy in the allocation of spectrum or radio waves used to offer mobile services.

Raja and Kanimozhi were also let off in another case lodged by the ED under the money laundering law arising out of the 2G scam.

Saini, whose court came into being on March 14, 2011 for hearing 2G cases exclusively, also acquitted Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia and six others in a separate CBI case arising out of the 2G scam probe.

Besides Ruias, Loop Telecom Promoters I P Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan and Vikash Saraf, one of the Essar Group Directors, Loop Telecom Ltd, Loop Mobile (India) Ltd and Essar Teleholdings Ltd were also acquitted.
Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate -- the upper house of the parliament -- on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

Gen Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between Gen Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the Army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.

Pak must address our core concerns for better ties: India

Reacting to the comments of Gen Bajwa, India on Thursday asserted that Islamabad will have to take action against terror groups operating from its soil for improvement in the bilateral relationship.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India would like good relations with Pakistan provided Islamabad takes action against terror groups.

"It is important for Pakistan to understand our core concern, which is terrorism. We have time and again asked them to take action against terrorists who are operating from their soil. This is something they (Pakistan) will have to handle if they are serious in cultivating this friendship," Kumar told reporters.

He was asked to comment on Gen Bajwa's remarks.

"Like any good neighbour, we do desire good neighbourly relations with the country which is next to us," Kumar said.
The tough question before the DMK and its leader MK Stalin now is, what should their response be if sounded out for an alliance by the BJP for or after the next parliamentary polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets DMK chief M Karunanidhi as party working president M K Stalin looks on at their residence in Chennai on November 6, 2017. Photograph: PTI Photo.

It is celebration time for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, but the saddest part is that party chief, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who has been bed-ridden, may not be able to participate in the revelry following the CBI court dismissing the 2G scam case against his daughter Kanimozhi and party colleague and then telecom minister A Raja.

As chief minister, veteran politician, responsible party chief and an affectionate father, Karunanidhi donned all the caps with as much elan and composure as was possible under the circumstances. Yet, that could not stop him from visiting Kanimozhi in Tihar jail more than once -- taking on the political criticism and media opprobrium attending as much on the probity and propriety of his action as on the 2-G scam case that was unfolding all the same.

Now, when CBI court judge O P Saini has acquitted them all after nine long years, the nonagenarian leader is bed-ridden and is said to suffer from memory loss, with the result he may not even know that the dirt thrown at Kanimozhi and Raja, and through them at him and the party, has all been wiped clean.

Son M K Stalin, now working president of the party, put it aptly while welcoming the verdict and condemned all those who had foisted what other party leaders said then, and now, was a trumped up case, when he asked the media to show the same grit in taking to the people about the acquittal story with the same vehemence they had taken the scam story (and the various phases of the court cases, arrest and bail, etc).

The trial court verdict raises more questions than the 3-line judgment. To start with, will the CBI and/or ED go in appeal, and if so against whom all? Despite the ED announcing it will and the CBI saying it will wait for the detailed order, it will take more time for these agencies and their law officers to study the verdict and advise accordingly, as at the end of the day, it is a political decision of sorts for the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take.

On the one hand, the party that had riled the Congress-led UPA, of which the DMK was a ministerial partner, and more so Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally, would have a lot to explain.

Already, second and third-line DMK leaders appearing on social media and television have started reminding the people about the famous/infamous report of then CAG Vinod Rai, fixing what came to be dubbed the notional loss to the exchequer, at an astronomically high Rs 1.86-lakh crores. They have also begun revisiting the CBI probe to ask how this loss came to be reduced to Rs 30,000 crore first and later to Rs 10,000 crore later.

Does it mean that now that all the accused have been acquitted, there was no loss at all? is the unasked question, and if the entire sum and story was cooked up for political reasons. If so, why, for whom and by whom? they have begun asking.

Leaving aside second-line DMK leaders, some alliance leaders like VCKs Thol Thirumavalavan, among others, have sought investigations and cases against all those involved in foisting the case, holding the accused in jail without bail, all in a case where there possibly was no evidence at any point in time, only because of which judge Saini could dismiss the prosecution argument, outright -- at least in the order part of his judgment.

This apart, the Congress Opposition, or whatever remains of the party in Parliament, but more enthusiastic after the Gujarat assembly poll results, could go to town, tom-tomming that all the other court-ordered or court-supervised cases on coal allocation and the like too were all foisted and politically-motivated.

Considering that even without it, no same issue has won or lost more than one election in this nation, other than those directly affecting the voter like price rice, food scarcity and unemployment, one may have to wait and watch the political fall-out of the days verdict.

Nearer home in Tamil Nadu, the DMK cadres are celebrating. It has boosted their morale while working on the days controversial polling in the even more controversial second R K Nagar by-election in Chennai, after the seat once held by Chief Minister Jayalalitha fell vacant following her death on December 5, 2016.

Not that anyone expected the Delhi court verdict to alter the course of polling, or the results one way or the other, but already party second-line leaders and cadres across the state are talking about the verdict refurbishing the DMKs image, which could have done with such a make-over in what is becoming a long run-up to the assembly polls in 2021, preceded by the Lok Sabha elections in May 2019.

Eyebrows were caused to be raised when, a few weeks ago, PM Modi made an unscheduled visit to call on ailing Karunanidhi, whose condition was however known to be stable for months then, and since, too. Though everyone involved described it as a courtesy call, something the PM had not extended to the ailing Jayalalithaa through her 75-day-long hospitalisation, there was speculation that the BJP was seeking to warm up to the DMK and Stalin after the partys purported bid to prop up a post-Jaya AIADMK under its overall care and direction had failed miserably.

For the DMK and Stalin, the verdict is a political victory. Any reversal, and conviction/sentencing of party leaders, instead, could have embarrassed both the DMK and Congress ally at the national level, post-Gujarat, when everyone was expected to warm up to the new Rahul Gandhi leadership of anti-BJP forces at regional and national levels.

BJPs Subramanian Swamy, the original initiator of the investigations and court cases in the 2-G scam as against the DMKs political rival Jayalalithaa on other occasions, was prompt in tweeting that the Centre could prove its sincerity in the matter only if it filed a quick appeal against the days acquittal.

That leaves a tough question before the DMK and Stalin, as to what should be their response if sounded out for a BJP alliance for or after the next parliamentary polls, the Delhi verdict having erased all shades of dirt sticking to the DMK.

The win-win lose-lose performance in PM Modis native Gujarat, that too after all his great campaign efforts, may have only made decisions of the kind difficult, not only for the DMK in Tamil Nadu, but possibly for other similarly-placed regional parties elsewhere in the country, too.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is director, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
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.
Sudan: Charge or Release Rights Activists

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 19 December 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Sudan: Charge or Release Rights Activists, 19 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a3baade4.html [accessed 18 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.

Sudanese authorities should immediately charge or release the human rights activist Rudwan Dawod and other activists in national security custody, and investigate allegations of ill-treatment and torture, Human Rights Watch said.

Security officials detained Dawod, a 35-year-old dual Sudanese-American citizen, on December 6, 2017, in the El Jereif neighborhood in Khartoum. A witness told Human Rights Watch that plainclothes security agents arrested Dawod after he visited the area to show solidarity with local community protests against government land expropriations. He is being held in an unknown location, without access to a lawyer or his family.

"Sudan locks up activists for weeks on end, holds them incommunicado, and subjects them to abuse, including torture," said Jehanne Henry, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Authorities need to end these detentions and grant all detainees full access to family, lawyers, and medical care."

Sudan's National Security and Intelligence Service (NISS) officials are holding an unknown number of other activists, according to local rights groups. Known detainees include Nasreldin Mukhtar, a prominent Darfuri student activist who was arrested on August 22, and eight Darfuri students arrested in mid-September while protesting NISS detentions of two other students. NISS is well-known for abusing and torturing detainees in their custody. Mukhtar's sister said in a video statement that she saw visible physical injuries on him when she visited him in October.

"His face was full of bruises and injuries and he was trembling and very sick because of the detention and extensive beatings," she said. "His situation was very bad."

Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of similar cases in recent years. During a crackdown on "civil disobedience" in November 2016, a NISS official beat a member of the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP), who was detained for 50 days, so badly that he required surgery. In December 2016, a British journalist and his Sudanese-American translator who entered Darfur to investigate allegations of chemical weapons were tortured, including beatings, use of electric shocks, and mock executions. Dawod was among the scores of activists arrested during popular protests in July 2012 and beaten and tortured in detention.

In October 2017, the United States lifted decades-long economic sanctions on Sudan, following a January executive order citing improvements in a number of key areas that did not explicitly include human rights reforms. Human Rights Watch has urged the US to put human rights benchmarks at the heart of its engagement with Sudan. Chief among them should be ending the practice of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture.

"Torture and prolonged, arbitrary detention are still routine practice in Sudan, used as a means to stifle dissent and dialogue," Henry said. "These tactics are further evidence of Sudan's appalling rights record."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
We value your privacy.

Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy.
Vancouver, BC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/21/2017 --According to a new series of reports on the U.S. market for digital dentistry devices by iData Research (www.idataresearch.com), growth of the market is limited due to the emergence of relatively inexpensive products. Foreign brands have penetrated the market for zirconia CAD/CAM blocks and discs in the United States, driving the overall average selling price (ASP) downwards.



"Generic brands produced in the U.S. have captured a notable portion of the market through promotion strategies, facilitating further ASP declines," explains Jeffrey Wong, Strategic Analyst Manager at iData Research. "Inexpensive products have also facilitated ASP cuts and competitive pricing within the rapid prototyping system market."



Overall, the digital dentistry market will be driven by lab consolidation. Small laboratories are being displaced by large corporate chains that have the financial means to invest in technologies and replace their systems, thereby driving growth of the installed base for CAD/CAM milling systems. On the other hand, the number of dental labs is shrinking as the dental lab market consolidates and puts a damper on potential market growth. However, larger consolidated labs often own more than one system, and are more likely to invest in premium machinery. Small labs tend to use systems past their expiration date rather than replacing them with new ones. Ongoing consolidation will also have a positive impact on the placement rate of rapid prototyping systems, thereby encouraging unit sales growth.



Growth of the CAD/CAM system market largely stems from the growing intraoral scanner space. Initially, the intraoral scanner market was largely driven by general practitioners (GPs). However, orthodontists and dental surgeons are increasingly adopting the technology, as GPs are now sharing scanners in multi-practice organizations. As the user base for intraoral scanners expands, unit sales will increase, thereby encouraging market growth. Growth of the CAD/CAM material market also reflects the ongoing shift of labs and dental offices towards milling their prosthetics and molds, rather than relying on traditional fabrication methods.



Dentsply Sirona is the leading competitor in the U.S. digital dentistry market due to its share in the chairside CAD/CAM system market as well as the CAD/CAM milling system, standalone CAD/CAM scanner and intraoral scanner markets. Its dominance is mainly attributed to the large chairside system segment achieved through sales of its CEREC chairside CAD/CAM system.



Additional competitors in the U.S. digital dentistry market include Sagemax, Glidewell Laboratories, Ivoclar Vivadent, Digital Dental, E4D Technologies, 3Shape, 3M ESPE, VITA North America, Align Technology, Stratasys, 3D Systems, Shofu Dental, Straumann, Nobel Biocare, Carestream Dental, EnvisionTEC, B&D Technologies, Condor Scan, Roland DGA and Formlabs among others. Although each segment within the digital dentistry market is dominated by a different handful of companies, the top competitors were able to distinguish themselves through ongoing mergers and acquisitions. As these deals increase their pre-existing shares of the digital dentistry market, the top competitors will continue to grow in terms of market share.



For Further Information



More on the digital dentistry device market in the U.S. can be found in a series of reports published by iData entitled the U.S. Market Report Suite for Digital Dentistry Devices. The full report suite on the U.S. market for digital dentistry includes CAD/CAM systems, CAD/CAM materials and rapid prototyping systems. There is also an analysis provided on CAD/CAM software within the laboratory environment.



The iData series on the market for digital dentistry devices covers the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, India, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and 15 countries in Europe including Germany, France, the United Kingdom (U.K.), Italy, Spain, Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), Scandinavia (Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway), Portugal, Austria and Switzerland. Reports provide a comprehensive analysis including units sold, procedure numbers, market value, forecasts, as well as detailed competitive market shares and analysis of major players' success strategies in each market and segment. To find out more about digital dentistry device market data, register online or email us at info@idataresearch.net for a U.S. Market Report Suite for Digital Dentistry Devices brochure and synopsis.



About iData Research

iData Research (www.idataresearch.com) is an international market research and consulting firm, dedicated to providing the best in business intelligence for the medical device industry. Our research empowers our clients by providing them with the necessary tools to achieve their goals and do it right the first time. iData covers research in: Dental Operatory Equipment, Dental Material, Dental Lasers, Dental Prosthetics, Dental CAD/CAM, Dental Bone Graft Substitutes, Laparoscopy, Urology, Gynecology, Endoscopy, Orthopedic Trauma, Large & Small Joints, Orthopedic Soft Tissue, Orthopedic Biomaterials, Orthopedic Soft Tissue Reinforcement and Regeneration, Vascular Access, Spinal Implants and VCF, Spinal MIS, Wound Management, Ultrasound, X-Ray Imaging, Diagnostic Imaging, Oncology, Ophthalmics, Interventional Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, Cardiac Rhythm Management, Electrophysiology, Operating Room Equipment, Surgical Microscopes, Robotics and Surgical Navigation, Anesthesiology and more.



We have built a reputation and earned our clients' trust based on consistent and uniquely intelligent research that allows our customers to make confident decisions and impact their businesses. A combination of market expertise and over a decade of experience has resulted in a deep understanding of the medical device industry that has inspired innovation and propelled our clients to success.
Note all articles are independently researched and written by myself. However, if you buy via one of the links it may be an affiliate and I may earn a small commission.

By all means, have a browse yourself. But to save time I have picked out what I think are the 20 of the best retro designs in the Made Sale.

Im a big fan of Made. A constantly evolving range and a steady supply of retro and midcentury modern designs that cover furniture, seating, beds, lifting, accessories and so much more.

But theres another great thing about Made, which is the annual end of year sale.

The retailer isnt afraid to mark down a good number of designs. A lot of retailers have sales, but when it comes to Made, it includes the pieces you want, as opposed to the furnishings it just wants out of the range.

With that in mind, its a good time to buy a lot of the pieces I have featured in the past 12 months and beyond. Discounts inevitably vary, but theres always money off and as such, it is a great time to buy.

I would recommend a full browse of the sale if you have time, but if you dont, I have also picked out some of my favourite designs currently on the sale. Its really the tip of the iceberg considering there are over 1,500 things marked down. But it does at least give you an idea of what the sale is about.

No particular order, just have a look at the discounts

1. Chou midcentury modern sofa bed

You can see this at there top of the page as a sofa. But as you can see, it adapts to a bed as well. Plenty of colours, a wonderful retro look and marked down. From 399 to 329.

Find out more at the Made website

2. Lucien midcentury modern bookcase

Practical, good-looking and very adaptable. After all, everyone needs storage.

A dark mango wood finish here, some lovely legs and room for everything from books to your favourite bits and pieces. Originally 649, it is now own to 459.

Find out more at the Made website

3. Louis retro walnut sideboard

This is lovely. And much cheaper right now.

Everyone needs a sideboard and the contrasting detail on this one makes it for me. Storage is aplenty and those metal legs look nice and sturdy. Originally 649, it now sells for 459.

Find out more at the Made website

4. Amalyn retro walnut coffee table

Like a sideboard, everyone needs a coffee table. And this one is ideal if you want a retro look. A curved shape contrasts the crossed metal legs and with two layers of storage, theres plenty of space to keep things t0 hand. 299 originally, it is down to 229.

Find out more at the Made website

5. Cecil midcentury modern accent armchair

It looks vintage, but of course, thats not the case.

A chair that has more than a hint of the 1950s about it, the Cecil is available in a variety of colours (although this gold cotton velvet appeals to my eye) and all that lovely wooden frame. Big discount here, down from 599 to 399.

Find out more at the Made website

6. Alchemy two-tone glass decanter

I love a bit of orange glass in the home and this piece has a real presence.

Its actually amber in colour, at least in part as this is a two-tone colour scheme, Lovely vintage Scandinavian shape as well. Not massively discounted, but down from 59 to 53.

Find out more at the Made website

7. Vaserely round wool rug

Different shades of this, but the Vaserely rug works best for me in mustard.

Op art in inspiration (hinted at by the name) this is the perfect feature rug for brightening up a retro living room. A definite talking point. Originally 349, it is down to 279.

Find out more at the Made website

8. Sanne mango wood planters

You get a set of two of these  and they look good as well as being practical if you want some green in your home.

Two planters, two sizes and the mango wood base contrasting the curves of the ceramic pots. The pair were originally 129 but are now down to 99.

Find out more at the Made website

9. Glenn midcentury modern desk

Homeworking seems to be here for some time, so a desk like the Glenn might be an option for your home.

A strong 1960s look, a dark oak stain and three drawers within. Not to mention all of that surface space and the tapered legs. Originally 429, it is down to 349.

Find out more at the Made website

10. Charley retro king size bed

Plenty of beds in the sale, but this one caught my eye.

Plenty of space, tapered legs, an upholstered frame and a rather grand headboard. Usually selling for 649, it is down to 529.

Find out more at the Made website

11. Bow large overreach floor lamp

This has become something of an affordable classic. Even more affordable now.

Of course, this is a take on the iconic Arco lamp, but for much less money, a marble base, chrome frame and serious drama for your living room. As well as light. Originally 169, it is down to 139.

Find out more at the Made website

12. Jenson midcentury modern storage bench

Yes, its the smaller of the two designs above and one thats always been popular. Surprised to see it in the sale.

An entryway bench or telephone bench, perfect for the hallway, phone or not. It was originally 229 but is now down to 179. Note there are other designs in this range marked down too, so have a browse for those too if you like this.

Find out more at the Made website

13. Keaton walnut and brass sideboard

Another sideboard and one that would work in a 1960s or 1970s-inspired interior.

Cupboard and drawer space, a good surface area and the brass frame contrasting the wooden upper. This was 699, but you can pick it up now for 499.

Find out more at the Made website

14. Warner click clack sofa bed

A second sofa bed, this one is both affordable and with a design that should fit into most interiors.

Love the wood support and hairpin legs. Four colours to choose from too. As for price, it is down from 379 to 299.

Find out more at the Made website

15. Austin retro floor lamp

Another lamp, one thats available in three finishes. Although personally, I quite like the brass one pictured here.

Theres a table lamp of this, but thats not in the sale. However, the bigger version is. A 70s vibe assured, the lamp has three adjustable mini shades, so you can aim the light wherever you need it. So pretty useful as well as a good looker. Was 109 it is now 89.

Find out more at the Made website

16. Liana retro glass cabinet

The Liana range is quite extensive and with a common look across that range. But the glass cabinet caught my eye.

I think its because this is the only such cabinet I can see and if you want a cabinet, it is worth a look. Like the full range, it is made of warm ash and rattan, with this piece also having glass panelling and of course, tapered legs. 749 at full price, but now down to 559.

Find out more at the Made website

17. Ogilvy midcentury modern wall lamp

Something of a bargain anyway, but even better in the sale.

It looks like a pricey feature wall light and probably a design from the 1950s. it is neither. But the Ogilvy in matt black and brass is as much all art as feature lighting. And all for just 35, down from 45. Note that there are other lights in this range too.

Find out more at the Made website

18. Donna retro sputnik pendant light

Talking of feature lights, they dont get much more feature than this one.

A take on the space-age sputnik design, but with opal glass and brass protruding from the centre globe. A serious centrepiece. Was 249, now down to 199.

Find out more at the Made website

19. Yuri retro garden lounge chair

Seems odd talking about garden furniture in the middle of winter. But thats when you get it cheap.

There used to be a target version of this, but now there are two different shades to choose from. Theres even a table and a sofa version as well. All very hip 50s garden party. Was 229, you can plan ahead for next summer for 179.

Find out more at the Made website

20. Collet retro dome table lamp

Not all versions of this are in the sale, but the copper one here is.

A lovely, Panton-esque design too. Retro, cool, practical and not too large. That pull cord is pretty cool too. Originally 69, you can get it for just 49 now.

Find out more at the Made website
Jailed Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha refused on Thursday to be questioned by court investigators in his prison cell in a remote corner of the country, instructing his attorney also to decline future sessions until he is transferred to a facility closer to his home in the capital Phnom Penh, his lawyer said today.



Kem Sokha is now exercising his right to remain silent, his attorney Som Sokhong told RFAs Khmer Service in an interview.



He has chosen to stop responding to questions by the investigating judge while he is being held at Trapeang Phlong prison, Som Sokhong said. He wants questioning to be conducted in a courtroom setting rather than a prison cell.



We are following his instructions and are boycotting the session, he said, adding, It is against the law for him to be questioned in prison.



Kem Sokha, leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was arrested on Sept. 3 and faces charges of collaborating with the U.S. to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Hun Sens ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP).



Cambodias CPP-dominated Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 16 that the CNRP be dissolved for its part in the alleged plot, essentially eliminating Hun Sens competition ahead of a national election scheduled for July 2018.



Kem Sokha has already been questioned twice in his cell in remote Tboung Khmum province. In both cases, members of his legal team took issue with the investigators line of inquiry, which they said had assumed their clients guilt.



Following todays boycotted questioning session and another session scheduled for Dec. 22, a session has been scheduled for Dec. 29.



'Collecting information'



Also on Thursday, a lawyer for two former RFA Khmer Service reporters arrested in November on charges of espionage said an appeals court will hear their case on Dec. 26. They will also be questioned on Dec. 25 by the investigating judge of the Trial Court, attorney Keo Vanny said.



Former RFA reporters Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin were taken into custody on Nov. 14 by police who initially said the pair had been detained for running an unlicensed karaoke studio. They were later accused of setting up a studio for RFA and were formally charged with illegally collecting information for a foreign source.



They now face a possible prison term of up to 15 years.



RFA closed its operations in Cambodia in September amid a government crackdown on the media, and the two reporters have denied the charges against them.



Meanwhile, former Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia leader Chea Mony has fled the country into exile after being hit with a lawsuit by over 100 government-linked smaller unions and federations, sources said.



Filed earlier this week, the suit accuses Chea Mony of having called for international sanctions in response to the governments shut-down of Hun Sens political opposition.



In an interview with RFAs Khmer Service, Chea Mony had urged the European Union and the U.S. to impose sanctions on Cambodia to pressure Hun Sen to reinstate the CNRP, release Kem Sokha, and reverse a months-long crackdown on NGOs and the media ahead of next years general election.



Not safe to remain



Chea Mony joins a list of many CNRP members including party leaders, lawmakers, and commune council members who have now fled Cambodia ahead of threats by the ruling party.



Speaking to RFA earlier this week, Sea Phiromexecutive director of the Housing Rights Task Force, now living in the U.S.said that the government had tied his work helping the victims of land grabs to alleged support for a popular revolution against the ruling party.



It was not safe for me to remain in Cambodia, he said



The courts and the prisons are now political tools used by the government to silence its opposition along with the media and NGOs, he said.



Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Authorities in Taiwan have widened an investigation into the activities of Zhou Hongxu, jailed in September for trying to recruit a diplomat from the democratic island to spy for mainland China, to include four members of the pro-China New Party, according to local media reports.



Prosecutors arrived to search the home of party spokesman Wang Ping-chung and three other party officials this week, following up on suspicions that they might have supplied Zhou with information in violation of Taiwan's national security law, according to the Taiwan News website.



After Wang began a live Facebook feed and refused to admit police and judicial investigators, the door was opened by a locksmith, the Taiwan News reported. Police later found Chinese yuan in cash and documents written in simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China stored there.



Wang said at a news conference held after his release from questioning that the move was part of a "Green Terror" witch-hunt by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has previously campaigned on a pro-independence platform under a green flag.



However, he admitted to knowing Zhou, adding that the former student had attended New Party events in the past.



"In 2014, when I successfully became a representative of the party, he came to an event to offer his support," Wang said. "Later he participated in our organization events so of course we know him."



Wang has denied receiving money from mainland Chinese political or military organizations, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported.



'Green terror'

The phrase 'green terror' echoed that used by an opinion article in the Global Times newspaper, a nationalistic tabloid which has close ties to Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, on .



"Taiwanese authorities aim to frighten pro-mainland groups through their doomed to fail ... 'green terror' independence movement," the paper said, citing claims that some 5,000 mainland Chinese spies are currently in hiding in Taiwan, a former Japanese colony which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.



Officials have declined to confirm or deny reports that the party members are suspected of spying for China.



However, Taiwan's judiciary is independent of the executive, unlike that of mainland China.



KMT lawmaker Tseng Ming-chung said the DPP, which ousted the KMT from the presidency and the Legislative Yuan in 2016, fears anyone who supports "peaceful reunification" with mainland China.



"This has the flavor of killing the chickens to frighten the monkeys," Tseng told reporters. "I think that if cross-straits tensions continue, it will cause instability in the relationship [with Beijing]."



"That wouldn't be good for Taiwan's development as a whole," he said, in an apparent reference to increasing air-force patrols of the island by the Chinese military in recent weeks.



'One China' principle

China's Taiwan Affairs Office on praised the New Party for its stance in opposing Taiwan independence and upholding the "one China" principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China.



"Recently, the Taiwan authorities have shielded and connived with Taiwan independent splittists, and taken various moves to wantonly crack down on and persecute forces and people who uphold peaceful reunification," it said.



"We strongly condemn this and are paying close attention to developments," the office said.



The New Party was founded in the 1990s by breakaway members of the former Kuomintang ruling party, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's communists.



It currently has no seats in the island's parliament, the Legislative Yuan, but holds two seats on the municipal government of the capital, Taipei.



Taiwan was a Japanese colony during the 50 years prior to the end of World War II, but was handed back to the KMT government of what was then the Republic of China as part of Tokyo's post-war reparation deal.



The KMT government relocated entirely to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war, but Beijing still regards the island as part of Chinese territory and has threatened to invade if Taiwan seeks formal independence.



President Tsai Ing-wen swept to victory in 2016 on the back of broad political support for de facto self-rule for Taiwan, where the majority of voters identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.



Taiwan began a transition to democracy following the death of KMT President Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, in , starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of President Lee Teng-hui in 1996.



Reported by Chung Kwang-cheng for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Hwang Chun-mei for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Diplomatic archives recently declassified by the U.K. government have shed further light on the horror of the military crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, describing troops of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) 27th army as being ordered to "spare no-one" as they used dum-dum bullets, automatic weapons and armored vehicles to carry out mass killings in Beijing.



After decades of secrecy and suppression of public debate on the massacre by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the documents give a harrowing and bloody account of what happened on the streets of Beijing on the night of , 1989 and in the days that followed, the Hong Kong news site HK01.com reported.



"On arrival at Tiananmen troops from [the northeastern city of Shenyang] had separated students and residents," then British ambassador Alan Donald wrote in a diplomatic cable dated detailing how the Shenyang troops had been sent in unarmed to disperse the crowd, followed up by a fully armed 27th Army that rampaged through the city killing civilians and other soldiers alike.



"Students understood they were given one hour to leave square but after five minutes [armored personnel carriers] APCs attacked," the cable said. "Students linked arms but were mown down, including soldiers."



"APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make "pie" and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains," it said.



The cable, which described the 27th Army as illiterate "primitives" from the northern province of Shanxi, commanded by the nephew of then Chinese President Yang Shangkun, said the heavily armed troops were kept without news for 10 days and told they were to take part in a military exercise.



An earlier cable dated May described Beijing as encircled by at least 10 different armies from elsewhere in China, at an estimated strength of 100,000.



"The leadership keeps 27th Army on the move so that it can attack from a different direction each time," the June cable said.



The documents also describe pitched battles between "enraged" crowds and troops in the western suburb of Muxidi, and Shilipu, to the east of the diplomatic quarter in Jianguomenwai.



"The first three waves were held by the demonstrators and [Shenyang] troops tried to push back the crowds to let 27 Army through," the cable says. "They failed and 27 Army opened fire on the crowd (both civilians and soldiers) before running over them in their APCs."



'Enraged masses'

At Muxidi, "the enraged masses followed ignoring machine-gun fire to next battle at Liubukou," the description reads, in a reference to a district of Beijing just west of Tiananmen Square.



"APCs ran over troops and civilians at 65 kilometers/hour in same manner," it said. "One APC crashed and driver (a captain) got out and was taken by crowd to hospital. He is now deranged and demands death for his atrocities."



It said the 27th Army was ordered to spare no-one, and "shot wounded Shenyang soldiers."



In Liubukou, "four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted," it said.



"A three-year-old girl was injured but her mother was shot as she went to her aid as were six others who tried," the cable said.



The account, which gives an estimate of 10,000 civilian deaths, suggests premeditated killings on a mass scale on the streets of Beijing.



"1,000 survivors were told they could escape via Zhengyi Lu but were then mown down by specially prepared machine-gun positions," it says, adding that any ambulances trying to rescue the wounded were also attacked and their crews killed.



"With medical crew dead, wounded driver attempted to ram attackers but was blown to pieces with anti-tank weapon," it says. "In further attack APCs caught up with Shenyang military straggler trucks, rammed and overturned them and ran over troops."



It said a 27th Army officer was shot dead by his own troops, "apparently because he faltered."



"Troops explained they would be shot if they hadn't shot officer," according to the cable, which said the Chinese leadership was protected by two rings of tanks and armored personnel carriers, one inside the walls of Zhongnanhai, and another outside.



Target practice on civilians

The embassy said the 27th Army were likely used because they were the most "reliable and obedient," adding that many in China believed civil war was an imminent possibility.



"Some considered other armies would attack 27 Army but they had no ammunition," Donald's cable reads, adding that many military commanders had refused to respond to a summons to a meeting with President Yang Shangkun, while the Beijing military commander had refused to supply outside armies with food, water or barracks.



"27 Army snipers shot many civilians on balconies, street sweepers etc for target practice," the cable says, adding that hospitals in the capital had been ordered to accept only security force casualties.



Former Tiananmen student protest leader Xiong Yan, who was a Beijing University law student at the time, said he was at at the battle of Muxidi.



"I think this is a pretty true account," Xiong told RFA on . "Government departments have ways of finding out military secrets, and they are more likely to have the bigger picture."



U.S.-based former student activist Fang Zheng, who lost both legs in the crackdown, said he was at Liubukou, where he was was run over by an armored vehicle, but was more skeptical about the cables having a big impact.



"There are a lot of things about , 1989 which have yet to come out," Fang said. "If we ever get the whole truth, I think it can only come from the Chinese government."



"But that's unlikely to happen, because the current regime is still covering it all up and distorting the facts," he said. "This is still the post-, 1989 government in power."



The estimate of 10,000 civilian casualties differs from later estimates of the 1989 death toll in Beijing.



Former Beijing mayor Chen Xitong told a top meeting of China's parliament on , 1989, that "more than 200" people were killed, including 36 undergraduates, while more than 3,000 non-military personnel were injured.



In 2008, victims' group the Tiananmen Mothers, founded by retired university professor Ding Zilin, said it had documented the locations of 188 civilian deaths, 71 of whom were students, including Ding's 17-year-old son.



But the group says that 13 of its members have yet to locate the place where their loved ones died.



Reported by Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in southern Laos Attapeu province continue to turn up caches of illegally logged timber, despite a pledge by the governor to eradicate the trade when he took over administration of the region a month ago from his predecessor, who was removed because of ties to lumber smuggling.



On Dec. 13, a provincial inspection team discovered 250 pieces of illegal timber, measuring around 180 cubic meters (6,350 cubic feet), buried underground in a forest area of Attapeu between posts 766 and 770 of the Lao border with Vietnam.



According to a senior provincial official, who spoke to RFAs Lao Service on condition of anonymity, the cache must belong to Lao and Vietnamese businessmen who colluded in this illegal activity.



We found it before they were able to deliver it, he added.



In addition to timber that was partially processed, the inspection team also uncovered a pile of uncut logs, two power saws, and a saw table in the forest near a village along the border, the official said.



Teams will continue to investigate in the area, he said, adding that inspectors expect to find additional logs of varying stages of processing hidden along the borderline.



Days after last weeks discovery, a provincial inspection team stopped a Toyota SUV driving through Saysetha district towards the border with Vietnam and uncovered 11 pieces of hidden rosewood timber valued at around U.S. $20,000, according to reports by local media.



The driver was reported to be the former deputy head of immigration police at Laos Phoukeua International Border Checkpoint, which regulates crossings from Attapeu into western Vietnams Kon Tum province.



The two arrests are the latest to uncover illegally logged wood believed destined for Vietnam since Leth Xaiyaphone assumed the governorship of Attapeu province on Nov. 21, assuring the public that he would pursue the prosecution of those who disregarded state law, as well as a Communist Party directive banning logging in certain areas and exports of timber from Laos.



In May, Lao authorities seized a convoy of 27 trucks of logs owned by Seng Viyaketh, wife of Attapeus then-governor Nam Viyaketh, at the Phoukeua International Border Checkpoint. Authorities determined that the timber was illegally obtained in Laos, where logging is heavily restricted as a measure to curb widespread deforestation.



Three Lao officials from Attapeus finance, forestry, and commerce departments are being investigated for their roles in the scheme and have since been ordered to stop working.



The Politburo issued an order early last month reassigning Nam to work with the countrys National Social and Scientific Council and replacing him with Leth as part of a reshuffle of high-ranking leaders  in accordance with job requirements for the new era.



While Nam and his wife denied any connection to the trucks seized in May, an official source who inspects timber in the southern provinces of Laos told RFA that the governors dismissal was directly related to the incident, as well as conflict of interest for his family and embezzlement.



Officials complicit



High-ranking officials in Attapeu are regularly involved in illegal logging and cross-border sales, despite a ban on the export of timber issued by Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith in May 2016 as part of an effort to end rampant smuggling to China and Vietnam, where the wood is used to make high-end furniture.



Sources have told RFA that provincial officials who take bribes to facilitate the smuggling include those from the departments of commerce, forest, public works and transport, customs and tax, and the provincial cabinet office.



Some 10,000 cubic meters (353,150 cubic feet) of illegally harvested timber seized from smugglers in Attapeu province this year has gone missing, likely the result of local authorities looking the other way or actively selling the wood on the black market.



Most of the illegal timber is obtained through conversion forestryclearing areas marked for the development of infrastructure projects such as hydropower dams, road building, and mining operationswhich is used as an excuse for large-scale logging that otherwise would not be permitted under Lao law.



Reported by RFAs Lao Service and translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh for RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Two Uyghur students who were detained after voluntarily returning to northwest Chinas Xinjiang region from Egypt this year amid a call by authorities for members of the ethnic group living abroad to travel home have died in police custody, according to sources.



A resident of Xinjiang, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told RFAs Uyghur Service that Abdusalam Mamat and Yasinjan, both from Korla (in Chinese, Kuerle) city, had been studying at prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University in Egypts capital Cairo since 2015 and 2016, respectively.



After Xinjiangs government issued an order earlier this year for Uyghurs living abroad to travel home to register with authorities, Mamat voluntarily returned to Korla in January and Yasinjan three months later, the source said.



The two young men were immediately imprisoned upon arrival and later died in police custody under suspicious circumstances, despite having no prior health issues, he added.



Since Xinjiang Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August last year, a series of harsh policies have been initiated targeting Uyghurs in the region, where members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group complain of religious and cultural repression and harassment under Chinese rule.



Thousands of Uyghurs accused of harboring extremist and politically incorrect views have been detained in political re-education camps and prisons throughout Xinjiang since April as part of an ongoing crackdown.



The Communist Party secretary of Korlas Aq-Eriq village, who said that 23 people are currently detained in his village, confirmed in a telephone call with RFA this week that Mamat and Yasinjan had died in prison.



Mamat was the son of the imam of the Grand Mosque, he said, referring to Korlas biggest Muslim house of worship, also known as the Juma Mosque.



Yasinjan was the sibling of an officer from Korlas Charbagh township police station who had worked for seven to eight years at the townships prison, the secretary said, adding that not even his police brother could save his life.



Yasinjans brother was dismissed from his police work prior to Yasinjans death, he said.



He was dismissed because he began to inquire about Yasinjans imprisonment.



Enver Osman, the secretary of Lenger village, in nearby Awat township, said he was unfamiliar with Yasinjans brother, when asked about policemen who had been recently fired from the Charbagh police station.



We have many who have been dismissed, so I dont know which one, he said.



Cairo students



Some 20 Uyghur students in Cairo are unaccounted for several months after authorities launched a dragnet targeting members of the ethnic minority at Chinas behest, two of the young men, who said they endured regular abuse while in detention, recently told RFA.



More than 200 Uyghurs, many of them religious students at Al-Azhar University, have been detained since July 4, rounded up in restaurants or at their homes, with others seized at airports as they tried to flee to safer countries, sources said in earlier reports.



Dozens of Uyghurs are believed to have already been deported home to Xinjiang, where rights groups say they face a serious risk of arbitrary detention and torture, but many of those who have voluntarily returned home have also been taken into custody.



China regularly conducts strike hard campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.



While China blames some Uyghurs for terrorist attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat and that repressive policies in Xinjiang are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Authorities in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region have earmarked a substantial amount of cash to reward residents of Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture who report acts of terrorism in the predominantly ethnic Uyghur-inhabited area, according to official sources.



The Counter-Terrorism Reward Resolution, enacted by the government of Hotan Prefecture, set aside 100 million yuan (U.S. $15.2 million) for information on suspicious activities, and for individuals who attack or kill terrorists, the official Hotan Daily newspaper said in a post to its WeChat social media account earlier this month.



The exact amount of individual rewards will be made public soon, the report added.



Officers who responded to calls at police departments in the prefecture confirmed that the reward policy had been announced by their superiors, but mostly said they were unsure of the details of the scheme.



But a security guard who answered the phone at the Aqsaray police station in Hotans Qaraqash (Moyu) county agreed to read the content of the Announcement of Payment Categories for Rewarding Members of the Public Who Provide Information on Illegal Activities Relating to Acts of Terrorism or Violence, which he said had been posted in the station two or three months ago.



People from all ethnic backgrounds who provide tips or clues of any illegal activities relating to acts of violence or terrorism will receive high rewards, once the information has been confirmed to be genuine after investigation, the guard read from the notice, speaking to RFAs Uyghur Service on condition of anonymity.



Anyone who supplies information prior to a planned violent terrorist attack on high density public areas or key locationssuch as government officesusing machetes, knives, bombs, or vehicles to ram buildings or people, will receive 3 million-5 million yuan (U.S. $456,000-760,000).



According to the notice, anyone who provides information regarding those believed to supply financial support to extremist organizations or individuals at home or abroad, or about those who attempt to cross national borders will be rewarded 1million-2 million yuan (U.S. $152,000-304,000), depending on the quality of the information received.



Tipsters who inform on those who plan or arrange illegal cross-border activities are eligible for 2 million-3 million-yuan rewards.



The notice contained 19 reward categories in total, the guard said, with the lowest value of 2,000 yuan (U.S. $304) earmarked for informants who report women in full dress or bearded men.



Number 19 states that anyone who reports women in full dress, young men who grow beards, and those who mix normal cultural traditions with religious extremism, will be rewarded 2,000 yuan, the guard said.



Regional crackdown



While similar policies have promised to reward would-be spies on terrorist activities in past years in Xinjiang, the announcement from Hotan provides some of the most detailed information on how authorities monitor Uyghur residents.



Uyghur exile groups told RFA they were deeply concerned that the new resolution also rewards members of the public who attack and even kill alleged extremists, expressing fear that it would allow Han Chinese migrants to the region to take the law in their hands and attack innocent Uyghurs with impunity by labelling them terrorists.



Since Xinjiang Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August last year, a series of harsh policies have been initiated targeting Uyghurs in the region, where members of the mostly Muslim ethnic group complain of religious and cultural repression and harassment under Chinese rule.



Thousands of Uyghurs accused of harboring extremist and politically incorrect views have been detained in political re-education camps and prisons throughout Xinjiang since April as part of an ongoing crackdown.



China regularly conducts strike hard campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.



While China blames some Uyghurs for terrorist attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat and that repressive policies in Xinjiang are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA's Uyghur Service. Translated by RFA's Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
UPDATED at 9:17 A.M. EST on 2017-12-22

A court in Vietnam sentenced five people on Thursday to a total of 19 years in prison on charges of spreading propaganda against the state under Article 88 of the countrys Penal Code.

The members of the group hung 26 flags emblazoned with three red stripes  the symbol of the Republic of Vietnam, also known as South Vietnam before 1975  around the town of Chau Doc in southern Vietnams An Giang province on April 25.

State media called the banners flags of a former puppet government.

Those sentenced include Nguyen Tan An, 25, who was given five years in prison; Huynh Thi Kim Quyen, 38, sentenced to four years in prison; Nguyen Ngoc Qui, 25, sentenced to four years in prison; and Pham Van Trong, and Nguyen Thanh Binh, both 23, and both sentenced to three years in prison. All are residents of An Giang province.

According to the trial panel of the provinces Peoples Court, they received the lowest possible sentences under Article 88 because they pleaded guilty.

Of the five convicted, Nguyen Tan An was considered the leader for organizing propaganda activities against the state.

According to police, An had belonged to other organizations called An Giang Force and An Giang Youth, both of which have a presence on Facebook.

Ans Facebook page contains many photos of activities organized by religious groups, such as charity vegetarian meals, and photos of Prophet Huynh Phu So, the founder of Hoa Hao Buddhism in Vietnam.

Vietnams government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some two million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups such as the one in An Giang province, that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

Rights groups say that authorities routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founders writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other southern provinces.

State media reports have not mentioned Hoa Hao Buddhism in relation to the arrests and prosecution of the five. However, An Giang province and some other parts of the Mekong Delta are centers of the religion, which does not recognize the state's control over its activities.

There have been several other cases this year in which Hoa Hao Buddhists have been detained.

Hoa Hao Buddhist follower Nguyen Huu Tan, 38, was arrested in May in Binh Minh township of southern Vietnams Vinh Long province after police searched his home for disseminating anti-state documents, according to a report at the time by the official Thanh Nien news.

Vu Duc Hois wife detained

In far northern Vietnam, police kidnapped the wife of a former prisoner of conscience Vu Duc Hoi after she withdrew 4.5 million dong (U.S. $200) from her bank account and robbed her after three hours of interrogation as to where she had obtained the money.

Hoang Thi Tuois abductors identified themselves as officers of the Ministry of Public Security.

The Vietnamese civil society group Human Rights Defenders quoted Hoi on Wednesday as saying that the kidnappers had taken his wife to a police station in Huu Lung district, Lang Son province, in far northern Vietnam where they took the money and asked her for information about the person who sent the funds.

After nearly three hours, they let her go at 7 p.m., he said.

Vi Duc Hoi, a former Communist Party member and former director of the Huu Lung District Party School in Lang Son province, was fired after publicly calling for Vietnam to be a multiparty democratic country.

He is also a member of the Association of Former Prisoners of Conscience in Vietnam and one of the founding members of the Association of Independent Journalists in Vietnam.

In 2010, Hoi was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly spreading propaganda against the state under Article 88 of Penal Code.

After his release in October 2015, Hoi was closely monitored by local police.

Police in the capital Hanoi arrested him again on May 19, 2017, when he arrived there to meet with other activists. He was held for three hours, and then sent back to Huu Lung district.

Vietnams security forces routinely steal money from the relatives of activists as well as persecute, harass, and intimidate them as a means of deterrence from criticizing the one-party, communist country, the activists say.

Nguyen Thi Lanh, wife of imprisoned pro-democracy activist Nguyen Trung Ton, said she was robbed by police in northern Vietnams Thanh Hoa province after she withdrew money from a bank, according to Human Rights Defenders.

Vietnamese protesters demonstrate against Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa during a rally in downtown Hanoi, May 1, 2016. Credit: AFP Formosa protesters arrested

Also on Wednesday, police arrested five people for staging a protest in Ho Chi Minh City against the Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group, which was responsible for a devastating toxic waste spill in 2016, an activist at the scene told RFAs Vietnamese Service.

Activist Dinh Quang Tuyen told RFA that he had witnessed the police and civil defense force beating the roughly 20 demonstrators, many of whom were young or elderly people.

Security forces also confiscated their banners and took them away by car.

[T]here were three people holding anti-Formosa banners in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, Tuyen said. After about five or 10 minutes, the secret service and civil defense force came to disperse the demonstrators, putting pressure on them to leave.

After that, they had to move to the city post office, he said. However, a group of secret service agents were waiting there for them, and five of them started to choke a girl whose Facebook nickname is Moc Lam. They proceeded to drag her to a taxi and took her away.

I witnessed Moc Lam being beaten severely, he went on to say. Four men choked her and pushed her onto the ground in front of many foreigners. The demonstrators goal was to peacefully protest against Formosa with banners. They werent shouting loudly; all they did was peacefully display banners.

After that they arrested an elderly person and another man who was recording them, Tuyen said.

Police and security officials at the scene can be seen trying to stop the demonstrators from shouting Formosa get out, according to a video clip posted on protester Dung Ngovans Facebook account.

During the protest, demonstrator Hoang Nhat Minh read out claims about the damage that Formosa had caused in Vietnams central provinces and urged people to unite to protect the environment.

Formosa has poisoned the central provinces, he said. Our fishermen are no longer able to fish in their waters. Now I would like to call on all the people in our country to unite and urge Formosa to get out of Vietnam.

It doesnt matter if you arrest us or kill us, he said. We have to speak out to protect the environment. If I must die to protect the environment, I am willing to do it.

As of Thursday evening, there was still no information on whether police had released the five protesters they had arrested.

RFA contacted the Police Department for the Investigation of Social Order Crimes under the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department, but an official there denied having arrested anyone.

The April 2016 spill  Vietnams largest environmental disaster to date  killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen and tourism industry workers jobless in four central provinces.

Formosa acknowledged that it was responsible for the release of toxic chemicals from its massive steel plant located at the deep-water port in Ha Tinh provinces Ky Anh district and voluntarily paid U.S. $500 million to clean up and compensate those affected by the spill.

Slow and uneven payouts of the funds by the Vietnamese government, however, have prompted many protests.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Emily Peyman. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
MGT Construction, a subsidiary of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, is shutting down operations after nearly three decades, in the wake of a lawsuit filed in October against top executives of the Henrico County-based commercial real estate company.

MGT is experiencing financial challenges, said C. Lee Warfield III, chairman, president and CEO of Thalhimer. The contracting company is still operating but not pursuing new projects and it is working to complete existing ones, he said.

Warfield said MGT Construction is a separate corporate entity, distinct from Thalhimer, which has been part of the Richmond community for more than 100 years, and its Thalhimer Realty Partners subsidiary.

Looking forward to 2018, we are bullish on the regions business climate and our companys ability to perform at a high level for our clients, he said about its commercial brokerage business.

Regarding the lawsuit, Warfield said this lawsuit contains blatantly false information, along with widespread distortions of the truth. The lawsuit has no merit, and we will make that case at the appropriate time.

The construction companys recent projects include Eggleston Plaza, an affordable housing project in Richmonds Jackson Ward neighborhood, and renovations of three City View Landing warehouses into apartments and office space at the former South Plant site for Reynolds Metals Co.

Its pending closure appears to be related to poor performance, not the lawsuit.

However, it is referenced in the lawsuit, which centers on alleged mismanagement and violations related to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, that was adopted by Thalhimer effective Jan. 1, 2003.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 26 in U.S. District Court in Richmond by Steven B. Brincefield  who retired in 2012 after 38 years and was a senior vice president and former board director  accuses top executives of violating the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974, breach of fiduciary duties and conspiracy, among other charges.

The company hired an independent special litigation committee to investigate the charges. It is being led by Norfolk-based Willcox Savage Law.

The lawsuit alleges that the stated purpose of the stock ownership plan was to enable employees to share in the growth of the company. However, Brincefield claims the goal was to enrich top executives.

One purpose of the ESOP was to create a market and financing mechanism to buy out the (top executives) shares of company stock at favorable prices, the lawsuit says. Put simply, the goal was for Thalhimer to become a tax-free cash warehouse for the benefit of (top executives).

ESOPs in general are tax-free organizations and provide tax advantages to participants.

In addition to Warfield, other executives named in the suit are Paul F. Silver, former chairman, president and CEO of Thalhimer; Evan M. Magrill, an officer, director and executive vice president of Thalhimer and chairman of MGT Construction; David R. Dustin Jr., chief financial officer of Thalhimer; Jeffrey S. Bisger, executive vice president of Thalhimer; and Lance T. Studdard, trustee of the ESOP.

The suit also was filed against Morton G. Thalhimer Inc., the predecessor company to Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.

Brincefield participated in the ESOP and also owns 17,460 shares of Thalhimer stock independent of the ESOP, which he has held since 1985, according to the lawsuit.

He claims he was pressured over the years by top management to sell the independently owned stock to the ESOP and directors inflated the price of the stock by 30 percent to persuade him and others to sell. Shareholders who sold their stock to the ESOP at the inflated price were later required to return 30 percent of the proceeds, the lawsuit says.

Brincefield, who could not be reached for comment, was the sole holdout. By June 30, 2016, the ESOP had purchased all the company stock of remaining stockholders except Brincefield, the lawsuit states.

In a Jan. 11, 2017, email from Dustin, Brincefield was told that Thalhimer was forecasting a tax loss in 2016 caused by unprofitable construction projects.

In another correspondence, dated Feb. 6, 2017, the attorney for Thalhimer said the current issues the company is facing are directly related to an employee who actively concealed his actions to defraud the company. The employee was not named in the suit.

H. David Gibson of Gentry Locke in Roanoke, who is representing the directors, could not be reached for comment. Nor could attorney John J. Craddock with Craddock Law in Richmond, who is representing Brincefield, be reached for comment.
A player in an international drug trafficking organization that handled tons of cocaine intended for distribution in the U.S. pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday.

With the aid of an interpreter, Edgar Antonio Quinonez-Salazar, 39, a Mexican national extradited from Colombia, pleaded guilty to a cocaine trafficking conspiracy charge in exchange for a promise from the government not to seek a prison term of more than 25 years.

The conspiracy charge carries a potential sentence of 10 years to life in prison and a $10 million fine, but under the terms of his extradition, the U.S. agreed not to seek a life sentence, said U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson. Hudson will sentence Quinonez-Salazar on April 6.

Court records show he was arrested in September after arriving in the U.S. at Washington Dulles International Airport. The Eastern District of Virginia apparently has jurisdiction in the case because he entered the U.S. in the district, which covers the crescent from Northern Virginia through Richmond east to Hampton Roads.

In pleading guilty, he admitted that he and others brokered and organized the transportation of more than 3 tons of cocaine from June 2015 to June 2016 and conspired to transport thousands of pounds of cocaine from sites in Guatemala to Mexico for ultimate importation into the U.S.

A statement of facts signed by Quinonez-Salazar Wednesday said that from February through May 2016, he oversaw and managed the construction of a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel to transport the cocaine. No further details were made available by authorities.

According to an indictment by a Richmond grand jury last year, the conspiracy occurred from June 2015 to June 2016. Quinonez-Salazar, aka Mexican Boss, was responsible for brokering and organizing the distribution and transportation of cocaine in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and other Central American countries for importation into the U.S.

Authorities allege that more than half a ton of cocaine being shipped by the organization was seized off the coast of Costa Rica on March 8, 2016, as was another 121 pounds shipped from Costa Rica through Nicaragua that same month. Authorities seized another 500 pounds in Guatemala in May 2016.

The traffickers used air, land and sea routes and employed GPS devices to track the location of loads owned or being transported by the organization, alleges the indictment.

An affidavit from a Drug Enforcement Administration agent said that on May 19, 2016, U.S. law enforcement observed a go-fast boat in the Pacific Ocean approaching the southern coast of Guatemala. They saw packages at the front of the boat that were later determined to be full of cocaine.

Lawfully intercepted communications revealed that the (drug trafficking organizations) members onboard threw packages overboard due to the presence of law enforcement authorities in the area, attested Patrick Flood, the DEA agent.

Later more legally intercepted communications revealed that Quinonez-Salazar ordered efforts that successfully recovered some of the more than 1,000 pounds of cocaine thrown overboard.

As part of the recovery effort, Quinonez-Salazar told another, unidentified co-conspirator to threaten and physically harm an organization crew member suspected of stealing some of the jettisoned cocaine.

On May 20, 2016, a search and recovery team organized by the drug trafficking organization recovered some of the packages of cocaine, according to the affidavit.

During the next four days, the Guatemalan Navy seized more than 400 pounds of cocaine that washed up along the southern Pacific coast of Guatemala.
Matthew Sozio and Matthew Halpern look at a laptop with a bearded character wearing a yellow VCU sash thats set in a waving motion.

This is Little Leo, says Sozio, a 23-year-old graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The character is more than a graphic illustration. Little Leo or Little Leonardo is a new artificial intelligence bot that answers questions about the universitys da Vinci Center. Its part of an experiment thats being watched by others across campus to see if they, too, can automate part of their frequently asked questions.

This is the future of the FAQ page, said Halpern, 26, who is also a VCU graduate student.

The two are part of a nine-person team overseeing the bot, which was designed by NumberAI, a Silicon Valley startup. The technology is being field-tested at VCU, which led to Little Leo, and is open to the public.

If you have a question about the da Vinci Center, which is the hub of VCU student entrepreneurship and innovation, all you have to do is text (804) 823-7464. The bot reads the text message and sends a response. Most of the basic questions  hours, mission, programming  are preloaded and are sent automatically. More complex answers have to be entered by the team overseeing the trial run.

Work-study students monitor the feed for inquiries, which come in 24/7, and help enter the more qualitative responses.

Because the bot is still in its first months, the students are still working on getting the word out about it.

One of the challenges of a new technology like this is people are unfamiliar with it, so theres a learning curve to what exactly an artificial intelligence bot that can facilitate these questions is, said Garret Westlake, the executive director of the 10-year-old da Vinci Center, located at 807 S. Cathedral Place.

VCU pitched the idea of bringing the technology to Richmond in July and received positive feedback, Westlake said.

Part of the job of this center is to explore new fields and new opportunities, he said. Artificial intelligence is obviously one of those emerging fields, so were constantly looking for ways for our students to get real-world experience with emerging trends.

In a recent survey of 2,500 U.S. consumers and business decision makers, nearly 3 in 4 called artificial intelligence a business advantage. Its also expected that by 2025, the artificial intelligence market will exceed $100 billion, according to Constellation Research.

As the da Vinci Center tests this new technology, other departments and groups across campus are watching, Westlake said. It could eventually help answer questions about admissions or other subjects people normally search for online.
Jimmy Bowling grew up along Jefferson Davis Highway, or the pike, as he calls it.

Ive lived in the pike, worked on the pike, Bowling said. And anyone who has lived there doesnt know it as Jeff Davis Highway. They just call it the pike.

Its been 30 years since he returned to the pike, but now the 34-year veteran of the Chesterfield County Planning Department is the main person behind a plan aimed at reviving the Northern Jefferson Davis corridor.

There, the median income is half that of the rest of the county.

Coming back to it after about 30 years, I see a lot that I remember and Ive seen a lot of things that I dont like. I see needs that I forgot that were there. The needs have pretty much always been there, Bowling said.

We have children living in motels, we have poverty. We have crime, although I think people think the crime is worse than it is. We have people living on the edge. People ask, Why do we have to use tax money for this neighborhood? They are in your county, they are in your neighborhood.

The plan is now in the hands of Planning Commissioners, who Bowling said are reworking staffs recommendations for how changes should be implemented. Eventually, the plan will go before the elected Board of Supervisors for consideration.

Planning Commission Chairman Gib Sloan has said that the implementation portion should be reworked because the bulk of the responsibility to make the changes is falling to the county.

Sloan referred questions about what changes are being made to county spokesperson Susan Pollard, who wrote in an email that our understanding, from Mr. Sloan, is that the commission is still working through this process and to provide anything further would be premature.

Despite the impending changes, Bowling said he has no doubt that we will come out with a better product and that planning staff and government officials may have different points of view, but good synergy.

What he (Sloan) wants is something out of the box, something other than what we have done in the past where the county finds ways to implement. We are trying to be a little more inclusive so that business, citizens and the county invest in the community. Its not just the county pumping money into infrastructure, but neighborhoods and businesses contributing to the plan. We are beginning to realize that the county cant do everything, Bowling said.

The 155-page plan encompasses about 13 miles of the county and centers on an 8.5-mile section of the Jefferson Davis Highway that stretches from the Richmond city limits down to Old Bermuda Hundred Road between the James River and CSX Railroad Line.

Some of the recommendations, like creating programs to help residents connect to jobs, are broad. The plan is a high-level one and doesnt serve as county ordinance or a land zoning change, planners have stressed.

Others are more specific, such as improving development standards to help shift the communities from the patchwork system of development to ones that are more mixed-use, fit with long-term visions for how the land should be used, and are of a better quality.

The plan still suggests abolishing a 1994 policy adopted by the Board of Supervisors that instructed the Transportation Department to not recommend things such as sidewalks and curb and gutter widenings to developers proposing to build facilities in the Jeff Davis corridor. The idea behind that ordinance, Bowling said, was to make it less expensive to build along the corridor and usher in investment. The result was development of a lesser quality.

It doesnt enhance the community as a place to live, work and play in the future, he said.

The plan also still suggests a trolley system as a possible short-term solution to the areas transportation needs.

The resident population of the plan geography is the most demographically diverse and least mobile of any area in the county. At the same time much of the geography continues to be a major economic resource for the county, the plan reads.

The plan is completely different, Bowling said, from a 1993 Jeff Davis plan that planners acknowledged didnt solve many of the challenges it sought to address, such as the need for reinvestment and community organization and engagement. Its pioneering, he added, because it is the first that he could find that takes on suburban revitalization in a comprehensive way.

We found no examples anywhere in the country. We think we are breaking new ground here. And thats part of the reason we are having to go slow, he said.

The challenge will be to improve and preserve at the same time.

Gentrification is an issue whenever you have successful revitalization, Bowling said. How can we lessen the impact and allow people to continue to live in the community? Thats one of the biggest problems that we have to find a solution to. They want the neighborhood to become better, but they dont want to be pushed out.

Bowling said that is a problem that still needs to be worked out.

The Jefferson Davis Highway is one of the countys oldest highways and where some of Chesterfields earliest modern subdivisions developed. In the early 20th century, people settled in homes outside of the city since the Richmond and Petersburg Electric Railway that paralleled Jefferson Davis Highway provided major transportation routes, according to the plan. For decades, the highway was the major transportation artery on the East Coast between Florida and Maine.

According to the plan, construction of Interstate 95 in the mid-1950s was the major cause of a decline along the corridor as business shifted to areas more accessible to I-95. As Chesterfield grew into a major suburban community in the second half of the 20th century, many incoming families and workers chose to settle into newer subdivisions in the western part of the county.

Now, the Jefferson Davis neighborhoods of Ampthill, Bensley and Bellwood host a more diverse population that has specific needs.

During his research, Bowling has come across people he once worked with at the DuPont facility in the 1970s.

They are all good people, and its just that their needs are different. There is more need for basic services than you would find from residents in a newer, and frankly, more affluent part of the county, Bowling said. I think a lot of people werent aware of these issues. I have a lot of friends and neighbors who when they hear about the work Im doing, they are appalled that happens in Chesterfield County.

The 67-year-old who has been in public service for 40 years is on the brink of retirement, but he wont end his career until this project is complete.
The family of a slain Virginia State Police trooper has teamed up with an advertising agency this holiday season to convey their appreciation to police officers nationwide.

On Friday, the message will appear on Lamar Advertising Co.s digital billboards locally and in 16 other states. The billboards are a collaboration between the company and the family of trooper Chad P. Dermyer, 37, who was killed in the line of duty in March 2016.

John Dermyer, Chads father, said they are intended to honor his son and thank law enforcement officers for their service.

Its a Christmas present to myself to get it out there, and Ive got to do something to support my son and what he chose for his profession and what he loved, John Dermyer said. I think I owe it to him. Thats what it means to me: Its repaying a debt that he paid with his life.

Chad Dermyer died from gunshot wounds he sustained when a man opened fire at officers during a state police training exercise at the Greyhound bus terminal on North Boulevard.

Police killed the gunman, James Brown III, at the scene.

Dermyer was married with two children. Before joining the state police in 2014, he served in the Marine Corps and worked for the Newport News and Jackson, Mich., police departments.

As last Christmas was approaching, John Dermyer decided he wanted to honor his son by thanking as many law enforcement officers as he could. He and his wife, Christine, settled on a billboard as their medium of choice.

They reached out to Lamar Advertising, a Louisiana-based advertising company that operates 2,800 electronic billboards nationwide. The company agreed to help design the familys message and feature it on its digital billboards in seven states, including Virginia, free of charge, Dermyer said.

Beside an image of the state police badge, the message reads: The Dermyer Family would like to thank you for what you do every day. Merry Christmas. In loving memory of Virginia State Trooper Chad P. Dermyer. End of Watch 3/31/2016.

The response was overwhelmingly positive, John Dermyer said, so he decided to ask the company to share the message again this year.

Beyond Virginia, Lamar will feature it on billboards in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
Justin Fairfax, the Democrat who was elected lieutenant governor in November, will leave his Northern Virginia law firm next month. He will be inaugurated Jan. 13.

Fairfax, a former federal prosecutor, has worked as a white-collar defense attorney at Venable LLP in Tysons Corner for about three years.

I will be leaving Venable LLP in January in order to focus on my duties as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and the legislative priorities facing the commonwealth in my first General Assembly session, Fairfax said in a statement. I have immensely enjoyed practicing law at the firm for the past nearly 3 years, and I am tremendously grateful to my colleagues for their wonderful friendship and support.

The job of lieutenant governor is part-time, and Fairfaxs move could help him avoid a potential conflict of interest between his position in government and private legal work.

Over the next several months, my family and I will discuss various career offers and opportunities, however I do not plan to take on other responsibilities prior to the conclusion of the 2018 General Assembly regular session, Fairfax said in the statement.

Fairfax defeated state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier, to win the seat. In his role, he will preside over the state Senate when the legislature goes into session next month and break tie votes on most issues in that chamber.

Fairfaxs wife, Cerina, is a dentist and runs a practice in Northern Virginia.
This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, wrote University of Virginia founder Thomas Jefferson. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. That noble sentiment has been scratched and dented in recent years by disputes over whether certain errors are worth tolerating.

The latest instance involves a conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom, which sought official recognition from the student council  and was denied. The reason for the rejection: YAF asks its members to embrace certain principles, and that violates the schools policy against discrimination based on political affiliation.

That policy might need some work. It evidently does not apply to the College Republicans at U.Va., or the University Democrats, or numerous other politically oriented groups that have received official recognition. Those groups might not make political identity a condition of membership in their bylaws, but to suggest they welcome anyone regardless of political affiliation would be naive.

YAF representatives quickly fired off a letter pointing out that state law permits a religious or political student organization to select ... the organizations leaders and members. Its a fair bet that YAF will soon receive the recognition it seeks. School administrators have asked the student council to remedy the matter promptly.

Which is not suprising. After all, U.Va. has been down this road before. In 2008 the student council balked at granting recognition to the conservative Burke Society. After advice from the schools legal counsel, the council granted recognition. Before that, the school took a fight over recognition of a student-run Christian magazine all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of the magazine.

YAF also has run into opposition elsewhere. Three years ago a student committee at Virginia Tech pulled YAFs funding after the group co-sponsored a speech by conservative pundit Bay Buchanan. Its funny how often conservative groups get singled out for such treatment. (Often, that is, but not exclusively: Last year a student group called DREAMers that supported undocumented immigrants also was denied recognition, according to the student-run Cavalier Daily.)
The pundit class has grudgingly been calling passage of tax reform a win for President Trump. But its not the only one. Despite the failure to repeal Obamacare, the administration has racked up numerous accomplishments.

Not all of them deserve praise. Unilaterally yanking the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will hurt the economy and leave America weaker against nations such as China, which rushed in to fill the void. The presidents aggressiveness on immigration  such as bringing the hammer down on Dreamers  deserves no applause, either.

Yet some of Trumps handiwork deserves plenty. The list should begin with the elevation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch is no Scalia  nobody could be  but he might be the best possible substitute.

Another worthy win: a rollback of onerous regulations, including so-called net neutrality, which really just privileged big content suppliers over big content carriers. The administration has revoked 66 other regulations and sidelined more than 1,500 others.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
The drama over an upcoming random drawing that could decide control of the Virginia House of Delegates heightened Thursday as Democrats lost the last of four scheduled House recounts. But with the holidays approaching, officials said the big moment will have to wait until next week.

The Virginia State Board of Elections will meet Wednesday in Richmond to break a tie in the Newport News-based 94th District, where Republican Del. David Yancey and Democratic challenger Shelly Simonds finished with 11,608 votes each. Under state law, the elections board has to break the tie by writing each candidates name down, putting each name in a film canister and picking one at random from a bowl or a hat.

The outcome of the rare tie-breaking ceremony could determine whether the House is split 50-50 or Republicans hold a 51-49 advantage. Democrats flipped 15 other GOP-held seats in the Nov. 7 election, erasing what had been a 66-34 Republican majority.

On Thursday, Republican Bob Thomas emerged victorious in a recount in the Fredericksburg-area 28th District. Thomas entered the recount with an 82-vote lead over Democrat Joshua Cole.

He finished 73 votes ahead after a nine-vote swing for Cole, according to House Republicans.

The recount confirmed what we have known since November, and we are excited to have Bob join us on the floor of the House when we convene in January, House Republican leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said in a statement.

The General Assembly is scheduled to convene Jan. 10, but Thomas isnt in the clear just yet.

In a pending lawsuit, Democrats have asked a federal court to block Thomas from being seated in the House due to major voting problems that affected the 28th District. State election officials have said at least 147 voters in and around the 28th District cast ballots in the wrong House election after receiving the wrong ballot.

The lawsuit, scheduled for a hearing Jan. 5, asks the court to throw out the result and order a special election.

This fight is not over until every vote is cast and counted in the proper district, Cole said in a statement.

With all recounts now concluded, the 94th District was the only one that produced a significant change.

Though it appeared Simonds had squeaked her way to a one-vote victory, Yanceys lawyers asked a three-judge panel to accept one ballot that had been tossed out as an overvote. The voter had filled in bubbles for both Yancey and Simonds, but had put a slash through the Simonds bubble, which the court interpreted as intent to vote for Yancey.

Though the state ballot guidelines arent crystal clear on how the ballot should have been treated, the rules allow ballots to be counted if a voter has marked two candidates but has erased, scratched out, or otherwise obliterated their erroneous choice.

House Democrats have said they are weighing their legal options. On Thursday, the party referred to Simonds as the rightful winner.

Though Democrats think the recount court made the wrong call, there is no appeal process under state law. The state elections board also has no authority to second-guess the courts decision, said board Chairman James Alcorn.

At some date in the future, we will discuss this example and probably add it to our standards for hand-counting ballots, Alcorn said. That wont impact the races this month, but it will ensure uniformity in future elections.
After serving 12 years on Roanoke City Council, David Trinkle announced Thursday he will not seek re-election.

Proud of Roanokes growth and stability and feeling confident that Roanoke is in good hands, Trinkle said he feels comfortable leaving the council in search of a new challenge.

Trinkle, who has served on the council since 2006 and was on the Roanoke School Board from 2003 to 2006, said he will likely step out of politics to serve Roanoke in other ways.

I truly love this community and plan to pursue other opportunities where I can remain engaged and continue to contribute to the exciting  and critical  next steps for Roanoke, he said in a statement. I am ready for a new challenge and look forward to serving the region and Commonwealth at other levels.

Trinkles political career may not be over yet. He said he is open to considering a run for a higher elected office should a local seat become available.

But Trinkle also promised his family he would quit politics at age 60. Now 56, his self-imposed deadline is creeping closer.

When Trinkle started on the seven-member board, the council was just as divided as its citizenry. A fight over the future of Victory Stadium was representative of a broader push-pull between Roanoke becoming more progressive and the city staying the same.

Over the years, Roanoke and the council have embraced the progressive wave, Trinkle said. The council has become more collaborative and forward-thinking in trying to improve Roanokes workforce, quality of life and schools, he said. Moreover, the citizenry is more engaged and excited than ever before, he said.

Trinkle served on the council during a revitalization of downtown Roanoke and played a major role in driving the Elmwood Park and amphitheater development. As a longtime supporter of Roanokes arts scene, he kept the project on track through the multiyear planning and construction process.

Hes been part of the dynamic changes that have taken place in our city, said Mayor Sherman Lea.

Lea stressed Trinkles contributions to the downtown revitalization and to the resurgence in economic development, which helped the city land Deschutes Brewery.

A critical thinker and a strong supporter of maintaining Roanoke as Southwest Virginias hub for arts and culture, Trinkles passion and dedication to bettering Roanoke will be missed, Lea said.

Trinkle was also a strong proponent of marketing Roanokes natural resources like its greenways, the Roanoke River and nearby hiking and biking trails to increase tourism in the city. During his term, Trinkle oversaw streetscape improvements, neighborhood rejuvenation projects and renovations to the City Market Building.

But Trinkles proudest achievement is how Roanokers now talk about their city. Residents talk positively about their quality of life and about the city as a whole, he said.

Were no longer comparing ourselves to other cities, but were proud of where we are and where were going, Trinkle said.

Trinkle ran for mayor last year and lost the Democratic nomination to Lea. In 2013 he unsuccessfully vied for the 11th District House of Delegates seat that was won via primary and in a later general election by Democrat Sam Rasoul. While on the council, Trinkle served three terms as vice mayor.

Although he was surprised by Trinkles decision, Lea said the councils positive momentum will continue because at this point, most of the other members are seasoned veterans. Trinkle is the second longest serving council member behind Lea.

We know which direction were headed, Lea said. Were doing some positive things. Again, hell be missed, but I think well forge ahead.

A geriatric psychiatrist, Trinkle is the associate dean for community and culture at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and a consultant to Carilion Clinics Center for Healthy Aging. Hes also a small-business owner.

Trinkles term will expire June 30.

Council members Bill Bestpitch and Ray Ferris are also up for re-election next year; both independents have said informally that they will run again. Roanoke magazine publisher Robert Jeffrey Jr. and social worker Djuna Osborne have already announced plans to seek the Democratic nomination in the city council race.
Apple is taking heat for a discovery about old iPhones: As their batteries age, Apples software slows them down.

The phenomenon, discovered by Reddit members and acknowledged Wednesday by Apple, throws gasoline onto a long-standing conspiracy theory that iPhones slow to crawl as a sly way to convince us to buy new ones.

That sounds upsetting  but be mad at Apple for the right reasons. Apple is correct to make its software smart about managing old batteries, which can act unpredictably. Apple is wrong, however, not to make it easy and inexpensive to replace old batteries.

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices, said an Apple spokeswoman.

Worn-out batteries are a fact of gadget life. Lithium-ion becomes less capable after hundreds of charges, which can result in phones randomly shutting down. Apple said it changed its software last year for the iPhone 6, 6s and SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed.

Apple could have been a little more transparent about its practice. (Its latest major update, iOS 11.2, does the same slowdown to an iPhone 7 with a dud battery.) But the larger problem is it leaves the impression that customers should buy a new phone when all they really need is a new battery.

The iPhone doesnt start flashing an alert when your battery is in trouble  it just starts to curtail your phones processing power. There might be a warning message if you dig into the settings menu for the battery. You can test your battery health for yourself with apps such as Battery Life.

Replacing your phones battery might make a huge difference. Repair site iFixit, which sells replacement batteries and other parts, says its seen performance boosts of 100 percent in old iPhones given battery transplants.

But replacing a battery can be expensive: Apple wants $80 to do it in a store. Theres no charge if you paid upfront for AppleCare Plus coverage and have a battery Apple thinks warrants replacing.

You can buy a new iPhone 6 battery for as little as $20, if youre willing to do surgery on your phone. (Warning: its not easy.) Or some mom-and-pop shops will do it for far less than Apple. Taking either approach would void Apples warranty.

Why not design phones in a modular way, so owners could just slide in new batteries? As recently as 2014, Samsungs flagship Galaxy S5 phone came with an easily swappable battery. That style went out of favor as phone makers moved toward thinner, water-resistant, and more durable designs.

The battery replacement problem is an example why a growing community of gadget lovers are calling for laws to ensure consumers have a legal right to repair their own electronics. Laws proposed in a handful of states would help prevent tech companies from locking down devices with software and make repair manuals available to the public.

Guess who has lobbied against those laws? Tech companies, including Apple.

The Apple spokeswoman didnt respond to questions about replacing batteries or its view on right to repair legislation.
Charlottesville formally designated sections of Fourth Street Northeast and Southeast as honorary Heather Heyer Way during a Wednesday ceremony.

Family and friends of Heyer, as well as several dozen residents and city officials, gathered on the street that was the site of her death. Most people wore something with a shade of purple, Heyers favorite color.

Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was protesting the Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally when a car plowed through a crowd of people just south of the Downtown Mall. She was killed and dozens of people were injured.

James Alex Fields Jr. of Ohio has been charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the case.

Fourth Street was supposed to be closed during the rally. A recently released independent review led by former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy found that it was improperly barricaded.

Heyers mother, Susan Bro, along with Alfred Wilson, with whom Heyer worked at the Miller Law Group, spoke at Wednesdays ceremony. They are both co-founders of the Heather Heyer Foundation.

With the sign bearing Heyers name in sight over his left shoulder, Wilson became emotional standing at the podium as he offered a simple thank you to the city and those in attendance.

Bro said it was hard for her to come back to Fourth Street. Her first time standing where her daughter died was exactly one week after the car drove into the crowd.

I thank the city for taking this step to name this street after Heather, she said. Your love and your support continue to give me hope for Charlottesville and for the world and for people in general, and I thank you so much for coming out today.

Mark Heyer, Heather Heyers father, said it was an honor for the city to do this in his daughters memory.

The City Council approved the honorary designation in October.

The terror attack that resulted in Ms. Heyers death, and serious injury to dozens more, shocked our community and touched the heart and soul of not only Charlottesville, but the entire country, Mayor Mike Signer read from the proclamation.

Youve inspired a whole city, a whole nation, with your tenacity and your vision and your compassion and your warmth  youre a model for all of us, he said to Bro after reading the document.
ALROSAs Supervisory Board approved 2018 budget

21 december 2017 News

At its meeting held on 14 December, the Supervisory Board of ALROSA reviewed and approved the Groups budget for 2018.

ALROSA expects the diamond market to be balanced in 2018 on the back of a slight upward trend in the global jewellery demand and virtually flat global production. ALROSAs diamond production is planned at 36.6 million carats backed by higher diamond output at the strategic mining assets: the Udachny underground mine will see an increase from 1.6 to 3.9 million carats, Severalmaz  from 2.4 to 3.3 million carats.

ALROSAs sales in 2018 will be supported by the accumulated diamond inventories, improved sales mix and, therefore, higher average price of gem-quality diamonds vs 2017. The Company implements a comprehensive programme to manage costs and improve efficiency, and has initiatives in place to decrease working capital by minimising receivables, limiting supplies and reducing end product inventories. These initiatives are expected to keep the Companys costs flat in 2018. ALROSAs costs may be brought down even further through the disposal of non-core gas assets, which are expected to be sold at an auction in Q1 2018.

Capital expenditures in 2018 are planned at the level of RUB 32 bn and comprise investments in existing strategic mining assets, including ramping up output at the Udachny underground mine, completing the construction of the Verkhne-Munskoye deposit infrastructure, developing the Zarya pipe, and maintaining production at the current level, including at the International and Aikhal underground mines.

The budget for 2018 approved by the Supervisory Board of ALROSA Group provides for stable financial performance despite the temporary downtime of the Mir underground mine. In 2018, the Companys main focus will be on increasing efficiency, controlling costs and selling non-core assets. ALROSA keeps generating significant free cash flow, which is mostly used for dividend payments and debt repayment, said Alexey Philippovskiy, CFO of ALROSA.




(1prime.ru) - Almazy Anabara (ALROSAs subsidiary) sold 83.5 kg of incidentally mined gold to Sberbank raking in more than RUB 190 million, the company said in a statement to the press.

This is the first transaction in the companys history to sell gold mined as a byproduct in the process of developing an alluvial diamond field, Almazy Anabara said.

Last year, the government of the Russian Federation introduced amendments to the Law on Mineral Resources concerning the recovery of byproducts while developing multi-component deposits.

Almazy Anabara is mining diamonds on seven placers, including Morgoror, Istok, Holomolokh, Ebelyakh, Gusinoye, Ruchey-41 and Kurung-Yuryakh. The company produced 5.176 million carats of diamonds and 89 kg of gold in the mining season of 2017.




(Agencia CMA Latam) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos appointed former Vice President Gustavo Bell Lemus as the new head of the government's negotiating team in the peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group.

The president expressed his gratitude and appreciation for the work accomplished by the outgoing negotiating team leader, Juan Camilo Restrepo, and said that the government expects that the ceasefire with the ELN can be extended.

"Let's reach January 9. We listened and read the ELN's letter sent to the United Nations very carefully, and we hope that from January 9 we can negotiate an extension and new conditions of that ceasefire," he said.

Gustavo Bell Lemus closely monitored the peace process between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) former guerrilla group in Havana.

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.
Telecom giant AT&T Inc. (T) announced that it has planned to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and to pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees, once the tax reform bill is signed into law.

Today, Congress approved legislation representing the first comprehensive tax reform in a generation. The President is expected to sign the bill in the coming days.

Employees eligible for the bonus are all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers, AT&T specified in a statement.

If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays, the company added.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Fitch Ratings on Thursday lifted the sovereign ratings of Indonesia citing its resilience to external shocks.

The rating was upgraded to 'BBB', from 'BBB-', with stable outlook. This was the second lowest investment grade.

In May, S&P Global Ratings had raised the nation out of junk status, saying effective expenditure and revenue measures made public finances stronger.

According to Fitch, Indonesia's resilience to external shocks steadily strengthened over the past few years, as macroeconomic policies consistently geared towards maintaining stability.

The flexible exchange-rate policy helped Southeast Asia's largest to increase foreign reserve buffers to $126 billion at the end of November 2017, reaching seven months of current account payments, compared with the 'BBB' median of just six months.

Moreover, monetary policy has been sufficiently disciplined to limit bouts of volatile capital outflows during challenging periods. Further, macro-prudential measures helped to control a sharp rise in corporate external debt, Fitch said.

However, the agency cautioned that external challenges remain, including potential emerging market pressure in the context of the US Federal Reserve's policy normalization.

As the economy benefits from the global pick-up in trade and stabilizing commodity prices, Fitch forecast GDP growth to rise to 5.4 percent in 2018 and 5.5 percent in 2019, from 5.1 percent in 2017.

A low general-government debt burden of 28.5 percent of GDP in 2017, as forecast by Fitch, compares well with the 'BBB' median of 41.1 percent. The government is adhering to a self-imposed budget-deficit ceiling of 3 percent of GDP, the agency noted.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
European stocks fell for a third day running Thursday as offered a muted reaction to the passage of major U.S. tax reform and traders started paring positions ahead of the Christmas holiday. The focus remained on a defining election in Catalonia that will decide the future of Spain.

The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.2 percent at 387.42 in late opening deals after losing 0.7 percent the previous day.

The German DAX and France's CAC 40 were down around 0.3 percent each while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was moving up 0.1 percent.

Troubled furniture retailer Steinhoff slumped 7 percent to extend recent losses.

Housebuilding stocks fell in London on concerns over the Brexit effect on the after industry data showed that U.K. car output decreased 4.6 percent year-on-year in November in the wake of deteriorating consumer sentiment.

Berkeley Group dropped 1.5 percent, Persimmon shed 1.1 percent and Barratt Developments declined 0.9 percent.

McCarthy & Stone fell as much as 10 percent after the government proposed to cut controversial ground rents on new long leases to zero.

Balfour Beatty shares rallied 3 percent. The infrastructure group has reached an agreement with funds managed by Dalmore Capital Limited to sell a 12.5 percent stake in Connect Plus, the company which operates the M25 orbital motorway.

Intercontinental Hotels Group rose over 1 percent. The company said that the enacted U.S. Tax Cuts and Job Acts Bill will reduce its group effective tax rate by mid to high single digit percentage points from 1 January 2018.

Nokia shares rallied 2.7 percent. The Finnish telecoms equipment group has signed a multi-year patent license agreement with China's Huawei.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
No, it's not what I thought either...Laureen Harper slams cougar hunter as 'creep' who 'must be compensating'Former Prime Minister Stephen Harpers wife joined the chorus of online backlash against a Canadian TV personality who bragged about killing a cougar in northern Alberta.Steve Ecklund, the host of the outdoor enthusiast show The Edge, posted several photos earlier this month showing him holding the dead animal, and another of him cooking a stir-fry with the meat.Laureen Harper took to Twitter on Wednesday night to express her distaste for the hunter, calling him a creep and suggesting his behavior may have been the result of a masculine shortcoming.Harpers response provoked reactions online ranging from support to surprise at such blunt language from the wife of a former prime minister.Laureen? I honestly must admit, I never expected you to speak so boldly. Luv it! wrote one user.Another said, Laureen! Who knew you were such a badass?Harper responded to a user who worried her account had been hacked, writing Wasnt hacked. I was really angry that some guy flies all the way to Alberta to kill a magnificent cougar, so he can make a stir fry.
Makenzie Rezac wasnt worried when she first heard Aztec High School was in lockdown.

I honestly just thought it was a drill or that someone was going around Aztec just doing stupid things, because in the past weve had lockdowns called for a bank robbery and people going around and throwing things at signs, Makenzie said.

But the former Fremont girl and her family  like others from the town in New Mexico  would learn that a 21-year-old gunman had disguised himself as a student to get into the school.

There, William Atchison fatally shot students Francisco Fernandez and Casey J. Marquez.

Associated Press reports say Atchison then walked up and down the hall  firing randomly  before killing himself.

For those who live in the town of about 6,500, the shooting was a shock.

We never expected anything like this to happen in a small town like Aztec, Makenzie said.

Makenzie and her mom, Mikala, and twin siblings, Macy and Jonah, moved to Aztec in 2013.

Its one of those towns where everybody knows everybody and everyone is nice and really caring. Its a really cool community, said Makenzie, now a 15-year-old sophomore.

On Dec. 7  the day of the shooting  Makenzie was in her world history class wondering if her friend was going to be late, but he made it just in time.

Makenzie was teasing her pal about almost being marked absent when the lockdown announcement came over the intercom.

Then students heard loud banging downstairs.

We all kind of moved to a corner of the room, but I dont think any of us had really heard gunshots  at least not like that  so we thought that maybe a student was banging on the lockers or people were moving furniture to scare us, she said.

A woman on the intercom told students to get down, stay away from doors and windows and to get into their classrooms closet.

Makenzie believes her teacher didnt have his 22 students go into the closet, which faced the hallway, for fear the gunman would be able to shoot students through the wall.

Students huddled together, whispering and trying to calm each other. Makenzie said she saw her teacher crying and she started to cry, too.

The students then heard shooting and yelling coming from the other side of a windowed catwalk.

And they heard the sound of running coming toward their room.

The gunman began jiggling door handles and knocking on doors trying to get into the locked classrooms.

Is this it? Makenzie wondered. I wanted to tell her (mom) that I loved her.

The shots ended.

We heard the last round of gunshots and it was right next to our classroom and we all just got quiet, Makenzie said. We were all terrified, because we didnt know if that was the cop shooting the shooter or if the shooter shot another student.

Makenzies teacher kept looking through a small window in the door and saw a police officer. Students soon learned they were being evacuated and were given back phones routinely stored during class time.

Students were told to stay quiet and text  not call  their parents.

Mom, I am okay, Makenzie texted Mikala. There was a school shooting right outside my classroom.  Im not sure what happened yet. They got the person who had the gun, but we have to stay in my classroom.

Mikala, who works late nights and had been asleep, said a friend previously texted her, asking what was going on. Mikala also had received a vague text from the school, but like her daughter figured the lockdown was due to someone throwing rocks at signs or something similar.

She texted Makenzie and didnt expect to hear back because students cant have their phones during class.

Then Mikala got her daughters texts with the details of what happened.

Thats when I jumped up, got my keys and my coat and went out the door, Mikala said.

Through her texts, Makenzie asked about her 8-year-old twin siblings  not knowing at the time if there was more than one shooter.

Makenzies mom also asked her to look for a close family friend, a student who didnt have a phone.

Soon, Makenzies teacher told students theyd be evacuated and patted down by a police officer.

Students formed a single-file line and walked out of the classroom and their teacher told them not to look to the right.

I put my hoodie up, because I didnt want to look, because I knew if I looked Id be scared, Makenzie said.

Makenzie and other students had to keep their hands on their heads as they walked outside with an officer. The students huddled, hugged each other and cried, before going to a gym where they were searched. They then boarded buses for a convention center, where their parents were to pick them up.

After getting her daughters text, Mikala  whose family lives about 12 miles outside of Aztec  got her best friend who lives down the road and whose son also attends the school. They drove together in his minivan.

I was trying to keep calm, because he hadnt heard from his son yet, Mikala Rezac said.

Parents were told to go to the police station.

There was probably 100 parents, if not more, there already, she said. The police had said the shooter was down.

An officer said 15 students were injured, although that wasnt the case.

Various rumors and falsehoods circulated, adding to the angst.

We heard there was another shooter  that they were searching for him. It got ridiculous and that was the most upsetting to my daughter, because while she was waiting to get on the bus she was reading all this stuff online, all these rumors that were floating around, Mikala said.

Mikalas friend learned that students were being taken to a convention center in another town. The two headed there.

It took about 1  hours for students to reach the convention center.

Mikala stayed in communication with Makenzie. But almost two hours passed before Mikalas friend heard from his son.

Students were brought into the building, grade by grade.

Mikala saw Makenzie.

Once I got her, I hugged her and wouldnt let go, Mikala said.

As time passed, parents and students learned more details about the shooter, who didnt have a criminal record, but was found with a thumb drive on which he told how he planned to kill others, then himself.

My understanding is that he hated his life, Makenzie said.

Aztec High School students returned to class on Monday.

Were working on healing, Makenzie said beforehand.

It (shootings) can happen anywhere, but people shouldnt be afraid to send their kids to school, Mikala said, adding, I hope every school is as prepared as well as the school here was.
June 25, 1920  Dec. 18, 2017

WAHOO -- Clarence F. Pestal, life-long resident of the rural Wahoo area, entered the presence of his Lord on Dec. 18, 2017. Clarence was born on the family farm 3/4 miles north of the Czech Presbyterian Church on June 25, 1920, to John and Emily (Cejka) Pestal. Their families were descendants of those who immigrated here from Moravia and Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) in the late 1800s.

The middle child of three, Clarence grew up harnessing the work horses and helping out on the farm. He loved horses and rode often. He loved listening to his grandfather Joseph pray, quote scripture and sing hymns in Czech on his porch in the evenings. This made a life-long impression upon him, encouraging his own commitment to Christ.

Clarence completed his elementary grades at School District 44 and attended Wahoo High School.

Following school, Clarence went to do farm work as far as Iowa and Minnesota to earn money. On Nov. 3, 1941, he joined the Army and received his basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was always so thankful that his parents came to visit him during his time there. He was deployed from California via Hawaii to serve in the Philippines and New Guinea in the Pacific Theatre. He was with the 6th Engineers and led an engineering team to work on roads, bridges and landing areas. He was honorably discharged on Nov. 7, 1945. Clarence was proud to serve his country and also very thankful the Lord kept him safe throughout his years of service in World War II.

Clarence met Martha Marie Maresh at the last Czech Presbyterian Church Convention. He saw her across the room and said he would really like to meet her. That meeting led to a long-distance courtship and they were married in South Dakota at the Eagle Presbyterian Church on Dec. 1, 1948. He frequently reminisced that they took a 34-day honeymoon, and couldn't imagine someone doing his chores for so long. To their union were born Amy, Fay, and Chris.

Clarence and Martha lived on a farm southwest of Wahoo, where he raised corn, soybeans, wheat, and lots of hogs. Martha would help with the hogs and however she was needed.

Clarence loved trees, and you could tell by their yard with all the many kinds of trees planted. He also loved all kinds of flowers and plants and lovingly cared for them all.

Clarence loved the Lord Jesus and would encourage people to go to church. During his lifetime he was part of the Czech Presbyterian and Calvary Church families. He continued to be a disciple of the Lord through his last days -- telling others how important it was to know Christ.

Clarence was a loving father who always wanted the best for his children. He supported them in their school, church, and life activities. Socializing with family, friends and whoever he met gave him great joy. He enthusiastically attended his grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's activities. Clarence was generous, kind and loving and brought joy and laughter to the lives of many.

Clarence was preceded in death by his wife Martha; his parents; his sister, Esther (Paul) Jasa of Madras, Oregon; an older sister, Irene, who died in infancy; his brother, Elmer (Dorothy) Pestal; sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, Ruth (George) Pestal and Betty (Bob) Burkine of Watertown, South Dakota.

Survivors include: daughter, Amy (Lyle) Hayek of Friend, Fay (David) Minor, Chris (Brenda) Pestal; grandchildren, Kim (Tom) Stewart, Carri (Allen) Vavra, Aaron (Maggie) Hayek, Becky (Michael) Deen, Julie (Rick) Sulzbach, Caleb Pestal and Noah Pestal; eight great-grandchildren, and many other relatives and friends.

The funeral will be 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 23, at Czech Presbyterian Church, Wahoo. Visitation will be from 4-7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 22, with a 7 p.m. Evening of Praise, all at Calvary Church, Wahoo.

Interment with Military Honors at Czech Presbyterian Cemetery, Wahoo.

Memorial gifts may be given to Memorial Missions Fund, Calvary Church, 558 W. 16th St., Wahoo NE 68066.

Visit www.marcysvoboda.com to leave condolences.

Svoboda Funeral Home, 211 N. Linden St., Wahoo, NE 68066, 402-443-3624.
Following is the chronology of events in the 2G spectrum allocation cases, leading to the acquittal of all accused.

October 21, 2009: CBI registers case related to alleged irregularities in allocation of 2G Spectrum



May 2010: NGO Centre for Public Interest litigation (CPIL) moves Delhi High Court seeking Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into irregularities in spectrum allocation.



October 8, 2010: Supreme Court seeks government's response on Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report on the alleged scam.



November 10, 2010: CAG pegs loss to exchequer at Rs.1.76 lakh crore.



November 14, 2010: A. Raja resigns as the Communications Minister.



December 8, 2010: Supreme Court orders setting up of a special court to look into 2G scam.



February 2, 2011: Raja arrested.



April 2, 2011: CBI files chargesheet in the case.



April 29, 2011 : CBI files supplementary chargesheet in the case.



September 15, 2011: BJP leader Subramanian Swamy goes to CBI special court seeking P. Chidambaram to be made co-accused.



October 22, 2011: Special CBI court frames charges against 17 accused, including Raja.



October 22, 2011: Court frames charges against Raja and others.



November 11, 2011: Trial begins in the case.



November 23, 2011 : Supreme Court grants bail to five Corporate honchos.



December 12, 2011: CBI submits third charge sheet, including names of Essar promoters Anshuman Ruia, Ravi Ruia, Essar Group director strategy and planning Vikas Saraf, Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan and her husband I.P. Khaitan as accused. Loop Telecom Pvt Ltd, Loop Mobile India Ltd and Essar Tele Holding also recognised as accused.



February 2, 2012: The Supreme Court orders cancellation of 122 licences issued in 2008, gives companies four months to cease operations.



February 4, 2012: Trial court dismisses Swamy's plea to make Home Minister P. Chidambaram an accused.



November 28, 2011: DMK MP Kanimozhi gets bail.



May 15, 2012: Raja gets bail.



May 25, 2012: Court frames charges against promoters of Essar and Loop, grants bail.



April 25, 2014: ED chargesheets Raja, Kanimozhi and others.





October 31, 2014: Money laundering charges framed against Raja, Kanimozhi and others.



November 17, 2014: Trial begin in money laundering case.



December 5, 2017: Court sets December 21 as judgement day in the case.



December 21: All including Raja, Kanimozhi acquitted in the case.
Play with fearless attitude in T20s, but important to assess conditions and situations, says VVS Laxman

VVS Laxman, India's head coach for the white-ball tour of New Zealand, wants to see his team play in...
A 15-week investigation into two 2016 Nebraska State Patrol incidents has resulted in a firing, a retirement, a resignation and disciplinary action against four others.

State Patrol Col. John Bolduc, who was hired in October to replace Col. Brad Rice, announced the actions Wednesday afternoon at a news conference. The disciplinary actions stemmed from conduct following two incidents last year involving a tactical vehicle intervention and excessive use of force by troopers.

In June, Gov. Pete Ricketts fired Rice for inappropriately interfering with internal affairs investigations and suspended six others in the agency. The action came after a review of the State Patrol by Chief Human Resources Officer Jason Jackson.

The patrol investigation was to determine if employees violated policies of the agency, Bolduc said, whether leaders were derelict in their duties in the aftermath and whether troopers accurately and honestly reported their conduct.

Bolduc would not name the troopers who were disciplined or left the patrol's employment, saying they had not waived confidentiality.

But the trooper who was fired was Tim Flick, according to the State Troopers Association of Nebraska. In October 2016, Flick was involved in the pursuit of a car that had run a stop sign on a county road north of Gordon in Sheridan County. His patrol car intercepted the vehicle, which crashed into a ditch and rolled, and the driver, Antoine L. Ladeaux, 32, of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was ejected and died at the scene.

A grand jury found no wrongdoing by Flick. District Judge Travis O'Gorman has since appointed former U.S. Attorney for Nebraska Joe Stecher, who will look into any potential criminal wrongdoing that occurred regarding how the investigation of the incident was handled.

In addition to Flick's termination, a sergeant resigned and a lieutenant colonel retired, Bolduc said. At any time during the process, anyone can elect to resign or retire if they are eligible, but he wouldn't say whether they would have been fired if they had not decided to leave.

Also, two officers were demoted: a major reduced in rank to captain and a captain to sergeant. A trooper and sergeant received administrative penalties.

Sgt. Travis Wallace, a patrol investigator, was disciplined but would keep his current position. According to the state troopers union, Wallace was called to the scene of the crash involving Flick to do an accident reconstruction investigation.

Others besides Flick and Wallace who were suspended with pay by Ricketts at the time of Rice's firing, and have previously been named, were Capt. Jamey Balthazor, Sgt. Kevin Waugh, Maj. Mike Gaudreault and Lt. Col. Thomas Schwarten. A seventh trooper was since brought into the investigation but not named.

The trooper involved in the excessive force incident, Lindsey Bixby, who was seen on a widely distributed internet video hitting a drunk driver last year with the butt of his rifle, resigned in June. He was not included in the action announced Wednesday.

The state troopers association sent out a news release Wednesday saying Flick is an "honorable trooper" who has served the state with dedication and valor for more than two decades, "including being shot multiple times while placing himself in harm's way to protect the citizens of Nebraska."

Flick's actions were thoroughly reviewed by multiple law enforcement officials and found to be within law and policy, the union said.

"(The union) is in complete support of Trooper Flick, and it will not rest until this unjust offense against his reputation is reversed in arbitration," the news release said.

The union said Wallace was disciplined for technical policy violations and has accepted responsibility. It will fully support his decision on whether to appeal the amount of discipline, the union said.

Bolduc said the State Patrol is not a troubled agency, but one of integrity.

He emphasized he believed those who were disciplined or left are good people who made mistakes. Among them are veteran troopers who have had decorated and accomplished careers, have even been heroes in their communities.

"However, even good people make mistakes," he said. "And some mistakes have serious consequences."

The investigations were thorough, consuming 1,300 hours of work over a total of 15 weeks, including 177 hours of interviews, Bolduc said.

The incidents at the center of the investigation were two out of more than 216,000 handled last year.

"Public trust and accountability are paramount in our ability to serve the public," Bolduc said.

He believed some troopers would be disappointed in some or all of the discipline meted out by the agency to the seven men.

"I know how they feel," he said. "I'm a cop, just like you. I want you to know I have your back. But having your back isn't a blank check for every error. ... Unfortunately, there are some mistakes that just can't be tolerated."

Bolduc said the state patrol is cooperating with probes by other agencies, including the FBI.

Omaha Sen. Burke Harr, who has pushed for criminal investigations and more information on the incidents and aftermath being made public, said the agency needs to let the public know more about why the troopers and administrators were fired or disciplined, and whether anyone committed crimes.

It sounds as if there was abuse of power within the patrol, he said.

"And when there's an abuse of power, I think the public has a right to know what happened so that we know we can trust our law enforcement ... even if it's something as simple as filing a false report," he said.

The vast majority of troopers are great men and women and they sacrifice every day, he said.

Bolduc said the patrol is looking at ways to improve some of its policies and procedures.

The Legislature's Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Laura Ebke filed public-records requests last month to get information on patrol actions that could potentially be violations of law or prompt legislation. She has received hundreds of pages of documents and emails from Ricketts' office, Attorney General Doug Peterson, the patrol, the courts and the Department of Administrative Services.

The Legislature will try to ensure the state does not have future conflicts of interest with the attorney general regarding such investigations and suspensions, and make a run at other changes in policy and procedures as needed.

"The administration has already brought us some ideas for things that they'd like to have accomplished," Ebke said.
Members of Parliament gathered early at Tuanaimato on Tuesday for their final Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast.

The service was officiated by Reverend Peteru Fiaumi Taua of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (C.C.C.S.) Lepale, Fasitoo-uta.

The Head of State, His Highness Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II and the Masiofo, members of the Council of Deputies and their wives, Cabinet members, Members of Parliament, members of the Clergy, Diplomatic corp (regional and international) and other dignitaries were present.

The Prayer Breakfast is a Parliament annual event which takes place every end of the year to give thanks to our Heavenly Father for guiding its work for the year 2017.

Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Nafoitoa Talaimanu Keti greeted the guests, thanked them for their hard work and assistance rendered to Parliament throughout the year and invited them to a morning banquet with Parliament as a token of its appreciation.

The Prayer Breakfast was followed by the Parliaments final sitting for the year 2017 to discuss its remaining business.

Here are some photos from Parliaments last session of the year.
A father from the village of Seesee has one wish for Christmas.

He hopes the government can do something to decrease the cost of living for the sake of many impoverished families in Samoa.

Alafua Ah Fook says the government should look at lowering the cost of food prices to help some families.

In my own opinion, the cost of food is getting too expensive, he said.

We can live without many things, but food is what we need the most to make it through the next day.

Having good food gives us the strength to carry out our daily routines and also keeps us healthy.

Alafua emphasized the importance of having the right meal to eat every day.

He said there were so many people who were getting sick or obese because they ate a lot of unhealthy food.

Nowadays the hospitals are packed, most people who are there are mainly sick because of the food they consume. Shops should start selling not just any product, must be good quality, he told Village Voice team yesterday.

He says sardines are healthy but they are becoming too expensive.

As a breadwinner for his family, Alafua is grateful to the Chinese shops for making food products affordable.

I am the only one who works within our family and my wife stays home to look after our child. It is uplifting to come across cheap stores like the Chinese shops, they are such a big help to our family.

The cost of living nowadays is not getting any easier, especially for an 18-year-old parent, even though he works as a plumber, there is still so many other things that he needs to focus on such as paying for the bills in the house.
Its a done deal. Prime Minister Tuilaepa and Samoas one-party state Parliament have gleefully brought back the Criminal Libel Act into the law books of Samoa.

They did this with ease during this years last Parliament session at Tuanaimato where hardly a soul objected during the discussion of the Crimes Amendment Bill.

In fact, the reintroduction of the law, which had been abolished in 2013, passed the first, second and third reading within less than an hour.

And with that ladies and gentlemen, Samoa has taken a step back to the dark ages since this ancient piece of legislation has been outlawed in most civilised societies around the world.

And yet in Samoa today, in the 21st century, the leaders of this nation have quite happily resorted to it as if its the answer to all our problems. Pity that given the amount of lauias with big brains in the government involved in this fiasco.

Surely one of them could have piped up to tell their leader that in the eyes of the world, Samoa looks like a country stuck in the past with such a barbaric law being used to threaten and gag people.

But then who could possibly oppose what the Prime Minister wants. Having lorded over the affairs of the 38-year-old H.R.P.P. for close to 20 years, what he says goes.

Which means the passing of the Bill would have been quite a proud moment for Prime Minister Tuilaepa and all their big fishes.

You see since the news broke, he has been instrumental in bringing back the law, as part of a government-driven effort to clamp down on ghost writers such as Ole Palemia and others who use anonymous social media pages to push their agenda.

When it comes to faceless bloggers and people who abuse freedom of information to vent unfounded and personal attacks on others  including innocent members of the public - the government has got a legitimate concern.

Here at the Samoa Observer, we dont subscribe to the idea that freedom of information and expression should be used to abuse and hurt people.

Instead we believe freedom of information and expression should be used to build our country and allow a vibrant exchange of views and ideas so that people are informed, educated and entertained. That includes views we dont necessarily agree with. That after all is what the media is about.

This is what should be encouraged.

Then there is also the medias role as a watchdog of the government, which we believe, is what the Criminal Libel law is really designed to discourage.

When people are afraid to speak up and express their views, democracy withers and dies. For the media, when sources dry up because they are afraid, corruption will thrive and people suffer.

Its hard to deny that in Samoa today, especially in the government, there is a real climate of fear where people are afraid to criticise their leaders because of repercussions. Contrary to what they say about Samoa being a free country, people, especially in government, are afraid to speak to the media. Some of them know they are being monitored. Which is a sad turn of event.

What does that have to do with Criminal Libel and Samoa today?

Put it this way, if the government wanted to track down Ole Palemia and other faceless bloggers who are critical of them, they will not catch them using Criminal Libel.

How can you prosecute a ghost-writer? How can you bring criminal charges against someone whom you have no idea who they are?

The fact is this piece of legislation exists to cripple media operators who are trying to be the watchdog of government  under conditions that are already hard enough. It is designed to silent dissent and shut up people who disagree with the status quo.

This is a sad day for this country. We say this because there are much more pressing issues the government should prioritise. There are stories of austere corruption that have been permeating unstoppably throughout the public service which have yet to be addressed appropriately.

Take for instance the issues raised by the Controller and Chief Auditor, Fuimaono Camillo Afele, in his report to Parliament for the periods ended 30 June, 2010 and 30 June, 2011 which revealed allegations of unbridled corruption in the government. The report was referred to the Officers of Parliament Committee (O.P.C.), chaired by then Associate Minister Papalii Niko Lee Hang to investigate. In the end, they backed and proven a number of allegations raised by Chief Auditor Fuimaono. They even found collusion to defraud taxpayers of millions of tala.

We dont need to go into details. You know what we are talking about.

The point here is about consistency in the pursuit for truth and justice. Here is the government using its power to bully people they see as a threat to them by bringing back an old piece of legislation that has been discarded by most democracy.

But where is the consistency then?

If they are hell-bent on catching bloggers and people expressing their views, what are they doing then to people  public servants  found to have abused their positions, public assets and monies?

Which public servants are subjected to investigations, scrutiny and eventually sacked and which ones are forgiven and allowed to get away with breaking the law and rewarded? Isnt everyone supposed to be the same under the law? Or are there people who are above the law in Samoa?

Why do we get the feeling that the government is again up to its old ways of trying to silent the independent media so that its reign as an undisputed one-party state remains forever?

Tell us what you think!
Dear Editor,

Re: Heated debate in Parliament

When you talk about breaking the law, youre talking to these people, Olo said while pointing to Cabinet Ministers.

But not all of you are criminals, just some.

Hahaha good comeback. Parliament should be televised and livestreamed online. The most entertaining part of proceedings is when the MPs fire shots across the floor.

As for Faumuina, why should Samoa bend over backwards for American Samoan nationals to come to Samoa free while Samoans need to pay to enter Tutuila ma Manua?

PS Jeffrey
Christmas came early for ten of the most needy families in Samoa on Wednesday.

Courtesy of Island Rock Company and their initiative to give back to the community, the company donated groceries and toys worth $1,000 each to the families whose plight had featured in the Samoa Observers Village Voice section.

Seiuli Paul Wallwork and Sua Julia Wallwork, of the Island Rock Company, visited the families to share the Christmas spirit of giving with them.

Its the Christmas season and these people deserve it, Tuaopepe Jerry Wallwork said.

Thats what the Christmas season is all about.

For the past few weeks, the Samoa Observers Village Voice Section had featured a lot of stories of families struggling with food, money, water and other essentials for living.

Tuaopepe said they were touched by the stories and they wanted to help. And with Christmas, they surprised the families by turning up bearing gifts and love.

It was an unexpected blessing for these families and all they could do was shed tears of gratefulness and express their gratitude.

Maiava Iosia, a senior member of the Island Rock Company, conducted the presentation of donations on behalf of the company.

Samuelu Maka of Leusoalii and the family was the first recipient of the donation.

Three families in Lotofaga-Uta - Tavita Kalolo, Moamoa Kitiona and Soolefai Sitagata  were given their items next.

I am truly out of words right now for this unexpected visit, I am truly grateful because finally now its started to feel like Christmas to my kids especially receiving toys, said Moamoa Kitiona.

Tavita Kalolo was in tears while accepting the donations.

I am so grateful for the assistance from your company, I never thought someone would care and donate these goods for my family.

Lotu Palauni of Lotofaga Safata was the fifth family visited and then Finau Linos family in Leulumoega.

Lotu Palaunis family survives from selling Faapapa (Samoan bread) while Finau sells koko esi for a living.

Fuga Niue of Manono-Uta was the seventh family visited.

Mr. Niue said this had been the first time anything like this had happened to him.

I am truly honoured to receive this donation because this is the first time for me to be able to receive something like this.

Paulo Visesio of Faleula was also fortunate to receive assistance from this Good Samaritan, along with Ionatana Vili and Lagi Ale of Toamua-Uta.

Another special donation yesterday was from the Wallworks granddaughter, Seirosa Wallworks Lamb, who provided First Aid gears to all 10 families.

She has been selling cookies throughout the year as part of her fundraising program and today she was able to provide these first aid gears for all the 10 families because she believes Christmas is all about giving, Maiava said.

We thank you Samoa Observer with your Village Voice team and the Island Rock Company for bringing us light during this years Christmas, Fuga added.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has changed his tune about confirming the cost Samoa Airways is paying to lease the aircraft form Icelandic Air.

After he asked the Samoa Observer to direct queries to the Chief Executive Officer of Samoa Airways, Seiuli Alvin Tuala, yesterday he said it is a secret.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa made the comment during an interview with the Samoa Observer where he was again pressed about the cost of the lease.

These are commercial secrets, it cannot be revealed, he said.

The Samoa Observer learned from inside sources that the airline is paying up to US$500,000 (T$1.25million) a fortnight to lease the aircraft.

Tuilaepa refused to discuss any of the information.

These things are commercial contracts, and if you inquire with any airline companies, they will never allow that to be known, he said.

At that point, the Samoa Observer put it to the Prime Minister that Samoa Airways is government-owned and that members of the public deserve to know.

But he disagreed.

These are commercial secrets, it cannot be revealed, he responded.

It cannot be publically announced, these are commercial based secrets.

Samoa Observer pressed that this is a Government-owned airline; Tuilaepa again intervened and said when the accounts are available thats the time you will know.

He was asked to point out when that will happen and Tuilaepa said the end of every year.

Last month, Tuilaepa referred questions to the Management of the Airline.

At the time, he said: To get the exact amount down to the cents, direct your questions to the C.E.O. of Samoa Airways.

That shouldnt be hard to do.

The Prime Minister then asked as to why the Samoa Observer was interested in the cost of the lease.

Your questions appear to be looking for trouble, he said.

However if you ask, then do a follow up question, what is the usual amount of such leases, that is how you do it. But dont just ask about our lease.

Questions sent to the Management of the Airline have not been responded to all.

In October, 2017, Cabinet ordered all government Ministries and corporations to use Samoa Airways for any flights to New Zealand and Australia funded by the government.

The Cabinet order was signed by the C.E.O. of the Ministry of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Agafili Shem Leo.

The Cabinet paper also strictly instructs government officials to persuade sponsors and funders of other trips to book flights from and back to Samoa with Samoa Airways.
Attorney General, Lemalu Herman Retzlaff, has washed his hands clean of a call for his Office to investigate an incident where the Ministry of Revenue confiscated container allegedly smuggled into the country using falsified documents.

Responding to questions from the Samoa Observer about his Offices role, Lemalu said the matter was not referred to his office and therefore he could not act.

I informed the Ministry that if there are alleged breaches of the Law, then we can and should be involved, once the file passes to the police with a formal complaint of criminal charges, upon which we can then legally advise police on prosecution, Lemalu told the Samoa Observer.

I also stated that this office can work directly with Customs in their investigation to advice on legality, if required.

We do not otherwise have any investigative power ourselves.

Lemalu said so far, the file about the matter had not reached his Office.

I have not received any file, or any further communication, or any further notice of the matter, he said.

I have contacted today (yesterday) the Police Commissioner and he has confirmed that he has not received a criminal complaint on this specific matter either.

The Attorney General assured that if a criminal complaint is lodged, his office will undertake their duty as required.

The call was made by Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, last month.

During an interview, Olo said the matter deals with border security breaches in our country, which is an issue Lemalu should definitely look into.

The issue at hand was uncovered back in September 2017, where the Minister of Revenue and Customs, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, told the Samoa Observer the container was allegedly smuggled into the country using falsified documents.

Instead of taking it to Court, the Ministry of Revenue has decided to settle the matter with the company involved.

The details about the settlement remain hidden.

But Olo believes that by involving the A.G., it will send out a clear indication to the business community that this type of (alleged) criminal activity will not be tolerated by this government.

Its clear from the Ministry of Police they have not been asked to investigate this matter. So now is the time for the Attorney General to step into this relatively important issue, said Olo.

However, Lemalu cited that his office has no legal grounds because there has been no official complaint to the Ministry of Police.

Responding to the Samoa Observer questions, Lemalu says his office was informed earlier this year by the Ministry that there was an internal investigation as to these particular containers.
Samoa will have to wait a little longer to benefit from the promise of faster and cheaper internet.

Thats because the Tui Samoa Cable will not go live until next month.

This was confirmed by Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Afamasaga Tico Tupai, in response to questions from the Samoa Observer on the status of the cable.

The cable is delayed due to some unforeseen circumstances, he said.

What the circumstances are, the Minister did not say.

The Tui Samoa Cable was brought to its landing site in Moataa last month.

The Samoa Submarine Cable Company Limited (S.S.C.C) and Alcatel Submarine Networks (A.S.N.) began the loading of the 1,470 km Tui-Samoa Cable in July 2017.

Afamasaga said the goal was to go live before Christmas.

But the plans have changed.

We lost three weeks due to the availability of the berthing during the loading, bad weather, some technical problems on the vessel and the entry of the vessel in Wallis lagoon, he said.

The final splice is now planned in Suva end of this week on the 24th.

All equipment has been installed and once the final splice is in then it means the system is complete.

Training and testing of the system will commence immediately after crew returns from holiday and if system is clear then it will be switched on immediately, explained the Minister.

Last month Afamasaga assured the public that prices for internet will be significantly cheaper.

According to the Minister of M.C.I.T. currently, the cable is being laid between Fatuna and Suva Fiji.

The plan is to reach Fiji by the second week of December then the testing period starts with the intention to go live before Christmas.

All this depends on the smooth operation of the cable-laying process currently in progress so lets hope it goes well.

Regarding cheap internet and what the public needs to expect, Afamasaga stated the price will be less than US$90 (T$216).

Government and S.S.C.C. have been working to significantly reduce wholesale capacity prices from an estimated US$300 (T$771) Mbps to a price which will be less than US$90.

It is intended that with affordable bandwidth pricing Samoans licensed telecommunications operators will be able to increase the value proposition for their retail customers.

In short Samoans retail customers should see a significant increase in their data bundles, explained the Minister.
The Bank of South Pacific (B.S.P.) celebrated the official opening of a $3.78million project to refurbish the Retail Banking Area of their main branch in Apia this week.

Minister of Finance, Sili Epa Tuioti, was among the guests at the opening on Tuesday night. He congratulated the management of B.S.P. saying it was wonderful to have top-notch facilities in Samoa so that customers dont have to leave Samoa to be able to experience the use such state of the art offices.

The project was carried out by Fletcher Construction Company Limited over seven months with Asiata Van Wright as the Quantity Surveyor.

Country Manager Taituuga Maryann Lameko-Vaai said the refusbishment is all about the banks efforts to provide a superior banking experience.

The vision of the Bank of South Pacific is to be the leading financial services provider in our chosen markets, helping customers, staff, shareholders and communities prosper, she said.

This Refurbishment reaffirms B.S.Ps commitment to providing a superior banking experience for our customers, and embedding a whole-of-bank customer service culture complete with new Prime Banking, Business Banking and General Banking facilities.

Taituuga acknowledged the B.S.Ps Board, especially Group C.E.O. Robin Fleming, who was in the country for the opening.

The project was awarded to Fletcher Construction Company Limited and I would like to acknowledge Mr Chris Schembri, John Muholland, Peter Humrick, the Fletchers team and all the subcontractors for a job well done.

I would like to acknowledge Mr Asiata Van Wright our project Quantity Surveyor, who made sure all the boxes on our checklist were ticked. I also would like to thank Mr Bill Gordon of Tinai and Gordon for his assistance in the beginning as we were trying to navigate our way through the arduous task ahead.

Thank you to all our staff who have been a part of this project, I know that you have worked so hard to get the branch ready for this evening and I personally thank you for your efforts.

Last but not the least, I would like to acknowledge and thank the project manager Mr Rod Greed for your hard work, perseverance and for seeing to every detail of this work. Despite the long hours, you complained very little and even gave up your usual Friday nights with the guys just so you can keep an eye on things.
Remember this number. 911.

It is the new emergency dial for all of Samoa launched by Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi at Tuanaimato yesterday afternoon.

The cutting of the ribbon was conducted by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Afamasaga Rico Tupai.

Tuilaepa urged the operators of the call center to ensure all lines are available.

This number is being used by countries all over the world, he said.

The main purpose of this change to 911 among other things is to eliminate confusion regarding what appropriate number to call for any particular emergency.

It is also to expedite the response by the emergency services save lives.

The Prime Minister also advised employees of F.E.S.A. especially operators against misusing the phone lines.

There is one problem faced by us Samoans, its a sickness called gossiping using phones, he said.

This problem is faced by many young people, especially the youths.

Tuilaepa said there are times when callers cannot get through to the emergency line because they engaged.

The emergency lines are usually busy with calls to families and friends and of course the bill is paid for by the F.E.S.A.

This has also delayed F.E.S.A.s response to emergencies and fires.

No matter how great an initiative is, gossip and misusing it always ruins for everyone using it.

So my advice to the Commissioner of Fire, initiatives such as these having two eyes is not enough.

You should have eight eyes, two at the front, two on the side and two at the back so that you can monitor all that is happening at the call center.

Minister Afamasaga told the Samoa Observer said the move is a must for safety reasons.

There are a number of reasons the move is necessary. The 911 emergency numbers is a universal number and am glad that Samoa has opted to make this change, said Afamasaga.

Also we have a number of tourists who come to Samoa and when they need help the number that comes to mind is 911.

Again this is vital to ease up on the confusion but also a good move.
Janella Monae arrives at the premiere of the film 'Black Panther,' at The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Featuring a predominantly black cast, the film that is an ode to Africa - with costuming and sets heavily inspired by African cultures - moved many vie (Photo: Samoa Observer)

Janella Monae arrives at the premiere of the film 'Black Panther,' at The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Featuring a predominantly black cast, the film that is an ode to Africa - with costuming and sets heavily inspired by African cultures - moved many vie (Photo: Samoa Observer)

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to denounce President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, largely ignoring Trump's threats to cut off aid to any country that went against him.

The nonbinding resolution declaring U.S. action on Jerusalem "null and void" was approved 128-9  a victory for the Palestinians, but not as big as they predicted. Amid Washington's threats, 35 of the 193 U.N. member nations abstained and 21 were absent.

The resolution reaffirmed what has been the United Nations' stand on the divided holy city since 1967: that Jerusalem's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Trump administration made it clear the vote would have no effect on its plan to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterward that he completely rejects the "preposterous" resolution.

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour called the vote a victory not only for the Palestinians but for the United Nations and international law, saying U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley "failed miserably" in persuading only seven countries aside from the U.S. and Israel to vote against the resolution.

"And they used unprecedented tactics, unheard of in the diplomatic work at the U.N., including blackmail and extortion," he said.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the measure, with Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the U.S. Trump went further, threatening a funding cutoff: "Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

But in the end, major U.S. aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution. Egypt received roughly $1.4 billion in U.S. aid this year, and Jordan about $1.3 billion.

The nine countries voting "no" were the U.S., Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo. Among the abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close U.S. ties.

The U.S. is scheduled to dispense $25.8 billion in foreign aid for 2018. Whether Trump follows through with his threat against those who voted "yes" remains to be seen.

After the vote, Haley tweeted a photo naming the 65 nations that voted no, abstained or were absent, and said: "We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN."

We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the @UN: pic.twitter.com/a0hUTepD8H  Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 21, 2017

But within hours, the Trump administration appeared to be backing away from its funding threats. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said cuts to countries that opposed the U.S. are not a foregone conclusion.

"The president's foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations," Nauert said. "However, no decisions have been made."

During the debate, Arab, Islamic and non-aligned nations urged a "yes" vote on the resolution, which was sponsored by Yemen and Turkey.

Yemeni Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany warned that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem undermines any chance for peace in the Mideast and "serves to fan the fires of violence and extremism."

He called Trump's action "a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world," and "a dangerous violation and breach of international law."

On Wednesday, Trump complained that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by countries that take billions of dollars and then vote against the U.S. Haley echoed his words in her speech to the packed assembly chamber, threatening not only member states with funding cuts, but the United Nations itself.

Haley said the vote will make no difference in U.S. plans to move the American Embassy, but it "will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N., and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N."

"And this vote will be remembered," she warned.

Trump's pressure tactics had raised the stakes at Thursday's emergency meeting and triggered accusations from the Muslim world of U.S. bullying and blackmail.

"It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale," said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. "We will not be intimidated! You can be strong but this does not make you right!"

The Palestinians and their supporters sought the General Assembly vote after the U.S. on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other U.N. Security Council members that would have required Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem.

The resolution adopted by the assembly has language similar to the defeated measure.

It "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded."
The mobile industrys push to accelerate the roll out of ultra-fast 5G networks took a step forward Wednesday when a standard-setting body wrapped up work on the first specification for a fifth generation cellular radio.

The move paves the way for Qualcomm, Intel and others to design semiconductors based on the new standard, and for network equipment makers such as Ericsson and Nokia to build gear that supports 5G.

Qualcomm expects to see the first 5G-enabled smartphones to be available in the first half of 2019.

Advertisement

Getting this spec finalized is a significant milestone in the industry, said Qualcomm spokesman Pete Lancia. It sets the stake in the ground for all the development we have been doing up to now and through the first half of 2019 when it is going to be commercialized.

5G aims to deliver up to 5 gigabits per second download speeds, imperceptible transmission delays, more capacity and high reliability to smartphones and other connected devices.

The technology to do all this is complex. 5G taps so-called millimeter wave frequencies. These frequencies can deliver a lot of bandwidth but degrade easily and must be tightly managed with beam-forming antennas and other technologies.

In February, the mobile industry agreed to accelerate the 5G standard-creation process, in part because of the increasing bandwidth demands on current 3G/4G networks.

With less latency, faster speeds and better reliability, 5G is forecast to help power improved driver-assist/self-driving vehicles, new connected health care apps, improved augmented and virtual reality and other services.

In addition, these networks would have the flexibility to absorb the many millions of connected Internet of Things gadgets.

Qualcomm has been investing in 5G research for nearly a decade and played a key role in the standards setting process.

AT&T, Qualcomm and Ericsson were able to announce Thursday that theyve already tested the new Non-Standalone 5G New Radio on phones and cellular bases stations running in labs.

We look forward to continue working with our mobile industry peers to bring 5G New Radio commercial networks and devices in 2019 in smartphone and other form factors, said Cristiano Amon, head of Qualcomms chip-making division, in a statement.

Engineers from dozens of companies submitted technologies for consideration for inclusion in interoperability standard  which ensures smartphones and cell towers from different manufacturers can call, text and otherwise communicate with each other.

The next step for the 3GPP standards body is to set the specifications for the Standalone 5G New Radio, which is expected next summer or fall.

Global wireless companies applauded the new standards, with Vodafone, Orange, Verizon T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, China Mobile, Telefonica and NTT Docomo among the carriers issuing statements of support.

With these specifications now available, chipset, hardware and device manufacturers can now get a head start on development, said AT&T Senior Vice President Marachel Knight in a blog post. And operators will be able to provide mobile 5G service sooner to customers. These key components include not only the specifications for 5G New Radio but also the non-standalone enhancements to the LTE core network interface.

Business

mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973
PHOTO: The nonprofit Oceanside-based Womens Resource Center received a donation of 45 coats from area resident Jeffrey Olsen, for the nonprofits 13th Spirit of Giving program. During Spirit of Giving about 115 families, including nearly 300 children attend a Christmas party and are given Christmas gifts. The children also get to choose gifts to give their parents. From left to right they are staff members, Beatriz Morales case manager, Brandee Clayton, special event coordinator and Jill Morgan, deputy director with Olsen. The nonprofit serves over 6,000 families each year who have been affected by domestic violence and sexual assault. The nonprofit offers an emergency shelter and transition house. Visit wrcsd.org

CARLSBAD

Senior center hosts monthly dance

Advertisement

The Carlsbad Senior Center hosts The Vidals from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Jan. 4 with refreshments and prizes sponsored by Las Villas de Carlsbad. Admission costs $4. The senior center is at 799 Pine Ave. Call (760) 602-4650.

DEL MAR

Thrift stores half-price sale ends Saturday

St. Peters Thrift Shop, in Del Mar Village, is holding its annual Customer Appreciation Week with a half-price sale of everything in the store. The sale runs through Saturday. The thrift shop is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and is located between 14th and 15th streets, on Maiden Lane. Proceeds from sales support the work of the Missions, Outreach and Social Justice Ministries at St. Peters Episcopal Church. Visit stpetersdelmar.net.

ENCINITAS

Community center offers ballet classes

Ballet classes will be offered for ages 13 and older starting Jan. 4 at the Encinitas Community Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive. Level I (beginning) will be offered from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Mondays; Level II (Intermediate) from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. Mondays and/or Thursdays; and a mixed Level I-II from 9 to 10 a.m. Saturdays. In addition, a Just Barre class, for those who only want barre exercises and stretching with no across the floor moves, will be offered from 6:45 to 7:30 p.m. Thursdays. The instructor is former professional dancer Marti Neal. Visit encinitasparksandrec.com or call (760) 943-2260.

NORTH COUNTY

Pet adoption fees waived through Sunday

The San Diego Humane Society is waiving pet adoption fees through Sunday at all campuses and satellite adoption centers across San Diego County. Adopted animals are spayed/neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. Pets go home with a certificate for a free veterinary exam, 30 days of pet insurance from Trupanion and bag of food from Purina. The pre-Christmas adoption event is sponsored by Sharon Blanchet of ABC Family Law, and Phil and Pam Reed, Reed Team at Willis Allen Real Estate in La Jolla. Visit sdhumane.org/how-you-can-help/adopt/available-pets.

OCEANSIDE

Christmas Bird Count on Saturday at lagoon

Community members can participate in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count in Oceanside and join the Coastal 101 Birding Loop team. The group will gather at 9 a.m. Saturday in the parking lot at the Audubon Nature Center, 2202 S. Coast Highway. No birding experience is required and there is no need to RSVP. The group will be led by experienced guides on a walk along the nature center trails and to several viewing areas along Highway 101, recording the birds seen in the reeds and waters of the lagoon. Around 11:30 a.m., the group will return to the nature center to turn in their results, compare notes with other returning birders, and have a free chili luncheon. Call (760) 439- 2473.

City offers road trip

to 129th Rose Parade

The city of Oceanside Parks & Recreation Division hosts a road trip to the 129th Rose Parade in Pasadena on Jan. 1. Participants meet at 4 a.m. Jan.1 at the El Corazon Senior Center, and the bus returns at 4 p.m. The parade starts at 8 a.m. Breakfast, round-trip bus ride, souvenir seat cushion, lunch, program, souvenir pin and admission are included. Tickets include front row seats at West Colorado & Orange Grove. The cost is $200 per person. Register and buy tickets at bit.ly/2z1cVr0. The bus will accommodate 40 people. In addition, staff has arranged transportation for four additional people requiring ADA accommodations with a companion rider. Call (760) 435-5250.

SAN MARCOS

Dine and Discover program for seniors

The city of San Marcos hosts the ongoing series Dine and Discover at 11:30 a.m. Jan. 17 at the Senior Activity Center, 111 Richmar Ave. Participants will have lunch while listening to a presentation by Sarah Macdonald, city communications officer. Learn about the citys branding campaign and gain a better understanding of the Communications Department. RSVP at least one day in advance. Cost of lunch for guests 60 and older is a $4 suggested donation and a $5 fee for guests younger than 60. For more information or to RSVP, call (760) 744-5535 or visit san-marcos.net.

VALLEY CENTER

Holiday items at museum gift shop

The Valley Center History Museums gift shop sells holiday gifts, with proceeds going to the nonprofit museum staffed by volunteers. The shop offers a range of items from T-shirts and coffee mugs featuring the towns iconic grizzly bear to books about Valley Center history, note cards, educational games and toys along with small teddy bears dressed in holiday garb. Gifts of membership are also available. The museum at 29200 Cole Grade Road is open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Call (760) 749-2993.

VISTA

Church announces holiday service times

Regular services for Christmas Eve and New Years Eve will be held at 10 a.m. at United Methodist Church of Vista, 490 S. Melrose Drive. The two-service schedule of worship at 9 and 11 a.m. will resume Jan. 7. The 10 a.m. Christmas Eve service will be family oriented, but child care will be available. Additional services on Christmas Eve will be at 7 p.m., featuring candlelight and chancel choir, and 11 p.m., featuring candlelight and Holy Communion. All services are open to the public. Visit umcvista.org.

If your nonprofit would like to submit calendar listings for events, or photos of events that have happened recently, please email northcounty@sduniontribune.com.

Send us your Community News

If your nonprofit would like to submit calendar listings for events, or photos of events that have happened recently, please email northcounty@sduniontribune.com.

Include the name of the group, date and time of event, address, cost and contact information for readers.

Photos must be sent in jpeg form, with the names of those in the photo from left to right.
A communitywide Celebration of Life, in honor of Elizabeth Betty Bulen, founder of Escondido-based nonprofit The Elizabeth Hospice, is set for Jan. 13 at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido.

Bulen died Dec. 2 at an assisted living home in Escondido where she had moved two and a half years ago from her Escondido home. She was 98.

She founded The Elizabeth Hospice with several friends in 1978 after visiting the founder of St. Christophers Hospice in London. Inspired by the meeting, Bulen, with help from friends Betty Benz, Ann Elizabeth Warren and Kay Elizabeth Austin, established the hospice in Escondido. Since then the nonprofit has grown to include 350 staff and 400 volunteers who work to bring comfort to the dying and help families during their loved ones final days.

Advertisement

Betty helped to build a community around the hospice movement in North San Diego County in 1978, when few even knew what hospice care was, said Jan Jones, president and CEO of The Elizabeth Hospice.

Bulen was born on Sept. 29, 1919, in Massachusetts and is the eldest of three children of the Rev. Russell W. Bosworth, a Methodist pastor, and his wife, Helen.

When she was 7, her father died from scarlet fever. During high school she wrote a paper on death and dying.

After graduating from high school, Bulen began nurse training in 1938 at Maine General Hospital and graduated in June 1941. She joined the Army in 1944 and served as a second lieutenant working in a childrens ward before getting transferred to the Philippines to care for the sick and injured in Biak at the evacuation hospital.

She returned to the United States in December 1945 and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in the Philippines. Soon after returning home, she met Jim Bulen, a doctor in training for the Army Air Force. They married on Aug. 25, 1946, in his hometown of Escondido and moved to Vermont for medical school, where they had their first of five children, Ann, and later moved back to Escondido after spending several years in Japan and Texas.

While the family lived in Japan, Bulen learned Japanese flower arranging, a skill she drew on to make floral arrangements for area churches.

Bulen was also a founding member of the Rancho Bernardo Light of Life Religious Science Church in 1996.

Bulen is survived by her sister Lois, her five children and their spouses, 21 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.

The public Celebration of Life ceremony will be from 3 to 5 p.m. at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. For more information or to RSVP, call (760) 796-3797 or email BulenEvent@ehospice.org.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to The Elizabeth Hospice. Visit elizabethhospice.org/donate or call (800) 797-2050.
ENCINITAS

Water polo team helps with baskets

The San Dieguito High School Academy boys water polo team helped with the Encinitas Community Resource Centers Holiday Baskets at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in preparation for the recent Holiday Baskets event. As part of the teams commitment to community service work, they unboxed bikes and sorted food. This is the teams fourth year to participate. The Community Resource Centers Holiday Baskets is San Diegos largest distribution program, providing a dignified and free shopping experience for families and individuals in need. Pictured above: standing: Harry Van Loan (left), Dylan Herrera, Shelton Bishop (back), Alex Glenn, Jude Irons, Ryan Elliott, Charlie Scholl, Ryan Shumate, Jack Severson, Jake Holland, Haidyn Estes, Nate Conger, Kekoa Wheeler, Max Van Loan, Gavin Silberman. Sitting: Conrad Nielson, Michael Wieland.

Advertisement

ESCONDIDO

Classical Academy among top finalists

The Classical Academy High School in Escondido was one of five California schools among the nations 255 state finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest, a program that encourages students to solve real-world issues in their community using classroom skills in science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM). The finalist schools were chosen based on their creative and strategic proposals to solve complicated issues that affect their communities by using STEAM learning. All 255 teachers selected as state finalists received a Samsung Chromebook for their classrooms. Visit samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow.

Palomar student photos on display

Enlightened Lens 2017/2018: New Work by Palomar College Photography Students is on exhibit at the Escondido Municipal Gallery, 262 Grand Ave., through Jan. 6. Enlightened Lens is a juried exhibition of more than 60 photographic works by students of the Palomar College photography program. Photography faculty members viewed more than 180 images entered by students of all levels to create this annual show. Much of the work will be for sale. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, and Thursdays through Saturdays. Call (760) 480-4101 for holiday hours. The exhibit will travel to the Hearth Gallery at the San Marcos Civic Center and show from mid-January through February.

OCEANSIDE

Lifeguard Academy scholarships open

The City of Oceanside Lifeguard Academy will be awarding full-ride scholarships to five applicants between ages 16-24 who are ready to jumpstart their career in lifeguarding and aquatics. Scholarship recipients are expected to work for the city of Oceanside as lifeguards for at least one year after their successful course completion. The deadline for the application and pre-course swim test is Jan. 7, 2018. Course dates are Jan. 9 through Feb. 24. Visit www.ci.oceanside.ca.us/gov/ns/parks/pools.asp or call (760) 435-5225.

Film festival seeking entries; early bird deadline Jan. 2

The Oceanside International Film Festival 2018 is accepting film submissions till June 11. Student films can be up to 120 minutes and if submitted by the early bird date of Jan. 2, the submission fee is discounted. The film festival is an opportunity for independent filmmakers to have their work screened and judged. Anyone can enter a film, from elementary to college level and independent filmmakers. Visit filmfreeway.com/oceansideinternationalfilmfestival to submit a film. Call (760( 433-3632 or email OIFF@ocaf.info.

SAN MARCOS

Cal State San Marcos professor wins honor

Keith Trujillo, a California State University San Marcos psychology professor and director of the universitys Office for Training, Research & Education in the Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This year, 396 members were awarded this honor by the association because of their efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Feb. 17 at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Trujillo was selected for distinguished contributions to science and neuroscience education and mentoring that have advanced diversity at local, regional and national levels. Visit aaas.org.

Palomar College classes begin Jan. 2

Intersession classes at Palomar College begin Jan. 2, and spring semester begins Jan. 29. Whether students plan to transfer to a university or have other education or career goals, Palomar offers classes, including English, history, math and the sciences, at different times, locations and formats to accommodate their needs. The new five-story parking structure on the San Marcos campus will be open in time for spring semester classes and will accommodate 1,615 vehicles including 28 handicapped designated spaces. Building features include license plate recognition, pay ticket machines and three elevators. Besides the San Marcos location, classes are offered at Palomars Escondido Education Center, along with sites at Camp Pendleton, Ramona, Fallbrook High School and Mt. Carmel High School. Construction on campuses in Fallbrook and Rancho Bernardo will be finished for summer session 2018. Visit palomar.edu.

VALLECITOS

New superintendent on board for district

Maritza Koeppen will start as superintendent/principal of the Vallecitos School District on Jan. 2. Koeppen is currently director of special programs in the San Marcos Unified School District. She holds a doctorate in education through San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate School. Koeppen is bilingual and has extensive experience overseeing services for Title I schools, English learners, after-school programs, and parent involvement. She has also served as summer school principal in the San Marcos district. Interim Superintendent Gary Wilson has been leading the Vallecitos district since August, when David Jones left to become superintendent at the Bonsall Unified School District.

VISTA

Beaumont Elementary holds food, toy drive

Students, parents, staff and volunteers at Beaumont Elementary School held their annual holiday food and toy drive for needy Beaumont families recently. Each family received several boxes of canned goods and food, presents for their children, a new set of clothes and a jacket for every child, and assorted furniture as needed. Most of the food  1,200-plus cans  was donated by students. Fresh fruit, staple foods, presents and home furnishings were purchased with donations. Teachers and parents gathered to wrap gifts and help load the trucks, and members of the Rancho Buena Vista girls softball team helped make deliveries. Other organizations also pitched in: Madison Middle School ASB, New Song Church, Cub Mentors from La Costa Canyon and North Coast Church adopted families, and Vista City Councilman Joe Green adopted two. The RBV softball team provided extra toys, the Beaumont PTA donated money for food, and Summit Settlements provided money for furniture and other items. The school was able to assist 13 families with a total of 43 children.

Please send items to laura.groch@sduniontribune.com at least 10 days before events.

laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski late Thursday survived an attempt by congress to remove him from office as lawmakers fell short of the two-thirds majority required. After hours of debate, the presidents opponents could summon only 78 votes to remove, instead of the 89 needed.

The president had gone before congress earlier in the day to refute corruption charges related to business dealings with a Brazilian construction company accused of bribing officials in several Latin American countries to secure contracts.

Kuczynski told Congress he was innocent of any moral incapacity charges, while apologizing for not being more attentive to business issues.

Advertisement

But that doesnt make me corrupt. What is at play here is not the issue of removing a president, but a democracy, Kuczynski said.

After the presidents comments, the legislature began debating whether the charges warrant removing Kuczynski as president. The measure finally came to a vote with 78 voting to remove, 19 against and 21 abstentions.

Analysts considered Kuczynskis chances of losing the presidency high because a majority of seats are controlled by opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, whom Kuczynski defeated in the 2016 presidential race.

Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori and twice a losing candidate for president, also faces accusations of having taken illegal contributions from the same company, Odebrecht. Kuczynskis supporters say she was engineering the presidents firing to distract attention from still undetermined sums her campaign allegedly received from Odebrecht in 2011.

Cynthia McClintock, a Peru expert and professor at George Washington University, described the fast-moving impeachment process as a rush to judgment, especially in light of the fact that the much older corruption case against Keiko Fujimori has proceeded at a snails pace.

That is the question, why Kuczynski and not Keiko? Its the source of all the cynicism and disillusion, McClintock said. What is worse is the inconsistency in the application of the law.

The Congress voted Nov. 14 to bring charges against the president and force Thursdays hearing and a vote.

Fujimori supporters hold 71 seats but said they had formed alliances to gain the two-thirds required for removal.

Recent Peruvian media reports indicate that an investment firm co-owned by Kuczynski called Westfield Capital received $787,000 from 2004 to 2007 when he was economy minister under then-President Alejandro Toledo.

The impeachment process is being held against a backdrop of enormous public discontent, evidenced by the tens of thousands of angry protesters who participated last Saturday in organized anti-corruption marches in Lima and 12 other cities. The theme of the marches emblazoned in banners was: All the Crooks Must Go.

The so-called Car Wash scandal centered around the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht and its payment of millions of dollars in bribes to high level officials in a dozen Latin American countries has taken a huge toll in Peruvians confidence in public officials.

Not only have Kuczynski, Toledo and Humalla all been stained by the scandal, but another former president Alan Garcia also has been mentioned by Brazilian prosecutors as having received illegal payments.

Kuczynski on Thursday told legislators that his firm received money from Odebrecht but said he knew nothing about the dealings, having left the company under the control of partner Gerardo Sepulveda when he became a government minister and building a Chinese wall to shut himself off from all company matters.

I do not enjoy the presumption of innocence, as many of you have already said you favor my removal, said Kuczynski, insisting he never used his office to favor a person or business during his time as minister.

In a televised speech Wednesday, Kuczynski denounced the impeachment process as amounting to a legislative coup detat and a rush to judgment. He said his two vice presidents would resign if he was booted from office, leaving unclear who would succeed Kuczynski as president.

But Marco Arana, a leftist congressman from the Broad Front party, told reporters after Kuczynskis speech Wednesday that, although he was receptive to parts of Kuczynskis defense, he would vote for the presidents removal to avoid the stain of institutionalized corruption, the privatization of the state.

One day he is a businessman, the other a minister, Arana said. The president has shown how the state submits to private interests. He doesnt think there is anything wrong, that since [Westfield finances] are accounted for, there is no conflict of interest.

Special correspondents Leon and Kraul reported from Lima and Bogota, Colombia, respectively.

UPDATES:

11:10 p.m.: Updated with the vote result.

3:25 p.m.: This article was updated to indicate the legislatures debate on Kuczynskis status was ongoing into Thursday evening.

This article was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
Isabel Campos expects to go to the polls Thursday morning thinking of her ancestors.

Her parents and grandparents are from outside Catalonia, the prosperous northeastern Spanish region whose parliamentary election Thursday is at the heart of a fight over identity and independence from or unity with the countrys central government.

The 33-year-old, who lives in Barcelona, the regions capital, said she will vote for a political party committed to keeping Catalonia as part of Spain. Her reasoning is simple: She wants to live in the same country where her relatives grew up.

Advertisement

We are playing with the future of Catalonia and Spain, Campos said as she waited in the cold Tuesday night to attend a rally for the anti-independence party Ciudadanos. I dont want to need a passport to get to other parts of Spain.

On Thursday, a polarized Catalonia votes for the fourth time in seven years on a new regional government  an election that could serve as a de facto referendum on independence, though experts say its unlikely to produce decisive results.

The push for the region of 7.5 million people to separate from Spain has instigated the countrys deepest political crisis in its 40 years of democracy after the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.

After an Oct. 1 referendum considered illegal by the central government and boycotted by many voters overwhelmingly favored secession, Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont declared the region independent, spurring Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to dissolve the regions government and call early elections for Dec. 21 to replace it.

Rajoy has said he hopes to return Catalonia to normal and quell the secessionist movement.

The Catalan conflict, which grew in strength two years ago when secessionists won a slim majority in parliament, radically changed the political map of Catalonia, said Joan Vintro, a constitutional law professor at the University of Barcelona. The change has generated a determined political instability.

Candidates for the 135-member parliament began campaigning in early December on platforms defined primarily by their stance on independence. Other issues, such as health and education, went largely untouched.

The campaign has been unusual, in part because of circumstances that include members of the previous regional government being elsewhere.

Puigdemont has been running a virtual campaign from self-imposed exile in Belgium, where he fled in October. Catalonias former vice president, Oriol Junqueras, has campaigned from a jail near Madrid, while he and other incarcerated independentista politicians are being investigated on suspicion of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds.

Voter turnout is expected to be high Thursday. The parties vying for power consist of those that favor independence, those that favor a unified Spain and those that are nonaligned. Voters cast ballots by parties and the parties allocate seats for individuals who normally serve four-year terms. Parties must win more than 3% of the vote to gain seats.

The three main pro-independence parties are Puigdemonts Junts per Catalunya, Junqueras Esquerra Republicana and the small far-left Candidatura dUnitat Popular, or CUP. The main anti-independence party is Ciudadanos.

The election is not expected to be decisive, analysts say, as opinion polls generally have not forecast any party winning a clear majority, meaning that parties would have to form coalitions to govern. To earn a majority and a mandate to govern, a party must win 68 seats in parliament.

The conflict in Catalonia has polarized its citizens. Some people say they have stopped speaking with friends because of rancorous arguments, and others say politics has become a taboo topic.

We arent living a Civil War, but especially in the last months there has been ... a social tension, said Fernando Sanchez, a parliamentary candidate for the conservative Partido Popular, outside a campaign event where supporters dined and toasted to Spanish unity.

Maria Carmen Marti, 61, said she supports pro-independence parties, which she sees as the only means to stand up to a robber Spanish state.

Ill vote for Esquerra or Puigdemont, the Barcelona resident said. For my parties.

With the election coming just days before Christmas, some people worry about political arguments with family members.

Sara Alvarez wont celebrate Christmas this year with her brother or sister-in-law. Alvarez said her sister-in-law, who supports independence, attacked her on Facebook recently for a post about Spanish unity, and their relationship worsened in the months since.

They are very radical. They have treated me badly, Alvarez, 56, said at a rally for Ciudadanos.

But for some, the contentious political moment has brought people together in support of a common cause.

Enric DAngelo, 63, who supports independence, met guitarist Francisco Munoz Anta, also an independence backer, recently while strolling around the Plaza Sant Jaume, where the seat of the regional government is located and where Munoz performs, and they became friends.

Munoz plays guitar for a few minutes, then wraps a cloth around his mouth and stands completely still for 15 more minutes to protest the jailing of pro-independent members of the former Catalan government. The two men drink coffee together after each performance.

We are different people, DAngelo said of Catalans. We are another country, another nation.

Bernhard is a special correspondent.
When Brian Houston wed his Mexican fiancee in a surprise ceremony during a rare opening of the steel gate on the U.S.-Mexico border fence last month, he said it was because he could not cross into Tijuana.

Now we know why.

Houston, a U.S. citizen, is awaiting sentencing in San Diego federal court on a drug smuggling conviction  a fact that the Border Patrol says it did not know when it ran a background check on him clearing him to participate in the event at Border Field State Park.

Advertisement

Houston was arrested in February as he crossed through the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Found hidden in his Volkswagen Jetta were 43 pounds of heroin, 47 pounds of methamphetamine and 43 pounds of cocaine, according to the complaint.

The agents are upset, feel like they were taken advantage of, feel like they were duped, said Joshua Wilson, vice president and spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613. Turns out we provided armed security for a cartel wedding.

The incident could put future Door of Hope events in jeopardy. The event is closely monitored and choreographed, with a handful of vetted families on the U.S. side allowed to embrace and greet family members on the Mexican side in three-minute reunions under the watchful eye of Border Patrol agents. The encounters are held in a small strip of land owned by the Department of Homeland Security known as Friendship Park.

The enormous border gate has opened with fanfare like this six times since 2013.

The events are organized by the Border Angels nonprofit group, run by executive director Enrique Morones. He gives questionnaires to interested families who cannot cross the border legally for whatever reason, and the forms are then provided to the Border Patrol for approval.

Border Angels has never done any background checks, as the Border Patrol advised us they will do all background checks and advise us which families have been cleared, Morones said in a statement Wednesday.

Twelve families were approved for the Nov. 18 opening  including Houston  although one family did not show, Morones said.

Border Patrol spokesperson Takae Michael said Houston was screened through an internal vetting process based on biographical information provided to us by Morones. A review of the provided information, through our DHS systems, did not indicate criminal activity, Michael said.

The wedding between Houston and Evelia Reyes was a surprise to agents. The couple  in only a few minutes  signed documents from the Tijuana municipal authorities, posed for pictures and hugged. The nuptials were widely covered by news outlets on both sides of the border, including the Union-Tribune.

Its a statement that love has no borders, Houston told reporters at the time. Even though we are divided by a giant fence here, we can still love each other on both sides of the fence.

He said his wife was working with an immigration attorney to get a green card to live in the U.S.

Wilson, the Border Patrol union rep, said Morones should have alerted the agents to the wedding.

They showed up dressed for a wedding, Wilson said. The agents there were powerless to stop it. We were certainly put on the spot.

The Border Patrol said that after the wedding, a subsequent review of Houstons information was completed and confirmed a match for a previous arrest for drug smuggling.

Morones said he plans to meet soon with San Diegos new Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to discuss the incident and future events.

We were shocked to learn this past week of Brian Houstons very serious criminal situation. That goes against everything Border Angels stands for, Morones said. Border Angels is a humanitarian group serving immigrants that started decades ago by leaving water and other supplies in the desert for border crossers.

Houston, a SENTRI pass holder, approached the port of entry at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 28 and said he had nothing to declare, according to the complaint. But the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer smelled a strong chemical odor while inspecting the trunk and noticed scrapes that suggested the lining of the compartment had been tampered with, the complaint states.

Under the lining, several plastic-wrapped packages could be seen, the complaint says. The car was driven through an X-ray machine and several more packages were detected in all four doors, rear quarter panels and the spare tire. There were 67 packages in all.

After his arrest he was granted release on $20,000 bond secured by the signatures of his parents and a 15 percent cash deposit, according to court records. He was also not allowed to enter Mexico and had to surrender his U.S. passport.

He pleaded guilty in May to importing the three drugs. Sentencing is set for Feb. 23.

Staff writer Kate Morrissey contributed to this story.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
When Brian Houston wed his Mexican fiancee in a surprise ceremony during a rare opening of the steel gate on the U.S.-Mexico border fence last month, he said it was because he could not cross into Tijuana.

Now we know why.

Houston, a U.S. citizen, is awaiting sentencing in San Diego federal court on a drug smuggling conviction  a fact that the Border Patrol says it did not know when it ran a background check on him clearing him to participate in the cross-border event at Border Field State Park.

Advertisement

Houston was arrested in February as he crossed through the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Found hidden in his Volkswagen Jetta were 43 pounds of heroin, 47 pounds of methamphetamine and 43 pounds of cocaine, according to the complaint.

The agents are upset, feel like they were taken advantage of, feel like they were duped, said Joshua Wilson, vice president and spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613. Turns out we provided armed security for a cartel wedding.

The incident could put future Door of Hope events in jeopardy. The event is closely monitored and choreographed, with a handful of vetted families on the U.S. side allowed to embrace and greet family members on the Mexican side in three-minute reunions under the watchful eye of Border Patrol agents. The encounters are held on a small strip of land owned by the Department of Homeland Security known as Friendship Park.

The enormous border gate has opened with fanfare like this six times since 2013.

The event is organized by the Border Angels nonprofit group, run by executive director Enrique Morones. He gives questionnaires to interested families who cannot cross the border legally for whatever reason, and the forms are then provided to the Border Patrol for approval.

Border Angels has never done any background checks, as the Border Patrol advised us they will do all background checks and advise us which families have been cleared, Morones said in a statement Wednesday.

Twelve families were approved for the Nov. 18 opening  including Houston  although one family did not show, Morones said.

Border Patrol spokesperson Takae Michael said Houston was screened through an internal vetting process based on biographical information provided to us by Morones. A review of the provided information, through our DHS systems, did not indicate criminal activity, Michael said.

The wedding between Houston and Evelia Reyes was a surprise to agents. The couple  in only a few minutes  signed documents from the Tijuana municipal authorities, posed for pictures and hugged. The nuptials were widely covered by news outlets on both sides of the border, including the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Its a statement that love has no borders, Houston told reporters at the time. Even though we are divided by a giant fence here, we can still love each other on both sides of the fence.

He said his wife was working with an immigration attorney to get a green card to live in the United States.

Wilson, the Border Patrol union rep, said Morones should have alerted the agents to the wedding.

They showed up dressed for a wedding, Wilson said. The agents there were powerless to stop it. We were certainly put on the spot.

The Border Patrol said that after the wedding, a subsequent review of Houstons information was completed and confirmed a match for a previous arrest for drug smuggling.

Morones said he plans to meet soon with San Diegos new Border Patrol chief, Rodney Scott, to discuss the incident and future events.

We were shocked to learn this past week of Brian Houstons very serious criminal situation. That goes against everything Border Angels stands for, Morones said. Border Angels is a humanitarian group serving immigrants that started decades ago by leaving water and other supplies in the desert for border crossers.

Houston, who had a SENTRI pass, which allows expedited clearance on arriving in the United States for preapproved travelers, approached the port of entry at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 28 and said he had nothing to declare, according to the complaint. But the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer smelled a strong chemical odor while inspecting the trunk and noticed scrapes that suggested the lining of the compartment had been tampered with, the complaint states.

Under the lining, several plastic-wrapped packages could be seen, the complaint says. The car was driven through an X-ray machine and several more packages were detected in all four doors, rear quarter panels and the spare tire. There were 67 packages in all.

After his arrest, Houston was granted release on $20,000 bond secured by the signatures of his parents and a 15% cash deposit, according to court records. He was also not allowed to enter Mexico and had to surrender his U.S. passport.

He pleaded guilty in May to importing the drugs. Sentencing is set for Feb. 23.

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Firefighters, air tankers and helicopters were fighting a brush fire burning in the Santa Ana river bottom near downtown Riverside Thursday afternoon.

The fire began about noon Thursday and began burning within

Advertisement

dense vegetation in the riverbed. Nearby hillsides and homes were at risk, fire officials said.

Silvio Lanzas, a division chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in Riverside County, told ABC 7 the fire had grown to about 35 acres.

A plume of smoke could be seen over Riverside but it had started to dissipate as helicopters and airplanes made water and fire retardant drops early in the afternoon.

Riverside Fire: Reportedly out of the river bottom now: https://t.co/CrIpw2Xcdd pic.twitter.com/d3CdF6Oa3f  Renee Schiavone (@NewsNay) December 21, 2017

Some homes near Indian Hill Road were being evacuated. The fire is near Mount Rubidoux Park, officials said.

Firefighting efforts will be complicated later in the afternoon, when winds are expected to pick up about 3 p.m., with gusts reaching 30 mph, said Capt. Tyler Reynolds of the Riverside Fire Department.

It is going to be very dangerous with possible spot fires and embers getting pushed by these winds, Reynolds told NBC 4.

Mandatory evacuations for residents on the following streets: Indian Hill, Glenwood, Miramonte, Loring and Mt. Rubidioux Dr.

The evacuation center is located at Dales Senior Center 3936 Chestnut St at White Park  Riverside Fire (@rivcafire) December 21, 2017

UPDATES:

1:20 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Cal Fires Lanzas.

This article was originally published at 12:45 p.m.
Days away from Congress winter holiday, San Diegos young unauthorized immigrants are hoping for a longshot resolution that could protect them from deportation.

However, the odds of that happening are slim as some members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said a vote on immigration reform will come in January. McConnell said Wednesday the issue had to be resolved by the end of next month in order for him to call for a vote.

But dreamers, as the immigrants are called, and their advocates have pressured legislators to get it done sooner and leverage the spending bill, which must pass by Friday to avoid a government shutdown.

Advertisement

Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, has spent most of the last two weeks in Washington campaigning for dreamers.

She said Republicans hoped to pass a continuing resolution for government spending like they did a few weeks ago when confronted with the same issue, which would push the debate over dreamers to January.

As of Wednesday evening, she said, they didnt have enough votes.

With that additional negotiating pressure, Guerrero hopes that a solution could come in time for Christmas.

We have a small window in the next 48 hours, Guerrero said. Look, its holiday season, and anything can happen.

Any movement to bring legislation to a vote before January, Guerrero said, will have to come from Republicans.

There are some courageous Republicans who are willing to do the right thing, but theyre not in leadership, Guerrero said. If there are enough of them, that wont matter. My Christmas wish is that members of Congress, and especially Republican members of Congress, find the courage to do right by dreamers who have given us so much in this country.

Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California who is a board member for an immigration restrictionist think tank, said he does not expect a vote will come before January.

He pointed to reports that Democrats have backed away from the idea of forcing a shutdown over the issue.

They can vote anyway they want as I understand it, but they dont have enough votes or the will to take the hit for closing the government over this issue, Nunez said.

When a vote does happen, he said, it will include components meant to further President Donald Trumps immigration agenda.

Both the White House and the House seem to be sticking to their previous commitments that there will be no dreamer relief without other fixes to chain migration, E-Verify, the diversity lottery, and the wall, Nunez said, referring to several items on an immigration wish list sent by the White House to Congress.

Dreamers and their advocates have pushed back against suggestions of additional enforcement legislation as a compromise for their protection in the months since the Trump administration ended a program that gave them temporary relief from deportation.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, created by the Obama administration, gave two year permits to unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children that protected them from deportation and allowed them to work.

The Trump administration ended the program in September but allowed those whose permits expired before March one month to file renewals.

Some recipients have already lost their protection because they were unable to renew in time.

One San Diego immigration attorney who is a DACA recipient has been fasting for six days and counting to push Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to vote against the spending bill unless it includes the DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill that would create a path to citizenship for dreamers.

The attorney, Dulce Garcia, has filed a court case against the Trump administration for ending the program. She also gathered several protesters to block an intersection in downtown San Diego during rush hour at the beginning of December.

She has campaigned in Washington, given countless media interviews and frequently called Congressional offices.

I dont know what more I can do to get this Congress to understand the urgency of the matter, to have them understand that this is a real crisis, that we dont have until March for them to act, Garcia said.

She finds inspiration to keep pushing from other DACA recipients who have been fighting for years to be heard, she said, referring to a group of seven dreamers who were arrested during a sit-in on Friday in the Capitol offices of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Miami.

I dont understand why it has had to come to this point where people are very much risking their lives, literally risking their bodies, their futures  risking deportation  just to receive a little bit of dignity and respect, Garcia said. Im in disbelief that its December 2017 and were still talking about this issue when it should have been resolved a long time ago.

About 50 people gathered at the edge of Balboa Park on Wednesday to push Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, to support the DREAM Act.

Alejandra Garcia, a 26-year-old dreamer, struggled to contain her emotions as she told the crowd her story of coming to the U.S. when she was nine. About a year ago, she married a U.S. citizen, and they bought a house together.

The uncertainty is especially difficult to handle around the holidays, she said.

Its time for Congress to take action, Garcia said through tears. Its time for us to have an answer of what our future is going to look like.

Juan Pablo Sanchez, owner of Super Cocina in City Heights, said he wants dreamers to have the same opportunities as any child growing up in the U.S.

The word immigrant is not the opposite of American, Sanchez said. You can be an immigrant and an American at the same time.

Many cars honked enthusiastic approval at the rally as they passed. One driver yelled out the window, God bless Trump!

Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
When Marco Chavez Medina walked across the border at San Ysidro on Thursday, he carried with him the hopes of hundreds of U.S. military veterans who have been deported following their years of service.

Before he walked into the port of entry, several deported veterans who live in Tijuana shook his hand, wished him well and then erupted into cheers.

Chavez, 45, is the first deported military veteran to have his green card reinstated after a governor pardoned the conviction that caused him to lose it.

Advertisement

For the first time in 15 years, Chavez will be home for Christmas.

I was in disbelief, Chavez said after emerging from an interview with border officials. I believe it now.

Though he said he was nervous and couldnt sleep the night before, Chavez didnt show it. He stood calmly with his hands folded behind his back and his face stoic, the way one might expect from a man who served four years in the Marine Corps. He smiled mostly with the crinkles of his eyes.

Chavez first came to the U.S. in 1973 when he was about six months old. He was an unauthorized immigrant until he received a green card in 1989 through the Reagan administrations amnesty program.

In the late 90s, Chavez was convicted of animal cruelty and served 10 months of a two-year sentence. An immigration judge revoked his green card a few years later. The situation involved a dog in a mechanic shop, Chavez said, and he maintains that the jury made a mistake in convicting him, that he is innocent.

An immigration judge reinstated his green card at the end of November after Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned him earlier this year. He had less than a month to mentally prepare to come back.

Its been 15 years  a third of his life  since hes been to his parents home in Los Angeles, where hes now heading to begin a new life.

Im nervous about restarting my life again in the U.S., he said. Ive been away for quite a bit, so Ive got to start somewhere. I figure I did it in Tijuana, so I can do it in the U.S.

He hopes to find work quickly, perhaps in construction or maintenance and repair. He dreams of having a place of his own that is big enough for his sons to visit when they want.

When he was deported, his sons were children, the oldest about six. Now, theyve grown into young men, and he barely knows them.

Im trying to establish a relationship with them, Chavez said. Im pretty sure theyre resentful for me not being there.

He carried two Christmas bags filled with gifts for his grandchildren.

Its also been 15 years since he could buy himself a good pastrami sandwich, something he craved in his time away. He asked his parents to bring him one when they came to visit him in Tijuana every so often.

His father, Antonio Chavez, came on Thursday to pick him up in San Ysidro.

Former state assemblyman Nathan Fletcher and ACLU executive director Norma Chavez-Peterson, who are part of a coalition to help deported military veterans return to the U.S., welcomed Chavez with hugs when he reached U.S. soil.

This is really great  second to birth of kids and marriage  really great to work so hard and know it mattered, Fletcher said.

Chavez is one of three deported veterans pardoned by Californias governor this year thanks to the persuasion of Fletcher and his team.

Fletcher hopes the others might be permitted to cross soon.

On behalf of all who serve, for so many of us, these are our brothers, Fletcher said. None of us can truly be at peace until everyone comes home.

Hector Barajas, one of the men waiting to find out if his pardon will also help him return, beamed with excitement as he escorted Chavez to the border.

Out of the millions of people getting deported, how often do you hear of people going home? Barajas said.

The ACLU has documented at least 239 cases of deported veterans living in 34 countries.

While people in active military service are eligible to become citizens immediately instead of waiting the years required of other immigrants, they still have to go through the process.

Some have argued that if veterans dont make the effort to naturalize, that they should be deportable if they commit certain crimes. They believe that green cards should be conditional to a persons behavior regardless of a persons military service.

Many deported veterans have said that they thought that they were automatically citizens as part of their service because of what they were told during recruitment.

No veteran gets a free pass, Fletcher said. Every veteran should be held accountable for any mistake that they make, and all of these veterans were. For almost all veterans, after you pay your debt to society, a grateful nation offers you a path to redemption and reentry. For these veterans, after they pay their debt to society, we offer a path to deportation.

He is pushing Congress to prevent more deportations of veterans and bring back those already removed.

Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
As recreational marijuana goes legal in California, the City of Chula Vista is looking to steer its licensing power toward high-quality retail cannabis businesses, while Imperial Beach will be answering many residents who favor a heavy hand of regulation.

In public workshops on the subject last week, both cities took steps toward setting out the rules and regulations that will govern the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of marijuana products in their communities under Proposition 64.

Chula Vista is considerably farther along in the process, with a 23-page draft ordinance already reviewed by the City Council even though no licenses would be issued there until Jan. 1, 2019.

Advertisement

Neither of the South County cities seem inclined to prohibit recreational marijuana businesses altogether.

But regulation is harder than it looks: The State of California is issuing 22 different types of licenses for cannabis-related business, and topics covered in the proposed Chula Vista ordinance include a required community relations liaison with surrounding residences.

Citizens initiatives circulated in both communities, meanwhile, could open up a much freer approach than elected officials want unless their backers can be convinced to withdraw them.

Here is a look at where both cities stand following workshops devoted to the subject:

CHULA VISTA

The draft ordinance presented to the council last week would allow up to three cannabis retail licenses in each of the citys four council districts, with no limit on the number of businesses devoted to cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and testing.

It would impose a 150-foot buffer around residences and a 1,000-foot buffer around schools and other locations frequented by youth. In the workshop, prospective marijuana entrepreneurs objected to several details of the draft ordinance. Issues that appeared to have the biggest impact with the council included:

 A proposed prohibition on deliveries and medicinal-marijuana sales from storefront retailers. Several council members said they didnt understand the rationale for the limit on deliveries, and both industry representatives and several users of medical marijuana said the high number of illegal dispensaries in Chula Vista shows a need to make the product more readily available.

 Proposed regulations separating retail marijuana operations from residential zones that critics said could rule out vast swaths of otherwise suitable commercial property. Council members Patricia Aguilar and Stephen Padilla said they shouldnt be set so tight that there arent at least some locations in each of the citys four council districts.

 Making a felony arrest  not just conviction  grounds for suspension or revocation of a city license.

In other aspects, however, council members thought the draft ordinance might be too loose.

It proposes a lottery to award licenses from among a pool of applicants who survive a stringent background, financial and criminal check. Several council members, however, said they favor a more selective approach, allowing administrators to pick the winners.

Id like to be able to judge these candidates on how they actually perform, said John McCann, envisioning a system that involves picking the highest-quality operators.

Mayor Mary Casillas Salas and Council member Mike Diaz both said they would favor some form of standards for employees of cannabis businesses.

Also drawing questions was the absence of a numeric limit on licenses for cultivation and distribution facilities.

That seems to imply that these manufacturing facilities are going to be able to deliver their product out of the city, Aguilar said.

IMPERIAL BEACH

An ad hoc committee that includes two council members has been exploring the issue since March but has not yet presented proposed regulations for council approval. Its Dec. 11 workshop  which attracted an overflow crowd of about 70 Imperial Beach residents  was devoted primarily to public input.

You actually get to be part of the process, Council member Mark West told the audience.

In a survey passed out and tabulated at the workshop, 56 percent of residents attending said they thought commercial cannabis businesses should be allowed to operate in their city.

About 87 percent said that if commercial businesses are allowed, there should be limits on the number, location and type.

About 81 percent opposed operation in residential zones.

The hour of public testimony followed familiar lines in the age-old marijuana debate, with advocates touting the benefits of medical marijuana, new revenues from taxes and the opportunity to eliminate a black market, while opponents decried a wider exposure of drugs to youth.

Imperial Beach should jump on this, said resident Greg Neil. This is bigger than dot-com, bigger than cable TV.

Deanna Rose said she has been using cannabis to treat pain and arthritis for decades. Alcohol is more dangerous and harmful to the body than cannabis, she said.

I dont want to see storefronts in our community, said resident Carol Green. No amount of money is going to bring back kids that get addicted to drugs.

The issue is the health, safety and welfare of our community and our citizens here, said Ron Moody. Its all about dollars and cents for the people who run the clinics. Its not about medicinal use.

With its compact density and a distribution of schools and parks, Imperial Beach could have fewer spots open for marijuana businesses depending on the circumference of any protective buffer zones, according to maps shown at the workshop. That could steer many such businesses into the State Route 75/Palm Avenue corridor, assistant city manager Steve Dush said.
Yes, the holidays are stressful. No matter how far in advance shopping lists are checked off or how well-behaved your family (usually) is, anxiety, tension and uneasiness have a way of creeping into your life during this time of year.

So, before you reach a volcanic-level blowup, take a little time for yourself with these personal escapes around San Diego.

Customized facial

Wipe all of your holiday cares away with a customized facial. Head over to North Park, where a holistic esthetician at Shop/Good, the new brick-and-mortar store for website good-life.com, will pamper you with a totally unique facial thats mixed on the spot to cater to whatever skin ailments you may have (the 60 and 75 minute treatments even come with a foot massage). Plus, for those who may have over indulged this festive season, grab a Holiday Rx gift bag for yourself or your bestie. These three-item kits are designed for Winter Skin, Hangover and Stress.

Advertisement

Shop/Good, 3030 North Park Way, North Park, 619.501.5362, good-life.co

Sweet treat

Yes, the holidays are already filled with tons of sweet treats around every corner, but the newly opened Sugarfina at Westfield UTC has candy that is a little different. Sneak away from wrapping presents to a quiet corner of your home and indulge in the confectioners boozy candy lines including Casamigos Tequila and Cuban Rum cordials, or Champagne Candy and Rose All Day (the latter two of which are alcoholic in name only). Bonus: Grab some extras to give out as presents or hostess gifts at all the holiday parties youll be attending.

Westfield UTC, Sugarfina, 4545 La Jolla Village Dr., #H-8, La Jolla, sugarfina.com

Earth-shattering rejuvenation

Make the world come to you with one of the Global Rituals at SpaTerre. Here, they are always looking to bring unique and culturally rich experiences to their guests in a tranquil environment. Try the Ancient Earth Cleanse, which includes a full body dry brush, an application of clay to detoxify the body, then finally the Body Melt with Macadamia Oil and wax to help calm angry skin. Spa Director Tricia Sterling said, After treatments like this many feel a sense of lightness and rejuvenation leading to a greater sense of well being.

Kona Kai Resort & Spa, 1551 Shelter Island Dr., Shelter Island, 619.221.8000, resortkonakai.com

Fresh air

Head to the outdoors and get those workout endorphins flowing. The weather in San Diego is way too nice to spend another second indoors at a crowded mall or throwing back another cocktail. Check out this list of top hikes around San Diego for a sun-filled outing thats sure to lower stress levels.

Explore San Diego

Are out-of-town-guests encroaching on your space? This list of coolest things to do when someone visits San Diego is the perfect way to keep them busy and out of your hair. Dont feel guilty if you just point guests in the right direction, or untie yourself from holiday ribbons and wrapping paper and get out and explore the city with them.
San Diego Councilwoman Georgette Gomez is asking for a legal opinion on Mayor Kevin Faulconers decision not to reveal who will serve on panels interviewing candidates to become the citys new police chief.

Gomez, who wants the names of the panelists revealed, sent a memo to City Attorney Mara Elliott this week asking whether there are any municipal code, City Charter or other legal provisions preventing that.

She also wants Elliotts legal opinion to address whether the rankings and recommendations of the panels could legally be revealed.

Advertisement

If we are going to continue pushing, we want to make sure we are pushing for something that actually is doable, Gomez spokesman Roberto Torres said by telephone. We want to make sure there isnt anything legally stopping us.

The citys ongoing national search to replace retiring Chief Shelley Zimmerman is slated to include two rounds of candidate interviews in mid-January.

One of the panels will be comprised of 24 volunteers  18 with no city affiliation and six from city boards and commissions  all selected by Faulconer. The other panel will include some top Faulconer staffers and local law enforcement experts.

Faulconer says the names of the panelists wont be revealed to the public until after the new chief is selected, to avoid having them lobbied by prospective candidates or special interest groups during the process.

Critics say the names should be revealed before the new chief is selected to make the process more transparent  and so those making the selection can receive public input.

Elliott spokesman Gerry Braun said on Wednesday that a memo explaining whether there are any legal barriers to revealing the names will be issued soon.

Faulconer is scheduled to announce his choice for chief in late January or early February, with a City Council confirmation hearing shortly afterwards.

City spokeswoman Katie Keach said in an email that a recruiting firm hired by the city is now reviewing submissions from applicants.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
FORT MADISON (AP)  An Iowa man who spent 48 years in prison for killing a 10-year-old girl has died in custody.

The Iowa Department of Corrections says Robert Anthony Williams died Wednesday of natural causes at the State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. He was 73.

Williams was convicted of killing Pamela Kay Powers, of Urbandale, on Dec. 24, 1968.

The girl was abducted from the downtown Des Moines YMCA while attending her older brother's wrestling tournament with her family.

Williams led police to the girl's frozen body along a gravel road near Mitchellville two days after she was killed.

While incarcerated, Williams filed several of his own appeals and his case went to the U.S. Supreme Court twice. But he failed to regain his freedom.
A Democratic candidate with wide support from elected leaders is emerging to challenge Republican San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapfs re-election bid next year, boosting chances that Democrats increase their council majority to a veto-proof 6-3 advantage.

Dr. Jennifer Campbell, second cousin to high-profile Democratic national strategist David Axelrod, recently announced her candidacy and has received several key endorsements from San Diego Democrats.

They include Rep. Scott Peters, Rep. Juan Vargas, state Senator Toni Atkins, Assemblyman Todd Gloria and Councilman Chris Ward.

Advertisement

Campbell, 72, has never previously run for office. The Bay Ho resident has served on the Clairemont Town Council and the county Democratic Partys central committee.

Incumbents rarely lose San Diego council races, but Campbell has a better chance than usual because more city residents have been registering as Democrats and because voters approved new election rules last year requiring November runoffs.

In Zapfs Council District 2, which includes the citys beach areas and western Clairemont, registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans 31,724 to 23,127 on Dec. 1, the latest data available.

Many local Republicans, including Zapf in 2014, have been able to overcome such registration disadvantages by clinching victories in June primary elections, where Democratic turnout is typically far lower than in November general elections.

But Measure K, which city voters approved in November 2016, requires a November runoff even if the leading vote getter in June has more than 50 percent of the vote.

The change makes incumbents more vulnerable by giving challengers more time to fund raise, more time to build name recognition and more time to attack their opponents.

Many also expect local opposition to President Donald Trump to make Democrat turnout higher than usual for an election year in which there is no presidential race, like 2018.

Local Republican political consultant Jason Roe said those factors and the endorsements appear to make Campbell a viable challenger to Zapf.

I think people are taking her pretty seriously, he said by telephone. Shes got some pretty high-powered support.

Axelrod, who previously served as chief strategist for former President Barack Obama, came to San Diego last month to drum up support for Campbell, including campaign donations that can be elusive for first-time candidates.

Seamus Kennedy, a consultant running Campbells campaign, said she also expects strong financial support from organized labor.

When the most recent campaign donation disclosure forms were submitted in August, Zapf had raised $130,000 and her five opponents had all raised less than $15,000. Campbell, now one of seven challengers, hadnt yet entered the race.

Another wave of disclosures covering the second half of 2017 is due Jan. 31.

Campbell said by telephone on Wednesday that fundraising is going well and that shes upbeat about the challenge ahead of her.

The district has changed a lot and the Democrats are very energized this year, said Campbell, who retired as a medical doctor two weeks ago. I feel like I have a chance, but I have to work very hard to earn peoples support.

Campbell said she was spurred to run partly by a white supremacist rally in Virginia in August.

Its very upsetting, whats going on in the country, she said.

Another factor was the citys response to the recent hepatitis A outbreak, which Campbell considered inadequate.

The hepatitis outbreak was my final straw, she said, contending the city should have declared it an epidemic more quickly. It was totally mishandled.

John Hoy, a consultant running Zapfs campaign, said Zapf was one of the first council members to raise the alarm about the hepatitis outbreak.

Hoy said Zapf, 59, is focused on doing her job right now, not challengers she will face in the election.

On the effect of Measure K, he noted that Zapf beat Democrat Howard Wayne in a November 2010 runoff in District 6, which she represented before redistricting shifted her Bay Ho home into District 2.

Shes going to face a tough opponent and a lot of spending by the labor unions  I dont think this election is going to be any different, Hoy said.

Campbell is a native of Colorado who spent much of her life in Pittsburgh before moving to San Diego 12 years ago. She lives with her partner, Suzanne, and the couple share six children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The primary will be June 5.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
With an already crowded field of contenders hoping to unseat Rep. Duncan Hunter and months to go before the candidate filing deadline, one local activist group has made an early endorsement in the race.

Indivisible CA50, made up of activists mostly in San Diego County, announced Thursday that its endorsing Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat and public affairs consultant whos challenging Hunter, R-Alpine.

The endorsement comes as liberal activists and interest groups all over the state are grappling with whether  and how  to winnow down the dozens of candidates vying for 10 GOP-held seats in California.

Advertisement

The group held more than half a dozen endorsement meetings to allow members throughout Hunters district to vote on their preferred candidate. One of the candidates, Pierre Beauregard, dropped out of the race recently and endorsed Campa-Najjar.

Campa-Najjar said in a statement that the nod represents the enthusiasm of hundreds of progressive grassroots activists.

Indivisibles national political director Maria Urbina said the endorsement was the first made by any California chapter in the 2018 midterms.

Aside from Campa-Najjar, two other Democrats are running for Hunters seat: Josh Butner, a school board trustee and former Navy SEAL, and real estate agent Patrick Malloy, who ran last year and lost to Hunter by nearly 27 percentage points.

Hunter will also face at least two GOP challengers: Shamus Sayed and Andrew Zelt. Hunter is not considered to be particularly vulnerable in next years election, but an investigation into his alleged misuse of campaign funds has caused at least one election handicapper to move his race from solid Republican to the likely Republican column.
Rep. Darrell Issa didnt take one for the team this time.

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump got their tax overhaul bill passed while Issa voted against it, saying he did so in the interests of his constituents. It also happens to be in the interest of his political survival.

That they didnt need his vote made bucking the party easier. That wasnt the case last spring when he cast a vote for the Republican health care bill that caused him nothing but grief.

Advertisement

Unlike that time, Issa declared his intentions days before the final tax bill vote. He said reducing state and local tax and mortgage interest deductions would be a burden for those living in his 49th congressional district, which straddles northern San Diego and southern Orange counties  some of the highest-priced real estate around.

Many in my area could face higher taxes under this bill, Issa said Tuesday. Californians have entrusted me to fight for them. I will not make the incredible tax burden they already endure even worse.

Most of the other Republicans who voted against the bill were also from high-tax states. Issa was joined by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. Both Issa and Rohrabacher face serious re-election threats next year and are among a handful of California Republican House members targeted by Democrats.

Twelve California Republicans voted in favor of the bill.

Its hard to say how much this could help Issa politically. Its just one vote, albeit a big one.

It isnt going to persuade partisan opponents or those who protest outside his Vista office every week to back off. But such moves distancing himself from Trump and disputed GOP policies  polls say the tax bill is unpopular  may give him a better chance to hang on to his seat.

The vote might nudge some undecideds toward him or help keep wavering supporters in his camp.

Also, while the wealthy certainly make out under the tax bill, many of lesser means also will see a reduced tax bill, to a lesser extent. The tax cuts for the middle class and others are temporary but theyll be there in the coming election year, and all the sturm und drang predictions about the impact of the bill may seem overblown to some voters as they choose candidates.

But his vote doesnt diminish the litany of grievances of Issas opponents  from his dogged investigations of the Obama administration to his early backing for candidate Trump.

Outrage over the former may have faded, but the latter has not. He didnt just endorse Trump, but exhorted reluctant Republicans to get on board. He took high-profile roles at Trump campaign events.

That all might have put him in a powerful position in Congress  or gained him a high-level appointment or ambassadorship  but it backfired. His once reliably Republican district backed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, his advocacy of Trump energized critics and he is now considered the most vulnerable Republican in Congress.

Issa didnt see that coming until almost too late and barely held on to his seat last year. He has tried to put space between himself and Trump but hasnt always been successful. In May, he was publicly undecided on the GOP health care bill  which polls also said was unpopular  until the very end.

He cast one of the final votes that helped put it over the top in the House, a vote Republicans needed. Issa depicted the legislation as flawed and his vote as a means to keep it moving through the process where it would be improved.

Critics nevertheless expressed outrage and his vote rebooted the protests outside his office. Issa may have fanned the flames by joining other members of Congress in a celebration of the health bills passage at the White House, where he was photographed front and center with the group.

All for naught. The bill collapsed and Trump trashed it after urging its passage.

This time around, things are different. Republicans on Wednesday passed the tax bill to Trump, who plans to sign it early next year. Another celebration was held at the White House, sans Issa.

Regardless, hundreds of people will continue to protest outside his office, their efforts to oust Issa now being bolstered by national Democratic-leaning organizations and funding from Hollywood celebrities.

We couldnt do this, week in and week out, if the people of District 49 werent so determined to persevere, said Ellen Montanari of Solana Beach, a lead organizer of the rallies.

She attended the very first one on Dec. 20, 2016  exactly one year ago Wednesday, when Congress took final action on the tax bill and Issa voted no.
Hoping to reignite a two-decade-old cold case, San Diego homicide detectives are asking the public for any new information about the shooting deaths of two men 20 years ago in the Mount Hope neighborhood.

Bryan Sean Carter, 30, and Vernon David Bownes, 26, were shot and killed Dec.17, 1997, while sitting at a picnic table in the front yard of a home on Francis Street near Tompkins Street, San Diego police homicide Lt. Mike Holden said.

The two friends were shot in the head and died before they could be taken to a hospital.

Advertisement

Investigators believe two men ambushed Carter and Bownes around 11 p.m. that night, Holden said. After the killings, detectives believe a man and woman went through the victims pockets and stole several items.

Anyone with information about the killings was asked to call the San Diego Police Departments Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or San Diego County Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
San Diego police investigating an illegal marijuana delivery business served search warrants at homes in Pacific Beach and Bay Park, seized about 45 pounds of marijuana and arrested two people Wednesday morning.

An apartment on Haines Street near Fortuna Avenue in Pacific Beach and a house on Tonopah Avenue near Nashville Street in Bay Park were raided around 7 a.m. by officers investigating a delivery service called Cali Cats Collective, police Lt. Matt Novak said.

Officers seized about 45 pounds of high-grade marijuana, concentrated cannabis, $3,000 in cash and business documents and records from the two locations.

Advertisement

Two people, including the business owner and an employee, were arrested on suspicion of operating a business without a license and sale of marijuana. The names of those arrested were not released.

As was evident by yesterdays operation, SDPD and the City Attorneys office are continuing to conduct enforcement on all illegal marijuana delivery services, as well as all other illegal marijuana businesses operating in the City of San Diego,' Novak said in a statement. All persons operating and working for any of these illegal marijuana businesses will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Novak said police are looking into whether others were also involved with the delivery service, which investigators believe may have been operating for the past 10 to 12 months.

Novak said police are finding that delivery businesses often use multiple locations to store their products.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
A sheriffs deputy fatally shot a man in Oceanside on Wednesday afternoon after a pursuit that started in Vista, authorities said.

No deputies were injured in the incident, which occurred around 3 p.m. on Roselle Avenue near College Boulevard, sheriffs Lt. Glenn Giannantonio said.

It wasnt immediately clear why the deputy went in pursuit of a dark sedan with a man and woman inside it, or where in Vista the chase started.

Advertisement

The pursuit reached speeds of about 50 mph, and ended after the sedan crashed into a parked car on Camarillo Avenue, in a residential neighborhood, Oceanside police said.

The sedan driver jumped out and took off running, followed by the deputy, Oceanside police spokesman Tom Bussey said. After a short foot chase, some sort of confrontation occurred between the two, and the deputy opened fire. The suspect was hit by gunfire, and he died in the frontyard of a home on nearby Roselle Avenue.

The woman was detained.

Police blocked off Roselle at College, a few blocks north of state Route 78, during the investigation.

Because the shooting happened in Oceanside, police there will handle the investigation, Bussey said.

Before Wednesdays incident, San Diego County deputies had been involved in seven shootings this year. Six were fatal.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT

UPDATES:

7:10 p.m.: This story was updated with additional information. It was initially published at 3:39 p.m.
An 18-year-old woman suffered life-threatening wounds Wednesday when she was stabbed three times during an argument with an acquaintance in City Heights, San Diego police officer said.

The victim was stabbed in the abdomen and back while in her apartment bedroom on Van Dyke near Landis Street about 10 a.m., Officer Dino Delimitros said. Her wounds are considered life-threatening.

He said the suspected assailant is a 20-year-old woman, and that the violence stemmed from a dispute that happened on Thanksgiving, about a month ago, Delimitros said.

Advertisement

He did not indicate whether the suspect was arrested, but said detectives were investigating.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
A 41-year-old Davenport woman is facing sex abuse charges after police allege she had sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Virginia Jean Peterson is charged with one count each of felony third-degree sexual abuse, felony enticing a minor under 16, and misdemeanor telephone dissemination of obscene material to a minor.

According to the arrest affidavits filed by Davenport Police Detective Erin Pape, on Dec. 13, Peterson engaged in sexual activity with the 14-year-old.

On Dec. 12 and 13, Peterson enticed the teen to have sex with her through a series of text messages as well as sending nude images of herself to his cell phone.

Peterson was booked into the Scott County Jail at 4:21 p.m. Tuesday.

She was released Wednesday morning after posting 10 percent of a $10,000 bond through a bonding company.

Peterson has waived her preliminary hearing. She is scheduled to be arraigned at 11 a.m. Jan. 11 in Scott County District Court.

If convicted of the charges, Peterson will be required to register as a sex offender.
As a sexual-misconduct case deepens within the San Diego County Sheriffs Department  a 10th woman has come forward with a legal claim against the county  three alleged victims are publicly raising questions about why the accused lawman has not been arrested.

The latest accusation is from a San Marcos domestic-violence victim who said in a lawsuit that Deputy Richard Fischer caressed her in a sexually suggestive manner after returning to her home following the arrest of her husband last year.

Fischer, who has been on administrative leave from the San Diego County Sheriffs Department since November, responded to the call in 2016 with another deputy and left after the man was placed under arrest, the lawsuit states.

But Fischer returned to the house a short time later and repeatedly groped the woman identified in court papers by her initials, C.P., the complaint said.

C.P. pulled away from Fischer, but said that he was not done yet and hugged her tightly again, the lawsuit said. When Fischer was done, C.P. walked him to the front door and he left.

Advertisement

Ten or 15 minutes later, Fischer allegedly called the woman to say, Im down the street checking up on you.

The pattern of behavior put forward by the latest plaintiff mirrors circumstances alleged by nine other women in recent weeks. Fischer is accused of groping and sexually assaulting each of the women while answering routine calls or initiating contact with the plaintiffs.

Three of the women said in a joint interview Wednesday that they are angry and frustrated that Fischer has yet to be arrested. They went on the record for the first time, agreeing to be named and photographed to emphasize their concerns. They said they worry Fischer is getting special treatment from Sheriff Bill Gore and District Attorney Summer Stephan because he is a sworn officer.

Accuser Debra Anderson said of Deputy Fischer, If it was anybody else, it would have been taken care of. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune )

Its like they are trying to sweep it under the rug, said Debra Anderson, another San Marcos woman whose complaint said that Fischer groped her several times after responding to a 911 call in October and also rubbed her hand up and down against his genitals.

Its probably all political, Anderson said. Theyve made the phone calls to my kids, to my sister, to verify what I told them. Its all been done.

Fischer, 31, has worked as a San Diego County sheriffs deputy for almost six years. He has not responded to repeated requests for an interview.

The Sheriffs Department has said little beyond acknowledging that Fischer is the subject of both an administrative investigation and a criminal case.

The department is prohibited by law from releasing specific details of personnel investigations, Lt. Karen Stubkjaer wrote in an email. However, allegations of this nature are taken very seriously and the department will take any appropriate actions at the conclusion of the investigation.

Fischer was placed on administrative duty in late October, when the accusations first were leveled, then put on leave in November. He is required to check in with department officials five days a week.

The District Attorneys Office issued a statement Wednesday saying it could not discuss the status or details of a pending investigation, but is engaged in the Fischer case.

Allegations of sexual misconduct are a high priority for the District Attorney and our office, particularly when they involve persons in positions of trust, the statement said. The D.A. has dedicated resources to this case and is working with the Sheriffs Department to expedite and complete the investigation in a thorough and professional manner.

We will thoroughly and objectively review the case for potential criminal charges once the investigation is completed, it added.

In addition to Anderson, two other alleged victims told The San Diego Union-Tribune on Wednesday that they could not understand why Fischer was not already facing charges. They said they worry he may assault other women while the case drags on.

Accuser Liza Russell said of Deputy Fischer, Every time I see a cop, I start to get sweaty. I get nervous. I moved because I was worried about something happening. He knew where I lived. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune )

Liza Russell of Alpine said Fischer arrested her after finding prescription drugs during a traffic stop. She and her husband were returning from Arizona and the medication was in a baggie rather than a pill bottle for the journey, she said.

Fischer groped her repeatedly before taking her to jail, the complaint states. A nurse at Las Colinas said Russells blood pressure was too high to be booked into custody and insisted she go to an emergency room. Rather than transport her to a hospital, Fischer returned to the arrest scene and let her go with a citation.

This is not a normal interaction with a cop, Russell said she was thinking during the ordeal. I took my shoes off and I ran all the way home.

Russell said she doubts investigators are working as quickly as they could.

They should already have dealt with it, she said. They should already have finished this case. My biggest fear is I have kids. I dont want something like this to happen to my daughter.

In her claim, Shelly Howell of Vista accused Fischer of rubbing her genitals and backside during an unwarranted traffic stop in June. She agreed with Russell that county officials do not appear to be expediting the probe.

Theyre definitely dragging their feet, she said. Its one of their own. Hes an officer. They work together with the District Attorney.

According to Howells complaint, Fischer stopped her for a broken taillight and after fondling her asked if she wanted to make out. The deputy allegedly had her drive to a darkened parking lot but left without further incident to answer an incoming radio call, the claim states.

The incident with me would have been avoided if they had been on their feet and done to him what they would do to anyone else, Howell said. Anyone who didnt have a badge.

Accuser Shelly Howell said of Deputy Fischer, He needs to be put in the same position he put all of us in. What hes done is wrong. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune )

Underlying all of the allegations is a claim from a woman identified only as K.P., who says she warned the Sheriffs Department in May 2016 that Fischer fondled her breasts during a drug arrest months earlier.

He is a predator, not an officer, said K.P.s letter to the department, which she kept a copy of. Department officials said they have no record of the letter.

Attorney Marlea DellAnno co-represents the 10 alleged victims. A former prosecutor who worked with police for years, she said she was most bothered that no one at the Sheriffs Department has updated her clients about the case, or offered them victim services.

Most police and deputies are really good and decent people, DellAnno said. But one person can change everything for everyone. One person can destroy that trust for an entire agency.

The number of women coming forward with allegations against Fischer has escalated in recent weeks. Each of the claims seeks damages in excess of $6 million.

Previously

Watchdog Videos On Now Sexual misconduct accusers worry deputy is being protected 6:16 On Now City funded $2-million waterfront bathroom 1:26 On Now Public water district charges customer for legal work, response to records request On Now Video: Tiny homes won't be reused amid housing, homeless crisis On Now Attorney General seeks documentation for Miss Middle East On Now Rep. Hunter probe covers possible fraud On Now Video: SDG&E delaying solar credit for some low-income housing tenants On Now Video: Former San Diego Junior Theatre teacher sentenced for sex with teen girl 0:24 On Now Video: Shelter volunteers believe they were fired for finding a dog a home 0:49 On Now McKamey Manor is leaving San Diego 3:35

jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald
The city of San Diego recently embarked on a process of hiring a new police chief to replace retiring Chief Shelley Zimmerman. A few weeks ago, Mayor Kevin Faulconer outlined his proposal for identifying and interviewing candidates and making the hiring decision, and recently released an updated memo with additional changes to the process.

While we commend city officials for convening outreach forums to gather public input, and for responding to the concerns raised by the Coalition for Police Accountability and Transparency (CPAT) and the community about revealing the identities of the panelists and incorporating community input, we believe the mayor can do more to give the people a voice in the process. Something San Diegans repeatedly expressed in these forums was the desire to have an open and transparent process.

CPAT is comprised of community stakeholders, organizations, and faith and labor leaders who have individually and collectively advocated for accountable and transparent policing in San Diego. We established CPAT to be of one voice in our efforts for an open and transparent hiring process with meaningful community guidance.

Advertisement

Under the mayors proposal, the community is not given an opportunity to know the finalists the mayor will be considering or meet these finalists. An expanded process to allow the community an opportunity to meet the finalists is something that Councilman Chris Ward has championed and the community agrees with this request.

To ensure public confidence in this important process, we call on the city of San Diego to provide community representatives, including youth, the opportunity to meet with the finalists.

San Diegos next police chief will face significant challenges. The successful candidate will need to have exemplary leadership skills to protect and serve the citys 1.4 million residents.

Public participation in the search process is essential to identifying candidates with the necessary qualifications to lead the San Diego Police Department. Other cities such as Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles and Phoenix have successfully engaged the public in open and inclusive recruitment processes that generated top-tier candidates. The residents of San Diego deserve nothing less.

Whomever is eventually hired as chief of police will need the publics confidence and support to overcome systemic problems within the department.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justices Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) led an audit of the San Diego Police Department. The 85-page report detailed internal problems, including the inefficient handling of citizen complaints, inadequate tracking of complaints, insufficient ethics training and lack of diversity in hiring.

The audits recommendations highlighted the need to address systemic flaws in several areas, such as recruiting and hiring, accountability, internal investigations and discipline. One recommendation called for improvement in SDPDs Early Intervention System to identify and address problematic behavior as quickly and efficiently as possible and to hold officers accountable for their actions.

A 2016 San Diego State University report on police traffic stops used SDPDs own data to document unfair bias in how people of color are policed. Analysis of more than 250,000 traffic stops found a disproportionately higher number of black and Latino drivers were likely to be searched, despite the fact that white drivers were more likely to be found with contraband.

The next San Diego police chief must address these troubling findings.

San Diegans deserve fair treatment by our police force. San Diegans deserve open and accessible government. The process by which San Diegos next police chief is selected will demonstrate our mayors commitment to these ideals.

We urge Mayor Faulconer to revise his hiring proposal and conduct a search process that welcomes public input.

Hill is a senior policy strategist for the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. Elo is associate director of Campaigns and Policy for Mid-City CAN. Both their organizations are members of the Coalition for Police Accountability and Transparency along with the Center on Policy Initiatives, Alliance San Diego, Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, CAST, San Diego Organizing Project and the San Diego LGBT Community Center.
Just as President John F. Kennedy set a vision to land on the moon within the 1960s, at San Diego Unified we have set an ambitious Vision 2020 goal that all of our students will successfully graduate prepared to enter college and technical careers by that year. We are setting out to do this by creating quality schools in every neighborhood of San Diego. We already know the programs that work. We just need the funds to take them to scale across the district.

There is one major hindrance to our moonshot goal for our students: Californias financing of public education, which ranks pitifully at 46th among the states. Just to maintain our status quo staff and programs without raises next year we need an increase of $59 million. This is due to increased state pension contributions and other costs. Anything less than $59 million means further reductions in programs.

While there has been a gradual increase in funding the past few years, it would require an infusion of approximately $350 million more (about $3,500 per student) to have an adequate number of teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians, bus drivers and other support staff to carry out our mission. This would just put us closer to the national average. But we could achieve great results with only average funding.

Advertisement

Taxpayers need to see a return on their investment. Since the inception of Vision 2020, we have increased the graduation rate to about 90 percent. But more dramatic is the fact that we have significantly increased the number of students eligible for state universities in all student groups, while preparing others for technical careers. We are narrowing the achievement gap.

Our increase in student achievement has resulted in being recognized as one of the top four urban districts in the nation by the Broad Foundation. In math and English, our test scores have ranked at or near the top among Californias large districts for the past several years. But going beyond test scores, we have been nationally recognized by the Kennedy Center for our arts programs. Teachers and district staff are collaborating on a new teacher evaluation system focused on improving student achievement that will be a model for the nation.

Taxpayers are baffled by their high taxes and low funding of public schools. California ranked at the top in education funding and outcomes in the 1960s and 1970s. Since that time prisons have had three times more increases than public schools. We are now working to close the school-to-prison pipeline.

One irate parent recently said to me, We need our school libraries open every day. Raise the taxes to pay for it. Unfortunately, we rely on the state for funding, but accountability for services is at the local level.

Previously most school funding came through local property taxes determined by local voters. But since then authority has been switched to the state and our schools are very dependent on volatile sales and income taxes. The lottery accounts for a paltry 1 percent to 2 percent of school funding. Proposition 13 seriously reduced public school funding in the past few decades. We spend about half of what New York spends on schools and only about 72 percent of the national average.

At the state level, we need to close a loophole in Proposition 13 that allows for some commercial properties to avoid being reassessed. We need to give more authority at the local level to assess taxes to operate local schools. In the past, local school boards were accountable to their constituents for both taxing authority and outcomes.

As a school board we must live within our means. To stay the course (even with sacrifice on the part of our employees) we need a $59 million increase to our $1.3 billion dollar budget. To fully fund our schools at an adequate and robust level we need $350 million more.

An increase of less than $59 million is not really an increase. Anything less impairs our ability to move forward at the same pace and we will have to make further cuts. Somewhere in between $59 million (status quo) and $350 million (adequate, robust funding) will allow us to at least approach and circle the moon. But we are not giving up on a moon landing by 2020. With these numbers in mind, we await the governors proposed budget in January and the Legislatures subsequent action.

Evans is District A trustee, San Diego Unified School District.
Given cell phones ubiquity and how much they are used, the question of whether they are safe is a profoundly important one. Two recent stories out of California are likely to worry a lot of people.

The first has to do with the state Department of Public Health releasing previously undisclosed safety warnings about cell phones after being sued by Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Moskowitz is a social psychologist  not a doctor or scientist  who has long promoted the idea that cell phones may cause cancer.

Although the science is still evolving, there are concerns among some public-health professionals and members of the public regarding long-term, high-use exposure to the energy emitted by cell phones, said Karen Smith, director of the state health agency. She suggested turning off your Wi-Fi and phone while you sleep, using your phone less when the signal is weak and keeping your phone away from your body.

Advertisement

But the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, debunks the cancer-cell phone link in a page on its website, suggesting that those who make the claim dont understand that there are different kinds of radiation. Ionizing radiation, used in x-rays, is dangerous and linked to cancer. Non-ionizing radiation, such as from cell phones and microwave ovens, isnt linked to cancer.

This is reassuring. So is the fact that hundreds of millions of people have used their cell phones for trillions of hours without developing cancer.

But the second story must be taken seriously because it is actually based on evidence. A Kaiser Permanente study of hundreds of pregnant Bay Area women found that those who were more exposed to the non-ionizing radiation produced by power lines, wireless networks and cell phones were nearly three times as likely to have miscarriages. Pregnant women should immediately take steps to minimize their exposure.

Kaisers finding demands follow-up research on whether non-ionizing radiation has negative effects on other people with specific health conditions  funded by neutral sources, not cell-phone makers or networks. If devices that people around the world routinely use for hours a day carry health risks, they must be pinned down.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
Duncan Hunter and 11 other California Republicans just joined the Red State swamp lords to betray the people they claim to represent. Middle- and upper-middle-class home-owners will get a tax increase.

Donald Trump and the Republicans broke every promise they made during the last election. Eighty-three percent of the income tax cuts go to the top 1 percent. All the bigger taxes that working people pay  sales, property, Social Security and Medicare  are unchanged or will go up.

Plus user fees for everything from parks to health care will also go up. California already sends more to Washington than we receive. The new tax bill makes that unfairness worse. Unless you make $1 million or more, Hunter just gave you a big lump of coal for Christmas. Deficits do not matter for tax cuts. Get ready for deficits are terrible, so we must cut Medicare and Social Security. Hunter deserves to be fired.

Advertisement

Vincent Biondo Jr.

Del Mar Heights

The allegation of criminal offense against Rep. Duncan Hunter have been under investigation now for over several months. The myriad charges, as reported by the U-T appear, to be forthright and uncomplicated.

The question arises, why is the investigation taking so long? This obvious stall does not pass the smell test and Hunters constituents deserve a speedy resolution to the investigation. Why is this process taking so long?

Rodgers T. Smith

El Cajon

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
While traveling through San Diego International Airport during the holidays, more than 4,000 military personnel are receiving a special gift packed and distributed by local volunteers to say thank you for their service and sacrifices.

The seventh annual Waves of Appreciation Project was started in 2011 by Rancho Bernardo resident Reed Reichert after he reportedly met a young military member who was hungry and had not eaten in nine hours, but did not have enough money to purchase food while traveling. The situation was not an isolated case.

Reichert previously said he also noticed military personnel counting their pennies outside an airports McDonalds in order to purchase food. He said its not right that service members have to count their pennies to buy food and went about fixing that situation.

With the help of several groups, Reichert collected donations and recruited volunteers to fill and distribute bags filled with snacks through the USO center at the San Diego airport. He said tremendous support came from the Los Rancheros Kiwanis Club in Rancho Bernardo, which each year provides financial support and dozens of volunteers to distribute the bags.

In fact, the support from the Kiwanis coupled with the support from the Knights of Columbus at San Rafael Parish in RB have made Rancho Bernardo one of the best examples of community support for this program, Reichert said. It has been an honor for me to see (how) much our residents care for the young men and women who wear our nations cloth.

Also instrumental in the effort since its inception was Pepperdine Universitys San Diego Alumni Chapter. This years sponsors also include Jack Links, Metal Masters Inc., Pettit Kohn, St. Vincent de Paul in Fallbrook and Target. Among the scores of volunteers who on Veterans Day filled each cinch bag with 20 snack items and handwritten thank you notes were representatives of California Coast Credit Union.

Over the past six years, more than 24,000 bags have been distributed through the help of 1,000-plus volunteers, according to organizers.

Long hours in airports, airport food prices and the absence of food on so many flights present challenges to the financial resources of our service members, said Lauren Bullock, a Waves of Appreciation co-founder. It has been an honor to convert these obstacles into an opportunity to thank our service members.

Since the inception of this program, (it) has continually made a real difference in the lives of military members during their holiday travel, said Bobby Woods, director of the USO San Diego Neil Ash Airport Center. San Diego is privileged to have one of the largest concentrations of military in its backyard, and during the holidays a great number travel through San Diego airport on their journey home.

Many are young service members that do not make a lot of money, and after securing a ticket for their flight, there is little, if any, left to pay for food, Woods said. Pepperdines Waves of Appreciation recognized that gap and did what a community of a grateful nation would do.

For details on how to donate to or volunteer for the 2018 project, go to wavesofappreciation.org.

Email: rbnews@pomeradonews.com
MASON CITY | Mason City police officers teamed up with local children for Cops for Kids at Christmas at Shopko Wednesday night.

Each year 100 children in the community shop with an officer for $75 in needed items. Officers and kids cruised through the store Wednesday to help pick out clothes and other items.

Officers took a group of kids to Walmart Tuesday night as well.

Mason City Police Department has hosted the event (formerly Shop with a Cop) for more than 20 years.

Children are nominated for the program by daycares, daycare providers, schools and acquaintances. Donations for Cops for Kids can be mailed to Local Unit 18 at police headquarters, 78 S. Georgia Ave., Mason City, IA 50401.

 Courtney Fiorini
CLEAR LAKE | A Clear Lake man was arrested after police said a search warrant turned up cocaine and marijuana.

Kevin Eugene Rucker, 41, was charged with two counts of felony possession of a controlled substance, third or subsequent offense and possession of drug paraphernalia.

At about 12:35 p.m. Nov. 30, Clear Lake police executed a search warrant at Ruckers home in the 200 block of Wesley Drive.

During the search, police said cocaine was found in Ruckers bedroom. Marijuana and various drug paraphernalia was found in the home as well, according to court documents.

According to the criminal complaint, Rucker admitted to possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Rucker has been convicted of drug related offenses twice before  in July 2007 in Cerro Gordo County and November 2007 in Las Vegas, according to court documents.

Rucker was booked at Cerro Gordo County Jail Wednesday and later released on his own recognizance after his initial appearance.

He is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 5.

 Courtney Fiorini
Inspired by Franklin Roosevelts 1941 Four Freedoms speech, Norman Rockwell painted four images depicting those freedoms. These paintings went on to inspire all of America during World War II and beyond.

Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join

Americans of 1943 knew the Second World War was being fought to preserve individual freedom, but many had trouble imagining just what that freedom looked like. In February and March of that year, Norman Rockwell  inspired by President Franklin Roosevelts 1941 Four Freedoms speech  gave Americans a vision of the freedoms that justified all the sacrifice and suffering the war had brought them.

His paintings of President Roosevelts four postwar goals resonated so deeply with Americans in the 1940s that they became iconic symbols of American life, and they are still powerful images of what we prize in our country.

That same year, the Post commissioned four authors to write essays to accompany each Freedom painting.

Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today

Longtime Post contributor and a two-time Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist Booth Tarkington depicted his ideas of free speech by way of a parable about the chance meeting of two young men at a small chalet in the Alps.

A historian and philosopher, Will Durant spent 40 years writing the masterful, 11-volume series The Story of Civilization. In his essay, he identifies a little white church and its tall steeple as a symbol of the promise of freedom of worship.

A Filipino novelist and labor organizer in the U.S., Carlos Bulosan reminds us in his essay that freedom from want is not something that we can be given, but something we must earn  all of us together  through hard work, shared goals, and an honest sense of unity and equality.

The essay by poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benet appeared in the Post on the day of his death. In it, he reminds readers that the fight against fear is ultimately a fight against ignorance, and that it is not enough to fight our own ignorance, to hoard knowledge for our own peace of mind; to free ourselves from fear, all of mankind must grow its understanding together.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.  A Charleston environmental group has filed a lawsuit challenging the federal governments stamp of approval to construct Interstate 73 all the way to Myrtle Beach, arguing that a less costly alternative should first be considered.

The Coastal Conservation League (CCL) says building a Grand Strand Expressway (GSX) by upgrading the current route along U.S. 501 would save taxpayers $2 billion.

The estimated cost to build the interstate is $2.4 billion. The league did not state how much money it would cost to upgrade the current route to handle upwards of 30,000 vehicles a day, except to estimate it at one-tenth of the cost.

Not only would the environment be protected, but so would businesses along the current route, the group argued.

An interstate that bypasses the region would be devastating to this business and dozens of others, said Alex Small, manager of Sparkys, a fireworks store and iconic tourist attraction on U.S. 501. Our livelihood and the paychecks of the local workers we hire depend on attracting travelers passing through. Losing that steady stream of visitors would be a significant setback.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, essentially asks the federal court to require that the environmentalists alternative be considered before construction proceeds. It argues that an interstate constructed several miles away from the current route would rob the rest of the state from possibly obtaining federal tax dollars.

This is about giving all of the people of South Carolina a voice and a choice, said Erin Pate Pate, a spokeswoman for the league. We support the Myrtle Beach tourism economy. The GSX would get tourists to Myrtle Beach faster and cheaper than I-73, which will take at least a decade to build.

Supporters of building the interstate to Myrtle Beach, including U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, say the interstate project is a shovel-ready project that already meets federal requirements to obtain funding.

Brad Dean, president and chief executive officer of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber is disappointed that this same group that blocked construction of International Drive through the courts was pursuing another legal challenge to block road construction.

Dean said the action also contradicts an earlier pledge by the environmental group that it would not block interstate construction as long as it is located north of U.S. 501.

Like they did with International Drive, the CCL ignores the needs of the region by pushing its self-serving agenda with no regard for the economic growth, job creation and enhanced safety Interstate 73 will bring, Dean said.

Interstate 73 is too important to our community to back down, so we will continue our efforts to make Interstate 73 our pathway of progress, in spite of this ridiculous legal challenge.
WASHINGTON

The recent excitement over an incredible story about the government trying to ban certain words reminded me of all the words and phrases I despise and wish were banned.

For the sake of getting on with it, briefly: The Washington Post reported Friday that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been forbidden from using seven words as they prepared their 2019 budget documents. The words were: vulnerable, diversity, entitlement, fetus, transgender, science-based and evidence-based.

Everybody went bonkers on cue.

Pro-choice activists insisted that such word changes were an attempt to thwart abortion rights. The CDC pushed back and denied the ban. Anonymous analysts continued to confuse everyone. CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald went straight to Twitter, writing: "I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC. We will continue to talk about all our important public health programs."

What really happened? It's hard to know for sure at this point. The Post sees a heavy-handed silencing, but the National Review's Yuval Levin's offers a different explanation. According to Levin's sources, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, issued a stylebook to departments for the preparation of budget documents. Included were three of the words mentioned above  vulnerable, diversity and entitlement  with the suggestion that they be used as little as possible because they were either used too often or incorrectly.

Now that you mention it, I think I'll add them to my list.

Levin was also told that other, more intriguing words were mentioned in a meeting as possible "trigger" words that might so upset congressional Republicans that they'd slash funding. These were fetus, science-based, evidence-based and transgender. In some cases, alternatives were suggested, such as "unborn child" for "fetus." In other words, if you want those people  congressional Republicans  to fund us, don't use language they don't like.

One could call this either, "Oh, my God, they're trying to ban words!" Or, you could call it common sense. I'm not sure which is more discomfiting, however: CDC guys worried that "science-based" would so frighten Republicans that they'd kill their budget, or, that this could possibly be true.

So that happened.

Obviously, the government shouldn't ban words, but there's no reason a columnist, who gets to be queen for about 750 words, can't take a stab. In a gesture of democratic pandering, I even enlisted the help of my kingdom of Facebook "friends." Because they were self-selecting, this survey should not be construed as "science-based."

But the evidence suggests that my friends are a peevish lot when it comes to mis- or over-used words, which makes me like them even more. My own personal list, the phrasing of which is rhythmically pleasing if obviously redundant, begins with nouns that have been "re-purposed" as verbs.

When a friend recently said to me that she hadn't been "gifted" in a long while, I thought (to myself), "So I see." Then, "lo and behold," (a phrase that will be allowed at Christmastime), I was informed by a linguist that "to gift" has been a verb since 1550. He noted, however, that he would have interpreted my friend's statement as meaning that she hadn't been given (as a gift) in a while. That, too, I'm sure.

To put it bluntly, "awesome" isn't anymore. "Snowflake" produces more ennui than insult. "Pivot," "veritable,' "in reality," and "best practices" wear us down. As do: "reach out," "share" and "think outside the box." "Own" it, if you must, but I'd sell it on Ebay. Just sayin'.

"Breaking news" IS news. It's devastated, not "decimated." You don't "effort," for heaven's sake. You make an effort. Or, maybe just try. Which apparently is a thing. No problem? You're welcome. And I take back my thank you.

Literally, where is all this "low-hanging fruit," if you don't mind my asking. And, no, you're not recording me "for quality and training purposes." You're collecting profane diatribes to read at the company holiday party. Nice try. Or just, "nice." Sick. Stop it.

We're not going to "unpack" anything, unless you're my valet, or "drill down," unless you're the plumber. We're sick of optics, mansplainin', onboarding and THIS, as in "what she said." We've had it with closure and ideating, as well as doubling down on the whole nine yards. No one is "woke."

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the fact of the matter is we were all vulnerable as fetuses, some of whom were surely bound to become transgender because evidence-based diversity is what it is.

But, no worries. It's all good. Believe me. Bigly.
"The intellectual cannot operate at room temperature."

 Eric Hoffer,

"First Things, Last Things" (1971)

WASHINGTON

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) meant that intellectuals in his day tended not to be temperate. In our day, this defect  moral overheating  has been democratized: Anyone can have it. Now, everybody can be happily furious, delirious with hysteria and intoxicated with intimations of apocalypse, all day every day.

Hoffer was a longshoreman and an autodidact who wrote slender books hefty with wisdom. His first, "The True Believer" (1951), put him on a path from San Francisco's docks to a 1982 Presidential Medal of Freedom, conferred by a fellow Californian. In Hoffer's time, intellectuals often were feverish because this was the best way to be noticed, and to say, about this and that: Listen to our intelligent selves or the end is nigh.

In 2017, many others emulated this act. Were Hoffer still with us, he would marvel at today's vast, deep reservoirs of extravagant rhetoric. For example:

During two decades, the internet was barely regulated as it delighted its users. In 2015, a regulatory policy ("net neutrality"), one without a constituency sufficient to move Congress, was imposed by bureaucratic fiat. Thirty-three months later, net neutrality was ended. And the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth commenced: "This is the end of the internet as we know it." (Sen. Bernie Sanders); "A brazen betrayal ... disastrous ... I am disgusted" (Sen. Richard Blumenthal); "Outrageous" (Sen. Cory Booker); "Horrible" (Sen. Tim Kaine); "Shameful" (Sen. Sherrod Brown).

Another example: Most of the nonstop noise emanating from the White House is white noise  audible wallpaper, there but unnoticed. Some is, however, interestingly symptomatic, as when a presidential assistant calls this year's tax legislation "the most significant tax reform we've had since 1986." Which is like bragging about the tallest building in Boise. The 1986 tax reform radically simplified the tax code. Since then, the code has acquired more than 15,000 new wrinkles. The 2017 tax legislation might  this is difficult to measure  have managed the minor miracle of making the 70,000-page code more complicated. On a scale of importance from 1 (negligible) to 10 (stupendous), the legislation might be a 3. Never mind. Cue the Cassandras. This tax cut of less than 1 percent of the next decade's projected GDP is "the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress." (House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi). It "will result in 10,000 extra deaths per year" and "our country will be living on a shoestring for decades." (Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers)

The many Americans who are happiest when unhappy seem as addicted to indignation as the fewer Americans are to cocaine. Brain imaging might show the same pleasure points lighting up in both cohorts. Furthermore, because today's technologies have eliminated barriers to entry into public conversations, ignorance and intemperateness are not barriers. Because modern technologies allow the instant, costless dissemination of fulminations, and because the more vituperative the fulminations the more apt they are to be noticed in the digital clutter, public conversations often quickly degenerate into something less.

Christopher DeMuth, president emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute, notes the interaction of high affluence and modern technologies. "Americans have attained levels of material comfort, leisure time, and education unknown until the recent past." And as Americans have become "entangled by networks of communication," they have entered "a world of empowered mass intimacy" that encourages the better but also "the darker angels of human nature." New modes of communication enable us "to organize ourselves into highly defined networks of affinity and endeavor." These enable splendid cooperative endeavors, but they also are "fracturing our politics."

Institutions that hitherto organized and stabilized politics  parties, Congress, federalism, civic organizations - have been, DeMuth says, "deconstructed by a thousand networks of ideology, interest and identity." Such "private networks have commandeered central institutions of government." Congress, especially, has buckled beneath the weight of "many more numerous political causes than a representative legislature can manage." Congress has responded by offloading onto the administrative state's executive agencies activities that are essentially legislative. So, its members are free to "strut and fret on the national stage" on behalf of causes that are made conspicuous, articulate and potent by the new technology-created networks.

The result is an ever-more-clamorous politics, and the survival of the shrillest. Hence 2017, the year of living splenetically, has been replete with confirmations of Eric Hoffer's aphorisms: "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." And: "We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves."
MASON CITY | Larry Whaley was found guilty of second-degree murder by a Cerro Gordo County jury Thursday afternoon.

The jury deliberated for two and a half hours before reaching its verdict. Whaley had been charged with second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Samantha Teeter.

Whaley sat silently in his seat, and showed little emotion as the verdict was read.

The trial, which spanned four days, focused on the issue of whether Whaley was justified to shoot through his apartment door on Dec. 2, 2016. Cerro Gordo County Attorney Carlyle Dalen and Iowa Assistant Attorney General Douglas Hammerand argued that he was not justified, and acted with malice and forethought when he fired his .44-caliber revolver through that door.

State public defenders Jill Eimermann and Mike Adams argued that Whaley feared for his life, and thought Corey Mays  a man who police testified was known to possibly carry a gunwas behind his door. They added that Whaley had felt threatened by Mays the entire week.

Dalen said he was pleased with the verdict, and added he was happy with how the evidence came into court.

"Law enforcement did a very good job of putting this together and the trial went well," he said. "So I'm happy for the family and I'm happy for everyone involved ... there's some conclusion to this murder and I think the family can move on the best that they can after this terrible incident."

Dalen clarified that the state amended the charge against Whaley from first to second-degree murder because he and Hammerand eventually determined Whaley never intended to shoot Teeterso, the best charge to bring to the jury was second-degree murder.

Both Eimermann and Adams declined comment after the verdict.

The state called several witnesses during the trial, ranging from law enforcement officials to Deb Ewing, the only other person in the apartment when Whaley fatally shot Teeter. The defense called two police officers Thursday, who testified that they kicked Mays out of Whaleys apartment Dec. 1.

Those officers also testified they found a gun holster, which would not have fit Whaleys revolver. Whaley chose not to testify in the trial.

Sentencing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Feb. 6. A second-degree murder conviction in Iowa carries a term of up to 50 years in prison.

Previous story:

MASON CITY | Neither Iowa Assistant Attorney General Douglas Hammerand nor State Public Defender Mike Adams disagree that Larry Whaley fatally shot 19-year-old Samantha Teeter through his apartment door on Dec. 2, 2016.

What they do disagree on, however, is whether Whaley was justified in shooting.

Both Hammerand and Adams delivered their closing arguments to the jury in Courtroom No. 1 of the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse Thursday. Whaley faces a second-degree murder charge in the shooting of Teeter.

Hammerand based much of his argument on the premise that Whaley acted in a reckless manner, and emphasized that the jury should conclude he acted with malice and forethought.

The defendant took that gun, and then went, 'pow', and fired through the door, he said while demonstrating to the jury how Whaley fired the gun the night of the shooting.

Adams disagreed with that assessment, saying Whaley was terrified because he thought Corey Mays, a man who police thought carried a gun  was behind that door.

He also told the jury Whaley believed Mays was involved in a prior shooting, and felt terrified.

If Mr. Whaley had any clue that Samantha was on the other side of that door, he wouldnt have shot, Adams said.

Did Larry have perfect judgement? No, he added. But the law does not say he has to have perfect judgement.

Hammerand said in his final summation of the case that Whaley could have taken several steps to avoid shooting, like asking who was behind his door when Teeter knocked.

She was being polite; it was 4 a.m., he said about the knocking. Maybe they were sleeping, so she was going in.

The jury now must decide if Whaley was justified in shooting through his front door, and whether he is guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder. They started deliberating shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday, after closing arguments lasted roughly an hour.

Previous story:

Defense attorneys for a Mason City man charged with second-degree murder rested their case after calling two Mason City police officers as witnesses Thursday morning.

Larry Whaley, 61, has decided not to testify. He faces a second-degree murder charge for shooting 19-year-old Samantha Teeter in his apartment building on Dec. 2, 2016. Teeter died two days later in the hospital.

State public defenders Mike Adams and Jill Eimermann based their defense Thursday around two Mason City police officers who had spent part of Dec. 1, 2016, removing Corey Mays from Whaley's apartment, along with searching the apartment for a gun that Mays potentially owned.

Officer Brent Dettman testified that he first arrived to Whaley's apartment between 7:40 to 8 a.m., after Whaley reported to him that Corey Mays was still in his apartment, and wanted him evicted.

"Whaley told Mays he had to leave, via the landlord," Dettman testified.

Dettman also noted that Mays seemed upset when asked to leave, and that Whaley gave him a key so that he could retrieve the rest of his belongings at a later time.

One of the central issues that arose in testimony Thursday morning was that officers found a gun holster in Whaley's apartment. Both Dettman and Mason City police Sgt. David Houser were shown Whaley's .44-caliber revolver in court, and testified that gun could not have fit in the holster.

Houser also testified that when he arrived at Whaley's apartment around 11 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2016, it was messythe couch cushions were out of place, and Whaley's bed was lifted off its box spring.

"It sort of looked like someone ransacked it," he said.

Houser also said that Mays had an "officer safety alert" at the time officers searched Whaley's apartment for a gun. The alert meant that Mays may have possessed a handgun, he added.

Both Houser and Dettman added that Whaley told them he had given Mays $600 to find an apartment.

Iowa Assistant Attorney General Douglas Hammerand briefly cross-examined both Houser and Dettman, asking where the gun holster was found. Both stated it was found in the bedroom.

Houser added he didn't know exactly when the holster was found or why the apartment was messy when he arrived.

The defense rested its case about 9:45 a.m. Thursday, after Whaley told Judge Christopher Foy he had decided not to testify.

Closing arguments are expected to begin late Thursday morning.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Undergraduate studies are all about preparation for real research. But for Francis Marion University students Rachel Fleschner and Kristin Ingram, their undergraduate years included a heavy dose of higher-level research within their chosen majors.

Both students majored in biology and graduated Saturday with University Honors. Their abilities, coupled with FMUs commitment to experiential learning, allowed them to perform graduate-level research work while they were still undergraduates.

FMU University Honors means a student must complete 21 course hours  approximately seven courses  in the universitys demanding honors program while maintaining a high grade-point average. The program includes writing an honors thesis, which encompasses a semester-long research project.

Fleschner, a Bloomington, Indiana, native with a love for animals, chose to study Von Willebrand disease, which affects Shetland sheepdogs. She worked with Windsor Animal Hospital in Florence for part of her research.

I have always loved animals, and I knew what I wanted to do since the first time I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, Fleschner said.

Ingram, a Mullins native, studied bacteriophages in the soils of Marion County.

Bacteriophages are essentially viruses that are capable of infecting bacteria. Knowledge of bacteriophages is useful when it comes to fighting certain infections, as they can be used in place of antibiotics, decreasing the risk of forming an antibiotic resistance.

The subject attracted Ingram, in part, because she aspires to work in the medical field. It also interested her because of the possibility that she could leave a lasting legacy if she discovered her very own bacteriophage.

If I find a new virus, I get to name it, and that really caught my attention, she said. I always loved the medical field, and you think of all these researchers who go through all this time and they dont find anything. Being able to do it over the process of a semester and being able to find a new virus would be really exciting.

The soil samples Ingram isolated are being processed to determine if any new viruses were discovered.

Fleschner, an aspiring veterinarian, was right at home while researching Von Willebrand disease, an affliction that inhibits proper clotting of a dogs blood. It essentially turns infected dogs into hemophiliacs, which in turn, means minor wounds can become serious.

Fleschner tested blood samples from dogs throughout the Pee Dee, focusing on Shetland sheepdogs, but she also examined golden retrievers and Doberman pinschers as well.

With my goal to go to veterinary school, I wanted to do something vet-related, she said. I wanted to have different experiences with animals to make sure that veterinary medicine was what I wanted to do.

Fleschner and Ingram are looking ahead to graduate school. Fleschner will pursue her veterinary dream. Ingram wants to become a physician assistant. Fleschner even says she might apply to FMUs new program in that field, which will admit its second class next August.
Five men arrested in Mason City have been charged in federal court for meth crimes this fall.

Christopher Funk, 57, and Dakota Lee Sanders, 30, both of San Andreas, California, were indicted by a federal jury Wednesday on conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

Between the fall and Oct. 19, the two allegedly conspired between themselves and others to distribute 500 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing methamphetamine or 50 grams or more of pure meth, according to court documents.

Funk  who allegedly possessed a Glock Model 19 handgun was also charged with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, court documents said.

Eric Thomas Hart, 28, of Mason City was also indicted with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance stemming from an incident Oct. 19.

Hart is accused of possessing more than 5 grams of pure meth, according to court documents.

Funk, Sanders and Hart were arrested in Mason City during a narcotics investigation  traffic stops and a search warrant  that yielded 3 pounds of methamphetamine and marijuana.

The drugs had an estimated street value of $65,000, Cerro Gordo County Sheriff Kevin Pals said in October.

Justin Ray Davey, 27, West Des Moines, and Spencer Ray Fitzpatrick, 41, Knoxville, were indicted in a separate federal case Wednesday.

Davey and Fitzpatrick are charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

Davey  who allegedly possessed a Makarov 9x18 9mm handgun  was also charged with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.

The men were arrested at the Mason City Super 8 Oct. 12 and are accused of distributing 50 grams or more of pure meth in North Iowa and elsewhere between the fall and Oct. 12, court documents say.
MASON CITY | About 6:30 a.m. Dec. 2, 2016, Mason City police investigator Terrance Prochaska began his interview with Larry Whaley.

On Wednesday afternoon, Prochaska detailed much of that conversation with a Cerro Gordo County jury, which will soon determine if Whaley is guilty or not guilty of the second-degree murder in the shooting of 19-year-old Samantha Teeter.

Prochaska testified Wednesday that Whaley told him he felt threatened by Corey Mays the entire week leading up to the incident, and believed Mays had a key to his apartment and a gun.

Much of his testimony described the Dec. 1 timeline Whaley told him. That included Whaley renting a hotel room at the Days Inn for himself and Deb Ewing  the only other person in his apartment when he fired his .44-caliber revolver.

Before that, Whaley, Ewing, Samantha Teeter and Kalab Van Scyoc, Teeters boyfriend, had bought ammunition and a cell phone at Walmart in Mason City, shortly after 7 p.m. Dec. 1, Prochaska testified.

Whaley had previously bought the revolver earlier that day from a Charles City man, named Charles, for $500, Prochaska added.

Prochaskas timeline was dense, but it eventually put Ewing, Whaley, Teeter and Van Scyoc back at his apartment late that night. Whaley left to go see a friend and then to buy a TV and groceries from Walmart before returning.

As Whaley was doing that, Teeter and Van Scyoc got into an argument, and then eventually left the apartment with Whaleys key, Prochaska testified. When Whaley returned, Ewing told him they had left, and that Teeter said she would return.

Whaley then proceeded to insert two kitchen knives into his front doorjamb  Prochaska detailed this to the jury and demonstrated it on the door itself, which was brought into the courtroom Wednesday morning. Whaley then sat on his one of his couches with his revolver.

The next sequence detailed the shooting itself, which occurred about 3:43 a.m. Dec. 2, 2016.

He saw the doorknob starting to move, Prochaska testified. And then he said he heard knocking.

He said he got up, walked over to the door, and shot through it, he later added.

Prochaska later clarified that Whaley shot three shots total, and only yelled for someone to get away from his door after he first fired through it.

He detailed how Whaley described the shooting, standing up and mimicking how it occurred  one shot through the door, a pause, then two shots to the right.

Much of Wednesday morning's testimony focused on how the gun functioned, and physical evidence tied to the crime scene. Victor Murillo, a firearms expert who works in the state's Division of Criminal Investigation, told the jury how he examined the .44-caliber revolver that was recovered at Whaley's apartment the morning of the shooting.

He also handled the gun, and explained its different parts and how it works.

In State Public Defender Mike Adams cross-examination of Prochaska Wednesday afternoon, he asked about whether Whaley was nervous about Corey Mays, who was allegedly involved at a shooting in the plaza near the north entrance to Southbridge Mall on Oct. 16, 2017.

Prochaska stated that Whaley told him this in the initial interview, and that he was hoping Corey behind the door instead of Teeter. He added immediate recollections of events can be jumbled because of how stressful a shooting situation is.

Iowa Assistant Attorney General Douglas Hammerand followed up by questioning Prochaska if Whaley said he was confused when he was being interviewed Dec. 2, 2016. The Mason City police investigator said he didn't ask Whaley if he was confused.

The states last witness was Dr. Ross Reichard, a pathologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Reichard performed the autopsy on Teeter Dec. 5, 2016, a day after she died.

Reichard testified he ruled Teeters death a homicide based off medical records and the autopsy. Photos from that autopsy, released in court, show she was shot through her right eye.

Testimony ended about 3:10 p.m. Wednesday, and the defense is expected to begin calling witnesses tomorrow. Judge Christopher Foy said Wednesday he hopes to hand the case to the jury by the end of this week.
The venue is about an hour outside of midtown New York. This gathering, which started nearly 30 years ago with nascent shipping software providers demonstrating their wares to the then-burgeoning Connecticut shipping cluster at a local restaurant, has grown into a world-class event drawing attendees from shipping centers throughout the world.

Likewise, the Commodores have been drawn from Europe and Asia, in addition to the all-important U.S. maritime markets. Ms. Chao joins a list of previous awardees including Worldwides Helmut Sohmen (1996), IMCs Frank Tsao (2002) and Coscos Capt. Wei Jiafu (2009). In recent years, awardees have included Scorpios Robert Bugbee (2014), Capt. Panagiotis Tsakos (2015),Euronavs Paddy Rodgers (2016) and in, 2017 Jack Noonan, from the chemical tanker side of the business.

Chaos biography is extraordinarily impressive. She joined the family business - with the original Wah Kwong founded by her grandfather in the early 1950s - in 2002, after gaining grounding in the finance, insurance and Class sides of the business. She has recently served as chair of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association.

The importance of Asia was an important consideration as the CMA Board chose among a short list of impressive and highly qualified shipping industry leaders. In explaining the CMAs choice of Chao as the 2018 Commodore, the CMA President, Joe Gross, who works for the dAmico organizations local office in Stamford, noted that: For us here on the East Coast of the US the central role in and understanding of Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and the remarkable One Belt One Road initiative is just icing on the cake for our community.
MASON CITY | A Mason City man is in jail on a $100,000 bond for allegedly delivering methamphetamine to a law enforcement informant.

Joseph Angel Luna, 28, is charged with felony possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, among other charges from separate incidents.

Luna allegedly delivered 13.9 grams of meth to an individual cooperating with the North Central Iowa Narcotics Task Force in the 1000 block of Fourth Street Southwest in Mason City April 21, police say.

He is scheduled to appear in Cerro Gordo County District Court on those charges Dec. 29.

Luna was arrested in Forest City Sunday after a search warrant was executed at a home where drugs were found. He was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession, possession of drug paraphernalia and interference with official acts. Law enforcement said he refused to tell officers his name or where he lived.

He is being held in the Cerro Gordo County Jail on a $105,000 bond, with an additional bond imposed for Winnebago County charges.

Luna will also go to trial Jan. 23 in Cerro Gordo County District Court after he was arrested in an bait bike sting operation in October.

The Mason City Police Department conducted an operation where a bicycle was left unattended in a public location while officers watched to see if anyone would attempt to steal the bike, a Gary Fisher brand valued at $250.

Two hours into the operation, the bait bike was stolen. Luna attempted to elude police by riding away on the bike but was tackled and taken into custody. He was charged with fourth-degree theft, interference with official acts and possession of drug paraphernalia.

During a search of his person, police found a used drug needle and a scale in his pocket, court documents said.
Source: Western Michigan University





Changing demographics on Western Michigan University's campus such as a strong international enrollment and an increasing number of students from other states is driving the university to build new student housing.Students' housing preferences also are changing, which makes this the time to consider and carefully plan for future housing needs, says Dr. Diane Anderson, vice president for student affairs.In what is known as the South Neighborhood there will be a newly constructed student center, housing, and a new campus gateway. The South Neighborhood is highly visible from the adjacent Stadium Drive.WMU says this visibility gives the university an opportunity to create a campus gateway that offers a "wow" factor along what WMU President Edward Montgomery recently noted is "the longest contiguous face of the campus.""This is all about transforming the student experience on campus--making sure the student center and residential neighborhoods are set up to offer our students a truly transformational environment," says Anderson. "It's more important than ever that we provide a rich student experience on campus--one that is cutting edge, enriching and engaging.The first new student housing in the area is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2020, and a new student center is targeted to be available in 2021. Intense long-range planning for the entire South Neighborhood is expected to begin soon and be completed by October 2018. That neighborhood master plan will guide development through 2023.City planners and the Michigan Department of Transportation also are proposing development near the Stadium Drive and Howard Street intersection. "The chance to develop for our students' needs at the same time we coordinate with community needs and planning is a very appealing prospect," Anderson says.That potential is a prime reason Montgomery and other senior leaders are convinced the South Neighborhood needs to be next in line for development, she says.The first new housing in South Neighborhood will replace Elmwood Apartments, a tract of 16 low-rise student apartment buildings that house about 220 students.Students now living in Elmwood were informed in early November that once the academic year is over and their leases end, the apartments will be demolished in late May to prepare the site for new student housing construction in 2019.The South Neighborhood development is in keeping with a campuswide housing and dining master plan adopted in 2013.
CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trusted Brand 2016 Inc. ("Trusted Brand" or the "Corporation") (TSX-V:HAH.P), a capital pool company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (the Exchange), announces that its previously announced letter of intent with Holmes Services Companies has been terminated and the proposed acquisition will not proceed. As part of the termination of the letter of intent, Trusted Brand will receive a termination fee of $25,000 from Holmes Services Companies. The Corporation will resume the process of identifying and evaluating businesses and assets with a view to completing a Qualifying Transaction.



Trading in Trusted Brand shares on the Exchange is currently halted.

For further information, please contact:

Trusted Brand 2016 Inc.

Karen Stewart

President and Chief Executive Officer

Telephone: (403) 561-3355

Email: karen@thekarenstewartgroup.com

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS



This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the future business and operations of Trusted Brand. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and the delay or failure to receive applicable Board, shareholder or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and Trusted Brand disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
Press Release

December 21, 2017 De Lima seeks bigger funds to address housing problems Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has opposed the huge decline in the proposed 2018 P3.767-trilllion national budget for the housing sector, notably on the National Housing Authority (NHA), which can negatively impact the living conditions of the poor. In her Second Manifestation / Additional Comments on the 2018 Budget which was entered into the Senate records last Dec. 12, De Lima said the Duterte administration has overlooked the problems besetting the informal settlers and relocated communities. "The housing sector leaves much to be desired. The housing program should have been in the forefront of the government's anti-poverty program as it provides the opportunity to build communities and lives around the relocation sites," she said. The NHA received a budget allocation of P2.2 billion for 2018, which is P10 billion lower than its 2017 allocation of P12.68 billion. De Lima pointed out that the Duterte administration has failed to recognize the need to finance a key agency that would ensure that all the requirements of the housing projects are complied with by several agencies involved. She lamented that the local government units and the NHA, which are expected to work together to provide basic services and facilities and access to livelihood opportunities for the informal settlers, operate almost independently of each other. "The families end up living in substandard conditions with little to no access to basic services, schools, and livelihood opportunities," she said. To address the problems besetting the relocated communities, De Lima said there should be adequate funding that will ensure that families who have already been resettled would not again be rendered homeless through eviction. "At the very least, the government should invest funds in ensuring that they don't revert back to being homeless, since they have already been awarded units and it is economic realities outside their control that make it difficult for them to pay off their debts, and in improving their living conditions," she said. "What good will evicting these families do? For the families themselves? For the government? For the economy? On the flipside, what evil would happen if they are to be pushed out of their homes? Obviously, they will again be counted as the homeless that we need to find shelter for," she added. The Senator from Bicol maintained that by failing to put funds where it is most needed will only worsen the problem involving the poor sector of the society. Last Dec. 12, Congress has ratified the proposed P3.767-trillion national budget for 2018. President Duterte is set to sign the budget into law on December 19. (30) For the full text of Senator De Lima's Second Manifestation / Additional Comments on the 2018 Budget, see links below: Part I: http://bit.ly/2Cz8YvE

Part II: http://bit.ly/2BJSTo5

Part III: http://bit.ly/2z1ClVm


Press Release

December 21, 2017 De Lima thankful family, relatives permitted to visit her on Christmas, New Year Senator Leila M. de Lima may be celebrating the upcoming holidays in detention but she remains in high spirits as her family and relatives were allowed to visit her on Christmas and New Year's Day. De Lima, touted as the first prominent political prisoner under the Duterte regime, said she is thankful for what she considers an "early Christmas present" but admitted the celebration will be incomplete sans her mother's presence. "I am very glad and thankful that my request to be with my family this Christmas and New Year was granted, especially because I failed to be with them during Lent and All Saints' Day, which are two very important occasions for the entire family. This is indeed an early Christmas present," she said. "But while I'm elated about the news on the visitation grant, it still saddens me that I cannot be with my mother over the holidays considering that she is still unaware of my current situation and we don't want to cause her misery and grief by giving her details about my unjust detention," she added. On Dec. 20, De Lima confirmed that she, as with other PNP Custodial Center detainees, were granted visits from family and relatives on Christmas Eve, December 24, until 1 a.m. the following day and on December 25, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., also on December 31 until 1 a.m. the following day, and on January 1 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Note that the Senator from Bicol wrote to the PNP Custodial Center authorities on Dec. 15 requesting to allow her family and relatives to visit her on Christmas and New Year's Day. "Since both holidays fall on a Monday, a 'no visitors' day, and in the spirit of the Yuletide season, may I humbly request for exemption from the 'no visitors' rule for both days and accordingly allow visits from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.," she noted. In anticipation of Christmas Day, a Mass will be officiated and be attended by De Lima, along with her family and relatives, on Dec. 24. Aside from their regular visits to check on the condition of the Senator, De Lima's family members also regularly hear Mass with her inside the Custodial Center of the Philippine National Police, in Camp Crame, Quezon City every Sunday.
Press Release

December 21, 2017 Legarda: 2018 Budget to Sustain Growth in the Agriculture Sector Senator Loren Legarda today said that the 2018 national budget, which was already signed by the President into law, will further boost progress for the more than 11 million farmers and fisherfolks in the country. Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, said that the approved budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and attached agencies for next year is Php110.075 Billion, the 7th highest allocation in the 2018 budget. Citing figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Legarda noted that agriculture recorded a 4.64% growth in output in the first nine months of 2017 due to production gains in the crops, livestock, and poultry subsectors. She also said that the gross value of production in agriculture amounted to Php382.5 Billion, following current prices, a 6.27% increase than the previous year's record. "The Philippines is an agricultural country. It is imperative for us to sustain progress in the agriculture sector and ensure that there is enough support to address the needs and concerns of our farmers and fisherfolks," Legarda said. The Senator emphasized that the 2018 budget will strengthen the national programs of agriculture agencies; provide for the equipment, machinery, facility, and infrastructure needs of our farmers and fisherfolks; and build their capacity to combat climate change and reduce disaster risks; as well as conduct research and development for the growth of the sector. Legarda said that Php20.2 Billion is for the national programs for rice, corn, high value crops development, organic agriculture and livestock; and Php4.186 Billion for the National Fisheries Program. She added that, as in the current year, the government will continue to subsidize irrigation service fees being paid by farmers to the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) for next year. The DA will also have Php2.669 Billion for the construction, restoration, or improvement of small-scale irrigation projects, while Php4.281 Billion is allocated for the construction of facilities and procurement of machineries and equipment. The amount of Php9.958 Billion is allocated for the construction, rehabilitation and repair of farm-to-market roads (FMR), which will be geo-tagged and will lead to arterial or secondary roads and key agricultural production areas. Furthermore, a Php395 Million funding for the implementation of extension support, education, and training services of the national corn program will include Php10 Million for corn-based farmer-scientist research, development, and extension training program. Additionally, the amount of Php1.05 Billion under the Agro-Industry Modernization Credit and Financing Program Administration will be transferred to government financial institutions (GFIs), cooperative banks, rural banks, and viable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be used exclusively for the establishment of a flexible credit facility for the benefit of small farmers and fisherfolks. In order to reduce disaster risks and build resilience against the impacts of climate change, the DA shall provide support for agriculture communities to be attuned to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction through the implementation of disaster-resilient agriculture infrastructure projects, distribution and development of climate-resilient seeds, capacity building on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and the conduct of seminars for local government units (LGUs) and farmers on the importance of ecological solid waste management, rainwater catchments, and organic farming approaches, among other elements of sustainable land use. Legarda also mentioned that Php1 Billion Quick Response Fund (QRF) under the DA shall serve as a standby fund to be used for provision of seeds and other planting materials, fingerlings and fries, livestock, minor fishing paraphernalia and minor repair of small-scale irrigation systems to normalize the living conditions of people living in communities and areas stricken by calamities, epidemics, crises, and catastrophes. The NIA also has QRF in the amount of Php500 Million. "Our farmers and fisherfolks feed the entire nation, yet they remain among the poorest sectors. With the increased funding for the agriculture sector in the 2018 budget, we signify the importance of their role to provide sustenance and nutrition to all Filipinos and their capacity to lead our country towards a food-secure future," Legarda concluded.
Press Release

December 21, 2017 Protect our marine creatures, help keep our oceans clean - Villar STRESSING that the death of marine creatures like the endangered turtles (pawikan) will threaten our entire ecosystem, Senator Cynthia A. Villar urged the public to protect and maintain the cleanliness of their habitat-the oceans. Villar, chair of the Senate environment committee, said the death of marine creatures will also have adverse effects on our livelihood and food sources. She said one of the ways to protect our oceans is to avoid throwing plastic garbage in our bodies of water. In her capacity as Senate environment committee chair, Villar said she is working on amending the 17-year-old Ecological Solid Waste Management law to hold accountable manufacturers that dump plastic wastes in rivers and seas. Last month, Villar said she attended a panel discussion in Singapore, organized by the European Union, which dealt on ensuring a plastic-free ocean. She said among the concerns raised in the discussion was the amount of wastes that reach led our oceans and eventually damaged our ecosystem and marine biodiversity. On top of that, she noted that those wastes kill marine creatures, including endangered turtles, which is integral to the ecosystem as they keep sea grass beds healthy. Based on a University of Georgia study, the Philippines ranked third, next to China and Indonesia among 192 countries surveyed, in terms of volume of plastic wastes produced by the population that could potentially enter the seas and oceans. "That truly alarmed me because marine plastic wastes pose an extreme danger to our country's marine natural resources," said Villar, adding that it is already among the common cause of the disease and death of animals. "I am sure you have heard about increasing reports and incidents of whale sharks, turtles and other animals that get entangled in or ingest plastic wastes. We have seen photos of turtles hanging on (fish) nets or plastic straws stuck in their nostrils," said Villar. She described as "very timely" the recently-concluded 12th Meeting of Conference of the Parties to the Convention of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP12) as biodiversity and the protection of animals are among the major topics discussed. She said the story of how the Pawikan Conservation Project in Bataan started way back in 1999 is a very good one. She said this is a good example on how the outlook of residents are changed by becoming more environmentally aware and better informed. "It is truly good to know that the people who used to exploit the endangered turtles are now the ones protecting them," said Villar who was the Guest Speaker during the Pawikan Festival in Bataan.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim signaled her intent to enter the 2018 mayoral race Wednesday, requesting nomination papers from the citys Department of Elections.

Kim, a stalwart progressive as a supervisor, has long been rumored to be considering a bid for the mayors office. She was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010.

She and any other candidates eyeing a run for mayor have until Jan. 9 to file the necessary paperwork. Though any number of people may take out the papers to run, none of them are official candidates until those nomination papers are returned.

Kim ran an unsuccessful race last November to replace termed-out state Sen. Mark Leno. She was beaten by fellow Supervisor Scott Wiener, but the race may have boosted her recognition with San Francisco voters, particularly after her high-profile endorsement from then-presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Before being elected to the board, Kim, San Franciscos first Korean American elected official, worked as a community organizer for the Chinatown Community Development Center and served as president of the San Francisco Board of Education. Shes also worked as an attorney at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Kim did not respond to a request for comment.

ALSO Angela Alioto takes big step toward SF mayoral run

As the supervisor representing District Six, Kim has presided over a corridor of the city undergoing an intensive transformation, thanks to a raft of commercial and residential development. The district includes the South of Market area, which became the citys most valuable neighborhood this year, thanks to the many real estate transactions taking place there.

But nearby neighborhoods in her district, such as the Tenderloin, remain home to many of the citys poorest residents.

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.

Among her major legislative accomplishments as a supervisor, Kim led the effort to make City College of San Francisco free to city residents. She also spearheaded the successful 2014 ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in San Francisco to $15 by 2018. Her official campaign page also touts her efforts to expand access to affordable housing, protect renters, close the income gap and improve public schools.

Despite her progressive bona fides, her progressive colleagues on the board  Aaron Peskin, Sandra Lee Fewer, Ahsha Safai and Norman Yee  have already endorsed Leno.

Kim joins former Supervisor Angela Alioto in pulling papers this week to run for mayor in the June 5 ranked-choice election, which was scheduled after Mayor Ed Lees death from a heart attack Dec. 12.

Leno and a handful of lesser-known candidates also have requested nomination documents. Among those believed to be considering entering the mayors race are acting Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Mark Farrell, Assemblyman and former Supervisor David Chiu, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
VANCOUVER, B.C., Dec. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP. (the "Company" or First Majestic) (NYSE:AG) (TSX:FR) is pleased to announce that it has filed updated National Instrument 43-101 technical reports on its Del Toro, La Parrilla and San Martin mining operations. Each of the technical reports are available under the Companys SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com and on the Companys website at www.firstmajestic.com.



Mr. Ramon Mendoza Reyes, Vice President Technical Services for First Majestic, is a "qualified person" as such term is defined under National Instrument 43-101, and has reviewed and approved this news release.

First Majestic is a mining company focused on primary silver production in Mexico and is aggressively pursuing the development of its existing mineral property assets and the pursuit through acquisition of additional mineral assets which contribute to the Company achieving its corporate growth objectives.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION contact info@firstmajestic.com, visit our website at www.firstmajestic.com or call our toll free number 1.866.529.2807.

FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP.

signed

Keith Neumeyer, President & CEO

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release includes certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, target, plan, forecast, may, schedule and similar words or expressions, identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information relate to, among other things: the price of silver and other metals; the accuracy of mineral reserve and resource estimates and estimates of future production and costs of production at our properties; estimated production rates for silver and other payable metals produced by us, the estimated cost of development of our development projects; the effects of laws, regulations and government policies on our operations, including, without limitation, the laws in Mexico which currently have significant restrictions related to mining; obtaining or maintaining necessary permits, licences and approvals from government authorities; and continued access to necessary infrastructure, including, without limitation, access to power, land, water and roads to carry on activities as planned.

These statements reflect the Companys current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in the spot and forward price of silver, gold, base metals or certain other commodities (such as natural gas, fuel oil and electricity); fluctuations in the currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso versus the U.S. dollar); changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada, Mexico; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding); risks relating to the credit worthiness or financial condition of suppliers, refiners and other parties with whom the Company does business; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining, including those currently enacted in Mexico; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities; diminishing quantities or grades of mineral reserves as properties are mined; the Companys title to properties; and the factors identified under the caption Risk Factors in the Companys Annual Information Form, under the caption Risks Relating to First Majestic's Business.

Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements or information. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law.
The 98-loss team is not rebuilding.

The Giants are simply retooling. Thats the intention they consistently signaled even as the 2017 season crumbled around them. And that direction became more obvious Wednesday with their acquisition of 32-year old Evan Longoria, in their most significant move of the offseason.

The men in charge of the Giants have never accepted the concept of rebuilding. They dont believe their fans will stand for it. They dont want to lose season-ticket revenue, which might happen if they strip down the team. They think much of what happened last year was an aberration, a dirt-biking one-off. They think they still have the foundation of a proud, competitive team.

As executive vice president Brian Sabean said Wednesday, the Giants have a plan to plug the holes and go forward and be competitive right out of the gate.

Welp. Well find out.

Is this just rearranging the Titanic deck chairs? Or is it a realistic bid to have a competitive couple of years while Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford and Madison Bumgarner are still in their primes?

Check back in about six months.

Longoria is another Dirtbag at third base  he played for the Long Beach State Dirtbags, before Matt Duffy, who went to Tampa Bay in the Matt Moore trade in 2016. Longoria provides right-handed power and is a legitimate star. Longoria is a massive upgrade from the rotating list of ineffective names who manned third last season: Pablo Sandoval-Eduardo Nunez-Conor Gillaspie-Christian Arroyo.

Arroyo was the teams first-round draft pick in 2013. His April call-up provided momentary excitement in what was already a season spinning out of control. Arroyo then slumped, and injuries ended his season. Now, he goes into the dustbin of first-round picks who wont contribute directly to the Giants, along with names like Zack Wheeler and Gary Brown. Sabean said the team wasnt sure what Arroyo is or will become.

The Giants hope giving up Arroyo doesnt come back to bite them. The most exciting part of Wednesdays deal might be saying farewell to Denard Span and his $11 million salary, which  combined with offloading Moore  could help the Giants avoid the luxury tax.

The Giants just might have gotten significantly better in 2018. But this move is a gamble for the long-term future. Longoria has $86 million remaining on his deal, a lot of salary to absorb for a player in his 30s.

The outfield is still a mess. There are rumors that Jay Bruce could be on his way to AT&T, but hell be 31 next season. The Giants are going to be an old team next season. Will they again be an old, bad team?

Longoria said all the right things on a conference call: that its an even year, so the Giants should win, hes excited to play in front of enthusiastic fans rather than the empty warehouse where the Rays play, hes happy to play on forgiving grass, and growing up in Southern California, he was more of an Angels fan than Dodgers fan.

Hell be a good fit for 2018. But what about beyond?

It was interesting that the lead voice Wednesday was Sabeans. General manager Bobby Evans was on the media conference call, but Sabean did a lot of the talking and also did a radio interview later in the day (though Evans did with the teams flagship station).

Whether that was calculated or not, one cant be sure. Many fans have lost faith in Evans; Sabean has long been a more forceful, no-nonsense voice for the Giants moves. Even in his new position, Sabeans input and approval has been required, but the disaster of 2017 seems to have forced him to be more out front.

Its also worth noting that Sabean and manager Bruce Bochy have two more years remaining on their contracts. They would like to end their careers with their legacies intact, not in the midst of a painful rebuild and massive fan disgruntlement.

The Giants arent going to rebuild. The 2018 strategy: Retool and say a prayer.

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion
For years, Iran has been accurately labeled as the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism. Now, quietly with little notice beyond the region, the militant regime in Iran has established a major land force in Syria effectively threatening the existence of Israel.

Using the cover of helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against domestic insurgents, Tehran has stationed an estimated 125,000 troops in that country, outnumbering the Syrian army, and enhanced by Russian forces. This is in addition to thousands of Iranian militia allegedly helping Iraq forces extinguish ISIS threats there.

United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley outlined last week how Iran is flouting U.N. resolutions by supporting and arming Yemens Houthi rebels, who recently fired an Iranian missile into Saudi Arabia.

Under pressure from U.S.-advised troops and Iranian and Russian attacks, ISIS has declined as an organized military threat, leaving Iranian and allied Hezbollah forces with time and motivation to make other mischief.

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMasters team is developing a post-ISIS strategy focusing on neutralizing or containing the looming threat of Iran to Israel and U.S. forces.

In his national security outline this week, President Trump noted the global balance of power has shifted in recent years in ways adverse to U.S. interests. He focused on Russia and China in this congressionally mandated statement, adding realistically, Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition.

But Iran is likely to be a major policy target in the new year when the McMaster strategy is completed. With American troops fighting in Afghanistan for the 17th year, presenting a case for confronting Iran anew is likely to take considerable public education and selling, short of a direct attack by Iran on Israel or American troops.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary James Mattis has indicated the 2,000 special operations forces stationed in Syria are not going anywhere in order to stymie any ISIS rebirth. But this raises the possibility of armed encounters with Irans forces.

Already, U.S. planes have downed two armed Iranian drones. Israeli planes regularly bomb Hezbollah convoys in Syria. And intelligence reports say Iran is building a missile base in northwest Syria.

What we face, McMaster said recently, is the prospect of Iran having a proxy army on the borders of Israel. Thats a more imminent threat to our closest Middle Eastern ally than the long-standing  and remaining  concern about Iranian missiles traveling the 600 miles to erase Israel, as Tehran has threatened.

President Barack Obama preferred ineffective words, red lines and sanctions against the Syrian regime. He ignored Irans troop buildup in Syria in favor of negotiating his much-coveted nuclear weapons agreement with Tehran. Trump has denounced that agreement as incomprehensibly bad and certified to Congress this fall that Iran is not living up to the spirit of the pact.

With Trump already facing down a rapidly developing nuclear threat from North Korea, the stakes with Iran are high and growing. Such confrontations are likely to figure in the budget debate over the GOPs enhanced defense appropriation desires vs. the domestic spending priorities of Democrats.

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.

No U.N. resolutions, sanctions or words have halted Irans expansionist ambitions. Like Russia, Iran has cycled much of its armed forces through years of Syrian fighting, giving them real-life regular army training under Russians and actual combat experience for whatever Irans future military plans might be.

The nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War reported earlier this year that Iranian military cooperation with Russia in Syria is dramatically increasing Tehrans ability to plan and conduct complex conventional operations ... (and) is transforming its military to be able to conduct quasi-conventional warfare hundreds of miles from its borders. This capability, which very few states in the world have, will fundamentally alter the strategic calculus and balance of power within the Middle East.

Washington has been consumed this month with passing the tax bill and a continuing spending resolution, both of which have been languishing all fall. And, of course, theres a half-month recess to enjoy.

But the volatile Iranian problem, like that annual arrival of post-holiday credit-card bills, is likely to come due early in 2018.

Andrew Malcolm has covered politics since the 1960s. Twitter: @AHMalcolm
Stephen Brashear

When a top Amtrak official described this weeks deadly derailment of a speeding train near Olympia, Wash., as a wake-up call, he was being generous to himself and his fellow rail officials. They and Congress had already decided to sleep through plenty of alarms.

While federal investigators are still sorting out the facts of the Washington disaster, it appears likely to be the kind that could have been prevented by positive train control, an automated safety system that can brake trains traveling at excessive speeds if their operators dont respond to warnings. After a 2008 Southern California train wreck killed 25, Congress required the nations rail lines to install positive train control systems by 2015, but the deadline was extended at least into next year when railroads resisted. Mondays derailment took place during the first regular service on new tracks where the system was expected to be implemented but was not yet functioning.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WASHINGTON  Congress averted a partial government shutdown Thursday by passing a short-term spending bill, but an $81 billion disaster-aid bill died in the Senate after winning passage in the House.

Rushing to leave for the Christmas break, Congress punted to next year not only disaster aid for Californias record fires and the three hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast this fall, but a list of other urgent business.

Those include conferring legal status on 800,000 young immigrants who enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that President Trump ended in September. Trump gave Congress until March 5 to remedy their status before subjecting them to deportation. Roughly a third of these Dreamers reside in California.

The Childrens Health Insurance Program that provides health care to 9 million children, including 1.3 million in California, expired Sept. 30, and states are running short of money to continue coverage. Recipients are children who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose parents lack insurance. Roughly a quarter have special health needs.

Congress also must renew, repeal or amend a law that allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. residents and expires Dec. 31.

Republicans, who control Congress, made a $1.5 trillion tax bill their top priority for the past two months. That legislation cleared both chambers Wednesday, but left just two days before the holiday recess to deal with unfinished business. Lawmakers faced a Friday midnight deadline on a spending bill to keep the government operating, but were unable to resolve differences between the parties over military and domestic spending and other issues, so instead passed a temporary bill that lasts until Jan. 19.

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, both Democrats, voted against the funding bill, which passed 66-32 in the Senate with significant help from moderate Democrats. Feinstein and Harris had said they would oppose the bill because it lacked help for young immigrants.

Harris called the bill short-term and shortsighted, saying Congress has said loud and clear that Dreamers, children, and families devastated by wildfires can wait  but corporate tax cuts cant.

Feinstein accused Republicans of doubling down on their failed strategy of secrecy, coming up with a government funding bill at the very last minute that ignores many of our highest-priority needs.

The disaster-relief bill had passed in the House on a 261-169 vote, but stalled later in the Senate when Republicans refused to take it up for a vote. Even in the House, the bill was met with opposition from conservatives upset about the cost, as well as many Bay Area Democrats.

The Democrats were eager for relief for their state but furious over how Republicans left hanging other issues, such as a solution for the Dreamers. They were also unhappy with the disaster bill itself, which they felt gave short shrift to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Seventeen of Californias 53 House Democrats voted against the disaster-aid bill. One Republican, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (Sacramento County) voted with other conservatives against it.

Republicans said the relief bill would have been the largest ever passed by Congress, bringing total disaster spending for the year to an astonishing $133 billion. Conservative Republicans balked at the price tag and wanted the spending offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

The bill was aimed at assisting recovery from three big hurricanes that struck Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands this fall and the enormous wildfires in California that struck Wine Country in October and then coastal Southern California this month, during what normally is the rainy season.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who fought to get relief for the Wine Country fires, said many Democrats were upset at the lack of action on childrens health care and young immigrants, which he said was inexcusable, so you can certainly understand why people were upset about this.

Republicans had just passed a tax bill  without needing Democratic support  that will add at least $1 trillion to the national debt, said Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, yet they sought Democratic votes to pass disaster aid because their own members balked at the price tag.

Republicans, he said, have created this ridiculous world that they live in, and because we are here too, we have to try to navigate it when they need our votes. But they only come to us when they dont want to take a stand.

DeSaulnier, who voted for the disaster aid, said passage of the tax bill without Democratic input made the decision harder for Democrats. The fact that the atmosphere is so poisoned because of what we just went through makes every single thing more difficult to do, he said.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, said he took what he called a tough vote against the disaster aid, saying the bill showed a moral blindness to the crisis in Puerto Rico, and came just one day after the House gave final approval to a tax bill that levies a 12.5 percent excise tax on goods from the island territory.

Its outrageous, he said. Were treating them like a colony, taxing their goods to us at a time when they need relief.

Republicans said the bill contained significant provisions for Puerto Rico and struck the right balance between the larger requests from the states governors and the amount the Trump administration requested, which was half as much as the bill provides.

The legislation also included what may be the highest funding levels yet to help states reduce damage from future disasters. Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County), said it incorporated his ideas to stop spending disaster money on rebuilding the same structures in the same disaster-prone places.

The legislation would have created a mitigation fund for states and localities, and incentives to use it. Denham said for every $1 spent on mitigation, $4 is saved on disaster relief. The Trump administration, which has stifled numerous climate-change programs across the government, has been reluctant to fund such efforts.

Other Bay Area Democrats voting no on the disaster bill were Reps. Anna Eshoo, of Palo Alto, Barbara Lee, of Oakland, Zoe Lofgren, of San Jose, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of San Francisco, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and Eric Swalwell, of Dublin.

The bill died in the Senate when Republicans refused to take it up for consideration, citing lack of time.

All California Democrats except two, Jim Costa of Fresno and Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert (Riverside County) voted no on the short-term spending bill.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead
Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. 2015

Bay Area Rep. Zoe Lofgren lost her bid to become the Democrats top-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, as colleagues in her party caucus went instead with a New York congressman with more seniority.

Lofgren, D-San Jose, announced her intention to become the Judiciary Committees ranking minority-party member after Rep. John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who had held the spot, was forced to resign in response to allegations he had sexually harassed staffers.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Details of a regional ballot measure that would raise tolls to pay for billions in Bay Area transportation improvements are beginning to fall into place after results of a new poll show that the measure has sufficient support to pass.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission took no official action Wednesday afternoon, but after a two-hour discussion it was evident that officials are ready to ask voters in nine Bay Area counties in June to approve a $3 toll increase on the regions seven state-owned toll bridges, phased in a dollar at a time over as many as eight years.

The decision on whether to go to the ballot in June, and the details of Regional Measure 3, will be made at a Jan. 24 meeting.

Consensus emerged quickly after results of a public opinion poll, presented to commission members, showed that voters are likely to support the measure, which could raise up to $4.5 billion over 30 years.

There is clearly support for investment in transportation in the Bay Area  overwhelming support  and there is support for raising tolls to pay for that investment, said pollster Ruth Bernstein of EMC Research.

Support for a toll increase was relatively consistent among those surveyed whether the proposed boost was $1 to $2 phased in over four years or $3 spread over eight years. The toll-increase measure would need approval by a simple majority of voters, not a two-thirds supermajority required in most tax measures.

A majority of the 4,151 likely June voters said they would support all three of the potential toll-increase scenarios presented by pollsters.

A $1 toll hike in 2019 won 56 percent support, a $2 toll hike split between 2019 and 2023 garnered backing from 57 percent, and a $3 increase, levied in 2019, 2023 and 2027, earned support from 54 percent.

After those surveyed were informed of how the newfound toll revenue would be spent, support rose for all three scenarios: to 59 percent for the $1 increase, 62 percent for the $2 increase and 59 percent for the $3 increase.

The hybrid phone/Internet survey was conducted between Nov. 27 and Dec. 11 by EMC Research of Oakland. Results were weighted proportionally to represent the demographics of the nine-county electorate. The overall margin of error was 2.6 percentage points.

Commissioners said they were pleased with the results, particularly after hearing grumbling from the public for months about the possibility of bridge tolls rising.

I am very pleased, in fact surprised, at the level of support, especially from my county, said Commissioner Julie Pierce of Clayton in Contra Costa County.

Some commissioners wondered if they should shorten the period between toll increases from four years to two years to speed the arrival of the improvement money, but staffers said it wouldnt be necessary because many of the projects on the list wont be ready for construction for years.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in October granting the MTC the chance to ask Bay Area voters to raise their tolls to fund dozens of transportation projects.

The spending plan, established by the Legislature last summer after considerable Bay Area infighting, offers something for every part of the Bay Area, with a little more for the most populated areas. It includes both transit and road projects but continues the regions strategy of emphasizing public transportation while focusing highway improvements on chronic choke points.

The spending plan includes several transit projects: new BART and Muni Metro railcars, a BART extension to downtown San Jose, a Caltrain extension to the Transbay Terminal, a SMART extension to Windsor and Healdsburg, expansion of the San Francisco Bay ferry system, regional express buses and bus rapid transit in the East Bay.

Highway improvements include funding to complete the widening of the notorious Novato Narrows; new carpool lanes and conversion of existing lanes into combined carpool/toll lanes; new freeway interchanges and connections at Interstate 680 and Highway 4 in Martinez, Highway 101 and Highway 92 in San Mateo and Highway 101 and Interstate 580 in San Rafael; and reconstruction of Highway 37 in the North Bay, which floods during heavy rains.

Pollsters found that the most popular projects among those surveyed were highway improvements designed to reduce truck traffic, and a variety of transit improvements: the downtown San Jose BART extension, purchase of new BART cars, better Transbay bus service and carpool access across bridges, and a second transbay rail crossing for BART and other rail service.

BART, BART, BART, said Bernstein. Three of the five most popular projects involve BART.

What the project list does not include, to the disappointment of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep, Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, is a so-called Southern Crossing, a new transbay bridge that could accommodate cars as well as rail. In a letter two weeks ago, the pair demanded that the MTC study a new bridge.

The commission staff has said it will again study the feasibility of a Southern Crossing, which has been dismissed before because of the high cost and concerns about environmental damage. But there are no plans to make it part of the regional toll increase proposal.

Even before the toll increase makes it to the ballot, a coalition of Bay Area business and planning groups is pressing for creation of a broader plan that would raise money to fund a list of regional mega-projects to relieve congestion well into the future. But representatives of the Bay Area Council, Silicon Valley Leadership Group and SPUR, an urban planning think-tank, said Wednesday that their goal for 2018 is to get Regional Measure 3 passed.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
San Francisco came a big step closer to ending chronic homelessness for veterans Wednesday with the opening of a 70-unit supportive housing complex for people who have served in the military.

The complex is in the refurbished Auburn Hotel on Minna Street, near Sixth Street, and it brings to 300 the number of residential rooms or apartments opened in the past year in San Francisco for homeless veterans.

Filling these rooms means there are now fewer than 150 chronically homeless vets  meaning the most troubled, on the streets for at least a year  left living outside in San Francisco, according to Jeff Kositsky, head of the city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Kositsky said the city hopes to all but eliminate chronic homelessness among veterans in 2018. In addition to getting the remaining chronically homeless vets off the streets, that will involve finding shelter for the estimated 17 additional veterans who fall into that category each month in the city.

Officials try to deal with the problem by opening residential buildings like the Auburn, handing out rent vouchers, and giving people bus tickets home if there are people waiting for them there.

Its been a challenge, but were still committed to getting there, Kositsky said. He noted that in 2014, there were 350 chronically homeless veterans in San Francisco, and since then more than 900 have been housed.

Acting Mayor London Breed said at the Auburn that we are well on our way to ending chronic homelessness among veterans. She called the new complex the least we can do for people who put their lives on the line time and time again.

The Auburn is being leased by the city and managed by the nonprofit Delivering Innovation in Supportive Housing. Episcopal Community Services, another nonprofit, will provide counseling services on-site  a key component of the supportive part of supportive housing.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell announced Thursday that he will not enter the mayors race, putting an end to months of speculation about whether he would consider running.

In an email to his supporters, Farrell cited a desire to spend more time with his wife and three young children.

The timing is simply not right for our family, and I will always put them first, he said.

Farrell said he has long maintained that any future political decisions would be made through the lens of my family, period. The fact is, Im not willing to disappear from my family for the next six months during the course of a compressed mayoral campaign, he said in an interview.

The June 5, 2018, ranked-choice mayoral election was scheduled after Ed Lees sudden death Dec. 12.

Instead, Farrell said he would spend the rest of his time in office addressing the quality-of-life issues that matter most to San Franciscans: homelessness, housing and public safety, he said in his email.

Farrell is also spearheading an ambitious initiative to create a city-owned fiber optic Internet network connecting every resident and business in San Francisco to high-speed Internet service. Next year will be instrumental, Farrell said, for pushing that project toward reality.

Before his election to the board in 2010, Farrell worked as a corporate attorney in Silicon Valley and later spent five years as an investment banker. Hes also a co-founder of Thayer Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco that invests in companies in the hospitality and travel sectors. He was re-elected as the citys District Two supervisor in 2014 and will be termed out of office in 2018.

The field of potential mayoral candidates is expected to swell in the coming weeks, as the Jan. 9 deadline to file nomination paperwork draws closer. This week, Supervisor Jane Kim, former Supervisor Angela Alioto and a handful of lesser-known candidates have pulled papers to run for mayor.

Ten hopefuls have requested nomination forms from the city Department of Elections so far. They will not be official candidates until those forms are completed and returned.

Farrell said he intends to take a wait-and-see approach on whom he intends to support in the mayors race. Theres a long way between now and when the field is finalized, he said.

At this point, all options are on the table.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
MIAMI, Dec. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Five deserving healthcare heroes have been selected for the Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF) 2018 Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Action Awards. For 13 years, the nonprofit organization has celebrated the stem cell and regenerative medicine community's top innovators, leaders, and champions. The honorees will be recognized at a gala reception and dinner on January 23rd during the 13th annual World Stem Cell Summit (WSCS) at the Hyatt Regency Miami in Miami, Florida, which takes place from January 22-26, 2018.



This year's Action Award honorees include global leaders in the fight to end cancer as we know it; a world leader in advancing the emerging field of regenerative medicine and game-changing cell therapy medical treatments; the president of a non-profit group focused on developing cures for chronic, debilitating and fatal diseases; a sickle cell and stem cell advocate and founder/science administrator of the Axis Advocacy; and the founding director of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) at Japans Kyoto University. All of these distinguished honorees are devoted to improving health and developing cures by accelerating stem cell and regenerative medicine.

The 2018 Stem Cell Action Award Honorees Are:



Advocacy Award: Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.

Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden have demonstrated their leadership in and commitment to improving cancer research and care by injecting a sense of urgency and reimagining how the government, academia, non-profits, and the private sector can better organize their resources and systems. Vice President Bidens leadership of the national Cancer Moonshot effort dramatically advanced efforts to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. The Cancer Moonshot launched a series of coordinated efforts that incentivized bold, creative, and disruptive approaches to conducting cancer research, promoting prevention, and addressing critical needs in cancer care. In addition to driving this progress in both the public and private sectors, Vice President Biden also helped lead the effort to pass the 21st Century Cures Act that provides $1.8 billion over seven years for the Cancer Moonshots scientific priorities.

Building on the progress made under the Cancer Moonshot, Vice President and Dr. Biden launched the Biden Cancer Initiative in the Summer of 2017. The Biden Cancer Initiative is dedicated to developing and driving the implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research, and care, and to reducing disparities in cancer outcomes.

Leadership Award: Ed Bosarge  Dr. W. E. Ed Bosarge is an acknowledged world leader in the emerging field of regenerative medicine. His passionate commitment to advancing biotechnology innovations has resulted in game-changing treatments for orthopedic conditions, cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders, cancer, diabetes and other chronic conditions. As Chairman and Founder of Black Beret Life Sciences, Dr. Bosarge maintains an international focus on accelerating the development and clinical introduction of cutting edge regenerative medical, adult stem cell and immunotherapy treatments. In an effort to bring scientific discovery and medical innovation back to the forefront of clinical practice in the US, Dr. Bosarge recently spearheaded a federal legislative initiative supporting the FDAs leadership to advance approval of safe and effective cell-based therapies which would allow Americans with debilitating or life-threatening diseases expedited access to new potentially life-changing or life-saving treatments.

Advocacy Award: Shelley Ross and the Cure Alliance  Shelley Ross is President of The Cure Alliance, a non-profit group of top scientists, researchers, medical doctors and innovators, plus those who support their efforts to end suffering by developing cures for chronic, debilitating and fatal diseases. Their #1 goal is to help accelerate the movement of potential cures from the laboratory to the bedside. To that effort, they raise public awareness and make noise when necessary. In her position at The Cure Alliance, Ms. Ross calls on her experience as a three-time Emmy Award-winning executive producer who changed the landscape of morning, primetime and late-night television. She is best known for her 17 years at ABC News where she won three news and documentary Emmy awards, a Peabody award, and other honors. CBS has recently announced the development of a dramatic series based on her early years as a journalist. A natural story-teller, she presented the FDA with her dramatic first-person narrative of healing through regenerative medicine after conventional medicine had failed. Then she implored them not to unnecessarily restrict treatments for others. She also contributes to CellR4, the official journal of The Cure Alliance with Dr. Camillo Ricordi of the Cell Transplant Center and Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami, editor-in-chief and founder.

Inspiration Award: Adrienne Bell-Cors Shapiro -- A Sickle Cell Disease and stem cell Patient Advocate, the Founder and Science Administrator of the Axis Advocacy Sickle Cell Disease website, Ms. Shapiro is the fourth generation of mothers in her family to have a child born with Sickle Cell Disease. She was one of the first supporters of the work done by UCLAS Dr. Don Kohn in bone marrow and later stem cell transplants. As a firm believer that stem cell science will cure Sickle Cell Disease, she has dedicated a large portion of her life to improving the lives and overall healthcare of those living with the disease. In the past three years Ms. Shapiro has found her voice as a stem cell activist, speaking at multiple forums in support of the funding for clinical trials through the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM) and her role as an ambassador for the Americans for Cures Foundation. Her experience includes attending educational conferences and seminars, as well as meeting with lawmakers to promote support for the Sickle Cell Education Act.



International Leadership: Norio Nakatsuji  Professor Nakatsuji is the Founding Director of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) at Kyoto University in Japan, an institute which advances cross-disciplinary research and technological innovation based on cell biology, chemistry and physics. He is focused at making the best use of human pluripotent stem cells, including ES and iPS cells, for drug discovery and cell therapy by multidisciplinary R&D. He is part of the pioneering groups which established human ES cell lines and distributed them to other scientists free of charge. He is also a scientific founder of a start-up company, ReproCELL, Inc., which accomplished a successful IPO in 2013. Moreover, he has been taking leadership of several Japanese government-supported stem cell R&D collaboration projects between industry and academia. Professor Nakatsuji has been at the forefront of cutting edge work done in Japan, which is a great global collaborative hub for stem cell research and regenerative medicine whose regenerative market is growing exponentially. Japanese companies are investing in advanced therapies around the globe. He is a valued advocate and philanthropist and recently founded and funded, the Nakatsuji Foresight Foundation dedicated to support the next generation students and scientists by advancing programs relating to education, science and technology.

The 13th World Stem Cell Summit has garnered international attention. Brought to you by RMF, this original, translation-focused, international and partnering conference is expecting 1,000 attendees from over 30 countries in the world, more than 210 participating organizations, and 100+ speakers.

This year the WSCS will be co-located with the industry's premier partnering event; Phacilitate World Leaders Forum, incorporating Cell & Gene Therapy World, Immuno-Oncology Frontiers World, and our shared Cord Blood & Perinatal Stem Cells track. Co-organizers are the Regenerative Medicine Foundation, Karolinska Institute, Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund/TEDCO, Mayo Clinic, The New York Stem Cell Foundation, Nova Southeastern University and NSU Cell Therapy Institute, The Cure Alliance, Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, University of Florida Center for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medicine. Together, this will be the world's largest interdisciplinary event dedicated to Advanced Therapies and Regenerative Medicine, the one meeting on the global calendar attended by all of the critical decision-makers from both inside and outside of the eld.

To register or for a complete detailed timeline and agenda, please visit: http://worldstemcellsummit.com/. If you are interested in a customized sponsorship or an exhibit, please contact us today at 1-888-238-1423 or email Bernard@worldstemcellsummit.com.

About the Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF)

The nonprofit Regenerative Medicine Foundation fosters strategic collaborations to accelerate the development of regenerative medicine to improve health and deliver cures. RMF pursues its mission by producing its flagship World Stem Cell Summit, honoring leaders through the Stem Cell Action Awards, publishing with our official Platinum media and journal partner Stem Cells Translational Medicine, and promoting educational initiatives. For further information about RMF please visit: http://regmedfoundation.org/

About the World Stem Cell Summit

Produced by the 501(c)(3) non-profit Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF), and in its 13th year, the World Stem Cell Summit 2018 is co-located with the Phacilitate Leadership Forum, Cell & Gene Therapy World and Immuno-Oncology Frontiers World conferences. It is the most inclusive and expansive interdisciplinary, networking, and partnering meeting in the stem cell science and regenerative medicine field. With the overarching purpose of fostering biomedical research, funding, and investments targeting cures, the Summit is the single conference serving the diverse ecosystem of stakeholders.

Media Contact:

Howard R. Miller

305-573-0882

Howard@gohrmc.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/62027bf9-d954-482c-8b04-afd166e8b40f

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/abc88b3c-84d0-4a7c-988d-80288576f923
The California Supreme Court refused to intervene Wednesday in a state commissions disciplinary proceedings against veteran Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Mills, whose lawyer claims the commission has a conflict of interest.

The Commission on Judicial Performance, which has reprimanded Mills three times in the past, filed new allegations against him in October, accusing him of holding an improper private meeting with a prosecutor in a drunken-driving case and, in a second case, trying to deny a defendant good-behavior credits that could reduce his jail term for contempt of court.

The defendant in the second case was Joseph Sweeney, who separately has accused the state commission of covering up judicial misconduct, and has led a campaign that prompted the state auditor to begin the first probe of the commissions operations.

Citing Sweeneys involvement in Mills disciplinary case, Mills lawyer, James A. Murphy, asked the state Supreme Court to remove the commission from the proceedings and appoint an independent panel to review the disciplinary charges.

Our position is that a reasonably objective person would conclude that the Commission on Judicial Performance has a hard time being fair and impartial with regard to Judge Mills, Murphy said in an interview.

A judge who heard a case under similar circumstances, and did not step aside, would be subject to discipline, he said.

But the court unanimously denied the request Wednesday, in a one-line order, leaving the case with the commission. The commission has not yet scheduled a hearing, where a panel of hearing officers would decide whether the allegations against Mills are true and, if so, what discipline should be imposed. It has the power to remove a judge from the bench, subject to review by the states high court.

Mills, a former prosecutor, was appointed to the bench by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1995 and has been elected by county voters to a succession of six-year terms, most recently in 2014.

The commission privately reprimanded him in 2001 for ignoring a defendants request for a lawyer and trying to coerce the defendant to plead guilty. It publicly reprimanded him in 2006 for making what it described as discourteous and demeaning comments to people appearing in his court. And it reprimanded him again in 2014 for contacting a juvenile court judge who was hearing a case against Mills son.

In one of the new allegations, the commission said that after another judge had found Sweeney in contempt of court in a family law case, Mills sentenced Sweeney to 25 days in jail in August 2016 but told him and his lawyer he could get the sentence cut in half for good behavior in jail. But the commission said Mill imposed the sentence without half-time credits, told the sheriffs office not to reduce Sweeneys term, and relented only when Sweeneys lawyer contacted him nine days later.

In the other case, the commission said, while a jury in Mills court was deliberating drunken-driving charges in March 2016, the judge met with the prosecutor, talked about his own experience prosecuting such cases, and mentioned data that might be used to help the prosecution.

The jury deadlocked, but Mills did not remove himself from the case until the district attorneys office disclosed the private conversation, the commission said.

The case is Mills vs. CJP, S245704.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
We recommend these recently reviewed titles:

God

A Human History

By Reza Aslan

(Random House; 298 pages; $28)

Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent journey through the history of human thinking about the divine.

No Time to Spare

Thinking About What Matters

By Ursula K. Le Guin

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 215 pages; $22)

Distilled from her blog at www.ursulakleguin.com, Le Guins writing here is particularly concerned with the process of aging. None of the entries feel tossed off, nor do any feel labored.

Women & Power

A Manifesto

By Mary Beard

(Liveright; 115 pages; $15.95)

Slim but potent, this manifesto by the Cambridge classicist is a subversive and witty argument about what power has meant to Western civilization from ancient times, and how its meaning could be changed in the future.

Dunbar

By Edward St. Aubyn

(Hogarth Shakespeare; 244 pages; $25)

St. Aubyns new novel is a retelling of King Lear, an undertaking that the widely admired British author has approached with plenty of cheek.
In 1874, Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, a 17-year-old orphan, persuaded his uncle to allow him to join the French merchant marine. After promising never to forget that wherever you may sail, you are always sailing towards Poland, Konrad set out for Marseille, France, and then London, where he found work as a deck hand and, eventually, as a captain in Britains legendary merchant fleet. For two decades, Korzeniowski traveled the world, from Malaysia to the Congo to the Caribbean, along with Western imperialism and colonial rule.

By the end of the 19th century, Konrad Korzeniowski had become Joseph Conrad, a naturalized British subject. I may have been a seaman, he would tell his amanuensis, but I am a writer of prose. And, indeed, he was.

In The Dawn Watch, Maya Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard University, explores Conrads life and work with the compass of an historian, the chart of a biographer, and the navigational sextant of a fiction reader. She demonstrates that Conrads four great novels (The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and Nostromo), drew on his experiences  the flimsiness of ideals hed encountered among the nationalists of his youth, the perils of modernization hes seen at sea, the malignancy of greed hed witnessed in Africa  to illuminate the phenomenon we now call globalization.

Jasanoff is a splendid storyteller and stylist. As a boy, she tells us, Conrad gobbled Dickens in Polish translation. Although Dickens London was disappearing when he arrived there, he framed his autobiographical reflections through Dickens, turning a story of arrival into a story of becoming.

In The Secret Agent, Jasanoff writes, Conrads London, like Dickens, swallows light, gags on mud, coughs up soot, and chokes in fog. A character wandering through the swarming metropolis has a chance encounter with an individual who moves the plot. Bleak House has an act of spontaneous combustion; The Secret Agent, which loosely connects the Russian Empire Conrad left with Victorian London, features a dynamite blast. Konrad Korzeniowski read Dickens; Joseph Conrad rewrote him.

Jasanoff is equally adept in supplying historical context for her narrative. Personal decisions, she points out, often turn on conditions remote, if not invisible to the individual making them. In 1874, Conrad almost certainly did not know that England was the very best place for a European sailor to find employment. Preeminence in steel production, engineering excellence and command of a global network of coaling stations helped England use steamships to control about 70 percent of world trade. Although other European nations required at least two-thirds of sailors and one hundred percent of officers to be citizens, England had no quotas  and offered wages higher than its competitors. Not surprisingly, then, about 20 percent of the crew on British ships were continental Europeans. Moreover, in the merchant marine, unlike the Royal Navy, ordinary seamen could become captains by meeting minimum service requirements and passing an exam administered by the Board of Trade.

Most important, Jasanoff provides compelling assessments of Conrads novels. In Lord Jim, she writes, Conrad wrote about an indigenous culture under colonial rule as he had seen it in Malaysia  from the deck of a steamship. Conrad knew more about Anglo-Dutch rivalry, merchants, pilots and lascars, Jasanoff adds, than he knew about Malay sovereignty, the nature of Islam, or the Dayak societies of Borneo. His fiction rarely ventured outside the heads of European characters.

That said, Conrad was also on to something. Jim did not project the confidence of imperialism at the height of its power. Drawing on stereotypes about the Orient, Jim ruminated about the impact progress and civilization, with their utilitarian lies and fractured communities, would have on Malays. Noting as well the abandonment of honor and honest authenticity in the West, Conrad has Jim rediscover in a moment of illusion the deep hidden truths of works of art and of self-sacrifice.

In Heart of Darkness, what had been a search for routes in Conrads journal became a search for meaning in the Belgian Congo. The now famous cry, The horror! The horror!, Jasanoff suggests, hung as an epitaph over Kurtzs contradictions: the agent who brought civilization and stole ivory, embraced savage customs and women and promised to exterminate all the brutes. The horror, then, could well mean, Anyone could be savage. Everywhere could go dark.

The only novel set in a place Conrad had never visited (South America), Nostromo, published in 1904, posited with extraordinary prescience an end game for European colonialism, in which what one nation gained, another would lose, with an American-led consortium of material interests in the ascendant, writes Jasanoff.

With a glance fixed upon nothing from under a fixed frown, hoping against hope to restore vanished Arcadia, but convinced that somehow imperialism would continue, albeit with the term empire no longer in use, Conrad concluded that the question for the future was not what would happen. It was when and how. Fittingly, Jasanoff reveals, Conrad was in Poland in the summer of 1914 when World War I commenced.

Conrad made me see, Jasanoff concludes, with both eyes fixed on the 21st century, that todays hearts of darkness are to be found wherever civilizing missions serve as covers for exploitation. In manufacturing jobs performed by robots. In material interests located in China and the United States. In the hollowness of civilization and what appears to be a universal potential for savagery.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. Email: books@sfchronicle.com

The Dawn Watch

Joseph Conrad in a Global World

By Maya Jasanoff

(Penguin Press; 375 pages; $30)
Coinbase is investigating allegations of insider trading on its cryptocurrency exchange in the hours before the company announced it would enable purchases of the bitcoin spinoff known as bitcoin cash.

Bitcoin cash surged in the hours before the San Francisco companys announcement, while bitcoin prices tumbled the most in two months.

It appears the price of bitcoin cash on other exchanges increased in the hours before our announcement, Brian Armstrong, chief executive at Coinbase, said in a blog post. While theres no indication of any wrongdoing at this time, he said that we will be conducting an investigation.

Armstrong said he will not hesitate to fire any employee found to have violated Coinbase policies, which bar them from trading on material non-public information  such as when an asset will be added to the service.

Taxes

Some workers

get bonuses

At least three major companies are building goodwill in the wake of President Trumps tax cuts by finding ways to pass along some of their likely savings to employees.

AT&T says it will pay a $1,000 bonus to 200,000 workers once the tax bill passed Wednesday is signed into law. The Justice Department is currently suing to block a proposed $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, a deal Trump has objected to as not good for the country.

Ohios Fifth Third Bancorp says it will pay a $1,000 bonus to more than 13,500 employees, as well as raise the minimum wage for 3,000 of its workers to $15 an hour.

Major government contractor Boeing will provide an additional $300 million for job training, facility upgrades and charitable giving.

AT&Ts relationship with the Trump administration has had its ups and downs. Even as CEO Randall Stephenson praised the president, the Justice Department is busy preparing its antitrust case against AT&Ts $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Stephenson has characterized the deal as strategically vital, but Trump has said the transaction would harm consumers.

On the other hand, AT&T scored a victory when the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission gutted utility-style regulations for Internet service providers.

In the 2016 elections, Republican candidates got 62 percent of $2.7 million in donations to federal candidates from AT&Ts political action committee that pools contributions from employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Stephenson has averaged a bonus of about $5.2 million over the past three years.

Technology

Apps to work

on Macs, too

Apples iPhone and iPad introduced a novel way of interacting with computers: via easy-to-use applications, accessible in the highly curated App Store.

The same approach hasnt worked nearly as well on desktops and laptops. The Mac App Store is a ghost town of limited selection and rarely updated programs. Now Apple plans to change that by giving people a way to use a single set of apps that work equally well across its family of devices: iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Starting as early as next year, software developers will be able to design a single application that works with a touch-screen or mouse and track pad depending on whether its running on the iPhone and iPad operating system or on Mac hardware, according to people familiar with the matter.

Restaurants

L.A. Chipotle

workers ill

Health officials are investigating a Chipotle restaurant in Los Angeles after the burrito chain reported that some of its workers were ill with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The company has struggled to win back customers after previous food safety issues.

Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold confirmed Wednesday that the company had reported the illnesses to health officials and said the employees are being held out of work. The restaurant was inspected Tuesday and remains open, Arnold said.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it did not receive any reports from other Chipotle locations and it is working to determine the cause of illness. Chipotle said it is aware of only a few reports of customer illnesses from user-generated reporting sites.

Chipotle saw its sales plunge after an E. coli outbreak in 2015.

 Chronicle News Services
A few weeks ago, Verizon advertised on Facebook to recruit applicants for a unit focused on financial planning and analysis. The ad showed a smiling, Millennial woman seated at a computer and promised that new hires could look forward to a rewarding career in which they would be more than just a number.

Some relevant numbers were not immediately evident. The promotion was set to run on the Facebook feeds of users 25 to 36 years old who lived in the nations capital, or had recently visited there, and had demonstrated an interest in finance. For a vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people who check Facebook every day, the ad did not exist.

Verizon is among dozens of the nations leading employers  including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself  that placed recruitment ads limited to particular age groups, an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times has found.

The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebooks business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers.

Several experts questioned whether the practice is in keeping with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment. Many jurisdictions make it unlawful to aid or abet age discrimination, a provision that could apply to companies like Facebook that distribute job ads.

Its blatantly unlawful, said Debra Katz, a Washington employment lawyer who represents victims of discrimination.

Facebook defended the practice. Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: It helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work, said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

The revelations come at a time when the unregulated power of the tech companies is under increased scrutiny, and Congress is weighing whether to limit the immunity that it granted to tech companies in 1996 for third-party content on their platforms.

Facebook has argued in court filings that the law, the Communications Decency Act, makes it immune from liability for discriminatory ads.

This year the social network added a section devoted to job ads. Facebook allows advertisers to select their audience, and then the Menlo Park company finds the chosen users with the extensive data it collects about members.

The use of age targets emerged in a review of data originally compiled by ProPublica readers for a project about political ad placement on Facebook. Many of the ads include a disclosure by Facebook about why the user is seeing the ad, which can be anything from their age to their affinity for folk music.

Other tech companies also offer employers opportunities to discriminate by age. ProPublica bought job ads on Google and LinkedIn that excluded audiences older than 40  and the ads were instantly approved. Google said it does not prevent advertisers from displaying ads based on the users age. After being contacted by ProPublica, LinkedIn changed its system to prevent such targeting in employment ads.

On Wednesday, a class-action complaint alleging age discrimination was filed in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of the Communications Workers of America and its members  as well as all Facebook users 40 or older who may have been denied the chance to learn about job openings. The plaintiffs lawyers said the complaint was based on ads for dozens of companies that they had discovered on Facebook.

The database of Facebook ads collected by ProPublica shows how often and precisely employers recruit by age. In a search for part-time package handlers, United Parcel Service ran an ad aimed at people 18 to 24. State Farm pitched its hiring promotion to those 19 to 35.

Some companies, including Target, State Farm and UPS, defended their targeting as a part of a broader recruitment strategy that reached candidates of all ages. The group of companies making this case included Facebook itself, which ran career ads on its own service, many for people 25 to 60. We completely reject the allegation that these advertisements are discriminatory, said Goldman of Facebook.

After being contacted by ProPublica and the Times, other employers, including Amazon, Northwestern Mutual and the New York City Department of Education, said they had changed or were changing their recruiting strategies.

Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Several companies argued that targeted recruiting on Facebook was comparable to advertising opportunities in publications like the AARP magazine or Teen Vogue, which are for particular age groups. But this obscures an important distinction. Anyone can buy Teen Vogue and see an ad. Online, however, people outside the targeted age groups can be excluded in ways they will never learn about.

Mark Edelstein, a fitfully employed social-media marketing strategist who is 58 and legally blind, says he never had serious trouble finding a job until he turned 50. Once you reach your 50s, he said, you may as well be dead.

Edelstein, who lives in St. Louis, spends most of his days scouring sites like LinkedIn and Indeed and pitching hiring managers with personalized appeals. When he scrolled through his Facebook ads on a Wednesday in December, he saw a variety of ads reflecting his interest in social media marketing: ads for marketing software HubSpot (15 free infographic templates!) and TripIt, which he used to book a trip to visit his mother in Florida.

What he did not see was a single ad for a job in his profession, including one identified by ProPublica that was being shown to younger users: a posting for a social media director job at HubSpot. The company asked that the ad be shown to people ages 27 to 40 who live or were recently living in the United States.

Hypothetically, had I seen a job for a social media director at HubSpot, even if it involved relocation, I ABSOLUTELY would have applied for it, Edelstein said by email when told about the ad.

A HubSpot spokeswoman, Ellie Botelho, said that the job was posted on many sites, including LinkedIn, the Ladders and Built in Boston, and was open to anyone meeting the qualifications regardless of age or any other demographic characteristic.

She added that the use of the targeted age-range selection on the Facebook ad was frankly a mistake on our part given our lack of experience using that platform for job postings and not a feature we will use again.

Edelstein says he understands why marketers would not want to target ads at him: It doesnt surprise me a bit. Why would they want a 58-year-old white guy whos disabled?

Some companies contend that there are permissible reasons to filter audiences by age, as with an ad for entry-level analyst positions at Goldman Sachs that was distributed to people 18-64. A Goldman Sachs spokesman, Andrew Williams, said showing it to people above that age range would have wasted money: Roughly 25 percent of those who typically click on the firms untargeted ads are 65 or older, but people that age almost never apply for the analyst job.

We welcome and actively recruit applicants of all ages, Williams said. For some of our social media ads, we look to get the content to the people most likely to be interested but do not exclude anyone from our recruiting activity.

This article was written through collaboration between the New York Times and ProPublica. Julia Angwin and Ariana Tobin are ProPublica writers. Noam Scheiber is a New York Times writer.
This holiday season, as giant shipping operations once again struggle to handle the e-commerce explosion, some mall retailers have found a surprising way to compete: same-day delivery.

Last week, Target said it would pay $550 million for Shipt, a fast-growing firm in Birmingham, Ala., that operates a $99-a-year grocery delivery service. In August, Target acquired Grand Junction, a San Francisco transportation technology company that connects retailers to a same-day delivery network of more than 700 drivers.

Best Buy expanded same-day delivery to 40 cities this month using Deliv, a crowdsourced service in Menlo Park.

Same-day delivery is a service that our guests are asking for more and more often, Target Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan said in an interview posted to the Minneapolis companys website.

By acquiring Shipt, well be able to take advantage of our network of stores and Shipts technology platform and shopper community to quickly offer same-day delivery to millions of our guests, Mulligan said.

Traditional retailers are trying to tap what some experts call the instant gratification economy.

We can get our news instantly, said Anthony Dukes, professor of marketing at the University of Southern Californias Marshall School of Business. We can have food delivered instantly. We can stream programming instantly. That has given us higher expectations for retail.

The catalyst may have come in February, when statistics showed that fast-delivery king Amazon.com accounted for more than half of all e-commerce growth in the previous 12 months, said Tushar Patel, chief marketing officer at Kibo, a Dallas company that helps merchants more closely tie their online and brick-and-mortar operations.

That was a tipping point, Patel said. That was news to other retailers that they would have to constantly push the delivery envelope. Same-day has become the new retail standard.

Immediate gratification wasnt always so important. Mail-order catalogs came with the caveat allow six weeks for delivery.

But the time customers are willing to wait for satisfaction continues to shrink, from a week to two days to overnight to the same day. They also dont want to pay for it.

We have had studies that show 70 percent of consumers expect free shipping, Patel said. An even higher percentage, he added, said free shipping is compelling enough to make a purchase and not abandon a shopping cart.

To manage all that, Amazons competitors have to play both sides of the aisle, said management Professor Jay Prag, by offering the rough equivalent of same-day shipping but with a little effort by the shopper: buy online, pick up in store. (Many also offer buy online, return in store.)

Target wants to be a hybrid, said Prag, who teaches at Claremont Graduate Universitys Drucker School of Management. Have the fast-delivery options but keep the brick-and-mortar presence.

Los Angeles resident Danielle Kent, 23, said Amazon.com raised her expectations, with its quick delivery and ability to track shipments.

Coming home from a long day of work and finding what you ordered that morning waiting for you on your doorstep when you get home  its almost like someone sent you a gift, even though you bought it yourself, said Kent, an account coordinator for the Konnect Agency in Los Angeles.

Kent said she never felt as comfortable with smaller retailers where you still have to wait weeks, or it even sometimes gets lost in the mail.

That type of feeling  and figuring out how to tap into it  was part of what drove Daphne Carmeli to create Deliv in 2012. Her quandary: how to jump on the fast-delivery train without an expensive investment in warehouses, vehicles and customer base.

Deliv borrows some of the philosophy behind Uber and Lyft by relying on a small army of independent contractors who drive their own vehicles. Each has to pass a background check and have a valid drivers license and insurance.

We all have a GPS source in our pockets with our smartphones, Carmeli said, so we can mobilize a group of drivers, know exactly where they are and who can get the job done first.

Deliv now serves 4,000 merchants in 23 states, ranging from big retailers like Walmart, Home Depot and Best Buy to small merchants.

We are their same-day delivery option, Carmeli said. The shortest delivery window we will do is 45 minutes to an hour. We do returns as well.

Prag said economies of scale matter greatly in whether companies such as Target will succeed with high-speed delivery.

This will work in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, other big cities, where there is enough demand density to justify the delivery costs, Prag said. It wont work in Oklahoma.

Still, the hashtag #samedaydelivery has acquired a life of its own. Plug it into an Instagram search and nearly 58,000 shopping offers from around the world will show up, plugging everything from high-heel shoes from Nigeria to flowers from Ireland, all offering same-day delivery.

With mainstream delivery providers UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service struggling to keep up with record online shopping, Kibos Patel said delivery services such as Shipt and Deliv will remain in high demand.

Companies like Target dont have a lot of confidence in the capacity of the traditional logistics providers, Patel said. They want to control their own destiny.

Ronald D. White is a Los Angeles Times writer.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A pair of thieves snatching packages off porches in Hayward were nabbed in a holiday season sting when they swiped a parcel police implanted with tracking device, officials said Thursday.

Package theft is a nettlesome problem for police departments at this time of year, when gifts are delivered on doorsteps around the Bay Area and country. The so-called porch pirates who steal the packages usually go undetected.

Its been an nagging issue in the Bay Area this year. In Mountain View, police announced that there has been a rash of package thefts, and said that theyre seeking a suspect who they believe may have been responsible for a string of them.

In Hayward, a series of package thefts prompted such concern that police devised a technological trap for the culprits.

You hear enough of whats going on and eventually you say, Hey, its time to do whatever we have to to stop this from happening, said Lt. Guy Jakub of the Hayward Police Department.

So police came up with a plan, which Jakub said is based on similar undercover operations they do year-round. Officers placed a decoy packagean Amazon box with a tracking device in iton a porch where parcels had been previously stolen.

The package was placed on the porch at 11 a.m. Wednesday, and by 2 p.m. thieves took the bait.

Police tracked the device to a white Acura. When they searched the car, officers recovered not just the decoy package, but several parcels that had been pilfered from porches.

We found a couple dozen stolen items, Jakub said. One item was a stuffed bear in a Santa hat, which police said will be returned to its rightful recipient in time for Christmas.

Police arrested two suspects, who were both on probation for theft. Their names were not immediately released, but they are now in custody at the Hayward Police Department awaiting charges.

Hayward Police hope that this operation, and ones like it, will be a deterrent to others thinking about commit ting similar crimes.

Theres more than one person in the Bay Area doing this, said Lt. Eric Krimm, also of the Hayward Police Department. Were sure there are other persons out there who may be temped to commit this type of a theft and hopefully when they realize that these types of operations are being conducted, it may discourage them.
21 December 2017 - The Swiss operating company Nord Stream 2 AG and Kvaerner have signed a contract for delivery of onshore facilities for a new Russian gas export pipeline. The contract value is somewhat above NOK 600 million.

The planned new Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea will provide reliable, affordable and sustainable gas supplies to the European market. Kvaerner's subsidiary Kvaerner LLC is contract partner for the work related to the construction of parts of the onshore facilities at the pipeline's export landfall facilities in the St. Petersburg region. The work will include procurement and project management for civil, mechanical and piping works in addition to installation of some onshore pipelines and service buildings at the facilities.

The scope of Kvaerner LLC's contract consists mainly of civil works and foundations, procurement and installation of piping and valves for the pipe cleaning pig launch and receiver unit. The scope also includes installation of the approximately two kilometre long adjacent pipeline onshore, as well as construction of permanent buildings for operation of the gas export plant. Design of the installations will be performed by Nord Stream 2 AG's engineering contractor.

"We are excited to be selected for this important new project. We have extensive experience from both delivery of onshore plants and from solid track record on execution of projects in Russia", says Hans Petter Mlmen, Executive Vice President for Concrete & New Solutions in Kvaerner.

Kvaerner LLC's execution of the Russian export landfall facilities will take place in cooperation with local subcontractors and international suppliers. Collaborating with other international EPC contractors, Kvaerner LLC is part of a strong team which will ensure the execution of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with focus on HSSE, quality and efficiency.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:

Investor inquiries:

Ingrid Aarsnes, VP Investor Relations & Communications, Kvaerner, Mob: +47 950 38 364, email: ingrid.aarsnes@kvaerner.com

Media inquiries:

Torbjrn Andersen, Head of Communications, Kvaerner, Mob: +47 928 85 542, email: torbjorn.andersen@kvaerner.com

About Kvaerner:

Kvaerner is a leading provider of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services, and delivers offshore installations and onshore plants for upstream oil and gas production around the world. Kvaerner ASA, through its subsidiaries and affiliates ("Kvaerner"), is an international contractor and preferred partner for oil and gas operators and other engineering and fabrication contractors. Kvaerner and its approximately 2 600 HSSE-focused and experienced employees are recognised for delivering some of the world's most amazing and demanding projects.

In 2016, Kvaerner's Field Development segment had consolidated annual revenues of more than NOK 10 billion and the company reported an order backlog at 30 September 2017 of NOK 8.2 billion. Kvaerner is publicly listed with the ticker "KVAER" at the Oslo Stock Exchange. For further information, please visit www.kvaerner.com.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to our press releases, please see our web page: http://www.kvaerner.com/en/toolsmenu/Media/Subscribe-to-releases/
WASHINGTON  A new report concludes that a Department of Homeland Security pilot program improperly gathers data on Americans when it requires passengers embarking on foreign flights to undergo facial recognition scans to ensure they havent overstayed visas.

The report, released on Thursday by researchers at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Universitys law school, called the system an invasive surveillance tool that the department has installed at nearly a dozen airports without going through a required federal rule-making process.

The reports authors examined dozens of Department of Homeland Security documents and raised questions about the accuracy of facial recognition scans. They said the technology had high error rates and was subject to bias, because the scans often fail to properly identify women and African Americans.

Its telling that DHS cannot identify a single benefit actually resulting from airport face scans at the departure gate, said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the center and one of the reports co-authors.

DHS doesnt need a face-scanning system to catch travelers without a photo on file. Its alarming that DHS still hasnt supplied evidence for the necessity of this $1 billion program, he added.

A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, did not have an immediate comment in response.

The report comes as Homeland Security officials begin to roll out a biometric exit system that uses facial recognition scanning in 2018 at all U.S. airports with international flights.

Customs and Border Protection has been testing a number of biometric programs, partnering with several airlines in Atlanta, Boston, New York and Washington. It will cost up to $1 billion, raised from certain visa fee surcharges over the next decade.

Customs officials say the biometric system has also produced some successes in the pilot testing and has helped catch people who have entered the United States illegally and are traveling on fake documents. They noted that facial scans and fingerprints  unlike travel documents  cannot be forged or altered and therefore give agents an additional tool to ensure border security.

The biometric system being tested by the Department of Homeland Security can be used either with a small portable handheld device or a kiosk equipped with a camera.

Ron Nixon is a New York Times writer.
CHICAGO  A Chicago foundation awarded $100 million Wednesday to two New York-based organizations to help educate millions of Syrian refugee children through home visits, learning centers and local versions of the educational program Sesame Street.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee as joint winners of a competitive grant program aimed at solving critical problems. Their project was chosen from more than 1,900 submitted proposals.

Officials with the organizations said they will use the five-year grant to address toxic stress experienced by displaced children in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, in addition to educational basics. Roughly 9.4 million children will have access to the local version of Sesame Street in Arabic and Iraqi Kurdish through television, cell phones and direct services. The emphasis will be on language, reading, math and social skills, along with lessons on inclusion and equality.

Ryan Heffernan/Associated Press

The program also will include child development centers; community sites where organizers envision families will have access to books and videos; and home visits to bring books, toys and parenting resources. An estimated 1.5 million children will receive in-person services, organization officials said.

There is no more pressing issue. This is the humanitarian crisis of our time, said Sherrie Westin, an executive vice president at Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit organization behind the longtime television show.

The money represents a significant cash infusion for not only the organizations, but efforts in general to help refugee children. Officials with both Sesame, a nonprofit group with about a $117 million budget, and the International Rescue Committee believe its one of the biggest grants of its kind. IRCs annual budget is roughly $750 million.

Westin said she hopes the evidence-based program will become an educational model for refugee children worldwide.

Officials said theres already infrastructure in place for some of the community centers because of IRC. The International Rescue Committee is a humanitarian organization founded in 1933 that works in dozens of countries.

Sophia Tareen is an Associated Press writer.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited the American Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to offer holiday greetings to troops Thursday. It was the first trip there by a Pentagon chief in almost 16 years.

Mattis was meeting with troops, not touring the detention facilities or discussing detainee policy options. His stay comes amid uncertainty over the Trump administrations policy on continued use of the military prison.

President Trump hasnt released any Guantanamo prisoners or added any to the list of men who have been officially cleared to go home or to a third country for resettlement.

Mattis is the first defense secretary to visit Guantanamo Bay since Donald Rumsfeld in January 2002, just weeks after the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan in the early stages of the fight against terrorism. The detention center was set up to hold suspected terrorists shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Forty-one prisoners remain in detention. Ten have been charged by a military commission. Five have been cleared to leave, but their status is in doubt under the current administration.

That leaves 26 in indefinite confinement, though some eventually could be cleared for release, too, or prosecuted. Lawyers are considering filing new legal challenges, arguing that a policy of no releases means the detainees confinement no longer can be legally justified as a temporary wartime measure.

President Obama tried to close the detention center, but was thwarted by Congress. Lawmakers objected to transferring detainees to confinement facilities in the United States.

Mattis has said little publicly about Guantanamo Bay since taking office in January. The subject wasnt raised in his Senate confirmation hearing.

Asked whether the U.S. should keep detainees without trial, he said: Long-term detention is appropriate when an unprivileged enemy belligerent poses a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.

Robert Burns is an Associated Press writer.
1 Amtrak derailment: The fight to reinstate criminal charges against the engineer in a deadly 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia will carry over into next year. A judge on Wednesday told prosecutors that she will review Brandon Bostians case, and she set a hearing for February where prosecutors may have the chance to argue that the engineer should be held criminally accountable for the derailment. A different judge in September threw out involuntary manslaughter and other charges after finding evidence pointed to an accident. Eight people died and more than 200 people were injured when the train rounded a curve at more than twice the speed limit and derailed.

2 Tie vote: A court has now declared a tie in a Virginia legislative election that one day earlier appeared to have gone to a Democrat by a single vote, the latest dramatic twist in a contest likely to decide control of the state House. A three-judge panel certified the 94th District in Newport News as tied at 11,608 to 11,608 on Wednesday, a day after a recount appeared to give Democrat Shelly Simonds the victory over Republican David Yancey. Virginia Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn said the board would have to pick a winner at random, likely picking a name from a bowl.
Dublin, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "The Market for Stem Cell Exosomes" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.



Exosomes are rapidly gaining momentum as a strategy for accessing the therapeutic effects of stem cells without the risks and difficulties of administering the cells to patients. With exosome companies multiplying in number and exosome publications on the rise, it is clear that exosomes can be commercialized as therapeutic agents, diagnostic tools, research tools, cosmeceuticals, and more.

Although long overlooked, exosomes are rapidly gaining momentum as a novel strategy for accessing the therapeutic effects of stem cells without the risks and difficulties of administering the cells to patients.



Although exosomes were discovered more than 30 years ago, it was not until recently that the scientific community began to give credit to exosomes for a range of promising traits. Ten years ago in 2006, there were only 76 articles published about exosomes on PubMed.gov. Today, there are more than 4,400 articles published about exosomes on PubMed.gov, of which approximately 25% were released in the past year.



When exosome publications are analyzed, U.S. authors have published approximately 40% of the articles and Chinacomes in second place. When the term "exosome" is searched in the scientific literature, Dr. Susanne Gabrielsson from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden is the leading author, with 37 articles.



On the venture capital front, there has also been a great deal of market activity. In January 2016, Exosome Diagnostics closed $60 million in Series B financing, which it followed in July 2017 with $30 million in Series C financing. Similarly,Codiak Biosciences was launched in 2016 when the MD Anderson Cancer Center joined two venture capital firms to form the company with more than $80 million in series A and B financing. On November 29, 2017, Codiak BioSciences added another $76.5 million in Series C financing. In May 2017, ExCoBio Inc. raised US $11 million in a Series A funding round.



Companies leading the charge in the area of exosome therapeutics include Anjarium Biosciences, Capricor Therapeutics, Codiak Biosciences, Creative Medical Technology Holdings, Everkine Corporation, Evox Therapeutics, Exogenus Therapeutics, Kimera Labs, ReNeuron, and Unicyte AG, a subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care.



Numerous life science companies have also launched tools and systems to support exosome research, including Beckman Coulter, Exiqon, System Biosciences (SBI), Lonza, Thermo Fisher, Qiagen, ZenBio, and more. In particular, Lonza made aggressive investments in the sector through its May 2017 acquisition of HansaBioMed Life Sciences and investment into Exosomics.



Similarly, techniques for large-scale clinical-grade manufacture of stem cell exosomes is becoming a focal point within the industry, as highlighted by a recent partnership between RoosterBio and Exopharmand Lonza's strategic acquisitions.



To characterize this rapidly forming marketplace, we have released a 134 page market report that explores growing demand for exosome therapeutics, diagnostics, research tools, consumer care products, and manufacturing technologies. It also reveals trend rate data for exosome patents, grants, scientific publications, andclinical trials, and present social analytics from Google Trends and Google Adwords.



Claim it to:

Identify the five market segments that compose the industry

Reveal the market players competing in each niche

Identify opportunities for exosome product development

Access market size determinations and projections through 2022

Key Topics Covered:



1. Abstract



2. Research Methodology



3. Report Purpose



4. Key Characteristics of Exosomes



5. Types of Stem Cell Derived Exosomes



6. Advantages of Exosomes



7. Therapeutic Effects of Exosomes



8. Role of Stem Cell Exosomes in Cancer



9. Exosome Characterization



10. Rates of Exosome Scientific Publications (All Cell Types)



11. Trend Data



12. Social Analytics



13. Timeline of Exosome Industry Events



14. Profiles of Companies Developing Exosome Technologies



15. Companies Developing Exosome Research Products



16. SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)



17. Investment Environment



18. Market Segments



19. Market Size Determination



20. Regulatory Oversight of Exosomes



21. Exosome Conferences and Events



22. Conclusions

Appendix A - Exosome Industry Announcements

Companies Mentioned



Anjarium Biosciences

Avalon GloboCare Corp.

Beckman Coulter

Capricor Therapeutics

Cavadis B.V.

Cell Guidance Systems

Codiak Biosciences

CosmoBio USA

Creative Medical Technologies Holdings

Evox Therapeutics

Exerkine Corporation

Exiqon

ExoCoBio Inc.

Exogenus Therapeutics

Exopharm

Exosome Diagnostics

Exosome Sciences

Exosomics Siena SpA

Exostemtech Co. Ltd.

Exovita Biosciences

Galen Lab Supplies

Guangzhou Selaira Stem Cell Technology Co., Ltd

HansaBioMed Life Sciences

iZon Science

Kimera Labs

Lonza

Miltenyi Biotec

Norgen Biotek

ReNeuron

RoosterBio

Unicyte AG

ZenBio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dh9jkm/global_stem_cell?w=12




This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SARASOTA, Fla.  Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s and stands as one of the all-time literary hoaxes, died after being admitted to hospice care. He was 87.

Irvings fifth wife, Julie Irving, confirmed that he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home, the New York Times reported. She said he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week ago.

A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGraw-Hill publishers into paying him a $765,000 advance for a book about the reclusive Hughes. His ruse became the subject of the 2006 movie The Hoax, starring Richard Gere.

Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication. The bogus autobiography wasnt published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition.

The scam was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure, Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century. Time magazine dubbed Irving Con Man of the Year in a 1972 cover story.

Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article about the billionaires eccentric lifestyle. Hughes hermit-like obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the gorgeous literary caper would succeed, Irving wrote in The Hoax, his 2006 account of the scheme.

At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker. He reportedly lived the final 10 years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, in near-total seclusion.

Hughes intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irvings claims to have interviewed the billionaire.

Irving insisted that he had several clandestine meetings with Hughes. He submitted to a lie-detector test and produced documents purportedly from the billionaire, including a handwritten letter written to McGraw-Hill.

The letter, forged by Irving, was deemed authentic by handwriting analysts hired by McGraw-Hill. At that point, the publisher decided to move forward with the book.

The deception unraveled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes, recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irvings manuscript of the autobiography.

Irving and his collaborator, Richard Suskind, were indicted on fraud charges and were found guilty in June 1972. In addition to his prison term, Irving returned the $765,000 advance to McGraw-Hill. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five.
Danish English

Company announcement







Announcement No. 64/2017









Group Communications

Holmens Kanal 2  12

DK-1092 Kbenhavn K

Tel.: +45 45 14 56 95





21 December 2017

Danske Bank accepts fine of DKK 12.5 million

Danske Bank A/S has today been charged by the Danish Public Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime (SIK) with having violated the stipulations of Danish anti-money laundering (AML) legislation on the monitoring of transactions to and from correspondent banks. In this connection, Danske Bank has accepted a fine of DKK 12.5 million. The charge and the fine are the result of the inspection made by the Danish FSA at Danske Bank in 2015. The inspection statement issued in March 2016 included reporting Danske Bank to the police.

We have a special responsibility with regard to the combating of money laundering, and regrettably, we have not lived up to that responsibility in terms of the monitoring of transactions to and from correspondent banks, says CEO Thomas F. Borgen. That is the reason why we have been fined, and we have accepted and will pay the fine. We have since taken many initiatives to considerably strengthen monitoring in relation to correspondent banks, and today, the situation is quite different. In recent years, we have generally strengthened our efforts to combat money laundering and other financial crime very considerably. This includes considerable investments in new IT systems to support monitoring, tighter control, adding resources to AML activities and more extensive training of staff. The combating of money laundering and criminal activity is high on the agenda and a priority across the entire Danske Bank Group.

The fine notice reads as follows: Danske Bank A/S is charged with having violated section 78(3), cf. (1), cf. section 11(1)(5), of Danish Act No. 651 of 8 June 2017 on Measures to Prevent Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (the Danish Anti-Money Laundering Act) (formerly section 37(7), cf. (1), cf. section 12(5), of Danish Consolidation Act No. 1022 of 13 August 2013) by, in the period from November 2012 to the issuing of an order on 15 March 2016 to be implemented by 1 August 2016, in the financial institution Danske Bank A/S, CVR No. 61126228, Holmens Kanal 2-12, Copenhagen, not having monitored transactions executed as part of business relations to ensure that the transactions matched the undertakings or the persons knowledge of the customer and the customers business and risk profile, including, where necessary, the origin of the funds, since Danske Bank, in relation to transactions executed in connection with its correspondent bank relationships, did not monitor transactions where the transactions did not involve a customer of Danske Bank. The fine is set at DKK 12,500,000 (twelve million, five hundred thousand Danish kroner).

Danske Bank AML activities at Group level

 More than 900 employees are dedicated to the combating of financial crime.

 Every month, we screen 3.9 million customer transactions.

 Every week, we screen 15 million customer numbers against international sanction lists.

 Every year, we record more than 150,000 warnings of unusual customer behaviour in relation to money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

 In the past year, we have submitted more than 8,600 reports to the authorities.

The FSAs statement on its inspection and Danske Banks comments from March 2016 are available at danskebank.com.

Danske Bank

This is a translation of a company announcement in the Danish language. In case of discrepancies, the Danish version prevails.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. (NYSE:FSM) (TSX:FVI) is pleased to provide an update on construction activities at its 100 % owned Lindero gold Project located in Salta, Argentina.



Jorge A. Ganoza, President, CEO and Director, commented, The start of construction activities for a new mine is always an energizing event for an organization. Mr. Ganoza continued, We are fully funded, key positions in the project team are in place and the Company feels very welcome in the Province of Salta. Mr. Ganoza concluded, We are looking forward to building and commissioning on time and within budget the first modern large scale precious metals mine in Salta.

In September 2017, the Company announced a positive construction decision for Lindero with commissioning expected in the second quarter of 2019 (see Fortuna news release dated September 21, 2017). Lindero has been designed as an 18,750 tpd1 owner operated open pit mine with a pit life of 13 years based on existing reserves. Crushed ore will be placed on a leach pad with the pregnant solution pumped to SART2 and ADR3 plants prior to electrowining and refining where gold will be poured to dore bars. The technical report of the Lindero Project is available on the Company's website at https://fortunasilver.com/site/assets/files/4098/lindero-project-technical-report-effective-date-31-oct-2017.pdf

With Lindero in its first year of full production, Fortunas consolidated precious metals annual production is expected to increase to 190,000 ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver or 340,000 gold equivalent4 ounces.

Note:

Tonnes per day Sulphidization-Acidification-Recycle-Thickening Adsorption, Desorption and Recovery Gold equivalent is calculated using a gold to silver ratio of 1 to 60 and does not include lead nor zinc

Project Update

In September 2017, the commencement of construction at Lindero was officially launched. As of the end of November, initial contracts have been awarded for approximately US$14 million or 6 percent of the projects capital expenditure.

Detailed Engineering

Engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) was awarded in October 2017 to SAXUM Ingenieria, an Argentinian company with international experience in infrastructure and mining. Detailed engineering work has been launched, procurement packages are being prepared and the bidding process initiated.

Advanced basic engineering of the SART plant is being completed by Kestrel Engineering, an American firm that will work under the direction of Mr. Mike Botz, a qualified engineer with extensive experience of the SART process.

The construction of the leach pad, a critical path of the project, is in the bidding process. Mass earth moving activities are scheduled to commence in February 2018 and are estimated to conclude with the commissioning of the pad in March 2019. Detailed engineering and construction supervision has been awarded to Anddes Argentina, a company specialized in geotechnical engineering and leach pad design and construction.

Mine Equipment

Mine fleet and other heavy equipment are in the process of being awarded. The principal components of the initial mine fleet include six 100 ton trucks, two 17 cubic yard wheel loaders, two bulldozers and two drill rigs.

The Company is evaluating a non-recourse vendor financing of US$15 million for the purchase of mining equipment.

Initial Site Activities

The project requires the upgrading of the existing exploration camp in order to host the initial workforce who will be responsible for building the temporary construction camp. On site activities commenced in November and the temporary facilities will be ready to host the inflow of construction personnel in January 2018. The construction workforce who will build the permanent facilities is estimated to gradually increase and peak at 600 people. The permanent camp facilities will accommodate 320 people.

The Company is in the process of obtaining municipal approval from the town of Tolar Grande for the start of construction activities on new infrastructure. Formal authorization is expected in January 2018.

Project Funding and Financing

The estimated fully scoped capital cost for the construction of Lindero is US$239 million. Capital expenditures are estimated at US$200 million for 2018, and US$36.5 million for 2019; amounts do not include VAT which is expected to be recovered in the first 24 months from the start of mining operations.

The Company plans to fund the construction from a combination of existing cash reserves, projected cash flow generation and an upsized US$120 million credit facility.

Project Construction Milestones

The Company is providing the following selected milestones from the project construction schedule:

2018

February: Start mass earthworks

April: First concrete for permanent installations

August: Start of equipment installation, including HPGR tertiary crusher

November: Construction of roads and platforms in preparation for initiation of mining activities

2019

January: Commissioning of power plant

March: Placing of first ore on the leach pad

May: First dore poured as part of commissioning

Construction updates will be provided on a regular basis throughout the development of Lindero.

Qualified Person

Eric N. Chapman, Vice President of Technical Services of Fortuna, is the Qualified Person for Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Chapman is a Professional Geoscientist of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia (Registration Number 36328) and is responsible for ensuring that the information contained in this news release is an accurate summary of the original reports and data provided to or developed by Fortuna Silver Mines.

About Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.

Fortuna is a growth oriented, precious metal producer with its primary assets being the Caylloma silver mine in southern Peru, the San Jose silver-gold mine in Mexico and the Lindero gold Project in Argentina. The company is selectively pursuing acquisition opportunities throughout the Americas and in select other areas. For more information, please visit its website at www.fortunasilver.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Jorge A. Ganoza

President, CEO and Director

Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.

Trading symbols: NYSE: FSM | TSX: FVI

Investor Relations:

Carlos Baca

T (Peru): +51.1.616.6060, ext. 0

Forward looking Statements

This news release contains forward looking statements which constitute forward looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and forward looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, Forward looking Statements). All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are Forward looking Statements and are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the Forward looking Statements. The Forward looking Statements in this news release may include, without limitation, statements about the Companys plans for its mines and mineral properties, including the Lindero gold Project; the Companys business strategy, plans and outlook; the merit of the Companys mines and mineral properties; mineral resource and reserve estimates; timelines; the future financial or operating performance of the Company; expenditures; approvals and other matters. Often, but not always, these Forward looking Statements can be identified by the use of words such as estimated, potential, open, future, assumed, projected, used, detailed, has been, gain, planned, reflecting, will, containing, remaining, to be, or statements that events, could or should occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.

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 results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward looking Statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, whether the Companys activities at the Lindero gold Project will proceed as planned; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; changes in prices for silver and other metals; technological and operational hazards in Fortunas mining and mine development activities; risks inherent in mineral exploration; uncertainties inherent in the estimation of mineral reserves, mineral resources, and metal recoveries; governmental and other approvals; political unrest or instability in countries where Fortuna is active; labor relations issues; as well as those factors discussed under Risk Factors in the Company's Annual Information Form. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in Forward looking Statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.

Forward looking Statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the Companys activities at the Lindero gold Project will proceed as planned; expectations regarding mine production costs; expected trends in mineral prices and currency exchange rates; the accuracy of the Companys current mineral resource and reserve estimates; that the Companys activities will be in accordance with the Companys public statements and stated goals; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; that all required approvals will be obtained; that there will be no significant disruptions affecting operations and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward looking Statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any Forward looking Statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that Forward looking Statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on Forward looking Statements.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

This article appeared on Good Housekeeping.

Potty training is never fun, but for one family in California, it got to be downright dangerous.

After they claim a WeePOD Basix Potty Ring from Target "nearly dismembered" their 3-year-old son, the family has filed a lawsuit against the retailer.

According to the lawsuit, the boy's penis got stuck on the potty trainer, made by Prince Lionheart, and the polypropylene surface then deeply cut his genitals almost all the way around. The family, who wishes not to be identified, alleges that the child was taken to the emergency room, where the family lawyer says his penis needed to be glued back together.

The family is now suing for undisclosed damages. Their attorney John Kristensen told CBS Los Angeles that despite the fact that numerous safety complaints have been filed against the product since 2015, it was never recalled and remains marked as "safe." He says it is Target's responsibility to inform consumers about these issues.

"They had a duty to warn customers about the dangers of their WeePOD product," Kristensen told CBS. "Their failure to do so was reckless and led directly to the mutilation of my client."

ALSO READ: Apple admits to slowing down older iPhones

Kristensen also claims that in 2015, another child was injured by the same Prince Lionheart seat that the family bought at Target.

"My 4 year old son was going to the bathroom on his wee pod basix potty seat and when he stood up he started screaming," a Virginia parent wrote in a comment on a website in 2015, according to the lawsuit. "He had a nasty cut on the base of his penis and it was bleeding a lot. My husband and I cleaned him up and took him to the doctor.

"When we got home I examined the seat and the bottom edge is actually very sharp and just sliced open the very sensitives in in that area. This has been horribly traumatic for him and could have been so much worse."

According to the lawsuit, the comment "is no longer available due to Target's malfeasance."

The potty seat is currently still available on Target's website, where it has nearly a 4-star rating. Some commenters did complain of the seat giving their children rashes and others said that the rim easily cracked, posing a safety hazard.

In a comment to GoodHousekeeping.com, a Target spokesperson said the company's legal team is reviewing the lawsuit.

"Target is currently reviewing the claim with our legal team. We take product safety incredibly seriously, are committed to providing safe products to our guests and require our vendors to follow all product safety laws and CPSC guidelines for the products they sell at Target." they said.

GoodHousekeeping.com has reached out to Prince Lionheart for comment, and will update this post as more information becomes available.
Dublin, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "3D Bioprinting: Technologies, Products and Key Application Areas, (2nd Edition), 2018-2035" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.



The 3D Bioprinting: Technologies, Products and Key Application Areas, (2nd Edition), 2018-2035' report provides a comprehensive study on the current market landscape of the 3D bioprinting industry, featuring an elaborate discussion on the future potential of this evolving market. The field has seen the emergence of many new players in the past few years; in fact, several well-known players of the 3D printing industry have broadened their focus to launch new initiatives specific to 3D bioprinting.



3D printing has garnered significant attention within the healthcare industry. The concept of 3D bioprinting was conceived in the late 1990s; since then, various industry stakeholders and academicians have undertaken several initiatives in order to further develop / improve this technology for a variety of applications. Organovo was the first company to enter the 3D bioprinting space by printing functional blood vessels in 2010. The company now offers 3D printed kidney and liver tissue models. There have been a number of other notable attempts to create fully functional 3D bioprinted tissues.



The current applications of 3D bioprinted products cater to various requirements within the pharmaceutical industry for clinical testing of therapeutic drugs. Owing to the evident interspecies differences, drug candidates that are shown to be efficacious in animal models often fail in humans. For such purposes, 3D bioprinting can be used to develop more accurate, human specific disease models. Further, there is a severe unmet need when it comes to organ transplants. Therefore, the ability to synthetically create organs for transplantation purposes is expected to generate a lot of interest amongst pharmaceutical / biotechnology players in the coming years.



The current market landscape of 3D bioprinting is characterized by the presence of nearly equal number of industry and non-industry players, featuring a number of startups and university spin-offs. Although there are several 3D bioprinting technologies already available, active efforts are being made to add to the intellectual property portfolio. The field has witnessed growing partnering activity and has also managed to capture the interest of both public and private sector investors.Despite certain challenges, several technical advancements and high unmet need of current patients waiting for organ transplants is anticipated to significantly drive future growth.

Amongst other things, the report features:

A detailed overview of the current market landscape of 3D bioprinters and 3D bioprinted products, highlighting the contributions of industry and non-industry players, including information on the various technological aspects and key specifications of such technologies / products.

Profiles of developers of bioprinting devices / technologies and bioprinted products. Each profile includes an overview of the company, information on their financials (wherever available), details on their respective product portfolios, 3D bioprinting specific collaborations, and an informed future outlook.

A comprehensive product competitiveness analysis of existing 3D bioprinters, based on supplier power and product specific features such as type of technology and range of applications.

An analysis of the partnerships that have been established in the recent past, covering research agreements, distribution agreements, product development agreements and other relevant deals, along with information on the collaborators / partners.

An analysis of the investments made at various stages of development, such as seed financing, venture capital financing, debt financing, grants, capital raised from IPOs and subsequent offerings received by companies that are focused in this area.

An analysis depicting the prevalent and emerging trends in 3D bioprinting as observed on the social media platform, Twitter. The report also includes a detailed case study on the upcoming trends, such as use of stem cells as bioinks, emergence of the concept of 4D bioprinting and commercialization of low-cost bioprinters, based on inputs from primary and secondary research.

An analysis of intellectual property portfolio related to 3D bioprinting. The study presents a high-level view on the granted patents and submitted patent applications related to these technologies, highlighting the prevalent trends in this domain. In addition, the analysis highlights the most active geographies and the key players driving innovation in this field.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Preface



Scope of the Report

Research Methodology

Chapter Outlines

2. Executive Summary



3. Introduction



3D Printing Technology

3D Bioprinting: Printing of Living Cells, Tissues and Organs

4. Market Landscape



3D Bioprinting: Overall Market Landscape

3D Bioprinters by Non-Industry Players

3D Bioprinted Products by Non-Industry Players

5. Company Profiles



3Dynamic Systems

Aspect Biosystems

Allevi (formerly BioBots)

BioDan Group

CELLINK

EnvisionTEC

GeSiM

MEDPRIN BIOTECH

microdrop Technologies

MicroFab Technologies

Nano3D Biosciences

Organovo

Qingdao Unique Products Develop

regenHU

SunP Biotech International

6. Recent Collaborations and Funding



Partnership Models

3D Bioprinting: Recent Collaborations

Venture Capital Interest

Types of Funding

3D Bioprinting: Funding Instances

7. SWOT Analysis



8. Emerging Trends on Social Media



Trends on Twitter

Popular Keywords and Word Cloud Analysis

9. Recent Trends in 3D Bioprinting Industry



Introduction of Scaffold-Free Bioprinting

Emergence of 4D Bioprinting: the Next Generation of 3D Bioprinting

Use of Stem Cells as Bio Ink

Development of UV 3D Bioprinting, a Modified Stereolithography Approach

Establishment of Spin-Offs of Academic Institutes

Entry of Well-Established Players of 3D Printing Industry in Bioprinting Industry

Introduction of Low-Priced Bioprinters

Increasing Number of Initiatives Taken by Governments of Different Countries

10. Product Competitiveness Analysis



3D Bioprinters: 2 x 2 Product Competitiveness vs. Supplier Power Analysis

11. Patent Analysis



3D Bioprinting Patents: Distribution by Publication Year

3D Bioprinting Patents: Distribution by Geographical Location

3D Bioprinting Patents: Distribution by CPC Classifications

3D Bioprinting Patents: Emerging Areas

3D Bioprinting Patents: Leading Players

12. Market Forecast and Opportunity Analysis



Forecast Methodology

Overall 3D Bioprinting Market, 2018-2035

3D Bioprinting Market: Distribution by Applications

3D Bioprinting Market: Distribution by Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World)

3D Bioprinting Market: Distribution by Technology (Extrusion, Inkjet, Laser and Others)

13. Conclusion



3D Bioprinting has Garnered Significant Attention within the Biopharmaceutical Industry

The Competitive Market Landscape Features a Mix of Industry and Non-Industry Players

North America and Europe Dominate the Current Market; Several Companies based in the Asia Pacific are also Making Notable Progress

Research Continues to be the Major Focus as Stakeholders Strive to Improve Existing Methods and Technologies

Increasing Partnership Activity and Financial Support from Public and Private Investors are Expected to Drive Growth

Recent Advances are Expected to Act as Catalyst to the Success of 3D Bioprinting

Inherent Challenges Must be Overcome to Tap the Multi-billion Dollar Opportunity in the Long Term

14. Interview Transcripts



Douglas Chrisey, Professor, Tulane University

Igor Zlatkin, Application Scientist and Chirantan Kanani, Technology & Product Development, Digilab

Fanny Geraldo and Lisa Oliver, Researchers, University of Nantes

Glauco R Souza, President & Chief Scientific Officer and Hubert Tseng, Senior Research Scientist, n3D Biosciences

Kenneth Church, President & Chief Executive Officer and Xudong Chen, Executive Vice President Business Development & Sales, nScrypt

Laura Bosworth, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, TeVido BioDevices

Lauralyn McDaniel, Industrial Manager, SME

Marc Thurner, Chief Executive Officer, regenHU

Roger Narayan, Professor, North Carolina State University

Simon Fried, Chief Business Officer, Nano Dimension

Anonymous, MicroFab Technologies

15. Appendix 1: Tabulated Data



16. Appendix 2: List of Companies and Organizations

3D Bioprinting Solutions

3D Systems

3Dynamic Systems

500 Startups

Accellta

Advanced Solutions

Advanced Solutions Life Sciences

Aether

Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg

AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research)

American Process

Amuza

AO Research Institute Davos (ARI)

Aprecia Pharmaceuticals

Aquitaine Science Transfert

ASI Life Sciences

AxolotlBio

Axolotl Biologix

BASF

Belgorod State University

BellaSeno

Ben Franklin Technology Partners

Bio3D Technologies

BioAdvance

BioBots (Allevi)

BioDan Group

Bioftalmik

Bioink Solutions

BioServe Space Technologies

Bone Therapeutics

Bsing Dental and Implant Solutions

Breakout Labs

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Brunel University London

BTI Biotechnology Institute

Cambridge University Hospitals

Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)

Captario

Cardiovascular Innovation Institute (CII)

Carnegie Mellon University

Celgene

Cell Applications

CELLINK

Censo Biotechnologies (previously Roslin Cellab)

Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS)

Center for Gene and Cellular Therapies in the Treatment of Cancer (ONCOGEN)

Cerhum

Chalmers University of Technology

Children's National Health System

China Resources (Holdings)

Chinese Academy of Engineering

Chungnam National University Hospital

Citizens Bank

Clemson University

Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory

Collagen Solutions

Columbia University

Competence Centre TEDD (Tissue Engineering for Drug Development and Substance Testing)

Cornell University

Cosmo Bio

CPA Group

Crain's Detroit Business

Cyfuse Biomedical

Danske Bank

DBJ Capital

DePuy Synthes Companies

DiethelmKellerSiberHegner (DKSH)

DigiLab

DreamIt

Drexel University

Eli Lilly

Embrapa Genetic Resources and Biotechnology's Laboratory of Nanobiotechnology (LNANO)

EnvisionTEC

EpiBone

ETH Zurich

European Medicines Agency (EMA)

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Fernndez-Vega Foundation

FLENI

Flexadyne

Flipkart

Foley & Lardner LLP

Forschungsinstitut fr Leder und Kunststoffbahnen

Foundation for the Fight Against Infantile Neurological Diseases

Founders Alliance

Fraunhofer CMI

Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nrnberg

FUJIFILM Dimatix

FundersClub

GeSiM

Glidewell

GoPrint3D

GreenByte AB

Greiner Bio-One

Hangzhou Electronic Science and Technology University

Hannover Medical School

Hanyang University

Harvard Medical School

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

Heart Research Institute

Helisys

Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)

Heriot-Watt University

Hoffmann-La Roche

Hogeschool Utrecht

Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Maran

Houston Methodist

Humane Society International

I&L Biosystems

Image Analysis

INVITRO

Indiana University

Indiegogo

INNOTERE

Innovate UK-MoST

INSION

Institute for Drug Safety Sciences

Institute of Burn Research, Southwest Hospital

International Society for Biofabrication (IBSF)

International Space Station

InvestX Capital

Invetech

IQ ARTISIA

Izumi International

JAFCO

Janssen Research and Development

Johns Hopkins University

Johnson & Johnson

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM)

Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)

Labsun

Le Vivier

Life Science Nord group

L'Oral

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Luxexcel

Maastricht University

Made In Space

MakerBot

MaRS Innovation

Mass Innovation Labs

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Mayo Clinic

McGill University Health Centre

McMaster University

Medical University of South Carolina

Medicrea

MedImmune

MEDPRIN BIOTECH

Med-Tech Innovation

Merck & Co

Merrill Corporation

Metabridge

Methuselah Foundation

microdrop Technologies

MicroFab Technologies

MIDSCI

Mode Diagnostics

Morriston Hospital

Moss Enterprises

Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI)

MUSC Bioprinting Research Center

My Doctor

n3D Biosciences

Nano Dimension

Nanyang Technological University

NASA

National Cancer Institute

National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)

National Eye Institute (NEI)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Medical Research Radiological Centre of the Ministry of Health of the RussianFederation

National Research Council-Industry Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP)

National Science Foundation (NSF)

National University of Singapore (NUS)

Neatco

NetScientific

Neutec Group

New Ventures BC

Newcastle University

News/Talk 760 WJR

NextGene Biosystem

Nike

Nippon Venture Capital

Northeastern University

Northwestern University

Novartis

nScrypt

NSF Frontiers in Integrative Biological Research

NSF SBIR

Objet Geometries

Ohio State University

OHSU Knight Cancer Institute

Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)

Organovo

Ortho Baltic Group

Ourobotics

Oxford MEStar

OxSyBio

Pandorum Technologies

Pennsylvania State University

PeptiGelDesign Technologies

Phonak

Plum Alley Investments

Poietis

Praxis Pharmaceutical

Precise Bio

Pressure BioSciences

Princeton University

ProtoSpace Foundation

Qingdao Unique Products Develop

Queensland University of Technology

Rainbow Biosciences

Range of Motion Project (ROMP)

RBC Royal Bank

REGEMAT 3D

regenHU

Regenovo Biotechnology (subsidiary of Shining3D)

ReproCELL Group

RESAAS Services

Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT)

Rice University

Ricoh

Roche

Rokit

RoosterBio

Royan Institute

R-Pharm

Russian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education Studies

Sahlgrenska Academy

Samsara Sciences

Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine

Sanitas International

SAP America

SBH Sciences

ScanSource

Sciperio

Scripps Clinic

Seoul National University Bundang Hospital

Seoul National University of Science and Technology

Seraph Robotics

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Shanghai Man Heng Digital Technology

Shapeways

Shibuya Kogyo

Sichuan Revotek

Siemens

Silentys (Zeltia Group)

Sirris

Skinprint

Skolkovo Innovation Centre

Solidscape

Somos

South by Southwest SXSW Accelerator

Spanish National Research Council

SPIRE Bioventures

Stanford University

Stem Cell Network

Stemorgan Therapeutics

SternAegis Ventures

Stratasys

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

SunP Biotech International

Swansea University Medical School

Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology

Symme 3D

Tanner Friedman

Technical University of Munich (TUM)

TeViDo BioDevices

The Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation

The Scripps Research Institute

The Trade & Industry Group of Gothenburg&Co

The University of Virginia

The Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery

The Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating

ThermoFisher Scientific

Tiffany & Co

Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society

Trideo

Tsinghua University

Tufts University

UMC Utrecht

UniQuest

United Rocket and Space Corporation

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Universit catholique de Louvain

University College of London

University of Antwerp

University of Bath

University of Bayreuth

University of Bordeaux

University of British Columbia

University of California

University of Cambridge

University of Colorado

University of Dayton

University of Eastern Finland

University of Exeter

University of Iowa College of Engineering

University of Liverpool

University of Louisville

University of Manchester

University of Manitoba

University of Maryland

University of Minnesota

University of Missouri

University of North Carolina

University of Nottingham

University of Otago, Christchurch

University of Pennsylvania

University of Pisa

University of Sheffield

University of South Australia (UniSA)

University of South Carolina

University of Southampton

University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA)

University of Tokyo

University of Tokyo Edge Capital

University of Toronto

University of Victoria

University of Washington

University of Waterloo

University of Wollongong

University of Zurich

University Santiago de Compostela

USFDA

Utrecht3DMedical (University Medical Center Utrecht)

VisualPing

Vivos Dental

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Wallenberg Wood Science Center

Watson Research Center

WiSEED

Wyss Institute (Harvard University)

Xanofi

Xilloc

Yale School of Medicine

Yale University

Z Corporation

Zeev Bregman

Zeltia Group

ZenBio

Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)

Zyomic Technologies

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dlfc56/global_3d?w=12




The year 2017 was the fieriest in memory for the visual arts. It opened with Oaklands December 2016 Ghost Ship Fire and the deaths of 36 artists, musicians and others freshly branded on our hearts. The Wine Country fires of October displaced thousands of people, many of them artists, and destroyed 8,889 structures  including the homes and studios of an untold number of celebrated professionals, promising novices and dedicated amateurs. And we exit this cursed calendar as fires on the Southern California coast blaze close by the J. Paul Getty Museum on their way to new state records of devastation.

A struggle to control culture: Incendiary comments, made by leaders who might otherwise have been expected to guide intelligent discussion, fueled the flames of cultural resentment. Thus, we have had furious arguments over whether to celebrate, destroy or reinterpret Civil War sculptural monuments, as if the art might grant us some talismanic control over history. And we have endured raging demands for the removal from the Whitney, the Metropolitan, the Walker and other museums, nuanced works of art that touch, however lightly, on inflamed nerves of race, sexuality and power.

The art world says #MeToo: The blaze of indignation kindled by a recording of our now-president bragging of sexual assault, then spread west to one of Hollywoods most powerful producers, finally reached the art world. Accusations now seem to have toppled, among others, Knight Landesman, publisher of the influential Artforum magazine, and Jens Hoffmann, one-time director of San Franciscos CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.

Art we thought we knew: Bay Area museums were at the top of their form this year, bringing new insights to historical objects. A particular surprise was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed, which put flesh on the bones of the artist known around the world for a single painting, The Scream. The show brought 44 original, mournful paintings, rarely, if ever, seen on the West Coast. Munchs mastery of form, it turns out, gives his art an authenticity that cannot be read in reproduction. Meanwhile, the Legion of Honor enlivened the centennial of the death of Auguste Rodin by dramatically contrasting the museums great sculpture collection with two exhibitions of cheeky works by living artists Sarah Lucas and Urs Fischer.

Art that wont sit still: William Kentridge, who started with short, hand-drawn filmic works in the early 1990s, has steadily expanded his territory in size and technique. His The Refusal of Time, a large installation combining film and sculpture, is owned jointly by SFMOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had its West Coast premiere through March. Then, the American Conservatory Theater presented Refuse the Hour for three performances in November. The stirring multimedia chamber opera starred the artist himself, narrating a trip through the fourth dimension that featured photographic film and animation, live music and dance. It was a physical experience of what I imagine to be an Albert Einstein dream.

Ragnar Kjartanssons 2012 installation The Visitors, also at SFMOMA, and Isaac Juliens Playtime (2014), at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, are equally immersive, if apparently more straightforward in narrative. Both demand to be seen and are still on view, The Visitors only through Monday, Jan. 1, Playtime through Feb. 11.

Art in the age of the social media selfie: Carla Shen is a lively woman with a closetful of great clothes, a love of art and, apparently, a fair amount of disposable time and income. She also has a great eye, which she has turned on herself in an ongoing series on Instagram, where she posts as @carlapshen. Shen (a trustee of the Brooklyn Museum and, full disclosure, a personal acquaintance) finds uncanny visual parallels between apparel in her closet and works of art on public view. They are guileless and celebratory, if not high art  not even self-portraits, she said in an email. They are just snap shots or even records of my matching hobby.

New Faces: Erica Deeman burst into public consciousness with an expansive show of innovative portraits of black women at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and a simultaneous exhibition of new work at the the tiny-but-influential gallery Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Marcela Pardo Ariza brought a refreshing comic approach to photography at a new space in the Tenderloin, R/SF Projects. And Alicia McCarthy, hardly a neophyte after some 20 years on the alternative scene, found a broader public with a solo show at Berggruen Gallery and a featured spot in the 2017 SECA Art Award exhibition at SFMOMA.

Art that has it both ways: Avidly crossing supposed boundaries between object and image, the thought-driven (conceptual art) and the emotion-laden (abstract expressionism), the public and the private, Robert Rauschenberg cleared a new path for himself and all who have come after. Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules, at SFMOMA through March 25, is a superb guide to the career of one of the 20th centurys most influential figures.

Art that made us laugh: Nina Katchadourians exhibition Curiouser is running through Jan. 7 at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. It is a rare opportunity to laugh out loud at serious art that questions assumptions about identity and authenticity, with a warmth and caring that is a blessing at this crucial moment in American history.

Art to make us cry: If I were to choose a Best Exhibition of 2017, it would have to be the French artist Sophie Calles Missing. Presented this summer at the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, which has turned itself in two years into a vital center for contemporary exhibitions, it was less a show than a series of deeply intimate encounters with one womans life, and our own fears of absence and longing.

Charles Desmarais is The San Francisco Chronicles art critic. Email: cdesmarais@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Artguy1
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A dentist pleaded no contest Tuesday to felony charges alleging that she performed unnecessary work on several patients in Daly City and then altered a judge's order and stole someone's identity to seek other dental jobs during her pending court case, San Mateo County prosecutors said.

Amishi Patel, 43, was a part-time dentist at Campus Heights Dental Care in Daly City, where she performed unnecessary dental work on at least eight patients between April 2014 and May 2015, according to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

The case came to light when the family of a patient contacted the Dental Board of California, which contacted the state Department of Insurance, which contacted the district attorney's office about the alleged insurance fraud, Wagstaffe said.

Among the patients was a 16-year-old girl who Patel recommended receive 16 fillings. Patel performed eight of the fillings before the girl's father became suspicious and took her for a second opinion, prosecutors said.

Three subsequent dentists determined the girl had no signs of cavities, did not need any fillings and said the eight fillings from Patel were so poorly performed that they needed to be replaced, prosecutors said.

Patel was charged this February for the cases in Daly City and a judge ordered her not to practice dentistry as a condition of her release on bail, but investigators eventually learned she had altered the order to make it appear that it had been rescinded days later, prosecutors said.

She used the altered order to get temporary employment as a dentist in Fremont, where she treated four patients.

Patel also called another dentist with a name similar to hers, pretending to be from a dental insurance company, and obtained the dentist's license number that she then used to apply for several dental jobs in Fremont, including an interview attended by an undercover officer, prosecutors said.

Those cases took place between June and July of this year, Wagstaffe said.

Patel pleaded no contest Tuesday to felony insurance fraud, assault, identity theft and forgery on the condition that she receive a sentence of up to a year in county jail and a referral to mental health court, according to the district attorney's office.

"She got a very light sentence," Wagstaffe said of the plea deal, adding that San Mateo County Superior Court Donald Ayoob "had leniency for her because he thinks there are mental issues there."

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to five years in state prison for Patel.

"We think the only mental issue is she's a fraud," Wagstaffe said.

The case will return to court on Jan. 12 for an intake conference for the mental health court and to set a sentencing date.

Patel's defense attorney Jonathan McDougall was not immediately available for comment on the case.
Songa Offshore SE (the "Company") will today summon a bondholders meeting for convertible bond with ISIN NO 001076003.6 ("SONG07").



The Company has received irrevocable undertakings to vote in favor of the proposed amendments from more than 2/3 of the voting bonds.

For further detailed information, please see the attached summons.



21 December 2017

Limassol, Cyprus





For further information, please contact:

Jan Rune Steinsland, CFO (+47 97052533)



This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

Attachments:

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cb4305f1-55bc-4131-bc92-013a8183f433
ZUG, Switzerland, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Transocean Ltd. (NYSE:RIG) announced today that the harsh environment semisubmersible Transocean Spitsbergen was awarded a 22-well contract with an estimated duration of 33 months; plus two one-well options in the Norwegian North Sea with Statoil Petroleum ASA. The estimated firm backlog associated with the contract is approximately $286 million, which excludes opportunities for performance incentives. The contract is expected to commence in the third quarter of 2019.



We are extremely pleased to have once again contracted the Transocean Spitsbergen with Statoil, said Jeremy Thigpen, President and Chief Executive Officer. This contract is a testament to the capability, reliability and efficiency of the asset, the expertise and professionalism of our crews and shorebased support, and the strength of our relationship with Statoil. We look forward to this opportunity to continue to exceed Statoils performance expectations.

About Transocean

Transocean is a leading international provider of offshore contract drilling services for oil and gas wells. The company specializes in technically demanding sectors of the global offshore drilling business with a particular focus on deepwater and harsh environment drilling services, and believes that it operates one of the most versatile offshore drilling fleets in the world.

Transocean owns or has partial ownership interests in, and operates a fleet of 39 mobile offshore drilling units consisting of 26 ultra-deepwater floaters, seven harsh environment floaters, two deepwater floaters and four midwater floaters. In addition, Transocean has three ultra-deepwater drillships under construction or under contract to be constructed. The company also operates two high-specification jackups that were under drilling contracts when the rigs were sold, and the company continues to operate these jackups until completion or novation of the drilling contracts.

For more information about Transocean, please visit: www.deepwater.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

The statements described in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements contain words such as "possible," "intend," "will," "if," "expect," or other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on managements current expectations and assumptions, and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. As a result, actual results could differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, estimated duration of customer contracts, contract dayrate amounts, future contract commencement dates and locations, planned shipyard projects and other out-of-service time, sales of drilling units, timing of the companys newbuild deliveries, operating hazards and delays, risks associated with international operations, actions by customers and other third parties, the future prices of oil and gas, the intention to scrap certain drilling rigs, the benefits, and other factors, including those and other risks discussed in the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and in the company's other filings with the SEC, which are available free of charge on the SEC's website at: www.sec.gov. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize (or the other consequences of such a development worsen), or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those indicated or expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the company or to persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by reference to these risks and uncertainties. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of the particular statement, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur, or which we become aware of, after the date hereof, except as otherwise may be required by law. All non-GAAP financial measure reconciliations to the most comparative GAAP measure are displayed in quantitative schedules on the companys website at: www.deepwater.com.

This press release, or referenced documents, do not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and do not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of Transocean and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of Transocean.

Analyst Contacts:

Bradley Alexander

+1 713-232-7515

Diane Vento

+1 713-232-8015

Media Contact:

Pam Easton

+1 713-232-7647
DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zenergy Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: ZNGY), the nations leading next-generation utility, is excited to announce today its new Carbon Footprint Reduction Counter on its new corporate website, ZenergyBrands.com. This new Carbon Footprint Reduction Counter will show in real-time the effectiveness of Zenergys suite of responsible energy conservation, smart controls, and efficiency-based products and how each installation positively impacts the environment and the nation.

The carbon footprint is the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions, consisting primarily of carbon dioxide, associated with an organization and is one of the most common measures of the effect of a community, industry, or country on the environment. With every Zero Cost customer contract, the company is able to make a considerable positive impact on the environment; this counter will reflect each and every contract that Zenergy enters into.

Once companies and municipalities understand the effect that their carbon footprint has on the planet, they often want to know how they can reduce both their utility costs and their carbon footprint. This is where Zenergy steps in to assist with expert analysis and effective sustainability solutions, without the premium costs normally associated with going green initiatives. Zenergys trademarked Zero Cost Program  focuses on reducing electricity, natural gas and water consumption levels for commercial, industrial and municipal end-use customers across the entire United States.

The purpose of this online ecosystem is to educate customers, prospective customers and shareholders alike about Zenergys impact on our nations Carbon Footprint. With this new Carbon Reduction Counter, you will be able to see Zenergys impact on the Carbon Footprint in real-time, with each new customer contract.

Zenergy CEO, Alex Rodriguez, commented, I have never been more privileged in my career than to head up a company that can immediately and positively impact the bottom line for our clients, while at the same time causing a significant and measurable positive impact on our environment.

ABOUT ZENERGY BRANDS, INC.

Zenergy Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: ZNGY), is a next-generation energy and technology company operating in the emerging smart energy, conservation, and utility industries. The Company provides energy conservation, smart controls, and efficiency-based products and services to commercial, industrial and municipal end-use customers. The Company specializes in reducing utility expenses (electricity, natural gas, and water) by 20% to as much as 60% in some cases through its cutting-edge Zero Cost Program. Zenergy is a public company, fully reporting to the SEC and currently trading on the OTCQB, a venture market designed for early-stage and developing U.S. and international companies.

Facebook: Zenergy Brands



LinkedIn: Zenergy Brands, Inc.



Twitter: @ZenergyBrands



YouTube: Zenergy Brands



FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains statements that involve expectations, plans or intentions (such as those relating to future business or financial results) and other factors discussed from time to time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These statements are forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties, so actual results may vary materially. You can identify these forward-looking statements by words such as "may," "should," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend," "plan" and other similar expressions. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors not within the control of the Company. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company disclaims any obligation subsequently to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events.




CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ATCO Ltd. (TSX:ACO.X) (TSX:ACO.Y), Canadian Utilities Limited (TSX:CU) (TSX:CU.X)



ATCO Ltd. and its subsidiary, Canadian Utilities Limited, today announced an agreement to transfer Canadian Utilities Limiteds 24.5 per cent ownership interest in ATCO Structures & Logistics Ltd. to ATCO Ltd. As a result of the transaction, ATCO will own 100 per cent of the shares of ATCO Structures & Logistics.

Pursuant to the transaction, ATCO will pay approximately $140 million in cash to Canadian Utilities for its 24.5 per cent interest in ATCO Structures & Logistics using ATCOs cash reserves. Canadian Utilities expects minimal tax and earnings impacts arising from the transaction, subject to year-end adjusting entries.

The transaction simplifies ATCOs ownership structure, while allowing Canadian Utilities to redeploy capital as part of its financing plan for its large investment program in core regulated and long-term contracted energy infrastructure asset base.

The transaction was reviewed by an independent financial advisor, Ernst & Young LLP, who has provided a fairness opinion that the financial consideration to be paid and received pursuant to the transaction is fair, from a financial point of view. The transaction is subject to the completion of documentation and receipt of all necessary approvals which are expected to be completed by December 31, 2017.

Canadian Utilities will continue to wholly own its core investments in the Electricity and Pipelines & Liquids Global Business Units, as well as its international operations in Australia and Latin America. ATCO will wholly own the Structures & Logistics Global Business Unit and all its foreign operations, as well as its 52.7 per cent interest in Canadian Utilities.

With approximately 7,000 employees and assets of $21 billion, ATCO is a diversified global corporation delivering service excellence and innovative business solutions in Structures & Logistics (workforce housing, innovative modular facilities, construction, site support services, and logistics and operations management); Electricity (electricity generation, transmission, and distribution); Pipelines & Liquids (natural gas transmission, distribution and infrastructure development, energy storage, and industrial water solutions); and Retail Energy (electricity and natural gas retail sales). More information can be found at www.ATCO.com.

Media & Investor Inquiries:

D.A. (Dennis) DeChamplain

Senior Vice President &

Chief Financial Officer

403-292-7502
VANCOUVER, B.C., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Columbus Gold Corp. (TSX:CGT) (OTCQX:CBGDF) is pleased to announce that Columbus spin-out Allegiant Gold Ltd. has strengthened its Board of Directors with the appointments of Russell Ball and Norm Pitcher as Independent Directors. Mr. Ball recently served as the Chief Financial Officer of Goldcorp and prior to that as Chief Financial Officer of Newmont. Mr. Pitcher is a former President of Eldorado Gold Corporation.



Were extremely pleased to announce the appointments of Mr. Ball and Mr. Pitcher to ALLEGIANTs Board of Directors, said Robert Giustra, Chairman and CEO of Columbus. ALLEGIANTs ability to attract such well-regarded individuals to its management team speaks to the high-quality and compelling aspect of its property portfolio and general business strategy.

About the Independent Directors

Russell Ball

Russell Ball served as the Chief Financial Officer of both Goldcorp Inc. and Newmont Mining Corporation, two of the worlds largest gold producers. Mr. Ball joined Goldcorp in 2013 as Executive Vice President of Projects and Capital Management and in 2014 he was appointed Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and Capital Projects. From March 2016 to October 2017, Mr. Ball served as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development. Prior to Goldcorp, Mr. Ball served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Newmont Mining Corporation. Over his nineteen years with Newmont, Mr. Ball worked in audit, finance, treasury and investor relations before joining the executive team as Chief Financial Officer. Prior to Newmont, Mr. Ball was a manager in the finance and audit groups with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Durban, South Africa. He qualified as both a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of South Africa and a Certified Public Accountant in Colorado.

Norm Pitcher

From 2012 to 2015, Mr. Pitcher served as the President of Eldorado Gold Corporation, a Canadian mid-tier gold producer with a market capitalization exceeding a billion dollars. Prior to this, he served as Eldorados Chief Operating Officer. During his 30-year career, Mr. Pitcher has also worked with Pan American Silver, H.A. Simons, Ivanhoe Gold and Pioneer Metals. He has extensive international expertise in exploration, evaluation and mining of open-pit and underground mineral deposits. Mr. Pitcher is a Professional Geologist and is a graduate of the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Science in Geology.

About Columbus Gold

Columbus is a leading gold exploration and development company operating in French Guiana, France, and in Nevada. Columbus holds a major interest in the world-class Montagne d'Or gold deposit in French Guiana. A Feasibility Study for Montagne d'Or was filed in May 2017 and the permitting process is currently underway. In Nevada, Columbus is advancing its flagship projects, the Eastside gold project and the Bolo gold project. Drilling is underway at Eastside and drill samples from Bolo have been shipped to the assay lab. Columbus plans to spin-out its subsidiary Allegiant Gold Ltd., with the intent of listing ALLEGIANT on the TSX Venture Exchange. ALLEGIANT indirectly holds Columbus United States mineral property portfolio, which includes Eastside, Bolo, and 12 other properties.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD,

Robert F. Giustra

Chairman & CEO

For more information contact:

Investor Relations

604-634-0970

1-888-818-1364

info@columbusgold.com

This release contains forward-looking information and statements, as defined by law including, without limitation, Canadian securities laws and the "safe harbor" provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("forward--looking statements"), respecting Columbus plans to spin-out its subsidiary Allegiant Gold Ltd., which is intended to be listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to materially differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements including that the spin-out may not be completed as planned or at all due to failure to obtain regulatory approval regarding the spin-out or failure to obtain TSX-V approval to list Allegiant. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and a number of assumptions that may prove to be incorrect, including, without limitation, assumptions about general business and economic conditions, the timing and receipt of required approvals and continued availability of capital and financing. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained herein. The foregoing list is not exhaustive and Columbus undertakes no obligation to update any of the foregoing except as required by law.




Dutch English

Papendrecht, 21 December 2017

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. (Boskalis) in a consortium with Van Hattum en Blankevoort (Royal VolkerWessels) and TBI subsidiary Mobilis has been awarded a contract by the Port of Rotterdam Authority to build quay walls and a jetty, as well as to execute related activities for the construction of a new tank terminal in the port of Rotterdam. The contract is valued at more than EUR 100 million, with Boskalis' share amounting to EUR 34 million. The project will commence in early 2018 and is expected to be completed at the end of 2019.

HES International B.V. is building a new storage terminal for oil products in the port of Rotterdam. To be able to accommodate both large oil tankers and inland vessels, Boskalis and its partners will construct a 1,200-meter long quay wall for seagoing vessels, a 1,100-meter long quay wall for inland vessels, a 350-meter long jetty with four berths as well as riverbank and soil protection.

The Boskalis strategy is designed to benefit from the key macro-economic drivers that fuel global demand in our selected markets: global trade, increasing energy consumption, population growth and the challenges of changing climate conditions. This project is driven by the growth in global trade and energy consumption.

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. is a leading global services provider operating in the dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services sectors. The company provides creative and innovative all-round solutions to infrastructural challenges in the maritime, coastal and delta regions of the world with services including the construction and maintenance of ports and waterways, land reclamation, coastal defense and riverbank protection. In addition, Boskalis offers a wide variety of marine services and contracting for the oil and gas sector and offshore wind industry as well as salvage solutions (SMIT Salvage). Furthermore, Boskalis has a number of strategic partnerships in harbor towage and terminal services (KOTUG SMIT Towage, Keppel Smit Towage, Saam Smit Towage and Smit Lamnalco). With a versatile fleet of more than 900 vessels and floating equipment and 11,700 employees, including associated companies, Boskalis operates in 90 countries across six continents.

This press release can also be found on our website www.boskalis.com.
Five Products Receive Recommended Rating for IPv4; Four Products Receive Recommended Rating for IPv6

AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NSS Labs, Inc., a global leader and trusted source for independent, fact-based cybersecurity guidance, today announced its Data Center Security Gateway (DCSG) Group Test results. Growing reliance on the Internet and IT infrastructures has placed significant demands on corporate data centers. The rise in cyber threats has led enterprises to seek new defenses and ways to enhance existing defenses to protect not only their end users, but also the intellectual property and mission-critical applications residing in their data centers. Industry analysts estimate that the data center security market will reach $13.38 billion by 2020, with a CAGR of 14.70%.1

Enterprises host servers and applications in the data center to deliver business services such as audio and video streaming, retail and B2B e-commerce, business applications, and the routing infrastructure that runs the Internet. While perimeter devices are expected to protect end users and a wide range of end user applications, enterprises must also protect the intellectual property and mission-critical applications that reside in their data centers.

Data center security gateways (DCSGs) converge data center firewall (DCFW) and data center intrusion prevention system (DCIPS) technologies and play a vital role in todays security infrastructure. A DCSG must be able to perform access control and deep packet inspection in order to protect server applications from remote attacks. Unlike its NGFW cousin, which protects users from the Internet, the DCSG protects data center servers and the applications that run on them (i.e., web servers, mail servers, DNS servers, application servers, etc.) from potential threats.

The 2017 Data Center Security Gateway Group Test results provide insight into DCSG products, including their security effectiveness, performance, stability and reliability, and total cost of ownership (TCO).

Key findings from the test:

Five products achieved a Recommended rating for IPv4; four products achieved a Recommended rating for IPv6; one product received a Security Recommended rating for IPv6;

Security Effectiveness of verified products ranged between 79.7% and 98.3%.

The average Security Effectiveness rating was 73.3%; five products received a Security Effectiveness rating above this average.

TCO per Protected Mbps for verified products ranged between US$3 and US$10, with most tested products costing less than US$7 per protected Mbps.

The average TCO per Protected Mbps (Value) was US$8; five products demonstrated value above the average.

Enterprises are increasingly evaluating the implications of replacing existing data center firewalls and data center intrusion prevention systems in their data centers, said Jason Brvenik, Chief Technology Officer at NSS Labs. The 2017 Data Center Security Gateway Group Test results help enterprises understand the true cost of their investments and the capabilities necessary to address their specific use case requirements.

The following products were tested:

Cisco FirePOWER 4150 v6.2.2

Fortinet FortiGate 3000D v5.4.5 GA Build 3273

Fortinet FortiGate 7060E v5.4.5 GA Build 6355

Juniper Networks SRX5400E v15.1X49-D100.6

Palo Alto Networks PA-5250 PAN-OS 8.0.3-h4

Unverified Products: Check Point and Huawei

NSS Labs is committed to providing empirical data and objective group test results that enable organizations to make educated decisions about purchasing and optimizing security infrastructure products and services. As with all NSS Labs group tests, there is no fee for participation, and the test methodology is available in the public domain to provide transparency and to help enterprises understand the factors behind test results. Click here for more information about our group test policies.

Click here for more information on this test and the test methodology used, or to purchase the individual Test Reports. Click here to download the Security Value Map, which provides a graphic comparison of Security Effectiveness and TCO across the tested products.

Additional Resources:

1.Mordor Intelligence Study, Data Center Security Market - Industry Analysis, Geography, Trends, Forecast - (2017 - 2022)

About NSS Labs, Inc.



NSS Labs, Inc. is recognized globally as the most trusted source for independent, fact-based cybersecurity guidance. Our mission is to advance transparency and accountability within the cybersecurity industry. We empower enterprises by providing them with timely, relevant information on which to base their decisions. Our unmatched foundation in security testing, along with our extensive research and global threat analysis capabilities, provide the basis for our CAWS Continuous Security Validation Platform. CAWS measures the ongoing effectiveness of security controls, providing a real-time score card to help business leaders substantiate their security investments. Businesses can also leverage the threat data delivered by CAWS to strengthen their cyber risk posture and mitigate threats to their operating systems and applications. CISOs, Chief Security Architects, SOC and Threat Analysts, and information security professionals from many of the world's largest and most demanding enterprises rely on trusted insights from NSS Labs. For more information, visit www.nsslabs.com.

Contact:

Tom Resau

W2 Communications

Phone: +1 703-877-8103

tom@w2comm.com
From Roy Moore, to Donald Trump's White House; Doug Jones to the tax bill; Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, North Korea targeting missiles at the West Coast, recognizing Jerusalem, Michael Flynn's plea deal, and the sexual harassment or sexual assault zeitgeist changing the shape of America's icons, it's been a long, long year. Naughty or nice or just nasty, it doesn't matter, it's exhausting.

Add in the stress of the holiday season to the stress of the political season that just wrapped up for much of the country, and America needs some comic relief.
What is a foreclosure? When a homeowner doesn't pay his or her mortgage for an extended period, the bank or entity that lent that money takes possession of the homewhich means the current owner must move out.

Foreclosure is a scary word for homeowners, but it's not all that common today: According to CoreLogic, the foreclosure rate (meaning the percentage of loans in foreclosure) currently hovers just under 1%. During economic downturns, like the housing crisis of 2011, foreclosure rates rose as high as 3.6%.

If you're struggling to make your mortgage payments, you'll want to know what foreclosure means and how it works. Here's what you need to know.

1. What is pre-foreclosure?

If youre a few days late on a mortgage payment, dont panicthe bank isnt going to confiscate your house. In fact, most mortgage contracts have a 15-day grace period, with a late fee of 5% on payments made thereafter, says Jack Guttentag, author of The Mortgage Encyclopedia.

The real problem starts if youre more than 90 days late on your mortgage payments, at which point the bank will issue a Notice of Default with the County Recorder's Office. Youll receive a letter in the mail notifying you that youve defaulted on your loan, and you typically have 90 days to pay off your most recent bill. During this stage, your house is technically in pre-foreclosuremeaning that the bank has not taken possession of the property yet. (Thats good news.)

If your house is in pre-foreclosure, your best move is to contact your lender to see if you can work out a repayment plan and avoid foreclosure. "The bank doesn't want the property back," says Beverley Hourlier, a real estate agent in San Diego. "They want you to be able to save it, but you have to take action. Don't bury your head in the sand and stop opening the mail. Contact your bank right away, and they may be able to find a way to work with you.

One way to save your home is through a mortgage reinstatement, whereby you reinstate your mortgage by making up all the missed payments at once, plus interest and lender fees. You'll then go back to paying your monthly bill as usual.

If you cant come up with the money, your lender will start the foreclosure process.

2. What is foreclosure?

When a property officially enters foreclosure, the lender will repossess the house due to lack of payment and sell it to recoup some of its money. This process can take a while. For example, in New Jersey, the average time it took for a foreclosure to complete in 2017 was 1,347 daysthe longest in the nation. According to RealtyTracs U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. Nationwide, the average foreclosure took 883 days.

While the paperwork is winding its way through, you dont have to move out, but when the process is complete, youll receive a notice to vacate. (In most states, you have between five and 30 days to leave.) Youll also receive a Notice of Sale, which states that the property will be sold at auction, and it lists the date, time, and location of the auction.

Your lender is required to publish the Notice of Sale in a newspaper in the county where the home is located for three consecutive weeks before the auction date. You still have the option, however, to reinstate your mortgage up until five days before the auction.

3. What happens at auction?

Your home will be sold at a public auction to the highest bidder, who must pay the full amount for the purchase immediately. This buyer will receive a trustee's deed once the sale is complete, at which point he or she becomes the official owner. But foreclosure auctions dont always go as planned.

Unlike a traditional home salewhere the seller uses comparable properties (comps) to determine the sales pricemortgage lenders use a different formula to determine the listing price of a foreclosure. The starting bid usually includes the balance of the unpaid mortgage loan, interest owed, attorney's fees, and costs generated by the foreclosure processand together, those costs can sometimes push the asking price above market value.

If no one buys the home, the lender becomes the owner and the home is considered a bank-owned or REO (real estate owned) property. Typically, the lender then works with a real estate broker to put the property on the market. Generally, REO properties are sold "as is," which means the lender is selling the home in its current condition and will make no repairs or improvements (or give the buyer any credits to fund fix-its).

4. What happens after foreclosure?

If you undergo a foreclosure, it goes on your credit report and can drop your credit score by as much as 300 points, or possibly more. This can hurt your ability to obtain a credit card, auto loan, or cell phone plan. A foreclosure remains on your credit report for up to seven years, but its impact to on your credit score will lessen over time. There are also steps you can take to mend your credit score: Pay your credit card bills on time, spend within your means, and dont take on new debt.

In short, foreclosure may be stressful, but there is plenty you can do to prevent it from happeningand repair the damage if it happens to you.

The post What Is a Foreclosure? 4 Things Homeowners Need to Know appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Death had already been on Hansa Bergwall's mind before he came up with the idea for an app that would remind him constantly. But, he found himself wishing it was more present in his mind. Bergwall, a publicist living in Brooklyn, had been trying to make himself happier by adopting a confronting Bhutanese adage: "to be a truly happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily."

But he'd been failing. He tried to go analog - using sticky notes - but even those didn't take. His mind was too distracted, too focused on the customary aches of life in the city: traffic, work, overcooked meals.

"It was nearly impossible," Bergwall said. "I don't live in a rural Himalayan community; I was in New York City, and I would get home and realize I'd thought about anything but."

At the time, he was renting a spare room through Airbnb to Ian Thomas, a freelance app developer from the Bay Area who was staying in New York City to attend an artificial intelligence boot camp. Mindfulness and meditation weren't exactly topics Thomas had on his radar, but a few weeks into his stay, the two forged a connection, and began discussing Bergwall's struggle to incorporate death into his daily life.

As a developer, Thomas was intrigued by the idea of building an app that would solve a simple problem for Bergwall, whom he'd grown close with. But the idea had far more reach than both imagined.

The two are the brains behind WeCroak, an app that prompts users to consider their mortality five times a day. The conceit is painfully simple: we are all alive, and then we dielet's acknowledge it. The design is too; five thought-producing quotations pop up as notifications throughout the day, but besides that, it doesn't offer much.

In some ways, WeCroak is the anti-app. It's not free, but there's no advertising. When Thomas debuted an early version of WeCroak to a group of people in tech, their first inclination was to scroll and to look for "more things to do;" they were disappointed to find they couldn't.

Story continues below.

That's because Bergwall and Thomas don't want users to spend a lot of time in their app; they want them to be living their lives, and basking in the 'now.' (It seems to be working, average time per user is less than a minute) In the past week, WeCroak's download count has jumped from a modest 84 to 5,000, with users from Uruguay to Indonesia. Last week, they were surprised to learn their death-related app was #1 on the Apple Store's health and fitness section.

For them, a major priority in WeCroak's design was to run counter to the idea of a 'successful' app: one that keeps users addicted, wanting more, and paying more. They didn't want to participate in the 'bottomless pit' of endless scrolling that apps like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have made vogue. They want people to reconnectwith each other, themselves, and the colossal world around themnot fall deeper into the cyber pit.

The quotations are all handpicked by Bergwall, but he's recently opened up the floor to crowdsourcing. Hundreds of suggestions have been appearing in his email, from people all over the world. You can see a few examples in the slideshow at the top of the page.

There are a fair number of people who find the unrelenting reminders of our impending finale disturbing. One woman Bergwall introduced the app to called the idea "sick." Most of their users are under 35-years-old. Older people have told Bergwall and Thomas they wish they could think about death only five times a day.

"It can sound like a provoking or crazy idea, but it's really not that bad," Bergwall said. "This stuff is true. It's not telling you something you don't already know. Things that stress me out feel smaller. It's really nice."

For example, the other day, Bergwall was sitting at the breakfast table with his husband. He was complaining to him about stress at work, and finding himself getting worked up.

Right at that moment, as if by fate, a quote he'd hand picked himself buzzed on his phone. Bergwall took a look at his device, let out an exasperated sigh, and continued: "And on top of all of that, I'm going to die," he declared to his husband. Then the two started laughing.

Read Annie Vainshtein's latest stories here. Send her news tips at avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain
SYDNEY  The driver of an SUV that rammed into a crowd in central Melbourne on Thursday, injuring 19 people, is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent with a history of drug use and mental illness but no known links to terrorism, police said.

Police said the 32-year-old driver, who was not identified, was arrested and had been known to police for minor assault and traffic offenses. The motive for the attack was not immediately known.

We dont at this time have any evidence or any intelligence to indicate theres a connection with terrorism, said Victoria state police acting commissioner Shane Patton.

The streets outside the citys iconic Flinders Street railway station were crowded with Christmas shoppers Thursday afternoon when a white Suzuki SUV ran a red light and sped up to slam into pedestrians crossing the road before crashing into a traffic barrier.

While police had earlier said 14 people had been injured, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed that 19 people had been taken to hospitals. Four were listed in critical condition and were believed to include a preschool-aged child, Australian media reported.

Andrews described the incident as an act of evil and an act of cowardice, perpetrated against innocent bystanders.

Witnesses described a horrific scene.

I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and heard a thump, one man identified only as David said on ABC TV. He said he turned around saw people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them.

Bystanders rushed to drag the driver out of the vehicle before police arrived to arrest the man. Early reports said there were two men in the car, but Patton confirmed the suspect was driving alone.

Confusion had arisen when a second man was seen being apprehended alongside the driver. Patton said he was a 24-year-old man seen filming the incident on his mobile phone and found carrying a bag with three knives.

Patton said that man was taken into custody to determine whether he was connected.

At this stage, we dont believe that to be the case, he said.

Patton said the investigation would involve the forces counterterrorism unit to ensure that there isnt that connection, and that there is no ongoing threat but that the attack was being treated as a singular incident.

Trevor Marshallsea is an Associated Press writer.
SEATTLE, WA, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



CFN Media Group ("CannabisFN"), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces publication of an article covering Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: PVOT) (CNSX: PVOT) (PVOT.CN) (OTCQB: PVOTF) and why its well positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for cannabis-infused products, which has become an area of increasing interest for food and beverage companies.

Cannabis Infused Products

Canadas cannabis industry is projected to reach $22.6 billion in size over the coming years, according to Deloitte, driven by the legalization of recreational marijuana. While dried marijuana has been the primary area of focus, cannabis oils and extracts are the fastest growing subset of the burgeoning industry. The legalization of these products has expanded the market to non-smoking consumers and further legislation surrounding edibles could do much more.

The interest in cannabis-infused edibles is underscored by Constellation Brands Inc.s recent acquisition of a minority stake in Canopy Growth Corp., a leading licensed producer of medical cannabis under Health Canadas Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). Constellation Brands is a leading international producer and marketer of beer, wine, and spirits with operations around the world.

Cowen & Co. has found evidence that the craft beer markets in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State have been impacted by the legalization of recreational marijuana. The volume of craft beer sold in these states fell 2% in 2016 despite a 0.5% increase throughout the rest of the United States. In Denver, these volumes were down over 5% in 2016. The cannabis industry has also eclipsed the craft beer industry in size, making it an appealing diversification.

Pivot Pharma Enters the Space

Pivot Pharma recently announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire ERS Holdings LLC, a privately-held California company that has developed a patented Ready to Infuse Cannabis technology (RTIC) that enables the transformation of cannabis oil into powder and designed to be infused into a variety of food and beverages. In particular, the technology converts cannabis oil into tasteless powders that can be infused into products like K-Cups, stick packs, baked mixes, shots, shakes, topicals and bottled beverages.

Pivot believes that the anticipated changes in cannabis regulations in Canada and California will provide an opportunity to launch multiple products into the healthcare and recreational markets in 2018, said Pivot Pharma CEO Dr. Patrick Frankham. We are delighted that Ross Franklin and Pat Rolfes from ERS have chosen Pivot to help transform their patents and processes into therapeutic customer goods.

Pivot previously acquired three other technologies that address the problems inherent in the delivery of cannabinoids. These include an oral solution (Solmic Solubilisation), a transdermal approach (BiPhasix Transdermal Drug Delivery Platform), and nanotechnology for topical applications (Thrudermic). The newly acquired powder technology extends the companys capacities while also complementing its existing assets, as the powder could potentially be integrated into Pivots other delivery mechanisms.

Pivot Pharma is already engaged in discussions with several Canadian licensed producers and licensed dealers to accelerate the commercialization of its large pipeline of technology-driven products. If it doesnt find a joint venture, management plans to seek a Licensed Dealer designation from Health Canada and begin building its own production facility. A Licensed Dealer can house, research, test, develop and sell products associated with cannabis and other drugs in ways that companies holding Licensed Producer permits cannot.

Looking Ahead

The global food and beverage market is worth nearly $100 billion, according to Statista, and continues to experience tremendous growth. The cannabis industry could have an outsized impact on certain segments of the adult beverage market, such as the adult recreational and functional foods sectors, given the similarity in demographics. This has led some companies to acquire ownership stakes in cannabis companies, but others could pursue joint ventures or licensing agreements with cannabis firms.

Pivot Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: PVOTF) (CSE: PVOT) is well-positioned to capitalize on these dynamics following its letter of intent to acquire ERS Holdings LLC. In combination with its plans to partner with or acquire a Licensed Dealer, the company will be capable of producing a variety of cannabis-infused products targeting the massive food and beverage industry. This could create opportunities for joint ventures or other favorable events down the road.

Please follow the link to read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/pivot-pharma-moves-acquire-cannabis-infusion-technology/

For more information, visit the companys website at www.pivotpharma.com.

About CFN Media

CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.

Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/featuredcompany

Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8

Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com

Disclaimer:

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/




1 Syria war: Air strikes on a Syrian village in the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib killed at least 17 people, including women and children, activists and rescue workers said Wednesday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the overnight strikes killed at least four children and two women, and wiped out an entire displaced family. Idlib is a rebel stronghold where President Bashar Assads forces have recently launched an offensive to try retaking the province after losing it nearly three years ago.

2 Human rights sanctions: The United States is slapping five Russians with sanctions under a law that lets the U.S. target violators of human rights. The Treasury Department says its designating the Russians under the Magnitsky Act. Congress passed it in 2012 in response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. He died in prison after exposing a tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials. Three of the five being targeted are accused of involvement in the criminal conspiracy that Magnitsky exposed. The two others are accused of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights in Chechnya. The Treasury says one allegedly was involved in abusing gay men in Chechnya in 2017.
SEOUL  South Korean soldiers fired 20 warning machine gun rounds Thursday, turning back North Korean soldiers apparently pursuing a comrade who had earlier dashed across the rivals shared border, officials said. It is the fourth time this year a North Korean soldier has defected across the worlds most heavily armed border.

South Korean military officials said they heard gunfire from the North after South Korea fired its warning shots, but it wasnt clear if the firing was retaliatory. Neither side immediately reported casualties.
Judges have been in recess for two hours. Debating whether or not to count a ballot that looks somewhat like this. They would not allow photos of the actual ballot. pic.twitter.com/1GAJBWoTrM
.@nikkihaley: U.S. "will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation...We will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more." pic.twitter.com/e06Gk2U1kv
The Commerce Commission is taking High Court action against GEA Milfos International alleging the milk testing technology company engaged in cartel pricing with rival Smart Farm Technologies.

The regulator alleges Milfos breached the Commerce Act by engaging in cartel conduct between mid-2012 and September 2014, it said in a statement. The conduct relates to Milfos allegedly entering into an agreement with its competitor to fix, control or maintain prices of milk testing products and services and herd management systems by agreeing to use a common quote calculator to generate quotes for retail customers.

The commission also warned Smart Farm over its role in the conduct, noting that although the company is likely to have breached price-fixing rules, it chose to issue a warning rather than take court action after taking into account the extent of Smart Farm's involvement in the conduct.

The regulator said it is seeking a declaration from the High Court in Auckland that Milfos breached the Commerce Act, as well as a financial penalty and costs.

The Commerce Act prohibits contracts, arrangements or understandings between competitors containing provisions that have the purpose or effect of fixing, controlling or maintaining the prices charged for goods or services. An individual can be fined up to $500,000 and be prohibited from being a company director or manager, while a body corporate can be fined $10 million, three times the commercial gain from the breach, or 10 percent of turnover. Each separate breach of the act may incur a separate penalty.

"Competition between firms typically derives from rivalry on price, quality, service, choice and other offerings," Commerce Commission head of competition Katie Rusbatch said in her warning letter to Smart Farm. "Conduct which fixes, controls, or maintains prices reduces competition and can be detrimental to consumers."

Germany's GEA Group bought Milfos in late 2012, and its local holding company, GEA Farm Technologies New Zealand, reported a loss of $2 million on revenue of $43.7 million in calendar 2016. Smart Farm is a subsidiary of Dutch group DEC International, whose NZ holding unit generated a profit of $2.9 million on revenue of $32.2 million in 2016.

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

My Food Bag confirms dividend and releases HY results

Fonterra announces divestment of Chile business

Meridian Energy monthly operating report for October 2022

NZ Automotive to announce interim results for HY 2023

November 18th Morning Report

CHI - 2023 Guidance Update

TRA - Weblink for Turners Half Year FY23 Results Presentation

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Concludes Goodwill Discussions

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Announces Discussions on Goodwill

KMD - Trading Update


New Zealand's benchmark stock index is headed for a 22 percent gain this year as investors chased growth stories ranging from infant formula to technology and tourism. Headwinds may prevent a repeat in 2018.

The S&P/NZX 50 Index hit a record high 8,401 this year and is on track for the best performance since 2012, in line with global markets with many other indices at records.

Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners, says that while investors will be happy, this year's growth has to be considered in the context of last year's declines. Between September and November 2016, the NZX 50 dropped as much as 12 percent from its then-record 7,571.1 on Sept. 7.

The first part of this year's gains was "more of a rebound than us going onwards and upwards", Lister said, and about 5 percent of this year's gains come from dividends, which are included in New Zealand's benchmark index though they are excluded from many indices around the world.

The benchmark index was unperturbed by the general election in September although a predicted slowing economy in the year ahead could take some money off the table, Lister said.

"The housing market is probably going to go sideways rather than up, that will probably put the breaks on consumer spending. Migration continues tapering off a little bit and we've got policy change which creates a bit of uncertainty," he said. "What you'll see is the pace of growth will slow and some of our tailwinds will lose a bit of steam. Next year might be a bit more subdued, higher volatility and the pace of growth might be a bit lower."

"There is also lots of global risk - some markets around the world are at much higher highs than ours and there is certainly no shortage of risk offshore," he said. "There is all manner of things that could hit us next year. It's definitely a time for being a little bit more cautious and conservative."

The Reserve Bank's November forecasts have quarterly economic growth rising to 1.2 percent in the first three months of 2018, before slowing to 0.7 percent in the final two quarters.

The top performer on the NZX 50 this year has been A2 Milk, which has soared 278 percent to $8.05, while its production partner Synlait Milk has gained 132 percent to $7.25.

The two milk stocks have moved in tandem for much of the year, despite the businesses being quite different - A2 markets its A2-protein branded milk products, particularly in the form of baby formula, while Synlait is a dairy processor. A2 owns about 8 percent of Synlait which supplies its dairy products. The share prices seem to have decoupled of late, but both have benefitted from strong demand in China for A2's products, each reaching record highs during the year.

Other top performers this year include Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, up 64 percent this year; Tourism Holdings, which has gained 49 percent; Air New Zealand, which has risen 45 percent; and Scales Corp, up 39 percent.

"What all of the companies have in common is they are real growth stories - be it by technology and software, branded products like infant formula or healthcare products, or tourism - that sector has had a very strong year," Lister said. "There has been loads of really strong returns from particularly growth stocks."

One of the most notable stocks of the year has been one which is no longer a member of the NZX 50 - Xero, which ditched the local index earlier this month in favour of listing solely on the Australian stock exchange. Company management has long criticised Kiwi media and analyst coverage as overly negative, and said the shift would increase its relevance "to a more diverse range of large investors". The stock has dropped 7 percent since the company said it was leaving, though it has gained 77 percent in the year and will keep trading on the main board until Jan. 31 next year.

Xero has been replaced by another tech stock, Pushpay Holdings, which has gained 195 percent this year, making it the second-best performing stock on the NZX 50, as its charitable giving app continues to gain ground in the US. Pushpay itself is planning a US listing and likely a capital raising within the next 15 months, but says that won't mean de-listing from the NZX or ASX.

Stockmarket operator NZX has seen its own share price rise 7 percent over 2017, a year which saw the company undertake a five-month operational review. It released a new strategy in November, which it said was a fundamental reset of the business to drive shareholder value and reinvigorate New Zealand's capital markets. The market has seen just one initial public offering this year - from Oceania Healthcare - though Vodafone New Zealand is a strong contender for an IPO next year.

"It's something NZX is going to have to think about pretty carefully, how to generate new listings," Lister said. "We've got all of this Kiwisaver money that's growing, every week, every month, and that needs to go somewhere. A lot of it goes offshore because we have a small market, investors have to turn their attention to international opportunities, but we'd like to support local companies that are growing. It's not simply 'oh the NZX has done a bad job', it's not as simple as that."

Despite the building boom, construction stocks have not fared as well this year. Metro Performance Glass has plunged 48 percent, making it the worst performer, while Fletcher Building is down 28 percent in the year.

"Metro Performance Glass and Fletcher Building do stand out," Lister said. Earnings downgrades, more than one, all the issues with the construction division, change of CEO and other executives - a really rough year for Fletchers, and Metro Glass has been worse again. They've had a shocker, they've really disappointed the market and haven't been able to deliver at all on expectations."

Lister said that investors have learned that a macro tailwind such as a construction boom doesn't equate to success from every company in that industry.

"There are two sides to it - the industry can be in the right position, but the company needs to do a lot of things right," he said. "Fletcher's is an interesting one. If you take out the B+I division, they've actually gone okay, the other divisions are doing fine. Placemakers is selling loads of stuff. It's not right across the board, it's just that Fletchers is a big company these days and with one division having made some pretty horrendous judgement calls about contract pricing, that's dragged down all the other divisions. There are lessons for investors and management alike."

Sky Network Television was the second-worst performer, falling 38 percent. The pay-TV operator was knocked back by the Commerce Commission over a planned merger with Vodafone New Zealand and its shares dropped further in August after it reported annual profit slumped 21 percent to $116 million as revenue dropped and increasingly expensive content squeezed its margins.

Outside of the NZX 50, Serko has soared 624 percent, last trading at $2.10. The online travel booking software developer has booked most of those gains since October, when it posted its first mid-year profit and reiterated its expectation to post a maiden annual profit.

Energy Mad has been the worst performer on the All Index, down 89 percent, with Veritas Investments plunging 70 percent and Plexure Group down 56 percent this year.

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

Now is the time to reassess your investments

Now is the time to reassess your investments

Fonterra looking to lift China's importance in new strategy

A2, Synlait shares climb as takeover bid revives optimism about Chinese appetite for milk

Service sector activity eases in August but still expanding

Lumpy imports drive bigger July trade deficit than expected

Nimbys, carparks and the status quo under threat as govt tells big cities: grow up and out

Dairy manufacturers got better prices in June quarter

Orr defends RBNZ rate cut, says monetary policy looks ahead, not behind

RBNZ's Orr says investors need to put their money to work


The Supreme Court has batted away Wellington International Airport's appeal to allow a shorter runway safety area than what pilots insist is needed, saying the Civil Aviation Authority went about its decision-making the wrong way in signing off on the proposal.

Chief Justice Sian Elias and Justices William Young, Susan Glazebrook, Ellen France and Terence Arnold unanimously dismissed the airport's appeal, saying the regulator's decision started from the wrong point which led to the approval of a 90-metre runway end safety area (RESA) for a proposed extension to the landing site. International standards call for the RESA to be at least 90 metres, and if practicable, at least 240 metres.

The ruling, delivered by Justice Arnold, said the Civil Aviation Authority director erred in law by acting as if the legislation hadn't been amended to strip out the 'reasonable cost' element in promoting safety. The director was also mistaken in using the airport's proposal as a starting point rather than what the rules required, the judgment said.

"We consider that it is not consistent with the act as it presently stands to assess practicability solely by reference to WIAL's costs as balanced against the increased level of safety that would result," the judgment said. "We see WIAL's intended benefits as being relevant to the practicability analysis as well."

The issue ended up in the courts when the New Zealand Air Line Pilots' Association took the case due to concerns about the shorter safety run-off area.

The judges upheld the Court of Appeal's ruling in favour of the pilots' association and ordered the airport and Civil Aviation Authority to pay costs of $30,000 plus disbursements to the union.

"As we understand it, WIAL's current extension proposal will require a further acceptance from the director," the judges said. "The director should consider that application in the light of the court's reasoning."

The pilots' association welcomed the decision, saying the longer RESAs or use of specialist arrestor systems on shorter distances helped mitigate the damage caused in an undershoot or overshoot situation.

"Even though airline pilots have the most to gain from extended runways and the extra international flights they encourage, safety will always be our first priority and this should also be so for both New Zealands airport companies and especially for the CAA," said association president Tim Robinson said in a statement.

Wellington Airport chief executive Steve Sanderson said the transport hub was still committed to extending the runway and will review the judgment.

"We remain committed to the project and will be informing the Environment Court of our next steps in due course," Sanderson said. "While we need to take time to review the decision and consider our re-application to the Civil Aviation Authority, the Supreme Courts judgement and interpretation is encouraging and provides more guidance on what the CAA should take into account."

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

My Food Bag confirms dividend and releases HY results

Fonterra announces divestment of Chile business

Meridian Energy monthly operating report for October 2022

NZ Automotive to announce interim results for HY 2023

November 18th Morning Report

CHI - 2023 Guidance Update

TRA - Weblink for Turners Half Year FY23 Results Presentation

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Concludes Goodwill Discussions

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Announces Discussions on Goodwill

KMD - Trading Update


Meridian Energy has agreed to buy Trustpower's Australian hydro-electric generation assets for A$168 million, which it says will support an expanding retail business across the Tasman.

Wellington-based Meridian will buy the shares of GSP Energy in Australia, subject to Foreign Investment Review Board approval, adding three power stations generating 92.4 megawatts to its portfolio in Australia, it said in a statement. The former Green State Power hydro assets are the Hume, Burrinjuck and Keepit power stations in New South Wales.

"Meridian is building our portfolio of complementary Australian renewable generation to support our growing retail business," chief executive Neal Barclay said. "Customers are finding value in our easy-to-use online model that shows them how much power they are using and what it costs and were finding there is a strong and growing desire from Australian electricity consumers to support a green energy retailer."

Tauranga-based Trustpower started reviewing its ownership of the Australian assets in August, hiring Forsyth Barr to run the process, which it today said culminated in the sale. Infratil-controlled Trustpower said it will reap a "significant gain" on the A$72.2 million price it paid in 2014.

"We came to the view that while the assets in GSP Energy were generating solid cash flows, they were no longer a strategic fit for Trustpower without a broader Australian platform," chief executive Vince Hawksworth said. "Realising value by selling GSP Energy, including a material gain on our purchase price in 2014, is an excellent outcome for Trustpower."

Trustpower spun out its wind and solar generation facilities into separately listed Tilt Renewables in October 2016 and since then has focused its strategy on the New Zealand business.

Meridian already has wind-farms in Australia and more than 100,000 customers on its Powershop branded retail business but has been dealing with an uncertain policy environment. Still, at the company's annual meeting in October, former chief Mark Binns said it had just signed parameters for the final negotiation of power purchase agreements with several developers, potentially underwriting solar and wind projects in NSW and Victoria.

Australia has been a happy hunting ground for New Zealand's biggest electricity generator, with Meridian booking a $600 million profit 12 years ago when it sold its then-Australian subsidiary Southern Hydro for A$1.42 billion.

Meridian shares last traded at $2.94 and have gained 15 percent this year, while Trustpower stock closed at $5.95 yesterday having gained 26 percent this year.

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

My Food Bag confirms dividend and releases HY results

Fonterra announces divestment of Chile business

Meridian Energy monthly operating report for October 2022

NZ Automotive to announce interim results for HY 2023

November 18th Morning Report

CHI - 2023 Guidance Update

TRA - Weblink for Turners Half Year FY23 Results Presentation

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Concludes Goodwill Discussions

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Announces Discussions on Goodwill

KMD - Trading Update


Tourism Holdings says annual profit will be about 10 percent higher from new tax legislation passed in the US.

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the US tax code in 30 years that includes tax cuts and a new deduction on business income.

Auckland-based Tourism Holdings expects that will boost net profit by between $2.3 million and $3 million based on the current distribution of its earnings across US states, current state tax rates, and exchange rates. The rental motorhome operator anticipates its total effective tax rate in the US will fall to about 27 percent from 40 percent.

While the new income tax rate is effective from Jan. 1, it said it is not clear whether there is an impact on the Tourism Holdings tax expense in the current financial year ended June 30, 2018, apart from a one-off deferred tax balance adjustment. The first full year in which the lower federal tax rate will apply to Tourism Holdings is expected to be the 2019 financial year.

In August, the company reported a 24 percent gain in annual net profit to $30.2 million. At the time it projected 2018 profit to be between $36 million and $39 million.

Overall, the legislation is a complex document and "late changes made up until the time of passing mean that a full definitive financial analysis of the impact on thl cannot be accurately quantified at this stage," chair Rob Campbell said in a statement.

Regarding the 100 percent deductibility for capital asset purchases, it said it understands the new qualifying assets include RVs and they will be subject to 100 percent deductibility in the year of purchase for tax years until 2022.

"The full deductibility of fleet asset purchases will have the effect of deferring tax cashflows, but will not impact income tax expense," Cambell said.

The company's Deferred Tax Balance (a liability) will reflect the tax rate change at the date of enactment, and result in a one-off positive adjustment to FY18 net profit, although it can't accurately predict that until it figures out how rates will be applied between now and FY19, Tourism Holdings said.

The shares rose 0.5 percent at $5.55 and have gained 49 percent so far this year,

(BusinessDesk)

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

My Food Bag confirms dividend and releases HY results

Fonterra announces divestment of Chile business

Meridian Energy monthly operating report for October 2022

NZ Automotive to announce interim results for HY 2023

November 18th Morning Report

CHI - 2023 Guidance Update

TRA - Weblink for Turners Half Year FY23 Results Presentation

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Concludes Goodwill Discussions

General Capital (GEN:NZ) Announces Discussions on Goodwill

KMD - Trading Update


CHANTILLY, Va., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Four Points Technology, LLC (Four Points), a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), has been awarded a delivery order under the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement V (NASA SEWP V), a Government-Wide Acquisition Contract to provide the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with cloud computing resources. The Enterprise Cloud Capacity Contract award includes a base year and four option years with a total potential ceiling value of $495 million, and will support VAs Cloud first initiative in delivering multiple cloud solutions across the VA enterprise. Specifically, the order will provide the full suite of cloud service offerings from both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure required to allocate memory, processing, storage, and networking on demand to gain access to a suite of secure, scalable, and flexible information technology (IT) capabilities to enable creation, deletion, and flexible sizing of Virtual Data Centers and Virtual Machines.



Four Points supports the VA in multiple areas, including medical IT as well as traditional IT. For this program, Four Points is providing cloud solutions from both Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Four Points has been delivering Federally-compliant Cloud to government customers for over five years, and the VA award reflects the combination of the companys focus on both the VA and on cloud computing. Company President and CEO, David "Chief" Gilchrist, stated, "We are honored to have been selected by the VA to support their transition from traditional data centers to the Cloud. Weve invested for years in building effective processes for delivering best-of-breed cloud services to the Federal Government in a manner that supports our customers unique needs for governance, security, and compliance."

Weve proudly supported the VA in its Cloud journey to date, helping the agency create the Vets.gov portal so that veterans can easily accomplish tasks ranging from applying for healthcare benefits to refilling a prescription, said David Levy, Vice President of U.S. Government at AWS Public Sector. We are thrilled to collaborate with Four Points to continue our work with the VA, providing them with needed cloud technology and services so that the agency can focus on whats most important: the men and women who have served our country.

Greg Myers, Vice President, Microsoft Federal stated, "We are proud of our ongoing strategic partnership with the VA, and are honored to support the important work they do to serve our nation's Veterans, leveraging the full suite of Microsoft IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud services.

About Four Points Technology

Four Points Technology is a CVE Verified SDVOSB dedicated to providing IT Products and Professional Services to the Federal Government. Four Points Technology offers solutions that support a wide variety of business initiatives specifically suited for Government organizations.

By leveraging well-established relationships with major vendors, suppliers, and manufacturers, Four Points Technology's approach begins with an assessment of each client's needs and objectives. Our experienced staff is committed to supporting unique requirements in order to best provide efficient and cost-effective solutions. www.4points.com

Contact Info:

Joel A. Lipkin, Chief Operating Officer

jlipkin@4points.com

(703) 657-6127

Four Points Technology, LLC
BALTIMORE, Md., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce, today announced that Maryland Department of Commerce Secretary, Mike Gill will deliver opening remarks at its 2018 Legislative Reception, being held at the Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys on Thursday, January 4, 2018. (Register here)



Secretary Gill will speak to the current economic climate and detail how agencies statewide are incentivizing businesses in 2018. In addition, elected officials from city, state and federal legislatures will be on-hand to speak directly with attendees about the future of business in Baltimore.

WHO: The Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce The Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce WHAT: State of Baltimore Business  A Legislative Reception WHEN: Thursday, January 4th, 2018 (6:00  8:00 pm) WHERE: Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys

Secure your registration today!

Eben Frederick and Kendrick Tilghman, presidents of the Baltimore City and Greater Baltimore Black Chambers, respectively, will discuss their vision for sustainable business growth in Baltimore. They will lead a discussion with elected officials on how constituencies across the City can come together to provide more opportunities to residents and business owners.

Click here to submit questions or topics you would like to be discussed.

* The deadline for all submissions is December 27, 2017.

The Baltimore City Chambers Legislative Reception is an important event and a rare opportunity for unfettered access to elected officials, said Eben Frederick, president, Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce. Its not often that business owners have the opportunity to speak directly with leaders from the various branches of legislature and hear from one of the States most prominent business figures, all in one evening.

We are honored that Secretary Gill, members of Baltimores City Council, the Maryland General Assembly and Congress are participating and excited to partner with the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce.

Baltimore is nationally recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, and together, we will continue to thrive and ascend to unprecedented heights to continue to make Baltimore a great place to live, work and play.

As Marylands largest city, Baltimores economic success resonates statewide, added Frederick.

Contact us today! For sponsorship opportunities, information on registration or award submissions, please contact the Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce at 410-948-0920 or by email at eben@baltimorecitychamber.org.

ABOUT THE BALTIMORE CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

As the voice of Baltimore businesses, the Baltimore City Chamber of Commerces focus is to serve as a forum through which members are able to grow their respective businesses. Programs and initiatives foster collaboration long-term growth, and development, and each campaign is designed to promote both members and the Citys core value propositions. The Chamber is committed to advocating for the continuing adoption of a pro-business agenda by the City of Baltimore and the region on behalf of its members.

For additional Information on membership please visit www.baltimorecitychamber.org

CONTACT

Mostafa Razzak

JMRConnect

202-904-2048

m.razzak@jmrconnect.net
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nicola Mining Inc. (TSXV:NIM) is pleased to provide an update on its 2017 Exploration Program focused on copper exploration at its wholly-owned New Craigmont Property. The first four holes all successfully intersected skarn alteration, including previously untested segments of the Embayment Zone. The skarn alteration, consisting of a mineral assemblage of garnet-magnetite-epidote-chlorite, is associated with the Craigmont Copper deposit, which is located along strike to the east. As a result, the strike length of the Embayment zone has increased by 150 metres, bringing the total strike length of the zone to over 250 metres and it remains open to the west and at depth.



Skarn alteration intersected over 200 meters in holes NC-2017-01 and NC-2017-03 with an estimated true-thickness of 153.0 meters, and over 120 meters in NC-2017-04 with an estimated true thickness of 78.0 metres. Hole NC-2017-02 successfully defined the eastern boundary of the zone, where it terminates against the post-mineral Embayment Fault.



Embayment zone skarn alteration is open at depth and to the west.

Diamond drilling in 2017 was designed to test for continuity of the Embayment Zone at depth and along the west-striking zone of skarn-type alteration and copper mineralization encountered in historical drill holes and more recently, in DDH-THU-002. These first holes met this objective and will aid the geological team in future program planning.

Ongoing drilling continues to expand the Embayment Skarn zone westward. The Company will release assays once analysis of all samples has been completed.



Craigmont Mines Limited put significant importance on the Embayment Zone and developed an underground portal to within 150 metres of the Embayment Zone.

Hole NC-2017-01 tested the Embayment Zone between DDH-THU-002 and S-100 and intersected 212.51 metres of copper mineralization associated with skarn from 253.05 to 465.56 metres. This mineralized interval is interpreted to have a true thickness of 163 metres. Hole NC-2017-02 was designed to define mineralization extending east from DDH-THU-002, whereas holes NC-2017-03, and NC-2017-04 were drilled approximately 90 metres west of DDH-THU-002 and targeted a previously untested portion of the Embayment Zone. Hole NC-2017-03 intersected approximately 240.0 metres of skarn alteration from 347.90 to 587.35 metres and hole NC-2017-04 intersected approximately 120.0 metres of skarn alteration from 390.79 to 512.57 metres. These intersections both correlate well with skarn alteration intersected in holes THU-002 and NC-2017-01. The current program continues to extend the skarn zone westward.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c2107f66-cf9b-475d-9f69-fe2655ee855c

The Embayment Zone is a historic skarn target that was identified by Craigmont Mines Limited through several surface and underground drill holes, the most notable being S-100 drilled in 1978, which had a 149 metre interval grading 0.47% copper beginning at 271.88 metres downhole (invalidated historical results). In 2016 the Company drill tested the target area with hole DDH-THU-002 and intersected skarn type mineralization grading 1.11% Cu over 86 meters (331.1- 417.0 metres).

Peter Espig, Chief Executive Officer of the Company, commented, The results of diamond drilling in 2017 are extremely significant as it opens up the potential over the whole New Craigmont property for continued significant copper mineralization. We have several key zones that combine to make a very exciting project.

Quality Control

The Company implemented a quality control program for this program to ensure best practices are utilized for sample collection and analysis of diamond drill core samples. Lithology, structure, alteration and mineralization was logged by the Companys geologic team and sample intervals ranging from 1.0 metres to 2.0 metres in length were selected based on geology. Quality control measures include insertion of standards, blanks, and duplicate pairs into the sample stream at a frequency of one duplicate pair, one standard and one blank for every group of 30 samples submitted.

Activation Laboratory (ISO 17025 Certified) in Kamloops, British Columbia conducted sample analysis using 38 element Aqua Regia digest-ICP finish (IE3) and fire assay gold (IA2) packages. Samples returning assay values greater than 10,000 ppm copper were re-analysed using over-limit mass spectrometry methods (8-AR ICP-MS). Certified reference standards and rock blanks were placed in the sample stream with a ratio of approximately one sample out of 10.

Qualified Person

Kevin Wells, P.Geo, a consulting geologist to the Company is the independent qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for the technical disclosure contained in this news release. The scientific and technical content of this press release was reviewed by Mr. Chris LeClair, G.I.T., an employee of the Company and verified by Mr. Kevin Wells, P.Geo.

Nicola Mining Inc. is a junior mining company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, and is in the process of recommencing mill feed processing operations at its 100% owned state-of-the-art mill and tailings facility, located near Merritt, British Columbia. It has already signed four mill profit share agreements with high grade gold producers. The fully-permitted mill is able to process both gold and silver mill feed via gravity and floatation processes. The Company also owns 100% of Treasure Mountain, its high-grade silver property, and a gravel pit, which is located adjacent to its milling operations.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

 Peter Espig 

Peter Espig

CEO & Director

For additional information

Contact: Peter Espig

Phone: (778) 385-1213

Email: info@nicolamining.com



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.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Dozens of animals in the care of Staten Island's volunteer animal rescue groups are waiting for their forever families to find them.

Click through the photos to see the dogs, cats, puppies and kittens up for adoption at events this weekend.

STILL HOLIDAY SHOPPING? NEED GIFT IDEAS? Give the gift of life this season! Adopt a pet or donate to local rescue groups in the name of your favorite "pet lover." The list below will help your quest.

-Animal Care Centers of NYC, 212-788-4000, nycacc.org; located at 3139 Veterans Road West, Adoption Hours: Mon-Fri: noon to 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

-Fur Friends in Need, a NJ based group with Staten Island members and adoption events on the island; 732-829-1426, imavegge@aol.com; furfriendsinneed.com.

-Happy Homes Animal Rescue- a NJ based group with Staten Island adoption events. Elaine: 914-393-8292 elaine@happyhomesinc.org; Eric@happyhomesinc.org; happyhomesinc.org.

-Louie's Legacy, 646-397-LLAR (5527), newyork@louieslegacy.org; louieslegacy.org/wp/

-New York Bully Crew, 844-633-NYBC (6922), nybcapp@gmail.com; nybullycrew.org.

-P.L.U.T.O. Rescue of Staten Island, 718-227-0553, plutorescue@aol.com; plutorescue.org.

-

Staten Island Council for Animal Welfare (SICAW),

call

victory4thevoicelessanimalrescue.com. -Victory for the Voiceless Animal Rescue, 718-442-1625, AdoptVictory4theVoiceless@gmail.com

OR

Help by buying calendars...The 2018 countdown is upon us!

Heart Throbs and Hounds" 2018 calendar: Order your "Heart Throbs and Hounds" Calendar 2018 by celebrity photographer Mike Ruiz which benefit Fur Friends In Need and Lilo's Promise Animal Rescues. What happens when you put together hot fitness models who volunteer their time and adorable rescue pups? The goal of the calendar is to raise awareness to decide to "adopt and not shop" for pets. Proceeds will help both rescue groups save more local shelter lives and help with medical needs. For more info, visit the 2018 calendar: Order your "Heart Throbs and Hounds" Calendar 2018 by celebrity photographer Mike Ruiz which benefit Fur Friends In Need and Lilo's Promise Animal Rescues. What happens when you put together hot fitness models who volunteer their time and adorable rescue pups? The goal of the calendar is to raise awareness to decide to "adopt and not shop" for pets. Proceeds will help both rescue groups save more local shelter lives and help with medical needs. For more info, visit the Friends in Need website.

"Paws of Gotham" 2018 calendar: Louie's Legacy's fourth annual calendar (take a sneak-peak in the above gallery) is aimed at raising funds to rehabilitate and re-home animals from high-kill shelters across the United States. "Paws of Gotham" was shot by famed South African photographer Candy Kennedy. The images she captured focus on the diversity of both people and pets, and showcase the noise and colorful energy of New York City. Each month features a stunning photo of a real rescue pet, most from Louie's Legacy, with a celebrity, influencers or model, and is shot in front of an iconic New York scene. Pre-orders can be made at LouiesLegacy.org/wp/calendar.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2018 WITH MORE REASONS TO LOVE A RESCUE DOG! Catch a first look at the All-New 2018 American Rescue Dog Show coming to Hallmark Channel! Preview: HallmarkChannel.com/videos/preview-2018-american-rescue-dog-show.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The chalk white exterior of the landmarked Bennett House will become the canvas for an LED light installation in the shape of the "Betsy Ross flag" at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

The holiday display at Historic Richmond Town, 411 Clarke Ave., is part of the Staten Island Historical Society's history driven, future-focused approach to reimagining New York City's only living history village.

"Historic Richmond Town is the ideal backdrop for a modern take on the historic Betsy Ross flag," said artist Scott LoBaido."I can think of no better place for this installation than at the heart of Staten Island, in the heart of New York City, the heart of America."

The light installation is part of a new partnership with the patriotic artist and a group of borough leaders devoted to helping Historic Richmond Town raise much needed funds to revive the Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House at 1476 Richmond Road in Dongan Hills. As the oldest surviving building on Staten Island, it is one of few such treasures still standing on its original foundation state and nationwide.

"Scott has traversed the country painting flags in every state on a mission generate a country-wide love and appreciation for the stars and stripes," adds Historic Richmond Town Interim Executive Director Ken Bach. "The Bennett Cafe, a labor of love of the Women's Auxiliary of Historic Richmond Town and located in the Bennett House, is the ideal location for celebrating the role of women in building a strong country. The flag, representing the original 13 colonies through modern LED lighting demonstrates the enduring value of American ingenuity."

Bach adds the display would not be possible without the generous donation of materials and support from Dennis McKeon, executive director of Where to Turn, adding, "we are grateful for Scott and Dennis and their dedication to celebrating a love of country at Historic Richmond Town through this dramatic installation, and the upcoming exhibit and fundraiser in support of our Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House."

When the very first walls and roof went up on the Billio-Stillwell-Perine House, circa 1662 , the borough was still owned by nature. Thriving wetlands and thick vegetation stretched for miles, interrupted only by Lenape Indians cultivating fields and one tiny, Dutch settlement. The British had yet to lay claim to the land, and it would be more than 100 years until this great experiment called the United States of America would take shape.

The Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House had already passed through several prominent Dutch and British families by 1792, when the flag we now know as the "Betsy Ross Flag" became a symbol for the 13 American colonies. Edward Perine took possession of the home in 1764, overseeing the addition of English-styled wooden sections to the original, rough fieldstone structure over subsequent decades. The family owned the home for more than 100 years, until it was purchased by the now defunct Staten Island Antiquarian Society in 1915.

Descendants of the Perine family will be among those on hand this Thursday, when LoBaido flips the lights on his 16-by-24-foot holiday light display of the historic flag -- brightening the night sky on the shortest day of the year. The Perine family -- and thousands of Staten Islanders who viewed the home's interior after it opened to the public in 1953 -- can describe how its unique Dutch jambless fireplace similarly worked to battle darkness long, long before electricity or modern LEDs had even been dreamed possible.

MORE ABOUT THE BILLIOU-STILLWELL-PERINE HOUSE: Historic Richmond Town is dedicated to bringing this history to life with a campaign to reopen the landmark building to the public. In 2013, the community coalesced around the cause -- uniting to restore its then dilapidated roof.

A community initiative led by Staten Island Advance Editor Brian Laline, artist Scott LoBaido, contractor Steven LoBaido, and Iron Hills Civic Association President Dr. Mohammad Khalid brought matching funds to a $25,000 pledge by Executive Director of Richmond County Savings Foundation Cesar Claro for a new roof.

Thanks to their generous support plus donations from hundreds of individuals, groups and families, the Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House received.a new roof in 2014. The Staten Island Historical Society continues to raise funds to complete the next phases of work to restore the building, which remains at its original location for 356 years.

This Staten Island treasure, on the National Register of Historic Places, has stories to tell and history to teach current and future generations. The LED light installation Thursday is a step toward showing what that future can hold.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Some toupees are ugly, others sloppy, and some are barely detectable.

But his father-in-law's rug scared him silly, Staten Island resident Mazen Abdel Dayem alleges in a bizarre lawsuit centered on a long-standing family feud.

Yunes Doleh's hairpiece was so disturbing, it reminded him of the Tasmanian Devil, the whirling cartoon character he deathly fears, Dayem said, according to a report in the New York Post.

"He removed his wig, made hand gestures," he told the Post. "It's just a very large fear of mine, his damn wig. Him and his hair reminds me of the Tasmanian Devil hair."

Dayem's court papers were filed two weeks ago in response to a defamation lawsuit Doleh brought against him last month in state Supreme Court, St. George.

In a motion to dismiss Doleh's suit, Dayem 36, alleges the hair-raising episode unfolded when his 62-year-old father-in-law approached him last month at a memorial service in Brooklyn, violating an order of protection.

Doleh "stood in the direct line of sight of Mr. Dayem and proceeded to grimace, snarl, gurn and gesticulate, which was made all the more menacing by the forward rake of (Doleh's) toupee," wrote Robert Garson, Dayem's lawyer. "This caused Mr. Dayem considerable harassment, alarm and distress, especially given the somber nature of the occasion at which such outlandish behavior was unbecoming."

Man afraid of Tasmanian Devil sues father-in-law for wearing bushy toupee https://t.co/qLfkEGXg7V pic.twitter.com/BFsJF2up9g  New York Post (@nypost) December 21, 2017

Reached by phone Thursday, Garson couldn't say exactly what image Doleh's toupee conjured for Dayem, but whatever it was "caused him to be scared."

"My client is very fearful when he sees his father-in-law," said Garson, a principal in the Manhattan firm Garson, Segal, Steinmetz, Fladgate.

Doleh's lawsuit stems from an episode that allegedly occurred outside Angelina's restaurant in Tottenville on Sept. 3.

His civil complaint alleges his son-in-law, whose last name is listed in those filings as Dayem and Abdul Dayem, had him "unlawfully" arrested and took photos as he was handcuffed. The complaint does not provide details of the incident, although Dayem's legal papers allege Doleh kicked his SUV.

Afterward, Dayem published those photos on social media and e-mailed them to people both men know, embarrassing and defaming Doleh, the complaint contends.

Online state court records show Doleh was charged with a misdemeanor count of criminal mischief for damaging property. He was arraigned on Sept. 4 and released on his own recognizance. His case is pending in Criminal Court.

The arraignment judge issued an order of protection instructing Doleh to stay away from Dayem, records show.

Dayem moved to dismiss Doleh's suit, alleging "the mere publication of a true event cannot be defamatory."

The dismissal motion, which contains a police report, says the two men, who had been at odds for years, met to "bury the proverbial hatchet."

However, they argued over money, and Doleh refused to let him leave when he got into his SUV, alleges Dayem.

Doleh, a New Jersey resident who owns Key Food supermarkets, kicked the rear bumper of Dayem's vehicle, damaging it, said the police report.

Tensions flared again two months later on Nov. 5 at a memorial service in a Brooklyn community center, Dayem alleges.

That's when Doleh approached him in the garish toupee and menaced him, alleges Dayem's motion.

However, Dayem didn't report the incident to police until 11 days later on Nov. 16, records show.

As it happened, Doleh had filed the defamation and slander lawsuit against Dayem two days earlier on Nov. 14.

Garson, Dayem's lawyer, said the timing of his client's complaint to cops was "coincidental" with regard to the lawsuit filing.

Doleh was later arrested on Dec. 7 and arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on felony charges of criminal contempt, and misdemeanor counts of aggravated harassment, online state court records show.

The case is pending.

The civil complaint indicates Dayem lives in Dongan Hills.

Matthew Santamauro, Doleh's criminal defense lawyer, could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

However, he told the Post he believed the charges would be dismissed and Doleh will be shown to have done "nothing wrong."

While he alleges to have wigged out over Doleh's toupee, Dayem can be a cool customer.

In August 2012, he delivered his daughter, Leann, when his wife, Lili Dayem, gave birth en route to the hospital, Advance records show.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- There will be a planned aircraft flyover near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Thursday, according to the city's Notify NYC alert system.

Two Navy F/A-18s will fly over the Hudson River, north to the Tappan Zee Bridge, then fly south and near the Verrazano at approximately 3 p.m.

The aircraft will fly between 2,500 and 3,000 feet.
WASHINGTON - The first six people to face trial in Inauguration Day protests that turned destructive were acquitted of all charges, a victory for not only the defendants but also for advocates who argued the government overreached in its effort to prosecute more than 200 people arrested as they marched through the nation's capital.

Following a nearly four-week trial and two full days of deliberations, a D.C. Superior Court jury delivered not guilty verdicts Thursday on multiple charges of rioting and destruction of property.

The defendants, who include a nurse for cancer patients, a freelance photographer and a college student, joined throngs of protesters who took to the streets on Jan. 20 to protest President Donald Trump's election. Prosecutors said the six were among a group that cut a violent swath through 16 bocks of the city, smashing windows of businesses, tossing newspaper boxes into the street and damaging a limousine. Authorities tallied the damages at more than $100,000.

As the jury foreman read the not guilty verdicts, the defendants began to smile. One of them, Alexei Wood, a 37-year-old freelance photographer from San Antonio, covered his face, sat down and began sobbing.

Outside the courtroom, Wood and the other defendants hugged each other and their supporters. One, in tears, pulled out her iPad to Facetime her family and friends.

Jennifer Armento, 38, a Philadelphia woman who was among the six, said the verdict "shows the country that the jury was unwilling to do what the government wanted them to do, which was criminalize dissent."

Oliver Harris, 28, a Drexel University doctoral student who was charged, said the acquittal was "the only just verdict." He called his arrest and trial "repeatedly traumatizing."

Also acquitted were Michelle Macchio, 26, of Naples, Florida; Christina Simmons, 20, of Cockeysville, Maryland; and Brittne Lawson, 27, of Pittsburgh.

From the start, defense attorneys said their clients and most others in the group of about 500 were peacefully protesting, while only a handful peeled off and became violent. They criticized police for failing to identify those people, and said officers unfairly herded a group of about 200 and charged them with rioting.

During his closing argument, attorney Steven J McCool, who represents one of the men on trial, appealed to jurors to protect the "rights of free speech" as he presented his closing argument last week.

But prosecutors said the demonstration, planned by a group that calls itself DisruptJ20, was aimed at destruction, not freedom of expression. Authorities say the group used "black bloc" tactics - wearing dark clothing and hiding their faces with masks and goggles so it would be harder to identify them. Some came armed with hammers, crow bars and bricks.

Prosecutors told jurors there was no evidence the six people on trial were personally involved in the vandalism, but stressed that they chose to remain with the group, essentially providing cover for those who caused the damage.

In his closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rizwan Qureshi told jurors the group "tore up your city, putting people in danger."

He presented the jury with the analogy of a bank robbery, likening the defendants to a getaway driver while comparing those who smashed windows to the robber in the bank.

"They are both just as guilty," Qureshi said. "This was not a First Amendment activity. They conspired by joining in the group to do unlawful things on the streets of your city."

"That sea of black was the getaway car," Qureshi said, referring to the dark clothing and masks worn by protesters.

In a statement released after the verdict, the U.S. Attorney's Office said prosecutors continue to assert that a riot occurred on Inauguration Day and the "destruction impacted many who live and work in the District of Columbia, and created a danger for all who were nearby."

"We appreciate the jury's close examination of the individual conduct and intent of each defendant during this trial and respect its verdict," the office said in the statement. "In the remaining pending cases, we look forward to the same rigorous review for each defendant.

The case follows one of the largest mass arrests for vandalism in the city, and authorities spent months preparing for trial and mining for evidence. Authorities confiscated the cellphones of the defendants to examine text messages and videos. And prosecutors sought court orders for Internet records, website visits and Facebook accounts of defendants in hopes of securing additional evidence to support their theory the protesters planned to participate in a violent demonstration. The searches were challenged by attorneys and civil liberties groups as violating the rights of the users.

In court, jurors heard from about 40 witnesses, including employees and patrons of businesses who described their fear as protesters pounded on or smashed windows. The jury spent hours watching video of clashes between demonstrators and police. At one point, three of the jurors sat with their eyes closed as the footage was played.

One of the more controversial videos viewed by the jury was submitted to police from Project Veritas, an organization that uses secret recordings to target the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. A Veritas member secretly recorded a Jan. 8 DisruptJ20 planning meeting in the basement of a D.C. church.

That video showed organizers advising that people wear comfortable shoes, avoid carrying identification and, if stopped by police, decline to give their names. One person says that would "jam up the police." But the video didn't show anyone discussing plans of vandalism or rioting.

Defense attorneys also argued some of the police officers and detectives overseeing the arrests were biased against the protest group's anti-capitalism and anti-fascism stance. Attorneys identified evidence from the officers' personal Twitter accounts and police records of statements that attorneys said were anti-Semitic, homophobic and against groups, including Black Lives Matter.

Before the case was presented to the jury, Judge Lynn Leibovitz threw out the most serious rioting charge against the six, a felony count of inciting a riot. The judge said there not enough evidence against the four women and two men to prove they urged others to riot and destroy property. She allowed the seven remaining charges of rioting and destruction of property to remain.

In her closing argument, defense attorney Sara Kropf reminded the jury that one of the police commanders was heard on a police radio at the beginning of the protest calling the demonstrators "anarchists."

"This is about politics. This is about police and local prosecutors who work for the Department of Justice. And we know who they report to," she said referring to Trump.

"All the government proved was that these individuals showed up and walked as protesters," she said. "And that is not a crime."

In all, 212 people were charged in connection with the riots. Twenty of those people have pleaded guilty and prosecutors have dropped cases against another 20.

Additional defendants are scheduled for trial, in groups of six or seven, through mid-2018. Though the U.S. Attorney's Office said it would move forward, one defense attorney said prosecutors should interpret the acquittal as a sign that the remaining cases should be dropped.

"I hope this sends a message to the U.S. Attorney's Office to let all of these people go. The jury has spoken," said attorney Betty Ballester who represents one of the defendants scheduled to go to trial in April.
MONTREAL, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yesterday, a group of Optimum Group employees donated $ 100,000 to the Fondation du Dr Julien. This money was raised by employees and management during the campaign to support the social pediatrics movement held by the company each year during the fall.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/18dc3b2e-558f-4b13-84c4-3f94eba1b39f

"Our employees' support for the Foundation is growing every year, but our donations this year have reached a record high of which we are extremely proud," said Mrs. Anabelle Blondeau, President and Chief Operating Officer of Optimum Group. "It is with great enthusiasm that members of our team have more than ever demonstrated their generosity and commitment to a cause close to their heart, and I thank them sincerely," she added.

About Fondation du Dr Julien

The Fondation du Dr Julien (FDJ) is a group specialized in social pediatrics whose goals are to understand and attend to the environmental, socioeconomic and family conditions that contribute to childhood illness, malnutrition and behavioural problems. With their communal approach to tackling these issues, they treat the most vulnerable children in Quebec as well as their families.

Anne-Marie Morrison

Director of communications

Optimum Group Inc.

(514) 288-2010
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware last week, Mammoet-Starneth -- the contractor fired by the New York Wheel in May -- is asking for a lawsuit brought against it by the Wheel to be dismissed, according to court documents.

A high-stakes feud over project delays and work payments between the Wheel's developer and the project's fired contractor, the Holland-based Mammoet-Starneth, has been playing out in federal court since May. Both sides allege the other party breached the contract.

Mammoet-Starneth had suspended work on May 26 and threatened to terminate the contract. The company alleged NY Wheel failed to make required payments, the complaint said. The Wheel says it paid the company $70 million, according to court papers.

Subsequently, the NY Wheel fired Mammoet-Starneth and filed a counter-lawsuit in federal court.

MOTION TO DISMISS



On Wednesday, attorneys for Mammoet-Starneth filed court papers asking that the Wheel lawsuit be dismissed.

"Last week's bankruptcy filing by Mammoet-Starneth LLC ('Mammoet'), the former design-build team for the New York Wheel, is the latest example of its bad faith conduct in trying to avoid liability over its breaches for failing to finish this iconic project on time and then abandoning it altogether," said Randy Mastro, attorney for New York Wheel and partner at the Manhattan-based Gibson Dunn.

"The developer is committed to completing this huge, one-of-a-kind attraction, which is poised to join other great landmarks dominating the New York skyline. The developer is transitioning the project to American Bridge, the same contractor that built the new Tappan Zee Bridge. We intend to challenge this bad faith bankruptcy filing, pursue the developer's liability claims, take all steps necessary to complete this project as quickly as possible, and then deliver the Wheel for the benefit and enjoyment of all New Yorkers," he added.

A contract has yet to be inked between the NY Wheel and American Bridge.

AUTOMATIC STAY REQUEST

Initially, Mammoet-Starneth filed court papers requesting an "automatic stay," or freeze imposed, which protects the Chapter 11 debtor from a broad range of actions against it, according to court papers filed last week in New York federal court.

Under section 362 of the United States Bankruptcy Code, an automatic stay is defined as an automatic injunction that stops actions by creditors to collect debts from a debtor who has filed for bankruptcy.

After that motion was filed, the NY Wheel amended its complaint to the court, which rendered that motion "moot," according to court documents.

Mammoet-Starneth's attorneys refused comment on the motion to dismiss, and a spokesman for the company did not return emails requesting comment.

FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Citing the elimination of the state and local tax deduction, also known as the SALT deduction, Rep. Daniel Donovan voted against the tax bill that passed Wednesday in the House of Representatives.

"I wanted nothing more than to vote for a tax plan that would put more money in the pockets of overburdened taxpayers and spur job creation," Donovan (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) said in a statement.

The state and local tax deduction has been a part of the U.S. tax code since 1913.

Donovan told the Advance that removing the deduction would "result in a tax increase for many Staten Island and Brooklyn families -- especially the middle income homeowners."

"New York is a high-tax state, and this legislation should serve as a wake-up call to politicians who have been taxing and spending with little regard for the taxpayer," he said.

'HUGE CONCERN' THAT PEOPLE WILL LEAVE NEW YORK

"This tax bill doesn't give a lot of people, or state government, a lot of time to prepare. You're going to find a lot of people leaving New York," Donovan told the Advance.

He said it's a "huge concern" that middle-class Staten Islanders would consider relocating to a lower-tax state because of the SALT elimination.

"Middle income folks who own homes and are raising their kids here would probably have a difficult time just picking up and moving. But very high income taxpayers can afford to relocate their primary residence to state like Florida with much lower taxes, and that would seriously erode the New York tax base," he explained.

MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION WAS 'MAJOR' FOR DONOVAN

Donovan said the $10,000 cap on mortgage interest deduction was one of the "major tenets" that he brought up to Congressional leadership as "hugely problematic" for his constituents.

Originally, the House's proposal was to cut the mortgage interest deduction in half from $1 million to $500,000. The final bill caps it at $750,000.

"It isn't perfect but it's much better," Donovan said.

"There have been analyses showing that home prices could tank by 10 percent in New York because of this bill," he said.

MEDICAL, STUDENT LOAN DEDUCTIONS NOT CUT

The original House bill also eliminated the ability to deduct interest on student loans and medical expenses.

However, the final bill that was passed kept the deductions, which Donovan praised.

"Our efforts resulted in some positive developments, like the protection of student loan interest and medical expense deductions, but it still falls short of accomplishing the goals that I strongly believed we could and should have achieved," he said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- New York City's Finest will now have changes to their daily encounters on the streets after the City Council passed two "Right to Know" bills on Tuesday.

The police reform measures were first proposed in 2013 amid criticism the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program was discriminatory.

The act requires officers to provide information during street interactions, including presenting a business card and giving the reason they are questioning an individual, and, separately, to get consent from a person before conducting a search in cases where a search would otherwise not be permitted, according to the New York Times.

Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA) President Patrick J. Lynch said the council chose politics over public safety, and that it discourages officers from proactively addressing the threat of a crime and terrorism.

"The PBA had zero input on the revisions to this legislation, and if the Council really didn't want to discourage officers from exercising discretion and policing proactively, they would have abandoned these misguided bills altogether," Lynch said. "But instead, they have continuously piled on new burdens and second-guessing for our police officers, presenting a dangerous distraction that will place New Yorkers in harm's way. Now the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the council and the mayor. New York City police officers will always continue to do their jobs to prevent crime and terror. But with this legislation, our city leaders have failed all of us."

Activists and some members of the council argued the bills were watered down.

Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the criminal defense practice at the Legal Aid Society, stated her disappointment on the passage of the act, saying it is "replete with loopholes and a shell of its former self."

"Our clients and others will benefit little from this final version," Luongo said. "The Legal Aid Society hopes to work with the next speaker and council on a revamped Intro 182 that truly serves New Yorkers."

The act also requires departments to develop policies for recording such searches and explicitly telling civilians that they can refuse to be searched, according to the Times report.

The legislation approved on Tuesday is supported by Mayor Bill de Blasio, and was expected to sign the bills into law.

-- Associated Press material was used in this report.
By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent.

Agree
ATHENS, Greece, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX), (the Company), a global shipping company specializing in the ownership of dry bulk vessels, today announced that, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, it has agreed to extend the present time charter contract with Phaethon International Company AG, for one of its Panamax dry bulk vessels, the m/v Erato. The gross charter rate is US$10,500 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties, for a period of minimum fourteen (14) months to maximum seventeen (17) months. The new charter period is expected to commence on December 30, 2017. The m/v Erato is currently chartered, as previously announced, at a gross charter rate of US$7,250 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties.

The Erato is a 74,444 dwt Panamax dry bulk vessel built in 2004.

The Company also announced that, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, it has agreed to extend the present time charter contract with Phaethon International Company AG, for one of its Panamax dry bulk vessels, the m/v Danae. The gross charter rate is US$10,000 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties, for a period of minimum thirteen (13) months to about sixteen (16) months. The new charter period is expected to commence on December 22, 2017. The m/v Danae is currently chartered at a gross charter rate of US$7,750 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties.

The Danae is a 75,106 dwt Panamax dry bulk vessel built in 2001.

In addition, the Company announced that, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, it has entered into a time charter contract with DHL Project & Chartering Limited, Hong Kong, for one of its Capesize dry bulk vessels, the m/v New York. The gross charter rate is US$16,000 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties, for a period of minimum sixteen (16) months to maximum nineteen (19) months. The charter is expected to commence by mid-January, 2018. The m/v New York is currently chartered, as previously announced, to Koch Shipping Pte. Ltd., Singapore, at a gross charter rate of US$14,450 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties.

The New York is a 177,773 dwt Capesize dry bulk vessel built in 2010.

The employment extensions of Erato and Danae as well as the employment of New York are anticipated to generate approximately US$15.99 million of gross revenue for the minimum scheduled period of the time charters.

Diana Shipping Inc.s fleet currently consists of 50 dry bulk vessels (4 Newcastlemax, 14 Capesize, 5 Post-Panamax, 5 Kamsarmax and 22 Panamax). As of today, the combined carrying capacity of the Companys fleet is approximately 5.8 million dwt with a weighted average age of 8.33 years. A table describing the current Diana Shipping Inc. fleet can be found on the Companys website, www.dianashippinginc.com. Information contained on the Companys website does not constitute a part of this press release.

About the Company

Diana Shipping Inc. is a global provider of shipping transportation services through its ownership of dry bulk vessels. The Companys vessels are employed primarily on medium to long-term time charters and transport a range of dry bulk cargoes, including such commodities as iron ore, coal, grain and other materials along worldwide shipping routes.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts.

The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words believe, anticipate, intends, estimate, forecast, project, plan, potential, may, should, expect, pending and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, our managements examination of historical operating trends, data contained in our records and other data available from third parties. Although we believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond our control, we cannot assure you that we will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections.

In addition to these important factors, other important factors that, in our view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand for dry bulk shipping capacity, changes in our operating expenses, including bunker prices, drydocking and insurance costs, the market for our vessels, availability of financing and refinancing, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hires and other factors. Please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.

Corporate Contact:

Ioannis Zafirakis

Director, Chief Operating Officer and Secretary

Telephone: + 30-210-9470-100

Email: izafirakis@dianashippinginc.com

Website: www.dianashippinginc.com



Investor and Media Relations:

Edward Nebb

Comm-Counsellors, LLC

Telephone: + 1-203-972-8350

Email: enebb@optonline.net
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Encompass Supply Chain Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of Supply Chain Logistics, Parts Distribution, 3PL and 4PL solutions for a diverse range of finished goods and replacement parts, today announced plans to open a warehouse and distribution center in the North Las Vegas area.

The facility  located at the Prologis Las Vegas Corporate Center 3, 4031 Market Center Drive  will be Encompass central supply point for repair parts delivery to customers west of Texas, and is scheduled to open in January 2018. Close to critical shipping ports, it will stock a full range of inventory for multiple verticals, such as Consumer Electronics, Major Appliance, Computer, Printer, Personal Care, Mobile and more from 200+ world-leading manufacturers.

The North Las Vegas facility further expands Encompass strategic footprint and complements its existing flagship distribution and high-tech repair center in Atlanta and distribution center in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. It will also augment the companys current call center operation with the capability of extending support hours to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Encompass President and CEO Robert Coolidge said establishing a West Coast presence was essential to accommodate the companys service focus and aggressive nationwide business growth.

The company has been experiencing record sales through the addition of new clients and product verticals, particularly to support the whole home warranty industry, said Coolidge. This additional space will give us the flexibility to take on new programs and inventory, which also enables us to improve delivery times to customers in the region and beyond.

The space is easily scalable, enabling Encompass to eventually build out core retrieval, technical repair and reverse logistics functions, as well as a technician training center.

Encompass is one of the most diversified parts distributors in the country, supporting a wide range of product categories from top global manufacturers. The company aims to supply parts and accessories to repair or maintain products throughout the home from the kitchen to the back yard. It primarily serves warranty companies, national retailers, independent servicers and consumers.

"North Las Vegas is home to some of the largest and most innovative companies for a reason: It's easy and profitable to do business here, thanks to our close proximity to transportation hubs, favorable tax climate, skilled workforce and fast-track permitting and licensing processes," said North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee. "We're thrilled that an industry leader such as Encompass has chosen our city for its newest warehouse and distribution center, and we're excited to see the company's next phase of growth and success in North Las Vegas."

North Las Vegas is also near the Tier 4 Gold campus of Switch, Encompass highly-secured off-site data storage partner. Combined with a third stand-alone facility, Encompass is even better positioned to maintain operational redundancy in case of business interruption.

We are committed to providing an exceptional service experience to all our valued partners and helping them be more successful, said Coolidge. Opening a North Las Vegas location will help us better support both our customers and their business strategies.

About Encompass Supply Chain Solutions, Inc.

Encompass is a market leader in forward and reverse supply chain management and high-tech repair services for a diverse and expanding range of consumer electronics, computer, major appliances and imaging products. Encompass provides end-to-end solutions for OEMs, retailers, independent dealers and third-party administrators.

Encompass manages all stages of the product lifecycle, including finished goods and replacement parts logistics, board repair and product refurbishment services, returns management, asset value recovery and eco-friendly disposal. For more information, please visit solutions.encompass.com and encompass.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal.

Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.



We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.



A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
Axe murderer Marcus Rappel was one of five men on Thursday hauled into court accused of bashing two brothers in Canberra's jail.

Rappel, and fellow prison inmates Daniel Grech, Alex Bourne, and Jeremy Reid filed in from the cells one by one.

Marcus Rappel pleaded guilty to killing Tara Costigan.

They were each charged with recklessly inflict grievous bodily harm against one brother, and assault actual bodily harm against the other.

They were all remanded in custody.
Can you unwrap a Christmas present faster than a tiger?

Aceh the Sumatran tiger scaled a tree to claim his gift early on Thursday morning, tearing through the wrapping in seconds as Santa made a special delivery to the animals at the National Zoo and Aquarium in Canberra.

Aceh the Sumatran tiger easily finds his present, hidden in his enclosure at the Canberra zoo on Thursday. Credit:karleen minney

Visitors gathered to watch meerkat pups and capuchin monkeys tackle wrapping paper and papier mache (made from more than a few recycled copies of The Canberra Times as it turns out).

Wildlife supervisor Bec Scott said the annual tradition was not just good fun, but also provided important enrichment for the animals.
The rainbow crocheted Love Wheels bicycle which was chained to a pole outside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Sydney home during the marriage equality postal vote campaign will join the National Museum of Australia's collection in Canberra.

The iconic bicycle, which featured on Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull's social media channels, was made by a Sydney-based yarn bomber - known as 'Treble Maker' - Eloise Murphy.

The rainbow crocheted Love Wheels bicycle which was chained to a pole outside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Sydney home during the marriage equality postal vote campaign will join the National Museum of Australia's collection in Canberra.

In a tribute to the Turnbulls' 37-year marriage, Ms Murphy echoed the 'Yes' campaign's rainbow theme in her crocheted design, which also includes YES embroidery on the purple seat, sequined hearts, photographs of the Turnbulls and quotes about their marriage.

National Museum director, Dr Mathew Trinca, thanked the Prime Minister for personally bringing the bicycle to Canberra and noted the marriage equality vote was a defining moment in Australia's history.
English Lithuanian

The Competition Council has adopted the decision to impose a fine in the amount of 8,513,500 Euros on Panevezio statybos trestas AB for agreements with Irdaiva UAB at public procurement tenders by concluding joint activity agreements in accordance with the procedure established by the Law on Public Procurement of the Republic of Lithuania.

Panevezio statybos trestas AB objects to the decision of the Competition Council and has not committed any breach of legal regulations on competition. The company will defend this position using all means of legal defence at the court.

More information:

Dalius Gesevicius

Managing Director

Tel.: (+370 45) 505 503
The Canberra Liberals have questioned the competency of Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury after a prisoner was accidentally released from the Alexander Maconochie Centre on Saturday.

The release of the detainee - who had completed his first sentence but should have stayed in prison on a further remand warrant -followed four escapes, two deaths and a violent bashing at the centre since April last year.

The accidental release of a prisoner from Alexander Maconochie Centre was due to an "administrative error". Credit:Rohan Thomson

Saturday's accidental release was due to an "administrative error", according to a Justice and Community Services spokesman.

Opposition corrections spokeswoman Giulia Jones wrote to Chief Minister Andrew Barr urging him to consider whether Mr Rattenbury was fit for the portfolio.
ANZ Banking Group's $NZ660 million ($626 million) sale of vehicle finance firm UDC Finance to Chinese conglomerate HNA Group has been blocked by New Zealand's overseas investment regulator.

The deal was originally brokered in January as Australia's biggest banks sought to offload assets to meet new regulator-imposed capital requirements.

ANZ said it was unsure if HNA would attempt to overturn the decision. Credit:Wayne Taylor

ANZ has since ramped up its divestment program, including the sale of its $2.85 billion insurance unit to Zurich, making the HNA deal less critical.

"While the sale agreement between the parties remains in place, unless HNA successfully overturns the OIO [Overseas Investment Office] decision, the sale will not proceed," ANZ Bank group executive and New Zealand chief executive David Hisco said in a statement.
In a fight that pitted champagne producers against supermarket chain Aldi, the European Union Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the retailer can sell its Champagner Sorbet  but only if it can prove that champagne is a distinct part of its flavour.

The German discounter has built its customer base on private labels. The sorbet appeared in Aldi's freezers in December 2012 as part of a limited Christmas promotion. It contained 12 per cent champagne.

Champagne producers, fiercely protective of their brand, have fought Aldi in court - and lost. Or did they?

But the champagne producers, who are fiercely protective of their luxury brand, contended that Aldi's Champagner Sorbet was exploiting the vaunted reputation of Champagne, which comes from a region of France.

The Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, which represents the champagne producers, said the sorbet did not conform to the specifications required of champagne products, and so should not be allowed to use that name.
Gas producer AWE's board has backed a takeover offer from fellow Australian resources company Mineral Resources after it sweetened the deal, trumping a rival Chinese bid.

The improved offer values AWE at about 83 a share, or $526 million, and includes a mix of cash and scrip. Mineral Resources' previous all-scrip bid valued AWE at 80 a share.

On Wednesday, AWEs share price rose to a two-year high, reaching 89 before ending the day at 88, lifting the companys market cap to $532.62 million. Its shares closed at 85.5 each on Thursday.

Mineral Resources' approved offer consists of a scheme of arrangement comprising 41.5 in cash and between 0.0198 and 0.0277 Mineral Resources shares per AWE share.

AWE shareholders will have the option of receiving either 100 per cent cash or 100 per cent scrip. Allocations may be scaled back to ensure the total consideration paid is split evenly between cash and scrip.
It is increasingly likely Australia will be dragged into the global corporate tax race to the bottom after the Republican Partys extraordinary piece of economic vandalism passed US Congress overnight.

The implications are manifold  and none of them beneficial beyond the initial sugar hit stock markets had already priced in.

Mission accomplished: US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during a passage of the tax bill event at the White House. Credit:AP

Among the less obvious, the $US1.5 trillion ($1.96 trillion) Trumpster/Republican tax bill increases the urgency of genuine Australian tax reform  the sort that will have any and all vested interest groups complaining, the sort that requires real leadership, not mere election-focussed income tax trimming and big business pandering.

The urgency comes from the big picture impact of the US throwing more fuel on a strongly-growing economy, abandoning concern about burgeoning deficits and exacerbating its inequality tensions. That combination is unlikely to end well.
Telstra, ANZ, Coca-Cola Amatil and The University of Melbourne have joined forces to pre-purchase the energy generated from what will be the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere.

The group has secured the energy generated from RES and Macquarie Capitals Murra Warra wind farm, near Horsham in Victoria, at a locked-in price.

The deal will help the fledgling wind farm get off the ground while securing the companies' future access to enough renewable energy to power the equivalent of 220,000 homes, significantly lowering their emissions.

RES Australia chief executive Matt Rebbeck said the consortiums support would underwrite the first stage of the project.
Vodafone Hutchison Australias bid to overturn the competition regulator's ruling governing access to mobile phone networks in regional areas has been dismissed by the Federal Court.

The telecommunications company had taken legal action against the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission after the regulator in May said it would not declare wholesale domestic roaming.

Vodafone has lost its fight against the regulator in the Federal Court. Credit:Gabrielle Charotte

If the ACCC had made the declaration, it would have forced Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to let rival carriers access their entire networks at regulated prices.

In particular, this would have allowed the telco's access to Telstra's extensive regional network in areas where they didn't have their own coverage.
PM Malcolm Turnbull with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Credit:AAP When President Jokowi visited Sydney in February, Mr Turnbull said the two leaders were "very committed to concluding a high-quality bilateral free-trade agreement  by the end of this year". "It's a very strong friendship and it gets stronger all the time," he said. President Jokowi concurred: "We agreed that negotiation over the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement will be concluded in 2017 as Prime Minister Turnbull previously mentioned." After meeting in Jakarta in September, Indonesia and Australia's trade ministers bullishly predicted the 10th (and penultimate) round of negotiations in November could be the last.

I won't sacrifice the quality of the agreement for speed. If it takes a little bit longer, so be it. Trade Minister Steven Ciobo "The meeting was so positive that we  the CEPA agreement can be signed by our two country's leaders by the end of this year at the latest," said Indonesian Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita at the time. But on December 20, Mr Lukita said: "We never said it will be completed by the end of 2017. In fact in the latest APEC meeting, Prime Minister Turnbull told President Jokowi that it would be completed by March." Mr Lukita said there were some "tough issues". "I told [Australia], you have to step back, because we have stepped back." He said 94 to 95 per cent of the agreement had been finalised, with just a few sticking points remaining.

"Actually they [Australia] want to invest, they want more shares, but we only want to grant this much. It's not stagnant, it's merely about the numbers." Asked if this concerned the education sector, Mr Lukita replied: "Yeah, education." Mr Lukita said there would be another round of negotiations, the 12th, in the second week of January. He joked that if the countries wanted to settle by March they should not let the Australian negotiating team go home before reaching agreement. Indonesia Australia Business Council president Noke Kiroyan said the delay was a "bit disappointing" but the end result was what was most important.

However, he warned the deal would need to be finalised in the beginning of next year or Indonesia would become preoccupied with the 2019 presidential elections. "If we have it within a few months I think that's still a good outcome," he said. Australia Indonesia Business Council president Philip Turtle said it was "unfortunate" that the agreement would not be concluded this year. "But any delay is a small price to pay for an agreement that will ultimately deliver benefits for many years to come," he said. "Much better to get it right than rush it." Mr Turtle said the council had observed the goodwill and intent between the negotiating teams and remained hopeful that any remaining sticking points could be resolved soon.

Lowy Institute research fellow Matthew Busch has been critical of the "ill-advised rush to strike a trade deal" given the Australian government had framed it as a testament to the relationship. "It will be undeniably awkward if IA-CEPA is too hard and must be rolled into next year," he wrote in The Interpreter earlier this month. Mr Busch told Fairfax Media it was sensible for Australia and Indonesia to keep working towards the stated objective of a high-quality agreement. "It was never going to be easy or quick to conclude with Indonesia what is a novel framework for trade and investment liberalisation," he said. "This is especially so because Indonesia is not an active trade negotiator and does not have a strong domestic constituency for reducing barriers for inbound goods, services, and investment.
Flo was the name that launched a thousand headlines, and even more pumpkin scone recipes, but Florence Bjelke-Petersen, who has died aged 97, hated the rhyming diminutive that irrevocably bound her to her husband Joh Bjelke-Petersen's coat-tails and gave the old pastoral Australia politics its last hurrah.

Installed by the machinations of her Queensland premier husband to fill a 1981 casual vacancy in the Senate, she went on to head the National Party's Queensland ticket until her 1993 retirement, impressing many, friends and foes, as a pleasant representative for her state during her Canberra sojourn. However, she left little evidence of efficacy.

Flo Bjelke-Petersen at a new aged care community complex, 2005. Credit:Tony Phillips

Florence Bjelke-Petersen arrived on the national stage in the early 1980s when federal politics was a primarily sour male arena and Joh yet to be revealed as Australia's first homespun spin doctor. She projected the human side of a ruthless and corrupt political machine. Once Joh's political career crashed and burned, her public life spluttered on briefly but never again attained its early, good-natured, hard-eyed mix of innocence and cynicism that went with her Steele Ruddesque turn as Mum in Politics.

Florence Isabel Gilmour was born on August 11, 1920, daughter of J.P. Gilmour, a Brisbane company director. She grew up in the inner city suburb of New Farm, attending nearby Fortitude Valley Presbyterian Church and was schooled at Brisbane Grammar School and State Commercial High. Until she was well into her 20s her father tucked her into bed every night, ensuring the mosquito net was down in summer. She started as a typist in the Main Roads Department typing pool before World War II. Florence Gilmore may have taught Sunday school, but in the office she was hugely ambitious and worked her way up the ladder. By 29 she was private secretary to the Main Roads Commissioner, no mean feat in an era when women were flushed from the public service on marriage.
So long, George Brandis, we hardly knew thee. But if we're honest, that's on us. Brandis leaves politics as a confounding figure, outraging progressives with his pronouncements on Australians' "right to be bigots", then latterly inspiring them with heartfelt parliamentary speeches on Pauline Hanson's burqa stunt or same-sex marriage.

There's a tendency here to see a man who changed dramatically, swinging maddeningly between bigotry and "wokeness". But Brandis is honest enough in insisting, as he recently did, that we have this all wrong: he hasn't changed much at all.

That we seem so confused about him demonstrates just how shallow our engagement with politics has become, how desperately hasty we've become to class every action, every utterance, and with it, every person as good or bad, as though that's a meaningful way of understanding the world. It is in this environment that people become instant champions or villains. Our public culture is so profoundly lacking in curiosity it is largely uninterested in why people disagree with us. Only that they do and thereby stand condemned.

It is in this context that Brandis' assertion of a right to bigotry became such an inescapable touchstone. It's true that amid a debate about diluting the Racial Discrimination Act, this was a political clanger, waiting to be taken as a celebration of bigotry itself. But that was always a lazy, impressionistic reading. Whatever your views on 18C (and my own aren't with Brandis), he was simply stating an uncontroversial fact: that in a liberal democracy like ours, you have a right to express obnoxious views.
MORRISTOWN, N.J. and WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Berger Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established by Louis Berger, is granting a scholarship donation of $16,000 to Virginia Tech in honor of Ben Wenger, a promising young engineer who passed away in September 2017.

Ben Wenger joined Louis Berger in 2015 soon after graduating with a bachelors degree in civil and environmental engineering from Virginia Tech. He was the third in the Wenger family to work at Louis Berger, with his father Fred Wenger III, who serves as a leader in the companys program and construction services practice, and his brother, who previously supported projects in the U.S. and overseas.

Ben caught the attention of our structures team early on, demonstrating himself as a bright, collaborative and team oriented professional with tremendous potential, said Jim Stamatis, Louis Berger CEO. We mourn the loss of any member of our team, but at such a young age and with such a promising career ahead of him, Bens loss was unexpected and especially tragic. We hope that this scholarship donation in Bens memory will help other promising young minds achieve their potential in the field that Ben loved.

The scholarship donation will support students studying engineering through the Beyond Boundaries Scholars Program, which provides financial aid support to high-achieving, under-represented, under-served, and first-generation college students attending Virginia Tech. The program matches a donors gift and presents students with funds needed to attend the university. The foundations donation to the Beyond Boundaries Scholars Program will provide funds to support promising engineering students over the next four years.

About Louis Berger

Louis Berger is a global professional services corporation that helps infrastructure and development clients solve their most complex challenges. We are a trusted partner to national, state and local government agencies; multilateral institutions; and commercial industry clients worldwide. By focusing on client needs to deliver quality, safe, financially-successful projects with integrity, we are committed to deliver on our promise to provide Solutions for a better world.

Louis Berger operates on every habitable continent. We have a long-standing presence in more than 50 nations, represented by the multidisciplinary expertise of 6,000 engineers, economists, scientists, managers and planners.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6fe3fe44-c4ec-47a7-9a85-6867debdd58c

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3e2cf5f9-3c97-4cfa-ab66-843a2734f350
Australia will wind back its military operations against Islamic State after the Iraqi Prime Minister declared victory over the extremist group, which three years ago seized control of large swathes of the region.

Defence Minister Marise Payne announced on Friday that Australia's contribution to US-led coalition air strikes will end, while emphasising that other operations  including the training, advising and assisting of local forces  would continue.

Airstrikes target Islamic State positions on the edge of the Old City in Mosul, Iraq in July. Credit:Felipe Dana

"After more than three years of air operations, the number of coalition air strike commissions has steadily dropped since the last major population centre, Hawija, was captured in October," Senator Payne said.

"Following discussions with Iraq and with members of the international coalition, the Australian government has determined that we will bring home our six Super Hornet strike aircraft from the Middle East, marking the end of Australia's air strike operations in Iraq and Syria."
Before Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as Prime Minister in 2015, Mr Morrison had been seen as the man most likely to be the next conservative leader of the Liberal Party.

The Treasurer said he had made a conscious decision to "call out" discrimination and to stand up for people of faith.

Mr Morrison also promised to play a leading role next year in the debate about enshrining further "protections" for religious freedom in law, which will be informed by a review currently being led by former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

Scott Morrison says he will fight back against discrimination and mockery of Christians and other religious groups in 2018, in comments that position him as one of the leading religious conservatives in the Turnbull government.

Mr Morrison's switch to Mr Turnbull cost him allies in the party room and Peter Dutton has gone past him as the leading conservative; Mr Morrison's vocal public advocacy for greater religious protections in the same-sex marriage bill was seen in some quarters as a move to mend fences with conservative colleagues.

Aside from his maiden speech a decade ago, in which spoke openly about the importance of his deep personal faith, Mr Morrison has rarely discussed his religious views in public life.

But in a year-ending interview with Fairfax Media, he declared that "it all starts when you allow religious freedoms [to be eroded], mockery to be made of your faith or your religious festivals  it always starts innocently and it's always said it is just a joke  just like most discrimination does".

"And I'm just gonna call that out. With what I've seen happen in the last year, I've just taken the decision more recently, I'm just not going to put up with that any more, I don't think my colleagues are either."

"Where I think people are being offensive to religion in this country  whichever religion that might be, but particularly the one I and many other Christians subscribe to  well, we will just call it out and we will demand the same respect that people should provide to all religions."
Australia's new Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud, says he's committed to a controversial addition of 450 gigalitres of water to the Murray-Darling, casting aside doubts about the plan strewn by his predecessor Barnaby Joyce.

In an interview with Fairfax Media, the first-term MP and now cabinet minister said he was confident the extra environmental flows could be achieved without economic damage to irrigators their and communities.

"We've made decision to support the plan and that's part of the plan": Water Minister David Littleproud. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"We've made the decision to support the plan and that's part of the plan," Mr Littleproud said. "I don't think anyone should say we're going to blow up the building. We've got a plan, let's work collaboratively to achieve that."

The extended target would take to 3200 gigalitres the total amount of water returned from irrigated agriculture to the river system under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
After working as an E! News host for more than a decade, Catt Sadler has quit due to what she claims to be an exorbitant wage gap between her and her male co-host.

Writing on her personal website, The Cattwalk, Sadler told readers how she made the decision after her request to be paid the equivalent salary to her male counterpart was "repeatedly denied". According to People, the male co-host that the 43-year-old was referring to was Jason Kennedy.

Catt Sadler arrives at the NBCUniversal Golden Globes afterparty. Credit:AP

"Information is power. Or it should be. We are living in a new era," Sadler, a single mother to two boys, wrote in the lengthy post. "The gender pay gap is shrinking, although admittedly we have a long way to go. And well, I learned this first hand. My team and I asked for what I know I deserve and were denied repeatedly."

"How can I operate with integrity and stay on at E! if they're not willing to pay me the same as him? Or at least come close? How can I accept an offer that shows that they do not value my contribution and paralleled dedication all these years? How can I not echo the actions of my heroes and stand for what is right no matter what the cost? How can I remain silent when my rights under the law have been violated?"
These statements appear at direct odds with the report data which revealed that 12 per cent of all attempted or completed sexual assaults at college happened during O-Week; and that 88 per cent of all sexual assaults occurred on college grounds. The report was commissioned by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick. So how could the Elizabeth Broderick & Co review, reported to cost $1,087,600, have become so sanitised? And how much control did the colleges exert over the process? Damning documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal entire groups that were initially intended for inclusion in the review were subsequently omitted from the study. Nina Funnell, End Rape on Campus ambassador

According to the original project proposal (June, 2016), the review team intended to conduct: 36 focus-groups with current students;

12 focus-groups with former students;

12 focus-groups with parents and

120 one-on-one interviews with recently exited students; council members; alumni; staff; donors; and other students. Interviews with college drop-outs as well as servers, cooks and cleaners would have been particularly interesting. Yet in the end, the reviewers conducted just 35 one-on-one interviews with current students; a mere 17 individual interviews with alumni (whom the colleges were in charge of recruiting) and a further 43 focus-groups with current college students. The limited number of alumni interviews, and heavy reliance on focus-groups with current students is particularly alarming, especially given that many current students will self-censor in such settings.

Katie Thorburn, a former St John's College student and the 2017 Women's Officer says that "if [students] are in a group setting, they are not going to rat out the college. "There is no way anyone would say something bad in front of the others They are really scary places to speak out against, because you're indoctrinated from day one [not to speak to outsiders]." Kendra Murphy (whose own alleged sexual assault triggered the review) is angry that more recently-exited students were not included: "Obviously the people still in college are going to be the ones who the culture benefits. It's the ones who've left, and left for a reason, that should be providing opinions." Ms Murphy was never approached by the review team. Indeed the report is so sanitised that, excluding footnotes, the word "rape" appears just three times in the main body of the report (and two of those times are when our own organisation's name - End Rape On Campus - is mentioned).

Curiously, the following words and expressions are also absent: "Rape culture", "date rape", "victim blaming", "male entitlement", "drink spiking", "exploitation", "predator" and "predatory behaviour". There is virtually no discussion of class, and the words "privilege", "wealth", and "entitlement" do not appear once. (The word "elite" does appear, but only in relation to "elite sport".) Nor is there any discussion of the college's religious affiliations. "Homophobia" is mentioned (but not "transphobia"), and "slut shaming" is mentioned once (but only to deny it existed). Alcohol, by contrast, is mentioned 206 times. And this, right here, is the problem: by focusing on the toxicity of alcohol (as opposed to the toxicity of college masculinity), the report euphemistically reframes "rape culture" as "binge drinking culture".
A young Sydney father charged with terror offences after he allegedly travelled to a Middle Eastern war zone to take up arms has had his case delayed until the new year.

Belal Betka, 25, was arrested on Tuesday morning at Mount Lewis, in Sydney's southwest, where he lives with his mother.

Police allege he travelled to Syria's al-Raqqa province between March and July 2015.

At the time, the federal government had declared the area as a region where a listed terror organisation was engaging in hostile activity.
The Berejiklian government's plan to tear down and replace two Sydney stadiums has the strong support of 4 per cent of the state, according to a survey by a market research firm.

And the $2 billion plan is opposed by 67 per cent of respondents, according to the online survey of more than 1300 people.

The survey was conducted by market research and polling firm Micromex Research and Consulting, whose clients include local councils and state government agencies.

The firm's managing director, Stu Reeve, said he conducted the survey because his interest was triggered by what looked to be a strong public reaction to Premier Gladys Berejiklian's announcement of the stadium plan last month. For instance, an online petition organised by Herald columnist Peter Fitzsimons has attracted more than 150,000 signatures.
In October last year representatives of one of Australia's most powerful gambling lobby groups, Clubs NSW, had lunch with a group of Nationals including then-senator Fiona Nash and the party's candidate for the seat of Orange, Scott Barrett.

Precisely who from Clubs NSW attended is unclear, but the organisation described the event as a "cruise" in its declaration to the electoral commission for which it coughed up $990 to the state Nationals.

They didn't quite know it at the time, but the NSW Nationals were about to be plunged into crisis.

Within weeks they would lose the Orange byelection to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, precipitating the toppling of their leader Troy Grant by John Barilaro.
A Rebels bikie and two of the gang's "nominees" have joined their local enforcer behind bars accused of the bashing murder of former associate Clint Starkey.

Heavily armed police joined Strike Force Bartondale detectives in a series of Central Coast raids on Thursday before taking the three men  two aged 25 and one aged 29  into custody.

The trio  one a fully patched Rebel member  were all charged with murder on Thursday night and will face Gosford Local Court on Friday.

It followed the arrest of fellow Rebel, Adam David Symons, the sergeant-at-arms of the gang's Peninsula chapter, on October 30.
Two men are being investigated by the RSPCA after they ate a live fish in a Sydney pet shop and posted the video online.

Vision of the stunt, which was filmed at Petbarn in Penrith, has been watched more than 7 million times.

In the video, one of the men can be seen pointing at a goldfish in a tank and saying "let's go that one there".

A staff member scoops the fish out of the tank and puts in a plastic bag, before leaving to get elastic bands to seal the bag shut.
Not for dissemination or distribution in the United States or through U.S. newswire services.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Excelsior Mining Corp. (TSX:MIN) (FSE:3XS) (OTCQX:EXMGF) ("Excelsior" or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has closed the first tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the Offering) (see press releases dated December 11, 2017 and December 19, 2017). The Company has issued 22,168,000 common shares at a price of C$1.00 per common share for gross proceeds of C$22,168,000 (approximately US$17.2 million). The second and final tranche of the Offering consists of an additional 16,467,200 common shares at a price of C$1.00 for gross proceeds of C$16,467,200 (approximately US$12.8 million). The second tranche will be subscribed for by an affiliate of Greenstone Resources L.P. (Greenstone) and is expected to close in the first half of January, 2018 after customary closing conditions are satisfied.

The Offering was oversubscribed with strong support from major North American, UK and European based institutional investors alongside Greenstone, the Companys major shareholder, said, President & CEO, Stephen Twyerould. With this financing, pre-construction activities at Gunnison will continue on pace as we prepare to seamlessly transition to well-field construction as planned, upon the receipt of the final permit and project finance, expected in the New Year. Backed by stakeholders that share our commitment for technical excellence and environmental stewardship, we remain on-track for copper production in 2018.

The Offering is non-brokered; however, Clarksons Platou Securities AS and Tamesis Partners LLP were engaged by Excelsior to act as finders in connection with the Offering and were paid finders fees on the first tranche of the Offering. The net proceeds of the Offering will be used for the development, construction and maintenance of the Companys Gunnison Copper Project, including the acquisition of long lead items, and for working capital requirements. All common shares issued in the first tranche of the Offering are subject to a statutory four month hold period that expires on April 22, 2018.

The securities being offered hereby have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This news release will not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor will there be any sale of the securities in any State in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About Excelsior Mining

Excelsior Mining The Copper Solution Company is a mineral exploration and development company that is advancing the Gunnison Copper Project in Cochise County, Arizona. The project is an advanced staged, low cost, environmentally friendly in-situ recovery copper extraction project that is scheduled for commercial production in 2018. The 2016 Feasibility Study projected an after-tax NPV of US$ 807 million and IRR of 40% using a US$ 2.75 copper price and a 7.5 discount rate.

Excelsiors technical work on the Gunnison Copper Project is supervised by Stephen Twyerould, Fellow of AUSIMM, President & CEO of Excelsior and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Twyerould has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release.

Additional information about the Gunnison Copper Project can be found in the technical report filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com entitled: Gunnison Copper Project, NI 43-101 Technical Report, Feasibility Study dated effective December 17, 2016.

For more information on Excelsior, please visit our website at www.excelsiormining.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE EXCELSIOR BOARD

"Stephen Twyerould"

President & CEO

For further information regarding this press release, please contact:

Excelsior Mining Corp.

Concord Place, Suite 300, 2999 North 44th Street, Phoenix, AZ, 85018.

JJ Jennex, Vice President, Corporate Affairs

T: 604-681-8030 x240

E: info@excelsiormining.com

www.excelsiormining.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information



This news release contains "forward-looking information" concerning anticipated developments and events that may occur in the future. Forward looking information contained in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) information pertaining to the terms of the Offering, (ii) the closing of the second tranche of the Offering, (iii) the timelines for completion of permitting, commencement of construction and commercial production, (iii) the use of proceeds from the Offering, and (iv) the ability to mine the Gunnison Project using in-situ recovery mining techniques.

In certain cases, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" suggesting future outcomes, or other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, intentions or statements about future events or performance. Forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on certain factors and assumptions regarding, among other things, the estimation of mineral resources and mineral reserves, the realization of resource and reserve estimates, copper and other metal prices, the timing and amount of future development expenditures, the estimation of initial and sustaining capital requirements, the estimation of labour and operating costs, the availability of necessary financing and materials to continue to develop and construct the Gunnison Project in the short and long-term, the progress of development activities, the receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, the completion of the permitting process, the estimation of insurance coverage, and assumptions with respect to currency fluctuations, environmental risks, title disputes or claims, and other similar matters. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect.

Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include risks inherent in the exploration and development of mineral deposits, including risks relating to changes in project parameters as plans continue to be redefined including the possibility that mining operations may not commence at the Gunnison Project, risks relating to variations in mineral resources and reserves, grade or recovery rates resulting from current exploration and development activities, risks relating to the ability to access infrastructure, risks relating to changes in copper and other commodity prices and the worldwide demand for and supply of copper and related products, risks related to increased competition in the market for copper and related products and in the mining industry generally, risks related to current global financial conditions, uncertainties inherent in the estimation of mineral resources, access and supply risks, reliance on key personnel, operational risks inherent in the conduct of mining activities, including the risk of accidents, labour disputes, increases in capital and operating costs and the risk of delays or increased costs that might be encountered during the development process, regulatory risks, including risks relating to the acquisition of the necessary licenses and permits, financing, capitalization and liquidity risks, including the risk that the financing necessary to fund the exploration and development activities at the Gunnison Project may not be available on satisfactory terms, or at all, risks related to disputes concerning property titles and interest, environmental risks and the additional risks identified in the Risk Factors section of the Companys reports and filings with applicable Canadian securities regulators.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The forward-looking information is made as of the date of this news release. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information.
An angry father has labelled a decision to let the man behind the wheel when his daughter was killed in a car crash walk free from court as "piss weak", crying as he begged for jail time.

Aashish Tiwari, 35, pleaded guilty on Thursday in the Holland Park Magistrates Court to driving without due care and attention in a crash that claimed the life of 27-year-old Yasmin McAllister.

Yasmin McAllister with her husband, Aaron. Credit:Facebook

On Thursday afternoon, he walked free from court, with a three-month suspended sentence hanging over his head and a six-month driving ban, slightly more severe than what police had called for but well below father Glynn Harnell's expectations.

About 8.30am on June 14 in Camp Hill, in Brisbanes south, Ms McAllister was walking to the bus stop when Mr Tiwari tried to cross a busy intersection with fatal consequences.
A family home could be demolished to make way for a riverfront hotel in an east Brisbane suburb.

Brisbane City Council received a development application from 11 Ludlow Pty Ltd on Tuesday proposing the 12-room hotel on Oxford Street, adjoining the Bulimba ferry terminal.

The proposed hotel would adjoin the Bulimba ferry terminal

A five-bedroom home and pool currently occupy the 1134-square-metre lot, with property records showing the home has been held by the same owner-occupiers for the past 19 years after being purchased in August 1998 for $800,000.

A proposal was made for a three-storey building with tenancies suitable for shops and food and drink outlets on the ground floor and level one with the second level providing the 12 hotel rooms with bathrooms and individual balconies.
Brisbanes waterfront could receive a new bar as an application was put forward on Tuesday for the octagonal over-water bar to be built as part of the $110 million Howard Smith Wharves project.

The development application, received by Brisbane City Council, proposed the bar in prime position under the Story Bridge.

An over-water champagne bar has been proposed as part of the Howard Smith Wharves development.

The champagne bar offers a unique octagonal space with a generous outdoor lounge area, the application said.

The architecture sees large arched doors into the central space which was inspired by the Story Bridge arched pylons, while the fitout makes reference to a different 'olde worlde' time in Brisbanes history mixed with European influences.
Of the hundreds of resumes I've reviewed this year, some have stood out for the oddest reasons. There was one that used Comic Sans as the font throughout, thereby reflecting the work of a primary schooler. There was another that didn't include the applicant's contact details at all  a mysterious phantom candidate. And then there was my personal favourite, if only for daring purposes, who creatively presented her CV on PowerPoint rather than Word. (She got the job.)

What makes those examples so confronting is that the resume and cover letter are supposed to be the first attempt at a first impression. And yet if you were to look beyond those standouts, you'd see for yourself how many more are even littered with typos and spelling mistakes, cliches and gaps, hyperboles and lies.

The resume and cover letter are supposed to be the first attempt at a first impression.

Which raises the question: When people complain about the dozens of jobs they apply for, none of which result in an interview, is it always discrimination at fault or is there, even if only occasionally, also culpability on the part of the applicant?

In any case, research published last year by scholars at the University of Michigan sheds light on some of the strategies applicants use to woo recruiters. The researchers analysed real-life applications and subsequently discovered there are eight impression-management tactics people most frequently adopt.
The man who murdered six-year-old Kylie Maybury 33 years ago will almost certainly die in prison, after being ordered to serve at least 28 years in jail.

Gregory Keith Davies, now 75 and in poor health, was on Thursday jailed for life for the rape and murder of Kylie on Melbourne Cup Day 1984 in East Preston.

Gregory Keith Davies has been jailed for life. Credit:Jason South

Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry set a minimum jail term of 28 years in the remote chance Davies would be still alive when he became eligible for parole when well over 100.
Live: Pedestrians hit by SUV in Melbourne CBD

Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later.

Dismiss
A man has drowned at a Victorian beach after he rushed into the water to save his two children, police said.

Emergency services were called following reports a 41-year-old Sydenham man had drowned at Skenes Creek beach about 1.20pm on Thursday.

The beach on the Great Ocean Road is un-patrolled.

A man has drowned at a Victorian beach after he rushed into the water to save his two children, police said.

Victoria Police understands the man was attempting to rescue his two children when he started to struggle.
A man is dragged from a car in Flinders Street after an attack that left 18 people injured. Credit:Seven News Mr Turnbull said the alleged offender had no known links to any "political issues or extremist groups". "Therefore, the position I'm advised is that no terrorism link has been established," he said. The damaged vehicle after it ploughed through a crowded intersection and then smashed into a tram stop. Credit:JOE CASTRO But he said a mass of material was being investigated in relation to the attack and "nothing has been ruled out".

"I want to reassure all Australians that this is an isolated incident," Mr Turnbull said. "We should continue to go about our daily lives in the way we always do" When it comes to preventing terror, Mr Turnbull said Melbourne has some "special challenges" "Melbourne has ... big wide streets, wide footpaths and of course, it has trams, and the tramways enable a driver, as this driver did, to get, to pull out of stopped traffic, get into the tramway and then make an attack. "This is an issue for protecting, for example, the Bourke Street Mall.

"There are a lot of measures that can be done, such as bollards, but it is not possible to do that in every area of Melbourne, so again, that presents some challenges. "The Premier is very alert to this and we have talked about it. I think it is vital that we ever we can, we build protections into the design. Melbourne's acting lord mayor Arron Wood praised the emergency services for their quick response. "Like all Melburnians I was saddened and sickened [by Thursday's incident]," Mr Wood told journalists on Friday.

"But I was very proud of our emergency services ... they are our true heroes. "There'll be extra police numbers as there always are at this time of year. "There will be an additional saturation of [police] numbers [due to the incident].



Mr Wood added that lord mayor Robert Doyle, who stood aside from the post this week, had been briefed by police about the incident on Thursday and Friday. Driving offences

In June, Mr Noori was convicted and fined $1000 after pleading guilty to driving while unlicensed, using a mobile phone while driving, and failing to answer bail. The driving offences occurred either late last year or earlier this year. The charge of failing to answer bail related to him missing a court appearance in May that related to the driving offences. It is believed to have been his first conviction, after he pleaded guilty but was not convicted of recklessly causing injury in 2010. He was fined $800, and told his guilty plea had spared him a suspended sentence.

A charge of unlawful assault was dropped. The nature of the alleged assault is unclear, but Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton described it as minor last night. Mr Noori was allegedly sitting about four cars back from traffic lights travelling west on Flinders Street before he drove up on the tram tracks and accelerated into pedestrians. Charges are yet to be laid. While police believe the motivations of the attack are not terror-related, the driver attributed his actions in part to the treatment of Muslims when investigators spoke to him in hospital. "He made a number of utterances in respect to dreams and voices, but also attributing his actions relative to concerns for the treatment of Muslims," Mr Patton told Channel Seven's Sunrise program.

"We are obviously going to be exploring the entirety of these matters when set against the backdrop of the circumstances I have outlined to see what the actual cause, the motivation of this, is." Mr Noori is yet to undergo a psychological assessment but police have made it clear that he has a history of mental illness. He also missed a mental health appointment on Thursday and is a known drug user. The homicide squad, major collision investigation unit and counter terrorism command are investigating the incident. Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said it had been the first day on the force for many of the officers. "We understand about 16 of the members at the scene were actually on their first day on the job," he said.
One of two men arrested in relation to the incident. Credit:SKY NEWS It's now believed he had no links to the incident, however he is still assisting police with enquiries. Witness Lachlan Vella said he saw a man in a suit lying on the floor surrounded by people. Police inspect the car at the scene of the incident. Credit:Joe Armao "His head was busted open".

Nearby was a woman who was "coming back to consciousness and asking what was happening", and another man "who had blood around his head and was snoring, like atonal breathing." Commander Russell Barrett during a press conference at the scene. Credit:Joe Armao, Fairfax Media. Soon after, he saw police arrive at the scene and pulled out his phone to film the arrest. The clip that he posted on social media would become the most vivid footage of the arrest to be circulated on Thursday. An aerial view of the incident on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Street.

Visibly shaken, Mr Vella recalled seeing a man in blue jeans and a shirt inside the car. Bystanders were inside of the car, holding the man, he said. Police cordoned off the scene. Credit:Paul Jeffers He then saw the man get pulled from the car by police officers, one "with a giant gun at his chest ... like the big one". His footage shows three officers holding down a bearded man in a white T-shirt and light blue jeans moments after he was pulled from the car. Officers cuff the man while he is face down then turn him over.The man appears to be unconscious and is slapped in the face by an officer. He then appears to regain consciousness.

Emergency services tend to pedestrians outside of Flinders Street Station. Credit:ABC News Police commander Russell Barrett did not rule out terrorism as a possible motive. "We believe based on what we've seen it is a deliberate act," he said. "It is too early in the investigation to discuss motivation. Ambulances and fire trucks line the street. Credit:Paul Jeffers "Police will continue to have a strong presence within Melbourne's CBD tonight," he said. "People will not be able to retrieve items left in the crime scene."Earlier, an officer at the scene described it as a terrorist incident, but this was not confirmed.

It appears police did not enact counter-terrorism lockdown strategies. The new terror warning sirens were not activated. The crowd outside the station. Credit:3aw twitter People were struck in front of dozens of others as they crossed the intersection at the start of peak hour. Police and emergency services remain on the scene and will do for the foreseeable future. The crime scene is active and will remain in place until at least 7am tomorrow.

Police urge people who can avoid the area, to avoid the area. Child among injured A preschool-aged child is among the injured and has been taken to the Royal Children's Hospital in a serious condition with head injuries.Thirteen people were taken to hospital, including three to The Alfred and three to the Royal Melbourne. Their injuries and condition are not yet known. Police said investigators were still piecing together how the incident occurred. They called for witnesses to immediately come forward. "Police have saturated the CBD area in the vicinity of Flinders, Elizabeth and Swanston streets to ensure community safety," police spokeswoman Creina O'Grady said.

Public transport affected Sections of the city's public transport system were in lockdown, with Metro Trains urging commuters to avoid Flinders Street. "Due to a major incident at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders streets, passengers are advised to defer travel through Flinders Street Station," Metro Trains tweeted. "Please interchange for services at Southern Cross and City Loop Stations." Yarra Trams cancelled services to the area. A huge area of the city was cordoned off as crowds tried to navigate their way home.Police progressively pushed people back from the site of the incident.

Whole streets were clogged with police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles. By about 8pm emergency services had started to vacate the immediate area of the mayhem, although a huge part of the city remained cordoned off to pedestrians and cars. 'People are flying everywhere' Sue from Walker's Doughnuts on Elizabeth Street told radio station 3AW that she heard screams before she saw "people flying everywhere"."We could hear this noise. As we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said. "People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere." A young mother who was at the scene with her young daughters told radio station 3AW they fled as the car ploughed into pedestrians."I didn't want the kids to see anything," she said. "We just ran.

"I wanted to get the girls out of there so we ran into the closest building. Chris Gath said he was standing at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets with a coffee in hand when he heard screaming. "I heard it first and then I turned around and saw lots of bodies on the floor. "I saw a car ploughing into many people and bodies flying everywhere." He marshalled a group of people, including women with prams, away from the intersection to safety.

"I was a bit worried about myself so I got lots of people to run with me, and got families out of the way. "I didn't know what was coming or how organised it was, whether it was a bomb... so I just freaked and ran. Rohit Kaul, 45, was on the phone to his wife, Avi, and crossing the intersection at Elizabeth Street when he was hit by the car.Ms Kaul heard the loud noises down the line before her husband's phone cut out and she unsuccessfully tried calling him several times.Mr Kaul sustained leg injuries and was helped by several pedestrians who had been walking in front of him. He managed to return his wife's call and was taken to The Alfred hospital. Hundreds of people milled around the edges of the crash scene, with police quelling a group in the crowd calling out that the incident was a terrorist attack.

Footage from the scene showed crowds of scattered people surrounding the white SUV in the middle of the intersection. Police asked any witnesses to go to the Melbourne West police station at 313 Spencer Street, Melbourne. About 20 people entered the police station within half an hour of their request. Some wiped away tears while others buried themselves in the arms of loved ones. Among them was Kat Edwards, who said she had been at the tram stop near the intersection when she heard the vehicle. "I saw the driver, but I also saw a man lying at a tram stop, so I decided to run towards that man and tend to him." Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Premier Daniel Andrews tweeted statements of support for the victims and emergency service workers on the scene.
The former Oasis frontman is looking forward to his Australian tour. "I always look forward to getting out there," he says. "I want to get a bit of sunshine and play some tunes and that, so yeah, can't wait." I ask if he's ready for Australia's scorching hot summer weather. Silly me.

"Mate, I can handle any heat," he says. "I'll be there in my parka as well." The last time Gallagher hit our shores was in 2014 when he played the Big Day Out with his band Beady Eye. He had hoped to bring his sons, Gene and Lennon, with him this time, but with the boys due back at school soon and the pair baulking at the long-haul flight, they may have to wait awhile before they get a dose of Aussie warmth. "I asked them if they wanted to come and they've gone 'well how far is it?'" Gallagher said.

"I said it's pretty far. "They've got to be back for school so maybe next time, but I would've loved to have brought them." Joining him on tour will be Gallagher's band, his girlfriend, Debbie Gwyther, and a "few of me mates". While his schedule is tight - "it's just gonna be gigs, gigs, gigs, you know?" - he hopes to take a look around. It's been a "lunatic" few months for the Mancunian.

While his album has copped mixed reviews, his shows have been "biblical", according to Gallagher. "I tell you what, they've been as good as like the good old days," he said. "Lots of jumping about, lots of pushing around - really rowdy gigs and that's just how I like it. "I hate going to concerts and people are stood there scratching their chins, you know what I mean?" Oasis fans can expect "lots and lots" from the Gallagher back catalogue.

"We do all the proper ones and I do them proper nice and loud - how they're meant to be done," he said. And while I'm not supposed to mention his brother Noel, Gallagher can't help himself. "Noel sort of does them a bit cutesy, a bit like Dolly Parton," he said. "She's alright. But she's not up there with Oasis, you know what I mean?" Come January Gallagher will be sharing a stellar line-up with the likes of Flume, Fleet Foxes, Foster the People and Daryl Braithwaite.

"Who?", Gallagher asks. "Daryl Braithwaite," I say. "He fronted one of the biggest Australian bands in the '70s." "I'll check him out, then," he says. "I'm looking forward to having a listen to a few people." Falls Festival will hit Lorne, Marion Bay and Byron Bay before landing in Fremantle for two massive days on January 6 and 7.
Danish English

Company announcement no. 13/2017

TK Development sells 78-unit rental property at stre Havn, Aalborg, Denmark

Summary:

TK Development is developing and constructing a 6,100 sqm rental property containing 78 apartments at stre Havn in Aalborg, Denmark.

The project has been sold to Wagner Ejendomme ApS under a conditional sale agreement.

Construction will commence in the second quarter of 2018 and is scheduled for completion and handover on 1 October 2019.

The total selling price is DKK 161.3 million, inclusive of VAT.

TK Development develops, constructs and sells 6,100 sqm apartment project

A local development plan totalling 34,000 sqm, including part of the areas which TK Development is developing at stre Havn in Aalborg in cooperation with Frederikshavn Maritime Erhvervspark (Lauritzen-Gruppen), was approved in spring 2016.

Based on this local development plan, TK Development will now initiate a project containing 78 rental apartments. The project will be executed as a 6,100 sqm high-rise building of up to ten storeys, plus a 1,300 sqm basement with storage rooms and parking facilities.

TK Development has sold the total project to Wagner Ejendomme ApS under a conditional sale agreement at a price of DKK 161.3 million. Wagner Ejendomme ApS has taken over the letting process as part of the deal. The sale will be executed on a forward funding basis, meaning that the investor will pay for the project in step with its increase in value during the course of the construction period.

Wagner Ejendomme ApS is a private, Aalborg-based property company founded by Sven Wagner and currently run by Trine Wagner. The company is owned by the Wagner family, which provides management and letting services for a large portfolio of quality properties.

Construction is expected to commence in the second quarter of 2018 and is scheduled for completion and handover to the buyer on 1 October 2019.



TK Developments share of the profit from the project is 70%. The initiation and sale of the project will not affect TK Developments profit guidance for financial year 2017/18, but will underpin the Groups 2018/19 earnings performance. The Group maintains its forecast of a pre-tax profit of DKK 80-90 million for financial year 2018/19.

Contact details:

TK Development A/S

Frede Clausen, President and CEO

Tel.: +45 8896 1010

http://prlibrary-eu.nasdaq.com/Resource/Download/4c36840e-be4d-4e34-8838-c1dbe0ba151b
Police have charged a man as part of an ongoing investigation into a series of obscene act offences at a Perth shopping centre.

Kensington Detectives arrested and charged the man after reports of a person performing obscene acts at Belmont Forum Shopping Centre on Sunday.

The man will face court next month.

As part of the ongoing investigation police are now asking anyone who saw a man riding a motorcycle through the car park of the shops while performing obscene acts to contact them.

Police say on some occasions the man parked his motorcycle next to women and children while carrying out obscene acts.
A Perth boy who was just 11 when he was charged with murder over the Australia Day brawl that left a man dead has been sentenced to four years behind bars.

The boy, who is now 13 and cannot be named, was the youngest of a group of eight males who attacked Patrick 'Paddy' Slater at the Esplanade train station on January 26, 2016.

Patrick 'Paddy' Slater died at the Esplanade Train Station in Perth on Australia Day 2016

Mr Slater was beaten and stabbed to death by the group after Australia Day celebrations in the city had finished.

Five men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 16-18 years over Mr Slater's murder, and two teenagers involved are also serving time.
Lisa Scaffidi has announced she will return to her duties as City of Perth Lord Mayor next year.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Ms Scaffidi said she would be back in office on January 8 after temporarily exiting the role in September.

Ms Scaffidi has not been in the role since September. Credit:Jessica Hromas

".. .on 8 January 2018 I will resume the statutory duties which I have been duly elected to undertake. That will be four months since the date on which I agreed to the CEO's request not to perform my statutory duties pending the determination of my appeals to the Court of Appeal," she wrote.

"I look forward to resuming my duties and continuing to serve the City of Perth and all stakeholders/ratepayers."
A man has been arrested after indecently touching an eight-year-old girl and taking photos of playing children in a southern Perth suburb, police claim.

Police spokeswoman Susan Usher said the girl was playing with friends at Horse Hire Park in Mala Way in Success on Tuesday between 1pm and 2pm.

The man was arrested after a report was made. Credit:Craig Sillitoe

It's claimed the man who was not known to the children photographed the group before approaching the eight-year-old girl and touching her in an indecent manner.

Fremantle Detectives arrested the man after a report was made.
Washington: The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has warned US President Donald Trump against firing special counsel Robert Mueller or pardoning any targets of the federal probe into Russia and the president's Republican campaign.

In a speech from the Senate floor, Virginia Senator Mark Warner said that growing criticism of Mueller's probe pointed to an effort to lay the groundwork for Mueller's removal or other interference in the federal investigation. Warner said any attempt to remove Mueller would provoke a "constitutional crisis".

Asked this past weekend if he was considering trying to push out Mueller, Trump replied, "No, I'm not." And a White House lawyer has repeatedly said the president is not considering any pardons. Trump cannot directly fire Mueller, but critics say he could demand that top Justice Department officials fire Mueller and then remove them if they don't follow through.

"The president has said he's not considering removing special counsel Mueller, but the president's track record on this front is a source of concern," Warner said. "I'm certain that most of my colleagues believed that he wouldn't fire (former FBI Director) Jim Comey."
Paris: French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, whose government has vowed to clean up politics, has been forced to defend his decision to hire a private jet for 350,000 ($542,000) to fly back from Japan.

Opposition politicians decried the use of the private charter, and a non-governmental agency that pursues financial wrongdoing in high places accused him of ignoring his own government's pledges of exemplary behaviour.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, left, and Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, centre, meet police forces during a visit at the Eiffel Tower Tower. Credit:CHRISTIAN HARTMANN

President Emmanuel Macron came under fire earlier this month for celebrating his 40th birthday in the grounds of a royal palace. His office sought to play that down, saying the event had been paid for by Macron and his wife.

Philippe acknowledged on RTL radio that he and his delegation flew back to Paris from Tokyo, after an official trip to New Caledonia, at a cost of 350,000, but said he had been obliged to do so.
Minneapolis: Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is defending the state agency investigating the fatal shooting of an Australian woman by a Minneapolis police officer.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating Justine Ruszczyk Damond's killing last summer.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said last week that he didn't yet have enough evidence to charge Officer Mohamed Noor, saying investigators "haven't done their jobs".

Damond's father John Ruszczyk expressed concern on Thursday at a news conference in Sydney that the investigation has not been properly conducted.
Seoul: A second North Korean soldier in as many months fled across the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas, capping a year that has seen the most military defections this century from Kim Jong-un's regime.

The low-ranking soldier crossed at around 8am Thursday local time, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. South Korea's military fired about 20 warning shots as North Korean guards chased the defector in thick fog, Yonhap News Agency reported.

North Korean soldiers look at a South Korean guard standing near the spot where a North Korean soldier crossed the border in the Demilitarised Zone on November 13. Credit:LEE JIN-MAN

Last month, another North Korean soldier was shot as he crossed near the Joint Security Area - the only part of the demilitarised zone where forces from both countries stand face-to-face. That defection was only the third across the heavily guarded JSA since 1998.

According to the Unification Ministry in the South, 881 North Koreans defected to South Korea in the first nine months of this year, compared with 1418 in the whole of 2016. Most come by way of China.
Bali: Australian accountant Isaac Emmanuel Roberts, detained in Bali on drug allegations, is "feeling guilty and sorry to the Indonesian government" according to one of his lawyers.

Roberts, 35, received several visits at the police station where he is being detained on Wednesday, including one from his mother, who was helped into a car with a maroon shawl over her head in an attempt to avoid the media pack.

"He is feeling guilty, he is feeling sorry to the Indonesian government," lawyer Yoga Cahyadi said. "Careful, she's elderly," he remonstrated to the shoving media pack as he guided Roberts' mother into the car.
BETTY'S ESTATE:--- The Methodist Agogic Center experienced some Christmas cheer on Monday 18th December 2017. Dino Arrundell and his wife Brenda Arrundell, of Captain D's Rib Shack, surprised 94 Cycle 1 Year 2 students of the Rev. John A. Gumbs and Browlia F. Maynard campuses with goodie bags to jumpstart their Christmas celebration. "I am a product of the Methodist Agogic Center; an institution that taught me the true meaning of Christmas which is giving. My wife and I decided to take it back to where it all started and treat the students with items that will keep their mind active during the Christmas vacation, Dino Arrundell stated." The items in the bags included an activity book, pencils, glue sticks, erasers, rulers, candies and a refreshing drink.

Captain D's Rib Shack continues to play a key role in the community. Their first community outreach was in December 2016 when they donated a Christmas tree and decorations to the pupils of the Leonard Connor School. The couple continued their outreach with their free hot meal distribution of over 500 plates every Sunday for families in need post-hurricane Irma. "We will not stop here. Our goal is to help whenever we can because it is only together we will smile again," Brenda Arrundell concluded.

Captain D's Rib Shack is located on the Simpson Bay parking lot and open every day from 11am until serving delicious meals.
LAS VEGAS, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Black Cactus Global (OTC Markets:ENVV) (the Company) is pleased to announce it will acquire 100% acquisition of the issued shares of World on Wireless (UK) Ltd (WOW), a company which provides white label payment systems and services on an international basis to banks, financial institutions, remittances companies and retail chains. The acquisition will generate recurring contractual revenue of nearly US$ 1,000,000, very similar to WOW s present 2017 proceeds.



WOWs services include mobile wallets, merchant payments, physical and on-line payment points, consumer credit products, PCI and closed loop card programs that are interconnected into all mobile payment networks and can be used by any mobile phone world-wide. WOW owns approximately US$ 2,000,000 of Intellectual Property for its programs and platforms which are licensed on 3  5 year rolling agreements which are backed with revenue generating technical and development support.

Black Cactus will retain WOWs experienced software development and management team. Mr. John Mittens, WOWs current CEO will be appointed the Executive Vice-President for New Business Development. Mr. Mittens has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry managing major technical projects for both start-ups and mature companies worldwide. John has held senior executive positions with both, British Telecom and Cable & Wireless, as well as launching a number of highly successful start-up ventures including; the largest Fiber Optic network in Europe; the largest prepaid card company in the UK; and a number of mobile telephone gateway companies.

Lawrence Cummins, CEO of Black Cactus, states, Black Cactus acquisition of WOW is one of the steps the company is taking in strengthening its position in the Blockchain payment services industry and with WOWs expertize and IP it will be able to rapidly grow this business." Mr. Cummins further states, I am very pleased to bring John Mittens onto our management team as it will increase the depth of our ability to provide and support a wider range of products and his knowledge of the payment card industry dovetails into our trading platform offering of fiat and crypto currencies."



John Mittens the CEO of WOW, states, I am very pleased to become part of the future of Black Cactus Global, WOW has been developing a number of initiatives in crypto currency and Blockchain development which will be enhanced by the powerhouse of Blockchain IP owned by Black Cactus.

About the Company

Black Cactus Global is a technology developing company with a focus on Blockchain, machine learning, cryptocurrency, and the Internet of Things. We partner with international government agencies, large corporations and specialised groups on global development and consulting projects in our key development areas of Fintech, digital media, financial services, cyber security, and healthcare.

Our mission is to pioneer the application of Blockchain and overlapping technologies to protect IP and the security of data and financial transactions.

Correction Notice

The company wishes to issue a slight correction of our news release of December 8th 2017, which stated that the Companys CEO, was appointed to the Board of Commissioners to the UNs Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development. This Blockchain Commission was actually established by Global Partnerships Forum, PVBLIC Foundation & The Fund for Philanthropy in response to the need to develop a framework for the United Nations system, including its Member States, Intergovernmental Organizations, programs and specialized agencies can utilize Blockchain-based technologies.

In addition to Lawrence Cummins, the CEO of Black Cactus Global, Inc, joining the Board of Commissioners of the Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development, Black Cactus Global will join the Commissions global community platform, Blockchain for Impact, as a Founding Member.

Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, Co-Chair of The Blockchain Commission, stated, "Mr. Cummins brings a wealth of expertise and resources to the Blockchain communityhis wisdom and deep experience in distributed ledger philosophy, technology and industry provides an unique and invaluable perspective, and we are delighted to have him on board.

For further information please visit our website at:

www.blackcactusglobal.com

Investor Relations:

Company Contact: Louis Silver

Tel: 1-610-710-1303  Email: lsilver35@verizon.net; louis@blackcactusglobal.com

Safe Harbor Statements

Certain information contained in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as expects or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, estimates, intends or believes, or that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur, or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the Companys ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Companys filings with the SEC. Such risks and other factors include, among others, the ability to locate and acquire suitable interests in alternative medicine manufacturing operations on terms acceptable to the Company, the availability of financing on acceptable terms, accidents, labor disputes, acts of God and other risks of the alternative medicine industry including, without limitation, delays in obtaining governmental approvals or permits, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements included in this news release are reasonable; however, no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct, and such forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Protection of Guyana launched a comprehensive study report conducted titled Skills for Green Jobs Study- Guyana.

Prime Minister of Guyana, the Honourable Moses Nagamootoo attended the launch at the Guyana Marriott Hotel. In addressing the gathering last Friday 15 December, he explained, The national budget is key to maintaining stability in the work environment and shows that the State can become an important instrument in maintaining an environment where there is not only availability of opportunities for work, but also can articulate plans for programmes that would bring in new areas of work culture for example, greening the economy - an innovation that hasnt actually been fully implemented because it has never been properly financed - so that you could have opportunities in non-traditional areas of employment.

The Skills for Green Jobs Study highlights policies, programmes and emerging opportunities in the green economy as Guyana sets it eyes on transitioning into a green economy. The creation of more jobs, better jobs and green jobs is a target for Guyana as laid out in the Guyana Green State Development Strategy.

It is estimated that by 2030, some 600 million young people globally will be looking for jobs. Prime Minister Nagamootoo noted, Traditional jobs may not be sufficient avenues for them. We have to create jobs in new sectors, green jobs, the jobs that accord with the resources of the State. We are rich in forests, we are blessed with sunshine. If we go solar, or use renewable energy we have to train young people to work in the new environment of renewable energy, in agro-processing, in agriculture etc.

This study was launched in the context of the Guyana Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) which reflects consensus among Government, workers and employers organizations regarding Decent Work objectives and results to be pursued over the 2017-21 period. It also recognises the need to build a strong link between the DWCP and the Guyana Green State Development Strategy currently in the making.

Deputy Director of the ILO Decent Work Team and Caribbean Office, Dagmar Walter explained, One of the corner stones of such a successful transition is the development of adequate skills in the workforce. Right skills for green jobs are the prerequisite to make the transition to a greener economy happen. Today, skills gaps are already recognized as a major bottleneck in a number of sectors, such as renewable energy, energy and resource efficiency, renovation of buildings, construction, environmental services and manufacturing.

Indeed, the adoption and dissemination of clean technologies requires skills in technology application, adaptation and maintenance. Skills are also crucial for economies and businesses, workers and entrepreneurs, as well as for livelihoods to rapidly adapt to changes as a consequence of environmental policies or climate change. The bottom line is that skills are a critical factor for productivity, employment growth and development.

The Skills for Green Jobs Study-Guyana gives a comprehensive overview of the emerging jobs in the green economy and the skills required by workers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the new opportunities.

ILO Press Release
MADAME ESTATE:--- Reports reaching SMN News state that well known Erno Labega Jr. was shot multiple times around 2am Thursday morning in Madame Estate. Police Spokesman Ricardo Henson confirmed that a victim identified as E.L was shot in the Madame Estate area. Henson said the victim is in stable condition at the St. Maarten Medical Center. The police spokesman said so far the suspects have not been arrested and police do not know the motives behind the early morning shooting. Henson said the detective department is busy investigating the case.

Shooting in Madame Estate.

MADAME ESTATE:--- Detectives are presently investigating a shooting which took place on Guadeloupe road in Madame Estate on Thursday, December 21st at approximately 01.45 a.m. One male victim identified with initials E.L. was shot by an unknown person (s). He was transported to the Sint Maarten Medical Center for medical treatment and remains admitted for observation in stable condition.

No other details regarding this investigation will be released at this time due to the sensitivity of the case.

KPSM Police Report
ENCINITAS, CA, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Com-Guard.com, Inc. (OTC Pink: CGUD), the technology company that has been designing and developing security applications for over 15 years, had previously announced that it is going to standardize on the Raspberry Pi Development Platforms using Linux based Software and ARM Architecture Hardware to develop low cost and high-performance solutions and is planning on implementing the Blockchain Software on the Raspberry Pi Platform. As stated previously, the first target industry will be the Solar Industry.

In an article titled, SolarCoin How Blockchain Is Incentivizing A 5,000 Gigawatt Quest To Save The Planet by Jacqueline Prause, July 4th 2017 in Digitalist Magazine published by SAP, it was stated that Rather than wait for more money to flow into the solar industry, the SolarCoin Foundation (see below), based in Greenwich, Connecticut, is incentivizing solar production for participating households and businesses, one megawatt-hour at a time  and its using blockchain technology to do it.

An item of importance to the Company is that the above article also states that the use of a $10 piece of equipment called a Raspberry Pi, which is a data logger that gathers information from the solar installation and publishes it to the blockchain. Currently, there are also discussions in progress to have some solar equipment providers embed SolarCoin in a more dynamic way onto solar equipment they sell, hence enabling granting down to the minute.

As previously stated, "We are currently using the Raspberry Pi Platform for Hardware and Software development and we see an opportunity to use our long history of development of Hardware and Software to educate the consumer on Blockchain Software on the Raspberry Pi and develop an easy to use Platform for Solar Companies to sell and end users to understand. We believe that it is important for the Company to concentrate on SolarCoins and we are looking to continue to establish relationships with Solar Companies and the users of Solar Power therefore enhancing our understanding into how we can use the Blockchain Software and the Raspberry Pi technology in this market, said Dr. Edward W. Savarese.

The Company purchased the Web Names BlockChainPi.info, SolarCoinSolar.info and SolarCoin.solar to better explain its strategy and the Companys implementation of Blockchain on the Raspberry Pi and specific targeted markets. Its first market will be the Solar Industry using the SolarCoin Currency. We are going to develop these websites to educate the Public on Blockchain Technology on the Raspberry Pi (BlockChainPi) and its implications for the future in the Solar CryptoCoin and other CryptoCoin Markets, said Dr. Edward W. Savarese.

About the SolarCoin Foundation:

Founded in 2014 by a group of solar experts and macro-economists, the SolarCoin Foundation is an international network of volunteers and community members whose job it is to oversee the distribution of SolarCoins (cryptoexchange symbol: SLR)  a blockchain-based digital currency that is distributed to solar producers at a rate of one coin per megawatt-hour of solar energy produced, based on verified meter readings. The organization maintains a public ledger that records each SolarCoin given out to solar electricity generators.

About Com-Guard.com, Inc.: (Pink Sheets: CGUD), (www.com-guard.com)

Com-Guard, Inc. has been recently focusing on the announcement that it is going to standardize on the Raspberry Pi Development Platforms using Linux based Software and ARM Architecture Hardware to develop low cost and high performance solutions in the Security and Tracking Markets and is planning on implementing the Blockchain Software on the Raspberry Pi Platform. The company has been a software and hardware developer in the security markets for over 15 years.

This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "seeks," "believes," "estimates," "expects" and similar references to future periods. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements.

We caution you therefore against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance. Expression of future goals and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact involve risks and uncertainties. The actual results the company achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statements due to such risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from expectations in this press release. These and other risks are detailed in ComGuards Disclosure and Information Statement at www.pinksheets.com and its previously filed quarterly reports on Form 10-QSB and its annual report on Form 10-KSB. Any forward-looking statement made in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

 2017 Com-Guard.com, Inc. All rights reserved. Com-Guard.com, Inc. and the CGUD logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Com-Guard.com, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.




NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES, OR IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, SOUTH AFRICA OR JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. OTHER RESTRICTIONS ARE APPLICABLE. PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTICE AT THE END OF THE PRESS RELEASE.

The Board of directors of GC Rieber Shipping ASA has today resolved to call for an extraordinary general meeting in the Company and proposed that the general meeting resolves a rights issue of NOK 100 million in the Company at a subscription price of NOK 7.50 per share (the "Rights Issue"). The shareholders of the Company will receive tradable rights to subscribe for new shares in the Company in connection with the Rights Issue.

The Company's largest shareholder, GC Rieber AS, has fully underwritten the Rights Issue and will minimum subscribe in full for its part of 70.4 percent. Further, AS Javipa and Pelicahn AS, controlled by Paul Chr. Rieber, chairman of the Board of the Company, will minimum subscribe for their parts, 2.3 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.

In connection with the Rights Issue, the Company has negotiated better terms and certain amendments to the credit facilities for the subsea fleet, including covenant relaxations, reduction of scheduled amortization by 80% over the next six semi-annual instalments and extension of the tenor until 31.12.2022. The amendments are subject to credit committee approvals from the relevant banks.

The Board of GC Rieber Shipping ASA has through 2017 assessed several available strategic options and concluded that the proposed Rights Issue will put the Company in the best position. The Rights Issue and amended debt structure will provide the Company with financial runway for the next three years. The refinancing will strengthen the competitive position of GC Rieber Shipping's subsea operations. In combination with the successful establishment of Shearwater GeoServices AS in December 2016, this concludes the refinancing processes initiated during the spring of 2016.

Completion of the Rights Issue will be subject to approval by the Company's general meeting, following approval by the bank's respective credit committees. The extraordinary general meeting in the Company will be held on Friday 26. January 2018 at 10.00 hours (CET) at Solheimsgaten 11, Bergen (the auditorium at Skipsbyggerhallen). The notice is attached to this stock exchange announcement. Documents concerning items on the agenda that shall be resolved by the general meeting have been made available at the Company's website (www.gcrieber-shipping.com), in accordance with article 5 in the Company's articles of association.

For further information:

CEO Christian W. Berg, phone: +47 974 05 553

About GC Rieber Shipping:

GC Rieber Shipping's business within offshore/shipping includes ownership in specialized vessels, high quality marine ship management and project development within the segments subsea, ice/support and marine seismic. The group has a specialized competence in offshore operations in harsh environments as well as design, development and maritime operation of offshore vessels.

GC Rieber Shipping currently operates and has direct and indirect ownership in 11 advanced special purpose vessels for defined markets within the subsea,ice/support and marine seismic segments. The company has its headquarter and a ship management office in Bergen, and an additional ship management company in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Russia). The company is listed on Oslo Brs with ticker RISH.

Further information is available on the company's website www.gcrieber-shipping.com.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This communication may not be published, distributed or transmitted in or into the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan. These materials do not constitute or form a part of any offer or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for securities of the Company in the United States, Norway or any other jurisdiction. The securities of the Company may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"). The securities of the Company have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act. Any sale in the United States of the securities mentioned in this communication will be made solely to "qualified institutional buyers" as defined in Rule 144A under the U.S. Securities Act and to "major U.S. institutional investors" under SEC Rule 15a-6 to the United States Exchange Act of 1934. No public offering of the securities will be made in the United States.

In any EEA Member State that has implemented the Prospectus Directive, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors in that Member State within the meaning of the Prospectus Directive, i.e., only to investors who can receive the offer without an approved prospectus in such EEA Member State. The expression "Prospectus Directive" means Directive 2003/71/EC (and amendments thereto, including Directive 2010/73/EU, to the extent implemented in any relevant Member State) and includes any relevant implementing measure in the relevant Member State.

In the United Kingdom, this communication is only addressed to and is only directed at Qualified Investors who (i) are investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (as amended) (the "Order") or (ii) are persons falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (high net worth companies, unincorporated associations, etc.) (all such persons together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). These materials are directed only at Relevant Persons and must not be acted on or relied on by persons who are not Relevant Persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this announcement relates is available only to Relevant Persons and will be engaged in only with Relevant Persons. Persons distributing this communication must satisfy themselves that it is lawful to do so.

Matters discussed in this announcement may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by words such as "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "intends", "may", "should", "will" and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions. Although the Company believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond its control. Such risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in this release by such forward-looking statements. The information, opinions and forward-looking statements contained in this announcement speak only as at its date, and are subject to change without notice.

This announcement is made by and, and is the responsibility of, the Company. Carnegie AS (the "Manager") is acting exclusively for the Company and no one else and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to their respective clients, or for advice in relation to the contents of this announcement or any of the matters referred to herein.

Neither the Manager nor any of its affiliates makes any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this announcement and none of them accepts any responsibility for the contents of this announcement or any matters referred to herein.

This announcement is for information purposes only and is not to be relied upon in substitution for the exercise of independent judgment. It is not intended as investment advice and under no circumstances is it to be used or considered as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities of the Company. Neither the Manager nor any of its affiliates accepts any liability arising from the use of this announcement.

Each of the Company, the Manager and their respective affiliates expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update, review or revise any statement contained in this announcement whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
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: Majedie Asset Management Limited (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



TESCO 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 20 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" No





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:



ORD 5P



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 299,595,347 3.66 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL:



299,595,347



3.66

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 ORD 5P Sale 460,900 206.2952

(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





(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: 21 December 2017 Contact name: Matthew Hambly Telephone number: 0207 618 3900

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.




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement
Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press

Federal prosecutors successfully won extradition orders for a pair of Nigerian nationals to face charges in Connecticut that they used emails to hoodwink a Torrington executive into wiring $500,000 to accounts they controlled.

Olumuyiwa Yahtrip Adejumo, 32, was arrested Nov. 16 in Toledo, Ohio, and appeared Wednesday before a U.S. District Court judge in New Haven. Adeyemi Odufuye was arrested Dec. 19 in the United Kingdom and has since been extradited to the United States to await trial.
CLEARWATER, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Florida chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a non-profit mental health watchdog co-founded by the Church of Scientology and dedicated to protection of children, is calling for an investigation into the heavy psychiatric drugging of children; especially foster children, in Florida. A report from the research arm of Florida's child-protection system released in 2015 showed that foster children are being put on psychotropic medications without caregivers following proper procedures and that 11 percent of the children in foster care had active prescriptions for at least one psychotropic drug. A review of the files for 140 foster children showed just 20 percent of these children met all the key requirements for administering such medication.i



Following the tragic death of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers in 2009, who was found hanging from a shower fixture in his foster home after having been prescribed two black box drugs intended for adults, the Florida policies for using psychotropic drugs on foster kids were updated but this has not solved the problem.

Currently 8 million U.S. children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs, with more than 1 million between the ages of zero to five.ii Children are being drugged simply because psychiatry has pathologized normal childhood behaviors, and repackaged them as mental disorders. The result is that millions of children are being drugged for behaviors reclassified by psychiatry as disease.

As a result, CCHR is calling for an investigation into the psychiatric drugging of children in the United States. Individuals are invited to the center, located at 109 N. Fort Harrison Avenue in downtown Clearwater, to learn more about the dangers associated with psychiatric drugs as well as alternatives to medication. To learn more, please call 727-442-8820 or visit www.cchrflorida.org.

About CCHR: Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHRs mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the free world tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of mental health.

__________

i http://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2015/09/22/report-finds-florida-foster-kids-put-on-psychotropic-drugs-without-following-proper-procedures

ii https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/





Media Contact:

Diane Stein

President, CCHR Florida

727-442-8820

diane@cchrflorida.org

www.cchrflorida.org
This list is from The Feifer Five, a monthly newsletter by Entrepreneur's editor in chief, Jason Feifer. Each month, he shares five entrepreurial insights to help you think bigger. Subscribe here.

Heres the only prediction I can guarantee: Next year will bring new opportunities for sharp, forward-thinking entrepreneurs. And what exactly will those opportunities be?

I have a theory. Which leads me to #1 on my list...

1. 2018 can be a fresh start.

For Entrepreneur's December issue, we asked tons of smart people to make a prediction. (Gary Vaynerchuk's answer, in part: The same way I felt in 2008 about social media is how I feel about voice now.) And as we did, I began forming my own prediction: Trust is next years competitive advantage.

Following a 2017 full of fake news, divisiveness, hacking, corporate malfeasance, and never-ending scandals, consumers want to embrace anything that is true and honest and decent and giving and real. The entrepreneurs who are most trustworthy -- who have nothing to hide, who speak openly and clearly, whose companies are transparent, who believe in their customers as much as they believe in themselves -- will be the ones that win people over. The future is for entrepreneurs to shape. Next year is a fresh opportunity to prove it. May we do so in the image of our best selves.

2. Great opportunities at the wrong time are actually just bad opportunities.



For evidence, look no further than this episode of my podcast Problem Solvers. It's about what happened when Noosa, the yogurt company, said yes to its first big retail opportunity -- and lost $100,000 because of it.



(Side note: After this episode ran, Noosa sent me a box with dozens of their yogurts. It's great stuff but, oh man, that's too much. I literally gave some away on the street outside our office, so they'd all be eaten before going bad.)



3. You may be making things unnecessarily hard.



Every so often, someone tells me something so simple and yet profound that I immediately know: This is something I'll think about for years, if not forever. And it happened recently, during a conversation I had with Tim Ferriss. He was telling me that the past year-plus has been the most productive time of his life. I asked: How? And he said: He started to look at every project and asked, "If this was simple, what would it look like?"



If this was simple, what would it look like?



In other words: Imagine what it would take to make this project easier. Imagine the structure. The other people you'd need to involve. The way you could delegate, spread, or re-organize the tasks. The stuff you can simply cut out of the process. And then... do that. Stop doing it the complicated way. Make it easy. Because the easier it is, the more you can accomplish.



I've been asking this of myself a lot lately. I don't always have the answers, but the question feels like a lifeline all its own. (And when I do have the answers, I'll share them with you.)



4. If you anchor yourself to the old ways of doing things, time will just move on without you.

The year is 1777. Frederick the Great is ruling Prussia. Coffee was becoming popular there, so Frederick made the drink prohibitively expensive for people to buy. His explanation: "It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors."



What Frederick didn't appreciate: Just because something happened in the past, that doesn't mean it must or even can continue in the same way. He died in 1786 and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William the II, who lifted the restrictions on coffee. People still love beer, of course. But they love coffee too. There's always room for something new.



(This all came from the latest episode of my podcast Pessimists Archive -- site, iTunes -- where I tell the story of how coffee survived 500 years of bans and health scares. Frederick is my absolute favorite moment from it. Though, I also loved diving into what 17th century coffee houses looked like in London. Hint: Not Starbucks!)



5. Own it!

I loved this sandwich board, which I spotted outside of Emmerson in Boulder, Colorado in November. It's a great reminder that confidence trumps almost anything else. Someone insult your food? Use that to promote yourself, and suddenly you've flipped the insult on its head. It's like you're saying, Our food is so good, we can joke about it being bad. That's how confident we are you'll love it.



That's a compelling message.

Related:

5 Ways To Think Bigger in 2018, According to Entrepreneur's Editor In Chief

What Drove My Decision To Merge SBI And Its Associates

30 Top Podcasts for Influential Entrepreneurs



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


A report came out in December about marijuana sales closing in on the $10 billion mark in North America this year. Notably, it didnt set off a huge round of discussion in the media.

For the record, that $9.7 billion in 2017 legal marijuana sales is a 33 percent jump over 2016 but its kind of like that Pentagon UFO video. People just seemed to shrug and move on with holiday shopping.

The cannabis numbers, based on a report from Arcview Market Research, got the same type of greeting. No one is surprised the industry is booming, and everyone expects even more staggering numbers when California and Massachusetts start sales in 2018.

Related: Entrepreneurs See Opportunity Addressing Consumer Demand for Pesticide-Free Cannabis

California sales begin

California begins legal recreational marijuana sales on Jan. 1. The state just recently granted licenses to dispensaries, so it might be a bit hard to find initially. Some cities, such as San Francisco where sales wont begin until Jan. 6, will lag in allowing legal sales. But eventually, the state is expected to become one of the biggest  perhaps the biggest  recreational marijuana market in the world. Some estimate that market at $5 billion.

And Massachusetts, too

Lost in all the justifiable talk about California is the fact that Massachusetts is set to begin recreational marijuana sales in April 2018. Massachusetts already has jumped ahead on the idea of creating cannabis cafes that will allow residents to buy and use marijuana products outside of their homes. The state also has the distinction of creating the first legal adult-use market in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River.

Chicago will send message

Voters in Chicago and Cook County, Ill., will get a chance to make their voice heard on legalization of marijuana in an advisory referendum to be held March 20. Advisory referendum is another way of saying it doesnt count, at least not in terms of changing current law. But marijuana supporters hope that if Cook County voters say they approve of recreational marijuana, it will send a message to Illinois lawmakers to pass a proposed bill creating a legal adult-use cannabis market in Illinois. Of course, it could also go the other way.

Related: Chicago Voters Will Soon Tell Illinois Lawmakers If They Favor Legalizing Adult-Use Cannabis

Jeff Sessions may not give up

Many, many words were spoken and typed in 2017 about U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' opposition to legal marijuana. The crackdown on states that allow marijuana sales hasn't happened but that doesnt mean it wont. The ongoing threat of a federal crackdown has not dampened growth in the marijuana industry, however. For investors and business leaders, thats the bottom line -- so far.

Canada legalizes nationwide - probably

The decision to make adult-use marijuana legal nationwide in Canada was one of the big stories in 2017. But putting that system in place by the July 2018 deadline is a challenge. Some Canadian provinces have asked for more time to set up regulated systems, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said the date will not be July 1, I assure you of that. He did, however, say he expected the system to be set up next summer. Meanwhile, conservative politicians have done all they can to put off the final vote on the issue for as long as possible.

From Los Angeles and Chicago to Boston and Toronto, millions will have their lives affected by the legal marijuana movement. How all of it turns out in 2018 is just a matter of waiting and seeing.

Follow dispensaries.com on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest cannabis news.

Related:

The Year Ahead: Cannabis Legalization in 2018

Chicago Voters Will Soon Tell Illinois Lawmakers If They Favor Legalizing Adult-Use Cannabis

Massachusetts May Leap Ahead on Cannabis Cafes



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


CLEARWATER, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On December 16th, The Way to Happiness (TWTH) Association of Tampa Bay held their 2nd Annual Love and Help Children Awards Banquet in the historic Fort Harrison, the international religious retreat for the Church of Scientology. Twenty-two youth were acknowledged for their community service in front of an audience of 320 guests, including educators, community advocates and religious leaders.



Im honored to be joined by so many who are responsible for educating youth, seeing that they make correct choices and assisting them to live happy and healthy lives, said Ms. Tanja Cranton, the Executive Director for TWTH Association Tampa Bay, especially during this Holiday season.

Guests enjoyed a complimentary buffet dinner, prepared by the award-winning Fort Harrison chefs.

Following dinner, Ms. Kelly Yaegermann, President of TWTH Association Tampa Bay, spoke about The Way to Happiness, The Way to Happiness is a book written by L. Ron Hubbard and is a simple, straightforward and direct guide that helps individuals make positive decisions.

Ms. Yaegermann also introduced the guest speakers: Dr. Regina Young, United Congregations for Communities and Youth; Mr. Edward Herman Jr. from AMI Kids Orlando; and Ms. Susan Liverpool, community activist  all advocates for The Way to Happiness program.

The event ended with a concert performance by the Flag Band with Michele Henderson, bringing the whole audience to the dance floor.

For more information about The Way to Happiness Association Tampa Bay, please call their center in Downtown Clearwater at (727) 467-6961.

The Fort Harrison Religious Retreat:

Since its construction in 1927, the Fort Harrison in Downtown Clearwater has been the home for many community events and charitable organizations. The Fort Harrisons current owner, the Church of Scientology, has hosted over 500 community events there since a top-to-bottom restoration in 2009. The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard, and incorporated in 1954. To learn more, visit www.scientology.org.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/647e97bf-26c6-4f40-927d-c00171bde2ed

Dylan Pires

(727) 467-6860
TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Qtrade Investor provides the best overall online investor experience in the Canadian Online Discount Brokerage landscape according to Surviscor's 2017 Online Discount Brokerage scorCard Review. Qtrade Investor repeated as the top ranked firm for online discount brokerage services in Canada with another convincing win with a score of 90%, 11 percentage points ahead of 2nd place Questrade who moved up one position from 2016. Past multi-winner BMO InvestorLine and Scotia iTRADE finished in a tie for third place ahead of RBC Direct Investing and TD Direct Investing. CIBC Investors Edge finished in 11th place, the worst showing of the big bank owned firms.

2017 Surviscor Online Discount Brokerage Rankings 1 Qtrade Investor 90 % 2 Questrade 79 % T3 Scotia iTRADE 77 % T3 BMO InvestorLine 77 % 5 RBC Direct Investing 72 % 6 TD Direct Investing 70 % 7 Credential Direct 69 % 8 Virtual Brokers 64 % 9 Desjardins Online Brokerage 62 % 10 National Bank Direct Brokerage 61 % 11 CIBC Investors Edge 59 % 12 HSBC InvestDirect 55 %

The scorCard Review, now in its 12th year, is the most comprehensive analysis in North America providing an impartial assessment of the overall online customer experience at Canadian online discount brokerage institutions. "The overall digital discount brokerage, or direct brokerage experience, continues to hinge on multiple non-online specific experience factors, yet the online experience continues to be the baseline in determining our rankings. Top firms are challenged to adapt in a progressive digital environment while ensuring customer responsiveness and expectations are met while maintaining competitive costs of services said Glenn LaCoste, President of Surviscor Inc. Canadians are very fortunate to have some of the best financial service digital experiences in the world and the discount brokerage industry has always lead the way. We congratulate Qtrade Investor for its convincing win and once again for its commitment to innovation and un-matched service levels added Mr. LaCoste.

Were delighted to once again be recognized by Surviscor, said Catherine Wood, Qtrade Financial Groups Senior VP and Head of Online Brokerage. This year we made significant enhancements to our platform and servicesuch as our paperless online application and account-funding capabilities, mobile apps and new tools for income investors. This ranking recognizes our commitment to deliver the best value for self-directed investors.

Surviscors proprietary scorCard methodology measures over 4000 objective usage-related criteria questions and reviews each firm by 9 independent categories, each weighted according to industry importance through direct feedback with industry firms.

For further information on the main categories, results and more detailed analysis on the firms reviewed, visit www.surviscor.com, contact Surviscor at 1-866-299-7267 or email results@surviscor.com.



About Surviscor Inc.

Surviscor is a North American leader in the analysis and ranking of Canadian digital customer experiences provided by service firms. Surviscor's popular digital brokerage and banking reviews are powered by its proprietary scorCard methodology, identifying the BEST and WORST digital customer experiences. All studies and analyses serve as industry benchmarks for consumers and industry participants by identifying digital offerings considered to be leading-edge as compared to the industry standard.








Washington D.C., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Our friends at Comcast are celebrating the anticipated gains of the New Year by promising to create better jobs, invest in infrastructure and increase bonuses for employees.



On Wednesday, Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast NBCUniversal, announced that over one hundred thousand frontline and non-executive employees would be receiving a $1,000 bonus before the year is out. He also announced that the company would be investing over $50 billion in infrastructure over the next five years.



This is more than just a win for Comcast employees. This is a win for every consumer that uses Comcasts services, said Javier Palomarez, President & CEO of the USHCC. Mr. Roberts has made it clear that these investments will radically improve the quality of our internet services, televisions, and much more.



Similarly, AT&T will be awarding 200,000 of its frontline employees with bonuses of $1,000. CEO Randall Stephenson also promised a $1 billion investment in the United States in 2018.



Comcast and AT&T attribute their generous bonuses and promises to invest to the reduction in the corporate tax rate and the repeal of FCC Title II internet regulations. Recently, the USHCC advocated on behalf of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed through our Congress today, and the repeal of the FCC Title II regulations, which were formally repealed last week. These policies, however imperfect, are already making a positive impact.



Policies like the reduction in the corporate tax rate do not inherently create economic growth. It is up to our corporations to take the money they will save from a lower tax rate and invest it in the American economy. We are proud to see our corporate partners taking initiative and committing to job creation, better wages and better services for consumers, said Don Salazaar, Chariman of the Board at the USHCC.



On behalf of the USHCC, we commend Comcast and AT&T for demonstrating outstanding commitment to both employees and consumers.

About the USHCC

The USHCC actively promotes the economic growth, development, and interests of more than 4.4 million Hispanic-owned businesses, that combined, contribute over $700 billion to the American economy every year. It also advocates on behalf of 260 major American corporations and serves as the umbrella organization for more than 200 local chambers and business associations nationwide. For more information, visit ushcc.com. Follow us on Twitter @USHCC.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/218076dd-81f5-40d5-9ac5-8f00c712178f
SCOTTSBLUFF  An annual event since 2003, Christmas Dinner in the Valley is free and open to the public.

The meal consists of roast turkey, baked ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy, seasoned green beans, applesauce, rolls, milk, coffee and pies of all kinds. Meals will also be delivered to the homebound.

Larry Massie, one of the events organizers, said whether people experience days of economic prosperity or days of economic downturn, there are people among us who need a little help. The dinner is one way the community can help those who have been hard hit.

The event prepares to serve more than 900 meals on Christmas Day to the needy. Massie and Melissa Turman are looking for volunteers to help with set up, serving, clean up and delivering meals.

Massie said if anyone needs a meal or knows of someone who does, to contact him and he will make sure one is provided.

Every year, Massie looks forward to the large turnout on Christmas Day.

We are grateful the Lord has given us this opportunity to serve Him, he said.

Massie has been involved with the event since the beginning. He got into it because he saw a need in the community and wanted to help fill it.

The lord blessed me with a heart to do it, he said. And it gets easier every year with the people who volunteer.

Turman said the meal provides a unique opportunity to show the love of Jesus by meeting the needs of others.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love others, she said. We encourage area churches and believers to partner with us in this mission.

Massie said he is happy to take any volunteer that is willing to help.

There are plenty of things to do, he said. If youd like to come, we can plug you in someplace.

Massie said putting the event on wouldnt be possible without the quiet donations from local businesses.

Were grateful to all of them that they wanted to do this, he said.

Roberts Dairy has provided milk every year and Massie estimated they have provided 17,000 units of milk over the years for free.

They dont publicize themselves, but they are always willing to give in the community, he said. They have been a big contributer to us since day one.

Arbys has also quietly donated more than 1,000 rolls each year.

They never ask for anything, he said. They do it just because of who they are.

A new business this year, Cappuccino and Company, will be providing coffee and Northfield Retirement Community will be providing pies and cookies.

Northfield wants to partner with us in the future as well, he said.

One of the rewards Massie receives is the thank yous from people who receive a meal and from their loved ones. They express their gratitude for the volunteers who provided a meal for their loved ones on Christmas day.

The recipients make it all worthwhile, he said.

Christmas Dinner in the Valley will be held on Dec. 25, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Guadalupe Center in Scottsbluff.

For more information on how to help, volunteer or have a meal delivered, contact Larry Massie at 308-436-7554 or visit the Harvest Vally Church at http://www.harvestvalleychurch.com.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oceanus Resources Corporation (TSXV:OCN) (OTCQB:OCNSF) ("Oceanus" or the Company) has completed the 2017 fall drill program at its wholly owned El Tigre Gold-Silver Property located in northern Sonora, Mexico. The fall 2017 program comprised 600 meters of diamond drilling to define the strike and dip of the high-grade Caleigh vein and the low-grade alteration zone in the hanging wall. Due to a backlog at the lab, assay results for holes ET-17-146 to ET-17-151 are pending and are expected to be released in January 2018 once the Company receives them.



Q1 2018 Outlook

During the first quarter of 2018, exploration will continue at the El Tigre property with the focus continuing to be on locating and defining other high-grade vein systems on the property. The Company will also begin testing the potential of the favourable El Tigre formation along strike to the south of the El Tigre mine with geological and prospecting teams mapping and collecting rock and geochemical samples over a distance of 5 kilometers to the south between Gold Hill and the Lluvia de Oro prospect.

2017 Highlights

September 2017 Resource Estimate

Oceanus completed the 2017 infill drilling program at El Tigre in May 2017 having drilled a total of 62 diamond drill holes totaling 11,923.1 metres. These drill results demonstrated wide oxidized zones of precious-metals mineralization at El Tigre that outcrop at surface. The results from this drill program supported a National Instrument 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate which was released on September 13, 2017. The Mineral Resource Estimate included a total indicated resource of 661,000 gold equivalent ounces and a total inferred resource of 341,000 gold equivalent ounces and is detailed in Appendix A. A copy of the Technical Report is available on the Companys website and on SEDAR under the Companys profile.

Bonanza Silver and Gold Grades to the North

Step-out hole ET-17-144 was the last hole drilled in May 2017 and it intersected high-grade gold and silver mineralization in the Protectora vein, located approximately 800 meters north of the old El Tigre mine. Hole ET-17-144 returned 3.15 meters of 36.6 grams per tonne gold equivalent from a depth of 88.25 meters to 91.40 meters consisting of 10.1 grams per tonne gold and 1,990.9 grams per tonne silver. This intercept included 0.85 meter of 135.1 grams per tonne gold equivalent consisting of 37.2 grams per tonne gold and 7,338.9 grams per tonne silver. Hole ET-144 also returned 1,107.36 grams per tonne silver and 0.024 gram per tonne gold over 1.5 meters from a depth of 188.65 metres to 190.15 meters.

Hole ET-17-145, the first hole in the fall 2017 program, as previously released returned 0.75 meters of 48.7 grams per tonne gold equivalent from a depth of 28.50 to 29.25 meters consisting of 10.91 g/t gold and 2,830.4 g/t silver. This hole also encountered the low-grade hanging wall alteration zone adjacent to the Caleigh vein. The overall intersection returned 25.75 m of 1.88 g/t gold equivalent from a depth of 3.50 to 29.25 meters consisting of 0.65 g/t gold and 91.9 g/t silver. The true width has not been calculated for the intercepts, however true width is generally estimated at 75 per cent to 90 per cent of drilled width. The gold equivalent ratio is based on a gold-to-silver price ratio of 1:75.

The high gold and silver grades intersected in drill holes ET-17-144 and ET-17-145 are reminiscent of the bonanza silver and gold grades mined underground in the 1920s and 1930s at the old El Tigre mine which is 800 meters to the south. Surface mapping shows that the Protectora vein and alteration zone, that has not been mined, extends along strike to the north from the old El Tigre mine for 2,000 meters. This 2,000 meter long extension presents a new exploration target to find additional near surface mineralization

Significant Drill Results to the South

Drill hole ET-17-140, a step out hole located approximately 500 meters to the south of the Main Deposit past Gold Hill, returned 9.0 meters of 1.86 g/t gold equivalent from 35.0 meters to 44.0 meters consisting of 0.18 g/t gold and 125.5 g/t silver, including 1.5 meters of 9.54 g/t gold equivalent consisting of 0.43 g/t gold and 683.2 g/t silver. The vein and alteration zone remains open along strike to the south, north and at depth. This area represents another high priority exploration target for discovering additional mineralization.

Media Update

In November 2017, during the Cambridge House Silver and Gold Summit in San Francisco, Oceanus President and CEO, Glenn Jessome, was interviewed by Mickey Fulp. The full interview can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/z02ldLXqi54.

Stock Options Granted

The Board of Directors of Oceanus has approved the issuance of 250,000 incentive stock options to its recently hired Vice President of Investor Relations of the Company. The options are exercisable on or before December 20, 2027 at a strike price of $0.27.

El Tigre Property

The El Tigre Property lies at the northern end of the Sierra Madre gold belt which hosts many of the larger multi-million ounce epithermal gold and silver deposits including Ocampo, Pinos Altos, Dolores and Palmarejo. In 1896, gold was first discovered on the property in the Gold Hill area and mining started with the Brown Shaft in 1903. The focus soon changed to mining high-grade silver veins in the area with the majority of the production coming from the El Tigre vein. Underground mining on the El Tigre vein extended 1,450 meters along strike and mined on 14 levels to a depth of 450 meters. By the time the mine closed in 1938, it is reported to have produced a total of 353,000 ounces of gold and 67.4 million ounces of silver from 1.87 million tons (Craig, 2012).

The El Tigre Property is approximately 35 kilometers long and comprises 21,842.78 hectares. The El Tigre gold and silver deposit is related to a series of high-grade epithermal veins controlled by a north-south trending structure cutting across the andesitic and rhyolitic tuffs of the Sierra Madre Volcanic Complex within a broad gold and silver mineralized prophylitic alternation zone. The veins dip steeply to the west and are typically 1 meter wide but locally can be up to 5 meters in width. The veins, structures and mineralized zones outcrop on surface and have been traced for a distance of 5.3 kilometers along strike. Historical mining and exploration activities focused on a 1.5 kilometer portion of the southern end of the deposits, principally on the El Tigre, Seitz Kelly and Sooy veins. Four veins in the north (Aguila, Escondida, Fundadora and Protectora) were explored with only limited amounts of production.

Qualified Person

David R. Duncan, P. Geo, vice-president, exploration, of the corporation, is the qualified person for Oceanus as defined under NI 43-101. Mr. Duncan has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release.

About Oceanus Resources Corporation

Oceanus Resources Corporation is a gold exploration company operating in Mexico. Oceanus is managed by a team of mine finders with extensive experience in exploring and developing large hydrothermal gold projects in Mexico. Oceanus is currently drilling and exploring the El Tigre Property in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

For further information, please contact:

Tania Shaw

Vice President, Investor Relations

416 419 2750

tshaw@oceanusresources.ca

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:

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. This News Release includes certain forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization, resources and reserves, the ability to convert inferred resources to indicated resources, the ability to complete future drilling programs and infill sampling, the ability to extend resource blocks, the similarity of mineralization at El Tigre to the Ocampo mine, exploration results, and future plans and objectives of Oceanus, are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as may, is expected to, anticipates, estimates, intends, plans, projection, could, vision, goals, objective and outlook and other similar words. Although Oceanus believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Oceanuss expectations include risks and uncertainties related to exploration, development, operations, commodity prices and global financial volatility, risk and uncertainties of operating in a foreign jurisdiction as well as additional risks described from time to time in the filings made by Oceanus with securities regulators.





APPENDIX A: El Tigre Project Mineral Resource Estimate (1-11)

Resource Area Class AuEq g/t

Cut-Off Tonnes

(000s) Ag

g/t Ag ozs

(000s) Au

g/t Au ozs

(000s) Au Eq g/t AuEq ozs

(000s) El Tigre

Constrained Pit1 Indicated 0.20 25,170 15 11,906 0.51 416 0.69 559 Inferred 0.20 2,791 12 1,093 0.38 34 0.52 47 El Tigre

Underground1 Indicated 1.50 207 156 1,041 0.46 3 2.33 16 Inferred 1.50 11 82 29 1.27 0 2.26 1 Fundadora

Constrained Pit2 Indicated 0.20 451 167 2,428 0.93 14 2.94 43 Inferred 0.20 1,774 150 8,554 0.69 39 2.49 142 Fundadora

Underground2 Indicated 1.50 80 118 306 1.03 3 2.45 6 Inferred 1.50 2,003 140 9,044 0.60 38 2.28 147 Sub Total Indicated 0.20, 1.50 25,908 19 15,681 0.52 436 0.75 624 Sub Total Inferred 0.20, 1.50 6,579 89 18,720 0.52 111 1.59 337 El Tigre

Tailings3 Indicated 0.37 939 78 2,345 0.27 8 1.21 37 Inferred 0.37 101 79 254 0.27 1 1.22 4 Total Indicated 0.20,0.37,1.50 26,847 21 18,026 0.51 444 0.77 661 Total Inferred 0.20,0.37,1.50 6,680 88 18,974 0.52 112 1.59 341

Notes to Table 1:

(1) El Tigre Deposit Mineral Resources are comprised of the El Tigre and Seitz Kelly Veins.

(2) Fundadora Deposit Mineral Resources are comprised of the Aquila, Fundadora, Protectora and Caleigh Veins.

(3) El Tigre Tailings Deposit Mineral Resources are comprised of the tailings from the former El Tigre operation.

(4) Mineral Resources are reported within a constraining pit shell.

(5) The Mineral Resource Estimate is reported in accordance with the Canadian Securities Administrators National Instrument 43-101 and has been estimated using the CIM Estimation of Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves Best Practice Guidelines and CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves.

(6) Au:Ag ratio = ($1250/$17)/(70% Ag Rec/80% Au Rec)= 84:1 Therefore, AuEq=(Ag/84) + Au.

(7) Mineral Resources in this estimate are based on approx. two year trailing average metal prices of US$1,250 oz Au and US$17 /oz Ag, estimated process recoveries 80% Au and 70% Ag, US$5.70/t process cost and US$0.80/t G&A cost. Mining costs of US$1.55/t for open pit and $45/t for underground and tailings mining costs of US$5.50/t were used to derive the respective Mineral Resource Estimate AuEq cut-offs of 0.20 g/t and 1.5 g/t and 0.37g/t. Pit optimization slopes were 50 degrees.

(8) The Mineral Resource Estimate uses drill hole data available as of September 1, 2017.

(9) Totals may not add correctly due to rounding.

(10) An Inferred Mineral Resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of Inferred Mineral Resources could be upgraded to Indicated Mineral Resources with continued exploration.

(11) Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimate of Mineral Resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing or other relevant issues.
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 21 December 2017

Growth in exports of services continued in the third quarter of the year

Service exports grew by eight per cent in the third quarter of 2017 compared to the corresponding quarter last year. Exports of services increased particularly due to telecommunications, computer and information services, transport, and manufacturing services. Service imports, in turn, remained on level with 2016. The data appear from Statistics Finland's statistics on international trade in goods and services, which are part of balance of payments.

Imports and exports of services

The combined exports of goods and services grew by 10 per cent and imports by four per cent in the third quarter of 2017 compared with the corresponding quarter in 2016. In balance of payments terms, goods exports grew by 10 per cent and goods imports by seven per cent.

The growth in goods trade in balance of payments terms is around 4.5 percentage points lower than goods trade in customs terms in both exports and imports. This is caused by that the data according to Finnish Customs include goods flows where the ownership does not change, while goods trade in balance of payments terms is based on change of ownership. In addition to the changes made to the customs data, goods trade in balance of payments terms includes sales and purchases from aboard to abroad.

International trade in services by service item

In the third quarter of 2017, exports of services increased most due to telecommunications, computer and information services (ICT services), transport, and manufacturing services. The biggest service item of exports, telecommunications, computer and information services, grew by 13 per cent. Measured in euros, the growth amounted to EUR 188 million. Transport exports grew by 20 per cent and exports of manufacturing services by 30 per cent. Transport grew in euros by EUR 177 million, while exports of manufacturing services increased by EUR 86 million.

Exports of services by service item

The level of service imports remained unchanged, but changes occurred in individual service items, however. Professional and management consulting services, which belong to the biggest service item of imports, other business services, went down by around 160 million. The 27 per cent change in this item explains the fall of six per cent in other business services.

Imports of financial and insurance services also fell by 22 per cent. Tourism expenditure abroad from Finland grew by slightly over EUR 100 million, representing a growth of eight per cent.

International trade by area

Of total exports of goods and services, 68 per cent was directed at Europe in the third quarter of 2017. Nearly one-half of this was exported to the euro area whose share of European exports thus grew by three percentage points. Europes share in total imports of goods and services was 85 per cent in the third quarter of 2017. The euro area accounted for 51 per cent of total imports in Europe.

Service exports to Germany grew by 32 per cent, to Russia by 31 per cent and to the United States by 13 per cent. Service imports from China, in turn, went down by 38 per cent and from the United States by 18 per cent.

Exports of goods and services in balance of payment terms by area

Statistics on international trade

The statistics on international trade in goods and services are part of balance of payments . The statistics comprise breakdowns of goods and services on a more detailed level. The guidelines and recommendations of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6) applied to balance of payments are consistent with the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010). National Accounts are published on quarterly and annual levels . Finnish Customs publishes data on goods trade across borders. Goods trade published by Finnish Customs is used as source data for the statistics on international trade in goods and services. Removals and additions caused by definitions are made to them to achieve goods trade in balance of payments terms.

Finnish Customs statistical service, tilastot@tulli.fi, +358 29 552 335.

Source: International trade in goods and services 2017, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Risto Sippola 029 551 3383, Terhi Tulonen 029 551 3604, globalisaatio.tilastot@stat.fi

Director in charge: Ville Vertanen

Publication in pdf-format (262.6 kB)

Updated 21.12.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): International trade in goods and services [e-publication].

ISSN=2343-4244. 3rd quarter 2017. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 18.11.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/tpulk/2017/03/tpulk_2017_03_2017-12-21_tie_001_en.html
Darrin Shamo, Former Zappos and DoorDash Executive, Will Help Lead Growth Strategy as CMO Alongside New COO, Matt Bohn

Cortney Read Joins Team as Director of Communications and Outreach

PHOENIX, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OfferPad, the leading on-demand, tech-enabled direct home buyer and seller, today announced the hire of seasoned marketing executive, Darrin Shamo as chief marketing officer and Cortney Read as director of communications and outreach. The two executives join Matt Bohn, chief operating officer as of August 2017. Together, the team is responsible for the companys national expansion and brand awareness.

An innovator in online real estate, OfferPads goal is to provide consumers with a better, stress-free option for buying and selling homes. The company's platform has disrupted the traditional real estate process by empowering consumers and using technology to eliminate the uncertainty that comes with buying and selling a home. OfferPad has grown significantly over the past year and now operates in eight major markets in the U.S., with plans to grow in 2018. The company recently announced a joint venture with loanDepot, the nations second largest non-bank consumer lender, to create OfferPad Home Loans, that will provide customized mortgage financing solutions to OfferPads customers.

With this growth, OfferPad had a need to expand its leadership to include key hires within marketing and operations. As Chief Marketing Officer, Darrin Shamo will be responsible for driving brand awareness and growth, both nationally and within local markets where the company currently operates. Shamo joins OfferPad most recently from DoorDash, where he helped to expand the brands footprint from 26 to 56 markets. Prior to that role, Shamo served as CMO for Coupang, a high growth startup located in Seoul, South Korea, where he led all acquisition, retention, pricing and fraud/abuse practices for the company. Shamo spent more than a decade at Zappos, where he helped grow the company from $70M to $3.6B in gross merchandise value.

We are focused on expanding our capabilities and marketing efficiency, and it was essential to bring in an executive that can provide expertise as we transition from a fast-growing startup to national real estate technology leader. Darrin has a proven track record for driving growth and awareness within a wide range of industries, and we are thrilled to have him join our leadership team at OfferPad, said Brian Bair, co-founder and co-CEO of OfferPad. With our recent hires, OfferPad is building a team with a blend of real estate, technology and marketing skillsets that will allow us to further revolutionize the industry and continue to drive positive change for consumers.

Shamo joins Matt Bohn, who has been leading operations at OfferPad since August. As Chief Operating Officer, Bohn oversees the companys core business functions. Bohn is a seasoned executive with more than two decades experience spanning startup, Fortune 500 and public-sector companies. Bohn came to OfferPad after working in leadership development at Egon Zehnder and spending over a decade at Millennium Challenge Corporation, where he most recently served as Chief Financial Officer. He was a member of the Investment Management Committee, overseeing billions of dollars in investments globally, and served in operational leadership roles in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia. Prior to Millennium Challenge Corporation, Bohn held a variety of leadership roles at General Atlantic, Booz Allen Hamilton and a technology startup in the Bay Area.

In addition, OfferPad has brought on Cortney Read in the newly created role of Director of Communications and Outreach. Read most recently served as Director with Allison+Partners, a global public relations agency, where she managed strategic media relations plans to support large brands such as Baidu and Toyota Motor North America. Prior to Allison+Partners, Read was an early employee at LifeLock, Inc. where she was responsible for managing crisis communications and leading regional and national media relations efforts. She managed internal and external communication for LifeLocks first acquisition, along with handling the companys public relations and marketing efforts to support the IPO in October 2012. In her role at OfferPad, Read will be focused on the companys strategic communications and media relations efforts.

For additional information, please visit www.OfferPad.com or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter.

ABOUT OFFERPAD

OfferPad is the leading tech-enabled direct home buyer and seller. OfferPads on-demand technology platform is revolutionizing the industry with an innovative end-to-end real estate solution. The company empowers the consumer with choice, convenience and certainty, and eliminates the stress and unpredictability associated with the traditional real estate process. OfferPad also works with real estate agents, homebuilders and other real estate technology companies, including Zillow, to provide homeowners with more options to buy and sell their homes. Founded in 2015, the companys leadership team has decades of real estate experience and has collectively purchased, renovated, rented or sold more than 100,000 homes. OfferPad is a privately held company headquartered in Gilbert, Arizona, and currently operates in Atlanta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, with additional cities being added in the coming months.



Contact:

Mel Bolton

510.847.8781

press@offerpad.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/841d8c80-e0d7-4d89-b2b1-5af8f4c66aad
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Metallic Minerals Corp. (TSX-V:MMG) (US OTC:MMNGF) (Metallic Minerals or the Company) is pleased to announce drill results from six holes drilled on two parallel vein targets on the Homestake block at its 100%-owned Keno Silver Project in Canadas Yukon Territory. A total of 1,320 meters of diamond drill core was collected from 14 holes drilled in 2017 on areas prioritized during initial exploration work, namely two vein targets at Homestake (see Figure 1) and the previously announced high-grade results at the Caribou and Duncan targets. The results discussed herein show that the Homestake targets are vein structures within a broad structural corridor nearly 200 metres wide, with both longitudinal and transverse-style veins. The Homestake #1 vein shows classic Keno style, high-grade silver-lead-zinc mineralization, whereas the #2 vein also shows significantly elevated gold, which is characteristic of some structures in the larger deposits within the Keno Hill silver district. The strongest grades to date include assays of 4,027 g/t silver from drilling and 4,717 g/t silver from trenching on the Homestake #1 vein, and 22.1 g/t gold with 332 g/t silver from trenching on the Homestake #2 vein. The Homestake vein systems are exposed at the surface and are open to further expansion down dip and along trend (see Figures 2, 3 and 4).



The objective at the Homestake targets was to drill below, and along trend of, the shallow historic mining and sampling on the structure to determine the potential of the systems to host significant high-grade silver, lead, zinc and gold, and to provide vectors to assist follow-up exploration aimed at pursuing higher-grade material. All six 2017 drill holes intersected the mineralized Homestake structures, with highlight assays for all results to date shown below in Table 1. Offset drilling on the Homestake #1 and #2 vein structures is a key component of the planned 2018 exploration program, particularly down dip and along strike in a broad window of more massive Keno Hill quartzite, one of the preferred host rocks in the district.

Table 1: Highlighted Drill Results from the Homestake #1 and #2 Vein Structures Hole Vein # From (m) To (m) Width (m) Ag g/t Pb % Zn % Au g/t Ag Eq g/t HS17-024 HS2 31.86 33.14 1.28 8 0.11 0.15 2.460 214 Including 32.69 33.14 0.45 16 0.18 0.12 6.600 547 HS17-027 HS1 74.64 75.60 0.96 207 3.62 0.09 0.002 383 Including 74.64 75.13 0.49 364 6.30 0.06 0.004 665 And 76.48 77.50 1.02 569 1.02 0.03 0.010 620 HS10-001 HS2 47.30 50.10 2.80 59 0.81 0.37 2.500 312 Including 48.75 50.10 1.35 71 1.00 0.61 4.840 530 HS10-006 HS2 73.15 74.91 1.76 522 0.47 0.25 0.030 560 Including 73.15 73.37 0.22 4027 1.00 0.65 0.170 4122 HS10-009 HS2 32.38 34.99 2.61 110 0.49 0.06 1.510 253 Including 33.35 34.09 0.74 359 1.00 0.02 4.880 789 08HS004A HS1 79.80 80.60 0.80 24 1.01 0.74 1.510 229 Including 79.80 80.10 0.30 63 2.67 0.76 3.910 535 08HS009 HS2 40.50 42.70 2.20 37 1.30 0.38 1.150 209 Including 40.50 40.90 0.40 98 4.29 0.83 3.300 603 And 43.70 45.00 1.30 109 4.10 0.04 2.000 461 Including 43.70 44.10 0.40 232 6.43 0.10 1.320 644 Equivalent (Ag Eq g/t) values assume Ag $16/oz, Pb $1.10/lb, Zn $1.25/lb, Au $1,250/oz, and 100% recovery.

Metallic Minerals CEO and Chairman, Greg Johnson stated, Homestake was one of our top four advanced targets for 2017, due to its historic production, the very high grades at surface and its stratigraphic setting, which is comparable with some of the largest deposits in the district. We are very pleased with these results which confirm the existence of high-grade, well-mineralized 1-3 metre-wide structures that are typical of the Keno Hill silver district and which remain open to depth and along trend. We now have 21 vein intersections grading more than 600 g/t silver equivalent on the Homestake structures including five that exceed 10 g/t gold on the Homestake #2 structure. The average resource grade in the Keno Hill silver district is 400-500 g/t silver1 and the average reserve grade for primary silver deposits in the industry is approximately 300 g/t2. Future work at the Homestake targets will focus on step out drilling to determine the ultimate scale of the mineralized system and to pursue targets considered to have the highest potential to host additional higher-grade material. We anticipate conducting a robust 2018 exploration program that will continue our focused, systematic exploration approach to rapidly advance additional priority targets to drill-ready stage, along with step out drilling on our most advanced targets as we move toward potential resource delineation.

1Alexco Resource Corp: Alexco Announces Positive Preliminary Economic Assessment for Expanded Silver Production at Keno Hill, March 2017

2New Explorer for High-Grade Silver Resources in the Prolific Keno Hill Silver District of Yukon, Canada; Michael Fowler, Loewen, Ondaatje, McCutcheon Ltd (LOM), September 2017

Table 2: Highlighted Trenching Results from the Homestake #1 and #2 Vein Structures Trench Vein # Length (m) Ag g/t Pb % Zn % Au g/t Ag Eq g/t HS_TR4_b HS1 0.7 1155 6.27 10.10 0.300 2015 HS_TR4_d HS1 1.3 520 5.28 1.28 0.270 858 Including HS1 0.3 1592 22.70 0.90 0.630 2759 HS_TR4_p2 HS1 2.0 1564 12.95 6.11 0.310 2525 HS_TR4_p3 HS1 3.0 1650 15.23 0.49 0.240 2413 Including HS1 0.8 4717 26.00 0.80 0.700 6040 HS_Shaft_B HS1 0.9 3168 0.15 2.60 4.670 3679 HS_TR1_g HS2 1.5 95 3.48 0.32 6.070 751 Including HS2 0.4 332 13.00 0.60 22.100 2704 HS_TR5_b HS2 2.8 147 6.74 0.10 10.160 1264 Including HS2 1.2 171 7.09 0.10 17.900 1909 Including HS2 0.6 340 17.20 0.10 10.000 1937 Equivalent (Ag Eq g/t) values assume Ag $16/oz, Pb $1.10/lb, Zn $1.25/lb, Au $1,250/oz, and 100% recovery

The Homestake targets occur along the Homestake trend; one of the 12 known mineralized trends running across the Keno Silver District and traversing Metallic Minerals ground. It is the next major mineralized trend 2 kilometers east of the trend that hosts Alexco Resource Corps Bellekeno mine and is similarly underlain by the main Keno Hill quartzite package and locally-intruded by greenstone sills, which are the two key rock units that host most of the production and resources in the district. Originally discovered and worked in the 1920s and 30s, several tons of direct shipping ore were historically mined at the Homestake property. Limited exploration including trenching was completed on the Homestake block during the 1960s and 70s, with some shallow drilling and surface trenching conducted between 2008 and 2011. Both efforts returned significant high-grade results (see Table 3 and 4 below).



Figure 1: Keno Silver Project Priority Targets Map

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fb832443-754a-4a59-8c24-bac5a7d4c45f

Exploration by Metallic Minerals on the Homestake targets in 2017 followed up the historic surface work with detailed stratigraphic mapping, magnetic and VLF geophysical surveys, as well as the extension of soil sample grids over the broad target area. Through this preliminary work, it was recognized that there was potential on the Homestake targets to significantly expand the known strike extent of mineralization by testing the more massive Keno Hill quartzite to the east of the main showings.

Diamond drilling in 2017 focused on testing down dip below the shallow historic sampling and along the structure to determine the potential depth and lateral extension of the open-ended mineralization in the best potential host rocks. Three drill holes successfully tested this concept by stepping out approximately 250 metres from the closest drill intercept of the #1 vein and 600 metres from the main cluster of previous drilling on the #2 vein (See Figure 2 below). The width of the structure in this area was particularly notable, extending over 15 meters in three mineralized structures. It is anticipated that future drilling will follow up the continuation of these holes down dip and along strike to the east as well as test the massive quartzite stratigraphy to the west of the main showing.

Figure 2: Homestake Target Drill Hole Location Map

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cb26ef7e-3814-4eae-a1cc-4b2d066c4521

Drilling on the Homestake structures shows that they remain open to expansion down dip and along strike and that there remains significant exploration upside with the potential to rapidly develop a resource on this target (see Long Sections in Figures 3 and 4 below). Drill holes and trenches are shown on these longitudinal sections, with their respective grades, where they intersect the plane of the vein. Stratigraphic sections containing quartzite are the most favorable setting at Homestake to host significant mineralization.

Planned work in 2018 at Homestake would include continuation of step-out drilling along the best mineralized shoots within the quartzite stratigraphy down dip and along trend as shown on the sections below as open or untested. Greenstone sills in the area may also become important hosts at the Homestake block and follow up work will assess this potential.

Figure 3: Homestake Vein # 1 Long Section

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/aeb56957-bd41-40ac-aec0-52406e01ccdb

Figure 4: Homestake Vein # 2 Long Section

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8b8eb7d6-bd70-40c8-a6b3-31638617573b

Priority Target Areas for Follow Up in 2018

Metallic Minerals is in the advanced planning stages for the 2018 field season at its Keno Silver Project. A focus of this work is expected to include follow-up drilling on our priority targets at Caribou and Homestake where the combined historic and recent drilling may allow for rapid development of resources. Additional drill-focused exploration work is intended to include follow-up drilling on the Duncan target, the 2017 discoveries at the Bounty and Gold Hill target areas, remaining drill ready targets at Vanguard, Silver Basin and Silver Queen, as well as on the recently acquired Formo property, which has an historic resource estimate.

Further exploration activities will continue to focus on advancing known targets to the drill-ready stage through application of the exploration techniques successfully demonstrated during the 2017 field season, including detailed stratigraphic mapping, soil sampling, trenching and geophysics. Follow up exploration will also continue on the earlier stage targets on the highly prospective, but lesser explored targets on the eastern and southern edges of the Keno Silver Project.

Table 3: Homestake #1 and #2 Comprehensive Drill Results Hole Vein # From (m) To (m) Width (m) Ag g/t Pb % Zn % Au g/t Ag Eq g/t HS17-027 HS1 74.64 75.60 0.96 207 3.62 0.09 0.002 383 Including 74.64 75.13 0.49 364 6.30 0.06 0.004 665 And 76.48 77.50 1.02 569 1.02 0.03 0.010 620 HS11-015 HS1 17.20 18.10 0.90 48 0.57 0.29 0.020 92 And 19.60 20.60 1.00 20 0.14 0.42 0.010 51 08HS004A HS1 75.00 77.40 2.40 11 0.44 0.08 0.310 59 And 79.80 80.60 0.80 24 1.01 0.74 1.510 229 08RHS046 HS1 6.10 7.62 1.52 70 1.17 0.45 0.020 151 HS17-023 HS2 27.65 29.15 1.50 21 0.19 0.02 0.290 54 HS17-024 HS2 31.86 33.14 1.28 8 0.11 0.15 2.460 214 Including 32.69 33.14 0.45 16 0.18 0.12 6.600 547 HS17-028 HS2 101.70 102.80 1.10 24 0.01 0.01 0.400 57 And 105.30 106.20 0.90 4 0.05 0.05 1.900 157 And 116.80 117.50 0.70 3 0.07 0.58 0.480 75 HS10-001 HS2 47.30 50.10 2.80 59 0.81 0.37 2.500 312 Including 48.75 50.10 1.35 71 1.00 0.61 4.840 530 And 50.70 52.50 1.80 53 0.45 0.71 0.080 119 HS10-002 HS2 7.01 7.38 0.37 39 0.69 0.01 0.180 86 HS10-006 HS2 73.15 74.91 1.76 522 0.47 0.25 0.030 560 Including 73.15 73.37 0.22 4027 1.00 0.65 0.170 4122 HS10-009 HS2 32.38 34.99 2.61 110 0.49 0.06 1.510 253 Including 33.35 34.09 0.74 359 1.00 0.02 4.880 789 08HS003 HS2 39.30 40.60 1.30 54 0.07 0.06 0.050 64 08HS005 HS2 10.90 11.30 0.40 35 0.03 0.10 0.130 52 And 49.50 52.00 0.30 8 0.02 0.16 0.420 50 08HS009 HS2 40.50 42.70 2.20 37 1.3 0.38 1.150 209 Including 40.50 40.90 0.40 98 4.29 0.83 3.300 603 And 43.70 45.00 1.30 109 4.1 0.04 2.000 461 Including 43.70 44.10 0.40 232 6.43 0.10 1.320 644 08HS010 HS2 82.20 82.40 0.20 4 0.04 0.07 0.550 52





Table 4: Homestake #1 and #2 Comprehensive Trenching Results Trench Vein # Length (m) Ag g/t Pb % Zn % Au g/t Ag Eq g/t HS_Shaft_A HS1 1 278 1.88 1.50 0.000 447 HS_Shaft_B HS1 0.9 3168 0.15 2.60 4.670 3679 HS_TR4_b HS1 0.7 1155 6.27 10.10 0.295 2015 HS_TR4_d HS1 1.3 520 5.28 1.28 0.271 858 Including HS1 0.3 1592 22.70 0.90 0.630 2759 Including HS2 0.6 340 17.20 0.10 10.000 1937 HS_TR4_g HS1 1.1 284 1.41 2.00 0.052 461 HS_TR4_j HS1 0.4 761 5.72 1.50 0.056 1116 HS_TR4_k HS1 0.4 228 0.07 0.50 0.070 263 HS_TR4_m HS1 0.3 872 8.79 3.00 0.385 1477 HS_TR4_p2 HS1 2 1564 12.95 6.11 0.305 2525 HS_TR4_p3 HS1 3 1650 15.23 0.49 0.237 2413 Including HS1 0.8 4717 26.00 0.80 0.700 6040 HS_ TR1_b HS2 0.5 97 3.95 1.90 11.400 1276 HS_TR1_g HS2 1.5 95 3.48 0.32 6.071 751 HS_TR1_i HS2 0.3 267 1.97 0.90 0.075 414 HS_TR5_b HS2 2.8 147 6.74 0.10 10.157 1264 Including HS2 1.2 171 7.09 0.10 17.900 1909 HS_TR5_p1 HS2 4 285 12.29 0.40 2.765 1102 HS_TR6_a HS2 0.3 45 1.76 4.40 0.265 384 HS_TR6_b HS2 0.5 116 1.67 1.60 1.320 384 TR01_d HS2 0.5 66 0.64 2.00 3.110 446 TR01_e HS2 0.4 20 2.11 0.60 9.130 865 TR01_f HS2 0.4 167 11.76 2.70 7.800 1475 TR01_p1 HS2 1 28 1.79 0.47 11.050 1000 TR05_d HS2 0.8 85 3.05 0.00 1.500 346 TR05_e HS2 1.5 89 4.13 0.10 2.240 464 Silver Equivalent (Ag Eq g/t) values assume Ag $16/oz, Pb $1.10/lb, Zn $1.25/lb, Au $1,250/oz, and 100% recovery.

About Metallic Minerals Corp.



Metallic Minerals Corp. is a growth stage exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of high-grade silver and gold in the Yukon within under explored districts with potential to produce top-tier assets. Our objective is to create value through a disciplined, systematic approach to exploration, reducing investment risk and maximizing probability of long-term success. Our core Keno Silver Project is located in the historic Keno Hill Silver District of Canada's Yukon Territory, a region which has produced over 200 million ounces of silver and currently hosts one of the worlds highest-grade silver resources. The Companys McKay Hill Project, northeast of Keno Hill, is a high-grade historic silver-gold producer. Metallic Minerals is also building a portfolio of gold royalties in the historic Klondike Gold District. Metallic Minerals is led by a team with a track record of discovery and exploration success, including large scale development, permitting and project financing.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Website: www.metallic-minerals.com

Email: chris.ackerman@metallic-minerals.com

Phone: 604-629-7800

Toll Free: 1-888-570-4420

Quality Assurance / Quality Control

Analytical work in 2017 was done by Bureau Veritas Commodities Canada Ltd. with sample preparation in Whitehorse, Yukon and geochemical analysis in Vancouver, British Columbia. Each rock (grab) sample was analyzed for 36 elements using an Aqua Regia digestion with inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and inductively coupled Plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) (AQ202). Samples with over limit silver and gold were re-analyzed using a 30-gram fire assay fusion with a gravimetric finish (FA530-Ag, Au). Over-limit lead and zinc samples were analyzed by multi-acid digestion and atomic absorption spectrometry (MA404) or titration (GC516, GC8917). All results have passed the QAQC screening by the lab.

Qualified Person

Scott Petsel, P.Geo, Vice President, Exploration, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Petsel has reviewed the scientific and technical information in this news release and approves the disclosure contained herein. Mr. Petsel has reviewed the results of the sampling programs and confirmed that all procedures, protocols and methodologies used conform to industry standards.

Forward-Looking Statements

Forward Looking Statements: This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization, historic production, estimation of mineral resources, the realization of mineral resource estimates, interpretation of prior exploration and potential exploration results, the timing and success of exploration activities generally, the timing and results of future resource estimates, permitting time lines, metal prices and currency exchange rates, availability of capital, government regulation of exploration operations, environmental risks, reclamation, title, and future plans and objectives of the company are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Although Metallic Minerals 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. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of material factors and assumptions. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include failure to obtain necessary approvals, unsuccessful exploration results, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, results of future resource estimates, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, risks associated with regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of personnel, materials and equipment on a timely basis, accidents or equipment breakdowns, uninsured risks, delays in receiving government approvals, unanticipated environmental impacts on operations and costs to remedy same, and other exploration or other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the companies with securities regulators. Readers are cautioned that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral exploration and development of mines is an inherently risky business. Accordingly, the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on Metallic Minerals and the risks and challenges of their businesses, investors should review their annual filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

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.
MONTPELLIER, France, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (FR0012596468  ALSEN)  Sensorion, a biotech specializing in the treatment of inner ear diseases (the "Company"), announces that it has today carried out a capital increase of  1,614,449 reserved to Cochlear Investment Ltd.



Following signature of its collaboration agreement with Cochlear as announced on Monday December 18th, 2017, Sensorion has finalized the capital increase in accordance with the 13th resolution voted by the Shareholders meeting of May 30th, 2017.

The Company has thus issued 533,755 new shares at a nominal value of 0.10 each for a total of 1,614,448.75.

The confidence that our development partner, Cochlear, has expressed via this investment in our partnership is matched by our enthusiasm in this cutting-edge collaboration at the intersection between medtech and biotechnology, said Nawal Ouzren, CEO of Sensorion. We look forward to exploring the potential complementarity of our small molecule SENS-401 with Cochlears implantable devices.

Purpose of this capital increase

Sensorion will principally use the funds to finance the preclinical combination studies that will evaluate SENS-401s therapeutic effect on hearing outcomes achieved with Cochlears implantable devices. The preclinical combination studies will evaluate SENS-401s therapeutic effect on hearing outcomes achieved with Cochlears implantable devices. SENS-401 has demonstrated in preclinical models (noise and drug induced hearing loss) the capacity to enhance survival and preserve functional integrity of hair cells in the inner ear. It has the potential to improve hearing outcomes for patients undergoing cochlear implant surgery.

Preclinical combination studies will be initiated in 2018 with potential clinical trials to begin as soon as 2019. In exchange for its investment, Cochlear received a right of first negotiation for a global license to use SENS-401 in patients with certain implantable devices.

Terms of the operation

This operation was carried out following the decisions of the Board meeting of December 20th, 2017 in accordance with the delegation of powers granted by the Shareholders' Meeting of May, 30th, 2017 at a price representing the volume weighted average price over the 20 days before the decision.

The capital increase was carried out via the issuance of ordinary shares without preferential subscription rights through a placement reserved to certain beneficiaries.

The new shares carry dividend rights and were immediately admitted to trading on Euronext Growth regulated market in Paris under ISIN FR0012596468 and ticker ALSEN.

In accordance with its obligations, Cochlear has registered the shares in nominative form and has committed to not trade the shares for the duration of the research collaboration.

In addition, if Cochlear and Sensorion were to sign a license agreement at a later stage, Cochlear will have the opportunity to increase its shareholding in Sensorion in an amount and at a price to be then agreed upon.

Sensorion's share capital now consists of 8,761,996 shares.

Cochlear Investment Ltd holds 6.09% of Sensorions share capital.

For information,

Under not-fully diluted basis, a shareholder holding 1.00% of the Company's share capital prior to the operation would now hold 0.94% of its issued share capital.

On a fully diluted basis, and taking into consideration the conversion of outstanding convertible notes at a price of  2.54 (last known conversion price), the same shareholder would own 0.80% of the fully diluted share capital before the capital increase and 0.76% after the capital increase.

Information available to the public

This operation will not Iead to the drafting of a prospectus requiring a visa from the AMF (Autorite des Marches Financiers, the French stock market authority). Detailed information about Sensorion, notably regarding its activity, results, outlook and related risk factors, are laid out in the Company's reference document registered with the AMF on September 6th, 2017 under reference number R.17-062, and can be found, along with other regulated information and all of the Company's press releases, on Sensorion's website (www.sensorion-pharma.com).

About SENS-401

SENS-401, R-azasetron besylate, is a drug candidate that aims to protect and preserve inner ear tissue when lesions are present that can cause progressive or sequelar hearing impediments. A small molecule that can be taken orally or via an injection, SENS-401 has received Orphan Drug Designation in Europe for the treatment of sudden sensorineural hearing loss, and Orphan Drug Designation from the US FDA for the prevention of Cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in pediatric populations.

About Sensorion

Sensorion is a biotech company pioneering novel treatments for inner ear diseases, such as severe vertigo, tinnitus, or hearing loss. Two products are currently in the clinical development stage: SENS-111, in phase 2 in acute unilateral vestibulopathy (vestibular neuritis), and SENS-401, which has completed a phase 1 trial. The company was founded by Inserm (the French Institute of Health and Medical Research) and is utilizing its pharmaceutical R&D experience and comprehensive technology platform to develop first-in-class, easy-to-administer, notably orally active, drugs for treating and preventing hearing loss and the symptoms of bouts of vertigo and tinnitus. Based in Montpellier, Southern France, Sensorion has received financial support from Bpifrance, through the InnoBio fund, and Inserm Transfert Initiative.

Sensorion has been listed on the Euronext Growth Paris exchange since April 2015.

www.sensorion-pharma.com

Contacts

Sensorion

Nawal Ouzren

CEO



Tel : +33 (0)4 67 20 77 30

Investor Relations  International

LifeSci Advisors LLC

Chris Maggos, Managing Director, Europe

chris@lifesciadvisors.com

Tel. : +41 79 367 6254 Libelle : SENSORION

Code ISIN : FR0012596468

Mnemonique : ALSEN



Relations Presse

Alize RP

Caroline Carmagnol & Wendy Rigal

sensorion@alizerp.com



Disclaimer

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Sensorion and its business. Such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that Sensorion considers to be reasonable. However, there can be no assurance that such forward-looking statements will be verified, which statements are subject to numerous risks, including the risks set forth in the Document de reference registration document filed with the Autorite des marches financiers (AMF- French Financial Market Authority) on September 6th, 2017 under nR.17-062 and to the development of economic conditions, financial markets and the markets in which Sensorion operates. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to risks not yet known to Sensorion or not currently considered material by Sensorion. The occurrence of all or part of such risks could cause actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements of Sensorion to be materially different from such forward-looking statements.

This press release and the information that it contains do not constitute an offer to sell or subscribe for, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for, Sensorion shares in any country. The communication of this press release in certain countries may constitute a violation of local laws and regulations. Any recipient of this press release must inform oneself of any such local restrictions and comply therewith.
Sen. Claire McCaskill wants answers from Anthem Inc. on its restrictive emergency room policy.

This summer the Indianapolis-based insurance giant said it would no longer pay for emergency room visits for minor ailments such as the common cold. If patients decide to seek care in an ER for non-emergencies, Anthem warned patients they'd be on the hook for the entire bill. The move drew heated criticism from providers and state hospital association.

McCaskill sent the insurance company a letter, dated Dec. 20, detailing her concerns about the policy. In the letter she also requested a variety of internal communications related to the rule. Some of what she requested includes communications mentioning the potential cost savings as a result of the policy and any complaints the company has received.

"Anthem has a strong presence in Missouri, and this decision significantly impacts health care costs for thousands of Missourians," McCaskill said in the letter addressed to Anthem CEO Joe Swedish.

"Patients are not physicians. I am concerned that Anthem is requiring its patients to act as medical professionals when they are experiencing urgent medical events."

Anthem has said that there are exceptions to its ER rule.

ER services for children under the age of 14 will always be covered regardless of the reason for the visit.

If there isnt an urgent care within 15 miles of the patient, ER payments will be covered by Anthem.

If a patient was directed to the emergency room by another physician, it will be covered.

Any visit that occurs on a Sunday or major holiday will be covered.

Anthem said it decided to implement the policy in states where there was an increase in unnecessary ER visits.

Those who are critical of the policy worry that patients will forgo care in an actual emergency because they're worried about the financial costs.
Midas Hospitality of Maryland Heights was selected as the developer for the $28 million, 129-room Aloft Hotel in the Cortex innovation district.

Construction on the hotel at 4245 Duncan Avenue is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2018, with a planned Fall 2019 opening, Cortex said in a statement Thursday.

Gray Design Group is the architect and and MC Hotel Construction, a Midas subsidiary, is building the hotel.

More than 350 IT, bioscience and consumer product development firms have operations in the Cortex technology district including Boeing and Square. Microsoft announced plans to open a regional headquarters at a new building in Cortex under construction.

For several years our Cortex clients have urged us to develop a hotel in the District," president and CEO Dennis Lower said in the statement. "We can now check this off the wish-list of amenities that support the business needs of our tech companies."
Families with children in private or parochial school will be able to tap their college savings plans to pay for up to $10,000 in tuition and other expenses in the new year, thanks to a provision in the tax overhaul bill going into effect in 2018.

This will require some new math for families and financial advisers, whose saving formulas focused on much longer time horizons for college savings. The 529 plans, named after the Internal Revenue Code section that created them in 1996, offer tax-free growth. More than 30 states allow some kind of tax deduction on money going into accounts.

More than two-thirds of Americans did not know what a 529 savings plan was before the tax bill started to make its way through Congress this fall, according to a study in spring by investment firm Edward Jones. The average balance has been running around just $25,000, said Rich Polimeni, director of education savings at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who chairs the College Savings Foundation.

Families have been encouraged to start saving as early as possible for college tuition. An account opened for a child at birth, with a monthly contribution of $100, would have around $50,000 by the time he or she turns 18, assuming a healthy growth rate of 8 percent.

Start taking out chunks of money for elementary school and you will quickly run dry. Even if you put in $10,000 a year starting at birth, when kindergarten arrives, you would have only $63,000 saved. Some private school tuition, especially in areas such as New York or Los Angeles, can run $40,000 a year.

You cant get enough in there to spend and save at the same time. It doesnt work, said New York-based certified financial planner Jeffrey Levine.

While CSFs Polimeni thinks the new rules allow for a lot of flexibility, he still does not anticipate many people to withdraw money for K-12 expenses.

Theres not a whole lot of benefit to putting it in and taking it out, Polimeni said.

One exception is if a child gets a scholarship, he said. You could change the beneficiary and use the excess funds for a few years of private school for a younger sibling, or a future grandchild.

The best hope for families in the short term is that those with tens of thousands of cash can get a small tax break. They can deposit the money into an account, claim their states tax deduction, if available, and then take up to $10,000 right away to pay their tuition bills.

Pennsylvania has one of the most generous state tax deductions at $14,000 per person, which amounts to about $430 in tax savings, calculated Chris Cortese, a certified financial planner for Wescott Financial in Philadelphia.

Will states respond to the new tax laws by either capping deductions at lower rates or requiring some kind of holding period? Nobody knows.

Different states may have different perspectives, said David Williams, executive director of the Intuit Tax and Financial Center.

Ways to take advantage

States determine the maximum amount you can aggregate over the lifetime of an account, with the top end at just over $500,000. You cannot put it in all at once, but the plan does allow front-loading, or making five years of contributions in one chunk. That means that a married couple or a pair of grandparents could put up to $140,000 into an account.

If you did that at birth, after five years, you would have about $200,000, or about $450,000 after 15 years, calculated Levine.

That would be a point where you could fund the last years of high school, and college, he said.

Not many people are front-loading their 529 accounts, though, Polimeni said. How many people have $140,000 to put upfront?
French English

Montrouge, 21 December 2017

Acquisition of three Italian savings banks completed

Credit Agricole S.A. and its subsidiary, Credit Agricole Cariparma SpA, have announced that as all preconditions have been met for the acquisition of a 95.3% stake in the equity of each of three savings banks in Cesena (Cassa di Risparmio di Cesena SpA), Rimini (Cassa di Risparmio di Rimini SpA) and San Miniato (Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato SpA) from the "Schema Volontario" section of Italy's Interbank Deposit Insurance Fund (the "Schema Volontario"), the transaction was completed today.

Prior to the completion of the transaction, the Schema Volontario increased the capital of the target banks to bring their fully-loaded CET1 ratios into compliance with Credit Agricole Group criteria. A portfolio of non-performing loans, totalling around 3 billion euros gross, has been securitised with the help of the Italian Recovery Fund (Atlante II) or sold to private investors and deconsolidated from the balance sheets of the three banks. The consideration paid by Credit Agricole Cariparma to the Schema Volontario for the acquisition of a 95.3% stake in the capital of each of the three target banks totals 130 million euros.

The transaction was completed by the deadline initially set thanks to the full and wholehearted cooperation of all the parties involved, in particular the competent authorities, notably in Italy.

Credit Agricole S.A. and Credit Agricole Cariparma SpA are happy to have been given the opportunity to help shore up the Italian banking system and to implement the turnaround in the activity of all three banks at the service of their territories, clients and employees.

In accordance with the announcement made in April 2017 on the opening of the negotiations, the impact of this transaction on the fully-loaded CET1 ratios of Credit Agricole S.A. and Credit Agricole Group will be approximately 10bp.

CREDIT AGRICOLE PRESS CONTACTS

Charlotte de Chavagnac + 33 1 57 72 11 17 charlotte.dechavagnac@credit-agricole-sa.fr

Alexandre Barat + 33 1 43 23 07 31 alexandre.barat@credit-agricole-sa.fr

Find our press releases on: www.credit-agricole.com - www.creditagricole.info
Just about everyone has a hard time pronouncing his last name correctly, but Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) just shrugs it off. Hes an easygoing guy who has little drama in his life, and you get the impression hes fine with that. So its a bit surprising when Paul decides to make a big change  that involves literally getting small.

A new technology out of Norway has made it possible for humans to be shrunk to about 6 inches tall. The process is irreversible, but the benefits are enticing. Because of the economics of being small  a diamond bracelet costs just $83  folks who had been struggling to stay afloat can enjoy millionaire lifestyles in tiny McMansions.

At first, Paul is skeptical, but hes persuaded to get on board by his wife, Audrey (Kristen Wiig)  who, ironically, has been frustrated that they couldnt afford to move into a bigger house. The next thing he knows, hes about the size of a bobblehead figure, but with his noggin still in proper proportion to his body.

Paul has trouble reconciling himself to his new life, which includes coping with neighbor Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz), whose home is the scene of virtually nonstop partying.

Downsizing starts out as a sharp satire of consumer culture and the consequences of shaking up the social order. But the film then wanders into murky, puzzling territory, leaving viewers to wonder exactly what the story was all about.

Thats not necessarily a bad thing  some films are deliberately provocative. Unfortunately, the latest comedy-drama from Alexander Payne is a rare disappointment from the director whose filmography includes The Descendants, Election and Sideways.

Working from a screenplay that he co-wrote with Jim Taylor, Payne delivers what must be his least funny film  if, indeed, his intention was to be funny.

Perhaps Downsizing is a transitional film that Payne had to make to get to the next level.
ST. LOUIS  Prosecutors have charged a man with murder in the shooting death of a man earlier this month in the Shaw neighborhood.

Dejuan Allen, 19, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the shooting.

He is accused in the death of Kendrick Isaiah Woods, 19, who was found shot to death on the back porch of a home in the 3900 block of DeTonty Street on Dec. 2.

Authorities released little information about the case, saying only that a witness saw Allen shoot Woods.

Allen, of the 1200 block of North 18th Street, was ordered held with bail set at $200,000, cash-only.
MARYVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ruby Tuesday, Inc. (NYSE:RT) (Ruby Tuesday) and NRD Capital (NRD), an Atlanta-based private equity firm that specializes in franchised and multi-location business investments, today announced the successful acquisition of Ruby Tuesday by a fund managed by NRD. The acquisition was announced on October 16, 2017, and the transaction closed and became effective today.



Under the terms of the transaction, Company shareholders will receive $2.40 per share in cash for each share they own, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes. At a Special Meeting of Shareholders held yesterday in New York, NY, shareholders approved the transaction by a large majority.

In connection with the completion of the acquisition, Ruby Tuesday (i) entered into a new credit facility for a secured term loan in the amount of $115,000,000 and a new $12,500,000 secured revolving credit facility; (ii) paid all amounts due under its prior credit facility with UBS AG, Stamford Branch, as administrative agent and issuing bank, and terminated such credit facility; and (iii) provided notice of an optional redemption to the holders of its 7.625% Senior Notes due 2020 pursuant to which the Company has elected to redeem $212,546,000 in principal amount of the outstanding Notes on January 20, 2018.

As a result of the completion of the acquisition, Ruby Tuesdays common stock will cease trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The Company also will make the necessary filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission to end its reporting obligations under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.

About Ruby Tuesday, Inc.

Ruby Tuesday, Inc. owns and franchises Ruby Tuesday brand restaurants. As of December 1, 2017, there were 596 Ruby Tuesday restaurants in 41 states, 14 foreign countries, and Guam. Of those restaurants, the company owns and operates 541 Ruby Tuesday restaurants and franchises 55 Ruby Tuesday restaurants. The company-owned and operated restaurants are concentrated primarily in the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest of the United States, which are considered to be the companys core markets.

About NRD Capital

NRD Capital invests in brands that offer superior products or services and compelling unit-level economics in order to help them strategically grow through the power of franchising. The fund was founded in 2014 by Aziz Hashim, one of the worlds leading experts on franchising, with the goal of leveraging operational and financial experience to position high quality brands for accelerated but responsible growth. The differentiated private equity fund takes a unique approach to investing, applying operating expertise and leveraging its wide network of franchisees, in addition to infusing capital in its portfolio companies.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this communication regarding the transaction between Ruby Tuesday and NRD are forward-looking statements. The words anticipate, believe, ensure, expect, if, intend, estimate, probable, project, forecasts, predict, outlook, aim, will, could, should, would, potential, may, might, anticipate, likely, plan, positioned, strategy, and similar expressions, and the negative thereof, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions about Ruby Tuesday and NRD, may include projections of their respective future financial performance, their respective anticipated growth strategies and anticipated trends in their respective businesses. These statements are only predictions based on current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results, level of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including the risk factors set forth in Ruby Tuesdays definitive proxy statement, most recent report on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other documents on file with the SEC.

Ruby Tuesdays forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that Ruby Tuesday believes to be reasonable but that may not prove to be accurate. Neither Ruby Tuesday nor NRD can guarantee future results, level of activity, performance or achievements. Moreover, neither Ruby Tuesday nor NRD assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. Ruby Tuesday and NRD assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.

Contacts:

Media

ICR

Christine Beggan, 203-682-8329

RubyTuesday@icrinc.com

Or

Investors

ICR

Melissa Calandruccio, CFA, 646-277-1273

RubyTuesdayIR@icrinc.com
ST. LOUIS  Lawyers for a St. Louis man serving a 241-year prison sentence for crimes he committed at 16 have appealed the case to the nations highest court.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted a writ of certiorari filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Bobby Bostic, now 38, the ACLU said. Bostic robbed a group of people delivering Christmas presents for the needy when he was 16. Bostic and his 18-year-old accomplice also each shot a victim, slightly injuring one, the brief says. The victims' heavy winter coats slowed down the bullets.

The pair then carjacked another woman and put a gun to her head, and Bostics accomplice robbed and fondled her before releasing her, the brief says.

Bostic rejected a deal to plead guilty and get a 30-year sentence, went to trial and lost. His accomplice, Donald Hutson, took the deal.

The ACLU brief argues that a 2010 decision that prohibited a sentence of life without parole for juveniles, Graham v. Florida, should also apply to those whose lengthy prison terms effectively mean the same thing.

Bostic, whose case was profiled in the Post-Dispatch in 2014, is likely to die in prison, they say, because he wont be eligible for parole until hes 112, nearly twice his life expectancy.

That was the intent of then-Circuit Judge Evelyn Baker, who ran the sentences jurors had recommended consecutively and told Bostic, You made your choice. Youre gonna have to live with your choice, and youre gonna die with your choice because, Bobby Bostic, you will die in the Department of Corrections.

Baker cited Bostics history of arrests and letters from jail in which he blamed others.

The ACLU says the Graham decision means that Bostics sentence is unconstitutional and that Bostic should be given some meaningful opportunity for release, if he has shown hes fit to rejoin society.

It also says that the Supreme Court needs to resolve a split among state courts that, like Missouri, have been ignoring the courts decision in Graham as it applies to juveniles sentenced to the equivalent of life without parole in non-homicide cases.

Bostics appeals on grounds similar to the one in the ACLU appeal have been rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court and lower courts.

The state has struggled in recent years to reconcile its legal system with the Graham decision and another, Miller v. Alabama, which found automatic punishments of life without parole for youths unconstitutional.

Last year, legislators changed the law in response to the Miller case so that anyone under 18 at the time of a crime who was sentenced to life without parole or sentenced to life or between 30 and 40 years for murder could petition the parole board for a review after serving 25 years.

But activists are still fighting to raise the age at which teens are prosecuted as adults in criminal court.

Missouri Rep. Nick Schroer, an OFallon Republican, has prefiled a bill that would require children 17 and younger to be prosecuted for most offenses in juvenile courts unless they are certified to stand trial as an adult.
Ashley Jost Ashley Jost is the higher education reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Ashley Jost Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

ST. LOUIS  A longtime Tiger is moving into a new role at the University of Missouri-Columbia as the school's interim chief academic officer.

Jim Spain starts as the interim provost  a position considered to be the second-in-command at universities  Feb. 1, according to an announcement from Chancellor Alexander Cartwright.

"Dr. Spain displays a passion and dedication for Mizzou that is unmatched," Cartwright said in the announcement.

Spain joined the flagship university in 1990 as an assistant professor focused on animal science. He gained tenure at Mizzou, continuing to teach in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources to this day despite being an administrator.

Working for a decade as the vice provost for undergraduate studies, Spain is also responsible for Mizzou's online education operation.

Spain will serve as interim provost while Cartwright looks to replace Garnett Stokes. Stokes, who was hired in early 2015 by former Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, starts March 1 as the president at the University of New Mexico.

Cartwright hopes that by spring 2018, finalist candidates for the permanent provost job will be on campus for interviews.
ST. LOUIS  State Rep. Bruce Franks Jr. and the family of a man shot by St. Louis police in 2013 are calling for a new investigation into the shooting.

Franks, a leader in the mass protests over police conduct in St. Louis this fall, held a press conference with the family of Cary Ball, 25, on Wednesday, calling on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to lead a new investigation into Balls shooting .

We dont feel like our questions were answered, said Balls brother Carlos Ball at Fifth Baptist Church in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood.

There are still a lot of questions surrounding what happened to my brother that night. Police say one thing, the witness statements totally contradict everything they said.

Cary Ball was shot the evening of April 24, 2013, after he crashed a car at Cole and Ninth streets, near the Dome at Americas Center, at the end of a police pursuit. He had fled a traffic stop. Officers shot him 21 times. Nobody else was hurt.

Police said Ball pointed a .40-caliber Glock handgun at officers but did not fire. But at least one witness told police they thought Ball was trying to set the gun down when he was shot, and no civilian witnesses interviewed said they saw him point the gun at officers.

There was no video recording of the shooting. Police found a loaded, stolen gun they say Ball was carrying.

A previous FBI investigation into the case concluded in 2014 that officers were justified in using deadly force. The investigation came at the request of the police chief at the time, Sam Dotson, after an internal review by the department that came to the same conclusion.

But Franks and Balls family believe that the federal review did not go far enough.

Franks, D-St. Louis, said he found no evidence that the FBI re-interviewed the witnesses in the case or inspected the scene, but instead only reviewed the internal investigation by the St. Louis Police Department.

Former U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan released a statement shortly after the FBI report was released that he found no basis for criminal charges in the case. The office of St. Louis Circuit Attorney, at the time Jennifer Joyce, did not conduct its own investigation into the shooting, deferring to federal authorities.

It is standard protocol for local prosecutors to stand down when the Federal Authorities have been asked to review a case, a representative for Joyces office told the Post-Dispatch in an email in 2016.

But three years later, Franks said he is hopeful that a new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Jeffrey Jensen, and a new circuit attorney, Gardner, will revisit the case.

Franks is also calling on the U.S. attorney to investigate whether Balls civil rights were violated in the case. Jensens office declined to comment Wednesday on Franks statements. Gardners office did not immediately comment.

The St. Louis Police Department issued a statement Wednesday saying that though the case had previously been reviewed by prosecutors, the department will fully cooperate with the Circuit Attorneys Office and U.S. Attorneys Office in this matter.

This is about a young mans life that was lost and a family just trying to get accountability, Franks said.

Ball earned his GED in prison while serving time for robbery, relatives said. He also earned early release, they said. They described Ball as a student with a promising career in social work who would never have threatened police.

In September 2013, the police department agreed to pay $400,000 to Balls family as part of a settlement for a wrongful death suit.

Both officers who shot Ball, Jason Chambers and Timothy Boyce, are still employed with the department.
SYDNEY  The family of an Australian woman who was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer in July demanded a more rigorous probe Thursday after a prosecutor cast doubts on the investigation.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman faulted investigators last week when he complained that he doesn't have enough evidence to charge Officer Mohamed Noor in the killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Noor shot Damond in the alley behind her home after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault.

Reading a statement to reporters in Sydney, Damond's father John Ruszczyk said the family was deeply concerned "about the possibility that the initial investigation was not done properly, and with the greatest integrity or sense of completeness."

Ruszczyk said he and the rest of Damond's family were demanding Freeman and his colleagues continue to pursue a rigorous investigation and examination of evidence in the shooting.

Freeman was captured on video at a Dec. 14 holiday reception expressing his frustration about the case. He said it wasn't his fault that there was not enough evidence to charge Noor, and that investigators "haven't done their job." Noor has declined to speak with investigators.

Freeman didn't name the investigators, but the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation. He has since said he didn't know he was being filmed and apologized for discussing the agency's work in a public setting.

Nevertheless, Damond's father applauded Freeman's candid statement.

"At the least, Mr. Freeman's comments cast doubt on the description of how Justine's death occurred as it was initially put out by the BCA and the attorney for the officer driving the squad car," Ruszczyk said Thursday.

The BCA said in a statement after the family's news conference that it is "committed to conducting a fair, impartial and thorough investigation as we gather the facts and evidence in this case." The agency said it will continue to work with prosecutors as needed to provide additional information as the case is being reviewed.

Freeman's office declined to comment on Ruszczyk's statement.

Noor fired at Damond from the passenger seat of a squad car, across his partner and through the driver's window.

Damond's death sparked protests and led to a police department shake-up, including the resignation of Chief Janee Harteau.

Flanked by three other family members, and pausing occasionally to compose himself, Ruszczyk said that after the shooting, authorities in Minneapolis had "looked me in the eye and said they were committed to getting to the truth of the event".

"Now I hear that the Hennepin county attorney, to whom the BCA handed its investigative results, says that the investigation has not been done to the prosecutor's satisfaction, or even to the expected levels of accuracy and thoroughness," Ruszczyk said.

Ruszczyk cited a quote by American writer James Baldwin: "It is certain in any case that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

Ruszczyk said this was particularly true "when it comes to evaluating the use of deadly force by those sworn to protect us."

He added: "Ignorance cannot prevail here."
MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Outsell, which drives more revenue for auto dealers by transforming how they engage customers and prospects throughout their lifecycle, announced today that Valerie Vallancourt, its Vice President of Marketing, has been named one of MarTechExecs 50 Women You Need to Know in Martech 2018.



MarTechExec selected the winners based on their demonstrated passion for marketing technology, and their dedication to creating a community of strong and talented marketing executives.

I am delighted to see Valerie receive this honor and recognition from MarTechExec, said Michael Wethington, President and CEO of Outsell. Valerie is a dynamic, strategic marketing professional whos had a tremendous impact on Outsell. She brought a new level of innovation to our marketing efforts, and has developed a strong team here.

I am honored and thrilled to be recognized by MarTechExec along with these other inspiring marketing professionals, said Vallancourt. I am also proud to lead the Outsell marketing team and contribute to the companys overall mission of helping auto dealers across the country drive more sales.

Valerie leads all marketing for Outsell, which provides an AI-driven marketing automation solution to auto dealers. Since joining the company nearly three years ago, Vallancourt has transformed marketing, developing a demand-generation engine and implementing new processes for lead generation and tracking. These efforts significantly improved inbound lead flow while improving quality  helping Outsell exceed its sales goals. Valerie also champions women to be a part of the automotive industry.

To read more about Valeries mentors, her take on common misconceptions in martech and how women in marketing can support one another, please visit https://martechexec.com/article/valerie-vallancourt-martech50women.html#gs.oMc2MbI

For more details about the 50 Women You Need to Know in Martech 2018 and the full list of winners, visit MarTechExec.

About Outsell

Outsell drives more revenue for auto dealers by transforming how they engage consumers throughout their individual lifecycles. Outsell makes dealers lives easier by keeping them in front of customers and prospects using AI-driven, automated marketing communications across channels  helping them retain more customers and attract new ones. Dealers using Outsells proprietary technology are tipped off when consumers are most ready to engage, buy or service. Every day, the Outsell customer engagement platform listens to and manages the engagement of over twenty million consumers for dealers representing all major automotive brands.

Media Contact

Gina Rezendes

Big Swing Communications

gina@big-swing.com

+1.617.640.9278

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/911987b8-9f1a-4e52-b214-9a993feb1b6f




KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Courtyard King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel announces exclusive packages for couples-to-be hosting their celebration at the premier Big Island wedding venue. The hotel offers captivating ceremony settings priced as low as $1,500, with a brand-new elopement and wedding vow renewal package starting at only $1,750.



The package includes a private ceremony space at one of the hotels signature sunrise viewing locations, a non-denominational officiant, 8 wedding cake, champagne toast for up to 10 guests, tropical flower leis for the bride and groom, an oceanfront suite for one night and dedicated wedding coordination.

The iconic Kona hotel creates the perfect backdrop for Big Island beach weddings, showcased by its recent feature on Hot Hawaiian Weddings. The show wowed watchers with a glimpse at Macey and Jonathans beautiful wedding reception on the hotels Oceanfront Luau Grounds, as well as a sneak peek at the bride and groom preparing for the ceremony at the hotel.

With exclusive Kona wedding packages and idyllic oceanfront venues for weddings big or small, the hotel can easily accommodate up to 450 guests for your special day. Wedding parties love hosting their rehearsal dinners during an Island Breeze Luau and Honos on the Beach offers a great Sunday Brunch selection. With 452 guest rooms for out-of-town guests, the hotels convenient location lets your attendees explore all that Kailua-Kona has to offer.

Located on the beachfront, King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel offers some of Kona Hawaiis most delectable culinary offerings right onsite. The hotels culinary team serves fresh, delicious Hawaii-inspired cuisine, specializing in seafood, sushi and local Kona produce, as well as refreshing signature cocktails.

Guests can also enjoy nightly live music at Billfish Bar & Grille. Theyll delight in acoustic sounds by local musicians on an ocean view pool deck, from 6:30 - 9:30 P.M. every night. Valet parking is also available.

For more information or to start planning your Kona beach wedding, call 1-808-329-2911.

About the Courtyard King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel

Courtyard King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel welcomes guests to the Big Island of Hawaii with modern accommodations and superb amenities. Located on the historical site where King Kamehameha, the famed King of the Hawaiian Islands, once lived, the full-service hotel boasts a blend of cultural sophistication and stylish convenience. The property is just steps from the white-sand beaches of Kailua-Kona and offers many onsite beach activities. The shopping and attractions of Kailua-Kona are moments away. Airy, spacious rooms and suites feature plush bedding, complimentary Wi-Fi and private balconies, while the hotels delicious restaurants blend the flavors of Hawaii with casual, oceanfront dining. Celebrate a wedding right on the beach or take advantage of the hotels spacious indoor venues for hosting a Big Island meeting.

CONTACT: Courtyard King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel

75-5660 Palani Road Kailua-Kona, Hawaii 96740 USA

1-808-329-2911

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/koacy-courtyard-king-kamehamehas-kona-beach-hotel/

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ca440eb1-3170-4900-a11c-c41a17a5f9b5.
(All Dollars in Canadian Dollars)

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InZinc Mining Ltd. (TSXV:IZN) (the Company) is pleased to announce it has closed the second tranche of its previously announced non-brokered private placement (the Offering) for additional gross proceeds of $350,000. As announced in its previous news release dated December 15, 2017, the Company closed the first tranche of the Offering and raised gross proceeds of $3,148,000, bringing the total raised in both tranches to $3,498,000.

Completion of the financing is a positive sign of the support the Company and its projects have from its shareholders and the investment community, stated Wayne Hubert, CEO of InZinc. With a strong balance sheet, we are ready to move forward exploring and developing our zinc projects in 2018."

Pursuant to the second tranche of the Offering, the Company issued a total of 3,500,000 units (the "Units") (for a total of 34,980,000 Units in both tranches) at a price of $0.10 per Unit, each Unit consisting of one common share (a Common Share) of the Company and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (a Warrant). Each full Warrant will entitle its holder to acquire one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.15 for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance of the Warrant.

All securities issued in connection with the second tranche of the Offering are subject to a statutory four-month hold period expiring on April 21, 2018.

The Company paid finders fees in cash of $37,450 (for a total of $182,560 in both tranches) and issued common share purchase warrants (Finders Warrants) to purchase up to 388,500 Common Shares (for a total of 1,825,600 in both tranches), such Finders Warrants having the same terms as the Warrants.

As disclosed in the Companys previous news release dated December 15, 2017, certain directors and officers of the Company participated in the Offering for $200,000.

The net proceeds from the Financing will be used for advancement of the Companys exploration projects and for general corporate purposes.

Grant of Stock Options

InZinc announces the grant of incentive stock options to certain directors, an officer and key project consultants to purchase a total of 1,300,000 common shares of the Company for a period of three (3) years at an exercise price of $0.13 per share effective December 20, 2017. These stock options will vest over the next 12 months.

About InZinc

InZinc is focused on growth in zinc through exploration and expansion of the advanced stage West Desert project (100%) in Utah and exploration of the early stage Indy project (100% option) in British Columbia. West Desert has a large underground resource open for expansion and has district scale exploration potential. A West Desert preliminary economic assessment completed in 2014 forecasted 1.6 billion pounds of zinc production over 15 years. Indy comprises both near surface exploration targets and regional discovery potential. Both zinc projects are well located with easy access and existing infrastructure.

InZinc Mining Ltd.

"Wayne Hubert

___________________

Wayne Hubert

CEO and Director

Phone: 604.687.7211



Website: www.inzincmining.com

For further information contact:

Joyce Musial

Vice President, Corporate Affairs

Phone: 604.317.2728

Email: joyce@inzincmining.com



Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news 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. 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, plan, design, 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, performance, or actions and that actual results and actions may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Companys Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2016 filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties.

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.
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT AUTHORIZED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.



TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Cobalt Corp. (TSX-V:FCC) (ASX:FCC) (OTCQB:FTSSF) (the Company) is pleased to announce it has completed the financing announced on December 8, 2017 with the Underwriters fully exercising their option to sell an additional 4,550,000 Units. The Company issued on a bought deal basis (i) 4,700,000 units of the Company (Flow-Through Units) at a price of $1.51 per Flow-Through Unit (the FT Offering) and (ii) 20,950,000 units (the Units) of the Company at a price of $1.10 per Unit for aggregate proceeds of $30,142,000 (the Offering). The syndicate of Underwriters for the Offering was led by Canaccord Genuity Corp., together with TD Securities Inc., GMP Securities L.P., Eight Capital and Red Cloud Klondike Strike Inc.

Each Unit consists of one common share (a Common Share) of First Cobalt and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant a Warrant) of First Cobalt. Each Flow-Through Unit consists of one common share of the Company qualifying as a flow-through share (a Flow-Through Share) of First Cobalt and one-half of one Warrant. Each full Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share of the Company at a price of $1.50 per Common Share, for a period of 24 months following the date of issue of Warrants.

All proceeds from the sale of the Flow-Through Shares will be used to incur eligible Canadian Exploration Expenses as defined in the Income Tax Act (Canada) related the Company's projects in Ontario, Canada. The net proceeds of the Offering will be used to advance the exploration and development of the Companys mineral properties located in Ontario, Canada, growth opportunities and working capital and general corporate purposes.

The issuance of the Warrants will be completed pending the approval of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and approval of the shareholders of the Company. Pursuant to ASX listing requirements, the Company will call a special meeting of shareholders to seek approval for the issuance of the Warrants. Subsequent to receipt of shareholder approval, the Warrants will be issued to the subscribers promptly following the meeting and such Warrants will be subject to a hold period of four months from the date of such issuance. Should approval of Shareholders be withheld at the Special Meeting, the Company will not issue the Warrants to the subscribers and the subscribers will have no right to the receive any Warrants.

In addition, concurrent with the closing of the Offering, the Company completed a non-brokered traditional flow through offering of 249,000 Flow-Through Units at a price of $1.33 per Flow-Through Unit for gross proceeds of $497,670, with each such Flow-Through Unit and Unit consisting of one Flow-Through Share and one-half of one Warrant.

All Common Shares and Flow-Through Shares issued today pursuant to the above offerings will be subject to a statutory four-month and one day hold period.

The securities being offered pursuant to the Private Placement have not been, and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent U.S. federal and state registration or an applicable exemption from the U.S. registration requirements. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States.

About First Cobalt

First Cobalt is the largest land owner in the Cobalt Camp in Ontario, Canada. The Company controls over 10,000 hectares of prospective land and 50 historic mines as well as a mill and the only permitted cobalt refinery in North America capable of producing battery materials. First Cobalt began drilling in the Cobalt Camp in 2017 and seeks to build shareholder value through new discovery and growth opportunities.

On behalf of First Cobalt Corp.

Trent Mell

President & Chief Executive Officer

For more information visit www.firstcobalt.com or contact:

Heather Smiles

Investor Relations

info@firstcobalt.com

+1.416.900.3891

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.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as plans, expects', estimates, intends, anticipates, believes or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance and opportunities to differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are set forth in the management discussion and analysis for the First Cobalt, filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although First Cobalt believes that the information and assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed times frames or at all. Except where required by applicable law, First Cobalt disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
CHARLOTTE, NC, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

CHARLOTTE, NC - Golden Door Scholars, a nonprofit founded and managed by Red Ventures CEO Ric Elias, announced today that it has awarded an additional 100 full scholarships to undocumented immigrants to enroll in college next year. Golden Door Scholars partners with colleges and universities to create educational opportunity for undocumented students and, since its inception in 2013, has awarded scholarships to 258 students in 14 states. All participants in the program are currently protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which will end in March, 2018.

Its an honor to give another 100 outstanding students the gift of education this year, particularly during a time when far too many are living in fear, said Elias. We dont want these kids to give up hope. We will continue to invest time, energy and resources in them, in their futures, and in fulfilling the American promise of opportunity for all.

Golden Door Scholars reviewed nearly 1000 applications this year alone, landing on a final scholarship list of 100 students, with an average unweighted GPA of 3.8.

This round of scholarships comes at a time when the future is uncertain for more than 700,000 DACA recipients - undocumented immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children and who now attend school, serve in the military, and legally work. In September, the administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, giving Congress a 6-month window to pass legislation that mitigates the impact on those enrolled in the program. On average, more than 100 dreamers are losing protections like work permits daily  and that number will rise significantly until the program ends on March 5, 2018.

We have 60 days left to find a solution for these kids. Congress inability to act quickly is not only frustrating, its inhumane, Elias said. People are not pawns, and their futures are not chips to be cashed in for political favors. Our communities, businesses and country will pay a steep price if we cannot come together and find a solution.

On September 20th, hundreds of business leaders including Mark Zuckerburg, Warren Buffet and Elias himself, signed an open letter calling for a permanent legislative solution to avoid devastating consequences.

Without congressional action, our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions, the letter said. All DACA recipients grew up in America, registered with our government, submitted to extensive background checks, and are diligently giving back to our communities and paying income taxes. More than 97 percent are in school or in the workforce, 5 percent started their own business, 65 percent have purchased a vehicle, and 16 percent have purchased their first home. At least 72 percent of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies count DACA recipients among their employees.

The Golden Door Scholars team, led by Director Kacey Grantham and operated out of Red Ventures headquarters, says it will continue its work and advocacy for their students as long as they are needed.

Education is the most powerful tool we have to change trajectories and dislodge inequity, said Grantham. We will continue to fight for whats right  for these kids and for our country.

About Golden Door Scholars

Golden Door Scholars is a nonprofit founded in 2013 to invest in education and career access for high-performing DACA students. GDS currently supports 133 students enrolled at 43 colleges and an additional 25 scholars who have earned their degrees and are in graduate programs or working in highly technical roles at companies including Samsung, Oracle, and Red Ventures. Learn more at www.goldendoorscholars.org.

About Ric Elias

Ric Elias is the CEO and co-founder of Red Ventures and the founder of four nonprofit organizations; Golden Door Scholars, Rebuild Puerto Rico, Life Hoops, and RoadtoHire. Elias was a survivor of Flight 1549, an event which led to his widely-viewed TED Talk 3 things I learned while my plane crashed. In September, he released a video expressing support for dreamers.

Media Contact: Kacey Grantham kacey@goldendoorscholars.org

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/113900c5-a3a5-44ab-a042-07ec143c50e0
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALQ Gold Corp. (CSE:ALQ) (ALQ or the Company) is pleased to announce the following developments:



the Company has entered into a binding letter of intent with Vulcan Enterprises Ltd. (Vulcan) to acquire certain intellectual property rights for use of the name, approved photographs, approved images, voice, and approved likenesses of Dan Bilzerian exclusively within the cannabis industry worldwide (collectively, Licensed IP);



the Company has completed its second investment, being the acquisition of 100,000 units in the capital of Salvation Botanicals Ltd. (Salvation) for $500,000;



the Company has arranged a non-brokered private placement to raise up to $10,000,000 through the distribution of 10 million units of the Company at a price of $1.00 per unit. Each unit will comprise one common share (Shares) and one-half of one share purchase warrant (Warrants), each whole Warrant entitling the holder to acquire one additional Share at $2.50 for a period of 12 months; and



the Company intends to change its name to Green Axis Capital Corp. and become an investment company focusing on opportunities in the global cannabis sector.

About Vulcan Enterprises Ltd.

Vulcan is the exclusive owner of the Licensed IP, which includes the cannabis brand logos or related marks, including Burn by Bilzerian and Ignite by Bilzerian. ALQ and Vulcan have agreed to the following:

ALQ will receive initially a limited license to utilize the Licensed IP for its use in the Canadian cannabis industry, in exchange for ALQ issuing 5,000,000 shares to Vulcan;



Vulcan will assist with ALQs utilization of the Licensed IP through personal appearance by Dan Bilzerian and utilization of Dan Bilzerians social media accounts; and



ALQ will retain the exclusive option to acquire additional global and exclusive rights to Vulcans Licensed IP for additional consideration.

Closing of the above transactions is conditional upon closing of an equity financing by ALQ of at least $10,000,000 (see item 3 above for details of the proposed financing).

About Salvation Botanicals Ltd.

Salvation is a private British Columbia company based in Nanaimo, which is involved in the production of high quality standardized cannabinoid products for Licensed Producers (LPs), and operates one of the first analytics laboratories in Canada, accredited by Health Canada to test cannabis and derivatives for LPs, Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR) growers, approved cannabis patients, Section 56 License holders, industrial hemp producers, and any other party legally entitled to possess cannabis.

Salvation holds a Narcotic Dealers Licence, allowing contract extract production, with authority to extract and produce oil, capsules and tinctures within Health Canada guidelines. In 2016 Health Canada granted Salvation a Hemp Processing License (HPL) permitting production and sale of seed & grain derivatives. Using the name Purely Hemp Salvation has developed a line of value-added foods including Hemp Protein Powder, Hulled Hemp Seeds, Protein Bars, Hemp Butter, Capsules (Oil, Protein Powder) and Cold-Pressed Hemp Oil while building exports of value-added bulk hemp products.

It is planned that Salvation will produce certain products on behalf of Vulcan and ALQ to bring Dan Bilzerians brands to market in Canada in time for the launch of recreational sales and other global jurisdictions that have legal medical marijuana legislation and suitable import laws.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Morgan Good

Chief Executive Officer

Tel: 604-715-4751

Email: morgan@dukecapitalinc.com

Investor Contact:

Keir Reynolds

Duke Capital

Tel: 778-998-9242

Email: keir@dukecapitalinc.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: the terms and conditions of the proposed transaction; the terms and conditions of the proposed private placement; use of funds; and the business and operations of the Company after the proposed change of business. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals; and the uncertainties surrounding the cannabis industry in North America. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. ALQ disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Florida East Coast (FEC) Railways 8th annual Christmas Train was a huge success again this year.



FEC employees, customers and suppliers together raised $370,000 in donations to buy over 24,000 toys for distribution to children in need living in the communities along the network that FEC serves. The toys were distributed in partnership with the local Toys for Tots programs managed by the United States Marine Corps.

Santa and his FEC elves boarded the festively decorated Christmas Train, which departed from Jacksonville in the early hours of December 9th. The special train made eight stops along the 351-mile route to Miami. By the end of the day, over 1,600 children received a special gift from Santa as he visited with each of them personally to hear their Christmas wishes.

"We are extremely proud of the results from this years Christmas train, said FEC President & CEO, Jim Hertwig. It is because of this compassionate giving that so many children along the Florida East Coast Railway network will wake up Christmas morning with a gift from Santa.

The Christmas Train is a 501c3 non-profit and is a favorite tradition among the FECR family and its suppliers and customers. FEC gives special thanks to all who donated this year.

This is just one way we give back to the communities where we live and work, said Hertwig. We thank everyone who made this event possible."

About Florida East Coast Railway

Florida East Coast Railway is a 351-mile freight rail system located along the east coast of Florida and is the exclusive rail provider for PortMiami, Port Everglades, and Port of Palm Beach. FEC connects to the national railway system in Jacksonville, Florida, to move cargo originating or terminating there. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, FEC provides end-to-end intermodal solutions to customers who demand cost-effective and premium quality. For more information, visit www.fecrwy.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b489f01b-dfa5-45eb-a6c4-74adcb89f36e
A Gisborne man arrested after a fleeing vehicle hit a police officer in the Bay of Plenty will remain behind bars for Christmas.

Joshua Strickland appeared in Opotiki District Court today where Judge Louis Bidois denied the accused bail.

The 26-year-old is facing three charges of theft, failing to stop, and dangerous driving.

Todays court appearance comes after an incident in Awakeri yesterday morning, where a constable was hit by car fleeing from police.

The officer was laying road spikes in an attempt to stop the fleeing vehicle on Kope Drain Road.

The injured officer was flown to Waikato Hospital with serious leg injuries.

Strickland has been remanded in custody until February 7.

He is next set to appear at the Whakatane District Court.
Documents released under the Official Information Act show the New Zealand Transport Agency is looking at tolls for four uncompleted roads nationally  including the yet to be built Tauranga Northern Link.

Western Bay of Plenty District Mayor Garry Webber says while he accepts tolling is a tool NZTA could use to speed up the building of state highways, he questions the equity of the approach across New Zealand.

The Western Bay already has two out the countrys three toll roads, the Tauranga Eastern Link, which has been tolled since 2015 and Takitimu Drive, tolled from 2003.

Theres no doubt these roads have brought significant benefit, particularly in terms of efficiency and safety, however its hard to reconcile the Western Bay sub-region could end up with another toll road while other large scale roading network upgrades and improvements in Auckland, Waikato and Canterbury have been progressed without tolling.

Garry understands the outcomes of the Tauranga Northern Link tolling investigation are not expected until mid-2018.

Im not going to predict the final outcome however I will be reminding central government of the need for equity when it comes to applying road funding tools around the country.

Its vital the right balance is struck between the benefit of yet another toll road to the residents of the Western Bay sub-region and the additional cost to those same residents, businesses and visitors compared to residents in other areas who do not have toll roads.

Tauranga MP and former transportation minister Simon Bridges says Tauranga and the Western Bay already has enough toll roads.

When I was Transport Minister I made clear repeatedly that Tauranga already had enough toll roads in comparison to the rest of New Zealand and so there would not be another. Todd Muller and I as local MPs still strongly believe this.

More tolls in Tauranga are entirely unfair when next to nowhere else has been tolled.

We are also concerned about the timeframe to build this important road and the pulling back on Nationals promise to four lane all the way to Katikati.

The new coalition government and Transport Minister Phil Twyford need to do the job once, right, and not treat Tauranga as a cash cow in the process, says Simon.

The NZTA says it is looking at all possible options.

"The information provided to the Board indicates the four key projects being considered meet the criteria for tolling as far as can be determined at this stage, and further investigations are needed and business cases developed.

"There are prescriptive requirements under the Land Transport Management Act 2003 before a decision can be made to implement a toll on a road.

"This included extensive public consultation determining the level of community support."

More information can be found on the NZTA website.
Three significant pou whakairo (carved panels) weighing more than 2300kg each and standing up to seven metres tall, have been installed at the entrance of the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institutes new Wananga Precinct.

The national schools of wood carving, weaving, stone and bone carving and bronze foundry are about to move into their new building located at Te Puia in Rotorua.

Construction work is now transforming the old carving school into a new gallery, tamoko (Maori tattoo) studio and administration space.

The entire Wananga Precinct will officially open in April 2018, however visitors will be able to watch carvers in their new environment from mid-January.

Carved from totara, the three pou whakairo each recognise a prominent carving style from the Te Arawa tribal area and are examples of the finest works from Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Pikiao and Ngati Tarawhai.

NZMACI tumu whakairo (head of school), Arekatera Maihi says it is the first time the three main carving styles of this area have been officially acknowledged in one place, recognising the legacy of expert carvers gone by and the whakapapa that has been passed down to present day carvers.

There is not one person at this carving school, students and tutors alike, who hasnt worked on this kaupapa. From project lead and graduate carver, Grant Marunui, sketching the designs, to our staff and students working for months on the finer details.

We believe these are the biggest carved pou in the country and were proud to see them gracing the entrance to our new wananga and welcoming manuhiri into the heart of what we do.

NZMACI tohunga whakairo (master carver), Clive Fugill says the smallest pou has been carved in the local style of Ngati Whakaue and follows the design of famous Ngati Whakaue carver and ancestor Pukaki, however it does not depict him.

The second pou, representing the Ngati Pikiao style of carving, is similar to that of Ngati Whakaue in its surface patterning, but offers a contrast in surface design with deep pakati, adding movement to the carved piece.

The third and largest pou represents the carving style of Ngati Tarawhai, which involves a similar design, but has haehae, or grooves, that is much wider and bolder, with the pakati being smaller.

Clive says carvers from Ngati Tarawhai were amongst the most prolific of all carvers from this region.

Along with Ngati Whakaue and Ngati Pikiao, the three carried the torch of carving well into the 20th century.

These carvers were key to the renaissance in Maori wood carving, supported by the work of NZMACI, which plays a fundamental role in keeping the art of carving alive, protecting, promoting and perpetuating Maori arts and crafts across New Zealand under its Act established in 1963.

The Wananga Precinct is just one part of significant site developments underway at Te Puia, which includes a new 300-seat whare kai, due to open in July 2018, and a kiwi husbandry facility which will further enhance and enrich the visitor experience.

Manuhiri visiting Te Puia l NZMACI will be able to access the carpark directly from the new Hemo Gorge roundabout once it is fully open, providing visitors safe access to and from the Te Puia carpark, as well as an underpass for pedestrians and cyclists.

In 2018, the roundabout will feature a 12m high sculpture, forming the southern gateway to the city. Designed by NZMACI tumu (head) of Te Takapu o Rotowhio (the National Stone and Bone Carving School), Stacy Gordine and the team, the sculpture aligns with the cultural concept of a waharoa, where before entering the area, the cultural significance of the place and its ancestors is acknowledged.
An elderly man knocked out of his wheelchair by a car on Cameron Road this afternoon has been taken to Tauranga Hospital for observation.

The accident happened in Cameron Road near the intersection with Monmouth Street about 4pm.

Further details have been requested of the police media team.
A Tauranga woman is frustrated after losing more than $500 to thieves who found her wallet  and is warning others to be careful with gift cards.

Gabi Wood lost her wallet four weeks ago, and says whoever found it wasnt kind enough to return it to her.

Instead, they spent around $200 on her credit card in several transactions before she could cancel it, and $361 off a Prezzy card that was also in her wallet.

I didnt even realise I had lost my wallet  it was ANZ who contacted me when they realised someone else was using my card.

She had already spent $149 of the $500 Prezzy card, which only required a signature to authorise, not a PIN.

They spent what I had left on it, says Gabi. The thieves rang the 0800 number on the card to check how much I had left. They then went to Liqourland on Cameron Road and asked the manager if they could use it, and had a whole story about buying alcohol for their sons 21st birthday.

They spent $361 on alcohol, forging Gabis signature.

I visited Liquorland the next day and told them the card was stolen. I asked for their security camera images to pass for the police, which they provided. But the manager didnt seem to think it was their fault.

Liquorland owner Lisa Parker says the signature was carefully reviewed when it was provided, and matched closely.

Our staff followed all due processes and procedures, and the signature was checked. Weve provided security footage and all assistance we can to the police.

She says the situation is similar to someone coming in off the street with stolen cash or debit cards  the retailer has no way of knowing the customer is paying with stolen funds.

Gabi tried to get the Prezzy card cancelled after realising her wallet had been stolen, but had to register it first. She managed to do so, but was only minutes too late to cancel it, as she was informed the balance was zero after the thieves had cleaned it out.

Kiwibank, who issued the Prezzy card, encourages customers to register their Prezzy card online as soon as they receive it.

By registering the card customers can dispute unauthorised transactions, and if the card is reported lost or stolen, we can cancel it and provide a replacement, carrying over any unused value (minus fees).
New information showing how much overseas tourists are spending in the Bay of Plenty underlines the need for a new welcoming gateway and tourism hub, says Tourism BOP CEO Kristin Dunne.

New data is showing cruise ship passengers and crew spending in the Bay of Plenty is the second highest in the country, second only to Auckland.

Cruise visitors contributed $59 million to the local economy, based on credit card spending by cruise visitors to New Zealand in the 2016/17 season.

Its the first time MBIE has officially measured cruise ship visitors credit card spending and officially recorded it.

The $59m spent by cruise passengers in the Bay of Plenty represents 20 per cent of the total national $306,464,000 cruise passenger expenditure.

Lyttleton, Wellington and other cruise destinations have recognised the countrys fastest growing tourism market and are heavily investing. The Bay of Plentys proposed $5m facility is urgently needed, says Kristin.

We are determined to deliver on the industrys need and the communitys wish to build a Hub fit to welcome our visitors. Tourism in the Bay of Plenty needs careful management to ensure it provides what is best for both visitors and the community, and this cannot be achieved without providing appropriate infrastructure.

Tourism Bay of Plenty and Tauranga City Council continue to seek the additional $1m of funding required for the new Regional Cruise Gateway and Welcome Hub. The $1m required will enable the proposed iconic facility to be built.

The largest passenger ship to call at New Zealand the Ovation of the Seas is in Port today is bringing 4180 passengers, measures 348 metres and weighs 168,666 tonnes.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and Statistics New Zealand Tourism Satellite shows the Bay of Plentys cruise passenger economy is ahead of all other New Zealand port destinations by at least $31m.

Dunedin received $28m in cruise expenditure, Canterbury received $26m and Wellington received $25m. The cruise expenditure accounts for shipping agents, providoring (ship supplies), bunkering (fuel), shore excursions, and ground spend.

The retrospective cruise expenditure reported by the Tourism Satellite Account also shows significant growth rates year on year.

The Bay of Plenty cruise passenger expenditure has grown 15 per cent and 20 per cent year on year for the last two years.

The region is set to welcome 113 cruise ships in the next season which is 39 per cent more than the 83 ships expected this season.

The 113 ships visiting the Bay of Plenty next season are set to bring 235,500 passengers and 102,100 crew.

This growth represents a significant economic opportunity for the community to maximise; however, the logistical issues that come with it need to be managed.
In todays weather forecast we are expecting cloudy periods, and a few showers from the afternoon, with northeast breezes.

Its a one-clothing layer day today with a high of 25 and an overnight low of 18 degrees. Humidity is 66 per cent.

High tide is at 10.30am and low tide at 4.40pm. Sea temperature is 20 degrees. Theres an average sea swell of .2m. Sunset tonight is at 8.33pm.

If youre going fishing today the best fish bite times are between 8 and 11pm.

This day in NZ history in 1916 a future Prime Minister was charged with sedition. Peter Frasers trial in the Wellington Magistrates Court was the sequel to a speech in which he attacked the governments policy of military conscription.

In world history on this day in 1829, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened the first passenger railway line. In 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, General Anthony McAuliffe responded to a German surrender request with a one word answer: Nuts. In 1966 the United States announced the allocation of 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine in India.

In 1989 on this day the division of East and West Germany effectively ended when the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin reopened for the first time in nearly 30 years. In 2001 a passenger on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris, Richard Reid, unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the plane in flight by igniting explosives hed hidden in his shoes.

Todays quote is from the Book of John 1:4-5 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

To get involved in activities and events please check out our Whats on page.

Have a great day!
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TAP Air Portugal continues to expand its European network with the addition of daily service to one of Italys most romantic destinations, Florence, from June 10, 2018. TAP was named Best Airline in Europe, for the seventh consecutive year, on December 12 by the readers of Global Traveler Magazine.



Florence will be TAPs fifth Italian destination served from Lisbon, joining Rome, Bologna, Milan and Venice. Each Italian destination, along with TAPs entire European and African route network, may be coupled with up to five days stopover in Portugal when flying from the United States, Canada or Brazil. More than half of TAPs U.S. passenger traffic continues beyond Lisbon, on to Europe or Africa, and Italy is one of the most popular final destinations.

TAP will fly 10 round-trip flights each week between Lisbon and Florence, on the schedule below:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday

Departs Lisbon Arrives Florence 7:05am 10:50am Departs Florence Arrives Lisbon 11:35am 1:35pm

Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday



Departs Lisbon Arrives Florence 7:05am 10:50am 3:50pm 7:35pm Departs Florence Arrives Lisbon 11:35am 1:35pm 8:20pm 10:20pm

TAP also will grow its operations from Porto airport in 2018, introducing a total of 41 new flights per week between to four new destinations.



TAP will add six flights per week from Porto to London City airport and a new daily service to Ponta Delgada in Portugals Azores, starting on March 25.

The new flights a week will depart Portos Francisco Sa Carneiro Airport at 12:05pm (TP354), arriving in London at 2:20pm, with the return flight leaving London at 2:50pm (TP353), arriving in Porto at 5:10pm.

The new daily flight from Porto to Ponta Delgada (TP1861) will depart Porto at 1:20pm, arriving in Ponta Delgada at 2:45pm. The return flight (TP1866) will take off at 3:35pm, landing in Porto at 6:50pm.

Finally, the airline also has re-instated two flights a day to Barcelona and to Milan, which had been suspended in 2016.

The two daily flights to Barcelona will depart Porto at 6:30am (TP1030) and 7:35pm (TP1031) and, to Milan, departing Porto at 6:30am (TP818) and 5:55pm (TP816).

"In additional to TAPs Best Airline in Europe win, Portugal also was just named Destination of the Year at the World Travel Awards, the first time a European destination has claimed that title," said David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airways and investor in TAP Air Portugal. Were seeing a huge increase in US travelers to Portugal and now, with our Portugal Stopover program, travelers can enjoy up to five nights in Lisbon on the way to Florence for no additional airfare.

Travel for the new Florence service is on sale now, via www.flytap.com. The new service from Porto will be on sale once operational details have been finalized.

About TAP Air Portugal

TAP is Portugals leading airline and a member of the global airline Star Alliance since 2005. Flying since 1945, TAP celebrated its 70th anniversary on March 14, 2015, before completing its privatization process later that year, now with the Atlantic Gateway Group as private shareholders.

As of Summer 2017, TAPs network comprises 84 destinations in 34 countries worldwide. The airline currently operates around 2,500 weekly flights, with a modern fleet of 63 Airbus aircraft. TAP Express, the airlines regional arm, operates an additional 17 aircraft.

With TAPs privatization process, it has restructured its network, launched new fare products and is renewing its medium and long-haul fleet. TAP has 53 Airbus neo aircraft on order and, by 2020, its long-haul fleet will either have been replaced with new aircraft or newly reconfigured aircraft. TAP Express now operates a new fleet of 8 ATR 72 and 9 Embraer 190.

TAP is one of Europes most awarded airlines. Global Traveler (USA) named TAP as Best Airline in Europe for seven consecutive years, from 2011 to 2017, and the World Travel Awards named TAP as both Europes Leading Airline to Africa and Europes Leading Airline to South America from 2014  2017. Previously TAP was awarded Worlds Leading Airline to Africa, in 2011 and 2012, and Worlds Leading Airline to South America from 2009 through 2012. TAPs Inflight Magazine, UP, received the World Travel Award as Europes Leading In-flight Magazine for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Media contact:

Gareth Edmondson-Jones

GEJ, Ink

917 399-9355

GEJink@gmail.com
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- An employee of Carmelcorn at Destiny USA was stabbed in the hand after confronting a man who stole a bag of chips on Wednesday night, according to Syracuse police.

The employee told police that a man, identified as 19-year-old Luis Torres, stole a bag of chips from the store. The employee confronted the thief "and was able to recover the proceeds," spokeswoman Sgt. Julie Shulsky said.

The suspect left but then returned a short time later and began threatening the employee, Shulsky said. The pair then got into a fight, and Torres pulled out a knife and cut the victim's hand, she said.

The employee's injury is minor, she said.

Torres was on scene when officers arrived around 7:52 p.m. and was arrested without incident.

Torres is being charged with second-degree assault, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and petit larceny.

Hes being held at the Onondaga County Justice Center pending arraignment, Shulsky said.
Don Cazentre

By Don Cazentre | NYup.com

CANASTOTA, NY -- For the first time in its four-year history, youll be able to walk into Erie Canal Brewing Co. and grab a pint of beer and/or a growler to go.

Erie Canal is opening its tap room at 135 S. Peterboro St. (Route 13), in the heart of downtown Canastota. It launches at 4 p.m. Friday, Dec. 22. Thereafter, hours will be 4 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1 to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

The location, in a former financial services office, has a bar with 8 taps -- they will pour beers from Erie Canal Brewing and its sister brewery, Seneca Street Brewpub in Manlius. There will be bottled beers from other brewers. The tap room is working on plans to have food provided by its neighbor, The Toast Restaurant, and the nearby Center Street Market.

Weve been making the beer, and selling the beer, but we really needed our own retail presence, said Bob Menikheim, whose family operates Erie Canal and the Seneca Street Brewpub. This buys us time to consider the next steps in our plans.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

For now, Erie Canal Brewing will continue to make the beer in the brewhouse at its original site, 135 James St. in Canastota. That's just a few block from the new tap room, but in an industrial building that is not visitor-friendly. (It is, however, just across from ZEM's Ice Cream). It opened in 2013.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

The Erie Canal tap room, like the former finance office, is cut up into to several smaller spaces aside from the bar. Its decorated with images and pictures related to Canastotas history on the Erie Canal.

Beers will include the two original Erie Canal beers, Muleskinner Pale Ale and Lock Tender IPA, plus beers in what the brewery calls its Hero Trio. They are American Warrior Pale Ale, Ground Pounder IPA and Amber Waves of Grain.

Amber Waves was originally brewed to support Clear Path for Veterans, a veterans services and support agency in Chittenango. Now, Erie Canal is sending proceeds from more of its beers to support Clear Path, Menikheim said.

As part of the ongoing 200th anniversary of the building of the Erie Canal, the brewery will introduce a new series of beers it calls the Bicentennial Edition.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

Seneca Street beers available at the Canastota tap room will include Cloud (a hazy American IPA), Kolsch, Grapefruit IPA and others. Unlike the Seneca Street Pub, which has other New York beers on tap, there are no current plans for the Erie Canal tap room to have guest beers on draft.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

The new Erie Canal tap room represents the continuing evolution of the ambitious beer business envisioned by Menikheim, his wife, Joyce, daughter Brooke and daughter-in-law Heidi.

The two most visible pieces are Erie Canal Brewing and the Seneca Street Brewpub.

Erie Canal is a production brewery, with a 7-barrel brewing system (a barrel is 31 gallons). It supplies draft beer to bars and restaurants in Onondaga, Madison and some surrounding counties. Erie Canal was founded by Jason Tedford and Sam Lanzafame in 2013. The Menikheims bought it in 2015.

Photo: From left, Bob, Brooke, Heidi and Joyce Menikheim.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

Seneca Street is a brewpub, with a 1-barrel system that supplies beer primarily to its own taps. Brooke Menikheim is the brewer for both companies. She also has a half-barrel brew system, which currently does private label beers for accounts like the Yellow Brick Road Casino in Chittenango.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

The familys long-held plans for a larger production brewery, Limestone Creek Brewing, are evolving, too. Bob Menikheim says that may end up as an all-lager brewery, similar to Jacks Abbey in Framingham, Mass.

But as with other parts of the project, the Menikheim family is taking things as they come, not rushing.

Don't Edit

Don Cazentre

The next big step for Erie Canal Brewing, for example, is the installation of a bottling line. Its already purchased, but probably wont go online until the spring. There is also the possibility of adding brewing equipment to the the new tap room. There is room to grow, if needed.

We want to invest in Madison County, and weve got great support so far, Bob Menikheim said.

Don't Edit

More beer, wine and drinks stories at NYup.com

Follow our coverage of beer, wine, spirits and more at NYup.com/drinks.

Recent stories:

The next beer in the Ommegang/Game of Thrones series: A barleywine

Wine tasting: Mulled wine with a Finger Lakes red

Move over rye, triticale's the thing at this Upstate NY distillery

Don't Edit
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- New York should consider creating its own individual mandate or take other steps to protect its health insurance market now that the Obamacare individual mandate is scheduled to be repealed, according to a state insurance trade group.

The unpopular Obamacare individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to get insurance or pay a tax penalty, is scheduled to be repealed as part of the Republican tax reform package passed by Congress.

The New York Health Plan Association says eliminating the mandate could lead to higher premiums and a return of a "death spiral" in New York's individual insurance market.

In 1992 the state required health insurers to provide coverage at the same cost to all individuals, regardless of medical condition. But the law did not mandate that all individuals get coverage. That triggered what the insurance industry calls a death spiral.

Many people waited until they got sick to buy coverage, while young, healthy individuals went without insurance. Premium rates more than tripled while the number of people buying individual coverage plummeted. By 2013, the year before Obamacare took effect, New York had the nation's highest insurance rates.

"New York's individual market must be protected to prevent a return to the unsustainable market conditions pre-2013," said Paul F. Macielak, president and CEO of the state association.

Some other states such as Connecticut, New Jersey and California are considering imposing state individual mandates. Massachusetts has had an individual mandate since 2006.

Leslie Moran, the association's senior vice president, said an individual mandate is one of several strategies the state should consider. New York could also use some of the more than $5 billion it collects annually from insurers to offset premium increases or fund a high-risk pool that covers insurers' high-cost insurance claims.

Bill Hammond, a health policy expert with the Empire Center, said in a recent blog post the loss of the Obamacare individual mandate will hurt New York much less than other states.

The mandate is a weak deterrent against going uninsured in New York because insurance costs here are among the highest in the U.S., according to Hammond.

For 2017, the penalty for not having insurance is $695, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is greater. Hammond said for many New Yorkers without employer health benefits that's still thousands of dollars less than the cost of a typical health plan in the individual market.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates eliminating the federal mandate would cause 13 million fewer people to be covered by 2027.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- New York wants to spend $65 million to prevent harmful algae blooms in Skaneateles Lake and 11 other Upstate lakes.

New York saw major outbreaks of algae blooms last summer in many bodies of water. Toxic algae blooms in Skaneateles Lake caused major concern because the lake supplies drinking water to the City of Syracuse and other municipalities.

"We need to stop it before it becomes a crisis," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today during a visit to the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.

Cuomo said he will include $65 million in his proposed budget to address the environmental problem. He expects to get bipartisan support in the state Legislature for the proposal.

Algae blooms can carry liver toxins that can sicken people and kill pets.

In addition to causing health problems, algae blooms hurt tourism, Cuomo said.

Because the causes of algae blooms vary from lake to lake, there's no single solution, according to Cuomo. Individual plans must be developed for each lake, he said.

Under his proposal, four regions of the state would come up with plans for their lakes based on input from national experts, SUNY ESF and local experts.

Those plans would be developed between February and May, then implemented before the hot weather arrives.

"We must move with speed and haste," Cuomo said.
DEER PARK, Ill., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chicagoland-based Plexus Financial Services, LLC, a firm specializing in corporate retirement plan advisory services, has had two associates honored by a leading industry lobbying group.



Plexus Financial Services Executive Vice President and Practice Leader Allison Winge and Vice President of Client Relations Pamela Appell have been named Top Women Advisors for 2017 by the National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA). The honor recognizes excellence in retirement plan advisory. Top Women Advisor winners were selected by a panel of judges, with nearly 600 retirement advisors receiving nominations.

Winge was selected a Captain, a designation given to leaders of retirement plan advisory firms. Appell was chosen an All-Star, an honor for top producers. Winge and Appell each have about two decades of experience in corporate retirement plan advisory.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Plexus Groupe LLC, Plexus Financial Services offers fiduciary assistance, participant education, investment consulting, plan design, and provider management for corporate retirement plans, including 401(k) and 403(b) plans.

We are extremely proud of the recognition Allison and Pamela have received, said Brian F. Griffin, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Plexus Groupe. Their tireless advocacy on behalf of retirement plan sponsors and participants is to be commended, and we cannot thank them enough for the impact they have had on Plexus Financial Services and our clients. The entire Plexus family salutes Allison and Pamela for their excellent work.

An affiliate of the American Retirement Association, NAPA is an advocacy group for the retirement plan advisory industry. Plexus Financial Services is a member of NAPA.

Disclosure regarding NAPAs Top Women Advisors

The list is formed through an advisor application process supporting a potential nomination from the National Association of Plan Advisors, an affiliate organization of the American Retirement Association, a non-profit association. The nomination acknowledges excellence and contributions within the profession. No fee is charged for application, nomination, or selection; however, only NAPA Firm Partners are allowed to participate. Among various selection criteria, annual dues are required to obtain NAPA Firm Partner Membership.

Disclosure regarding NAPA/ARA

The National Association of Plan Advisors is a non-profit professional society backed by the American Retirement Association (ARA). The materials provided are intended for instruction only and are not a substitute for professional advice.

The American Retirement Association is a non-profit professional organization with two major goals: to educate all retirement plan and benefits professionals, and to create a framework of policy that gives every working American the ability to have a comfortable retirement. The American Retirement Association is comprised of four premier retirement industry associations: the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA), the ASPPA College of Pension Actuaries (ACOPA), the National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA), and the National Tax-deferred Savings Association (NTSA).

For additional information, please contact NAPA (napa-net.org) and the American Retirement Association (usaretirement.org) at 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 750, Arlington, Va., 22203. Both organizations can be reached by telephone at 703-516-9300.

Disclosure regarding Plexus Financial Services, LLC

Plexus Financial Services, LLC (PFS) does not provide specific investment, tax, and/or legal advice, and the information referenced/provided is not specific to any companys or individuals circumstances. The materials referenced/provided are general in nature and provided for educational purposes based upon publicly available information from sources believed to be reputable and reliable; we cannot assure the accuracy or completeness of these materials and caution you to use personal diligence in review before relying or acting upon any information presented. Any general information referenced/provided is not be construed as personalized investment, tax, and/or legal advice. Always consult an advisor, attorney and/or tax professional regarding your specific situation.

This communication is strictly intended for individuals residing in the states of Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin and does not provide any information regarding any offers or services directly provided by PFS. The information referenced/provided is not to be considered an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer.

PFS is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Plexus Groupe LLC. Advisory services are offered through Plexus Financial Services LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC which transacts business in states where it is properly registered, or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements, member FINRA (www.finra.org) and the SIPC (www.sipc.com). SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Commission nor does it indicate that the adviser has attained a particular level of skill or ability.

You may request receipt of PFSs Form ADV, Privacy Policy Statement, Code of Ethical Behavior, and Conflict of interest Policy at any time by written request to info@plexusfs.com. For additional details or questions regarding this or any information provided by or related to PFS, please visit our website at www.plexusfs.com. Plexus Financial Services is located at 21805 Field Parkway, Suite 300, Deer Park, Illinois 60010. To contact us by phone, please call (847) 307-6222.
TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A 2016 IBM cyber security intelligence report found that 60 percent of all cyber-attacks were related to, or directly the result of, insider activity. Cody Wray, Co-Managing Partner of Tampa FL based Adsero Security, observes that these security breaches often originate from three unique sources within an organizations known security perimeter.



Malicious Insider: This individual has motive to harm. He or she could be a disgruntled employee, one facing workplace discipline or financial difficulties, or an individual using work privileges for personal gain.

Negligent Insider: This employee is bypassing company cyber security protocols to be more productive or save time. He or she is careless in securing data or losing credentials, or is falling prey to phishing attacks that can result in security breaches, theft of sensitive data and the introduction of malware into an organizations IT systems. These individuals often knowingly exceed the organizations risk tolerance.

Third Parties: Subcontractors, vendors, and business partners may all have access to your systems. However, your ability to ensure they adhere to best practices is limited. To maintain your organizations cyber security standards, all third parties should be treated as a security risk.

Employees and associates can pose the biggest cyber security threat, whether their actions or intentional or not, says Wray. Establishing a culture of security through an employee awareness training program is essential. And, once you have an entity-wide security program in place, an organization must continually evolve with it through ongoing employee training and consistent security program maintenance and updates. Finally, remember that practicing basic cyber hygiene can address or mitigate many security breach attempts.



Wray says that with diligence, internal threats can be monitored and remediated. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics support the application of crowdsourced data regarding known external threats to your organizations internal activities. AI and big data analytics also allow for correlation of multiple internal data points highlighting anomalies that suggest a security risk, Wray advises.

ADSERO OFFERS COMPLIMENTARY SECURITY SCANS

As a service to IT teams at large firms seeking to strengthen their data security protocols in a business environment becoming riskier by the day, Adsero Security announces complimentary external vulnerability scans of internet-facing corporate networks, including up to four external domains or IP addresses.

The offer is in response to proof of increased computer-driven cyber-attacks on U.S. firms identified by Adseros intercept tracking technologies at its Tampa headquarters.

For more information, or for a confidential IT security consultation, please call 813-616-5055 or visit info@adserosecurity.com.


NASA wants to send a spacecraft to Proxima Centauri, Earths nearest stellar neighbor, in the next 50 years or so.

Scientists from the U.S. space agency recently presented a paper at the American Geophysical Unions Fall 2017 meeting in New Orleans, discussing the same. The researchers talked about a possible future mission, which would need a spacecraft traveling at a tenth of the speed of light. The agency is working on developing such a spacecraft by 2069.

Proxima Centauri Mission 2069

Anthony Freeman from the NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory spoke at length on his paper titled The First Interstellar Explorer: What should it do when it Arrives at its Destination?

The researcher talked about the probable project, a 40-year-long mission to travel to the exoplanet, which is located in the habitable zone of one of the nearest stellar neighbors of the solar system. It would be one of the most ambitious undertakings of mankind.

The project has not been named formally yet as it is too early in the day and the technology needed for most of the mission steps does not exist yet. Freeman, however, added that there is still time in hand to work on the technicalities as the mission will be launched only after 50 years.

"It's very nebulous," Freeman said.

The mission will be divided into six stages, the first of which is the simplest as it consists of traveling outside the solar system, a feat that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has already accomplished.

The other five stages include surviving the journey to Proxima Centauri, lowering the speed on approach, making a trajectory adjustment for a near encounter, getting data, and relaying the information collected back to Earth. All the five stages needed technological advances that are still beyond the current capabilities of mankind.

Proxima Centauri - Solar Systems Closest Stellar Neighbor

The smallest of the Alpha Centauri systems three stars, the Proxima Centauri, is a red dwarf star that is located around four light-years away. The star system is also home to Proxima b, an exoplanet that has the size of Earth, which was discovered in 2016. The planet orbits its host star at around 4 million kilometers.

Proxima b is said to be a probable candidate for being able to support life, in spite of its close distance to the Proxima Centauri. Any probe that travels close to the planet is going to search for alien life signs on it or at least try to determine if it can support life.

2069 will be the 100th anniversary of humans stepping on an extraterrestrial surface for the first time a man landed on the moon in 1969. Thus, launching the interstellar mission in that year will act as a tribute to the U.S. space agencys earlier accomplishment.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 22, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (NYSE:AMG) a global asset management company, today announced the appointment of Kevin Haran as Managing Director, Head of Distribution, Australia and New Zealand, effective January 1, 2018. In this role, Mr. Haran will lead AMGs distribution efforts for the region, focusing on developing new business opportunities and serving clients on behalf of AMGs Affiliates in the region. He replaces Gregor Rennie, who indicated his intention to step down from AMG. Mr. Haran will be based in AMGs Sydney office and report to Hugh Cutler, Head of Global Distribution.

With over 15 years of sales and distribution experience in the Australian and New Zealand asset management markets, Mr. Haran joins AMG from Natixis Investment Managers S.A., where he was most recently Head of Institutional Sales, Australia and New Zealand. Prior to his role at Natixis, Mr. Haran held senior sales positions at Macquarie Investment Management Australia Pty Ltd. and Colonial First State Investments Ltd.

Over the past decade, AMG has steadily enhanced our presence in Australia and New Zealand, offering an increasingly diverse array of leading active investment strategies to both institutional and wholesale clients across a growing number of our outstanding Affiliates, said Hugh Cutler, AMGs Head of Global Distribution. Through AMGs global distribution strategy, which combines Affiliate-driven marketing efforts with the scale and resources of a global franchise, we have met an increasing investor appetite for global assets in Australia, and given their industry-leading offerings in global equities and across a broad range of diversifying alternatives, our Affiliates are positioned to continue to generate strong returns for Australian clients going forward.

Mr. Cutler added, Kevin brings to his new role an impressive professional track record, strong network of relationships, and a clear understanding of the growing investor interest in differentiated alpha-generating strategies. He will be an excellent resource for our team, Affiliates and clients in the region, and we look forward to his contributions.

With sales and marketing offices located in major financial centers in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America, AMGs distribution platform enhances the global reach of its Affiliates marketing efforts both within the U.S. and around the world. AMGs Affiliates are leading boutique investment firms recognized for their best-in-class, long-term performance track records across a broad array of active investment products, particularly in global equity and alternative strategies.

About AMG

AMG is a global asset management company with equity investments in leading boutique investment management firms. AMGs innovative partnership approach allows each Affiliates management team to own significant equity in their firm while maintaining operational autonomy. AMGs strategy is to generate shareholder value through the growth of existing Affiliates, as well as through investments in new Affiliates and additional investments in existing Affiliates. In addition, AMG provides centralized assistance to its Affiliates in strategic matters, marketing, distribution, product development and operations. As of September 30, 2017, AMGs aggregate assets under management were approximately $804 billion in more than 550 investment products across a broad range of active, return-oriented strategies. For more information, please visit the Companys website at www.amg.com.

Certain matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to our expectations regarding the performance of our business, our financial results, our liquidity and capital resources and other non-historical statements. You can identify these forward-looking statements by the use of words such as outlook, guidance, believes, expects, potential, continues, may, will, should, seeks, approximately, predicts, projects, intends, plans, estimates, pending investments, anticipates or the negative version of these words or other comparable words. Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including changes in the securities or financial markets or in general economic conditions, the availability of equity and debt financing, competition for acquisitions of interests in investment management firms, the ability to close pending investments, the investment performance and growth rates of our Affiliates and their ability to effectively market their investment strategies, the mix of Affiliate contributions to our earnings and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described under the section entitled Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our periodic filings with the SEC, which are accessible on the SECs website at www.sec.gov. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements that are included in this release and in our filings with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

From time to time, AMG may use its website as a distribution channel of material Company information. AMG routinely posts financial and other important information regarding the Company in the Investor Relations section of its website at www.amg.com and encourages investors to consult that section regularly.
NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR THROUGH U.S. NEWSWIRES

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GFG Resources Inc. (TSX-V:GFG) (OTCQB:GFGSF) (GFG or the Company) is pleased to announce that further to its press release dated December 11, 2017 it has completed the acquisition of the West Porcupine Property from Probe Metals Inc. (TSX-V:PRB) (Probe) (the West Porcupine Property Acquisition) and the Swayze Project from Osisko Mining Inc. (TSX:OSK) (Osisko) (the Swayze Property Acquisition). Immediately prior to closing the acquisitions, the Company also closed the first tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the Concurrent Financing) for gross proceeds of C$4,228,305.

West Porcupine Property Acquisition

GFG has acquired Probes 100% interest in the West Porcupine property, a land package consisting of 198 claims and covering approximately 245 km2 located 50 kilometres southwest of Timmins, Ontario, in exchange for the issuance of 6,477,883 common shares of GFG, representing an implied purchase price of approximately C$3.5 million based on GFGs 20-day volume weighted average share price (VWAP) ending December 7, 2017.

Swayze Property Acquisition

GFG has acquired Osiskos 100% interest in the Swayze property, a land package consisting of 56 claims and covering approximately 120 km2 located 40 kilometres from Borden, Ontario, in exchange for the issuance of 1,110,494 common shares of GFG, representing an implied purchase price of approximately C$600,000 based on GFGs 20-day VWAP ending December 7, 2017.

Concurrent Private Placement

The Company has completed the first tranche of the Concurrent Financing by way of a non-brokered private placement. Due to higher than expected demand, the Company increased its flow-through common shares offering previously announced (See news release dated December 11, 2017) from 3,636,364 to 5,460,555 flow-through common shares at a price of C$0.55 per share for gross proceeds of C$3,003,305 (the FT Private Placement). The Company also issued 2,450,000 units at a price of C$0.50 per unit for gross proceeds of C$1,225,000 (the Non-FT Private Placement), with each unit consisting of one common share and one-half of a common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional common share at an exercise price of C$0.75 for a period of 24 months following closing. Gross proceeds raised under the FT Private Placement will be used for exploration activities in Ontario that will qualify as Canadian Exploration Expenses. Net proceeds raised under the Non-FT Private Placement will be used for exploration activities at the Companys projects in Wyoming and Ontario as well as for general working capital purposes.

The Company intends to close a final tranche on or about January 11, 2018, for up to the balance of the remaining units of the Concurrent Financing previously disclosed.

The Company paid cash finder's fees to certain arms length finders of up to 6% of the gross proceeds of the Concurrent Financing. The Concurrent Financing is subject to final approval by the TSX Venture Exchange. The securities issued pursuant to this tranche of the Concurrent Financing are subject to a four month hold expiring on April 22, 2018.

Qualified Persons

Brian Skanderbeg, P.Geo. and M.Sc., serves as President and CEO of GFG, and is a qualified person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Skanderbeg has reviewed and approved the information contained in this news release.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold within the United States unless an exemption from such registration is available.

For further information, please contact:

GFG Resources Inc.

Brian Skanderbeg, President & CEO

Phone: (306) 931-0930

or

Marc Lepage, Vice President, Business Development

Phone: (306) 931-0930

Email: info@gfgresources.com

Website: www.gfgresources.com

About GFG Resources Inc.

GFG Resources is a publicly traded precious metals exploration company headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, whose shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange (GFG) and on the OTCQB (GFGSF). The Company controls 100% of the Rattlesnake Hills Gold Project, a district scale gold exploration project located approximately 100 kilometres southwest of Casper, Wyoming, U.S. The geologic setting, alteration and mineralization seen in the Rattlesnake Hills are similar to other gold deposits of the Rocky Mountain alkaline province which, collectively, have produced over 50 million ounces of gold.

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.

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

All statements, other than statements of historical fact, contained in this news release constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (referred to herein as forward-looking statements). Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, disclosure regarding possible events, completion of the second tranche of the Concurrent Financing, conditions or financial performance that is based on assumptions about future economic conditions and courses of action; planned use of proceeds, expenditures and budgets and the execution thereof. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate or believes, or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results, may, could, would, will, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved or the negative connotation thereof.

All forward-looking statements are based on various assumptions, including, without limitation, the expectations and beliefs of management, the assumed long-term price of gold, that the current exploration and other objectives concerning its mineral projects can be achieved and that its other corporate activities will proceed as expected; that the current price and demand for gold will be sustained or will improve; the continuity of the price of gold and other metals, economic and political conditions and operations;; all necessary approvals and consents in respect of the Concurrent Financing, including requisite regulatory, securityholder and court approvals, as applicable, will be obtained in a timely manner and on acceptable terms; and that general business and economic conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner. In addition, the similarity or proximity of other gold deposits of the Rocky Mountain alkaline province to the Rattlesnake Hill Gold Project is not necessarily indicative of the geological setting, alteration and mineralization of the Rattlesnake Hills Gold Project.

Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of GFG to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks and uncertainties related to the second tranche of the Concurrent Financing not being completed; actual results of current exploration activities; environmental risks; future prices of gold; operating risks; accidents, labour issues and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining government approvals or financing; and other risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are not, and should not be construed as being, exhaustive.

Although GFG has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. In addition, forward-looking statements are provided solely for the purpose of providing information about managements current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of our operating environment. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date hereof and GFG assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws.
HIGH RIVER, Alberta, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Investment Company of Canada Limited ("Western") (TSXV:WI) today announced that, subject to final conditions and approvals, it will acquire a 75% interest in Ocean Sales Group Ltd. (Ocean Sales). The transaction is scheduled to close in early January.



Ocean Sales is one of North Americas largest Exhibition Retailers with operations throughout Canada and the USA. Founded 35 years ago, Calgary based Ocean Sales sells a unique line of products direct to consumers through live demonstrations at public events including major consumer shows and fairs across the continent. In addition, Ocean Sales has established a successful and growing partnership with Costco, whereby Ocean Sales operates live demonstration kiosks within selected locations.

Western CEO Scott Tannas comments: We at Western are very proud to partner with Founders George and Barbara McBride in this unique and successful business. Their skill and expertise has driven Ocean Sales remarkable success to date and will continue to be applied toward a very exciting future. We are also very impressed with the depth and strength of the management team that provides nimble logistics in support of a large group of talented sales people across North America.

Ocean Sales Founder George McBride said, My family and I are very happy to have found a partner that is focused on investing in Western Canadian business success stories like ours. We are very proud of what we have built, and are determined to set the stage for significant growth in the future. The reputation and business track record of Westerns founders was a big factor in our decision to establish this partnership.

About Ocean Sales

Ocean Sales markets high-quality, household products through live demonstrations at leading consumer shows and fairs throughout Canada and the US. We are headquartered in Calgary with four warehouses located in Calgary, Montreal, Pickering and Tumwater, Washington. Ocean Sales is the largest exhibition retailer in Canada with approximately $25 million in revenue and actively participates in 390 shows in North America and demonstrates select products at all Costco Canada locations.

Further information about Ocean Sales and its products can be found at www.oceansales.ca.

About Western

Western is a unique publicly traded, private equity company founded by a group of successful Western Canadian businesspeople, and dedicated to building and maintaining ownership in successful Western Canadian companies, and helping them to grow. The Companys shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol WI. For more information on the Company, please visit its website at www.winv.ca

Q3 2017 Financial Statements

Western confirms that it has filed its interim financial statements and MD&A for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017 (Q3 2017). All results are presented in Canadian dollars. Readers should refer to the September 30, 2017 Management Discussion and Analysis Quarterly Highlights, and the consolidated interim financial statements for complete information, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION

The Western Investment Company of Canada Limited

Scott Tannas

President and Chief Executive Officer

(403) 6522663

stannas@winv.ca

Advisory

This news release may contain certain forwardlooking information and statements, including without limitation, statements pertaining to board approvals, satisfactory completion of due diligence, entering into a purchase and sale agreement, receipt of debt financing and obtaining regulatory approvals. Statements containing the words: 'believes', 'intends', 'expects', 'plans', 'seeks' and 'anticipates' and any other words of similar meaning are forwardlooking. All statements included herein involve various risks and uncertainties because they relate to future events and circumstances beyond Western's control. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. A description of assumptions used to develop such forwardlooking information and a description of risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forwardlooking information can be found in Western's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Any forward looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and Western does not undertake to update any forwardlooking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Some advice for the angry mob Sometimes, I get embarrassed for people who show up to speak at city council or township board meetings. Im talking...

Preparing teens for their futures with soft skills Businesses of every size and industry continue to identify labor shortages as a top challenge  across the country and...

Public Act 184 a real loser for school sports in Michigan There is a crisis in Michigan schools today that centers on one problem: Not having enough people. In discussions with...

Where to find non-partisan ballot information Thank you for your non-biased bullet points explaining the three state ballot proposals in "A look at the three state...
Kyle Duncan talks to U.S. Senator John Kennedy before the hearing on Duncans nomination for the 5th Circuit as U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy talks to someone in the foreground.
If you have watched a recent congressional hearing on a nominee for a lifetime appointment on the U.S. District Court for the District of Colu
John Besh, Alon Shaya clash over price, more in legal feud for N.O. restaurant name

John Besh, Alon Shaya clash over price, more in legal feud for N.O. restaurant name
Bankruptcy judge clears way for First NBC Bank's estate to pursue plan for marketing tax assets
The Canberra school cleaners who were left without work for a fortnight after an ACT government crackdown on their industry will receive a special surprise ahead of Christmas.

More than 200 cleaners could get an ex-gratia payment of $1100 after they were laid off by their employers when the government condensed its school cleaning contracts.

United Voice secretary Lyndal Ryan and school cleaner Namgay Namgay. Credit:Jamila Toderas

United Voice secretary Lyndal Ryan said cleaners were "relieved" by the one-off sum.

"It's been a tough few years for some," Ms Ryan said.
Mitchell Wadsworth is among bartenders at some high-end Melbourne bars who are paid below award rates and less than the price of some of the cocktails they serve.

When he started work in August last year, Mr Wadsworth said he was paid a flat rate of $22 an hour until February this year with the Thank You, Come Again Melbourne Bar Group.

Bartender Mitchell Wadsworth Credit:Joe Amao

United Voice, the union representing hospitality workers, said the bar group paid workers below the cost of some of its cocktails including the $24 "border control" and the $23 "temple".
The Fish and Chips trains (C8) have gotten responses on a huge scale. David Bennetts of Bowral has done his research and states: "These were not Newcastle trains, but commuter trains to the Blue Mountains. The Fish started with names of the crews, the driver being John Herron (sounded like Herring), his fireman was John Salmon, and the guard was John Pike. A subsequent following train was given the name 'The Chips'." Noel Foster of Perth backs this up: "The Fish originated in the 19th century when it was driven by John Herron whose nickname was the Big Fish. The Chips was a spin-off of the Fish."

Talk of enjoying the hot weather while it lasts (C8) caused Margaret Partridge of Newport Beach to remember how they describe the summer weather in Finland: "Nine months of anticipation followed by three months of disappointment."

Tim Crawshaw of Kenthurst was attending the school graduation ceremony of one his grandchildren and fell victim to the growing problem of people with mobile phones recording the event and blocking the view of those seated behind. "On this occasion," he writes, "the worst offender was a woman who used an iPad. I complained to the guy sitting next to me who said he knew her. He quickly tapped out a message to her on his mobile which read: 'Afterwards will you show me your video as right now you're blocking my view?' She then scrambled out into the aisle and continued recording." Is there a protocol for dealing with this?

Kerrielynn Clark of Kiama poses the question: "When did we stop having conversations 'about' things and start having them 'around' things?"

A record for being summoned for jury duty? "My 101-year-old mother-in-law has just been summoned for jury duty with the estimated trial length being 18 weeks," shares Ric Bentley of Diamond Beach. "She would be happy to do her civic duty  provided the court could provide an ambulance for the trip to the Supreme Court, a wheelchair, hearing devices, seeing-eye dog and maybe a bed."
An ATAR is still the best pathway to get an offer to a university. If Brendan looked at the top ATARs he would see that Erindale College students do achieve excellent scores. I agree with Brendan that there are problems in Tuggeranong schools but we need unbiased data, and statistical tools that measure educational value-adding rather than crude outcome statistics. Andrew Wardrop, Rivett (retired Deputy Principal of Erindale College) Too many car trips

I get it. Too many car trips in Canberra. So we need to improve public transport. Let's make the trips longer than current bus trips and force commuters to change two or three times. That works. Naysayers, look at the Gold Coast. Yes, I know there's a hospital and a university on the route, but we'll have Woden Plaza. The White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter assure me that's even better. Maria Greene, Curtin Wheels of progress I offer some comments in response to Derek Wrigley's "apprehensions about the safety of driverless vehicles" (Letters, December 15).

Chief Executive of the National Transport Commission, Paul Retter, announced on November 13 that "[Transport] Ministers have agreed to a goal of having an end-to-end regulatory system in place by 2020 to support the safe, commercial deployment of automated vehicles at all levels of automation." Wrigley's remark that "all users of computers will be aware of the many times that digital technology can go inexplicably wrong" is misleading in the context of driverless vehicles. Most commercial software has a very short time to market, and is often released with an attitude of let the user find the errors. Safety critical systems have long development times, redundant hardware, and rigorous change procedures. Autonomous vehicle research began at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg in the 1960s. Waymo/Google started its driverless vehicle project in 2009. Waymo announced its first driverless vehicle service in November this year, following years of testing on city roads. Soon the public will have to gauge the risks of electric, shared, autonomous vehicles against a demonstrably unsafe and increasingly uneconomical system of privately owned and driven vehicles.

John L Smith, Farrer Driverless danger Derek Wrigley (Letters December 16) makes a good point about driverless vehicles. They are generally supported on the basis that people are fallible. With regular use of driverless vehicles, people will become deskilled as drivers or not develop those skills in the first place. As passive occupants, their awareness of traffic around them will decline compared with the need to stay alert when in control of a vehicle. Reaction times will, therefore, be longer even if it is possible to interfere with the control of a driverless vehicle. A separate point about electric vehicles in general that never seems to be discussed is what will happen when they become the norm and have to be recharged.

How long does this take and how frequently will it be necessary? How large an electricity supply system will be needed to cope when numerous vehicles are connected at the same time? The present system of petrol stations is quite separate from the domestic power supply and vehicles can pop in, top up and be out within five minutes  not so with recharging electrically. Some information on this issue would be useful. R. Boxall, Hawker

Stand for humanity Offshore detention and boat turn-backs place us in the shabby ranks of the push-back nations. Peter Dutton is dangerously over-powered, and counter-factual in his statements against people in the camps. Some have been found to be refugees, but held back with Kafka-esque security assessments. The people in the remains of the camps are in danger.

It is our responsibility, and the government is attempting to avoid it. I urge all MPs, including mine, Gai Brodtmann, to stand for humanity against brutality. Michael Bradley, Canberra Australian monarchy Do Phillip Benwell (Letters, December 15) and other Australian monarchists really believe that a constitutional monarchy is necessary to protect citizens from the excesses of democratically elected governments? If so they should be advocating for an Australian Monarchy with an Australian Monarch living at "Yarralumla".

They would, of course, propose a method of selection for our first monarch and rules of succession, remuneration etc. that would at least have a prospect of being successful at a referendum. But perhaps monarchists are really just nostalgic for our British past. John F. Simmons, Kambah Capitalist bullying will never win  as lessons from Vietnam reveal I write in reference to the SBS series on the Vietnam War.

I grew up in the JFK, LBJ era, a time of lap dog Australian conservative prime ministers, and was fortunate not to be called up for national service as a 20-year-old in 1968. My father had served in the Pacific during World War Two and had no desire for a son to be involved in another Asian war. I was unfortunate to know a 21-year-old, also from Coolah, my place of abode in 1966, who was called up and who never returned from Vietnam. He was fatally wounded at Battle of Long Tan on August 18, that year. The SBS series shows how the conflict imploded against the US, despite it having more than half a million troops on the ground and absolute superior air power.

The conflict was not going to be won by America. It was not like defeating Japan or Germany. The homeland resistance gathered momentum across society. What was achieved by decades of superpower intervention in the Asian War and the loss of more than 55,000, mostly young American, lives? The north prevailed despite an unbelievable 3 million tonnes of relentless bombing, (1million more tonnes than was dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II). Saigon fell in 1975. Move forward to another era and the world is uneasy once again, as another trigger-happy White House administration threatens renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula.

The lap dog Australian Liberal government is again offering support. Even if the US is the policeman of the planet, will it never learn that capitalist bullying does not always win? What will it be? Peace by diplomacy or a nuclear Armageddon? Terry Webster, Ngunnawal Right and wrong

The thoughts of H. Ronald from Jerrabomberra are always a source of amusement, but his latest missive (Letters, December 19) is more absurd than most. Sustainable, non-polluting energy is not a figment of "green left ideology". Of the 10 leading wind power producing countries, at least six have right-wing governments, including the US and UK. On the other hand, H. Ronald does have a point about "bone-headed politicians", especially those who believe humanity is best served by burning coal, which destroys the environment and is hazardous to human health. I suggest that this Christmas, H. Ronald builds a coal-fired power station in his Jerra backyard so he's free from ever using ideologically abhorrent green-left renewable energy. Simon Tatz, Curtin

Renewable reality John L. Smith regards domestic solar panels as "defacing urban rooftops" (Letters, December 18). The ugliness or otherwise of rooftop solar panels is a matter of aesthetic opinion. However, Mr Smith overlooks at least one other fact: Domestic solar panels create areas of shade on the roofs, keeping the houses, particularly those with dark-coloured tiles (common in Canberra) a little cooler in summer. Mr Smith also queries the "right (of householders with rooftop solar panels) to draw energy from the grid". Households with rooftop solar panels, which are only partly subsidised by the government, also pay for electricity, unless they have sufficient solar panels and battery storage to disconnect from the grid, which only a few do.

The aim of the ACT government for the capital's energy needs to be met by 100per cent renewable sources is not a "fantasy". If Canberra had sufficient wind and solar-derived capacity, backed up by sufficient battery (or other) storage, it could of course be independent of the eastern-Australia grid. Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin Badge of honour John L Smith (CT Letters December 18) does not seem to know that people who choose to fit solar panels to their roofs also pay the same service fees to electricity retailers as the rest of us, if they wish to retain grid connection.

They also pay for whatever electricity they use from the grid, like the rest of us, and contribute to the reduction of peak loads during the day, unlike the rest of us. They are, in most cases, paid a pittance for the energy they put into the grid, which provides more energy to be used by the rest of us. To me, solar panels on a roof should be regarded as a badge of honour, signifying people who care about the environment and who are prepared to make some financial sacrifice for the welfare of others, including future generations. Richard Johnston, Kingston Not the same thing

The "move to mute charities" is a step backwards for open democracy. Unless common sense prevails, legislation targeting foreign donations to political parties will ban charities that receive international philanthropy from being able to advocate for Australians, for those in need in our region and on global issues which Australians care about. International philanthropy to Australia boosts the impact of domestic giving in alleviating hardship, gives voice to those who may otherwise be ignored, and contributes to a brighter future for many Australians. There is a categorical difference between donations to political parties and philanthropy for charitable purposes. It would damage the functioning of our democracy if there is failure to recognise this. Peter Graves, Curtin

Rot lies beneath A recent report of multiple fatalities and injuries caused by a collapsed timber deck in a Melbourne suburb should prompt all of us with timber decks and balconies to take prudent action this summer. Structures built from Oregon timber more than 20 years ago are particularly vulnerable and appearances can be deceptive as this timber can look firm on the surface but be prone to "dry rot" from the inside, particularly near ends of beams and where they join the wall or supporting posts. If a screwdriver can be pushed into these spongy areas, then repair or replacement is urgently necessary. A thorough inspection by an experienced professional or tradesperson is highly recommended. Allan Spira, Architect, Lyneham Narrow outlook

Section 44 of the constitution has knocked some strange worms out of the can. Michael Lane wrote, "For loyalty purposes we are part of Western culture, not just to a single country." (Letters, December 16) That sounds rather like the white Australia policy. It is a lot narrower than the concept of a British subject from the days of the empire, which Mr Lane mentioned. Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor Degree of comparison Too many people are going to universities in Australia, and not enough are learning vital trades. Rod Matthews, Melbourne,Vic

TO THE POINT CARRY ON, JOYCE With the news that Barnaby Joyce is to become the Minister for Infrastructure, I am hoping he brings the same sort of transparency, honesty, expertise and intelligence he brought to the management and oversight of the Murray Darling Water Basin. By the way, does this make the NBN the National Barnaby Network? John Passant, Kambah

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? It was bizarre watching a desperate Malcolm Turnbull crowing with excitement over winning a safe Liberal seat. Richard Keys, Ainslie STOP AT NOTHING So the tram extension to Woden will not be stopping at the hospital.

Given that Mitchell will also be devoid of any tram stops on the Gungahlin line, is there any truth in the rumours that to ensure trip times between Gungahlin and Civic and now Civic to Woden are kept to a minimum, they're cutting out all stops? Peter Toscan, Amaroo GILT-EDGED SURPLUSES M. Moore (Letters, December 18) says that G. Wilson "obviously forgets Mr Costello's budget surpluses". M. Moore obviously forgets that, apart from one, the rest of Costello's surpluses were based on increased taxation and the sale of Commonwealth-owned assets (including the vast majority of our gold reserves at giveaway prices). Roger Terry, Kingston

QUICK FIX Derek Wrigley (Letters, December 16) has some doubt about computer software running driverless cars. The simple solution is, if you suspect that a collision is about to occur, simply push the keyboard's following keys  all at the same time  namely ALT CTRL DELETE, and every thing will be OK in no time. Brian Hale, Wanniassa PRIORITIES PLEASE

The campaign by Peter FitzSimons against the redevelopment of three stadiums in Sydney needs to be replicated in Canberra to stop the unnecessary and costly extension of light rail to Woden. How can such expenditure be prioritised above pressing bus-based public transport, health, education and disability service needs? Mike Quirk, Garran HUE AND CRY Thanks to the tram vandals the white elephant now has some local colour.

Bryan Cossart, Stirling GET TO THE POINT A Liberal member was being questioned on the radio about what the government would do to turn the polls around. He immediately started talking about Labor. Don't they ever learn? It doesn't work. The public want to know what they are going to do. Ken Morehouse, Wangaratta
In light of climate change, can Snowy 2.0 promise there will be enough water to make it work? Rainfall and snowfalls are decreasing. The study claims it will be a backup when wind and solar farms are out of action. The introduction of batteries for solar storage, as seen in South Australia, means electricity will be stored for use at night; therefore, solar power will be reliable 24/7. There is more chance of the sun shining and the wind blowing than relying on enough precipitation to make Snowy 2.0 a good idea. Robyn Lewis, Raglan The Snowy 2.0 will proceed at 150 per cent of the budget and with a six-year lag period. It will be able to provide a fraction of the stored power provided by the SA batteries, and can only supply power to thousands of homes. It is more expensive and less efficient than the solar power farm that supplies Broken Hill, for example; a power source expected to be supported by battery storage well prior to the opening of Snowy 2.0. It looks like NBN 2.0 all over again. And to think we previously regarded ourselves as the clever country. Bernie de Vries, Bolwarra It is now "Snowy 2.0 + 50%".

Geoffrey Williamson, Woollahra Nation dealt a bad hand in cabinet reshuffle We can depend on Malcolm Turnbull to turn a positive end to a disastrous year back into bad news in record time ("No merit in Turnbull reshuffle", December 21). Together with Barnaby Joyce, he has produced an uninspiring new team and angered the factions. I recall him saying that the Liberal Party is not ruled by factions, and can still hear the derisive laughter that invoked. Along with regrets over citing the 30 negative Newspolls as a reason for dumping Abbott, he must now regret the "factions" remark as well. Graham Lum, North Rocks Back in 2016, our new PM put the fox in charge of the hen house by allowing Barnaby Joyce to be in charge of water. Now Joyce has moved to Infrastructure, and will approach it in a similar manner by building dams and irrigation channels; and in this will be aided by his new, morally conservative and out of the mainstream acolyte, who will represent the big water users in Queensland. Pity about anyone further south. Well done, Malcolm, you have put the interests of the nation at the bottom of your thoughts.

Tony Sullivan, Adamstown Heights Why cotton was ever given permission to grow in this dry land is beyond comprehension. Now, water is being illegally sucked up out of a dying water system to feed this thirsty brute that adds nothing to the nation. Apart from the greedy farmer of course. When will governments ever learn that the environment is more important than the economy? The Indigenous people lived here for more than 60,000 years and did no harm. Samantha McKay, Katoomba It seems that Malcolm Turnbull is striving to be remembered as the Prime Minister who took Australia back to the Middle Ages. First he sells out his commitment to managing climate change; then he embraces the loony notions of the opposition to same-sex marriage by bowing to the postal vote; and now science is in the outer ministry and sport is in cabinet. Can we expect a Minister for Religious Affairs to be announced in the next reshuffle? Time to elect some intelligent people to Parliament. Nick Hendel, Roseville

Empower at your peril David Wroe's interview with the new Home Affairs Minister ("Dutton flags espionage focus", December 21) dubs him the "political czar for national security". Behind Dutton, of course, is his Rasputin (department head Michael Pezzullo). Citizens concerned with diminishing privacy and civil liberties should be extremely wary of the further empowerment of this duo. Geoffrey Briot, Stanmore Let's expose carbon credits Congratulation to Noel Whittaker for exposing Bitcoin for what it is, an investment which fails every investment test and works on the greater fool theory ("Big business cleared to buy foreign carbon credits", December 20). Now will somebody in authority please stand up and expose carbon credits for what they are, viz pieces of paper purporting to represent dubious quantities of a colourless, odourless, not toxic, naturally occurring atmospheric trace gas. And now I read that "Big business will be cleared to buy foreign carbon credits". Even the Greens' Adam Bandt describes them as "dodgy permits from pig farms in China". They are without question, a scam exploited by both buyer and sellers.

Mike Cuming, Carlingford Sharyn Cullis (Letters, December 21) saw "vast areas of heat-absorbing roofs" while driving past a housing development in the west of Sydney. Why do all these houses not have solar panels? It should be mandatory to install these on all newly built dwellings and the NSW government should provide a rebate for doing so. Much better use of funds than stadiums, and the likelihood of blackouts would be decreased by the grid not being overloaded on heatwave days. Stephanie Edwards, Roseville Sharyn Cullis is right to be concerned about, amongst other things, the removal of trees and green space under this state government. And it is happening everywhere. Along Hickson Road's 'The Hungry Mile' we have just witnessed the removal of huge mature fig trees on the western side of the road. But there is hope. There is one tree still standing. Given the government's environmental destruction record it was probably an oversight. But even so, there is hope. Geoff Wannan, Dawes Point

What a dystopian Sydney Sharyn Cullis describes, and all too accurate. Swathes of livable Sydney have been demolished; houses, trees, public pools and more, to be paved with wall to wall units, cramped housing estates and roads, roads, roads. I saw Gladys Berejiklian blathering on about something deep in a tunnel under Sydney last night. Perhaps she was describing not some road to nowhere but the future livable Sydney deep in the cool earth. Don Smith, Ashfield Yet another publicity shoot for Gladys ("Digging near done: Premier tours tunnels", December 21). Has there ever been a Premier whose wardrobe is mainly orange or green fluoro? Peter Miniutti, Ashbury

The Opera House, which officially opened 45 years ago, and was partly funded from money raised by the Opera House Lottery (i.e from the private purses of the citizens of of NSW), is now being renovated to address its longstanding acoustic problems and update worn, unsafe and outdated equipment ("Scene not heard: $71m for sounds of silence", December 21). The Opera House is famous throughout the world and synonymous not only with Sydney but with Australia as a whole. Both directly and indirectly, it brings in billions of tourism dollars to Australia annually. Every day and every night of the year, thousands gather beneath its sails. The cost of these long overdue renovations is $71 million. There has been no knee-jerk, vote-garnering, big-business pacifying reaction to tear it down and replace it with a more user-friendly venue. No, just a sensible, well-thought-out plan to simply fix it at an acceptable cost. I suggest we apply the same strategy to our money-guzzling, half-empty stadiums. Helen Robinson, Killcare In reply to Gabrielle Merton (Letters December 20), "How can [government] close down a working rail line and plan to replace it with something that offers a reduced capacity?"  Gladys did it in Newcastle. To Geoff Wannan (Letters, December 20) "no other city has replaced an existing railway line with a metro line"  Gladys did it in Newcastle. To Graeme Finn (Letters, December 20) "The destruction of a well-patronised pubic rail linehas little to do with transport and more to do with privatisation and developer profits"  Gladys did it in Newcastle. Cost to put in new light rail $290 million; cost to remove perfectly good heavy rail $210 million. Sydney, be aware and wary. Ross Whitelaw, Newcastle I think it's Gillian Baldwin (Letters, December 21) who has been napping. Only last night I saw Luke Foley on the TV news with a "no stadiums" backdrop. Labor has been almost as loud as Fitzy on this.

John Lees, Castlecrag Lives before stadiums One of our professional development sessions on December 18 was a refresher course on CPR. I was shocked to hear that not all public schools have a defibrillator on the premises. I asked the presenter how much they cost. I was told a good one costs about $3000. Instead of spending billions on stadiums, I call on the Premier to outfit all schools with defibrillators that could potentially save lives. Rita Del Riccio-Zammit, Concord Your correspondent Dr Alan Garrity (Letters, December 20) has not done his homework. There have been at least four shark attacks in my memory all taking place in Middle Harbour: 18th January 1955, John Willis, Balmoral; 5th February 1955, Bruno Rautenburg, Sugarloaf Bay; 16th January 1960, Ken Murray, Roseville; 28th January 1963, Marcia Hathaway, Sugarloaf Bay. As a young man at the time, each of these attacks remained in my mind for many years. Perhaps Dr Garrity is too young to remember.

Tony Hill, Empire Bay True Christmas spirit Do we find the much-talked-about spirit of Christmas in frenzied shopping, glitzy decorations, or in the quiet spaces in between (Letters, December 21)? With, for instance, a family's ritual of putting out their nativity set year after year, even though Joseph is looking a bit wonky by now. With the elderly gents in my town who man the familiar Lions Club van selling Christmas cakes and puddings to raise money for community causes. With a local aged-care home, where the manager on Christmas Day will help serve up a lovely meal to the residents not taken out for the day, or those who have no family to take them out. It's shown by a doctor from the Royal Flying Doctor Service, saying on a TV news item he is quite happy to work on Christmas Day because he may get to help someone in a desperate situation. The spirit of Christmas will endure in its own quiet way. Joan Brown, Orange Contender for honour

Kim Hatherly (Letters, December 21) may you be nominated for the Letter of the Year for "Latest cabinet displays a distinct lack of talent". Ted Richards, Batemans Bay Kim Hartherly's brilliant expose of our federal politicians' backgrounds could have mentioned that the PM's is law and investment banking. Peter Skrzynecki, Eastwood Kim Hatherly paints a scary picture of our uninspiring federal cabinet. Don't worry, Kim, Peter Dutton seems well qualified to be Minister of Home Affairs, at last count he owned about seven of them.

John Grinter, Katoomba Brushing up on facts Memo to Bruce Stafford (Letters, December 21). They are brush turkeys, not bush turkeys. Ross Storey, Normanhurst All brush turkeys are found in Parliament House, Canberra so they're in short supply elsewhere as pest controllers. Their unfortunate city relative the ibis may substitute, however, since their beak is already bent towards the worms and bugs in the ground. The trouble with ibis is that in winter they fly off to the Bosphorus.
It's a familiar image: an Antarctic glacier melting in unprecedented warmth. The relentless process goes on without much visible change, until gradually, worn away beneath, the glacier can no longer hold together. The strain becomes too much. The ice splits. Another gigantic iceberg  an object so big that the Earth's maps must be redrawn  falls into the sea.

Something similar is happening in the mining industry, and the cause is the same: climate change. BHP, the world's largest mining company, has given notice to three major industry bodies of which it is a member  the Minerals Council of Australia, the World Coal Association and the US Chamber of Commerce  that it may have to break away. BHP has reviewed the policies and statements on climate change of all the industry bodies it belongs to, and has found these three act in support of views seriously at variance with its own position. That means, in effect, that it has been paying considerable sums to industry representatives who are lobbying against the company's interests on the issue. If they don't stop, a split is inevitable.

Ice sheets frozen for centuries are melting. Credit:SHUTTERSTOCK

Environmental groups rarely see eye to eye with mining companies  even though mining supplies the raw materials on which much of the world's prosperity depends. Many will disagree strongly with BHP's outlook, which still sees fossil fuels as helping to supply the world's energy needs for decades to come. BHP's priorities are not those of, for example, the renewable energy industry. That is unavoidable. But if BHP's priorities are self-interested, they are clear and they are prudent  to preserve as far as possible the existing economic and financial system, which climate change already threatens with massive, uncontrollable disruption.

All should welcome the company's activism first, in acknowledging the fact of climate change; second, in accepting the urgency of acting to mitigate it; and third, in criticising those interests which in their short-sightedness seek to frustrate the changes needed. Those priorities should be greeted as the conservative minimum, the baseline shared by all, on which more ambitious environmental initiatives can be built.
Stacey looks out from behind the bars of her cage.at Mr Kim's dog meat farm in Namyangju, South Korea. Credit:Jean Chung fr Humane Society International "We had a core team of three expert rescuers and a rolling team of 10-12 extra members from various Humane Society International offices including South Korea, Britain, Canada, the US and the Philippines. "We work in partnership with dog meat farmers who are looking to leave the trade to start a new, humane livelihood. Adam Parascandola, director of animal protection and crisis response of Humane Society International, places Ava into a crate. Credit:Jean Chung for Humane Society International "The process usually takes some months from when the dog meat farm is identified - usually initiated by the farmer approaching us for help - until the last of the dogs leave South Korea on their way to the US, Canada or Britain," she said.

"Like all farmers whose dog meat operations we help shut down, we are helping farmer Kim develop a business plan to transition into his new livelihood and also giving him a small start-up grant to help him launch his new business. Lola Webber, left, Humane Society International's campaign manager for South Korea and Abby Hubbard, deputy director of the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, carry a rescued dog in a crate. Credit:Jean Chung for Humane Society International "It's a blueprint for change that we hope the Korean government under President Moon Jae-in will adopt. "In all the 10 dog meat farms that we have closed, Humane Society International has worked in co-operation with the farmers. Farmer Kim didn't live on site but he attended the rescue almost every day, and happily discussed his journey with attending media." Rescued dogs from South Korea arrive at the Humane Animal Welfare Society in Wisconsin. Credit:Kenny Yoo for Humane Society International

Up to 80 per cent of dog meat is eaten during the hottest days of summer, during South Korea's dog-eating festival called boknal. The meat is usually made into a spicy soup called bosintang. Small dogs can also be made into a herbal drink called gaesoju. HSI says the dog meat industry is in legal limbo in South Korea; neither legal nor illegal. Many provisions of the Animal Protection Act are routinely breached, such as the ban on killing animals in a brutal way including hanging by the neck, killing in public areas or in front of other animals of the same species. Nara Kim, an anti-dog meat campaigner with HSI in South Korea, said: "As a Korean myself, I'm hugely proud to be able to save these beautiful dogs and stop their daily suffering.

"Most people in South Korea have no idea how atrocious these dog meat farms are and what physical and mental misery these animals go through. "Eating dog is already a declining habit in South Korea, but if people could see the sorrow of these dogs and the disgusting unhygienic conditions in which they're raised, I think even more people would stop eating it." A combination of growing societal shame, increased difficulty in selling dogs as the appetite for dog meat declines, and regret at the suffering of dogs, leads many farmers to seek a way out. With the help of HSI, some elderly dog farmers will be able to retire without the hard labour of dog farming. Others will work with the organisation to transition into alternative livelihoods such as water delivery or blueberry farming. Most people in South Korea don't eat dog meat regularly.

In fact, HSI says, opposition to eating dog is growing among Korean citizens, and the President recently adopted a dog named Tory who was said to have been rescued from a dog meat farm. "I originally started farming dogs because I heard it would make money," Mr Kim said. "But now in South Korea even in the summer the trade has reduced by about one third, "I also have a young child, and the dog farming business won't look good for her because she really likes dogs. "Working with Humane Society International makes me feel great for the dogs, but at the same time I'm nervous to step into a new business.

"Before Humane Society International, I wouldn't talk to the dogs and I stopped myself from caring about them because it made it harder selling them to traders. "But after I decided to work with [them], I started to talk to these dogs and told them to hang on in there. I told them they are going to have a much better life. "And I mean it. I feel really great and happy for them." HSI's president Kitty Block, who joined the dog farm rescue effort, said: "I've worked in animal protection for many years but I can tell you, seeing these dog farms for myself has been one of the most emotionally confronting things I've ever done. "As we count down to the Winter Games, it's clear that it's not sufficient for South Korea to temporarily hide the dog meat trade in the shadows when the world's media shines its Olympics spotlight. What's needed is a commitment to phase it out for good."
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have released a series of intimate portraits to mark their engagement.

Queen Elizabeth's 33-year-old grandson, Harry, fifth-in-line to the throne, and Markle, 36, who starred in the US TV legal drama Suits, announced their engagement last month.

Kensington Palace released two of the photographs from the romantic photo shoot to the media, and later posted a candid image from the shoot to Instagram.

"Thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments following the release of Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle's engagement photographs," the post said.
A two-year-old girl has died in hospital after she was hit by a reversing car in Sydney's south-west.

The driver was "absolutely hysterical" after hitting the girl with a Kia car at the rear of a mechanic workshop in Campsie, police said.

Emergency services were called to Canterbury Road, just past Beamish Street, about 10.40am to reports of a toddler being hit by a car, a NSW Ambulance spokesman said.

The girl went into cardiac arrest and was rushed to Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick in a critical condition, but later died.
A man faces possible jail time after impersonating a doctor at Queenslands major childrens hospital. Nicholas Brett Delaney pleaded guilty on Thursday morning to attempted fraud and two other charges but would not know his penalty until next year after he was told to seek legal representation. Nicholas Brett DeLaney has been accused of impersonating a doctor for several months at a Queensland children's hospital and a Ronald McDonald House. Credit:AAP You shouldnt underestimate the seriousness of your offences, Magistrate Stuart Shearer said. The court heard the wardsman had been passing himself off as a qualified doctor at the Lady Cilento Childrens Hospital and nearby Ronald McDonald Children's House in South Brisbane since May this year.

Charges were laid on December 7 after security staff at the hospital were alerted to the problem. The police prosecutor said he was purporting to be Dr Nick Delaney to hospital employees and other staff and accessing staff-only areas but it was unclear if there was contact with patients. The police prosecutor told the Brisbane Magistrates Court the Sunnybank Hills man, originally from New South Wales, was found with a hospital lanyard, which was seized. After Mr Delaney pleaded guilty, Magistrate Stuart Shearer adjourned the matter for sentencing on January 29, urging Mr Delaney to seek legal representation in the meantime. Its hardly a trivial offence to be impersonating a doctor in a childrens hospital over an extended period of time, he said, adding that possible penalties included imprisonment.
Former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has been told to resign from the Liberal National Party.

Mr Newman told Sky News he received a letter from the party suggesting his role as a commentator was inconsistent with being a member of the LNP.

Former LNP leader Campbell Newman has been asked to leave the party. Credit:Harrison Saragossi

It goes on to suggest that I resign and then wishes me well for the future, he said.

Its quite an interesting letter.
Premier Daniel Andrews' Socialist Left faction has allowed Peter Marshall's United Firefighters Union to join their grouping in a controversial power-play that has reignited tensions within the Victorian Labor Party.

The high-profile union was welcomed into the faction as part of a pre-Christmas deal that has baffled some MPs and fuelled internal dissent against Mr Andrews as he heads into an election year.

United Firefighters Union leader Peter Marshall. Credit:Angela Wylie

The UFU's realignment with the Socialist Left comes after a tumultuous year for the union, with the government no closer to achieving fire service reforms designed to break the stalemate over the EBA.

Mr Marshall did not return The Age's calls, but expressed his frustration in his latest bulletin to members, telling them: "It has been another long and challenging year."
The former premier who launched the Federation Square design competition and the public servant who oversaw its development have clashed on whether a planned Apple store will damage or enhance the public square.

Jeff Kennett, who as premier unveiled the winning design for Fed Square in 1997, said the proposed design for Apple's future store was awful and should be scrapped.

Overhead shot of Federation Square with proposed Apple store.

"It's not in sympathy with the rest of the square," Mr Kennett said. "A lot of the square is going to lose its flavour because they're going to demolish so much of the original design."

But Peter Seamer, who was Fed Square's chief executive for its first five years, said the store was perfectly in keeping with the original vision that the square would combine civic, cultural and commercial uses.
A hate-filled man who stabbed his ex-wife 16 times in what a judge called family violence of the most extreme kind has been jailed for 30 years.

Fernando Paulino, 55, was found guilty in June of stabbing ex-wife Teresa Paulino, 49, in the garage of her mothers Reservoir home on July 15, 2013.

Fernando Paulino is led into court on Thursday. Credit:AAP

The murder came days after he had been served with legal documents during Family Court proceedings over their assets, including their family home.

During his trial, the jury heard that Paulino told one of his sons: Shell die before I give her anything.
That is the end of the second day of our live coverage of another attack that has left a scar on our city.

Our thoughts this evening remain with the injured, their family and friends. We hope they are all back home home soon.

It has been a sad year for Melbourne with many events difficult to fathom. We as a city, however, remain united and as Christmas approaches we wish everyone in Victoria a peaceful time over the festive period.

As Tony Wright writes, it has been a year living dangerously in Melbourne. We hope 2018 brings new times.
Just as the original design for Federation Square polarised many when it was first unveiled, Melburnians are divided over plans to demolish a building at Federation Square to make way for an Apple store.

Some visitors to the square on Thursday were strongly opposed to the plan, announced by the State Government on Wednesday, to replace the Yarra building with a flagship store for the tech giant flanking the river.

An artist's impression of the new Apple flagship store to be built at Federation Square in Melbourne.

I think it is insanely stupid, said Chloe OBrien of Bayswater.

They are taking down something that is monumental, that is Melbournes culture, and they are replacing it with an Apple store when there is one down the street already.
An award-winning Australian accountant detained in Bali on drug allegations appeared to enjoy the high life in the years before his arrest, frequenting gay dance festivals and dining at Bangkok's top-rated restaurants.

But a friend told of how he had become increasingly worried about Isaac Emmanuel Roberts.

He said the 35-year-old had begun injecting up to a gram of crystal meth daily and had become a shadow of his former self.

Mr Roberts was arrested on December 4 after he was allegedly caught with 19.97 grams of crystal meth, which Indonesians call shabu, and 14 ecstasy tablets at Bali's international airport.
Vatican City: Pope Francis issued a stinging new critique of the Vatican's top administration on Thursday, saying "traitors" stood in the way of his reforms and made any change as hard as cleaning Egypt's Sphinx "with a toothbrush".

For the fourth year running, Francis used his annual Christmas greetings to the Roman Catholic Church's central bureaucracy, or Curia, to lecture the assembled cardinals, bishops and other department heads on the need for change.

Pope Francis issued a stinging new critique of the Vatican's top administration during his address. Credit:Claudio Peri

"Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush," he said, quoting a 19th-century Belgian churchman. The phrase did not evoke much laughter when the pope read it in the frescoed Clementina Hall of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace.

Since his election as the first Latin American pope in 2013, Francis has been trying to reform the Italian-dominated Curia to bring the Church's hierarchy closer to its members, to enact financial reforms and guide it out of scandals that marked the pontificate of his predecessor, former Pope Benedict.
Citys Pet of the Week Mallas is Columbia Animal Services adoptable pet of the week. This leggy two-year-old has three passions in lifegoing for walks, meeting new people, and snuggling. He rides well in cars...

Pet of the Week Snoopy is approximately two years old, neutered, microchipped, vaccinated, heartworm negative, and just looking for the right match. Please refer to ID number A279828 when visiting www.columbiasc.net/animal-services.
Cameron police are searching for a 20-year-old man in connection to an armed robbery of a Dollar General store earlier this week.

Authorities have obtained an arrest warrant for Jordan Keshone Smith on an aggravated robbery charge. Aggravated robbery is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison.

According to Cameron police, the department received a 911 call Monday night of a robbery in progress at the store, located at 1701 W. Fourth. Officers arrived within one minute of the call, and because of the police's quick response, the person suspected of robbing the store left a bag and ran away without receiving any money.

Police say several items, including the weapon, were recovered during the investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to call Cameron police at 254-697-6574.
Joe Fauth III was sworn in as Grimes County Judge on Monday, replacing Ben Leman, who earlier this month announced his candidacy for the District 13 seat in the Texas House.

Fauth spent 28 years in the oil and gas industry before starting his own management consulting private practice, Fauth and Associated International. He also served as chair of the Grimes County Republican Party for nine years.

Fauth will finish Leman's term, which ends Jan. 1, 2019. According to the Texas Secretary of State website, Fauth is running against Mike Pederson in the March Republican primary for the Grimes County judge seat; because there is no Democratic candidate, whomever wins that primary will become the county judge.

Fauth said he has wanted to be the county's judge since August, after learning Leman would run for state legislator. He said he wouldn't have run for the seat if Leman hadn't run for state office, but he was happy to throw his hat into the ring once he learned the current county judge wouldn't seek another term.

Leman is seeking the seat previously held by Rep. Leighton Schubert, who announced earlier this month he would not seek re-election.

Fauth said he hoped being currently seated as county judge would help him with the Republican primary in a few months. "It's always good to be the incumbent," he said, before joking: "However, I have two months to mess this up."

Fauth previously has served on the county's economic development and strategic planning committees, helping the county plan how to bring more businesses to the area. He also was involved in helping to bring an animal shelter to the county, something county officials learned was in high demand after a public town hall.

Fauth said, during the approximate year he will spend as acting county judge, he hopes to make sure the planning for the new law center near the Grimes County Sheriff's Office will continue "down the path it needs to go." He said his campaign is based on preserving the history of Grimes County, pursuing a future of economic development, protecting the community and helping employees with their professional development.

His final campaign platform, Fauth said, is to "have some fun," because "life's too short to dance with ugly people."

Echoing the county judge he replaced -- Leman is chairman of Texans Against High-Speed Rail -- Fauth said he is opposed to the proposed Dallas-Houston bullet train, the route of which would run through Grimes County.

"I just don't see where that's going to benefit our citizens," Fauth said. "At the end of the day, I think it's going to bring more economic harm than benefit."

Fauth said he opposes the high-speed rail because he thinks it would disrupt the county, cutting into the land that cattle can graze on and making a lot of noise for those who live near the track.

In a lengthy report released last week, the Federal Railroad Administration said the preferred route would not significantly impact or hamper crop yields, livestock numbers or Texas's agricultural economy, and that conversion of pastured lands would not directly result in loss of livestock revenue.

The report also stated noise levels would be reduced through specific shielding methods and that the bullet train is designed to minimize and avoid noise impacts.

Fauth said he didn't "buy that" people who lived by the rail line wouldn't hear the train passing by their homes.

But while Fauth said, as of Wednesday, he is against the high-speed rail, he added, "I'm open-minded."
With the holidays fast approaching -- or even already here for some -- it can be easy to forget the devastation left by Hurricane Harvey earlier this year and the reality that for some, full recovery is still out of reach. Between semesters, more than 30 Texas A&M University engineering students are stepping up to do their part in the recovery effort along the Texas coast through a 10-day volunteer internship with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The students -- who wrapped up finals last week -- are now midway through a week-long, 40-hour site inspection training course administered by FEMA professionals on the A&M campus, where they are being prepared for their service in the field after the new year begins.

Mark Weichold -- who serves as associate dean for academic affairs, executive director of the Halliburton Engineering Global Program and as a regents professor of electrical and computer engineering at A&M -- said it makes him proud as both an engineer and an Aggie to see these students giving of their vacation time to serve their neighbors and fellow Texans.

"It makes me proud to see these young people taking their responsibilities as an engineer seriously," Weichold said. "As a former student and a professor in the College of Engineering, it makes me really proud to see these young people doing this. It sort of exemplifies the Aggie spirit, in my opinion."

The students will be paired with mentors from the agency and sent out into the field to assess public infrastructure -- ranging from roads and bridges to wastewater treatment plants and other public facilities -- as part of the agency's public assistance program.

Herman Zepeta, a class of '20 mechanical engineering major, said although his family in the Cypress area did not experience the direct damage that some of their neighbors did during the storm, seeing the effects first-hand inspired him to get involved.

"Just being able to help out is something I'm really taking pride in," Zepeta said. "I feel like the benefits completely outweigh giving time from my vacation. ... As soon as I saw the opportunity, I really wanted to do it, because I really think it's interesting to see how people go into these disasters head first and how they work to recover from it."

Reginald Ward, a FEMA program specialist trainer, said he admires the willingness of the students to get involved and lend support to affected communities -- the same sentiment he said encouraged him to join the agency as well.

A native of Louisiana, Ward -- who joined FEMA more than five months ago -- said he knows all too well the damage that can be left in the aftermath of hurricanes.

Ward said he expects the nearly three dozen students to "do really well" once they get the opportunity to make it out into the field.

"It's amazing to see people going out to try to help other people, and I'm proud to be a part of that," he said. "... It's fun to watch the students learn and grasp this, and they're so excited about it. I think they're going to do well at it, and hopefully some of them will stick with it."

Traci Brasher, director of the FEMA Region 6 Recovery Division and deputy federal coordinating officer for Hurricane Harvey, said the partnership is the first of its kind to pair university students with the federal agency and came about just over a month ago during a November visit to Houston by FEMA Administrator Brock Long. Brasher said the partnership came about after a meeting between Long, Texas A&M University System Chancellor and Commissioner of the Rebuild Texas initiative John Sharp and other state officials.

She said over the past month, several teams worked together to design the partnership as a way to see how universities such as Texas A&M with "a plethora of students who through their major and interest in helping their community can really be a part of recovery and our programs with FEMA."

"From the top down, we had the support of the leadership to form this partnership and to try this," she said. "... As you know, with government, things don't tend to happen this fast, but I've know working with Chancellor Sharp and Rebuild Texas throughout the recovery that they are very much about cutting through red tape and getting things done."

Though still early, Brasher said she expects the "amazing" partnership developed between FEMA and Texas A&M in the Rebuild Texas initiative to continue to be productive in the months and years ahead.

Brasher said she "can't wait" to see the students get out into the field and have a chance to experience what it is like to be a part of the federal response process.

"In one respect I'm overwhelmed by the number of students who have shown up to participate over their winter break, but on the other hand its just another example of Texas A&M, its commitment and what the university stands for," Brasher said. "I'm very proud to be a part of it."

Freshman mechanical engineering major Olusola Babatunde said he jumped at the opportunity to help out and hopefully lend some aid along with his fellow Aggies to FEMA operations in Houston. Babatunde said after two of his best friends who attend school in Houston were affected, he felt it was important for him to find some way to serve.

"If just a week of training can teach me how to help a bunch of people affected by the hurricane, I couldn't really say no to it," Babatunde said. "... Learning how to solve these problems and maybe even prevent them in the future is an unbelievable advantage that I'd love to earn."
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Texas A&M University is among the bidders interested in managing one of the nation's premier nuclear research laboratories.

The multibillion-dollar contract with Los Alamos National Security LLC to run Los Alamos National Laboratory expires in 2018. Federal officials announced in late 2015 that the contract wouldn't be renewed because of missed performance goals.

The Los Alamos Monitor reports that university officials confirmed their interest during a recent meeting with the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities.

Other bidders include the University of California and the University of Texas System.

In May 2016, Texas A&M joined with leaders from the University of Texas System, Boeing, Battelle and the University of New Mexico to announce a joint bid being made to the U.S. Department of Energy to take over management of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The five partners, who called themselves "Together Sandia," saw potential for providing continuing education for Sandia's workforce and giving faculty members the change to participate in the laboratories.

At the time, A&M system Chancellor John Sharp said that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helped to facilitate the partnership between the university systems.

About a year ago, it was announced that a subsidiary of Honeywell International was awarded the $2.6 billion contract to manage the Sandia lab.

According to the Monitor, Texas A&M Assistant Vice Chancellor Scott Sudduth with the office of federal relations said one of the factors that helped Texas A&M decide to bid on the contract is the school's nuclear engineer program.

"What you may not know is that Texas A&M has been a leader in the field of nuclear engineering for many decades," Sudduth told the Monitor. "There are many schools around the country that have had nuclear engineering programs, and indeed, many still do today. But as interest in industry and interest throughout the country has waned toward nuclear power, many of those programs have gone away. We have supported our program through thick and thin. It's now the largest nuclear engineering program in the country, and one of the oldest."

Sudduth also said the university's faculty is routinely involved with operations at the Los Alamos lab.

"From the standpoint of Los Alamos, not only have we been a tremendous pipeline source of graduates that go to work at this lab, but we have many of our faculty routinely involved in research and collaboration with the lab as we speak we're no stranger to the mission," Suddeth told the Monitor.
YORK, Neb.  A couple in their 80s who were found with 60 pounds of marijuana in their pickup truck told York County sheriff's deputies that they were going to give the pot away for Christmas gifts.

The marijuana, discovered during a traffic stop Tuesday on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, was considered high grade, Sheriff's Office officials said. It had an estimated street value of $336,000.

Deputies stopped the couple's Toyota Tacoma after they saw the pickup truck driving over the center line and the driver failing to signal, Lt. Paul Vrbka said.

When they stopped the vehicle, he said, deputies could immediately smell the strong odor of raw marijuana.

Vrbka said the countys K-9 unit alerted to the presence of a controlled substance. Deputies then searched the pickup and found the pot in boxes stored inside the pickup topper.

An 80-year-old man and an 83-year-old woman said they were from Clearlake Oaks, California, and were headed for Vermont. They were arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and no drug tax stamp.
February 3, 1946 - December 18, 2017

Rosita Garcia Ortiz passed away on December 18, 2017. She was born to Ysidro and Maria Garcia on February 3, 1946 in Mumford, Texas. She was 71 years old.

Rosie was the oldest daughter of ten children; she had five sisters and four brothers. She graduated from Stephen F. Austin High School and was an employee of ARC for many years before retiring. In her retirement she cared for numerous children in her home day care. She was known as Aunt Rosie and Miss Rosie to her numerous nieces and nephews and children she cared for on a daily basis.

Rosie was the matriarch of the Garcia family following the passing of her mother. She carried on the traditions of Sunday breakfast after church, making tamales with her sisters, stuffing Christmas stockings for her nieces and nephews and hosting many other celebrations with all of her family. She added to the traditions by sharing her famous dishes: homemade cinnamon rolls, peach cobbler, Mexican hot chocolate and her capirotada among many others.

Rosie had many interests that filled her days. She loved to shop during her favorite time of the year, Christmas. She loved watching The Golden Girls, MASH, Matlock and Dallas to name a few. Rosie enjoyed reading her Reader's Digest and doing her crossword puzzles. Her most favorite past time was spending time with her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and watching her Aggies play. Rosie's greatest accomplishment was loving and taking care of her family. She always answered the call to help any family or friends in need. She helped raise several children and helped family members overcome difficult times in life. She gave all she had to give and loved with all the love she had, she will be deeply missed and forever remembered.

She was proceeded in death by her parents, Ysidro and Maria Garcia, her big bother Ruben Garcia and her little sister Linda Garcia.

Survivors include her brothers, Ysidro Garcia and Elia, Roy Garcia Sr. and Susie, of Bryan and Richard Garcia and Norma of Houston. She was also survived by her sisters, Yolanda Rosser, Mary Helen Ramirez and John (J.J.), Melva Mireles and Rod and Annie Ramirez and Julian (Billy), all of Bryan and 22 nieces and nephews, 19 great nieces and nephews and the many children that lovingly referred to her as "Miss Rosie."

Rosie's family would like to thank Rosie's best friend Dorothy Grimaldo Garza, caregivers Yolando Cano and Rosemary Lopez, the caring staff at Generations Senior Living and the wonderful doctors and nurses at St. Joseph's Hospital.

A visitation for Rosie will be held from 6:30-8 p.m., Friday, December 22 at Hillier Funeral Home of College Station with a rosary at 6 p.m. On Saturday, December 23 there will be a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 a.m. at Santa Teresa Catholic Church.

Please visit Rosie's tribute page at www.hillierfuneralhome.com to share memories and stories.
Born in Africa on September 27, 1940 to Baptist missionaries, Bennie, Jr., along with his brother Byron, was raised and schooled by their mother Alice in the Calvert School curriculum while their father presided over the affairs of the Baptist Boys' School in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Nigeria was an English colony, the world was at war, and Ben was a minority "white" boy in a foreign land. These were his earliest memories. In the 1950s, Ben returned to the Griffin family's native Texas to finish his education. Schools were segregated; "blacks" were now the minority. Ben was then raised by his grandmother Griffin. He said that next to his parents, no one helped or loved him more than did she. Such is the role of a grandparent. He considered it among his greatest honors to give her eulogy. In 1961, he graduated from Baylor University, in Waco, Texas, just as his father had done as well as other Griffins. Like his father before him, Ben was "called" to the ministry. He attended Andover Newton Theological School near Boston, Massachusetts. The 60s were a turbulent time, and faith-based leaders were active in racial justice. Seminary students were no exception; Ben joined his classmates marching in Selma, Alabama. Ordained a minister into the United Church of Christ, Ben began serving parishes in Pennsylvania: first in Mt. Pleasant, then in Orwigsburg, and finally in York. During those years, Ben was active in community service, led parishioners in worship, baptized babies, officiated at weddings, eulogized the faithful, and counseled many. Along the way, he earned his Doctor of Ministry and published writings, including his dissertation on the "Pastoral Care of Children in Crisis," a book, The Americanization of a Congregation, and others. After more than twenty years serving as a parish minister, Ben move to New Brighton, Minnesota, with his wife Gail and their youngest daughter Jennifer, to become the President and Professor of Liturgies at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. After eight years, Ben returned to his beloved Andover Newton Theological Seminary to become its President and Professor of Liturgies. There on "the hill," as the school was called by those who loved it, Ben's theological life came full circle.
May 30, 1929 - December 17, 2017

Dorothy E. Hagen, 88 of Bryan, passed away Sunday, December 17, 2017 at a Bryan Nursing home.

Dorothy was born May 30, 1929 in Sealy, Texas, the daughter of Louise Nitschke and Robert Nitschke. She met her late husband of 66 years, Lee Stowell Hagen, in 1947. They later married in Houston on March 5, 1949. She retired from the University of Texas in 1989 after 22 years of service. They later moved to Georgetown where she volunteered at the Georgetown Hospital for 18 years. She and Lee were also members of the Pathfinders of the First Methodist Church.

In 2007 they moved to Bryan, Texas where they joined the First Methodist Church and Dorothy volunteered at St. Joseph Hospital. During their marriage they traveled to numerous places such as, Canada, Alaska, Germany, Mexico, Switzerland, and many others.

Dorothy is preceded in death by her parents; and her husband of 66 years, Lee Stowell Hagen.

Survivors include her daughter, Sandy Selter and husband David of Bryan; two grandchildren, Chris Selter of Beaumont, and Michelle Selter of Bryan.

A graveside service was held Thursday, December 21, 2017 at Cook-Walden Memorial Hill Cemetery in Pflugerville under the direction of The Gabriels Funeral Chapel and Crematory.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Hospice Brazos Valley.
June 9, 1942 - December 17, 2017

Santos Martinez ,75, of Bryan, TX, went to be with his Lord on Sunday December 17, 2017. A time for family to receive friends will be from 11am to 12:30pm on Thursday December 21 at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Bremond, TX. A rosary will be recited at 12:30pm. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 1pm on Thursday December 21 at St. Mary's Church, 715 N. Main Street, Bremond, TX with Father Yu officiating. Interment will follow at St. Mary's Cemetery.

Santos was born on June 9, 1942 to Carmen Martinez in Bremond, TX.

Santos was an active member of St. Joseph Church in Bryan, TX.

He is preceded in death by his brothers Cleto Soto, Severo Ortega, Joe Jr. Margo and Pete Alvarado, and sisters Lucy Alvarado and Lupe Ramirez.

Santos leaves behind his loving wife Mary of 56 years; children, Virginia, Jenny, Juan, Jack, Alex, Daniel, Michelle, and Ricky; parent Carmen Martinez; siblings Vicente, Janie, Bernarda and Manuela; 19 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.

Please visit Santos' tribute page at www.hillierfuneralhome.com to share memories and stories.
Rumors are flying that President Donald Trump will try to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III by years end.

Although this nightmarish prospect cant be counted as likely, and Trump insists hes not contemplating it, there are several reasons why he will not see a better time to lower the boom  and the White House surely has taken them into account.

First, there are strong signs that Mueller may soon indict Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and adviser. Kushners lawyer quietly has been shopping for a crisis response team of the sort brought on board for criminal prosecutions. Kushners indictment would be a disaster for the president: Either his son-in-law goes to prison or cooperates by providing the mother lode of inculpatory information. Probably no one, except possibly Donald Trump Jr., knows more about Trumps activities as president, candidate and entrepreneur. (Remember that Deutsche Bank, whose records Mueller recently subpoenaed, lent Kushner $285 million in addition to its highly questionable loans to Trump.)

Second, the coordinated onslaught against the FBI and Justice Department from Capitol Hill lends Trump a measure of cover for moving to shut down the investigation. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the majority whip, recently joined the chorus with a demand that Mueller  clean house of partisans. Never mind that the attacks are 100 percent bogus: Anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment among FBI agents in 2016 far outstripped  in quantity and quality  any mutterings against Trump. Equally bogus is the recent charge that Mueller improperly obtained emails of the Trump transition: There is no Fourth Amendment protection of transition emails, which are on government servers with government addresses, and no executive privilege since the Trump team was not yet in office. These counterfeit arguments are strictly for public relations purposes.

Third, Congress is leaving town for Christmas break, leaving Washington at its sleepiest and least prepared for a nimble response.

Fourth, Trumps lawyers have scheduled a meeting with Muellers team, and the script already has been written. Trumps team will ask about the progress of the investigation and when it will end; Muellers side will respond that there has been progress but there is still much to do and cannot estimate an end date. Trump then will have his rabble-rousing talking point. For months, Trumps lawyers and the White House staff have been claiming that, as Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated last week, (w)e expect this process to wrap up soon. There never was any basis for the expectation, which experienced prosecutors would find ludicrous, other than to set up a public argument that the inquiry has gone on too long and needs to be shut down.

There is one glaring problem with that position, which is that it is hard to see how the process can wrap up to the publics satisfaction without testimony of some sort from Trump. But Trumps lawyers may have concluded that he should avoid the expected reckoning with a skillful questioner, given the multiple, contradictory accounts of key events he has provided to date. The very best he could hope for would be the worst day of his public life, made to look like a doddering fool and forced into a refrain of I dont recalls. Or he might answer some questions and expose himself to multiple counts of perjury.

If Trump does move to fire Mueller, we cant count on immediate consequences.

He first would have to find someone at the Justice Department willing to be remembered as his political stooge. And he would have to force the resignations of everyone above that person. It might be years before the department is able to regain its full footing.

Mueller surely already has banked important evidence against the president by requiring his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, to give his full story to state authorities and possibly to a federal grand jury. But state attorneys general may not be able to step into the breach. The Office of Legal Counsel has issued two opinions concluding that the president cannot be indicted during his term in office; if that position is correct, it would imply that the federal Constitution likewise bars state authorities from bringing charges against a sitting president.

The focus, then, would turn to Congress. Its possible lawmakers could reconstitute the investigation in some hobbled fashion, but the effort would take many months. And any attempt actually to remove the president from office would need to secure the support of 15 or so Senate Republicans, which still seems highly unlikely.

Crippled in public support and exposed as a boor and a rogue, Trump may yet survive to the end of his term  a feat hell define as winning, always his paramount concern. As he memorably promised the country more than a year ago, were going to win so much, youre going to be sick and tired of winning.

Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, teaches at UCLA Law School and practices law at Constantine Cannon. Follow @harrlitman. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
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
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

What started as an up-close view of democracy at the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary has become an exploration of modern communication practices in America  at the junction (of) media, politics and technology in the Post-Truth Era.

Massachusetts-based director Kevin Bowe said in a recent telephone interview that his desire to embed himself in the media in New Hampshire for a democracy-in-action experience turned into an 18-month odyssey where shiny objects hypnotize, truthiness empowers and paranoia runs rampant.

The result is Bowes first feature documentary, in which he contends that Americas broken political information system is ruining America. His film, Democracy: Through the Looking Glass, will be presented Wednesday, Dec. 27, at the Bethel Cinema. Bowe said he looks forward to attending the event, which is part of FilmFest52, Bethels weekly Wednesday Night film festival that screens more than 250 narrative, documentary and student shorts, features and animation films each year.

In the setting of the New Hampshire primary, the film looks at how modern communications  including social media, 24-hour news channels and cellphone video  often focuses on the minutia and absurd aspects of the news, rather than on providing an overview.

Or as veteran CBS journalist Bob Schieffer asks in the film: The question is: Are we more informed or are we just overwhelmed?

Among the other experts in the film are Boston Globe Editor Brian McGrory, Harvard Universitys Nicco Mele and American academic, attorney and political activist Larry Lessig. The running time is 76 minutes.

More Information Bethel Cinema, 269 Greenwood Ave. Wednesday, Dec. 27, 6 p.m. $10.50, $9 seniors. 203-778-2100, bethelcinema.com, democracythroughthelookingglass.com See More Collapse

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Bowe said he spent many years in media advertising. Filmmaking is his second or third career, in which he is finally exploring his true passions  politics and communications. He is a self-taught video producer.

According to his bio, he is the executive producer of Story-Crafters, a video production company that specializes in examining broad social issues from the perspective of personal stories.

Also during primary season, he produced a 50-part web series, Stories from the New Hampshire Primary, which focused on personal stories from individuals.

The documentary project, he said, has alerted him to the disconnect between the media and voters. Theyre standing three feet apart, and youd think they were from two different worlds.

The transformation from the industrial age to the digital age, and how it is transforming democracy  will be the subject of debate and research for years to come, he added.

The schedule

The evening begins at 6 with a meet and greet with Bowe, followed at 7 with the film presentation. A question-and-answer session will be offered afterward. Ticket price includes hors doeuvres, beer, wine and non-alcoholic beverages.

pasboros@ctpost.com;

Twitter: @PhyllisASBoros
Many people have an exasperating tale about a construction contractor who didn't get the job done. Shoddy work. Stopped showing up. Took the money and ran. But those don't compare to the tale of Daniel Jamison, a contractor who had a string of fraud-related convictions when he was hired and paid by a Fairfax County, Virginia., man to do a $41,000 home remodeling job.

Jamison did some work on the home, then vanished. The homeowner had him charged with construction fraud. So Jamison took his own action: He hired a hit man to kill the homeowner.

Jamison agreed to pay $500 for the murder weapon, $10,000 for the killing, and then falsely told the hit man that the homeowner had stacks of cash and Rolex watches in the house that the killer could keep after he committed the murder. All of this information is on video, because the hit man was actually a Fairfax County police officer.

Jamison did not end up paying the "hit man" anything, but he did end up charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder, a crime so rarely charged in Virginia there are no sentencing guidelines for it. And last Friday, after Jamison made a tearful apology in court but claimed he never intended to kill anyone, a Fairfax judge told him "I don't believe a word of your story" and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. And ordered him to stay 1,000 feet away from the homeowner when he gets out, at all times.

The homeowner, Stephen Mann, from the Alexandria area of Fairfax County, declined to comment. Fairfax prosecutors said he remained "truly terrified" of Jamison and has limited his family's activities around their home after being targeted for murder.

The case began unspooling in February 2016, when Mann hired Jamison to remodel his home, signing a contract and paying Jamison about $41,000, court records show. Prosecutors said Jamison began working but then stopped in early May, having performed roughly a third of the project. Jamison's attorney, Toni Fay, said Jamison had been injured and couldn't work, but she didn't specify what the injury was or why that wasn't made clear to Mann.

Jamison had prior experience with failing to complete work, court records show. In 2006, he pleaded guilty in both Arlington and Stafford counties to felony construction fraud, and was sentenced to two years in prison, a year in each county served consecutively. And then in 2011 in Fairfax County, Jamison pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of working without a contractor's license, as part of a plea deal in which another felony construction fraud count was dismissed, and was given 12 months suspended jail time on both.

In August 2016, having failed to obtain any funds from Jamison or to get him to finish the job, Mann went to the police and obtained a felony obstruction fraud charge against Jamison. This inspired Jamison to take action.

In mid-August, Jamison approached a young woman "he knew had previously been in jail," Fairfax Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Meghan Flesch said at the sentencing hearing. Jamison "asked if she knew anybody who would 'take care of' the victim in this case." The young woman asked Jamison to clarify his request. "You know, 'Take care of, take care of,'" Flesch said. Court records indicate that Jamison told the woman "he was in a butt load of trouble in Alexandria," and that whoever handled the job "could have whatever was in [Mann's] safe as a bonus," even though Mann had no safe.

The young woman relayed this request to an ex-girlfriend of Mann's, who informed Mann of the situation. Mann called Fairfax police.

An undercover Fairfax detective took over, meeting with the young woman and learning that Jamison had called her again, asking if someone had been found for the job, court records state. The woman arranged a dinner meeting in Winchester, Virginia, with Jamison, herself and the detective, which the detective secretly audio-recorded, according to court records.

During that conversation on Aug. 26, 2016, Jamison falsely told the detective "there were two safes in the house and that he had installed them," Senior Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jessica Greis Edwardson wrote in a court filing. Jamison "told the detective Mr. Mann's schedule and what kind of car he drives," Greis Edwardson said. "He also talked about the general location of Mr. Mann's house and how easy it would be to get in the back door." Jamison and the detective agreed that Jamison would pay half the contract killing fee up front, that the "hit man" could keep whatever he took from the house and Jamison would pay him the rest.

Five days later, after an exchange of texts, Jamison and the detective met at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on Route 1 in the Alexandria area. This time, the two took a drive together, recorded on video. The video shows Jamison directing his "hit man" to Mann's house, and discussing possible escape routes the killer could take after the deed was done.

"I can give you the layout of the f-- house like nobody's business," Jamison confidently informs the detective. "Done a s-- of work in the house." As they drive through the Belle Haven section of Fairfax County, Jamison points out a number of houses he claims to have worked on.

Looking at the back of Mann's house from a nearby street, Jamison tells the detective, "When you come up to the top of the stairs, his room is going to be on the right."

At one point, the detective cleverly asks Jamison when his next court date is. "November 7," Jamison says, correctly noting his next scheduled appearance in the construction fraud case Mann had brought against him. Flesch noted that Jamison's murder plot was also a case of "trying to get rid of a witness" against him in a pending court case.

"When can you come up with some money?" the detective asks. Jamison says, "In about three weeks." A few minutes later, the detective tells him, "Normally it's 10 grand. Five up front, and five on the back end." But there seems to be an agreement that Jamison will first pay $3,500, plus another $500 for the gun, and that the "hit man" will be able to loot Mann's safe. "He'd pull out stacks of cash," Jamison tells the detective. "Ten grand in cash. A ton of money in there." Fay, Jamison's lawyer, said none of that was true.

Jamison and the detective exchanged a number of texts after the drive to Mann's house, trying to arrange another meeting, but then prosecutors reviewed the audio and video tapes the detective already had and instructed police to arrest him, Fairfax Police Lt. Tom Harrington said.

"He seems to make a living on this type of fraud," Flesch said. "This is someone who planned a murder over several weeks to rid himself of a legal problem that he got himself into." Flesch asked Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Michael Devine to impose a maximum sentence of 40 years.

Fay argued that "Mr. Jamison injured himself and wasn't able to work" and that "Mr. Mann got upset. He used the defendant's past to turn what should have been a civil matter into a criminal matter," meaning the construction fraud case, which she noted was dismissed, though at the same time his murder-for-hire case was taken to the grand jury.

Jamison's position, Fay said, "is he jokingly made contact" with the young woman who made the connection with the Fairfax police, and "he knew this guy was a cop. He didn't say the 'M word.' He didn't exchange any money. . . . He proceeded to tell the detective some things about Mr. Mann that weren't true. . . . He thought, if it's not true, he can't get himself in trouble. In the scheme of things, Mr. Mann was never in trouble." Fay incorrectly claimed that Jamison had no contact with the detective after their first dinner meeting, and noted that Jamison had been in jail without bond since his arrest in October 2016. She asked Devine to release him for his 14 months already served.

Jamison entered an Alford plea in September, meaning he did not admit committing the crime but acknowledging the state had enough evidence to convict him. Devine then found him guilty.

"I realize that my actions were wrong," Jamison told the judge. He said he wanted to tell Mann how sorry he was "for this entire bunch of nonsense that I created. I am truly sorry for my actions."

Jamison said, "I truly thought that not talking about murder . . . coupled with not paying any money, would be enough to show that I didn't want this to happen." He told Devine he had completed numerous Bible studies by correspondence course while in jail, "and totally rededicated my life to Christ. I have aspirations of becoming a pastor and working in the prison ministry field."

Devine was unswayed.

"Mr. Jamison," the judge said, "I don't believe a word of your story about how this offense was committed. I believe you intended to have Mr. Mann killed. . . . I believe you were in deep financial trouble, and understood that another conviction would put you in great danger." He said by lying to the "hit man" about the safes and valuables in Mann's home, "you were going to rip him off the way you were ripping off Mr. Mann. . . . I cannot give you credit for taking responsibility because I don't think you have. I think you continued to lie to me, to these people," he said, gesturing at Jamison's wife and friends. "You committed a serious crime, and I'm going to impose a serious sentence."
Contributed Photo

WESTPORT  Just after midnight on Dec. 15, an officer observed a woman slumped over the steering wheel of a vehicle on Post Road East.

After several attempts, officers successfully roused the driver, who they identified as 54-year-old Carole Sonick, of Rowland Road in Fairfield. Police said the vehicle was running and the break lights were activated.
NORWALK  The Board of Education took the first step this week in a long process to potentially bring a public Montessori magnet school to Norwalk.

One of the implementation steps set for this year is a Montessori feasibility study that would determine location of new program, the materials that would be needed, and the district capacity needed to implement it, the training of Montessori educators educators, theres a lot involved in Montessori education, said Superintendent Steven Adamowski, who was a strong proponent of Montessori education as superintendent of Hartford Public Schools.

The district is contracting with the Capitol Region Education Council to conduct the feasibility study, which serves goal No. 5 of the districts Strategic Operating Plan, to increase the number of high quality educational choices for parents.

In another section of the plan, we speak to the desire to increase the effectiveness of early childhood education and the effectiveness of early childhood education, and its really the juncture of those two strategic plan goals that brings us to the activity this year, Adamowski said.

Tim Nee, managing director of the CREC Montessori Training Center Northeast, provided a basic presentation on the principles and construct of Montessori education to the board, highlighting key characteristics and answering questions about what makes the education style different from a traditional education.

The education method was developed by Maria Montessori more than a century ago in the slums of Rome. Montessori developed the child-centered approach based on scientific observations of children from birth to adulthood.

The model has become an international movement, known for use in expensive private schools. But more public schools are looking at ways to make the model available to everyone. There are more than 4,000 Montessori schools in the U.S. and 7,000 around the world. Of those, there are 350 public Montessori schools and 200 charter public schools.

The primary tenant of the Montessori model is based on students teaching themselves in a prepared environment and guided by teachers.

Montessori schools have gotten great raps, theyve gotten bad raps, some people have good information about Montessori, some people have bad information about Montessori, some people have the myths of Montessori, some people are very well trained in understanding Montessori, Nee said.

The feasibility study would look at the districts ability to meet the basic components of running a successful Montessori school. Implementing a Montessori school would take several years, so Tuesdays presentation was only the first step on a long road to bringing Montessori to Norwalk.

There is a private Montessori school in Wilton, and Connecticuts first public Montessori  the CREC Montessori Magnet School  opened in Hartford in 1999. The school was struggling when CREC took over and introduced the Montessori model. The school now boasts 340 students between the ages of 3 and 12.

This is something Ive been excited about, along with Tim in my entire career because Ive seen the power of it, Adamowski said. Ive seen the type of students. The Montessori program produces such a well-rounded student. These are students that have a very broad perspective, theyre very kind, theyre considerate, theyre socially adjusted so well because of this methodology.

During the public comments section of the meeting, Norwalk Federation of Teachers Vice President Joseph Giandurco said the Montessori proposal represents an interesting and energizing opportunity for Norwalk, but requested on behalf of the NFT that teachers and the union be strategically involved in the development of such a program.

As we are learning with the problems surfacing with vertical houses in the middle school classrooms, theories and models are very important, but also so are the individual professional relationships in building these into our individual buildings, Giandurco said. The best programs are those which are guided by models but are informed by the realities of our students and the building needs. Good programs are developed most effectively through collaboration with people who implement the plan, like certified staff and building administrators.

kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt
As children, we're taught to treat others as we want to be treated. But when money is involved, what can encourage us to follow the golden rule and run ethical businesses?

When asked, we say: Yes, of course we all deserve the same standards. When it comes to business, though, I think we've focused too much on cutthroat leaders who can get away with nearly anything -- as long as they're charismatic or innovative enough. The golden rule is a way of improving emotional intelligence and increasing an awareness of ethics in every interaction, but it's no match for the common figure of the rogue business genius.

Just consider how lenient we are with individuals who are forging new ground, especially in areas such as technology or finance. Take for example, the memoir-turned-movie "The Wolf of Wall Street." Even more extreme is the example of John McAfee, the founder of McAfee software. Prorofiled by Wired when he ran off to Belize to evade authorities, he'll be played by Johnny Depp in an upcoming feature film.

And when businesses are unethical? Uber remains on top of the ride-hailing game in spite of terrible PR during the past two years. And though the executives at Equifax who sold stock before revealing the data breach could face charges, by and large the team will face no legal repercussions. Equifax retains its monopoly on credit report information.

This all sets a bad precedent, and it can hold water for only so long before the dam breaks.

Related: 5 Reasons Leaders Behave Badly

The golden rule always has been my motto. It holds espeically true in the healthcare industry, where we can see the impact on patients and their families. As a COO, I must implement every decision in the context of both doing good (in accordance with the golden rule) and not simply doing well (for our bottom line). Mounting evidence suggests this is not just beneficial, but a growing necessity among consumers who won't stand for much less.

Here's how (and why) I think all businesses can adopt this concept productively.

Slow change through social intervention.

Companies are beginning to realize that treating people well is essential to a long-term business strategy in our digitally connected world. Social media was the first wake-up call for businesses that quietly operated under unethical or simply poor values. The change is slow, but we are moving from the stick to the carrot, as the saying goes. "The Wolf of Wall Street" would be a different story entirely if the company's employees had been armed with smartphones.

Before social media, advertising ruled. Wronged customers had two primary choices and little recourse otherwise: write a complaint letter or badmouth the company to friends, family, coworkers and anyone else who would listen. That usually was the extent of it. Social media, however, offers the opposite extreme. We now live in an era of information overload. It's enough to make some people wish for the simplicity of early times, while others feel a sigh of relief that their complaints can make a difference.

Of course, each industry and its regulatory bodies have set forth their own standards. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) was formed in 1912 -- well ahead of its time, really -- as a nonprofit organization that promoted honest advertising practices and resolved disputes between consumers and businesses. The BBB accepts complaints and serves as a mediator. Its truly revolutionary role, though, comes in the form of its business ratings. These scores consider the public's input, among other factors. Regulating agencies, on the other hand, keep a filter in place. A wall prevents people from seeing exactly what another consumer has said about a company or service.

Related: The Holy Trinity of Business Growth: People, Process and Metrics

Social media removes the barriers between customers and corporations. We now can see comments, ratings and even photographic evidence of bad behavior not only online but in real time. (Those same tools can expose unfounded customer complaints, too). Treating customers poorly can have ripple effects. "United Breaks Guitars" is a viral, musical testament to poor customer service at United Airlines. It's amassed more than 17 million views on YouTube.

Clearly, that's the stick approach. But what about the carrot? And who leads the way? The list of innovative business leaders who have become major philanthropists includes Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Susan Alice Buffett, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others.

Tangible benefits.

At first glance, the golden rule's financial impacts are simple. In fact, many companies include something along these lines in their values statements:

Treat your employees as you would want to be treated, and they will work harder and stay with you.

Treat your customers as you would want to be treated and they will come back again.

The golden rule provides guidance in hiring, too. Increasing numbers of employees want to work exclusively for organizations that have a positive impact on the world. As the millennial generation makes up an even larger proportion of workers in the coming years, companies will face mounting pressure to hold leaders and brands accountable -- to associates and consumers alike.

Related: Why Honesty and Integrity Really Do Matter

When we treat our associates, customers and the world well, we can maintain and build the loyalty needed to succeed in the long term. An unethical workplace also is a less productive one. According to another survey, almost 90 percent of workers who experienced incidents of unethical behavior while on the job stated they were personally affected. It distracted them from focusing on the task at hand.

Moreover, an ethical business avoids the sunk costs and bad press that can come with resulting legal issues. Companies can achieve the golden rule in part through transparency -- a factor that equates to employee happiness, health, productivity and ultimately, profit.

A reminder of ethics.

How, then, to make sure our businesses are on the right track? We can use the golden rule as a framework for all our decisions. When we stop to consider the other person, we practice empathy -- and that's strongly tied to making ethical choices. Psychology Today contributor Mark B. Baer points us to several Harvard University studies and reports that attempt to understand the complex emotional connections between empathy and decisions. Those same sources uncover how fear and advertising can derail empathy.

Related: The 6-Step Method for Managing Any Ethical Dilemma

In the healthcare field, business decisions directly impact the quality of life for patients and their families. But businesses must turn a profit to continue, and profits can drive companies to cut corners and act badly. Applying the golden rule activates our entire suite of ethical and emotional decision-making tools. This changes our day-to-day relationship with employees and clients as well as how we perceive the long view when weighing major, direction-setting alternatives.

We owe it to our businesses and ourselves to keep the golden rule in mind at all times. Our associates, customers, bottom line and collective conscience will reap the benefits in due time.

Related: Are You In It for 5 Years or 50? The Trust You Earn Will Determine How Long Your Business Lasts.

Related:

The Golden Rule Is Just as Good for Businesses as It Is for People

What Happened When This Shaving Startup Bought a 100-Year-Old German Manufacturing Company

Tour LinkedIn's New York Offices, Where There's a Speakeasy and a Movie Theater



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


When New York-based shaving startup Harry's purchased a 100-year-old manufacturing company in rural Germany, there was a bit of a cultural disconnect. In this video, Harry's CEO Jeffrey Raider explains how important it was for the factory employees to buy into Harry's company vision.

Related: Daymond John's Best, Surprising Advice for Entrepreneurs? Get a 9 to 5 Job.

Related:

The Golden Rule Is Just as Good for Businesses as It Is for People

What Happened When This Shaving Startup Bought a 100-Year-Old German Manufacturing Company

Tour LinkedIn's New York Offices, Where There's a Speakeasy and a Movie Theater



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WILTON  A problem most emerging artists face is being able to afford a studio.

To help local artists with this issue, Stamford gallery owner Fernando Luis Alvarez launched the Sprouting Spaces program, which offers a year of free studio space to an artist who will build community through the arts. This kind of work embodies the mission of Alvarezs newly formed Clementina Arts Foundation, which is a nonprofit named after his grandmother.

The first Sprouting Space is a storefront space in Kimco Realtys Wilton River Park Shopping Center next to Cactus Rose Restaurant. Alvarez held a launch party inside the space on Dec. 16, with artwork from six finalists on display.

Theres a reason why we came to Wilton and not other places around who have shown interest in program. We came here because Wilton deserves what were doing, Alvarez said at the event, before revealing the winner.

Ben Quesnel, a mixed media artist from Stamford, was surprised to hear his name announced.

I was actually the last artist to bring the artwork and I looked around and thought, Wow, there are some talented people in here. So Im thrilled to have gotten this opportunity, said Quesnel. The artists in the room know that its difficult for us to make our projects and have a space to do our work, so Ill do my best to put out good stuff for you guys.

Along with using the space as his personal studio, Quesnel envisions putting together an interactive installation called Undelivered, where people can make pieces of mail and attach it to parts from two old mail trucks his friend found on his property. The mail wont be delivered until after his time at the studio, which he was inspired to do after he and his friend found pieces of mail from 1982 in the mail trucks that never made it their destination.

The strong plan for community engagement in Quesnels proposal led to the jurors unanimous decision of choosing him as the winner.

The three jurors were Eileen Doyle, The Marsted Curatorial Fellow for Contemporary Art at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Alexandra Porter, the Independent Art Advisor; and Marisa Caichiolo, founder and curator of Building Bridges International Art Foundation in Los Angeles.

His previous artwork is very strong, both visually and conceptually, and he is able to articulate his goals and intentions extremely well, making him an outstanding choice for this opportunity, the jurors wrote in a joint statement. We believe his experience as an educator will serve him well in the workshops he intends to do. But his professional approach also bodes well for his year-long representation of the Clementina Arts Foundation.

Originally created in 2011, Sprouting Spaces also aims to unite emerging and mid-career artists in need of studio space with landlords who have commercial spaces that have been vacant for a long time. This kind of partnership not only makes effective use of unused space but also benefits the community at large, said Sarah McCall, a marketing consultant at Kimco Realty. Kimco Realty offered the storefront space to Clementina Arts Foundation at no cost.

Its a great partnership to bring people to the complex, to draw traffic, McCall said. Were hoping that people then come and stay and use the restaurants and shop.

The Clementina Arts Foundation is currently undergoing 501(c)(3) status and funds Sprouting Spaces, in addition to the Kid Contemporary Program and the Special Situation Funding.

skim@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2568; @stephaniehnkim
Grand Island Central Catholic English teacher Cathy Howard said she is going to have the happiest Christmas ever this year, as a result of being honored for her 40 years of teaching.

On Wednesday, Howard was announced as the second recipient of this years Excellence in Teaching Award, given for the 13th year by the Grand Island Community Foundation, in honor of Kim West Dinsdale, to honor Grand Islands best educators.

I am absolutely overwhelmed, Howard said of receiving the award. I did not have a clue I would be receiving this award. It was a total surprise. It is wonderful. It was very humbling. The kids have been so great.

Howard was nominated by Jen Myers, who currently serves as Hall County Court Magistrate and was Howards student 25 years ago. She called Howard one of the most influential teachers she has ever had.

I still reference her to this day, as far as being a great teacher and being someone who has had a great influence over me in my life, Myers said. Cathy was so caring and understanding. Ive had the opportunity to get published as a blog writer. She was encouraging when I wanted to do that. She is someone who stands by her students no matter how long ago they graduated.

Howard said she is humbled to know that, after all these years, she has a meaningful impact on her students.

I think Central Catholic is just that way, she said. Our kids get so close to each other and to their teachers. It is nice being in this nice, small community.

Melissa DeLaet, chief executive officer of the Grand Island Community Foundation, said there were more than 100 nominations for the Teaching in Excellence Award, with teachers from every school in Hall County being nominated. She said each nominator submitted a short application online, wrote a short statement, gave some information on the teacher and submitted that to the foundation.

Then, really, that application process gets put onto the shoulders of the teacher, DeLaet said. They are asked to fill out a form that really lists their accomplishments and their philosophy on teaching and what they think kids learning styles are. It is really that over-the-top, extra mile that they go to make themselves an outstanding educator.

DeLaet added a selection committee goes through the applications and scores them. Those with the best scores receive the Excellence in Teaching Award. This year, for the second year, two awards were given. Tracy Morrow, a teacher at West Lawn Elementary School, was the other award recipient.

DeLaet said it was Howards impact on Myers, all these years later, that led her to be a recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award.

I think it spoke volumes that Cathy had a student, who was her student 25 years ago, nominate her, DeLaet said. That says a lot about an impact somebody makes on their life.

Myers said Howard proves that, even after 25 years, an educator can continue to have an influence on their students lives.

You just want to know that they have done that in your life, Myers said. What I wanted Cathy to realize is that shes had that impact on, not only me, but several other students as well.

When asked what she tries to instill in her students, Howard said it is reading and writing.

Reading and writing has just been so important to me and I want to make it important to our kids, she said. That is a way of connecting with other people. It has been so meaningful to me and I want to be meaningful to the kids.
On Wednesday, Catrina Abby Sanic received her high school diploma from Grand Island Public School through the districts Ombudsman program

Sanic was the only graduate. Another highlight of the ceremony was it was Linda Sanders final Ombudsman graduation. She is retiring this month from her position as its director.

Sanic said it was a big day for her.

Out of all of my family, Im the first one to graduate in the United States, she said. It makes me happy as it accomplishes a dream I have always had since I was a little kid. I have made my family proud.

At the ceremony were her parents and brothers and sisters.

Her parents are from Guatemala, where she was born. She came to the U.S. when she was 1 year old.

Sanic expressed gratitude for her chance to become a high school graduate.

For many of the kids in the Grand Island Public Schools, they may not have been able to graduate from high school in their home countries.

It was really tough accomplishing this because I really didnt like school, Sanic said.

Like many sons and daughters of immigrant parents, she plans to attend college. She would like to be either a lawyer or a kindergarten teacher.

Sanders said Sanics graduation is a special day and special accomplishment.

Along with Sanics parents, at the ceremony were her elementary school teachers and others from the school district who have touched her life during her journey.

Also attending were Superintendent Tawana Grover, Bonnie Hinkle, president of the school board, and former Grand Island Public Schools superintendent Robert Winter.

Sanders said that speaks volumes of the commitment of the school systems strong faith in the success of each of its students.

Quoting Dr. Seuss, Grover told Sanic, Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

She encouraged her to stand out and be an example for others.

Sanders has been with the Ombudsman program since its creation in Grand Island in 2009.

The Ombudsman graduation was at its office at 2300 N. Webb Road.

Sanders taught in the Grand Island Public Schools for 33 years before retiring. She came out of retirement in 2009 to work for the Ombudsman program.

Ombudsman is an alternative school run by the private company ChanceLight.

They are an education and behavioral solutions company, Sanders said. We contract with the public schools.

She said Ombudsman works with the districts adjudicated youths  kids who have gotten in trouble with the court for truancy or other offenses. The program also serves expelled and long-term suspended students.

When Sanders retired from teaching, she was a substitute teacher for two years.

I was desperate, she said. I was not good at being retired.

Sanders was a middle school teacher during her 33-year career. Jeff Gilbertson, who was her principal at Barr Middle School, encouraged her to apply to the Ombudsman program. She became a teacher there and later was promoted to director.

Sanders will be moving to Virginia to be near her family, but she still has no plans to retire.

Im going to sub for a little while, she said. Im hoping that next fall I will be working for their school district.

Her daughter is a teacher there.

Sanders said working for the Ombudsman program has been a great opportunity.

Every kid is different and every year is different, she said. Sometimes it is crazy. Sometimes it is calm. It is very rewarding, especially on graduation day when you see kids who would not have gotten a diploma if we had not been here. At first, they may not know what to do with that diploma, but they will be glad that they have it in the future.

At the end of the term, the Ombudsman program holds its regular graduation. Sanders said it will graduate about 20 students in May.

As Ombudsman director, she estimated about 200 students have received their high school diploma since that first year. She said that was a highlight for her working there.

Stephanie Shaw will be the new Ombudsman director. She is from Roseland and received her teaching degree from Hastings College. She was previously a public school teacher in Nebraska.

Hinkle said that Sanders has a very big heart and cares for children.

She came into this program at a time when we really needed to get it going and established, she said. She has done a wonderful job with it by the fact that we can say 200 kids have graduated from it. That says a lot about her and what she did, especially going out of retirement to do it. It takes a special person with patience and dedication and just believing in the kids to do it and she does it wonderfully.

Sanders said her 33 years as a public school teacher helped her as Ombudsman director.

They gave me some insights. Working with middle school students is different, she said. I loved working with them. I taught seventh grade for 25 years. Toward the end of my teaching career, I did some foster parenting. That also helped me learn some skills that worked. We dont just work with the kids here, but we also work with their families. You have to be a good listener and know where they are coming from. We work with probation as well.

Each one of them has a different story.

Sanders has lived in Grand Island since 1975. Her parents retired from the military during her senior year of high school.

Since first grade, I wanted to be a teacher, she said. It worked and there is still some teaching in me.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 08:39 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e6ba8c 1 Opinion #commentary,anies-baswedan,#Anies-Sandiaga,FPI,#FPI,Islam-Defenders-Front,Christmas,Christmas-Jakarta,#Christmas Free

It was Friday evening in Bethlehem in October several years ago. I took my wife to the rooftop at the home of a Palestinian Muslim family, who had invited us for dinner. We heard the azan (a call to prayer for Muslims) from a nearby mosque.

She stood at her wheelchair and we sang Holy Night while looking at the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was believed to be born. I dont know why, but I felt more peaceful and more religious in Bethlehem than in Jerusalem, a holy site for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

We shall return, we said in our prayer. Our Palestinian host said Muslims are obliged to highly respect Jesus, a prophet in Islam. I told him that celebrating Christmas is more peaceful in Bethlehem than in Jakarta. Terrorist attacks have haunted churchgoers on Christmas Eve for nearly two decades.

That is nothing compared to our suffering from the Jews here, the old man said. During our pilgrimage to Israel, and also Palestinian territory, we could easily see the Israelis unbelievable oppression of the Palestinians.

In Jerusalem it is easy to understand when people say World War III could start there. The Palestinians living situation is very inhumane. But they always smile at visitors despite the daily horrors they have to confront.

But for me, Jakarta is more worrying during the festive days, especially because I worry about the safety of my wife, who was powerless when bombs exploded in our own church in East Jakarta in 2000 and again in July 2001.

How about next Monday? I feel more secure now. But it is not because my faith is more mature or that I have completely surrendered my life to Jesus.

The recent statement issued by an organization that is often feared by minorities like me, was a little bit heartening, no matter whether it is true or false. The Islam Defenders Front (FPI) said it would help safeguard Christmas celebrations at the National Monument (Monas). It was also very active in the recent demonstration to condemn United States President Donald Trumps decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has also recently softened its stance on expressing Christmas greetings. It had previously said it was not haram to say Merry Christmas to Christians. But now the ulemas apparently consider that the greeting is just a matter of courtesy. When I greet my Muslim friends during Idul Fitri, it does not mean that I become a Muslim too.

The police have also not issued any warnings this year as they have done in previous years. But to be honest, it is hard to sense a merry atmosphere in Jakarta. Many shopping malls are refraining from openly presenting a Christmas atmosphere; some radio and TV stations are also not airing Christmas carols. Their position is very understandable, they do not want to create unnecessary problems for their business.

Many, if not most, Indonesian Christian Protestants and Catholics laughed bitterly and were shocked when they heard last week that the FPI had stated it would support Christmas celebrations in the name of religious tolerance.

Has a miracle happened or has Santa Claus come to town? For an ordinary Indonesian with little knowledge of theology or religion such as myself, every year the birthday of Jesus becomes a huge hullabaloo of security, political or social concerns, including terrorist threats, although it is actually just an ordinary birthday celebration.

However the FPIs endorsement of Christmas likely applies only once and in one place. Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan has allowed Christians to celebrate Christmas at Monas after he recently permitted Muslims to hold huge gatherings there.

Some Christians may say it is simply exaggeration. The FPI is always hostile toward any Christmas-related events or moments. Just Google it.

Islam is rahmatan lilalamin [a blessing for the universe] and is very supportive of pluralism, differences must be respected, tirto.co news portal quoted FPI Jakarta branch secretary-general, Novel Chaidir Hasan Bamukmin, as saying.

The two largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah have regularly assured security during Christmas. But I have never heard such assurances from the FPI before. But who knows? Maybe we are totally wrong this time.

The Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) has strongly rejected the offer to hold Christmas celebrations at Monas, while the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI) has taken the same position, albeit in a more subtle tone. Basically, they suspected the offer was made just for political purposes. Anies has dropped the plan and offered a more acceptable location.

The PGI and the KWI have voiced the feeling of their followers. On social media, there are suspicions that Governor Anies and the FPI are suddenly being friendly toward them just to accommodate Christian relatives or friends of Gerindra Party leader Prabowo Subianto. But the reactions are sometimes too much and go against the teaching of Christianity itself.

I just want to slap the faces of those who want to go there [Monas], posted one social media user, while on the same page condemning the intolerance from the Muslim side. For me, whatever the motivation of the governor and the FPI, their statement is certainly interesting.

Technically, Christmas is just an ordinary birthday celebration. Why should we make a big fuss of it? That is probably the reason why the FPI softened its position.

Churchgoers will hopefully experience a beautiful day on Monday.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 12:07 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e75f13 1 Lifestyle Hello-Kitty,antam,gold,#gold Free

State-owned miner PT Aneka Tambang (Antam), through Precious Metals Processing and Refinery Business Unit (UBPP LM), is entering the Japanese market by distributing Hello Kitty minted gold bars.

Tempo.co reported that the company had worked with MKK Co. Ltd, a subsidiary company of Mirai Kagaku Co. Ltd., to produce the gold bars.

Antam marketing director Tatang Hendra said Japan was a potential market for Hello Kitty minted gold bars, as there was high demand for gold in the country.

Read also: Hello Kitty, Pikachu appointed ambassadors for Japan

Tatang said the Hello Kitty minted gold bars were among Antams other innovations to enter the international market.

MKK Co. Ltd. is said to have chosen Antam as the supplier for the Hello Kitty minted gold bars because the state-owned miner was the only gold refinery in Southeast Asia with a London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) certificate.

The Hello Kitty minted gold bars would be available in 1, 5, 10 and 25 grams. The front design displays the Hello Kitty character, while the back part displays Antams logo. (jes/kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Carla Bianpoen and Stevie Emilia (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 09:58 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e6eecd 4 Art & Culture art-and-culture,Art-Jakarta-2017,biennale,Biennale-Jogja,Jakarta-Biennale,Europalia-Arts-Festival,Art-Stage-Jakarta-2017 Free

Undeterred by continuing commercial quiet in the art world, Indonesias artists and enthusiasts go the extra mile, infusing the art scene with astounding creative energy.

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS



A selected number of artists have been busy creating works based on colonial history for the 2017 Europalia Arts Festival, an international biannual arts and culture festival in Europe, which this year took Indonesia as its focus country.



At the four-month festival, which runs until Jan. 21 next year, Indonesia aims to showcase the countrys diversity by presenting nearly 250 programs.

Read also: First exhibition for Indonesian comics history held in Brussels

Meanwhile, a number of artists took part in the exhibition Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, held at the Mori Museum and the National Art Center in Tokyo, which is now on its way to Fukuoka.



While it is not immediately known how many other international events have included Indonesian artists, it seems there was a huge amount of creative energy on the move.



Given the abovementioned successes, the outlook for next year is fairly optimistic.

KALIJODO

Artist Teguh Osentrik poses in front of his art installation made with four slabs of berlin wall in Kalijodo Park, North Jakarta, Tuesday, September 26, 2017. The installation titled (JP/Seto Wardhana)

Veteran artist Teguh Ostenrik wowed the public by setting up four authentic sections of the Berlin wall in his thrilling art installation, titled Patung Menembus Batas (Sculpture that Breaks Boundaries) at the Kalijodo child friendly integrated public space in Jakarta, which the artist created in memory of the Berlin Wall, and which he related to current situations at home.

Read also: Teguh Ostenriks: Berlin Wall in Jakarta: Art to overcome divisive powers

The artist waited for 27 years before finally making the project a reality in Jakarta. The wall was the defining symbol of the Cold War that divided East Berlin and its Western parts and Europe from 1961 to 1989. Teguh himself lived near the wall for over 10 years.



I saw the perilous impact of the wall in Berlin, the dramatic and fatal impact [the wall] had on human lives and I felt signs of similar trends had already reached my country back then.

YOUNG TALENT

Youthful force: A visitor poses with Ronald Apriyams paintings at Art Jakarta 2017 at Pacific Place in Jakarta. The arts fair, previously known as Bazaar Art, showcased a wide range of works by young artists and positioned itself as the peoples arts fair. (JP/Carla Bianpoen)

The rise of young talent could easily be seen this year at Art Jakarta (formerly Bazaar Art), where upcoming artists from various parts of Indonesia revealed a surprising creativity in work and thought.



Great artistic talent was also revealed in the fifth edition of the Bandung Contemporary Art Awards (BaCAA) held for artists under 40, showing an ever advancing number of excellence in works with creative concepts including social matters, scientific knowledge and humane sensitivity.

Read also: Heres what you shouldnt miss at 2017 Art Jakarta

Worth mentioning is the publication of LipLap, a book on 35 Bandung artists under 35, which was conceptualized by young artists in cooperation with artist-led Gerilya Gallery and Omnispace, and supported by Melbourne-based collector Konfir Kabos Project 11, which is described as a giving initiative which seeks to support artists and projects that make an imprint on their field.



There was also the Bandung Re-Emergence exhibition at the Selasar Sunaryo gallery, which challenged artists of the previous Bandung New-Emergence to review their works with todays interpretation.

ART STAGE JAKARTA

The surge of creative energy in Indonesias art world, especially in the second half of the year, was marked by, among other things, the launch of the ALEQS, an art award founded by Art Stage Jakarta, which was in its second iteration this year. (JP/Carla Bianpoen)

The surge of creative energy in Indonesias art world, especially in the second half of the year, was marked by, among other things, the launch of the ALEQS, an art award founded by Art Stage Jakarta, which was in its second iteration this year.



Encompassing the entire art ecosystem, this first-ever award was handed to the best in 13 separate categories displaying Authenticity, Leadership, Excellence, Quality and Seriousness in art.



The awards included Best Collector, Best Curator, Best Artist, Best Gallery, Best Gallerist, Best Young Curator, Best Young Gallery and Best Senior Collectors.



The Best Collector award was won by businessman Haryanto Adikoesoemo, whose collection encompasses local and international artworks and who is also the owner of the newly opened Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN).



Other winners were long-durational performance artist Melati Suryodarmo, who is also this years director of the Jakarta Biennale; Enin Supriyanto, who won the Best Curator award; ROH Projects, which received both the Best Gallery and Best Young Gallery awards; and the Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA), which collected the award for Best Art Institution.



Life Achievement Awards were also given to senior curator Jim Supangkat, senior artist Sunaryo and senior collector Ciputra. The Bhinneka Award recognized the work of the Jatiwangi Art Factory arts community in West Java, which focuses on researching the lives of people in the area through art.

MUSEUM MACAN

Melt (triptych, 2008) by Entang Wiharso (Museum MACAN collection/File)

Another excitement in Indonesias art scene this year came when the long-awaited Museum MACAN in West Jakarta opened its doors to the public on Nov. 3.



Prior to the vernissage, the museum organized contemporary art performances by renowned artists from Indonesia and abroad, acknowledging performance art as a contemporary art form.



At its inaugural exhibition, titled Art Turns. World Turns, the museum, which is the countrys first museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art, displays 90 out of the owners some 900 art works, both Indonesian and international pieces, which have been amassed over a 25-year period.



The museums director Aaron Seeto praised Haryanto as a unique collector because his collection is of great strength, quality and artistic resource. And when other [collectors] have been singularly focused on Indonesia, his collection has, from its inception, been both locally and internationally focused, said Seeto.



The exhibition, which is up and running until March 18 next year, correlates either issue-wise or time-wise, denoting a conceptual vision that fits the spirit of our time.

BIENNALES

Tribute to ancestors: Balinese artist Ni Tanjungs artwork depicting gods, ancestors and mythological animals sits on display at the Jakarta Biennale. (JP/Carla Bianpoen)

Equally exciting was that Indonesia hosted three biennales  the Jogja Biennale, the Makassar Biennale in South Sulawesi and the Jakarta Biennale  from November to December this year.



The Jakarta Biennale showcased its groundbreaking inventions and excelled in presenting a new understanding of contemporary art in Indonesia. For the first time, the biennale appointed a woman, Melati Suryodarmo, as its artistic director.



The theme Jiwa (Soul) for the biennale can be understood the all-encompassing energy and creative spirit flowing from the past or the memory of it, to the present time and on toward new visions.



Jiwa opened with a traditional ceremony performed by bissu  the androgynous shaman community from South Sulawesi, included works of Balinese outsider art, and revived works from senior artists of the past and present, such as Semsar Siagian, Hendrawan Ryanto, Siti Adiati and Marintan Sirait.



The biennale also included famous international artists and presented 27 performances (the most ever in a biennale) as well as new and existing video works by strong female filmmakers from Argentina, Indonesia, the Philippines and Mexico.



The Jogja Biennale continued its Equator series, now in its fourth edition, this time cooperating with Brazil, with the main theme Stage of Hopelessness, presenting the works of 12 Brazilian artists and 25 Indonesian artists.



The Makassar Biennale marked its second edition this year, taking Maritime Culture as its artistic concept, with participating artists including a Taiwanese artist, who explored similarities between certain features of Makassar, historically renowned for its strategic location during the spice trade period, and his homeland.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 19:04 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e95f87 2 Environment pangolin,trafficking,Indonesia,Pekanbaru,wildlife,environment Free

Pangolins in Indonesia are at risk of extinction because of an illicit trade that sees thousands of the critically endangered animals trafficked each year, a study showed Thursday.

More than 35,000 pangolins -- docile, ant-eating mammals with a thick armour -- were seized by Indonesian authorities between 2010 and 2015, exposing the scale of the illegal business, the study by wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic said.

Indigenous to parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, the pangolin is prized as an edible delicacy and ingredient in traditional medicine, especially in China and Vietnam, and is the world's most trafficked mammal.

Rampant poaching is putting Indonesia's indigenous manis javanica species at an "extremely high risk of extinction", the group said.

"Indonesia's wildlife is being drained on an industrial scale to feed the global illegal trade," Kanitha Krishnasamy, acting regional director for Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

"While the relatively high number of seizures speaks to Indonesia's commitment in tackling the problem, it also highlights the relentless poaching."

Read also: Pangolin smuggling thwarted in Dumai

This file photo taken in Pekanbaru, Riau province on October 25, 2017 shows Indonesian officials unloading pangolins after a recent raid in Pekanbaru. Pangolin in Indnesia are at risk of extinction thanks to an illicit trade that sees thousands of the critically endangered trafficked each year, a stury showed on December 21, 2017. (AFP/Fatima Elkareem)

The study found at least 127 suspects had been arrested in connection with the trade over six years in Indonesia.

Sumatra was identified as a hotspot and served as a key link to smugglers in Malaysia and Singapore, where the animals were most often sent on to China and Vietnam.

Indonesia's government said it could not halt the illegal trade alone and urged recipient countries to crack down on importers.

"Don't just blame Indonesia. It takes two to tango," Bambang Dahono Aji, the conservation director at Indonesia's Environment Ministry, told AFP.

"We are huge archipelagic nation with limited resources to monitor all the sea routes."

In October, more than 100 live pangolins were seized in a fishing boat off the east coast of Sumatra. Two people were arrested for attempting to smuggle the scaly mammals to Malaysia.

That came after more than 223 live pangolins as well as nine large bags of pangolin scales were discovered in a warehouse near Medan, North Sumatra, in June.

Topics : pangolin trafficking Indonesia Pekanbaru wildlife environment
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 10:08 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e6ff96 1 Science & Tech mobile,cellphone,registration,identity-card,SIM-card Free

More than 110 million mobile phone numbers have been registered with the government, according to an official, two months after the regulation was first announced.

The figure represents half of active prepaid SIM cards on the market, according to Ahmad M. Ramil, the Communications and Information Ministry's director general for post and informatics management, as reported by kompas.com.

"This accomplishment cannot be separated from efforts made by the Home Ministry and the police, as well as other institutions that helped with the process of registering SIM cards," he said during the ministry's Performance Achievements and Innovation Launch event in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Ramli also thanked telecommunication operators for raising awareness about the regulation and help boost the number of registered SIM cards from 90 million on Dec. 7.

There are some 290 million active SIM cards across Indonesia, and about 390 million are currently in the market.

Indonesian citizens are required to register their phone numbers along with their identity card (KTP) and family card numbers by sampling texting their details to 4444.

Meanwhile, foreigner must register with their passport and temporary stay permit (ITAS) or permanent stay permit (ITAP).

Read also: What you need to know about SIM card registration

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara explained at Wednesdays event that the regulation was a matter of public safety, but could also help boost related industries.

"Every year, the cellular industry buys more than 500 million SIM cards, Rudiantara said.

Prepaid SIM card users have until Feb. 28, 2018, to register their details or risk having their phone numbers blocked.

The government will provide a 30-day grace period following the deadline, during which no outgoing calls or text messages can be made.

Fifteen days into the grace period, unregistered SIM cards will not be able to receive incoming calls or texts.

Finally, 30 days after the deadline, any unregistered numbers will be blocked completely, disabling all services provided by the prepaid SIM card. (liz/kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Glenda Kwek (Agence France-Presse) Sydney, Australia  Thu, December 21, 2017 16:39 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e8bf8a 2 Science & Tech submarine,Australia,WWI,World-War-I,mystery,Papua-New-Guinea,HMAS-AE1,wreckage,military Free

Australia's most enduring military mystery has been solved after the wreckage of the country's first submarine was found more than a century after it vanished off Papua New Guinea, officials said Thursday.

HMAS AE1, the first of two E Class submarines built for the Royal Australian Navy, disappeared on 14 September, 1914 near the Duke of York Islands with 35 crew members from Australia, Britain and New Zealand on board.

It was the first Allied submarine loss in World War I.

AE1 was found in more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) of water after an expedition -- the 13th such search -- was launched last week using Fugro Equator, a ship also used by Australia to hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

"After 103 years, Australia's oldest naval mystery has been solved," Defence Minister Marise Payne told reporters in Sydney.

"This is one of the most significant discoveries in Australia's naval maritime history... The loss of AE1 in 1914 was a tragedy for our then fledgling nation."

Payne said she hoped the discovery would help investigators establish the cause of the sinking.

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs said the most likely cause of the loss "remains a diving accident", The Australian newspaper reported.

"The submarine appears to have struck the bottom with sufficient force to dislodge the fin from its footing," it quoted Briggs as saying.

He said the vessel appeared to have suffered a "post sinking, high energy event" that would have caused the submarine to flood rapidly, probably near the surface.

The newspaper pointed to a possible torpedo explosion or the rupture of a high-pressure air cylinder.

"When the end came for the men of AE1 it would have been very fast. They may well have not known what hit them," Briggs said.

Read also: Museum of Broken Relationships: Love found and lost

Progression of technology

A handout photo received on December 21, 2017, from the Royal Australian Navy shows the Find AE1 survey team analyzing the drop camera vision of the wreckage of Australian submarine HMAS AE1 located in waters off the Duke of York Island group in Papua New Guinea. (Royal Australian Navy/AFP/Fugro Survey)

Construction for AE1 started in 1911 and she was commissioned in Portsmouth, England in February 1914. The sub reached Sydney in May with her sister AE2.

At 55 metres long, AE1 displaced 599 tonnes and could reach a top speed of 15 knots on the surface and 10 knots when submerged. She was armed with four 18-inch torpedo tubes.

AE1 joined naval forces assigned to the capture of the German Pacific colonies and with AE2 took part in operations leading to the occupation of German New Guinea -- the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea.

On September 14, she vanished after a rendezvous off Herbertshohe -- present day Kokopo -- near the Duke of York Islands with destroyer HMAS Parramatta.

Australia's Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, said the submarine was located using a range of technologies, including a magnetometer that measures magnetic disturbances, remotely operated vehicles and a deep-drop camera.

"Each time that we searched for AE1, the progression of technology has allowed for us to learn a little bit more," he said.

Barrett said he hoped the discovery of the vessel and the lost crew would be of comfort to their descendants.

Payne said the government was working with its PNG counterparts to preserve the site and arrange for a commemoration of the sub and its crew.

The search was jointly funded by the Australian government, the Australian National Maritime Museum and two maritime history organisations.

Submarines like the AE1 came to play key roles in WWI. But the first military submersibles had taken to the seas more than a century earlier.

The first naval submarine was purported to be Turtle, a hand-cranked vessel created in the 1770s during the American Revolution.

By the end of the 19th century, the French were developing submarines that used electric motors while Britain joined the underwater race in 1901 followed by Germany in 1905.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 18:40 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e95ac9 1 Business traffic-congestion,Holiday,anticipation,toll-road Free

The Toll Road Authority Agency (BPJT) is anticipating a surge in traffic along roads heading to tourist areas over the year-end holidays.

"We expect a traffic surge on toll roads that are close to tourist areas such as Puncak in Bogor and Bandung." BPJT head Terry Trisaputra Zuna in Jakarta on Thursday.

The Public Works and Public Housing Ministry estimates a 30 percent increase in land traffic, including along toll roads on Dec. 23, Dec. 30 and Jan 1.

In anticipation of the situation, the BPJT has prepared a number of measures, including by halting construction along toll roads from Dec. 22 to Jan. 1, enforcing full cashless payment at toll gates and introducing a contraflow strategy.

By halting projects like the construction of the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road, the existing toll roads will be at full capacity, he said.

Terry said he had coordinated with banks to improve the top-up capacity at toll road rest areas. "We also private top-up machines at toll gates to help toll users top up their e-money cards." he added. (srs/bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Rosie SCAMMELL (AFP) London  Thu, December 21, 2017 07:14 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e678ee 2 World Britain,Prime-Minister,Theresa-May Free

British Prime Minister Theresa May was left weakened by the resignation Wednesday of her deputy Damian Green, the latest crack in her government as she faces tough Brexit talks.

Green agreed to step down as first secretary of state after a probe into his conduct found he had acted dishonestly.

"It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation," the prime minister wrote in a letter addressed to Green.

May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her deputy to step down, describing him as a friend since their time at university and throughout their political careers.

The departure of one of her closest aides is the result of an investigation into Green's conduct following newspaper allegations published last month.

The Sunday Times reported that pornography was found on his parliamentary computer in 2008, while a journalist claimed Green acted inappropriately towards her in 2015.

In its report the Cabinet Office said Green had breached the ministerial code when he made "inaccurate and misleading" statements, by falsely claiming he was unaware that indecent material had been found on his computer.

London's Metropolitan Police had told Green about the pornography found, the Cabinet Office noted, without drawing conclusions on whether he had viewed the material.

In a summary of the report findings published by May's Downing Street office, the investigation did not draw definite conclusions on Green's behaviour towards the journalist Kate Maltby.

- Scandal at Westminster -

In his resignation letter Green apologized for breaching the ministerial code, while denying that he downloaded or viewed pornography in parliament.

He also expressed his regret at the "distress caused" to Maltby, who claimed Green touched her knee and later sent her a suggestive text message.

"I do not recognize the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologize," he wrote.

Green's resignation comes as part of a broader scandal over sexual harassment at Westminster, which erupted weeks ago and prompted the departure of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon last month.

Numerous other claims have been made against those working in politics, prompting the prime minister to call for rules on MPs' behavior to be toughened.

- Weakened May -

Fallon's resignation was followed a week later by that of Britain's overseas aid minister, Priti Patel, who stepped down over unauthorized meetings in Israel.

The loss of two ministers in a matter of days cast doubt over May's authority, already challenged by divided opinions within her cabinet over Brexit.

May had been left fragile after a snap election in June backfired dramatically, leaving the Conservatives clinging onto power but losing their majority in parliament.

The premier dismissed calls to resign and vowed to lead Britain through its EU departure, although she faced a further challenge last week when a group of Conservative MPs rebelled against her in a key parliamentary vote on Brexit.

Her troubles appeared to have abated somewhat on Friday, when European Union leaders agreed to open talks on a future relationship with Britain.

But Brussels warned that the next phase of talks will be even more difficult than the past six months of negotiations on the country's exit.

While May will enter the new year on unstable footing, the resignation of Green is not expected to mark her imminent departure from Downing Street.

She will however lose an important ally in Green, a former journalist who was first elected to parliament in 1997.

He rose through the ranks to become work and pensions secretary last year under May, before being appointed first secretary of state after the June election.

In his resignation letter Green indicated he would stay on as a lawmaker, thanking his constituents for their support and vowing to "continue to argue for the modernizing conservatism I have always believed in".
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Depok  Thu, December 21, 2017 15:11 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e82248 1 City #Depok,#CSR Free

With no regional bylaw to regulate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the Depok administration has found it difficult to manage CSR funds for the public interest, Depok Mayor Mohammad Idris Abdul Shomad has said.

Idris regretted the fact that the region, one of Jakarta's satellite cities, still had no regulation in place as it received a large amount of CSR funds, which could be utilized for the benefit of Depok residents.

"We are yet to manage CSR funds as there is no legal basis in place," he said Wednesday, as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

He added that he hoped his city's administration and the Depok Regional Legislative Councils (DPRD) would begin discussing a CSR bylaw.

"Once we have a legal basis, we can manage the funds to develop public facilities, such as public parks and open green spaces (RTH)," he added.

A draft bylaw on CSR funds was proposed in 2014 but there was no follow up regarding the matter, councilor Suparyono said. (rdi)


Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 09:29 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e6e4fb 4 Politics #politics,#GolkarParty,#GolkarNationalCongress,#AirlanggaHartarto Free

Indonesia's oldest existing political party, Golkar, concluded its extraordinary congress on Wednesday by officially inaugurating Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto as its chairman until 2019.

Airlangga replaced Setya Novanto, a seasoned party stalwart who is currently standing trial as part of the controversial e-ID procurement corruption case.

At the meeting, Golkar mandated Airlangga, the son of a former industry minister during the Suharto administration, to carry out a "revitalization" of the party, including organizational structure changes, based on "the needs of the party."

Speaking to reporters after the congress, Airlangga said as quoted by kompas.com it was "the president's prerogative" whether he would be replaced as industry minister or not.

Golkar, a member of the ruling coalition led by the Indonesian Democratic Party Of Struggle (PDI-P), decided to make changes to its leadership as its chances of securing votes in the upcoming 2019 legislative and presidential election were potentially under threat following Setya's implication in the corruption case. (mos)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 17:50 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e919d7 1 Politics Golkar,KPK,graft Free

Under the leadership of Airlangga Hartarto, the Golkar Party will withdraw its support for the controversial inquiry initiated by the House of Representatives to probe the work of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Happy Bone Zulkarnaen, an aide to Airlangga, said that with the move, Golkar expected to improve its standing ahead of the 2019 general election. Golkar's electability rating has taken a hit following graft allegations leveled at some of its politicians, including outgoing party chairman Setya Novanto.

"The mood of the moment is for us to protect the KPK," Happy said as reported by tempo.co on Wednesday.

Happy said the planned move to withdraw support for the inquiry was consistent with Airlangga's plan to clean up the party and improve its chance of success in the 2019 election.

Read also: Golkar installs Industry Minister Airlangga as new chairman

Following the KPK's move to investigate cases in which lawmakers had been implicated, the House launched an inquiry into the antigraft body as it believes the latter has become a super body and is plagued with irregularities.

The political party of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), meanwhile, said it had no plan drop its support for the House inquiry.

"We have not received a directive to change course. We continue to support the inquiry," PDI-P central board member Trimedya Pandjaitan said as reported by tempo.co.

Topics : Golkar KPK graft
Pack goat aficionados and bighorn sheep conservationists appear to have struck a compromise in Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest.

"This is the way we're supposed to do business, especially in the West," said Steve Kilpatrick, executive director of the Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation. "It demonstrates that we can get along if we sit down and talk."

Overall, the Shoshones decision is a win-win for bighorn sheep conservation and goat packing, as the decision provides ample protection of bighorn sheep herds while still allowing recreational pack goat use on areas of the forest, said Andrew Irvine, a Jackson, Wyoming, lawyer who represents the North American Packgoat Association.

Pack goat use would be prohibited in occupied core native bighorn sheep habitat in the Shoshone but could be authorized under a permit system in other areas. Domestic sheep grazing would continue to be allowed on two current allotments.

The proposals are part of the forest's Final Environmental Impact Statement and draft Record of Decision for the use of domestic sheep, goats and pack goats. The rules were developed after the forest was sued in 2015 by the North American Packgoat and Idaho Wool Growers associations.

The proposal is subject to a 60-day objection period.

Wild sheep

The Shoshone National Forest has the largest number of bighorn sheep of any national forest, with about 4,550 of the 6,000 bighorn sheep in Wyoming. Northwestern Wyoming contains eight core native bighorn sheep herds, which have never been extirpated and re-populated with transplanted bighorn sheep.

These core native herds include the Clarks Fork, Trout Peak, Wapiti Ridge, Younts Peak, Francs Peak, Targhee, Jackson, and Whiskey Mountain herds, which account for more than 90 percent of the bighorn sheep in the state.

Protecting those herds was the primary concern of regional forester Brian Ferebee. In his record of decision he wrote, "While I appreciate pack goat users interest in this form of backcountry recreation, I have chosen to exercise caution and select an alternative that will reduce the risk of contact and potential for disease transmission to the core native bighorn sheep herds on the Shoshone National Forest.

"While there is emerging science to indicate that pack goats may present less of a disease transmission risk, only a small number of scientific studies have been done specific to the risk of disease transmission from pack goats," Ferebee added. "The magnitude of the consequences if disease were to be transmitted from pack goats to bighorn sheep places the risk of allowing pack goat use within occupied habitat for core native bighorn sheep herds beyond an acceptable level."

"The biggest issue in the West for wild sheep is disease," Kilpatrick said. "They are somewhat imperiled."

Irvine countered that, While NAPgA does not believe the limited risk of disease transmission from pack goats to bighorn sheep warrants closure of any of the forest to goat packing, it recognizes the desire to mitigate against any potential risk of disease transmission to bighorn sheep, and believes the Shoshone has achieved that desire with its decision.

Pack goat response

Newly elected Packgoat Association president Curtis King said his organization has worked closely with the Forest Service and bighorn sheep conservation groups to find common ground since filing its lawsuit.

"We've never been a difficult group to work with,but we're somewhat frustrated," King said.

That frustration comes from what King said is the fact that there's never been a disease transmission or bighorn sheep die-off caused by a pack goat coming into contact with a bighorn or mountain goat.

"The science does not support that goats are a danger to bighorn sheep," King said. "I believe the Forest Service is erring on the side of caution, and I understand that."

But he warned bighorn sheep wildlife groups, as well as other national forests across the West, not to take the group's acquiescence as a sign of approval for pack goat restrictions.

"They cannot argue this is a scientific fact, and we've been doing this since 1970," King said.

Bighorn infections

Two of the Shoshone National Forest's core native herds have suffered significant die-offs in the past due to bacterial pneumonia. The Jackson herd, on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, was hit in 2002, and the Whiskey Mountain herd has suffered through several outbreaks of the disease. Managers also suspect that disease played a role in a population decline in the southern Absaroka Mountains during 201113.

Domestic sheep are known to carry bacteria that can infect and kill bighorns, however scientists have been unable to narrow the deaths down to a specific pathogen.

The science tying bighorn deaths to pack goats is much thinner. A study published in June by lead researcher Thomas Besser, of Washington State University, showed that although bighorn sheep could contract pneumonia from pack goats the "severity of the disease was markedly milder" than when the sickness is caused by domestic sheep.

The Wyoming Game & Fish Department conducted capture operations for all bighorn sheep herds on the Shoshone National Forest for disease surveillance and other purposes from 2011-2017. The results indicate that all of the herds harbor an array of pathogens that have been identified as being factors in bighorn sheep pneumonia outbreaks.

The results of this disease surveillance work do not diminish the concern for disease transmission from domestic sheep, domestic goats, or pack goats to bighorn sheep on the Shoshone National Forest, the agency stated. Forest Service biologists believe it is possible that in some cases the strains currently carried by bighorn sheep in these herds may be less virulent, or that these bighorn sheep have developed some level of immunity specific to those strains.

History

Domestic sheep grazing on the Shoshone reached its highest point in the early 1900s and has been on a steady decline since. From the 1960s to 1980s many sheep allotments were converted to cattle. Since then, all commercial sheep grazing permits on the SNF, except for one, have been removed.

Two active allotments on the southern end of the SNF comprise the current extent of domestic sheep grazing on the forest. Up to 1,150 ewe/lambs are grazed on the Pine-Willow Allotment, and are then moved to the adjacent Slate Creek Allotment. No domestic sheep grazing is authorized within core native bighorn sheep range on the Shoshone.

There are no active commercial domestic goat allotments on the SNF, and domestic goats are not used for vegetation management, but recreational goat packing is allowed on the Washakie Ranger District.

Goat use

In 2011, domestic goat use on the Clarks Fork, Wapiti, Greybull and Wind River ranger districts was restricted. The closure was implemented to reduce the risk of disease transmission from pack goats to core native bighorn sheep herds. The pack goat closure order was issued again in June 2016 and will be in effect until Dec. 31, 2019, or until rescinded. Under this temporary closure, domestic goat use is only authorized on the Washakie Ranger District.

Under the newly released proposal, permit-only pack goat use would be allowed on portions of the Clarks Fork, Washakie and Wind River districts.

Pack goat use for backcountry trips into the Wind River Range occurred prior to implementation of the closure order, primarily into the Fitzpatrick Wilderness.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21 2017

With Christmas and New Years Eve just around the corner, the Jakarta Police traffic division has planned to deploy personnel to help organize traffic ahead of the peak of the holiday exodus on Friday.

Jakarta Police traffic division deputy head Adj. Sr. Comr. Suhandono said Wednesday that the police would deploy 1,200 personnel to secure traffic in areas prone to heavy congestion.

Our prediction was about 10,000 vehicles [would leave Jakarta] but we were not certain since it is a holiday season, he said as quoted by kompas.com.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21 2017

The number of residents with social and community problems (PMKS) has decreased thanks to citywide policies, Jakarta Social Affairs Agency head Masrokhan has said, citing agency data that show a 45 percent decrease in PMKS this year.

Entering the third week of December, the agency has taken 8,143 PMKS into custody, a decrease from the 14,808 PMKS in 2016.

During an event on preparation for Christmas and New Years Eve on Wednesday, Masrokhan said the agencys success in dealing with PMKS had been realized through cooperation with several parties, including the citys Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) and the Transportation Agency.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 10:41 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e72d1c 1 Business Indonesia-Australia,CEPA,negotiation Free

Indonesia and Australia failed to conclude their Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) this month as initially scheduled due to several unsettled issues such as investment in the education sector.

They agreed to conclude the IA-CEPA negotiation in March, 2018.

The text of the agreement is 94 to 95 percent complete but because of some unsettled issues we need to prolong our negotiation, Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita told a press conference on Wednesday.

Delegates from both countries will meet again in January and we dont want this to be unfinished by March, he said.

Read also: RI, Oz aim to settle crucial points in CEPA 9th round

Previously, the Australia government expressed interest in increasing its investment in the Indonesian education sector. The country expects easier terms of investment.

In response, Indonesia chief negotiator Deddy Saleh said Indonesia had considered allowing the investors to own majority shares in education businesses.

In the negotiations, Indonesian delegates focused on gaining added benefits from investment from Australia, because, with its population of 24.3 million, Australia is not a major export destination for Indonesian. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 15:49 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e843c9 1 Business Indonesia,Chile,CEPA,agreement Free

Indonesia and Chile have signed the Indonesia-Chile Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita announced on Wednesday.

The two countries will ratify the agreement soon, said Enggartiasto. He added that this marked a new era for the two countries and its businesses, which had started preparations to utilize the CEPA for exporting products beyond traditional commodities.

Some palm oil and seaweed businesses have expressed their interest in exporting more of their commodities there, in addition to many other exporters, Enggartiasto said. Indonesia currently exported automotive spare parts and footwear, while Chile exported iron ore and grapes to Indonesia.

Read also: Indonesia-Chile CEPA negotiations resume after delay

He said the CEPA signing took place on Dec. 15, when the Indonesian delegation visited Santiago after attending the Eleventh World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Chile is the first South American country with which Indonesia has a free trade agreement (FTA). The next in line is Peru, with negotiations expected to start before the end of the year.

ASEAN countries Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam already have a CEPA with Chile.

Total two-way trade between Indonesia and Chile was about US$226 million in 2016, far less than trade between Vietnam and Chile at more than $1 billion, with the former enjoying a surplus of about $216 million.

Even though Chile is a small country with a population of only 17.6 million, the Indonesian government considers it a strategic partner because Chile has FTAs with dozens of countries, including in South America and Africa. (bbn)

Topics : Indonesia Chile CEPA agreement
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 10:38 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e7209b 1 Business Indonesia,Palestine,MoU,zero-tariff Free

Indonesia and Palestine have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to exchange zero tariffs for particular goods to improve their bilateral trade, Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita announced Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the WTO ministerial conference in Argentina recently, we signed the MoU with Palestine as instructed by our President to implement the OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] summit decision, he told a press conference.

Indonesia has agreed to apply zero tariffs for Palestines dates and olive oil, while Indonesia has yet to submit its list of products of interest.

Read also: OIC seeks unity on Palestine

Weve asked them what [goods] they need from us and they said they need all products, he said, adding that the Finance Ministry would immediately issue a regulation on zero tariffs for the Palestinian products, starting next month. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21 2017

For Korean pop (K-pop) fans, especially those grouped in Shawol, the fandom of boy group SHINee, the week started off in tragedy following the shocking news of vocalist Kim Jong-hyuns apparent suicide at the age of 27.

However, insensitive tweets from the account @MemeComicIndo (MCI) marred what was supposed to be a mourning period and ignited anger among Indonesian Shawols.

The comments even prompted one fan to send the anonymous account a legal notice.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 16:10 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e89005 1 City #Jakarta,#Bantar-Gebang,#WasteManagement Free

The Jakarta administration has joined hands with the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) to build a waste-to-energy power plant (PLTSa), the first of its kind in the capital.

The pilot project will be carried out at the Bantar Gebang Integrated Waste Treatment Area (TPST) in Bekasi, West Java.

It is set to start in late 2018 with a Rp 900 billion (US$ 63 million) budget.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said Jakarta dumps 7 tons of waste at TPST Bantar Gebang every day. Without effective management, the accumulated garbage would be a dangerous problem for the environment, he added.

One of our biggest problems is waste management. With the waste-based electricity power plant, we expect to cut the amount of waste dumped at Bantar Gebang, Anies said as quoted by Antara on Wednesday.

He also expects Jakartans to help by managing the waste produced by their own households.

The Jakarta administration will provide the land needed for the PLTSa project, while the BPPT will deal with construction.

The PLTSa will have 400-kilowatt capacity and manage up to 50 tons of waste every day. (roi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 20:30 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e97f1d 1 City #ChildProtection,#HumanTrafficking,#ChildTrafficking,#Jakarta Free

The Jakarta Police have arrested four people allegedly involved in a child trafficking scheme.



South Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr, Mardiaz said the four suspects were identified as F, D, DI and S, kompas.com reported.



The 12-year-old victims are street children, Mardiaz said at his office.



"The victims were sold to foreigners living in Indonesia. Those children were recruited by the syndicate to be sold as sex slaves," Mardiaz said.



He went on to explain that the case was uncovered after a parent of one victim reported the case to the Police.



His office then launched an investigation and arrested the four suspects in South Jakarta.

The suspects could be charged for violating the Child Protection Law and the Human Trafficking Law, which could send them to prison for 15 years. (fac)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Zurich, Switzerland  Thu, December 21, 2017 19:03 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e95bb3 2 World Malaysia,scandal,money-laundering,JPMorgan Free

JP Morgan Chase's Swiss unit "seriously breached anti-money laundering regulations" in its dealings with Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, the Swiss financial markets watchdog found Thursday.

The US bank's subsidiary "failed to adequately identify the increased money laundering risks in some of the business relationships related to this case", the FINMA body said, referring to a money-laundering scandal that has shaken the Malaysian political establishment.

"The bank seriously breached anti-money laundering regulations by failing to screen adequately transactions and business relationships booked in Switzerland associated with the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB and one of its business partners," FINMA said in a statement.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was looted from 1MDB in an audacious campaign of fraud and money-laundering.

The scandal has rocked the administration of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who must call elections by mid-2018. He has responded by purging critics from his government and curbing domestic investigations.

Celebrities have been sucked into the scandal, with the Justice Department alleging stolen 1MDB money was used to buy jewelry worth millions of dollars for Miranda Kerr as well as gifts for Leonardo DiCaprio.

FINMA said Thursday that, despite its findings, it would not seek legal proceedings against any individuals.

It would, however, now conduct an in-depth review of the bank's anti-money laundering systems.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 13:21 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e7e0da 1 National #corruption,corruption-case,bakamla-graft-case,Bakamla,#Bakamla Free

Commodore Bambang Udoyo, a Navy officer who was appointed to the Maritime Security Board (Bakamla) as its data and information director, has been sentenced to jail after the Jakarta Military Court found him guilty of receiving bribes in connection with the procurement of a observation satellite in 2016.

"The defendant is sentenced to four years and six months in prison and a Rp 200 million [US$14,760] fine, or serve an additional three months imprisonment by default," presiding judge Brig. Gen. Deddy Suryanto read out the sentence on Wednesday, as quoted by kontan.co.id.

Bambang, the court said, received S$105,000 from Fahmi Darmawansyah, the president director of technology company PT Melati Technofo Indonesia, which won the bid for procuring the observation satellite.

The transaction took place at Bakamla's Jakarta headquarters in December last year, during which two of Fahmis subordinates, Muhammad Adami Okta and Hardy Stefanus, handed over the money to Bambang.

The sentence was heavier than the 4-year imprisonment and Rp 50 million fine the military prosecutor had asked for.

Bambang was also discharged from the Navy.

Bakamla chief Vice Adm. Arie Sudewo has also been implicated in the case for luring Bambang and other Bakamla officers to receive portions of the illicit money, according to Bambangs defense statement.

Arie has been questioned by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) as a witness in the case. (kuk/ipa)
art

Adult art class

THRIVE -- an 8-week art class for adults, will meet each Sunday from 1-3 p.m. at the Cardiello Art Garage, 912 Eighth Ave. Most of our time will be spent creating art. Participants will explore various styles of art, using many art mediums. Students do not have to be "artistic," but need to come with a willing spirit. The cost is $240 for the 8-week class. This includes an open studio time. Cost can be pro-rated if one or two weeks must be missed. Call Theresa Cardiello at 442-8165 or Sue Kronenberger at 449-0801. Cardielloartgarage.com

film

Free movie night

On Friday, Dec. 22 the Helena Center of Creative Living presents a free movie night with a showing of "Nativity!" The film is rated PG and runs for 105 minutes. Doors open at St. John's Building, 25 S. Ewing, at 6 p.m. with the film beginning at 6:30 p.m. Join the group for snacks and community in the lobby. Bring a snack to share, but there is no obligation.

music

Queen City Swing Band

The Queen City Swing Band will be playing at The Eagles Lodge on Fee St. on Friday, Dec. 22. This is a live 10-piece band playing a combination of Christmas and your favorite dance music from 8-10 p.m. There is no cover charge.

Carrie Krause and Friends

Joining Carrie Krause again this year is Davina from London, Nate from Portland and John from Seattle, the same international group whose music filled the house last January. The group will play at the home of Jean and Steve Krause in West Helena Valley on Sunday, Jan. 7, at 4 p.m. A donation of $25 is required, and light refreshments will be served.

There is a limit of 40 seats so please reserve early. RSVP to simplystrings1@gmail.com to reserve your seat immediately. To secure your booking online go to https://www.brownpapertickets.com, or send a check made out to BAROQUE MUSIC MONTANA. For the address, contact Jean Krause at 907-687-3932 or simplystrings1@gmail.com.

theatre

The Santaland Diaries

An out of work, middle-aged writer in need of holiday cash decides to trade his dignity for a pair of jingling shoes and takes a job as an elf at Macys Department Store. Shows are at 10 p.m. Dec. 15-16 and at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10, 12, 17 and Dec. 19-22 at Grandstreet Theatre, 325 N. Park Ave. Show runs through Dec. 22. Call 442-4270 or visit grandstreettheatre.com for tickets. "The Santaland Diaries" contains mature themes.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Robert Hutton, Kitty Donaldson and Thomas Penny (Bloomberg) London, United Kingdom  Thu, December 21, 2017 16:37 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e8a26b 2 World Theresa-May,scandal,resignation Free

UK Prime Minister Theresa Mays effective deputy, Damian Green, resigned after an official investigation found that hed made misleading statements about pornography on one of his parliamentary office computers, and left questions unanswered about his behavior toward a female activist.

I am extremely sad to be writing this, May wrote in a letter to Green, released by her office, asking him to quit. We have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives.

His departure strips her of one of the most loyal members of her government as she seeks to steer Britains path out of the European Union and rescue her struggling premiership. The 61-year-old and May knew each other since they were at Oxford University and he is one of her closest political allies -- ushered into the Cabinet after her election debacle.

He is the third member of her cabinet to leave office since the start of November. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon quit over inappropriate sexual behavior while Priti Patel stepped down as international development secretary after she misled the premier over private meetings with Israeli officials.

Unlike the previous two resignations, Greens wont require a Cabinet reshuffle -- his role came without a departmental portfolio -- and officials in Mays office said there were no immediate plans to replace him. May set off for a visit to Poland on Thursday morning.

It is not clear in any case who in the government could take over as Mays all-round trusted fixer and adviser.

One possible candidate is Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was sent out on Thursday morning to give interviews on Greens departure. He lied on a particular incident, Hunt told the BBC. He said May had sacked Green very sadly, and I know with a very heavy heart. Im sure she didnt want him to go.

Greens is the latest and most senior British head to roll as a result of women coming forward to complain about inappropriate sexual behavior in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

In October, when that story broke, Green was asked whether he thought there were similar episodes in British politics. Peoples awareness generally of the facts that there are usually men in power who seek to exploit that power for bad purposes is the best defense against it, he replied.

Two weeks later, he was himself in the spotlight, after a journalist and Conservative activist 30 years his junior, Kate Maltby, described how he had taken her for a drink in 2015 to discuss her political career.

After discussing political sex scandals, she wrote, he mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee  so brief, it was almost deniable.

When the article was published, Green did indeed deny it, but May asked her civil servants to investigate whether he had broken the ministerial code. That investigation led a former senior officer from Londons Metropolitan Police, Bob Quick, to allege that pornography was found on a computer in Greens office before he became a minister.


Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 16:29 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e89cf2 1 City #school,#Jakarta,#building,#collapse Free

A hall at SMP 32 Pejagalan Raya state junior high school in Tambora, West Jakarta, collapsed on Thursday, injuring at least three people.

Jakarta Education Agency deputy head Bowo Irianto confirmed the incident, saying that the building, which was built in 1920, "had been too old."

"It's an old building that has achieved cultural heritage status and was not being used for learning activities because of its [deteriorating] state," he said.

"There are three victims. One of them is a teacher who has been admitted to the hospital to receive treatment, and the other two are currently being evacuated [from the rubble]. A team from the Education Agency is observing the location and we will help [the victims] process their BPJS," he added, referring to the Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan).

Separately, Jakarta Fire and Rescue Department head Subejo said that his agency had deployed three fire trucks and one ambulance to the scene.

"A victim identified as 40-year-old Mahendra has been evacuated [from the collapsed hall] and admitted to a hospital," he said. (fac)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Moses Ompusunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 10:28 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e70f65 1 National Jokowi,Joko-Widodo,AMAN,Komnas-HAM,indigenous-people,indigenous-people-rights Free

The government has only acknowledged Indonesia's indigenous cultural diversity through "symbolic" activities while at the same, it has failed to fully protect indigenous communities across the country, a rights advocate said on Wednesday.

National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Sandrayati Moniaga said one of the symbolic activities staged by the current administration was Indonesias 72nd Independence Day celebration held at the State Palace in Jakarta on Aug.17, during which President Joko Jokowi Widodo, his Cabinet ministers and all participants wore traditional attire from the archipelago.

However, when it comes to its responsibilities to provide administrative and legal acknowledgment of indigenous people in Indonesia, the governments efforts have been "minimal," Sandrayati said.

Criminalization has become a logical consequence of the states attitude toward indigenous people, in which it has not yet acknowledged their presence and their rights, especially their land," Sandrayati told a press conference held by the Alliance of Indigenous People of the Archipelago (AMAN).

Komnas HAM last year launched an national investigation into the condition of indigenous people living in forests in Indonesia. The investigation revealed the numerous human rights violations they had suffered from a long time.

Sandrayati said indigenous communities had long been denied access to their own customary boundaries, creating long-standing economic and social problems as a result of their lack of freedom to harness natural resources.

She said the problems stemmed from the designation of customary forests as state land by the Suharto administration in the 70s to 80s, paving the way for the massive expansion of forestry, mining and plantation businesses. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Winda A Charmila (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 21, 2017 18:12 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e9376f 1 City #Anies-Sandiaga,#flooding,#Jakarta Free

After being hit by annual floods owing to a broken dike, residents of Jati Padang, South Jakarta named their concrete dike after Governor Anies Baswedan in a show of gratitude after the governor approved the construction of a new dike for neighborhood unit 3.

Previous governors never really tried to help us solve the annual flooding problem, said community unit head Arief Syarifuddin on Thursday.

Sandbags had been placed around the collapsed dike in October. However, as rain intensified, the sandbags failed to prevent flooding in November and December.

Therefore, the city decided to build a concrete dike, which has been named Tanggul Baswedan. The construction is expected to be completed next week.

Meanwhile, Anies said earlier that he did not expect the gesture from residents.

I was just acting responsibly, Anies said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ganug Nugroho Adi (The Jakarta Post) Surakarta, Central Java  Thu, December 21, 2017 18:23 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e9471d 1 National food-poisoning,toddler,Posyandu,surakarta,Central-Java Free

Several toddlers were admitted to a number of hospitals on Thursday with food poisoning after eating food at an integrated health post (Posyandu) in Gilingan subdistrict, Banjarsari, Surakarta, Central Java.

The toddlers and their parents were reportedly participating in an activity at the health post in which they received free food consisting of rice, fried tempeh, chicken soup and pudding.

They began to report that their children were vomiting after eating the food at 3 p.m. Some of the parents also said they felt dizzy and nauseous, said Posyandu head Sri Purnamaningrum.

She said 15 out of 30 toddlers and adults had suffered food poisoning and were undergoing in-patient treatment at the hospitals.

Gilingan subdistrict head Joko Partono said all medical expenses of the toddlers and their parents would be covered by the Indonesia Health Card (KIS). Meanwhile, one of the Posyandu officers, Didik Subagyo, said he had taken food samples to a medical laboratory at the Central Java Health Agency for examination. (vla/ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Michael Mathes (AFP) Washington  Thu, December 21, 2017 07:30 1793 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e6831f 2 World Donald-Trump,congress,tax-cuts,US Free

Donald Trump celebrated a "historic" victory Wednesday as the US Congress passed a massive Republican tax cut plan, handing the president his first major legislative achievement since taking office nearly a year ago.

The House of Representatives voted along party lines to greenlight a $1.5 trillion overhaul that will impact every corner of the US economy through dramatic tax cuts for corporations and temporary reductions for individuals.

Opposition Democrats have branded the tax plan a giveaway to the wealthiest that risks blowing a hole in the national debt, but the revamp fulfills a core Trump campaign pledge to redirect money from government coffers into the pockets of working Americans.

"We broke every record," a jubilant Trump told scores of elated Republicans gathered at the White House for a victory lap, thanking them for driving through "the largest tax cut in the history of our country."

"We are making America great again," he declared, in a melee of smiles and handshakes with lawmakers -- who took turns to sing the president's praises.

"Something this big, something this generational, something this profound could not have been done without exquisite presidential leadership," gushed House Speaker Paul Ryan, as fellow lawmakers applauded.

The most sweeping rewrite of the US tax code in decades, the bill represents Trump's most important legislative victory in the 11 months since his inauguration, until now marked by the stinging failure to repeal his predecessor's health care law.

Billing it as a "Christmas gift" and a "history victory" for the American people, Trump and his Republicans hope their success in passing tax cuts plays to the party's advantage in next year's mid-term elections.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also takes a major step toward crippling Obamacare, by scrapping the individual mandate that requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine.

"With this bill... we have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something that's much better," Trump declared.

Trump earlier gathered his cabinet members for a meeting where he discussed the tax accomplishment, and that gave way to an extraordinary scene as the president invited those present to join in prayer.

Housing Secretary Ben Carson, a fervent member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, proceeded to say grace, thanking God for giving America Trump and his tax cut plan.

"We're thankful for the unity in Congress that has presented an opportunity for our economy to expand so that we can fight corrosive debt that has been destroying our future," Carson intoned.

- Changing minds -

Having taken months to get across the finish line, the bill was delayed at the last moment Tuesday after a technical glitch required the Senate to strip three minor provisions from the bill before approving it overnight.

Since the House had already voted -- and the versions approved by both chambers must be identical -- it was forced to vote again on the changes. The bill passed the House 224 to 201, with 12 Republicans siding with all Democrats in voting no.

The measure tests conservatives' fidelity to the principle of fiscal discipline, as it is projected to add nearly $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

That figure drops to about $1 trillion when economic growth is accounted for.

Trump had leaned heavily on Republicans to push the contentious package through Congress. The party had been deeply fractured after the Obamacare repeal failure, and the prospects of success on tax reform in 2017 appeared remote.

The reform remains unpopular: a CNN poll shows that 55 percent of Americans oppose the tax plan, widely criticized as favoring wealthy people over the middle class, while just 33 percent support it.

But Republicans have pushed back at that notion, with Ryan predicting that Americans would be won over once they start to reap the benefits next year.

"I think people are going to change their view on this," he said.

The tax bill slashes the federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and the maximum individual income tax rate, for the nation's wealthiest, would drop from 39.6 percent to 37 percent.

It also doubles the standard deduction for families, and doubles the child tax credit, while eliminating or limiting several deductions currently claimed by millions of middle-class families.

- Economic 'rocket fuel' -

Ryan stated that a median-income family of four earning $73,000 annually would save $2,059 in taxes next year.

But he could not say whether the tax cuts would generate enough economic growth to pay for themselves.

Trump however was bullish. "By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy," he said.

Democrats meanwhile trashed the plan's implications for ordinary citizens.

"It is a victory for billionaires like Donald Trump... but this is a disaster for the American people," independent Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN.

Under the law, the corporate tax cuts are permanent, while those for individuals phase out beginning in 2026. By 2027, the Tax Policy Center warns, 53 percent of households will see their taxes rise.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Steven T. Dennis (Bloomberg) Washington, United States  Thu, December 21, 2017 16:07 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e88bef 2 World trump,Russia-meddling,Robert-Mueller,probe Free

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee warned President Donald Trump against firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller or pardoning key witnesses like Michael Flynn in the continuing Russia investigation.

While Trump has said he isnt planning to fire Mueller, Senator Mark Warner said Wednesday that he continues to worry about that prospect. Warner cited what he said appeared to be a coordinated campaign to dismiss the special counsel or others in the Justice Department emanating from some right-wing media outlets and echoed by some members of the House.

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," Warner said on the Senate floor.

The senator from Virginia called Trumps lack of actions against Russia unnerving. He later told reporters that the president, who has repeatedly referred to the Russia investigations as a witch hunt, should let them continue. Warner said thats the only way to lift a cloud that hangs over the administration.

Legislation aimed at protecting Muellers job has yet to move out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, although supporters are working on merging two bills and hope to convince Chairman Chuck Grassley that such an effort would be constitutional.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Carole Landry (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States  Thu, December 21, 2017 21:00 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e98b8a 2 World UN,Jerusalem,US,trump,resolution Free

UN member-states will soon vote on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with President Donald Trump threatening to cut funding to countries that back the measure.

At an emergency session, the UN General Assembly will decide on a draft resolution reaffirming that Jerusalem is an issue that must be resolved through negotiations and that any decision on its status has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

The measure was sent to the General Assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

The status of the Holy City is one of the most thorny issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides claiming it as their capital.

Trump's decision on December 6 to recognize the city as Israel's capital broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world, prompting a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

But Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted, suggesting there could even be reprisals for countries that back the motion which was put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us," Trump said at the White House.

"Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

The draft resolution mirrors the text that was vetoed on Monday, and although it does not mention Trump's decision, it expresses "deep regret at recent decisions" concerning the city's status.

Ahead of the vote, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the UN as a "house of lies," saying Israel "rejects outright this vote, even before it passes."

"The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well -- the house of lies," he said.

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain, vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley sent an email to fellow UN envoys to put them on notice that "the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us."

"We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," she wrote in the message seen by AFP.

Topics : UN Jerusalem US trump resolution
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, December 22 2017

The Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced on Thursday businessman Andi Agustinus, also known as Andi Narogong, to eight years in prison for his role in the high-profile e-ID graft case.

Andi was proven guilty at the House of Representatives of conspiring with numerous parties to rig the e-ID procurement project, which caused Rp 2.3 trillion (US$169.7 million) in state losses, said presiding judge Jhon Halasan Butarbutar.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, December 22 2017

Seven people have been arrested for their alleged roles in human trafficking to Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and China.

The investigation of these three human trafficking networks is based on information we received and information from Indonesian embassies overseas, the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) chief, Comr. Gen. Ari Dono Sukmanto, told the press on Thursday.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Natnicha Chuwiruch (Bloomberg)  Thu, December 21, 2017 17:06 1792 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2e8f6d7 2 News Chinese-tourists,China,Thailand,tourism,travel,tourists Free

Thailand, land of golden temples, white-sand beaches, smiling hosts. Or of overcrowded airports, epic traffic jams and littered seashores.

Facing a deluge of Chinese tourists that has strained its airports beyond capacity, the Southeast Asian nation is spending billions to upgrade its infrastructure, open up new islands and cities to travelers, and tone down its image of cheap shopping, hotels and sex that underpinned the industry for half a century. But the change will take years and even then may fail to keep up with soaring visitor numbers that have given the Land of Smiles a reputation for delays, overcrowding and government crackdowns.

Our strategy was more for less, not less for more, so we invited a lot of tourists from China, said Suvit Maesincee, in an interview last month, when he was the minister attached to the Prime Ministers office. I think in the near future we need to change from volume to value.

The military-backed government relies on tourism for 18 percent of the economy and foreign inflows have made the baht one of the strongest performers in Asia this year, a bright spot amid weak domestic consumer demand and private investment. While it plans to spend more than $5 billion to double capacity at its international airports, its planning to increase foreign tourist numbers at a similar pace, reaching 68 million in the next decade.

Weerasak Kowsurat, who returned to the post of tourism minister in November in a cabinet reshuffle by the military government, is frank about the challenge: Today were not even ready, he said after a press briefing in Bangkok on Dec. 1. To get us prepared within a year is not even possible.

At the heart of the upgrade, and the congestion, are Bangkoks two international airports: Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang, which are running at 40 percent beyond designed capacity. New terminals, facilities and another runway would allow them to handle 130 million passengers a year, including inbound and outbound trips.

But work wont be completed until 2022 at the earliest, and the first taste most travelers get of the Thai capital is a long queue at immigration.

In three to five years time we might not reach our targeted tourist growth due to a lack of airport capacity, said Thongyoo Suphavittayakorn, a spokesman for the Association of Thai Travel Agents. The problem with the Thai government is they want to increase the number of visitors but they dont stop to check first if were able to accommodate them.

Read also: Gay Chinese tourists flock to Thailand for fun, acceptance

Traffic congestion in Bangkok. (Bloomberg/Taylor Weidman)

Once out of the terminal building, visitors must contend with the Bangkok traffic, the worlds most congested after Mexico City, according to TomTom NVs traffic index.

We took five hours to go to the hotel just because of the traffic, said Diogo Matos, a 28-year-old first-time visitor from Portugal. It was a horrible start to our trip.

Thailands ability to attract tourists has defied the effects of a military coup, floods, political protests, a tsunami, airport blockades and the global financial crisis. In the past 15 years, more visitors have arrived from Europe, North America, Japan and Southeast Asia. But it is the explosion in Chinese visitors since the 2012 Chinese road movie Lost in Thailand that has changed the industry.

The number of Chinese visitors to Thailand has tripled in the past five years, to 8.8 million in 2016. They account for more than a quarter of all foreign tourists and 28 percent of revenue, according to official data.

The sudden influx, boosted by packaged tours arranged in China, led to accusations of so-called zero-dollar tourism, where groups were shepherded through shopping and sightseeing itineraries that provided little benefit to the host country.

A clampdown last year on those tours -- 29 operators were prosecuted -- caused a temporary dip in Chinese arrivals, but the tour numbers soon rebounded, and the number of independent travelers from China, making their way around the country with the help of their smartphones and Google Translate, continues to rise.

Meanwhile, the government is making efforts to clean up the countrys image. Former Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, who was replaced in the cabinet reshuffle, began a crackdown on sex tourism last year, with police and army officials raiding bars and hostels in Pattayas red-light district.

On the island of Phuket, attempts have been made to clear away the beach touts and reduce littering. In October, the government extended a ban on trips to the nearby Koh Khai islands, because of damage to the coral reef from speedboats that brought thousands of daytrippers. Last month, 21 beaches in popular spots like Pattaya and Krabi instituted a smoking ban.

They want to shift the emphasis away from quantity and towards the quality of tourists coming, said Patrick Cooke, an editor in Manila for Oxford Business Group Ltd. To do that, obviously more investment is required in the luxury segment and the wellness segment.

Read also: Lake Toba, Lombok becoming more popular among Chinese tourists

One plan includes a Japanese-backed $15 billion double-rail link from the capital to Chiang Mai in the north that would open up cities and towns along its route. Another is to build a new regional airport in the south at Betong, an area prone to unrest from Muslim separatists. Phuket opened a new international terminal last year, looking to become a gateway for surrounding regions like Phang Nga and Krabi.

In addition, the government is revamping the old U-Tapao navy airbase near Pattaya, from which U.S. B-52s flew to bomb Vietnam in the 1960s. A Chinese-funded high-speed rail link would connect the beach resort with Bangkoks airports, 150 kilometers to the north.

What theyre doing is adding more spots to see, while not taking care to preserve the old spots that are becoming worn out, said Puttachard Lunkam, a tourism analyst at Krungsri Research in Bangkok. You see islands being closed or national reservations being barred to tourists as a way to fix things when its gone too far, but not enough is being done to maintain the sites before it gets to that point.

There are some signs that the more-from-less strategy may be having an effect. Revenue from tourism in the first 10 months of this year increased by about 9 percent, outpacing a 6.4 percent growth in visitor numbers, according to data from the Thailand Department of Tourism.

But extracting more profit from visitors wont be easy. Thailand is already one of the worlds top destinations for medical tourism, and high-end resorts have nestled in its secluded bays and picturesque forests for decades. Ultra-luxury chain Aman Resorts International began life in Phuket in 1988 and Four Seasons Holdings Inc. opened its first-ever boutique resort in Chiang Rai in 2005.

And other countries in the region are also trying to emulate Thailands success in turning Chinese leisure into loot. Indonesian President Joko Widodo plans to create 10 new Balis, to try to replicate the success of the Island of the Gods, which hosts more than 40 percent of the 11.6 million visitors to the country. Malaysia is investingbillions in opening up its eastern coast, including building a railway to the capital.

With competition for the tourist yuan heating up, Thailands influx of Chinese visitors, and the congestion at its airports and resorts, are likely to remain for years.

 With assistance by Karlis Salna, Yudith Ho, and Samuel Dodge
Manhattan landlord Steve Croman, who owns many Lower East Side buildings, is already serving a one-year prison sentence for mortgage loan and tax fraud. Now he also must hand over $8 million and accept a court-approved monitor for his sprawling real estate empire.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced yesterday evening that a settlement had been reached in a civil lawsuit that alleged harassment, coercion and fraud to force rent-regulated tenants out of their apartments. The AG calls the agreement unprecedented.

Over and over again, Schneiderman said in a statement, Steven Croman acted as though he was above the law, putting profits before his tenants safety and wellbeing. Earlier this year, we put Mr. Croman in jail for an elaborate scheme that was intended to push out rent-regulated tenants (he also paid a $5 million as part of a plea agreement). And today, were ensuring tenants get the restitution and protections they deserve  including the largest-ever settlement with an individual landlord, and unprecedented independent management and monitoring at his properties.

In the past few days, we have been talking with tenants of several Croman buildings on the Lower East Side. While pleased about yesterdays developments, theyre also cautious and have lingering concerns after years of fighting one of New York Citys most notorious landlords.

First  details from the consent decree signed by Croman and approved by State Supreme Court Judge Shlomo Hagler. Under terms of the deal, an $8 million Tenant Restitution Fund will be established. While details wont be announced until next year, tenants who received a buyout offer of less than $20,000 during the past six years will be eligible. Also, more than 100 Croman buildings will be run by, a new, independent management company with no ties to Croman, for five years. A monitor will be appointed, who will oversee compliance with the terms of the consent decree and provide regular reporting to the Attorney General. And Anthony Falconite, a former cop allegedly used by Croman to intimidate tenants, has been ordered to stay away from residents in Cromans buildings.

In response to yesterdays news, local State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou said, The message to unscrupulous landlords is clear: tenant harassment is simply not tolerated in New York, and our State will hold bad actors accountable for their actions Tenants throughout my district have long voiced concerns about Cromans housing practices. My office has heard tenant accounts describing a lack of basic repairs, caving rooftops and broken staircases caused by landlord neglect. I applaud Attorney General Schneiderman for his actions today, and I look forward to ensuring tenants have the tools necessary to recover and move past Cromans severe negligence.

One of the local organizations that has battled Cromans 9300 Realty over the years is the Cooper Square Committee. Brandon Kielbasa, Cooper Squares director of organizing and policy, told us last night, The tenants that organized against Steve Croman deserve huge amounts credit here. Without them pushing back every time they felt harassed, this precedent-setting agreement would have never been reached. This is another major victory for NYC tenants, in a year that has been absolutely full of them.

In an interview, 18th Street resident Cynthia Chaffee, a founder of the Stop Croman Coalition, said, Im very pleased with the outcome and grateful to the attorney general for all hes done. Chaffee, whos been fighting Croman since 1999, said her pleas to city and state agencies were ignored for many years. Well sleep better at night knowing that (9300 Realty) is not in charge.

At the same time, however, Chaffee is dismayed that Croman has apparently avoided serving his prison sentence at Rikers Island. [New York Times Oct. 3, 2017: A notorious New York City landlord began his own one-year residency on Tuesday on Rikers Island.] According to the Department of Corrections website, hes at the Manhattan Detention Complex, where Chaffee told fellow tenant advocates this week, hes in a private cell and can have three visitors a week. She complained about his relatively cushy accommodations to the judge, but was told by court staff that the Department of Corrections makes all decisions about where inmates are held. We were told the same thing by the attorney generals office.

There is optimism from tenants that yesterdays settlement will finally offer them some relief. But in interviews over the past week, residents have told us that Cromans criminal prosecution did little to improve their living conditions.

Just last night, tenants at 159 Stanton St., fired off an email to 9300 Realty, demanding the replacement of the broken down front door. The door, they wrote, has for years been a menace to our quiet enjoyment of our homes, and has resulted in frequent break-ins, trespassers and incidents of tenants being unable to enter or exit the building freely.

Kit Brauer, who has lived at 159 Stanton St. for six years said in an interview the other day that there had been a series of patchwork fixes for years and years, but that 9300 Realty has never taken seriously the security issues in the building. There are many other lingering problems, as well. Brauer said about half of the apartments are currently being renovated. The units were gutted, but then the work stopped, and plastic sheeting has been covering the doors for the past year. Asked what hed like to see happen at 159 Stanton St., Brauer said, The ideal situation is that 9300 Realty would start treating residents with basic human dignity and provide for our health and safety.

George Tzannes, a resident of 529 East Sixth St. for more than 40 years, told a similar story. Hes been trying to get the windows in his apartment fixed for at least two years. Every time 9300 Realty sends someone to look, said Tzannes, they say the windows clearly need to be replaced, but then nothing happens. Now his six-year-old grandchild is living in the apartment, a development that finally prompted management to conduct lead testing and lead abatement. At one point, gas service was shut off in the building (a situation that wasnt rectified for 15 months). Since his conviction in criminal court, said Tzannes, Croman has been laying low in terms of harassing (rent regulated) tenants to get us out. Thats good. In the future Id like to see him treat rent regulated tenants and stabilized tenants the same.

At 200 Stanton St., Silvana Jakich said Con Ed shut down gas service about three months ago when illegal piping was found in the building. Now residents are facing the holidays with no cooking gas and the prospect of making meals on hot plates for the forseeable future. Jakich said the building manager told her hes waiting for Con Ed to get in touch with management. Like their counterparts in other Croman buildings, Jakich said she and her neighbors live with constant construction dust, persistent leaks, after hours work without proper permits and a general lackadaisical attitude from management about repairs. Just when you think things might be returning to normal, said Jakich, some new event occurs. Its just relentless and it doesnt seem like (conditions) will improve no matter what happens to Croman.

Last night Jakich told us in an email that residents are relieved that new management will be taking over, but after everything theyve been through, they believe there are several unanswered questions.. Among them: Why has Croman not had his license revoked? Why is he not paying out more money so that market rate tenants can also be compensated? Why isnt Croman at Rikers like hes supposed to be?

We contacted Steve Cromans spokesperson this week for comment regarding the ongoing maintenance issues in his Lower East Side buildings. There was no response. Regarding the settlement, a spokesperson told the Daily News, We are pleased to have reached a mutually acceptable settlement with the Attorney General to end the ongoing inquiry into our business We look forward to working with his office to implement the terms of our agreement and continuing to provide quality rental housing throughout New York City.

Croman Settlement Agreement by The Lo-Down on Scribd
Could something finally be happening at this stalled Lower East Side construction site? The beginnings of a 12-story residential building at 208 Delancey St. have been a neighborhood eyesore for several years. Now The Real Deal reports that a group of investors has finally unloaded the site for $29 million.

According to the story, the development parcel with frontages on Delancey and Pitt streets, was sold to New Empire Real Estate Development, which is, managing the project for a developer based in the Chinese second-tier city of Wuhan.

In 2011, The Lo-Down first reported that 53 investors had pooled their resources to buy five parcels for $8.5 million. They planned to build a 69-unit condo project with 8300 square feet for ground floor commercial use. Construction got underway but then stopped. A deal to sell the site collapsed with the seller and prospective buyer tangling in court.

Andy Zhu, heading up the original investment group, told The Real Deal, The Lower East Side is better for rentals. We dont do a lot of rentals.

No documents have showed up in city records just yet, so well have to wait to find out what the new owners have in mind.
Host Goronwy Thom explains at the beginning the show is an attempt "to bring cabaret into the 21st Century". It doesn't, but you don't really want it to.

The Slightly Fat Show,

performed in two parts by the touring troupe Slightly Fat Features is a throwback to a good old-fashioned British variety show. You could imagine a grandparent of yours walking down a promenade to see it in the 1940s or 50s.



It has everything you could want - slapstick humour, magic, escapology and does everything really well. The humour isn't overly complicated, it's quite simple, basic, sometimes even crude and therein lies it's beauty. It's a relaxed, easy-to-follow show with a feel-good vibe.

You're not expecting a lot of what happens, sometimes because you're looking for something more complicating and sometimes from the cast's unpredictably.

There's a fair bit of audience interaction, at least four members of the audience will come up to the stage to help out at some point. You'll have props chucked at you and if you're lucky some crisps so you can have a light snack during the second half.

Robert Lee and Matt Barnard (who is described as a fat Aled Jones) provide the live music and it is on point without. Barnard performs in several scenes himself and transitions smoothly from musician to actor/performer.

Jon Hicks (The Slammer) is in non-speaking roles throughout, so his characterisation involves rather melodramatic scenes, such as a sad bunny and a knife-wielding psychopath.



Herbie Treehead (Xperimental) is in the show as a rather eccentric Northern lad, he'll perform a song for you, going on a rather long complicated song that has nothing to do with the song, about the sun and the moon and being happy, which fits in the rest of the show. An optimistic song, which may sound ridiculous, but leaves you feeling good.

Gareth Jones (Doctor Who Audios) and Richard Garaghty (Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) make up the rest of the cast. Jones is jovial throughout, epitomised in the last scene with his Dirk The Daring character. Richard meanwhile would bemoan the fact he doesn't have a good agent. Singing in the Rain, song by Treehead, turning into Dying in a Box.

Thom hosts a fantastic night, with quintessential cabaret showbiz panache. His humour is warm, and the cast is fantastic at everything they do, even though there are some deliberate mishaps, which adds to the atmosphere.



Some of the performances will generally amaze you, some will warm your heart and some will have you in fits of uncontrollable laughter. The show seems to go really quickly and is driven by the audience, who have the opportunity to influence what goes on stage.

For a cabaret show, it quite simply ticks all the boxes and does it in some style. A must see for anyone who wants a good simple night of comedy.
This happens with a lot of the films on offer. Elf, Love Actually, Home Alone, The Holiday: these are the epitome of feel-good, cosy Christmas watches. But sometimes it gets too much. Sometimes, watching these films can feel like the equivelant of force-feeding yourself sugar-coated marzipan in an attempt to fill a void, except the whole thing just ends up making you more miserable than when you started. So if that sounds familiar, here are seven films to watch this Christmas for when you just need to get away from it all. And if not, you're free to go enjoy Home Alone in peace.Its become almost a holiday tradition in itself to debate over whether Die Hard counts as a Christmas film. Whatever side you take, you aren't really wrong considering what a walking contradiction it is. It takes place on Christmas Eve, but was originally released as a summer blockbuster. It contains all the traditional Christmas iconography, but with just as much blood and carnage. It ends with a classic rendition of 'Let It Snow' as the credits start to roll, but there's also a building on fire in the background. Still, for those who cant stand the usual festive sentimentality, Die Hard offers its own brand of holiday cheesiness: Bruce Willis taking on a dozen terrorists who are holding a business Christmas party hostage. It even gives viewers its own alternative take on the ugly Christmas jumper. What more could you want?Terry Gilliams dystopian sci-fi is a bleak but farcical warning about technology, totalitarianism and consumerism, so of course its set around Christmas. With a tone that flirts between the darkly funny and just plain creepy, it follows a low-level bureaucrat who has a recurring dream of himself saving a beautiful woman as a distraction from the monotony of his daily life. When a case he's investigating leads to the death of an innocent man, he comes across the woman from his dream and the pair become tangled in a web of lies, terrorism and mistaken identity. For anyone who's ever fancied seeing what a Monty Python version of 1984 might look like, consider this a Christmas gift.Shane Black sure does love his cynical Christmas buddy comedies. There's Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3, and even a touch of it in The Nice Guys. But none do it so beautifully as in his directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Robert Downey Jr. plays a small-time thief who ends up in L.A. for the holidays after stumbling into an acting audition while on the run from the police. There he meets his childhood sweetheart (Michelle Monaghan) plus a private eye named 'Gay Perry' (Val Kilmer), and the three of them end up embroiled in a murder-mystery straight out of the type of pulp noir-fiction the film is parodying. This irreverent crime comedy isn't just for Christmas; it's for life.Bruges at Christmas time sounds like a fairytale, doesn't it? Well, Colin Farrells rookie hitman Ray vehemently disagrees. When he and his partner Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent there by their foul-mouthed boss (Ralph Fiennes) to lay low after a killing goes wrong, all he does is complain about the place. To make matters worse, the pair are instructed to wait there until further instructions - which could take weeks. The humour of In Bruges is as black as you would expect from a Martin McDonagh script, while still holding a large amount of savvy and emotional weight. But it's the dynamic between Ray and Ken that really makes it stand out, with those in the bitter disposition camp probably siding themselves more with Ray. For the most part, anyway.Stanley Kubricks "unfinished masterpiece" opens with a lavish Christmas party attended by Dr Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman), an art curator. Its peppered with fake smiles, insincere social niceties and suffocating fairy lights. Most scenes, in fact, contain rainbow-coloured lighting, or a Christmas tree, or both. The feeling of Christmas is inescapable in Eyes Wide Shut, yet it also serves as background noise to some not-so Christmassy themes - namely, sex and infidelity. Some have argued that, like Die Hard, Kubrick's final film is actually a Christmas classic in disguise. If it is, its not exactly optimistic. This ones best enjoyed as a late night odessey.Eastern Promises is a dark, dark, dark film. But then that's why we're here. After a teenager dies in childbirth a few days before Christmas, a British-Russian midwife (Naomi Watts) tries to locate the babys family and discovers it could have ties to a sex trafficking ring involving a violent Russian crime family. If that's not enough to entice you, it also contains scenes of neck slicing, prostitution, and a naked Viggo Mortensen fighting off mobsters in a sauna. Its grim, gritty, and very melancholic. Its the ultimate antithesis of Christmas.While it contains one of the happier endings of this list, The Apartment is not a happy film. After lending his flat out to several of his womanising bosses in exchange for a promotion, a small-time clerk at an insurance company (Jack Lemmon) is left to deal with the aftermath of one of the less successful visits involving the elevator girl at work (Shirley MacLaine), whom hes interested in himself. At one point they share Christmas together, but it doesnt go at all the way youd think. Of course there are moments of comedy (its a Billy Wilder film) as well as moments of real tenderness, but for a romantic film made in 1960 the subject matter is surprisingly grim. Lemmon and MacLaine have wonderful chemistry, but ultimately what were watching here is two lonely, unhappy people who are just desperate for some hope against the cynicism of their corporate worlds. And what's a better way to anti-celebrate Christmas than that?
Since 2015, the Star Wars sequels have been receiving a lot of praise for the diversity of their main cast.

Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac) are undeniably a step in the right direction towards diversifying popular culture. The announcement last year that Kelly Marie Tran had been cast as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi brought new hope to fans who were overjoyed that Star Wars would finally include a woman of colour in a prominent role.

Though there were a lot of fun moments in The Last Jedi, and a lot of great homages to Luke and Leia and the Original Trilogy, it was a disappointment for a lot of fans of colour.

Following the Empire Strikes Back model of separating the Jedi from their friends whilst they undergo training, Rey had one storyline whilst Finn, Poe, and the Resistance had another. The tonal dissonance and discrepancies between the two was one of the biggest issues.

Reys storyline is wholly focussed on attempting to redeem Kylo Ren, who we are told time and time again by the narrative is a victim rather than a villain. While Star Wars has always given us complex villains, theres something about Kylo Ren that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. We are presented with a grown man who, though conflicted, chooses time and time again to cause suffering, side with fascists, torture our heroes, and kill innocents. Despite this, the audience is expected to, like Rey, sense the good in him, and therefore give him the benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, The Force Awakens introduced us to Finn, who was kidnapped at birth and brainwashed, raised within the First Order to have no independent thought and to simply follow orders. The second he is placed into a combat situation, his innate goodness and strength prevails over a lifetime of conditioning, and he immediately rebels.

Between those two characters: a black man who chooses good despite how he was raised, and a white man who chooses evil despite how he was raised, why is it that The Last Jedi wants audiences to focus on redeeming Kylo Ren?

While Finn is painted as a coward and a deserter, and used time and time again as the butt of the joke, Kylo Ren is consistently absolved of accountability for his actions, with the blame laid at the feet of Snoke, or Luke, or absent parents, but never his own. This reeks of the trend in media to report white male mass shooters as troubled young men with a history of mental illness, while innocent black children like Tamir Rice are shot by police because they were considered a threat. Though it might seem extreme to make such comparisons, its the same institutionalised racism, and to see Star Wars perpetuating it after purporting to be championing diversity is incredibly disheartening.

Beyond this direct comparison, characters of colour are constantly mocked and belittled throughout the film. Experienced resistance pilot and leader Poe Dameron, who had no trouble handling diplomatic, combat, and captive situations in The Force Awakens, is all of a sudden reduced to a hothead with no apparent understanding of the situation at all. Not only does that play into a harmful Latino stereotype, its disrespectful to reduce a well-loved and heroic character to the role of an idiot who needs to be taught a lesson.

Laura Derns Admiral Holdo is a white feminists wet dream: a white female character who comes in out of nowhere and sets up an antagonistic relationship with a male character, only to be proven right in the end. Whats frustrating here is that theres absolutely nothing progressive about having a white woman condescend to and patronise a man of colour, yet Star Wars seems to be asking for feminist brownie points, at the cost of a man of colours dignity.

This trend is hugely apparent in last years Rogue One: A Star Wars Story too, which saw (the frankly boring as hell) Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) constantly condescending to and belittling the men of colour around her that carried the entire plot, especially Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), but then getting ultimate credit for all their hard work and sacrifices.

Back to The Last Jedi, the entire plot put together and executed by Poe, Finn, and Rose is rendered utterly useless by the wider storyline. Everything that these characters go through in this film is all for nothing, and worse than that, is condemned as a stupid idea and a waste of time by Leia, Holdo, and the narrative itself. The powerful moment where Rose and Finn destroy the casino symbolic of the war-profiteering bourgeoisie? Totally belittled by the wider narrative.

Oh, at least they got to show us a scene of our black hero on his knees being slapped by a literal Nazi though, right? Not for any particular plot reason, just to further humiliate our black hero, whose entire presence in this film was rendered useless. Because thats exactly what the world needs at the end of 2017, right?

On top of all of that, we saw Paige Tico (Ngo Thanh Van) die right at the beginning of the film, and Roses character pushed into a horribly forced and awkward kiss with Finn for no reason other than to dissuade LGBTQ+ fans from hoping that Finn and Poes chemistry might develop into something on screen. Benicio del Toro was utterly wasted in what was hardly more than a cameo, but hey, at least we got time to see some pointless footage of shirtless Kylo Ren, right?

Honestly, what Star Wars needs more than anything is diverse creators given the power to shape the content theyre putting out. Diverse faces are only half the solution, but Star Wars seems to think theyve done all they need to do when it comes to representation.

Check out the hashtag #StarWarsHatesPoC and this Twitter Moment, and add your voice! The louder we talk about these problems, the more chance that someone who has the power to do something about it might hear.
We kicked off the night with the nomination for Best Video which was snapped up by dynamic duo Noisia for their track Tentacles. The video is deep-sea David Attenborough meets millennial nightmare meets The Exorcist, all with a strong political undertone, and a worthy video for such an iconic track. This was Noisias only win this year  quite the contrast to last year where bums barely touched seats. Jenna G presented the award for Best Vocalist to Tasha Baxter who received roaring applause from fellow artists. You mightve heard her airy vocals on the Camo & Krooked track Black or White, from their album Mosaik released back in June this year. It was great to see a category made up predominantly of talented females, another contrast to last years awards.The award I was most excited about was, aptly named by co-presenter Pav (of Foreign Beggars), the one award Andy C cant win: Best Newcomer. Safe to say, old time drum & bass fans need not worry, because the future is looking fresh. 1991 stole the title this year from the clutches of a bunch of new names including Tsuki, Pola & Bryson and Dub Elements. Keep an eye out for these names in the years to come. Hospitality Records picked up the first two awards in the shape of Best Club Night, beating Fabric to the top spot. Later in the evening, they snapped up Best Label. Neither of these awards came as a shock to me, despite still being a relative newbie to drum & bass. Hospital are world-renowned and aint about to go anywhere soon. The Meryl Streep of the Drum & Bass Arena Awards however, was D&B legends Camo & Krooked. The pair took home the holy trinity of D&B awards last night: Best Producer, Best Album, and Best Track. And rightly so. The boys have been working hard the past year, bringing out a new studio album, a killer essential mix, and performing a live tour full of new tracks. All in all, it was a proper drum & bass night (and far too heavy for a Tuesday). There was laughter, tears, and at least one or two artists falling up the stairs on the way to collecting an award. See you next year, folks. Check out the full list of winners here: https://awards.breakbeat.co.uk/2017/
Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here

You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. Please check our main navigation pages for other content: 

Home Page
Tentang Situs Slot Online Resmi MGS88 Nama Situs  MGS88 Minimal Deposit  Rp. 10.000,- (Sepuluh Ribu Rupiah) Proses Deposit   2 Menit Metode Deposit  Bank Transfer,  Pulsa,  E-Wallet Judi Online Terbaik  Slot Online,  Judi Bola,  Casino Online,  Togel Online,  Tembak Ikan Provider Slot Gacor Mudah Maxwin  Pragmatic Play,  PGSoft,  MicroGaming,  Habanero Slot Gacor Gampang Menang  Gates of Olympus,  Sweet Bonanza,  Wild West Gold,  Starlight Princess Win Rate 98%

RTP Live Slot Gacor Tertinggi Hari Ini Terbaru Terlengkap

Selamat datang di halaman RTP live dan informasi soal slot gacor hari ini dari situs MGS88 yang setiap hari selalu update. Berdasarkan RTP Live MGS88, Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi tentang slot online yang saat ini yang sedang Gacor atau onfire dengan persentase yang terbukti akurat, ini bisa menjadi rekomendasi anda sebelum memilih permainan slot online di situs MGS88. Cek RTP Slot sekarang juga bosku

Klik Provider Slot Untuk Mengetahui RTP Slot Secara Real Time

Selamat datang bagi kalian yang sedang mencari situs RTP Live terlengkap dan terkini hari ini. Sangat sesuai jika Anda mengunjungi website MGS88 RTP live untuk informasi tentang permainan slot yang lagi gacor dengan slot RTP yang terupdate. Persentase kemenangan yang kami berikan tentunya diambil dengan data yang sangat valid dan hanya untuk permainan slot yang tersedia di situs MGS88. RTP yang tersedia juga akan selalu diperbarui setiap hari berdasarkan level kemenangan yang diberikan kepada member kami.

Memang sih untuk bermain slot itu tergantung hoki dari setiap pemain, Namun RTP live atau bocoran slot dari yang kami sediakan ini adalah data autentik dari banyaknya pemain yang telah bermain dan mencapai kemenangan tinggi. Sederhananya, kalau banyak pemain yang menang di dalam 1 permainan slot, karena itu permainan slot tersebut akan mempunyai persentase RTP yang sangat tinggi.

Namun kami tegaskan sekali lagi, ini bukan sebuah paksaan kami situs MGS88 untuk anda bermain di game slot yang mana. Ini bisa dijadikan sebagai referensi atau tolok ukur, boleh dicoba kalau anda mempunyai feel yang kuat dalam memainkan permainan game slot. Anda dapat mengakses kapan saja dan di mana saja selama anda siap bermain. Jangan ragu untuk bertanya ya seputar pola putaran terhadap kami, sebab kami juga menyediakannya loh.

Apa itu RTP Live?

RTP Live ialah informasi mengenai persentase tertinggi saat ini dari hasil RTP Live dengan bocoran kemenangan pemain saat ini. RTP Live merupakan singkatan dari Return To Play atau bisa juga diartikan sebagai Return to Player. Karena itu, para pemain slot sekarang jika ingin mengetahui seberapa besar kemenangannya, bisa dengan memainkan permainan yang akan dimainkannya dan bisa untung dengan mudah dan tentunya maksimal.

Apa itu RTP Slot?

RTP Slot juga dikenal sebagai return to player atau pengembalian ke Pemain. RTP slot ialah persentase dari nilai pengembalian semua uang yang dipertaruhkan pemain dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan kata lain, RTP juga dianggap sebagai salah satu fitur slot yang mengembalikan uang pemain saat pemain kalah.

Persentase digunakan untuk menghitung RTP dalam permainan slot. Misalnya, jika slot memiliki RTP 97%, itu berarti untuk setiap 100.000 koin yang hilang di slot, slot dapat mengembalikan 97.000. Jika Anda mengetahui RTP sebuah permainan slot, Anda dapat memutuskan permainan slot mana yang akan dimainkan tanpa kerugian besar.

Apakah Angka Persentase RTP Slot Itu Penting?

Biasanya pemain slot itu tidak memperhatikan RTP dalam permainan yang akan dimainkan, biasanya setelah anda mengisi saldo utama anda akan langsung buru-buru memainkannya. Yang terakhir 90-96% mempengaruhi jumlah kemenangan. Semakin tinggi jumlah RTP yang digunakan, semakin luas peluang untuk mendapatkan keuntungan.

Akan namun itu segala tak secara 100% menjamin kemenangan kau dalam bermain, RTP itu cuma sebagai kalkulasi pengeluaran anda saja selama bermain slot.Dengan adanya RTP, kau dapat mengerjakan pengaturan atas uang yang akan kau pertaruhkan nanti pada ketika bermain.Untuk itu pada ketika kau bermain slot dan telah mengalami banyak kekalahan di satu permainan, direkomendasikan kau pindah ke permainan slot lainnya yang RTP nya lebih tinggi dari permainan yang tadi kau mainkan.

Keuntungan Menggunakan Bocoran RTP Slot Hari Ini

Situs MGS88 Akan dengan senang hati akan beberapa keuntungan yang didapatkan jika anda bermain slot dengan menggunakan RTP Live yang telah disediakan. Berikut Keuntungannya :

Peluang Kemenangan Meningkat Tentu saja, saat bermain slot online, menang adalah hal yang paling penting. Di sinilah RTP berperan sebagai metode atau metode baru yang akan membantu Anda memilih permainan slot persentase tinggi. Mendapat variasi dalam Memainkan Game Slot Pastinya banyak pemain slot online yang hanya memainkan 3-5 permainan slot saja. Namun dengan RTP Live slot akan memberikan banyak game slot lain yang bisa anda coba. Tentunya semua permainan slot memiliki potensi kemenangan yang besar, jadi jangan hanya mengandalkan beberapa permainan saja. Menambah Pengalaman Dalam Bermain Slot Keuntungan terakhir adalah Anda tentu saja menambah pengalaman dan keahlian dalam permainan slot online. Dengan berbagai macam permainan slot yang dimainkan, Anda pasti mengetahui karakteristik dari setiap permainan slot yang Anda mainkan. Akibatnya, Anda pasti bisa dianggap sebagai pemain slot yang andal, yang pasti akan meningkatkan peluang Anda untuk menang besar menggunakan RTP.

Daftar 8 Situs Dengan RTP Slot Live Tertinggi Hari Ini

Ada banyak penyedia mesin slot online di internet. Tetapi tidak semuanya memiliki peluang tinggi atau RTP Live Slot yang sangat tinggi. Tapi jangan khawatir, berikut ini adalah situs slot gacor yang akan memberikan bocoran slot dengan RTP Live Tertinggi:

RTP Live Slot Pragmatic Play (RTP Slot 97.85%) RTP Live Slot PG Soft (RTP Live 96.15%) RTP Live Slot Habanero (RTP Slot 95.89%) RTP Live Slot CQ9 (RTP Live 98.83%) RTP Live Slot Spade Gaming (RTP Live 94.99%) RTP Live Slot Micro Gaming (RTP Slot 95.39%) RTP Slot Live Top Trend Gaming (RTP Live 96.14%) RTP Slot Live JOKER123 (RTP Live 97.45%)

Itulah Daftar 8 Provider Slot Gacor dengan RTP Live teratas diatas tentunya kami analisa terlebih dahulu. Anda bisa membuktikannya langsung dengan mengklik banner atau meprovider game slot yang sudah tersedia di atas. Saran kami yaitu Anda harus memainkan semua penyedia slot di atas untuk mencapai peluang kemenangan terbaik.

Daftar Slot RTP Live Tertinggi Sering Kasih Jackpot

Selain mempertimbangkan RTP Slot Gacor yang ada, sebenarnya ada banyak faktor penting untuk menang dalam permainan judi online. Sebab ada banyak game yang memiliki fitur dan mekanisme unik dan bisa membantu anda meraih Jackpot yang sangat besar.

Berikut ini akan kami ulas daftar 5 game slot paling populer karena sering memberikan jackpot:

RTP Live Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus adalah game slot teraneh dan terbaik di Indonesia. Karena permainan mesin slot ini paling populer karena kakek Zeus dapat mengizinkan pengganda x500. Selain itu, fitur dan mekanik Gates of Olympus juga sangat menguntungkan untuk memenangkan Grand Jackpot. Secara teoritis, RTP slot langsung Gates of Olympus bernilai 96,50%, yang berarti peluang Anda untuk memenangkan MaxWin cukup tinggi. RTP live Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza adalah permainan slot terpopuler kedua. Game slot bertema buah dan permen yang lezat ini sepertinya akan menarik banyak perhatian karena tergolong slot gacor yang mudah menang. Secara teoritis, slot Sweet Bonanza RTP bernilai 96,48%, yang berarti peluang Anda cukup tinggi untuk memenangkan jackpot. RTP Live Wild West Gold Wild West Gold adalah permainan slot bertema koboi yang juga populer di kalangan penggemar konspirasi. Permainan slot Wild West Gold sendiri kerap menawarkan kejutan jackpot bagi para pemainnya. Selain itu, nilai RTP Live Slot menunjukkan indeks tertinggi hari ini, yang berarti sangat layak dan sangat direkomendasikan. RTP Live Starlight Princess Slot Starlight Princess ini memiliki gaya dan fitur yang mirip dengan Gates of Olympus. Perbedaannya hanya pada desain dan karakter gamenya saja, karena memiliki fitur dan mekanik yang sama tentunya RTP slot teoritis pada game slot ini sama yaitu 96,50%. RTP Live Cash Elevator Mungkin sebagian dari Anda baru mengenal slot Cash Elevator. Namun dari data benchmark yang diungkap, ternyata banyak sekali yang menikmati permainan slot ini. Dengan fitur dan mekanisme unik seperti Lift up and down asli, slot ini juga memiliki slot RTP Live dasar 96,64% yang juga memiliki mekanisme yang sangat menguntungkan untuk memperlancar tingkat kemenangan besar.

Bocoran Jam Main Slot Gacor Hari Ini

Dalam bermain permainan slot online itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sembarangan yah. Jadi, Jika anda bermain pada waktu tertentu seperti yang akan kita bahas sesaat lagi, ada kemungkinan anda untuk mendapatkan kemenangan lebih tinggi. Jam RTP Slot Gacor merupakan bocoran jam main slot yang akan memberikan anda kapan waktu yang pas dalam bermain game slot.

Tentu saja seluruh provider slot online memiliki jam tertentu dalam memberikan peluang kepada para pemainnya untuk mendapatkan kemenangan. Disini kami akan memberikan anda Bocoran Jam Slot Gacor yang Paling Akurat Hari ini:

Jam Slot Gacor Pragmatic Play 02:30 WIB - Jam 05:25 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Habanero 14:26 WIB - Jam 17:38 WIB Jam Slot Gacor CQ9 00:45 WIB - Jam 05:53 WIB Jam Slot Gacor PG SOFT 14:25 WIB - Jam 17:35 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Joker123 17:41 WIB - Jam 20:42 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Microgaming 22:30 WIB - Jam 00:35 WIB

MGS88: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Pay4D Resmi dan Terpercaya

MGS88 adalah situs game slot online Gacor terbaru yang bermitra dengan Pay4D, Pay4D sendiri merupakan daftar situs game slot online terpercaya dengan berbagai macam permainan judi yang mudah dimenangkan seperti Game Bola, Casino Online, Slot Pay4D, Tembak Ikan dan Pay4D Online Permainan togel seperti Singapura, Hongkong, Sydney dan lain-lain. Tujuan utama kami adalah menjadi situs judi online Pay4D yang menyediakan layanan judi online terbaik di Indonesia.

Kami juga salah satu situs resmi PAY4D di Indonesia yang pasti akan membayarkan semua kemenangan kepada semua member kami, karena kepercayaan dari semua member kami adalah prioritas utama kami sebagai mesin slot 4d Asia terbaik di Asia, khususnya di Indonesia.

Dalam melakukan sistem transaksi sistem simpanan dapat dilakukan dengan mudah melalui mobile banking dan electronic banking berupa bank BCA, BSI, BRI, BNI, Cimb Niaga, Permata dan Mandiri. Selain itu, transaksi e-wallet juga tersedia melalui Dana, Gopay, LinkAja dan Ovo serta dapat digunakan untuk pulsa tanpa dipotong.

Untuk mempermudah dan kenyamanan dalam melakukan registrasi atau melakukan setiap transaksi, MGS88 menyediakan layanan live chat dan Whatsapp terhubung langsung dengan customer service online 24 jam.

Mengenal Istilah Dalam RTP SLOT

Di slot RTP Live Anda akan melihat berbagai fitur yang mungkin tidak Anda pahami masing-masing. Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini.
News from the Capitol in Helena unfortunately often emphasizes the partisan nature of modern politics. But today, we  a Senate Democrat and a House Republican  want to share something we both strongly support, a bipartisan success story that has been quietly improving state government for decades. Its a function that helps state government serve Montanans by making sure state agencies obey laws and accurately balance their books, saves taxpayers money by finding efficiency in state programs, and protects sensitive information held in state computer security systems.

The Legislative Audit Committee is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Following the committees creation in 1967, the delegates at the 1972 Montana Constitution Convention felt the work of the newly formed committee was fundamental to the proper functioning of the state government. So, they put it directly in the Constitution  the only legislative committee given such status. The move essentially mandates the committees existence and helps safeguard the independence of the work performed by its non-partisan staff in the Legislative Audit Division. The staff follow strict standards to draw conclusions about the programs they review, and their dedication and professionalism have been central to our 50-year track record of making government work better.

Over time, the range of issues considered by the committee has expanded to meet the growing information needs of legislators. Beyond traditional financial activities, audit work now assesses broader aspects of government accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness. As computer systems gained importance in government operations, a process for auditing these systems was developed.

This work has provided the legislature and public with literally hundreds of reports over the years, containing thousands of recommendations to state agencies. In just the past few years, the office has:

 Found scores of errors in the states own annual financial report which, if uncorrected, could have threatened Montanas credit rating.

 Discovered that the Department of Corrections was illegally housing adult prisoners in youth facilities.

 Exposed problems in the Public Service Commissions handling of railroad safety.

 Brought to light inconsistencies and a lack of oversight in the ways state agencies approve pay raises for employees.

 Determined the Department of Administration needs to improve its ability to monitor the contract for State Employee Health Centers and validate the costs related to the centers.

 Unearthed a number of shortcomings in the states vital Child Protective Services program.

The information generated in audit reports provides valuable information to agency management, public stakeholders, and legislators when assessing the governments stewardship of public resources and compliance with law. The reports contain real-world solutions and actionable ideas for making state government better.

Legislative audits are a true picture of accountability in action, not just the hollow promises of reports gathering dust on a shelf. Agencies know their financial records will be regularly inspected and management will be held to task if there are problems. Accountability functions like legislative audits dont just save money through effective oversight, they strengthen the integrity of our public institutions and increase trust in state government. Thats something we all should support.

Even the public has a role to play. The Audit Division manages the states toll-free hotline for reporting fraud, waste, and abuse. We encourage anyone with concerns about fraud or how state government programs or activities are being managed to call (800) 222-4446, email LADHotline@mt.gov, or visit the website below. All of us share responsibility for ensuring state resources are being used wisely, especially in the difficult budget times we are currently experiencing.

As our committee begins its second half-century, we are confident that commitment to the vital mission of government accountability in Montana state government is stronger than ever. Additional information about the Audit Committee, copies of previous reports, and information about work in progress can be found on the webpage leg.mt.gov/audit or by calling the office at 444-3122.
It should come as no surprise that the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers supports the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act. BHA was founded in part to advance policy like the BCSA, and the areas conserved under the bill happen to sit right in our big western Montana backyard.

The bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Jon Tester would establish 80,000 acres of new wilderness and maintain recreational areas for snowmobilers and mountain bikers. Timber harvests would be streamlined and expanded, and active forest management would be promoted where it is needed in the Seeley Lake area.

This BCSA has been in the works for more than a decade and has the support of conservation and environmental groups, ranchers, as well as recreation groups including Drift Riders Snowmobile Club, Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, and the Montana Mountain Bike Association. Additionally, Powell, Lewis and Clark, and Missoula counties, which would be directly affected by the BSCA, all have endorsed the legislation.

This proposal is a win for backcountry lovers of all types, especially sportsmen. Wilderness areas provide crucial habitat security for a variety of big and small game species alike. The protected watersheds would guarantee cold, clean-flowing streams and tributaries on which native fish such as cutthroat and bull trout depend. The conserved areas facilitate wild and non-motorized sporting opportunities. These areas provide hard-to-find seclusion where hunters and anglers are free to roam, harvest or disappear as they so choose  opportunities all Montana sportsmen value. Furthermore, they offer some of the best hunting and fishing, holding the biggest bucks, biggest bulls and hardest-fighting trout.

The BCSA, if passed, would boost the economies of the upper Blackfoot and Clearwater areas. The increased recreational opportunities would bring outside revenue, which is harder to come by for rural Montana communities. The increased timber harvest not only would support that sector of the community; it also would help maintain its character and health.

The community of Seeley Lake has felt this all too keenly this year. Establishing playgrounds for those who like to ride on wheels, both motorized and non-motorized, would help too: Year-round recreational opportunities would keep motels and restaurant dining rooms full every month of the year.

On Sept. 12, Tester called for a hearing on the BCSA, urging the leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to consider the bill as soon as possible. As Montanas lone voice on that committee, its time for U.S. Sen. Steve Daines to add his support and help Tester shepherd the bill through Congress.

The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act is championed by many diverse voices and it's good for the economy, good for the community and good for sportsmen. Lets get behind this and get it passed.
Downriver residents have given the new Flat Rock Calder Dairy a warm welcome since the store opened Dec. 15 at 28190 Telegraph Road.

Its been amazing, General Manager Nicola Noble said. Theyve been busy every single day. We have been so blown away with the friendly welcome we received.

PHOTOS: Calder Dairy opens in Flat Rock

Donald Fowler, project manager for the Flat Rock store, agrees, and said things have been going very well and that business has been steady. He said ice cream has been selling better than expected despite the fact that the store, 28190 Telegraph Road, opened a few days before the official start of winter.

The customers appreciate us being open, he said, referring to the fact that Flat Rock residents have been waiting for the Calder Dairy store to open since the company made an announcement about the new location in 2015.

The Flat Rock store is the second Downriver location for the dairy thats based in Carleton. The other store is in Lincoln Park.

The Flat Rock store has 3,500 square feet of retail space, divided into two main sections. On one side, the store offers Calder Dairy and other made-in-Michigan products, from bread to candy. The other side sells ice cream and milkshakes and has a small seating area.

Fowler was instrumental in designing the look of the store, Noble said.

Basically, what we did was try to simulate an old barn from the inside, Fowler said, adding that all the decorations are related to farming and related antiques.

Fowler said phase two is getting a dairy processing facility up and running, and said that is planned for after the first of the new year.

Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

For more information about Calder Dairy & Farm and its products, visit calderdairy.com.

Contact freelance writer Sarah Rigg at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.
Add another item to your holiday shopping list: last-minute tax planning.

Congress has passed the most sweeping overhaul of the federal tax code in three decades. The Republican legislation, which President Trump has promised to sign before Christmas, delivers most of its benefits to corporations and the wealthy, but there are key changes that affect individuals.

Unlike the corporate tax cuts, the revisions to the individual code are temporary and expire in 2026. Most of them kick in on Jan. 1 and there are steps you could take in the coming days to maximize new advantages and minimize the potential hit from other changes.

"Tax advisors are going to be busy the next couple of weeks," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for financial information website Bankrate.com.

Here are five things to talk to your advisor about doing before New Year's Day.

Pay your property taxes early

The legislation sets limits on the amount of state and local taxes that people can deduct. Beginning in 2018, couples filing jointly will be limited to an annual deduction of no more than $10,000 worth of state and local income, sales and property taxes.

Right now, there is no limit on the deduction and the change will be a hard hit to many residents of California and other high-tax states.

Property tax bills generally go out in the fall, with half the taxes due by early December and the other due by April. If your state and local taxes will be greater than $10,000, you could pay the second installment bill before the end of this year and should still be able to deduct it on your 2017 taxes when you file in the spring, if you itemize.

The legislation doesn't specifically rule out such a move. But it does prohibit people from pre-paying 2018 state or local income taxes this year and claiming them as an itemized deduction for 2017.

"The bill is pretty clear that you will not be able to prepay, even if you could, your income taxes," said Darien Shanske, a tax law expert at the UC Davis School of Law. "But it's silent about property taxes."

Pre-paying property taxes might not be possible if your mortgage servicer pays them for you from an escrow account. People should contact their servicer.

Make an extra mortgage payment

The tax overhaul will nearly double the standard deductions for taxpayers who don't itemize, from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals, and from $12,700 to $24,000 for couples.

The change is expected to dramatically reduce the number of filers who itemize because fewer people will have total deductions above the new levels.

Given that, taxpayers who anticipate itemizing on their 2017 returns might want to consider making their January mortgage payment before the end of the year.

Doing so would allow you to deduct an extra month of mortgage interest that you might not be able to deduct on your 2018 return if you don't end up itemizing because of the higher standard deduction, McBride said.

The tax bill also limits the deduction to interest on as much as $750,000 in mortgage debt, down from the current $1-million limit. People who already own homes still get the higher limit.

But lawmakers added a provision to prevent people from a last-minute scramble to buy homes before the limit goes up next year.

Unlike most of the bill's changes, which take effect on Jan. 1, a taxpayer must have entered into a binding written contract before last Friday to be eligible for the $1-million limit.

Give more to charity

Charitable contributions are one of the most popular deductions. But with the number of people who itemize set to fall sharply, you might want to consider making your 2018 contributions by Dec. 31 so you would be able to deduct what you give to charity.

"This might be the year, if they can no longer itemize their charitable donations, to clean out the closet and donate to Goodwill or the Salvation Army or make that extra contribution to your church," said Kathy Pickering, executive director of the Tax Institute at H&R Block, which provides research and analysis to the company's tax preparers.

As with an extra mortgage payment, the move only makes tax sense for people who believe they will have enough deductions to itemize on their 2017 return but not when they file 2018 taxes, said Robert Spielman, a partner at Marcum, an independent public accounting and advisory services firm.

The key is estimating your chances of having deductions in 2018 that exceed the new standard deduction level.

"If you're not going to exceed that, maybe you arrange with your parish and prepay your 2018 pledge in 2017," Spielman said.

Defer or accelerate income

Individual marginal tax rates are shifting lower, so you'll generally pay less taxes on the same amount of earnings in 2018 compared to 2017.

People who are self-employed, such as contract workers or freelancers, should consider holding off on sending invoices so the payments come in 2018.

"For most people, their federal tax bracket is going to be lower under the tax bill, so it would make sense to defer," McBride said.

Depending on the size of your family, however, you might not want to make that move. Instead, it might make sense to accelerate any possible income into this year when you might owe less taxes.

The tax bill eliminates the existing $4,050 exemption that can be claimed by taxpayers for themselves, their spouses and their dependents and also reduces taxable income. Those exemptions currently phase out at upper-income levels.

Some of that change is offset by the legislation's doubling of the child tax credit to $2,000 and making it applicable to higher-income households, as well as adding a $500 family tax credit for dependents other than children.

It all means that some people might have more offsetting family-related deductions this year.

"If you have a big family, three or more kids, it might make sense to accelerate the income into this year before the tax bill takes effect next year," McBride said.

Take advantage of expiring deductions

Under current law, employees are allowed to deduct unreimbursed business expenses if they total more than 2 percent of their adjusted gross income.

They include a home office, depreciation on a personal computer required for the job, dues to professional societies and subscriptions to journals and trade magazines.

All of those deductions would disappear through 2025 under the Republican tax bill, so you probably want to move to as many of those expenses as you can to this year, such as by re-upping professional journal subscriptions.

A key to tax planning is figuring out which deductions to take in one year and which to postpone until the next, Spielman said.

"This year's a little different because we have a lot of deductions going away," he said.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla.  Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s and stands as one of the all-time literary hoaxes, died after being admitted to hospice care in Florida. He was 87.

Irving's wife, Julie Irving, told The Associated Press he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home. She said he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier.

Julie Irving and Irving's sons Ned and Barnaby remembered the writer as a fearless charmer even in his last days.

The day before he died, they said Thursday, Irving asked his doctor to help hasten the process. The doctor demurred, saying he did not want to go to jail.

"Cliff said, 'Don't worry, I won't tell anybody,'" Julie Irving said. "That was so classic Cliff. He was just conspiratorial to the end."

A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGraw-Hill publishers into paying him a $765,000 advance for a book about the reclusive Hughes. His elaborate ruse became the subject of the 2006 movie "The Hoax," starring Richard Gere.

Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication. The bogus autobiography wasn't published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition.

The scam "was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure," Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography "the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century." Time magazine dubbed Irving "Con Man of the Year" in a 1972 cover story.

Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article about the billionaire's eccentric lifestyle. Hughes' hermit-like obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the "gorgeous literary caper" would succeed, Irving wrote in "The Hoax," his 2006 account of the scheme.

"Hughes would never be able to surface to deny it, or else he wouldn't bother," he wrote.

At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker. He reportedly lived the final 10 years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, in near-total seclusion, even neglecting personal hygiene to avoid contact with the outside world.

Hughes' intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irving's claims to have interviewed the billionaire.

Irving insisted that he had several clandestine meetings with Hughes. He submitted to a lie-detector test and produced documents purportedly from the billionaire, including a handwritten letter written to McGraw-Hill.

The letter, forged by Irving, was deemed authentic by handwriting analysts hired by McGraw-Hill. At that point, the publisher decided to move forward with the book.

Irving put the cash advance into a Swiss bank account, opened in the name Helga R. Hughes.

The deception unraveled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes, recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irving's manuscript of the autobiography.

Hughes himself then surfaced to conduct a telephone conference with reporters during which he repudiated Irving's story and said that he never met him. His lawyer sued Irving and his publisher.

At the urging of McGraw-Hill, Swiss authorities investigated the Helga R. Hughes bank account and learned that the deposits had been made by Irving's wife, Edith.

Irving and his collaborator, Richard Suskind, were indicted on fraud charges and were found guilty in June 1972. In addition to his prison term, Irving returned the $765,000 advance to McGraw-Hill. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five.

Edith Irving served a total of 16 months in U.S. and Swiss jails for fraud. She left jail announcing her intent to file for divorce.

Irving was unhappy with the movie version of his escapades and asked to have his name removed from the credits as a technical adviser.

"Movie Clifford has the energy of a not-too-bright psychopath. If I were that man, I'd shoot myself," he wrote on his website. "The movie is best thought of as a hoax."

The Hughes hoax followed Irving's book "Fake!," the story of art forger Elmyr de Hory. The reviews of the book were favorable, but it sold fewer than 30,000 copies.

Ned Irving said his father's friendship with the forger helped inspire the Hughes scheme. Though traumatized by the imprisonment of both their parents, he and his brother eventually made peace with their father.

"They made an example out of him," he said. "I think he got a kick out of it. In retrospect, I wish he would have gotten away with it."

Born in 1930, Irving grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He attended public schools and his boyhood friends included William Safire, the late columnist and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon.

He attended Cornell University and stayed on for a year after graduation in 1951 on a creative writing fellowship. He worked odd jobs after leaving academia and traveled to Europe, where he finished his first novel, "On a Darkling Plain."

In all, Irving wrote more than a dozen books. In recent years, he and sixth wife Julie lived in Mexico, Colorado and Florida.

"I never heard my father complain in any of his divorces. They split up the money, the house, the cars, and he'd start right over again," Barnaby Irving said. "And when I lived with him, there was never a day I didn't hear the clicking of the typewriter."

This report includes biographical material written by former AP staff writer Gary Kane.
Born with congenital kidney failure, Zachary Elsenpeter faced a lifetime of medical complications.

He had his first kidney transplant, from his father, as an infant. But by age 5, his body began to reject it. A buildup of antibodies fighting the kidney gave him only a 3 percent chance of finding a perfect match for a new organ.

Zachary was put on a list of more than 100,000 people waiting for a kidney. His mother, Stacey Elsenpeter, felt helpless.

Its the worst feeling ever as a parent, Stacey said. Just watching him get sicker and sicker and theres nothing I can do but pray someones going to come forward to donate.

Stacey wanted to donate her kidney to him, but she wasnt a match.

That didnt stop her from getting proactive: She signed up for the Paired Exchange Program at the University of Minnesota Health.

I said, Im not taking that 3 percent,  Stacey said.

She wrote an email to a favorite television celebrity that she hoped would change the familys fortunes. Years later, it did.

While he was undergoing more than 70 surgeries by the age of 13, Zachary had to find a way to cope with so much hospital time. He found it in The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Im a huge fan, Zachary said. She just makes me laugh, and it makes you forget that youre sick.

For the Elsenpeters, the show became a daily ritual that kept the laughs coming through Zacharys medical ups and downs, which included complications with his urinary tract, bladder and bones.

More than once, Stacey wrote to the show  first to seek help finding a donor, and later, to bring awareness to the program that saved Zacharys life. She never expected to hear back.

So her shock was understandable when DeGeneres herself patched into the familys Andover home

Im feeling awesome, ever since I got that kidney, Zachary told DeGeneres in their first conversation.

DeGeneres, of course, had a hilarious response.

This is the kind of commitment  listen to me, everybody  this is the kind of commitment I need from my viewers, the host quipped. Even though hes been in and out of the hospital, he does not stop watching my show. Thats what I want, thats what I need.

Stacey and her three children, Zachary, Austin and Kylie, went on an all-expenses-paid trip to California this month to attend the taping, one of DeGeneres 12 Days of Giveaways episodes, in which audience members win big prizes.

They each took home gift cards, airline tickets, wireless headphones and an Xbox One, but the highlight was being called up on the set to sit with DeGeneres and share their story. DeGeneres then handed Zachary a giant check

We had the trip of a lifetime, Stacey said afterward.

Zachary was part of a paired donation program, which helps make matches among people who want to donate a kidney to a family member and cant. Potential donors from within a family donate to a stranger in need, and that patients potential donor gives to another person, and so on. The chain gets tipped off by an altruistic non-directed donor who doesnt have a target for their donation.

The program was launched at the University of Minnesota in 2009, and since then has participated in more than 80 exchanges that included the worlds longest chain of 35 transplants.

When Stacey signed up, there were no matches for Zachary. But three years later, a stranger who wanted to donate a kidney launched a chain. That person matched a patient in South Dakota who needed a kidney. And that patients family member matched Zach.

Stacey was the next link in the chain, donating to a teenager on the universitys kidney donation wait list.

These were miracle matches, said Dr. Ty Dunn, Staceys transplant surgeon and the director of the paired exchange program at the university. Its really cool that two kids benefited.

Six years after his kidney transplant, Zacharys health has greatly improved. And so has his quality of life. Children who dont have working kidneys have to be on dialysis several times a week, hours at a time. Zachary no longer has to be tied to a dialysis machine.

Were talking about a child missing school three times a week, kids not being able to go to slumber parties or birthday parties, and if they do, they cant eat the pizza or drink the pop, said Dr. Priya Verghese, Zacharys pediatric nephrologist.

Zacharys appearance on Ellen highlighted for Verghese the profound impact this (kidney exchange) program has had on his life, she said.

Stacey, meanwhile, has become an advocate for blood and organ donation. She hopes the visibility of her familys appearance on Ellen helps kickstart more chains.

I think its going to change the whole world in organ donation  I just feel it, she said.

Word is already spreading. DeGeneres posted a photo of the Elsenpeters on Instagram

Since joining the host on the show, Stacey says her inbox has been overflowing with emails from other parents who want to do what she did for her son.

She would do it all over again, if she could.

I wish I had more kidneys to donate.
"I stand up and announce that his best mate's got to sit down and shut up or bugger off.
DECATUR  A Decatur driver had to defend himself after a stranger wearing a surgical mask climbed into his car and punched him twice in the head, police said.

A sworn affidavit said the 58-year-old victim suffered a bleeding, swollen nose and swelling near his left eye in the attack, which happened around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday in a downtown parking lot near the 100 block of West Prairie Avenue.

His 32-year-old assailant appeared to be high on narcotics, according to Decatur police officer Christopher Skalon. Police reports on the incident were incomplete Thursday and its not known if the suspect tested positive for illegal drugs.

Skalon said what the suspect told officers made no sense. (He) stated that he was under the influence of corn syrup, and had ingested too much sugar, referring to his condition as Caffeine-itus, Skalon added.

Skalon said the victim earlier told officers he had been getting ready to drive off when he suddenly heard a rear door open and a man wearing a Chicago Cubs hat and a surgical mask over his face got in.

The driver immediately jumped out and asked the suspect what he wanted. (The suspect) stated I thought you wanted me in the car... and then punched him in the face two times said Skalon

The driver fought back by kicking the suspect in the crotch, and his attacker ran off but only got as far as the 200 block of West Main Street before police intercepted him.

The suspect was booked on a preliminary charge of aggravated battery and remained held in the Macon County Jail on Thursday night in lieu of posting $40,000 bail. Preliminary charges are subject to review by the states attorneys office. He is due to be arraigned Dec. 28.
The Punjab Congress raised the issue of forced conversion of Sikhs in Pakistan with Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday.

A delegation of Congress Members of Parliament (MPs) led by Punjab Congress chief and MP from Gurdaspur, Sunil Jakhar, along with MP Ravneet Singh Bittu sought MEAs urgent intervention in the matter to protect the identity of the Sikh community settled in Pakistan.

The delegation asked MEA to intercede on a personal basis and pressurise the government in Islamabad to take strong steps to put an immediate stop on the conversions.

The delegation also asked to provide all necessary protection to the Sikh community to protect them from any such victimisation or harassment in the future.

Punjab Congress chief, Sunil Jakhar, said that after Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh raised the issue, MEA has already directed the Indian High Commission in Pakistan to take it up at the highest level with Islamabad.

However, we believe the matter to be extremely grave, therefore, it should be taken up personally with the Pakistani authorities without delay by Union MEA minister Sushma Swaraj herself, Jakhar said.

He said that media reports suggest that a government official is involved in spearheading the conversion campaign in Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

In such circumstances, there is the dire need for the Indian government to engage directly with the government in Pakistan instead of routing it through the Indian High Commission, Jakhar added.

Jakhar also said that the alleged forced conversions have the potential of escalating out of control, which would have a disastrous effect on the future of the Sikhs settled in the neighbouring country.

He further said that in the long run, it could lead to total annihilation of the Sikh identity in Pakistan, which could also trigger a cascading impact on Sikhs living in other parts of the world.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has honoured the Jagdguru Kripalu Parishad (JKP) Education Trust for its contribution to the education of girls, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds.

The award was given as part of an event organised here by Zee TV Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand channel that was also attended by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Yoga guru Baba Ramdev.

JKP Trustee Ram Puri, who received the award, said the trust has taken the initiative of elevating the social, educational and economic level of the rural girl child in the Mangadh region.

The trust has established three educational institutes in Kunda, Pratapgarh district  the Kripalu Mahila Mahavidyalay, Kripalu Balika Intermediate College and Kripalu Balika Primary School  which together provide free education to almost 6,000 girls.

JKP President Dr Vishakha Tripathi said the institutions aimed to give the girls self-respect and also make them self-reliant, adding that students were enrolled irrespective of caste, creed or religion.
Telugu cinema star Nagarjuna says he has no problem in welcoming Salman Khans Hindi film Tiger Zinda Hai alongside his son Akhil Akkinenis Telugu movie Hello on Friday.

How can we oppose the release of a Hindi film just because it is expected to be a success? Thats not healthy competition. In my times, so many of my Telugu films were dubbed and released in Hindi, said Nagarjuna.

At that time, nobody opposed my dubbed appearance in Mumbais theatres. So now when Bollywood films, or for that matter Hollywood spectacles, are our competition we should be thinking of equalling not killing the competition, he added.
An employee of the Weinstein Company has accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of assaulting and sexually harassing her for years.

Alexandra Canosa, an associate producer on the series Marco Polo, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the Supreme Court. She claims that Weinstein had threatened to sack her if she ever spoke up, reports deadline.com.

She named Bob and Harvey Weinstein as defendants as well as the company and seven other board members.

The suit does not detail her allegations but alleges that Canosa was subject to sexual harassment, sexual intimidation, emotional abuse, assault and battery over several years.

Canosa has also accused the company and the board of facilitating and concealing Weinsteins conduct and of failing to act to prevent it.

Weinstein is now facing seven lawsuits alleging sexual harassment or sexual assault as well as claims arising from the collapse of productions in the wake of revelations about his alleged misconduct.

Weinstein has repeatedly denied any non-consensual sex.
Moments after a special CBI court acquitted all the accused, including former Union telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi, of all charges in the 2G scam cases on Thursday, a war of words broke out between the main Opposition Congress and the ruling BJP, with the Congress claiming that the previous party-led UPA government was vindicated even as the BJP asked it not to treat this verdict as a badge of honour.

The Congress camp alleged that the BJPs propaganda and lies and its unrelenting targeting of the party over 2G and corruption led to the ouster of its UPA government headed by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress also gunned for the then CAG Vinod Rai, charging that his 2010 report estimating a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the State exchequer had also helped the BJP in sealing the UPAs fate in the 2014 elections.

The principal Opposition party demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the BJP and Rai should apologise to the country and that their accountability should be fixed on the issue.

On being asked to comment on the special courts verdict in 2G scam cases, ex-PM Singh told reporters, I do not want to boast about anything. The courts judgment has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any basis.

When asked whether it was vindication for his dispensation which has continued to draw fire over the 2G corruption scandal, Singh said, The judgment speaks for itself.

The then FM P Chidambaram said, The allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never trueand that has been established today.

The Congresss chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala asked whether those including PM Modi, Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda on this issue to come to power, apologise to the country now.

Congress leader Kapil Sibal claimed vindication of his zero loss theory in the 2G case, saying it has always been a scam of lies.

The government and the BJP, however, remained unfazed, maintaining that the UPA regimes first come, first served 2G spectrum allocation policy and its implementation was arbitrary and corrupt and that it was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2012 when it had scrapped the allocation of all 122 licences of 2G spectrum to various companies.

Hitting back, Jaitley said: The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proved wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012.

Jaitley asserted that the investigative agencies will have a closer look at the trial courts judgment acquitting all the accused, and decide what has to be done.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners in the 2G case, said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal of the 2G accused.
Reacting to the 2G verdict, firebrand BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who exposed the alleged multi-crore spectrum allocation scam, said the judgment was not a setback but just an aberration as the law officers investigating the case were not serious.

Addressing a press conference, Swamy mocked the Congress and DMK celebrations upon the acquittal of all accused including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi and said that the case was not over yet.

This (verdict) is not a setback at all, its an aberration because the law officers (investigating the case) were not serious about fighting corruption, Swamy told the media here.

Swamy warned the Narendra Modi government to crackdown on the corrupt otherwise the BJP will have to pay an electoral price in the 2019 General elections.

I hope the PM takes lesson from this. We must now fight corruption on war footing. Modi must set up war like council to fight corruption. There are many officers who are serious about fighting corruption, Swamy said.

There are people in my party who are not too keen on fighting corruption Similarly, there are officers in the finance ministry who are corrupt and still loyal to previous government. Finance ministry needs a purge, Swamy said.

Earlier in the day, Swamy had said that the government must immediately file an appeal against the acquittal of all accused in the nearly decade old case.

A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted all the accused in the 2G scam case, which had rocked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II regime.

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA governments first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
The just concluded Gujarat assembly elections have brought different lessons for various sections of people and organisations.

The strongest message the Gujarat electorate have sent out is that the state would remain bipolar for ages to come, their choice being limited to the two major parties-the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress.

This message is evident from the poll results as no new entrant in the poll fray has been entertained by Gujarats 4.32 crore voters.

Not only that the new entrants could not win any seat in the 182-member assembly, all their candidates have lost their security deposits too.

The Shiv Sena, one-time ally of the BJP, had contested this election independently by fielding 42 candidates. But all of them have lost their security deposits. As many as 31 of the 42 Shiv Sena nominees got less than 1,000 votes, many of them even below the None Of The Above (NOTA) votes in the constituency.

Similarly, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) fielded 29 nominees but all of them forfeited their deposits .

The vote share of AAP and Shiv Sena put together was less than the total NOTA votes (1.8 per cent) against the BJPs 49 per cent and 41 per cent of the Congress.
India on Thursday dismissed remarks, made by Pakistan National Security Advisor Nasser Khan Janjua on the possibility of nuclear war, as alarmist.

Januja had made comments about the possibility of a nuclear conflict in South Asia due to the delicate security situation in the region.

We are quite used to such alarmist comments coming out of Pakistan. It is clear that such statements are made with a political motive. I suggest they should not be taken seriously, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said at a media briefing.

On Pakistan Army chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwas reported advice to the countrys lawmakers to work for improving ties with India, the spokesperson said New Delhi too desired good ties with all its neighbours, including Pakistan. However, it was important for Pakistan to understand the core concerns of India.

We have time and again emphasised to Pakistan the need to take action against terrorists and terrorist groups operating from its soil. This is something which they (Pakistan) have to handle if they are serious about cultivating friendship, Kumar added.

In response to questions about the visit of the mother and wife of Indian prisoner Kulbhushan Jadhav to Pakistan to meet him on 25 December, the spokesperson said the modalities were still being worked out.

Reports in the Pakistani media said Indias Deputy High Commissioner J P Singh would fly to India to bring Jadhavs mother and wife to Pakistan for the meeting.
Ahead of India-China boundary talks on Friday, New Delhi on Thursday reiterated its opposition to Beijings ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

During a press briefing, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, Our policy has been very clear and consistent on why we oppose this initiative. We believe connectivity initiatives should be based on universally recognised international norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and quality and must be pursued in a manner which respect territorial integrity and sovereignty.

India, he said, would be open to any efforts which would address its legitimate concerns in this regard.

The spokesperson was asked for his reaction to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs recent remarks that India should reconsider its position on BRI and join it.

New Delhi has opposed BRI on the ground that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of the initiative, runs through Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir under the illegal occupation of Pakistan.

There have been reports suggesting that China, which is keen on Indias participation in the BRI initiative, could even raise the issue at Fridays boundary talks between the Special Representatives (SRs) of the two countries.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will lead the Indian delegation at the talks while the Chinese team will be headed by State Councillor Yang Jiechi.

Meanwhile, India hit out at China for protecting JeM chief Masood Azhar by repeatedly blocking his listing as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council.

On counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns, Indias Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin told the Council, without naming China.

On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress, thus putting our common security in peril, he added.
DECATUR  Workers from Decatur's Ameren Illinois Customer Care Center delivered 3,400 canned food items to the Northeast Community Fund on Wednesday, the company said. Ameren representatives presented an additional $5,900 to the Decatur food pantry.

This initiative provided an opportunity for our local employees to support a food pantry in the community where they live and work," said Ameren Illinois Chairman and President Richard J. Mark in a statement.

In addition to its food pantry, the Northeast Community Fund helps needy citizens with finding access to social service programs, area charities, finding jobs, and assists in everything from applying for state-issued IDs to finding local job openings.
Pakistan Army again violated the ceasefire on Thursday evening, triggering a heavy exchange of fire with Indian troops along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmirs Poonch district.

Indian positions retaliated strongly and effectively. The fighting took place in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district, as per Police officials.

Pakistan Army initiated indiscriminate firing and shelling on military and civilian positions by using automatics, small arms and mortars. Heavy firing exchanges are still going on, a police officer said.

(with input from agencies)
No Rohingya has been deported in the last three years while 330 Pakistan and 1,770 Bangladesh nationals were sent back to their native countries in the same period, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

In a written reply, the Minister, however, said it was not possible to have a correct estimate of migrants who enter the country without valid travel documents.

He said the central government is vested with powers to deport a foreign national under Section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

These powers to identify and deport foreign nationals illegally staying in the country have also been delegated to the state governments and union territory administrations and the Bureau of Immigration under the said Act.

Detection and deportation of such illegal immigrants is a continuous process. A revised procedure for the detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants was communicated to the states and union territories in November 2009, which was partially modified in February 2011 and further modified in February 2013, Rijiju said.

The procedure includes sending back then and there the illegal immigrants who are intercepted at the borders while entering India illegally, the Minister said.

He said the central government was also implementing a mission-mode project on Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking (IVFRT) which will facilitate improved tracking of foreigners by integrating and sharing information captured during visa issuance at missions, during checks at immigration check posts and during registration at the offices of the Foreigners Regional Registration Officers.

The Minister confirmed some instances of violation of law and involvement of foreign nationals in illegal activities.

He said that registration of cases and action thereon comes within the purview of the police stations and state governments and union territory administrations concerned, but he did not give data regarding the issue, saying that statistical data of this nature is not centrally maintained.

Law enforcement agencies also maintain a strict vigil on the activities of foreigners in the country and take appropriate action in cases of illegal activities, Rijiju added.
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said terrorism and radicalisation were common challenges for India and Mali after he held talks with a senior delegation from the country.

Interacting with a delegation of parliamentarians of Mali lead by the President of the nations High Court of Justice Abdrahamane Niang, Naidu said India was committed to further strengthen its partnership with Mali.

India stands ready to extend Lines of Credit in projects of renewable energy sector in Mali. India is committed to further strengthen its developmental cooperation partnership with Mali, Naidu said.

The Vice President said that the World Heritage Site of Timbuktu with its repository of invaluable Islamic scriptures and manuscripts is a unique cultural asset for the entire world.

He further said that India, shall keenly look forward to the early inauguration and opening of the Exhibition Taj Mahal meets Timbuktu in India.

The Vice President congratulated the Government of Mali on the establishment of G-5 Sahel Joint Force which will contribute to unity, peace, development and prosperity of Mali and the region.
Have you ever felt as if you had woken up in an alternative reality? Or that you might be trapped in the twilight zone? For those of us who are self-proclaimed sci-fi geeks, it would probably be the most plausible explanation. For others, it may just feel like being the silent participant in an ongoing nightmare. How else do we explain the current state of the world that we live in? If there are any aliens out there trying to make contact (with hostile intentions), it would be advisable for them to wait it out as we are already well on our way towards economic, political, social and environmental self-destruction.

There are currently more than 65.6 million people worldwide who, due to violence, persecution or war, have been displaced and forced to leave their homes. Of these people, 22.5 million are refugees and 10 million are stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement (UNHCR). The figures are unprecedented and unconscionable. It begs the question whether we, as a society, have become so desensitised to the suffering of fellow human beings that apart from paying lip service and going through the motions of expressing condemnation and horror, we have nothing else to offer.

We need look no further than Bangladeshs neighbour, Myanmar, to see the effects of religious and racial discrimination. The horrors that the Rohingya Muslims have, and are still facing are unimaginable with villages being razed to the ground, systematic rape of women by the Myanmar military, babies being burnt alive and men and children being slaughtered. The victimisation of this ethnic minority has resulted in the exodus of almost 650,000 Rohingya who have crossed the border from Rakhine state to escape. This combined with the existing Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh brings the total number to approximately 900,000. This represents a significant burden for a country with one-third of the population living below the poverty line but, given the circumstances, it was the right thing to do.

But apart from a proverbial slap on the wrist, no action has been taken by the international community. Some countries have provided aid towards the crisis but nothing else has been done to help alleviate the suffering of the affected and no sanctions imposed to discourage or hold the Myanmar military accountable. In our alternative reality, we obviously have not learned from the consequences of historical genocides such as the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia to name but a few. Even if action were taken now, it would still be too little too late for the victims of what appears to be another deliberate, calculated and racially motivated act of genocide. Europe could also take a leaf out of Bangladeshs book and re-evaluate their position on the Syrian refugee crisis which has been unfolding over the last few years.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, with Donald Trump at the helm of the United States, the political and economic scenario could not be more different than it was under the enlightened but hamstrung Barack Obama. Bellicose and bombastic speeches under the slogan America first or making America great again, given during his campaign and repeated subsequent to becoming president, seem to have resonated with his supporters and enabled a form of nationalism that rejects globalisation and free trade. However, this version of America is insular, xenophobic and regressive.

Far from taking the country forward, the President of the United States appears to have taken the country on a journey back in time to an era where racism, sexism and bigotry were part of the social landscape. His appeal is that he is an outsider notionally campaigning for those who were left behind by globalisation. The fact that he is an erratic billionaire whose achievements to date are a litany of failures gets lost in the posturing.

Over the last year, the world has watched in astonishment at the extraordinary antics of Trump. His most recent action has been to jeopardise peace in the Middle East by unilaterally recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in an uncalled-for act almost designed to cause maximum disruption. During his presidency, he has managed to antagonise his neighbours by trying and failing to get Mexico to build or pay for a wall; trigger a trade war with China; consort with Russians alleged to have meddled in the election; indulge in racism and ignorant oratory which incites religious discrimination; reduce taxes on corporations and the rich; tried (and manifestly failed) to bully the tiny but resolutely defiant nuclear rogue nation that is North Korea. He has also been accused by at least 15 women of sexual harassment and sexual assault and been caught on tape making lewd and derogatory remarks about women. Despite the above, in this twilight zone-esque scenario, he is somehow still the President of the United States.

Unfortunately for the planet, Trump is also a climate change sceptic. With more and more countries pledging to combat global warming and protecting the environment, the United States has not only pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement but has also taken climate change out of its National Security Strategy. France and Germany have stated they will make up for the shortfall generated by the US withdrawing from the agreement. Even China, the worlds biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (the USA is the second) is actively committed to reducing its carbon footprint by launching an emissions trading systemone of the largest mechanisms in the world. In the last 20 years, Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti have been identified as the most affected countries with Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Bangladesh following closely. The sad reality is that it is the poorer and less developed countries that have actually done the least to cause global warming, that will be the ones suffering the most. China, North America and Europe will fare far better despite being responsible to a large extent for the current state of the environment. To put things in context, a three foot rise in sea level would submerge 20 per cent of the country and displace almost 30 million people in Bangladesh. This is a reality that no one should have to face.

There is always the hope that one can wake up from this nightmare or do a Rip Van Winkle and sleep it out and by then somehow the world will have righted itself. However, unless something is done or we all collectively take a stance, it is more likely that we will awaken to a post-apocalyptic world given that both Trump and Kim Jong Un have their fingers on the nuclear buzzer.

The Daily Star/ANN
The election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the leader of South Africas African National Congress has been greeted with a fair measure of hope and optimism across the world. He is set to take over as the next President and the implications of the change of guard in Johannesburg are profound. The party that nearly 25 years ago had unshackled the country from the indignities of apartheid is now in a position to check the slide towards corruption and anarchy, indeed the hallmark of Jabob Zumas dispensation.

Thus it was that contracts were awarded to cronies and dissenting ruling party activists were murdered almost every day. Mr Ramaphosa is set to ascend the saddle after defeating Mr Zumas ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former ANC minister with considerable political experience. If she had won, she would have been expected to protect her former husband from no fewer than 783 charges of corruption, in itself a commentary on Mr Zumas presidency. South Africas transition from Nelson Mandela to Zuma is testament to the distance the country has reversed. Mr Ramaphosa, therefore, has a formidable task before him when he steps into the presidential palace. A close aide of Mandela, he will be expected to bridge the gulf between the countrys new black elite and its poor.

South Africa languishes as one of the worlds most unequal countries; the inequality is a legacy of the apartheid regime. Indeed, the historical division between man and man has intensified since the eclipse of institutionalised segregation in 1994. Not that there have been no reforms to help the poor and fight the aftermath of apartheid; the countrys deepest tragedy must be that race is still a major determinant in terms of income, education, job opportunities and wealth ~ the fundamentals of sustenance. The richest 10 per cent are largely white, and this segment earns more than 60 per cent of the national income and enjoys income levels that are comparable to Europeans. At another remove, 90 per cent of the lower rungs are predominantly blacks who have to eke out a living in dire poverty.

Into this black-and-white quagmire will step in Mr Ramaphosa. His uppermost priority is to boost economic growth and provide jobs and schooling. South Africa will have to contend with a bitter irony ~ it is the continents largest economy and yet needs to improve the quality of life generally. Above all, it needs to recover its moral authority, which it had gained at birth but lost in the dubious dealings of the post-apartheid regimes. In a word, the world will expect him to retrieve the optimism that was generated with the end of apartheid, indeed effect a swingback to the better. He will have to address the tragedy of South Africa.
From India to Austria, the Right has cogent reasons to feel delighted. Vienna is poised to be the only west European capital with a far-right party in government. The loop gets lengthened across the Atlantic with Chile in South America scheduled to be helmed by a conservative leader. While the current trend towards nationalism is likely to be renforced, the fact that the Austrian conservative leader, Sebastian Kurz, has concluded a coalition deal with the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) cannot but be a distressing thought to the migrants.

Quite a stark contradiction considering that Angela Merkel, in neighbouring Germany, has been singularly sympathetic and accommodating in her policies towards those fleeing North Africa and the Arab region, not to forget the Rohingyas. The coalition pact, that was signed in Vienna, comes two months after a parliamentary election that was dominated by Europes migration crisis. The wheel has turned full circle for the FPO, which was in the opposition for more than a decade. It had last entered government with the Peoples Party (OVP), that Mr Kurz now heads. While details of the coalition agreement are yet to be spelt out, Mr Kurz as the President-to-be has already worked out his agenda ~ We want to reduce the burden on taxpayers and, above, all we want to ensure greater security in our country, through the fight against illegal immigration. He has thus made his position clear on by far the most sensitive issue that confronts Europe today.

Anti-establishment parties have scored major electoral gains in Europe in recent years by exploiting the general dissatisfaction of voters with the handling of the economy, security and immigration by mainstream parties. Most of these parties, including the Front National led by Marine Le Pen, who made it to the French presidential runoff this year, have fallen short of entering government. In Austria, however, the FPO is expected to hold key posts, notably the interior, foreign and defence ministries. Which makes the psephological swing in Austria so very critical in the context of the nationalist surge in Europe, primarily the discourse over Brexit.

When the FPO last entered government in 2000, other EU countries had in protest imposed short-lived sanctions on Austria. Given the changed political landscape in Europe since then, the reaction is likely to be more restrained. There is little doubt that there is a nationalist wave across the Continent or even sub-regional jingoism as in Catalonia. Kurz has, however, sought to stave off potential criticism by offering assurances that his government will be pro-European. He plans to shift some EU departments from the foreign ministry to his office, and has secured a guarantee that there will be no Brexit-style referendum on leaving the bloc. That jingoist assertion was more pronounced in Britain.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

A few clouds. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 19F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 19F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
Police on Tuesday night responded to two more instances of shots being fired on Decatur streets, following a pair of similar incidents the night before. It's unclear whether the shootings, one of which left multiple bullet holes in a house, were related.

In other news, President Donald Trump is celebrating a massive overhaul of U.S. tax laws; Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs has returned a lost Purple Heart medal a Marine's family; state police are preparing to increase DUI patrols; and lawmakers are scheduled to hold a hearing to address the Legionnaires' disease outbreak that has killed 13 residents of a Quincy veterans home in three years.

Police: Gunfire erupts for a second night on Decatur streets

Detective Sgt. Chris Copeland said a home in the 300 block of South Webster Street was hit by multiple bullets around 8:40 p.m. Tuesday.

In the second incident, Copeland said witnesses called police at 9:30 p.m. after seeing a gun being fired into the air from the parking lot next to Roosevelt School Apartments, 701 W. Grand Ave.

Weve got some nicknames of people who may have been involved, said Copeland. No one was injured and there appeared to be no property damage.

Trump celebrates after Congress wraps up tax package

Trump cheered a massive overhaul of U.S. tax laws Wednesday, saying "we broke every record."

Flanked by Republican lawmakers, the president took a bow outside the White House shortly after the House finished its last-minute re-vote to pass the $1.5 trillion bill that provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans while providing smaller cuts for middle- and low-income families.

Democrats call the legislation a boon to the rich that leaves middle-class and working Americans behind.

Trump said the effort had "been an amazing experience" and claimed it resulted in "the largest tax cut in the history of our country."

Illinois treasurer returns missing medal to Marine's family

Treasurer Michael Frerichs has returned a Purple Heart medal to the family of Marine killed during the Vietnam War.

Frerichs returned the medal to two of Marine Pfc. Andrew Gust Richard's nieces during a ceremony at the Illinois Statehouse on Tuesday. Richard, a native of Elkhart, was killed in June 1968.

The State Journal-Register reports that Richard's original medal was destroyed in a house fire during the 1970s.

State police to increase DUI patrols

Police and sheriff's departments across Illinois are stepping up patrols to try to reduce alcohol- and drug-related crashes this holiday season.

The Illinois Department of Transportation and Illinois State Police say the stepped up enforcement started this week and will continue through Jan. 2. It will be in effect at all hours, with heightened efforts in the evening.

Hearing to address Legionella outbreak at veterans home

The Illinois General Assembly's two veterans committees are scheduled to hold a joint legislative hearing to address the Legionnaires' disease outbreak at a veterans home.

Thirteen residents at the Illinois Veterans Home have died from the disease over the past three years.

The Quincy Herald-Whig reports that democratic state Sen. Tom Cullerton of Villa Park toured the home in Quincy Tuesday to prepare for the hearing. It'll be held in Chicago on Jan. 9.
Organisation: University Research Co., LLC (URC)

Project Name: USAIDs Defeat TB Project

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Deputy Chief of

Party

About US:

University Research Co., LLC (URC) is a global company dedicated to

improving the quality of health care, social services, and health education

worldwide. With a non-profit affiliate, the Center for Human Services (CHS),

URC manages projects in over 45 countries, including the United States.

About USAID Defeat TB project:

University Research Co., LLC (URC) is implementing the USAIDs Defeat

TB project. Aligned with Objective #3 in USAIDs Country Development

Cooperation Strategy and in support of the Government of Ugandas TB Program,

this five-year, USAID funded projects goal is to increase TB case

notification, case detection, and treatment outcomes through health system

strengthening. The Defeat TB project goal is to increase TB case

notification, case detection, and treatment outcomes through health system

strengthening with the aim of ending the TB epidemic in Uganda.

Job Summary: The Private

Public Mix, Coordination and Partnership Officer will work within NTLP and

report to the Deputy COP Defeat TB. This responsibility is focused on

facilitating NTLPs leadership role in the implementation of the National TB

Strategic Plan, achieving this through: enhanced engagement of the private

sector in the management of TB; consensus and partnership building with

government ministries and agencies, with other departments of the Ministry of

health and with implementing partners, private sector, and civil society. Key

to this activity will be ensuring that the NTLP as the secretariat for the TB

National Coordination Committee leverages technical expertise and resources

that are supportive of TB both nationally and internationally. The job will be

made possible by working closely with other departments of the Defeat TB

project including: the Kampala TB management services advisor; the TB

prevention services advisor; and the Quality Improvement Advisor amongst

others.



Key Duties and Responsibilities:



leadership for TB control: Support to the NTLP and other entities for the enhancement ofleadership for TB control:

Ensure coordination between implementing

partners and the NTLP;

Ensure that TB related policies and

regulations developed by all the stakeholders that have a bearing on TB

control are adequately circulated, acknowledged and responded to by the

NTLP and others;

Tasked with the provision of

administrative support to NTLP Programme manager in relation to

coordination and partnership building and resource mobilization;

Relationship management with the National

Coordination Committee and technical working groups, relevant departments

and agencies of health and other stakeholders;

Coordinate and assist in steering and

implementation of resolutions of the National Coordination committee and

its technical working groups;

Support NTLP and the MoH Emergency

Operations Centre to functionalize the regular monitoring of MDR-TB as a

notifiable disease.

Support the coordination of NTLP responses

to TB related crises.

Partnership building and resource

mobilization:

Identify opportunities for partnership

building and resource mobilization with development partners in Uganda and

beyond;

Build on and manage relationships with

current and potential partners;

Tasked with drafting concept notes and

reports to prepare and facilitate partnership building and resource

mobilization.



approaches for TB care and control, in line with the national policy framework: Support the strengthening and expanding of public-private mix (PPM)approaches for TB care and control, in line with the national policy framework:

Work closely with the NTLP to

functionalize the National PPM Guidelines adapted from WHO.

Support the NTLP and the health care

authorities of Kampala, Mukono and Wakiso to map, identify and engage

private health providers in the detection, notification and treatment of

tuberculosis.

Work with the NTLP to develop and

implement a system for accrediting and regulating private facilities

providing services for TB diagnosis and treatment.

Implement programs for capacity building,

supportive supervision and mentorships in TB management in the private

sector.

Support capacity building in TB management

and provide recording and reporting tools.

Implement TB related laboratory quality

assurance and operations research in the private sector.

Develop and/or strengthen referral

mechanisms linking Presumptive TB cases from other private providers to

either public or private diagnostic and treatment units.

Strengthen linkages of private providers

providing TB services to the hub sample transportation system

Facilitate referrals and capture data

disaggregated by provider.

Increase involvement of traditional

medical practitioners in TB care.

Develop strategies for engaging the

corporate world in TB prevention and care.

Participate in the implementation urban TB

care and prevention strategies for Kampala, Wakiso and Mukono and municipalities

in the catchment of MDR sites.

Work with TASO to promote the linking of

private DTUs to community TB support structures so as to: minimize initial

loss to follow up; support Urban DOTs implementation; and, support sputum

sample referrals, systematic screening and contact tracing.









Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

The applicants for the USAID Defeat TB

Project Private Public Mix, Coordination and Partnership Officer job opportunity

must hold a Masters degree or an equivalent in Public Health, Social

Sciences, Economics or Political Sciences or related field.

At least two years experience in

integrated health programming gained through serving within a government,

NGO or private for profit institution with proven ability to coordinate

activities of different stakeholders at national, district and community

level.

Two years of relevant work experience at

national level;

Broad knowledge and understanding of the

goals of the USAID Country Development Cooperation Strategy

Knowledge of the government systems;

Working experience of Quality Improvement

approaches and willingness to gain more experience in QI.

Proven ability to conceptualize, innovate

and execute ideas, as well as transfer knowledge and skills to policy

makers and to the private sector

Excellent interpersonal skills

Ability to express clearly and concisely

ideas and concepts in written and oral form

Experience with USAID and donor projects

is highly desirable

Knowledge in gender mainstreaming is

desired

Excellent oral and written communication

skills are required to develop and maintain effective, sustainable working

relationships with members of the private sector

Ability to analyze, understand and discuss

new program design, management and implementation approaches is required.

The ability to influence other

collaborative organizations engaged in TB & HIV control programs to

adopt appropriate strategies for improving the programs for patients with

TB/HIV co-infection is an important skill required for this position.

Willingness to learn core principles of

the project that include new innovations for the enhancement of TB case

detection and treatment success, the application of CQI for enhancing the

effectiveness of the project

Demonstrated sound judgment, and high

ethical standards; flexible and able to adapt to changing priorities and

deadlines

Previous experience and skills in

humanitarian emergency context is highly desirable;

Being able to effectively network with

NTLPs partners, donors and other international organizations, seizing opportunities

to build strategic alliances relevant to NSPs strategic objectives

NB: Only candidates who are eligible to work in

the Uganda for an indefinite period without a need for sponsorship will be

considered for this position.

How to Apply:



URC should upload their updated CVs / resumes and cover letters at the link

below. Also, please complete your application form and attach a completed USAID

Form 1420 Contractor Employee Biographical Data Sheet as well, All suitably qualified and interested candidates who wish to join theURC should upload their updated CVs / resumes and cover letters at the linkbelow. Also, please complete your application form and attach a completed USAIDForm 1420 Contractor Employee Biographical Data Sheet as well, download it

here

th

December 2017 by 5:00 pm Deadline: 29December 2017 by 5:00 pm
With the 2G allocation scam charges ruled out by a court, telecom minister Manoj Sinha said that the investigating agencies will pursue their charges, into what the Supreme Court has already ruled as arbitrary, faulty and corrupt.

"The government does not want to comment anything on the court decision now. Investigating agencies will take further decision. The government will ponder on it after that," Sinha told reporters here.

"Supreme Court had already given its verdict. The 2G spectrum auction was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt. We will wait for instructions from the court," said Sinha, when asked about the fate of the cancelled 122 2G licences allowed in 2012 auction.

Sinha said that there is 'no question' of the current spectrum auction system being subject to any change after today's judgement. "We have earned 10 per cent more revenue from spectrum auction.. This judgement is Congress's dirty tricks," he said.

Meanwhile, Essar Group, whose two promoters and five other key officials were named in the scam for cornering spectrum in the guise of Loop Telecom, has thanked the court for releiving them of the charges.

"We are thankful to the Honble Court for the judgement since it vindicates our stated position, and the Honble Court has accepted it," Essar said, in a one line comment after today's judgement.

Investigating agencies in the case held that the court had not been able to take heed of the documentary evidences provided by them.

"We will most definitely be going for appeal as we have presented some incriminating documents showing FCRA violations," said an Enforcement Directorate official, who is overseeing the agency's 2G spectrum case.

Another accused Sanjay Chandra, MD, Unitech, blamed that he and his company had to pay the price for the fraudulent charges relating to 2G spectrum allocation to his company, Uninor, a partnership with Danish telecom giant Telenor.

"There was no wrongdoing on my part or on the part of my companies," Chandra said in a statement on Thursday evening. "However, the damage suffered by me and the companies continues to affect the health and financial status of my company and they continue to pay the price for this case having been foisted on us fraudulently and without any basis," he added.

Share prices of Shahid Balwa-owned DB Realty, Uninor and SunTV Network rallied 5-20 per cent after the verdict came in the morning.

CBI, too, said it would seek appeal of Justice O.P. Saini's order in higher court. CBI spokesperson, Abhishek Dayal said, "I can tell you we will be availing all legal opinion on this for filing an appeal on today's judgement."

In a statement issued today, the premier investigation agency, which had filed chargesheet in two different cases in the scam, said, "The judgment relating to 2G scam case today has been prima facie examined and it appears that the evidence adduced to substantiate the charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the Learned Court."

All eyes are now on the investigating agencies and on Chennai High Court for further developments in the 2G spectrum allocation cases.
BLOOMINGTON  Two people have died this week in McLean County as a result of flu, Coroner Kathy Davis said Wednesday morning.

We have two deaths related to influenza A, she said. One came in from Michigan into Illinois but was a 25-year-old. The other was in an assisted living facility.

Over the last decade in Illinois, an average of 3,500 people died each year because of influenza, commonly called the flu, and pneumonia.

Some hospitals already have enacted voluntary visitor restrictions and several schools in Illinois have reported flu outbreaks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are four types of influenza, categorized as A, B, C, and D. Type A is the most common.

We just need to remind people to stay home if they are sick, get a flu vaccine if you have not had one and just try to limit the spread of this in any way we can, said Davis.

The CDC said last week that flu season across the country looks to be early and severe. The Illinois Department of Public Health does not track flu cases, just the number of people who are hospitalized.

According to the IDPH, a typical flu case includes fever (usually 100 degrees to 103 degrees in adults and often even higher in children); respiratory symptoms, such as a cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose; headache; muscle aches; and extreme fatigue.

Although nausea, vomiting and diarrhea can sometimes accompany influenza infection, especially in children, these are rarely the primary symptoms.

A person can be showing no signs of the flu, and then quickly they get the severe body aches, and they go from feeling fine to feeling like everything is turned upside-down, said Lisa Slater, a spokeswoman for the McLean County Health Department. We urge them to get to the doctor because drugs such as Tamiflu can shorten the duration and lessen the severity.

Most people who get the flu recover in one to two weeks, but some people develop serious and potentially life-threatening medical complications, such as pneumonia.

The flu can be contagious, but there are precautions that can be taken to reduce the spread of the disease, Slater said.

If someone is recuperating from the flu in a home with multiple people, assign one person to be the caregiver, she said. Also, keep the sick person confined to one room, preferably with a bed, couch and television, so everything can be contained to one area. Also, use as many disposable things as possible, like cups, plates, utensils and things like that.

Many families will be traveling or attending holiday events in the next few days, which could make for some tough decisions, she added.

Its hard, but if someone truly is sick, they shouldnt go, and this goes for children, too, she said.

One thing to keep in mind that if someone is taking an anti-fever medication and their fever is down, that doesnt mean they arent sick," she added. "They should have no fever for 24 hours without any anti-fever medication to know for sure.

Sue Rutherford, a nurse at Bent Elementary School in Bloomington, said the school is starting to see an increase in absences due to the flu.

Younger students can be more at-risk with spreading illness due to how closely they interact with each other and are also at risk for complications from illness, she said.

Flu-related complications can occur at any age, but the elderly and people with chronic health problems are much more likely to develop serious complications after influenza infection than are young, healthier people, say health officials.

During most flu seasons, which typically run from October through May, between 10 percent and 20 percent of the population become sick.
Microsoft Corporation co-founder Bill Gates has lauded the Bollywood film Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and said that it has educated audiences about India's sanitation challenge.

The movie was amongst his seven inspiring things in 2017.

"There's no denying that 2017 was a really tough year... but it also delivered some amazing moments of hope and progress. Here are some inspiring tweets that you may have missed," Gates tweeted on Tuesday.

Later he re-tweeted a link and wrote: Toilet: A Love Story, a Bollywood romance about a newly wed couple, educated audiences about India's sanitation challenge."

Directed by Shree Narayan Singh, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha revolves around a man named Keshav, who falls in love with Jaya and gets married to her. However, she complains that there is no toilet in the house and he tries to pacify her with temporary arrangements.

Actress Bhumi Pednekar, who stars opposite Akshay Kumar in the film, thanked Bill Gates for recognising our efforts.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha is our contribution towards ending a practice that affects a very large population of the world. We truly hope open defecation will be a thing of the past. To a brighter and better world. Say no to open defecation," she added.
Actor Tom Hanks says he would turn down an invitation from the White House to screen his new movie The Post.

Hanks portrays editor Ben Bradlee in the Steven Spielberg directorial. The film is about the Washington Post defying threats from then-President Richard Nixon to publish the Pentagon Papers stories in 1971.

Hanks, 61, said he would turn down an invitation to the White House because of Donald Trump's attacks on the free press and parallels between the world now and what is documented in the film.

"I don't think I would. Because I think that at some pointlook, I didn't think things were going to be this way last November. I would not have been able to imagine that we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville and jokes about Pocahontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers," said Hanks.

"And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts. You don't take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things. You may think: 'You know what? I think now is the time.'

"This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions. We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go," he added.

The actor said that one of the reasons why he was attracted to the project was the similarities between then and now.

"I said: 'Well, look, this is ridiculously timely, and the even better part of it is: this is the story of the week that (Washington Post publisher) Katharine Graham became Katharine Graham. It had a very human element to it. I felt immediately that this was not just going to be a museum piece, but it was going to get into very, very human details of essentially these two peopleGraham and Ben Bradlee," said Hanks.

"He had a love for the woman, because he had this great empathy for what she had been through. He had great respect for the class that she demonstrated through her entire life. But he also had a very strict determination of what a newspaper's job was. Ben knew the role of the Fourth Estate in society," he added.

"So, all that stuff put together, I thought, was a pretty prescient story. It had an awful lot of parallels to 2017."
For the DMK, which lost three majors elections since 2011 on account of the corruption tag, the 2G verdict is a huge shot in the arm.

The political impact of the verdict of a CBI special court in Delhi in the 2G Spectrum Scam is a huge shot in the arm of the DMK, which has been out of power in Tamil Nadu since 2011 and was reduced to zero seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014. The political implication of the judgement was apparent immediately after the orders were passed by special judge O.P. Saini. The DMK cadres were seen celebrating outside the court premises in Delhi and at the party headquarters in Chennai. DMKs working president M.K. Stalin was seen distributing sweets to the cadres and his party seniors at the party office in Chennai.

With the court acquitting all 28 accused in the case including former telecom minister and DMKs organising secretary A. Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, Stalin described the 2G verdict as "historic." Recalling that the case was filed in 2009, he said it was a "planned (attempt) to insult and finish off a party in political history (of the country). It is a matter of joy that all of them have been acquitted," he said.

Coming out of the court premises, a beaming Kanimozhi thanked everyone who stood by her. We will take this to the people of our state, she said. In a detailed statement issued after the 2G verdict was pronounced, Kanimozhi said, I have always believed that I would see light at the end of the tunnel. I have been waiting these last six years for this. The last six years have been harrowing to say the least. To be falsely accused in a case for a notional loss of Rs. 176,000 crore to appease the opposition that was stalling Parliament, is atrocious.

For the DMK, which carried the burden of being '2G scam tainted' since 2009 and which it could not get rid off till now, the court order would help clear the taint.

The DMK lost in 2011 and had to bow to the Congress for ensuring an alliance by shedding 63 out of 234 seats. The DMK-Congress relationship then soured, but the two parties came together in 2016. In fact, the DMK was routed in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu as the 2G scam and the Rs.176,000 crore corruption allegation was a tool for the opposition.

And given the state of political flux in Tamil Nadu, the DMK can go to the people as a 'clean' party and say its hands are not tainted like the AIADMK, as former chief minister Jayalalithaas close aide Sasikala has been convicted in the DA case.

The DMK is certain to have a nose ahead in the electoral battle for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The DMK, which has already been opposing the ruling AIADMK for corruption, will now have a free hand to go hammer and tongs against the Edappadi K. Palanisamy government in Tamil Nadu and look for a big victory in any snap election if the ruling AIADMK collapses because of its inner bickering.

But as of now, the DMK, though maintaining a friendly relationship with the BJP, will go with the Congress. And Stalin, by all means, will ensure that the Congress comes in line with the DMK. The Congress cannot drive any more hard bargains like in 2011.

And within the DMK too, the equations in the party and the family are likely to change. Stalin, who is now the working president and who leads the party, might soon accommodate his sister Kanimozhi.

Sources say Kanimozhi will now get a prominent role in the party. On the other hand, Stalin will try and establish him as the strongman not just within the party and the family but also as a strongman of the regional parties in the South.

After the victory, the biggest task on hand for the DMK is to rebuild Tamil Nadu, which had been demolished to the ground by years of misrule by the AIADMK, says DMK MLA T.R.B. Rajaa.

Apparently, the judgement has given an opportunity for Stalin to prove his leadership mettle and take the party forward after his father M. Karunanidhi.
After leading the party from the front to put up a tough fight in the recently concluded Gujarat assembly elections, Congress president Rahul Gandhi will visit the state on December 23.

According to party's official communication, Gandhi will meet leaders from various regions of the state and later the party workers at the Gujarat University Convention Hall in Ahmedabad.

He would begin the meet with leaders from north Gujarat, followed by leaders from central Gujarat and south Gujarat. Lastly, he would meet party workers before leaving for New Delhi in the evening.

Gandhi is expected to get feedback of the election campaign and the results from the leaders and cadres.

In the 182-member assembly, the Congress won 77 seats, the party's highest since 1985 when it bagged 149 seats under Madhavsinh Solanki.

The BJP had set a target of 150+ seats but thanks to the rejuvenated Congress, rise of three young leadersHardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakore, problems in implementation of GST and demonetisation, the BJP's tally could not cross two digits and stood at 99 seats, 16 less than 2012 number.

A senior party leader said that Gandhi is expected to also speak on the Congress' role as strong opposition, especially keeping in mind 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

On Wednesday, a three-day meeting of the Congress began in Mehsana, North Gujarat, to assess the assembly results. Gujarat in-charge of the party Ashok Ghelot, state party president Bharatsinh Solanki and other leaders are meeting party leaders and workers to get a detailed feedback.

Party workers are also giving feedback about the Congress' alliances in the poll and how it benefitted or damaged the party. There are at least 16 seats on which the Congress has lost by a margin of less than 3,000 votes.

Given the performance of the Congress, they will also be asked to start preparing for Lok Sabha elections.

However, the next major thing coming up are the Rajya Sabha elections. Term of four BJP leadersFinance Minister Arun Jaitley, Union minister of state for agriculture Parshottam Rupala, Union minister of state for roads and highways and chemicals and fertilisers Mansukh Mandaviya and Shankar Vegadends in March 2018.

Now with the BJP's tally down to 99, the saffron party has strength for only two members in the Upper House. This would mean that the Congress can field two candidates.

Sources said that in all likelyhood, the party may reward Solanki and AICC spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil. Gohil, who lost the election by over 9,000 votes had changed his constituency from Abdasa to Mandvi. He had played an important role during Rajya Sabha election earlier this year and was instrumental in raising in technical point based on which the Election Commission had rejected two votes, paving the way for Ahmed Patel's victory.
The acquittal of all accused in the 2G Spectrum Scam case on Thursday has left the then CBI director A.P. Singh 'shocked and disappointed'.

Speaking to THE WEEK, he said that the court verdict disappoints him as the agency painstakingly gathered evidence and expressed shock that all accused have been acquitted. The CBI is now planning to appeal in the High Court.

The judgement relating to 2G Scam case today (Thursday) has been prima facie examined and it appears that the evidence adduced to substantiate the charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the court. CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter. In due course, CBI will be filing an appeal, said the CBI.

Reacting to the verdict, Vijay Agarwal, lawyer of Swan Telecom's promoters Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and others, said that it is a victory of truth and justice has been served by the court.

The CBI case was a mountain made out of a molehill and ended up like Bofors, he said.

The judgement by the special CBI judge O.P. Saini in the Patiala House court runs into 1,552 pages where it has come down heavily on the investigating agenciesboth the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate. The court has been hearing three casestwo filed by the CBI and one by the Enforcement Directorate.

In its verdict, the CBI court said that the charge-sheet filed by the agency is based on misreading, selective reading, non-reading and out-of-context reading of the official record.

Judge Saini said that there is no material on record to show that the then telecom minister A. Raja was mother lode of conspiracy in the case. There is also no evidence of his no-holds-barred immersion in any wrongdoing, conspiracy or corruption.

Coming down heavily on the CBI, the judge said that the charge-sheet of the case is based mainly on misreading, selective reading, non-reading and out-of-context reading of the official record. Further, it is based on some oral statements made by the witnesses during investigation, which the witnesses have not owned up in the witness box. Lastly, if statements were made orally by the witnesses, the same were contrary to the official record and thus, not acceptable in law.

It was also embarrassing for the CBI when the judge said that many facts recorded in the charge-sheet are factually incorrect, like the finance secretary strongly recommending revision of entry fee, deletion of a clause of draft by Raja, and recommendations of the TRAI for revision of entry fee.

I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any charge against any of the accused, made in its well-choreographed charge-sheet, Saini said in his judgement.

The court also observed that there was unwarranted delay in the examination of important witnesses coupled with the type of hype around the case indicates that the witnesses may be under pressure or were even coerced to toe the prosecution line.

It said that even the witnesses who were expected to be in the know of everything that had happened in this case, were recorded at a very late stage and with a rapid pace. No plausible explanation has been given for the delay except citing the high-profile nature of the case. This puts a cloud on the fairness of the investigation.

The court also criticised the probe of the ED, saying that the ED case is completely hinging on the CBI investigation. Since the CBI probe has been rejected by the court, it not only threw out the ED case but also ordered release of the attached properties.

Meanwhile, Agarwal said that the CBI in this case had filed around 4 lakh documents,thinking that the truth will get concealed in between so many documents. But the judge has very beautifully observed in the order that the charge-sheet in the instant case is based mainly on misreading, selective reading and non-reading and out-of-context reading of official record.

The judge has also said that for about the last seven years, he sat on all working days, summer vacations included, from 10 in the morning to 5 in the evening, waiting for some legally admissible evidence to come up but not even a single soul turned up, Agarwal said. This indicates that everybody was going by public perception created by rumours, gossip and speculations, he added.

Case background

The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate worked in tandem to investigate what the BJP, then in opposition, called the biggest scam during the UPA's tenure.

The whos who of the country were called for interrogation. Finally, Raja was arrested on February 2 2011. It has been almost 7 years since the 2G scam hit the then-ruling UPA government.

The case acted as a catalyst for the BJP, which challenged every action of the ruling Congress by linking corruption to every decision taken by the government and forcing adjournments of the Parliament.

The first charge-sheet was filed on 02.04.2011 by the CBI against A. Raja, Sidharath Behura, R. K. Chandolia, Shahid Balwa, Vinod Goenka, Sanjay Chandra, Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara, Hari Nair, M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. (now M/s Etisalat DB Pvt. Ltd.) among others; and thereafter, a supplementary charge-sheet was filed on 25.04.2011, arraigning in additional Accused Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Agarwal, Karim Morani and Sharad Kumar.

The volume of the documents ran into few hundred thousand pages, which took an entire room to store, said an official.

Allegations levelled

(a) A. Raja, along with Sidharath Behura and R. K. Chandolia, conspired to give benefits to private accused persons, that is, M/s Swan Telecom (P) Limited (company of Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka) and to Sanjay Chandras companies, in the issuance of LOIs, UAS licences and spectrum by DoT.

(b) The charge-sheet alleged that A. Raja ensured that there be a cut-off date on the receipt and processing of the UASL applications, so that the system can be manipulated to benefit its favoured few.

(c) It was further alleged that the first come, first serve policy was changed to first compliance, first serve, which was not disclosed to the public but was informed only to favoured few, who had kept everything ready, and, thus, were in a position to take advantage of the manipulation, thereby getting LOIs, UASL and spectrum, though they were not eligible for the same.

(d) It was also alleged that M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. was the front company of M/s Reliance Communications Limited, which already had UASL, but to manipulate things and to conceal the violation of clause 8 of the UASL Guidelines, a mechanism was devised, thereby concealing the true ownership of the former company.

(e) It was further alleged that the Dual Technology Policy was also manipulated, thereby defeating the right of M/s TTSL / M/s TTML.

(f) It was further alleged that the Government of India was cheated by non-revision of entry fee.

(g) Lastly, it was alleged that in furtherance of the said conspiracy, M/s Dynamix Realty, a partnership firm of M/s DB Realty Ltd. and other DB Group companies, paid Rs 200 crore to M/s Kalaignar TV Pvt. Ltd. during December 2008 to August 2009, following a circuitous route through M/s Kusegaon Fruits & Vegetables Pvt. Ltd. (a DB Group company) and M/s Cineyug Films Pvt. Ltd.

These two charge-sheets were tried together in a single trial. Arguments on charges were heard by the special judge and charges were framed in the matter on 22.10.2011.
To rejoice or not to rejoice, is the question before the hundreds of farmers in rebellion in the north Karnataka districts, who had gathered at Hubli's Nehru Maidan to hear the good news promised by the BJP.

The farmers have been on an agitation for the last two years, demanding implementation of Kalasa-Banduri project that can quench the thirst of at least three districts  Gadag, Belagavi and Dharwad. But the project is stuck due to the 30-year-old inter-state water dispute over sharing of Mahadayi river water among the three riparian states of Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The Mahadayi agitation is sure giving jitters to both the parties in an election year, as farmers allege that both are indulging in political rhetoric and blamegame. The region with its 50 crucial seats spread across six districts has been a deciding factor in swinging the elections.

On Thursday, BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa read out a letter from Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar, where he had assured that the Goa government would not oppose the reasonable and justified quantum of water meant for drinking needs of the people of north Karnataka. He had also reiterated that a bilateral discussion, as suggested by the Tribunal, was needed. And that Goa understands that access to drinking water is a basic human need, and on humanitarian ground, his government was willing to consider the request to work out an amicable settlement strictly restricted to drinking water in the drought prone areas.

Ironically, the latest assurance by Goa is nothing significant as the earlier negotiations have failed as Goa is hopeful of getting a favourable verdict before August 2018, when the extended term of the Tribunal ends. The Karnataka farmers have been demanding out-of-court resolution of the Mahadayi dispute, alleging the proceedings of the Tribunal (constituted in 2010) are painfully slow.

The Congress government in Karnataka has been shying away from negotiations as the party has been backing Goa since May 2007, when Congress president Sonia Gandhi, while addressing an election rally at Margao, assured Goans that her party would not allow diversion of the Mahadayi waters. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who led an all-party delegation in 2015, has been insisting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to end the deadlock.

On the other hand, the BJP, which has been rattled by the Lingayat movement that threatens to divide their traditional votebank in the region, is now facing the heat for neglecting the Mahadayi issue. That explains why BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa, who is leading the 75-day 'Parivartana Yatre' (rally for transformation), which was passing through the epicentre of the Mahadayi agitation, took an usual break on December 20. Yeddyurappa flew to Delhi for an emergency meeting with Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar, which was mediated by BJP national president Amit Shah.

Soon after Yeddyurappa petitioned Parikkar, Vinod Palyekar, Goa water resources minister and MLA from Goa Forward Party, an ally of the BJP-led coalition government, tweeted saying his party and the water resource department remained unchanged on Mhadei (Mahadayi).

Our @Goaforwardparty & my WRD depts stand remains unchanged on #Mhadei. We are committed to protect our mother #Mhadei & protect each drop of water . We are committed to protect Goem Goem Goemkarponn to take #GoaForward.  Vinod Palyekar (@vinod_palyekar) December 21, 2017

Parikkar too clarified that Karnataka BJP leaders had submitted a petition seeking release of Mahadayi for drinking water purpose. I listened to them and told them that our response will be sent in writing. No formula discussed or given, Parrikar said.

It will be a tough call for the Goa chief minister to yield to the demands of his party MPs from Karnataka, as the BJP in Goa, which bagged only 13 seats in last Assembly polls in March, is leading a coalition government. The BJP will have to convince its alliesGoa Forward Party (GFP), Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and two Independents, which seems most unlikely. The real question before the two states is whether Goa can afford to let diversion of 7.56 tmc of water to quench the thirst of the people of north Karnataka, through negotiations or by Tribunal order considering that the lower riparian state is opposed to diversion citing ecological problems.

Irked by Yeddyurappa's initiative, Sidadramaiah has dubbed it as an election gimmick and also hit back at Parikkar for writing to Yeddyurapa. As the Goa chief minister, Parikkar should have written to the Karnataka chief minister. This is only an election gimmick. Why did the BJP wake up only now, just before the elections?, he asked.

JD(S) state president H.D. Kumaraswamy warned the BJP against misleading the people stating the letter conveyed nothing new.

The dispute over sharing of the water of the Mahadayi river between the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa started way back in 1980s, when Malaprabha dam failed to yield enough water to irrigate the fields in its command area. Aaccording to a report by the Water Resources Development Organisation (WRDO), there was a deficit of 17 tmc (against an estimated maximum yield of 45 tmc) in the dam and the drought-prone regions (tail-end villages in the Malaprabha basin) could benefit by diverting water from Mahadayi river.

Mandovi Bridge view from Ribandar | via Commons

The issue reached a flashpoint in 2002, when the Karnataka government during S.M. Krishna's tenure as chief minister, decided to implement drinking water project by building a canal across two tributaries of the MahadayiKalasa and Banduri, that aimed at diverting 7.56 TMC of water from Mahadayi to Malaprabha river to cater to the drinking water needs of three parched districts of Belagavi, Dharwad and Gadag. In April 2002, the NDA government gave approval in principle but stayed the project in September after Goa, the lower riparian state and green brigade opposed the project citing ecological hazard. The Parrikar government argued that the Kalasa Banduri project would cause immense ecological damage in Goa since the river supports the fragile eco system in parts of the Western Ghats located in the territory of Goa.

While, some experts believe change in cropping pattern in the water-scarce Malaprabha basin could help, Goa seeks to know why Karnataka cannot harness the Krishna waters for drinking water instead of tapping Mahadayi. Goa approached the Centre the same year with a request to set up Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal, to assess the available utilisable water resources in the basin at various points and allocation of this water to the three basin states keeping in view priority of the use of water. Goa then approached the Supreme Court, too, seeking a tribunal.

In 2006, the then JDS-BJP coalition government in Karnataka brought the dispute to the fore once again with Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy deciding to revive building two canals (at a cost of Rs 400 crore) connecting the Kalasa and Banduri tributaries of Mahadayi to Malaprabha basin to supply drinking water to twin cities.

With no prospects of a negotiated agreement in sight between the three states, the UPA government eventually set up the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal on November 16, 2010. The canal work along Kalasa- Banduri (in non forest areas pending clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests) was stalled and the government was forced to give an undertaking which barred automatic flow of water into the canals till the Tribunal gave its decree.

The Mahadayi agitation threatens to upset the electoral prospects of both the national parties, as the consecutive drought years, and the lack of political will of subsequent government has angered the people of north Karnataka.
By afternoon on Thursday, nearly 42 per cent votes were polled in the bypoll for R.K. Nagar Assembly constituency in Chennai. However, media attention to the election was diverted by the news that a CBI court had acquitted all the accused, including senior DMK leaders M. Kanimozhi and A. Raja, in the 2G Spectrum Scam case.

DMK candidate Maruthu Ganesh declared that truth always triumphs has been proved, when referring to the verdict. He claimed that voters were angry with the AIADMK government. Other senior DMK leaders said the 2G verdict would have a bearing on the R.K. Nagar elections but AIADMK leaders played down the development.

Ganesh, a former journalist and practising lawyer, is contesting against the AIADMK's E. Madhusudhanan, a long-time MGR loyalist, and T.T.V. Dhinakaran, relative of J. Jayalalithaa's aide Sasikala Natarajan. Dhinakaran was expelled from the AIADMK earlier this year.

During polling on Thursday, Dhinakaran denied allegations by the BJP that he was bribing voters and declared that the voters trusted him.

Counting of votes in the bypoll will be held on December 24.
Over 200 tanks with 40,000 troops from the Strike Corps of the Indian Army are flexing their muscles a few kilometers from the Pakistan border in the deserts of the Rajasthan. The aim of the massive drill is to evaluate the capability to strike deep into enemy territory, according to Army.

Calling it a significant show of strength, formations of the Souther Command are carrying out drills called Hamesh Vijayee (always victorious) from December 16 to 22 December. And for the first time, Bhopal based Strike Corps 21 is participating the military exercise.

Military establishment believes that neighbouring Pakistan is closely monitoring the movement of the Indian troops, especially a day after Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa came out with a statement saying that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks. Bajwa's statement came as a surprise to the Indian military establishment because Pakistan army has violated ceasefire along the International Border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir more than 720 times this year, the highest in past seven years.

The ongoing military war game by the Indian Army, right on the border, is seen as a strong message to the Pakistan.

According to Indian Army sources, on Thursday, para-battalions were landed at the ground, similar to September 29 Surgical Strike.

After extensive training of two months to hone their skills and tactics, a large number of troops along with tanks and other armoured vehicles duly supported by overwhelming land and air based firepower has commenced conducting fully integrated operational manoeuvres to validate their operational plans.

Army claims that the exercise, being conducted in battle like conditions, aims at fine tuning surveillance and destruction mechanisms to support precision strikes and manoeuvres by network enabled forces.

With emphasis on joint operations, the exercise would test robust sensor to shooter grids by employing a vast array of surveillance and air assets networked with land based strategic and tactical vectors," Army said, while adding that besides conventional warfare, troops will also be rehearsed to operate in the back drop of chemical and nuclear contingencies.

The exercise showcasing a high degree of synergy between the Army and Air Force along with new generation aviation assets of the Army will be reviewed by a large number of senior officers of both the Services to obtain inputs for further refinement of operational procedures, according to Army officials.

Army maintained that it undertakes such exercises at regular intervals to ensure a high degree of battle readiness as well as validation of operational plans using modern weapons and equipment.
A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea on December 21, crossing on the western side of the border, without any exchange of fire between troops from both sides, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.



The low-ranking North Korean soldier appeared in front of a South Korean border guard post around 8.04 a.m., a Defence Ministry spokesman told the media.



The soldier crossed to the South at a point of the "western slope" of the DMZ, the militarised border that divides the two countries.



This is the fourth North Korean soldier to defect to the South this year and the first one following the dramatic desertion of a soldier who was shot five times by the North Korean Army last month during his flight through the Joint Security Area (JSA), the only border area where soldiers of the two Koreas are stationed face to face.



However, in this case the South Korean troops have detected "no unusual movements" of the North Korean Army, according to the spokesman.



In a separate development, the Unification Ministry on Thursday announced that two other North Korean civilians defected to the South on December 20 by boat.



After the vessel was detected by a Navy patrol in the Sea of Japan, its two crew members expressed their desire to defect.
Saudi Arabia aims to start talks with Washington within weeks on an agreement to allow US firms to participate in its nascent civilian nuclear energy programme, with the first tender expected in 2018, the kingdoms energy minister said on December 20.

Saudi Arabia is interested in reaching a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Washington, and Riyadh has invited US firms to take part in developing the kingdoms first atomic energy programme.

The worlds top oil exporter wants nuclear power to diversify its energy supply mix, enabling it to export more crude rather than burning it to generate electricity.

Weve indicated with our American partners that we intend to localise the entire value chain with nuclear energy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said

We hope that through the negotiations that will be taking place over the next few weeks with our American partners that we will find common ground that will allow the American government to meet the intent of American law.

Washington usually requires a country to sign a peaceful nuclear cooperation pact - known as a 123 agreement - that blocks steps in fuel production with potential bomb-making applications before US technology can be used.

Riyadh has said it wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel and it was not interested in diverting nuclear technology to military use.

In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement that would deprive it of the possibility of one day enriching uranium.

Riyadh sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October in a first step towards opening a multi-billion-dollar tender competition for two nuclear power plants.

It plans to build 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity by 2032, the equivalent of around 16 reactors, making it one of the biggest prospects for an industry struggling after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan.

Contracts

Falih said earlier on December 20 that he expected to sign contracts to build two nuclear reactors by the end of 2018.

Falih said he hoped that American companies will participate in front-end engineering studies, which will start in the next few weeks, and ultimately compete for the contracts.

He said Saudi Arabia was committed to using the programme for peaceful purposes, but was also committed to extracting uranium domestically and developing the nuclear energy sector as an industry.

We have large resources of uranium that we are exploring and we are extremely encouraged, he said.

Whatever we do is going to be under strict compliance with international agreements, said Falih. But we will not deprive ourselves of accessing our natural resources and localising an industry that we intend to be with us for the long term.

Were going to harvest our resources, were going to localise and were going to develop the technology just as weve done with oil and gas.

Toshiba-owned Westinghouse and two other US-based companies are in talks to form a consortium to bid on the project and are pushing Washington to restart talks with Riyadh on a civil nuclear cooperation pact.

The Trump administration briefed congressional staff last week on how the White House was considering non-proliferation standards in a potential pact to sell nuclear reactor technology to Saudi Arabia, but did not indicate whether allowing uranium enrichment would be part of any deal, congressional aides said.

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Saudi Arabia earlier this month, telling Reuters that new talks between the two allies on a 123 agreement would start soon.

Uranium fuel for reactors is enriched to only about 5 percent, lower than the 90 percent level for fissile material in nuclear bombs.

 Reuters
The Armenian government today decided to grant yet another tax break to Multi Solar LLC, a company owned by MP and business tycoon Gagik Tsarukyan.

Proposed by Minister of Economic Development and Investments Souren Karayan, the tax break allows the company to import technological equipment and their components without paying import customs tax.

This is the second tax break the government has granted the company. On November 23, the government decided postponing VAT payment for goods imported from December 1, 2017 to December 31, 2018, for three years.

Based on the documents retrieved from the Armenian State Register of Legal Entities, Multi Solar is a newly established company. It was founded on 13 September this year. Gagik Tsarukyan and Zareh Balasanyan are 50% stake owners. The same source says Balasanyan is a U.S. citizen, and this is Balasanyan's first company in Armenia.

According to the documents submitted to the government, the company will import 23 equipment items from China, worth 74 million drams, to be used to manufacture solar panels and install solar systems.

The company plans to invest some 967 million drams and create 49 new jobs, gradually increasing the number to 97 in a year.

The planned volume of production is worth 2.4 billion drams. 242.5 million worth is planned to be sold in Armenia, 727.5 million drams - in the EAEU member countries and the rest - in the U.S.

Granting tax breaks to officials and their children's companies seems to have become routine for the Armenian government.
US President Donald Trump on December 20 threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care, Trump told reporters at the White House.

The 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday - at the request of Arab and Muslim countries  to vote on a draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of UN states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that Trump had asked her to report back on those countries who voted against us.

She bluntly echoed that call in a Twitter post: The US will be taking names.

Several senior diplomats said Haleys warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing US voters.

According to figures from the US governments aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania.

It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID.

Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trumps remarks, but added: Its the right and responsibility of member states to express their views.

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment on Trumps remarks on Wednesday.

I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations, for all those nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council, or they vote against us potentially at the assembly, Trump said.

Bullying

Trump abruptly reversed decades of US policy this month when he recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washingtons Western allies.

He also plans to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft UN resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

A senior diplomat from a Muslim country, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Haleys letter: States resort to such blatant bullying only when they know they do not have a moral or legal argument to convince others.

Responding directly to that comment on Twitter, Haley said: Actually it is when a country is tired of being taken for granted.

A senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Haleys letter as poor tactics at the United Nations but pretty good for Haley 2020 or Haley 2024, referring to speculation that Haley might run for higher office.

Shes not going to win any votes in the General Assembly or the Security Council, but she is going to win some votes in the US population, the Western diplomat said.

A senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed Haley was unlikely to sway many UN states.

We are missing some leadership here from the US and this type of letter is definitely not helping to establish US leadership in the Middle East peace process, the diplomat said.

Israel considers Jerusalem 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 recognised internationally.

The first name that she should write down is Bolivia, Bolivias UN Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz said of Haleys message. We regret the arrogance and disrespect to the sovereign decision of member states and to multilateralism.



 Reuters
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is mans injustice to woman.

Mahatma Gandhi

Documenting reality through visuals is my profession. The combination of journalism and visual arts, which I studied as a student of fine arts, helped me add my own language to photojournalism.

Most of the time, I do challenging assignments with ease. But my latest project was not an easy one. With the increasing instances of attacks against women, I decided to do a visual feature to highlight one of the critical issues of our times. Taking pictures of victims, however, would only present them as survival stories. If you want images to talk, they should capture the brutality of the crime itself. So far, we have seen only blurry images, often from CCTV footages, of some of these crimes. Often, stories feel distant and read like fiction. So, it was my intention to capture live images of attacks against women.

Yet, even as days passed, I did not witness any such incident, although crimes against women have been occurring with alarming regularity. It was then I decided to do an artistic interpretation of the issue, instead of a routine photo feature. These pictures are the result of an art project involving volunteers and not purely a journalistic body of work.

Initially I discussed the idea with a few of my female friends, about how image making is a very important part of such campaigns in the new world. What kind of images can capture the attention of the general public and authorities even at a glance? They had no idea. I then sought the help of my painter friends and we came up with the idea of recreating common scenarios where women have been assaulted or been vulnerable to danger. My female friends showed no interest in the project. They were kind of scared. I then realised that it is traumatic even to imagine a mock attack.

I met hundreds of women of all ages and tried convincing them into participating in the mock assault. We informed the volunteers about the mock attacks months in advance and then subjected them to a few seconds of surprise attacks by their friends or acquaintances, who would be wearing masks. Within a few seconds, the masks would come off and the victims would be reminded about the project. As photographer, I would remain hidden, capturing the response of the victims and also the onlookers.

To my surprise, only five people finally came forward and they all were college students in their 20s. The rest backed off, some of them after assuring participation. In most of the cases, the victims received no help and were vulnerable to harm. None of them screamed, except one. Some of them tried to run away to safety. I asked one of the girls why she did not even scream. I was so panicked and blanked out that I forgot to scream, said Pavitra, a BCom student. All I could do was to try to hit back. Two of the girls were brave enough to fight back. I saw two onlookers who did not even bother to ask what was going on.

While preparing to capture one of the premeditated attacks, I started pondering over a dilemma that photojournalists often face. If it was happening for real, how should I react as a photographer? Should I continue taking pictures like a true professional and report the reality or should I stop taking pictures and help the victim? I would have definitely tried to rescue the victim. After all, the principal aim behind taking pictures is the betterment of society. In such a situation, my primary duty is towards the victim and I am not missing anything by not taking photographs. The thought justified this project, which is just like a novel, drama or a movie, depicting imaginative scenarios to provoke certain thoughts or create an impact.

I am sure the images from this project will disturb viewers. As more and more women speak up boldly against sexual harassment through campaigns like #MeToo and #womenspreading, THE WEEK is proud to be associated with a project to spread awareness about this heinous crime.
But the tribe has a long way to go
Five lawyers in one of the Sasna Dzrer trial underway in Yerevan staged a symbolic ten-minute strike today court to protest a bill the parliament passed yesterday allowing attorneys charged with improper conduct to be fined 100,000 drams instead of the current policy of reprimanding them.

The lawyers who declared the strike before the start of the session were Tigran Hayrapetyan, Nina Karapetyan, Moushegh Shoushanyan, Ara Gharagyozyan and Arayik Papikyan.

Gharagyozyan called on lawyers to take to the streets to voice their opposition to the new law, and claimed that opposition legislators were ready to join them.

Once the lawyers got back to work, the judge asked the defendants if they felt guilty for seizing a Yerevan police station in July 2016.

Defendant Armen Lambaryan said he and the others did what they did because they believed constitutional order in Armenia had been violated.

We had the consent of 85% of the people, and we had the right to revolt. Our actions were legal. The court has no power to accuse us, Lambaryan said.

Attorney Papikyan declared that his clients, Armen Lambaryan and Ashot Petrosyan, were being persecuted for political reasons, and not for the charge of participating in a revolt.
NEWS SWITCH Social media network Facebook is to scrap a feature on its website that flags some news articles as disputed.

It was put in place to tackle fake news but said it would now instead show related articles to provide more context to stories.

Facebook has also struck a deal with Universal Music Group, which represents stars such as Taylor Swift and Jay-Z, to let users listen to and share its music.

GOLD RUSH AIM-listed gold producer Hummingbird has poured first gold at its Yanfolila Mine in Mali. The mine is set to produce around 130,000 ounces of gold in its first year.

AIRCRAFT SWOOP Turkish low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines has firmed up a deal for 24 A321neo aircraft from Airbus. It has now ordered 100 of the A320 family.

FASHION LAUNCH Fashion firm Prada has launched a new e-commerce platform in China to boost online sales.

The platform is linked to social networks and payment services WeChat and Alipay.

RIVAL BOUGHT Smoke detector maker Halma is buying Italian rival Argus Security and its UK distributor Sterling Safety Systems, in a 21million deal.

COPPER INVESTMENT Kazakhstan-focused miner Kaz Minerals is spending 900million to double processing capacity at its Aktogay copper mine.

INVESTIGATOR OFF A top official has quit the City watchdog for a US law firm. Jamie Symington, director of investigations at the Financial Conduct Authority, will work in the London office of lawyer Brown Rudnick as a partner.

TAXI TREASURE A Chinese rival to taxi app Uber has won 3billion of funding to fuel global expansion. Didi Chuxing received the cash from Japanese tech giant Softbank.

LISTING PLAN Luxury fashion house Valentino is said to be looking at listing 25 per cent of its business on the Milan stock market late next year.

WOODFORD PROFIT Star fund manager Neil Woodfords firm turned a 22.9million profit in the six months to March, despite a tough year on the markets.

Woodford Investment Management has more than 15billion under management, and increased its staff from 30 to 39 during the period.




Hetq is pleased to report that our recent Help Tlik School drive has been a huge success.

We have written about the Yezidi-populated village of Tlik, a stones throw from Armenias border with Turkey, on several occasions.

Our December 23, 2016 article entitled Yezidi Village School: Coal Stoves are Relics of a More Prosperous Past, described the horrendous conditions that the schools 23 students and teachers must put up with.

The school lacked new books, maps, and other learning materials.

We decided to organize a campaign to help and called on our readers to bring what they could to Hetqs Yerevan office. From November 29 to December 20, people brought in books, maps and a globe. IT specialists donated two computers. (The school only had one old one.) The Yerevan State Universitys Faculty of Journalism donated atlases.

School principal Vahagn Martoyan and Hetq will join forces to transform the supply room into a cozy reading nook.

Readers are still contacting us, ready to donate computers and other school supplies to Tlik. We appreciate this much needed support, especially during the holiday season.

The school principal, teachers and pupils, now preparing for the New Years play, thank all those who have so generously contributed to the Help Tlik School drive.

Photos: Hakob Poghosyan
MBABANE  The Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority will pay nearly E650 000 for evaluation of King Mswati III International Airport.



A Swazi company, Christian Amoako & Co Pty Ltd, has already undergone evaluation and stands to be granted the tender for the evaluation.



In tender results published by the Swaziland Public Procurement Regulatory Agency (SPPRA), it has been disclosed that the exact amount of money that Christian Amoako & Co Pty Ltd stands to cash in for the project is E643 800.75.



The company outsmarted six other companies that had tendered for evaluation of the countrys international airport. The company reportedly scored 90.8 per cent upon evaluation. It was closely followed by Mabuza Masina Property Consultants, who scored 74.3 per cent upon evaluation.



Two other companies that were also vying for the same tender were disqualified, while another two were rejected for being below the benchmark.

The tender results were issued in accordance with the Swaziland Public Procurement Act of 2011. A contract award decision has been reached by the approvals authority. (However), the contract award decision does not constitute a contract, reads the evaluation results in part.



All interested companies were further allowed a period of 10 days to make any submissions of any application for review from the first date of publication of the tender award notice.



The notice was first issued on December 19, 2017.










MBABANE  Once bitten twice shy. Well, Mdabula is not in any way following suit of this old saying.



The well-known socialite, Mbekezeli Mdabula Zulu is trying hard to clear his name to local music lovers.

After a failed show hosted by Zulu through his company, Umdabula Music in December 31, 2016, he is keen to redeem himself. Zulu will be hosting a show themed Redemption Tour on Christmas Day. The show is expected to take place at the Old Trade Fair in Manzini.



The line-up includes well-known South African spinners DJ Tira, Merlon, Bongz, DJ Chynaman and trending afro soul artists Sjava. Also added on the line-up are local DJs including DJ Master P, DJ Njebza, DJ Lolo, DJ Deepmotion, DKJ Crooks, lomasoul, Illa Pen Boy and Mr Music.

The show has been trending on social media and sparked a lot of debate on its authenticity, especially after the failed 2016 Mdabula Crossover show. Speaking on the concerns raised, Swaziland Arts and Culture CEO Stanley Dlamini said he was well aware of the show. He said they had met with Zulu and urged him to first pay the service providers he had left hanging in 2016.



He has since deposited a sum of E50 000 which SNCAC will distribute accordingly to all the concerned service providers. The E50 000 was a sum agreed on after negotiations with Zulu and the service providers in 2016, said Dlamini.
MBABANE  When you desperately want something, you do everything in your power to get it.



For Swazi students who want South Africa study permits, they have been forced to brave the past cold and rainy days and spend nights sleeping on the floor at the New Mall.



This has been the situation since last week as the students sought to get services from the South African High Commission offices.

The need to spend the night on the malls floor has been caused by the fact that the office not only closes at 10am but there had been more frustration following that it services around 50 students per day.



Those who are not part of the first 50 are turned back and told to return the following day.

In order to be part of the 50 the next day, the students, some of whom are accompanied by their parents, bring their blankets and sleep on the floor at the New mall entrance.



They arrive from as early as around lunchtime to camp for the following day.

Some days have seen the queue becoming longer starting from the main entrance past Fuji Film up to the left corner of the Old Mutual Offices.



The desperate students cannot seek refuge inside the high commission offices situated upstairs as they are not allowed to camp there.

More frustration has been caused by the fact that some of the students have found themselves having to spend the night sleeping on the floor more than once after they were ordered to fetch missing documents.



When a student fails to provide all the required supporting documents, they are told to go back and fetch them.

However, when they return, they do not get the privilege of bypassing the queue, instead they have to start afresh and be the last in line.

I was here on Tuesday but was turned back as I was not carrying a medical report.




MBABANE  The cardinal rule is that marriage is a sanctified office to be fiercely guarded by those occupying it.



However, it was a different case when a Swaziland-based woman, whose husband, *Brian, resided in Pine Town, Durban in the Republic of South Africa, allowed a maid to spy on her husband. Due to the information the maid relayed to *Lihle about goings-on in her husbands residence concerning visits by another woman, Lihle was angered by what the house keeper told her.



Part of the information that the maid told Lihle, who was employed by Mananga Sugar Packers, was that there was her husbands former girlfriend in the house and she had a baby who did not look like him.

Lihles children also visited their father in Durban and they informed their mother on their return that there were baby toys in one of the bedrooms.



The children said their father told them that the toys belonged to a certain lady who rented the room.

Lihle decided to call the maid to enquire if the woman was the one who was present in the house when her husband denied her access to the house earlier on, and she confirmed.



She submitted that Brians alleged desertion and denying her access to their Durban house cumulatively resulted in their marriage irretrievably breaking down.



According to Lihle, the maid had previously informed her that her mother-in-law and Brians former lover once visited her husband together and they stayed in the house for about a week. Lihle accused her husband of deserting her and instituted court proceedings seeking restoration of conjugal rights, failing which a final decree of divorce be issued.



She also wanted the court to grant her custody of their two children and payment of their maintenance by her husband. She further prayed for an order for the distribution of the matrimonial assets as per the ante-nuptial contract and costs of suit.
Lets suppose the British achieve victory in Buenos Aires during their invasions. Or that, instead of being involved in the Peninsular War, the British army ready to a new invasion finally did its way south. Lets remind how the invasion planned for 1808 and 1809 considered attracting local population, fueling growing division between peninsulares and colonials in Spanish America.



Imagine that, a temperate territory with almost no native population in the Southern Cone.
WASHINGTON - President Trump basked in the glow of GOP-lawmaker warmth after approval of the Republican tax bill, with House Speaker Paul Ryan commending him for exquisite presidential leadership and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah calling him "one heck of a leader."

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer answered back for Democrats on Capitol Hill.

For last three months, the Republicans have buried their heads in their tax bill, zealously slashing taxes for those who need it the least while leaving critical middle-class programs behind," Schumer said Thursday. "Thats been the story of this year.

With the legislative season just about over for 2017, both parties are doing their best to seize the high ground and control the thumbs-up or thumbs-down narrative for the year.

For Republicans, approval of the tax bill with its slashing of the corporate rate and reduction of the top personal rate is the marquee event. It takes the sting out of defeat on Obamacare repeal and replace - although Trump claimed victory for that too by saying the tax bills ending of the Obamacare mandate accomplished the goal.

Republicans also point to confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as well as 12 circuit court judges and significant reductions of federal rules and regulations.

But in news conference at the Capitol, Schumer and fellow Democratic senators not surprisingly painted a grim picture of few GOP achievements.
COLONIE  A Colonie High School student was injured after a fellow student backed his car into her sometime before 1:50 p.m. Thursday, town police said.

Police said it appears a girl aged 16 was walking in the area of the "triangle" when she was struck by a male Colonie High student, also 16, who was backing out of a parking spot.

She was apparently knocked to the pavement and possibly run over by the car, which then collided with another parked car occupied by a parent waiting to pick up his child, police said.

The girl was taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital and remained there later Thursday with "numerous but at this time non life-threatening injuries," police said.

The driver stopped and co-operated with police. Drugs and alcohol have been ruled out, but the police Traffic Safety Unit continues to investigate.

A statement on the South Colonie School District website adds some details:

"This afternoon during student dismissal at Colonie Central High School, a student was backing their vehicle out of a parking spot and struck another student, who was a pedestrian. School buses had not yet left campus, therefore many students may have fully or partially witnessed this incident. Colonie Police and EMS were called immediately and the student was transported to the hospital with their parent. Administration will continue to communicate with the family for updates on the student's status. Please note that if your child would like to discuss the incident, there will be counselors available throughout the day tomorrow."
SARATOGA SPRINGS  The longtime bookkeeper with the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau is accused of forging close to 200 bureau checks, a loss estimated at $220,000, city police said Thursday.

Kathryn A Price, 57, of Saratoga Springs is charged with second-degree grand larceny.

Police said they took a complaint from the bureau in October over purported theft of funds from bureau bank accounts. Price was quickly identified as the possible offender, police investigators said.

"Thefts were quite extensive, went back several years, and involved numerous bank accounts held by the bureau," police said.

Since 2015, Price allegedly forged bureau checks and took possession of the proceeds for her personal use. Police said the financial investigation is continuing into Price's earlier activities and there is potential for more charges. The State Police Financial Crimes Unit assisted.

She was arraigned and released on $5,000 bail.

Price, whose title is listed on the bureau website as executive assistant and office manager, has been fired, according to a statement from the bureau, issued through Ed Lewi Associates.

She marked 25 years with the bureau in 2013, the website says. At that time her duties were listed as working with the president and board of directors, assisting the sales and service departments with daily activities and coordinating the annual meeting, annual golf tournament and Thanksgiving/Hometown Ambassador reception.

"The Saratoga Convention & Tourism Bureau takes its fiduciary responsibilities very seriously. The Bureau is pursuing a comprehensive review of its accounting practices and has retained the services of an independent accounting firm to conduct an audit of its finances. The Bureau is committed to maintaining the trust of its members and stakeholders in the community," the statement said.

The bureau website said its 2017 operating budget was $1.54 million.
The Madison Theater, the 88-year-old moviehouse in Albanys Pine Hills, will close Jan. 1 for a stem-to-stern cleaning and improvements while its owners decide on purchase offers from two potential buyers.

I really cant be specific, but I have a couple of interesting deals in front of me that would keep the integrity of the theater and be much more responsive to the community, said Gunther Fishgold, founder and president of Tierra Farm, which owns the Madison and its two abutting businesses.

A couple different options are on the table, he said. Both interested parties are independent players who plan to maintain the Madison as a film venue  one programming movies only, the other employing a mixed community space that would likely retain the buildings large theater for live performances.

Tierra will make and announce a decision on the potential deals by the end of January, Fishgold said.

A nut-and-fruit farm based in Valatie, the company purchased the Madison in September of 2013, opened it in January of 2014 and has spent more than $1 million on a new marquee and other interior and exterior improvements. The latest expenditure was $150,000 on Gigis, the restaurant that had been scheduled to replaced Tierra Coffee Roasters on the Madisons west flank but never opened. Any potential purchase would include the entire 16,000-square-foot layout, which also features Tierra Farm Store.

Fishgold said he planned from the get-go to sell the Madison, which opened in 1929 with "The Desert Song" on one enormous screen. Tierras main aim, he said, was saving the historic space  which had come close to being razed in 2004 for a CVS drive-through -- and accentuating its role in the neighborhood.

Its not a money-maker, Fishgold said. Its never been a money-maker for me . . . . It really was a placeholder for someone who could come in and do a better job than we could, as a nut-and-fruit company running a theater.

The decision to revamp and possibly sell comes several months after Fishgold addressed a community advisory board with his hopes for the structure, which he envisioned as a vital neighborhood hub. Those hopes became concerns, he said, as the $5 movies failed to sell tickets, other programming failed to blossom and upkeep proved problematic.

I think Gunther has the interest of the community in mind. Hes done a huge amount of work, and I dont think hes going to abandon us, said Virginia Hammer, a member of the Madison advisory board and president of the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association. I have faith.

(Hammer is also active with the Pine Hills Film Colony, which has been screening silent films and classic talkies at the Madison since 2014. Starting January, it will move down the street to Steamer No. 10 Theatre.)

If both potential deals fall through, Fishgold said he would just figure out a way to continue to operate the Madison, potentially by leasing it.

But someones gonna run a better coffee shop than I run. Someones gonna run a better restaurant than I run. No ones gonna run a better nut business than me, but all three of those  theater, restaurant and coffee shop  can be done much better. Its such a thriving neighborhood. Im not doing it justice.

And no, he said, he wouldnt abandon it. I dont want to leave the community high and dry after all I did to this space. And I wont, he said. I wont.
Immediately after Vanellope Hope Wilkins was born, she was put in sterile plastic to protect her heart - which was beating outside her tiny chest.

It was a moment that her parents, Dean Wilkins and Naomi Findlay, had hoped for but were not certain would actually come - a moment in which their baby girl would come into the world, and live.

The newborn, who was born Nov. 22 at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, was delivered by Caesarean section several weeks premature with a rare and often fatal congenital condition called ectopia cordis, in which the heart is growing either completely or partially outside the chest cavity. Most babies born with the malformation are stillborn or they do not survive long after birth.

"It was overwhelming, wasn't it?" Wilkins, from Bulwell, Nottingham, recently asked Findlay about the birth of their first child, according to BBC News.

"It was very overwhelming," she agreed.

"Especially the part where we were just staring at each other because we didn't want to be told what was happening while it was happening. But, as soon as we heard her cry, that was it," Wilkins said, turning toward Findlay. "We had a little cry, didn't we?"

She started: "It's like we held our breath through it all -"

"For her," Wilkins added, talking about their daughter.

The details came in a statement Wednesday from the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, where dozens of doctors, nurses and clinical staffers worked together late last month to deliver Vanellope and give her a chance to live. A pediatric cardiologist there said the newborn may become the first to survive the condition in the United Kingdom.

In June, Wilkins and Findlay learned they were expecting their first child, according to the statement from hospital.

They also learned early on that the fetus had an extremely rare condition and were told about the potential risks - that she could have other chromosomal abnormalities or other issues, and that she could die before she would ever get to live.

Scans showed her heart and stomach growing outside her developing body. Weeks later, her stomach had entered her torso, but her heart had not.

The soon-to-be parents rejected advice to terminate the pregnancy. They sought help from specialists. They underwent blood tests to determine whether the fetus had major genetic disorders. "When the results of that test came back as low risk of any abnormalities we jumped up and down in the living room and cried," Wilkins said in the statement from the hospital. "At that point we decided to fight to give our daughter the best chance of surviving."

So the couple continued on.

And on that Wednesday morning in November, less than an hour after Vanellope was born - after she was put in a sterile plastic bag to protect her heart, and after she was given a breathing tube, fluids and medications to help her heart beat strong - she was ready to undergo complex surgery to put it into place.

"At around 50 minutes of age, it was felt that Vanellope was stable enough to be transferred back to the main theater where she had been born to the waiting anesthetists, congenital heart disease and pediatric surgical teams who began the task of putting her entire heart back inside her chest," Jonathan Cusack, a consultant neonatologist within the hospital system, said in the statement.

According to the hospital: "The actual defect in baby Vanellope's chest wall was quite small. The main concern with repositioning her heart was that the arteries and veins which bring blood to and from the heart were extremely elongated, and might become kinked and blocked when the heart was placed inside the chest wall. To ensure this didn't happen, the plan was to use a special splint to support the edges of the larger hole that had been created in the front of her chest, attached to its own plastic tube. This meant it was possible to hang her heart outside of her chest to help create more space within, and allow a plastic sheet to be stitched around it to seal the heart away from the outside air."

Since then, Vanellope has had two additional surgeries - one to remove the supporting tube and another to place her heart behind the skin of her chest wall, Frances Bu'Lock, a consultant in pediatric cardiology, said in an email sent Wednesday by the hospital.

"She's been lucky, if you like, in that she has a structurally normal heart, which most of these babies don't have and she didn't have any other abnormalities with the chromosomes. Sometimes the bowel is outside the body as well. She's not had any of those problems," Bu'Lock said about the newborn, according to BBC News. "But she's also proved very resilient and she's had a great team to support her."

About one in every 126,000 babies is born with ectopia cordis, and about 90 percent of them are either stillborn or die soon after birth, according to Children's Hospital Colorado. That said, in most cases, babies born with the condition also have heart problems in addition to the heart's unusual placement; typically babies who survive are ones like Vanellope, who seemingly have no other heart issues.

Jack Rychik, director of the Fetal Heart Program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said the prognosis hinges partly on the heart's structure. In the heart, he said, there are four chambers - two on the top and two on the bottom - as well as vital vessels; but in most cases of ectopia cordis, the heart structure is affected - whether it be holes, blockages or other developmental problems.

Rychik said there are more anticipated favorable outcomes in cases without other heart problems.

"If this particular patient had no structural cardiac abnormalities - just ectopia cordis - and had a normal genetics and chromosomal makeup, and it was detected prenatally and managed in an anticipatory manner - that's a threading of a needle that's pretty wide," he told The Washington Post.

In any case, Rychik said, the challenge with ectopia cordis is the heart needs to be put back into the chest, which is often filled with the lungs and other organs.

"So the way to think about this is, you sort of have to be a bit of an architect and reconstruct the chest around the heart and do so in a manner that does not compress the cardiac structures and allows for function and allows for growth of the chest," he said.

Now three weeks old, the baby has "more strength than you could ever imagine," Wilkins, her father, said, according to BBC News.

"She's fighting it all the way and she's defying everything, isn't she?" he added, addressing the baby's mother. "What they're saying she can't be doing, she's doing it."

---

Video Embed Code

Video: Naomi Findlay's baby was born with her heart outside of her body on Nov. 22 at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England.(Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

Embed code:
Even before it completely falls apart, even before it begins to seem as though it were being made up on the spot, "Downsizing" is strangely unlovable. It's a place we don't want to visit, a world we don't want to inhabit. Watching it feels like work.

Co-written and directed by Alexander Payne, the movie is an intelligent person's response to the environmental and economic anxieties plaguing the modern world. Dumb sci-fi movies are all about the destruction of the universe, but "Downsizing" is more localized, serious and despairing. Its whole atmosphere is depressed  post-hope.

In the movie's first scene, scientists develop a process by which people can be shrunk to five inches in height, a process designed to reduce the human footprint and save the planet. But in practice  this is the movie's one genuinely clever and poetic touch  people are attracted to downsizing for economic reasons. For an outlay of just $150 thousand, a person can buy a mansion and finance a life of leisure, without ever having to work again.

Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig play a fortyish couple, struggling to buy a first house. They become attracted to downsizing because they grasp that, in the full-sized economy, they are always going to be struggling. Though they approach downsizing with some enthusiasm and expectation, we can't help but see this the way Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor see it, as the self-abnegation of the middle-class, as two people willing to erase themselves and do violence to their own bodies because of the way wealth is allocated in modern America.

More Information *1/2 Review "Downsizing" Rated: R for language, including sexual references, some graphic nudity and drug use Running time: 135 minutes **** Excellent *** Good ** Fair * Poor See More Collapse

This is a provocative and arresting opening, but it's only an opening, and from there Payne must deliver. He does, but only in small ways, such as the careful rendering of Leisureland, the downsized community. In terms of story, or at least narrative interest, "Downsizing" is essentially over less than a third of the way in. Paul (Damon) floats through the movie with a sadness that never lifts, which reflects the movie's outlook and philosophy.

You know a film is bad when even Christoph Waltz can't save it. He plays Paul's upstairs neighbor, who is always having wild parties in his fancy apartment, and for a time we think, okay, good, something fun will come from this character. He's full of mischief. He's a black marketeer, pirating luxury items (wines, cigars) to the small communities. But nothing really happens.

Instead Payne bogs himself down in a storyline about a Vietnamese dissident (Hong Chau), who stows away to Leisureland and, because she didn't buy in, ends up as a cleaning woman. This leads to a whole rumination on income inequality within Leisureland itself, with the idea, I suppose, that even in a downsized community, hierarchies based on exploitation are inevitable. But it all seems so tired, so good, so preachy, so weak, so without vitality or promise, as though Payne were just indulging in liberal despair, rather than thinking his way through the story.

It doesn't help that he guides Hong Chau to a sentimental performance, full of tearful outbursts, or that that he seems to forget that Waltz is even in the picture. Meanwhile there's poor Matt Damon: If you see "Downsizing"  but why would you?  pay attention to Damon in the movie's last 45 minutes. Notice how he's hanging on by his fingernails, really trying. This is an experienced actor pushing through the scenes, actively willing the screenplay to work by investing in every moment. And he can do nothing.

In the end, "Downsizing" doesn't get past its original conceit and doesn't even work out the implications of its premise. What about predators? When the little people go boating in Norway, what about birds and insects? By the end, "Downsizing" is one of those great ideas that should have just stayed as an idea.
For years, Mass MoCA was the tallest kid in the class. Then it became the gangly adolescent that shot up past its parents. Now, after a growth spurt fed by a $65 million expansion, the strapping 18-year-old has emerged as a giant among non-collecting art institutions, its 250,000 feet of raw exhibition space making it the single largest museum of contemporary art in the United States.

MORE STORIES: Check out timesunion.com/topstories for the year's Top 10 stories as they are published through Dec. 31.

As director Joseph Thompson remarked back in May: "By the time you have wended your way through all the nooks and crannies of Mass MoCA  if you go through the perimeter of all the galleries, up and down  you can clock almost 4 miles."

But the museum is more than just colossal. With its Memorial Day weekend unveiling of Building 6 and the conclusion of its final, Phase III expansion, the sprawling former textile mill and electric company in North Adams, Mass., has positioned itself at a nexus of art, music, public engagement and creative relevancy. The recent expansion both augments the Berkshires' standing as a cultural destination and  sitting, as it does, in our leafy back yard  marks the latest evolution in a thriving regional modern-art scene that sparked to life 50 years ago with the opening of the University at Albany Art Museum.

Paul Buckowski

The idea behind MoCA first struck Thomas Krens (then Williams College Museum of Art director, eventually director of the Guggenheim) back in 1985: a large and cutting-edge home for art that didn't fit conventional museums. Two years later, Times Union freelancer Robert Phelan hailed the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art as a "radical" concept, envisioning "a museum that isn't a holding pen, that devotes more space to exhibits than storage, that is an environment for living, working artists."

Included in the Building 6 expansion are spaces dedicated to the substantial collections of six artists: painter Robert Rauschenberg, conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, instrument creator Gunnar Schonbeck, light artist James Turrell, cross-disciplinary icon Laurie Anderson and painter-sculptor Louise Bourgeois. The Schonbeck invites visitors to make music; the Anderson invites them to don virtual-reality goggles and walk; the Turrell invites them to enter small rooms and let their eyes adapt to minute adjustments in light and color. All invite reflection.

Hushed though it is, there's nothing passive about any encounters with art at the expanded Mass MoCA, a cultural hub as welcoming as it is immense. The museum gets people in, then gets them moving  at concerts, music festivals, talks, comedy shows, other public events and, with a literal push outward, a leg of bike trail that now swings through the basement and connects to North Adams. It's the museum's latest (and sweatiest) effort at community outreach.

In 1999, Mass MoCA first opened its doors to the public. In 2017, Krens' "radical" idea was even more wholly realized with a grand-reopening that hauled in visitors from around the country and the world. "A weird and wonderful place," The New York Times called it. "A revelation round every corner," declared the Financial Times.

Paul Buckowski

All that, plus one more thing. It's huge.

abiancolli@timesunion.com  518-454-5439  @AmyBiancolli
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ALBANY - City lawmakers want hotels to be up front with guests about infestations, construction or pickets at the hotels and to provide refunds if guests want to cancel their stays.

With ongoing picketing at Hilton Albany, Common Council members want to vote on legislation outlining fair hotel consumer practice and require hotels notify guests of any disruption in service, and ensure refunds and eliminate cancellation fees if theres a disruption.

Members of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council started picketing outside the Lodge Street hotel in September to protest contract demands by Hilton Albany's owner, United Capital Corp., for for elimination of the pension plan and other concessions.

The union represents about 140 people who work at the hotel as room attendants, bell staff, engineers, front-desk staff, bartenders, cooks and food-service workers. Their labor contract expired in April.

The city cited the hotel in September for numerous health and safety code violations, including vermin in kitchen areas, after the union filed a complaint with the city and the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

Guests who are not aware of the circumstances when they come in dont want to cross a picket line, or get involved in a labor dispute, council President Pro Tempore Richard Conti said. People who have booked events have started to relocate and have had some difficulty with that.

A call to Hiltons general manager wasnt returned Wednesday.

Northeast Regional Black Students Law Association is facing a nearly $50,000 fee for cancelling its 50th annual regional convention at the Hilton Albany because it doesnt want members to have to cross the picket line, regional Chair Viona Miller said Wednesday.

Despite a clause in the contract the association had with the Hilton allowing it to cancel should workers strike, Miller said hotel officials say the organization must pay the cancellation fee because its a boycott, not a strike.

We have terminated the contract with Hilton Albany. We see this labor dispute being covered by this clause, she said. Its unfair to expect our members and alumni to cross that picket line to come to our event.

Union leaders in September urged a boycott of the Hilton Albany due to the continued contract dispute. Since then, state lawmakers have signed pledges in support of the boycott and in October Gov. Andrew Cuomo instructed state agencies and personnel not to book events or rooms at the hotel during the contract dispute.

The city Common Council is expected to vote on the local legislation during a special meeting Thursday. If passed, the measure would take effect 90 days after enactment. Hotels that fail to notify guests of the prescribed disruptions would be expected to refund affected customers an amount equal to 200 percent of the total cost of the charged.

Miller said the association terminated the contract with Hilton and has since booked with the Renaissance Albany Hotel to host the convention, but fears the legal battle ahead should Hilton continue to demand the fee.

Were an entirely student-run organization. Were a nonprofit, she said. If we end up paying this amount, it puts us in a horrible position.
State Police

FONDA  Two Florida men each face seven felony charges after State Police found credit card skimmers on gas pumps in Fonda.

Yudiel Ceballos, 31, of Opa Locka, Florida, and Yuny Rodriguez Hurtado, 29, of Miami, Florida, are accused of placing the skimming devices, which troopers discovered, disabled and surveilled until the men returned.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Washington

Democrats on Wednesday elected longtime New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler to serve as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, which would take the lead on impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump if Democrats reclaim the House majority next year.

The 14-term Nadler is replacing former Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who resigned in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. Nadler outdistanced Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California for the position, winning by a vote of 118-72.

Democrats look forward to Nadler's "fierce, fearless leadership to defend the promise of justice and liberty for all," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Pelosi's statement made no mention of the potential impeachment actions if Democrats capture control of the House in the 2018 elections.

Nadler, who was elected to the House in 1992, said the country is possibly headed toward a constitutional crisis. He told colleagues he was best prepared to safeguard civil rights and civil liberties from a Trump administration that he says is constantly attacking them. Lofgren emphasized her expertise on immigration issues.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, freshman member of the committee, said she was looking for someone who could lead Democratic fights on a committee that she described as extremely partisan.

"I think we need a bulldog," said Jayapal, D-Wash.

At the same time, she said she wanted someone steeped in the broad range of issues that come before the committee such as intellectual property laws issues, criminal justice and immigration.

Democrats voiced concerns that Republicans are laying the groundwork for stifling the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia's meddling in the 2016 elections. They wanted someone who could lead the fight to ensure the investigation is allowed to run its course.

"What proved decisive was the concern in the caucus about making sure we have a constitutional expert at the head of the committee on our side given what we're facing," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

TROY  Mayor Patrick Madden said City Council President Carmella Mantello acted illegally Wednesday in thwarting administration plans to resolve the citys 2018 budget deficit, while she countered that she was defending the City Councils independence by following the City Charter.

The standoff between the two officials means the city will enter 2018 with a continued $2.9 million deficit in its 2018 budget of $78.6 million.

She acted illegally and stopped the city clerk from calling a meeting, Madden said Wednesday night.

The mayors not able to call a special committee meeting, Mantello said. She said the mayor cannot set fees.

Mantello, a Republican, told City Clerk Patti OBrien that the Finance Committee meeting called by Madden, a Democrat, for Thursday night was cancelled and she was scheduling a committee meeting for Tuesday night. In an exchange of emails between Corporation Counsel James Caruso and Mantello each cited charter sections and rules regarding who can and cannot call a committee meeting.

But one thing was clear, if OBrien did not send out the meeting packets to the council members there couldnt be a meeting.

Madden said he had reached a bipartisan compromise with council members to resolve the budget problems with a new $160 trash fee. Madden said with the support of Republican Councilmen Dean Bodnar and John Donohue and Democratic Councilman Robert Doherty and Councilwoman Erin Sullivan-Teta and Lynn Kopka there was a majority to adopt the new trash fees.

The legislation my administration submitted today to the Troy City Council will deliver a financially-responsible balanced budget for 2018. This proposed bipartisan solution  which addresses anticipated cost increases in municipal solid waste delivery, rising mandated healthcare and pension payments, and expands capacity in key quality of life sectors like parks and green spaces  is a pragmatic approach to confronting the Citys long-term financial challenges while addressing concerns of the State Comptrollers office outlined in their recent letter, Madden said in a statement.

Development of this bipartisan legislation is the result of thoughtful dialogue and negotiations with a majority of Councilmembers who understand the importance of delivering a balanced budget and its impact on the future prosperity and growth of our community, the mayor said.

Mantello said the mayor is trying to take advantage of a lame duck City Council to ram through the trash fee at the last moment of the legislative year. She said the mayor has never spoken to her about resolving the budgetary deficit.

Under the legislation proposed by Madden, the trash fee would raise $2.8 million and additional $600,000 would be cut. Mantello said the incoming Democratic-majority council could decide to vote on the resolutions if it wants after it convenes in 2018. Under the charter, there must be seven days between the Finance Committee meeting and the City Council meeting.
Saratoga County Sheriff's Office

Malta - A Schenectady man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly cashing a forged check at a Malta bank last June, the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office said.

Lloyd Holness, 59, of Division Street was charge with one count of criminal possession of a forged instrument, a felony.
Tributes are being paid today to the former CEO of the South Eastern Health Board, Mr. John Cooney, who has passed away.

Mr. Cooney, a native of Clonmel, had been one of the longest serving employees of the health services in the South East when he retired in 2002.

Mr Cooney had been living in Kilkenny for many years but was originally from Ard na Greine in Clonmel. His brother Jimmy passed away just two months ago.

The HSE has expressed its sympathies on the passing of Mr. Cooney,

He joined the staff of South Tipperary County Council in 1959. Ten years later, John took a position with the Waterford Health Authority, before transferring to the South Eastern Health Board (SEHB) in 1970 when the health boards came into being.



Based at its Head Offices in Kilkenny, John Cooney subsequently served as Computer Manager, the Management Accountant, Finance Manager and Programme Manager for Special Hospitals before moving into the position of Programme Manager for Acute Hospital Services in 1987.

From 1992 to 1995, Mr. Cooney acted as CEO of the SEHB and was appointed in a permanent capacity in that year. During his time in the SEHB, Mr. Cooney oversaw major expansion in social services and in hospital services, with building and equipping programmes in all acute hospitals in the South East region. John Cooneys time as CEO also saw a great increase in accountability, as new and wide sweeping legislation was introduced.



Aileen Colley (Chief Officer, South East Community Healthcare), Richard Dooley (General Manager, University Hospital Waterford), Lily Byrnes (General Manager, Wexford General Hospital), Anne Slattery (General Manager, St. Lukes General Hospital Carlow/Kilkenny) and Maria Barry (General Manager, South Tipperary General Hospital) on their own and their services behalves have been associated with tributes to Mr. Cooneys dedication to the development of health services for the people of counties Carlow, Kilkenny, South Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford and are expressing the sympathies of the HSE to Mr. Cooneys wife Elsie, daughter Helen, son Emmett, Johns sister Mary, his grandchildren, extended family and wide circle of colleagues and friends.

The funeral arrangements are

Reposing in Johnston's Funeral Home, John's Green, Kilkenny from 4 o'clock on Thursday 21st December, with Funeral Prayers at 6.30 o'clock followed by removal to St. Patrick's Church, Kilkenny. Requiem Mass on Friday 22nd December at 12 noon. Funeral afterwards to Foulkstown Cemetery, Kilkenny. House private please.
The man who died in a fire in Nenagh overnight has been named locally as a foreign national who had been homeless.

The Gardai have not released the dead man's name, but he was named locally as Kryztof Sec, who was aged 47 and was known around the town.

It is understood the Gardai are trying to contact his family back in his native country.

Mr Sec's last known address in Nenagh was in Sarsfield Street, but it is believed he may have been sleeping rough on and off. He was known to have health issues.

He died when a fire broke out in a derelict public house on Stafford Street / Kenyon Street, Nenagh at around 1.10pm this Thursday, December 21.

Two units of Nenagh Fire Service, along with one unit from Cloughjordan, attended the scene.

Firefighters discovered the deceased man inside the premises while fighting the blaze.

Its understood a second person, who is in his 50s, was in the premises at the time of the blaze but managed to escape.

A body was found at the premises. It is a disused pub on Kenyon Street. The (999) call was made by a passer-by, said a source.

Firefighters left the scene at 11.55am, nearly 12 hours after they first arrived to tackle the blaze.

The building has been sealed off by Gardai and a technical examination is to take place to establish the cause of the blaze.

A Garda spokesman said: A fire was reported at 1.05am at Kenyon Street Nenagh. Two males were thought to be staying at the premises. One male was removed to Limerick Hospital with minor injuries. The other male is deceased and was removed to Limerick Hospital for a postmortem.

The scene was preserved for a technical examination.
[December 20, 2017] Accenture and Roche Collaborate to Enhance Digital Healthcare for Cancer Patients

Accenture (News - Alert) (NYSE: ACN) today announced a collaborative services agreement with Roche. Under the terms of this exclusive multi-year agreement, Accenture will provide digital data integration services to Roche's NAVIFY Tumor Board solution. A tumor board is a meeting in which multi-disciplinary healthcare teams review and discuss individual cancer patient cases and available treatment options. The NAVIFY Tumor Board solution streamlines and standardizes the tumor board workflow process by aggregating relevant patient data from disparate IT systems into a software solution that fosters efficient team collaboration, reduces errors, and gives the care team more time to evaluate individual patient cases. The data integration capabilities Accenture provides will allow Roche to integrate patient data between hospitals and the NAVIFY Tumor Board solution to support clinicians in arriving at the best possible treatment decisions for their patients. The NAVIFY Tumor Board solution is built on a secure cloud platform. "Our collaboration with Accenture is another exciting step forward in providing personalized healthcare solutions to patients," said Tim M. Jaeger, Global Head of Diagnostics Information Solutions for Roche. "Tumor board coordination is labor intensive and time consuming for healthcare providers. Accenture's global scale, deep digital expertise, and innovation capabilities in the healthcare and life sciences industries allows Roche to continue our focus on delivering workflow and decision support solutions to customers and improvin patient outcomes."



Andrea Bruckner, who leads Accenture's Life Sciences practice in Europe, said: "With Roche, we continue to provide meaningful impact on patients' lives by combining new science with leading-edge technology to revolutionize patient care. By providing data integration services to the NAVIFY Tumor Board solution, we aim to ensure that all available data is used to accelerate and optimize treatment decisions for cancer patients." As shared in an October 2017 announcement, the NAVIFY Tumor Board solution fundamentally changes the way tumor board meetings are organized and conducted with the goal of fostering collaboration on patient treatment decisions. It is currently available in the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions - underpinned by the world's largest delivery network - Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 425,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com. Accenture Disclaimer:

Accenture is in no way promoting or intending to provide a medical device or recommend a product for purposes of any diagnosis or treatment. Accenture expects Roche and other companies involved to use its own operations to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171220006131/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Ahmedabad University Launches Global Centre for Environment and Energy

AHMEDABAD, India, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Envisioned as an International Institute and Centre of Excellence Ahmedabad University announced the launch of its Global Centre for Environment and Energy, a one-of-its-kind centre of excellence at the University to foster and pursue interdisciplinary academic research, and the design of technological and social experimentation related to environment, energy and natural resources. The Global Centre will undertake scientific studies to develop or assess alternative energy sources, new technology, global climate change and its impact, energy efficiency policies and technologies, environment economics and conservation, mitigation policies, waste water recovery, behavioural models in energy and environment, evolution and biology related to climate change. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/622102/Panelists_at_Ahmedabad_University.jpg )

Speaking at the launch of the Global Centre for Environment and Energy, Professor Pankaj Chandra, Vice Chancellor of Ahmedabad University, said, "The Centre will have a strong policy focus that will be evidenced by deep research in sciences, technology, economics, psychology, management and other disciplines. It is an opportunity to connect with as well as influence the direction of research at the various Schools of the University." He further said, "A university is an ideal venue to undertake such studies and generate viable options for the society because it is both neutral as well as multidisciplinary. It is our endeavour to establish this institute that contributes significantly to both the debate and solutions prtaining to environment and natural resources."



"Within Ahmedabad University, we look forward to connect with as well as influence the direction of research at the various Schools. It will draw faculty from various disciplines of the University who have interest in aspects of environment and energy. The new Centre will delineate issues of policy that face the nation and the world and address them sharply through evidence-based analysis, outcomes, and implementation. In that, the Centre will be open to working with agencies of the state, other global centres and research institutes. It is envisioned as an international institute and a centre of excellence that will build an integrated perspective on issues related to environment, energy and natural resources," he added. To mark the launch of the Global Centre for Environment and Energy at Ahmedabad University, a panel discussion was organized titled No 'Plan B': Looking Through the Sustainability Lens. It was an opportunity for all students and faculty at the University to engage with some of the most important questions facing the planet today - How does climate change affect a student of engineering, commerce, management or technology? How does each one of us reduce our carbon footprint and lead a more sustainable life? What can we do to make a healthier natural environment for our children?

The panelists were a range of distinguished experts, including P.R. Shukla, the Chair of the Global Centre for Environment and Energy and a Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Punit Lalbhai, Executive Director, Arvind Ltd.; Subhash Rajpurohit, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University; Minal Pathak, Visiting Researcher, Imperial College and Global Centre for Environment and Energy and Bijal Brahmbhatt, Director Mahila Housing SEWA Trust. (Professor P.R. Shukla is Chair of the Global Centre for Environment and Energy and Distinguished Professor at Ahmedabad University. He is a lead author of several international reports which include nine reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has been awarded a certificate for the 'Contribution to the Award of Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC'. Since October 2015, he is the Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III (Mitigation). He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University) About Ahmedabad University: Ahmedabad University is a private, non-profit university dedicated to rigorous academic pursuit with a focus on building enquiry as a value through interdisciplinary learning. The institution has a unique mindset to develop cultural and entrepreneurial sensitivity in our graduates. Established in 2009 by the Ahmedabad Education Society, Ahmedabad University is located in one of Indias most vibrant cities which has recently been elected as UNESCO's Heritage City. The University offers programmes across its four schools and four centres at Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral levels. Its unique learning process is mediated by experiential learning, field work and a belief that good theory leads to good practice. Media Contact :

Siddharth Baad

[email protected]

+91-9620213300

Head - Communications, Ahmedabad University



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Basilea reports that ceftobiprole received QIDP designation from U.S. FDA for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB)

Basel, Switzerland, December 21, 2017 - Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated its investigational drug ceftobiprole as a Qualified Infectious Disease Product (QIDP). The designation relates to the potential use of the drug in the treatment of bacterial bloodstream infections (bacteremia) caused by Staphylococcus aureus. QIDP status, granted under the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act in the United States, provides certain incentives for the development of antibiotics, such as priority review if the product is submitted for approval in the United States, and a five-year extension of certain periods of market exclusivity that may be applicable should it be approved. Ronald Scott, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of bloodstream infections, which are associated with significant morbidity and mortality specifically when caused by methicillin-resistant strains. Basilea is committed to address the issue of resistance in underserved areas of high medical need such as bacteremia. The FDA QIDP designation for ceftobiprole provides important support for us to achieve this goal." Basilea is preparing two cross-supportive clinical phase 3 studies with ceftobiprole to support a potential future registration in the United States. Both studies will be conducted under Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) agreements with the FDA. The first study, exploring ceftobiprole in the treatment of adult patients with acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI), is going to start shortly. The second study is going to explore the utility of ceftobiprole in the treatment of adult patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia and is anticipated to start in the first half of 2018. The phase 3 program receives funding of up to approximately USD 108 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, under contract number HHSO100201600002C. About ceftobiprole Ceftobiprole is a cephalosporin antibiotic for intravenous administration with rapid bactericidal activity against a wide range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including methicillin-susceptible and resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA, MRSA) and susceptible Pseudomonas spp.1 Ceftobiprole is currently approved for sale in major European countries and several non-European countries for the treatment of adult patients with community-acquired peumonia (CAP) and hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), excluding ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).1 Basilea has entered into license and distribution agreements for the drug in Europe, Latin America, China, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Canada and Israel. Ceftobiprole is not approved for commercial sale in the United States.



About Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia is a leading cause of bloodstream infections, responsible for a broad variety of complications and has been associated with significant morbidity and a mortality of 20 to 40%.2, 3 Several studies have demonstrated that MRSA bacteremia is associated with a significantly higher mortality rate compared with methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) bacteremia.4, 5 Infections of the inner lining of the heart or heart valves (infective endocarditis) and bone infections (osteomyelitis) are common complications of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia.

About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company developing products that address the medical challenge of increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com. Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD

Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations

+41 61 606 1102

[email protected]

[email protected] This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. References

1 UK Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) Zevtera: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/

[Accessed: December 20, 2017]

2 A. G. Jensen et al. Treatment and outcome of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: a prospective study of 278 cases. Archives of Internal Medicine 2002 (162), 25-32

3 J. L. Wang et al. Comparison of both clinical features and mortality risk associated with bacteremia due to community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2008 (46), 799-806

4 S. I. Blot et al. Outcome and attributable mortality in critically Ill patients with bacteremia involving methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Archives of Internal Medicine 2002 (162), 2229-2235

5 S. E. Cosgrove et al. Comparison of mortality associated with methicillin-resistant and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: a meta-analysis. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2003 (36), 53-59 Attachments: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/636dab7e-2ca2-460e-9b63-5b13e32c8454

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Venture Design With NYUCT Design Labs and the Collective

MUMBAI, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Businesses, brands, entrepreneurs and CXOs today need help with solutions that deliver on both the business and the creative balance sheet while staying relevant with technology. NYUCT Design Labs, a first-of-its-kind multi-discipline collective, specialises in Venture Design - building ventures, brands, innovations and IPs. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/622143/NYUCT_Design_Labs.jpg )

This is a unique collective, a 'think and do' tank of experienced domain and industry experts across strategy, brand development, technology, design, content and integrated marketing. The collective is built around:



- A core of industry and domain experts with more than 180 years of experience - who create, curate and collaborate - the Cureators.



- A boxful of technology - enterprise, mobile and web solutions and emergent technologies.



- A private league of extraordinary independents / specialists across the most diverse disciplines. Take a quick peek at how NYUCT Design Labs work: http://bit.ly/2gUqCBk Launched in 2016 (conceptualised in 2014) NYUCT engages with clients right from blue sky thinking to srategic consulting, venture design and meticulous last mile execution from start to completion, with the vision of making true multi-discipline collaboration work and creatively disrupting the solution space.



NYUCT Design Labs imagined, business modelled, designed, and content powered a new Travel and Discovery platform for a social, millennial India called Gulliver's India (http://www.gulliversindia.com). This is an illustrative live example of how the firm does venture design. Other ventures for NYUCT Design Labs include the 'Done in 60 seconds', which is a 17 films project for the Taj, the Vasant Utsav film, the first-of-its-kind sound map of India with Sunoh, the Kaziranga and Manas photo story project, helping reinvent a not for profit foundation, empowHER India. And other interesting projects in the pipeline.

NYUCT Design Labs has in its collective, partners that range from VR specialists, Sound scientists, Influence marketers, Mind mappers, spatial designers and activation experts. The team's earlier adventures have included building and powering global brands, integrated marketing and strategic brand management, content development, industry leading innovations and building technology solutions and platforms. The portfolio includes bringing alive the first luxury rainforest retreat Taj Coorg, building a museum in Coorg, interpretive projects like the Kabir project at Delhi, the Madras chronicles, the Great Escape each of which were a synthesis of design, content and technology and delivered both on brand and business. We have created bespoke brand experiences, book projects, art installations and exhibitions, several films and brand forays. We have conceived and built social?business models, IPs around adventure, music, films, stand-up comedy, food and beverage - that has created immense value for brands and organisations. The technology adventures include building solutions and platforms across the web, mobile and cloud space. These comprise intelligent websites, analytics engines, community platforms and support solutions. For more details please visit http://www.nyuct.com Media Contact:

Manojeet Bhujabal

[email protected]

+91-9833756085

Director

Founding Partner

NYUCT DESIGN LABS PRIVATE LIMITED



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] YouCam Makeup Unveils Groundbreaking Beauty AR & AI Technology at CES Las Vegas

Honored as "One of the Best" at CES (News - Alert) BeautyTech last year, Perfect Corp. continues to introduce cutting-edge AR and AI technology in its flagship app YouCam Makeup at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Developer of the YouCam apps suite with over 525 million downloads worldwide, Perfect Corp. will be exhibiting and demoing the latest technology at LVCC South Hall 3, Booth #32202 from January 9th through the 12th. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171220005378/en/ YouCam Makeup Unveils Groundbreaking Beauty AR & AI Technology at CES Las Vegas (Photo: Business Wire) Perfect Corp. will debut its latest AR and AI beauty solutions, including the "AI Look Transfer" that allws users to take a photo of a makeup look in print and then try that exact AR look on their own face in YouCam Makeup. Extending beyond cosmetics, YouCam will also showcase new real-time AR hair coloring that allows users to experience true-to-life shades on their own hair, making selecting a new hair color fast, easy and fun.



"Beauty tech is deeply transforming the beauty industry; it's changing how the customer experiences and explores products before they purchase, and also how brands interact and engage with customers," says Perfect Corp. CEO, Alice Chang. "Perfect Corp. is excited to present our lineup of industry-leading new AR & AI solutions at CES BeautyTech, the ideal global stage to unveil our key technologies powering the transformation in beauty retail." Perfect Corp.'s founder and CEO, Alice Chang will be hosting a BeautyTech keynote "Powering the Retail Transformation: Beauty AR & AI" on Wednesday, January 10th from 10AM-10:30AM at the Beauty Tech Stage Sands, Level 2 (Booth #43731). Perfect Corp. will also moderate a panel discussion "Rewiring Your Retail Brain for the Digital World" at the High-Tech Retailing Summit on Thursday, January 11th, from 2:15-2:45PM on Venetian Level 4, Lando 4302.

App Availability YouCam Makeup is available for free download on the App Store and Google Play. About Perfect Corp. With over 525 Million downloads globally, Perfect Corporation is dedicated to transforming how consumers, content creators and beauty brands interact together. Our experienced team of engineers and beauty aficionados are pushing the frontiers of technology to create the beauty platform of the future - a fluid environment where individuals express themselves, learn the latest about fashion and beauty, and enjoy instant access to the products from their favorite brands. Further information about Perfect Corp. can be found at perfectcorp.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171220005378/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Spireon Celebrates 15th Anniversary

IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Spireon, the vehicle intelligence company, announced that December 30, 2017, will mark the company's 15th year in business providing automotive and commercial fleet telematics solutions to now more than 20,000 customers in North America. Spireon achieved landmark results in 2017, earning five industry awards, releasing new products across all segments, and exiting the third quarter with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65. "2017 has been a stellar year for Spireon, with more new product releases and industry awards than any other year in the company's history, and NPS scores that are double the industry average," said Kevin Weiss, CEO of Spireon. "I am honored to celebrate the company's 15th anniversary leading this dedicated team who believes, as I do, that our success must be built on our customers' success." Spireon provides businesses and consumers with powerful insights to track, manage and protect their most valuable mobile assets. The company's customer base includes many of the largest trucking companies, auto dealers, and finance companies in the country, as well as thousands of small fleet operators and used car dealers. "Since the start, Spireon has changed the landscape of the telematics industry by turning any vehicle into a 'connected' vehicle, and allowing businesses of every size to benefit from the Internet of Things long before IoT was a recognized acronym," said Tim Welch, COO and co-founder of Spireon. "We continue to grow and thrive because we are more than a technology company - we are a serice company - and our goal is to provide outstanding service every step of the way, from shipping to installation to support."



Some of the company's most notable milestones include: NSpire platform evolution:

More than 326 billion recorded driving miles



Processing over 1.5 billion data events every quarter



Supporting nearly 4 million active subscribers



Maintained 99.99 percent uptime throughout 2017

Product portfolio expansion and enrichment:

Kahu  , the first connected car solution designed for dealers

, the first connected car solution designed for dealers

On-board telematics integration, enabling mixed fleet support from a single dashboard with FleetLocate  Connected by OnStar

Connected by OnStar

Rich data and predictive analytics, delivering unique, actionable insights to improve efficiency and reduce risk for customers



Innovative and efficient GPS devices, such as GoldStar Edge for CDMA and LTE networks, and FL Solar for unpowered asset tracking



Native mobile app experiences for all products

Eight industry awards, including:

Three-time winner of "Customer Service Department of the Year" from American Business Awards (Stevies), Golden Bridge Awards, and One Planet Awards



"New Product of the Year" for Kahu from BIG Awards for Business



"Enterprise Service of the Year" for FleetLocate from Best in Biz Awards



"IoT Vehicle Telematics Company of the Year" from Compass Intelligence

Operational achievements:

Over 20,000 devices shipped each week, and 95% of orders shipped within four hours of order receipt



275 certified installers nationwide, surpassing 800,000 onsite device installations



Average Net Promoter Score of 65 at the end of Q3 of 2017 Additional company information and milestones from Spireon's 15-year history can be found here.

About Spireon

Spireon, Inc. is North America's leading connected vehicle intelligence company, providing businesses and consumers with powerful insights to track, manage and protect their most valuable mobile assets. The award-winning Spireon NSpire platform supports nearly 4 million active subscribers across the company's growing suite of products for new and used car dealers, lenders and financial institutions, rental car agencies, commercial and local fleet operators, and consumers. Learn more at www.spireon.com. For more information, contact

Emily Lynn Ashley

Havas Formula for Spireon

[email protected]

619-234-0345 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/spireon-celebrates-15th-anniversary-300574268.html SOURCE Spireon, Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Oasys names John R. "Bob" Nunnally, Jr. Director of Corporate Growth and Development

MCLEAN, Va., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Oasys International Corporation (Oasys) is excited to announce that John R. "Bob" Nunnally, Jr. has joined Oasys as the Director of Corporate Growth and Development. In this role, Bob, a well-known figure in Federal and Commercial Information Technology (IT) circles, is responsible for critical marketing, strategy and business development initiatives, and charged with helping our clients meet the complexities of today's evolving challenges. "Oasys is an exceptional partner to our civilian agency and defense clients. I am excited to join this amazing team," said Nunnally. "I look forward to helping us position Oasys for continued growth and recognition by strategically expanding our contracts, partnerships and core services." "We are thrilled to welcome Bob to the team. He will be critical to our continued growth, and in our pursuit of providing Agile Solutions and Exceptional Results to our clients," said Oasys CEO Tony Johnson. "Bob's experience, energy and focus on staff and company growth perfectly complement our efforts to make Oasys excellent by any measure." Prior to joining Oasys, Bob served as President and COO of the Ambit Group where he oversaw all company operations and contract delivery. Under his leadership, Ambit expanded its service offerings and improved company performance. In 2016, Bob received the SmartCEO Magazine Executive Management Award. Bob complete a 23-year military career in the US Air Force where he served as a fighter pilot and commander of various combat organizations, and on the Hill in Legislative Affairs. Following his military career, Bob served as a Senior Subject Matter Expert with Toffler Associates supporting the National Security Agency, FBI, DoD and other federal agencies helping develop policy and deliver process improvement. While at Toffler, Bob led a number of strategic planning engagements based on the creation of alternative futures and the use of business-based game theory.



Bob is active in a number of professional and charitable organizations, contributes to national and regional media, and is a noted keynote speaker. He is a member of the AFCEA Homeland Security Committee and is on the board of two non-profits. Bob has served as a keynote speaker for corporate meetings and conferences across the US and abroad. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and the Air War College. He resides in the District of Columbia. About Oasys

Oasys, established in March 2011, is a Department of Veterans Affairs Certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). We are a values-driven firm [Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork] and were recognized in 2016 and 2017 by Inc. as one of the fastest growing companies in America. Oasys provides program management, advisory, design and full technology life-cycle services to clients in both the public and private sectors with our Structured Agility Framework. We are solutions driven and pragmatic, providing innovative solutions to our customers' toughest problems. Our primary goal is to provide objective, flexible and efficient solutions in a rapidly changing budget and technology environment with one fundamentally simple principle in mind: deliver responsive, efficient services and solutions  one customer, one person, one deliverable at a time. For more information, please visit www.oasysic.com. Inquiries can be sent to [email protected].

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oasys-names-john-r-bob-nunnally-jr-director-of-corporate-growth-and-development-300574202.html SOURCE Oasys International Corporation

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Leonovus Announces Plans for an Initial Coin Offering

OTTAWA, Dec. 21, 2017 /CNW/ - Leonovus Inc. ("Leonovus") (TSXV: LTV) today announced its plans for an initial coin offering ("ICO") in the summer of 2018 to support the launch of an advanced blockchain storage and compute solution with a marketplace for cloud applications. Leonovus has invested over twenty million dollars in the development of distributed compute and distributed storage technology. With several granted patents, numerous patent claims and patents pending, the company's unique software-defined storage ("SDS") solution has strong intellectual property protection. The company is currently planning to hire specialized blockchain software development teams in both Ottawa and Toronto. Unknown to many, Leonovus is not new to the blockchain world. Indeed, Leonovus was one of the first companies to marry Internet of Things ("IoT") technology and blockchain. In August 2014, the company mined the cryptocurrency Litecoin from low-end distributed smart devices - digital light bulbs! In that same year, Leonovus demonstrated a production deployment of a managed, loosely-coupled, blockchain computation pool built from available idle compute resources in hotels. Our patented, Web Integrated Services Environment ("WISE") Network, managed a compute pool that supported both public and private blockchain computation on thousands of low/no-cost computing cores across both the USA and Canada with only a few clicks of a mouse from a browser-based dashboard. "Our vision is simple. Imagine a world where any device with connectivity, a processor, and some storage becomes part of a globally distributed computing platform - a global blockchain-based apps marketplace. Every consumer o business in the world could become a Leonovus blockchain farmer", said Michael Gaffney, CEO, Leonovus Inc.



"Our research indicates that our core distributed storage and distributed compute technology is significantly ahead of other firms that have completed storage/compute ICO's  some of these firms have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in their ICO. Moreover, our patented WISE network technology is unique. It is a patented foundation technology to build a global blockchain-based marketplace for developers wanting to design and deploy blockchain products and services - simply and rapidly. The potential for our blockchain-based apps marketplace is massive. The Leonovus ICO will provide the company with significant non-dilutive cash resources and is a powerful economic mechanism to incent storage and compute farmers as well as app developers", said Gaffney. "Our core business continues to be blockchain hardened ultra-secure distributed software-defined storage solutions for the enterprise. This ICO will add resources and a global pool of software verification, compute and storage farms that will make our core business even more attractive to enterprise customers", said Gaffney.

The Leonovus blockchain storage and compute solution for enterprises, institutions and consumers will unlock a fantastic, never-before-realized amount of storage and computing power. The existing Leonovus product suite, with minimal augmentation, provides the foundation for an enterprise-class blockchain/distributed ledger technology ("DLT"). A Leonovus hybrid blockchain/DLT offers de-centralized storage and compute without the loss of centralized controls  no single point of failure. This press release may contain forward-looking statements and information, which may involve risks and uncertainties. The results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual results or events. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, competitive developments, risks associated with Leonovus' growth, the state of the financial markets, regulatory risks and other factors. There can be no assurance or guarantees that any statements of forward-looking information contained in this release will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. These and all subsequent written and oral statements containing forward-looking information are based on the estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Leonovus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Readers should not place undue reliance on any statements of forward-looking information that speak only as of the date of this release. Further information on Leonovus' public filings, including its most recent audited consolidated financial statements, are available at www.sedar.com. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE LeoNovus Inc.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Commercial Logic Is Now a Part of AbacusNext

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AbacusNext, the largest Technology-as-a-Service (TaaS) provider for the legal and accounting professions, today announced their acquisition of Commercial Logic, developers of practice management and workflow tools for accounting professionals.

We are so pleased to welcome Commercial Logic into the AbacusNext family, said Alessandra Lezama, CEO of AbacusNext. Our shared values and client focused approach make them an ideal addition, and we look forward to augmenting their current offerings so clients can benefit from our broader scope and private cloud solutions. Commercial Logic has developed practice management and workflow tools with an exclusive focus on accounting firms for more than 30 years, as well as provided consulting services designed to help professional services companies streamline their internal processes. AbacusNext is an ideal partner to secure the continued growth of Commercial Logic, said Peter Coburn, President and Founder of Commercial Logic. By joiningforces with AbacusNext, our clients will benefit from the substantial marketing, engineering and support resources at AbacusNexts disposal and gain new access to CRM, business management, and private cloud solutions.



About Commercial Logic Commercial Logic has specialized in practice management software for CPA firms since 1983, providing the tools and services required to manage successful practices. Commercial Logic, Inc. operates offices and datacenters for its Hosted Solution clients in Etna and Dover, New Hampshire.

About AbacusNext As the largest Technology-as-a-Service (TaaS) provider for the professional services sector, AbacusNext helps legal and accounting professionals achieve ultimate success and peace of mind through the delivery of a complete suite of compliance-ready technology solutions designed to support a secure and cloud-enabled practice at a cost they can afford. Our portfolio of turnkey solutions include hardware, software and infrastructure on a pay as you go model; Practice Management, Client Resource Management (CRM), Payment Processing, Email, Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Managed IT. Headquartered in San Diego, California, and backed by private investment with Providence Equity, AbacusNext delivers products and services to over 500,000 businesses worldwide. To sign up or learn more visit AbacusNext.com. About Providence Equity Providence is a premier global asset management firm with $45 billion in assets under management across complementary private equity and credit businesses. Providence pioneered a sector-focused approach to private equity investing with the vision that a dedicated team of industry experts could build exceptional companies of enduring value. Since the firm's inception in 1989, Providence has invested in more than 150 companies and is the leading equity investment firm focused on the media, communications, education and information industries. Providence is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, and has offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Delhi. For more information, please visit www.provequity.com. Contact: 858-529-0018 [email protected]

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Charles River Expands MiFID II Support by Adding Continuous Evaluated Pricing from ICE Data Services for Best Execution

Charles River is helping clients prepare for the impending European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) requirements by incorporating ICE Data Services' Continuous Evaluated Pricing (CEP) into the Charles River Investment Management Solution (Charles River IMS). Charles River provides investment managers with an end-to-end solution for meeting regulatory obligations under MiFID II. The solution captures key data and trade lifecycle decision points needed to comply with new requirements for trade and transaction reporting, best execution and commission management. CEP provides an independent, trade-by-trade measure of price quotes that help fixed income portfolio managers and traders more easily identify potential trade opportunities, while also providing a tool to assist fund managers, traders and compliance officers to ensure they meet their obligation under MiFID II to undertake "all sufficient steps" to achieve the best trading result for their clients. CEP from ICE Data Services, which is part of Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), provides a continuous stream of fixed income evaluations on over 2.4 million instruments across Global Corporate Bonds, Emeging Markets, Money Markets and Sovereigns, as well as Treasuries, US Agencies, US Municipal Bonds, MBS Pass-throughs, TBA Mortgages and Bank Loans.



"By incorporating ICE's CEP, Charles River gives portfolio managers a more realistic measure of quotes so they can make better decisions as well as meet the more stringent requirements of MiFID II," said Tim Kelly, Head of Product Management, Charles River. "With Charles River's significant R&D investment we are confident our solution enables clients to meet their MiFID II obligations." "Given its real-time capabilities, CEP often plays an important role supporting pre-trade price discovery and post-trade execution quality analysis in the fixed income markets," said Rob Haddad, Head of Product Strategy and Innovation at ICE Data Services. "Working with companies like Charles River allows ICE Data Services to offer critical data and analytics solutions that support our clients' desired workflow in support of their MiFID II compliance obligations."

About Charles River:

Charles River enables sound and efficient investing across all asset classes. Over 350 firms worldwide use Charles River IMS to manage more than US$25 Trillion (News - Alert) in assets in the institutional investment, wealth management and hedge fund industries. Our Software as a Service-based solution automates and simplifies investment management on a single platform - from portfolio management and risk analytics through trading and post-trade settlement, with integrated compliance and managed data throughout. Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, we support clients globally with more than 750 employees in 11 regional offices. For more information, please visit www.crd.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005451/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Civitas Solutions Announces Acquisition of Unique Options, Michigan Provider of Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Individuals Recovering from Brain Injuries

Civitas Solutions, Inc. ("Civitas") (NYSE: CIVI) today announced that it successfully completed the acquisition of Unique Options, LLC, a provider of vocational rehabilitation services for individuals who have sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the state of Michigan. Founded in 2004 and located in Warren, Michigan, Unique Options supports more than 100 individuals in metropolitan Detroit through community-based programming focused on training and employment placements for individuals who have experienced a TBI. Unique Options generates annual revenues of approximately $5 million. Civitas entered the attractive Michigan market for brain injury services in 2013 via acquisition and has now acquired a total of seven high-quality providers that are part of the Company's Specialty Rehabilitation Services (SRS) segment. Since that time, Civitas has leveraged its platform in the Michigan SRS market to drive organic growth and expand its impact in the state. "Unique Options has a compelling track record of helping the individuals they support achieve successful, long-term employment, making it an excellent addition to our SRS programs in Mchigan," said Bruce Nardella, president and CEO of Civitas Solutions. "We are pleased to welcome the Unique Options team and the individuals they support to Civitas."



Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains statements about future events and expectations that constitute forward-looking statements, including statements about the expected benefits of the transaction, expansion projects and expected growth. Forward-looking statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and expectations, taking into account the information currently available to us. These statements are not statements of historical fact. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. Factors that could contribute to these differences include, but are not limited to, unanticipated transaction costs and our inability to successfully integrate the Unique Options business with our business, and the other factors described in "Risk Factors" in Civitas Solutions, Inc.'s Form 10-K. We qualify any forward-looking statements entirely by these cautionary factors. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

About Civitas Civitas Solutions, Inc. is the leading national provider of home- and community-based health and human services to must-serve individuals with intellectual, developmental, physical or behavioral disabilities and other special needs. Since our founding in 1980, we have evolved from a single residential program to a diversified national network offering an array of quality services in 36 states. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005499/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] VIMO to provide Wechat payment at Airport outlets

HANOI, Vietnam, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The leading mobile payment platform in Vietnam VIMO.vn has signed strategic e-payment partnership with Southern Airports Services Joint Stock Company (SASCO) to accept WeChat Pay (Weixin Pay) from Chinese tourists at duty free stores of Ho Chi Minh City's (HCM) international airport, before expanding to other airport stores of SASCO across the country. According to the announcement, starting from January 2nd 2018, Chinese tourists coming to and from HCM city international airport in Vietnam will be able to use WeChat mobile application to scan QR-code generated by cashier upon checkout at SASCO's duty free shops to make payment quickly and easily without needing to bring cash or credit cards. Chinese customers will be able to easily buy popular souvenirs and Vietnamese specialties like aloe wood, coffee, food and wines, perfume and cosmetics, fashion, jewelry etc.



SASCO owns the largest network of duty-free shops, retail outlets, business class lounges, and food chains at airports in Vietnam. "SASCO is always ahead of the trends, leveraging technology to optimize business and bring convenience and high quality products to customers. Our plan for 2018 is to accept WeChat payment through VIMO at all airport outlets to create convenience for Chinese customers," said Mr. Nguyen Van Hung Cuong, Deputy General Director of SASCO. VIMO is the largest mobile wallet and the first and only mobile payment platform in Vietnam to allow Chinese customers to pay with WeChat while traveling to Vietnam. Currently VIMO has nearly 500 higher end stores accepting WeChat payment at popular tourist destinations in Vietnam, including more than 50 stores at five international airports with direct flights to and from China.

General Director of VIMO, Mr. Do Cong Dien, stated that in 2018 VIMO will expand its acceptance network to 2,000 more shops to provide convenient payment method for Chinese tourists, as well as boosting revenue for local merchants. Vietnam is one of the most attractive destinations in the region for Chinese tourists, with an estimated 3.5 million arrivals and turnover of nearly 3 billion USD in 2017. By enabling WeChat payment to thousands of stores locally, VIMO targets to boost spending by Chinese tourists while travelling to Vietnam by 10% in 2018, from 638 USD averagely per capita in 2017. Media Contact: Pham Ngoc Tram Anh

+84-983-843-112

[email protected] Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171221/2020626-1 SOURCE VIMO Technology Joint Stock Company

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Matt Choi's Certus Trading to Launch Two New Products for Scheduling Trades in 2018

TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2017 /CNW/ - Two new trading products designed to give small traders some of the market advantages of institutional and other larger-scale investors will be launched in 2018 by Matt Choi's Certus Trading , a trading education company that has been helping traders since 2011. Certus Trading's new "Profit Scheduler for Stocks" and "Profit Scheduler for Options" will help subscribers piggyback onto the buying and selling schedules of large investment professionals. Certus Trading's Matt Choi says such traders typically plan weeks or months in advance of buying or selling hares. Their buys are typically scheduled before the announcement of strong seasonal financial results. Conversely, they often sell before news is released of weak seasonal numbers.



"Their transactions are so substantial that they can move stocks and markets," Choi explains. "Through data mining, it is possible for retail traders to predict the trading schedules of these financial institutions and hedge funds. That's what our new Profit Scheduler products will share." Both Profit Schedulers will be published weekly. Profit Scheduler for Stocks will include one or two bullish stocks with a strong seasonal tendency to move up over a five to 45 day period. Each has a success rate from the same periods of previous years of at least 80 percent and returns of between 3 percent to 12 percent. One example is Hershey Company (HSY), whose stock has advanced 19 of the last 21 years between Feb. 13 and 23, presumably on seasonal strong global chocolate and related product sales leading up to Valentine's Day.

Certus Trading's Profit Scheduler for Options will include one or two options trades that are bullish and bearish. Long calls, long puts, debit spreads, and credit spreads will be the primary strategies used based on volatility and duration of the trade. Matt Choi says the preciseness of the schedules will allow the trades to be aggressive, with a target of 50 percent to 100 percent return on investment. "These products aren't for every kind of trader, but they do have advantages for certain situations, like part-time traders with limited time or investors in search of short-term, rule-based strategies," Matt Choi adds. ABOUT CERTUS TRADING: Certus Trading is a Toronto-based trading education company that helps traders and individual investors learn simple and practical strategies to profitably trade stocks, ETFs, currencies, options, commodities and financial futures. MONEY.CA

[email protected]

1-800-789-1011 SOURCE Certus Trading

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] TCS Recognized as a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Application Testing Services

NEW YORK and MUMBAI, India, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization has been positioned as a Leader for the fourth consecutive year in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Application Testing Services1. "In the Business 4.0 world, market shares are being gained or lost based on an enterprise's ability to seamlessly deliver a superior customer experience across all channels. To win, they need a partner they can rely on to continuously validate and assure software releases on scale in an Agile / DevOps model," said Jayashree Natarajan, Global Head, Quality Engineering and Transformation (QET), TCS. "We view this independent validation of our leadership in Application Testing as recognition of how our investments in Quality Engineering have resulted in significant differentiation and market success." TCS offers Quality Engineering services across the testing value cycle, including test consulting and advisory services, test services implementation, and managed services for test environment and test data management. Leveraging its process frameworks, methodologies and tools, TCS helps customers across various industries achieve first-time-right solution releases, quality improvements, and to deliver a superior customer experience. In addition to Centers of Excellence specializing in areas including automation, performance testing and test data management, TCS has invested significantly in building IP, assets, frameworks and platforms that deliver time to market advantages. Two such solutions are highlighted below: TCS' AI-powered solution, Intelligent 360 Degree Assurance provides actionable insights by identifying potential problems at different stages in the IT application life cycle, based on the context and the nature of activities. The solution continuously extracts data from different sources, cleans, processes and synthesizes the nformation to deliver analytics and insights. The platform uses AI to provide problem analysis and root-cause identification, optimization and prediction capabilities.









TCS' comprehensive CX Assurance solution provides a holistic CX Index by measuring applications' characteristics across different non-functional parameters for both mobile and non-mobile platforms. The solution also identifies the CX gaps and provides high-level recommendations to mitigate them. "Our customer-centric approach has resulted in next generation digital offerings and platforms based on the evolving needs of our customers. Our quality engineering expertise, IPs and accelerators across pervasive computing, cloud, AI and robotics, Agile and DevOps, along with investments in state-of-the art labs and innovation centers that are helping global clients accelerate their speed-to-market, assure superior customer experience and mitigate business risks," added Jayashree. 1 Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Application Testing Services, Worldwide by Susanne Matson and Gilbert van der Heiden, published on 21st November 2017

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS):

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT, BPS, infrastructure, engineering and assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 389,000 of the world's best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $17.6 billion for year ended March 31, 2017 and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com To stay up-to-date on TCS news in North America, follow @TCS_NA. For TCS global news, follow @TCS_News. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tcs-recognized-as-a-leader-in-gartners-magic-quadrant-for-application-testing-services-300574506.html SOURCE Tata Consultancy Services

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Community Brands Announces Xperience 2018 in Orlando

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Community Brands, a technology-driven company that delivers purpose-built solutions to the world's leading associations and nonprofits, today announced its first annual technology conference, Xperience 2018, which will take place May 69, 2018, at the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Fla. The conference is a four-day event planned exclusively for Community Brands customers, partners and consultants, as well as leaders from the association, nonprofit and government markets. Motivational keynotes, more than 140 educational sessionsmany of which qualify for CPE, CAE and CFRE creditsand one-on-one product support explore ways organizations can embrace digital transformation and make an impact on the world through technology to support their members, donors and missions. Community Brands Xperience 2018 is the first technology conference that unifies the annual user and technology conferences of 501 Auctions, Abila, Aptify, Configio, Digital Ignite, Gesture, GiveSmart, MIP, NimbleUser and YourMembership, all of which are now part of the Community Brands family since the company was formed in April 2017. "Our Community Brands team is highly anticipating hosting the best and brightest minds in the association and nonprofit sectors at Xperience18," said Jean-Paul (JP) Guilbault, president and CEO of Community Brands. "We're working diligently to create an unforgettable experience that will have leaders and their staff from both associations and nonprofits feeling inspired and empowered to reach their full potential." Xperience 2018 is designed as a unique opportunity for association and nonprofit professionals to surround themselves with like-minded people who are dealing with similar callenges and using similar tools every day. The chance to have one-to-one conversations with product leaders allows them to influence product roadmap decisions and gain a deeper understanding for what is coming and why, as well as learn from industry experts how to efficiently leverage technology to meet growing expectations of members, donors and other key stakeholders, while improving engagement and delivering value to their constituents.



Tracks

The content available at Xperience 2018 is a group effort of some of the best minds from all the former companies that have come together to form Community Brands. Sessions not only align with the technology associations and nonprofits are using, but also support the work and missions they are focused on, including the needs of developers, fundraisers, continuing education professionals, nonprofit accountants and association executives. Best practices, industry topics and leadership sessions include product-specific technology training with more than 140 sessions to choose from; professional development and career advancement with more than 60 accredited sessions applied towards CPE, CAE or CFRE certification; personalized education paths with content catered to executives, marketing, fundraising, membership, finance and technology professionals; and innovation and collaboration by directly partnering with product leaders to access resources to further advance technologies, organizations and missions. Additionally, there will be one-on-one support and consultation labs, hands-on training, developer deep-dives and small group meetups.

Registration Now Open

Registration is now open online, with a full conference pass price of $650 through January 31, 2018; the full conference pass increases to $900 on February 1, 2018. Additional pricing includes an Executive pass for $350, an Aptify/netFORUM Enterprise Developer Day pass for $300, and a Nimble AMS Training Day pass for $300. For more information about Xperience 2018, click here. About Community Brands

Community Brands is a technology-driven company that delivers purpose-built solutions to more than 13,000 of the world's leading associations, nonprofits and government entities to help them thrive and succeed in today's fast-paced, evolving world. The company's focus on accelerating innovation and bringing to market modern technology solutions helps power social impact, effect positive change and create opportunity. With Community Brands software and services, organizations better engage their members, donors and volunteers; raise more money; effectively manage revenue; and provide professional development and insights to power their missions. To learn more, visit www.communitybrands.com. Get social with Community Brands on Twitter and LinkedIn. Media Contact:

Michael Piotrowski

[email protected]

(727) 497-5975 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/community-brands-announces-xperience-2018-in-orlando-300574498.html SOURCE Community Brands

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017]

BooleBox, the Multi-Sided Secure Collaboration Platform, Launches a Winter Promo

MILAN, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Boole Server, Italian provider of security solutions purposely designed to meet the needs of both private users and the enterprise world, launches a Winter Promo to grant users total protection for their documents and e-mails, without giving up on accessibility (everywhere, anytime and from any device), collaboration and usability.

BooleBox is the complete and reliable enterprise collaboration platform. Thanks to user-friendly protection tools and military-level encryption (AES 256-bit), users can always have their data under control and safe from prying eyes. Unlike other typical public cloud services, BooleBox offers complete privacy, including the possibility to set and use Personal Keys to extra-protect information, while sharing and collaborating both on documents and e-mails.

This Winter Boole Server gives everyone the possibility of having BooleBox Cloud Individual at 50 percent off (monthly and annual license) and BooleBox Cloud Business at 23 percent off (annual licese).







BooleBox users will benefit from:

Protected storage



Safe and controlled sharing: Watermark, Anti-Capture, Expiry, Activity Logs



Advanced collaboration tools: Online Editor, Secure Chat, Annotations



AES 256-bit military level of encryption



Secure Synchronization



Desktop and Mobile App

Boole Server is a leading software vendor, which has been in the market for 10 years, with headquarters in Italy and sales offices in the United States and Germany. Boole Server's mission is to design and develop innovative software dedicated to the data protection of sensitive information with advanced capabilities.

Boole Server can count on over 180 premium customers  among them Giorgio Armani, Ferrero, Qatar Airways, Samba Bank, State of Jersey Police  and more than 100,000 worldwide users.

For more information, please visit www.boolebox.com.

Media Contact:

Boole Server Srl

Martina Casiraghi

Phone: +39 02 87383213

Email: [email protected]

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boolebox-the-multi-sided-secure-collaboration-platform-launches-a-winter-promo-300574335.html

SOURCE Boole Server
[December 21, 2017] Mark Farrah Associates Reports on Enrollment Trends in Employer-Group Medicare Advantage

In the latest analysis brief, Mark Farrah Associates (MFA (News - Alert)), www.markfarrah.com, provided insights about the current employer-group Medicare Advantage market and assessed membership trends over the past four years, by carrier and state. At December 1, 2017, total Medicare Advantage (MA) membership stood at 20.1 million, representing approximately 35% of the 60 million Americans eligible for Medicare. While 81% of the MA enrollees represent policies purchased by individuals, only 19% of total Medicare Advantage members originated through an employer-group health plan as of December 2017. However, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Advantage enrollment reports aggregated by Mark Farrah Associates in Medicare Business Online, this segment continues to show steady growth. As of December 1, 2017, MFA reported 3.7 million of total Medicare Advantage members were enrolled in employer-group Medicare Advantage plans, or Medicare Advantage employer-group waiver plans (MA-EGWPs). Group MA membership grew 15%, adding 488,000 more beneficiaries, year-over-year, and increased by 23% since 2014. The top five carriers covered 80% of all group Medicare Advantage enrollees. UnitedHealth maintained its leading position as the top group Mediare Advantage organization in the country, with over 1.15 million enrolled. Aetna and Kaiser Foundation Group trailed UnitedHealth's employer-group MA membership with 548K and 525K, respectively. Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan also command a sizeable stake in the Group Medicare market.



As employer-group Medicare Advantage continues to be a viable opportunity for employers, retirees and Medicare Advantage organizations, Mark Farrah Associates will continue to monitor enrollment and industry shifts in this competitive segment. To read the full text of "Membership Trends in Employer-Group Medicare Advantage," visit the Analysis Briefs library on Mark Farrah Associates' website. About Mark Farrah Associates (MFA)

Mark Farrah Associates (MFA) is a leading data aggregator and publisher providing health plan market data and analysis tools for the healthcare industry. MFA's Medicare Business Online (MBO) product simplifies the tracking of monthly Medicare Advantage and PDP enrollment by competitor. The Medicare Benefits Analyzer presents benefit copay comparisons across hundreds of benefit attributes by plan as reported in the Plan Finder on Medicare.gov. Med Supp Market Data offers enrollment and financial insights for companies interested in Medicare Supplement business. Our product portfolio also includes Health Coverage Portal (with Supplemental Health Care Exhibit data), County Health Coverage, and Health Plans USA. Healthcare Business Strategy is a FREE monthly brief that presents analysis of important issues and developments affecting healthcare business today. If you aren't on our email distribution list, click here to subscribe now. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005580/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Major Breakthroughs in Smart Devices and IoT from Taiwan to Be Unveiled at CES 2018

Kicking the new year off with a bang, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), Taiwan's foremost trade promotion organization, will provide a first look at brand new "smart" innovations from ITRI, AEON Motor, GEOSAT, Robotelf, and Taiwan Main Orthopedics at a January 8 press conference at CES (News - Alert) 2018. The companies will showcase products poised to make an impact in the global consumer electronics marketplace. These breakthrough products include an intelligent family robot, a futuristic drone, a smart motorcycle dashboard, smart surgical glasses and an intelligent vision system for robots. TAITRA is spotlighting some of Taiwan's most innovative companies and products at CES. These companies' innovations have the potential to dramatically improve people's work and everyday lives. They are also advancing their respective industries by reimagining how the Internet of Things can improve and transform our lives - not just in Taiwan, but globally. Taiwan has had a strong presence at CES over the years. The 2018 press conference highlights the Silicon Island's evolution in the consumer electronics industry, from its early prowess in hardware technology to creating some of today's most cutting-edge AI, robotics, and IoT innovations. They are exemplified by the five companies/organizations that will unveil the following at the Taiwan ICT Industry Innovations Press Conference at CES: 1. AEON Motor

Transforming the rider experience, the CROXERA Smart Dashboard is the future of UX in motorcycles. For the first time, the new dashboard provides riders with turn-by-turn display and voice navigation. It also offers IoT-related functions such as accident detection, reporting, and a full dynamic digital interface. 2. GEOSAT

Weighing under five pounds, the GEOSAT Pterosaur is a portable all-wing drone that can take off by hand-throwing or catapult, depending on terrain, wind, and operation conditions, and the only one with a parachute to ensure a safe landing. It's equipped with an auto-pilot flight control computer and can carry a 24 million-pixel camera, infrared camera, or multi-spectral sensor making it ideal for aerial photography, precision agriculture, and 3D modeling for buildings and environmental monitoring. It offers best in class air time and coverage up to 70 minutes and up to 1800 hectares in a single sortie. 3. Robotelf Technologies

A CES 2018 Innovations Award winner, Robotelf is a cute next-generation AI robot with a warm personality and rich expressions. It talks like a friend as it patrols your home, plays with kids, and makes life easier for elders. Its advanced voice detection and facial recognition technology transcends all other robotic interactions. Its patented technology is the first to allow the head to swivel 90 degrees vertically, making it easy to operate while standing. And it's the only family robot to have dual cameras-one in front and one in back called Elf Eye, which doubles as a webcam, so you won't have to worry about anything when you're away from home. 4 Taiwan Main Orthopedics





5. ITRI

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (News - Alert) (ITRI), one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions, will showcase at CES 2018 AI-related solutions for smart homes and cities, such as a companion robot, portable pesticide residue detector, sleep monitor, intelligent battery system, and cloud-based video analytics for city surveillance. Their Intelligent Vision System (IVS) for companion robots and handheld pesticide residue detector are both CES 2018 Innovation Awards winners.

TAITRA's Taiwan ICT Industry Innovations Press Conference On January 8th, TAITRA will be hosting the press conference at the Hotel Encore Tower Suites in Las Vegas at 4pm. The event will provide early access to these innovative companies' spokespeople and their products, as well as the opportunity to hear from senior officials from TAITRA and the Taiwan government. Media representatives are encouraged to register in advance or to request for one-on-one media interviews here. Follow us on Facebook or on Twitter. Information about Taiwan Excellence / Bureau of Foreign Trade, MOEA and TAITRA: TAIWAN EXCELLENCE The symbol of Taiwan Excellence was established in 1992 by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs, and subsequently the Taiwan Excellence Selection was launched the following year. The selection is based on the distinct criteria of R&D, quality, design, and marketing. Products that have been selected for the Taiwan Excellence Awards would serve as examples of the domestic industries and be promoted by the government in the international market in an effort to shape the creative image for Taiwanese businesses. This year marks the 26th selection, making the symbol of Taiwan Excellence a prestigious brand for enterprises in Taiwan to strive and be recognized by, and is highly reputed throughout the world. Please visit www.taiwanexcellence.org for more information. Sponsored by: Bureau of Foreign Trade, MOEA The Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), under The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) of Taiwan, is responsible for implementing policies and regulations governing foreign trade, economic cooperation, and foreign investments. Established in January 1969, BOFT's role and position have undergone ongoing adjustments to meet the needs of a shifting international economic and trade environment. BOFT has been guiding and working with the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) in numerous trade promotion projects and activities both internationally and domestically. Having worked closely with TAITRA for many decades, BOFT continues to entrust TAITRA with various critical government projects relating to trade and investments, promoting Taiwan on every international aspect. Organized by: Taiwan External Trade Development Council Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) is the foremost non-profit, semi-governmental trade promotion organization in Taiwan. Founded in 1970 to help promote foreign trade, TAITRA is jointly sponsored by the government, industry associations, and several commercial organizations. TAITRA assists Taiwanese businesses in strengthening their international competitiveness and in dealing with the challenges they face in foreign markets. TAITRA boasts a well-coordinated trade promotion and information network consisting of over 1,200 trained specialists stationed throughout its Taipei headquarters and 60 branches worldwide. Together with its sister organizations, the Taiwan Trade Center (TTC) and Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), TAITRA has created a wealth of trade opportunities through effective promotion strategies. www.taitra.org.tw View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005142/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[December 21, 2017] Mission Hospital and CHOC Children's at Mission Hospital Receive Verification as a Level II Trauma Center for Adult and Pediatric Trauma Services

Mission Hospital and CHOC Children's at Mission Hospital (CHOC Mission) announced today that its regional trauma center has met the rigorous national requirements set by the American College of Surgeons (ACS (News - Alert)) as a verified Level II Trauma Center, for both adults and pediatrics. It is the only verified level two trauma center in South Orange County. "For more than 30 years, Mission Hospital's trauma center has addressed South Orange (News - Alert) County's most critical cases by treating life-threatening injuries around-the-clock," said Almaas Shaikh, MD, trauma medical director at Mission Hospital. "The Trauma Level II verification for pediatric services now extends the lifesaving care we provide for adults as well as our community's youngest members through our CHOC Children's partnership." The ACS hospital verification program promotes the development of trauma centers to provide the highest quality of care to meet all injured patients' needs. Level II trauma centers offer services ranging from neurosurgery and emergency medicine to radiology and critical care. A Level II trauma verification criterion requires that a hospital meets optimal care of injured patients. "Our dedicated pediatric and adult trauma teams are uniquely trained to care for those who need immediate and exemplary care," said Tarek Salaway, chief executive of Mission Hospital. "The ACS verifications recognize our commitment to treating trauma both in trauma care as well as preventing trauma from occurring through community programs and services." "We are privileged to play a role in caring for children and families affected by trauma. Pediatric patients have unique needs, very different from adults, which our physicians and staff are distinctly qualified to address. Our goal is to give children and teens the happiest and healthiest of lives," said Marcia Folli, administrator and chief nursing officer, CHOC Mission, a 54-bed children's hospital located on the fifth floor of Mission Hospital and part of CHOC Children's pediatric healthcare system. Mission Hospital treats bout 2,500 traumas each year. Its staff of physicians, nurses and other caregivers focus on prevention and education community partnerships throughout south Orange County, while also providing resuscitation, surgery, critical intensive care and a robust rehabilitation program.



For additional information about Mission Hospital's and CHOC Mission's pediatric and adult trauma center, visit www.mission4health.com/trauma or www.choc.org/mission. About Mission Hospital

Mission Hospital is a state-of-the art, 552-bed acute care regional medical center in Mission Viejo, California. As one of the busiest designated adult and pediatric Level II Trauma Centers in the state of California, Mission Hospital provides a full range of specialty health care services with highly skilled teams treating a multitude of complex conditions. Services include a full range of expertise in cardiovascular, neuroscience and spine, orthopedics, cancer care, women's services, mental health and wellness, and a variety of other specialty services. Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach (MHLB) provides South Orange County coastal communities with 24-hour emergency and intensive care as well as medical-surgical/telemetry services, orthopedics, general and GI surgery. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission and designated as a Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center for nursing excellence, Mission Hospital is highly recognized for its high quality of care, evidenced through various health care quality benchmarks. Mission Hospital is part of St. Joseph Health, a not-for-profit provider of integrated health care. Together, we work to improve the quality of life in the communities it serves in the tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. For more information, visit www.mission4health.com. About CHOC Children's at Mission Hospital CHOC Mission, part of CHOC Children's regional healthcare system, is a 54-bed children's hospital located on the fifth floor of Mission Hospital. Offering the only dedicated pediatric health care facility for families in south Orange County, CHOC Mission has a medical/surgical unit, pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, a state-of-the-art epilepsy monitoring unit, and a sleep center accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Additional services include child life programs, Ronald McDonald Family Room and Sleep Rooms, and outpatient specialty care. For more information, visit www.choc.org/mission. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005986/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

Paraguays Chamber of Deputies has adopted a declaration condemning the massacre committed in Khojaly town of Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in 1992, the Parliament informed on December 21.

The document reads that the Khojaly massacre was the biggest attack civilians suffered during hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The ethnic massacre took lives of 613 Azerbaijanis, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly, while 1,275 Khojaly residents were taken hostage and the fate of 150 of them remains unknown.

Moreover, 487 residents of Khojaly, including 76 children, were left disabled, 130 children lost one parent and 26 lost both of them. The declaration notes that this fact is documented by various agencies of Azerbaijan and independent sources.

The Paraguayan MPs note in the declaration that many countries condemned this crime against humanity and the genocide committed by the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijani civilians as well as the military occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia. The countries expressed their respect for Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty, and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders.

The document also reads that four resolutions of the UN Security Council adopted in 1993 urge to stop the occupation, to focus on the victims and a dialogue as a way to resolve the conflict that arose due to the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia.

The Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay condemned the genocide in Khojaly and expressed solidarity with Azerbaijani people in commemoration of the victims of this crime against humanity.

Besides Paraguay, the parliaments of many countries, including Pakistan, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Jordan, Israel, Sudan, Honduras, Djibouti as well as the legislative bodies of 20 states of the U.S., have adopted resolutions to recognize this tragic crime as a genocide.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, 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.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.
















The park will be renamed in honor of the former East High principal. Mayor Paul Soglin will declare April 4 Milton McPike Day.
Craig Glazer: Why Do American Jews Celebrate Christmas?

Oh boy, Jews in America even buy Christmas trees, decorate and of course get their family gifts that are only open Xmas morning! That's a fact. No not all Jews but too many too count for sure. Is it because they believe in Jesus as the son of God? No. Then why. The Jews in our country believe in America, thats why. Christmas, like Thanksgiving is an American Holiday thats hard to miss right. The great food, the fun, the lights, the tv specials, the families getting together. What happened to Hanukkah? Of course many Jewish families still do the seven nights of that holiday which falls on or near Xmas, yep seven nights of gifts, what a hassle. Isn't one big day BETTER?As a kid and being a baby boomer, my older relatives would all stop by our house each night of Hanukkah and give us three boys gifts. The gifts were usually somewhat pedestrian, underwear, a sweater, a shirt, maybe a few bucks, no biggies for the most part. As time marched on our families started gathering on Christmas Day for that one big gift and nice meal, instead of all the smaller ones. Yep I sure liked getting a bike instead of a tie, who wouldn't. More important we felt left out of the big day. It's become such an American Holiday with the parades and in KC the Plaza and so much more. How about that great Christmas music played non stop. Hey we got brainwashed. Man were us kids jealous of the Christian kids who got to do the Xmas thing and we didn't. Not only all that but the Christmas vacation from school was such a huge deal, we wanted to belong. You sure can't miss all those advertising minutes on the tube or at stores and online, right.For many Christians its still a very religious holiday that's true, but for Jews who want to participate its just so American and Jews love America. Hey I married a non Jewish girl years back and we even had a Christmas tree, it looked so nice and did lift your spirits.Many Christians celebrate Yom Kippur, a high Jewish holiday. Why? That one is more for business reasons. That is the Jewish High Holiday and most Jews make the trip to the synagogue at least on that day. If you live in Hollywood or New York you will notice tons of Christians at the services, why business respect. Yes all the biggies from the Jewish business world are there from film makers to billionaire bankers and more, good idea to rub shoulders and see them afterwords at the lunch and dinner parties.Ah its All-American. So Jewish, Christian, or whatever you were born to be or became...############
Airbnb owners had a profitable year in both Kansas and Missouri, with St. Louis and Kansas City hosts at the top of the list, according to data released by the company. Kansas City had 75,240 guest arrivals, bringing in $7.7 million for Kansas City hosts.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Every month at Kansas City International Airport, about 500 pounds of prohibited carry-on items are surrendered by passengers. "Some hidden things. We've got a hairbrush that has a little shiv on the inside," Mark Howell, a TSA spokesperson said while conducting a demonstration Wednesday.
The Argument In Motion: Why Mental Illness Is Not A Simple Answer To Understanding Murder Dairian Stanley's ex-girlfriend was warned before she met up with him that Sunday morning in September 2016. Stanley had been missing for two days, had been talking "crazy stuff" and threatening to kill himself, his mother told her. When the ex-girlfriend found him at a BP gas station on Van Brunt Boulevard, Stanley demanded to know who she had been with.

It seems like public radio is attempting to do a service with this sketchy report about the mental health issues confronting a murder suspect. This angle on the story is important given thatbut they always get a pass because of mental health issues as well.Strangely, maybe the secret sauce here is maybe getting across the message that even head cases are culpable for their actions given that blaming everyone else (and society) doesn't seem to be helping . . . And wishing for "gun control" that's never gonna happen or make a dent on the massive American consumer armory is a bit delusional as well.
In 2016, there was a domestic dispute where a woman threw a vacuum cleaner at or near her husband. The case was tried on Tuesday, and several community advocates want to know why.
A female manager at the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority said Johnson County Commissioner Steve Klika grabbed her by the face and shook her head violently last summer in what she told the Star was "a domineering and egregious abuse of power."
Kansas City Gunfire Rings Out Overnight

Police investigating shooting at 113th Terrace, Ruskin Way Police are investigating a shooting at 113th Terrace and Ruskin Way. Police dispatch says a suspect is in custody. The victim as shot twice and suffered serious injuries, but is in stable condition. Students at the school are currently on winter break. Copyright 2017 KCTV (Meredith Corp.) All rights reserved.

Local Tribute After Tragedy

Community gathers to remember victim of apparent murder-suicide KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Community members and friends of Mikayla Norris gathered for a prayer service on Wednesday evening to remember the 18-year-old recently killed in an apparent murder-suicide. Norris was last seen around 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 17, at her job at Jack Stack BBQ at 95th and Metcalf in Overland Park.

Kansas City Hard Times For Christmas

Hundreds of metro AT&T employees laid off just before Christmas KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- AT&T has announced layoff's affecting people in five states, including Missouri. Just days before Christmas, hundreds of people in the metro found out they will be out of jobs come Jan. 4. On Dec. 16, the company announced a surplus affecting an estimated 600 employees in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

Overturning Rigged Case

Could Bryan Sheppard's lawsuit provide answers about six KC firefighter deaths? Too many questions were never answered about the investigation into the 1988 arson and explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters. A new lawsuit filed by defendant Bryan Sheppard, who served nearly 22 years in prison, could compel the Department of Justice to finally release the records in the case.

Calling Kansas City Cold Front

Rain possible early Thursday, cold front rolls in before Friday A small burst of snow is possible late Saturday.

We start this #TBT with tribute to the last stand of Brit lad mags hotties before the advent of Instagram and then we move forward to some of the top Kansas City MSM links right now. Checkit:is the song of the day and this is thefor right now . . .
Jackson County Executive vetoes unlawful ordinance

The County engaged in outside legal counsel to determine whether the ordinance was lawful. They concluded that it is not, and even if adopted, would be void. Their independent analysis cited five reasons why the ordinance is not lawful.





As Ive said before, every decision I make in this position will be based on whats right. Let me be clear, I will oppose any unlawful actions by this Legislature. My actions today protect the integrity of the charter and the rights of the people, said Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. As always, I am remain committed to working with all of our partners, including the Legislature, Prosecutor, Drug Commission and local law enforcement to ensure COMBAT continues to have a positive impact on our community.

Just now, Jackson County Executive Frank White directs tough talk towards the Legislature amid a struggle to maintain the authority of his office against what his supporters claim are politically motivated local government encroachment efforts.There has been an important battle over thefor months thatand now delves into legal concerns over the transfer of power.Remember,isn't just a run-of-the-mill anti-violence group - It's a multi-million-dollar taxpayer subsidized effort that cooperates with law enforcement throughout the metro and is very much akin to its own division of County government.Now, check the latest word on this move and the County Exec calling out the actions of his colleagues:KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. has issued a veto of Ordinance 5061, his third veto this year.On December 11, the Jackson County Legislature voted in favor of Ordinance 5061, which would transfer authority for the Countys COMBAT tax from the County Executive to the Jackson County Prosecutor.###And so . . .While it is likely that the Legislature will overturn the veto, animpasse persists at the Courthouse as we move closer to an election year.Developing . . .
The proposal would allow sidewalks in Westport to be barricaded between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends and for special festivals. To get in, people would have to pass through a metal detector . . . There were 16 gun-related weapons offenses in the district in 2016, according to statistics from the Westport Regional Business League. Through Oct. 31 this year, there were 65. Police say majority of those incidents occurred on weekends at about the time bars close. Wednesday's 4-2 vote came during a joint meeting of the council's planning, zoning and economic development committee and the neighborhoods committee. The ordinance will go before the full council for a discussion before a vote is taken."

A move that our blog community has debated for months is now getting closer to reality.Here's the latest:Deets:Should Kansas City privatize party district streets???You decide . . .
Tensions between the two countries, Greece and Turkey, have been going on for years but their cooperation has also been extensive enabling tourism to benefit significantly and reach very high levels lately

Either we find a solution with diplomacy, we take it to the International Court, or we send an army to take back the Greek islands, noted Turkeys Foreign Minister Melvut Cavusoglu, during an address to the Turkish Parliament.

Greek media has reported there was strong confrontation in Turkish parliament between the ruling party (AKP), and the main opposition regarding the issue of certain Greek islands in the Aegean, which Turkey claims as its own.

Referring to the isle of Imia, in the Dodecanese region, Cavusoglu claimed it is a national issue and that AKP is not responsible for what happened in 1996, because they were not in government at the time. The Turkish Minister claims Imia was occupied by the Greeks.

We continue our diplomatic talks with Greece. If we do not agree, Parliament will decide on the alternatives and we will apply them. But this is a national policy. This is not an issue that will be discussed in the corridors. We established a team of military personnel at the Ministry of National Defence. We discussed the problem and the steps we can take. Is it better to reduce tension or increase it? Cavusoglu wondered.

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: greekcitytimes.com
Tensions between the two communities , Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, have been going on for years but their cooperation has also been extensive enabling tourism on the island to thrive

Nicosia has announced it is ready to address Ankara's design's in its Exclusive Economic Zone, in a calm, serious and effective manner.

"We are ready to face Turkey`s threats and plans for illegal drilling in Cyprus` Exclusive Economic Zone, as we have done so far, in an effective and cool manner," Deputy Government Spokesman Victoras Papadopoulos has noted, invited to comment on the fact that Turkey is moving ahead with its plans in Block 6 of Cyprus EEZ and has already issued an illegitimate Navtex.

Speaking on Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting, he pointed out that the government will exercise its sovereign rights as it has done to date, and at the same time it will continue its effective policy.

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: CNA
Egypt has announced plans to set up two monorail projects - a 52-km-long line linking the new administrative capital with East Cairo and downtown and a 35-km-network connecting Sixth of October City with Giza, said a report.



The proposed monorail project, which will have 27 trains, will be able to transport around 48,000 passengers per hour in each direction, with a journey time of 35 minutes, reported Daily News Egypt, citing a senior minister.



"The first phase will have 108 railroad cars that can transport 24,000 passengers at speeds of up to 80 kilometres per hour," remarked Mostafa Madbouly, the Minister of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Communities.



He called upon both international and local companies to co-ordinate with the government and asked them to prepare engineering designs, finance, procurement, construction, operation, and maintenance proposals for the monorail project before January 15 next year.



The project will accelerate the development of the new administrative capital and will help meet passenger demand according to current and future development plans for the years 2020, 2030, and 2050, stated Madbouly, who is also the acting Prime Minister.



According to him, the project will be completed in three years. Once the monorail starts operating in 2020, it would be able to transport 250,000 passengers daily, he added.
The global food market is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5 per cent from 2015 to 2020, and the UAE food and beverage market alone is anticipated to reach a valuation of Dh82 billion ($22 billion) by the end of the decade, according to Euromonitor International.



The 2018 edition of Gulfood, the worlds largest annual food and beverage trade event and the first major international food industry trade show of the year, will further strengthen the UAEs lead role in setting the global food agenda, according to the exhibition organisers, Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC).



Gulfood 2018 is a trade event open strictly to business and trade visitors. The show will take place from February 18 to 22.



Citing the long-established reputation of Gulfood as a key driver in fostering innovation across the local, regional and global food and beverage supply chain, DWTC officials revealed on-site sales generated by 95,000-plus buyers and visitors at Gulfood 2018 - which runs from February 18 to 22 - will contribute heavily to a global food market expected to generate revenues of $3.03 trillion by 2020, according to Research and Markets, a Dublin-based market research company.



Trixie LohMirmand, senior vice president, exhibitions and events, DWTC, said: In attracting the Middle Easts largest trade industry audience, generating huge transactional volumes every year on the show floor, and setting global foodstuff commodity prices, Gulfood is the regions premier food and beverage industry platform  it underlines Dubais leading role in the global food sector.



With regional investment in food production on the rise, international manufacturers see the Middle East as a lucrative market for their products. In this dynamic climate, Gulfood continues to empower the global food and beverage community as an unmatched trading and knowledge platform that offers unrivalled market overviews and insights to industry professionals, she added.



The bright forecast for Gulfood 2018 follows hundreds of major deals struck and initiatives launched at this years event, including US Beef regaining eligibility to ship beef products to Saudi Arabia, a $31 million market.



US exhibitors at the show reported on-site sales of $85.5 million with forecasts of a further $722 million in direct sales as a result of their participation, according to the US Department of Agricultures (USDA) Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS).



The FAS also recruited 47 potential food and beverage suppliers - with a network spanning Asia, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East - to service US exporters at Gulfood 2017.



In the UAE, Dubai-based gourmet snacks specialist Hunter Foods signed a lucrative deal with Chinese importers, while the Emirates Authority for Standardisation & Meteorology (ESMA) hosted the pioneering Global Halal Industry Platform.



Following a successful debut in 2017, Gulfood 2018 will continue its sectorised approach to further increase accessibility and trading potential. Tens of thousands of finished food and beverages will be featured in halls dedicated to eight of the biggest commodity trading sectors: beverages; dairy; fats and oils; health, wellness and free-from; pulses, grains and cereals; meat and poultry; power brands and world food.



With the pulses, grains and cereals and fats and oils sectors already close to being sold-out amid unprecedented demand, the meat and poultry sector is also tracking strong sales two months before the show.



Philip Seng, president and CEO, US Meat Export Federation (USMEF), said: For US red meat exporters, Gulfood has a well-established reputation as the premier marketing event in the Gulf region.



Over the years, Gulfoods footprint has expanded considerably and its now a key venue for exporters looking to grow their business in emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Europe, he said.



New to the 2018 event is the Gulfood Discover Zone, where exhibitors will be able to apply for recently-launched products to be showcased in an exclusive and interactive lounge.



The Gulfood Discover Zone will also feature a dedicated area for companies that have never conducted business in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region before and are using Gulfood as a market-entry opportunity.



Finalists for the Gulfood Innovation Awards, which also return in 2018, will also be showcased in the Gulfood Discover Zone.



Another new feature is the Gulfood Start-up Competition, which is designed to foster further innovation in the food and beverage supply chain. Open to aspiring food industry professionals or students, the competition will reward sustainable development and socially-impactful ideas that are either disrupting the old ways of doing business, or promoting healthier and environmentally-correct practices.



LohMirmand added: Gulfood start-up promises to be the region's most influential innovation enabler for the next generation of food industry pioneers.



The competition will connect impassioned food technology entrepreneurs from across the Middle East with the regions largest food technology and product buyers, she said.



With more than 5,000-plus exhibitors expected at the 23rd edition of the event, Gulfood 2018 will feature more than 120 national pavilions including first-time participants from as far afield as Estonia, Serbia and Slovakia.



The show will also see hundreds of international heads of state, ministers, government officials and scores of national trade associations eager to ink lucrative bi-lateral trade agreements among tens of thousands of anticipated visitors.



Gulfood 2018 will also see the return of perennial features including Halal World Food, the worlds largest annual Halal food sourcing trade show; the annual Emirates Culinary Guild International Salon Culinaire; the worlds largest single-entry chef competition; and the Gulfood Innovation Awards, which recognise best-in-class excellence and innovation across the regions food and drink industry, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Winter is a time when visitors can experience Turkey like most travellers never do as the country offers a different kind of charm, apart form the obvious off-season benefits.

Travellers can witness the mountains and countryside transform into a winter wonderland. One can visit Turkeys beautiful lakes that freeze over to form amazing sites. Admire the country's ancient ruins and archeological sites, minus the crowds. And enjoy Istanbuls winter festivals and Christmas joy from a unique winter perspective, says the Turkish Cultural and Tourism Office in Dubai.

With moderate Mediterranean weather, Turkeys average temperature in December ranges between 8 and 12 degrees centigrade on the low side, and a conformable 16 to 18 degrees centigrade on the higher side. Its a perfect weather to investigate Istanbuls historical and Unesco world heritage buildings located in the Sultanahmet district bursting with colour and art, followed by shopping at the Grand Bazaar.

Visiting the city during the New Year is an extra bonus. Istanbul hosts huge fireworks displays that reflect stunning views reflected by the waters of the Bosphorus. With the city usually covered with a blanket of white snow, the streets come alive with parties, Istanbul style, that spread across neighborhoods and well into the night.

Venturing outside Istanbul during is best suited for travellers who want to visit Turkeys most ancient Greco-Roman sites on the Mediterranean without the vast loud crowds of tourists witnessed in the summertime. In Antalya, where the climate is warmer than other regions in Turkey, tourists can enjoy its city center which remains active and vibrant with modern shopping malls and renowned nightlife.

As Turkeys most visited historical site, Ephesus magnificent old theater with a capacity of over 25,000 people, can be enjoyed and appreciated to the maximum in December. Get an almost exclusive tour of the Celsus library that in ancient times held over 12,000 scrolls and manuscripts. Finally, end your historical visit by viewing the amazing mosaics of the Roman terraced houses, and the Byzantine homes built for the rich and powerful governors of the time.

Turkey has had as many as a dozen ski resorts that drift down beautifully snow-covered mountains. With more than 100 peaks that reach above 3,000 m, the most famous ski resort, of which there are more than a dozen in Turkey, one of the most popular is located south of the Sea of Marmara, in the alpine village of Uludag. With an elevation of over 6,500 ft, Uludagin Bursa is the perfect place to combine an active lifestyle, with a relaxed and spiritual feeling of well-being.

And finally, for a genuinely authentic Christmas flavour, winter travellers can venture to visit the place where St. Nicholas lived and preached in the ancient village of Myra, now known as Demre. On St. Nicolas Feast Day, which happens on December 6th every year, Greek Orthodox faithful crowd Demres ancient basilica to pay tribute to the global icon. - TradeArabia News Service
ABTA, the UKs largest travel association, estimates that over 4.5 million passengers are heading abroad over the Christmas and New Year period (December 18  January 2), with the peak travel day predicted to be December 22, and Christmas Day expected to be the quietest day for travel.

ABTA is advising customers to leave extra time to get to the airports as the roads will be extremely busy, and to check in advance for any travel restrictions if using public transport.

Holidaymakers are either heading off for some much-needed winter sun or to colder climes to enjoy the snow. Winter sun lovers are heading short haul to the Canary Islands, Antalya in Turkey and Hurghada in Egypt, long haul to Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

France, Italy and Austria are the most popular destinations for those looking for a traditional experience in a snowy destination, with Lapland and Iceland also selling well this year.

Popular New Years Eve breaks include the cities of, New York, Amsterdam, Geneva, Dublin, Barcelona and Budapest and domestically London and Edinburgh lead the way.

Millions of people are leaving the UK through the major airports, all of which are reporting high numbers. Over a million are departing from Gatwick, 525,000 from Stansted, 330,000 from Luton, in addition around 480,000 are leaving from Manchester. Heathrow is also anticipated to be very busy with substantial passenger numbers in line with other airports.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers are leaving the UK from Scottish airports, with 226,000 travelling through Edinburgh alone, as well as large numbers leaving from other regional airports.

A significant number of people are also travelling across the English Channel by ferry or through the Channel Tunnel, with hundreds of thousands heading off on the Eurostar who report their busiest days will be December 22, 27 and 29.

Many are taking the opportunity to take a break in the UK, staying in a country cottage or a seaside resort, and city breaks in London and York have also sold well.

Mark Tanzer, ABTA Chief Executive, said: Christmas and New Year are always a very busy time for the travel industry with people heading off for winter sun or guaranteed snow for a truly authentic Christmas experience. For many people the festive period is a really busy time of year, going away for Christmas or New Year gives families and friends time to relax, safe in the knowledge that someone else is doing the hard work for them. The weather in the UK looks set to be mild over the holiday period, which should help avoid travel disruption, but the roads will be exceptionally busy so customers should allow extra time to get to their departure port and check for line closures and engineering work if using public transport. - TradeArabia News Service
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
You can opt out of certain types of cookies (e.g. those used in social media sharing) by choosing "I do not accept". The website will still largely function well, but with slightly less functionality in places. To manage your cookie preferences in future, visit the "Cookie Statement" link at the bottom of any page.
Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa was declared as Greeces Best Resort Spa for 2017 by the prestigious global awards program World Spa Awards, which stands as the hallmark of excellence in the tourism, wellbeing and spa sector, during the glamorous awards ceremony held this year, 10th of December, in Vietnam.



(TRAVPR.COM) GREECE - December 21st, 2017 - The voting procedure, in which spa and wellness professionals - senior executives, travel buyers, tour operators, agents and media - and consumers around the world participated was conducted until the end of September. The results rewarded the leaders of the industry for the high-quality services and the notable facilities that they offer.

Although the newly built Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa operates only for the second year, it has already achieved to be differentiated and meet the quality standards of an established worldwide awards program.

At the state-of-the-art Spa facilities of the hotel, exclusive and complete wellness services and therapies inspired by Greek concepts and products are offered, granting a unique sense of wellbeing and total recovering.

This award belongs to the people at the front line of Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa, who are dedicated in offering memorable experiences to our guests, following our philosophy of personalized hospitality. For us, each one of our guests is unique and we do our best in order to repay them to the outmost level for the choice of their confidence., Mr. Andreas Metaxas, the CEO of the Metaxas Group of Companies, stated after receiving the award during the press interview.

About Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa:

The newly built Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa which opened its doors in 2016, is the newest addition to the portfolio of Metaxas Group of Companies, which has been operating in tourism sector since 1975. Located in a privileged setting at the edge of Oia in Santorini Island, Santo Maris Oia offers seclusion and direct views to the renowned sunset of Oia. It is comprised by 44 suites & villas and among its facilities four outdoor swimming pools, the 300 sq.m. Spa with indoor swimming pool and the Alios Ilios fine restaurant is included.

About the World Spa Awards:

Launched by the World Travel Awards, established itself in 1993 and being today recognized globally as the ultimate benchmark of industry excellence, World Spa Awards was inaugurated in 2015 to drive up standards within spa tourism by rewarding organizations that are leaders in the field. The World Spa Awards was developed in reaction to overwhelming demand from the spa industry for a program that was fair and transparent.

On the below link please find high-resolution pictures from the award ceremony and the Spa of Santo Maris Oia Luxury Suites & Spa: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iekbm26hc7ftf5y/AACe0TF4pD58UKACSNUiNOZBa?dl=0

###
CARIBBEAN HOTELS REPORTING STRONG HOLIDAY SEASON

MIAMI (December 21, 2017) - Holiday travelers are escaping to the Caribbean, with hotels in most destinations not impacted by this year's hurricanes reporting occupancies in excess of 90 percent over the holiday season.

"More than 70 percent of the Caribbean was not impacted by hurricanes Irma and Maria and travelers are discovering the incredible diversity of destinations and offerings throughout the region, as they explore its many vacation options," stated Frank Comito, CEO and Director General of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA).

CHTA canvassed a number of the region's destinations this week to see how they are faring for the holidays and into the first quarter of 2018. The results are encouraging, according to Comito, who reports that a sampling of the region's 32 holiday destinations all pointed to a surge in holiday bookings and most indicated that forward bookings into the first quarter of 2018 are equaling or surpassing 2017.

Several destinations reported that a number of their hotels anticipate being sold out over the Christmas and New Year's period. Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Cancun, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and The Bahamas all reported strong bookings, and Comito expects that most of the other destinations which were unaffected by the storms are experiencing similar booking levels.

Turks and Caicos Islands, which was one of the first hurricane-impacted destinations to rebound, fully recovering and opening within weeks following the storms, is reporting occupancies in excess of 90 percent over the holidays and strong first quarter bookings.

Puerto Rico announced last week that it is open for business, with many of the hotels in the popular coastal stretch in and around San Juan up and running and thousands of restaurants now operating.

CHTA will be bringing Caribbean Travel Marketplace, the region's largest B2B marketing event, to Puerto Rico from January 30 to February 1, 2018.

Comito advised prospective travelers that there is still an opportunity to book a last minute quick escape to the region over the holidays, and into the first quarter. Travelers are encouraged to visit www.caribbeantravelupdate.com for information about those destinations and hotels which are welcoming visitors.

"Now is a perfect time to visit and support the Caribbean and to see for yourselves how the resilience of our people offers travelers from around the world an exceptional experience - especially during this winter season and beyond," said Comito.
Bathinda, December 21

A workshop on Measles and Rubella Vaccine Preventable Disease Case-Based Surveillance was held at GNM Training School today. Civil Surgeon Dr HN Singh presided over the workshop.

The Civil Surgeon a special campaign would be run in April 2018 wherein children aged nine months to 15 years would be vaccinated for measles and rubella diseases.

He added that measles was a viral disease that is the cause of death in kids.

Similarly, rubella is also a viral disease. If an expecting mother suffers from rubella fever in first trimester of pregnancy, the child may suffer from congenital problems.

The government will run a special campaign to counter these diseases by administering one common MR vaccine for both measles and rubella.

He added that earlier, whenever five or more than five cases of measles and rubella were reported from a place, the Health Department used to start surveillance.

Now, even a single case would be sent to World Health Organisation (WHO) approved laboratory for test and simultaneously efforts are be made in conducting surveillance and controlling the spread of disease.

He added that the target was to make India free from measles by 2020 and control rubella completely.

District immunisation officer Dr Kundan Kumar Pal said if a pregnant woman contracts rubella in the first trimester, her baby might suffer from congenital brain problem, congenital cataract and heart problems.

Dr Gagan Sharma, NSPS, Dr Harijot Bhathal and Dr Ravikant also gave information about the survey.  TNS
Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21

The MC today removed an illegal water connection of a flat allotted to Punjab Congress legislator Raj Kumar Verka at the MLA Hostel in Sector 3 here.

The MC action came during a major crackdown against illegal connections and defaulters of water bills. Another illegal water connection of a factory in Maloya was also cut. Besides, a civic body team removed the water connection of a building in Sector 29 for non-payment of dues of Rs 1 lakh.

The MC team, under the guidance of Executive Engineer Suresh Kumar Gill, reached Verkas flat at around 11 am. While the legislator was not present during the drive, a person residing there, Paramjit, failed to show the document pertaining to the water connection. While he showed the flat allotment letter, he feigned ignorance about the connection saying the MLA was yet to shift there.

When contacted, MLA Raj Kumar Verka said he was not aware of the water connection. He said though he was allotted the flat in April, he was yet to take its possession. The MLA said he was told by an official of the department concerned that the estimate of renovation had been prepared and the work would begin soon. Verka said he never visited the flat but some of items taken from his Delhi house were kept in a room of the flat.

The MC team also snapped the water connection of another flat, which was vacant.

Earlier, the team had raided a factory on the outskirts of Maloya and found an illegal water connection.

Gill said a penalty would be imposed on the factory owner.

Action against defaulters was taken as per the provisions of the Chandigarh Water Supply Bylaws 2011.

Sources said the water bill defaulters owe Rs 16 crore to the MC. Majority of the defaulters are in villages and colonies like Bapu Dham, Mauli Jagran, Ram Darbar, Dadu Majra, Palsora and Maloya.

The government departments of Haryana, Punjab and UT also owe water bills.

The MC has been facing the heat for not being able to recover dues. During a meeting recently, MC Commissioner Jitender Yadav had asked officials to intensify the drive against defaulters.

Recently, an MC team had snapped more than 200 water connections, including the one given to the house of BJP councillor Jagtar Singh Jagga, in Govind Pura area of Mani Majra. The authorities restored the connections after a protest by local residents.

Jagga said the MC had not provided them legal connections. He said the Administration had denotified the area in 2009 and water lines were laid in 2014 but the authorities failed to give water connection to them despite their requests.

Gill said they had snapped the connections as water was being used for free. He said all residents were asked to obtain temporary connections soon. If they failed to do so, action would be taken as per law.

Jagga said he would raise the issue in the House meeting.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 21

Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) announced protest against the Government of Indias decision to merge Punjab and Sind Bank with Bank of Baroda. DSGMC president Manjit Singh GK has arranged an assembly of well-informed persons to discuss on this topic on December 29 at the committee office.

GK showed his concern on the government decision to destroy the existence of Punjab and Sind Bank.

GK further said Punjab and Sind Bank actually lead the precious heritage of the presidency of Punjab and Sind. Veer Singh, S Trilochan Singh and Sundar Singh Majithia were called the founder of bank at registered office in Amritsar and main office in Lahore started with deposit amount Rs 10 lakh in 1908 before the Partition.

After the Partition, the registered office of the bank certainly lied in Amritsar, but administrative office was established in New Delhi, he said.

GK reminded the stands of banking facilities took from former chairman of bank Dr Inderjit Singh for the needy villagers specially farmers of Punjab and said when another banks got aside to open their branch in Punjab, Dr Singh not even opened banks new branches, in fact he gave jobs and business opportunity to the people of Punjab.
London, December 21

An Indian-origin driver is among 10 members of a so-called white van group jailed for a total of 31 years for smuggling drugs and money across the UK.

Daljeet Singh Juttla from west London had been stopped by Scotland Yard officers with 90,000 pounds of drugs money couriered by one of the other gang members.

Yesterday, Liverpool Crown Court handed the 42-year-old, Juttla, a 20-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, and 200 hours of unpaid work for the money laundering charge.

Established trafficking routes like these present a complex and troubling threat to the UK. With well worked-out logistics a criminal group can turn its hand to anything from gun running or drug smuggling, expanding their own operations or hiring out their services to others, said Jane Lloyd, branch commander at the UKs National Crime Agency (NCA), which conducted the UK-wide investigation.

The NCA officers are alert to the tactics criminals use to shift commodities and hide their activity and are equipped with the skills and tools needed to bring them to justice, she said.

The officers exposed the gang in an investigation that ran from October 2014 to January 2016.

Officers from the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside police provided support to the long-running operation.

The group was led by Jamie Hughes and operated out of the north west of England.

Members delivered bulk loads of drugs to clients in locations from Scotland to London in vans with hidden compartments.

Hughes was imprisoned for five years and four months after pleading guilty to his role in the conspiracy.

Hughes, who kept a stun gun disguised as an iPhone, installed a CCTV system to monitor his driveway.

This provided NCA officers with key evidence against his network as footage showed various members of the conspiracy exchanging packages or leaving Hughess address with parcels.

In addition to cash seizures and damning emails, evidence used against the group included traces of Ketamine found in the floor concealment of a white Peugeot Partner van and a hidden compartment in the rear of a white Vauxhall Vivaro van.

Both concealments were skillfully constructed and operated by switches in the cabs, the NCA revealed.  PTI
MAHARASHTRA has it. So does Karnataka. Punjab, after suffering the ravages of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), is understandably circumspect, though its police is an ardent believer in a special gangster control law. But UP may be the first among several eager states to introduce a legislation that will make it easy for the police to secure convictions and imprison gangsters for long periods. A subdued civil society and the visible impunity with which gangsters continue to straddle the worlds of crime and politics in UP might pave the way for uncontested passage of the law; former UP CMs Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav though have drawn attention to the vulnerability and defencelessness of the aam aadmi caught in the whirlpool of such laws.

Police all over the country face pressure because of the low conviction rate. Politicians succumb to the lure of such laws because the offer of speedy trials through special courts helps position them as tough on crime. Past experience shows that soon enough, the law begins targeting petty criminals and small-time swindlers. The temptation for overreach is also overwhelming. The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) has been invoked for the first time in an electricity theft case because an accused was a repeat offender. Regardless of recurring injunctions over the misuse of special laws, it remains the politicians favourite.

There is by now enough evidence across the nation to suggest that special laws invariably end up promoting rogue policing and invading an individuals liberties and civil rights. But there is complete bias among politicians who fall for these unconstitutional shortcuts because the regular processes are inadequate. MCOCA was extended to Delhi during the UPA government while the Congress government improved upon a similar law in Karnataka. The debate on a model anti-terror law is unlikely to conclude and not much hope should be put on police reforms and expansion of the judiciary. The common political desire for deterrence in the changed societal circumstances could be bridged by more stringent provisions in the existing laws.
Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21

Despite operational glitches, the government today conducted the first mega mock drill to test the state of preparedness in case of earthquake across 122 locations in the state involving 136 teams of the state and Central agencies in association with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

While evacuation and rescue drills were conducted at the Punjab and Haryana Civil Secretariat and the New Haryana Civil Secretariat here, drills were conducted in schools, offices, residential and shopping complexes, hospitals and major hazardous units across the state.

At the New Haryana Civil Secretariat, the lack of coordination was clearly visible among various state and Central Government agencies during the first phase of the one-and-a-half hour exercise.

While the building was evacuated of scores of employees by the rescue team, a majority of the senior bureaucrats were conspicuous by their absence. A DGP-level officer created a flutter when he drove into the cordoned off building in a government vehicle when the rescue operation was in progress.

Meanwhile, a senior bureaucrat injured her foot when she was busy in the post-exercise briefing analysis.

Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu, however, claimed that such a mega mock drill had been held for the first time in Haryanas history. Based on assumption, total number of casualties identified in this mega mock exercise is 257 with 1,717 injured. The exercise simulated an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale having its epicenter at west of Gurugram.

The authorities, right from the CM to officers of the district administration and Central agencies have made collective efforts for the success of the mega exercise. The experience gained during the first such initiative would stand the state in good stead in case of any eventuality in future, said Capt Abhimanyu. He said some of the lessons learned during the mock exercise included a separate communication network and setting up of emergency operation centres, setting up of a separate helpline for disaster management, retro-fittings of all important buildings and use of advanced technology such as drones and satellite phones during such emergencies.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said Incident Response Centres were being set up in every district of the state to ensure immediate relief and rescue operations in the event of any natural disaster. These centres will work under supervision of the Revenue and Disaster Management Department.

Advisor of the NDRF, Maj Gen VK Dutta (retired) said six teams from the Army, eight from the NDRF and two each from the CRPF, the NSG and the ITBP were deployed in the districts for assisting in response during the exercise.
Vishal Joshi

Tribune News Service

Kurukshetra, December 21

During the first mega mock drill on earthquake, the emergency toll-free number 1077 was found non-responsive at various district headquarters today. The number is a helpline response number for disasters.

Sources in the Telecom Department said the toll-free number was supposed to be at the emergency control rooms of the Deputy Magistrates. But administrative officials in various districts reportedly found the number non-operational during the mock rescue drill.

This correspondent also dialled 1077 to check the status, but no one responded to the calls.

Official sources admitted that working of the toll-free helpline number was not checked earlier and many of them were not even aware of the availability of the emergency number.

Sources said when district officials in Gurugram dialled 1077, the call was connected to response system in Delhi. The state authorities were apprised about the laxity, said an official.

Meanwhile, Sumedha Kataria, Kurukshetra DC, said the administration would look into non-responsive helpline number. Todays mock drill was a learning experience for the administration. The issue of non-functional disaster helpline would be taken up with the appropriate authorities, said the DC.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 21

Supporters of former CM Prem Kumar Dhumal and newly-elected MLA Jai Ram Thakur resorted to counter-sloganeering as central observers Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar arrived here on Thursday to meet BJP legislators and to decide on the next CM.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Leaders and party workers accorded a rousing welcome to PK Dhumal as he arrived at the meeting venue.

The Central team will hold consultations with newly-elected MLAs and is likely to return to Delhi tomorrow.

A formal announcement of the name of CM will be made in Delhi.

In-charge of party affairs in the state, Mangal Pandey, also attended the meeting.

The shock defeat of the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal from Sujanpur has opened up the race for the top post in Himachal Pradesh.

Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda and five-time MLA Jai Ram Thakur are being seen as front-runners for the chief minister's post.

Some other senior BJP lawmakers in the state, including Mohinder Singh, who won for a seventh time, five-term MLA Rajiv Bindal, former state BJP chief Suresh Bhardwaj and Kishan Kapoor, both elected for a fourth term, could also be considered, party sources said.

The BJP has 44 members in the 68-member Assembly and Congress 21.

The CPI(M) bagged one seat while two seats were won by Independent candidates. Assembly polls in the state were held on November 9 and the results were announced in December 18.

The central observers would elicit the view of the members and submit a report to the party top brass, said state BJP vice-president Ganesh Dutt.

Meanwhile, clamour for making Dhumal the chief minister was gaining momentum and three BJP MLAs reported to have offered to vacate their seats for him.  With PTI inputs
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 21

Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh has sought the Central government support for recruitment of more Special Police Officers (SPOs) in the state and construction of community bunkers for people living along the International Border and the Line of Control.

The requests were made by Nirmal during a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi. He also requested the Prime Minister to visit Jammu to lay the foundation stone of a habitat centre in the city and launch the Tawi River Front Project.

The Deputy CM briefed Modi on the recent visits of interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma and the status of various developmental initiatives undertaken in the state.

During the meeting with Rajnath Singh, the Deputy CM discussed the modalities of the package to be given to refugees from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the issues of West Pakistan refugees.

Extending his felicitations to Modi for the recent victory in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat elections, Nirmal said these triumphs were a clear referendum on the policies and programmes of the Central government and also an endorsement of the leadership of the Prime Minister.

The Deputy CM also presented to the Prime Minister The Book of Joy containing write-ups by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Rajouri, December 21

The Pakistan army today resorted to unprovoked mortar shelling and firing on Indian forward posts in the Nowshera subdivision in Rajouri district.

Sources said the Pakistan army besides opening firing onIndian forward posts, also fired 5-10 mortar shells on Thursday evening that fell in uninhabited areas of Numb and Kharali in the Bhawani sector. There was no loss to life or property.

The Indian Army retaliated effectively, said the sources.

Immediately after the information of ceasefire violation, chowkidars and lambardars concerned were contacted by the Bhawani police post in charge and an alert was sounded in the area. The firing and shelling stopped after about 30 minutes, said Abdul Sattar, SDM, Nowshera.

In case of any emergency, a contingency plan was ready to evacuate people to safer places, he said.  OC
Jitendra K Shrivastava

Tribune News Service

Patna, December 21

At least four bodies were recovered from the site of boiler blast at a sugar mill in Sadamusa, Gopalganj, on Wednesday night. Many more were feared dead and the injured were admitted to hospitals.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed his grief over the deaths of workers in teh sugar mill and ordered an enquiry into the tragic incident.

Nitish Kumar said: "A compensation to the next kin of the deceased family would be given. For rescue operation team of state disaster response force (SDRF) has been deployed.

The senior government officials, including principal secretary of disaster management Dipak Kumar, have reached the spot and are probing the matter.
New Delhi, December 21

India has announced a development assistance of USD 25 million for Myanmars Rakhine State, from where thousands of Rohingya Muslims recently fled following incidents of violence against the community.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the amount will be spent over a period of five years.

The amount of commitment to the development efforts is USD 25 million over five years which is an indicative figure and depends on the actual requirement and utilisation, he said.

An estimated 6,00,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmars Rakhine State since late August after large-scale violence there.

The issue of Indias development assistance to Rakhaine State was discussed in detail during Foreign Secretary S Jaishankars talks with Myanmarese leaders in Myanmars capital Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.

Kumar said there were several other aspects of discussions which include how India can help the country in restoring normalcy in Rakhaine State and enable return of displaced persons.

Asked about the financial assistance, he said the broad objective of it is to restore normalcy in the troubled state.

He said India would welcome Myanmars talks with any country which could help in the restoration of peace and the return of displaced persons to the Rakhine State.

India and Myanmar yesterday had inked an agreement on restoration of normalcy and development of the Rakhine State.  PTI
New Delhi, December 21

India and China will on Friday hold a fresh round of border talks under the special representatives mechanism which will be the first on the sticky boundary issue since the 73-day-long military standoff in Doklam.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

In the 20th round of special representatives talks, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and China's State Councillor Yang Jiechi are likely to deliberate on ways to maintain peace and tranquillity along the 4,000-km-long border between the two countries.

The Doklam standoff is expected to figure in the talks.

When asked about the talks, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the discussions will be focused on the boundary issue, adding "we, of course, attach lot of importance to this dialogue mechanism."

Ahead of the talks, China on Tuesday said the Doklam standoff posed a "major test" for the bilateral ties and lessons should be learnt from it to avoid a similar "conflict" in the future.

The Doklam standoff began on June 16 over People's Liberation Army's plans to build a road in area claimed by Bhutan after the Indian troops intervened to stop it as it posed a security risk to Chicken Neck, the narrow corridor connecting India with its North-eastern states.

The standoff ended on August 28 following mutual agreement between India and China.

Asked about the disengagement of troops in Doklam, Kumar refused to give details, calling it an operational matter.

During the weekly media briefing, he said it was not appropriate to comment on operational matters like how the disengagement had taken place, how many troops were stationed, where were they.

Asked about India's position on China's One Belt One Road project, he said India's policy is very clear and consistent.

"We believe that connectivity initiatives should be based on universally recognised norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and must be pursued in a manner which respects territorial integrity and sovereignty," he said.

India has opposed the OBOR due to its sovereignty concerns over the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). CPEC is part of the OBOR.

Asked about Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently pitching for India joining the project, Kumar said India will always be open to any efforts which will address its concerns.  PTI
New Delhi, December 21

In a move aimed at combating black money stashed abroad, India signed an agreement with Switzerland today that would allow automatic sharing of tax-related information from January 1 next year, the CBDT said.

With the completion of the parliamentary procedure in Switzerland and signing of the agreement, India and Switzerland are set for automatic exchange of information for the period beginning from January 1, 2018, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

A joint declaration for the implementation of Automatic Exchange of Information signed last month provided that both countries would start collecting data in accordance with the global standards in 2018 and exchange it from 2019 onwards.

While Switzerland has conformed to the global standards on automatic exchange of information with the signing of the declaration, India, on its part, has promised to safeguard the confidentiality of the data.

It will now be possible for India to receive from September, 2019 onwards, the financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland for 2018 and subsequent years, on an automatic basis, the government earlier said.

Switzerland, at the centre of the debate on black money allegedly stashed by Indians, used to be known for very strong secrecy walls till a few years ago around its banking practices.  PTI
Washington, December 21

India today joined 127 other countries to vote in the UN General Assembly in favour of a resolution opposing the recent decision of US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Nine countries voted against the resolution, while 35 countries abstained.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Indias decision to vote against American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital comes a day after Trump warned countries against opposing the US position. India did not speak on the floor of the Assembly in New York, but after Trump recognised the holy city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it had said that its Palestine position was independent and consistent.

The countries that joined the US in voting against the resolution were Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo. Among major nations who abstained voting were Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Columbia, Hungry, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland and Uganda.  PTI
Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, December 21

Disgruntled Banaras Hindu University (BHU) students went on a rampage inside the campus on Wednesday evening damaging and setting ablaze more than 50 vehicles, including a school bus.

Speaking to this reporter, BHU Chief Proctor Royana Singh said the university had lodged a complaint against 10 unidentified students at the Lanka police station.

The students moving as mob indulged in unprovoked arson and created terror among students and teachers of the university.

According to Royana Singh, the arrest of an MA student Ashutosh Singh on Wednesday triggered the violence.

Singh had a non-bailable warrant against him for indulging in violence and creating terror on the campus during the BHU-IIT cultural festival last month.

Doing moral policing, Singh and his supporters wanted the festival to be cancelled, which in any case had been cancelled for not getting administrative clearance. Still a mob led by him had ransacked the venue, damaged cameras, laptops and even fractured the finger of a security guard who had tried to intervene, said the chief proctor.

A resident of Birla Hostel, Ashutosh, had been dodging the police since then but was arrested on Wednesday afternoon.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

As soon as the news of his arrest spread on the campus his supporters, wearing masks, went on a rampage.

The first target was the newly installed high-resolution CCTV cameras on the campus, said Royana Singh, adding that in spite of this the efforts were on to identify the culprits.

They broke the windscreen and set ablaze dozens of private and government vehicles parked at the Sundar Lal hospital attached to the BHU medical college inside the campus.

The bank, ATM, hostel gates and even the vehicles of professors and patients attendants were not spared.

The school bus of Delhi Public School, which had come to drop wards of teachers on the campus, was also set ablaze. Fortunately, there were no students inside the bus and the driver and cleaner managed to escape.

Police force from several neighbouring police stations took about an hour to control the rampaging students.
Kathmandu/New Delhi, Dec 21

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today held telephonic talks with top Nepalese leaders, including KP Sharma Oli, who is set to become the premier of the Himalayan nation, and congratulated him on his alliances grand victory.

The conversations were the first highest-level contact between the leaderships of the two countries after the Left alliance of Oli and Prachanda swept the elections recently.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Modi expressed happiness on Nepals successful conduct of three levels of elections  local body, provincial assembly and parliamentary. The results will strengthen democracy, bring political stability and lead Nepal towards economic prosperity, a statement by the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) in Kathmandu quoted Modi as saying.

It said Modi also invited Oli to visit India immediately after the formation of the new government. Modi said his government is willing to work with Nepal, the statement said.

Oli said good relations will be maintained with neighbours and he would like to collaborate with all nations, especially India and China, for economic development and prosperity. Modi also telephoned his Nepalese counterpart and Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and CPN-Maoist chief Prachanda.  PTI

Have friendly ties: Left to Centre

The CPM on Thursday urged the Centre to establish close ties with Nepal without interfering in its internal affairs. About the recent victory of Left parties in Nepal, ex-CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said the development should lead to a re-thinking and change in Indias attitude to Nepal
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 21

After a powerful performance in Gujarat, the Congress today claimed another moral and judicial victory in the 2G Spectrum verdict, setting the stage for a future offensive against the BJP on the issue.

The principal Opposition fielded former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to claim vindication of UPA-II Government, which was brought down by the 2G Spectrum scam that rested on the then CAGs premise of Rs 1.76 lakh crore presumptive loss to the exchequer due to corrupt and malafide allocations.

I do not want to boast about anything. The courts judgment has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously that all the massive propaganda launched against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgment speaks for itself, said Manmohan Singh, whom PM Narendra Modi recently mocked in Parliament for bathing with a raincoat on. The reference was to 2G scam.

Quoting from the trial court judgment, top Congress leaders today sought an apology from PM Modi and BJP for spreading falsehoods about the 2G spectrum allocations. The party will raise the issue inside and outside Parliament with its Delhi unit set to demonstrate tomorrow.

This is no ordinary trial. It generated immense national and international interest. Those who contributed in giving life to the lie of presumptive loss became beneficiaries of this conspiracy of which Congress was the victim. Then CAG who authored the presumptive loss was rewarded with chairpersonship of the Bank Boards Bureau and administration of the BCCI. Then TRAI chairman Nripendra Mishra was appointed principal secretary to PM whose first act post 2014 Lok Sabha win was issuance of an ordinance to amend TRAI Act and enable Mishras appointment. Then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi became PM by misleading people, Congress leader Anand Sharma said, demanding accountability of Rai.

The Congress rejected Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys assertions that the apex court ruled the UPAs spectrum auction policy as corruption-ridden. Show us the orders, said Sharma, insisting on the post-2010 period to be revisited to trace the flow of political developments post-CAGs draft report on the so-called loss.

The Congress cited the Anna Hazare-led anti corruption movement based on the 2G Spectrum scam to ask where the emotional provocateurs of the anti-graft movement were now.

It appears 2G scam was indeed a conspiracy to malign the UPA and mislead the people. The UPA passed the Lokpal Act but the BJP government has not operationalised it in three years. Where are anti-graft crusaders now? asked Sharma.

While former Telecom minister Kapil Sibal claimed vindication of his zero loss theory, ex-law minister Ashwani Kumar said after the moral defeat of BJP in Gujarat, this is yet another moral and political censor of trial by accusations.

How it unfolded

May 2007: A Raja takes over as the Union Telecom Minister

A Raja takes over as the Union Telecom Minister Aug: The Department of Telecom (DoT) initiates process of allotment of 2G spectrum along with Unified Access Services Licences

The Department of Telecom (DoT) initiates process of allotment of 2G spectrum along with Unified Access Services Licences Sept 25: Telecom Ministry fixes deadline for application as October 1, 2007, and DoT receives 575 applications from 46 firms

Telecom Ministry fixes deadline for application as October 1, 2007, and DoT receives 575 applications from 46 firms Jan 10, 2008: DoT issues licences on first come, first served basis, pre-poning cut-off date to September 25

DoT issues licences on first come, first served basis, pre-poning cut-off date to September 25 2009: The CVC directs CBI to probe illegalities in 2G spectrum allocation

The CVC directs CBI to probe illegalities in 2G spectrum allocation Oct 21: CBI files an FIR

CBI files an FIR Nov 10, 2010: CAG report claims loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore

CAG report claims loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore Nov 15: Raja resigns as the Telecom Minister

Raja resigns as the Telecom Minister Feb 2, 2011: Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura and Rajas private secretary Ravindra Kumar Chandolia arrested by the CBI

Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura and Rajas private secretary Ravindra Kumar Chandolia arrested by the CBI Feb 8: Promoter of Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd, Shahid Usman Balwa, arrested by the CBI

Promoter of Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd, Shahid Usman Balwa, arrested by the CBI Mar 14: The Delhi HC sets up special court to deal with 2G cases

The Delhi HC sets up special court to deal with 2G cases April 2: CBI files first chargesheet. Names Raja, Chandolia and Behura. Reliance ADAG Group MD Gautam Doshi, its senior vice-president Hari Nair, Group president Surendra Pipara, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka and Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra made accused. Reliance Telecom Ltd, Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Pvt Ltd chargesheeted

CBI files first chargesheet. Names Raja, Chandolia and Behura. Reliance ADAG Group MD Gautam Doshi, its senior vice-president Hari Nair, Group president Surendra Pipara, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka and Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra made accused. Reliance Telecom Ltd, Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Pvt Ltd chargesheeted Apr 25: CBI files second chargesheet naming DMK chief M Karunanidhis daughter and MP Kanimozhi, four others

CBI files second chargesheet naming DMK chief M Karunanidhis daughter and MP Kanimozhi, four others Nov 11: Trial begins

Trial begins Nov 23: SC grants bail to Hari Nair, Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara, Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenka

SC grants bail to Hari Nair, Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara, Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenka Nov 28: Kanimozhi, Sharad Kumar, Karim Morani, Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal get bail

Kanimozhi, Sharad Kumar, Karim Morani, Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal get bail Nov 29: Special court grants bail to Shahid Balwa and two days later Chandolia also gets bail

Special court grants bail to Shahid Balwa and two days later Chandolia also gets bail Dec 12: CBI files third chargesheet. Names Essar Group promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia, its director Vikas Saraf, Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan and her husband IP Khaitan

CBI files third chargesheet. Names Essar Group promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia, its director Vikas Saraf, Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan and her husband IP Khaitan Feb 2, 2012: SC cancels 122 telecom licences

SC cancels 122 telecom licences Apr 25, 2014: ED chargesheets Raja, Kanimozhi and others in money-laundering case

ED chargesheets Raja, Kanimozhi and others in money-laundering case Dec 21: Special court acquits all accused, including Raja

Who said what

Allegation of a scam involving the highest echelons of government was never true and not correct and that has been established today.  P Chidambaram, ex-Finance Minister

It appears the evidence adduced to substantiate the charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the learned court. The CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter.  Abhishek Dayal, CBI spokesperson

Today my words have been proved right. There was no corruption, there was no loss. If there was any scam, it was a scam of lies, the oppositions and Vinod Rais lies. Vinod Rai must apologise.  Kapil Sibal, former telecom minister

Cong is (sic) and allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will happen here.  Subramanian Swamy, BJP leader

The fate of 122 telecom licences that were cancelled in 2012 will be decided based on the position the investigation agency takes on the acquittals.  Manoj Sinha, telecom minister

Prosecutions main argument was on clause 8. It was a civil issue. It was never an issue of criminalitythis is what court also held.  Mukul Rohatgi, former attorney general

The CBI court rejected every allegation of corruption, wrongdoing, criminal conspiracy and breach of trust. Will Modiji and the BJP come forward to own up to the sinister maligning and apologise to the nation.  Randeep Surjewala, Cong spokesperson

Todays verdict has demolished the concerted, vicious campaign built upon a pile of lies against DMK by vested interests and now DMK stands vindicated.  MK Stalin, DMK working president
Chandigarh, December 20

The Shiromani Akali Dal has asked Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood to ensure safety of Sikh families living in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa after news reports said they were being forced to convert to Islam by a government official.

A delegation of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) led by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal met Mahmood in New Delhi on Wednesday and wanted Pakistan government's intervention.

The meeting came a day after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said India would take up the issue at the highest level in the Pakistan government.

The Express Tribune, a leading Pakistan daily, this week published a news story about the Sikh community raising serious concerns after being forced to convert to Islam by the government official in Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The SAD delegation also urged the Pakistan High Commissioner to take strict action against any official who coerced Sikhs to convert to Islam, the partys statement said.

The party also asked Pakistan to allow a delegation to visit the Sikh families in Pakistan's northwest.

Mahmood told the delegation that an officer of the provincial administration had an altercation with the Sikh community members and that he had been suspended. A committee has been formed to probe the matter, the statement quoted him as saying.

Badal, meanwhile, also spoke to External Affairs Minister Swaraj, who assured him that her ministry would take up the issue with the Pakistan Government. PTI


Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 21

Members of Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant (GNDTP) Employees Union today blocked the Bathinda-Malout road for half an hour to protest the Punjab Cabinets decision to shut it down.

Earlier, they staged a protest at the thermal plant gate and burnt the effigy of Finance Minister Manpreet Badal. Addressing mediapersons, their general secretary Gursewak Singh Sandhu said they would take out a massive rally in Bathinda tomorrow.

He said power employees unions would also stage a protest at the sub-divisional level across the state.

We will hold a protest rally outside the office of Manpreet Badal in Bathinda on Saturday and will also hand him our charter of demands. We will remind him of his pre-poll promises like running Bathinda thermal plant on full load and providing jobs to unemployed youth, he said.

Ashwani Kumar, GNDTP Contractual Workers Union president, rejected the claims of the state government that power generation in Bathinda was costing Rs 11.50 per unit. He said, Power generation costs Rs 4.50 per unit in our thermal plant. Moreover, if the government was facing huge losses while running the thermal plant, why did they revamp it at a cost of Rs 700 crore in 2014?

He alleged that it was the strategy of the state government to extend benefits to private players who were fleecing power consumers. He said they cannot trust the state government over the issue of transferring contractual employees to other places.

Cong has reneged on promise, say akalis

Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) said on Thursday that the Congress had reneged on its pre-election promise not to shut down the Bathinda thermal power plant, even as it demanded that the plant be modernised to ensure that it remained an asset to the state. In a statement here, former minister Bikram Singh Majithia said it was wrong to say that the plant was a liability. It has huge infrastructure. All the government needs to do is to install new machinery, he added. The government should take back the anti-people decision immediately, Majithia said. TNS
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21

Taking cognisance of frauds involving disbursement of gold loans in alleged connivance with bank employees, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to come out with a deterrent step or evolve a methodology to curb the menace.

The direction by Justice AB Chaudhari came in a case where gold stored in a bank, against which loan was given, was allegedly found missing from a locker. Justice Chaudhari, during the course of the hearing, observed that gold kept in the bank for loan or by way of mortgage was apparently being removed or tampered with.

Quoting an example, Justice Chaudhari observed that a case was reported from Maharashtra that about 4-5 kg gold, against which loan was given, was found to be fake. The bank officer concerned, perhaps, in defence claimed that the accepted gold was certified to be genuine by the bank valuer. As such, the bank officials were not at fault.

Justice Chaudhari added a large number of private and nationalised banks, along with finance companies, were dealing with gold loan schemes and that such instances were on the rise.

In my opinion, the Reserve Bank will have to find out ways and means to check these fraudulent activities as the ultimate loss is of public money, Justice Chaudhari added.

In its short reply, the Reserve Bank subsequently stated that commercial banks had to observe necessary and usual safeguards.

The banks had, in fact, been instructed to frame a board-approved loan policy covering advances against gold ornaments and jewellery. The banks had the freedom to prescribe rules for necessary safeguards for the advances.

Taking a note of submissions on the petition filed by one Rohit Monga, Justice Chaudhari asserted the Reserve Bank of India had left it to the wisdom of the individual bank, credit society and finance company to take care of the issue relating to gold loan or fake gold deposited with the bank by way of mortgage.

Justice Chaudhari added that leaving the issue to the wisdom of the individual bank would not serve public purpose. The RBI was, as such, requested to have in place some deterrent step or a system to curb the menace involving frauds taking place in connivance with bank employees.

See if stringent regulations can be brought

Before parting with the case, Justice Chaudhari said the court expected the Reserve Bank would have a relook and see if stringent action or regulations could be brought to do the needful. Prima facie in the opinion of this court, under the Bank Regulations Act, the Reserve Bank may be able to do so. It is, however, left to the Reserve Bank to act in public interest.
Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21

It seems the land mafia has had a free run in the state all these years. Common village land worth Rs 2,000 crore, owned by panchayats, is in illegal possession of the mafia. The fact came to the fore during an internal report prepared by the Department of Rural Development and Panchayats recently.

According to the report, 20,800 acres is in illegal possession of the land mafia and influential individuals.

According to a rough estimate, if the department gets back the possession of the land from the mafia it can generate revenue of Rs 50 crore annually from it.

Out of the total land, more than 60 per cent falls in just four districts of the state. In district-wise breakup, Chief Ministers home district Patiala tops the chart.

In Patiala alone, 4,854 acres (25 per cent of the total land) is in illegal possession. It is followed by Kapurthala with 3,411; Fatehgarh Sahib 2,436 and Jalandhar 1,967 acres.

Despite having powers to protect village panchayats given under constitutional provisions, the department officials have failed to protect the land.

There are examples when department officials didnt settle panchayat land disputes over five years. In the recent past, the Panchayat Union, Punjab, had also alleged a high-level nexus between land mafia and department officials.

The union had also alleged that the officials were using their powers to settle panchayat land dispute cases in favour of the land mafia.

With an aim to watch the interest of panchayats, the department officials under the Punjab Village Common Lands Regulation Act, 1961, were given powers to hear the cases related to panchayat lands and jurisdiction of civil courts was barred.

As per the Act, where individuals claim the ownership over shamlat land, responsibility lies upon individuals to prove that they are cultivating possession as per his share in shamlat land since or before January 26, 1950, which is hard to prove.

Earlier this year, the issue was also raised in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha when a joint development commissioner, who had powers to listen the land dispute of panchayats, settled around 70 cases in favour of private individuals just nine months before his retirement.

Recently the department officials had also instructed the district-level department officials to settle the panchayat dispute cases within three months.

Minister for Rural Development and Panchayats Tript Rajinder Bajwa said the process of eviction from the panchayat land was on. He accepted that there were some delays at different levels when it came to department officials acting to get back the panchayat lands.

Why village common land matters

The panchayats in the state own 1.7 lakh acres, of which 1.42 lakh acres is auctioned for annual cultivation. It is one of the main sources of revenue for the department. This year, the department generated Rs 307 crore from the auction of common village lands across the state. The money is later spent on the overall development of villages.
Islamabad, December 21

Pakistan on Thursday refuted media reports that some Sikhs in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were forcibly converted to Islam.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

"Misinformation is being spread about an incident in Hangu," Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, adding that some shopkeepers, including Sikhs got into a row with a local official.

The spokesperson said the official concerned was immediately suspended and a formal inquiry was ordered into the incident.

Faisal said Pakistan remained committed to the freedom of religion and protection of the rights of all minorities.

The sposkesperson said the incident is many days old. The senior members of the local administration remain in touch with the Sikh community in Hangu, which has lived there in peace and harmony for over a century. Sikhs are proud Pakistani citizens and are represented in all walks of life, Faisal added.

Earlier, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressed concern over the reported conversion and promised to take up the issue with Pakistani authorities.  Agencies
Islamabad, December 21

Pakistan today refuted media reports that Sikhs in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were forcibly converted to Islam.

Misinformation is being spread about an incident in Hangu, Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said, adding that some shopkeepers, including Sikhs, got into a row with a local official.

The spokesperson said the official concerned was immediately suspended and an inquiry was ordered into the incident. Faisal said Pakistan remained committed to the freedom of religion and protection of the rights of all minorities.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had expressed concern over the reported conversion and promised to take up the issue with Pakistani authorities.

On Wednesday, a SAD delegation led by party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal had met Pakistani High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood in New Delhi along with SGPC members. The delegation had told the High Commissioner that Pakistan should give credit to the brave Sikh families which had preferred to stay in that country and not migrate to India in 1947. Sukhbir had suggested that the Pakistan Government should take on board the SGPC to resolve issues related to Sikh affairs in the neighbouring country.  Agencies

Congress MPs meet Swaraj

Chandigarh: A delegation of Congress MPs from Punjab, led by PPCC chief Sunil Jakhar, on Thursday raised the issue of alleged forcible conversion of Pakistan Sikhs with Swaraj in New Delhi. Jakhar and fellow MP Ravneet Singh Bittu sought the MEAs urgent intervention to protect the religious identity of the Sikh community. TNS
Before we are faced with a constitutional crisis, Congress should make clear that firing Robert Mueller is a red line the president must not cross.
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 21

Local Bodies, Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said today that the security of minorities was the governments responsibility, while promising that there would no negligence on this count.

Representing Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, Sidhu presided over the state-level Christmas function here and extended greetings to the Christian community.

Addressing the gathering, Sidhu expressed concern over reports about alleged conversion of Sikhs in Pakistan. Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal mentioned instances of a church priest being assaulted by a group which wrongly assumed that he was indulging in conversion.

The minister said people belonging to all religions would keep living in harmony in Punjab, adding that the state government would not allow anybody to disturb peace.

Bishop Franco decried politics in the name of religion. He said the Masih Mahasabha was not a wing of any political party, even as Christians were associated with the Congress, SAD, BJP, AAP, BSP etc.

Ours is a platform on which the problems faced by Christians are redressed with the governments help, he added.

Lok Sabha MP Gurjit Singh Aujla lauded the community for its welfare-oriented works. Bishop Franco assured the government of the Christians active cooperation in philanthropic endeavours. Bishop PV Samanthroy and Bishop Franco honoured Sidhu.
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 21

Two months after a train driver was killed when a truck rammed into a passenger train at an unmanned crossing in Jalalabad, Justice Rajan Gupta of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed exploration of possibility of adopting electronic measures to alert the general public on approaching trains.

The Railways, too, has adopted a slew of measures to prevent accidents. Justice Guptas Bench was also told that the Railways had initiated the process of constructing diversions, subways of limited height, underpasses, etc, to eliminate unmanned railway crossings.

Besides this, it had deployed Gate Mitras for 12 hours from 6 am at identified vulnerable unmanned level crossings as an interim step. A request had also been made to the state government to deploy Home Guards volunteers. As many as 269 unmanned crossings were in the Ferozepur Division alone.

A copy of the communication received from the Railways was also handed over to the Punjab Additional Advocate-General. He, in turn, submitted that he would get instructions from the authority concerned before informing the court on the next date of hearing.

If necessary, Punjab Additional Director-General of Police shall be at liberty to call a meeting with the railway officials to ensure that concrete steps are taken by the next date of hearing, Justice Gupta asserted.

The Railways, on the previous date of hearing, had virtually placed the Punjab government in dock by claiming that its proposals to prevent untoward incidents in future had till then not met with a response by the Deputy Commissioners concerned.

Referring to a communication received from the Divisional Railway Manager, Northern Railway, Ferozepur, its counsel submitted that the move to undertake safety measures to avoid accidents included construction of overbridges, underbridges, limited-height subways and diversion or merger with the nearest manned level crossing.

He added that a communication in this regard had already been sent to the Deputy Commissioners concerned for grant of NOCs, but no reply was received.

Appearing before the Bench, amicus curiae or the friend of the court Gaurav Chopra had submitted that the Railways was casual, leading to a number of accidents. He had further submitted that directions were required to be issued by the court for initiating appropriate steps at the earliest.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, December 21

A leopard, which strayed into the Army Cantonment in the Kaladhungi area of Nainital, was caught by the forest officials after a four-hour rescue operation today.

The leopard, who tried to enter the Thimayya Bagh area in the morning hours today, got struck in the fencing. Forest officials managed to catch the leopard after a four-hour rescue operation.

A few days ago, a leopard had created panic in theKewal Vihar locality of Dehradun. The leopard was seen in the locality during the day time, forcing people to stay indoors. Despite camping in the area, Forest Department officials have failed to cage the leopard that is reported to be still hiding in the nearby forest area.
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, December 21

Uttarakhand Labour Minister Harak Singh Rawat has appointed himself as the chairman of the Uttarakhand Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board without caring for rules and regulations of appointment.

As a Cabinet minister in the Congress government in the past, Rawat had appointed himself chairman of several boards of departments under him. If at all, there is a hindrance, he is believed to have issued government orders ensuring that these became favourable for his appointment. Several boards that exist under various departments and rules for their composition indicate that these could only be headed by senior bureaucrats and not politicians. At that point of time, Rawat was heading the Department of Horticulture.

Following the past practice, recently government orders were issued after which the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board was constituted with Rawat as its chairman.

Though the rules implicitly state that, upon its constitution, the board has to appoint a bureaucrat  a senior IAS officer of the rank of Principal Secretary  as its chairman. Above all, the rules also state that the officer would only be nominated by the Centre.

In March 2016, the state Labour Department had issued orders stating that according to the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (2005), the chairman of the welfare board would be nominated by the Central government. Further, it was stated that till the time the Central government does not nominate the chairman, only a senior bureaucrat of the department will continue to function as the chairman.

On being asked about the provisions in the Act and the government order, the minister said, It is a normal practice. During the tenure of the Congress government, then Labour Minister Durg Pal was the chairman.

However, soon after the notification was issued in March 2016, Durga Pal was forced to relinquish the post. Soon, after taking over the post, Rawat has taken several decisions allegedly to strengthen his position.
London, December 21

British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign for lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office.

The resignation of one of Mays closest political allies, who had helped pacify her deeply divided party, is a blow as she navigates the final year of tortuous negotiations ahead of Britains exit from the European Union in March 2019.

Green, who voted to stay in the EU, was appointed as first secretary of state just six months ago in a bid to shore up Mays premiership following her disastrous bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in Parliament.

But Greens future was thrust into doubt when the Sunday Times newspaper reported last month that the police in 2008 had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament. In response, Green said the story was untrue.

A review, requested by May and conducted by a senior government official, concluded that Greens statements which suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on the computers were inaccurate and misleading. The inquiry found he had breached rules governing the behaviour of ministers because the police had told him about the indecent material.

I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point, Green said in a letter to May. I regret that Ive been asked to resign from the government.

Green, 61, said he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers. He added that he should have been clearer about his statements after the story broke. May said she had asked him to resign and accepted his resignation with deep regret. He is the most senior British politician to fall since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal triggered a debate about a culture of abuse by some powerful men at the heart of Westminster.  Reuters
Melbourne, December 21

An Indian was among 19 persons injured when a speeding SUV ran down pedestrians at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne today, an incident described by Australia as act of evil and an act of cowardice.

A white Suzuki Grand Vitara with two men inside drove into the crowd at the intersection just after 4.30 pm local time (0530 GMT), injuring 19 persons, including Rohit Kaul, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir.

According to eyewitnesses, the car driver was waiting for the traffic signal to turn red before he drove his vehicle hitting pedestrians crossing the road.

However, the Victorian police maintained that it was not a terror attack but would continue to investigate.

Quoting eyewitnesses, the local media said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle.

The attack was an act of evil and an act of cowardice, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters here. He said the condition of four people hit was critical. Fifteen others were stable.

The 45-year-old Kaul was talking to his son while crossing the intersection when he was hit by the car. My husband was talking to my son Avi and crossing the intersection. Suddenly, my husbands phone fell down and we could hear loud noises and people screaming on the other side before the line went dead, Kauls wife said.

We tried to call him on his mobile but there was no response. We soon got a call from a fellow Indian who said my husband was injured and was being taken to a hospital, she added.

Her husband suffered a tibia fracture and will undergo a surgery tomorrow. He is stable, she said.

The driver was waiting for the red light and when people started crossing the road, he jumped the red light and crashed into them, she said, adding that it was a deliberate act.

A pre-school child who suffered a head injury is not in a critical condition.

Acting Commissioner Shane Patton said that the police do not believe what happened is terror related but will continue to investigate. He said police will allege the man intentionally drove into the pedestrians.

The driver of the car has been arrested and is receiving hospital treatment, Patton said. The driver, identified as a 32-year-old of Afghan descent, was known to police in relation to minor traffic offences and a minor assault in 2010. We believe hes driven down the tram tracks and he crashed into a tram-stop on the other side, Patton said.  PTI

Police rule out terror angle
Barcelona, December 21

Catalans voted today in a crucial election that could mark a turning point for their region, just two months after a failed secession bid triggered Spains worst political crisis.

Will voters again hand victory to pro-independence parties that tried to break Catalonia from Spain, one of whose candidates is in jail and the other in self-imposed exile in Belgium? Or will they lose the absolute parliamentary majority of 72 seats they won in 2015?

Catalans on both sides of the divide saw the day as a potential moment of truth for their region, following weeks of upheaval and protests unseen since democracy was reinstated following the death in 1975 of dictator Franco. Some 5.5 million people are registered to vote in Thursdays election which is likely to see seven parties winning mandates.  PTI
Stock grants will be awarded to the 2,100 drivers who are employed by Daseke operating companies and will be offered to new drivers after a quarter of service. Photo: Daseke

With high turnover and a shortage of new talent, trucking companies are trying everything they can to inspire loyalty in drivers. Thats why Daseke is offering its drivers something that no other carrier can offer  stock in Daseke.

After going public earlier this year, Daseke implemented a plan to offer all company employees stock grants as an incentive to stay with the company. The company is offering around 1 million shares of common stock, worth nearly $10 million, to 2,900 company drivers and support team employees throughout Dasekes group of operating companies.

Stock grants will be awarded after one full quarter of service. Professional company drivers and support team employees who were hired in the first quarter of 2017, for example, got their stock grants in July 2017.

This is a program that is above and beyond what our operating companies already have in place with new hires, and it rewards those drivers who help us build the future, says Don Daseke, president and CEO. Our objective is for truck drivers to be appreciated and respected, and we think ownership is a way to do that.

Daseke sees the lack of respect for drivers as part of the reason for the driver shortage, because young people dont see it as a legitimate and rewarding career path. We think that drivers as a group are underappreciated and not respected as much as they should be, because people dont have the idea of a truck driver as a prestigious job.

The company would not release statistics publicly, but says that its driver turnover has gone down, even as the general truckload turnover has been rising, and it believes the program has played a role in that decrease.

I think the drivers are very positive about it. It sends a message to them, which to our knowledge, no other trucking company has ever given them  that they are really important to this company and we want them to be an owner, along with management.

Don Daseke got the inspiration for the program when he was in a different line of business earlier in his career. Other CEOs told him that ownership makes employees feel differently about a company. Investing in people became a personal philosophy for Daseke, and the stock program grew out of it. He views it as not just a carrot on a stick to get employees to work harder, but also believes that it can positively impact their interactions on a daily basis.

If you feel like youre an owner of the company, you act differently. Youre more free with your ideas, youre rooting for the company as a whole, and you take problems of the day more in stride, he explains.
Owasso High School sophomore Mackenzie Adams has been named a state winner of the Oklahoma Department of Transportations (ODOT) 2018 Trash Poster Contest.

Every year, ODOT publishes its annual Trash Poster Calendar, which features various works of art created by local students from schools across the state highlighting the harmful effects of litter on the environment.

The organizations 27th annual contest is used a tool to help teach young children and teenagers about the dangers of improper waste disposal in Oklahoma and gives them an opportunity to propose solutions through their art.

With the help from our educators, the contest becomes a fun and educational way for students to learn about littering and how it impacts our state, said Melody Johnson, ODOT Beautification Coordinator.

More than 8,800 students participated in the contest statewide in grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12, with Adams winning first place in her age category, 9th-12th grade.

Her poster, a sketched picture of an emu with the words, pollution is not EMU-sing, was featured as the state winner for the month of October. She was one of 103 students in Rogers County to apply for the contest.

There are some very talented students in Oklahoma, Johnson said, and this contest showcases their artistic abilities, along with promoting the anti-litter campaign.

County judging and awards, coordinated by local DEQ offices, will take place in February, and local winners will be forwarded to the state competition in March. Adams will then join the other winners at an award luncheon in April on the floor of the House of Representatives at the state Capitol.

They will receive cash prizes, including $250 for first place, $150 for second place and $100 for third place in each of the four divisions, and one additional poster will be chosen to win $200 as the state Promotional Poster of the Year. Teachers of the winners will also receive a two-night stay at an Oklahoma state park and art supplies for the classroom.

The deadline for entries in the 2018 contest is Monday, Jan. 31, and students Kindergarten through the 12th grade are encouraged to show their creative talents by entering. Entries must be received at the local Department of Environmental Quality Office by Jan. 31.

For more information and entry forms, contact the ODOT Beautification Office at (405) 521-2557, or access the ODOT website at www.odot.org and click Programs and Projects then Beautification.
It took a bit of a nudge to get 35-year-old Matthew Gilliland to enter a Tulsa Community College art contest with his acrylic painting depicting a snowman wearing a mortar board in downtown Tulsa.

That painting won this years TCC Holiday Card competition.

I wanted it to be wintry because I wanted everybody to like it, Gilliland said. I wanted it to have a feeling of Tulsa with school spirit.

I did something I thought was fun and easy with the cap and blue scarf. I wanted to work in the buildings downtown because theyre so beautiful and Tulsa is such a great place.

Like many non-traditional students, Gilliland entered TCC through an unusual journey and a decision to change careers.

He graduated from Charles Page High School in Sand Springs in 1999, then completed a degree from the Art Institute of Dallas in 2003. He worked as a concept artist for a toy and novelty company, coming up with ideas for new products.

During this time, Gilliland was also a member of the Army National Guard, being deployed twice: once for Hurricane Katrina relief in New Orleans and then a six-month stint as a replacement during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

When I was working as a concept artist, I had this thought I might like to get into art education, Gilliland said. I had moved to Tulsa, and a job opportunity came up working with Pinots Palette. I thought it was a good way to dip my toe into the water and see if I liked it.

Ive loved working there. It inspired me, and I felt it click for me.

Education in the arts is something I want to do. So, I thought, How do I make it happen? The best road for me is to start at TCC.

Gilliland graduates this month with an associates degree in art with plans to earn a bachelors degree in fine arts from Rogers State University. After that, he plans to pursue a masters degree.

Ideally, Id like to teach at the college level to aspiring young people and adults who want to be professional artists, Gilliland said.

Each year, TCC holds a competition among its arts students for the holiday card. Gilliland completed the painting while in the Painting I class, which focuses on acrylic paint techniques.

As winner of the contest, Gilliland receives $500 from the TCC Foundation and 25 printed copies of the card featuring his work. The card is emailed to TCC students, faculty and staff. It is also mailed to community members and TCC Foundation members.

Gilliland said being a TCC student has opened doors he didnt have while working in his previous position. In October, his poster design was chosen for the Linde Oktoberfest; it featured clinking beer steins against a Tulsa skyline.

Winning the holiday card contest wasnt even the highest of the high notes, Gilliland said. Through going and studying at TCC, Ive had a lot of opportunities come up. I did the Oktoberfest poster, and Ill have a solo arts show at the TCC Gallery through January.

My hobby and interest has been in medieval art. Being at TCC has given me the opportunity to explore my personal interests, which have revolved around medieval art.
The Shape of Water is one of the years most gorgeous, romantic and unusual films, a fairy tale for troubled times that is full of imagination.

Using your imagination is important when considering this adult fable about the romance between a woman and a fish man.

Amphibian Man is the exact credit in the film, and its important to know what youre getting yourself into here. The best way to do that is to think of this as a twist on the Beauty and the Beast model.

By way of Creature from the Black Lagoon but with more intimacy.

The film is very much a tale of finding beauty inside another person, of looking deeper to find their soul shining through, beyond what others may see as a deficiency.

Or even a difference in species, as is the case in the latest tale from writer-director Guillermo Del Toro, who creates his best picture since his 2006 masterpiece of imagination, Pans Labyrinth.

Let that fable of a film serve as a guide to the manner in which the filmmaker again tells a story of love and of a monster  in which the monster is man.

There is a dark side to The Shape of Water to accompany its stunning cinematography and production design through the use of vibrant color and its exquisite score by Alexandre Desplat.

That palette of green patina and injections of red for high emotions color a world in which the main characters live with their hearts on their sleeves, in love with the fantasy of the movie musicals they watch, which set their toes to tapping.

This is a movie that loves movies, with characters living above a theater and with a black-and-white song-and-dance number that furthers the fantasy that our heroine sees as a better reality than the one shes living.

Sally Hawkins, who could just as easily be nominated for best actress for Maudie earlier this year as she will be for this performance, is our focus as Elisa.

Elisa is a mute cleaning woman working the graveyard shift at an imposing-looking government lab in 1962 that is cold and concrete and filled with all the Cold War paranoia you might expect.

Its running even more rampant when a new doctor (Michael Stuhlbarg) and a new security chief (Michael Shannon) arrive with a new test subject  an amphibian creature from the jungles of South America, where locals hailed it as a god.

This comes during an era when Russia was making a dog the first animal to orbit the Earth and the space-race was making any such find worthy of further inspection. Which Shannons character takes to mean poking with an electric cattle prod to show the tall, green creature with gills whos boss.

Not only is Shannon sadistic, but hes also a racist and a sexual harasser who is set up as the ugly, unfeeling white-and-powerful male villain in Del Toros story of inclusion.

Elisa communicates through sign language only, so Del Toros story depends on her words being voiced by her two best friends  a black woman and a gay man  who symbolically also dont have voices in 1962 society.

That would be Zelda, her cleaning partner at the lab played by Octavia Spencer who gabs enough for both of them, and Giles, the lonely illustrator who lives across the hall from Elisa.

You have to think that Spencer (The Help) only takes on another servant role because of its rich wit, and she kills it, and Richard Jenkins is heartbreaking as the man with a crush on the young counter-guy at the local diner that we know will never happen.

While the perfection of the first half of this film is followed by a somewhat weaker second  especially with regard to an undercover-Russian subplot  the power of the performances and the unforgettable artistry of this picture is intoxicating.

That includes the work of Del Toro favorite Doug Jones in motion-capture form as the fish man, making him expressive and graceful, as well as seeing Shannon take his bad guy to a painfully creepy level of villainy.

The Shape of Water shows that love comes in many forms, and that love conquers hate, and those with an open mind and love of cinema may fall hard for this fish tale.
Federal administrators are committed to finding a way to restore roughly $65 million a year that Oklahoma has used the past two decades to help fund graduate medical education, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Wednesday.

I dont think they have a choice, Inhofe said by telephone. They have to find a way.

Inhofe noted Oklahoma has received the funding since 1996 through a Medicaid waiver that provides federal matching dollars for physician training. The state puts in roughly $40 million to qualify for the federal dollars, creating a total pool of $105 million.

Last month the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees the program, notified the Oklahoma Health Care Authority that it did not believe the waiver met CMS requirements.

Accounts of why the waiver was rejected vary, but the programs difficulties apparently began with a 2015 annual review that noted the waiver had not been properly worded since 2001.

The OHCA had been working with CMS staff to correct the issue in a new application when, according to reports, CMS said it did not believe the waiver could be renewed.

That led to a meeting Wednesday involving Inhofe and members of his staff, CMS Director Seema Verma, and staffers of U.S. Sen. James Lankford and 4th District Congressman Tom Cole.

Cole chairs the appropriations subcommittee with direct oversight of CMS.

Any time you can get the administrator to come to your office for a meeting, it means you have their attention, Inhofe said.

Inhofes staff said a new waiver application was submitted to CMS on Tuesday, and that there is optimism the state will ultimately receive the same level of funding it is now, although not necessarily through the same program.

The medical education money is divided among the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, and the the Physician Manpower Training Commission.

The states two medical schools have said losing the federal funding would cause severe hardship for their teaching hospitals in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and reduce training opportunities for their students.
A restaurant industry leader is hailing an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that reversed lower court decisions dealing with how eateries and bars charge taxes on mixed-beverage sales.

The court ordered two Canadian County lawsuits dismissed Tuesday after finding that a law cited by the plaintiffs as justification for their case did not apply to their cause.

Yesterdays ruling is a step in the right direction toward this being over, Oklahoma Restaurant Association President Jim Hopper said Wednesday.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs could still ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling.

Oklahoma City-area residents John Truel, Gladys Erbar and Tom Erbar sued hundreds of restaurants and bars in 2011, claiming that the businesses overcharged them in taxes on mixed-beverage purchases.

State law requires a 13.5 percent tax on mixed-beverage sales.

The lawsuit said about a third of the more than 1,600 bars and restaurants they visited across the state overcharged them in mixed-beverage taxes by adding the 13.5 percent levy to the price of the drinks rather than including it in the advertised price of the beverage.

State law at the time stated that the advertised price of a mixed beverage shall be the sum of the total retail sale price and the gross receipts tax levied thereon.

The law was amended after the lawsuit was filed, dropping the word shall from the law and replacing it with the word may.

The state Supreme Court noted that Truel testified that he visited establishments multiple times even after he concluded that he had been overcharged for his mixed drinks, according to his interpretation of state law.

Yet he did not protest to any of the retailers at the time he bought the mixed beverages, even when he knew the 13.5 percent tax was being added in separately on his bill, the Supreme Court opinion states. Accordingly, the alleged violation of a tax law regarding advertising a mixed drink cannot result in a legal wrong to a patron.

The court did note that the law was ambiguous and caused sufficient problems in collection of the tax that resulted in the Legislatures amending the statute.

We hold that the statutes purpose does not involve protecting consumers from having a tax separately listed from the price of a drink instead of including it in the price of a drink, the opinion states. Because the complaints of the plaintiff against the defendants rest on the assumption that (the law) protects consumers, and we have held that it is solely a tax statute, we order the trial court to dismiss these cases.

Meanwhile, records show that some restaurants named as defendants in the lawsuit have already reached settlements with the plaintiffs.

I think some restaurants did decide to settle because they just didnt want the hassle of continuing in the lawsuit, Hopper said.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs could not be reached for comment.
A global oil-field services company, Halliburton knows what its like to dig deep.

On Thursday, the company did so in its wallet, announcing a pledge of $10 million to A Gathering Place for Tulsa.

At Halliburton, we very much appreciate the communities where we live and work and are happy to support Gathering Place, Halliburton President and CEO Jeff Miller said in a statement. We believe the park is a great benefit to Tulsa and the local community  home of hundreds of Halliburton employees.

The company has more than 3,600 employees in Oklahoma, with presences in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Duncan, Norman, El Reno and a number of small towns. It was founded in 1919 by Erle P. Halliburton, who, after borrowing a wagon, a team of mules and a pump, built a wooden mixing box and started an oil well cementing business in Duncan.

More than 70 donors have contributed to A Gathering Place, a 100-acre park under construction along Riverside Drive near downtown. The George Kaiser Family Foundation has given $200 million toward the project ($50 million in land plus $150 million for construction of Phase I of the park), and nearly $150 million has been raised in private donations.

Matching the $10 million pledges of the H.A. and Mary K. Chapman Charitable Foundation and ONEOK, Halliburtons gift is among the largest given to A Gathering Place. Only Williams Cos. ($16 million) and QuikTrip Corp. ($12.5 million) have donated more.

Halliburton has maintained an office in Tulsa for more than 60 years, said Emily Mir, the firms director of public relations.

Jeff Stava, executive director and trustee of Tulsas Gathering Place LLC, said Halliburtons pledge is an example of the ongoing support this project is generating and the unwavering commitment from our business community.

When they (companies) see how transformational this will be for Tulsa, they look at this huge park as a way to honor their current and retired employees who make Oklahoma home, Stava said.

The 66.5-acre first phase is expected to open in late spring/summer of 2018, with the Chapman Foundations Adventure Playground opening in January for scheduled visits by Tulsa-area elementary school children.

Halliburtons gift is sponsoring the King Post Bridge.

Its the central bridge that crosses over Peggys Pond, and it connects Williams Lodge and the Chapman Foundations Adventure Playground to ONEOK Boat House and the QuikTrip Great Lawn, Stava said. Its kind of the major connection point between two sides that have four prominent features.

King Post refers to the spans design. The logs and decking are made from Coastal Douglas Fir harvested in Oregon and Washington.

It looks like an A-Frame bridge, an all-timber bridge with stainless steel collars, Stava said. Its a perfect segue between the Chapman Foundations Adventure Playground, which is nearly all wood, to the more modern ONEOK Boathouse.
| By Mary T. Phelan

The presentation given by Jonathan Jayes-Green began with a simple declaration.

I am Jonathan Jayes-Green and I am undocumented, said the co-founder of the UndocuBlack Network, an advocacy group for undocumented African-Americans. I know the stories that you hear about undocumented people and I just want you to see my face.

From left, Kathleen Page, Jonathan Jayes-Green, Nalini Negi, Elizabeth Alex, and Maureen Sweeney.

Jayes-Green was among a panel of speakers discussing DACA and Beyond: The impact of Restrictive Immigration Policies, held recently at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). The event was co-sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Social Work and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Other panelists included Carey Law Associate Professor Maureen Sweeney, JD, and Elizabeth Alex, MSW 02, senior director of community organizing, CASA de Maryland. The evening was moderated by Nalini Negi, PhD, MSW, associate professor at the School of Social Work, and Kathleen Page, MD, associate professor, division of infectious diseases, at Johns Hopkins University and co-founder of Centro SOL, which promotes equity and health opportunities for Latinos.

Since the Trump administration began to dismantle Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in September, the status of more than 800,000 undocumented U.S. residents has been in jeopardy.

Jayes-Greens family arrived in the United States when he was 13, leaving their native Panama for better opportunities on a tourist visa. They arrived in Maryland and filed for residency, but the request was denied.

And that is how I became undocumented, he told the overflow crowd at UMB's Southern Management Corporation Campus Center. Back then, in 2006, I didnt really understand what undocumented meant until I tried to go to school. It really gets me because at that time we had bought into the American dream. Everyones heard about the American dream, that if you just work hard enough, youll be able to access all the opportunities in the world. If you work hard enough, youll be able to have a house with the 2 kids and the white picket fence.

During his high school years, he began to realize maybe because of my undocumented status, the opportunities that I thought were available if I just worked hard enough were not available, he said. It really made my relationship to this country complicated and its gotten even more complicated since.

CASA de Maryland recruited him to work on the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act at the state level. He went on to build a career and own a car and a house.

Regardless of what youve heard, I am here to stay, he said.

Bruce Jarrell, MD, FACS, executive vice president, provost, and dean of the Graduate School, who attended the event on behalf of UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, quoted former President Barack Obamas comments about the dismantling of DACA.

They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants," Jarrell said, quoting from Obama's statement. "They may not know a country bedside our country. They may not even know a language beside English. They often have no idea that theyre undocumented until they apply for a job, a college, or a drivers license. Therefore, whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldnt threaten the future of this group, the DACA group, of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us. Kicking them out wont lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyones taxes, or raise anybody elses wages.

Jarrell added: I cant think about any better way to say it than that. At the campus level, we have a deep commitment to making sure this is a welcoming and friendly international environment.

Richard P. Barth, PhD, MSW, dean of the School of Social Work, also welcomed the audience, which filled the room to capacity, many people sitting on the floor because there were no seats left.

One of the things that we hope that we can accomplish tonight is not only figuring out a way to embrace our DACA program participants, but to think more broadly, he said. There are many others who need the same opportunities that we hope we can get restored to DACA.

Negi said 800,000 young adults' lives were thrown into limbo Sept. 5, the day that Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded DACA. That only tells one part of the picture in some ways. What it doesnt also share the story of is that we in this country also have 11 million undocumented immigrants. Many of them were not eligible for DACA.

Sweeney provided an overall history of DACA, adding that the U.S. immigration system is one thing everyone can agree on. Its a mess, she said.

There is also just no pathway (to citizenship) for many people, Sweeney added. The desire to come here and work and make a better life for yourself isnt enough. If you dont have job skills and an education and an employer who will petition for you to come to the United States, or you dont have an immediate family member who is a U.S. citizen, then you have no pathway.
Kenya: UNHCR chief calls for more support for Somali refugees

In Kenya, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees visited Dadaab, one of the largest and oldest refugee camps in the world. He met with Somali refugees who are choosing to go home, and the vast majority who plan to remain until conditions in Somalia are safer. Filippo Grandi urged more global investment and support for Somali refugees living in Dadaab and beyond.
Trucks carrying the belongings of Chadian refugees line up as they prepare to leave for Chad.  UNHCR/Sudan

More than 4,000 Chadian refugees are ready to return to their home country after seeking refuge in Darfur for more than a decade. On 18 December 2017, UNHCR and the Governments of Sudan and Chad began assisting the refugees with transportation and return packages. The first convoy which had 301 refugees, left Um Shalya camp in Central Darfur State heading to Chad.

After ten years in Darfur, we called on the authorities to help us to return home safely and in dignity in order to lead stable lives and cultivate our lands, explained Osman Harun Abdallah, one of the refugee leaders from Um Shalaya camp in Central Darfur. We have been waiting for this day for a long time. We have been thinking of home day and night.

I thank the people of Darfur for hosting us for more than ten years. We have the same traditions and cultures and we never felt like strangers here, continued Mr. Abdullah.

Nearly 1,000 refugees are expected to return by the end of the year to Moudeina, in eastern Chad's Sila region. Up to 4,000 refugees are planned to return in 2018 to other locations in the country.

UNHCR is supporting both governments to ensure that refugees are well prepared for the return and reintegration process and that both their legal and physical protection needs are met," explained Ms. Noriko Yoshida, UNHCR's Representative in Sudan. We also wish to extend our appreciation to the Government of Sudan and the host communities for their generosity towards the refugees.

Transportation will be provided for the refugees from Central Darfur to Chad, along with return packages to help them re-establish their homes and livelihoods. UNHCR, the Government of Chad, and other partners will also work together to enhance service provision in the return areas.

Since the outbreak of violence in Chad from 2005 to 2007, Darfur has been hosting refugees from neighboring parts of the country. Over the last decade, UNHCR and its partners have worked with the Government of Sudan to provide refugees with protection and assistance, including the establishment of two refugee camps in Central Darfur. More than 8,800 individuals still remain in the camps, half of which are now opting to return to Chad.

In May of this year, a tripartite agreement was signed by the Governments of both countries and UNHCR, which provides the legal framework for voluntary repatriation for Chadian refugees who wish to return to their country.

Returning to Chad is expected to be a lasting solution for these refugees as the security situation is permissive. The Government of Chad launched a new National Development Plan (NDP) in September 2017, which has so far attracted more than US$ 10 billion in financial pledges from the international community. Now in its early stages of implementation, the plan aims to strengthen the economy while providing all citizens with access to water, health, housing, energy and mobility.

Chadian refugees who chose to remain in Darfur will continue to benefit from the principles of international protection.

Chad is itself an important refugee host country with over 300,000 people from Darfur living in camps in the east of the country.

For further information, please contact:

In Sudan, Mohamed Elfatih Elnaiem, [email protected], +249 -183 493 664
J&K DGP for seizure of properties raised by drug proceeds 17 Nov 2022 | 10:36 PM Jammu, Nov 17 (UNI) Referring to the directions of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha that the drug menace has emerged as a big threat, Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police, Dilbag Singh on Thursday stressed on seizure of properties raised by drug proceeds. see more..

Mamata writes to PM requesting him to restore extended jurisdiction of Farakka Barrage Project 17 Nov 2022 | 10:29 PM Kolkata, Nov 17 (UNI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday dashed off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting him to restore the extended jurisdiction of the Farakka Barrage Project (FBP). see more..

Former minister Upendra Kushwaha gets bail 17 Nov 2022 | 10:27 PM Patna, Nov 17 (UNI) Former Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha was released on bail on Thursday after he surrendered before the special court in connection with a case related to taking out a procession and blocking the road in restricted area. see more..

Azam's name struck from electoral rolls in Rampur 17 Nov 2022 | 10:26 PM Rampur (UP), Nov 17 (UNI) After being disqualified from the membership of Uttar Pradesh Assembly, senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Mohammad Azam Khan will not be able to vote in the by-poll for Rampur Sadar seat as his name has been struck off from the electoral rolls. see more..
21 killed in Gaza fire 18 Nov 2022 | 9:16 AM Gaza, Nov 18 (UNI) A least 21 Palestinians, including seven children, were killed and more than 30 others were injured on Thursday in a massive fire inside a residential building in the northern Gaza Strip, said security and medical sources. see more..

Ethiopia establishes national anti-corruption committee 18 Nov 2022 | 9:09 AM Addis Ababa, Nov 18 (UNI) The Ethiopian government announced the establishment of a national anti-corruption committee to coordinate the government's campaign against corruption. see more..

Lebanese parliament fails to elect president for 6th time 17 Nov 2022 | 5:56 PM Beirut, Nov 17 (UNI) Lebanese lawmakers have failed to elect the country's president for the sixth time, as none of the candidates secured enough votes, media reported on Thursday. see more..

Russia's SR Space to launch country's first internet-of-things satellite in 2024 17 Nov 2022 | 5:45 PM Moscow, Nov 17 (UNI) Private Russian company SR Space told Sputnik that it was going to launch its first internet-of-things (IoT) satellite SR NET in 2024 and use it to test the technologies necessary to create a full-fledged grouping of such devices. see more..
UN envoy urges for efforts to resume pol process in Yemen

United Nations, Dec 21 (UNI) The United Nations envoy for Yemen has called for halting violence and supporting efforts to bring warring parties together for the resumption of the political process.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for Yemen, is deeply concerned about the escalation of violence in Yemen and the continuous violations putting the life of civilians at risk, said a statement issued by his office on Wednesday.

Since 2015, the southern Arabian nation has been in a conflict between forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi rebel movement.
(Dec. 21, 2017) -- Winter break is typically a time for students to catch up on sleep and spend time with family. Several students and staff members from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) will roll up their sleeves over break to help fellow Texans who are still recovering from Hurricane Harvey.

UTSA Volunteer Services is sponsoring an Alternative Winter Break trip to Beaumont, Jan. 3 to 6, 2018. Eighteen UTSA students are partnering with Community Collaborations International to clean up homes damaged during the storm.

So many people went to Houston and other areas in Texas right after the hurricane, said Brandi Raschke, program manager for UTSA Student Center for Community Engagement and Inclusion. Three months later, there is still destruction. There are still people without jobs and living in shelters and hotels because their homes arent livable yet.

As an Alternative Winter Break team leader, Cameron Nguyen, a San Antonio native majoring in computer science and statistics, chose this volunteer opportunity because it hit so close to home.

I hope to have a better understanding of what communities go through in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Harvey, Nguyen said. I want to come back to UTSA feeling like I made a positive impact and be inspired to continue helping in my community.

Maria Guerra Garcia, a biomedical engineering and neurobiology senior and first-generation Roadrunner originally from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, has a heart for helping. This will be her fourth alternative break experience, an opportunity she says she couldnt do without support from UTSA.

This alternative break will allow me to finally be able to donate my time and give my undivided attention to serve those affected, Garcia said. I hope I can leave Beaumont with a stronger sense of what it is to be homeless and how severely natural disasters affects people. I also hope to motivate and inspire others to serve those that aren't as fortunate as us.

Nguyen echoes the sentiment.

Volunteering was never my first thought whenever I had a break from school, but it is now, Nguyen said. These experiences really are a lot of fun and are very rewarding knowing youve made a difference for a community in need.

Garcia says shes also learned a lot out from the experiences.

The UTSA Alternative Winter Break program exposes you to things you'd never think you'd ever had the opportunity to learn to do, Garcia said. I've learned how to compost material, pick and plant cotton, efficiently and effectively pull weeds, and even bathe horses.

In addition to building pride and a sense of accomplishment, Raschke said volunteering helps students when they graduate and go out into the job force. To a prospective employer, volunteering shows that UTSA students know how to work as a team. It also demonstrates that they want to go above and beyond by taking on new challenges, helping others and contributing to society.

It encourages you to build meaningful relationships with others and improve both your leadership and communication skills, Garcia added. I'd highly recommend the experience to all Roadrunners.

UTSA Volunteer Services also funds the majority of the trips.
Presentation on UW Science Initiative Dec. 28 in Cheyenne

Two University of Wyoming faculty members and a student are scheduled to speak about UWs Science Initiative Thursday, Dec. 28, at the Kiwanis Club of Cheyennes weekly membership meeting.

The meeting is noon-1 p.m. at the Radisson Hotel, 204 W. Fox Farm Road.

Greg Brown, professor of botany and associate dean of the UW College of Arts and Sciences, will be joined by Wyoming Research Scholars Program Director Jamie Crait and student Kali Nicholas Moon to discuss the initiative that aims to revolutionize scientific education and discovery in Wyoming.

The Science Initiative, initiated by Gov. Matt Mead and the Legislature in 2014, is an effort to enable world-class research and education related to pillars of Wyomings present and future economy. Through life and data sciences research that impacts areas including mineral extraction, agriculture, tourism, resource management and high technology, the initiative will impact Wyomings economy and give UW students a leading-edge skill set.

Central to the Science Initiative is construction of a $100 million facility at the northwest end of the UW campus, featuring flexible laboratories for interdisciplinary science research; the Center for Advanced Scientific Instrumentation; state-of-the-art greenhouses for plant research; a 200-seat active-learning classroom; and student collaboration areas to foster science innovation.

Mead, who describes the facility as a unique research and teaching environment that will transform interdisciplinary research and education, has recommended that the 2018 Legislature release $100 million previously appropriated for the project.

The Wyoming Research Scholars Program, one of the components of the Science Initiative, provides scholarships for undergraduates to study and conduct research with top UW researchers.
Wyoming Business Tips for Dec. 31-Jan. 6

A weekly look at issues facing Wyoming business owners and entrepreneurs from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC) Network, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Sarah Hamlin, WSBDC Network regional director

How does the way my website look affect my in-store sales? Melanie, Riverton

Having the correct online presence can drive potential customers through the doors of local businesses. But, how do you know if your website is prioritizing the right information?

Building and maintaining a website can be a large undertaking for any small-business owner, and making sure it is set up to best appeal to your customers can be even more challenging. Having a well-organized and easy-to-navigate website lets visitors find what they are looking for so they can make a decision instead of abandoning your page.

The WSBDC Network can help evaluate your options and come up with a step-by-step plan to get an effective website started or to optimize your current layout.

Google reports that four out of five people are using the internet like they would a phonebook -- to find your business phone number, hours, contact information and a general sense of whether your products or services can meet their needs.

A 2016 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that consumers are researching products online, reading peer reviews and then, ultimately, purchasing in their local stores. These findings only underscore the importance of having the right information readily available to online consumers.

So, how do you get started creating the necessary online presence? Your local WSBDC adviser is always available to help create a plan of action and to offer guidance in evaluating different website options such as: optimizing directory listings on various search engines; creating a do-it-yourself site through an all-in-one platform, such as Wix or Squarespace; and hiring a web designer to create a site for you.

To get started, give me a call at (307) 851-2029 or email sarah.hamlin@uwyo.edu.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyomingsbdc.org/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership among the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council and the U.S. Small Business Administration, offering business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their businesses.

To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
A Portage man was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison on Tuesday for felony domestic abuse, with little in the way of an apology during his appearance in Columbia County Circuit Court.

Justin Blanchard, 32, returned before Judge Alan White, following conviction on Aug. 17 on charges of felony domestic battery and domestic disorderly conduct. Blanchard was acquitted of a third and more serious charge of strangulation.

This wasnt a first-time incident, said Blanchards former girlfriend, with whom he has a 3-year-old daughter, referring to the March 3 incident. There has been a long history of domestic violence between Justin and myself. It is hard for me to single out just one incident, because it had been going on for 3 years.

After meeting in June 2013, the two began living together and were residing in an East Emmett Street apartment when on March 23 the Portage Police Department received a report of a domestic incident. According to the criminal complaint, the woman told police that during an argument, Blanchard grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, and that she had been too frightened to report it until 20 days later.

The event was reportedly witnessed by the couples young daughter, a fact taken into consideration by the court as an aggravating factor.

Blanchard was released from state custody in a previous case on March 22, the woman told the court, at which point she began attempting to contact a local womens shelter, fearing for her life.

I know that the end of an abusive relationship is the most dangerous, she said. The honeymoon periods are shorter and shorter.

District Attorney Jane Kohlwey highlighted the gravity of the case, saying that it could arguably be seen as the most important kind of case in preventing a homicide. Kohlwey then went on to list Blanchards previous convictions from an arson case when he was still a juvenile, to cases in which he was convicted of domestic disorderly conduct and strangulation, involving the same woman.

While Blanchard was in Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility for domestic abuse treatment in his most recent case, he sent letters to the victim. Kohlwey read the letters to the court Tuesday, apologizing to those in the room for the obscenity involved.

I know you have been breaking the rules and you will pay for them when I get home, Blanchard wrote. You are not allowed to go out anywhere without me. You are not allowed to talk to other men and you know the rest. If you dont, write me and I will tell you. You are mine to do with as I please. You are to obey me. If I dont have you, I just want to go to prison.

Blanchards mother spoke on his behalf, telling the court, This is a toxic relationship and we just want to move on.

Telling White that the woman was just as guilty and had bailed Blanchard out of jail, she said, Justin wants to move on, we as a family want to move on, but we dont leave one behind.

Blanchard told the court that he never denied what he had done to his former girlfriend and was very sorry for the things that had happened to her, wishing her and her family the best.

This is a case where I have looked very hard and havent been able to find much of any mitigating circumstances that would tend to make me believe that Mr. Blanchard is a person who deserves any kind of a break here, White said.

White ordered Blanchard to prison, where he has been serving sentences stemming from revoked probation, to serve the maximum sentence possible.

You have been an unproductive citizen, you are a criminal and you belong behind bars  that is my take, White said. Its hard to send someone to prison, Ive had to do it many times in 11 years, but I will tell you Mr. Blanchard, I have no problem with doing this because I believe that you deserve that punishment.
RACINE  Two Racine residents have been charged in connection with a reported home invasion early Monday morning on the citys north side.

Janasia L. Kirby, 20, of the 600 block of 18th Street, has been charged with a felony count of attempted armed robbery, and Naython Bergeron-Davila, 26, of the 1100 block of Yout Street, has been charged with felony counts of attempted armed robbery and possession of a firearm by a felon.

According to the criminal complaints:

Racine police were dispatched to 1207 Romayne Ave. at about 4:11 a.m. Monday for a report of a man with a gun. One resident, who resides at the address, said he was awakened by the sound of banging from the stairs leading to his apartment and then observed Bergeron-Davila standing in his bedroom door holding a shotgun and asking, Wheres the money? Wheres the weed?

The two then struggled over the shotgun until the residents brother assisted by grabbing a bat and hitting Bergeron-Davila until they could get the gun away from him.

During the struggle, a woman who was with Bergeron-Davila reportedly told the resident, Were going to get you, too. That woman was later identified as Kirby.

After getting the gun away from Bergeron-Davila, the resident and his brother forced the two down the stairs from the apartment. At that point Kirby reportedly got out the door, but the two brothers held Bergeron-Davila until police arrived.

Police later made contact with Bergeron-Davila at the Ascension All Saints Hospital emergency room, where he was transferred due to injuries in the struggle. He denied trying to rob the residents. While police were at the hospital, Kirby reportedly showed up with clothing matching those that the victims had described and she was later taken into custody and charged in connection to the incident.

Kirby and Bergeron-Davila both have Dec. 27 preliminary hearings scheduled in Racine County Circuit Court. Both were reported in custody as of Monday night at the County Jail.
Residents search for survivors after an air strike on the rebel-held town of Armanaz in northwestern Syria on Sep 30, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Omar Haj Kadour)

"Suspected Russian air strikes targeted several houses in Maarshurin," a rebel-held town in Idlib province, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He said 13 members of a single family were among the dead.

Residents of Maarshurin were still working on Wednesday morning to clear rubble from buildings hit in the bombardment, an AFP photographer reported.

One had been completely flattened and blood stained the rubble.

"These are all civilian homes," said resident Zahed Abu Abdo.

The Observatory said more than 25 people were wounded in the strikes, some of whom were in critical condition.

The Britain-based war 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.

Russia has been carrying out air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government since 2015.

Idlib province is one of four regions of Syria which are supposed to be safe areas under a deal agreed by Russia, fellow regime ally Iran, and rebel backer Turkey in May.

Maarshurin is jointly controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel alliance dominated by Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate, which is not covered by the deal.
Equitisations of three leading oil giants should generate over $570 million for the state , Photo: Le Toan

The Vietnamese government last week approved the equitisation plans of Binh Son Refinery, PV Oil, and PV Power, all leading businesses in the oil and gas industry. The market has been abuzz about the public debuts of these three firms for the past year. The government expects to generate at least VND13 trillion ($570.7 million) from these sales.

Binh Son Refinery (BSR), the operator of Vietnams only oil refinery Dung Quat, plans to offer 241 million shares, or 7.79 per cent of its outstanding capital, to external investors. Prices start at VND14,600 ($0.64) a share. Strategic investors are expected to hold 49 per cent of BSR, while state-owned oil giant PetroVietnam retains its 43 per cent ownership.

For Vietnams second-largest oil retailer and sole exporter of crude oil PV Oil, outside investors can buy 20 per cent of shares in the initial public offering (IPO). About 44 per cent will go to strategic investors, with state ownership dropping to 35.1 per cent. The starting price for PV Oil is VND13,400 ($0.59) a share.

Meanwhile, PV Power, the countrys second-largest electricity producer, will sell 28.8 per cent of stake to strategic partners and offer another 20 per cent to the market at VND14,400 ($0.63) per share. PetroVietnam plans to keep its 51 per cent stake.

All three businesses have shown their determination to hold their IPOs before the Lunar New Year, in mid-February 2018. Throughout 2017, they have met with various potential investors, mostly leading oil businesses around the world. BSR, for example, held meetings with 17 investment funds and five oil firms, including World Petro Company from the US and Macron Petroleum from Cyprus, who both offered to buy the entire 49 per cent batch of shares.

Other suitors for BSR are Spains Repsol and American firm Kevcomp, who met with the Vietnamese oil refinery last month. All investors expressed their intention to improve corporate governance and technologies at BSR.

Similarly, PV Power has attracted the attention of Singapores Gemcorp Industries and sovereign fund GIC, as well as Vietnam-based investment funds Indochina Capital, VinaCapital, and Dragon Capital.

The situation is a bit more complicated for PV Oil. According to the law, investors can only become strategic partners at a Vietnamese oil retailer if they also invest in an oil refinery in the country.

This rule could lead to two scenarios. In the first, potential strategic partners in PV Oil must also buy stakes in BSR. Another option is that Idemitsui Kosan, Kuwait Petroleum, or Mitsui Chemicals, all existing developers in Vietnams upcoming Nghi Son refinery, can consider buying PV Oil. However, Idemitsui and Kuwait Petroleum have just launched their own oil retailing system in Vietnam called Idemitsui Q8, which seemingly provides the firms less incentive for a PV Oil purchase.

In a recent report, BIDV Securities pointed out that Vietnams fast-growing economy, especially in its continued focus on manufacturing, presents opportunities for the $5.9 billion oil and gas industry. Viet Capital Securities also reported that the prospects of oil and gas firms are strong, citing forecasts that Vietnams oil and gas consumption will climb by 6.8 per cent every year between now and 2025.

Huynh Anh Tuan, CEO of SJC Securities, noted that global oil prices are on a recovery track ($62.44 per barrel for crude oil, and $56.6 for Western Texas Intermediate as of Friday), which bodes well for Vietnams oil and gas firms.

This is a good time to sell leading businesses in this sector, Tuan said. Moreover, foreign investors are paying strong attention to Vietnam, thanks to the recent well-reported sales of Vinamilk and Sabeco. I believe that these businesses can do well in their IPOs.

There are worries, however, that these three major sales taking place at the same time could lead to an oversupply of oil-related shares.

Nguyen Manh Hung, deputy CEO of PetroVietnam, downplayed these concerns, stating that BSR, PV Oil, and PV Power all operate in different segments, which means they will attract different sets of investors.
New laws and improved macro-economic conditions are drawing investors back to Vietnamese banks Photo: Le Toan

Until recently, Vietnams banks remained a no-go zone for most investment funds, due to their chronic problems of non-performing loans and low levels of transparency. However, it seems that the financial industry regained some of its attractiveness this year, with new laws promising to tackle bad debts and international standards forcing banks to enhance their efficiency.

Foreign investors are taking notice of the banking sectors improvements. Two weeks ago, the 417 million ($491.62 million) PYN Elite Fund spent $40 million on 4.99 per cent of TPBanks shares, making its first foray into the domestic banking sector. In the year prior to this investment, TPBank also received $75 million of trade finance from the Asian Development Bank and $18 million of capital from the International Finance Corporation.

This shows investors newfound confidence in the bank, ranked in 2012 on the list of struggling lenders but having since cleaned up its bad loan portfolio and restructured its business.

In October, Vietnam Opportunity Fund (VOF), managed by VinaCapital Group, acquired a nearly 5 per cent stake at Orient Commercial Bank in a deal valued at $11 million. Andy Ho, chief investment officer of VinaCapital, said that this was a rare opportunity to buy a sizeable stake at a bank that has strong growth potential.

Finance is also one of the prioritised sectors for VOF in the next three years, as stated at its annual investor conference. Before its plunge into holdings at Orient Commercial Bank, Eximbank was the only investment that VOF had made in the banking sector.

Other commercial banks such as HDBank and Techcombank are also seeking foreign investors before their listings next year. HDBanks representatives recently revealed that the bank will finalise selling 20 per cent of shares to four or five investors, aiming to raise $300 million.

Analyst Lam Nguyen from Viet Dragon Securities pointed out that Vietnamese banks can now accelerate their cleanup of bad debts thanks to a recovering economy, growing consumer confidence, and especially Resolution 42, which paves the way for banks to sell collaterals. A loosened monetary policy also helps with credit growth.

Credit rating agencies such as S&P and Moodys have upgraded their ratings for some Vietnamese banks, and financial institutions are enjoying a favourable macro-environment. The initiation of Resolution 42 will boost the recovery rate of bad debts, Nguyen said.

According to Viet Dragon Securities, the banking industry in Vietnam achieved high profit growth in the first half of 2017, as net profits grew by 39 per cent from the same period last year, while return-on-equity increased to 7.5 per cent from 5.7 per cent.

It is interesting to note that at this moment, Vietnamese banks seem to be attracting more financial investors than strategic ones. A recent example is VPBank, which managed to raise $1.2 billion from 80 investment funds before its listing, after its refusal of strategic partnerships. CEO Nguyen Duc Vinh explained that it is difficult to find a strategic partner that shares the same vision with the bank.

Some foreign banks see Vietnam just as a short-term investment, so they dont bring their best practices to us. There are also conflicts between the banks international practices and the Vietnamese business environment, said Vinh. VPBank previously partnered with Singapores OCBC Bank, between 2006 and 2013.

Economic expert Le Xuan Nghia pointed out that more and more financial investors are keen on Vietnamese banks, and their taste can be different from strategic partners. Specifically, instead of buying a small, struggling bank or an over-valued major one, financial investors now opt for up-and-coming small lenders.

Foreign funds, as purely financial investors, tend to choose banks that have good corporate governance and strong growth potential, said Nghia.

On the downside, according to Vietnamese law, a non-bank investor is only allowed to own at most 5 per cent of a Vietnamese bank, while a foreign bank can buy up to 10 per cent. This cap can be a challenge for investment funds competing to buy stakes at good lenders.
File photo of Britain's First Secretary of State Damian Green. British prime minister's deputy Damian Green resigns on Dec 20, 2017. (Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP)

Green agreed to step down as first secretary of state after a probe into his conduct found he had acted dishonestly.

"It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation," the prime minister wrote in a letter addressed to Green.

May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her deputy to step down, describing him as a friend since their time at university and throughout their political careers.

The departure of one of her closest aides is the result of an investigation into Green's conduct following newspaper allegations published last month.

The Sunday Times reported that pornography was found on his parliamentary computer in 2008, while a journalist claimed Green acted inappropriately towards her in 2015.

In its report the Cabinet Office said Green had breached the ministerial code when he made "inaccurate and misleading" statements, by falsely claiming he was unaware that indecent material had been found on his computer.

London's Metropolitan Police had told Green about the pornography found, the Cabinet Office noted, without drawing conclusions on whether he had viewed the material.

In a summary of the report findings published by May's Downing Street office, the investigation did not draw definite conclusions on Green's behaviour towards the journalist Kate Maltby.

SCANDAL AT WESTMINSTER

In his resignation letter Green apologised for breaching the ministerial code, while denying that he downloaded or viewed pornography in parliament.

He also expressed his regret at the "distress caused" to Maltby, who claimed Green touched her knee and later sent her a suggestive text message.

"I do not recognise the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise," he wrote.

Green's resignation comes as part of a broader scandal over sexual harassment at Westminster, which erupted weeks ago and prompted the departure of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon last month.

Numerous other claims have been made against those working in politics, prompting the prime minister to call for rules on MPs' behaviour to be toughened.

WEAKENED MAY

Fallon's resignation was followed a week later by that of Britain's overseas aid minister, Priti Patel, who stepped down over unauthorised meetings in Israel.

The loss of two ministers in a matter of days cast doubt over May's authority, already challenged by divided opinions within her cabinet over Brexit.

May had been left fragile after a snap election in June backfired dramatically, leaving the Conservatives clinging onto power but losing their majority in parliament.

The premier dismissed calls to resign and vowed to lead Britain through its EU departure, although she faced a further challenge last week when a group of Conservative MPs rebelled against her in a key parliamentary vote on Brexit.

Her troubles appeared to have abated somewhat on Friday, when European Union leaders agreed to open talks on a future relationship with Britain.

But Brussels warned that the next phase of talks will be even more difficult than the past six months of negotiations on the country's exit.

While May will enter the new year on unstable footing, the resignation of Green is not expected to mark her imminent departure from Downing Street.

She will however lose an important ally in Green, a former journalist who was first elected to parliament in 1997.

He rose through the ranks to become work and pensions secretary last year under May, before being appointed first secretary of state after the June election.

In his resignation letter Green indicated he would stay on as a lawmaker, thanking his constituents for their support and vowing to "continue to argue for the modernising conservatism I have always believed in".
At a recent online roundtable, discussing the credit policy for minority ethnic groups and the youth with regards to economic development, co-organised by Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) and Youth Newspaper, Le Ngoc Khanh, deputy director of the Development Centre for Rural Youth under the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Centre, said that the Youth Union is currently managing 24,233 savings and credit units across districts, communes, and villages nationwide.

The total outstanding credit under the management of the Youth Union is currently recorded at VND21 trillion ($954.5 million), with loans approved for 845,420 households, some 40-folds higher than when VBSP was established in 2002.

Walking in step with the underprivileged youth on their path to a career, the policy bank in conjunction with the Youth Union has co-ordinated and implemented many preferential credit programmes in areas in need and great difficulty.

The young people have then been able to gain access to preferential funds in a bid to pay for their continued education in high school or university, to get on with a career and invest into a small business to ultimately help their hometowns to flourish. In the past 15 years, this very source of funding has assisted millions of young villagers to improve their financial stances and lives.

This was the case of Nguyen Ngoc Triu (35) from My Thuan commune, Tan Son district in Phu Tho province, who was able to borrow to improve his familys finances. With a little savings accumulated over the years (he had been working at Tan Phu Tea Factory in Phu Tho) and the preferential funds borrowed from VBSP, Triu and his wife were able to start a small tea farm.

Nguyen Ngoc Triu and hiw wife at the family tea processing business

In 2009, with an additional interest-free loan of VND5 million ($227), his family expanded their farm to grow more tea plants. A year later, he applied for another VND15 million ($682) loan to purchase a tea grinder. Apart from looking after the tea farm, he and his wife also collected the tea leaves in the village, then ground them up and processed them into final products to sell in the market.

Up to this point, his family processes some 6-7 tonnes of fresh tea leaves each month, earning approximately VND200 million ($9,090) a year.

Out of the 6.7 million loan customers at VBSP, 1.4 million are recorded to be under the age of 35, taking up some VND37.13 trillion ($1.68 billion) in outstanding loans or 21.8 per cent of the total. Most of the loans are then invested into production and business development.

Deputy director of the VBSP Credit Department Nguyen Manh Thien noted that while there has not been a specific loan programme designed for the young to start business, the bank has numerous other programmes for which they can enrol and apply for. There are the preferential credit programmes for the poor, for those who need funds to start a business, for businesses and businesspeople in difficulty, and for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

Meanwhile, VBSP deputy director for Student Loans Dinh Mai Phong shared that under Decree No.61/2015/ND-CP, the young people looking to start a small or micro-business are eligible for loans through the National Employment Fund.

To qualify for such loans, these businesses must meet certain conditions including a feasible business plan that suits the provinces production and business lines, as well as creating more jobs with a sustainable development plan. In addition, the project must also be certified by a competent agency or organisation where it is registered and a loan guarantee in accordance with the current regulations.

According to Thien, the maximum amount of loan available to the poor is VND50 million ($2,272) a month. Some customers have stressed that the limit has not actually met the borrowing demand. VBSP has thus been revising the policy to raise the limit, and is going to submit a new loan limit to the appropriate authorities for approval.

In 2014, the VBSP Board of Directors increased the lending limit from VND30 million ($1,363) to VND50 million per household in an attempt to meet the demand for loans for business and production.

VBSP, in the years to come, is committed to continue rolling out various preferential credit programmes to the youththe future generation that hold the knowledge, creativity, and will for a stronger and brighter future.

VBSP celebrates 15th anniversary Vietnam Bank of Social Policies has enjoyed a successful 2017, celebrating its 15th anniversary. Nguyen Van Ly, deputy CEO of the bank, shared with Ha An his thoughts about this milestone and the banks future strategy.

Streamlining preferential credit flows to those in need In a quest to assist the poor and those longing to access preferential credit programmes from the government, Vietnam Bank for Social Policies has set up operations at the commune level, with transaction points located at the communal peoples committees, to provide convenient and efficient funding for those in need.
The local telecommunications market is the scene of fierce 3G competition

The prime minister last week gave in-principle approval to FPT Group and FPT Telecom being strategic investors of EVN Telecom.

EVN Telecom will this month announce its strategic investors after its negotiations with FPT and its affiliate FPT Telecom are finalised.

An EVN Telecom source revealed that the stake to be sold to FPT and FPT Telecom would be more than 50 per cent.

FPT Telecom was already licenced to be a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and is piloting LTE TDD technology.

Mobile business is what we want in our business portfolio and we are enthusiastic in our negotiations with partners. Our investment capital will be 10-times the amount we previously planned to invest in EVN Telecom, said FPT deputy general director Phan Duc Trung Trung.

FPT previously planned to invest VND400 billion ($21 million) in EVN Telecom as the former wanted to use the latters facility to provide mobile service.

The upcoming involvement of FPT and FPT Telecom in EVN Telecom means there would be no chance for foreign entities to be the mobile operators strategic partners.

Previously, EVN Telecom, which is expected to be the first mobile operator to be equitised in Vietnam, announced its plan to sell a 30 per cent stake to a foreign strategic investor. Details of the plan were not revealed then, except that the strategic investor would be a Singaporean or Malaysian firm.

EVN Telecom then also said the foreign strategic investors name would be made public after the company completed its equitisation process in September, this year.

Meanwhile, MobiFones long-awaited equitisation has seen many delays. The company was converted into a one-member company in early July and is still waiting for new government directions. The company planned to sell a 30 per cent stake to investors, including 15 per cent to strategic partners.

Viettel Telecom does not have a clear equitisation plan, as it is trying to complete a restructuring proposal by expanding into other business segments such as mobile handset production.

The long-awaited VinaPhone equitisation is still distant, as VNPT Groups restructuring proposal has not yet been approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications.
General Director of the Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) Phung Dinh Thuc makes a speech at an event when he was still in office. - Photo pvoil.com.vn

The Investigation Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security issued a decision to start legal proceedings against Thuc for alleged deliberately violating the States regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences, according to Article 165 of the Penal Code.

He was suspected of committing violations while directing the implementation of the Thai Binh 2 thermal power project.

The prosecution of Thuc was part of the polices investigation into the case of deliberately violating the States regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences and committing embezzlement in PetroVietnam and PetrolVietnam Construction Corporation.

Thuc, born in 1954, was banned from leaving his residence area at Dich Vong new urban area, Dich Vong Ward, Cau Giay District.

He served as PetroVietnams general director between 2008 and 2010, and as its chairman from 2011 to 2014.

In a related move, the Investigation Police Department also decided to prosecute a former board member of PetroVietnam, Phan Dinh Duc, over allegations of deliberately violating the States regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences.

He was suspected of mismanagement in the case involving PetroVietnams investment in OceanBank, which caused a loss of over VND800 billion (US$35.4 million).
Despite previous refusals, the General Department of Taxation is again proposing to widen its administrative grasp, Photo: Le Toan

Luu Duc Huy, head of the General Department of Taxations (GDT) Policy Division, said at a meeting in early December discussing the draft amendments to the Law on Tax Administration that his agency proposes adding one chapter on tax investigation to the draft to adapt to the countrys increasingly deep global integration.

Vietnam has so far signed agreements on the avoidance of double taxation with 76 countries. The country has also undertaken numerous tax commitments with ASEAN and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

We propose being empowered to investigate tax issues and then send the investigation results to other investigation agencies. The department now has the right to assess and inspect tax performance at enterprises, but these functions are not strong enough to help us realise the commitments in the international conventions on taxes, Huy added.

As an example, he cited the US as a country where the tax agency has the power of tax investigation. He said that only this agency has this function.

The proposal, however, was met with objections among businesses who have said that this would cause a burden on them.

If the GDT has tax investigation power and even the right to prosecute under the draft amendments, this may cause negative impacts on the transparency of tax management and objectiveness of investigation and litigation, thus possibly causing a pressure on taxpayers, said Pham Thi Thu Trang, a partner of accounting firm EYs Tax and Advisory Services.

Though the US tax agency has tax investigation power, they do not have the right to prosecute. Vietnam should carefully consider the proposal as the country is trying to prevent the criminalisation of economic issues, she added.

Echoing Trangs view, Pham Thi Giang Thu from the Hanoi Law University said that the changes on tax investigation authority should not be added in the draft amendments.

If the proposal is approved, some related laws will have to be amended, including the Law on Criminal Procedure, Thu said. We should not apply all mechanisms in the US and other countries to Vietnam. We instead have prevention measures.

Dang Thi Binh An of tax advisory company C&A also raised concerns over the issue. An said the scale and authority of GDT should be carefully considered before making any change. If this agency is given tax investigation powers, another issue is whether or not their investigation results will be re-checked by prosecution-related agencies. This may cause a burden on businesses.

At present, many agencies in Vietnam are capable of tax assessment and inspection, including the Government Inspectorate and the State Audit of Vietnam. The Ministry of Public Security and the customs agency also have tax investigation powers.

This is not the first time that the GDT made such a proposal. Previous proposals came up against opposition from the government and the National Assembly.
Visiting Samsungs complexes in the northern provinces of Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen, and Ho Chi Minh City, people are surprised by the enormity of their scale. A few foreign investors in Viet Nam are able to invest in such modern and colossal complexes as Samsung.

Starting investment in Viet Nam with a medium-sized project, Samsung developed step-by-step from focusing on simple assembly at first to investing in mammoth facilities producing mobile devices.

Now, Samsung has three of the largest-ever high-tech manufacturing complexes in the northern provinces of Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen, and Ho Chi Minh City, turning Viet Nam into the groups global production base.

Not counting Samsung Vina, the first small-scale project Samsung invested in Viet Nam 20 years ago, 2018 will mark the companys 10-year investment anniversary in Viet Nam.

Back in March 2008, Samsung Electronics Viet Nam (SEV) received the investment certificate to invest in its facility in Bac Ninh. The project was quickly kicked off and put into operation in April 2009.

Over the past years, Samsung has made quick leaps ahead in Viet Nam. In late 2012, Samsung increased its initial investment capital from $670 million to $1.5 billion. Its export turnover broke records with $12.72 billion that year, up from $245 million in the first year of operation in the country.

By expanding its businesses in Viet Nam, Samsungs total investment here now totals $17.3 billion, an over ten-fold increase since 2012.

In Bac Ninh, together with the $2.5-billion SEV complex, Samsung Display has invested $6.5 billion, while Samsung SDI - despite its smaller investment capital of $133 million - plays an important role in producing almost all of the batteries in Samsungs mobile phone devices across the globe.

In Thai Nguyen, next to the $5-billion Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen (SEVT) complex, Samsung Electro-Mechanic Vietnam hit $1.23 billion in total investment capital. Meanwhile in Ho Chi Minh City, the expired Samsung Vina facility was replaced by Samsung Electronics Ho Chi Minh Complex (SEHC), which has total investment capital of $2 billion.

When SEV was put into operation, it had a single factory. By now, a complex of factories is in operation, manufacturing mobile phone devices and spare parts. SEVT is even more modern and bigger than SEV, looking like a high-tech city in Thai Nguyen.

SEHC is on a whole different scale and technological level than Samsungs previous television manufacturing plant in Thu Duc district of Ho Chi Minh City. The large manufacturing buildings were constructed on a 94-hectare area, and according to Samsung, all production lines are the most modern available and were freshly imported for the production of high-end product lines, such as TV SUHD, Smart TV, and LED TV.

With the expansion of the scale of operations, the number of employees has increased as well, to more than 160,000, making up over 30 per cent of Samsungs total global workforce.

Not only making bold steps in investment activities, Samsung has also been reporting sky-rocketing export turnover.

In 2012, Samsungs export turnover was $12.72 billion, which was considered an amazing figure at the time, although being less than half of the $26.2 billion in 2014 and only one-third of the $36.2 billion in 2016. These figures were contributed by SEV and SEVT only. If all of Samsungs Vietnamese production complexes were included, the value would be $40.05 billion last year.

In the first nine months of this year, Samsungs export turnover reached $38.1 billion and is forecast to surpass the $50 billion-mark estimated earlier this year. This figure is expected to definitely make up at least 25 per cent of Viet Nams total export turnover.

An exemplary case of FDI attraction

Samsung has become an iconic success story in foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction in Viet Nam not only because of its huge investment capital and quick and efficient development, but also its wide and deep impact on local socioeconomic development.

Looking back in April 2009 when Samsung put into operation its $67-million mobile phone facility, it was praised as a model of FDI attraction as at the time Samsung was among the few high-tech giants choosing Viet Nam, following the push of Intel.

The groups huge investment has attracted satellite investors and investment in research and development (R&D) activities, while creating jobs for locals, contributing to increasing Viet Nams export turnover and state budget revenue, as well as bringing valuable opportunities to join the global value chain.

Samsung now has an R&D centre named Viet Nam Mobile Research and Development Centre (SVMC) in Ha Noi which employs 1,600 Vietnamese engineers. The number of satellite businesses entering Viet Nam to serve Samsungs increasing demand has also rose rapidly with total investment reaching billions of US dollars, contributing to the development of the local supporting industries for the electronics sector.

In addition, Vietnamese firms joining Samsungs global value chain have continued growing at an astounding pace. The number of Tier-1 and Tier-2 vendors is 220 at present. The localisation rate of SEV and SEVT has reached 57 per cent.

Samsungs investments and wide impact on the Vietnamese socioeconomic development is obvious evidence for the mutual benefits enjoyed by both sides that the Vietnamese government has been targeting.

Samsungs investments boosted socioeconomic development in Thai Nguyen and Bac Ninh by a significant degree. Samsung accounted for 99 per cent of Thai Nguyens and 75 per cent of Bac Ninhs total export turnover.

Although the groups contribution to the state budget remains lower than what is coined desirable as it is still enjoying the period of tax reduction and exemption, the annual amount of $800 million that Samsung pays for Vietnamese labourers has helped improve the life of more than 100,000 local households.

Samsung has also brought about business opportunities for small Vietnamese traders. According to Samsung, the group buys 16.9 tonnes of rice, 20.1 tonnes of vegetables, 11 tonnes of meat and fish, 10.5 million tonnes of water melons, and 30,979 eggs each day.

Samsungs foothold in Viet Nam will be further strengthened when all of its registered capital is disbursed. Currently, there remains around $5 billion that has yet to be disbursed. The group even plans to make more investments in Viet Nam. Sectors of special interests include energy, shipbuilding, and aviation. When these plans are realised, Samsungs contribution to the Vietnamese economy will be even larger.
Boeing logo photo source: AFP

AT&T plans to give US$1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 workers and will issue the cheques over the holidays if President Donald Trump signs the bill before Christmas.

The company also said it plans to invest an additional US$1 billion in 2018 due to the bill.

"This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs," AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said. "In fact, we will increase our US investment and pay a special bonus to our US employees."

The handful of announcements came after the House of Representatives approved the US$1.5 trillion tax overhaul, sending the measure to President Donald Trump to sign into law.

Democrats criticised the bill as a budget-busting sop that mostly benefits the very wealthy, while Republicans argued it would boost economic growth.

Boeing announced US$300 million in additional spending that includes funds for workforce training and to upgrade facilities to the "workplace for the future."

"We applaud and thank Congress and the administration for their leadership in seizing this opportunity to unleash economic energy in the United States," Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said.

"It's the single-most important thing we can do to drive innovation, support quality jobs and accelerate capital investment in our country."

Fifth Third Bancorp said it would boost its minimum wage for all employees to US$15 an hour and distribute a one-time bonus of US$1,000 to more than 13,500 employees.

Still, many analysts and economists have expressed skepticism the tax bill will boost growth as much as promised.

The tax cut "will improve corporate profits and that in turn will increase share buybacks and dividends more than it actually increases economic activity," said Karl Haeling, portfolio manager at LBBW Asset Management.

"Big companies have a lot of money right now," he said. "If they needed to build a big plant they would not have wait for it before the tax reform. I'm still skeptical that it really does that much."
Uber is showing an increasing number of violations and reluctance to heed authorities' warnings

This is the report of provincial representatives at the meeting reviewing the implementation of the two-year pilot programme of ride-hailing services via technology application, organised on December 19 in Hanoi.

On January 7, 2016, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) issued Decision No.24/QD-BGTVT on the pilot scheme for ride-hailing services. The pilot duration was two years, lasting from January 2016 to January 2018.

According to the decision, the pilot programme of ride-hailing services will be implemented in five cities and provinces, namely Hanoi, Quang Ninh, Danang, Khanh Hoa, and Ho Chi Minh City.

However, after two years, only four cities and provinces have joined the programme, while Danang remained exempt. At the same time, the authorities identified numerous violations in Uber operations.

Notably, as of December 4, the Hanoi Department of Transport also had yet to receive the report about the companys operation for the last two years.

Besides, in early August this year, when Uber Vietnam released information about implementing its services in Danang on its website, the Danang Department of Transport asked Uber to stop the pilot programme and the relevant advertisement campaign. However, Uber ignored the request and continued both activities.

In addition, Uber is operating in Danang without any the representative office as well as legal representation.

Uber entered Vietnam in June 2014. Since then, tax collection for the ride-hailing service application has remained controversial as this was the first service of its kind in the country, triggering worries about the efficiency in collecting taxes as well as unfairness to other transport firms in the country.

According to Dang Duy Khanh from the General Department of Taxation, Ubers total revenue from 2014 to June 30 this year was estimated at more than VND2.77 trillion ($122.1 billion) and the firm has paid approximately VND76.9 billion ($3.38 million) in taxes.
Vietnam Customs has just announced the export and import situation of the first 11 months on December 19, 2017. Total export and import turnover hit $385.77 billion in the first 11 months, up 21.4 per cent, which is the highest on-year increase ever, adding $200 billion compared to 2011.

Specifically, total export turnover hit $194.47 billion, up 21.5 per cent or $34.44 billion against the same period last year while total import turnover hit $191.3 billion, up 21.2 per cent.

Milestones of Vietnams export and import turnover

Breaking the record

According to Vietnam Customs, in 2001, total export and import turnover was only at a modest $30 million. It was $100 billion in 2007, after Vietnam became an official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Four years later (2011), the export-import turnover doubled to $200 billion, and to $300 billion four years later (2015).

Only two years later, by mid-December 2017, the total export-import turnover hit the $400-billion mark.

As a result, ten years after joining the WTO, the country's total export and import turnover increased four-fold and the ranking of Vietnam (according to the assessment of WTO) rose significantly.

Vietnams export ranking raised to the 26th in 2016 from the 50th in 2007, while its import ranking raised to the 25th from the 41st. Vietnam Customs predicted that these ranking will once again rise this year.

Historical record in trade surplus

Vietnam has recorded its highest trade surplus ever, with $3.17 billion.

In the 2006-2010 period, trade balance was in a deficit of around $12.5 billion per year. In 2011-2015, it reduced sharply to about $2 billion per year. In 2016, the trade balance turned sharply into a $1.78 billion surplus and reached $3.17 billion in the first 11 months of this year.

The trade surplus mainly comes from foreign invested enterprises. In the first 11 months, the trade surplus of this sector was $23.85 billion, while the trade deficit of the domestic sector was $20.67 billion.

China and Korea are the two biggest markets where Vietnam has a trade deficit. In the other hand, Vietnam has a trade surplus with the US, the EU, and Hong Kong.

However, there have been significant changes in the first 11 months of this year, as trade deficit from China declined by 15.3 per cent on-year and increased by 55.8 per cent towards Korea. Thus, Korea has become the market where Vietnam has the highest trade deficit, with approximately $29 billion, while it was $21.6 billion for China.

Vietnam's detailed trade balance towards its main trade partners in the first 11 months of the year

Continental breakdown

Vietnam has over 200 trade partners over the world, including 29 export markets and 23 import markets reaching a turnover upwards of $1 billion in the first 11 months. Of these, there are four export markets and five import markets that reached a turnover higher than $10 billion.

Total export and import value between Vietnam and Asia in the period hit $257.4 billion, up 25.7 per cent on-year. Asia is followed by the Americas with a total $62.16 billion, up 10.8 per cent.

The total turnover between Vietnam and Europe hit $52.89 billion, up 13.8 per cent, while Oceania reached $7.07 billion, up 24.5 per cent. Turnover towards Africa gained $6.25 billion, up 27.6 per cent.
AT&T says it will give 200,000 employees $1,000 after Republican tax bill is signed into law
On December 10, 1939, during the horrors of the Japanese aggression against the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), 2,988 Chinese soldiers were assigned to defend a bridge on the Yangtze River. By morning, the Chinese Nanking Battalion had simply vanished.

Ready to fight

The commander of the newly-arrived battalion was a colonel, Li Fu Sien. He was ordered to defend Nanjings hills, which consisted of a 3.2-kilometer area, with the view of defending a bridge on the Yangtze River against an impending Japanese attack.

Subscribe to our Newsletter! Receive selected content straight into your inbox. Leave this field empty if you're human:

The battalion was the rear guard, advancing toward the Japanese strongholds in the area. They were equipped with a number of heavy artillery and were reported to be ready to fight to the last man if necessary. After seeing that his troops were well dug in for the night and soldiers were posted on watch, the colonel then retired to his sleeping quarters about two miles behind the lines.

The next morning, the Colonel was woken by his aid and was told the newly placed troops were not responding to calls or signals. A party was formed from those who were behind the lines. When they arrived at the forward positions, they were simply stunned.

The troops position was completely abandoned, there was no sign of a struggle, the heavy weapons were still in place and ready to be fired, and their concealed fires still glowed, with rifles stacked close by. With the exception of a handful of troops stationed at the bridge on watch, there was not another single soldier to be seen.

The bulk of the battalion had simply vanished, including all the field officers. Questioning the few men that were on watch revealed nothing. They claimed that no one had slipped by in the night, they had not heard any sounds of combat, and they were unsure of the missing soldiers fate.

The surrounding vegetation was reported to be so sparse that a mass defection was not possible, nor were there any signs on the landscape that any skirmishing had occurred. Not a single corpse or grave was located. And finally, the Japanese later reported they had not engaged any such group of Chinese soldiers in battle during that time.

The farmers living in the area likewise reported they had not heard any gunfire, nor had they seen any soldiers fleeing from the defensive line through the countryside.

What happened to the Chinese Nanking Battalion?

It has been suggested that the Chinese may have decided to surrender to the Japanese. To do this, the soldiers would have had to cross the bridge, which was under constant observation. No such mass crossing had been seen.

However, surrender seems unlikely  the Chinese were well aware of the horrific and widely known ill-treatment the Japanese afforded prisoners of war. If they did surrender, they would be tortured and probably killed outright or die from abuse.

The most reasonable conclusion is probably as follows: Tired of the fighting or seeing the hopelessness of the situation, they simply deserted quietly. Just because there was only one bridge does not mean that was the only way out of the area. Using the cover of darkness, men familiar with the countryside could have purely melted into the landscape.

The farmers in the area, who were not part of the developing Communist ideology of China or directly involved in the war with Japan, may have been inclined to help hide and cover for the fleeing soldiers.

If it was desertion, there is a good reason such a defection would not be forthcoming; China was turning into a true Communist country, and for ideological and morale reasons, no one in authority would ever allow the news that soldiers fighting for the rightness of Communism would deign to desert to get out, even to this day.

Another simpler reason not to report a desertion could have been the fact that it would have destroyed morale, and mass desertion by the Chinese would have been great propaganda for the Japanese to use against the Chinese government, making them look foolish and weak on the world stage.

There are also various theories online to explain the disappearances, such as a UFO abduction, or that the troops retreated into a hollow subterranean layer of the earth. However, there may be another explanation, and perhaps its the most reasonable one  it never happened, there was no such battalion or disappearance. The story may very well be nothing but folklore.

Conjecture is all that remains.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook
On Election Day Eve, Seth Meyers ended his final Closer Look of the campaign by comparing the two candidates. Do you pick someone whos under federal investigation for using a private e-mail server or do you pick someone  he began, before proceeding to list many legally dubious, reprehensible things about Donald Trump for 50 seconds, gradually losing his breath, overwhelmed. He ended the tally by joking, How can you choose? It was designed to be a final statement, an In Conclusion. He was ready for it to be over, as was his audience. But it was just beginning.

Over the last couple years, a tremendous amount of comedy focused on Trump has been created and consumed, whether on Twitter, late-night shows, comedy-club stages, or sitcoms. Perhaps because there is so much of it, an assumption has emerged that this presidency is good for comedy. Whatever your thoughts about President Donald Trumps impact on America, no one can deny that hes truly made one sector of America great again: Political comedy, reads a piece published on CNN this summer, which echoes an opinion I have heard regularly (though rarely by comedians). I can see why some would think this is the case. SNL has earned its best ratings since the early 90s. Comedy Centrals fall 2017 lineup included four politically focused late-night shows: The Daily Show, The Opposition, The President Show, and The Jim Jefferies Show (not to The Fake News With Ted Helms special). Stephen Colberts more politically focused show is beating Jimmy Fallon in the ratings, and Jimmy Kimmels own political turn helped him beat Fallon for the first time, too. Then theres Samantha Bee and Seth Meyers and Robin Thede and John Oliver and so on, to the point where CNN felt we needed a Special Report on Late Night in the Age of Trump. As Lara Zarum wrote in the Village Voice, Trump is the biggest target of our age.

Related Stories Suddenly, Jimmy Kimmel Is Our Cronkite

Its true, he is. Hes a [sigh] yuge target. But that doesnt mean hes the best target, or even a good one. This boom of political comedy is less motivated by the people making it than an industry attempting to seize upon the markets addiction to consuming as much as they can about the president. I was told by one comedian on a politically leaning show that while their team saw an opportunity because of how aggressively the networks were seeking such projects, they werent particularly excited about doing something topical. Its not that all comedy made about Trump this year has been bad, but that his administration has resulted in comedians making worse comedy than they would have otherwise. Thats because Trump is a bad subject for comedy: Hes shallow and played out, and already what people expect from the comedy about him is bad.

This expectation, and comedians awareness of it, was well captured by a joke in Patton Oswalts Netflix special, Annihilation. After about ten minutes of talking about the president, Oswalt stops, announces, Thats it for the Trump material, and then continues into probably his funniest and definitely his most honest joke about Trump:

People tell me, You comedians must be so happy. Trump is president. All this free material. You know what, yes, there is a lot of material, but there is too fucking much. Its exhausting. Being a comedian while Trump is president is like, imagine theres like an insane man on the sidewalk, just shitting on the sidewalk and yelling about Hitler. So youre looking at him and immediately think of the funniest joke about shitting on the sidewalk, and you turn to tell it to a bunch of people, and behind you hes taken the shit and made a sombrero out of it. So you turn and you tell your amazing shitting on the sidewalk [story] and everyone goes, Oh  Turn around, he made a sombrero out of it. Do a sombrero joke. Ah, fuck! I can make fun of the shit he did the last couple of days, but by the time it airs, you guys are going to be like, Wait what was that again?

If there is one thing that has defined Trumps presidency, its the rate at which hes been bad at it. While that might sound like a good thing for comedy  theres something new to joke about every day!  comics actually dont need more material. They need people to care about their material long enough for them to make their jokes better. In a terrific piece for the Scotland Herald, stand-up Sara Schaefer wrote, Comedians are now struggling to get the distance needed to make something awful hilarious. This demand for quick turnaround can result in reactionism and lazy contrarianism, or we get comedy like the premiere of the rebooted (and otherwise quite charming) Will & Grace, which doesnt even try to keep up and instead resigns itself to stock Trump jokes: Cheetos, Russia, hair.

A lot of the stuff now is  just the first step you think of, legendary comedy writer Jack Handy told Mike Sacks on the Doin It podcast. Thats what [people making political comedy now] do, rather than going to the second or third step. The thing is, it is hard to find extra steps to be taken with Trump. To put it mildly, hes real, you know, surfacey, and so it goes that the art about him would be, too.

Sure, there are jokes to make: Yeah, hes orange, ha-ha, said comedian Jen Kirkman, when I asked her if Trump was good for comedy, but the answer is no. Youre either going to get the same jokes over and over, or were going to be normalizing him by making really silly jokes about him. The truth is, the premise was exhausted before he was inaugurated. In my estimation, comedian John Mulaney has the funniest, most accurate reading of Trump  and its not his Trump-is-a-horse-loose-in-a-hospital theory, though that is pretty funny. Rather, its his Donald Trump material from eight years ago, where he explains that Trump is what a hobo imagines a rich man to be.

Thats just me: I am my age and have consumed comedy at the time that I have. Someone else may have a similar assessment about a different Trump joke (i.e. Spys legendary short-fingered vulgarian description). Trump does something mockable at an unprecedented clip, but its mostly rooted in the same toxic psychology hes always had. (The dementia stuff is new, but not really an enticing area for comedy.) As comedian Noah Garfinkel put it: Donald Trump is the least complicated president in history. There are like four things about him in total. I can think of one exception, and thats the moment from The President Show when Anthony Atamanuik as Trump sees a truck and, stream of consciousness, goes down a rabbit hotel of his psyche, revealing a hidden-in-plain-sight existential despair. Thats it: One new take in the more than two years since he announced his candidacy.

Thats at the heart of the problem with Trump as a satirical target: He is both incredibly easy and incredibly challenging. The cleanest definition of the goal of satire Ive heard came from Larry Wilmore in his podcast conversation with Malcolm Gladwell. Satire is about revealing a truth, Wilmore explains, not taking a side. The key is the phrasing: a truth as opposed to just truth. Currently, our political comedians are doing a fine job of telling their audience what is true and what is false, but its difficult for them to find something deeper  a truth  because Trump isnt deeper. His lies are transparent.

Compare Alec Baldwins Emmy-winning Donald Trump impersonation to the two most iconic political impressions of the last quarter century: Will Ferrells George W. Bush and Tina Feys Sarah Palin. Where Ferrells and Feys impressions revealed something about their targets that had not yet been expressed  specifically, how each used a sort of aw shucks folksiness as their sheeps clothing  Baldwins just reflects back, thoroughly and confidently, what everyone already thinks about Trump. (Atamanuiks impression is superior as a result of being darker and more grotesque, but The President Show will always struggle with the superficiality of its muse.) Wilmore says, The satirists job is to have the flashlight and say, Look at this, but Trump already puts a spotlight on himself and says, Look at me.

All of this is compounded by the fact that Trump and the culture around him have created a terrible atmosphere for risk-taking. Regardless of what you think about what Kathy Griffin did with the severed Trump head, its hard to look at the fallout from it and say, Yeah, its worth trying to push boundaries right now. People are understandably edgy and consequently on guard about the correct way to resist. Tina Fey didnt cut anyones head off, but she did cut into an American-flag cake, and for some viewers that was just as bad, since it suggested, in the eyes of critics, that a person in a position of privilege was saying that everyone should stay at home. Defenders argued that she was mocking that position, not arguing for it, but it sort of doesnt matter: People have dug their heels in and are harder to sway. Its not about political correctness run amok; Trump, because of the feeling of constant danger he projects, makes us more vigilant. But comedy needs room to fail, and these days, were less likely to afford it the time to be ambiguous or complicated. Im reminded of a quote from a recent piece by my colleague Jerry Saltz, [Even in our rush] to assume the moral high ground, art can never abandon paradox.

This is also true for comedy that wants to avoid Trump altogether. Though Lara Zarums Village Voice piece chastising South Park for not taking on Trump this season was well-argued and articulated, it glossed over why the shows co-creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, decided to avoid him in the first place. In an interview with the L.A. Times, Parker put it plainly: It was because he and Stone hated the show last season, when every week was about Trump. I understand the desire for people with a platform and influence to use it to challenge Trump, but doing so often means asking artists to make art they dont think is good and dont like making.

And yet, despite their hang-ups, most comedians, because the nature of their art demands that they engage with the cultural conversation, have gone along with doing Trump material. As Michel Che told the Washington Post, Now you gotta dedicate 10 minutes about Trump. Based on the live comedy Ive seen since the election, the process of stand-ups doing Trump material is like a couple having sex on their anniversary long after the passion has faded: No one wants it, but both parties feel like they have to go through the motions.

In the very first minute of my show, I mention, I did not vote for him, Schaefer writes. Even though this line usually gets a big laugh, I can immediately feel a subsequent wave of reverse farts rippling through the crowd. The anxiety is palpable. She continues, Oh no, shes gonna scream at us about Trump for an hour! And this from an audience who agrees with her. This tension doesnt feel partisan. I truly think that people on both sides of our political divide are nervous about what happens when a comedian starts talking about the president in public.

Even if the comedian can get laughs throughout an entire Trump chunk, it often raises question about whether thats appropriate. How can someone talk about Trump for ten minutes and not make a serious point, the thinking goes? Recently a friend of mine wondered out loud if a white male comedians ability to get laughs about Trump was actually just an exercise in privilege. People are going to die, and hes able to just make jokes, they remarked. Its a sentiment I regularly see echoed by comedians themselves, as Daily Show writer David Angelo perfectly captured in this tweet:

People: "Trump will be good for comedy."



Comedians: "The 9th Circuit ruling should be upheld for the following 35 reasons..."  David Angelo (@MrDavidAngelo) June 26, 2017

Bigger picture, the fact that every comedian is expected to cover this one topic halts much of the progress comedy was doing in terms of reframing audiences expectations. The current Comedy Boom has been defined partly by how it emphasizes that comedians are individual artists with individual styles and point of views. Just like you wouldnt show up to Webster Hall and expect whoevers playing to play some uniform idea of music, not every comedian is a political comedian. Most arent. But Trump has brought back the feeling of the 80s, when clubs were filled with nameless men with rolled-up suit jackets and a similar five minutes worth of half-baked observation. Comedians are being treated like people we pay to provide a basic service.

The thing is, they shouldnt stop. Thats not the point. However undesirable the jokes may or may not be, silence would be worse. Comedians are positioned on the front lines of free speech, and they can often lead the way in terms of oppositional language. Trevor Noah spoke to this idea on Late Night With Seth Meyers, saying, There are many countries Ive been to where people dont have free speech and one of the biggest things an authoritarian ruler tries to remove is the ability to make jokes about them  A person is less frightening when youre laughing. It doesnt diminish what they do, but its how we cope.

As much as I saw SNL as a show struggling under the weight of outsize importance last season, it did directly communicate to this administration that the mainstream thinks its doing a bad job. And as much as I imagine Jimmy Kimmel wants to be making jokes about The Bachelor and pranking your kid, his impact on the health-care conversation was significant and possibly life-saving. Mindy Kaling put it well when she tweeted, after all the late-night hosts commented on the Las Vegas massacre: Our late talk show hosts are now de facto activists, not because they want to, but because it would be incomprehensible to not be.

Comedians are doing something valuable by just continuing to show up and do what they do. Comedy might never be good because of Trump, but Im often reminded that it will continue to be good in spite of him.
Diane Kruger and Numan Acar in In the Fade. Photo: Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

As Katja, a German woman whose bespectacled little son and Turkish husband are blown up by terrorists in Fatih Akins In the Fade, Diane Kruger is in nearly every shot, and her wide, open face with its hollow eyes says more in silence than other actors do in lengthy perorations. What Kruger conveys most deeply is confusion. Katjas husband (Numan Acar) had served prison time for dealing drugs (they marry, in a prologue, while hes still imprisoned) but has straightened himself out and built a business. Her son on his last day of life is taken with the concept of empathy, which he pronounces em-pat-tee. Now she glowers across a courtroom at the accused murderers (a husband and wife), unable to comprehend their clear, untroubled faces or the sneering persistence of their defense attorney (the spooky-looking Johannes Krisch) to raise doubts about a case that seems open-and-shut. Watch Krugers face as she stands outside the courthouse, smoking a cigarette across from the father (Ulrich Tukur), who alerted the police when he found fertilizer and bomb ingredients in his sons garage. You see anger, pity, distrust, and gratitude, all of which resolve themselves into hopelessness. She has no words.

One of Germanys most accomplished directors, Akin returns to a region where the borders are increasingly porous and the blending of cultures produces unease  or worse. (Possible culprits for the bombing: neo-Nazis, the Turkish Mafia, the Kurds, or those familiar scapegoats the Albanians.) Thanks to chillingly spare storytelling, Krugers momentous performance, and a score by Josh Homme (the front man of Queens of the Stone Age) that features a sort of screechy clang that gave me shivers, In the Fade is gripping. But its hard to know what to take away from it. The villains are one-note. The trials outcome is difficult to buy. Akins sense of helplessness borders on nihilism of the sort that makes vigilante action seem the most reliable recourse. At least he leaves you thinking What a waste, instead of Kill em again!

*This article appears in the December 25, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Kath. Photo: Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images

More women have reportedly come forward to accuse Crystal Castles Ethan Kath of sexual assault. In October, former band member Alice Glass detailed for the first time why she left the band, accusing Kath of rape and chronic abuse, which he denied. Toronto police have now confirmed to the Daily Beast that they are investigating Kath for sexual assault. While the sex-crimes unit could not confirm if there are multiple accusers involved, the Daily Beast reports that several women have filed complaints, including one woman who says Kath assaulted her when she was a minor. That anonymous accuser tells the Daily Beast that Kath allegedly contacted her on social media when she was 15 and began a sexual relationship with her when she was 16. I want this guys insane horrible mistreatment of underage girls to be out in the open for everyone to know and to protect themselves, she says. Glass had also claimed that Kath took advantage of her when she was a minor. In November, Kath sued Glass for defamation over her claims.
Stallone. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

TMZ reports that an unnamed woman has filed a report with Santa Monica police accusing Sylvester Stallone of raping her in 1990. According to the report, which was filed in mid-November, the woman claims that the incident allegedly occurred during a meeting at Stallones office, though no further detail has been given. Stallone preemptively denied the accusation prior to news of the police report going public, claiming via his lawyer to TMZ that he had spent three days with the woman in 1987 during a movie shoot in Israel, she was not a minor, he never saw her in 1990, and that he did not rape her. Stallone will reportedly file a police complaint accusing the woman of filing a false police report. Local law enforcement tells TMZ that while the statute of limitations on the allegation has expired, due to the recent spike in high-profile misconduct accusations, police will investigate the alleged incident and let the district attorneys office decide if theres enough to prosecute. Last month, a separate police report from 1986 resurfaced accusing Stallone and his former bodyguard of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, which he denied.
As we enter week two of the RHONJ excursion to Milan, Im happy to report the city is still standing. For now.

Danielle and Siggy are late for a bike ride with Melissa, who, ironically, is wearing a Fashionably Late sweatshirt. Wait, wasnt Siggy all set to storm out of Milan last we saw her? Not anymore! The three women careen down busy sidewalks, narrowly managing to avoid mowing down any pedestrians (at least that the editing shows us), until they reach a picnic spot in a nearby park. There, over berries and champagne, Siggy complains once again about Margarets meanness.

I am beginning to wonder if Siggy might have Memento-style anterograde amnesia, waking up every morning to see SOGGY FLICKER tattooed on her forehead and a Polaroid of Margaret tucked into the corner of her mirror. Im fine with that, if you guys dont speak, says Melissa, tapping out after another unsuccessful round of trying to defend Margaret. Let me heartily co-sign that sentiment. I do believe that Siggy, deeply immersed as she is in Siggyworld, genuinely feels hurt  I dont think shes milking it for the cameras. But Margaret obviously didnt intend any real harm by mentioning Hitler. We are all adults here. And more important, Siggy is an adult under contract to appear on a theoretically entertaining television show, so lets move on, please.

Teresa has hired a local chef, Alberto, to teach herself, Dolores, and Margaret how to prepare some local cuisine, which theyll then serve up as dinner for the whole group. He may be kind and patient, but Alberto is no SEXZCHEF. Has this man even gone on the record about his stance on thick booties in yoga pants? After picking out their ingredientses (as always, Teresa, thank you) at a local market, the ladies head to Albertos own house, a prospect that genuinely terrifies me on behalf of Alberto and his family.

Teresa apparently is enough of a pasta-making expert that she thinks a pasta-making class is beneath her, despite the fact that she signed herself and her friends up for this pasta-making class in the first place. And so, she volunteers for a special responsibility: To make steak tartare, shes handed two enormous cleavers (Alberto, no) with which to smash chunks of raw beef into smaller chunks of raw beef. I mean, there are worse visual metaphors for season eight of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. But centuries of Italian culinary tradition are no match for Teresas yoga triceps, and she ends up chopping shards of the cutting board right into the meat. In a more exciting and upsetting version of this episode, she would proceed to spoonfeed the wood-beef right into Kim D.s mouth. Wish you were here!

At Albertos  please dont destroy this nice mans home, there is no way he has any idea what he signed up for  Margaret pouts through dinner until Melissa takes her outside to talk. Understandably, shes still feeling raw over Siggy calling her anti-Semitic. But back at the table, for conservatively the fifth time this season, Margaret sincerely apologizes to her unwanted nemesis for unintentionally hurting her. In response, Siggy takes a sip of her wine and stares into space, neither reciprocating nor even acknowledging the apology shes been waiting for. What more does Siggy want, short of Margaret throwing herself onto a funeral pyre?

This next morning, Margaret brings along Danielle, who has a dedicated shoe room in her home, to visit a potential shoe factory. (Where you going? To a bar mitzvah? asks Siggy of the plunging black dress Danielle has chosen for the occasion.) Its a busy facility, and as Margaret and Danielle are led through all the gluing and sewing and shaping happening on the production floor, I find myself wishing wed suddenly veer into a How Its Made crossover for the remainder of the episode. Alas, Margaret isnt interested in making a deal after all. The quality of the craftsmanship is high, but so are the price points. Surely she could have gotten this information in advance and saved herself a trip to Italy, no?

Teresa takes Siggy to look at a random picture of Jesus on an arch somewhere in honor of her late mother, to make up for her missing that Margaret-planned memorial on the beach in Boca. Surely if Margaret had invited Siggy to join her in admiring a portrait of Christianitys number-one dude, that gesture would have been interpreted as further evidence of her anti-Semitism. Because its Teresa, though, Siggy is touched. But not so touched that she wont equate being called a vaguely hurtful nickname to being accused of cheating on ones incarcerated spouse  or as Teresa puts it, You were called Soggy Flicker. I was called an adultery from Kim D.

By this point, even Dolores, who I believe is fully prepared to go down with the RMS Siggy like the band on the sinking Titanic, thinks they need make peace. At dinner that night, Siggy interrupts Melissas toast to thank Margaret for her apology before starting to cry some more. Margaret asks if Siggy really believes that shes anti-Semitic. Siggy (eventually) says she doesnt, and that shes sorry for hurting Margarets feelings, a classic Housewives non-apology.

Anyway, the good news is that we have a Studio 54themed birthday party for Margaret to look forward to  which promises to be especially delightful given that Teresa doesnt know what Studio 54 is.
Luke Skywalker on Tatooine. Photo: Lucasfilm

I am not the first person to note that what separates Star Wars from the numerous space epics before and since is its sense of place. As Tegan ONeil writes in her wonderful essay about the franchise, The beauty of Star Wars is that so much care has been spent making the universe onscreen appear normal for the people who inhabit it  Everything feels real, carries authority that makes every frame seem like a portal into another world, perfectly plausible on its own terms. But of all these immersive worlds, which one is the best? Well, thats what were going to figure out.

To keep things manageable, were only ranking planets that have shown up in the nine live-action Star Wars films so far. Well use a fairly loose definition of planet  any sort of natural space object with an atmosphere counts; space stations do not, no matter how many people confuse them for moons. Rankings will be based primarily on how much I, a normal-ass human, would like to live there. Being inhabited helps (having company is fun), but can also hurt (if some of those inhabitants have a penchant for eating people). Points will also be assessed for conceptual brilliance, whether or not the planet eventually gets blown up by an Imperial superweapon, and climate.

Photo: Lucasfilm

30. Mustafar (Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One)

Not only is Mustafar a planet full of lava, its most famous inhabitant is Darth Vader, who seems likely to be the Galaxys least-inviting neighbor. (I find your lack of lawn-care disturbing.) What about the other inhabitants? Per Wookiepedia, The planets native Mustafarian species lived in underground caves created by lava fleas as they ate through the planets crust, and made their armor from the heat-resistant shells of the creatures. Oh.

Photo: Lucasfilm

29. Geonosis (Attack of the Clones)

Geonosis is kept from the bottom spot by a prospering industrial economy and some innovative arena design. But everything else is pretty unpleasant, especially the Geonesians, wretched bug creatures that you almost feel bad for when the Jedi (and eventually the Empire) start slaughtering them en masse.

28. Polis Massa (Revenge of the Sith)

Okay, yes, its technically a planetoid. But guess what, I googled it and apparently the term planetoid has never been precisely defined. So were counting it! This rocky space-crag holds the distinction of being the birthplace of Luke and Leia (as well as the death place of Padme Amidala), and not much else.

27. Wobani (Rogue One)

This is the desolate prison planet Jyn Erso got rescued from at the beginning of Rogue One. We dont see a whole lot of it, but you gotta figure when it came to building penal colonies, the Empire wasnt exactly using the choicest planets.

Photo: Lucasfilm/Lucasfilm Ltd.

26. Eadu (Rogue One)

Man, Rogue One had some crappy planets, didnt it? This ones great if you love rain, murder, scientists being held against their will, and cliffs. Its small native population is mostly comprised of nerf herders, who Im sure do not appreciate being the subject of the Galaxys most popular classist insult.

25. Mygeeto (Revenge of the Sith)

Oh, yes, Mygeeto, the cold planet glimpsed briefly during the Order 66 montage when the Clone Troopers frag their Jedi commander, the phrenological phenomenon Ki Adi Mundi. The crystal-mining colony was originally occupied by a race of cute lemur creatures, who were quickly subjugated by the Galaxys financial elite and reduced to thralldom. Then it was the site of the longest battle of the Clone Wars, as Republican and Separatist armies became locked in a brutal urban stalemate. Altogether an unpleasant place.

Related Stories Star Wars Breakout Kelly Marie Tran on The Last Jedi and Shirtless Kylo Ren

24. Hosnian Prime (Force Awakens)

No planet encapsulates the world-building issues of the new Star Wars films like Hosnian Prime, the off-brand Coruscant we met shortly before its destruction in Force Awakens. Like Coruscant, its a planet-wide city located near the Galaxys Core. And, just like Coruscant was in the old EU, its the capital of the New Republic (though to find out why they switched it, you might have to read some of the new tie-in novels, and frankly I refuse). But before anyone can say, Hey, is that Coruscant and also, what is the nature of the relationship between the Resistance and the New Republican? it gets blown up. In other words, Hosnian Prime only exists because the people behind Force Awakens wanted a big mid-film moment, but didnt want to waste one of the good planets.

Photo: Lucasfilm

23. Hoth (Empire Strikes Back)

Its an inhospitable ice planet whose apex predator is the abominable snowmans less-fuckable cousin, but its also home to tauntauns, the best Star Wars animal. Id risk a lot to ride a tauntaun just once.

Photo: Lucasfilm

22. DQar (Force Awakens, Last Jedi)

Listen, I get that Hoth was uninhabited. Same with Crait. But Im supposed to believe that this temperate planet, which strongly resembles the English countryside, didnt have any people living on it before the Resistance showed up, just because it was far from the hyperspace lanes? This is a galaxy where people live on Mustafar, for goodness sake. Docked a spot for bad world-building, and another for being a pale retread of Yavin 4.

Photo: Lucasfilm

21. Jakku (Force Awakens)

Its not Tatooine. Get that? Its. Not. Tatooine. If anything, this desert planet seems to be even more remote a backwater than the original one, which at least had enough of an economy to support a thriving podrace circuit. Though if nothing else, at least Jakku gave us those awe-inspiring Star Destroyer wrecks, the first  and still most alluring  images of the new trilogy.

20. Cato Neimoidia (Revenge of the Sith)

Another planet glimpsed in the Order 66 montage, this is the one that Jedi Plo Koon pilots a starfighter through shortly before hes shot down. As you can (briefly) see, Cato Neimodia is home to a fascinating strain of urban design in which its cities are suspended between colossal rock formations. Pretty cool, right? Except, uh-oh, its home to the Neimoidians, those terrible Orientalized aliens from the Trade Federation. Docked five or so spots for being inhabited by George Lucass worst racial stereotypes.

Photo: Lucasfilm

19. Dagobah (Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi)

Its perfectly safe for droids, but maybe not for humans. Still, youve got to admit, Dagobahs got character  there has never been a movie swamp thats swampier than this one. (Its one of the great spooky forests ever created on a British soundstage, which have given us many great spooky forests.) And just listen to this list of indigenous species: bogwings, dragonsnakes, butcherbugs, sleens, vine snakes, and swamp slugs  pure gross-out poetry.

18. Felucia (Revenge of the Sith)

Hi, Felucia. This is the jungle planet that saw the death of Jedi Master Aayla Secura in the Order 66 montage, and early in the planning process for the new trilogy it was going to be the site of the new Resistance base before the filmmakers decided to go in a different direction. (DQar got the gig instead.) You can see why: Its all very colorful and computer-generated in a way that screams prequels. The Felucians themselves seem nice, though.

Photo: Lucasfilm

17. Utapau (Revenge of the Sith)

The site of Obi Wans infamous duel with General Greivous is filled with skeleton-inspired architecture (or, you know, actual skeletons) and plenty of handy rock pools, should you happen to be betrayed by your own troops and fall from an unfortunate height. It was apparently a peaceful planet before Greivous showed up, but you dont get a sense of that from the movie; it feels more like a video-game level than an actual place.

Photo: Lucasfilm

16. Kamino (Attack of the Clones)

Its an unmapped planet thats one big ocean, and the only habitation seems to be a freaky cloning facility. And yet, Ive got a little bit of an affinity for Kamino. I think its the Kaminoans themselves. Look how polite they are when Obi-Wan visits: They send him straight to meet the prime minister! And theyre so proud of the new clone army theyve created that the Jedi cant bring himself to admit he has no idea what theyre talking about. George Lucas wanted Obi-Wans Episode II plotline to play as noir, but for one wonderful scene, it becomes something close to farce.

Photo: Lucasfilm

15. Jedha (Rogue One)

For my money, this is the new Star Wars planet (technically its a moon) that feels the Star Warsiest. Its basically an interstellar Tibet  a cold, mountainous place where holy men and galactic backpackers exist alongside an Imperial occupation. And if you like your planets to contain chilling reminders of the impermanence of earthly glory, Jeddah also has a few gargantuan Jedi statues crumpled across its landscape, Ozymandias-style. Docked a few spots for its most interesting city getting blown up.

Photo: Lucasfilm

14. Crait (Last Jedi)

Star Wars planets find inspiration from lots of places, but this is the first one that draws from high-end car commercials. Start with the pure white salt that covers the planets surface. Then consider the blood-red dust that gets kicked up any time anyone so much as walks on it. And we havent even gotten to the crystal foxes yet! Who designed this place, Tarsem?

Photo: Lucasfilm

13. Lahmu (Rogue One)

Ah, the simple life. Nothing much seems to happen on Lahmu, and thats the way its inhabitants like it. Far away from the hustle and bustle of the Galactic Core, this Outer Rim colony is home to a few hundred farmers, who were drawn to its fertile soil, mild temperature, and general lack of all the terrible things youll find on other planets. Its the perfect hideaway, as long as youre not the finest engineer in the Galactic Empire. But what are the odds of that?

12. Alderaan (A New Hope, Revenge of the Sith)

With Alderaan, its all about the timing. As long as you die of old age shortly before the year 0BBY, well, you had a perfectly marvelous life in what Alderaan tourism board member Bail Organa once called a planet of beauty, with enough nature, poetry, philosophy, art, couture, [and] cuisine to shake a swagger stick at. But if youre still kicking around during the events of A New Hope, well, Im sorry. Well split the difference and put it at no. 12.

Photo: Lucasfilm

11. Takodana (Force Awakens)

Did you know this was filmed in the Lake District? I have a lovely mental image of William Wordsworth wandering around and stumbling upon Maz Kanata. (Id ship them.) We never did figure out how Anakins old lightsaber got there.

Photo: Lucasfilm

10. Yavin 4 (A New Hope, Rogue One)

Another weirdly uninhabited moon, but at least this one has a backstory: The people who originally lived here were all massacred by the Sith thousands of years before the series takes place. Theres no denying the power of those temples turned hangers (shot at real Mayan ruins in Guatemala) which give the Rebellion an aesthetic heft to match the Empires. Bumped up a spot due to my lingering affection for the sadly no-longer-canon Young Jedi Knights series, which was mostly set here.

Photo: Lucasfilm

9. Scarif (Rogue One)

The climax of Rogue One gave us something wed never seen before in the Star Wars universe: an island paradise! Dont ask me why the Empire chose to set up their most top-secret military facility here when youd think they would have been much better served using it for tourism, though who am I to second-guess the strategic thinking of a bunch of space-fascists. (Wookiepedia hand-waves some business about Scarifs mantle being filled with dense metals that were ideal for spacecraft construction. Sure.) It probably ranks highly on the list of the Galaxys most Instagrammable vacation spots, as long as you avoid the part that got blown up.

Photo: Lucasfilm

8. Cantonica (Last Jedi)

Finally, some glamour. In the casino city of Canto Bight, you can take a break from the starrin and the warrin to hobnob with some of the Galaxys most stylish people (to say nothing of the Heptoonians). Many of them are arms dealers, but hey, nobodys perfect.

Photo: Lucasfilm

7. Kashyyyk (Revenge of the Sith)

Star Wars fans know that, in the initial planning stages for Return of the Jedi, Chewbaccas home world was the original choice for what later became the forest moon of Endor. For those fans inclined to look down on the Ewoks, the switch seemed a monumental blunder, and the news that the prequels would right the wrong by giving us the real Kashyyyk was greeted with jubilation. That version turned out to share the prequels characteristic CGI sheen, but what we saw was still pretty cool: There are plenty of tree houses, and it turns out the Wookies travel around in buglike helicopters. Plus, who wouldnt want to hang out with Chewbacca? Unfortunately, it wouldnt last: In both the new and old canons, Kashyyyk was environmentally devastated by the Imperial occupation, which sent the vast majority of its population into slavery.

Photo: Lucasfilm

6. Tatooine (A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith)

The first and most iconic Star Wars location. For whats supposed to be the middle of nowhere, people in this series really cant stop visiting, can they? I guess thats just the Force at work (or a harried screenwriter, though often they amount to the same thing). The character of Tatooine would shift slightly over the course of the series; I think I prefer the version we got in A New Hope, which mixed relatable teenage boredom (the deleted scenes sell the American Graffitiinspace vibe) with a real sense of mystery. Like the island from Lost, Tatooine lost its mystique the more we saw of it, as it turned out the planet was also home to a slug who was the most feared crime lord in the Galaxy, a big hole with teeth in it, a bunch of podracers, and, once upon a time, the child who would become Darth Vader. Still, well always have that binary sunset and the Mos Eisley cantina, which told us all we needed to know about this strange new universe.

Photo: Lucasfilm

5. Bespin (Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi Special Edition)

Would you live on a gas planet? Im not so sure. I feel like it would be like living on a cruise ship; Id need some solid ground beneath my feet eventually. But if you can manage it  and just as important, afford it  youll find charming hosts, magnificent views, and some of the nicest dining rooms in the Galaxy. Visit with your dad!

Photo: Lucasfilm

4. Ahch-To (Force Awakens, Last Jedi)

Speaking of dads, when I was 13 my father took me on a trip to the isolated Irish peninsula where hed spent summer vacations as a child. I had a pretty bad time: My hearty relations took a wicked glee in subjecting themselves to all manner of unpleasant experiences, the appeal of which was baffling to me. (Also I was fat, which made getting in and out of a wetsuit a trial.) But over subsequent visits I slowly came to love the place, and now that Im an adult Ive found I enjoy even the terrible wind and the rain. This doesnt really have anything to do with Star Wars, except that it means Ahch-To, which was filmed on Irelands southwest coast, had an elemental hold on me from the first time I saw it. And that was before Id even met the judgmental fish-nuns!

Photo: Lucasfilm

3. Coruscant (Return of the Jedi Special Edition, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith)

The Galaxys capital was another planet that had been built up for years in the old EU before we finally got a good look at it in the prequels. And boy, did we see a lot of it in the prequels. Coruscant doesnt give us much that we didnt get from earlier sci-fi megalopolises, but I appreciate the little glimpses of life outside the corridors of power  a diner and

an opera! This kind of futuristic city life isnt for everyone (I imagine the rents are prohibitive), but at least the sanitation department seems to be doing a much better job than the one in Blade Runner.

Photo: Lucasfilm

2. Naboo (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith)

Yes, visiting Naboo means your risk of interacting with Jar Jar Binks increases exponentially. And the final battle takes place in a bit of country so featureless it might as well be the Windows XP background. If you can get past all that  as well as the locals weird habit of electing teen girls to rule them  youll find the most beautiful examples of Italianate architecture in all the galaxy. Plus, Im told the lakes are to die for.

Photo: Lucasfilm

1. Endor (Return of the Jedi)

Make fun of Ewoks all you want  I would absolutely live on the forest moon of Endor. It combines the stunning natural beauty of Northern California, the cuddliness of a trip to Build-a-Bear Workshop, and tree houses straight out of a Dwell spread. The locals will either throw you on a kebab or hail you as a god, and honestly, Ill take my chances.
Editors note: Nibbles is Access Wacos bi-weekly mini-profile of Waco-area restaurants and food trucks that are new or have had a major change in menu or operations.

Past Nibbles run weekly with the latest Nibbles added and the oldest deleted.

Amo La Pizza

Mary Avenue Market, 324 S. Sixth St. (weekdays)

Valley Mills Vineyards, 8532 N. State Highway 6 (Saturdays)

On Facebook

Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays, 6-10 p.m. Saturdays

Price: $

Takeout: Yes.

Alcohol: No.

On the menu: Personal-sized pizzas (8-9) with standard toppings, plus flatbread.

Good to know: Hand-stretched pizza using the same dough as 900 Degrees Wood Fired Pizzeria, cooked in a gas oven.

Restaurant origin: Owners Caleb and Laury Duty debuted their food truck during the recent Waco Wonderland at Heritage Square.

The Clay Pot

416 Franklin Ave.

254-756-2721

Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays

Price: $-$$

Takeout: Yes.

Alcohol: BYOB, but beer and wine permit applied for.

On the menu: Vietnamese cuisine, including pho and bun nuoc (Vietnamese soups), clay pot dishes, noodle dishes, spring rolls. Beverages include bubble tea and Vietnamese coffee

Good to know: The Clay Pots new location has a spring roll bar and an outdoor patio complete with fountain.

Restaurant origin: Owners Thanh Le and Phong Le relocated their restaurant from its longtime Interstate 35 location near Baylor University to downtown, opening in October with a grand opening on Nov. 6.

Brown House Cafe

9110 Jordan Lane, Woodway

254-235-1251

On Facebook

Hours: 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays and Saturdays, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Fridays. Breakfast menu served 8-11 a.m., full menu after 11 a.m.

Price: $-$$

Takeout: Yes.

Alcohol: No. BYOB.

On the menu: Steaks, seafood, soups, sandwiches, salads. Desserts made fresh daily.

Good to know: Family home recipes used for many menu items, including chicken-fried steak, a customer favorite, and pies. Grilled salmon and catfish popular items on Fridays as is handmade chicken salad.

Restaurant origin: Owners Danny and Laurie Brown, who started with a cafe in McGregor in 2015, opened their Woodway location in July 2017.

Hecho En Waco

300 S. Sixth St., Suite B

254-732-0147

On Facebook

Hours: 7 a.m.- 10 p.m. daily.

Price: $$ (see below)

Takeout: Yes

Alcohol: Yes. Full bar available.

On the menu: Regional Mexican cuisine including enchiladas, carnitas, fajitas, quesadillas and moles.

Good to know: Dishes prepared with an eye to healthy eating with more vegetables, less fat. Specialty margaritas featuring cucumber, jalapenos, pineapple or avocado.

Restaurant origin: Owners Lupita and Pedro Leon opened their restaurant on Sept. 9.

Butter My Biscuit

1427 S. Valley Mills Drive (inside Kings Landing Games)

254-752-2333

On Facebook and Instagram

Hours: Full menu available 4-9 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and 4-9 p.m. Saturdays; partial menu served during Kings Landing hours, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and noon-6 p.m. Sundays.

Price: $ (see below)

Takeout: Yes. Curbside pickup, catering also available.

Alcohol: Craft beer on tap with domestics, wine.

On the menu: Scratch-made biscuits with meal toppings or sandwich fillings, baked potatoes, soups, salads. 18 different add-ons for biscuits and potatoes.

Good to know: Buttermilk and Texas jalapeno biscuits served daily with other flavors including garlic parmesan, Guinness Irish tenor and sweet biscuits. Bacon pimento tomato sandwich on biscuit or sourdough bread is a customer favorite as are Saturday morning breakfast specials.

Restaurant origin: Owner and head chef Lee Bankston opened Butter My Biscuit in December 2016.

Pie Peddlers

300 S. Sixth St.

254-396-0767

Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays.

Price: $-$$

Takeout: Yes. Special orders also accepted.

Alcohol: No

On the menu: Pies in 16 flavors and styles including fruit (apple, cherry, blackberry, strawberry/rhubarb), chocolate, pecan, key lime, buttermilk and coconut.

Good to know: Sold by the slice, whole pie and mini pies (single). Crusts are handmade daily. Strawberry/rhubarb and raspberry/rhubarb are customer favorites.

Restaurant origin: The original Pie Peddlers opened in Glen Rose 15 years ago. Owners Summer and Wade Redwine opened the Waco location at Mary Avenue Market on June 23.











































Price guide: $  main dishes less than $10; $$  $10 to $20; $$$  more than $20.
The Janesville man who was the subject of a nationwide manhunt last spring after he stole guns and wrote an anti-government manifesto cursed a judge Wednesday and told him to Give me freedom or give me death before the judge instead gave him a 14-year sentence in the federal prison system.

Joseph Jakubowski, 33, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William Conley at the federal courthouse in Madison for stealing 18 firearms and two silencers from a Janesville gun shop and illegally possessing guns because he is a felon.

He was convicted of the charges after a trial in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin in September.

Jakubowski spent much of the sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon espousing his anti-government views, ending with a 10-minute, profanity-laced rant directed at Conley just before he was sentenced.

I dont care about your damned laws, he said.

During his trial, Jakubowski admitted on the witness stand that he stole the guns from Armageddon Supplies in Janesville in April. After he stole the guns, police say he burned his vehicle, sent a long anti-government manifesto to President Donald Trump and then disappeared for 10 days. Fears about his intentions prompted some Janesville-area schools and churches to close  and even threatened to cancel the annual Easter egg hunt at the Governors Mansion  until he was captured without incident on private land in Vernon County on April 14.

Just four of the guns were recovered at his campsite.

Since his capture, Jakubowski has been defiant when asked by police about the location of the 14 stolen guns, including one machine gun, that are still missing. He told Conley at his hearing, As far as the guns, you aint getting them.

Conley sentenced Jakubowski to 10 years in federal prison for stealing the guns and four years in prison for possessing them as a felon. He ordered the sentences to run consecutively and recommended that Jakubowski receive anger management treatment, mental health counseling and pre-release placement in a residential re-entry center with work-release privileges. He also said that if Jakubowski is found guilty of state charges during a separate trial scheduled next year in Rock County, the state can decide if the sentence should run consecutively or concurrently to the federal sentence.

Jakubowski also was ordered by Conley to pay nearly $15,000 in restitution to Armageddon Supplies for the stolen guns. That followed a discussion that began with Conley broaching the subject of restitution, to which Jakubowski angrily responded, I dont care about the money.

After Jakubowski is released from federal prison, Conley ordered him to spend six years of supervised release. Conley said he hoped Jakubowski will use his time in prison to grow as an individual and to learn  especially about subjects like truth and government  so that his education will be a value to him and society.

Prosecutors wanted a stiffer sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rita M. Rumbelow referred to recent statements by Jakubowski in media reports that hed commit the same crimes as proof that a lengthy sentence is needed because society needs to be protected.

Jakubowskis attorney, Joe Bugni, said that wasnt necessary because Jakubowski is more talk than action. But Conley said he worried that might change.

Throughout the hearing, the judge often appeared sympathetic toward Jakubowski. He gave Jakubowski a great deal of latitude to express his opinions about the government and the flaws of a money-focused society, and sometimes agreed with his points. But when Conley queried Jakubowski about whether he understood the seriousness of his threats and comments, Jakubowski almost always responded with outbursts of anger.

Conley accepted Jakubowskis explanation that he was not planning to attack schools or churches after he stole the guns. But he told Jakubowski law enforcement officials were rightfully concerned by assertions in his manifesto that Ill fight to the death.

Jakubowski responded with a tirade against the media, which he accused of reporting on his psychological problems  then read off a list of conditions from a pre-sentence investigation that included schizoid paranoia, narcissism, anti-social traits and alcoholism.

Scott Blader, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, said the way Jakubowski responded to Conley was a reaffirmation of Mr. Jakubowskis inability to try to understand what he actually did (last April).

Hes unrepentant and unremorseful, and I think that was reflected here in the sentence today.
An Evansville man who mistakenly shot and killed two dogs after believing they were coyotes while hunting at night was found guilty of one count of mistreating an animal and not guilty of a second count by a jury Wednesday afternoon.

Kurt K. Rausch, 36, also was found not guilty of negligent use of a firearm by the jury in a Dane County courtroom. The jury deliberated for just under three hours before reaching a verdict during the two-day trial that included emotional testimony from Rausch and the owner of the dogs, veterinarian Deanna Clark.

The incident occurred in the Badfish Creek Wildlife Area around 6 p.m. on Jan. 22, 2016, when an Alaskan husky mix named Franny and a mastiff named Gary were running ahead of Clark, who took them and her two other dogs there for some exercise.

The jury found Rausch not guilty of animal mistreatment with regards to Franny, the first dog he shot, but guilty with regards to Gary, which had no characteristics resembling a coyote.

Most of the facts of the case were not disputed by either side and the verdict boiled down to an interpretation of a vague and rarely enforced state Department of Natural Resources regulation about dogs running unleashed in wildlife areas and whether Rauschs mistake was a criminal act even though he wasnt cited for a hunting violation.

Rauschs attorney, Michele Tjader, said after the trial that the DNR should stop night hunting and that coyote hunting isnt necessary. She also said the case highlights problems at large wildlife areas like Badfish Creek, where the state DNR allows hunters with firearms and trappers to co-mingle with cross-country skiers, hikers, wildlife viewers and other outdoor enthusiasts, and does a poor job of educating users about the rules.

During the trial, Clark testified that she took her dogs to run in the area about 100 times and thought she could run her dogs unleashed for nine months of the year because a DNR sign at the entrance of the park says dogs may run unleashed from Aug. 1 through April 14. Tjader focused on the signs fine print, which says other rules apply, to attack the prosecutors case. The other rules, which can be found only in hunting manuals that arent usually read by non-hunters like Clark, say that only hunting dogs can run unleashed during those months.

Were putting these two populations together that have two separate knowledge bases, Tjader said.

Rausch testified Wednesday morning that he shot what he believed was a coyote after he was startled by some noise in a brushy area near where he was seated at the edge of some woods and saw eyes reflecting back at him and some pointy ears when he shined a dim light toward the noise. He testified that he shot what he believed was a second coyote seconds later after he heard more noise and saw another set of eyes.

Rausch, who said he is a dog owner, testified that he was in a state of shock when he saw the second animal he shot was a dog.

Assistant district attorney Paul Humphrey said in his closing argument that Rausch had reason to pause before he shot because the dogs were bigger than coyotes and their approach through the brush toward him werent typical of coyotes. He argued that was particularly true for Gary, who weighed 75 pounds  or twice the average weight of a coyote  and had floppy ears.

Tjader said Rausch never should have been charged. She said Rausch turned down the DAs office offer to put him in the first offenders program because he had to admit he committed a crime. Hes not a criminal. Hes a man who made a mistake, she said.

Hes not a criminal. Hes a man who made a mistake. Michele Tjader, Rauschs attorney
The final day of the 2017 Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign is Saturday.

Red Kettles are stationed outside many major stores in the Waco area. Local Salvation Army officials report donations are down in 2017 and urge residents to help support the local chapters effort. Donations help support local programs and services for those facing hunger, homelessness and crisis; programs for youth, seniors and veterans; and programs to make Christmas merry for children. Call 756-7271 for more information.

Christmas meal

The Salvation Armys Christmas Holiday Community Meal will be from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday at 300 Webster Ave.

It will be a traditional Christmas meal, including turkey, trimmings and pie, plus a few special gifts to help spread holiday cheer.

Volunteers can sign up by calling 756-7271.

Mutton Bustin

The Heart of Texas Cowboy Church will host a New Years Eve Mutton Bustin Dec. 31 at its arena, 5101 Kendall Lane.

All kids are welcome, with a weight limit of 55 pounds. Books will open at 1 p.m., and riding will start at 2 p.m. Gear will be provided for youth who do not have their own. Chuck Wagon will be open with refreshments. For more information, call 652-0828.
A judge appointed to hear a court of inquiry to determine if McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna or Waco police Detective Manuel Chavez lied during a hearing last year in the Twin Peaks shootout cases dismissed the proceedings Thursday.

David Peeples, of San Antonio, judge of the Fourth Administrative Region, informed the parties Thursday that he has dismissed the court of inquiry. 203rd State District Judge Teresa Hawthorne found in October that there was probable cause to believe an offense was committed and to request a regional administrative judge convene a court of inquiry.

I have decided to dismiss the Chavez/Reyna court of inquiry, Peeples wrote to the parties. My decision rests on two separate and independent bases. First, I conclude that the evidence of perjury is insufficient and does not justify continuing the court of inquiry. Second, I continue to have serious prudential concerns about procedure, as was suggested in my earlier emails and in our discussions on Tuesday.

The parties in the case met last week with Peeples to discuss how to proceed.

Peeples said he will issue an order next month that elaborates on my reasoning.

Hawthorne ruled there was probable cause for the court of inquiry based on an affidavit from Dallas attorney Clint Broden, who represents bikers Matthew Clendennen and George Bergman.

The court of inquiry would have focused on an Aug. 8, 2016, hearing in which Reyna testified to what Broden calls extensive discussions he had with Chavez before Chavez signed the identical, fill-in-the-name Twin Peaks arrest warrant affidavits for 177 motorcyclists after the May 17, 2015, shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco.

Chavez testified he never spoke to Reyna that night.

Reyna did not return phone messages left on his cellphone or at his office Thursday.

I am very happy for Detective Chavez that this unnecessary matter is over, Chavezs attorney, J.R. Vicha, said. Now he can get back to doing his job of serving the citizens of the city of Waco as a special crimes detective. I am pleased with this result and appreciate the courts careful consideration of the facts.

The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas hired Vicha, a Waco attorney and former prosecutor in Reynas office, to represent Chavez in the court of inquiry.

Broden said he is disappointed in the judges ruling. He said Peeples expressed concern that the court of inquiry was initiated by a Dallas County district judge for something that happened in McLennan County while the Code of Criminal Procedure allows any district judge of this state to initiate a court of inquiry.

Despite the plain reading of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Judge Peeples appears to believe that the court of inquiry could only have been initiated by a McLennan County district judge, Broden said. I believe I fulfilled my ethical responsibility by bringing this scientifically impossible contradiction in testimony to an impartial judge to determine if a court of inquiry should be initiated.

I am disappointed that this process was not completed as contemplated by the Code of Criminal Procedure. Having fulfilled my ethical responsibility, I consider my role in this matter to be concluded.

Broden and other attorneys have attempted to have Reyna disqualified based on the conflicting testimony at the hearing involving the cases of Clendennen and Nelson and for other reasons.

In my almost 30 years of law practice, I have never had to even consider requesting a court of inquiry, Broden said in October. Nevertheless, perjury strikes at the core of our system of justice and, therefore, apparent contradictory statements under oath by public officials must be investigated.

Broden has said he anticipates other courts of inquiry to be convened to review other aspects of how Reynas office handled the Twin Peaks cases, including information outlined in a recent motion to disqualify Reynas office from prosecuting the cases because prosecutors released videos from a bikers cellphone through the discovery process that show him and his wife in a consensual sexual encounter.
Graduate students nationwide dodged a major blow to their pocketbooks when Republican lawmakers opted not to tax tuition waivers pivotal to their education.

Baylor University doctoral students get tuition waivers worth about $30,000. Most also receive a $20,000 stipend to teach a class or work with a professor. Under a proposed House GOP tax plan, students would have faced an $8,000 tax bill.

After receiving strong backlash to the plan, House and Senate Republicans kept the exemption on tuition waivers alive in their tax plan that propelled forward this week. President Donald Trump plans to sign the bill into law Jan. 3, 2018, according to Bloomberg Politics.

There was a considerable concern on campus, said Larry Lyon, vice provost and dean of the Baylor graduate school.

That concern was rooted in Baylor President Linda Livingstones goals to push Baylor into tier-one research status and boost the graduate school population. The plan would have potentially placed new research opportunities in harms way.

Jeff Strietzel, president of the Baylor Graduate Student Association, said he was thankful for the representatives who fought to protect tuition waivers.

Making the attainment of a graduate degree more difficult would have hurt me and my family, all graduate students, our colleges and universities, and our country, Strietzel said by email.

U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, opposed the tax and said he worked with officials from Baylor, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin  all institutions in his district.

This is particularly important to enable our research institutions to compete globally for the best and brightest students as they educate and pursue important research initiatives for the 21st century, Flores said in a statement. Robust graduate education programs are economic engines for America and it is crucial that policymakers recognize and promote these important components of our higher education infrastructure.

Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp said Flores work is the primary reason graduate students were saved from the tax, according to The Eagle, a Bryan-College Station newspaper.

The entire Texas A&M System owes him a huge debt of gratitude, Sharp said of Flores, who signed a letter to top Republicans opposing the repeal of the tax break.

Lyon had previously called the original House tax plan probably the most serious threat to doctoral education we have ever experienced.

He said universities are too often viewed with disdain among those unfamiliar with them, and the message of their goals should be clearer in order to avoid aggressive policy being made against them.

Higher education generally needs to understand that a number of our representatives and a proportion of our population see higher education as a problem rather than a solution, he said. We probably need to do a better job of not presenting ourselves as always critical and always attacking and showing more fully that we respect all points of view, and that we reflect all points of view. There are all kinds of faculty and all kinds of graduate and undergraduate students.

Strietzel hoped the discussions would positively influence higher education policy rules in the future.

In the end, calling into question the incentives for graduate education may clarify and galvanize support at the legislative level, he said. Our country needs a highly educated workforce, now more than ever.
Betty Nell Martin, 86, a native Texan, passed away Tuesday, December 19, 2017, surrounded by her loving family. Betty's family and friends will gather for visitation from 5 to 7 p.m., Saturday, December 23, 2017 at Lake Shore Funeral Home, 5201 Steinbeck Bend in Waco. A graveside service celebrating Betty's life will be held at 1:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 26 at Flint Creek Cemetery in Coryell County.
Ann Badolati Roznovsky

March 17, 1936 - December 16, 2017

Ann Badolati Roznovsky, beloved community leader and veteran newspaper woman, passed away peacefully on Saturday, December 16, 2017 at her home after valiantly battling cancer. She was 81. Ann's body will be donated to scientific research. Even in death, she continues to give to others as she did every day of her life. A Celebration of Life service will be held on Thursday, December 21, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. at Woodway First United Methodist Church.

Ann was born in Paris, Tennessee on March 17, 1936, and grew up in Brownsville, Tennessee. After graduating with honors and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas Woman's University, Ann began a career spanning more than 50 years with the Waco Tribune-Herald. Her devotion to the Texas Aggies and everything maroon and white made her a Texan at heart. As a young reporter, she met her future husband, Al Roznovsky, a Waco police officer, while covering an automobile accident. Thanks to that "accidental" meeting, Ann and Al married on May 21, 1960, and celebrated 57 years of marriage this year.

Anyone who knew Ann remembers her beautiful smile and the warmth that came with every word she spoke. Known for her impeccable taste and beautiful clothes, Ann's style was her trademark. Ann was a model of modesty, but her service to others was widely known throughout the state. With a heart for her community, Ann served on the board of 24 different non-profit organizations throughout her career. Ann loved Waco as much as she loved the Trib. In early 2000, she began a museum at the Trib, "Through Our Pages," highlighting Waco and the Trib's history. Ann's legacy will live on through the museum and also through her love of Storybook Christmas, a literacy project which she co-founded, focused on providing new books at Christmas to underprivileged children in McLennan County. During Ann's years at the helm, over 434,000 books have been distributed.

Not many Wacoans have had a day named for them; "Ann Roznovsky Day" in Waco was formally declared in 1996 when Ann was selected as a "Community Hero" to carry the 1996 Olympic Torch through the streets of Waco, and again in 2008, celebrating her 50 years as the "Face of the Trib." Ann was the "Ultimate Tribber," her experience and talent valued and respected by several Trib owners and publishers over the decades. Ann also directed the Great Texas River Run for 20 years and the Summer Sounds (now River Sounds) for 10 years.

Ann was reared by her widowed grandmother in Tennessee whom she credits for her own love of reading and spelling expertise, her perfect manners, and appreciation for music. Ann's grandmother wanted her to be a classical pianist, but she chose to be a journalist. She and Al are members of Woodway First United Methodist Church.

Ann is survived by her husband Al, a retired City of Waco police chief and personnel director, and their son Mike of Waco as well as her brother David Frantz of Houston, Texas; her half-brother Tom Keenan of Omaha, Nebraska along with their spouses and children; and her half-sister Sarah Keenan of Clearwater, Florida. She is also mourned by a multitude of friends. Her two cats, Priscilla and Kaycee, were special members of her family as well.

In lieu of flowers, please send memorials to Storybook Christmas, P.O. Box 6088, Waco, 76706; the Salvation Army, P.O. Box 268, Waco, 76703; or The Cameron Park Zoological & Botanical Society, 1703 North 4th St., Waco, 76707.
Letha LaRue Whatley

Jan. 14, 1933 - Dec. 19, 2017

Letha LaRue Whatley, of Hewitt, left this earth for her eternal home on December 19, 2017, to forever be with our Lord and Savior. Funeral services will be 2:00 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 21, at Pecan Grove Funeral Home, 3124 Robinson Drive, Waco, with Rev. Daron Farmer officiating. The family will receive visitors one hour prior to the funeral, beginning at 1:00 p.m., at the funeral home. Interment will be at Rosemound Cemetery.

Letha LaRue was born to Jack and Letha Shook on January 14, 1933, on a farm in McLennan County. As a young girl she played the piano for Shiloh and Speegleville Baptist Church. Later in life she owned Whatley's Alpha Omega Security.

Preceding Letha in death were her parents, Jack and Letha Shook and a brother, Douglas Shook.

Letha is survived by her two sons, Terry Schnizer and wife, Rita of Terrell and Randy Schnizer of Waco; daughter, Pam Comfort and husband, Steve of Hewitt; her beloved sister, Jackie Sue Lake and husband, Roy Lee of Arkansas; four grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.

Pallbearers will be Steve Comfort, Jonathan Henneke, Reid Jacobs, Logan Carney, Grant Henneke, and Curt Hancock.

Online guestbook www.pecangrovefuneral.com.
Many thanks

We at Friends for Life acknowledge the generous people of Waco who have helped with our Christmas gift program, Gifts for Grannies and Grandpas. Our gift list is an extensive one and we have many generous donors who assist us with our work. Not only do they furnish actual gifts for our clients but they also make cash donations we use to purchase items that help make Christmas happier for many deserving seniors and people with disabilities.

We also thank those who volunteer to wrap and deliver Christmas gifts during the holidays and we appreciate those who drive our clients to doctors appointments and deliver gifts throughout the year. Theres always a need for volunteers who give their time and make donations.

Thank you, Waco, for all you do to make our programs successful each year for hundreds of our friends.

Joyce Stokes, Volunteer, Friends For Life

What could go wrong?

With Republican members of the Senate and House tinkering with tax legislation the past several weeks, what could possibly go wrong? For one of Americas last pristine wildernesses, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the answer is: plenty. For more than 40 years, repeated attempts by various GOP lawmakers to pass stand-alone legislation that would permit oil-drilling in the 19-million-acre ANWR with its fragile ecosystem were rebuffed by environmentally conscious members of Congress and/or the president. Well, with passage of the tax-reform bill, thats about to change.

If asked to put a monetary value on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, priceless would be the response of most Americans. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the senior U.S. senator from Alaska and a Republican, evidently thinks otherwise. Breaking new ground for political craftiness, she slipped an Arctic refuge oil-drilling provision into the tax-reform bill. She estimates that oil production will generate more than $1 billion over a 10-year period. So, motivated by monetary greed, this slippery politician sold out to Big Oil the Arctic refuge which belongs to all Americans, not just the residents of Alaska.

According to a Dec. 15 New York Times article, in 1985 an exploratory oil-drilling platform was permitted within the Arctic refuge where it operated for 18 months. Thirty years later, the delicate tundra on the drilling site has yet to recover. Infrared images show, even after three decades, the wells footprint is easily distinguishable from the undisturbed tundra around it. It wont take Big Oil long to despoil this fragile wildlife refuge, home to thousands of caribou, muskox, polar bears and countless wildfowl. This is an ecological disaster in the making. A few GOP lawmakers with backbone objected to this sell-out. Regrettably, none were from Texas  a shortcoming worth remembering when you vote.

Waldo Montgomery, Belton
The search for a new vice chancellor for student affairs at UW-Madison has started, with the 15-member committee utilizing a national search firm to fill the post.

The vice chancellorship was announced in November by Chandellor Rebecca Blank, as a way to strengthen student service and the student "experience" at the university.

Lori Berquam, dean of students and vice provost for student life, became interim vice chancellor for student affairs on Dec. 1.

The vice chancellor for student affairs will be the university's chief student affairs officer, responsible for overseeing and coordinating a wide range of student services, the university said in a release.

The largest entities under the student affairs banner include the Division of Student Life and Dean of Students Office; the Wisconsin Union; the Division of Recreational Sports; and University Health Services.

Almost all of the schools in the Big Ten Conference, as well as the other UW System four-year schools have the vice chancellor for student affairs position.

UW-Madison had a vice chancellor for student affairs in the 1980s and again in the late 1990s up to 2004, but discontinued the position and reorganized the responsibilities following the resignation of then vice chancellor Paul Barrows.

The 15-member committee includes three students and is chaired by John Zumbrunnen, political science professor and chair of the Department of Political Science.

A short list of candidates is expected to be given to Blank by spring 2018 and for interviews to be completed by the end of the spring semester.
Editor,

In 2013, a former CIA employee named Edward Snowden leaked information about what the National Security Agency (NSA) was doing. He revealed that the NSA was involved in several illegal and immoral activities, such as collecting phone records from Verizon customers and collecting private data from peoples social media accounts. After this information was revealed, Congress passed a bill to end the bulk collection of peoples phone records in 2015.

Today, Snowden is hiding in Russia and he is facing up to 30 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act. He is branded a criminal for exposing the crimes of the NSA. That is not the way things should be. He was not the one who committed the crimes in this scenario and revealing crimes should not be considered treason.

Whistleblowers like Snowden are important in America so that the government cannot do whatever it wants. If it wasnt for a whistleblower named Mark Felt, the Watergate scandal would have never been revealed to the public. If Snowden had not leaked this information, the NSA would still be doing all of those highly illegal things today, maybe even more.

President Trump should grant Snowden a full pardon to show that he is supportive of what Snowden did and also to show that he does not support an unchecked and secretive government.

Ben Reisen,

Greenwood

Editor,

Earlier this year. Trump made a budget proposal to cut all federal funds to Planned Parenthood. This 2018 budget proposal would not only cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood, but also to other abortion providers. The budget is called the New Foundation for American Greatness and is part of the Trump administrations effort to follow through on a campaign promise to exclude certain entities that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood from being a part of the Department of Health and Human Services programs.

Planned Parenthood is one of the nations leading providers of high-quality, affordable healthcare. They offer their services to anyone who is in need of healthcare services; whether you are a man, woman or young person you can go to Planned Parenthood.

The New Foundation for American Greatness wants to cut funding to Planned Parenthood because they provide abortions. But abortions only accounted for 3 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provided in 2014. Women go to Planned Parenthood for breast exams, pap smears and so much more. Some people even go to Planned Parenthood just for a regular checkup because they cannot afford to go anywhere else.

Planned Parenthood not only helps women, but they help men too. Men can go for STI/STD screenings, cancer screenings, vasectomies, etc. Planned Parenthood is more like a doctors office rather than an abortion clinic.

For these reasons, I think Planned Parenthood should not be cut from federal funding. Planned Parenthood does so much more than provide abortions and helps many people in need, not just women.

Britney Tilson,

Ashland

Editor:

I am writing to express my opinion on universities providing safe spaces for students in college.

A safe space is a spot where students who are a part of an organization can be sheltered from all criticism and conflicting viewpoints or discrimination. Anyone can go into these safe spaces if they are accepted into the organization by agreeing to its terms.

Two colleges in Nebraska that stand out for hosting safe spaces include the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Omaha. These schools even have a map of the locations on their websites.

I believe that these spaces are completely unnecessary and even detrimental to prepare for the real world. Students need to become open to different ideas and new suggestions. This is an important problem because if no one listens to or collaborates with anyone else who has a different view then there will never be any further forward progress.

Communication is the key for everyone to understand each other and there are always multiple sides to each story. Without listening to and understanding each side we will continuously judge and make biased decisions. Although the safe spaces are supposed to be helpful and prevent criticism and discrimination for students, safe spaces are just secluding each students thoughts more and ultimately creating a worse atmosphere where the students do not share their opinions or information.

The reasons above are why safe spaces in colleges, or any school for that matter, should be altered or eliminated across Nebraska and every other state.

Colton Yard,

Alvo

Editor:

This December, republicans in Congress are working to pass a bill that will reform the federal tax plan. The bill was passed in the Senate and the House of Representative, and the Conference Committee has revised the bill to agree with both chambers.

If this bill is passed, which Congress says should happen prior to Christmas, it would cut taxes for almost everyone, including corporations. Single filers making between $9,526 and $38,700 would pay a 12 percent tax, compared to the 15 percent currently in place. Single filers making between $38,701 and $70,000 would pay 22 percent, compared to 25 percent. Married taxpayers filing jointly would pay 12 percent, compared to 15 percent, if they filed between $19,051 and $77,400, or would pay 22 percent, compared to 25 percent, if they filed between $77,401 and $140,000.

The bill also eliminates personal exemption, which is based on dependents, but standard deduction would be increased to $12,000 for single filers and $24,000 for married filers.

Personally, I think that taxes should be reduced as a way to promote spending, as people would have more money to use to buy goods and service. An increase in purchasing means more money going to businesses and a boost to the economy.

But, at the same time, I am concerned about the federal debt and I wonder if tax breaks are the best idea right now. Can the government continue to spend as much as it has been spending and still afford to cut taxes? I would rather have a government that is in the green than pay less in taxes.

To conclude, I do not think that this bill should be passed, at least not at this point in time.

Riddock Moran,

Ashland
WAHOO  Saunders County employees now have an additional health service in place to deal with mental health and substance abuse.

The purpose is an additional service for employees that might experience behavioral health issues without needing treatment intervention, said Blue Valley Behavioral Health Executive Director Jonathan Day.

The Saunders County Board of Supervisors approved a contract with Blue Valley Dec. 12 for an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that will provide three sessions of behavioral health interventions.

The sessions fall under a large umbrella of potential issues people face, including individual, marital, family, anxiety, depression or substance abuse.

Day said employees can come to discuss issues of their own volition or can be referred by their supervisors due to work-related issues.

The cost to the county is $100 per session, paying for up to three sessions per year.

Blue Valley serves a number of companies with EAPs in a similar capacity and has seen success, he said.

Day said Blue Valley has noticed the stigma with anxiety and depression has reduced and people are more likely to come in for services when they need help. Some that have been hesitant to come in have been more willing to do so with the encouragement of friends and family members.

One way to increase self awareness is logging onto the Blue Valley website and taking one of a variety of screenings including anxiety and depression.

The screens are a good way for assessing where people are on scales of depression, plus they are free fore everyone and confidential, Day said.

Blue Valley has also done suicide awareness training in the county.

He also said the county has done a good job to stay ahead of the curve with their concerns of employees with difficult jobs.

The EAP is a good way for the county to reach out to their employees and help them do better in life, Day said.
WAHOO  Wahoo Police Chief Ken Jackson will soon take off the badge.

The spirit is willing but the body is weak, he said.

It is with that mind set that Jackson will end his 16-year tenure as police chief in the town he now calls home.

Jackson grew up east of Davey, but traveled around the state over his career in law enforcement, working in Omaha, Lincoln, York, Holdrege and finally in Wahoo.

He was all but retired after 16 years as police chief in Holdrege, before the willing spirit brought him back into public service.

I retired from Holdrege in 2000 and had some rental houses I was going to live off of, Jackson said.

He was working on one of them one day when his wife called and told him a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers in New York.

I made it home just in time to see the second plane hit and thought this was not right, something wasnt right in the world, he said.

So he stepped back into pubic service, taking the police chief position in Wahoo. He was motivated by his own credo: fighting evil and promoting good.

Jackson said most police officers operate by the motto to serve and protect, but he felt like the job was bigger than that on some level.

He said his love of law enforcement began very early and believes it is similar to that of a pastors calling to ministry.

Its a calling. And if its not, you had better find something else to do, he said.

Jackson said he was the first generation of college educated cops and graduated from the University of Nebraska in Omaha in 1964 and received his masters degree in 1975.

He wanted to be on the side of criminal investigations and went to polygraph school while working for the Lancaster County Sheriffs Office for 10 years. He administered the offices first polygraph test.

He ran for Lancaster County sheriff in 1978 and 1982, but did not win.

He then took a job as police chief in Holdrege for 16 years. It was there he met his wife, who was also a police officer.

When the Jackson family moved to Wahoo, he said it was like a homecoming.

His youngest daughter was still in school at the time, but now he has 12 grandchildren, all within 100 miles.

Jackson said each town hes worked in has its own personality and that is why he chose to call Wahoo home.

Its been a great, wonderful place to live and work, he said.

Jackson said hes worked for several mayors and all have been good. The city government in Wahoo has been positive and the parents are supportive of law enforcement

Parents tend to hold their children accountable for their actions here, he said.

Jackson said he feels law enforcement has an overwhelming reputation in Wahoo and would not want to see anything change that.

Its tough to see what has happened in the last few years with all of us being called liars and racists, he said. Its been hard. We know there are bad ones but, their actions diminish the majority of the rest of us.

I believe police officers are the most honest, ethical people in the world you can find. You have to have a desire to be on the side of right to be in this business.

Jackson said he plans to stay in Wahoo, but travel with his wife to see friends and family members in Colorado, Arizona and Texas.

Ive got over 100,000 miles on my motorcycle and probably half of those were put on with both of us riding together, he said. Well do a little more motorcycle riding and visiting now that we will have time.

Jackson said he is not involved in the selection process for the next chief, but said he has offered to help the city make the transition.

Jackson said the same was afforded him when he replaced John Kolterman upon his retirement.

And he kept his badge number. I never reassigned it. Its just something you do out of respect, Jackson said.
The corporate watchdog will get sweeping new powers to ban "potentially harmful" financial products, under new laws forcing banks to put more emphasis on serving their customers' interests.

In the latest change amid a wave of new regulations on banks, the federal government on Thursday unveiled draft laws to beef up the tools available to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Under the changes, ASIC will get the power to ban products or behaviour that raise the risk of "significant consumer detriment," a change that is intended to result in more timely and pro-active intervention from the watchdog.

Banks and other institutions will also be forced to design products to suit the needs of customers, with the threat of $1 million per civil breach, or jail time for criminal breaches of the new obligations.
On New Year's Day, a bold experiment in Australian university policy will end. It began six years ago, when the national government lifted most controls on undergraduate student numbers, triggering an enrolment boom and today's highly competitive student market. But from January 1, 2018, this demand-driven system will be no more. Regardless of how many students they enrol, each university will be paid no more than their 2017 funding level.

Critically, this change does not need Senate approval. The government has hit an already-legislated fiscal panic button that lets it freeze demand-driven funding for bachelor degree student places. With some additional cuts to postgraduate places, the government estimates it will save $2.2 billion over the next four years.

Peter Costello (left, with Joe Hockey) in 2004. The former treasurer's "baby boom generation" could easily add 20,000 higher-education applicants in the early 2020s. Credit:Andrew Taylor

Universities are understandably upset about this blow to their finances. But freezing demand-driven funding damages the higher-education system in ways that go well beyond the consequences of universities having less money than they expected.

As its name suggests, demand-driven funding let universities meet student preferences. Previously, they had to work within a fixed government allocation of student places.
Before you leap in to defend these words as humorous and creative copy competing in a crowded commercial environment, bear in mind they are anything but harmless. They violate fundamental rules in English grammar for the sake of a quick buck. The more we let this happen, the less clear and precise our language will become. When Donald Trump is wrong, his staff insist he is "instinctively correct". Credit:AP Frankenwords were a notable trend in the 2017 list of the worst words and phrases released by the Plain English Foundation. Each year, the foundation collects the worst examples of doublespeak, buzzwords and spin.

Unsurprisingly, corporate spin featured prominently again this year, particularly whenever a company faced public scrutiny.

United Airlines, for example, used security staff to drag a passenger out of his assigned seat and off an overbooked plane. When confronted with video evidence of its bleeding and distressed customer, the airline played down the incident as an overbook situation that led to involuntary deboarding. The chief executive reluctantly apologised for having to reaccommodate the passenger. In Australia, another airline lost a propeller mid-flight, which the pilot described as an uncommanded engine operation. Im sure the control tower was relieved to know he didnt command the propeller to fall off.

United Airlines tried to play down the incident as an 'involuntary deboarding'. Credit:Facebook Why is it that airlines seem so perversely opposed to plain English?

Corporate spin took a darker turn after allegations against Harvey Weinstein unleashed some of the worst non-apologies ever uttered in the English language. Australias own Don Burke was among the chief offenders when responding to claims of sexual misconduct, admitting that "I might have terrified a few people, or whatever". The Plain English Foundation's worst sign of 2017. Words still matter, and when they are used to paper over an abuse of power and evade responsibility, its more essential than ever that we call them out.

Which brings us to the worst words of the year, and its no surprise they were associated with United States President Donald Trump.

Why is it that airlines seem so perversely opposed to plain English? On his very first day in the job, White House press secretary Sean Spicer lied about the size of the crowd attending the Presidents inauguration. When asked to clarify, Trumps adviser Kellyanne Conway argued Spicer had merely given alternative facts. Lets be clear about this: a fact simply cannot have an alternative that is also a fact. In the words of George Orwell, this is a language "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".

If you think thats an exaggeration, the Trump administration followed up by explaining the President wasnt wrong about something else hed said, he was instinctively correct. Which means, of course, that even when hes wrong, hes right. And day is now night.

Just this week, news emerged of a list of words that health agencies should replace if they want to get funding from the Trump administration. Science-based programs should instead be called science in consideration with community standards and wishes. The State Department now dubs sex education as sexual risk avoidance. Trump himself reinforced the Orwellian trends of 2017 when he tweeted the tautology of the year. Tautologies are an easy slip-up to make, as Michelle Obama did when she cautioned young people against expressing their first initial thoughts on Twitter.

But a quadruple tautology is rare, and Trump tweeted a classic for the ages when he wrote about recent leaks being "fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media". When the world watches its leaders abuse our language this way, it's no wonder our standards are slipping.

Sure, some cases are humorous and unintentional, such as Pauline Hanson's complaint that the covert recording of One Nation staff was very fixacious. But poor language also promotes self-importance, such as the blogger who opined about the latest millennial trend of co-living or living as a service. We used to call this renting. And the worst cases of buzzwords promise a world of technical meaning only to deliver pure wind, like the new electricity arrangements that will apparently follow an optimised non-linear trajectory. I think this means something will go up and down, but in a good way. Then there was the worst sign of the year, on which the local council warned the public that "no fixing of restraints to the handrail stanchions is permitted without express permission". Like many of the year's worst words, the more you think about this, the less clear it becomes. The council has our express permission to use plain English instead of giving the appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Every Thursday morning when Parliament sits in Canberra, a group of Liberal MPs from regional and rural seats gather to talk shop. The meetings have been happening on and off since the early 1990s. In the past six months, Malcolm Turnbull started coming too.

The rural Libs, convened by South Australian Rowan Ramsey, used the opportunity to press the Prime Minister for better representation in the ministry. It's not just the Nationals that represent regional Australia, they stressed.

And the pressure has worked. Rural Liberals have excelled in this cabinet reshuffle, including the promotion of Dan Tehan, Angus Taylor and the spectacular elevation of Queensland MP John McVeigh from newly-elected backbencher to Minister for Regional Development.

"He's a wonderful choice," says Queensland Liberal senator Ian Macdonald. "It shows that Turnbull has listened to the concerns of rural Liberals, who make up the majority of rural representatives in the federal Parliament."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's much-hyped 'Snowy 2.0' expansion has been given the green light, however the scheme could cost 125 per cent more than first thought and won't be switched on for at least six years.

The government will now officially proceed with the ambitious plan  nine months after the iconic Snowy Mountains scheme emerged as a solution to the country's fragmented and increasingly unreliable energy network.

A $29 million feasibility study to be released on Thursday concludes the project is financially and technologically viable, can stabilise wholesale electricity prices, and reduce Australia's reliance on gas as the main backup for when wind and solar farms are out of action.

The expansion had a tentative price tag of $2 billion, however new documents show the cost could actually end up as high as $4.5 billion - not including the estimated $2 billion also needed to upgrade transmissions lines from the mountains into Sydney and Melbourne.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has issued a stark warning in the wake of the largest corporate tax cut in US history, saying international companies will flee the country while Australians are sitting on the beach this summer.

Mr Morrison has become so alarmed at the prospect of Australia being left with a corporate tax rate of 30 per cent that he fears February  when Parliament is due to return  will be too late, as northern hemisphere-based companies will be making decisions in January on whether to stay in Australia or move elsewhere.

"They will be considering their investment plans over their winter, our summer," Mr Morrison told Fairfax Media in an interview to mark the end of the year.

"While many Australians will be at the beach the investment chiefs in major companies will be at work."
Mothers have to put up with a lot, not least of which is a society where terms such as "baby brain" and "mumpreneur" can cut down as many women as they empower or emancipate.

But one Australian magazine is seeking to smash the stereotypes around "juggling" motherhood with other pursuits in a feature about mothers who are making their mark.

RUSSH magazine contributor Anna Harrison was spurred to write "New Dawn" after her own conflict around how having a child would impact her work.

"Mothers are badass, this much is clear," Harrison writes. "[But] the overriding message is clear: motherhood is akin to a vice that constricts a woman's potential to grow and prosper in most other areas, namely professional and creative."
Alison Blake took her own life in June, 2015, only two weeks after a doctor told her nothing could be done to ease her pain or address the devastating consequences of pelvic mesh device surgery.

"I cannot bear the thought of leaving you but the emotional torment and physical pain I'm going through are just too much," Mrs Blake, 64, said in a final letter to her only child, Leesa Tolhurst.

Leesa Tolhurst and Alison Blake.

"I simply cannot bear to be lying on a couch for months on end and to have to rely on catheters, enemas, Temazepam, pain killers and be a burden to my family and friends."

Mrs Tolhurst sobbed this week as she remembered the day her mother gave up hope.
A mountain range in WA's outback believed to be one of the oldest on the planet has been spared from further mining with a decisive move from the State Government.

The EPA found the mining proposal was environmentally unacceptable. Credit:Photographer: Rob Neave

Mining group Mineral Resources Limited wanted to develop two iron ore deposits within the Helena-Aurora Range, a banded ironstone formation around 100km north of Southern Cross in the Eastern Goldfields.

MRL already operates a five million tonne per annum mining operation at nearby Carina, and the proposal to mine the Jackson 5 and Bungalbin East deposits would have extended that operation's scope and lifespan.
Every year, WA's top 10 ATAR students are interviewed, celebrated and awarded for their amazing achievements in their year 12 exams.

But in 2017, around 25,000 WA students achieved an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank.

So what about the other 24,990? Jordan's story is one of incredible determination.

His mum Natalie Bock said her son who attended Ocean Reef Senior High School was faced with the daunting prospect of passing English.
A Perth property manager has copped a $2500 fine after falling for a holiday accommodation booking scam which left her real estate agency $45,000 out-of-pocket.

The State Administrative Tribunal found Vicki Theresa Redfern had "failed to exercise due skill, care and diligence" when dealing with an overseas scammer who is understood to have used a fake name when dealing with Ms Redfern.

The scammer attempted to book a "holiday" in Scarborough. Credit:Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority

The scammer posed as "Colonel Michael Warner" in October 2015, and contacted the Scarborough real estate agency to make a booking for their short-term rental residential apartments.

Consumer Protection WA said the name "Colonel Michael Warner" had been used previously in other Nigerian-based scams.
An Australian man who was fatally stabbed in Sweden managed to walk several hundred metres along a street before collapsing.

The 30-year-old was found in Odinsplatsen, a public space in the middle of the city of Gothenburg, at 4.50am on Wednesday morning, Swedish time.

He was suffering severe spinal and abdominal injuries and later died in hospital.

Police believe the assault may have taken place in Drottningtorget, closer to Gothenburg's central station, several hundred metres from where the man was found.
As President Donald Trumps lawyers were preparing this week to meet with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, their client continued to undermine Muellers investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.

Echoing a complaint by lawyers for his transition team that Mueller had unlawfully obtained tens of thousands of its emails from the General Services Administration, the president on Sunday said: Its not looking good. Its quite sad to see that. My people are very upset about it  A lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad. (A spokesman for Mueller insisted the emails were obtained lawfully.)

In response to a question last week about whether he might pardon former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is assumed to be cooperating with Muellers investigation, Trump said: I dont want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn  yet. (Ty Cobb, one of Trumps lawyers, later said: There is no consideration at the White House of any pardon for Michael Flynn. But whom would Flynn be more likely to believe?)

If Flynn and other potential cooperating witnesses believe that Trump might pardon them, Mueller would lose much of his leverage  making it unnecessary for Trump to fire the special counsel to frustrate the investigation.

Meanwhile, the presidents Amen Corner at Fox News has continued its campaign of vilification against Mueller and the FBI. For example, Sean Hannity has called the Mueller investigation a giant cesspool ... full of corruption, partisanship and unbridled bias and has said Muellers stooges literally are doing everything within their power and then some to try and remove President Trump from office. This is delusional nonsense.

In a normal presidency, it would be unfair to draw a connection between the rantings of a presidents most feverish cheerleaders in the media and the chief executive. But Trump has made it clear that he and Fox News exist in a sort of feedback loop. (In retweeting a Hannity Thanksgiving greeting the president gushed: A great guy [with great ratings]!) Its not paranoid to worry that Foxs highly suggestible First Viewer might be impelled by what he sees on television to move against Mueller.

Perhaps most ominous, some Republican members of Congress increasingly are sounding like Fox News commentators in besmirching Muellers investigation and the FBI and pushing unsupported conspiracy theories. When Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, defended the special counsel in an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio suggested that the Comey FBI and the Obama Justice Department worked with one campaign to go after the other campaign. That is likely to be music to Trumps ears.

Republicans also have grossly exaggerated the importance of the fact Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who was involved in the Mueller inquiry (and the investigation of Hillary Clintons emails), exchanged text messages critical of Trump. Strzok was transferred, and there is no evidence so far he was influenced by his political beliefs in the way he performed his duties, either as part of the Mueller investigation or in connection with the Clinton inquiry. ... (Strzoks activities are under review by the Justice Departments inspector general.)

Trump already has shown he is susceptible to conspiracy theories, especially if they accord with his view that the intelligence services and law enforcement are biased against him. This month he tweeted the absurd assertion that the reputation of the FBI was in Tatters, worst in History!

Several obstacles stand in the way of an effort by Trump to fire Mueller or undo his investigation through the use of his pardon power, including (presumably) the advice of his lawyers and the near-certainty that any move against Mueller would provoke a popular uprising and demands for impeachment.

But anyone who thinks Trump cant act impulsively against his own best interests should remember he fired James Comey, a reckless act that resulted in Rosenstein appointing Mueller. Its incumbent on responsible Republicans in Congress to make it clear to the president that if he menaces Mueller, he does so at his own peril.
Operation COCAIR VI took place from 9 to 17 December 2017, bringing together the enforcement services of airports in some thirty countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East. The main objective of the Operation was to intercept illicit consignments of cocaine by air from South America bound to Europe, either directly or via transit zones in Africa.

More generally, its aim was to intercept any illicit substance or contraband that might be transported by air, in particular currency, countless seizures in previous operations having netted cash and securities.

Cocaine, the main product targeted during the Operation, topped the list in terms of numbers of seizures, and ranks first in terms of quantities intercepted (900 kg). Heroin, tobacco, methamphetamine, cannabis, khat, medicines, LSD and species of flora and fauna protected by the Washington Convention were among the other products intercepted. The Operation also made three interceptions of currency totalling over USD 700,000, confirming that the movement of smuggled currencies observed during the previous COCAIR operations is still prevalent. Thirty-two people have already been detained, and two companies incriminated.

Operation COCAIR VI is part of the Project AIRCOP implemented by WCO, UNODC and Interpol and aimed at stepping up controls in international airports in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean through the establishment of Joint Airport Interdiction Task Forces (JAITFs), bringing together the national stakeholders in enforcement and the fight against fraud. Initiated and organized by the World Customs Organization (WCO), it has benefited from the support of the UNODC, INTERPOL, and the European Commission, which funded it under the Cocaine Route Programme.

The JAITFs and other units operating in airports located along the cocaine route thus formed, for a number of days, an enforcement network covering 38 airports in 35 countries. The officers in these different units were able to exchange information and record their seizures via a tailored version of the WCOs secure communication system, CENcomm. They also had access to the INTERPOL data bases (I-24/7) to search the criminal records of those detained, and to verify the authenticity of travel documents in circulation. The exchange of information during the Operation was intense, as evidenced by the large number of messages issued through the WCOs CENcomm and the number of searches carried out in INTERPOLs I-24/7system (see tables below).

The WCO Regional Intelligence Liaison Offices (RILOs) for West Africa, Western Europe, Central Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean also participated actively in the Operation, facilitating the exchange of operational information with their members.

The WCO hosted an Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) in Brussels comprising officials from the Customs services of Brazil, Gambia, the Dominican Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali, staff working at the RILOs for Central Africa and Western Europe, and representatives of INTERPOL and of CRIMJUST, a UNODC project that seeks to enhance the capacities and integrity of criminal justice institutions in the detection, investigation, prosecution and sentencing of organized crime cases and drug trafficking.

The role of the members of the OCU was to support the operational units by coordinating a number of exchanges and communicating data on passengers from certain airports, in particular Brazil, to allow risk analysis and profiling.

Operation COCAIR VI helped consolidate cooperation between operational services in participating countries, as such cooperation remains the most effective tool in the fight against trafficking organized by serious international crime. In addition, the rapprochement with the CRIMJUST project opens up new opportunities for further investigations by the national judicial investigation services on currency seizures to determine their origin or purpose.

Number of seizures per category

Category Number Drugs 58 Tobacco 3 Currency 3 Other restrictions and prohibitions 1 Protected Fauna and Flora 1 Total 66

Quantities seized per type of product

Category Number Total Number Quantity KG Items Dollars KG Items Dollars Cocaine 44 44 916.268 Heroin 6 6 20.24 Tobacco 3 3 128,180 Methamphetamine 3 3 5.72 Cash 3 3 708,200 Cannabis 2 2 13 Khat 2 2 59.52 Medicine 1 1 95 LSD 1 1 0.189 Protected Fauna and Flora 1 1 250 Total 59 4 3 66 1,109.937 128,430 708,200

CENcomm Messages

Role Quantity National Contact Points 2,358 OCU 7,218 Total 9,576

I-24/7 searches
Alabama is getting a lot of credit for electing Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate and rejecting Roy Moore, but it was black voters who saved Alabama from ridicule, embarrassment and shame.

Incredibly, whites voted 68 percent for Moore, 30 percent for Jones, and 2 percent for write-ins. Blacks voted 96 percent Jones and 4 percent for Moore. Additional demographic breakdowns are just as astounding. Eighty percent of white evangelicals voted for Moore.

It is no wonder Moore will not concede the election and is raising money for his "election integrity fund." He probably thinks only white votes should count.

Bill Kennelly, Madison
The WCO participated in the Customs-Tax Conference on Innovation, Digitalization, Knowledge Management in Budapest, Hungary on 22 and 23 November 2017. 120 Participants from twelve neighboring countries participated in the Conference.

In her opening remarks, Mrs. Csilla Tamas Czinege, the Deputy State Secretary, Director General for Taxation Issues of the Hungarian National Tax and Customs Administration (NTCA) said that the NTCA was a newly integrated organization. The organization faced a high expectation from the Government to collect national revenue, fight against economic crime, and simplify tax and customs procedures. In order to meet the expectations, the NTCA had developed a simple and transparent organization structure to improve the quality of service and extend the organizational competence.

In the Conference the WCO shared that in this modern era, the optimum use of ICT could potentially enhance the efficiency of the work of Customs. The use of ICT could enable the implementation of modern risk management, big-data analytics and digital interoperability. In addition, digitalization helped Customs to standardize Customs procedures, simplify data requirements, and increase compliance.

The WCO moderated a discussion on knowledge management and capacity building. The WCO suggested that in addition to the development of ICT capabilities, Customs and Tax organizations should develop the capacity of the people through knowledge management. The WCO shared its activities relating to the knowledge management and standard setting in the area of Customs and Tax cooperation, inter alia on the development, update, and promotion of the Guidelines on Customs and Tax Cooperation, and of the Guidelines on Customs Valuation and Transfer Pricing.

In the session, several speakers shared experiences relating to knowledge management activities, such as the development of a new curriculum that related to Customs and Tax in the National University of Public Service, regional activities on joint Customs training by the Visegrad Group, the use of technology for supporting capacity building using e-learning platforms, as well as the characteristics of a new generation, namely the generation Z, relating to the requirements of Administrations on the competence of human resources.
By: Associated Press

December 20, 2017

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida man accused of helping an undercover FBI agent posing as a terrorist plan a bombing at a 9/11 event has pleaded guilty.

The U.S. attorney's office says Joshua Goldberg entered the plea Wednesday in a federal courtroom in Jacksonville. The 22-year-old man pleaded guilty to attempted malicious damage and destruction by an explosive of a building.

The FBI says Goldberg sent bomb-making plans to an undercover agent who claimed he wanted to bomb a commemoration in Kansas City, Missouri. No bomb was produced.

Goldberg lived in a Jacksonville suburb. He initially caught authorities' attention after online posts calling for an attack on a contest for drawings of the Prophet Muhammad in Garland, Texas.

Prosecutors recommended that Goldberg receive eight years in prison.
. 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.
Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required.

Your Full Name: (optional)

Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required.
ALDI'S STORES IN WNC RE-CALL APPLES PURCHASED IN MICHIGAN;

COULD HAVE BEEN, SHOULD HAVE BEEN...APPLES GROWN AND PURCHASED IN HENDERSON COUNTY!

WHKP.com News spoke with Jack Brown Produce...they are in Sparta, Michigan. The spokesman who answered the phone said to their knowledge, there had been no illnesses from the Michigan-grown apples. He said the recall applied to apples sent out from their location in Michigan through December 16th

Aldi has announced a voluntary recall of a variety of apples sold in stores across North Carolina due to possible listeria contamination, according to a press release from the company.

The recall was made in cooperation with Jack Brown Produce Inc., and out of an abundance of caution, the company wrote.

The apples were available for purchase in stores beginning Dec. 13.

The company immediately removed the apples from its stores upon notification from Jack Brown Produce, the release said.

The potentially affected apples were sold in a limited number of stores in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.

The following product types and UPC codes are impacted by the recall:

 Fuji Apples, 3 lb. bag, UPC code: 033383087139

 Gala Apples, 3 lb. bag, UPC code: 033383086897

 Golden Apples, 3 lb. bag, UPC code: 033383081175

 Honeycrisp Apples, 2 lb. bag, UPC code: 079954000015

 Honeycrisp Apples, unpackaged, PLU sticker: 3283

No illnesses related to the apples have been reported and no other Aldi products are affected, the company said.

If any customers purchased the affected apples, they should immediately throw them out or return them to the store for a full refund.

Customers who have questions about this recall may contact Jack Brown Produce Inc. at 616-887-9568, Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
Thank you for reading!

Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.
Winona

Monday

4:26 p.m.  A man on the 300 block of Mankato Avenue reported being extorted for $200 by a subject on the internet after sending them nude pictures, which they threatened to post online.

9:14 p.m.  A St. Paul Park man on the 700 block of Terrace Heights reported that three of his vehicles tires were cut.

Tuesday 34 alternate side parking tickets were issued.

Winona County

Monday

8:29 a.m.  Luis Santiago Martinez, 35, Utica, was cited for inattentive driving after falling asleep and driving into the ditch, where his vehicle rolled, near County Roads 6 and 33.

12:14 p.m.  Charges of methamphetamine crimes involving children and fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance were referred against James Anthony Reed, 35, Stockton; Jason Michael Reed, 33, Stockton; and Tammi Jean Reed, 31, Stockton, following a warrant search of their residence on West Main Street in Stockton.

Deputies, along with Winona Police and the Southeast Minnesota Drug Task Force found several meth pipes with residue, 1 gram of methamphetamine, three hydrocodone pills, a scale, several marijuana pipes and 1 gram of marijuana between the house and a vehicle. Children had been present in the home.

Winona

Tuesday

8:40 a.m.  A woman on the 450 block of West Wabasha Street reported that five $100 visa gift cards went missing from a desk in an office there, as well as $158 in cash, overnight.

Wednesday

15 alternate side parking tickets issued

12:11 a.m.  Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance were referred against Antoine Milton Booker, 44, Winona, after being stopped for driving over the center line and a stop sign violation near Cummings and Broadway streets. When stopped, the officer saw a marijuana pipe, and when getting out of the vehicle Booker put two small baggies on the passenger seat, containing .97 grams and .06 grams of a substance which tested positive for cocaine.

12:14 a.m.  A man reported that a blue electric wheelchair was missing from the area of Belleview and Main streets, where it had been parked from 4 p.m. to midnight Tuesday without the keys.

Winona County

Tuesday

11:40 a.m.  A 56-year-old woman on County Road 12 in rural Winona reported her dog was taken from her home. Police spoke with the suspect, a 21-year-old from Winona, who confirmed that he did take it and it was returned. Burglary charges will likely be referred, according to the Sheriffs department, but as of yet have not been.
The Sauk County Board will wait until the last possible moment to consider a deal with a private firm that wants to finance solar energy systems at two government buildings.

Citing a full meeting agenda and uncertainties about the property on which one array would be sited, supervisors voted 18-12 Tuesday night to postpone consideration of a third-party solar contract until next month.

The delay sets the stage for a final showdown during the boards next meeting Jan. 16. The Iowa company that bid on the project has agreed to extend its offer until the day after that meeting.

Postponing consideration also may provide political cover for supervisors who dont yet face opposition in the spring election, but who intend to vote against a proposal that has received broad public support. Campaign paperwork for county board candidates is due Jan. 2.

If solar installation can save the county money, then why wouldnt everyone on this board vote in favor of it? said Carol Olson of Baraboo, one of four members of the public who spoke to the board Tuesday in favor of the proposal. And if you dont believe or accept the consultants analysis, then explain exactly where theyre wrong and make your numbers transparent and available to the public so that we can all better understand.

The boards Property and Insurance Committee voted unanimously Dec. 7 to recommend approval of a contract with Eagle Point Energy, forwarding the matter to the full board for consideration.

However, as the board was asked to adopt its agenda Tuesday night, Supervisors Andrea Lombard and Chuck Spencer, both of Baraboo, moved to postpone consideration of the contract. They cited a lengthy agenda and uncertainties about the suggested location of one of the arrays.

Under the proposed solar deal, Eagle Point Energy would finance the installation of a roof-mounted array on the countys law enforcement facility in Baraboo, and a ground system next to the Reedsburg nursing home.

The county is not yet certain how property adjacent to the nursing home might be used in the future. The board Tuesday approved the creation of a special committee to study the matter and report to the board in March.

Terms of the solar deal would allow the county to purchase energy from the contractors systems at rates that presumably would be less expensive than those offered by power companies, allowing for annual savings. The contractor would benefit from the countys payments, as well as financial incentives that only are available to private entities.

Consultants that helped set up the proposed deal say the county stands to save $556,527 over 25 years if it never purchases the systems for itself. The county would have the option to buy the systems beginning after the seventh year and up through the 25th year of the contract.

Before the county solicited bids, the consultants estimated savings at about $1 million over 25 years. Asked Tuesday about what changed, and why the county only received one bid, Mark Hanson of Hoffman Planning, Design & Construction cited uncertainties related to newly imposed solar tariffs and a federal tax code overhaul.

The solar project  which has been the subject of much political infighting among competing factions of the board  has been delayed several times. Hanson said the county likely could have received more favorable proposals if it had requested bids sooner.

The terms that youre facing now arent quite as favorable, but its still a huge win, Hanson said. So you would have been a slightly bigger winner had things been done at a slightly different timing.
When Gov. Scott Walker signed Assembly Bill 280 on Nov. 30, more than 40 people crowded in behind him to be part of the official bill-signing photo. The larger-than-normal turnout for the event was emblematic of the widespread support for the legislation, which requires Wisconsin K-12 school districts to incorporate personal finance into their curricula.

The bill had passed the Assembly and Senate by voice vote, and also had the strong backing of a variety of private-sector stakeholder groups from the financial services industry. Walker enthusiastically signed the bill, which took effect immediately.

As secretary of the Department of Financial Institutions, I was pleased to be present for the historic signing, which makes Wisconsin one of 18 states to require the teaching of personal finance. DFI, through our Office of Financial Literacy, has been working for years to promote the importance of this critical lifelong skill, with a special emphasis on educating our K-12 students. Our agency spearheads the work of the Governors Council on Financial Literacy, which Walker convened in 2011. We also collaborate with a variety of stakeholders groups to promote financial literacy in our schools, workplaces and communities across Wisconsin.

The signing of AB280 was, indeed, good news. But the even better news is that Wisconsins K-12 school districts already have made outstanding progress on incorporating personal finance into their curriculum requirements. Consider this:

In 2010, a survey showed that just 25 percent of Wisconsin high schools required students to take a personal finance class in order to graduate.

In 2016, based on a district-by-district review conducted by DFI, the percentage of districts with such a requirement had risen to 64 percent.

Today more than 70 percent of Wisconsin high schools have such a requirement in place, based on DFIs most recent survey.

It is gratifying to see that a significant number of local school boards across the state have decided to add personal finance to their graduation requirements in the past seven years.

Obviously, they have come to the realization that financially literate students have a far greater likelihood of becoming financially successful adults than do students who are financially illiterate. Studies have shown that mandated financial education increases financial knowledge later in life, including improved retirement planning.

In addition, by age 22, people who were taught personal finance in school have credit scores that are 8 to 17 points higher than those who werent. Given the rapidly evolving nature of the financial services industry, the need to equip young people with these skills has never been more important.

The hard work by many educators, stakeholders groups and others on this topic is paying dividends, but there is more work to be done. DFI, our Office of Financial Literacy and Walkers Council on Financial Literacy stand ready to help.
The Wisconsin Society for Human Resource Management has awarded the Dodge County SHRM Chapter an Enterprising Leadership Grant for its partnership with the Glacial Heritage Development Partnership.

The Dodge County SHRM and GHDP began working together in March to help Dodge County manufacturers attract workers. A Labor Availability Analysis is focused on documenting the availability of workers willing to work in manufacturing in Dodge or Jefferson counties, documenting the wages and benefits necessary for workers to accept first-, second- or third-shift positions in manufacturing in Dodge County.

This type of study has never been done in the state of Wisconsin, said GHDP President Vicki Pratt. With more than 62 percent of Dodge Countys employed residents currently commuting out of Dodge County to work, the goal is to better understand how we can keep these workers employed in Dodge County, and specifically in manufacturing, the countys largest industry.

Our very tight labor market makes getting this information essential to our largest employers. We know everyone is trying to hire  this study will provide us with data about the actual number of workers willing to consider jobs in manufacturing in Dodge County, Pratt said.

Dodge County SHRM President Mary Vogl-Rauscher said, We understand the importance of manufacturing in Wisconsin. As a SHRM chapter, we want to support not only our members, but also collaborate with the needs of the employers and the communities we are part of. We believe the information that will be obtained is much needed and will be a tool that benefits our members and area employers.

The study will deliver specific information about the availability of manufacturing workers in a labor shed area that picks up municipalities across a 10-county area. Mayville will be used as a central point in Dodge County due to its heavy manufacturing presence. The central point in Jefferson County is the city of Jefferson. The study will deliver specific information about the willingness of workers in the area with no manufacturing experience to accept a position in manufacturing.

The study is being done in partnership with the city of Jefferson as part of its award from the Economic Development Administration following the closing of the Tyson plant.

Jefferson County, the Jefferson County Economic Development Consortium and the city originally planned to complete a labor shed analysis. However, after the formation of the GHDP and the signing of a partnership agreement with Dodge County, Pratt promoted completion of a Labor Availability Analysis specific to manufacturing across the two-county region.

Following a request-for-proposals process, the Docking Institute of Fort Hays State University was chosen to complete the study. The Enterprising Leadership Grant of $2,000 will offset costs incurred to complete the study, which is expected to be completed by April.

The GHDP intends to share the results of the study broadly in April and May.
JUNEAU  A 33-year-old Hustisford man who was employed as a correctional officer at Waupun Correctional Institution has been charged with sexually assaulting the 6-year-old daughter of his live-in girlfriend.

Martin A. Lee is charged with two felony counts of first-degree child sexual assault. He could be sentenced to up to 120 years in prison if convicted.

Lee appeared before Dodge County Court Commissioner Steven Seim on Wednesday and was given a $50,000 cash bond with the conditions that he not have any direct or indirect contact with the woman he had been living with, the victim or her other children. He may not have any direct or indirect contact or communication with any minor females. He also may not leave the state.

According to the criminal complaint, the woman contacted the Dodge County Sheriffs Office on Monday after her daughter told her that Lee had sexually assaulted her. The girl said that Lee began assaulting her in the mornings before taking her to school and did it on a regular basis. They both were clothed during the assaults.

Lee met Dodge County deputies at the Waupun Police Department. He originally denied assaulting the girl but, according to the complaint, ended up telling the deputies that it happened about five times.

A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Dec. 28. As of Wednesday night, Lee remained in custody.
Jack H. Voit, 92, Beaver Dam, formerly of Milwaukee, passed away Dec. 18, 2017.

Jack was born Dec. 27, 1924, to Michael and Florence (Bucher) Voit in Milwaukee and due to his wonderful parents he was brought up to be a compassionate and friendly person. He learned to give instead of expecting from others.

On Feb. 3, 1945, he married his beautiful wife Ruth Strehlow. They shared 57 years together until her death in 2002. She wasnt perfect and he wasnt either, but their marriage was. They had a nice home in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, for 45 years. When Ruth became ill in 1996, it was no problem for Jack to take care of her until she passed away. In 2004 Jack moved to Stone Terrace. He really liked it in Beaver Dam and always said that the friendliness of the people just amazed him.

Jack was a working foreman for a major commercial construction company for more than 40 years. He was a cement mason and bricklayer. He had to give up construction in 1984 and was re-trained in computers. After retirement, he remained active with working on his house, helping others with their projects and doing his stained glass artwork. His time at Stone Terrance was spent reading and playing with his computer. He always considered himself a loner. His artwork can be seen in the meditation room and other places throughout Beaver Dam Community Hospital, where he donated lamps and religious pictures. Having Kim Miller accept his glass artwork for the hospital made him extremely happy.

Jack said, Tears for me would be out of place as I have enjoyed my life to the fullest, and I never dreamt Id live as long as I did.

Jack will be laid to rest next to his loving wife Ruth at Wisconsin Memorial Park.

Koepsell-Murray Funeral Home in Beaver Dam is serving the family. Online condolences may be made at koepsellfh.com.
Marquis Energy Wisconsin LLC, Necedah, gifted three local high schools with $60,000 in cash contributions, to be used in advancing the fields of science, math or agricultural studies.

The success of our local students is a major priority to Marquis and we hope this investment makes a lasting impact in the lives of our future leaders, says CEO Mark Marquis. Our students have big aspirations and we look forward to seeing these future generations better the world.
A Mauston woman faces criminal charges after allegedly stealing an individuals credit card and making purchases with it.

Kristi Dahlgren, 46, is charged with felony bail jumping, identity theftfinancial gain, and credit cardfraudulent use $2500 (four counts). She faces up to six years imprisonment for the first charge.

According to the criminal complaint:

On Nov. 14 a Mauston police officer was notified by the Juneau County Communication Center that a woman wanted to report fraudulent use of her credit card.

The officer contacted the woman by telephone and recorded their conversation The woman stated she had received a call from the Discover credit card company. Discover had asked her if she had been making numerous charges to numerous places. The places included business in Mauston and Juneau County. The woman replied she had not been making those charges and had never heard of these business.

The woman stated she did not know anyone who lived in Mauston except for Dahlgren. The woman said Dahlgren had taken her credit card information before, but she did not press charges.

The woman called Dahlgren on the telephone and left a voicemail. Dahlgren later responded to the voicemail via text message, stating I hope you know that I had absolutely no idea the numbers I had were yours until tonight when I used for an order. I never even saw your card or the numbers ever I will call you tomorrow Im not that stupid to do any of this bullshit again.

The woman emailed the officer a picture of the Discover credit card statement with the disputed charges.

The officer made contact with Dahlgren on the telephone after the woman gave him her number. Dahlgren agreed to meet with the officer at the Mauston police department on Nov. 19 but did not show up for the meeting. She left a voicemail and said she wanted to reschedule.

The woman whose information had been stolen informed the officer in a phone interview on Nov. 27 Dahlgren had tried to use another credit card to pay for a bill at the Sunrise Motel in Necedah. The officer asked the owner if Dahlgren had used that credit card. The owner said Dahlgren had texted her credit card information and sent a picture of the credit card. The owner charged the card $200 for services rendered to Dahlgren.

The owner later received a call asking about the $200 charge. The owner replied that she would refund the charge. Dahlgren then offered to use a different credit card to pay her bill, but the owner informed her she would only accept cash from Dahlgren.

On Nov. 28, the officer went to the Roman Castle restaurant in Mauston to drop off a list of the disputed charges Dahlgren had made with the womans credit card. The officer was informed several employees of the restaurant would speak with him about Dahlgrens use of the credit card information.

One employee stated the first time Dahlgren came to the restaurant, she gave her credit card information on a piece of paper. Dahlgren said she had lost her credit card and another one was in the mail. The employee said Dahlgren came in several more times and paid her bill in the same manner.

Dahlgren had also inquired about getting a job at Roman Castle and was hired the year before. The employee recalled a time Dahlgren had requested that she order a pizza with the womans credit card and put a $150 tip on the order, which she would collect the next day. The employee replied she did not feel comfortable doing that. The employee provided screen shots of the text messages.

Another employee stated she saw Dahlgren use the credit card information the one day she actually worked at the restaurant. She said she saw Dahlgren order food and add a $20 tip to the bill. When the employee asker her about this, Dahlgren replied she needed the cash.

By Dec. 1, nine of the 10 transactions Dahlgren had made at the Roman Castle restaurant had been found and photocopied by employees. The photocopies were left for the officer at the Mauston police department. The last four digits of the credit card used for the purchases were identical to the digits on the womans credit card. Each transaction was also manually entered into the card machine at Roman Castle.

Dahlgren was also found to have used the womans credit card for a hair appointment at The Company Hair in Mauston. The stylist stated she had received a call from a woman before Dahlgren came. The caller claimed to be the woman whose name was on the credit card, and she wanted to pay for Dahlgrens hair appointment as a birthday gift. The total for the hair appointment was $138. The total amount charged on the credit card in the City of Mauston was $442.67.

The woman whose information was stolen informed the office she believed Dahlgren photographed her credit card the last time she came to visit. The woman stated she had left her purse on the counter unattended, and believed that was when Dahlgren photographed the card.

Dahlgren was arrested on Dec. 6 and transported to Juneau County Jail without incident. She is currently in Juneau County Jail. Her initial appearance in court is scheduled for Dec. 20 at the Juneau County Justice Center.
A battle over one vote has left control of the Virginia House of Delegates up in the air -- and headed for the winner's name to be drawn at random.

After a recount Tuesday had Democrat Shelly Simonds declaring victory by a margin of one vote over Republican Del. David Yancey and Virginia Republicans conceding defeat, a three-judge panel deliberating the recount Wednesday declared a previously uncounted vote for Yancey valid.

Virginia law says that in the event of a tie, the election board will determine the winner "by lot," after which point Republicans believe the loser can petition for another recount; however, there is some disagreement among Virginia election experts as to how the law should be applied in this case.

The panel's decision meant that what had been a one-vote victory for Simonds became a tie. A victory for the Democrat would split control of the House of Delegates 50-50 and end Republican control of the chamber, while a victory for the Republican would mean the GOP would continue in the majority.

A split would mean Virginia Republicans and Democrats must craft a power-sharing agreement, which would include committee assignments and who is elected speaker of the House.

In the initial count, Simonds had been behind by 10 votes, and the recount found her ahead instead by one vote.

Virginia Republicans released a statement Tuesday afternoon conceding the race after the "close recount" and said they "stood ready" to forge a bipartisan, power-sharing agreement for the chamber. But on Wednesday, Republicans asked the judges to look at an uncounted vote for Yancey, and the panel agreed, bringing the race to a tie.

"While it appeared yesterday that Shelly Simonds was elected, it's obvious now that the result will remain unclear for a while longer," Virginia House Republican leadership said in a statement Wednesday.

The statement continued, "The State Board of Elections will publicly meet to make a determination by drawing lots, after which the loser may request an additional recount."

The outsize impact of the one-vote margin came after other close results in off-year elections across the country. A city council race in Idaho came down to a coin toss and a recount Monday, resulting in the discovery of one new ballot that tilted the race for the incumbent. In the Alabama US Senate election earlier this month, a potentially decisive share of voters wrote in candidates in a race that saw Democrat Doug Jones defeat Republican Roy Moore.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Wednesday public employees who are victims of sexual harassment should be able to receive taxpayer-funded settlements  and those settlements should be public  but does not support notifying taxpayers of the settlements' existence.

Vos, R-Rochester, said in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal that the public and members of the media should be able to have access to settlement records but he does not want to proactively release the details of the agreements in an effort to help preserve victims' privacy.

"I would never support keeping those ultimate settlements secret. I dont agree with that at all," Vos said. "I certainly think that maybe you guys now, in the press, will look every month at the settlements the (Equal Rights Division) has and more power to you. But I dont think it should be incumbent upon us to promote an embarrassing situation."

Settlements reached through the Department of Workforce Development's Equal Rights Division's process to litigate complaints of sexual harassment or discrimination are public documents and may be obtained through requests made under the state's open records law.

In 2015, Senate leaders approved a $75,000 settlement to be paid to a former female staff member of former Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, who was fired after she complained Coggs sexually harassed her. An administrative law judge found probable cause to believe Coggs sexually harassed Harris and discriminated against her before the Legislature settled with Harris.

Vos said Wednesday he never knew about the settlement before the Wisconsin State Journal reported it on Dec. 5, "and I shouldnt know. It doesnt matter to me."

The state Legislature's handling of sexual harassment has been under fresh scrutiny following an October New York Times story on Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein's systematic harassment and assault of female actresses.

Since the report, more women have come forward with stories of sexual harassment, misconduct and assault involving powerful men in media and involving lawmakers in state Legislatures and Congress. The women making the accusations say they feel now more confident that their stories will be believed.

Vos said Wednesday that he feels the Wisconsin State Legislature's process for handling sexual harassment allegations is fair because victims can report harassment to any Legislative leader, each house's chief clerks and to the Legislature human resources office.
Before Wednesday morning, Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt would have bet that few members of the countys Board of Supervisors knew what judicial district the countys courts are in, or why it matters.

But by the end of the meeting, he had the County Boards unanimous support for his efforts to oppose a proposed realignment of those districts, which would have grouped Columbia Countys courts with those of the much more populous Dane and Rock counties.

Such outspoken opposition, Voigt said, could very well hurt his judicial career by branding him as a boat rocker. He couldnt be dismissed as a judge  not unless the countys voters dont re-elect him, anyway  but he could, he said, be permanently removed from consideration as a future chief judge of a judicial district.

The district is way more important to me than that title, or some post, he said.

Voigt said the state Supreme Court and the director of state courts, Randy Koschnick, are considering a proposal to dissolve Judicial District 6 (one of 10), which includes the circuit courts in Columbia, Adams, Clark, Dodge, Green Lake, Juneau, Marquette, Portage, Sauk, Waushara and Wood counties.

All the counties in District 6 then would be realigned with one of the remaining nine judicial districts. The proposal, according to Voigt, calls for Columbia and Sauk counties to become part of a district that includes two of the states metropolitan counties, Dane and Rock.

That could hurt Columbia Countys court operations, Voigt said.

For example, substitute judges usually are assigned within their judicial districts  which could conceivably mean that one or more of Columbia Countys three judges could be tied up for weeks in a long trial in Dane or Rock county.

Voigt said Dane Countys 17 judges typically specialize, for two or three years on a rotating basis, in a specific type of case, whereas Columbia County judges all hear all different types of cases.

We have to do everything, every day, Voigt said. Sometimes, I do a divorce case, followed by an injunction, then go back to some criminal cases.

Voigt said as far as he knows, the only benefit to dissolving District 6 would be a $250,000 annual savings in the cost of operating the states courts.

The County Board often passes resolutions stating the countys position on legislative issues, and forwards those resolutions to the governor and the lawmakers that represent Columbia County.

This resolution is unusual, however, because the Supreme Court, and not the Legislature, would have the final say on the matter.

Neither Voigt nor Corporation Counsel Joseph Ruf could hazard a guess as to how influential the resolution might be.

However, Ruf said, sometimes its in the interest of a county to take a position.

To Voigts knowledge, no other county body, including those of the other District 6 counties, has gone on record on this issue, though others might now that Columbia County has passed the resolution in opposition.

According to Voigt, Columbia County is about in the middle of the 11 District 6 counties, in terms of the number of judges it has  three. One of the judges posts is vacant due to the recent retirement of Judge Alan White. The other judge is Todd Hepler.

There are 23 judges in District 6, he said, and they enjoy a collegial relationship that may not exist in the other districts, as well as much commonality in procedures such as court calendars.

Supervisor Matthew Rohrbeck of Portage said it makes little sense, in his mind, to align Columbia Countys judiciary with those of two of the states most populous counties.

Just looking at this out of the blue, he said, I would say we have significantly more in common with the other District 6 counties.

County Board Chairman Vern Gove praised the County Boards Judiciary Committee for bringing the resolution for the County Boards consideration, and praised Voigt for taking a stand.

Youre really putting yourself out there, and I understand that, Gove said. Thats why we need to support this.
The Portage School Board will have two seats on the ballot in the spring election.

As of Wednesday, incumbents Dan Garrigan and Connie Shlimovitz faced no challengers in the election to be held April 3, reported the Portage Community School Districts administrative assistant, Suzi Hemler.

The deadline to file candidacy papers is 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 2.

Garrigan filed his paperwork on Monday, while Shlimovitz told the Daily Register on Tuesday that she plans to file for candidacy later this week. Garrigan holds one of three rural seats on the board, and Shlimovitz holds one of four city seats.

Rural candidates must reside within the Portage Community School District but outside city limits, while city candidates must reside within city limits, Hemler said. Term-length is 3 years.

Garrigan, a detective with the Portage Police Department, seeks his fourth term on the school board. Shlimovitz works as a teacher supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, seeking her second term on the board.

Both candidates talked about why they choose to run for the board and what they hope to see accomplished if re-elected.

Dan Garrigan

Ill be honest that over the last year or so I havent been as excited (about serving on the board) as I was in the past, Garrigan said. I was starting to feel as if the board was dysfunctional, not accomplishing some of the goals we needed to accomplish.

Ive since changed my mind. I felt we were, as a board, not doing our schools a lot of justice, and it bothered me. I believe thats changing, he continued, saying he thinks the board is working better as a team.

I believe we are making some changes that are more open to listening to staff, to the community, and thats why I changed my mind. Im not giving up.

Garrigan said hes optimistic state testing in Portage schools will improve as a result of steps the district has taken, in areas like testing preparation and student attendance. Other areas for improvement Garrigan noted included expanding the gymnasium at Portage High School and becoming more competitive in the Badger Conference.

I compare us to all of (the schools in the conference) whether thats in extracurricular activities, sports, academics, everything  I dont want us to be the school that the rest of the conference looks at as being the slacker, so to speak.

Garrigan remains focused on staff retention in the school district, saying he believes Portage is thinking outside the box to attract new employees and has barely scratched the surface in what it can do to make Portage an even better place to work.

Connie Shlimovitz

If Im fortunate enough to get the vote, then I will continue to represent the voters the best I can, giving them all the time I have, Shlimovitz said of her candidacy.

What I would really like is for (the district) to be like a family again. I dont want to see the high turnover of staff members; I would just like some stability.

Its always the kids and families that are no. 1, Shlimovitz said of her priorities on the board. Were a community school district, and theres no greater concern than educating our future.

Dedication is the most important trait for a school board member, Shlimovitz said. You need to be at everything you can be at, knowing you truly do represent the community. So you have to know whats going on. Its one thing to show up once a month for committee meetings, but you really need to know your community.

As a board member, Shlimovitz has donated each of her quarterly stipend checks to various causes in the community, her most recent check going to The Portage Family Skate Park. She promised to do this when she ran three years ago, and she said Tuesday that shell keep doing it if shes re-elected.

I cant believe its been 3 years already. Its exciting, she said.
Good news. At the Portage Community School Board meeting on Dec. 11, it was announced that science and social studies are, again, going to be included in the elementary schools' curriculum.

Social studies and the history of Portage are a big part of the curriculum for all elementary schools in the state of Wisconsin. Other schools take field trips to the Indian Agency House, the Surgeons Quarters and also learn how the Fox and the Wisconsin rivers played an important part in history.

The question for the School Board President is: Why were science and social studies ever removed from the elementary curriculum? This is something you need to answer.

It should be noted that Portage schools have many great employees, teachers, support staff and some good administrators. The list goes on, however, some changes need to be made.

Gary O'Hearn, Portage, retired principal and university supervisor
The Republican Party is responsible for illegal immigration, just ask Pat Nash (Dec. 8 column).

As usual, Nash ignores the facts, e.g. Democratic opposition to the GOP's legislation in recent years requiring all employers to use E-Verify, the free federal database system that determines whether a new hire is authorized to work here. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in June 2013 that "illegal immigration will end" if employers use E-Verify. Now he's saying no DACA deal if E-Verify is included.

Like all Democrats, Ms. Nash isnt serious about ending illegal immigration because the more Democratic voters there are the merrier. Has she ever written a column backing E-Verify? Her solution to the problem is amnesty (there have been seven amnesties since 1986), i.e., legalization of 11 million people . If these people are no longer here illegally, then the problem is solved. Get it?

If, as Ms. Nash demands, the GOP pushed heavy fines and jail sentences for employers who knowingly hire illegals, could they count on support from Democrats who once boasted that they "stick up" for American workers?

Dave Gorak, La Valle (Executive director, Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration)
Governor-elect Northam names VIMS alumnus as resource secretary

Announcement Virginia Governor-elect Ralph Northam (L) announces VIMS and W&M alumnus Matt Strickler (MS 07) as his Secretary of Natural Resources during a press conference at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.  Bob Brown/Richmond Times Dispatch Photo - of - Hide Caption

Matt Strickler M.S. 07 will oversee six state agencies

Virginia Governor-elect Ralph Northam has named Matt Strickler  a 2007 graduate of the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at William & Mary and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science  as Virginias next secretary of natural resources.

The Natural Resources Secretary oversees six state agencies: the departments of Conservation and Recreation; Environmental Quality; Game and Inland Fisheries and Historic Resources; as well as the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the Virginia Museum of Natural History.

Professor Carl Hershner, Stricklers advisor during his masters research at VIMS and W&M, says Matt was an exceptional student. Were confident he will demonstrate the excellence of his training and make us proud as he serves the new governor and citizens of the Commonwealth.

Hershner, director of the Center for Coastal Resources at Management at VIMS, also lauded the Governor-elect for choosing Strickler to fill the post. We congratulate Dr. Northam on his selection of what we obviously believe to be a uniquely qualified individual, he says. We look forward to working with Matt as he tackles the environmental challenges confronting Virginia.

During his academic career at VIMS, Strickler combined field studies with water-quality and economic modeling to examine how land-use changes on Virginias Eastern Shore impact hard clam aquaculture, with a focus on clam-farming operations in Old Plantation Creek in Northampton County.

In 2007, he was chosen through the Virginia Sea Grant program as a Knauss Marine Policy Fellow within NOAAs Office of International Affairs. This legislative experience presaged his later hiring as a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources.

Strickler credits both his masters research and Knauss Fellowship for his interest and rapid advance in the policymaking arena. "I'm honored and excited to be handling natural resources policy for Governor-elect Northam," he says. "The broad exposure I got at VIMS to a range of environmental science and policy issues, as well as hands-on experience working on Chesapeake Bay with scientists and stakeholders, has been invaluable to me and I know will serve me well in this new role."

"I definitely wouldn't have been hired for my current position had I not served as a Knauss Fellow, he adds. "It taught me an unbelievable amount about the interplay between science and policy." Strickler currently serves as senior policy advisor to the House Natural Resources Committee under Democratic Ranking Member Raul Grijalva (AZ-3) His portfolio includes fisheries, oceans, wildlife, and coastal policy, as well as related energy and public lands issues. He also handles matters related to The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Prior to his work in Congress, Strickler served for three years as a legislative assistant to Northam during the governor-elects stint as a Virginia senator for the 6th District, which covers all or part of Accomack, Mathews and Northampton counties, as well as the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. He also worked on U.S. Senator Mark Warners successful 2008 campaign.

Strickler will commence his new position as secretary of natural resources when governor-elect Northam officially takes office on Jan. 13, 2018.




China News on Women





Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page
FXFOWLE heads for the top in downtown Brooklyn

One Willoughby Square will promote social and natural connectivity with amenity spaces and exterior terraces

by Nick Myall
Union minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said the 2G case verdict wasn't proof of the Congress-led UPA government's innocence.

Union Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley reacts to news that all accused in the 2G case were acquitted (Photo: Twitter/ANI)

By India Today Web Desk: Union Finance Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader took a jibe at the Congress' reaction to the 2G scam verdict.

"Congress treating the judgement as a badge of honour," he told reporters outside the Parliament today.

Jaitley said the 2G case verdict wasn't proof of the Congress-led UPA government's innocence.

He went on to say that the Supreme Court had commented adversely on United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's spectrum allocation policy.

advertisement

Jaitley said that according to the apex court the first come, first served 2G policy was arbitrary and corrupt. It had ordered the government to change the policy to an auction-based one.

Jaitley charged the UPA government with favouring a handful and the policy was changed to first come, first pay. But the favourites were informed before the policy was tweaked.

"The fact that policy caused loss is clear from the fact the subsequent auctions got a much higher price," the Finance Minister said.

He hoped that the investigative agencies would take a close look at the judgement and decide what had to be done.

On Thursday a special CBI court had acquitted all the accused in the 2G spectrum spam case.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had said the spectrum allocation spam had caused the national exchequer a notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

The spam was one of the reasons for Congress' crushing defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections; it also spelt the near death knell of politicians A Raja and M Kanimozhi.

Also read: What was the 2g spectrum scam? 10 things to know

--- ENDS ---
Nursing students deliver festive cheer to patients at Wrexham Maelor Hospital

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Dec 21st, 2017

A group of generous student nurses have helped deliver some early festive cheer to patients at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital.

Fern Williams, Ceri Chamorro, Natalie Evans and Kate Topple, third year adult nursing students at Bangor University, have been working alongside their lecturer Angela Williams to fill shoeboxes full of presents for patients at the hospital since October.

It is the second year the group have delivered shoeboxes full of goodies to patients, with the gesture being inspired by Ceris experience on a clinical placement at the Wrexham Maelor in 2015.

During her time at the hospital, Ceri said it was upsetting to see patients without visitors and those who didnt receive a Christmas card.

To help give those patients something to enjoy and to smile about over Christmas, the group decided to collect and fill shoeboxes with goodies and to help spread the festive cheer on the wards.

A total of 80 shoeboxes packed full of goodies, toiletries and games were delivered to patients on Onnen, Acton and Evington wards earlier this week.

The remaining 14 boxes were donated to The Penley Rainbow Centre while the remaining goods  including soap, shower gel and flannels  were donated to Heddfan- Gwanwyn ward.

Student nurses, lectures at Bangor University and Borras Park school Choir accompanied by headteacher Mrs Hurst and Mr Valentine helped distributed the Christmas boxes to the patients.

Mayor and mayoress John and Ann Pritchard also attended and helped distribute the boxes to patients and provided the group with Christmas cards

Commenting on the visit, Fern said: The school choir were fantastic and brought a tear to everyones eye. Patients and staff were singing along with the children.

Some of the patients have been in hospital for a very long time and some unfortunately do not have any relatives or visitors. It was lovely for the children to help us spread Christmas cheer.

Ward sisters have contacted me today to thank me and have said the patients really enjoyed it and has helped put a smile on the patients faces who will be spending Christmas in hospital.

Last year was a huge success so we decided to do it again. This year, students from other years got involved and helped us wrap the boxes.

Fern added: Christmas can be a lonely time, but knowing those patients have a gift on Christmas Day is very satisfying.
According to CBI and ED sources, both agencies will appeal against the verdict in the 2G spectrum case.

By Munish Chandra Pandey: Following a stinging observation made by Special CBI court judge OP Saini, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) decided to appeal against the acquittal of all the accused in the 2G spectrum case.

Reliable sources within the agency have told India Today that the top leadership of CBI immediately decided that they would appeal before the higher court, since they strongly believe that the have ample evidence against the accused in the case. Typically, CBI takes the 90-day legal window before taking any decision to appeal. But in this case the decision was taken immediately after the verdict came in. Another CBI source said, "the apex court cancelled the licences on the basis of certain evidence. Can that be ignored."

advertisement

A special CBI court today pronounced the judgement on the 2G spectrum allocation case after a 6 years-trial. The special court acquitted all the people accused in the case.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will also appeal against the judgement, PTI quoted agency sources as saying.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy also said the government should appeal in the High Court against the 2G case verdict.

The CBI probe in the 2G spectrum case was ordered after Swamy became a petitioner in a PIL filed by Centre for Public Interest Litigation or CPIL in 2012.

Congress and DMK leadership erupted in celebration after the verdict was announced acquitting former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader M Kanimozhi. DMK's working president, MK Stalin, said that the verdict further proves that nothing wrong was done.

Former PM Manmohan Singh said in a statement said that a "vicious campaign and propaganda" was launched against his government back then.

ALSO WATCH | Manmohan Singh reacts on 2G scam verdict, alleges 'vicious propaganda' against his government

--- ENDS ---
Andimithu Raja, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader who was the telecom minister at the time, is the main accused in the 2G scam case.

By Anand Patel: AP Singh, the ex CBI Director, who arrested former Union Telecom Minister A Raja in the alleged 2G Scam, has expressed surprise over the trial court's verdict, giving clean chit to all 19 accused.

"I am shocked at the verdict," said Mr Singh while talking to India Today during whose tenure CBI prepared chargesheet in the case.

advertisement

"We had prepared 60 pages of chargesheet after much hard work. It wasn't a very difficult chargesheet and it is very clear," said Mr Singh

He added, "There were 3-4 allegations against Mr Raja, one was the 1658 figure in the auction of 2001 which wasn't indexed to current prices so we calculated the loss of Rs 30 thousand crores. That was despite Finance Ministry, PMO and TRAI saying that auction and if you can't auction them at least index it to current figures."

The former top cop said, "In our investigation we found he was favouring two companies- one was Swan telecom and Unitech..and the entire process of getting the licenses giving the letter of intent and dates of cut off were done to favour these two companies."

Mr Singh said that CBI investigators also found the money trail, the swan telecom paid Rs 200 crores which was sent to Kalaignar TV through intermediaries, of which 60 percent shareholding was with Dayalu Amma, the mother of Kanimozhi and 20 percent with Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo K Karunanidhi.

The ex CBI Director said that the investigation calculated a loss to the tune of Rs 30 thousand crores. "The thrust of our investigation was not on the loss but the irregularities committed in giving these licenses and the attempt to favour these companies," he added.

The 2G Spectrum case, which is said to be the biggest scam in India, is a combination of three cases- one filed by the Enforcement Directorate and two cases registered by the CBI.

According to the report by the CAG of India, 2G or second generation licenses for mobile networks were given at throwaway prices instead of carrying free and fair auctions.

The then Telecom minister, A Raja, denied all charges and said that the decisions were made after apprising PM Manmohan Singh. A Raja stepped down as the Telecom minister in 2010 and was arrested in 2011 on charges of cheating, forgery and conspiracy.

He spent around a year in jail and was released on bail afterwards.

Several other businessmen and business conglomerates have also been named in the case. Karunanidhi's daughter M Kanimozhi is also one of the accused.

--- ENDS ---
On Monday, Alabama parents whose children depend upon AllKidsthe states Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP)received devastating notices. The program would stop enrolling children as of January 1, 2018, the notice stated; furthermore, the entire program will be terminated on February 1 should Congress fail to earmark funding for CHIP.

Alabama was the first state to announce enrollment freezes and possible closure, but a total of 9 million children are threatened nationwide by the failure of Congress to provide new funding for the program for the fiscal year that began October 1. The program allows children in families with low or moderate incomes, who would not qualify for Medicaid, access to affordable medical care with low copays.

Currently, 84,000 children in Alabama stand to lose health coverage in February. Cathy Caldwell, the director of the AllKids program, told reporters on Monday that the programs closure would have devastating effects on many families in Alabama. According to Caldwell, prior to the institution of CHIP in 1997, one in five Alabama children were uninsured. Today, the number is down to 2.4 percent.

Randi Carter is a mother of three children in Bessemer, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham. With a single income supporting her family, she and her husband have relied upon the ACA market place for insurance; their children received care through Medicaid. When her husband received a modest pay raise this year, she knew that the children would no longer qualify for Medicaid, but would be eligible for AllKids.

This was welcome news to Carter; although she had kept up with Congresss dilatory treatment of federal CHIP funding, she was eager to leave the chaotic administration of Medicaid behind. Few Alabama doctors accept Medicaid; by contrast, many welcome AllKids, which is administered for the state by private insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama.

The notice from AllKids came at a particularly bad time for the Carter family. Just the week prior, Randi had taken their five-year-old daughter to the doctor with complaints of a sore throat and a stomach ache. Within 30 minutes of arriving at the doctors office, an ambulance had been called, and Randis daughter was whisked to Childrens Hospital in Birmingham.

Randi watched anxiously as doctors conferred over the best treatment for her daughter. Several rounds of bronchodilators had not helped her to breathe easier, and doctors worried that her lungs might collapse. Her right lung, in particular, was in danger of perforation. It took three days for her condition to stabilize. She was diagnosed with asthma, a condition that shed never had symptoms for prior to her surprise attack.

Randi was required to attend a class on asthma with other parents before her daughter was released from the hospital. The nurse leading the class showed them how to use the inhalers and spacers, a short, plastic tube that helps the aerosolized medication in the inhaler make it into a childs airways. She cautioned the parents to keep up with the spacers. Just the spacer for the inhaler, is $200 for that piece of plastic, Carter told WSWS reporters.

The Carters were able to find a plan that would cover their children as well as them, but at considerable cost and uncertainty. The plan we had this year is not being offered for 2018, she said. I was already frustrated and then we had a medical emergency. I didnt get to check to see if the Blue Cross plan we picked covered this ... how much is Qvar going to cost us that we have to take two times a day?

Qvar is the inhaler the doctors prescribed for Randis daughter. Prices for an inhaler begin at nearly $185. Healthcare costs will become more difficult for the Carters; Randi herself is being treated for an autoimmune disorder.

Since Alabama announced the imminent closure of its AllKids program, other states have notified CHIP participants that their benefits hang in the balance, too. On Tuesday, the Connecticut Department of Social Services sent letters to families using CHIP. Congress has not acted to continue the funding, so we must plan to end the CHIP program on Jan. 31, they told residents. Colorado sent a similar letter.

According to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 16 states are expected to exhaust their federal CHIP funds by the end of January. In addition, 21 states are projected to run out of CHIP funds by the end of March.

As millions of American children stand to lose insurance, the House of Representatives has sent a tax bill giving the USAs wealthiest citizens trillions of dollars in tax cuts. Earlier this month, Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, responded to questions regarding CHIP on the Senate floor.

While acknowledging that CHIP had done a terrific job, he stated, The reason CHIPs having trouble is because we dont have money any more. Hatch went on to frame the crisis as one of laziness on the part of the working class. I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who wont help themselves, wont lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything, he went on to say.

Hatch has claimed that CHIP will be funded. The Republican stop-gap plan for funding the program, however, does so at the expense of charging higher premiums for some Medicare beneficiaries and cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which provides 12 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions yearly budget.
Firefighters in Southern California continue to battle the Thomas Fire northwest of Los Angeles more than sixteen days after it began. While the fire is currently 60 percent contained, officials believe it almost inevitable that the fire will continue to burn into January.

According to the National Weather Service, wind gusts are expected to reach up to 50 miles per hour Thursday, increasing the likelihood of expansion. In some mountaintop canyons, gusts could reach 60 miles per hour. The Thomas Fire is now the second largest of its kind in state history and is poised to threaten the city of Santa Barbara as well as the nearby community of Montecito. Thus far, the fire has killed two people and destroyed more than 765 homes.

Firefighters are working regularly to hose vegetation, set controlled burns to reduce fuel for the oncoming fire, and are felling trees and other vegetation. Vegetation in the area remains critically dry, posing an extreme risk for fire acceleration. Firefighters have been working hard for three-and-a-half days to prep for tomorrow, Captain Steve Concialdi of the Orange County Fire Authority told the media.

Large portions of the affected area have not seen any rainfall since last February while relative humidity has remained in single digits throughout the lifespan of the fire.

Parts of the 101 Freeway were closed off on Sunday and Monday due to the fires near Santa Barbara. In an interview with the Associated Press, Pierre Henry, a bakery owner in Montecito, described the conditions in the area prior to his evacuation. The worst was the smoke, he said, You couldnt breathe at all, and it became worse when the wind started. All the ashes and the dust on the street were in the air. It was very, very frightening.

Though the cause of the fire is still under investigation, a group of Ventura residents has filed a lawsuit against the Southern California Edison Utility Company. The suit alleges that Southern California Edison crews working on a nearby campground sparked the fire. According to filed court papers, the companys construction activities caused the ignition of dry vegetation at this construction site, which set off this massive wildfire [the Thomas Fire].

The suit also alleges that area fire hydrants did not work properly because of power outages and that downed power lines may have also been to blame for starting the fire. In fact, a resident of the Little Tujunga Canyon area north of Los Angeles attested to the fact that she saw a downed power line, also owned by Southern California Edison, sparking the Creek Fire last week, which burned for a week and a half but now is contained.

Alexander Robertson, an attorney representing the Ventura plaintiffs, attested to the anger of his clients over what is likely the criminal role of Southern California Edison in causing and accelerating the fire. Many of our clients are very angry and confused as to why in the height of a firestorm the fire hydrants lost power  it was just like somebody shut the valve off, he said. The firefighters had to send their engines where there was pressure, and it was a 20-minute round trip.

Regardless of the lawsuits findings, it will have little impact on the behemoth utility company. While the company rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year, it paid only $37 million in fines after it was found guilty of sparking the 2007 Malibu Canyon Fire, which destroyed dozens of homes and left hundreds without power.

Southern California Edisons northern counterpart, Pacific Gas and Electric, still has a case pending against it for its role in sparking the 70,000-acre Butte Fire in 2015. The fire killed two people, and Pacific Gas and Electric was found by Cal Fire investigators to be responsible for starting the fire.

The firefighters fighting the Thomas Fire are nonetheless fortunate to be aided in their efforts by advanced technologies not available to them as little as a year ago.

The National Weather Service employs 80 incident meteorologists who spent a record 31,000 hours this year working on wildfires. Utilizing a network of drones, mobile weather stations and other technologies, these meteorologists specialize in monitoring of localized weather conditions that is essential for the daily tactical orientation of the firefighting groups. This is especially critical, as older permanent stations throughout Ventura County have been incinerated by the Thomas Fire.

As an end user of all the products that these people make, we base almost all of our decisions, as far as strategically and operationally, on the weather, Jana Luis, division chief of predictive services at the CalFire Sacramento headquarters told Noozhawk. So having current and accurate weather is huge to us.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also deployed its high altitude ER-2 aircraft to observe the fire. Flying at an altitude of 65,000 feet, it is capable of making extraordinarily detailed analysis of water content in vegetation and thereby can provide firefighting crews with such information to better inform resource deployment.

There is a glaring contradiction between the existence of such powerful technological achievements, however, and a wildfire that has reached a size not seen since the 1930s, when firefighting technologies were far less advanced, to say the least.

According to fire officials, yearly fire seasons are now 40 to 50 days longer than they were just 20 years ago. Moreover, the state itself has suffered from 6 consecutive years of drought leading to mass tree death.

As of 2016, 102 million trees had died as a result of the drought. This has provided prime conditions for fires as the state relies almost entirely on the limited efforts of private industry, which needs to keep supply at a minimum to maintain profits, to clear the dead pines to resell as lumber or firewood.

In spite of this mass devastation, Californias Democratic governor Jerry Brown declared the states drought officially over in April of 2017 due to a marked but temporary increase in rainfall during the previous winter. As a result, the governor decreased budgetary amounts proposed to address the five-year drought from $179 million to $63 million. Of the $63 million, only $2 million was budgeted to help local agencies clear brush and other fire fuels.

In addition, the ruling elite, Democratic and Republican alike, is enacting measures to ensure that wildfire victims are not made whole after their respective life-altering tragedies.

The recent tax plan passed by Congress, for example, includes the elimination of tax write-offs for property destruction as a result of wildfires. The bill eliminates the deduction entirely beginning with losses incurred in 2018.

Under current tax law, casualty losses that exceed ten percent of adjusted gross income and are not covered by insurance can be deducted by homeowners. In 2015 alone, California homeowners claimed casualty loss deductions in excess of $700 million.

Waivers to the current casualty loss provision have been passed before, although these have been in the form of a marginal increase over the ten percent adjusted gross income threshold.

Additionally, bills now before the US Congress would allow for wildfire and other disaster victims to deduct from their retirement plans, allowing them to pay for losses themselves in the absence of government assistance.
In presenting her annual report, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman chose to target for attack schools, which persistently fail to make progress due to high levels of disadvantage. Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Childrens Services and Skills) is the regulatory government body that scrutinises the performance of all schools.

Spielman claimed that schools in poorer areas were caught in a culture of disadvantage one-upmanship, and that these focused too much on their pupils deprivation. Disregarding the problems schools face in highly deprived areas, after nearly a decade of austerity, she claimed schools were competing over how many pupils were on free school meals, or how many did not speak English as a first language.

She insisted that disadvantage was not an excuse for low achievement and that a school having no money and scant resources wasnt really a big deal, asserting, I am not someone who believes that extra funding for schools is the solution to all of our problems. Indeed, a greater focus on efficiency can sometimes help to sharpen minds about what really matters.

Dismissing with contempt virtually every study that has been produced on the persistent and endemic causal link between poverty and educational attainment, these statements are aimed at justifying an escalation of the slashing of school budgets and teacher bashing, as well as an acceleration of the privatisation of state education through the academisation programme.

The actual numbers of schools which persistently fail to improve are relatively low. Over 90 percent of primary and over 80 percent of secondary schools are rated either good or outstanding, with just 80 secondary and 50 primary schools nationally that have failed the level of good repeatedly in inspections since 2005.

According to Spielmans report, there are also about 500 primary and 200 secondary schools which have been rated as requiring improvement on their previous two inspections. These struggling schools were most likely to be in disadvantaged areas with a high proportion of poor white pupils, have a high turnover of staff, and heads and teachers facing burnout.

The report has been issued in anticipation of a drastic fall in educational standards in response to a spiralling fall in living standards, an increase in poverty and a further escalation of austerity; in order to then direct the blame onto schools and teachers.

Spielmans report was delivered only weeks after a report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies was published, which predicted that over the next four years 37 percent of UK children will be living in relative poverty.

Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2017, funded jointly by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council, predicts a four percent national increase in children in families living in poverty. It means a rise of 400,000 children in poverty in families with incomes of 60 percent or less of the median. This will bring the total number of children living in poverty to a scandalous 5.2 million by 2022. This would be the highest percentage since records began in 1961.

Schools nationally will see a funding cut of 1.5 to 3 percent this year, and this will be repeated for the foreseeable future. As a result, thousands of schools are facing an unprecedented funding crisis. Many schools are being forced to ask for parental contributions for essential resources.

According to the National Education Union, 88 percent of schools face a real terms cut despite the announcement from the ruling Conservatives that there would be more funding by 2019.

Despite the Tories announcement of the new package of 2.5 billion increase this year, the money being provided falls far short of what is needed. Most of the funding comes internally from efficiency savings. Since 2015 alone, schools have suffered a real terms cut in funding of 2.7 billion.

According to the Association of School and College Leaders, schools require a further 2 billion a year between now and 2020 if they are to be able to deal with previous budget cuts.

Spielmans solution, in line with the governments, is to increase the number of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs). Schools which are forced to become academies are increasingly rejecting the MAT model and merging with a single school, making it more difficult for the private sector vultures to reap the levels of profit they envisaged.

The aim of the government was to have MATs as the dominant sector in the education system. However, over 60 percent of academies are in trusts of five or less schools, with 31.1 percent in a single school trust and only 3.3 percent in trusts which manage 40 or over schools.

Spielman, who has never been a teacher, is perfectly placed to push for Multi Academy Trusts. Between 2011 and 2016, she was chair of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator. From 2005 she was a founding member of the leadership team at the academy chain, ARK Schools, a multi-academy trust which runs 34 schools in London, Birmingham, Hastings and Portsmouth.

ARK Schools is the educational arm of an international childrens charity founded in 2002 by a group of financiers. The chair of the ARK Schools board, Paul Marshall, received a knighthood in the Queens Birthday Honours for services to education and philanthropy. He is the co-founder, with Ian Wacechair of ARKs global boardof Marshall Wace Asset Management Ltd, a big hedge fund. Of the eight trustees of ARK Schools, five are hedge fund managers. None have any background in education.

ARK schools claim to have had a miraculous turnaround in school achievement, but this has been due to the fact that serious money has been put into securing their good results.

According to a 2016 assessment of Ark by the Local Schools Network, At a time when the freezing of the education budget has left all schools facing a funding cut of around 8 percent, ARK academies are protected by the largesse of their sponsors. A recent report by Schools Week claims that ARK Schools received 3.6 million of private funds last yearnearly 106,000 for each school in the chain. In the brave new world of venture philanthropy, there is nothing wrong with using profits generated offshoremost hedge funds are domiciled outside the UKto back a privately-controlled network of schools, whose exam results are then held up as an example to defunded local authority schools.

A closer study of ARK and its international connections provides a glimpse of what the future education of the poor and disadvantaged may look like. Local School Networks reports, In 2018, the trust plans to open the Pioneer Academy, a new all-through blended learning school with an emphasis on technology. According to the proposal submitted to the DfE [Department of Further Education], blended learning is the combination of traditional class-room based teaching [sic] with online learning. It was developed by American charter school operators like Rocketship and Carpe Diem. Rocketship, founded in Silicon Valley in 2006, runs a non-profit network of public elementary charter schools, serving primarily low-income students.

Their educational modeldescribed by a former employee as the stripped-down efficiency modelhas changed a number of times since 2006. But one element remains constant: pupils at Rocketship schools, who are aged five to ten, spend a significant part of each day engaged in individualised learningin other words, intensive test preparationon computers.

The article noted that Rocketship staff are divided into master teachersfrequently young Teach for America recruits, whose training consists of a five-week summer campand hourly-paid assistants (individualised learning specialists) without any kind of teaching qualification, who supervise online instruction.

As Spielmans report confirms, Ofsted operates as a mouth piece for the government and its reactionary privatisation agenda, with its leading figures the financial beneficiaries of this process.

It is anything but a mechanism for improving standards, least of all for the poor and disadvantaged. Ofsteds ability to pose as such is bound up with the lack of any opposition to the cuts and privatisation of education by the Labour Party and trade unions. Labour began the process of academisation, and the trade unions have dissipated and strangled all opposition to its impact and the broader attack on education.
Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig; Wonderstruck, directed by Todd Haynes, written by Brian Selznick

Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig, concerns itself with a young woman coming of age during her senior year of high school. Wonderstruck, directed by Todd Haynes, follows two deaf children in search of family connections.

Both films are occasionally amusing. They are generally well-acted. They are mostly free from the sort of bombast and cruelty that dominates much of popular cinema today.

But the smallness of the films (and of the filmmakers concerns) hinders their ability to make much of an impression. Both films begin to fade from ones memory nearly as soon as one has left the theater.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) this, both films have garnered considerable critical praise.

Lady Bird follows Christine Lady Bird McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a senior at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California (where Gerwig also grew up). The film, which takes place during the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003, consists of a series of brief episodes in which Lady Bird navigates the choppy waters of high school friendships, dating, and a volatile relationship with her mother.

Lady Birds father Larry (Tracy Letts) has recently been laid off from his job, and her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse, works extra shifts at a hospital to make ends meet. The familys money troubles place a strain on their relationships. Marion is especially sensitive about appearing poor in front of the citys wealthier residents, including some of Lady Birds friends. At one point Marion chastises her daughter for not putting her clothes away properly, observing that, some of your friends fathers could employ your father, and they wont do that if it looks like his family is trash.

Meanwhile, Lady Bird dreams of leaving Sacramento behind and attending college on the East Coast. She professes a desire to move somewhere cultured like New York, or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire where writers live in the woods. With the help of her father, she secretly applies to New York schools, knowing her mother will be hurt if she attends college out of state.

She enters into relationships with two boys, one a polite, buttoned-down type who endears himself to her family, the other a self-involved musician seen constantly reading Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States. Neither relationship is very fulfilling. She distances herself from her best friend to spend time with a wealthy, popular girl, lying about her familys modest living conditions in the process.

In the end, the various conflicts are neatly resolved. It seems that Lady Bird has grown up, or at least begun to.

There are some charms here. Ronan does well in the lead role, delivering her sometimes-clumsy dialogue with deft comedic timing. There are occasionally pointed moments, such as when Lady Bird, forced to sit through an anti-abortion presentation, tells the presenter that, If your mother had had an abortion, we wouldnt have to sit through this stupid assembly.

Metcalf is the highlight of Lady Bird. She portrays Marion with a mix of passive aggression, combativeness and occasional tenderness that seems true to life. The scenes between her and Lady Bird are the films strongest, and the brief glimpses into her professional life (she is seen counseling a priest and a teacher at Lady Birds school who suffers from depression) are intriguing. One wishes the film had focused on her character instead.

In fact, one often gets the sense there is a far more interesting film occurring outside the frame of Gerwigs camera. It appears in flashes: the familys economic troubles (and the toll it takes on their relationships), the tensions created by wealth disparity, the widespread social and psychological problems produced by such conditions.

A comment needs to be made on Lady Birds timeframe. The fall 2002/spring 2003 school year was presumably chosen because it was on or about Gerwigs own senior year of high school (she was born in 1983). But that eight-month period was also a time of explosive social tensions, with the George W. Bush administration launching a war based on lies and the eruption of the largest protests in world history. Such events were a topic of intense discussion and debate in homes and classrooms across the country. Yet here the war is only glimpsed briefly on televisions in the background. When one character attempts to mention the widespread civilian casualties in Iraq in order to gain the upper hand in an argument, Lady Bird shuts him down by saying, Different things can be sad. Its not all war.

Gerwig, who has acted in numerous films, including Noah Baumbachs Greenberg and Frances Ha, Todd Solondzs Wiener-Dog and Barry Levinsons The Humbling, has crafted some interesting performances. Yet the bulk of her films (and this is not solely her fault) have been fairly narrow, self-involved works.

In a recent interview Gerwig perhaps reveals the relatively low bar she set for herself: I just dont feel like Ive seen very many movies about 17-year-old girls where the question is not, Will she find the right guy or Will he find her? The question should be: Is she going to occupy her personhood? Truth be told, there are far more critical questions Gerwig and her characters might be asking themselves right now.

Regardless, the praise critics have heaped upon the film is out of proportion to its modest charms. In addition to the identity politics crowd rushing to prematurely proclaim the genius of a female director, one senses almost a desperation, perhaps a desire to retreat into the small world of this film, in the face of overwhelming events.

Wonderstruck

Gerwig has stated that for her next film she wants to make something thats more silent, literally fewer words. If she follows this impulse, she might end up with something like Todd Haynes latest film, Wonderstruck.

The film, based on a 2011 novel by Brian Selznick, tells two parallel stories set fifty years apart. In 1927, Rose (Millicent Simmonds), a young deaf girl, runs away from her domineering father to seek out her mother Lillian (Julianne Moore), a famous actress living in New York City. In 1977, Ben (Oakes Fegley), a boy who has been recently rendered deaf by a freak accident, sets out to discover the identity of his father, also in New York.

The two children navigate their respective New Yorks, and their journeys take them both into the famed American Museum of Natural History. As the stories progress, we learn the two children are connected in a more profound way as well.

The film seems largely a cinematographic/stylistic exercise. The 1927 scenes, shot in black and white and done entirely without dialogue, borrow some of the visual and performative language of the silent films of that era. The 1977 scenes, which also have long stretches without dialogue, appear to visually imitate the work of William Friedkin and others from that time.

Theres a richness here for the eyes. Great care has obviously gone into recreating the visual landscapes of the respective time periods. Certain shots or moments evoke the texture of the two time periods, or at least as they were represented in film.

But the rather trite narrative fails to evoke an important feeling for either epoch. Haynes has suggested that Wonderstruck was his attempt at making a childrens movie. Theres nothing wrong with that, but children too need work that is more challenging and intriguing. Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Mildred Pierce) is a genuine talent who seems somewhat at sea at present.
Late last month, former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship announced his candidacy for the US Senate in West Virginia. Blankenship, who oversaw the deadly Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster in 2010, will run against West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and US Representative Evan Jenkins in next years Republican primary. The winner will challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Manchin in the November 6, 2018 election.

Blankenship headed Massey when the UBB mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia exploded on April 5, 2010, killing 29 coal miners. Blankenship is currently on supervised release from prison until May 9, 2018the day after the primary electionafter serving a year in prison on conspiracy charges to willfully violate federal mine health and safety standards and defraud the US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

The former coal baron has yet to provide any specific details of his campaign outside of his general support for corporate and environmental deregulation coupled with his embrace of Trumps chauvinist and right-wing America First rhetoric.

When asked in an interview with WVVA-TV earlier this month what his first move in Washington would be, Blankenship answered: Sit down with President Trump and others and make sure we know how we compare to other places in the world  Weve got to take care of the people in the United States. Trump understands that, whether its the wall or illegal immigration or trade policy. But we have to move now if we have any chance of catching up.

In a state dominated by the Democratic Party for the better part of the last century, Senator Manchin is now West Virginias last Democrat holding office above the level of the state legislature. West Virginias billionaire Governor Jim Justicehimself a major coal operator in the statewas elected on the Democratic ticket in 2016 only to announce this past August that he was joining the Republican Party.

With the West Virginia Democrats decades-long support for the coal bosses, promotion of austerity measures and indifference to the plight of the states working class and poor residents, Manchins seat is certainly vulnerable to a Republican challenge.

While Blankenship remains deeply unpopular in the state, he has no doubt been emboldened by the ultra-right politics of the Trump administration. Blankenship hopes to exploit and divert, as Trump did, social anger over the states depression-like conditions and popular alienation towards the Democratic Party. He will also use his personal wealth and business connections to buy a US Senate seat, or, failing that, to shift politics in the state even further to the right and remove whatever obstacles to corporate profit-making remain.

Four separate investigations into the UBB disaster all agreed that sparks from a longwall mining machine ignited a minor methane gas explosion, which was transformed into a massive coal-dust explosion due to the dangerous levels of accumulated coal dust in the mine. The mines poor ventilation, inoperable sprinklers, worn and unmaintained equipment, and inadequate rock dusting all contributed to the deadly explosion. These reckless conditions, in turn, were the product of the criminal corporate culture at Massey, which placed coal production ahead of miners health and safety.

That such a corporate murderer even has the opportunity to run for a US Senate seat next year is entirely due to the Obama administration. In the aftermath of the UBB disaster, Obamas US Department of Justice (DOJ) dragged its feet for more than four and a half years before securing a grand jury indictment against Blankenship in November 2014.

Rather than charging Blankenship with causing the UBB disasterfor which there was overwhelming evidencethe Obama administration charged the Massey boss with lesser crimes, which carried only minimal prison time. He was tried for conspiracy to willfully violate federal mine health and safety standards in the lead up to the explosion, and with two other counts related to false company statements to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and investors.

Over the course of Blankenships two-month trial in late 2015, federal prosecutors not only took testimony from more than a dozen former UBB miners and employees confirming the appalling conditions in the mine. They also demonstrated that Blankenship was intimately aware of, and involved in, the maintenance of these conditions for the sake of boosting Masseys corporate profits and amassing his own multi-million-dollar fortune.

Evidence at the trial showed that between January 2008 and April 2010, UBB was cited by MSHA for federal health and safety violations 836 times, 311 of which were classified as significant and substantial (S&S), where there existed a reasonable likelihood of serious injury. Over the same period, UBB was issued 59 unwarrantable failure orders, where sections of the mine were shut down due to aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence.

However, in December 2015, Blankenship was only convicted on one misdemeanor count of conspiring to willfully violate mine health and safety laws, and sentenced the following April to just one year in prison and a fine of $250,000. He served ten months of his sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in Southern Californiaa minimum-security facility for white-collar criminalsbefore completing his time at a halfway house and his residence in Las Vegas.

Through it all Blankenship denied any responsibility and to this day claims the explosion was caused by an unnatural inundation of methane gas, aided by poor ventilation from an inadequate ventilation plan, which he claims, was forced upon Massey by MSHA inspectors. The federal prosecution, he claims, was a legal vendetta conducted by Obama, Manchin and the Democratic Party because of his outspoken Republican politics.

Over the years he has used his fortune to fund a right-wing public relations campaign aimed at clearing his name. While in prison, Blankenship published and distributed 250,000 copies of a 67-page pamphlet entitled An American Political Prisoner.

Blankenship also appealed every ruling against him. In January, a three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed his conviction and denied an additional rehearing in February. Blankenship then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear his case in October.

Following the UBB disaster, federal and state officials and politicians, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and the media did their best to present Massey and Blankenship as anomalies in an otherwise healthy industry led by responsible corporate executives. In doing so, they hoped to block any broader inquiry into the socioeconomic and political roots of the UBB disaster: the subordination of miners lives and limbs to the relentless drive for profit by all the coal companies and energy giants.

The presentation of Blankenship as a rogue employer also served to whitewash the federal and state regulatory agencies, which allowed, and continue to allow, rampant violations of basic health and safety regulations; the failure of the UMWA to defend the most basic interests of the coal miners; and the role played by the Democratic Party, which has overseen the deep poverty and exploitation in the coalfields for the better part of a century.

When Obamas Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) conducted an internal review into its own role in the disaster, it admitted in March 2012 to several instances where enforcement efforts at UBB were compromised because MSHA and District 4 did not follow established Agency policies and procedures. MSHA, concluded, however, that these actions and inadequacies did not cause the explosion. An independent review by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of MSHAs internal review, concluded shortly after, found, If MSHA had engaged in timely enforcement of the Mine Act and applicable standards and regulations it would have lessened the chances ofand possibly could have preventedthe UBB explosion.

The Trump administration, with the full backing of coal bosses like Blankenship, want to eliminate whatever nominal health and safety and environmental protections remain. This includes Trumps proposal to eliminate coal dust standards belatedly implemented in the final years of the Obama administration to reduce the number of miners contracting the most deadly form of Black Lung disease.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) The CPI(M) today stayed away from the political slugfest between the BJP and the Congress over a court verdict on the 2G spectrum case, but called for immediate legal steps to ensure that the guilty in the scam were punished.

The Left party in a statement observed that the judgement of the CBI special court had raised more questions than answers.

advertisement

"Since the CBI case and prosecution have proved inadequate, steps must be taken immediately to pursue the matter legally, so that those who are guilty are punished," it said.

The CPI(M) maintained that it had been "well-established" by the Comptroller and Auditor General that the allocation of 2G spectrum had caused "a big loss" of Rs 1,76,000 crore.

"The Supreme Court had indicted some of the telecom companies involved for misuse of the allocations and cancelled the licences of concerned companies," it said. PTI CSN BDS

--- ENDS ---
In the week since the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to overturn net neutralityagainst overwhelming public oppositionthe political motivation for the deregulation of broadband internet service providers (ISPs) is becoming clearer.

An opinion poll conducted by the University of Maryland on the eve of the FCC decision showed that 83 percent of Americans opposed repealing net neutrality. Poll respondents rejected the arguments of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and, according to the director of the schools Program for Public Consultation Steve Kull, American public opinion is blowing in the opposite direction from government policy.

The Maryland poll results showed an increase in support for net neutrality over the past several months, with surveys over the summer and fall showing opposition to the repeal plan at around 75 percent. In a Mozilla-sponsored poll last May, for example, three-quarters of the population expressed no confidence that either the Trump administration or Congress would defend their right to internet access.

Net neutrality is the principle that the owners of the cable and wireless infrastructure of the internet must treat all information and data equally and deliver it to the public without regard to content or source. In 2015, the FCC voted to formalize net neutrality and block the ISPs from implementing paid prioritization, throttling download speeds and alternately restricting or promoting web sites that their customers access.

The strength of public support for a genuinely free and open internet was illustrated in a New York Times article titled In Protests of Net Neutrality Repeal, Teenage Voices Stood Out. The Times reported that protests were organized by young people in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Keene, New Hampshire, and a group of students drove from Centerville, Maryland to Washington, DC to protest the end of net neutrality.

The Times also cited an Associated Press study that showed 94 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds use social media and 98 percent of children through age eight access a mobile device at home, up from 52 percent in 2011.

As with the present Tax Cut and Jobs Act about to be signed into law by President Trump, the repeal of net neutrality was accompanied by an unprecedented level of hypocrisy and lying. As is apparent to everyone, the end of net neutralitywhich goes officially into effect within several weekswas implemented to further the interests of the giant telecom corporations in blatant disregard for the public interest.

That the telecoms are moving to capitalize on the net neutrality overthrow was revealed in a query by the Associated Press of the top seven ISPs. Among those askedVerizon, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Sprint and T-Mobilenone of them were willing to rule out the possibility of paid prioritization or the creation of internet fast lanes. Paid prioritization is a practice whereby content providers such as YouTube and Netflix must pay the ISPs to make faster access available to consumers.

The response of the US Congress to the FCC decision has shed further light on the political impulse and deception behind ending the 2015 regulations. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), chair of the House Energy Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and outspoken advocate of FCC Chairman Pai, stepped forward on Tuesday with a bill called the Open Internet Preservation Act that will prevent efforts by state and local governments to defend net neutrality. Blackburns bill officially legalizes the creation of internet fast lanes.

One year ago, Blackburnwho has accepted major campaign contributions from the telecom industrydistinguished herself by calling on the ISPs to censor internet content. During a CNN interview to discuss the 2016 elections, Blackburn said, If anyone is putting fake news out there, the ISPs have the obligation to, in some way, get that off the web. And maybe its time for these information systems to look to have some type of news editor doing some vetting on that.

Meanwhile, a group of congressional Democrats headed by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have announced a pledge to introduce legislation to invalidate the FCCs net neutrality decision under the terms of the Congressional Review Act. According to the rules of the act, Congress has 60 days to block the agencys decision. No one is taking this charade seriously, since it requires all Democrats and some Republicans to move it forward.

The dismantling of net neutrality is an attack on the basic democratic rights of the working class. No confidence can be placed in Congress or the US courts to defend the right to free and open access to online news and information. Genuine freedom of expression on the internet can be guaranteed only through public ownership of the hardware and software of the internetas a critical part, like electicity, gas and water, of the infrastructure of society. The struggle to defend the most basic democratic rights is thus inseparably bound up with the fight for socialism.
US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has again threatened to attack North Korea to prevent it from developing its nuclear arsenal, and warned that time is short. This latest threat of a catastrophic war underscores the thuggish message of the Trump administrations National Security Strategy released this weekthe willingness of US imperialism to use military force to secure its dominant world position.

Speaking to CBS on Tuesday, McMaster declared that while the US was seeking a peaceful solution to the confrontation with North Korea, all options are on the table, as President Donald Trump had said.

And we have to be prepared, if necessary, to compel the denuclearisation of North Korea without the cooperation of that regime, McMaster warned. The national security adviser told PBS on Monday Trump had ordered him to continue to refine a military option should we have to use it.

By a peaceful solution, the Trump administration means nothing short of a complete capitulation by North Korea to US demands to abandon its nuclear arsenal and allow ever-more intrusive inspections. Washington is pressing for increasingly draconian sanctions to achieve this end.

What were doing is really applying maximum pressure to North Korea to really convince [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un that this is a dead end, McMaster told CBS. The US is pushing for all nations to cut off all trade, he said, in effect mounting an economic blockade of North Korea, which is itself an act of war.

McMaster also ruled out talks with North Korea. Asked about US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons offer last week to meet with North Korean official without preconditions, he said: The president has made very clear that on North Korea for example, now is not the time to talk. Tillerson quickly backtracked last week, insisting that negotiations would begin only if North Korea ended its threatening behavior.

The US has mounted a series of major joint military exercises with South Korea and other nations in what amount to rehearsals for war with North Korea. Last week, in another provocative show of force, hundreds of special forces troops took part in Warrior Strike to practice a US-led military intervention into North Korea to seize its nuclear weapons.

Under pressure from Washington, the UN has already banned virtually all exports from North Korea, and placed limits on the sale of oil to the Pyongyang regime. This week the Trump administration called for another 10 ships to be added to the UNs blacklist for allegedly circumventing sanctions on North Korea. In addition, the US has imposed its own unilateral sanctions not only on Pyongyang, but also individuals and entities from other countries, including Russia and China.

These crippling sanctions are aimed at provoking an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang that the US and its allies could exploit to change the regime. The rehearsal of military interventions into North Korea is part of a broader joint strategic planOPLAN 5015that envisages pre-emptive strikes on key targets and decapitation raids to assassinate North Korean leaders.

In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has just returned from a trip last week to China, suggested that the US suspend joint military exercises in the lead-up to next Februarys Winter Olympics in South Korea. In return, North Korea would have to be willing to pause its nuclear and missile testing. Such steps, Moon said, would help in creating a conducive atmosphere towards inter-Korean as well as US-North Korean dialogue.

The proposal is similar to the so-called freeze-for-freeze plan proposed by Chinaa halt to US-South Korean war games in return for the suspension of North Korean tests. Washington has repeatedly rejected the proposal, which runs counter to its strategy of maximum pressure on North Korea. While Moon said the US was considering his suggestion, Tillerson declared he was not aware of any plans to halt joint military drills.

Far from cancelling its provocative war games ahead of the Winter Olympics, the US is considering not sending a US team to compete. US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley told Fox News earlier this month it was an open question whether American athletes would participate, citing security reasons.

Trump officials have warned that time is running out to prevent war. McMaster declared earlier this month that the likelihood of conflict between the US and North Korea was increasing every day. This week he said the US had to act urgently if trade sanctions were going to work.

Having delivered repeated ultimatums to North Korea, the Trump administration is impelled to carry out its threats. Not to do so would undermine US standing in the world and constitute a major political blow to Trump. McMaster declared this week: We cant tolerate that risk. If North Korea has a nuclear weapon, who are you going to try to prevent getting one?

North Korea has already declared it has no intention of backing down. As reported in the Washington Post, UN undersecretary for political affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who visited North Korea from December 5 to 9, urged Pyongyang to reopen military-to-military channels cut off in 2009, signal a willingness to talk to the US and implement UN resolutions. His proposals were rejected or declared not appropriate at present.

The North Korean regime has obviously concluded that it has no option but to try to develop its nuclear arsenal as a means of preventing US aggression. It has previously pointed to the fate of the Libyan and Iraqi regimes, which were attacked despite reaching deals with the US on weapons of mass destruction.

Feltman apparently presented a copy of historian Christopher Clarks book, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, to North Koreas Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho to underline the danger of the situation. Leaving aside the limitations of Clarks analysis, today, as in 1914, great power rivalry could trigger a devastating war. The US determination to maintain its global dominance has put the Korean Peninsula on a hair trigger. Any incident could precipitate a conflict that would rapidly draw in major nuclear-armed powers such as Russia and China.
The response of the ruling class to the opioid epidemic in the US has been to crack down nationwide on drug users and low-level dealers, while ignoring the pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors that are largely responsible for the crisis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioidsincluding prescription drugs, heroin, and fentanylkilled more than 33,000 people in 2015. Many of the people who become heroin users first became addicted to opioids after taking prescription painkillers, but turn to heroin as a cheaper alternative.

The number of overdose deaths resulting from prescription drugs has quadrupled since 1999. The CDC estimates that more than 183,000 people have died from overdoses on prescription drugs between 1999 and 2015.

According to an article that appeared Monday in the Wall Street Journal, law enforcement agencies are now treating overdose deaths as homicides. Prior to this change, police officers only involvement in overdose deaths would be to check the scene to make sure the accidental death was not in fact a murder.

In response to the opioid crisis, police officers are now viciously pursuing overdose victims friends and acquaintances who bought and used heroin together with the victim. In Hamilton County, Ohio, one of the areas looked at by the Journal, individuals have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 11 years.

According the Journal, 86 people were sentenced last year for crimes related to the distribution of drugs that resulted in an overdose death or serious injury. Prosecutors in these cases are drawing on the reactionary legislation passed to address cocaine and heroin use in the 1980s and 1990s, but rarely enforced until now. And it is not only drug dealers who are being charged, but also anyone who shared drugs with the overdose victim or sold small amounts to support their drug habit.

For example, the U.S. Attorney for eastern Kentucky, Kerry B. Harvey, made drug-overdose deaths a priority starting in 2015, using federal laws to sentence defendants from 20 years to life. Earlier this year, a 38-year-old drug trafficker in Kentucky, Navarius Westberry, was sentenced to life for supplying the heroin and fentanyl that led to the overdose death of 25-year-old Cory Brewer. Westberry admitted that his drug trafficking organization had distributed between 750 and 1,000 grams of heroin and 50 grams of fentanyl.

The harsher enforcement of the law, however, will do little to stem the tide of drug overdoses. Moreover, the behavior of opioid users is in many ways dictated by their addiction, which the National Institute on Drug Abuse defines as a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences.

The treatment of opioid users and low-level drug dealers by law enforcement stands in stark contrast to the kid gloves used on the drug companies that flooded these very same communities with prescription opioids in the first place.

For example, over the course of five years drug distributor Miami-Luken shipped 11 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone into Mingo County, West Virginia, which has a total population of only 25,000 persons. Drug distributor Cardinal Health alone shipped 241 million pills into West Virginia between 2007 and 2015.

What were the consequences for these companies that have unleashed untold harm and damage upon the residents of the state? Miami-Luken agreed to pay $2.5 million and Cardinal Health paid $20 million in settlements reached with West Virginia. Another drug distributor, AmerisourceBergen, paid the state $16 million.

For drug companies and distributors, minor fines like these simply represent the cost of doing business. Drug distributorsthe big three being McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergenact as middlemen between drug companies and retail pharmacies. Together, these three companies account for 85 percent of all drug shipments and have combined annual revenues of over $450 billion.

McKesson, the largest drug distributor, stands at number 5 on the Fortune 500 list. According to the companys most recent annual report, McKesson pulled in $190.8 billion revenues and $2.3 billion in profits in 2016. The company has 30 warehouses located across the country that deliver more than a third of all medicines in the US. The companys long-time CEO, John Hammergren, is consistently one of the most highly paid CEOs in the country, taking home $639 million over the last 10 years.

These companies repeatedly failed to comply with the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which requires drug distributors to report suspicious orders of controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). However, due to successful lobbying efforts on the part of drug companies the DEAs ability to enforce this law has been sharply curtailed.

According to an ongoing joint investigation by 60 Minutes and the Washington Post published in October of this year, the DEA began to crack down on drug distributors in 2005, but eased up starting in 2011 as top DEA officials approved fewer and fewer freeze orders against opioid distributors. Civil cases filed by the DEA dropped from 131 in 2011 to only 40 in 2014.

Between 2014 and 2016, the three largest drug distributors, along with an industry trade group, spent $13 million lobbying Congress. (The drug industry as a whole spent $102 million on lobbying during this same time period).

Their investment paid off in the form of the Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, legislation first proposed in 2014 by Republican representatives Tom Marino of Pennsylvania and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

The bill, which was written by a former DEA lawyer, had bipartisan support with Democratic cosponsors and the approval of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the leader of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, Michael Botticelli. The bill was passed without debate and by unanimous consent. Obama signed the law in April 2016.

The Act raises the standard that must be met before the DEA is allowed to suspend the licenses of drug wholesalers. Instead of showing that the companys operations pose an imminent threat, a more expansive standard, the DEA must now show they pose an immediate threat, which is much more restrictive and difficult to meet because of the distance between the drug distributors and the consequences of their actions in the neighborhoods and communities afflicted by the opioid epidemic.

Republicans and Democrats placed pressure on the DEA to back off of drug companies even before Congress approved the legislation. In 2015, congressional Republicans and the Obama Justice Department pushed Joe Rannazzisi to step aside as the head of the Office of Diversion Control, and eventually forced him to retire all together. Rannazzisi, the primary whistleblower for the October story, told 60 Minutes that it is a fact that drug companies knowingly flooded communities with drugs that were killing people. Thats exactly what they did, he said.

These werent kids slinging crack on the corner, Rannazzisi told 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker. These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.

None of the politicians involved in the legislation were willing to give interviews to 60 Minutes or the Washington Post. Aides to congressman Marino called Capitol Hill police when a camera crew showed up at his office asking for a comment.

The Trump administration nominated Marino to become the next drug czar, but had to withdraw the nomination after the 60 Minutes/ Washington Post story broke. The bills chief co-sponsor, Blackburn, will likely run for a US Senate seat from Tennessee in 2018. Both Marinos and Blackburns districts have been particularly hard hit by the opioid epidemic.

Over the weekend, CBS News published additional findings from the 60 Minutes/Washington Post joint investigation highlighting how the powerful case that the DEA and US Attorneys had built over the course of two years against the drug distributor McKesson was undermined.

The report is largely based on an interview by Whitaker with David Schiller, a 30-year veteran of the DEA who recently retired from the agency. He served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Denver Field Division where he supervised about 100 people investigating drug trafficking and money laundering cases.

Its the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company: the McKesson Corporation, the countrys largest drug distributor, writes Whitaker. Its also the story of a company too big to prosecute.

Schiller notes that McKesson was pouring millions of opioids into pharmacies, many of which were simply fronts for criminal drug rings, without conducting any due diligence. This took place not only in Denver, but cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York City.

In the interview, Whitaker asks about the responsibility of the McKesson Corporation for the opioid epidemic:

BILL WHITAKER: One of the former D.E.A. Administrators said that the McKesson Corporation has fueled the explosive prescription drug abuse problem in this country. Do you agree with that?

DAVID SCHILLER: 100%. If they woulda [sic] stayed in compliance with their authority and held those that theyre supplying the pills to, the epidemic would be nowhere near where it is right now. Nowhere near.

They had hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders they should have reported, and they didnt report any, Schiller said. Theres not a day that goes by in the pharmaceutical world, in the McKesson world, in the distribution world, where theres not something suspicious. It happens every day.

60 Minutes also interviewed Helen Kaupang, a retired DEA agent who worked with Schiller on the McKesson investigation.

McKesson is supplying enough pills to that community [unclear, but most likely Denver] to give every man, woman and child a monthly dose of 30 to 60 tablets, Kaupang said. Is that not shocking? I found it shocking.

Red flags like these, however, were completely ignored by the company. In order to hide suspiciously large orders, Kaupang says the company simply rigged the system: whenever the number of pills ordered by the pharmacy crossed the threshold that would require reporting the order as suspicious, the company would simply raise the threshold.

A 2014 DEA memo obtained by 60 Minutes and the Washington Post, says the company had a pattern of dramatic increases in thresholds without justification It noted that McKesson had supplied controlled substances in support of criminalActivities [sic] to pharmacies.

Special agent Schiller and his team wanted to hold McKesson accountable for its criminal actions, including a fine of billions of dollars and jail time for company executives. But the DEA and the Justice Department got cold feet in the summer of 2014 because they were, Schiller says, intimidated by the companys legal representation:

BILL WHITAKER: Did a DEA attorney actually tell you that they were not going to pursue McKesson because they had lawyers who had gone to Harvard and Yale?

DAVID SCHILLER: They told me those exact words, because the case would take too much time and too much effort and, by the way, What if we lost? I said, What if you lost? I go, Youyou cant have a better case on a silver platter.

At the time, attorneys from Obamas Justice Department were encouraging Ranazzisi, the DEAs deputy administrator at the time, to lay off of McKesson. Ranazzisi found the request inappropriate, especially since the company refused to comply with the law, despite repeated meetings and warnings.

The time for meetings and reports are over, Ranazzisi said. You either comply or you lose your registration.

The DEA dragged its feet for over two years before reaching a $150 million settlement with McKesson this past February, a mere slap on the wrist. The figure represents about what McKesson makes in profits in a week and a half, and is only $50 million more than McKesson CEO Hammergrens total compensation last year, the third highest in the country. Hammergren, 60 Minutes reports, received a $1.1 million performance bonus this year based on his actions regarding ethics and accountability.

There was [sic] backdoor deals being cut that we didnt know about, I didnt know about, and I was representing DEA nationally on the investigation at the highest level, said Schiller.

How do you settle? How do you say its okay just, Here, write this check this time andand close this place for a little bit, sign this piece of paper. How do you do that? No. Put em in jail. You put the people that are responsible for dealing drugs, for breaking the law, in jail, he said. Nobodys in jail. They wrote a check.

Schiller talked to his supervisor. David [Schiller] I am totally against settling, his supervisor wrote to him in an e-mail, but how do we hold their feet to the fire? Our attorneys have us over a barrel with their refusal to go to court.

There is not a man or woman in the DEA today thats happy with the settlement and morale has been broken because of it, Schiller said.

A senior DEA official spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity when the newspaper reached out for comment.

We could have fined them out of existence, or indicted the company and put them out of business, the official said. Id rather have one of the largest drug distributors be the poster child for detection and reporting of suspicious orders.

Another problem hindering the enforcement of the law is the revolving door between the DEA and the drug industry they purportedly regulate. A story published in the Washington Post in December 2016 found that pharmaceutical companies or their law firms had hired at least 42 former DEA officials since 2005. This includes 31 former employees of the DEAs Diversion Control Division, the very division responsible for preventing prescription drugs from reaching the black market and holding the authority to suspend or revoke the licenses of doctors, pharmacies, and drug companies. Five former employees of the Division went to work at McKesson.

Legal action has been taken against drug distributors, but the fines are minuscule compared to the money the companies make by violating the law. For example, before McKesson paid the record $150 million civil penalty, it had been forced to pay a $13.5 million civil penalty in 2008 to settle similar allegations. In December 2016, Cardinal Health agreed to a $44 million settlement.

While these and smaller distributors collectively have paid $400 million in fines over the past 10 years, in that same time period the gross revenues for the companies was more than $5 trillion.

US attorney generals in 41 states so far have filed lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. Inevitably, any settlement reached with the drug companies will be a mere pittance compared to money the companies make by violating the law and wreaking havoc on communities across the country.
Today, Catalans are voting in the December 21 (21D) special regional elections called by the Spanish central government. These elections, held after the brutal police crackdown on the October 1 Catalan independence referendum and Madrids subsequent invocation of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to suspend Catalonias elected government, hold critical political lessons for workers in Spain and internationally.

They are confronted with a universal collapse of democratic forms of rule, rooted in the decay of international capitalism. In holding the 21D elections, the minority Popular Party (PP) government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, backed by the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), is not trying to ascertain the will of the Catalan people. Rather, it aims to give a democratic veneer to the drive for police-state regimes and the rehabilitation of far-right forces across the European Union.

PP officials have stated that if voters in Catalonia elect a government Madrid opposes, it will invoke Article 155 again to suspend the resulting government. They are giving voters the choice to elect whatever government they wish, so long as it is the one Madrid wants.

The PP and its allies are trying to accustom the population to the holding of political prisoners and other arbitrary, dictatorial measures. Despite mass protests in Barcelona, they jailed Catalan nationalists Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez for calling peaceful protests, and threatened to remove Catalan language material from schools and television. Even as campaigning proceeds in Catalonia, deposed Catalan Vice-Premier Oriol Junqueras remains in jaila fate deposed Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont escaped only by unceremoniously fleeing to hold talks with the EU in Brussels.

On this basis, the PP and its allies are preparing new attacks on the workers. Already, after seizing Catalonias finances, PP officials have threatened to invoke Article 155 against the Madrid municipality, even as they bully it into imposing hundreds of millions of euros more in EU social cuts. The PP government backed protests for Spanish unity marked by the singing of fascist hymns, including Cara al Sol, and has publicly discussed imposing a state of emergency.

This collapse of democratic forms of rule is not, however, the product of Spanish conditions, but rather a European and international phenomenon, symbolized by the EUs consistent support for Madrids crackdown.

The turn to state repression, the rehabilitation of militarism and the rise of far-right forces is proceeding across Europe. In France, the main police powers seized by the state during the two-year state of emergency, used to repress protests against an anti-worker labor law, have now been written into law. And four years after Berlin announced the remilitarization of its foreign policy, a far-right government has taken power in Austria, and a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, has won seats in the German parliament for the first time since the Nazi defeat in World War II.

This crisis flows from an international collapse of capitalism that has matured over decades. The quarter-century since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union, eliminating the main military counterweight to imperialism, has been one of escalating wars, police repression and austerity. Particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash, bourgeois democracy in Europe has begun to disintegrate amid rising social inequality and class and international tensions.

Inequality in Spain exemplifies the impact of this crisis on workers across Europe. Nearly a decade after the 2008 crash, unemployment in Spain is still at 17 percent (39 percent for youth), and social inequality is high. The top 10 percent now hold 57 percent of Spains wealth, the bottom 50 percent only 7 percent, and the top 20 percent of families earn 761 times more than the bottom 20 percent. Europes wealthiest individual, Spanish billionaire Armancio Ortega, is worth $77.9 billion.

The resulting social anger and alienation from official politics have completely undermined the stability of the ruling establishment. This year, the EUs Generation What poll found that two thirds of Spanish youth, and over half of European youth, would join a mass uprising against the existing order.

This crisis cannot be resolved by electing one or another capitalist politician to pursue a different policy, accepting the framework of the EU and of capitalism. The turn is to the working class in Spain, Europe and internationally. The only viable response to the EUs move toward police-state rule is a turn toward an internationalist and revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Opposition to the Spanish states repressive actions does not imply any support for the fundamentally reactionary policies of the Catalan separatist parties: the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Together for Catalonia, and their petty-bourgeois allies such as the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP). They imposed billions of euros in EU cuts on workers in Catalonia. One unanswerable proof of their reactionary role is their support for the EU, which is a tool for imposing austerity and building up European militarism. They have continued this support even after the EU Commission backed Rajoys crackdown in Catalonia.

In the faction fight within the ruling class of the Iberian Peninsula, there are no progressive factions. The Catalan nationalistslike the Scottish nationalists in Britain and the Northern League in Italyadvance a selfish strategy based on the fact that Catalonia is a wealthier region. They aim for autonomy or independence in order to cut off their financial obligations to other, poorer regions of Spain, obtain a greater share of the profits extracted from workers in Catalonia, and deepen their ties to the international banks.

The predatory character of the Catalan nationalists attitude to the rest of Spain, which repels and angers broad sections of the Spanish working class, makes it easier for Rajoy and his allies to whip up Spanish nationalism.

Like every great crisis, the Catalan crisis has revealed the role of petty-bourgeois parties such as Podemos, whose left demagogy has been exposed. Far from pursuing an independent policy for the working class, Podemos has sought to maneuver between the two bourgeois camps. Its Catalan branch, Catalonia in Common (CeC), claims to be neutral in the conflict between Catalan and Spanish nationalism and to advance instead the social question. It has proposed to support a coalition government between the PSOEs pro-Article 155 Catalan branch and the separatist ERC.

Podemos claims everything can be reconciledregionalism and nationalism, Article 155 and democratic rights and, above all, the capitalist class and the workers. It shares much in common with its Greek sister party, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left). It too presented itself as a democratic alternative opposed to austerity. Once elected in 2015, however, it implemented austerity and is now actively suppressing the working class.

The way forward is a fight to unify Spanish and Catalan workers against both the Spanish and Catalan nationalist forces, as part of the unification of the European working class in struggle against the EU and European capitalism.

The only viable answerin Spain as in every other countryis the reorientation of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective. Against all attempts to pit Spanish- and Catalan-speaking workers against each other, it is necessary to advance the struggle for power by the working class, the expropriation of the financial aristocracy, and the building of a workers state in Spain as part of the United Socialist States of Europe.

The struggle for this perspective requires the building of a new political leadership in the form of sections of the ICFI in Spain and across Europe.
South African multi-millionaire tycoon and former union leader Cyril Ramaphosa has been elected to lead South Africas ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) for the next five years, setting the stage for his expected run for president in the 2019 election. On Monday, at an internal party conference held in Johannesburg, 5,000 ANC party delegates voted 2,440 to 2,261 in favor of Ramaphosa over his rival Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, giving him a slim 179-vote margin of victory.

The election comes amid dimming prospects for the South African economy and widespread disaffection with the ANC government, which has overseen an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the working class to the top layers of society.

The country has experienced a precipitous economic downturn over the last several years under the ANC President Jacob Zuma, with a shrinking of South Africas GDP to 0.5 percent, with a corresponding rise in unemployment.

As Ramaphosas sole rival, Dlamini-Zumathe ex-wife of President Zuma, and his chosen successorsought to cover over the wealthy elites responsibility for South Africas economic crisis with a dishonest campaign against racial economic inequality. Her central platform of claiming to fight big business interests is belied by her immense wealth and the fact that her campaign was underwritten by powerful interests in the South African business elite.

For Ramaphosas part, he campaigned on a platform to end systemic corruption, which he cast as a barrier to international capital investment in South Africa. The former union leader and wealthy businessman is perceived as providing a face-lift on the world markets for South African capitalism, which has taken a severe hit under the administration of the corrupt Zuma government.

Upon receiving the news of Ramaphosas victory, South African bank stocks responded with a sharp rally. Ramaphosas victory has boosted the confidence of the South African financial aristocracy, who view the wealthy businessman as the best choice for carrying out policies aimed at putting the economy on a stronger footing in South Africa, as Reuters reported.

After Ramaphosas victory, the South African rand rallied 4 percent, the highest level since March, before retreating slightly on Tuesday.

The souring economy has resulted in a sharp increase of strike activity and protests by workers and youth across the country. The mass social anger has been directed against the ruling ANC, which, since coming to power in 1994, has represented a corrupt layer of the black elite at the expense of the masses of workers and poor. As a result, South Africa has become one of the most economically and socially polarized countries in the world.

With South Africas official unemployment rate at 28 percent, with one in two young people not employed, and social inequality at astronomic levels, the ruling class is extremely concerned at the prospect of a massive social explosion.

The social antagonisms between the wealthy aristocracy and the impoverished masses have only sharpened under the government of Jacob Zuma, an administration which has been characterized by corruption and a series of scandals since he assumed office in 2009. The pro-capitalist program advanced by the ANC under post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela of black economic empowerment has continued unabated under Zuma, benefiting a thin layer of black businessmen, while the South African masses face deepening social misery.

In the 1990s, with the social anger of black South Africans against racial apartheid reaching a fever pitch, threatening to explode into a full-scale insurrection against the countrys capitalist social order, the white ruling class initiated the end to racial apartheid and oversaw the formation of an enriched black upper class as a means of preserving their fortunes.

Ramaphosa is a principal beneficiary of this political arrangement. He began his career as the head of South Africas largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and was elected ANC general secretary in 1991, playing a central role in the multiparty negotiations that resulted in an end to legal apartheid, while leaving capitalist interests intact. He, above all, used his influence as a union leader to promote the ANC, an anti-working class bourgeois nationalist party, among South Africas black workers.

He was richly rewarded for his services. In the post-apartheid era he has become one of South Africas wealthiest figures, with a net worth valued at $675 million. He is the former chairman of South African telecom giant MTN and has interests in a variety of corporations and banks across the country and internationally.

The ANCs political odyssey from a repressed political movement to cementing an alliance with South Africas white capitalist ruling class was dictated by its bourgeois class character and its explicit renunciation of socialism. Mandela spoke of the ANCs aims in 1956 in which he promised not to introduce socialism, but instead advance the interests of an aspiring African bourgeoisie: For the first time in the history of this country, the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own in their own name and right mills and factories, and trade and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before.

The ANCs program of black economic empowerment was promoted by both the Stalinist South African Communist Party and the trade union leadership, with Ramaphosa playing the pivotal role in coordinating these political forces.

Underscoring the utter bankruptcy of the South African trade union bureaucracy, Ramaphosa received a blanket endorsement in his bid for ANC leader from these anti-working class scoundrels, including from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a federation made up of 21 affiliated trade unions, and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

These organizations have provided political cover for Ramaphosa, who played a direct role in the events that led to the massacre of striking mineworkers at the Lonmin mines in Marikana in August of 2012.

At the time, Ramaphosa was a Lonmin director and owned a 9 percent share in Marikana. He used his position as a high-ranking ANC leader to pressure the authorities to take action against what he called the plainly dastardly criminal acts of the strikers. The security forces obliged, shooting down the strikers, killing 34 and leaving dozens more wounded.

As the WSWS reported, the principal aim behind the formation of the Farlam commission to investigate the massacre was to whitewash the ANCs role, and that of Ramaphosa in particular.

The celebratory mood of the financial oligarchy with Ramaphosas election as ANC leader is indicative of their expectation that he will be able to assist in the extraction of even greater profits off of the exploitation of South Africas impoverished working class. The ratings agency Moodys has considered boosting the credit rating for South Africa after Ramaphosas win, after recently threatening to downgrade it to junk status. The agency said that his victory opened prospects for a shift in policy leading to a rise in business confidence, adding that [Ramaphosa] could reverse the gradual deterioration in South Africas credit fundamentals.

The history of the ANC serves as a powerful indictment of the program of black economic empowerment, of which Ramaphosa is a key proponent, and a confirmation that class, not race or other categories, is the fundamental division within South African society.

The author also recommends:

South Africas ANC at 100: A balance sheet of bourgeois nationalism

[11 January 2012]

Political and historical issues in the South African miners revolt

[20 September 2012]
South Korean President Moon Jae-in concluded a four-day trip to China on Saturday, his first since becoming president in May. He met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and other senior officials to discuss North Korea and attempt to mend the relationship between Seoul and Beijing.

Meeting with Xi last Thursday, Moon called for a new start in South Korean-Chinese relations while blaming North Korea for the rapidly rising tensions in the region. I hope we will reaffirm our countries joint stance to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear problem that threatens peace and security not only in Northeast Asia but the entire world, and discuss specific ways to cooperate, Moon told Xi.

Relations between Seoul and Beijing soured quickly in July 2016 when the previous South Korean administration of Park Geun-hye agreed to the deployment of an American Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery. Ostensibly aimed at protecting the South from a North Korean missile attack, THAAD is in fact an integral part of Washingtons war plans against China. The battery utilizes a radar system that can peer far into Chinese territory and obtain intelligence that would be otherwise unavailable.

China-South Korea relations experienced a setback due to the reason we all know, said Xi, who avoided using the term THAAD during the public portion of the summit. I am confident the presidents [Moons] visit will be an important opportunity for us to improve our relationship by paving a better way based on mutual respect and trust.

Before the summit began, Seoul and Beijing had agreed not to release a joint statementa reflection of continuing tensions. However, the two presidents did agree to four basic principles: war on the Korean Peninsula is unacceptable; dialogue and negotiations for dealing with North Korea; denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; and improved inter-Korean relations.

The reality is, however, that neither Moon nor Xi has any influence over Washingtons militaristic stance towards North Korea. The Trump administration in particular faces a worsening political crisis that encourages it to launch a catastrophic war in the desperate attempt to deflect acute internal tensions outwards.

A South Korean presidential official sought to assuage fears about conflict. The military option is meant to shore up diplomatic and peaceful means. The US is officially in favor of a peaceful, diplomatic resolution, and the four principles agreed upon with China are not that different from the USs position, the official claimed.

In fact, Trump has threatened to totally destroy North Korea and ruled out any talks to end the confrontation unless Pyongyang capitulates to the US demand. South Korea is closely integrated into the US war plans.

This does not mean Seoul blindly follows Washington ignoring its own interests, which were at the heart of Moons trip. South Korean diplomatic sources quoted in Joongang Ilbo, for example, stated that the US wanted Moon to pressure Xi to impose an oil embargo on North Korea. This did not occur.

For Moon, the trip was aimed at convincing China to end its punitive economic measures against South Korea after Seouls decision to allow the US to deploy a THAAD battery. The sanctions caused a sharp decline in sales for South Korean companies doing business in China. Tourism also took a hit when Beijing banned group travel packages to South Korea, resulting in lost revenue of as much as $15.9 billion.

Beijing and Seoul had already agreed on October 31 to improve relations so long as South Korea accepted Chinas so-called three nos: No new THAAD deployments, no participation in a US missile defense system, and no trilateral military alliance with the US and Japan.

During Moons trip, the two countries agreed to begin talks on adding service industries to their free trade agreement that took effect in December 2015. The South Korean president also met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang last Friday and both pledged to reopen communication channels on trade and to resume bilateral economic projects.

For its part, Beijing is attempting to undermine US efforts to strengthen ties with South Korea and throughout Asia against China. Christopher Hill, a former US ambassador to South Korea, commented: The hope is that South Korea can play the kind of role that the [UK] has played in European politics, that is, South Korea can somehow deliverin the Chinese viewa more reasonable US [foreign] policy.

China pressed Moon to stand by the three nos, which have already been called into question by Washington. US National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster in early November dismissed the three nos out of hand. Moons office stated around the same time: The principle of the three nos is not a promise we made to China, but more of a statement that this has been our position thus far.

South Korea, Japan, and the US conducted joint war games this month aimed at preparing for a massive bombing campaign against North Korea. Despite Moons criticisms of Japanese imperialism in China, his administration has moved to thaw relations with Tokyo that were damaged during the previous Park government.

Seoul is conducting a precarious balancing act between Washington and Beijing as the US ramps up the threats of war against North Korea. Moon and his ruling Democratic Party of Korea may want better economic relations with China, but his government is committed to the US military alliance and will fall into line with Washingtons war drive against North Korea.
On Monday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said his committee has begun investigating Jill Stein, the Green Partys presidential candidate in the 2016 election, in relation to evidence of alleged conspiracy or meddling by Russia. Stein said she was contacted by the committee with requests for information, including emails.

The targeting of Stein is a major intensification of the anti-Russia witch-hunt, which, in addition to fighting out factional disputes within the ruling elite, is aimed ultimately at domestic political opposition within the United States.

For over a year, Democrats have argued that Jill Steins campaign assisted Trumps campaign by diverting support and votes away from Hillary Clinton, pointing to the fact that Trumps margin of victory was smaller than Jill Steins total number of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This is now being used to suggest that Stein was in cahoots with Russian officials.

Mark Warner, the committees top-ranking Democrat, laid out the reactionary motives for investigating Steins campaign. I will point out though that Ms. Stein was at the infamous dinner that included General Flynn and Vladimir Putin, and we do know that she has very complimentary things to say about Julian Assange, who certainly was being used by the Russians to take some of the hacked information and release it into our political system, he said.

In 2015, Stein attended a dinner in Moscow celebrating the tenth anniversary of RT, the Russia-based news organization. The event has been used as a pretext by the committee to allege possible collusion between Stein and the Kremlin.

Photographs from the dinner show Stein sitting at a table with President Vladimir Putin and other prominent Russian officials. Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor who has agreed to a plea deal in the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the election, is seen sitting at the same table.

Assange attended the Green Partys 2016 convention via Skype to discuss the leaked Democratic National Committee emails that pointed to efforts by the pro-Hillary Clinton DNC leadership to undermine the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders. Stein praised WikiLeaks and Assange, calling him a hero for publishing the emails.

In a statement released Monday, Stein said she attended the 2015 dinner in hopes of reaching an international audience and Russian officials with a message of Middle East peace, diplomacy, and cooperation against the urgent threat of climate change.

The fact that RT hosted the Green Partys 2016 presidential debate, and has interviewed Stein multiple times, is also being used to suggest collusion between Stein and the Russian state.

Stein said she plans to cooperate with the committees requests, but warned against the politicization, sensationalism and collapse of journalistic standards that has plagued media coverage of the investigation.

In January, the director of national intelligence (DNI) released a report on Russian intervention in the 2016 election, declaring RT to be an arm of the Kremlin aimed at sowing divisions among the American people. Various actions have since been taken against the news organization, including forced registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), setting a dangerous precedent for the freedom of speech and press in the United States.

The DNI report alleged that RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a sham.

These statements make clear the antidemocratic political motivations behind the censorship of RT and the investigation of Stein.

Jesse Ferguson, a former Clinton campaign spokesman, argued that Americans should know if a candidate was used by Russia to divert votes away from Clinton. Russian operatives were not promoting Jill Stein because they thought she would win, he said. They were promoting her because they thought it would hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

Zac Petkanas, former rapid response director for the Clinton campaign, typed Jill Stein is a Russian agent eight times in a single tweet. He continued in another thread to say that the Senates probe mattered because she [Stein] played a big role in electing Putins favorite candidate: Donald Trump.

Jill Stein has denounced these allegations. In a podcast on the Intercept, she said that there wasnt any substantial conversation at the table where she was seen with Putin and Flynn because of language barriers. She was not paid for attending the event, and only gave a speech about nuclear disarmament and pursuing peace instead of war.

The Green Party is a bourgeois party that poses no serious threat to the political establishment. But the campaign to link Stein to Russian meddling sets a dangerous precedent for all critics of the US government. The return of McCarthyism is centered on anti-Russian hysteria, but is part of a broader campaign to censor political opposition in the face of mass social unrest.

The United States is the worlds wealthiest country, yet it has the highest levels of social inequality in the developed world. More than 40 million Americans, or 14.5 percent, live in poverty. Congress has passed a tax plan that will only further destroy the conditions of the working class by funneling trillions of dollars to the ultra-wealthy and slashing funding to social programs.

What the two big-business parties fear most is the development of a mass movement against the capitalist system. They aim to combat this threat by censoring the Internet, criminalizing political dissent, and preventing the free exchange of ideas.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday unveiled an end-of-the-year restructuring of his ministry, pointing to the increasing pressure on his Liberal-National Coalition government on both the geo-strategic and economic fronts.

Having barely survived the past 18 months, since being reduced to a one-seat parliamentary majority at the July 2016 double dissolution election, the government is desperately attempting to shore up its position.

The Coalition faces ongoing political uncertainty and the possibility of being forced into an early election during 2018. There is the continuing prospect of members of parliament, both government and opposition, being disqualified on the basis of a nationalist purge of MPs entitled to dual citizenship.

Turnbull has created three new super-ministries that point to the agenda of war preparations, social spending cuts and attacks on working conditions that the government intends to pursue.

Already deeply unpopular and facing potential electoral oblivion at the next federal election, the government is also seeking to fend off internal rifts. Turnbull enhanced the powers of the most right-wing, socially conservative members of the cabinet, underscoring his reliance on these layers.

Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton, who has spearheaded the governments anti-refugee policies, becomes Home Affairs Minister. In effect, he will be a national security supremo in charge of the countrys main intelligence and immigration agencies. He will also supervise two more junior ministers overseeing the Australian Federal Police (AFP), cyber security and citizenship laws.

As well as the AFP, the new Home Affairs super-ministry covers the domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Border Force, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. Over the past decade and a half, these agencies have been handed greater resources and far-reaching powers of surveillance, compulsory questioning and detention.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has been handed extra authority as minister of state and leader of the government in the Senate. Together with Treasurer Scott Morrison, another key right-wing figure, Cormann will supervise the work of a team of ministers tasked with inflicting further budget cuts, particularly in welfare, health and education, where billions of dollars have already been slashed in successive budgets over the past decade.

Workplace Relations Minister Michaelia Cash takes charge of a new overarching jobs and innovation portfolio and gains a position on cabinets expenditure review committee, commonly referred to as the razor gang. Together with several junior ministers, Cashs brief is to step up the assault on full-time jobs, wages, penalty rates and other basic working conditions.

These three super-ministries are in addition to one other, covering the military, which was established last year after the government narrowly survived the 2016 election. Two senior ministers, Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, head a group of ministers focussed on a multi-billion dollar expansion of the armed forces.

To make way for Duttons expanded powers, Attorney-General George Brandis, who was in charge of ASIO, has been handed the diplomatic post of high commissioner to Britain. The new attorney-general, with reduced powers, will be another social conservative, Christian Porter.

A parallel shift occurred within the rural-based National Party, which retained five cabinet posts under its coalition agreement with Turnbulls Liberal Party. National Party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, dumped Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester and a junior minister, Keith Pitt, to allow two new members of parliament from the state of Queensland to be elevated straight into the cabinet.

Chester apparently earned the ire of social conservatives by supporting the recognition of same sex marriages, and by backing a fellow MP from the state of Victoria, Bridget McKenzie, to become deputy National Party leader.

The reshuffle has triggered rifts, with Pitt and others reportedly threatening to split away from the Joyce-led National Party. The threat could bust apart a formation that has been a linchpin of the Coalition and the two-party parliamentary system since the formation of the Country Party, the Nationals forerunner, in 1920. An editorial in todays Australian denounced the dissidents, urging them not to destabilise the Coalition.

The same editorial backed Turnbulls ministerial restructuring, saying: The most important feature of the reshuffle announced by Malcolm Turnbull is that it has elevated competent, conservative ministers into super portfolios where they will oversee the governments main agenda for next year: job creation, security and tax cuts.

Job creation means accelerating the corporate destruction of permanent jobs, forcing growing numbers of workers into poorly-paid, insecure casual or part-time employment, and further driving down average wage levels, which have already fallen in real terms for the past four years.

Security means ramping up the resources and powers of the intelligence, police and military apparatus, both for looming military conflicts and to deal with the heightened social and political unrest. It also means stepping up the use of nationalism and xenophobia, directed against refugees, immigrants and alleged foreign influence, to divert social tensions outward.

Tax cuts means matching the Trump administration in providing historic tax breaks for the corporate elite in order to boost profits. This would mean going far beyond the $50 billion cut to company taxes over the next decade that the Coalition is already seeking to deliver to the financial markets.

This agenda underscores the intense pressure being placed on the Australian political establishment by US President Donald Trumps America First program.

In todays Australian, Treasurer Morrison declared that, unless matched by Australia, Trumps tax cuts would drain billions of dollars in investment from the country. Based on an International Monetary Fund report, Morrison said capital outflow from Australia caused by the US tax cuts, combined with lower rates in Germany and France, would reduce Australias gross domestic product by 1 percent over the next decade.

At the same time, the escalating US military threats against North Korea, which are bound up with Washingtons open drive toward a confrontation with China, have seen both the Coalition government and the opposition Labor Party commit themselves to backing the US in any conflict. Successive governments have aligned themselves ever-more behind the US alliance, despite China being Australias largest export market.

The rising danger of war compounds the deepening social and class tensions wracking the government and the political establishment as a whole. Turnbulls reshuffle is a warning that its response will be to escalate the offensive against social and democratic rights of the working class.
The 2G scam is said to be the biggest scam in India with the Time Magazine calling it the biggest example of abuse of power after Nixon's Watergate scandal.

By India Today Web Desk: After six years of trial the verdict on the infamous 2G spectrum scam will likely be announced today. A court in Delhi will decide if A Raja, the then Telecom Minister allocated airwaves and licenses for cellphone networks in exchange for bribes which caused the state exchequer a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

The 2G Spectrum case is a combination of three cases- one filed by the Enforcement Directorate and two cases registered by the CBI.

advertisement

Said to be the biggest scam in India, the case came was revealed after a report by the CAG of India. According to the report, 2G or second generation licenses for mobile networks were given at throwaway prices instead of carrying free and fair auctions.

The then Telecom minister, A Raja, denied all charges and said that the decisions were made after apprising PM Manmohan Singh. A Raja stepped down as the Telecom minister in 2010 and was arrested in 2011 on charges of cheating, forgery and conspiracy.

He spent around a year in jail and was released on bail afterwards.

Several other businessmen and business conglomerates have also been named in the case. Karunanidhi's daughter M Kanimozhi is also one of the accused.

The verdict, today, will be pronounced by OP Saini. The verdict was earlier expected on November 7 but was delayed when the judge asked for more time to write his decision.

WATCH: Those used to 2G, coal scam will face problems with legitimate tax, says Jaitley

--- ENDS ---
The 2G scam verdict - all accused were acquitted - came as big reprieve for the Congress and its UPA partner, the DMK. The Tamil Nadu party's deputy chief MK Stalin expressed joy, and said the case had been filed to eradicate the DMK

All the accused in the 2G scam case, which Stalin said was filed to eradicate the DMK, were acquitted today. (File photo of Stalin: PTI)

By India Today Web Desk: DMK Working President MK Stalin expressed joy at a 2G scam verdict which exonerated all of the accused, including M Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi and former Telecom minister A Raja.

Stalin said the 2G scam case was filed with the intention to humiliate and eradicate the DMK, which was a member of the Congress-led United Progessive Alliance (UPA).

advertisement

Minutes after the verdict, which at least one journalist described as a "political earthquake," top UPA minister P Chidambaram said the Patiala House Court's decision had established that the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was untrue. Another former minister, Kapil Sibal, demanded an apology from the UPA government's accusers - essentially the BJP.

Will BJP now apologise to the nation for stalling parliament for years, slowing down India's growth story, levelling baseless accusations against the then government for BJP's hunger to be in power at any cost? Shame on their power hungry politics #2GScamVerdict- Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) December 21, 2017

The 2G scam verdict gives the DMK a major boost in the short term: one of its leaders, Maruthu Ganesh, is a candidate in the RK Nagar bypoll - the electoral battle for J Jayalalithaa's assembly seat. We'll find out whether he wins on counting day - Sunday.

Delhi: DMK supporters marching and celebrating outside Patiala House Court after the Court's pronouncement of #2GScamVerdict. All accused have been acquitted. pic.twitter.com/LtLzDbyQ2h- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

The 2G scam case, which Time magazine called the biggest example of abuse of power after US President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal, is a combination of three cases. One was filed by the Enforcement Directorate, and two were registered by the CBI. The CAG projected that the notional loss caused to the state exchequer by the alleged scam was Rs 1.76 lakh crore. (Read our explainer to learn more)

To get all the reactions on the 2G scam verdict, follow our live blog. To know what's happening in RK Nagar, follow this live blog.

(Inputs from India Today's Priyamvatha P.)

WATCH | Former Telecom minister A Raja after the 2G scam verdict (Video: Twitter/ANI)

#WATCH: Former Telecom Minister A Raja after being acquitted in the #2GScam pic.twitter.com/hmu8oWOZeD- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

--- ENDS ---
As Chennai's Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar (RK Nagar) votes in the electoral battle for Jayalalithaa's seat, we bring you all the latest updates, right here.

Voters in RK Nagar, the constituency in Chennai where former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa won two elections (Photo: Twitter/@nagarjund)

By India Today Web Desk: Residents of RK Nagar, a constituency in northern Chennai, are filing into polling centres to elect the MLA who will succeed J Jayalalithaa in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.

Her party, the AIADMK, hopes voters will choose presidium chairman Madhusudhanan. Losing RK Nagar (Dr. Radhkrishnan Nagar) to either the DMK, which has fielded Marudhu Ganesh, or TTV Dhinakaran, a former AIADMK deputy general secretary who has now been sidelined, will be a tremendous blow to Chief Minister E Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam.

advertisement

Hours after polling began, all the accused in the 2G scam case were acquitted by a Delhi court; they included DMK MP Kanimozhi and former Telecom minister A Raja. The decision could be a boost for the DMK, not just in the long-term, but also in the RK Nagar bypoll. But we'll need to wait till counting day - Sunday - to see if Marudhu Ganesh emerges victorious.

The DMK's triumph in the 2G case is not the only sub-plot in the RK Nagar saga. The AIADMK's top brass will be hoping the area's voters deny independent candidate TTV Dhinakaran, a former deputy general secretary and the nephew of VK Sasikala) the chance to claim Jayalalithaa's legacy. What's more, the vote is seen as an informal referendum on the AIADMK government's performance. Victory is a must.

Campaigning for the RK Nagar bypoll ended on Tuesday. The vote was initially scheduled to be held in April, but was cancelled after the Election Commission uncovered evidence of corruption and bribery. This time, things have hardly improved - as an India Today TV investigation found out.

Stay on this page for all the latest updates on polling day in the RK Nagar by-election.

LIVE UPDATES

6.06 PM: Voting concludes.

5.22 PM: Polling could be extended to 7 in the evening. People still in queue will be given tokens.

3:48 PM: Kanimozhi, who was acquitted in the 2G spectrum case, says the DMK would have won the RK Nagar bypoll anyway (that is, with or without the effect of the verdict). As of 3 pm, voter turnout was 57.16 in 184 booths.

1:54 PM: Voter turnout in the RK Nagar bypoll is 41.6 per cent. That's a significant jump from the figure at 11 am: 23.74 per cent (from 166 booths).

12:00 PM: The battle for Jayalalithaa's seat may be in Chennai, but all the action is in the national capital. After the 2G verdict, DMK MP Kanimozhi thanked everyone who stood by her, and jubilant party workers celebrated in Delhi, Chennai and Coimbatore. In the Tamil Nadu capital, Stalin expressed joy and said the 2G case had been filed to eradicate his party. Can the DMK pull off a win in RK Nagar?

advertisement

10:50 AM: There were scenes of jubilation outside the Patiala House Court as all the accused in the 2G scam case, including Kanimozhi and A Raja, were acquitted. Judge OP Saini said the prosecution miserably failed to prove its case (Get all the latest updates on our 2G verdict live blog). Former Union Minister and P Chidambaram said the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government is not true, and this has been established now. The 2G scam verdict a big breather for the DMK and the Congress, but how will this impact the RK Nagar bypoll?

#FLASH Verdict on 2G Scam cases pronounced, all aquitted pic.twitter.com/wmCP4WbdIw- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

9:53 AM: DMK leaders Kanimozhi and A Raja arrived at the Patiala House Court in New Delhi a few minutes ago. The court will pronounce its verdict in the 2G scam case shortly. Could the verdict have an impact on the RK Nagar bypoll result?

Delhi: Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK chief M Karunanidhi & Rajya Sabha MP, arrives at Patiala House Court for #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/MgwaGwO3ba- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

advertisement

9:48 AM: AIADMK candidate Madhusudhanan arrived at a polling centre to cast his vote. He said he was "definitely confident" of winning. "Amma's grace is with us. God is with us. MGR is with us," he said. He added that Chief Minister Palaniswami had instructed party men not to comment on the video of Jayalalithaa which was released by TTV Dhinakaran's camp yesterday. "Justice will be done," he promised.

9:33 AM: Voter turnout at 9 am was 7.32 per cent, based on inputs froom 173 booths. There are almost 2.27 lakh general electors in RK Nagar. Here's a factsheet on the today's bypoll.

Photo: Twitter/@madhavpramod1

8: 25 AM: Chennai Police Commissioner AK Vishwananthan promised a fair and free election. Allegations of voter fraud few thick and fast in the run up to this election, an India Today investigation exposed the role of money power in this battle royale for Jayalalithaa's seat. You can watch the broadcast right here.

8.13 AM: DMK candidate Marudhu Ganesh cast his vote, and said his party would win by a big margin. His leader, MK Stalin, has vowed to unravel the "mystery" behind Jayalalithaa's death and book anyone found to be in power, a PTI report said. After a video of Jayalalithaa sitting on a hospital bed was released by the TTV Dhinakaran faction yesterday, Stalin said he "never thought they would stoop to this level to politicise her death," the Hindu reported.

#RKNagarByPoll DMK candidate N. Marudhu Ganesh cast his vote at polling booth no. 134 in #Chennai, says "whether it is Rs 6000 or Rs 60,000, we are going to win; voters of RK Nagar will teach a lesson to AIADMK this time" pic.twitter.com/g58dCEZ4xc- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

advertisement

8.04 AM: Voting began in the RK Nagar bypoll at 8 AM. The election is a litmus test for the ruling AIADMK. Since Jayalalithaa's death, the party has had to manage infighting, natural disasters (cyclones Vardhah and Ockhi), a near-repeat of the Chennai rains in 2015, and a people's movement in support of jallikattu, among other things.

(With inputs from India Today reporters Shalini Lobo and Nagarjun Dwaraknath, and news agency ANI)

WATCH | NEWSROOM | Amma video a desperate attempt by TTV camp to swing vote in RK Nagar bypoll?

--- ENDS ---
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The holidays are a time of happiness and joy for most people, but for those who suffer from mental illness, the holidays can be a tough time.

Mental illness could cause those suffering to experience sadness due to many factors, including the weather, being away from your family, and the normal stresses of the holiday. The best thing to do is to try and keep your normal routine.

Dr. Saxena suggests keeping your mind busy during the holidays if you can through activities. One activity that can help turn your mood around is volunteering.

"Giving back is really a good way to kinda turn your own vibes around," said Saxena. "If you're not feeling that great, there's nothing like volunteering at a soup kitchen or local boys and girls club.It's unbelievable how positive you are going to feel if you help other people.

Dr. Saxena suggests if these things don't work and the problems continue, to call your doctor.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Florida State University officials say they will incorporate some of the grand jury's suggestions into reforming Greek life following the death of Andrew Coffey.

Vice President of Student Affairs Amy Hecht tells the Associated Press they will look at possibly penalizing students who do not cooperate in investigations.

The grand jury said in its report it was troubled by the conspiracy and obstruction surrounding the case.

The Leon County grand jury found enough evidence for criminal charges in the death of the 20-year old, but the investigation is not complete.

The autopsy revealed Coffey died of alcohol poisoning with a blood alcohol level nearly seven times the legal limit for driving.

Physician assistant Anna Snel* describes how drinking affects the body at first and then if it continues.

Research shows more than 1,800 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle crashes, each year.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - One business is providing a way for residents to help local seniors, while getting a little something in return.

Local Senior Discounts is offering member cards for $5 each that can be used to get a variety of discounts at restaurants, beauty salons, hotels and other activities.

Some of those include Blue Halo, Chuy's Mexican, Harry's, Marie Livingston's Steakhouse, Sonny's BBQ, Wahoo seafood and more.

Member cards are available to anyone age 50 and older.

Half of the proceeds from each card sold goes to Elder Care Services' Meals on Wheels program.

Lew Wilson, the president of Local Senior Discounts, says he's looking to expand the member cards to other areas besides Tallahassee.

"It's part of a program that we put together to help seniors save, businesses to prosper and and to support local senior organizations. At the end of the day, it helps everybody, it helps the senior, the business, and the senior organization. We're going to pass this around the state and help senior organizations in every county."

The one time fee of $5 is good for the life of the member card.

More information can be found at https://eldercarebigbend.org/senior-discount-cards
The Time magazine ranked the 2G scam as the world's second-biggest abuse of executive power. Today, a court acquitted all accused in the 2G scam case, including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi.

Former Telecom Minsiter A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi were acquitted in the 2G scam case (FILE)

By India Today Web Desk: It was a scam that shook the country and a government. A scam that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India said caused a notional loss of a staggering Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the Indian national exchequer.

Ranked as the world's second-biggest abuse of executive power by the Time magazine (the first was the infamous Watergate scandal in the US), the 2G scam, along with other allegations of corruption, is widely believed to be among chief factors that led to the downfall of the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls that routed the Congress.

advertisement

The main accused in the 2G scam case, was Andimithu Raja, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader who was the telecom minister at the time. He is alleged to have accepted kickbacks in the form of a Rs 200 crore loan funneled into the DMK's propaganda arm Kalaingar TV.

READ | WHAT WAS THE 2G SCAM ALL ABOUT?

A court in Delhi today pronounced the 2G scam verdict, acquitting ALL of the accused in the case.

LIVE UPDATES FROM 2G SCAM VERDICT DAY:

12:55 PM: DMK supporters distribute sweets in Coimbatore in celebration of the verdict.

Tamil Nadu: DMK supporters distribute sweets in celebration in Coimbatore after the acquittal of all the accused in #2GScamVerdict by Delhi's Patiala House Court. pic.twitter.com/Hnfc6lrfm2- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

12:53 PM: Enforcement Directorate (ED) to appeal against the 2G scam verdict pronounced today.

12:28 PM: DMK Working President MK Stalin says that the verdict has brought happiness to DMK.

The acquittal of all the accused by the special court has brought happiness to us. The verdict further proves that there was no wrong done. All this has been proved: MK Stalin, DMK Working President #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/BEJHdZ4EhM- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

12:22 PM: FM Arun Jaitley said that the Congress leaders are treating this verdict as some kind of badge or certification that the Manmohan government was an honest government.

Each & every case of spectrum allocation was quashed by SC (in 2012) as arbitrary & unfair, the policy was quashed as unfair & intended to cause loss to GoI & the govt was directed to have a fresh policy by which an auction would take place: Arun Jaitley #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/d9PLPckdmk- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

12:20 PM: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the 2G verdict- This was a corrupt & dishonest policy, which has already been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.

12:16 PM: All acquitted in the case will have to furnish a bail bond of Rs. 5 lakhs each. This is done to ensure their presence in a higher appellate court if the verdict is challenged. (ANI)

advertisement

11:53 AM: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reacting to the 2G scam verdict, said the "judgement speak(s) in itself." Singh was speaking exclusively to India Today TV.

11:47 AM: FUN FACT | OP Saini, who pronounced the 2G scam verdict, was once a police sub-inspector. Read all about him here.

11:37 AM: READ | Congress reacts to 2G scam verdict, calls it moral, legal victory

11:31 AM: A jubilant Congress has gone on the offensive after the 2G scam verdict. While former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the verdict proved the allegations of a scam involving the highest levels of government were false, senior leader and ex-Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal demanded an apology from all those who had accused the UPA regime of corruption. Sibal also said the prime minister must now stop talking about scams.

#WATCH: Former Telecom Minister A Raja after being acquitted in the #2GScam pic.twitter.com/hmu8oWOZeD- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

11:02 AM: Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, reacting to the 2G scam verdict, said he will not comment on the actual judgement. But, "it is established that the said biggest scam that was said to be involved with the highest people in govt is not true (sic)," he said.

advertisement

10:49 AM: "The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its case, and all accused are acquitted," judge OP Saini is reported to have said while acquitting all accused in the 2G scam story.

10:48 AM: One of the lawyers of the accused, speaking to media outside the court, said judge OP Saini's verdict was just a sentence long.

The Court said that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of its charge. Thus all accused are acquitted: Vijay Aggarwal, Lawyer of Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and others #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/MgWCLKApNE- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

10:45 AM: All accused have been acquitted in the 2G scam case.

10:37 AM: In what underlines the sheer interest in the case, the proceedings at the Patiala House Court have been delayed because of overcrowding.

10:24 AM: The 2G scam case has not only seen high-profile accused but also high-profile witnesses. Anil Ambani, one of India's leading businessmen, appeared as a prosecution witness in the Delhi court that tried the 2G scam case.

Some of my 2G scam cartoons from the archives. pic.twitter.com/hXsZ2HfjO7- Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) December 21, 2017

advertisement

9:55 AM: While ranking it number 2 on its list of top abuses of power, the American magazine Time called the 2G scam "an epic corruption scandal that has challenged its [the UPA government's] once unbreakable grip on power." The magazine ranked the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon over allegations of political espionage and illegal surveillance.

9:48 AM: The verdict in the 2G scam case comes as Tamil Nadu sees a crucial by-poll being held in RK Nagar, late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's constituency. DMK's Marudhu Ganesh is contesting in the by-poll.

9:40 AM: Here is a profile of all those accused in the 2G scam case:

Click here to Enlarge Profile of those accused in the 2G scam case (India Today FILE)

WATCH | Those used to 2G, coal scam will face problems with legitimate tax, says Jaitley

--- ENDS ---
CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Wakulla County Sheriff's Office is seeking the public's help in identifying people wanted for questioning in a theft from Walmart in Crawfordville.

Sheriff Jared Miller is asking people with information to contact his office at (850) 745-7100.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates.

Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Two Florida porch pirates may spend the holiday season in jail after authorities say they followed delivery trucks into neighborhoods and grabbed the packages left outside front doors.

The SunSentinel reports 32-year-old Curtis Harris and 27-year-old Demetrius Harris made off with an impressive haul before detectives caught up with them on Tuesday north of Fort Lauderdale. The loot included an Apple TV 4K device, English pies, candy and toys.

An undercover Fort Lauderdale detective told a judge during a bond hearing that the pair followed UPS and FedEx trucks into neighborhoods, then backed into driveways and took holiday gifts that these people were counting on.

Public Defender Hector Romero told the judge the men are unemployed and sought low bonds. Theyre charged with unarmed burglary and grand theft.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee man is facing charges after posting a sexually explicit image and video of a victim to social media.

Alvin E. Holloway Jr., 37, was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Leon County Detention Center. He remained jailed Thursday.

Holloway posted the video and explicit image on his Instagram page following his break up with the victim, according to a court complaint.

Before Holloway published the items, on the morning of Sept. 27, 2017, he had gone through the victim's cell phone and found the sexually explicit video and a picture.

Confronting the victim about them, he demanded the name of the receiver. After an argument, Holloway retrieved his belongings and moved out of the residence.

Later that day, a friend of the victim phoned to say the video and picture had been posted to Holloway's Instagram page and tagged with the victim's username.

The victim screenshot both posts and reported the posts to Instagram, and they were soon removed.

Although neither the approximately 20-second long video nor the picture showed the victim's face, the victim felt that the tagging would identify the victim to people.

In October 2017, the victim came to the Tallahassee Police Department and consented to a download of the victim's cell phone that provided screenshots of the picture and video.

The victim desired to pursue criminal charges for sexual cyberharassment, a first degree misdemeanor.

On Dec. 4, 2017, Holloway admitted to the TPD investigator that he posted the video with the victim's name tagged underneath, the court document said, but stated it was not malicious.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Trial for one of the men accused in the murder of FSU law professor Dan Markel has been pushed back.

Sigfredo Garcia's trial has been pushed back six months, according to his attorney Saam Zangeneh.

Garcia is expected to be back in court Jan. 3 so attorneys can come to an agreement regarding an official trial date. The date was pushed back so that attorneys could have more time to look over the large amount of evidence that's been collected.

His attorney says that they are looking for a mid to end of summer trial date.

"Sigfredo Garcia stands by his plea and looks forward to his day in court," said Zangeneh.

Luis Rivera and Katherine Magbanua, and Garcia were indicted in Markel's murder. Rivera was sentenced in October 2016 to 19 years in state prison for his role in the professor's death. Magbanua is due back in court on January 22, 2018.

Markel was shot and killed in the driveway of his Tallahassee home in July of 2014.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - It took just a few minutes Tuesday morning, but a trial date has been set for Sigfredo Garcia.

His attorneys and the state agreed to start trial early next year, on January 22nd.

It's been three years since FSU professor Dan Markel was killed. Garcia and Luis Rivera were charged in his murder.

Rivera was sentenced in October of last year, but Garcia has yet to stand trial.

Garcia's attorneys said Rivera got a "very good deal on a first-degree murder case," and they're working to strengthen their own case.

"We might need more time even as it goes along. Obviously, it's a first-degree murder case, so it's a lot of investigation that's needed, but we're going to push to have it resolved by then -- to have a trial date by then," said Mutaqee Akbar, Garcia's defense attorney.

Prosecutors say they wanted trial to start next month but Garcia's attorneys said they needed more time to build their case.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The Washington County Jail escapees have been found in Oklahoma.

Reports say right before 12:30 p.m. today, police attempted to stop the men during a traffic stop.

The Oklahoma District 21 Task Force members were able to apprehend both Ronly Diaz Pardo and David Allan Anderson.

Oklahoma officials have reported that the pair have local charges pending there as well.

WTXL will keep you updated as more details become available.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The autopsy of FSU fraternity pledge Andrew Coffey revealed he died of alcohol poisoning, with a blood alcohol level nearly seven times the legal limit for driving.

When does drinking alcohol become abusing alcohol? The answer is different for everyone, based on a number of factors, but what's the same is realizing your limits and understanding how going past that puts you in danger.

Capital Regional Medical Center says it frequently sees patients in the emergency room with alcohol-related issues, from injuries from falls to nausea, dehydration and vomiting from drinking too much. It's also possible heavy drinking can lead to cirrhosis, dependence and addiction.

Physician assistant Anna Snell describes how drinking affects the body at first, and then if it continues, it affects your brain.

"Right away, it will affect your brain. It affects your cerebellum, so you start becoming off-balance, and then you increase your risk for falls," said Snell. "You lower your normal inhibition, which is why we'll start seeing more fights and more types of behaviors that you wouldn't typically see otherwise. And then, of course, the effects that it does to your liver, just destroys your liver. You don't have to be a drinker for 20 or 30 years."

Snell says a person's environment also plays a role in possible alcohol abuse.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports around 88,000 Americans die from alcohol-related causes every year, making alcohol the third-leading preventable cause of death in the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-20 21:17:49|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

RABAT, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's trade deficit increased 3.3 percent between January and November 2017 compared with a year before, reaching a total of 18.32 billion U.S. dollars, the foreign exchange regulator said on Wednesday.

The rise in the deficit was driven by a hike in imports by 6.7 percent to 42 billion dollars from 39.37 dollars in the same period last year, according to exchange regulator statistics.

The hike was due to 28.6-percent increase in energy bills and 3.4-percent rise in equipment imports rose 3.4-percent, the same source pointed out.

Total exports rose 9.4 percent year on year, but stood at only 23.68 billion dollars, pushed by the rise of 12.2 percent in phosphate exports, and 8.5 percent in agriculture exports, the exchange regulator said.
File Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and British Prime Minister Theresa May (R) attend the handover ceremony of the new NATO headquarters during a one-day NATO Summit, in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said here Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation by British Prime Minister Theresa May to visit her nation and the president has been "tough" on Moscow.

According to the White House, Trump called May earlier on Tuesday, the first since their twitter dispute, and the two leaders "exchanged holiday greetings and warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year." They also discussed next steps in forging peace in the Middle East.

The "special relationship" between Trump and May has been questioned in recent weeks following the U.S. president's retweeting of several videos clips posted by a British far-right group. May said Trump's decision was wrong and Trump responded by asking her to take care of her nation. British parliament members have urged May not to invite Trump for a state visit next year.

Speaking of May's invitation, Sanders said it has been "extended and accepted," adding that the White House is working with the British side "to finalize the details, which we expect to announce soon."

Asked why Trump did not use harsh rhetoric against Russia in his speech on the national security strategy on Monday, Sanders said Trump and the White House have always been "tough" on Russia.

"The president has weighed in on Russia and his feelings on that a number of times. The policy and the strategy put forth in that very detailed paper was that of the president and it reflects his views," she said.

She added that Trump "has been clear what his position is. We've been tough on Russia, we've put sanctions on Russia, we've imported energy, and impacted them in a big way. The president has not been soft in this process."

In the national security strategy and the speech, the Trump administration labeled Moscow as the United States' "competitor" and "rival power" seeking to undermine the Washington-led international order and U.S. interests. Russia has denied such an allegation repeatedly.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-20 23:58:37|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

DHAKA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- To support the flood response, the Ministry of Commerce (MoFCOM) of China has partnered with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to provide four million U.S. dollars for early recovery efforts in Bangladesh.

This is a part of MoFCOM's Disaster Recovery Support in South Asia, said the U.N. agency in a statement received here Wednesday.

Under this partnership, UNDP will provide 13,000 flood-affected households in flood-hit Bogra, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram and Nilphamari districts with emergency shelter and households items packages including materials to repair housing and to keep warm in the upcoming winter months.

Additionally, UNDP is partnering with UNFPA to ensure that 14,000 flood-affected women and girls will be provided with emergency dignity kits containing clothing, personal hygiene items and a flashlight, and 125 health workers provided with emergency health response kits to serve women and girls' health needs.

In recognition of the government of Bangladesh's support to the Rohingya, the Chinese contribution will also support the procurement of medical supplies for health facilities serving Rohingya women and girls in Cox's Bazar, 292 km southeast of capital Dhaka.

China will also provide support in Pakistan and Nepal to restoring the livelihoods of the flood-affected people, said the statement.

It is expected that, with this first of its kind initiative, UNDP and the Chinese government will have stronger collaboration with a larger impact on disaster management and early recovery in Bangladesh and in South Asia, it added.
By PTI: badge of honour, BJP hits back

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) A political storm broke out today after a special CBI court acquitted all the accused in the 2G spectrum case with the Congress asserting that the verdict has "vindicated" its stand and "exposed" the BJP, which asked it not to treat the order as a "badge of honour" and a "clean chit".

advertisement

Launching a fusillade on the ruling BJP, the Congress accused it of carrying out a "massive propaganda" against the UPA-II regime and demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the party.

DMK MP Kanimozhi and former telecom minister A Raja, two of the accused in the case who were acquitted today, hailed the verdict and said justice had been delivered.

Manmohan Singh, who was the prime minister when the alleged scam took place, said the verdict has made it clear that the "massive propaganda" against the UPA was without any foundation.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The courts judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh, whose image had taken a major beating over the alleged scam, told reporters.

Jaitley hit back, saying the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour".

The partys "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, he said.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, Jaitley asserted.

"The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012," he told reporters.

Later, talking to reporters, senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar said the trial court verdict is no "clean chit" to the Congress.

Raja said his acquittal proved that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was "cooked-up" and that the judicial system validated the "rightfulness" of his actions.

The DMK leader, who was the minister in the Congress-led UPA government when 122 telecom spectrum licences were issued to 8 companies in 2008 on first-come-first-serve basis, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

"My firm belief in the rightfulness of my actions as well as my faith in our nations justice system has been validated today," he said in a statement.

advertisement

On the other hand, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners in the case, said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.

Former Union minister P Chidambaram asserted that allegations of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was "never true and not correct" and the verdict has established that.

Attacking the BJP, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, "The BJP has been exposed for its untruth and propaganda against the Congress. The prime minister, (Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley and the BJP should apologise to the nation," Surjewala said.

Congress MP and former telecom minister Kapil Sibal also demanded an apology from former Comptroller and auditor general (CAG) Vinod Rai and the BJP, asserting that he has been saying from day one that there was no loss.

"I have been vindicated today. In fact it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation," he added.

"After the 2G judgement by the Special Court, zero gain for BJP...My position vindicated," Sibal said on Twitter.

Swamy, who was one of the petitioners on whose plea a CBI probe was ordered in 2G case, told PTI outside the court premises that the government should appeal in the high court against acquittal of all the accused.

advertisement

"Congis (sic) and allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here," Swamy also tweeted.

Reacting strongly, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "The truth ultimately has prevailed. It has been proved now that the BJP speaks lies and propaganda to win elections."

Emphasising that "Congress has been a victim of a conspiracy that was intended to besmirch the image of the party", senior Congress leader Anand Sharma alleged that the BJP launched a malicious campaign against the Congress that besmirched the image of the then prime minister.

The CPI(M) stayed away from the political slugfest between the BJP and the Congress and called for immediate legal steps to ensure that the guilty in the scam were punished.

The Left party in a statement observed that the judgement of the CBI special court had raised more questions than answers.

"Since the CBI case and prosecution have proved inadequate, steps must be taken immediately to pursue the matter legally, so that those who are guilty are punished," it said.

advertisement

Raja and Kanimozhi and all other accused were acquitted in the politically-sensitive 2G spectrum allocation scam cases by the special court which held that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove the charges.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the top court on February 2, 2012. PTI KR/SKC/PR/UK/PKS/ABA/ENM/PRS/ANZ JTR MP PYK ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Foreign Ministers Council in Istanbul, Turkey, December 13, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

ISTANBUL, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Wednesday urged the UN General Assembly to recognize the "invalidity" of the U.S. decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel after Washington vetoed a draft resolution asking it to withdraw this move.

The top Turkish envoy urged the General Assembly, which is scheduled to hold a rare emergency session on Thursday to discuss the status of Jerusalem, to move against the U.S. decision with "a strongest support possible."

"Not only Muslims but also the Christians are very disturbed by the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Cavusoglu said in Istanbul at a joint press conference with his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki before leaving for the United States.

Following her country's veto of the Egypt-drafted request on Monday, U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley tweeted that "the U.S. will be taking names" of those criticizing its choice at the General Assembly.

"What are you going to do after taking the names? Are you going to punish those countries too?" Cavusoglu demanded, adding that "the world rebels against injustice now. No dignified state will submit to such repression. Nobody will bow to this pressure."

In response to the unilateral decision made by U.S. President Donald Trump on Dec. 6, Turkey called for an extraordinary summit of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul on Dec. 13, which declared East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine "under occupation."

Trump's decision has sparked clashes and protests in countries from the world, as the status of Jerusalem is among core issues to be settled through negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 07:00:09|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

DUBLIN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The national average house rent in Ireland has risen 7 percent higher than the boom-time peak recorded a decade ago, said a government agency here on Wednesday.

The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), a government-run organization responsible for registering tenancies and dealing with disputes between tenants and landlords in Ireland, said that the monthly house rent paid by new tenants in the country reached a national average of 1,056 euros (1,254 U.S. dollars) in the third quarter of 2017, up nearly 7 percent compared with the previous high of 988 euros recorded in the last quarter of 2007.

In Dublin, the capital of the country, the average monthly rent paid was 1,518 euros, up 9.8 percent compared with the third quarter of last year, with the average in the greater Dublin area (Meath, Wicklow and Kildare) standing at 1,086 euros, a 6.5 percent increase over a year ago, said the RTB.

The house rent in Ireland witnessed a sharp decline after the global financial crisis. However, the local house rental market has witnessed a consistent rise after hitting the lowest point of 746 euros per month in the first quarter of 2012.

Rosalind Carroll, Director of the RTB, attributed the recovery of the Irish house rental market mainly to demographic and economic growth matched with low levels of supply in the country.

She said that nearly 30,000 new tenancies were registered across the country in the July-September period of this year, 6,000 more compared with the same period of last year, adding that the rapid rise in demand would continue to put significant pressure on the private rental market and those trying to find a place to live in the country. (1 euro = 1.19 U.S. dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 13:42:28|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

HOUSTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Governor of the U.S. state of Texas Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas still needs more from the federal government to recover from Hurricane Harvey.

On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled a disaster aid package of 81 billion U.S. dollars to help hurricane-ravaged communities and states hit by wildfires.

According to Abbott, Texas is paying for 10 percent of the Hurricane Harvey debris removal costs for some cities and counties in the state, with the federal government paying the other 90 percent.

Abbott said the 90-10 split deal and the 81-billion-dollar relief plan are just a start and Texas still needs more from the federal government.

"It is clear that the House (of Representatives) is doing a good job of increasing the amount of money that would be allocated," Abbott said. "What's important to emphasize is we have dug into the details that the strategies are being used to appropriate that money are not necessarily the strategies that are best for what the state of Texas needs."

Abbott also said he expects to see mitigation efforts, including a third Houston reservoir paid for with federal money.

Hurricane Harvey blew ashore on Aug. 25 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and damaging nearly 200,000 homes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 13:52:31|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Taliban shadow governor for Khanabad of Kunduz province Mawlawi Dost Mohammad was killed in a mine blast on Thursday, army spokesman in the province Abdul Khalil said.

"Mawlawi Dost Mohammad, the shadow governor for Khanabad district, was killed in a mine blast and his bodyguard was injured early today morning after they were fleeing from Ebrahim Khil village," Khalil told Xinhua.

Cleanup operations have been continuing in parts of Khanabad district over the past few days.

Taliban militants who have presence in parts of Khanabad district are yet to make comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:12:35|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

TAIYUAN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- North China's coal-rich Shanxi Province has banned random exploitation of 39 nature reserves.

An environmental inspection team from the central government has found various illegal exploitation projects within the province's nature reserve areas and has urged the local government to take measures.

Only construction projects at state or provincial level can now apply for an adjustment in the existing range of nature reserves, the Shanxi environmental protection bureau said Wednesday.

China's State Council earlier this year made public a guideline to support the economic transformation of Shanxi.

By 2020, the share of coal mining and preliminary processing in the province's output should have seen a notable decline.

The province must seek better "ecological civilization" and create a "beautiful Shanxi" by stepping up environment rehabilitation in coal mine regions, conducting strict water resource management and pushing for economical energy use.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:12:36|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Up to 19 insurgents were arrested during a special operation in Afghanistan northern province of Balkh, a local official said Thursday.

The security forces launched overnight operations in Fatima Khil area of Chamtal district resulting in arrest of 19 militants, Nasratullah Jamshidi, an army spokesman in the northern region, said.

The Taliban militants who have been fighting the government forces in parts of the province haven't commented on the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:22:40|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

NEW DELHI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A special court in the national capital Thursday acquitted all the accused, including the country's former Telecom Minister A. Raja, in the multi-billion dollar telecom scam, India's biggest corruption scandal.

Special Judge O.P. Saini freed Raja and 19 other accused, including three companies, saying that the prosecution failed to prove its case against them in the scam.

The scandal pertains to the misselling of bandwidth to telecom companies in 2008 by Raja, who was the telecom minister in previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, thus causing a loss of 40 billion U.S. dollars to exchequer.

The scandal came to light only in 2010 when the top government auditor pointed out the loss due to the selling of the second generation frequency licences by Raja to few telecom companies on a "first-come, first-served" basis, instead of an auction. Raja denies any wrongdoing.

Other accused freed in the case included Raja's party colleague K. Kanimozhi and top executives of some private telecom companies. Raja's regional DMK party of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was an ally in the then United Progressive Alliance government.

In February 2012, India's Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecommunications licences awarded to companies in 2008. "Licences after January 2008 are quashed. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will make fresh allocations by auction," the court said.

India is one of the world's fastest growing markets for mobile phones with over 900 million connections.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:27:40|Editor: liuxin

Video Player Close

CHANGCHUN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand sold 3 million vehicles in the Chinese market as of Wednesday, breaking an all-time high in a single year, the company said Thursday.

China remains the brand's biggest single market, with sales of SUVs still robust, according the company.

The company planned to launch at least four new SUV models in 2018 to meet strong demand.

With sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) registering strong growth in the world's largest car market, Volkswagen also plans to invest over 10 billion Euros in the Chinese NEV market and launch about 40 NEV models by 2025.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:27:41|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

HOUSTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The passage in the U.S. Congress of a new tax bill on Wednesday could lead to further investments in the oil and gas industry, experts said.

Scott Desmarais, with consulting firm McKinsey & Company, predicted that big companies in the energy sector will be the main beneficiaries of the Republican measure as it lowers the corporate tax rate.

"The cash that that frees up allows them to think about, and gives them more confidence in, some potential investments to improve and increase production, or increase productivity overall," he told local radio broadcaster Houston Public Media.

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, also expected the overhaul to "unleash" oil and gas activity, according to the Houston Public Media report.

If the low oil prices stay steady, it will be easier for companies to spend money to improve technological efficiency in the industry, something they have been focusing on for a while.

Desmarais said some companies are considering "bolder and more confident moves."

The U.S. Congress on Wednesday approved the tax bill which would cut the country's tax on a scale not seen in the past three decades, awaiting President Donald Trump to sign it into law.

All the 48 Democratic senators were against the bill in a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday. It was narrowly passed and sent to the House for a procedural vote.

Opponents to the legislation are concerned that the change will widen income inequality and swell public debt.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:27:41|Editor: Xiang Bo

Video Player Close

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's younger generation is facing rising debt, while the older generation has less living costs, boosting worry about the prolonged low birth rate amid the aging population, data showed Thursday.

According to data jointly released by Statistics Korea, the Bank of Korea (BOK) and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), householders aged under 30 have an average debt of 23.85 million won (22,000 U.S. dollars) as of the end of March.

It was the lowest debt in the age group, but it marked the fastest growth rate of 41.9 percent compared with 16.81 million won (15,600 U.S. dollars) tallied a year earlier.

Debts owed by householders in their 30s averaged 68.72 million won as of end-March, up 16.1 percent from a year ago. It was the second-highest expansion in the all age group.

Household debts averaged 7,022,000 won (65,000 U.S. dollars) for all ages as of end-March, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier.

Financial soundness worsened the most among those in their 20s and 30s. The ratio of financial debts to disposable income jumped by 23.2 percentage points in the cited period among householders aged under 30.

It was the fastest increase in the age group, followed by householders in their 30s who saw the ratio surge by 12.6 percentage points in the same period.

The ratio for all households added 4 percentage points over the year to 121.4 percent as of end-March as financial debts grew at a faster pace than disposable income.

The growing debts facing the younger generation came amid mounting concern about a high unemployment rate.

The official jobless rate among youths aged 15 to 29 was 9.2 percent in November, but the sentiment rate including discouraged job seekers and those doing part-time jobs against their will stood at 21.4 percent last month.

According to some of local media speculations, almost half of college graduates here failed to get a decent job for long even after graduation. Many of college graduates were estimated to live on debts or live on part-time jobs to study and prepare to enter a big corporation.

Amid difficulties in finding a job, South Korean youths delayed marriage and postponed having baby, dragging down the already low birth rate further. Low birth rate will pull down potential growth rate of the South Korean economy as it reduces the number of working age population and weighs down on private consumption.

Meanwhile, the older generation struggled to get proper living costs after retirement. According to the joint data, nearly two thirds of after-retirement householders had difficulty because of lack of living costs.

About 40 percent of families having retired householders lacked proper living expenses, while 22.4 percent was very lack of appropriate living costs.

The least living cost for after-retirement households was estimated at 1.92 million won (1,770 U.S. dollars) a month, while the proper living cost was estimated at 2.76 million won (2,550 U.S. dollars).

The expected retirement age of householders was believed to be 66.8 years old, but the actual retirement age was 62.1 years old on average, the data showed.

The shortage of living expenses for the older generation boosted worry about the population aging. South Korea has one of the world's fastest-aging population.

South Korea's government unveiled a series of measures to offer retirement pensions, but the annuity fell far short of appropriate living costs for retirees.

It already became a serious social problem. In addition, the rising number of retirees would increase tax burden for the younger generation already struggling to get a job and repay rising debts.
In 2017, pictures of children in violence-hit Kashmir went viral creating a storm on the internet.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : 2017 has been a rather tragic year for Kashmiris. And nothing captured the sorrow and pain that the people felt more than three photographs that went viral.

The photographs were of three girls who lost a parent and were captured off guard.

A frame capturing eight-year-old Zohra with tears rolling down her cheeks at the funeral of her father in August became a symbol of the senseless violence that people of J&K face.

advertisement

Zohra's father Abdul Rashid Peer from Qazigund was a policeman and was killed in a militant attack in Anantnag.

Her tearful face choked every voice and melted countless hearts.

On December 11 a similar picture of another little girl broke millions of hearts on the internet. The photo of a teary six-month-old Maryam with her father went viral.

Her mother Misra Banoo had just been killed during an encounter in their village of Handwara in North Kashmir between security forces and the militants.

Later the police said she was killed in the crossfire. Twenty-five-year-old Misra was married to Ishfaq Ahmad Wani.

On the evening of December 19, internet timelines were rocked with yet another heart-wrenching picture. This time it was of 11-month-old toddler Azra from a village in Shopian of South Kashmir.

The photo of a bereaved man holding his daughter with a bottle of milk created a virtual storm of emotions.

Azra had lost her mother Rubeena Jan on that day in what the police again termed as an incident of crossfire. An encounter had been raging on in their village and two militants were killed.

But Rubeena didn't die during the gunfight, she died later on.

A lot of people had come out to protest against the encounter, something that has been seen happening a lot during encounters in Kashmir lately.

According to her family, she was hit by a bullet from the security forces as she leaned out of a window to watch the protest.

This has been one of the more bloody years in recent memory. Security forces have so far claimed that more than 200 militants have been killed in Operation

All Out that has been mounted as an offensive against militants in rural Kashmir. Scores of men in uniform have also been killed as well a number of civilians.

In a reply in the Lok Sabha, the government said that 37 civilians were killed till December-the highest so far.

And every such death leaves behind a story of a helpless Zohra, a Maryam or an Azra.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 14:42:44|Editor: liuxin

Video Player Close

WUHAN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China's Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles Co. Ltd., known as Dongfeng Trucks, has recently signed a dealership agreement with Services Machinery Trucks (SMT) Africa to jointly distribute Dongfeng trucks in Africa.

Dongfeng Trucks will benefit from SMT's large network and extensive logistics to ensure the availability of genuine parts across the region. Meanwhile, its trucks will complete SMT's product portfolio in Africa

The move has been seen as part of the parent company Dongfeng Motor Group's efforts to improve its global aftersales service network.

According to Si Tu, vice-general manager of Dongfeng Trucks, customers care most about the reliability of their trucks, and parts and maintenance is crucial to improving reliability. "This is one of the reasons why we choose to cooperate with SMT Africa," he said.

Chinese vehicles do well in overseas markets due to their low prices, but good aftersales service should follow this, said Liu Weidong, vice-general manager of Dongfeng Motor Group.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, exports of Chinese vehicles for the first 11 months reached 797,000, up 26.6 percent year-on-year.

The rising momentum is accompanied with changes in the overseas expansion plans of Chinese automakers, as they are working to improve their services by establishing assembly plants, parts factories and "4S stores," which include sales, spare parts, service and surveyed feedback, all over the world.

Dongfeng Motor Group, which exported 59,000 vehicles during the first 11 months, a 70 percent rise from the same period last year, has set up factories in countries including Iran, Vietnam and Malaysia. In Russia alone, it has established a sales network of over 40 sales outlets.

In the next five years, the automaker expects to launch over 40 models in more than 70 countries and regions, and expand its sales and aftersales service locations to 912 and 971 respectively.

In December, three Chinese auto giants, Dongfeng Motor Group, FAW Group Corp., and Changan Automobile Co., signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement to jointly explore overseas business partners, manufacturing facilities and logistics services.
Ukrainian serviceman patrols area after recent shelling in the government-held village of Novoluhanske, Ukraine, December 19, 2017. (REUTERS PHOTO)

KIEV, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday reached an agreement on a fresh round of ceasefire and a prisoner exchange between the conflicting sides, a spokesperson for Kiev's delegate said.

Darka Olifer, the spokesperson for Ukraine's representative in the group Leonid Kuchma, wrote on Facebook said that the indefinite ceasefire in the conflict-hit region will be launched on midnight Dec. 23 to enable civilians quietly celebrate the winter holidays.

During the group's meeting, she said, the representatives of the Ukrainian government and pro-independence insurgents have confirmed their readiness to exchange the detained persons before the New Year and Christmas holidays.

The participants of the meeting have expressed a "joint commitment to the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements," Olifer said.

The comprehensive ceasefire and the prisoner swap are the key parts of the Minsk peace agreements designed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014.

Previously, the Ukrainian government and insurgents have declared more than 30 rounds of the truce, which helped to ease the hostilities in the restive area.

Kiev believes that insurgents are holding at least 162 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians captured in the conflict, while rebels estimate that the government is holding 309 of their supporters.

The trilateral contact group is a group of representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that was formed as means to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the armed conflict in the Donbas region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:03:05|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's top nuclear negotiator for the six-party talks left for Japan Thursday to discuss the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, Seoul's foreign ministry said.

Lee Do-hoon, special envoy for the Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs who represents South Korea in the suspended six-way nuclear disarmament talks, made a two-day trip to Japan to meet with his Japanese counterpart Kenji Kanasugi.

It was the follow-up meeting of South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha's talks in Tokyo Tuesday with her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono, the foreign ministry said.

The chief negotiators of South Korea and Japan for the six-party talks would share assessment on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear and missile program following the DPRK's test-launch in late November of what it called Hwasong-15, a newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Lee and Kanasugi will also discuss measures to manage security situations on the Korean Peninsula and prod Pyongyang to return to a meaningful dialogue table, according to the South Korean ministry.

The six-party talks for the denuclearized Korean Peninsula, which involve South Korea, the DPRK, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, have been halted since late 2008.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:13:08|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- When China's top leaders emphasized efforts to control financial risks last year, few expected policymakers would go so far and hard in its financial clean-up for 2017.

In what some dubbed the "toughest year" for China's financial industry, the hand of regulation is everywhere, be it in traditional institutions like banks or emerging Internet finance businesses like micro lenders.

The hardline stance is set to continue. At the Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded Wednesday, senior leaders agreed to maintain the resolute crackdown on irregular and illegal activities in the financial sector to forestall risks.

"The meeting sent a signal that regulations on the financial industry will further tighten as a healthy and stable financial market is key for China's sustainable development," said Yang Zhiyong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

REGULATION STORM

Throughout 2017, authorities have taken real steps to curb widespread malfeasance in the rapidly expanding financial market.

Banks, insurance and securities companies have received heavy fines for flouting market rules, and Internet finance companies once prospering on easy and fat profits are having a difficult time to survive with the enhanced rules.

In the first ten months, China's banking regulatory authorities imposed administrative penalties in 2,617 cases of irregularities in the industry, with fines totalling 667 million yuan (about 101.4 million U.S. dollars) for state-owned banks, joint-equity banks and city commercial banks.

Shadow banking, one of the most dangerous risk points for China's economy, is being put under greater scrutiny as regulators tighten their grip on interbank activities and off-balance-sheet wealth management products.

For loosely regulated emerging businesses, Chinese regulators earlier this month specified new rules to clean up the cash loan, or micro lending, market, which dealt a heavy blow to stock prices of China's micro lenders.

The regulation storm is producing the desired results: the non-performing loan ratios of commercial banks are stabilizing, corporate debt is coming down, and irregular financing activities in the property market are being effectively curtailed.

Considering the complexities and size of China's financial market, policymakers have also decided to to create a new committee for financial stability and development to enhance inter-agency coordination.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Ratna Sahay, deputy director of IMF's monetary and capital market department, said if Chinese authorities were able to address potential concerns such as rapid credit growth and complex financial products, the country could go through the transformation process safe and sound.

TOUGH TIMES AHEAD

The latest message from China's top leadership is that there will be no let-up in the crackdown.

Prevention of financial risks is key for China to win what central authorities have called the three tough battles, namely controlling risks, reducing poverty and tackling pollution.

In the coming three years, China will seek to foster a "virtuous circle" between finance and the real economy, between finance and the property sector as well as one within the financial system, according to the statement.

Compared with the statement from last year, analysts have noticed the absence of "deleveraging" in the wording.

"Although the statement did not mention deleveraging, financial risk control is still a priority given that defusing major risks is one of the three tough battles that the country vowed to fight," said a research note from a team under the China International Capital Corporation.

"While short-term vulnerabilities in the financial market have been partly patched up, China needs to foster a long-term mechanism to provide more solid support for risk prevention," said Zeng Gang, a CASS researcher.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:18:09|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

KABUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Up to 1,600 militants loyal to the Islamic State (IS) have been killed in Afghanistan over the past nine months, local news agency Pajhwok reported on Thursday.

Citing the Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, the agency asserted that 300 commanders of the group are also among those killed over the period and 8,500 others sustained injuries.

The official, however, didn't mention the possible casualties of security forces in the war against IS militants in the militancy-hit country.

IS militants who have been fighting against government in parts of the eastern Nangarhar province and isolated areas of the northern region over the past two years, haven't commented on the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:18:09|Editor: Yang Yi

Video Player Close

Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo (L front)and Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn (R front) shake hands after signing the cooperation agreement on projects of LMC Special Fund in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Dec. 21, 2017. China provided 7.3 million U.S. dollars from the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Special Fund to Cambodia on Thursday for carrying out a variety of projects in the kingdom. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China provided 7.3 million U.S. dollars from the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Special Fund to Cambodia on Thursday for carrying out a variety of projects in the kingdom.

Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo and Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn signed the cooperation agreement on projects of LMC Special Fund here.

China initiated the LMC Special Fund during the first LMC Leaders' meeting in Sanya of China's southern Hainan province in March 2016 with the aim of supporting the small and medium-sized cooperation projects put forward by the six Lancang-Mekong countries.

The six Lancang-Mekong countries include China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Speaking after the signing ceremony, Ambassador Xiong said Cambodia had the largest number of applications and approval of the first batch of LMC Special Fund projects, which truly demonstrated the country's positive attitude and enthusiasm towards the LMC.

"We are confident that the smooth implementation of these projects will surely be conducive to Cambodia's efforts in accelerating development, improving people's livelihood, and building a Lancang-Mekong community of shared future," he said.

Sokhonn expressed his appreciation to China for approving and financing 16 Cambodian projects for the first batch projects of LMC Special Fund with a total amount of 7.3 million U.S. dollars.

He said the projects covered a variety of areas including agriculture, tourism, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), public health, education and research, water resources, rural development, air connectivity, and cultural and religious exchanges.

"Today's ceremony reaffirms our strong confidence in this growing sub-regional mechanism, which is clearly project- and cooperation-based," Sokhonn said. "We anticipate that these cooperation projects will contribute to the sustainable development, promotion of connectivity and people-to-people exchange within the Lancang-Mekong region."

Meanwhile, the minister said Cambodia will be hosting the second LMC Leaders' meeting on Jan. 10, 2018. At the end of the meeting, a Phnom Penh Declaration, which charts a vision for the six countries to continue their cooperation, will be released.

LMC mechanism focuses on cooperation in prioritized fields like connectivity, production capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:23:11|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

by Tao Jun, Le Yanna

HANOI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Reciprocal visits of Chinese and Vietnamese leaders in 2017 have revealed a vista of relations between both countries which are now in full bloom, Vietnamese experts said.

In January, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong paid a visit to China in January. In May, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang traveled to Beijing on a state visit. In November, Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Vietnam.

The exchange of visits within one year are evidence that the China-Vietnam relations will be broadened and deepened in the coming time, and that any differences can be solved through negotiations and consultations, said the experts.

The state visit to Vietnam by Xi after the 19th National Congress of the CPC has indicated "a higher political trust and closer cooperation" between the two countries, whose ties will "develop unceasingly," said Vo Dai Luoc, director of Vietnam's Asia-Pacific Economic Center.

The two countries' top leaders agreeing to deepen their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership can be seen from time to time, including during the Vietnamese party chief's visit to Beijing and the Chinese leader's trip to Hanoi, Luoc said.

The two sides have agreed on a list of key projects for trade and economic cooperation in the 2017-2021 period.

"This shows that the two sides have already defined concrete plans for long-term cooperation, not just short-term ones," Luoc, who is also former director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

In addition, memorandums of understanding inked between the two sides have also opened up new fields of cooperation, including renewable energy, e-commerce and cross-border economic zones, Luoc said, adding that the bilateral cooperation is making remarkable contribution to Vietnam's economic growth.

After hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Year 2017, especially the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in November, Vietnam is expected to make great leaps in promoting international economic integration, especially with Pacific Rim countries, including China.

"Economic ties with China will remain a pillar in boosting Vietnam's import and export sectors in 2018 and the following years," Luoc said.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Thien Chi, member of Executive Committee of Ho Chi Minh City's Vietnam-China Friendship Association, believed that reciprocal visits of Vietnamese and Chinese leaders in 2017 have further oriented their foreign policies closer toward each other.

"I strongly believe that the mutual trust shown will be reinforced ceaselessly, the diplomatic ties will develop robustly, and the two-way trade will make a breakthrough in the coming years," Chi said.

Amid complicated changes in the world, the CPC and the CPV have maintained and reinforced high-level contacts, and frequently exchanged views and discussed measures to cope with potential global crises or existing global and regional issues.

The bolstering of cooperation and coordination is conducive to developing stronger ability to adapt to international changes, while following socialism with their own characteristics, said Vietnamese experts.

Luu Bich Ho, former director of the Institute of Development Strategy under the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, said Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era will have profound impacts not only in China but the broader region and the world.

"Along its own socialist path, Vietnam can learn from the success of the 19th National Congress of the CPC and its strategies for deepening reform, promoting innovation, bringing prosperity to people and building a beautiful country," Ho said.

Tran Viet Thai, deputy director-general of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies under the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, said Xi's visit to Vietnam as his first foreign trip after the 19th CPC National Congress highlighted China's implementation of foreign policy in a new period.

"The visit marks a milestone in Vietnam-China relations and creates momentum for practical development in the near future, which is not only beneficial to the two countries, but also to the region and the whole world," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:33:13|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

MANILA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A ferry carrying 251 passengers sunk off Philippines' Quezon province on Thursday, a spokesman for the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) said.

PCG spokesman Armand Balilo told reporters that there are media reports saying a number of passengers were drowned but they are yet to be confirmed.

"We heard reports that there are casualties but we are still validating it," Balilo said.

He said a rescue operation is still going on. "Three rescue boats are on the way to the accident site, some eight to nine miles from the shoreline," he added.

He said the ferry left a port in Real town, Quezon, and was on the way to Polilio, an island in the northeastern region of the Philippine archipelago which is separated from Luzon island by the Polilio Strait.

Balilo said authorities are looking into the cause of the accident. However, he said it could be due to the inclement weather.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 16:53:22|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (2nd R) meets with visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan (2nd L) in Tashkent Dec. 20, 2017. (Xinhua/Sadat)

TASHKENT, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan here Wednesday, expressing willingness to improve practical cooperation in various fields.

Mirziyoyev said China is a close friend and reliable partner of Uzbekistan, which adheres to the one-China policy and supports the Belt and Road Initiative.

Uzbekistan is ready to cooperate with China in a comprehensive way to serve the interests of both peoples and maintain regional peace and stability, said the president.

Chang said China and Uzbekistan have a long history of friendship and their relationship entered a new era in 2017, when the two countries celebrated the 25th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic ties.

He said China is willing to work with Uzbekistan to implement the consensuses reached by the two countries' heads of state and strengthen relations between the two countries and militaries, so as to contribute to a better comprehensive strategic partnership.

Earlier in the day, Chang also held talks here with his Uzbek counterpart.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 17:23:31|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

MANILA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A ferry carrying 251 passengers sank off Philippine Quezon province in high waves on Thursday, killing at least four people, a hospital staff said.

The administrator of the Claro M. Recto district hospital in Infanta, Quezon said at least 11 survivors were also brought to the hospital.

Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Armand Balilo told reporters that the PCG received reports that some passengers drowned but that they had yet to confirm the report.

He said a rescue operation was underway. "Three rescue boats are on the way to the accident site, some 8 to 9 miles from the shoreline," he added.

The ferry left a port in Real, a town Quezon province, around 8:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) and was on the way to Polilio, an island in the northeastern region of the Philippine archipelago which is separated from Luzon island by the Polilio Strait.

The vessel reportedly sank an hour after it left the port.

Spokesman Balilo said they were still determining the cause of the accident. However, he said that it could be caused by the inclement weather.

He said the ferry, a fast craft, has a capacity to carry 286 passengers.

There are no reports of Chinese passengers on the ferry as of now, an official from the Chinese embassy in the Philippines told Xinhua.
By PTI: (Eds: Updates with polling percentage)

Chennai, Dec 21 (PTI) Polling progressed at a brisk pace in the R K Nagar assembly constituency here, with an estimated 41 per cent of the electorate casting their votes by 1 PM in the prestigious by-election.

Election authorities said 41.6 per cent of the 2,28,234 voters in the constituency exercised their franchise by 1 PM and there were no reports of any untoward incident so far.

advertisement

A few issues related to Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were immediately sorted out and polling was "brisk", they said.

The by-election is being held to fill the vacancy caused by the death of sitting MLA and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

Earlier, polling began at 8 AM, with people arriving to exercise their franchise across booths in the constituency in North Chennai, braving the misty conditions.

R K Nagar, represented twice by Jayalalithaa, has an electorate strength of 2,28,234 -- comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

The key contenders in the poll are ruling AIADMKs E Madhusudhanan, main opposition DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh and sidelined AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, contesting as an Independent.

The bypoll is being seen as an acid test for the AIADMK, as it is the first election since the death of Jayalalithaa and after it got the Two Leaves election symbol back following the merger of the factions led by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his present deputy and former rebel O Panneerselvem.

Jailed leader V K Sasikala-Dhinakaran camp lost the symbol case before the Election Commission which last month held that the EPS and OPS group commanded majority in the partys organisational and legislature wings.

Though as many as 59 candidates are in the fray including from the BJP, it is mainly seen as a fight between the AIADMK, its rival faction led by Dhinakaran and DMK.

Madhusudanan is a party veteran who hails from the constituency. Ganesh too hails from the area.

Elaborate security arrangements are in place with about 2,000 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces, including CRPF, deployed across 256 polling stations.

The polling process is being monitored by nine observers, considered the highest for a single assembly constituency.

This includes general, special, police and expenditure officials. PTI SA VGN VS SMN

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 17:23:32|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Commerce said Thursday that the United States should work with China to maintain healthy and stable bilateral ties.

"Abandoning the Cold War mentality and hegemony, the world's two largest economies would maintain win-win cooperation and mutual development, and together could push prosperity in the global economy," the ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a press briefing.

Commenting on the newly released U.S. national security strategy report, Gao said the report had raised global concerns about the stability of the world's economy.

The report, released by U.S. President Donald Trump Monday, refers to China and Russia as "revisionist powers," and lists them as "competitors" seeking to alter the status quo that favors the United States.

"As the world's economic recovery remained sluggish, a stable expectation would be crucial for maintaining the recovery momentum," Gao said.

He said the new type of international relationship should not be one of zero-sum competition, and China had always viewed the United States and other economic and trade partners as cooperators, but not competitors.

"China has never engaged in, and will never pursue so-called economic aggression policies," the spokesman said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 17:38:39|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

ISTANBUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- For those in Turkey who wish to make a small fortune to greet the New Year, buying lottery tickets from a well-known kiosk at Eminonu Square in central Istanbul is a good bet.

The reason is simple: the booth has sold more tickets which rake in good money for its owners than others in the history of the Turkish national lottery.

So many braved a wet and cold Wednesday afternoon, queuing up in front of the kiosk to try their luck, a regular spectacle during this season of the year.

It took about three hours to have one's turn, but Aytac Turan did not care, waiting in line patiently under pouring rain.

"We will wait no matter how long it takes," he said. "Three hours or five, it doesn't matter."

The lottery tickets are for New Year's Eve draw with a grand prize of 61 million Turkish lira (about 16 million U.S. dollars), a fortune appealing to all.

The fact that the booth approached by Turan and the others is run by the family of Nimet Abla, or Big Sis Nimet, a legendary lottery dealer, makes everyone much more confident about their luck.

Nimet Abla began to sell lottery tickets of the Turkish Aeronautical Association in 1928, five years after the Turkish Republic was founded. She became well-known in 1931, when she sold the winning ticket of a grand prize of 100,000 Turkish lira.

Ever since, lottery tickets sold by her kiosk have won numerous hefty prizes year by year, including one fourth of last year's jackpot, a feat that has brought an incredible fame to the booth, which was taken over by Nimet Abla's descendants following her death in 1978.

"Buying the New Year's lottery tickets from Nimet Abla has become a tradition in the entire Turkey," said Turan.

For Sendil Gokdemir, a woman in her 50s, things have not gone well this year but she believed things would get better next year. "That's why I decided to pay a visit to Nimet Abla as I really believe in her luck," she said.

Other dealers across the city have mobilized their employees to the square, transforming the area into a huge lottery ticket market.

"Same ticket, same chance," some dealers were chanting, trying to draw the attention of the buyers lining up.

"When I ask people not to wait for Nimet Abla but buy tickets from me, they say they enjoy waiting while they dream of becoming a billionaire," said Ayse Sarac, a ticket dealer for 27 years.

"I suppose this is the entire belief of this tradition," she added.

Even though online sales are available with Nimet Abla, most people prefer to buy their tickets from the kiosk as a years-old habit, according to a worker with the booth.

The worker said the kiosk has to hire additional security guards this year to cope with a massive influx of buyers, as many come from other provinces.

Eighty percent of lottery tickets in Nimet Abla have been sold following the announcement of the prize draw on the first day of this month.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 17:43:41|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday urged the EU to abide by WTO rules and avoid abusing trade remedy measures.

The EU has described China's economy as distorted in a recent report.

"The relevant report makes irresponsible remarks on China's economy and take unfair measures to China through creating various pretexts, but the report does not mention the EU's own actions in violation of WTO rules," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Thursday. "It is hypocritical to have double standards," she said. "Using zero-sum game mentality to deal with reciprocal cooperation will injure others and harm [the EU] itself."

"In recent years, China's economic development has made historic achievements, providing important material conditions for development and reform in other fields, and making important contribution to the stability and growth of the world economy," Hua said. "The socialist economy with Chinese characteristics has a bright future."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 17:58:45|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

NEW DELHI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Indian government has approved medical visas to three ailing Pakistani nationals including a 13-year-old girl, officials said Thursday.

The confirmation was given by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj.

Swaraj took to Twitter to announce its ministry's decision to approve the medical visas of people from neighbouring Pakistan.

"Pakistan nationals Fatima Naeem (13), Mansoor Bhagani and Shehab Asif have sought medical visa for their treatment in India. We have approved their visa," Swaraj tweeted.

Swaraj has been proactive and prompt in reaching out to the people especially distressed ones both Indians as well as foreigners.

She has been seen taking cognizance of issues pertaining to her ministry using social media.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 18:08:47|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

KAMPALA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan lawmakers late on Wednesday voted on the controversial constitutional amendment bill for the removal of the presidential age limit of 75 years amid tension.

A total of 315 lawmakers mainly from the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party voted for the amendment of Article 102 (b) to scrap the presidential age limit of 75 years, which will now allow incumbent President Yoweri Museveni to run in the 2021 elections.

At least 62 legislators, mainly opposition, voted against and two abstained from the bill that now removes a cap that barred any Ugandan citizen below the age of 35 or older than 75 years to hold office of the president in the East African country.

Opposition and campaigners who are opposed to the bill argue that the move by the ruling NRM is intended to allow Museveni, now 73, to run in the 2021 elections when he will be over 75.

The NRM used its numerical strength in Parliament to attain the two-thirds majority, which was 289 lawmakers out of the 434 to pass the new law after the third reading.

"After an extensive and exhausting day, the Constitution Amendment Bill No. 2 (2017) is passed," said Rebecca Kadage, the Speaker of Parliament.

The bill also reinstated and entrenched the two five-year presidential term term limits.

Uganda once had the presidential term limits but were scrapped off in 2005 amid accusations that the move was meant to favor President Museveni.

The legislators also voted to extend their parliamentary and local government term of office from the current five years to seven years, starting with the current term, which was set to expire in 2021.

The bill's tabling, debate and passing has witnessed chaotic scenes, brawls and suspensions in the last three months.

At least 24 opposition lawmakers were in September suspended and violently ejected from the parliamentary chambers by plainclothes security officers.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 18:13:49|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

GUIYANG, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Guizhou Province has set up a 20 billion yuan (3 billion U.S. dollars) fund to help provide clean tap water for both rural and urban residents.

The fund is part of a massive 300 billion yuan poverty relief fund in the poverty-stricken mountainous province.

Guizhou Water Investment Water Affairs Group Thursday said local authorities would contribute 15 percent of the fund and the Industrial Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China will provide the rest.

"The company will spend the money building new or expanding existing tap water plants and safe drinking water projects in the urban and rural areas," said Qin Liqi, president of Guizhou Water Investment Water Affairs Group.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 18:28:53|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

ISTANBUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkish police on Thursday detained at least 55 people suspected of links with the Islamic State (IS) in anti-terror operations in Istanbul and the western city of Izmir, local media reported.

Simultaneous operations were launched in 12 places in Istanbul, in which 45 foreign nationals reportedly planning to carry out attacks were captured, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

According to CNNTurk, Izmir public prosecutor issued detention warrants for 11 suspected IS members, whose nationalities were not revealed.

Police detained 10 suspects while the rest one was still on the run, the report said.

Digital material and documents linked to the group were also seized in the operations, the reports said.

Security measures are being stepped up in Istanbul's Beyoglu district as the New Year sets in.

Ismail Kilic, the district police chief, announced on Wednesday that New Year celebrations at the iconic Taksim Square were banned this year due to security reasons.

Abdulkadir Masharipov, a Uzbek national, shot dead 39 people at Istanbul's Reina nightclub on New Year's Eve this year.

The IS claimed responsibility soon after the shooting spree.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 18:28:54|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

NAIROBI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Lack of funding is threatening the operations of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an African Union (AU) official said Thursday.

Francisco Madeira, Special Representative of the Chairperson of the AU Commission for Somalia and Head of AMISOM, said the inadequate funding threatened the operations of peacekeepers and the Somali security forces.

"Without funding, little can happen to move forward with certain undertakings already made on the security front," he said during a media briefing in Nairobi.

Madeira said AMISOM needs support to conduct the last leg of military operations to recover territory that remains under the control of Al-Shabaab militants.

"We are planning elaborate offensive operations next year mainly in the Jubba valley, Gedo region and Middle Juba regions, areas that still harbor pockets of Al-Shabaab militants," said Madeira.

He revealed that AMISOM has been unable to undertake military operations in the recent past due to limitations in personnel, logistics and others.

"We need urgent support to recover the territories that are currently under Al-Shabaab," the envoy noted.

The Envoy observed that the Somali security forces need to be capacitated to take over the security responsibilities since the drawdown of AMISOM troops from Somalia entails the handover of some of the Forward Operating Bases in the sectors to the Somali National Army.

"A stable Somalia is critical for stability across the East African region and beyond. If we do not decisively address the threat of Al-Shabaab, they will continue to pose a danger to the whole world," he warned.

A review of the AU Mission in Somalia that was carried out by the African Union and the UN, during the course of the year, recommended a gradual and phased reduction and re-organization of the AU Mission.

The UN Security Council Resolution 2372(2017) extended AMISOM's mandate to 31 May 2018 and authorizes troop reduction, starting this December, as the Somali government progressively takes over AMISOM's tasks.

1,000 peace keepers have already left Somalia while a similar number will leave by May next year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 18:44:00|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- "Sharing" and "original aspiration" have been chosen as the Chinese Character and Word of the Year 2017, respectively, in China, according to a survey released Thursday.

The survey also chose "intelligence" and "a community with a shared future for mankind" as the international Chinese Character and Word of the Year, respectively, for 2017.

Sharing is taken from the term word "sharing economy," a business model which has become popular in China during the past few years.

The saying "remain true to our 'original aspiration' and continue marching forward" has been widely publicized by Chinese leaders and officials on many occasions.

In 2017, artificial intelligence was one of the most discussed ideas in the world, and "a community with a shared future for mankind" was a concept that China promoted constantly on the global stage, representing the search for a more equal, peaceful and open world.

Experts say that the chosen characters and words reflect the news, life, and public thought in China, reflecting the changing times.

The winning Chinese characters and words were chosen from several thousand recommendations and 200 million hits by Internet users over the last month.

The Character and Word of the Year has been going for 12 years. This year's survey was conducted by the Chinese National Language Monitoring and Research Center, the Commercial Press, People.cn and QQ.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 19:39:16|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

WUHAN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Work has started on the building of a cargo airport in central China's Hubei Province, designed as one of the largest air cargo hubs in the region.

The airport in Ezhou City will primarily serve delivery companies. Industry leader SF Express was the first to move in. The hub's first eight projects -- including power supply, sewage treatment and resettlement housing -- with a combined cost of 18 billion yuan (2.7 billion U.S. dollars) broke new ground Wednesday, the local government said.

Ezhou is located in China's central region, from which the country's major cities can be reached by air in less than one-and-a-half hours.

The government of Ezhou said the hub was expected to handle 2.45 million tonnes of cargo annually by 2025 and 7.65 million tonnes by 2045.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) Pakistan and Sri Lanka have 681 Indian fishermen in their custody, the government informed the Rajya Sabha today.

In written response to a question in the Upper House, V K Singh, the Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, said 537 fishermen were in jails in Pakistan while 144 were in Sri Lankan jails.

advertisement

Pakistan has 1,000 boats and Sri Lanka has 144 boats of Indian fishermen in their custody.

Singh, however, said that Pakistan has not acknowledged the number of Indian fishermen and boats in their custody.

"The state of bilateral relations between India and Pakistan impinges on the release and repatriation of Indian fishermen. Even in the absence of a structured bilateral dialogue, both sides have released fishermen," Singh said.

He added that in 2017, India secured the release and repatriation of 363 Indian fishermen, of which 245 were released in the last six months.

Following the 2+2 initiative when the foreign and fisheries ministers of India and Sri Lanka met last year, it was agreed that the ministers of fisheries from the two sides will meet every six months.

The 3rd meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) and the 2nd Ministerial meeting was held on October 13 and 14 in New Delhi.

"As a result of sustained diplomatic efforts, the government has so far secured the release of 347 fishermen from Sri Lankan custody," he added.

In response to another question on the Rohingya issue, Singh said during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Myanmar, the matter was raised with the Myanmerese leadership and the two countries agreed that the only lasting solution to the problem lay in overall development of Rakhine state.

In order to meet the pressing relief needs of the displaced persons, India has supplied essential regiments to about 30,000 people in Bangladesh and about 15,000 people in Myanmar in October and November, Singh said. PTI PR SMN

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 19:49:18|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- California's Governor Jerry Brown requested a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration to bolster ongoing state and local recovery efforts in response to the Southern California wildfires on Wednesday.

Brush fires across the region were fed by extremely high winds, low humidity, warm temperatures and dry fuel. More than 200,000 Californians were forced to evacuate by multiple fires.

Over 8,700 firefighters were deployed to fight the fires, including the California National Guard air and ground forces. Twelve states -- Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming -- have deployed resources to help battle the fires, according to a press release of the office of the governor.

The most dynamic brush fire, dubbed the Thomas Fire, which broke out on Dec. 4 in Ventura County, has burned more than 270,000 acres (1,092 square km), destroyed over 1,000 structures and resulted in two fatalities. The fire is only 60 percent contained to date and on track to become the largest fire in the history of the western U.S. state.

"These fires collectively caused extensive damage to primary residences and infrastructure and continue to pose a direct threat to public health and safety," wrote Brown in the request, noting that the incident is of such severity and magnitude that an effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state of California and affected local governments.

The major disaster declaration aims to bolster ongoing state and local recovery efforts.

"Supplemental federal assistance is necessary," Brown added.

California has endured an unprecedented fire season thus far. Brown has proclaimed states of emergency for 19 fire events throughout the state since July and there have been over 8,747 fire starts in California since January.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 19:54:19|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China will work to ease market access restrictions on foreign investment and push the opening of the manufacturing, producer services and financial sectors, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday.

The country will push for nationwide implementation of a pre-establishment national treatment system as well as a negative list, which determines industries in which foreign participation is prohibited or limited, the ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a press briefing.

The country will also improve its mechanism for foreign investors to file complaints and protect their legal interests, Gao said.

Efforts will be made to attract more foreign investment into the country's central and western regions, while improving the quality of investment, he said.

Foreign direct investment into the Chinese mainland rose 9.8 percent year on year to reach 803.62 billion yuan (around 122 billion U.S. dollars) in the first 11 months. The growth was much faster than the 1.9-percent year-on-year increase registered in the first 10 months.

Chinese leaders have reiterated that the country will not close its door to the world, but rather the door will only open wider.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 19:54:20|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

PYONGYANG, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Thursday rejected the U.S. accusation that it was responsible for the Wannacry ransomware attack upon global cyber space in May.

A foreign affairs ministry spokesperson told the official Korean Central News Agency that the United States is now inciting a global confrontation against the DPRK by forcibly linking it to the latest cyber attack incident.

"The U.S., a source of all social evils and a state of global cyber-crimes, is unreasonably accusing the DPRK without any forensic evidence. This cannot be construed otherwise than an expression of its inveterate repugnance towards the DPRK," said the spokesman.

He said the DPRK has nothing to do with the cyber attack and it does not "feel a need to respond, on a case-by-case basis, to such absurd allegations of the U.S."

"However, we can never tolerate the reckless U.S. move of using the issue of cyber-attack for the purpose of making direct accusations against our state," he said.

"This move is a grave political provocation by the U.S. aimed at inducing the international society into a confrontation against the DPRK by tarnishing the image of the dignified country and demonizing it," he added.

The WannaCry ransomware attack affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide. The United States vowed recently that the DPRK would be held accountable for the attack.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:08:03|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

An American teacher and children make tangyuan, a kind of round and sweet dumpling made of glutinous rice flour, to celebrate the upcoming Winter Solstice festival at a kindergarten in Lijiaxiang Township in Changxing County, east China's Zhejiang Province, Dec. 21, 2017. Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, falls on Dec. 22 this year. In Chinese culture, it marks the beginning of deep winter and a break from farming in traditional agricultural society. It is also a time for family gatherings. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:04:22|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

South Africa's ruling party African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa gives a speech at the closing of the 54th National Congress of the ANC in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dec. 21, 2017. The ANC's national conference closed here Thursday, and the party's newly elected leader Cyril Ramaphosa called for the party's members to unite and accept the results of the conference. (Xinhua/David Naicker)

JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's ruling party African National Congress (ANC)'s national conference closed here Thursday, and the party's newly elected leader Cyril Ramaphosa called for the party's members to unite and accept the results of the conference.

Ramaphosa made the call as the 54th National Congress of the ANC closed on Thursday morning.

The ANC on Monday elected Ramaphosa as the party's president for the next five years to replace Jacob Zuma, who is also the current president of the country.

In his first address as the ANC president at the closing ceremony of the conference, Ramaphosa said: "You have decided you want a united leadership. You have crafted songs about how unity in this leadership you have voted for should manifest itself."

Ramaphosa urged the party members to talk less and act more to meet South Africans' desire for the ANC to develop the economy, create jobs and improve the people's livelihood.

"The people want action, not words. They are waiting for action. Our people want an ANC that is true to its mission and lives the values that it espouses," he said.

Ramaphosa said the ANC will accelerate programs of land reform and rural development as part of a radical socio-economic transformation.

He also said that the ANC will revamp the state-owned enterprises to ensure that they serve the people and fight corruption.

"Given all these challenges we are called upon to act against corruption, collusion and other economic crimes prevalent in the public and private sector. This conference has resolved that this must be acted upon and stopped. Corruption has to be stopped and it must happen with immediate effect," Ramaphosa said.

The ANC is in alliance with the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African National Civic Organization. Ramaphosa said the conference has resolved to mend the relations of the alliance.

"The alliance has faced many challenges and problems in the recent past. We will work with our alliance partners to repair relations between the four formations that our people expect to lead the national democratic revolution," he said.

ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule said the conference went well and agreed to work toward strengthening the party to create a prosperous South Africa.

"The ANC commits to the people of South Africa that we shall isolate and root out corrupt tendencies in the public and private sector," Magashule said.

"The ANC committed to speed up services to our people. We depart from this conference fully aware that the work of restoring the integrity of our movement has just begun ... We emerged more united," he said.

The ANC secretary-general said that the party should work to address the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality and "work much harder, to rebuild and unite this glorious movement of our people."

The 54th ANC National Congress began on Saturday in Johannesburg to elect the party's new leader and members of its national executive committee.

Ramaphosa narrowly beat former Africa Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to become the new ANC leader to succeed Zuma, who will remain the president of South Africa until 2019 when South Africa holds its presidential and parliamentary elections.

At the conference that opened on Saturday, Zuma said in his speech that he was ready to retire and join the party veterans.
The following are the most popular Xinhua tweets so far this year.

China sets 2017 growth target

- China sets 2017 growth target at around 6.5%. What's your take on that? Xinhua correspondent Helen Bentley shares her observations

Xi visits U.S.

- Xi, Trump take a walk together after bilateral meeting at Mar-a-Lago. They pledge to expand win-win cooperation, manage differences #XiVisit

Chinese Vice Premier meets Musk

- Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang meets with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Beijing

First Belt and Road Forum is held

- #Live: President Xi Jinping delivers keynote speech at opening session of Belt and Road forum

Hong Kong celebrates 20th anniversary of its return to motherland

- LIVE: President Xi Jinping attends grand variety show celebrating 20th anniv. of Hong Kong's return to motherland

PLA celebrates 90th birthday

- LIVE: China holds military parade in Inner Mongolia, in celebration of PLA 90th birthday. #XiJinping inspects troops

China's new high-speed train debuts

- China's Fuxing trains will run on Beijing-Shanghai #highspeedrail at 350 km/h from Sept, world's fastest commercially-used bullet trains

BRICS summit is held in Xiamen

- LIVE: President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan host welcome banquet for delegations of #BRICS summit in Xiamen

19th CPC National Congress

- LIVE: #19thCPC National Congress opens in Beijing, to set blueprint for China's development for next 5 yrs & beyond

Trump visits China
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:24:25|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government on Thursday said it has repatriated over 14,000 undocumented citizens residing in Saudi Arabia over the past month.

Meles Alem, spokesperson for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the East African country, since November 15, has repatriated some 14,130 Ethiopians from the Middle Eastern country.

Saudi Arabia in March had given a 90-day amnesty for undocumented migrants to voluntarily leave the country or face fine or imprisonment. The country has since then extended the amnesty for more than once.

The two countries managed to repatriate more than 70,000 undocumented Ethiopian migrants within the amnesty period.

Even though the amnesty period is over, the Ethiopian government said it is still working to repatriate its citizens. Estimates suggest several hundred thousand undocumented Ethiopians still refused to leave Saudi Arabia.

Ethiopia, in a bid to curb illegal migration, had signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia earlier this year to help future Ethiopian migrants through legal overseas employment opportunities.

Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said Thursday that it is working with its embassy in Cairo to protect its citizens currently stranded in Libya.

According to Alem, the Ethiopian government is working to protect Ethiopians in Libya's major cities, mainly Tripoli and Benghazi, from slavery and other challenges.

He indicated that the Ethiopian government is preparing travel documents to bring back vulnerable Ethiopians from the North African nation.

The exact number of Ethiopians stranded in Libya is yet to be identified by the Ethiopian government.

Hundreds of thousands of African migrants have in recent years used Libya, lying on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as a transit route to Europe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:39:28|Editor: Yang Yi

Video Player Close

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha speaks during the inauguration ceremony of Thailand's first high-speed railway in Pak Chong, Thailand, Dec. 21, 2017. Thailand and China jointly inaugurated the construction of Thailand's first high-speed railway from Bangkok to northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima on Thursday. (Xinhua/Li Mangmang)

PAK CHONG, Thailand, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Thailand and China jointly inaugurated the construction of Thailand's first high-speed railway from Bangkok to northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima on Thursday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in a congratulatory letter that the China-Thailand high-speed railway is a flagship project in jointly realizing the Belt and Road Initiative in the spirit of "wide consultation, joint construction and shared benefits."

The 253-km first phase of the railway links Bangkok with Nakhon Ratchasima province. China is responsible for design of the railway, supervision of construction and manufacturing of trains and signal systems among others.

Once completed, the railway with a maximum speed of 250 km per hour will be the first high-speed railway of Thailand.

The planned second phase of the project will link Nakhon Ratchasima with Nong Khai on the border with Laos, which connects with the China-Laos railway in an artery railway linking Thailand, Laos and China.

Li said the project will contribute to infrastructure development and enhance connectivity in Thailand as well as in the region. He hoped both sides could cooperate to complete the first phase and push forward the second phase of the project, and connect the cross-border railway with the China-Laos railway as soon as possible.

The Chinese premier said the China-Thailand high-speed railway, as a new platform for bilateral cooperation, will further promote pragmatic cooperation of win-win and mutual benefit between the two countries and their comprehensive, strategic, cooperative partnership.

Wang Xiaotao, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Lyu Jian, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Transport Minister Arkhom Termpittayaphaisith, Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda among other officials from both countries attended a ground-breaking ceremony.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut said the Thailand-China high-speed railway will connect Thailand with other countries and help Thailand merge into the grand transport network under the Belt and Road Initiative. It will also help the kingdom become a regional transport and logistic hub.

Prayut emphasized that Thailand will work with the Chinese side to move the project forward in a bid to realized sustainable development.

Transport Minister Arkhom told Xinhua after the ceremony that the project will greatly help the development of Thailand's northeastern region and the first phase of the project is set to be operational late 2022 or early 2023.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:44:30|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

JERUSALEM, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United Nations as the "house of lies" ahead of a UN vote on Thursday against the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The State of Israel flatly rejects this vote even before it is held," the Israeli leader said. "Jerusalem is our capital. We will continue to build in it and foreign embassies, led by the U.S. embassy, will move to Jerusalem. It will happen."

He also thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened Wednesday to cut aid to countries that will vote in favor of the UN resolution.

The UN General Assembly is set to vote on a resolution on Thursday, calling the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump's announcement on Jerusalem's status on Dec. 6 triggered violent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as widespread international protests.

Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it shortly later, a move which was not recognized by the international community.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:54:35|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

TIANJIN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Tianjin Airlines Thursday announced that it would open flights to link the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin with Auckland in New Zealand later the month.

The flight, scheduled to be launched on Dec. 29, will fly from Tianjin to Xi'an, home to the Terracotta Warriors, and then to Auckland, the airlines said.

This will be Tianjin Airlines' first intercontinental flight in Xi'an and also Xi'an's first non-stop service to Auckland.

A 260-seat Airbus A330 will make a round trip once a week. A single trip takes about 15 hours.

Tianjin Airlines said it would open more flights in Xi'an to link destinations in Europe, America and Australia in the future.

The company said it was scheduled to open flights to link Tianjin and Zhengzhou with Sydney on Jan. 29, 2018.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) Pakistan and Sri Lanka have 681 Indian fishermen in their custody, the government informed the Rajya Sabha today.

In written response to a question in the Upper House, V K Singh, the Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, said 537 fishermen were in jails in Pakistan while 144 were in Sri Lankan jails.

advertisement

Pakistan has 1,000 boats and Sri Lanka has 144 boats of Indian fishermen in their custody.

Singh, however, said that Pakistan has not acknowledged the number of Indian fishermen and boats in their custody.

"The state of bilateral relations between India and Pakistan impinges on the release and repatriation of Indian fishermen. Even in the absence of a structured bilateral dialogue, both sides have released fishermen," Singh said.

He added that in 2017, India secured the release and repatriation of 363 Indian fishermen, of which 245 were released in the last six months.

Following the 2+2 initiative when the foreign and fisheries ministers of India and Sri Lanka met last year, it was agreed that the ministers of fisheries from the two sides will meet every six months.

The 3rd meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) and the 2nd Ministerial meeting was held on October 13 and 14 in New Delhi.

"As a result of sustained diplomatic efforts, the government has so far secured the release of 347 fishermen from Sri Lankan custody," he added.

In response to another question on the Rohingya issue, Singh said during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Myanmar, the matter was raised with the Myanmerese leadership and the two countries agreed that the only lasting solution to the problem lay in overall development of Rakhine state.

In order to meet the pressing relief needs of the displaced persons, India has supplied essential regiments to about 30,000 people in Bangladesh and about 15,000 people in Myanmar in October and November, Singh said. PTI PR SMN RBS

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:59:37|Editor: Lu Hui

Video Player Close

ALGIERS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The relations between China and Algeria have achieved substantial progress since the establishment of the diplomatic ties 59 years ago, and are expected to be further strengthened in the future.

The Sino-Algerian cooperation has already exceeded Algeria's collaboration with the European Union, Kamal Kheffache, an Algerian economic analyst, told Xinhua.

The core of China's competitiveness is its financial resources and the technological capabilities of Chinese companies that allow China to win mega projects and to deliver them on time based on international standards, Kheffache said.

According to Algerian Customs data, China is the largest exporter to Algeria during the first 10 months of 2017, with exports reaching 7.29 billion U.S. dollars, which accounts for 19.11 percent of the total imports by Algeria.

China is also a major investor in Algeria. Chinese companies have been extensively involved in the development of Algerian infrastructure, including the construction of the East-West Highway, the extension of the railway network and the duplication of tracks.

A Chinese consortium has recently been commissioned to build a mega port in the north of Algeria, in a deal worth 3.3 billion dollars.

The port is located in Cherchell in the El Hamdania coastal area in the province of Tipaza, 80 km west of Algiers. It was assigned to a joint venture company set up by Algeria's state-run Port Services Group and China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC).

Algerian Trade Minister Mohamed Benmeradi said the new port of Cherchell will help transport goods to Africa through the connection with the Trans-Saharan road.

Telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet are also areas for bilateral cooperation between Algeria and China.

On Dec. 10, the Algerian satellite Alcomsat-1 was successfully launched by the Chinese Long March 3B launcher from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center station.

The launch is hailed as the culmination of serious long-term cooperation between the two countries in the field of space technology.

On the issue of trade inbalance, Kheffache suggested encouraging Chinese companies to invest in Algeria by creating joint ventures in the manufacturing sector to produce goods for exporting to China.

The thousands of Chinese who are living in Algeria and acquainted to the Algerian culture could also help promote and market Algerian products in China, he added.

Chinese car manufacturers, like Chery, Geely, Dongfeng and JAC, are already awaiting permission to install assembly plants in Algeria.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:59:37|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

By Xinhua writer Wen Chihua

BEIJING, Dec.21 (Xinhua) -- She is a multi-millionaire, rich and powerful. Yet outside her business empire, she has earned fame as the Crazy Lady of China's photography community.

Crazy because as an mature photographer, the 55-year-old Wang Xinmei has journeyed the North Pole 14 times to photograph wild animals, and to the South Pole six times to photograph king and emperor penguins.

Crazy also, because she is building China's first photography library, Yingshang Shufang.

In the beginning, most photographers didn't take her seriously, saying it's just wayward behavior of a rich woman, with money to burn and time to kill.

But only Wang herself knows she is on a rocky and yet hopeful road towards self-redemption.

Then, in March 2017 after almost 10 years of endeavor, Wang Xinmei became the first female photographer to hold a solo photo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China. Entitled "The Transcendence of Heart", Wang Xinmei's shots of nature left those who had once scoffed at her deeply touched, particularly by the images of the emperor penguins.

One critic noted, that Wang "created the most heart-warming images from the world's coldest place. The penguin photos from other photographers, with perfect composition, light and shade, are cold and remote. Wang's shots exhibit something humane, compassionate, and life affirming."

In one picture showing a penguin family of three, the chick in the middle holds its head high like an impish child, while the parents are lowering their heads as though they were trying to discipline the little baby.

"What makes it attractive most is that you can most hear the chick humming its naughty anger. It reminds me of my son when he was little," said Tu Yongzhen in Jiaxing. Tu collected this photograph as a gift to her grown-up son, who hung it on his bedroom wall alongside his wedding picture.

"Wang might not have any particular philosophy about life, but her penguin images show us the photographer as an individual being, as though her humble life is mysteriously connected with the birds," says Jin Yongquan, chief editor of the monthly magazine Chinese Photography.

After some serious difficulties in her life, Wang found her true self through photography.

In 1999, at the age of 37, Wang was the vice president of a listed company in the eastern city Jiaxing, 98 km southwest of Shanghai, that she and her husband had started from scratch. That year she was diagnosed as having an immune condition. The disease attacked her joints and organs so badly that she could hardly walk and breathe. She resigned in 2000.

"When you realize the resignation means you no longer have a say in the company, all of a sudden you've lost your reason for living," Wang lively recalls, as though she was telling someone else's story.

The treatment for the disease greatly altered her appearance. She went from a delicate and slender lady who only wears silk underwear to a 'fatty' who could only dress in baggy outfits. "I gained 20 kg. I changed so much that my next door neighbor of 9 years didn't recognize me when we met one day at a shopping mall."

An independent, sensitive, and battle-hardened business veteran, Wang is clear that sometimes what looks like a disaster today could be a part of a fortune later. At the moment when her neighbor failed recognizing her, Wang made a decision. "Rather than stay immersed in self-pity, I decided to go somewhere far away and alien enough that I could recharge myself."

In 2008, she made her first trip to the South Pole. The first creatures she spotted were king penguins, noted for their elegant posture, docile temperament, and striking appearance. This little flightless bird, standing only 100 cm tall at most, and weighing 18 kg, would completely change the life of Wang 162 cm in height, 65 kg in weight at the time.

One day, out on the ice with the temperature around 30 degrees below, Wang witnessed an engaging scenario. A month-old penguin was dying. Three big penguins gathered around the chick, holding it tightly as to help the little bird hang on and survive. A few minutes later, the little thing gave its last gasp. The three big penguins gave a grievous cry, like an emergency call. In a moment a large group of penguins appeared and gave a sorrow-stricken whine in unison.

The spectacle of penguins expressing their pure love left Wang, who has experienced more than her share of the cold and inconstancy of human relationships, crying, with tears streaming down her face. "In this bird's world, I got to see myself in reality, both in the ruthless business circle and in photographic society. I feel like a penguin, wadding but strong with manners."

Since then, her signature became King Penguin, on the social media platform Wechat, akin to the Western Whatsapp. "It's not an exaggeration to say that without the encountering of the penguin, I would be nobody, but a rich woman," she says.

In spite of all her wealth, Wang is modest and plain. She wears no makeup, no diamond jewelry, and carries no brand bag, watch or clothing. Not because she is unwilling to spend her money, but to spend it on something more valuable, her photography books.

She often claims "I'm just a peasant, with little culture. Born in 1962 to a peasant family in the Heshan township in Jiaxing, Wang is the youngest of five children. Her illiterate parents worked to see that her education went through high school graduation, thus she became the child with most education in her family.

When she was 20, Wang married Shen Yuxing, a farm boy in neighboring township, handsome, but poor, three years her senior, who had no high school diploma. But he had a vision. "After the country opened up in 1979, he set up a private leather shoe factory," says Wang, who was the bookkeeper for the factory, because she can "write a good hand".

"In my husband's eyes, I was the one with knowledge and culture," Wang says proudly. "I don't have to do farm work or household chores. I was free just to lie in bed, reading all kinds novels. The more I read, the more I learned how narrow my view of the world was. I remember telling myself that someday I must get out of the countryside and see the world."

After becoming a professional photographer, Wang started to journey round the world, "not for personal pleasure, but to collect photography books, and explore the culture of Western photography."

"I don't have solid training in photography," Wang says bluntly. "So many things in this field I don't understand, especially photographic theory. I need to learn a lot."

Her hunger for learning fueled Wang's ambition not just to collect photography books, but to also build a library for those books.

In 2014, Wang began to collect books from Japan and some Western countries in large quantities. "Buying the books," Wang says, "to me is an intimate contact with the great photographers in history. Once you open a book, you begin a dialogue with them."

In the course of reading and collecting books, Wang Xinmei is not looking for masters to worship. Take Diane.Arbus, who is regarded as a master of documentary photograph of America. Wang says she does not care for Arbus's images at all. However, she says, "I really admire her documentary attitude. She explored the dual character of those in the social margins: the poor, the vagrants, and homosexuals. I could never ever understand this without reading books about her."

To Wang, spending money on books is like other women who lavish it on jewelry. "When I go searching for a set of good books, I am overjoyed. If I fail to get the books I want, they will be on my mind until I get them." Over the past three years, Wang has spent about 10 million yuan purchasing some 6,000 books. Among them are 5,000 original editions, mostly in English.

The rarest and most expensive one is "China and its People", by British photographer John Thomson, who is regarded as the first foreign photographer to document China. Wang spent 400,000 yuan to obtain this set of four volumes in the 1873 edition, which includes over 200 images Thomson shot in places like Hong Kong, Fuzhou, Shanghai and Beijing around 1870.

In April 2015, Wang's three-storey library, Yingshan Shufang, was completed with an investment of 30 million yuan. "Wang has a generous heart. Collecting books and building her private library is actually building an infrastructure for China's photographic culture. It will fill the gaps that we have all kinds of buildings, but have no contents and great masters," says Jin Yongquan.

Jin notes that China's photography culture has long been controlled by ideology and commercialism. "The former greatly affected photography critique in a negative way, while the latter affects the rational discussion about the photographic text and exaggerates the value of images. These two forces have created a group of suspicious photography experts who have hindered the construction of a culture of photographic art."

Now the most noted book collector in China, Wang Xinmei says, "my ultimate intention is to let Yingshang Shufang develop into an organ that has academic value, and let it become a rich database for scholars in the future to study China's photography culture. If, in the future, when speaking of Jiaxing city, people could say 'Aha, there is a private library called Yingshang Shufang in the city', I would feel greatly honored, and very, very happy."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 20:59:37|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

RABAT, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The second Arab Ministerial Forum on Housing and Urban Development opened here on Thursday to discuss implementation of new urban development plan in Arab world.

The forum serves as a platform to discuss new approaches to issues associated with housing aimed at achieving balanced, sustainable development and improving the living conditions of Arabs.

In a message to the participants, Morocco's King Mohammed VI said the choice of theme confirms Arab collective commitment to carry out the urban agendas and to support the 2030 Agenda so as to achieve the sustainable development goals.

The king said that Arab cities are confronted with pressing challenges, calling for efficient cooperation based on the exchange of experiences and best practices as well as capacity-building.

He urged for the development of a common vision for a full-fledged urban development system based on exploratory action and rational exploitation of the resources.

"Such a system should help make the urban network balanced again, increase its ability to adapt to different economic, social, environmental, political and technological changes and reduce the gap between urban areas, marginalized neighborhoods and rural areas," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:04:39|Editor: Yang Yi

Video Player Close

Huang Kunming (2nd R, rear), head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with foreign delegates representing media or cultural departments from the Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, who are here to attend a media summit on Lancang-Mekong cooperation, in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Thursday pledged to enhance friendly cooperation among countries along the Lancang-Mekong river.

Huang Kunming, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while meeting with foreign delegates who were here to attend a media summit on Lancang-Mekong cooperation.

Huang expressed the hope that the foreign delegates, who represent media or cultural departments from the Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, will take the summit as an opportunity to cement exchanges and understanding among the five countries and China.

He said China will firmly conduct friendly cooperation with the five Mekong countries, guided by the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness.

The Lancang-Mekong River is a natural link between the six countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:19:44|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

WELLINGTON, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand police and customs have seized 24 kg of cocaine in Paihia in the North Island carried by a 26-year old French national.

This person appeared in the Whangarei District Court on Thursday following an intensive month-long investigation. The cocaine seizure is one of the largest in New Zealand, with a street value estimated to be between 6.8 million NZ dollars (4.76 million U.S. dollars) and 10.8 million NZ dollars (7.56 million U.S. dollars), according to a government statement.

"We hope this sends a strong message to those seeking to traffic drugs: New Zealand border and law enforcement partners are working together to catch you, and not just at airports," Customs Minister Meka Whaitiri said in the statement.

Police Minister Stuart Nash said identifying and targeting drug carriers was a big priority for the police and the customs, adding that drug abuse is the cause of too much harm in communities, "whether it's the health side effects from those abusing drugs or crimes that people commit when they are looking for ways to fund their habit."

"These illicit drugs are destructive and have no place in our communities," Nash said, adding that they cause devastating social and financial harm and they lead to increased crime.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:19:44|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday advised the two South Sudanese warring factions to use the ongoing High-Level Revitalization Forum (HLRF) as an opportunity to end the misery of the people of South Sudan.

Meles Alem, ministry spokesperson, while addressing the media said that South Sudanese parties are expected to reach agreements to resolve the on-going crisis through the HLRF.

On the basis of the agendas endorsed at the 59th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Council of Ministers on Sunday, the HLRF is focusing on ceasefire and delivery of humanitarian aid.

Alem, however, stressed that the international community would take all the necessary measures if the current meeting fails to bring the two South Sudanese warring factions toward an agreement.

Ethiopian Prime Minister and the current Chairperson of IGAD (the Intergovernmental Authority on Development), Hailemariam Desalegn, also said during the opening session of the forum on Monday that the two South Sudanese warring factions need to leave their differences aside.

According to Desalegn, the East African bloc of IGAD will take necessary actions if the current efforts fail.

Desalegn, who urged South Sudanese warring parties to do their part for the peace and stability of their country, stressed that the current five-day forum is the last opportunity to ensure peace in South Sudan.

The forum is expected to provide a distinctive opportunity to bring IGAD, regional and international parties together toward ending the conflict in South Sudan with the help of stakeholders on the negotiation table.

According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the High-Level Revitalization Forum "has continued with a good spirit of solidarity and determination by all the parties to the process stressing on the need to exploit this opportunity to end the misery of their South Sudanese brothers and sisters."

AU, UN, EU, Troika, IGAD Partners Forum (IPF), China and other delegates from the international community have recently expressed their strong support to the revitalization process.

South Sudan descended into violence in December 2013 after political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel chief Riek Machar led to split within the SPLA, leaving soldiers to fight alongside ethnic lines.

The 2015 peace agreement to end the conflict was weakened after the outbreak of renewed fighting in July 2016 caused the SPLA-in opposition rebel leader Machar to flee the capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:24:44|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday sent a congratulatory message on the launch of the construction of the first phase of the China-Thailand railway project.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha attended the opening ceremony of the project held Thursday in Kele, northern Thailand.

The China-Thailand railway project is a flagship project of bilateral cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative and production capacity, which reflects the spirit of wide consultation, joint construction and shared benefits, Li said in the message.

It is a win-win project, and will effectively enhance the infrastructure construction and interconnectivity in Thailand and the region, facilitate the sustainable development of Thailand, drive the development and prosperity in the region and improve the people's livelihood, Li said.

The Chinese premier hoped the two sides would continue to keep close cooperation, complete the first phase of the China-Thailand railway with high quality, steadily push ahead the related work about the second phase of the project, and strive to realize the interconnection of the China-Thailand railway and the China-Laos railway.

That will facilitate the trade and travel of people in the countries along the railway, and achieve a win-win situation, he added.

Li also noted that China attaches great importance to the development of the friendly relations between China and Thailand.

China is willing to work together with Thailand to strengthen their respective development strategies, and constantly advance the win-win pragmatic cooperation between the two countries with the railway cooperation project and to further promote the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two counties, he said.

The planned China-Thai railway stretches 867 km, from Nong Khai on the Thai-Lao border to Rayong in eastern Thailand. The initial phase, at 252 km long, runs between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima.

The railway is planned to connect with China-Lao railway from Vientiane to Kunming in China's southern Yunnan Province, and to extend through the south, via Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, and finally ending in Singapore.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:29:46|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

ISTANBUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkish police on Thursday seized 26,456 ancient artifacts in the country's most extensive anti-smuggling operation and detained 13 suspected smugglers, a police statement said.

The Istanbul-based operation was launched in five provinces following a three-month-long technical and physical surveillance, the statement said, noting the suspects are believed to be planning to sell the pieces abroad.

Among the confiscated relics are a three-thousand-year-old Mycenaean sword, known as Achilles sword, and coins, plinths and stone art pieces that can be traced back to the Byzantine and Roman Empires as well as the Middle Ages, showed a police video.

"This operation reveals the gravity of the situation in Turkey regarding illegal trafficking of historical artifacts," Nezih Basgelen, an archaeologist and editor of the Archaeology and Art magazine, told Xinhua.

Due to demand from private collectors and museums abroad, the smugglers have long been digging Turkey's archaeological sites and looting its ancient tombs and cairns "with big efforts," he said.

"From the 19th century onward, it is very apparent that many of Turkey's ancient artifacts have been smuggled abroad upon demand of European and American collectors," the archaeologist added, urging the authorities to improve the existing legislation and adopt an appropriate archaeological record system.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:29:48|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

HARARE, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) on Thursday warned the public against the use of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin because of the risks involved.

In a statement, RBZ governor John Mangudya noted that the use of virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies was on the increase both locally and globally, with Bitcoin being the most popular.

He warned that the use of and trading in such currencies was not regulated by the country's laws and presented risks such as money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion and fraud.

"Under the existing legal and regulatory dispensation, any person who invests in virtual currencies or participates in any transaction involving virtual currencies, does so at own risk and will not have legal protection from, or recourse against, any regulatory authority," he said.

Mangudya said virtual currency was defined as a digital representation of value that could be digitally traded and functioned as a medium of exchange or a unit of account or a store of value but did not have legal tender status.

"Virtual currency is different from fiat currency (also known as real currency, real money or national currency) which is the coin or paper money of a country that is designated as its legal tender. Virtual currency is also not the same as e-money, which is used to electronically represent and transfer value denominated in fiat currency," he said.

He said virtual currencies were attractive to money launderers and other criminals because of the supposed anonymity and ease with which transactions could be conducted -- on the internet and across borders.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:34:49|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

KIGALI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank and the Rwandan government signed 80 million U.S. dollars financing agreement Thursday to support the effectiveness of Rwanda's social protection system, notably Vision 2020 Umurenge Program (VUP), for targeted vulnerable groups.

VUP provides citizens in abject poverty with work opportunities in public projects while elderly or disabled citizens are given cash handouts.

The Strengthening Social Protection Project (SSPP) of the World Bank will help expand the coverage and improve the effectiveness of the VUP thus increasing the number of households receiving income support, said a statement released by Rwanda's finance ministry.

It will also expand the number of working days for public works, which will effectively increase the size of transfers households receive, said the ministry.

The ministry said the project will extend eligibility criteria for direct support to more labor-constrained households, including vulnerable households with people caring for disabled members.

SSPP will also introduce a gender and child sensitive expanded public works model to provide more accessible jobs to those ineligible for direct support but still with labor constraints, including caring for young children, it further said.

Rwanda has started building an integrated social protection system to ensure a minimum standard of living and access to core public services, boost resilience to shocks, promote equitable growth, and strengthen opportunity through increased human capital development, said Rwandan finance minister Claver Gatete in the statement.

The project will benefit vulnerable households primarily in social stratification category one (Ubudehe Category 1) living in the 416 VUP direct support targeted geographical sectors, the 300 geographical sectors targeted for expanded public works as well as 270 geographical sectors targeted for classic public works, according to the finance ministry.
In 2014, 2G scam was one of the reasons that put a tainted tag on the UPA government leading to its defeat in the Lok Sabha elections. Here is the story of the scam that was not proved in the court of law.

By Prabhash K Dutta: The alleged 2G spectrum scam that pulled down the Manmoahn Singh government after 10 years and reduced the Congress to its lowest ever figure in the Lok Sabha today effectively ceased to be a case of corruption.

With the acquittal of all the accused in 2G scam, including former Union ministers A Raja and Kanimozhi, the biggest question now is, if there happened any irregularities in 2G spectrum allocations or the leaders and corporate honchos were put behind the bars for no fault of theirs?

advertisement

Was the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) wrong in calculating Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss due to "irregularities" in spectrum allocations? Was former Union minister Kapil Sibal right for propounding zero-loss theory?

FIRST RED FLAG

The 2G scam, if there was one, hit the headlines in May 2009 with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) - acting on two petitions by an NGO and an activist - directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the irregularities in 2G spectrum allocation.

The CBI registered First Information Report (FIR) in October against unknown officials of the Department of Telecommunication, then headed by DMK leader A Raja, who was accused of deliberately changing the rules for spectrum allocation in return for monetary gain.

The CAG report came out in 2010, which was also presented in the Supreme Court, besides tabling in Parliament. The then CAG Vinod Rai was very vocal about the irregularities flagged in the report, which questioned the "first come, first served" policy adopted for 2G license allocation.

CANCELLATION OF 2G LICENSES

With 2G spectrum allocation case through several twists and turns, the CBI filed its chargesheet in April 2011 against Raja and the others. the CBI calculated that the 2G spectrum allocations caused a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the country.

The Supreme Court in 2012 cancelled 122 licenses issued by A Raja to eight companies. It was such a big shock to them that seven of these eight companies could not survive in the market. The banks that lent money to these companies saw their NPA fly north at a fast pace.

The companies which lost their spectrum licenses were Idea Cellular, Unitech, Swan Telecom, Sistema, Loop Mobile, Videocon, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra, and S-Tel. Of these, only Ideal Cellular survived the turmoil.

By the time the Supreme Court cancelled the 2G licenses, A Raja was already in jail on charges of forgery and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and also under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

MONEY LAUNDERING IN 2G 'SCAM'

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried a parallel investigation for alleged money laundering and in 2014, it filed a charge sheet against Raja, Kanimozhi and others.

The ED named Raja, Kanimozhi, DMK chief M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal, Shahid Balwa, and Vinod Goenka in its chargesheet.

advertisement

Filing chargesheet against Dayalu Ammal, the ED said that Rs 200 crore was paid by Swan Telecom's promoters to DMK-run Kalaignar TV - owned by Karunanidhi's family.

2G 'SCAM' THAT NOBODY DID

It was also discovered that some of the licences had been allotted to applicants who had suppressed facts about themselves, disclosed incomplete information and submitted fake documents in order to get access to the spectrum on sale.

The court that pronounced judgment today began trial in the case in October 2011 following framing of charges 17 accused including A Raja and Kanimozhi. They faces charges that invited sentences ranging from seven years' term to life imprisonment.

The charges included criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using as genuine fake documents, abusing official position, criminal misconduct by public servant and taking bribe under various sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The trial court today rejected all the charges made by the CBI against all the accused in 2G spectrum allocation case. None of alleged irregularities was proved. Though, the agency is likely to challenge the verdict in the Delhi High Court, the judgment has come as a shock to both the CBI - in spectrum allocation matter - and the ED - in money laundering case.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:34:49|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

SHANGHAI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai intellectual property right court Thursday rejected an appeal by two Chinese companies and ordered them to pay compensation to Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar for intellectual property right infringement and unfair competition.

The animated film "The Autobots," produced by Bluemtv in Xiamen in eastern China's Fujian Province and released by G-Point in Beijing, was screened in July 2015.

Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar, holders of the copyrights to animated comedies "Cars" and "Cars 2" as well as the character images, sued G-Point, Bluemtv and an online video provider after they found that the images, title and posters for "The Autobots" resembled those of "Cars" and "Cars 2."

Shanghai Pudong New District People's Court said the images of the main characters in "The Autobots" -- named K1 and K2 -- infringed on the copyright of the characters Lightening McQueen and Francesco Bernoulli in "Cars" and "Cars 2."

The court ordered an immediate stop to the infringement and compensation of over 1.35 million yuan (205,180 U.S. dollars).

Bluemtv was asked to pay 1 million yuan to cover the plaintiffs' economic losses, for which G-Point has joint liability for 800,000 yuan. The two companies were also asked to pay 350,000 yuan to cover the legal expenses of the plaintiffs.

Bluemtv and G-Point appealed to the Shanghai intellectual property right court, which affirmed the original judgment.

"We are pleased the court is protecting the intellectual property rights of creative companies like ours," Disney Enterprises, Inc. told Xinhua.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 21:39:50|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

HARARE, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A cabinet minister was named acting president as Zimbabwe's Emmerson Mnangagwa left for South Africa on a working visit.

Yet to appoint his two deputies, Mnangagwa on Thursday left Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri as acting president.

Muchinguri-Kashiri is currently the most senior member of the ruling Zanu-PF's Politburo where she was recently appointed national chairperson.

This is Mnangagwa's first visit outside the country as head of state following his inauguration in November when he took over from former President Robert Mugabe.

He is expected to hold talks with President Jacob Zuma and attend a business conference to be hosted by the Zimbabwean embassy in South Africa.

The South African government said the two presidents would discuss various bilateral issues.

"During the courtesy call, the two heads of state will share perspectives on various issues of mutual importance, such as regional, continental and international developments," the South African Presidency said.

South Africa is Zimbabwe's biggest trading partner and the two countries have signed over 40 cooperation agreements under their Bi-National Commission early this year.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha (R2) shakes hands with Wang Xiaotao (L3), deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission of China at a ground-breaking ceremony for the first phase of the China-Thailand high-speed railway, on Dec. 21, Pak Chong, Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand. (Xinhua/Li Mangmang)

PAK CHONG, Thailand, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Thailand and China jointly inaugurated the construction of Thailand's first high-speed railway from Bangkok to northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima on Thursday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in a congratulatory letter that the China-Thailand high-speed railway is a flagship project in jointly realizing the Belt and Road Initiative in the spirit of "wide consultation, joint construction and shared benefits."

The 253-km first phase of the railway links Bangkok with Nakhon Ratchasima province. China is responsible for design of the railway, supervision of construction and manufacturing of trains and signal systems among others.

Once completed, the railway with a maximum speed of 250 km per hour will be the first high-speed railway of Thailand.

The planned second phase of the project will link Nakhon Ratchasima with Nong Khai on the border with Laos, which connects with the China-Laos railway in an artery railway linking Thailand, Laos and China.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha watches a diagram at a ground-breaking ceremony for the first phase of the China-Thailand high-speed railway, on Dec. 21, Pak Chong, Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand. (Xinhua/Li Mangmang)

Li said the project will contribute to infrastructure development and enhance connectivity in Thailand as well as in the region. He hoped both sides could cooperate to complete the first phase and push forward the second phase of the project, and connect the cross-border railway with the China-Laos railway as soon as possible.

The Chinese premier said the China-Thailand high-speed railway, as a new platform for bilateral cooperation, will further promote pragmatic cooperation of win-win and mutual benefit between the two countries and their comprehensive, strategic, cooperative partnership.

Wang Xiaotao, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Lyu Jian, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Transport Minister Arkhom Termpittayaphaisith, Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda among other officials from both countries attended a ground-breaking ceremony.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut said the Thailand-China high-speed railway will connect Thailand with other countries and help Thailand merge into the grand transport network under the Belt and Road Initiative. It will also help the kingdom become a regional transport and logistic hub.

Prayut emphasized that Thailand will work with the Chinese side to move the project forward in a bid to realized sustainable development.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:20:02|Editor: Zhou Xin

Video Player Close

KAMPALA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan opposition lawmakers on Thursday launched a new campaign to challenge the passing of the controversial constitutional amendment bill that scrapped the presidential age limit of 75 years.

Winnie Kiiza, leader of opposition in parliament, told reporters here that the campaign dubbed "Kogikutteko" loosely translated to "Now that you have touched it" is aimed to consult Ugandan voters on the next course of action and resisting the contentious bill.

"We want to let Ugandans know that we played our part and now we are giving the ball to the citizens in a new campaign Kogikutteko on what follows now that the Constitution has been tampered with," said Kiiza.

She said as part of the campaign, the legislators will drag Parliament and Speaker Rebecca Kadaga to the regional East African Court of Justice based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha for the passing of the contentious bill.

The bill was passed late on Wednesday by Parliament.

Kiiza said during the Wednesday vote on the bill, Kadaga violated the voting procedure.

"We even warned Speaker of Parliament that what the MPs were doing was illegal but she gave us a deaf ear and continued with process," she said.

Kiiza said they will also challenge the extension of the parliamentary and local council tenure of office from the current five years to seven years, starting with the current term, which was set to expire in 2021.

Opposition and campaigners who are opposed to the bill argue that the move by the ruling NRM is intended to allow President Yoweri Museveni, now 73, to run in the 2021 elections when he will be over 75.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:20:02|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea could play a positive role in promoting better implementation of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, South Korean politicians said here Wednesday.

The "grand" Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 has promoted multi-dimensional cooperation between countries, said Kim Jin-pyo, a South Korean national assembly member and former vice prime minister, at an event hosted by Chinese think-tank the Charhar Institute in Beijing.

Kim pointed out a major way for his country to join the initiative is through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), of which South Korea is a major stakeholder.

"So in the whole process of pushing forward with the Belt and Road, South Korea has been making investments with China," he said.

The AIIB is a multilateral bank which focuses on infrastructure investment in Asia and beyond.

Kim added the Belt and Road Initiative could be further complemented in Northeast Asia by creating an economic circle around the Yellow Sea, which encompasses the Korean Peninsula and coastal cities in northern China such as Dalian and Qingdao, as well as mega-cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

"Accommodating 600 million consumers, the region could be a pole of growth for global consumption," he said, adding South Korea could better contribute to the initiative through enhanced cooperation in logistics and infrastructure.

Kim's remarks echoed that of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who during an embassy banquet Tuesday in Seoul proposed to link his New North and New South policies with the Belt and Road Initiative to promote diversified diplomatic strategies and expand foreign cooperation.

Moon's new policies seek to boost the country's diplomatic and economic cooperation with Eurasian states like Russia in the north, as well as Southeast Asian nations in the south.

Also on Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voiced an intention to raise the Sino-Japanese relationship to a "new stage" in a speech in Tokyo, saying Japan is willing to cooperate with China under the Belt and Road Initiative.

For his part, South Korean national assembly member Park Jeong said on Wednesday's think tank event that both South Korea and Japan are close neighbors of China that could join the initiative.

Referring to China's proposal of building a community with shared future for mankind, Park said such links among countries in the Northeast Asia is beneficial to our cooperation and a win-win situation, so as to build a community with a shared future for members in the Northeast Asia.

"South Korea and China could also form cooperation in exploring a third-party market, that is, to joint bid on projects in the third-party market. This is the true spirit of the Belt and Road," Park added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:20:03|Editor: pengying

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The legal rights of defendants in a serious telecom fraud case, some of whom are Taiwanese, were well protected during investigation and trial, said a mainland spokesperson Thursday.

The court and prosecutors have handled the case strictly in line with the law, said An Fengshan, spokesperson with the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office in a press release.

On Thursday, a Beijing court found 85 defendants, 44 of whom are Taiwanese, guilty of committing telecom fraud and cheating 185 victims out of 29 million yuan (4.4 million U.S. dollars).

After the judgement was delivered, defendants were arranged to meet their families, An said.

Telecom fraud has undermined the interests of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait for some time, he said.

"Subjecting these criminals to legal penalty is a move to deliver justice and safeguard people's rights and interests," he said. "It has support from compatriots on both sides and understanding from the international community."

The mainland will continue to crack down on telecom fraud and protect the essential interests of people on both sides of the Strait, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:25:04|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ULAN BATOR, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia's foreign exchange reserves reached 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in December, a new high since December 2016, the Bank of Mongolia, the country's central bank, said Thursday.

Mongolia's official gold reserves had increased to 18.4 tons, it added.

The growth was attributed to the implementation of the first and second phases of the IMF's Extended Fund Facility program in Mongolia, a significant increase in gold purchases by the Bank of Mongolia, the renewal of a currency swap agreement with China's central bank, it said.

The restoration of investors' confidence in Mongolia and the Mongolian government's policy such as the implementation of the Economic Recovery Program 2016-2020 and the reduction of budget expenditures also led to the increase in foreign exchange and gold reserves, according to the bank.

Experts with the Mongolian central bank predict that by the end of 2019Mongolia's foreign exchange reserves will reach 3.8 billion dollars, and by 2020, 4 billion dollars.

On Dec. 15, the IMF Executive Board completed the first and second reviews of Mongolia's performance under the Extended Fund Facility program and decided to allocate 79.1 million dollars from a 5.5 billion bailout fund to relieve Mongolia's debt burden and stabilize the local currency.

In May, the IMF approved a three-year extended arrangement under Extended Fund Facility for Mongolia in a total amount of about 434.3 million dollars to support the country's economic reform program.

The IMF has raised its 2017 growth projection for Mongolia to 3.3 percent from 2 percent.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:30:05|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

PARIS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- France's lower house of parliament on Thursday passed the government's 2018 budget draft that aims at respecting the European bloc's financial limits by cutting public spending and tax.

In its first budget draft, since President Emmanuel Macron took office in May, the government forecast the budget gap at 2.6 percent in 2018 compared to the 2.9 percent expected this year, down from previous estimates of 2.7 percent and 3.0 percent respectively.

With that aim, French government hopes to save 16 billion euros (18.97 billion U.S. dollars) this year and a further 80 billion euros by 2022 by freezing the expenditure of some ministries, local authorities and social security welfare.

Adding to that, the government targeted 7-billion-euro cut in taxes in 2018 to improve households' purchasing power and boost their expenditure, one of the country's main growth engine.

Next year's budget draft, disapproved by the Socialists and center-right lawmakers, expects France's growth rate to be 1.8 percent on favorable business climate and expanding world demand. (1 euro = 1.186 U.S. dollar)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:30:05|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

MOGADISHU, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Four Al-Shabaab militants including top commanders surrendered to the Somali government on Thursday, officials said.

Ugaas Hassan, the Information Minister for the Southwest State in Somalia, confirmed to Xinhua that the militants agreed to lay down arms and surrender to Somali National Army and Southwest State forces in Berdale town.

"Four Al-Shabaab fighters including deputy commander of the group in the Bay region surrendered to the officials of the Somalia National Army (SNA) and Southwest state in Somalia in Berdale town, these militants decided to denounce the wrong ideology of the terrorist group Al-Shabaab," said Hassan.

The joint forces, including the SNA and African Union troops, have intensified military operations against Al-Shabaab militants in the recent past while some militants are either escaping or leaving from the group now.

"Military operations are going on in the region now, and we are welcoming anyone who is in the terrorist group to accept peace process," Hassan said.

The latest development came against a backdrop of factional wars within the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist network that has intensified this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 22:30:05|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

KATHMANDU, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) on Thursday distributed school bags and stationery to over 100 students in Nepal's quake-hit areas.

The Chinese organization made the donation to students from Bhim Dhunga Lower Secondary School in the outskirts of Kathmandu.

Rameshwar Luitel, Principal at Bhim Dhunga Lower Secondary School, told Xinhua, "Most of our students were affected by the devastating earthquake in 2015. We are very thankful to get the stationeries, which will help our children to continue their education."

"Despite of being inside the capital, this area is backward in terms of education, health and facilities. Thus, the school support program from Chinese side is very effective. We look forward for more assistance in the future," Keshav Prasad Pokharel, the locally elected leader told Xinhua.

The CFPA has planned to distribute around 5,000 bags to various schools across the country till mid 2018. The bag comprises notebooks, pens, geometry box and other stationary items.

"I am very happy to get this bag, I will use it well. Thank you China," Bashna Khadka, a student at Grade 4, told Xinhua after receiving the bag.

Besides the stationary support, the CFPA recently completed the construction of toilets for boys and girls students and a concrete water tank in the same school.

Meanwhile, CFPA also distributed woolen clothes to some 100 students from Majuwa Primary School in the same area.

China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, which started works in Nepal right after the earthquake, has been focusing on health, education and community development programs.
Raja, who was the minister in the Congress-led UPA government when 2G spectrum scam case rocked the nation, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

By Press Trust of India: Former telecom minister A Raja, who was at the centre of the allegations in India's biggest graft case, today said a trial court acquitting him of all charges proved that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was "cooked-up".

Raja, who was the minister in the Congress-led UPA government when 122 telecom spectrum licences were issued to 8 companies in 2008 on first-come-first-serve basis, said his actions were for the benefit of masses.

advertisement

Bringing competition in the telecom sector had sent mobile call charges to rock-bottom levels.

"My firm belief in the rightfulness of my actions as well as my faith in our nation's justice system has been validated today," he said in a statement.

He said his decision for allocation of spectrum, or radiowaves that carry mobile voice signals, were in line with the National Telecom Policy and recommendations of the sectoral regulator TRAI.

Raja said he had, in fact, brought a "revolution" in the telecom sector.

"I have felt somewhat vindicated all along even prior to this judgement because the beneficial results of my actions are evident to and being enjoyed by the nations public (especially the poor)," he said.

Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and all other accused were today acquitted in the politically-sensitive 2G spectrum allocation scam cases by a special court which held that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove the charges.

Further, Raja debunked the presumptive loss theories in the allocation. In its charge-sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had put the loss to the exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

"I brought a revolution in the telecom sector. It is not unknown to the history that a person who did a revolution is often termed as a criminal," he said.

Raja, a leader of Tamil Nadu-based DMK party, which was an ally in the Congress-led UPA government, blamed vested interests for propagating the presumptive loss theory.

"Vested interests manipulated public perception by leveraging the media and sensationalising fabricated allegations," he said. "It has been repeatedly proven that the presumptive loss to the exchequer which formed the basis for the conspiracy theorists to run amok, was cooked-up."

Raja said he had full faith in the judiciary and had cooperated fully with the trial and did not seek even single day adjournment.

"I also had the courage and confidence to step into the witness box and gave evidence and offered myself for cross examination by the CBI, which is very unusual in criminal trials in India," he said.

advertisement

Raja claimed that the trial court judge had repeatedly observed that his evidence was "cogent, credible and consistent with the official records, in contrast with the evidence of the prosecution witnesses whose evidence has been rejected as untrustworthy".

He added: "The learned Judge has held that it is not just a case of the prosecution failing to prove its allegations, but a case where the prosecution case itself was false, which was my submission from the very first day."

He went on to thank his party leader and DMK cadre for their unflinching support during the "dark period" of his life which include 15 months in jail.

Watch the video | 2G scam verdict: A Raja, M Kanimozhi acquitted of all charges

--- ENDS ---
Somali refugees prepare to get on a bus heading for Somalia at Dadaab in Garissa, Kenya, July 1, 2016. The Kenyan government on Friday kicked off voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees at the Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp in northeast part of the country. (Xinhua/Stephen Ingati)

by Christine Lagat and Wang Xiaopeng

NAIROBI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Habibu Abdikadir Abdi has lived in Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya with her husband and nine children since 2008 while dire economic circumstances have forced her to undertake strenuous jobs in order to put food on the table.

The 32-year-old Somali refugee found a safe haven in the sprawling complex that once housed about 400,000 fellow country men and women who fled war and natural calamities in the Horn of African State.

Habibu and her young offspring are lucky to have escaped the devastations of civil strife that has engulfed her native country for two and a half decades though living in a foreign country without a formal job has been an agonizing experience.

Speaking to Xinhua at Dadaab refugee camp on Tuesday, Habib decried financial hardships endured by her entire household in recent times thanks to declining support from foreign benefactors.

Currently, Habib ekes out a living from cleaning jobs that earns her 2 dollars a day while her husband's jobless status has made it a herculean task to feed and educate the young children.

"The food and financial aid meant for us has been declining," said Habib, adding that female refugees have borne the brunt of a cut back on humanitarian assistance.

Habibu retains an emotional attachment to her homeland and in particular the capital city of Mogadishu that she calls her hometown but the thought of going back there disturbs her given the volatile security situation.

She is among a growing number of Somalia refugees awaiting repatriation back home under a tripartite agreement signed between the UN Refugee Agency, Kenya and Somalia governments in November 2013.

Though Habibu loves her native country, she is still pondering on whether it is prudent to relocate due to the fragile security situation as well as climatic vagaries like droughts that have had a devastating impact on local communities.

Despite the fact that obtaining food rations has been a nightmare in the refugee camp, she is yet to make a decision on a permanent relocation to her hometown.

Habibu embodies the dilemma facing Somalia refugees living in Kenya whose desire to relocate to their mother land is constrained by the tragic reality of encountering new forms of security threats, poverty and social stigma.

Faxti, an 18-year-old Somalia refugee who settled at Dadaab camp in 2010 with her family members looked forward to a safe return to her native country with a mixture of nostalgia and anxiety.

The young woman who is a native of the port city of Kismayo in south central Somalia defied self-doubt and doomsayers to jump into a plane that ferried her and the next of kin back to Somalia on Tuesday.

"I want to go back to Somalia, because it is my home country," Faxti told Xinhua on Tuesday before she boarded a UN plane that ferried fellow refugees back home.

On Tuesday alone, 90 Somalia refugees left Dadaab camp to Kismayo to start a new life after years of sojourn in a foreign land.

The voluntary repatriation of Somalia refugees that commenced in early 2014 has been going on smoothly save for minor logistical hitches.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, revealed that about 75,000 Somalia refugees have so far returned home while an additional 20,000 is awaiting repatriation.

Speaking at a media briefing in Nairobi on Wednesday, Grandi said the international community will support voluntary repatriation of Somalia refugees to enable them participate in their country's reconstruction.

"Majority of Somalia refugees living in Dadaab camp are willing to be repatriated back home on condition they are guaranteed security and access to basic services like education, housing and health," said Grandi.

He had earlier visited Somalia, Djibouti and Dadaab refugee camp to assess the living conditions of people displaced by conflicts.

The UN refugee agency official urged multilateral lenders and host countries to channel investments to projects that can enhance resilience of displaced persons in the face of poverty and limited opportunities in life.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, the Dadaab refugee complex has a population of about 238,600 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of November 30.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:00:10|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BERLIN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- German energy consumption rose in 2017 thanks to the country's favorable economic development, a report by the Working Group on Energy Balances (AGEB) showed on Thursday.

The report estimated that Germany's energy consumption would increase 0.8 percent this year, mainly driven by higher demand related to growth in the output of domestic firms.

Several leading economic research institutes have recently revised their forecasts for gross domestic product (GDP) upwards, with the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research expecting an expansion of 2.3 percent in 2017 and 2.6 percent in 2018.

Despite the rise in total energy consumption, CO2 emission levels remained stable in 2017 thanks to changes in the German energy landscape.

AGEB said in the report that over the past year, renewables extended their share of national energy production from 12.5 percent to 13.1 percent, largely driven by a 34-percent surge in electricity generated through wind energy.

However, electricity only accounts for a relatively small share of total energy production in Germany while conventional energy sources continue to dominate. Oil and gas were hence still responsible for a combined 60 percent of total energy consumption in 2017, registering an annual growth of 3 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

By contrast, hard coal consumption fell by 10.4 percent, representing only 11 percent of total consumption. Similarly, nuclear power's share slipped by more than 10 percent to 6.1 percent. Brown coal consumption stagnated.

Reducing the role of fossil fuels in the German energy landscape is critical to Berlin's official objective to transition towards a greener economy under its ongoing "Energy Revolution" reforms.

A study by the Federal Ministry of the Environment has warned that the country would fall far short of lowering man-made greenhouse emissions by 40 percent until 2020 (compared to levels of 1990) if it continued on its current trajectory.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:05:11|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A senior Party official on Thursday pledged that judicial and law enforcement agencies will try to create a "fair, transparent and predictable" legal environment for sustainable economic growth.

Guo Shengkun, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks at a meeting here to set the priorities for judicial and police work next year.

One of the priorities is to help control financial risks, safeguard the order of the socialist market economy and people's interests, Guo said.

Judicial agencies and police will work to better protect citizens' property rights so that people will have more confidence in the market economy, he said.

Efforts against organized crime, fraud, human trafficking, prostitution, gambling, drug use and trafficking will also be priorities, in addition to a serious crackdown on leaking and trading personal information and online fraud.

"We would like our people to have a stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security," he said.

Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court, and Cao Jianming, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, attended the meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:20:13|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

HAIKOU, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of warplanes and an fleet of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy recently conducted drills in the West Pacific Ocean, navy officials here said.

Bombers, fighters and airborne early warning aircraft belonging to the naval air force of the South China Sea Fleet took off from an disclosed airport for the drills, which also involved the Navy's 28th escort fleet that was passing by the site of the drills, said the officials from the South China Sea Fleet.

The naval air force has been conducting far-sea training on a regular basis in order to examine its combat capabilities, said the officials.

As part of the annual training program of the naval air force of the South China Sea Fleet, the drills are in line with international laws and practices and do not target any particular country, region or object, the officials added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:20:14|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) holds a welcome ceremony for visiting Gambian President Adama Barrow before their talks in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday underscored the one-China principle as he hosted Gambian President Adama Barrow on his first China visit since diplomatic relations were resumed last year.

The two countries established formal diplomatic links in 1974, but China suspended relations in 1995 when the west African country resumed so-called "diplomatic" ties with Taiwan. Gambia severed ties with Taiwan in 2013.

"Upholding the one-China principle and the big picture of bilateral friendship, China and Gambia should understand and support each other on issues relating to core interests and major concerns, and be sincere friends and partners on an equal footing," Xi said during the talks at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.

Xi said Gambia's decision to resume diplomatic relations with China is a "correct choice," which follows the trend of the times and serves the fundamental interests of the two countries and peoples.

Barrow said the resumption of diplomatic ties fully accords with the will of the Gambian people.

He said the Gambian people respect the Chinese people, reaffirming that his country will firmly adhere to the one-China policy.

Hailing the sound development of bilateral cooperation since the resumption of ties, Xi said such cooperation has brought tangible results to both peoples.

Xi and Barrow agreed to map out future cooperation in their talks.

Xi called on both sides to have closer exchanges between governments, political parties and legislative bodies and share experience in national governance.

"China attaches importance to cooperation with Gambia in agriculture, electricity and infrastructure, and is willing to enhance Gambia's capacity for self-development and sustainable development," Xi told Barrow.

Xi proposed more exchanges in culture, education, media, youth, women, health and tourism and joint efforts to build the Confucius Institute to consolidate the popular will of friendship between the two countries.

"China is willing to increase cooperation with Gambia in security and to step up communication and coordination in international and regional affairs to contribute to peace and stability in west Africa," Xi said.

China aims to build a community with a shared future for mankind and will strengthen solidarity and partnership with developing countries including those from Africa, according to Xi.

"China's cooperation with foreign countries is not attached to any political string. The essence of China-Africa cooperation is to combine China's development with that of Africa to realize win-win cooperation and mutual development," Xi said.

Barrow, who took office in February 2017, thanked Xi for extending him an invitation to visit China for the first time as a head of state.

"It is a sign of support, a sign of giving confidence to our new administration," Barrow told Xi.

Expressing his gratitude to China for supporting Gambia in the 1970s, especially since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations, Barrow said his country cherishes the friendship with China and will never forget its assistance.

China's support in the areas of agriculture and health has greatly promoted the national development of Gambia and improved people's livelihood, said Barrow, adding that he himself had received treatment by Chinese medical teams.

Gambia stands ready to enhance cooperation in areas of the economy and trade, agriculture, electricity, infrastructure, education, tourism and people-to-people exchanges, and collaboration in international affairs, he said.

Expressing his admiration for China's achievements, Barrow said Gambia would like to learn from China's reform and development experience and enhance its own capacity-building.

He also said that Gambia is willing to take an active part in cooperation within the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

Following the talks, the two presidents witnessed the signing of bilateral cooperation documents on the setting up a Confucius Institute at the University of The Gambia as well as on cooperation in economy, trade, investment, technology, infrastructure construction and human resources development.

Barrow arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for a week-long state visit. Besides Beijing, he will also visit the cities of Xiamen and Guangzhou.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (2nd R) meets with visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan (2nd L) in Tashkent Dec. 20, 2017. (Xinhua/Sadat)

TASHKENT, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan here Wednesday, expressing willingness to improve practical cooperation in various fields.

Mirziyoyev said China is a close friend and reliable partner of Uzbekistan, which adheres to the one-China policy and supports the Belt and Road Initiative.

Uzbekistan is ready to cooperate with China in a comprehensive way to serve the interests of both peoples and maintain regional peace and stability, said the president.

Chang said China and Uzbekistan have a long history of friendship and their relationship entered a new era in 2017, when the two countries celebrated the 25th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic ties.

He said China is willing to work with Uzbekistan to implement the consensuses reached by the two countries' heads of state and strengthen relations between the two countries and militaries, so as to contribute to a better comprehensive strategic partnership.

Earlier in the day, Chang also held talks here with his Uzbek counterpart.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:40:18|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed and 20 others injured when a passenger bus met accident in Pakistan's east Punjab province on Thursday, local reports said.

The ill-fated bus, carrying 40 people, was on its way to provincial capital of Lahore from Rajanpur district when it met the accident, local TV channel Geo reported.

Police said that the accident happened due to low visibility caused by the heavy smog, adding that the driver was negotiating a sharp turn, but lost control over the vehicle due to low visibility.

Rescue teams said that the whole area has been engulfed by the smog, making them hard to carry out the rescue operation.

Plains of Punjab have been partially blanketed with the fog over the last couple of days, causing problems for the commuters early in the morning.

Local experts said that the smog this year has been caused by inland activities. Increased number of vehicles on roads, smoke from industries and mushroom-growth of housing societies in urban areas have caused the smog in the province.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:45:21|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

TOKYO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Japan's central bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda said Thursday that the recent surge in the price of bitcoin is "abnormal."

The Bank of Japan Governor made the remarks at a press conference following the central bank's two-day policy meeting.

In Japan, the price of the bitcoin topped 2 million yen (17,640 U.S. dollars) earlier this month on a major exchange, registering a 20-fold jump since January when it changed hands around 100,000 yen (882 U.S. dollars).

"It's not my place to say, but if you look at the charts, it's clear that the jump (in prices) is abnormal," Kuroda reportedly said.

He also said that bitcoin, unlike conventional currencies, is not controlled by a central bank or government and "does not have the same function as currency as a means of payment or settlement."

Bitcoin is "being traded for investment or speculative purposes," he said.

Bitcoin is a major digital currency without ties to any bank or government. It is underpinned by blockchain technology, a digital ledger system that uses cryptography.

Credibility of the virtual currency has been a concern to many people, especially after the sudden shutdown in 2014 of the Japanese bitcoin exchange MtGox Co..

The virtual currency has also raised controversy over its potential use for money laundering and capital flight, as it allows users to spend and transfer money anonymously.

Police said last month that 170 cases of suspected money laundering linked to cryptocurrency included bitcoin were reported in Japan from April through September.

Japan revised its law last year to regulate the dealings of virtual currencies including bitcoin, so as to prevent their use in terrorism or money laundering and protect the interests of the owners.

According to the revised law, virtual currencies could be used for settlement. But exchanges dealing virtual currencies shall be registered with the Financial Services Agency.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:45:22|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

SHANGHAI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Internet firms are racing to launch car models with smart functions and installing charging posts to make their cars run further.

Shanghai-based smart car developer NextEV, considered by some to be "China's Tesla," launched its electric SUV model NIO ES8 on Sunday.

A standard version of the ES8 is priced at 448,000 yuan (68,168 U.S. dollars). With subsidies, the ES8 is sold at 370,000 yuan, compared to the Tesla Model S sold at 700,000 yuan with subsidies in the Chinese market.

The car boasts outstanding self-driving technology. NIO Pilot, its automated piloting system, is Internet-connected and equipped with 23 sensors.

Company founder and CEO Li Bin said the car is capable of producing a playlist of music by analyzing users' records. It can automatically shut car windows in case of rain, take a selfie for the driver, and turn on air purification based on weather conditions.

Delivery to customers is expected begin after the model completing a 3-million-km road test in the first half of next year.

Li said the company plans to build 1,100 battery-swap stations nationwide by 2020. Each station covers the space of three parking lots. It can swap electric vehicle batteries in just three minutes.

Drivers in China's first-tier cities will be able to find a battery-swap station within three km, Li said.

Less than one-third of Chinese urban households can afford to install electric car chargers at home due to the lack of family-owed parking spaces. Li said the company plans to work with the State Power Grid to link its chargers with the power network along highways so that recharging electric vehicles is more convenient than filling up at gas stations.

Always-on, another new smart car developer, launched its SUV EX5 model in Shanghai last week. It focuses on smart driving. Priced at 200,000 yuan, the car will be available to customers in the second half of 2018.

Chinese consumers have already been able to buy the EV 10, an electric car produced by Chinese Internet firm Deercc.

The company hopes to sell 2,000 EV10 cars this year. The model is priced between 59,800 and 67,800 yuan with subsidies.

Chinese Internet giant Alibaba has teamed up with car manufacturer SAIC to set up Banma (Zebra in English) to develop China's first Internet car RX5. The upgraded model available in October serves as a smart terminal allowing drivers to surf the Internet for free while offering a number of user-friendly remote-control functions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-21 23:50:23|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ISLAMABAD, Dec, 21 (Xinhua) -- At least seven people were killed and four others injured in a gun attack and landmine blast in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province on Thursday, local Urdu media reported.

According to local reports, the incident happened in the morning when a group of unknown gunmen opened fire on a house in the Toba Nohkani area of district Dera Bughti in the province, resulting in deaths of six members of a family which included women and children and injured two others.

Moreover, the ambulance taking the injured to a hospital hit by a roadside planted improvised explosive device causing one more death and wounded another two people, said a local police official.

Security forces and police have condoned off the site and launched an investigation into the incident. No group or individual has claimed the attack yet.

The attack came a day after the Pakistani security forces have foiled a terror plot targeting provincial governor and arrested two suicide bombers from Killa Abdullah area of the province.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) US-based online retailer Amazon will bring in a range of smartphones to the Indian market under 10.or (pronounced Tenor) to take on homegrown rival, Flipkart.

The smartphones, first of which goes on sale on January 5, will be launched under the companys Crafted for Amazon programme, it said in a statement.

Explaining the programme, Amazon.in said it shares customer insights with OEM partners. These partners then design and manufacture products as per industry leading quality and reliability standards.

advertisement

Amazon provides go-to-market support for these products, it added.

The first device -- 10.or D series smartphone features 5.2 inch screen and 3,500 mAH battery. It will be priced Rs 4,999 onwards

The Crafted for Amazon program will also include fashion brands like Myx, Symbol, and the Home & Kitchen brand Solimo.

"Crafted for Amazon program seeks to look for selection gaps and introduce more products to cater to local customer demand," Amazon.in said.

All 10.or D phones will be manufactured in India, with only the first set of units made in China, the statement said.

"The promise of 10.or is to combine world-class manufacturing with marketing insights and a convenient, trusted shopping experience from Amazon," Noor Patel, Director ? Category Management, Amazon India said.

In November, Flipkart had launched its Billion Capture+ brand of smartphones.

Smartphone is one of the biggest categories in which Amazon and Flipkart are at loggerheads for leadership in the booming Indian e-commerce market. PTI SR MKJ

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:05:25|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

HANOI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- During the official friendly visit to Vietnam by Laos' party top leader and president Bounnhang Vorachith, the two sides have pledged to develop the special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two parties, states and people, said their joint statement on Thursday.

General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and President of Laos Bounnhang Vorachith and the Lao high-ranking delegation left Vietnam's central Nghe An province on Thursday for Vientiane.

During his three-day stay in Vietnam, the Lao leader held talks with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and had meetings with other Vietnamese leaders. He also visited some economic and cultural facilities of Hanoi, Nghe An and the Military Zone 4 Headquarters.

The two sides agreed to maintain regular meetings between party and state leaders, while enhancing the effectiveness of bilateral cooperation mechanisms and expanding partnership as well as fostering relations between ministries, organizations and localities.

They concurred to improve the effectiveness of cooperation in economy, investment, trade, culture, education and training, healthcare, science, technology, as well as defense and security.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:05:25|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly will vote on a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem in a rare emergency session on Thursday after the United States vetoed a similar one at the Security Council.

The draft resolution prepared by Turkey and Yemen "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard, calls upon all states to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem."

It further demands that all UN member states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Thursday's General Assembly emergency session, the 10th in history, was called after the United States vetoed a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the Security Council on Monday.

The Security Council vote was prompted by an announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In the General Assembly voting, the permanent members of the Security Council, including the United States, do not have veto power.

The United States has threatened to cut aid for countries that would vote against Trump's decision. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said she would be "taking names."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:05:25|Editor: Mengjie

Video Player Close

(Xinhua file photo)

MOSCOW, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Moscow is preparing a response to a new set of U.S. sanctions, the Kremlin and the Russian foreign ministry said Thursday.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned Russia's Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and four other people for human rights violations under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act.

"It is highly likely that reciprocity principle will be implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

He declined to name possible targets of the countermeasures.

"Unfortunately, we are again forced to confirm our position, which boils down to the fact that these steps will be followed by retaliatory measures," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a weekly briefing.

It is said that a number of U.S. political groups still have a desire to follow the path of destroying relations with Russia, Zakharova added.

She said that currently around 200 Russian citizens and 402 legal entities are under various U.S. sanctions.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which was named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, in December 2012, imposing sanctions on Russian officials allegedly responsible for the 37-year-old lawyer's death in a Moscow prison in 2009.

Russia fought back by passing a law in January 2013, barring U.S. citizens from adopting Russian orphans and banning Americans suspected of human rights violations from entering Russia.

In 2016, U.S. Congress enacted the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. government to sanction foreign government officials implicated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:10:28|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

MOSCOW, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in the Middle East on Thursday in a phone conversation with Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Kremlin said.

The Saudi King expressed serious concerns over the launch of a ballistic missile toward the royal palace in Riyadh by the Yemeni Houthi movement on Tuesday, the Kremlin said in a press release.

Condemning the missile launch, Putin noted the importance of a comprehensive investigation of the incident and spoke in favor of resolving the Yemeni crisis exclusively through peaceful means and national dialogue.

The two leaders exchanged views on the situation in Syria and stressed the need to further intensify efforts to achieve a political settlement in the war-torn country.

Putin and King Salman also discussed issues of Russian-Saudi cooperation, including energy. They agreed to continue close coordination to maintain stability in the global hydrocarbon market.

King Salman visited Russia in October, during which Russia signed deals to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons worth at least 2.1 billion U.S. dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:10:30|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

SANAA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Suspected cholera cases in Yemen have reached one million, highlighting the suffering of the country caught up in a civil war for nearly three years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday.

More than 80 percent of the population lack food, fuel, clean water and access to healthcare, ICRC said on its official Twitter page.

The World Health Organization has reported 2,219 deaths from the cholera outbreak since it spread across the country in April, third of whom were children.

The war-torn Arab country has also been suffering from a severe diphtheria outbreak since October.

On Dec. 11, the United Nations aid agencies reported 32 deaths from diphtheria, warning the disease is spreading.

The suspected cases of diphtheria have reached up to 244, mostly children, according to the aid agencies.

Vaccines needed to treat diphtheria will run out, local authorities have warned.

Ships and planes carrying humanitarian supplies have been unable to reach Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition imposed a blockade in early November.

The Saudi-led military coalition, which has been fighting the Houthi rebels since March 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has blocked land, sea and air access to Yemen after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile launched by the Houthis toward the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Nov. 4.

The coalition has eased the siege late last month, reopening some ports in south of the country. But UN aid agencies said the move was not enough, while demanding for a complete reopening of all Yemeni ports, including Hodeidah port, the only port to northern Yemen, which is under Houthi control.

On Tuesday, the Yemeni Houthi rebels fired another ballistic missile towards Riyadh's royal palace of Yamamah, but the Saudi-led coalition said they intercepted the missile without casualties.

The day later, Saudi Arabia said it would allow humanitarian aid deliveries into Houthi-controlled Red Sea port of Hodeidah for a month, according to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:20:35|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

HAVANA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Cuban parliament approved "unanimously" on Thursday to extend the mandate of the Council of State, of President Raul Castro and his vice presidents for two more months until next April.

According to an official release, the term extension is due to the damages provoked by Hurricane Irma that caused the modification of the initial electoral timetable.
African Union peacekeepers salute Nicholas Kay, the new UN envoy to Somalia, on his arrival in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, June 3, 2013. (Xinhua/Faisal Isse)

NAIROBI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Lack of funding is threatening the operations of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an African Union (AU) official said Thursday.

Francisco Madeira, Special Representative of the Chairperson of the AU Commission for Somalia and Head of AMISOM, said the inadequate funding threatened the operations of peacekeepers and the Somali security forces.

"Without funding, little can happen to move forward with certain undertakings already made on the security front," he said during a media briefing in Nairobi.

Madeira said AMISOM needs support to conduct the last leg of military operations to recover territory that remains under the control of Al-Shabaab militants.

"We are planning elaborate offensive operations next year mainly in the Jubba valley, Gedo region and Middle Juba regions, areas that still harbor pockets of Al-Shabaab militants," said Madeira.

He revealed that AMISOM has been unable to undertake military operations in the recent past due to limitations in personnel, logistics and others.

"We need urgent support to recover the territories that are currently under Al-Shabaab," the envoy noted.

The Envoy observed that the Somali security forces need to be capacitated to take over the security responsibilities since the drawdown of AMISOM troops from Somalia entails the handover of some of the Forward Operating Bases in the sectors to the Somali National Army.

"A stable Somalia is critical for stability across the East African region and beyond. If we do not decisively address the threat of Al-Shabaab, they will continue to pose a danger to the whole world," he warned.

A review of the AU Mission in Somalia that was carried out by the African Union and the UN, during the course of the year, recommended a gradual and phased reduction and re-organization of the AU Mission.

The UN Security Council Resolution 2372(2017) extended AMISOM's mandate to 31 May 2018 and authorizes troop reduction, starting this December, as the Somali government progressively takes over AMISOM's tasks.

1,000 peace keepers have already left Somalia while a similar number will leave by May next year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:40:37|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BRUSSELS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The European Union on Thursday officially prolonged its economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy for another six months, despite repeated warnings from Moscow it would worsen relations.

The Council of the European Union unanimously formalized the extension, based on an update from French and German leaders to the European Council last week. They said the Minsk agreements had still not been fully implemented.

The measures limit access to EU primary and secondary capital markets for five major Russian majority state-owned financial institutions and their majority-owned subsidiaries established outside of the EU, as well as three major Russian energy and three defense companies.

The export and import ban on trade in arms will continue; so will the export ban for dual-use goods for military use or military end users in Russia.

The sanctions also curtail Russian access to certain sensitive technologies and services that can be used for oil production and exploration, the EU said in a release.

In addition to these economic sanctions, several EU measures are also in place in response to the crisis in Ukraine, including targeted individual restrictive measures, namely a visa ban and an asset freeze, currently against 150 people and 38 entities until March 15, 2018.

Western nations have imposed sanctions against a number of Russian officials and companies citing Russia's intervention in Crimea in March 2014.

The EU slapped sanctions on Russia in July and September 2014 in response to an alleged role that Russia had played in conflicts in east Ukraine. In March 2015, EU leaders decided to align existing sanctions to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements.

In response, Russia imposed an embargo on food imports from Western countries in August 2014. Following several extensions, the import ban is due to expire at the end of 2018.

Moscow has continuously expressed its "deep regret" over EU sanctions, warning it reserved the right to retaliate.

In a statement issued in early August after EU expanded its sanction list, Russian Foreign Ministry accused Brussels of violating both international laws and principles, considering the step as both "unfriendly and unjustified".

"Responsibility for this decision, including the possible economic costs, as well as European companies operating in Russia, lies entirely with the EU and the German government," it said.

Western sanctions are a double-edged sword as Western countries lose more than Russia does, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a press conference this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 00:40:38|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

SKOPJE, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Macedonia's political class is mulling plan to hold a national referendum over the name dispute with Greece, deeming that it would be better if citizens decided whether to accept a new name, as a compromise with Greece, local media reported Thursday.

It seems that government and all political actors here are in favor of this option as the best way to find a solution to long-term pending issues that exist between the two countries.

A few days ago, mediators of Macedonia and Greece over the name issue, Vasko Naumovski and Adamantios Vassilakis, met the United Nations negotiator, Mathew Nimetz, in Brussels and discussed ways how to enhance cooperation and reach a deal but no new name was put on the negotiations table.

Macedonia is the name of a northern province in Greece and Athens is worried that the use of the same name by the neighboring state could lead to territorial claims.

"In this phase, we still don't have a solution. However, as it has been said more than once, it is necessary to have a referendum," the government's spokesman, Mile Bosnjakovski told reporters Thursday.

Also, Macedonia's Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov said that referendum was part of the electoral programs of all major political parties so it was a pre-electoral pledge that should be kept.

While stressing the need for national consensus, he said that in order for a solution to be long-term, the citizens must have their say.

"The name issue with Greece is an issue that can't be solved without the citizens' say," Dimitrov told reporters.

The largest opposition party, VMRO-DPMNE, has sought a national referendum saying that the decision for the solution of the name dispute was not the prerogative of any political party, but a prerogative of the citizens who should decide through a referendum.

The month of January will mark the continuation of talks between Skopje and Athens to find a compromise on the issue of the name, through the support of the UN negotiator, Mathew Nimetz.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:00:42|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly will vote on a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem in a rare emergency special session on Thursday after the United States vetoed a similar draft resolution at the Security Council.

The draft resolution prepared by Turkey and Yemen "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard calls upon all states to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem."

It further demands that all UN member states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

It reiterates its call for the reversal of the negative trends on the ground that are imperiling the two-state solution and for the intensification and acceleration of international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

Thursday's General Assembly emergency special session was called after the United States vetoed a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the Security Council on Monday. All other 14 members of the council voted in favor.

The Security Council vote was prompted by an announcement of U.S. President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and to move the U.S. Embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In UN General Assembly voting, the five permanent members of the Security Council do not have veto power.

The United States has threatened to cut aid for countries that would have voted against the Trump decisions.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said she would be "taking names." Haley has also reportedly written to representatives of various countries to the United Nations to persuade them to vote against the General Assembly draft resolution.

Under a 1950 resolution, a General Assembly emergency special session can be called for all UN member states to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations" for collective measures in case the Security Council fails to act.

The last General Assembly emergency special session was held in 2009 and Thursday's meeting is a resumption of that session as they carried the same subject of Israel's illegal actions in occupied East Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories.
Police said two men had been arrested, and that "at this stage, we believe it is a deliberate act."

Australian police are seen where a driver was arrested after ploughing into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne (Photo: Reuters)

By India Today Web Desk: Australian police said there is no evidence of a terrorist link to Thursday's car ramming attack at central Melbourne's Flinders Street that left 19 people injured, reported news agency Associated Press.

While police had earlier said 14 people had been injured, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed that 19 people had been taken to hospitals. The 4 listed in critical condition are believed to include a preschool-aged child, reported Australian media.

advertisement

Police said two men had been arrested, and that "at this stage, we believe it is a deliberate act."

Early reports said there were two men in the car, but police confirmed the suspect was driving alone.

Confusion had arisen when a second man was seen being apprehended alongside the driver. Patton said this was a 24-year-old man who was seen filming the incident on his mobile phone and found carrying a bag containing three knives.

Police said that man was taken into custody to determine whether he was connected.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the incident "shocking" in a tweet and said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and those treating them.

As our federal & state police & security agencies work together to secure the scene and investigate this shocking incident our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them. https://t.co/JkUM9TuIQe- Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) December 21, 2017

Victoria Police also asked witnesses to go to Melbourne West Police Station at 313 Spencer Street, and people who have any useful multimedia evidence to upload them ataustraliauploadserviceweb.cloudapp.net.

Police said the driver was a 32-year-old Australian citizen of Afghan decent who has a known history of drug use and mental health issues. The man was known to police for historical minor assault and traffic offenses.

There's no clear word yet on whether this was an act of terrorism, but we do know from an article in the Mirror, which says - citing reports - that the terrorist group ISIS had called for attacks on Christmas markets in Europe.

That article cited an Epoch Times report on an image obtained by a darknet intelligence company, which shows a man - covered and hooded in black cloth - standing behind Santa Claus, with a hand behind his neck. "Soon on your holidays," reads a message, written in English, French and German.

According to the Epoch Times report, the image is of Regent Street in London.

WATCH | Commander Russel Barrett speaks to reports after the Flinders Street incident.

Media conference regarding the Flinders Street incident with Commander Russell Barrett. pic.twitter.com/j7zx0V5fYQ

- Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) December 21, 2017

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:25:46|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BERLIN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The European Union's (EU) competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has approved Lufthansa's takeover of the Air Berlin subsidiary LGW on Thursday.

"Lufthansa has made enhanced commitments to ensure that the implications of the LGW purchase on competition will be limited," a statement by Vestager read.

However, the merger only received the EU Commission's green light on the condition that Lufthansa surrenders valuable LGW starting and landing rights slots at Duesseldorf airport to prevent Germany's largest commercial airline from gaining an excessive market share.

Vestager said Lufthansa had consequently taken "adequate account of our anti-trust concerns" by agreeing to this concession, enabling her to approve the planned transaction.

According to Air Berlin, Lufthansa offered 18 million euros (21.4 million U.S. dollars) for the acquisition of Dortmund-based LGW.

Lufthansa had originally intended to take over the struggling Air Berlin subsidiary Niki as well, but recently retracted its offer in the face of persistent resistance from EU anti-trust authorities. As a consequence, Niki was forced to file for insolvency within hours and is now desperately looking for a new investor.

Ever since Lufthansa first signaled its interest in Air Berlin, the European Commission has warned that plans to purchase a total of 81 jets from the bankrupt rival would grant it a monopoly on a significant number of domestic German routes.

LGW accounts for 30 out of these 81 jets and currently employs a staff of 870.

"Even if LGW is very small, it is very valuable for us," an unnamed Lufthansa executive told German media.
The European Union flags flutter in front of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 12, 2012. (Xinhua/Wu Wei)

BRUSSELS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The European Union on Thursday officially prolonged its economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy for another six months, despite repeated warnings from Moscow it would worsen relations.

The Council of the European Union unanimously formalized the extension, based on an update from French and German leaders to the European Council last week. They said the Minsk agreements had still not been fully implemented.

The measures limit access to EU primary and secondary capital markets for five major Russian majority state-owned financial institutions and their majority-owned subsidiaries established outside of the EU, as well as three major Russian energy and three defense companies.

The export and import ban on trade in arms will continue; so will the export ban for dual-use goods for military use or military end users in Russia.

The sanctions also curtail Russian access to certain sensitive technologies and services that can be used for oil production and exploration, the EU said in a release.

In addition to these economic sanctions, several EU measures are also in place in response to the crisis in Ukraine, including targeted individual restrictive measures, namely a visa ban and an asset freeze, currently against 150 people and 38 entities until March 15, 2018.

Western nations have imposed sanctions against a number of Russian officials and companies citing Russia's intervention in Crimea in March 2014.

The EU slapped sanctions on Russia in July and September 2014 in response to an alleged role that Russia had played in conflicts in east Ukraine. In March 2015, EU leaders decided to align existing sanctions to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements.

In response, Russia imposed an embargo on food imports from Western countries in August 2014. Following several extensions, the import ban is due to expire at the end of 2018.

Moscow has continuously expressed its "deep regret" over EU sanctions, warning it reserved the right to retaliate.

In a statement issued in early August after EU expanded its sanction list, Russian Foreign Ministry accused Brussels of violating both international laws and principles, considering the step as both "unfriendly and unjustified".

"Responsibility for this decision, including the possible economic costs, as well as European companies operating in Russia, lies entirely with the EU and the German government," it said.

Western sanctions are a double-edged sword as Western countries lose more than Russia does, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a press conference this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:30:47|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BEIRUT, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Thursday called for Arab solidarity to save Jerusalem, hailing the Palestinians for their patience and steadfastness against all plots.

"Arab solidarity today is an urgent need to save Jerusalem," Hariri said during the launching of "the Key Findings of the National Census of Population and Housing in Palestinian Camps and Gatherings in Lebanon" at the Grand Serail.

"We Lebanese, who are always in solidarity with Palestine, with Jerusalem, with our Palestinian brothers, consider that it is our duty as a state to deal with the problems that the Palestinian refugees are facing in our country," Hariri said.

The prime minister said that he would like to pay special tribute to the Palestinian brothers, the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people, for their patience and steadfastness against all plots including the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"This decision is a gift for the extremists, a hindrance to the peace process and a factor that raises tension in the region," Hariri said.

On Dec. 6, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, triggering large-scale outrage in the Arab and Muslim world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:40:49|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

TRIPOLI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The number of illegal immigrants in Libya currently reaches 700,000, an immigration official told Xinhua on Thursday.

"Libya this year deported about 13,000 immigrants of different nationalities, in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration(IOM)," Milad Saadi, media adviser of Tripoli's anti-illegal immigration department.

In 2006, the IOM and the Libyan authorities launched a humanitarian program to repatriate immigrants stranded in Libyan shelters to their own countries.

"Most Arab and African countries are cooperating with the department on the deportation of their citizens," Saadi said.

"Morocco has recently started cooperating with the department through an official delegation from Rabat. 265 Moroccan migrants will be repatriated over the weekend," Saadi added.

Libya has become a preferred departure point for illegal immigrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, because of insecurity and chaos in the North African country following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:45:50|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

Libyan UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Serraj (R) holds a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (L) in Tripoli, Libya, on Dec. 21, 2017. Fayez Serraj on Thursday asked France to support southern Libya's border security. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

TRIPOLI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Serraj on Thursday asked France to support southern Libya's border security.

Serraj made his remarks during a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Libya's capital Tripoli.

According to the prime minister's media office, the meeting discussed illegal immigration, human trafficking and political developments in Libya.

"The prime minister stressed that Libyans are victims of this phenomenon (illegal immigration), and that all parties involved are responsible for it," the office said in a statement.

"Libya needs assistance to secure its southern border, through which illegal immigrants flow," it added.

For his part, Le Drian reiterated France's support for the Libyan government to achieve security and stability in the country.

"The two parties agreed to increase cooperation and coordination to track smugglers and traffickers inside and outside Libya, support the voluntary return for illegal immigrants, persuade immigrant countries of origin to receive their citizens and find a solution to the problem in a comprehensive manner," the statement noted.

Due to the insecurity and chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime, Libya has become a preferred point of departure for illegal immigrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean toward Europe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 01:55:53|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A plane charted by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) landed in Yemen's capital city of Sana'a on Thursday, delivering nearly six million doses of essential vaccines for millions of children at risk of preventable diseases.

"Vaccinating children in Yemen now is critical to protect them from preventable diseases and death. It is vital that vaccines and other lifesaving supplies for children continue to flow into Yemen and across the country unimpeded. They are a lifeline for millions of children," said Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.

The current diphtheria outbreak has reportedly infected over 300 people and killed 35, with most cases and deaths being reported among children.

Since 2015, Yemen has been in a conflict between forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi rebel movement.

The country is in the grips of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with restrictions on fuel and food imports further complicating emergency response.

UNICEF reiterates its call on all parties to allow unhindered humanitarian access to all of Yemen's land, sea and air ports and to facilitate the distribution of lifesaving assistance for children inside the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:00:54|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

TRIPOLI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Security agencies in the Libyan city of Sirte on Thursday found a mass grave containing dozens of bodies, an official said.

"A security force went to al-Manara neighborhood and inspected the reported site, where a mass grave containing the remains of dozens of bodies was found," Taha Hadid, the spokesman for Sirte's security force, told Xinhua.

The bodies are believed to be of Islamic State (IS) militants, Hadid said.

Al-Manara is one of the last IS-held strongholds during its war against the government forces in 2015.

As soon as the weather improves in the next few days, the Red Crescent teams will recover the remains of the bodies and take DNA samples, the spokesman said.

In December 2015, forces allied with UN-backed Libyan government defeated IS affiliates and expelled them from Sirte, some 450 km east of the capital Tripoli.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:10:56|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

VILNIUS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Lithuanian government decided to ban Kaspersky Lab software in the state's critical infrastructure and information resources on grounds of security threats, announced the Lithuanian defense ministry on Thursday.

The Baltic State's government recognized in its sitting that Kaspersky Lab software poses potential threat to the national security. The cabinet also ordered managers of critical information infrastructure and state information resources to replace the software with "safe equivalents", according to the Defense ministry's announcement.

The ban will affect Lithuania's state controlled energy, finance system, transport computer systems, public sector. Private companies are advised to assess their risks of using the software individually, according the announcement.

"We have to ensure cyber security of the state therefore it is a timely decision of the Government taken with regard to the assessment of threats and vulnerabilities," Edvinas Kerza, deputy defense minister was quoted in the announcement.

Lithuania's decision follows the similar of the U.S. taken recently.

Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied to global media having any ties with any government and insisted it would not help a government to conduct cyber espionage.

In recent years, Lithuanian institutions have faced an increase in cyber attacks, according to the country's cyber security specialists.

Data from Lithuania's communications regulatory authority shows that specialists investigated almost 40,500 cyber incidents last year, 19 percent more than in 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:26:00|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis (L) and Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid attend the celebration ceremony at a former border crossing between Valka in Latvia and Valga in Estonia, on Dec. 21, 2017. The presidents of Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia met on Thursday to mark their countries' first decade in the Schengen Area. (Xinhua/Janis)

RIGA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The presidents of Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia met on Thursday to mark their countries' first decade in the Schengen Area, local media reported.

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis and his Estonian counterpart Kersti Kaljulaid met at a former Latvian-Estonian border crossing which used to divide two border towns.

Historically, the Latvian town of Valka and Estonia's Valga had been developing as one town. The restrictions of movement that came with the reestablishing of the Latvian-Estonian border in the early 1990s affected its residents the most.

During the Soviet era, there was no border between Valka and Valga. But as Latvia and Estonia restored their independence in 1991, the border between the two countries divided the town into two, causing various practical inconveniences for local residents.

Dec. 21, 2007 was a long-awaited day in the border towns as Latvia and Estonia acceded to the Schengen Agreement, paving the way for closer exchange and integration.

Addressing a gathering the former Valka-Valga crossing point, Vejonis emphasized the necessity of joint efforts aimed at strengthening security in Europe and preserving free movement of people.

He called Valka and Valga "our Schengen", the symbol of the opportunities that come with free movement of people and the abolishing of borders.

Kaljulaid stressed the role of the Schengen in promoting cooperation between communities in the border region.

"As neighbors we communicated closely also before that, but removing border control in the border crossing points of Estonia and Latvia when we joined the Schengen Area made communicating between people even easier and smoother, and gave a push to communities near the border to develop their home regions together," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:36:05|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

STOCKHOLM, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The number of fatal shootings nearly doubled in the Swedish capital Stockholm in 2017 compared to last year, according to new figures released by police on Thursday.

Up until mid-December, in Stockholm alone, 18 people were killed in shootings in 2017, compared to 10 people in 2016. In Sweden, 40 people had been shot dead, which has seen a total of 306 shootings so far this year.

"Today, they are shooting more indiscriminately, using three gun magazines instead of three bullets," Patrik Hertzman, chief forensic investigator and weapons investigator at Sweden's National Forensic Center, told news agency TT.

Meanwhile, in the western police region, which includes Sweden's second largest city Gothenburg, the number of shootings has gone down. So far this year, four people were shot to death in connection with 36 shootings. In comparison, in 2016, six people were killed by gun fire in the region.

Police measures to tackle gun crime have included targeting criminal gangs, cooperating with the Gothenburg city authorities, and conducting dialogues with residents in areas plagued by shootings, reported Swedish Television.

"We do not just deal with crimes that lead to long prison sentences but also with those that perhaps involve a two-month prison sentence," said Emmelie Kullmyr, deputy police chief in Greater Gothenburg, to Swedish Television.
By PTI: Karachi, Dec 21 (PTI) A plot to assassinate the Balochistan Governor has been foiled by Pakistani police after they arrested two men near the Pak-Afghan border, officials said.

Quettas Deputy Inspector General, Abdul Razzaq Cheema told a media yesterday that two men have been arrested who were plotting to kill the provincial governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai during a planned visit to his village.

advertisement

"Hamid Bashir from Punjab and Munawar Ahmed from Quetta have confessed to the plan. They were arrested during a raid in the Gulistan area near the border with Afghanistan," he said.

They were planning to carry out a suicide bomb attack on the Governor.

He said a large cache of weapons and explosives, including two suicide vests and land mines, were found in a compound during the raid carried out after receiving a tip- off.

Balochistans Home Minister, Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said that investigations revealed that the Qari Taliban group which now operates out of Afghanistan was behind the plan to carry out the attack on the governor.

He said the same group was behind the assassination of late Punjab Home Minister Shuja Khanzada in 2015. PTI CORR AJR

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:36:06|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

MOSCOW, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that he plans to convene the 9th round of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva in the second half of January.

The special envoy made the announcement at a press conference here after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

He said the new round of Geneva talks will concentrate on ways to fully implement the Resolution 2254 of the UN Security Council adopted in December 2015, which underlines the necessity to prepare for the constitution and organize elections in Syria.

He said he expected help from all parties involved, including Russia, to make the upcoming talks "more successful" than the previous round, which ended earlier this month with nothing significant achieved.

He added that from Moscow he will fly to the Kazakh capital of Astana, where the 8th round of Russia-led international negotiations on Syrian settlement is underway.

At the press conference, Lavrov said he hoped the Astana meeting will produce a list of participants in a Syrian national dialogue congress to be held in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi early next year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:41:09|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

TIRANA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Albania's exports to European Union member states accounted for 78.3 percent of the country's total exports, whereas imports accounted for 60.3 percent of the total, a report of Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) showed Thursday.

Thus, trade exchanges with European Union countries accounted for 66 percent of Albania's exchanges in November.

Meanwhile, Albania exports in the first eleven months of this year were valued at 251 billion lek (2.23 billion U.S. dollars), registering a 13.2-percent growth compared to the same period of the previous year.

Imports from EU countries were valued at 565 billion lek, up by 8 percent year on year from a year ago, the report showed.

According to INSTAT, Albania's trade exchanges with the EU states in the 11 months of this year accounted for 66.3 percent of the total.

Italy, China, Germany and Turkey emerged as Albania's main trading partners, respectively accounting for 37.1 percent, 7.1 percent, 6.5 percent and 6.2 percent of the total, data showed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 02:51:13|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- As the Ethiopia - China Economic, Trade and Cultural Cooperation Forum is currently underway in Hangzhou, China, the Ethiopian government envisaged the forum to provide a new impetus to the comprehensive partnership among the two countries.

The forum kicked off on Wednesday in Hangzhou city in east China.

According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the forum is one major result of the long-standing relations that the two countries have enjoyed for many years.

"Since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the two countries have steadily strengthened a relationship based on their common interests. The two countries have also been and are working closely together in regional and international matters," the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.

Aklilu Hailemichael, Ethiopian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, who noted the long-standing and strong brotherly relations between the two countries and their common aspirations on various areas of cooperation, praised the government and people of China for playing a prominent role in his country's economic boom.

"The Ethiopia - China Economic, Trade and Cultural Cooperation Forum will further enhance the multifaceted ties between the two countries," the statement quoted Hailemichael as saying.

Hailemichael further stressed on the need to promote the South-South cooperation modality and maintain the "excellent collaboration" within the framework of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum, the G-77 and the Non-Aligned Movement among others.

Hailemichael has also briefed participants of the forum regarding Ethiopia's untapped human and natural resources together with the Ethiopian government's commitment towards promoting investment schemes in the east African country.

According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vice Mayor of Hangzhou, Chen Xinhua, also stressed on the need to further map out fields of cooperation in different arrays.

China, Ethiopia's largest trading partner, is a major player in Ethiopia's investment, trade and diplomatic landscape.

In just the past 2 decades alone, Chinese companies have invested close to 4 billion U.S. dollars in Ethiopia. According to the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), the bilateral trade volume among the two countries has also reached 6.37 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.

The recently published McKinsey report also indicated that Ethiopia, together with South Africa, have developed a "robust partnership" with China, along with a high degree of economic engagement in the form of investment, trade, loans, and aid.

The Ethiopian government also stressed the importance of Chinese engagement to the east African country.

Workneh Gebeyehu, Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister, said earlier this month that the ties between Ethiopia and China have shown consistent upward trajectory over the past years.

Gebeyehu, who noted Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn's visit to China during the Belt and Road Initiative Summit in May 2017, also said that the relationship between the two countries "has grown to an excellent level, where the two countries enjoy a comprehensive cooperation and partnership."
UN General Assembly adopts a resolution on the status of Jerusalem, which will make U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital have no legal effect, in New York, Dec. 21, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution on the status of Jerusalem that will make U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital have no legal effect.

In a rare emergency special session, the draft resolution tabled by Turkey and Yemen was adopted 128-9 with 35 abstentions.

The resolution "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard calls upon all states to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem."

It further demands that all UN member states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Such a vote at the General Assembly is non-binding but a resounding "yes" reflects the collective will of the international community and carries much political weight.

Thursday's General Assembly emergency session was called after the United States vetoed a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the Security Council on Monday. All other 14 members of the council voted in favor.

The Security Council vote was prompted by Trump's Dec. 6 announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and to move the U.S. Embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Under a 1950 resolution, a General Assembly emergency special session can be called for all UN member states to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations" for collective measures in case the Security Council fails to act.

Thursday's emergency special session was only the 10th of its kind in UN history. The last such meeting was held in 2009.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:01:15|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

KIEV, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine can survive without buying Russian nuclear fuel by replacing it with imports from other countries, Ukrainian Minister of Energy and Coal Igor Nasalyk said here Thursday.

"If Russia stops the supplies, we have enough options and possibilities to support the nuclear industry from other sources," Nasalyk told a press conference here.

According to the minister, currently Ukraine imports about 60 percent of nuclear fuel from Russian state-owned fuel group TVEL and the rest from the European branch of the U.S.-based nuclear power company Westinghouse Electric Company.

Next year, Kiev plans to reduce the share of imports from Russia to 45 percent, Nasalyk said.

As nuclear energy accounts for over half of power generation in the country, Ukraine heavily depends on nuclear fuel for its 15 reactors in four nuclear power plants.

In the first 10 months of 2017, Ukraine imported nuclear fuel totally worth 381 million U.S. dollars, of which 64.1 percent came from Russia.

Ukraine, which relied on Russia for more than 90 percent of its nuclear fuel imports in 2013, has gradually reduced the purchase since the political dispute between Kiev and Moscow in 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:11:20|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ROME, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Italy hopes Austria will continue to respect a 1946 agreement concerning its northern Alto Adige province, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano told his Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl in a phone call on Thursday.

The 1946 accord "underlies Alto Adige's autonomous status, which is a universally appreciated example of peaceful coexistence and economic development between different language groups," Alfano said in a statement.

"The Italian government's commitment to continuing on this path remains firm," Italy's top diplomat said.

The bilateral agreement signed in the wake of World War II guaranteed equal rights to German speakers living in the Italian border province, which had been invaded by the Nazis and which had been subjected to strict "Italianization" policies under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, with Germans forbidden to speak their language and being forced to change their names to Italian ones.

Alfano's remarks came after a proposal earlier this week by the brand-new government of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to offer passports to German-speaking residents of Alto Adige, one of 20 regions in Italy.

The proposal sparked alarm in Italy over what is being seen as an attempt to sow division in the ethnically diverse border province, which is largely German-speaking.

Kurz on Wednesday sought to downplay those tensions, saying any such move would only be undertaken "in cooperation with Italy".

The newly sworn in 31-year-old chancellor is the leader of the conservative Austrian People's Party and is governing in coalition with the far-right, anti-immigrant and euroskeptic Freedom Party.

He made a name for himself last summer while serving as Austrian foreign minister, when along with the defense minister he threatened to send troops to the Brenner Pass, a key border crossing into Italy, to keep migrants from entering Austria.

In a recent tweet, the Austrian chancellor wrote that "the new Austrian government will be clearly pro-European and committed to making a positive contribution to the future development of the EU."

Kurz repeated words to this effect in meetings with European Union leaders on Wednesday.

"Kurz's significant words yesterday on our common belonging to the EU and on the firm desire to cooperate with Italy assure us that the new Austrian government will take initiatives that are exclusively based on these principles," Alfano said, adding that he and Kneissl planned to meet in person in the coming weeks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:16:22|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

MAPUTO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank announced in a press release here on Thursday that it will spend 105 million U.S. dollars for the health sector in Mozambique, aimed mainly at the areas of nutrition, reproductive health and maternal and child health.

"The results-based funding targets underserved geographical areas in Mozambique and aims to improve the utilization and quality of health services including, in particular, nutrition and reproductive, maternal and child health," said the release.

The World Bank notes that Mozambique faces troubling challenges in terms of social indicators, ranking 181 in the Human Development Index among 188 countries.

The statement notes that Mozambique is short of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the health chapter, despite some progress.

Funding will be channeled through an instrument called Program for Results, which only releases funds in a phased manner and based on the achievement of pre-agreed targets between the World Bank and the Mozambican government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:21:23|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ARUSHA, Tanzania, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania on Thursday launched a nationwide tree planting campaign aimed at rescuing the east African nation from the risk of becoming a desert.

Speaking at the official launch of the campaign in the country's capital, Dodoma, Tanzania's Vice President, Samia Suluhu Hassan blamed local government authorities for failure to keep the national tree planting campaign alive, saying the country risks becoming a desert if no action is taken.

She argued that records show that at least 61 percent of the country is likely to become a desert, calling on the councils and municipal authorities to come up with by-laws to ensure schools, universities and other institutions plant trees annually. The same should also be at family levels.

Samia noted that for many years the Tanzanian government has been implementing a number of tree planting campaigns but unfortunately they all turned unsuccessful due to lack of efforts from the local authority leaders to sustain the plans.

The official expressed her commitment to actively participate in implementing the father of the nation, Julius Nyerere's vision of transforming Dodoma into a green city.

"Both regional and district authorities have not been telling the government the truth as they do not effectively oversee the entire process and give false statistics on tree planting," she said here Wednesday before launching a nationwide tree planting programme.

Tanzania's government first launched tree planting campaign in the 1970s and later in the 2000s to ensure every council plant at least 1.5 million trees annually. However, the Vice President said the plan was not effectively implemented.

"Had all the campaigns been fully implanted, we could have a better environment today," said the official.

At least 2,500 trees were planted at Mzakwe area some 20 km from Dodoma municipality on the way to Arusha. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism said there were 100,000 trees ready for the municipality and 650,000 more to be planted across the districts in the region.

The VP directed the regional authorities to ensure the trees allocated by the ministry are planted within 14 days.

She warned however, no tree should be abandoned to dry.

Tanzania has 33 million hectares of forests and woodland, but the country has been losing more than 400,000 hectares of forest a year for two decades, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's 2010 Global Forests Resources Assessment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:26:24|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ANKARA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The latest row between Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the history of Ottoman era represents the rivalry of two alliances in the Middle East, experts said.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the charges d'affairs of the UAE embassy in Ankara on Thursday to protest the UAE minister's post, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told Xinhua on condition anonymity.

The latest dispute surfaced when UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan retweeted a Twitter post on Dec. 16, criticizing Fahreddin Pasha - a Medina governor and commander of the Ottoman Empire during the World War I - for committing crimes against the people of Medina during the siege of the city in 1916.

He accused the official of stealing treasures of the people of Medina and smuggling handwritten manuscripts to Istanbul.

"These are (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan's ancestors and their history with Arab Muslims," said the top UAE diplomat.

Erdogan on Thursday fought back by slamming the UAE minister's comments on the former Ottoman official, saying Pasha "was protecting Medina from intruders instead of stealing its treasures."

He also criticized al-Nahyan for being "a man spoiled in the hands of the oil."

Erdogan's spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin on Tuesday suggested that al-Nahyan was aiming to put the Turks against Arabs.

"We see that the two countries started to take side in the alliance system formed in the region," Oytun Orhan, an expert from the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM), told Xinhua.

In addition to this dispute, Turkey and the UAE also have opposite views on other major issues in the region, including the Qatari crisis and the Jerusalem issue.

While the Saudi Arabia-backed alliance, including the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and imposed a full blockade on Doha in early June, Ankara has been siding with Doha.

Turkey has set up a military base in Qatar to showcase its support after the crisis started, while providing the much-need food supplies to the rich Gulf nation to offset the Saudi-led blockade as Iran did.

Ankara has also taken steps to improve its ties with Iran, an enemy to most of the Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia.

"Turkey has never been a part of this anti-Iranian bloc. Despite having problems with Iran, Turkey keeps a balanced policy and tried to escape from the Shiite-Sunni confrontation," Orhan said.

Turkey and the UAE also have different positions on U.S. President Donald Trump's recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Orhan noted.

Turkey, a non-Arab country with a Muslim-dominated population, takes the most outspoken position among other regional countries against the U.S. Jerusalem decision.

Erdogan also convened an urgent summit of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which called for recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.

But the leaders of the UAE and Saudi Arabia did not attend the OIC summit in Istanbul, which illustrated the obvious difference between the two sides.

The Saudi and UAE camp are reportedly seeking rapprochement with Israel, at a time when Turkey is at odds with both Israel and the U.S., Orhan said.

Orhan noted that the fued between Ankara and Abu Dhabi goes bak to the days of a coup d'etat in Egypt in 2013 that removed Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood movement from power.

While the UAE openly supported the coup in Egypt, the Turkish government, which politically embraces Muslim Brotherhood movements in the region, took side with Morsi.

The most concrete indicator of the dispute in the Turkish-UAE relations at the time was that the UAE did not send an ambassador to Ankara till 2016.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited the Gulf country in 2016 and stated that a new page was opened in relations.

But, following Turkey's July 15 coup attempt in 2016, the bilateral relations have become tense again, as Turkey accused the Gulf country of "financing the coup."

"We know very well who in the Gulf was happy with the coup attempt in Turkey," Erdogan said, indirectly pointing a finger at the UAE.

The allegation that the UAE played role in the coup attempt has angered Turkey, which has once again adopted a firm stance toward the Gulf country, Orhan said.

Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Thursday called on the government to withdraw its ambassador in Abu Dhabi even the UAE does not apologize for its latest comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:26:24|Editor: Yamei

Video Player Close

Photo taken on Dec. 21, 2017 shows the voting result of a United Nations General Assembly resolution on the status of Jerusalem during a rare emergency special session at the UN headquarters in New York. The General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution on the status of Jerusalem that will make U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital have no legal effect. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution on the status of Jerusalem that will make U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital have no legal effect.

In a rare emergency special session, the draft resolution tabled by Turkey and Yemen was adopted 128-9 with 35 abstentions.

The nine countries that voted against the text were Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, as well as the United States and Israel.

The resolution "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard calls upon all states to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem."

It further demands that all UN member states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Such a vote at the General Assembly is non-binding but a resounding "yes" reflects the collective will of the international community and carries much political weight.

Before the vote, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley repeated the threat to cut aid for the countries that would have voted in favor of the draft as well as U.S. contributions to the United Nations.

She said her country will move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that."

However, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu showed defiance to U.S. pressure.

"We will not be intimidated. You can be strong, but that does't make you right!" Cavusoglu told the emergency special session in clear reference to U.S. threats.

"Before this meeting, a UN member state threatened all the other members. We were all asked to vote 'no' or face consequences. Some were even threatened with development aid cut," said Cavusoglu.

"Such an attitude is unacceptable. This is bullying and this chamber will not bow to that. It is unethical to think that the worth and dignity of member states are for sale," said the foreign minister.

Thursday's General Assembly emergency session was called after the United States vetoed a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the Security Council on Monday. All other 14 members of the council voted in favor.

The Security Council vote was prompted by Trump's Dec. 6 announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Under a 1950 resolution, a General Assembly emergency special session can be called for all UN member states to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations" for collective measures in case the Security Council fails to act.

Thursday's emergency special session was only the 10th of its kind in UN history. The last such meeting was held in 2009.
The impact of the explosion was so high that three persons who were working in the vicinity of the boiler there bodies were ripped apart.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Four persons lost their lives and 9 were injured when a boiler at a sugar factory in Gopalganj district in Bihar exploded last night. The incident happened at around 11:30 PM on Wednesday at the Sasmusa sugar factory in Gopalganj, approximately 170 kms from Patna.

According to eyewitnesses, the impact of the explosion was so high that three persons who were working in the vicinity of the boiler there bodies were ripped apart. Sources say that at the time of the explosion, there were at least 100 workers working in the sugar factory.

advertisement

The deceased have been identified as Arjun Kushwaha, resident of Kuchayat Kot, Kripa Yadav, resident of Baani Khajuri and Md. Shamsuddin, hailing from Padrauna district in Uttar Pradesh. It is feared that several other workers at this sugar factory may still be trapped under the debris.

The injured have been admitted at the civil hospital in Gopalganj where their condition is said to be critical. The doctors have also referred three persons injured to Patna's PMCH for advanced treatment. The injured workers have been identified as Banka Yadav, Kanhaiya Prasad, Md. Harool, Parasnath, Bikram Yadav, Ravindra Yadav, Md. Hasanuddin and Chandradev Prasad.

"The condition of all the 9 workers who have been brought to the hospital is extremely serious. We have referred three of them to Patna", said Shashi Kant Mishra.

Soon after the incident, police and senior officials of the Gopalganj administration rushed to the site and started the operation of rescuing the injured. Police sources say that the initial cause of the explosion of the boiler is believed to be overheating which may have led to the incident.

The police have begun investigation into the incident to ascertain the reason behind the incident.

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 03:31:27|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

BAGHDAD, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi parliamentary committee Thursday called on the Kurdish security forces to exercise restraint in response to protests in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq amid widespread anger over unpaid salaries and corruption.

"We call on the security forces in the Kurdistan region to exercise restraint and not to use excessive force against demonstrators," Abdul-Rahim al-Shimmary, head of the parliamentary human rights committee, said in a statement.

"We are following with great concern the developments in the Kurdistan region, and the demonstrators' protests demanding their rights that were guaranteed by the Iraqi constitution, including the right of peaceful demonstration," Shimmary said.

The massive demonstrations continued for the fourth day in the town of Rania in Sulaimaniyah province in northeastern Iraq, witnesses at the scene told Xinhua.

Rania was the scene of bloody clashes on Tuesday when the security forces opened fire and used tear gas after protesters torched offices of the Kurdish parties, leaving five people killed and some 80 others wounded.

During the past four days, clashes erupted in several cities and towns in the province, including the city of Sulaimaniyah, when the security forces fired rubber bullets and used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, with people admitted to hospital for suffocation and rubber-bullet wounds.

Hundreds of Kurdish security forces were deployed in the provincial cities, while attempting to avoid clashes with protesters.

The protests were sparked by frustration over unpaid salaries to teachers and other civil servants, in addition to the deterioration of basic services and widespread corruption.

The provinces of the Kurdistan region have been suffering from financial and economic hardships as a result of disagreement with the federal government in Baghdad over distribution of crude oil revenues extracted from the northern oil fields.

The financial hardship has increased after the Iraqi forces retook control of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and some other oil wells in the disputed areas on Oct. 16.

Tensions have been running high between Baghdad and the region of Kurdistan after the Kurds held a controversial referendum on the independence of the Kurdistan region and the disputed areas on Sept. 25.

The independence of Kurdistan has been fiercely opposed by the Iraqi central government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 04:16:35|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ACCRA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank will provide 142.4 million Special Drawing Rights (SDR) or 200 million U.S. Dollars to support Ghana's 2018 budget, according to a release it issued here on Thursday.

The Bank signed the credit agreement to that effect with the government of Ghana under the Second Macroeconomic Stability for Competitiveness and Growth Development Policy Financing (MSCGDPO II) program.

Prior to the signing of the agreement, the Board of the World Bank Group had approved the financing at a meeting held in Washington on Wednesday.

The release added that the program was in consonance with the current government's commitment to continue with the stabilization program over the medium term with a strong focus on legal, policy and institutional measures that may transcend political cycles.

The MSCGDPO II is expected to ensure stronger institutions for more predictable fiscal outcomes; achieve improved control over the wage bill; ensure better management of government subsidies and arrears; enhance debt management capacity; enable stronger governance of State Owned Enterprises; ensure more effective public investment management; and reinforce social protection for the poor and vulnerable.

"The combined success of the program is crucial for macroeconomic stability and a prerequisite for sustained growth," the release said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 04:21:36|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

CAIRO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's Public Prosecution on Thursday handed over to its Italian counterpart new investigation reports and documents on the last year murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni.

In a statement, Public Prosecution said that Egypt's top prosecutor Nabil Sadeq met with Rome chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone.

During the meeting, Sadeq and Pignatone have reviewed the progress made by a company tasked with recovering recordings of Cairo Metro stations, where the victim was present before his disappearance, the statement read.

Rome prosecutors have provided a detailed explanation for the facts of the case, the statement noted.

The Egyptian public prosecution had received a copy of a report prepared by the Italian judicial police, saying it will complete inquiries, in light of assumptions exchanged between the two parties, according to the statement.

Italian doctoral student Regeni, 28, disappeared on Jan. 25, 2016.

His tortured, half-naked body was found on a roadside in Cairo nine days after his disappearance, casting a shadow on the diplomatic relations between the two countries.

A few weeks later, the Egyptian police said they busted a five-member gang in Cairo and found Regeni's handbag with his passport and student ID card at the residence of a gang member's relative.

Regeni's disappearance came amid intensive security in Cairo and other major cities in Egypt ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising that toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 04:31:37|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- More than 40 million people are suffering hunger in the Near East and North Africa Region (NENA) due to wars and conflicts, according to the latest 2017 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on food security and nutrition in the region.

Released on Thursday, the report states that 40.2 million people are suffering undernourishment and hunger while some 55.2 million are going through severe food insecurity due to conflicts in the NENA region.

The NENA countries are mostly Middle Eastern and Arab states, including Egypt where the FAO regional headquarters is based, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.

"This year, the FAO report shows that conflicts are the main reason behind the deteriorating conditions of food security and nutrition in the NENA region, as over 40 million people are suffering hunger in the region with 75 percent of them living in five war-torn states," said Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO's regional chief for NENA and the organization's assistant director general.

The region has been the most tense worldwide throughout history. Since the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that started about seven years ago and toppled some powerful Arab leaders, turmoil has further hit Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, with Lebanon suffering political instability and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process facing a deadlock.

The FAO 2017 report states that 27.2 percent of all people of NENA's war-affected countries are chronically hungry, or undernourished, during the 2014-16 period, highlighting Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya as "hot spots" of regional conflicts.

Taking Syria as an example, the country's ongoing crisis that erupted in March 2011 has claimed the lives of about half a million and displaced and wounded over 14 million others.

"The costs of conflicts and wars are not restricted to the level of food security but it also extends to the human level, as the NENA region includes the largest number of displaced people, and the issue has its large social and economic impacts too," Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO's regional chief, told Xinhua after releasing the 2017 report in Cairo.

Ahmed emphasized that the effects of wars on agriculture in Syria, for example, have been estimated at 16 billion U.S. dollars.

"There are some countries that spend 20 to 60 percent of its GDP on coping with wars and violence, which is such a high cost," he lamented.

The FAO report highlighted peace in this region as the only means to eradicate hunger by 2030, which is one of the UN millennium development goals agreed on by world states.

"There must be collaboration, collective work and adoption of comprehensive policies to face poverty, starting with the pressing humanitarian needs of some states and supporting resilience, development and reconstruction in conflict-stricken countries," the FAO regional chief said.

Undernourishment and malnutrition, which are widely spreading in the region due to civil wars and conflicts over the past few years, have made the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) dedicate half of its annual budget to NENA suffering states.

Since March 2015, a Saudi-led Arab alliance has been launching airstrikes against Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, a group that helped overthrow Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and killed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh after he turned against them.

The Yemeni crisis has left some 20.7 million people in need, over 2 million internally displaced, according to the report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released on Dec. 18.

"The WFP along with its partners provide food aids for more than 7 million people in Yemen and over 6 million in Syria and its neighboring states, in addition to several other Arab states and countries in the Middle East and North Africa," WFP regional director Muhannad Hadi told Xinhua, noting that the WFP budget for 2018 is 9 billion U.S. dollars.

"Unfortunately, due to the ongoing conflicts, more than half of the WFP budget goes to the Middle East region and the Arab world. For example, we need more than 1 billion dollars for Yemen and the same amount for Syria in the coming year 2018," he added.

In Libya, a civil war has also been taking place for years, leaving the state divided between two rival administrations, one based in the capital Tripoli and the other in the eastern city of Tobruk.

The FAO 2017 report serves as a source of data and information for the massive, nonstop work of the WFP and the UN organizations.

The report also focuses on the fundamental factors that have driven improvements in food security and malnutrition, including violence cessation, poverty reduction, economic growth, better maternal and childhood nutrition and public health and higher food quantity and quality.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 04:51:39|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

ANKARA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkey on Thursday welcomed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)'s rejection of a U.S. decision on Jerusalem's status, and called on the U.S. administration to rescind its decision without delay.

"We welcome with great pleasure the UN General Assembly's overwhelming support for a historic resolution on Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem)," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on his official Twitter account.

"We expect the Trump administration to rescind without further delay its unfortunate decision, whose illegality has been clearly established by UNGA," he added.

In a statement, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the UN resolution "created a new opportunity for peace efforts" in the region.

Turkey would continue to side with "its Palestinian brothers, humanity, Jerusalem, justice and those who are oppressed," he noted.

Turkey's presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also hailed the UN resolution, describing the vote "historic" for Jerusalem, Palestine and international justice.

"Today, the General Assembly clearly rejected the U.S. decision on Jerusalem. There was solidarity for Palestine and Jerusalem's status in the General Assembly," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in New York after the voting.

Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag tweeted that the 128 countries "showed that they, as sovereign and independent countries, did not surrender to the clear threat and oppression of the U.S.."

The UN resolution "showed that Palestinians and Jerusalem are not alone," he said.

"Although the resolution is non-binding, it will be very effective as it defines legitimacy against threat and blackmailing," Turkey's EU Minister Omer Celik wrote on his Twitter account, saying the UN decision is "a turning point."

The UN on Thursday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on Jerusalem, calling on the U.S. to withdraw its recognition of the holy city as Israel's capital.

A total of 128 members voted in favor of the resolution, nine voted against and 35 others abstained.
Photo taken on Dec. 21, 2017 shows the voting of a United Nations General Assembly resolution on the status of Jerusalem during a rare emergency special session at the UN headquarters in New York. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution on the status of Jerusalem that will make U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital have no legal effect.

In a rare emergency special session, the draft resolution tabled by Turkey and Yemen was adopted 128-9 with 35 abstentions.

The nine countries that voted against the text were Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, as well as the United States and Israel.

The resolution "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard calls upon all states to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem."

It further demands that all UN member states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.

Such a vote at the General Assembly is non-binding but a resounding "yes" reflects the collective will of the international community and carries much political weight.

Before the vote, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley repeated the threat to cut aid for the countries that would have voted in favor of the draft as well as U.S. contributions to the United Nations.

She said her country will move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that."

However, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu showed defiance to U.S. pressure.

"We will not be intimidated. You can be strong, but that does't make you right!" Cavusoglu told the emergency special session in clear reference to U.S. threats.

"Before this meeting, a UN member state threatened all the other members. We were all asked to vote 'no' or face consequences. Some were even threatened with development aid cut," said Cavusoglu.

"Such an attitude is unacceptable. This is bullying and this chamber will not bow to that. It is unethical to think that the worth and dignity of member states are for sale," said the foreign minister.

Thursday's General Assembly emergency session was called after the United States vetoed a draft resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the Security Council on Monday. All other 14 members of the council voted in favor.

The Security Council vote was prompted by Trump's Dec. 6 announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Under a 1950 resolution, a General Assembly emergency special session can be called for all UN member states to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations" for collective measures in case the Security Council fails to act.

Thursday's emergency special session was only the 10th of its kind in UN history. The last such meeting was held in 2009.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 05:31:46|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Thursday renewed the mandate of the world body's peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights.

In a resolution, the council decided to extend the mandate of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), tasked to maintain a cease-fire between the Israeli and Syrian forces since 1974, for six months, till June 30, 2018.

Resolution 2394 calls on both Israel and Syria to exercise "maximum restraint" and prevent any breaches of the cease-fire and the area of separation.

It underscores that there should be no military activity of any kind in the area of separation, including military operations by the Syrian government troops and by Syrian armed opposition groups.

It urges UN member states to convey strongly to the Syrian armed opposition groups in UNDOF's area of operations that UNDOF remains an impartial entity and to halt all activities that endanger UN peacekeepers on the ground and to accord the United Nations personnel on the ground the freedom to carry out their mandate safely and securely.

The resolution calls on all parties to cooperate fully with the operations of UNDOF, to respect its privileges and immunities and to ensure its freedom of movement, as well as the security of and unhindered and immediate access for the UN personnel carrying out their mandate.

UNDOF was established in May 1974 following the agreed disengagement of the Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights. Since then, the mission has remained in the area to maintain the cease-fire between the Israeli and Syrian forces and to supervise the implementation of the disengagement agreement.

The situation in UNDOF's area of operations had been quiet until the spillover of the Syrian civil war in 2012.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 05:36:47|Editor: Yang Yi

Video Player Close

File photo taken on May 26, 2017 shows a passenger train passing the Kolasin station in Montenegro. A ceremony was held here on Dec. 21 in Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, to celebrate the completion of Kolasin-Kos railway rehabilitation project by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). (Xinhua/CCECC)

PODGORICA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A ceremony was held here on Thursday in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, to celebrate the completion of Kolasin-Kos railway rehabilitation project by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).

Also on Thursday, CCECC received a taking-over certificate of the 9.864 km-long, 7-million-euro project, marking the successful completion of the first railway project in Europe by a Chinese company with European Union fund.

Chinese Ambassador to Montenegro Cui Zhiwei, Montenegro's Minister of Transport and Maritime Affairs Osman Nurkovic, and Milan Bankovic, general director of directorate for railway traffic at Montenegro's Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs, and representatives from Railway Infrastructure of Montenegro - AD Podgorica, attended the reception.

Bankovic said in his speech that the project has attracted a lot of attention since the start of the work.

"Chinese colleagues have finished the project in line with EU standards, and also accumulated experience in Montenegro on implementing railway projects and other infrastructure ones," said Bankovic.

According to Zhu Tianran, general director of CCECC Montenegro Ltd., CCECC won the public tender of the project on Sept.29, 2015, whose design and construction adopted EU technical standards. This rail line is the most difficult part of the railway from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, to the port of Bar in Montenegro. The number of bridges and tunnels of this part accounted for 90 percent of that of the whole line. Extreme weather conditions during the past two year in Montenegro also caused trouble to the work.

After the rehabilitation, the speed of the train will be raised from 50-60 km per hour to 80 km per hour, and it will revitalize the economic development of Montenegro. (1 euro = 1.19 U.S. dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 06:01:51|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

People wave Syrian national flags during the anniversary celebration of the liberation of Aleppo on the Saadallah al-Jabiri square in Aleppo city, northern Syria, on Dec. 21, 2017. The anniversary celebration also included a military parade and the families of the "martyrs" who have lost their lives during the war, holding up posters featuring the photos of their slain sons and relatives. Last year's battle of Aleppo was a turning point in the course of actions in the Syrian crisis, due to the strategic importance of the city, which was the economic capital of Syria and where most of the country's industry was located. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani)

by Hummam Sheikh Ali

ALEPPO, Syria, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- During the war, it was known as the "death square" due to the heavy rebels' shelling and bombing that rocked its core. A year after the liberation of Aleppo, the Saadallah al-Jabiri square was festooned with the Syrian flags and flocked by thousands of Syrians celebrating the liberation anniversary of their city.

Around a big sign read "I Love Aleppo," the huge crowds of people gathered on Thursday, waving the Syrian flags and posters of President Bashar al-Assad, while shouting slogans in support of the Syrian government forces.

"Today is the celebration of Aleppo, the celebration of every single person here. We have come to express our real joy and happiness that our nightmare has ended a year ago," Ahmad, 40, told Xinhua while holding a Syrian flag in the square.

The anniversary celebration also included a military parade and the families of the "martyrs" who have lost their lives during the war, holding up posters featuring the photos of their slain sons and relatives.

The security around the square was tightened and cars were prevented from getting close, out of fear of possible retaliatory bombings.

The Information Minister Ramez Tourjman took part in the celebration as well as top military officers, including Russians, who played a significant role in enabling the army to retrieve the rebel-held part of Aleppo.

Last year's battle of Aleppo was so cubical and a turning point in the course of actions in the Syrian crisis, due to the strategic importance of the city, which was the economic capital of Syria and where most of the country's industry was located.

It was said that the one who controls Aleppo wins the Syrian war.

Much of the former rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo, including the ancient part of the city, is in ruins, but people are finding their ways to overcome the difficulties and rise with their city to make it the economic capital of Syria once again.

Throughout the year since the liberation, roads, which had been previously blocked by rubble and debris, were cleaned up. Electricity has also returned, at least partially to the city, which was relying totally on generators and batteries.

Drinking water has also been pumped to the taps of the Syrian homes in Aleppo after the rebels cut it off to suffocate the government-controlled areas in Aleppo over the years.

Marketplaces and streets are now jam-packed with people and merchants started opening their businesses there despite the still-under-expectations services.

But as the people of Aleppo say: "we are people who love to work."

Hussain Ibrahim, a resident of Aleppo, told Xinhua during the celebration that the situation in Aleppo has significantly changed after the liberation.

"We are having a better life now thanks to the sacrifices of the Syrian army. The situation before was very bad with security situation hitting rock bottom, but now it's much better," he said.

Ahmad, another man from Aleppo, said holding the celebration in the Saadallah al-Jabiri square is a joy itself.

"Before the liberation, no one dared to stand here in this square... it was totally deserted, and look at us now all gathering here, singing and chanting and feeling our city again," he told Xinhua.

For his side, Aleppo Governor Hussein Diab affirmed that the victory of Aleppo was achieved due to the steadfastness and sacrifices of its people and their solidarity with the Syrian army, pointing out that this victory was a strategic shift in the war on terror and its supporters.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 06:27:00|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

VALLETTA, Dec. 21(Xinhua) -- The Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) has signed an agreement with the Maltese government over working conditions for teachers in state schools.

The new sectoral agreement, which will come into force next year and run till 2022, was the result of intense negotiations.

Frank Fabri, permanent secretary of the Education Ministry, explained that the agreement would start to be implemented immediately, with a committee set up to oversee the process.

Earlier this year, MUT had declared a trade dispute with the government when negotiations on teachers' salaries appeared to have stalled.

Last month,the government and MUT have reached an agreement to raise teachers' salaries by 20 percent.

According to the agreement signed on Thursday, teachers will be granted more teaching resources, as well as the opportunity to receive up to 360 hours of specialised training.

Teaching syllabi will also changed, giving teachers more autonomy and freedom in their classroom.
Bipasha Basu has denied reports that she is expecting her first child with Karan Singh Grover.

By India Today Web Desk: The grapevine was abuzz with reports of Bipasha Basu's pregnancy, when she was clicked outside the hospital with her husband, Karan Singh Grover, on Tuesday. However, the actress refuted the rumours and told SpotboyE, "I am not pregnant, please end this speculation."

Bipasha and Karan visited the Hinduja Hospital in Khar, Mumbai. Hinduja Hospital is the choice for many B-Town celebs to deliver their babies, from Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput to the more recent Esha Deol.

advertisement

However, the 'monkey lovers' went to get Karan's stomach infection checked, if a report in Pinkvilla is to be believed.

This is not the first time that Bipasha's rumoured pregnancy has made headlines. Earlier this year, she said that the "constant guessing game is tiring" and that when she and Karan are having a baby, she will announce it to the world herself.

On the work front, Bipasha and Karan recently decided to endorse a condom brand, and shot a too-hot-to-handle commercial for the same. While Karan will be seen next in Ankoosh Bhatt's thriller Firrkie, Bipasha is yet to sign a film after Alone (2015).

ALSO WATCH: Karan and I are very happy for all the love you guys are giving us, says Bipasha

--- ENDS ---
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 06:52:05|Editor: yan

Video Player Close

CAPE TOWN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday urged his countrymen residing abroad to return home following the resignation of former President Robert Mugabe.

It's time for Zimbabwean nationals in the diaspora to return home, Mnangagwa told a crowd of Zimbabweans in Pretoria during a visit to South Africa.

Millions of Zimbabweans fled to foreign countries, most of them to South Africa, during Mugabe's 37-year rule.

Mnangagwa said Zimbabwean nationals living in South Africa should return home and put the skills that they have acquired in the neighboring country to great use in the rebuilding of the Zimbabwean economy and development of their motherland.

"I appeal to you to come to Zimbabwe ... Zimbabwe is your home," he said, adding that from now on Zimbabwe is now open for business.

He urged his countryment to let bygones be bygones and look in the future with hope.

Mnangagwa thanked his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma for the warmth and hospitality provided to Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

Earlier on Thursday, Mnangagwa met with Zuma and both leaders pledged to strengthen economic trade and cooperation between the two countries.

Mnangagwa was on his first working visit to South Africa, which was also his first official visit outside of Zimbabwe since his assumption of office on November 24, 2017

The two presidents emphasized the warm historical relations between the two countries and the need to ensure the further deepening of these relations, South African presidential spokesperson Bongani Ngqulunga said.

The two heads of state agreed on the need to strengthen economic cooperation and expand economic and trade relations between the two countries, and to make this a key feature of the cooperation agenda, in support of Mnangagwa's mission to revive the Zimbabwean economy, said Ngqulunga.

The Zimbabwean economy has been hard hit by sanctions imposed by Western countries and other challenges over many years.

According to the Zimbabwe's embassy in South Africa, the main purpose of Mnangagwa's visit was to attract investments from South Africa.

South Africa and Zimbabwe enjoy cordial bilateral relations underpinned by strong historical and political bonds that date back to the era of the liberation struggle.

The two countries have convened their Bi-National Commission (BNC) meeting every year since 2015. The BNC is co-chaired by the two heads of state.

The previous session of the BNC was held on October 3,2017, with the participation of Mugabe, who was deposed not long after he returned home.

South Africa and Zimbabwe have signed over 40 memoranda of understanding and agreements, covering wide aspects including security, energy, agriculture, mining, infrastructure development, trade, transport and arts and culture.

Trade between the two countries has seen exponential growth over the years with Zimbabwe being one of South Africa' s top five trading partners in the region and the continent.

South African exports to Zimbabwe in 2016 were worth 29.3 billion rand (about 231 million U.S. dollars), official statistics show.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-22 07:02:08|Editor: Yurou

Video Player Close

SANTIAGO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Heraldo Munoz on Thursday called for closer ties between Latin America's two leading trade blocs.

The Southern Common Market (Mercosur), which gathers South American countries, and the Pacific Alliance, which includes most of the region's Pacific coast countries, should work more closely together, Munoz told the 51st Leaders Summit of Mercosur and Associated States, hosted by Brasilia from Dec. 18 to 21.

"We value everything that united us and allows us to create shared agendas. We are part of the same region. We have all proposed fighting poverty and inequality; we all hope for a more just and prosperous future for our peoples; and we think there is no better path towards progress than working jointly," said Munoz.

The two blocs have previously pledged to strengthen collaboration and Munoz said there have been "advances" in the road map to facilitate trade, customs cooperation, value chains and the elimination of trade barriers.

The two have also exchanged information and adopted measures to promote regional trade, he said.

Munoz also took the opportunity to invite his regional counterparts to the upcoming summit between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the region's largest integration bloc, and China, which Chile is to host on January 21 and 22.

The gathering will feature "a first-rate cast from China that will allow us to dialogue in a good way as we look to the Asian-Pacific," he said.

The gathering will also benefit future ties between the two blocs, given that China's influence in the region has steadily grown in recent years, he said.

China is Latin America's second-largest trade partner, and the leading trade partner for certain regional countries, such as Chile, Munoz noted.
Submit An Obituary

Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.

Go to form
A study explains just how sexual dysfunction can be caused by cancer.

By Asian News International: A cancer diagnosis affects a person's sexual functioning, according to a research.

The study, led by the University of Houston, found that more than half of young cancer patients reported problems with sexual function, with the probability of reporting sexual dysfunction increasing over time.

The study discovered that two years after their initial cancer diagnosis, nearly 53 percent of young adults 18 to 39 years old still reported some degree of affected sexual function.

advertisement

Also Read: A rare type of cancer is making this six-year-old bleed from her eyes

"We wanted to increase our understanding of what it's like to adjust to cancer as a young adult but also the complexity of it over time," said Chiara Acquati, lead author and assistant professor at the UH Graduate College of Social Work.

"Cancer can put a patient's life on hold, especially among young adults who are just starting their careers or families."

The study also found that for women, being in a relationship increased the probability of reporting sexual problems over time; for men, the probability of reporting sexual problems increased regardless of their relationship status.

"We concluded that sexual functioning is experienced differently among males and females. For a young woman, especially, a cancer diagnosis can disrupt her body image, the intimacy with the partner and the ability to engage in sex," Acquati said.

At the beginning of the two-year study, almost 58 percent of the participants were involved in a romantic relationship. Two years after diagnosis, only 43 percent had a partner. In addition, psychological distress increased over time.

She says it's important to research how psychological and emotional developments are effected so tailored interventions and strategies can be created. Detecting changes in the rate of sexual dysfunction over time may help to identify the appropriate timing to deliver interventions.

Also Read: Alcohol abuse could cause 6 different types of cancer

Failure to address sexual health, the study concludes, could put young adults at risk for long-term consequences related to sexual functioning and identity development, interpersonal relationships and quality of life.

Acquati said health care providers might find it challenging to discuss intimacy and sex because of embarrassment or lack of training, but she believes addressing sexual functioning is vital soon after diagnosis and throughout the continuum of care.

"Results from this study emphasize the need to monitor sexual functioning over time and to train health care providers serving young adults with cancer in sexual health," said Acquati.

"Furthermore, patients should be connected to psychosocial interventions to alleviate the multiple life disruptions caused by the illness and its treatment."

advertisement

The findings have been published in the American Cancer Society journal Cancer.

--- ENDS ---
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

In the meanwhile, here are some of our most popular posts and categories to keep you busy.

Happy shootin' my friends!

Buying Guides:

Firearms

Firearm Accessories

Ammunition

Gun Safes

Scopes & Optics

Hunting

Air Rifles

Best AR-15

Best AR 15 Scope

Best Hunting Rifle

Best Gun Safe

Best AK 47

Best AR 10

Best Glock Triggers

Best Glock

Best Home Defense Shotgun
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
By PTI: By K J M Varma

Beijing, Dec 21 (PTI) China today lashed out at the European Union for criticising its economy and said the economic bloc should abide by the WTO rules and avoid abusing trade remedy measures.

The EU had described Chinas economy as distorted in a recent report.

"The relevant report makes irresponsible remarks on Chinas economy and take unfair measures to China through creating various pretexts, but the report does not mention the EUs own actions in violation of WTO rules," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters here.

advertisement

"It is hypocritical to have double standards," she said. "Using zero-sum game mentality to deal with reciprocal cooperation will injure others and harm [the EU] itself."

She said that in recent years, Chinas economic development has made historic achievements, providing important material conditions for development and reform in other fields, and making important contribution to the stability and growth of the world economy.

"The socialist economy with Chinese characteristics has a bright future," she added. PTI KJV ZH

--- ENDS ---
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - The City invites all residents to ring in the New Year in a child-friendly celebration at the New Year's Eve Family Fun Night, to be held 3 to 9 p.m. on Dec. 31, at the Yuma Civic Center (1440 W. Desert Hills Drive).

The event aims to provide a fun, safe environment for residents and friends of all ages to bid adieu to 2017. Attendees are encouraged, but not required, to dress as their character of choice for the celebration in honor of this year's theme: superheroes!

Admission is $1 per person, with no cost for little ones under three years old. All minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian throughout the duration of the New Year's Eve Family Fun Night.

Features this year include:

Free face painting

Bounce houses

Photo booths

Music

Dancing

Games

Arts and crafts

Food and non-alcoholic beverages available for purchase

Thanks to generous sponsorships from Arizona Public Service (APS) and the Caballeros de Yuma, the event will have free jumping houses for kids and 100 door prizes.

"Without the support from our local businesses, we wouldn't be able to host these community events that create a safe, family-friendly environment that allows us to strive for our mission at Parks and Recreation," said Marketing Specialist Carrie Ring. "We aim to enrich the lives through quality programs, experiences and facilities that preserve the past, provide for the present, plan for the future and promote the spirit of fun," Ring added, elaborating on the Parks and Recreation Department's goal.

The City thanks the following additional sponsors who made this family-friendly event possible: Johnny Yuma's Bicycles, A & R Jumpers LLC, Vintage Selfie Photo Booth, WestAir, Funny Faces, YumaMom.com, El Dorado Broadcasters, ClassicYuma.com, Monster Media, Blackhawk Broadcasting.

For more information, please contact the Yuma Civic Center at 928-373-5040.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - This morning, at approximately 5:06 a.m., officers responded to the 900 block of S. 1st Avenue reference to shots fired.

Upon arrival, officers located a 23 year old female with a gunshot wound. The victim was transported to Yuma Regional Medical Center in serious condition.

There are no suspects in custody at this time. The Yuma Police Department is still investigating the scene.

The Yuma Police Department encourages anyone with any information about this case to please call the Yuma Police Department at (928) 373-4700 or 78-Crime at (928) 782-7463 to remain anonymous.
Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- More than 50% of Romanians believe that the situation in their country is worse than in 1989, according to a survey carried out by INSCOP Research as part of the their "Romania - Agenda 2050" project commissioned by the Strategic Thinking Group and released on Thursday at a news conference. Fii

- The annual inflation rate in the European Union continued to rise in October to 11.5 percent from 10.9 percent in September, with the highest annual rates being recorded in Estonia (22.5 pct), Lithuania (22.1 pct), Hungary (21.9 pct) and Latvia (21.7 pct), shows data published on Thursday by Eurostat.

- The General Inspectorate of the Border Police (IGPF) informs that on Thursday, a number of 90,947 people entered Romania through border points throughout the country, of whom 8,406 were Ukrainian citizens, decreasing by almost 4 percent compared to the previous day, told Agerpres. Fii la curent

- The European Union struck a deal on Thursday on a law to effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, aiming to speed up the switch to electric vehicles and combat climate change, according to Reuters. Negotiators from the EU countries and the European Parliament, who must both

- Natural gas stocks have currently reached almost 93 percent and by November 1 they will be covered in a proportion of 95-97 percent, Minister of Energy Virgil Popescu announced on Thursday, in a videoconference with the county prefects on preparations for the cold season, headed by Prime Minister

- Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday that Turkey was the most reliable route to deliver gas to the European Union and proposed to build what he called a supply hub there, according to Reuters. The proposal comes as Russia looks to maintain its energy

- Approximately 45% of Romanians declare that they have been actively involved in actions to support and help Ukrainian refugees, and another 45% intend to get involved, according to the study conducted by Reveal Marketing Research, published on Thursday. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri.

- Almost half (47pct) of Romanians have limited their spending in the last year due to price hikes, and a quarter are saving money for education and professional training, reveals the "Money Matters" survey, carried out annually by Erste Group. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste
Patna: At least five labourers were killed and several others injured due to a blast in a boiler at a sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj district, said reports on Thursday.

The incident took place at the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill in Gopalganj.

#Visuals from boiler blast site at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj; three laborers killed, many others injured. pic.twitter.com/RRUKvPpPme  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

There were at least a hundred people present at the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill when the blast in one of its boilers took place.

The initial investigation reveals that blast in the boiler occurred due to overheating.

Among those injured in the blast were rushed to a nearby hospital with over 90 percent burns. Three of those are said to be in a critical condition.

Many labourers are still trapped at the boiler blast site.

#UPDATE: Death toll rises to 4 in Gopalganj boiler blast. Police arrest sugarmill owner pic.twitter.com/2mWAhV2YTZ December 21, 2017

Meanwhile, the Gopalanj administration has launched a rescue operation.

Gopalganj is 160 kilometres away from Patna, Bihar.

The owner of the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill, who was absconding, has now been arrested.

The relatives of the deceased have accused the authorities of not paying heed to the advice of the engineers and flouting safety norms.
Mumbai: The Central Board of Film Certification is likely to appoint a panel of historians to watch Padmavati, after the makers of the movie stated that it was partially based on historical facts, according to sources.

The Padmavati team, which was hoping to get a quick censor clearance after the Gujarat elections may be in for disappointing news.

Source at the censor board said that the makers of Padmavati had "unnecessarily complicated its case" with an ambiguous disclaimer in its application for certification which stated that the film was partially based on historical facts.

"The content will now have to be scrutinised for authenticity," the source said declined to be named. The film had earlier been sent back to the producers after it was found that the column for stating whether it was a work of fiction or was based on historical facts was left blank.

There were protests against the movie by some fringe Hindutva outfits which said it was "insulting to Rajput pride." Several politicians then weighed in saying they won't allow the release of the movie in Rajasthan.

The source in the CBFC said that Padmavati could only be certified in January, since December was almost over. "We have not scheduled the film. There are at least 40 feature films in different languages waiting in the queue before Padmavati," the source said.

Because of the year-end, some board members were on holiday and a few others had called in sick. "Forget about appointing a panel of historians, we don't even have a normal Examining Committee to view all the films," the source said.

"Even by conservative estimates the film won't be certified before the second week of January. I don't think they can release the film before March or April. That is, provided the CBFC clears the film without any objection," the source said.
Mumbai: Priyanka Chopra hasnt spent much time in India this year owing to her busy Hollywood schedule and Quantico shoot in the US. The former Miss World, who is one of the most sought after actresses in the Tinsel Town, performed at the Zee Cine Awards event recently.

During the event, when PeeCee was quizzed by reporters about the controversy over Sanjay Leela Bhansalis film Padmavati, she said, I have an incredible relationship with Sanjay sir and I admire him tremendously. I know this film will come out and people will see the art behind it. They just need to make sure that everything is sorted. I will always stand not only by Sanjay sir but also Deepika, Ranveer and Shahid for the film.

For the unversed, Priyanka has been a part of Bhansalis Goliyon Ki Raasleela  Ram Leela and Bajirao Mastani. Priyanka did a special song for the first film and played the role of Kashibai (a pivotal role) in the latter. Though she is not associated with Padmavati, she has extended support to the filmmaker and the cast.

Bhansalis Padmavati hasnt got a clearance certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification. Reports suggest that the makers will announce the new release date as soon as they get the film certified by the Censor Board. The film may release either within the first 15 days of January or hit the screen in February so that it gets maximum time without any competition.

Padmavati reportedly based on Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jaysi in 1540 is inspired by one of the most glorious chapters of Indian history.

In Sanjay Leela Bhansalis film, Deepika essays the titular role of Rani Padmavati while Shahid Kapoor plays Maharawal Ratan Singh, a brave Rajput warrior. Ranveer Singh portrays Alauddin Khilji, the antagonist in the story.

Several Rajput organisations protested against the film believing that Padmavati had a dream sequence between Rani Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji. The filmmaker and other members of the production team clarified that the film doesnt contain any objectionable content and that it upholds the pride and glory of the Rajput community.

But protestors were not convinced and they issued death threats to Bhansali and Deepika.

The sets of the film were vandalised during the initial days of shoot and a rangoli inspired by the films poster, created by an artist in Gujarat mall was destroyed by an angry mob.
CHENNAI: The voting for by-election to 'prestigious' RK Nagar constituency in Tamil Nadu began at 8:00 am on Thursday with as many as 59 candidates are in the fray.

According to the final list posted on the website of the Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer, a total of 72 nominations were accepted and out of it, 13 nominees withdrew, leaving 59 candidates, including a woman, in the contest.

The major contenders are AIADMK`s E Madhusudhanan, DMK`s N Marudhu Ganesh, sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, contesting as an Independent and Bharatiya Janata Party`s K Nagarajan.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the smooth conduct of the poll, according to reports.

In Tamil Nadu, campaigning for the high-stakes by-poll came to an end yesterday.

Counting of votes will be held on December 24.

The bypoll was necessitated as the constituency fell vacant after the death of AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

The bypoll was earlier scheduled for April 12 earlier this year, but was cancelled following allegations that sums of money were distributed in a vote-for-cash scam.

Meanwhile, setting off a political controversy, a video purportedly showing Jayalalithaa in a hospital was released by Dhinakaran's loyalist on Wednesday.

Amid questions raised about the timing of the about 20-second video, aired by TV channels and later went viral on the social media, election officials asked channels to stop it's telecast, saying it was a violation of the model code of conduct.

The footage, showing a frail-looking Jayalalithaa in a nightdress was released by Vetrivel, disqualified AIADMK MLA and election agent of Dhinakaran.

A police complaint was lodged by Returning Officer of RK Nagar Assembly constituency against Vetrivel, who said he released it in view of doubts raised over the circumstances leading to Jayalalithaa's hospitalisation and death.

AIADMK hit out at Sasikala's family, saying the video release was a 'conspiracy' and a 'demeaning' act with an eye on bypoll.

Suspicions have been raised over circumstances leading to Jayalalithaa's demise by several persons, including now Deputy CM O Panneerselvam and his followers.

The state government has appointed a retired Madras High Court judge as the one-man commission of inquiry to look into the circumstances leading to her death.

DMK also alleged that the video had been released with an eye on the bypoll.
Ahmedabad: Congress contestants who fought the recent Gujarat polls may move the high court against the Election Commission over the functioning of the EVMs during the election process, a senior party leader said on Thursday on the concluding day of the party's introspection meet in Mehsana.

On the second and concluding day of the 'chintan shivir', party leaders expressed doubts over the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines and claimed the party's performance would have been better had ballot papers been used in the polls.

"Defeated candidates raised doubts over EVMs and said the party could have won more seats had ballot papers been used in polls," Gujarat Congress unit chief Bharatsinh Solanki told reporters.

The meet, aimed at analysing the electoral outcome and discuss the roadmap in view of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, began yesterday.

The party's new president Rahul Gandhi will interact with the newly-elected MLAs as well as leaders from state's four zones - north, south, central Gujarat, and Saurashtra - separately for four hours in Ahmedabad on Saturday, before addressing a gathering of party workers in the evening.

"Many candidates said the party suffered due to EVMs. We have discussed the matter with technical experts. We are seeking a legal opinion on this," Solanki said.

He said the candidates who have raised doubts over the functioning of the EVMs may file a petition in the high court, challenging the EC.

Solanki said the conclave also discussed the "misuse" of the government machinery by the ruling party during polls.

On Tuesday, a day after the Gujarat election results were declared, a senior official of the election machinery had said there was a "100 per cent match" in a random vote count on EVMs and paper trail slips carried out by the Election Commission in the 182 polling stations in the state.

Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer B B Swain had said that the vote count through the EVMs matched with the VVPAT in all the constituencies where the paper trail slips were counted.

In the elections, the Congress could not wrest power from the BJP even though its tally increased to 77 seats from 61 last time.

Congress ally Bharatiya Tribal Party won two seats, and along with an independent backed by it winning his seat, the tally of the Congress-led alliance stood at 80, 12 short of the simple majority in the 182-member Assembly.

The BJP retained power for the sixth time, though with a reduced score of 99 seats against 115 in 2012.

The Congress performed well in rural areas of Gujarat but failed to make a significant mark in the urban pockets.

According to Solanki, it was for the first time that the Congress held an introspection meet immediately after an election.

"The aim of the meeting was to ensure that the connection with the public remains intact and any issues with the party are addressed," the senior leader said.

During the conclave, Congress workers from 33 districts in Gujarat discussed the poll results with senior leadership. They also raised issues like allotting tickets to "outsiders" and use of "money power" by the BJP government.
Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Thursday resigned along with his council of ministers, a day after Governor O P Kohli dissolved the legislative assembly following the recently-concluded polls, paving the way for formation of a new government.

Rupani, accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel and other ministers visited Raj Bhavan in Gandhinagar and handed over their resignation letters to the governor.

Rupani, however, would serve as the caretaker chief minister till the formation of a new government.

"Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and his entire council of ministers have tendered their resignations to Governor O P Kohli who has accepted them," Patel told reporters outside Raj Bhavan.

In the recently concluded polls, BJP retained power by winning 99 seats in the 182-member Assembly while the Congress claimed 77. Six seats went to others, including three Independents.

Meanwhile, Patel said a meeting of all the newly-elected BJP MLAs would be convened soon by state BJP unit president Jitu Vaghani to select the next chief minister.

However, he refused to assign any timeline for the meeting and formation of the next government.

He said the entire process to select the next chief minister will be carried out under the supervision of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP general secretary Saroj Pandey who have been appointed as observers by the central leadership.

"Since Parliament is in session, the party (leadership) will inform us in one or two days as to when Arun Jaitleyji and Saroj Pandeyji would come here. In their presence, MLAs would take a decision about the new chief minister," Patel added.

Though speculation is doing rounds on who will be the next chief minister, mild-mannered Rupani seems to be a front-runner and is likely to retain the job.

Sources in the BJP had said the party was likely to stick with Rupani.

BJP president Amit Shah had said during the campaign that the party was fighting the election under Rupani and Nitin Patel.

Sources had said the central leadership may also think of changing the chief minister following the narrow win of the BJP.

Besides Rupani, the other names doing the rounds for the top job in the state are those of Nitin Patel and Mansukh Mandavia, a Rayja Sabha member from Gujarat who is a member of the Narendra Modi government.

Mandavia is from the Patidar community.

Earlier, Rupani had said the party's parliamentary board will take the final decision.

December 25 is the likely date for the swearing-in of the new ministry as it is the birthday of former prime minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the sources had said.
Shimla: BJP central observers Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar are scheduled to arrive in Shimla to set off the process for electing the new chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, days after party's landslide victory in the hill state.

According to reports, the two senior BJP leaders will hold discussions with the newly-elected party MLAs to elect the leader of the BJP legislative party.

In-charge of party affairs in the state, Mangal Pandey, would also arrive here today, state BJP vice-president Ganesh Dutt said yesterday.

The issue also came up during a meeting of the BJP parliamentary board yesterday which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah and other top members.

The shocking defeat of the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal from Sujanpur has opened up the race for the top post in Himachal Pradesh.

Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda and five-time MLA Jairam Thakur were being seen as front-runners for the chief minister's post.

Some other senior BJP lawmakers in the state, including Mohinder Singh, who won for a record seventh time, five-term MLA Rajiv Bindal, former state BJP chief Suresh Bharadwaj, and Krishan Kapoor, both elected for a fourth term, could also be considered, party sources said.

Among all top contenders, Jairam Thakur, who won from Seraj constituency by defeating Chet Ram of the Congress, is leading the race for next Himachal CM.

Thakur had earlier served as a cabinet minister in the BJP ministry in the hill state.

He was the Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. He was elected to Himachal Pradesh Assembly from Mandi and had won his first election in the year of 1998.

Meanwhile, Jagat Prakash Nadda has been part of the Narendra Modi Cabinet since 2014 and is believed to be very close the PM and BJP chief Amit Shah.

His past association with the RSS - BJP's ideological mentor - is likely to work in his favour.

The BJP won 44, while the Congress won 21 seats in the elections to 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the results of which were declared on December 18.

(With ANI inputs)
By PTI: By K J M Varma

Beijing, Dec 21 (PTI) The first trilateral meeting of Foreign Ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan - a Beijings initiative to reduce friction between Islamabad and Kabul over terrorist attacks - will be held here next week.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who conducted shuttle diplomacy earlier to forge peace between Afghanistan and Pakistan over Kabuls allegation of increasing attacks from Taliban militants from across the border, will attend the meeting along with his Afghanistan and Pakistan counterparts Salahuddin Rabbani and Khawaja Muhammad Asif respectively.

advertisement

"As a neighbour and friend of Pakistan and Afghanistan we always support friendship between the two countries and their common development," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters while announcing that the meeting will take place in Beijing on December 26.

The Foreign Ministers trilateral mechanism was formed after Wangs visit to the two countries in June.

"This is the first dialogue of its kind and the three countries will exchange on political mutual trust, reconciliation and developing cooperation and connectivity as well as security cooperation and counter terrorism," Hua said.

"We hope the meeting will promote our cooperation and enhance peace and stability of the region," she said.

Afghanistan has blamed Pakistan in the recent months for sheltering Taliban militants and violent attacks in different parts of the country. Pakistan, however, has denied the charge and accused Afghanistan of moving closer to India.

Earlier, China conducted a meeting of top Foreign Ministry officials of the three countries on issues related to cooperation in counter-terrorism.

China has stepped up efforts to forge peace between Pakistan and Afghanistan after US President Donald Trump announced his new South Asia policy in which he blamed Islamabad for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and India.

The new policy which gave importance to India and invited New Delhi to play a bigger role in reconstruction of Afghanistan has raised eyebrows in Beijing and Islamabad. PTI KJV MRJ

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: Communications Minister Manoj Sinha on Thursday said the next course of action on the 2G issue would be decided by the investigating agencies, adding that the 2G spectrum allotment was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt.



"Congress party jo chakma de rahi hai (trying to fool), it is all wrong," Sinha said, adding that the NDA government`s realisation through spectrum auction was robust.



Asked what would the government do with the 122 licences that the Supreme Court had quashed in February 2012, Sinha said: "The government does not want to comment anything on the court decision now. Investigating agencies will take further decision. The government will ponder on it after that. The Supreme Court had already given its verdict. 2G spectrum auction was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt."



Sinha was speaking to reporters at a press meet at the Department of Telecommunications here after the special CBI court acquitted all the accused in the case which was decided after seven years.



The minister stressed on the transparent route of spectrum auction adopted by the NDA government.



"Spectrum scarcity has become a thing of the past. There is no complaint (from the operators)," he added.



He said in 2001 the government decided to allot spectrum on a first-come, first-serve basis. "But in 2008 they (the UPA government) decided to make spectrum allocation as first-come, first-pay."



Sinha added that the CVC had criticised the earlier UPA government over the 2G spectrum allotment while it had applauded the NDA for the 2015, 2016 auctions.


New Delhi: The acquittal of all 2G telecom spectrum allocation scam accused and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alleged derogatory remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh on Thursday led to the adjournment of the Rajya Sabha.

The 2G scam case verdict found an echo in the Rajya Sabha, with the Opposition Congress disrupting the proceedings and demanding an explanation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congress members shouted slogans, drowning the voices of other members and forcing Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to adjourn the proceedings till 2 pm, but not before threatening to invoke rules against them and rapping them for their unruly behaviour.

The Leader of the Opposition and Congress veteran, Ghulam Nabi Azad, sought an explanation from Modi for the "false propaganda" on the 2G scam to come to power in 2014.

Congress, he said, has been since the past week seeking an explanation from the Prime Minister over "false" allegations he made against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Today, after the acquittal of all the accused, "we want to ask where did all the allegations (of scam) go," he said.

The BJP had run a propaganda on the 2G spectrum allocation that helped it "move from that side (opposition side in Rajya Sabha) to this side (ruling side) and us from that side (ruling side) to this side (opposition benches)," Azad said.

Naidu said he was not allowing Azad's submission as he had not given any notice, as he asked members to return to their seats. He also said, "nothing will go on record".

But Congress members were in no mood to listen and rushed to the Well raising slogans against Modi and the BJP.

Naidu then cited a May 22, 1990, ruling of the then Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma that the Chair's ruling on not allowing suspension of a Question Hour or allowing a discussion is final.

"Democracy means working according to rules (and) not shouting," he said.

Stating that he is willing to use his discretion to allow serious matters to be raised, Naidu said, "some people have developed the habit of giving notices under rule 267 and then disrupting proceedings."

Notice under rule 267 calls for setting aside of the listed business of the day to take up the issue being raised.

As some slogan-shouting Congress members moved in front of the ruling benches, Naidu castigated them for moving from the Opposition side to the treasury side of the Well.

At the persuasion of Azad, the Congress members left the Well and returned to their seats but kept raising slogans, drowning the voices of members whom the Chair had called to raise Zero Hour issues.

Naidu went on to rap the Congress members for the unruly behaviour, saying "3/4ths of the House wants to take up Zero Hour issues".

"Please follow some decorum. I condemn your behaviour," he said, adding "I will have to think about invoking rules. Don't force me to do that. ... The whole country is watching your behaviour."

When deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma tried to raise a point, Naidu snapped back at him saying it was not good for a deputy leader of the party to defy the Chair.

As the Congress members continued to shout the slogan, Naidu went on to state that it was not the right tradition to take the names of the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister or political parties.

With Congress members remaining unrelenting, he adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

Normally, the chair in case of disruptions in the first hour of the sitting adjourns proceedings till 1200 hours. But when Naidu adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm, members were surprised.

Thursday, being the Question day for the Prime Minister's Office, Modi was expected to be present during Question Hour slated at noon.

The Leader of the House, Arun Jaitley, was seen asking the Rajya Sabha officials if he has indeed adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

As the din continued, the Chairman of Rajya Sabha, M Venkaiah Naidu, adjourned the Upper House for the day.

(With PTI Inputs)
New Delhi: From a Delhi Police sub-inspector to becoming a special judge dealing with several high-profile cases, including the 2G scam, Justice OP Saini has been able to create a name for himself and is among a few trial court judges to enjoy a round-the-clock 'Y' category security cover.

Saini, 58, today acquitted ex-telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and others, including top corporate executives, in the 2G cases while holding that it was not a scam.

Hailing from Haryana, Saini started his career as sub- inspector in Delhi Police in the early 1980s and was selected in Delhi judicial services after clearing a competitive exam.

He shot to fame when he as a special judge dealt with the sensitive Red Fort attack case and awarded death sentence to the main accused and varying jail terms to others.

Saini is one of the very few trial court judges in the country who enjoys 'Y' category security cover by the CISF.

According to sources in intelligence agencies, the 'Y' category security cover has been provided to the judge for the threat extended to him by one of the convicts in the Red Fort case.

Known as a tough judge having a sound knowledge of law, Saini was handpicked to handle the sensitive cases arising out of the 2G spectrum allocation scam probe.

The 2G case, which started in February 2011 after Raja was arrested by the CBI, witnessed a long journey of nearly seven years.

Besides handling the 2G and Red Fort attack cases, Saini also dealt with other high-profile matters like the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games cases, corruption cases against several top government officials and private persons.
NEW DELHI: The most high-profile corruption in India in decades came to a dramatic end on Thursday. With one line, a special court in New Delhi acquitted all the individuals accused in the 2G spectrum scam case. The acquittals covered all 19 individuals accused - including former Union Telecom Minister A Raja and Rajya Sabha MP K Kanimozhi - in three cases.

"I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any charge against any accused," said CBI Judge OP Saini in the operative line of the judgment. The special court pronounced the verdict in the three cases - two by the CBI and one by the Enforcement Directorate.

Also Read: 2G spectrum case: All you need to know

The blanket acquittals are dramatic since the Supreme Court had in February 2012 cancelled the 2G telecom licences issued under the process. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had initially estimated that irregularities in the spectrum allocation process had caused presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The CBI's prosecution had then set the loss at Rs 30,000 crore.

The verdict is a massive relief for not just the DMK and its leaders Raja and Kanimozhi, but also for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of the time. The UPA's second term was bogged down by the allegations. Even the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, had come under the scanner.

The verdict brought out immediate demands for apologies by a whole range of officials and parties, including the then CAG Vinod Rai and opposition parties who capitalised on the charges to hand massive defeats to UPA allies in elections across the country.

Also read: A timeline of the 2G scam

Raja, a lawyer by profession, has said he would react to the verdict only after going through the 2,000-page order of the court.

Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, however was visibly relieved. "I would love to thank everyone who stood by me," she said to reporters outside the Patiala House court where the verdict was delivered.

The CBI, whose efforts were sharply rebuked by Justice Saini, said, "We are waiting for copy of the judgement. We will take legal opinion on it after that."

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who had impleaded himself in the case, said the CBI should appeal against the verdict.

Also read: Who said what after acquittal of A Raja, Kanimozhi, others

Others acquitted in the case are former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani are also acquitted in the case.

Besides them, three telecom firms -- Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL), Reliance Telecom Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd -- are also accused and acquitted in the case.
New Delhi: Reacting to the 2G verdict in which the special court acquitted all accused including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi in the 2G case, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the Congress must not consider it a certificate.

"Congress leaders are treating this judgement as some kind of a badge of honor and a certification that it was an honest policy," Jaitley said, adding that the party's zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in its chargesheet had alleged that Raja was biased in allocating 2G mobile air waves and operating licences to telecom firms, causing a huge loss to the state exchequer.

Stating that there was a huge element of arbitration within the policy implementation, Jaitley said that the cut-off date was advanced while the first-come, first-served basis policy was intended to serve only a few.

In 2007-08, spectrum was not given by auction, but on the basis of price discovery which was based on 2001 prices. It was then changed to first-come, first-pay policy. Favourite few were told in advance about the policy, he said.

This was a corrupt and dishonest policy, which has already been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012, the FM added.

The alleged scam in the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government`s first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by then Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai.

I am sure investigating agencies and prosecuting agencies will look into it and decide what to do further in the matter. The Congress should not consider this as some kind of certificate of clean chit, Jaitley added.
NEW DELHI: Soon after former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi along with all others were acquitted by a special court in the 2G spectrum scam case, reactions have started pouring in.

Here is who said what:

Kanimozhi: "I thank everybody who stood by me. It wasn't very easy being accused of something that you have not done. It meant a lot to the party as well. It is a big day for the party."

A Raja: "I will only comment after reading the judgement."

#WATCH: Former Telecom Minister A Raja after being acquitted in the #2GScam pic.twitter.com/hmu8oWOZeD  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Chidambaram, Congress leader: "Allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of Government was never true, was not correct and that has been established today."

Shashi Tharoor, Congress leader: "Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country."

Manish Tewari, Congress leader: "Former CAG Vinod Rai must apologise to the nation for throwing presumptive sensational Corrosive numbers into public discourse. He was author of imbecile 1.76 thousand crore loss theory that I had destroyed during my cross-examination of Rai in JPC. Court has affirmed JPC Report.

Mr VINOD RAI Former C&G must Apologise to the nation for throwing presumptive sensational Corrosive numbers into public discourse.He was author of imbecile 1.76 thousand crore loss theory that I had destroyed during my cross examination of Rai in JPC.court has affirmed JPC Report  Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) December 21, 2017

Durai Murugan, Senior DMK leader: "Victory begins now. With political motives, this case was put in us. Conspiracies were hatched against us but all have been blown away now."

RS Bharathi, DMK leader: "It was a false case. For the past 2 assembly elections, the case was used against us, now it has been proved to be wrong."

CBI: "We are waiting for copy of the judgement. We will take legal opinion on it after that."

Arun Jaitley: "This was a corrupt and dishonest policy, which had already been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012."

Subramanian Swamy: "Govt must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in High Court. Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here."
New Delhi: The acquittal of all the accused in the 2G case by a special court on Thursday triggered a major political slugfest between the BJP and the Opposition.

Reacting to the verdict, the Congress said that the "truth" had finally prevailed. On the other hand, the ruling party asked it not to treat the verdict as a "badge of honour".

Alleging that the BJP, which was in Opposition then, had spread a "propaganda", the Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the saffron party apologise to the nation for doing so.

What Congress said:

Congress veteran Manmohan Singh, who was the PM when the alleged scam took place, reacted saying the verdict made it clear that the "massive propaganda" against the UPA was without any foundation.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh told reporters, PTI reported.

Former Union minister P Chidambaram echoed Singh's view, saying that the allegations of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was "never true and not correct" and the verdict established that.

Congress MP and former telecom minister Kapil Sibal also demanded an apology from former CAG Vinod Rai and the BJP, asserting that he has been saying from day one that there was no loss. "I have been vindicated today. In fact, it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation," he said.

What the BJP said:

On the other hand, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hit back, saying the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour".

The party's "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, said.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, Jaitley asserted.

"The Congress is treating 2G verdict as a badge of honour, but its zero loss theory was proven wrong when the Supreme Court quashed spectrum allocation in February 2012," he told reporters.

And, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners in the case, said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.

What the court said:

DMK MP Kanimozhi and former telecom minister A Raja and all other accused were acquitted in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases by the special court which held that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove the charges.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the top court on February 2, 2012.

"I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused," Special CBI Judge OP Saini said in his verdicts in three separate cases related to the 2G scam in a packed courtroom at the Patiala House premises.

Dealing a body blow to the CAG's and CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences, judge Saini in his 1,552- page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people "artfully" arranged few selected facts and created a scam "when there was none".

The three judgements, which together ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed out of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

Raja remained in jail for over 15 months while Kanimozhi was in prison for six months before they were granted bail. Other accused persons were also in jail for varying terms.

Meanwhile, the ED and the CBI said they will challenge before the Delhi High Court the verdicts. In all, there were 17 accused, including Raja and Kanimozhi in this case.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was one of the petitioners on whose plea a CBI probe was ordered in 2G case, on Thursday said the government should immediately appeal in the Delhi High Court against the acquittal.

"The government should appeal in the high court against the acquittal of all the accused," Swamy told PTI outside court premises.

Later, Swamy also tweeted that the government must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in the High Court.

In the tweets, he also made reference to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's DA case in which she along with her close aide Sasikala Natarajan was acquitted by the Karnataka High Court which was finally overruled this year by the Supreme Court.

Govt must prove its bonafides by filing an immediate appeal in High Court  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017

Congis and Allies celebrated JJ HC acquittal. Then in SC got deflated. Same will be here.  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017

Judge Saini must have taken into account what the Establishment is doing to ED Jr Director for prosecuting PC BC.  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 21, 2017

DMK MP Kanimozhi and former telecom minister A Raja and all other accused were acquitted in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases by the special court which held that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove the charges.

The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the top court on February 2, 2012.

"I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused," Special CBI Judge OP Saini said in his verdicts in three separate cases related to the 2G scam in a packed courtroom at the Patiala House premises.

Dealing a body blow to the CAG's and CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences, judge Saini in his 1,552- page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people "artfully" arranged few selected facts and created a scam "when there was none".

The three judgements, which together ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed out of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

Raja remained in jail for over 15 months while Kanimozhi was in prison for six months before they were granted bail. Other accused persons were also in jail for varying terms.

Meanwhile, the ED and the CBI said they will challenge before the Delhi High Court the verdicts. In all, there were 17 accused, including Raja and Kanimozhi in this case.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: A Special CBI court on Thursday acquitted former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and all other accused in the 2G scam case that had rocked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II government.

Following are some of the key highlights of the verdict:

- Dealing a body blow to the CAG's and CBI's estimation of huge loss in grant of 2G licences, Special CBI Judge OP Saini in his 1,552- page verdict in the main CBI case held that some people "artfully" arranged few selected facts and created a scam "when there was none".

- "I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any of the charges against any of the accused," Saini said in his verdicts in three separate cases related to the 2G scam in a packed courtroom at the Patiala House premises.

- In all, there were 17 accused, including Raja and Kanimozhi.

- The three judgements, which together ran into 2,183 pages, included the one that stemmed out of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s money laundering case.

- The ED and the CBI said they will challenge before the Delhi High Court the verdicts.

- Buoyed by the verdicts, the Congress and the DMK said "truth" has finally prevailed and that justice has been delivered while the ruling party asked the Congress not to treat them as a "badge of honour".

- The Congress demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders apologise to the nation for their alleged "propaganda and lies" on the issue.

- Manmohan Singh said the court judgement needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government was without any foundation.

- "Will all those people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders, who for years made false propaganda and lies their stepping stone to come to power, apologise to the country?" asked Congress communications incharge Randeep Surjewala.

- In a counterattack, Jaitley said the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour." The party's "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, he added.

- A number of supporters of DMK leaders Raja and Kanimozhi, who were anxiously waiting outside the jam-packed courtroom, broke into loud cheers as soon as the verdict was pronounced.

- "There is no evidence against me and justice has been delivered," Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, told reporters.

- A beaming Raja said, "You see everybody is happy."

- In a statement, Raja said the court acquittal showed that the presumptive loss in allocation of 2G spectrum was "cooked-up". He also debunked the presumptive loss theories in the allocation.

- Raja remained in jail for over 15 months while Kanimozhi was in prison for six months before they were granted bail. Other accused persons were also in jail for varying terms.

- The trial in the three cases relating to the 2G scam began after the then comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai in his report alleged 122 2G licences were given to telecom operators at throwaway prices when the UPA was in power and pegged at Rs 1.76 lakh crore the loss to the national exchequer.

- The CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of licences for the 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court court on February 2, 2012.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: A special court on Thursday acquitted 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.

In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, the CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

Following is the chronology of events related to the scam

May 2007: A Raja takes over as Telecom Minister

Aug 2007: Process of allotment of 2G Spectrum along with UAS Licences initiated by Department of Telecom (DoT)

Sept 25, 2007: Telecom Ministry issues press note fixing deadline for application as October 1, 2007

Oct 1, 2007: DoT receives 575 applications by 46 firms

Nov 2, 2007: PM writes to Raja to ensure fair licence allocation and proper revision of fee. Raja writes to PM allegedly rejecting many of his recommendations

Nov 22, 2007: Finance Ministry writes to DoT raising concerns over the procedure adopted

Jan 10, 2008: DoT decides to issue licences on firstcomefirstserve basis (FCFS), preponing cutoff date to September 25. Later in the day, DoT says those who apply between 3.30 and 4.30 pm would be issued licences

2008: Swan Telecom, Unitech and Tata Teleservices sell off a part of their stakes at much higher rates to Etisalat, Telenor and DoCoMo respectively

May 4, 2009: NGO Telecom Watchdog complains to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on the illegalities in the 2G spectrum allocation to Loop Telecom

2009: CVC directs CBI to investigate the matter.

July 1, 2009: Single judge of Delhi HC holds change of cutoff date as illegal. Stel had moved the petition

Oct 21, 2009: CBI files FIR against unknown officers of DoT and unknown private persons/ companies and others

Oct 22, 2009: CBI raids DoT offices

Nov 16, 2009: CBI seeks help from Directorate General of Income Tax for information on lobbyist Niira Radia and records pertaining to middlemen in award of 2G spectrum licences

Nov 20, 2009: Information by IT dept shows role of corporate players in influencing policies of DoT via illegal means. Shows Radia directly in touch with Raja

Mar 31, 2010: CAG report notes whole process of issue of licence lacked fairness and transparency

May 6, 2010: Telephonic conversation between Raja and Radia made public by the media

May 2010: Government constitutes GoM for allocation of 3G spectrum, reducing DoT under Raja as mere implementing body

Aug 18, 2010: HC refuses to direct PM to decide on a complaint by Janata Party chief Swamy seeking sanction to prosecute Raja for his alleged involvement in 2G scam

Sept 13, 2010: SC asks government, Raja to reply within 10 days to three petitions alleging a Rs 70,000 crore scam in the grant of telecom licences in 2008

Sept 24, 2010: Swamy moves SC seeking direction to PM to sanction prosecution of Raja

Sept 27, 2010: Enforcement Directorate informs SC of probe against firms suspected to have violated FEMA. Says cant deny or confirm now Rajas involvement in the scam

Oct 2010: SC asks government to respond to CAG report about the scam. Pulls up CBI for its tardy progress in probe

Nov 10, 2010: CAG submits report on 2G spectrum to government stating loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to exchequer

Nov 11, 2010: DoT files affidavit in SC; says CAG did not have the authority to question the policy decision as per which licence were issued to new players in 2008

Nov 1415, 2010: Raja resigns as Telecom Minister. Kapil Sibal given additional charge of Telecom Ministry

Feb 10, 2011: SC asks CBI to bring under its scanner corporate houses which were beneficiaries of the 2G spectrum. Raja remanded to CBI custody for four more days by a special CBI court along with Balwa

Feb 1718, 2011: Raja sent to Tihar Jail under judicial custody. Balwa too jailed

Feb 24, 2011: CBI tells Delhi Court Balwa facilitated transaction to DMKrun Kalaignar TV

March 14, 2011: The Delhi High Court sets up special court to deal exclusively with 2G cases

March 29, 2011: SC permits CBI to file charge sheet on April 2 instead of March 31. Two more persons  Asif Balwa and Rajeev Agarwal arrested

April 2, 2011: CBI files its first charge sheet. Names Raja, Chandolia and Behura. Reliance ADAG Group Managing Director Gautam Doshi, its senior Vice President Hari Nair, Group President Surendra Pipara, Swan Telecom Promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka and Managing Director of Unitech Ltd Sanjay Chandra made accused. Three companies  Reliance Telecom Ltd, Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Pvt Ltd  also charge sheeted

April 25, 2011: CBI files second charge sheet naming DMK chief M. Karunanidhis daughter and MP Kanimozhi, 4 others

Oct 23, 2011: Charges framed against all 17 accused

Nov 11, 2011: Trial begins

Nov 23, 2011: SC grants bail to 5 corporate executives  Nair, Doshi, Pipara, Chandra and Goenka

Nov 28, 2011: Delhi HC grants bail to Kanimozhi, Kumar, Morani, Asif and Rajiv

Nov 29, 2011: Special court grants bail to Shahid Balwa

Dec 1, 2011: Chandolia gets bail from special court

Dec 12, 2011: CBI files third charge sheet

Jan 31, 2012: SC says filing complaint under the PC Act is a constitutional right and the competent authority should take a decision on giving the sanction within four months

Feb 2, 2012: SC cancels 122 licences granted during Raja's tenure. Directs auctioning of licences in 4 months. SC leaves it to the special court to decide on Chidambaram within 2 weeks

Feb 2, 2012: SC refuses to ask CBI to probe role of Chidambaram in 2G case and leaves it to the Special Court to decide the matter

Feb 4, 2012: Special Court dismisses Swamy's plea to make Chidambaram a co-accused

Feb 23, 2012: Swamy moves SC against the trial court order on Chidambaram. NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation also files application seeking probe against Chidambaram

Mar 1, 2012: Plea against Chidambaram and Law Minister Salman Khurshid for their alleged role in the 2G spectrum scam is listed for hearing in the SC

Apr 4, 2012: SC begins hearing plea against Chidambaram

Apr 24, 2012: SC reserves order on the maintainability of the plea for probe against Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum case

Aug 24, 2012: SC dismisses plea for probe against Chidambaram in the 2G case, says no prima facie material to show that Chidambaram got pecuniary benefits

December 9, 2013: Amid protests, JPC report on 2G tabled in Lok Sabha

April 25, 2014: 2G kickback case: ED chargesheets Raja, Kanimozhi

May 5, 2014: Court records statement of Raja | Acted with the Prime Ministers concurrence

October 31, 2014: Charges framed in 2G-linked case

November 10, 2014: Final hearing from December 19

June 1, 2015: Kalaignar TV got Rs. 200 crores through 2G scam, says ED

August 19, 2015: CBI files assets case against Raja

November 3, 2015: SC rejects Kanimozhis plea to quash charges against her

October 7, 2016: Entitled to be acquitted in 2G case: Kanimozhi

April 19, 2017: Special court concludes arguments

October 25, 2017: Special Court adjourns case to November 7, says it may decide the date of judgement on that day

November 7, 2017: The court again postpones decision on fixing a date for the pronouncement of the verdict in the 2G spectrum allocation case

December 5, 2017: Special Court says it would deliver its verdict on December 21 in the 2G spectrum allocation graft cases
By Geeta Mohan: "It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," India's permanent representative to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin, said at the Security Council during an open debate on December 20 on 'Addressing complex contemporary challenges to International Peace and Security.'

advertisement

Hitting out at China and Pakistan, India raised the issue of designation of terrorists and how the former two have frustrated India's efforts at the UNSC 1267 Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee against the designation of Masood Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant group, as a global terrorist.

Akbaruddin also referred to what India now calls "mainstreaming" of terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed when he said, "In other cases where Sanctions Committees have designated terrorists, there are states who venture to mainstream UN designated terrorist individuals into their political process in total disregard of international law, thus putting our common security in peril."

While Pakistan is yet to respond, the Chinese put out a very stern statement rubbishing India's claims of "narrow minded" political consideration. The spokesperson reiterated China's commitment in fighting terrorism and said that they have acted in a "candid" way and with "ease".

The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "On this issue we make our own judgement based on the merit of the matters themselves. Like we said the relevant move in that committee of course was (based) on the rules and procedure of that committee."

"We will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international communication. You have mentioned the narrow political consideration. But we think we have acted in a candid way with ease. So what we do is nothing to do with the narrow minded political considerations as you mentioned," he added.

The Indian envoy also raised the issue of countries siding with nations for their own interests and compromising the greater interest of global peace and security. "It appears that this common threat to states and societies is not clearly understood here. Even on counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council," Syed Akbaruddin said.

When a reaction was sought by the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar on the reaction of China to India's statement at the UN, he said "the envoy represents India and makes statement for the nation. I would not like to add further to what he said."

"Mr Akbaruddin also wanted the forum to recognise the difficulties faced because of unequal representation at the world body pleading for UN reforms, " he added.

advertisement

"A non-representative Council, designed many long years ago to maintain the balance of power among competing rivals is simply not equipped to handle the challenges that have changed beyond recognition in the intervening decades. An instrument that is no longer considered legitimate and has lost its credibility cannot be our hope for salvation. New realities cannot be addressed by using old paradigms," said MEA Raveesh Kumar.

ALSO WATCH | Former Pakistan PM Musharraf continues to sing pro-Hafiz tunes

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi: After a reported fallout with his boss and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, the social media is now abuzz with several theories claiming that Pakistan-based gangster Chhota Shakeel may not be alive.

One report claims that Chhota Shakeel -Dawood Ibrahim's most trusted lieutenant and his partner in crimes for several years  may have been killed by his rivals in a bitter succession battle within the gang.

Triggering speculation on Shakeel, an audio clip of a conversation between a member of his gang, Bilal, and a Mumbai-based relative of the underworld gangster, confirming the gangster's death has also surfaced.

However, the veracity of the clip has not been confirmed as yet. Top officials in the National Security Council Secretariat in New Delhi and Mumbai Police said they were not in a position to either confirm or deny this.

It was reported that the Karachi-based don died on January 6, 2017, in Islamabad.

Another theory says that the gangster suffered a lethal heart attack and was rushed by his bodyguards to the Combined Medical Hospital in Rawalpindi by air where he was declared dead on arrival.

Adding an interesting angle to Chhota Shakeel's reported death, a report claimed that he was actually bumped off on the directive of Pakistan's notorious spy agency the ISI.

It was reported that the Inter-Services Intelligence used its henchmen to kill 57-year-old gangster because it was becoming difficult to manage him.

The ISI, which initially tried to broker peace between Dawood and Shakeel, finally decided to eliminate him as it feared that the break-up would hit its anti-India activities, the reports said.

After his death, his body was kept in a morgue for two days and then flown to Karachi in a C-130 transport aircraft.

He was silently buried in Karachi in an unmarked grave in the Defence Housing Authority graveyard, the report said.

Soon after his death, Shakeels second wife Ayesha and other members of his family were asked to vacate the house and were moved to a safe house in Lahore.

Dawood Ibrahim was informed about Shakeels death two days later and only the inner-circle members of the D gang are aware of his death.

The fourth theory says that Choota Shakeel is alive, but has parted ways with Dawood Ibrahim over alleged interference by his younger brother Anees in the affairs of the gang.

The news about Chhota Shakeel's death started doing the rounds days after it was reported that he has cut all ties with his boss.

Shakeel also rubbished reports of a split in the D Company- an organised crime syndicate controlled by fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

Speaking exclusively to Zee Media reporter Rakesh Trivedi, Chhota Shakeel said, ''It's all rumours and there is no question about me getting apart from the D Company till my last breath.''

''I am very much with Bhai," the fugitive gangster said.

Chhota Shakeel said this in a telephonic conversation to Zee Media from an undisclosed location.

Media reports quoting top intelligence sources had claimed said that Chhota Shakeel has in fact moved away from the Clifton area of Karachi, where he had been living since the two fled Mumbai in the 1980s.

The sources claimed that Shakeel is currently holed up at an unknown location.

Shakeel, who is now in his 50s, reportedly had an argument with Dawood over the latter's younger brother Anees Ibrahim's alleged interference in the gang's operations.

Though Shakeel, known as Dawood's most trusted aide, has played a major role in handling the gang's activities for the past three decades.
BEIJING: China on Thursday rejected India's criticism that Beijing is shielding Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar out of "narrow political and strategic concerns" and said Beijing's decision at the UN was "candid" and taken with "ease".

India on Wednesday slammed China for repeatedly rejecting resolutions seeking to declare Azhar - chief of Pakistani terror group Jaish-e Mohammad -- at the UN Security Council (UNSC).

Without naming China, India`s Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin told the Council that "on counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns".

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing had nothing to with the charges levelled by India.

"You have mentioned the narrow political consideration but we think we have acted in a candid way with ease. We have nothing to do with the narrow-minded political consideration," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said here.

"We should say that we firmly crackdown on various forms of international terrorism and on this issue we make our own judgements based on the merits of the matter.

"Like we said, the relevant move in the committee accords with the rules of the procedure of the committee and we will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international community."

Last month, China again blocked a move by Britain, France and the US to list Azhar, the mastermind of last year`s attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base, as a global terrorist by using its veto power.

China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the terrorist who is accused by India of plotting a deadly attack on the airbase in January 2016.

India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar an international terrorist. The listing of Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India.

The issue might come up for discussion on Friday when Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and India`s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval meet for the border talks in New Delhi.
New Delhi: The Congress working committee (CWC), the party's highest decision-making body, will meet on Friday to welcome new party president Rahul Gandhi.

The CWC will also discuss the current political issues, especially in the wake of the 2G spectrum case verdict acquitting all accused, IANS reported.



This will be first CWC meeting after Rahul took charge as Congress chief on December 16, 2017, from his mother Sonia Gandhi and he will be felicitated by the members.



The party is also expected bring in organisational changes as Rahul had recently said that his plan was to transform the Congress from bottom upwards and he will like to bring in many new, young, exciting and dynamic faces.



The party will also discuss its future strategy after the Gujarat elections, where it managed to restrict BJP to 99 seats.



The party has to prepare to face the challenge of the next round of Assembly polls in 2018 - first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.



Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

Meanwhile, the Congress said that the "truth" had finally prevailed in the 2G case.

Alleging that the BJP, which was in Opposition then, had spread a "propaganda", the Congress demanded that PM Modi and the saffron party apologise to the nation for doing so.

Manmohan Singh, who was the PM when the alleged scam took place, reacted saying the verdict made it clear that the "massive propaganda" against the UPA was without any foundation.

"I do not want to boast (about) anything. The court's judgement has to be respected. I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously. All the massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation. The judgement speaks for itself," Singh told reporters, as per PTI.

Congress MP and former telecom minister Kapil Sibal also demanded an apology from former CAG Vinod Rai and the BJP, asserting that he has been saying from day one that there was no loss. "I have been vindicated today. In fact, it is Vinod Rai who must apologise to the nation," he said.

On the other hand, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hit back, saying the Congress should not treat the 2G verdict as a "badge of honour".

The party's "zero loss theory" was proved wrong when the apex court squashed spectrum allocation in 2012, said.

Though the trial court verdict says nobody was guilty of corruption, investigating agencies will study the case history and look into it, Jaitley asserted.

(With Agency inputs)
NEW DELHI: DMK working president MK Stalin called on the media to report the 2G spectrum case verdict with the same zeal that the allegations of the scam had been carried. The barb at the media came in a press conference that Stalin addressed soon after a special court acquitted all accused in the 2G scam case, including his half-sister K Kanimozhi and his party colleague A Raja.

"As far as the DMK is concerned, the special court's verdict clearly shows that the party has not committed any mistake," said Stalin, the son of party patriarch M Karunanidhi.

"I humbly request the media to take the news to the people that the court has cleared the DMK of any wrongdoing with the same zeal with which it had blown up the reportage to the people and slandered the DMK," he said, as a barb at the media.

"This 2G case was filed as part of a scheme to humiliate and destroy a party. To this end, they blew out of proportion with fallacious estimates and foisted the case. So, the acquittal of all individuals by a special court in New Delhi is a verdict that gives joy," Stalin added.

The 2G spectrum scam has given the DMK enough sleepless nights, but the party leadership has steadfastly stood by Raja and Kanimozhi, throughout the ordeal. It was among the corruption charges that were blamed for the DMK's ouster from power in the 2011 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections and for leaving the party unable to attract allies in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the 2016 Assembly election.

However, persistent and widespread anger over allegations of land grabbing and corruption in the DMK government of 2006-2011 too played a major role in 2011 and 2014.
NEW Delhi: The Narendra Modi-led government is likely to introduce a bill on controversial triple talaq in the Lok Sabha on December 22, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar announced on Thursday.

The "List of Business" posted on the Lok Sabha website showed that The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights of Marriage) Bill will be introduced by Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2017 criminalises instant triple talaq, or talaq-e-biddat, and imposes a prison term of up to three years on husbands who violate the law, according to reports.

It also makes a provision for alimony for the woman on whom instant triple talaq has been pronounced and grants her the custody of her children.

Meanwhile, as per a report, the BJP has issued a whip to all its MPs to attend the Parliament session while the government presents the 'controversial' bill.

In a historic judgment on August 22, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court struck down instant triple talaq as illegal.

The woman can also seek the custody of her minor children from the magistrate who will take a final call on the issue.

Under the draft law, instant triple talaq in any form -- spoken, in writing or by electronic means such as email, SMS and WhatsApp -- would be bad or illegal and void.

Following the Supreme Court's order pronouncing the 'triple taalq' as invalid, Muslim groups have been up in arms against it with the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind saying that regardless of what the legal position is, instantaneous triple talaq would continue to happen in Muslim society.

AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi too described the proposed Bill as "draconian".

He said it would lead to further exploitation and more injustice to married Muslim women and that it is being done by the government only for "political considerations".

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Ministry of Law and Justice informed the Lok Sabha that no Muslim groups were consulted before framing a law on triple talaq.

Law Minister Ravi Shankar said the government believed that the proposed bill would help ensure gender justice, gender equality and dignity of women.

The government has maintained that since the practice of instant triple talaq or 'talaq-e-biddat' continues despite the Supreme Court striking it down, there is a need to bring a law.

To a written question on whether the government consulted Muslim organisatons before framing the draft law, Minster of State for Law P P Chaudhary replied in the negative.

In a separate written reply, Prasad said, "The government is of the view that the issue arises from the humanitarian concept of gender justice, gender equality and dignity of women and not arising from faith and religion."

He said that since the Supreme Court struck down the practice of instant triple talaq, nearly 66 cases of husbands divorcing their spouses through this method were reported.

Earlier, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had said the government had sought suggestions from various people before framing the law.

(With Agency inputs)
United Nations: India has hit out at China for protecting Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Masood Azhar by preventing the Security Council from sanctioning him as an international terrorist because of its "narrow political and strategic concerns."



"On counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council, as it falls victim to narrow political and strategic concerns," India`s Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin told the Council on Wednesday without naming China.



"On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress, thus putting our common security in peril."



Last month China once again blocked a move by Britain, France and the US to list Azhar, the mastermind of last year`s attack on the Pathankot air force base, as a global terrorist by using its veto power. He lives in Pakistan, an ally of China.



Speaking during the debate on "Complex Contemporary Challenges to International Peace and Security," Akbaruddin said terrorism "is a common challenge which requires greater focus by this Council, one where closer international cooperation needs to be, can be and should expanded for common interest.



"But, it appears that this common threat and its seriousness to states and societies is not clearly understood here."



The threats to international peace are intensified by the globalization of terror networks, which operate across borders propagating "hateful ideologies, sometimes based in deep-rooted perceived grievances," raising finances, getting arms and recruiting operatives.



He questioned the very legitimacy of Council and its credibility in dealing with today`s complex challenges.



"An instrument that is no longer considered legitimate and has lost its credibility cannot be our hope for salvation," he said. "New realities cannot be addressed by using old paradigms.



Making a case for reforming the Council to make it more representative, he said, "The reasons for the lack of success of international structures designed seven decades ago in dealing with the complex challenges of today are self- evident. A non-representative Council, designed many long years ago to maintain the balance of power among competing rivals, is simply not equipped to handle the challenges that have changed beyond recognition."
New Delhi: Indian airlines have collectively phased out 84 foreign pilots during 2017, Parliament was informed on Thursday.



The foreign pilots were phased out by airlines such as Jet Airways, Air India, SpiceJet and IndiGo.



"All the operators or airlines have been directed to develop their in-house strength to minimise the dependency on expatriate pilots," Minister of State of Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in a written reply during question hour in the Lok Sabha.



"Accordingly operators train and upgrade the inducted Indian pilots to reduce the number of expatriate pilots and submit the phase out programme to DGCA on a regular basis," the minister said.



There are still 249 foreign pilots employed by the various segments of the domestic industry as of December 1, 2017, he added.


Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said alleged 'Indian spy' Kulbhushan Jadhav was not under any threat of immediate execution and his meeting with his wife and mother had been arranged "purely on humanitarian grounds".



"Let me assure you that the Jadhav is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said.



Jadhav's mother and wife will meet him here on December 25 in the "light of Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds," the official said.



Islamabad also said it was awaiting New Delhi's decision on Pakistan permitting media interaction with the wife and mother of Jadhav.



The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi on Wednesday issued visas to the mother and wife of the Indian who has been sentenced to death on charges of espionage and terrorism.



Jadhav's mother and wife are expected to arrive in Pakistan on Saturday via the Wagha land border. An Indian diplomat is expected to accompany the two women when they meet Jadhav.



Pakistan had earlier repeatedly rejected India's plea for consular access to Jadhav, who it says was arrested in Balochistan.



India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the navy.


Islamabad: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate - the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, Gen Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, the BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

Gen Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

Gen Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between Gen Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the Army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday had a telephonic conversation with KP Sharma Oli, who is poised to become Nepal's new Prime Minister and is viewed as leaning towards China.



Modi also spoke with former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and with current Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress.



"Prime Minister had a telephonic conversation with K.P. Sharma Oli, Chariman, Communist Party of Nepal-UML, also with Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal-MC, and also with Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of Nepali Congress and the present Prime Minister," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in his weekly media briefing here.



Kumar could not share details of what transpired in the conversation.



Oli is set to become Prime Minister after the Leftist alliance mustered two-thirds majority in the parliamentary and provincial elections in Nepal.



On Tuesday, Oli had paid a surprise visit to Nepal's border with China in Rasuwagadhi and inspected the only trade and transit point between the two countries. During his earlier stint as Prime Minister in 2015, he had been critical of India and was seen as close to China.
By PTI: issue

By K J M Varma

Beijing, Dec 21 (PTI) China today rejected Indias assertion that moves at the UN to list JeM leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist were blocked due to narrow political considerations, saying it acted in a "candid way" over the issue based on rules and procedures.

China has been consistently blocking moves by India, the US, the UK and France to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the 1267 Sanctions Committee by putting technical holds.

advertisement

Indias Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin during an open debate yesterday in the Security Council criticised some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism.

"It is noticed that on an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," he said.

Responding to Akbaruddins remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that on Azhars issue China had "acted in a candid way with ease".

"So what we do is nothing to do with the narrow minded political considerations as you mentioned," Hua said.

The issue of China blocking the listing of Azhar at the UN is expected to come up in tomorrows 20th round of India- China border talks in New Delhi. The talks will be held between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi. Besides the border related issues, the two top officials also has the mandate to discuss all issues between the two countries. "We have stated our position multiple times about the listing issue 1267 committee to the media queries and dealt the questions in a sincere way on different occasions in the past," Hua said.

She said China "firmly" backed crackdown on various international terrorist groups.

Defending Chinas move to block the moves against Azhar who is accused by India of being the mastermind of the Pathankot terrorist attack, Hua said "on this issue, we make our own judgement based on the merit of the matters themselves".

She said the "relevant move" by China in 1267 committee was based on its rules and procedures.

"We will work with various parties to uphold the security and peace of the international communication," Hua said. PTI KJV NSA

--- ENDS ---
Mumbai: The Valmiki community has filed a complaint against Bollywood superstar Salman Khan and Shilpa Shetty for uttering a specific word that has hurt peoples sentiments.

During the promotion of his upcoming film Tiger Zinda Hai, Salman had reportedly used the word bhangi while referring to his dancing skills. Shilpa too had reportedly used the aforementioned word to describe how she looks at home.

The use of the term bhangi in an inappropriate way has apparently irked the Valmiki community who have lodged a police complaint and sought action against the film stars.

The Valmiki Samaj Action Committee Delhi Pradesh shared a copy of the complaint on Facebook.

Members of the Valmiki community in Agra protested against Slamans upcoming film Tiger Zidna Hai, which is slated to release on December 22.

According to a Zee Media report, dozens of people from the community reached the district headquarters and chanted slogans against the two actors. They have demanded action against the film stars.
Mumbai: Telugu cinema star Nagarjuna says he has no problem in welcoming Salman Khan's Hindi film "Tiger Zinda Hai" alongside his son Akhil Akkineni's Telugu movie "Hello" on Friday.

"How can we oppose the release of a Hindi film just because it is expected to be a success? That's not healthy competition. In my times, so many of my Telugu films were dubbed and released in Hindi," said Nagarjuna.

"At that time, nobody opposed my dubbed appearance in Mumbai's theatres. So now when Bollywood films, or for that matter Hollywood spectacles, are our competition we should be thinking of equalling not killing the competition," he added.
CHENNAI: All accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam case, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi, were acquitted by a special CBI court on Thursday.

Special CBI judge OP Saini acquitted all accused stating that the prosecution "failed to prove charges beyond a reasonable doubt". I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that prosecution has miserably failed to prove any charge against any accused: Saini said.

Besides Raja and Kanimozhi, Special Judge O P Saini also acquitted Shahid Balwa, Vinod Goenka, Asif Balwa, Rajiv Aggarwal, Karim Morani, P Amirtham and Sharad Kumar in connection with the case.

In its charge sheet, the ED had also named DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal as an accused in the case in which it had alleged that Rs 200 crore was paid to DMK-run Kalaignar TV.

In its final report, the ED had named 10 individuals and nine companies as accused and listed them in the charge sheet for the offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The trial in 2G spectrum scam started six years ago in 2011 after the court had framed charges against 17 accused in the CBI case for offences that entailed punishment ranging from six months to life imprisonment.

The alleged scam on the issuance of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the Department of Telecom occurred during the Congress-led UPA government's first tenure in 2008 but was widely reported in 2010 following a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The court had in October 2011 framed charges against the accused under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using as genuine fake documents, abusing official position, criminal misconduct by public servant and taking bribe.

In its charge sheet filed in April 2011 against Raja and others, the CBI had alleged that there was a loss of Rs 30,984 crore to the exchequer in allocation of 122 licences for 2G spectrum which were scrapped by the Supreme Court on February 2, 2012.

All the accused facing trial in these cases had denied allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.
New Delhi: Apple Inc has addressed claims that might be slowing down old iPhones that have low capacity batteries.

Recently, John Poole, the Founder of Primate Labs, wrote in a blog explaining slower performance in the Apple`s iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 models as they aged.

Poole has mapped out performance for iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 over time, and has concluded that Apple`s iOS 10.2.1 and 11.2.0 updates introduce this throttling for various devices.

Moreover, iOS 10.2.1 is particularly relevant, as the update was designed to reduce random shutdown issues for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S.

Some Reddit users have noticed that the Cupertino-based company might be slowing down the performance of older phones.

So it's true Apple intentionally slow down old iPhones. Proof: My iPhone 6 was bought 3years ago and recently got really slow. APP 'CPU DasherX' shows iPhone CPU is under clocked running at 600MHz. After a iPhone battery replacement. CPU speed resumed to factory setting 1400MHz. pic.twitter.com/pML3y0Jkp2  Sam_Si (@sam_siruomu) December 20, 2017

Meanwhile, Apple has acknowledged that the company does take some measures to reduce power demands - which can have the effect of slowing the processor - when a phone`s battery is having trouble supplying the peak current that the processor demands.

"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions," Apple told Reuters.

"Weve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future, it said.

The problem stems from the fact that all lithium-ion batteries, not just those found in Apple products, degrade and have problems supplying the big bursts as they age and accumulate charging cycles, Apple said in a statement. The problems with peak current draws can also occur when batteries are cold or low on charge.

When an iPhone`s processor makes a big current draw from a flagging battery, the battery can deliver the current in spikes that can potentially damage the phone`s electronics. As a result, iPhones would suddenly shut down to protect the pricey processor from being damaged by the power spikes.

The sudden shutdown problem became widespread among iPhones in late 2016, forcing Apple to issue a software fix that had the net result of slowing the phone somewhat with an old, cold or low-charged battery, the company said.

The problem can be remedied by replacing the phone`s battery. Apple charges $79 to replace batteries not covered under the phone`s warranty. The company has long faced criticism from repair advocates for making its batteries difficult for users to replace on their own.

With Agency Inputs
Mumbai: Bigg Boss punished all the contestants except Hina Khan for discussing nominations by nominating each of them for eviction this weekend. This means everyone  Vikas Gupta, Shilpa Shinde, Puneesh Sharma, Akash Dadlani, Luv Tyagi, Arshi Khan and Priyank Sharma - are in the danger zone.

Contestants tried to outsmart Bigg Boss by discussing nominations in a code language. But it was impossible to fool the boss.

All the contestants were shown a clipping of fellow contestants discussing their nomination choice. Akash Dadlani got the shock of his life when he saw his best friend Begum Arshi Khan plotting against him. Akash lashed out at Arshi and repeatedly asked her that how she could betray their friendship just for the sake of getting of rid of eviction. He also taunted her by singing different songs on betrayal. He went on to break all ties with Arshi and made it very clear to her that he does not need any fake friends standing by him in the Bigg Boss house.

After Hitens shocking exit, all the remaining contestants in the house have raised their guards as they are aware of the fact that the tables can turn any minute in Bigg Boss 11.

But who will get evicted this week? According to the latest buzz, Puneesh may get eliminated this week. He is one of the contestants who has reportedly been getting the least number of votes.

#BB11 As Per Latest Voting Trend Akash And Arshi are still Least Gainer!

But as Per sources This weeks eviction Will be based on Votes+Content and Puneesh Sharma has high chances of getting evicted Bcz of Least Content.  The Khabri (@BiggBossNewz) 20 December 2017

Ever since Bandgi Kalra got evicted from the house, Puneesh has almost been invisible. He hasnt been as active as he used to be earlier.

But we dont really know if there will be a new twist to the tale. Hiten Tejwanis evicted was extremely shocking and we wonder if Bigg Boss has yet another rude shock in store for us.

Considering the fact that Arshi has been playing a very nasty game, will audience vote against her? Or Will Akash face the brunt?

Well, we will have to wait and watch.
Basti: Two 'sadhvis' have accused four babas, including the head of an ashram, of allegedly raping them at the ashram in this district of Uttar Pradesh, the police said on Thursday.

An FIR was lodged last evening against six persons -- the head of Sant Kutir ashram, Sachidanand alias Dayanand, Param Chetanand, Vishwas Nand, Gyan Vairagyanand as well as two women. A search is on for the six, all of whom are absconding.

The two 'sadhvis', who had joined the ashram in 2008, alleged they were assaulted by the head priest and his three colleagues with the help of two women associates, at the Sant Kutir ashram here, about 200km from Lucknow, said Sankalp Sharma, superintendent of police (SP).

Police have interrogated the manager of the ashram, which has its main branch in Delhi. The 'sadhvis', who belong to Chhattisgarh, have been sent for medical test, the SP added.
Kolkata: Voting for the Sabang assembly byelection began on a dull note with just 15 per cent voters exercising their franchise in the first two hours, an Election Commission (EC) official said.

The opposition CPI(M) and the BJP accused the ruling TMC of driving away their election agents from the polling booths, an allegation which was denied by TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia.

"The allegation made by the opposition parties is completely baseless. Voting is going on peacefully in the constituency," Bhunia said.

The byelection is being held amid tight security with eight companies of central paramilitary force personnel deployed in the constituency, the EC official said.

Altogether 245,259 voters will exercise their franchise for the bypoll, he added.

TMC has fielded Gita Rani Bhunia, wife of former Congress leader Manas Bhunia, who had defected to the Mamata Banerjee-led party earlier this year, necessitating the byelection.

Bhunia had won the seat in last year's assembly polls.

The BJP has nominated Antara Bhattacharya, while the Congress has fielded Chiranjib Bhowmick, a local leader. Rita Mandal of the CPI(M) will contest the fray as a Left Front candidate.


A car ploughed into a crowd in Australia`s second-largest city on Thursday injuring 19 people in what police said was a "deliberate act" but one they did not believe was terror related.

Witnesses said people were thrown through the air after being hit by the vehicle, which did not appear to be trying to stop as it "mowed everybody down" at a busy intersection in downtown Melbourne.

Victoria state police said the 32-year-old driver, an Australian of Afghan descent, was known to authorities for traffic and "minor assault" offences and had mental health issues.

The car was driven "intentionally" through the intersection and collided with a "large number" of pedestrians, Acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters in Melbourne.

The driver "has a history of drug use and mental health issues... At this time we do not have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism" or extremism, he said.

The man was arrested after a tussle with an off-duty police officer.

Investigators were waiting to interview the driver, who was in hospital under police guard.

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews, called the incident an "evil, deliberate, cowardly act" that left 19 people hurt -- four of them critically.In a tweet, police appealed to members of the public to upload any images they might have of the incident to help assist with their investigation.

A witness, named only as Sue, told Melbourne radio station 3AW that she heard screams and saw "people flying everywhere".

"We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down," she said.

"People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere."

Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw an "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys -- and I hope not prams," he said.

"I`ve really never seen anything like this before and I haven`t stopped shaking."

The intersection is one of Melbourne`s busiest, a local shop owner told national broadcaster ABC, and is particularly crowded at this time of the year ahead of the Christmas break, with school holidays under way.

The incident came after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne`s busiest mall in January, killing six people.

The driver, whose case is still being heard in court, had been pursued by police prior to the rampage after he had allegedly stabbed his brother.

Canberra has become increasingly worried about homegrown extremism and officials say they have prevented 13 terror attacks on home soil in the past few years.

The Australian government in August unveiled a strategy aimed at preventing vehicle attacks in crowded public places.

Suggested steps include deterrent options like fencing and closed circuit cameras, and delaying approaches such as trees and bollards to slow down vehicles.

Melbourne has also been installing a public siren system and more security cameras to warn people of a possible terrorist attack or other serious threats.

Andrews said there would an inquiry into the incident, and whether any further changes to Melbourne`s security measures needed to be made.

Over the next few days, hundreds more police would patrol the city, he added.

While the circumstances surrounding Thursday`s incident were still unclear, there have been several cases of vehicles being used to deliberately maim and kill.

The most deadly such case was in the southern French city of Nice on July 14, 2016, when 31-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed a 19-tonne truck down a beachside promenade, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more.

Other deadly attacks using vehicles have taken place in Berlin, New York, London, Stockholm and Barcelona.
WASHINGTON: The US forces have conducted multiple ground operations and more than 120 airstrikes against terror groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen in 2017, under a long-running campaign, the Pentagon has said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is one of the terrorist groups most committed to and capable of conducting attacks in America, as assessed by the intelligence and defence communities, while intelligence estimates indicate that ISIS-Yemen has doubled in size over the past year.

"The removal of key facilitators in this region will interrupt AQAP's freedom of movement and likely force the group into a reactionary posture, limiting their ability to challenge Yemeni Security Forces and partnered advances," said Lt Col Earl Brown, a spokesman of US Central Command (CENTCOM).

"US forces also expanded counter terrorism operations in October to encompass both AQAP and ISIS. This parallel targeting effort is required to prevent ISIS-Y from filling the vacuum left by a diminished AQAP footprint or influence in the region," Brown said as CENTCOM released its year end assessment of the fight against terrorism in Yemen.

In November, the US conducted 10 strikes across Yemen governorates al-Bayda, and Marib, including a strike on Mujahid al-Adani, AQAP Shabwah leader. He was killed on November 20 in al-Bayda governorate.

Al-Adani, also known as Mohammad Shukri, was a senior leader responsible for planning and conducting terrorist attacks against Yemeni, coalition and tribal security forces.

He exerted significant influence within AQAP's terrorist attack networks, similarly, maintained close ties and access to the group's other senior leaders.

Al-Bayda AQAP facilitator Abu Layth al-Sanaani and three AQAP associates were also killed in the November 20 strike.

Ruwahah al-Sanaani, also an AQAP facilitator, was killed on November 2 in Marib governorate. On October 19, a strike killed Ubaydah al-Lawdari, the Emir of Lawdar, and four associates in al-Bayda governorate.

Al-Lawdari had been known to provide equipment and money in support of AQAP attacks against coalition forces, posing an increased threat to US interests.



Meanwhile, a series of strikes against two ISIS terror training camps in al-Bayda in October 16 killed more than 50 ISIS-Y combatants, disrupting the organisation's attempts to recruit and train new fighters.

According to CENTCOM, ongoing operations pressuring the network have also degraded AQAP's propaganda production, reducing one of the methods for the terror group to recruit and inspire lone wolf attacks across the globe.

The al-Masra Newsletter, previously published three times a month, has not been published since July.

Al-Malahim Establishment for Media Production, which produces AQAP's terrorist-inspiring video series, as well as Inspire Magazine, saw a large drop in October.

Unable to produce video series and graphic terror- inspiring magazines, AQAP has resorted to using low-tech audio messages, CENTCOM said.

"US forces have enabled regional counterterrorism partners to regain territory from these terrorists - forcing them to spend more time on survival," said Brown.

"These operations have helped to illuminate terrorist networks, making intelligence-gathering, subsequent targeting and follow-on operations increasingly productive and effective," he added.

"Every strike, every raid and every partnered operation advance the defeat of these violent extremist organisations. US forces will continue to use all effective measures to degrade the groups' ability to export terror," Brown said. Wine shop owner attacked by unidentified assailants in Hyderabad, last night. Victim hospitalized, family lodges complaint with Malakpet police
United Nations: More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel`s capital.

Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favour. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote.

Trump`s threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. A spokesman for Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the vote "a victory for Palestine" but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the vote.

Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated on the world stage as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure.

French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said in a statement: "The resolution adopted today only confirms relevant international law provisions on Jerusalem. This vote must not divide or exclude."

Earlier this month, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by announcing the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there.

Ahead of Thursday`s vote, the United States said it was "singled out for attack" at the United Nations over Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites.

The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly.

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit, she said.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trumps move. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city.

The vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries. The United States, backing its ally Israel, vetoed the resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told the United States it could not buy Turkey`s support in Thursday`s vote.

"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey`s democratic will with your dollars," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

Among the countries that abstained on Thursday were Australia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Philippines, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.

Australian U.N. Ambassador Gillian Bird said Australia wanted to see the United States continue to play a leadership role in brokering peace and abstained from the vote because, "We do not wish to see any party isolated from the process."

"There is much in this resolution with which we agree," Bird told the General Assembly after the vote. "We do not, however, consider that this further resolution...helps bring the parties back to the negotiating table."
By PTI: Manmohan

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) The Congress today asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shed his "raaj-hatth" (stubborness) and clarify in Parliament his conspiracy with Pakistan remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh to end the stalemate and enable a discussion on issues such as the Rafale deal.

With no end in sight to the current impasse on the issue, the proceedings in Parliament continued to be disrupted.

advertisement

Congress leader Anand Sharma held the "obduracy" of the prime minister and the attitude of the government as being responsible for the impasse in Parliament, that continued with a washout of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha for a fourth day today.

He also accused the government of wanting to continue the standoff so that issues of critical concern to the people are not taken up.

Sharma alleged that the government does not want the opposition to raise issues of acts of "commission and omission" and the wrong decisions of the prime minister.

He said that the government does not want that it is exposed on the floor of the House on issues such as the Rafale scam which the opposition wants to discuss.

"It is the responsibility of the PM to clear doubts regarding his accusations. It is his duty to restore the dignity of the office and in the interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock comes to an end," Sharma told reporters.

"We urge the prime minister to shed his raaj-hatth (stubbordness) and clarify his remarks against Singh and Ansari, which he made to win Gujarat polls," Sharma said.

The stalemate, he said, continues primarily because of the attitude of the government and obduracy of the prime pinister, who refuses to register the seriousness of the situation resulting from his "baseless and unwarranted aspersions" for electoral gains.

He said, as one who is occupying the constitutional office, it is the duty of the prime minister to restore the dignity of the office of the institution.

Whatever is said in politics, never before a prime minister has pointed any finger of suspicion on the commitment to the country of former prime ministers or former vice presidents or even the former Army chief.

"It is in national interest, in interest of parliamentary democracy that this deadlock is brought to an end.

"It is unfortunate that prime minister has still not apologised for his ill-thought accusations against the former PM Manmohan Singh who was PM for 10 years and dedicated his life for this country," he said.

Sharma, however, said it is being conveyed by government that the prime minister is not willing to take back his words.

advertisement

He "disappointed" the opposition today when it was his day for the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress leader said.

Sharma said the opposition also wants to raise other issues concerning the economy and job losses.

The Indian economy has suffered losses due to some "wreckless" decisions of the prime minister, he alleged. PTI SKC ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
United Nations: UN member-states were poised on Thursday to vote on a motion rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel`s capital, after President Donald Trump threatened to cut funding to countries that back the measure.

"The United States will remember this day," US Ambassador Nikki Haley warned the 193-member General Assembly ahead of the vote expected to reject the American move, which broke with international consensus and unleashed protests across the Muslim world.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem," Haley said. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.

"But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN," she said.

"When we make generous contributions to the UN we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected."

Gathered in an emergency session, the General Assembly is to decide on a draft resolution reaffirming that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiations, and that any decision reached outside of that framework has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

A draft resolution was sent to the assembly after it was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council on Monday, although all other 14 council members voted in favor.

Danny Danon, Israel`s envoy to the United Nations, vowed that his country would never be forced out of Jerusalem.

"No General Assembly resolution will ever drive us from Jerusalem," Danon said.Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki appealed for support and referenced the US warning that it was "taking names" among countries that oppose it at the UN.

"This organization is now undergoing an unprecedented test," al-Malki said.

"History records names, it remembers names -- the names of those who stand by what is right and the names of those who speak falsehood. Today we are seekers of rights and peace."

Trump`s decision on December 6 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel`s capital has prompted a flurry of appeals to the United Nations.

The status of the Holy City is one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides claiming it as their capital.

Trump warned that Washington would closely watch how nations voted on Thursday, suggesting, like Haley, there could be financial reprisals for countries that back the motion put forward by Yemen and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars and then they vote against us," Trump said at the White House.

"Well, we`re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We`ll save a lot. We don`t care."The draft resolution mirrors the text that was vetoed at the Security Council on Monday, and although it does not mention Trump`s decision, it expresses "deep regret at recent decisions" concerning the city`s status.

Ahead of the vote, Israel`s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the UN as a "house of lies," saying Israel "rejects outright this vote, even before it passes."

Diplomats expect strong support for the resolution, which is non-binding, despite the US pressure to either abstain, vote against it or simply not turn up for the vote.

America`s neighbors Canada and Mexico were both expected to abstain, according to diplomats.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said UN member states should not be swayed by Trump`s threat.

"I am calling on the whole world: never sell your democratic will in return for petty dollars," he said in a televised speech in Ankara, predicting that "the world will teach a very good lesson to America today."

No country has veto powers in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council where the United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, can block any resolution.

Among the 14 countries voting in favor on Monday were Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Ukraine who were expected to do the same at the assembly.

While resolutions by the General Assembly are non-binding, a strong vote in support would carry political weight.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several UN resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from territory seized in 1967 and the draft resolution contains the same language as past motions adopted by the assembly.
WASHINGTON: A major West Coast highway reopened on Wednesday after workers spent two days clearing the wreckage from an Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state while speeding onto a bridge, state transportation officials said.

Crews had carted off the biggest chunk by the afternoon: the 270,000-pound (122,470-kg) locomotive involved in the Monday morning rush-hour crash in the city of Dupont, which killed three people and sent another 100 to hospitals.

The affected southbound stretch of Interstate 5, which runs from the Canadian border to Mexico, opened on Wednesday afternoon, the Washington State Department of Transportation said. There was a gouge in a road shoulder from where a train carriage slammed into the surface and guard rails were crushed but the roadway surface did not suffer any major damage, officials said.

Federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are seeking answers about the crash`s cause in interviews with the train`s engineer and a trainee conductor who were in the locomotive`s cab.

NTSB members say they are focused on whether the engineer was distracted, but are timing their interviews with the crew this week around their recuperation from injuries. Investigators are also examining the wrecked train cars, which have been taken to a nearby U.S. military base.

The accident occurred during the train`s inaugural run on a new, slightly quicker route between Olympia and Tacoma, with 86 people aboard, 80 of them passengers, Amtrak said. It was traveling at 80 miles per hour (129 km per hour), more than twice the speed limit for the curved portion of track leading to the bridge.

NTSB investigators have found that the train`s emergency brakes were automatically activated during the derailment rather than being engaged manually by the engineer.

They also said a safety system known as positive train control, which automatically slows trains if they go too fast, was not installed on the rail line. Congress had extended a mandatory deadline for having the system installed on all passenger railways to 2018.

The derailment placed Amtrak, the country`s main passenger rail service, under renewed scrutiny following a series of fatal incidents.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner`s Office identified the third victim on Wednesday as Benjamin Gran, 40, of Auburn, Washington.

The other two people killed were Jim Hamre and Zack Willhoite, transit enthusiasts who wanted to ride the inaugural run along the new route.
Trump's threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the UN General Assembly (Photo: AP)

By Reuters: More than 100 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, nine voted against and 35 abstained.

advertisement

Trump's threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions.

Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated on the world stage as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure.

Ahead of the vote, the United States said it was "singled out for attack" at the United Nations over Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly.

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit," she said.

Earlier this month, Trump reversed decades of US policy by announcing the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trump's move. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city.

The vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries. The United States, backing its ally Israel, vetoed the resolution on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told the United States it could not buy Turkey's support in Thursday's vote.

"Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there (the United Nations) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of the vote.

advertisement

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech in the port city of Ashdod.

--- ENDS ---
December 19, 2017

Tensions between Iranian former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and conservative judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani are reaching a climax, with both of them trading barbs against each other publicly.

On Dec. 13, at a summit with students, Larijani accused Ahmadinejad of trying to create turmoil and sedition.

Hitting directly at Ahmadinejad, Larijani said, The actions of those who are making [different] kinds of accusations against the judiciary are a type of sedition. Because whoever undermines [Irans] political system is actually committing sedition.

Of note, it has been claimed recently that the daughter of the judiciary chief has been arrested on spying charges, an accusation that has been repeatedly denied by officials.

Larijani said, In [a recent] Expediency Council meeting, [Ahmadinejad] asked the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council [Ali Shamkhani] about whats new about the spying case of the daughter of [the judiciary chief]. [Shamkhani] replied that this story is completely a lie. [Ahmadinejad then] said, You are not aware, yet we have exact information that she is in custody and we know her detention place, too. How is it possible that a human lies this much and has gotten so far away from the path of fairness and piety?

Larijani also accused Ahmadinejad and his entourage of supporting jailed billionaire Babak Zanjani, who has been said to be a middleman for bypassing Irans sanctions.

On Dec. 17, Ahmadinejad reacted to Larijanis remark by threatening to disclose a number of issues about the performance of the judiciary chief.

In a video released on Ahmadinejads Instagram account, the former president of Iran addressed Larijani, asking him to deliver to him any documents and proof for his accusations. He [Larijani] attributed charges to me and my colleagues. He described us as seditionist, deviant and a supporter of Mr. Babak Zanjani, and accused us of these charges. However, Mr. Babak Zanjani has been in jail for almost four years and has been put on trial in closed sessions, and we dont know what has been going on in there, said Ahmadinejad.

The former president then set a 48-hour ultimatum for the judiciary chief to give him proof of their charges of sedition.

In response to Ahmadinejads threat, Iranian Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, who was appointed by Larijani, vowed to give Ahmadinejad what he asked for. On Dec. 18, Montazeri said, I will answer him in the next one or two days.

Meanwhile, a former conservative member of parliament said Ahmadinejads team may be in contact with spying agencies of Western countries. Ebrahim Aqa-Mohammadi said Dec. 19, [The issue that] they are influenced by a number of Western countries is undeniable, and this may be in the form of having ties with foreign intelligence services [of these countries].

Hassan Ghaffouri-Fard, a prominent moderate-conservative figure, analyzed Ahmadinejads recent activities and said Ahmadinejad is seeking to stop the judiciary from studying his case.

Ghaffouri-Fard said Dec. 19, The judiciary is planning to review his case, and he is attempting to affect his case by [resorting] to illogical tools. He also may think that he can make the judiciary retreat and influence the process of reviewing his case by giving one or two speeches.

On Dec. 19, Ahmadinejad released a video in which he asked the judiciary chief to resign; however, he didnt reveal anything against Larijani.

Now, [Larijani] lacks legitimacy due to frequent violations of the constitution, laws and the emergence of signs of his inadequacy. The continuance of his [responsibility as the judiciary chief] violates the rights of the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], the Islamic Republic and the people as the main owners of the country and the revolution, and that is why he is a usurper, Ahmadinejad said.

Minutes later, the judiciary answered Ahmadinejad by saying he should be responding to them instead of threatening others. The judiciary also said Ahmadinejads threats are a known method for trying to escape trial and punishment.

On the same day, the judiciary announced that the verdict of Hamid Baghaei, Ahmadinejads vice president in charge of executive affairs, has been delivered to him. However, according to the judiciary, the verdict is not definitive and can be objected to.
Culture Shock

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

The artist behind the River of Lights
Visionary (theres really no other word for it) filmmaker Guillermo del Toro mashes up horror, sci-fi, fantasy, romance and historical drama for his latest film, the mid-century modern fairy tale The Shape of Water. The result is one of his most artistic outings and a swooningly original twist on the postwar monster movie genre.

Its no secret del Toro loves his monsters: Witness the kindly old vampire in Cronos, the sad underaged ghosts of The Devils Backbone, the heroic titular demon in Hellboy, the mysterious woodland spirits of Pans Labyrinth, the giant alien kaiju of Pacific Rim. Now he lets that lifelong passion bloom into full-blown romance and limpid eroticism. Our guide into this brave old world comes in the form of Elisa Esposito (British actress Sally Hawkins from Happy-Go-Lucky and Blue Jasmine). Elisa is lonely mute gal working as a cleaning woman at a top secret government facility outside Baltimore, circa 1962. The Cold War is heating up, and a cabal of white-jacketed scientists scurry around the elaborately tiled bunker looking for ways to one-up the Russkies. In one particular lab, they have isolated a curious new specimenan amphibious fish-man who looks suspiciously like a certain Creature from the Black Lagoon (not to mention Abe Sapien from Hellboy).

Privy to the sort of secrets that unseen underlings are frequently exposed, Elisa and her talkative coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) witness the creature firsthand while mopping up the bloody carnage after the aquatic prisoner lashes out at his cruel captor. That captor turns out to be hard-nosed, cattle prod-wielding Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who is now the secret government facilitys new head of security. If theres one thing Shannon knows how to do its project slate-faced menace. (See for example: Boardwalk Empire, Revolutionary Road, Man of Steel, Nocturnal Animals.) Here he serves as the films metaphorical (as opposed to literal) monster, pushing for the creatures vivisectionwhich will put a quick end to this assignment, allowing Strickland to escape the lowly confines of 60s Baltimore.

The film quickly establishes that our Plain Jane protagonist Elisa is unhappy and isolatedalthough not without her dreams and sexual longings. Handicapped by her lack of speech, her only real friends are the equally marginalized Zelda and her gay next-door neighbor (Richard Jenkins, the fourth Oscar nominee in an already impeccable cast). As expected, Elisa befriends the mute (and privately peaceful) amphibian man (played by famed man-in-a-rubber-suit actor Doug Jones). This sets the stage for the films E.T. the Extraterrestrial/Free Willy-esque plot trajectory. But del Toros masterful execution gilds the simple story with a wealth of glittering layers.

First and foremost, the film is jaw-droppingly gorgeousin a grimy, soggy, government institutional sort of way. With its burnt umber and slate gray color palette, plus its curated collection of artistically cracked tiles and meticulously placed stains, the art direction is reminiscent of the fractured fairy tale work of French filmmakers Caro and Jeunet (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Amelie). Beneath its tale of interspecies interconnection, del Toro drops hints of racism and homophobiamolding the entire feature into a story about xenophobia in post-World War II America. On top of that, the director throws in a bunch of nods to classic Hollywood filmsfrom Biblical epics to musicalsjust because he can and wants to. Finallyand perhaps most wiselydel Toro flips the script on the original Creature From the Black Lagoon, turning this monster from girl-stealing predator to modern-day, fully consensual romantic partner. Yup, The Shape of Water goes there. I mean goes there.

Despite its adult content, The Shape of Water is best viewed through the rainbow-colored prism of a fairy tale. The serious script grounds the film in time and place, addressing such historical realities as institutional racism and Cold War paranoia. But there are enough conveniences and contrivances in the plot that its best to look at it as fantasy and not reality. Surrender to the sensual cinematic visuals and the humid air of sexual tension surrounding this Beauty and the Beast-esque fable and youre sure to be swept up in its particular, peculiar tide.
Its surprising to find a European cafe on a farm in New Mexico. Then again, the place is called Peculiar Farms for a reason.

Europa Coffee. Tea. Bakery opened two months ago on the eastern edge of Peculiar Farms, right off of Highway 314. The small cafe resides in what was previously the Peculiar milking shed, and it still looks like a modest farm shed from the road. Inside, though, its since been decked out with spindly little cafe chairs and displays of European candies.

I visited Europa around noon on a cloudy Saturday with a couple friends in tow. We hemmed and hawed over the menu for a long time (its a pay-up-front establishment), getting in the way of some other, more decisive customers in the small space. The menu is fairly limited at the moment, and mostly consists of pre-prepared thingsthough there are a couple hot entrees that change every couple of days, depending on what ingredients are available. We chose a couple savory pastries (all imported unbaked from France, then baked in-house; $3 each) and the French picnic plate ($7.50), which came with focaccia and several different kinds of meats and cheeses. Though the cooler full of kombucha, sparkling vinegar drinks and other unusual concoctions was tempting, we all decided on lattes ($3.25) instead.

We chose a table outside, where theres a stage for nighttime performances and play equipment for kids. Right behind the stage theres acres and acres of grass with a few dozen Hereford cows lazily chewing their cud. Behind that is another pen with about a hundred small, black Panorama cows milling about. Theres also a flock of seasonal visitors: Hundreds of migrating cranes have chosen the field as a landing pad, and are now stalking around on their long legs and eyeing the cattle with suspicion. Even with the highway just a stones throw away, its impossible to forget that youre eating at a farm. Its lovely.

We nursed our coffees (imported from an Italian roaster) as we watched the cows flicking their tails and living their quiet cow lives. The pastries we sampled (one tomato and olive, the other leek and cheese) were fantastically buttery and flakyI nearly went back for another. Although I find it a bit odd that a New Mexico farm cafe would import nearly all of their food from Europe rather than use local ingredients, I suppose there is something to be said for the French knowing how to make a good pastry.

Although I find it a bit odd that a New Mexico farm cafe would import nearly all of their food from Europe rather than use local ingredients, I suppose there is something to be said for the French knowing how to make a good pastry.

The French picnic plate came out, and the teenage waiter told us that the cafe has actually been quite busy since it opened. Its not usually so empty this time of day, he told us. This place has become kind of a local hub, actually. The community was really ready for a new coffee shopthats not a Starbucks. Los Lunas is a small farming town, so I can definitely see how a European cafe could be an exciting addition to the scene. I imagined this young man with a headset and a green apron on. I figured he was pretty happy to be working here rather than at a Starbucks, too.

The picnic plate was simple but tasty, served alongside several little bowls of pickles and fat, salty olives. Its a good plate for sharing, but its lightmost of the plates at Europa are small and not good for particularly hungry people. But its more of a cafe and market than a make-from-scratch restaurant: As long as youre not expecting a three-course meal when you show up, its a perfectly good place for breakfast or lunch. And an even better place for picking up European chocolates, preserves and other imported foods you wouldnt normally find outside of an IKEA.

I imagine the menu at Europa will expand in the spring, when the growing season allows them to offer more fresh ingredients. For now, you can still buy cuts of fresh beef (cows are always in season) in the cafe, and enjoy the bounty that the European import trade allows. If you were wondering where to get marzipan and stroopwafels for stocking stuffers, look no further.

The atmosphere is what sold the place for me. Being able to sit outside and then wander down the lane to pet the cows was magical; running into one of the owners of the farm and chatting with him about the cafe and his plans for the future of the farm was delightful. Even after we finished eating, the three of us ended up spending well over two hours at the place, talking and watching the cranes arrive in packs. I could see what the waiter meant about this being a community hub: Its quiet and peaceful there, and has a way of encouraging you to sit and take your time. Whether youre a Los Lunas resident or simply passing through, Europa is a great place to take friends or family for a long morning of shooting the shit and catching up. Of course, you may find yourself falling quiet and just appreciating the place, too.
PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Letters Affordable Care for All Dear Editor, The millions of United States citizens who have enrolled in health insurance programs under the Affordable Care Act feel lifted up. Not least of the benefits they enjoy are the right to get healthcare even when they have preexisting conditions and the right to have their children remain on their policies until they reach the age of 26. But some of us are looking forward to being lifted up even more. We want Medicare for all. We know that we citizens will be able to pay for the House bill, HR 676, through a small progressive payroll and self-employment tax and a modest tax on unearned income. We are not distressed because the top five percent income earners will pay an increased personal income tax and because there will be a small tax on stock and bond transactions. We know that this is an equitable way for all of us to pay for our healthcare. Furthermore, we know that this bill and Senator Sanders' S.915 will save us current premium payers a vast amount of money by eliminating the high amount of advertising done by the insurance companies and the large number of people that physicians now must employ to satisfy the multitude of requirements demanded by the insurance companies.

Garage Sale Snob Dear Alibi, I moved to Albuquerque last March from Wisconsin. Having spent an entire garage sale season here in New Mexico, which is a lot longer than we had up north, I feel I have to share my frustration with the garage sale signs I see in this city. I have been garage saleing since I was born. It is ingrained in my family and whenever I see a garage sale my instinctual response is to immediately chase down that sale. Therefore, I acknowledge that I am a bit of a garage sale snob. I still think it is fair to say that the signs I see in Albuquerque are almost always, well, lacking. Often the sign just says Yard Sale, or sometimes just Sale. And yes, sometimes there is an arrow. Often signs are written with what looks like a fading pen or pencil. Sometimes the signs are placed after the turn, therefore too late. Every once in a while I will see a sign that says something descriptive like toys or tools, but these things are less important than the information that needs to be there. The sign almost never includes the date, the address or the time. I cant tell you how often I have started following garage sale signs to never have found the place. I have wasted hours. Either the signs just disappear, or I may start following other way-too-similar signs for a different sale. I have almost stopped searching for garage sales in fear of going down a wild goose chase leading to nowhere. In my almost-professional opinion, here is a quick garage sale sign 101: 1) Make the sign legible from a decent distance away. If you are unsure if your sign can be read from a moving car 100 feet away, test it. Use sharpie or another kind of thick marker. 2) Include a date and time, and if you dont, take down your sign when the sale is over. More than a few tears have been shed finding a sign leading to nowhere. 3) Include an address to help navigate shoppers and distinguish your sign from others. If you dont want to include a whole address, how about just the street. Or at least an original word. Once I saw Killer Sale and although the word Killer is strange in the context of garage sales, it helped to know what signs were all leading towards this sale. 4) Place the signs often and before turns.

#GOPvalues Dear Editor, After the shooting in San Bernardino California in 2015, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez slammed the President for politicizing the tragic attack on Americans by calling for gun control measures. Almost Three years later, after a failed Pipe Bombing in New York, President Trump is calling for tougher immigration measures? Why does Gov. Martinez suddenly have nothing to say? After the worst mass shooting in American history, this year, in Las Vegas, Gov. Martinez didn't even offer her thoughts and prayers like most National Rifle Association Republicans often do. When President Trump politicizes a tragedy, why doesn't Gov. Martinez hold him to the same strict standards she held President Obama to? Gov. Martinez has been on just about every side of either supporting or denouncing our current President, so perhaps she's just trying to finish her last year in public office, with no more PR disasters like 5 star burgers or her infamous Peetza party! Given her silence on the Roy Moore Candidate, is it fair to ask if she condones Child Predation?

Help! Dear Editor, Hey! I need help, its really urgent. Can u please write for me the review of serial Treme episode of ethnicity (S1, Ep.6: Shallow Water, Oh Mama). Its educational purpose? Let me know I shall be grateful. Waiting forward to get your reply.
By PTI: stability: Pak

By Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Dec 21 (PTI) Pakistans nuclear command body today voiced concern over what it termed as the "destabilising actions" in the "neighbourhood" that threatened the strategic stability in South Asia, in an apparent reference to India.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi chaired the 23rd meeting of the National Command Authority (NCA), which was briefed comprehensively on the strategic environment, said a statement by the Prime Ministers Office.

advertisement

It said that the NCA took stock of the regional security environment and "noted with concern certain destabilising actions in Pakistans neighborhood, which undermine the objective of maintaining strategic stability in South Asia."

"These include the massive arms build-up in the conventional domain, nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean Region and plans for the development/deployment of Ballistic Missile Defence system," it said.

While expressing full confidence in Pakistans capability to address any form of aggression, the NCA reiterated Pakistan?s policy of developing and maintaining Full Spectrum Deterrence, in line with the policy of Credible Minimum Deterrence and avoidance of arms race.

It appreciated the technological sophistication demonstrated during the tests of Babur III submarine-launched cruise missile and Ababeel Missile System.

The NCA took a detailed review of the Nuclear Security Regime and expressed full confidence in command and control systems and security measures in-place to ensure comprehensive stewardship and security of strategic assets and materials.

It said that as a responsible nuclear state, Pakistan would continue to contribute meaningfully towards the global efforts to improve nuclear security and nuclear non- proliferation measures.

The NCA asserted that Pakistan desires peaceful co- existence in the region and will endeavor to work with its neighbors to ensure strategic stability in South Asia.

It noted with satisfaction, the implementation of national comprehensive export control measures, which are in line with international export control regimes.

It reiterated that Pakistan has the requisite credentials to become part of various non-proliferation regimes, including the Nuclear Suppliers Group, for which Pakistan seeks adoption of a non-discriminatory criteria based approach.

The NCA was also briefed on National Space Programme ? 2047 and Nuclear Power Programme for peaceful uses of nuclear technology, to meet growing energy needs. It fully endorsed both programmes.

The role of nuclear applications in the fields of health, agriculture, medicine and industry was deeply appreciated.

The NCA reiterated Pakistans interest in expanding international cooperation in these areas and play a positive role towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The meeting was attended by the ministers of Defence and Interior, Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Director General Strategic Plans Division, Director General Inter- Services Intelligence and other senior officials. PTI SH ZH

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Cruisers, addressing the opioid crisis and discussions about ART were among the items on the agenda at the regular Albuquerque City Council meeting held on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017.

Cruise On, Maybe

Several business owners, car enthusiasts and cruising fans spoke up to the Council to say it is time to take the brakes off taking cultural slow spins down Central Avenue.

Existing law essentially makes a Sunday afternoon slow car ride through Downtown a crime, so Councilors Klarissa Pena and Isaac Benton sponsored a measure that would form a task force to look at promoting responsible car cruising. Then the council could repeal the ordinance that allows police to ticket those cruising, citing such activities as a threat to public safety by creating traffic congestion through repetitive, unnecessary driving.

Councilor Pena who says she is a part of the cruising community, said taking a dawdling ride down Route 66 in a cool car is a part of the citys culture and tradition. Its a slice of pride for some. She pointed out that the Smithsonian Institute has a classic lowrider car on display as part of New Mexicos history and culture, therefore Albuquerque should not criminalize it.

Another speaker said the cars, lowrider or classic, are rolling pieces of artwork. This prompted Councilor Benton to take a trip down memory lane to the first time he encountered Burque cruisers at the long-gone San Gabriel Park. He said he was sure there is a way to protect the residents and businesses Downtown, and allow the many cruising fans to do their thing.

Newly seated Westside Councilor Cynthia Borrego, who grew up in lowrider capital Espanola, said she was on board for a cruise to tweak the law. Public comments stressed that cruising in and of itself is not a crime. We do everything we can to make this a positive experience, said Lorenzo Otero. Otero went on to say that cruising brings people and families together in a positive way and is not a Chicano thing or a white thing or a black thing or a brown thingit is an us thing. The measure passed unanimously.

Wanna Fight?

A couple of attorneys showed up to urge the city to pursue litigation against big opioid-producing pharmaceutical companies. Pia Salazar from the local law firm of Salazar, Sullivan and Jasionowski urged the councilors to join the nationwide wave of lawsuits against big pharmaceutical corporations. After a sobering presentation on the opioid epidemic, not only here in New Mexico but across the country, Salazar said the opioid addiction sucks away city and private resources and raises the crime rate and homelessness. Salazar urged the council to issue a request for a proposal to make sure the city of Albuquerque is well represented in this nationwide wave of opioid litigation. Try to end this process of addiction and hopefully recover back some of our losses and put an end to it in our community, Salazar said.

The Bernalillo County Commission recently decided to join the wave of national lawsuits against big opioid manufacturers. Councilors agreed to explore and discuss with the administration how to move forward with this idea. We need to recognize that these issues impact all of us, Councilor Borrego said. Councilor Diane Gibson summed things up with, We cant just keep allowing people to kill themselves.

Salazar said lawsuits are handled on a contingency basis and the city would not have to front the costs of the litigation. As recently reported by CBS 60 minutes, Big Pharma targets poorer and browner communities like those in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, because it is all about profit.

Move Along

Councilors made it illegal to just hang out on the new Albuquerque Rapid Transit stations without intending to ride it. Also, there will be no smoking on the station platforms. But to be fair, pedestrians who must use the station to cross Central Avenue can be on the platform long enough to walk across it. Remember, there are plenty of cameras on the platforms to catch loiterers, smokers and others breaking the laws.

Paying for ART

Councilor Pat Davis gave new city Chief Operations Officer Lawrence Rael his debut before the new Council when he asked about the Albuquerque Rapid Transit funding. Davis said he was following up on a media report about the federal funding for the project not being locked down.

Rael said they are still in the process of doing a broad overview of the project but it is his understanding that federal transportation department has agreed to reimburse the city $75 million; but he said, there is not a signed contract with the feds to reimburse. Rael said the unofficial plan has the money for reimbursements coming to the city in two chunks: $50 million in the first year and $25 million in the second year.

Rael said the entire project stretching along Central from Coors to Louisiana will cost roughly $135 millionwith $119 million of that being attributed to the actual rapid transit project. Most of the project costs have already been paid out. The problem is the city fronted the money to build the project, Rael told the Council. He said this is a challenge, especially with the current political situation in Washington D.C. He assured the council that after the holidays, the Keller administration will be working on getting the feds to sign an official agreement.
Dateline: India

A woman was arrested after allegedly killing her husband and trying to replace him with an imposter. Police in the Indian state of Telangana say that Swati Reddy has confessed to killing her husband, Sudhakar Reddy, late November with the help of her lover, Rajesh Ajjakolu. According to reports, just days after the murder, acid was poured on Ajjakolu's face, and he was admitted to a hospital under Mr. Reddy's name. Their plot was reportedly to have Ajjakolu pose as the dead husband and pass off the change in his appearance as the result of plastic surgery. To that end, Mrs. Reddy told her husband's parents that he had been attacked and would need facial reconstructive surgery. The parents believed the attack story and agreed to pay for the procedure. The plot was discovered over a week later, when Mr. Reddy's brother visited Ajjakolu in the hospital and became suspicious of the man. The brother alerted police, who arrested Mrs. Reddy after she admitted to the crime. Police say they plan to arrest Ajjakolu once he has been treated for his facial burns and is released from the hospital. Mr. Reddy's parents believed that the man undergoing treatment was their son and they paid up to 500,000 rupees (5,821; $7,758) in hospital bills.

Dateline: England

A doctor pled guilty to signing the livers of two patients during surgery with his initials. In a hearing at Birmingham crown court last week, Simon Bramhalla renowned liver, spleen and pancreas surgeonpled guilty to two counts of assault by beating. According to complaints filed against Bramhall, the doctor used an argon beama tool used to stop livers bleeding during operationsto sign his initials into the patients organs. Although marks left by argon supposedly caused no damage to either of the patients, prosecutor Tony Badenoch said the surgeon's actions constituted an intentional application of unlawful force to a patient whilst anaesthetised. Officials say Bramhall defaced patients' organs on two known occasions: in February and August of 2013. In that year, he was suspended from his post after a colleague spotted the initials SB drawn onto a patient's liver during a follow-up surgery. Bramhall tendered his resignation the following summer during an internal investigation into his conduct. The case is reportedly unprecedented. Bramhall previously received media attention in 2010 when he used a liver salvaged from a plane crash to perform transplant surgery.

Dateline: New York

A man was arrested for posing as a police officer allegedly to receive discounts on coffee. Police say Mark Stetter, of Buffalo, N.Y., showed a fake badge and gun to employees at a Starbucks before claiming to be a detective and asking for a discount. According to reports, Stetter then went to a Spot Coffee and displayed his badge in an attempt to gain access to the closed business. Once officers caught up with the man later in the evening and arrested him, they allegedly discovered a BB gun inside of a holster attached to his belt. Stetter was charged with criminal trespassing, criminal impersonation of a police officer and menacing.

Dateline: California

An animal shelter is being criticized for siccing robots on homeless people. The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) reportedly began using a security robot to patrol the parking lot and sidewalks around its campus. The robot, developed by Knightscope, is over 5 feet tall, weighs nearly 400 pounds and has a top speed of 3 miles an hour. They are equipped with 4 cameras capable of reading up to 300 license plates per minute and are programmed to send alerts when trespassers or anyone on a blacklist are in an area. According to the San Francisco Business Times, S.F. SPCA president Jennifer Scarlett said the robot, dubbed K9 by its owners, was deployed due to concerns over the alleged rise in discarded needles, bicycles and tents on the sidewalks surrounding the facility. The robots are said to be cheaper than human labor, since it only costs $6 an hour to rent them, while the minimum wage in the city is $14 an hour. Scarlett told reporters that there had been less car break-ins and less homeless encampments since the robot began patrolling. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Department of Public Works ordered the SPCA to keep its robot off public sidewalks. The organization was threatened with the possibility of facing penalties of up to $1,000 per day for operating in the public right-of-way without a permit.

Dateline: California

A man posing as television evangelist Joel Osteen was admitted to Joel Osteen's live night of hope worship event for free after being mistaken for the pastor. For almost an hour, Los Angeles comedian and impersonator Mike Klimkowski pretended to be the famous Houston pastor while walking around the venue and taking photos with fans. He was able to park and gain access to the event for free, and managed to trick dozens of people before security became alerted and escorted him out.
State Senator Announces Net Neutrality Legislation State Senator Howie Morales announced last week that he will propose legislation to establish net neutrality for New Mexico following the Federal Communications Commission's decision to repeal internet regulations. Last week, the FCC rolled back Obama-era net neutrality rules, which protect consumers by ensuring that internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon treat all websites the same by barring them from blocking or slowing down certain services. The regulations were enacted in 2015 so that services like Netflix or Hulu could not be interrupted by ISPs that are owned by competitors, and to protect communications between consumers. The FCC's vote to roll back those protections means that broadband providers will now have complete control over the content and speeds their clients experience. According to a statement released by Sen. Morales, legislation at the state level could require that broadband providers practice net neutrality to do business in New Mexico.

City Attorney Says Rio Rancho Did Not Violate IPRA Earlier this year, the New Mexico Attorney General's office said the city of Rio Rancho violated state laws by charging $30 for access to 911 recordings. Rio Rancho City Attorney Gregory Lauer responded to the allegations in a letter saying that the city disagrees with the Attorney General's office and will actually be considering raising the prices for some services. He argued that state statute allows municipalities to charge a reasonable fee to provide copies of records. The Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) allows public agencies to charge the actual costs for making copies of records, but does not allow them to charge for the retrieval of the records. Lauer's letter, however, references the Public Records Act (PRA), which must be considered alongside the IPRA. The state Attorney General's office does not have the authority to fine or reprimand the city of Rio Rancho for violations of IPRA.
Silk Way West Airlines, a growing cargo operator based in Azerbaijan, and Alaska Airlines on Thursday signed contracts with Boeing for two freighters apiece  but that is where the similarities ended. Silk Way West said it will take two 777-8s, the largest plane available from Boeing (NYSE: BA) and one so modern it isnt []
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. An exhibition dedicated to the Armenian culture will open in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York in 2018, Vahan Ter-Ghevondyan, acting director of Matenadaran - The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, told ARMENPRESS.

He informed that the opening of the exhibition will be held in September and will last 4 months.

Exhibits from the Matenadaran, Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and History Museum of Armenia will be displayed. We provide 28 manuscripts. I think it will contribute to promoting our values. This process started two years ago, it passed a very good preparation stage, he said.

Deputy director of the History Museum of Armenia Iveta Mkrtchyan told ARMENPRESS that the Museum is going to present samples of sculpture of 5-6th centuries, such as cross-stones. Applied art objects, jewelry samples dating back to 11-13th centuries will also be displayed at the exhibition.

We held a discussion with the specialists of the Metropolitan Museum, the exhibits were chosen to be displayed at the exhibition. In other words, we jointly selected the exhibits, she said.

The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin is going to present a total of 20 exhibits, including cross-stones, the stone-made model of the church, fabrics and curtains.

A very great event is expected to be held in one of the worlds greatest Museums. Its a major exhibition presenting the culture of our people, the Christian era. Its an important event in terms of promoting the Armenian culture, director of the archives and manuscripts of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin Asoghik Karapetyan told ARMENPRESS, stating that catalog publishing is also expected.


YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian lawmaker of the Turkish parliament, announced during a press conference in the parliament that he has an intelligence data according to which an assassination attempt is being planned against the Turkish-Armenians settled in Europe, CNN Turk reports.

Paylan informed that the assassination attempts are being organized by a structure operating in Turkey.

I have information that certain groups are preparing an operation against Turkish-Alevis and Turkish-Armenians living in Europe, as well as journalists, writers, academicians who were forced to leave Turkey under the ruling Justice and Development Party which must create a great reaction, Paylan said.

The lawmaker refused to inform from where he has received this information. This central structure operating in Turkey has used well-known killers to conduct these murders. This intelligence data has been very seriously taken into account by many European countries, in particular Germany, the intelligence agencies started acting. After receiving this data I had meetings with the governments representatives. Reminding their duties I urged them to take actions, the Armenian lawmaker said, adding that he informed the representatives of the intelligence service, security bodies and respective ministries about this incident. Garo Paylan stated that these crimes aim at creating a sensation.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The extraordinary session convened by the government continues in the Parliament, reports Armenpress.

96 MPs were registered.

At the beginning of the session the issues discussed at the previous session will be put up to voting.

During the December 20 session the lawmakers discussed 5 legislative initiatives. The Judicial Code will be put up to voting to adopt it at the first reading.

After the voting the MPs will continue debating a number of drafts laws.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. A number of flights to/from Yerevan were postponed due to bad weather conditions and fog in Armenia.

Gevorg Abrahamyan, spokesman of the Armenia International Airports, told Armenpress that a total of 6 flights have been delayed as of December 21. 6 more late flights have been operated during the night, he said, adding that the delayed flights will be carried out when the weather conditions are normal.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan on December 21 attended the discussion of the 2018 state budget draft within the frameworks of the parliaments plenary session, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

President Sahakyan expressed gratitude to the members of the parliament for adopting the state's main financial-economic document for the year of 2018 rating highly appreciating the carried out active and substantive discussions.

Bako Sahakyan expressed confidence that the legislative and executive branches of the power would do everything possible for efficient implementation of the budget.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Political scientist Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan says in 2017 Azerbaijan appeared in quite an isolated situation which Armenia should focus on through its policy in the upcoming year, reports Armenpress.

In 2018 one of our main tasks should be the focus on the isolated situation of that country and its capitalization during the negotiation process. If there is an international support, if our position is more perceived than that of Azerbaijan, plus Azerbaijans domestic problems, therefore, a good opportunity is created to work more consistently on this direction, reach the point that the international communitys support will be more favorable for the Armenian side than it was during the past years, he said.

Recalling the spy scandal launched in Azerbaijan in early 2017 as a result of which numerous military officers have been arrested, after which many of them have been killed by the law enforcement agencies, the political scientist stated that from the very start the year of 2017 was not favorable for Azerbaijan. This shows that there are serious problems within the Azerbaijani armed forces and in such circumstances Azerbaijan was unable to take practical steps in the frontline and reach success by military means, he said, adding that the internal contradictions created an atmosphere of mistrust towards the Azerbaijani armed forces.

Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan added that this spy scandal still continues, recently it became known that new military officers have been arrested for cooperating with the Armenian special services.

In addition to the internal contradictions, new facts were revealed on links with the Islamic State, supplying arms to them, as well as giving bribes to different officials in international platforms, which, according to the political scientist, negatively affected Azerbaijans reputation at the international arena. There were accusations by the international media and different structures against Azerbaijan on conducting an unfair policy. This strongly weakened Azerbaijans reputation and perception especially within the Western countries. This also contributed to the fact that the Armenian side managed to enshrine the three principles important for us regarding the Artsakh conflict settlement in the partnership agreement with the EU. These, in fact, will get a legal force in the EU countries, the political scientist said.

He added that Azerbaijan is strictly concerned over the fact that the Armenian position is accepted not only in the West, but also in the post-Soviet region.
West Dinajpur District School Board have come up with such a directive to ensure success for 'Mission Nirmal Bangla'.

By Arindam De: Want to get the mark sheet for the school exams? You must submit an undertaking if your house has a toilet or not. West Dinajpur District School Board has issued the directive to ensure success for 'Mission Nirmal Bangla'. This directive is meant for all schools, high schools and madrassas under the aegis of the district school board.

advertisement

The circular was issued by the school inspector's office to over 330 schools spread across 8 blocks. The directive also mentions that in case there is a toilet in the house premises, the same should be certified by the panchayat.

Most of the parents have supported the move, but there is a section of guardians who claim that the education department cannot come up with such directives and that exams have nothing to do with houses having or not having toilets.

However, such a directive have been issued by the School Inspection Department to all schools within its jurisdiction. It has been mentioned therein that mark sheets will be withheld unless students share written inputs on the status of toilets in their homes.

Head master of Balurghat High School, Narayan Sarkar, said, "We have been asked to declare internal results by December 22. Parents will have to submit written undertaking about their houses having toilets. In case, there is no toilet they will have to submit a written undertaking, promising to have one constructed. Only on the receipt of these undertakings will mark sheets be distributed."

District school inspector said that "the directive is to ensure cent per cent success for the Nirmal Bangla mission."

It must be noted that school mark sheets are a prerequisite for a slew of government scholarships and grants. Sources in the administration say that such directives are affective in pushing reluctant or lazy parents to have a toilet constructed in their premises, anyways most of the cost is subsidised by various state and central government schemes, so it sometimes comes down to some prodding, non-coercive measures from the administration.

Some parents have alleged that although they deposited money and completed all paperwork the panchayats and their contractors have not completed the task of constructing toilets in their homes till date. On the other hand, block-level officials say that many are not using the toilets that panchayats have constructed in their premises.

Rubbishing the charges, some villagers say that it is not an issue of habit - the poor quality material used by the panchayats to construct the toilets makes them unuseable.

On being questioned if the district school board can actually issue such a directive, Additional District Magistrate (Education) of West Dinajpur defended the move, saying "The measure is intended to create pressure for getting toilets constructed, in the interest of a cleaner and healthier society."

advertisement

Nirmal Bangla's Mission statement declares its goal as transforming all the villages of West Bengal to Open Defecation Free (ODF) villages by 2 October 2019.

--- ENDS ---
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. On December 19-20 the Seventeenth meeting of the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (PCC) was held in Yerevan. At the end of the meeting Final Statement and Recommendations were adopted which are based on Article 83 of the EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia.

The adopted document reflects the procedure of the RA-EU relations, in the bilateral, as well as multi-lateral planes, the spheres of cooperation and the further works in the context of signature of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership.

The document once again reaffirms the EU distinct position in the NK conflict issue directed to the support of the OSCE Minsk Group mediatory efforts.

Below we present the English version.

FINAL STATEMENT AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Pursuant to Article 83 of the EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA)

The Seventeenth meeting of the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (PCC) was held in Yerevan on 19-20 December 2017, under the co-chairmanship of Mr Armen Ashotyan on behalf of the National Assembly of Armenia and of Mr. Sajjad Karim on behalf of the European Parliament. The Committee heard Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Garen Nazarian on behalf of the Government of Armenia, and Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Armenia H.E. Piotr Antoni Switalski.

Having thus considered the state of play of EU-Armenia relations, the Parliamentary Cooperation Committee agreed upon the following final statement and recommendations.

The Parliamentary Cooperation Committee:

1.Recalls the crucial role of the European Parliament and of the National Assembly of Armenia, on the basis of their democratic legitimacy, in the development of the Eastern Partnership dynamics;

2.Welcomes the signature of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between the EU and Armenia, in the fringes of the Eastern Partnership Summit that was held in Brussels on 24 November 2017;

3.Stresses that this historical Agreement is based on the EUs and Armenias common commitment to democracy, the rule of law, good governance and the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; notes with deep satisfaction that it sets a solid legal basis to invigorate the political dialogue and broaden the scope of economic cooperation as well as cooperation in sectors such as energy, transport, environment and climate change, creates a framework for new opportunities in trade and investments, and paves the way for increased mobility for the benefit of the citizens; underlines that elements of paramount importance for the strengthening of democracy, such as the rule of law, consolidation of the judiciary, development of public and social institutes, and good governance, are at the core of the new Agreement;

4.Urges both the EU and Armenia to stay committed to a thorough and lasting implementation of this Agreement;

5.Emphasises the role of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Agreement between the EU and Armenia, which gives new impetus to the strengthening of the parliamentary cooperation between the EU Parliament and the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia; stresses the importance of launching the new parliamentary partnership cooperation format aimed at enhancing the parliamentary dimension of the cooperation between the EU and Armenia;

6.Stresses that both the European Parliament and the National Assembly of Armenia should provide appropriate mechanisms for the strengthening of the parliamentary oversight, fostering public awareness and building up the appropriate tools for the inclusion of society;

7.Urges the National Parliaments of the EU Member States to ratify the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement without undue delay;

8.Emphasises that the Eastern Partnership dynamics should not be considered as a tool aimed at forcing the EUs Eastern Partners to choose between the European path and other partnerships; notes that Armenia has signed a far-reaching Agreement with the EU whilst being at the same time a member of the Eurasian Economic Union;

9.Recalls that, following the principle of differentiation that guides the Eastern Partnership, every Eastern Partner should be given the possibility to deepen its cooperation with the EU, in coherence with its ambitions, and with the pace and quality of its reforms;

10.Welcomes the steady progress that has been made in Armenias reform agenda; highlightsnevertheless the need to further work on the top priorities consistently identified over the last years, i.a. giving greater momentum to the reforms process, fighting corruption, ensuring media plurality and freedom and protecting minorities;

11.Recalls that the EU has already planned to provide, under the Single Support Framework 2017-2020, a bilateral financial support totalling around 160 million (to be compared to 118.5 million in grants for the period 2014-2017), focusing on areas such as economic development and innovation, improving the rule of law and the business environment, electoral assistance, connectivity, energy efficiency, environment and climate change;

12.Calls on closer cooperation to improve energy security and efficiency through investments in interconnectivity and infrastructure and the diversification of energy sources, in particular by increasing renewable energy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels; underlines the importance of ensuring full respect for international nuclear safety and environmental protection agreements and obligations;

13.Reckons that the EU assistance should reflect the growingly ambitious goals of the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement, provided that Armenia meets the required conditions as far as the reforms jointly agreed with the EU are concerned, in line with the principles of differentiation and more for more; encourages the European Commission to further enhance its assistance and to align its budgetary instruments, such as the European Neighbourhood Instrument and the European Fund for Sustainable Development, to match the ambitions of the new EU-Armenia partnership;

14.Stresses that the EU financial support will be strictly conditional on concrete reforms steps and their effective implementation, notably in terms of upholding the rule of law, ensuring good governance, and defending human rights as well as the plurality and freedom of media; recalls and that the EUs incentive-based approach aims at benefiting those Eastern Partners most engaged in genuine, ambitious reforms;

15.Encourages Armenias active participation in the COSME and Horizon 2020 programmes, in regional programmes funded under the European Neighbourhood Instrument in the fields of environment, energy, transport, culture and youth, in cross-border cooperation actions, and in the initiatives open to all the Eastern Partners such asErasmus+, Erasmus Mundus, eTwinning Plus, TAIEX, SIGMA, and the Neighbourhood Investment Facility;

16.Recommends to the European Commission to allow for a more intensive participation of Armenia in EU-supported programmes that are open to non-EU countries and to open the way for the participation of Armenia, when the conditions are met and under a legally appropriate framework, in EU agencies;

17.Welcomes the achievements in strengthening people-to-people contacts, including through education, youth, cultural and scientific exchanges between Armenia and the EU; calls for reinforced engagement in modernising education, research and innovation systems, increased investment in young peoples skills, entrepreneurship and employability, and welcomes in this regard the strengthened Youth Package presented by the EU under the EU4Youth initiative;

18.Calls on the European Commission to focus on tangible deliverables for the citizens; underlines, in this respect, that the EU-Armenia Visa Facilitation and Readmission Agreement that entered into force in January 2014 is already up-and-running; looks forward to strengthening cooperation and further progressing in the area of mobility in a secure and well-managed environment and to considering in due course the opening of a visa liberalisation dialogue with Armenia, provided that the conditions for well-managed and secure mobility are in place, including the effective implementation of the visa facilitation and readmission agreement between the parties mentioned hereinabove;

19.Notes positively the initiation of reforms in the area of territorial management and local self-government, seeking to enhance the role of municipal authorities and shape stronger links with the local communities in the decision-making processes;

20.Welcomes the Council of Europes Venice Commissions and OSCE/ODIHRs generally positive assessment of Armenias ongoing reforms towards ensuring the rule of law and notes measures enacted with a view to enhancing the efficiency of the Prosecutors office; notes positively, as far as the reform of the Electoral Code is concerned, that a number of previous recommendations from the OSCE/ODIHR and the Council of Europes Venice Commission have been addressed; regrets, however, that many factors, specifically identified by them, as yet need to be addressed; calls on the Armenian authorities to take all the necessary steps- legislative measures and others  to tackle these issues, seeking in so far as necessary the technical assistance of the international community, e.g. of the European Union and in particular of the European Parliament;

21.Notes positively , as far as the April 2017 elections are concerned, that the observation mission led by the OSCE/ODIHR, to which the European Parliament contributed, found that the public media channel gave an equitable coverage to each contestant during the campaign period, that the elections were generally well administered and that fundamental freedoms were generally respected; stresses, nevertheless, the shortcomings also identified by the OSCE/ODIHR-led mission, such as the persistence of pressure and vote-buying practices, and the illegitimate interference of party representatives or police officers at the voting stations;

22.Recalls the importance of the gender dimension in the EU-Armenia relations and, as a whole, within the Eastern Partnership framework; recalls that gender equality, non-discrimination and womens empowerment are among the 2020 deliverables, as it was stressed during the Eastern Partnership Summit of 24 November 2017; calls on the authorities of Armenia to continue paying attention to this issue, i.a. by fighting negative gender stereotypes, bridging the pay gap between women and men, and declaring zero tolerance for any form of gender-based harassment, intimidation or violence;

23.Recalls that international human rights bodies, such as the UN CEDAW Committee, have underlined the necessity to eradicate harmful gender norms and practices on numerous accounts, and have called on the authorities of Armenia to ensure that traditions do not hamper the realisation of womens rights and potentials;

24.Welcomes the commitment of Armenian authorities to sign, ratify and thoroughly implement the Council of Europes Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention); encourages them to do so without undue delay;

25.Welcomes the adoption of the law for the prevention of violence in the family, the protection of the victims of violence in the family and the restoration of the harmony in the family that was first proposed for public debate in October 2017, as a major, positive step forward; stresses that the EU stands ready to offer all support and expertise to help Armenian authorities to best deal with all matters of domestic violence and all related issues; underlines that there must be follow-up in order to deliver effective implementation and enforcement, and that the victims needs must be priority at all times;

26.Stresses the need to tackle all forms of discrimination, as defined by the United Nations Conventions and Resolutions, and put in place the appropriate mechanisms to address all forms of discrimination;

27.Commends the Armenian authorities for their endeavours to accept and integrate Syrian refugees of Armenian descent; calls on the European Commission and the EU Member States to respond positively to any request for assistance from the Armenian authorities aimed at facilitating this integration;

28.Deplores the continued human losses caused by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; deeply regrets the regular violations of the cease-fire agreement, which repeatedly claim the lives of both military personnel and civilians, whilst hampering the socioeconomic development of the entire region; acknowledges that the current status quo is neither acceptable nor sustainable, and that there can be no military solution to the conflict;

29.Reiterates its unwavering support to the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and to their 2009 Basic Principles as noted in the CEPA Preamble  refrain from the threat or use of force, territorial integrity of States, and equal rights and self-determination of peoples - as well as its appreciation of its endeavours to advance towards a peaceful settlement of the conflict; stresses that efforts shall follow commonly shared principles of maintaining international peace and security as enshrined in the UN Charter, the OSCE Helsinki Final Act and other relevant multilateral documents, underlining the importance of existing agreed formats for the peaceful settlement of the conflict; stresses that arms control and confidence- and security-building measures are of great importance for security, predictability and stability;

30.Welcomes the joint statement made by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the fringes of the Geneva Summit of 16 October 2017, organised by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs; calls on the authorities of both countries to hold high-level talks in good faith and commit to genuine confidence-building measures and renewed dialogue, in order to ease tensions on the line of contact, stabilise the security situation and promote a more constructive atmosphere for future negotiations aimed to the peaceful resolution of the conflict; reiterates its full adherence to the exclusively peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and supported by the European Union and the European Parliament;

31.Welcomes the efforts and the EUs strengthened role in conflict resolution and confidence-building in the framework of existing agreed negotiating formats and processes; welcomes in this regard its new initiatives aimed at supporting and completing the aforementioned efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, by promoting confidence- and peace-building activities across the conflict divide and bringing the civil societies closer;

32.Regrets deeply that the Armenian initiative of normalisation of relations with Turkey without any preconditions fully supported by the international community and reflected in the Zurich Protocols of 2009 were not ratified by the Turkish side putting forward preconditions for this ratification, thus continuing to keep the border with Armenia unilaterally closed; recalls the approaching of the 70th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; calls on all the EU Member States to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide; notes that the issue has become in recent years a topic of open and public debate in Turkey itself.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. While on a working visit in Paris, Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian on December 20 had a meeting with the representatives of the French-Armenian community, the foreign ministry told Armenpress.

During the meeting FM Nalbandian presented the goals and agenda of his visit to France, as well as the ongoing steps aimed at further strengthening and developing the Armenian-French ties.

The minister also touched upon the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries aimed at peacefully settling the Karabakh conflict, as well as the recent developments over the conflict settlement.

Minister Nalbandian introduced the Armenian community representatives on the cooperation prospects envisaged by the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) signed between Armenia and the EU.

The minister also introduced them on Armenias stances on international and regional urgent issues and the countrys foreign policy priorities.

Nalbandian touched upon the results of the OSCE Ministerial Council held in Vienna and Armenias chairmanship in the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).

The meeting also focused on the preparation works of the Francophonie Summit which will be held in Yerevan next year.

Thereafter, the Armenian FM answered the questions of the meeting participants.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government approved the grant-sharing program to be signed between the Armenian and Japanese governments titled Program of on improving the equipment for the restoration and preservation of archeological discoveries of the Cultural Heritage Scientific-Research Center, reports Armenpress.

One of the key functions of the Scientific-Research Center is the excavations of endangered and restoring monuments as a result of which hundreds of thousands of archeological values that need urgent restoration have been discovered. The culture ministry plans to equip the Centers laboratory with the latest technologies through the Japanese grant, culture minister Armen Amiryan said, adding that the Japanese experts visited Armenia and examined the issue.

They have proposed to provide 650 thousand USD grant instead of the 250 thousand USD approved initially. The Japanese side should purchase the Japanese and European latest equipment with these funds and give them to the Center without any compensation. After being equipped the Centers laboratory will become the best in the region the services of which can be used by the expeditions and museums of the neighboring countries, the minister said.

Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan tasked to present the works carried out so far in the future, as well as the archeological values. We need to see to what extent we are able to make our citizens, tourists get familiarized with them, otherwise sometimes it seems to me that its an end in itself, the PM said.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Next year the programs of the Armys reform, upgrading and increasing the combat efficiency will continue, political scientist Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan told reporters, reports Armenpress.

He said this year Armenia took major steps in the armament sector.

During 2017 the frontline has been equipped along the entire length of the border which is among the main guarantees of security and the current more or less peace situation. The installation of monitoring devices, various reconnaissance tools led to cardinal changes in the frontline, the political scientist said.

Commenting on the Armenian Presidents statement over the Army reforms which should be reached by drastic solutions, the political scientist highlighted the necessity to get the issue of military balance out of the agenda. In terms of the armament the Armenian side should be at the highest level than the adversary, he said.

Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan said during 2017 the Armenian side managed to change the approaches in the negotiation process and acted by a more solid diplomatic stance. According to him, this was expressed for the first time during the Armenia-Diaspora forum by foreign minister Edward Nalbandian and then by President Serzh Sargsyan. This showed that the Armenian side has narrowed its policy of territorial concessions. They announced that the Armenian side is ready to continue the negotiation process, and as a basis for the continuation, they talked about possible concessions, but not with the vocabulary existed in the famous content of the Madrid principles. Rather, they stated that the Armenian side is ready to concessions at a level which will not threaten the security of the second Armenian Republic, the political scientist said, reminding that the change in approaches was linked by the continuation of Azerbaijans anti-Armenian and hostile policy.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The statement of Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu according to which the Armenian-Turkish Protocols were signed with certain preconditions is an absolute lie, Armenian foreign ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan said in response to ARMENPRESS inquiry.

-Mr. Balayan, how would you comment on the Turkish foreign ministers statement according to which the Armenian-Turkish Protocols were signed with certain preconditions?

-The Turkish foreign minister is just lying. If we move forward with the same logic, we can state that during the talks of the Protocols Turkey promised to recognize Artsakhs independence. Let us once again remind that the negotiations launched in 2008 by the mutual agreement with the Turkish side according to which the process cannot have any precondition. The negotiations continued based on this agreement and the Zurich Protocols were signed. The absence of preconditions has been repeatedly announced by different capitals well-aware of the process.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) hasnt held any official discussion over a candidate for Prime Minister of 2018, RPA faction head Vahram Baghdasaryan told reporters, reports Armenpress.

We havent discussed this issue neither in the faction, the partys executive body nor in the council. The political developments are underway, you are following them, when we discuss this issue, we will issue a statement, he said.

Vahram Baghdasaryan once again assured that the RPA didnt discuss this issue and promised that in case of making a decision on this issue, they will hold an open discussion. Lets wait, time will come, we will make all comments, Baghdasaryan said.
YEREVAN, 21 DECEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 21 December, USD exchange rate is down by 0.36 drams to 481.18 drams. EUR exchange rate is up by 1.59 drams to 571.64 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate is up by 0.01 drams to 8.22 drams. GBP exchange rate is down by 1.06 drams to 643.82 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is up by 50.39 drams to 19562.96 drams. Silver price is up by 0.28 drams to 250.39 drams. Platinum price is up by 82.24 drams to 14232.67 drams.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia has not discussed any issue of expanding coalition, but is ready to negotiate if other forces express such a desire, head of RPA parliamentary faction Vahram Baghdasaryan told the reporters at the National Assembly. Nothing is ruled out in politics. At the moment we have coalition partners with whom we are able to continue our partnership. We do not decline any offer of cooperation. If you think that now we do not cooperate with the two opposition factions, you are mistaken. If there is any cooperation offer, we will discuss it, he said.

Vahram Baghdasaryan reminded that still before the parliamentary elections they had announced that their doors are open for anyone wishing to cooperate. And now we again announce that if there are any political forces wishing to cooperate with us, we are ready to discuss it, think of cooperation formats. We have not discussed the issue of expanding the coalition. If there are offers we are ready to discuss, Head of RPA parliamentary faction concluded.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. A festive reception was held on December 21 at the Presidential Palace for the business representatives of Armenia on the occasion of the New Year and Christmas holidays. Serzh Sargsyan congratulated and addressed warm wishes to the businessmen on the upcoming holidays.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the pres service of the Armenian Presidents Office, in his congratulatory speech the President referred to the economic results of the passing 2017 year and expectations from 2018.

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

Dear entrepreneurs,

I warmly greet you at the Presidential Palace and I am glad such meetings have become a good tradition, we gather on the eve of the New Year, congratulate each other and wish success. First of all, I wish that in 2018 love, mutual understanding, respect be present in your families and that in 2018 all of you has the feeling of more happiness and satisfaction. Its very important for our country, our public, because its not a secret that you success means economic growth, new jobs, and welfare. I wish that your achievements of 2017 are continued in 2018 by not only continuing your work, expanding it, but also become the initiators of new ideas. For that I think there are two preconditions  first, desire and diligence and second, mutual trust and cooperation with the government.

I think 2017 years could be characterized as the year of cooperation between the economy-related bodies of the government and businessmen. In this context, all of you should be satisfied to some extent, because when the new Tax Code of Armenia and the EAEU Customs Code enter into force from January 1, all of you will see and probably have already made sure that almost all of your proposals that have been put on the table during both official and non-formal meetings have been taken into account. I am convinced that in 2018 we will have far better results against 2017, since rather a lot of conditions have been created in 2017 to end the year with sufficient economic growth. I will make no forecasts, but I think we will record economic growth of over 6%. Thank God, the index of economic activation is quite high and during the 11 months we have recorded an unprecedented rise of exports amounting to 2 billion USD that makes the 20% of our GDP. We have never had such an indicator. Our trade turnover of the 11 months has already exceeded 6 billion USD, President Sargsyan said, adding that its the first time for a long period that Armenias local currency, the AMD, has not been subjected to any external pressures, and the contrary, it tries to improve its position.

Referring to the fact that in spring of 2018 the new Constitution will fully enter into force, President Sargsyan urged the businessmen to improve their work style themselves. I suggest that in 2018 we together achieve a point where the non-official, non-documented workflow is minimized. We have reached a preliminary agreement with the Premier and the Cabinet that in 2018 we fully regulate the doc flow. This will be beneficial for everyone  you, the state, our army, pedagogues and anyone else, President Sargsyuan said, urging the businessmen to pass that path without delay, without waiting for anyone to push for that.

I once again wish all of you health, success and, I reiterate, very long moments of satisfaction. This is important for everyones job.

Happy New Year and Christmas, the President of the Republic concluded his speech.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The World Bank Group is launching a new advisory project in Armenia to support women engaged in the wild harvest sector, to help increase productivity, reduce poverty, and spur economic growth. The three-year Armenia Gender project, implemented by the International Finance Corporation (IFC)a sister organization of the World Bank and member of the World Bank Groupwill help women engage in more productive activities in the sector, and foster their links with buyers and producers, ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Yerevan Office of the IFC.

Wild harvesting is composed almost entirely of women and provides a vital source of income for many of Armenias poorest citizens, especially in remote areas. However, its productivity is hampered by challenges including a poorly developed value chain, with low turnover and profits. Lilit Asatryan, Chairwoman of the Armenian Young Womens Association, said: Developing the wild harvesting sectors value chain has real potential to improve the lives of many in Armenias remote areas. For that to happen, the currently disjointed system needs to be improved and made more efficient, with standardized collecting procedures, and close links to buyers and markets.

The project will work with the Armenian Young Womens Association to improve entrepreneurs' skills and enhance value-chain participation through business education, mentoring, and networking activities.

The project will also provide advice to the Ministry of Agriculture to improve the regulatory environment. To ensure the efficient implementation of regulatory reforms and womens involvement in the decision-making process, the project will foster coordination among key stakeholders, including womens business associations, buyers, industry networks, and the government.

Womens employment is vital to driving economic development, so supporting womens participation in the labor market is a win-win for Armenia, said Jan van Bilsen, IFC Regional Manager for the South Caucasus. This new project aims to help women employed in this sector reach new markets, by working with key stakeholders to remove obstacles and adopting regulations that will help develop the sector.

The Armenia Gender project is funded by Austrias Federal Ministry of Finance and the World Bank's multi-donor Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality. Armenia became an IFC member in 1995. Since then, IFC has provided over $480 million, including nearly $118 million mobilized from other lenders, to finance 49 projects across a range of sectors, including financial markets, manufacturing, agribusiness, services, and mining. In addition, IFC has also supported trade transactions worth more than $130 million through its trade finance program, and implemented advisory projects focused on private sector development.

The World Bank Group is one of the world's largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. It comprises five closely associated institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), which together form the World Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Each institution plays a distinct role in the mission to fight poverty and improve living standards for people in the developing world.
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has seized one of the biggest consignments of smuggled gold at Mumbai International Airport on Thursday.

By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has seized one of the biggest consignments of smuggled gold at Mumbai International Airport on Thursday.

Acting on a tip-off, the DRI officials and Mumbai Customs, successfully made the seizure of 50-kg gold from a DHL courier packet, which arrived from Gulf region.

Sources said the consignees of this courier at both Gulf and Mumbai have used bogus details to hide the identity of real beneficiary. "The investigation is under progress. Our team is getting into the roots of this consignment," the source said.

advertisement

In another case, on Wednesday night, the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) retrieved 4.7-kg of gold from an Air India aircraft parked in the hanger of Mumbai Airport.

"The gold includes 26 bars worth Rs 1.25 crore was hidden in a cotton cloth bag tied with a black nylon rope to the panel of aircraft. After much difficulty the bag was retrieved. On opening the bag, two large packets were found which were wound with black and green cellphone tape," one custom official said.

The first packet had two gold bars of one kg each and four bars of 116 grams each. In the second packet, 20 gold bars of 116 grams each were retrieved. After examination by the government approved valuer, the unclaimed seized gold was valued at Rs 1.25 crore.

The official said, "It is extremely difficult to hide smuggled gold under the carpet of aircraft by a common air traveller. Hence, we suspect someone from the engineering section may be involved into the smuggling racket. The investigation is on."

On the same night, in yet another case, one woman Sudanese passenger was arrested for bringing in five pieces of melted gold weighing 410-gram worth Rs 10 lakh.

In the fourth case, one Khalifa Hassan, holding Sudanese passport was arrested for smuggling 20 gold bangles in his undergarment, totally weighing 1393 grams valued at Rs 35 lakh.

--- ENDS ---
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian who is on a visit in Paris, met with Director-General of the UNESCO Audrey Azoulay, ARMENPRESS was informed from the pres service of the MFA Armenia.

Minister Nalbandian congratulated the Director-General of the UNESCO on the assumption of the post. Edward Nalbandian stressed that the skillful management of the organization can have a significant influence on the implementation of the key goals of the organization.

Thanking for the congratulation, Audrey Azoulay highlighted Armenias active involvement in UNESCO works.

The interlocutors discussed the cooperation between the UNESCO and Armenia, issues related to the activities of the organization in various spheres, exchanged views on the key goals of the UNESCO, particularly the implementation of joint programs in the spheres of culture, science and education, as well as preservation of cultural heritage.

It was mentioned during the conversation of the Armenian FM and UNESCO Director General that the needless politicization of the organization does not bring any benefit to the productive cooperation in the sidelines of the organization.

During the meeting an exchange of ideas took place about the preparatory works of the Francophonie summit to be held in Yerevan in 2018, as well as the implementation of joint UNESCO-OIF projects. In this context Audrey Azoulay highly appreciated the selection of the slogan and the main topics of discussion of the Yerevan summit.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution urging the USA to step back from its decision recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

ARMENPRESS reports, citing BBC, 135 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 35 abstained and 9 countries, USA, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo, voted in favor.

The text of the resolution authored by Turkey and Yemen notes that the final status of Jerusalem should be decided through negotiations and called on all the countries not to station their embassies in the Holy City. Before that it was mentioned that any decisions regarding status will be observed as null and void.
LONDONDamian Green, the United Kingdoms First Secretary of State and effectively the second-most powerful politician in the U.K., resigned on Tuesday after an investigators report found that he had made inaccurate and misleading statements about porn found on his work computer in 2008, according to a report in Londons Telegraph newspaper.

As AVN. com reported earlier this month, Greenthe top deputy to Britains Conservative Party Prime Minister Theresa Maywas the target of an investigation over leaked government documents in 2008. Though he escaped any charges due to a lack of evidence in the leaking case, police who inspected his computer at the time also found thousands of pornographic images on the government-owned, office computer.

It was only late this year that the revelation about porn on Greens computer was made public. Green in November repeatedly denied that he had ever viewed porn on the computer. But on Tuesday, investigators said that Green  misled the public with those denials.

In fact, Green had known about the porn on his computer since 2008, the investigators found.

When the scandal broke in November, even some of Greens staunchest defenders, such as the conservative Daily Mail newspaper, acknowledged that if it were shown that Green lied to the prime minister about the computer porn, he would be obligated to quit. That now appears to be exactly what happened.

Green and May have been friends and political allies for three decades, but May confirmed that when she learned about the report, and Greens misleading denials, she asked for his resignation.

In a brief resignation letter, Green apologized for his lies about whether or not he knew that his work computer contained porn.

"I accept that I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013, he wrote. I apologize that my statements were misleading on this point.

But the investigators report did not directly accuse Green of viewing the porn images, focusing only his statements to the public regarding whether he knew about the images on his computer, statements that fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code, the report said.

Green was also accused of sexually harassing journalist Kate Maltby, in 2015. But though the report called the accusations plausible, it said that it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on whether Green acted inappropriately toward Maltby or not.
BARCELONAExoClick has been named as a top company in the Ones to Watch in Europe list. The list of business excellence is compiled by the European Business Awards (EBA).

ExoClick, which is Spain's biggest ad tech company, was chosen because it reflects the EBA programs core values of innovation, success and ethics. Out of the 124 companies named as 'Ones to Watch' in Spain, ExoClick is included in the 16 companies with an annual turnover between 75-150 million euros. ExoClick is the only marketing company listed.

ExoClick's CEO and founder Benjamin Fonze commented, We are very proud to be featured in this list. ExoClick's continued success is due to our constant innovation and our ability to quickly adapt to an ever changing digital marketplace. This year we re branded ExoClick to 'the innovative ad company' with the launch of our ad exchange and our programmatic RTB platform to compliment our ad network, which we have grown to become the 4th largest network in the world. This year we broke our daily impression record and we are now serving 6 billion every day, globally. We also launched our own native advertising widget and updated our platform API allowing our clients to automate every single feature in our admin panel. We have many further innovations in the pipeline for 2018.

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards, Europes largest cross-sector business competition, said: We wanted to recognise more widely the many incredible business success stories from across Europe. The talent, dedication and innovation at the heart of these companies creates jobs and opportunity, and is what drives their countrys prosperity. The Ones to Watch list will set a benchmark of success for the European business community.

The EBA's Ones to Watch list for Spain can be found here.
OAKLAND, Calif.Adult boutique Feelmore has taken the first step to open a sex store in a federally regulated airport.

Street retail is changing, and Feelmore must do its best to stay ahead of the change. Preparing beyond street retail will ensure we survive, said Nenna, owner of Feelmore.

Three weeks ago, Feelmore was awarded the Airport Concession Disadvantage Business Enterprise Certification. ACDBE was developed to level the playing field for individuals and/or businesses that are economically and socially disadvantaged. Nenna is an African-American female who owns of the company, which fits the criteria for the program.

Nenna sought to understand the process for years by studying the landscape of federal airports and airport concessions.

Its challenging for small to midsize businesses to access airports economy but I am eager to continue learning everything I possibly can to ensure it happens for Feelmore, said Nenna.

With the opportunity to bring a new type of retail into airports in America, Nenna believes it will be a game changer not just in the adult industry but also in entrepreneurship circles in all industries.

The vision has always been large and I will not stop Dreaming. Who knows  perhaps one day there could be in a Feelmore in Oakland International Airport or San Francisco International Airport, Nenna said.

For more, visit Feelmore510.com.
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.
Hundreds of farmers held protests in Sheopur and Morena districts on Thursday demanding a canal and better price for milk.

By Hemender Sharma: Farmers' unrest is once again brewing in Madhya Pradesh. Hundreds of farmers protested on the streets in Sheopur and Morena districts on Thursday demanding a canal and better price for milk. They have also threatened to intensify their stir by Friday.

In Sheopur district, farmers of 35 villages on Thursday staged an indefinite semi-nude protest at the district headquarters demanding construction of a canal from the Chambal river. The agitating farmers had earlier held five panchayats and protested for seven days seeking an assurance from the government.

advertisement

While in Morena district's Salabgharh town, farmers spilled milk on the streets demanding better price. The farmers in Morena have announced a massive protest on Friday in which thousands are expected to participate.

The agitating farmers of both the districts have alleged that they have been given false assurances by the government in past, and that this time around, the protests would be much bigger in scale than the Mandsaur protests that rocked the state in June this year.

Five farmers were killed in police firing in Morena in June this year when they were protesting for a better price for their produce. The government in a haste had announced a minimum support price for onions and pulses, but failed to pacify the agitating farmers.

In an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by the Mandsaur farmers' protest , the government had later launched a 'Bhavantar Scheme' under which farmers were to be paid the difference between their selling price and the average of the selling price of three neighbouring states.

Farmers have alleged that the 'Bhavantar Scheme' is a farce as no one is getting the direct cash as was promised by the state government.

"The scheme has in fact worked to the disadvantage of the farmers as we are not getting the promised cash and also the leaders have further lowered the prices," an agitating farmer said.

Agrarian distress is a major cause of concern for Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who misses no opportunity in calling himself a farmer's son and has won past elections by promising to double the income of farmers.

--- ENDS ---
Britain's justice secretary wants to ban miniature cellphones in a hapless effort to be seen to be doing something about prison smuggling. The "Beat the Boss" handsets (Amazon) are barely the size of lipstick or a stick of gum. They're unlocked, dirt cheap, popular with kids, and easily concealed.

They are marketed as being virtually metal-free and therefore able to beat the detectors anyone entering a prison must pass through. "It's pretty clear that these miniature phones are being advertised and sold with the purpose of being smuggled," Mr Lidington will say in a speech on Monday. "I am calling on online retailers and trading websites to take down products that are advertised to evade detection measures in prisons."

Looking at the specs, these are 2G GSM handsets and will only work in the U.S. on T-Mobile and (maaaaybe) AT&T.

"IT REALLY WORKS BUT DIFFICULT TO USE BECAUSE IT IS SO SMALL ," writes verified purchaser Bill Hubner, who I stress is merely an Amazon customer and absolutely not suspected of any clever jailhouse shenanigans.

There are several sellers offering this gadget, all obviously identical.

eBay UK promised to stop sales of these months ago, according to the BBC, but the site remains well-stocked at press time.

Beat the Boss Phone [Amazon]


The Australian government's open data initiative is in the laudable business of publishing publicly accessible data about the government's actions and spending, in order to help scholars, businesses and officials understand and improve its processes.



As part of that initiative, the government published 10% of its Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), after encrypting the patient and provider ID numbers to protect the privacy of the Australians whose sensitive health information was contained in the database.





This is called "de-identification" and holy shit, it's very, very hard to get right. When you have a lot of data to work with, there are so many ways to fill in the blanks, from using metadata to uncover the identities of people in the set (called "linkage attacks") to targeting weaknesses in the encryption used to scramble the data ("encryption attacks").

A group of computer scientists from the University of Melbourne conducted an encryption attack on the scrambled provider identities in the dataset and were able to easily unscramble them (they didn't attempt to descramble the patient identifiers). They reported this weakness to the Australian government, which quickly pulled the dataset offline.





This is an interesting story because the researchers found vulnerabilities in the encryption, rather than re-identifying by using metadata, which is generally considered the easiest route to re-identification.





In a fascinating postmortem, the researchers describe the implications of their work for the important practice of publishing government datasets for research and evaluation, while protecting sensitive information.



The Australian Government's open data program provides numerous benefits, allowing better decisions to be made based on evidence, careful analysis, and widespread access to accurate information. Decisions about data publication itself should follow the same philosophy. We have some important decisions to make about what personal data to publish and how it should be anonymised, encrypted or linked. Making good decisions requires accurate technical information about the security of the system and the secrecy of the data. Details about the privacy protections should be published long in advance. They can then be subject to empirical testing, scientific analysis, and open public review, before they are used on real data. Then we can make sound, evidence-based decisions about how to benefit from open data without sacrificing individual privacy.

Understanding the maths is crucial for protecting privacy [Dr Chris Culnane, Dr Benjamin Rubinstein and Dr Vanessa Teague/Department of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne]

(via 4 Short Links)


On December 15, Ars Technica ran a story by veteran security reporter Dan Goodin in which Goodin reported on a disclosure by Google researcher Tavis Ormandy, who had discovered that Keeper Security's password manager, bundled with Windows 10, was vulnerable to a password stealing bug that was very similar to a bug that had been published more than a year before.



Ormandy had reported the bug to Keeper Security in advance of publication and waited until the company had issued a patch to disclose it.

Keeper Security has filed a lawsuit in Illinois (where it is based) against Goodin and Ars Technica, alleging that the factual report of the defects in its products "made false and misleading statements about the Keeper software application suggesting that it had a 16-month old bug that allowed sites to steal user passwords."

Keeper Security previously threatened to sue Fox IT, a security research firm, over publication of another defect in its products.





Illinois has good anti-SLAPP laws, which protect critical speech from legal attacks that try to outspend critics, which bodes well for Ars and Goodin. In the meantime, the lawsuit has attracted critical attention to Keeper Security, as security journalists and researchers speak out against "ridiculous" actions that are tantamount to "bullying."

Keeper Security Inc v Goodin et Al



Security firm Keeper sues news reporter over vulnerability story [Zack Whittaker/Zdnet]
A Propublica investigation (ed: I am an annual donor to Propublica and urge you to support their work) found dozens of companies who placed help wanted ads on Facebook that used ad-targeting to exclude older workers, a practice that an employment law specialist called "blatantly unlawful."

Facebook was one of the companies that used the practice in its own ads; also on the wall of shame are "dozens of the nation's leading employers," such as Verizon, Amazon, Goldman Sachs and Target.

Defenders of the practice claim that it's no different from running ads in demographically specific periodicals, such as Teen Vogue. But there's at least one critical difference here: anyone can choose to buy Teen Vogue and see the ads, but to see ads targeted outside your age-group on Facebook you would have to falsify your data to Facebook, which the company maintains is a felony violation of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.





Facebook is being sued over the practice, on the theory that it is not a mere media outlet, but, rather, a sort of employment agent.

Propublica was only able to uncover the practice because its reporter, Julia Angwin (previously) has asked her readers to install a browser add-on that records and uploads the ads that they see on Facebook. Facebook itself maintains that these ads are a secret, which makes it very difficult to detect this kind of wrongdoing.

If you are unwise enough to be a Facebook user, you can download and install the plugin for your browser (Chrome, Firefox) and help gather more data.

Edelstein spends most of his days scouring sites like LinkedIn and Indeed and pitching hiring managers with personalized appeals. When he scrolled through his Facebook ads on a Wednesday in December, he saw a variety of ads reflecting his interest in social media marketing: ads for the marketing software HubSpot ("15 free infographic templates!") and TripIt, which he used to book a trip to visit his mother in Florida. What he didn't see was a single ad for a job in his profession, including one identified by ProPublica that was being shown to younger users: a posting for a social media director job at HubSpot. The company asked that the ad be shown to people aged 27 to 40 who live or were recently living in the United States. "Hypothetically, had I seen a job for a social media director at HubSpot, even if it involved relocation, I ABSOLUTELY would have applied for it," Edelstein said by email when told about the ad. A HubSpot spokeswoman, Ellie Botelho, said that the job was posted on many sites, including LinkedIn, The Ladders and Built in Boston, and was open to anyone meeting the qualifications regardless of age or any other demographic characteristic.

Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads [Julia Angwin, Noam Scheiber and Ariana Tobin/Propublica]
The state of Alabama announced that it's mathematically impossible for accused pedophile Roy Moore to win the senate race. Moore predictably responded to the news by promoting an article from a loony conspiracy theory website called World Net Daily that's blaming "a coalition of Muslim and Marxist-led groups" for foiling God's plan to make him the winner.

Moore, whose passion for cowboy cosplay is exceeded only by his sexual interest in teenage girls (but only with the "permission of her mother"), also took a jab at winner Doug Jones' son for being gay, like that had something to do with losing the election.

[via Raw Story]

[Image: YouTube/LIVE SATELLITE NEWS]
[This story is from one of my favorite newsletters, Now I Know. It has over 100,000 subscribers.

Sign up for it here.  Mark]

If you're a four-year-old in the United Kingdom, you probably know who Peppa Pig, above, is. The anthropomorphic, snorting pig and her family are a mainstay of children's television there  and, increasingly, elsewhere  with unrivaled popularity throughout Great Britain. Each episode features Peppa's family and her friends (and often the friends of her brother, George) exploring the everyday adventures that come with being a preschooler. Take, for example, Wikipedia's description of the first episode of the show's third season, titled "Work and Play:" "When Peppa and Suzy [that's Suzy Sheep, Peppa's best friend] learn that grown-ups must work all day, they decide to play at working in a store. But they quickly get tired of it." It's not very hard-hitting stuff, but little kids tend to like it.

As of this writing, there are four seasons of the show totaling 208 episodes, each of which is five minutes. (There's also a ten minute Christmas special.) One of them can be seen below

 but if you're in Australia, your major broadcaster doesn't want your preschooler to watch it.

That episode is called "Spider Web." Wikipedia's description is short but to the point: "There's a spider in the house, so Mummy Pig tells Daddy Pig to get rid of it." The Pig family spend much of the five minutes discussing whether the spider should be able to live with them or not  Mummy Pig wants it gone, but Daddy Pig notes that spiders eat flies and are therefore good to have around. In the end, the family concludes that spiders are good to have around (although better outside the house than inside). Daddy Pig even makes a new rule: no one is to break a spider's web, as the spider worked long and hard to build it, and that just wouldn't be nice.

"Spider Web" originally aired in the UK on December 21, 2011 and soon was available for broadcast in other areas. Australia was one of those secondary regions  but it never made it to TV there. Peppa Pig typically airs on ABC 4 Kids in Australia and the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company), which operates that channel, declined to air the episode.

The problem: spiders in Australia are really dangerous. Really. As Wikipedia notes, "Australia has some highly venomous spiders, including the notorious Sydney funnel-web, its relatives in the Atrax genus, and redback spiders, whose bites can be deadly." Even though the most common spiders in Australia are generally not very toxic, there are some best avoided. Learning to play nice with spiders is a bad idea if you're an Australian four-year-old.

The ABC's decision probably wouldn't have come to light except for a slight error on their part. In August of 2012, a viewer complained that the Spider Web" episode appeared on an ABC-run website. The ABC apologized for their error, and the episode is no longer available there.
By PTI: (Updating toll, adds inputs)

Gopalganj (Bihar), Dec 21 (PTI) Five persons were killed and 10 others injured, two of them seriously, when a boiler exploded at a sugar mill in this district early today, police said.

After the boiler explosion, angry workers set afire vehicles parked inside the premises of the Sasa Musa Sugar Mill, blaming the accident on the owners "failure" to get the machinery repaired despite complaints, police said.

advertisement

The owner has been arrested along with his two sons.

"Five bodies have been recovered from the site of the incident. Identity of one of the deceased could not be established while the remaining four have been identified," the Station House Officer (SHO) of Kuchaykot police station, Awadhesh Kumar said.

"The deceased are Kripa Yadav, Kanhaiya Sharma and Vishwakarma Yadav - all residents of nearby Khajuri village - and Shamsuddin Ansari from Padrauna in Uttar Pradesh", he said.

Taking serious note of the incident, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a compensation of Rs four lakh to the next of the kin of each deceased and also dispatched teams of the National Disaster Relief Force and the State Disaster Relief Force to the site of the incident for carrying out relief work.

The chief minister also ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. He directed principal secretary, Sugarcane Industries, S Siddharth and principal secretary, Labour, Deepak Kumar Singh to personally visit the site of the incident and carry out an investigation.

The Kuchaykot SHO said out of the 10 persons admitted to Gopalganj Sadar hospital with burn injuries, condition of two is critical and they have been sent to the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH).

According to Superintendent of Police, Gopalganj, Mrityunjay Kumar, the explosion took place at around 2 am.

He said rescue operations were disrupted as angry workers indulged in arson, setting fire to the vehicle of the mill owner and a tractor, both of which were parked inside the mill premises.

"The angry workers alleged that the boiler was in need of repair for long but the owner paid no heed. The owner, Mehmood Ali, and his two sons Rinky Ali and Siksy Ali have been arrested", the SP added. PTI CORR NAC RG DV

--- ENDS ---
News / Africa

by APO

South African President Jacob Zuma has today received a courtesy call from Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his Mahlamba Ndlopfu residence in Pretoria.President Mnangagwa is on his first working visit to South Africa since his inauguration on 24 November 2017.South Africa and Zimbabwe enjoy cordial bilateral relations underpinned by strong historical and political bonds that date back to the era of the liberation struggle.The significance of these diplomatic relations are marked by the annual convening of the Bi-National Commission (BNC) signed in 2015 and co-chaired by the two Heads of State.The previous session of the BNC was held in South Africa on 3 October 2017.The two countries have signed over forty Memoranda of Understanding and Agreements as such, the scope of cooperation is vast covering several fields including security, energy, agriculture, mining, infrastructure development, trade, transport and arts and culture.Trade between the two countries has seen exponential growth over the years with Zimbabwe being one of South Africa's top five trading partners in the Region and the Continent. South African exports to Zimbabwe in 2016 were worth R29.3 billion.During the courtesy call, the two Heads of State will share perspectives on various issues of mutual importance, such as, regional, continental and international developments.
News / National

by Simbarashe Sithole

Mt Pleasant independent candidate for 2018 advocate Fadzai Mahere, who is well known for encouraging people to register to vote in 2018 election on micro blogging social network Twitter, has come under attack on Twitter after she encouraged all Zimbabwean business people in South Africa to demand the diaspora vote from the president Emmerson Mnangagwa who is set to conduct a meeting with them today at the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria."Dear Zimbabweans in SA, Please attend this business meeting with the President & demand the diaspora vote. Zimbabweans abroad can't be remembered as such only when it comes to remittances & investment but then totally forgotten when it comes to political rights like voting," tweeted Mahere.A commenter identified as Simplisio muvunde tweeted, "it's a business meeting and you are talking about diaspora vote you should know whether some things should be on page 2 or page 8 somethings can't fit on the same page not even chapter.""Does the Government have resources to fund the diaspora vote, voter registrationand in which countries should the votes be and what criteria to use and which constituency should they vote, will there be an MP for those in diaspora? enlighten me pliz ," tweeted Cde Victah.Others suggested that those in the diaspora should come back home vote not to be given the luxury to vote in foreign land.However, Mahere continues to preach the gospel of registering to vote and does not entertain personal questions.At one point she was asked by her follower on Twitter on her marital status and she replied by asking the follower to register to vote since her marital status is none of anyone's business.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

MUNICIPAL police were told they risk losing their jobs after destroying a beggar shack at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre.The unidentified woman believed to be mentally-challenged prayed in front of the officers saying they were going to lose their jobs after destroying her children's shelter and holy waters in the shack."Dzinza rangu munoriziva here, mauya makawanda kudaro kuzorwisana neni nevana vangu, mabasa enyu arikuzopera nekuda kwekupaza miteuro yangu nekusiya vana vangu pachena," she was heard saying as she confronted the officers."I won't tell you my name because you will visit a sangoma, I come from Domboshava, ndinonamatira paCoca Cola paMadzibaba Israel ini."You can destroy this shack and you will be cursed," she said collecting few belongings that included mealie-meal.Municipal police officers came in their numbers and destroyed the shack using a bulldozer and filled three trucks to ferry all that was in the shack.Shop owners had complained to municipality over the shack reported to have been releasing unpleasant stench scaring customers off since it was too close to the shops.In an interview with H-Metro, the beggar said she allowed the officers to destroy the shack saying some gifts come with bad omen."Some of these gifts are not pure since others come with curses, zvimwe zvinouya nenhamo dzinenge dzakadeketerwa padziri ngavaparadze zvavo."My child is a dancer at Macheso, the other one is an accountant so I'm sure I will get new stuff," she said refusing to give her name.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

A 40-YEAR-OLD Harare man, who was facing charges of kidnapping his wife's boyfriend, was sentenced to 420 hours of community service by a Harare magistrate.Innocent Maendesa had pleaded not guilty to the charges but was convicted after a full trial.Maendesa had an altercation with Silas Chinaa (Jnr), whom he accused of having an extra-marital affair with his wife, Rutendo Myambo, dating back from as far as 2007.In considering reasons for sentence, magistrate Victoria Mashamba-Kajengo said Maendesa had been provoked by the complainant when the latter proposed love to Myambo.Mashamba-Kajengo further indicated that Maendesa controlled his anger as in some instances when men who find their wives cheating, they usually commit murder."The accused was provoked and it should be noted that in such circumstances, the end result is a loss of life but the accused controlled his anger," read the magistrate.The State led by Patience Chimusaru proved that in July, Maendesa sent a short text to Chinaa telling him his days were numbered.The message was sent after Maendesa realised that Myambo and Chinaa were still seeing each other.Chinaa went missing on the same day he received the message he was never seen again.
Opinion / Columnist

Facebook- Leonard Koni

Twitter - @leokoni

Whatsapp- +27747402042

Email- konileonard606@gmail.com

The United Nations has commended Zimbabwe for its commitment to rebuild the economy and wish to normalise the international relations. This is so refreshing after such a long time in the chaotic economic and unattractive policies.The country is coming from the wilderness and it needs to strike the right cord. The President must now make sure that the human and property rights are upheld to remove the distortions which were there before. As the leader of the country he must now set the tone and recommit himself to the constitution and make sure that he does not wantonly break the law. We have had enough of twisting the constitution.The fish rots at the top and cascade down the whole body. That was the problem with the former President who lacked the stamina to pounce and deal decisively with corruption, embezzelment of funds and looters of the economy.The only prosperity which we need can only be attained through going back to legitimacy and people's will underwritten under Sadc principles.The Zimbabwean economy is based on Agro-business and this is a sector which cannot be ignored and needs a revamp. The land has been lying dormant and being under utilised. With the new appointed Minister of Agriculture who is also a renowned farmer must get down to business and we therefore expect the full utilisation and equitable allocation of farming area regardless of one's political affiliation, whether black, white, asian.Let those with farming experience have access to the land. They deserve it and must not be asked too many questions. We need to boost the agricultural sector so as to maximise profits. We are expecting a paradigm shift from the previously administered government. The country can no longer waste time on political grandstanding from year to year. Let 2018 be a year of rebuilding the fallen walls of Jericho and revert back to a bread basket of Africa.The current prevailing political atmosphere should not be dampened by seeking political retribution. We are so hopeful that Zimbabwe shall never go back to the old system. The country was under hibernation economically and the giant is now waking up from the slumber.For Zimbabwe to succeed we need to tap into our huge base of domestic resources like minerals such as chrome, gold, platinum and lithium. We have just exhausted a very few mineral deposits along the Great Dyke and we still need to explore other remaining ones and resume wide scale operations.Zimbabwe is poised for an economic growth and this is the time for business people to strike an opportunity and scramble for vast business spaces. This is the right country to do business with, because of the prevailing political environment which has positively improved. Any policy inconsistency must be removed so that we attract foreign and regional investors. It's all about implementing those economic policies than embarking on a talk show.There are of course push and pull factors which need to be addressed but the bigger picture is the country is ready and ripe for investment.The future of trading with ZIMBABWE is so bright and today the President of Zimbabwe Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa will be on a government duty addressing business personnel in Pretoria South Africa. He has just started his whirlwind tour with the aim of engaging with business personnel across the globe. He is courting them to come back home and start investing in the country.There are contingent plans set to be rolled and unravel business opportunities in the country like mining, tourism and agriculture. The country has been going through a lot of challenges but it has taken a new trajectory which will usher in a new economic era. It has re energised to another level of political path. This is a critical issue and investors must feel free to do business in a country where there is political stability. The President is so confident that next year's elections will be free and fair and the people must take heed of such a refreshing statement from a reformist point of view.The environment still favours the country and remains attractive as long as the President keeps on knocking confidence in the people. There is no need to serve personnel egos and interests. The President must prove a point. The human resources is readily available, posessed with high skills and is ready to bolster the economy and eradicate poverty.Contacts
Opinion / Letters

Dear New President,As you took the reins of the country from a corrupt system, you promised, all who cared to listen to you, that you would deal a lethal blow to corruption. So far, all we have seen are concerted efforts being made in dealing with those who were your direct political opponents. Not that doing so is wrong as corruption must surely be ranked as corruption no matter who is guilty of committing it, but you could as well extend your blitz to cover those with well documented corruption files. Could you now extend your cleansing exercise to the Higher Education sector, particularly focussing on Bindura University? The institution is a mess to say the least as far as corruption is concerned. I am sure, by now, your media analysts have since brought this institution's Vice Chancellor's moral decadence to your attention. This man's depravity is compounded by the University Council which was appointed by Professor Jonathan Moyo to lead that institution. I don't think this Council meets at all. If they are meeting, by now, they surely should have stopped the rot at the institution. Or could it be that there are some ability related challenges in the new Council? Or are they simply drawing board allowances without meeting like their former Ministry's Permanent Secretary allegedly did? If these people ever meet as a board why haven't they advertised the Vice Chancellor's job to enable properly qualified Zimbabweans who are not corrupt to apply for the job? Judging by the time the corrupt incumbent was installed amid unnecessary celebration by the former President, the contract of the arriviste, corrupt, arrogant, cruel and clueless Vice Chancellor should be up by now.There may be a need for you to remove all the Councillors and replace them with people who are qualified. Higher education issues are so esoteric that they require a board that is highly qualified and knowledgeable. The board that was appointed by Professor Jonathan Moyo is chaired by a senior manager of IDBZ. IDBZ advertised in the mainstream newspapers that they entered into MOUs for infrastructural development with State Universities. One of the Universities covered by these MOUs is Bindura University. So, this senior manager chairs a board (Bindura University) that has to decide whether to enter into a business arrangement with his full-time employer (IDBZ)! How convenient for the Chairman! Clearly this Chairman is not independent and will be driven by self-interest in his dealings with Bindura University. How can he stop the rot at the institution when the Vice Chancellor is his main customer? He surely will do all in his power to safeguard the Vice Chancellor who is buttering his bread at the expense of other University stakeholders. Was this part of Professor Jonathan Moyo's way of ensuring that the corrupt Vice Chancellor would never be removed from the University regardless of his incompetence and moral depravity? Why did Professor Jonathan Moyo also impose the wife of a short-lived G40 Minister as the Deputy Chairperson of the same University Council? I guess this was done to ensure that all corridors of power would be in the hands of those that would make sure that corruption would continue unabated. This corrupt Vice Chancellor introduced corruption to the institution during the time of the first Permanent Secretary of the four that he has worked with in the Ministry. On that one, I am sure Your Excellency, you know how corrupt that Permanent Secretary was. He even had to be shifted around by the former President who did not punish the corrupt.Even Mutare Technical College have their stories to tell on how he plundered their resources in the form of scotch carts and furniture! During my time at Bindura University, he had a farm in Shamva and the corrupt Vice Chancellor had even gone to the extent of assigning one of the University's tractors to that Permanent Secretary's farm. When a forensic audit was done at Bindura University, the same Permanent Secretary is alleged to have confiscated the Report done by Grant Thornton and threatened the gentleman who was the Chairman of the University Council when he wanted to act on the findings. The Ministry of Higher Education then replaced all the University's board members save for one. Some of the people who were replaced were really upright people of integrity. People like Mrs Grace Muradzikwa, Dr Guramatunhu and Mr Kunaka are people of integrity who would have stopped the rot if they were allowed to do so. These were not appointed back on the board.Does President Mnangagwa really mean it when he says he wants to tackle corruption head-on? If so, he may need to make his Minister of Higher Education interrogate the process that led to the recruitment of this new board. Where did they come from? Their qualifications must be assessed. Universities, due to their special place in the knowledge society, need board members who hold at least a relevant Master degree. The Minister could also take a look at the corruption files and all complaints bordering on gross incompetence that his Directors have on this Vice Chancellor and immediately suspend this corrupt person (Vice Chancellor of Bindura University) before he tarnishes the new President's name as he is now saying he is friends with President Mnangagwa as he used to say about Mr Mugabe as a way of instilling fear in those who he works with. It would not surprise me to hear that this Vice Chancellor is the one who told Professor Jonathan Moyo who should be a Chairman and who should deputise the Chairman and who should be on the new Council and who should not.President Mnangagwa, please extend your dragnet to cover all the country's parastatals. For now, please suspend this incompetent man and his board and then ask your Minister to publicly call for applications from those who are not corrupt to apply to fill these board vacancies. The Minister ought to move fast as the corrupt gentleman is cunningly deceptive and he may destroy all the evidence courtesy of his fearful team that is ready to comply with his orders. The Minister may need to suspend all the key personnel that is the finance director, the human resources director as well as the special projects director and the other projects that are not special director to pave way for a proper investigation. The corruption of this Vice Chancellor and nepotism forced me to leave the institution that I so loved and had contributed to for a very long time. I follow the developments at the institution in the hope that when sanity prevails perhaps one day I may be considered for re-appointment on merit if I make the grade then.Cde Corruption Ichapera
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

.

..Times of Israel..21 December '17..10.In response, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer took the floor to ask Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and the others, a simple question:  Where are your Jews ? For once, the room was silenced. UN Watchs speech went viral on the Internet, with the video viewed 5 million times worldwide.9.Real abusers of womens rights, such as Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan, were ignored.The next month, UN Watch exposed the U.N.s election of Saudi Arabia to this same womens rights commissionand the fact that at least five EU states voted for the Saudis. The story went viral, and created a major scandal in Belgium, where the prime minister eventually admitted their vote and apologized, and sparked controversies in Ireland, Norway and Sweden.
Geeta was found by the Pakistan rangers in the Samjhauta Express when she was 11 years old. She has since lived in Pakistan, where Karachi based Edhi Foundation took care of her for 13 years.

By India Today Web Desk: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has appealed to the public to help Geeta find her parents.

A speech and hearing impaired girl, Geeta, returned from Pakistan to find her parents. Sushma Swaraj, yesterday, tweeted about finding a diary written in a Devnagari script. She has appealed to the public to recognise the dialect and help Geeta locate her parents.

advertisement

The Ministry of External Affairs has also announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh to whoever helps identifying the dialect.

Geeta was rescued from Pakistan. She cannot speak or hear. We have obtained some pages from Pakistan written by her in a local dialect and in Devanagari script. /1- Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 20, 2017

Please see these pages and tell us the area where this dialect is spoken and what do these pages convey. This will help us locate her home and unite her with her family. https://t.co/YvOM7sQ3l2- Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 20, 2017

Geeta was found by the Pakistan rangers in the Samjhauta Express when she was 11 years old. She has since lived in Pakistan, where Karachi based Edhi Foundation took care of her for 13 years. Geeta returned to India 2 years ago in an attempt to find her parents.

Below is the script found in the diary Geeta's was carrying:

--- ENDS ---
THURSDAY, Dec. 21, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer drugs have become so pricey that U.S. patients often can't afford them, a new study finds.

The findings suggest that high out-of-pocket costs may be a barrier to potentially life-saving or life-prolonging treatments, the researchers said, and raise questions about whether patients will be able to take advantage of new cancer treatments.

"Imagine leaving your doctor's office with a plan, ready to start treatment, only to find you can't afford it," said study author Jalpa Doshi, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

"It adds more stress at what is already a stressful and scary time," she said in a UPenn news release. Doshi is a professor of general internal medicine at Penn and director of value-based insurance design initiatives at the university's Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics.

The study involved more than 38,000 patients with a new cancer diagnosis or a change in their disease that required a new treatment, Doshi said. The patients had different types of insurance, including Medicare. From 2014 to 2015, all of them had received a new prescription for one of 38 types of cancer drugs.

Among those whose out-of-pocket cost for a prescription was less than $10, about 10 percent did not fill their prescription, the study found. However, the rate rose to 32 percent when people had to pay $100 to $500 out-of-pocket, and to nearly 50 percent if the out-of-pocket cost was more than $2,000.

The type of cancer made essentially no difference in whether patients picked up their prescriptions -- even when treatment with the prescribed drug might have extended their life, according to the researchers.

The study also found that few of the cancer patients went on to use another cancer medication in the same drug class in subsequent months, including intravenous therapies.

When patients with higher out-of-pocket costs did fill their prescriptions, they were more likely to delay doing so than were those who faced lower costs, the findings showed.

The study "shows the importance of discussing financial barriers up front, during conversations about treatment options, even with patients who don't raise concerns," Doshi said. "Patients may not be aware of how expensive their prescriptions will be, and physicians may not realize that a patient has opted not to fill the prescription."

When the study was done, one in eight patients had out-of-pocket costs higher than $2,000, but that number has increased since the study was conducted, according to the researchers.

"Our results highlight the pressing need for all stakeholders -- including manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers, payers and policy makers -- to identify fiscally sustainable strategies to improve patient access to cancer medications," the researchers wrote.

The study was published online Dec. 20 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on cancer treatment.
Share this: Twitter

Facebook

WhatsApp

LinkedIn

Email

Telegram



Durban, South Africa, December 21, 2017  The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes todays ruling by a Cameroonian military appeal court that should result in Radio France Internationale radio journalist Ahmed Abbas immediate release from prison.

We are delighted that Ahmed Abba will finally be free, having already spent 876 days in jail too many. Abba was a victim of a monumental travesty of justice and should never have been arrested or charged in the first place, said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal. He must now be free to pick up the pieces of his life and return to his journalism without further fear of reprisal.

Abbas 10-year sentence was reduced to 24 months, a period he has already served, according to RFI and diplomats present at todays court proceedings. RFI reported that a military court in Yaounde acquitted Abba of laundering the proceeds of a terrorist act, but upheld his sentence for non-denunciation of terrorism. The news outlet indicated he would be released since he already served 29 months in prison.

Abba, CPJs 2017 International Press Freedom Award honoree , was convicted and sentenced in April this year to 10 years in jail on terrorism-related charges following his arrest on July 30, 2015 for reporting on the activities of extremist group Boko Haram. CPJ featured Abba in its 2017 Free the Press campaign.
Share this: Twitter

Facebook

WhatsApp

LinkedIn

Email

Telegram



Murders of Mexican journalists at highest number recorded

New York, December 21, 2016At least 42 journalists were killed in the course of their work in 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its annual analysis. While the overall number eased for a second consecutive year from record highs earlier this decade, at least six journalists were murdered in Mexico, the most killings there in one year that CPJ has confirmed as direct reprisal for reporting.

Iraq was the most deadly country, making it the first time in six years that Syria did not top the list. At least eight journalists were killed in Iraq and seven in Syria.

Surges in journalists deaths have been linked to coverage of conflict, so its certainly good news that there are fewer media deaths in the Middle East. Its also a reminder of why journalist safety worldwide must remain a priority, said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. The rise in the number of journalists murdered in Mexico in retaliation for their work is terrible news and suggests that the Mexican government has failed in its public commitments to end the culture of impunity.

Globally, the number of journalists singled out for murder in reprisal for their reporting has declined for the past two years, with 17 as of December 15, 2017 compared with 18 in the whole of 2016. The reason for the recent decline is unclear, and could be due to several factors including self-censorship, efforts to bring global attention to the issue of fighting impunity, and the use of other means, such as imprisonment, to silence critical journalists.

Eightor 19 percentof journalists killed in 2017 were female, CPJ research shows. The historical average is around seven percent. We are alarmed by this high number, and note that some of the most prominent journalists killed last year were women, including Kim Wall, Miroslava Breach, and Daphne Caruana Galizia, Simon said.

More than a third of journalists killed overall were freelancers. Politics was the deadliest beat, followed by war, and camera operator was the most dangerous job.

CPJs database of journalists killed in 2017 includes capsule reports on each victim and filters for examining trends in the data.

CPJ began compiling detailed records on all journalist deaths in 1992. CPJ considers a case work-related only when its staff is reasonably certain that a journalist was killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in combat-related crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment. CPJs list does not include journalists who died of illness or were killed in car or plane accidents.

###

CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide.

Note to Editors:

The report is available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. CPJ experts are available for interviews.

Media contacts:

Bebe Santa-Wood

Communications Associate

[email protected]

212-300-9032
Share this: Twitter

Facebook

WhatsApp

LinkedIn

Email

Telegram



After three years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, the militant group Islamic State has been forced out of large swathes of territory. But local journalists and press freedom groups with whom CPJ spoke said that the defeat of Islamic State doesnt necessarily mean that journalists will be any safer.

The extremist group is one of the main suspected sources of fire in the killings of journalists in Iraq and Syria ever since it declared a caliphate in Mosul in June 2014. During its three-year grip over large parts of both countries 38 journalists were killed, at least eight are missing, and others were forced underground as the militants created a monopoly over information in the territory under its control, CPJ has found.

But Islamic State is not the only threat facing journalists in the region. Local journalists with whom CPJ spoke during its mission to Erbil and Lebanon in March 2017, predicted that the emergence of militias, political pressure, censorship, and sectarianism would pose a threat in a post-Islamic State Middle East.

Abdalaziz al-Hamza, co-founder of the citizen journalist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), told CPJ that journalists will remain under threat.

I dont think the end of [Islamic States] presence in Syria will bring any opportunities for Syrian journalists. Threats against journalists will worsen. Armed groups remain the main threat to journalists, although the level of threat posed to them changes from one armed group to the next, al-Hamza said.

Militias have proliferated across the Middle East in recent years. Authorities in Iraq and Syria who relied on these politically and religiously diverse groups to help oust Islamic State, must now decide whether to integrate these militias into their own forces, or try to disband them, according to news reports.

Rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have repeatedly condemned abuses allegedly carried out by militias, including extrajudicial executions, forcible disappearances, and torture.

Dlovan Barwari, from the independent Iraqi civil rights group Legal Defense for Crimes Against Press Freedom, said that he sees them as the biggest challenge. Militias dont hesitate to use all kinds of threats against journalists, including killings. Journalists in areas retaken from [Islamic State] are very cautious and exercise self-censorship for fear of militia brutality and of being accused of terrorism, Barwari said.

Ragaz Kamal, co-founder of the local Iraqi human rights organization 17Shubat for Human Rights, told CPJ that journalists in Iraq face a threefold threat from armed groups that have gained political cover, like the PMF, political parties, and the authorities because of their job.

Kamal added, None of these groups tolerate criticism and they are rarely held accountable for their actions against journalists. The end of [Islamic State] will not change much for journalists in either Iraq or Kurdistan.

Rahman Gharib, coordinator of the Iraqi press freedom organization Metro Center for Journalist Rights and Advocacy, said that the case of a Kurdistan TV cameraman killed by men who identified themselves as a militia highlighted the dangers such groups pose.

Not only do militias threaten journalists, they also identify them on a sectarian basis as Sunni, Shia, Kurds, ArabsJournalists are threatened, harassed, and sometimes killed. Arkan Sharifi for example, was killed by the PMUs, Gharib said, referring to the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella group of mainly Shiite militias.

Eight masked men who said they were members of the militia forced their way into Sharifis home in the city of Daquq in north central Iraq on October 30, and stabbed the Kurdistan TV cameraman to death, according to CPJ research. Sharifi had returned to Daquq four days earlier, having fled when the Popular Mobilization Forces first seized the city, according to Kurdistan TV.

Gharib added that a lack of protection for journalists, and a climate of self-censorship is preventing the media from playing a vital role.

If Iraqi journalists had access to public information they could play a pivotal role in Iraqs struggle against corruption, but journalists face threats and murder if they uncover instances of corruption. Journalists in Iraq need laws to protect them and those laws are lacking in our country. In Iraqi Kurdistan, even though there are laws regulating the work of journalists and access to information, journalists face violence, he said.

A September 25 referendum on Kurdish independence further stirred tension in areas under Kurdish rule, and left media outlets and journalists in the political crossfire. CPJ documented how outlets and journalists regarded as critical or anti-independence by Kurdish authorities in Erbil had broadcast signals blocked, offices attacked, or were ordered to leave the city of Kirkuk.

In neighboring Syria, journalists with whom CPJ spoke said they also do not believe the recent defeat of Islamic State in the country will lead to improved safety or greater respect for press freedom.

Yara Bader, head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, told CPJ, Press freedom doesnt rank high in any of the Syrian parties agendas. The future for journalists will depend on who is in power. In areas held by Assad, journalists are jailed on terrorism charges, media are strictly controlled, and torture and disappearances are common. Islamist factions are equally repressive of journalists. In the Kurdish-held areas, journalists enjoy more freedoms, but there are also arrests.

Syria is currently divided by several factions after coalitions led separately by President Bashar Assads regime and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) forced Islamic State from its strongholds in November. The Syrian regime and the SDF hold 83 percent of the territory, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and news reports. Other factions, including the Free Syrian Army, the Army of Islam and Al-Qaedas offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, hold several enclaves.

Al-Hamza, of RBSS, said, In rebel-held areas, journalists are safer than in areas held by the regime or by some armed groups, but they still face the risk of being arrested, kidnapped or killed.

Seven journalists were killed in Syria in 2017, all in crossfire, according to CPJ research. Since the start of the civil war there in 2011, 114 journalists have been killed in relation to their work in Syria, making it one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist.

CPJ also documented two separate cases of security forces detaining journalists in the Kurdish-held region of Rojava in 2017.

Bader, who is based in Berlin, Germany, said, Internationally, things dont augur well for press freedom, either, with the war on terror taking precedence over media freedom. The only thing that makes me hopeful is the Syrian journalists who are abroad and have experienced freedom of media and expression for the first time. Without any previous media background, they have created independent outlets, gained experience as journalists, and improved the quality of their job. However, I dont think there will be room for them to come back to SyriaI am afraid that Syria will turn into a news black hole like North Korea.

[Reporting from Beirut]
Naseem-Al-Bahr 2017: India, Oman conducts naval exercise

Published: December 21, 2017

The 11th edition of Naseem-Al-Bahr (Sea Breeze) 2017 Naval exercise between India and Oman was held at Said Bin Sultan Naval Base, Wudam in Oman.

The year marks 24 years of Indian Navy-Royal Navy of Oman bilateral exercises that has been a biennial feature since 1993.

Key Facts

The Indian Navy had deployed two naval ships  INS Trikand and INS Teg in this edition of bilateral exercise for the harbour phase. In sea phase of the exercise, Indian Navy ships along with four Royal Navy of Oman ships Al Mubashir, Al Rasikh, Khassab and Al Bushra had sailed. Ffor the first time, an Indian Navy had deployed submarine as well as the versatile P8I, long range maritime aircraft are participating.

Background

India has ancient maritime tradition and maritime interaction with Oman dates back to over 4000 years BC. Bilateral relations between both countries were formally established with signing of 1953 Indo-Oman Treaty of friendship, Navigation and Commerce. It was first between India and Arab country.

Since then, bilateral naval exercises have contributed to strengthening of bilateral ties between both countries. The first exercise Indian Navy with Royal Navy of Oman was conducted in 1993.

Further signing of MoU on Defence Cooperation in December 2005 and subsequent establishment of oint Military Cooperation (JMC) in March 2006 had set foundation for increased defence cooperation. The naval cooperation between both countries since then has gradually increased in scope and scale.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2017

Category: Defence Current Affairs

Topics: Defence  India-Oman  Naseem-Al-Bahr 2017  Naval Exercises

Latest E-Books
By PTI: By Mohana Basu

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) A new LIGO gravitational wave detector to measure ripples in the fabric of space and time is set to be built in India by 2025, in collaboration with universities from across the globe.

The new Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detector will add to the two already operational in the US.

advertisement

The LIGO detectors discovered the first gravitational waves produced by two giant merging blackholes last year. The research won a Nobel Prize in Physics this year.

The location for the new detector in India has been selected, and the acquisition has started, said Somak Raychaudhury, Director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) Pune. However, the site has not been revealed yet.

"When the detector building is completed in 2025, IUCAA will run it," Raychaudhury told PTI.

The LIGO India partnership is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) through its Newton-Bhabha project on LIGO.

The Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore and Institute for Plasma Research in Ahmedabad are in charge of building various parts of the system, said Raychaudhury.

The mirrors and detectors required to build the system will be sent from the LIGO collaborators in the US.

"They had originally built the LIGO detectors in US, out of which two were installed. They wanted to install the third one in the other part of the Earth," said Raychaudhury.

A third LIGO detector will help pinpoint the origin of the gravitational waves that are detected in future.

The existence of these waves were first predicted by German scientist Albert Einstein 100 years ago in his general theory of relativity.

Massive accelerating objects - such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other - would disrupt space-time in such a way that waves of distorted space would radiate from the source.

These ripples travel at the speed of light through the universe, carrying with them information about their origins, as well as invaluable clues to the nature of gravity itself.

"With the siting of the third Advanced LIGO detector in India there is an essential need for critically skilled students, postdocs and early career researchers to be trained at the highest level in gravitational wave astronomy, for construction of the infrastructure, technology and data pipelines," Raychaudhury said.

advertisement

"In turn, the LIGO India project will help the Indian scientific community to be a major player in the emerging research frontier of gravitational wave astronomy," he said.

An agreement was officially signed at the British Council offices in New Delhi between a consortium of universities in India, led by the IUCAA and a consortium of UK universities, led by the University of Glasgow.

This collaborative programme will enable Indian scientists to work with UK institutes for extended periods of time, with reciprocal visits to the India labs to develop infrastructure and provide onsite training, essential to build the capability to deliver a LIGO-India detector.

"We need hundreds of young people who will not only be involved in building the detector, but also running it after 2025," said Raychaudhury.

IndIGO, the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-wave Observations, is an initiative to set up advanced experimental facilities, for a multi-institutional Indian national project in gravitational-wave astronomy.

Since 2009, the IndIGO Consortium has been involved in constructing the Indian road-map for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and a strategy towards Indian participation in realising the crucial gravitational-wave observatory in the Asia-Pacific region.

The IndIGO Consortium includes Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) and Delhi University, among others.

advertisement

The California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US are among the 108 universities involved in the international collaboration. PTI MHN BDS MHN

--- ENDS ---
Productivity Growth Will Catch Up With Technology

Charles Hughes, E21 Although Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that nonfarm business sector labor productivity grew at a 3 percent annual rate in the third quarter, this healthy growth has been more the exception than the rule in recent years. From 1995 to 2004, average annual labor productivity growth was 2.9 percent. Since 2005 the average annual growth rate has fallen to 1.3 percent. During this same period, technologies such as artificial intelligence or related applications have seen significant breakthroughs. Read more here....
The United States has announced an additional $130 million dollars in emergency food assistance to Yemen through the U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID. This brings the total U.S. contribution in humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen to nearly $768 million since October 2016.

The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen is a matter of grave concern for the United States. More than 22 million Yemenis are in dire need of assistance with more than 8 million on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations. The country has been brought to this state because of the conflict that began in 2015, when Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, seized the capital of Sanaa and drove the internationally recognized government into exile. At the request of the Yemeni Government, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia began airstrikes on rebel positions to stop their expansion.

Not enough critically needed supplies are reaching the suffering Yemeni people. The United States has repeatedly called on the Saudi-led military coalition to facilitate the free flow of humanitarian aid and commercial imports to all of Yemens ports and through Sanaa airport. USAID Administrator Mark Green noted that the small amount of goods that Saudi Arabia has let into Yemen so far is not nearly enough to address the tremendous need. In addition to urging Saudi Arabia to allow humanitarian aid to reach all points where it is needed, the White House has called on the Iranian-backed Houthi militias [to] allow food, medicine, and fuel to be distributed throughout the areas they control, rather than diverted to sustain their military campaign against the Yemeni people.

The United States urges all parties to the conflict in Yemen to immediately cease hostilities, reenergize political talks, and end the suffering of the Yemeni people. As White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a press statement earlier this month, The United States continues to believe that the devastating conflict in Yemen and the suffering it causes must be brought to an end through political negotiations in accordance with relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. Successful political negotiations are necessary to ensure that Yemen can flourish, free of the malign influence of Iranian-backed militias operating outside the structures of the state.
A man kisses his ballot paper before voting in Barcelona. Albert Gea (Reuters)

In a day marked by calm, long lines outside polling stations, and a record high voter turnout of over 80%, the big winner was the constitutionalist party Ciudadanos.

Led by Ines Arrimadas, the party which has campaigned strongly against independence had, with 99% of the vote counted, won 37 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament  more than any other party  and picked up more than one million votes, making it the most-voted party in the region by a long margin. The result also gives the party a clear leadership position among the anti-independence forces in the region.

However, the success of Ciudadanos was not enough to put the brakes on the three pro-independence parties that governed from 2015 until October 27 of this year, when Madrid ousted them from power using emergency measures to stop the secessionist bid. The Catalan Republican Left (ERC), Junts per Catalunya and the radical left-wing party CUP won a combined 70 seats in the Catalan regional parliament  enough to form a majority government.

The ERC picked up 32 seats while Junts per Catalunya  the party of former premier Carles Puigdemont, who watched the results come in from Belgium where has been since the regional parliament passed a unilateral declaration of independence in late October  won 34 seats. The CUP won four seats.

The Catalan Socialists, led by Miguel Iceta won 17 seats, or one more than in the regional election of 2015.
Ballet papers at a polling station in Barcelona. ALBERTO ESTEVEZ (EFE)

The election being held in Catalonia today should mark a milestone in the regions gradual return to normality. This is a regional election that will award legitimacy to a new legislature in the Catalan parliament for the next four years, and to the government that emerges from it so that it can exercise all the basic functions of any Catalan administration.

The best option for voters is not those who provoked the chaos but those who respect constitutional and statutory order

This is an appeal to the key mechanism of democracy: the ballot boxes made available in a legal manner under the rule of law. And it is also an appeal to their final owners, the people, so they may set the course of their immediate future at a particularly difficult time.

But it is nothing more and nothing other than that: it is not a return to judicial insecurity nor a return to the systematic violation of the democratic order. It is not a confirmation of any type of separation or of any kind of alternative regime. Nor is it a restoration of a previous authority holding onto power by some kind of miraculous divine right or automatic inheritance.

The parliamentary attack of September 6 and 7 against the Catalan Statute and the Spanish Constitution through the use of self-made laws constituted a coup detat, lacked any judicial legitimacy, and was orchestrated by authorities without the power or legitimacy to do so. As such, the Constitutional Court struck down the unlawful legislation.

The subsequent temporary intervention in the self-government of Catalonia was the second step towards bringing things back to normal. This intervention has prudently been limited to calling todays election, after the former premier shirked his own duty to call the vote as he had promised to do, instead going back on his word and fleeing the country.

The election being held in Catalonia today should mark a milestone in the regions gradual return to normality

There have been other cases of intervention in a regional government in Europe, notably in the United Kingdom and, in a certain manner, in Italy after Padanias Declaration of Independence in the 1990s. The claims of victimhood on the part of the Catalan pro-independence movement who says this has never happened before are strictly false.

The claim that one executive has been imprisoned by another is also false; that would certainly be a first. It didnt happen that way: it was the judicial system that initiated proceedings against certain leaders for allegedly criminal behavior, and ordered pre-trial custody for four (not all) of them. What is indeed happening in Europe for the first time is that a regional government  in this case one that enjoys very high levels of autonomy  has risen against the democratic legality that was at its foundation. Without this illegal precedent there would have been no need to restore the legality which has been damaged.

The most urgent tasks of the new Catalan parliament, the new regional government and the new premier of Catalonia will be to heal social division, get the economy back on track, and restore the confidence that has been damaged by the breakdown of judicial security. As many citizens as possible must now go out and vote, and they must do so keeping in mind that when it comes to restoring normality and assuring that Catalonia is spared secessionist nightmares, the best option is not voting for those who provoked the chaos in the first place, but those who respect constitutional and statutory order.

The way this election goes will determine how quickly these tasks are performed, and whether Catalonia returns to its historic role as an economic engine and a modernizing force in Spain. This, unfortunately, is not something that is assured at this time: it depends to a great degree on what voters do today.

English version by George Mills.
Educational exposure of ideas, assumptions or hypotheses, based on proven facts" (which need not be strictly current affairs) Value in judgments are excluded, and the text comes close to an opinion article, without judging or making forecasts , just formulating hypotheses, giving motivated explanations and bringing together a variety of data

A drawing by the artist TvBoy of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy kissing Ciudadanos candidate Ines Arrimadas. JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)

One out of every four Catalans had yet to decide which way to vote just one week ago. There are many undecided voters in Catalonia, but odd as it may sound, it is likely that their votes will not be all that decisive.

The first reason is that many undecided voters will end up staying home. According to calculations based on the last poll by the Spanish public research center the Center for Sociology Studies (CIS), nearly half of these individuals also stayed home at the last regional election in 2015: 37% of them said so clearly, while 7% said they cast blank ballots or voted for very small parties.

Nearly every undecided voter is hesitating between parties within one of two specific blocs

Secondly, this kind of vote will probably go to a wide variety of parties. In 2015, 22% of undecided voters finally cast their ballots for the pro-independence Junts pel Si, 9% for the Catalan Socialists (PSC), 7% for Ciudadanos, 7% for the Popular Party (PP) and 6% for Podemos. It is to be expected that a similar distribution will occur this time around.

It is also unlikely that undecided voters will make a dent on the resulting majorities. Nearly every undecided voter is hesitating between parties within one of two specific blocs. Around 6% of Catalans are torn between two pro-independence parties. Another 4% wonder whether to vote for the anti-independence Ciudadanos, PSC or PP. But only 2% are hesitating between a secessionist and a constitutionalist party.

So why do undecided voters matter? They are mostly an indication of the abstention rate. Not being sure which way to vote is the first step towards not voting at all. It is generally assumed that parties with undecided supporters are at risk. This should be of particular concern to Catalunya en Comu-Podem and to the PSC: 26% of the formers previous voters and 23% of the latters are now unsure who to vote for. And 18% of Junts pel Si voters are undecided, but its successors, ERC y JxCat, could argue that this is because people are torn between the two secessionist parties, not because they have lost their motivation to vote.

Voters say that they will cast their ballot, but will they stick to their word?

There has been a lot of talk in Catalonia about the hidden vote, but perhaps it would be best to wonder about hidden abstention. Surveys are predicting a record turnout rate based on a survey by the CIS where respondents said they would vote in all certainty in the following proportions: 98% of JxCat voters, 98% of ERC voters, 96% of Catalunya en Comu voters, 96% of Ciudadanos voters, 94% of PSC voters, 88% of CUP voters and 84% of PP voters. These are extremely high figures, even compared with the 2015 election, when voters were already highly motivated.

Two conclusions have emerged in recent days. One is that separatists are as highly mobilized (or more) as they were in 2015. The other is that supporters of Catalonia remaining a part of Spain are also highly mobilized.

But these are no more than intentions, after all. Voters say that they will vote, but will they stick to their word or will there be hidden abstentions? There could be surprises in more ways than one: some secessionists may finally stay home after three months of living on an emotional rollercoaster. But some constitutionalists could do the same. These two unknowns will make the difference on Thursday, and predicting figures is very hard for the same reason: because abstention is something that people almost never admit to.

English version by Susana Urra.
After a 4.9 magnitude earthquake forced people in Tehran to flee into streets, all educational institutions and many offices have been closed for Thursday.

Friday is the weekly off day, like Sunday, and schools, universities, offices and companies will be closed anyway.

Schools were closed since Sunday due to heavy smog and pollution, but the decision to keep them closed on Thursday is for safety reasons after the earthquake.

Irans Emergency Management Agency announced that in Tehran, Qom and Alborz provinces all centers of learning and many public services and other government offices will remain closed. Banks and health and public assistance services will continue to operate as normal.

Reports say that at least 97 people were injured, mostly during panicked escape from homes and buildings. One person died apparently died of a heart attack while induced by fear and panic.

There are no reports of visible damage from the tremor, which was centered west of Tehran and hit at 11:27 pm local time. U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake to be 4.9 on the Richter scale. Iranian authorities initially said the quake measured 5.2.

Photos in social media show that many people slept in streets, parks and in their cars overnight for fear of more tremors.

A commander of traffic police in Tehran province told reporters, early on Thursday, many Tehran area residents are driving to northern parts of the country.

Iranian weekend starts on Thursday, and given the fear of earthquakes more people leave the city for northern resort towns.

Tehran and some other large cities have also been suffering from heavy smog and pollution in recent days.

Two powerful earthquakes have hit Iran in as many months; one in the west of the country, which killed hundreds of people and another less powerful quake in the southeast, near the city of Kerman.
In an apparent U-turn, pro-reform Tehran MP Mahmoud Sadeghi announced on December 20 that he believes in the Guardian Councils right to confirm or reject people nominated for a seat in the parliament.

Earlier on December 17, in a speech delivered in a parliamentary session, Sadeghi had sparked a heated debate among his fellow pro-reform and conservative legislators by criticizing the Guardian Council (GC) for disqualifying competent candidates.

He had insisted on the necessity of fighting corruption in the ruling echelons and while criticizing the ambiguity in the governments budget, he had also expressed doubt whether a parliament, which went through the GC filter really presented the people.

Addressing his fellow legislators, he asked, Are we the essence of the nations virtues? [No,] we are the essence of the Guardian Councils virtues.

Sadeghi was referring to a comment made by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1980 when he met with the members of Irans first post-revolution parliament and described them as the essence of the nations virtues.

The comments triggered tensions in the parliament. Sadeghis conservative opponents argued that if he would not accept the role of the GC, he should not be allowed to keep his post.

Sadeghi tried his best to take back his previous derisive comments about the GC.

Based on Article 99 of the Iranian Constitution, the Guardian Council is responsible for supervising the elections of the Leadership Council of Experts, the president of the republic, the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament), and referrals to the public vote and referenda, he said. There is a solid logic behind this article and as I have repeatedly said, I believe in the GCs right to qualify or reject candidates.

Sadeghi, however, criticized recent limitations imposed on the authority of the parliament, including restrictions on its right to investigate matters related to the GC and the Assembly of Experts.

The point is reducing parliaments realm of authority. We are not allowed to investigate any case related to the GC or Assembly of Experts. These limitations have reduced the level of the parliaments authority and its output, Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted Sadeghi as saying.

Sadeghis new comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to downplay his fiery speech from a few days before.

Lambasting the GC, he had noted, By disqualifying merited candidates, the Guardian Council has not allowed figures brave enough to fight corruption to have a seat in the parliament.

Furthermore, he had maintained that Iran has hopelessly fallen into a corruption trap while there is no will for combatting corruption.

Why is the parliament devoid of the serious will necessary for fighting corruption? Why are we cooperating with corrupt figures, and why are we afraid to publicly name those who have astronomical overdue debts [to the banks]? he said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump has spoken with King Salman of Saudi Arabia to express solidarity after a ballistic missile was fired at Salman's official residence.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels says it intercepted a missile Tuesday over southern Riyadh.

The rebels say they were targeting a "top leadership" meeting in the kingdom's capital.

It's an attack the White House says was "enabled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps."

The White House says the leaders "discussed the importance of engaging the United Nations to hold Iran accountable for its repeated violations of international law" during Wednesday's call and "agreed on the importance of reinvigorating a political process to end the war in Yemen."

The war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and driven millions to the brink of famine.
BJP sources confide Mandaviya has a good understanding of farmers issues, an area where the BJP lost out heavily in 2017 elections.

By Jumana Shah: A joke on BJP is doing the rounds on social media in Gujarat - and it is not circulated by the Congress.

Ahead of the 2012 Assembly elections, BJP had released a social media campaign mocking the Congress's indecisiveness over its leader.

The video is based around a kabaddi game, where the referee calls out for the captain to the team dressed in saffron and a player decisively steps ahead. When the referee calls out to the other team dressed in blue, all five players step ahead and eventually start fighting amongst themselves.

advertisement

JOKE BACKFIRES

After the 2017 elections where the BJP won by a relatively slim margin getting its lowest tally since 1995, the five-year-old clip has resurfaced in social media and the joke is on BJP this time.

Before polls, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had said the elections will be fought under the leadership of chief minister Vijay Rupani and deputy chief minister Nitin Patel.

"But now that the results have not been as positive as was expected, and Rupani avoided the question if he would be the next CM, the question that BJP posed to Congress about their question is now applicable to us," a BJP worker said.

JOCKEYING FOR POLE POSITION

As the day of announcement draws close, the front runners in the race continue to change. On Thursday, a section of BJP workers revealed that the chances of Rupani being repeated were abounding again.

The reason cited for this was that no other leader was matching up to the advantages he brings - non-controversial, Shah and Modi loyalist and gives the message of continuity.

However, another section feels it is Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya who is a tad ahead of Rupani at the moment. The benefits he brings to the table are his age and caste primarily. Mandaviya is 45-years-old and belongs to the powerful Leuva Patel community from Bhavnagar.

Bringing a Patidar CM is a political strategy the BJP is expected to use to consolidate Patidar votes for 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Mandaviya, currently a Rajya Sabha MP and Union minister of road transport, shipping, chemical and fertilizers.

His RS term ends in April 2018. BJP sources confide Mandaviya has a good understanding of farmers issues, an area where the BJP lost out heavily in 2017 elections. He was instrumental in identifying the issue of urea availability for farmers. The initiative of neem-coating urea so that it is not misused for industrial use was his brainchild, sources said.

Modi has often mentioned this in his speeches. "He is a simple man. He uses a cycle to reach Rajya Sabha. His family members still use the state transport buses to commute in Gujarat. He is well accepted in both RSS and BJP circles. Moreover, his loyalty is clearly to Modi, which makes him a frontrunner," a reliable BJP source said.

advertisement

THROWING THEIR HATS IN THE RING

The other names doing the rounds are Parshottam Rupala and Nitin Patel - both Patidar leaders. The other leading candidate is Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala. BJP observers Arun Jaitley and Saroj Pandey are expected to meet elected legislators of Gujarat on Friday and the name of chief ministerial candidates will be discussed.

An announcement might come by the end of the day. Chief minister Rupani submitted his resignation on Thursday and the process of dissolving the Assembly was initiated by Governor OP Kohli.

Preparations for the swearing-in ceremony have also started. The new cabinet is likely to take oath on December 25. The oath-taking ceremony could be held in the Sardar Patel Stadium in the heart of the city, Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar or at the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad.

ALSO WATCH | Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani heard in video: The situation is bad

--- ENDS ---
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 21

By Diana Aliyeva  Trend:

An Uzbek delegation led by State Adviser to the President of Uzbekistan Rustam Kamilov is taking part in an international conference dedicated to the results of the Year of Islamic Solidarity in Azerbaijan.

An international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku Dec. 21.

The Uzbek Foreign Ministry said that the Uzbek delegation also includes Chairman of the Committee on Religious Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan Artukbek Yusupov and Head of Uzbekistan Muslims Board Muftiy (spiritual leader) Usmanhon Alimov.

The conference has been organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office jointly with Azerbaijans State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations.

More than 200 scientific, religious, social and political figures from more than 40 countries and eight international organizations are taking part in the conference.

Under a decree of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, 2017 was declared as the Year of Islamic Solidarity in Azerbaijan with a view to ensure the strengthening of Azerbaijans special position in the establishment of Islamic solidarity.

During the Year of Islamic Solidarity, events were held in a number of countries, including Azerbaijan, Finland, Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Spain and Russia.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

An international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku Dec. 21.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took part in the opening ceremony of the conference.

The conference is organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan, and is dedicated to the results of the Year of Islamic Solidarity, proclaimed by a decree of President Aliyev.

The international conference is attended by well-known state, religious and scientific figures from about 40 countries, heads and representatives of eight international organizations, special representatives of heads of various states, leaders of religious confessions, government, public and parliamentary members, representatives of the diplomatic corps.

The conference started with the recitation of ayahs from Holy Quran.

President Aliyev has delivered speech at the event.

Congratulatory messages from the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Holy See (Vatican), Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, and Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II were read out.

Addressing the international conference participants on behalf of world Muslims, ISESCO Director General Abdulaziz Altwaijri emphasized Azerbaijans growing role in ensuring the strengthening of the Islamic solidarity and inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.

Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Office, co-chair of the CIS Interreligious Council Sheikhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade made a report at the conference.

Allahshukur Pashazade highlighted the international events jointly organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee on Work with Religious Organizations in a number of countries as part of the Year of Islamic Solidarity.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

The Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay adopted a statement condemning the massacre committed in 1992 in Khojaly town of Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

The statement reads that the Khojaly massacre was the biggest attack suffered by civilians over the three years of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The ethnic massacre took lives of 613 Azerbaijanis, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 elderly, while 1,275 people were taken hostage, of whom 150 are still missing.

Also, 487 residents of Khojaly, including 76 children were left disabled, 26 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent.

The statement stresses that many countries denounce the genocide of the Azerbaijani civilians and the crime against humanity committed by the armed forces of Armenia, condemn the military occupation of Azerbaijan's territories by Armenia, and respect the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and inviolability of the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan.

The statement reads that resolutions 822, 853, 874, and 884 of the UN Security Council urge to stop the aggression, focuse attention on victims, and encourage a dialogue to resolve the conflict that broke out as a result of Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijani lands.

The Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay condemned the genocide committed in 1992 in Khojaly and conveyed solidarity with the people of Azerbaijan in commemoration of the 26th anniversary of this crime against humanity.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Pakistan condemns the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia and refuses to recognize Armenia as a state, said Deputy Chairman of Pakistans Senate Molana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

He made the remarks at an international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue, kicked off in Baku Dec. 21, Trends correspondent reported from the event.

The Pakistani official noted that Pakistan will stand on its position until Armenia fulfills UN resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, because Pakistan attaches great importance to fraternal relations with Azerbaijan.
Details added (first version posted on 12:26)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by Mahmoud Vaezi, the head of Iranian Presidential Office and chief of staff.

The sides hailed the successfully developing Azerbaijan-Iran bilateral relations in a variety of areas.

Mahmoud Vaezi extended greetings of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to President Ilham Aliyev and underlined that the Iranian head of state will pay a visit to Azerbaijan next year.

He emphasized the significance of the Baku-hosted "2017-Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference. He described the fact that the event participants include representatives of eight international organizations and nearly 40 countries as indicative of the event's importance.

President Ilham Aliyev recalled with pleasure that he invited President Hassan Rouhani to visit Azerbaijan during his brief meeting with the Iranian President on the margins of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul last week.

The head of state described the fact that Iran is represented in the Baku-hosted international conference with a high-level delegation as indicative of great importance that the country attaches to interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

They exchanged views on a number of issues, including Azerbaijan-Iran cooperation in energy, pharmaceutical, banking sectors, as well as the North-South transport corridor.

President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Hassan Rouhani and asked the head of the Presidential Office to extend his greetings to the Iranian head of state.
Details added (first version posted on 09:45)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

An international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku Dec. 21.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took part in the opening ceremony of the conference.

The conference is organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan, and is dedicated to the results of the Year of Islamic Solidarity, proclaimed by a decree of President Aliyev.

The international conference is attended by well-known state, religious and scientific figures from about 40 countries, heads and representatives of eight international organizations, special representatives of heads of various states, leaders of religious confessions, government, public and parliamentary members, representatives of the diplomatic corps.

The conference started with the recitation of ayahs from Holy Quran.

President Aliyev has delivered speech at the event.

Congratulatory messages from the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Holy See (Vatican), Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, and Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II were read out.

Addressing the international conference participants on behalf of world Muslims, ISESCO Director General Abdulaziz Altwaijri emphasized Azerbaijans growing role in ensuring the strengthening of the Islamic solidarity and inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.

Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Office, co-chair of the CIS Interreligious Council Sheikhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade made a report at the conference.

Allahshukur Pashazade highlighted the international events jointly organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee on Work with Religious Organizations in a number of countries as part of the Year of Islamic Solidarity.
Details added (first version posted on 14:23)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today received Deputy Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Tawfiq al-Sudairi.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi thanked the Azerbaijani president for his support to the organization of the 2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference in Baku.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi recalled his meeting with national leader Heydar Aliyev during his visit to Azerbaijan in 1998. The relations between the two countries have been rapidly developing ever since, he noted.

Both the King and people of Saudi Arabia feel love and friendship for the Azerbaijani president, government and people.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi said Azerbaijan has been developing rapidly in all areas over the 20 years since his visit to the country. He said this has been possible due to President Ilham Aliyevs wise leadership and policy aimed at ensuring the future of the country and prosperity of the people.

President Aliyev hailed Saudi Arabia's high-level representation in the 2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference.

President Aliyev praised the high level of bilateral relations between the two countries, and recalled his official visit to Saudi Arabia.

The president stressed that the Azerbaijani government and people highly appreciate the fact that Saudi Arabia has not built any relations with Armenia, which occupied Azerbaijani territories, destroyed Islamic monuments and mosques.
Details added (first version posted on 14:27)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today received Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam.

President Aliyev said relations between Azerbaijan and Egypt are developing successfully. Noting the importance of the "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference, the president hailed Egypt's high-level representation in the event.

President Aliyev described the conference as an outstanding contribution to strengthening Islamic solidarity. The president said it is important that religious leaders come together, describing large delegations' participation in the Baku conference as a demonstration of Islamic solidarity.

Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Ibrahim Allam said he was deeply impressed by ongoing development processes in Azerbaijan, adding that this was possible thanks to wide policy of the country's president.

Underlining the significance of the "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference, Shawki Ibrahim Allam said the event contributes to bringing different religions and civilizations closer to each other.
Details added (first version posted on 16:32)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

If Armenians would desire to enforce their self-determination in countries of their residence, then we will see what will be the policies of those countries, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

He made the remarks addressing the opening ceremony of the international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue, kicked off in Baku Dec. 21.

Azerbaijan, which has been living as an independent state for 26 years, stands strong, said the president.

Of course, our main problem is the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. As you know, Armenia has been occupying 20 percent of our territories recognized by the international community for more than 20 years. More than one million citizens were expelled from these lands, became refugees and internally displaced persons, said President Aliyev.

An ethnic cleansing policy was conducted against our people. Armenians committed a bloody crime  the Khojaly genocide. Armenian gunmen killed more than 600 innocent peaceful people, including more than 100 women and 60 children. More than 10 countries have recognized the Khojaly massacre as an act of genocide, he noted.

The head of state said that the United Nations adopted four resolutions on the conflict.

These resolutions clearly state that the Armenian armed forces should be withdrawn immediately and unconditionally from the occupied lands, stated the president.

However, these resolutions have remained on paper, he added.

Those who adopt these resolutions are indifferent to this issue, and Armenia, taking this opportunity, continues its occupation policy. All the buildings were destroyed in our occupied lands. Our historical, religious monuments, mosques were destroyed by Armenians. The photos of these destroyed mosques were posted enough on the Internet, and everyone can see them. The entire infrastructure was destroyed. The OSCE have sent two fact-finding missions to the occupied lands. Those missions faced the scene that I am talking about and included this in their reports, said the Azerbaijani president.

He noted that the position of Azerbaijani state on the conflict is fully based on international law.

First of all, Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijans ancient, historical land, and on other hand, it is an integral part of Azerbaijan in terms of international law. The entire world knows Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijans integral part. In this case, the conflict must be resolved solely on the basis of norms and principles of international law, he said.

The UN Security Council resolutions  there are no other superior documents than these documents in the world  must be fully implemented and the territorial integrity of our country must be restored. The Azerbaijani state and the Azerbaijani people will never allow the establishment of second Armenian state on its land, added President Aliyev.

Speaking about self-determination of peoples, the head of state said that this issue can be resolved within the framework of territorial integrity of countries.

As I noted, many countries in the world are multinational and multi-religious. The Armenian people decided on its self-determination and they have a state. Azerbaijan will never allow the second Armenian state to be established on historical Azerbaijani lands. This, in fact, is a very harmful, dangerous and illogical logic. Armenians live in many countries. If they would desire to enforce their self-determination in all countries of their residence as in Azerbaijan, and resort to aggressive separatism, then we will see what will be the policies of those countries, added President Aliyev.

Todays processes in the world support and strengthen our position. As I noted, our position is strong enough in terms of international law, history and potential. However, Europe also faces separatism today. Look, which steps are taken in European countries against separatism?! Our problem is aggressive separatism. The Armenian gunmen committed genocide, occupied our lands by force, expelled innocent people from these lands, and are engaged in illegal activities on these lands today, noted the head of state.

I am absolutely convinced that Azerbaijan will restore its territorial integrity, said President Aliyev. There are all opportunities for this, and recent events  the events of the past year show that once again.

The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is as valuable as the territorial integrity of all other countries, added the head of state.
Details added (first version posted on 14:06)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with President of Directorate of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Turkey Ali Erbas.

Ilham Aliyev congratulated Ali Erbas on his appointment as President of Directorate of Religious Affairs of Turkey and underlined the importance of Turkey's high level representation in the Baku-hosted "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference.

President Aliyev recalled his recent meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Istanbul. Saying he has made three visits to Turkey within a year, President Aliyev described this as an indicative of friendship and brotherly relations between the two countries.

Ali Erbas extended greetings of President Erdogan and Prime Minister Yildirim to President Aliyev.

He noted that he witnessed rapid development of Azerbaijan during his visit to Baku.

They hailed the importance of the international conference, underlining that the event contributes to bringing the countries, nations and religions closer to each other.

Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Erdogan and Prime Minister Yildirim and asked Ali Erbas to extend his greetings to the president and prime minister of Turkey.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 24 (PTI) The CPI(M) today urged the Indian government to establish close relations with Nepal without interfering in the internal affairs of the neighbouring country.

Reacting to the recent victory of Left parties in Nepal, former general secretary Prakash Karat said the development should lead to a "re-thinking and change in India?s attitude to Nepal".

advertisement

In an editorial in the forthcoming edition of party organ Peoples Democracy, he said relations between the two countries should be based on equality.

"The important political development in Nepal should lead to a re-thinking and change in India?s attitude to Nepal. The Modi government should strive to establish close relations of cooperation based on equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of Nepal," Karat wrote.

It said the big victory of the Communist alliance would have its "repercussions in South Asia too", and observed that the "Indian government should recognise the reality that Nepal would like to maintain cordial relations with both India and China ? its two big neighbours".

India should not view Nepal?s assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion, it said.

"Like the rest of South Asia, Nepal too intends to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. India should not view Nepal?s assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion but work towards strengthening the natural affinity historically and culturally ordained between Nepal and India," Karat emphasised.

The editorial also criticised the Modi governments moves in 2015 relating to an economic blockade sparked by the Madhesi agitation in Nepal.

The Centre should take positive measures to assist Nepal?s economic development and build on the two countries common cultural heritage, he said.

Extending full support to the Nepali Communists, he said the Left alliance government in Kathmandu has the "golden opportunity" to implement a Left-oriented programme for economic and social progress to provide a better life to the people of Nepal. PTI CSN BDS

--- ENDS ---
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov invited Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Angelino Alfano to visit Azerbaijan during a phone conversation Dec. 21, said the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

Alfano accepted Mammadyarov's invitation.

Gratification with comprehensive development of relations between Azerbaijan and Italy was expressed during the phone conversation.

The fact that Italy is the main trade partner of Azerbaijan among the member-states of the Council of Europe was also stressed.

Views on further developing trade and economic relations were exchanged.

The sides stressed successful energy cooperation between the two countries.

Mammadyarov also congratulated his counterpart that Italy assumed the status of the OSCE Chairmanship in 2018 and wished the Italian side success.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Participants of the 2017 - Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference made a statement to heads of state, international organizations, and religious leaders.

According to the statement, the participants appreciate joint conferences on interreligious dialogue held in Azerbaijan, Finland, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Uzbekistan and Spain during 2017 within the "Year of Islamic Solidarity" announced by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who attaches great importance to protection and development of intercultural and interreligious dialogue, national, cultural and religious values and traditions. They also expressed appreciation for President Aliyevs attention and support for these events.

The participants welcome the messages of the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Uzbekistan, as well as the Holy See, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia.

The participants emphasized the importance of supporting cultural diversity, intercultural and interreligious dialogue, as well as the related cooperation at international level in an atmosphere of mutual respect and mutual understanding, regarding it as a guarantor of peace and security.

The participants also confirm the importance of continuing the Baku process, launched in 2008 with the goal of preventing global threats, as well as relevant initiatives, and intensifying efforts in this direction.

They express deep concern over increasing incidents of discrimination, xenophobia, terrorism, separatism, extremism, as well as national, religious and ethnic intolerance, the mass flow of refugees and internally displaced people, destruction of monuments and temples, as well as destruction of religious temples, cultural monuments and historical values by terrorist and separatist groups.

The participants stressed that Islam and all religions, having the universal values, make an indispensable contribution to the world civilization, culture and heritage, contribute to peace, justice and humanism.

They emphasize that Islamic solidarity plays an important role in the development of intercultural and interreligious dialogue, the promotion of universal human values in the world and their transfer to future generations.

They stress the importance of multiplying the efforts of the international community to end armed conflicts that impede sustainable development, tranquility, stability and security.

The participants urge the countries, the UN and other international and regional organizations, as well as religious leaders to continue to promote intercultural and interreligious dialogue, mutual understanding and cooperation.

The participants urge the countries, the UN and other international and regional organizations to take effective measures to prevent politically motivated and purposefully incited xenophobia and Islamophobia, acts of terrorism, abuse of the name of Islam, and crimes against humanity.

They call on the international community to unite efforts through UN's central coordinating role in effective counteraction of threats and risks to international stability and security, as well as to prevent terrorism, aggressive separatism and extremism that engender conflict and flow of refugees, internally displaced people and migrants.

The participants reaffirm their commitment to the UN Charter and universally recognized international norms and principles, in particular the sovereign equality of countries, their territorial integrity and the inviolability of international borders.

They call for making contribution to a speedy, peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Stressing the unacceptability of the political processes taking place around Jerusalem, which is sacred for all religions, the participants call for exerting more efforts to find a peaceful solution to this issue based on respect for each religion and culture in accordance with international norms, principles and UN resolutions.

They also call on the international community to be vigilant about the status quo of religious communities in Jerusalem in accordance with international law.
Details added (first version posted on 14:58)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received State Adviser to the President of Uzbekistan Rustam Kamilov on Dec. 21.

President Aliyev thanked Uzbekistan for attending the 2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference in Baku with a high-level delegation.

The president stressed the importance of the fact that brotherly Uzbekistan also hosted a conference as part of the Year of Islamic Solidarity.

State Adviser Rustam Kamilov conveyed President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev's greetings to President Aliyev. Kamilov noted that the two countries have many similar approaches to the protection and preservation of tolerance.

Highlighting the significance of tolerance, Kamilov said it is important that people co-exist and try to ensure development of the country. Kamilov noted that reviving Islamic traditions, preserving and passing Islamic heritage to next generations are one of the key priorities in Uzbekistan.

President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Mirziyoyev and asked the state adviser to extend his greetings to the Uzbek president.
Details added (first version posted on 14:51)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri.

Altwaijri thanked President Aliyev for support to excellent organization of the "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference. Altwaijri noted the importance of the conference and the fact that representatives of different religions attended the event. The ISESCO director general hailed President Aliyev's impressive speech at the conference.

President Aliyev thanked Altwaijri for the warm words and emphasized the significance of the ISESCO director general's participation and speech at the conference. The president praised Altwaijri's fair stance on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that he voiced in his speech at the conference as well as other events.

The ISESCO director general noted that ongoing comprehensive, sustainable development processes in Azerbaijan and outstanding achievements made by the country under the leadership of President Aliyev spark great interest in the Islamic world and beyond.

They underlined the successful cooperation between Azerbaijan and ISESCO, expressing their confidence that bilateral relations will continue strengthening.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

Some hotels in Baku raised prices on the eve of the New Year holiday, the chairman of Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA), Nahid Bagirov, told Trend Dec.21

His pointed out, the rise in prices is observed in five-star hotels in Baku. Bagirov explained this by the influx of tourists to Azerbaijan on the eve of the New Year holiday.

"The rise in prices means that many tourists will come to Baku, and the practice of world tourism shows that hotels raise prices before the New Year and other holidays," Bagirov said. It's very unfortunate that the hotels are taking this step.

The head of the association reminded that the hotels are independent in their pricing policy.

"The hotels operating in Azerbaijan belong to businessmen who can both raise and lower prices," Bagirov said.
The final round of a Tournament of Young Chemists among pupils of secondary schools and Child Development centers was held at the new campus of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS). It was organized by Baku city Education Office.

BHOS rector Elmar Gasimov, Head of the Education Office Mahabbat Veliyeva and other representatives of the Offices management attended the event.

Speaking at the opening of the final round of the tournament, the rector Elmar Gasimov emphasized importance of such initiatives for intellectual development of young generation and wished success to the participants. Head of the Baku City Education Office Mahabbat Veiyeva expressed her gratitude to BHOS management for the support in arranging the event and briefed about the tournament history.

Within the two-hour round, the participating teams answered 30 test questions, and each correct answer was given one point. They also were solving tasks, and each correct answer was given five points. The tournament results will be announced soon.

The schoolchildren were also given a tour of BHOS campus and were familiarized with its premises, laboratories and other facilities.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.21

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Azerbaijani embassy to Saudi Arabia and the Cabinet of the First Vice-President of Azerbaijan jointly organized a presentation ceremony of Azerbaijans bid to host Expo 2025 at OIC headquarters, said a message from OIC.

The event was attended by heads and representatives of the diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia and high officials of the OIC General Secretariat.

Ambassador Elchin Amirbayov, Assistant to the First Vice-President of Azerbaijan and head of the Baku Expo 2025 Task Force, gave an informative briefing of Azerbaijans bid with visual presentation of the diversity, development and potential of Azerbaijan under the theme Developing human capital, building a better future.

We are here to seek your support for an important international project we signed in, said Ambassador Amirbayov to the representatives of the OIC member states.

The capital city of Baku is one of the candidates for hosting in 2025 a World Expo normally held every five years under the aegis of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE, International Bureau of Exhibitions) based in Paris.

Our desire to host the World Expo in 2025, fits very well into Azerbaijans long-term vision and national development strategy. Hosting a World EXPO would create an unprecedented opportunity for Azerbaijan to realize some of its long-term strategic goals including development of the regions, diversification of economy, development of human capital through investments in education, health and job sectors and building a greater Baku which will serve the well-being of its population,: explained the ambassador.

Azerbaijan is the only member state of the OIC to submit its bid for EXPO-2025.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

Caspian American Club and Caspian European Club held the 9th CEO Lunch Baku, dedicated to Azerbaijan-USA relations.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta attended CEO Lunch Baku as an honorary guest. Addressing the forum, Robert Cekuta noted the progress Azerbaijan and the United States have made in bilateral relations, while stressing the need for further cooperation on the rule of law and other issues necessary for maintaining a positive investment and business climate.

First Deputy Chairman of the Caspian European Club and Caspian American Club Telman Aliyev expressed his gratitude to the US Embassy forts support and attention to the activity of the Caspian American Club. In a few days we will be celebrating the jubilee of the creation of the Caspian American Club.

It is noteworthy that this CEO Lunch, dedicated to Azerbaijan-US relations, is being held in the anniversary year of the creation of the Club. Since the creation of the Caspian American Club we have received a large number of letters and one of the first ones was from Robert Cekuta, who wished us success in the further implemntation of the project, Telman Aliyev noted. He added that members of the board of the Caspian American Club are elected for a two year period, and all the member companies of the Caspian European Club automatically become members of the Caspian American Club.

Telman Aliyev also thanked the US Embassy for its official support of the Caspian American Forum which will take place in June 2018.

Chief Executive Officer of the Caspian European Club Mustafa Abbasbeyli also welcomed all the guests and invited them to attend the 5th International Caspian Energy Forum Tbilisi which would be held on April 12, 2018 with the support of the Governments of Georgia and the Azerbaijan Republic. Prime Minister of Georgia Giorgi Kvirikashvili and all members of the Georgian Government representing economic issues are expected to attend the opening ceremony of the Forum. The Georgian Company Caspian Energy Georgia is the organizer of the forum.

According to him, CEO Lunch events are held twice a month, every third Wednesday of the month in Baku and every last Friday of the month in Tbilisi.

Since its very establishment, the Caspian European Club has promoted the attraction of oil industry revenues to the development of the non-oil sector. The Caspian European Club, which brings together more than 5,000 member companies and organizations, operates in 70 countries around the world and is active in supporting dialogue between government agencies and the private sector.

Addressing the event were also other newly elected members of the board of the Club. Each member of the board spoke about the activity of their committee and about their further plans.

At the end of the event Ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta was presented the first honorary membership certificate of the Caspian American Club.

Certificates were also given to companies which joined or extended their membership in the Caspian European Club and Caspian American Club.

The CEO Lunch is one of the key tools for establishing a dialogue between the public and private sectors of the countries across the Caspian-Black Sea and Baltic regions, as well as for creating additional opportunities to communicate and establish new business contacts in an informal setting.

Problems facing entrepreneurs are disucssed during CEO Lunch Baku. Issues concerning business doing in different regions of the country, as well as proposals on expansion of cooperation in different sectors of economy are touched upon.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

The fifth Azerbaijan-Russia Youth Forum on the theme "New generation: boundless responsibility" was held in Baku.

Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva attended the opening ceremony of the forum.

Addressing the event, Azerbaijan`s minister of youth and sport Azad Rahimov highlighted the country`s youth policy. The minister underlined measures to support youth development, improve healthcare and education opportunities and organize effective leisure activities for them. "President Ilham Aliyev always takes care of young people and pays special attention to their problems," Rahimov noted. The minister singled out the State Program on "Azerbaijani Youth for 2017-2021" approved by the executive order of the head of state.

He said that the Ministry of Youth and Sport cooperates with 65 countries in the field of youth and sports. "This year, we, for the first time, organized a lab for preparing talented teenagers in an international format. A large Azerbaijani delegation attended the 19th Youth and Students Festival in Sochi, Russia," the minister added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkeys Nisantasi University and Japans Nagasaki University have signed an agreement on the joint development and production of a flying car, the Nisantasi University said in a message.

The agreement was signed within the framework of the Super Object for Road and Air Movement (SORA) Project.

Single and double-seat models of the flying cars will be produced.

It is expected that the first flying cars will be commissioned in Turkey by 2020, the message said.

Meanwhile, Turkey also plans to start domestic car production.

On Nov. 2, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the names of companies that will take part in manufacturing of domestic cars. He noted that those companies are Anadolu Grubu, BMC, Kiraca Holding, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding.

Erdogan said that starting from 2021, Turkey will start exporting domestic cars to the neighboring countries.

The Turkish president added that it is also planned to create a special commission, which will supervise the production of domestic cars.

Turkey ranks sixth in Europe in car production. Models of Ford, FIAT, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Opel, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and MAN are currently assembled in Turkey.

Moreover, Turkey manufactures local brands of buses, such as BMC, Temsa and Otokar.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
By PTI: (Eds: correcting dateline)

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) The CPI(M) today urged the government to establish close relations with Nepal without interfering in the internal affairs of the neighbouring country.

Reacting to the recent victory of Left parties in Nepal, former general secretary Prakash Karat said the development should lead to a "re-thinking and change in India?s attitude to Nepal".

advertisement

In an editorial in the forthcoming edition of party organ Peoples Democracy, he said relations between the two countries should be based on equality.

"The important political development in Nepal should lead to a re-thinking and change in India?s attitude to Nepal. The Modi government should strive to establish close relations of cooperation based on equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of Nepal," Karat wrote.

It said the big victory of the Communist alliance would have its "repercussions in South Asia too", and observed that the "Indian government should recognise the reality that Nepal would like to maintain cordial relations with both India and China ? its two big neighbours".

India should not view Nepal?s assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion, it said.

"Like the rest of South Asia, Nepal too intends to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. India should not view Nepal?s assertion of an independent foreign policy with suspicion but work towards strengthening the natural affinity historically and culturally ordained between Nepal and India," Karat emphasised.

The editorial also criticised the Modi governments moves in 2015 relating to an economic blockade sparked by the Madhesi agitation in Nepal.

The Centre should take positive measures to assist Nepal?s economic development and build on the two countries common cultural heritage, he said.

Extending full support to the Nepali Communists, he said the Left alliance government in Kathmandu has the "golden opportunity" of implementing a Left-oriented programme for economic and social progress to provide a better life to the people of Nepal. PTI CSN

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) BDS

--- ENDS ---
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 18

By Diana Aliyeva  Trend:

Uzbekistan plans to reconsider the existing agreements and sign new ones for international road haulage with countries along the routes that ensure access of Uzbek goods to foreign markets and to the oceans of the world, the norma.uz portal reported.

Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, China, Spain, Iran, France, Estonia are among these countries, according to the report.

To this end, a package of documents is currently being developed by the Uzbek Agency for Road and River Transport in conjunction with interested ministries and departments.

The purpose of adopting these regulatory and legal documents is to improve business environment for road haulers, especially those that ensure access for Uzbek goods to international markets.

Uzbek national haulers will be allowed to transport cargo through the Kamchik Pass, regardless of the life of trucks.

It is planned to exempt foreign haulers crossing the state border of Uzbekistan with Tajikistan from additional fees for entry and transit, established in 2008.

It is planned to carry out a set of measures to implement the agreement on creating favorable conditions for international road haulage among the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states.

The rules for transporting cargo by road in Uzbekistan will be amended. This is related to the implementation of the agreement on international transportation of perishable foodstuffs.

Filling stations located along the international highways of Uzbekistan will be provided with fuel which meets Euro 4 emissions standards or higher.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

Uzbekistan and Belarus plan to sign a new intergovernmental agreement on economic cooperation, designed for the period until 2028. This was announced after the meeting of the joint intergovernmental commission in Minsk on Dec.20.

The previous agreement, which expires on Dec.31, 2017, envisaged the implementation of a specific program of economic cooperation between the two countries. Then the parties agreed to bring the trade turnover up to $1 billion. Despite the announced plans, it continues to fluctuate around $100 million.

The new agreement is expected to be drafted before February 2018.

"In 2016-2017, we managed to identify areas of cooperation across all sectors that allow us to say that by 2020 we will be able to achieve a turnover of $500 million. Today, we signed a Road Map for 2018, which outlined areas in which we will develop cooperation. This covers machine building, agro-industrial complex, construction and production of building materials, healthcare, production of medical products," Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Mikhail Rusy said.

During the meeting of the intergovernmental commission, the parties also discussed issues of further development of industrial cooperation, as well as interaction in science and technology, health, education, tourism and other areas.

In addition to the Road Map, a memorandum of understanding was signed on cooperation between the Ministry of Industry of Belarus and Uzeltehsanoat on joint activities in the electrical industry.
Details added (first version posted on 11:53)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

Azerbaijan will have its own investment bank, the director of AzFinance investment company Abid Mammadov said at the event Capital Markets in 2018.

His pointed out that the creation of an investment bank is one of the main goals of AzFinance.

"We plan to establish the country's first investment bank in 2018, or at the latest, in 2019, Mammadov said.The more we work with the market, the more often we see the demand in it. Investment bank will play a big role in this development. "

He added that people are gradually moving away from traditional financial instruments and are looking for new directions for investment.

"Until 2014, people considered two key tools for investment, namely, bank deposits and real estate investments. Today, people dont want to use standard investments. The reason is that today the real estate market is no longer experiencing the boom that was observed a few years ago, and the interest on deposits is not so attractive," Mammadov said.

"Companies that are looking for alternative means of financing also show interest. Therefore, the need for an investment bank is growing," Mammadov said.

The investment bank is a financial institution that organizes capital raising in the world financial markets for governments and large companies, as well as provides consulting services for the purchase and sale of business, brokerage services.

It is the leading intermediary in the trading of stocks and bonds, derivatives, currencies and commodities, as well as issuing analytical reports on all markets on which it operates.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkey intends to export domestic cars to the world market after mass car production is launched, the Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology told Trend Dec. 21.

The Turkish domestic cars will be able to compete with those of the world's leading car manufacturers, the ministry said.

"The establishment of the production of domestic cars in Turkey and export of domestic cars to the world markets contribute to the development of the Turkish economy and the automotive industry," the ministry said.

The ministry said that the export of domestic cars to the world markets is one of the most important priorities for Turkey.

The production of four car models is planned to be launched as part of the program of domestic car production in Turkey, the countrys Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology told Trend earlier.

At least 600 cars will account for 1,000 people after the domestic car production is launched in Turkey.

The prices for a new domestic car will correspond to the purchasing power of the Turkish population.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the names of companies that will take part in manufacturing of domestic cars.

He noted that those companies are Anadolu Grubu, BMC, Kiraca Holding, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding.

The president stressed that the domestic car production in Turkey will strengthen the country's economy.

Erdogan said that Turkey will start to export domestic cars to the neighboring countries from 2021.

The Turkish president added that a special commission, which will supervise the production of domestic cars, is also planned to be set up.

Turkey ranks sixth in Europe in car production. Models of Ford, FIAT, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Opel, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and MAN are currently assembled in Turkey.

Moreover, Turkey manufactures local brands of buses, such as BMC, Temsa and Otokar.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

Kyrgyzstan's Air Manas will launch flights en route Bishkek-Tashkent-Bishkek.

The flights will be operated twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays from Dec. 23, 2017 to March 24, 2018.

Flight schedule (departure and arrival, local time)

 Bishkek-Tashkent - 12: 30-12: 30

 Tashkent-Bishkek - 14: 00-16: 05

The price of an one way economy class ticket is about $110.

Currently, Uzbekistan Airways operates flights from Tashkent to Bishkek twice a week.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will provide a financial package of up to $30 million to JSCB Hamkorbank, Uzbekistan's largest privately-owned commercial bank.

The loan will facilitate better access to finance for small private businesses (SMEs) and promote trade operations in Uzbekistan and the region.

The transaction will consist of a $ 20 million loan to Hamkorbank to support its lending operations with local micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

In addition, the EBRD will also provide a limit of up to $10 million under its Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP) to assist Hamkorbanks international trade transactions, widen correspondent banking network and strengthen its trade finance product range .

With a network of 32 branches and 177 service outlets across the country, Hamkorbank is well positioned to provide much-needed finance to smaller businesses in Uzbekistan, especially in rural areas.

Alkis Vyrenios Drakinos, EBRD Head of Uzbekistan, said: We have known Hamkorbank for almost two decades and we are very pleased to resume our cooperation with the financial institution. It is a well-established bank, which will deliver in areas of the economy where support is required the most.

The TFP promotes international trade to, from, and within the Banks countries of operations, including Uzbekistan. Through the Programme, the EBRD provides guarantees to international confirming banks, taking the political and commercial payment risk of international trade transactions undertaken by banks in these countries. The Programme supported over 20,000 trade finance transactions totalling 15 billion across the EBRD region.

The EBRD is the largest institutional investor in Central Asia, with close to 11.6 billion (US$ 12.3 billion) committed to projects in a variety of sectors, from infrastructure to agriculture, with a focus on private sector development.

Between 1992 and 2010, the EBRD invested 894 million in Uzbekistan in 54 projects. Since its reengagement in 2017, the Bank has identified several new projects in the country, some of which have already been signed or are due to be signed by the end of 2017, with more to follow in 2018.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Year 2017 turned out to be successful to some extent for the Azerbaijani banking sector, President of the Azerbaijan Banks Association (ABA) Zakir Nuriyev said at a ceremony to award banks and their partners in Baku Dec. 21.

Nuriyev added that despite 2017 was rather difficult, the measures that allow achieving the future goals were successfully implemented this year.

He stressed that this year banks have been able to restore their capital and the number of bank employees is growing again.

The awarding ceremony titled "Bank Awards" was held in Baku Dec. 21. Representatives of banks, the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), and media outlets attended the event.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.21

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is considering allocation of 500 million euros loan for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project, said a message from the Bank.

The project has passed concept review and is now pending structure review.

The beneficiary of the loan is TAP AG consortium.

Aside from EBRD, the European Investment Bank (EIB) will also discuss the allocation of 1.5 billion euros loan for TAP in February 2018.

TAP worth 4.5 billion euros is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

The pipeline will connect to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italys south.

TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers).

TAPs shareholding is comprised of BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.21

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing its first corporate loan in local currency manat to the Azerbaijani company METAK, a leading producer and trader of plastic and metallic pipes, said a message from the Bank.

The funds, the manat equivalent of 8 million euros, will support the companys expansion plans.

Founded in 1997 as a trading company, METAK successfully moved into production and has become one of the leading companies in steel and plastic pipes in Azerbaijan.

The EBRD loan will support METAKs expansion in response to growing market demand, helping to strengthen the companys position and develop its competitiveness, said the message.

METAK plans to increase its production capacity by expanding to the cities of Sumgait and Balakhany, which will include the construction of a brand new manufacturing facility.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in October 2017 between the EBRD and the National Bank of Azerbaijan for lending to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in local currency and this is the first deal under that new EBRD facility.

We are very happy to continue supporting the development of the manufacturing and services sector in Azerbaijan. With our long-term local currency financing and strong expertise, the EBRD will help Metak to further strengthen its competitiveness as well as contribute to the diversification of the local economy, Ivana Fernandes Duarte, EBRD Head of Azerbaijan.

The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Azerbaijan. Since the start of its operations in the country, the Bank has invested over $2.8 billion in 163 projects in the financial, corporate, infrastructure and energy sectors, with 58 percent of those investments in the private sector.

---
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Huseyn Valiyev  Trend:

An innovative contest will be held in Azerbaijan annually.

A corresponding memorandum on this was signed by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, the Ministry of Economy, the National Academy of Sciences and the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations Dec. 21.

The document was signed in Baku during an event of the Ministry of Economy and the UN representative office in Azerbaijan.
By PTI: (EDS: Adding HCs observations)

Panaji, Dec 20 (PTI) In a setback to Tehelkas former editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal, the Bombay High Court today dismissed his petition seeking quashing of rape and other charges levelled against him by a former woman colleague.

Turning down the plea, Justice Nutan Sardessai of the Goa bench of the high court observed that no case whatsoever is made out for interference in the decision of the trial court to frame charges against Tejpal, who has been accused of raping the woman during an event in Goa in 2013.

advertisement

Tejpal had moved a petition before the HC against the framing of charges under various sections, including those related to rape, against him by the District and Sessions Court at Mapusa.

The court had framed charges against Tejpal under IPC sections 354-A (sexual harassment), 376 (rape) and 376(2)(k) (rape of a woman by a person being in the position of control or dominance over the woman), and began the trial last month.

The crime branch later added to the case IPC sections 341 (wrongful restraint) and 342 (wrongful confinement), 376 (2)(f) (person in the position of trust or authority over women, committing rape of such women), 376 C (sexual intercourse by person in authority) and 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty)

"In view thereof, no case whatsoever is made out for interference therewith and hence, the revision petition is dismissed," Justice Sardessai said in the 27-page order.

Justice Sardessai had reserved the order on Tejpals plea on December 12 after hearing the arguments made by his lawyer Aman Lekhi and special public prosecutor Saresh Lotlikar.

Lekhi had then presented before the HC CCTV footage of the area outside the lift of a five-star hotel, where he is alleged to have sexually assaulted the woman.

Lotlikar had contended that the charges against Tejpal should not be dismissed without trial.

"Findings of the learned Judge do not warrant any interference in revision on the premise that the order is either incorrect, illegal or lacking in propriety as to exercise the powers vested in this court. There was sufficient material on record to frame charge against the accused," the order said.

Referring to the argument made by Tejpals lawyer that there was an inconsistency in the version of victim and other witnesses, Justice Sardessai said, "It was not appropriate to do so at the stage of framing of charges against him.

"On a proper appreciation of the material at large, the findings rendered by the learned judge and the various judgements on the point, the impugned order cannot be attacked on the ground of illegality, correctness or perversity," it said.

advertisement

The alleged rape occurred inside the lift of a five-star hotel near Panaji during ThinkFest 2013 held on November 8-10.

Tejpals plea for anticipatory bail was rejected on November 30, 2013 following which he was arrested.

HeAwas lodged in the Sada sub-jail at Vasco and the crime branch charge-sheeted him on February 17, 2014 for rape, sexual harassment and outraging the modesty of the victim.

On May 19, 2014 the Supreme Court granted Tejpal interim bail for three weeks to attend the final rites of his mother. The interim bail was later extended to six weeks.

On July 1, 2014 the apex court granted him bail.

Earlier, on June 16, 2017 the trial court at Mapusa heard the arguments in-camera before framing the charges.

On September 7, the district court in Mapusa refused to drop the charges against Tejpal, following which he moved the high court bench here.

Tejpal had sought a stay on the framing of charges against him till the time the high court decided his plea on dropping the charges.

advertisement

On September 26, the high court refused to stay the framing of charges against him, and issued a notice to the Goa government seeking its response to his plea.

On December 12, the high court had reserved its order on his petition seeking the quashing of rape and other charges against him, without specifying the date.

At the last hearing, Lekhi argued that the charges were without considering the material evidence on record, which he claimed, "shows that the prosecutrix was not restrained, confined or her modesty was outraged by the applicant (Tejpal)".

He said after the alleged incident, she was with Tejpal in the same lift for the second time the next day without showing any sign of distress.

The lawyer also claimed that the investigating officer had failed to examine several crucial witnesses named by the prosecutrix in her statement.

The investigating officer had also withheld the CCTV footage from the applicant, who got it following a Supreme Court order, Lekhi said. PTI RPS GK NSK SK

--- ENDS ---
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21



By Husein Valiyev - Trend:



NaaSAT team of the National Academy of Aviation of Azerbaijan received an invitation to a regular international contest CanSat (Student Satellite), Akbar Aliyev, the Academy teacher, design engineer told Trend.



The contest will take place on June 08-10, 2018 in Tarleton State University located in Stephenville (Texas, US).



NaaSAT team first participated in this contest in 2016, ranking 31-st among 40 participating teams. In 2017 the team ranked 13th.



According to Aliyev, unlike the last year's contest, the technical selection criteria have been amended this year.



"Previously held two contests saw launch of a missile, a container detaching from the missile, and a glider smoothly descending from it and further monitoring; this time, a missile is expected to put a micro-satellite onto specific altitude. The satellite then should be parachuting with simultaneous monitoring," Aliyev explained.



"The conditions require that the micro-satellite descend at a specific speed to 400 m and only after that change the speed. This year the participants are expected to meet requirements for smooth descending. To test it, an egg will be placed inside a micro-satellite, and it should land smoothly, not to break the egg," he said.



When descending, a micro-satellite will measure flight altitude, wind speed, air parameters (temperature, pressure, and composition), air-photograph directed by signals from the earth. Collected flight and atmospheric data will be sent to an earth-based station with the software developed by a team.
China will finance the reconstruction and rehabilitation of 60 streets of the city of Bishkek, Kabar with reference to the press service of the Ministry of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic reported.

Minister of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic Artem Novikov met with Chinese Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic Xiao Qinghua.

During the meeting, the parties discussed issues of bilateral cooperation, including the promotion of agricultural products to the Chinese market, the transfer of excess capacities to Kyrgyzstan, cooperation under the One Belt, One Road initiative.

Also, the Exchange letters were signed between the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Government of the People's Republic of China on the implementation of the Development of the Bishkek Road Network project (Phase 2).

On behalf of the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic, the document by Minister Novikov, on behalf of the Chinese government, Ambassador Xiao Qingua.

Within the second phase of the Development of the Bishkek street-road network project, 60 sections of the roads in Bishkek with a total length of about 74 km will be rehabilitated and reconstructed.

The project will be implemented through free technical and economic assistance to the Government of the PRC to the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic. The total cost of the project is 278 million 730 thousand yuan.

Earlier on June 20, 2016, Exchange letters were signed between the Governments of the Kyrgyz Republic and the PRC on the implementation of the first phase of the project "Development of the Bishkek Road Network". At present, the first phase of the project is underway, where 49 streets are reconstructed and rehabilitated, with a total length of about 100 km. Funds for the implementation of the first phase of the project were allocated by the Government of the PRC in the form of free technical and economic assistance in the amount of 481 million yuan.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan Sirojidin Aslov received today the Head and the Country Manager of World Bank Office in Tajikistan Jan-Peter Olters, Khovar reports.

A statement by the Tajik MFA Information Department indicated that during the meeting, the sides exchanged views on key areas of the World Banks Country Partnership Framework with the country for 2018-2023.

The sides also discussed further ways to strengthen cooperation in achieving sustainable development in the country.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Dec. 21

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The State Migration Service of Turkmenistan hosted a meeting with the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Turkmenistan Elena Panova, the Service said in a message.

It should be especially noted during the meeting that Turkmenistan attaches great importance and actively participates in the implementation of global plans and UN sustainable development goals on migration issues until 2024, says the message.

The sides noted the importance of the humanitarian action carried out by the Turkmen side in honor of the International Day of Neutrality - the admission of new citizens to the Turkmen citizenship.

It was noted that the executive committee of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as the International Organization for Migration, gave the same assessment to this event.

It should be noted that 1,690 people became Turkmen citizens in honor of the International Day of Neutrality  December 12, 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:

Asian countries remain the main destination of Iran's non-oil exports (including gas condensates), despite the fact that two years have passed since the removal of the international sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Under the sanctions, the Islamic Republic shifted its trade eastward, and expanded economic ties with countries such as China and India.

The latest data released by Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI), shows that over 65 percent of Iran's export was targeted to five Asian countries, including China, Iraq, the UAE, South Korea and Afghanistan during the first eight months of the current fiscal year (started March 20).

China, Irans traditional trade partner from the sanctions period, has maintained its position as the Islamic Republics top trade partner in the period.

Over 20 percent of Irans non-oil exports went to China in the first eight months of the current fiscal year (March 20-Nov. 22). During the period, Iran exported $5.748 billion worth of goods to China, 14 percent more, compared to the same period of the preceding year.

Iran also exported $4.351 billion worth of goods to Iraq, which marked 15.3 percent of Iran's total exports value. Irans exports to Iraq registered a rise by 7 percent.

The UAE ($3.893 billion), South Korea (with $2.747 billion), Afghanistan ($1.849 billion), India ($1.782 billion), Turkey ($1.412 billion), Pakistan ($544 million), Thailand ($383 million), Oman ($368 million), Indonesia ($361 million), Taiwan ($335 million), Turkmenistan ($294 million), Azerbaijan ($292 million) and Japan($286 million) were the other top importers of Iranian goods.

The exports to Turkey, which was fourth target of Irans non-oil exports last fiscal year, had registered a huge fall by 46 percent.

The countrys exports to the UAE, Japan and Oman also registered fall of 19, 62 and 11 percent. Irans exports to India and Turkmenistan also witnessed a fall by 6 and 17 percent, respectively in terms of value, year on year.

Meanwhile, exports to Indonesia and Thailand witnessed rise by 293 and 85 percent, respectively.

Irans exports to South Korea and Afghanistan had also increased by 28 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Two European countries, Italy and Germany were the only European countries, which took place among the top 20 destinations of Irans non-oil exports.

Germany imported $202 million worth of goods from Iran in the 8-month period and stood at 19th place, meanwhile Italy ranked 17th with $249 million worth of imports.

Irans exports to Germany witnessed a rise by 13 percent in terms of value, however Italys imports from the Islamic Republic decreased by 32 percent.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Azer Ahmadbayli  Trend:

In a few days a piece of railway line Astara (Iran)  Astara (Azerbaijan) connecting the two countries railway networks is scheduled to be commissioned.

For Iran, launching of the cross-border corridor is one of the milestones in the way of implementation of several projects aimed at turning Iran into a transit country between Asia and Europe. The corridor can rightfully be called one of the most essential external railway links, giving Iran an overland access to the North  Russia and the Northern Europe.

Construction activities of the 10 km corridor began in 2016. The piece of the line begins on territory of Azerbaijan at a distance of 8.3 km from the state border with Iran, and then extends 1.4 km to Irans Astara. The whole work also includes the construction of a bridge on Astarachay River that stretches along the border.

Azerbaijan invested about $60 million in construction of the railway corridor connecting two homonymous cities, as well as in the construction of a railway station and cargo terminals in Irans territory.

In total, four terminals should be built for the cargo storage - container, general cargo, oil and grain. At the first stage, it is planned to launch two terminals - container and general cargo.

It is planned that Azerbaijan will have the right to operate the Astara-Astara line and a railway station in Irans Astara for 15 years as well as the terminals located in Irans Astara, for 25 years.

Azerbaijan also agreed to annually transit up to 2 million tons of freight through the corridor.

In November, an agreement was reached to send a container train from Irans Astara to Vorsino station near Moscow once the construction of the railway corridor is completed.

However, the significance of the short cross-border railway line is not limited by forecasted mutual growth of trade between Iran and Azerbaijan. It is a part of a greater 7200-km trade route from India to Finland (port Helsinki).

After launching the Astara-Astara cross-border line the construction of the 165 km long Astara-Rasht segment on the territory of Iran will remain the only missing link of the whole North-South project. Azerbaijan has allocated a $500-million loan to Iran for purchasing plots of land and construction activities, which are planned to be completed by 2020.

When goods from India travel to Europe by traditional sea route via Suez and Mediterranean and up to the North Sea in 45 days, the North-South route via Iran will take twice less time.
A suspect is dead and an unarmed security officer sustained very serious injuries after they were shot at the psychiatric emergency services wing of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, according to Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac, US media reports.

The suspect, who has not been identified, either entered or attempted to enter the wing when they started to fire shots, Isaac said during a press conference Wednesday.. The security officer was shot and was taken into surgery with injuries described as very serious.

The shooter fired additional shots, including at least one in the direction of a Cincinnati police officer responding to the call, Isaac said. The officer was not hit and did not return fire.

The shooter then turned the gun on themselves and was pronounced dead from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound, investigators said.

The injured security officer was unarmed and is not affiliated with the University of Cincinnati Police nor the Cincinnati Police Department, Isaac said.
America is drawing up plans for a bloody nose military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons programme, The Telegraph understands.

The White House has dramatically stepped up preparation for a military solution in recent months amid fears diplomacy is not working, well-placed sources said.

One option is destroying a launch site before it is used by the regime for a new missile test. Stockpiles of weapons could also be targeted.

The hope is that military force would show Kim Jong-un that America is serious about stopping further nuclear development and trigger negotiations.

Three sources - two former US officials familiar with current thinking and a third figure in the administration - confirmed military options were being worked up.
The wreck of Australia's first naval submarine has been found after a 103-year search, BBC reports.

The HMAS AE-1 was the first Allied submarine lost in World War I, vanishing off Rabaul, Papua New Guinea with 35 Australian and British crewmates onboard in 1914.

The thirteenth search mission for the vessel found it in waters off the Duke of York islands in Papua New Guinea.

The discovery solves Australia's oldest naval mystery, the government said.
11:52 (GMT+4) Two men were arrested after the car in which they were travelling crashed into pedestrians on a busy Melbourne street Thursday, leaving up to 19 people injured, Associated Press reports.

The motive of the incident was not clear immediately. Sky News reported police arrested the driver of the white Suzuki SUV that plowed into the crowd and another man who was in the vehicle with him.

Sky News said the driver was of Middle Eastern appearance and that he was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed after his vehicle crashed into a bollard by a cable car stop around 4:40 p.m.

Witnesses told Sky News the car ran a red light, speeded up and struck pedestrians on Flinders Street in the Melbourne central business district.

"As it (the car) approached this intersection ... it just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere," one witness who identified herself only as Sue told radio station 3AW.

Victorian state police said in a statement they had "saturated the ... area in the vicinity of Flinders, Elizabeth and Swanston streets to ensure community safety."

The area was busy with Christmas shoppers at the time of the incident.

10:49 (GMT+4) Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that plowed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection in the southern city of Melbourne, with as many as 12 people injured, Reuters reports.

Police in Australias second-largest city did not give any possible motive for the incident, which had chilling echoes of a similar case when four people were killed and more than 20 injured in the same city in January.

Ambulance Victoria said in a statement it was assessing 12 people at the scene. Two people had been taken to hospital, including a pre-school child with a head injury.

Australian media outlets put the number of injured between 5 and 16, although police had not yet put a figure on how many people had been hurt. Major streets in cities such as Melbourne and Sydney have been packed with holiday shoppers this week.

Extent of injuries are not known at this stage, Victorian state police said of Thursdays incident on their official Twitter account.

Police said the January incident was not terror-related, although it led to Melbourne and other cities ramping up security measures in pedestrian areas in major cities.

That incident followed a series of terror-related attacks in Europe where vehicles were used to mow down pedestrians.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) The Delhi High Court today raised doubts over a north Delhi-based ashrams claims that the female inmates there were not illegally confined, saying that if they were free, why were they being kept behind locked doors.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar asked why the ashrams founder and spiritual head was not making an appearance if he was genuine and honest.

advertisement

"Where is he? This inquiry (by the CBI) into the ashram, where girls and women were allegedly kept in illegal confinement will throw him in suspicion, if he does not appear," the bench said and sought his appearance before the CBI.

The counsel for the ashram, however, told the bench that its founder was not in Delhi and he has sent the message about the courts order through someone else.

Irked over the counsels statement, the court wished to know about the whereabouts of Virender Dev Dixit, referred to as the founder and spiritual head of the Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya in North Delhis Rohini.

It directed the counsel to give information about Dixit by tomorrow, while cautioning him not to act as proxy between the founder and the court.

The bench also enquired into the financial details of the ashram and sought to know from where they were getting funds to run the institution.

It asked the ashrams lawyer, who claimed that he was not representing Dixit, that "if you are claiming that the inmates are free, then why are you controlling their movements?

"Why are you controlling, how they should dress? Why are you not allowing them to meet their parents? Why does your ashram look like a fortress and why are there metal doors, grills and locks at every five feet interval," the bench asked.

It asked why the women are not being allowed to move out of the ashram.

Yesterday the high court had directed the CBI to probe the alleged illegal confinement of girls and women in the ashram where, it was claimed, they were kept in "animal-like" conditions behind metal doors in a "fortress" surrounded by barbed wire.

Taking note of the "seriousness and the sensitivity of the matter", the bench had asked the CBI director to forthwith constitute a special investigation team (SIT) which will take charge of all the records and documents pertaining to the case.

The court has passed the order on the PIL filed by NGO Foundation for Social Empowerment, which informed the court that several minors and women were allegedly being illegally confined at the "spiritual university" here and were not allowed to meet their parents.

advertisement

Moved by the issued, the high court immediately set up a committee, comprising lawyers and Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal, to inspect the premises of the institute.

The committee, comprising lawyers Ajay Verma and Nandita Rao, gave a report detailing the "horrible" living conditions of the over 100 girls and women who were housed in "animal- like conditions with no privacy even for bathing".

The panel, which had again inspected the ashram and its adjoining building, submitted today that over 30 mobile phones were seized and they want the court to order sealing of a room where they found trunks and other documents containing "serious evidence".

The bench said since the CBI is now seized of the issue, they should investigate it.

During the hearing the bench was informed by the ashram that that there were over 168 females living in the premises.

It was informed by Delhi polices standing counsel Rahul Mehra that the Delhi governments health department has set up a medical board, which will soon visit both the premises in question to medically examine all the inmates to ensure their well-being. PTI PPS HMP RT

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
The PCG main headquarters in Manila received a report at 11 a.m. from Coast Guard Station Northern Quezon that the ship, identified as Mercraft 3, went down in the vicinity, Manila Bulletin reports.

Capt. Armand Balilo, spokesman of the PCG, said Mercraft 3 departed from Ungos Port in Real, Quezon and was en route to Polillo Island when the maritime incident occurred.

As per initial information received, said sea craft has a maximum capacity of 286 passengers and 251 were reportedly on board, said Balilo

Search and rescue (SAR) operations are still ongoing for the passengers and crew of Mercraft 3. The cause of the sinking remains unclear.

The Coast Guard has dispatched rescue teams from Southern Luzon to Real, Quezon.

At the same time, the maritime agency also coordinated with the Armed Forces of the Philippines Southern Luzon Command in Lucena, Quezon for the deployment of its air and maritime assets for the SAR mission.

Balilo also said PCGs multi-role response vessels were about to depart from Manila to participate in the search and rescue operations.
At least five labourers were killed after the boiler at of a private sugar mill in northwest Bihars Gopalganj district exploded on Wednesday night, Hindustan Times reports.

Nine more labourers sustained serious burn injuries in the explosion at the Sasa Musa private sugar mill, 143 km northwest of state capital Patna.

Three of the injured have been airlifted to Patna by two helicopters in view of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-sponsored Bihar bandh in protest against the state governments mineral policy and sand crisis. They have been admitted to Patna Medical College Hospital.

The remaining six injured have been taken to Gorakhpur in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh for treatment.

Police said three of those killed had been identified as Arjun Kumar Kushwaha, Kripa Yadav and Mohammad Shahsuddin, said police.

Gopalganj superintendent of police Mrityunjay Kumar Chowdhary said mill owner Mahmood Ali and his two sons had been detained for safety reasons after angry people went on the rampage on the factory campus. He said the mob also attacked Alis house and set on fire a vehicle parked there.

Work was in full swing when the boiler exploded. At least 100 workers were on duty at the time of the incident and the toll could mount as many workers were still trapped inside the mill. Personnel of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) have been pressed into service to rescue the trapped mill workers.

Locals said they heard a loud blast around 11.35 pm. Overheating of the boiler could be the reason for the explosion, they said.

Arun Kumar Kushwaha, brother of one of the victims, said a pipe of the mill boiler had exploded a few days ago also but it was later repaired.

Perhaps, lack of proper maintenance and inspection was the reason behind the incident. There had been demands in the past to change worn-out parts of machine and deploy experts, but to no avail, while minor mishaps kept taking place, he added

Chief minister Nitish Kumar has ordered an inquiry into the incident and announced compensation of Rs 4 lakh each to the family of victims. The inquiry will be conducted by principal secretaries of sugarcane industries and labour resource departments, S Sidharth and Dipak Kumar Singh, respectively.

Meanwhile, RJD chief Lalu Prasad has expressed grief over death of five persons in the boiler blast. While appealing to people to maintain calm, Prasad asked the administration to speed up the rescue work and ensure proper treatment of the injured.
A free trade deal with the European Union would boost Japans gross domestic product (GDP) by 1 percent annually once the benefits fully kick in over 10-20 years, a government estimate showed on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been promoting free trade as a pillar of his growth strategy. Japan and the EU, which concluded negotiations on the trade pact, hope that it will go into effect early 2019, media reports say.

The Cabinet office estimated that the trade pact would lift Japans GDP by 5 trillion yen ($44 billion) per year, or about 1 percent, and create an additional 290,000 jobs, according to the estimate by the Cabinet Office.

However, Japans farmers would be hit as tariffs on wheat, beef and other food imports will be slashed, intensifying competition with domestic producers. The Cabinet office estimated that domestic farm production would drop by 60 billion to 110 billion.

The deal will remove the EUs 10 percent tariffs on Japanese cars and 3 percent typically applied to car parts.

The agreement will also scrap Japanese duties of 30 percent on EU cheese and 15 percent on wines as well as allowing it to increase its beef and pork exports.

The Cabinet Office also estimated the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership - which requires more works after the United States pulled out of it early this year - would boost Japans GDP by about 1.5 percent annually, or 8 trillion yen, and create 460,000 jobs.

In November, the countries remaining in the TPP agreed on the core elements to move ahead without the United States but more work need to be done before it is finalised.

The Cabinet Office also showed the TPP 11 would cut Japans farm production by 90 billion to 150 billion yen.

In 2015, the government predicted the 12-nation TPP, including the U.S., would increase Japans GDP by 2.6 percent, or 13.6 trillion yen, and would add 795,000 jobs. It would also lower farm output by as much as 210 billion yen.

Japans economy grew an annualized 2.5 percent in the third quarter to mark a seventh straight quarter of expansion thanks to a business spending splurge and buoyant exports.
Russia will grant Turkey a loan to partially finance Ankaras purchase of S-400 air defense missile systems, with deliveries expected to begin in late 2019 - early 2020, Russian presidential aide for military and technical cooperation Vladimir Kozhin said on Thursday, TASS reported.

"All the issues have been resolved and I discussed this theme while literally entering this hall. The contract is entering the implementation stage actually in coming days. A part of the contract will be paid for by the Turkish side and the other part will be covered by a loan granted by the Russian side," the presidential aide said.

"The deliveries will begin in late 2019 - early 2020," he added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in September that Ankara had inked a deal with Moscow on the purchase of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems and had made an advance payment.

Chief Executive of Russias state hi-tech corporation Rostec Sergei Chemezov told TASS on November 2 that the deal for the delivery of S-400 air defense missile systems to Turkey was worth over $2 billion.

Russias S-400 Triumf is the latest long-range antiaircraft missile system that went into service in 2007. It is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles, and can also be used against ground objectives.

The S-400 can engage targets at a distance of 400 km and at an altitude of up to 30 km.

Russian Aerospace Force Deputy Commander-in-Chief Viktor Gumyonny said in April that missiles capable of destroying targets in outer space had started arriving for the S-400 systems.
A second North Korean soldier in as many months defected across the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas, according to South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bloomberg reports.

The low-ranking soldier crossed without incident at around 8 a.m. Thursday. Last month, another soldier was shot as he crossed near the Joint Security Area - the only part of the demilitarized zone where forces from both countries stand face-to-face.

That defection was only the third across the heavily guarded JSA since 1998. Escapes like Thursdays across a less sensitive area of the border are more common. Four soldiers have defected south this year.
The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution that rejects US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Sputnik reported.

The UN General Assembly passed the resolution by a vote of 128 to 9 with 35 countries abstaining. The resolution condemns both US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as well as Washington's decision to move its embassy to the ancient city.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said before the vote to those at the meeting that Washington, the largest contributor to the international body, will remember the voting day.

Earlier the day, President Donald Trump threatened to withhold US aid to countries that voted in favor of the General Assembly resolution but stopped short of warning that US contributions to the United Nations itself would also be at stake.

On Monday, the US vetoed the UN Security Council resolution that called on Trump to reverse his decision on Jerusalem, while 14 states supported the document drafted by Egypt.
A US-drafted UN Security Council resolution is aimed at prohibiting nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum product exports to North Korea and the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad, Sputnik reported.

The draft resolution was circulated to the 15-member council on Thursday and could be voted on as early as Friday, diplomats said.

Still, it is not clear how China would vote, traditionally a draft resolution on North Korea is not given to the full council until it has been agreed by Beijing and Washington.

However, earlier today it was reported that three sources, including two former US officials and a figure in the Trump administration, confirmed to The Telegraph that military options of the North Korea's crisis resolution were being considered in the White House.

Previuosly, on December, 15 US State Secretary Rex Tillerson attended a UN Security Council ministerial meeting, where he reiterated calls on all member states to work together and maintain maximum pressure on Pyongyang to bring its nuclear and ballistic missile programs to an end.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

A bus carrying students has overturned in Turkeys Konya province in the south-west of the country, the Turkish media reported Dec. 21.

Eighteen students were injured in the road accident. All of them were taken to the nearest hospitals.

A criminal case has been launched, investigation is underway.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Fifty-five members of the Islamic State terrorist group (IS) were detained as a result of special operation in Turkeys Istanbul and Izmir, the Turkish media reported Dec. 21.

Forty-five of the detainees are foreigners and their citizenship is not disclosed. The detained foreigners will be deported from Turkey.

Previously, on Dec. 1, sixty-two foreigners, who are members of the IS terrorist group, were detained in Istanbul.

The Istanbul police said that 117 operations were conducted in Istanbul against the IS members from August 2016 to August 2017, as a result of which over 1,000 people were detained.

It was also reported that 940 people were deported from Turkey as part of the fight against the IS during the reporting period.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 21

Trend:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomes the UN General Assembly's clear-cut rejection of a U.S. decision on Jerusalems status.

Erdogan wrote on Twitter: "We welcome with great pleasure the UN General Assemblys overwhelming support for a historic resolution on Al-Quds Al-Sharif."

We expect the Trump administration to rescind without further delay its unfortunate decision, whose illegality has been clearly established by UNGA, Erdogan added.

The UN on Thursday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on Jerusalem, calling on the U.S. to withdraw its recognition of the city as Israel's capital, despite threats by the U.S. President Donald Trump to cut aid to those countries who voted against the move.

A total of 128 members voted in favor of the resolution, nine countries voted against and 35 others abstained.
The Janki Ghat Bada Sthan temple in Ayodhya has installed a heater for its deity, its Mahant Janmey Sharan says.

The Janki Ghat Bada Sthan temple in Ayodhya has installed a heater for god, its Mahant says. (Photo: Twitter/ANI)

By India Today Web Desk: As the mercury dips across northern India, its residents are thankful for their heaters and geysers - there's nothing like a hot, steaming bath to beat the bone-numbing cold.

But they're not alone. In Ayodhya, the deity at the Janki Ghat Bada Sthan temple is getting a 'jal-abhishek' with hot water, its Mahant has told the news agency ANI.

advertisement

The temple installed a heater "keeping in view (the) intense cold weather," ANI quoted Mahant Janmey Sharan as saying.

"Heater installed for god at Janki Ghat Bada Sthan temple in #Ayodhya, Jalabhishek with hot water keeping in view intense cold weather" says Mahant Janmejay Sharan #UttarPradesh pic.twitter.com/DuessgMorV- ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 21, 2017

Just two days ago, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad asked that the deity in Ayodhya's Ram Lalla be provided with "woollen clothes, quilt and a room heater so that he can counter the cold weather," PTI reported.

The Hindu god Ram symbolises faith and devotion for crores of people across the world, and looking after him is the responsibility of all devotees, VHP regional media in-charge Sharad Sharma said.

WATCH | 25 years after Babri Masjid demolition, Ayodhya still battles for development

--- ENDS ---
Magic Leap unveiled a new "creator edition" product on Wednesday, lifting the veil of secrecy around one of the most mysterious unicorn start-ups. The product, called "Magic Leap One: Creator Edition," appears to be a stand-alone mixed-reality headset called "Lightwear" with a portable power and processing pack (which looks somewhat like a Discman player) and remote. The portal is coming early in 2018, according to the company's website. There doesn't appear to be a way to preorder yet  the website prompts users to sign up for an email list.

The Florida-based mixed-reality start-up made headlines earlier this week with a musical collaboration with indie rock darling Sigur Ros. The company has also sent emails during the past few weeks hinting at an upcoming release. The company, which CB Insights says is valued at nearly $5 billion, is backed by big names like Qualcomm (QCOM) Ventures, Alibaba (BABA), Morgan Stanley (MS), T. Rowe Price, Google (GOOGL), Fidelity, Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz, according to Crunchbase. But past reports by publications like The Information have cast doubt on the veracity of Magic Leap's claims about its technology. Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap founder and CEO, has told skeptics to be patient. Tweet To a few of the grumpy mouse tech blogger writers: you too will get to play the real thing when we ship Magic Leap has been relatively slow to come to market, compared with Microsoft's (MSFT) HoloLens, another high-end mixed reality device. But the company's backers have been staunch defenders of the start-up, despite allegations that Magic Leap's previous demonstrations have been dressed up with special effects. Tweet: So, a while ago I said that seeing Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that.  CNBC's Sara Salinas contributed to this report.



More From CNBC


Heres a look at some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Investors are getting a healthy dose of Aeterna Zentaris (AEZS) today. The biopharma company is up big after the FDA approved its hormone deficiency treatment. The new drug, Macrilen, stimulates growth hormones in adults.

Honda (HMC) is looking at creating all solid-state batteries for its electric cars. Solid-state batteries last longer, hold longer charges, and are safer compared to conventional lithium ion. The move comes as automakers work to meet tighter global emissions regulations.

Rolling Stone is under new leadership. Penske Media is buying a controlling stake in Rolling Stones parent company Wenner Media for roughly $50 million. Despite dwindling magazine sales, Penskes CEO believes he can unlock value in the iconic brand. Jann Wenner, who co-founded Rolling Stone, will stay on as editorial director.

Chinas Didi Chuxing is ready to take on rival Uber. The ride-hailing giant raised over $4 billion for international expansion, artificial intelligence and new business initiatives. Earlier this month, Reuters reported Didi was launching in Mexico and Didi itself said it was looking to expand to Taiwan. Uber gave up on opening shop in China in August, and instead took a minority stake in Didi.
The iPhone cycle that drove Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares higher this year is near its end, according to one Wall Street firm. Nomura Instinet lowered its rating for Apple shares to neutral from buy, citing the company's high valuation compared with previous iPhone cycles. "We argue that the stock's gains for the iPhone X supercycle are in the late innings. We believe unit growth, if not quite ASP growth, is well anticipated by consensus and a historically full multiple," analyst Jeffrey Kvaal wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. Apple shares fell 1.1 percent in early trading Tuesday after the report.The company is one of the market's best-performing large-cap stocks this year, rallying 52 percent through Monday versus the S&P 500's 20 percent gain.Kvaal noted that Apple is trading at a valuation of 15 times estimated 2018 earnings. He said during the iPhone 6 cycle, the company's earnings multiple peaked at 15 times earnings and then declined to 9 times earnings. The analyst also noted that the smartphone maker's stock went from 13 times earnings to 8 times earnings during the iPhone 5 cycle.The analyst reduced his price target for Apple shares to $175 from $185, a 1 percent downside to Monday's close."Apple is certainly not the same company as it was five or even three years ago. The growth in its services business is a particularly notable departure though hardly the only one," he wrote. "We do believe Apple's improvements merit a richer multiple than in prior years, though marginally so. We do not consider any of these sufficient, either individually or in aggregate, to flout the historical precedent."Apple is one of the most popular stocks on Wall Street and Main Street and rarely gets negative opinions from the former. The last time the stock was downgraded was by Mizuho Securities on June 11. Apple shares are up 18 percent since then.Of the 38 analysts who cover Apple, 31 have a buy rating. The rest have a hold rating, including Nomura Instinet, according to FactSet. Zero say sell.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The iPhone cycle that drove Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares higher this year is near its end, according to one Wall Street firm. Nomura Instinet lowered its rating for Apple shares to neutral from buy, citing the company's high valuation compared with previous iPhone cycles. "We argue that the stock's gains for the iPhone X supercycle are in the late innings. We believe unit growth, if not quite ASP growth, is well anticipated by consensus and a historically full multiple," analyst Jeffrey Kvaal wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. Apple shares fell 1.1 percent in early trading Tuesday after the report. The company is one of the market's best-performing large-cap stocks this year, rallying 52 percent through Monday versus the S&P 500's 20 percent gain. Kvaal noted that Apple is trading at a valuation of 15 times estimated 2018 earnings. He said during the iPhone 6 cycle, the company's earnings multiple peaked at 15 times earnings and then declined to 9 times earnings. The analyst also noted that the smartphone maker's stock went from 13 times earnings to 8 times earnings during the iPhone 5 cycle. The analyst reduced his price target for Apple shares to $175 from $185, a 1 percent downside to Monday's close. "Apple is certainly not the same company as it was five or even three years ago. The growth in its services business is a particularly notable departure though hardly the only one," he wrote. "We do believe Apple's improvements merit a richer multiple than in prior years, though marginally so. We do not consider any of these sufficient, either individually or in aggregate, to flout the historical precedent." Apple is one of the most popular stocks on Wall Street and Main Street and rarely gets negative opinions from the former. The last time the stock was downgraded was by Mizuho Securities on June 11. Apple shares are up 18 percent since then. Of the 38 analysts who cover Apple, 31 have a buy rating. The rest have a hold rating, including Nomura Instinet, according to FactSet. Zero say sell. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



More From CNBC


Its been quite a year to say the least, but at least its nearly over. And so now is the perfect time to reflect on the single most important issue of 2017: the best smartphones of the year.

Our most recent trip around the Sun brought an incredible array of top-notch handsets that will help set the standard for smartphone design and technology for years to come. From Apples hugely anticipated iPhone X to Samsungs comeback tour following the Note 7 debacle, it was a big year for the smartphone industry.

iPhone X  Best phone if money isnt an issue

Apples iPhone X is one of the best, and most expensive, phones you can buy.

Apples (AAPL) most premium of premium devices starts at a cool $1,000, or about $41 to $49 per month depending on your purchase plan  putting it out of the reach of many consumers. Its worth noting that price doesnt include the cost of your monthly wireless plan.

But man is the iPhone X beautiful. Its 5.8-inch nearly edge-to-edge panel gently curves around its four corners and its OLED display technology produces brilliant colors and deep blacks. The Xs spot-on Face ID facial-recognition technology and fantastic dual-lens camera help make this just the kind of iPhone Apple needed at a time when industry analysts were questioning the companys ability to innovate.

Sure, the loss of the Home button, which disappeared so Apple could make a full-screen handset, will turn off some users. But Apple has some slick touch controls to make up for it. And besides, if youre looking for a phone thats both elegant and screams wealth, the iPhone X is the only way to go.

Galaxy Note 8  Best big-screen smartphone

Samsungs Galaxy Note 8 is a powerful handset with a brilliant display, but itll cost you.

Samsung (SSNLF) essentially created the big-screen smartphone category with its original Galaxy Note in 2011. But the company took a major hit to the wallet, and in the press, when it released, and then recalled, its fire-prone Note 7 in 2016. But instead of killing the Note name, Samsung doubled down on it, releasing the Note 8 to rave reviews and going out of its way to explain how it worked to ensure the phone wont, you know, explode into flames.

Story continues

The Note 8s vibrant 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display and dual-lens camera are among the best on the market. Throw in staples like the S Pen stylus and the phones note-taking features, and youve got one heck of a big-screen handset.

Like the iPhone X, though, the Note 8 is incredibly pricey. At $950, its second only to the iPhone X in terms of price on our list. However, the Note 8 might still be for you if youre a fan of giant smartphone screens, want a great camera and will get a lot of use out of the stylus. If not, you might want to go for a different Samsung handset. Perhaps the 

Galaxy S8  Best smartphone if you dont want an iPhone

Samsungs Galaxy S8 is an impressive smartphone. Even more so if youre tired of Apple.

Samsungs Galaxy S8 is the go-to smartphone for anyone who wants a high-powered handset and has an intense dislike of Apples iPhone 8. Not that the S8 is second to Apples mainstream smartphone. In fact, Id put the S8 over the iPhone 8 thanks to its superior design, display and camera.

The S8s curved, edge-to-edge display gives the handset a unique look, and its Super AMOLED display technology offers a greater range of colors than the iPhone 8s LCD panel. Whats more, the iPhones display measures just 4.7 inches, while the S8s measures 5.8 inches. And at $725, the S8 is just $25 more than the iPhone 8. Thats a pretty solid deal.

iPhone 8 Plus  Best smartphone for the Apple lover

Apples iPhone 8 Plus is a fantastic smartphone with an impressive camera and huge display.

Okay, so Samsungs got a great phone or two, but that doesnt mean much to Apple fans. And while the S8, and its larger stablemate the S8+, might beat out the iPhone 8, it cant quite top the iPhone 8 Plus. Starting at $799, the iPhone 8 Plus has a large screen that, though not as colorful as Samsungs, offers sharp visuals.

Then theres the iPhone 8 Plus dual-lens camera, which lets you optically zoom in on a subject using the phones telephoto lens. Neither the Galaxy S8 or the S8+ can do that. And, I mean, its an iPhone. If youve got one already, chances are youre going to want to stick with it.

Pixel 2 XL  Best smartphone for the Android purist

Googles Pixel 2 is a phone the way Google believes it should be.

Okay, so you love Googles (GOOG, GOOGL) Android, but youre sick of all of that extra stuff manufacturers and carriers add to the operating system. Im talking about duplicate apps, scams like map apps that charge you money and others. Then youll probably want to opt for Googles Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL.

Starting at $649 and $849, respectively, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL give you the purest form of Android available. Theres no bloatware, no unnecessary menus to slog through  its just straight-up Android the way Google intended it to be.

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are essentially the same phone with the exception of the Pixel 2 XLs larger, curved screen display. Both handsets share the same processor, the same camera and offer the same features including the ability to squeeze their edges to activate Googles Assistant.

The Pixel 2 XL, however, has been met with some controversy over potential screen burn-in, how the display looks cooler when viewed from an angle and crackling noise from its speaker. For what its worth, I only noticed the burn-in issue when I downloaded a grey background and focused on looking at the bottom of the display near the Android buttons. And that cooler color isnt very noticeable unless you view the 2 XL next to the regular Pixel 2. I also never heard a crackling sound from my phone.

But if those issues concern for you, Id go with the Pixel 2. Its every bit as great as the Pixel 2 XL without the baggage.

OnePlus 5t  Best bang for your buck

The OnePlus 5t packs plenty of power for just $499.

The Chinese company OnePlus has made quite a name for itself in the smartphone industry despite little to no mainstream advertising here in the U.S. The company has pulled it all off by not only producing some impressive handsets, but also by selling them for what seems like a pittance next to the cost of other smartphones.

The OnePlus 5t is the follow-up to the OnePlus 5, and offers the same internal specs and camera as the 5. The main difference between the two is that the 5t gets an improved, nearly edgeless 6.1-inch display. The 5, on the other hand, has a 5.5-inch screen along with a classic home button design.

The best part is that the 5t costs just $499 and rocks the kind of on-board power youd expect from any other leading smartphone. There are some drawbacks, though  the biggest being that you cant use the 5t on either Verizons or Sprints networks. (Verizon is the parent company of Yahoo Finance.) Instead, youll have to use AT&T or T-Mobile. Thats because the handset doesnt support the CDMA bands used by Verizon and Sprint, but does use GSM bands, which are used by AT&T and T-Mobile.

LG V30  Best phone for music lovers

The LG V30 is the smartphone to get if youre a complete audio fiend.

LGs smartphones have always been also-rans to the likes of Samsung, and more recently, Google. But the V30, the companys latest offering, helps put LG on a nearly equal footing alongside the categorys best. The handsets 6-inch OLED display nearly reaches the phones edges and its design is among the best around.

But where the V30 really shines is in the audio department. Thanks to its quad-DAC (digital-to-audio converter) the V30 can pump out some incredible-sounding audio from its headphone jack. Oh yeah, its got one of those too.

Loaded with a slew of top-of-the-line specs, the V30 is easily the best phone for music fans looking for a handset that will do their tunes justice.

More from Dan:

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday that dire warnings of big Medicare cuts as a result of the GOP tax plan are scares tactic by Democrats. The concern about reductions in Medicare and other federal programs stems from a Senate rule designed to prevent increases in the budget deficit.The Republican tax package is expected to raise the deficit. The Senate's so-called pay-go rule , as described in a congressional research report, requires any bill that's projected to increase spending or cut revenues to also include equal spending cuts, revenue increases or a combination of the two. McCarthy said lawmakers shortly after the new year will prevent any Medicare cuts from going into effect. "That is more of a fear of what the Democrats are trying to spread out," the California Republican told CNBC's " Squawk Box ." "Remember what [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ] said: This is 'Armageddon,' this is 'the end of time.'" Democrats put "a lot of different Pinocchios out there," McCarthy continued. Republicans have wanted to fix Medicare "for quite some time," he added.McCarthy also suggested that some Democratic lawmakers wanted to vote for the tax plan but didn't because it was a Republican-led bill. "I had even one the night before with me say, 'I'm getting whipped to vote no,'" he claimed.The Senate passed the sweeping GOP tax bill early Wednesday, sending the legislation back to the House for another vote later in the day. The reason the House has to vote again even though it passed the bill on Tuesday has to do with a procedural snag . McCarthy joked about the need for a second vote on Wednesday morning, saying, "We love this bill so much, we want to vote on it twice." McCarthy also spoke about reports that House Speaker Paul Ryan will retire in 2018, which Ryan has denied. "I'm the closest to Paul Ryan as you can get," McCarthy said, "He is not leaving." House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday that dire warnings of big Medicare cuts as a result of the GOP tax plan are scares tactic by Democrats. The concern about reductions in Medicare and other federal programs stems from a Senate rule designed to prevent increases in the budget deficit. The Republican tax package is expected to raise the deficit. The Senate's so-called pay-go rule , as described in a congressional research report, requires any bill that's projected to increase spending or cut revenues to also include equal spending cuts, revenue increases or a combination of the two. McCarthy said lawmakers shortly after the new year will prevent any Medicare cuts from going into effect. "That is more of a fear of what the Democrats are trying to spread out," the California Republican told CNBC's " Squawk Box ." "Remember what [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ] said: This is 'Armageddon,' this is 'the end of time.'" Democrats put "a lot of different Pinocchios out there," McCarthy continued. Republicans have wanted to fix Medicare "for quite some time," he added. McCarthy also suggested that some Democratic lawmakers wanted to vote for the tax plan but didn't because it was a Republican-led bill. "I had even one the night before with me say, 'I'm getting whipped to vote no,'" he claimed. The Senate passed the sweeping GOP tax bill early Wednesday, sending the legislation back to the House for another vote later in the day. The reason the House has to vote again even though it passed the bill on Tuesday has to do with a procedural snag . McCarthy joked about the need for a second vote on Wednesday morning, saying, "We love this bill so much, we want to vote on it twice." McCarthy also spoke about reports that House Speaker Paul Ryan will retire in 2018, which Ryan has denied. "I'm the closest to Paul Ryan as you can get," McCarthy said, "He is not leaving."



More From CNBC


A collection of Bitcoin (virtual currency) tokens are displayed in this picture illustration taken December 8, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration/Files

By Hideyuki Sano

TOKYO (Reuters) - Bitcoin fell more than 10 percent on Wednesday to a one-week low of $15,800 at cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp (BTC=BTSP), losing almost one- fifth of its value from a peak hit just three days ago.

The digital currency has been sliding since it reached a record high of $19,666 on Sunday, when the exchange giant CME Group (CME.O) launched bitcoin futures, one week after its rival Cboe Global Markets (CBOE.O) listed the world's first bitcoin futures.

"The listing of two bitcoin futures makes it easier for institutional players to trade bitcoins. Futures also enable players to go short on bitcoins, which was difficult without liquid futures," said Makoto Sakuma, researcher at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo.

The bitcoin's monumental gains this year - its price has soared about 19 times - have spurred caution and alarm among some policymakers.

Singapore's central bank on Tuesday issued a warning against investment in cryptocurrencies, saying it considers the recent surge in their prices to be driven by speculation and that the risk of a sharp fall in prices is high.

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service said on Tuesday it does not consider bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be currencies of any kind.

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday that bitcoin had not been proven as a credible currency.

However, for Japanese retail investors who are estimated to account for 30 to 50 percent of bitcoin trade worldwide, a more worrying warning may have come from a Japanese day trader guru known as Cis.

The individual trader, who claims to own 21 billion yen ($186 million) in assets, tweeted over the last 24 hours that he had sold cryptocurrencies.

"Given that he has a lot of followers, his tweets could have had an impact on Japanese traders, which in turn could have moved the market," Sakuma said.

Bitcoin has since pared some of the losses and last traded at $16,939, down 4.3 percent for the day.

Story continues

Its decline since Sunday is hardly a major correction for digital currency. In November, it tumbled almost 30 percent in four days from $7,888 to $5,555. In September, it fell 40 percent from $4,979 to $2,972.

Many financial professionals have said bitcoin, which now has market capitalisation of about $275 billion, slightly bigger than Visa Inc (V.N), is a typical bubble, given how small the actual number of transactions are.

The market is highly inefficient, with bitcoin futures (BTCH8) (XBTc1) trading much above cash bitcoins while the gaps of price quotes between various exchanges are also very large, they say.

(Reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
Hello, readers! This is Sy.

Would you take a deadly pathogen like the influenza, SARS, or MERS virus and make it even deadlier? Well, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) may, after a three-year hiatus, decide to fund your research. Which raises the question: Why?

The goal here is to develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health, the NIH explains. That is, so-called gain of function research in pathogens may help scientists anticipate how viruses may spread and evolve, and therefore how to stop them from leading to unmanageable pandemics. The NIHs funding pause on such studies went into effect in October 2014 but has now been lifted.

Still, the very idea likely sounds like a horror moviewhich is why the NIH has listed out detailed criteria for what kind of lethal virus research would make the cut for government funding. We have a responsibility to ensure that research with infectious agents is conducted responsibly, and that we consider the potential biosafety and biosecurity risks associated with such research, said NIH director Dr. Francis Collins in a statement. I am confident that the thoughtful review process laid out by the HHS P3CO Framework will help to facilitate the safe, secure, and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner that maximizes the benefits to public health.

For instance, the research would have to be both ethically and scientifically justified. You cant just go around enhancing any old virus; it would have to be one that feasibly poses a threat to humans. And institutions involved in conducting such studies would have to prove they have the technology and protocols to carry it out safely.

Pandemics like the 2014 Ebola outbreak, or the wildfire spread of MERS, SARS, and flu are difficult to contain once theyve already infiltrated human population centerswhich is why global health experts have urged new research and incentive models to prevent pandemics from occurring in the first place. Making lethal viruses deadlier in a controlled setting could be one part of that effort, in the NIHs eyes.

Story continues

Read on for the days news.

DIGITAL HEALTH

Gene editing fixes deafness in mice. In the latest advance for CRISPR gene-editing, scientists have for the first time been able to prevent hearing loss in mice by fixing a defective gene. Howard Hughes Medical Institutes (HHMI) David Liu and his team used CRISPR-Cas9 to snip out the bad Tmc1 gene copy in mice and successfully prevented them from going deaf. The long-term implications? We hope that the work will one day inform the development of a cure for certain forms of genetic deafness in people, said Liu.

INDICATIONS

Huge new GAO report highlights pharmas profits and expenses. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is out with an extensive new report examining pharmaceutical companies profits, R&D costs, and M&A trends. Some standout numbers: Sales revenue increased from $534 billion to $775 billion between 2006 and 2015. Additionally, 67% of drug companies increased their annual profit margins during the same periodwith margins up to 20 percent for some companies in certain years. Drug industry spending for research and development increased from $82 billion in 2008 to $89 billion in 2014. Another tidbit: Among the largest 25 [drug] companies, annual average profit margin fluctuated between 15 and 20 percent. For comparison, the annual average profit margin across nondrug companies among the largest 500 globally fluctuated between 4 and 9 percent. The entire report is worth perusing. (GAO)

Gene therapy upstart Orchard raises $110 million. Gene therapy has been the name of the biotech game in 2017, and another firm is raising mounds of cash to develop treatments in the field. Orchard Therapeutics on Wednesday announced a $110 million second funding round to help it launch and manufacture a gene therapy treatment for a rare inherited disorder. Just yesterday, the FDA approved the first directly-administered gene therapy in the U.S., Spark Therapeutics Luxturna to treat a form of blindness. (Reuters)

THE BIG PICTURE

The GOP tax plan passes along with Obamacare mandate repeal. The GOPs tax bill has officially passed Congress and will momentarily be signed by President Donald Trump. It includes a repeal of Obamacares individual insurance mandate. If youre confused about how that might affect you, I have an explainer up here. Health care bills that are still up in the air at this point include: a pair of Obamacare fixes Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins says she has been promised; and renewal of the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers 9 million children in low- and middle-income families. Congress may not renew CHIP until next year, after the holidays, while 25 states would likely run out of CHIP funding and begin denying coverage to children if the program isnt reauthorized by the end of January. (Fortune)

REQUIRED READING

Heres When the GOP Tax Reform Bill Will Take Effect, by John Patrick Pullen

The Billion-Dollar Loophole, by Peter Elkind

Why Saudi Arabia Is Looking for Oil and Gas in the U.S., by Kirsten Korosec

Google Chrome to Start Blocking Annoying Ads in February, by Jonathan Vanian

Produced by Sy Mukherjee @the_sy_guy sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com

Find past coverage. Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.
From the immediate till at least 2019 and from the RK Nagar bypoll to the next Lok Sabha elections, the 2G scam case verdict acquitting DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi will have wide-ranging ramifications.

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: The verdict given by a special CBI court today in the 2G spectrum allocation scam could not have come at a more opportune time, particularly for the DMK and Congress.

Though the 2G spectrum allocation scam is related to business and economy but its impact has largely been political. The scam was one of the prime reasons of the Congress-led UPA government's defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

advertisement

The 2G scam was projected by the BJP and its alliance partners, who were in the Opposition, as a symbol of Manmohan Singh government's alleged corruption.

The BJP had clubbed the 2G scam with irregularities in others such as the coal block allocation, Commonwealth Games and Adarsh Housing Society to build a public perception against the Congress and the UPA government ahead of the last general elections.

The public perception did have its impact. The Congress suffered its most humiliating defeat by getting restricted to just 44 out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.

The scam also impacted the Assembly elections which were held after the last Lok Sabha elections. The Congress lost in all but one (Punjab) of them while the BJP won most of them except in Delhi and Bihar.

Today's court order will affect the national politics as well as the political equations in Tamil Nadu, which is considered as the epicentre of the 2G scam. The two main accused - former Union telecom minister A Raja and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi - are leaders of the DMK, which is a leading regional party of Tamil Nadu.

RK NAGAR BYPOLL

The crucial verdict was delivered just in time as far as the DMK is concerned.

The 2G scam verdict will have the first and immediate impact on the ongoing bypoll in RK Nagar in Tamil Nadu. The DMK, which is the main opposition party, is likely to be the main beneficiary of the 2G scam case verdict.

The two factions of the AIADMK, led by TTV Dhinakaran and EPS-OPS, are pitted against each other. This may help the DMK to some extent. The 2G scam case order will give a boost to the image of the DMK and it may stand to gain out of today's order.

TAMIL NADU POLITICS

Since 1984, power had been alternating between AIADMK and DMK in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK had won the 2011 state polls. Its defeat and replacement by DMK was a probability going by the established trend till then.

advertisement

However, AIADMK breached that trend and came back to power for the second consecutive term in 2016.

The 2G scam case had played one of the most roles in the DMK's defeat. Its senior leader A Raja and DMK supremo K Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi had served a jail term. The DMK stood defamed.

However, with both A Raja and Kanimozhi getting acquitted in the 2G scam case, the DMK will play victim and work for reversing the public perception against bit. The DMK will have an advantage in the next Assembly polls.

NATIONAL POLITICS

The Congress has already started crying foul after the 2G scam case verdict came. Manmohan Singh and other Congress leaders are going to town claiming that a "vicious campaign and propaganda" was launched against the UPA government back then ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress will seek to refurbish the party's public image. The verdict gives the Congress a golden chance to call itself an honest party which was wronged by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

2019 LOK SABHA POLLS

The 2G scam verdict may have two repercussions on the alignments between the political parties at the national level. The BJP has been seen getting close to the EPS-OPS (Chief Minister E Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam) faction of the AIADMK.

advertisement

The ruling BJP has been avoiding the DMK because of the latter's impression due to the 2G scam. However, today's verdict gives an opportunity to the BJP to align with the DMK. The two were alliance partners during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime. The two may come together once again.

During his visit to Chennai last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called on Karunanidhi, giving rise to speculations of a possible bonhomie between the BJP and the DMK.

On the flip side, today's development may strengthen the bond between the Congress and the DMK. As both the parties had suffered together, the two may join hands to bear the fruits of the CBI special court's order.

From immediate till 2019 and from the RK Nagar bypoll to the next Lok Sabha elections, today's 2G scam case verdict will certainly have implications.

--- ENDS ---
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives with Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan prior to celebrating with Congressional Republicans after the U.S. Congress passed sweeping tax overhaul legislation on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., December 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria - HP1EDCK1K7F1Y

Republicans were lighting cigars and popping champagne corks (metaphorically, of course) on the south lawn of the White House Wednesday as they celebrated the passage of their tax bill, the most significant overhaul of the tax code in 31 years and a massive political victory for a party that for much of this year seemed to be in turmoil.

Reactions to the tax bills passage ranged from jubilation to despair, following fairly predictable partisan lines. Here are some of the more colorful statements about the bill from across the political spectrum:

1. President Trump stuck it to his critics Thursday morning: The Massive Tax Cuts, which the Fake News Media is desperate to write badly about so as to please their Democrat bosses, will soon be kicking in and will speak for themselves. Companies are already making big payments to workers. Dems want to raise taxes, hate these big Cuts!

2. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed confidence this will provide an election year boost: From a Republican point of view, this is as good as it gets and were more than happy to take our argument [for the tax bill] to the American people in an election contest. After the bill passed, McConnell quipped, If we cant sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work.

3. Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said Republicans are heading for the rocks: Calling this thing a win because Republicans finally got something done is like saying the captain of the Titanic won when he successfully found that reclusive iceberg.

4. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the tax plan probably the worst bill in recent time to come to the floor.

5. HUD Secretary Ben Carson offered a prayer of thanks at the cabinet meeting Wednesday: Our kind Father in heaven, we're so thankful for the opportunities and the freedom that you've granted us in this country. We thank you for the president and for Cabinet members who are courageous, who are willing to face the winds of controversy in order to provide a better future for those who come behind us. We're thankful for the unity in Congress, that presented an opportunity for our economy to expand, so we can fight the corrosive debt that has been destroying our future. And we hope that that unity will spread even beyond party lines, so that people recognize we have a nation that is worth saving. And nations divided against themselves cannot stand. In this time of discord, distrust and dishonesty, we ask that you will give us a spirit of gratitude, compassion and common sense. And give us the wisdom to be able to guide this great nation in the future. We ask in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Story continues

6. Novelist Stephen King made it clear that he is no fan of the legislation, tweeting: The tax cut bill is basically a little piece of candy on a long, shit-coated stick.

7. Sen. John Tester echoed Kings earthy sentiment: We just passed one of the shittiest bills thats ever come in front of the Senate last night so you know the countrys seen better days."

8. Sen. Orrin Hatch was effusive in his praise for Trump: "I have to say that youre living up to everything I thought you would. Youre one heck of a leader, and were all benefitting from it. This bill could not have passed without you. ... If you stop and think about it, this president hasnt even been in office for a year, and look at all the things that hes been able to get done  by sheer will, in many ways. I just hope that we all get behind him every way we can, and well get this country turned around in ways that will benefit the whole world, but, above all, benefit our people.  And I have to say, that this is one of the great privileges of my life to stand here on the White House lawn with the president of the United States, who I love and appreciate so much, and with these wonderful colleagues and Cabinet members who stand behind us.  And were going to keep fighting, and were going to make this the greatest presidency that weve seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever."

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing Technology Co on Thursday said it has raised $4 billion in funds earmarked for expansion overseas and into areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), as it looks to challenge Uber Technologies Inc.

The fundraising values Didi at over $50 billion and involved Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Capital, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters. Mubadala did not respond to a request for comment.

Existing investor SoftBank Group Corp also participated in the latest funding, a spokesman for the Japanese firm confirmed, declining to specify the size of its investment.

"With a substantial cash reserve, Didi plans to scale up investments in AI talent and technologies," Didi said in a statement. The funds would also help Didi "bring more innovative and diversified transportation services to broader communities around the world."

Didi has expanded overseas rapidly in the past year since sealing its dominance in China with the purchase of Uber's local business in 2016, ending a cash-burning subsidy war that cost the U.S. firm roughly $2 billion.

Earlier this month Reuters reported that Didi was planning to enter Mexico next year, in what would be its first overseas operation not managed through a local partner.

On Wednesday, Didi announced it was looking at entering the Taiwanese market, and had authorized a franchisee operator to do research there on its behalf.

Didi has also invested in several of Uber's rivals globally, including U.S.-based Lyft, Brazil's 99, India's Ola, Singapore's Grab, Estonia's Taxify and Careem in the Middle East.

Besides SoftBank, investors in Didi's previous funding rounds included Apple Inc and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the fundraising had pushed Didi's cash reserves to $12 billion from $3.5 billion two years prior.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Additional reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Stephen Coates and Christopher Cushing)
Every president makes news, but Trump is in a class by himself in this regard. From the outset of his campaign to his most recent tweet, the press has dissected and analyzed every word, every squabble, every White House hiring and firing, and every rally speech. Love him or hate him, he gets great ratings.

Even if youre not an avid consumer of political news, youre probably aware of the major accomplishments of his presidency. Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, hes about to sign a tax-reform bill into law, and hes dramatically rolled back President Obamas regulations. You probably know that hes moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and that he pulled the country out of the Paris Climate Accord. Indeed, if youve watched one minute of cable television, youre aware of his Twitter TWTR style and know the names of most of his Cabinet and senior staff.

Most people also know that the president has yet to make good on promises to repeal Obamacare and build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. And most people know that the stock market is currently soaring and that unemployment numbers are crashing to a 17-year low, whether or not you connect these successes to Trump. Not even a year into his presidency, Americans have been highly exposed to the Trump story.

Yet, President Trump has had a plethora of policy successes that the media hasnt fully covered. His White House and his Cabinet have spent the first year of their administration racking up a few quiet wins.

The president has put his focus on immigration enforcement, and the effect is beginning to take shape, telling a major success story. ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people who entered the U.S. illegally, 70% of whom were already convicted criminals. ICE removed nearly 2,800 criminal gang members in the last fiscal year. Additionally, President Trump led an international effort to arrest and charge 3,800 MS-13 and 18th Street gang members, two of the most violent gangs on the planet.

Story continues

Another undercover success story is found in the energy sector. President Trump approved the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that will lead to the creation of 42,000 jobs. In the spring, the Department of the Interior will sell 77 million acres of leases for oil and gas production on the Gulf of Mexico. Thats the largest such offering in history and could lead to 1.12 billion barrels of oil. The EPA has signaled its intent to repeal the job-killing Clean Power Plan, and the administration has streamlined the approval process for exporting liquefied natural gas.

The American energy industry is on the brink of a growth explosion thanks to these underreported policies.

Americas cherished veterans are also finally getting the reform effort they deserve. The president has enacted three major reform bills for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The first, the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act, will alleviate the claims backlog that veterans have long suffered through. Now theyll have access to a more efficient, streamlined service and can have their claims adjudicated much quicker. This is the first update to the appeals process since the 1930s. The second, the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, reauthorizes and improves the post- 9/11 GI Bill that helps veterans get education benefits. The last, the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act, opens up more options for veterans health care.

The press hasnt covered many of the 70 bills that President Trump has signed into law, and they havent covered the positive effect of many of his administrations policies. On immigration, energy, and veterans, the president has made a huge impact in his first year. Thats hardly what wed expect with a president that makes news so often, but its true.

Thomas Binion is director of congressional and executive relations for The Heritage Foundation.
This Disney heiress is taking a stand against the GOP tax bill  even though shes going to benefit from it pic.twitter.com/E5bmcI83mU  NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 20, 2017

Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy O. Disney, wants you to be infuriated about the Republican tax bill.

She explains why in a powerful NowThis video on Wednesday, pointing out that the legislation means a very fat tax cut for her on income she did not do anything to earn.

This bill will give me this tax cut while also killing health insurance for over 13 million people, Disney said. It will let me pass over $20 million to my children, tax-free. And all my friends with private jets? They get a tax cut too.

Roy O. Disney, seen here with his wife Edna Francis, made a fortune as co-founder of the Disney company with his brother Walt. (Photo: Bettmann via Getty Images)

Disney fears that the idea of social mobility, that kids from a poor family can achieve the American dream  as her grandfather Roy and great-uncle Walt, did  is quickly becoming unrealistic.

But I will be able to stay comfortably right where I am, she said. Does that strike you as fair?

Disney also references President Donald Trumps campaign promise to drain the swamp.

Given how this bill was written, I think its looking a lot like a nightmare from Pirates of the Caribbean, she said. Have I made you angry yet? I really hope Ive made you angry. You should be. No one who votes for this tax bill will be voting with your life in mind. But you will pay for it.

In a 2015 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Disney, who is a documentary filmmaker, said she has always felt like a rebel in her conservative family. When she attended Columbia University, she recalled being so anxious about her peers viewing her as a snob that she had a cab drop her off blocks from school. In 2014, when Meryl Streep called Walt Disney a bigot, his grandniece publicly agreed by posting on Facebook how much she loved the actresss remarks.

Story continues

Anti-Semite? Check, she wrote. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? Cmon

In a Nov. 30 op-ed for USA Today also deploring the tax bill, Disney wrote:

Although I was raised amid privilege and good fortune, I have always been cognizant of income and wealth inequality. It has never sat well with me.

To hear all of Disneys comments about the tax bill, check out the full video above.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the final version of a GOP-backed tax plan Tuesday that would overhaul the nations tax laws for the first time in decades. The Senate is expected to vote and clear the bill later Tuesday.

The bill passed along partisan lines at 227 for and 203 against. Twelve Republicans voted against the bill. No Democrats voted for the bill.

If the Senate clears the bill, as its expected to do, it will then head over to President Donald Trumps office to be signed into law. Passage of the tax reform bill would deliver Trump and congressional Republicans a significant victory in 2017 and allow the president to stick to his promise to enact tax relief before the end of the year.

To pass the Senate, the GOP tax bill must receive 51 votes. The Republican Party holds 52 seats. Arizona Republican John McCain will miss the GOP tax bill vote. Vice President Mike Pence could pass the tie-breaking vote if another Republican voted no. But one no vote is all the Republicans can afford.

The controversial tax reform bill, also known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, hasnt sat well with more than half of Americans, who say it would help neither their familys financial situation nor the U.S. economy, according to research by Gallup.

The tax bill lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, eliminates the penalty under the Affordable Care Act for failing to have health insurance, a narrower estate tax, and cuts the top effective marginal tax rate for S corporations to a top rate of 29.6 percent, among other measures that gives the biggest breaks to the wealthiest individuals and companies.

The biggest winners are business owners, corporate shareholders, and many workers who will see reduced tax withholding from their paychecks. The bill would reduce taxes by about $1,600 on average in 2018, with the biggest benefit going to households making between $308,000 and $733,000, according to a recent analysis by the Tax Policy Center. Middle-income taxpayers would pay about $930 less than under current law, or about 1.6 percent of after-tax income, the Tax Policy Center says.

However, some households, particularly those in regions with high state and local taxes, will lose under the tax reform bill. And the effects of the tax cuts will change dramatically after 2025 when individual income tax cuts are scheduled to expire, reported the WSJ.
The police rushed to the spot and during investigation the accused was identified as Karthik.

By Ashish Pandey: In a shocking incident, a young girl was set ablaze by her jilted lover in Hyderabad.

The incident took place in full public view under Lalaguda police station, when the accused who was riding a bike poured petrol and torched the victim, identified as Sandhya Rani.

The victim was rescued by the bystanders but till then she had suffered 60% burn injuries and was shifted to Gandhi Hospital in a critical condition.

advertisement

The police rushed to the spot and during investigation the accused was identified as Karthik.

Sources say that both Karthikand the victim were in a relationship earlier, but lately the girl started ignoring him on which he planned to kill her.

Speaking to India Today, DCP North Zone, B Sumathi said, "We have registered a case under section 307 and SC/ST Act, while we are in the process to arrest Karthik."

--- ENDS ---
New Jersey Gov.-elect Phil Murphy told CNBC on Wednesday that the GOP tax plan making its way to President Donald Trump is an "awful bill for America." Murphy, a Democrat, said on "Squawk on the Street" that New Jersey may seek to challenge in court the "legality and constitutionality" of the Republican package. In claiming "everything is on the table" to mitigate the impact of the bill, he also said state property taxes may go up. "New Jersey has taken a backseat over the past number of years in challenging what's coming at us out of Washington," said Murphy, who takes over in January for the state's two-term Republican governor, Chris Christie . "New Jersey will ... look at all available means  both legal and otherwise  to challenge this [bill] or compensate for it." Murphy said he's not a constitutional attorney, but questioned whether amendments to the bill, "a lot of them handwritten," to win over Republican votes will hold up. "My going-in bias is there are going to be flaws. There are going to be holes. And if there are we will exploit them; I hope with other like-minded states," said Murphy, who like a number of Trump administration officials previously worked at Goldman Sachs. The governor-elect also was U.S. ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama . Murphy also railed against the severe limit in the final GOP tax bill concerning how much state and local taxes Americans can deduct from their federal returns.Asked about the impact on average New Jersey residents, he said, "It's many thousands of dollars." Though he did not point to any study or hard numbers to back up that claim.Under current law for federal returns, the state and local tax deduction, better known as SALT, is unlimited. The House wanted to put a ceiling of $10,000 on property taxes alone. But the final Republican bill capped the combined state, local and property tax deduction at $10,000 for both single filers and married couples. GOP tax writers were aiming to make up for curtailing SALT by lowering overall federal tax rates and doubling the standard deduction. But those measures may not be enough of an offset for the wealthy in high-tax states on the East Coast like New Jersey and New York and on the West Coast like California . Opponents of the SALT deduction argue that wealthier Americans who face higher tax bills will move to lower-tax states."New Jersey was never a low-cost state to live in. We were always on our best day, the good-value-for-money state," Murphy said. "You pay a premium to live in a state like ours, but you get a lot back for that. Our job is to make folks feel like ... that premium was worth it." Murphy said other high-cost, good-value states  such as California and Massachusetts  are seeing "humming" economies. That's the goal in New Jersey as well, he said. New Jersey Gov.-elect Phil Murphy told CNBC on Wednesday that the GOP tax plan making its way to President Donald Trump is an "awful bill for America." Murphy, a Democrat, said on "Squawk on the Street" that New Jersey may seek to challenge in court the "legality and constitutionality" of the Republican package. In claiming "everything is on the table" to mitigate the impact of the bill, he also said state property taxes may go up. "New Jersey has taken a backseat over the past number of years in challenging what's coming at us out of Washington," said Murphy, who takes over in January for the state's two-term Republican governor, Chris Christie . "New Jersey will ... look at all available means  both legal and otherwise  to challenge this [bill] or compensate for it." Murphy said he's not a constitutional attorney, but questioned whether amendments to the bill, "a lot of them handwritten," to win over Republican votes will hold up. "My going-in bias is there are going to be flaws. There are going to be holes. And if there are we will exploit them; I hope with other like-minded states," said Murphy, who like a number of Trump administration officials previously worked at Goldman Sachs. The governor-elect also was U.S. ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama . Murphy also railed against the severe limit in the final GOP tax bill concerning how much state and local taxes Americans can deduct from their federal returns. Asked about the impact on average New Jersey residents, he said, "It's many thousands of dollars." Though he did not point to any study or hard numbers to back up that claim. Under current law for federal returns, the state and local tax deduction, better known as SALT, is unlimited. The House wanted to put a ceiling of $10,000 on property taxes alone. But the final Republican bill capped the combined state, local and property tax deduction at $10,000 for both single filers and married couples. GOP tax writers were aiming to make up for curtailing SALT by lowering overall federal tax rates and doubling the standard deduction. But those measures may not be enough of an offset for the wealthy in high-tax states on the East Coast like New Jersey and New York and on the West Coast like California . Opponents of the SALT deduction argue that wealthier Americans who face higher tax bills will move to lower-tax states. "New Jersey was never a low-cost state to live in. We were always on our best day, the good-value-for-money state," Murphy said. "You pay a premium to live in a state like ours, but you get a lot back for that. Our job is to make folks feel like ... that premium was worth it." Murphy said other high-cost, good-value states  such as California and Massachusetts  are seeing "humming" economies. That's the goal in New Jersey as well, he said.



More From CNBC


President Donald Trump on Wednesday reveled in Congress passage of a massive $1.5 trillion tax reform bill, claiming that, once he signed it into law, it would propel economic growth.

Trump also touted the bills passage as a technical repeal of the Affordable Care Act, an objective Congress has not been able to accomplish despite the Republican majority. But the reality is more complex.

We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something that will be much better, whether its block grants or whether its taking what we have and doing something terrific. But Obamacare has been repealed in this bill, Trump said in remarks at the beginning of a cabinet meeting, referring to the Affordable Care Act.

The tax bill indeed eliminates the individual mandate, a key component of the Affordable Care Act (also called Obamacare) that penalizes those who decline to purchase health insurance. The idea behind the individual mandate was to encourage younger, healthier Americans to sign up for insurance, thus stabilizing the market. But after the tax reform package becomes law, that penalty will be eliminated in 2019.

That will undoubtedly have significant consequences. Eliminating the individual mandate would reduce the federal deficit by $338 billion over the next decade, according to an estimate from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, however, the CBO also said such a move would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 4 million in 2019 and 13 million in 2027, leading to an average 10% increase in premiums for those who buy insurance individually over the next decade

Even with the individual mandate potentially on its way out the door, other parts of Obamacare will remain, like the Medicaid expansion. Thats largely because Republicans failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act over the summer. So while the tax bill would certainly weaken Obamacare, major parts of it will remain intact.
A recent EU decision means bad news for Uber

The ride-sharing app Uber has managed to avoid the regulations faced by other taxi companies since its inception. But on December 20th, after an EU court classified it as a transportation service, the app could be facing a financial blow in the face of heavy regulations.

Uber currently operates in more than 600 cities around the world. The creators of the app have argued that it should be classified an online service rather than a transport service in the EU, claiming that the app simply acts as a go-between for drivers and potential customers. But the European Court of Justice ruled otherwise.

The service provided by Uber connecting individuals with non-professional drivers is covered by services in the field of transport, the court said. Member states can, therefore, regulate the conditions for providing that service.

The new ruling could prevent Uber from expanding its services from non-professional drivers in Europe. It could also cause the app to be subject to stricter licensing rules and to start charging sales tax to customers. Other apps that rely on contract workers, like Lyft or TaskRabbit, could face similar restrictions in the EU after this decision.

ECJ ruling: Uber should be regulated like a taxi company not a tech company #uber pic.twitter.com/9rTCRoKguT  Helia Ebrahimi (@heliaebrahimi) December 20, 2017

The lawsuit was brought forward by a taxi company in Barcelona that felt it was unfair that Uber was not held to the same standards. The company took issue with Ubers peer-to-peer ride service called UberPop, which has since been discontinued in several countries including Spain.

What to know how #Uber operates across Europe? Here's the @POLITICOEurope guide as the ECJ ruling lands. https://t.co/LMfB9VUSFP pic.twitter.com/OFNgxhoL7g  Josh Posaner (@joshposaner) December 20, 2017

Former employees of Uber have been fighting for employee rights for a while, and now the conversation is starting to go global. In October 2016, an English court ruled that Uber drivers deserve employee benefits and cant be treated as self-employed contract workers. This decision meant that about 40,000 Uber drivers in the U.K. could file claims against the company. And in April, a class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles accused Uber of not paying its employees fairly.

The new EU ruling has huge implications for Uber and other companies like it. We hope that this decision results in more rights for independent contractors. But for now it just confirms what we knew all along: Uber is a taxi service, plain and simple.
Republicans are threatening to shut down the government unless they get more abortion restrictions

There was a lot of wheeling and dealing that went down to get the tax bill passed in both chambers of Congress this week, and one of them hinges on a health care funding bill that Senator Mitch McConnell promised to Maine Senator Susan Collins. The bill has to be voted on by Friday to avoid a partial shutdown of the government, but as always, some legislators are putting their own ideology ahead of whats best for Americans. Some Republicans are threatening to shut down the government for what amounts to stronger abortion restrictions, because the existing language in the bill preventing federal money from funding abortion apparently isnt good enough.

[subeader]Anti-abortion activists in Congress just wont quit.[/subheader]

#Update: Republicans are holding government funding hostage in order to advance their backward, ideological assault on women's reproductive rights. Let's make sure our voices are heard. #reprorights #stopthebans https://t.co/kvR7KZN5PI  Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) December 20, 2017

Heres what happened: The GOP needed all Republicans on their side to guarantee that they could pass the tax bill and feel like they actually accomplished something this year, so they made a lot of promises to individual state senators. Collins was bothered by the fact that the tax bill included what was essentially a skinny repeal of the Affordable Care Act, by repealing the individual mandate. She asked for McConnells word that they would pass a health care bill this week that would give states more money to beef up their health care markets to help expensive sick people and reimburse insurers for giving discounted deductibles and copays to low-income patients, which is called cost sharing. Cost sharing is always a big deal for Republicans who dont want to pay for things they find bad, like abortion, birth control, and anything that prioritizes a womans access to affordable reproductive health care.

Story continues

The #HydeAmendment blocks federal funds from being used to pay for #abortion. More on its impact: https://t.co/z1EqPIhedi pic.twitter.com/jTKXQJKeYk  Kaiser Family Foundation (@KaiserFamFound) December 19, 2017

The issue for anti-abortion activists is that the cost sharing funds can sometimes go to health care centers that offer abortion services. The ACA mandates that those centers keep federal funds separate from abortion services, but Republicans just dont think thats good enough, and theyre throwing a fit to get the Hyde Amendment added into the bill. Hyde language is an explicit caveat added to basically every piece of legislation that makes it illegal for any organization to use federal cash to provide abortions. Its basically why the whole taxpayers shouldnt pay for abortions argument is total nonsense, since no federal dollars currently fund abortions anyway.

Democrats think thats totally overreaching in this case, so its a non-starter, according to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. Which means theyre at a stalemate. If no one budges, the government will shut down like it did back in October 2013.

Abortion coverage restrictions already exist in Medicaid and in federal programs under the auspices of the Hyde Amendment. Now anti-abortion legislators and organizations are trying to prevent abortion reimbursement under Obamacare for low-income folks. https://t.co/dUbXH4oliU  NNAF Abortion Funds (@AbortionFunds) December 20, 2017

The issue is a non-starter for Republicans, too. It needs to have Hyde, said Rep. Chris Smith, who is also a co-chairman of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus. In the Senate, since they made a promise to Collins, the bill could pass. But the House is a whole other ballgame. Rep. Mark Walker, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest group of conservative activists in the House, told Reuters that Collins agreement means squat over [in the House.]

Lovely, right? Its even trickier, according to Ohio Rep. Tim Cole, since Republicans dont want to be doing anything at all to make it look like theyre keeping the ACA on life support. The abortion thing just makes it worse for them. Cole thinks it comes down to Speaker Paul Ryan. I think [Ryan] listens to his members, and I think he got a lot of pushback on that today, Cole told The Hill. Theres no stronger pro-life person than Paul Ryan. Thats never coming through here without Hyde language in it.

Thank you @RepJimBanks for standing firm on the Hyde Amendment! Republicans must add Hyde to any new market stabilization subsidies. #HydeSavesLives #prolife https://t.co/Fex7ymzJwo  FRC (@FRCdc) December 19, 2017

This is not just an issue for legislators. This is all the doing of a super scary organization that we should all pay more attention to: the Susan B. Anthony List. Their name suggests they should be a pro-woman group, but theyre not. They lobby for abortion restrictions and have been particularly emboldened by Trumps (and really, Mike Pences) anti-abortion views, going so far as to fight for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. They wrote to lawmakers of the upcoming vote:

Any Member voting for the Alexander-Murray proposal, or other Obamacare stabilization legislation not covered by the Hyde amendment, would not only be voting to sustain what many have called the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade, but would also be voting to directly appropriate taxpayer dollars for insurance that includes elective abortion.

Thank you so much @SpeakerRyan for standing up against #Obamacares assault on unborn children and standing firm against expansion of taxpayer funding of abortion! #ProLife pic.twitter.com/JPFWsQ2oLA  Susan B Anthony List (@SBAList) December 19, 2017

So theyve set up a situation in which no one wins. If the Democrats budge in the name of keeping the government up and running, theyre caving to Republicans  and anti-abortion lobbyists, really  who have lost their grip on reality (since, once again, there is Hyde language all over these bills anyway) and allow the language into the bill. Thats not a great long-game strategy when it comes to introducing some common sense and science into legislation around abortion. If they dont, the government could shut down, and well have to watch Ryan and McConnell point fingers at the Democrats even though it would be their own fault. Ugh, and the inevitable Trump tweets? Theres no good outcome here.

Hopefully, theres an adult in Congress who can show the anti-choice Republicans that no federal funds have paid for abortions since 1976 when the Hyde Amendment was first introduced, and theres definitely no federal money for abortions under the ACA.
Republican Senator Susan Collins ripped news coverage of her decision to vote for the GOP tax-cut bill as unbelievably sexist on Tuesday.

I cannot believe that the press would have treated another senator with 20 years of experience as they have treated me, the Maine senator told reporters at the Capitol.

Theyve ignored everything that Ive gotten, and there have been stories after stories about how Ive been duped, she said. How are you duped when all of your amendments get accepted? And when the majority leader  and I confirmed it again today with him  will be offering the two insurance bills that I care about as well as the provision waiving the automatic cut in Medicare that could be triggered by this bill?

The moderate Republican has often won praise from liberals for backing Planned Parenthood and especially for her crucial vote in July to block a repeal of Obamacare. Yet shes taken heat for deciding to back the GOP tax-cut plan, which contains a provision eliminating Obamacares requirement that most Americans get health insurance or pay a penalty.

Collins criticized a reporter, whom she didnt identify, who covered her meeting with people suffering from serious health conditions.

The reporter actually wrote that I didnt cry, Collins said. The same group met with Arizona GOP Senator Jeff Flake, Collins said, but there was no mention of his lack of tears. I cant imagine a reporter writing that about a male senator, she said.

Its been extremely discouraging to see the press coverage on this given the significant impact that Ive had on this bill, she said.

Collins said the press hasnt given her enough credit for her victories in negotiating revisions to the tax-cut plan.

I think I got more in this tax bill than any other member of the Senate, Collins said, when asked by a reporter about accusations she had gotten rolled or was naive in the deal she struck.

Collins said her three amendments  retaining some state and local tax deductions, restoring a more generous medical expense deduction for two years and retaining retirement account tax breaks  were all maintained or improved in the conference report.

Collins also pointed to a number of House provisions she helped kill  including taxes on graduate student tuition assistance, private activity bonds, student loans and other issues. The list goes on and on, she said.

It doesnt mean I like every provision of the final bill but I clearly had an impact, she said.
Dec 20 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley venture capital giant Sequoia Capital is in the early stages of raising $5 billion to $6 billion for a third global growth fund, Recode reported.

The venture capital firm is looking to raise more money in the wake of disruption from SoftBank's $100 billion vision fund, Recode added. http://bit.ly/2kvHkJx

Reuters had earlier reported that Sequoia's China arm was looking to raise $1.5 billion or more for a yuan-denominated fund.

Sequoia's previous fund in the series had invested in companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Toutiao.

Sequoia Capital did not comment on the report.

(Reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)
A man walks on a bridge in front of the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai, China, December 8, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song (Reuters)

By Samuel Shen and Elias Glenn

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Shanghai has started vetting licence applications for an outbound investment scheme allowing subsidiaries of global asset managers to raise funds for investment overseas, China's foreign exchange regulator said on Wednesday.

The city plans to hand out quotas within the existing limits of the Qualified Domestic Limited Partnership (QDLP) scheme, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in response to questions from Reuters.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Shanghai planned to revive the scheme this week. No QDLP quotas have been issued since an unofficial suspension late in 2015, when China tightened capital controls amid turmoil in its stock and currency markets.

"Shanghai has recently continued to press ahead with the QDLP pilot scheme and has started vetting QDLP licences with plans to grant institutions quotas within the existing QDLP limit," the regulator said in an email.

The pilot scheme has boosted options for allocation of overseas assets by domestic residents and will help Shanghai develop into an international financial centre, it added.

It did not say what the current quota limits were.

Between 2013 and 2015, Shanghai handed out three batches of QDLP quotas worth a combined $1.23 billion to 15 asset managers, such as alternative investment manager Oaktree Capital and hedge fund houses Winton, Citadel, OZ Management and Man Group.

People with direct knowledge of the plan told Reuters the authorities were expected to award each qualified asset manager a quota of $50 million this time round.

Domestic media have quoted foreign institutions such as BNP Paribas Asset Management, British asset manager Aberdeen Standard, and South Korea's Mirae Asset as saying they were interested in getting QDLP licences.

The move to reopen the gates for QDLP, at a time of a robust rally in global financial markets, shows Beijing is increasingly confident about pressing ahead with financial deregulation as its fears of capital outflows and yuan depreciation recede.

Story continues

The scheme allows foreign asset managers to raise funds from wealthy Chinese individuals, via subsidiaries in China, up to a set figure, and invest them in a broad range of assets overseas, including hedge funds and distressed debt.

But there is no sign of a resumption of the larger Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme, which allows Chinese investors to buy overseas stocks and bonds and which was also unofficially suspended.

(Reporting by Elias Glenn and Samuel Shen; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
AT&T and Comcast announced that they would give their workforces $1,000 in bonuses following the passage of tax reform that includes a massive cut in the corporate tax rate.

The move comes amid criticism from Democrats and even former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the legislation will exacerbate inequality and that it favors the rich and major corporations.

The legislation drops the corporate tax rate to 21%, from 35%.

But AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has been a big booster of the tax bill, and last month the company said that it would invest $1 billion in infrastructure if the legislation was passed. Shortly after the House passed the final version of the bill, the company said that it would provide a $1,000 special bonus to each of its 200,000 employees. At his White House event celebrating the passage of the bill, President Trump touted the AT&T commitment.

AT&T is seeking approval for its merger with Time Warner, but the Justice Department is trying to block the transaction in court.

Charles Rivkin, the chairman and CEO of the MPAA, said in a statement that the legislation will promote further economic growth across American industries, including the U.S. film and television sector, which supports two million jobs and a network of thousands of small businesses across all 50 states. This legislation will advance our nations global competitiveness and encourage additional investment at home.

Before the vote, none of the member studios have made public commitments about how they will spend their tax savings, in line for most corporations that did not pledge to raise wages and add jobs with the lower corporate rate. That has added to criticism that the savings would be spent on shareholders, not employees.

Later on Wednesday, Comcast announced that it, too, would provide $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 employees.

The company said that it would invest $50 billion over the next five years in broadened infrastructure, movie and TV production, and theme parks, although it was unclear what portion of that spending was driven by the drop in the corporate rate and what was already planned. The company said that it would outline further plans during its Jan. 24 earnings report.

Story continues

CEO Brian Roberts said that with these investments, we expect to add thousands of new direct and indirect jobs. The company also cited the repeal of most of the net neutrality rule last week as a reason.

The legislation was greeted far more negatively by others in Hollywood. A criticism is that the corporate tax rate savings will go to shareholders or to executive salaries.

Moreover, there is concern among individuals in the industry who work in states like California, New York and New Jersey that the tax bill will lead to an increase in their tax liability because of the limitation of key state and local tax deductions.

The Writers Guild of America, West called the bill a disaster, saying that it will exacerbate inequality and lead to cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Middle class writers are not immune to the forces of inequality. We will be doing our best to help writers understand the implications of this legislation for them. The WGAW stands with those who will resist.

House Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that tax breaks dont lead to job creation. They lead to big CEO salaries and money for the very, very wealthy.

He also spoke out against the legislation before the Senate vote, but was irritated as some Republican colleagues talked during his speech.

We believe youre messing up America. You could pay attention for a couple of minutes, he said.

He cast doubt on the notion that a lower corporate tax cut will lead to more jobs, and he criticized AT&T for paying a low effective rate for years but not using that tax savings then to boost employment.

After AT&Ts announcement, Schumer issued a statement, saying, Leaving aside that AT&T has a merger pending before President Trumps Justice Department, its good that theyve worked with the Communications Workers of America to start making progress on the promised $4,000 raise for workers. However, their announcement today is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the biggest corporations spending their windfall. His office provided a list of $83.7 billion in stock buybacks that have been announced by major companies since the Senate first passed the bill earlier this month.

Related stories

Trump Holds White House Victory Lap Over Tax Bill Passage

Eminem Slams Donald Trump Again on New Song 'Like Home,' Featuring Alicia Keys (Listen)

As Disney Catches Fox, What's Next for Comcast?

Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts!
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 21 (PTI) Blaming disruptions caused by the GST implementation for sluggish exports, noted economist Gita Gopinath has said the country will have to become more competitive if it were to improve its merchandise trade.

"My take on what looks like a cyclical downturn on exports has to do with the disruption that the GST caused," the John Zwaanstra professor of international studies and economics at the Harvard University said here this evening.

advertisement

The dip in textile exports is evident of GST, the most ambitious indirect tax reform implemented from July, the Kerala-born Gopinath who is also the economic advisor to the state chief minister said.

She said exporters are yet to get input tax credit from the system, resulting in a liquidity crunch. She was delivering the Exim Bank foundation day lecture.

But from a longer-term perspective, there is a need to relook at competitiveness vis-A-vis competing emerging markets like Bangladesh and Vietnam, Gopinath said, adding currency fluctuations alone cannot be blamed for the poor show.

Export growth has been sluggish for the first half of the fiscal year starting April, and even turned negative in October, before rebounding in November in high double-digits. The imports have been growing at a faster clip, widening the trade imbalances.

Both Gopinath and Exim Bank chairman David Rasquinha hoped for a better show on the exports next year.

On the highly-discussed crypto currencies like bitcoins, Gopinath said dealing with them is akin to "gambling" and such instruments, even though interesting from a technology perspective, will not be used widely as a medium of exchange.

About the high volatility right in its prices now, she said it is a "speculative bubble".

On the US treasury plan to declare India a currency manipulator, she said such an idea is "crazy" and "bad economics" to call any country as being one.

"It make no sense to me. I think there are many other reasons why one would accumulate reserves other than currency manipulation besides the fact that whether a country can actually manipulate its exchange rate in a very precise way," she wondered. PTI AA BEN BEN

--- ENDS ---
By Roberta Rampton SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello on Tuesday urged the U.S. Congress to address issues in the Republican tax bill that he said would harm the island's economy, which is already reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Maria and years of financial hardships. A provision in the tax bill that is meant to keep companies from shifting profits to other countries to avoid paying taxes would affect Puerto Rico because the U.S. territory is considered a foreign jurisdiction for tax purposes, even though its 3.4 million residents are American citizens. The tax bill was expected to win final passage in the Republican-led Congress on Wednesday. At a news conference with two members of Trump's Cabinet who visited the island to assess the hurricane's impact - Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson - Rossello said the provision designed to prevent shifting of profits - a process known as "base erosion" - amounts to a new tax that Puerto Rico cannot afford. "There is an opportunity to set things straight, to give Puerto Rico an opportunity and to eliminate this just weird application of the base-erosion provision to a jurisdiction of the United States," Rossello said. He urged lawmakers to attach an exemption from the tax for Puerto Rico to a year-end spending bill they are writing. Rossello also said Puerto Rico's Medicaid funding could run out as soon as February, leaving millions of residents without health insurance coverage, unless Congress acts soon. Even before Maria laid waste to the island three months ago, Puerto Rico was contending with $72 billion in debt. Rossello has asked the U.S. government for a total of $94.4 billion in aid, including $31.1 billion for housing and $17.8 billion to rebuild the ruined power grid. About 70 percent of Puerto Rico's power grid  as measured by its peak use  is operating, the government has said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects 95 percent of the grid will have power by the end of February, but it will take until the end of May for power to resume on the rest of the island. House of Representatives Republicans this week unveiled an $81 billion natural disaster aid package intended to help Puerto Rico and states such as Texas that have been hit by hurricanes, as well as California, which is grappling with wildfires. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Caren Bohan and Leslie Adler)
By Heather Somerville and Jim Finkle

(Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] on Wednesday named the former chief executive of Orbitz to be its chief operating officer, second-in-command to new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been revamping the leadership team in hopes of turning around the ride provider and preparing for an IPO.

Barney Harford, who was CEO of online travel service Orbitz Worldwide Inc, will join Uber on Jan. 2 and will be tasked with overseeing global ride-hailing operations, marketing, customer support and the food delivery business. A familiar face at Uber, he been an adviser since October, Khosrowshahi said in an email to employees.

With Khosrowshahi flying to Europe and South America to address regulatory issues, Harford will have an important role in Uber's day-to-day business. He must also help figure out how to turn a profit at Uber, where the loss widened to $1.46 billion in the third quarter from $1.06 billion the previous quarter.

Harford is Uber's first COO and Khosrowshahi's second significant hire after General Counsel Tony West joined in October from PepsiCo.

Khosrowshahi is under pressure to establish a leadership team capable of changing the toxic and rule-flouting corporate culture that developed under co-founder and former-CEO Travis Kalanick.

Khosrowshahi, who replaced Kalanick in August, has vowed to usher in a new era at Uber after a string of scandals led to the departure of many executives. These included allegations of sexual harassment, data privacy violations, a lawsuit alleging trade-secrets theft that is headed for trial in February, and criminal probes involving possible bribes paid overseas and a scheme to evade regulators.

Uber's board of directors has agreed to take the company public in 2019 and the company is searching for a chief financial officer who can help take the company public. The CFO position has been vacant since 2015.

Uber also needs a head of engineering and has vacancies for a number of managers for regional operations. Five key members of its security team also recently departed.

Story continues

Harford, who sits on the board of airline company United Continental Holdings Inc, was a one-time competitor to Khosrowshahi. Harford ran Orbitz from 2009 to 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile, while Khosrowshahi was CEO of online travel company Expedia Inc. In February 2015, Expedia announced it would acquire Orbitz for $1.3 billion in cash, part of a spate of acquisitions under Khosrowshahi.

Harford also worked for Expedia, and briefly under Khosrowshahi, running the company's Asia Pacific division, according to LinkedIn.

In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Harford said he looked forward to helping broaden transportation options in cities and said Uber "clearly wants to turn a corner."

In March, the company announced its plan to hire its first COO. Then, Kalanick was still CEO and under fire for his leadership abilities. The search was delayed while the board searched for a replacement for Kalanick.

(Additional reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and David Gregorio)
IN THE NEWS TODAY President Donald Trump called the massive Republican tax cut bill "an amazing experience." But it won't likely be signed by the president until next year. The measure consists of massive, permanent tax cuts for corporations, and more moderate, temporary tax cuts for individuals. (CNBC) In the hours after Capitol Hill approved the tax cut plan, Boeing (BA) and AT&T (T) were among the handful of companies that quickly announced plans to share some of the proceeds with their employees and spend on infrastructure. (CNBC) * Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp unveil minimum wage hikes after tax bill passage (CNBC) * Sen. Schumer says tax plan to boost share buybacks and dividends, not wages (CNBC) Lawmakers hope to approve a spending bill today as the clock ticks toward a potential federal government shutdown this weekend. Meanwhile, an $81 billion disaster aid bill faced a potential separate vote. (AP) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would bring an immigration bill to the floor by the end of January if lawmakers and the White House can reach a compromise. The groundwork is being laid on a deal impacting so-called dreamers. (Politico) The U.S. Commerce Department has finalized duties of nearly 300 percent on passenger jets made by Bombardier, a win for Boeing (BA), which lodged the complaint against its Canadian rival. (CNBC) South Korean guards fired up to 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a soldier who had defected today, after officials in the South confirmed the latest defection across the heavily militarized border. (Reuters) A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne today, injuring up to 14 people with some in a critical condition, though the motive was not known , police said. (CNBC) Apple (AAPL) acknowledged that it does take measures to reduce power demand in its older phones, which can have the effect of slowing performance. Apple said those steps are needed to prevent those phones from shutting down under certain circumstances. (CNBC) China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has raised over $4 billion in its latest round of funding, posing a challenge to its U.S. rival Uber in its efforts to branch out overseas. (CNBC) Facebook said employment ads that target younger users are not discriminatory if they're part of a broader recruitment campaign aimed at multiple age groups. (CNBC) Netflix's (NFLX) new fantasy thriller "Bright," starring actor Will Smith, debuts tomorrow to streaming company's 109 million customers. "Bright" will also be released initially in two theaters in the United States and 10 in Britain. (Reuters) STOCKS TO WATCHBed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) reported quarter profit of 44 cents per share, beating estimates by 7 cents, while the housewares retailer's revenue was slightly above forecasts. Comparable store sales did fall by 0.3 percent, but that was a smaller drop than the consensus estimate of a 2.4 percent decline.Walmart (WMT) is developing new services aimed at high-end consumers, according to Recode. The report also said the retail giant is working on stores without checkout lines or cashiers, like Amazon's (AMZN) Amazon Go stores.Nokia (NOK) signed a multi-year smartphone patent licensing agreement with China's Huawei, echoing actions it had already taken with companies like Apple, Samsung, and LG. Nokia's significant patent catalog stems from the era when it was a significant player in the mobile handset business.Sony (SNE) has struck a new royalty deal with YouTube for music videos and user clips, according to a Bloomberg report. Jefferies said the agreement will likely give a significant boost to Sony's music-related earnings.WATERCOOLERWinter is here . The winter solstice, which marks the longest night and fewest hours of daylight of the year, arrives this morning at 11:28 a.m. ET. It is the precise moment at which the Northern Hemisphere is tilted farthest from the sun. (USA Today) IN THE NEWS TODAY President Donald Trump called the massive Republican tax cut bill "an amazing experience." But it won't likely be signed by the president until next year. The measure consists of massive, permanent tax cuts for corporations, and more moderate, temporary tax cuts for individuals. (CNBC) In the hours after Capitol Hill approved the tax cut plan, Boeing (BA) and AT&T (T) were among the handful of companies that quickly announced plans to share some of the proceeds with their employees and spend on infrastructure. (CNBC) * Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp unveil minimum wage hikes after tax bill passage (CNBC) * Sen. Schumer says tax plan to boost share buybacks and dividends, not wages (CNBC) Lawmakers hope to approve a spending bill today as the clock ticks toward a potential federal government shutdown this weekend. Meanwhile, an $81 billion disaster aid bill faced a potential separate vote. (AP) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would bring an immigration bill to the floor by the end of January if lawmakers and the White House can reach a compromise. The groundwork is being laid on a deal impacting so-called dreamers. (Politico) The U.S. Commerce Department has finalized duties of nearly 300 percent on passenger jets made by Bombardier, a win for Boeing (BA), which lodged the complaint against its Canadian rival. (CNBC) South Korean guards fired up to 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a soldier who had defected today, after officials in the South confirmed the latest defection across the heavily militarized border. (Reuters) A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne today, injuring up to 14 people with some in a critical condition, though the motive was not known , police said. (CNBC) Apple (AAPL) acknowledged that it does take measures to reduce power demand in its older phones, which can have the effect of slowing performance. Apple said those steps are needed to prevent those phones from shutting down under certain circumstances. (CNBC) China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has raised over $4 billion in its latest round of funding, posing a challenge to its U.S. rival Uber in its efforts to branch out overseas. (CNBC) Facebook said employment ads that target younger users are not discriminatory if they're part of a broader recruitment campaign aimed at multiple age groups. (CNBC) Netflix's (NFLX) new fantasy thriller "Bright," starring actor Will Smith, debuts tomorrow to streaming company's 109 million customers. "Bright" will also be released initially in two theaters in the United States and 10 in Britain. (Reuters) STOCKS TO WATCH Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) reported quarter profit of 44 cents per share, beating estimates by 7 cents, while the housewares retailer's revenue was slightly above forecasts. Comparable store sales did fall by 0.3 percent, but that was a smaller drop than the consensus estimate of a 2.4 percent decline. Walmart (WMT) is developing new services aimed at high-end consumers, according to Recode. The report also said the retail giant is working on stores without checkout lines or cashiers, like Amazon's (AMZN) Amazon Go stores. Nokia (NOK) signed a multi-year smartphone patent licensing agreement with China's Huawei, echoing actions it had already taken with companies like Apple, Samsung, and LG. Nokia's significant patent catalog stems from the era when it was a significant player in the mobile handset business. Sony (SNE) has struck a new royalty deal with YouTube for music videos and user clips, according to a Bloomberg report. Jefferies said the agreement will likely give a significant boost to Sony's music-related earnings. WATERCOOLER Winter is here . The winter solstice, which marks the longest night and fewest hours of daylight of the year, arrives this morning at 11:28 a.m. ET. It is the precise moment at which the Northern Hemisphere is tilted farthest from the sun. (USA Today)



More From CNBC



Top News and Analysis



Latest News Video



Personal Finance


Just a few weeks ago, Wall Streets equity strategists rolled out their 2018 forecasts for the stock market. But now that tax reform is basically a done deal, some strategists are rewriting their outlooks.

Credit Suisses Jonathan Golub had called for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) to climb to 2,875 in 2018 on $139 in earnings per share (EPS). In a note to clients on Thursday, Golub raised his target to 3,000 on EPS of $155.

[C]orporate results have surprised, GDP expectations have improved, and tax rates have fallen, he wrote. While the new effective tax rate remains uncertain, an assumed rate of 21% adds $12, or 8%, to our 2018 EPS estimate.

On Wednesday, Citis Tobias Levkovich raised his price target to 2,800 from 2,675 while increasing his EPS forecast to $146 from $141. Though, he cautions against getting too excited about how tax cuts will hit the bottom line.

Each 1% of tax rate decline theoretically adds nearly $2 of EPS but several company management teams are suggesting that a portion of the tax savings will be used for competitive strategies, which may include price cuts and/or more marketing expenditures, he said. Thus, it may be presumptuous to build the full benefit into 2018s projections and Street hopes of a very large boost may be disappointed.

Stock market forecasters are already tweaking their 2018 outlooks.

Nevertheless, Levkovich acknowledges that stocks could go a lot higher.

The possibility of a blow-off rally does exist but we doubt that a repeat of 1999s exuberance is probable, he said. The excitement around cloud, automation, robotics, virtualization, cybersecurity and mobility has been a major part of the near 40% rally in the Information Technology sector this year and hence it seems unlikely that another big boost is coming in 2018. The underlying fundamentals are very well known and thus captured in current valuations and forecasts, in our opinion.

Elsewhere, Morgan Stanleys Michael Wilson maintains his 2,750 target on the S&P. Though on Wednesday, he reiterated his call for a market top the day a tax bill becomes law. However, he thinks any weakness in the markets should prove temporary.

Story continues

First, breadth is still too strong and we have yet to see any major divergences in that regard. Second, the tax cut bill didnt just happen earlier than we thought, but the cuts are bigger too which can get us higher than current levels, particularly if the euphoria stage persists, Wilson said. As a result, we are open to the idea that if we finally get a pause to reset sentiment and positioning in January, that could set us up for a move toward our bull case of 3,000 in 1H 2018.

Heres a summary of Wall Streets 2018 targets:

For a little more context, click here for what Wall Street had predicted for 2017.



Sam Ro is managing editor at Yahoo Finance.

Read more:

Follow him on Twitter: @bySamRo

Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn
WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan-born Zalmay Khalilzad had a central role in shaping the approach of U.S. President George W. Bushs administration toward Afghanistan after 9/11. In an interview with RFE/RL Gandhara website, Khalilzad says President Donald Trumps current strategy in Afghanistan requires a presidential envoy to succeed. Drawing on decades of government expertise, he says the strategy must involve changing Pakistans outlook toward Afghanistan, preventing a domestic political implosion, and offering long-term economic prosperity and security for Afghans.

RFE/RL: Do you see any positive impact of Trumps new strategy so far?

Zalmay Khalilzad: Psychologically, it has had a good impact on the Afghans. Based on Trumps campaign and some of his statements before he became president, they feared abandonment by the United States. The revalidation of the American objective in Afghanistan, and the adjustment in the strategy indicating a recommitting are positive impacts.

The addition of forces, the delegation of more authority to the commander as to how he uses the force, the commitment to get more involved in the fight not only against Daesh (eds: Arabic acronym for Islamic State militants) and Al-Qaeda but also against the Taliban has had a positive impact.

The focus on sanctuaries, particularly in Pakistan, has had a good impact in terms of the Afghans. But  Pakistani policy has not changed. And the question the administration faces is what to do because changing the Pakistani approach to Afghanistan is fundamental to the success of the strategy; its a central assumption.

RFE/RL: If you were in a position to do so, what would you do to change Pakistans policies?

Khalilzad: Im pessimistic that Pakistans policies can change easily. While it is necessary, it will require a demanding approach, and by that I mean it probably has to become coercive.

One [way] is to go after the sanctuaries by use of drones and other means. Second is to put individuals involved in support of the Haqqani network and the Taliban and others on a list where they cant do business as usual or travel to the West. Third is to increase economic pressure on Pakistan in terms of bilateral assistance, making more assistance conditional, and have other allies -- Europeans, Japanese -- make their assistance conditional. And even international help -- IMF, World Bank, where the U.S. and the West have considerable influence -- to be conditional.

Then there is the Indian issue, which should be used smartly. If Pakistan doesnt change, there will be a greater role for archrival India, a greater burden-sharing in Afghanistan. The U.S. needs a plan as to when from this diplomatic engagement it shifts to a coercive approach where for six months we try this and if it doesnt work then we shift to the other.

Afghanistans success requires a change in Pakistani policy, a better relationship, and respecting legitimate Pakistani interests. You cant stabilize Afghanistan in the immediate to midterm without Pakistani cooperation.

RFE/RL: Do you see the Trump administration, which is now dealing with a broad array of challenges and has yet to make key appointments, changing Pakistans approach in the short term?

Khalilzad: The administration has repeated multiple times that one way or another -- perhaps even implying force would have to be used -- that Pakistan will have to change. Either they change or we, the U.S., would have to do whatever is necessary to deal with the problem. That is a big challenge. And they implicitly, and even explicitly, stated that this administration is determined to deal with this problem, but how and when is not clear.

The other issue is that the president has emphasized an integrated approach that takes into account Pakistan, the Taliban, the military effort, but also political efforts in Afghanistan, regional efforts, economic development, and [yet] there is a question of how this will happen. People have talked about the appointment of a presidential envoy that would integrate all that, but that has not happened yet. That will be one way integration of the policy could occur.

RFE/RL: The Afghan government is united in name only, and hardly anything hopeful is happening on the political front. Do you think domestic Afghan politics are being ignored and that feeds into the Talibans strategy of waiting it out?

Khalilzad: There is a dilemma that Afghans and their friends need to address effectively: the elite politics -- various political forces and the maneuvering over power -- and the need for reform, improvement in governance, improvement in economic conditions and services to the population.

This is a tricky challenge, and it requires the elite -- both who want reform and those who benefit from issues like corruption -- to rise to the occasion and take the national interests into account. The world is watching the commitments Afghanistan has made to the United States, the international community that it has to deliver almost like conditions for continued engagement. This is very tricky, and its very important, and its very difficult.

RFE/RL: Do you see Washington dealing with this challenge?

Khalilzad: The ambassador has just gone there, so we have to wait and see. Its highly important Washington recognizes the importance of this, because sometimes you get the impression that the only thing that is important is the military part, but the politics are also extremely important. If politics are not going the right way, it can create security problems which the military has to then deal with, and sometimes you cannot deal with it successfully without dealing with it politically.

RFE/RL: Do you see a scenario like in 2001 where the U.S. military has nearly absolute victory on the ground but then later on, because of not addressing the political and the regional problems, Afghanistan doesnt pan out the way it was supposed to?

Khalilzad: One should never underestimate military success, and not only tactical military success but also strategic military success. The successes of the early period that you refer to did not address the issue of sanctuaries. The sanctuaries and the Taliban regrouping, and some of the political challenges within Afghanistan created the conditions for the Taliban to become a bigger challenge. Its one thing to win military engagement, and its another thing to win peace.

Peace and enduring success requires a professional security force; it requires political understanding including reconciliation with the Taliban or elements that want to reconcile. It requires improvement in governing, balanced development, [and] economic development because sometimes youngsters are recruited purely because the extremists pay them more than they could get otherwise.

So it needs a comprehensive approach. If you think every problem can be dealt with militarily, thats a mistake. We need to have various instruments at work. If the only thing you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

RFE/RL: One of the key things in Afghanistan has been reconciliation among Afghans. Does this current strategy focus enough on bringing the Taliban to the table and integrating them into the political system, or some kind of compromise that could ensure lasting peace?

Khalilzad: It does. The ultimate objective of the strategy is to bring the Taliban to the table; thats a step of success. The question that right now has been focused on and appropriately is to work on the conditions.

During the Obama administration, the message that the U.S. was getting out was that the U.S. wasnt going to fight the Taliban and that it was an Afghan problem. It didnt encourage reconciliation; it sustained the opposition -- it sustained the Taliban. The Taliban thought wow, time is on their side. The Americans are going to leave; they are going to win. Why should they compromise?

The Taliban did make successes. The areas they were contesting and the areas they controlled expanded dramatically. So now if you can work on the conditions that first the strategy that America is recommitted is important, a signal to set the strategic context, and then to show success militarily on the ground, and then work on diplomacy including in Pakistan, which is a key player and with the goal of ultimately an agreement. Were not quite there yet, so theres time for these other elements to be brought in.

Setting the conditions also means the Afghans managing their politics, because if militarily you do a little better and the Taliban are challenged and pushed back in this or that area, politics can go in the opposite direction.

RFE/RL: In 2001, when you were part of the administration that won the war, there was near consensus globally on backing the U.S. military effort. But now you have a lot of destabilizing rivalries in Afghanistan, and none of Afghanistans neighbors -- apart from India, perhaps -- is in favor of a long-term American military presence. How do you resolve that?

Khalilzad: Its one thing to talk about the long-term U.S. presence, and the Afghans have said that for any peace negotiations, thats a subject on the table. Its leverage the Afghan government has.

But a U.S. withdrawal without a settlement plays into the hands of the Taliban because that would weaken the government and change the balance in [their] favor. And the region doesnt want that. While some players have questions about U.S. intentions and the effects of a long-term U.S. presence, there is broad agreement that [their premature withdrawal will be problematic]. [Former Afghan President Hamid] Karzai -- who was a very serious critic of the U.S. strategy -- has repeatedly said, when he went to China, he went to Russia, he went to Pakistan, except for Iran everyone else told him, you better sign this security agreement to keep the U.S. there, as the absence of the U.S. would be worse. But they also said they dont want the U.S. to be there for the long term. The long term is really related to a settlement, so I think ideally you would like to have a regional consensus thats supportive of the U.S., although Russian President [Vladimir] Putin recently made a positive statement about cooperating with the U.S. in Afghanistan. So well see.

The worsening of the situation because of the Obama policies where the Taliban were getting stronger, the rise of Daesh, had an effect on regional attitudes, especially Russia and Iran. Russia thought maybe the Taliban can be an instrument to fight Daesh because they were more concerned about Daesh especially in northern Afghanistan, Iran similarly. But now the balance shifts; there could be an adjustment. One reason for a special envoy would be to deal with that regional diplomacy.

RFE/RL: If you had Trumps ear and he asked for advice to ensure his strategy will ultimately be a success, what would you tell him?

Khalilzad: I would tell him first that integration, as hes said, is very important; he should appoint someone as a presidential envoy, someone he knows and he trusts and has his confidence.

Second, that we need to pay attention to the Pakistani dimension; I give him credit for highlighting this. Now he needs a game plan of what will happen when. If there is no cooperation, then I think, of course, a coercive strategy needs to be identified and planned and ready to be executed if the Pakistanis dont cooperate. Third is: Pay attention to politics in Afghanistan, the inter-elite problems, because if elections dont happen, if there is ethnic polarization and god forbid conflict, that will have a very serious negative effect on the ground and in terms of attitudes.

Then develop a business plan, an economic plan, so that peoples lives can be improved and they can insist on reforms. I would appoint an envoy with those four or five tasks to be accountable for and timelines to deal with.
WASHINGTON -- The United States has sanctioned 52 more international figures as human rights abusers connected to the Global Magnitsky Act, targeting individuals from Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Included on the list of sanctioned persons announced on December 21 are Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of the late longtime Uzbek President Islam Karimov; and Artyom Chaika, the son of Russian Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika.

The announcement comes one day after the Treasury hit five Russian individuals under the Magnitsky act, including Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechnya region, accusing him of torture and "extra-judicial killings.

In the December 21 announcement, the Treasury said new sanctions against 39 individuals built on the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act passed last year by the U.S. Congress.

In addition, it said, "President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order today declaring a national emergency with respect to serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world and providing for the imposition of sanctions on actors engaged in these malign activities."

As part of the order, it said, sanctions were imposed on 13 individuals classified as "serious human rights abusers."

Along with Karimova and Chaika, it said it also sanctioned Mukhtar Hamid Shah of Pakistan, believed by Pakistani police to be involved in kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and the removal of and trafficking in human organs.

In addition, Burma military officer Maung Maung Soe was sanctioned for matters related to a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the countrys Rakhine Province.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) India said today that it attaches a lot of importance to its ties with the Maldives and hoped that the country will be sensitive to its concerns.

Replying to questions on an anti-India editorial in a Maldivian newspaper, Spokesperson in the External Affairs Ministry Raveesh Kumar said it should not be taken seriously.

advertisement

The Maldives recently signed a free trade agreement with China, which is seen as Beijings growing influence over the island nation.

"We have to see our relationship with Maldives in a broader perspective. It is an important country. We do attach lot of importance to our relationship with the country," Kumar said.

At the same time, he said India expects and hopes that the Maldives will be sensitive to New Delhis concerns.

On the FTA between China and the Maldives, he said India was trying to understand its implications.

"We should look beyond these developments and we should have diplomatic discussions between the two sides to address any issue between the two countries," said the MEA spokesperson.

He said much attention should not be paid to things which are going around.

Kumar also referred to a tweet by Maldivian Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim few days back in which he called the India-Maldives ties time-tested.

"Relations with #India is time-tested and is based on people to people contact & cooperation in several sectors. We remain committed to further enhancing and strengthening existing ties," Asim had tweeted.

Meanwhile, asked about the the visit of the mother and wife of Indian death row convict Kulbhushan Jadhav to Pakistan to meet him, Kumar said the modalities of the trip were being worked out.

"The modalities of the meeting are being worked out and who goes when, how do they go, how the meeting takes place, I think this is something the two countries are engaged in discussion," said Kumar when asked about media reports quoting Pakistani officials that the mother and wife of Jadhav will be flying to Islamabad than taking the road trip via Wagah.

Asked about the comment of a Pakistani official that Islamabad may allow the two women to interact with media if India does not have any objection, Kumar did not give a direct reply, saying, "We will see."

To a separate question, Kumar said Pakistan is under international obligation to protect the minorities in the country.

advertisement

On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said that India will take up at the highest level in the Pakistan government reports of Sikhs being forced to convert to Islam by a government official in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Her reaction came after leading Pakistan daily The Express Tribune published a news story about the Sikh community raising serious concerns after being forced to convert to Islam by the government official in the Hangu district of K-P. PTI MPB ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
English Estonian

The Management Board of AS Silvano Fashion Group, registry code 10175491, registered address Tulika 15/17, 10613 Tallinn, (hereinafter SFG) convenes an Extraordinary General Meeting (hereinafter: EGM) of shareholders on 12th of January 2017 at 11:00 (Estonian time) in Nordic Hotel Forum conference hall Arcturus, address Viru valjak 3, Tallinn, Estonia.

The registration of participants of the Extraordinary General Meeting starts at 10:30 a.m. (Estonian time).

I Agenda

The agenda of the EGM is the following:

1. The amendment of the profit distribution decision approved by the Annual General Meeting held on 29th of June 2017 and additional distribution of profit of AS Silvano Fashion Group

II Proposals of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board

The Supervisory Board of SFG has approved the agenda of the EGM as proposed by the Management Board. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board make the following proposals to the shareholders with regard to the agenda:

1. The amendment of the profit distribution decision approved by the Annual General Meeting held on 29th of June 2017 and additional distribution of profit of AS Silvano Fashion Group

Proposal of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board:

1.1. To distribute the profit by paying dividends to the shareholders from the profit of the company based on the approved annual report of 2016 as follows:

1.1.1. The list of shareholders of AS Silvano Fashion Group entitled to profit distribution shall be fixed on 5st of January 2018 end of day of settlement systems.

1.1.2. EUR 0.30 per share shall be payable to the entitled shareholders as a dividend at the latest on 29th of January 2018.

III Organizational questions

The list of the shareholders entitled to participate in the EGM shall be fixed 7 days prior to the date of the meeting, i.e. on 4th of January 2018 end of day of settlement systems.

At the EGM, a shareholder is entitled to receive information from the Management Board about the activities of SFG. The Management Board may decide to withhold information if there is a reason to believe that the disclosure of information may cause significant damage to the interests of SFG. If the Management Board refuses to disclose information, the shareholder may demand from the EGM to adopt a resolution regarding to the lawfulness of the information request or file a petition to a court of law within two weeks of the EGM requesting the court for the ruling requiring the Management Board to disclose the information.

The shareholders whose shares represent at least 1/20 of the share capital may request for additional items to be included in the agenda of the EGM, if the respective request is submitted in writing at least 15 days prior to the EGM.

The shareholders whose shares represent at least 1/20 of the share capital may present their draft resolutions to each item in the agenda in writing no later than 3 days before the EGM.

Draft resolution regarding to the agenda items and other documents presented to the EGM (including annual report, report of the sworn auditor, profit distribution proposal and report of the Supervisory Board) are available for examination on every working day as of the notification of the EGM until the business day preceding the day of the EGM at the headquarters of the Company at Tulika 15/17, Tallinn on business days from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. (Estonian time).

On the day of the EGM the materials related to the agenda of the General Meeting are available for examination at the venue of the EGM as of the opening of registration of participants until the end of the EGM. In order to examine the documents: (1) the shareholders who are natural persons are required to present a document verifying their identity and their representatives are additionally required to present the power of attorney in written form; (2) the representatives of the shareholders who are legal entities shall present (a) an extract from the registry where the legal entity is registered; and (b) a document verifying the identity of representative; and (c) in case of representation on the basis of proxy, also a power of attorney.

Documents and data which are disclosed according to Article 2941 of the Estonian Commercial Code and the templates of power of attorney are available on the homepage of the Company: http://www.silvanofashion.com.

The following documents must be submitted to participate in EGM - the shareholders who are natural persons shall present a document verifying their identity and their representatives shall present the power of attorney in written form; - the representatives of the shareholders who are legal entities shall present (a) an extract from the registry where the legal entity is registered; and (b) a document verifying the identity of representative; (c) in case of representation on the basis of proxy, also a power of attorney.

Unless otherwise provided by a foreign agreement, a document issued by a foreign authority shall be duly apostilled or legalized. Documents in foreign language should be accompanied by the translation into Estonian, verified by relevant institution.

Prior to the EGM the shareholder may notify the Company of the appointment of a representative or the revocation of the representative's authority by sending a digitally signed e-mail message to info@silvanofashion.com or by delivering the information in person on workdays between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Estonian time) or via mail to AS Silvano Fashion Group, Tulika 15/17, 10613 Tallinn, Estonia by 5 p.m. (Estonian time) on the business day preceding the day of the EGM.

For any information regarding the EGM or the agenda items, please contact Jarek Sargava (e-mail info@silvanofashion.com; phone +372 684 5000).

Jarek Sargava

AS Silvano Fashion Group Board Member

E-mail: info@silvanofashion.com

Tel: +372 684 5000; Fax: +372 684 5300

Address: Tulika 15/17, 10613 Tallinn, Estonia

http://www.silvanofashion.com
Posted from my mobile device

$25k per year is not horrible to get a much better shot at MBB and up your rankings/prestige/etc. you are already investing 300k with opportunity cost and tuition. But I dont feel it is black and white.In terms of your last question, brand and how it helps you after graduation. It is hard to tell sometimes since your resume may be picked from a pile due to Fuqua (Duke) name or due to your achievements. At the same time I feel, most jobs after the first one are based on networking and professional accomplishments. However, it sets a good tone when you can say, I have a 99th percentile on the GMAT or I went to a top 10 MBA. First impressions are important but how do you value them?_________________
By Asian News International: As we all know, India is a rich country with diverse culture and traditions. Every festival stands out for its unique celebrations, grandeur, food and customs.

In these winter months, plan an extraordinary journey to witness the finest culture of the country. Goomo, an Omni channel trevel tech company, has curated a special list of these lovely mainstream festivals that you must put in your itinerary this holiday season.

advertisement

- Rajasthan

1. Camel Fair: Winter brings out the best in some places, and, Rajasthan is one such royal destination that gets prettier with the onset of winter. Apart from visiting the majestic havelis and breathtaking forts of the state, visit the desert land to revel in art, culture and festivals. Catch a glimpse of the spectacular camel performances, intriguing local folklores, extravagant firework display and more at the Camel Fair in Bikaner. The two-day affair scheduled from January 13-14, 2018 is sure to mesmerize you with its splendor and make for a perfect getaway during the winter.

Also Read: The Svanubhava arts festival returns to Chennai with its 10th edition

2. Jaipur Literary Festival: Several literary fests take place in and around India. However, the Jaipur Literary Festival scheduled from January 24-29, 2018 at the Pink City of India is the world's largest free event of its kind that will see renowned personalities including historians, politicians, humanitarians and business leaders grace attendees with their presence. The literary fest, with its stimulating conversations held in the backdrop of the famous Diggi Palace will offer a unique cultural and intellectual experience.

The camel fair in Rajasthan. Picture courtesy: Instagram/sharmatherahul The camel fair in Rajasthan. Picture courtesy: Instagram/sharmatherahul

3. Desert Festival: Witness the Thar Desert come to life at the three-day extravaganza of Jaisalmer Desert festival. Scheduled from January 29-31, 2018, this is the time when the celebrations of the festival lighten up the desert with colour, enthusiasm, and happiness. The traditional and bright costumes, the folk music recitals, competitions like camel races, tug-of-war, moustache competition, gymnastic stunts along with mouth-watering food and artifacts make it an absolute must-visit destination during the winter.

4. Sufi Spirit Festival: Rajasthan is definitely much more than its historic forts and palaces. The Sufi Spirit Festival at Nagaur with soothing music, dance and poetry and good food is sure to offer an unforgettable experience. Touted to be one of the most exhilarating music spectacles in the country, the Sufi Festival brings together brilliant artists from across India and around the world in a stunning royal setting. Scheduled from February 12-15, 2018 at the Nagaur fort and from February 16-18 at the Mehrangarh fort, Jodhpur, this event is sure to transport you to a different world altogether.

- Kerala

5. Theyyam: While Kerala is an epitome of tranquility and oozes picturesque beauty, its festivals, too, stand out for their grandeur and uniqueness. One offbeat festival of Kerala is Theyyam that originated in North Kerala. Scheduled to take place from February 23-26, 2018 in the Kasargod district of Kerala, the popular ritual dance, Theyyam represents a host of Gods and Goddesses dancing to the sounds of musical instruments like chenda, elathalam, kurumkuzal and veekkuchenda. The big and bright red headgear, heavy make-up, huge masks and flamboyant costumes make it one of the best visual art forms to be discovered in God's Own Country.

Theyyam, a Keralan fest. Picture courtesy: Instagram/ankitbhat92 Theyyam, a Keralan fest. Picture courtesy: Instagram/ankitbhat92

advertisement

- Gujarat

6. Rann Utsav: With its ancient temples and wildlife sanctuaries, Gujarat definitely is a treasure trove of architecture and history. Well, give them a miss and head to the desert of Kutch to experience a grand cultural fiesta. The ongoing India Rann Utsav is a melange of music, dance and craft. The white sands and full bloom moon make for picture-perfect scenery, especially in the winter months. Therefore, treat yourself to the cultural performances of traditional dancers, Kutch food, camel-back safari and more at the Gujarat's Rann Utsav that ends on February 20, 2018.

7. Kite festival: From stunt kites, rokkakus, deltas, miniature kites and inflatables, scan the skies during the renowned Ahmedabad International Kite Festival scheduled from the of January 7-15, 2018. Every nook and cranny of Ahmedabad's streets and lanes will be full of makeshift shops selling kites of different colours and hues, sizes, and shapes. Come, witness the marvelous kite flying skills and incredibly artistic kites take to the skies during the festival. Do not forget to shop for beautiful handicrafts, knick-knacks, clothes, and spices sold at the time of the festival. Also, enjoy the local delicacies on offer for visitors, tourists, and locals alike.

advertisement

Also Read: Puppy Puja: This festival in Nepal is dedicated to worshipping dogs

- Sikkim

8. Losar: The Northeast states have a medley of fascinating festivals full of colours and that are rich in cultural history. When it comes to Sikkim, a visit to the Tibetan areas in the tiny Indian hill state is a must. In February, the Tibetans celebrate the Tibetan New Year, also known as Losar, with much gaiety and fervor. At the Pemayangste Monastery, tourists can witness the New Year celebrations, where certain special rituals are performed along with traditional dance forms. Catch all the action live at Gangtok for two days, from February 16-18, 2018.

Losar is celebrated in Sikkim. Picture courtesy: Instagram/ibnbattutah

advertisement

- Nagaland

9. Hornbill festival: If you are taking a tour of the Northeast in the winter months, then Nagaland can be an ideal spot. Do not miss out on the 10-day Hornbill festival held in Kisama heritage village of Nagaland. Scheduled from December 1-10, 2017, the village plays host to a series of arts and crafts exhibitions and events such as a Naga wrestling competition, Naga chilli-eating contest, cooking competition, greased bamboo pole climbing event and much more. Enjoy the rock music festival held at the same time featuring some of the best contemporary bands from Northeast India. Food aficionados will have the opportunity to dig into the best of Naga culinary delights offered on every day at the festival.

--- ENDS ---
Image: Screengrab from YouTube

Islamabad/New Delhi, Dec 21 (IBNS): In a significant development, Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said he is ready to normalise relation with neighbour India and has also urged his country's policy makers to contemplate the same, according to media reports.

"The military is ready to back political leadership's initiative for normalization of relations with India," he told lawmakers at the senate committee.

According to him, the only way forward for his country is to have good relations with all its neighbours.

However, Bajwa has reminded the country's leaders that most of Indian deployments in the recent past have been against Pakistan.

Bajwa has also blamed India and Afghanistan of forming a nexus through its individual intelligence agencies and stirring up controversies in Pakistan.

The move is significant because so far India has blamed its neighbour's army of blocking peace talks.

Image: Screengrab from YouTube
Mumbai, Dec 20 (IBNS): Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra are currently undergoing the most challenging shooting schedule of their career.

Dibakar Banerjee has taken the lead actors of his directorial, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, to shoot at the international border of India and Nepal that is constantly under radar for illegal immigration.

Dibakar is filming extremely intense and gritty portions of the film at the Indo-Nepal border. The portions will show the tension between Arjun and Parineetis character. These are crucial and defining moments of the film. The area where the two are shooting is exactly at the border and is constantly under alert for illegal immigration and smuggling. People use an inflated rubber tube as a flotation device on the Kali river at the border and make this risky crossing in the thick of a wintry night. So, shooting has been quite difficult. Local authorities have been of tremendous help providing the crew with assistance and necessary security, informs a source.

This new information builds more intrigue for this thriller.

Meanwhile, the shooting schedules of Yash Raj Films Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar have been an adventure in many ways.

The films crew was previously shooting in an Uttarakhand village, Jhulaghat, which will soon be immersed underwater because of the construction of a dam.

Dibakars film will end up being the only film to have a visual record of this quaint town that will be first evacuated and then submerged under water.

The hugely entertaining thriller, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, is set to release on August 3, 2018.
Recently, Sadegh Larijani alleged that Ahmadinejad attempted to implicate his daughter in an espionage plot. Iranian Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani said in an address to university students, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had asked Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, for information regarding rumors of espionage charges against Larijanis daughter Zahra. Shamkhani apparently told Ahmadinejad there was no truth to the rumors, but the former president said, then you dont know. Zahra Larijani has been arrested and we even know her place of detention.

Amad News reported in September, Zahra Ardeshir Larijani, daughter of Sadegh Amoli Larijani, has been accused of espionage for the West and a top secret dossier has been filed for her. On October 1, the news site also claimed, After Zahra Larijanis espionage for the British Embassy in Iran was discovered, one of the Supreme Leaders aides, Vahid Haghanian, directly ordered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence apparatus to arrest her.

Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi stepped in after the announcement, and denied that any member of the Larijani family was under arrest.

Ahmadinejad has had a long and ongoing feud with the influential Larijani brothers, who include Judiciary Chief Sadegh, Speaker of Parliament Ali, Mohammad Javad, who heads the judiciarys human rights council, and two other brothers.

Sadegh Larijani retaliated, accusing Ahmadinejad of being a seditionist after Ahmadinejad voiced support for some of his closest allies  Hamid Reza Baghaei, who was Ahmadinejads Vice President for Executive Affairs, his one-time press advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr, and his former financial affairs director, Habibollah Joz-e Khorasani, after they sought sanctuary in holy shrine near Tehran to escape appearing in court, and as a protest against being under investigation in the first place, last November.

Larijani also pointed out that in the last months of his presidency, on February 3, 2013, Ahmadinejad presented a video to the Iranian parliament that appeared to show Fazel Larijani procuring bribes. The chief of judiciary quoted the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who called Ahmadinejads action illegal, immoral and against sharia.

In a video interview on November 24, Ahmadinejad said in that the Iranian judiciary was responsible for the death of Sattar Beheshti, the blogger who died in prison four days after he was arrested in 2012, reportedly after suffering torture. Ahmadinejad said that at the time, he got into a shouting match with Larijani over Beheshtis death. Larijani refuted this. He does not dare to shout at me, Larijani told the student group. He also implicitly accused Ahmadinejad of supporting Babak Zanjani, the billionaire sanctions-breaker who is in jail and has been sentenced to death.

In the case that concerns Mohammad Javad Larijani, he is accused by farmers in Varamin, near Tehran, of land grab and corrupt deals. This, along with the rumors about Zahra Ardeshir Larijani, and the 2012 video that Ahmadinejad presented to the parliament to prove that Mohammad Javad was procuring bribes, has garnered extremely negative public response. The more these cases are discussed in public, the worse they affect the political climate surrounding the Larijani brothers. In fact,

following Sadegh Larijanis speech, a group of students from Sharif University staged a protest calling for him to be dismissed.

Sadegh Larijanis tries, as best as he can, to avoid ugly public battles. It appears that Sadegh Larijani is practicing restraint for the moment, part of his overall strategy to rally his resources and move forward to a point that has yet to be revealed.
Houthi militias are reported to be responsible for the killing of former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Commander of the terrorist Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Ali Jafari has stated, Today, Yemen is ruled by the Ansarullah (Houthi Movement), and Irans assistance is confined to advisory missions and spiritual support, which Yemen needs most. His statement makes it clear that Iranian regime is supporting the Houthis.

According to Reuters, a drone that the Pentagon says was manufactured in Iran, but recovered in Yemen, is on display at a military base, in a U.S. Department of Defense exhibit.

Reuters also reports that a missile the U.S. Department of Defense says is a Qiam ballistic missile manufactured in Iran. The Pentagon says that this missile was fired by Houthi militias from Yemen into Saudi Arabia in July. CNN broadcast a report on December 8th, saying that evidence from the remains of the missile has convinced the US that it was fired under Iranian regimes supervision. Those remnants indicate the missile was provided by Iran, and the assessment is the launcher and missile training was also provided by Tehran.

US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, is planning to show remnants of the missile later this week. She is set to unveil components of a short-range ballistic missile that Houthi rebels fired into Saudi Arabia at Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C.

General HR McMaster spoke at a security forum earlier this month. The National Security Advisor discussed Iran regimes interference in Iraq and Syria. What they (Iranians) are in the middle of doing now is using a sophisticated campaign of subversion in Iraq and a continued support for Assad. About 80 percent of Assads fighters are Iranian proxies in Syria to establish this kind of land bridge over into the Mediterranean and so what we face is Iran having a proxy army on borders of Israel.

Although Iran regimes President Rouhani relied on the EUs support against the mounting pressures from Washington Frances foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian said on December 12th, Rather than pursue ambitions to expand its military presence in the region, Iran should work with the United Nations to try to establish peace in war-torn Syria. He said that Iran should desist in attempting to create an axis of military and political influence stretching from Tehran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea.

On November 30th, Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. The aim of the US administration is to get Iran out of Syria. He added, The US and Russia cannot decide for Iran. We are there at the request of the Syrian government. Its our region. Its the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico. We are going nowhere.

Maryam Rajavi, President of Irans main opposition organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) warned of what was to come in her address in Paris in 2007. Four years ago I warned the threat of the mullahs meddling in Iraq is 100 times more dangerous than its nuclear ambitions. However, it is not just Iraq, Irans influence has now spread across the region.
The incident of the woman officer getting caught while cheating in the exam and the attempts by senior officers of the legal branch of the force was exposed by some insiders on social media.

According to the allegations, the lady officer is the daughter of a former legal officer who retired as a Major General from the force who has been accused of trying to save his ward from being punished.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: Acting tough, the Army has ordered a probe into the charges against a Captain-rank lady officer who was allegedly caught while cheating in an exam in the legal branch of the force in a training institute for young officers.

"The charges against the young lady officer have been received and we have also come to know about the allegations that since she is the daughter of a senior retired officer, attempts have been made to cover it up. A probe has been ordered to find out the actual details," an Army source told Mail Today.

advertisement

The incident of the woman officer getting caught while cheating in the exam and the attempts by senior officers of the legal branch of the force was exposed by some insiders on the social media as almost all social media groups in the force were talking about it.

According to the allegations, the lady officer is the daughter of a former legal officer who retired as a Major General from the force who has been accused of trying to save his ward from being punished.

The lady officer was allegedly caught cheating in the exam by another lady officer who is working as an instructor in the Military Institute of Law in Kamptee.

The allegations also suggest that in a bid to cover up the cheating incident, the lady officer was admitted to the Military Hospital in Kamptee on some flimsy grounds and she was being allowed to give her exams from the hospital bed itself.

As per the Whatsapp messages floating in the Army groups, it is alleged that there was "a lot of resentment amongst all the course mates of the lady officer with whom she was doing the course when she was being awarded highest marks in weekly tests."

A new group calling itself 'Team Name and Shame' has also alleged that the some of the legal officers of the force were trying to protect the lady officer whereas when other officers get caught, they are advised to be tried by General Court Martials as cheating in any form is taken very seriously in the services.

In the allegations, names of two Major Generals and one Brigadier have also figured and a demand has been made to hold an inquiry against them for various other corruption allegations along with the charge of protecting the lady officer.

In the recent times, the Army has taken very serious steps against officers indulging in any kind of wrongdoings as Gen Bipin Rawat has made his zero tolerance policy against any form of corruption.

Recently, a Maj Gen was shunted out from the Military Institute of Technology in Pune by the Army Headquarters after a raunchy party was organised during the ladies meeting attended by the wives of young officers attending courses there.

advertisement

The action was initiated against the Maj Gen-rank officer after pictures of the honeymoon theme party surfaced in social media with double beds placed in halls with handcuffs on them.

The Defence Ministry is also backing the Army in taking such strong decisions against any wrongdoing.

--- ENDS ---
Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of the U.N. draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States "will be taking names".

By Reuters: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod.

advertisement

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington's Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump's announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tyres. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire.

Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack.

Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of the U.N. draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States "will be taking names".

Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for "their brave and uncompromising stance". He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington's lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The attitude towards Israel of many countries, on all continents, outside the walls of the United Nations, is changing and will ultimately permeate into the U.N. - the house of lies," he said.

Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled.

Israel considers Jerusalem 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 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Several senior diplomats said Haley's warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 20 (PTI) Suhaib Ilyasis daughter, who was three-year-old and an eyewitness to the killing of her mother, was never interrogated or produced before investigating agencies, a Delhi court has noted in its judgement convicting the former TV producer and anchor of Indias Most Wanted.

The court, which took on record the contention Ilyasis counsel that his daughter was never made a witness by the prosecution, said that it was "his duty" to produce eyewitness of the incident as he had initially given a statement regarding his wife Anjus death to the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) as a complainant.

advertisement

"Initially, it was accused, who gave statement to the SDM as complainant, therefore, it was his duty to produce eyewitness of the incident, if any, before SDM or investigating agencies to get his/her statement recorded, which was not done by him.

"Although the accused asked his inAlaws...to come and give statement to the SDM, he never produced his daughter before the SDM or Investigating Officer to record her statement saying that she witnessed the entire incident and could narrate the same as such, at this stage, he cannot take benefit of nonAexamination of Aliya," additional sessions judge S K Malhotra said.

The court today sentenced Ilyasi to life imprisonment for killing his wife Anju more than 17 years ago. PTI AG RKS SMN

--- ENDS ---
In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask you enter in the text you see in the image below so we can confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.




A new organization called the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is being criticized by health and anti-smoking groups.

They accuse the foundation of acting secretly to assist tobacco companies, a charge the foundations president denied.

Derek Yach is the founder and head of the non-profit foundation. He was one of the planners of the World Health Organizations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005.

Yach said the Convention has been largely successful in preventing people from smoking and in slowing the increase in kids through higher taxes, marketing and so on.

But, he told VOA, the Convention does not focus on trying to get the billion current smokers in the world to quit the habit.



Yach said more than seven million people globally die earlier than necessary each year from tobacco. He said his foundations mission was to get these smokers away from their addiction by using new harm reduction tools such as e-cigarettes and vaping.

If these products have an impact, he said, we need to have independent research to show that they should be given more support.

So, our work will not be to simply push them out, but to do high quality research to look at the negative and positive sides.

The foundation accepted a $1 billion grant from the large tobacco company Philip Morris. The money is to be paid in $80 million yearly payments over the next 12 years.

Philip Morris is also a producer of e-cigarettes and is pushing hard into the vaping market.

Vince Willmore is a Vice-President of Communications at the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. With so much money involved, he questioned whether the alliance between the foundation and Philip Morris has credibility.

Willmore accused the foundation of trying to undermine real efforts to reduce the death and disease caused by tobacco use around the world. He added the foundation was really trying to help Philip Morris sell more products.

It is hard to take Philip Morris seriously that they want a smoke-free world when they are marketing cigarettes as aggressively as ever and they are fighting real solutions to reduce smoking.

If Philip Morris wanted to reduce smoking, he said, it would push for higher taxes, smoke-free policies, and strong warnings on cigarette packages. These are actions that really work, he added.

Yach told VOA he had not taken the side of big tobacco.

He said that some people could never understand that profitability and public health can actually work together.

He said his relationship with Philip Morris was not based on trust.

No. What they want to do is have a product that is less risky and that makes them profits. That is the beginning and end of it, he said.

Yach knows that many of his former colleagues at the World Health Organization (WHO) disagree with his decision to work with Philip Morris. He said he also wants to rid the world of tobacco products, but with one billion lives hanging in the balance, we urgently must do more to cut the adult smoking rate, he said.

WHO would not comment for this article. However, the global health organization issued the following statement:

The tobacco industry and its front groups have misled the public about risks associated with other tobacco products. This includes promoting so-called light and mild tobacco products as an alternative to quitting, while being fully aware that those products were not less harmful to health.

WHO noted the many conflicts of interest involved in the foundation and the tobacco company.

It stated that WHO will not partner with the foundation. Governments should not partner with the foundation and the public health community should follow this lead.

Derek Yach said that he set up measures, including a legal firewall, to protect the foundation from the influence of the tobacco company.

He added his foundation would lose its non-profit status if they let Philip Morris influence them.

Despite his many protestations, Yach admitted that he has some difficulty in dealing with his tobacco business partner.

When I go into meetings with Philip Morris, I feel I have to hold my nose and that is something I suspect will continue for a long time, he said.

I'm Susan Shand.

Lisa Schlein reported this story for VOA. Susan Shand adapted the story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

addiction  n. a strong and harmful need to have something

vape  v. inhale and exhale the vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device.

colleague  n. a person who works with you

front group  n. an organization that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it serves some other party or interest

firewall  n. a very thick wall that keeps fire from spreading
3 Seats are pushed together with other debris on an upside-down Amtrak train, following Monday's deadly crash onto Interstate 5 in the American state of Washington.
Luciano Oliveira looks at the floor of the small poorly built wooden house where he lives. It is among thousands of similar poor homes in an occupation near the city of Sao Paulo.

Oliveira was fired from his restaurant job at a few months ago, after arriving from the northeastern state of Bahia.

I cant read. I cant write. And I have nowhere else to go, said Oliveira, 23. But here I met so many people like me. I feel I am part of a movement now. This has become my family.

More than 8,000 shacks and poorer shelters make up Oliveiras occupation, or squat. It is one of the largest in Brazil. The 20-year-old Brazilian group, Homeless Workers Movement, organized it and others across the country. The group seizes abandoned government buildings to house homeless people. Sometimes the group negotiates with governments and private companies for such use.

Brazil continues to recover from economic crisis. Oliveiras neighborhood shows how difficult life has been for the poorest Brazilians.

The labor union research organization DIEESE says almost 42 percent of squatters are unemployed. That is almost 30 percentage points above the national average. On average, they earn about $350 a month, less than the average cost of rent for a two-bedroom home in Sao Paulos metropolitan area. Seventeen percent of 15 to 17 year olds in squats are not attending school. Instead, many must work to help their families survive.

The occupation near Sao Paulo has little electricity. Some shelters are no more than pieces of plastic on the ground and above. Others have wood walls and floors.

Adriana Marcolino is a DIEESE researcher.

She said Brazil is not investing enough in social policies, including the minimum wage. She said more such occupations may be established, as a result. She called the squatters the face of Brazils poorest citizens.

For many, the squatters are the face of Brazils deepest poverty.

Many entertainers organized a concert in central Sao Paulo on December 10 to raise money to help the homeless. Grammy-award winner Caetano Veloso sought to perform at a squat. A judge barred him from doing so, saying it was unsafe.

People who live near the squatters are less sympathetic, and have called on them to leave.

They make noise all night long. They dont care about people that were already here and are not to blame for their situation, said neighbor Carlos Elias. He lives in a building of costly homes next to the squatters.

Recently, gunshots were fired at the occupation from a nearby building. One squatter was wounded in the arm.

The Homeless Workers Movement has received much attention this year. Some think its leader, Guilherme Boulos, will run for president next year.

If so, he would take votes away from former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the frontrunner. But Lula da Silva may not seek any office at all. A court found him guilty of corruption in July and sentenced him to more than nine years in prison. The case is in the appeals process.

Boulos said whether to run is not a decision for now. He said his biggest concern now is the squats.

Recently, squatters seized the headquarters of Sao Paulo states housing administration and demanded negotiations with the government. They did not leave until the government agreed to let the squats remain for at least four months while the two sides held talks.

On a recent day at the squat, most tents sat empty as their owners were out looking for work. Some people made use of the five kitchens and several bathrooms.

Renata Swiecik, 31, has lived in the squatters neighborhood for three months. She last held a steady job three years ago. She begs to support her four children. She says her two youngest live with their grandmother mostly, so they do not have to bathe in cold water every day.

When the cold comes at night and during our showers we cant pretend that we want to be here forever, she said.

The building company MZM owns the land on which the squat sits. The company is taking legal action to reclaim the property. In October, a court ordered the land be returned to MZM.

The squatters have ignored the decision.

Luciano Oliveira spoke of possible police action to remove the squatters.

If they come we will be here. he said. We have nothing to lose.

Im Dorothy Gundy. And Im Susan Shand.

The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

squat  v. to live in a building or on land without the owner's permission and without paying

shack  n. small house or building that is not put together well

conviction  n. the act of proving that a person is guilty of a crime in a court of law

frontrunner - n. the person or thing that is most likely to win a race or competition


U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to stop giving financial aid to countries that vote in favor of an emergency United Nations resolution this week.

The draft resolution calls for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Trump told reporters at the White House Wednesday, They take hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, were watching those votes."

Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care, the president added.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold the rare emergency special session on Thursday. Arab and Muslim countries requested the special session. Egypt drafted the resolution.

The United States vetoed the draft resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of it. The draft resolution does not directly mention Trump or the United States. But it expresses deep regret at decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in a letter to several U.N. states that Trump had asked her to report back on those countries who voted against us.

She repeated that warning in a Twitter post, writing, The U.S. will be taking names.

Bolivias U.N. Ambassador, Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz, said of Haleys message: The first name that she should write down is Bolivia. He added that the message was disrespectful and arrogant.

Several senior diplomats said Haleys warning was not likely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such public, direct threats are rare.

Miroslav Lajcak, the president of the General Assembly, did not comment on Trumps threat. But he did say, Its the right and responsibility of member states to express their views.

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also did not comment on Trumps remarks.

Trump reversed US position on Jerusalem

Trump suddenly reversed years of U.S. policy earlier this month when he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision led to anger and protests from Palestinians and across the Arab world, as well as concern among Western allies of the United States.

Trump has said he plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to not establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

Israel considers Jerusalem its indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the citys eastern area, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War in 1967. The move was never recognized internationally.

Im Ashley Thompson.

Reuters reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. _______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

draft - n. a version of something (like a document) before the final version

take names - expression, keeping track of countries (in this instance) that are against the U.S.

arrogant - adj. showing the insulting attitude that they are better, smarter, or more important than other

senior - adj. higher standing or rank
By PTI: By Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Dec 21 (PTI) Pakistan today rejected the insinuations that the mother and wife of Kubhushan Jadhav would be having last meeting with him on Monday, saying the Indian prisoner is under no threat of immediate execution.

Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal said that Pakistan had decided to permit the meeting of the wife and mother of Jadhav with him purely on humanitarian grounds.

advertisement

"Let me assure you that the Commander (Jadhav) is under no threat of immediate execution and his mercy petitions are still pending," Faisal told the media at the weekly briefing.

He was responding to a question on the possible immediate execution of the Indian prisoner on death row after his meeting with his family.

Faisal said the mother and wife of Jadhav were being provided with a meeting with him in the light of "Islamic traditions and based on purely humanitarian grounds."

He said that the meeting between Jadhav and his family will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Pakistan has issued visas to both the ladies. The meeting will be held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the spokesman said.

A diplomat from the Indian high commission in Islamabad would be allowed to accompany the visitors.

To a question Faisal said, "Pakistan is ready to permit media interaction with the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav. We await Indian decision in this regard."

Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April, following which India moved the ICJ in May. The ICJ halted his execution on Indias appeal pending the final verdict by it.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the ground that it was not applicable in cases related to spies.

It said that Jadhav is not an ordinary person as he had entered the country with the intent of spying and carrying out sabotage activities.

Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav alias Hussein Mubarak Patel from its restive Balochistan province on March 3 last year after he reportedly entered from Iran.

India, however, maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy. PTI SH ZH

--- ENDS ---
The United Nations General Assembly voted Thursday in an emergency special session to reject U.S. President Donald Trumps declaration of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The U.N. resolution was approved with 128 "yes" votes, nine "no" votes, and 35 abstentions.

Before the vote, Trump and his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, had threatened to cut off aid to member states that voted in favor of the resolution.

Speaking before the resolution was approved, Haley said: The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attacks in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the worlds largest contribution to the United Nations.

Earlier this month, Trump reversed years of U.S. policy in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision led to anger and protests from Palestinians and across the Arab world.

Israel considers Jerusalem its indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in eastern Jerusalem. Israel captured that area in the Six-Day War in 1967. However, the move was never recognized internationally.

On Thursday, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas thanked countries that voted in favor of the resolution despite, in his words "all the pressure exerted on them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he completely rejects the preposterous U.N. resolution. He said in a video published on Facebook that Jerusalem always was, always will be Israels capital. He also thanked Trump for his defense of Israel.

While Thursdays vote was a victory for Palestinians, fewer U.N. members voted yes than expected. Observers had predicted at least 150 yes votes.

The United States vetoed a similar draft resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The remaining 14 members voted in favor of it. However, the U.S. used its veto power to block its adoption.

Haley said after Monday's vote, "The United States will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy." Trump has said he plans to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Haley also warned other countries in a letter before Thursday's vote. At the U.N., several diplomats said they had received Haleys letter, but did not plan to change their position.

Thursdays emergency General Assembly session was requested by Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour. Mansour said he hoped the measure would receive "overwhelming support."

General Assembly resolutions are non-binding. Rather, they demonstrate the majority opinion of the international community.

Im Ashley Thompson.

Ashley Thompson adapted this story for Learning English based on VOA News and Associated Press news reports. Hai Do was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

abstention - n. a formal refusal to vote on something

single out - phrasal verb. to treat or to speak about (someone or something in a group) in a way that is different from the way you treat or speak about others

contribution - n. a regular payment that is made to an organization

exert - v. to cause pressure, force in order to have an effect

preposterous - adj. very foolish or silly

overwhelming - adj. very great in number, effect or force

non-binding - adj. not officially required or not able to be enforced
Duke Energy Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an energy company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Electric Utilities and Infrastructure, Gas Utilities and Infrastructure, and Commercial Renewables. The Electric Utilities and Infrastructure segment generates, transmits, distributes, and sells electricity in the Carolinas, Florida, and the Midwest; and uses coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, oil, renewable generation, and nuclear fuel to generate electricity. It also engages in the wholesale of electricity to municipalities, electric cooperative utilities, and load-serving entities. This segment serves approximately 8.2 million customers in 6 states in the Southeast and Midwest regions of the United States covering a service territory of approximately 91,000 square miles; and owns approximately 50,259 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity. The Gas Utilities and Infrastructure segment distributes natural gas to residential, commercial, industrial, and power generation natural gas customers; and owns, operates, and invests in pipeline transmission and natural gas storage facilities. It has approximately 1.6 million customers, including 1.1 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as 550,000 customers in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky. The Commercial Renewables segment acquires, owns, develops, builds, and operates wind and solar renewable generation projects, including nonregulated renewable energy and energy storage services to utilities, electric cooperatives, municipalities, and corporate customers. It has 23 wind, 178 solar, and 2 battery storage facilities, as well as 71 fuel cell locations with a capacity of 3,554 MW across 22 states. The company was formerly known as Duke Energy Holding Corp. and changed its name to Duke Energy Corporation in April 2005. The company was founded in 1904 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a marine fuel logistics company that markets and supplies refined marine fuel and lubricants to vessels in port, at sea, and on rivers worldwide. The company offers fueling services to ocean-going and a range of coastal vessels, including oil tankers, container ships, drybulk carriers, cruise ships, reefers, LNG/LPG carriers, car carriers, and ferries, as well as to marine fuel traders, brokers, and other end-users of marine fuel and lubricants. It also markets and distributes marine lubricants under the Alfa Marine Lubricants brand; and provides a range of shipping services, such as technical support and maintenance, insurance arrangement and handling, financial administration, and accounting services. As of December 31, 2016, the company owned and operated a fleet of 46 bunkering vessels, including 45 double hulls and 1 single hull special purpose vehicle; 15 double hull bunkering vessels with an aggregate carrying capacity of approximately 292,400 deadweight ton (dwt); operated 10 land-based storage facilities with an aggregate storage capacity of approximately 1,075,000 cubic meters; and operated 2 vessels as floating storage facility with a cargo carrying capacity of approximately 86,800 dwt. Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Athens, Greece.
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.

Read More
By India Today Web Desk: The credibility of award shows has always been somewhat dubious. Many Bollywood A-listers, from Aamir Khan to Ajay Devgn, have gone on record to say that they do not believe in them. With Kangana Ranaut's claims on a recent podcast, award shows have come under the scanner again.

Kangana, who has been boycotting award shows since 2014, talked about her disillusionment with them. "Early on, I got dressed up for some award, I don't remember the award but I was supposed to receive the award for supporting cast for Life In A Metro. I got stuck in traffic. I started getting calls asking 'where are you'. The hysteria and panic that I experienced, I didn't make it and Soha (Ali Khan) got it for Rang De Basanti," she said.

advertisement

The Queen actress said that this shattered the ideal notion that she had. She also revealed an incident where she was asked to perform at an award show and promised not only remuneration but also an award for her performance.

Kangana also alleged that the Filmfare Awards were rigged. "I was in the United States for my screenwriting course when I got a call from Filmfare in 2014. They told me I was going to get an award for Krrish 3 and they requested me to come back for just one day so I could attend the awards. I told them I am doing my course and going back and forth will cost me around 10 lakh. Because I would miss my classes, I told them it's not possible. They decided to give the Best Supporting Actress award to Supriya Pathak for Ram Leela instead," she said.

The editor of Filmfare, Jitesh Pillaai took to Twitter to refute her claims. "Apparently Kangana Ranaut has given a radio interview where she says I told her she was winning for Krrish. Is she hallucinating? I've never had a conversation with her about Krrish," he wrote.

Apparently Kangana Ranaut has given a radio interview where she says I told her she was winning for krrish A???A???A???. Is she hallucinating? IA??ve never had a conversation with her about krrish A???A???A???- J (@jiteshpillaai) December 19, 2017

In another tweet, he wrote, "Kangana further adds that the Filmfare team doesn't talk to her. We just shot a cover with her in August in London. Our team was present, having a wonderful time with her."

Kangana further adds that the Filmfare team doesnA??t talk to her. We just shot a cover with her in August in London. Our team was present A???A???A??? having a wonderful time with her pic.twitter.com/Q0cNwZVj9j- J (@jiteshpillaai) December 19, 2017

ALSO WATCH: Kangana Ranaut opens up on being called witch, whore and psychopath

--- ENDS ---
The memory of a beloved pet inspires one couple's fight against injustice.
In an unprecedented move, Belgium appointed a female Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, which has long been criticized for violating womens rights.

The Belgian media reported that Dominique Mineur, who is performing her duties in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as envoy, would move to Riyadh in 2018 summer.

Probably the ban on driving was often cited as the most absurd constraint on women. The ban was lifted recently in a push by the young Crown Pricne, Mohamed Bin Salman, to modernize the Saudi society.

However women still need to cover their hair and have the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad and take other key decisions that affect their lives.

Yekaterina Majering Mikadze, a Georgian diplomat appointed in 2010, previously had responsibility for Saudi Arabia, but was based in Kuwait and covered a number of neighboring countries. When Georgia later opened an embassy specifically for Saudi Arabia in 2015, it appointed a male ambassador in Riyadh.
A slew of recent studies have found scary amounts of arsenic in baby food, frightening many new parents already stressed out by all-night feedings and endless diaper changes. In a world where environmental dangers seem to lurk in every corner, here is a simple piece of advice.

As the Independent reported, since rice cereal is often a baby's first solid food but it often has very high levels of arsenic, one advocacy group is suggesting that the easiest switch for parents trying to avoid this potentially hazardous substance is to switch it up and pick cereals made with other grains such as oatmeal, barley and quinoa.

A new report from Healthy Babies Bright Futures, a group of scientists, nonprofit groups and private donors aiming to reduce children's exposures to chemicals that may harm developing brains, advises that since rice cereal contains more than six times the inorganic arsenic than other cereals, it should be a no-brainer. According to the World Health Organization, arsenic has been linked to developmental defects, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity, diabetes and even cancer.

"Parents have a lot of easy ways to reduce their babies' exposure now, because there are so many new cereal options on the market; many are fortified with iron that babies need, and many are just as affordable as rice cereal," said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies Bright Futures, noted the Independent.

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed limits for the amount of arsenic allowed in infant baby cereals, but the regulations have not yet been put into effect. In 2016, the FDA proposed a recommendation of no more than 100 parts per billion of arsenic in infant cereal but that is by no means a requirement. The Environmental Protection Agency does limit inorganic arsenic in public drinking water, for the record.

Jennifer Lowry, pediatrician and toxicologist at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., and chairwoman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Council on Environmental Health, said the FDA standard on arsenic is "completely ineffective."

"As the report alludes, it isn't working as there are too many baby foods that continue to have too high of levels," Lowry, who is not affiliated with the study, said in an email, as USA Today noted.

The Healthy Babies Bright Futures organization commissioned Brooks Applied Labs in Bothell, Washington, to test more than 100 samples of infant cereals, including 45 products made by nine different companies. The alliance's report, which has not been published in a journal and has not been peer-reviewed, found that overall, oatmeal, barley, buckwheat, organic quinoa, wheat and rice-free multigrain baby cereals contained much lower amounts of arsenic than rice cereals. The bottomline is that the study found 85 parts per billion of arsenic in the rice cereals tested on average. One product tested registered at 235 ppb, as USA Today reported.

"We welcome the data provided by Healthy Babies Bright Futures and will review it in its entirety to inform our efforts in reducing inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal products," the FDA said in a statement as USA Today reported. "The FDA continues to advise consumers to feed infants and toddlers a variety of fortified infant cereals, rather than relying solely on infant rice cereal."

The Healthy Babies group is calling on the FDA to more strictly regulate arsenic levels in baby food even as it advises parents to take their own precautions.

Diversifying the grains in your baby's cereal is one easy fix. Another way to strictly control the ingredients in what the infant eats is to make it at home. Do-it-yourself is what some doctors suggest.

"When parents ask me the question what is the best brand of baby food to feed my baby, my answer is home-made," says Dr. Keith Fabisiak, assistant chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente's Campbell Medical Center. "Even the baby foods that are labeled as 'organic' or 'all natural' can still contain significant amounts of contaminants like lead and arsenic, so the best baby food is the one that you make yourself. ... Although this takes some additional effort, it is easier than most people think and is the only way you know exactly what is in your baby's food."

Fabisiak suggests that parents invest in a simple food processor to make the chore easier. He advises you make a batch of baby food and then freeze it overnight in an ice cube tray. The next morning you can pop out the frozen cubes of baby food into a larger freezer container for storage. Each cube will contain about one ounce of homemade baby food, so all you need to do is take a few cubes out of the freezer to thaw for each meal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics counsels that parents reduce the risk of arsenic exposure by also limiting fruit juices, avoiding brown rice syrup in processed foods and avoid using rice milk as a dairy substitute. It should be noted that arsenic is often absorbed into rice from the environment and it can't be completely removed.

2017 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Scanning electron microscope image of Vibrio cholerae. Credit: Wikipedia

The cholera epidemic in Yemen, where it is afflicting one million people according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ranks among the world's worst of the past decade.

The World Health Organization warned in November that nearly 2,200 people in war-torn Yemen have so far died from the waterborne disease, which has propagated rapidly due to deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions.

The following lists the deadliest outbreaks of the past 10 years:

Haiti: most virulent outbreak

The most virulent outbreak in modern times was in Haiti, where some 10,000 people have died and more than one million been infected since the epidemic broke out in October 2010.

The disease was introduced by infected Nepalese UN peacekeepers who were sent there after Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake.

200,000 cases were registered in the impoverished Caribbean country in 2013.

DRCongo: an endemic problem

According to the United Nations, cholera has become a major public health problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thousands of cases are recorded every year in many provinces of the vast central African country, which lacks basic infrastructure and where most of the population lives in poverty.

Cholera is endemic in DR Congo, but usually only affects the east of the country.

However, in 2016, when 700 people died, the infection spread west along the Congo river and reached Kinshasa for the first time in five years.

Since the start of 2017, some 500 cholera-linked deaths have been registered, according to the WHO.

Infections peaked in 2013 at 14,000 cases.

Scourge across Africa

- Somalia: Since the beginning of the year, 800 deaths have been recorded in Somalia, which is ravaged by drought and threatened with famine.

- Tanzania: Between August and November 2015, a major cholera outbreak infected nearly 10,000 people and killed 150 in 19 of the east African country's regions.

- South Sudan: In 2014, at least 167 people died following a cholera epidemic, as conflict drove some 1.3 million people from their homes.

- Central and East Africa: In 2011, a wave of cholera swept for several months across the region, mainly in Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad where more than 85,000 cases were recorded, with 2,466 deaths.

- Zimbabwe: From August 2008 to June 2009, an epidemic which ravaged the southern African nation during a major economic crisis infected more than 98,000 people and killed almost 4,300.

- Angola: In 2006, at least 68,585 people were infected in the worst cholera epidemic ever recorded in the southwestern African state. More than 2,750 people died across its 18 provinces. The disease has since re-emerged in the impoverished country, which has poor systems of drinking water and hygiene and limited access to health care.

 2017 AFP
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers

New lessons are being learned about risk assessment and predicting the extent of thyroid cancer occurrence following radiation exposure due to a nuclear power plant accident such as the one in March 2011 in Fukushima Prefecture of Japan. The article entitled "Lessons from Fukushima: Latest Findings of Thyroid Cancer after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident," is part of a special section on Japanese Research led by Guest Editor Yoshiharu Murata, Nagoya University, Japan, in the January 2018 issue of Thyroid.

Coauthors Shunichi Yamashita, Shinichi Suzuki, Satoru Suzuki, Hiroki Shimura, and Vladimir Saenko, from Fukushima Medical University and Nagasaki University, Japan discuss the implications of the results of two rounds of large-scale ultrasound screening, which detected a relatively high rate of thyroid cancer in young individuals from the Fukushima area. The researchers examine the challenges in distinguishing radiation-induced thyroid cancer from thyroid cancer that develops spontaneously and thus the difficulty in establishing a causal relationship. They explore in detail numerous topics, including studies of the link between radiation exposure, thyroid cancer, and related genetic alterations; the occurrence of thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, hereditary factors that may increase a person's susceptibility to radiation-induced thyroid cancer, and the findings from children, adolescents, and young adults in Fukushima with thyroid cancer treated with surgery.

"The careful study of the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima on health and societal issues continues to be highly informative. At this point, there is no clear evidence that the Fukushima accident has resulted in an increased incidence of thyroid carcinomas, a finding that contrasts with the observations after the Chernobyl accident," says Peter A. Kopp, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Thyroid and Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL. "The relatively high incidence of thyroid malignancies detected through the screening of the Fukushima population highlights the challenges associated with screening programs. However, any definite conclusion would be premature, and continuing observation of the Fukushima population, as well as detailed characterization of the genetic and pathological alterations in the detected thyroid carcinomas, remain important. Our Japanese colleagues are to be commended on the rigorous approach to this highly important public health problem."

More information: Shunichi Yamashita et al, Lessons from Fukushima: Latest Findings of Thyroid Cancer After the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident, Thyroid (2017). Shunichi Yamashita et al, Lessons from Fukushima: Latest Findings of Thyroid Cancer After the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/thy.2017.0283
After years of studying the causes of asthma, a pediatrician-turned-public health sleuth thinks there's a way to substantially reduce its impact.

But the approach faces a big hurdle: getting someone to pay for it, said Elizabeth Matsui, a physician and a professor at Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore.

Matsui, who had asthma as a child, has spent much of her career studying the link between poor housing and asthma in low-income neighborhoods. In particular, she's looked at the effects of mouse allergens, typically found in high concentrations in urban homes.

Matsui cited a 2004 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that described measures to reduce home allergen levels and concluded that they were linked to reductions in asthma symptoms.

That research "was highly successful and impactful," but the approach wasn't widely adopted, Matsui said.

"So here we have this trial that was published more than 10 years ago that shows (indoor allergen control) works," said Matsui, who did not participate in the study. "But the families who need it most can't afford to do these things, don't have control oftentimes over their home environment, and insurance or other payers don't cover these things."

Matsui has proposed incentives for hospitals to provide home intervention, including Medicaid waivers. But, she said, scientists can't use research money for those programs. "Delivery of community health care programs would require a different type of funding."

As a result, doctors and scientists doubted that a plan to control home allergens would scale up, and insurers questioned whether benefits to their bottom line would justify the added cost.

"We have this enormous public health problem in that there are housing conditions that directly affect allergen exposure in this population of kids," Matsui said. "We have dedicated individuals and groups who are trying to solve the problem. But we don't have a system that is able to solve the problem."

A 2017 study by Matsui, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that even without intensive professional cleaning services, families that receive some training can substantially reduce home allergens on their own.

That finding suggests that health agencies should routinely offer to educate asthma-affected families in home allergen control. "There's potentially a large benefit," Matsui said.

In a separate study, Matsui's group is following 200 Baltimore children to see if those in homes scrubbed of allergens need fewer treatments with rescue inhalers. If they do, that could give health insurers an incentive to pay for the approach.

There's another incentive: Clearing the air in a child's home may be critical in cases where medications alone don't work. "We continue to see a lot of kids that, despite being on medication, don't have well-controlled asthma," Matsui said.

Asthma drugs can also have serious side effects, she said, especially at higher doses, and may suppress symptoms without halting lung damage.

Matsui's work on asthma began while working as a pediatrician at Baltimore's Franklin Square Hospital in 1998. As part of her job, she spent half a day each week in a school health clinic in a low-income area.

Matsui was struck by the number of children she saw with severe asthma, she said, and set up a home health visit program to help them. But she wasn't certain the program was working, so she consulted with experts at Hopkins.

In 2004, she earned a master's from the Hopkins school of public health. Today, she is one of the nation's leading asthma researchers.

Matsui said her career was shaped by her own struggle with childhood asthma. "I think that that probably played a role, consciously or unconsciously," she said.

2017 Kaiser Health News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
As President Donald Trump completes his first year in office, Americans are increasingly concerned about health care, and their faith that government can fix it has fallen.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 48 percent named health care as a top problem for the government to focus on in the next year, up 17 points in the last two years.

The poll allows Americans to name up to five priorities and found a wide range of top concerns, including taxes, immigration and the environment. But aside from health care, no single issue was named by more than 31 percent.

And 7 in 10 of those who named health care as a top problem said they had little to no confidence that government can improve matters. The public was less pessimistic in last year's edition of the poll, when just over half said they lacked confidence in the problem-solving ability of lawmakers and government institutions.

"We are way up there on the cost, and as far as giving good health care, we are way down," said Rebekah Bustamante of San Antonio, a retired medical imaging technician. "Now in health care, you're a number."

Bustamante said she voted for Trump, but "he's learning on the job, and he's got a long way to go."

Trump initially promised his own plan that would deliver "insurance for everybody" and "great" health care, "much less expensive and much better." But the White House never released a health care proposal from the president.

GOP legislation to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law failed in Congress, although the tax bill scraps the Obama requirement that most people get health insurance. Bloodied on both sides, Republicans and Democrats seem to have battled to an uneasy draw on health care.

Meanwhile, conflicting policy signals from Washington, including an abrupt White House decision to cancel insurer subsidies, roiled insurance markets. Premiums on health plans purchased by individuals jumped by double digits. Progress reducing the number of uninsured stalled, and one major survey found an uptick this year.

"There is zero bipartisanship, and it's frustrating," said Eric Staab, a high school teacher from Topeka, Kansas. "It seems like we have thrown everything at this dartboard, and nothing is improving the coverage."

Rumblings of discontent have political repercussions for next year's midterm elections and the presidential contest in 2020, said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who follows opinion trends on health care.

"It's the issue that won't go away," said Blendon. "Given the news cycle, taxes should be first, the economy should be second, and this health care thing should be buried."

Three in 10 Americans listed taxes among their top priorities, about double the percentage who said that last year. About a quarter mentioned immigration, and just under 2 in 10 mentioned environmental issues and education. Meanwhile, concerns about unemployment plunged to 14 percent, about half the mentions as last year.

Health care was by far the top issue mentioned by Democrats and independents. Republicans were about equally likely to mention immigration, health care and taxes.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say they have little to no confidence that the government will make progress on health care, 84 percent to 57 percent.

The reason health care doesn't fade away is that costs aren't getting any more manageable, said some people who took part in the AP-NORC survey.

Bustamante said she is planning a trip to Mexico for some dental work, because she can obtain quality service for much less there. "Thank God I live in Texas, where getting to Mexico isn't that far away," she said. "But everybody doesn't have that option."

ShyJuan Clemons of Merrillville, Indiana, said he's currently uninsured because his previous health plan was costing too much money for the benefit he got from it. He faced his insurance plan's annual deductible when he went to the doctor, so he'd wind up paying out-of-pocket for visits, on top of premiums.

"You are not constantly worried about taxes, but you are constantly worried about health carebe it major or minor," said Clemons, a personal care attendant who works with disabled people. "You catch a cold, and you just think about it in passing'I hope it doesn't develop into a problem.'"

Clemons, a Democrat, said he's disappointed that Trump and Republicans in Congress seem to be trying to tear down "Obamacare" instead of building on it. "I would like to see them make the thing run smoothly so we can do better, instead of just trying to cripple it," he said.

The lack of confidence in the ability of government to find pragmatic solutions extended to other problems in the AP-NORC poll, including climate change, immigration, and terrorism.

Just 23 percent said that Trump has kept the promises he made while running for president, while 30 percent said he's tried and failed, and 45 percent said he has not kept his promises at all.

Nearly 2 in 3 said they were pessimistic about the state of politics in the U.S. About half were downbeat about the nation's system of government, and 55 percent said America's best days are behind.

___

The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,444 adults from Nov. 11-Dec. 4 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. Interviews were conducted online and using landlines and cellphones.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Demonstrating the potential of precision health, a team led by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine has matched existing drugs to errant proteins expressed by patients with a rare eye disease.

"Analyzing fluid samples from the eye can totally change how we treat patients," said Vinit Mahajan, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology.

The team employed proteomics, the large-scale study of proteins, to identify four on-the-market drugs that successfully quelled symptoms triggered by several of the overabundant proteins. The findings, although not curative, demonstrate the potential of treating rare and complex eye conditionsand potentially other inflammatory diseasesby matching existing drugs with proteins that are abnormally expressed in the eyes of individual patients.

A paper describing the research will be published online Dec. 21 in JCI Insight. Mahajan is the senior author. Gabriel Velez, an MD-PhD student at the University of Iowa and a visiting research scholar at Stanford, is the lead author.

"Patients with rare diseases often have few therapeutic options, and many conventional therapies fail them," Velez said. "Proteomic profiling allows for clinicians to analyze a patient's diseased tissue in real time and identify proteins that are targeted by already-approved drugs."

The genetic eye disease is called neovascular inflammatory vitreoretinopathy, or NIV. It is a progressive, inflammatory condition that evades all current therapies. Patients with the disease eventually go blind. It is exceptionally rare and only affects a handful of families worldwide, including an Iowa family studied and treated by Mahajan when he was at the University of Iowa. Initial symptoms, which include internal inflammation of the eye, cataract development and vision changes, usually appear when individuals are in their 20s. By the time patients are in their 50s and 60s, their vision has usually deteriorated into blindness, Mahajan said. Sometimes, eyes become so atrophied and painful they need to be removed.

Although a team led by Mahajan identified the gene responsible for the disease in 2012, a cure has yet to be developed. In the past, clinicians treating NIV patients used a trial-and-error approach to treat each symptom as it appeared, Mahajan said.

"This constant uphill battle to save the vision of NIV patients made us determined to find the molecules active inside the eye that can lead us to better therapies," Mahajan said.

Analyzing biopsies

Researchers performed liquid biopsies: A small amount of intraocular fluid was extracted from eight eyes of members of the same family at various stages of NIV and, as a control, four eyes with a noninflammatory eye disease. The researchers looked for 200 types of immune-signaling molecules called cytokines and identified 64 that were different, usually more abundant, in the eyes affected by NIV. In addition, they found that a protein called TNFalpha, which is usually abnormal in inflammatory conditions, was not elevated. Clinicians had previously assumed it was a culprit in NIV, yet infusions of an anti-TNFalpha drug called infliximab hadn't alleviated symptoms for patients with the disease. Now they know why.

"That's one of the important stories here," Mahajan said. "There's no target for the drug inside the eye, which totally explains why the drug didn't work. One of the benefits of this precision health approach is to identify which drugs we shouldn't use."

The researchers worked through the symptoms of the disease, matching each one with abnormal levels of proteins from the biopsies, and then with existing drugs that could potentially provide relief.

One feature of NIV is the excessive formation of new blood vessels in the retina, which can lead to a blinding hemorrhage. Clinicians traditionally treat this type of hemorrhage with surgery. However, eye surgery prompts inflammation and scarring in NIV patients. The protein analyses revealed elevated levels of vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, that correlated with moderate cases of the disease. The researchers turned to an anti-VEGF drug, bevacizumab, which had been approved to treat macular degeneration. Injections of bevacizumab were able to resolve hemorrhages in seven NIV eyes without surgery, the study said.

Drug reduces eye inflammation

Another symptom of NIV is cellular inflammation and leakage of proteins into the eye, which patients experience as cloudy vision, akin to looking through a fog, with occasional "floaters" or shadows, Mahajan explained. Through the protein analysis, researchers spotted several abnormally expressed molecules that drive these inflammatory symptoms. The molecules help determine the fate of developing immune cells known as T cells. After reviewing existing drugs, the researchers decided to try injections of methotrexate, which targets T cells in arthritis. It successfully reduced the number of inflammatory cells in the eye, the study said.

The protein analysis also revealed numerous inflammatory compounds that could be treated with steroids, so the research team decided to put steroid implants into three of the NIV eyes. The implants, which release steroids continuously over two years, reduced levels of 31 molecules related to inflammation and the eye's abnormal immune response.

But the study participants eventually developed scarring around the implants, suggesting that some of the proteins contributing to inflammation weren't effectively blocked by steroids. And even after the steroid implantations, these eyes still expressed elevated levels of the inflammation-related protein interleukin-6.

The researchers used this clue to solve another issue in NIV: Scar tissue grows inside the eye, causing the retina to detach from the back of the eye. Surgery is the only option for treating this complication, but in NIV the scarring is so extensive the retina detaches again after the surgery. The researchers gave one participant in the study, who had already lost the use of one eye, a drug called tocilizumab to block interleukin-6 after reattaching her retina. The surgery was effective, marking the first time a retina has remained attached in an NIV patient and suggesting the drug may be beneficial to others with scarring inside the eye, Mahajan said.

The researchers also used the protein analysis to supplement and confirm the classification of NIV into five stages of severity. Now, in addition to physical symptoms, they know which proteins are most active in each stage, Mahajan said. For future patients, a liquid biopsy from the eye could help provide more precise diagnoses, he said.

More gradual decline in eye health

"For the NIV patients in this family, the slope of their decline, once steep, is now more gradual. We're still working on a cure," Mahajan said. "But we can do a better job of trying to maintain their sight with what we've learned."

The applications of the approach are even broader, Mahajan said.

"In the future, we can imagine, in difficult-to-diagnose patients or patients not responding to treatment, just removing a few drops of fluid from the eye to very quickly learn exactly which proteins to target," he said. "Liquid eye biopsies are outpatient procedures that are safe and painless."

Mahajan said he believes the work illustrates the power of proteomics, which could help fulfill the potential of precision health to diagnose diseases before they advance and provide a real-time look at biochemical processes driving disease.

"This is a fantastic example of the precision health approach we're taking in ophthalmology at Stanford," said Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD, professor and chair of ophthalmology. "It's innovative, has broad applicability and, most importantly, is helping patients."

Researchers at the University of Iowa and Columbia University also contributed to the study.
Hello, you've been (semi-randomly) selected to take a CAPTCHA to validate your requests. Please complete it below and hit the button!
Reacting to the 2G scam verdict, Congress leader and Former Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said that the verdict is a moral, legal victory for the Congress Party.

By India Today Web Desk: ALL the accused in the infamous 2G scam, one ranked by the Time magazine as the world's second-biggest abuse of executive power, have been acquitted by a Delhi court today.

The prime accused in the 2G scam, Andimithu Raja, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader, then telecom minister, who was accused of accepting kickbacks in the form of a Rs 200 crore loan given by Swan Telecom to the DMK's propaganda arm Kalaingar TV, should be a very happy man today, just like the Congress Party leaders.

#WATCH: Former Telecom Minister A Raja after being acquitted in the #2GScam pic.twitter.com/hmu8oWOZeD- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

advertisement

Reacting to the verdict, Former Telecom Minister and senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said, "This verdict is both a moral and legal victory for the Congress Party. We will take this issue up in Parliament."

Sibal slammed former CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) Vinod Rai saying, "I have been saying all along that this was not a scam. It was a scam by Vinod Rai."

Sibal also said, "The country has suffered major loss due to this accusation. PM Modi should stop talking about 2G scam."

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaran, reacting to the 2G scam verdict, said, "Allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of Government was never true, was not correct and that has been established today."

Allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of Government was never true, was not correct and that has been established today: P Chidambaram,Congress #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/bfVgL14ES9- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Other accused in the 2G scam case were DMK MP Kanimozhi, ex-telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's secretary RK Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Bollywood producer Karim Morani, and three executives of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

"I would love to thank everyone who stood by me," said Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi on her acquittal.

I would love to thank everyone who stood by me: Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha MP #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/3plOl0RlLE- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

DMK supporters, meanwhile, have been celebrating the verdict of their leader being acquitted in different parts of India.

Delhi: DMK supporters marching and celebrating outside Patiala House Court after the Court's pronouncement of #2GScamVerdict. All accused have been acquitted. pic.twitter.com/LtLzDbyQ2h- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Tamil Nadu: DMK workers celebrate in Coimbatore after Patiala House Court acquitted all in #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/9LttRdjZyV- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor reacted to the 2G scam verdict saying, "Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country."

Clearly the Court found that innocent people have been wronged. Justice has worked as it is supposed to work in our country: Shashi Tharoor, Congress #2GScamVerdict pic.twitter.com/MK8IEYHVuV- ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

advertisement

WATCH | Those used to 2G, coal scam will face problems with legitimate tax, says Jaitley

--- ENDS ---
Prime Minister of Finland: Europe is now too reliant on Chinese technology

Turkey to require insurance from oil tankers when passing through its waters

EU to provide Ukraine with generators and kits to repair power grids

Turkey sentences sect founder to 8,658 years in prison

Xi Jinping urges world to abandon any Cold War mentality

Aliyev rules out talks with Artsakh State Minister

FP: Ukraine's appetite for weapons depletes Western stocks

Putin and Aliyev discuss energy cooperation

Armenian financial technologies to enter international market: VISA and Idram sign memorandum in Yerevan

Incident in Poland causes disagreement between Kyiv and West

Mark Milley urges Kyiv and Moscow to find political solution: Chances of military victory are unlikely

New NATO Secretary General to be announced at Vilnius summit in 2023

Finnish Defense Ministry announces largest batch of military aid to Ukraine

Pashinyan receives Ukrainian businessmen of Armenian origin

Armenian soldier wounded in Azerbaijani shooting

Erdogan: Turkey-Israel relations entered a new phase of development

Mishustin: Cooperation between Moscow and Baku has become truly strategic and allied

Igor Khovaev to visit Baku

Mishustin arrives in Baku

Russian Foreign Ministry: South Caucasus is a strategic transport hub for Eurasia

U.S. general lays flowers at eternal flame at Armenian Genocide memorial

Republicans stand for same-sex marriage rights

Pallone says US State Department should not hesitate to speak about Azerbaijani aggression

Aliyev refuses to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh and threatens Armenia with new aggression

Greek minister doesn't get off plane to meet head of Libya's presidential council

Sergey Lavrov to visit Yerevan

Lebanese parliament fails to elect president of country

Kremlin on Zelenskyy's proposal to hold 'public' talks

National Assembly Speaker: Armenia is extremely interested in establishing strategic relations with Georgia

Canada provides additional military aid to Ukraine

Representatives of defense agencies of CSTO countries discuss crisis response issues

Armenian Defense Minister and American General discuss defense cooperation

Tehran accuses Israel and West of trying to organize civil war in Iran

Oppositionist: No guarantees that war with Azerbaijan can be avoided

Issue of biometric passports to Armenian citizens is temporarily suspended

Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement to be signed till end of year? Pashinyan's associate voices conditions

Erdogan says Russia and US agreed to refrain from using nuclear weapons

Azerbaijani oppositionist complains of torture by police

Kyaram Sloyan and Andranik Zohrabyan posthumously bestowed 'Hero of Artsakh' title

UN Secretary General Guterres welcomes parties' agreement on renewal of food deal

Eurasian Development Bank: Armenia is the leader among EEU countries in terms of economic growth

Greece promises to continue military support to Ukraine

Number of appeals from Azerbaijan to ECHR is growing

Pashinyan: The wheel of processes related to confiscation of illegal property is spinning

Fire hits Baghdad airport

North Korea fires ballistic missile towards Sea of Japan

Istanbul agrees to extend 'grain initiative' for another 120 days

'Hayastan' Fund to build 6 residential houses in Nerkin Khndzoresk village

Vocal as Russophobic propaganda: Azerbaijani singer sings about 'disgusting peacekeepers'

Biden congratulates Republicans on winning majority in House of Representatives

14 freight cars derailed in Kazakhstan, train traffic suspended

Newspaper: Ruben Vardanyan does not hurry to make changes in composition of Karabakh government

Russia attacks Ukraine with missiles in morning: Explosions heard in Dnieper, air defense works in Kyiv region

U.S. National Security Council: It is clear that the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia

Gold prices decline

Russian Trade Representative to Armenia: Situation at Upper Lars checkpoint is not related to geopolitical issues

Trade Representative of Russia: Trade turnover with Armenia sets new record

Copper falls in price

Gas explodes in Fatih district of Istanbul, 10 people injured

Oil prices go down

Meteorite that fell in Britain contains key information about how oceans and life formed on Earth

Gamer drinks 12 energy drinks in ten minutes and ends up in hospital

Chinese customs officers accidentally find cockroach unknown to science

Man removes cobra's teeth with manicure pliers and gets arrested

Sweden to provide Ukraine with new military aid worth $287 million

Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania meet conditions for joining Schengen zone

Oil prices may reach $120 a barrel and stay at this level for 2 years

Zelenskyy receives 'signals' that Putin wants direct talks

Security Service of Ukraine puts Ramzan Kadyrov on wanted list

Unidentified men open fire at market in Izeh city in southwestern Iran

Karen Donfried tries to explain State Department's decision to exempt Azerbaijan from 907th Amendment

Philip Reeker says U.S. administration representatives have no access to Nagorno-Karabakh

Rimac Nevera sets speed record for production electric cars

Reeker: Pace and depth of current talks between Yerevan and Baku demonstrate potential to resolve conflict

FBI director considers TikTok threat to US National Security

Bob Menendez says Ukraine supplies Azerbaijan with phosphorus bombs it used in Karabakh

Delegation headed by Speaker of Armenian Parliament is in Tbilisi

Austin: U.S. intends to continue supplying weapons and aid to Ukraine during winter

Armenian politician charged with abuse of office, money laundering

Donfried says Armenia and Azerbaijan have historic opportunity to establish lasting peace

Bob Menendez: How on earth can we justify sending any support, security or otherwise, to the regime in Baku?

Azerbaijan fires at residents of Sarushen village of Artsakh

Head of Portugal's Finance Ministry: EU countries must work faster on energy intervention

Kuwait executes 7 prisoners

Czech Republic plans to train up to 4,000 Ukrainian servicemen next year

Ukraine once again asks US for powerful drones

Belarusian border guards shoot down drone intruding into airspace from Ukraine

Armenian Deputy PM: Regional electricity export opportunities significantly increased

Greek authorities temporarily ban export of firewood from country

Azerbaijan protests to France in connection with Senate resolution

Blinken calls on Aliyev to observe ceasefire and limit provocations

Pashinyan: We're advancing rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinyan: Armenia invites Azerbaijan to sign framework agreement on peace

Pashinyan: Most of the arable land of 4 villages in Tavush Province is occupied by Azerbaijanis

Armenian Prime Minister: Let the opposition loudly reject Russia's proposals

Pashinyan: 2023 budget growth in social protection compared to 2018 is 56%

Inflation in UK up to 41-year high of 11.1% in October

Pashinyan: We don't want to provoke war between CSTO and Azerbaijan

Pashinyan's explanation: How should we fight inflation?

Pashinyan: Armenia submitted its proposals for peace treaty to Azerbaijan, we are waiting for a response
YEREVAN.  The Facebook page of the For the Development of Science [in Armenia] initiative has informed that initiative member Yuri Avagyan has ended his hunger strike, on Wednesday night.

Avagyan was taken to the hospital because of pneumonia, the respective post also reads.

Yuri Avagyan on Wednesday was examined at a medical center, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia.

The aforesaid initiative members on Tuesday resumedat a Yerevan State University lecture halltheir hunger strike, which they had stopped about a month ago.

They demand that the right to academic military deferment be maintained in Armenia.

Now, solely Davit Petrosyan, another member of the said initiative, continues his hunger strike.

On November 15, the National Assembly of Armenia passed the bill on making amendments to the Law on Military Service and the Status of Military Servicemen. But this bill considerably limits the right to military deferment in the country.
YEREVAN.  It is likely that we will close this year with a growth of over 7 percent of the GDP.

Tigran Khachatryan, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Investments of Armenia, on Thursday told the aforementioned to reporters, after Thursdays Cabinet session of the government.

In his words, data for the eleven months of this year are summarized and, according to which, a 7.3-percent unprecedented high economic activity indicator has been recorded in Armenia.

Also, Khachatryan stressed that the next good news is that, after the negative indicators for the past ten months, a positive indicator has been recorded in the countrys agriculture.

To the remark that the government says the current year will be closed with a 4.5-percent economic growth, the deputy minister responded as follows, in particular: A growth of over 7 percent is likely to be.

And when asked to what extent it will be possible to maintain this 7-percent growth in the coming years, Tigran Khachatryan replied: The government is doing everything so that exports continue to grow at high rates.
The Council of Europes anti-corruption body Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) has published today a new report assessing the implementation by Armenia of its earlier recommendations on preventing corruption in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors.

GRECO concludes that Armenia has implemented satisfactorily five of the eighteen recommendations. Of the remaining recommendations, twelve have been partly implemented and one has not been implemented.

With respect to members of parliament, GRECO notes that progress has been achieved regarding the transparency of the legislative process in Parliament and measures to implement standards on incompatibilities. Further efforts are required to establish a code of conduct for the members of parliament and to strengthen the mechanism for monitoring members compliance with ethical norms and standards.

As far as judges are concerned, GRECO welcomes the constitutional amendments that reformed the judicial self-governance with the establishment of the Supreme Judicial Council. Furthermore, the immunities of judges have been limited to so-called functional immunities. Some progress has been achieved as regards the procedures for recruitment, promotion, dismissal and transfer of judges in that the Supreme Judicial Council has been given the key role. That said, more is expected to be done in relation to dedicated training and counselling of judges and with respect to safeguards against the use of disciplinary proceedings to influence or retaliate against judges. Effective rules against undue interference still have to be put in place. Regarding prosecutors, GRECO welcomes the adoption of the Law on Prosecutors Office; important steps to enhance the recruitment procedures of prosecutors and to strengthen the ethics committee of prosecutors have been made. More measures are necessary to introduce dedicated mandatory training and confidential counselling.

GRECO notes that further significant progress is necessary in order to achieve an acceptable level of compliance with the recommendations within the next 18 months. GRECO invites the Head of delegation of Armenia to submit additional information regarding the implementation of the outstanding recommendations by 30 June 2019 at the latest.
Former Indian naval officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav, has been under the captivity of the Pakistani military since March 2016 and this would be his first contact with anyone other than the military officials of Pakistan.

By Geeta Mohan: The Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson on Thursday said that Kulbhushan Jadhav's mother and wife would travel to Islamabad by air.

Earlier there were speculations that they could cross over through Wagah border but India Today has learnt through sources in Pakistan that it was at the behest of the Indian government that they agreed to being flown in rather than driving down from Lahore.

advertisement

Sources say that India cited security reasons for travelling by air. Pak spokesperson Dr. Mohammad Faisal told media persons that the "meeting will take place on Dec 25th in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamabad."

Former Indian naval officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav, has been under the captivity of the Pakistani military since March 2016 and this would be his first contact with anyone other than the military officials of Pakistan.

When asked about the travel plans, Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar refused to divulge any detail regarding the travel plans.

"I have been hearing a lot of things about this particular meeting. Modalities are still being worked out. Who goes when and how are still being worked out", he said.

Pakistan has also proposed media interaction with the mother and wife after the meeting. Pak spokesperson had said, "Pakistan is willing to permit media interaction with wife and mother. We are waiting for response from India."

The Indian side is deliberating on these proposals and will take a call on it. While India Today has learnt that the Jadhav family is likely to fly out on the 24th, for now the Ministry of External Affairs made it very clear that the logistics details would not be made public.

Watch the video | India's full argument of Kulbhushan Jadhav's case in ICJ

--- ENDS ---
YEREVAN.  It was a year full of achievements and innovation at PicsArt. In 2017, the company has invested much in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) both for the app improvement and the development of the AI sphere in Armenia in general, said Mikayel Vardanyan, CTO and General Manager of PicsArt Armenia office.

PicsArt has implemented a number of educational programs in this field. The biggest project of the year, a six-month course on Machine Learning, aimed to train 28 professionals in AI and machine learning. As a result, the training course initiated by PicsArt with the support of BetConstruct, Ucom and ACA (Armenian Code Academy) provided the graduates with employment opportunities in the above mentioned companies.

This year, PicsArt internal AI department has grown to a team of 20 professionals. Mikayel Vardanyan emphasized the importance of data collection and analysis which makes the application of artificial intelligence possible in any industry today.

For example, we deal with a large amount of data. PicsArt app collects several billion events per day and our users upload several million of images on daily basis. We apply machine learning to these data to understand the preferences of our users. We also use AI for image recognition and analysis, Vardanyan explained.

In 2017, PicsArt has partnered with a number of well-known companies and individuals to implement various social, educational as well as fun campaigns. In July 2017, Natalia Vodianova, the supermodel and philanthropist, joined PicsArt team as the Head of Aspiration.

PicsArt Armenia office has hosted state officials, musicians and many guests from abroad. Mikayel Vardanyan notes that PicsArt aims to create a new working culture in our country making Armenian employment market more competitive with the world.

One of the biggest achievements of the company this year was to surpass 100 million monthly active users. There are only a handful of consumer applications that reach 100 million active users per month. In addition, the number of monthly active users from Armenia has increased almost three times, while the daily usage of the app has grown twice. Moreover, the PicsArt Animator app was named the most entertaining app of 2017 by Google Play. While, PicsArt Color Paint app was featured in the App Store Best of 2017 list.

Mikayel Vardanyan notes that PicsArt is one of the leaders in term of diversity of the tools in offers. One of the advantages of PicsArt is its 3,000 editing features available in the app enabling users to express themselves by creating unique images.

PicsArt values the development of a tech society. In 2017, around 500 high-school and university students visited the PicsArt Armenian office to participate in a one-day training and learn more about the tech world, various professional opportunities in the IT sector in Armenia, as well as to explore their creativity using the PicsArt app. Next year, PicsArt Armenia office plans to organize similar trainings for the young people from the regions, aiming to motivate them to study and join the growing IT sector of Armenia. These visits inspire young people and raise awareness for their future career path choices.

In 2018, PicsArt will continue to improve the app by the means of AI, targeting to provide personalized content based on users preferences. The company will also continue to implement educational programs, collaborate with different universities to competitive AI and ML professionals in Armenia.
YEREVAN.  The government of Armenia will do everything so that the growth in exports continues.

Tigran Khachatryan, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Investments, on Thursday told about the above-said to reporters, after Thursdays Cabinet meeting of the government.

In his words, the government will continue its policy of increasing the export of goods and services, since economic growth depends considerably on external demand.

Speaking about the 7-percent GDP growth that is projected for the current year in Armenia, Khachatryan noted that the 5-percent long-term indicator is envisioned by the government program, and all efforts will be directed at its implementation.

In the context of ensuring the GDP growth, the minister underscored the external climate, too.

Tigran Khachatryan added that numbers attest to the indicators, it is impossible to draw these numbers, and the assertions about an economic growth are well-grounded.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects outright General Assembly vote on a resolution against US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the UN a house of lies, Daily Mail reported.

On December 18, the United States used its veto to block the Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of Donald Trump's recognition on Jerusalem. The UN General Assembly will hold on December 21 an emergency special session to adopt a draft resolution on Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, whether the UN recognises it or not," Netanyahu said. "It took 70 years until the US officially recognised it and it will take many more years until the UN recognises it too. The attitude to Israel of many nations in the world, in all the continents, is changing outside of the UN walls, and will eventually filter into the UN as well -- the house of lies.

Netanyahu thanked Trump and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for standing by Israel and the truth.

At the beginning of December, US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital. The US decision was positively received in Israel and prompted negative reaction by many countries. People have started protesting all over the Muslim world, also in Israel.
The governments of Armenia and Russia have discussed the matter of creating a new national air carrier in Armenia, according to RFE/RL Armenian Service.

There was a preliminary discussion, after which no substantial step has been taken, said Sergey Avetisyan, Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation (GDCA) of Armenia, speaking to RFE/RL.

Earlier, Denis Manturov, the Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia, had announced that discussions were held with the Armenian side for already a year now, and noted that this new airline will be operated with Russian production aircrafts.

The Armenian GDCA chief on Thursday confirmed that the matter of these Russian airplanes was conferred on, but added that everything is preliminary.

The Russian side was the first to announce about the talks with respect to creating a new Armenian national air carrier.

Sergey Avetisyan said there are no discussions at this time, and he cannot say whether there will be discussions in the future.
A sub divisional officer of police posted in Ater in Bhind district was caught trying to implicate the local Congress MLA Hemant Katare in a false case.

By Hemender Sharma: A sub divisional officer of police posted in Ater in Bhind district, who is allegedly close to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has become a cause of embarrassment for the MP Police after he was caught trying to implicate the local Congress MLA Hemant Katare in a false case.

The officer identified as Indraveer Singh Bhadoria, on Wednesday, added the name of Hemant Katare in a charge sheet of a case related with atrocities against a member of the Scheduled Caste community. Bhadoria, however, could not satisfy the judge in Bhind when he was asked why Katare had not been arrested.

advertisement

"The judge asked him where is Katare, to which, he said that he is absconding. The judge, however, was not convinced as I'm an active local MLA and participate in various programmes in the region," Hemant Katare told India Today.

On further questioning by the judge it was revealed that Bhadoria has decided to add Katare's name in the charge sheet as a conspirator at the last moment on his own. The charge sheet did not have the sanction of the district prosecuting officer and the district superintendent of police as is mandated by law.

Katare late in the evening contacted the district superintendent of police, who according to him, accepted that Bhadoria had acted on his own.

According to Katare, Bhadoria tried to implicate him in a false case as he had sought his removal from the district after he was caught taking money for allowing illegal sand mining in the crocodile sanctuary area of the Chambal river, in a sting operation that was conducted about two months back. The government at that time had taken no action against Bhadoria.

Bhadoria was shifted out of Ater by the Election Commission during the Ater bypoll earlier this year after his conduct was found to be suspicious and favouring the ruling party contestant. The government after the elections, however, brought him back to Ater.

In a face saving move, the government on Thursday transferred Bhadorai to Bhopal and he has now been posted as DSP police headquarters.

--- ENDS ---
Afghan Taliban Claims Killing 2 U.S. Soldiers, Wounding 3 in "Tactical Explosion" Near Jalalabad Airpor
Fresh Corn Season Might Be Over, but You Can Still Have Delicious Cornbread Using Frozen Corn
By PTI: Nagpur, Dec 21 (PTI) The Congress and the NCP today expressed an apprehension in the Maharashtra Assembly that the BJP-led state government may divert more water to neighbouring Gujarat from the proposed Damanganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada projects.

However, State Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan denied the charge.

Stating that the BJP could form government in Maharashtra in 2014 due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, NCP MLA Ajit Pawar said, "We do not want to see Modi influencing the project and taking more water to Gujarat from Maharashtra. The National Water Development Authority is preparing a detailed plan of the project".

advertisement

The Damanganga-Pinjal project proposes to divert the surplus water of the Bhugad and Khargihill reservoirs in the Damanganga basin to Mumbai, via the Pinjal dam on the Pinjal river in the Vaitarna basin.

Bhugad village is located in Nasik district of Maharashtra near the border of Valsad district of Gujarat.

The project is expected to provide 909 million cubic metres of water to Mumbai for the citys domestic and industrial requirements.

The Daman Ganga river flows through Maharashtra and Gujarat states, as well as the Union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Leader of Opposition and Congress MLA Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said the state government should protect the interest of the people of Maharashtra as far as the river-linking projects are concerned.

"Godavari command area is known as a scarcity region. With river linking projects such as the Daman Ganga-Pinjal and the Par-Tapi-Narmada, the state government should protect the interest of our people as well as the state," Vikhe Patil said.

The Par Tapi Narmada Link proposes to transfer water from the water surplus regions of Western Ghats to the water deficit regions of Saurashtra and Kutch. The link project includes seven reservoirs proposed in north Maharashtra and south Gujarat.

The water from the seven proposed reservoirs would be taken through a canal, which would save Sardar Sarovar water. That water will be used to extend irrigation in Saurashtra and Kutch region.

"The state government should not give lame excuses such as an inability to lift water to level as high as 600 meters. Maharashtra has already implemented lift irrigation schemes like Tembhu, Mhaisal in Sangli district. It is possible to lift water from Gujarat to Maharashtra," Vikhe Patil said.

Allaying the concerns raised by the Opposition leaders, Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan said "not a single extra drop" of water will be given to Gujarat.

He said Maharashtras interest and desired requirement of water will be protected by the government.

advertisement

"The Damanganga-Pinjal river link project proposes to provide additional drinking water to Mumbai. The total cost of the project is Rs 2,746.61 crore," the minister said,

Referring to Union government sanctioning Rs 10,800 crore to the Gujarat government for the Par-Tapi-Narmada project, Mahajan said, "We demanded similar allocation for the Maharashtra as well. The Centre has also approved our demand and given funds for the river linking projects". PTI ND NSK SNK

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: By Aditi Khanna

London, Dec 21 (PTI)AThe Mahindra Group today announced an investment of 200,000 euros in a Finnish start-up which won a competition run by the Indian conglomerate in search for the next big idea.

Medixine, which has a suite of cloud software programs that provide e-services to patients and help them become active players in their own care instead of being passive targets, won the Mahindra Group?s Avatar Hunt.

advertisement

Medixine won the funding from seven shortlisted entrepreneurs from a variety of industries, including education, healthcare, analytics and finance, who presented their unique business ideas to a jury comprising of young leaders from within the Mahindra Group.

"Finland is a strategic part of our global footprint and our significant presence in the country is testimony to the important position it holds in our business plans,? said Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group.

"A combination of public R&D funding and focus on skill development has resulted in Finland?s consistently high rankings in global innovation surveys. Our intent is to leverage the strengths of this unique eco-system to help us discover the next big ideas and business models which will help us leverage the forces of disruption to create new opportunities for the Group in the future," he said.

Finpro, Finland?s trade promotion agency, helped Mahindra identify and shortlist innovative start-ups from across the country for the competition.

"Finland is a major tech hub and fast-rising start-up nation ideal for open innovation, offering great business opportunities for forward-looking corporations such as the Mahindra Group," saidAMarkus Suomi, CEO, Finpro.

"Avatar HuntAprovided us with the ideal platform to introduce Finnish companies to Mahindra Group executives and give them a sense of what the country has to offer,? said Suomi.

Avatar Hunt formed part of the Group?s annual Senior Leaders Conference, held in Helsinki this week. PTI AK NSA

--- ENDS ---
Reacting to a Delhi court acquitting all accused in the 2G scam case, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the judgment spoke for itself.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose credibility had come under following the 2G scam revelations (FILE)

By India Today Web Desk: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reacting to the 2G scam verdict, said the "judgment speak(s) in itself (sic)". Singh, whose credibility had come under doubt over the scams unearthed during the UPA II rule, said there was a "vicious campaign and propaganda" launched against his government back then.

"Today court has taken an unanimous decision over this issue," Singh added.

advertisement

Earlier today, Delhi's Patiala House Court acquitted all of the accused in the high-profile 2G scam case, a fraud ranked by the Time magazine as the world's second-biggest abuse of power.

According to an estimate prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, the scam caused a notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the Indian exchequer. Then Telecom Minister A Raja was the prime accused in the 2G scam case.

Following the verdict today, the Congress has gone on the offensive, saying it is a moral and legal victory for them and that those who had raised accusations against the UPA government should apologise.

Congress leaders came out hitting soon after the verdict was announced at around 10:45 am. Kapil Sibal, who took over as telecom minister after Raja's resignation, said, "This verdict is both a moral and legal victory for the Congress Party. We will take this issue up in Parliament."

He also demanded an apology from the Bharatiya Janata Party, without explicitly naming the part and said PM Narendra Modi must now stop bringing up scams during his speeches.

P Chidambaram, on the other hand, said the verdict showed the allegations of a "major scam involving the highest levels of government" were never true. "That has been established today."

Leaders from the BJP, who had used the 2G scam, along with other corruption allegations, to target the Manmohan Singh government during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls were yet to react on the verdict.

The Congress was routed in the Lok Sabha polls and the dagger of corruption hanging over the UPA II was believed to be one of the factors behind the Grand Old Party's poor performance.

READ | All about the sub-inspector-turned CBI judge who pronounced today's verdict

WATCH | Manmohan Singh reacts on 2G scam verdict, alleges 'vicious propaganda' against his government

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: (Eds: Adding babies fathers quotes, protest details)

New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) The family of the twin babies, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, today demanded a CBI probe into the case after an appellate authority stayed the Delhi government order cancelling the hospitals licence.

At a press conference held here, 48-year-old Kailash Kumar, grandfather of the baby boy, who later died at a nursing home in Pitampura while his sister was still born, alleged that the family was not even "informed" about the stay order.

advertisement

"We tried to silently protest in front of Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, but police asked us to move from there. The Delhi government had taken the decision that would have served as a warning to other hospitals.

"But, now the cancellation order has been stayed. We are running for justice. We want justice and so we demand a CBI probe into the whole case so that things get clear," Kailash told reporters.

He said they have hired an advocate to pursue the case and claimed that today a plea was filed by him in Rohini court for a status report in the ongoing investigation in the case.

The Court of Financial Commissioner stayed the cancellation order issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) till January 9, when the next hearing will be held.

Rishi Pal Singh, counsel for the aggrieved family, said "if the appellate authority summons us, we will present our case or else we may move the high court".

Meanwhile, the father of the babies, Ashish Kumar, and about 10 other family members, picketed on a dusty pavement right across the facility in Delhis Shalimar Bagh, demanding justice.

"Well not move and well not relent, till we get justice," asserted Ashish Kumar, 24, father of the infants, one of whom was wrongly declared dead by the hospital on November 30, where they were born.

"We are demanding a CBI probe because we feel that is the only way we will be able to get justice," he said.

The premature baby boy had died on December 6 at a nursing home in Pitampura after battling for life for nearly a week since he was found alive on the way to be cremated by family members. PTI KND KJ

--- ENDS ---
The finance commissioner is a statutory post and the incumbent exercises the powers of the Lt Governor or chief commissioner, delegated under various statutes.

By Mail Today Bureau: While Delhi's finance commissioner has issued a stay order on the cancellation of licence of Max hospital, Shalimar Bagh, the institute has been asked to file its reply within two weeks.

The finance commissioner is a statutory post and the incumbent exercises the powers of the Lt Governor or chief commissioner, delegated under various statutes.

advertisement

A copy of the order is with Mail Today, which says: "Counsel for petitioner brought to the notice of the court the provisions of the Act under section 8(2) and (4) of the Delhi Nursing Home Registration Act, 1953 whererby no such order shall come into force until after the expiration of a calendar month from the date on which it was made or where notice of appeal is given it until the appeal has been decided or withdrawn."

It stated: "The cancellation order is passed under section 7 and not Section 8(2)of the Act. Petitioner should have been given time to reply. The operation of impugned order is stayed till the next date of hearing."

On Wednesday, in no time after the stay order was issued, the hospital resumed its operations.

Max Healthcare in a statement said: "Max hospital, Shalimar Bagh has resumed its operations from following a stay order issued by the appropriate appellate authority to whom an appeal was made."

--- ENDS ---
Medical syringe prices may come down from next year. Manufacturers of disposable syringes have decided to cap trade margins at 75 per cent from ex-factory/import landed to MRP.

By Anand Patel: Medical syringe prices may come down from next year. Manufacturers of disposable syringes have decided to cap trade margins at 75 per cent from ex-factory/import landed to MRP.

The Executive Body and larger membership of All India Syringe & Needle Manufacturing Association (AISNMA) have decided that with effect from Consumer Day on December 24th, 2017 all members will print reduced MRP on basis of a Voluntary Capped Trade Margins of maximum 75 per cent over their discounted net ex-factory prices (including GST) and implement this latest by Republic Day, January 26th, 2018. This period is to allow all manufacturers to clear current stock of their packing material with current MRPs and enable smooth transition. This covers all categories of syringes and needles - disposable, auto disable, reuse prevention, needle stick prevention, insulin pen needle etc.

advertisement

The move comes after a meeting between the manufacturers and the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) officials. The NPPA had told the medical syringe manufacturers to cut down price or the government will be forced to act.

The regulator in its meeting with the manufacturers had conveyed government's concern about over pricing of syringes. The issue of overpriced medical consumables got highlighted during the recent Fortis Gurugram episode.

NPPA in its inquiry has found that the hospital had overcharged the family of deceased seven-year-old dengue patient for medical consumables. The girl's parents had complained they were billed heavily for 1,600 gloves, 660 syringes and many high-end antibiotics. The data submitted by the hospital showed that it had charged as high as Rs 70 for a 5ml syringe while the procurement price was just Rs 15. NPPA inquiry into all the medical bills related to the case found several violations by the hospital.

"In the meeting with about 28 syringe manufacturers, the NPPA warned us on imminent action by government if India, our suggestions were sought and market dynamics feedback was also taken," said one of the manufacturers on condition of anonymity.

Rajiv Nath, president of the AISNMA, told India Today that this step should be seen as a contribution by the manufacturers to the citizens of the country for patients benefit.

"AISNMA initiates path breaking self-regulations on syringes and needles, a first in the Medical Devices Industry, we are sincerely attempting to address the systemic issues of irrational MRP," he added.

--- ENDS ---
i used to get michael myers mixed up w austin powers when i was a kid. i stopped being invited to play "halloween"

Reply

Thread

Link

listening to the soundtrack of this right now haha

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

So this makes Michael in his 60s if we are to believe MM was 20ish in 78

Reply

Thread

Link

Normally Id say no - hes more of an entity or evil being.



But this film is ignoring all of the sequels and pretends only the original exists. So I guess he still could be an entity but the Michael from all the sequels is to be voided as having not existed.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

seriously my idea is that MM hooked up with a disturbed nurse while in the hospital and it is his SON who is now continuing the legacy, I think that would make much more sense than a literal senior citizen being some unstoppable killer

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

let this franchise REST

Reply

Thread

Link

please don't kill Laurie off again. I haaaaaaate when horror films do this. They did it with her, with Nancy, etc. Only ones who haven't are Sydney and Gale...

Reply

Thread

Link

Didnt JLC say she would only be in the last one she was in if they killed her off?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

One of the reasons why Scream is my favorite horror franchise is the fact that Sidney is still alive after all these years.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link









Edited at 2017-12-21 02:19 am (UTC) I dislike that she's still alive, personally. 7 different people have tried to kill her and she's managed to survive them all? Same with Dewey and Gale.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

My boyfriend's uncle is named Michael Myers and his old college roommate's name was Eddie Murphy. Nobody wanted to rent to them because they always thought it was a prank.

Reply

Thread

Link

that's all kinds of amazing omg

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmaoo aw

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

They're ignoring it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

omg JUDY GREER???? I'M IN

Reply

Thread

Link

Have you watched Pottersville on Netflix yet? It was ADORABLE and funny. I loved it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I watched it last night and I agree with this comment.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

FABULOUS! i'm looking forward to this next installment of the Strode Halloween series . :)

Reply

Thread

Link

I love H20 so much that I wish there was a way to incorporate that and the original but she did chop off his head soooo yeah.



Anyway, Im here for this!

Reply

Thread

Link

So I guess Michael technically wont be her brother anymore since that wasnt revealed until H2?

Reply

Thread

Link

I saw someone comment today that the Halloween series is like "Choose Your Own Adventure" and tbh, I love that.



You can watch it as a trilogy:

Halloween => Halloween 2 => Halloween H20

Halloween => Halloween 2 => Halloween 4



Or a saga:

Halloween => Halloween 2 => Halloween 4 => Halloween 5 => Halloween 6

Halloween => Halloween 2 => Halloween H20 => Halloween Resurrection



Or, if you're feeling adventurous, you could try to connect them all (but then you're basically saying Laurie is a terrible mother who abandoned Jamie in favor of John but whatevs)





Reply

Thread

Link

omg lmaoooo this is amazing

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ugh Michael was so hot in the first film.

Reply

Thread

Link

You need Jesus.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Jesus can't save anyone on ONTD sis

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
Chevron Makes Second $500,000 Donation to CA Wildfire Relief

$500,000 from the Chevron Global Community Fund is going to the American Red Cross in support of relief efforts for the wildfires in Ventura, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties.

Chevron announced Dec. 20 it is contributing $500,000 for Southern California fire relief. The company, based in San Ramon, Calif., reported $500,000 from the Chevron Global Community Fund is going to the American Red Cross in support of relief efforts for the wildfires in Ventura, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties.

"Chevron, like others in California, wants to help with the response to these devastating wildfires," said Mike Wirth, Chevron's vice chairman and executive vice president. "Our heartfelt thoughts are with the people affected by the fires, including the brave firefighters working so hard over the holidays to contain them."

The energy company has had its headquarters in California for more than a century. It plans to match any qualifying donations to wildfire relief efforts made by its employees and retirees, and this contribution from the Chevron Global Community Fund follows another $500,000 in October 2017 for California wildfire relief efforts.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Resigns

Gov. Mark Dayton already had directed the Minnesota Department of Human Services' Office of the Inspector General to help the Health Department improve the management of its investigations of elder neglect and abuse.

In the wake of media reports that his department mishandled reports of alleged criminal abuse in senior care facilities, Dr. Ed Ehlinger resigned Dec. 19 as Minnesota's commissioner of Health. Gov. Mark Dayton announced the same day that Health Department Deputy Commissioner Dan Pollock will serve as acting commissioner until Dayton appoints a permanent replacement.

Dayton thanked Ehlinger for his service and reiterated that he and his administration are focused on working immediately to improve the Health Department's efforts to protect seniors and properly investigate the allegations of elder neglect and abuse. Ehlinger has worked at the Health Department since January 2011.

"We are grateful to Commissioner Ehlinger for his many years of dedicated public service," Dayton said. "I wish him the very best in his future endeavors. And I pledge to the many dedicated employees at the Health Department our strong support in their efforts to improve the health and safety of all Minnesotans."

The governor's news release credited Dr. Ehlinger for leadership to reduce tobacco use, improve community-based health programs through the Statewide Health Improvement Program, improve health equity in Minnesota communities, expand access to life-saving health care for state residents, and during outbreaks of measles, avian influenza, and the Ebola outbreak. "It has been my great honor to serve the people of Minnesota," Ehlinger said. "I am thankful to Governor Dayton for this opportunity to serve, and grateful to the many tremendous public health professionals at the department for the work they do every day to improve the lives of Minnesotans. I am proud of the work we have done to make our state healthier, for all of us."

Dayton already had directed the Minnesota Department of Human Services' Office of the Inspector General to help the Health Department improve the management of its investigations of elder neglect and abuse.
As 101 Freeway traffic streaked past, a dozen conservationists and fundraisers gathered this week just west of Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura Hills, their eyes alternating between maps they carried and the contours of a canyon where mountain lions hunt and breed.

But it wasn't the big cats they were looking for. Their target, instead, was a patch of land that could anchor a 200-foot-long, 165-foot-wide overpass spanning a stretch of freeway that carries 100,000 vehicles each day.

The bridge they hope to build near Liberty Canyon Road, scientists say, would provide safe crossing for wildlife, helping diversify the gene pool among the small, isolated populations of mountain lions remaining in the Santa Monica Mountains south of the freeway as well as in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the north.

Linking these mountain lion communities won't be cheap. Advocacy groups led by the National Wildlife Federation admit it will require one of the most ambitious fundraising campaigns ever held on behalf of local wildlifea total of $60 million by 2020.

Now, just weeks away from approval of an environmental review of the long-awaited project, they are kicking off a drive to raise a total $10 million by June to keep the design phase of the project on schedule.

"I spend every waking moment wondering how the heck we're going to accomplish this," said Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, the federation's regional executive director in California. "But we must because time is running out for Southern California's mountain lions."

Because the bridge crosses the interstate, the California Department of Transportation will oversee design and constructionbut the transportation agency is not providing funding. Instead, roughly 80 percent of those funds are expected to come from private philanthropy and corporate donations.

So far, the effort has raised $3.6 million including $1 million from the Annenberg Foundation, $250,000 from the Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, $100,000 from the Boeing Co., and $175,000 from an 80-year-old couple in Kansas, federation officials said.

Molly Judge, director of leadership, giving and individual philanthropy for the federation, is optimistic. "I've been speaking with philanthropists and national funding organizations for two years about this," she said, "and they're committed."

An estimated 10 to 15 mountain lions currently roam 275 square miles in and around the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, the 405 and 101 freeways, housing and commercial developments, and agricultural fields.

Studies suggest that inbreeding is a serious problem among these big cats, which have extremely low genetic diversity.

Roadkill is also taking a toll. Since National Park Service biologists began researching mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains in 2002, motorists have struck and killed 17 of the large predators in the study area, federal officials said.

The first mountain lion believed to have crossed the 101 Freeway from the north into the Santa Monica Mountains was P-12, which crossed near Liberty Canyon Road in 2009. Biologists say he brought with him a "genetic rescue" because of all the breeding that occurred after he arrived in the geographically isolated landscape to the south.

Some critics, however, question the effort to support a wild predator that is not threatened or endangered in California, but legally classified as a "specially protected species" by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The statewide population of about 6,000 is relatively stable.

Others suggest it's the wrong time to seek donations for local wildlife that might otherwise be directed to charities helping victims of hurricanes and flooding in Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico; the mass shooting in Las Vegas; and the wildfires that ripped through California.

Among them is Paul Scrivano, 51, of Agoura Hills, who is telling anyone who will listen that the wildlife overpass is "a rotten idea."

"Spending a single dollar on a dirt bridge that benefits not a single taxpayer is dangerous," he said. "Giving money to help blood-thirsty predators instead of first responders and public health and safety is nuts."

Paul Edelman, an ecologist with the state Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, suggested he misses the point.

"The amount of money we're trying to raise is a drop in the bucket," Edelman said, "when you think about the wildlife this project would help and the lands it would connect."

That said, the $60 million target marks "the largest capital campaign focusing on private dollars we've ever tackled in Californiaand perhaps anywhere else," Pratt-Bergstrom said.

The National Wildlife Federation has raised private donations in the past to restore red wolf populations in the Southeast and secure land for wild bison habitats in Montana, "but those efforts involved far smaller monetary goals," she said.

Scientists long ago identified Liberty Canyon as the ideal location to build a wildlife passage because of the large swaths of protected public land on either side of the freeway. The final design and placement of the bridge are expected to be determined in early 2019, according to Caltrans' estimated timelines, with a goal of completing the project by 2022.

As envisioned by Caltrans, the nation's largest wildlife overpass would be landscaped with native vegetation and include sound walls and retaining walls along its outer edges, irrigation systems and fencing to funnel wildlife including mountain lions, bobcats, deer, coyote, skunks, badgers, squirrels, mice and lizards through the passage.

Supporters include the National Park Service, Democratic Assemblyman Richard Bloom, Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, the California State Coastal Conservancy and the city of Agoura Hills.

"Our wild and unique Santa Monica Mountains ecosystem is ripped in two by the 101, much in the way that many neighborhoods were torn apart by our freeway system," Bloom said. "Were we to build the freeway today, we would surely do a better job of providing ways for animals to access habitat and avoid becoming roadkill."

"Every single donor is important," Judge said. "The thousands of individuals who've already made contributions large and small demonstrate the community's commitment and support for a noble cause."

"Our pitch is that this is a rare opportunity to prove," she added, "that people and a range of wildlife can actually coexist in a metropolis."

2017 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
UW Assistant Professor Kevin Monteith, right, and graduate student Tayler LaSharr release a bighorn sheep ram on Wyomings Wind River Indian Reservation last March. The two are among authors of a new paper that concludes that hunting of female bighorn sheep may well be one of the most effective ways to increase the number of trophy rams in North American bighorn sheep populations. Credit: Kevin Monteith

Although contrary to prevailing notions, hunting of female bighorn sheep may well be one of the most effective ways to increase the number of trophy rams in North American bighorn sheep populations, according to researchers at the University of Wyoming and other institutions.

That's because such harvests would make more forage available to growing rams and, importantly, their mothersboosting their nutritional levels, a factor that has been shown to be more important than genetics in producing rams with large horns, the researchers say.

Their conclusions are detailed in a paper that appears in a special section on management of mountain sheep in the Journal of Wildlife Management, a peer-reviewed, scientific journal devoted to the ecology of nondomesticated animal species and published by The Wildlife Society.

The paper's lead author is Kevin Monteith, assistant professor in UW's Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Zoology and Physiology, and the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Also contributing was UW master's degree student Tayler LaSharr, along with researchers from the University of Idaho, the University of Nevada-Reno, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Unlike management of many other big-game species in the American West, there are few hunting opportunities for bighorn sheep ewesin part, because of tradition and public resistance to the idea. But, Monteith and his colleagues say that not only could hunting of females improve nutritional conditions, leading to rams with bigger horns; it also could help stabilize bighorn sheep populations, reduce the frequency and severity of die-offs from diseases, and increase opportunities for hunters.

"We acknowledge and fully appreciate that initiating female harvest may conflict with hunting and management traditions," the paper reads. "(However), if production of large, trophy males remains an important management objective, then we contend that management programs should integrate monitoring of nutritional status of populations and, where evidence indicates nutritional limitation through density dependence, seek to regulate abundance and per capita nutrition via harvest of females."

For decades, concerns about declines in the numbers of trophy rams have focused on the evolutionary effects of hunting such large males, as removing those animals from the gene pool could lead to fewer large-horned offspring. But, while horn size is known to be hereditary, a growing body of evidence shows that age and nutrition frequently override genetic contributions to the size of horns, the researchers say.

"Given the hyperbole surrounding trophy management and big horns, we suggest the importance of females in the management of mountain sheep has been largely forgotten," the scientists wrote. Those impacts include the lifelong effects of the physical condition of ewes during and after pregnancy on growth of their male offspring, as well as the overall nutritional condition of sheep herds where their numbers exceed what available habitat can support.

"Ultimately, we call for greater recognition of the pervasive role of females in the production of trophy males, and that, accordingly, females be better integrated into harvest and management programs," the researchers concluded.
Thinking about building a new home on a bluff overlooking the sea? You may want to think again.

A new report out of UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that methods of tracking coastal cliff erosion using historical data to predict the impacts of sea-level rise may be unreliable.

"Using those old rates could significantly under predict what's going to happen at a particular location," said the study's author and Scripps researcher Adam Young. "You could see very high rates of retreat in the future in areas that have so far seen very little."

The report released online and slated for publication early next year in the journal Geomorphology called out California's worst areas for cliff failure in the first decade of this centuryincluding San Onofre State Beach, Daly City, Point Reyes National Seashore and Palos Verdes. The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's California Sea Grant program.

In these areas, ocean waves, rain storms and other factors eroded coastal bluffs at a frightening pace of up to about 12 feet a year.

However, Young said he was surprised to find that there was little historical precedent for the most rapidly crumbling shorelines within these regions.

"What this says is the predictions of future coastal erosion from sea-level rise could be significantly under or over predicted for some locations," Young said.

Cities around the world are grappling with ocean waves that threaten to destroy everything from roads to railways to military bases to homes and businesses. About a quarter of the world's population lives along the coast, with many communities pushed right up against a shoreline.

In March of this year, the U.S. Geological Survey forecasted that rising tides would swallow up to 67 percent of beaches in Southern California from Santa Barbara to San Diego by 2100.

To improve the understanding of how such impacts will play out, Young is using "light detection and ranging" technology, called LIDAR, to create three dimensional images of California's coastline.

"New laser technology has really revolutionized the way we map the cliffs," Young said. "In the past, we were using aerial photographs and old topographic maps. The resolution and accuracy of those methods are a lot less (accurate) than compared to the type of technology that we have right now."

The laser mapping data Young used for his study was from 1998 to 2010, the most recent available at the time. New maps for the California coast were released this year, which he said he will use in his ongoing research.

The results will likely be sought after as local governments and state agencies prepare for the worst impacts of climate change.

A large part of planning for a future of rapidly rising tides is determining where to build sea walls to protect vulnerable cliffs. Armoring the coast can save structures but it also prevents bluff erosion from naturally replenishing beaches.

That's pitted homeowners that favor using the walls against environmental groups that advocate for a slow retreat to save the shorelines for public use.

"Right now, what we're doing is choosing if we want to save our beaches and deciding which of those beaches we want to save," said Jennifer Savage, California policy managers with the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation.

Nowhere in the state is that debate raging louder than in North San Diego County, Savage said.

"We see every month at the (California) Coastal Commission hearings where homeowners show up because they want to put in a seawall," she said. "Certainly, there's cases up and down the coast, but if I had to name one place in California that we hear about it would be Del Mar and Solana Beach."

Developers have taken note of the conflicts inherent in seaside living. For many builders, constructing communities atop costal bluffs is no longer in vogue.

"The amount of housing planned along our shoreline is very small and nearly all custom home related," said Borre Winckel, president of the Building Industry Association of San Diego County. "Anecdotally, we hear that folks who rebuild or build newly are dissuaded from (building near) the shoreline, because the (coastal) commission wants the ocean to reclaim the beach and allow for natural sand replenishment where this can occur."

As officials consider the tradeoffs between saving beaches and protecting property, Young said that science will eventually give us the tools to help make those hard choices.

"Ultimately, we'd love to make predictions," Young said. "We're getting more and more data as we move forward, and the data is getting much better. We'll start to understand these things in the future for sure."

2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Cardiff University

A huge European astronomy survey, whose results are released today (21 December 2017), has revealed that the view of the Universe provided by traditional optical telescopes is seriously biased.

The Herschel ATLAS (H-ATLAS) was a survey carried out by an international team led by researchers at Cardiff University with the European Herschel Space Observatory in the far-infrared waveband, which consists of electromagnetic waves with wavelengths 200 times greater than optical light.

Although Herschel stopped observing in 2013, the Herschel-ATLAS team has spent the last five years analysing their results, and today they released their final images and catalogues, which consist of half-a-million galaxies emitting far-infrared radiation. While the optical light from galaxies is starlight, the far-infrared radiation is from interstellar dust, tiny solid grains of material between the stars.

Galaxies, assemblies of stars ranging from 40,000 to thousand billion stars (ours contains about one billion) are the basic building blocks of our Universe. Since they were discovered about a century ago, most of what we know about them has come from optical telescopes. However, when looked at in far-infrared light, the galaxy population looks very different.

Initially, the team used their results to measure how much dust there is in galaxies today.

Cardiff University Ph.D. student Rosie Beeston who led this work said: "Before, astronomers were trying to understand how much dust there is billions of light years away but didn't really have a handle on how much dust resides in our own astronomical backyard because only a couple of hundred measurements existed. Now we've created a census of dust in over 15,000 galaxies."

One of the gravitationally lensed sources found in the survey. The ring is a map made with the Atacama Large Millimetre Array of one of the sources detected in the survey. The ring is an 'Einstein ring' made as the result of the bending of light from the distant Herschel source as the result of the gravitational field from a nearby galaxy (the galaxy in the centre, which was not detected by Herschel). Credit: Cardiff University

Puzzlingly, the team also found a mysterious class of galaxy with lots of gas and a bigger ratio of dust to star mass than any other type of galaxy. Dubbed BADGERS (Blue and Dusty Gas Rich Galaxies), these galaxies are deeply mysterious, since the huge amounts of dust should hide most of the optical light, and the dust is also very cold.

Dr. Loretta Dunne, a research fellow at the University's School of Physics and Astronomy, was amazed to discover these odd new galaxies: "I remember checking the optical images of our brightest 300 galaxies and being amazed that they were mostly these really messy looking blue galaxies with no obvious signs of dust. It was totally not at all what I was expecting to see, and the funny thing was I having this eureka moment in Sydney airport on my way to an H-ATLAS meeting in Cardiff."

Another discovery made by the team has overturned astronomers' ideas about how galaxies evolve. All current theories of how galaxies evolve are based on the fundamental assumption that there are two classes of galaxy: galaxies in which stars are actively forming and 'quiescent galaxies' in which star formation has essentially stopped. This assumption is based on decades of optical surveys, which have found that most galaxies are either blue (star-forming) or red (quiescent). The existence of these two classes means that all theories need to include a catastrophic process that suddenly (in cosmic terms) converts a star-forming galaxy into a quiescent galaxy.

Most of the galaxies detected in the Herschel ATLAS, however, fall in the 'green valley' between the red and the blue galaxies. According to Professor Steve Eales, of the University's School of Physics and Astronomy: "This discovery has overturned all the current theories for how galaxies evolve. Our results show that there really is only a single galaxy class. There is no longer any need for a violent process that moves a galaxy rapidly from one class to the other. Herschel has shown that galaxy evolution is actually quite a gentle process."

The catalogues and images released by the team today will be a treasure trove for the worldwide community of astronomers. Apart from revolutionising our view of galaxies, the catalogues contain galaxies ranging from ones nearby to ones being seen only a billion years after the big bang, tens of thousands of galaxies magnified by `gravitational lensing', and even tiny clouds of dust in our own galaxy. Since there is no similar mission on the drawing board for either the European Space Agency or NASA, the results from the survey will be a fundamental resource for astronomers for decades to come.

Elisabetta Valiante, also of the School, who led the team that produced the galaxy catalogues: "The H-ATLAS survey is a milestone in the history of far-infrared astronomy and I expect it to be a reference for the next generation of researchers studying the formation of stars and galaxies."
Roshanak Nateghi, an assistant professor of industrial engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University, leads research into the effects of climate change on future energy consumption. Credit: Purdue University image/ DeEtte Starr

New projections show climate change could induce a 5 percent increase for the average commercial building's energy consumption in Indiana by the year 2100, while reducing an average residential home's energy use by 3.5 percent.

"These are looking at 'statistically representative' average residential homes and commercial buildings in Indiana, so the effects of climate change on residential and commercial energy consumption will range above and below these estimated projections," said Roshanak Nateghi, an assistant professor in Purdue University's School of Industrial Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering.

Since the largest part of residential energy demand in Indiana is attributed to heating, future warming scenarios could lead to reduced end-use residential demand due to lower space heating and water heating needs. In the commercial sector, the overall energy demand is expected to increase under future warming scenarios. This is because the increased space cooling required during hot summer months will likely outpace the reduced heating needs during the more temperate winter months.

"One surprise for us was that the demand goes down for statistically representative average households in the residential sector," Nateghi said. "The main reason is that air conditioning use is only 2 percent of energy consumption for residential households. In fact, the majority of residential energy use is for heating, at about 74 percent."

The majority of existing energy-economy models do not account for climate variability and change.

"So, we propose a multi-paradigm framework to help extend the energy-economy models, such as a well-known model called MARKAL, to be able to account for climate change," said Sayanti Mukherjee, a postdoctoral research associate in the Division of Construction Engineering and Management and a visiting scholar in the School of Industrial Engineering. "To illustrate the applicability of our proposed framework, we used the state of Indiana as a case study."

She and Nateghi co-authored a paper about the research published online Nov. 20 in the journal PloS One. They refer to their approach as a "multi-paradigm" framework because it integrates different types of modeling techniques.

The study compared the future projections to historical energy consumption for cooling, heating and water heating for the commercial and residential sectors from 19812013.

Two sets of projections were calculated: one assumes a future world with lower greenhouse gas emissions than the other because more aggressive steps are taken to mitigate emissions. The analysis concluded that under both scenarios, by the year 2100 the effects of climate change alone will cause energy consumption for an average commercial building in Indiana to increase by 5.1 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively. Energy consumption for the average residential household is projected to decrease by 3.5 percent on average under both scenarios because warmer temperatures will reduce energy use for heating.

"Projecting long-term trends in energy demand is an increasingly complex endeavor due to the uncertain emerging changes in climate, policy, the regulatory environment, the economy and technology, among other factors," Mukherjee said.

The projected changes are in addition to the expected changes in energy consumption caused by a variety of factors such as changes in electricity rates, population and energy policy.

Sayanti Mukherjee, a postdoctoral research associate at Purdue University, is the lead author of a new paper into the potential effects of climate change on energy consumption in Indiana. Credit: Purdue University image/ Trevor Mahlmann

The work was conducted as part of the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA) project, led by the Purdue Climate Change Research Center in the university's Discovery Park. The IN CCIA is a multidisciplinary effort to provide accessible, credible climate science to Indiana residents, allowing a better understanding of climate changerelated risks that will support more effective planning. Another team working on the assessment provided critical climate-change data, "downscaling" general climate models to focus on Indiana. The findings will be part of the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment being coordinated by the center to be released next year.

Being an importer of electricity from the neighboring states and Canada, Indiana is vulnerable to supply shortages in cases of shifts in end-use demand due to reasons such as climate variability and change. The state ranks second in terms of coal consumption in the energy sector.

"Changing patterns of energy consumption, therefore, will have significant implications for the environment," Nateghi said.

The researchers used a Bayesian, "ensemble decision-tree" based algorithm to develop predictive models.

For the residential sector, the findings reveal that the future median energy demand under the lower-emissions scenario is projected to be 278.5 trillion British thermal units (Btu), a 3.5 percent decrease from the historical median, and can range from 243.7323.2 trillion Btu. Under the higher-emissions scenario, the median residential demand is projected to be 278.7 trillion Btu, also a 3.5 percent decrease from the historical median, and could range between 243.0276.9 trillion Btu.

The demand in the commercial sector will be on-average substantially higher than the historical average values under both emission scenarios. More specifically, under the low-emission scenario, the average demand will be around 179.9 trillion Btu, a 5.1 percent increase than the historical median, and it could range between 147.8214.1 trillion Btu. Similarly, under the high-emissions scenario, the projected median commercial demand will be around 180.5 trillion Btu, a 5.4 percent increase from the historical median and could range between 146.4211.4 trillion Btu under the uncertain future scenario.

The projected increase is due to the commercial sector's greater use of cooling energy, relative to the residential sector, and higher projected daytime temperatures.

"It should be noted that while our proposed framework accounts for demand variation due to climate change, it does not account for potentially higher intensity and frequency of climatic extremes such as ice storms and tornadoes under climate change," Nateghi said. "Future work is needed to extend our paradigm to also account for such weather and climate extremes that could become much more intense and frequent under climate change, and have significant impacts on our energy sector in the future."

The projections could be underestimating the potential influence of climate change because they are based only on the expected rise in temperature, not relative humidity.

In future work, the researchers will use a more sophisticated "dynamically downscaled" model from the Climate Change Research Center to more accurately predict the impacts of climate change on energy consumption.

The researchers also are expanding their work to prepare projections across other energy-intensive states in the United States.

More information: Roshanak Nateghi et al. A multi-paradigm framework to assess the impacts of climate change on end-use energy demand, PLOS ONE (2017). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0188033 Journal information: PLoS ONE , Ecological Engineering
Meghan Markle is leaving no stone unturned to fit in with the Royals.

By Shivani Chhabra: Ever since the official announcement of Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle's engagement, the two have been creating waves with every movement.

Recently, it was announced that the Royal couple will exchange vows on May 19, 2018, at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, sending the fans in a frenzy, all over the world.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report

While Meghan has already won over everyone's heart with her first official outing with Prince Harry, post their engagement, she was all set to woo her future in-laws, at Queen Elizabeth's annual pre-Christmas lunch, held at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday.

advertisement

Also Read: Meghan Markle's handbag becomes a hit after her first official outing with Prince Harry

The annual pre-Christmas lunch is a Royal tradition that has the entire family gather under one roof, and feast with the Queen. After Prince William made an entry with the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, and his tiny tots, Princess George and Princess Charlotte, all eyes were glued to Meghan's entry with Prince Harry, who drove in a Land Rover Discovery.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report

Markle happens to be the first non-Royal to have attended this grand banquet thrown by the Queen herself. The actress will even be a part of the Royal Christmas celebrations that will be held at Queen's Sandringham estate.

Also Read: Here's what Meghan Markle might wear for her royal wedding with Prince Harry

Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report

For the grand occasion, for this was Meghan's first official meeting with most of the members of the British Royal family, the actress opted for a classy outfit by Self Potrait. The brown-black, crew-neck dress was brimming elegance, and Meghan looked every bit royal, already.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report

The floral motifs above the waist looked rather refreshing, while the black, box-pleats below the waist emanated a formal vibe. The brown flowers were balanced beautifully by the plain, black aspect of the dress, which made this piece the perfect pick.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/royalty.report

We're sure Meghan managed to make a statement with her plush ensemble at the grand event.

--- ENDS ---
Atoms, molecules and the bonds that hold them together  I want to see these things as they actually appear in nature, says Wilson Ho, UCIs Donald Bren Professor of Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry, here seated beside the tanks of liquid helium that allow his scanning tunneling microscope to operate at a temperature of nearly absolute zero. Credit: Elena Zhukova / UCOP

Models and schematic diagrams are powerful tools for studying the fundamental workings of chemistry, but they're not enough for Wilson Ho.

"Atoms, molecules and the bonds that hold them together  I want to see these things as they actually appear in nature," says Ho, UCI's Donald Bren Professor of Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry. "These phenomena are central to chemistry; it's important to image them directly instead of just studying them from drawings in textbooks."

Ho, who came to UCI in 2000, has made a career out of trying to understand intermolecular behavior. He wants to know "what the nature of this interaction is, what's really happening at the point of bonding and what makes molecules attract each other to form more complicated, extended structures?"

In recent months, he and his research group have made significant breakthroughs in their efforts to see these heretofore invisible processes. Their goal was to get a snapshot of chemical bonds involving fluorine, which shares a column on the periodic table with other so-called halogen elements, including chlorine, bromine and iodine.

Fluorine is used in a lot of drugs and in polymers that make up many of the materials people use daily. But, according to Ho, even manufacturers who handle molecules containing the element aren't clear on how it interacts with adjacent compounds.

Using a one-of-a-kind, handmade microscope, Ho and his graduate students succeeded in imaging halogen bonds in real space and reported their findings in Science this summer.

"Views previously attained through our method have shown that many chemical bonds are quite similar in the real world to what you see in the literature: basically, atoms with lines connecting them," Ho says. "But the pattern of the fluorine-halogen bond  a sort of pinwheel shape  was quite surprising, certainly different from anything you would draw on a sheet of paper."

The veteran scientist says that this line of research has spurred an evolution in his thinking about chemical bonds, which are classified under such headings as hydrogen, covalent, ionic and halogen, as well as weak bonds known as Van der Waals interactions that Ho compares to the sticky footsteps of a gecko.

"The deeper implication of our work is that all these different types of chemical bonds can be described within a more unified picture," he says. "Using our apparatus and technique, we can see that strong covalent bonds and weaker halogen bonds appear very similar; there's just a difference in strength and the degree of electron sharing."

Key to all the discoveries coming from Ho's lab is an instrument called a scanning tunneling microscope. Occupying three levels in the basement of Reines Hall, the hulking conglomeration of stainless steel chambers and pipes  much of it covered in crinkled foil  is connected by miles of wires and cables and surrounded by banks of computers and other electronic equipment.

Designed and built by Ho and graduate students, the apparatus hovers on a set of four shock-absorbing stanchions to minimize any disturbance from external vibrations. This microscope doesn't use an optical lens. Instead, it images molecules with an electron-emitting tip, or needle, positioned just 5 angstroms from subjects. (In comparison, a hydrogen atom is half an angstrom.) The needle is stable to one-thousandth of an angstrom.

Another key to the instrument's stability and precision is its operating temperature, 600 millikelvins. Absolute zero, the lowest theoretical temperature, is colder by just six-tenths of a kelvin.

"This gives us very good energy resolution, which allows us to precisely measure minute electrostatic ripples inside and between the molecules we're studying," Ho says. "We can obtain images by monitoring variations in the vibrational intensity of our probe molecule."

To get down to that temperature, he taps into his own supply of liquid helium, which he recycles in another Reines Hall facility, also designed and constructed by his team. "We like to build our own instruments," Ho says. "It provides good training for the students. When they leave here, they can rely on all of that experience in solving problems and making devices. Not many places do that."

One such graduate student, Gregory Czap, has put his mark on the microscope by inventing interlocking devices that let researchers rapidly switch experiments.

"I think it's pretty phenomenal to get to work on a machine like this," he says. "It gives you the ability to look at single atoms and bonds. Things like that, not very long ago, people didn't think you'd ever be able to actually see. And more than looking at them, you can play with them. You can do things like break and form bonds. You can reposition molecules to see how they interact with one another. It's just amazing."

More information: Zhumin Han et al. Imaging the halogen bond in self-assembled halogenbenzenes on silver, Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aai8625 Journal information: Science
An infographic depicting results from Missirian et al. Credit: Carla Schaffer / AAAS

New research predicts that migrants applying for asylum in the European Union will nearly triple over the average of the last 15 years by 2100 if carbon emissions continue on their current path. The study suggests that cutting emissions could partially stem the tide, but even under an optimistic scenario, Europe could see asylum applications rise by at least a quarter. The study appears today in the journal Science.

"Europe is already conflicted about how many refugees to admit," said the study's senior author, Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and a professor at the university's Earth Institute. "Though poorer countries in hotter regions are most vulnerable to climate change, our findings highlight the extent to which countries are interlinked, and Europe will see increasing numbers of desperate people fleeing their home countries."

Schlenker and study coauthor Anouch Missirian, a Ph.D. candidate at SIPA, compared asylum applications to the EU filed from 103 countries between 2000 and 2014, with temperature variations in the applicants' home countries. They found that the more temperatures over each country's agricultural region deviated from 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) during its growing season, the more likely people were to seek refuge abroad. Crops grow best at an average temperature of 20 degrees C, and so not surprisingly, hotter than normal temperatures increased asylum applications in hotter places, such as Iraq and Pakistan, and lowered them in colder places such as Serbia and Peru.

Combining the asylum-application data with projections of future warming, the researchers found that an increase of average global temperatures of 1.8 Can optimistic scenario in which carbon emissions flatten globally in the next few decades and then declinewould increase applications by 28 percent by 2100, translating into 98,000 extra applications to the EU each year. If carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory, with global temperatures rising by 2.6 C to 4.8C by 2100, applications could increase by 188 percent, leading to an extra 660,000 applications filed each year.

Under the landmark climate deal struck in Paris in 2015, most of the world's nations agreed to cut carbon emissions to limit warming by 2100 to 2C above pre-industrial levels. President Trump's recent decision to withdraw the United States, the world's second largest carbon emitter, from the accord now jeopardizes that goal.

In a further setback to reducing U.S. carbon emissions, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency has proposed lowering the U.S. government's "social cost" of carbon, or the estimated cost of sea-level rise, lower crop yields, and other climate-change related economic damages, from $42 per ton by 2020 to a low of $1 per ton. The EPA partly arrived at the lower figure by excluding the cost of U.S. emissions on other countries, yet as the study shows, effects in developing countries have clear spillovers on developed countries. "In the end, a failure to plan adequately for climate change by taking the full cost of carbon dioxide emissions into account will prove far more costly," said Missirian, a fourth-year sustainable development major.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that weather shocks can destabilize societies, stoke conflict and force people to flee their home countries. In a widely-cited 2011 study in Nature, a team of researchers led by Solomon Hsiang, then a graduate student at SIPA, linked modern El Nino drought cycles to increased violence and war globally.

More recently, researchers have highlighted the connection between the drying of the Middle East and ongoing conflict there. In a 2015 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, another team of Columbia researchers made the case that climate change made Syria's 2006-2010 drought two to three times more likely, and that the drought was a catalyst for Syria's 2011 uprising. The civil war that followed has so far claimed 500,000 lives, by one estimate, and forced 5.4 million Syrians to flee the country.

Germany has taken in the largest share of asylum-seekers from Syria and elsewhere, but increasingly faces a backlash from German voters worried about assimilation and loss of jobs. A wave of anti-immigrant sentiment elsewhere in Europe has led to Hungary building a wall to keep refugees out and influenced Great Britain's decision to leave the European Union. In the United States, President Trump was elected in part on his promise to build a wall to block Mexican immigrants from entering the country illegally.

Hsiang, now an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research, called the study an "incredibly important" wakeup call. "We will need to build new institutions and systems to manage this steady flow of asylum seekers," he said. "As we have seen from recent experience in Europe, there are tremendous costs, both for refugees and their hosts, when we are caught flat footed. We should plan ahead and prepare."

Colin Kelley, a climate scientist at Columbia's International Research Institute for Climate and Society who linked climate change to Syria's ongoing conflict, also praised the research. "It's unclear how much more warming will occur between now and the end of the century, but the study clearly demonstrates just how much climate change acts as a threat multiplier. Wealthier countries can expect to feel the direct and indirect effects of weather shocks from manmade climate change in poorer, less resilient countries."

The research was initiated at the request of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), which also provided funding. "These findings will be especially important to policymakers since they show that climate impacts can go beyond the borders of a single country by possibly driving higher migration flows," said Juan-Carlos Ciscar, a senior expert at the JRC's Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transport Unit. "Further research should look at ways for developing countries to adapt their agricultural practices to climate change."

More information: A. Missirian el al., "Asylum applications respond to temperature fluctuations," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao0432 Journal information: Science
A study co-authored by MIT professor Daron Acemoglu shows that demonstrations in Cairos Tahrir Square lowered the stock market valuations of politically connected firms  indicating how much people thought a full democratic revolution was possible. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Day after day in early 2011, massive crowds gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square, calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Away from the square, the protests had another effect, as a study co-authored by an MIT professor shows. The demonstrations lowered the stock market valuations of politically connected firmsand showed how much people thought a full democratic revolution was possible.

"When there's street mobilization, you expect that the future will be different," says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, co-author of a paper detailing the results.

The study opens a keyhole into the hopes and fears of Egyptians at a time of great political uncertainty. After weeks of protest, caused in part by perceptions of government corruption, Mubarak resigned in February 2011, replaced by an interim military government. The moment passed, however. In June 2012, the Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi was elected president, only to be replaced by another phase of military rule, starting in July 2013. Military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was then elected president in May 2014 with 97 percent of the vote.

Still, in the first half of 2011, an open democracy seemed conceivableindeed, a democratic revolution was taking place in Tunisiaand that was reflected in market sentiment. In the nine days of market activity after Mubarak left power, the valuations of the firms most politically connected to his National Democratic Party (NDP) fell by 13 percent relative to other firms.

Moreover, the support for NDP-linked stocks was not shifted to firms linked to other power centers in Egyptian life, including the military or Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. Investors were, in part, devaluing the worth of political connections in the country.

"It's not just redistribution of a given amount of spoils, but perhaps street mobilization is reducing what the market thinks the available spoils are," Acemoglu says of investor activity in early 2011.

More specifically, Acemoglu adds, some investors thought politically connected firms would be "less capable of capturing rents," the revenues flowing from noncompetitive business activity, and would have "less room for engaging in these corrupt activities."

The study also shows a connection to protest-crowd size; an estimated one-day turnout of 500,000 protestors in Tahrir Square would lower the valuation of NDP-connected firms by 0.8 percent relative to other listed firms.

Among its other findings, the study sheds light on the much-discussed relationship between social media and the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. In this case, the scholars also found that Twitter activity forecast the amount of street protest that would ensue. By itself, social media activity did not immediately affect stock market valuations, but by encouraging public demonstrations, it had an indirect effect.

The paper, "The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt's Arab Spring," is forthcoming in print form by the Review of Financial Studies and currently appears in advance online form. The authors are Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT; Tarek A. Hassan, an associate professor of economics at Boston University; and Ahmed Tahoun, an assistant professor of accounting at London Business School.

Taking stock of protests

To conduct the study, the researchers used stock-market data concerning 177 firms listed on the Egyptian stock exchange in early 2011, and examined daily closing prices for those firms between 2005 and 2013, as well as total firm assets and leverage (the amount of debt as a fraction of total assets).

Looking at board members and principal shareholders, Acemoglu and his colleagues divided the firms into four main groups: those with connections to the NDP, those with military connections, those with Muslim brotherhood connections, and those that were unconnected to the other groups.

The scholars also used published estimates of crowd sizes from Tahrir Square demonstrations, and to derive the conclusions about Twitter they examined 311 million tweets by over 300,000 Egyptian accounts between Jan. 1, 2001, and July 31, 2013.

In the paper, the researchers consider but largely rule out a couple of alternate explanations for stock market behavior during this time. One would be that Mubarak's fall simply created instability which affected firms in varying ways. But the study controls for firm-level qualities and industrial sectors, and the devaluation effect was specific to NDP-aligned companies.

A second possible alternative is that the stock market was still expecting top-down control over the Egyptian government, but investors were simply altering their bets and identifying the next group of firms they expected to benefit from useful political connections. Acemoglu says that "is definitely a possibility" in theory, but as the paper notes, "there is no evidence of such offsetting shifts" in market investments.

To be clear, the 13 percent drop experienced by NDP-connected firms shows that many investors were not fazed by the protests, or at least did not expect the protests to lead to massive political changes. On the other hand, a significant portion did think that a ground-up, populist uprising could succeedeven if that ultimately proved not to be the case.

"It's whoever the marginal investor is, and obviously the marginal investor was wrong," Acemoglu says. "If you had perfect foresight, the day Mubarak fell, you would just be selling all the NDP stocks but buying all the military stocks."

The social media moment

The study's Twitter data suggest a slightly more subtle picture than some commentators described during the eventful days of 2011. Twitter activity did not lead to immediate stock market effects. On the other hand, protest hashtags did predict the occurrence of large demonstrations, and those protests subsequently moved the market.

"You can scream and shout whatever you want on social media, and it doesn't [directly] change anything, but if social media acts as a vehicle for people organizing, then it might have an effect," Acemoglu says.

Acemoglu, who pursues research projects in multiple areas of economics, is perhaps best-known for his work on the relationship between democratic institutions and economic growth, which is summarized in his 2012 book "Why Nations Fail" but remains very much an ongoing project.

At the same time, Acemoglu has conducted a wide-ranging series of studies analyzing and modeling political change in many countries, often with political scientist James Robinson of the University of Chicago. The paper on Egypt flows, in part, from that vein of research. It also builds on other academic studies of other countries, such as a 2001 paper demonstrating that links to the Indonesian government accounted for about a quarter of the value of well-connected firms in that country during the 1990s.

Acemoglu, for one, says he does not anticipate a sea change in Egypt's current system of government any time soon. The current stasis in the country's politics makes it all the more useful, however, to consider how fluid the political situation appeared in real time as recently as six years ago.

"Looking at it from the vantage point of 2011, none of that was obvious, that Tunisia would go one way, Egypt would go another way," Acemoglu says.

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
Parasitic wasps, on aphid hunt, at Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, broadcast 26-28 December on BBC. Credit: Rothamsted Research

Insect communication, silent and often deadly, features prominently among the remarkable experiments that are performed live during the three lectures that explore "The Language of Life" for this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

The three hour-long lectures, broadcast on BBC Four at 8pm from 26 to 28 December, explore the many forms of communication by humans and other life. They are presented by Sophie Scott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.

For the second lecture, "Silent Messages", Scott is joined by Gia Aradottir, an entomologist from Rothamsted Research who specialises in insect-plant interactions. The episode considers how much humans say without opening their mouths and how animals make their points without a sound.

When Aradottir appears on set, her only obvious props are a family of aphids, some cabbage leaves for them to feed on and a microscope. But then she brandishes a syringe of aphid alarm pheromone, and a tub of parasitic wasps.

"Over two experiments, I wanted to show how aphids generate chemical signals [the pheromones] to alert other aphids to predators, and how the predators can use those signals to their advantage," says Aradottir.

"And we were very lucky with how our experiments turned out, even before a live theatre audience, under bright lights and in front of TV cameras," she notes. Details of those interactions, among aphids and between aphids and wasps, must wait for the broadcast, on the 27th."What I can say is that it was a huge honour to take part in the Christmas lectures; I was probably more excited than the children in the audience," she adds. See video, My Day at the Christmas Lectures.

Gia Aradottir, entomologist at Rothamsted Research, shows how aphids and parasitic wasps communicate, at Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, broadcast 26-28 December on BBC. Credit: Rothamsted Research

Aradottir's demonstrations at the Royal Institution reflect some of her current research underway in Zimbabwe where she is helping wheat farmers to find sustainable ways of protecting their crops from aphids without resorting to costly pesticides. See article, Trials to regain independence.

Provided by Rothamsted Research
The lensless DiffuserCam consists of a diffuser placed in front of a sensor (bumpson the diffuser are exaggerated for illustration). The system turns a 3-D scene into a 2-D image on the sensor. After a one-time calibration, an algorithm is used to reconstruct 3-D images computationally. The result is a 3-D image reconstructed from a single 2-D measurement. Credit: Laura Waller, University of California, Berkeley

Researchers have developed an easy-to-build camera that produces 3D images from a single 2D image without any lenses. In an initial application of the technology, the researchers plan to use the new camera, which they call DiffuserCam, to watch microscopic neuron activity in living mice without a microscope. Ultimately, it could prove useful for a wide range of applications involving 3D capture.

The camera is compact and inexpensive to construct because it consists of only a diffuser - essentially a bumpy piece of plastic - placed on top of an image sensor. Although the hardware is simple, the software it uses to reconstruct high resolution 3D images is very complex.

"The DiffuserCam can, in a single shot, capture 3D information in a large volume with high resolution," said the research team leader Laura Waller, University of California, Berkeley. "We think the camera could be useful for self-driving cars, where the 3D information can offer a sense of scale, or it could be used with machine learning algorithms to perform face detection, track people or automatically classify objects."

In Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research, the researchers show that the DiffuserCam can be used to reconstruct 100 million voxels, or 3D pixels, from a 1.3-megapixel (1.3 million pixels) image without any scanning. For comparison, the iPhone X camera takes 12-megapixel photos. The researchers used the camera to capture the 3D structure of leaves from a small plant.

"Our new camera is a great example of what can be accomplished with computational imagingan approach that examines how hardware and software can be used together to design imaging systems," said Waller. "We made a concerted effort to keep the hardware extremely simple and inexpensive. Although the software is very complicated, it can also be easily replicated or distributed, allowing others to create this type of camera at home."

A DiffuserCam can be created using any type of image sensor and can image objects that range from microscopic in scale all the way up to the size of a person. It offers a resolution in the tens of microns range when imaging objects close to the sensor. Although the resolution decreases when imaging a scene farther away from the sensor, it is still high enough to distinguish that one person is standing several feet closer to the camera than another person, for example.

The researchers used the DiffuserCam to reconstruct the 3-D structure of leaves from a small plant. The new camera can reconstruct 100 million voxels, or 3-D pixels, from a 1.3-megapixel image without any scanning. Credit: Nick Antipa and Grace Kuo, University of California, Berkeley

A simple approach to complex imaging

The DiffuserCam is a relative of the light field camera, which captures how much light is striking a pixel on the image sensor as well as the angle from which the light hits that pixel. In a typical light field camera, an array of tiny lenses placed in front of the sensor is used to capture the direction of the incoming light, allowing computational approaches to refocus the image and create 3D images without the scanning steps typically required to obtain 3D information.

Until now, light field cameras have been limited in spatial resolution because some spatial information is lost while collecting the directional information. Another drawback of these cameras is that the microlens arrays are expensive and must be customized for a particular camera or optical components used for imaging.

"I wanted to see if we could achieve the same imaging capabilities using simple and cheap hardware," said Waller. "If we have better algorithms, could the carefully designed, expensive microlens arrays be replaced with a plastic surface with a random pattern such as a bumpy piece of plastic?"

After experimenting with various types of diffusers and developing the complex algorithms, Nick Antipa and Grace Kuo, students in Waller's lab, discovered that Waller's idea for a simple light field camera was possible. In fact, using random bumps in privacy glass stickers, Scotch tape or plastic conference badge holders, allowed the researchers to improve on traditional light field camera capabilities by using compressed sensing to avoid the typical loss of resolution that comes with microlens arrays.

Although other light field cameras use lens arrays that are precisely designed and aligned, the exact size and shape of the bumps in the new camera's diffuser are unknown. This means that a few images of a moving point of light must be acquired to calibrate the software prior to imaging. The researchers are working on a way to eliminate this calibration step by using the raw data for calibration. They also want to improve the accuracy of the software and make the 3D reconstruction faster.

The researchers used the DiffuserCam to reconstruct the 3-D structure of leaves from a small plant. They plan to use the new camera to watch neurons fire in living mice without using a microscope. Credit: Laura Waller, University of California, Berkeley

No microscope required

The new camera will be used in a project at University of California Berkeley that aims to watch a million individual neurons while stimulating 1,000 of them with single-cell accuracy. The project is funded by DARPA's Neural Engineering System Design program - part of the federal government's BRAIN Initiative - to develop implantable, biocompatible neural interfaces that could eventually compensate for visual or hearing deficits.

As a first step, the researchers want to create what they call a cortical modem that will "read" and "write" to the brains of animal models, much like the input-output activity of internet modems. The DiffuserCam will be the heart of the reading device for this project, which will also use special proteins that allow scientists to control neuronal activity with light.

"Using this to watch neurons fire in a mouse brain could in the future help us understand more about sensory perception and provide knowledge that could be used to cure diseases like Alzheimer's or mental disorders," said Waller.

Although newly developed imaging techniques can capture hundreds of neurons firing, how the brain works on larger scales is not fully understood. The DiffuserCam has the potential to provide that insight by imaging millions of neurons in one shot. Because the camera is lightweight and requires no microscope or objective lens, it can be attached to a transparent window in a mouse's skull, allowing neuronal activity to be linked with behavior. Several arrays with overlying diffusers could be tiled to image large areas.

A need for interdisciplinary designers

"Our work shows that computational imaging can be a creative process that examines all parts of the optical design and algorithm design to create optical systems that accomplish things that couldn't be done before or to use a simpler approach to something that could be done before," Waller said. "This is a very powerful direction for imaging, but requires designers with optical and physics expertise as well as computational knowledge."

The new Berkeley Center for Computational Imaging, headed by Waller, is working to train more scientists in this interdisciplinary field. Scientists from the center also meet weekly with bioengineers, physicists and electrical engineers as well as experts in signal processing and machine learning to exchange ideas and to better understand the imaging needs of other fields.

More information: N. Antipa, G. Kuo, R. Heckel, B. Mildenhall, E. Bostan, R. Ng, L. Waller, "DiffuserCam: Lensless Single-Exposure 3D Imaging," Optica, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1-9 (2017).

DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.5.000001 Journal information: Optica
Lithuania will ban Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab's products from computers managing key energy, finance and transport systems due to security concerns, authorities said Thursday.

The Russian firm's software was banned from US government networks earlier this year amid allegations that it helped Russian intelligence steal top secret information.

"The government... recognised that Kaspersky Lab software is a potential national security threat," the Baltic EU state's defence ministry said in a statement.

The government agencies responsible for "critical infrastructure" must replace the popular anti-virus software in "a short while", it added.

Lithuanian intelligence chief Darius Jauniskis recently said the cyberfirm "was sometimes acting as a toy in the hands of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's administration".

Kaspersky has repeatedly denied having any inappropriate ties with the Kremlin and said that malware-infected Microsoft Office software and not its own was to blame for the hacking theft of American intelligence materials.

Kasperski told Russian media on Thursday it was "disappointed" and assured customers they "do not have to worry because they have not been subjected to any violation from our company."

"The Kaspersky laboratory has never helped nor will it ever assist any state in the world to engage in cyber-espionage or to conduct cyber-attacks," the company said.

"The Kaspersky laboratory has no political connection or affiliation with any government."

Lithuania, a NATO and EU member of 2.8 million people, has been one of the most vocal critics of Russia, notably after its 2014 annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine.

 2017 AFP
Artistic reconstruction of Habelia optata. Habelia is thought to have been an active predator, eating small animals with hard carapaces -- such as trilobites. Credit: Joanna Liang. Copyright: Royal Ontario Museum

Paleontologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto have entirely revisited a tiny yet exceptionally fierce ancient sea creature called Habelia optata that has confounded scientists since it was first discovered more than a century ago.

The research by lead author Cedric Aria, recent graduate of the PhD program in the department of ecology & evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T, and co-author Jean-Bernard Caron, senior curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the ROM and an associate professor in the departments of ecology & evolutionary biology and Earth sciences at U of T, is published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Approximately 2 cm in length with a tail as long as the rest of its body, the long-extinct Habelia optata belongs to the group of invertebrate animals called arthropods, which also includes such familiar creatures as spiders, insects, lobsters and crabs. It lived during the middle Cambrian period approximately 508 million years ago and comes from the renowned Burgess Shale fossil deposit in British Columbia. Habelia optata was part of the "Cambrian explosion," a period of rapid evolutionary change when most major animal groups first emerged in the fossil record.

Like all arthropods, Habelia optata features a segmented body with external skeleton and jointed limbs. What remained unclear for decades, however, was the main sub-group of arthropods to which Habelia belonged. Early studies had mentioned mandibulatesa hyperdiverse lineage whose members possess antennae and a pair of specialized appendages known as mandibles, usually used to grasp, squeeze and crush their food. But Habelia was later left as one of the typically unresolved arthropods of the Burgess Shale.

The new analysis by the U of T-ROM researchers suggests that Habelia optata was instead a close relative of the ancestor of all chelicerates, the other sub-group of arthropods living today, named for the presence of appendages called chelicerae in front of the mouth and used to cut food. This is mostly due to the overall anatomy of the head in Habelia, and the presence of two small chelicerae-like appendages revealed in these fossils.

"Habelia now shows in great detail the body architecture from which chelicerates emerged, which allows us to solve some long-standing questions," said Aria, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, in China. "We can now explain why, for instance, horseshoe crabs have a reduced pair of limbs - the chilaria - at the back of their heads. Those are relics of fully-formed appendages, as chelicerates seem to originally have had heads with no less than seven pairs of limbs."

Fossil specimen of Habelia optata from the Royal Ontario Museum. This specimen spectacularly shows some of the very large jaws under the head shield. Note also the long dorsal spines on the thorax. Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron. Copyright: Royal Ontario Museum

Aria and Caron analyzed 41 specimens in total, the majority of which are new specimens acquired by ROM-led fieldwork parties to the Burgess Shale.

The research illustrates that the well-armoured body of Habelia optata, covered in a multitude of different spines, was divided into head, thorax and post-thorax, all bearing different types of appendages. The thorax displays five pairs of walking legs, while the post-thorax houses rounded appendages likely used in respiration.

"Scorpions and the now-extinct sea scorpions are also chelicerates with bodies divided into three distinct regions," Aria explained. "We think that these regions broadly correspond to those of Habelia. But a major difference is that scorpions and sea scorpions, like all chelicerates, literally 'walk on their heads,' while Habelia still had walking appendages in its thorax."

The researchers argue that this difference in anatomy allowed Habelia to evolve an especially complex head that makes this fossil species even more peculiar compared to known chelicerates. The head of Habelia contained a series of five appendages made of a large plate with teeth for mastication, a leg-like branch with stiff bristle-like spines for grasping, and an elongate, slender branch modified as a sensory or tactile appendage.

"This complex apparatus of appendages and jaws made Habelia an exceptionally fierce predator for its size," said Aria. "It was likely both very mobile and efficient in tearing apart its preys."

The surprising outcome of this study, despite the evolutionary relationship of Habelia with chelicerates, is that these unusual characteristics led instead the researchers to compare the head of Habelia with that of mandibulates from a functional perspective. Thus, the peculiar sensory branches may have been used in a similar fashion as mandibulates use antennae. Also, the overlapping plate-like appendages in the middle series of five are shown to open and close parallel to the underside of the headmuch as they do in mandibulates, especially those that feed on animals with hardened carapaces.

Simplified phylogeny (tree of life) showing the relationship of Habelia with other groups of arthropods. A new study by paleontologists at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum shows that it is an early relative of chelicerates -- a group including spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs and mites. Credit: Cedric Aria

Lastly, a seventh pair of appendages at the back of the head seems to have fulfilled a function similar to that of "maxillipeds"appendages in mandibulates that assist with the other head limbs in the processing of food. This broad correspondence in function rather than in evolutionary origin is called "convergence."

"From an evolutionary point of view, Habelia is close to the point of divergence between chelicerates and mandibulates," Aria said. "But its similarities with mandibulates are secondary modifications of features that were in part already chelicerate in nature. This suggests that chelicerates originated from species with a high structural variability."

The researchers conclude from the outstanding head structure, as well as from well-developed walking legs, that Habelia optata and its relatives were active predators of the Cambrian sea floors, hunting for small shelly sea creatures, such as small trilobitesarthropods with hard, mineralized exoskeletons that were already very diverse and abundant during Cambrian times.

"This builds onto the importance of carapaces and shells for evolutionary change during the Cambrian explosion, and expands our understanding of ecosystems at this time, showing another level of predator-prey relationship and its determining impact on the rise of arthropods as we know them today," said Caron, who was Aria's PhD supervisor when the bulk of this research was completed.

"The appearance and spread of animals with shells are considered to be one of the defining characteristics of the Cambrian explosion, and Habelia contributes to illustrate how important this ecological factor was for the early diversification of chelicerates and arthropods in general."

The findings are described in the study "Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate," where Habelia optata is brought to life by visual artist and scientific illustrator Joanna Liang with animations depicting the spectacular body architecture and complex feeding mechanism of this fossil. Liang collaborated with Aria and Caron to produce the animations as part of her master of science thesis in biomedical communications at U of T under supervisor Dave Mazierski.

More information: Cedric Aria et al, Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate, BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1186/s12862-017-1088-7 Journal information: BMC Evolutionary Biology
The stem rust pathogen infects all above-ground parts of the wheat plants, including the head. In this case, control with fungicides is usually not possible because of end-product contamination, or economic. Credit: Karanjeet Sandhu, University of Sydney.

Famine may be largely a thing of the past but in recent years the re-emergence of a disease that can kill wheat - which provides a fifth of humanity's food - has threatened food security; now a breakthrough is being announced just before Christmas, in two companion papers being published in the journal Science.

In a world first, science has leaped a step ahead of an old foe that has recently re-emerged in some parts of the world, where it has devastated crops because of its ability to evolve, undoing much of the hard work that began in earnest with the Green Revolution - using natural techniques to isolate the first rust pathogen gene that wheat plants detect and use to 'switch on' in-built resistance.

The breakthrough in research targeting the stem rust foe - historically the most dangerous pathogen of wheat - will mean suspect samples could be analysed within hours in an emergency rather than weeks, potentially saving crops from being destroyed.

"For the first time it will be possible to do DNA testing to identify whether a rust in a wheat crop anywhere in the world can overcome a rust-resistance gene, called Sr50, which is being introduced in high-yielding wheat varieties," said Professor Robert Park, corresponding author from the University of Sydney.

"This will indicate whether or not a given wheat crop needs to be sprayed with expensive fungicide quickly to protect against rust - which would otherwise devastate the crop in a matter of weeks."

Rust disease epidemics have emerged at times in tandem with carefully refined selective breeding in cereals; the disease is once again extremely damaging in East Africa and is making a comeback in Europe.

Superficially, stem rust looks like another rust pathogen of wheat, leaf rust. The two can be distinguished on leaves, with leaf rust forming pustules on one side of the leaf only, and stem rust producing pustules that appear on both leaf surfaces. Credit: Credit Karanjeet Sandhu, University of Sydney.

The new findings are being published in one of the world's leading journals, the US-based Science.

Mr Jiapeng Chen, a PhD candidate from the University of Sydney who initiated the work by sequencing and analysing the genome of a virulent rust isolate, said this was the first important step in addressing the diagnostic challenges posed by ever-changing fungi, which result in new rust pathogen strains.

Professor Park explained: "It's like an ongoing arms race - we've got to keep one step ahead of this changing pathogen.

"The last major epidemic of wheat stem rust in Australia alone, in 1973, caused $AU300 million in damage - imagine what that would be today."

Co-corresponding author, Dr Peter Dodds from the Commonweatlh Scientific Industrial Research Organisation, said demand for wheat in the developing world was expected to jump 60 percent by 2050 and in economic terms alone the ramifications were huge.

"Now that we've identified how stem rust strains are able to overcome Sr50 resistance - by mutation of a gene we've identified called AvrSr50 - this information can be used to help prioritise resistance genes for deployment.

The pathogen kills wheat plants by girdling stems, resulting in crops comprising a tangled mess. Credit: Robert Park, University of Sydney

"Our results so far show the plant immune system is able directly to recognise the fungal protein, said Dr Peter Dodds, from CSIRO's Agriculture and Food team. "We are gaining a better understanding of the whole process - what's going on at the protein level, at the gene level."

Co-author Dr Kostya Kanyuka from Rothamsted Research, an agricultural science centre in the United Kingdom, said stem rust had been making a comeback in Europe, for example in Sweden as recently as this year, and was threatening Asia and the US.

"The highly virulent Ug99 race of the stem rust fungus - which emerged in 1998 in Uganda - has become even more potent as it has spread through Africa and the Middle East, with winds threatening to carry it into Asia," Dr Kanyuka said.

US collaborators Professor Melania Figueroa, Professor Brian Steffenson and Dr Yue Jin were able to extend the results of the study by examining strains of the stem rust pathogen from other parts of the world, including the US and Africa.

"It is important to look at this gene in worldwide rust strains to gain a picture of where virulence is most likely to evolve," Professor Figueroa said.

Professor Park, from the Plant Breeding Institute, part of the University's Sydney Institute of Agriculture and School of Life and Environmental Sciences, said the results should also lead to a better understanding of how rust pathogens infect wheat, evading detection by the wheat plant, and causing yield losses.

"In addition to the immediate practical benefit regarding the important rust-resistance gene Sr50, our world-first finding could potentially have a longer-term payoff in the 10-15-year horizon," he said.

More information: DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4810 J. Chen el al., "Loss of AvrSr50 by somatic exchange in stem rust leads to virulence for Sr50 resistance in wheat," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao4810 Journal information: Science
SciPet, a company incubated at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, and formed in 2016, uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to identify animals. The smartphone app CrowdPet is the result of research carried out by the company. It combines two data sources: photographs of lost animals registered by their owners and photographs of animals sighted in the street by volunteers.

"The app establishes a match between two images using computational visual recognition, and pinpoints by geolocation the place where the picture of the lost animal was taken," says Fabio Rogerio Piva, CEO of SciPet. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from UNICAMP.

CrowdPet is already in use by the municipality of Vinhedo, a city in the surroundings of Campinas. With the aid of the app, identification and registration are performed by the city's Center for Animal Disease Control. The initiative, part of a census of animals conducted during vaccination campaigns, started in July, and has the purpose of maintaining an up-to-date registry for control of lost and abandoned animals in the streets.

At the end of stage 1 of the PIPE project, during which its feasibility was analyzed, SciPet completed a prototype capable of distinguishing cats and dogs from all other images with a 99 percent success rate. "Even if a user photographs people or objects, the system will register only photos of animals," Piva explains.

The researcher explains that the SciPet studies are among the first attempts to apply biometry to animals. "It showed that human facial biometry methods aren't very effective to identify dogs. Using a method specially developed for animals, they achieved 89 percent accuracy, equivalent to the success rate obtained by a human observer who specializes in dogs."

Accurate and single recognition

The research project, which was selected among finalists for the 2017 awards of UNICAMP's incubator agency (the Inova UNICAMP Prize), is preparing itself for an even more complex challengeobtaining accurate identification of each animal.

Piva says much more development is needed for the prototype to satisfy all the real conditions for use of the CrowdPet app. A project called "Where is my puppy? Retrieving lost dogs by facial features" forms the basis for the firm's first studies. The project was conducted by researchers at UNICAMP's Reasoning for Complex Data Laboratory (ReCoD Lab), with Professor Eduardo Valle as principal investigator. Valle is currently working with SciPet.

"The study was based on photos taken with the animal always in the same position and at the same distance, i.e., centered. We have to work with photos taken in the street, in different positions, and with varying lighting conditions," Piva says.

Moreover, the state of the lost animal may also influence visual recognition, as it may be dirty or injured. It will, therefore, be necessary to train the system with several photos of the same animalnot just of its head, but the whole body, given that a characteristic mark on any part of the body could be decisive for recognition.

"The next step will be to reproduce the experiments described in the article "Where is my puppy?" using photos taken in the wild. This is our biggest challenge," Piva says. To surmount it, SciPet will be assisted by Professor Anderson Rocha as an associate researcher. Rocha is a specialist in machine learning for image recognition.

The first version of SciPet's business plan for CrowdPet chose people who wanted to find missing pets, connected in a kind of "social network" as its sole target clientele. However, before completing stage 1 of PIPE, SciPet was selected to take part in the fourth edition of FAPESP's Training Program for High-Tech Entrepreneurs between July 31 and September 19, 2017.

During the training program, the SciPet team interviewed over 100 prospective customers. This listening and market prospection exercise showed that city governments needed to conduct a census before they could control the population of abandoned animals. "This is an unsolved problem. It's hard to avoid double counting. Some cities use microchips, but the process involved is costly," Piva says. At that point, the firm made the strategic decision of offering the app to local governments so that cities could provide a street animal monitoring service. "Besides Vinhedo, we're also in touch with several other cities that are setting up animal welfare departments," Piva says.

Cities are now considered the main partners for the project. "CrowdPet can be offered free of charge to the public through local government," he explains. "We refined the concept and realized we wouldn't be able to make a 'pet solution' work."

Piva plans to add more functionality in future, including registration of volunteers and animal protection associations, lists of animals available for adoption, and rewards for people who find lost animals.

Provided by FAPESP
The GOP's tax bill passed through Congress this week and President Trump is expected to sign it into law before the year is out. In this Q&A, Stanford Law Professor Deborah Sivas discussed the environmental implications of several provisions in the bill.

Included in the GOP's tax bill is a provision that will open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration and drilling. First, why is ANWR protected?

ANWR is a place of spectacular wilderness and biodiversity, unlike anywhere else in the U.S. It supports polar bears, a species now teetering on the brink of extinction, as well as grizzly (brown) and black bears, over 200 species of birds, huge caribou herds, and much more incredible wildlife. It is one of the last truly wild places left on Earth, largely untouched by human activity. And it is incredibly fragile. Oil-related drill rigs, roads, and other infrastructure, not to mention the potentially catastrophic impacts from oil spills, pose significant risks to the ANWR ecosystem.

It is for these reasons that the Secretary of the Interior set aside nearly 9 million acres and withdrew the area from leasing, including oil and gas leasing, in 1960. Then in 1980, Congress enacted and President Carter signed a law that expanded the protected area to 19.3 million acres and renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That law mandated further assessment of oil and gas development on the 1.5-million-acre coastal plan and required congressional approval for any drilling. Another 8 million acres was designated as wilderness. That was the compromise struck nearly four decades ago, and since then many environmental groups and indigenous people have fought to protect the coastal plain area from oil and gas development.

What might oil drilling mean to the environment? What are the objections to drilling from environmentalists?

There have been several attempts to open up the coastal plain to oil and gas development, including toward the end of the Reagan administration. But in 1989, we had the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, which demonstrated how much damage can be done by an oil spill and how hard it is to clean up such an incident. For example, hundreds of thousands of birds were covered by oil and died. The responsive cleanup efforts, which involved scouring rocks with high pressure hot water, created their own damage to the flora and fauna, with long-lasting impacts. And as a nation, we saw how unprepared the industry was to deal with an accident and how hard it is to get cleanup personnel and equipment into Alaska. ANWR is even more remote and more fragile than where the Exxon Valdez ran aground. A major oil spill there could permanently damage the ecosystem, creating harm that could last literally for many decades.

Several attempts to open the ANWR coastal plain to oil drilling, usually in budget bills, have been thwarted, including in 2005, when Alaska's then-Senator Ted Stevens vowed to open the area to drilling no matter how long it takes. In 2015, the Department of the Interior proposed designating the remaining 12 million acres of ANWR as fully-protected Wilderness, including the coastal plain. Now, the new tax bill mandates that the Interior Department open ANWR's coastal plain to oil leasing  thereby finally achieving what special interests and some Alaska elected officials have, for decades, been unable to do.

How "climate aware" is the tax bill? For example, does the tax bill leave in place incentives for solar, wind and renewable energy development?

Although the original House tax bill would have scaled back tax credits for wind and solar power and for electric vehicles, those changes have been mostly deleted from the reconciled bill. This is largely because some prominent Republicans, even some climate skeptics, have renewable energy industry in their states. For example, Iowa now gets one-third of its power from wind energy and Tesla is building a battery factory in Nevada, meaning that Republican senators from those states argued for maintaining these tax credits.

The administration also announced this week that the US no longer regards climate change as a national security threat. What does this meanand why should we care about this? It seems to run contrary to the actions and statements made by coastal state governments such as California and New York.

This announcement is yet another problematic statement by the administration. In some ways, the U.S. military and national security establishment have been on the forefront of climate science and adaptation. This makes sense. Many military installations, for instance, are located on the coast, directly in harm's way as sea level rise accelerates. We are likely to see new international tension and conflict, especially between Russia and the U.S., as melting ice opens new shipping passages in the Arctic; the ability of Russian and other military vessels to expand their presence to North America is troubling for U.S. national security.

And probably most significant, we are poised to see worldwide population displacement, with millions  or hundreds of millions  of climate refugees fleeing rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, increasing catastrophic natural disasters, and declining food security. Much more modest population migration in response to Middle East conflict has already begun to fray Western European democracies. A destabilized world order, where mass global migration becomes much more common, will profoundly threaten national and international security. The question is whether this week's revised National Security Strategy is mostly just provocative words, like so much else from this administration, or whether it actually portends a shift in direction by those in the military and national security establishment. It is not yet clear whether the President's political rhetoric will actually have repercussions for our day-to-day national security operations.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with MEA statement)

New Delhi/Kathmandu, Dec 21 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today held telephonic talks with top Nepalese leaders, including K P Sharma Oli, who is set to become the premier of the Himalayan nation, and conveyed Indias support to Nepal in its pursuit of stability and inclusive development.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Modi spoke with Chairman Communist Party of Nepal (UML) Oli, Chairman Communist Party of Nepal Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and congratulated them on their successful participation in the recently conducted parliamentary and first-ever provincial elections.

advertisement

In his telephonic conversations, prime minister Modi reiterated Indias "support to Nepal in its pursuit of stability, prosperity, and inclusive development", an MEA statement said.

Modi also recalled that timeless people to people contacts are at the heart of the India-Nepal ties.

"Our open border is a reflection of our unique bonding. He (the PM) reaffirmed Indias commitment to strengthen these bonds of friendship and work with the incoming government on a broad range of development and reconstruction projects," the statement said.

The MEA also said that Nepals holding of elections at all three levels of the government in 2017 is a commendable achievement.

Modi congratulated Oli on the Left alliances grand success in the recently concluded elections, said a statement issued by the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) in Kathmandu.

The conversations were the first highest-level contact between the leaderships of the two countries after the Left alliance of Oli and Prachanda swept the elections.

"The results of the recently held elections will strengthen democracy, bring political stability in the country and lead Nepal towards economic prosperity," the statement quoted Modi as saying.

It said Modi also invited Oli to visit India immediately after the formation of the new government, saying he was eager to welcome him in New Delhi.

"Modi said his government is willing to work together with the Nepalese government," according to the statement.

Oli thanked Modi for his good wishes and said good relations will be maintained with neighbouring countries.

The CPN-UML chairman said he would like to collaborate with neighbouring countries, especially India and China, for economic development and prosperity.

He said that shortly after the formation of the new government invitation will be sent to Modi to visit Nepal.

Oli also congratulated Modi on his partys success in the recent elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

Nepals Left alliance won 116 seats out of a total 165 under the first-past-the-post system while the ruling Nepali Congress bagged 23 seats in the countrys recently concluded historic polls that many hope will bring the much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.

advertisement

Olis triumph is being widely seen as a victory for the pro-Chinese elements in Nepal. PTI MPB/SBP TDS SK ZH ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
Scientists believe that kelp forests like this one off of Californias coast are being threatened by climate change. Credit: University of California, Los Angeles

Kelp forests grow along coastlines worldwide, largely hidden from view. Like rainforests, they're among the planet's most important ecosystems: beautiful but fragile habitats for a wide array of plant and animal species.

But scientists believe kelp forests are being threatened by climate change. Now, researchers from UCLA and seven other universities have an improved tool for tracking these shifting ecosystems, the largest of which is about 5 miles long.

With new funding from NASA, the team recently relaunched Floating Forests, a website that enables volunteer citizen-scientists to scan hundreds of thousands of satellite images for places where the tops of kelp forests skim the ocean surface.

The original site went online in 2014, and its more than 7,000 users had viewed roughly 700,000 satellite images as of early December 2017. The new version launched Dec. 13 with better image filters and enhanced color contrast, which will produce fewer photos that don't have kelp in them, and will make the kelp forests easier to identify.

"We hope to track global trends in the abundance of giant kelp forests and identify regions that have experienced significant declines in kelp," said Kyle Cavanaugh, a professor of geography in the UCLA College and a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "Giant kelp forests are ecosystem engineersthey provide both food and habitat for incredibly diverse and productive near-shore ecosystems. They are also highly sensitive to changes in climatic and environmental conditions."

Mapping kelp forests has traditionally been a more solitary endeavor: Scuba divers would gather information about areas of the ocean that they could explore themselves. So the data was limited to tiny portions of the ocean, and the information divers gathered could only provide a snapshot of conditions on the day that they collected ita problem because conditions in the forests can change rapidly.

To gather a fuller picture of the forests, and to monitor them over long periods of time, Cavanaugh recognized he could draw from NASA's Landsat program, which has taken satellite images of the entire Earth every 16 days since the 1970s. Landsat collects data in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths, which made it an ideal tool to track kelp forests: Because water absorbs a lot of near-infrared energy and plants reflect a lot of it, the kelp forest canopies stand out in the satellite images.

But Cavanaugh also knew that it would take human eyes to analyze the images, so he and Jarrett Byrnes, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, obtained funding from a nonprofit called Zooniverse to build a website that would allow people from around the world to participate.

Here's how it works: If one of the citizen-scientists sees evidence of a kelp forest in a satellite image, that image is shown to 15 other users for verification and to carefully trace the outline of the canopy. On the other hand, if four different users view an image and don't see any kelp, that image is discarded from the dataset.

So far, Floating Forests users have helped map kelp forests along the entire coast of California from 1984 to 2011one user found a large, never-before-mapped patch of kelp on an underwater mountain called the Cortez Bank, about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. Volunteers also helped map most of the coast of Tasmania, Australia, over the same period, providing evidence that climate change is causing problems in the kelp forests there.

In addition to improvements in its image processing, the relaunched site makes it easier for Cavanaugh and his fellow scientists to add new regions to the platform. One of the newest additions is a collection of 5,000 images of the waters around the Falkland Islands, off the coast of South America. Byrnes said kelp forests are the foundation of the coastal ecosystem there.

"It's a breeding ground," he said. "Local squid love to lay their eggs on kelp. It's also a source of kelp rafts that can transport some species around the subantarctic oceans."
Oil palm harvest at Pasoh. Credit: Nanyang Technological University

A new study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has warned of the threat that oil palm production poses to tropical forests.

Over two decades, the international team of scientists found that oil palm production in Malaysia has an impact beyond the direct loss of habitat. It also provides a rich source of food for nearby wildlife such as wild boars, which then multiply in big numbers and damage forest trees and prevent them from regenerating.

Published in Nature Communications on 20 Dec, the research paper reports that the wild boar population grew a hundred-fold in forests that were adjacent to oil palm plantations, even when the forest and plantations were over a kilometre apart.

The wild boars reduced the number of small trees and saplings by more than half, compared with experimentally fenced-in areas of the forest that did not have wild boars. This reduction is primarily driven by wild boar mothers harvesting small trees to build nests for their young.

Dr. Matthew Luskin, a research fellow at NTU Singapore's Asian School of the Environment, conducted this study in partnership with the Center for Tropical Forest ScienceForest Global Earth Observatory (CTFS-ForestGEO) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

"For 10 years, we saw that plants and small trees on the forest floor were disappearing but we didn't understand why," said Dr. Luskin. "Once we started looking outside the forest to the surrounding oil palms, the story became clear.

"When oil palms start fruiting, wild boars quickly aggregate to feed in the plantations. The abundant food allows them to reproduce, causing a massive surge in their population in the nearby forest. The biggest subsequent effect this leads to is when pregnant wild boars build nests, as this clears vegetation from the forest floor."

Dr. Stuart Davies, Director of CTFS-ForestGEO programme that facilitated the study, said, "This important new study uses intensive long-term field research to illustrate that the effect of agriculture is not necessarily restricted to the land under production.

"Further experiments and observations are critical for understanding interactions between production and protection lands, thereby improving the management of the world's hyper-diverse ecosystems."

Matthew Luskin building fenced wildlife exclosures in Pasoh . Credit: Nanyang Technological University

The researchers said that with many oil palm plantations found near Southeast Asia's remaining forested lowlands, it could have a similar knock-on effect on the ecology in those areas, but its long-term impact warrants more in-depth studies.

"I've personally seen population eruptions of pigs and macaque monkeys in forests near oil palms across Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra. This may become a huge conservation issue for the entire region," said Dr. Luskin.

The researchers urged oil palm growers as well as the countries and regulatory bodies that govern them to consider ways to limit negative impacts.

One solution suggested by Dr. Luskin could be for forest reserves to be surrounded by larger 'buffer' areas to limit wildlife access to oil palm fruits. With many tropical forests lying within a kilometre of a non-forested area, such as a plantation, the scientists said well-protected forest reserves may be insufficient to conserve tropical biodiversity in the face of ongoing agricultural expansion.

Efforts to control the wild boar or feral pig population is also culturally sensitive in some parts of Southeast Asia where pigs are regarded as unclean and consumption of pork is taboo.

The study focused on native wild boars (Sus scrofa), which are well-known to farmers as crop-raiding pests. The wild boar population was estimated to grow 100-times larger than natural levels, resulting in dramatic impacts on an intact forest.

Other animals such as macaque monkeys are also known to forage on oil palm and become common in forests found near plantations. These animals eat birds' eggs and a variety of other species and also alter the food webs in forests found near oil palm plantations.

Associate Professor Fidel Costa, Acting Chair of NTU's Asian School of the Environment, said this paper is yet another project that showcases the strengths of the partnership NTU Singapore has with the Smithsonian Institution in the United States.

"Together with the Smithsonian, NTU Singapore hopes to groom the next generation of scientific research expertise, which will help Asian countries effectively conserve their environment and to embark on more sustainable business practices," Prof Costa explained.

"Through impactful studies on the effect of agricultural expansion and wildlife population, we hope to provide insights for countries and policymakers who seek to better protect our environment for future generations."

More information: Matthew Scott Luskin et al. Cross-boundary subsidy cascades from oil palm degrade distant tropical forests, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01920-7
Flaming pudding. Credit: Ruth Hartnup

Brandy is the UK's favourite Christmas spirit, according to research into our festive online searches from the University of Warwick.

Nathan Cunningham from Warwick's Department of Statistics has discovered that during the week of Christmas, UK online searches for brandy have been far higher than for any other alcoholic drink during the last five years.

This is probably due to it being a staple of festive treats, as rich fruit cake, Christmas puddings and mice pies often contain brandyand are served with brandy butter.

Using Google Trends data from 2012-2016, Cunningham analysed the volume of online searches for our most popular festive spiritsbrandy, gin, rum, vodka, and whiskey  looking for a spike at Christmas.

He found that we search for brandy far more than any other spirit at Christmas. Rum and vodka came second and third, respectively.

Nathan Cunningham commented:

"In each of the last five years, the search volume for some of the most popular alcoholic spirits has peaked dramatically around the week of Christmas.

"I found it interesting that there's been such a consistent surge in searches for spirits around the festive period, and wanted to find out which one, more so than any other, we associate with Christmas above and beyond any other time of the year.

"Not being a fan of mince pies or Christmas pudding myself, I feel I'm missing out on the Christmas spirit now! Christmas dessert in my house has always been my mum's lemon cheesecake."

To find out the most searched for spirit over the Christmas period, he didn't want to simply pick the drink with the greatest search volume at Christmas, as that would likely only reveal which one is the most popular in general.

Therefore, Cunningham looked at the standardised search volume for each tipplesubtracting their respective means (the average search volume of each drink) and dividing this by their respective standard deviations (how each search volume varies from the average).

Brandy was the spirit whose Christmas search volume was the most standard deviations above their mean value.
A mother-and-calf pair of Atlantic humpback dolphins. A group of scientists now considers this little-known dolphin to be among the Africa's most endangered mammals. Credit: T. Collins/WCS

A group of scientists now considers a little-known dolphin that only lives along the Atlantic coasts of Western Africa to be among the continent's most endangered mammals, a list that includes widely recognized species such as gorillas, African wild dogs, and black rhinos, according to WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and the IUCN's (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Cetacean Specialist Group.

The latest assessment of the Atlantic humpback dolphin (Sousa teuszii) reveals a new and mostly depressing reality: the obscure and poorly studied dolphin is now considered to be in great peril across most of its coastal range and has been uplisted from "Vulnerable" to "Critically Endangered" on IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species.

Growing up to 2.5 meters (more than 8 feet) in length, the Atlantic humpback dolphin is gray in color and has a characteristic hump just below its dorsal fin. These dolphins are shy, occur in small groups, and rarely venture more than a few kilometers from shore. They are highly susceptible to human activities in coastal waters, and threats include entanglement in fishing gear, offshore construction such as port development, and hunting for human consumption.

"Our recent assessment suggests that the global population of the Atlantic humpback dolphin likely numbers fewer than 1,500 breeding adults distributed among several isolated sub-populations, most of which appear to be very small," said Tim Collins, of WCS's Ocean Giants Program and the Africa Coordinator of the IUCN's Cetacean Specialist Group.

The presumed range of the Atlantic humpback dolphin stretches more than 7,000 kilometers along the coastal areas of Western Sahara to central Angola. The previous "Vulnerable" listing for the species was based largely on the assumptions that dolphins were more abundant in areas where the species was known to occur and the presumption of occurrence in many areas had not been surveyed.

For the new Red List assessment, researchers conducted a thorough review of the available data, which strongly suggest that the dolphins occur in very low and apparently declining numbers throughout most or all of their range. Most populations are extremely small and several appear to be isolated. Declines have been observed (or are suspected) for every known population, and their continued decline is considered inevitable given the ongoing expansion of identified threats throughout the species' known range.

Entanglement in fishing gear is one of the many threats faced by the Atlantic humpback dolphin along its coastal range in Western Africa. Credit: T. Collins/WCS

Bycatch in fisheries, the principal cause of the declines, has been identified or suspected everywhere the species has been studied. Hunting is known from several areas, and the threat of coastal development in remaining habitats is increasingly prevalent. Appropriate management interventions that limit habitat loss, bycatch and hunting are limited or entirely lacking across most of the range. In the absence of targeted and sustained conservation management efforts, the researchers conclude that the species will continue to decline.

Researchers add that several marine protected areas provide Atlantic humpback dolphins and other marine wildlife with important refuges that can provide marine managers with a foundation for complementary conservation efforts. This includes the recent creation of a marine protected area network in Gabon.

Howard Rosenbaum, Director of WCS's Ocean Giants Program and a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Cetacean Specialist Group, said: "The new Critically Endangered listing will hopefully provide greater attention and resources to mitigate primary and cumulative threats faced by the Atlantic humpback dolphin, as well as proactive strategies for protecting the species and its vital habitats in key parts of the range."

Randall Reeves, Chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Cetacean Specialist Group, said: "Particularly in view of the impending extinction of the vaquita (a small porpoise endemic to Mexico's Gulf of California) due entirely to overkill in fishing nets, we need to do a better job of not just assessing the present condition of riverine and coastal small cetaceans, but also of looking ahead and anticipating what is likely to happen to species like the Atlantic humpback dolphin unless current trends are reversed, and soon."

In addition to long-term field studies on Atlantic humpback dolphins, WCS scientists have also produced important findings on humpback dolphins living in the in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean basins, specifically to resolve confusing taxonomic questions about which populations should be considered full-fledged species or related subspecies. These investigations determined that four species exist: the Atlantic humpback dolphin; the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea); the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis); and a newly described speciesthe Australian humpback dolphin (Sousa sahulensis).

All four species live in coastal habitats and face the same threats; entanglement in fishing nets, coastal development, ship strikes, and increasingly hunting. The Indian Ocean humpback dolphin is listed as "Endangered," whereas the Indo-Pacific and Australian humpback dolphins are both listed as "Vulnerable."
Nawazuddin Siddiqui is all set to play Bal Thackeray on the big screen.

By India Today Web Desk: That Nawazuddin Siddiqui is an actor par excellence cannot be disputed. Just last week, reports emerged that Nawazuddin was all set to play Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray in a film, a role he is expected to do full justice to.

The Bal Thackeray biopic has been written by Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut, who will also produce the film. It will be directed by Abhijeet Panse.

advertisement

Sanjay Raut has been keen on bringing Bal Thackeray's story alive on celluloid for a while now, but he was awaiting a green signal from the late leader's son, Uddhav Thackeray, who is currently the president of the Shiv Sena.

The as-yet untitled film will show different periods of the Shiv Sena founder's life, right from the time he began his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal.

Important political developments in Bal Thackeray's life will also be portrayed in the biopic, including joining hands with the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), the Mumbai riots and his nephew Raj Thackeray's decision to break away from the Shiv Sena and start a separate party, the MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena).

(With inputs from Sahil Joshi)

ALSO WATCH: Nawazuddin alleges colour discrimination. Dark side of racist Bollywood?

--- ENDS ---
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/  Synoptek, award-winning managed IT services and managed cloud services provider, is recognized among the worlds top companies for their managed cloud services in Pentons 7th annual Talkin Cloud 100 report. Synopteks ranking improved to #11 from #20 (2017 over 2016, respectfully), as a tier-one total service provider among the top 20 cloud services providers (CSPs).

Penton conducts research by analyzing companies yearly cloud-based revenue growth along with their innovations and support model for cloud services in order to select the honoree for this prestigious award. For the 5th straight year, Synoptek is proud to have received this honor by Talkin Cloud. This top-20 nationwide recognition by Talkin Cloud is due in part to Synopteks commitment to improve service delivery and expand cloud operations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Canada.

Synoptek Managed Public Cloud Services

Synoptek has enhanced its managed public cloud services to encompass six critical pillars: cloud readiness/ assessments, technical support, resource management, cybersecurity, compliance management, and strategic advisory. The enhanced strategy delivers a set of services to clients, both proactively and as needed. Partnering with Synoptek provides firms with technology resources, necessary skills, and the ability to address a range of issues related to cost, quality of service, and risk. In addition to Managed Public Cloud services, Synoptek provides cloud consulting and migration for firms looking for help to design, configure, and scale their cloud operations.

Synoptek advises firms in leading verticals including, but not limited to healthcare, technology, financial services, county and municipal government, and manufacturing. Synoptek offers an exclusive suite of managed cloud services including private, public, or hybrid configurations across multiple global environments. As we continue to invest in high-caliber tools, resources, and processes annually, our delivery of assessments, deployments and managed cloud solutions does not go unnoticed, said Mike Bank, Synopteks Vice-President. We are once again proud to be recognized by Talkin Cloud and other leaders in the industry as a top Cloud Services Provider. We continue to demonstrate our long-term commitment for innovative managed IT services and managed cloud services.

Previous Synoptek Recognition by Industry Leaders a Direct Link
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

Read more
" " Everyone has a carbon footprint, even our favorite superheroes. Ollie Millington/Getty Images

If you're out there saving humanity from supervillains, does it matter how many pounds of carbon you use to do it? Gotham City would have been obliterated a hundred times over if Batman weren't constantly bailing it out of trouble, but that Batmobile sure is a gas guzzler, not to mention the Batwing airplane, and the electricity bill for the Batcave is probably astronomical. So, is all that do-gooding really good after all?

Some researchers from Stanford University recently presented a poster at the American Geophysical Union's 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans entitled "Stop Saving the Planet! Carbon Accounting of Superheroes and Their Impacts on Climate Change." The point of the project was to bring awareness to the fact that everybody on this planet has a carbon footprint, which is just a calculation of how much carbon each of us uses in our daily activities such as driving, eating, and heating and cooling our houses. We've all got one, but the average American's carbon footprint is around 44,000 pounds (20,000 kg) of carbon per year. An average person in the United Arab Emirates uses a good bit more, the average Peruvian uses considerably less. But what about your average superhero?

Advertisement

Well, according to the study, they're all over the map. Take Superman: According to the comics, the Man of Steel is entirely solar powered, which nets him a carbon footprint of zero, bless him. That's not the case for every good Samaritan in a cape, however. The Oracle  erstwhile Batgirl-turned-computer-hacker  might weigh in at a conservative estimate of 151,000 pounds (68,500 kg), but the figure might be as many as 320 million pounds (145 million kg), depending on how many servers she's running. The Flash, who can run near the speed of light, would require an insane number of calories  equalling somewhere between 131 pounds (59.5 kg) to nearly 89.5 million pounds (40.5 million kg) of carbon  to accomplish this feat.

But isn't this a kind of silly question for serious scientists to spend their time exploring?

"If I calculate my own carbon footprint, that's depressing," poster coauthor Miles Traer, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, told Eos. "If I calculate Batman's carbon footprint, that's hilarious. So let's go with the hilarious. It's a way of tricking people into learning."

Now That's Interesting Next, Traer is setting his sights on the carbon footprint of Supervillians. "One of my favorites," he said, "is Mr. Freeze, because refrigeration carries a pretty horrendous carbon footprint."
" " Do the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Defense have proof we aren't alone? Sherri Lynn Herrmann/EyeEm/Getty Images

"Keep watching the skies!" That's the last line uttered in "The Thing from Another World," a 1951 sci-fi classic. Released by RKO Radio Pictures, the movie is about an Unidentified Flying Object  or UFO  that turns out to be an alien spacecraft.

Flying saucers were constantly making headlines in those days. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, postwar America went through a surge of reported UFO sightings. In response, the U.S. Air Force created a couple of short-lived programs called "Project SIGN" and "Project GRUDGE" to look into the phenomenon. These were followed up by "Project Blue Book," a large-scale government study that lasted from 1952 to 1969.

Advertisement

Ordered into existence by Major General Charles P. Cabell (a former director of intelligence at the Air Force), Project Blue Book painstakingly gathered 12,618 reports about UFOs. After it was determined that the overwhelming majority of these had natural explanations  and there wasn't enough data to evaluate the others properly  support for the effort dwindled.

Officially, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. But did the U.S. government's interest in aerial aberrations die with it? Evidently not. Because we learned in mid-December 2017 that the Pentagon launched yet another UFO research program in the late 2000s.

The story was broken on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2017 by near-simultaneous reports that appeared in Politico magazine and The New York Times. According to unclassified documents obtained by the press, a total of almost $22 million was quietly spent over a four-year period on a project dubbed The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

Who was the major driving force behind its creation? That would be the now-retired Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada. One of Reid's repeat campaign contributors was businessman Bob Bigelow, a fellow Nevadan who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain  as well as a startup called Bigelow Aerospace, which develops space station modules. He's also a huge UFO enthusiast. In a "60 Minutes" interview in May 2016, Bigelow said that he believes extraterrestrial visitors have maintained a "presence" on planet Earth.

Reid himself has a fascination with cosmic mysteries; according to one of his former spokeswomen, this fact is obvious to anyone who's ever talked to the retired senator "for [over] 60 seconds."

At some point in 2007, Bigelow was reportedly visited by a Defense Intelligence Agency official who expressed an interest in his UFO research. As an anonymous ex-congressional staffer told Politico, there was some concern at the time that the Chinese or Russians might be developing experimental new aircraft that could conceivably pose a threat to America's national security.

Bigelow later told Reid about the visit, prompting the senator to contact the DIA. When Reid learned the agency was interested in setting up a new, government-funded UFO program, he decided to lend a hand. To get the project started, Reid approached the late senators Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska. It was an easy sell; Stevens was particularly enthusiastic about the idea because he claimed to have once been tailed by some unrecognizable aircraft during his service as an Air Force pilot in World War II.

Using the Pentagon's classified programs budget, Reid, Inouye and Stevens secretly set some money aside for the upstart AATIP. The bulk of the cash went to Bigelow Aerospace, which used it to finance research and hire subcontractors on the government's behalf. With the company's guidance, a few buildings in Las Vegas were converted into storage facilities for objects with alleged ties to UFO-related incidents.

The job of heading AATIP fell to one Luiz Elizondo, an intelligence officer with the Department of Defense. Although many aspects of the program remain classified, we do know that its staffers and contractors put together an as-yet unreleased 490-page report chronicling several decades' worth of UFO sightings in the United States and elsewhere. What's more, the initiative rounded up "video and audio recordings" from supposed encounters between human onlookers and mysterious airborne objects.

AATIP started receiving taxpayer funds late in 2008. The following year, Senator Reid attempted to upgrade the program's level of security, but his efforts failed. Then, in 2012, the Pentagon cut off AATIP's cash supply altogether. According to Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White, "It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the [Department of Defense] to make a change."

Yet some sources claim that the Pentagon is still quietly investigating new UFO reports made by those in the armed forces. If this is true, then AATIP may continue to exist in some form, despite its current lack of financial support.

For his part, Elizondo felt the initiative wasn't getting enough respect within the DOD. After 22 years of service, he resigned from the Pentagon in October 2017. Before he left, however, Elizondo persuaded his colleagues to release three formerly secret videos to the public. These were raw footage taken by cockpit cameras in U.S. fighter jets and appear to show strange objects traveling through the atmosphere at high rates of speed.

To Elizondo, the evidence suggests that, in his own words, "we may not be alone, whatever that means."

Meanwhile, a number of scientists have given more skeptical assessments. Astrophysicist Johnathan McDowell says the object in one of these newly released videos is probably some sort of reflection. Despite Elizondo's cryptic statements, Sara Seager of M.I.T. was quick to remind The New York Times that unidentified shapes in the sky aren't necessarily extraterrestrial vessels. And furthermore, astronomer Seth Shostak believes the decision to include Bigelow  someone with firm, pre-existing views on alien visitations  raises doubts about the program's objectivity.

Are we alone in the universe or not? Humanity doesn't have nearly enough data to answer that question. All we can do right now is keep our minds sharp and our eyes skyward.

Not That's Interesting Roswell, New Mexico is mainly associated with a UFO crash-landing that supposedly took place there in 1947. But did you know that this city was also the longtime home of legendary scientist Robert Hutchings Goddard, who had previously launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket?
Analysis: How developing nations are driving record growth in solar power

Posted on 21 December 2017 by Zeke Hausfather

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief

Emerging markets now account for the majority of growth in solar power, according to new data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

Led by China and India, these developing economies are behind dramatic recent growth in solar capacity, which expanded by 33% in 2016.

China alone installed 27 gigawatts (GW), around 40% of the worlds new solar last year. Brazil, Chile, Jordan, Mexico and Pakistan all at least doubled their solar capacity in 2016.

In total, solar accounted for 19% of all new generating capacity in the emerging markets tracked by BNEF.

However, solar still only accounts for 5% of capacity and 1.3% of electricity generationglobally. But its exponential growth in recent years has been driven by national policies and a combination of photovoltaic module prices falling more than threefold.

Exponential growth

Over the past decade, solar capacity has increased exponentially, driven by falling module prices and national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or expand access to electricity.

While Europe, the US and Japan led the way in early solar installations, over the past few years most growth has been driven by developing countries, with China in particular starting to dominate the solar sector.

The figure below shows total global solar capacity installed each year from 2003 through to 2016 by region.

Cumulative solar photovoltaic capacity by region and year from 2003 through 2016. Based on data from BNEF/Climatescope and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Europe drove much of the early solar capacity growth  and cost reductions. In 2016, however, Asia became the dominant region. North America has also ramped up its solar capacity considerably. While still relatively small, solar capacity in Africa and South and Central America also experienced rapid year-over-year growth from 2013 onwards.

Mapping solar use and new installations

Carbon Brief combined the new Climatescope BNEF data for emerging markets with data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, to show the growth of solar over recent years in a wider range of countries.

Total solar capacity, shown in the bar charts below, are dominated by high-population countries, such as China and the US. China alone accounts for 26% of the worlds solar installations, with Japan, Germany and the US each accounting for around 13%. The UK has the sixth largest installed solar capacity of any country, larger than India, France, Spain and Australia.

Total solar photovoltaic capacity by country, both cumulative (top chart) and added in the year 2016 (bottom chart). Based on data from BNEF/Climatescope and BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

In 2016, China added around 27GW of total solar capacity, more than any other country and about 40% of all solar capacity installed globally that year. The US was the second largest, at around 15GW. India was the fourth largest source of new solar capacity, installing more than 4GW in 2016. The UK installed around 2GW in 2016.

To normalise by a countrys population, the map below shows the total amount of solar power capacity per-capita. A per-capita metric allows comparisons across countries without large population countries overshadowing rapid changes elsewhere.

Cumulative solar photovoltaic capacity per capita by country in 2016. Based on solar capacity data from BNEF/Climatescope and BP Statistical Review of World Energy and population data from the World Bank. Countries in grey have no data available. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Germany has the largest installed solar capacity per person, at nearly 500 watts per person. It is followed by Japan at 337 watts, Italy at 318 watts, Belgium at 302 watts, Greece at 243 watts and Australia at 228 watts. Other European countries round out the top 11, with the UK at number 9 with 179 watts. The US has the 12th largest installed solar capacity per person at 125 watts, while China is the 24th largest at 56 watts solar per person.

While European countries have some of the highest solar capacities per person, their growth has slowed in recent years. The map below, which shows new solar installed in 2016 per-capita, paints a somewhat different picture.

Solar photovoltaic capacity per capita by country added in the year 2016. Based on data from BNEF/Climatescope and BP Statistical Review of World Energy and population data from the World Bank. Countries in grey have no data available or no new solar in 2016. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

In 2016, Japan had the most new solar installed per person, at 68 watts. The US was near the top at 46 watts, while the UK and Australia had 31 watts. China installed more solar per-person than Germany in 2016, which has capped the rate of renewable additions and moved to auctions for new capacity.

While per-capita installations across Africa are relatively low, the regions growth is still noteworthy. According to BNEF, more than 1.5m households in Africa now use solar home systems, with mobile-money enabled financing plans resulting in a nearly 300% increase in cumulative installations relative to 2015.

Conclusion

While Europe, Japan, Australia and the US drove early installations of solar power, in recent years developing countries led by China have taken the lead and now account for more than half of new solar installations globally.

Solar power accounts for only 5% of capacity and 1.3% of electricity generation globally today, but is growing rapidly. Solar is widely expected to continue its rapid growth as prices continue to fall and climate policies and national solar targets drive adoption at scale.

The International Energy Agency suggests that by between 2020 and 2025 solar will be cheaper than coal in the US, India and China. However, there are still challenges associated with variable generation and the need for flexible backup or battery storage, which will become increasingly important as solar contributes a larger share of the electricity mix.
To face change is to deal with the unexpected.

Font size: A - | A +

Andrea Sadlonova is a Slovak-born scientist who returned home after 19 years in the USA.

Americans have many movies and Slovaks many folk stories about people traveling the world and then coming home to the small town they grew up in. During the course of the story, tensions arise when expectations clash with reality and the hero needs to get along with the locals again. There is usually a situation when the single or broken hero finds some love interest or experiences something that mends him and makes him whole again. The reality is, of course, different. While it is true that no matter where we live, we will always love our childhood home (for those with happy childhoods),some of us, if we return to Slovakia, do so because of family ties, childhood nostalgia or a desire for fulfillment of some other need.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Migration is like an osmotic gradient and people are like water, naturally moving towards a higher concentration of a positive solvent, in human terms the solvent being a positive element beneficial to people. It has always been more difficult to go against a current, which is what returning to Slovakia is a little bit like. And like everything against the current, it requires a lot of energy and many things get lost in the process. After making the dramatic jump back home, we can only hope for the best.

Read also:

Read also: Less money and missing links await expats upon return Read more

Some of us, the idealists, hope for a successful return to our friends and family members. However, the more pragmatic expats never stay for long once they have returned. After already experiencing the dramatic and painful adjustment and integration into a new country and culture, they do not want to go through another change that requires lots of resources and balancing the equation of loss and gain.

I belong to the category of idealists. For many years in the US, while having wonderfully happy times with my friends and people that I became very close to, I wished for the perfect, balanced life which includes having a fulfilling job, reaching self-actualization and spending every holiday, names-day, birthday or just regular Sunday evening with my family members and friends without the need to have a conversation over Skype, Facetime, WhatsApp, Viber or VOIP devices. The list of hopes goes on and on for any returning expat, but the reality is different.

Returning expats need to know that even if they plan for every scenario, the reality ends up being surprising and challenging. One can only hope that they can be creative with solutions and have enough strength to tackle the challenge. Needless to say, to face the change is to deal with the unexpected.
Digital transformation offers the chance to be a leader, says Peter Pellegrini, deputy prime minister for investment and informatisation, in an interview with The Slovak Spectator.

Font size: A - | A +

In an e-mail interview with The Slovak Spectator in October 2017, he also talks about why Slovakia lags behind in R&D, how the smart cities programme can help Slovak companies to go global, and he also addresses the question of problems with introducing e-government.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

The Slovak Spectator (TSS): Slovakia belonged among the leaders in innovation of the countries of the Eastern Bloc (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) before 1989, but nowadays only a few companies are involved in research and development. Why?

Peter Pellegrini (PP): The democratic changes after 1989 also brought a dramatic drop in living standards, as we needed to build a new economy and faced the lack of capital. Rules and conditions needed to be set before sustainable foreign capital could start flowing into the country. We needed to build a modern business environment from scratch, and all the while reacting to the economic crises in the world. So it is only fair to admit we have passed through a period when many Slovak companies focused on survival and transformation, and modernisation and innovations have only come gradually.

TSS: What reasons do you see behind the current low interest in innovation in Slovakia?

PP: I keep hearing a number of explanations for why some companies innovate and others do not. Visionaries at the helm of companies increase the innovation potential. So does the culture that encourages employees to bring ideas for improvement, which some companies have been building for decades. It is important to understand the need to focus on the sustainability of business, rather than on maximising short-term revenues. Perhaps some find it easier to procure a ready-made innovation and then commercialise it, as opposed to taking risks. To follow trends rather than to lead. But there are a whole lot of companies in Slovakia who are not afraid to invest in innovation. The state can support innovation activities through tax relief or by using operational programmes. Our office has announced two calls for Slovak companies with innovative ideas in the area of smart cities. We have linked private foreign capital and the state budget, plus the possibility of spending time at an accelerator in the US.

 It is important to understand the need to focus on the sustainability of business, rather than on maximising short-term revenues. 

TSS: In June 2017 you have passed an implementation plan for the RIS3 strategy, the first strategic document for the coordination of R&D in Slovakia. Has there been any progress on putting the plan into practice yet?

PP: We have cooperated on the amendment to the income tax law, which is now in Parliament. We want to increase the rate of the super-deduction of expenses for science and research. We also aim to significantly simplify the paperwork around the deduction. We have set platforms for so-called technology leadership for all domains, including the automotive industry, creative industry, health care and healthy food and the environment. All these activities are prepared with the technological and research capacities of our companies in mind. We have also taken into consideration the existing research infrastructure in the public sector, the research potential of Slovakias top research teams, and the economic specialisation of Slovakia in foreign trade. We will come up with measurable indicators for the tools towards RIS3 aims by the end of 2017.
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 21 (PTI) South Asian nation Nepal, today invited Indian businessmen to explore investment opportunities.

The Himalayan nation offered all possible support in potential areas of cooperation in the realm of tax structure, infrastructure, special rights and exemptions and redressal of single window grievances.

"Its an opportune time to invest in Nepal with bilateral trade on the upswing and we assure Indian industry that our government would provide all possible support to investors," Embassy of Nepal Charge dAffairs Bharat Kumar Regmi said here.

advertisement

Regmi was speaking at a seminar on Indo-Nepal Trade and Investment Opportunities organised by FICCI to identify and promote emerging business opportunities between the two countries in the potential areas of cooperation.

Bilateral trade between India and Nepal has grown from USD 3631.94 million in 2012-13 to USD 5892.72 million in 2016-17 and Nepal is keen that Indian businesses invest on a large scale, especially at a time when the Himalayan Kingdom is witnessing the last leg of the transitional period, he said.

Krishna Hari Pushkar, minister-economic, embassy of Nepal, outlined the expanding business opportunities in Nepal in hydro-power, infrastructure, tourism, agro-based industries, health, mining and minerals, education, IT, manufacturing, construction.

Addressing the gathering, the cultural counsellor from the Nepal Embassy, Krishna Prasad Pantha, highlighted the need to strengthen people-to-people links between the two countries and deepen the multi-cultural relations between India and Nepal. PTI AP DSK DSK

--- ENDS ---
Slegers has served as executive director of AmCham since 2001.

Font size: A - | A +

Jake Slegers, Executive Director of AmCham since 2001, and the AmCham Board of Directors, have agreed on a transition period to the end of April 2018. The Board of Directors will be looking to appoint a new Executive Director before that date.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

"I have come to a point in my life where I would like to actively pursue other opportunities and challenges," Slegers said, noting that under his tenure, AmCham Slovakia grew from 117 members to over 350 member companies and organizations.

The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) was founded in 1993 in Bratislava as an independent and self-funded organisation financed exclusively through the contributions of its members. In September 2003 a new AmCham branch opened in Kosice to help foster economic development in the Eastern Slovak region. Its current membership contains more than 350 international and Slovak companies

Todd Bradshaw, President of AmCham Slovakia, said Slegers has been instrumental in building the position of AmCham over the past 17 years.

"Jake has built a strong team at AmCham that covers membership services, policy and advocacy initiatives, and events," Bradshaw noted.
Data from labour offices point to further decrease in unemployment rate.

Font size: A - | A +

The unemployment rate in Slovakia in November 2017 stood at 5.59 percent, down by 0.19 percentage points month-on-month and by 2.83 percentage points year-on-year, based on data from the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (UPSVaR).

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

The number of jobseekers immediately able to start working was 162,087 in November, a decrease of 5,191 individuals m-o-m and 76,293 y-o-y, the TASR newswire reported.

The unemployment rate calculated from the total number of jobseekers reached 7.19 percent in November, down by 0.16 p.p. m-o-m and 3.05 p.p. y-o-y.

The total number of jobseekers stood at 196,055 in November, falling by 4,217 individuals m-o-m and 82,137 y-o-y.

As for individual regions, all eight Slovak regions recorded reductions in their unemployment rates in November, with the Banska Bystrica Region seeing the most significant drop.

"For the first time the unemployment rate has dropped below 6 percent and the total number of jobseekers has fallen under 200,000," Labour Minister Jan Richter commented on the data as quoted by TASR, adding that there is no region in Slovakia whose unemployment rate would exceed 10 percent.
Specialised Criminal Court fined Milan Mazurek 5,000.

Font size: A - | A +

The judge of the Specialised Criminal Court in Banska Bystrica accused the MP of the far-right Peoples Party - Our Slovakia (LSNS), Milan Mazurek, of defamation of nation, race and belief in concurrence with the crime of defamation and threatening people due to their race, nationality, skin colour and ethnicity.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Mazurek committed the deed as a public official during the broadcast of the Radio Frontinus in October 2016.

The judge ruled that Mazurek pay 5,000 as a penalty for his crime. The ruling is not effective yet. Mazurek already announced that he would appeal against the verdict, which he called absurd and politically motivated, and as having just one aim: "to threaten and discourage us from further political work and fighting for the rights of all decent people," he said as quoted by TASR.

The prosecution also plans to appeal against the verdict, arguing that the penalty is too mild, TASR reported.
Several changes are underway concerning the work of immigration authorities, particularly concerning highly-skilled immigrants, but the question is whether they will work.

Font size: A - | A +

If you are a non-EU national and want to work in Slovakia, you should be ready for the possibility that it could take up to six months to get your immigration paperwork completed. For large businesses that increasingly need a foreign labour force, the length of the process represents a major issue and might even affect their operation and further growth.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Business service centres are one of the quickest-growing economic sectors in Slovakia, and one that increasingly needs a foreign workforce to realise their growth potential. To fully benefit from the growth potential, it is necessary to remove barriers hindering the arrival of highly-skilled resources. The participants of the Business Service Centres in Slovakia: Back to the Future? conference, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia and held in Bratislava in early December, agree.

As global organisations look at Slovakia as a strategic option and compare it to other markets, the speed and ease of relocating skilled resources will be key in the decision-making process, said Holly Ferreira, director of MBS Performance Management & Reporting at Mondelez in Bratislava.

Though costs are an important factor for big companies when assigning projects to a certain BSC, in which Slovakia has a big advantage, the decision-making criterion is how quickly a centre can ramp up free forces in the market, Ferreira explained.

The foreigners police, Slovakias immigration authority, say they are planning to adopt certain changes to ease the rules for highly-skilled foreigners coming to the country, but observers also point to some more pressing issues that need to be addressed.

Third-country nationals have to wait

The excessive length of the immigration process applies mostly for foreigners coming from non-EU countries. Ferreira, who is a US citizen, and thus falls into this category, needed to wait six months to have her immigration process completed.

Read also:

Read also: FAQ: Non-EU citizens - dealing with immigration authorities Read more

The end-to-end timeline can be a bit lengthy, she admitted.

Third-country nationals (the official term for non-EU nationals) coming to Slovakia often face excessive red tape.

One of the issues that need to be addressed is the experience of foreigners with the foreigners police, which can be tense due to a lack of organisation and structure to manage people from different cultures and languages.
The ship will soon join the Coast Guard fleet at Paradip, Odisha. It was commissioned at Goa today.

Sujay, which means 'great victory', is a projection of the Indian Coast Guard's will and commitment (Photo courtesy: Manjeet Singh Negi)

By Manjeet Negi: Indian Coast Guard Ship - Sujay - the sixth in the series of six 105m Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) was commissioned today at Goa by Director General Rajendra Singh.

Sujay, which means 'great victory', is a projection of the Indian Coast Guard's will and commitment "to serve and protect" the maritime interest of the nation.

The ship is based at Paradip, Odisha under the operational and administrative control of the Commander Coast Guard Region (North-East).

advertisement

The 105 meter OPV has been designed and built by Goa Shipyard Limited. It is fitted with state-of-the-art navigation and communication equipment and sensors and machinery.

The features include a 30mm CRN 91 Naval Gun, integrated bridge system (IBS), integrated machinery control system (IMCS), power management system (PMS) and high power external fire fighting system.

The ship is designed to carry one twin engine light helicopter and five high speed boats including two quick reaction inflatable boats for swift boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol.

The ship is also capable of carrying pollution response equipment to contain oil spills at sea.

The ship draws 2,350 tons(GRT) propelled by two 9,100 kilowatt diesel engines to attain a maximum speed of 23 knots and has an endurance of 6,000 NM at economical speed.

The sustenance and reach coupled with the latest and modern equipment and systems, gives her the capability to perform the role of a Command platform to accomplish all Coast Guard Charter duties.

Once the ship joins the Coast Guard fleet at Paradip, it will be deployed extensively for EEZ surveillance and other duties as enshrined in the Coast Guard Charter, to safeguard the maritime interests of India.

Currently, the Indian Coast Guard has a fleet of 134 ships and boats and 66 ships and boats are at various stages of construction at different shipyards in India.

Sujay is commanded by Deputy Inspector General Yoginder Dhaka and manned by 12 officers and 94 men.

The commissioning of ICGS Sujay will enhance the Indian Coast Guard's operational capability to discharge the multifarious maritime tasks.

The induction of a sophisticated and state-of-the-art Offshore Patrol Vessel will give a fillip to the maritime protection of our vast coastline of Eastern Seaboard in general and the maritime state of Odisha and West Bengal in particular.

--- ENDS ---
The US$4.8 billion worth of stakes a Thailand-based company has managed to purchase from Vietnams top brewer Sabeco is the latest example of just how vulnerable Vietnamese businesses are to acquisition by stronger foreign enterprises.

The huge gap on market capitalization between Vietnamese and foreign companies was among the top topics discussed at the Vietnam International Economic Integration Forum 2017 in Hanoi on Wednesday.

The event was held a matter of days after Thai Beverage, through a local unit, won via an auction the rights to buy a nearly-54 percent stake worth $4.84 billion in Sabeco, marking Vietnams biggest ever privatization.

The stake sale was directly won on Monday by Vietnam Beverage Co. Ltd., an indirectly affiliated company of Singapore-listed Thai Beverage.

Vietnam Beverage is owned by Vietnam F&B Alliance Investment Company, which is 49-percent owned by BeerCo Limited  an indirect but wholly-owned unit of Thai Beverage, Reuters reported, citing official documents about the companies.

Experts expressed concern at Wednesdays forum that similar acquisitions may take place in the near future, given the modest scale of Vietnamese companies compared to their regional peers.

Bottles of Sabeco's Saigon beer are seen at a restaurant bar in Hanoi, Vietnam December 18, 2017. Photo: Reuters

Dang Pham Minh Loan, deputy managing director of VinaCapital, a private equity and venture capital firm, cited data from Vietnams top 30 biggest companies and statistics from other Southeast Asian countries as saying that the average market capitalization of Vietnamese companies is only more than $3 billion.

This is far from comparison with the $15 billion figure of Singapore, and $11 billion and $10 billion of Indonesia and Thailand, respectively.

With a leading Vietnamese company having a market capitalization only equal to one fifth of that of a Singaporean firm, it will take the latter only three years to accumulate enough profit to acquire the former, Loan said.

The VinaCapital executive also recounted an investment her company made three years ago to prove that Vietnamese companies are also vulnerable when it comes to free trade and integration.

In 2014, VinaCapital invested in a leading consumer goods company, only to see its stock price losing 50 percent of its value in 2017, as the merchandise it is trading is set to enjoy import duty exemption from 2018, pursuant to a free trade agreement.

To Vietnamese businesses, challenges outplay chances when it comes to integration, Loan commented.

Many [Vietnamese] firms join the integration process with fear, instead of embracing chances.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Ride-hailing service Uber B.V. has promised to pay its overdue tax arrears in Vietnam within this week, but stressed that it would continue to file formal complaints against the tax collection and even take the matter to court if necessary.

The promise was made in a letter Uber sent to the tax department of Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday, the taxman confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper the same day.

In the letter, Uber pledged to arrange its budget for the payment of VND66.68 billion (US$2.95 million) in back taxes to be made within this week.

It is still not clear whether Uber B.V. will pay the amount in full or in part, a tax official said.

On our part, we underline that our collection of Ubers tax arrears is in accordance with current regulations.

Last week, the southern citys taxman gave Uber an ultimatum to pay the amount within ten days after the company had failed to comply with earlier requests.

The Netherlands-based Uber B.V., which oversees the ride-hailing apps operations in Vietnam, was first required to pay the sum in September after the municipal taxman completed an inspection of the companys operations in the southern hub.

However, Uber completely ignored the request and refused to pay any part of the back taxes.

The firm later filed a petition against the tax claim to Vietnams Ministry of Finance, reasoning it had fulfilled its tax duties in the Netherlands in accordance with a treaty against double taxation signed between the European country and Vietnam.

The petition was dismissed, with the finance ministry asking the company to pay the full amount as demanded by the Ho Chi Minh City taxman.

In related news, the European court of justice (ECJ) on Wednesday ruled that Uber is a transport services company, requiring it to accept stricter regulation and licensing within the European Union (EU) as a taxi operator, The Guardian reported.

The decision in Luxembourg, after a challenge brought by taxi drivers in Barcelona, will apply across the whole of the EU, including the UK, and cannot be appealed against.

Uber had long denied that it was a transport company, arguing instead it was a computer services business with operations that should be subject to e-commerce governance.

This argument has baffled Vietnamese authorities as they struggle to seek the best way to administrate the company, while conventional taxi firms argue that Uber and similar services like Grab enjoy too lax regulation compared to a regular transport services company.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
The Gioi Di Dong (Mobile World), one of Vietnams leading mobile retailers, has dipped its toe into the pharmaceuticals retail sector with the acquisition of a local drug store chain.

Rumor that The Gioi Di Dong would start selling medicines surfaced on social media earlier this week, after a Facebook user posted a photo showing an under-construction pharmacy with the companys logo.

The Gioi Di Dong CEO Tran Kinh Doanh confirmed to tech website ICTNews on Monday that the company had acquired the Phuc An Khang pharmacy chain.

The firm is rebuilding the brand under the new name of An Khang, Doanh added.

Phuc Anh Khang was founded in May 2006, and had 14 pharmacies in Ho Chi Minh City when it was acquired.

The move to expand into the drug retail sector came two months after The Gioi Di Dong acquired Tran Anh, a popular electronics chain in northern Vietnam with 39 outlets.

The Gioi Di Dong will maintain the Tran Anh brand for a couple of years before a possible rebranding drive.

The companys shareholders voted in mid-2017 to spend VND2.5 trillion (US$110.13 million) on the two acquisitions.

A The Gioi Di Dong store in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Founded in 2004, The Gioi Di Dong started as a small company with three mobile phone and electronics stores, before inaugurating its first major outlet in 2014, and has since developed into a network of 1,100 locations across Vietnam, according to the companys website.

In 2010, the firm separated its electronics business into a new entity, called dienmay.com, and renamed it Dien May Xanh (Blue Electronics) in May 2015. The chain now has more than 400 outlets countrywide.

A Dien May Xanh outlet in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

In early 2017, The Gioi Di Dong continued to gain a foothold in a brand new sector  groceries  with its Bach Hoa Xanh fresh food chain.

A search on the companys website at the time of writing showed that it had opened 273 Bach Hoa Xanh (Green Department Store) venues in District 12, District 8, Tan Phu District, Binh Tan District, Binh Chanh District, and Go Vap District.

In July, the firm announced plans to operate 350 stores by the end of this year.

A Bach Hoa Xanh outlet in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Despite the European Commission having given Vietnams seafood industry a yellow card in October - a warning to countries involved in illegal fishing - Vietnamese seafood exporters believe they can have the decision revoked, and avoid a more serious red card.

While seafood exporters try to help themselves, the whole industry, from the national seafood association to provincial authorities, are also working to improve the situation.

All of them are working against the clock, as it has been two months into the six-month window Vietnam is given to fix its seafood export issues.

What is a yellow card?

The yellow card is a warning given by the European Commission to any non-cooperating country in its fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing worldwide.

The warning to Vietnam was based on the country not doing enough to fight illegal fishing.

The country currently lacks both an effective sanctioning system to deter IUU fishing activities, and adequate actions to address illegal fishing conducted by Vietnamese vessels in non-Vietnamese waters.

Furthermore, Vietnam has an inadequate system of control over fish that are processed locally before being exported to international markets, including the EU, the commission said.

After the six-month period of the yellow card, if significant progress is made, the yellow card will be lifted, and replaced with a green card, representing legal export status.

If not, a red card will be given, meaning that Vietnam will be banned from exporting its seafood to the European Union.

A Vietnamese fishing boat is seen in the East Vietnam Sea. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Businesses get proactive

The EU currently accounts for 16-17 percent of Vietnams seafood exports, making it a market Vietnam cant afford to lose.

Cao Thi Kim Lan, general manager of Bidifisho, a local seafood firm, has warned that any red card, if enforced, may lead to other large importers, including the U.S. and Japan, turning their back on Vietnamese seafood.

Nguyen Thi Thu Sac, chairman of the seafood committee under the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said the business community is well aware of the challenge they face, and are actively cooperating with authorities to solve the problem together.

One practical solution is to say no to catches from illegal or unlicensed fishing boats, those that use banned equipment or illegal methods for their catches and those that fail to prove the origin of their products, Sac said.

We also need to say no to rare and precious aquatic species, and seafood that is undersize, she added.

Nearly 80 seafood exporters have signed up to join the VASEP campaign, and the association has also set up websites, in both English and Vietnamese, to publicize their efforts in having the yellow card lifted.

Employees are seen at a seafood processing company. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Coimex, a seafood exporter based in the southern coastal city of Vung Tau, sells 40 percent of its domestically sourced products to the EU, earning $10 million in annual revenue.

The companys operations are yet to be impacted by the yellow card, but chairman Le Van Khang is concerned that a red card is inevitable if no improvements are made.

A red card means Vietnamese seafood will be banned from entering the EU, he said. What will be the fate of my hundreds of employees then?

Tran Van Dung, general director of Baseafood, said that in the immediate term, the company would protect itself by putting more focus on the origin of the products it sources.

During the six-month yellow card period, the country will have 100 percent of its shipments to the EU held for inspection before clearing customs.

If we fail to carefully check the origin of our products, we will face export turnarounds by the EU immediately, he said.

The EU makes up 30 percent of the export turnover of Baseafood, earning it some $10 million a year.

A man is pictured on his fishing boat off Da Nang, central Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Authorities must take part

Khang, the chairman of Coimex, said businesses trying to rescue themselves is one thing, but authorities should also do their part.

It is not impossible to stop Vietnamese fishermen from engaging in illegal fishing if local authorities and relevant authorities get more serious in their management.

Citing the European Commissions statement, Khang said Vietnams problems begin with the lack of an effective sanctioning system to deter IUU fishing activities, and the countrys failure to take adequate action in addressing ongoing illegal fishing activities.

The EU warned Vietnam before it actually handed out the yellow card, but we still let it happen, he said.

The problem can only be properly resolved if top officials in each province take responsibility.

Dung, general director of Baseafood, suggested that local authorities and relevant agencies cooperate in expediting certificates of origin on seafood products, which currently takes more than ten days.

Nguyen Hoai Nam, deputy general secretary of VASEP, put the emphasis on building a workable database of seafoods origin, as recommended by the EU.

Vietnam currently has 28 coastal provinces and cities, each of which has their own database of fishing activity.

The business community hopes that these databases are well developed and can be connected to the national database, so it will be easy to check fishing registrations and trace seafood origin, Nam said.

Fishermen are seen aboard a boat off southern Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Fishermen to blame?

While its the fishermen themselves who undertake the illegal activities, some say its not a deliberate act to violate other countries sovereign waters.

In September 2017, Do Thanh Dat, from the south-central province of Binh Dinh, was captaining a boat with 11 fishermen aboard in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spartly) archipelago, when the sea turned rough. The locations deep water prevented Dat from anchoring and strong winds blew them into Brunei waters before they could act.

Brunei forces captured us quickly and penalized us for violating their fishing waters, Dat recalled.

The captain was sentenced to ten months behind bars, while the crew members each served one month and paid cash fines, he added.

Dat said fishermen have been told not to go fishing in the waters of other countries, but this is easier said than done.

When you are in the middle of the sea, you cant tell each countrys waters apart, he said.

Many Vietnamese fishing boats are not equipped with devices to identify the overlapping maritime territories and fishermen end up violate foreign waters unknowingly.

Border guard soliders brief fishermen of regulations on legal fishing in Kien Giang, southern Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Fishermens commitment

Vietnamese fishermen acknowledge that the EUs yellow card is not something that only seafood exporters should lose sleep over.

If the EU stops importing seafood from Vietnam, fishermen will be impacted as they will be left with no choice but to sell their catches to China at a cheaper price, Nguyen Van Manh, a fisherman from Vung Tau with 45 years of experience, said.

Nguyen Van Thu, from the central province of Quang Ngai, has been arrested for illegally fishing in both Australia and Palau.

I have signed a written guarantee not to violate foreign waters, he said.

In fact, Thu said he had built a new boat and will now fish nowhere but in Vietnamese waters.

Nguyen Tan Hai, another Quang Ngai fishing boat captain who has served jail time in New Caledonia, signed a similar guarantee and promised himself and local authorities not to repeat such a mistake.
Our greatest gift at Christmas is peace and this comes through our children; their joy, their laughter, their ability to live in the present and above all, their unlimited love.

This article was inspired by the photo of Declan Donnellan and Ho Nhat Minh checking each other out, that accompanies this story. I commented on it on Facebook and the father, Matty Donnellan, an expat living in Da Nang suggested I write about how kids get along, the differences and similarities and so on.

Young children dont discriminate. It doesnt matter what color you are, how you speak or how much money you have. Play is play, no hidden agendas, no social status scale, just totally open minds. So Ive often thought that the best way we make peace is when we start young with our children mixing with kids from other cultures and ways of life.

Kids live in their own world and literally create their world views from the ground up. Trouble is, with parents who only have a narrow view of the world, kids easily grow up with some pretty ideas that arent necessarily their own! And parents do some weird things.

Noticed around Vietnam how parents love to dress up their kids like super fashion models? Its mildly funny to see so many youngsters wearing snazzy sunglasses on motorbikes, dressed up even if they are only going to the markets. Theres certain showing off your kid aspect to this that Im not sure is so healthy for the kids. Another difference? Walking around the street feeding your kid whereas Westerners teach their kids to stay put really quick!

Did you know babies can recognize the 800 (roughly) different sounds that make most of Earths languages? Thats why they can learn anything. Baby mumbles are their way of practicing how to move the face to make sounds, its experimenting. Thats why a lot of babies also like to hear other babies talk (well, mumble) because they think thats something they can try to do! The kind of language, by the way, doesnt become a feature until they are 15 months old.

Food is fascinating too. I know many Vietnamese who grow up in a home eating fish all time only to totally loathe fish as adults! Some of my other local friends cant stand noodles! Can you remember the foods that you threw at your parents? I think for me, it was anything green. Strangely, spoon feeding the kids denies them the pleasure of working stuff for themselves, so thats a Vietnamese disadvantage in my opinion.

One of the nicest times is when I go to the beach and the Vietnamese mums married to expats bring down their kids to play with the foreign children. No matter the background, kids love to show off, run around and get wrapped in what they are doing. Perhaps in this situation, foreigners are a little bit more reasonable, allowing the kids to do their own thing, while Ive observed the locals restrict their young rather more tightly.

Interestingly too, foreigners dont worry about their kids so much being in the sun and getting a nice brown tan. Its kinda surreal to see locals wrapped up for the North Pole at the beach in the summer, although these habits are dying as more locals flock to the beaches to escape the urban stress and heat.

Yet what is true of both cultures is the universal wish of parents for their kids to grow up strong, healthy and happy. The common effort of both cultures to make the best for their offspring and ensure they will survive and prosper long after their parents are dead is deeply embedded in all our cultures that we rarely have to explain this to others. So what we feel towards our kids at Christmas and Tet (or Lunar New Year) are much the same in our hopes and dreams for them.

As we gaze in wonder at our children and fantasize about the future they will have, we also have to be thankful that for all the awful things in the world, there is still the marvel of new life finding its own way and becoming more amazing with each day. And each day, some parts of the Western and Eastern cultures mix together among our young.

Perhaps that is the best Christmas present.

Merry Christmas everyone!
By PTI: Ahmedabad, Dec 21 (PTI) Newly-elected NCP MLA in Gujarat, Kandhal Jadeja, was today arrested for alleged rioting and thrashing a police official in Porbandar district.

The MLA, son of godmother late Santokben Jadeja, was arrested along with seven others for rioting, thrashing an official and damaging property at Ranavav police station in Porbandar during a poll-related scuffle yesterday, Superintendent of Police Shobha Bhutada said.

advertisement

Kandhal Jadeja, his two brothers Karan Jadeja and Kana Jadeja, and around a dozen others allegedly barged into the Ranavav police station yesterday around 5 am and thrashed his political rival Samat Gogan, who had taken shelter there fearing attack by him and others.

"The accused beat up Gogan and the police station officer present there. They then created ruckus and damaged a telephone kept in the police station," Ranavavs police inspector N D Parmar said.

Jadeja was angry at Gogan over some issues related to the recent Assembly elections and was searching for him when the latter took refuge in the police station, Parmar said.

Gogan had tried to contest as an independent candidate allegedly against the wishes of Jadeja but had later withdrawn his nomination form. However, the matter apparently did not end there leading to the attack, he said.

Jadeja and others were booked under IPC sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 504 (intentional insult), 427 (mischief causing damage), 332 (causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 186 (obstructing public servant), the police official said.

Jadeja, the only NCP member to have won the recent Assembly polls, was elected for the second time from Kutiyana constituency. He defeated BJPs Lakhmanbhai Odedara by over 23,000 votes. PTI KA PD GK DV

--- ENDS ---
The cold weather in Ho Chi Minh City in recent days has added more Christmas atmosphere to the tropical city as the holiday is around the corner.

People dart every night in droves to downtown areas where shopping malls and churches are decorated beautifully for Christmas.

They walk, take photos and enjoy the atmosphere with their families and friends.

Below are a series of photos capturing how people in the vibrant city enjoy Christmas in unusually cold weather:

A man carries a baby while walking on a sidewalk decorated with sparkling lights in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A kid smiles while hanging out with his parents for Christmas celebration. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A young pair pose for a picture together in front of a shopping mall. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A cold spell has made Christmas headband and hats easier to sell in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A young man wears a Santa Claus costume to sell Christmas stuff like reindeer headbands and Noel hats. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A reindeer headband costs VND40,000 (US$1.7) and a Noel hat fetches VND50,000 ($2.2). Photo: Tuoi Tre

Christmas decorations are sold at a mall. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Giant Christmas trees are seen at a shopping mall in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A young lady wears a reindeer headband outside a shopping mall in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A group of young ladies pose in front of a vividly decorated shopping mall. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A group of young ladies pose in front of a vividly decorated shopping mall. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The renowned pink-colored Tan Dinh Church in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City has been one of the most-visited places. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A Christmas-themed music show at Tan Dinh Church on December 12, 2017. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Children prepare for performing at Tan Dinh Church. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Vietnams Ministry of Police has concluded its investigation and suggested the prosecution of Dinh La Thang, former Politburo member and ex-chairman of state-run oil and gas group PetroVietnam (PVN), along with his accomplices over their wrongdoings leading to a loss of over US$35 million incurred by a state-owned enterprise.

The investigation result has been finalized and submitted to the Supreme Peoples Procuracy for the next step of the legal proceedings.

Investigators requested that Thang and six other accessories be prosecuted for deliberately violating state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences, and abusing positions and powers to arrogate property at PVN.

Thang was a member of the Politburo, the all-powerful body of the Communist Party of Vietnam, from January 27, 2016 to May 7, 2017.

He was secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee from February 5, 2016 to May 10, 2017.

The other suspects include Nguyen Xuan Son, OceanBanks former deputy general director, Nguyen Xuan Thang, Nguyen Thanh Liem, Vu Khanh Truong, Phan Dinh Duc, ex-board members of PVN, and Ninh Van Quynh, PVNs deputy general director.

OceanBank was a private lender acquired at zero dong by the State Bank of Vietnam, which is the countrys central bank, in 2015 over its poor financial results.

According to the investigation result, the central government in 2006 allowed PVN to establish a bank, of which the oil and gas group would own 50 percent.

However, in 2008, instead of opening the lender, PVN decided to buy shares of OceanBank.

Thang, who was chairman of PVNs board of directors for the 2008-11 tenure, did not discuss with the board when he signed a contract with Ha Van Tham, former chairman of OceanBank.

Thang did not submit a report to the central government regarding the deal as promulgated by the law.

He continued issuing a resolution on capital contribution and appointed a PVN official to be the representative of the groups investment in OceanBank, which accounted for 20 percent of the lenders charter capital.

Despite being warned by other board members and his secretary that such actions were against regulations, Thang did not change his decision.

That resulted in the loss of VND800 billion (US$35.2 million) worth of PVNs investment in OceanBank.

Thang was insincere and dodgy when working with competent authorities, posing difficulty for the investigation, investigators said.

The Ministry of Finance previously sent documents to the Government Office and PVN, advising that careful review should be done of OceanBanks activities to ensure an effective investment.

Thang and other individuals at PVN neglected the suggestion of the finance ministry, resulting in the financial loss.

Police first arrested and began legal procedures against Thang on December 8.

In May, Thang was warned and then dismissed from the Politburo based on his financial misconduct.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
A Vietnamese man has devotedly come to companionless senior citizens' rescue over the past several years, despite his average income.

Ngo Duc Thang, born in Kien Giang Province, boasts no wealth but has become a familiar benefactor to whom many people of advanced years are beholden for his public-spirited deeds in Can Tho City.

He was determined to embark on tiding over incapacitated or lonely elders living below the poverty line after working multiple times with poverty-afflicted people in 2012, as an employee of a pharmaceutical company.

Having received information concerning isolated people in their old age, he extends his assistance to them in various ways.

A case in point is the provision of a Common House, as called by its occupants, in which five seniors live after staying alone for quite a time, beset by the plight of poverty.

This collective label was originally applied to a decent place Thang temporarily rented for Ho Thi Ba, 82, who had led a solitary existence in her ramshackle wooden shelter with no electricity and running water, before enjoying company with the other four fellows arriving later.

Subsequently, after Do Thi Giau, the owner of a construction material dealer in the city, bought housing land as a present for the aged women, Thang took them to the new building erected on it, which now welcomes more members.

Always regarding us as his relatives, Thang is very considerate toward us, said Ha Thi Si, a half-year occupant here.

He has also solicited more financial help to provide adequate housing for those in similar situations who cannot live in the Common House, with the result that 15 houses have hitherto been constructed for them.

The all-female elderly group in the Common House in Can Tho City, southern Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

In another way, Thang creates a 'salary' fund from part of his modest earnings and his friends' donations, destined to benefit seniors in dire need.

Two years ago, this idea produced VND80 million (US$3,515), which covered the treatment fees of Nam, 80, who was suffering from an opening in his chest.

During the past two years, Thang has doled out a constant sum of VND300,000 ($13) from the fund to around 20 elderly lottery ticket vendors each in the city on a monthly basis.

He even uses his own money on rainy days to buy their remaining tickets, many of which are then purchased by his friends.

It's painful to see the elders struggle with difficulty and in isolation, Thang said.

A Facebook fan page named Nha Chung (Common House) has been created by him, with a view to encouraging the community to join hands in promoting the cause, according to Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

It would be, well, quite inappropriate to call what I've done acts of charity, because I have an empty pocket. Actually I'm just soliciting money from others, and distribute it to those in penury, Thang said with modesty.

I was dispiritingly greeted with defamation on a large number of occasions, and intended to abandon the seniors, but I didn't. If I had done it, who would look after them?

His motivation may have stemmed from formative years of childhood in a disadvantaged family, with his father making a livelihood by catching fish on rivers, and his mother selling in the market from dawn till dusk, both managing to barely afford an education for Thang and his two siblings.

However, their meager earnings were insufficient to deal with all household expenses, which meant the children had to rely on many people for help, while the family lived as temporary tenants without rental on another person's premises.

Not long ago, as a student I had to beg for clothes for myself to save money, he said smilingly.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Film Victoria has confirmed funding for TV projects including for Neighbours and True Story with Hamish & Andy.

There were also film, documentary and gaming projects funded.

Outgoing Film Victoria CEO, Jenni Tosi said Were delighted to be supporting so many fantastic projects and with further announcements to come, the Victorian Industry will be buzzing in the first half of 2018.

The diversity and caliber of work coming through is a testament to our creative talent and resourceful producers who are successfully financing their projects in a highly competitive marketplace.

Heres an excerpt on the TV projects:

Through the Victorian Content Initiative partnership with the ABC, Back In Very Small Business from Gristmills Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, the fourth and final series of Nowhere Boys by Matchbox Productions and a returning series to be announced in early 2018 have been supported.

Australias longest running television drama series Neighbours also received funding that will ensure the popular soap continues to film 258 episodes a year. This support will also deliver upskilling opportunities for early career writers, directors and technical crew over the next four years.

Film Victorias Production Attraction Incentive Fund supported comedy duo Hamish and Andy with their second series of True Story.
A divorced couple has lost a defamation case brought against the Nine Network.

The case, surrounding a 2014 60 Minutes story Forced Marriage was heard in the NSW Supreme Court and saw reporter Liz Hayes attend court proceedings.

In her 2014 story she heard Nadia Tabbaa was kidnapped when she was 13 and holidaying in Egypt. Nadia said she was taken to relatives in Jordan, beaten by her father, forced to undergo a medical examination to check her virginity and then made to marry a cousin in his 30s. She told 60 Minutes she did not escape until 5 years later on her 18th birthday.

Her parents, Mouhammad Tabbaa and his former wife Pamela Tabbaa, said the claims in the report were not true. Together with Pamelas brother Omar, took the matter to court.

Yesterday a jury deliberated for just over one day, finding in Nines favour.

The parents have been ordered to pay the legal costs of Nine and a hearing will be held if the broadcaster seeks a special order as to the scale of costs applicable.

In relation to a Nine news program, the jury did not accept as true a contention that Mr Tabbaa had sold off Nadia to her cousins family in Syria.

The issue of damages related to the claim will be heard at a later date, but Nines barrister indicated it would argue the amount should be zero because it caused no further harm to the fathers reputation.

Source: News Corp, Yahoo
JKX Oil & Gas updated the market on the police investigation into its Ukrainian subsidiary Poltava on Monday, confirming that the investigation remained ongoing.

The London-listed firm said Poltava Petroleum Company was still receiving information requests from local police in connection with the criminal inquiry of alleged misappropriation of funds liked to Poltavas activities.

It added that the information requests followed police searches of Poltavas offices and the homes of two of its executives on 14 June.

PPC continues to cooperate with the investigation although the scope of the investigation appears to have broadened from the original search warrant, the board said in a statement.

JKX has now referred the matter to the British and US Embassies in Kyiv and has asked for their assistance in engaging with the relevant authorities to resolve the situation.
Agency workers are collectively underpaid by 400m a year compared to their full-time counterparts, with the pay gap costing temporary admin staff 990 a year on average, according to new research. The Resolution Foundation said the loss of pay across all sectors took the average loss for each of the UKs 800,000 agency workers to 500 a year, up from 430 last year.  Guardian

The number of cars built in the UK fell in November compared to a year ago amid a continuing reduction in production for the home market, new figures show. Just under 161,500 cars left UK factories, down by 4.6% on the same month in 2016 after a huge 28% drop in domestic demand, the biggest decline of the year. Exports rose by 1.3%, reported the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which revealed that almost 80% of the 1.5m cars built this year have gone to one of 160 global markets.  Guardian

Two energy supply minnows have failed to meet a key payment deadline for the Governments warm home discount scheme, fuelling growing fears of a financial crunch for small suppliers due to rising costs in the crowded market. Flow Energy and Spark Energy were both expected to pay into an Ofgem-run funding pot, which is backed by a 15-strong group of energy suppliers. The scheme aims to cut up to 140 from energy bills for the most vulnerable customers over the winter, when bills are at their highest. - Telegraph

Bitcoin will come under the scrutiny of regulators worldwide, the governor of the Bank of England has said, hours after Americas largest digital currency exchange said it would be investigating potential insider trading. Mark Carney said that the scale of growth of bitcoin over the past year would prompt global rule-makers to examine digital currencies, amid concerns about a speculative bubble.  The Times

Britain may be running out of workers, according to some of the UKs biggest business groups, with recruiters reporting that they face growing difficulties with hiring. There has been a steady drop in the UKs unemployment rate to a 42-year low of 4.3 per cent, squeezing the number of available candidates at a time when EU migrant workers are choosing to leave Britain.  The Times
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 20 (PTI) The Delhi High Court today ruled that there was no illegality in the decision of airport operator DIAL to partially shift the operations of private carriers Indigo, GoAir and Spicejet from Terminal-1 (T-1) to Terminal-2 (T-2) at the IGI Airport here.

Justice A K Chawla dismissed the petition of the airlines, saying the facts by no means indicated that DIAL acted unfairly or unreasonably.

advertisement

"The impugned decision of DIAL cannot be said to be unilateral for the simple reason that it took this decision, on account of any of the airlines, including IndiGo, failing to respond to its repeated requests and the proposals, inasmuch as, the operations of the airport is the prime responsibility of DIAL, which, it seeks to discharge," the court said.

However, it also extended till February 15 the deadline provided to IndiGo and Spicejet to shift their part operations. The deadline was going to expire on January 4, 2018.

The court further said if IndiGo and Spicejet make a request for shifting of operations of their flights other than the sectors Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, at par with the traffic of such sectors within seven days from today, it shall be open for DIAL to consider it and dispose of within a week.

The high court had on December 4 reserved its verdict on low-cost carrier IndiGos plea against the decision of the Delhi International Airport Ltd. (DIAL) to partially shift its operations along with that of two other airlines, SpiceJet and GoAir, from Terminal-1 to Terminal-2.

In its plea, the airline challenged DIALs communication of October 21, asking the three carriers to shift their flights to and from Delhi to Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, to T-2 from January 4, 2018.

All other flights of the airlines shall continue to operate from T-1, the airport operator had said.

The court noted that DIAL, in January this year, had given an opportunity to all the three airlines operating from Terminal-1 to reach a consensus for operations of their flights or even propose the flights that may be relocated from Terminal-1 to Terminal-2, as a temporary measure.

It said that the airlines failed either way, while, DIAL continued to pursue, so that the process of renovations and expansion of Terminal-1 could be undertaken, at the earliest.

The court said it was a matter of record that in the absence of any progress, the Ministry of Civil Aviation took serious note of the situation and by June 14 order, it expressed its anguish for the severe capacity constraints at Terminal-1 on account of the increased demand of the three low cost carriers.

advertisement

It said that none of the issues sought to be agitated by IndiGo can be said to be in the larger public interest.

IndiGo had challenged DIALs decision on the ground that partial shifting of its operations would inconvenience passengers, especially those on hopping flights emanating or ending at those sectors, as T-1 and T-2 are not connected.

Defending its decision, the DIAL said that T-1 had already exceeded its capacity and if airline operations were not shifted partially, it would lead to overcrowding of the airport.

It also contended that in case of a fire or a terror threat, an overcrowded airport would have serious consequences for which the DIAL alone would be answerable.

IndiGo was opposed to the shifting of its operations, saying if the decision of the DIAL was allowed, the airline would be spread across T-1, T-2 and T-3.

The central government had supported DIALs move and contended that IndiGos plea was not maintainable. PTI SKV HMP RKS SMN

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Three charged in connection to missing Aberdeen man

As the Aberdeen Police Department continues to investigate the disappearance of Simon Deng in Aberdeen, three people now face charges.
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 21 (PTI) Share of households in bank deposits has increased by nearly two percentage points to 63.5 in FY17 thanks to the note-ban-driven spurt in saving deposits by individuals, show data released by the Reserve Bank today.

It can be noted that demonetisation, which involved pulling out of high denomination notes during the last November-December period, led to a massive spurt in cash deposits forcing RBI to ask banks to park the excess funds with it and draw interest on them.

advertisement

The overall deposits by households increased by 14.14 per cent to Rs 69,13,900 crore as against an 11.20 per cent rise in total deposits with banks to Rs 1,09,43,700 crore, the Reserve Bank said.

In the annual data on the composition and ownership of deposits, the central bank said the share of household deposits rose to 63.2 per cent in FY17 from 61.5 per cent in the previous fiscal led by savings bank deposits, the central bank said.

"Unlike in the past, more than two-thirds of individuals incremental deposits were in the form of savings deposits," it said, adding savings account deposits by individuals grew by nearly 30 per cent to Rs 26,78,200 crore.

Households share in total deposits grew across all types of deposits and in all population groups/ domestic banks groups, whereas in foreign banks, the private corporate sector held the major portion of deposits.

The central bank said households and government sectors contributed the entire incremental deposits, whereas deposits of financial and foreign sectors shrank during the last fiscal.

Among the states, Maharashtra remained at the top when in terms of share of deposits with 20.4 per cent, followed by the Delhi NCR at 10 per cent.

But gauging by incremental deposits by households, it was UP that led the way with a 12.7 per cent share followed by Maharashtra (9.5), Bengal (8) and Gujarat (7.1). PTI AA BEN BEN SNK

--- ENDS ---
PHOENIX  The City Council has unanimously approved a proposal to name a terminal at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Council members voted Wednesday after the proposal was unanimously backed by the citys citizen-led Heritage Commission, which reviews proposals to name city facilities.

McCain said in a statement that he was deeply humbled by the honor.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton proposed last month that Sky Harbors Terminal 3 should become the John S. McCain III Terminal to honor the 30-year member of the U.S. Senate.

Terminal 4 is named after another long-serving Republican senator from Arizona who also ran for president  Barry Goldwater, who died in 1998.

The 81-year-old McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer earlier this year.
The New Mexico Game Commission approved the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's final Mexican wolf recovery plan during a meeting Wednesday morning in Albuquerque, a move that some hope signals the start of a better relationship between the two groups.

These are encouraging developments because it shows the state is finally supporting the recovery of Mexican gray wolves, said Bryan Bird, director of the Southwest Program for Defenders of Wildlife.

Last year, the state's Department of Game and Fish, which is overseen by the commission, sued Fish and Wildlife to block the planned release of wolves in the state.

That litigation is pending.

Defenders of Wildlife and others had previously sued Fish and Wildlife to create a new recovery plan, because it had not been updated since 1982.

The final plan was issued at the end of November.

The commission voted in August to support a draft of the plan.

The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is satisfied with the Mexican wolf recovery plan which includes measurable recovery criteria, biological and legal considerations, the Department of Game and Fish said in a statement. Key to our support is that consideration of the historical range of the Mexican wolf are taken into account, recognizing that approximately 90 percent of the subspecies' historical habitat exists in Mexico.

On Wednesday, the commission also approved Fish and Wildlife permits to allow the cross-fostering of up to 12 pups in New Mexico in 2018 and for some pups to be moved into captivity in New Mexico from Arizona.

Cross-fostering involves placing very young pups born in captivity into wild litters.

Sherry Barrett, Mexican wolf recovery coordinator with Fish and Wildlife, said litters shouldn't be made up of more than eight pups.

So in the event the pups being introduced to a litter bring that number above eight, pups already in the den would need to be removed and taken to New Mexico, she said.

The commission also approved Fish and Wildlife's request to move a female wolf currently in Arizona to New Mexico to be artificially inseminated.

The female is paired with her biological brother, and Fish and Wildlife are hoping to prevent the two from breeding.

The wolf's lack of genetic diversity is one of the largest challenges in the subspecies' recovery.

This definitely will assist us in moving cooperatively forward with the state of New Mexico, Barrett said.
WASHINGTON  The fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants living here illegally and facing deportation will be decided next year, a Republican senator says.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said Wednesday he received assurances from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the Senate will vote in January on bipartisan legislation. The promise came in talks with the GOP leader on Flakes backing for the tax bill.

While I would have written a much different bill, this bill lowers the corporate tax rate in a manner that makes us globally competitive, Flake said in a statement. He said McConnell has made a commitment for a vote on the measure now being negotiated.

The White House and lawmakers are working out details of the bill, but Flake said in an interview with The Associated Press that the legislation will broadly address border security, asylum policy and a fix for certain young immigrants.

At issue is President Donald Trumps decision to rescind an Obama-era executive order that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gave protected status to about 800,000 of those immigrants who are in the United States illegally. Popularly known as Dreamers, many were brought here as infants or children and have known no other country except the U.S.

In scrapping the order, Trump gave Congress until March to come up with a legislative solution.

Flake said he and other lawmakers have worked with White House chief of staff John Kelly and other administration officials. Kelly outlined a list of White House priorities at a meeting on Tuesday and pledged to present a detailed list by Friday of border security and other policy changes it wants as part of a broader deal on the immigrants, Flake said.

The White House is committed to moving forward in good faith, he said, calling the administrations plans eminently reasonable and well thought-out.

Flake, a frequent Trump critic, said he has been impressed by Trumps commitment to protect the young immigrants.

The presidents instincts are better than the advice he sometimes gets, Flake said. He says he wants to protect these kids. I believe him.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who wanted to find a remedy this year, said in a statement that he was thankful for Flakes efforts to keep the measure alive. But Durbin did not immediately agree to a January timetable.

Bipartisan negotiations continue and were fighting to pass this measure soon, said Durbin, D-Ill.

While Flake is confident the Senate will vote, it remains unclear whether the House will back such legislation. In 2013, the Senate supported a bipartisan bill overhauling the immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for some 11 million living here illegally. The measure died in the Republican-led House.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has said that deporting the young immigrants is not in our nations interest. Ryan has said any immigration solution must include border security measures, though he said a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, which Trump has urged, doesnt make sense.

Flake also downplayed the idea of a wall encompassing the 2,000-mile (3,219-kilometer) border, saying, The wall is kind of a metaphor for border security.

In reality, the border measure will include fencing and other barriers, including sensors and other high-tech security techniques, he said.

Under the DACA program, the young immigrants get two-year permits that let them work and remain in the country. Trump rescinded the program this year, but he let immigrants renew their documents if those documents were set to expire between September and March.

The government says 132,000 of the 154,000 eligible renewals applied before an October deadline, leaving more than 20,000 without any protection from deportation.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said he was disappointed that Flake would settle for action on immigration in January.

Maybe thats the way he scrubs his conscience to allow him to leave for the holidays, said Gutierrez, who has pushed for immediate action on Dreamers.

While Flake has been a consistent supporter of immigration reform, its not good enough, Gutierrez said.

Sen. Flake was pretty good about giving a trillion-and-a-half dollars away to the wealthiest in the nation by supporting the GOP tax bill, Gutierrez said. Maybe he could give a little bit to those who want to be part of the nation.
The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission voted 4-1 Wednesday to allow Public Service Co. of New Mexico to raise its rates by 9 percent, to be phased in over the next two years.

But in a controversial move, commissioners also ruled that PNM investments made in recent years in the coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant near Farmington were imprudent, thus rejecting the utilitys request to recover $148 million it has spent on new pollution controls and other upgrades there since 2013.

PNM sought $62.3 million in new annual revenue in the case, which it filed last December.

Originally, it had requested $99.2 million in new revenue. But in May, it reached a stipulation, or settlement agreement, with about a dozen other parties in the case to lower that by nearly $37 million.

PNM and the other settlement parties now have five days to accept or reject the commissions ruling. If they accept, average residential customers would pay about 8.3 percent more on their total bill by 2019, with monthly charges climbing 3.9 percent in 2018, and an additional 3.4 percent the following year.

The overall impact on bills is smaller than the 9 percent hike in base rates approved by the commission because it only applies to a portion of the bill.

If the parties reject the PRC ruling, it would send the entire case back to a new round of hearings on the original $99.2 million PNM had requested last December before it negotiated a settlement with other parties.

The utility may well balk at the commissioners decision, given that it denies any recovery for new investments at the Four Corners Power Plant. PNM spokesman Pahl Shipley said the company must carefully review the PRC order before determining its next steps.

We are very disappointed, Shipley said in an email to the Journal. The parties to the settlement agreement have worked together to strike a fair and balanced outcome, with only one party opposing the settlement. Making significant changes to a settlement that has overwhelming support adds to the uncertain regulatory environment in New Mexico.

The one group that opposed the agreement, Santa Fe-based New Energy Economy, praised the PRC decision to deny PNM recovery for investments in Four Corners. That organization opposed the $148 million in recovery that PNM sought because the utility allegedly failed to conduct a thorough financial analysis to justify its investments.

The two regulatory examiners in the case, Ashley Schannauer and Anthony Medeiros, agreed with NEEs arguments following two weeks of hearings last August. To compensate for PNMs imprudent investments, they recommended the commission deny PNM any right to earn a profit on those expenditures.

In the PRC ruling Wednesday, however, commissioners went well beyond those recommendations. They rejected any right for PNM to recover its expenditures in the plant, rather than just deny profits on its investments.

NEE Executive Director Mariel Nanasi called it a great day for New Mexicans.

The PRC has declared that PNMs reckless decision to invest in the costly and polluting Four Corners coal plant was imprudent and therefore rejected all capital costs associated with that investment, Nanasi said. The PRC agreed with New Energy Economy that ratepayers must be held harmless from any amount irresponsibly invested.

Even if PNM rejects the commissions decision, the finding of imprudence in Four Corners expenditures will stand, meaning PNM will have to now justify any other future expenditures in the plant through 2031, which is when the current co-ownership and coal contracts for the plant expire.

Other parties in the settlement agreement could also reject the commissioners ruling, particularly large electric consumers like the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and members of the New Mexico Industrial Energy Consumers. Thats because PNM had agreed to give them a discount on the rate hike in exchange for signing the stipulation, which commissioners said was unfair to other customers.

PNMs motivation with those concessions was to buy off the big consumers like NMIEC, the City of Albuquerque and the Water Authority, making up for the discounts on the backs of residential and small business class customers, said Commissioner Valerie Espinoza during Wednesdays hearing. In effect, those customers would be paying for a subsidy that benefits the large consumers.

Lynda Lovejoy was the only commissioner to vote against the PRC order.
A Raja, M Kanimozhi and all others were acquitted in the 2G scam trial, which went on for six-years.

By India Today Web Desk: CBI Special Judge OP Saini, today, pronounced the verdict in the 2G scam case. Ex-Telecom minister A Raja was accused in the 2G scam case, which is called India's biggest scam.

A Raja, M Kanimozhi and all others were acquitted in the 2G scam trial, which went on for six-years.

Here's all you need to know about OP Saini, the judge who pronounced the verdict:

The 62-year-old judge started his career as a sub-inspector in Delhi Police. He appeared in the judicial magistrate exam 6 years after joining the service and was selected. Saini was handpicked to handle the 2G spectrum case after a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly asked the government to set up a special court to deal with the case. Before, Saini was designated to handle the 2G case, he had also heard cases related to Commonwealth Games. Saini was responsible for putting behind bars, Suresh Kalmadi's aides Lalit Bhanot, V.K. Verma, K.U.K. Reddy, Praveen Bakshi and Deorukhar Shekhar. OP Saini is known to be a tough judge. He denied bail to M Kanimozhi and seven other accused in the 2G case giving the reason that Kanimozhi is a famous politician and he doesn't want witnesses to get intimidated. Saini also heard the corruption case against National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO) and denied bail to AK Srivastava, the NALCO Chairman. Saini also pronounced the verdict in the Red Fort shootout case where he awarded death sentence to the main accused and awarded life imprisonment to the other six. Saini got the case after the judge (M.S. Sabharwal) hearing it retired in 2002. At least two judges refused to take on the case since it was complicated, with five related cases and 300 witnesses, and needed to start afresh.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A state agency that oversees various programs for elderly New Mexico residents announced Wednesday it will sever its contract with one of four regional management entities due to concern over possible financial irregularities.

In addition, the Aging and Long-Term Services Department asked state Auditor Wayne Johnson to investigate suspected misuse, waste and abuse of public funds on the part of the North Central New Mexico Economic Development District, a multicounty nonprofit agency that runs the Non-Metro Agency on Aging.

The chain of events could rattle a state system that helps provide home-delivered meals, transportation and job-finding assistance for thousands of New Mexico seniors, though state officials said they would seek to minimize any disturbances.

For us, the No. 1 goal will be uninterrupted distribution of services to seniors, acting Aging and Long-Term Services Secretary KyKy Knowles told the Journal.

In her letter to the state Auditors Office, Knowles alleged several potentially serious financial problems:

 A program audit in September discovered an overbilling of $336,834 in administrative funding, a mix of federal and state dollars, on the part of the Non-Metro Agency on Aging.

 The regional entity also overcharged the state $113,879 by submitting inflated reimbursement requests for a federal program that assists grandparents raising their grandchildren.

She said her agency had asked those in charge of the Non-Metro Agency on Aging to explain the discrepancies but got no documents in response and, in one case, no answer at all.

The discrepancies prompted the state agency to sever its contract with the regional entity, effective Feb. 1, 2018, it announced Wednesday. The state will then take over the regional entitys day-to-day duties for six months, until a new plan can be put in place.

The Aging and Long-Term Services Department has an annual contract of roughly $20 million with the Non-Metro Area Agency on Aging, which operates throughout much of the state but not in Bernalillo County.

In all, the Non-Metro Area Agency on Aging served 72,875 older adults and caregivers through contracts with 150 senior centers and meal sites in the 2017 budget year, according to the state. The regional entity is run by the North Central New Mexico Economic Development District, whose board of directors includes legislators, business owners and other elected officials in eight northern New Mexico counties.

The districts executive director, Tim Armer, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, president of the districts board of directors, said there may have been a misunderstanding over the contracts scope.

Were not making any money  its costing us money, Trujillo said of the contract. Its going to be very difficult for anyone else to come in and take over.
Rio Rancho city government has doubled down on a bad bet against public transparency and accountability  wasting additional taxpayer dollars in the process.

Back in January, Rio Rancho resident Dianne Goodman filed a formal Inspection of Public Records Act request seeking all 911 calls and call-for-service reports for a specific address in Rio Rancho since 2012. But a city official told Goodman the audio recordings of 911 calls were unavailable until they were copied and put into a different format  and that a fee of $30 per call was required in advance.

Assistant state Attorney General Lori Chavez informed City Clerk Stephen Ruger that inspection of public records should cost the requester nothing, the $30-per-recording fee was excessive and the city cannot charge for identifying and isolating records. Chavez recommended city officials re-evaluate the fee structure to ensure IPRA compliance.

Instead, City Attorney Gregory Lauer went looking for a loophole and came up with a special provision in a separate statute, the Public Records Act, that the city claims allows municipalities to charge a requester for staff time and related expenses. In the meantime, the city provided Goodman with the records and offered to refund her money.

Lauer and Ruger would do well to review section 14-2-5 of the Inspection of Public Records Act, which states in part: Recognizing that a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate, the intention of the Legislature in enacting the Inspection of Public Records Act is to ensure  all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of public officers and employees.  to provide persons with such information is an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of public officers and employers. (Emphasis added.)

In laymans terms, as the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government has long argued, providing public records is part of public employees jobs, and so IPRA does not permit charges for the labor in producing a record.

Unfortunately, some continue to see it as a revenue stream or, more likely, a way to deny the public its public records. And Goodmans case is not unusual. Rio Rancho resident Charles Arasim filed an IPRA request earlier this year for 911 calls and computer-aided dispatch reports for a Nov. 3 incident at the Bank of America call center, according to court documents. (A suicide had occurred there that day.)

The city clerk responded with the often cited  and regularly misinterpreted  ongoing law enforcement investigation canard and refused to provide the records. Arasim filed a petition with the court and, after a district judge ordered the city to produce the records or explain why it wouldnt, the city said Arasim could have the records. The city now wants that suit dropped, and a hearing on the matter is set for today. This isnt Arasims first rodeo: He won a $20,500 judgment against the city of Albuquerque earlier this year in connection with an IPRA for police records.

Although the state attorney general and a judge have essentially told Rio Rancho to put up or shut up, Ruger and Lauer persist in a quest at taxpayer expense to avoid providing public records as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Back in July, City Councilor Cheryl Everett responded to numerous public comments about non-compliance with IPRA and the Open Meetings Act with I believe a lot of what weve heard tonight simply doesnt ring true  this is not the city I know, is not the city government Ive been a part of, is not the staff that serves the citizens of Rio Rancho. Does she still think that in light of the records denials, fee gouging and AG and court rebukes?

Someone  Everett, other councilors or Mayor Gregg Hull, who is running for re-election  should finally recognize the problem and ensure City of Vision employees read IPRA, then comply with records requests and protect residents right to know as well as the citys checkbook.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
SANTA FE  Although the U.S. Department of Energy decided three years ago to have separate contracts for operations and environmental cleanup work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first long-term cleanup contract has been awarded to a group including a company that has helped run the lab since 2006.

The $1.4 billion contract went to a consortium involving BWXT, which also is part of lab operator Los Alamos National Security LLC.

According to a news release issued Wednesday by DOEs Office of Environmental Management, the cleanup contract with Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos LLC is for five years, with an additional five years in two optional extensions. BWXTs partner in the group is SN3, part of Huntington Ingalls Industries.

The contract is to remove nuclear waste, demolish and clean up some facilities and protect and monitor the regional aquifer, where a chromium plume was discovered a decade ago and, according to recent readings from wells, may be spreading.

The contract amount comes to cleanup on the cheap, said Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a frequent lab critic. A federal estimate shows that $3.8 billion in cleanup work remains at the lab, even while leaving much of the waste buried, Coghlan said.

In 2014, DOE decided to separate remediation of radioactive and other hazardous materials generated by decades of nuclear weapons work from the overall Los Alamos lab operating contract, held since 2006 by LANS, which also includes the University of California and Bechtel.

The move was part of a shake-up after a drum of radioactive waste packed improperly with a combustible mix at Los Alamos breached in February 2014 at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant at Carlsbad, resulting in a shutdown of the nuclear waste storage facility.

But LANS subsequently was granted a temporary bridge contract to continue doing the cleanup work for an interim period while a long-term cleanup contract was put out for bids. Three proposals were received, Wednesdays news release said.

LANS failed to get extensions of the $2.2 billion annual operating contract beyond next September due to inadequate performance reviews. Competition for a new operating contract is underway.
SEOUL, South Korea  The former Korean Air executive whose onboard nut rage tantrum delayed a flight in 2014 will avoid jail as South Koreas top court upheld her suspended prison term on Thursday.

Cho Hyun-ah, who is the daughter of the companys chairman and was the head of the airlines cabin service at the time of the incident, achieved worldwide notoriety after she had an onboard tantrum after a first class flight attendant served her nuts in a bag instead of on a dish. Infuriated, Cho ordered the chief flight attendant off the flight forcing the plane to the gate at New Yorks John F. Kennedy Airport.

Cho was previously sentenced to one year in prison. She was released later after a high court shortened the prison term to 10 months and suspended that sentence for two years, confirming some charges but acquitting her of a contested charge of violating the aviation security law.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Chos suspended jail term, saying a majority of judges ruled that diverting a plane that was taxiing didnt constitute forcing a change in the planes route, a crime that can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

According to a Supreme Court statement, Cho yelled several times to crew members, ordering them to tell the planes captain to stop the flight immediately because she didnt want to let in a flight attendant who didnt know about proper service procedures. After being informed of Chos request and overwhelmed, the captain was forced to return the flight to the gate, it said.

Court officials said Thursdays verdict is final and cannot be appealed.

During her trial, Cho admitted using violence against one flight attendant by pushing her shoulder and throwing an object at her. A statement from one crew member described Cho as behaving like an angry tiger.

The incident was a lightning rod for anger in a country whose economy is dominated by family-run conglomerates known as chaebol. The first and second generations of these families were credited with helping to transform South Korea into a developed nation. But the third generation is often regarded as pampered and entitled, and the public is less tolerant of their excesses.
UNITED NATIONS  The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to denounce President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, largely ignoring Trumps threats to cut off aid to any country that went against him.

The nonbinding resolution declaring U.S. action on Jerusalem null and void was approved 128-9  a victory for the Palestinians, but not as big as they predicted. Amid Washingtons threats, 35 of the 193 U.N. member nations abstained and 21 were absent.

The resolution reaffirmed what has been the United Nations stand on the divided holy city since 1967: that Jerusalems final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Trump administration made it clear the vote would have no effect on its plan to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterward that he completely rejects the preposterous resolution.

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour called the vote a victory not only for the Palestinians but for the United Nations and international law, saying U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley failed miserably in persuading only seven countries aside from the U.S. and Israel to vote against the resolution.

And they used unprecedented tactics, unheard of in the diplomatic work at the U.N., including blackmail and extortion, he said.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the measure, with Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the U.S. Trump went further, threatening a funding cutoff: Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care.

But in the end, major U.S. aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution. Egypt received roughly $1.4 billion in U.S. aid this year, and Jordan about $1.3 billion.

The nine countries voting no were the U.S., Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo. Among the abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close U.S. ties.

After the vote, Haley tweeted a photo naming the 65 nations that voted no, abstained or were absent, and said: We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN.

She later sent invitations to the 65 ambassadors inviting them to a reception on Jan. 3 to thank them for their friendship with the United States.

The U.S. is scheduled to dispense $25.8 billion in foreign aid for 2018. Whether Trump follows through with his threat against those who voted yes remains to be seen.

But within hours, the Trump administration appeared to be backing away from its funding threats. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said cuts to countries that opposed the U.S. are not a foregone conclusion.

The presidents foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations, Nauert said. However, no decisions have been made.

During the debate, Arab, Islamic and non-aligned nations urged a yes vote on the resolution, which was sponsored by Yemen and Turkey.

Yemeni Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany warned that Trumps recognition of Jerusalem undermines any chance for peace in the Mideast and serves to fan the fires of violence and extremism.

He called Trumps action a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world, and a dangerous violation and breach of international law.

On Wednesday, Trump complained that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by countries that take billions of dollars and then vote against the U.S. Haley echoed his words in her speech to the packed assembly chamber, threatening not only member states with funding cuts, but the United Nations itself.

Haley said the vote will make no difference in U.S. plans to move the American Embassy, but it will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N., and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N.

And this vote will be remembered, she warned.

Trumps pressure tactics had raised the stakes at Thursdays emergency meeting and triggered accusations from the Muslim world of U.S. bullying and blackmail.

It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. We will not be intimidated! You can be strong but this does not make you right!

The Palestinians and their supporters sought the General Assembly vote after the U.S. on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other U.N. Security Council members that would have required Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem.

The resolution adopted by the assembly has language similar to the defeated measure.

It affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded.

___

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Joe Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
NEW YORK  The wave of sexual misconduct allegations that toppled Hollywood power brokers, politicians, media icons and many others was the top news story of 2017, according to The Associated Press annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.

The No. 2 story was Donald Trumps tumultuous first year as president. A year ago, Trumps unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election was a near-unanimous pick for the top news story of 2016.

The first AP top-stories poll was conducted in 1936, when editors chose the abdication of Britains King Edward VIII as the top story.

Here are 2017s top 10 stories, in order:

1. Sexual misconduct: Scandals involving sexual misdeeds by prominent men are nothing new in America, but theres never been anything remotely like the deluge of allegations unleashed this year by women who were emboldened to speak out by the accusers who preceded them. Luminaries toppled from their perches included movie magnate Harvey Weinstein, media stars Bill OReilly, Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, and several celebrity chefs and members of Congress.

2. Trump-First Year: The controversies started on Inauguration Day, with the new president challenged over his claims on the size of the crowd, and persisted throughout the year. Trumps approval ratings hovered around record-low territory, his base remained fiercely loyal, and his relentless tweeting  often in the early morning hours  provoked a striking mix of outrage, mockery and grateful enthusiasm.

3. Las Vegas mass shooting: A 64-year-old high-stakes video poker player, after amassing an arsenal of weapons, unleashed a barrage of gunfire from a high-rise casino-hotel that killed 58 people and injured hundreds among a crowd attending an open-air concert along the Las Vegas Strip. Weeks after the massacre, questions about the gunmans motives remained unanswered.

4. Hurricane onslaught: In a four-week span, hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria ravaged Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. Harvey killed more than 80 people in Texas and caused an estimated $150 billion in damage. Irma killed scores of people in the Caribbean and U.S., including 12 residents of a Florida nursing home that lost its air conditioning. Maria damaged more than 200,000 homes in Puerto Rico, caused lengthy power outages, and prompted an investigation into whether the official death toll of 64 was vastly undercounted.

5. North Korea: At times the taunts had a schoolyard flavor to them  a dotard versus Little Rocket Man. But they came from two world leaders with nuclear arms at their disposal  Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Fueling the tensions were North Koreas latest tests of a hydrogen bomb and of ballistic missiles that potentially could reach the U.S. mainland.

6. Trump-Russia probe: Trump fired FBI director James Comey, but a former FBI chief, Robert Mueller, was soon appointed to investigate potential coordination between Russia and Trumps election campaign. By mid-December, Muellers team had brought federal charges against four people, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

7. Obamacare: Despite repeated efforts, majority Republicans in Congress failed to repeal Barack Obamas health care law and replace it with new plan. At one point, a deciding vote against a GOP replacement bill was cast by Republican Sen. John McCain. But questions remained as to how Obamas plan would fare going forward without substantive help from the Trump administration.

8. Tax overhaul: Without a single Democratic vote, Republicans in Congress pushed through a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that would cut corporate taxes while producing mixed results for individuals. GOP lawmakers, backed by Trump, said the bill would have broad benefits by accelerating economic growth. Critics said consequences would include higher budget deficits and the potential loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

9. Worldwide terror attacks: The first big terror attack of 2017 came on New Years Day  a gunman killing 39 at a nightclub in Istanbul. Subsequent targets of global terror included an Ariana Grande concert in England, a bike path in New York City and the historic La Rambla promenade in Barcelona. In October, a truck bombing in Somalia killed more than 500 people; in November, an attack on a crowded mosque in Egypt killed more than 300.

10. Islamic State: After lengthy assaults, an array of forces drove the Islamic State from its two main strongholds  the city of Mosul in Iraq, and its self-styled capital, Raqqa, in Syria. The defeats left the Islamic State without significant territory in either country, but affiliates elsewhere in the region, particularly in Egypt and Afghanistan, continued to operate.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Americans received an incredible Christmas gift in the form of a tax overhaul approved by the House and Senate this week, but critics contend its more like a lump of coal for average New Mexicans.

The $1.5 trillion overhaul slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans and offers smaller reductions for middle- and low-income families. Nearly half of all New Mexicans dont make enough money to owe federal income taxes. Many who do pay federal income taxes will see at least modest increases in their take-home pay.

The legislation marks the first major overhaul of the U.S. tax code in three decades.

The heart of our bill is a tremendous amount of relief for the middle class, including a doubling of the child tax credit and a nearly doubling of the standard deduction, Trump said at the White House on Wednesday after the bill cleared both chambers. Thats going to be tremendous for people. Theyre going to start seeing the results in February.

Trump said probably the biggest factor in the 521-page bill is a provision reducing the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 21 percent, aimed at encouraging companies to invest in the U.S. and create more jobs.

Our companies wont be leaving our country any longer because our tax burden is so high, Trump said.

Buoyed by news of the tax bills passage, telecommunications giant AT&T announced Wednesday that it would give 200,000 of its U.S. workers who are union members a special bonus of $1,000. Comcast also announced that it will give $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 of its employees.

New Mexicos four congressional Democrats harshly criticized the legislation, which Trump said he will sign in the coming days. Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, called the bill reckless and said it wont do much to accelerate growth in New Mexico. New Mexico, with its sluggish economy, has a relatively low number of corporations that would reap big benefits from the tax legislation.

Theyve abandoned working American families while recklessly blowing up the deficit in order to reward their wealthy friends and corporations with a tax cut that they do not need, Heinrich said of the GOP majorities that pushed the bill through Congress .

Starting next year, families making between $50,000 and $75,000 will get tax cuts averaging $890, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Families making between $100,000 and $200,000 will get tax cuts averaging $2,260, while families making more than $1 million will get tax cuts averaging nearly $70,000, according to the analysis.

But if the cuts for individuals are allowed to expire, most Americans  those making less than $75,000  would see tax increases in 2027, according to congressional estimates. New Mexicos median family income is $48,451, the fifth-lowest in the nation. GOP backers of the bill contend those tax cuts are likely to eventually be extended for the middle class.

The bill also limits what homeowners can deduct in terms of state and local property taxes and income and sales taxes from their federal returns. The legislation approved this week limits these deductions  which can be any combination of property, income, and sales taxes  to $10,000.

In addition to changing the tax code for businesses and individuals, the legislation repeals a congressional mandate that required Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty  a key provision of the Affordable Care Act. It also paves the way for oil drilling in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which has been the focus of one of the nations longest-running environmental battles. Democrats quickly threatened lawsuits to prevent drilling in the refuge.

Rep. Steve Pearce, the only Republican in New Mexicos congressional delegation and a candidate for governor in 2018, celebrated the tax overhaul as a win for small businesses and middle-class residents of the state.

This will allow New Mexicans to move closer to their goals of saving for retirement, going to school or simply having enough money to afford emergencies, Pearce said, referring to the tax breaks for individuals. Additionally, this tax overhaul will reduce taxes on corporations and small businesses, which will encourage more job creation and put confidence back in our economy.

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat from Albuquerque, is also running for governor of New Mexico next year. The three-term congresswoman voted against the bill this week, calling it the most destructive and immoral piece of legislation I have voted against since serving in Congress.

We have the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, half of our population is on Medicaid, and one in every four New Mexico children do not know where their next meal is coming from. she said. New Mexicans deserve a tax package that prioritizes middle-class families and small businesses, lifts families out of poverty, increases targeted investments in education and innovation, and incentivizes businesses to grow wages and create jobs.

Meanwhile, partisans from both sides of the aisle in New Mexico said the tax bill will be a key issue in the 2018 elections.

Ryan Cangiolosi, chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said Republicans will be rewarded at the polls for their partys support of tax cuts.

Tax reform is good for families, good for businesses and good for our economy, he said. Voters will remember where their elected officials stood when it comes to casting their vote in November.

Richard Ellenberg, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, also said the tax overhaul will be an issue in the 2018 elections, but for different reasons.

I expect this to be an issue with Steve Pearces race (the gubernatorial contest), and an issue in the 2nd Congressional District race, where Pearce is vacating his House seat to run for governor, Ellenberg said.

The state Democratic chairman also said Republican congressional leaders pledge to overhaul entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in 2018 should worry those in low-income states such as New Mexico.

Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc. and a longtime observer of New Mexico politics, said its too soon to tell how the tax overhaul bill will play in the states elections next year.

Democratic and Republican candidates will try to use the tax reform law to their political advantage in New Mexico, with Republicans saying it will help grow the economy and jobs, while Democrats will say it just benefits the wealthiest individuals and corporations, Sanderoff said. But the midterm elections are nearly one year away, which is a long time in politics.
Facing bipartisan hostility over high drug prices in an election year, the pharma industrys biggest trade group boosted revenue by nearly a fourth last year and spread the millions collected among hundreds of lobbyists, politicians and patient groups, new filings show.

It was the biggest surge for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, since the group took battle stations to advance its interests in 2009 during the run-up to the Affordable Care Act.

Does that surprise you? said Billy Tauzin, the former PhRMA CEO who ran the organization a decade ago as Obamacare loomed. Whenever Washington seems interested in limiting drug prices, he said, PhRMA has always responded by increasing its resources.

The group, already one of the most powerful trade organizations in any industry, collected $271 million in member dues and other income in 2016. That was up from $220 million the year before, according to its latest disclosure with the Internal Revenue Service.

PhRMA spent $7 million last year to prepare its ubiquitous Go Boldly ad campaign and gave millions to politicians who were up for election in both parties in dozens of states. It lavished more than $2 million on scores of groups representing patients with various diseases  many of them dealing with high drug costs.

Some of the biggest patient-group checks went to the American Autoimmune Related Disease Association, for $260,000; the American Lung Association, for $110,000; the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, for $136,150; and the Lupus Foundation of America, for $253,500.

PhRMA also gave big money to national political groups financing congressional, presidential and state candidates. The conservative-leaning American Action Network got $6.1 million. The Republican Governors Association got $301,375. Its Democratic counterpart got $350,000.

PhRMAs state and federal lobbying spending rose by more than two-thirds from the previous year, to $57 million.

Thats PhRMA. They do it all to protect drug companies from potential policy risks, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political financing. And theyre going to marshal even more resources when they perceive that these threats or opportunities are most imminent.

Threats seemed especially dire last year. Storms of bad publicity hit the industry in the form of stories about arrogant executives and thousand-dollar pills.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said some pharma companies were making a fortune off of peoples misfortune. Then-candidate Donald Trump, a Republican, suggested he could save $300 billion annually by requiring drugmakers to bid on business.

Nonprofit organizations such as PhRMA must file detailed disclosures with the IRS. PhRMA, which submitted its 2016 report in early November, shared a copy with Kaiser Health News.

The group also aimed dollars at states where policymakers were considering drug-related measures such as price limits or greater price transparency, the document shows.

It gave $64 million to a California fund established to defeat a proposal requiring state agencies to pay no more for drugs than does the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. Also supported by direct contributions from drug companies, the fund spent $110 million last year to defeat the initiative, California regulatory filings show.

This year, California established a less comprehensive law requiring drug firms to give notice and explanation when they substantially raise prices. PhRMA recently sued to block that measure.

In Louisiana, where policymakers were considering proposals to make drug prices clearer to consumers, PhRMA gave campaign contributions directly to scores of state legislators last year. The group also gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to help defeat a ballot proposal for single-payer health care in Colorado.

Last years massive mobilization underscores how besieged the industry felt over complaints about soaring medicine prices and high profits.

PhRMAs $271 million in revenue for the year represented its biggest budget since 2009, when it recorded $350 million in dues and other revenue.

The $57 million it spent on lobbying was also the most since 2009, when the lobbying bill was $70 million. So was the $7 million spent on advertising, a cost that should rise this year, since the Go Boldly ads aired in 2017. PhRMA employed 237 people last year, up from fewer than 200 in 2011.

The associations 37 members include the biggest and best-known drug companies including Johnson & Johnson, Celgene, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Amgen. Holly Campbell, a PhRMA spokeswoman, declined to make an executive available to discuss the report, saying it doesnt comment on contributions.

PhRMA engages with stakeholders across the health care system to hear their perspectives and priorities, she said in an email. We work with many organizations with which we have both agreements and disagreements on public policy issues.

Patient groups receiving PhRMA money often deny that it influences their policies or keeps them from criticizing high drug prices.

The Lupus Foundation has policies to ensure there is no conflict of interest, a spokeswoman said. At the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, donors such as PhRMA have no role in the groups decision-making process, a spokeswoman said.

No funder influences our position, agenda or science-based messages at the American Lung Association, its spokeswoman said.

The American Autoimmune Related Disease Association did not respond to requests for comment.

During negotiations over Obamacare, PhRMA agreed to support overhauling health care relatively early in the process, in mid-2009. Then it threw its muscle into promoting the measure, which promised billions in new revenue for members. President Barack Obama signed it into law in March 2010.

PhRMA shrank substantially after that, taking in around $205 million for several years in a row starting in 2010.

Last year it agreed to increase dues by 50 percent to raise an extra $100 million, Politico reported. In an attempt to distance itself from drug companies earning bad headlines, it also decided to bar members that didnt invest a minimum in pharmaceutical research.



2017 Kaiser Health News

Visit Kaiser Health News at www.khn.org

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
ATHENS, Greece  Angering the countrys government, Greeces central bank governor on Thursday said he would welcome a precautionary credit line from bailout lenders after the international rescue program officially ends in August.

Bank of Greece governor Yannis Stournaras said in a report that a contingency credit scheme could have a supportive effect on the Greek economy.

His remarks rekindled spat between Stournaras and the left-wing government which has promised a clean exit from the bailout and a full return to markets, ending eight painful years of rescue programs.

Stournaras served as finance minister under the previous conservative-led government.

A government official Thursday reacted angrily to Stournaras suggestion.

Just because a failed finance minister from a failed government had favored a credit line, instead of a return to markets, does not mean that a successful government cant do things better, he said, asking not to be named pending official comment.

The spat broke as Greece heads into the final year of the bailout, under pressure from lenders to resolve a long list of outstanding problems over the next few months.

Lawmakers late Thursday approved tougher restrictions against anti-bailout protesters who have sought to block the auction of homes that have gone into default because their owners cant meet mortgage payments.

They debated draft legislation that would impose three and six-month minimum jail sentences on activists that gather regularly at courts to disrupt the auctions.

About 500 Communist Party supporters took part in a peaceful demonstration outside Parliament late Thursday against the new regulations, a day after clashes between protesters and police.

The government promised bailout lenders that it will restart auctions, and introduce online transactions, to try and reduce the huge number of bad loans at Greek banks that are hindering the countrys economic recovery from recession.

Anti-government campaigners argue that vulnerable households will no longer be protected from home seizures.

The outgoing head of a parliamentary budget oversight committee warned that unless the auctions proceed, banks could be forced to impose a haircut on depositors  a measure that has been emphatically ruled out by the government.

Also Thursday, Greeces privatization agency said it has signed an agreement with an international consortium for the sale of a 67 percent stake in the Port of Thessaloniki  the countrys second-largest city  for 232 million euros ($275 million).

The transaction is expected to be completed early next year, the agency said.

Under its bailout commitments, Greece has agreed to sell off large parcels of state holdings to private investors.

___

Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed. Follow Gatopoulos at http://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos
SYDNEY  The family of an Australian woman who was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer in July demanded a more rigorous probe Thursday after a prosecutor cast doubts on the investigation.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman faulted investigators last week when he complained that he doesnt have enough evidence to charge Officer Mohamed Noor in the killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Noor shot Damond in the alley behind her home after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault.

Reading a statement to reporters in Sydney, Damonds father John Ruszczyk said the family was deeply concerned about the possibility that the initial investigation was not done properly, and with the greatest integrity or sense of completeness.

Ruszczyk said he and the rest of Damonds family were demanding Freeman and his colleagues continue to pursue a rigorous investigation and examination of evidence in the shooting.

Freeman was captured on video at a Dec. 14 holiday reception expressing his frustration about the case. He said it wasnt his fault that there was not enough evidence to charge Noor, and that investigators havent done their job. Noor has declined to speak with investigators.

Freeman didnt name the investigators, but the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation. He has since said he didnt know he was being filmed and apologized for discussing the agencys work in a public setting.

Nevertheless, Damonds father applauded Freemans candid statement.

At the least, Mr. Freemans comments cast doubt on the description of how Justines death occurred as it was initially put out by the BCA and the attorney for the officer driving the squad car, Ruszczyk said Thursday.

The BCA said in a statement after the familys news conference that it is committed to conducting a fair, impartial and thorough investigation as we gather the facts and evidence in this case. The agency said it will continue to work with prosecutors as needed to provide additional information as the case is being reviewed.

Freemans office declined to comment on Ruszczyks statement.

Noor fired at Damond from the passenger seat of a squad car, across his partner and through the drivers window.

Damonds death sparked protests and led to a police department shake-up, including the resignation of Chief Janee Harteau.

Flanked by three other family members, and pausing occasionally to compose himself, Ruszczyk said that after the shooting, authorities in Minneapolis had looked me in the eye and said they were committed to getting to the truth of the event.

Now I hear that the Hennepin county attorney, to whom the BCA handed its investigative results, says that the investigation has not been done to the prosecutors satisfaction, or even to the expected levels of accuracy and thoroughness, Ruszczyk said.

Ruszczyk cited a quote by American writer James Baldwin: It is certain in any case that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Ruszczyk said this was particularly true when it comes to evaluating the use of deadly force by those sworn to protect us.

He added: Ignorance cannot prevail here.
By PTI: HC told

Jodhpur, Dec 21 (PTI) Over 10,000 applications of migrants from Pakistans Hindu community seeking long- term visas (LTV) are pending, the Rajasthan High Court was informed today.

Taking serious note of the deficiencies and disposal of the applications, the high court ordered removal of all deficiencies in the LTV applications within two weeks from the date of the order and submit a report in the court before the next hearing on January 19.

advertisement

The court, which, on December 14, asked the state government to file a report on pending citizenship cases of the Pakistani Hindu migrants, also directed the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) to upload the notification on the concerned web-portal.

The FRRO was also asked to hold camps at appropriate places and remove all the deficiencies in the forms in the presence of the applicants, amicus curiae and the divisional- level committee constituted by the state.

Out of the pending applications, 2,716 applications have already been forwarded to the Union Home ministry, whereas 4,912 pleas are pending before the state government.

The applications pending at the FRRO level in the state are as 2,418.

On September 22, the court had issued the directions that the applications submitted offline for grant of LTV or citizenship by migrants from Pakistan belonging to minority communities shall be positively considered as far as possible within a period of 60 days from the date of order.

But, amicus curiae Kamal Joshi told the court that neither the corrections were done nor the applicants and the divisional-level committee were informed about the deficiencies in the forms. PTI CORR HMB KJ

--- ENDS ---
LAS CRUCES  Bob Gallagher, the city manager of Jal and former city manager of Sunland Park, denies claims of sexual harassment in a letter sent to the Las Cruces Sun-News on Wednesday.

I, for the record, categorically deny any and all allegations of harassment, Gallagher said in the letter.

At least two women have come forward alleging Gallagher harassed them. One said he sent lewd texts and demanded photos of her. A second claimed he asked for sex during an out-of-town training session.

In the letter, Gallagher said he did engage in what he called legal and consensual text messaging but did not touch, pressure or attempt to exploit the woman.

Instead, Gallagher said in the letter, a third party in Jal was fabricating the stories to run (him) out of town and ruin (his) life.

Gallagher split his time as city manager between Sunland Park and Jal from February 2016 to August 2017. In August, the Sunland Park City Council terminated his contract.

Sunland Park spokesman Peter Ibarbo said the council did not provide a reason for its decision. But there were no allegations of sexual misconduct while he was managing Sunland Park, Ibarbo said.

Gallagher is a former chairman of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents and former president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

In todays rush to judgment, my professional life and reputation have been forever besmirched, Gallagher said. I am confident that the fact will be revealed. But the label never comes off.
The proposed sick leave ordinance introduced during Mondays City Council meeting is getting mixed reactions, with the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce supporting the measure and worker rights groups saying it would be the worst sick leave law in the nation.

This is incredibly more business friendly than the prior one, Sherman McCorkle, chairman of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerces Bold Issues Group, told the Journal.

Something is going to move forward. We know that. The new mayor said that. The council has said that, McCorkle said.  This is much more fair and is something that the (chamber) board would look very favorably on.

But Elizabeth Wagoner, an attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty and one of the individuals who fought for the narrowly defeated sick leave ballot initiative, told the council on Monday that the proposed ordinance is too weak. She said 28 other cities and nine states have paid sick leave laws.

If passed, this truly would be the worst sick leave legislation in the country, Wagoner said. It excludes many part time workers, most of whom want full time jobs or work multiple jobs to make ends meet. It excludes between 90 to 95 percent of Albuquerque businesses from coverage altogether. And it denies coverage for many important family care giving relationships.

The proposed ordinance  sponsored by Council President Ken Sanchez, a Democrat, and Councilor Don Harris, a Republican  would require employers with 50 or more workers to provide them with up to 40 hours of paid sick leave a year. The ordinance would cover individuals who work an average of at least 20 hours a week, but not temporary workers.

Sanchez and Harris have said the ordinance they introduced is a starting point and that they hope to work with the business community and worker rights groups to come up with an ordinance that protects workers and the economy.

Voters in October narrowly rejected a sick leave ballot initiative that many Albuquerque business owners and groups warned would impose onerous regulations and hurt the local economy. The so-called Healthy Workforce Ordinance was defeated by fewer than 800 votes.

Wagoner said one of the problems with the new ordinance that has been introduced is that those who get sick leave would only be able to use it for themselves, or to care for their child or spouse.

So, if your mother or grandmother falls and breaks her hip, you cant take sick time under this ordinance to care for her, Wagoner said. Nieces, siblings, grandchildren, domestic partners and many other important family care giving relationships arent covered by this draft ordinance.

She added that the proposed law has the lowest sick time accrual rate in the country and one of the longest wait periods to be able to actually use sick leave. Wagoner offered to help the city come up with a better ordinance.

Better models are out there, she said. Albuquerque families deserve something better than last place.

Wagoner was one of several people who spoke about the ordinance during the Council meeting.

Traeshaun Buffin, a full-time Central New Mexico Community College student, part-time worker and member of OLE, told councilors he is only able to work 15 hours a week and wouldnt be covered under the proposed ordinance.

Like the people that are covered with the proposed ordinance, we, too, get sick, and we all deserve the right to be able to earn the time off to be able to take care of ourselves and loved ones when we are not feeling well, he said.

Others suggested the council shouldnt move forward on sick leave.

Nobody likes it, Paul Ryan McKenney said. Actual liberty minded folks and conservatives dont like it. Progressives dont like it. Nobody likes it. Your corporate bodies are the only ones that like it.
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.  A judge has decided to delay a January murder trial for a Colorado man accused of shooting and killing Mesa County Sheriffs Deputy Derek Geer in 2016.

According to an order issued Wednesday by Judge Richard Gurley, who is presiding over the case, 19-year-old Austin Holzers Jan. 8 jury trial has been delayed following a discovery violation by the defense.

The delay will give prosecutors time to prepare to cross-examine an expert witness for Holzers defense team.

The Daily Sentinel reports psychologist Marie Banich disclosed more than two dozen articles that she is planning to rely upon in her testimony just weeks before the start of the trial.

Holzer will need to return to court for a hearing to determine new potential trial dates.

___

Information from: The Daily Sentinel, http://www.gjsentinel.com
WASHINGTON  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 percent from 35 percent starting Jan. 1.

Asked by The Times to clarify the connection on Wednesday, Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist said there was none.

As it relates to team members, minimum pay is a topic that we continue to review as part of our efforts to attract and retain talent, and we have been on a path to increasing the minimum hourly rate, having most recently increased it in January 2017, Gilchrist said in an email in response to an inquiry from The Times.

Asked directly to confirm that the pay raises were not a result of the tax bill, Gilchrist said, That is correct.

On Thursday, Gilchrist backtracked.

We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to raise our minimum hourly pay to $15 as a result, he said after The Times article appeared online.

He would not comment on the reason for the earlier statement or whether Wells Fargo would have raised its pay if the tax bill had not passed.

Arati Sontakay Randolph, a Wells Fargo senior vice president, said that Gilchrist had misspoken Wednesday.

Our spokesperson made a mistake, and we apologize for this, she said Thursday. Our announcement was directly related to the passage of tax reform.

AT&T Inc., Boeing Co., Comcast Corp. and Fifth Third Bank all said Wednesday they would boost U.S. investment or worker pay, or both.

AT&T plans to increase U.S. capital spending $1 billion and provide $1,000 special bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. employees. And thats because of what we did, so thats pretty good, Trump said to applause from Republicans during a celebration of the tax bills passage at the White House on Wednesday.

Ed Mills, a Washington policy analyst for financial services firm Raymond James, said the similarity of the announcements, including the same $1,000 employee pledge in several of them, indicated this was a coordinated public relations move designed to curry favor with Trump and congressional Republicans.

What this administration has shown is the president very much pays attention to the headlines and kind of likes companies showing that his legislative actions and his regulatory actions can have a positive benefit for their employees, Mills said.

He also noted that banks and telecommunications companies are highly regulated in Washington.

The most regulated industries always value goodwill in D.C., Mills said.

AT&T in particular is facing regulatory challenges after proposing an $85.4-billion takeover of Time Warner Inc., the owner of HBO, CNN, several other cable networks and the Warner Bros. film and television studio. Last month, the Justice Department sued to block the deal on antitrust grounds.

Wells Fargo also could use a boost to its reputation in the wake of the unauthorized-accounts scandal that led to sharp criticism from lawmakers.

In its Wednesday announcement, the bank said it was pledging the following actions once tax reform is signed into law.

The first was raising the minimum hourly rate for U.S.-based employees to $15 an hour from the $13.50 rate the company announced in January.

Wells Fargo also said it was targeting $400 million in donations to community and nonprofit organizations in 2018 and would target contributions of 2 percent of after-tax profits for corporate philanthropy beginning in 2019.

We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to take these immediate steps to invest in our team members, communities, small businesses and homeowners, Wells Fargo Chief Executive Tim Sloan said in the news release.

Gilchrist said about 36,000 employees will get a pay raise. He would not say how much the pay raises would cost the bank or how much it anticipates saving because of the tax cuts and other changes in the legislation.

Raymond James estimates that the corporate tax cut will boost earnings for the average U.S. bank by 18 percent. In 2016, Wells Fargo had $21.9 billion in profits, which was down 4 percent from the previous year because of the fallout of the unauthorized accounts scandal.

(Times staff writer Tracy Lien contributed to this report.)



2017 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
WASHINGTON  Congress has again failed to approve long-term funds for a popular program that provides health insurance for nearly 9 million low-income children, leaving each party blaming the other for Christmas-season gridlock and states scrambling to decide how to parcel out dwindling money.

Lawmakers scurrying to leave the Capitol for the holidays approved a short-term patch Thursday designed to keep state programs operating through March, though some Republicans said federal officials think the money would run out by early February. The money was part of a bill averting a weekend federal shutdown. Congress had approved a previous stopgap solution for the childrens health program that was about to expire.

Democrats and Republicans agree that finances for the Childrens Health Insurance Program should be renewed for five years, but theyve clashed over how to pay for it. And while few think Congress would blunder into letting the money completely lapse  which no lawmaker would care to defend with elections approaching  an effort to provide long-term money collapsed as leaders punted a bunch of unresolved issues until early next year.

What GOP is obsessed with: Ramming through tax cuts for the rich and powerful, tweeted Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., referring to the $1.5 trillion tax bill Congress approved this week. What GOP completely ignores: Extending #CHIP  health care for our children.

We would love to pass it. They wont let us, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an interview, asserting that Democrats had blocked a multiyear extension.

As the issue slipped into next year, the two top senators on the issue  Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and top committee Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon  issued a statement promising to seek a five-year extension soon.

We will be vigilant to ensure this program isnt subject to repeated short-term fixes and constantly looming deadlines  families across the nation deserve better, they said.

With no long-term funding agreement imminent, growing numbers of states have begun edging toward depleting their federal funds and commencing steps to cope with that. According to a survey the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in November and released this month, 14 states were planning to end or phase out coverage for children, including five by the end of January.

A separate study by Georgetown Universitys Center for Children and Families estimated that without the money from Thursdays short-term extension, 25 states would run out of money by the end of January, with 1.9 million children potentially losing coverage.

It remained uncertain how those states and others would react to the latest infusion of federal money.

But Alabama recently warned it would stop registering new beneficiaries on Jan. 1 and halt the entire program a month later. Connecticut cautioned it would stop supporting families after Jan. 31, and Colorado has sent letters to recipients warning that their coverage may be canceled.

Were just hoping Congress does the right thing and doesnt put politics in front of peoples health, in front of childrens health, in front of pregnant womens health, said Colorado Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a Democrat.

Although Congress has stepped in and provided eleventh-hour money twice in recent months, the will-they-or-wont-they drama has put pressure on state officials about how to respond. They say they need lead time to keep recipients abreast about the status of their assistance and to adjust their programs if theres a chance state allotments might change.

Kelly Haight, spokeswoman for North Carolinas health department, said the states 220,000 children receiving assistance under the program will not experience any interruption in benefits at this time because the state had enough money for the beginning of 2018. She said officials were considering all our options for possibly losing federal funds.

Federal taxpayers paid about $16 billion for the program last year, with states adding a smaller share, according to government figures. The program is aimed at children from families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, the health insurance program.

The House approved GOP legislation in November extending the health insurance programs federal money for five years. Most Democrats voted no, saying they opposed plans to finance the extension in part by cutting a public health program created under President Barack Obamas 2010 health care law.

The Senate Finance Committee easily approved its own five-year measure in October, but that bill lacked offsetting savings to pay for the extra money. One Democratic aide said top lawmakers of both parties had subsequently quietly agreed to a package of savings.

But as Congress rushed Thursday to pass short-term pending legislation preventing a weekend federal shutdown and leave town for the holidays, unsettled disputes over health care, immigration and other issues fell by the wayside for lawmakers to address next year.

Instead, the short-term bill includes $2.9 billion for states to use for childrens health plus authority for federal officials to continue distributing unspent program money to states running short.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking in Washington; Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon; Kyle Potter in St. Paul, Minnesota; Jonathan Drew in Durham, North Carolina; and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
The 12th edition of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards were held in the Capital on December 20, 2017. Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu, who was the chief guest at the function, handed over the awards to 27 winners  in 25 categories, including print and broadcast  for outstanding work done in 2016.

These awards, instituted in the name of such a doyen of freedom of speech and expression, have rightly emerged as the most coveted journalism awards in the country. Ramnath Goenka embodied the finest qualities of journalism of courage and commitment: fierce independence, relentless pursuit of facts, robust determination to withstand pressures, to constantly ask questions and to uphold the principles of freedom of expression in the face of every challenge. These attributes also constitute the highest principles of citizenship and are necessary for strengthening our democracy, the Vice-President said in his address.

Reflecting on the responsibility of the media, Naidu said, In my view, the media's role should be the empowerment of people through information, social mobilisation, building partnerships, catalysing individual and collective actions for betterment of lives and promoting peace and harmony, and supporting national reconstruction. Every news report should result in enhanced level of understanding and inspire action.

An eminent jury, including former Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna, HDFC Ltd chairman Deepak Parekh, former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi and senior journalist Pamela Philipose, chose the winners from over 800 entries that came from all parts of the country, many of them in regional languages.

In the past, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, former President APJ Abdul Kalam, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, former vice president Hamid Ansari, former president Pratibha Patil and former chief justice of India P Sathasivam have been chief guests at the awards.

The Express Group instituted the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2006 as part of the centenary year celebrations of its founder, Ramnath Goenka. Over the years, the awards have become the gold standard of journalism honours in India, the ultimate recognition that every outstanding journalist working in the country searches for today. The awards, which come with a trophy and a reward of Rs 1 lakh to each of the winners, aim to celebrate excellence in journalism, recognise courage and commitment and showcase the outstanding contributions of journalists from across the country.

Attached is a press release and photograph along with the list of the winners for your perusal. Please let us know in case you need more details.

Below is the entire list of the winners in both Print and Broadcast categories:

PRINT

1) Reporting From J&K And The Northeast: Abhishek Saha, Hindustan Times

2) Hindi: Rahul Kotiyal, Satyagrah.scroll.in

3) Regional Languages: Reshma Sanjeev Shivadekar, Loksatta

4) Environmental Reporting: Jimmy philip, Deepika Daily

5) Uncovering India Invisible: S.V Rajesh, Malayala Manorama

6) Business & Economic Journalism: Utkarsh Anand, The Indian Express

7) Political Reporting: Muzamil Jaleel, The Indian Express

8) Sports Journalism: Qaiser Mohammad Ali, Outlook

9) On The Spot Reporting: Shubhajit Roy, The Indian Express

10) Investigative Reporting: Ritu Sarin, P V Iyer & Jay Mazoomdar, The Indian Express

11) Feature Writing: Sangita Barooah Pisharoty, The Wire

12) Foreign Correspondent Covering India: Ellen Barry, The New York Times

13) Commentary And Interpretative Writing: Tamal Bandyopadhyay, Mint

14) Civic Journalism: Chaitanya Marpakwar, Mumbai Mirror

15) Photo Journalism: Waseem Andrabi, Hindustan Times

BROADCAST

1) Reporting From J&K And The Northeast: Moumita Sen, India Today

2) Hindi: Ravish Kumar, NDTV India

3) Regional Languages: Dinesh Akula, TV5 News

4) Environmental Reporting: NO WINNER

5) Uncovering India Invisible: Manogya Loiwal, TV today

6) Business & Economic Journalism: Harshada Sawant, CNBC Awaaz

7) Political Reporting: Ashish Singh, News X

8) Sports Journalism: Bipasha Mukherjea, TV Today

9) On The Spot Reporting: Ashish Sinha, India News

10) Investigative Reporting: Sreenivasan Jain, NDTV 247
A map included in the Dec. 21 Planning Commission meeting agenda shows the location and size of the proposed rezoning area.
At the same time, Gen Bajwa reminded the legislators that a large part of Indian military deployments was mostly against Pakistan, even though it cited other threats.

By Hamza Ameer: In a major gesture, the Pakistan army had said that it is willing to back the political leadership's initiative for normalisation of relations with India.

Pakistan's army chief General Bajwa said that relations with all neighbours had to be normalised. According to a couple of senators, Bajwa urged the political leaders to try and improve relations with India and assured that the efforts will be fully supported by the Pakistan army.

advertisement

The general's offer was particularly significant because Indians allege that the Pakistan army has been blocking peace efforts.

Notwithstanding the army chief's proposal, the prospects of progress towards normalisation remain dim because of Indian intransigence.

At the same time, Gen Bajwa reminded the legislators that a large part of Indian military deployments was mostly against Pakistan, even though it cited other threats.

He also recalled that India was fomenting instability and terrorism in Pakistan and had in this regard developed a strong nexus with Afghan intelligence agency NDS.

--- ENDS ---
Work on Aiken library elevator in final stages, but no 'clear answer' on when it will be finished
You have permission to edit this collection.

Edit Close
December 20, 2017

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey  In the 1950s, the Turkish state returned the centuries-old Surp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakir to the citys Armenian community, after having used it as a warehouse for years. Armenian writer Migirdic Margosyan, a native of Diyarbakir, describes how ironsmiths, carpenters, painters and goldsmiths from the citys Infidel Quarter joined hands to revive that wreck and reopen it quickly to worship, keen to preserve the legacy of their ancestors.

Little could the volunteers have known then that the ordeal involving the largest Armenian church in the Middle East was far from over. By the early 1980s, Surp Giragos was a church without a congregation as Diyarbakirs Armenians dwindled away. Abandoned to its fate, the church fell into decay. When a new restoration began in 2008, only its walls were standing, with the windows broken, the roof collapsed and the interiors filled with soil.

During the three-year restoration, every corner of the church was meticulously repaired. An expert craftsman  one of only three left in Turkey  was brought to Diyarbakir and worked for half a year to renovate and complete the seven altars. The overhaul was crowned with a new church bell, brought from Russia. As services resumed, the church became a meeting point for Armenians  natives of Diyarbakir but now scattered across the world  and an attraction for tourists visiting the city.

This new atmosphere, however, was short-lived. In the fall off 2015, security forces cracked down on urban militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party, who had entrenched themselves behind ditches and barricades in residential areas in Sur, the ancient heart of Diyarbakir, where the church is nestled. Only months before the clashes erupted, UNESCO had put Sur on its World Heritage list.

The militants used the church as an emplacement and infirmary to treat their wounded, as evidenced by the medical waste found later inside. As the security forces advanced, the militants left the church, and this time the security forces used it. After the monthslong clashes, the church emerged with its yard walls ruined and riddled with bullets. Still, the Armenian community took solace in the fact that the church itself was standing. The authorities promised to repair the church and return it to the community.

The church was presumed to be under protection since the area remained sealed off even after the clashes ended in March 2016. Since then, however, the church has become the target of thieves, who broke in twice and stole various objects. How the thieves managed to sneak in remains a mystery, for even members of the church board need official permission to enter.

Most recently, a more malicious intruder  or intruders  broke into the church, apparently with a sledgehammer that was used to smash altars and reliefs. Armen Demirciyan, who used to work as a caretaker at Surp Giragos, said the news of plunder and desecration cut him to the bone.

He told Al-Monitor, We had one place here and it is now gone. I am devastated. We had so many valuable things  they are all gone. We had an antique rifle  they have stolen it. They have broken the altars and stolen the books. In short, the place has been ravaged.

For Demirciyan, the loss is not only about a church, but also about a meeting point for a community scattered across the world. We worked so hard to restore it and now all our efforts have gone down the drain. It was a place that brought us [Armenians] together, he added.

After news of the latest assault, Aram Atesyan, the Istanbul-based acting patriarch of Turkeys Armenian community, flew to Diyarbakir in late November to inspect the damage. Visibly shaken after the visit, he said, They have broken everything with a sledgehammer. It had taken three years to make those handmade ornaments. The altars are all broken to pieces. What was ravaged, he stressed, is not solely an Armenian house of worship but a historical monument that belongs to Turkey. Those monuments are the riches of the entire country, he said. This place does not belong only to us  it belongs to this state and these lands.

Gaffur Turkay, a member of the church board and a resident of Diyarbakir, witnessed how the church fell into decay in the 1980s and then was reborn half a decade ago. We were so moved, so full of hope after we brought the church  back into magnificent shape. We would go there every day just to sit and take care of it, he told Al-Monitor.

Turkay was among those who inspected the damage after the clashes. The church was on its feet. At least its basic elements  the walls, the roof and the tower bell  were intact, he said. Despite some damage in the interior, the board was content that the edifice survived the clashes in much better shape than the Armenian Catholic Church and several mosques nearby, he noted.

Turkay said that as the uncertainty in Sur dragged on and the area remained off-limits to residents, We got permissions from time to time to check on the church. In the past three or four months, we began to discover new damage each time we visited the church. We informed the authorities several times and asked them to find a solution but, unfortunately, the rings of the columns were ripped off first and then the altars were shattered with hammers. All figurines, reliefs, paintings and other materials were ransacked.

For Turkay, the fact that hammer-wielding vandals could enter and damage the house of worship while members of the church board could only go there after receiving permission is a bitter pill to swallow.

Journalists, for instance, need permissions from various institutions in both Diyarbakir and Ankara to take pictures or film inside Surp Giragos, and sometimes even those permissions are not enough. Last year, this reporter witnessed how policemen standing on guard at the corner of the church turned away a foreign television crew, although it had obtained permission to film in the area. Curiously, the intruders are able to elude the security measures.

Only construction workers can enter [Sur]. A very limited number of people can go and they are all under the control of the authorities, Turkay said. If this beautiful structure is going to be missing something else each time we go, this is a very serious problem.
December 20, 2017

US President Donald Trumps threat to cut foreign aid to countries that criticize his position on Jerusalem at the United Nations is drawing fierce condemnation from key Democratic lawmakers, raising doubts that Congress would allow him to carry it out.

Trump suggested today that any country voting in favor of Thursday's nonbinding resolution opposing the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel could lose US foreign assistance, potentially putting vulnerable US allies in the Middle East at risk. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, after sending letters to UN members warning them of consequences if they vote the wrong way, followed suit today with a tweet endorsing the president's statement of "Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot."

The effort by President Trump and Ambassador Haley to threaten nations who might dare to express disagreement in the United Nations is not a wise or sustainable tactic, and it will make cooperation more difficult in the future, said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., a member of the House panel overseeing foreign aid spending.

Even members of Congress who support recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital have raised concerns about the administrations diplomatic approach.

"I support the American position that this resolution shouldnt be passed, but the way the president handled the announcement makes it much more difficult to get the type of vote that we would like to see at the United Nations, said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

We dont always win United Nations votes, but weve been coming closer on a lot of these votes, added Cardin. I think the way the president handled the announcement will isolate Israel even more and the United States more.

House Foreign Affairs Committee member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., derided Trumps threats as reckless and short-sighted and a form of self-defeating bullying not usually successful in international relations.

All of our allies on the Security Council supported a similar resolution, Connolly told Al-Monitor. "Shall we cut off all diplomatic relations and pull in the drawbridge while were at it?

Similarly, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, accused Trump of recklessly [upending] the Middle East peace process.

It is no surprise that our allies and partners strongly disagree with his actions, said McCollum. I oppose any attempt to weaken our relationships with governments that object to President Trumps decision.

Several Arab states, Turkey and other countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation called for a rare emergency UN session after the United States vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council earlier this week. The United States ended up being outnumbered 14-1 on that vote, prompting Trump to threaten US aid cuts.

Were watching those votes, Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House today. This isnt like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars.

From the outset, the Trump administration has sought steep foreign aid cuts across the board as part of its America First agenda. Ironically, the preponderance of US aid to the Middle East and North Africa consists of military aid earmarked for beneficiary states to buy US-made military equipment.

Congress earlier this year overwhelmingly rejected aid cuts proposed in the administration's State Department budget request. Instead, lawmakers stipulated that aid levels for Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco  all countries likely to vote against the United States at the UN  should remain at or above current levels.

Despite the bipartisan congressional consensus against slashing foreign aid levels, not a single Republican office responded to Al-Monitors request for comment on Trumps recent foreign aid threat.
By PTI: Chandigarh, Dec 21 (PTI) A delegation of Congress MPs from Punjab led by state party chief and Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar today raised the issue of alleged "forced" conversion of Sikhs in Pakistan with External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

Delegation members including Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu said that they were concerned about the "forced" conversion of Sikhs to Islam in Pakistan and solicited the ministrys urgent intervention to protect the identity of the Sikh community settled there.

advertisement

Jakhar, in a party release here, said that after Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh raised the issue, the Centre has already directed the Indian High Commission in Pakistan to take it up at the highest level with Islamabad.

"However, we believe the matter to be extremely grave, therefore, it should be taken up personally with the Pakistani authorities without delay by the minister herself," he said.

He added that media reports suggested that a government official was involved in spearheading the conversion campaign in the Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

"In such circumstances, there is a dire need for the Indian government to engage directly with the government in Pakistan instead of routing it through the Indian High Commission," he added.

Jakhar said unless immediately nipped in the bud, the alleged forced conversions have the potential of escalating out of control, which would have a disastrous effect on the future of the Sikhs settled in the neighbouring country.

He said that in the long run, it could lead to total annihilation of the Sikh identity in Pakistan, which could also trigger a cascading impact on Sikhs living in other parts of the world.

The delegation asked the MEA to intercede on a personal basis and pressurise the government in Islamabad to take strong steps to put a stop on the conversions and provide all necessary protection to the Sikh community the, release said. PTI CHS ADS

--- ENDS ---
December 20, 2017

CAIRO  Abdulrahman Sulaiman Salama had never believed weapons alone can resolve the war between the Egyptian army and extremist groups. The activist realized that although weapons can kill extremists, they can't kill their ideology, so he decided to fight back using an ideology of his own.

Salama established the Mariam Center to educate children in North Sinai. In addition to a standard curriculum, students are taught art and prepared to face the extremist ideology they might encounter in their lives. The project started with three volunteer teachers and 15 children, who attend for free.

Salama, along with a group of young people who share his dream and beliefs, began their work in mid-2017 in al-Madbaa, a neighborhood of al-Rawda village in el-Arish. Their dream was born in a small tent, where they first taught children who fled the clashes between the army and extremists in Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah.

Mariam Gomaa, a professor at el-Arish University and al-Madbaa resident, took it upon herself to teach the displaced children standard school curricula, in addition to painting and resisting anti-extremist discourse, while Salama handled the administrative tasks and drove the children to and from the center.

The project spread and attracted more children and volunteers, especially after the Ministry of Education backed the project and promised to reproduce it in other villages in North Sinai. But the Nov. 24 bombing of al-Rawda's mosque ended any chances for Salama to see his dream come to life, because he was one of the victims killed while praying there.

Khaled Zayed, a volunteer teacher at the center, told Al-Monitor, The idea of establishing an enlightenment center in al-Rawda village was to help the children who were displaced from Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah and moved here to al-Madbaa, which is about 5 kilometers [3 miles] from the nearest school. Gomaa feared these children would fall prey to extremist ideas if they remained uneducated, so she started teaching them in the tent, making use of the little resources she had and with Salamas help.

He added, The media first publicized this initiative, then the Ministry of Education announced its support for the project and a room was built to replace the tent as the headquarters of the enlightenment center. The ministry pledged to support the project and spread it throughout Sinai because it teaches children national principles and aims to fight terrorism. An anti-extremism culture is definitely worthy of support.

Zayed noted, The project aims to teach children the history of Egypt and Sinai, as well as enlighten them using various arts, such as music, acting and painting, all of which are helpful in countering extremism. He continued, We have lost one of the projects founders in the bombing of al-Rawda mosque. Salama was so keen on spreading education and anti-extremist ideology, and we will carry on with his dream of developing the center.

Zayed pointed out, The enlightenment center and its members have developed a plan, which is to work toward the psychological rehabilitation of children who witnessed the bombing of the mosque. With the help of psychologists, we will go around schools offering psychological support to these children.

Amal Nasrallah, head of the English department at the University of Sinai and another volunteer, told Al-Monitor, We have encountered many obstacles, most notably the interruption of communication due to the difficult security situation. We have a hard time communicating with other volunteers. In addition, families fear for the safety of their children because of the terrorist operations, so we try to reassure them as much as we can and accompany their children from their homes and take care of them.

She added, We also are lacking in resources. Although the Ministry of Education adopted the project, it still needs support. We have a plan to reproduce it in every village in North Sinai, which requires more effort, more volunteers and more buildings.

She noted, Attention must be paid to remote and marginalized villages, which are a focus of extremist groups who exploit poverty and lack of education to spread their ideas among the people there. This is why it is so important for us to build enlightenment centers in these villages.

Nasrallah explained, We have a future plan to include parents, not just children, and develop age-appropriate curricula and activities to raise cultural awareness to protect them from extremist ideas.

Laila Murtaji, a representative of the Ministry of Education in North Sinai, told Al-Monitor, The ministry supports the project for its cultural importance and its national objectives. The governor of North Sinai, Gen. Abdel Fattah Harhour, met with Gomaa in this regard and I have visited the center to check in on children there after the large room was built.

Murtaji noted, The ministry supports any development activity in North Sinai, especially since the residents of Sinai are known for their patriotism. This volunteer enlightenment project is proof.
December 18, 2017

The Sinai Tribal Union is pushing to play a pivotal role in the ongoing confrontations between the Egyptian armed forces and extremist groups in the Sinai Peninsula, especially after the Nov. 24 attack that targeted the al-Rawda mosque, near el-Arish, killing 311 civilians. The union issued several statements announcing its support for the armed forces and its willingness to participate in armed confrontations against the extremist groups in Sinai.

The union consists of the 24 tribes of Sinai and is headed by Sheikh Ibrahim al-Argani. In an interview with Al-Monitor on Dec. 7 in Cairo, Argani said that the tribes were coordinating with the army to make extremists regret their actions, particularly in regard to the bombing of al-Rawda mosque, but did not specify in what way. He asserted that the al-Rawda attack had pushed the tribes to come together and overcome their differences. Argani also spoke about the government's development and investment plans for Sinai and the role of the Misr Sinai Investment Company, which the tribes founded in cooperation with the army.

Al-Monitor: What does the Union of Sinai Tribes think about the Nov. 24 bombing of al-Rawda mosque, near el-Arish, in North Sinai?

Argani: The attack targeting al-Rawda mosque shows how weak the extremist groups are. There is no real power in attacking and killing unarmed civilians while they pray. This is proof of a lack of human values.

Al-Monitor: Do you think that the bombing of al-Rawda mosque was targeting Sufis in Sinai? What is the message behind this incident?

Argani: The extremist groups were only trying to put on a show and create media hype to prove that they still have a strong presence in North Sinai. In addition, the incident intended to target Sufis in North Sinai, because these extremist organizations reject anyone that does not share their point of view, regardless of their religious or political affiliation.

Al-Monitor: In May, the Sinai tribes announced that they will engage in armed struggle against the extremist organizations. Will that confrontation develop after the bombing of al-Rawda mosque?

Argani: Indeed, a major development is expected. In fact, immediately after the bombing, the tribes began implementing an operation against extremist groups in cooperation with the army. We have issued several statements in this regard, namely a sharp statement on Nov. 30, calling on our tribes to take part in the cleansing of Sinai. All I can say is the tribes were very responsive, and many volunteered, but I cannot reveal any more details about the battle and those participating in it. With increased cooperation with the army, we will make [extremists] regret their actions.

Al-Monitor: How does the Union of Sinai Tribes play a role in uniting tribes and fighting extremist organizations? What is the purpose of this union?

Argani: The union consists of the 24 tribes present in Sinai. It is tasked with maintaining full coordination between the tribes themselves, especially in the fight against extremists. In addition, the union provides the army with information on the extremists activity and their whereabouts.

Al-Monitor: During a previous interview with Al-Monitor, spokesman for the Tarabin tribe Musa al-Dalah said, Not all Sinai tribes cooperated properly in the battle against Wilayat Sinai. Are there any differences between the tribes when it comes to this battle?

Argani: The ugliness of the recent incident and the extremists persistence in targeting innocent civilians urged the tribes to unite at this critical time.

Al-Monitor: The Union of Sinai Tribes announced in a Nov. 30 statement that it coordinates with the security services to support them in fighting extremists. What is the nature of this support?

Argani: We provide all the support the military might need, whether by volunteering to fight alongside it or by providing information. I cannot really reveal certain confidential details about our current work in the field in terms of our hand-in-hand confrontation, but the tribes insist on supporting the armed forces no matter what.

Al-Monitor: Does the bombing of al-Rawda mosque, which killed [311] people, reflect the state's failure to protect citizens in Sinai?

Argani: This incident has nothing to do with a security failure. There is no way we can guarantee the security of every mosque in North Sinai. There are 40 Sufi mosques in Sinai, and it is a shame that we could not predict the occurrence of such an incident.

Al-Monitor: After the incident, some called on the need to evacuate North Sinai, where the army is battling extremists, such as security expert and strategist Maj. Gen. Hussam Sweilem, who called for emptying the area of its residents so they would not be exploited by extremists to pressure the Egyptian state. What do you think about such calls?

Argani: Those making such calls do not understand the situation in Sinai. Evacuating Sinai would do the Egyptian army more harm than good, because tribes know the exact whereabouts of extremists. [In case of evacuation], the armed forces would have no other source of information, and Sinai would become home to extremists alone. The army never expressed desire to evacuate Sinai because it is well aware of the importance of keeping us here.

Al-Monitor: What kind of development projects does Sinai need?

Argani: The army and Sinai tribes founded Misr Sinai Investment Company in August 2014, and I was appointed chairman. The 24 tribes cooperated with the armed forces, represented by the National Service Projects Authority, in establishing the company, which is involved in several areas, including manufacturing marble and granite. A large marble factory will be opened in North Sinai in the coming days. Sinai needs numerous projects, such as paving roads and digging more wells, which the army is implementing in cooperation with the tribes.

Al-Monitor: How does the state encourage businessmen to invest in Sinai?

Argani: The state facilitates all necessary approvals for investment projects in Sinai and is willing to partner with all businessmen wishing to invest here in order to reassure them, while providing all the services they might need.

Al-Monitor: How do you see the future in Sinai?

Argani: I am optimistic about Sinais future, especially after we succeed in eliminating the Islamic State [IS]. Sinai will be a witness to much-needed development efforts, since areas with weak development attract IS. Although we cannot specify an exact day for it, the battle to eliminate IS is approaching.
December 20, 2017

Amid speculation about an increase in gasoline prices in Iran, reports of a 70% surge in the salaries of parliament members have infuriated both public opinion and the media.

President Hassan Rouhani recently presented his budget bill to parliament for the next Iranian year (beginning in March)  a budget that faced serious criticism for dramatic increases in gasoline prices and the departure tax and a massive cut in cash handouts, among other measures.

An Iranian under the name MohammadMoayer2 tweeted Dec. 19, Why should the salary of incompetent parliament members surge [when] their services dont increase?

Another user identifying himself as Mostafa tweeted Dec. 20, Now I dont know why these parliament members [have decided] to increase their salary when they dont need it [at all]. They spent at least millions [of tomans] to become candidates and then members of parliament.

While a number of parliament members have denied reports of an impending salary surge, a few have confirmed it could take place and spoken in its favor.

On Dec. 18, deputy parliament Speaker Masoud Pezeshkian said, The issue of a 70% increase in parliament members' income has been discussed, but it hasnt been passed yet.

Pezeshkian, a Reformist, added, I state clearly that the parliament member salary is less than the [salary] of their drivers  and I can prove this.

In reaction to these reports, Reformist parliament member Parvaneh Salahshouri said Dec. 18, I have seen the reports, but I couldnt believe it. I cant accept this [surge in] salary while the people are under [financial] pressure. I will certainly oppose it if it turns out to be true. You can be sure that other parliament members will oppose it.

She also said parliament members receive around 70 million Iranian rials per month, which is equivalent to $1,957 using the official exchange rate.

In reaction to the ballyhoo, parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Dec. 19, They say that the salary of parliament members has increased by 70%. This is 100% untrue.

He added, Those who once slammed populism are now entangled by new populism. What is this atmosphere [against parliament members] that you have created?

In other news, Hamid Baghaie, who was vice president in charge of executive affairs when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president, said Dec. 20 that he has been sentenced to 63 years in prison. In response, the judiciary denied Baghaies remarks, hinting that the time he is to spend in prison is less than 63 years. The Mizan News Agency, which belongs to the judiciary, quoted a jurist saying Dec. 20, Basically, nobody can be sentenced to prison for 63 years based on Iran's legal system. You should consult [jurists] before lying. Moreover, Ali Akbar Javanfekr said Dec. 20 that a verdict has also been issued in his case; Javanfekr was a media adviser in the Ahmadinejad administration.

Of note, verbal clashes between Ahmadinejad and judiciary chief Sadegh Amoli Larijani have increased lately, with both sides accusing the other of various charges. Ahmadinejad believes the trials of his entourage and the verdicts issued against them are not fair and are politically motivated.
December 20, 2017

Is an earthquake likely to occur in Tehran? What will happen if there is an earthquake in Tehran? These questions have recently been discussed in Iranian media and among the public in the aftermath of the earthquake in the west of the country in November. In response to these questions, Iranian experts and officials warn that a possible future earthquake in Tehran would bring much death and destruction.

On Nov. 14, Tehran City Council Chairman Mohsen Hashemi stated at a council meeting that the Iranian capital is expecting a massive earthquake in the near future, adding, According to the experts, Tehran experiences an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 every 150 years. Currently, it has been 35 years since the last due date for another earthquake.

Of note, the capital was as recently as Dec. 20 rocked by a 5.2 magnitude quake with its epicenter in the nearby city of Karaj. According to a recent study carried out by the Seismology and Engineering Risk Department at the Research Center of the Ministry of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, if an earthquake does strike Tehran, anywhere between 200,000 and 300,000 buildings will be destroyed and more than 1 million people will lose their lives. Tehran currently has a population of more than 13 million.

On Nov. 7, in an interview with Shahrvand Daily, Ali Beitollahi, the head of the abovementioned research center, stated that Tehran is one of the world's top five cities at risk of an earthquake, There are a lot of fault lines in Tehran; there are in total about 30 fault lines from north to the south.  Therefore, if there is an earthquake, it will be massive.

I climb the fountain again. The street looks like a dining table whose tablecloth has been dragged. People are scattered around and beating themselves.  I look at the most beautiful street in Tehran for the last time. Perhaps I will never see it this beautiful again. This is a quote from the novel Dont Worry written by Iranian author Mahsa Mohebali. The novel begins with an earthquake in Tehran and follows 24 hours in the life of a young woman named Shadee, who is an addict. Shadee has run out of drugs and left her house in search of the next fix. Tehran continues to shake in the aftermath of the earthquake as Shadee tells of what is happening in the streets, the chaos, people behaving abnormally, violence and fear in the city.

The 2008 novel has won two independent literary awards in Iran and was printed as an eighth edition in only two years. In February 2009, in an interview with BBC Persian, the author of the book talked about her reasons for deciding to portray the Iranian capital in the aftermath of an earthquake, saying, I think Tehran is constantly about to explode. It is like an overflowing bowl of hot soup. Now imagine there is an earthquake in this city. When a low magnitude earthquake struck Tehran following the earthquake in Bam, many people left their homes and spent the night in the parks. A lot of people started behaving abnormally.

During the past few years, numerous Iranian officials and experts have warned that the capital is not equipped to face an earthquake. On Feb. 22 this year, Amir Mohsen Ziaie, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, talked about Tehrans inability to face an earthquake in an interview with Jam-e-Jam Online, saying, Neither the citizens nor the officials are paying any attention to this issue and dont understand that we are in fact sitting on a time bomb.

On May 1, Esmail Najar, the head of Irans Crisis Management Organization, spoke about the same issue in a special meeting arranged by the organizations coordinating council, saying, An earthquake in Tehran will undermine national security. Nonstandard buildings and worn-out urban structures are among the reasons why any possible earthquake in Tehran will have very destructive consequences.

According to Beitollahi, one-fifth of the buildings in Tehran are located in the worn-out urban zone, which has narrow passages, old buildings and unreachable areas. He talked about this issue in an interview with the semi-official ISNA news agency on Dec. 12, saying, High-rises have been built next to roads that are 6-8 meters [roughly 20-26 feet] wide, and it is hard to even imagine what the rescue operations in these areas would be like if Tehran is ever hit by an earthquake. Therefore, the number of secondary victims of a possible earthquake in Tehran can rise dramatically. The Tehran municipality, which is one of the legal organizations monitoring urban construction in Tehran, is also the organization in charge of managing the aftermath of any possible earthquake in the city.

On Nov. 23, in an interview on Iranian state television, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Ali Najafi said, The crisis management system of Tehran is in some ways efficient and we should not worry about it  an earthquake is a natural event and we should not be afraid of it. We should instead try to reduce the risks associated with such an incident as much as possible.

Ali Najafi further noted that better buildings are a vital matter, saying, The buildings should be able to resist an earthquake of magnitude 7.0. However, some of Tehrans buildings are not even able to resist an earthquake of magnitude 5.0.

On Oct. 25, the head of the Center for Prevention and Crisis Management of Tehrans municipality, Ahmad Sadeghi, talked about the process of renovating Tehrans worn-out urban structure in an interview with Fars News Agency, saying, If we go forward with this pace, we need at least 100 more years to renovate Tehran and make it strong enough to resist a possible earthquake.

According to research conducted more than two decades ago by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Tehran's fault lines can produce earthquakes of magnitude 7.0. Ebrahim Akasheh, a former university professor who is known as Irans father of geophysics and seismology, discussed this research during an interview with ISNA on Jan. 24, saying, Back when this research was conducted, some of Tehrans fault lines were identified. Today, due to further research done in this field, even more fault lines are recognized. The energy that will be released by these fault lines is enough to create, in my opinion, a great deal of human casualties. According to the data available from this research, it will be impossible to save Tehran if such an earthquake occurs. This reality should not frighten us; it should instead motivate us to take necessary measures to reduce the citys vulnerability to earthquakes.
December 21, 2017

One year ago, President Hassan Rouhani unveiled an Iranian bill of rights, called the Citizens Rights Charter, that would offer Iranians more personal freedoms. On Dec. 19, Rouhani, along with his advisers and Cabinet and parliamentary officials, marked the one-year anniversary of his citizens rights charter at a gathering called the National Conference Report on the Progress and Solutions for the Realization of Citizens Rights.

During his speech, Rouhani called for more transparency in the country and for Iranians to hold government institutions accountable. Rouhani stressed the importance of applying the law impartially to all, saying, No one, not even the prophet of Islam, is above the law. Rouhani recalled how the founder of the Islamic Republic, former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, used to insist on the law being applied equally, saying, Everyone must act according to the law. This is what citizens rights are, citizens rights means everyone acting according to the law.

Rouhani said in terms of transparency, Everyone must know what is happening and what decisions are being made. This is why I gave the Cabinet instructions, and it is being implemented now," that every policy that a ministry is considering or adopting "be published publicly on the website.

Rouhani also praised Iranians on social media for discussing and criticizing his Cabinets budget proposal on Twitter and Telegram. You do not know how happy I have been lately, he said. You might not believe it if I told you how happy I am that when our budget went to parliament, the next day on social media there was a storm. How beautiful. Everyone came on the scene, they gave their opinions and criticized. They criticized the budget, the administration and the president. He called on the people to not let go of their criticisms and continue to keep a critical eye on the budget and the various government-funded institutions and how they are spending their money.

On his decision to publicly name the institutions that receive government money, Rouhani said, We gave those institutions money and if it was one day late they would protest. Later when we would ask them where they spent their money, they would say it has nothing to do with us. Rouhani said that to fight corruption, the public should know all the institutions that receive government money. He said, If we create a hundred institutions to fight corruption, if dozens of courts fight corruption, we still cannot uproot corruption until people can see transparently what we are doing. We have to be in a glass room; the spotlight has to be on us and everyone has to witness us.

While some on social media praised the presidents call for more transparency, conservative media did not buy it. Kayhan newspaper said that while Rouhani has given speeches about transparency, his government has not provided information on how much gasoline the country has imported. Kayhan said the Rouhani administration has not published the numbers because it would be a blow to the government's efforts on self-sufficiency.
December 21, 2017

CAIRO  The Islamic State (IS) is remobilizing in southern and central Libya, penetrating towns where lawlessness, tribal tensions and poverty are rife. No longer able to seize large swaths of land, the group is waging an insurgency to weaken the countrys competing authorities. The strategy is working, though experts and fighters from the western port city of Misrata, do not expect IS to reclaim the power it had in 2016.

The aspiring caliphate has a personal vendetta with Misrata after forces from the city  united under the banner of Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous (BAM)  defeated IS in the southern city of Sirte in December 2016. US airstrikes, which supported the forces, were vital to the mission.

BAM is nominally aligned with the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, and continues to cooperate with the United States to hunt down IS cells south of Sirte today. On Nov. 17 and 19, US drones ostensibly hit two IS outposts in the central town of al-Fuqaha, Libyan officials told reporters.

The group isnt going to reclaim the strength it once had, Col. Ali Rafideh, a fighter in BAM, told Al-Monitor. IS militants are hiding in the desert, but we are looking for them. We know that most Libyans do not accept this group in our country.

IS still poses a major threat, even though it is on the run. On Oct. 4, the group hit a courthouse in Misrata, killing four people and wounding more than 40. Field Marshal Khalifa Hifters self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA)  the nemesis of militias in western Libya  is also struggling to keep the group at bay. In August, IS ostensibly attacked an LNA checkpoint in the southern town of Jufra, beheading nine fighters and two civilians.

BAM and LNA are fighting Daesh [Arabic acronym for IS] on different fronts and under different leadership, Rafideh said. Thats the biggest issue Libya faces to fully defeat the group.

Young Libyans at least are not as drawn to IS as they used to be. Lydia Sizer, a terrorist expert focusing on Libya and a guest contributor to the Middle East Institute, explained that the groups senior leadership is mostly made up of Saudi nationals. Tunisians, Egyptian and Sudanese men comprise much of its lower ranks. Men from Senegal, Eritrea, Chad and Gambia are also reportedly fighting with IS in Libya.

IS does not enjoy significant domestic support among the Libyan population, Sizer told Al-Monitor. IS [in Libya] also doesnt have the attraction it once did for recruits; it no longer has significant territorial possessions, and its seen globally as being on the defensive.

The group can still target civilian centers to damage the legitimacy of ruling powers. Tarek Megerisi, a Libya analyst and frequent contributor to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that stopping them requires competing authorities to come together to address Libyas security vacuum. IS particularly poses a major threat to civilians in Sirte and Misrata, and in areas surrounding the southern town of Ubari, which competing governments have neglected, enabling IS to bribe residents for shelter.

Some semblance of economic and security control must be levied across Libya, so that communities arent desperate to tolerate the risk of an IS presence for money, Megerisi told Al-Monitor. [IS] ability to move across the country would then be heavily compromised.

Uniform governance is unlikely without a new political agreement that binds all of Libyas major players. However, IS appears more willing to cooperate with rival jihadis and Islamist groups, hoping to subsume them if it regains enough power.

Hifter's rhetoric is largely to blame. Since returning to Libya in 2014  after spending more than two decades in exile in Virginia  the strongman has branded all his opponents as terrorists. His bravado is pushing several armed groups, which might have been willing to negotiate, into the hands of extremists. He also refuses to compromise, threatening to retake the capital Tripoli by force, though he does not have the manpower to do it.

In Megerisis view, IS will try to exploit the ongoing power struggle. The group could, for instance, recruit fighters that were uprooted by Hifters forces in the east. IS may also pay smugglers in the north to maneuver around the country, while embedding cells in the pro-Moammar Gadhafi town of Bani Walid, located in the east. Marginalized by the revolution, tribes in Bani Walid are staunch opponents of the current political order.

The trajectory of the country is toward further conflict between large parties and an increasing fracturing of existing power groups and militias, Megerisi said. This will increase the intensity of local conflicts and provide more cover for IS to act as mercenaries.

Civil society is also assuming a larger role to curtail extremism due to the absence of durable state institutions. Emad Badi, a youth activist from Tripoli, told Al-Monitor that it is particularly important to assuage tribal tensions in the south, where fighting over smuggling routes and oil fields is common.

Community divisions have resulted in some tribes coordinating with IS [to settle scores with their rivals], said Badi. If civil society can improve social cohesion, then terrorist groups will have a harder time to exploit disadvantaged youth, or create further chaos.

While that may be true, weak governance and the absence of a national army remain the biggest hindrances to eradicating IS. According to Rafideh, too many militias have political ambitions, while others prefer profiteering from the chaos than combating terrorism.

The only way to defeat IS is to unify our country, he said. We need an army that unites fighters from across the country. Libya needs an army that is solely responsible for protecting the homeland and its people.
December 21, 2017

A pair of Saudi sisters is struggling to reverse a Turkish court's decision to deport them saying they would face certain violence back home. The case has received little attention either in Turkey or abroad. But Turkeys mass circulation daily Hurriyet splashed their story on its front page today together with a photograph of the wan-looking brunettes. The Turkish headline read, Dont send us to our death.

Ashwaq Hamoud, 30, and Areej Hamoud, 28, said they left the kingdom in late February, fleeing physical abuse from male family members. The violence ranged from beatings to being locked in their room and denied food, Hurriyet reported. But a Turkish court has rejected pleas that their deportation order be overturned.

The girls were detained in Istanbul on May 16 after their father told Turkish authorities that his daughters were planning to join terrorist groups in Syria. Human Rights Watch, which has called attention to their case, suggested the sisters may have attracted notice when they attempted to follow up on applications for residency permits.

According to their lawyer Serdarhan Topo, the sisters boarding passes showed that they had attempted to flee to New Zealand on Feb. 8 via Hong Kong from Abu Dhabi. Officials who suspected their real purpose was to seek asylum, not leisure, barred them from the flight. So the women decided to go to Istanbul instead.

The sisters odyssey contradicts their fathers claims that they were planning to go to Syria. Until Turkey began tightening its border with Syria, which stretches more than 800 kilometers (500 miles), the country was the main transit route for foreign fighters and their families who wanted to be part of the Islamic States now crumbling caliphate and its fallen capital Raqqa. The sisters deny that their final destination was Syria.

Sarah Leah Whitson is Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. She told Al-Monitor, We do find the [sisters] case convincing as it fits the same pattern of abused girls and women that we have documented in Saudi Arabia for many years, and in particular adult women who have tried to flee from their families. Whitson added, The proof they have offered is their testimony, which we find credible. I dont know why Turkish authorities have rejected the first case [to halt their deportation]. They should be challenged on that, because we do believe that the women face a serious risk of detention if they are forcibly returned to Saudi Arabia.

Whitson pointed to the case of Dina Ali Lasloom, a 24-year-old Saudi woman who was placed in indefinite detention in the kingdom after seeking to escape continued abuse.

Another Saudi woman, Mariam al-Oteibi, 29, tried to make a break for freedom from her native al-Qassim province and is now sitting in jail as well. If deported, the Hamoud sisters will likely suffer a similar fate and possibly so-called honor violence meted out to women deemed to have besmirched a familys honor.

Saudi Arabia, at the behest of its Reformist Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has made some tentative moves toward giving its women some rights. The most notable change was a decision in September allowing them to finally drive that will kick in next summer. But rights groups say they remain very much in the patriarchial vise under the controversial guardianship system, which dictates among other things that women must have a male guardian's approval to marry, travel and apply for a passport.

There is no known criminal investigation of the Hamoud sisters by Turkish authorities. Topo told Hurriyet that he had lodged an application with the Istanbul Administrative Court to halt the sisters deportation but that it had been rebuffed. Topo then applied to the Constitutional Court to issue an injunction to prevent any sudden deportations from taking place. The countrys top court refused to do so for one of the sisters, Ashwaq. The courts decision for Areej remains unclear. Topo has not responded to Al-Monitors request for comment.
December 21, 2017

An interesting episode unfolded Dec. 13 in the Turkish parliament as Osman Baydemir, a deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) representing the province of Sanliurfa, took the rostrum and began talking about his and his party's mission.

I, as a Kurd, as a representative of Kurdistan, he said at one point, I believe I have a role, a mission to make this roof the common roof of the Turk and Kurd. Baydemir could not continue much beyond that, as Deputy Speaker Aysenur Bahcekapili from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) asked Baydemir to stop talking, muted his microphone, and then asked him, Where is Kurdistan? There is no such region in Turkey. Baydemir responded, It is right here, thumping the left side of his chest, over his heart.

Most of the deputies were not impressed with his response. A quick vote was taken, resulting in Baydemir being found guilty by the AKP and its new ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), of using the word Kurdistan. As punishment, Baydemir was banned from two parliamentary sessions and had his monthly salary cut by two-thirds. In defense of Baydemir, other HDP deputies reminded those present about someone else who had uttered the word Kurdistan from the very same pulpit: Turkey's current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Back in 2013, Erdogan had slammed the two opposition parties, the Peoples Republican Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), both of which were opposed to Erdogans Kurdish opening. Erdogan had said, MHP and CHP [parliament members] should read the first official records of the parliament. They will see the word 'Kurdistan' in those records. When they look into the past, they will see that the eastern and southeastern [regions] are the Kurdistan region of the Ottoman [Empire].

So how is it that the concept of Kurdistan, which Erdogan defended four years ago in reference to the Ottoman past, is now punishable by Erdogans own party?

The simple answer is that the Turkey of 2013 and the Turkey of 2017 are very different places. In 2013, the AKP still imagined itself as a Reformist party questioning the century-old political taboos of the republic, including the hypersensitive Kurdish question. That is why the party that represents the most uncompromising version of Turkish nationalism, the MHP, was up-in-arms over the AKP, constantly accusing it of high treason. The Gulenists, also key actors at the time, likewise opposed certain aspects of Erdogans Kurdish opening, such as the peace process with the armed and outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In todays Turkey, however, the reforms and openings of the AKP have long passed. The party today only speaks in the most ominous language of old Turkey, which is all about deadly threats, pernicious enemies, evil traitors and the ruthless power of the state. The peace process with the PKK collapsed in summer 2015, with the AKP embracing the hawkish security policies that it had formerly opposed. As a result, the MHP became the AKPs new best friend. In fact, the parties now co-exist as if two pillars of an Islamo-nationalist regime spearheaded by Erdogan.

Such dramatic swings in politics are a bit bizarre, but they are not unusual. Yet there is something more to Turkeys swings: When politics in Turkey go in a certain direction, everything else follows. The media follows. Academia follows. The very concept of truth follows.

Here is the truth about Kurdistan, at least in my view: An independent country of Kurdistan has never existed, but Kurdistan has always existed as a cultural region. The Ottomans, as Erdogan rightly noted, never shied away from using the term Kurdistan to define their predominantly Kurdish provinces. They even created an administrative unit called Kurdistan in 1847, which was renamed Diyarbakir in 1867.

So, today, can a parliamentarian from Turkeys predominantly Kurdish provinces claim to be from Kurdistan? If he or she is referring to a historical-cultural region, yes. By doing so, he or she would also be echoing the political movements, as well as terrorist groups like the PKK, that aim to create an independent Kurdistan by carving large chunks of land from Turkey. Most Turks are rightly concerned about this, as would anyone facing a violent separatist movement.

The solution, however, is not to deny historical terms or ban their mere utterance, but to have an open, honest dialogue about the political meaning we impart on them today. Yet such a dialogue is either impossible or ineffective in Turkey, precisely because of the aforementioned problem of politics.

In Turkey, politics  and sometimes a single political leader  defines everything. In the current climate, Erdogan defines everything, and all else follows: the entire AKP, the whole bureaucracy, pro-Erdogan media, pro-Erdogan intellectuals, university administrations, and countless numbers of NGOs that are in fact under the government's thumb. If Erdogan initiates a Kurdish opening, then Kurdistan exists for them. If the Kurdish opening closes, Kurdistan ceases to exist for them.

The same relativism applies in every other arena. The entire world gets defined and redefined according to the machinations of Turkey's leader. Thus, the European Union can go from being a beacon of democracy that Turkey should emulate to being a crusader alliance that Turks should be alarmed about. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can go from best friend to evil dictator and then back to being not so bad again. Ahmet Davutoglu can be hailed as the great teacher who will lead the AKP for the next decade and then be dismissed as someone compromised by the Western cabals conspiring against Erdogan. Yesterdays heroes can be todays traitors, and todays heroes can be gone tomorrow. There is only one constant truth  the will of the leader. All else is contingent.

One could call the prevailing situation Turkeys post-truth moment. In it, truth does exist, but only as defined by power. Turkey will not make much progress, however, unless it reverses the nature of this relationship: determining power according to the truth, instead of determining the truth according to power.
The Android Wear app surpassed 10 million installs earlier this week, as revealed by its recently updated listing on the Google Play Store. The actual number of active Android Wear-powered devices is presumed to be higher since the figure doesnt include iPhone users for obvious reasons and doesnt account for owners of multiple wearables. The number may also be somewhat inflated since the Android Wear app can be downloaded even without a compatible wearable but that scenario doesnt seem likely.

Following its debut in early 2014, Android Wear went through several iterations and powered dozens of smartwatches from manufacturers like ASUS, LG, Huawei, Fossil, and Sony. Even Samsung gave the platform a try with the Gear Live but ultimately ended up committing to its own Tizen operating system. Early estimates put the shipments of Android Wear devices at north of 700,000 units in the first six months of their availability, so the ecosystem gained additional traction if it managed to grow to approximately 10 million devices after two and a half years. Android Wear still isnt considered the dominant wearable platform in the world as this product category remains largely reliant on fitness trackers made by likes of Fitbit, Samsung, and Xiaomi, whereas smartwatches remain a somewhat niche category that primarily caters to tech enthusiasts.

Unlike smartphones, wearables also havent been enjoying a steady pace of technological advancements in recent years, discouraging even existing customers from upgrading to new devices as most consumers saw little point in doing so, according to some industry watchers. While Google was repeatedly called upon to give the platform an additional push by delivering something in the vein of a Pixel Watch, the company has yet to launch such a solution, even though recent reports indicate that at least one of its divisions is now developing unspecified wearables. With some wearable manufacturers like ASUS and Sony essentially giving up on this product segment in recent times, the future of the platform remains uncertain. At the same time, fitness trackers are said to be gaining additional momentum and are expected to become the first wearable category to start enjoying mainstream popularity.
Kensington Palace has released official portraits to mark the couple's engagement, on social media.

By India Today Web Desk: It looks like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are still living their romance to the hilt.

There is already enough buzz around the world about the royal redhead and his fiance, ever since the announcement of their much-awaited engagement.

And now, the couple has released their official portraits for the same.

Kensington Palace has released three such photographs of the couple on its social-media page, and have captioned the posts, ''Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle have chosen to release this official portrait photograph to mark their engagement.''

advertisement

The pictures were released ahead of Prince Harry and Meghan's royal wedding that will be held on May 19, 2018, at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

One picture has Prince Harry and Meghan sharing a smile in a monochrome shade.

In the other picture, Harry is seen posing in a blue suit with his fiance, who looks beautiful in an embellished, sheer outfit.

Both the pictures have Meghan flashing her much-talked-about engagement ring, the one that also carries pieces of diamonds from Princess Diana's jewellery.

Kensington Palace also released a candid snapshot of the couple, from the day of their portrait sittings.

The pictures were clicked by Alexi Lubomirski, earlier this week, at Frogmore House, Windsor, mentioned Kensington Palace in its post.

--- ENDS ---
Android 8.0 (Oreo) is the second newest version of Googles Android OS available, still making its way to many flagship handsets, and Google has put out a detailed blog post that goes over some of the new security measures in the OS, such as changes to Verified Boot and hardware-based security. Oreo boasts support for security features like an OEM Lock Hardware Abstraction Layer, which allows manufacturers to implement whatever level of protection over the core OS and kernel code in their devices that they want, along with a special process that sandboxes users in-browser web activity from the rest of the system by splitting off WebView into different processes with different privilege levels.

The changes to Verified Boot take heavy advantage of Project Treble, Googles efforts to make a modular base for the Android system, and are extensive enough to warrant being called Android Verified Boot 2.0. The changes include common header and footer code across the board to make it easier to tell when something is amiss at boot, and a feature that blocks device boot if the firmware version has been downgraded. As far as hardware security, Oreo adds in support for a wide range of different types, and the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are the first consumer smartphones to use such technology. They have a specialized chipset on board thats made to verify code in real time and resist both physical and remote data attacks and exploits. Google welcomes all manufacturers to take advantage of this new feature of Oreo and put their own hardware security into new handsets. Furthermore, all Google Mobile Services devices going forward must be equipped with Key Attestation, a technology that allows for the creation and use of complex encryption keys for various purposes both before and after boot.

The Android platform in general has had its security hardened in many ways with Oreo. For starters, Project Treble allows vendor HALs for individual device components to run sandboxed from the main core of the system, keeping the device safe from exploits that take advantage of that piece of hardware. Likewise, most aspects of how Android handles media have been retooled to lower privilege levels and sandbox media containers and protocols from the bulk of the systems code. Unused system calls have been locked away from app and user access to prevent exploits, kernel and user layers have been separated completely, and changes to the way Android devices identify themselves have been made in order to prevent authentication spoofing.
Nokia Mobile has released a new television advertisement, called Be The Gift and accessible both via YouTube and embedded below, that takes a decisive step away from touting its latest devices and focuses on people. In fact, throughout the entire video, although its main characters are using Nokia handsets, theres not a single mention of any of the companys latest devices. It does cleverly highlight some of the latest Android features and applications at various points, including video chatting, showing off how well Nokias smartphones handle those types of tasks. That may seem a bit odd with all of the current releases from the company, ranging from the budget-friendly Nokia 2 to the top-of-the-line Nokia 9 flagship. However, Nokias message here appears to be centered around touting brand-quality and promoting goodwill, as opposed to simply touting the latest specs and prices for its product line.

Set to Freya Ridings Lost Without You and first published on December 19, the video draws viewers attention to a relationship that is presumably between a mother and her college-age son. The young man heads off to school and the two stay in touch over some extended period of time, remaining in touch through text messages, photo sharing, and video calls. However, coupling the song played over the course of the minute and a half long video with some of the more emotional moments found throughout results in a genuinely stirring experience. Encompassed in the video are moments of joy and laughter, expertly offset by moments of striking sadness and loneliness. The video, as might be expected, ends with a happy reunion between mother and child. It also fittingly includes a message reminding users to switch off this Christmas and spend time with their loved ones. The accompanying video description on YouTube, meanwhile, brings the message of the video together by reminding users that technology is a great way to stay connected but that they shouldnt allow that same technology to get in the way.

With the holidays just around the corner for many, setting aside the clamor of device launches and Android rumors, Nokia arguably could not have created a more heartfelt brand advertisement. In any case, it is certainly well worth a watch and anybody interested in checking the video out for themselves can watch it here or head over to the source link below.
The 3GPP recently completed and announced the first version of the true 5G standard and kicked off the implementation and buildout race, and chip giant Qualcomm has taken a moment to gather its own thoughts on the matter and the relevant thoughts of a number of other industry players in a blog post. The new standard is referred to as 5G NR, short for 5G New Radio, because it will require entirely new radio equipment, separate from whats currently in wide use for 4G LTE networks. While LTE is not dead by any means, 5G NR is the new direction of the industry, and major players have already been working toward preparing for it and making the transition as easy as possible on themselves and their partners.

Qualcomm kicked off the proceedings by declaring its delight at being part of this significant milestone in the development of the mobile web and worldwide networking. China Mobile says that the completion of the standard is the first step to a unified worldwide wireless networking setup, while AT&T says that it has enabled the industry to move forward in regards to equipment advancement and the availability of consumer-facing solutions that utilize next-generation networks. Deutsche Telekom said that the completion of the new standard means that carriers and equipment manufacturers must double down on standalone 5G solutions in order to deliver the full power and value of 5G networking and features to customers. Huawei echoed China Mobile, and said that it would commit to the development of a single, worldwide 5G standard to unify network equipment development and carrier buildout. Nokia, meanwhile, is looking forward to all of the new technological advancements that 5G will enable. Samsung pledged to expedite the development and delivery of rich 5G solutions all across the stack, from network backhaul all the way to consumer devices.

The finishing of this initial standard is one of the biggest milestones that the world of mobile networking technology has seen in years, and marks the dawning of a new era in mobile. Now, ground-based telecoms, device manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, and wireless carriers have common ground to work from in bringing 5G solutions to consumers and innovators, with the promise of self-driving cars, advanced virtual reality, seamless high-speed networking, and other advancements that havent even been dreamed up yet just waiting for them all to get together and make good on the promise of the 5G standard.
Samsungs current chief technology officer for the mobile division, Rhee In-jong, has officially parted ways with the company, saying that he felt he could not fulfill his fatherly duties to his daughter while in his current employment. Rhee sent out an email to Samsung staff saying that his daughter had recently been deployed to Iraq as a member of the United States Armed Forces, and he needed to leave his role at Samsung in order to be there for her as he felt he should. His resignation is effective immediately, and there is reportedly no fixed time frame for when he will return, if he will be coming back at all.

Rhee joined Samsung back in 2011, after spending some time teaching computer science at North Carolina State University. Before falling in with Samsung, Rhee devoted his time to research, and wound up developing BIC and CUBIC, two of the TCP congestion algorithms at the core of how Linux-based systems worldwide handle internet traffic. His passion for development carried him during his time at Samsung, seeing him helping to develop the Knox security suite and Samsung Pay. He eventually wound up as the lead developer for Bixby, the voice assistant that debuted alongside the Galaxy S8 flagship family.

The engineering position where he accomplished all of those feats was actually not In-jongs current when the big corporate shakeup within Samsung happened at the end of October; he was already the mobile divisions chief technology officer at that point, among other roles. With executives reshuffled into different divisions and some leaving the company entirely, the fact that In-jong was kept where he was serves as a testament to his accomplishments and his fitness for that particular position. The news of his daughters deployment was enough to shake In-jong out of his newly-earned role after serving for just over a month. Rhee has yet to make any announcements on the matter. His LinkedIn page still lists him as being employed with Samsung. Likewise, Samsung has yet to officially say anything on the matter, and has thus not yet named a successor for In-jongs multiple positions.
Xiaomi has introduced support for the Google Tez payment service to its Mi online store in India as well as the Mi Store app in a bid to help customers in the country make payments without relying on physical cash. The payment option allows users to make direct online payments from their bank accounts, and this capability is now extended to Xiaomis online store and mobile app designed to help consumers pick up and check out products they want to buy from the Chinese consumer electronics company.

With the new update, you can use Google Tez to pay for items on Mi.com or via the Mi Store app by clicking on the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) option and then choose Tez, after which you will need to key in the UPI ID thats visible in your Google Tez profile. The payment app was launched in India in September, with support from at least 55 banks in the country including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and State Bank of India, among others. Upon its India debut, Google Tez included support for a number of languages in the country such as Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. As part of efforts to boost its user base in the country, Google offered an incentive to let a customer win as much as Rs. 1000 (approximately $15) for every payment made through Google Tez.

Its worth noting that Google Tezs arrival for the Xiaomi Mi online store and Mi Store app serves up the search giants India-first mobile payment platform to Mi.coms more than 21 million unique monthly visitors in the country. Google also claims its Tez mobile payment system has been gaining much traction in a country where most consumers depend on cash-based transaction. As a matter of fact, the payment service has been used to process at least 140 million transactions in the country by about 12 million active users. Also, the payment method is supported by over 525,000 merchants in the country to accept payments, pay suppliers and send wages to their employees. Its also worth pointing out that this growth in Google Tez adoption occurred both in Indias metropolitan areas as well as in small towns nationwide.
BAE Systems has signed a contract with Czech manufacturer Laser Centrum CZ, Ltd. to produce mechanical components for the Swedish Armys Mjolner mortar system based on CV90 tracked combat vehicle chassis. The agreement represents BAE Systems first agreement with a supplier in the Northern Liberec region of the Czech Republic.



Project of Mjolner 120mm mortar system based on CV90 tracked combat vehicle chassis.(Picture source BAE Systems)

Laser Centrum, a family-run company established in 2006, offers precision metal sheet manufacturing services, including laser cutting, metal bending, and welding. The contract will support work for the Mjolner system, which is being integrated on the Swedish Armys fleet of CV90 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs).

This arrangement adds to the number of industrial cooperation relationships BAE Systems has established in the Czech Republic as it looks to support the Czech governments effort to replace the Armys legacy fleet of BMP II IFVs. BAE Systems is offering the CV90, an adaptable, combat-proven vehicle in service with numerous countries, including several who are members of NATO.

We are pleased to extend our industry network further into the north of the Czech Republic, while helping to support the regional economy and workforce through a high profile defence programme, said Peter Nygren, vice president of business development at BAE Systems Hagglunds business. This latest contract will also open the door for Laser Centrum to compete for production work in the defence sector, which only serves to strengthen the Czech Republics defence industry base over the long term.

The contract with Laser Centrum is the second made in 2017 with a Czech company for participation in the Swedish Mjolner system programme. In May, Czech manufacturer Ray Service was selected to develop and produce cabling assemblies for 40 mortar systems. Additionally, Slovak defence company Konstrukta-Defence, a.s was chosen to produce 84 120-millimeter barrels in September as part of a multimillion Euro contract for the mortar systems.
By PTI: By Aditi Khanna

London, Dec 21 (PTI)ABritains Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle today released a set of intimate photographs marking their engagement last month.

The 33-year-old fifth in line to the British throne is seen hand-in-hand with the 36-year-old American actress on the grounds of Frogmore House in Windsor in photographs taken by fashion photographer Alexi Lubomirski earlier this week.

advertisement

The series includes a black and white portrait of the couple embracing, with MeghanAin a sweater by designer Victoria BeckhamAwrapped in Prince Harrys Burberry coat as she holds his face and they both smile.

A colour photograph shows the prince and his bride-to-be, dressed in a flowing black dress with gold detailing, sitting on the steps at Frogmore House.

The prince is dressed in a blue suit and the couple have their heads pressedAtogether and are holding hands in a way that shows off Markles engagement ring, which was designed by the prince.

"Prince Harry and MsAMeghan Markle have chosen to release official photographs to mark their engagement. The photographs were taken by Alex Lubomirski earlier this week at Frogmore House, Windsor," Kensington Palace said in a statement.

Lubomirski thanked the couple for allowing him to take the official engagement portraits.

"Not only was it an incredible honour, but also an immense privilege to be invited to share and be a witness to this young couples love for each other. I cannot help but smile when I look at the photos that we took," he said.

New York-based Lubomirski is a former assistant to famous photographer Mario Testino, who created some of the most famous images of Prince Harrys mother Diana, Princess of Wales.

A second black and white image, shared by the couple via social media site Instagram as a "candid" shot shows them walking in embrace along the grounds of Frogmore House near Windsore Castle, the venue of their wedding set for May 19 next year.

"Thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments following the release of Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markles engagement photographs. The couple are so grateful for the warm and generous messages they have received during such a happy time in their lives," Kensington Palace said with the release on Instagram.

"As a way to say thank you, they have decided to share this candid photograph from the day of their portrait sittings directly with all of you," it adds.

advertisement

The pictures follow Markles official meet-up with Harrys extended family at the annual pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace hosted by his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II yesterday.

The British monarch traditionally hosts a festive lunch for her family in London before leaving for her private Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, where she spends the rest of the Christmas period.

In a break from royal tradition, Markle has also been invited to join the festivities at Sandringham this year despite not being officially married to Harry as yet. PTI AK MRJ

--- ENDS ---
Email Newsletters

Get the best of The Aspen Daily News in your inbox. Our newsletters are free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
By PTI: Chennai, Dec 21 (PTI) Polling passed off peacefully at the R K Nagar Assembly constituency here today, with an estimated 60 per cent of the electorate exercising their franchise by 3 pm in the prestigious bypoll. Election officials said the final voting figure is expected later tonight as many people were still waiting to cast their votes at 5 pm.

advertisement

An estimated 60 per cent of the 2,28,234 voters in the constituency exercised their franchise by 3 PM and there were no reports of any untoward incident, officials said.

In booth after booth, serpentine queues were witnessed right from 8 am when voting opened with women outnumbering men in several of them. A large number of people were awaiting their turn to vote even at the scheduled closure of voting at five pm.

All those who were present inside the polling stations ahead of the 5 pm deadline were given tokens by officials to ensure that they exercised their franchise.

There were sporadic complaints of snag in some EVMs, and consequential delay.

Also, some voters complained that their names were deleted, others claimed their names were struck off the rolls wrongly categorising them as "dead." The byelection is being held to fill the vacancy caused by the death of sitting MLA and late AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

The bypoll is being seen as an litmus test for the AIADMK, as it is the first election since JayalalithaaS death and after it got the Two Leaves election symbol back following merger of factions led by chief minister K Palaniswami and his present deputy and former rebel O Panneerselvem.

The key contenders in the poll are ruling AIADMKs E Madhusudhanan, main opposition DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh and sidelined AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, contesting as an independent.

Though as many as 59 candidates are in the fray including from BJP, it is mainly seen as a fight between the AIADMK, its rival faction led by Dhinakaran and DMK. Madhusudhanan is a party veteran who hails from the constituency as also Ganesh. Voting at 258 polling stations passed off peacefully with 2500 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces and 1638 election officers manning the poll process. RK Nagar, represented twice by Jayalalithaa, has an electorate of 2,28,234, comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 24 and the results are expected to be out by afternoon that day. PTI VGN SA BN

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
A US federal judge has dismissed a complaint accusing tech giants Facebook, Google, and Twitter of allowing Palestinian political party Hamas to use their sites to spread propaganda.Hamas is currently the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip. The US State Department lists it as a foreign terrorist organisation. The three firms were sued following a mass shooting in Dallas last year that killed five police officers. According to Bloomberg, the plaintiffs alleged the companies provided material support to Hamas.The ruling said the plaintiffs failed to show a connection between the companies alleged conduct and the shooting. It also cited a provision of the Communications Decency Act, which shields such websites from similar claims.Plaintiffs explicitly base their claims on the content that Hamas allegedly posts, because absent offending content, there would be no basis for even the frivolous causal connection that Plaintiffs have alleged between Defendants services and the Dallas attack, said the US District Court for the Northern District of California.According to Bloomberg Law data, the decision marks the fourth dismissal of complaints this year alleging social media provided services to terrorist groups.
Legal profession consulting firm BTI has identified the key trends for the year ahead.A substantial rise in outside counsel spend will be the headline trend, BTI says, and it will be the first such increase in 10 years as in-house teams shift U$3 billion in spending to outside firms. However, firms are likely to continue to reduce the number of law firms on their rosters.IP litigation is another trend expected to show increase with a 35% increase in the number firms expecting to face IP litigation in 2018 compared to this year.Clients will expect firms pitching for substantive work to offer transparency on budget and progress and will also demand a constant level of client service.Healthcare and financial services firms will be leading the increased spend on outside counsel.Thomson Reuters has hired Christine Gray as a head writer in its Practical Law Australia team.The former Gilbert + Tobin and Dentons lawyer leads the commercial real estate law team, writing resources for law firms and in-house legal departments.The growing team at Practical Law Australia includes Herbert Smith Freehills partner Peter Butler AM RFD who chairs its board of advisors.Britain may be divided on the pros and cons of leaving the European Union but the Law Society of England & Wales is focused on risks to law.The society has warned that the Brexit deal must avoid two cliff edges  one at the end of the period which began when Article 50 was invoked, and another at the end of the likely transition period that will follow.Regardless of when any future deal is agreed, a lengthy period to prepare for legal changes will be necessary, commented Law Society president Joe Egan. Leaving the EU will result in the single largest upheaval in law in the UKs history.The society has welcomed the likelihood of a transition period as a period of stability for business, but Egan says the future legal framework must be addressed urgently.We cant make these changes happen overnight and we urge the government to accept the committees recommendations on a transition and implementation period, he added.
Similarly to the 2019 Honda Insight, Acura describes the all-new RDX as a prototype that previews the production-ready model. Scheduled to go official on January 15, 2018, the third-generation RDX wont share its bits and bobs with the fifth generation of the Honda CR-V According to the automaker, the new RDX will ride on an Acura-exclusive platform that incorporates key design elements from the Precision Concept and Precision Cockpit. Designed and developed in the U.S. and built around the concept of Precision Crafted Performance, the newcomer promises more premium-oriented touches than ever before.The low-cut roofline and creased bodywork will make for a striking appearance, whilst the interior will be gifted with a waterfall arrangement for the infotainment controls and a large infotainment display. The teaser video, meanwhile, shows that the rear ends design is an overstyled interpretation of what youll find on the second-generation Mazda CX-5 Not much is known about whats hiding under the hood of the 2019 Acura RDX, though many people expect the 2.0-liter VTEC Turbo from Honda to be offered. Not the 310-hp engine in the award-winning Civic Type R hot hatchback, but a detuned version of the four-cylinder powerplant.Theres also the possibility Acura wont be bothered with forced induction, instead dropping the 3.5-liter direct-injection V6 in the engine bay. Codenamed J35, the naturally aspirated motor comes as standard in the MDX, whilst the Sport Hybrid relies on a 3.0-liter port-injected V6.On that note, a hybrid powertrain could be introduced to the RDX lineup after the non-hybrid model is revealed at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show.
To be more precise, a current E-Class LWB was recently spotted in Stuttgart and while some might wonder wether the three-pointed star is willing to introduce the model in its home market, the right-hand drive nature of the car only raises more questions.Nevertheless, the RHD configuration probably involves the Indian market. We have to mention that the E-Class L has been the most successful model of the automaker as far as the 2017 sales in India are concerned. The carmaker's local representatives have explained that 80 percent of these cars are handled by chauffeurs, so the LWB version makes full sense for the buyers in that part of the world.For one thing, the elongated Mercedes-Benz E-Class is brought to life by a joint-venture between Daimler and BAIC Motor, with the company being called Beijing Benz Automotive Co.The LWB aura of the car can clearly be seen thanks to the third side windows adorning the C-pillars, as well as the more generous rear doors. Speaking of which, the Merc measures 121.2 inches (3,079 mm) from axle to axle, which makes for a wheelbase boost of 5.5 inches (140 mm). As you can imagine, most of the extra length has been invested into providing extra rear passenger legroom (think: 5.3 inches or 134 mm).All in all, we wouldn't hold our breath for the Old Continent introduction of the elongated E-Class.
The date, coming courtesy of Australian publication Motoring , isnt joined by technical information of the mid-sized alternative to the F-150 Raptor. Be that as it may, Motoring understands that the hottest ever Ranger will be powered by a potent new four-cylinder turbo diesel. While that may be the case for the AU-spec Ranger Raptor thanks to the 2.0-liter EcoBlue diesel engine, Ford is cooking something else for the U.S.-spec model.As yours truly explained when Ford published the teaser video of the Ranger Raptor in September 2017, the induction noise and exhaust sound of the pre-production prototype resembles that of an EcoBoost-type V6 powerplant. Of course, there are modern diesel engines that sound a lot like theyre fueled by gasoline, though everyone can agree that there's close to no demand for a diesel-powered Ranger Raptor in the United States of America.The report published by Motoring further suggests the U.S. version is anticipated to use a detuned version of the F-150 Raptor s 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, though theres no official confirmation to support this tittle-tattle. One of the reasons why the 3.5-liter isnt likely for the Ranger Raptor is the engine bay, which up to this point, fits engines as large as the 3.2-liter inline-five Duratorq TDCi turbo diesel, which is also known as the PUMA P5AT.Considering the size and weight of the T6 Ranger when compared to the F-150, the 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6 seems like a better fit. With 325 horsepower and 400 pound-feet (540 Nm) of torque on tap, its also sufficiently potent for the upcoming Raptor model. As for shifting, the 10-speed automatic transmission co-developed with GM is not a matter of if but of definitely.
The development of the CityAirbus VTOL demonstrator is moving forward, Airbus said in a news release this week. The first structural parts are complete and will soon be assembled. The ground-test facility in Germany is also complete, which will enable Airbus engineers to verify the electric propulsion system. The facility can test the systems components, from flight controls to the dynamic loads of the propellers. After passing those tests, the propulsion system will be installed on the demonstrator by next summer, Airbus said.

The CityAirbus aircraft itself is also progressing. The first structural parts have been produced and will soon be assembled, the company said. The CityAirbus is a battery-powered, four-seat VTOL vehicle designed to provide fast, affordable and environmentally friendly transport in urban areas. The VTOL will be designed to fly on fixed routes with a cruising speed of about 65 knots. The test aircraft will be remotely piloted at first; later, a test pilot will be on board. When the aircraft begins operations in 2023, Airbus says, it will initially be operated by a pilot to ease certification and public acceptance, but the goal is to provide fully autonomous operations. The program is on track for a first flight next year.
The V-280 Valor, a tilt-rotor under development by Bell Helicopters, flew for the first time on Monday, in Amarillo, Texas, the company has announced. The Valor aims to deliver twice the speed and range of conventional helicopters, according to Bell, and is designed to be versatile and affordable. The V-280 intends to completely transform what is possible for the military when it comes to battle planning and forward operations, said Mitch Snyder, Bells CEO. The design is competing against the SB-1 Defiant, under development by Sikorsky and Boeing, for a contract that aims to replace the militarys Black Hawk helicopters by the 2030s.

Bell says the V-280 will fly up to 800 NM at speeds up to 280 knots, more than twice the speed and range of current helicopter platforms. It can carry a crew of four and 14 troops, with a total payload of 12,000 pounds. The Defiant project is a more conventional helicopter design, but with a pusher prop added at the tail. Its expected to fly for the first time next year. The Army is expected to select one of the two designs by 2019.
The new federal tax regulations that will take effect on Jan. 1 are mainly good news for aviation, according to AOPA and NBAA. The legislation passed this week will directly lead to growth for the general aviation industry, said NBAA President Ed Bolen. For example, the new rules allow for immediate expensing, Bolen said, which allows taxpayers to claim a 100-percent expense when they buy either factory-new or pre-owned aircraft. AOPA President Mark Baker also welcomed this change. We think the inclusion of immediate expensing for used as well as new investments will effectively spur economic growth and create good jobs, especially in aviation and the aircraft industry, he said.

AOPA noted that another provision of the bill does away with a tax-planning tool often used by those purchasing aircraft for business, known as the like-kind orSection 1031 exchange. According to AOPA, limiting the immediate tax break to only new assets and aircraft while simultaneously doing away with the benefit of like-kind exchanges, could actually hurt jobs and large segments of the aviation industry instead of generating the intended investment.
By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Two sons of a BJP minister in Vasundhara Raje-led government are under spotlight, but for wrong reasons.

Surendra Bhadana and Hitesh Bhadana, sons of Hem Singh Bhadana, Rajasthan state motor garage minister in Vasundhara Raje government, have been accused of kidnapping and physically assaulting a man in Alwar district.

Tejsingh Yadav, complainant, has accused Surendra, Hitesh and around 15 other people of kidnapping him at gunpoint.

advertisement

In the FIR, he has alleged that he was taken to a room in Veersavarkar Nagar where he was locked inside a room and beaten up due to which he has sustained serious injuries on foot, back and head.

"My son is not being treated at any private hospital and my life is under threat from the minister and his sons," Satish Yadav, father of Tejsingh Yadav, said.

The complainant has demanded police protection alleging that there is threat to his life and family from the minister and his sons.

The minister, Hem Singh Bhadana, however, claimed that it was the complainant who was hurling abuses at him.

"On the evening of December 19, I was at my home. Three to four other people were sitting with me. All of a sudden, there were shouts of expletives being hurled outside. I came out and my PSO came out, my private secretary came out, my friend Mukesh Gulati came out. Four to five boys were sitting with their faces outside in Swift car and were hurling abuses. Then, they ran away with their car.

"Later on, their car's number was noted. Next day, address was extracted from the RTO. The owner mentioned that his car was taken by this person, who was hurling abuses in the night. Thereafter, the car number, everything was given Shivaji Park police station. Their footage has come in my CCTV camera, that of the car number along with that person. This was the incident and all this is recorded. In the CCTV footage, (he) can be seen sitting inside the car with his face popping outside and we made an estimate with that only. All these are recorded, then police control room was called. We also got information he has been punished in two cases," the minister said.

Meanwhile, the police has registered an FIR at Shivaji Park Police Station against the minister's sons and some other accused in the case.

"A case of physical assault and kidnapping has been registered against Surendra Bahdana and Hitesh Bhadana and 10- 12 other people," SHO Vinod Samaria said.

--- ENDS ---
Mike Allen closed out 2017 with back-to-back News Shapers events in DC. Today's featured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Mark Warner. They discussed Russian election interference, tax reform, what's next, and what's not.

Why it mattered: Now that the Republicans' sweeping tax bill has passed both chambers of Congress, President Trump is expected to sign it into law on Jan. 3. Meanwhile, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation continues at full force.

Mike thanks guests for coming to Axios' 31st and final event of the year.Chuck Kennedy

Sen. Warner tells Mike that the tax bill "is probably the single most disappointing piece of legislation" he's seen during his time in the Senate.Chuck Kennedy

"The tone and tenor of the comments coming out of the president's allies both elected and otherwise should send a chill through all of us," Sen. Warner says, referring to efforts to undermine Mr. Mueller's investigation. Chuck Kennedy

140 guests getting in one last Axios event before the holidays.Chuck Kennedy

Leader McConnell doesn't dispute that there may need to be a fix to the tax bill. Chuck Kennedy

Leader McConnell tells Mike that welfare and entitlement reform are not expected to be on the 2018 agenda.Chuck Kennedy

On the president's negative tweets about him over the summer: ""They weren't my favorite, no. But he's gotten better. [...] We're doing just fine."Chuck Kennedy

Mike in the holiday spirit. Chuck Kennedy

See you in 2018!

Thank you Bank of America for sponsoring this event.
Chinese ride-hail company Didi Chuxing announced that it has raised $4 billion in new equity funding. Investors in the round include Abu Dhabi's Mubadala and existing shareholder SoftBank, according to a source close to the company, which is now said to be valued at about $56 billion.

Why it matters: This means Didi has now raised nearly $17 billion in private funding, which is more than either Uber or Lyft. The company also says that some of the proceeds will be used to build "new energy vehicle service networks."
Paramilitary policemen in an armored vehicle are on duty last month at the Hotan airport in western China's Xinjiang region. Photo: Ng Han Guan / AP

"China's efforts to snuff out a violent separatist movement by some members of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic group have turned the autonomous region of Xinjiang ... into a laboratory for high-tech social controls that civil-liberties activists say the government wants to roll out across the country," The Wall Street Journal's Josh Chin and Clement Burge write.

Why it matters: Zhu Shengwu, a Chinese human-rights lawyer who has worked on surveillance cases: "They constantly take lessons from the high-pressure rule they apply in Xinjiang and implement them in the east ... What happens in Xinjiang has bearing on the fate of all Chinese people."
Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the largest U.S.-based oil producers, released this week its first-ever sustainability report that analyzes how the company would fare in a carbon-constrained world.

Why it matters: Pioneer is a dominant producer in Texas' prolific Permian oil basin in West Texas, so their move to publish such a report suggests it's not just the biggest, most global oil and gas companies acknowledging climate change is a material business risk. It also shows the impact of investor pressure. The sustainability report was required by a shareholder resolution vote earlier this year.

"It is significant that Pioneer, perhaps the most influential company in the Permian, is publishing a sustainability report for the first time," said Andrew Logan, who directs the oil and gas program at Ceres, a group urging more sustainable investments. "It should lead to pressure on its peers to follow suit."

The big picture: Oil and gas companies based in the U.S. with mostly domestic operations, like Pioneer, are responding to growing concerns about climate change and sustainability by cutting costs to become hyper lean oil producers. The world is going to need a lot of oil for a very long time, even in a lower-carbon world, and relatively smaller companies with less capital to put in riskier investments hope to be among the companies providing the oil.

Gritty details: The 51-page sustainability report covers a range of environmental efforts at the company, including how it manages spills and minimizes emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that's the primary component of natural gas. it also includes a detailed analysis of how the company would fare in a carbon-constrained world, which was an additional step not required by the shareholder vote.

"Recognizing this is an important issue for many of our stakeholders, we decided to go ahead and tackle it, and that's why it's in our inaugural report we put out this year," Mark Berg, an executive vice president at Pioneer told me by phone Wednesday.

The report finds that Pioneer is positioned to survive  and even thrive  in a world with ambitious reductions in carbon emissions because of its low-cost attribute. The company says its break-even point is $24 per barrel, meaning it can make money even with oil prices quite low in a potential carbon-constrained future where prices have dropped a lot because of lower demand.

One level deeper: Berg says Pioneer is considering leasing some of its land in West Texas  it has about 800,000 acres  to wind companies to develop wind-energy projects. The idea would be to lease the surface of the land that they're developing oil and gas from below the surface.

"We are certainly looking at opportunities to be creative in how we manage our oil and gas," Berg said.

On top of being America's biggest oil and gas producing state, Texas is also the nation's biggest wind producer, and dual use of its land for both wind and oil development is common. But, Berg says he's not aware of any other oil and gas operators who are leasing their land to wind companies.

Go even deeper: I've covered this dynamic in a few of my Harder Line columns this year:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose relationship with President Trump got rocky over the summer, said at an Axios event on Thursday that the two are getting along "just fine."

Some fun quotes:
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) told Mike Allen at an Axios event on Thursday that he thinks that tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Youtube were too slow in recognizing the interference of Russian hackers during the elections and that Facebook still hasn't fully exposed Russian activities on their platform.

Key quote: "I've been told about companies and individuals in the Valley that are basically going to copy the Russian playbook  and are going to start making American-based firms for corporate warfare using these exact tools." He added that he thinks conflict in the 21st century will be less about guns, bombs and rockets, and more about cyber attacks.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that outside researchers should analyze the vast trove of content posted by Russian accounts in an alleged attempt to sow chaos during the 2016 election. At an Axios event, he said there needs to be an "independent third-party, almost academic analysis" of the content, suggesting his committee didn't have the capability to vet everything in its possession.

Why it matters: It's a major task to investigate not just the ads posted by Russian operatives online during the election, but also the far more voluminous "organic" content not backed by any ad spending.
21 December 2017 17:19 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The scandal over supplying the Armenian army with margarine instead of butter continues to gain momentum.

Recently, the Armenian newspaper Past, citing its sources, reported that sensational detentions have begun in Armenia. It turned out that one of the Armenian companies has for many years been buying cheap margarine abroad and was supplying the army under the guise of expensive butter. Following inspections by the National Security Service, it was found out that the company pocketed millions of dollars in this scheme. The employees of the laboratory of the Agriculture Ministry, who falsified the documents on which margarine was supplied as butter, were detained.

Another Armenian media 1in.am has discovered further information on the issue  the amount of margarine sold to the Defense Ministry hit 14 tons. The companies that won the supply tender, SP LLC and Eliser LLC, are connected with the deputy head of the Food Safety Service (FSS) Yeghishe Margaryan.

Margaryan owns one of these companies, and it was he who was forcing the employees to falsify the final results of examination and present the imported margarine as butter. Nevertheless, the employees do not admit the pressure  they note in their testimony that an error occurred during the examination.

However, Armenian journalists found out that no examination was carried out in the FSS. Following inspections conducted in the laboratory, no information on butter examination was found in computers. That is, without any product verification, the FSS issued an examination certificate that the imported margarine is allegedly butter. Theoretically, if the product contained poison or was expired, it would be anyway sent for consumption of Armenian soldiers.

All the information on the issue was obtained from unofficial but informed sources, while neither the Armenian Defense Ministry nor the Food Safety Service have so far commented on the situation. Many experts believe the reason for this silence may be attributed to the involvement of the Defense Ministry in this fraud. The ministry has even imposed a ban on negative information concerning the agency.

Thus, the assumption that the Armenian Defense Ministry is itself involved in the crime has reasonable grounds. This incident has once again revealed the deception and fraud reigning in the Armenian army as well as throughout the country.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 09:51 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 127 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on December 21.

Armenians were using large-caliber machine guns.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 16:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Anatole Kaletsky

Since last years Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom has been likened to a suicide who jumps off a 100-storey building and, as he falls past the 50th floor, shouts so far, so good. This comparison is unfair to suicides. The real economic and political message today is so far, so bad.

The deal to begin negotiations for a post-Brexit relationship, announced at the EU summit on December 15, followed Prime Minister Theresa Mays capitulation on all of the demands made by European leaders: 50 billion ($59 billion) of budget contributions, European court jurisdiction over the rights of EU citizens in Britain, and a permanently open border with Ireland.

The last concession was a game changer. The open border in Ireland has forced May to abandon her promise to take back control from the EU and its regulatory framework, as confirmed in the summit communique: In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation.

The result of this crucial concession on Ireland is that both scenarios usually proposed for Britains relationship with the EU can now be dismissed. With no parliamentary majority to revoke the agreement, a hard Brexit, in which Britain breaks free of EU regulations and trades simply on the basis of World Trade Organization rules, is no longer possible. And a soft Brexit, which attempts to preserve the commercial benefits of EU membership without the political obligations, is equally impossible, because European leaders reject any such cherry-picking  and now have the whip hand over Britain.

If hard and soft Brexit are both excluded, what other options are there? The obvious one, apparent after Mays failed election gamble, is some form of associate EU membership, similar to Norway. Britain would retain many of its current commercial privileges, in exchange for complying with EU rules and regulations, including free movement of labor, contributing to the EU budget, and accepting the jurisdiction of EU law. While May foolishly rejected all three of these conditions early this year, the likely result of the Brexit negotiations will be to blur all her red lines out of existence.

While businesses, investors, and economists would welcome such a Norwegian-style fake Brexit, it would carry a huge political cost. Britain would have to adhere to EU laws, regulations, and legal judgments in which it would no longer have any say. Instead of a rule-maker, the United Kingdom would become a rule-taker  or, in the emotive language adopted recently by Brexit hardliners, Britain would be reduced from an imperial power to a vassal state or a colony of the EU.

This rule-taker status is what the UK has already requested for a two-year transition period, beginning in April 2019. May claims that this will be a strictly time-limited arrangement, while she negotiates a free-trade agreement with the EU. But the EU has repeatedly made clear that two years is too short a period to negotiate even a simple FTA, never mind the imaginative, bespoke deal that May is seeking.

In truth, there is almost no chance of Britain ever negotiating the deep and special partnership May has promised. It is simply inconceivable that European leaders would offer Britains service industries access to the EU single market without imposing the legal and budgetary conditions accepted by Norway and Switzerland.

What, then, will happen at the end of the transition period in April 2021? The only plausible answer is a further transition, if only to avoid an economically devastating rupture in trade regulations just before the UK general election due in 2022. And, assuming the transition is extended from 2021 to, say, 2023, arent further extensions likely, probably evolving into a quasi-permanent arrangement? Norways EU relationship via the European Economic Area, also designed as a brief transition, has now lasted 24 years.

This Hotel California scenario, in which you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave, would ultimately enrage both Brexiteers and Remainers. So what are the other options?

If a hard Brexit is economically unacceptable to British business and Parliament, a soft Brexit is politically unacceptable to EU leaders, and a fake Brexit is unacceptable to almost everyone, that leaves just one alternative: no Brexit.

It is still entirely possible to abandon Brexit by revoking Britains withdrawal notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. This decision would have to be made by Parliament before the treaty deadline of March 29, 2019, and it would probably have to be ratified by another referendum.

A necessary condition for this sequence of events would be the collapse of Mays government, perhaps caused by a Brexiteer revolt against the vassal state conditions imposed by the EU during the transition period. Under these circumstances, a general election would almost certainly produce a Labour-led coalition based on a promise to think again about Brexit. This was exactly the scenario suggested last month by one of Mays few remaining loyalists, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who became the first senior Tory to admit publicly that Brexit might never happen if zealous Euroskeptics ever rebelled against May.

For the time being, the threat of a Labour government has been sufficient to intimidate Brexit hardliners. But the forced quiescence of the Euroskeptics makes it more certain that May will negotiate a vassal state transition that evolves into the Euroskeptics nightmare of an inescapable Hotel California, based on the Norway model.

As the Brexit hardliners grasp this logical conundrum, they could well decide to bring down May and risk a general election rather than collaborate in Britains demotion to vassal statehood. The suicide jumper is still falling, and, until he passes the first-floor window, we will not know whether he is attached to a bungee cord.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Fake Brexit or no Brexit

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By PTI: Jaipur, Dec 21 (PTI) Two sons of a Rajasthan minister, along with others, allegedly abducted and thrashed a man in Alwar district, police said today.

The incident occurred last evening when Surendra Bhadana and Hitesh Bhadana, sons of General Administration Department (GAD) minister Hem Singh Bhadana, along with 10 others, allegedly abducted one Tej Singh Yadav and thrashed him, they said.

advertisement

"Yadav was admitted to a local hospital for treatment. He said 12 persons, including Surendra and Hitesh, abducted and thrashed him," Vinod Samaria, SHO of the Shivaji park police station, said.

"Reasons behind the incident are not clear yet," he said, adding that the investigation is underway.

No arrest have been made so far, Samaria said.

The minister could not be approached for his comments. PTI SDA AQS

--- ENDS ---
21 December 2017 10:06 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Russian Minister of Economic Development Maksim Oreshkin will pay a working visit to Baku on December 25, said a message posted on the website of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development on December 20.

According to the message, during the visit, Oreshkin will meet with Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev and take part in an expanded meeting of the Russian-Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani-Russian business councils and the opening ceremony of a representative office of the Russian Export Center JSC in Azerbaijan.

"The meeting will discuss the current relations and prospects of trade and economic relations between Russia and Azerbaijan in such important sectors as energy, industry, agriculture, transport, construction and tourism," the message said. Promotion of investment projects and initiatives as well as improvement of conditions for cooperation between the business circles of the two countries will be the key topics of the meeting."

Memorandums of intent are expected to be signed between Russian and Azerbaijani companies as part of the minister's visit. B2B meetings and an exchange of business contacts will also be held.

The data from the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee shows that trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia in January-October 2017 amounted to $1.89 billion, of which $528.97 million accounted for the export of Azerbaijani products to Russia.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 13:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

Uzbekistan plans to reconsider the existing agreements and sign new ones for international road haulage with countries along the routes that ensure access of Uzbek goods to foreign markets and to the oceans of the world.

Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, China, Spain, Iran, France, Estonia are among these countries, the norma.uz portal reported.

The purpose of adopting these regulatory and legal documents is to improve business environment for road haulers, especially those that ensure access for Uzbek goods to international markets.

Uzbek Agency for Road and River Transport in conjunction with interested ministries and departments develops a package of documents.

Moreover, it is planned to exempt foreign haulers crossing the state border of Uzbekistan with Tajikistan from additional fees for entry and transit, established in 2008.

The Uzbek government also plans to carry out a set of measures to implement the agreement on creating favorable conditions for international road haulage among the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states.

The rules for transporting cargo by road in Uzbekistan will be amended. This is related to the implementation of the agreement on international transportation of perishable foodstuffs.

Filling stations located along the international highways of Uzbekistan will be provided with fuel which meets Euro 4 emissions standards or higher.

The diplomatic relations between two countries were established on October 2, 1995.

Trade and economic cooperation is carried out in the mode of free trade and includes the range of goods of various sectors of the economy. Uzbekistan supplies vehicles, non-ferrous metals, pharmaceutical products, fertilizers, electrical and mechanical appliances, agricultural products to Azerbaijan, and renders services in the transport, tourism and other spheres. Azerbaijan's export to Uzbekistan mainly consists of mechanical appliances, confectionery products, various organic and chemical compounds, tanning and dyeing extracts.

As of December, 2016, 45 enterprises operate in Uzbekistan with the participation of Azerbaijani investors.

They specialize in such sectors of the economy as energy, light industry, engineering, metal processing, insurance, science and education, construction and trade.

Currently, more than 110 bilateral documents have been signed between the states.

The trade turnover between the countries amounted to $7.21 million in January-June, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 16:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

The first investment bank will be created in Azerbaijan, said Abid Mammadov, adding that the creation of an investment bank is one of the main goals of the AzFinance.

The director of AzFinance investment company made the statement addressing the event titled Capital Markets in 2018 on December 21.

The investment bank is a financial institution that organizes capital raising in the world, financial markets for governments and large companies, as well as provides consulting services for the purchase and sale of business, brokerage services.

We plan to establish the country's first investment bank in 2018, or at the latest, in 2019, Mammadov said. The more we work with the market, the more often we see the demand in it. Investment bank will play a big role in this development.

He added that people are gradually moving away from traditional financial instruments and are looking for new directions for investment.

Until 2014, people considered two key tools for investment, namely, bank deposits and real estate investments. Today, people dont want to use standard investments. The reason is that today the real estate market is no longer experiencing the boom that was observed a few years ago, and the interest on deposits is not so attractive, Mammadov said.

Companies that are looking for alternative means of financing also show interest, therefore, the need for an investment bank is growing, according to him.

Vugar Namazov, head of the Baku Stock Exchange (BSE), in his turn stressed that listing in Azerbaijan should become more attractive.

He went on to say that it is stocks but not other tools that are a heart of todays market, further adding that today, BSE offers great conditions for accepting companies for listing.

In 2016 we updated the technical platform and created a trade system based on the system of Korean stock exchange. This system is among the top technologies in the world. We updated our legal framework. Now we have to revive business by using the platforms, Namazov said.

Head of BSE pointed three directions that mainstreamed the current markets - control, competition and technology.

Namazov pointed out that the current listing process in BSE is split into three levels including major market, standard market and alternative market.

This approach attracts more companies to being listed, both major companies meeting top standards and small and middle businesses just emerging, he said.

The future goal will be to have maximum possible number of companies listed. This year we have drawn two companies - Unibank and Metak to listing. Unibank is getting ready to issue bonds and stocks, Namazov added.

Speaking at the event, Ruslan Babayev, Head of the Division of Supervision at Financial Markets Infrastructure at Azerbaijans Financial Market Supervisory Authority pointed out that, Azerbaijani banks will render investment services.

He said that the final decision on this issue will be adopted before the end of the first half of 2018.

A package of proposals which envisage amendments to Azerbaijans legislation has already been prepared on this issue, he noted. The changes will reflect the issues of licensing and the types of services provided, as in the world practice banks cannot provide all types of investment services.

Currently, 31 banks, including two state-owned ones, are implementing their activities in Azerbaijan.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 16:46 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The increase in non-oil revenues will secure the rate of Azerbaijani manat, Murad Ahmadov, deputy director of Azerbaijans investment company AzFinance CJSC, told reporters in Baku on December 21.

He noted that Azerbaijan needs to reduce dependence on raw materials in order to maintain the national currency.

The share of the oil sector in the state budget revenues is quite high today. If we can achieve a reduction in the share of oil revenues, then we can say one thing  the rate of one US dollar will not exceed two manats. Otherwise, strong fluctuations in oil prices and volatility of the currencies of our main trading partners  Turkey, Russia and Kazakhstan, will exert pressure on the rate of manat against the US dollar, noted Ahmadov.

The Azerbaijani government switched to the floating manat regime on December 21, 2015. The exchange rate of Azerbaijans national currency, the manat, against the US dollar has strengthened by almost four percent since the beginning of 2017, and the exchange rate was set at 1.7001 for December 21.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 13:49 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

An exhibition titled "One nation two states" by Turkish Cartoonist Alp Gurhan Yalciner was opened in Baku on December 20.

Co-organized by the Turkish Embassy in Baku and International Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation, the event brought together officials, MPs, cultural figures, including Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Azertac reported.

Addressing the event, Mammadyarov highlighted the steadily developing bonds between the two countries. The minister spoke about projects carried out by the International Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation and stressed their importance.

Cavusoglu praised development of fraternal and strategic bonds between Azerbaijan and Turkey: Both countries will also continue to develop cultural relations. The relations with Azerbaijan are very important for us."

He also stressed successful representation of the International Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation in international arena.

President of the International Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation Gunay Efendiyeva spoke of the historical-cultural relations between the two brotherly countries.

Touching upon the activity of the Turkish artist, Efendiyeva stressed that the exhibition is a vivid evidence of fraternal ties between both countries. She noted that the International Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation is ready to contribute strengthening the unity among the Turkic speaking countries.

Turkish artist Alp Gurhan Yalciner said that he is trying to show friendship and fraternity relations between the two countries in paintings by children. The artist thanked organizers for holding the exhibition.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 15:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts will host a meeting with Honored Art Worker of Azerbaijan, fashion designer Fakhriya Khalafova on December 22.

The meeting which starts at 13:00 will discuss an agreement signed between the director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky and Fakhriya Khalafova in St. Petersburg on December 5, Trend Life reported.

Within the framework of the agreement, three dresses from designer's collections were presented at the "Costume History" exhibition, which opened on December 8 at the State Hermitage Museum, and then entered the museum's fund.

Earlier in December 2014, two dresses with unique Azerbaijani ornaments from the collection "Oriental Magnetism" were presented at the Oriental Fashion Festival Oriental Fashion Show in Paris.

One of them features patters of national headscarf kelaghayi and precious stones.

The silk scarf, its production and the wearing style, was included in the UNESCO's List of Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2014.

The second dress features beautiful sun pattern. With its unique range of colors, stunning gown presents a composition of a dress in the Caucasian Albania.

Another dress from the designer's wedding collection is created in the rococo style of the 19th century.

Fakhriya Khalafova was also awarded with the Russian Order Serving the Art.

Meanwhile, visitors of Hermitage Hotel enjoyed stunning dresses by the national fashion designer on December 5-9.

"Fashion, primarily haute couture, which is not intended for the mass market, is sometimes viewed as art. The conceptual fashion requires a really colossal elaboration. It's not just to sew a cute skirt or jumper, but also your own vision of the world through clothing. Throughout the history of mankind, philosophical moods were reflected in literature, architecture and costume, and the task of modern designers is to feel the spirit of the times. The fact that fashion exhibitions were held in museums undoubtedly contributed to blurring the border between art and fashion," fashion designer said.

Notably, dresses from designer's collections will be also presented as part of the meeting.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 15:04 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Paraguays Chamber of Deputies has adopted a declaration condemning the massacre committed in Khojaly town of Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in 1992, the Parliament informed on December 21.

The document reads that the Khojaly massacre was the biggest attack civilians suffered during hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The ethnic massacre took lives of 613 Azerbaijanis, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly, while 1,275 Khojaly residents were taken hostage and the fate of 150 of them remains unknown.

Moreover, 487 residents of Khojaly, including 76 children, were left disabled, 130 children lost one parent and 26 lost both of them. The declaration notes that this fact is documented by various agencies of Azerbaijan and independent sources.

The Paraguayan MPs note in the declaration that many countries condemned this crime against humanity and the genocide committed by the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijani civilians as well as the military occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia. The countries expressed their respect for Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty, and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders.

The document also reads that four resolutions of the UN Security Council adopted in 1993 urge to stop the occupation, to focus on the victims and a dialogue as a way to resolve the conflict that arose due to the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia.

The Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay condemned the genocide in Khojaly and expressed solidarity with Azerbaijani people in commemoration of the victims of this crime against humanity.

Besides Paraguay, the parliaments of many countries, including Pakistan, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Jordan, Israel, Sudan, Honduras, Djibouti as well as the legislative bodies of 20 states of the U.S., have adopted resolutions to recognize this tragic crime as a genocide.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, 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.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 18:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The NaaSAT satellite team of Azerbaijani National Aviation Academy has been invited to another international competition CanSat, the Academy teacher, engineer-designer Akbar Aliyev.

The contest will be held on June 8-10, 2018 at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. For the first time the NaaSAT team took part in CanSat in 2016, taking the 31st place among 40 teams. This year the national team became 13th at the same competition.

Aliyev said that unlike last year, this time certain changes have been made to the technical criteria for the selection for the competition. Earlier, teams had to launch their rockets, from which a container was separated, and a gliding device from the container was smoothly descending and conducting monitoring. Now, the rocket should raise this microsatellite to a certain height, and then it should conduct monitoring while smoothly descending via a parachute.

The conditions are such that the microsatellite should drop to a height of 400 meters at a certain speed, and only then to change its speed. This year, participants will have to comply with the requirements for a gradual decrease, so an egg will be placed inside the microsatellite, and the device will have to land in such a way that this egg does not break, Aliyev told Trend.

While gliding, the microsatellite must measure the flight altitude, wind speed, air parameters (temperature, pressure and composition), take photos on commands from the ground. The received flight and atmospheric data must be sent to the ground station with the software developed by the team.

CanSat competitions offer students to have practical experience of a real space project. The teams are responsible for all aspects including designing the CanSat, selecting its mission, integrating the components, testing, preparing for launch and then analyzing the data.

Main objective of the project is to inspire young people for pursuing a career in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields as well as ensure the availability of a highly qualified workforce in the space industry of the future. CanSat competitions have taken place in many countries around the world over the past 20 years.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 09:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

An international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku on December 21.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took part in the opening ceremony of the conference.

The conference is organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan, and is dedicated to the results of the Year of Islamic Solidarity, proclaimed by a decree of President Aliyev.

The international conference is attended by well-known state, religious and scientific figures from about 40 countries, heads and representatives of eight international organizations, special representatives of heads of various states, leaders of religious confessions, government, public and parliamentary members, representatives of the diplomatic corps.

The conference started with the recitation of ayahs from Holy Quran.

President Aliyev has delivered speech at the event.

Congratulatory messages from the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Holy See (Vatican), Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, and Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II were read out.

Addressing the international conference participants on behalf of world Muslims, ISESCO Director General Abdulaziz Altwaijri emphasized Azerbaijans growing role in ensuring the strengthening of the Islamic solidarity and inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.

Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Office, co-chair of the CIS Interreligious Council Sheikhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade made a report at the conference.

Allahshukur Pashazade highlighted the international events jointly organized by the Caucasus Muslims Office and the State Committee on Work with Religious Organizations in a number of countries as part of the Year of Islamic Solidarity.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 11:57 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

Poltava airport was granted the status of an international airport, due to which direct flights from Poltava to Azerbaijan can be opened.

The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine reported that the Cabinet of Ministers approved the opening of an international border crossing point on the territory of the airport of Poltava.

The international status will also allow Poltava airport to make flights from Poltava to Georgia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and other countries.

Earlier, the representative of the Ukrainian tour operator Join UP! said that the first international flight from Poltava will be held on May 2, 2018 to Antalya, Turkey.

Currently, 19 Ukrainian airports have international status.

Poltava Airport is a public airport located approximately 7 kilometres west of Poltava, Ukraine. It is one of two airfields near Poltava, the other being Poltava Airbase. The airport is located near the villages Ivashky and Suprunivka.

The airport Poltava was built in the 50s  60s years of the last century. The airport has a passenger terminal with a total area of about 5,000 square meters and a throughput capacity of 400 passengers per hour.

Diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Azerbaijan were established on February 6, 1992.

Azerbaijan is considered one of the main trade partners of Ukraine among the CIS countries.

Main goods imported from Ukraine to Azerbaijan remains as mainly metallurgy products, machine building products, agro-industrial products, and chemical industry products. While main goods exported from Azerbaijan to Ukraine are generally products of fuel energy industry, chemical industry products, and agro-industrial products.

The country plans to open its second Trade House in Ukraine, while the first was opened in Belarusian capital Minsk this May.

The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $390.76 million in January-July 2017, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with poll percentage)

Chennai, Dec 21 (PTI) The R K Nagar bypoll today witnessed a record 77.68 per cent voter turnout with polling to the constituency, which was represented by the late J. Jayalalithaa, passing off peacfully amid tight security.

Election officials here said there may be some variation in the figure after taking into consideration the polling percentage at some booths where voting went on beyond 5 pm.

advertisement

The voter turnout is higher than the 68 per cent recorded in the 2016 assembly election,according to officials.

The bypoll is being seen as an acid test for the chief minister K Palaniswami and deputy O Panneeerselvam-led ruling AIADMK which is facing a strong challenge from sidelined leader T T V Dhinakaran and an aggressive DMK.

The DMK is putting up a tough fight to wrest the seat after a hiatus of over two decades.

Of the 59 candidates in the fray, the fight is essentially triangular with the key contenders being ruling AIADMKs E Madhusudhanan, main opposition DMK candidate N Maruthu Ganesh and Dhinakaran, contesting as an independent.

The ruling AIADMK got back its Two Leaves election symbol back following merger of factions led by Palaniswami and former rebel O Panneerselvam.

The run up to the bypoll saw political parties and candidates holding as many as 152 public meetings and taking out 605 processions with the campaigning ending on December 19.

The 2015 R K Nagar bypoll in which Jayalalithaa was elected by a huge margin of 1.5 lakh votes for the first time in this segment had witnessed a record 75 per cent turnout.

Voting at 258 polling stations passed off peacefully with 2500 state police personnel, 15 companies of Central Armed Police Forces and 1638 election officers manning the poll process.

Serpentine queues were witnessed in booth after booth, right from 8 am when voting began with women outnumbering men in several of them.

A large number of people were awaiting their turn to vote even at the scheduled close of voting at five pm.

All those who were present inside the polling stations ahead of the 5 pm deadline were given tokens by officials to ensure that they exercised their franchise.

There were, however, sporadic complaints of snag in EVMs, and consequential delay.

Some voters complained that their names were deleted, othes claimed their names were struck off the rolls wrongly categorising them as "dead." Gun-toting Central Armed Police Force personnel in their trademark green uniforms were stationed at all the polling stations and across the 45 checkposts in and around the Dr Radhakrishnan (RK) Nagar constituency.

advertisement

Senior poll officials including the district election Officer D Karthikeyan inspected the polling stations.

Several dozens of flying squad teams, static surveillance teams and video surveillance teams were deployed in the constituency.

Election authorities made elaborate arrangements to ensure both hassle free environs for voters and measures for free and fair polling with nine observers, 307 micro-observers and 258 web cameras to monitor the poll process.

Chennai Corporation personnel drafted for poll duty took differently abled persons inside the polling stations using wheel-chairs.

In booths that had a significantly high number of voters, a medical team comprising doctors, and paramedics were stationed.

Pandals were put up, and help desks helped people find the right booth to vote. Amenities like drinking water, and toilets were also in place.

R K Nagar, represented twice by Jayalalithaa, has an electorate of 2,28,234, comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

advertisement

Election officials said 79.21 per cent of women voters exercised their franchise while 75.92 per cent of men cast their votes.

Counting of votes will be taken up on December 24 and the results are expected to be out by afternoon that day. PTI VGN SA BN

--- ENDS ---
21 December 2017 11:48 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

Next year, Azerbaijan and Indonesia will expand their ties in educational sphere, said Indonesian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Husnan Bey Fananie at a reception organized for the Embassy's friends.

"In 2017, relations between Azerbaijan and Indonesia, especially in the economic and cultural spheres, have improved significantly compared to 2015-2016."

He added that statistical figures on imports and exports were also the main indicators of this development, adding that while this figure was $19 million in 2015-2016, this year it reached $46 million.

Emphasizing the role of Azerbaijani youth in the development of relations between Azerbaijan and Indonesia, Ambassador said that in 2018, Indonesia will try to expand relations in education mainly in Azerbaijan.

"Next year, the Azerbaijani Language Center will be launched in Jakarta. Additionally, we plan to hold Indonesian Culture Days in Azerbaijan in September-October of the next year. At the same time we will try to make reciprocal visits, mutual cooperation between businessmen and scholarship programs."

Indonesia recognized Azerbaijans independence on December 28, 1991. Bilateral relations between the two republics were established on September 24, 1992. The embassy of Azerbaijan in Indonesia was established in 2006, while the embassy of Indonesia in Azerbaijan was opened in 2010.

The trade between Azerbaijan and Indonesia is mostly related to the energy sector, as Azerbaijan emerged as the second biggest supplier of crude oil to Indonesia after Saudi Arabia. Indonesia has been importing crude oil directly from Azerbaijan since 2015.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 12:36 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by Mahmoud Vaezi, head of Iranian Presidential Office and chief of staff.

They hailed the successfully developing Azerbaijan-Iran bilateral relations in a variety of areas, Azertac reported.

Mahmoud Vaezi extended greetings of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to President Ilham Aliyev and underlined that the Iranian head of state will pay a visit to Azerbaijan next year.

Head of the Iranian Presidential Office Mahmoud Vaezi emphasized the significance of the Baku-hosted "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference. He described the fact that the event participants include representatives of eight international organizations and nearly 40 countries as indicative of the event's importance.

President Ilham Aliyev recalled with pleasure that he invited President Hassan Rouhani to visit Azerbaijan during his brief meeting with the Iranian President on the margins of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul last week.

The head of state described the fact that Iran is represented in the Baku-hosted international conference with a high-level delegation as indicative of great importance that the country attaches to interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

They exchanged views on a number of issues, including Azerbaijan-Iran cooperation in energy, pharmaceutical, banking sectors, as well as the North-South transport corridor.

President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Hassan Rouhani and asked the Head of the Presidential Office to extend his greetings to the Iranian head of state.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 15:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

The meeting of Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of Azerbaijans Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Vasif Talibov and the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic Binali Yildirim was held in Nakhchivan on December 20.

During the visit to Nakhchivan the Turkish Prime Minister was accompanied by the Family and Social Policy Minister Fatma Bethul Sayan Kaya, the head of the Department for Religious Affairs Ali Erbash, and the deputy head of the Turkish Justice and Development Party Ravza Kavakchi.

Touching upon the history of education and modern development of the Autonomous Republic, Talibov said that Nakhchivan was formed on the basis of the international Kars Treaty signed in 1921. The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which is an autonomous state within the Azerbaijan Republic, has its own constitution, parliament, executive and judicial power, he noted.

On the ancient land of the Azerbaijani Turks, Nakhchivan, there are more than 1,200 Turkic-Islamic cultural monuments. The city of Nakhchivan, which has a 5,000 year-old urban culture, was elected as the Capital of Islamic Culture for 2018, he added.

It was noted that, despite the blockade conditions that have been going on for more than 25 years, food and energy security has been ensured in the Autonomous Republic, opportunities for using alternative energy sources and the volume of local production have been expanded.

Chairman of the Supreme Assembly noted that friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries, which have risen today to the level of strategic partnership, were developing in accordance with the will of the presidents of the two countries and served as an example for the whole world: Azerbaijan and Turkey were constantly supporting each other in the international arena, and are taking the same position.

Noting that the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic also plays an important role in the development of the Azerbaijani-Turkish relations, Talibov stressed that the development of ties in the fields of education, health, culture, trade, economy and army construction had encouraging effects.

The share of the Republic of Turkey in the foreign trade turnover of Nakhchivan has increased by $2 million over the 11 months of this year compared to last year and amounted to $7,685,000, Talibov noted. According to the new decision on regulation adopted by the government of Turkey, the production enterprises of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic are given the opportunity of free trade in the export of products to Turkey, which is also important in terms of increasing the foreign trade turnover.

Stressing that the peoples of Azerbaijan and Turkey had historically been together, Talibov said that the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister to Nakhchivan was an indicator of the high level of these ties.

Yildirim, expressing his satisfaction with the fact that he was again in the ancient Nakhchivan after nine years, said that over the past period Nakhchivan had achieved great development.

He noted that relations between the two countries had developed rapidly over the past 15 years, the recently commissioned Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line occupied a special place in the further development of ties. The high level of cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan in the field of economy, education, military and other spheres was also highlighted.

During the conversation, the parties also held an exchange of views on the prospects for development of cooperation between Igdir and Nakhchivan airports.

The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which forms the sole link between Turkey and Azerbaijan, has a specific place in terms of the bilateral relations of the two countries. Nakhchivan is physically separate from Azerbaijan can be described as Turkish Gate, which forms the point of direct connection between Azerbaijan and Turkey.

In general, Azerbaijan and Turkey are successfully cooperating in the political, economic, energy, military, scientific, technical, cultural and other spheres. The trade turnover between the countries amounted to $1.96 billion in January-September 2017, which demonstrated a significant increase as compared to the same period of last year.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 14:31 (UTC+04:00)

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today received Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam.

President Ilham Aliyev said relations between Azerbaijan and Egypt are developing successfully. Noting the importance of "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference, the head of state hailed Egypt`s high-level representation in the event. President Ilham Aliyev described the conference as an outstanding contribution to strengthening Islamic solidarity. The head of state said it is important that religious leaders come together, describing the fact that large delegations attend the Baku conference as demonstration of Islamic solidarity, Azertac reported.

Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Ibrahim Allam said he was deeply impressed by ongoing development processes in Azerbaijan, adding that this was possible thanks to wide policy of the country`s president. Underlining the significance of "2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue" international conference, Shawki Ibrahim Allam said the event contributes to bringing different religions and civilizations closer to each other.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 14:34 (UTC+04:00)

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today received Deputy Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Tawfiq al-Sudairi.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi thanked the Azerbaijani head of state for his support to the organization of 2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference in Baku, Azertac reported.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi recalled his meeting with national leader Heydar Aliyev during his visit to Azerbaijan in 1998. The relations between the two countries have been rapidly developing ever since, he noted. Both the King and people of Saudi Arabia feel love and friendship for the Azerbaijani President, government and people.

Tawfiq Al-Sudairi said Azerbaijan has been developing rapidly in all areas over the twenty years since his visit to the country. He said this has been possible due to President Ilham Aliyevs wise leadership and policy aimed at ensuring the future of the country and prosperity of the people.

President Ilham Aliyev hailed Saudi Arabia`s high-level representation in 2017- Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue international conference.

President Ilham Aliyev praised the high level of the bilateral relations between the two countries, and recalled his official visit to Saudi Arabia.

The head of state stressed that the Azerbaijani government and people highly appreciate the fact that Saudi Arabia has not built any relations with Armenia that occupied Azerbaijani territories, destroyed Islamic monuments and mosques.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 17:52 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Major energy projects being implemented today - the $40-billion Southern Gas Corridor and other projects - will support the long-term, successful sustainable growth of Azerbaijan, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

He made the remarks addressing the opening ceremony of the international conference, titled 2017  Year of Islamic Solidarity: Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue, kicked off in Baku on December 21.

The head of state underlined that Azerbaijan successfully develops, despite big and complex problems.

"We have turned into a very reliable partner in the international arena, a few years ago, we were elected a member of the UN Security Council by the votes of 155 countries. This was our great political victory, because then Azerbaijan was an independent country for only 20 years and during these years managed to gain recognition the international community," he said.

President Aliyev went on to ad that several economic reforms are being implemented in the country.

"Over the past 14 years, Azerbaijan has been developing more rapidly than others in the world from the point of view of economic development. Our economy, GDP grew by more than three-fold," President Aliyev said.

He said that Azerbaijan also carries out a very serious social policy, as a result of which the level of unemployment and poverty is at the level of five percent.

"Huge funds are invested in human capital. Over the past 14 years, more than 3,000 schools, over 600 medical institutions have been reconstructed or built, 12,000 kilometers of roads have been constructed and other necessary social infrastructure is being created in Azerbaijan. International financial structures very much appreciate the carried out reforms. It is enough to name one figure so that you have an idea.The World Davos Economic Forum placed Azerbaijan 35th in the countries' competitiveness rating. Of course, Azerbaijan is rich in energy resources, and we manage these resources efficiently, but the country's competitiveness is measured by other parameters, and this indicator puts us on a par with the 35 most competitive economies on a global scale, " said the president.

The head of state stressed that the society is positive about the future development of the country.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 15:17 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

SOCAR and Total held discussions on prospects for future cooperation, including the development of Absheron gas condensate field in the Caspian Sea.

President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev received a delegation headed by Total Vice President for Southern Europe and Caspian Region Bernard Clement on December 21.

Representatives of Total confirmed that the Absheron field has large hydrocarbon reserves (326 billion cubic meters of gas and 108 million tons of condensate).

In late 2016, SOCAR and Total signed a framework agreement on the main contractual and commercial principles regulating the program for the first phase of development of the Absheron field.

At the first stage, the field development includes drilling one well at a depth of 450 meters. The extraction will amount to 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas a year, which will fully flow to the domestic market of Azerbaijan, as well as significant amounts of condensate.

The agreement on exploration, development and share distribution of production at the Absheron offshore block was signed in 2009. At present, SOCAR and Total have equal shares in the project (50 percent each).

The Absheron gas field is an offshore natural gas field in the Caspian Sea. The field is located 100 kilometres southeast of Baku and 25 kilometres northeast of the Shah Deniz gas field. It covers approximately 270 square kilometers.

The field is expected to contain 350 billion cubic metres of natural gas and 45 million ton of gas condensate. According to Azerbaijani authorities, the production is likely to being in 2021-2022.

SOCAR is a wholly state-owned national oil company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. The company produces oil and natural gas from onshore and offshore fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea.

The company includes such production associations as Azneft (the enterprises producing oil and gas onshore and offshore), Azerikimya (the chemical enterprises) and Azerigas (distributor of gas produced in the country), as well as oil and gas processing plants, service companies, and the facilities involved in geophysical and drilling operations.

Total is the worlds fourth-largest oil and gas company, as well as a major integrated player in low-carbon energies. Backed by nearly a century of history the company discover, produce, transform, market and distribute energy in a variety of forms, to serve the end customer.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 11:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Fitch Ratings confirmed the long-term foreign and local currency issuer default rating (IDR) of Altyn Bank (a subsidiary of Peoples Bank of Kazakhstan) at "BB" and decided to leave the banks rating at RWP (Rating Watch Positive) with a positive outlook.

This decision reflects the position of Fitch that Peoples Bank of Kazakhstan, currently owning 100 percent of Altyn Bank's shares, will support the subsidiary, if necessary, taking into account the small size of the bank, as well as the planned sale of the majority of the banks shares to China's CITIC Bank Corporation Limited (CNCB).

Peoples Bank of Kazakhstan signed a memorandum of understanding with CNCB in November 2016. Completion of the deal for the sale of 60 percent of Altyn Banks shares is expected in 2018.

Peoples Bank of Kazakhstan JSC is a leading financial group and a leading retail bank in Kazakhstan with the largest customer base and distribution network. The bank is developing as a universal financial group, offering a wide range of services (banking, insurance services, leasing, brokerage and asset management services) to its retail customers, small and medium-sized businesses and corporate clients.

The bank also operates in Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 10:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The penalties will be introduced towards importers who have not imported products into Uzbekistan in time, according to the www.norma.uz legal portal.

The new regulation is contained in the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers decree #984 adopted on December 14, 2017. According to the decree, some of the government's decisions were amended.

The importers who have delayed the import of goods by more than 30 banking days will be fined, while small businesses and private businesses - 60 banking days.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 12:36 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Uzbekistan and Belarus plan to sign a new intergovernmental agreement on economic cooperation, designed for the period until 2028. This was announced after the meeting of the joint intergovernmental commission in Minsk on December 20.

The previous agreement, which expires on Dec.31, 2017, envisaged the implementation of a specific program of economic cooperation between the two countries. Then the parties agreed to bring the trade turnover up to $1 billion. Despite the announced plans, it continues to fluctuate around $100 million.

The new agreement is expected to be drafted before February 2018.

"In 2016-2017, we managed to identify areas of cooperation across all sectors that allow us to say that by 2020 we will be able to achieve a turnover of $500 million. Today, we signed a Road Map for 2018, which outlined areas in which we will develop cooperation. This covers machine building, agro-industrial complex, construction and production of building materials, healthcare, production of medical products," Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Mikhail Rusy said.

During the meeting of the intergovernmental commission, the parties also discussed issues of further development of industrial cooperation, as well as interaction in science and technology, health, education, tourism and other areas.

In addition to the Road Map, a memorandum of understanding was signed on cooperation between the Ministry of Industry of Belarus and Uzeltehsanoat on joint activities in the electrical industry.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By PTI: Gurgaon, Dec 21 (PTI) The counsel of the 16-year-old student accused of killing a boy at the Ryan International School today filed a second bail application in a sessions court here, a day after the Juvenile Justice Board decided to try him as an adult in the case.

The board had earlier rejected the bail plea of the class 11 Ryan International School student, charged with killing Pradhuman Thakur, a class 2 student of the same school, in the school premises on September 8.

advertisement

Yesterday, the JJB had passed the order on a plea that the accused teenager should not be treated as a juvenile.

The defense counsel, Sandeep Aneja, filed the second bail application this time to give some relief to his client after his first bail plea was rejected by the JJB on December 15 on the ground of scientific, physiological, psychological and behavioral reports.

"Under the JJB Act 10 (5), police or any authority apprehended a juvenile under any criminal charges, it should file charge sheet within one month. In this case, the CBI has failed to do so before the JJB and this was our main point in the bail application this time," Aneja said.

"The age of my client is 16-and-a-half-years-old and he is entitled to get bail until his age will not cross 21 years," he said.

The board set up a committee which included a psychologist from the PGI, Rohtak for an expert opinion on the accused, who was taken into custody by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) last month.

However, prosecution counsel Sushil Tekriwal said he would oppose the bail application in the sessions court.

"We are hoping the court will also reject it this time as the JJB did," Tekriwal said.

Pradhuman was found with his throat slit in the schools washroom. The Gurgaon Police had said the crime was committed by a school bus conductor, which the CBI later refuted.

The CBI claimed the teenager had killed Pradhuman in a bid to get the school closed so that a scheduled parent- teacher meeting and an examination could be deferred. PTI CORR KJ

--- ENDS ---
21 December 2017 17:29 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

In a few days a piece of railway line Astara (Iran)  Astara (Azerbaijan) connecting the two countries railway networks is scheduled to be commissioned.

For Iran, launching of the cross-border corridor is one of the milestones in the way of implementation of several projects aimed at turning Iran into a transit country between Asia and Europe. The corridor can rightfully be called one of the most essential external railway links, giving Iran an overland access to the North  Russia and the Northern Europe.

Construction activities of the 10 km corridor began in 2016. The piece of the line begins on territory of Azerbaijan at a distance of 8.3 km from the state border with Iran, and then extends 1.4 km to Irans Astara. The whole work also includes the construction of a bridge on Astarachay River that stretches along the border.

Azerbaijan invested about $60 million in construction of the railway corridor connecting two homonymous cities, as well as in the construction of a railway station and cargo terminals in Irans territory.

In total, four terminals should be built for the cargo storage - container, general cargo, oil and grain. At the first stage, it is planned to launch two terminals - container and general cargo.

It is planned that Azerbaijan will have the right to operate the Astara-Astara line and a railway station in Irans Astara for 15 years as well as the terminals located in Irans Astara, for 25 years.

Azerbaijan also agreed to annually transit up to 2 million tons of freight through the corridor.

In November, an agreement was reached to send a container train from Irans Astara to Vorsino station near Moscow once the construction of the railway corridor is completed.

However, the significance of the short cross-border railway line is not limited by forecasted mutual growth of trade between Iran and Azerbaijan. It is a part of a greater 7200-km trade route from India to Finland (port Helsinki).

After launching the Astara-Astara cross-border line the construction of the 165 km long Astara-Rasht segment on the territory of Iran will remain the only missing link of the whole North-South project. Azerbaijan has allocated a $500-million loan to Iran for purchasing plots of land and construction activities, which are planned to be completed by 2020.

When goods from India travel to Europe by traditional sea route via Suez and Mediterranean and up to the North Sea in 45 days, the North-South route via Iran will take twice less time.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 14:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

The world is looking forward to passing over 2017 and embracing 2018! Take along your loved ones with you and complete what you left unfinished in the past year - visit Azerbaijan, medium-sized country in the Caucasus considered both part of Europe and Asia.

Most tourists visiting Azerbaijan on New Year holidays will come from Arab and CIS countries, the Chairman of the Association of Tourism of Azerbaijan Nahid Bagirov told Trend.

He noted that the tourist flow is expected mainly from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Recently there has been a trend towards an increase in the number of tourists from Ukraine, and this year a significant increase in the flow of tourists from this country to Azerbaijan is recorded, he said.

Bagirov added that compared to 2016, this year the number of tourists coming to the country for the New Year from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, will grow by 15-20 percent.

The chairman of the association believes that Gabala and Gusar regions will be among the most popular among the tourists of the regions of Azerbaijan arriving for the New Year.

Changes in the legislation of the country and the increase in the number of tourists have also affected the activities of tourism companies said the tourism expert Aydin Ahmadov.

He noted that the majority of tourists coming to Azerbaijan are from Arab countries. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of tourists coming from European countries, Russia and Turkey.

The expert noted that as the number of tourists coming to our country increases, it will not be possible to find vacant places in hotels on the eve of the New Year.

As the number of tourists increases, it is difficult to find vacant rooms in hotels, for example, more than 90 percent of hotel rooms have been occupied in New Year's Eve, so there is a great need for new, especially 4-star hotels in Azerbaijan.

Experts noted that tourists from UAE, Qatar and Kuwait tend to prefer hotels in the city center in Baku, while Iraqi citizens prefer cheap hotels outside the city.

It should be noted that in January-October of this year, 2,276,604 foreign citizens visited Azerbaijan. The flow of tourists to the country increased by 20 percent for this year.

Of these, 727,577 people came from Russia, 439,305 from Georgia, and 320,904 from Iran.

During the mentioned period of time, some 81,742 citizens of the United Arab Emirates, 54,242 -citizens of Iraq, 49,449 tourists from Ukraine and 31,821-from Saudi Arabia visited Azerbaijan.

A sharp increase in number of tourists cannot but rejoice both the economy and the inhabitants of Azerbaijan, also known as the Land of Fires. Hotels, restaurants, recreation areas, and shopping centers filled up with foreigners and this shows the interest of tourists in a newly chosen destination.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
21 December 2017 12:24 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Some hotels in Baku raised prices on the eve of the New Year holiday, the chairman of Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA), Nahid Bagirov, told Trend on December 21.

His pointed out, the rise in prices is observed in five-star hotels in Baku. Bagirov explained this by the influx of tourists to Azerbaijan on the eve of the New Year holiday.

"The rise in prices means that many tourists will come to Baku, and the practice of world tourism shows that hotels raise prices before the New Year and other holidays," Bagirov said. It's very unfortunate that the hotels are taking this step.

The head of the association reminded that the hotels are independent in their pricing policy.

"The hotels operating in Azerbaijan belong to businessmen who can both raise and lower prices," Bagirov said.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Physician compensation increased 5.1 percent on average nationwide in 2017, yet a few major metropolitan areas saw declines as great as nine percent, according to research compiled by Doximity.

The study gathered data from 12,000 physician jobs posted in 2016 and 2017 on Doximity, the largest social network for physicians and advanced practice clinicians.

Doximity analyzed data on 20 metropolitan statistical areas and 15 medical specialties based on the number of job postings on the network in 2016.

To determine compensation decline, Doximity used its network's self-reported compensation surveys of about 40,000 full-time, licensed U.S. physicians who practiced at least 40 hours per week between 2016 and 2017.

Although the study did not explore why compensation declined, the authors note recent changes in the market that could have affected physician pay. These changes include a mix of insurer exits in the ACA exchange, accountable care organizations that influence physician revenue, hospitals buying physician practices and growing insurers negotiating more strongly.

Here are the five metro areas where physicians saw a decrease in pay, with compensation decline by percentage.

1. Phoenix (9 percent decrease)

2. Columbus, Ohio (8 percent decrease)

3. Denver (3 percent decrease)

4. Las Vegas (3 percent decrease)

5. Houston (1 percent decrease)
Inspired in part by a site visit to a Minnesota hospital, Epic is working to integrate comprehensive social care into its EHR.

That hospital has a teen pregnancy program that takes into account each mother's ability to stay in school, have a safe place to live and maintain a reliable support network to enhance her and her baby's care, which the EHR vendor took note of  care starts with the person  Emily Barey, MSN, RN, Epic's vice president of nursing and community health, explains to Becker's Hospital Review.

A comprehensive record, which Epic CEO Judy Faulkner described at the company's annual User Group Meeting in September as going "beyond the traditional walls" of the EHR, is one way to approach caring for a person while also acknowledging other aspects of the community that influence their overall health and wellbeing. Since a hospital or healthcare provider can only offer so many services, patients often turn to alternate sources, like schools or behavioral health clinics, to treat their other needs.

Ms. Barey defines comprehensive care and comprehensive health records as "really understanding who that person is and from there, being able to think not [only] about what's happening at the clinic or the hospital, but how we can support them by moving beyond the walls of the clinic or the hospital to have this really comprehensive health record that includes the community and the community's services and community providers [to] fill in those blanks."

The company is looking to expand on this work with a project based in Finland.

Four municipalities in Finland have banded together for this effort. Ms. Barey says there, the company will implement what Epic sees as the first integrated social care record  also known as a comprehensive health record  that will encompass primary care, secondary care and critical care, including social welfare, child services, elderly care, and mental health and addiction.

A key element of social care is meeting the person where they are, she emphasizes. So, Epic is updating its MyChart and expanding its mobile care tools, as it thinks about what may be helpful to social workers or home care aids in an attempt to enhance convenience as well as interoperability.

Epic is currently in the testing phase of the project, which means most of the content and workflows are complete, and its team has begun to evaluate the system's operations and ramp up its training plans. The project's go-live is scheduled for November 2018.

Ms. Barey adds that although right now the project is only set to launch in Finland, there are a number of groups in the U.S. considering implementing it as well.

"We have been doing comprehensive care planning for a long time, and we have been thinking about the needs of the population and working on these strategies, but this is really an exciting opportunity to think about really truly having a community record," she says.

So, just like that hospital in Minnesota caring for teen moms, Epic's newest approach encourages care teams to start with the person and build care plans around them.

More articles on EHRs:

20 hospitals, health systems seeking Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, Meditech talent

An 'Epic' year: 10 biggest stories from the EHR vendor this year

Epic to release new EHR version, 'Sonnet,' in March 2018


The following hospitals announced or completed plans in the last week to expand, upgrade or renovate their facilities.

1. Allegheny Health Network approves system's first mini hospital

Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network approved the construction of the system's first mini hospital in Hempfield, Pa.

2. Lawrence Memorial Hospital plans $100M expansion

Lawrence (Kan.) Memorial Hospital plans to spend nearly $100 million on an expansion and renovation project.

3. Munson Healthcare begins $2.9M renovation

Traverse City, Mich.-based Munson Healthcare is launching a $2.9 million renovation and construction project to its Grayling (Mich.) Hospital.

4. County OKs Marshfield Clinic's $35M hospital plan after Ascension Health conflict

Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic received approval from the Oneida County (Wis.) board of adjustment to build a 12-bed hospital in Minocqua, Wis., after contention from St. Louis, Mo.-based Ascension Health.

5. Los Angeles County hospital doubles ER beds in $12M project

Beverly Hospital in Montebello, Calif., held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $12 million emergency center expansion Wednesday.

6. Munroe Regional Medical Center plans $26M ED redesign

Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Fla., is planning a $26 million redesign to modernize and expand the emergency department.

7. Adventist Health purchases 15 acres of land for $8.98M

Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Adventist Health System bought 15 acres of land for $8.98 million, adjacent to a 67-acre site the health system purchased last year.

8. Ransom Memorial Hospital unveils $7M ER

Ransom Memorial Health in Ottawa, Kan., was set to open a 16,000-square-foot emergency department Tuesday.

9. New Mexico hospital completes EMS base in $38.1M project

Lincoln County Medical Center in Ruidoso, N.M., opened an EMS base, phase one of a project that will replace the existing 25-bed hospital.

10. Premier Health plans $12M emergency care center

Dayton, Ohio-based Premier Health is building a $12 million freestanding emergency care center in Miamisburg, Ohio.

11. Unity Medical Center plans $12M upgrade

Grafton, N.D.-based Unity Medical Center is planning a $12 million addition to its 60-year-old hospital.

12. UMC New Orleans opens $3.6M primary care facility

University Medical Center New Orleans is opening a primary care clinic on UMC's campus to alleviate emergency room use and improve patient access to direct care.

13. Tennessee hospital set to break ground on $5.1M expansion

Macon County General Hospital in Lafayette, Tenn., held a groundbreaking ceremony Dec 5. for a $5.1 million expansion set to begin this month.

14. Riley Children's Health plans $142M maternity center

Indianapolis-based Riley Children's Health will construct a $142 million maternity and newborn health center.

15. Gouverneur Hospital opens new ER

Gouverneur (N.Y.) Hospital has opened its new emergency room, the first renovation of the space since 1987.

16. Acadia Healthcare partners with Pennsylvania hospital to build 144-bed psychiatric facility

Franklin, Tenn.-based Acadia Healthcare and Reading (Pa.) Hospital will partner to build a 144-bed inpatient psychiatric facility in Berks County, Pa.

17. $1.1M ED proposal could fuel tension between HCA, Inova for Virginia healthcare space

Reston (Va.) Hospital Center is proposing a $1.1 million, two-story emergency department in Tysons, Va., fueling a conflict between competing health systems for hospital space in Virginia.

18. North Carolina hospital launches $8M ED

Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard, N.C., completed an $8 million emergency department renovation that nearly doubles the hospital's capacity for emergency services.



More articles on facilities management:

Allegheny Health Network approves system's first mini hospital

Lawrence Memorial Hospital plans $100M expansion

Munson Healthcare begins $2.9M renovation
Brad Tinnermon is new to Banner Health, joining the Phoenix-based system in September as vice president of revenue cycle management and revenue integrity.

Prior to joining Banner, he managed Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives' revenue cycle through an outsourcing agreement with Conifer Health Solutions, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare.

Mr. Tinnermon recently answered questions from Becker's Hospital Review about healthcare industry challenges and revealed his goals for next year.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

Question: What do you enjoy most about being a revenue cycle leader of a healthcare system?

Brad Tinnermon: Being part of improving the lives of the community we're supporting, making sure they have access to care and a better understanding [of] how to navigate our health system. A passion of mine is making the healthcare provider more transparent and easier to work with than it has been in the past. That's one of my favorite parts [of the job]. The other one really has to do with the employees and the team I work with on a daily basis. There are a lot of folks that make the revenue cycle work, and [the goal is] making sure we're doing things that can improve their lives, providing more efficient tools, [and] advancing their career and personal growth as part of being employed by Banner Health.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you're facing as revenue cycle leader?

BT: At Banner, we have a lot of things internally we have to look at in 2018. We have some significant upgrades to our technology and processes that need to take place over the next couple years, and we're going to take some big steps in 2018. A lot has happened over the last couple years kind of planning and moving toward that, but 2018 is a big year for us internally in modernizing our revenue cycle. So, while there are a lot of external impacts and influences [within the healthcare industry], that's probably our biggest challenge next year.

Q: What is one of your goals next year?

BT: We're working on really three major pillars. One involves patient experience, how we interact prior to service, during service and post service. We've got quite a bit planned to enhance those interactions. We have a lot of internal efficiency we're working on, modernizing some of our workflows and beefing up our big data usage. Our second pillar is creating efficiency with better data and better workflow. The last one is payer collaboration. We're working hard to move forward with some payer collaboration items that we think are viable in 2018. It's been interesting over the last few years. There's been a lot of talk about payer collaboration, and I've seen very little progress in the last three or four years. [There have been] a few pilots here and there and a lot of talk, but nothing big has come out. But I'm feeling an increased amount of cooperation over the last year that looks like it's leading into some significant things we can do this year, and specifically Cigna and Aetna have been very open and collaborative with us. I definitely see some [payers] maybe breaking through that level of talk and executing on some things.

Q: What would you do to improve the revenue cycle process?

BT: Address interaction with patients. We're looking at not only the interaction from a revenue cycle perspective but blending in the clinical aspects as well. So, when someone is researching potential services they might want to receive, whether they're an inpatient or an outpatient, ensuring they can not only figure out how they would receive information about the disease or treatment of the ailment they may have, but that also blends right into the cost and access and how to work through any financial counseling aspects of that care. [The process involves] kind of blending that entire education piece together for a patient so you're not researching certain ailments on WebMD, which is not tied into any health system specifically, and then making sure they [know] how to navigate through that ailment within our health system. That's something we're looking at not only with technology but also with some more creative influences in that area, whether you have simple animation tools or videos patients can interact with.

The other big effort we're working on is in coding and clinical documentation improvement. We're seeing a lot of opportunity in that area but also a lot of pressure from pay-for-performance and health quality grades, where our health systems are more heavily scrutinized on the outcomes and quality of service we provide. And so much of that information that is analyzed and posted comes straight out of our medical records and our documentation. Obviously, there's been movement to all patient refined diagnosis-related groups from Medicare severity diagnosis-related groups that are getting more specific in making sure teams are really in lock step to accurately document the care provided and tie that accurately to the outcome. So that's an area we're looking to innovate in. [We want] to bring teams together in a more unique way.

Q: Banner Health's net income nearly tripled in the first nine months of 2017. How has the revenue cycle played a role in this?

BT: We made some nice strides in pushing net revenue improvements, but I think we have the greatest opportunity in 2018 and beyond to provide a lot more assistance to the enterprise bottom line from a revenue cycle perspective. I think we helped slightly by being consistent and steady, but I think most of it had to do with a lot of forward thinking in how the organization is put together. Lastly, I think maturity in the health plan space is helping too as that stabilizes as part of the portfolio.
The Republicans' tax overhaul plan, which is expected to become law soon, will cause many healthcare organizations to reassess their debt levels.

The tax bill will limit the tax deduction companies take for the interest they pay on their debt to 30 percent of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This change will put pressure on healthcare companies with heavy debt loads. In 2022, interest expense deductions would be further reduced, which could cause companies' tax bills to increase further, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems and Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which carry about $14 billion and $15 billion of debt, respectively, could be negatively affected by the tax bill's limit on interest expense deductions. On Tuesday, Tenet said it expects the change to lower its 2018 earnings forecast, according to the report.

In a report issued earlier this month, Moody's Investors Service said many speculative-grade companies across several sectors, including healthcare, would be negatively affected if deductibility were limited.

More articles on healthcare finance:

Tenet explores sale of Conifer, expands cost-cutting plan to $250M

Financial updates from Cleveland Clinic, Ascension & 3 other health systems

Lawmakers eye fix for $15M Medicare error
Here are 10 recent news updates on health IT companies.

1. Precision Medicine Group, a specialized services company supporting precision drug development and commercialization, reached an agreement for a $275 million investment.

2. Castlight Health, a health navigation platform that connects health vendors, benefits resources and plan designs, completed new partnerships with five digital health companies and 26 new customers in its third quarter of 2017.

3. Epic is looking to expand its work on a comprehensive EHR that emphasizes social care with a project based in Finland.

4. Google unveiled plans to open an artificial intelligence center in China during a software developer conference in Shanghai Dec. 13.

5. Epic plans to release a new EHR version, called Sonnet, in March 2018.

6. Zane Burke, the president of Cerner, sold $3.5 million in stock Dec. 20, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission

7. Curisium, a healthcare technology company that offering a blockchain-based platform, raised $3.5 million in seed financing.

8. Cerner filed a protest with Illinois' chief procurement office for higher education over its $62 million, seven-year contract awarded to Epic for the EHR overhaul at Chicago-based University of Illinois Health, alleging the bidding process was unfair and tainted by a possible conflict of interest.

9. The technology company Exelus built an application that leverages Microsoft's HoloLens for telemedicine use and plans to demonstrate its capabilities at the Consumer Technology Association's 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.

10. InTouch Health and Vivify Health are partnering to integrate Vivify Health's remote care management solutions with InTouch Health's telehealth platform.

More articles on health IT:

Epic's Finland project creates a comprehensive EHR that emphasizes social care plans

NYU Langone Health notifies 2k after binder containing patient data improperly disposed

Meijer pharmacies join Michigan PDMP
Stonish Pierce, FACHE serves as System Vice President of Specialty Services for Beaumont Health.

On April 11th, Stonish Pierce will speak on a panel at Becker's Hospital Review 9th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Stonish's session, click here.

Question: As a leader, what is the best investment you made in your own professional development in the past five years?

Stonish Pierce: The best investment I've made in my professional development over the last five years was my participation in the ACHE [American College of healthcare executives] Executive Program. The program, which spanned approximately six months and three cities, included a direct cohort of approximately 20 other healthcare leaders from across the nation, featured a diverse set of talented program faculty with practical experience in their respective areas of expertise and site visits. During our Orlando, Fla., rotation we had the pleasure of visiting Disney World to learn how Disney best prepares its cast members for ""on stage"" behavior. Eventually I translated this same logic of on-stage behaviors back to my organization to enhance the patient experience. Other practical benefits of the program enhanced my abilities to have crucial employee conversations, deal with difficult physicians, interact with the media and hear how my peers were handling similar organizational challenges across the country. Six months later, shortly following my completion of the program, I was elevated to my first executive role.

Q: Who or what are the disruptors that have your attention? Why?

SP: Retailers, non-traditional healthcare providers, companies and technologies are certainly disruptors that have my attention. Among retailers, CVS Health is certainly making its presence in the industry known. One has to look no further than the company rebranding itself as a ""health"" company and stopping tobacco sales. CVS' evolution is not surprising to me as I closely studied the organization's visionary approach when I led the opening of the [California public healthcare district] Palomar Health's expresscare retail clinics over a decade ago, which were largely modeled after CVS Health's MinuteClinics. In addition to CVS' retail clinic division, we've also witnessed CVS acquire the Target pharmacies in recent years and now we're witnessing CVS' proposed acquisition of Aetna.

Among companies and non-traditional healthcare providers, I'm anxiously following the speculation of Amazon's potential foray into the pharmaceutical industry. UnitedHealth Group's, or Optum's, continued vertical integration with its recently proposed acquisitions of The Advisory Board Co. and Davita's medical division certainly have my attention.

In regards to technology, the numerous health-inspired apps that have entered the industry; ridesharing and other transportation companies partnering with providers; and the future evolution of telemedicine to enhance care, reduce costs and improve access certainly have my attention. As we've seen, the potential disruptions in our industry are limitless and care is no longer solely limited to physicians, hospitals and health systems. I strongly believe we will continue to see retailers and non-traditional healthcare companies vertically integrate into the industry.



Q: What did you notice about your healthcare experience the last time you were on the receiving end, as a patient?

SP: My last healthcare experience was a visit to a dental practice that I've remained a loyal patient to for the last several years. I would describe my entire experience as pleasant and consumer-focused, but this is due in large part to the fact I selectively research my healthcare providers based not only on clinical credentials, but also, and most importantly, on the ""service"" experience that I can anticipate receiving. Researching the service experience may include, but is not limited to, online ratings from prior patients and families, social media, promoted service amenities, ease of access and ease of interfacing with the provider on an ongoing basis given my busy schedule.

The practice is very modern in both its physical and virtual forms. From a pre-arrival standpoint, I was able to complete new patient paperwork, obtain information related to insurance coverage and even view photos of the practice's modern facilities online. Upon arrival, parking was easy to secure, comfortable seating was provided along with free Wi-Fi access and manageable television noise, but most importantly, the wait time was less than five minutes. The staff were all professional, introduced themselves by their name and their role and informed me as to how they would be interacting with me as a patient during my visit. Following my appointment, the practice provided me with immediate access to schedule future appointments during convenient evening and weekend hours that accommodated my schedule.

While not a ""traditional"" health system encounter, what I derived from this experience, as well as other healthcare experiences, is that we're fortunate to serve the overall experience that today's patients expect to receive at Beaumont. As the largest healthcare system in Michigan  based on inpatient admissions and net patient revenue  with eight hospitals, 36,000 employees, 5,000 physicians and nearly 200 outpatient care sites, I'm inspired to translate my personal experiences into motivating our employees to assist Beaumont in reaching its goal of being a national leader for patient- and family-centered care over the next five years.
By PTI: (Eds: With additional quotes)

Hyderabad, Dec 21 (PTI) The 105th Indian Science Congress, scheduled to be held at the Osmania University here from January 3 to 7, has been postponed due to security issues.

The Indian Science Congress Association said on its website that the universitys vice chancellor, S Ramachandram, expressed inability to host the event due to "certain issues" on the campus.

advertisement

The vice chancellor said though the varsity was fully prepared, the decision to postpone the event had to be taken due to the matters beyond their control.

"Reason is, security... Keeping in view recent incidents on the campus, it was postponed... We were fully prepared (to host the event)," he said.

A 20-year-old student allegedly committed suicide on the campus on December 3. The body of the first-year student of MSc Physics was found hanging in the washroom of one of the hostels. The incident led to protests on the campus.

The university said it hopes the event would be held in near future, after further discussions with the Indian Science Congress Association.

Several committees had worked for the past three months to ensure a smooth conduct during the event, it said in a release.

"In fact, the university changed the examination schedule for this purpose. At one point in time, the university was flexible and was willing to have the inaugural event outside the campus and the remaining sessions on the campus even if it meant incurring more expenditure and inconvenience," it said.

The Indian Science Congress Association has "indefinitely postponed" the event at the university, the release added.

"The vice chancellor of the Osmania University has informed that they are not in a position to host the 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7, 2018 due to certain issues in the campus," the association said.

The Indian Science Congress is usually held in the first week of January every year. The last Science Congress was held at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh in January 2017. PTI SJR GK KRK ABH

--- ENDS ---
Rachel Brown, MD, former associate dean of Columbia-based University of Missouri School of Medicine, sued the school Monday, claiming racial bias forced her from her position in an intentional change of leadership amid efforts to improve student diversity, according to a KMIZ report.

In October 2016, the medical school said Dr. Brown, then the associate dean for student programs, would step down to serve as a psychiatry professor. However, the lawsuit claims medical school dean Patrick Delafontaine, MD, forced her from her position.

Dr. Brown, who is white, claims the school removed her from her position because of her ideas on how to improve the school's diversity. The campus faced unrest about the lack of diversity within MU's student body and faculty in 2015, the lawsuit mentions. Medical school officials discussed increasing the percentage of out-of-state students and the number of scholarships for "underrepresented" racial and ethnic applicants.

Dr. Brown said she feared the legal risks of the medical school focusing just on racial and ethnic minority applicants and wanted to consult the school's attorneys on these policies. Her viewpoint caused Dr. Delafontaine and Warren Lockette, MD, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, to accuse her of "obstructing change" at an August diversity meeting, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also claims Dr. Delafontaine and Dr. Lockette left Dr. Brown out of discussions on diversity programs.

In October, Dr. Delafontaine told Dr. Brown Laine Young-Walker, MD, an African-American child psychiatry professor, would replace her as dean for student programs.

"[Dr.] Delafontaine succumbed to outside pressure in removing Dr. Brown from the associate dean position because she opposed race preferences that had not been reviewed by legal counsel for compliance with the civil rights laws," the lawsuit said.

Dr. Brown is seeking to return to her job or to receive salary and benefits from now until she retires.
Two shuttered rural hospitals in Virginia have been acquired, but there is no guarantee either facility will reopen, according to The Roanoke Times.

Lee Regional Medical Center in Pennington Gap, Va., was shut down in 2013 by its former owner, Kingsport, Tenn.-based Wellmont Health System. The Lee County (Va.) Hospital Authority purchased the facility in 2015. On Tuesday, the hospital authority sold the facility for $2 million to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Americore Health, which specializes in managing rural hospitals.

Under the deal, Americore will pay the hospital authority $500,000 at closing and begin paying off the balance in the hospital's third year of operation. The company is also responsible for staffing the hospital and navigating the licensing process. Americore is expected to seek state approval to reopen the hospital in the coming months, according to the report.

In a separate transaction this week, Virginia Community Capital acquired Pioneer Community Hospital of Patrick in Stuart, Va., for $5.7 million at a foreclosure auction. The bank had loaned the hospital's parent company, Magee, Miss.-based Pioneer Health Services, $6.7 million to renovate the facility before PHS filed for bankruptcy in 2016. Pioneer Community Hospital of Patrick closed in October.

"We still hope for a solution that will maintain the building for healthcare use, but we are open to talking to any business entity that is interested and can bring jobs to the community and enhance the region's quality of life," Wayne Waldrop, president of lending and community impact at VCC, told The Roanoke Times.

Pioneer Community Hospital of Patrick's operating license expires at the end of 2017.

More articles on healthcare industry transactions:

Northwell Health acquires Mather Hospital

Massachusetts healthcare watchdog delays Lahey-Beth Israel merger

New York hospital partners with St. Joseph's Health, U of Rochester Medical Center
New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System, Baton Rouge-based Louisiana State University and former hospital operator BRF inked plans for Ochsner to operate Louisiana's safety-net hospitals in Monroe and Shreveport.

The announcement came Tuesday after the state, Shreveport-based BRF, the board of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College on behalf of Louisiana Health Sciences Center Shreveport and the LSUHSC-S Faculty Group Practice, and Ochsner signed nonbinding letters of intent for the partnership.

As part of the proposed agreement, Ochsner plans to operate University Health Shreveport (La.) and University Health Conway in Monroe, La., which are owned by Shreveport-based University Health System, the clinical affiliate of New Orleans-based LSU School of Medicine. Ochsner also plans to operate the clinical activity of LSU's Faculty Group Practice.

LSU would maintain oversight responsibility for the LSUHSC-S School of Medicine, School of Allied Health and School of Graduate Studies, according to Ochsner.

"Both Ochsner and LSU are proven partners who are committed to leading the advancement of healthcare in our state," Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Edwards said in a statement. "LSU has significant strengths in medical education and research while Ochsner, also committed to academics and research, has tremendous expertise in operating hospitals and supporting the clinical activity of large physician groups. Working together, in a more integrated fashion, we plan to successfully deliver quality, cost-effective patient care in an environment that is optimal for the continued teaching and training of our state's future doctors and healthcare professionals."

As far as governance, the proposed agreement calls for a new UHS board of directors as well as a separate community advisory board comprised of Shreveport and Monroe community members, and representatives from Ochsner, LSU and BRF.

News of the proposed agreement initially surfaced earlier this month. Ochsner and LSU are expected to finalize details in early 2018.

Alyssa Rege contributed to this report.
Unionized healthcare workers at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic Health System's Albert Lea campus unsuccessfully tried to return to work Wednesday morning following a one-day strike, according to the Albert Lea Tribune.

The workers, who are represented by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota, went on strike Tuesday. The strike affected 79 union members working as certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, sterile processing technicians and in utilities and materials management. Those employees are part of the general group that voted to authorize a one-day strike in late November. The strike also affected six skilled maintenance workers who have not had a labor deal for more than two years.

Mayo told Becker's 20 percent of the employees who were scheduled to work in the general group crossed the picket line and reported to work Tuesday. All six maintenance workers participated in the strike.

The day after the strike, general group workers arrived at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea about 6 a.m. and were told by hospital management and security they could not go back to their jobs until Dec. 26, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota told the Star Tribune. The union has described the move as a "lockout" and claimed in the report it was the first such healthcare lockout in Minnesota.

Mayo said it repeatedly told SEIU leaders and members that the system would bring in replacement workers in the event of a strike. Since a seven-day employment commitment is required for those replacement workers, striking Mayo employees who are part of the SEIU Healthcare Minnesota general group were told they could not return to their job until Dec. 26. Mayo did not contract replacement workers for the maintenance workers, so they were expected to return to their job Dec. 20.

"No one has been taken by surprise by this situation, and it is disturbing to see SEIU leaders pretend otherwise. The responsibility for our valued employees being out of work over the holiday rests squarely with SEIU leaders, who chose to strike rather than bargain in good faith, and chose to call a strike at this time of year," Mayo said.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota general group members are slated to resume contract negotiations with Mayo Dec. 28. Another negotiating session has not been set for the maintenance workers, according to the Albert Lea Tribune.

A key sticking point in negotiations involves benefits. Mayo has said employees represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota "are being offered the same Mayo Clinic benefits package as virtually all other allied health employees, which we strongly believe is better as a whole than the benefits they currently receive."

But the union has taken issue with language stating union benefits could change when there is a change in benefits for nonunionized employees, according to the Albert Lea Tribune.
A man who allegedly stole an ambulance from outside Martins Ferry-based East Ohio Regional Hospital was arrested on multiple charges this week, according to a Times Leader report.

Andrew Norman, 22, of Flushing, Ohio, allegedly stole the vehicle Tuesday while it was parked and running, according to the report. He was arrested after law enforcement officials saw the ambulance traveling on Interstate 70.

Mr. Norman faces charges of grand theft, receiving stolen property, obstructing official business, misconduct at an emergency and disrupting public services, according to the report, which cites Belmont County Jail information.

More articles on healthcare industry legal issues:

DOJ: Man treated nearly 2 dozen patients while posing as physician in Virginia

Cooper University Health sues Trinity division for $15M over failed hospital deal

Nurse accuses Cedars-Sinai of failing to prevent sexual harassment by surgeon
A grand jury in New Hampshire has issued an indictment charging 49-year-old Travis Frink with both first- and second-degree murder in the shooting death of his mother earlier this year at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., according to the Valley News.

Mr. Frink is accused of shooting his 70-year-old mother Sept. 12 while she was a patient in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's intensive care unit.

The first-degree murder charge asserts Mr. Frink "purposely caused" his mother's death, and the second-degree charge asserts he acted "recklessly, under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life, by shooting her multiple times," according to the report.

According to an affidavit filed by New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Mary Bonilla, Mr. Frink drove to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center from Rhode Island on the day of the incident. He allegedly signed in to the visitor's desk and then went to the ICU, where he asked his stepfather for some time alone with his mother. As his stepfather was leaving the room, Mr. Frink allegedly shot his mother several times.

After firing the shots, Mr. Frink walked past his stepfather without saying a word and left the hospital. He was arrested as he attempted to drive off the Dartmouth-Hitchcock campus, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Mr. Frink has been held without bail since the shooting.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

2 physician groups will pay $33M to settle kickback allegations: 6 things to know

DOJ: Man treated nearly 2 dozen patients while posing as physician in Virginia

Cooper University Health sues Trinity division for $15M over failed hospital deal
A gunman entered the emergency psychiatric services wing of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Wednesday afternoon and opened fire, injuring a hospital security officer before killing himself, according to WHIO.

The shooter, who has yet to be identified, walked into the psychiatric wing and fired multiple shots. One bullet hit an unarmed hospital security guard in the shoulder. The security guard was immediately rushed into surgery after sustaining "very serious" injuries, according to the report.

Within minutes, the Cincinnati Police Department rushed to the scene, which was originally described as an active shooter situation.

The suspect continued to fire more shots, including at least one toward the police officer responding to the scene. That police officer was not hit, nor did that officer return fire.

Moments later, the suspect turned the gun on himself and was pronounced dead on the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

During the incident, the hospital was placed on lockdown. It has since been lifted. No other injuries were reported.

"We'd like to thank our community for their continued support throughout this time.  We would also like to thank our Public Safety team and @CincyPD for their prompt response and support," UC Health tweeted following the incident.
Medtronic appointed two executives in its Minimally Invasive Therapies Group and Asia-Pacific region.

The company shifted its leadership due to former Minimally Invasive Therapies Group Executive Vice President Bryan Hanson leaving to become president and CEO of Zimmer Biomet.





Here are six things to know:

1. Bob White will take on the roles of executive vice president and president of the company's Minimally Invasive Therapies Group.

2. Mr. White previously served as senior vice president and president of Medtronic's Asia-Pacific region. The region boosted its revenue from $2.1 billion in fiscal year 2015 to $3.4 billion in fiscal year 2017 under Mr. White's leadership.

3. He joined the company in 2015 following Medtronic's acquisition of Covidien. He served as president of Covidien's respiratory and monitoring business as well as president of emerging markets.

4. Medtronic also named Chris Lee the new Asia-Pacific region president.

5. Mr. Lee joined Medtronic in 2012 as senior vice president and president the company's greater China region. During his tenure, the region experienced double-digit revenue growth. He will serve as interim president until Medtronic finds a permanent replacement.

6. He previously worked at Bayer HealthCare, leading the Asia-Pacific region and the greater China region.
Doximity released a new research study on the 2017 labor market for physicians, examining data for 15 specialists practicing in 20 large metropolitan areas.

The report gathered compensation information from 12,000 job listings and 40,000 self-reported compensation surveys. The report found physician compensation grew 5.1 percent nationally and job growth is up 164 percent in geriatrics.

Here are the 10 medical specialties most in depend based on job growth:

1. Geriatrics: 164 percent

2. Urology: 49 percent

3. Oncology: 45 percent

4. Hematology: 39 percent

5. OB/GYN: 31 percent

6. Gastroenterology: 27 percent

7. Occupational medicine: 26 percent

8. Endocrinology: 25 percent

9. Neurosurgery: 25 percent

10. Cardiology: 23 percent
Here are eight things for spinal surgeons to know for Dec. 21, 2017.

Zimmer Biomet hands baton to Bryan Hanson as new president, CEO

Zimmer Biomet named Bryan C. Hanson its new president and CEO. He will also serve as a member of the board of directors. With more than two decades of medical device industry experience, Mr. Hanson previously served on Medtronic's executive committee and as executive vice president and president of Medtronic's Minimally Invasive Therapies Group.





Globus Medical files lawsuit against Stryker, ex-engineer over trade secret poaching

Globus Medical sued Stryker and a former engineer for allegedly stealing proprietary trade secrets when the engineer accepted a new job at Stryker, according to Mass Device. The lawsuit alleges the former engineer broke her non-compete and non-disclosure contract with Globus Medical after she accepted a job at Stryker Nov. 1. In a Nov. 14 statement, Stryker denied the allegations of the engineer was in violation of the previous agreement. Read more about the lawsuit, here.





OHSU neurosurgeon treats Amtrak derailment victims

Nathan Selden, MD, of Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland, was traveling to Seattle when he witnessed the Amtrak derailment in Tacoma, Wash. The neurosurgeon immediately began treating victims, according to KOIN 6 News. For two hours, Dr. Selden treated victims of the accident who had open head wounds, skull, pelvic and leg fractures as well as small cuts and neck sprains. Read more, here.





NuVasive appoints Michael Piccirillo to lead global surgeon education platform

NuVasive has expanded its surgeon education program into a clinical professional development global platform that integrates surgical training with professional development and appointed Michael Piccirillo to lead expansion efforts. Mr. Piccirillo has a background in designing and executing spine educational curriculums and has worked with surgeon communities in more than 80 countries around the world.





Women compose 50.7% of medical school enrollees in 2017

The Association of American Medical Colleges reported the number of women enrolled in U.S. medical schools surpassed the number of enrolled men. Of the 21,338 new enrollees, females made up 50.7 percent in 2017, up from 49.8 percent in 2016. While the female enrollees rose 3.2 percent, male enrollees decreased 0.3 percent.





60k spine surgeries completed with SpineGuard's PediGuard, DSG devices

Surgeons have performed 60,000 spine surgeries with SpineGuard's PediGuard and Dynamic Surgical Guidance devices. SpineGuard's devices are intended for accurate pedicle screw placement.





Barrow Neurological Institute, Aesculap to hold live neurosurgery course

Phoenix-based Barrow Neurological Institute is collaborating with Aesculap to host a live neurosurgery course. Michael T. Lawton, MD, Barrow president and CEO; neurosurgery department professor and chair; and neurovascular surgery chief will head the course. The four-day course will demonstrate approaches and microsurgical techniques during live operations on lesions.





Tenet closes 232-bed Phoenix hospital

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare closed Abrazo Maryvale Campus, a 232-bed hospital in Phoenix, on Dec. 18. The hospital, which announced plans in October to shut down and ended inpatient care Dec. 1, closed primarily because of dwindling patient volumes.




By PTI: (Eds: Updating toll, adds fresh inputs)

Gopalganj/Patna, Dec 21 (PTI) At least six persons were today killed and several others injured, some of them seriously, when a boiler exploded at a sugar mill in Gopalganj district of Bihar, a top police official said here.

Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) S K Singhal said that among the injured, the condition of three has deteriorated.

advertisement

Two of them have been referred to Gorakhpur and one to Kushinagar in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh for treatment, he said.

"The number of persons killed in the boiler explosion at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Gopalganj has reached six. Five workers had died on the spot and another succumbed to burn injuries while being taken to a hospital," Singhal told reporters.

Three persons, with minor injuries, are being treated at a hospital in Gopalganj.

Singhal also said that Mehboob Ali, owner of the sugar mill where angry workers set fire to vehicles after the explosion, has been arrested along with his two sons and the situation there has been brought under control.

The workers had alleged that the boiler was in a state of disrepair and blamed the incident on the owners negligence.

Taking a serious note of the incident, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased and also dispatched teams of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Relief Force (SDRF) to the site for carrying out relief work.

The chief minister also ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident, directing principal secretary, sugarcane industries, S Siddharth and principal secretary, labour, Deepak Kumar Singh to personally visit the site of the incident and carry out an investigation.

In a statement, Governor Satyapal Mallik also expressed grief over the incident and condoled the deaths and hoped for speedy recovery of the injured.

Meanwhile, Ali and his two sons have been kept at their house after their arrest due to security reasons, a report from Gopalganj quoted Superintendent of Police Mrityunjay Kumar as saying.

The report also said that Ali has announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased and promised to employ one person from the family of each who lost their lives in the explosion. PTI CORR NAC JM KJ

--- ENDS ---
As 2017 draws to a close amid a distinctly Brexit-dominated backdrop, it is perhaps timely to reflect on another steady if unspectacular year in the Northern Irish property market.

I must admit that it has certainly been an eventful year politically, both locally and on the international stage, something which seems certain to continue for the foreseeable future.

I feel it is now impossible to deny the reality that the spectre of Brexit has had a material impact on our property market over the past year.

That said, I believe it is important to acknowledge the significant local successes achieved within this challenging context, with the standout investment transaction being Wirefox's acquisition of CastleCourt Shopping Centre in August for a reported 123m.

Other noteworthy deals include the Tesco Extra in Newry, which is believed to have been sold to an internationally based private investor for in excess of 27m, perhaps demonstrating continued demand for secure income irrespective of the generalities of wider market uncertainty.

Osborne King can also report encouraging investment activity, particularly in respect of resilient local property investors, who clocked up more than 70m in sales in 2017. Notable acquisitions include the purchase of Cleaver House, Donegall Place, in August on behalf of an Irishinvestor for in excess of 16m, as well as sales totalling around 20m across the UK as part of a structured portfolio break-up on behalf of a high profile local property player. We have also witnessed considerable growth in our auction service line, selling 133 lots in 2017 for a cumulative total of just under 20m up circa 274% on the previous year, placing us sixth in the UK, according to industry group EI.

Demand from our indigenous entrepreneurs remains particularly healthy in spite of wider market concerns, with most local agents/commentators bemoaning the lack of quality product available to satisfy these requirements, a frustration that I fear will continue in 2018.

Following a slow start, the occupational market sprang into life in the latter half of the year thanks largely to HMRC's commitment to its new regional hub currently being developed on Chichester Street, as well as a series of smaller transactions throughout Belfast city centre and City Quays at Clarendon Dock. Interest in this market remains relatively strong, with the lack of supply of genuine Grade A opportunities likely to continue next year, indicating that further rental growth is anticipated as rents push past the 20 per sq ft barrier.

In retail terms it has been a mixed year with rents, particularly in Belfast, continuing to recover and prime Zone A rents in Donegall Place now sitting at circa 150 per sq ft, a marked increase over the past 12 months. In a wider sense, however, the sector does continue to look challenging, set against the seemingly relentless rise of online shopping. The recently announced Toys R Us closures are a stark reminder of the underlying issues and it will be interesting to see if more bulky goods casualties materialise in 2018 after the January sales.

In summary, it seems the key word for our local property market must be "resilience".

The simple reality is that in Northern Ireland political uncertainty is more or less a constant and within this context our business people, particularly our entrepreneurs, appreciate that life simply has to go on.

It is precisely this determined attitude which will inevitably carry us through 2018, Brexit and beyond

Dave McClure is a director in the advisory department of commerical property agents Osborne King
Homes and businesses will have a legal right to demand high-speed broadband by 2020 under new regulations

Homes and businesses will have a legal right to demand high-speed broadband by 2020 under new regulations.

More than a million premises across the UK cannot access decent speeds.

Last week a report by Ofcom said 56,000 homes and offices in Northern Ireland - around 7% of properties here - cannot get the speeds required to meet a typical household's needs.

The communications watchdog defines this as broadband offering a download speed of at least 10 Megabits per second (Mbps).

The Government confirmed that everyone in the UK will have access to speeds of at least 10 Mbps under a regulatory Universal Service Obligation (USO), rejecting a voluntary proposal from network provider BT to improve speeds.

Under the plan, broadband providers will face a legal requirement to provide high-speed broadband to anyone requesting it, subject to a cost threshold.

The Government said it believed that only a regulatory USO offered sufficient certainty and the legal enforceability required to ensure high-speed broadband access for the whole of the UK by 2020. It said it welcomed BT's "continued investment to deliver broadband to all parts of the UK".

Ofcom said this month that 4% of UK premises, or around 1.1 million, could not access broadband speeds of at least 10 Mbps.

Britain also lags behind most of Europe in providing fibre to the home which guarantees the fastest speeds available.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said: "We are grateful to BT for their proposal but have decided that only a regulatory approach will make high-speed broadband a reality for everyone in the UK, regardless of where they live or work.

"This is all part of our work on ensuring that Britain's telecoms infrastructure is fit for the future and will continue to deliver the connectivity that consumers need in the digital age."

A BT spokesman said: "We respect the Government's decision. BT and Openreach want to get on with the job of making decent broadband available to everyone in the UK so we'll continue to explore the commercial options for bringing faster speeds to those parts of the country which are hardest to reach."

It pledged to work closely with the Government, Ofcom and industry to help deliver the regulatory USO.

Alex Neill from Which? said: "This decision is welcome news, as consumers around the country simply want to know they will be able to access a broadband service.

"The Government must now move quickly to ensure consumers get these promised speeds by 2020 and closely monitor the programme to ensure it can keep pace with changing technology."
The long wait for hip hop musical Hamilton to open in London will finally end on Thursday.

The show, which has been a sensation on Broadway, bagged 11 Tony Awards and scored creator Lin-Manuel Miranda a Pulitzer Prize. It uses different musical genres to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton  one of Americas founding fathers.

The show is opening in London two weeks later than originally planned after renovations to the Victoria Palace Theatre delayed the start of previews.

The run in London will be the first outside the US, after receiving rapturous receptions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

In the programme notes for the production, co-producer Cameron Mackintosh writes: In only two years this brilliantly original musical has already become a legendary success in America and, whatever anybody tells you about it, the experience of seeing it is what really matters.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

With a stupendously talented cast, I have no doubt that London audiences are in for a theatrical experience like no other.

The show has been in previews since December 6 and audiences have heaped praise on the performances before critics deliver their own verdicts.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Performances were initially slated to begin on November 21 and thousands of ticket-holders have had to be re-seated.

Miranda, who penned the musical and starred as the title character in the original Broadway cast, has previously told the Press Association he is excited to see how the comedic portrayal of King George III, the British monarch who lost the American colonies, is received in the UK.

He said: King George III is a crowd favourite with every actor, every rapper.

When Busta Rhymes saw the show he said I need that outfit.

There is something about the character, he becomes an audience surrogate.

Its sort of delightful, as he pokes holes in the American mythology, hes all of us in a way.

Miranda added that he does not think the fact the show details another countrys history will affect the audiences enjoyment and understanding.

He said: That was one of the first questions I got when I was in London  We dont know your history here. I would sheepishly add, Well most Americans dont know our history either so thats not an impediment to enjoying the musical.

But Im very curious to see how you guys react to King George III in the show, that theatre is in the shadow of Buckingham Palace so Im very curious to see how that goes over.

Miranda is expected to attend opening night with his wife Vanessa Nadal after the couple offered fans the chance to make a donation to charities to be in with a chance of joining them at the show.

They teamed up with online fundraising platform Prizeo to invite fans to make a donation to the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) and the UK-based climate change charity 10:10 to be in with a chance of winning the prize.

Hamilton opens at the Victoria Palace Theatre on December 21.
An "inspirational" woman who was donated a kidney 30 years ago said it has allowed her to watch her son and grandchildren grow up.

Noreen Hamilton (57) had only become a first-time mum in 1983 when she discovered she needed a new kidney.

Despite having a newborn son to care for, Noreen spent the next four years undergoing gruelling dialysis twice a week.

The Banbridge woman, now a grandmother of two, described how the pain and fluid in her body left her unable to hold baby Wayne in her arms or feed him.

"It was a nightmare time for me, you take your health for granted all the time, you never think it's going to happen to you," she said.

"During those four years I couldn't do anything for myself. I couldn't climb the stairs, couldn't eat or drink or go on holidays. I had to stay near the house in case I got a call for the transplant.

"I struggled to go to the toilet.

"Until someone goes through it they will never understand how bad it is.

"Wayne was my first and only child. I think I had him out in the pram only twice."

Noreen spent sleepless nights waiting for the call to confirm that a match had been found.

Then in December 1987, just days before Christmas, Noreen was awakened by her mother.

"I didn't sleep during the nights as I thought that's when the hospital would phone me but I had Wayne's fourth birthday party that weekend and I was exhausted and fell asleep," she added.

"I never heard the hospital ringing and they rang and rang but couldn't get through so they contacted mummy and she came to the house, but I couldn't hear the front door, so she was banging at my bedroom window shouting at me to get out of bed."

At the age of 26, Noreen was brought in for a transplant that would change her life.

Her amazing story featured on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph 30 years ago this week.

"I never thought it would happen," she added.

"This phone call came years after watching all the patients on the dialysis ward come and go and I didn't think it was going to happen for me, so I couldn't believe it when my turn came up."

After the successful operation medics told Noreen she would probably return to hospital because of problems associated with kidney transplants, but 30 years on, she hasn't needed to.

She added: "The kidney started working the minute it was implanted, it was meant for me.

"I can deal with whatever comes my way now. It has prolonged my life, I could play with my child. I can now play with my grandkids and do things with them that I never got to do with my son."

Noreen is now an organ donation campaigner and has been raising awareness of the importance of carrying donor cards.

She continued: "The person whose kidney I have gave me my life back and there are no words. I look at my family and without that person I wouldn't be here to see them."

Former UUP MLA and family friend Jo-Anne Dobson, who spearheaded a campaign to introduce a new policy on organ donors in Northern Ireland, said Noreen is an "inspiration".

"Noreen is one of the committed army of transplant trailblazers who received their 'gift of life' many decades ago," she said.

"Like so many people I am privileged to know Noreen and her family and to see first-hand the amazing difference which receiving a donated kidney has made to her.

"Over the past 30 years it has enabled her to raise her son Wayne and to welcome her beloved grandchildren into the world.

"Noreen has a wonderful can-do attitude - she is a real transplant hero."
Two cousins have been jailed for a "savage" street attack in the Divis area of west Belfast

Two cousins have been jailed for a "savage" street attack in the Divis area of west Belfast.

Their victim - who had been socialising with one of his two attackers before he was chased down and stabbed a total of eight times - has been left with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Leo Benson (28), from Pegasus Walk in Downpatrick, was handed an eight-year sentence for attacking the victim and stabbing him as he lay on the ground.

His 18-year old cousin Corey Benson, from Manor Street in Belfast, was given a 10-month sentence after he admitted kicking the victim in the head.

Sending the cousins to prison, Judge David McFarland said most of the injuries were inflicted on the victim as he lay on the ground when he "couldn't escape or defend himself".

Belfast Crown Court heard that the incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday, November 1, 2015.

Prosecuting barrister Robin Steer said that Corey Benson and the victim had been drinking in Corey's grandmother's house, when an argument broke out between them.

Corey punched the victim in the face, before shouting up the stairs and summoning his sleeping cousin, Leo.

The victim ran from the house and tried to make his way to a relative's house at nearby Quadrant Place.

However, he was chased by the cousins and was stabbed in the chest by Leo Benson.

Once on the ground, Leo knelt down and delivered further stab wounds to the injured man's back and shoulders, while Corey kicked him in the head.

Mr Steer said that during the attack, Leo Benson told the victim: "I am going to cut you into pieces."

The prosecutor also revealed that Corey was heard to say to his older cousin: "Don't be stabbing him."

The injured man was left lying on the street, and a 999 call was made at 5.45am.

During this call, a relative of the injured man can be heard in the background blaming Leo and Corey Benson.

The victim was rushed to the A&E department at the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he was treated for eight separate stab wounds.

While five were deemed to be superficial, the other three were serious and required surgery.
The Department of Education has received almost 650,000 under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme.

The money, after a year-long delay, will go towards the education of Syrian refugee children.

In 2015 the Prime Minister announced that an additional 20,000 refugees would settle in the UK over the course of the current UK Parliament.

The First Minister and deputy First Minister signalled to the UK Government their willingness to welcome some of the most vulnerable refugees into Northern Ireland.

Refugees in Northern Ireland are eligible to claim housing, be admitted to schools and receive healthcare.

Sinn Fein MLA Karen Mullan has welcomed confirmation that schools have now received financial assistance to support the education of children from Syrian refugee families.

The party's Education spokesperson said: "Under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, the Home Office has committed to provide 4,500 a year towards each Syrian child's education.

"However, for more than a year nothing was received. That was a completely unacceptable delay and a matter which I raised with the Home Office directly."

The MLA added: "I am pleased the Department of Education has now received almost 650,000 because it is only right that schools should get the funding they were promised to assist children who have endured so much hardship and upheaval.

However, they should not have had to wait so long and I will continue to lobby and engage with the British Home Office to ensure there is of repeat of this delay."
A DUP MP has asked UK Government ministers if they should "slap down" Tanaiste Simon Coveney, amid claims that comments by the Irish government were undermining unionist confidence.

Ian Paisley pressed Northern Ireland minister Chloe Smith over an editorial in a Belfast newspaper that said comments by Mr Coveney were destabilising Northern Ireland's economy.

Mr Coveney, who is also Irish foreign affairs minister, recently suggested that if Stormont couldn't be resurrected, other options - including an election, or "the triggering of Intergovernmental Conferences to make decisions on Northern Ireland" - could be considered.

Unionists have interpreted the latter suggestion as a move to give Dublin a say in Northern Ireland's internal affairs.

Northern Ireland questions in the Commons saw North Antrim MP Mr Paisley ask: "Does the minister of state agree with the editorial in the News Letter this week, Britain's oldest running newspaper, which stated categorically that Mr Coveney, the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, needs to be slapped down by Her Majesty's Government for the comments that it is making, that is destabilising the economy of Northern Ireland?"

Ms Smith sidestepped the question, saying: "I think the simplest thing to say here is we stand behind, fully behind, the Belfast Agreement.

"We do have a strong relationship with the Irish government, which we wish to see continue."

Later, during Prime Minister's Questions, DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds asked Theresa May about "the well-established three-stranded approach to Northern Ireland which makes it clear that the internal arrangements and decisions on Northern Ireland are a matter for the United Kingdom Government and the parties in Northern Ireland?"

Mrs May said: "I am very happy to make that clear to (Mr Dodds) and to confirm what he says, and we are very clear about the position and the decisions that will be taken about Northern Ireland.

"What we do of course want to see is a Northern Ireland Executive restored so that we can see those devolved decisions being taken by that Northern Ireland Executive."

Speaking later, Mr Dodds added: "There has been some loose, inaccurate and misrepresentative language used by a number of politicians from outside Northern Ireland in recent times.

"Despite those comments however, the Prime Minister today was very clear that internal arrangements and decisions on Northern Ireland are a matter only for the United Kingdom government and the Northern Ireland parties."

Elsewhere in the session, the government's approach to Brexit was branded "a shambles" by shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Smith, given its position over the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said the UK would be leaving the CAP in 2019, while maintaining payments through to 2020.

Mr Smith said: "It cannot be right that we will both be under exactly the same EU rules and regulations, which is what the Prime Minister said in Florence, and that we will be leaving the Common Agricultural Policy.

"If it is true that we are leaving the Common Agricultural Policy, 30,000 Ulster families and farmers need to know how they're going to pay their mortgages and meet their other commitments in just 15 months' time. This is a complete shambles. The Prime Minister is going to be here in a minute. Can he tell her to sort this out?"

Mr Brokenshire replied: "The only shambles is the approach of the opposition to Brexit.

"I know at this time of the year that many people will mark the 12 days of Christmas, but we've had at least 12 different approaches on Brexit from Labour.

"I say to him that yes, we will be leaving the Common Agricultural Policy, as the Prime Minister said on Monday, but she also underlined clearly our commitment in relation to those direct payments."
In February, Unite and the US ITC will discuss whether Boeing has suffered injury or loss as a result of Delta Airlines' order of C Series jets

Union leaders are warning jobs could be "crushed" after the United States commerce department confirmed plans to impose duties on imports of Bombardier C Series commercial jets.

In its final determination, the department said it will impose duties of 292%.

Unite called on the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to set aside the decision when it meets in February to discuss whether Boeing has suffered injury or loss as a result of Delta Airlines' order of C Series jets.

If the ITC finds in Boeing's favour the tariffs will be applied.

Describing Wednesday's commerce department decision as "nakedly political", Unite warned that in addition to Northern Ireland jobs, as many as 22,000 US jobs could be under threat if the US ITC decided to impose tariffs.

Assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: "Today's decision by the US Commerce Department on C Series tariffs is nakedly political and has the potential to crush jobs, not only in Northern Ireland but in the US too.

"More than 50% of C Series components are sourced from the US, where the supply chain sustains 22,000 US jobs. The economic impact of these tariffs would be felt in communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Boeing does not produce an aircraft in the same class as Bombardier's C Series and didn't even bid for the Delta contract it is complaining about, which leaves its complaint totally without merit.

"Boeing is using its meritless complaint as cover to close the US market, which is one of the biggest in the world, to new entrants such as Bombardier's C Series aircraft."

He added: "We would urge the US International Trade Commission to do the right thing for fair trade and jobs by finding against Boeing and setting aside the commerce department's determination when it makes its final decision in the New Year.

"The UK government, despite handing out defence contracts to Boeing amounting to more than 4.6 billion, have provided no answers to the threat hanging over workers.

"Ministers have not even hinted at challenging future contracts with Boeing. When we asked what action they had taken to defend jobs, we were lamely told that Theresa May had rang Donald Trump.

"The UK government has to start forcefully backing Bombardier workers."

Unite regional officer for Bombardier in Northern Ireland, Susan Fitzgerald, said: "This decision poses a devastating risk for the Northern Ireland economy.

"Tariffs on the scale proposed by the US Commerce Department in the world's largest airline market, threaten to undermine the long-term economics of Bombardier's presence in Northern Ireland.

"Not only is it a threat to the economy, it poses a significant threat to stability in Northern Ireland. Unite is very conscious that workplaces are the largest integrated environments in our society."

She added: "We cannot lose thousands more jobs on top of what's already gone and expect hopelessness and instability not to feature.

"There is no need for one single job loss, in fact, the potential exists for the creation of jobs in Northern Ireland, the US, Canada and elsewhere.

"The C Series represents a tremendous opportunity for further growth in the sector."

Mike Nadolski, Bombardier's Vice President Communications and Public Affairs, said evidence presented by Boeing earlier this week at the US International Trade Commission demonstrated an "unfounded assault" on airlines, the flying public, and the US aerospace industry.

He added: "That has been true since the start of the investigation, and recent developments make it even clearer, particularly the Bombardier and Airbus partnership, which will include the construction of a new U.S.manufacturing facility in Alabama.

"This facility will provide US airlines with a US-built plane thereby eliminating any possibility of harm due to imports.

"Unfortunately, the Commerce Department decision is divorced from this reality and ignores long-standing business practices in the aerospace industry, including launch pricing and the financing of multibillion dollar aircraft programs.

"Moreover, we are deeply disappointed that the Commerce Department did not take this opportunity to rectify its past errors.

"We remain confident that at the end of the process, the United States International Trade Commission will reach the right conclusion, which is that the C Series benefits the US aerospace industry, US airlines, and the US flying public.

"The fact is that the C Series simply does not threaten Boeing."

A Government spokesman said: "This decision by the Department of Commerce is disappointing and damages the global aerospace industry. Though this judgment was widely anticipated given the initial action also found in favour of Boeing, we fundamentally disagree that this determination is justified by the facts.

"The next step is for the US International Trade Commission to decide on the impact, if any. We will continue to work alongside our counterparts in Northern Ireland and Canada, Bombardier and Airbus to resolve this matter."
The controversy led to the collapse of the Stormont Assembly

Compelling public interest justified cutting the cost of a botched green energy scheme in Northern Ireland, a High Court judge has ruled.

Critical mistakes meant businesses were enjoying an "unacceptably high" return from the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), Justice Adrian Colton added.

Political disagreements over the project encouraging largely rural firms to burn eco-friendly fuel led to the collapse of the powersharing institutions earlier this year.

If the original 2012 scheme had not been amended it would have cost Northern Ireland's public budget close to 700 million, the judge said, with "severe consequences".

He said: "There is a compelling public interest justifying interference with the rights of the affected persons."

He dismissed a legal challenge to changes imposing a cap on the spiralling payments earlier this year, adding: "I accept that there is an obvious and significant public interest in ensuring that expenditure on the scheme remains within HMT (Treasury) budgets."

The 2017 regulations seek to address mistakes which led to the original high rate of return and will still provide an average exceeding the anticipated 12%, the judge added.

He said most operators have already received more than their original outlay in payments.

Boiler owners had argued that they undertook substantial capital investments, borrowing on the basis of a binding contract with the state, and that altering that agreement was unlawful.

Chicken and mushroom farmers are among those who participated in the RHI, using subsidised boilers to heat their sheds. The legal action was launched on their behalf by the Renewable Heat Association.

Outside court, its executive chairman Andrew Trimble said the judgment will worsen the difficult position facing agri-food businesses while Brexit looms.

"The whole economics of the renewable sector will be significantly stressed by this."

In court, Stormont's Economy Department claimed it was legally entitled to alter the payments and the judge concurred.

He said: "The circumstances of extreme political urgency and practical impossibility created a unique imperative on the respondent (the department) to act before the dissolution of the Assembly."

The Assembly collapsed after Sinn Fein's late deputy first minister Martin McGuinness resigned in protest at the DUP's handling of the RHI.

Months of negotiations have not resurrected the institutions and a public inquiry is probing the events of the RHI saga.

The judge said: "I recognise that the introduction and operation of the RHI scheme has had a damaging effect on public confidence in good administration in this jurisdiction.

"There is a compelling public interest in permitting the department to correct the obvious errors and flaws in the scheme it introduced."
By PTI: Hubbali (Karnataka), Dec 21 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government, alleging that the way Hindu and BJP workers are being "brutally" killed signified "a state of anarchy."

Adityanath also asserted at a party rally here that "no one can stop" BJP from forming the government in Karnataka in the Assembly polls, due early next year.

advertisement

He accused the Congress of "insulting" Indias rich tradition by showing respect to the 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan, whose birth anniversary celebrations by the government had triggered a huge controversy and sharp divison of public opinion on the issue across the state.

Calling Karnataka "the land of Hanuman" and home of valour and courage which was ruled by the erstwhile Vijayanagara Empire, Adityanath said it was unfortunate that the Congress "instead of worshipping Hanuman and Vijayanagar was worshiping Tipu Sultan."

"This is the difference in mindset, because Congress wants to implement across the country the mafia raj that Rahul Gandhi has inherited. Karnataka has to dismiss this, like Gujarat and Himachal have dismissed," he said, referring to the recent assembly polls in the two states where the BJP won.

"If Karnataka dismisses Congress in one go, no one else will come to worship Tipu Sultan," he said. Adityanath was speaking at the "Parivarthana Yatra" rally organised by the state BJP as part of its programme to "expose the misdeeds" of the Congress government in the state.

Alleging that there is a law and order problem in the state, he spoke about "brutal killings" of Hindu and BJP workers.

He said "the way in which Hindu and BJP workers are brutally killed and there is always a threat to their lives signifies the state of anarchy that exists in Karnataka under Congress rule."

Speaking about farmers issues, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said his government had waived loan worth Rs 36,000 crore benefiting about 86 lakh farmers, and they include loans borrowed from nationalised or cooperative banks.

He claimed that the Congress government wants to use farmers money during elections and that is the reason it is not taking a firm decision on waiving the loan completely.

Pointing out that there is protection to every one and developmental works were happening in all the 19 BJP ruled states, he said "Congress policy is divisive, aimed at dividing the society."

advertisement

The people of Gujarat have chosen BJP for the sixth time keeping faith in Narendra Modis development agenda and disapproving the Congress "divisive" thinking, Adityanath said. "We want same thing to be repeated in Karnataka," he said. "Congress does not believe in development, their belief is in dividing the society in the name of caste or religion," the chief minister said. Appealing to the people to support BJP for the sake of Karnataka and its development, he said the Congress has always neglected the state by making lesser financial allocations.

"World over leaders want to replicate Indias developmental agenda ushered in by Narendra Modi, but Congress which doesnt know what is development is laughing at it and is raising questions about it," he said.

With Congress at the helm, development cannot reach the ground level in Karnataka, Adityanath said.

"BJP alone can do it...look at your excitement, Im assured that no one can stop BJP from forming government in Karnataka." "Im sure that by bringing BJP back to power in Karnataka you will make it clear that in India Hanuman, saints and great spiritual leaders will get worshipped, and not Tipu Sultan," he added. PTI KSU RA BN

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Family Members of this killed in the Loughinisland massacre speak to the press outside Belfast High Court on Thursday after a judicial review. A High Court judge ruled that the Ombudsman was wrong to declare collusion in Loughinisland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker

A report which found RUC officers colluded with loyalists who massacred six Catholic men has been ruled unlawful and procedurally unfair.

Mr Justice McCloskey held that Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman went beyond his statutory powers in reaching conclusions on the Loughinisland atrocity which are unsustainable in law.

Read More

He also found that none of the police officers subjected to "destructive and withering condemnations" of colluding with UVF terrorists in the Heights Bar attack had the protection of due process.

Sinn Fein's Chris Hazzard stated that there is bitter disappointment at Thursday's court ruling which was heavily criticised the Police Ombudsman's report into the Loughinisland massacre.

Commenting after the court case, he said: "There is a wealth of evidence already established regarding the scale of state collusion with the loyalist paramilitaries who carried out the Loughinisland massacre.

"And it's important to state that the judge did not controvert any of the facts that were in the original Ombudsman's report. The car used in the attack was still destroyed, interview notes were still destroyed, suspects were still protected.

"Todays ruling does not change any of that and Sinn Fein will continue to support the Loughinisland families in their campaign for truth and justice."

UUP MLA Alan Chambers said that the Police Ombudsman should resign in the wake of the High Court ruling.

He stated: "Today's High Court ruling regarding the Police Ombudsmans report in to Loughinisland is a devastating blow to the credibility of that office to the extent that I believe that the Police Ombudsmans position is now untenable, and he should resign.

The Loughinisland massacre in June 1994 was one of the most chilling and shocking crimes of the Troubles when six innocent men were gunned down by the UVF purely because they were Catholics.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Those murdered in the Loughinisland massacre were Barney Green, 87; Adrian Rogan, 34; Malcolm Jenkinson, 53; Daniel McCreanor, 59; Patrick O'Hare, 35; and Eamon Byrne, 39. Eamon Byrne Barney Greene Daniel McCreanor Malcolm Jenkinson Patrick OHare Adrian Rogan, . Middle: Eamon Byrne, Malcolm Jenkinson. Bottom: Daniel McCreanor, Barney Greene Adrian Rogan / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Those murdered in the Loughinisland massacre were Barney Green, 87; Adrian Rogan, 34; Malcolm Jenkinson, 53; Daniel McCreanor, 59; Patrick O'Hare, 35; and Eamon Byrne, 39.

Last year the Police Ombudsman found that there was collusion between the RUC and the terrorists. This was a massive statement to make and caused a great deal of controversy at the time.

Today a High Court Judge has ruled that this ruling of police collusion was beyond the Police Ombudsman's legal powers and was 'unsustainable in law."

The Ulster Unionist Policing spokesperson added: Mr Justice McCloskey also said authors of the Loughinisland report were careless, thoughtless and inattentive in the language and structuring of the document and that the police officers deemed to have colluded with the gunmen were in effect tried and convicted without notice in their absence.

"Some people seem to ignore the fact that the Police  serving and retired - are entitled to justice and fairness too.

Allegations of collusion have been used to smear the reputation of the RUC and question the credibility of the justice system in Northern Ireland. For the Police Ombudsmans Office to be the source of a report that has been so comprehensively rejected by the High Court should be a matter of huge embarrassment for the Ombudsman, and he should do the right thing and go now.

SDLP Policing and Legacy spokesperson Dolores Kelly MLA has repeated the party's call for justice.

Expand Expand Previous Next Close Ombusman Michael Maguire claimed Royal Ulster Constabulary officers colluded in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre Pacemaker Press 2/12/17 Family Members of this killed in the Loughinisland massacre speak to the press outside Belfast High Court on Thursday after a judicial review. A High Court judge ruled that the Ombudsman was wrong to declare collusion in Loughinisland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Ombusman Michael Maguire claimed Royal Ulster Constabulary officers colluded in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre

She said: "Today's judgement is bitterly disappointing and will feel like a blow to those families who have campaigned for justice for over twenty years.

"The primary focus of all parties must be on securing truth, justice and accountability for the victims of this atrocity. It is disappointing again that some have chosen to seek headlines rather than support victims and survivors.

"The SDLP will continue to seek a comprehensive and ethical process for dealing with the past. That includes a fiercely independent Police Ombudsman's Office."

South Down MLA Colin McGrath added: "This is a difficult day for the Loughinisland families who have given everything in pursuit of truth and justice for their loved ones.

"We will study today's judgement in detail over the coming days and work with the families to chart the best way forward."
A Co Antrim man has been ordered to stand trial accused of a catalogue of sex offences against a woman he allegedly held against her will.

Albert Nelson (30) appeared at Newtownards Magistrates Court yesterday, where he confirmed he was aware of the 28 charges he faces.

Nelson also confirmed that he had no objection to the holding of a preliminary enquiry, the legal step necessary to refer a case upwards to the higher Crown Court.

Nelson, from the Low Road in Islandmagee, is accused of 14 sex charges, which were all allegedly committed against the same female on various dates between November 30, 2015 and August 24 last year.

He faces 11 counts of rape; one count of attempted rape and two counts of sexual assault involving a hand and a beard trimmer.

The other half of the indictment accused Nelson of two counts of false imprisonment, two of issuing threats to kill the victim and her family, inflicting actual bodily harm, possessing a prohibited weapon, namely a canister of CS spray, possessing class B cannabis and seven charges of common assault.

While none of the facts or circumstances surrounding the plethora of allegations were opened in court, a prosecuting lawyer submitted there was a case to answer for Nelson, a submission which defence solicitor Jennifer Kelly took no issue with.

The court clerk told Nelson, who stood in the dock flanked by a prison officer, that although not obliged to he had the right to comment on the charges, give evidence himself or call witnesses on his behalf but that anyone giving evidence would be subject to cross examination.

Looking to Mrs Kelly for guidance, Nelson declined the opportunity.

Freeing Nelson on continuing bail, the terms of which bar him from contacting his alleged victim or being close to her address, District Judge Mark Hamill returned the case to Downpatrick Crown Court for trial.

The judge extended legal aid to allow a senior barrister to be instructed.

He ordered Nelson to appear at the higher court for his arraignment on January 18.
Scotlands First Minister has said any lessons from the investigation into a fatal fire at a luxury hotel will be learned.

Nicola Sturgeon gave the assurance in the wake of the blaze at the five-star Cameron House Hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond on Monday.

Guests Simon Midgley, 32, and Richard Dyson, 38, from London, died in the fire while a family of two adults and a child were rescued by ladder.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Local Dumbarton MSP Jackie Baillie was reduced to tears as she raised the tragedy in the Holyrood chamber during First Ministers Questions.

Ms Baillie sent her condolences to the families of Mr Midgley and Mr Dyson and praised the emergency services for their actions.

She said: The investigation has yet to start because the building needs to be made safe, but can I ask the First Minister, when the investigation is complete, will she ensure that lessons are learned, whether thats in practice or if there is indeed a need to enhance building standards regulations?

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Ms Sturgeon responded: I want today to convey my deepest condolences to the families of the two young men who died and send my thoughts to all of those who were affected by this tragedy.

This horrific event demonstrates once again how our firefighters so willingly put themselves in the line of danger to assist others on a daily basis and I know the whole chamber will want to send our grateful thanks to our firefighters and to all of our emergency services who responded.

Of course there will be a thorough investigation into what happened at Cameron House and it is important that that investigation is allowed to run its course, but I can give an assurance today that the Scottish Government, with our partners and indeed with the owners of Cameron House Hotel, will make sure that any lessons that emerge from that investigation are learned and fully applied.

Expand Close Nicola Sturgeon said: "The Scottish Government, with our partners and indeed with the owners of Cameron House Hotel, will make sure that any lessons that emerge from that investigation are learned and fully applied" (David Johnstone/Daily Record/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Nicola Sturgeon said: "The Scottish Government, with our partners and indeed with the owners of Cameron House Hotel, will make sure that any lessons that emerge from that investigation are learned and fully applied" (David Johnstone/Daily Record/PA)

More than 70 firefighters fought the early morning blaze at the resort, which caused significant damage to the hotel roof.One of the men died at the scene and the other died at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley.
Dog owners have been urged to keep festive treats away from their pets, as vets prepare for a spike in cases of chocolate poisoning.

More than 350 dogs have suffered the symptoms of chocolate exposure in the last five years, according to research published in Vet Record.

Advent calendars, Christmas tree decorations, Santa Claus figurines and gift box selections were among the confectionery items devoured by dogs.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

One particularly greedy canine got through six Chocolate Oranges and six Toblerones, while another was treated for poisoning after gulping down a hot chocolate drink, the study found.

Chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant similar to caffeine, which can cause vomiting, increased heart rate, agitation and seizures in dogs.

Between 2012 and 2017, 386 cases of chocolate poisoning involving 375 animals were reported at almost 230 veterinary practices in the UK, researchers at the University of Liverpool found.

Chocolate exposure was more than four times as likely to be recorded at Christmas and almost twice as likely to be recorded at Easter than in non-festive periods.

In December 2016, puppy Narla, who was nine months old at the time, nearly died after eating a box of liqueur chocolates from under the Christmas tree, animal charity PDSA said.

Expand Close Narla the French bulldog puppy (PDSA/PA) PA / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Narla the French bulldog puppy (PDSA/PA)

She was rushed to Blackpool PDSA pet hospital where she received life-saving treatment.

Vet Terry Ogdin said: We estimated that Narla had eaten around 200g of chocolate, which is an extremely dangerous amount for a dog of her size.

Thankfully she was brought in very quickly and we were able to treat her before the chocolate had a chance to digest.

Owner Suzanna Dixon, 32, from Blackpool, said: Not only did Narla eat a huge amount of chocolate, but they were also liqueur ones so the alcohol made it even worse.

There wont be any chocolates under the Christmas tree this year and Id urge others to ensure they dont leave any chocolate within easy reach.
Missionary Amy Carmichaels story is both an interesting and intriguing one

Northern Ireland has yet to realise the value and potential of so much of its history and heritage. I have long held that view, but it was reinforced a few weeks ago when I spent a few days in the city of Krakow in Poland.

In the heart of the city, beside the Market Square and the Christmas market stalls, there was a museum with a major exhibition about Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish soldier who died 200 years ago on October 15, 1817.

He was a Polish patriot, but he was also an American hero. In 1776 he sailed for America and joined the American revolutionary army, where he served under George Washington and eventually attained the rank of brigadier general.

It was an extensive exhibition with a strong emphasis on his role in America and celebrated the life of a great Polish soldier.

In stark contrast, the tercentenary of the birth of another American soldier, John Armstrong, passed almost unnoticed.

He was born in Brookeborough in Co Fermanagh on October 13, 1717, the son of Ulster-Scots parents, and he emigrated from Ulster to Pennsylvania around 1740.

Armstrong served with distinction in the American revolutionary army and was a friend and supporter of Washington.

He died in 1795 and, five years later, Armstrong County in Pennsylvania was named after him.

Both men fought in the same war and both men reached the rank of brigadier general, but while Poland celebrated the bicentenary of the death of the Polish soldier, Northern Ireland ignored the tercentenary of the birth of the Scotch-Irish soldier from Fermanagh.

It seems to me that, across our cultural establishment, there is now a hierarchy in the history of Ulster and that the successes and achievements of the Ulster-Scots, at home and abroad, are ranked very low in that hierarchy. It wasnt always like that, but it is like that today.

Someone could argue that this was a single omission, but unfortunately such omissions are more the norm than the exception.

Last Saturday was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Amy Carmichael, a famous Christian missionary, who was born into an Ulster-Scots family in Millisle on December 16, 1867.

Amy worked among the poor in Belfast, especially the shawlies, who were shawl-wearing factory workers, and, in 1887, she established the Welcome Hall, now the Welcome Evangelical Church, at Cambrai Street.

Later she travelled to India, where she spent more than half-a-century as a Christian missionary. There, her most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were rescued from what was really temple prostitution.

India eventually outlawed temple prostitution in 1948, but Amy continued her missionary work in India until her death in 1951. She also wrote many books, some of which are still in print today.

So, how is the story of Amy Carmichael told in our museums and cultural institutions?

Is her story not part of our Ulster story and is it not a story that deserves to be more widely known?

The Welcome Evangelical Church in Belfast is a testimony to her work, as is the Dohnavur Fellowship in India and there is an excellent Amy Carmichael mural in Cambrai Street, but we are still waiting for our cultural establishment to step up to the mark.

Why is it that the cultural establishment in Northern Ireland pays so little attention to the achievements of the Ulster-Scots? Are they not aware of these stories? Or are they not considered of sufficient merit?

Perhaps it is time for a real conversation between our cultural institutions, the Ulster-Scots Agency and the Ulster Scots Community Network to talk this through. Otherwise, the narrative that is told by these institutions is partial and patchy.

Such stories can be inspirational, affirmational and educational. They can also help to build our tourism product and tourism is an important aspect of our economy.

Yes, its time for Northern Ireland to embrace a cultural tradition that is at the heart of our cultural wealth.
They don't come bigger than the Pope - particularly when you consider that a successor to St Peter has never visited Northern Ireland. And, of course, any visit would be against the background of the burden of history from King Henry VIII's split with Rome over his annulment request around the time of the Reformation, to anti-Catholic hysteria arising from Titus Oates and the Popish plot to assassinate King Charles II that never was and subsequent centuries of prejudice, mistrust and misunderstanding.

Consider, also, Ian Paisley's denunciation of "Popery" and "the Anti-Christ" in Rome itself in the Sixties and in the European Parliament in the presence of Pope St John Paul in the Eighties.

Plus, the fact that the Troubles, more specifically security concerns following the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, prevented Pope John Paul from coming here on the only other papal visit to Ireland in 1979.

So, you can see that a visit by Pope Francis - who has won over hearts wherever he has gone - to a Northern Ireland still struggling to be remotely at peace with itself after decades of violent conflict that left thousands dead and so many unhealed wounds would be one of the biggest stories here since this part of the UK was founded almost 100 years ago.

We can be sure his every move would be beamed continuously on news channels and on web streams in every continent.

Oh, and, by the way, if the Pope - 81 last Sunday - does come (and, on balance, it is more likely than not that he will, health permitting), it will be in late-August towards the end of our often-fraught marching season, around the time of 'Black Saturday', when the Royal Black Preceptory have their last big day out of the year.

Between now and any official announcement confirming an Irish visit, which, on recent Vatican form on foreign trips to sensitive places could be several months away, it is likely there will be many stories of a speculative nature.

And, if he is coming north, we may not know his schedule until two months before he arrives.

A complicating factor is the acute political uncertainty here, with nobody knowing whether power-sharing will be restored in the foreseeable future.

There is no shortage of places with claims for a visit from the Pope during what would be likely a brief trip to Northern Ireland, with Armagh's two cathedrals and Downpatrick perhaps topping the list; and Belfast's Clonard Monastery - "the cradle of the peace process" - and the peace wall behind it also in possible contention.

The other day, Q Radio reported that the Queen would welcome the Pope to Northern Ireland, a development that would grab unprecedented world attention and confound fundamentalist Protestant monarchists planning to protest at any visit by a Pope. Q Radio may be on to something here and their story should not be dismissed as fanciful - even if it may not happen in the end.

Last year, a very influential senior Whitehall official, an English person who knows about these things, spoke to me privately of their wish for the Queen to welcome the Pope at Hillsborough Castle, her official residence here.

"It would be a potent symbol of reconciliation in a divided place," said my informant.

In case you have come to the story late, all this talk about a papal visit has arisen because, in September 2015, at the close of the Catholic Church's World Meeting of Families (WMOF) in Philadelphia, Pope Francis announced that the next WMOF, now dubbed 'WMOF2018', would be held in Dublin in 2018.

And, in May 2016, he said that WMOF2018 would take place from August 22 to 26 and that the theme would be 'The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World'.

The Pope does not always attend the WMOF, which is really a big religious festival that has been held every three years since 1994 to celebrate family life and promote the pastoral care of families. Pope John Paul, then in poor health, missed out Manila in 2003 and Pope Benedict XVI skipped Mexico City in 2009.

Just over a year ago, at the end of November 2016, Pope Francis granted a 20-minute audience to Enda Kenny in the Vatican and the then-Taoiseach - desperate for a good story to deflect attention from media speculation about his own future and the fact that most of his TDs wanted to see the back of him - couldn't wait to tell the media afterwards that the Pope had told him he would visit Ireland in 2018.

Whether it was right for Kenny to divulge the contents of a private conversation with the Holy Father is another matter. It appears that Kenny, at that time, probably still hoped that he would have the honour of greeting the pontiff on the tarmac at Dublin Airport, but, as we now know, Leo Varadkar had other ideas.

Last September, at the Down and Connor Faith and Life Convention in Belfast, one of Pope Francis' senior aides, Dublin-born Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life (head of the Vatican department that organises the WMOF) told journalists that the Pope intends to be in Dublin over two days, Saturday and Sunday, August 25 and 26 next year, but would not be drawn further.

Which begs the question: will Pope Francis make history by coming north?

Six months ago, a senior Catholic Church source told me that the Pope was coming to Northern Ireland.

One month ago, he wasn't quite so sure, as there is anxiety in Dublin, whose archdiocese is hosting the event, that a visit north would detract from the WMOF.

Undue weight should not be given to such concerns in Dublin and I have detected - and not just among the most senior northern bishops - a yearning for Pope Francis to come north that has been strongly communicated to the Vatican.

It is understood that, very early on, the Vatican's Secretariat of State, which is in charge of relations with foreign states, supported, in principle, a trip to both parts of Ireland.

It is, frankly, unthinkable that a Pope who has, as a moral leader, grabbed the imagination of much of the world, from Cuba to the US and the Middle East, who has spoken bluntly to Donald Trump and to the Myanmar generals (even if he did not, on his trip, use the 'R' word publicly until he addressed Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh), would not have something prophetic to say to society here after all we have been through.

A welcome recent development was DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson's statement to The Irish Catholic, apparently welcoming the prospect of a papal visit to Northern Ireland.

Whether power-sharing is restored or not by next August, Pope Francis would have something important to communicate to all of us by his actions and his words.

Martin O'Brien is a journalist and communications consultant and an award winning former BBC producer
ein Google-Unternehmen

Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben

Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen

Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern.

neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern

Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen

personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke.

Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten.

Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen.
Kareena Kapoor Khan had a rather unconventional gift for her son Taimur Ali Khan on his first birthday.

By India Today Web Desk: Taimur Ali Khan Pataudi's first birthday might not be a grand affair, but little munchkin's family definitely made it a special one. Away from the hustle-bustle of Mumbai, Kapoor khandaan and Khan family decided to ring in Taimur's first birthday at Pataudi Palace.

From balloons to fun rides to a delectable cake, Taimur's first birthday looked like a dreamy affair. But more than his birthday bash, it's his birthday gift that has grabbed eyeballs.

advertisement

If Saif gifted his son Taimur Ali Khan a swanky jeep worth Rs 1.30 crore on Children's Day, Kareena decided for a rather unconventional for their son on his first birthday.

Kareena has gifted Taimur a forest. Yes, you read it right! As part of a community farming initiative in Sonave, 50 km away from Mumbai, mom Kareena has named a forest after Taimur.

Photo Courtesy: Mumbai Mirror

"A little boy can never have enough of birds, bees and butterflies so we have put together a small forest as a birthday gift for Taimur on the outskirts of Mumbai," Kareena's nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar told Mumbai Mirror.

"The forest thrives on intercropping and I hope Taimur will grow up to celebrate a diverse society where people live together despite their distinctions," she added.

ALSO WATCH: Saif and Kareena become proud parents to a baby boy, Taimur Ali Khan Pataudi

--- ENDS ---
Secure School Counselor Portal

Within the secure School Counselor Portal, registered users can:

Access a listing of BGSU applicants from their school and view their admission status

Upload official transcripts for applicants

Users can also elect to receive a notification when a student applies to BGSU by signing up for our eNotification system.

The links below will allow you to access these features. If you don't yet have access to our secure School Counselor Portal, you may request access below.
Mitch McConnell selected to lead the Senate Republicans, 40-percent of households pay nothing to the IRS, 75-percent of workers need a second job to offset inflation, food prices hit a record high.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By PTI: Karachi, Dec 21 (PTI) A teenage Hindu girl, who was abducted by gunmen a few days ago in Pakistans Sindh province, has been forced to convert to Islam and pressured to get married, a media report claimed today.

Quoting the family of the girl, the Dawn said that the 14-year-old girl was abducted from Thar village after three armed men barged into their home and held the family hostage.

advertisement

The girls father, Hero Meghwar, said that he contacted some influential people in the area but was told that his daughter had converted and married a person named Naseer Lunjo and there was little that could be done, the paper reported.

The family members alleged that local police too was not interested in recovering the girl. The family demanded that the girl be recovered and produced before a court if she had indeed converted, the report said.

However, senior police official from Thar Ameer Saud Magsi said an FIR had been registered while raids are being conducted to arrest the three suspects.

The police had received a certificate of the conversion, Magsi said, adding that the now-married couple has filed an application in the Sindh High Court, seeking protection.

He said the court had fixed the application for hearing on January 17. PTI MRJ ZH

--- ENDS ---
The MoU was signed on 29th November, 2017 in New Delhi

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister has given its ex-post-facto approval for a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Italy on cooperation in the field of Health and Medical Sciences.

The MoU was signed on 29th November, 2017 in New Delhi.

The MoU covers the cooperation in the areas like Exchange & training of medical doctors, officials, other health professionals and experts; Assistance in development of human resources and setting up of health care facilities; Short term training of human resources in health; Regulation of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and cosmetics and exchange of information thereon; Promotion of business development opportunities in pharmaceuticals; Procurement of generic and essential drugs and assistance in sourcing of drug supplies; Procurement of health equipment and pharmaceutical products; Collaboration in the prevention of NCDs of .mutual interest, such as neurocardiovascular diseases, cancer, COPDs, mental health and dementia, with an emphasis on SDG3 and related factors; Collaboration in the field of climate change impact on communicable diseases and vector borne diseases; Nutritional aspects of food intake, including malnutrition (over nutrition and undernutrition) in the light of the SDG2 and organization of nutritional services; Safety of production, transformation, distribution and food delivery; Research and training of food industry operators; Information and communication to citizens on hygiene and food safety and healthy eating habits.

A Joint Working Group (JWG) will be set up to further elaborate the details of cooperation and to oversee the implementation of this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Is AMR Modern-day FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER?

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) continues to pose a significant public health problem in terms of mortality and economic loss. The rising AMR is a matter of huge concern that needs to be tactfully handled and health authorities of several countries, including India, have formulated action plans for its containment. Significant efforts by the government, an active involvement of startups and diagnostic players is a good start. The question remains, whether this will be enough.

For Feedback, please email us at: communications@mmactiv.com
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) Terrorism and radicalisation are common challenges for India and Mali, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today, calling for greater international cooperation to deal with the menace.

The Vice President and the Leader of a visiting delegation from Mali Abderhamane Niang, parliamentarian and President of the High Court of Justice, Mali, held a meeting and expressed their mutual concerns about the common challenge of terrorism and radicalisation, according to a statement issued by the Rajya Sabha secreteriat.

advertisement

Naidu thanked the Mali government for ratifying the International Solar Alliance agreement and said that he hopes that the President of the African nation would participate in the inaugural conference of solar alliance in India in April 2018.

Both leaders also discussed the prospects of bilateral cooperation in sectors such as energy, agriculture, food processing and infrastructure. PTI JTR ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: By Justin Rao

Mumbai, Dec 21 (PTI) Directing the much-awaited "Tiger Zinda Hai", starring Salman Khan, was a mammoth task for director Ali Abbas Zafar as he was under pressure to live up to the expectations of the superstar and his fans.

"Tiger Zinda Hai" is the second installment of the 2012 blockbuster action-drama film "Ek Tha Tiger" that was directed by Kabir Khan. The sequel will reunite Salman and Katrina Kaif as secret service agents while Salman and Ali are also working together after the massive success of "Sultan".

advertisement

Asked if there was a pressure on him, Ali told PTI, "Yes, definitely. He is such a big superstar with a huge fan base. As a filmmaker its your responsibility that you entertain the audience who are coming to watch the film.

"The pressure isnt only about Salman Khans stardom. Everyone who spends money to watch the film, is equally important."

With two films in a row with Salman, one would assume that there is a formula that the director has cracked but Ali insists that is not the case.

The director said it was important for him to stay true to the story while also charting out the character in a way that it lives up to the image of Salman.

"As a writer you have to be honest to the character you are writing. Both Sultan and Tigers characters are author- backed. The idea is, whenever you are working with a superstar like Salman Khan, you create a character which matches his stardom in real life.

"When the audience come and watch the film, they understand that the name is only Tiger or Sultan but it is Salman Khan there! But it has to be done in a real way."

The "realism", Ali said, comes only when one sticks to the story and not give in to the temptation of making things larger-than-life for the sake of it.

"The action in Sultan wasnt defying gravity or physics. Similarly, the idea here is to keep him (Salman) real but at the same time you give him a gun, which once he fires, becomes a wow moment. A lot of his fans will feel this is a Salman Khan moment.

"But its actually the character who is picking up the gun and firing. The gun has a justification to be in that world because its a war film."

"Tiger Zinda Hai" chronicles the story of two agents on a mission to rescue 25 Indian nurses taken hostage in Iraq.

Ali has woven real life incidents ? the abduction of nurses ? into a fictional setting as he believes the subject immediately becomes more accessible.

"What excites me most is what is happening around me, if I can weave a bit of fiction into it to bring it in front of the audience. Even Sultan was inspired by a lot of real life wrestler stories but was a completely fictional film. If we create something out of reality, it becomes more accessible."

advertisement

While there is a lot of buzz surrounding the film in India, there were reports that Pakistan may not release "Tiger Zinda Hai" as they had some objections.

Asked about it, Ali said, "Right now, we are not very clear on what has happened. It is still in contention. YRF (Yash Raj Films) is still trying to get through the matter. We will get to know by the next week. There are still things which are going back and forth."

Ali said he is experiencing "a weird feeling of being excited and nervous" as the film is set to be released this Friday. PTI JUR KKP GK BK

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/12/2017 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a historic apology was delivered in the House of Commons for the injustices endured by federal LGBTQ employees, Green Party leader Elizabeth May paid tribute to a friend from Brandon not able to hear it.

I do think transgender people  boy, do they need our support now. I lost a friend just, she said, bowing her head to maintain composure, in October, a wonderful mathematics professor at university of Brandon  was still suffering discrimination and injustice as a trans person.

Although May, last month, portrayed the Prime Ministers apology as a wonderful moment for all those who are oppressed, she continued, were not there yet when it comes to supporting transgender people. We have not righted all the wrongs.

Facebook Susan Roddy, a mathematics professor at Brandon University, took great care of her cats, her students and the friends she kept.

She ended her address to applause, a standing ovation and hugs from colleagues.

May was remembering Susan Roddy, an esteemed mathematician and longtime professor who was a faculty member at Brandon University for 30 years.

She is missed by Stefon Irvine, who chairs the Brandon University LGBTTQ* Collective.

In a city like Brandon with a small, close-knit queer community, Irvine said members watch out for each other.

As such, Irvine and Roddy did not share the conventional professor-student relationship. They had deep conversations, speaking sometimes of their hardships, he as a queer man and she as a transgender woman.

The speech from May, Irvine felt, gave people permission to wrestle with the hard realities of transgender people and discrimination.

Even as we led up to Trans Day of Remembrance (last month), we werent really sure if it was something that we were talking about, Irvine said, but I feel like Elizabeth May, speaking about it in the House of Commons, fully put it out there and allowed people to start having conversations about why. Why were there so many barriers in front of Susan and in front of other trans people? And how can we make that better?

More and more students and queer people in Brandon have reached out, wanting to know a little bit more, he continued. A lot of people in Brandon, and in the queer community, didnt know that she committed suicide.

AN INQUISITIVE MIND

Roddy was an adept conversationalist. An inquisitive mind with a thirst for knowledge, conversations with her could run hours.

It was one of the traits Ruth Pryzner appreciated most about her friend.

One evening, Roddy visited Pryzners farm in the country. They got to her back porch, looking out at the moon. They talked about the mysteries of the universe, all that might be and how it all came about, Pryzner remembered.

We drank a few beer, and woke up with the sun shining on our face in the morning, Pryzner chuckled.

Outside their stimulating conversations, they shared an appreciation of the arts, taking in ballet shows or listening to music together. The two got together for barbecues and birthday parties.

She would hang out, spend the night, Pryzner said. Wed have long conversations into the night about just about everything.

Roddy was an esteemed scholar. An internationally renowned mathematician, she is celebrated for solving a problem involving ordered set theory. Her 1994 discovery became known as Roddys Theorem, a standard in textbooks on ordered sets.

In the years since, shes kept learning and researching.

Pryzner recalled being shooed away from Roddys house because the mathematician was in the middle of proving some theorem and needed to focus. Understanding her friends curiosity, Pryzner stepped away.

Roddy deeply cared about her students, charitable endeavours including with Samaritan House Ministries and the environment, her friend said. On the latter point, she was a dedicated Green Party of Canada member, which is how she became a friend of May.

She was outspoken in her support of the LGBTQ community and was honest of the barriers faced by transgender woman like herself.

She said to me one time, I needed to do this for myself; I needed to bring my gender identity together with my body, Pryzner recalled, but she said when I was a man at Brandon University, I was treated much, much better.

Roddy endured constant judgment. Some people feared her since she was transgender, an explanation Pryzner never understood.

Pryzner referenced a quote, which states the greatest gift you can give another human being is to be truly seen and recognized for who they are.

Thats the way I try to interact with people, I saw Susan and Susan saw me, she said. It didnt happen in her daily life. She faced things at the university, from direct criticisms of the way she dressed, all the way through to being called a freak.

Pryzner conceded the university cannot legislate morality, but wished more was done for her.

In response, the university indicated in a statement they couldnt speak to allegations without specifics, but stated discrimination of any kind based on gender and gender expression is unacceptable and violates university policy.

BU held a memorial for Roddy after her death, attended by family and friends. The university issued a public statement mourning her death as well.

Were really proud of her advocacy and her support for the LGBTTQ* community, said university spokesperson Grant Hamilton, describing Roddy as a passionate advocate for numerous initiatives on-campus. She really challenged us as an institution and helped us move forward in many ways. Thats something that we really respect from her. She made us better.

Pryzner said the discrimination and harassment Roddy faced as a trans individual absolutely contributed to her taking her life.

Part of it is she was getting really tired of it, tired of carrying all the pain, Pryzner said. The one place that she had joy was with her students and teaching and sharing what she knew.

The rates of suicide among transgender people are higher than the general public. A study released in 2016 by the National Centre for Transgender Equality in the United States found 40 per cent of the trans people surveyed had attempted suicide.

BRAVE AND GIVING

A decade ago, Trevor MacDonald met Roddy at a support group for transgender people in Winnipeg.

He considers her one of the most fascinating people hes ever met.

She didnt just apply her analytical mind and her curiosity to her field of math  she was a person who was generally curious about the world. Any topic that you cared to talk about was interesting to talk with her about.

He was fairly new to Winnipeg when they met.

She was the kind of person who would say, Oh, you need a bike? Heres a bike. She was giving, too, of her time and energy, willing to talk to anyone who had a problem and offer help, MacDonald said.

He describes living as a transgender person to be difficult, especially for women. He likened it to visiting a restaurant and being served following people who arrived after you. If it happens once, you dont worry. But if that sort of thing happens to you every single day, and it happens at the grocery store and at the swimming pool and at the place where you work, so many times, its cumulative, he said. You cant think that every thing is a coincidence.

Kenneth Jackson, former chairperson of Brandon Pride, considers coming out as transgender probably one of the bravest decisions I could think that a person could make.

Hes appreciative of May giving light to Roddys challenges living out and proud.

It puts forward the idea that we have somewhere that we have yet to go, Jackson said. Im kind of hoping thats Susans legacy, that her memory keeps reminding us of that.

Corinne Mason, an associate professor in gender and womens studies and sociology at BU, is hopeful Roddys life will serve as a reminder of how our society has strides to make.

Anyone in our community who was connected to Susan and know the kind of things she went through on- and off-campus, I think we all owe her an apology, Mason said. We all owed her an apology much before her death.

She remembered Roddy as being very caretaking of others.

She was organizing a potluck for Thanksgiving because she knew queer and trans students, in particular, would perhaps have nowhere to go.

Even in the midst of everything that was going on for her, she was still reaching out and still making space for other people to try and ensure that people had somewhere welcoming to go for the holiday.

Roddy died the weekend of Thanksgiving, before the potluck could be held.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please contact the 24/7 Manitoba Suicide Prevention and Support Line toll-free at 1-877-435-7170. The transgender crisis hotline is 1-877-330-6366.

 ifroese@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @ianfroese
The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has today completed the early repayment in full of Irelands outstanding loans from the IMF, writes Denise ODonoghue.

The bilateral loans from Denmark and Sweden were repaid in full yesterday. In total some 5.5 billion was repaid early.

The repayment discharges all of the remaining IMF principal loan obligations that were originally to fall due from January 2021 to December 2023, as does the repayment of bilateral loans from Sweden and Denmark.

The Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, TD welcomed the early repayments.

"These early repayments mark a further significant milestone for Ireland in its continued robust economic recovery," he said.

"They will also generate interest savings estimated to be of the order of 150m over the remaining life of the loans. This will further improve Irelands debt sustainability.

"Ireland greatly appreciates the support provided by the IMF, Denmark and Sweden, at a time of great uncertainty. We will never forget the solidarity shown to Ireland.

"We also appreciate the cooperation of the remaining Programme lenders in facilitating these early repayments.

"As Ireland continues to recover we will keep making decisions that are in the best interests of our country, our future prosperity and, most importantly, our people."

- Digital Desk
The former high-flying founder of failed satellite company NewSat, Adrian Ballintine, has been charged with authorising three false invoices to allegedly funnel $357,000 to his private yacht business.

ASIC announced the charges, which each carry a maximum of five years' imprisonment, on Thursday. They follow two similar charges against Mr Ballintine's former tax adviser and Cresta Motor Yacht's finance chief, Jason Cullen.

The 2015 collapse of NewSat ranks as one of Australia's most spectacular recent corporate failures, with $200 million in investor funds wiped out and $500 million owed to US and European financiers.

A Fairfax Media investigation in the months leading up to NewSat's collapse showcased Mr Ballintine's flamboyant leadership style as NewSat managing director and highlighted several potential conflicts of interest between his satellite company and Gold Coast yacht business.
Tiger Zinda Hai, starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, failed to secure a certificate from the Pakistan Censor Board. This is not the first time that it has happened with a Salman Khan film.

By Lakshana N Palat: The year is coming to an end, and what better way to end it than a Salman Khan film? Tiger Zinda Hai is all set to release this Friday, and the anticipation for the Salman-Katrina starrer has reached a crescendo.

However, not everything is hunky-dory. For starters, the Shiv Sena, is protesting against the film's release in Maharashtra, as they believe it's sidelining other regional films. Tiger Zinda Hai's December 22 release has come under fire from the MNS and Shiv Sena because two Marathi films, Ek Atrangi and Deva, that are slated for a release on the same day, are left with no shows because of Salman Khan's big-budget film.

advertisement

This isn't the only problem for the Salman Khan film. The film won't be releasing in Pakistan either. It failed to secure a certificate from the Pakistan Censor Board, owing to its Pakistan-related film scenes, reportedly.

Now this situation, isn't entirely new to Salman. Over the years, he has developed a peculiar love-hate relationship with the country. Many times, his films haven't released, or have faced serious hurdles with their release dates. In short, many times, there's been much uncertainty around the fate of Salman Khan films in Pakistan, though the actor has a huge fan following in the country.

NO TIGER FOR PAKISTAN

The prequel to Tiger Zinda Hai, Ek Tha Tiger, was in a similar pickle. The Pakistani Censor Board banned Ek Tha Tiger, for its portrayal of Pakistani Intelligence Operatives. The film was supposed to release around Eid. However, Muhammed Ashraf Gondal, vice-chairman of the Central Board of Film Censors, said the film was 'problematic' for screening in Pakistan, owing to its depiction of the country's security agencies.

"We have strict criteria due to which films that have themes that touch on anti-terrorism and are against Pakistan's national institutions or security agencies ultimately have to be censored because they are against the national interest," Gondal had said in a statement.TV channels were banned from airing the trailer, promos and reviews of the film.

This affected Ek Tha Tiger's business, as it could have broken Bodyguard's record too.

BAJRANGI BHAIJAAN

There was much speculation that Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) would be banned in Pakistan, owing to one dialogue. In one scene, Om Puri says, "Ek chhota sa Kashmir humaare paas bhi hai." However, the film released in Pakistan, and did phenomenal business in the country.

NO TUBELIGHT?

Tubelight was expected to release on Eid in Pakistan. However, there was much chaos around its release date. According to numerous reports, local filmmakers protested to stall the release of the film, as they wanted to ensure better business for their own films. Distributors, producers and filmmakers said they wanted to protect the interest of their films. Finally, Tubelight released in Pakistan, but after Eid.

As of now, the Tiger Zinda Hai ban is still on Pakistan. It remains to be seen, whether it will be lifted in time.

advertisement

ALSO WATCH: Salman Khan: Warmongers should be given guns and made to fight

--- ENDS ---
Police on Thursday said they had seized almost $850,000 worth of illicit drugs destined for Canberra streets during a bust on the ACT-end of a major drug syndicate.

Nathan James Davidson, 34, was arrested overnight after police found more than 600 grams of the drug ice, 1000 MDMA pills, as well as $90,000 in cash at his city home.

Police seized drugs with a combined value for about $850,000. Credit:ACT Policing

Police also allegedly found trafficable quantities of suspected heroin and cocaine and 200 vials of anabolic steroids.

At Mr Davidson's home there was also allegedly drug paraphernalia, including scales and clip seal bags associated with trafficking drugs.
The devastated father of Australian woman Justine Damond, who was shot dead by a police officer in the United States, has questioned the integrity and completeness of the probe into his daughter's death after the case's chief prosecutor was shown on camera to be highly critical of investigators.

Ms Damond died after being shot in her pyjamas by officer Mohamed Noor on July 15 after she called police several times to report a possible sexual assault in an alley behind her Minneapolis home she had shared with her fiance.

The 40-year-old was shot as she approached a police squad car carrying Noor and his partner.

Ms Damond's death drew widespread condemnation and led to the forced resignation of the city's police chief.
A 15-year-old boy needed emergency surgery after he was bashed with a metal pole outside what neighbours call "the feral house" in an attack by a gang of youths that police described as "quite vicious" .

The teenager and another 15-year-old boy went to confront a group of about four young men who had gathered outside the house in Endeavour Drive, Cranbourne North about 12.30am on Thursday.

The house in Endeavour Drive, Cranbourne North, where a 15-year-old boy was beaten with a metal pole. Credit:Jason South

Police said during the confrontation the boy, who's from Frankston, was attacked and struck across the head with a metal pole.

He is now in a stable condition after surgery on Wednesday morning.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has flagged a boost to Australia's counter-espionage efforts and a greater domestic focus for the Defence Department's cyberspy agency as he moves to put his stamp on the new super-portfolio.

Speaking after he was sworn in as the minister in charge of a wide range of agencies, Mr Dutton said that terrorism would remain the top focus but battling espionage had been "well and truly underdone" in the era of al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State.

And he said the Australian Signals Directorate - which primarily exists to support Defence by gathering foreign electronic intelligence - would be used more in Australian investigations into terrorism, drug-smuggling, child exploitation and other cross-border crimes.

"I think people will quickly understand what Home Affairs is about and the virtue of it when you see the element of the Australian Signals Directorate that has a cyber capacity that is now working more closely with the anti-gang members of the Australian Federal Police that are targeting an offshore venture," he said.
Family friend and mining prospector Gina Rinehart remembered singing Christmas carols with Lady Flo a few days before the former Queensland premier's wife died.

Ms Rinehart visited Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen, wife of late Nationals stalwart Sir Joh, at her nursing home in Kingaroy last week.

Gina Rinehart has paid tribute to family friend Lady Flo on her passing on Thursday.

In a little tribute to her during my recent visit to her and Kingaroy, we sung some Christmas carols she loved, amended to 'Australianise' the words and in which mentioned those wonderful Lady Flo pumpkin scones, Ms Rinehardt said.

One of my many favourite memories of my dear friend will be her singing in fine voice, knowing every word of those Christmas carols, and of us together on a previous visit, with her son John and I around her bedside.
New York: More than 100 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favour. His warning did appear to have some impact with nine countries voting against the resolution and 35 abstaining. A total of 128 countries voted for the resolution.

The US vote in opposition was joined by countries including Guatemala, Nauru and Micronesia. Key abstentions came from Australia, Canada, Argentina and Romania.

"The United States will remember this day when it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly," US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly ahead of Thursday's vote.
In recent days, at least two of Franken's Democratic colleagues - Senators Joe Manchin III and Patrick Leahy - had said that he should withdraw his resignation to wait for the result of an ethics investigation into his behaviour. In Minnesota, former governor Arne Carlson, R, said the same, arguing that Franken was the victim of a "rush to judgment."

On Thursday, Franken's speech was followed by warm tribute from colleagues who praised his legacy and said they were sad to see him go.

"I'm sorry that he's leaving under these circumstances," Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, said. "Everyone who has ever lived has had moments they wish they could erase . . . We all draw strength from the healing power of redemption, and we can take heart in the knowledge that tomorrow is another day."

Franken, 65, joined the Senate in July 2009 and worked hard to distance himself from his prior career as a comedian. Cultivating a reputation as a serious legislator, he emerged as a powerful voice against corporate interests in politics and one of the Democrats' most pointed and effective critics of Trump.

The two-term senator had risen as far as to be discussed as a possible candidate for president in 2020 until a woman said last month that he had grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping and forcibly kissed her in 2006. That woman, Leeann Tweeden, was followed by many others who alleged sexual misconduct by Franken.
Barcelona: Pro-independence parties won back control of Catalonia in Thursday's regional election as Spanish efforts to contain the separatist movement earned Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy a historic defeat.

Secessionist parties won enough votes to regain a slim majority in the regional parliament and give new momentum to their political struggle for independence from Spain.

It was hardly an emphatic victory, however, as the separatists lost support compared to the previous vote in 2015, and a pro-unity party became the region's biggest single force in parliament for the fist time.

The anti-independence, pro-business Ciudadanos (Citizens) party garnered 37 seats in the 135-seat regional assembly with nearly 99 per cent of the votes counted on Thursday.
By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Dec 21 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has spoken with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia to express solidarity after a ballistic missile attack at Salmans residence on Tuesday.

"President Trump expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia following the ballistic missile attack against King Salmans official residence, al-Yamamah palace, on December 19 - an attack enabled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," the White House said yesterday in a readout of the call.

advertisement

During the call, King Salman updated Trump on the situation and briefed the President on Saudi Arabias plan to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

"The leaders discussed the importance of engaging the UN to hold Iran accountable for its repeated violations of international law and agreed on the importance of reinvigorating a political process to end the war in Yemen," the White House said.

Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce welcomed the decision of Saudi-led coalition that Hudaydah port in Yemen is open to all humanitarian and commercial goods.

"Its encouraging that Hudaydah port is reportedly now open to all humanitarian and commercial goods, including fuel," Royce said.

"This, along with the movement of four World Food Program cranes to the port to boost the flow of aid, is long overdue. According to the UN, more than 20 million people in Yemen ? 76 per cent of its population ? are in need of humanitarian assistance," he said.

"I appreciate the Trump administrations focus on this crisis and its continued efforts to counter the Iranian meddling that is driving this conflict," Royce said. PTI LKJ AJR

--- ENDS ---
Australian property investment group Ironfish has made a strategic investment in the popular Chinese-language real estate listing website Juwai.com, potentially opening up new opportunities for Australian mortgage brokers to provide financing to Chinese buyers.Chinese real estate investment in Australia has soared from $4bn five years ago to $31.9bn last year, according to Juwai. Australia was the second-most popular country after the U.S. for Chinese buyers in 2017, ahead of Thailand, Canada and the UK."Even though Chinese buying is off last year's incredible record high, just-released RBA data shows that Chinese buyers still snap up about every fifth newly built apartment," said Juwai's CEO Carrie Law.Ironfish founder Joseph Chou, a former Chinese diplomat, entrepreneur and property investor, said the investment in Juwai will help his company grow and expand.At Ironfish, while our Chinese buyers represent only a portion of our overall customer base, we still see very strong demand of Chinese customers coming to purchase property in Australia  whether its to buy property for their children to live in when they come here to study, or for when they migrate, or simply as an investment. We see that demand will continue," Chou said.For those brokers looking to work with Chinese investors, Law said they should first get to know the relevant lenders and products that will finance offshore buyers.

Law said brokers should be asking what kind of loan products they offer, what the terms are, which documents are required, and how much can be borrowed by these clients. "Probably the most important thing you can do is to have a relationship with the lenders who will work with these buyers," she said.

A key strategy for mortgage brokers is to tap into a pipeline of investors by working with a company like Juwai or even with agents who have large numbers of this kind of buyer among their client base. If you have a flow of buyers coming your way, success will be much easier than if you have to struggle to find each one."

Ironfish has 14 offices across Australia and China and is known for helping investors navigate their way into the property market. Juwai.com is the top online international real estate listing platform for Chinese-speakers with more than two million monthly visitors and listings across 89 countries. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.Related stories:
Latest News Which banks have passed on the latest rate hike to mortgage borrowers? Here's a breakdown on how the major lenders have responded to the latest OCR hike

Bridgit joins Finsure's panel Partnership expands lender's offering to brokers

The Australian Bankers' Association has released details of its new banking code of practice ahead of the royal commission into alleged misconduct by the country's financial institutions and service providers.ABA CEO Anna Bligh said the industry's voluntary creation of the simplified, customer-focused code over the last nine months was "a huge step for the industry". It involved hundreds of hours of development and more than 50 meetings with banks and key stakeholders. The code was sent to ASIC for approval on Tuesday (19 December).Banks are committed to change and the new code is stronger, broader and written in simple to understand language. It has been completely rewritten to better meet community expectations and service the needs of customers, Bligh said.While strengthening the banking code of practice was part of the ABA's six-point plan released in April 2016, the revised code was prompted in large part by consultant Phil Khoury 's January 2017 review, which provided 99 recommendations for how the code could be improved.The code is broken into ten key parts with four new sections, including one dedicated to small businesses and another related to making banking more accessible to customers. The remaining six sections are restructures of the existing code, Bligh said.

Under the new code, small business customers will be provided with a longer notice period about changes to loan conditions or a banks decision on whether it will continue to provide the loan facility. Loan contracts will be simplified and written in plain English so they are easier to understand. There will be improved communication and greater transparency by banks in the use of external property valuers, investigative accountants and insolvency practitioners.



For individuals, the code ensures that customers will be informed when a bank reports any payment default on a loan to a credit reporting body; they will be notified before their introductory credit card interest free period expires; and there will be improved transparency around disclosing transaction service fees.



Banks will also be expected to introduce ways to proactively identify customers who may be experiencing financial difficulty and implement better safety nets for guarantors. Guarantors will also be notified of changes to the borrowers circumstances, including if they are experiencing financial difficulty.



Banks most certainly do not underestimate the challenge ahead of them and will continue to make the necessary changes and improvements that their customers expect," Bligh said, adding that the fact that the industry has already accepted 96 of the Khoury's 99 recommendations in some form is proof that banks are serious about change.

But Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, who was consulted on a draft version of the code, said she was concerned that the code would not be properly enforced.



The [Banking Code Compliance] committee will not be fully independent and banks wont be obliged to accept its recommendations, she said. The code stipulates only that banks will comply with reasonable requests of the committee."

Its like the umpire is appointed by the home team and they dont have to accept the umpires decision.



Carnell welcomed the codes simplified language and the inclusion of a specific section for small business, but expressed concern that banks could still act unilaterally to change the conditions of a loan if there were materially adverse changes, such as to government policy or commodity markets.

Changes to market conditions are often outside the control of the borrower and should not be used to penalise a small business if they continue to make all their repayments, Carnell said.

The code says a bank wont default a loan because of a materially adverse change, but they retain the power to change a loans terms and conditions," she said. We understood the big four banks had individually agreed to remove those clauses, so its inclusion in the code is perplexing.

The royal commission will be tasked with reviewing the adequacy of self-regulation, including industry codes of conduct.



Related stories:
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

He got a new lease on life for Christmas.

A Supreme Court judge threw out an innocent mans decades-old conviction on Wednesday, giving the exonerated his first taste of freedom in nearly 30 years.

A jury convicted Mark Denny of participating in a gunpoint robbery on Dec. 20, 1987  three decades to the day of his exoneration  in which the then 17-year-old and three other defendants were accused of swiping $3,000 from a Fort Hamilton Parkway Burger King before stripping and raping a female employee.

But Denny maintained his innocence throughout his long incarceration, during which his fellow inmates nearly drove him to take his own life by torturing and shunning him over his sexual-assault conviction, he said.

It came to the point where I almost committed suicide, Denny said.

The case against Denny, which was prosecuted under former District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, lacked any physical evidence tying him to the crime scene, and instead relied heavily on witness testimony, according to Acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

Denny eventually found hope after a legal outfit dedicated to exonerating guiltless convicts, the Innocence Project, took on his case in 2009.

Innocence Project lawyer Nina Morrison labored for five years before bringing the case before former District Attorney Charles Hynes conviction-review unit, which ultimately made no moves to free Denny, she said.

But the defense attorney had more success working with prosecutors under Hynes successors, the late Ken Thompson and Gonzalez. The top prosecutors tracked down witnesses and contracted an eyewitness-identification expert who said that various factors, including the facts that the attackers blindfolded the victim during their assault and that she underwent extreme stress, made her testimony unreliable.

The combination [of] all these factors significantly decreased the likelihood that an accurate identification could have been made by victim in this case, said Dr. Jennifer Dysart, a psychology professor at New York Citys John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

And a co-defendant also convicted of the crime, Raphael James, wrote numerous letters stating Dennys innocence that date back to the 1990s and further buoyed his claim.

Gonzalez said he will reference Dennys case when training future prosecutors, using it as a reminder not to put too much weight behind tenuous eyewitness testimony.

Weve learned a lot about  how memory works, the district attorney said. Were training our prosecutors on the front end, so we wont have this continuing in the future.

The district attorneys conviction review unit has overturned 24 guilty verdicts  more than half of which were prosecuted under Hynes  since Thompson took office in 2014, according to a spokesman for the top prosecutors office.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

Cops are hunting for the sicko who stuffed a wounded dog inside a garbage bag and left the ailing pooch for dead in a Cypress Hills park on Tuesday.

Bystanders dialed 911 at 8:30 pm after they spotted a garbage bag moving and emitting breathing noises inside Highland Park near the Jackie Robinson Parkway, and cops found the tortured 10 to 12-year-old shepherd mix with its mouth duct taped shut within the sack, according to rescuers at animal hospital Verg South in Marine Park.

Police contacted another rescue service, New York Bully Crew, which sent members to retrieve the pooch from the park and transport him to the Marine Park clinic, where staff treated him with intravenous fluids, antibiotics, and pain medication.

Veterinarians examined the canine, who they dubbed Saint Vincent, and discovered that he was not able to move his hind legs  a disability they said is due to a suspected neurological condition, for which they plan to send the pooch to the hospitals sister facility in Park Slope, Verg North, for a MRI and further examination by a neurologist.

Saint Vincent remains in rough shape, but one vet who treated him said that he and the dogs fellow saviors are optimistic the poor pooch will live to see better days

His prognosis is currently guarded, but we are hopeful that he will be able to continue with treatment and recover, said Dr. Brett Levitzke, Vergs medical director.

Meanwhile, authorities opened an animal-cruelty investigation, and Saint Vincents rescuers urge anyone with information about the maniac who forsook the furball to come forward.

Someone out there knows who did this and we are hoping that with media attention, well be able to help law enforcement catch him or her and prosecute him or her to the fullest extent of the law, said Craig Fields, founder of New York Bully Crew.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 5778477. The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com or by texting tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All tips are strictly confidential.

Reach reporter Colin Mixson at cmixs on@cn gloca l.com or by calling (718) 260-4505.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

A decades-old dream of burying the hated Gowanus Expressway  a move that would free Brooklyn residents of choking pollution and remove an eyesore that has stunted the growth of Sunset Park for more than 50 years  is still alive, and one Brooklyn Heights Asssemblywoman wants to make it a reality.

Appearing on Brooklyn Paper Radio for the first time, Jo Anne Simon (DBrooklyn Heights) told host Vince DiMiceli the plan the federal government quietly killed in 2011 is actually alive and well, and practically shovel-ready for any massive infrastructure projects President Trump wants to push through.

The key, Simon says, is moving the proposed tunnel from beneath Third Avenue to the harbor, where a straight connection can be made to the trench portion of the BQE just past Red Hook in Carroll Gardens.

Im still working on it, she said. You can call me Queen of the Gowanus. 

DiMiceli, who claimed hed covered plans for Brooklyns Big Dig when he was a strapping young reporter back in the 1990s, was immediately on board.

A Big Dig in Brooklyn would do wonders for Sunset Park, DiMiceli said.

The Simon Tunnel Plan, as well call it moving forward, came up thanks to an initial discussion about a common enemy  truck traffic in Brooklyn coming from Staten Island. That, Simon claimed, was the result of a disastrous move by then Staten Island Rep. Guy Molinari, who put a provision into a federal highway bill demanding the two-way toll on the VZ (as we sometimes call it) become Staten Island-bound only, which literally freed up trucks coming from points south with a less expensive route across the Narrows.

At the time, Molinari claimed removing the toll would decrease air pollution on Staten Island, where the then-hand-collected tolls did slow traffic across the island to the Goethals Bridge. Simon noted that was a reasonable point back then, but that the problem was eliminated earlier this year when toll booths were knocked down and replaced with a cashless system.

The trucks are saving $80 to $100 a clip, she said. These roads not built for this kind of traffic, but the Jersey Turnpike was.

Host, guest, and Brooklyn Paper reporter Julianne Cuba eventually got to the topic of the day, the triple cantilever of the BrooklynQueens Expressway, which city officials now say must be replaced or shored up by 2026, lest truck traffic be banned from the dilapidated highway.

And Simon pointed out when driving on the roadway beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, its best to stay as far away from the harbor as possible.

The roadway near the edges is not safe, she said. You want to stay near the wall.

DiMiceli concurred.

This is a life and death situation, DiMiceli said. Its just a matter of time before that thing falls into Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Simon, Cuba, and DiMiceli also discussed the residential towers going up at the foot of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Bridge Park, but to find out what they had to say about that, youll have to listen to the episode, as we are well past our word count for this brief summation of the show, which will undoubtedly be cut significantly for our print edition.

You decide: DiMiceli, who still demands a soft focus, in 1997 working the cordless phone at 26 Court St. His looks have been called Clooney-esque  by members of the advertising team. Photo by Emanuel Brown
HBAN (Halo Business Angel Network), the all-island organisation responsible for the promotion of business angel investment today announces that investors in its South East Business Angel Network (SEBAN) plan to invest 10 million in start-ups from the region over the next three years.

A joint initiative of Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland, SEBAN has invested more than 6 million in a total of 38 deals. The syndicate has invested across companies in the ICT, manufacturing and food sectors, with a focus on, but not restricted to companies located in, or connected to, the South East.

SEBAN is part of the National HBAN network, and one of the benefits of joining the syndicate is the access to the best investment opportunities from across the island and in a wide range of sectors. The syndicate has only five angel investor places left for its regular investor forums and pitching events.

SEBAN is looking to recruit successful business people and entrepreneurs with the knowledge, expertise and insight to enable local start-ups to grow and scale their businesses, and achieve national and international success. It is inviting interested parties to attend one of its regular investor forums and pitching events.

HBANs South East angels have a wide variety of backgrounds and are interested in companies from a range of sectors including technology, agriculture, food, manufacturing and tourism. The angels provide not only funding but mentorship, support and access to their networks to assist these start-ups in growing their businesses into success stories.

On Thursday, 8th February 2018, HBAN will host its National Conference, Quality deal flow and leveraging the HBAN network, in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. The event is Irelands only angel investment-focused national conference and is targeted at new angels who are looking for structured and quality deal flow. The event will also be of interest to those looking to invest and create de-risked portfolios with likeminded investors through syndicates.

The conference is open to non-HBAN members who want to see how the HBAN network works, connect with HBAN angels and listen to pitches from high-potential start-ups. Tickets for the conference are priced at 50 (free for members of HBAN) and are available now at www.hban.org/conference

HBAN Coordinator for South East Region, Aidan Shine said, "HBAN is on a drive to boost the amount invested in Irish start-ups by HBAN angels to 25 million per year by 2020. Increasing the number of business angels in the six regional Irish HBAN syndicates is essential to reaching these targets. Angel investors fill an important gap in the start-up ecosystem in Ireland, as this type of investment offers support and guidance as well as funding, so its smart money."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
By PTI: Assembly it wont be misused Lucknow, Dec 21 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today assured the Assembly against any misuse of the proposed stringent UPCOC legislation aimed at curbing organised crime and terror, after the opposition parties expressed fears that the "draconian" law may be used to target them and the media. Urging the Opposition to back the bill, he asked if they wanted to support those who were indulging in organised crime by opposing it.

advertisement

"Ever since the day the draft of the bill was approved by the cabinet, I have noticed that the Opposition parties are against it...I can give the guarantee that the BJP has never misused any law and will never do so...we have come to bring development and give security without any bias," he said. The chief minister was initiating a discussion on the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crimes (UPCOC) Bill, 2017, drafted on the lines of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

"I assure you that no one will misuse it...it has been brought to break the backbone of those who indulge in organised crimes," he said, adding no one can say that his government has worked with political vendetta in the nine months it has been in power.

The chief minister compared the bill with similar laws in Maharashtra and Karnataka and said it will not only bring those who have made crime a trade under the law but will also create terror in their minds. The chief minister said that another bill is on the anvil through which about 20,000 political cases will come to an end. Though the concerted efforts taken by his government in the past nine months have had a positive impact, a need was felt to bring a law to check those involved in corruption, illegal and immoral acts and were creating anarchy, riots and mafia raj, he said. Tarring the bill as a "black law" and calling it an "undeclared emergency", Leader of the Opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary referred to an attempt by the then Mayawati government in 2007 which had got a similar bill passed but it failed to get presidential assent.

Chaudhary even read the previous speeches of the then BJP members Hukum Singh, now an MP, and MLA Suresh Khanna, who is the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, and stressed that both had opposed the measure expressing fear that it will be used against the opposition parties. "All rights have been given to the administration and to the police in the bill...the government which had promised to establish Ram Rajya is making provision for capital punishment," he said and stressed that the basic ethos of the Constitution is that no innocent should be punished. "I request you against creating a bhasmasur (self- destructive demon) ...having the feeling of autocracy in a democracy is not good," Chaudhary said. Apprehending that the bill has provisions that can also be used against the media, Chaudhary alleged that it is an attack on two main pillars of democracy - the legislature and the fourth estate.

advertisement

The Leader of the Opposition alleged that the BJP wanted to remain in power for a longer period of time than the Congress "for which they do not want anyone left to oppose them".

"They want to conduct the 2019 (Lok Sabha) polls with no rival to challenge them," he alleged. Chaudhary pressed for sending the bill to the select committee of the House to scrutinise its provisions and urged Speaker Hriday Narain Dixit to get the "draconian" bill withdrawn.

advertisement

BSP leader Lalji Verma too criticised the bill. PTI SAB SMI RT

--- ENDS ---
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

In sealing Trump's first major legislative victory since he took office in January, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while giving mixed, temporary tax relief to middle-class Americans.

The House approved the measure by 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up forced another vote on Wednesday. The Republican-led Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of Wednesday.

"We are making America great again," Trump said, echoing his campaign slogan at a White House celebration with Republican lawmakers. "Ultimately what does it mean? It means jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs."

Trump, who emphasized a tax cut for middle-class Americans during his 2016 campaign, said at an earlier Cabinet meeting that lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent was "probably the biggest factor in this plan."

It was uncertain when the bill would be signed. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the timing depended on whether automatic spending cuts triggered by the legislation could be waived.

The administration expects the waiver to be included in a spending resolution Congress will pass later this week, a White House official told reporters. Cohn told Fox News Channel on Wednesday night that Trump could sign the bill as soon as Friday if the resolution was passed by then.

"If not, most likely we'll sign it in the first week of the new year," Cohn said.

In addition to cutting the U.S. corporate income tax rate, the debt-financed legislation gives other business owners a new 20 percent deduction on business income and reshapes how the government taxes multinational corporations along the lines that the country's largest businesses have recommended for years.

Wall Street's main indexes were little changed on Wednesday, taking a breather after a month-long rally ahead of the long-anticipated tax vote. The S&P 500 has climbed about 4.5 percent since mid-November, led by a rally in sectors such as transport, banks and others that are expected to benefit the most from lower taxes.

Under the bill, millions of Americans would stop itemizing deductions, putting tax breaks that incentivize home ownership and charitable donations out of their reach, but also making tax returns somewhat simpler and shorter.

The bill keeps the existing number of tax brackets but adjusts many of the rates and income levels for each one. The top tax rate for high earners is reduced. The estate tax on inheritances is changed so far fewer people will pay.

Once signed, taxpayers likely would see the first changes to their paycheck tax withholdings in February. Most households will not see the full effect of the tax plan on their income until they file their 2018 taxes in early 2019.

In two provisions added to secure needed Republican votes, the legislation also allows oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and removes a tax penalty under the Obamacare health law for Americans who do not obtain health insurance.

"We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we'll come up with something that will be much better," Trump said.

Democrats were united in opposition to the tax legislation, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy that will widen the income gap between rich and poor, while adding $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the $20 trillion national debt. Trump promised during the campaign that he would eliminate the national debt.

"Today the Republicans take their victory lap for successfully pillaging the American middle class to benefit the powerful and the privileged," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

Opinion polls show the tax bill is unpopular with the public and Democrats promised to make Republicans pay for their vote during next year's congressional elections, when all 435 House seats and 34 of the 100 Senate seats will be up for grabs.

"Republicans will rue the day they passed this bill," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. "We are going to continue hammering away about why this bill is so unpopular."

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the bill, saying support would grow for after it passes and Americans felt relief. "I think minds are going to change," Ryan said on ABC's "Good Morning America" television program.

A few Republicans, a party once defined by fiscal hawkishness, have protested the deficit spending encompassed in the bill. But most voted for it anyway, saying it would help businesses and individuals while boosting an already expanding economy they see as not growing fast enough.

In the House, 12 Republicans voted against the tax bill. All but one, Walter Jones of North Carolina, were from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California, which will be hit by the bill's cap on deductions for state and local taxes.

Despite Trump administration promises that the tax overhaul would focus on the middle class and not cut taxes for the rich, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, estimated middle-income households would see an average tax cut of $900 next year under the bill, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would see an average cut of $51,000.

The House was forced to vote again after the Senate parliamentarian ruled three minor provisions violated arcane Senate rules. To proceed, the Senate deleted the three provisions and then approved the bill.

Since the House and Senate must approve the same legislation before Trump can sign it into law, the Senate's vote sent the bill back to the House. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Central Economic Work Conference said the economy would be developed based on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Photo: Xinhua

Chinas annual Central Economic Work Conference  chaired by President Xi Jinping and attended by top policymakers  concluded Wednesday with a pledge to focus on creating high quality growth in the worlds second-largest economy.

China's economy has transitioned from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development, said a conference statement released by the official Xinhua News Agency. China will further its supply-side structural reform in the coming year with more effort to improve economic quality.

The conference vowed to continue the shift in the economy from Made in China to Created in China, as the country reinvents itself from the worlds factory to an innovator in artificial intelligence, mobile pay services, electric vehicles and the like.

It also pledged to continue to wring out excess industrial capacity, support the high-tech sector, reduce costs in the real economy, and put the floodgate of money supply under control, the statement said, signaling a tightening bias in monetary policy in 2018 as regulators continue with efforts to deleverage the economy.

The three-day, closed-door meeting in Beijing came on the heels of the ruling Communist Partys National Congress in October, a gathering held once every five years at which the countrys top leadership lineup is unveiled. The economic conference looks at policy priorities and sets goals for the coming year, mapping out Chinas fiscal and monetary policies.

The conference said the economy would be developed based on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which features innovative, coordinated, environment-friendly, open and shared development, according to Xinhua.

Investors and China watchers closely study the economic conference for signs of government policy that could hugely impact financial markets and private and state-owned enterprises.

Rapid growth has been central to Chinas economic policies for decades. And even though Chinas growth no longer hits the eye-watering numbers in decades ending in 2011, the economy is still expected to end the year above the governments target growth rate of around 6.5% set in March, boosted by stronger exports and a rallying manufacturing sector.

Now Chinas leaders are less focused on achieving colossal growth numbers, instead aiming for quality growth, which includes a heavy emphasis on cleaning up choking air pollution, toning up state-owned enterprises and reducing risks in the financial system.

Lessening the priority of high growth targets  the center of the nation's economic policies for decades  indicates that the central government is shifting its focus from keeping high growth rates to enhancing the quality and structure of the economy, said Chen Jianheng, a fixed-income analyst at China International Capital Corp.

The policy shift will take pressure off local authorities to invest and borrow blindly to boost growth, Chen said.

The signals sent by this weeks economic conference were in line with predictions by analysts that Chinas top policymakers would set a lower and less rigid gross domestic product (GDP) target for 2018.

The economic conference usually decides on a growth target for the coming year, which is then formally announced by the premier at the National Peoples Congress  Chinas parliament  in March. The economy only needs to grow 6.3% annually to achieve the governments goal of doubling GDP in 2020 from a decade ago, UBS economist Wang Tao said in a report earlier this month.

In March of this year, then-Premier Li Keqiang announced a GDP expansion target of around 6.5%, or higher if possible in practice for 2017, down from a range of 6.5% to 7% in 2016.

In addition to reducing financial risks and other major tasks internally, the country faces complicated external challenges. These include the quickly moving tax overhaul by U.S. President Donald Trump, which could take a bite out of Chinas attractiveness as an investment destination and potentially lead to capital outflows.

Tightening stance

The conference said China will maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy stance in the coming year, which is in keeping with the message over the past seven years. Policymakers reiterated support to develop key sectors via fiscal measures while strengthening oversight of government spending and borrowing activities.

Niu Li, an expert at the State Information Center, a government think tank, said the central government will continue cleaning up excessive government borrowing and debt overhang, which will squeeze capital supply for some local infrastructure investments.

Chen expects the monetary authority to stick to a tightening stance, which may lead to slower growth in credit supply and social-financing activities next year.

Critical Battles

At the conference, policymakers hammered out critical battles for the government over the next three years: preventing major financial risks, improving poverty alleviation and fighting pollution, the statement said.

To defuse major risks, China will maintain a tough stance on irregular and illegal activities in the financial sector, according to the statement.

China will also address peoples desires for improvements to their overall well-being, such as in education, employment, pension insurance and medical care, the statement said.

In a housing market in which prices have skyrocketed, the conference pledged to set up a long-term mechanism to ensure housing supply, including more rental options.

Policymakers said China will further open its economy and speed up economic reform. Niu expected the government to step up efforts to protect property rights to encourage private investment and continue the shakeup of the state-owned sector to better allocate resources and improve the efficiency of the economy.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
In Taiwan, Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing has awarded local company Ledi Technology Co. the exclusive rights to promote and use the Didi brand and platform, and is now recruiting drivers. Photo: Visual China

Chinas largest ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing is expanding into Taiwan, months after rival Uber quit then re-entered the market.

Didi has awarded local company Ledi Technology Co. the exclusive rights to promote and use the Didi brand and platform in Taiwan, and is now recruiting drivers, according to a statement on the Didi Taiwan Facebook page.

The expansion is Didis latest foray outside the Chinese mainland. In February, it set up an international division, announced planned launches in Japan and opened a research and development center in California.

Uber, the U.S. company that Didi defeated in a vicious subsidy war in China in 2016, has a head start in the Taiwan market. Uber launched its services there in 2014, but has had to face protests from taxi companies and drivers unions, and a clampdown by the government, which considered Ubers services illegal.

According to the Taiwan transportation regulator, Uber was registered as an information services provider, not a transportation company, so it was illegal for it to offer rides to the public.

In January, the Taiwan government began offering up to NT$300,000 ($10,000) a year to members of the public providing information leading to fines against Uber, Taiwans Central News Agency reported. Taiwan also passed new legislation raising the maximum fine for illegal taxi services to NT$25 million, from between NT$50,000 and NT$150,000 before.

Uber suspended its Taiwan service on Feb. 10, saying in a blog post that Taiwans government has moved further and further away from embracing innovation and setting the stage for a 21st century transportation policy.

In April, Uber returned to the market, after reaching an agreement with authorities and partnering with licensed taxi-service providers. On Oct. 30, Uber launched its UberTaxi app, a collaboration with local taxi companies Crown Taxi, Ya Tai Taxi, and Q Taxi, which allows existing taxi fleets to use Ubers technology.

Didi appears to have taken lessons from its competitors struggle.

Applicants signing up to be Didi Taiwan drivers must have a Taiwan identification card, and must be registered in Taiwan as professional taxi drivers or minibus drivers, according to the application requirements listed on the Didi website.

The terms and conditions of Didi Taiwans driver registration page explicitly state that Didi Chuxing does not providing taxi services, but rather provides a platform to connect passengers with taxi service providers. Additionally, Didi Chuxing asks its Taiwan drivers and passengers to refrain from violating laws and regulations, and to bear sole responsibility for any disputes or losses. Uber racked up a total of NT$1.1 billion in fines in January alone, according to reports by Taiwan media.

Ledi Technology, Didis local franchisee, was set up on Nov. 10 with a total registered capital of NT$200,000, according to business registration records provided by Taiwans economic affairs authority.

Ledi Technology is currently studying Taiwans local market and actively seeking partners, Didis public relations officer said, when asked by Caixin for more information on the partner company. He said there was still no concrete timeframe for launching Didis Taiwan services.

On Thursday, Didi Chuxing announced that it has raised $4 billion in a new round of fundraising to develop its artificial intelligence capacity, overseas expansion and new energy vehicle service networks.

Contact reporter Teng Jing Xuan (jingxuanteng@caixin.com)
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Dec 21 (PTI) Launching a new sanctions regime targeting human rights abusers worldwide, the US today slapped sanctions against 14 individuals, including a Pakistani surgeon and a top Myanmar general, who is accused of leading an ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims.

Maung Maung Soe, in his former role as the chief of Burmese Armys Western command, oversaw the military operation in the Rakhine State responsible for widespread human rights abuse against Rohingya civilians in response to attacks by the Rohingya militants, the Department of Treasury said.

advertisement

Rawalpindi-based Pakistani surgeon Mukhtar Hamid Shah specialised in kidney transplants who police believe to be involved in kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and the removal of and trafficking in human organs, the Treasury said.

As an owner of the Kidney Centre in Rawalpindi, Shah was involved in the kidnapping and detention of, and removal of kidneys from, Pakistani laborers, it added.

Ahead of the sanctions, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order today declaring a national emergency with respect to serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world and providing for the imposition of sanctions on actors engaged in these malign activities.

As a result of this, all of the assets within US jurisdiction of the individuals and entities included in the Annex to the Order or designated by OFAC are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

"Today, the US is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the US financial system.

"Treasury is freezing their assets and publicly denouncing the egregious acts they?ve committed, sending a message that there is a steep price to pay for their misdeeds," said Secretary of the Treasury Steven T Mnuchin.

These actions advance American values and promote the security of the United States, allies, and partners, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.

"We must lead by example, and today?s announcement of sanctions demonstrates the US will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption," he said.

The sanctions list includes Yahya Jammeh (Jammeh), former president of Gambia; Roberto Jose Rivas Reyes, president of Nicaragua?s Supreme Electoral Council; Dan Gertler, an international businessman, and Slobodan Tesic, who is among the biggest dealers of arms and munitions in the Balkans.

Benjamin Bol Mel (Bol Mel), president of ABMC Thai-South Sudan Construction Company Limited; Gulnara Karimova, daughter of former Uzbekistan leader Islam Karimov; Angel Rondon Rijo, a politically connected businessman in the Dominican Republic; Artem Chayka, son of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation; Gao Yan, who was the Beijing Public Security Bureau Chaoyang Branch director; Sergey Kusiuk, commander of an elite Ukrainian police unit, the Berkut; Julio Antonio Juarez Ramirez, a Guatemalan Congressman and Yankuba Badjie from Gambia have also been sapped sanctions with. PTI LKJ ZH

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
India's first Rail University in Gujarat has opened admissions for its first bactch of students. The varsity had set a cut-off percentage of 55% for admitting students. India's dream to set up a Rail University now becomes a vision. The Indian Railways will serve as an experiential laboratory for NRTI students.

The National Rail and Transport University (NRTU) is seen as a big boost for the Indian Railways. The admission process commenced on May 30, 2018 and has seen 3500 students enrol on the first day. The classes for the founding undergraduate batch have begun from Sep 5, 2018, which is Teacher's Day. According to official sources, the debut courses were likely to see around 10000 applications this year by the end of June.

Also Read: Engineers Invited To Manage Gujarat Metro Rail

Rail University Admissions Merit List 2018

How to check the Merit list for Rail University Admissions 2018?

Log on to the Rail University merit list page. The list of successful candidates will be displayed on the screen. Save it to your computer and take a printout of it for future reference.

Location

The premier institution has been set up in Vadodara, Gujarat.

NRTI Admissions 2018 Details

CRITERIA DETAILS Courses Offered BSc in Transport Technology

BBA in Transport Management Course Fees INR 82500 Selection Process Aptitude Test Exam Syllabus English, Mathematics and General Knowledge Application Process Online Educational Qualification Class 12 graduation in PCM with 55% aggregate Maximum Age Limit 25 years Deadline To Apply June 30, 2018 Exam Date July 2018 Counselling Commencement Date Aug 10, 2018 Course Commencement Date Sep 5, 2018

Rail University Admissions Exam Pattern 2018

Number of Questions - 100

Question Type - Multiple Choice Questions

Duration - 90 minutes

Marks - 1 for every correct answer and -.33 for every wrong answer

How To Apply For Rail University Admissions 2018

In order to apply for Rail University Admissions 2018, follow the steps given here:

Step 1: Log on to the Rail University official website.

Step 2: On the home page, click on the button that reads, REGISTER NOW.

Step 3: Enter your details in the fields provided.

Step 4: Click on the declaration checkbox.

Step 5: Click Submit and complete the registration process.

Objectives Of The University

According to the Railway Ministry, the university would skill human resources and the build the capability of the Indian Railways.

The Rail University will foster entrepreneurship and generate large scale employment opportunities

The ministry said, "India's 1st National Rail & Transportation University to transform Indian railway and transport sector for a New India." Railway Minister, Piyush Goyal said that realising PM Narendra Modi's vision of Make in India, Skill India and Startup India, the government has set up the 1st National Rail and Transportation University in Vadodara, Gujarat.

Also Read: Serve The Indian Railways As A Specialist Doctor And Earn Up To INR 78000

NRTU Rail University Admissions Open In 2018

The first batch of students will be admitted in the National Rail and Transport University by Sep 5, 2018.

Advantages Of The Creation Of A Rail University In India

The first of its kind university will create employment and also improve productivity, a government official said.

It is also aimed at providing employment for the youth as it would help in the upgrading of skill.

Act To Construct Rail University

The Railway Ministry said that not-for-profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, will be created by the ministry of railways which shall be the managing company of the proposed university.

Land To Construct Rail University

"Existing land and infrastructure at National Academy of Indian Railways at Vadodara will be utilised, and suitably modified and modernised for the purpose of the university."

Number Of Seats

The total number of seats in the University are available for 100 full-time students. The funding of the new university/institute is to entirely come from the Ministry, the government further said.

Technologies Used For Learning

The university plans to use latest pedagogy and technology applications such as satellite-based tracking, radio frequency identification and artificial intelligence to improve on-the-job performance and productivity, it is learnt.
The Federal Reserve, which was at the center of an unsolved $81-million cyber heist nearly two years ago, is ready for further talks with foreign counterparts to address the lingering risks of cyber fraud in global messaging systems, a top Fed official said on Wednesday.

Simon Potter, head of market operations at the New York Fed, said the SWIFT bank messaging system is only as strong as the weakest of the central banks and financial institutions that use it to communicate and transfer trillions of dollars each day.

In February 2016, hackers broke into Bangladesh Banks systems and tricked the New York Fed  which maintained its account  into sending $81 million to entities mostly in the Philippines. Bangladeshs central bank has only recovered some $15 million of the stolen funds despite an international probe involving the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Fixing the deficiencies in prevention and detection may require a substantial re-orientation of priorities and resources for some institutions, said Potter, whose unit within the U.S. central bank maintains the international accounts and oversees some $3.6 trillion in foreign dollar-denominated assets.

Potter, who did not mention the Bangladesh incident specifically, said response regimes need improvement and that co-operation was more important than ever.

The Fed was ready to engage in further dialog and co-operation with both its foreign official account-holders and fellow central bank service providers in addressing these challenges, he told a private forum at the New York Fed, according to prepared remarks.

Last years heist exposed weaknesses not only in Bangladesh Bank and in SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, but also in the way the Fed detects fraud and communicates with clients in an emergency.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Bangladesh Bank had asked the New York Fed to join a lawsuit it was considering filing against the Philippines bank through which the money was stolen. That in turn set off finger-pointing between the bank, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp, and Dhaka.
NCHS Data Brief No. 294, December 2017

PDF Versionpdf icon (370 KB)

Holly Hedegaard, M.D., Margaret Warner, Ph.D., and Arialdi M. Minino, M.P.H.

Key findings

Data from the National Vital Statistics System, Mortality

In 2016, there were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the United States.

The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths in 2016 (19.8 per 100,000) was 21% higher than the rate in 2015 (16.3).

Among persons aged 15 and over, adults aged 2534, 3544, and 4554 had the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in 2016 at around 35 per 100,000.

West Virginia (52.0 per 100,000), Ohio (39.1), New Hampshire (39.0), the District of Columbia (38.8), and Pennsylvania (37.9) had the highest observed age-adjusted drug overdose death rates in 2016.

The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (drugs such as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol) doubled between 2015 and 2016, from 3.1 to 6.2 per 100,000.

Deaths from drug overdose are an increasing public health burden in the United States (14). This report uses the most recent data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to update trends in drug overdose deaths, describe demographic and geographic patterns, and identify shifts in the types of drugs involved.

Keywords: poisoning, opioids, heroin, National Vital Statistics System Mortality File

In 2016, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States was more than three times the rate in 1999.

In 2016, there were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the United States (Figure 1).

The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased from 6.1 per 100,000 standard population in 1999 to 19.8 in 2016 (Figure 1). The rate increased on average by 10% per year from 1999 to 2006, by 3% per year from 2006 to 2014, and by 18% per year from 2014 to 2016.

Rates were significantly higher for males than females. For males, the rate increased from 8.2 in 1999 to 26.2 in 2016. For females, the rate increased from 3.9 in 1999 to 13.4 in 2016.

Figure 1. Age-adjusted drug overdose death rates: United States, 19992016

image icon

1Significant increasing trend from 1999 to 2016 with different rates of change over time, p < 0.001.

22016 rate for males was significantly higher than for females, p < 0.001.

NOTES: Deaths are classified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision. Drug-poisoning (overdose) deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes X40X44, X60X64, X85, and Y10Y14. The number of drug overdose deaths in 2016 was 63,632. Access data table for Figure 1pdf icon.

SOURCE: NCHS, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality.

Among persons aged 15 and over, adults aged 2534, 3544, and 4554 had the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in 2016.

The rates of drug overdose deaths increased from 1999 to 2016 for all age groups studied (Figure 2).

Rates in 2016 were highest for persons aged 2534 (34.6 per 100,000), 3544 (35.0), and 4554 (34.5).

From 2015 to 2016, the greatest percentage increase in the drug overdose death rates occurred among adults aged 1524, 2534, and 3544 with increases of 28%, 29%, and 24%, respectively.

From 2015 to 2016, the drug overdose death rates for adults aged 4554, 5564, and 65 and over increased 15%, 17%, and 7% respectively.

Figure 2. Drug overdose death rates, by selected age group: United States, 19992016

image icon

1Significant increasing trend from 1999 to 2016 with different rates of change over time, p < 0.05.

22016 rate was significantly higher than for the rate for age groups 1524, 5564, and 65 and over, p < 0.05.

NOTES: Deaths are classified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision. Drug-poisoning (overdose) deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes X40X44, X60X64, X85, and Y10Y14. Access data table for Figure 2pdf icon.

SOURCE: NCHS, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality.

In 2016, 22 states and the District of Columbia had age-adjusted drug overdose death rates that were statistically higher than the national rate.

22 states and the District of Columbia had drug overdose death rates that were higher than the national rate (19.8 per 100,000); 5 states had rates that were comparable to the national rate; and 23 states had lower rates (Figure 3).

West Virginia (52.0), Ohio (39.1), New Hampshire (39.0), and Pennsylvania (37.9) were the four states with the highest observed age-adjusted drug overdose death rates. The District of Columbia had a rate of 38.8 per 100,000.

Iowa (10.6), North Dakota (10.6), Texas (10.1), South Dakota (8.4), and Nebraska (6.4) were the five states with the lowest observed age-adjusted drug overdose death rates.

Figure 3. Age-adjusted drug overdose death rates, by state: United States, 2016

image icon

NOTES: Deaths are classified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision. Drug-poisoning (overdose) deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes X40X44, X60X64, X85, and Y10Y14. Access data table for Figure 3pdf icon.

SOURCE: NCHS, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality.

The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone doubled from 2015 to 2016.

The rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, which include drugs such as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol, increased from 0.3 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.0 in 2013, 1.8 in 2014, 3.1 in 2015, and 6.2 in 2016 (Figure 4). The rate increased on average by 18% per year from 1999 to 2006, did not statistically change from 2006 to 2013, then increased by 88% per year from 2013 to 2016.

The rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin increased from 0.7 in 1999, to 1.0 in 2010, to 4.9 in 2016. The rate was steady from 1999 to 2005, then increased on average by 10% per year from 2005 to 2010, by 33% per year from 2010 to 2014, and by 19% from 2014 to 2016.

The rate of drug overdose deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids, which include drugs such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, increased from 1.0 in 1999 to 4.4 in 2016. The rate increased on average by 13% per year from 1999 to 2009 and by 3% per year from 2009 to 2016.

The rate of drug overdose deaths involving methadone increased from 0.3 in 1999 to 1.8 in 2006, then declined to 1.0 in 2016.

Figure 4. Age-adjusted drug overdose death rates, by opioid category: United States, 19992016

image icon

1Significant increasing trend from 1999 to 2016 with different rates of change over time, p < 0.05.

2Significant increasing trend from 1999 to 2006, then decreasing trend from 2006 to 2016, p < 0.05.

NOTES: Deaths are classified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision. Drug-poisoning (overdose) deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes X40X44, X60X64, X85, and Y10Y14. Drug overdose deaths involving selected drug categories are identified by specific multiple-cause-of-death codes: heroin, T40.1; natural and semisynthetic opioids, T40.2; methadone, T40.3; and synthetic opioids other than methadone, T40.4. Deaths involving more than one opioid category (e.g., a death involving both methadone and a natural or semisynthetic opioid) are counted in both categories. The percentage of drug overdose deaths that identified the specific drugs involved varied by year, with ranges of 75%79% from 1999 to 2013, and 81%85% from 2014 to 2016. Access data table for Figure 4pdf icon.

SOURCE: NCHS, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality.

Summary

This report updates statistics on deaths from drug overdoses in the United States and includes information on trends since 1999 as well as key findings for 2016.

The rates of drug overdose deaths continued to increase. In 2016, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths (19.8 per 100,000) was more than three times the rate in 1999 (6.1). Rates increased for both males (from 8.2 in 1999 to 26.2 in 2016) and females (from 3.9 in 1999 to 13.4 in 2016). Rates also increased for all age groups studied. In 2016, among persons aged 15 and over, rates were highest for adults aged 2534, 3544, and 4554, at about 35 per 100,000. From 2015 to 2016, drug overdose death rates increased 28% for persons aged 1524, 29% for persons aged 2534, 24% for persons aged 3544, 15% for persons aged 4554, 17% for persons aged 5564, and 7% for persons aged 65 and over. In 2016, 22 states and the District of Columbia had age-adjusted drug overdose death rates that were statistically higher than the national rate; 5 states had rates that were comparable to the national rate; and 23 states had lower rates.

The pattern of drugs involved in drug overdose deaths has changed in recent years. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (drugs such as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol) doubled in a single year from 3.1 per 100,000 in 2015 to 6.2 in 2016. Rates of drug overdose deaths involving heroin increased from 4.1 in 2015 to 4.9 in 2016. Rates of drug overdose deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids increased from 3.9 in 2015 to 4.4 in 2016.

Definitions

Drug poisoning (overdose) deaths: Includes deaths resulting from unintentional or intentional overdose of a drug, being given the wrong drug, taking a drug in error, or taking a drug inadvertently.

Natural and semisynthetic opioids: Includes such drugs as morphine, codeine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone.

Synthetic opioids other than methadone: Includes such drugs as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol.

Data source and methods

Estimates are based on the NVSS multiple-cause-of-death mortality files (5). Drug poisoning (overdose) deaths were defined as having an International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD10) underlying-cause-of-death code of X40X44 (unintentional), X60X64 (suicide), X85 (homicide), or Y10Y14 (undetermined intent). Of the drug overdose deaths in 2016, 86% were unintentional, 8% were suicides, 6% were of undetermined intent, and less than 1% were homicides. The type of drug(s) involved are indicated by ICD10 multiple-cause-of-death codes: heroin (T40.1), natural and semisynthetic opioids (T40.2), methadone (T40.3), and synthetic opioids other than methadone (T40.4).

Age-adjusted death rates were calculated using the direct method and adjusted to the 2000 standard population (6). Differences between national and state estimates were evaluated using two-sided significance tests at the 0.01 level, with the national rate treated as a fixed parameter. Trends in death rates were evaluated using the Joinpoint Regression Program (7). Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons described are statistically significant at the 0.05 level of significance.

Several factors related to death investigation and reporting may affect measurement of death rates involving specific drugs. At autopsy, the substances tested for and the circumstances under which the toxicology tests are performed vary by jurisdiction. This variability is likely to affect substance-specific death rates more than the overall drug overdose death rate. The percentage of drug overdose deaths that identified the specific drugs involved varied by year, with ranges of 75%79% from 1999 to 2013, and 81%85% from 2014 to 2016.

Additionally, drug overdose deaths may involve multiple drugs; therefore, a single death might be included in more than one category when describing the rate of drug overdose deaths involving specific drugs. For example, a death that involved both heroin and fentanyl would be included in both the rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin and the rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone.

About the authors

Holly Hedegaard is with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Office of Analysis and Epidemiology. Margaret Warner and Arialdi M. Minino are with the NCHS Division of Vital Statistics.

References

Suggested citation

Hedegaard H, Warner M, Minino AM. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 19992016. NCHS Data Brief, no 294. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2017.

Copyright information

All material appearing in this report is in the public domain and may be reproduced or copied without permission; citation as to source, however, is appreciated.

National Center for Health Statistics

Charles J. Rothwell, M.S., M.B.A., Director

Jennifer H. Madans, Ph.D., Associate Director for Science

Office of Analysis and Epidemiology

Irma E. Arispe, Ph.D., Director

Makram Talih, Ph.D., Associate Director for Science
Gambia's turning point

ICR Research By

Published 21 December 2017

Leaving behind a past of political unrest and financial mismanagement, Gambia is at the start of an exciting new chapter. Led by a new, democratically-elected government and witnessing an upturn in construction, the country is about to open its first cement production facility.

As the smallest country on the African mainland by area, Gambias economy relies heavily on tourism and agriculture. No wonder then that the Ebola crisis and poor harvest of 2014 led to a stagnation of economic growth that year with GDP improving by just 0.9 per cent. The economy picked up in 2015 with a rebound of 4.3 per cent, but estimates for 2016 were revised down from 4.3 to 2.2 per cent when the countrys political situation took a turn for the worse.

Presidential elections in December 2016 saw the incumbent President Yahya Jammeh, who had led the country for 22 years following a military coup in 1994, defeated by Adama Barrow of the United Democratic Party. When Jammeh refused to cede power, Barrow took refuge in Senegal. After weeks of pressure from regional players and the threat of military action, the former president eventually admitted defeat and Barrow returned to the country to be sworn in as president on 19 January 2017.

To continue reading this story and get access to all News, Articles and Video sections of the CemNet.com website, please Register for a subscription to International Cement Review or Login
By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Dec 21 (PTI) The US today welcomed a move by Saudi Arabia to allow humanitarian aid to reach Yemen and called for negotiations to bring peace in the war-torn country.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting Yemeni rebels has announced that it would allow the resumption of humanitarian deliveries to Sanaa airport and the crucial Red Sea port of Hudaydah.

advertisement

"The US welcomes Saudi Arabias announcement that the Saudi-led Coalition will open the Yemeni port of Hudaydah to all humanitarian and commercial goods, including fuel, and move cranes funded by the US to Hudaydah," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

As the largest humanitarian donor to the people of Yemen, the US remains committed to alleviating the dire human suffering in Yemen, she said in a statement.

"We welcome Saudi Arabias announcement of these humanitarian actions in the face of this major conflict," she said.

Sanders strongly condemned the December 19 Houthi ballistic missile attack against al-Yamamah Royal Palace in Riyadh, the seat of the Saudi Royal Court and official residence of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

Since early November, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has conducted Houthi missile attacks against Riyadhs international airport, she said.

Sanders urged the United Nations Security Council to hold Iran responsible for its repeated and blatant violations of the Security Council resolutions.

She called on all parties to support a political solution to the war in Yemen, asserting that it was the only way to advance long-term stability in Yemen and end the suffering of the Yemeni people.

About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival is dependent on international assistance. PTI LKJ MRJ

--- ENDS ---
Jidong Cement awards Mechel coal contract

ICR Newsroom By 21 December 2017

Chinese cement producer Jidong Cement has awarded a 3Mt coal supply contract to Russian mining company Mechel.

"Over the year Mechel will supply up to 3Mt of steam coal mined at LLC Elgaugol's Elga Open Pit Mine and JSC Yakutugol's Neryungrinsky Open Pit Mine, said the Russian mining company in a statement. The Elga coal complex is one of the worlds largest untapped deposits with coal reserves of around 2.2bnt in Yakutia. The Neryungrinsky mine is one of three in the companys 197.5Mt Yakutugol complex in Yakutia.

Prices will be adjusted on a monthly basis following negotiations and on the basis of index rates.

Mechel CEO, Oleg Korzhov, was cited as saying that Jidong Cement is the company's biggest foreign customer for Elga steam coal. "Jidong Cement is our longstanding and strategic partner in Asia, and we aim to continue our long-term and mutually profitable partnership," he said.

Published under
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a Muslim judge upheld the court-ordered eviction of two Christian families from their church-owned homes in Omdurman, Sudan. Pastors Yahiya Abdelrahim Nalu and Siddiqe Abdallah of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) filed an appeal against the eviction that was conducted on August 15, claiming that the property belonged to Hisham Al-Neel. This appeal was denied on December 3, 2017.



"The house that was marked for eviction was not ours. Our house number is 772 and the house that should have been vacated is 574. The judge went on with his ruling even after confirming from the housing authorities and the engineering surveyor that this was a mistaken raid. This is an outright breach of the law and it is done on purpose. The church is under siege and we are very disappointed," decried Pastor Yahiya.



Pastor Yahiya, his wife Manal, and their child Matthew, have been sleeping out in the open ever since. They are expecting their second child soon and winter is fast approaching. "We have been living outside in the streets with our wives and children after the forceful eviction four months ago. With the court ruling that didn't favor us, life will just become harder. This is an evil government that mistreats her people in the name of religion. We long for a nation that will give the minority groups protection and space," added Pastor Yahiya.



ICC spoke to pastor Siddiqe Abdallah, who has also been unable to find housing. "We are living under a tree in Khartoum city because a Muslim investor has taken over our house. Our hearts are broken and we can only ask our brothers to lift us in prayer. We are in great suffering and hopelessness," lamented Pastor Siddiqe Abdallah. He, his wife, and their two children are forced to live in the streets due to this injustice.



While speaking with ICC, Reverend Kuwa Shamal of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC), who was arrested in December 2015 and released in January 2017, expressed his dismay after the court upheld the eviction of the two Christian families. He said, "This is a ploy to finish the church in Sudan. The government has been oppressing the church by not only giving church properties to private developers but also forming a Muslim committee to oversee all the churches in Sudan. We are very disappointed by the move to turnover ownership of the property to a Muslim investor. The property might be demolished anytime as we speak."



ICC's Regional Manager, Nathan Johnson, stated, "The government in Sudan has long desired to end Christianity within its borders. It has worked tirelessly since South Sudan gained its freedom in 2011 to make Christianity illegal. We pray for the faith of these two families that are suffering and for those who are sure to suffer in the coming years. Sudan's flagrant human rights abuses must come to an end, and its citizens must be protected."

To read more Christian persecution news, visit www.persecution.org

Publication date: December 21, 2017
Years ago I had a conversation with a TV host on the topic of faith. He is not a Christian. In fact, he makes a point of emphasizing that he is not religious.

I explained my vocation as a Christian evangelist and apologist and asked this journalist for his advice. He took a few steps back and looked at me. You have a tough job. You try to convince people who dont believe to believe, he said. Heres what I would say to you: Dont try to convince people who do not believe to believe. People who do not believe are not going to believe, and you just have to be fine with that!

These words seemed to sound the death knell to my entire project, and I couldn't hide my discouragement as I left the studio that day. My friends attitude toward belief describes how many people, both believers and unbelievers, view Christian evangelism.

Even within the church, even among evangelicals, we have begun to diminish the work of evangelism. We emphasize good things like relationships and charity outreach but question the work of traditional apologetics, of speaking the gospel in hopes of convincing another that it is true. (Think of the commonly quoted line: Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.)

But when we diminish the work of evangelism and apologeticsas ineffective or as a secondary concernwe cheapen the gospel itself. If we believe the gospel is good news, true for all people, we cannot give up on making the case for our beliefs.

With the rise of secularism, sure, the church faces new challenges. But Im convinced that what we need is not innovative methods or answers. We need fresh confidence in the gospel.

Preaching to an Individualistic Culture

The philosopher Charles Taylor uses the term expressive individualism to describe the cultural milieu of the secular age. As James K. A. Smith writes, the term denotes an understanding that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that we are called to live that out (express it) rather than conform to models imposed by others (especially institutions).

The offshoot of this attitude is the desire to seek out what speaks to us personally: How am I going to be happy?How am I going to be fulfilled? Journalist David Brooks writes that we have moved away from a culture of humility to the culture of what you might call the Big Me, from a culture that encouraged people to think humbly of themselves to a culture that encouraged people to see themselves as the center of the universe.

My family and I moved to the Seattle area two years ago, where I constantly notice this expressive individualism worked out in what many have deemed a post-Christian context. Still, creative ministries and artsy churches arent the only vehicles God can use to reach this region; evangelism continues to play a role in engaging secular worldviews and pointing to Christ.

A friend of mine works as a senior leader at a tech company. He likes his job but also admits that he is consumed by work; his job is his life. He told me that he looks forward to retiring in ten years, if all goes to plan, and doing what he really loves: going on long vacations with his partner, spending time with family, and taking up different hobbies. As an evangelist, I hear his story and think of how many people strive for a life they alone control. Their vision of the good life and their pursuit of meaning and purpose point to a day when they get to call the shots.

In her book Religion & Public Life in the Pacific Northwest, Patricia OConnell Killen writes:

Individual religiousness tends to be private and episodically intense. Many pursue a spiritual quest on their own, drawing from multiple traditions and practices on a journey of religious experimentation.

Article continues below

The philosopher Charles Taylors term cross pressure describes the individualistic mood among my neighbors in the Northwest, people who feel caught between a closed world without God and a haunting of the transcendent.

After speaking to a group of students on their university campus, one told me she disagreed with most of what I presented that afternoon but had come with a Christian friend. She was baffled at why Christians make such a big deal about truth, specifically around moral issues. She recently experienced her own sort of freedom, without God or religion.

Last year, I took control of my life, she told me. I cut my hair, which used to be really long. I got a tattoo, I got piercings, and I got my heart broken for the first time. Then she brought up her struggle with anxiety. When shes out, shes worried that shes annoying at parties, and when she is at home by herself, she has this gnawing feeling that her friends hate her.

Even here, she was keen to express how she has taken control of her dilemma. Still, no felt need for God. She told me, When I wake up in the morning, I write in my journal, Anxiety is not telling the truth. I listened along with her friend as this student told me her story, and afterward, I assured her that even if she believes her friends dont value her, the Christian faith tells her that she is loved.

This is only one example of what individualism looks like when it comes face-to-face with the Christian faith. All the time, people convince themselves that God and the Christian truth claims are unnecessary, leaving Christians to think there is nothing to say. Yet, there is no escaping the longing for the transcendent.

Despite taking control of her life, this student discovered she still needs help. She began the conversation by expressing no need for God, yet in the end, she revealed the desire for love and acceptance we find profoundly met in the Christian faith.

Raising the Right Questions

When Christians think of evangelism, they often think of the issue of credibility, the need to prove that our faith is actually true. But plenty of our friends arent asking the credibility questions. They have settled well into their unbelief. They are not interested in whether Christianity is true, if Jesus Christ was who he said he was, or if the resurrection of Christ happened. Credibility is no longer a conversational starting point for much of evangelism in the modern world.

Because so few people directly ask for proof of our faith, many have lost confidence in sharing it with others or fail to see the need for evangelism altogether. Christians assume that apologetics is something practiced by the really keen or earnest believers and no longer relevant in the conversations of our day-to-day lives.

Its as though the culturally insensitive or simply out-of-touch Christians are the ones willing to share their faiththose who have yet to be enlightened by the myriad cultural barriers to the gospel. I wonder if this view could change if we could find another starting point in evangelism other than stating Christianitys credibility.

In his book Humble Apologetics, John Stackhouse points out that a more meaningful entry point for evangelism focuses on plausibility. Plausibility instead asks the question, Might this be true? The credibility questions do not go awaythe answers are fundamental to the Christian faithbut instead of waiting for others to ask, we can prompt them to consider new possibilities. This shift in approaches bridges personal curiosity and helps bring out the foundational truth claims of Christianity.

Article continues below

Another way in which Christians can respond to the fierce individualism of our time is by inviting spiritual seekers into our community. Many who are reading this already embody this. But if we are not already doing so, we need to convey to our friends that they can belong in our community without believing.

Evangelism is still alive and as important as ever. The best way to gain confidence in the work of evangelism, of speaking the gospel to convince others of its truth, is to engage in it yourself. Here are my top four simple tips for practicing evangelism in conversation:

1. Ask questions.

I was in a coffee shop in Oregon recently, waiting for my drink to be made, when a person came in, slapped two books on a table, and then stood in line to order. I noticed he was reading new spirituality titles, so I asked what the books were all about. Without hesitating, he looked at me and said, This book is about the untethered soul. I have found it really helpful. We continued talking, and even with a stranger in a coffee shop, I learned something about what he finds meaningful in life.

In evangelism, questions are always better than statements. Questions invite a conversation, whereas statements have great potential for closing a conversation down. As an evangelist, asking questions helps me get a person to bring up signals of transcendence in their life that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

2. Listen well.

Eugene Peterson said, Many people talk about urgency for action, but what we really need is urgency for listening. The tendency in conversational evangelism is to make sure we get our word in. Good evangelism begins with good listening. I am keen to listen to what excites people and how they spend their spare time. I listen for statements that tend to be veiled questions. With the college student I mentioned earlier, who struggles with anxiety and wonders whether some of her friends hate her, the question emerged of whether she was loved and accepted. By listening, I was able to express something of the truth within Christianitythat she is loved by God.

3. Patience is key.

Leading a person to Christ is exhilarating. But its a process. Just by observing conversations Christ had with his friends, we get a glimpse of how patient Christ was. Even when his close friends did not understand him, he remained patient with them. This ought to be instructive for Christians who desire to see friends commit their lives to Christ. Christs disciples had heard Christs teaching firsthand, they had witnessed Jesus cleansing a leper, and they had observed the authority with which he spoke. Now, in Matthew 8:2327, in a boat caught in a violent storm, they see his power dynamically and unimaginably demonstrated. Yet, after all of this, they look at each other and say, What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him? Surely, they saw something of the living God in these acts, yet they seemingly bumbled their way alongside Christ not really understanding the fullness of who he was. Remarkably so, Christ never gave up on them. He stuck with them every step of the way, despite their lack of understanding.

4. Give focused attention.

In our smartphone, 24/7, always-on culture, we have become too comfortable with interruptions and distractions. Still one of our greatest desires in friendships and conversations is attention. Listening well, cultivating a disposition of patience, and giving focused attention might be the most subtle, yet the brightest way in which we shine the light of Christ and thus lead our friends, family members, and colleagues to take what we are saying seriously enough to ask the Might this be true? question.

Article continues below

I believe these actions can provide powerful ways in which the beauty and attractiveness of Christs love can be seen and heard. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote, Make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.

The challenges to the gospel in our culture are real and daunting. But I have hope because the gospel is real and strong as it has always been. It is good news.

Being an evangelist in a post-Christian world starts with recovering confidence in the gospel. This is a gospel that tells of a God who is wonderfully involved in our world and in our lives. In Acts 17, Paul speaks to a group of people who felt as though their search for God was like reaching for someone in a dark room. Paul tells them that the God who made them is the one in whom we live and move and have our being (v. 28). Far from an impersonal force, to be sought after in a dark room, the Christian God is one who has pursued us, knows us, and who gives us the very reason for our existence. This same God invites us out of our extreme individualism and into a life that is far richer than something we could ever create or imagine.

Nathan Betts is an apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). He speaks frequently across the US and Canada. His focus areas include the interface of faith and culture, digital technology and belief, and youth apologetics.


Whats the best way for Middle Eastern Christians in America to help fellow believers back home? A single misspelled email address inadvertently revealed the breadth of this dilemma for activists in the diaspora.

The mishap sparked a spat this summer between two prominent US Arab groups: the Arab American Institute (AAI), a polling and policy organization led by James Zogby, and Coptic Solidarity (CS), which champions the religious freedom of Egyptian Christians and other minorities.

Zogby, who has a Lebanese Maronite background, was a scheduled participant in CSs annual Washington conference, which leaders often use to advise DCs foreign policy establishment on Middle East issues.

But two days before the June 15 conference, Zogby unexpectedly withdrew.

Zogby explained in an article weeks later that he withdrew after receiving word that some controversial anti-Muslim hate groups would be at the conference and that the title of a panel in which he was participating had been revised to suggest that violence and impunity are endemic in Muslim and Egyptian culture.

The best way to reinforce the message of the haters of Christians in Egypt is by giving them the ammunition that Copts in the US are working with Islamophobes in Washington, Zogby told CT. I felt it important to call out CS for what I strongly believe is a wrong-headed and potentially dangerous path.

Stunned by Zogbys withdrawal and his public criticism, CS wrote an angry response, accusing Zogby of a dhimmi mentality, a reference to the secondary status of non-Muslims in the historic caliphate.

He intentionally tried to hijack our event and tarnish our reputation, Lindsay Griffin, CSs director of advocacy and development, told CT.

According to organizers, participants had received the revised speaker list and panel names a full month before the conference. But Zogby didnt. His email address was misspelled, so he never received a May 9 message outlining the changes that later led him to withdraw.

But while the spark that ignited the conflict between the groups was an honest mistake, the issues at the center of the dilemma are real.

We reject the latent assumption that confronting such critical issues means attacking Islam and Muslims, Griffin said. The conference had Muslim participants, including a keynote speaker.

But participants also included Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy and Ryan Mauro of the Clarion Institute, both identified by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-Muslim hate groups. CS said it welcomes many voices in order to produce the best recommendations for US foreign policy.

In its rebuttal, CS described Zogbys approach as one that calls on Christian minorities and their representatives never to protest their persecution, and especially never to criticize Arab or Muslim cultures and societies, but to acquiesce and make do as best they can.

The tension underlying the dueling accusations was palpable, but also of substance. Do Middle Eastern Christians suffer from something intrinsic to Islam? Should the US government be pushed to intervene accordingly? Or is it best to work charitably with regional governments to incrementally extend fuller religious freedoms and individual rights?

There is a clear cultural and religious struggle here, said Lilian Samaan, the American Bible Societys strategic ministries advisor for the Middle East and North Africa. Originally from Jordan, she urges US Christians to support and learn from the Arab immigrant church in America.

CS has found space to talk freely in the US, she said, noting neighbor-trust has eroded significantly in the Middle East. But her own experience with many beautiful, loyal Muslims in Jordan prompted a somber observation once she began living in the diaspora herself.

Article continues below

The majority of Christians in the Middle East associate themselves with the more conservative Christian movement in the US, she said, which in some instances, unfortunately, expresses its views on Muslims by generalizing, and associating moderate Muslims with Islamic terrorists.

Samaan believes advocates need to employ both cooperation with and criticism of Middle Eastern governments. But she believes local Christians also need pressure to come from the American government.

Nabeel Jabbour, a Lebanese Christian who lived in Egypt for 15 years, disagrees. The CS approach is counterproductive in the long run, and it will hurt the expansion of the gospel among Muslims, he said. Christian minorities in the Middle East will not be protected by America or the West, which are motivated by national interests.

Jabbour teaches at Columbia International University and Denver Seminary and promotes a kingdom rather than a Christendom model for the Arab world. CS is driven by the protection and the preservation of Christians in the Middle East, and especially in Egypt, he said. Zogbys worldview is better, where the survival of Christianity is dependent on how well they learn to live with Muslims. Who will protect you when you are in danger?

No one, says Peter BetBasoo, founder and editor of the Assyrian International News Agency, which has covered the historic Christian communities of Iraq since 1995. Change will never come from working with Middle Eastern governments, he said. The pressure must come from an external agency, but then Christians will be seen as [a foreign threat].

Seeking equality in civil rights and nondiscrimination is a struggle, BetBasoo said. But he doesnt see governments as the biggest barrier. It is the mob pressure of Muslimsit is Islam, he said. It is hard to argue with a Muslim if he believes his religion is directly the word of Allah.

His major concern: the erasing of ancient Christian ethnicities under the banner of Arabism. He finds Zogby to be a principal culprit, lumping Assyrians, Copts, and Maronites into AAI. The culturally imposed identity of Arab must be removed, BetBasoo said. It is an injustice which continues to fester.

This debate is crucial, especially as the US considers creating a Middle East and North Africa category for the upcoming 2020 census (a move Zogby supports). But some see the back-and-forth over the Arab label as a distraction.

Calling the attention of the world to the suffering of many Eastern Christians is too important an issue to be wrapped up in domestic American politics and the volatile issues of identity politics, said Maged Atiya, an Egyptian-American physician, businessman, and blogger. Unity, rather than division, is the key to effective activism.

Michael Sorial, author of Incarnational Exodus: A Vision for the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America, believes the methodologies of CS and AAI can work together. One tends to be more disruptive in nature; the other appears more incremental, he said. But each group is speaking to a different part of the audience, seeking to educate them on the dire situation facing Christians in the Middle East.

Ultimately, said the New Jersey priest, the dialogue that is happening between the two approaches is creating net positive attention to the issue.

And this attention, Samaan hopes, will remind both American and diaspora churches of their crucial roleone she learned only gradually among the Muslims of Jordan.

We Christians can be salt and light to those whose souls belong in eternity with the rest of us, she said. There will always be limitations and pressures from governments and other groups. But in the long run, persistence in advocacy will be life-changing for Christians in the regionone step at a time.

Jayson Casper is a Cairo-based correspondent for Christianity Today.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
5 Reasons You Need to Believe in God Discussions about God had always been big. Does God exist? Is there a Heaven? At this time of year, those questions come to the forefront.

Discussions about God had always been big. Does God exist? Is there a Heaven? At this time of year, those questions come to the forefront. Lost in all this is whether we need to believe in God. Not only do we each need to believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but the Judeo-Christian God should be front and center even in our government. Here are five reasons:

A God-Based Government Doesn't Kill.

Godless governments have always  repeat, always -- murdered in the thousands and millions in the pursuit of some godless utopia. Never in the history of the world has a godless regime left the world in a better place. The Soviet Union, China under Mao, the Viet Cong, all the former Eastern Bloc communist nations, as well as Fascist Germany and Italy, were all godless. The writings of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini acknowledge that godlessness was at the core of their agenda.

In this way, godless governments are wholly different than many of the empires of old (the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Babylonians, the British, and so forth). Those empires sought power and land, yes, but did not seek the annihilation of whole peoples.

The 20th Century bears out my thesis amply: approximately 200 million people died in the 20th Century alone, as a result of godless regimes. No religious institution, nor country founded upon the Judeo-Christian ethic came close to even a hundredth of such numbers.

God Gives Us Freedom

Beauty, free will, humor, a sense of the past and the present, a sense of improvement and progress, are all central in humans. And they are meaningless without the notion of aspiring toward a connection with God. To conceptualize this, understand how animals do not care about any such things.

But we humans are different. We not only crave such things, we also crave freedom. Animals do not. A dog can be perfectly content, even though his master leashes him. He is not "free."

Those who do not care about God, particularly in the former communist countries, never express a yearning for freedom. As long as the government gives them free education, health care, housing, free child care, what do they care about freedom? It's not relevant to them.

I just hope they don't mind the leash.

God Alleviates Depression

As Rabbi Brandon Gaines has observed: Our society makes every effort to kick God out of our society -- and then we wonder why everyone is taking anti-depressants.

There's a correlation: Study after study show that those who observe a Judeo-Christian faith are far less likely to suffer depression.

Why? Life without God is ultimately a life without purpose. It is like expecting to feel fully satisfied after eating a bag of popcorn, rather than a nourishing meal of vegetables, risotto and tofu (I'm vegan; bear with me).

We need a sense that we do things for something beyond ourselves. Christians of old built churches they knew would take 600 years to complete. Those who started the project knew they would never see its end. But onward they went. They were part of something much larger.

When you have purpose, depression fades away. And loss of purpose is one of the great casualties of a world without God.

God Gives Us Science

Contrary to the atheists' declaration that God and science are incompatible opposites, God is science, and we could not haveScience without God. Science is the quest to find God.

This is what Judaism and Christianity have believed for thousands of years: we seek out knowledge because God imbued us with a sense of learning. Unlike the animals, we humans must always be discovering.

To the Christian and the Jew, the explanation is simple: God wants us to find him. It is Judaism and Christianity that created the university, the judicial system, the school system, and the scientific method itself. It was Georges Lemaitre, a French priest, who discovered what we now call the "Big Bang." He did so in a quest to reveal God's glory in His creation of the universe.

In a godless world of "survival of the fittest," there is no reason to learn science beyond our immediate comfort. Discovering the galaxies, millions of light years away? How is that relevant to our species' survival?

The lion, the gazelle and the chimpanzee don't give a hoot about the universe, let alone know such a thing exists. Science means nothing to them.

But it does to us, because of God.

God Allows Us To Recognize Evil

Without God, distinctions do not matter. There is no true "good" or "evil." There are no clear moral distinctions. All morality is relative.

The more godless our society becomes, the less focus there has been on "evil." That's because suggesting "evil" exists means a universal standard must exist.

One of the most haunting examples of the inability to fight evil comes from the true story of the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, in the late 1980s. A lone gunman with just one assault rifle ordered the male students to wait out in the hallway while he killed women in a classroom, one by one. The men did nothing. No one seemed to know what to do.

How could such a thing happen? Why didn't any of the men rush the gunman? Because no one had taught them to recognize evil. They knew about environmentalism, about gay rights, and that capitalism is bad. But the evil of madmen? Not so much.

A world without God demotes us to mere animals in the jungle. There is no "evil" in the jungle: One animal killing or raping another is no different than the jumping of a fish out of water or the falling of a leaf. These are just things that happen in the jungle.

We need God for the sake of our universal progress, and also for our own individual freedoms, safety and growth. Without Him, well: Welcome to the Jungle.

Barak Lurie is a former atheist who welcomed God back into his life after turning to logic, science, and probabilities. His book Atheism Kills is available on Amazon. He is a managing partner of the firm Lurie & Seltzer in Los Angeles, California and host of The Barak Lurie Show, a big-picture look at politics, religion, and law in the news Sunday mornings on AM870, KRLA. Lurie advocates the importance of God in society, using reason, history, and science to expose atheists' flawed philosophies.

Listen to Barak Lurie's radio show at https://soundcloud.com/barak-lurie and connect with him on Facebook.
Hold onto your heart, you're about to see chef Vikas Khanna and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau together, in one frame.

By India Today Web Desk: There's nothing Vikas Khanna hasn't achieved yet. From international validation to a Michelin star to making his country proud at various international platforms--celebrity chef Vikas Khanna has truly been the prodigy India is proud to call her own.

Recently, Vikas stepped foot in Canada, and decided to meet India's envoy to Canada, Vikas Swarup. You might recognise Mr Swarup from the 2009 Oscars. Yup, he stood right behind the cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire, as they all swarmed the Oscars stage to accept the award for Best Picture. Why? Because Vikas Swarup is the author of the book on which the movie was based.

Celebrating India with @TheVikasKhanna. Honoured to receive Utsav, a culinary epic of Indian festivals and a true labour of love from the legendary chef who visited India House today. pic.twitter.com/Oyw1kX1qEn- Vikas Swarup (@VikasSwarup) December 19, 2017

advertisement

Vikas Khanna met the same Mr Swarup and his family in Ottawa recently to present to him his legendary cook book, Utsav: A Culinary Epic. For the uninitiated, Utsav is a 1,200-page love of labour that's taken 12 years to compile by Vikas Khanna himself. The book is also touted to be the world's most expensive cookbook, having fetched Rs 30 lakh at an auction earlier this year.

Also read: 8 times Vikas Khanna made India proud on an international platform

So, after a meet and greet with Vikas Swarup and family, Chef Khanna decided to meet the Prime Minister of the country, Justin Trudeau, to present to him his most precious work thus far.

Picture courtesy: Twitter/@TheVikasKhanna

"On behalf of more than a Billion souls I bring to you UTSAV. One of the EPIC days of my life. Thank You Honorable PM @JustinTrudeau for so much time and your love for India. (sic)" Vikas Khanna Tweeted, with a picture of him and the Canadian Prime Minister lost in conversation.

Also read: Why Vikas Khanna's favourite ingredient, Mulethi, is good for your body

Needless to say, Vikas Khanna's efforts to make India's culture and food be recognised the world over have met with very warm returns. Here's hoping Chef Khanna gets all the love and support he needs to keep making his country and its culture proud.

--- ENDS ---
Colorado's Creative Professionals Are All Threatened by This Law A Christian creative professional who lives in Colorado knows the outcome of Jack Phillips' case could impact her.

Graphic designer Lorie Smith has followed Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips' case with concern for several years, watching it make its way through the court system all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a Christian creative professional who also lives in Colorado, she knows the outcome of Jack's case could also impact her artistic and religious freedom. It's what has kept her from expanding her business the past few years. Last year, she decided to do more than wait and watch.

She filed a lawsuit against the state in 2016, challenging the law that has silenced her and stunted her business growth. Alliance Defending Freedom filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit this week, after another court ruled earlier this year that she could not challenge the Colorado rule at the center of her  and Jack's  case.

Lorie owns graphic design studio 303 Creative and specializes in creating and designing custom websites, which include customized text, graphics, images, and other content that promote ideas, events, or organizations. Owning her own business has allowed Lorie to take on the projects she feels passionate about and those that line up with her beliefs. In fact, she often does work for churches and religious organizations.

The past few years, though, Lorie has wanted to expand her business into the wedding industry. She wants to design custom wedding websites that proclaim and celebrate the beauty of marriage as God designed it  as the lifelong union between one man and one woman.

But a Colorado law is being interpreted to require Lorie to use her artistic talents to promote same-sex marriages if she promotes marriages between one man and one woman. The law even prohibits her from publicly explaining her religious beliefs about marriage on her website.

On top of that, violating the law means costly and burdensome investigations, fines of up to $500 for each violation, and oppressive mandates, like re-education training designed to compel Lorie to agree with Colorado's views on marriage.

Lorie has watched as this law has been enforced against Jack. (Because Jack declined to use his artistic talents to design a custom cake celebrating a same-sex wedding, the State of Colorado demanded that he "re-educate" his staff at Masterpiece Cakeshop  mostly his family  on the definition of marriage.)

Because of this, Lorie has kept out of the wedding industry for fear that she would be punished. The result of this Colorado law has been to silence people who hold dissenting viewpoints on marriage.

This Colorado law is similar to many others across the country, and ADF is defending a number of creative professionals against such assaults on their freedom. ADF has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold religious and artistic freedom by ruling in Jack's favor, and we will continue to litigate on behalf of these artists. Securing these freedoms for them means securing them for us all.

Get the latest updates on Lorie's case and others like it by signing up for our newsletter.

Originally posted at Alliance Defending Freedom.
Loving God With Our Minds: A Tribute to the Late R. C. Sproul The greatest command, said Jesus, is that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Sometimes missing today among many professing Christians is the emphasis on the mind.

The greatest command, said Jesus, is that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Sometimes missing today among many professing Christians is the emphasis on the mind.

A great evangelical theologian died December 14, 2017, R. C. Sproul (rhymes with role), the founder of Ligonier Ministries. And I think he exemplifies the notion of loving God with our mind, as well as our other faculties. Even his radio program was called "Renewing Your Mind with R. C. Sproul."

Sometimes one gets the impression that the more religious you are, the less likely you are to be educated. But Dr. Rodney Stark of Baylor University factually disproves that myth.

In his book, America's Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists (2012), Stark notes, "Angry atheists frequently claim that religious folks tend to be uneducated and are inclined to stay that way---putting little value on book learnin'. This fantasy is probably the most outrageous of all regarding people of faith. Americans who never attend church are significantly less likely to have finished high school than are those who attend weekly." (p. 72)

Stark adds, "Religious students have a superior level of academic achievement, however it is measured....Evangelical Protestants were second only to Jews in being college-educated, significantly exceeding all other religious groups as well as the nonreligious....the more often students attended church, the more likely they were to enroll in college....The idea that churchgoers tend to be less educated is false." (pp. 134, 139, 140, 141)

The great thing about R. C. Sproul is that, while he was an intellectual and taught the meat of God's Word, he had the ability to communicate deep truths in an understandable way.

I interviewed Sproul for Christian television a few times. In one of those interviews he noted, "As the church embraces more and more secular ideas, and as preachers in their zeal to bring people into the church tell them that God loves them unconditionally, the unbeliever hears the preacher say, 'I don't need to repent. I don't really need Jesus. God loves me just as I am, unconditionally.' And it's not the Kingdom of God; it's more like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."

For this column, I reached out to some Christian leaders that knew him or were influenced by his teaching for a statement on Dr. Sproul and how he encouraged Christians to think.

Dr. Sam Lamerson, president of Knox Theological Seminary, where he taught some occasional classes, wrote: "Dr. R.C. Sproul was a rare mix of a great communicator and a good scholar....I became an academic, in part, because of the witness of Dr. Sproul."

Dr. Peter Lillback, president of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, sent me this eulogy: "Dr. Sproul was granted that rare combination of sincere devotion with penetrating intellectual power. This harmony of gifts made his preaching, writing and ministry magnetic to many within and without Reformed Christianity."

Author Dr. George Grant writes, "He was brilliant...Over the 35 years that I knew him, that first impression has only been reinforced a hundredfold. Without ever using notes, he could wax eloquent on everything from Greek morphology to Modernist philosophy, from the wonders of the Magisterial Reformers to the feats of the Pittsburg Steelers."

Lee Webb, vice president of broadcasting for Ligonier Ministries and host of "Renewing Your Mind with R.C. Sproul," wrote: "[His teaching] brought me great comfort and encouragement to know that Christianity could stand intellectual scrutiny. ...Dr. Sproul could lay claim to the theological 'ivory tower,' but his great passion was to bring that rich theology down to people like me to understand and embrace it."

Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, emailed me, "R. C. Sproul was a Christian apologist and theologian to the layman and laywoman in the pew and on Main Street. He had a great burden to equip the church to defend the faith in the public marketplace... to equip the laity to do so as well was quite evident to all those with whom he came into contact."

Del Tackett, creator and teacher of the Truth Project, pointed me to his blog, where he had written, "[Dr. Sproul] was instrumental in developing in me the understanding that it was all about God."

By contacting his office, I found out that John MacArthur had likewise already issued a statement, including this sentence: "One of R. C.'s most admirable characteristics was his refusal to shy away from difficult doctrines or shape his teaching to suit whatever might be popular or politically correct at any given moment."

Thankfully, R. C. Sproul's legacy endures through his books, taped lectures and radio broadcasts. His life work reminds us to love God with our all our mind.

Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is an on-air host/senior producer for D. James Kennedy Ministries. He has written/co-written 28 books, e.g., The Unstoppable Jesus Christ, Doubting Thomas (w/ Mark Beliles, on Jefferson), and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (w/ D. James Kennedy) & the bestseller, George Washington's Sacred Fire (w/ Peter Lillback) djkm.org @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com
Golden Globe recipient Michelle Williams confirms she will be part of upcoming Marvel film 'Venom'

Golden Globe winner Michelle Williams just confirmed that she will be part of the upcoming Marvel film "Venom." Williams will join actor Tom Hardy in the movie as Ann Weying.

The "All the Money in the World" star confirmed her involvement in the film during an interview with Screen Rant. When asked about her upcoming movies, Williams mentioned that she is having a great experience working for the Marvel film with the other cast like Hardy and Woody Harrelson. "We're having fun," Williams said.

The actress also grabbed the chance to praise Hardy's charisma and his influence in the movie. When asked by the publication about the most exciting part of the movie, Williams answered, "for me it's Tom (Tom Hardy)." She added, "I just thought, well, that guy knows what he's doing. I'm just going to steal some of his moves, figure out what he knows."

Williams did not disclose much information about her character. Ann Weying, based on the comics, is Eddie Brock's (Tom Hardy) former lover and is also known as She-Venom. Weying in the Marvel Comics Universe briefly makes use of the Venom suit that turns her into Symbiote. Weying is also killed in the comics by the serial killer Sin-Eater.

There are still no reveals from the show's producer and director Ruben Fleischer if Weying will be seen in the movie wearing the Venom Symbiote.

The movie "Venom" is set to be released Oct. 5 2018 as announced by Sony Pictures. Production already started during the fall season this year.

Meanwhile, Williams is in the middle of celebrating her Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the 2017 film "All the Money in the World." Williams is up for the category of Best Actress in a Drama film. The actress is going up against talented actresses Jessica Chastain, Sally Hawkins, Frances McDormand, and Meryl Streep.
Nokia 9 news: Nokia 9 specs include Android 8.0 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor

Nokia is yet to announce the official release date of its upcoming smartphone product, Nokia 9. Not much has been released about the smartphone's specs.

There are articles that have released few details about Nokia 9's specs including its processor, display features, battery power, and memory storage. These pieces of information about the phone come from the Federal Communications Communion website.

According to reports, the Nokia 9 will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor just like the Nokia 8 released last summer. It was also unveiled that the smartphone is functional with the Android 8.0 Oreo version. The smartphone can also support up to 128 GB of files. There are no further details if the smartphone will support other memory storage capacity. The 9th edition is supported by a 3,250 mAh battery with a 18W fast-charging support. The phone also includes dual rear cameras, 12 and 13 megapixels. The display setting of the Nokia 9 is backed with a 5.5-inch OLED display.

There are already speculations about the price rate of the Nokia 9 that ranges from $800 to $950, according to the phone's memory storage capacity.

Consumers are waiting for Nokia's announcement for the launch date of the product. According to further reports, the phone will hit stores on Jan. 19, 2018 along with the Nokia 6 2018 Edition.

The Nokia 8 received great reviews from critics and customers. The product got a score of 4 out of 5 from Tech Radar and Expert Reviews. One issue that experts had with the Nokia 8 is the lack of unique and new features. They did applaud the design and display setting of the product, though.

There are still no leaks or reports about the new features to be introduced with the Nokia 9. Nokia has not also disclosed any information about new potential products to be released next year.
Nokia 9 release date, specs rumors: Leaked FCC filing reveals 5.5-inch OLED display, Android Oreo

The rumors are rife that the next flagship Nokia smartphone is coming up soon. Further supporting the expected launch early next year is the recently leaked Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing. The documents show the brand new design and features of the device, including a 5.5-inch OLED display and Android Oreo OS update.

When a tech firm formally submits the patent documents for a device to the FCC, this means that the release is imminent. The patent filing for the Nokia 9 was posted by Liliputing, giving the public an idea of what to expect from the newly-revived mobile phone label. To recall, HMD Global has taken over the Nokia brand, which brought the premium Nokia 8 handset and the mid-range Nokia 8 last year.



The Nokia 9 is revealed to sport a 5.5-inch OLED display. The FCC documents show that the OLED panel used for the smartphone is manufactured by LG, suggesting a huge improvement over the Nokia 8's IPS LCD-powered screen. Looking at the device's core specs, the Nokia 9 will boast high-power performance via Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset.

Other specs of the Nokia 9 include a 3,250mAh battery and 128GB worth of internal storage. The FCC filing did not indicate how much RAM capacity the smartphone has. Although, an appended screenshot of the Nokia 9 render reveals that the handset will run the latest Android 8.0 Oreo OS out of the box.

In terms of the camera, the Nokia 9 will highlight a rear dual-lens camera, just like its predecessor. Specifically, the dual camera is a combination of 12MP and 12MP shooters, while the front-positioned camera will receive a 5MP lens. Aside from the camera resolution, the filing did not show other features of the Nokia snapper, although Tech Radar reported that the smartphone's dual camera will include a 2x telephoto zoom and wide-angle camera option.

The FCC documents for the Nokia 9 did not specify an exact release date and price of the handset. However, it is speculated that HMD Global's next flagship offering will arrive in the early months of 2018.
South Sudan Church leaders urge hope and prayer for devastated country

Church leaders in South Sudan have issued a Christmas message of hope and a paper containing a 'road map' for resolving the country's long-running conflict.

South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup only two years after the nation gained independence from its northern neighbour, Sudan.

In its Advent and Christmas message the SSCC says: 'Advent begins with the invitation to joy, because "the Lord comes", because he comes to save us. The words of the Prophet Isaiah addressed the people of Israel in their exile in Babylon after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

'The Israelites were uncertain about their return to the Holy City which remained in ruins. The Prophet Isaiah encourages them that the Lord is coming, and he will bring light, he will dispel darkness and restore light with his presence. He urges them to abandon sorrow and despair, lift up their hearts because the Lord is at hand.'

According to the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC), which comprises traditional Protestants, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Orthodox, human rights are being abused at every level. People are being killed, women and men are raped, children recruited into armed groups, while security organs are apparently acting above the law.

Also commonplace are armed robbery, arbitrary arrests with often delayed judicial processes and a shrinking space for citizens, journalists and civil society to speak out.

It says in its paper: 'The rapidly deteriorating economic situation coupled with the halting of most developmental projects and investments has led to extreme hardship for most ordinary citizens.

'The war and violent conflicts have driven millions from their home and made them extremely vulnerable.'

It calls for a focus on advocacy, establishing safe spaces to repair relationships, reconciliation and organisational strengthening.

The United States, the biggest aid provider to South Sudan, threatened at the United Nations Security Council on November 28 to take unspecified measures against the government unless it moves to end the war and stop harassing UN peacekeepers and aid workers.
A political tempest arose last week when the Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services had banned the use of certain words or phrasesvulnerable, science-based, and entitlements, among othersin official budget documents. National Affairs editor Yuval Levin debunked the story, though, finding instead that bureaucrats concerned about offending Republican budget overseers had, in fact, decided to censor themselves. If so, that suggests that the bureaucrats have been reading their George Orwell, who observed in his classic essay Politics and the English Language that language is an instrument which we shape for our own purposes; they are sharp enough to realize that even neutral terms can constitute mini-arguments. Each of the terms in questionand a great many morehave been weaponized for use in political conflict.

Vulnerable, for example, is a substitute for poor or low-income, but it usually suggests that the person in question should not be considered in any way responsible for his or her situation, because social conditions that transcend individual action have stacked the deck adversely. Science-based is a pithy way to characterize the views of ones political opponents as ignorant or superstitious. The belief that climate change will prove catastrophic is said to be science-based; any view that minimizes the risk constitutes denial, another noun that has become an argument. The widely used entitlement has also become an argument. The idea that all citizens are entitled to certain forms of financial supportchecks for those above a certain age, health insurance for those below a certain incomeimplies no other way of seeing the situation. Those who would change the way entitlements are disbursed, then, are impinging on rights, not programs.

Other examples abound. Disadvantaged describes low-income childrenwhile implying that other children are advantagedand thus that the system is unfair and violates social justice, another loaded term. The homeless, by and large, are not living on the street but are often doubled up with friends or family; they dont have their own home, in other words. But the word-picture painted by homeless is more powerful. The Right plays the same game. Death tax as a substitute for estate tax, for example, characterizes a debatable policy as an immoral absurdity.

It all comes down to the importance of euphemism as a way to minimize opposition. Orwell saw it clearly in 1946:

Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.

Of course, one would not want political leaders telling public employees what words they can usebut apparently there is no need for such direction, anyway. Our bureaucrats seem quite capable of figuring out whats politically correct on their own.

Photo by Michail Petrov/iStock
By PTI: Washington, Dec 21 (PTI) R Madhavan-starrer crime thriller "Vikram Vedha" and "Baahubali 2" have been voted by the viewers as IMDbs top Indian movies of 2017.

The third movie in the list is "Arjun Reddy".

Bollywood makes an appearance on the fourth spot with Aamir Khans "Secret Superstar". It is followed by "Hindi Medium", "The Ghazi Attack", "Toilet - Ek Prem Katha" and "Jolly LLB 2".

advertisement

Tamil film "Mersal" and "The Great Father" complete the top-10 list on the website.

These 10 films had the highest ratings by IMDb users.

"Fans worldwide demonstrated interest in a diverse set of Indian movies, from Vikram Vedha to The Great Father. It is interesting to note that films based on classics and mythology, as well as those based on contemporary issues, emerged as the two prominent themes of 2017," said Neha Gureja, IMDbs Head of Audience Development.

"Socially-conscious movies such as Secret Superstar, Hindi Medium, Toilet ? Ek Prem Katha and Mersal resonated among users," Gureja said. PTI BK BK

--- ENDS ---
Raha Naddaf first met Sati at a three-day writing workshop in San Francisco. Naddaf, the executive editor of The California Sunday Magazine, was teaching a group of teenagers about personal essay writing. On the first day, she noticed the 13-year-old Sati typing away on her computer with laser focus and headphones in her ears. I later read that draft and was so blown away by how polished and sophisticated and honest and raw and beautifully structured that piece was, she says.

That draft, which focused on the teens complicated relationship with eating and weight, eventually became one of 26 stories to appear on the pages of the latest issue of California Sunday. Since launching in late 2014, the longform, monthly magazine, which tells stories from California, the West, Asia, and Latin America, has become known for its highly visual, cinematic approach to narrative storytelling. Every year, the magazine produces a special issue. Last year, the special issue was about sound. This years focus was the American teenager. We wanted to give people a look at their lives right now through their eyes, says Doug McGray, the magazines editor in chief. That meant relying on teens to tell their own stories, and consulting with teens on content produced by adult contributors.

When I was a teenager, I had the luxury of divorcing myself from the world and being very interested in my own things, Naddaf says. Things are different now. A lot of teenagers are so engaged and dont necessarily have the option, or want the option, of focusing on themselves. It feels like a very different time to be growing up. The issue offered them the opportunity to explore thatto understand how things have changed, and in some cases, how they havent. Its not just a single teenage voice, but a collection of them. I never wanted us to speak for teenagers, but for them to speak for themselves, Naddaf says.

ICYMI: 8 strategies for saving local newsrooms

Early on, the California Sunday team created an informal advisory board of teenagers by tapping into their own networks and also youth-oriented organizations like Youth Radio and 826 Valencia (who co-organized the initial writing workshop). Assistant Editor Joy Shan reached out to over 100 teenagers during the making of the magazine, interviewing them about their routines, interests, thoughts, and concerns.

An issue of the magazine usually consists of an ambitious feature wellfour to five longform storiesplus the same number of shorter pieces. This issue breaks from that form, jam-packing its pages with a mix of 20-plus pieces from shorter as told to sections to reported features on border patrol agents in training to photo essays on the places where teens hang out. The first piece, The Two-Hour School Commute, details the daily routes of three teenagers; another looks at the impact of witnessing a school shooting. Throughout the issue, sidebars from teen experts give advice on everything from how to share your stuff to how to organize a political rally. I wanted it to be something that felt incredibly authentic and that teenagers played a central role in conceiving and creating, Naddaf says. I didnt want it to be this editing process by an adult walking into the teen world and pretending to have a certain type of authority there.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

Working with teen contributors was no different than working with professional writers (the magazine is entirely written by freelancers). The staff had phone calls and editing sessions to understand what the teens needed from the magazine in terms of support, guidance, or feedback. It was really about, Lets hone this sentence, and This part is confusing, Naddaf says. The biggest challenge was working with the teens busy schedules. Between school, extracurricular activities, and jobs, getting hold of them could be difficult; sometimes they even ghosted on their editors.

ICYMI: She identified herself as a reporter. He then walked behind her and punched her in the side of the head

California Sunday threw the standard conventions of magazine structure, like a table of contents, out the window. Instead, the issue begins at 5am and proceeds hour by hour through a day in the life of the American teenager. Timestamps are strewn across the pages where page numbers would usually appear. Interstitial photographs break up sections of the daymorning, afternoon, eveningemploying the shifting light of the sun as a visual cue to the time of day. The magazines design and content force the reader to embed with the teen as they flip through the pages.

Those pages are bursting with stories are rich, fun, important, complicated, and intimate. For teens, the issue is a reflection of their lives today. For adults, its nostalgia for those years and understanding whats different today. Teenagers are fascinating and thoughtful and know things adults dont know and have an important view on the world, McGray says. Were all teenagers at some point, and California Sunday asks the reader to see the world through their eyes today as they flip through its pages.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Meg Dalton is a freelance journalist and audio producer based in Connecticut. She's reported and edited for CJR, PBS NewsHour, Energy News Network, Architectural Digest, MediaShift, Hearst Connecticut newspapers, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @megdalts. Find her on Twitter @megdalts.
The federal agency responsible for safety at the nations 61 nuclear power plants routinely downplays warnings from plant workers and its own experts about problems, including some with potential for disaster, a Better Government Association investigation found.

Employees from U.S. nuclear power plants filed nearly 700 complaints with the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in recent years, claiming retaliation for raising safety concerns, records show. The agency found no wrongdoing.

NRC officials also overruled recommendations from their own technical experts on how to protect plants from potential catastrophe spurred by floods, equipment failures, power outages and other problems.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the nonprofit news outlet Better Government Association.

Interviews with more than 20 current and former NRC and nuclear plant employees reveal a pattern of top officials dismissing safety warnings rather than impose costly fixes on plant operators. Some said careers suffered as potential threats were never fully addressed.

Its the NRCs longstanding practice to consistently declare the plants are safe and to avoid directly answering any questions that might suggest otherwise, said Lawrence Criscione, an NRC risk analyst.

NRC officials would not consent to an interview. But NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng responded in writing to BGA questions.

All U.S. nuclear power plants have multiple appropriate procedures and resources in place to maintain key safety functions if severe events occur, Mitlyng said. These conclusions are based on extensive agency reviews and inspections.

In 2012, Criscione shared with Congress a letter raising doubts over adequacy of flood protections at Duke Energys Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina and other plants built decades ago near dams.

Soon after, Criscione said, he was accused by the NRC inspector general of compromising confidential information, interrogated by armed agents and saw his case referred to federal prosecutors. They opted not to act, and he remains on the job.

Internal NRC surveys underscore a climate of fear among employees. A report on a 2015 questionnaire of NRC employees stated most felt if you disagree with your manager it can, and most likely will, affect your career path and advancement.

Records and interviews also show that:

 In 2016, NRC brass overturned a proposed safety analysis for the Byron and Braidwood nuclear plants in Illinois after multiple appeals by Exelon, the Chicago-based owner of the facilities and the nations largest nuclear operator.

The action undid an order issued after agency technical staff concluded Exelon did not prove critical pressure-relieving valve systems were safe to use in an emergency. The same problem may exist at other nuclear plants, said one of the NRC engineers who ordered the safety testing.

 Also in 2016, seven NRC electrical engineers publicly urged the agency to order an immediate fix or a complete shutdown of most U.S. nuclear plants after discovering a problem with an emergency power system at the Byron plant that was common to other nuclear facilities as well.

Exelon quickly addressed the problem at its plants, but the NRC acceded to a request from other U.S. operators to give them an additional two years to devise a fix.

 Separately, the NRC took only two months to reject a staff petition in March 2017 urging the agency to reverse a decision allowing Arizona Public Service Co.s Palo Verde nuclear plant near Phoenix to operate even though an agency expert said it lacked sufficient emergency backup power to run safely.

Complaints from plant whistleblowers raised issues ranging from security problems to inadequate radiation monitoring.

 The U.S. Department of Labor ordered the Palisades nuclear plant near South Haven, Michigan, to rehire veteran security guard Chris Mikusko who claimed he was laid off in retaliation for pointing out security problems. Mikusko filed a similar whistleblower complaint with the NRC, which rejected his allegations as unsubstantiated.

 NRC investigators concluded supervisors at Exelons shuttered Zion plant in Illinois had greatly exaggerated claims of disruptive behavior they had used to discipline Marilyn Lingle, hired to help dismantle the facility. Yet the agency rejected these findings and declined to discipline Lingles managers.

The nuclear industry, through its trade group and individual companies, often downplays the seriousness of problems highlighted by NRC experts. Exelon and others in the industry bat down potential rules and regulations by pleading to NRCs top managers.

Safety is the highest priority for both Exelon Generation and the NRC, spokesman David Tillman said in a statement. We are equally committed to protecting our people and our communities and to suggest otherwise is a disservice to the authority of the NRC and our shared commitment to public health and safety.

The problem, say people who conduct government reviews, is that the NRCs final rulings often dont reflect warnings from its experts.

Management tells you where they want the answer to go. If you push, youre not going to get promoted again  there are other people who are willing to say its not a serious issue, said Richard Perkins, one of Crisciones NRC colleagues involved in exposing flooding concerns.

One case in point is the emergency safety valve issue at Exelons Byron and Braidwood plants.

After Exelon moved in 2013 to increase power, NRC experts concluded the plants pressure valves to relieve water in an emergency would stick open and allow cooling water to escape and not do its function to cool the reactor. They ordered Exelon to prove the valves would work, but the company blocked that with a successful appeal to the NRCs executive director.

Exelon says the valves work fine. But Samuel Miranda, an NRC expert who disagreed, said the company and NRC were rolling the dice on valves because it risks melting the reactor.

He said dozens of other U.S. nuclear plants are equipped with similarly problematic equipment.

They either wont close or they will leak, Miranda said. That will relieve about a million pounds per hour. Its a hole in the system. Now youre losing water that you need to cool the core.

Underscoring that frustration is the NRCs record of handling whistleblower complaints lodged by plant employees. From 2010 through 2016, workers filed 687 complaints. The NRC investigated just 235 and upheld none.

The largest number of complaints, 84, were filed by employees at the two nuclear plants operated in Georgia by Southern Nuclear, records show. Next were the 70 complaints lodged by nuclear workers in South Carolina, 58 by workers in Tennessee and 50 in California. Illinois ranked 12th, with 21 whistleblower cases filed.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
One of the owners of a company that abandoned thousands of tons of potentially explosive artillery propellant in Louisiana has admitted lying in order to be awarded federal contracts to demilitarize the smokeless powder, known as M6.

Explo Systems co-owner David Alan Smith, 62, of Winchester, Kentucky, filed a plea bargain Thursday in federal court pleading guilty to one count each of conspiracy and making false statements. Smith also admitted lying about selling demilitarized powder to another company. As part of the conspiracy plea, he admitted preventing authorities from properly monitoring Explos operations at Camp Minden, a 15,000-acre (6,100-hectare) industrial site owned by the Louisiana National Guard in north Louisiana.

The maximum penalty for each count would be five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Under the plea agreement, he could also be required to compensate the federal government for $35.4 million, including $8.7 million in contract losses plus cleanup costs after an October 2012 explosion at Camp Minden, Acting U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook said in an emailed statement.

The judge could order other defendants to pay all or part of the restitution.

Federal prosecutors agreed to drop most charges against Smith: 21 counts of making false statements and six of wire fraud.

The magistrate before whom he appeared last week filed papers Monday recommending that U.S. District Judge Elizabeth E. Foote approve the agreement.

A second owner of the company and four company executives are scheduled for trial April 26 on similar federal charges. They are: co-owner David Perry Fincher, 70, of Burns, Tennessee; William Terry Wright, 64, of Bossier City, the operations manager at Camp Minden; Kenneth Lampkin, 65, and Lionel Koons, 58, both of Haughton; and Charles Callihan, 68, of Shreveport.

Callihan faces only one count each of conspiracy and false statements; the others were indicted on at least as many charges as Smith.

Fincher, Smith, and Wright also face state charges. Fincher and Smith have pleaded not guilty to 10 state counts of unlawful storage and reckless use of explosives. Prosecutors have been waiting until federal charges are resolved to deal with those.

Explo Systems left 7,800 tons (7,100 metric tons) of M6 and 160 tons (145 metric tons) of clean-burning igniter at Camp Minden when the company went bankrupt in 2013.

Louisiana State Police had begun investigating the company in 2012, after the explosion in one of Explos leased bunkers and a nearby trailer shattered windows 4 miles (6 kilometers) away in Minden and created a 7,000-foot (2,130-meter) mushroom cloud and derailed 11 rail cars near the bunker.

The bunker had held about 62 tons (56 metric tons) of smokeless powder and the trailer had held about 12 tons (11 metric tons) of demilitarized M6, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Much of the remaining material was in bags out in the open, state police said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Investigators are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding train plunged off an overpass, killing at least three people, was distracted by the presence of an employee-in-training next to him in the locomotive, a federal official said Tuesday.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators want to know whether the engineer lost situational awareness because of the second person in the cab.

Preliminary information indicated that the emergency brake on the Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state went off automatically and was not manually activated by the engineer, National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said.

The train was hurtling at 80 mph (129 kph) in a 30 mph (48 kph) zone Monday morning when it ran off the rails along a curve south of Seattle, sending some of its cars plummeting onto an interstate highway below, Dinh-Zarr said, citing data from the locomotives event recorder.

Skid marks  so-called witness marks  from the trains wheels show where it left the track, she added.

Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to derail and that it was too early in the investigation to conclude why it was going so fast.

Investigators will talk to the engineer and other crew members and review the event data record from the lead locomotive as well as an identical device from the rear engine, which has already been studied. Investigators are also trying to get images from two on-board cameras that were damaged in the crash, she said.

There were two people in the cab of the train at the time of the crash, the engineer and an in-training conductor who was familiarizing himself with the route, Dinh-Zarr said. A second conductor was in the passenger cabin at the time of the crash, which is also part of the job responsibility, she said.

In previous wrecks, investigators looked at whether the engineer was distracted or incapacitated. It is standard procedure in a crash investigation to test the engineer for alcohol or drugs and check to determine whether he or she was using a cellphone, something that is prohibited while the train is running.

The engineer, whose name was not released, was bleeding from the head after the crash and his eyes were swollen shut, according to radio transmissions from a crew member.

The train, with 85 passengers and crew members, was making the inaugural run along a fast new bypass route that was created by refurbishing freight tracks alongside Interstate 5. The 15-mile, $180.7 million project was aimed at speeding up service by bypassing a route with a number of curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.

Investigators were also looking into what training was required of the engineer and other crew members to operate on the new route, said Ted Turpin, the lead NTSB investigator of the crash. That includes assessing the training process and how much time the workers were required to spend on the trains before they shuttled passengers, he said.

Under Amtrak policy he couldnt run this train without being qualified and running this train previously, Turpin said of the engineer.

At least some of the crew had been doing runs on the route for two weeks prior to the crash, including a Friday ride-along for local dignitaries, Dinh-Zarr added.

The bypass underwent testing by Sound Transit and Amtrak beginning in January and at least until July, according to documents on the Washington Department of Transportation website.

Positive train control  technology that can automatically slow or stop a speeding train  was not in use on that stretch of track. Track sensors and other PTC components have been installed, but the system is not expected to be completed until the spring, transit officials said.

Regulators have been pressing railroads for years to install such technology, and some have done so, but the deadline has been extended repeatedly at the industrys request and is now set for the end of 2018.

Dinh-Zarr said it was too early in the investigation to say whether positive train control would have prevented Mondays tragedy.

In addition to those killed, more than 70 people were injured. As of Tuesday, 35 were still hospitalized, including 21 in critical or serious condition.

Two of the dead were identified as train buffs and members of the rail advocacy group All Aboard Washington and were excited to be on board for the inaugural run: Jim Hamre, a retired civil engineer with the state Transportation Department, and Zack Willhoite, a customer service employee at a local transit agency.

Its pretty devastating. Were having a tough time, said All Aboard Washington executive director Lloyd Flem.

In 2015, an Amtrak train traveling at twice the 50 mph (80 kph) speed limit derailed along a sharp curve in Philadelphia, killing eight people. Investigators concluded the engineer was distracted by reports over the radio of another train getting hit by a rock.

Amtrak agreed to pay $265 million to settle claims filed by the victims and their families. It has also installed positive train control on all its track between Boston and Washington.

(Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Phuong Le and Sally Ho in Seattle, Michael Sisak in Philadelphia, Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington and Manuel Valdes in Dupont contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By IANS: As the probe into the Malegaon bombing envelops more and more Hindu radicals, Agriculture Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has described the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as "unpatriotic" for questioning the ongoing investigations.



Speaking to this correspondent, Pawar used uncharacteristically strong words to say: "The police have started investigating... If any political party takes objection, it is unfair and unpatriotic."



Asked if his criticism also included the BJP, which has viewed the action by Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad as a pre-election gimmick by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Pawar said he was referring to "all" those raising questions about the probe. "Why should we interfere in the process of investigations?"



When Hindu ascetic Pragya Thakur was first picked up for her alleged involvement in the Malegaon blast, the BJP did not know how to react to the dramatic development. The scenario has since changed.



Now L.K. Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, has charged the Congress-led UPA with political motivation.



Among the first to call for a ban on the Bajrang Dal, the NCP chief said: "I had said that action should be taken against Hindu fundamentalists. A terrorist does not have any religion."



Speaking at length about the Marathi-Bihari divide, Pawar expressed disappointment with "the Bihar politicians", flayed the media for sensationalising the issue and defended the culture of tolerance of Mumbai and Maharashtra.



"In Mumbai the Marathi-speaking people are only 24 per cent. Show me any other state capital where 74 per cent belong to other states?" he said. "Is this not tolerance? We have built up a cosmopolitan culture in Mumbai."



Commenting on the resignation by some Bihar MPs, following attacks in Mumbai on non-Marathis, Pawar said: "They have a right to take their own decisions."



But hitting out at his own colleagues in the UPA, though without naming them, he asked: "In a city where the population from the rest of India is 74 per cent, if someone attacks, say, a Gujarati-run shop, should you have the entire Gujarati leadership come together, meet the prime minister, and demand that the chief minister of Maharashtra be removed?



"They (Bihar politicians) are playing their political games, against each other, at the cost of Maharashtra."



Pawar dismissed allegations that the NCP and the Congress were propping up Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray so as to divide the Shiv Sena vote -- just as the Congress tacitly supported the Sena in the early years to break the Communist trade unions.



"Raj Thackeray contested local elections and managed to get only around 40 out of 5,000 seats. That shows his strength," Pawar quipped.



"I don't think he has the capacity to create a problem for the Shiv Sena. What I know of the Sena, no leader who has left it has been able to affect it. Its core remains intact.



"Secondly," Pawar went on, "why should we give him importance? His attack is... against the Congress and us, against the chief minister and the deputy chief minister."



The NCP welcomed north Indians in Maharashtra, Pawar said. "We welcome all. My party gave representation to north Indians in government. When I was chief minister, there were always north Indians in my ministry. There have been 10-12 north Indian MLAs in the Maharashtra assembly. There are also Gujaratis and south Indians."



"But except for Madhu Limaye and George Fernandes, who were accepted in other states from where they contested elections, which are the other leaders who are accepted by other states? How can anybody say the Marathi community is against north Indians? This is injustice."



He appealed to north Indians not to forget that Maharashtra had produced leaders such as Lokmanya Tilak, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Y.B. Chavan and S.A. Dange who never took a parochial line. "That is also the overall thinking of the people of the state."

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Silicon Valley venture capitalist, author and speaker Guy Kawasaki launched his tech career at Apple as the company's "software evangelist." He helped market the original Macintosh computer and grow the company's cult-like following. During his time at Apple in the mid 1980s again in the early 1990s, Kawasaki worked closely with the late Steve Jobs. The tech visionary taught Kawasaki a few key lessons about leadership and success. Here are three of the most important lessons Kawasaki learned from Jobs:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivers a keynote address at the 2005 Macworld Expo. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

1. If you want to get things right, set high standards

"One of the things that made Steve so successful," Kawasaki told CNBC Make It at the New York Synergy Global Forum, "was he was such a perfectionist." Every time Jobs would review a product, he would push his team to go over it and make updates until he thought it was perfect. The process, which was sometimes lengthy and arduous, encouraged others to ensure they presented their best possible product the first time around, so as to decrease the back and forth. "It starts feeding upon itself," Kawasaki says, "because as soon as people know that, 'Wow when I go to Steve, I better have my act together, then people get their act together and it becomes more efficient.'" In other words, his perfectionism was contagious. "Everybody ups their game, and then [Jobs] has to hammer you less," he says. Though Kawasaki says he doesn't have the same exact leadership style as Jobs, he does say that the tech visionary's high standards made the company more successful.

2. Don't be afraid to admit when you've made a mistake

Though Jobs was a perfectionist, he didn't always get things right. But according to Kawasaki, how he handled missteps set him apart. "One of the most important lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs," Kawasaki told CNBC Make It at the Synergy Global Forum, "is that changing your mind, changing what you're doing, reversing yourself at an extreme, is a sign of intelligence."

Steve Jobs Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

When Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007, it was a closed system  meaning that no one outside of Apple could create an app for it. Software developers had to use a Safari plugin to make their app work on the phone, as they weren't able to access the iPhone's system directly in order to ensure the phone's security. Just one year later, however, Jobs made a complete "180-degree reversal," Kawasaki says. The founder opened the iPhone system to the public after realizing how much more the device could offer customers with apps written by anyone with a good idea. "I learned the very valuable lesson that when you're doing something wrong, when you're doing something sub-optimally," he says, "it's a sign of intelligence to change your mind."

3. Treat everyone with respect

Jobs treated everyone equally, Kawasaki says, and it fostered a culture of meritocracy and equality at Apple. "I think he was decades ahead of his time in the sense that he did not care about your gender, your sexual orientation, your religion, your race, your height, your hair color or anything like that," Kawasaki says. "All he cared about was competence."

Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Computer Inc., greets attendees his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, after delivering the keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in 2011. Bloomberg | Getty Image

According to Kawasaki, Jobs was once in a meeting with several male executives from a global tech company. One of them told Jobs that they would not negotiate with the female Apple executive was was also present. Jobs stood up for his employee and made it clear to the men that if they wouldn't speak with Apple's female representative, he wouldn't do business with them. "If you were competent, nothing else mattered. And if you were incompetent, nothing else mattered," he adds. "And that is a beautiful thing." Check out Tim Cook says Apple founder Steve Jobs had this unique gift
We can't take our eyes off the lovely couple.

By Shivani Chhabra: The much-awaited moment is finally here; the country's most adored newlyweds, Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma, are throwing their wedding reception, amidst a gathering of friends and family in New Delhi.

Ever since the news of their wedding broke out last week, much has been said and written about the opulent ceremonies held in Italy, but most of all, how majestic and mesmerising they looked.

advertisement

Anushka, who was a Sabyasachi-bride, has shown her faith in the ace-designer yet again, as she can be seen draped in a blazing, red saree by this magical craftsman.

The actress has already won over a million hearts by opting for the colour, which is considered auspiciousness during Hindu weddings, and is of much relevance for every bride. Apart from embracing the beauty and prominence of the colour, she ticked off every box one needs for perfection, with her choice of a hand-embroidered, Benarasi saree.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/virushka_fan

Boasting of magnanimously gorgeous, golden bootis, the saree is nothing but a piece of art, and Anushka, a marvel tonight.

The infusion of golden in the attires isn't restricted to just bootis, but a rather heavy border that looks every bit royal. Red, gold and Benarasi--Anushka has the most appropriate and traditional elements in her wedding-reception look, and we couldn't be more delighted.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/virushka_fan Picture courtesy: Instagram/virushka_fan

Acing the bewitching bridal look further, Anushka complemented the saree with an uncut, diamond choker, and gold jhumkas by Sabyasachi. Needless to say, the mogra gajra she adorned in her neatly parted, low bun was the cherry on the cake.

While Anushka looks every bit a stunner in her red number, Virat Kohli looks no less in his black-white, Bandhgala kurta, which he teamed with a white chudidaar. The white brocade looks quite charming, as the man himself.

The two, look like a match made in heaven, and have got our hearts fluttering with their appearances.

--- ENDS ---
But the digital currency exchanges are dealing with far newer markets and less developed infrastructure.

"You have a very thin market with a lot of investor demand, and that's pushing prices up," said Brian Kelly, a CNBC contributor and head of BKCM, which runs a digital assets strategy for clients. "Coinbase is viewed as the New York Stock Exchange of cryptocurrencies."

San Francisco-based Coinbase is valued at $1.6 billion as the leading U.S.-based platform for buying and selling major digital currencies and also operates a GDAX exchange for professional investors. As a result, news or rumors the company would open trading in a new coin can move markets.

"It's the wild west," said Mike Novogratz, a noted hedge-fund manager who is launching a cryptocurrency fund through his firm Galaxy Investment Partners. "It still is, but regulation is coming. If I was a regulator I would be running not walking. There's too much money in this."

While cryptocurrency trading has the trappings of established financial markets, Coinbase's attempt to open trading in a new digital currency on Tuesday shows the industry is still experiencing growing pains.

Bitcoin cash, an offshoot of the wildly popular bitcoin , climbed Tuesday afternoon and soared further above $3,000 after Coinbase announced around 7 p.m. ET it was beginning trading in the cryptocurrency. The news surprised many in the market since Coinbase said in August it wouldn't allow withdrawals of bitcoin cash until Jan. 1, 2018.

"This is the difference between a tech company and a financial services company. A bank or broker would never surprise customers or the market with a change of plans like this," said DataTrek Research co-founder Nick Colas, a market strategist who began writing about bitcoin several years ago.

"Coinbase was very clear on their old FAQ. January 1st. Only sales. That was a good plan," Colas said in an email. "And then they changed it on the fly. Why? They should answer that."

The short notice didn't allow enough interest from buyers and sellers to build before trading in bitcoin cash launched on GDAX at 7:20 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Just four minutes later, trading was suspended as a lack of sellers caused high volatility, according to a company representative. Many tweets showed Coinbase charts temporarily indicated bitcoin cash was trading well above $8,000.

Tweet

Few, if any, trades were cleared at the higher price, the company representative said.

Trading resumed on GDAX around 2 p.m. ET Wednesday. Bitcoin cash traded about 40 percent higher, near $4,013 as of 5:21 p.m. ET, according to Coinbase. Bitcoin itself traded 8.5 percent lower, near $15,983 on Coinbase.

Bitcoin cash split off from the original bitcoin on Aug. 1 after a minority of developers decided to implement an upgrade proposal to improve transaction speeds and costs. Investors in bitcoin at the time of the split should have received equal amounts of bitcoin cash, the funds that Coinbase did not make available until Tuesday.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also said in a Wednesday blog post that the company was investigating potential violations of a policy prohibiting employees from trading on knowledge of forthcoming Coinbase announcements.

"Bitcoin [cash] isn't a security, so much of the regulation of the equity world simply doesn't apply," said Ari Paul, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency investment firm BlockTower Capital.

"I expect more stringent regulation to come to cryptocurrency exchanges and brokers, but market manipulation and insider trading [remain] rampant in traditional commodity and currency markets  the main difference is just the volatility it produces due to the relatively smaller size of cryptocurrency markets and their lack of liquidity."

Coinbase said late Wednesday afternoon ET that it was allowing bitcoin cash buys and sells, although the service was paused as of publication. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange and an investor in Coinbase, did not comment. Another investor, Andreessen Horowitz, did not comment because its offices were closed for the holidays.

Brian Patrick Eha, author of "How Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Fight for the Future of Finance," pointed out that Coinbase's customer support website still said that it would "notify all customers with an update e-mail" if it would allow buys and sells of bitcoin cash.

"The rollout was clearly botched," Eha said. "Worse, Coinbase sprung it on users with no advance warning."

Coinbase has struggled to keep up with surging demand. Its users grew from less than 5 million last fall to more than 13 million at the end of this November, according to publicly available data. On several occasions, customers have been unable to buy or sell due to record high traffic.

Its GDAX exchange also saw a "flash crash" in late June, when digital currency ethereum plunged from above $300 to 10 cents, before recovering.

Source: CryptoCompare

Major digital currency exchanges also remain vulnerable to hackers. Morgan Stanley analysts estimated in a Monday report that more than $630 million in bitcoin has been stolen from exchanges by hackers.

"I think consumers should recognize every cryptocurrency exchange on this planet is a start-up company, and when you work with a start-up, you should do your homework," said Ryan Gilbert, partner at Propel VC, which focuses on financial technology and has a $250 million fund. Propel is indirectly a minority investor in Coinbase, Gilbert said.

"I think they're lacking when it comes to the speed of withdrawal of funds and speed of deposit of funds," Gilbert said. "That's where these exchanges are lagging the traditional players on Wall Street."

Many already consider Coinbase one of the more transparent and developed digital currency exchanges. It is one of four to hold a BitLicense issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services for operating in the state.

"Through the virtual currency regulation, DFS is continuing its record of responsibly encouraging innovation while implementing necessary safeguards to protect consumers and markets," the department said in a statement to CNBC.

But the cryptocurrency exchange is one of the biggest businesses in the industry that's emerged around digital currencies. Overstock.com' s subsidiary tZero has announced it is launching a platform for trading digital coins, and the stock of the e-commerce company has soared nearly 300 percent this year. Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer has grown so much it expanded to the U.S. at the end of November.

Some are trying other exchange models that don't require the company to hold funds, making firms less susceptible to hacks. Colorado-based Radar Relay, which bills itself as a "bulletin board" for peer-to-peer token exchange, announced Tuesday it raised $3 million in a seed-funding round. Daily trading volume has topped $300,000 in just a few months, and the platform, still in beta stage, has tens of thousands of users.

"Sitting at the end of 2017," Gilbert said of the exchanges, "we're still at the very, very beginning."
When it comes to territorial disputes in Asia, the South China Sea typically commands the bulk of attention. But the East China Sea, a lesser-known hotbed of tensions, might be more likely to trigger an international conflict.

A Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force aircraft flying over the disputed islets known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and Diaoyu islands in China, in the East China Sea. Japan Pool | AFP | Getty Images

"Despite the lower profile, the dispute in the East China Sea may carry greater risk of drawing the United States into conflict with China than the various disputes in the South China Sea," Ryan Hass, David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brooking's foreign policy program, wrote in a note on Wednesday. Both China and Japan lay claim to a set of islands in the East China Sea that cover around 81,000 square miles. Called Senkaku in Tokyo and Diaoyu in Beijing, the area is near major shipping routes and rich in energy reserves. "There is greater risk of an unintended incident between Chinese and Japanese forces operating in the East China Sea," Hass explained, citing "the frequency of close-in operations involving Chinese and Japanese assets, the absence of mature risk- reduction mechanisms, and the lack of consensus between Beijing and Tokyo on acceptable behavior." Japan is a close ally of the U.S so if a Chinese-Japanese conflict occurs, the world's largest economy may have to step in given that it seeks to protect allies as well keep sea and air space open, Hass explained. If Beijing were to deny access to ships or planes which are operating in accordance with international law, that could also trigger a reaction from the White House, he added.

watch now

Former President Barack Obama was the first U.S. leader to state that the disputed East China Sea islands were covered by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. President Donald Trump meanwhile, has frequently criticized Beijing's aggressive behavior in the South China Sea. For China and Japan, "events in the East China Sea take on heightened significance because the dispute is perceived in both countries as a proxy for how they will relate to each other as Asian powers," Hass explained. Previous flare-ups have rapidly roused public emotions, resulting in "limited political space for leaders in Beijing and Tokyo to de-escalate," he continued. In 2012, Tokyo's decision to purchase three of the five disputed islands from their private owner triggered violent anti-Japanese protests in China, forcing Japanese firms to shut down businesses on the mainland. The following year, Tokyo lodged a protest following Beijing's declaration of a formal Air Defense Identification Zone over parts of the East China Sea. Moreover, "the frequency of close encounters between Chinese and Japanese ships and aircraft in the East China Sea is intensifying" and will likely continue as both countries look to improve their respective air and maritime capabilities in the zone, Hass noted. Chinese vessels have repeatedly sailed near the islands in recent years, according to Japan's Coast Guard, while Japanese fighter jets have conducted joint drills with U.S. aircrafts over the territory.

watch now
FedEx said the Republican-backed tax bill would deliver it a windfall: nearly $1.5 billion in higher earnings next year.

The company's stock closed at a record high of $251.07 on Wednesday, after the bill, which would reduce the corporate tax rate, passed. After the market closed on Tuesday, the company had issued an sunny quarterly earnings report and outlook as package volumes surged.

FedEx raised its earnings expectations for the year, from $12.70 to $13.30 a share from a range of $11.05 to $11.85 a share earlier this year.

But the company said in its release on Tuesday evening, before the bill had passed, that the corporate tax cut could increase its fiscal earnings by $4.40 to $5.50 a share, because of a revaluation of its net deferred tax liabilities. It's a sum that would equal as much as $1.47 billion, based on the number of shares outstanding.

Other companies, such as AT&T rushed to cheer the tax bill, announcing bonuses for employees and other investments. The telecom giant said 200,000 employees would receive $1,000 bonuses. Boeing said it would spend $300 million on charitable and employee investments, including worker training and facilities.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's goods and services tax has won him praise among big businesses, but it's a different story for small-scale entrepreneurs. Five months since its implementation, the levy remains a hindrance for small and medium enterprises, many of which were already struggling with the rippling effects of last November's demonetization measure.

Congress Party activists protest against the central Indian government and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Amritsar on November 25, 2017 NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images

Heralded as a game-changer, the roll-out of GST on July 1 was the biggest tax reform in Asia's third-largest economy since independence. In replacing a mass of central, state, inter-state and local levies  among the most common complaints of foreign investors a single duty was expected to transform India into a common market, bringing with it increased efficiency and lower corruption. But those remain distant dreams for many small business owners, who remain encumbered by GST's logistics. Modi's administration has promised to ease the burden on small and medium scale enterprises, with the PM stating in November that a committee will be looking into the matter. In the meantime, here are some of the biggest GST-related grievances faced by SMEs.

It's really confusing

A lack of clear guidelines from the federal government is perhaps the most common complaint among small firms. "GST has been an added impediment," explained Aashna Singh, co-founder of New Delhi-based indie fashion label The OLIO Stories. "Not only because of an increase in tax rates but because of how confusing the roll out was and its shoddy implementation. Our regular chartered accountant couldn't make sense of it." The picture is further complicated for certain industries that aren't explicitly covered under the government's new rates.

watch now

"They have clearly mentioned GST rates for movie tickets and classical music performances but haven't clarified the same for other kinds of music acts," explained Sohail Arora, founder and director of Krunk, a Mumbai-based booking and management agency for electronic music artists. As a result, his industry is "very confused," he said. For businesses still reeling from demonetization  Krunk's growth was impacted while OLIO saw almost three months of weak sales  dealing with the complexities of the new GST a few months later didn't help.

It's not really 'one tax'

The government's official mantra on GST is 'one nation, one tax,' but that's far from reality, businesses said. "Separate registrations and separate returns have to be done for separate states where business is established," explained Kaushal Dugar, founder of Teabox, an online tea retailer based in the northern town of Darjeeling. Moreover, the required number of annual filings have increased from 13 to 37. "It would be much better if we can combine all GST returns into a single returns structure," said Dugar.

Rates are higher for many industries

Apparel that boasts a price tag above 1,000 Indian rupees ($15)  the majority of branded garments in India's competitive retail landscape  now commands a 12 percent tax, up from roughly 7 percent previously. OLIO decided to absorb the extra cost instead of transferring it to customers "because in this price sensitive market, even a few 100 rupees could affect our sales," explained Singh.

watch now

India's entire services sector, meanwhile, saw an increase from 15 percent to 18 percent. "The worst part is if you are late in paying GST, they add a 200 rupee [$3.10] daily penalty charge," said Arora. "I find this ridiculous given when the government has to refund income tax returns at year-end, they take their own sweet time, often three to six months."

It favors registered companies
South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader of the governing party ANC , said on Thursday he aims to stamp out corruption and pursue a policy of "radical economic transformation" that will speed up expropriation of land without compensation.

Cyril Ramaphosa speaks during an event commemorating the third anniversary of former South African President Nelson Mandela's death in Johannesburg, South Africa, on December 5, 2016.

"This conference has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution," he said in his maiden speech delivered in the early hours after a long delay.

Any move by the government to take land without compensation would bring a comparison to neighboring Zimbabwe, which launched a seizure of white-owned commercial farms in 2000.

Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader who became a businessman and is now one of South Africa's richest people, is likely to become the country's next president after elections in 2019, because of his party's electoral dominance. The current embattled leader of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, could remain as president if he is not forced out and does not resign after the change in party leadership.

Ramaphosa has promised to fight rampant corruption and revitalize the economy, a message hailed by foreign investors.

"This conference has resolved that corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality," he said. "We must also act fearlessly against alleged corruption and abuse of office within our ranks."
Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, said it would pay 100,000 frontline and non-executive employees special $1,000 bonuses. The company also said it is making the move because of the FCC's recent change in broadband rules and tax reform. It also said it plans to spend well in excess of $50 billion over the next five years on infrastructure improvements.

Both Fifth Third Bancorp and Wells Fargo followed, saying they would raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Fifth Third said it would also give workers a bonus, and Wells Fargo said it would give $400 million to community and nonprofit organizations next year.

In the hours after Congress approved the GOP tax cut plan, a handful of companies jumped to announce plans to share some of the proceeds on their employees and spend on infrastructure. Boeing was first out of the gate, followed by AT&T , which said it would give more than 200,000 unionized employees a special bonus of $1,000 once the tax bill is signed. The company also said it would increase its capital expenditures by $1 billion.

Expect a stampede of companies handing out bonuses, raising pay, spending on capital projects and giving to charities, with the windfall from the massive corporate tax cuts passed Wednesday.

"This is exciting stuff. This is good. This is not just a whole bunch of guys saying I can buy back a lot of stock here and jazz up my numbers through financial engineering. This is a bunch of business leaders saying we can use this tax benefit to grow our company, keep our loyal employees and assist the community," said Dick Bove, banking analyst at Vertical Group.

The corporate tax rate is being cut to 21 percent from 35 percent. Bove said banks pay an average 31 percent tax rate.

Bove said he now expects the other banks to follow with similar announcements.

"It looks like they are going to use that money to stimulate more employee loyalty by increasing spending. They are also going to get more liberal with their stock programs. They are going to increase philanthropic activity because it's one of the ways they stimulate business," he said. "I was convinced they were going to cut prices and go to war with each other, which I'm sure they will still do."

Boeing also announced $300 million in employee-related spending and charitable donations. FedEx , when it announced earnings, said it expects U.S. GDP could increase materially next year as a result of tax reform. It said it would likely then increase its capital expenditures and hire to accommodate the additional volumes triggered by higher growth.

The announcements were met by some cynicism by Wall Streeters, especially since the Justice Department has sued to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner. Time Warner stock ended the day higher, after AT&T made the announcement, and President Donald Trump praised the company's action during a celebratory event with Republican members of congress.

But overall, the announcements were seen as positive steps for companies that are not only seeing the tax rate fall but benefiting from important changes in how they account for capital spending.

Yet companies have also been spending on stock buybacks  with $86 billion announced so far this month, the most since June, according to Trim Tabs. Democrats have said the bill favors only business and the rich, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's office circulated a list of companies that announced buybacks.

Schumer criticized the AT&T announcement, and said the company paid a low tax rate over the last decade. "They have 80,000 fewer employees today than they had then," he said.

Also, companies raising minimum wage may be forced to do so anyway. There are 18 states and some cities where the minimum wage was going to rise in 2018. New York City will have a rate of $15 an hour.

But Bove said the fact companies have immediately given money to workers is a positive surprise, and it could boost the economy if enough do it.

"You'll see more companies doing this," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. "It's excellent PR after all the mantra across the aisle that it's just a tax plan for the rich and for corporate America and for people who own stocks. ... It's a good PR move, giving back to the folks in the company."

"It affects the psychology of the moment. Giving back to your workers. This was a major victory for corporate America," she said of the tax cuts.

She also expects to see more banks making announcements since they are a major beneficiary of not only the tax cuts, but also deregulation.

"It's good PR. It's good corporate citizenship," said Jack Ablin, CIO of BMO Private Bank. "It's Christmastime. It's the holidays. It's spreading the good cheer around. It's probably from a communications and PR perspective smart, and probably proactive because they're going to get pressure. They might as well do it ahead of time."

Ablin said companies will feel pressured if their competitors make announcements on pay and bonuses.

The industries that see the biggest advantage in the tax law are expected to spread some of the proceeds around. Industrial companies are among the winners, as are media and retailers.

Tech is the sector that will gain the least from tax reform, since the average tax rate is about 24 percent.

"It would be smart for utilities to say they're going to cut their rates because regulators will probably force them to do it anyway," said Ablin.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.

Correction: This report has been updated that show that Boeing was the first company to announce new employee-related spending in response to the new tax law.
UPDATE: V Diamonds decided to cancel its ICO. World of Diamonds is now offering the package once again for purchase at its original price of $2 million. Last year, Russian diamond company World of Diamonds made waves when it announced it would be offering what it hailed as the "World's Most Expensive Dinner." With a price tag of $2 million, the dinner, to be held in Singapore, includes an 18-course meal prepared by a Michelin-starred chef, 10,000 roses, gold-plated and diamond-encrusted $17,000 chopsticks and to top it all off, a massive personal fireworks show that was to end with the presentation of a 2.08 carat blue diamond ring named after and endorsed by actress and jewelry designer Jane Seymour. But now, a chance to snag that dinner is going for just $2, after another wealthy jeweler who purchased the experience, Ville Oehman, opted to raffle it off to the masses using cryptocurrency. "We're excited about it," Oehman tells CNBC Make It. "It's going to be fun for the one who gets it."

Dinner guests will be awarded gold-plated chopsticks worth $17,000 each, set with 84 diamonds and later engraved with the guests' names to be kept as mementos. World of Diamonds Group |

There's just one change  the dinner no longer includes the blue diamond. Instead, Oehman's self-funded company, V Diamonds, split the ring from the rest of the dinner experience and is planning to use it in an initial coin offering, or ICO, which has become an increasingly common way to raise funds for cryptocurrency ventures without the same kinds of regulations that surround other fundraising methods. Oehman plans to issue one million tokens for the ICO  each one will cost $2 and constitute a one-millionth ownership stake in the 2.08 carat blue diamond ring. Later one token will be selected at random and its owner will win the dinner and the extravagance that comes with it, including a three-night all expenses paid trip for two to Singapore, chauffeured Rolls-Royce transportation and a three-hour sunset cruise before the meal is served at 30,000 feet in a private jet.

Part of the World of Diamonds package includes a three-hour sunset cruise around Singapore on a luxury yacht. World of Diamonds Group |

Oehman says the idea of taking the dinner that would have been available solely to the extremely wealthy and opening it up to those that have $2 to spare is similar logic to tokenizing any asset historically reserved for the world's richest investors  as he is doing with the blue diamond. "Basically it allows people to get access to a category of diamonds [as] an investment where they never perhaps would have [had] the ability to participate," he says. And while tokenizing out-of-reach assets is not an entirely novel concept, Oehman's idea of introducing the chance to win a high profile dinner is, according to TokenData co-founder Ricky Tan, who has tracked more than 15,000 ICOs. "There's an increasing amount of ICOs that are essentially asset-backed or commodity-backed, but the raffle aspect, that is definitely new," Tan tells CNBC Make It.

Dinner guests will be hosted at their choice of five-star hotels: Swissotel The Stamford (above) or Fairmont Singapore, for a three-night stay in a presidential suite. World of Diamonds Group | Swissotel The Stamford

Take for example, Maecenas, a company looking to create "the first open blockchain platform that democratizes access to fine art." It raised over $15 million in October 2017 with its ICO, according to TokenData. Its tokens, which can be used to invest fractionally in art pieces were issued at 51 cents each and as of mid-December were trading for around 74 cents. Oehman, who also manages a newly launched cryptocurrency investment fund, points out that the world's most expensive painting sold at auction, da Vinci's $450 million Salvator Mundi, was purchased by its owner just four years prior for $127 million, a 254 percent increase. Over the same time frame, a more attainable investment in an index fund tracking the S&P 500 would have returned just 60 percent, though the art market is volatile and largely unregulated, unlike index funds. "Of course [expensive art] is completely out of reach for most people, but it doesn't change the fact that that market is very interesting," Oehman says, adding that the blue diamond market in particular has seen returns just as impressive as the art market in recent years. At a Christie's auction in May, a 4 carat blue diamond ring sold for nearly $9 million, or over $2 million per carat. Extrapolating from that price point, Oehman says that would put the Jane Seymour ring he bought in October 2016 "at over $4 million." However, estimating the price at which a diamond will sell at auction depends on many factors  for example, Oehman's diamond is rated lower in clarity, indicating slightly more imperfections than the diamond auctioned at Christie's.

The Jane Seymour ring features a 2.08 carat, VS1 Fancy Vivid blue diamond set in 18-karat rose gold-plated platinum with floral motifs. World of Diamonds Group |

And then there are the general concerns that could come with any asset-backed ICO. In theory, owning a share of an asset through a token should function much the same way owning a share of a company does. If an outside collector were to make an offer for the Jane Seymour ring above $2 million, theoretically that profit would be passed on to token holders. But as Tan points out, that in large part has yet to be proven, as has the issue of token holders voting on what could be considered a worthwhile offer. "That's the unknown and that's also why many people are doubting the actual value of tokens as equity," Tan says. For his part, Oehman says any offer to buy the ring after the ICO would be voted on by token holders and determined by a simple majority. The ICO is planned for 2018 on an undecided platform but "thousands" have already signed up to buy tokens for a chance to win the dinner experience, according to Oehman. A winning token holder will be chosen in September 2018 before the dinner experience is slated to take place in Singapore come December. Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook! Don't miss: How a 33-year-old turned $200 into $1 million in 92 days selling Kevlar pants online

This 24-year-old made $345,000 in 2 months by beating Kickstarters to market

This entrepreneur is getting people to eat $100,000 of a venomous fish to save the ocean
As bitcoin tops the $15,000 mark, according to digital-currency website CoinDesk, finance experts are weighing in on whether or not to invest in the cryptocurrency. While some are calling it a total scam, others are advising that now's the time to buy. Regardless of which side you fall on, one thing is for sure: It would be unfortunate to misplace your bitcoin these days. Some unlucky people, however, have done just that. And they're not alone. In fact, around 2.78 million bitcoins have been lost since the cryptocurrency was created in 2009, according to Newsweek. That's almost $30 billion today. Here are three of the wildest things people are doing to recover their lost bitcoin:

1. One person has been trying to search a toxic landfill

James Howell, an IT worker in the United Kingdom, began mining bitcoin on his personal laptop in 2009. The Telegraph reports that his computer broke in 2013 but he kept the hard drive in case bitcoin became valuable one day. It did. While cleaning his home that year, he mistakenly put the drive into a waste bin at his local landfill site in Newport, South Wales, where it got buried. Now, with bitcoin's value hovering just above $15,000, Howell's 7,500 lost bitcoins are worth more than $117 million (as of Thursday afternoon). The U.K. resident wants to try searching the landfill, which reportedly has 350,000 tons of waste, but the Newport City Council won't allow it. According to tech website Wired, the landfill is not open to the public and trespassing would be considered a criminal offense. And even if the drive were recovered, it likely would no longer work after being exposed to heavy and potentially toxic waste for so long.

2. Investors are undergoing hypnotherapy

Many early Bitcoin investors are in a painful predicament. They can't remember the complex security codes they originally created to gain access to their Bitcoin wallet. Plus, there's no way to reset the password if you forget, reports Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. But there's hope on the horizon. South Carolina hypnotist James Miller has recently begun helping people recall forgotten passwords and find misplaced storage devices. "I've developed a collection of techniques," he tells the newspaper, "that allow people to access older memories or see things they've put away in a stashed spot." Miller charges one bitcoin plus 5 percent of the amount recovered for his services, although he says his rates are flexible.

3. Man hacks his Bitcoin vault
While the special CBI judge OP Saini has acquitted all the accused in the 2G scam case, find out 10 things about the fraud that costed the country Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

By India Today Web Desk: Large crowds had stalled the court proceedings of the 2G scam earlier today, a fraud that shook the country and was ranked as the world's second-biggest abuse of executive power by the Time magazine. However, after a brief delay the court announced that all accused have been acquitted in the 2G scam case.

"The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its case, and all accused are acquitted," Special CBI judge OP Saini is reported to have said while acquitting all accused in the 2G scam case.

advertisement

Former Telecom Minister A Raja, along with 14 others, was the prime accused in the 2g scam case, and in the dock are three companies as well, namely Swan Telecom, Reliance Telecommunications and Uninor.

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the scam has caused a notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the Indian national exchequer.

10 things you need to know about the 2G scam in India:

1. What is the 2G scam?

- It is a combination of three cases, one filed by Enforcement Directorate and two cases registered by the CBI.

A report by the CAG of India revealed that 2G, or second generation licenses for mobile networks, were given at throwaway prices instead of carrying free and fair auctions.

The then Telecom minister, A Raja, denied all charges and said that the decisions were made after then-apprising PM Manmohan Singh. A Raja was arrested in 2011 on charges of cheating, forgery and conspiracy.

2. The primary allegation on A Raja was of allocating airwaves and licenses for cellphone networks in exchange for bribes. According to allegations put on DMK MP Kanimozhi, he had played a major role in facilitating the 217-crore bribe from Swan Telecom to Kalaingar TV, the propaganda arm of the DMK party.

3. The CAG report says that all the demand drafts were actually backdated, thereby implying that the telecom operators had prior knowledge of the licences that were to be issued.

4. The CBI charge sheet says Swan telecom was actually a front for Reliance Telecom and that Reliance violated telecom policy to acquire more than 10 per cent share as allowed under the law.

5. In 2008, a PIL against A Raja's alleged wrongdoings was admitted in the Delhi High Court. During the PIL hearing, the court found out about the so-called lies that the telecom ministry provided.

6. In 2012, Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) submitted before the court that it will still conducting a probe with regard to the real beneficiaries of the spectrum scam from the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG).

Profile of those accused in the 2G scam case (India Today FILE) Click here to Enlarge Profile of those accused in the 2G scam case (India Today FILE)

advertisement

7. In February 2012, the Supreme Court cancelled all the 122 licenses awared in 2008 for a paltry Rs 9,200 crore, ruling that these licences and subsequently, all natural resources should be allocated through auctions/a fair bidding process alone. The court declared the allotment of spectrum as "unconstitutional and arbitrary".

8. The Supreme Court then imposed a fine of Rs 5 crore each on Unitech Wireless, Swan telecom and Tata Teleservices. The court further said A Raja "wanted to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer" and "virtually gifted away important national asset".

9. The wide coverage given to the 2G spectrum scam rocked the UPA II government. It is considered to be among chief factors that led to the downfall of Manmohan Singh government in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

In 2011, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also admitted that this government seemed to have "failed in managing perceptions". "It is quite possible that we have failed to manage perceptions. We should focus on changing perceptions", he told journalists.

Later, in 2014, Raja had claimed that certain forces who were angry with him wrote letters to Manmohan Singh but "he was unaware of the telecom policy."

advertisement

10. After A Raja resigned, Kapil Sibal took charge of the telecom ministry and came up with the "zero loss" theory in 2011. He claimed that no or zero loss was caused by distributing 2G licenses on first-come-first-served basis.

FOR LATEST UPDATES ON 2G SCAM : 2G scam verdict LIVE: Huge relief for A Raja ; all accused in case acquitted in single-line judgment

--- ENDS ---
Boeing and Brazilian airplane manufacturer Embraer said Thursday that they are in discussions about a potential tie-up.

The talks are ongoing, but the companies cautioned in a joint release any deal would be subject to the Brazilian government, regulators and each companies' boards and shareholders. The talks have been happening for some time, sources familiar with the situation told CNBC.

Shares of Embraer surged as much as 25 percent in midday trading.

Boeing could face a challenge in gaining Brazilian government approval to buy the country's aviation giant. Reuters, citing a government source, reported Brazil is open an Embraer partnership  but not a total sale of the company. Any deal which transfers control of Embraer is out, according to Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal reported Boeing is open to protecting jobs, the Embraer brand or structuring a deal that will maintain Brazilian government interest in the company's defense business.

Embraer's commercial aviation CEO, John Slattery, said at the Dubai Airshow in November that the Airbus deal for control of Bombardier's CSeries should generate a higher level of activity for Embraer.

The deal in progress would be a boon for Boeing's current offerings due to Embraer's strength in regional jets. Embraer rivals Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier in commercial jets with 100 to 150 seats, a product that is center stage of a bitter trade dispute between Boeing and Bombardier.

The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday finalized duties of nearly 300 percent on passenger jets made by Bombardier, a win for Boeing, which lodged the complaint. The suit alleges Bombardier received unfair government subsidies and dumped narrow-body jets below cost to No. 2 U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines. The Commerce Department first recommended the duties on Bombardier's CSeries jets earlier this autumn.

Bombardier CEO Alain Bellemare on Thursday defended the discounting of new airplanes. Bellemare doesn't deny that Delta received a good price, saying early customers for a fresh product rarely pay list prices. Steep discounts are common in the industry, to draw interest and attention to new planes.

Bellmare told CNBC that Bombardier has "an aircraft that nobody produces except Embraer. The real competitor to this aircraft is Embraer, it's not Boeing."

"There's no case here," Bellemare added, calling the complaint "ridiculous."

 CNBC's Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.
Bombardier CEO Alain Bellemare on Thursday defended the discounting of new airplanes, a day after the Trump administration threw more support behind U.S. aerospace giant Boeing in a bitter trade dispute with its Canadian rival.

Boeing has complained that Bombardier had received unfair government subsidies and dumped narrow-body jets below cost to No. 2 U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines .

The airline agreed to buy at least 75 of the Canadian planes last year, but their delivery is uncertain as the case intensifies. The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday upheld duties of nearly 300 percent on the C Series jets, tariffs that could render the planes unaffordable for Delta or other U.S. carriers.

Bombardier doesn't deny that Delta received a good price. Early customers for a fresh product rarely pay list prices as discounting is common to draw interest and attention to new planes.

"When you launch a new program you have aggressive pricing to start with," Bellemare said in an interview with CNBC. "Boeing does the same thing."

The International Trade Commission is scheduled to make a final determination by February if Boeing was harmed by Bombardier's practices, as the Chicago-based company alleges. Boeing, Bombardier and Delta presented arguments to the ITC this week. Boeing said Bombardier hurt its chances of selling its 737 airplane in the U.S., which Bombardier denies.

In a twist, European aerospace company Airbus, Boeing's chief rival, swooped in October, agreeing to buy a majority stake in the struggling C Series program.

Bombardier plans to build the planes in Mobile, Alabama, where Airbus assembles narrow-body jets. The plan would create a new wrinkle because the planes would effectively be a U.S. product.

"There's no case here," Bombardier's Bellemare said, calling the complaint "ridiculous."
Trae Carson is the only employee on the payroll of 405 Brewing, which he co-founded in 2015. Ryan Krill has expanded Cape May Brewing Co. to 65 employees from one since co-founding it in 2011.

The two men from two different states have the same plan for next year: use savings from a cut in the federal excise tax rate to grow their breweries. Congress included Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform as part of the sweeping tax reform bill it passed this week.

Brewers of all sizes will see lower federal excise taxes; though, as the name suggests, smaller producers will save the most proportionally. The measure adjusts excise taxes for distillers and wineries, too.

Carson expects Oklahoma-based 405 Brewing will save about $1,200 on the 300 to 400 barrels he expects to produce. The amount may seem minuscule, but it's enough for Carson to make an extra one or two batches of beer.

Krill expects New Jersey-based Cape May Brewing Co. will save about $50,000 on its 12,000 barrels. That will help him fund an expansion of the brewing facility and help pay salaries of new employees.

"The tax reform bill is really important to us because it reduces our beverage excise tax bill," Krill said. "We pay federal and state excise taxes, and sales tax in our tasting room. This reduces the level of beer tax we pay, which is really exciting for us because we can take that money and invest in people, equipment and real estate."

Brewers who produce 2 million barrels or less will see their federal excise tax rate halved, to $3.50 per barrel for the first 60,000 produced, from $7 per barrel. The overwhelming majority will pay $3.50 across the board, since at least 97 percent of breweries in the country produce less than 60,000 barrels, according to estimates from the Brewers Association.

The 182 brewers who produce between 60,000 and 2 million barrels per year will also pay $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 produced. After that, they'll pay $16, down from $18.

Industry groups and brewery owners have heralded it as a boon for the economy that will allow business owners to hire more people and make better beer.

"There's no one-size-fits-all," said Brewers Association CEO Bob Pease. "Right away some breweries will go out and hire people, and that's music to our ears. That's probably not normal, but we're confident businesses will take those savings and reinvest them back into their businesses."

Though the cuts could be a boon for small brewers, they may not be felt as much for mega-brewers such as Anheuser Busch InBev and Molson Coors . Big brewers will experience the largest cut in terms of dollar amount. For those producing more than 2 million barrels of beer, they'll pay $16 on each of the first 6 million produced, down from $18. The $2 difference equates to $12 million of savings per year. All beer after that would continue to be taxed at the current rate of $18 per barrel.

"We always thought tax relief should be fair, balanced and equitable," said Beer Institute CEO Jim McGreevy. "That's what this beverage bill has done for brewers. All sizes get relief under the bill, especially small brewers, and we see that as a win for brewers and beer importers of all sizes and that's great for beer going into the future."

The celebration won't last too long. The measure included in the tax reform bill expires after two years. Industry groups had originally lobbied for the cuts to be permanent.

The Brewers Association will savor the victory for the next week or so, Pease said. Then come the new year, it's right back to work.
China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has raised over $4 billion in its latest round of funding, the company said on Thursday, posing a challenge to its U.S. rival Uber in its efforts to branch out overseas.

The latest investment values Didi at over $50 billion, according to Reuters, and equips it with the cash needed to aggressively pursue expansion opportunities abroad.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Didi will launch in Mexico next year. The move would mark Didi's first expansion of its services beyond China.

On Tuesday, Didi said it was it was looking to bring its ride-hailing service to Taiwan.

Didi said it intends to use the proceeds to "scale up investments in AI (artificial intelligence) talent and technologies, to further build up its intelligent driving and smart transportation capabilities, and to bring more innovative and diversified transportation services to broader communities around the world."

Didi said the fundraising attracted both Chinese and international investors.

Softbank of Japan said in an email to CNBC that it participated in the funding. The company did not disclose how much it invested.
Entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis Goes Inside the Marijuana Capital of America

A Fascinating Look at this Pivotal Moment as California is About to Become the Largest Legal Marijuana Market in the World

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J.  December 21, 2017  On CNBC's hit primetime series "The Profit," entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis puts his own money on the line to help save and grow struggling businesses. Now, he's headed to California, as Proposition 64, a new law that allows any adult to buy cannabis legally, goes into effect New Year's Day. This time, he's here not to invest, but to meet the growers and entrepreneurs who are betting on the future of pot. Sales of cannabis in California alone are predicted to reach $6 billion by 2020, and one NYC investment bank forecasts that the national legal marijuana market may be worth $50 billion dollars by 2026.

In a special episode, "The Profit in Marijuana Country," airing Tuesday, January 2 at 10PM ET/PT, Marcus travels to the heart of the Emerald Triangle -- Humboldt County, in northern California -- for a rare and revealing look at the place many consider the marijuana capital of America. Humboldt County, twice the size of Delaware, is home to as many as 10,000 illegal pot farms. People here have been growing marijuana for generations, suspicious of outsiders and wary of talking about their lives. But with Proposition 64 going into effect, many are emerging from the shadows and going legal. This could mean a windfall for these men and women who are trying to grab their piece of what will be the largest legal marijuana market in the world.

"Everywhere I went in Humboldt County, I saw pot farmers hustling and hoping for their share of a potential six billion dollar industry," said Lemonis. "While investing in the marijuana industry seems tempting to some, I can't help but wonder, will reality meet the expectations?"

Many of those profiled by Lemonis are speaking out for the first time: a Philadelphia transplant who's now one of the largest growers in the county; a farmer who spent nearly eight years in prison on federal marijuana charges, only to go back into the business, this time legally; and a couple in their seventies who've been growing weed in Humboldt for more than 40 years, helping to establish the county's reputation as the Napa Valley of pot. Lemonis also takes a chopper ride above the rugged terrain with the local sheriff who's battling not only foreign drug cartels, but also the thousands of farmers who continue to operate illegally, unwilling to pay the steep taxes that come with a permit.

Mitch Weitzner is Senior Executive Producer and Vice President of Long Form Programming. Reid Collins Jr., Meghan Lisson, Kathy Liu, James Segelstein, Christie Gripenburg and Lincoln Farr are Producers, and Wally Griffith is Senior Producer. Nikhil Deogun is Senior Vice President and Editor in Chief of Business News for CNBC.

For more information visit http://www.cnbc.com/the-profit-marijuana. LIKE us on Facebook and FOLLOW us on Twitter and Instagram! #TheProfit

About CNBC:

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 409 million homes worldwide, including more than 91 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc.

For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin may be all the rage, but when it comes to storing your money, Agnico Eagle Mines CEO Sean Boyd told CNBC that they still pose some unaddressed risks.

"One of the things about bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies is, is there really an unlimited supply?" Boyd said to "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Thursday. "We're gold miners. We mine deposits. I think, over time, the question will be: are these cryptocurrencies and the developers of these cryptocurrencies just mining the public?"

Boyd, also the vice chairman of Agnico's board, echoed some technicians' sentiments that gold prices are turning and could be headed higher.

The CEO said that more and more investors who meet with Agnico on a regular basis are once again warming up to gold and could have a hand in driving it higher.

"Our sense is that investors are starting to do their homework, revisiting the high-quality gold equities, so there is a sense that gold's about to turn here," Boyd said. "We wouldn't be surprised to see gold between $1,400 and $1,500 within the next 18 months or so."

With a strong gold mining business in Mexico and healthy "geological upside" ahead, Boyd told Cramer that he and his colleagues at Agnico predict that production could increase by 25 percent between now and 2020.

And for investors seeking stable investments to manage potential risk, few are better than gold  especially not cryptocurrencies, the CEO said.

"Gold's a highly developed market, very liquid market, a very efficient store of value and portfolio diversifier. That's why you need to own it," he said. "It's proven itself. It's hard to believe it's going away just because of technology. People can invest in cryptocurrencies, but now's the time to own gold. If [the] stock market's setting record levels, I'd rather own gold than bitcoin."
Eric Schmidt will be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet 's board of directors and transitioning to technical advisor, the company announced. He will continue to serve on the company's board.

Schmidt first joined Google as CEO in 2001, back when the company only had several hundred employees, and became its executive chairman 10 years later. He maintained that role when Google restructured to become Alphabet in 2015.

"Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition," Schmidt said in a statement. "The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving. In recent years, I've been spending a lot of my time on science and technology issues, and philanthropy, and I plan to expand that work."

A source tells CNBC that the transition has been in the works for about a year, and that board member John Hennessy, a former president of Stanford University with a long history in computer hardware and research, is a likely candidate to replace Schmidt as chairman.

Schmidt tweeted "adult supervision no longer needed," a reference to a comment co-founder Sergey Brin made on the Charlie Rose show when Google first hired him.

Tweet here

In the past several years, Schmidt has become increasingly involved in philanthropy through his own family foundation, which just launched a $25 million science fellowship, as well as Rise of the Rest, which invests in startups in middle America, and the Alliance for Southern California Innovation. He also serves as a board member of the Broad Institute, which focuses on medicine and disease prevention.

In his new role, he'll likely advise the company's urban development arm, Sidewalk Labs, its deep learning efforts, and its healthcare spin-offs, Verily and Calico.

Alphabet expects that its board will appoint a new, non-executive chairman at its next meeting in January, meaning that it will join the ranks of Apple and Microsoft as major companies with non-executive chairman.
Final open enrollment numbers for the Obamacare federal marketplace were surprisingly strong, with 8.8 million customers selecting a plan by the sign-up deadline, officials said Thursday.'

In the final week of enrollment, 4.1 million people signed up on Healthcare.gov, with 1 million of those being new customers, according to snapshot figures published by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Thursday.

CMS said, however, that these figures are not final because they do not include those who signed up after midnight Friday, Eastern Time. These numbers also do not account for people who were in line to enroll and left their callback number.

The high level of demand came despite fears that an enrollment season cut in half and a sharp reduction in outreach budgets would depress the number of sign-ups. The sign-up season, the first full one under the Trump administration, ran from Nov. 1 through last Friday  but many customers were unaware of the deadline.

The number of people who enrolled in the plans sold on Healthcare.gov, the federal marketplace that serves 39 states, was just about 400,000 fewer than the number that signed up during the prior enrollment season.

@SeemaCMS: 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.

Lori Lodes, co-founder of the Get America Covered campaign, said these enrollment numbers are "huge." She said the sign-up totals from the final week of enrollment were "likely the biggest in the history of the marketplaces."

Lodes, who served as a top health care official in the Obama administration, said these figures are an "incredible indicator of just how much people want quality, affordable coverage."

"No wonder the administration scuttled their plans to release the enrollment numbers yesterday. Despite [President Donald] Trump declaring Obamacare dead just yesterday and all of his administration's efforts to undermine enrollment this year, we saw record demand and enrollments," she said.

Larry Levitt, senior vice president of special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation, tweeted that he was "very surprised" that enrollment was only down slightly year over year.

"That didn't seem possible with a 90% reduction in outreach, an enrollment period cut in half, and a constant refrain that the program is dead," Levitt said on Twitter.

@larry_levitt: I confess to being very surprised that ACA marketplace enrollment is down only slightly. That didn't seem possible with a 90% reduction in outreach, an enrollment period cut in half, and a constant refrain that the program is dead.

There is now a chance that the final enrollment tally for all of the United States could match or exceed the 12.2 million people who signed up throughout the country in the last sign-up period.

Nine state-run Obamacare marketplaces are still selling individual health plans that take effect in 2018. Officials at a number of those exchanges have reported higher enrollment this season than last season.

Washington state's Obamacare marketplace said enrollment so far this year is 35 percent higher than the same time period last year. California's exchange, the nation's largest state-run marketplace, said sign-ups are 10 percent higher.

Also, people in a number of Healthcare.gov states  including all of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and more than 50 counties in Texas  are still allowed to enroll in Obamacare plans because of a waiver given to those affected by hurricanes this year.

Charles Gaba, who runs the Obamacare tracking site ACASignups.net, said Wednesday that about 161 million people, or "almost precisely 50 percent of the total population" in the United States, live in areas with state-based Obamacare markets whose deadlines have yet to pass, or live in areas where they qualify for a special exemption that allows them to sign up for coverage through New Year's Eve.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is on a mission to get humans off of Earth and he needs your help.

If you want a job at Musk's aerospace company, there is one thing all candidates absolutely need to have: an appetite for exploration. "We're out there looking for people that want to help us achieve that goal of making humans multi-planetary," SpaceX vice president of human resources Brian Bjelde recently told job listings and career site Glassdoor. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has since been making historic strides toward making reusable rockets, including its most recent accomplishment of launching the first reused rocket on a NASA mission. The company's ultimate goal is to enable people to live on other planets.

SpaceX has been rated one of the top places to work on Glassdoor for two consecutive years now. Given the volume of applications the company receives, Bjelde said he also looks for three things in candidates: passion, drive and talent. While your resume is key to detailing your accomplishments, Bjelde said his team really wants to learn what makes you tick, what motivates you to do your best work and how you like to be challenged. "Resumes gauge the ability to write a bulleted list of achievements, and that's not always indicative of success  the resume is not going to be sitting in the seat doing the work on Monday," Bjelde said. One way he recommends that you make your resume more personable is to discuss a failure you've experienced in your career so far and discuss how you overcame it.

Furthermore, Bjelde wants hiring managers and employees who are part of the interviews to "always be focused on hiring people better than themselves." "If you're given the opportunity to grow your team and you seek out someone better than yourself, then you're going to make the company better," he added. Previously an engineer at NASA and SpaceX, Bjelde noted that it's also important to put the candidates' skills to the test before hiring them.

"If you're hiring someone to be a world-class welder here, then we actually bring them in as part of the interview and give them a welding assignment to understand their talent with this task," Bjelde said. "We do the same thing with our engineering groups, and with any role in which the work activity can be distilled into a practical examination." What Bjelde ultimately wants to see in SpaceX candidates is the same mission-driven work ethic he sees from Musk, who has always made clear that the company's collective goal is to get humans to Mars. "We're not all here to serve Elon Musk and his needs  rather, he's there to serve ours," Bjelde said. "It's rare, and it's a breath of fresh air to have a leader who sincerely cares. It's not about the bottom line or making a dollar to him  it's about the mission." Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook. Don't miss:

Here's where you can get Elon Musk's favorite $37 ugly Christmas sweater

The top 8 countries where millennials are most optimistic Video by Mary Stevens
The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to advance a short-term spending bill to fund the government through Jan. 19. The final tally was 231 votes in favor, and 188 votes against.

The bill unveiled Thursday morning contains $2.85 billion for the popular Children's Health Insurance Program and $750 million for diabetes programs and community health centers.

The funding measure also extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program known as FISA 702, which has been met with opposition from civil libertarians in both parties. An additional $4.7 billion was appropriated to the Department of Defense, to fund ship repair and missile defense programs in the short-term.

The most contentious part of the spending bill is what's called a "pay-go" waiver: A provision to suspend rules that bar the government from enacting expensive new programs, like the GOP tax cuts, unless there is enough money in the current year's budget to pay for them.

If the CR passes the Senate as expected, then the pay-go waiver would mean that President Donald Trump can sign the $1.5 trillion tax bill as early as Friday, instead of having to wait until 2018.

Following the vote, House Speaker Paul Ryan praised his colleagues for "responsibly" voting to fund the government, and said he hoped Democrats would, "return in the new year willing to work with us to complete our work."

The funding bill now advances to the Senate, where it is expected to pass late Thursday.

In addition to the House vote to fund the government, the chamber also passed an $81 billion disaster recovery assistance package aimed at helping Americans impacted by recent hurricanes and wildfires. The Senate, however, is not expected to take up the disaster relief supplemental funding bill until the New Year.

The federal government officially runs out of funding at midnight Friday.
watch now

A senior member of the House Financial Services Committee is calling for a congressional hearing, following a CNBC investigation that found UBS was not forthcoming about the risks associated with its proprietary bond funds sold to residents on the island. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter on Thursday to Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the chairman of the committee, urging him to convene a hearing to investigate the marketing and sales practices of investment companies operating in Puerto Rico. "The reported claims of deception, mismanagement, and coercion highlighted in the CNBC article, if true, are egregious, unethical, and potentially illegal," said Velazquez in the letter. "All Americans deserve honesty, integrity, and trust when it comes to investing in our capital markets -- they are the fundamental truths that our free-enterprise system is based upon." "A culture of deception and deceit erodes that trust and could lead investors to lose faith in our institutions and markets," she wrote. Read Velazquez's full letter below:

CNBC obtained 2,000 pages of documents, which detailed the dialogue among executives at UBS related to the firm's proprietary bond funds, which were majority comprised of Puerto Rico debt. The funds, which were not traded on a public exchange, collapsed four years ago, causing thousands of residents on the island to lose their savings. CNBC's investigation, "Broken Bonds," was published Monday. Due to a loophole in a 77-year-old piece of U.S. legislation, none of the funds was regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Investment Company Act of 1940 allowed funds offered outside of the mainland  in this case, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico  to avoid restrictions, such as leverage standards and certain affiliated party transactions. Velazquez sponsored a bill that is seeking to close that loophole: The "U.S. Territories Investor Protection Act of 2017" was passed in the House earlier this year and is still awaiting a vote in the Senate. She has said that if Puerto Rico had the same regulatory oversight as the mainland had, much of the residents' losses from the bond funds may have been prevented. The legislation would amend the Investment Company Act of 1940 to repeal the exemption to ensure that financial institutions that operate in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere operate under the same rules as their stateside counterparts. When Congress first enacted the Investment Company Act of 1940, it was deemed too expensive for regulators with the SEC to travel to U.S. territories  which then also included Alaska and Hawaii, in addition to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Since then, both Alaska and Hawaii have become states, air travel to and from Puerto Rico has become less expensive, and a large portion of financial activity takes place electronically. Therefore, it would be far easier to patrol financial activities in U.S. territories than it was 77 years ago, Velazquez has argued. This is Velazquez's third attempt at proposing a bill that would close this loophole. Her first effort was in 2015, after she first heard about the substantial losses residents had on the island. That version would have closed the loophole immediately. She tried again in 2016 with an updated version of the bill that included a three-year safe harbor period, with the option for the SEC to grant an additional three-years if warranted. The bill was later approved with bipartisan backing in the House, sending it to the Senate where the bill stalled, unable to get approval before the end of the 114th Congress. "Lobbyists retained by UBS Puerto Rico have tried relentlessly to gut the bill or block it," a Velazquez spokesman said. "What they call modifications would actually prevent the bill from safeguarding Puerto Rico's most vulnerable investors. One need only follow the money and they can draw their own conclusions."

Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y. Manuel Balce Ceneta | AP
Virtual reality is off to a slow start with general audiences, but a start-up called MEL Science is betting this new media will take off in schools in 2018. The company just raised a new round of funding to take its combination chemistry sets and VR content into the classroom.

Based in London, MEL Science started out making and shipping chemistry kits to subscribers for about $50 per month. Each kit contains several experiments and all the supplies a family needs to conduct them at home.

The company's introductory kit includes its "Molecular Viewer," a modified Google Cardboard VR headset. Unlike other subscription commerce companies, MEL Science creates virtual reality lessons to supplement what it sends by snail mail.

According to MEL Science CEO Vassili Philippov, in virtual reality, budding scientists can zoom in to observe a chemical reaction at a molecular level, or get more in-depth information about the experiments they've just completed. "This is also a good way to get kids interested in science who were more enthusiastic about video games," the CEO said.

Now, MEL Science is working on experiments and VR modules for kids from kindergarten through high school to be conducted in the classroom. Its previous kits were meant for kids twelve and older.

Philippov said his company plans to develop lessons for different science subjects, always combining hands-on activities with VR experiences.

On Thursday, the start-up made "teacher mode" features available to help educators use its kits and VR lessons in the classroom. This week, it also published 28 new VR chemistry lessons for Google Cardboard and Google Daydream users.

According to a Samsung survey, more than two-thirds of teachers in U.S. schools K-12 want to use virtual reality to supplement course curriculum. And 82 percent of science teachers said they believed VR could help their students with subject mastery.

Sistema Venture Capital led its latest $2.2 million round of funding. The capital will go toward developing new content and chemistry sets for schools and making educators aware of MEL Science curriculum.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that he "would not expect to see" Senate Republicans take up partisan welfare and entitlement reform next year.

The Senate GOP would "have to have Democratic involvement" in changing those programs, the Kentucky Republican told Axios on Thursday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has signaled that House Republicans want to turn to what he calls "entitlement reform" next year after the GOP's successful passage of a tax overhaul this week. Some Republicans have identified cutting spending as a way to address concerns about the roughly $1.4 trillion in tax cuts under the GOP plan.

"We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit," Ryan said on a radio show earlier this month.

"Frankly, it's the health-care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health-care entitlements  because that's really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking," he added.

Democrats would not support cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Senate Republicans, set to have 51 seats in the chamber next year, would need to win nine Democratic votes to pass legislation under normal rules of operation. The GOP could choose to make changes to the programs using budget reconciliation rules that require only a simple majority vote.
Congressional Republicans approved their massive tax overhaul on Wednesday , fulfilling a key goal for Ryan and Trump. Democrats have called the legislation a giveaway to corporations at the expense of the middle class.

"I think the Democrats are going to try to play some partisan games today because they would love nothing more than to see a government shutdown, blame us for having it, and step on our tax cut message, tax reform message," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

In a tweet, Trump said Democrats "want a SHUTDOWN" to "distract from the very popular, just passed" tax bill. "Don't let this happen."

President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan accused Democrats on Thursday of hoping to shut down the government to distract from Republicans' passage of the first major tax overhaul in decades.

While Trump called the legislation "popular," opinion polls have broadly shown that more respondents disapprove of the GOP plan than approve of it. Republicans contend that more people will warm to the tax bill when they see its effects next year.

Legislation unveiled by the House on Thursday would fund the government through Jan. 19. If Congress cannot pass a funding measure, the government will shut down early Saturday.

Ryan said Congress will push to pass a "clean" short-term continuing resolution funding bill to avert the shutdown.

"We're just bringing a clean, what we call vanilla CR  no games, no sneaky things. Just a continuing resolution to get us through this moment to get us into next year," Ryan told CNBC. "It's as clean and simple as possible. It's what the Senate on both sides of the aisle are asking us for."

The legislation Congress hopes to pass this week includes $2.85 billion in funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program. It would also include money for diabetes programs and community health centers, as well as extend the foreign surveillance warrant program.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday said he does not think members of Congress want to see a shutdown.

"No one wants to do it," he said at an event hosted by news site Axios.

Democrats have pushed to protect spending on social safety net and health-care programs as part of a bill to fund the government. They have also pushed for protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

"Republicans have spent the entire year trying to take health care away from millions and raise taxes on the middle class," said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "Democrats are simply asking for action on the broad set of bipartisan priorities before the Congress."

He added: "Republicans hold the House, the Senate and the White House. If they need Democratic votes, then they should incorporate the bipartisan proposals we are calling for into the continuing resolution."

A spokesperson for the Senate's top Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, did not immediately respond to requests to comment on Ryan's remarks.
A rock 'n' roll legend is selling his Manhattan penthouse, listing it for just under $11 million. Rolling Stones founding member Keith Richards and his wife, Patti Hansen, are selling their Greenwich Village duplex at One Fifth Avenue, which they've owned since 2014.

Living Room Source: Douglas Elliman

The musician's pied-a-terre is actually three units combined into one. The now super-sized unit is 2,700 square feet with panoramic views of Manhattan's Greenwich Village. For even more space, a wall slides open to reveal the rock star's secret lounge area.

Source: Douglas Elliman

Steps away is the master suite with a walk-in closet for him, another for her, and a modern master bath with steam shower.

Source: Douglas Elliman

One level up is the music legend's family room, which is sandwiched between two more bedrooms with what else, but a tribute to rock 'n' roll.

Rock n roll bedroom Source: Douglas Elliman

"Not only would you be owning some real estate in one of the most premiere buildings of all of New York City, but you'd also be owning a part of rock 'n' roll history," said Douglas Elliman broker Adam Widener, who has the listing.

Family room Source: Douglas Elliman

The Rolling Stones guitarist reportedly purchased the unit in 2014 for $10.5 million.

Closet Source: Douglas Elliman
Republican Sen. Bob Corker said Thursday he told President Donald Trump that he understands what it feels like to be treated unfairly by the media.

Corker, who has had his run-ins with Trump, said the president called him Wednesday morning to talk about a number of issues.

During the call, Corker said he told Trump, "'I have some empathy, if you will, with what you're dealing with,'" concerning the media. But in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box," the Tennessee Republican said he also told Trump that, in general, he does not like the tearing down of the media.

Stopping short of using Trump's "fake news" battle cry, Corker said he now "understands the problem," after defending himself against accusations that he changed his vote on GOP tax reform because of a last minute pass-through add-on that would benefit him financially due to his real estate holdings.

Corker, who decided not to seek re-election next year, said he was surprised and troubled that a "social media phenomenon can turn real live people that you respect in reporting to start writing things that have been totally debunked, but writing things as if the opposite is true."

The firestorm erupted after the late addition to the final GOP tax bill sparked accusations from critics that Corker, who was involved in the property business before going into politics, changed his vote because of this provision. Critics called it the "Corker kickback."

"Apparently these things get trending. Otherwise-respectable reporters begin to feel like they got to get in on it," Corker said.

The real estate-friendly inclusion allows for a deduction on income made from pass-through entities, like real estate LLCs, including those with few or no employees. The bill cut the pass-through rate from 39.6 percent to as low as 29.6 percent, subject to some limitations. The pass-through measure would also provide a 20 percent deduction for the first $315,000 of qualified business income.

Nonpublic pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietors, limited liability companies and partnerships, pay no income tax themselves. Instead their profits "pass through" directly to their owners, who pay tax on them at the individual tax rates.

In the CNBC interview, Corker insisted he was briefed on key differences between the reconciled bill and the Senate version last week, but he had no knowledge of the pass-through provision in question. Corker also said he requested no specific tax provisions throughout the months-long debate, noting he was not on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee. The senator is, however, a member of the Banking and Budget committees. He's also chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Corker was the only Republican to vote against the intial Senate version of the tax bill that passed on Dec. 2, making good on concerns he expressed in October about not voting for a measure that adds "one penny to the deficit."

During the debate over taxes this fall, Corker and Trump engaged in a war of words with the senator questioning the president's fitness to serve in the White House and saying Trump "debases our country."

But ultimately, Corker put all that aside and supported the final tax bill, saying the prospects for strong economic growth outweighed his concerns over the deficit.

"I did everything I could on the Senate side of the bill to contain the deficit," he told CNBC. But in the end, he said, he felt like the nation would be better off with the pro-growth aspects of the tax bill than not.
Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Accenture  The consulting firm beat estimates by 12 cents with quarterly earnings of $1.79 per share, with revenue also beating forecasts. Accenture also raised the lower end of its full-year outlook, now seeing full-year profit of $6.48-$6.66 per share from the prior $6.36-$6.66. Accenture's results are being helped by its investments in digital and cloud services.

Hasbro  The toymaker's stock was rated "buy" in new coverage at B. Riley, which said Hasbro should benefit from its Star Wars-themed toys as well as ongoing progress in the resolution of the Toys R Us bankruptcy case.

Conagra Brands  The food producer earned an adjusted 55 cents per share for its fiscal second quarter, three cents above estimates, while revenue also beat forecasts. It also said organic net sales and earnings for fiscal 2018 are now expected to be at the high end of the company's prior guidance.

Bed Bath & Beyond  Bed Bath & Beyond reported quarterly profit of 44 cents per share, beating estimates by seven cents, while the housewares retailer's revenue was slightly above forecasts. Comparable store sales did fall by 0.3 percent, but that was a smaller drop than the consensus estimate of a 2.4 percent decline.

Wells Fargo , Boeing , AT&T , NBCUniversal and CNBC parent Comcast , Fifth Third  These are among the companies announcing higher pay and bonuses for workers in the wake of the tax reform bill, as well as other spending measures.

PG&E  PG&E suspended its dividend, with the Pacific Gas & Electric parent warning that it could be held liable for deadly wine country wildfires in California, which caused more than $9 billion in damage. Officials haven't yet determined a cause, but the utility has already been the target of many lawsuits over operations and maintenance of its equipment.

E*Trade  E*Trade will allow its customers to trade CBOE bitcoin futures, joining several of its rival online brokerages in doing so.

Apple  Apple acknowledged that it does take measures to reduce power demand in its older phones, which can have the effect of slowing performance. Apple said those steps are needed to prevent those phones from shutting down under certain circumstances.

Sony  Sony has struck a new royalty deal with YouTube for music videos and user clips, according to a Bloomberg report. Jefferies said the agreement will likely give a significant boost to Sony's music-related earnings.

Nokia  Nokia signed a multi-year smartphone patent licensing agreement with China's Huawei, echoing actions it had already taken with companies like Apple, Samsung, and LG. Nokia's significant patent catalog stems from the era when it was a significant player in the mobile handset business.

Walmart  Walmart is developing new services aimed at high-end consumers, according to Recode. The report also said the retail giant is working on stores without checkout lines or cashiers, like Amazon's Amazon Go stores.

Pfizer  Pfizer is working on a potential buyout bid for British drug maker Shire (SHPG), according to the Financial Times.

Coty  Coty was upgraded to "outperform" from "sector" perform at RBC Capital, which said it has a more positive view of the cosmetics maker after meeting with its new management.
Virginia pet company Woofie's is in search of an experienced dog groomer to operate one of its mobile vans. Candidates must exemplify a keen knowledge of canine breeds and health and even examine a real dog. While all of them are true dog loverssome of them may not do as well with people. Who will be judged best in show and who will be left begging?

Check out a sneak peek above.

The Job Interview All New Wednesdays 10P ET/PT

About "The Job Interview"

New series "The Job Interview" takes an inside look at the world where the words you say, the clothes you wear, and even the expression on your face can mean the difference between success and failure. Each half-hour episode of this observational series brings viewers into the room as a real employer conducts real interviews with real candidates  only one of whom will land an offer.
"Let them vote against us," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. "We don't care. But this isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars." On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the United States would be "taking names" of those who voted for the resolution.

One hundred and twenty-eight countries voted for the resolution. Nine countries voted against and thirty-five countries abstained.

A United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the U.S. to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital passed overwhelmingly Thursday despite threats from the Trump administration to cut funding to U.S. aid recipients who voted in favor.

The symbolic vote from the General Assembly is not legally binding. The U.N. Security Council failed to adopt a similar resolution on Monday after the U.S. vetoed the measure. Security Council decisions carry the force of international law.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticized the United States on Thursday for "bullying."



Following the vote, he posted a message on Twitter saying the international community had "once again showed that dignity and sovereignty are not for sale."

A spokesperson for the U.S. mission pushed back on those saying the vote was a rebuke.



"While the resolution passed, the vote breakdown tells a different story," the spokesperson told NBC News. "It's clear that many countries prioritized their relationship with the United States over an unproductive attempt to isolate us for a decision that was our sovereign right to make."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a message on Twitter thanking Trump and Haley. He said that he appreciated "the fact that a growing number of countries refused to participate in this theater of the absurd."

Hanan Ashrawi, member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a statement posted to the organization's website that the PLO was "extremely encouraged and empowered by the vote."

"Despite American efforts to safeguard Israeli violations and war crimes, the majority maintained their principled position while a minimal number succumbed by abstaining or voting against the resolution," she said.

The nine countries that voted against the resolution were Israel, the United States, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Togo, Honduras and Guatemala.



Among the 35 countries that abstained were U.S. allies Australia, Canada, Mexico and Poland.
Newspaper editorials bashing President Donald Trump are a daily occurrence. But an op-ed by the USA Today editorial board earlier this month turned things up more than a few notches. It also proved that many of the president's biggest critics continue to undermine their attacks by sinking to his level.

Responding to Trump's tweet claiming that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would "do anything" for a campaign donation," the editorial accused him of hitting rock bottom and being unfit for office.

The key line in the column speaks for itself:

A president who'd all but call a senator a whore is unfit to clean toilets in Obama's presidential library or to shine George W. Bush's shoes.

Let's not be naive. Love or hate Trump, the editorial made very good points about his incivility and disrespectful tone which adds to the already ugly level of discourse in this country.

This president takes advantage of the most powerful messaging platform in history. He not only has 44.8 million Twitter followers, but his every word is publicized and scrutinized.

Sadly, he routinely uses that attention to take potshots at his rivals and rarely takes the high road. Whether he's sticking it to Mika Brzezinski for "bleeding badly from a face-lift" or attacking senators from both parties, the national discourse suffers when he keeps in the gutter.

For that, he shouldn't get a pass.

But most of the correct points USA Today made about that issue were lost in a self-made haze of naked opportunism. These are failings that not only undermine this particular editorial, but a great deal of anti-Trump criticism.

The essay first fails when it trashes Trump's lowly behavior, and then matches it with equally low discourse about Trump cleaning toilets.
President Donald Trump called the massive Republican tax cut bill "an amazing experience." But it won't likely be signed by the president until next year. The measure consists of massive, permanent tax cuts for corporations, and more moderate, temporary tax cuts for individuals. (CNBC)



In the hours after Capitol Hill approved the tax cut plan, Boeing (BA) and AT&T (T) were among the handful of companies that quickly announced plans to share some of the proceeds with their employees and spend on infrastructure. (CNBC)



* Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp unveil minimum wage hikes after tax bill passage (CNBC)

* Sen. Schumer says tax plan to boost share buybacks and dividends, not wages (CNBC)

Lawmakers hope to approve a spending bill today as the clock ticks toward a potential federal government shutdown this weekend. Meanwhile, an $81 billion disaster aid bill faced a potential separate vote. (AP)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would bring an immigration bill to the floor by the end of January if lawmakers and the White House can reach a compromise. The groundwork is being laid on a deal impacting so-called dreamers. (Politico)

The U.S. Commerce Department has finalized duties of nearly 300 percent on passenger jets made by Bombardier, a win for Boeing (BA), which lodged the complaint against its Canadian rival. (CNBC)

South Korean guards fired up to 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a soldier who had defected today, after officials in the South confirmed the latest defection across the heavily militarized border. (Reuters)

A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne today, injuring up to 14 people with some in a critical condition, though the motive was not known, police said. (CNBC)

Apple (AAPL) acknowledged that it does take measures to reduce power demand in its older phones, which can have the effect of slowing performance. Apple said those steps are needed to prevent those phones from shutting down under certain circumstances. (CNBC)

China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has raised over $4 billion in its latest round of funding, posing a challenge to its U.S. rival Uber in its efforts to branch out overseas. (CNBC)

Facebook said employment ads that target younger users are not discriminatory if they're part of a broader recruitment campaign aimed at multiple age groups. (CNBC)

Netflix's (NFLX) new fantasy thriller "Bright," starring actor Will Smith, debuts tomorrow to streaming company's 109 million customers. "Bright" will also be released initially in two theaters in the United States and 10 in Britain. (Reuters)
The overhaul of the nation's tax system should boost the U.S. economy in the next couple of years, but the longer-term impact is questionable, Michelle Meyer, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told CNBC on Thursday.

The Republican tax bill, which was passed by Congress on Wednesday, is now awaiting President Donald Trump's signature. Among other things, it slashes the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.

BofAML believes the tax cuts will add about 0.3 percentage point in economic growth each of the next two years "or something close to that," Meyer said in an interview with "Power Lunch."

The bigger question, however, is whether those cuts will stimulate long-term growth, she noted.

"We're skeptical," Meyer said. "Are you actually going to see a transformation in the economy that gets us out of a slow-growth environment? ... I don't think that we're seeing legislation that gets us to that point."

For one, the individual tax cuts aren't the only change that is temporary. The provision that allows businesses to expense new investment purchases is set to be phased out after five years. That will lead to a higher effective tax rate for corporations, she said.

Republicans have touted their tax reform plan as a way to stimulate the economy. They say it will lead to business investment, hiring and wage growth.
"Marketing often feels like an impossible job", according to Dave Anderson, vice president of global marketing at Dynatrace, a Boston-based software company. He explains: "We are required to create miracles in data science. Measure a brand, identify lead sources, create strategies to attract new prospects and retain existing ones. Expectations and pressure to continually innovate grow with each passing day."

Welcome to the world of the marketer today where rules have changed. New technology is endless and - just when you've mastered algorithmic media buying - artificial intelligence arrives to shake up the scene once again.

"This is peak disruption for CMOs," says Melody Bartlett, former editor of The Marketer magazine. "Everything about the job is changing. Some of the top CMOs I talk to admit being stressed by it all. And no surprise! You've got to ask whether it's realistic for the same person to have the soft skills needed to shape the customer experience and also be able to run data analytics on a Hadoop cluster. Who are these superheroes?"

An Accenture study conducted in partnership with Forrester Research reveals that only 7 percent of marketers believe their customer experience (CX) is exceeding customer expectations. A quarter admit their CX is under-par. A third say they don't have the right technology or processes in place. And it's a lonely job at times: half say they lack senior support.

The pressure means the CMO is facing an existential threat.

Glen Hartman, managing director of Accenture Interactive North America, says, "CMOs are asking not only 'how do I stay relevant to the customer and deliver the right messages?', but 'how do I stay relevant to my organization?' The CMO will come to us and say, 'There are all these new C titles in my office'. The chief digital officer, chief experience officer, chief customer officer, chief design officer. That's code for the CEO being really, really upset that the CMO can't figure this out."

So what is the route back to sanity? The solution is to identify the main changes in the role of the CMO. Then strategies can be put in place.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Davies hits out at dismissal of Welsh Leavers as Cairns coms under fire over tidal lagoon

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, has attacked the tendency of some Remainers to dismiss Brexit as an English issue.

Writing for Brexit Central Davies, who broke with the Welsh political establishment to campaign for Brexit, argues that the vote has exposed how disconnected much of the Cardiff Bay political class is from popular opinion.

A particular highlight is that Carwyn Jones, the embattled First Minister who predicted that Brexit might lead Welsh voters to choose between two unions, saw his own seat back Leave by a ten-point margin.

Davies acknowledges that the anti-Brexit brinksmanship of the devocrats makes more sense in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which voted Remain, but should have pointed out that even in Scotland the unrepresentative homogeneity of the governing class creates a democratic deficit against Leavers.

Thus far, however, the Welsh Tories seem to have struggled to convert calling Brexit right into ongoing electoral success, as they lost three seats in Junes general election despite an increased vote. Perhaps the scandal currently engulfing Jones will give them the opening they need.

In other news Alun Cairns, the Welsh Secretary, has come under fire over allegations that the British Government is losing interest in building a tidal lagoon in Swansea bay, according to Wales Online.

According to the Financial Times, ministers are sceptical that the eye-wateringly expensive project offers value for money. It was intended to be a pilot for a potential series of electricity-generating lagoons around the British coast. Despite a review recommending rapid approval last year, the fact that costs for other renewable energy sources are falling has apparently prompted the Government to think twice.

Wales Online reports that Cairns was subjected to a highly personal round of questioning on the subject by the Welsh Affairs committee on Tuesday.

SNPs teacher shortage deepens as they crack down on private schools

John Swinney, the Scottish Governments education secretary, has told a Holyrood committee that even more teachers have left the profession in Scotland this year than ministers had predicted.

According to the Scotsman he is considering a range of possible remedies, such as making a move on pay and waiving postgraduate course fees for switchers who want to move into teaching and plug gaps in the service.

Earlier this week one council, in the former SNP heartland of Moray, warned parents that pupils might have to attend school part-time due to a lack of staff.

In other education news, the SNP have indulged their populist side by moving to charge private schools full business rates. Headteachers warn that this will cost the taxpayer money as more pupils move back into the state sector  which the dire teacher shortages suggest is already overstretched.

According to the Scottish Council of Independent Schools, it would only take three per cent of pupils to return to state schools to wipe out the projected 5 million windfall for the Scottish Government from the rates rise.

Official at heart of Ulsters heating scandal admits he should have warned Foster

One of the civil servants who played a key role in designing Northern Irelands Renewable Heat Incentive programme, whose runaway costs eventually brought down the devolved executive, has said that Arlene Foster should have received more explicit warnings about the dangers.

Sam McBride, a Northern Irish journalist writing in the i, reports that Paul Hutchinson made these comments in front of the public inquiry into the scandal, in which subscribers to the scheme were caught turning a profit by heating empty buildings. Foster, the former First Minister and current leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, was the minister in charge of the Department for Enterprise, Trade, and Investment (DETI) when the RHI scheme was being drawn up.

Due to the removal of cost controls, which were present in the mainland legislation Stormont was mimicking, the programme ran wildly out of control and is estimated to have cost Northern Irish public services around 500 million over the next 20 years.

Martin McGuinness blamed Fosters refusal to step aside whilst the RHI scheme was investigated for his decision to pull Sinn Fein out of the power-sharing administration and force the DUP into a disastrous snap election. However Fosters position has recovered greatly since then (thanks in large part to strong Westminster performances by her party), and she will doubtless welcome anything which puts a bit of difference between her and renewable heating fiasco.
Philippa Stroud is Director of The Legatum Institute Foundation.

The smearing of Legatum was fascinating to behold. The accusations about us were wild, inconsistent and read like the plot of a Le Carre novel.

For six weeks we endured a barrage of allegations, on print, TV, digital and in Parliament. Each day seemed slightly more exotic than the next.

All sorts of shady tactics were involved. There were countless pages of sexed-up dossiers, out-of-date court-papers from failed legal actions, the transcripts of convicted criminal defamers, dubious un-sourced tittle-tattle from intelligence services in far-off countries, door-stepping of our friends, hearsay from former colleagues, lazy and unsourced innuendo, and telephoto lens photography snatched secretly and without consent.

I just wish I hadnt been at the receiving end.

Nonetheless it made me proud of the team at Legatum as I watched them unite, grow stronger and engage with the debate. I was proud of our founders at the Legatum Group who took the heat, and never wavered, and proud of our friends who stood by us.

The attacks were systematically organised. Behind them were an alliance of media owners, business people and politicians. Their objective was to stop Brexit. They saw Legatum as both a threat and opportunity.

How so? Before the referendum, Legatum Institute did not have a view on Brexit either way. Like most broadly-based think tanks with staff on both sides, we had stood back from involvement in the vote last year. Our output is easily checked.

But as the complex Brexit process began, we have sought to help. Our motives were very much in the spirit of our mission, from poverty to prosperity. In other words, to figure out whether Brexit could help improve outcomes for British families.

Who would have thought that could be so threatening? But something we were doing posed such a threat that an orchestrated group went to extreme lengths to drown us out.

And the big idea? Trade!

Shanker Singham has emerged from his often-overlooked world of trade negotiations to become the man of the moment. An advisor on trade around the world, he is probably Britains leading expert on this arcane but critical discipline.

With his colleagues on Legatums Special Trade Commission, Shanker has challenged orthodox views about Brexit in a way I could not have imagined. Their work is highly-technical, baffling in its complexity, and subtle in its conclusions. Frankly, under any other circumstances it would all be viewed as just a little boring. But such is the value of an idea that brings freedom and prosperity that I believe it is worth defending.

Their insight is that the highly-regulated trading bloc created by the EU is, inadvertently, creating a long-term problem for our economies that could ultimately cost ordinary people their jobs and their livelihoods, and that if Brexit is properly handled, opportunities abound in a number of settings that could catalyse a number of stalled trade initiatives that have contributed to a slowdown in global growth.

They argue that the answer to this economic cul-de-sac is a new approach to trade that lets countries like Britain excel in their competitive advantages. Whilst we did not intend it to be this way, we discovered through our research that Brexit could provide an opportunity for Britain to take a different road  one that could ultimately deliver greater prosperity, particularly for hard-pressed families worried about jobs for their children.

At a time when we face unprecedented challenges from economies like China, and paradigm-changing technologies like artificial intelligence, this is a way to ensure there are good jobs in Britain for our children, he argues.

This is a heretical view to many of those who have dedicated their lives to building the EUs regulatory and trading system. They undermine our work because it is a dangerous rival to their own world view. And they smear Legatum to try to undermine confidence in Brexit.

The sadness is that this is a time when we need leaders who can reunite the country. I know many who supported remain, like Singham himself, and are now trying to contribute to a successful future for our country. But there are some, who cannot come to terms with this direction of travel and who are seeking to achieve their aims by strengthening and driving home divisions. This is not the way of the statesman.

At the Legatum Institute we have repeatedly called for our politicians to build a nation that works for everyone. Our post referendum work 48:52 Healing a Divided Nation demonstrates that the referendum vote was a bold statement by millions of people who wanted to change the political economic and social status quo. We offer a way that those who supported leave and remain can come together to build our future.

At Legatum, we are dedicated to Britains democratic tradition. We believe freedom of speech is a building block of that tradition. We value selfless leadership and statesmanship because it is what the British people deserve, and it is what builds strong nations which have the opportunity to prosper.

We will not, therefore, shrink back. We will push forward on this important work. I fully anticipate that none of us will come through the next couple of years with exactly what we have in our minds eye now. But if we listen to one another, respect one another and work together we will build a Britain fit for the next generation.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Daniel Quigley, 31 of Cornwall was arrested on December 20th, 2017 and charged with flight from police, fail to remain at the scene of an accident, impaired operation of a motor vehicle and breach of probation for failing to keep the peace.

It is alleged on December 20th, 2017 the man was operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol when the van he was driving collided with a vehicle on Marlborough Street and another vehicle in the area of Prince Arthur Street and Walton Street. Police were contacted and located the man who failed to stop for police. His vehicle was then located lodged in a snow bank on Park Street. He was taken into custody, charged accordingly and held for a bail hearing.

BREACH, UNLAWFULLY IN A DWELLING, ASSAULT

Cornwall, ON  A 32-year-old Cornwall woman was arrested on December 20th, 2017 and charged with assault, unlawfully in a dwelling and breach of undertaking for communicating with her ex-husband, attending his residence and by being within 100 meters of him. It is alleged on December 20th, 2017 the woman attended her ex-husbands residence, forced her way in and assaulted him. Police were contacted and an investigation ensued. During the investigation the woman was taken into custody, charged accordingly and held for a bail hearing. Her name was not released as it would identify the victim in the matter.

DRUG WARRANT

Cornwall, ON  Christopher Lynch, 30 of Cornwall was arrested on December 20th, 2017 and charged with possession of cocaine and fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking. He was also charged with possession of cocaine and possession of property obtained by crime (cash). On December 20th, 2017 members of the Cornwall Street Crime Unit took the man into custody during a traffic stop and executed a drug warrant at a Fifth Street East address. A quantity of fentanyl, cocaine and Canadian currency was located. Christopher Lynch was held for a bail hearing and charged as follows:

Possession for the purpose of trafficking cocaine

Property obtained by crime

Possession for the purpose of trafficking fentanyl

Possession of cocaine

The estimated street value of the drugs seized is estimated to be $40,000.00.

There were 43 calls for service in the City of Cornwall in the last 24 hours (8am the previous day to 8am the day of the release). To see whats happening in your neighbourhood visit our Crime Plot Map @ http://www.cornwallpolice.ca/ . CCPS reserves the right not to post all calls for service in order to protect the identity of the victims.
Carnival Corporation today announced that Stuart Allison has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific Planning and Operations, for the Princess Cruises brand, effective immediately.

Retaining revenue and operations oversight for the Australia and New Zealand business, and revenue management for China, this new role will see his responsibilities expanded to include Carnival Corporation's Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore business.

With the company for more than 15 years, Allison was previously Vice President of Princess Cruises successful Australia and New Zealand businesses.

Earlier this year, he took responsibility for revenue management for the China business and this new role will see his responsibilities expand beyond China Carnival's operations in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, the company said.

The Asia Pacific region is one of the most dynamic in the world and I am excited by this new and expanded role, which will give me opportunities to ensure the Princess Cruises brand remains an industry leader, Allison said.

2018 is set to be a great year in the region, with our flagship, Majestic Princess, sailing from China, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia and an expanded season of cruising from Japan for Diamond Princess.

Allison, who will remain based in Carnival Australias Sydney office, will report directly to Deanna Austin who has been promoted to Chief Commercial Officer for Carnival/Princess Cruises.
History was made when the AIDAcara sailed into Sydney Harbor on Dec. 19, becoming the first AIDA ship to call in Sydney, Australia.

To mark the occasion, AIDA provided a live broadcast on Facebook for the call, which was part of the ship's 116-day 41-port world cruise.

The ship was docked by Captain Tommy Moller, who sailed past the famous Opera House and docked the vessel at Sydney's state-of-the-art White Bay Cruise Terminal.

The AIDAcara then departed, heading to the Great Barrier Reef and then Cairns on Dec. 21, which will be followed by a call in Darwin on Dec. 29. For the New Year, the ship will be at sea with a New Year's Eve party planned, according to AIDA.
Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to pay a $13.5 million settlement with the attorneys general of all 50 states and Washington D.C. to resolve allegations that the Ridgefield-based pharmaceutical company was deceptive and misleading in the promotion of four of its prescription drugs, it was announced Wednesday by Connecticut AG George Jepsen.

BI made misrepresentations about the drugs and claimed they had approval, characteristics, ingredients, benefits, uses, or qualities that they did not have, the AGs alleged. The trademarked drugs in question are: Micardis; Aggrenox; Combivent; and Atrovent.

"Companies are prohibited under state law from making false or deceptive claims about the products they produce and sell," Jepsen said in a release. "In the case of drug companies, the products they create and sell, and the representations they make about those products, have a direct impact on the health and well-being of patients, which makes it all the more important that those representations be truthful.

A BI spokeswoman said the company does not admit to the allegations and settled to avoid costs associated with the legal process.

The settlement requires court approval before it is final. If approved, Connecticut's share will be $186,357.19 and will be deposited into the state's General Fund.

BI spokeswoman Erin Crew said the latest allegations are essentially the same conduct alleged in the companys 2012 settlement with the federal government and several states regarding Medicaid claims.

The period during which the alleged conduct occurred ended in 2008, and most allegations are now more than a decade old, Crew said. As with the federal settlement, we are not admitting to any wrongdoing. We have agreed to the settlement to avoid the costs associated with a further prolonged legal process related to these allegations.

Resolving this matter allows us to focus our energy and resources on researching and developing innovative products to improve patients lives, she added.

The AGs alleged BI claimed the hypertension medication Micardis protected patients from early morning risks of strokes and heart attacks, and treated metabolic syndrome. The AGs said the company has no evidence to back up the claims.

Similar claims were made about the promotion of the antiplatelet drug Aggrenox, the AGs said. They also said Atrovent and Combivent, used to treat COPD and asthma, could be used at doses that exceeded the maximum dosage recommendation in the product labeling and that they were essential for treatment of COPD.

BI will also be required to ensure that its marketing and promotional practices do not unlawfully promote the drugs. It will also stop offering financial incentives for sales that may indicate off-label use of the four drugs.

The multistate investigation was led by the AGs of Kansas and Pennsylvania.

"Protecting public health and safety is our number one charge, and we take that very seriously, said Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Michelle H. Seagull. Companies who make untrue claims about health care products in our state will face the appropriate consequences."

cbosak@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3338
For a third straight year, Connecticut denizens reported an increase in robocalls and other unwanted telemarketing pitches, despite more tools for people to block calls and a few high-profile prosecutions brought by the Federal Trade Commission.

Nearly 95,000 Connecticut citizens and businesses complained in the past year of calls they received despite registering their telephone numbers on the FTCs National Do Not Call Registry, a 23 percent increase from the year before. In 2017, Connecticut ranked seventh among states for the rate at which people are bombarded with robocalls.

Nationally over 12 months through October, the FTC fielded 7.1 million complaints of telemarketers or computerized systems dialing numbers in the National Do Not Call Registry, which has grown to 229 million telephone numbers in a nation of 323 million people.

The registry is online at donotcall.gov, with the FTC fielding complaints online at ftc.gov/complaint as well as offering tips to block unwanted calls and text messages to mobile devices.

Robocalls are the No. 1 complaint to the FTC, which suggests a need for more stringent regulation, tightening of laws, and more vigorous enforcement, said Sergei Lemberg, whose Wilton firm Lemberg Law has pursued legal cases against telemarketers that violate Do Not Call rules. Unfortunately, collection agency and banks are fighting the strengthening of these and other and consumer protections.

Debt reduction and vacation offers were behind more telemarketing calls than any others in the past year, many of them placed by robocall programs designed to generate millions of calls, in some cases from numbers that spoof local exchanges to gull people into thinking the call is from a neighbor.

In June, Dish Network was fined $280 million after a federal judge sided with the FTC that the satellite TV company generated 66 million calls that violated Do Not Call and other consumer protection laws, with the company having disputed the accusation. The same month, the FTC hit a Miami robocall operation with a proposed $120 million penalty.

And this fall, the Federal Communications Commission separately authorized telephone and cable companies to block known robocalls within their networks to prevent the call being placed at all, a major new tool.

Will nuisance calls decrease? The last time that happened was 2014, which Lemberg speculates was the result of a relative lull in activity in advance of the next hot idea ripe for telemarketing.

Now whats popular is warranty scams, he said. People getting deported are getting jobs at call centers across the border and they sell warranties.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Once upon a time, Sen. Richard Blumenthal was Connecticuts U.S. attorney, appointed by then-President Jimmy Carter way back in 1977.

Did that mean Blumenthal took his party loyalty with him into his new office, targeting Republicans in addition to the usual Mafiosi, drug traffickers and the like?

As U.S. attorney, I attended no political functions, I met with virtually no political figures unless it was as part of their official duties, Blumenthal said. I drew a very, very strict line. I often joke that those were some of the best years of my life, because I attended no political functions.

So how did he negotiate the balance between the political roots of his appointment and the role of non-partisan law enforcement official? There was no balance, he said. The job was totally apolitical.

I asked these questions of Blumenthal in the wake of concerted right-wing savaging of special counsel Robert Mueller over seemingly anti-Trump emails involving a senior FBI agent who subsequently was on his staff. Commentators also trotted out Democratic campaign donations of Muellers staff members.

Fox News Channels Sean Hannity called Mueller a disgrace to the American justice system.

Wow, pretty harsh.

Full disclosure: I knew Mueller back in the day when I covered DOJ and he was the top criminal adviser-prosecutor on the staff of then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. (Yes, a Republican, appointed by President George H.W. Bush.)

He was totally focused on rooting out criminals, whether they be Mexican cartel types or the terrorists who brought down Pan Am Flight 103. And one thing I learned: With only one exception (U.S. attorney in San Francisco, appointed under President Clinton), Mueller was a Republican appointee through and through.

President George W. Bush named him to head the FBI, and he reported for duty just days before the 9/11 attacks.

So its a bit of a stretch to paint Mueller as a Democratic partisan hack.

I have total confidence that Mueller is going to make decisions without fear or favor to any political institution, said Blumenthal, who also was Connecticuts state attorney general for 20 years before being elected to the Senate. Hell rise above the political noise.

===========

And speaking of Blumenthal, a picture of him meeting now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch back in February graced the front page of the Washington Post on Tuesday. The accompanying story related how President Donald Trump went ballistic when he heard that Gorsuch considered the presidents repeated attacks on the judiciary disheartening and demoralizing.

The president worried that Gorsuch would not be loyal, the Post reported, citing several people with knowledge of the discussions.

Trump told aides he was tempted to withdraw Gorsuchs nomination, the Post said. Trump later tweeted the story was FAKE NEWS.

Not mentioned is how part of Trumps liftoff involved blaming Blumenthal for misconstruing Gorsuchs words and hauling out the old Vietnam bagatelle  in which Blumenthal indicated he was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam when he actually served in the Vietnam-era stateside.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him? Trump tweeted.

For Blumenthal, sensitive to this day about the Vietnam imbroglio, the irony is that Trump evidently considered yanking Gorsuch while accusing Blumenthal of lying about what transpired in his pre-confirmation meet-and-greet with the nominee.

I was somewhat perplexed because at the time, he denied that Gorsuch said such a thing even though it was confirmed by everyone at the meeting. Blumenthal said.

===============

Alabamas newest senator, Doug Jones, is a Democrat. But will he hew to the party line or blaze his own trail as a representative of a deep-Red Dixie state?

One of the issues Connecticut Democrats will be watching is guns. Will Jones be another vote for Fix NICS, expanded background checks, and even the assault weapons ban?

Sen. Chris Murphy, the virtual conscience of Senate Democrats on the gun issue, sees Jones as a vote for Fix NICS, which gives states and federal agencies carrot-and-stick options for submitting more gun-disqualification records to the FBIs National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

He might even go for Murphys expanded background check bill, which would require checks in most private sales of guns including those at gun shows. But supporting an assault-weapons ban might be a bridge too far.

Jones considers himself a Second Amendment guy and, no surprise, owns a case full of guns. Weve got limitations on all constitutional amendments in one form or another, Jones said in an MSNBC interview. I want to enforce the laws that we have right now.

Since the law establishing and funding NICS is already on the books, Jones will have no problem supporting improvements. Beyond that is anyones guess. But hes bound to be less pro-gun than his defeated GOP opponent, Roy Moore, who showed up at a rally in a cowboy hat waving a snub-nose revolver.
December 18 will remain a watershed moment in the electoral history of Mauritius when Mauritius Labour Party (MLP) candidate Arvin Boolell won the by-election in Belle Rose-Quatre Bornes constituency with a convincing margin. The immediate fallout of the election result is a big boost to the MLP which was almost vanquished into oblivion by the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM) in the last general elections held in December 2014.

Another implication of the MLP victory in Belle Rose-Quatre Bornes, popularly referred to as [constituency] Number 18, is its virtual comeback in the run-up to the next general elections due in 2019. Some Mauritius watchers are even estimating a general elections before the scheduled date.

The recent victory of the MLP has infused immense confidence among the general public who seemed to have began losing confidence in the present ruling party - MSM - whose three-year rule under Anerood Jugnauth and later succeeded by son Pravind Jugnauth, is marked by internal bickering, business scandals, massive corruption and many more charges.

The governance is also marked by inept handling of the day-to-day administration. The only visible sign of the government has been the politics of vendetta, settling scores with the preceding government and proceeding with prosecution and persecution of the civil and police officers connected with the erstwhile regime.

No sooner than the MSM came to power, it humiliated the previous prime minister Navin Ramgoolam by not only slapping him with multiple charges of alleged corruption, nepotism and manipulation, but also roughing him up and insulting in public. A raid at his house recovering huge assets was carried out with a lot of intimidation against any civil decorum.

PM Narendra Modi with former Mauritius prime minister Anerood Jugnauth. (Credit: PTI file photo)

In a case during Ramgoolam's regime, two very professional police officers were not only arrested, but charges were incriminated against them just for following the former PM's orders. Where in the world police officers are subjected to such persecution for allegiance to their boss? They just follow orders. Yes, if the orders are wrong and detrimental to security or affecting someone's life, it's a different ball game. The helpless police officers, most competent assets of the republic, are still trying to extricate themselves from the maze of the complicated legal system, depriving the country of their professional acumen.

Immediately after assuming power, the MSM government allegedly unleashed a trail of fear among businessmen perceived to be close to Ramgoolam. They were questioned, coerced and forced to depose against Ramgoolam. So, the MSM's account of governance opened with a very aggressive vengeance policy. Businesses reeled under awe, apprehension and uncertainty.

Coming back to the outcome of the by-election of December 17, it was, by far, an election with the lowest voter turnout - a meagre 54.96 per cent. The constituency is predominately Hindu. This is a big setback for the ruling MSM.

The MSM needs to step on the gas ahead of the 2019 elections from now itself, as their three-year rule so far has done more damage than good. A lot of hard work has to be undertaken in various spheres. The general public seems to be disillusioned with the government. Muslims too are confused and seem heavily polarised. Some allude this factor to the November 2 Mauritius visit of Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, whose Hindu hardliner image is not particularly popular among Muslims, further driving a wedge between the two otherwise peace loving communities.

In support of the present government, it must be said that it initiated a number of projects, and almost all aided by India. It is pertinent to point out that PM Pravind Jugnauth has developed a fairly good working equation with the Indian government and his last visit to Delhi yielded tangible results. India has lent enormous credit and huge assistance to his government, but serious questions are being raised if the money is being well-allocated or not.

The Metro project has run into rough weather as there was no judgement or application involved in selecting the route. The start itself ended up in protests as they meant to dislocate a segment of population and some permanent fixtures. That prevailing ire calls for a quick redressal keeping in mind long-term plans.

Insiders confide that not everyone's happy with Indian support to Mauritius as there is an element of suspicion that the money is not being properly utilised.

On his part, Pravind Jugnauth wanted to capitalise on his photo ops with the Indian leadership. It must be recalled that in 2014 during the swearing-in ceremony of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Mauritian counterpart Navin Ramgoolam was the only non-SAARC PM invited to the event. Almost eight months later, Ramgoolam lost the elections and that automatically severed all relationship with India.

The recently concluded election result has raised Ramgoolam's hopes in particular, and the MLP in general, to regain power in 2019 or even earlier. But that only time will tell.

Ramgoolam, after the recent by-election, looks comfortably poised in the wings to emerge at an opportune time. In either case, India should continue to hand-hold this tiny Indian Ocean island nation. The size of the country or its minuscule population doesn't matter. Their strategic and geo-political importance has to be kept in mind while making policies.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE:ARE), an S&P 500<sup></sup> urban office real estate investment trust ("REIT"), is the first, longest-tenured, and pioneering owner, operator, and developer uniquely focused on collaborative life science, technology, and agtech campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations, with a total market capitalization of $31.9 billion as of December 31, 2020, and an asset base in North America of 49.7 million square feet ("SF"). The asset base in North America includes 31.9 million RSF of operating properties and 3.3 million RSF of Class A properties undergoing construction, 7.1 million RSF of near-term and intermediate-term development and redevelopment projects, and 7.4 million SF of future development projects. Founded in 1994, Alexandria pioneered this niche and has since established a significant market presence in key locations, including Greater Boston, San Francisco, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland, and Research Triangle. Alexandria has a longstanding and proven track record of developing Class A properties clustered in urban life science, technology, and agtech campuses that provide our innovative tenants with highly dynamic and collaborative environments that enhance their ability to successfully recruit and retain world-class talent and inspire productivity, efficiency, creativity, and success. Alexandria also provides strategic capital to transformative life science, technology, and agtech companies through our venture capital platform. We believe our unique business model and diligent underwriting ensure a high-quality and diverse tenant base that results in higher occupancy levels, longer lease terms, higher rental income, higher returns, and greater long-term asset value.
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.
CynergisTek, Inc. provides cyber security, privacy, and compliance services in the United States. The company identifies, measures, and tests security and privacy risk of organization, as well as verifies and validates their programs to meet compliance and business objectives through IT audits, technical testing, and risk and program assessments; develops policies, procedures, and playbooks to help build out a risk management program; and verifies the processes, people, and technology are working effectively. It also provides insights to the ROI of an organization's security investment; resources to help organizations prioritize, implement, and execute initiatives to strengthen their security and privacy programs; and on-going management and oversight organization's security and privacy programs to address or give alerts when an issue arises. It serves primarily in the healthcare industry, as well as education, financial services, government, internet and media, and manufacturing industries under the CynergisTek, Redspin, and Backbone Consulting brands. The company was formerly known as Auxilio, Inc. and changed its name to CynergisTek, Inc. in September 2017. CynergisTek, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is based in Austin, Texas.
Eni S.p.A. engages in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas. It operates through Exploration & Production; Global Gas & LNG Portfolio; Refining & Marketing and Chemicals; Plenitude and Power; and Corporate and Other activities segments. The Exploration & Production segment is involved in the research, development, and production of oil, condensates and natural gas; and forestry conservation and CO2 capture and storage projects. The Global Gas & LNG Portfolio segment engages in the supply and wholesale of natural gas by pipeline, international transport; and purchase and marketing of LNG. The Refining & Marketing and Chemicals segment is involved in the processing, supply, distribution, and marketing of fuels and chemicals. The Eni gas e luce, Power & Renewables segment engages in the retail sales of gas, electricity, and related activities, as well as in the production and wholesale of electricity produced by thermoelectric and renewable plants. As of December 31, 2021, it had net proved reserves of 6,628 million barrels of oil equivalent; and installed operational capacity of 4.5 GW. The company was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Rome, Italy.
Brunswick Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets recreation products worldwide. It operates through Propulsion; Parts & Accessories; and Boat segments. The Propulsion segment provides outboard, sterndrive, and inboard engines for independent boat builders and governments through marine dealers and distributors, specialty marine retailers, and marine service centers; and propulsion-related controls, rigging, and propellers to original equipment manufacturers and aftermarket retailers, distributors, and distribution businesses. This segment offers its products under the Mercury, Mercury MerCruiser, Mariner, Mercury Racing, and Mercury Diesel brands. The Parts & Accessories segment provides engine parts and consumables, electrical products, boat parts and systems, engine oils and lubricants, marine electronics and control systems, instruments, trolling motors, fuel systems, and electrical systems, as well as specialty vehicle, mobile, and transportation aftermarket products for aftermarket retailers, distributors, and distribution businesses, as well for as for the original equipment manufacturers in marine and non-marine markets; and supplies parts and accessories. This segment offers its products under the under the Mercury, Mercury Precision Parts, Quicksilver, and Seachoice brands. The Boat segment provides Sea Ray sport boats and cruisers; Bayliner sport cruisers, runabouts and Heyday wake; Boston Whaler fiberglass offshore boats; Lund fiberglass fishing boats; Crestliner, Cypress Cay, Harris, Lowe, Lund, Princecraft aluminum fishing, utility, pontoon, and deck boats; and Thunder Jet heavy-gauge aluminum boats, as well as the freedom boat club, dealer services, and technology to the marine industry through dealers and distributors. Brunswick Corporation was founded in 1845 and is headquartered in Mettawa, Illinois.
Oshkosh Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets specialty vehicles and vehicle bodies worldwide. The company's Access Equipment segment provides aerial work platforms and telehandlers for use in various construction, industrial, institutional, and general maintenance applications. This segment also offers rental fleet loans and leases, and floor plan and retail financing through third-party funding arrangements; towing and recovery equipment; carriers and wreckers; equipment installation services; and chassis and service parts sales. Its Defense segment provides heavy, medium, and light tactical wheeled vehicles and related services for the department of defense. The company's Fire & Emergency segment offers custom and commercial firefighting vehicles and equipment; and commercial fire apparatus and emergency vehicles, such as pumpers, aerial platform, ladder and tiller trucks, tankers, rescue vehicles, wild land rough terrain response vehicles, mobile command and control centers, bomb squad vehicles, hazardous materials control vehicles, and other emergency response vehicles. This segment also provides aircraft rescue and firefighting, snow removal, and broadcast vehicles, as well as command trucks, and military simulator shelters and trailers. Its Commercial segment offers front-and rear-discharge concrete mixers for the concrete ready-mix industry; refuse collection vehicles and related components to commercial and municipal waste haulers; and field service vehicles and truck-mounted cranes for the construction, equipment dealer, building supply, utility, tire service, railroad, and mining industries. Oshkosh Corporation provides its products through direct sales representatives, dealers, and distributors. The company was formerly known as Oshkosh Truck Corporation and changed its name to Oshkosh Corporation in February 2008. Oshkosh Corporation was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Ingredion Incorporated, together with its subsidiaries, produces and sells starches and sweeteners for various industries. It operates through four segments: North America; South America; Asia-Pacific; and Europe, Middle East and Africa. The company offers sweetener products comprising glucose syrups, high maltose syrups, high fructose corn syrups, caramel colors, dextrose, polyols, maltodextrins, and glucose syrup solids, as well as food-grade and industrial starches, biomaterials, and nutrition ingredients. It also provides edible corn oil; refined corn oil to packers of cooking oil and to producers of margarine, salad dressings, shortening, mayonnaise, and other foods; and corn gluten feed used as protein feed for chickens, pet food, and aquaculture, as well as fruit and vegetable products, such as concentrates, purees and essences, pulse proteins, and hydrocolloids systems and blends. The company's products are derived primarily from processing corn and other starch-based materials, such as tapioca, potato, and rice. It serves food, beverage, brewing, and animal nutrition industries. The company was formerly known as Corn Products International, Inc. and changed its name to Ingredion Incorporated in June 2012. Ingredion Incorporated was founded in 1906 and is headquartered in Westchester, Illinois.
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.
The following companies are subsidiares of Lloyds Banking Group: A G Finance Ltd, A.C.L. Ltd, ACL Autolease Holdings Ltd, ADF No.1 Pty Ltd, Addison Social Housing Holdings Ltd, Alex Lawrie Factors Ltd, Alex. Lawrie Receivables Financing Ltd, Amberdate Ltd, Anglo Scottish Utilities Partnership 1, Aquilus Ltd, Automobile Association Personal Finance Ltd, BOS (Ireland) Property Services 2 Ltd, BOS (Ireland) Property Services Ltd, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages (Scotland) No. 2) Ltd, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages (Scotland) No. 3) Ltd, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages (Scotland)) Ltd, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 1 plc, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 2 plc, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 3 plc, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 4 plc, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 5 plc, BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No. 6 plc, BOS (USA) Fund Investments Inc., BOS (USA) Inc., BOS Edinburgh No 1 Ltd, BOS Mistral Ltd, BOS Personal Lending Ltd, BOSSAF Rail Ltd, Bank of Scotland (B G S) Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland (Stanlife) London Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Branch Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Central Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Edinburgh Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Equipment Finance Ltd, Bank of Scotland Foundation, Bank of Scotland LNG Leasing (No 1) Ltd, Bank of Scotland London Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Nominees (Unit Trusts) Ltd, Bank of Scotland P.E.P. Nominees Ltd, Bank of Scotland Structured Asset Finance Ltd, Bank of Scotland Transport Finance 1 Ltd, Bank of Scotland plc, Bank of Wales Ltd, Barents Leasing Ltd, Barnwood Mortgages Ltd, Birchcrown Finance Ltd, Birmingham Midshires Financial Services Ltd, Birmingham Midshires Land Development Ltd, Birmingham Midshires Mortgage Services Ltd, Black Horse (TRF) Ltd, Black Horse Executive Mortgages Ltd, Black Horse Finance Holdings Ltd, Black Horse Finance Management Ltd, Black Horse Group Ltd, Black Horse Ltd, Black Horse Offshore Ltd, Black Horse Property Services Ltd, Boltro Nominees Ltd, British Linen Leasing (London) Ltd, British Linen Leasing Ltd, British Linen Shipping Ltd, C.T.S.B. Leasing Ltd, CBRail S.A.R.L., CF Asset Finance Ltd, CF1 Ltd, CM Venture Investments Ltd, Cancara Asset Securitisation Ltd, Capital 1945 Ltd, Capital Bank Leasing 12 Ltd, Capital Bank Leasing 3 Ltd, Capital Bank Leasing 5 Ltd, Capital Bank Leasing 9 Ltd, Capital Bank Property Investments (3) Ltd, Capital Personal Finance Ltd, Cardiff Auto Receivables Securitisation 2018-1 Plc, Cardiff Auto Receivables Securitisation 2019-1 Plc, Cardiff Auto Receivables Securitisation Holdings Ltd, Cardnet Merchant Services Ltd, Cashfriday Ltd, Cashpoint Ltd, Caveminster Ltd, Cedar Holdings Ltd, Celsius European Lux 2 S.A.R.L., Central Mortgage Finance Ltd, Chariot Finance Ltd, Cheltenham & Gloucester plc, Cheltenham II Securities 2020 DAC, Cheltenham Securities 2017 Ltd, Chepstow Blue Holdings Ltd, Chepstow Blue plc, Chester Asset Options No.2 Ltd, Chester Asset Options No.3 Ltd, Chester Asset Receivables Dealings Issuer Ltd, Chester Asset Securitisation Holdings Ltd, Chester Asset Securitisation Holdings No.2 Ltd, Chiswell Stockbrokers Ltd, Clerical Medical Finance plc, Clerical Medical Financial Services Ltd, Clerical Medical International Holdings B.V., Clerical Medical Investment Fund Managers Ltd, Clerical Medical Managed Funds Ltd, Clerical Medical Non Sterling Guadalix Hold Co BV, Clerical Medical Non Sterling Guadalix Spanish Prop Co SL, Clerical Medical Non Sterling Megapark Hold Co BV, Clerical Medical Non Sterling Megapark Prop Co SA, Clerical Medical Non Sterling Property Company S.A.R.L., Cloak Lane Funding S.A.R.L., Cloak Lane Investments S.A.R.L., Conquest Securities Ltd, Corbiere Asset Investments Ltd, Create Services Ltd, Credit Card Securitisation Europe Ltd, Dalkeith Corporation, Deva Financing Holdings Ltd, Deva Financing plc, Deva One Ltd, Deva Three Ltd, Deva Two Ltd, Dunstan Investments (UK) Ltd, Edgbaston RMBS 2010-1 plc, Edgbaston RMBS Holdings Ltd, Elland RMBS 2018 plc, Elland RMBS Holdings Ltd, Eurolead Services Holdings Ltd, First Retail Finance (Chester) Ltd, Fontwell Securities 2016 Ltd, Forthright Finance Ltd, France Industrial Premises Holding Company, General Leasing (No. 12) Ltd, General Reversionary and Investment Company, Gresham Nominee 1 Ltd, Gresham Nominee 2 Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 1) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 10) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 11) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 12) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 13) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 14) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 15) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 16) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 19) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 20) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 21) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 22) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 23) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 24) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 25) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 26) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 27) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 28) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 29) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 3) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 30) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 31) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 32) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 33) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 34) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 35) Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 36) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 37) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 38) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 39) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 40) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 41) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 44) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 45) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 46) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 47) UK Ltd, Gresham Receivables (No. 48) UK Ltd, Guildhall Asset Purchasing Company (No 3) Ltd, Guildhall Asset Purchasing Company (No.11) UK Ltd, HBOS Covered Bonds LLP, HBOS Final Salary Trust Ltd, HBOS Financial Services Ltd, HBOS Insurance & Investment Group Ltd, HBOS International Financial Services Holdings Ltd, HBOS Investment Fund Managers Ltd, HBOS Social Housing Covered Bonds LLP, HBOS UK Ltd, HBOS plc, HSDL Nominees Ltd, HVF Ltd, Halifax Credit Card Ltd, Halifax Financial Brokers Ltd, Halifax Financial Services (Holdings) Ltd, Halifax Financial Services Ltd, Halifax General Insurance Services Ltd, Halifax Group Ltd, Halifax Investment Services Ltd, Halifax Leasing (June) Ltd, Halifax Leasing (March No.2) Ltd, Halifax Leasing (September) Ltd, Halifax Life Ltd, Halifax Loans Ltd, Halifax Ltd, Halifax Mortgage Services Ltd, Halifax Nominees Ltd, Halifax Pension Nominees Ltd, Halifax Premises Ltd, Halifax Share Dealing Ltd, Halifax Vehicle Leasing (1998) Ltd, Heidi Finance Holdings (UK) Ltd, Hill Samuel Bank Ltd, Hill Samuel Finance Ltd, Hill Samuel Leasing Co. Ltd, Home Shopping Personal Finance Ltd, Horizon Capital 2000 Ltd, Housing Association Risk Transfer 2019 DAC, Housing Growth Partnership GP LLP, Housing Growth Partnership LP, Housing Growth Partnership Ltd, Housing Growth Partnership Manager Ltd, Hyundai Car Finance Ltd, IBOS Finance Ltd, ICC Enterprise Partners Ltd, ICC Equity Partners Ltd, ICC Holdings Unlimited Company, Inchcape Financial Services Ltd, Intelligent Finance Financial Services Ltd, Intelligent Finance Software Ltd, International Motors Finance Ltd, Kanaalstraat Funding C.V., Katrine Leasing Ltd, LB Healthcare Trustee Ltd, LB Motorent Ltd, LB Quest Ltd, LB Share Schemes Trustees Ltd, LBCF Ltd, LBG Brasil Administracao LTDA, LBG Capital Holdings Ltd, LBG Equity Investments Ltd, LBI Leasing Ltd, LDC (General Partner) Ltd, LDC (Managers) Ltd, LDC (Nominees) Ltd, LDC GP LLP, LDC I LP, LDC II LP, LDC III LP, LDC IV LP, LDC Parallel (Nominees) Ltd, LDC V LP, LDC VI LP, LDC VII LP, LDC VIII LP, LTGP Limited Partnership Incorporated, Legacy Renewal Company Ltd, Leicester Securities 2014 Ltd, Lex Autolease (CH) Ltd, Lex Autolease (VC) Ltd, Lex Autolease Carselect Ltd, Lex Autolease Ltd, Lex Vehicle Finance 2 Ltd, Lex Vehicle Leasing (Holdings) Ltd, Lex Vehicle Leasing Ltd, Lime Street (Funding) Ltd, Lingfield 2014 I Holdings Ltd, Lingfield 2014 I plc, Lloyds (Gresham) Ltd, Lloyds (Gresham) No. 1 Ltd, Lloyds (Nimrod) Specialist Finance Ltd, Lloyds America Securities Corporation1, Lloyds Asset Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Bank (Branches) Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank (Colonial & Foreign) Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank (Fountainbridge 1) Ltd, Lloyds Bank (Fountainbridge 2) Ltd, Lloyds Bank (I.D.) Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank (International Services) Ltd, Lloyds Bank (Stock Exchange Branch) Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank Asset Finance Ltd, Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance Ltd, Lloyds Bank Commercial Finance Scotland Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Asset Finance (HP) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Asset Finance (No.1) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Asset Finance (No.2) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Asset Finance (No.3) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Asset Finance (No.4) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets Wertpapierhandelsbank GmbH, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets plc, Lloyds Bank Covered Bonds (Holdings) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Covered Bonds (LM) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Covered Bonds LLP, Lloyds Bank Equipment Leasing (No. 1) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Equipment Leasing (No. 7) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Equipment Leasing (No. 9) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Financial Services (Holdings) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales, Lloyds Bank Foundation for the Channel Islands, Lloyds Bank General Insurance Holdings Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Insurance Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Leasing (No. 11) Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Leasing (No. 17) Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Leasing (No. 20) Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Leasing (No. 3) Ltd, Lloyds Bank General Leasing (No. 5) Ltd, Lloyds Bank GmbH, Lloyds Bank Hill Samuel Holding Company Ltd, Lloyds Bank Insurance Services Ltd, Lloyds Bank International Ltd, Lloyds Bank Leasing (No. 6) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Leasing (No. 8) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Bank MTCH Ltd, Lloyds Bank Maritime Leasing (No. 10) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Maritime Leasing (No. 13) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Maritime Leasing (No. 17) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Maritime Leasing (No.16) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank Offshore Pension Trust Ltd, Lloyds Bank Pension ABCS (No. 1) LLP, Lloyds Bank Pension ABCS (No. 2) LLP, Lloyds Bank Pension Trust (No. 1) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Pension Trust (No. 2) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Pensions Property (Guernsey) Ltd, Lloyds Bank Properties Ltd, Lloyds Bank Property Company Ltd, Lloyds Bank S.F. Nominees Ltd, Lloyds Bank Subsidiaries Ltd, Lloyds Bank Trustee Services Ltd, Lloyds Bank plc, Lloyds Banking Group Pensions Trustees Ltd, Lloyds Capital GP Ltd, Lloyds Commercial Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Commercial Properties Ltd, Lloyds Commercial Property Investments Ltd, Lloyds Corporate Services (Jersey) Ltd, Lloyds Development Capital (Holdings) Ltd, Lloyds Engine Capital (No.1) U.S LLC, Lloyds Far East S.A.R.L., Lloyds General Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Group Holdings (Jersey) Ltd, Lloyds Holdings (Jersey) Ltd, Lloyds Hypotheken B.V., Lloyds Industrial Leasing Ltd, Lloyds International Pty Ltd, Lloyds Investment Bonds Ltd, Lloyds Investment Fund Managers Ltd, Lloyds Investment Securities No.5 Ltd, Lloyds Leasing (North Sea Transport) Ltd1, Lloyds Leasing Developments Ltd, Lloyds Nominees (Guernsey) Ltd, Lloyds Offshore Global Services Private Ltd, Lloyds Plant Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Portfolio Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Premises Investments Ltd, Lloyds Project Leasing Ltd, Lloyds Property Investment Company No. 3 Ltd, Lloyds Property Investment Company No. 4 Ltd, Lloyds Property Investment Company No.5 Ltd, Lloyds Secretaries Ltd, Lloyds Securities Inc., Lloyds TSB Pacific Ltd, Lloyds UDT Asset Leasing Ltd, Lloyds UDT Asset Rentals Ltd, Lloyds UDT Hiring Ltd, Lloyds UDT Leasing Ltd, Lloyds UDT Ltd, Lloyds Your Tomorrow Trustee Ltd, Loans.co.uk Ltd, London Taxi Finance Ltd, London Uberior (L.A.S. Group) Nominees Ltd, Lotus Finance Ltd, MBNA, MBNA Direct Ltd, MBNA Europe Finance Ltd, MBNA Europe Holdings Ltd, MBNA General Foundation, MBNA Global Services Ltd, MBNA Indian Services Private Ltd, MBNA Ltd, MBNA R & L S.A.R.L., MBNA Receivables Ltd, Mainsearch Company Ltd, Maritime Leasing (No. 19) Ltd, Membership Services Finance Ltd, Mitre Street Funding S.A.R.L., Molineux RMBS 2016-1 plc, Molineux RMBS Holdings Ltd, Moor Lane Holdings Ltd, NFU Mutual Finance Ltd, NWS Trust Ltd, Nominees (Jersey) Ltd, Nordic Leasing Ltd, Ocean Leasing (July) Ltd, Oystercatcher Nominees Ltd, Oystercatcher Residential Ltd, PIPS Asset Investments Ltd, Pacific Leasing Ltd, Penarth Asset Securitisation Holdings Ltd, Penarth Funding 1 Ltd, Penarth Funding 2 Ltd, Penarth Master Issuer plc, Penarth Receivables Trustee Ltd, Pensions Management (S.W.F.) Ltd, Peony Eastern Leasing Ltd, Peony Leasing Ltd, Peony Western Leasing Ltd, Permanent Funding (No. 1) Ltd, Permanent Funding (No. 2) Ltd, Permanent Holdings Ltd, Permanent Master Issuer plc, Permanent Mortgages Trustee Ltd, Permanent PECOH Holdings Ltd, Permanent PECOH Ltd, Perry Nominees Ltd, Prestonfield Investments Ltd, Proton Finance Ltd, R.F. Spencer And Company Ltd, Ranelagh Nominees Ltd, Retail Revival (Burgess Hill) Investments Ltd, SARL Coliseum, SARL Hiram, SAS Compagnie Fonciere De France, SCI Astoria Invest, SCI De LHorloge, SCI Equinoxe, SCI Rambuteau CFF, SW Funding plc, SW No.1 Ltd, SWAMF (GP) Ltd, SWAMF Nominee (1) Ltd, SWAMF Nominee (2) Ltd, Saint Michel Holding Company No1, Saint Michel Investment Property, Saint Witz 2 Holding Company No1, Saint Witz 2 Investment Property, Salisbury II Securities 2016 Ltd, Salisbury II-A Securities 2017 Ltd, Salisbury III Securities 2019 DAC, Salisbury Securities 2015 Ltd, Sandown 2012-2 Holdings Ltd, Sandown 2012-2 plc, Sandown Gold 2012-1 Holdings Ltd, Sandown Gold 2012-1 plc, Savban Leasing Ltd, Scotland International Finance B.V., Scottish Widows Administration Services (Nominees) Ltd, Scottish Widows Administration Services Ltd, Scottish Widows Annuities Ltd, Scottish Widows Auto Enrolment Services Ltd, Scottish Widows Europe, Scottish Widows Financial Services Holdings, Scottish Widows Group Ltd, Scottish Widows Industrial Properties Europe B.V., Scottish Widows Ltd, Scottish Widows Pension Trustees Ltd, Scottish Widows Property Management Ltd, Scottish Widows Schroder Personal Wealth (ACD) Ltd, Scottish Widows Schroder Personal Wealth Ltd, Scottish Widows Schroder Wealth Holdings Ltd, Scottish Widows Services Ltd, Scottish Widows Trustees Ltd, Scottish Widows Unit Funds Ltd, Scottish Widows Unit Trust Managers Ltd, Scottish Widows Fund and Life Assurance Society, Seabreeze Leasing Ltd, Seaspirit Leasing Ltd, Share Dealing Nominees Ltd, Shogun Finance Ltd, Silentdale Ltd, St Andrews Group Ltd, St Andrews Insurance plc, St Andrews Life Assurance plc, St. Marys Court Investments, Standard Property Investment (1987) Ltd, Standard Property Investment Ltd, Sussex County Homes Ltd, Suzuki Financial Services Ltd, Swan Funding 2 Ltd, Syon Securities 2019 DAC, The Agricultural Mortgage Corporation Plc, The British Linen Company Ltd, The Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland, The Mortgage Business plc, Thistle Financing Holdings Ltd, Thistle Investments (AMC) Ltd, Thistle Investments (ERM) Ltd, Thistle Leasing, Three Copthall Avenue Ltd, Tower Hill Property Investments (10) Ltd, Tower Hill Property Investments (7) Ltd, Tranquility Leasing Ltd, Trinity Financing plc, UDT Budget Leasing Ltd, UDT Sales Finance Ltd, Uberior (Moorfield) Ltd, Uberior Co-Investments Ltd, Uberior ENA Ltd, Uberior Equity Ltd, Uberior Europe Ltd, Uberior Fund Investments Ltd, Uberior Infrastructure Investments (No.2) Ltd, Uberior Infrastructure Investments Ltd, Uberior Investments Ltd, Uberior Nominees Ltd, Uberior Trading Ltd, Uberior Trustees Ltd, Uberior Ventures Australia Pty Ltd, Uberior Ventures Ltd, United Dominions Leasing Ltd, United Dominions Trust Ltd, Universe The CMI Global Network Fund, Upsaala Ltd, Vine Street IX LP, WCS Ltd, Ward Nominees (Abingdon) Ltd, Ward Nominees (Birmingham) Ltd 1, Ward Nominees (Bristol) Ltd 1, Ward Nominees Ltd 1, Waverley  Fund II Investor LLC, Waverley  Fund III Investor LLC, Waymark Asset Investments Ltd, West Craigs Ltd, Wetherby II Securities 2018 DAC, Wetherby III Securities 2019 DAC, Wetherby Securities 2017 Ltd, Wood Street Leasing Ltd, and Zurich Insurance Group - UK Workplace Pensions and Savings Business.

Read More
Ford Motor Company is the second largest US auto manufacturer by market cap and market share and ranks 4th globally. The company was founded in 1903 by Henry Ford following a series of cars that led to the introduction of the Model T. The Model T revolutionized the automobile industry not only because it made vehicles affordable for the budding middle class but it changed the way manufacturing was done. The Ford factory features the worlds first moving assembly line, an introduction that not only improved the pace of production but lowered the cost of its vehicles.

Other prominent innovations made by Mr. Ford include the strict standardization of parts that allowed for easy construction and repair and the standardized workweek. Henry Fords switch to a $5 workday and 8-hour shifts allowed him to run 3 shifts per day and improve productivity while providing his employees with the power to buy their own products.

Today, Ford Motor Company makes and markets a large lineup of cars, trucks, SUVs, EVs, and Lincoln luxury vehicles globally. The companys iconic F-series of trucks is the worlds best-selling pickup truck for decades running and the new all-electric Lightning is on track to dominate the top spot in the EV market. Other iconic brands in the Ford lineup include the Thunderbird introduced in 1954, the Mustang in 1964, and the Transit work van in 1965. The Mustang, notably, was created for the Worlds Fair and expected to sell 100,000 in its first year but shocked the industry with 22,000 units sold on the first day.

The company operates through four segments including Ford Blue (ICE vehicles), Model e (EVs) Mobility, and Ford Credit. The Ford Blue and Model e segments sell Ford and Lincoln vehicles, parts, and accessories while the Mobility segment designs and builds advanced technologies including but not limited to self-driving autonomous car systems.

The Ford Credit segment primarily offers commercial and retail loans to auto dealers and car buyers. This segment not only provides financing for new purchases and dealer inventory but makes loans for new dealerships and expansions of old ones.

Ford has fully embraced the switch to EV and is planning for an all-EV future. To that end, the company pledged to spend up to $50 billion on EV infrastructure by 2026. The plans include the build-out of an entirely new campus dedicated to EV manufacture from batteries to motor platforms, manufacturing capacity, and new vehicles. In regard to total capacity, the company is targeting 2 million in total annual EV sales by that same year.
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York.
The following companies are subsidiares of General Motors: 2140879 Ontario Inc., ACAR Leasing Ltd., ACF Investment Corp., AFS SenSub Corp., APGO Trust, Adam Opel GmbH, AmeriCredit, AmeriCredit Financial Services Inc., Annunciata Corporation, Argonaut Holdings LLC, Astyx Inc., BOCO (Proprietary) Limited, Banco GM S.A., Boco Trust, BrightDrop LLC, BrightDrop Solutions LLC, BrightDrop Vehicle Distribution LLC, CHEVYPLAN S.A. Sociedad Administradora de Planes de Autofinanciamiento Comercial, Cadillac, Cadillac Europe GmbH, Carve-Out Ownership Cooperative LLC, Chevrolet Deutschland GmbH, Chevrolet Otomotiv Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Chevrolet Sales (Thailand) Limited, Chevrolet Sales India Private Ltd., Chevrolet Sociedad Anonima de Ahorro para Fines Determinados, Controladora General Motors S. de R.L. de C.V., Cruise, Cruise LLC, Cruise Munich GmbH, DCJ1 LLC, DMAX Ltd., Dealership Liquidations Inc., Delphi Energy and Engine Management Systems UK Overseas Corporation, EDS (Electronic Data Systems), GCAR Titling Ltd., GM (UK) Pension Trustees Limited, GM Administradora de Bens Ltda., GM Asia Pacific Regional Headquarters Ltd., GM Components Holdings LLC, GM Corretora de Seguros Ltda., GM Cruise Holdings LLC, GM Defense LLC, GM Eurometals Inc., GM Finance Co. Holdings LLC, GM Financial, GM Financial Bank, GM Financial Canada Leasing Ltd., GM Financial Colombia Holdings LLC, GM Financial Colombia S.A. Compania de Financiamiento, GM Financial Consumer Discount Company, GM Financial Holdings LLC, GM Financial Insurance Company, GM Financial Mexico Holdings LLC, GM Financial de Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.R., GM Financial del Peru S.A.C, GM Global Technology Operations LLC, GM Global Tooling Company LLC, GM Global Treasury Centre Limited, GM Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, GM Holdings U.K. No.1 Limited, GM Inversiones Santiago Limitada, GM Investment Trustees Limited, GM Korea Company, GM LAAM Holdings LLC, GM Mobility Europe GmbH, GM Personnel Services Inc., GM Philippines Inc., GM Protections LLC, GM Regional Holdings LLC, GM Retirees Pension Trustees Limited, GM Speciality Vehicles UK Limited, GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, GM Technical Center Korea Ltd., GM-DI Leasing LLC, GMAC Administradora de Consorcios Ltda., GMAC Prestadora de Servicios de Mao de Obra Ltda., GMCH&SP Private Equity II L.P., GMF Funding Corp., GMF Global Assignment LLC, GMF International LLC, GMF Leasing LLC, GMF Wholesale Receivables LLC, General Motors (China) Investment Company Limited, General Motors - Colmotores S.A., General Motors Advisory Services LLC, General Motors Africa and Middle East FZE, General Motors Asia LLC, General Motors Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, General Motors Asset Management Corporation, General Motors Australia Pty Ltd., General Motors Australia and New Zealand Pty Ltd., General Motors Auto LLC, General Motors Automobiles Philippines Inc., General Motors Automotive Holdings S.L., General Motors Belgique Automobile NV, General Motors Chile Industria Automotriz Limitada, General Motors China LLC, General Motors Daewoo Auto and Technology CIS LLC, General Motors Egypt S.A.E., General Motors Europe Limited, General Motors Financial Chile Limitada, General Motors Financial Chile S.A., General Motors Financial Company Inc., General Motors Financial of Canada Ltd., General Motors Global Service Operations Inc., General Motors Holden Australia NSC Pty Ltd., General Motors Holdings LLC, General Motors IT Services (Ireland) Limited, General Motors India Private Limited, General Motors International Holdings LLC, General Motors International Operations Pte. Ltd., General Motors International Services Company SAS, General Motors International Services LLC, General Motors Investment Limited, General Motors Investment Management Corporation, General Motors Investment Participacoes Ltda., General Motors Investments Pty. Ltd., General Motors Israel Ltd., General Motors Japan Limited, General Motors LLC, General Motors Limited, General Motors New Zealand Limited, General Motors New Zealand Pensions Limited, General Motors Overseas Commercial Vehicle Corporation, General Motors Overseas Corporation, General Motors Overseas Distribution LLC, General Motors Peru S.A., General Motors Research Corporation, General Motors South Africa (Pty) Limited, General Motors Taiwan Ltd., General Motors Technical Centre India Private Limited, General Motors Treasury Center LLC, General Motors Uruguay S.A., General Motors Ventures LLC, General Motors Warehousing and Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., General Motors de Argentina S.r.l., General Motors de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., General Motors del Ecuador S.A., General Motors do Brasil Ltda., General Motors of Canada Company, General Motors-Holden's Sales Pty. Limited, Global Services Detroit LLC, Grand Pointe Holdings Inc., Grand Pointe Park Condominium Association, IBC Pension Trustees Limited, Lease Ownership Cooperative LLC, Lidlington Engineering Company Ltd., Limited Liability Company "General Motors CIS", Maven Drive LLC, Millbrook Pension Management Limited, Monetization of Carve-Out LLC, Motors Holding LLC, Multi-Use Lease Entity Trust, North American New Cars LLC, Omnibus BB Transportes S. A., OnStar Connected Services Srl, OnStar Egypt Limited, OnStar Europe Ltd., OnStar Global Services Corporation, OnStar LLC, OnStar de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., P.T. G M AutoWorld Indonesia, P.T. General Motors Indonesia, PIMS Co., PT. General Motors Indonesia Manufacturing, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center Company Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios GMF Colombia S.A.S., Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, Reliance Motor Car Company, Riverfront Holdings III Inc., Riverfront Holdings Inc., Riverfront Holdings Phase II Inc., SAIC GM (Shenyang) Norsom Motors Co. Ltd., SAIC GM Dong Yue Motors Company Limited, SAIC GM Dong Yue Powertrain Company Limited, SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Company Limited, SAIC General Motors Corporation Limited, SAIC General Motors Sales Company Limited, SAIC-GMAC Automotive Finance Company Limited, SAIC-GMF Leasing Co. Ltd., Servicios GMAC S.A. de C.V., Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co. Ltd., Sidecar Technologies, Ultium Cells LLC, Vehicle Asset Universal Leasing Trust, WRE Inc., and Zona Franca Industrial Colmotores SAS.

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc.,      ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics.

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AFD.TECH, AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) Pty Ltd, Accenture (UK) Limited, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Agencia Interativa Ltda, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture B.V., Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BPS Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A., Accenture Canada Holdings Inc, Accenture Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Limited, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co. Ltd, Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Pty Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SASU, Accenture Customer Services Ltd, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Delivery Poland S.p. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance II Limited, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services S.r.l., Accenture Financial Advanced Solution & Technology S.r.l., Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Global Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Global Engagements Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Limited, Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc, Accenture Holding Brasil Ltda, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SASU, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services B.V., Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture International B.V., Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea B.V., Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Lithuania UAB, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Marketing Services LLC, Accenture Marketing Services Limited, Accenture Middle East B.V., Accenture Minority I B.V., Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi Pty Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations GmbH, Accenture Operations S.p. z o.o., Accenture Operations Services Private Limited, Accenture Operations Services Sdn Bhd, Accenture Outsourcing S.r.l., Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations B.V., Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru SRL, Accenture Post Trade Processing SASU, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture Qiyun Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

Read More




and variants thereof.

i) a concentric circles layout;



(ii) a pictorial device in the innermost circle;



(iii) the brand name in curved lettering at the top of the concentric circle;



(iv) a descriptive phrase in curved lettering at the bottom of the concentric circle; and



(v) the proportions of the textual elements and pictorial device in the marks are identical.

Kat friend Gillian Tan of Infinitus Law reports on a recent decision in Singapore in which Starbucks failed in an opposition based on its composite mark and its colour scheme.Starbucks, arguably one of the most iconic coffee brands in the world, is widely recognised by its logo . However, stripped of the words STARBUCKS COFFEE and the mermaid device, would the remaining concentric , on its own, be recognisable as a distinctive trade mark?This was one of the underlying issues that the IP Adjudicator at the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) had to consider in[2017] SGIPOS 18, wherein Morinaga Nyugyo Kabushiki Kaisha, a Japanese dairy company, applied to register the mark , comprising the words Mt. RAINIER, ESPRESSO & MILK, THE MOUNTAIN OF SEATTLE and a mountain device. Starbucks mounted an opposition against application mark based on its marks This case is not the first time that the IPOS had to consider the similarities between two composite marks having allegedly similar layouts. Where this case differs is that the IP Adjudicator had to consider an additional factor in the mark-similarity assessment: colour.This is because, besides the alleged similarity in the layouts, Starbucks argued that Morinagas prospective use of the application mark in a green, white, and black colour combination would render the marks similar. Naturally, such arguments were primarily directed toward the visual aspect of the mark-similarity assessment.With respect to colour, the IP Adjudicator found that it was not appropriate to consider the full range of colours to which the Morinaga may put its mark in use at the initial mark-similarity stage. Such consideration is extraneous to a mark-for-mark comparison, and should only be taken into account at the third and final stage of the assessment, that is, the confusion inquiry. An important distinction must be made between the case at hand  where one mark is filed in black and white, and the other in colour  versus a case where both competing marks are filed in colour. The IP Adjudicator found that where the application mark is filed in black and white, colour is not a factor which influences the mark-similarity assessment.As for the layouts of the marks, Starbucks argued that the marks are similar by virtue of the following features and the arrangement thereof:It was held that the marks are visually dissimilar precisely because of features (ii) and (iii), namely, the mountain device and the words Mt. RAINIER in the application mark, and the mermaid device and the word STARBUCKS in the Starbucks marks. Further, the simplicity and use of the concentric circles device as part of the background in the Starbucks marks lent weight to the IP Adjudicators finding that the concentric circles device, used on its own, had little significance in the overall impressions of the marks.On the whole, the IP Adjudicator found that it was not the colour scheme per se or the conceptual layout comprising the concentric circles that would be retained in the minds of the consumer. Rather, it is the textual and figurative elements in the marks that play significant roles in the recollection of the marks. Because these elements are completely different from each other, the marks are not visually similar. As the marks were found to be dissimilar, Starbucks failed on its grounds of opposition based on its earlier marks.Starbucks opposition based on the alleged deceptiveness of the application mark also failed. The IP Adjudicator disagreed with Starbucks' argument that reference to Mt. Rainier would mislead consumers into thinking that the applicant's goods originate from Seattle. There was no evidence demonstrating that the average Singaporean consumer would make a connection between Mt. Rainier and coffee.One might question whether the depiction of the application mark as (which is how Morinaga actually uses its mark) would have affected the outcome of the decision. At first blush, it may seem that the decision could have turned in light of this fact. However, given that features such as colour and layout are typically perceived as secondary marks used alongside, and frequently, overshadowed by more prominent textual and figurative components, the ultimate result would have arguably been the same. This is particularly so if the other elements in the mark are as distinctive and fanciful as Starbucks mermaid device. Indeed, such is the intrinsic link between Starbucks and the mermaid device that, in 2011, the company rebranded its logo to , doing away with the word Starbucks (and the concentric circles) altogether.Ultimately, whether or not the average consumer would appreciate the trade mark significance of secondary features, such as colour and layout, will depend largely on the evidence. Naturally, where the mark is never used on its own, like the concentric circles device in the present case, it would be much more difficult to prove that the mark can stand up on its own as a badge of origin.
Sunoco LP, together with its subsidiaries, distributes and retails motor fuels in the United States. It operates in two segments, Fuel Distribution and Marketing, and All Other. The Fuel Distribution and Marketing segment purchases motor fuel from independent refiners and oil companies and supplies it to independently operated dealer stations, distributors and other consumer of motor fuel, and partnership operated stations, as well as to commission agent locations. The All Other segment operates retail stores that offer motor fuel, merchandise, foodservice, and other services that include credit card processing, car washes, lottery, automated teller machines, money orders, prepaid phone cards, and wireless services. It also leases and subleases real estate properties; and operates terminal facilities on the Hawaiian Islands. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 78 retail stores in Hawaii and New Jersey. Sunoco GP LLC serves as the general partner of the company. The company was formerly known as Susser Petroleum Partners LP and changed its name to Sunoco LP in October 2014. Sunoco LP was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Bank of America has a rich history dating back to 1800 and even earlier. It was begun by immigrants as a group of separate and unrelated banks that, over the years, merged and grew together. One such is the Bank of Italy which was founded in 1904 by Amadeo Giannini to serve Italian immigrants that were facing discrimination. He later buys out the Banca de America e de Italia (Bank of America and Italy) which was also located in San Francisco. Over the years additional mergers and changes in Federal banking legislation, as well as the boom brought on by WWI and then WWII, helped boost the bank to national prominence.

Things turned sour, however, in 1998 with a major bond default that led to yet another merger, this time with Charlotte, NC-based Nations Bank to officially become the Bank of America that exists today. At the time, the merger was the largest bank merger in history and the company has only grown in the time since.

Other additions to the new Bank of America include MBNA (a major credit card operator), Fleet Boston (then the US 7th largest and one of its oldest banks), and Merril Lynch, now Merril, which was added to the group in 2008 to provide an investment banking branch. Together the company dominates as one of the Big Four Banks in America. Bank of America lays claim to nearly 11% of all US deposits which ranks in line with its peer group and Bank of America Securities is listed as the worlds 3rd largest investment bank.

Today, Bank of America Corporation provides banking and financial services for individuals, small businesses, institutions, corporations, and governments worldwide. The bank operates in three segments Consumer Banking, Global Wealth & Investment Management, and Global Banking bringing in a combined revenue greater than $90 billion in 2022.

As of 2022, Bank of America serves approximately 67 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,200 retail financial centers. The bank also operates more than 16,000 ATMs and digital banking platforms with approximately 41 million active users.

Its Consumer Banking segment offers traditional banking and investment products for retail clients. These range from deposit accounts to savings, credit cards, consumer loans, and IRAs. The Global Wealth & Investment Management segment offers investment and wealth management solutions including, brokerage, banking, and trust and retirement products. The Global Banking segment provides lending products and services, including commercial loans and leases for businesses of all varieties. The Global Markets segment offers market-making, clearing, settlement, and custody services, as well as risk management, derivatives, and FX exchange services.
Our portfolio of high quality UK commercial property is focused on London Offices and Retail around the UK. We own or manage a portfolio valued at 13.7bn (British Land share: 10.3bn) as at 30 September 2020 making us one of Europe's largest listed real estate investment companies. Our strategy is to provide places which meet the needs of our customers and respond to changing lifestyles - Places People Prefer. We do this by creating great environments both inside and outside our buildings and use our scale and placemaking skills to enhance and enliven them. This expands their appeal to a broader range of occupiers, creating enduring demand and driving sustainable, long term performance. Our Offices portfolio comprises three office-led campuses in central London as well as high quality standalone buildings and accounts for 65% of our portfolio. Our Retail portfolio is focused on retail parks and shopping centres, and accounts for 31% of our portfolio. Increasingly our focus is on providing a mix of uses and this is most evident at Canada Water, our 53 acre redevelopment opportunity where we have plans to create a new neighbourhood for London. Sustainability is embedded throughout our business. Our places, which are designed to meet high sustainability standards, become part of local communities, provide opportunities for skills development and employment and promote wellbeing. In April 2016 British Land received the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development, the UK's highest accolade for business success for economic, social and environmental achievements over a period of five years.
Chevron Corporation, through a network of subsidiaries, engages in integrated energy and chemicals operations worldwide. The company is the 7th largest integrated oil company worldwide, the 2nd largest in the US, and has been in operation since 1879. Chevron was part of the original Standard Oil Company and is one of the 34 successor companies that were formed when it was broken up. Today, the company brings in roughly $160 billion in annual revenues and is the last remaining oil and gas component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Originally called Standard Oil Of California the company grew quickly via mergers and acquisitions. It was hailed as one of the Seven Sisters to dominate the US and global production throughout the mid-20th century and became even bigger in 1985 when it merged with Gulf Oil. The merger with Gulf Oil resulted in the rebranding from Standard Oil Of California to Chevron (a brand used by the company outside its California jurisdiction) and then ChevronTexaco Corporation in 2005 when that merger took place. The company rebranded again in 2005 to what we know today as Chevron Corporation.

Chevron Corporation is now based in San Ramone, California, and has operations in 180 countries. The company employs more than 42,500 people who operate 5 refineries and 8,000+ Texaco, Chevron, and Standard Oil service stations in the US alone. The company's Exploration and Drilling operations produced a record 3.1 million barrels per day and its US refineries process more than 1 million barrels per day. At the end of 2021, the company has more than 11.3 billion barrels of proven oil and liquid-equivalent reserves and boasted a 112% reserve replacement rate.

The company operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment explores new reserves, develops known reserves, produces petroleum and gas products as needed, transports, processes, pipes, stores, and markets petroleum worldwide. The Downstream segment refines and markets the full line of petroleum-based products including but not limited to fuels such as gas, diesel, and aviation fuel, as well as lubricants, petrochemicals, and plastics. The company transports products via pipeline, rail, marine vessels, and truck.

Chevron recognizes the need to lower the worlds carbon output and is working toward that end. The companys strategy is two-pronged and includes reducing its own carbon output while investing in green and lower-carbon technologies. The companys goal is to invest $10 billion or more into lower carbon energy sources and technologies by 2028.

Chevron is a Dividend Aristocrat. The company has been paying a dividend since 1989 and it has raised it every year since its inception.






The following companies are subsidiares of Colfax: AS ESAB, Agridzaar Limited, Airgare Limited, Arc Machines GmbH, CAST Limited, CAST Resources Limited, CLFX Sweden CV, Canadian Cylinder Company Ltd., Cefar-Compex Medical AB, Central Mining Finance Limited, Charter Central Finance Limited, Charter Central Services Limited, Charter Consolidated Holdings Limited, Charter Consolidated Limited, Charter Finance S.a.r.l., Charter International Jersey Funding Limited, Charter International Limited, Charter Limited, Charter Overseas Holdings Limited, Charter Pension Trustee Limited, Chattanooga Europe B.V., Cigweld Pty Ltd., Colfax (Wuxi) Pump Company Limited, Colfax Fluid Handling Finance Limited, Colfax Group GmbH, Colfax Group Holdings GmbH, Colfax Jersey Finance Limited, Colfax UK Finance Limited, Colfax UK Holdings Limited, Comercializadora Thermadyne S. de R.L. de C.V., Conarco Alambres y Soldaduras SA, Condor Equipamentos Industriais Ltda, DJ Orthopedics Services SA de CV, DJ Orthopedics de Mexico S.A. de C.V., DJO Asia-Pacific Ltd., DJO BRASIL LTDA., DJO Benelux B.V., DJO Canada Inc., DJO Consumer LLC, DJO FINANCE LLC, DJO France S.A.S., DJO Global, DJO Global Inc., DJO Global India Healthcare Private Limited, DJO Global Pty. Ltd., DJO Global Switzerland SARL, DJO Iberica Productos Ortopedicos S.L., DJO Italia SRL, DJO LLC, DJO Medical Device Trading (Shanghai) Ltd., DJO Motion Ireland Limited, DJO Nordic Aktiebolag, DJO Orthopaedic South Africa (Pty) Ltd, DJO Tunisie SARL, DJO UK Ltd., EMSA Holdings Inc., ESAB AB, ESAB ApS, ESAB Argentina SA, ESAB Asia/Pacific Pte.Ltd., ESAB Bulgaria EAD, ESAB CZ s.r.o. clen koncernu, ESAB CentroAmerica SA, ESAB Comercio e Industria de Soldadura Lda, ESAB Corporation, ESAB Europe GmbH, ESAB France SAS, ESAB GCE Holdings AB, ESAB Gesellschaft m.b.H., ESAB Group (Ireland) Limited, ESAB Group (UK) Limited, ESAB Group Canada Inc., ESAB Group Russia Limited, ESAB Holdings Limited, ESAB Iberica S.A.U., ESAB Industria e Comercio Ltda, ESAB International Holdings LLC, ESAB Kazakhstan LLC, ESAB Kft., ESAB Limited (Thailand), ESAB Limited Liability Company, ESAB Mexico SA de CV, ESAB Mexico Services SA de CV, ESAB Middle East FZE, ESAB Nederland B.V., ESAB Pensions Limited, ESAB Polska Sp. z.o.o., ESAB Romania Trading SRL, ESAB Saldatura SpA, ESAB SeAH Corporation, ESAB SeAH Welding Products (Yantai) Co. Limited, ESAB Service GmbH, ESAB Slovakia sro, ESAB Sp. z.o.o., ESAB Sweden Holdings AB, ESAB Ukraine LLC, ESAB VAMBERK s.r.o. clen koncernu, ESAB Welding & Cutting GmbH, ESAB Welding & Cutting Products (Shanghai) Management Company Limited, ESAB Welding Products (Jiangsu) Co Limited, ESAB-Mor Welding Kft, EWAC Alloys Limited, Elastic Therapy LLC, Empi Inc., Encore Medical GP LLC, Encore Medical L.P., Encore Medical Partners LLC, Evrador Trading Limited, Exelvia (Bermuda) Limited, Exelvia Company, Exelvia Cyprus Limited, Exelvia Group India BV, Exelvia Holding Limitada, Exelvia Holdings BV, Exelvia International Holdings BV, Exelvia Investments Limited, Exelvia Netherlands BV, Exelvia Properties Limited, GCE Gas Control Equipment Co. Ltd., GCE Gas Control Equipment Inc., GCE Gas Control Equipment S.A. de C.V., GCE GmbH, GCE Group AB, GCE Hungaria Kft., GCE India Private Ltd., GCE Krass LLC, GCE Latin America Ltd., GCE Mujelli S.p.A., GCE Norden AB, GCE Portugal Unipessoal LDA, GCE Romania s.r.l., GCE S.A.S., GCE Sp. z.o.o., GCE Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., GCE s.r.o., Gas Control Equipment Iberica S.L., Gas Control Equipment Limited, Gas-Arc Group Limited, H UK Engineering Limited, HE Deutschland Holdings GmbH, HKS-Prozesstechnik GmbH, HTP Beteiligungs AG, Hobart Place Investments Limited, Howden North America Inc., Imo Holdings Inc., Imo Industries Inc., Jinan Red Hawk International Trading Co. Ltd., LT Optoelectronics Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Labindia Liteforce Private Limited, LiteCure LLC, Litecure Asia Limited, Litecure Optoelectronics Technology (Shanghai) Co. Limited, MEDSHAPE INC., MT Central Finance SARL, MT FOREIGN HOLDINGS INC., Margarita SA, Mathys (Schweiz) GmbH, Mathys AG Bettlach, Mathys Immobilien GmbH, Mathys KK, Mathys Ltd., Mathys Medical Device Trading Co. Ltd., Mathys Orthopadie GmbH, Mathys Orthopaedics BV, Mathys Orthopaedics Belux, Mathys Orthopaedics Ltd, Mathys Orthopaedics Pty. Ltd., Mathys Orthopedie SAS, Mathys Ortopedia Srl, Medireha GmbH Produkte fur die medizinische Rehabilitation, Motion Parent Inc., NANOSPECTRA BIOSCIENCES INC., NV E.S.A.B., OZAS-ESAB Sp. z o.o., Ormed GmbH, Ortho Pros Express Inc., Orthomed Medizintechnik GmbH, Oxiprof LLC, Oy ESAB, PT Karya Yasantara Cakti, PT Victor Teknologi Indonesia, Quantum Ops Inc., Rikco International LLC, SIAM ESAB Welding & Cutting Limited, Shawebone Holdings Inc., Soldaduras West Arco S.A.S., Soldex Holdings I LLC, Soldex S.A., Speetec Implantate AG, Speetec Implantate GmbH, Surgi-Care Inc., TBI Industries GmbH, TBI Industries s.r.o., TBI Shandong Industries Co. Ltd., The British South Africa Company, The Central Mining & Investment Corporation Limited, The ESAB Group Inc., Thermadyne Brazil Holdings Ltd., Thermadyne South America Holdings Ltd., Thermadyne Victor Ltda., Thermadyne de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermal Dynamics Europe Srl, Trilliant Surgical LLC, Victor Equipment Company, Victor Equipment de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Victor Technologies (UK) Limited, Victor Technologies Asia SDN BHD, Victor Technologies Australia Pty Ltd., Victor Technologies Canada Ltd., Victor Technologies Group Inc., Victor Technologies Holdings Inc., Victor Technologies International Inc., Victor Technologies Partnership LLP, Warren Pumps LLC, Welding & Cutting Products LLC, and Weldnote LDA.

Read More
MATTOON -- As the new year begins, the city is scheduled to start negotiating a new contract with Mattoon Firefighters Local 691 while going through arbitration for two grievances filed by this union.

One grievance was filed as a response to the City Council's July 18 vote to eliminate the Mattoon Fire Department's ambulance service and the other was filed before this vote but is now connected to the ambulance measure, as well. The ambulance service is set to be eliminated on May 1, the day that the city's planned 2018-19 budget is required to take effect.

City Administrator Kyle Gill said the contract negotiations and the grievance processes could take months to complete, so the city staff will need to prepare budget scenarios that account for eliminating the ambulance service and for maintaining it.

"We have some negotiating to do," Gill said.

On July 19, Local 691 filed a grievance with the Illinois Labor Relations Board alleging that the city has violated the union's contract by attempting to subcontract out the firefighters' work to private ambulance providers. This followed the union filing a grievance in May alleging that the city has violated the contract by having 26 firefighters on staff instead of therequired 30.

The city has denied these allegations. Gill said the subcontracting grievance will go to an arbitrator in mid-January and the staffing level grievance is set for a Feb. 22 arbitration hearing. He said the findings of the arbitrators will be binding.

Gill said the city is trying reorganize the fire department to help keep the city budget in line. He said the national average for fire departments without ambulance services is one firefighter per 1,000 residents and the state average is 1.1 firefighters. Under these averages, Mattoon would have approximately 19 firefighters.

"(The ambulance service) does generate some revenue, but the expenses take away from revenue that is generated," Gill said, estimating that these expenses are more than $700,000 per year. He added, "We just cannot sustain the same city services we have been providing and the ambulance service is a service that is being done by the private sector."

Local 691 President Bart Owen said the fire department started offering its ambulance service, which was approved by the City Council, in 2010 without any increase in firefighter staffing. He said the department has continued to handle an ever increasing amount of ambulance calls even as staffing has been cut.

"Our salaries have not increased the budget in the last 10 years," Owen said.

The biggest drivers of rising costs for the fire department have been pension and health insurance increases that also have been issues for other city departments, Owen said. The firefighters' union helped the city with these costs by switching to a new pension plan three years ago that will save approximately $400,000 per newly hired firefighter over a 25-year career, he said.

Owen provided figures showing that the ambulance service generated $640,927 in billing net revenue in 2016 and is projected to generate nearly $700,000 in 2017. He said this service has the potential to generate even more revenue at a time when the city struggles to balance its budget.

"I think they would be hurting for more money now if they didn't have that revenue," Owen said.

Regarding the city's plans to eliminate the ambulance service, Owen said he is concerned that the only way that city might be able to save money is by cutting personnel by nine to 12 firefighters.

Gill said the city administration would like for fire department staffing to be in line with state and national averages. He said any staffing reductions would likely be done through attrition, not filling posts vacated by resignations or retirements.

"We are putting together a proposal to the firefighter union on the impact of doing away with the ambulance service," Gill said of the upcoming contract negotiations. He added that the firefighters' current contract is set to expire on April 30, but could remain in place beyond this date if more time is needed to complete a new contract.
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.
Danaher Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets professional, medical, industrial, and commercial products and services worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Life Sciences, Diagnostics, and Environmental & Applied Solutions. The Life Sciences segment provides mass spectrometers; flow cytometry, genomics, lab automation, centrifugation, particle counting and characterization; microscopes; genomics consumables; and Gene and Cell Therapy. This segment also offers bioprocess technologies, consumables, and services; and filtration, separation, and purification technologies to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical, food and beverage, medical, and life sciences companies, as well as universities, medical schools and research institutions, and various industrial manufacturers. The Diagnostics segment provides chemistry, immunoassay, microbiology, and automation systems, as well as hematology, molecular, acute care, and pathology diagnostics products. This segment offers clinical instruments, reagents, consumables, software, and services for hospitals, physicians' offices, reference laboratories, and other critical care settings. The Environmental & Applied Solutions segment offers instrumentation, consumables, software, services, and disinfection systems to analyze, treat, and manage ultra-pure, potable, industrial, waste, ground, source, and ocean water in residential, commercial, industrial, and natural resource applications. This segment also provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for various color and appearance management, packaging design and quality management, packaging converting, printing, marking, coding, and traceability applications for consumer, pharmaceutical, and industrial products. The company was formerly known as Diversified Mortgage Investors, Inc. and changed its name to Danaher Corporation in 1984. Danaher Corporation was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Washington, the District of Columbia.
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.
Picture use

Unless otherwise stated all photos on this site are copyrighted  Jim Budd. They should not be used without authorisation and due credit. Please contact me on budmac@btinternet.com for all use. There will usually be a charge for use in commercial publications  papers, magazines, websites etc. and for other commercial uses. Photos that are used for commercial use without permission will be charged double  the fee for the use of photo and for breach of copyright. Commercial organisations asking to use photos for no payment may not always receive a polite response.
Gannett Co., Inc. operates as a media and marketing solutions company in the United States. It operates through two segments, Publishing and Digital Marketing Solutions. The company's principal products include 230 daily print media with total paid circulation of approximately 1.9 million and Sunday circulation of 2.2 million; 249 weekly print media with total circulation of approximately 1.4 million; and 292 locally-focused websites. Its principal products also comprise 123 daily and weekly news media brands and approximately 80 magazines, and related digital platforms; sports network, as well as Reviewed.com, an affiliate marketing service; and USA TODAY NETWORK, a community events platform. The company also offers digital marketing solutions, such as online presence solutions, online advertising products, conversion software, and cloud-based software solutions. In addition, it produces niche publications that address specific local market interests, such as recreation, sports, healthcare, and real estate. Further, the company offers local market news and information, as well as advertising and subscriptions, and commercial printing and distribution services; and prints commercial materials, including flyers, business cards, and invitations. The company was formerly known as New Media Investment Group Inc. and changed its name to Gannett Co., Inc. in November 2019. Gannett Co., Inc. was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
Toyota Motor Corporation designs, manufactures, assembles, and sells passenger vehicles, minivans and commercial vehicles, and related parts and accessories. It operates in Automotive, Financial Services, and All Other segments. The company offers hybrid cars under the Prius name, fuel cell vehicles under the MIRAI name; and conventional engine vehicles, including subcompact and compact cars under the Corolla and Raize names. It also provides mini-vehicles, passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, and auto parts under the Toyota name; mid-size cars; luxury cars; sports cars under the GR Yaris, Corolla Sport, Corolla Cross, and Supra names; and recreational and sport-utility vehicles under the Highlander name. In addition, the company offers pickup trucks under the Tacoma name; minivans; and trucks and buses. Further, it provides financial services, such as retail financing and leasing, wholesale financing, insurance, and credit cards; and designs, manufactures, and sells prefabricated housing. Additionally, the company operates GAZOO.com, a web portal for automobile information. It operates in Japan, North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East. The company was founded in 1933 and is headquartered in Toyota, Japan.
HFF, Inc. provides commercial real estate and capital market services to the consumers and providers of capital in the commercial real estate industry in the United States. The company offers debt placement services, such as construction and construction/mini-permanent loans, adjustable and fixed rate mortgages, bridge loans, entity level and mezzanine debts, forward delivery loans, and tax exempt and sale/leaseback financing to the owners of various properties comprising office, retail, industrial, hotel, multi-housing, student housing, self-storage, nursing homes, condominiums and condominium conversions, mixed-use properties, and land, as well as senior, independent, and assisted living facilities. It also provides investment advisory services to commercial real estate owners; and equity placement, as well as assists clients in the sale of their commercial real estate debt note portfolios. In addition, the company offers private equity, investment banking, and advisory services, including equity capital to establish joint ventures relating to identified properties or properties to be acquired by a fund sponsor; structured finance; institutional marketing and fund-raising services for public and private commercial real estate fund sponsors; advisory services for mergers and acquisitions, sales and divestitures, management buyouts, and recapitalizations and restructurings; and private placements of preferred securities. Further, it provides loan sales and commercial loan servicing to life insurance companies. The company was founded in 1982 and is based in Dallas, Texas.
Andeavor Logistics LP operates as a diversified midstream company in the United States. The company's Terminalling and Transportation segment comprises the Northwest pipeline system, including a regulated common carrier products pipeline running from Salt Lake City, Utah to Spokane, Washington and a jet fuel pipeline to the Salt Lake City International Airport; a regulated common carrier refined products pipeline system connecting its refinery to its terminals in Anchorage, Alaska; tankage and related equipment at the refinery; and crude oil and refined products terminals and storage facilities in the western, and southwest and midwestern U.S. This segment also consists of marine terminals in California and Washington; a rail-car unloading and petroleum coke handling facilities; marine terminals; a manifest rail facility; an asphalt trucking operation; a petroleum coke handling and storage facility; asphalt terminalling and processing services; and other pipelines, which transport products and crude oil from its refineries to nearby facilities in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Its Gathering and Processing segment includes crude oil and natural gas, NGLs, and produced water gathering systems in the Bakken Shale/Williston Basin area of the Bakken Region, the Green River Basin, the Rockies Region, the Permian Basin System, and the Four Corners System, as well as crude trucking operations, and gas processing and fractionation complexes. The company's Wholesale segment consists of bulk petroleum distribution facilities and a fleet of refined product delivery trucks. Tesoro Logistics GP, LLC operates as the general partner of the company. The company was formerly known as Tesoro Logistics LP and changed its name to Andeavor Logistics LP in August 2017. Andeavor Logistics LP was founded in 2010 and is based in Findlay, Ohio.
Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to develop and offer operating system, virtualization, management, middleware, cloud, mobile, and storage technologies to various enterprises worldwide. It offers infrastructure-related solutions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an operating system platform that runs on hardware for use in hybrid cloud environments; Red Hat Satellite, a system management offering that helps to deploy, scale, and manage in hybrid cloud environments; and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, a software solution that allows customers to utilize and manage a common hardware infrastructure to run multiple operating systems and applications. The company offers application development-related and other technology solutions, such as Red Hat JBoss Middleware, a solution for developing, deploying, and managing applications; integrating applications, data, and devices; and automating business processes in hybrid cloud environments; The company's application development-related and other technology solutions also includes Red Hat cloud offerings, a software solution that enables customers to build and manage various cloud computing environments; Red Hat Mobile, a software development platform that enables customers to develop, integrate, deploy, and manage mobile applications for enterprises; and Red Hat Storage, a software solution that enables customers to manage large, unstructured, or semi-structured data in hybrid cloud environments. It also provides consulting, support, and training services; and realtime operating system, distributed computing, directory services, and user authentication. Red Hat, Inc. has collaboration with Juniper Networks Expand to provide a unified solution for enterprises designed to manage and run applications and services. The company was formerly known as Red Hat Software, Inc. and changed its name to Red Hat, Inc. in June 1999. Red Hat, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In the last couple of weeks, Hong Chau has received Golden Globe and Screen Actor Guild best supporting actress nominations for her work playing a shrunk-to-5-inches Vietnamese refugee in Downsizing.

But, when she appeared on the red carpet before the films Omaha premiere last week, she quickly brushed off those accolades.

Its about the movie, not the nominations, she said, repeatedly.

The films director, however, was effusive about the nominations and the performance of his breakout star.

Highly deserved, Alexander Payne said. Shes so good. As a director, one knows those old pros like Matt Damon or Christoph Waltz, Kristen Wiig, theyll deliver the goods. You kind of know not exactly what to expect, (but) you know to expect something good. When you have an idiosyncratic part and you find exactly the right actor coming out of nowhere, thats whats got special sauce.

Only Tatum ONeal could have played that part in Paper Moon. Only Hong Chau could have played this part in this movie.

"Its a bit of a consolation in terms of how long this movie took to get financed, I say Damn all those wasted years, but Hong Chau probably wouldnt have been in it.

In the film, Chau plays Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese dissident, who has been downsized against her will and shipped to the U.S. in a suitcase. Surviving the journey, but losing a leg, shes forced to work as a housekeeper while living in a massive tenement thats the dark side of the downsized world.

As Ngoc, Chau speaks in broken English, which has been criticized by some. But that speech and her performance ring true to the Vietnamese immigrant experience -- something she knows firsthand.

My parents are Vietnamese refugees and I was actually born in a refugee camp in Thailand, said the 38-year-old Chau. My first language was Vietnamese, and I didnt learn English until I started school. So its a profound moment for me to get to play a character that is so similar to my parents in terms of how they arrived in the United States and also their subsequent experience in not knowing the language and having to learn it as you go and having limited opportunities in terms of occupation.

So its an important story to me to be able to share in telling. And its one that will resonate with other people who arent Vietnamese. Ive had a lot of people who have Mexican heritage, whose parents have gone through a similar journey and they feel so much connection with my character. Its really one that speaks to a larger experience and not necessarily just a Vietnamese one. But its very specific to my family.

Chau grew up in New Orleans and attended Boston University, where she majored in film studies, intending to work behind the camera. But she moved to New York instead to study acting, then settled in California.

The first big role of her career came in Treme, the acclaimed HBO series that was set in her home city of New Orleans. Her first feature film role was in director Paul Thomas Andersons Inherent Vice in 2014, playing Jade, a massage parlor worker who guides detective Joaquin Phoenix toward solving the case.

Then came the opportunity to play Ngoc, a character she describes in the movies press notes as part dictator, part Mother Teresa, and part Charlie Chaplin.

Its the most richly drawn character that I have read on the page, Chau said. I read a lot of scripts and a lot of them are not as original and heartfelt and intelligent as this character is.

So how did she bring that to the screen?

Thats an actors job to fill in the outline thats been given to you in the script, she said. I think I saw something immediately once I read the script. I think I had a good idea of what Alexander was going for. Im a big fan of his. Ive seen all his previous films. I understand his sense of humor and also his sense of humanity. So you just try to bring that to the film. I think he saw that in the audition as well, that I was on the same page.

While Downsizing is satiric sci-fi, Chau said, theres heart at the core of the picture, just like all of Paynes films. Much of that comes via Ngoc, who selflessly devotes herself to helping the sick and dying in the tenements.

Theres kindness and compassion, she said. Thats not the coolest thing to do these days. But thats what I respond to as a human being, a filmgoer, a citizen of the world. Im on the Alexander Payne train ...

For me Ive always wanted to just work on things I care about, I think a lot about what I want to bring into the work, where I want to put my energies, which stories I want to help tell. There are some things I read that I think Why do we need that? Why do we need another violent movie?'

That said, for Chau, Downsizing isnt a message movie, or, at least it doesnt have a single theme for the audience to take away.

Alexander Payne is not a filmmaker who spoonfeeds the audience in what they should think, she said. Its complicated. I couldnt really sum up somebody I love in a word or two. Its expansive. Its a big story.
NCI Building Systems, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets metal products for the nonresidential construction industry in North America. It operates in four segments: Engineered Building Systems, Metal Components, Insulated Metal Panels, and Metal Coil Coating. The Engineered Building Systems segment offers engineered structural members and panels; and self-storage building systems under the Metallic, Mid-West Steel, A & S, All American, Mesco, Star, Ceco, Robertson, Garco, Heritage, and SteelBuilding.com brands to builders, general contractors, developers, and end users directly, as well as through private label companies. The Metal Components segment provides metal roof and wall systems, metal partitions, metal trims, doors, and other related accessories for use in new construction, and repair and retrofit applications; roll-up doors; and interior and exterior walk doors under the MBCI, American Building Components, Eco-ficient, Metal Depots, and Doors and Buildings Components brands to manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, lumberyards, cooperative buying groups, and other customers. The Insulated Metal Panels segment offers insulated metal panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and cold storage end-market applications under the Metl-Span and CENTRIA brands. The Metal Coil Coating segment engages in cleaning, treating, and painting flat-rolled metals in coil form, as well as in slitting and/or embossing the metal, before the metal is fabricated for use by industrial users. It also cleans, treats, and coats heavy and light gauge metal coils for use in construction products, heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, lighting fixtures, ceiling grids, office furniture, appliances, and other products; and provides toll coating and painted metal package services under the Metal Coaters and Metal Prep brands. NCI Building Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. 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. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. 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. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. Ltd, Phadia Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Phadia Malta Holdings Limited, Phadia Oy, Phadia Real Property AB, Phadia Sweden AB, Phadia Taiwan Inc., Phadia US Inc., Phadia s.r.o., Pharmacaps Mexicana SA de CV, Phenom-World B.V., Phenom-World Holding B.V, Phenom-World Innovations B.V., Phinotex, Pierce Biotechnology Inc., Pierce Milwaukee Holding Corp., Pierce Milwaukee Inc., Polychromix, Power Sweden Holdings I AB, Power Sweden Holdings II AB, Power Sweden Holdings III Aktiebolag, Princeton Gamma-Tech Instruments LLC, Princeton Security Technologies, Prionics AG, Prionics Asia Ltd., Prionics Deutschland GmbH, Prionics France SAS, Prionics Italia S.r.l., Prionics Lelystad B.V., Prionics USA Inc., Priority Air Express LLC, Priority Air Express Pte. Ltd., Priority Air Express UK Limited, Priority Air Holdings Corp, Priority Solutions International, Promedica Pty Limited, Proxeon, Proxeon Biosystems ApS, Qiagen, REP GBP I-B Blocker Inc., Raymond A Lamb Limited, Remel Europe Limited, Remel Inc., Richard-Allan Scientific Company, Robbins Scientific LLC, Robocon Labor- und Industrieroboter Gesellschaft m.b.H, Rupprecht and Patashnick, Rupprecht and Patashnick (R&P), Russell pH Limited, S.C.I. du 10 rue Dugay Trouin, SCI Inno 92, STC Bio Manufacturing Inc., Samco Scientific (Monterrey) LLC, Samco Scientific LLC, Saroph Sweden AB, Schantz Road LLC, Seradyn Inc., Shanghai Life Technologies Biotechnology Co. Limited, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (C-I) Trading Co. Ltd, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (S) Trading Co. Ltd, Southern Trials (Pty) Ltd., Specialty (SMI) Inc., Spectra-Physics AB, Spectra-Physics Holdings Limited, Spectra-Physics Holdings USA LLC, Spectronex, Staten Island Cogeneration Corporation, Sterilin Limited, Stokes Bio Ltd., Sweden DIA (Sweden) AB, SwissAnalytic Group GmbH, Systems Manufacturing Corporation, TFLP LLC, TFS Breda B.V., TFS LLC, TFS Singapore HK Limited, TFSL Financing GP LLC, TFSL Senior GP Holdings 2 LLC, TK Partnership, TKA Wasseraufbereitungssysteme, TMOI Inc., TPI Real Estate Holdings LLC, TSP Holdings I LLC, TWX LLC, Technology Design Solutions Pty Ltd, Thermedics Detection de Argentina S.R.L, Thermo Allen Coding Limited, Thermo Asset Management Services Inc., Thermo BioAnalysis LLC, Thermo BioAnalysis Limited, Thermo BioSciences Holdings LLC, Thermo CIDTEC, Thermo CRS Holdings Ltd., Thermo CRS Ltd., Thermo Cambridge Limited, Thermo Cayman Holdings Ltd., Thermo Corporation, Thermo DMA Inc., Thermo Detection de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Dutch Holdings Limited Partnership, Thermo EGS Gauging LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings I LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings II LLC, Thermo Eberline LLC, Thermo Electron (Calgary) Limited, Thermo Electron (Chile) S.p.A., Thermo Electron (Karlsruhe) GmbH, Thermo Electron (Management Services) Limited, Thermo Electron (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Electron A/S, Thermo Electron Australia Pty Limited, Thermo Electron Export Inc., Thermo Electron Holdings SAS, Thermo Electron Industries, Thermo Electron LED GmbH, Thermo Electron LED S.A.S., Thermo Electron Limited, Thermo Electron Manufacturing Limited, Thermo Electron Metallurgical Services Inc., Thermo Electron North America LLC, Thermo Electron Pension Trust GmbH, Thermo Electron Puerto Rico Inc., Thermo Electron SAS, Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments LLC, Thermo Electron Sweden AB, Thermo Electron Sweden Forvaltning AB, Thermo Electron Weighing & Inspection Limited, Thermo Elemental Limited, Thermo Environmental Instruments LLC, Thermo Fast U.K. Limited, Thermo Finland Holdings LLC, Thermo Finland Holdings MT1 B.V., Thermo Finland Holdings MT2 B.V., Thermo Finnigan LLC, Thermo Finnigan Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Malta Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN-I) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (CN-II) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings I Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings II Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings 2) LLC, Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) II Limited, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Heysham) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Kandel) GmbH, Thermo Fisher CHK Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust II, Thermo Fisher Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Thermo Fisher Cyprus Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Detection Mexico LLC, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics (Ireland) Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AB, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AG, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Aps, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Austria GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics B.V., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics K.K., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics NV, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.L.U., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.p.A. , Thermo Fisher Diagnostics SAS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Thermo Fisher Eurobonds Ltd., Thermo Fisher Financial Services Inc., Thermo Fisher GP LLC, Thermo Fisher German Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Germany B.V., Thermo Fisher India Divestco Private Limited, Thermo Fisher India Holding B.V., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Thermo Fisher Israel Ltd., Thermo Fisher Production et Services SAS, Thermo Fisher Project Cyprus LLC, Thermo Fisher Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Asheville) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Australia) C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Barbados) Holdings Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Breda) Holding BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (CN) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. 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. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. 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.

Read More
The following companies are subsidiares of PepsiCo: Alimentos Quaker Oats y Compania Limitada, Alimentos del Istmo S.A., Amavale Agricola Ltda., Anderson Hill Insurance Limited, Asia Bottlers Limited, BAESA Capital Corporation Ltd., BFY Brands, BFY Brands LLC, BFY Brands Limited, BUG de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Balmoral Industries LLC, Bare Foods Co., Barrhead LLC, Be & Cheery, Beaman Bottling Company, Bebidas Sudamerica S.A., Beech Limited, Bell Taco Funding Syndicate, Bendler Investments II Ltd, Bendler Investments S.a r.l, Beverage Services Limited, Beverages Foods & Service Industries Inc., Bishkeksut OJSC, Blaue NC S. de R.L. de C.V., Blue Cloud Distribution Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arizona Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arkansas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Colorado Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Florida Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Georgia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Illinois Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Indiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Iowa Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Kentucky Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Louisiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Minnesota Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Mississippi Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Missouri Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nebraska Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nevada Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of North Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Ohio Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Oklahoma Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Pennsylvania Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of South Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Tennessee Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Texas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Virginia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Wisconsin Inc., Blue Ridge Sales LLC, Bluebird Foods Limited, Bluecan Holdings Unlimited Company, Bokomo Zambia Limited, Bolsherechensky Molkombinat JSC, Boquitas Fiestas LLC, Boquitas Fiestas S.R.L., Bottling Group Financing LLC, Bottling Group Holdings LLC, Bottling Group LLC, Bronte Industries Ltd, C & I Leasing Inc., CB Manufacturing Company Inc., CEME Holdings LLC, CMC Investment Company, Caroni Investments LLC, Centro-Mediterranea de Bebidas Carbonicas PepsiCo S.L., Ceres Fruit Juices Pty Ltd, ChampBev Inc., China Concentrate Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Chipsy International for Food Industries S.A.E., Chipsy for Food Industries S.A.E., Chitos Internacional y Cia Ltda, Cipa Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cipa Nordeste Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cocina Autentica Inc., Comercializadora CMC Investment y Compania Limitada, Comercializadora Nacional SAS Ltda., Comercializadora PepsiCo Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., Compania de Bebidas PepsiCo S.L., Concentrate Holding Uruguay Pte. Ltd., Concentrate Manufacturing Singapore Pte. Ltd., Confiteria Alegro S. de R.L. de C.V., Copella Fruit Juices Limited, Copper Beech International LLC, Corina Snacks Limited, Corporativo Internacional Mexicano S. de R.L. de C.V., CytoSport Holdings Inc., CytoSport Inc., Davlyn Realty Corporation, Defosto Holdings Limited, Desarrollo Inmobiliario Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Dilexis S.A., Donon Holdings Limited, Drinkfinity USA Inc., Drinkstation Inc., Drinkstation Innovation Co. Ltd., Drinkstation Limited, Dutch Snacks Holding S.A. de C.V., Duyvis Production B.V., EPIC Enterprises Inc., Echo Bay Holdings Inc., Elaboradora Argentina de Cereales S.R.L., Enter Logistica LLC, Environ at Inverrary Partnership, Environ of Inverrary Inc., Eridanus Investments S.a r.l, Evercrisp Snack Productos de Chile S.A., FL Transportation Inc., FLI Andean LLC, FLI Colombia LLC, FLI Snacks Andean GP LLC, Fabrica PepsiCo Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Fabrica de Productos Alimenticios Rene y Cia S.C.A., Fairlight International SRL, Far East Bottlers Hong Kong Limited, Food Concepts Pioneer Ltd., Forest Akers Nederland B.V., Forty-Six Peaks Holding Inc., Fovarosi Asvanyviz es Uditoipari Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Freshwater International B.V., Frito Lay Gida Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay de Guatemala y Compania Limitada, Frito-Lay Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Frito-Lay Dip Company Inc., Frito-Lay Dominicana S.A., Frito-Lay Global Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Inc., Frito-Lay Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Manufacturing LLC, Frito-Lay Netherlands Holding B.V., Frito-Lay North America Inc., Frito-Lay Sales Inc., Frito-Lay Trading Company Europe GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company Poland GmbH, Frito-Lay Trinidad Unlimited, Fruko Mesrubat Sanayi Limited Sirketi, GB Czech LLC, GB International Inc., GB Russia LLC, GB Slovak LLC, GMP Manufacturing Inc., Gambrinus Investments Limited, Gamesa LLC, Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Gas Natural de Merida S. A. de C. V., Gatorade Puerto Rico Company, General Bottlers of Hungary Inc., Golden Grain Company, Goveh S.R.L., Grayhawk Leasing LLC, Green Hemlock International LLC, Grupo Frito Lay y Compania Limitada, Grupo Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Grupo Mabel, Grupo Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Gulkevichskiy Maslozavod JSC, Hangzhou Baicaowei Corporate Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co, Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Tao Dao Technology Co. Ltd., Health Warrior, Health Warrior Inc., Heathland LP, Helioscope Limited, Hillbrook Inc., Hillgrove Inc., Hillwood Bottling LLC, Hogganfield Limited Partnership, Holding Company "Opolie" JSC, Homefinding Company of Texas, Hudson Valley Insurance Company, IC Equities Inc., IZZE Beverage Co., Inmobiliaria Interamericana S.A. De C.V., Integrated Beverage Services Bangladesh Limited, Integrated Foods & Beverages Pvt. Ltd., International Bottlers Management Co. LLC, International KAS Aktiengesellschaft, Inversiones Borneo S.R.L., Inversiones PFI Chile Limitada, Inviting Foods Holdings Inc., Inviting Foods LLC, KAS Anorthosis S.a r.l, KAS S.L., KFC, Kevita Inc., Kinvara LLC, Kungursky Molkombinat JSC, Larragana S.L., Latin American Holdings Ltd., Latin American Snack Foods ApS, Latin Foods International LLC, Lebedyansky, Lebedyansky Holdings LLC, Lebedyansky LLC, Limited Liability Company "Sandora", Linkbay Limited, Lithuanian Snacks UAB, Mabel, Marbo Product d.o.o. Beograd, Marbo d.o.o. Laktasi, Matudis - Comercio de Produtos Alimentares Limitada, Matutano - Sociedade de Produtos Alimentares Lda., Mid-America Improvement Corporation, Mountainview Insurance Company Inc., Muscle Milk, NCJV LLC, New Bern Transport Corporation, New Century Beverage Company LLC, Noble Leasing LLC, Northeast Hot-Fill Co-op Inc., Office at Solyanka LLC, Onbiso Inversiones S.L., One World Enterprises LLC, One World Investors Inc., P-A Barbados Bottling Company LLC, P-A Bottlers Barbados SRL, P-Americas LLC, PAS Luxembourg S.a r.l, PAS Netherlands B.V., PBG Canada Holdings II LLC, PBG Canada Holdings Inc., PBG Cyprus Holdings Limited, PBG Investment Partnership, PBG Midwest Holdings S.a r.l, PBG Soda Can Holdings S.a r.l, PCBL LLC, PCNA Manufacturing Inc., PR Beverages Cyprus Holding Limited, PR Beverages Cyprus Russia Holding Limited, PRB Luxembourg S.a r.l, PRS Inc., PSAS Inversiones LLC, PSE Logistica S.R.L., PT Quaker Indonesia, Papas Chips S.A., Pei N.V., Pep Trade LLC, Pepsi B.V., Pepsi Beverages Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bottling Group Global Finance LLC, Pepsi Bottling Group GmbH, Pepsi Bottling Group Hoosiers B.V., Pepsi Bottling Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bugshan Investments S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Colombia Ltda, Pepsi Cola Egypt S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Panamericana S.R.L., Pepsi Cola Servis Ve Dagitim Limited Sirketi, Pepsi Cola Trading Ireland, Pepsi Logistics Company Inc., Pepsi Northwest Beverages LLC, Pepsi Overseas Investments Partnership, Pepsi Promotions Inc., Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Marketing Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bermuda Limited, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Holding C.V., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company Of St. Louis Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Ft. Lauderdale-Palm Beach LLC, Pepsi-Cola Company, Pepsi-Cola Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Pepsi-Cola Far East Trade Development Co. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Finance LLC, Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers Poland Sp. z o.o., Pepsi-Cola Industrial da Amazonia Ltda., Pepsi-Cola International Cork, Pepsi-Cola International LLC, Pepsi-Cola International Limited, Pepsi-Cola International Limited U.S.A., Pepsi-Cola International Private Limited, Pepsi-Cola Korea Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Management and Administrative Services Inc., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Company Of Uruguay S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing International Limited, Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Mediterranean Limited, Pepsi-Cola Marketing Corp. Of P.R. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mediterranean Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Company Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mexicana Holdings LLC, Pepsi-Cola Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Pepsi-Cola National Marketing LLC, Pepsi-Cola Operating Company Of Chesapeake And Indianapolis, Pepsi-Cola Sales and Distribution Inc., Pepsi-Cola Technical Operations Inc., Pepsi-Cola Thai Trading Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola de Honduras S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola of Corvallis Inc., PepsiAmericas Nemzetkozi Szolgaltato Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, PepsiCo ANZ Holdings Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Alimentos Antioquia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Colombia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Ecuador Cia. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Z.F. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos de Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Amacoco Bebidas Do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCo Asia Research & Development Center Company Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Cyprus Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Limited Partnership, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 1 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 2 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Australia Holdings Pty Limited, PepsiCo Australia International, PepsiCo Austria Services GmbH, PepsiCo Azerbaijan Limited Liability Company, PepsiCo BeLux BV, PepsiCo Beverage Sales LLC, PepsiCo Beverage Singapore Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Beverages Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Beverages International Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Italia Societa' A Responsabilita' Limitata, PepsiCo Canada Finance LLC, PepsiCo Canada Holdings ULC, PepsiCo Canada Investment ULC, PepsiCo Canada ULC, PepsiCo Captive Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Caribbean Inc., PepsiCo China Limited, PepsiCo Consulting Polska Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo De Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Del Paraguay S.R.L., PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH, PepsiCo Eesti AS, PepsiCo Euro Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Euro Finance Antilles B.V., PepsiCo Europe Support Center S.L., PepsiCo Finance Americas Company, PepsiCo Finance Antilles A N.V., PepsiCo Finance Antilles B N.V., PepsiCo Finance South Africa Proprietary Limited, PepsiCo Financial Shared Services Inc., PepsiCo Food & Beverage Holdings Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Foods A.I.E., PepsiCo Foods China Company Limited, PepsiCo Foods Group Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Foods Guangdong Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Nigeria Limited, PepsiCo Foods Private Limited, PepsiCo Foods Sichuan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Taiwan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Vietnam Company, PepsiCo France SAS, PepsiCo Global Business Services India LLP, PepsiCo Global Business Services Poland Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Global Holdings Limited, PepsiCo Global Investments B.V., PepsiCo Global Investments S.a r.l, PepsiCo Global Mobility LLC, PepsiCo Global Real Estate Inc., PepsiCo Global Trading Solutions Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Golden Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Group Finance International B.V., PepsiCo Group Holdings International B.V., PepsiCo Group Spotswood Holdings S.a r.l, PepsiCo Gulf International FZE, PepsiCo Hellas Single Member Industrial and Commercial Societe Anonyme, PepsiCo Holding de Espana S.L., PepsiCo Holdings, PepsiCo Holdings LLC, PepsiCo Holdings Toshkent LLC, PepsiCo Hong Kong LLC, PepsiCo Iberia Servicios Centrales S.L., PepsiCo India Holdings Private Limited, PepsiCo India Sales Private Limited, PepsiCo Internacional Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., PepsiCo International Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo International Limited, PepsiCo International Pte Ltd., PepsiCo Investments Europe I B.V., PepsiCo Investments Ltd., PepsiCo Ireland Food & Beverages Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Japan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Light B.V., PepsiCo Logistyka Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., PepsiCo Management Services SAS, PepsiCo Manufacturing A.I.E., PepsiCo Max B.V., PepsiCo Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo Nederland B.V., PepsiCo Nordic Denmark ApS, PepsiCo Nordic Finland Oy, PepsiCo Nordic Norway AS, PepsiCo Nutrition Trading DMCC, PepsiCo One B.V., PepsiCo Overseas Corporation, PepsiCo Overseas Financing Partnership, PepsiCo Panimex Inc, PepsiCo Products B.V., PepsiCo Products FLLC, PepsiCo Puerto Rico Inc., PepsiCo Sales Inc., PepsiCo Sales LLC, PepsiCo Services Asia Ltd., PepsiCo Services CZ s.r.o., PepsiCo Services LLC, PepsiCo Twist B.V., PepsiCo UK Pension Plan Trustee Limited, PepsiCo Ventures B.V., PepsiCo Wave Holdings LLC, PepsiCo World Trading Company Inc., PepsiCo Y LLC, PepsiCo de Argentina S.R.L., PepsiCo de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo do Brasil Industria e Comercio de Alimentos Ltda., PepsiCo do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCola Interamericana de Guatemala S.A., Pet Iberia S.L., Pete & Johnny Limited, Pine International LLC, Pine International Limited, Pinstripe Leasing LLC, Pioneer Food Group Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Groceries Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Group Ltd., Pioneer Foods Holdings Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods UK Ltd, Pioneer Foods Wellingtons Pty Ltd, Pipers Crisps Limited, PlayCo Inc., Pop corners, PopCorners Holdings Inc., Portfolio Concentrate Solutions Unlimited Company, Premier Nutrition Trading L.L.C., Prestwick LLC, Prev PepsiCo Sociedade Previdenciaria, Productos Alimenticios Rene LLC, Productos S.A.S. C.V., Productos SAS Management B.V., Punch N.V., Punica Getranke GmbH, Q O Puerto Rico Inc., QFL OHQ Sdn. Bhd., QTG Development Inc., QTG Services Inc., Quadrant - Amroq Beverages S.R.L., Quaker Development B.V., Quaker European Beverages LLC, Quaker European Investments B.V., Quaker Foods, Quaker Global Investments B.V., Quaker Holdings UK Limited, Quaker Manufacturing LLC, Quaker Oats Asia Inc., Quaker Oats Australia Pty Ltd, Quaker Oats B.V., Quaker Oats Capital Corporation, Quaker Oats Europe Inc., Quaker Oats Europe LLC, Quaker Oats Limited, Quaker Sales & Distribution Inc, Raptas Finance S.a r.l., Rare Fare Foods LLC, Rare Fare Holdings Inc., Reading Industries Ltd, Real Estate Holdings LLC, Rockstar Energy Drink, Rolling Frito-Lay Sales LP, S & T of Mississippi Inc., SIH International LLC, SVC Logistics Inc., SVC Manufacturing Inc., SVE Russia Holdings GmbH, Sabritas LLC, Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Sabritas Snacks America Latina de Nicaragua y Cia Ltda, Sabritas de Costa Rica S. de R.L., Sabritas y Cia. S en C de C.V., Sakata Rice Snacks Australia Pty Ltd, Sandora Holdings B.V., Saudi Snack Foods Company Limited, Sea Eagle International SRL, Seepoint Holdings Ltd., Senselet Food Processing PLC, Senselet Holding B.V., Servicios GBF Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Servicios GFLG y Compania Limitada, Servicios Gamesa Puerto Rico L.L.C., Servicios SYC S. de R.L. de C.V., Seven-Up Asia Inc., Seven-Up Light B.V., Seven-Up Nederland B.V., Shanghai PepsiCo Snack Company Limited, Shanghai YuHo Agricultural Development Co. Ltd, Shoebill LLC, Simba (Proprietary) Limited, Simba Proprietary Limited, Sitka Spruce, Smartfoods Inc., Smiles and Bites Holdings S.de R.L. de C.V., Smiths Crisps Limited, Snack Food Investments GmbH, Snack Food Investments II GmbH, Snack Food Investments Limited, Snack Food-Beverage Asia Products Limited, Snacks America Latina S.R.L., Snacks Guatemala Ltd., So Spark Ltd., Soda-Club CO2 Atlantic GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 Ltd., Soda-Club Switzerland GmbH, Soda-Club Worldwide B.V., SodaStream, SodaStream Australia Pty Ltd, SodaStream CO2 SA, SodaStream Canada Ltd., SodaStream Enterprises N.V., SodaStream France SAS, SodaStream GmbH, SodaStream Iberia S.L., SodaStream Industries Ltd., SodaStream International B.V., SodaStream International Ltd., SodaStream Israel Ltd., SodaStream K.K., SodaStream New Zealand Ltd., SodaStream Nordics AB, SodaStream Poland Sp. z o.o., SodaStream SA Pty Ltd., SodaStream Switzerland GmbH, SodaStream USA Inc., SodaStream Osterreich GmbH, South Beach Beverage Company Inc., South Properties Inc., Spitz International Inc., Sportmex Internacional S.A. de C.V., Springboig Industries Ltd, Spruce Limited, Stacy's Pita Chip Company Incorporated, Star Foods E.M. S.R.L., Stokely-Van Camp Inc., Stratosphere Communications Pty Ltd, Stratosphere Holdings 2018 Limited, Streamfoods Ltd, TFL Holdings LLC, Tasman Finance S.a r.l, The Gatorade Company, The Good Carb Food Company Ltd., The Pepsi Bottling Group Canada ULC, The Quaker Oats Company, The Smith's Snackfood Company Pty Limited, Thomond Group Holdings Limited, Tobago Snack Holdings LLC, Tropicana Alvalle S.L., Tropicana Beverages Limited, Tropicana Europe N.V., Tropicana United Kingdom Limited, Troya-Ultra LLC, United Foods Companies Restaurantes S.A., V-Water, VentureCo Israel Ltd, Veurne Snack Foods BV, Vitamin Brands Ltd., Walkers Crisps Limited, Walkers Group Limited, Walkers Snack Foods Limited, Walkers Snacks Distribution Limited, Walkers Snacks Limited, Whitman Corporation, Whitman Insurance Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Beverages JSC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Brands Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Central Asia-Almaty LLP, Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods LLC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Georgia Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann JSC, and Wimm-Bill-Dann Ukraine PJSC.

Read More
Carter's, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, sources, and markets branded childrenswear under the Carter's, OshKosh, Skip Hop, Child of Mine, Just One You, Simple Joys, Carter's My First Love, little planet, and other brands in the United States and internationally. The company operates through three segments: U.S. Retail, U.S. Wholesale, and International. Its Carter's products include babies and young children products, such as bodysuits, pants, dresses, knit sets, blankets, layette essentials, bibs, booties, sleep and play products, rompers, and jumpers; and OshKosh brand products comprise playclothes, such as denim apparel products with multiple wash treatments and coordinating garments, overalls, woven bottoms, knit tops, and bodysuits. The company also provides products for playtime, travel, mealtime, bathtime, and homegear, as well as kid's bags and diaper bags under the Skip Hop brand. In addition, it offers bedding, cribs, diaper bags, footwear, gift sets, hair accessories, jewelry, outerwear, paper goods, socks, shoes, swimwear, and toys. The company operates 18,800 wholesale locations, including department stores, national chain stores, and specialty stores. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 980 retail stores. The company also sells its products through its eCommerce websites, such as carters.com, oshkoshbgosh.com, oshkosh.com, and skiphop.com, as well as other international wholesale accounts and licensees. Carter's, Inc. was founded in 1865 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
The following companies are subsidiares of Nokia Oyj: AO Nokia Solutions and Networks, ATG Germany GmbH, Aircom International, Alcatel - Lucent, Alcatel Centroamerica S.A., Alcatel IP Networks Limited, Alcatel Lucent, Alcatel Lucent Middle East North Africa DMCC, Alcatel Lucent Teletas Telekomunikasyon A.S., Alcatel SEL Unterstutzungs GmbH, Alcatel Submarine Networks, Alcatel Submarine Networks Brazil Ltda., Alcatel Submarine Networks Denmark ApS, Alcatel Submarine Networks Hong Kong Limited, Alcatel Submarine Networks Marine, Alcatel Submarine Networks Norway AS, Alcatel Submarine Networks UK Ltd, Alcatel Submarine Networks USA Inc., Alcatel de Venezuela C.A., Alcatel-Lucent Angola Limitada, Alcatel-Lucent Benin SA, Alcatel-Lucent Centro Caribbean Holding Limited, Alcatel-Lucent East Africa Limited, Alcatel-Lucent India Limited, Alcatel-Lucent International, Alcatel-Lucent International Holdings Inc., Alcatel-Lucent Managed Solutions India Private Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Nigeria Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Participations, Alcatel-Lucent Participations Chine, Alcatel-Lucent Portugal S.A., Alcatel-Lucent RT International B.V., Alcatel-Lucent Saudi Arabia Co. Ltd., Alcatel-Lucent Services International B.V., Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell Information Products Co. Ltd., Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (Cabo Verde) Lda, Alcatel-Lucent Trade International AG, Alcatel-Lucent UK Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Ukraine SC, Alcatel-Lucent Vietnam Limited, Amber Networks Inc., Antelec, Apertio Ltd., Avvenu, Bell Laboratories Inc., C-Dot Alcatel-Lucent Research Centre Private Limited, Camilec, Comptel, Comptel Communications EOOD, Comptel Communications Holdings Limited, Comptel Communications India Private Limited, Comptel Communications Limited, Comptel Communications Oy, Comptel Communications Sdn Bhd, Comptel Oy, Comptel Palvelut Philippines Inc., DeepField, Diamond Lane Communications, Digiskin UK, DiscoveryCom Inc., Dopplr, ETA Devices Inc., Eizel Technologies, Elenion Technologies, Elenion Technologies LLC, Enpocket, Epistrophe Limited, Europe*Star Limited, Evolium, F5 Networks Inc., Hunan Huanuo Technology Co. Ltd., IRIS Service Delivery UK Ltd, IRIS Telecommunication Austria GmbH, IRIS Telecommunication France, IRIS Telecommunication GmbH, IRIS Telecommunication Poland sp. z o.o., IRIS Telekomunikasyon Muhendislik Hizmetleri A.S., InTalk Corporation, Intellisync Corporation, Intellisync LLC, Ipsilon Networks Inc., LCC International's U.S., LLC "Nokia Solutions and Networks Ukraine", Loudeye Corp., Lucent Technologies GRL LLC, Lucent Technologies Investment Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Nanjing Telecommunications Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Networks (Thailand) Limited, Lucent Technologies Nicaragua S.A., Lucent Technologies Philippines Inc., Lucent Technologies Qingdao Telecommunications Enterprises Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Qingdao Telecommunications Systems Ltd., MRAC Inc., Matra Nortel Communications, Mesaplexx Limited, MetaCarta Inc., Metrowerks Corporation, Mformation Software Technologies India Pvt Ltd, Motally, NE-Products Oy, NGI Industrial (NGI), Nakina Systems, Nassau Metals Corporation, Navteq, Network Alchemy Inc., Nokatus Insurance Company Designated Activity Company (DAC), Nokia (Shanghai) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Nokia (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Nokia Apps Distribution LLC, Nokia Arabia Limited  100.0, Nokia Asset Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Nokia Bell NV, Nokia Canada Inc., Nokia Costa Rica S.A., Nokia Denmark A/S, Nokia Display Technics GmbH i.L., Nokia Dominican Republic S.A.S., Nokia Egypt S.A.E., Nokia El Salvador S.A. de C.V., Nokia Electronics Bochum GmbH i.L., Nokia Federal Solutions LLC, Nokia Hong Kong Limited, Nokia India Private Limited, Nokia Innovations Japan G.K., Nokia Innovations Oy, Nokia Innovations US LLC, Nokia Investment Management Corporation, Nokia Investments Oy, Nokia Ireland Limited, Nokia Jamaica Limited, Nokia Kunststofftechnik GmbH i.L., Nokia Networks (Chengdu) Co. Ltd., Nokia Networks S.R.L., Nokia New Zealand Limited, Nokia Operations de Guatemala S.A., Nokia Operations de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Nokia Paraguay S.A., Nokia Puerto Rico Inc., Nokia Services Pty Limited, Nokia Services and Networks Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Nokia Shanghai Bell (Hong Kong) Limited, Nokia Shanghai Bell Co. Ltd., Nokia Shanghai Bell Lao Sole Co. Ltd., Nokia Shanghai Bell Philippines Inc., Nokia Shanghai Bell Software Co. Ltd., Nokia Siemens Networks Afghanistan LLC, Nokia Siemens Networks Algerie SARL, Nokia Slovakia A.S., Nokia Solutions Networks Iletisim A.S., Nokia Solutions and Networks (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks (Suzhou) Supply Chain Service Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks AB, Nokia Solutions and Networks Argentina S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Asset Management Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks Australia Pty Ltd, Nokia Solutions and Networks B.V., Nokia Solutions and Networks Baku LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Bangladesh Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Bolivia S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Branch Operations Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks CCC, Nokia Solutions and Networks CJSC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Chile Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks Colombia Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks Czech Republic s.r.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks EOOD, Nokia Solutions and Networks Ecuador S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Ethernet Services Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks GmbH & Co. KG, Nokia Solutions and Networks Hellas Single Member S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Holding Osterreich GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Honduras S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks India Private Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks International Holding GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Investment (China) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Israel Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Italia S.p.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Japan G.K., Nokia Solutions and Networks Kazakhstan LLP, Nokia Solutions and Networks Kft., Nokia Solutions and Networks Korea Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Kuwait Company W.L.L, Nokia Solutions and Networks LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Lanka (Private) Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks MEA FZ-LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Management GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Morocco SARL, Nokia Solutions and Networks Myanmar Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Nederland B.V., Nokia Solutions and Networks Nicaragua S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Nigeria Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Norge AS, Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks OU, Nokia Solutions and Networks Pakistan (Private) Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Peru S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Philippines Inc., Nokia Solutions and Networks Portugal S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks S.R.L., Nokia Solutions and Networks S.p.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks SIA, Nokia Solutions and Networks Schweiz AG, Nokia Solutions and Networks Serbia d.o.o. Beograd, Nokia Solutions and Networks Singapore Pte. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks South Africa Pty. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Sp. z.o.o, Nokia Solutions and Networks System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Taiwan Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Tanzania Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Tashkent LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Technical Services Vietnam Company Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks TraffiCOM Kft., Nokia Solutions and Networks Tunisia SA, Nokia Solutions and Networks UK Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Venezuela C.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o. Banja Luka, Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o. Sarajevo, Nokia Solutions and Networks do Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks telekomunikacijske resitve d.o.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks Osterreich GmbH, Nokia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Nokia Spain S.A., Nokia Technologies (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Nokia Technologies (UK) Limited, Nokia Technologies Oy, Nokia Technology Center Philippines Inc., Nokia Technology GmbH, Nokia Teknologia Oy, Nokia Training Center Russian Federation, Nokia Transformation Engineering & Consulting Services Spain S.L.U., Nokia UK Limited, Nokia US Holdings Inc., Nokia Unterstutzungsgesellschaft GmbH, Nokia Uruguay S.A., Nokia West and Central Africa SA, Nokia of America Corporation, Novarra Inc., OOO Nokia Solutions and Networks, OOO RTK  Network Technologies, OZ Communications, OZ Communications HK Limited, P.T. Lucent Technologies Network Systems Indonesia, PT Nokia Solutions and Networks Indonesia, Pishahang Communications Networks Development Company (Private Joint Stock), Plazes, Plum, R.F.S. (UK) Limited, RFS Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, RFS Holding GmbH, RFS India Telecom Private Limited, RFS Italia SRL, RFS Radio Frequency Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., RFS Radio Frequency Systems (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Radio Frequency Systems (Africa) Pty Ltd, Radio Frequency Systems (S) Pte Ltd, Radio Frequency Systems France, Radio Frequency Systems GmbH, Radio Frequency Systems Inc., Radio Frequency Systems Pty Limited, Radio Frequency Systems de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Ramp Networks Inc., Redback Networks Inc., Rooftop Communications Corporation, SAC AE Design Group Inc., SAC Wireless, SAC Wireless LLC, SAC Wireless of CA Inc., SRA Computer C.V., STC, Sega.com Inc., Smarterphone, Societe de Telecommunication Camerounaise  Sotelcam, Space Time Insight, Symbian Limited, Symbian Ltd, Tahoe Networks, Taiwan International Standard Electronics Limited, Technophone Ltd, Telekol Group, Trolltech (Qt Development Frameworks), Twango, UAB Nokia Solutions and Networks, Unium, User Interface Design, Vertu Holdings Oy, Vienna Systems Corporation, Western Electric Company Incorporated, Western Electric International Incorporated, Withings, Zyzyx Inc., bit-side GmbH, cellity AG, earthmine, and gate5 AG.

Read More
With Downsizing, Alexander Payne takes his compassionate social satire into a new realm -- science fiction. But the picture isnt scary sci-fi or an action-filled adventure. Its another of Paynes looks at ordinary people in trying, if funny, circumstances.

In this case, however, the people arent in Nebraska, as they were in Election, About Schmidt and Nebraska. Or at least, theyre not here for long.

Thats because Paul Safranek (Matt Damon), an occupational therapist at Omaha Steaks and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) decide they want to get downsized -- shrunk to about 5 inches tall and live in the self-contained little worlds where their meager savings make them rich and comfortable.

But, without giving everything away, the rich and comfortable part doesnt work out for Paul, who ends up working in tiny telemarketing while living in a small apartment underneath party animal Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz).

It is in Mirkovics swinging bachelor pad that Paul meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident who was downsized against her will, shipped to the U.S. in a suitcase and, after losing part of her leg, cleans houses and lives in the tenements that the downsizing advocates dont talk about.

Thats the gist of Paynes most ambitious production, a globe-spanning undertaking that required extensive use of visual effects and elaborate soundstage constructions rather than the natural views and settings of his previous work.

The good news is that Payne and his collaborators effectively pull off the effects -- showing, in highly entertaining fashion, full-sized and downsized people in the same shots as pitch people Neil Patrick Harris and Laura Dern try to sell tiny living to the curious and intrigued, like the Safraneks.

And the world created on the soundstage is just as convincing, whether its the contrast between the miniature environment and, say, a package of crackers or the sprawling tenement where Ngoc tends to the sick and dying.

Shes the heart and soul of the script, and Chau, who is likely to be Oscar-nominated for her performance, is the best thing about the movie.

And the spitfire, compassionate character of Ngoc is the most surprising thing about the film -- an illuminating contrast to the schlubby, everyman Paul, whos a bit of a blank slate, and the conniving Dusan, who got little to get big money, albeit not necessarily on the up-and-up.

Working from a script he and writing partner Jim Taylor initially crafted more than a decade ago, Payne has great fun envisioning first, the scientific research that led to downsizing, then the process itself -- in order to get reduced in size, teeth must be pulled or heads will explode.

That gives the first half of Downsizing more zip than the final hour as Paynes juggling of the films environmental theme, the social satire and multiple story lines doesnt always keep all the balls in the air while the picture heads to the finish.

But when it wraps up, Downsizing is thought-provoking, entertaining and satisfying -- and Chaus performance is unforgettable.
Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. operates as bank holding company for the Prosperity Bank that provides financial products and services to businesses and consumers. It accepts various deposit products, such as demand, savings, money market, and time accounts, as well as and certificates of deposit. The company also offers 1-4 family residential mortgage, commercial real estate and multifamily residential, commercial and industrial, agricultural, and non-real estate agricultural loans, as well as construction, land development, and other land loans; consumer loans, including automobile, recreational vehicle, boat, home improvement, personal, and deposit account collateralized loans; and consumer durables and home equity loans, as well as loans for working capital, business expansion, and purchase of equipment and machinery. In addition, it provides internet banking, mobile banking, trust and wealth management, retail brokerage, mortgage services, and treasury management, as well as debit and credit cards. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 273 full-service banking locations comprising 65 in the Houston area, including The Woodlands; 30 in the South Texas area including Corpus Christi and Victoria; 63 in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area; 22 in the East Texas area; 29 in the Central Texas area, including Austin and San Antonio; 34 in the West Texas area, including Lubbock, Midland-Odessa and Abilene; 16 in the Bryan/College Station area; 6 in the Central Oklahoma area; and 8 in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area doing business as LegacyTexas Bank. Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. was founded in 1983 and is based in Houston, Texas.
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, a technology company, focuses in the areas of automation and digitalization in Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. It operates through Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility, Siemens Healthineers, and Siemens Financial Services segments. The Digital Industries segment offers automation systems and software for factories, numerical control systems, motors, drives and inverters, and integrated automation systems for machine tools and production machines; process control systems, machine-to-machine communication products, sensors and radio frequency identification systems; software for production and product lifecycle management, and simulation and testing of mechatronic systems; and cloud-based industrial Internet of Things operating systems. The Smart Infrastructure segment offers products, systems, solutions, services, and software to support sustainable transition in energy generation from fossil and renewable sources; sustainable buildings and communities; and buildings, electrification, and electrical products. The Mobility segment provides passenger and freight transportation, such as vehicles, trams and light rail, and commuter trains, as well as trains and passenger coaches; locomotives for freight or passenger transport and solutions for automated transportation; products and solutions for rail automation; electrification products; and intermodal solutions. The Siemens Healthineers segment develops, manufactures, and sells various diagnostic and therapeutic products and services; and provides clinical consulting services. The Siemens Financial Services segment offers debt and equity investments; leasing, lending, and working capital financing solutions; and equipment, project, and structured financing solutions. Siemens Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Munich, Germany.
A 51-year-old Lincoln man was arrested this week and accused of distributing child pornography, according to court documents.

Michael Malec, of 1625 E St., came under investigation of Lincoln police and the Nebraska Attorney General's Office during a file-sharing investigation, investigators said in an affidavit for his arrest.

A Lincoln police sergeant on the investigation downloaded a video considered to be child pornography from an IP address that investigators traced to Malec's apartment, the affidavit said. Investigators searched his apartment Tuesday and found child pornography and file-sharing software on his computer.

Malec was taken to the Lancaster County jail, and county prosecutors charged him Wednesday with distribution of child pornography.

A judge has ordered him not to contact anyone younger than 18 years old. He remained in jail Thursday on $25,000 bond.

If convicted, Malec faces three to 50 years in prison.
Wabash National Corporation designs, manufactures, and distributes engineered solutions for the transportation, logistics, and distribution industries primarily in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Transportation Solutions and Parts & Services. The Transportation Solutions segment provides dry van and platform trailers; refrigerated trailers; converter dollies; van bodies for dry-freight transportation; cutaway van bodies for commercial applications; service bodies; insulated van bodies; stake bodies; refrigerated truck bodies; and used trailers, as well as laminated hardwood oak flooring products. This segment also offers stainless steel and aluminum tank trailers for the dairy, food and beverage, oil, gas, and chemical end markets; dry bulk trailers; and fiberglass reinforced poly tank trailers. The Parts & Services segment provides aftermarket parts and services; aluminum and steel flatbed bodies, shelving for package delivery, partitions, roof racks, hitches, liftgates, and thermal solutions; and door repair and replacement, collision repair, and basic maintenance services. This segment also offers stainless steel storage tanks and silos, mixers, and processors for the dairy, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, craft brewing, and biotech end markets; and composite products, including truck bodies, overhead doors, and other industrial application products. The company offers its products under the Wabash, DuraPlate, DuraPlateHD, DuraPlate AeroSkirt, and AeroSkirt CX brands, as well as EcoNex brand. It distributes its products directly, as well as through its retail operations and independent dealers to truckload common carriers, leasing companies, private fleet carriers, less-than-truckload common carriers, and package carriers. The company was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Lafayette, Indiana.
A 37-year-old Valparaiso man found guilty of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl maintained his innocence at his sentencing Wednesday, saying there was perjury at his trial in October.

David Hibler Jr. has taken no responsibility for his conduct, Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Dan Packard said.

Hibler violated a position of trust when he sexually assaulted the girl, Packard said, and asked the judge to take into consideration the mental toll testifying had on his victim and her mother.

"Retelling comes at a cost," he said.

Hibler's attorney, Bob Creager, said his client maintains his innocence now, as he did during a hard-fought trial in October. Creager said a jury question that came in the ninth hour of deliberation led him to believe the jury was struggling with whether there was penetration or just contact.

The former qualifies as a first-degree sexual assault charge with a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence; the later as third-degree sexual assault with a five-year maximum.

At trial, Creager said the case was built on the word of the girl and her mother; there was no physical evidence, DNA or recorded confession. And the girl at one point said she thought it might have happened in a dream, he said.

"On the facts, the case is what it is," Creager said Wednesday, asking for the minimum sentence.

The allegation against Hibler came out in March 2016, after the girl told friends at her school, which led to a report to a teacher, then police.

She said Hibler touched her beneath her underwear four or five times between January 2014 and March 2016 at a Lincoln home.

At trial, Packard pointed to an entry in the girl's diary  where she wrote of a deep, dark secret she was trying to find a way to reveal  as corroboration. She had tried to delete it, but investigators found it.

The jury found Hibler guilty of first-degree sexual assault of a child, third-degree sexual assault of a child and another sexual crime.

Wednesday, Hibler declined to make a statement at his sentencing other than to say that there was "provable perjury" at his trial. He plans to appeal.

In the end, Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus read an excerpt from the victim's letter where she said Hibler had betrayed her and wished he was a better man.

"What does make sexual assault cases so unique is the impact on the victims," Ideus said.

Then, she sentenced Hibler to 20 to 25 years in prison. Because the charge has a mandatory minimum, he'll have to serve 17 years before he's eligible for parole.

He'll also be subject to lifetime community supervision and be placed on the sex offender registry.
Allen Simpson, a novice to politics who is running for the Republican nomination for Lancaster County treasurer, has announced his campaign treasurer will be a man with statewide name recognition, retired Major Gen. Roger Lempke.

Lempke, the retired Nebraska Adjutant General and director of the Nebraska Military Department, currently is part of U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer's staff.

In a news release, Lempke praised Simpson, who is a retired commander and comptroller of the Nebraska Air National Guard.

"When Allen Simpson worked for me, I marveled at his stellar level of integrity, expertise and concern about proper use of government funds," Lempke said. "He brings a distinguished career in fiscal management that will greatly benefit Lancaster County."

Current treasurer Andy Stebbing, also a Republican, has said he will run for re-election. Current Lincoln Public Schools board member Matt Schulte also announced he's running for the Republican nomination.
Lancaster County's new roadside memorial sign program will be free to families who want to remember loved ones killed in car crashes on county roads.

A revision in how the program will be funded was the only major change Lancaster County Commissioners made before approving the roadside memorial program this week.

Originally, those who wanted a sign would have needed to pay $100. But the county attorneys office said the county lacked authority under state law to charge the public for the signs. So county keno funds will pay for them instead, in a program expected to cost an average of $300 a year.

Since people can request a memorial sign dating back six years, there might be a few more requested the first couple of years, making those costs a little higher, said County Engineer Pam Dingman.

The program allows family and friends to memorialize people who die in crashes on county roads through official road signs rather than unofficial displays along the road.

Commissioner Jennifer Brinkman, the only board member to vote against the memorial sign program, said she believes the unofficial memorials will continue to exist even though there is the official program available.

It is a grieving issue, she said. If the private memorials are a safety issue, "they should be picked up," she said.

Brinkman also pointed out that a decision to use keno funds had not gone through the traditional annual review process.

Dingman has said the signs allow families and friends to respectfully honor a loved one who died in a fatal crash without creating a safety hazard. The signs also educate the traveling public, she said.

Lancaster County will be the first jurisdiction in the state to have a memorial roadside sign program. In addition to the name of the person being memorialized, each sign will include one of four safety messages: Please Drive Safely; Seat Belts Save Lives; Please Watch for Bicyclists; or Dont Drink and Drive.

The program applies only to accidents on county roads, those outside the city limits. It also does not apply to state highways.

The city of Lincoln allows private memorials within the public right-of-way as close as possible to the location of a fatal crash, said Public Works and Utilities Director Miki Esposito.

The situation is different in cities, which have curbs and side streets, and people have a better, safer way to access a memorial than simply stopping along the road, Dingman said.
Icy streets proved to be a challenge for Lincoln drivers Thursday afternoon, leading to an uptick in vehicle crashes.

The ice began to plague Lincoln-area drivers just in time for the evening commute, icing over car windows and streets. A handful of crashes were reported in the area before 5 p.m., including a series of six crashes that stopped traffic on westbound Rosa Parks Way.

Police also closed areas around 9th and L Streets and Rosa Parks Way. The intersection of Antelope Valley and Salt Creek Roadway was closed for just over an hour until city crews could treat the area with anti-frost brine.

Police responded to 43 crashes by 8:30 p.m. Thursday, with the majority happening after 4:30 p.m., nearly double the amount police would respond to in the same time period on an average day.

In central Nebraska, roads south of Grand Island were described as a "sheet of ice" because of freezing precipitation.

A crash on Interstate 80 closed the westbound lanes from Seward to Goehner for about 30 minutes around 3 p.m. An overturned semi on I-80 also briefly shut down eastbound lanes between the Wood River and Alda exits around noon.

Icing was also reported in the Norfolk area, and icy conditions prompted road closures in the McCook area earlier on Thursday.

Freezing drizzle was expected off and on beginning around 2 p.m. in Lincoln, resulting in slick sidewalks and streets. Total ice accumulation of a light glaze is expected, the Weather Service said. Temperatures will fall to about 28 by 5p.m., and north winds will pick up and could gust to 28 mph.

A city of Lincoln news release said 17 crews overnight have pretreated arterial streets, bridges and major intersections with anti-ice brine. Normal driving conditions were reported Thursday morning.

Wind chills approaching single digits and falling pavement temperatures could cause isolated freezing and slick spots throughout the afternoon and evening commutes. Drivers are urged to use caution.
The competition for leadership in public cloud computing is a fierce three-way race: Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Clearly these three top cloud companies hold a commanding lead in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) markets.

AWS is particularly dominant. According to a 2020 report from Synergy Research Group, Amazon growth continued to closely mirror overall market growth so it maintained its 33% share of the worldwide [cloud] market. Second ranked Microsoft again grew faster than the market and its market share has increased by almost three percentage points in the last four quarters, reaching 18%.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is particularly strong in SaaS, while Google Cloud, with its strength in artificial intelligence, is positioned for aggressive growth as the AI market grows  and is known for offering discounts.

Heres the summary cloud comparison between AWS vs. Azure vs. Google:

Amazon Web Services

With a vast toolset that continues to grow exponentially, Amazons capabilities are unmatched. Yet its cost structure can be confusing, and its focus on public cloud rather than hybrid cloud or private cloud means that interoperating with your data center isnt AWSs top priority.

Check out courses on AWS here!

Microsoft Azure

A close competitor to AWS with an exceptionally capable cloud infrastructure. If youre an enterprise customer, Azure speaks your language  few companies have the enterprise background (and Windows support) as Microsoft. Azure knows you still run a data center, and the Azure platform works hard to interoperate with data centers; hybrid cloud is a true strength.

Check out courses on Microsoft Azure here!

Google Cloud

A well-funded underdog in the competition, Google entered the cloud market later and doesnt have as much of the enterprise focus that helps draw corporate customers. But its technical expertise is profound, and its industry-leading tools in deep learning and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics are significant advantages.

Check out this list of top Google Cloud courses!

More on Google: Google Cloud Platform Review

In-Depth Cloud Compare: AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP:



This Gartner magic quadrant shows the dominant position of AWS vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform. Expect this to change significantly over time as Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and the IBM Cloud keep evolving.

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Overall Pros and Cons

Each of the leading vendors has particular strengths and weaknesses that make them a good choice for certain projects  there is no one size fits all cloud solution.

AWS pros and cons

Amazons biggest strength is its dominance of the public cloud market. In its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide, Gartner noted, AWS has been the market share leader in cloud IaaS for over 10 years.

Part of the reason for its popularity is undoubtedly the massive scope of its operations. AWS has a huge and growing array of available services, as well as the most comprehensive network of worldwide data centers. The Gartner report summed it up, saying, AWS is the most mature, enterprise-ready provider, with the deepest capabilities for governing a large number of users and resources.

Amazons big weaknesses relate to cost. While AWS regularly lowers its prices, many enterprises find it difficult to understand the companys cost structure and to manage those costs effectively when running a high volume of workloads on the service.

In general, however, these cons are more than outweighed by Amazons strengths, and organizations of all sizes continue to use AWS for a wide variety of workloads.

Microsoft Azure pros and cons

Microsoft came later to the cloud market, but gave itself a jump start by essentially taking its on-premises software  Windows Server, Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Dynamics Active Directory, .Net, and others  and repurposing it for the cloud.

A big reason for Azures success: so many enterprises deploy Windows and other Microsoft software. Because Azure is tightly integrated with these other applications, enterprises that use a lot of Microsoft software often find that it ]makes sense for them to use Azure. This builds loyalty for existing Microsoft customers. Also, if you are already an existing Microsoft enterprise customer, expect significant discounts on service contracts.

On the con side, Gartner finds fault with some of the platforms imperfections. While Microsoft Azure is an enterprise-ready platform, Gartner clients report that the service experience feels less enterprise-ready than they expected, given Microsofts long history as an enterprise vendor, it said. Customers cite issues with technical support, documentation, training, and breadth of the ISV partner ecosystem.

Google Cloud Platform pros and cons

Google has a strong offering in containers since Google developed the Kubernetes standard that AWS and Azure now offer. GCP specializes in high compute offerings like Big Data, analytics, and machine learning. It also offers considerable scale and load balancing  Google knows data centers and fast response time.

On the downside, Google is a distant third in market share, perhaps because it doesnt have the traditional relationship with enterprise customers. However, it is quickly expanding both its offerings and its footprint of global data centers.

Gartner said that its clients typically choose GCP as a secondary provider rather than a strategic provider, though GCP is increasingly chosen as a strategic alternative to AWS by customers whose businesses compete with Amazon, and that are more open-source-centric or DevOps-centric, and thus are less well-aligned to Microsoft Azure.

See Related:

AWS vs. Google: Cloud Comparison

Google vs. Azure: Cloud Comparison

Azure vs. Google: Cloud Comparison

See Full Table Vendor Strengths Weaknesses AWS  Dominant market position

 Extensive, mature offerings

 Support for large organizations

 Extensive training

 Global reach  Difficult to use

 Cost management

 Overwhelming options Microsoft Azure Second largest provider

 Integration with Microsoft tools and software

 Broad feature set

 Hybrid cloud

 Support for open source Issues with documentation

 Incomplete management tooling Google  Designed for cloud-native businesses

 Commitment to open source and portability

 Deep discounts and flexible contracts

 DevOps expertise  Late entrant to IaaS market

 Fewer features and services

 Historically not as enterprise focused

x Vendor Strengths Weaknesses AWS  Dominant market position

 Extensive, mature offerings

 Support for large organizations

 Extensive training

 Global reach  Difficult to use

 Cost management

 Overwhelming options Microsoft Azure Second largest provider

 Integration with Microsoft tools and software

 Broad feature set

 Hybrid cloud

 Support for open source Issues with documentation

 Incomplete management tooling Google  Designed for cloud-native businesses

 Commitment to open source and portability

 Deep discounts and flexible contracts

 DevOps expertise  Late entrant to IaaS market

 Fewer features and services

 Historically not as enterprise focused

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Compute

AWS Compute:

Elastic Compute Cloud

Amazons flagship compute service is Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. Amazon describes EC2 as a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. EC2 offers a wide variety of options, including a huge assortment of instances, support for both Windows and Linux, bare metal instances, GPU instances, high-performance computing, auto-scaling, and more. AWS also offers a free tier for EC2 that includes 750 hours per month for up to twelve months.

Container services

Within the compute category, Amazons various container services are increasing in popularity, and it has options that support Docker, Kubernetes, and its own Fargate service that automates server and cluster management when using containers. It also offers a virtual private cloud option known as Lightsail, Batch for batch computing jobs, Elastic Beanstalk for running and scaling web applications, as well as a few other services.

Microsoft Compute:

Virtual Machines

Microsoft Azures primary cloud-based compute service is known as Virtual Machines. It boasts support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, and SAP, as well as enhanced security, hybrid cloud capabilities, and integrated support for Microsoft software. Like AWS, it has an extremely large catalog of available instances, including GPU and high-performance computing options, as well as instances optimized for artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also has a free tier with 750 hours per month of Windows or Linux B1S virtual machines for a year.

Additional Services

Azures version of auto-scaling is known as Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Azure has two container services: Azure Container Service is based on Kubernetes, and Container Services uses Docker Hub and Azure Container Registry for management. It has a Batch service, and Cloud Services for scalable Web applications is similar to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. It also has a unique offering called Service Fabric that is specifically designed for applications with microservices architecture.

Google Compute:

Compute Engine

By comparison, Googles catalog of compute services is somewhat smaller than its competitors. Its primary service is called Compute Engine, which boasts both custom and predefined machine types, per-second billing, Linux and Windows support, automatic discounts, and carbon-neutral infrastructure that uses half the energy of typical data centers. It offers a free tier that includes one f1-micro instance per month for up to 12 months.

Focus on Kubernetes

Like all of the leading cloud vendors, its well set up to offer containers and microservices. Google offers the Kubernetes Engine for organizations interested in deploying containers. And its worth noting that Google has been heavily involved in the Kubernetes project, giving it deep expertise in this area.

See Full Table Vendor Compute Services AWS  EC2

 Elastic Container Service

 Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes

 Elastic Container Registry

 Lightsail

 Batch

 Elastic Beanstalk

 Fargate

 Auto Scaling

 Elastic Load Balancing

 VMware Cloud on AWS Microsoft Azure  Virtual Machines

 Virtual Machine Scale Sets

 Azure Container Service (AKS)

 Container Instances

 Batch

 Service Fabric

 Cloud Services Google Cloud  Compute Engine

 Kubernetes

 Functions

 Container Security

 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

 App Engine

 Knative

x Vendor Compute Services AWS  EC2

 Elastic Container Service

 Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes

 Elastic Container Registry

 Lightsail

 Batch

 Elastic Beanstalk

 Fargate

 Auto Scaling

 Elastic Load Balancing

 VMware Cloud on AWS Microsoft Azure  Virtual Machines

 Virtual Machine Scale Sets

 Azure Container Service (AKS)

 Container Instances

 Batch

 Service Fabric

 Cloud Services Google Cloud  Compute Engine

 Kubernetes

 Functions

 Container Security

 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

 App Engine

 Knative

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Storage

AWS Storage:

SSS to EFS

AWSs storage services include its Simple Storage Service (S3) for object storage, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for persistent block storage (for use with EC2), and Elastic File System (EFS) for file storage. Some of its more innovative storage products include the Storage Gateway, which enables a hybrid storage environment, and Snowball, which is a physical hardware device that organizations can use to transfer petabytes of data in situations where internet transfer isnt practical.

Database and archiving

Amazon has a SQL-compatible database called Aurora, Relational Database Service (RDS), DynamoDB NoSQL database, ElastiCache in-memory data store, Redshift data warehouse, Neptune graph database, and a Database Migration Service. Amazon offers Glacier, which is designed for long-term archival storage at very low rates. In addition, its Storage Gateway can be used to easily set up backup and archive processes.

Azure Storage:

Storage Services

Microsoft Azures basic storage services include Blob Storage for REST-based object storage of unstructured data, Queue Storage for large-volume workloads, File Storage, and Disk Storage. It also has a Data Lake Store, which is useful for big data applications.

Extensive Database

Azures database options are particularly extensive. It has three SQL-based options: SQL Database, Database for MySQL, and Database for PostgreSQL. It also has a Data Warehouse service, as well as Cosmos DB and Table Storage for NoSQL. Redis Cache is its in-memory service and the Server Stretch Database is its hybrid storage service, designed specifically for organizations that use Microsoft SQL Server in their own data centers. Unlike AWS, Microsoft does offer an actual Backup service, as well as Site Recovery service and Archive Storage.

Google Storage:

Unified Storage and more

GCP has a growing menu of storage services available. Cloud Storage is its unified object storage service, and it also has a Persistent Disk option. It offers a Transfer Appliance similar to AWS Snowball, as well as online transfer services.

SQL and NoSQL

When it comes to databases, GCP has the SQL-based Cloud SQL and a relational database called Cloud Spanner that is designed for mission-critical workloads. It also has two NoSQL options: Cloud Bigtable and Cloud Datastore. It does not have backup and archive services.

See Full Table Vendor Storage Services Database Services Backup Services AWS  Simple Storage Service (S3)

 Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

 Elastic File System (EFS)

 Storage Gateway

 Snowball

 Snowball Edge

 Snowmobile  Aurora

 RDS

 DynamoDB

 ElastiCache

 Redshift

 Neptune

 Database migration service  Glacier Azure  Blob Storage

 Queue Storage

 File Storage

 Disk Storage

 Data Lake Store SQL Database

 Database for MySQL

 Database for PostgreSQL

 Data Warehouse

 Server Stretch Database

 Cosmos DB

 Table Storage

 Redis Cache

 Data Factory  Archive Storage

 Backup

 Site Recovery GCP Cloud Storage

 Persistent Disk

 Transfer Appliance

 Transfer Service Cloud SQL

 Cloud Bigtable

 Cloud Spanner

 Cloud Datastore  None

x Vendor Storage Services Database Services Backup Services AWS  Simple Storage Service (S3)

 Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

 Elastic File System (EFS)

 Storage Gateway

 Snowball

 Snowball Edge

 Snowmobile  Aurora

 RDS

 DynamoDB

 ElastiCache

 Redshift

 Neptune

 Database migration service  Glacier Azure  Blob Storage

 Queue Storage

 File Storage

 Disk Storage

 Data Lake Store SQL Database

 Database for MySQL

 Database for PostgreSQL

 Data Warehouse

 Server Stretch Database

 Cosmos DB

 Table Storage

 Redis Cache

 Data Factory  Archive Storage

 Backup

 Site Recovery GCP Cloud Storage

 Persistent Disk

 Transfer Appliance

 Transfer Service Cloud SQL

 Cloud Bigtable

 Cloud Spanner

 Cloud Datastore  None

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Key Cloud Tools

Looking ahead, experts say that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and serverless computing will become key points of differentiation for cloud vendors. All three leading vendors have begun experimenting with offerings in these areas and are likely to expand their services in the coming year.

AWS Key Tools:

Sagemaker to Serverless

As in other areas, AWS has the longest list of services in each of these areas. Highlights include its SageMaker service for training and deploying machine learning models, the Lex conversational interface that also powers its Alexa services, its Greengrass IoT messaging service, and the Lambda serverless computing service.

AI and ML

Among its many AI-oriented services, AWS offers DeepLens, an AI-powered camera for developing and deploying machine learning algorithms to use with things like optical character recognition and image and object recognition. AWS has announced Gluon, an open-source deep learning library designed to make it easy for developers and non-developers alike to build and quickly train neural networks, without having to know AI programming.

Azure Key Tools:

Cognitive Services

Having invested heavily in artificial intelligence, Microsoft offers a machine learning service and a bot service on Azure. It also has Cognitive Services that include a Bing Web Search API, Text Analytics API, Face API, Computer Vision API, and Custom Vision Service. For IoT, it has several management and analytics services, and its serverless computing service is known as Functions.

Supporting MSFT Software

Not surprisingly, some of Azures top tools are geared toward supporting on-premises Microsoft software. Azure Backup is a service that links Windows Server Backup in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016. Visual Studio Team Services hosts Visual Studio projects on Azure.

Google Key Tools:

Big on AI

For Google Cloud Platform, AI and machine learning are big areas of focus. Google is a leader in AI development thanks to TensorFlow, an open-source software library for building machine learning applications. The TensorFlow library is popular and well regarded. A testament to its popularity is that AWS recently added support for TensorFlow.

IoT to Serverless

Google Cloud has strong offerings in APIs for natural language, speech, translation, and more. Additionally, it offers IoT and serverless services, but both are still in beta previews.

See Full Table Vendor AI/ML IoT Serverless AWS SageMaker

Comprehend

 Lex

 Polly

Rekognition

Machine Learning

 Translate

Transcribe

DeepLens

 Deep Learning AMIs

 Apache MXNet on AWS

 TensorFlow on AWS  oT Core

FreeRTOS

Greengrass

 IoT 1-Click

 IoT Analytics

 IoT Button

 IoT Device Defender

 IoT Device Management  Lambda

 Serverless Application Repository Azure  Machine Learning

 Azure Bot Service

 Cognitive Services  IoT Hub

 IoT Edge

 Stream Analytics

 Time Series Insights  Functions GCP Cloud Machine Learning Engine

 Dialogflow Enterprise Edition

 Cloud Natural Language

 Cloud Speech API

 Cloud Translation API

 Cloud Video Intelligence

 Cloud Job Discovery (Private Beta)  Cloud IoT Core (Beta)  Cloud Functions (Beta)

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Hybrid and Multicloud Options

Although all of these vendors have barely dipped their toes into the hybrid and multicloud spaces, they each now offer different tools to give customers more cloud setup flexibility:

AWS Hybrid and Multicloud

AWS Outposts

AWS Wavelength

AWS Local Zones

AWS Snowball

AWS Snowcone

VMware Cloud on AWS

Amazon ECS Anywhere

Amazon EKS Anywhere

Azure Hybrid and Multicloud

Azure Arc

Azure Stack

Azure Active Directory

Azure Backup

Azure Blob Storage

Azure Security Center

Azure Centinel

Google Hybrid and Multicloud

Anthos

Looker

Operations

Cloud Build

Traffic Director

Cloud Run for Anthos

Read more: Top Hybrid Cloud Trends 2021

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: High-Profile Customers

AWS and Azure have boasted the lions share of high-profile enterprise customers for many years, but Google is quickly picking up more renowned enterprises and federal government branches.

AWS Customers

Netflix

CapitalOne

Coca Cola

McDonalds

Stanford University

Volkswagen

General Electric

Petco

Philips

LG

Azure Customers

National Basketball Association

Snowflake

AT&T

AccuWeather

EY

Papa Johns

FedEx

GNC

LOreal

Nationwide

Google Customers

Twitter

Deutsche Bank

PayPal

P&G

Home Depot

UPS

Etsy

Equifax

Target

20th Century Fox

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Pricing

Also see: an in-depth look at AWS vs. Azure vs. Google pricing for cloud services.

Understanding pricing among these three cloud leaders is challenging  and pricing changes; it can also change based on the specific arrangement that a customer wrangles from their service rep. Look below for typical pricing engagements with each provider:

AWS Pricing

Amazons pricing is particularly inscrutable. While it does offer a cost calculator, the many variables involved make it difficult to get accurate estimates. Gartner advised, [Amazons] granular pricing structure is complex; use of third-party cost management tools is highly recommended.

Azure Pricing

Microsoft Azure doesnt make things any simpler. Because of Microsofts complicated software licensing options and use of situation-based discounts, its pricing structure can be difficult to understand without outside help and/or considerable experience.

Google Pricing

By contrast, Google uses its pricing as a point of differentiation. It aims to offer customer-friendly prices that beat the list prices of the other providers. Gartner noted, Google uses deep discounts and exceptionally flexible contracts to try to win projects from customers that are currently spending significant sums of money with cloud competitors.

Key tip: Organizations that are basing their cloud vendor decisions primarily on price will need to analyze each project on a case-by-case basis to get the best deal. And because the vendors drop their prices regularly, they may need to revisit those calculations frequently.

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Availability Zones

Depending on where your international operations are located and what localized regulations you need to follow, one of these top clouds may be optimal for your business model:

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Whats Best for You?

As noted at the beginning of this article, the best public cloud vendor for you is going to depend on your needs and your workloads. In fact, the best vendor for some of your projects might not be the best vendor for your other projects. Many experts believe that the majority of enterprises will invest heavily in multicloud. Indeed, pursuing a multicloud strategy may help lessen vendor lock-in or match workloads with the best available service.

The AWS Choice

You cant go wrong with AWS, due to its rich collection of tools and services and massive scale. The only reason not to choose Amazon is if you want a more personal relationship, something a small boutique shop can offer. At its size, its hard for Amazon to have a close relationship with every customer, but there are managed services providers that can offer that type of attentive focus.

The Azure Choice

Microsofts greatest appeal is, of course, its Microsoft shops. All of your existing .Net code will work on Azure, your server environment will connect to Azure, and you will find it easy to migrate on-premises apps. Futhermore, Azures deep focus on the hybrid cloud will help you bridge the legacy data center environment with the rapidly scalable (and feature-rich) Microsoft cloud.

The Google Choice

Google is growing quickly but is a work in progress. Naturally, the search giant doesnt have a legacy background in dealing with businesses. But it is fully committed and has plowed billions into its cloud efforts. And it is partnered with Cisco, which does know the enterprise. The people who should look at Google now are the ones who looked a year ago and didnt like what they saw. They might be surprised. Google has built its cloud on its strength, which is scale and machine learning. its clearly worth a look.

Bottom line: Certain types of companies will be more attracted to certain cloud vendors. So again, if your firm runs Windows and a lot of Microsoft software, youll probably want to investigate Azure. If you are a small, web-based startup looking to scale quickly, you might want to take a good look at Google Cloud Platform. And if you are looking for the provider with the broadest catalog of services and worldwide reach, AWS will probably be right for you.

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: Vendor Pages

Look below for links to the AWS, Azure, and Google vendor pages about a variety of tools, from compute to storage to advanced cloud tools:
Mumbai: Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif will be seen together again in Ali Abbas Zafars Tiger Zinda Hai. The two are reuniting on-screen after five years, with the sequel to 2012 blockbuster, Ek Tha Tiger.

In an interview with a leading tabloid, Katrina was brimming with praises for her co-star. "Wherever life takes me, Salman will always be family," Katrina Kaif revealed.

The Fitoor actress also asserted that she does not lean on male superstars for her success. "If a female actor feels that working with the Khans is synonymous to leaning on them for success, she simply shouldn't work with them. However, I've always approached my career with the aim of collaborating with the most creative minds," the actress stated.

Katrina also called Aamir Khan one of the brightest minds in the country, and said that Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are one of the best talents in the country and that she gets to learn a lot from these superstars.

"Why wouldn't I want to learn from them? I like to work on happy sets, with friends who share the same passion as I do," Katrina said.

"A female actor doesn't necessarily need to play the lone protagonist to display her strength. Why can't we have stronger female characters in bigger setups? That's equally empowering. What we offer in this film is a fresh perspective. We have a strong woman standing alongside a powerful man. There's Salman, who plays an authoritative character, but there is also me, matching that bravado," the actress stated.

Produced by Aditya Chopra, 'Tiger Zinda Hai' is set to release on December 22.
Screengrabs from the video Zaira Wasim had posted about the incident.

Mumbai: A court here on Wednesday granted bail to Vikas Sachdev, a private firm executive arrested for allegedly molesting teenage Bollywood actor Zaira Wasim onboard a Delhi-Mumbai flight on December 9.

City civil and sessions court judge A D Deo granted bail to Sachdev (39) on a personal bond of Rs 25,000.

The court also directed Sachdev, a resident of suburban Kandivli, to visit the Sahar police station on the first Sunday of every month, and not influence any witness in the case.

Opposing the bail, Assistant Public Prosecutor Munna Inamdar said the relief should not be granted to Sachdev since the offence is of serious nature.

Defence lawyer Harvinder Singh Anand said the complaint lodged by the actor with police was an afterthought as she had not raised the issue with the cabin crew of the flight.

He also argued that Sachdev was illegally detained by the police before his arrest.

The court accepted the defence argument and granted bail to Sachdev.

Sachdev is working as western regional manager with Sun Broadcast in Mumbai.

Wasim had accused Sachdev of molesting her onboard the Mumbai-bound Vistara flight on December 9.

The incident was disclosed by the 'Dangal' actor herself, who had posted a video narrating her ordeal on the flight.

Following an outrage, Sachdev was booked under section 354 (Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of IPC, and relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) since the actor is a minor, and was arrested a day after the incident on December 10.

"He kept nudging my shoulder and continued to move his foot up and down my back and neck," the actor had said in an Instagram post soon after she alighted at the Mumbai airport.
Though the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights asked the school run by the Mar Thoma Church Educational Society to take back the students, the school approached the High Court, which on December 12 stayed the decision. (Representational Image)

Thiruvananthapuram: Hugging between a boy and a girl in a higher secondary school is not common in Kerala. So when two students of St Thomas Central School, Mukkolokkal, displayed their affection publicly during a youth festival held on the campus on July 21, the management dismissed the boy and removed the girl from the school register.This has brought to focus the issues of discipline, privacy and child rights. Does the school have the power to regulate the behaviour of students and what constitutes a decent behaviour and indecent behaviour? However, the CBSE has decided not to harm the students concerned  the boy aged 17 of 12th class and the girl aged 16 of 11th. CBSE regional officer Dinesh Ram clarified that a decision will be taken keeping in mind the interest of the students and that they would not lose their academic year.

Though the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights asked the school run by the Mar Thoma Church Educational Society to take back the students, the school approached the High Court, which on December 12 stayed the decision. Kochi-based psychiatrist Dr C.J. John says that the increasing cases of issues reported from campuses worried him about the disabilities in teaching skills.

Teaching is not all about knowledge transfer only. It is also about application of psychological skills. The point of discussion is whether the hug was long or short. Even if it was a hug with sexual tendency it was natural at teenage. The problem is that teachers do not have the psychological skills to deal with it. They opt for the easier way of disciplining the child, that is throw them out, says Dr John. Dr Aravind Thampi, assistant professor at the psychology department of SN College, Chempazhanthy, said that the issue is not who is right and who is wrong.

It has to do with cultural differences with many students from other states and NRIs also in the list. There is an identity crisis for students caught between the real world and the virtual world. The teachers are caught in the time warp to adapt to the changing times. The management is caught between the volatility of the students and the expectations of discipline. The teachers fail to individually connect to students in a class where the teacher student ratio is 1:40 or above. The BEd curriculum is inadequate to have a proper psychological approach while dealing with such problems. This makes the managements and the teachers take the easiest route throw out the undisciplined, said Mr Thampi.

Mr. Balamurali, founder, Greenvalley International School, Peyad, Thiruvananthapuram, said that parents and teachers should have more trust in students. It will enable us to have an open discussion on any issues they face, including attraction towards opposite sex at teenage. If children are brought up in an environment where they like to seek the help from teachers and parents for their adolescent problems, they will be self-disciplined and mature enough to solve their teenage problems. Teachers and schools should stop treating children like dump fellows without having values; rather they need to inculcate moral values and social conventions through dialogue and reflection. By threatening and creating fear we can't inculcate moral values in them, said Mr Balamurali.

Mr Anil Philip, whose child was a former student of the school, thinks that the schools follow double standards. This same school did not have the guts to sack a teacher who allegedly molested a girl student of class V a few years back. Despite several complaints, nothing happened and finally, the student had to leave the school, said Mr Philip.

Meanwhile, the alumni of the school have initiated a campaign in the change.org seeking the readmission of the students in the school. The petition initiated by one Preeti Krishnan in the portal has over 2500 till now. The petition says: As alumni, we are extremely upset and dismayed at how our alma mater has chosen to respond to what very apparently seems to be a rather innocuous adolescent behaviour, in which no harassment or assault was involved.

We believe that the school should aim to develop future citizens who can participate in the world in thoughtful and creative ways. Given how men and women are encouraged to participate equally in all aspects of our lives - science, politics, technology, medicine - it seems anachronistic that the management of a co-educational institution believes that hugging and handshakes between a boy and a girl on the school premises were against the discipline and conduct of the school rules.

It depends on cultural context: Aravind Thampi

Experts are of the view that there are different types of hugs indicating different things in different contexts, different people and different cultures. There is the friendly hug, the romantic hug, passionate hug and so on. The hug which may seem offensive for one person may not be offensive to another person or even to the same person in a different situation.

Aravind Thampi, assistant professor of SN College, Chempazhanthi told DC that there was no definite criteria to distinguish each hug. It depends on the cultural context. For example, people of Britain do not publically express affection. They are very formal and may wish you by just a handshake. People of America on the other hand, are passionate in their relationships. They express friendship through a hug, said.

The meaning of each hug may vary according to situation and also on the person whom you hug. There are no hard and fast rules which govern them. It may even vary from person to person, Mr Thampi said. However, one way of identifying different forms of hugs depended on duration and intimacy. However, there are no rules that define each type of hug. They are also very much depended on the culture in which one lived, said Mr Thampi.
The lifespan of the jet would be a minimum of 30 years just like any other frontline combat aircraft. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Faced with depleting strength of its fighter squadron, the Indian Air Force on Wednesday issued the request for proposal (RFP) to state-run aerospace behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the procurement of 83 Tejas light combat aircraft at a cost of over Rs 50,000 crore.

The IAF had earlier placed an order with the HAL for 40 Tejas aircraft.

The RFP for 83 Tejas light combat aircraft has been issued on Wednesday, setting the ball rolling for finalising the contract for the mega deal, official sources said.

The Defence Acquisition Council, the Defence Ministrys highest decision-making body on procurement, had in November last year approved purchase of 83 Tejas Mark 1 A by IAF at a cost of Rs 50,025 crore.

The sources said the final deal for the procurement is likely to be inked within the next five months.

They said out of the 83 LCA, 10 will be used for training purposes.

According to official figures, 14 squadrons of the MiG 21, MiG 27 and MiG 29 are due for retirement in the next 10 years which will bring down the fighter squadron strength to 19 by 2027 from the current 33.

The strength may be further reduced to 16 by 2032.

In an interview to PTI, HAL Chairman and Managing Director T. Suvarna Raju had said most of the 42 modifications in Tejas sought by the IAF, including weaponisation of the aircraft, had been carried out.

Tejas is a four-and-half generation world class fighter jet. There is no doubt about it. We can improve its various parameters. We are proud of Tejas. Every Indian will be proud of it. We will ensure enhancement in its quality and performance, Raju had said.

There have been views in the IAF that the Tejas aircraft was not enough to maintain its combat readiness and it needed to quickly procure a fleet of foreign single engine fighters to deal with any possible security challenges faced by the country in the backdrop of the dwindling size of its fighter fleet.

The IAF believes that it has to have a wide mix of aircraft to maintain an operational edge over its adversaries.

The HAL CMD had said that the four-and-half generation Tejas would be able to deliver what is expected of it.

The lifespan of the jet would be a minimum of 30 years just like any other frontline combat aircraft, he said.

The combat jets are classified under various generations depending on their avionics, capability and weapons systems.
Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa briefed the Senate  the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday. (Photo: File | AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has said that he will support any initiative of the civilian government to resolve issues with India through talks, according to a media report.

In a rare move, the Army chief briefed the Senate  the upper house of the parliament - on security situation and regional issues on Tuesday.

During the briefing, General Bajwa supported the peace talks with India, the BBC Urdu reported.

"We can resolve issues with India through talks instead of war. In this situation if the government decides to hold talks with India, then the army would back the government," he was quoted as saying.

General Bajwa also said that his forces were in favour of good ties with all neighbours including India.

"We want good ties with all neighbours including India and Afghanistan," he told the Senators.

The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago.

General Bajwa was accompanied by Director General of Military Operations Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Major General Asif Ghafoor.

It was for the first time in six years that the military leadership had come to the Parliament House to brief lawmakers on the security situation.

Last time it was in May 2011 when then army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha had briefed a joint session of parliament about the Abbottabad operation in which Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces.

Officials provided only limited information about the four-hour meeting between General Bajwa and lawmakers but the media reported the details of the discussion quoting senators.

Senate chairman Raza Rabbani criticised lawmakers for leaking details of the in-camera briefing by the army chief, saying they had violated the sanctity of the upper house.

"If we keep up with the same attitude, no one will be able to take the house into confidence," he said.

He added that senators should know that in-camera sessions are not spoken about in the public.

Rabbani forwarded the matter to the House Business Advisory Committee for breaching the privilege of the Senate.

He tasked the committee, which will include leaders of the house and opposition in Senate and parliamentary leaders of all political parties, to investigate the matter and devise a strategy for future in-camera sessions to prevent similar situations.
The BJP, meanwhile, said the Prime Minister had not uttered a single word for which he need apologise and accused the Congress of venting frustration of its defeat in the assembly polls by stalling Parliament. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

New Delhi: The war of words between the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress continued on Wednesday, both inside and outside Parliament, over Prime Minister Narendra Modis conspiracy with Pakistan remarks.

The Congress, along with other opposition members, stalled both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, storming the Well in both Houses and demanding an apology from Modi for the statements against his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, during the Gujarat election campaign.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said Modi should only say that he said it to win the Gujarat election.

The BJP, meanwhile, said the Prime Minister had not uttered a single word for which he need apologise and accused the Congress of venting frustration of its defeat in the assembly polls by stalling Parliament.

Ahead of the second phase of voting in the Gujarat campaign, Modi had alleged that Pakistan was trying to influence the assembly elections and that the discussion took place at a secret dinner meeting at the house of former Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar where Singh, former vice president Hamid Ansari and an ex-Indian Army chief was present with the Pakistan envoy and a former Pakistan foreign minister.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told reporters that its the Congress that should come clean on the dinner meeting as its leader Anand Sharma had first denied any such event before accepting it. He also said that Congress leaders, including its former chief Sonia Gandhi, her daughter Priyanka and many others, had humiliated Modi on multiple occasions and the opposition party never tendered an apology to him.

But the Congress said Modi should at least clarify his remark which he allegedly used to win the Gujarat election, saying had it been Atal Behari Vajpayee as prime minister, he would have apologised 10 times.

The prime minister is trying to break the country and blemish the image of good people, senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters outside Parliament.

He said if Modi had information about a secret meeting between senior Congress leaders and the Pakistan envoy and its ex- foreign minister, which was anti-national, then why did he not use the Intelligence Bureau and other agencies at his disposal.

Azad said opposition parties have demanded that the prime minister clarify the serious allegation.

When the countrys prime minister publicly accuses Manmohan Singh of conspiring with Pakistan then it is a very serious allegation and he should clarify. If he has a problem in seeking an apology, then the prime minister should say that to win the Gujarat election he threw a stunt, a gola (ball). It is acceptable to us, said Azad.

He said had Vajpayee been there (as prime minister), he would have apologised 10 times. It depends on who is the prime minister.

If the prime minister is taking his words back, we will accept that too. Then he need not apologise. He should only say that he said it to win the Gujarat election, he said.

Azad said Modi should state in Parliament that the BJP was losing in Gujarat and it had no other option but to concoct the story of conspiracy with Pakistan, seek public sympathy and portray Congress leaders as anti-national.

Let the prime minister say and admit that his job is done and now the BJP has won the election, hence I take back my words. We will accept that. The one who has levelled allegations, should explain. If there is truth in his allegations, the people concerned be punished. We are ready for it, he said.

It is the culture of the BJP to abuse, call people anti-national, beat them, fire bullets at them. This has become an order of the day, he alleged.

There is only one way in a democracy and that is Parliament. The prime minister and the former prime minister, who is facing the allegation, both are members of Parliament, he said, adding that Modi should clarify in Parliament.
OUTA demanded that the university reconsider its decision and host the congress as scheduled so that its image is not tarnished.

Hyderabad: Osmania University Teachers Association (OUTA), condemned the sudden and unilateral decision of Osmania University authorities expressing their inability to host the Indian Science Congress at the last minute.

The Vice Chancellor had informed the Indian Science Congress Association and the press that they were not in a position to host the 105th Indian Science Congress scheduled due to certain issues in the campus, alleged OUTA.

The association said the stature of the university would take an irrecoverable beating with the decision. It condemned the sudden and unilateral decision.

OUTA demanded that the university reconsider its decision and host the congress as scheduled so that its image is not tarnished.

The association alleged that for the last four months about 20 committees consisting of faculty members had been working relentlessly for the ISC. Many of them had completed a major part of their assigned tasks. The inability expressed by the Vice Chancellor to host the congress had rendered all their efforts useless, it said.

OUTA president Prof. Battu Satyanarayana said, In the 105-year history of the Indian Science Congress (ISC) it has never been postponed barely two weeks before it was to commence. Security problems at the University are being blamed for the postponement of the event, whereas the university is functioning normally and peacefully. Citing the Indian Science Congr-ess as a reason, the semester examinations were postponed and the messes on the campus are closed. Because of this, the academic calendar of the university is disturbed.

He added, about 16,000 delegates have registered to participate in the congress after paying the registration fees and have made their travel and accommodation arrangements. A number of Bhatnagar awardees, Nobel laureates and plenary speakers, ISCA awardees and eminent personalities had expressed their consent to participate in the congress.

Postponing the ISC undermines the reputation of the university as this event is being hosted as a part of centenary celebrations, he said. The students, research scholars, faculty members and ot-her stakeholders were greatly pained, he said. The university had hosted the congress successfully five times without any problem, Prof. Satyanarayana said.
New Delhi: It was a bittersweet victory for the BJP in Himachal Pradesh, where it came back to power but its chief ministerial candidate and stalwart Prem Kumar Dhumal lost to his one-time protege Rajendra Singh Rana of the Congress. Prof. Dhumal contested this time from a new constituency, Sujanpur, against a popular opponent who is well known for his social work in the area.

Many felt this could be the last electoral battle for Prof. Dhumal as he is just two years short of the BJPs unofficial age bar of 75.

All eyes are now on the party leadership, which will take a call on who will be chief minister. The names of Union minister J.P. Nadda and senior leader Jairam Thakur have started doing the rounds in the state as the partys parliamentary board appointed Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar as central observers for the legislature party meeting to chose its new leader.

Many felt internal strife was one of the main reasons for Prof. Dhumals defeat as some factions within the BJP were miffed over him being declared the partys face in the hill state. Some even claimed it was hard for Prof. Dhumal to defeat Mr Rana, who had learnt all the political tricks from him.

The party leadership had also announced his name just a few days before the state went to the polls as factionalism in the state unit is something the BJP leadership has been battling for many years now.

Prof. Dhumal, who shares a good personal rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was asked by the BJP leadership to contest from a new Assembly seat and not from his traditional seat of Hamirpur.
Bengaluru: Unlike Gujarat, where it had to rely heavily on three young leaders, Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani to put up a decent fight against the well-oiled poll machinery of the BJP, the Congress is more equipped in terms of resources and has no dearth of leaders to contest the 2018 Assembly polls in Karnataka.

"The party has already picked up pace by organising programmes like Mane-Manege Congress and almost completing the process of forming committees in nearly 54,000 of the 56000 booths in the state. The Congress is better equipped here unlike in Gujarat, where its party apparatus itself was non-existent," said a senior party leader.

Besides, the party has leaders, who can match the popularity of the BJP's, he points out. If the BJP has its state chief, B. S. Yeddyurappa as its mascot, the ruling party has its own mascots like Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, KPCC president, Dr G. Parameshwara, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, M. Mallikarjuna Kharge, and Energy minister, D. K. Shivakumar, he notes. "When it comes to urban areas we have leaders like Dinesh Gundu Rao and Krishna Byregowda. Whereas in Gujarat, except for AICC president, Rahul Gandhi, we did not have a credible state level leadership. So it would be naive to compare Gujarat with Karnataka. Here we can fight the BJP man-to-man," the Congress leader asserted.

Pointing out that the party can take on the BJP on issues too , he says that if it relies too heavily on hardcore Hindutva as it is doing already, the party will focus on regional sentiments using pro-Kannada issues to counter it.

Moreover, he believes that since taking charge of Karnataka, AICC general secretary, K. C. Venugopal has succeeded in infusing confidence and enthusiasm among party workers here to prepare for the 2018 polls.
Mr Trump himself complained in a tweet that defeated Dems and the media were out to demean the tax package but the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. (Photo: AP)

Washington: A triumphant President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their USD 1.5 trillion tax overhaul on Wednesday as a historic victory for the American people. The American people, however, will need some convincing.

As Mr Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement and the biggest tax changes in a generation some Republicans warned that the party could face a painful political backlash against an overhaul that offers corporations and wealthy taxpayers the biggest benefits and was projected to trigger the loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

There was no hint of anxiety at the White House, though, as the president and congressional Republicans pushed any qualms aside and revelled in a much-needed win at the end of a year marked by GOP infighting and political stumbles.

We are making America great again, Mr Trump declared, personally thanking his little team of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticised.

I dont know if well have bigger moments, but we hope to, said Mr Trump.

The President was expected to sign the bill at a later date for technical reasons. In fact, the signing may be postponed until the start of the new calendar year in order to delay USD 120 billion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and spare Republicans from having to explain them in an election year.

The tax package provides a deep cut in the corporate rate, from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. On the individual side, about 80 per cent of American households will get tax cuts in 2018, while about 5 per cent will pay more, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Centre.

People who make less than USD 25,000 will see an average tax cut of USD 60; those who earn between USD 49,000 and USD 86,000 will get about USD 900, and those in the top 1 per cent of income earning more than USD 733,000 will receive around USD 51,000 in tax savings, the policy centre said.

The cuts will come at a price. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the legislation will add USD 1.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Some of the Presidents strongest allies conceded that voters may not immediately warm to the new law.

Andy Surabian, a senior aide for a pro-Trump super PAC, likened the Presidents position to that of Ronald Reagan, who struggled through low approval ratings early in his presidential term after Congress passed a tax cut that led to huge Republican losses in the 1982 midterm elections. Reagan went on to a sweeping re-election in 1984 after the economy improved.

Even if we dont start seeing positive effects in 2018, the important thing here is President Mr Trump sets himself up to win re-election in 2020, said Mr Surabian.

GOP strategists and candidates alike called on MrTrump to launch an immediate public relations tour to sell the plan to help avert an anti-Republican tsunami in 2018.

People dont understand it, said Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, though he still called passage a massive win for Mr Trump and the GOP.

Read: Christmas victory for Trump: Senate passes tax reform bill

Only about 1 in 3 voters have supported the legislation in recent days, according to several polls. About half of Americans believe the plan will hurt their personal finances. And 2 in 3 voters say the wealthy will get the most benefits, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week

The White House said on Wednesday that Mr Trump will actively promote the bill. Aides argued that media coverage has not accurately portrayed the benefits and that people will come around as they feel the payoff.

Mr Trump himself complained in a tweet that defeated Dems and the media were out to demean the tax package but the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon.

Democrats, who unanimously opposed the tax plan in Congress, were furious about the new policy yet upbeat about the potential political fallout in 2018s elections. They need to flip 24 House seats and just two Senate seats to take control of each chamber.

Asked if the tax bill will help Republicans hold the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leaned into a microphone and said, Let. Them. Think. That.

The bill goes far beyond taxes.

While it does not repeal the law known as Obamacare, the legislation finalised by the House on Wednesday attacks a central tenet of the health care system by eliminating the requirement that all Americans have health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office says elimination of the individual mandate will boost health care costs by about 10 per cent for those with coverage and leave 13 million additional Americans without health insurance in 10 years.

Millions of people will still remain covered under the laws Medicaid expansion and health care exchanges, but Mr Trump cast the package as a shadow repeal.

We have essentially repealed Obamacare, the President declared.

On taxes, the first modest effects will be felt in February paychecks.

People living in high-tax states like New York and California may ultimately pay more. Among those who benefit, the wealthy will make out far better than the working-class voters who fuelled Mr Trumps victory in 2016.

Mr Trump said on Wednesday the bill will spur economic growth as corporations, flush with cash, increase wages and hire more workers. Democrats questioned, even mocked that prediction.

Reflecting the political risks, some of the nations most vulnerable House Republicans voted against the bill.

Rep Peter King, R-NY, one of 12 GOP House members to vote no, said the tax plan would hurt many people in high-tax states. The bill imposes a USD10,000 cap on taxpayers who deduct their state, local and property taxes. Currently, there is no limit on how much in state and local taxes you can deduct.

All but one of the GOP no votes came from like-minded Republicans facing re-election in 11 months in moderate districts across New Jersey, New York and California.

The road to a Democratic House majority, if there is one, runs through these districts.

All the salesmanship in the world wont change the reality that the tax overhaul overwhelmingly favours the rich, Democratic critics said.

People think its unfair. They want tax reform, they dont want tax cuts for the wealthy, said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. And I think people will realise theyve been sold a pig in a poke.
Police have questioned Benjamin Netanyahu in two cases involving possible bribery, fraud and breach of trust. (Photo: File)

Jerusalem: An Israeli TV reporter says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologised to him in a phone call after mocking him in a speech.

Netanyahu mimicked veteran journalist Moshe Nussbaum of Channel 2 News - who has been covering the prime minister's ongoing corruption investigations - in a speech to his Likud party this week. Nussbaum told Army Radio on Thursday that he told Netanyahu he was not offended.

An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, confirmed the call.

Netanyahu has lashed out at media over coverage of the investigations.

Police have questioned Netanyahu in two cases involving possible bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and says the allegations are part of a political witch hunt by hostile media.
5 Times Shah Rukh Khan Was Just Unfortunate Not To Win The National Award For Best Actor
As we are always excited to see the upcoming films of our favorite Bollywood stars whenever they release, these films do give jitters to these Bollywood celebs as it is a test of their hard work and performance. Just like the times when we had pre-examination jitters, stars also go through the same feelings before the release of their films.

We all have fond memories of our times at school and the friends who were always there for us and were partners in crime. A number of Bollywood celebrities also attended same schools and a few of them were even in the same class. Here are 11 Bollywood celebrities who were in the same school or same class:

Krishna Shroff-Athiya Shetty- The daughters of Suneil Shetty and Jackie Shroff are good friends and attended the same school.





Shraddha Kapoor and Tiger Shroff- Both go a long way back and attended the same school in Mumbai where they were also in the same class. They were also 2 years senior to Krishna Shroff and Athiya Shetty.





Karan Johar and Twinkle Khanna- The director and former actress attended the same boarding school together in Maharashtra and Karan spilled the beans on their time together in his autobiography.





Varun Dhawan and Arjun Kapoor- The actors were in the same acting class during their initial days when they were preparing to enter Bollywood.





Karan Johar and Apoorva Mehta- The famous director and the CEO of Dharma productions are childhood friends as they studied in same class and school.





Salman Khan and Aamir Khan- Mr. Perfectionist recently spilled the beans that he and Salman Khan were classmates for a year though they didn't talk during those days. They were in 2nd grade together.





Anushka Sharma and Sakshi Dhoni - The two ladies have more in common than just cricketer spouses. The two attended the same school in Assam and were also classmates in St Mary's School, Margherita.




Bollywood films are one of the major reasons a particular location becomes a tourist hotspot and people from all over the world start thronging to these places. The locations from iconic films such as DDLJ, Dil Chahta Hai, Rang De Basanti etc. have become a must-visit for anyone who likes to travel and is bitten by Bollywood bug.

While a majority of Bollywood films are shot in film studios and mostly the areas in and around the City of Seven Islands, there are times when popular films have been shot at an actor's home. Not many people are aware of that but some of the biggest hits were shot at homes of popular stars and celebrities. Here are 7 Bollywood films you didn't know were shot at actor's homes:

Fan: SRK's 2016 film was shot at his house Mannat. There are scenes where Gaurav goes to meet his idol Aryan Khanna outside his home and Aryan's home is the real-life home of Shah Rukh Khan. All the crowd gathered outside is real and no CGI was deployed.





Bombay Talkies: To celebrate 100 years of Indian Cinema, 4 filmmakers came together to make 4 different short films. Anurag Kashyap directed Vineet Kumar Singh and Amitabh Bachchan at the latter's Mumbai Bungalow Prateeksha.





Bajrangi Bhaijaan: Kabir Khan shot a few remaining scenes of the Salman Khan blockbuster at Salman Khan's Panvel farmhouse.





Dutt Biopic: A few scenes of the Ranbir Kapoor starrer were shot at Sanjay Dutt's Imperial Heights home and the neighbors filed a complaint against the crew for causing discomfort.





Bombay Talkies: The Karan Johar directed segment in the film which starred Rani Mukerji, Randeep Hooda and Saqib Saleem was shot at his house.





Veer Zaara: The Yash Chopra romance was shot at Saif Ali Khan's Pataudi palace in Pataudi. The palace has been a favorite among the filmmakers and films like Eat Pray Love and Rang De Basanti have also been shot here.





Ki & Ka: Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan made a cameo in Ki & Ka and their scenes were shot at their home.




OPENING FRIDAY

DARKEST HOUR. Gary Oldman delivers an Oscar-bound performance as Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940 in an entertaining film that burrows into the dealings of the British war cabinet. PG-13. (Grand) Grade: B

DOWNSIZING. This tale of an Omaha occupational therapist who is shrunk to 5 inches tall is a thought-provoking sci-fi satire from director/co-writer Alexander Payne. R. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe) Grade: B+

FATHER FIGURES. This listless, low-energy and profoundly unentertaining "movie" is more accurately described as a nearly two-hour borderline hostage situation, with torture involving bad, offensive and unfunny comedy. R. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood) Grade: F

PITCH PERFECT 3. Pitch Perfect 3 jettisons the body humor for action-adventure, and leans so far into the weird that its very, very strange, yet sometimes amusing. At least the musics fun. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe). Grade: C+

NOW SHOWING

COCO. "Coco" is a thrilling and joyous vision, a celebration of life and the loving tradition of the Day of the Dead. PG. (Grand) Grade: A

THE DISASTER ARTIST. James Franco's movie about the making of what may be the worst movie ever is in fact, very good and very funny. R. (Grand) Grade: B+

FERDINAND. With a lovely voice performance from John Cena, the spirit of Ferdinand the bull shines through, but the rest of the story filler is mostly forgettable. PG. (Grand, Edgewood, SouthPointe) Grade: C

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. This wild and wacky musical biopic of circus impresario P.T. Barnum is a profoundly confused and muddled film, with a story thats at once too thin and too busy. PG. (Grand, East Park). Grade: D+

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. This re-imagining of the Robin Williams movie feels like a John Hughes movie dropped into an Indiana Jones films that, thanks to its actors, works. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, SouthPointe). Grade: C+

STAR WARS: The LAST JEDI. Though there are countless familiar broad strokes  rebel escapes, Jedi soul-searching, daddy issues  "The Last Jedi" has discovered some new moves in the galaxy far, far away. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe in 3-D and 2-D) Grade: B

THE STAR. Featuring a brave donkey and a wisecracking dove, the animated film is an attempt to give the Christmas story less children's Bible and more "Kung Fu Panda" and ends up being a combination of the two. PG. (Grand) Grade: C+

WONDER. The film about a boy overcoming a physical setback likely will make you cry, but you wont feel manipulated into doing so  those tears are rightfully earned. PG. (SouthPointe) Grade: B

NOTE: Theaters are for Friday only and are subject to change the other days of the week.
Following Googles threats to remove YouTube from its devices, Amazon has filed a trademark request for Amazon Tube and Open Tube

It seems like the little tussle between Google and Amazon over YouTube is set to get pettier. American website, TV Answerman reports that the US Patent and Trademark office has received a trademark request from Amazon for Amazon Tube and Open Tube. The name itself suggests that online retailer may be planning to unveil its own YouTube competitor after Google decided to no longer support YouTube on Amazon devices.

While YouTube hasnt been specifically mentioned, Amazon does mention that the service would offer non-downloadable pre-recorded audio, visual and audiovisual works via wireless networks on a variety of topics, which sounds a lot like what YouTube does. Its not yet known when, or even if Amazon plans to launch the service but its a pretty clear indication that the online retails is backing down from Google.

To recall, the issue started after Google removed support for YouTube on Amazons Echo Show device. A few months later, Google said that it would pull down YouTube from the FireTV Stick next year onwards. Apparently, the reason for this move is because Amazon refuses to sell Google products that directly compete with its own lineup of devices, This includes the Chromecast and Google Home.

Starting its own video sharing service could helps Amazon negate the problems caused by the lack of availability of YouTube. However, the launch of the service may lead to a messy courtroom battle between the two companies. There have also been reports that the two companies have been engaged in productive discussions with the aim of reaching an agreement for the benefit of our mutual customers. For its part, Amazon has reportedly resumed the sales of Chromecast on its website, which could help ensure that FireTV stick users wont miss out on YouTube.
The monitor has a refresh rate of 144Hz and response time of 1ms, and packs HDR support, and an aspect ratio of 32:9

Taking the gaming industry in India to a new level, Samsung India on Wednesday launched the world's biggest QLED curved monitor for gaming enthusiasts and business professionals for Rs 1,50,000. The 49-inch ultra-wide curved monitor packs 'High Dynamic Range' (HDR) technology which offers better contrast, depth and range to colours. It also features quantum-dot technology and a wider colour spectrum.

"Samsung has always been at the forefront of consumer-centric innovations and the launch of QLED curved monitor is in line with that very commitment," Puneet Sethi, Vice-President, Consumer Electronics Enterprise Business, Samsung India, told reporters here.

The bezel-less curved QLED monitor with aspect ratio of 32:9 provides a motion picture response time with low input lag (which is how fast the screen responds to commands), thus reducing eye strain and preventing "ghost" images, the company said. The monitor uses "eye saver mode" and "flicker free technology" which enhances eye comfort, obstructs blue light, thereby reducing eye fatigue. Connectivity options include multiple input ports that make it easier to connect the display with any device.

The monitor is available at Samsung shops and will be available at retail stores soon.
Property tycoons the Candy brothers have won a 132m high court case brought by a former friend and business associate whose claims of harassment and intimidation have been quashed.

Mark Holyoake sued Nick and Christian Candy over a 12m loan they made to him in 2011 to fund a central London property development. The Candys claimed Holyoake defaulted on the loan when the deal ran into trouble but he alleged they set out to ruin him and intimidated him and his wife.

At the high court Mr Justice Nugee dismissed Holyoake's claim and found in favour of the Candys. He said Mr Holyoake did not have assets of 120m as he had claimed, meaning the brothers were justified in treating the loan as in default.

But the judge criticised the brothers, known as the "Brothers Bling" for their ostentatious lifestyles, and Holyoake after an acrimonious nine-week trial in which Holyoake and other witnesses made lurid allegations about the Candys' tax affairs and other business practices. The brothers denied the allegations.

"None of the protagonists emerge from the trial with great credit," Nugee said. "Each has been shown to have been willing to lie when they consider their commercial interests justify them doing so."

The judge accepted that Christian Candy had threatened to take a "wrecking ball" to Holyoake's assets but decided the threat was not unlawful.

The brothers, who told the court they were worth a combined 600m, admitted their reputations were damaged by the trial. Nick Candy told the court: Even if you find us completely innocent, [for] the rest of our lives there is going to be a slight smell.

In a statement after the judgment the brothers said: "It has taken a great deal of time and effort to win this case and it has caused unwarranted damage to our personal and business lives. The claim should never have been brought. We look forward to time more positively spent with our families and in our respective businesses.
Shares in US fast food restaurant Chipotle Mexican Grill fell on Wednesday when reports surfaced that a number of customers had reported symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea and nausea on iwaspoisoned.com after eating at one of its Los Angeles locations.

The Los Angeles Health Department's Acute Communicable Disease Control unit has confirmed that it was "aware of reports of illness" at the west LA restaurant and was said to be investigating the reports.

"Public Health routinely monitors for and investigates reports of foodborne illness and communicable diseases in response to health concerns," the division said.

The website on which reports initially surfaced, iwaspoisoned.com, was the same place that reports concerning a Chipotle in Sterling, Virginia began in July.

The location was temporarily closed before Loudoun County health officials cited the branch as the source of 135 norovirus illnesses.

Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said: "We take any report of illness very seriously.

"We are aware of three reports (two of which appear to be the same) on a user-generated reporting site, but there is no clinical validation associated with those reports."

"My whole family and I ate at Chipotle two days before we started experiencing stomach pains and nausea, one customer wrote. It was constant vomiting every two hours and weakness. We all had burrito bowls with meat, beans, rice, and guac. The symptoms lasted for two days now. We're starting to feel better, but it was a very uncomfortable experience and we won't be going to Chipotle anymore after this."

The Mexican themed eatery had previously dealt with a massive outbreak of e.coli in 2015 that affected more than 50 people across 14 states.

Shares fell as much as 4.6% following the reports, but as of 1415 GMT on Thursday, had recovered to trade up 0.61% in pre-market trade to $298.67.
Three months after founder James Jebbia offloaded 50% of his New York skate shop and clothing brand Supreme to DC-based investment firm The Carlyle Group , the private equity group was already beginning to take steps to expand the business, starting with the hiring of a chief financial officer.

The recruitment drive was said to be part of Supreme's future plans to open additional locations, including further international expansion, and build upon its already impressive resume of high-profile collaborations akin to its joint release with Louis Vuitton in summer.

The Carlyle Group and Goode Partners, which held a secret stake in the deal, purchased half of Supreme for $500m in October, making the streetwear icon a $1bn entity overnight.

Supreme had projected earnings of $100m for its 2017 financial year, making the valuation in excess of ten times that number.

In regards to working with the Carlyle Group, Jebbia told the Business of Fashion at the time: "We're a growing brand, and to sustain that growth we've chosen to work with Carlyle, who has the operational expertise needed to keep us on the steady path weve been on since 1994.

"Working with Carlyle allows us to concentrate on doing what we do best and remain in control of our brand, as we always have."

At 1440 GMT, Carlyle Group shares were down 0.4% to $25.04.
Kaz Minerals has confirmed plans to double capacity to 50m tonnes per year at its Aktogay copper project in east Kazakhstan by 2021.

The FTSE 250 company's board has given the green light to the $1.2bn addition of a second sulphide concentrator at Aktogay, where an initial 25m tonnes-per-year processor began commercial production in October.

The second processor, which is expected to come on stream in the second half of 2021 and ramping up the year after, comes as Kaz eyes an increase in Aktogay's annual copper production from sulphide ore to 170,000 tonnes from 2022 to 2027 and 130kt thereafter.

Net cash cost guidance through to 2027 is expected to be kept at the current $1-1.20 per lb, as efficiency gains are anticipated from larger scale mining operations to offset an accelerated decline in mining grades. The mining fleet will be upgraded to support the higher ore throughput.

Directors said the expansion would generate a return in excess of the current consensus forecasts for Kaz's cost of capital.

Construction will be managed in-house and sub-contracts tendered next year, with a $200m of the capital budget invested in 2018. The remaining expenditure will be incurred from 2019 to 2021, with sustaining capital expenditure from 2022 increasing to $50-$60m a year from $30-$40m.

Copper production from sulphide ore at Aktogay will increase by 80kt to an average of around 170kt per year from 2022 to 2027, supported by expected higher copper grades, with Aktogay's annual production predicted to be around 130k a year over the remaining life of the mine.

Due to higher processing volumes the life of the sulphide ore body will reduce from over 50 years to approximately 28 years. Copper cathode production from oxide ore at Aktogay will be unchanged at the current level of around 20kt per annum for the remaining eight year life of the oxide deposit.

Oleg Novachuk, chief executive, said: "This expansion represents an opportunity for our proven project team to deliver a strong return on investment from an asset we know well by replicating the existing sulphide plant. Our outlook for copper remains positive and this development will help us to continue to grow in a tightening market. The capital expenditure over the period to 2021 for the expansion will be supported by strong cash flows from our new, low cost operations at Bozshakol and Aktogay."
London's FTSE 100 was up 1% to 7,599.18 in afternoon trade on Thursday, taking a leg higher in the second half of the session after breaching the 7,600 mark and posting a new all-time high amid low volumes.

InterContinental Hotels Group was on the front foot after the Holiday Inn owner commented on the impact of the US tax reform bill. Based on initial estimates, the Republican tax reforms are expected to reduce IHG's group effective tax rate "by mid to high single digit percentage points" from 1 January 2018. For 2017, IHG's group effective tax rate is still expected to be in the low 30s.

Going the other way, housebuilders Berkeley and Persimmon were weaker after the Department for Communities and Local Government's proposal to set all ground rents to zero.

IG analyst Chris Beauchamp said: "The fear is that the big players will cut back on their building programmes, while the move could well spark some legal challenges as well."

WPP was also in the red as Redburn recommended investors sell shares in the advertising agency and its French rival Publicis.

"Bluntly, agencies are facing growing end market pressure, price deflation in account reviews and new competition from niche digital specialists, consultancies, ad tech and CRM/Enterprise software companies and finally, global media giants (Google, Facebook, Amazon)."

Risers

Mediclinic International (MDC) 618.00p 5.28%

NMC Health (NMC) 2,838.00p 3.65%

BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,465.50p 2.16%

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 4,705.00p 2.15%

Next (NXT) 4,382.00p 2.07%

British American Tobacco (BATS) 5,006.00p 1.75%

Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB.) 6,692.00p 1.64%

Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) 424.82p 1.61%

Old Mutual (OML) 224.80p 1.58%

Anglo American (AAL) 1,512.50p 1.51%

Fallers

United Utilities Group (UU.) 814.50p -1.39%

Admiral Group (ADM) 1,907.60p -1.01%

Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 4,170.00p -0.95%

Persimmon (PSN) 2,700.00p -0.81%

Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) 8,725.00p -0.63%

Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,748.00p -0.63%

Carnival (CCL) 4,934.00p -0.60%

WPP (WPP) 1,345.00p -0.59%

London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) 3,730.00p -0.53%

Centrica (CNA) 137.60p -0.51%
CALEDONIA  Ascension Living, one of the largest nonprofit and faith-based providers of senior services in the nation, has signed a letter of intent to purchase Shorelight Memory Care, along with physical space for a future skilled-nursing community.

Shorelight Memory Care, 5643 Erie St., and the skilled-nursing space are owned by Siena on the Lake, a nonprofit corporation that began as a partnership between the Racine Dominicans and the former Lincoln Lutheran of Racine. The latter has since declared insolvency, filed for receivership and is no longer part of Siena on the Lake.

Because of Lincoln Lutherans demise, some of the space that had been built as part of the ambitious, multiyear Siena on the Lake plan has gone unused.

As part of this transaction, the associates, residents, and skilled-care operation of Ascension Livings Lakeshore Manor, 1320 Wisconsin Ave., Racine, would move to the currently vacant skilled-nursing space on the Siena campus.

Bringing Shorelight Memory Care and Health Center into our ministry is an exciting continuation of our shared commitment and dedication to serving seniors, stated Gayle Trupiano, Ascension Living president and CEO. The newly constructed space on the Siena campus will foster an environment of comfort and healing for our residents, and is a space where our associates can better care for those who have entrusted themselves in our care.

This transaction would connect southeastern Wisconsin residents to integrated systems of care within Ascension Wisconsin, the organization stated.

Ascension Living stated that its mission is to provide spiritually centered, holistic care to seniors, particularly those most in need. We offer a wide range of programs tailored to meet the unique needs of older adults.

Shared faith and vision

The Racine Dominicans have a 155-year history of serving Racine and beyond. Their awareness of the need for memory care for those afflicted with dementia of various types and causes led to the establishment of Shorelight Memory Care.

Our leadership team applies a rigorous review process when considering a potential partner, said Sr. Maryann McMahon, president of the Racine Dominicans and Siena on the Lake. Our organizations are guided by a shared faith and the promise to provide personalized, compassionate care to all.

McMahon said the Dominicans are confident Ascension Living will provide a high degree of service and quality for Shorelight residents.
MILWAUKEE  The Racine Police Department played a hand in the apprehension of a sex trafficker who was sentenced to federal prison this week.

Jaboree Williams, 31, of Milwaukee was sentenced on Wednesday to 30 years in prison by United States District Judge J.P. Stadmueller.

The case was investigated by the FBIs Human Trafficking Task Force and the Racine Police Department with the assistance of the Oshkosh Police Department, according to a Racine Police Department news release issued Thursday.

Evidence at Williams trial proved that he used force, fraud and coercion to make female victims engage in prostitution in a number of states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The investigation

In January 2015, Racine Police were called for a welfare check of a missing family member. Using social media and internet websites, the family members location was discovered. Over the course of the next few months, several other human trafficking victims were identified, police said.

Racine police partnered with the FBIs Human Trafficking Task Force and began a human trafficking investigation into Williams. As a result of the investigation, Williams was located and arrested in July 2015.

Victims testified that Williams imposed a strict set of rules on them, including providing Williams with all of the money they were paid for engaging in sex acts, never telling law enforcement what Williams made them do and obeying Williams commands. Williams enforced the rules by reportedly severely beating victims who violated them.

Williams also allegedly threatened and intimidated victims and other witnesses during the investigation and prosecution, including while he was in jail and subject to a no-contact order by a federal judge.

After a 32-month investigation, Williams was prosecuted by the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and was found guilty on 18 counts.

The case was prosecuted by assistant United States attorneys Laura S. Kwaterski and Karine Moreno-Taxman.
HANOI  New regulations regarding formaldehyde and azo dye usage in textile manufacturing have been released by the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade. These regulations feature specified limits for the permitted levels of both substances in any goods manufactured or sold in Vietnam and will be enforced from May 2018, meaning manufacturers have until then to ensure all their textile products are compliant.

This news coincides with the Race to the Top Programme announcing that its textile partners in Vietnam are making good progress in efforts to improve sustainability in the country.
By Scott L. Montgomery

After decades of bitter struggle, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) seems on the verge of being opened to the oil industry. The consensus tax bill Republicans are trying to pass retains this measure, which was added to gain the key vote of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

This bill, however, stands no chance of being the final word. ANWR has been called Americas Serengeti and the last petroleum frontier, terms Ive seen used over more than a decade studying this area and the politics around it. But even these titles merely hint at the multifold conflict ANWR representsspanning politics, economics, culture and philosophy.

Differing Views From the Start

Little of this debate, which stretches back decades, makes sense without some background. Lets begin with wildlife, the core of why the refuge exists.

With 45 species of land and marine mammals and over 200 species of birds from six continents, ANWR is more biodiverse than almost any area in the Arctic. This is especially true of the coastal plain portion, or 1002 Area, the area now being opened up to exploration and drilling. This has the largest number of polar bear dens in Alaska and supports muskoxen, Arctic wolves, foxes, hares and dozens of fish species. It also serves as temporary home for millions of migrating waterfowl and the Porcupine Caribou Herd which has its calving ground there.

All of which merely suggests the unique concentration of life in ANWR and the opportunity it offers to scientific study. One part of the debate is therefore over how drilling might impact this diversity.



Map of northern Alaska showing locations of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including. the 1002 Area, which is slated to be opened for oil and gas drilling, and the National Petroleum ReserveAlaska (NPRA). U.S. Geological Survey

At the same time, debate over this areas mineral resources has existed since even before Alaskas founding. An effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to withdraw part of northeast Alaska from mining (later drilling) was eventually passed by the House in 1960 but then killed in the Senate, on the urging of both Alaska senators. It was resurrected by President Eisenhower through an executive order establishing a wildlife range (not refuge, which requires government protection and study).

ANWR thus began as a battleground over state versus federal control of resources. Change came with the oil crises of the 1970s. After much debate, Congress passed and President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, increasing the size of the area to 19.4 million acres and changing it to a refuge. ANILCA also mandated an evaluation of wildlife, oil and natural gas resources, and impacts if drilling occurred.



Map shows the 1002 Area, which will be opened up to oil and gas exploration, along with existing drilling sites in the region. U.S. Geological Survey

Such evaluation was delivered to Congress in 1987, with three principal conclusions. First, the 1.5 million-acre 1002 Area, had outstanding wilderness values. Second, it also had large hydrocarbon resources, likely tens of billions of barrels. Third, oil development would bring widespread changes in habit, but adequate protection for wildlife was achievable and leasing should proceed.

Made public, these results ignited major opposition from environmental groups. However, low oil prices meant that no companies would be interested in drilling so no action toward leasing was taken. Over the next 20 years, Congress and the president traded blows over drilling, with Republicans passing or proposing legislation in favor and Democrats voting down or vetoing or the relevant bills.

Matters of Wilderness



These struggles added support to a larger view: that wilderness is incompatible with any level of development. The stance is often referenced to the 1964 Wilderness Act, a venerable law protecting wildlands but one whose definition of wilderness is ambiguous: an area of undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character  [that] generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of mans work substantially unnoticeable. The vagueness here allows for ANILCAs position that drilling could happen so long as protection of wildlife and reclamation of land occurred.



Caribou grazing on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The area is more diverse than any area on the Arctic. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Today, however, no such allowance is accepted by pro-wilderness organizations and the FWS. You can have the oil. Or you can have this pristine place. You cant have both. No compromise, said Robert Mrazek, ex-chair of the Alaska Wilderness League.

Saving ANWR has thus become an effort to save the very idea of wilderness, culturally and philosophically.

How Much Oil?

The most recent comprehensive assessment of oil and gas in the 1002 Area was by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1998. This work shows a mean estimate of 10.4 billion barrels of oil and 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which at todays prices ($57/bbl oil, $3/kcf) equals a total value of about $600 billion before drilling.

If well costs were $50 a barrel (low for onshore Arctic drilling today but possible with cost reductions spurred by 1002 development), the value after extraction would be $100 billion, from which a federal royalty of 12.5 percent must be subtracted, yielding $87.5 billiona significant sum. Obviously if well costs are higher, this figure would be lower. Note that Alaska gets 90 percent of that federal royalty and pays a yearly dividend to every state residentone reason many Alaskans favor drilling and reject the uncompromising wilderness position.

When considering how oil and gas is available, the USGS estimates should be considered low, even minimal. This is because they were made well before the current era of shale oil and gas and tight oil and gas development. New discoveries and use of fracking to the west of ANWR suggest there is more accessible petroleum. How much more? Its impossible to say, given the many uncertainties.

Though only one well has ever been drilled in the 1002 Area, dozens have been sited in surrounding onshore and offshore areas. These have resulted in a number of limited discoveries and one substantial field, Point Thomson, which is estimated to have recoverable reserves of up to 6 trillion cubic feet of gas and 850 million barrels of oil plus condensate. It began producing in 2016, yet its reservoir is geologically complex, challenging and insufficiently understood, causing difficulties and raising costs.

But Point Thomsons larger significance could stem from its location: Close to the northwestern margin of 1002, it has brought a pipeline connection to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline right to ANWRs doorstep.

But Will They Come?

Given the substantial possible reserves and at least some pipeline access, how interested might energy companies actually be in ANWR? The answer for now seems to be: not very. This comes from my own discussions with industry personnel and from the results of a recent lease sale in NPR-A, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to the west of ANWR: Out of 900 tracts offered, only seven received bids (0.008 percent). A Dec. 7, lease sale on state lands did only somewhat better (0.04 percent), with a single company bidding on tracts near the 1002 Area, adjacent to the Point Thomson field, and in the immediate area of two small, undeveloped discoveries (Sourdough and Yukon Gold) made by BP in 1994.

If this be any indication, another multiyear period of high oil pricesin a range, say, more than $80 per barrelneeds to arrive before 1002 looks attractive. Leasing and drilling in an area with extreme weather, little detailed data on the subsurface geology, no discoveries or production, and no existing infrastructure is considered high risk, all the more so in an uncertain price environment like todays.

My own guess is that the estimated $1.1 billion revenue from an ANWR leasing program has roughly the same probability of coming true as the discovery that climate change is indeed a Chinese hoax. Similarly, we should probably view with a dash of skepticism Sen. Murkowskis statements that opening ANWR will create thousands of good jobs  keep energy affordable for families and businesses  reduce the federal deficit and strengthen our national security by reducing foreign oil. Regardless of what claims are being made now, one can say the measure would undoubtedly deliver on a long-standing promise to Alaskan voters.

Meanwhile, from an environmental perspective, climate change continues to alter and damage the Arctic, even if no development happens. As such, it is hard not to hope that we will never need the oil that lies beneath the refuge.

In the end, whichever way we turn, no stable compromise exists in this conflict. Opening the area to leasing now will not prevent a closing or ban later on. Even native voices are divided on the issue. The Inupiat who live in Kaktovik and depend on sea life for sustenance, would welcome the work that drilling could bring, while the Gwichin to the south, who rely on the caribou, see development as jeopardizing their culture.

Legal challenges to any level of leasing are certain, including those intended to slow the process until drilling opponents will win later elections, if they can.

The one truth all can agree on is that ANWR has never been a refuge in the landscape of American society.

Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.
Walk through your local grocery store these days and youll see the words all natural emblazoned on a variety of food packages. The label is lucrative, for sure, but in discussing the natural label few have remarked on whats really at stakethe natural ingredients and the companies themselves.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

If you take a look at some of the favorite organic and natural food brands, youll see theyre owned by some of the largest conventional companies in the world. Coca-Cola owns Odwalla and Honest Tea. PepsiCo owns Naked Juice. General Mills owns Lara Bar. Natural and organic food acquisitions aside, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills all opposed Californias GMO Proposition 37 that would require GMO (genetically modified organism) food labeling. Today, some of those companies touting an all-natural list of grains and sugars can be seen changing the ingredients in their natural food products as the natural foods distribution channels are pushed to larger and larger markets.

Recently, in a class action consumer-fraud lawsuit, Kashi agreed it would stop using all natural and nothing artificial for its line of cereal products, which, according to plaintiffs, contained unnatural ingredients like pyridoxine hydrochloride, calcium pantothenate and soy oil processed with hexane, a byproduct of gasoline refining in its line.

Kashis use of natural ingredients wasnt in question in 1999 when it made nearly $25 million in sales. But in 2000 Kelloggs purchased Kashi and less than a decade later it was the No. 1 natural foods brand making nearly $600 million in sales. The rise in class-action lawsuits against the natural label comes in part because brands like Kashi have ballooned in salesin other words, theres no money to be found in a smaller, natural company. Yet Kashi rose to the top while continuing to tout its all natural ideology of which David DeSouza, Kashis former general manager (a defendant in the case and formerly with Kelloggs for 19 years prior to joining Kashi), was so fond.

As part of the settlement for its use of unnatural ingredients, Kelloggs is creating a $5 million settlement fund for California customers who purchased the products containing the specific ingredients.

Natural food buyouts have become second nature to the food industry as companies like Kelloggs continue to diversify their portfolios and latch on to the popularity of natural and organic foods. And while a downgrade of some ingredients is one thing in some cases, companies have undergone a complete 180 from using organic and natural ingredients by opting for conventional or GMO ones.

When Brendan Synott and Kelly Flately started Bear Naked, they hand-packed granola and distributed it to bed-and-breakfasts themselves. Kelloggs purchased Bear Naked in a $122 million deal and it soon became apparent that its Kashi products were no longer as natural as its humble beginning. Kelloggs agreed to remove 100% natural and 100% pure and natural from its Bear Naked labels in a suit similar to Kashi, which faulted its ingredients. Kelloggs eventually settled for $325,000.

Still, when Kashi was criticized by the Cornucopia Institute for its use of GMO ingredients in April 2012, Kashi released a statement complaining about the organic food supply, writing: A major challenge we face in North America is that over 80% of many crops, including soy, are grown using GMOs. It added:  Given the fact that only 0.7% of US cropland is organic, its unfortunate that Cornucopia failed to recognize Kashis significant contribution to supporting organic agriculture and our ability to impact future change.
By Zen Honeycutt

Shortly after the release of a report showing 14 beers testing positive for glyphosate in Germany, a concerned supporter of Moms Across America approached me at a convention with disturbing news. He said he had test results from Microbe Inotech Lab of St.Louis showing 10 different wines, from large and small vineyards, contained the chemical glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsantos Roundup weedkiller, including wine made with organic grapes.

Test results from Microbe Inotech Lab show 10 different wines contained glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsantos Roundup weedkiller, including wine made with organic grapes.

The contamination of conventional wine was 28 times higher than organic wine, with levels ranging from 0.659 ppb in organic to 18.74 ppb in conventional wine.

The wines tested came from Napa Valley, Sonoma and Mendocino counties in California. The brand names of the wines were not revealed, and frankly, the brands are not the issue. The real issue is the widespread contamination of glyphosate based herbicides in consumer products.

Here are my five reasons why Roundup/glyphosate should never be sprayed on any crops, including vineyards:

1. According to farmers like John Kempf of AdvancingEcoAg.com, glyphosate based herbicides are showing up in irrigation water, are likely present in manure/fertilizer from animals fed genetically modified grains and drift from spraying. Glyphosate residues have been detected in many foods, cotton products, breast milk, beers and wines.

2. Wine growers of conventional farms report that their family businesses use to be able to harvest from their vines for 100 years. Today, with chemical farming, vines are lasting 10-12 years. Glyphosate is a chelator, which makes the vital nutrients and minerals of any living thing it touches unavailable. Taking the risk of depleting the vitality of important crops is not a good long term decision for farmers of any kind. Instead, Regenerative agriculture enriches the soil, supports longevity of the farm and does not use toxic chemicals.

3. Glyphosate has been deemed a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Even the small amount of 0.1ppt of glyphosate has been shown to stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells. According to the California Department of Health, breast cancer rates in the Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties are 10 to 20 percent higher than the national average. There are many pending lawsuits against Monsanto for the connection between non-Hodgkins lymphoma and Roundup.

4. The pig study by Pedersen and Krueger showed a repeated 30 percent increase of birth defects and stillborn with the introduction of glyphosate-sprayed grains. The infertility and sterility in America is exactly correlated to the pig study results, at 30 percent, the highest in recorded U.S. history.

5. French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini and his team have discovered that the co-formulants of Roundup are 1,000 times more toxic than glyphosate and are hormone disruptors, which can lead to breast cancer, miscarriages, birth defects and many other health issues.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Is Bill Gates Right About GMOs?

Big Food Says They Will Label GMOs  But Is There More to the Story?

Huge Victory: Senate Rejects the DARK Act

Read This if You Love Eating Fish But Worry Your Getting Too Much Mercury Exposure
Carmen Farina, the chancellor of New York City Schools, announced Thursday that she would be resigning in 2018, leaving behind a school system fundamentally changed from where it stood when her tenure began four years ago.

Farina, 74, plans to leave her job as head of the 1.1 million-student school system, the largest in the country, prior to the end of the school year.

I took the job with a firm belief in excellence for every student, in the dignity and joyfulness of the teaching profession, and in the importance of trusting relationships where collaboration is the driving force, Farina wrote in a letter to staff Thursday. These are the beliefs that I have built over five decades as a New York City educator, and they have been at the heart of the work we have done together for the past four years.

A nationwide search for her successor is already underway, with plans to hire a successor within months, said Mayor Bill de Blasio. Under state law, the citys mayor controls the schools.

Who de Blasio has in mind for his next chancellor isnt yet clear, but school leadership experts say the job requires a hard-to-find combination of someone with credibility as an educator and the acumen to navigate the rough-and-tumble politics of New York City.

The job warrants a top-caliber administrator with a reputation of success and familiarity with the complexities of running a system of that size, not the least of which is the ability to communicate with the public, said Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the AASA, the School Superintendents Association. You have the parents, you have the unions, you have the businesses, and of course, you have the politics.

Farina played a key role in the establishment of de Blasios prekindergarten-for-all program, which he considers his signature education victory. That program now enrolls about 70,000 children.

Graduation rates and test scores also improved under Farinas watch. The graduation rate has increased more than 6 percentage points since 2013; on New York state tests, math scores have increased 8 percent and English language arts scores 14 percent during that same period. But critics have raised doubts about those gains amid concerns about watered-down standards.

Farina, a veteran educator who spent her entire career in New Yorks school system, also ended the district policy of using only test scores to make decisions about promoting students to the next grade, started programs that allowed teachers and principals to collaborate regionally on teaching strategies, and created a senior-level position to oversee English-language learners.

Supporters say that the chancellor, a former teacher, principal, and deputy chancellor in the district, has set a new tone for the New York City school system in which parents are seen as assets and morale among teachers is on the rise after years of acrimonious relations between former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers. The city and the union agreed to a new teachers contract in 2014, her first year on the job. The previous pact had expired in 2009.

Farina and de Blasio sought a clean break from the signature school policies of Bloomberg, who during his tenure, selected two non-educators to lead the school system.

She has been able to achieve things that non-educators wouldnt, de Blasio said Thursday.

Under de Blasio, Farina sought to address issues ranging from racial and socioeconomic segregation to solutions for struggling schools. Rather than closing and replacing academically struggling schools, a hallmark of the Bloomberg era, Farina created the Renewal Schools initiative, which provided additional support to about 80 schools. Results of that work have so far been mixed; some schools have improved, while others are now slated for closure.

The mayor said on Thursday that he plans to hire an educator as Farinas successor, a person who will continue to carry out an already-established school improvement plan.

Some critics question that decision.

Mayor de Blasio needs a chancellor who will check his ideological impulses and steer him towards the evidence of what works, said Jenny Sedlis, the executive director of StudentsFirstNY, the state chapter of the K-12 advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging former chancellor of the District of Columbia school system. The next chancellor must deliver work rule concessions in the teachers contract, end the failed Renewal School program, work with urgency to open new schools, take a different approach to teacher quality, and support charter schools.

Farina retired in 2013, but, months later, the newly elected de Blasio persuaded her to take the top position at the department.

One of the more controversial issues shes faced involves the citys so-called absent-teacher reserve, a pool of teachers without permanent teaching positions who remain on salary. Farina initially promised that she wouldnt assign teachers from the pool to classrooms. Some teachers in the absent reserve have received low ratings for their job performance or have been disciplined for other infractions. But by 2017, the financial pressures of the pool, at about $150 million a year, had caused the district to rethink that policy. It began placing teachers again this fall, with advocates claiming that the teachers were more likely be placed in schools with large numbers of black and Latino students.

Mayor de Blasio did not set a timeline for selecting her successor and said the search for his next school chief will be discreet.

This is not a decision you [make] with a public ballot, he said.
RACINE  Stan Morris Sr. and Alex Rodriguez, both of Racine, volunteered to spend a frigid Wednesday handing out frozen turkeys and boxes of food for people in need.

The food was distributed from the Racine/Kenosha Community Action Agency at 2113 N Wisconsin St. as part of the agencys annual Holiday Food Basket program.

Im doing it for the smiles, Morris said. Ive been very fortunate in my life so Im giving back.

R/KCAA Community Services Coordinator Zeke Leo said the program had been going long before he joined the organization almost 20 years ago. Since 2010 the organization has worked with the Racine County Food Bank, which purchases the food items and organizes the volunteers to put together the boxes.

On the United Way of Racine Countys Day of Caring in September, Racine County Food Bank Executive Director Dan Taivalkoski said volunteers assembled 2,000 holiday meal boxes. Inside are the essentials for a holiday meal, including gravy packets, muffin mix, cans of corn, green beans, cream of mushroom soup, applesauce, cranberry sauce and mandarin oranges. Theres even a box of cake mix for dessert.

Frozen turkeys sat on top of the boxes at the R/KCAA loading dock, where Morris and Rodriguez waited to help people load them into their cars. R/KCAA is in charge of distributing the boxes to households that meet federal poverty guidelines.

Leo said that on Monday the organization gave out 200 boxes, on Tuesday 150 and Wednesday there were 167 scheduled for pickup. R/KCAA was also accepting applications for unclaimed boxes throughout the day.

Several area churches also got involved, requesting recommendations from R/KCAA for families to purchase Christmas presents for. Piles of wrapped boxes grouped by family sat in Leos office waiting to be delivered later this week.
Police warn against buying stolen birds

Police are urging the Manx public not to buy birds that could be stolen.

Officers warn those offering a duck, goose or turkey for sale may have stolen the bird.

Police say free range animals are tempting to opportunists, but the thefts wouldn't happen if the birds couldn't be sold on.

Anyone who has been offered a bird for sale or has other information about such thefts is urged to contact Castletown Police Station.
Manx shops to stop accepting UK round pounds next year

Manx retailers will stop accepting UK round pound coins next year.

Many local shops have continued to accept the old-style pounds, despite them having not been legal tender in the UK since October.

However, the Treasury says the coins are being taken out of circulation faster than anticipated, meaning it won't be necessary to keep accepting them on the Island indefinitely.

Only the new 12-sided UK pound coin will be accepted after February 28th 2018, as well as locally-issued pound coins and notes.

Manx residents are also being urged to return any remaining UK round pounds to their bank as soon as possible.
Forget about Java programming, web design, or mobile app development: Choosing a cyber security career and equipping yourself with the right skills can virtually guarantee you a wide selection of jobs to walk into, whenever you want, and a salary thats well above the IT industry average.

Cyber security skills shortage

Thats because the world is facing a huge shortage of cyber security engineers of all kinds, and in a sellers market those with the necessary skills can command a premium price for their services.

To get an idea of the scale of the cyber security skills shortage, consider this: By the end of next year, its predicted that one to two million cyber security jobs will remain unfilled. About six million cyber security analysts will be needed, with only between four and five million available to fill the positions.

In fact the cyber security engineer skills shortage is already becoming critical: A recent report by McAfee, Hacking the Skills Shortage, found that 82% of a group of 775 IT and cyber security decision-makers reported that they had a shortage of cyber security skills within their company.

And research carried out by Indeed.com in 2017 confirmed that although organizations are advertising cyber security analyst job postings, there are simply not enough candidates to fill those posts. In the U.S. there are only two candidates for every three job vacancies advertised, while in other parts of the world the situation is even more dire. In the UK and Ireland there is only about one candidate for every three vacancies, and the situation is deteriorating.

More recently, a report called The Life and Times of Cybersecurity Professionals, by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), found that 22% of survey respondents who had suffered a security incident over the last two years said their cyber security team was not large enough for the size of their organization, and 18% said that the existing cybersecurity team could not keep up with the workload.

All in all, thats pretty clear evidence that IT security jobs are going to be in plentiful supply, and those with the right skills will be able to take their pick.

Above average compensation

From the perspective of potential employers, the need to find people to fill their vacancies is urgent because having an insufficient or overworked cyber security team increases the likelihood of a security breach. And organizations with a shortage of cyber security skills are tempting targets for cybercriminals looking for an easy win.

That means that businesses are going to have to offer highly competitive packages  both higher salaries and other perks and benefits  in order to persuade candidates to accept their job offers rather than rival ones.

So what kind of salary can you expect if you choose an IT security job? The U.S. Department of Labors Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the median pay in 2016 for an IT security analyst was $92,000 per year, or $44.52 per hour. In 2018 that figure is likely to increase to well over $100,000, or a good 10% premium over less in-demand IT staff. And thats not including the other benefits you may be able to negotiate in order to be persuaded to accept a position.

Cyber security job openings

Cyber security is a very broad area, so its worth focusing on precisely which type of security jobs are likely to need filling, and the types of skills and credentials that are most in demand.

The most common job titles advertised, according to the 2014 SANS Institute Cyber Security Professional Trends Survey, include Security Analyst, Security Engineer or Architect, Security/IT Director or Manager, CISO/CSO, Systems Administrator, Network Architect or Engineer, Forensics Investigator, Auditor, Systems Engineer or Integrator.

And the types of skills that are most in demand, according to job site Monster.com, include incident handling and response, audit and compliance, firewall/IDS/IPS skills, intrusion detection, analytics and intelligence, SIEM management, access/identity management, application security development, advanced malware prevention, and cloud computing/virtualization.

Damage limitation and remediation

Anyone with penetration testing skills is also likely to be in demand as companies seek to understand their security weaknesses. But its also true that organizations are increasingly waking up to the fact that security breaches are going to become increasingly inevitable, and the key task of many cyber security analysts going forward will shift from security incident prevention and towards damage limitation and remediation.

You cant protect everything equally  we have to find a way to control only what matters, said Earl Perkins, a research vice president at Gartner, talking to cyber security engineers at a Security & Risk Management Summit earlier this year. Take the money youre spending on prevention and begin to drive it more equitably to detection and response, he added.

The implication of this is that demand for particular skills, such as incident handling and response, intrusion detection, analytics and intelligence, and network monitoring and SIEM management, that will be the key to the best jobs and the highest compensation in 2018 and beyond.

Internet of Identities

Another trend thats likely to have implications for IT security job vacancies is the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Managing the deployment, operations, and security of all these devices will be quite challenging, Jon Oltsik, a senior principal analyst at ESG, pointed out in a blog post in November. Someone must figure out network access controls, connectivity, segmentation, baseline behavior, network performance implications, etc.

ESG calls the need for identity and access management for IoT devices the Internet of Identities (IoI), and Oltsik says that the IoI security skills shortage will become acute very quickly. Security teams will be responsible for IoI policy enforcement, controls and end-to-end monitoring, but this oversight may be impacted by the global cybersecurity skills shortage, he said. Security teams will run around like turkeys with their heads cut off as IoT devices multiply in the coming years.

IT security certifications and education

The 2017 McAfee study also highlighted that many organizations value hands-on experience and relevant IT security certifications, but with such a shortage of cyber security engineer skills, its likely that many larger enterprises will be forced to train the staff they need internally, and that means that barriers to entry into IT security jobs will be low. Typical requirements for entry-level cyber security jobs are a bachelors degree in a computer-related field, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and its likely that many organizations will be satisfied with that and provide on-the-job training where they cant find people with the certifications or experience they require.

Thats not to say that certification programs are not important. Thats because cyber security has not been a part of many undergraduate courses in the past and cyber security degrees are few and far between, and although that is changing rapidly, many degree courses still do not provide specialist skills in that area. So many current cyber security engineers learn their skills through certification programs, and these will remain vital for candidates and in demand by employers.

Continuous professional development is critical in the field of cybersecurity because the nature of the threat continuously evolves, Diana Burley, a professor at George Washington University, told Monster.com. Many options exist for current professionals to augment their skill set, including certificates from technical training companies, additional degrees through university study, or stand-alone hands-on courses to develop specific skills.

Cisco and Microsoft security training certificate programs are common among all professionals looking for certification.

Industry opportunities

One final question worth asking is what kind of employers will be looking for cyber security engineers? Based on the SANS survey, the top five industries for cybersecurity professionals are Banking/Finance/Insurance, Information Technology/Management, Government (Defense), Government (Non-defense), and Consulting/Professional Services, according to Monster.com.

That means that if you are looking for information security jobs, theres a good chance youll end up in the Washington metropolitan area, New York, or the San Francisco-San Jose metro area. The good news is that youll be paid handsomely, youll have plenty of extra benefits, and if the job doesnt suit you then youll have no problem walking into a better one.
The latest recipients of Germany's most prestigious research funding prize have been announced. In Bonn today, the Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) selected eleven researchers, four women and seven men, to receive the 2018 Leibniz Prize. The recipients of the prize were chosen by the selection committee from 136 nominees. Three of the eleven prizewinners are from the humanities and social sciences, three from the life sciences, another three from the natural sciences, and two from the engineering sciences. Nine of the prizewinners will receive 2.5 million each, while two researchers will share one prize, each receiving 1.25 million. The recipients can use these funds for their research work in any way they wish, without bureaucratic obstacles, for up to seven years. The awards ceremony for the 2018 Leibniz Prizes will be held on 19 March in Berlin.

The following researchers will receive the 2018 "Funding Prize in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Programme" awarded by the DFG:

Prof. Dr. Jens Beckert, Sociology, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne

Prof. Dr. Alessandra Buonanno, Gravitational Physics, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Potsdam

Prof. Dr. Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln, Economics, Goethe University Frankfurt

Prof. Dr. Veit Hornung, Immunology, Gene Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen and Prof. Dr. Eicke Latz, Immunology, University Hospital Bonn, University of Bonn

Prof. Dr. Heike Paul, American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg

Prof. Dr. Erika L. Pearce, Immunology, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg

Prof. Dr. Claus Ropers, Experimental Solid-State Physics, University of Gottingen

Prof. Dr. Oliver G. Schmidt, Materials Science, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden and Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Chemnitz University of Technology

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Scholkopf, Machine Learning, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tubingen

Prof. Dr. Laszlo Szekelyhidi, Applied Mathematics, Universitat Leipzig

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize has been awarded by the DFG annually since 1986. Each year, a maximum of ten prizes can be awarded, each with prize money of 2.5 million. With the ten prizes for 2018, a total of 358 Leibniz Prizes have been awarded to date. Of these, 118 were bestowed on researchers in the natural sciences, 103 in the life sciences, 82 in the humanities and social sciences, and 55 in the engineering sciences. The number of award recipients is higher than the number of awarded prizes because, in exceptional cases, the prizes and money can be shared. Accordingly, a total of 385 nominees have received the prize, including 333 men and 52 women.

The Leibniz Prize is the most significant research prize in Germany. Seven past prizewinners have subsequently received the Nobel Prize: 1988 Prof. Dr. Hartmut Michel (Chemistry), 1991 Prof. Dr. Erwin Neher and Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann (Medicine), 1995 Prof. Dr. Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (Medicine), 2005 Prof. Dr. Theodor W. Hansch (Physics), 2007 Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ertl (Chemistry) and in 2014 Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hell (Chemistry).

Profiles of the 2018 Leibniz Prize recipients:

Prof. Dr. Jens Beckert (50), Sociology, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne

Jens Beckert was selected for the 2018 Leibniz Prize for his contribution to the renewal of an interdisciplinary perspective in the social sciences, particularly at the intersection of sociology and economics - two disciplines that have largely developed separately from each other for a long time. In his dissertation entitled 'Grenzen des Marktes' [Limits of the Market] (1996), Beckert was already laying the groundwork for embedding economic questions in a sociological context. In his habilitation thesis, 'Unverdientes Vermogen' [Unearned Wealth] (2003), he developed a comparative sociology of inheritance law in which he examined how different ideas about family cohesion, merit and recognition are reflected in law. This also brought him considerable recognition in the fields of law and history. In his most recent book, 'Imagined Futures. Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics' (2016), Beckert discusses various economic practices and illustrates how different visions of the future are socially coordinated and enable people to deal with uncertainty in the present. In this way, Beckert has combined new empirical research questions with conceptual reflection to examine current problems facing economies and societies.

Jens Beckert has been the director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne since 2005. He studied sociology and business administration in New York and Berlin and earned his doctorate in Berlin in 1996. After a period as a visiting researcher at Harvard University and one year as an Associate Professor in Bremen, he completed his habilitation in Berlin in 2003. Between 2003 and 2005 he was Professor of Theory of Society at the University of Gottingen.

Prof. Dr. Alessandra Buonanno (49), Gravitational Physics, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Potsdam

Alessandra Buonanno will receive the 2018 Leibniz Prize for her contributions to gravitational physics, particularly her work on the physics of gravitational waves. The first direct detection of gravitational waves - produced by the collision of two black holes - in 2015 provided spectacular proof of the general theory of relativity. Theoretical models developed by Buonanno were a key component of this success, enabling scientists to identify and interpret gravitational wave signals. As a postdoctoral researcher, together with Thibault Damour she developed the so-called Effective One Body (EOB) formalism, an extremely efficient method for describing the motion of binary systems and their emission of gravitational waves. Buonanno further developed this approach to include the merging of neutron stars. These extremely dense, massive stars are deformed before merging, which allows researchers to draw conclusions about their internal structure.

Alessandra Buonanno studied physics in Pisa, where she also earned her doctorate in 1996. She subsequently worked at CERN, a number of renowned institutions in Paris, and the California Institute of Technology. In 2005 she became an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, where she has held a full professorship since 2010. Since 2014 she has been director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam and in 2017 she was made an honorary professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Buonanno has won numerous awards, including the State Prize of Lower Saxony in 2016, which she shared with Bruce Allen and Karsten Danzmann.

Prof. Dr. Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln (45), Economics, Goethe University Frankfurt

Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln will be recognised with the Leibniz Prize for her methodological innovations and continuous development of the field of economics. Fuchs-Schundeln's research is grounded in macroeconomics but is characterised by the fact that she introduces microeconomic questions and microeconometric methods into macroeconomics. This basis has given rise to an influential body of empirical work. For example, the 'natural experiment' method has been widely used in microeconomics since the 1990s but had encountered justified reservations in macroeconomics. In the reunification of Germany, Fuchs-Schundeln recognised an event that could be investigated as a 'natural experiment', since it marked a coming-together of populations with different economic and political experiences whose behaviour could be studied against the background of these experiences. Starting with this breakthrough, she has also concentrated on studying individual saving and consumer behaviour and the formation of individual preferences, for example in relation to availability of employment, which in economics were previously regarded as being exogenously determined.

Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln studied economics and Latin American studies at the University of Cologne and earned her doctorate from Yale University in 2004. Starting in 2004, she spent five years as an Assistant Professor at Harvard University before accepting the position of Professor of Macroeconomics and Development at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2009.

Prof. Dr. Veit Hornung (41), Immunology, Gene Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen and Prof. Dr. Eicke Latz (47), Immunology, Institute of Innate Immunity, University Hospital Bonn, University of Bonn

Veit Hornung and Eicke Latz will share the Leibniz Prize as two of the world's most influential researchers in the field of innate immune responses. Their seminal papers on cytosolic sensing, which uniquely complement one another, have contributed to the international advancement of this area of research.

Veit Hornung became interested in core questions relating to innate immunity early on in his career. He studied the molecular basis of nucleic acid sensing in the cytoplasm, the cell substance enclosed by the membrane. He identified both the first virus ligand, which is detected in the cytoplasm, and the first cytosolic receptor (RIG-I) for viral DNA, which functions inside the cell. Both mechanisms are part of the complex innate immune response; their discovery is not only groundbreaking in basic research but also has useful applications in immunotherapy. Hornung's work has also laid the foundations for the development of new 'small molecules' as therapeutically effective immune modulators.

After studying human medicine, Hornung's research interests began with his doctorate at LMU Munich. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, he collaborated with Eicke Latz, who now shares the Leibniz Prize with him. In 2008 he was appointed Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Bonn before returning to LMU Munich to take up a professorship in 2015. Hornung already has multiple awards to his credit, including the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, presented by the DFG in 2007.

For many years Eicke Latz has been studying the 'inflammation workshop' of cells. He is especially interested in the activation mechanisms of the inflammasome, a multiprotein complex stimulated by bacterial components or uric acid crystals. Latz discovered the DNA-sensing AIM2 inflammasome and demonstrated the effect of crystalline or aggregate structures in immune system cells. Since the activation of inflammasomes plays an important role in lifestyle diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer's, his research has important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions. Through his work, Latz has had a profound impact on the field of innate immunity, developing new therapeutic concepts and influencing other research areas such as metabolic science and neuroscience.

Latz earned his doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2001 and, after completing his medical training, began working at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey. He subsequently held various positions at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMass), most recently as a professor. In 2009 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Bonn, where he founded the Institute of Innate Immunity, while continuing to work as a professor at UMass in Worcester.

Prof. Dr. Heike Paul (49), American Studies, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg

Heike Paul's work has contributed to a greater understanding of American literature and culture and of American-German relations past and present, in recognition of which she will receive the 2018 Leibniz Prize. From an early stage of her career, Paul focused on the observation of transatlantic relations in the context of a broadly defined concept of migration. She often adopted a cultural studies perspective, which takes the experiences of socioculturally marginalised groups as its starting point. Her habilitation thesis, for example, examined the representation of African Americans in German literature between 1815 and the start of the First World War. Later on, she studied conflicts between rural and urban areas in the USA and elucidated how these became the object of cultural debates. In her comprehensive study 'The Myths That Made America' (2014), she traces the construction and visualisation by the media of US founding and transformation myths. Paul's research brings together questions and methods in literature, media, social and cultural studies with a topicality and relevance that give it impact far beyond her own field.

Heike Paul studied in Frankfurt am Main and Seattle before earning her doctorate at LMU Munich as part of the DFG Research Training Group 'Gender Difference and Literature'. In 2004 she completed her habilitation at the University of Leipzig with a thesis on 'Kulturkontakt und Racial Presences' [Culture Contact and Racial Presences] before accepting a professorship in American studies at FAU. She has also had research stays at Harvard, in Toronto and at Dartmouth College.

Prof. Dr. Erika L. Pearce (45), Immunology, Department of Immunometabolism, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg

The Leibniz Prize will be presented to Erika L. Pearce for her outstanding work in metabolism and inflammation research. Her main research interests are the regulation of the immune system and of T cells, a group of white blood cells, and, in particular, the influence of metabolism on control of the immune response. Pearce demonstrated that a modified supply of glucose and the associated metabolic changes influence T-cell response. She has also decoded the signalling mechanisms that determine immunometabolic programming in T cells. She has therefore illuminated fundamental mechanisms in cell biology and linked them to important clinical applications: her findings are of immense importance to the current understanding of the way the body defends itself against tumours and pathogens and to the development of immunotherapies.

In 2015 Erika Pearce was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, where she heads the Department of Immunometabolism. Pearce studied biology at Cornell University and earned her doctorate in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. In 2011 she became Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, from where she moved to her current role.

Prof. Dr. Claus Ropers (40), Experimental Solid-State Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Gottingen

Claus Ropers, a leading researcher in electron microscopy who has made a significant contribution to the new field of quantum optics of electrons, will be recognised with the Leibniz Prize for his outstanding work. Among his most recent achievements, in 2015 he demonstrated that it is possible to manipulate the quantum state of a free electron beam in a transmission electron microscope. Prior to this, his work on the control of photoemission from extremely thin metal tips using terahertz and optical fields made a fundamental contribution to the future development of ultrafast scanning probe microscopes. His research into the generation of energy-rich ultraviolet radiation on plasmonic nanostructures gained worldwide attention. Ropers has consistently translated complex theoretical concepts into experimental form, initiating a variety of innovative research approaches and opening up new dimensions in time-resolved electron microscopy.

Claus Ropers studied physics in Gottingen and at Berkeley and, after working at the Max Born Institute Berlin, earned his doctorate from Humboldt University. He subsequently returned to Gottingen, initially as a junior professor and head of his own working group. In 2011 he was appointed Professor of Experimental Solid-State Physics. Among other accolades, Ropers has been awarded the Walter Schottky Prize of the German Physics Society.

Prof. Dr. Oliver G. Schmidt (46), Materials Science, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden and Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Chemnitz University of Technology

The Leibniz Prize for Oliver G. Schmidt recognises his outstanding work in the investigation, manufacturing and innovative application of functional nanostructures. Schmidt, a physicist, is a pioneer in the field of rolled-up nanotubes and his research moves between physics, chemistry, materials science, electronics and microsystems engineering. His work is concerned with the integration of self-organised three-dimensional nanostructures on a chip. To achieve this, Schmidt developed a technique for tensioning nanometre-thin layers in such a way that materials can be structured in numerous ways in a three-dimensional space. He has translated fundamental research findings into numerous new applications in photonics, sensors, medicine and environmental process engineering or demonstrated how this could be achieved. These applications include the production of micromotors, ring resonators, optofluidic sensors and capacitors.

Oliver G. Schmidt earned his doctorate from TU Berlin in 1999 and worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. After a research visit at the University of Southern California, he returned to Stuttgart as a research group leader and then embarked on his habilitation at the University of Hamburg. In 2007 he was appointed Professor of Material Systems in Nanoelectronics at TU Chemnitz and Director of the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden.

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Scholkopf (49), Machine Learning, Department of Empirical Inference, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tubingen

Computer scientist Bernhard Scholkopf was selected to receive the Leibniz Prize for essential contributions to the theory and success of machine learning. At the beginning of his research career Scholkopf was already interested in support vector machines (SVMs), which enable the classification of input data. SVMs are not machines in the traditional sense, but a mathematical procedure for pattern recognition. Scholkopf developed an algorithm that uses a kernel to perform calculations implicitly in a higher-dimensional space. This elegant simplification laid the foundations for the tremendous success of SVMs. The research field of these 'kernel machines' is now among the most important paradigms in machine learning. The process detects patterns in the learning data and can then recognise these patterns in previously unknown data. More recently, Scholkopf turned to the little-studied field of causal inference, the use of causality in statistical learning processes. These processes could provide a future basis for reliable intelligent systems, such as robots or autonomous vehicles.

Bernhard Scholkopf studied physics in Tubingen and then worked at Bell Laboratories, New Jersey with Vladimir Vapnik, the pioneer of support vector machines. After earning his doctorate from TU Berlin in 1997, he worked at the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD) and at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. In 2001 he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen and in 2011 he moved, with his research group, to the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems as its founding director. Scholkopf is an honorary professor at TU Berlin and the University of Tubingen.

Prof. Dr. Laszlo Szekelyhidi (40), Applied Mathematics, Institute of Mathematics, Universitat Leipzig

Laszlo Szekelyhidi was selected for the 2018 Leibniz Prize for his important research in the theory of partial differential equations. The methods he developed have enriched the interchange between geometry and analysis in mathematics. His new insights have a significance far beyond his own research area, for example in the understanding of Euler equations in hydrodynamics and elasticity theory in continuum mechanics. Euler equations have posed a major challenge in mathematics for over 200 years. Together with Camillo De Lellis, Szekelyhidi has developed new approaches to the construction of non-smooth solutions to Euler equations. These led to a complete proof of Onsager's conjecture, which states that solutions below a certain Holder continuity do not conserve energy but can reduce or, in a non-physical way, increase it. In the field of elasticity theory in continuum mechanics, Szekelyhidi, in his doctoral thesis, succeeded in constructing a polyconvex variation problem with an extremal that cannot be differentiated at any point. In collaboration with Daniel Faraco he achieved another scientific breakthrough with a compactness result, which is closely related to Morrey's conjecture.

Laszlo Szekelyhidi studied mathematics at Oxford University and wrote his dissertation in the natural sciences at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Leipzig. In 2003 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig, which was followed by research stays at Princeton University and ETH Zurich. In 2007 he was appointed professor at the University of Bonn and since 2011 he has held a professorship at the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Leipzig. In 2017 he was awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.

###

Award Ceremony

The 2018 Leibniz Prizes will be bestowed on 19 March 2018 at 3:00 pm at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin. A separate invitation will be sent to members of the media.

Further Information

Media contact:

DFG Press and Public Relations, Tel. 49-228-885-2109, presse@dfg.de

DFG Head Office contact:

Annette Lessenich, Scientific Prizes, Tel. 49-228-885-2835, annette.lessenich@dfg.de

Additional information about the 2018 prizewinners can be requested in early 2018 by contacting the DFG Press and Public Relations Office or by visiting the DFG website at http://www.dfg.de.

Detailed information about the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Programme is available at: http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/leibniz_prize
New study details how fertilization triggers changes to thousands of proteins in frog eggs

At a glance: New approach enables measurements of changes in thousands of proteins in the minutes after frog eggs are fertilized, revealing previously opaque molecular mechanisms.

Researchers describe in detail how fertilization triggers destruction of a small number of proteins, which releases the "brakes" on an egg's cell cycle.

Simultaneously, vast quantities of proteins are rapidly secreted from the egg to help prevent fertilization by multiple sperm cells.

Method allows absolute measurements of protein changes over time, with applications in a wide range of biological systems.

For more than half a century, studies on the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) have helped scientists better understand the biological underpinnings of life, from embryonic development and neurobiology to genetics and disease. The frog's claims to fame include the Nobel Prize-winning discovery that adult cell fate can be reprogrammed, and it once served as the world's only reliable pregnancy test.

Now, new technologies are allowing scientists to learn even more about the fundamental processes that drive biology from these homely model organisms.

Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Harvard Medical School systems biologist Marc Kirschner describes a new approach for identifying and measuring changes in thousands of proteins as Xenopus eggs undergo fertilization.

Their research reveals previously opaque aspects of the molecular mechanisms involved in fertilization, including details of how fertilization triggers the destruction of a small number of low-abundance proteins to release the "brakes" on an egg's cell cycle, and how the egg rapidly releases vast amounts of protein to help prevent fertilization by multiple sperm cells.

The results enable comprehensive analyses of protein dynamics in a cell within a narrow window of time, the researchers said, which can inform studies of molecular behaviors in a wide range of biological systems and help shed light on cellular changes that drive disease.

"We have developed a method that provides us with a critically important ability to quantify and measure absolute levels of proteins and protein modifications in a dynamic, complex system," said Kirschner, the John Franklin Enders University Professor of Systems Biology and chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

"The method should be widely used in many biological and biomedical studies," Kirschner added.

Xenopus eggs have been used for decades to investigate the molecular events that occur during fertilization, shedding light on cell cycle, cell division and embryonic development.

Though much is known from years of study, scientists still have an incomplete understanding of many aspects of fertilization due to technical limitations--in particular, a comprehensive picture of the proteins involved, their functions and what happens to them over time.

Barcode scan

With colleagues Marc Presler and Elizabeth Van Itallie, graduate students in systems biology at Harvard Medical School, and Allon Klein and Steven Gygi, professors of systems biology and cell biology at Harvard Medical School, Kirschner and the research team used a technique to label proteins in Xenopus eggs with barcode-like chemical tags, allowing the scientists to analyze thousands of proteins at once using mass spectrometry.

When coupled with a new analytical methodology, this approach allowed the team to measure the absolute levels of proteins in a cell and reveal details about a protein's phosphorylation--one of the primary chemical modifications that cells use to regulate the activity of a protein.

Taking measurements during and up to 20 minutes after fertilization, the researchers found that levels of a small number of low-abundance proteins quickly drop.

Within a few minutes, the destruction of these proteins causes the reverse of phosphorylation of a much broader range of proteins throughout the cell--a process that promotes the completion of the cell cycle, including the separation of chromosome copies, which prepares the egg for further growth.

While only around 0.01 percent of the total protein mass of the cell was degraded, the team found that fertilization also triggers the expulsion of 50 times this amount of protein from the cell. Primarily stored in cell compartments near the membrane, these sets of proteins are likely secreted to help prevent fertilization by multiple sperm cells, the researchers said.

This release coincides with a substantial uptick in phosphorylation for numerous signaling proteins and others that play a role in generating contraction waves on the surface of the egg immediately after fertilization.

The egg also secretes several protein-degrading enzymes outside the cell, which researchers suspect helps block multiple fertilization events by destroying sperm-binding proteins. In a somewhat paradoxical finding, the team also observed an increase in proteins that inhibit the activity of protein-degrading enzymes. The reasons, however, remain unclear and present an avenue for future studies.

"We were able to observe both new and previously known features of the cell cycle, but we were also able to untangle other major events happening in parallel," Presler said. "Fertilization occurs through the coordination of thousands of molecules at once, and for the first time we have an opportunity to understand it at this scale."

The new methodology enables measures of the absolute levels of proteins and phosphorylation through a combination of technological and mathematical approaches. It represents a significant improvement over commonly used large-scale protein analyses that can make the accurate prediction of functional differences challenging.

By significantly improving the detail and scale at which scientists can study protein composition and modifications, even across narrow windows of time, the team believes these techniques can be applied to many biological systems.

"To understand and cure disease, we need a more precise understanding of what is happening in normal, healthy processes," Presler said. "We asked what the molecular differences between a fertilized and unfertilized egg were, but this approach is immediately applicable for studying other important questions, such as the differences between cells that are in healthy and disease states."

"Protein biochemistry drives much of the function of a cell, and this methodology can give us a more complete picture of how cells do what they do," he said.

###

Additional authors on the study include Margaret L. Coughlin and Leonid Peshkin from the Department of Systems Biology and Ryan Kunz from the Department of Cell Biology, all at Harvard Medical School; and Martin Wu?hr from Princeton University.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (HD091846, HD073104, GM103785, GM39565), a Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship, Princeton University and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Mallinckrodt Award.

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School has more than 11,000 faculty working in 10 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in hospital-based clinical departments at 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network and VA Boston Healthcare System.
Like the ancient Greek god Cronus who devoured his children, a star 550 light years from Earth has been discovered to be slowly consuming its "offspring" -- crushing one or more planets in its orbit into vast clouds of gas and dust.

The discovery that RZ Piscium -- located in the constellation Pisces -- is an insatiable "eater of worlds" was reported today in The Astronomical Journal. Indiana University astronomer Catherine Pilachowski is co-author on the study, titled "Is the Young Star RZ Piscium Consuming Its Own (Planetary) Offspring?"

The discovery may shed light on a brief but volatile period in the history of many solar systems, including our own.

"We know it's not uncommon for planets to migrate inward in young solar systems since we've found so many solar systems with 'hot Jupiters' -- gaseous planets similar in size to Jupiter but orbiting very close to their stars," said Pilachowski, who is the Daniel Kirkwood Chair in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Astronomy. "This is a very interesting phase in the evolution of planetary systems, and we're lucky to catch a solar system in the middle of the process since it happens so quickly compared to the lifetimes of stars."

Doomed worlds that fly too close to their sun -- only to be ripped apart by its tidal forces -- are officially known as "disrupted planets." In the case of RZ Piscium, the material near the sun-like star is being slowly pulled apart to create a small circle of debris about the same distance from the star as the planet Mercury's orbit is from our sun.

"Based on our observations, it seems either that we're seeing a fairly massive, gaseous planet being pulled apart by the star, or perhaps two gas-rich planets that have collided and been torn apart," Pilachowski said of RZ Piscium.

Even solar systems whose planets are not lost to their sun are unstable in their early history, since newly born planets interact strongly with one another -- as well as their sun -- through gravity, she added. In our solar system, for example, some astronomers speculate that Uranus and Neptune swapped orbits about 4 billion years ago. But erratic orbits tend to stabilize over time, falling into regular patterns.

An expert on the analysis of light spectrum from distant stars to determine their temperature, gravity and elemental composition, Pilachowski was responsible in the new study for determining the gravitational strength near RZ Piscium's surface. The observation helped shed light on the star's radius and brightness, both of which suggest a young star in the midst of a freewheeling solar system with unstable planets.

This is significant because RZ Piscium's age was uncertain. The debris field around a star can result from either the erratic orbits in young solar systems or the destruction of planets that occurs as an old star grows before collapsing and dying.

Pilachowski's analysis of the star's light also helped determine the amount of lithium in the star, marking the star as a relatively young 30 million to 50 million years. Astronomers can use lithium levels to estimate a star's age because the element declines over time.

The study's authors also found the star's temperature to be about 9,600 degrees Fahrenheit (5,330 degrees Celsius) -- only slightly cooler than our sun's. Another sign of the star's relative youth: It produces X-rays at a rate roughly 1,000 times greater than our sun.

"This discovery really gives us a rare and beautiful glimpse into what happens to many newly formed planets that don't survive the early dynamical chaos of young solar systems," Pilachowski said. "It helps us understand why some young solar systems survive -- and some don't."

###

The study was led by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology with support from IU, University of California at Irvine, UCLA, Haverford College and Ithaca College. The team investigated the star using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite, the Shane 3-meter telescope at Lick Observatory in California and the 10-meter Keck I telescope at W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Scientists from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) and University of Valladolid have developed a neural network prediction model of corruption based on economic and political factors. The results of the research were published in Social Indicators Research: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-017-1802-2.

Researchers contend that corruption must be detected as soon as possible in order to take corrective and preventive measures. Because public resources for combating corruption are limited, efforts should focus on areas most likely to be involved in corruption cases. They use a unique database that brings together the main cases of political corruption in Spain. Then they propose an early warning corruption model to predict whether corruption cases are likely to emerge in Spanish regions given certain macroeconomic and political determinants. The model provides different profiles of corruption risk depending on the economic conditions of a region conditional on the timing of the prediction.

Scientists of HSE and University of Valladolid have used self-organizing maps (SOMs), a neural network approach, to predict corruption cases in different time horizons. SOMs are a kind of artificial neural network that aim to mimic brain functions. SOMs have the ability to extract patterns from large data sets without an explicit understanding of the underlying relationships. They convert nonlinear relations among high dimensional data into simple geometric connections. These properties have made SOMs a useful tool to detect patterns and obtain visual representations of large amounts of data. Consequently, predicting corruption is a field in which SOMs can become a powerful tool.

The results show that economic factors prove to be relevant predictors of corruption. Researchers find that the taxation of real estate, economic growth, increased house prices, and the growing number of deposit institutions and non-financial firms may induce public corruption. They also find that the same ruling party remaining in power too long is positively related to public corruption. Depending on the characteristics of each region, the probability of corrupt cases emerging over a period of up three years can be estimated. Then the different patterns of corruption antecedents were detected. Whereas in some cases, corruption cases can be predicted well before they occur and thus allow preventive measures to be implemented, in other cases the prediction period is much shorter and urgent corrective political measures are required. The method consists of a sophisticated algorithm with multiple non-linear relations according to which the determinants of the propensity to corruption change throughout the time.

"Our research develops a novel approach with three differential characteristics. First, unlike previous research, which is mainly based on the perception of corruption, we use data on actual cases of corruption, - says one of the authors of the research Felix J. Lopez-Iturriaga, Leading Research Fellow at the International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy of HSE. - Second, we use the neural network approach, a particularly suitable method since it does not make assumptions about data distribution. Neural networks are quite powerful and flexible modeling devices that do not make restrictive assumptions on the data-generating process or the statistical laws concerning the relevant variables. Third, we report the probability of corruption cases on different time scenarios, so that anti-corruption measures can be tailored depending on the immediacy of such corrupt practices. Our model allows patterns of corruption to be identified on different time horizons".

Since corruption remains a widespread global concern, a key issue in the research is the generalizability of the model and the proposed actions. Scientists have used fairly common macroeconomic and political variables that are widely available from public sources in many countries. In turn, the model can be applied to other regions and countries as well. Of course, it could be improved if country or region-specific factors were taken into account.

The approach in the research is interesting both for academia and public authorities. For academia, scientists provide an innovative way to predict public corruption using neural networks. These methods have often been used to predict corporate financial distress and other economic events, but no studies have yet attempted to use neural networks to predict public corruption. Consequently, the researchers extend the domain of neural network application. For public authorities, they provide a model that improves the efficiency of the measures aimed at fighting corruption. Because the resources available to combat corruption are limited, authorities can use the early corruption warning system, which categorizes each province according to its corruption profile, in order to narrow their focus and better implement preventive and corrective policies. In addition, this model predicts corruption cases long before they are discovered, which enhances anticipatory measures. The model can be especially relevant in countries suffering the severest corruption problems. In fact, European Union authorities are highly concerned about widespread corruption in certain countries and can use this approach to prevent corruption.

###

The research was conducted with the financial support (Project ECO2014-56102-P) of Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This paper was also prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).
A team of U.S. astronomers studying the star RZ Piscium has found evidence suggesting its strange, unpredictable dimming episodes may be caused by vast orbiting clouds of gas and dust, the remains of one or more destroyed planets.

"Our observations show there are massive blobs of dust and gas that occasionally block the star's light and are probably spiraling into it," said Kristina Punzi, a doctoral student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York and lead author of a paper describing the findings. "Although there could be other explanations, we suggest this material may have been produced by the break-up of massive orbiting bodies near the star."

RZ Piscium is located about 550 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. During its erratic dimming episodes, which can last as long as two days, the star becomes as much as 10 times fainter. It produces far more energy at infrared wavelengths than emitted by stars like our Sun, which indicates the star is surrounded by a disk of warm dust. In fact, about 8 percent of its total luminosity is in the infrared, a level matched by only a few of the thousands of nearby stars studied over the past 40 years. This implies enormous quantities of dust.

These and other observations led some astronomers to conclude that RZ Piscium is a young Sun-like star surrounded by a dense asteroid belt, where frequent collisions grind the rocks to dust.

But the evidence was far from clear. An alternative view suggests the star is instead somewhat older than our Sun and just beginning its transition into the red giant stage. A dusty disk from the star's youth would have dispersed after a few million years, so astronomers needed another source of dust to account for the star's infrared glow. Because the aging star is growing larger, it would doom any planets in close orbits, and their destruction could provide the necessary dust.

So which is it, a young star with a debris disk or a planet-smashing stellar senior? According to the research by Punzi and her colleagues, RZ Piscium is a bit of both.

The team investigated the star using the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton satellite, the Shane 3-meter telescope at Lick Observatory in California and the 10-meter Keck I telescope at W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Young stars are often prodigious X-ray sources. Thanks to 11 hours of XMM-Newton observations, Punzi's team shows that RZ Piscium is, too. Its total X-ray output is roughly 1,000 times greater than our Sun's, essentially clinching the case for stellar youth.

The team's ground-based observations revealed the star's surface temperature to be about 9,600 degrees Fahrenheit (5,330 degrees Celsius), only slightly cooler than the Sun's. They also show the star is enriched in the tell-tale element lithium, which is slowly destroyed by nuclear reactions inside stars.

"The amount of lithium in a star's surface declines as it ages, so it serves as a clock that allows us to estimate the elapsed time since a star's birth," said co-author Joel Kastner, director of RIT's Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. "Our lithium measurement for RZ Piscium is typical for a star of its surface temperature that is about 30 to 50 million years old."

So while the star is young, it's actually too old to be surrounded by so much gas and dust. "Most Sun-like stars have lost their planet-forming disks within a few million years of their birth," said team member Ben Zuckerman, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The fact that RZ Piscium hosts so much gas and dust after tens of millions of years means it's probably destroying, rather than building, planets."

Ground-based observations also probed the star's environment, capturing evidence that the dust is accompanied by substantial amounts of gas. Based on the temperature of the dust, around 450 degrees F (230 degrees C), the researchers think most of the debris is orbiting about 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) from the star.

"While we think the bulk of this debris is about as close to the star as the planet Mercury ever gets to our Sun, the measurements also show variable and rapidly moving emission and absorption from hydrogen-rich gas," said co-author Carl Melis, an associate research scientist at the University of California, San Diego. "Our measurements provide evidence that material is both falling inward toward the star and also flowing outward."

A paper reporting the findings was published Thurs., Dec. 21, in The Astronomical Journal.

The best explanation that accounts for all of the available data, say the researchers, is that the star is encircled by debris representing the aftermath of a disaster of planetary proportions. It's possible the star's tides may be stripping material from a close substellar companion or giant planet, producing intermittent streams of gas and dust, or that the companion is already completely dissolved. Another possibility is that one or more massive gas-rich planets in the system underwent a catastrophic collision in the astronomically recent past.

###

ESA's XMM-Newton observatory was launched in December 1999 from Kourou, French Guiana. NASA funded elements of the XMM-Newton instrument package and provides the NASA Guest Observer Facility at Goddard, which supports use of the observatory by U.S. astronomers.
The threat to global food security from the fungal pathogen that causes stem rust in wheat has eased but an "ongoing arms race" needs constant vigilance

Expertise in viruses and high security containment brought Rothamsted Research into a multinational team that has just won a major battle in the war against a genetically versatile fungal pathogen with a long record of devastation of wheat production globally.

The team, from Australia, the US and the UK, identified a gene in the fungus that triggers resistance in the host plant and have begun to understand how the fungus mutates to neutralise this avirulence gene to overcome the resistance pathway. Their findings are reported today in Science.

"For the first time, it will be possible to do DNA testing to identify whether a rust in a wheat crop anywhere in the world can overcome a rust-resistance gene, called Sr50, which is being introduced in high-yielding wheat varieties," says Robert Park, Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Sydney and co-leader of the research team.

"This will indicate whether or not a given wheat crop needs to be sprayed with expensive fungicide quickly to protect against rust, which would otherwise devastate the crop in a matter of weeks," adds Park.

The research is the first important step in addressing the diagnostic challenges posed by ever-changing fungi, which result in new rust pathogen strains, according to Jaipeng Chen, a PhD student who works with Park. Chen, who is lead author of the Science paper, initiated the work by sequencing and analysing the genome of a virulent rust stain.

In warm, dry conditions, the fungus, Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt), causes stem rust (also known as black rust), which has wiped out wheat crops throughout history. A particularly virulent form, Ug99, has spread across Africa and the Middle East; Asia is threatened, and other virulent strains have caused outbreaks recently in Europe.

"We can now survey distribution of avirulence genes in Pgt populations and anticipate the evolution of virulence," says Peter Dodds, the team's other co-leader and a specialist in fungal rust diseases at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). "This information can help prioritise resistance genes for deployment in different geographic locations."

Wheat varieties are already bred to contain known genes that confer resistance to stem rust, notably Sr50, which can still control the fungus. These resistance genes inhibit infection by detecting "effector" proteins that the pathogen's avirulence genes express. But it's a hit-and-miss affair.

"We didn't know which stem rust proteins were recognised by wheat resistance genes," says Dodds. "Therefore, we couldn't predict the likelihood of evolution of new virulent strains or the durability of particular resistance genes." The latest findings of his research team are changing all that.

Work in Dodds' lab on model tobacco plants pointed towards a particular fungal gene as the likely avirulence candidate of the resistance gene Sr50. However, it needed confirmation of this hypothesis through further tests in wheat, which is where Rothamsted came in.

Rothamsted has developed a virus-based system that can deliver alien proteins inside wheat cells, known as virus-mediated overexpression of heterologous protein (VOX). In this research, the viral vector was barley stripe mosaic virus.

"When the VOX vector produced rust effector proteins from the candidate gene in wheat without Sr50, we observed virus-induced mosaic symptoms in the plants, indicating infection," says Kostya Kanyuka, a specialist in functional genomics at Rothamsted.

Kanyuka continues: "However, this same VOX vector was stopped in its tracks completely in wheat with Sr50, indicating the resistance gene's recognition of the effector protein candidate and its induction of strong defensive responses against the virus."

Although the work was performed inside a "level-3" containment facility, the most secure for plant science, no fungus or stem rust entered Rothamsted; both pathogen and disease are controlled substances, and their use would require special permits.

Kanyuka adds: "I consider this data to be solid proof of concept and envisage expansion in the use of our VOX system for rapid identification of avirulence genes from other rust species, such as stripe and leaf rusts, and from other wheat-infecting pathogens."

Performing the work in the laboratory as a "transient transformation", which operates only during the individual plant lifespan, rather than as a "stable transformation", which would involve genetic modification of the genome and testing by growing the wheat, saved considerable time and money. And solutions are needed quickly.

The highly virulent Ug99 form of the stem rust fungus, which emerged in 1998 in Uganda, has become even more potent as it has spread through Africa and the Middle East, with winds threatening to carry it into Asia.

Europe has not detected Ug99, so far. Although stem rust has occurred only once in the UK over the past 40 years, other new fungal strains appeared in Germany and Denmark in 2013, in Sicily last year and in Sweden this year. The disease continues to be a threat in North America.

US collaborators Melania Figueroa and Brian Steffenson, from the University of Minnesota, and Yue Jin, from the US Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service, extended the results of the study by examining strains of the stem rust pathogen from other parts of the world, including the US and Africa.

"It is important to look at this gene in worldwide rust strains to gain a picture of where virulence is most likely to evolve," says Figueroa, assistant professor in plant pathology at the University of Minnesota.

There is no time for complacency, says Park: "It's like an ongoing arms race - we've got to keep one step ahead of this changing pathogen. The last major epidemic of wheat stem rust in Australia alone, in 1973, caused SAU300 million [$225 million]; imagine what that would be today."

According to Dodds, demand for wheat in the developing world is expected to jump 60% by 2050 and, in economic terms alone, the ramifications are huge.

###
SFU engineering science professor Marinko Sarunic has developed a high resolution retinal imaging scanner that will one day revolutionize eye care, helping ophthalmologists diagnose eye diseases before vision loss occurs.

The retina is the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. Its 100 million photoreceptors convert light into the images that our brain 'sees.'

Today, there are approximately one million Canadians with vision loss caused by major eye diseases such as wet age-related macular degeneration (Wet AMD), diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and others. The prevalence of vision loss in Canada is expected to double in the next 25 years. An estimated 75 per cent of vision loss can be treated or prevented through early detection.

Sarunic's high-resolution scanner is on the cutting edge of vision science because it can produce high-resolution, 3-D cross-sectional images of the retina--including individual photoreceptors, and fine capillaries, or blood vessels. And unlike other high-resolution retinal scanners, which are the size of a billiard table, Sarunic's is the size of a shoebox. It's perfect for everyday use in medical clinics and hospitals.

"It's a breakthrough in clinical diagnostics," says Sarunic. "With the high-resolution scanner, ophthalmologists and optometrists can detect damage and changes to small numbers of individual photoreceptors, giving them a diagnosis before the patient loses vision, and the potential to take preventative measures."

Currently, physicians use low-resolution scanners that can only assess and diagnose the cause of dead retina cells after a patient's vision is impacted. Last year, ophthalmologists at Vancouver General Hospital's (VGH) Eye Care Centre spent eight months testing Sarunic's high-resolution scanner.

Dr. Eduardo Navajas, a vitreoretinal specialist, says the scanner eliminates the need for, and the complications related to, dye injections that are currently used to diagnose and monitor eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy and Wet AMD.

"Early detection of abnormal blood vessels caused by Wet AMD and diabetes is essential to saving a patient's vision," says Navajas. "Dr. Sarunic's new imaging technology is benefiting patients, allowing us to diagnose and treat Wet AMD and diabetic eye disease before patients develop bleeding and permanent damage to their retina."

FAST FACTS:

Today, there are approximately one million Canadians with vision loss caused by major eye diseases such as wet age-related macular degeneration (Wet AMD), diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and others.

The prevalence of vision loss in Canada is expected to double in the next 25 years

The scanner eliminates the need for, and the complications related to, dye injections that are currently used to diagnose and monitor eye diseases like diabetic retinopathy and Wet AMD 75 per cent of vision loss can be treated or prevented through early detection.

Wet AMD accounts for 90 per cent of the severe vision loss caused by macular degeneration

Diabetic retinopathy occurs in people who have diabetes. It causes progressive damage to the retina. Diabetic retinopathy is a serious, sight-threatening complication of diabetes.

Glaucoma is a complicated disease in which damage to the optic nerve leads to progressive, irreversible vision loss. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness.

ABOUT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY:

As Canada's engaged university, SFU is defined by its dynamic integration of innovative education, cutting-edge research and far-reaching community engagement. SFU was founded more than 50 years ago with a mission to be a different kind of university--to bring an interdisciplinary approach to learning, embrace bold initiatives, and engage with communities near and far. Today, SFU is Canada's leading comprehensive research university and is ranked one of the top universities in the world. With campuses in British Columbia's three largest cities - Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey - SFU has eight faculties, delivers almost 150 programs to over 35,000 students, and boasts more than 145,000 alumni in 130 countries around the world.

###

Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.

Contact:

Marinko Sarunic, engineering science

778-782-7654

msarunic@sfu.ca

Suraaj Aulakh

applied science

778-782-7029

fascomms@sfu.ca

Marianne Meadahl

university communications

778-782-9017

mhamilto@sfu.ca

Justin Wong

university communications

jrwong@sfu.ca

Photos: http://i.sfu.ca/hROrNe B-roll: http://at.sfu.ca/SKHQve Interviews: http://at.sfu.ca/bsjFBc
Using x-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to map out how water fluctuates between two different states when it is cooled. At -44C these fluctuations reach a maximum pointing to the fact that water can exist as two different distinct liquids. The findings will be published in the journal Science.

Water, both common and necessary for life on earth, behaves very strangely in comparison with other substances. How water's density, specific heat, viscosity and compressibility respond to changes in pressure and temperature is completely opposite to other liquids that we know.

We all are aware that all matter shrinks when it is cooled resulting in an increase in the density. We would therefore expect that water would have high density at the freezing point. However, if we look at a glass of ice water, everything is upside down, since we expect that water at 0C being surrounded by ice should be at the bottom of the glass, but of course as we know ice cubes float. Strangely enough for the liquid state, water is the densest at 4 degrees C, and therefore it stays on the bottom whether it's in a glass or in an ocean.

If you chill water below 4 degrees, it starts to expand again. If you continue to cool pure water (where the rate of crystallization is low) to below 0, it continues to expand - the expansion even speeds up when it gets colder. Many more properties such as compressibility and heat capacity become increasingly strange as water is cooled. Now researchers at Stockholm University, with the help of ultra-short x-ray pulses at x-ray lasers in Japan and South Korea, have succeeded in determining that water reaches the peak of its strange behaviour at -44C.

Water is unique, as it can exist in two liquid states that have different ways of bonding the water molecules together. The water fluctuates between these states as if it can't make up its mind and these fluctuations reach a maximum at -44C. It is this ability to shift from one liquid state into another that gives water its unusual properties and since the fluctuations increase upon cooling also the strangeness increases.

"What was special was that we were able to X-ray unimaginably fast before the ice froze and could observe how it fluctuated between the two states", says Anders Nilsson, Professor of Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "For decades there has been speculations and different theories to explain these remarkable properties and why they got stronger when water becomes colder. Now we have found such a maximum, which means that there should also be a critical point at higher pressures."

Another remarkable finding of the study is that the unusual properties are different between normal and heavy water and more enhanced for the lighter one. "The differences between the two isotopes, H2O and D2O, given here shows the importance of nuclear quantum effects", says Kyung Hwan Kim, postdoc in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "The possibility to make new discoveries in a much studied topic such as water is totally fascinating and a great inspiration for my further studies", says Alexander Spah, PhD student in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University.

"It was a dream come true to be able to measure water under such low temperature condition without freezing" says Harshad Pathak, postdoc in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "Many attempts over the world have been made to look for this maximum".

"There has been an intense debate about the origin of the strange properties of water for over a century since the early work of Wolfgang Rontgen", further explains Anders Nilsson. "Researchers studying the physics of water can now settle on the model that water has a critical point in the supercooled regime. The next stage is to find the location of the critical in terms of pressure and temperature. A big challenge in the next few years."

###

The study was done in cooperation with the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, PAL-XFEL in Korea and SACLA in Japan. People from Stockholm University contributing to the study include Kyung Hwan Kim, Alexander Spah, Harshad Pathak, Fivos Perakis, Katrin Amann-Winkel and Daniel Mariedahl from Stockholm University.

Scientist Contact: Anders Nilsson, andersn@fysik.su.se, 46-73-9946230 (after Dec 26th +1 650 868 7558)

Further reading in Science: Maxima in the Thermodynamic Response and Correlation Functions of Deeply Supercooled Water by Kyung Hwan Kim and Alexander Spah et al Science DOI: 10.1126/science.aap8269
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and their colleagues have developed a way to pinpoint potential targets for cancer therapies that rely on the body's immune system.

Those targets are molecules called antigens, which appear on the surface of tumor cells and other malignant or damaged cells. Antigens are cumbersome to identify but critical to developing cancer immunotherapies, a type of treatment in which the host's own immune system is trained to seek out and fight harmful or mutated cells. And while cancer vaccines are still largely a thing of the future, new antigens are key to nudging progress forward.

The researchers exploited years of structural and protein engineering studies by the laboratory of Christopher Garcia, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and of structural biology, to better understand how the immune system "sees" antigens. Based on this knowledge, they developed a technique to identify them. What's more, the technique could serve to identify potential antigens relevant to other immunotherapies, such as those that combat autoimmune or infectious diseases.

A paper describing the work will be published online Dec. 21 in Cell. Stanford graduate student Marvin Gee and postdoctoral scholar Arnold Han, MD, PhD, share lead authorship of the paper. Garcia, who holds the Younger Family Professorship, is the senior author.

"The whole foundation of immunotherapy depends on immune cells recognizing specific antigens on tumor cells. That's the basis of the actual killing event -- where the rubber hits the road," Garcia said. "But currently we know very few tumor antigens, and there's just been no good way of discovering them." Here, he said, is where he sees potential for the new biochemical screen to expedite the identification process.

A game of odds

A type of immune cell known as a T cell patrols the body for foreign invaders or mutated cells poised to cause harm. On their surface, T cells have receptors that bind to one or more specific antigens of a tumor or other harmful cell. When a receptor finds its match, the antigen acts as the T cell's molecular directive to infiltrate and kill the unhealthy cell. But because matched receptor-antigen pairs are difficult to come by experimentally, many receptors remain unidentified. They're called orphan receptors.

"This screen is a completely unbiased way of taking a random T cell receptor that's infiltrated a tumor and interrogating it to find out exactly what antigen it is actually seeing," said Garcia, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

The screen he and his colleagues devised pulls data from two resources: orphan T cell receptors found on colon cancer tumors, and a hefty repository of antigen sequences of white blood cells. Using yeast as a vehicle, the team scanned some 400 million of these antigen sequences, all possible matches to 20 orphan receptors derived from the colon cancer tissue samples. Four of the 20 receptors found matches.

The somewhat modest ratio is a product of chance. The receptors are restricted by genotype, and will only bind to antigens of a matching genotype. Between that and the enormous variability of possible antigens, pegging a receptor-antigen match is "a bit like winning the lottery," Garcia said. "The key to increasing the odds is to increase the throughput of the experiments, kind of like putting more coins into the slot machine."

What's in the screen, and what's getting screened, Garcia explained, are mimics of the original receptors and antigens -- accurate, but not 100 percent identical. So, after the initial screen, the four receptors that bound antigens were then sequenced and run through an algorithm, which ultimately figured out the correct corresponding identity of the human antigen. With this technique, the team unambiguously identified two human antigens of the four receptors that found matches in the yeast-based library, and they're currently in the process of identifying a third one.

Neo versus self

There's an ongoing debate, Garcia said, about the most important types of antigens that T cells "see" and attack in tumors. One currently popular notion is that T cell receptors react with neoantigens, or antigens that are mutated or uniquely part of a cancer, rather than self-antigens, which both cancerous and healthy cells can have in common. Unexpectedly, however, evidence from the new study suggests otherwise, as one of the two antigens was "self." In addition, the self-antigen turned out to be shared between two patients -- a key to developing immunotherapies.

"It was a huge surprise to find that one of the antigens was a non-mutated, shared self-antigen, and the implications are that if you screen many more T cell receptors, you'll likely find a lot of shared antigens," Garcia said. "So in theory, you could have one immunotherapy that targets this antigen, and it'd be effective for multiple patients." But this, he said, brings us to the million-dollar question: How do we generate anti-tumor immunity against an antigen that is attached to both healthy and cancerous cells?

"Right now, we don't have an answer, but there are a lot of efforts going into that problem, and it's something that I'm very interested in," Garcia said. "It's a problem that we're going to have to solve because there are going to be a lot of tumor antigens that will be non-mutated, and so we have to figure out how to localize the attack to just the tumor, and not the rest of the host."

###

The study's other Stanford co-authors are staff researcher Shane Lofgren; postdoctoral scholars John Beausang, PhD, Juan Mendoza, PhD, Michael Birnbaum, PhD, Xinbo Yang, PhD, and Ricardo Fernandes, PhD; research assistants Suzanne Fischer and Andrew Velasco; David Bingham, MD, clinical assistant professor of pathology; graduate student Leah Sibener; Purvesh Khatri, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical data science; Stephen Quake, PhD, professor of bioengineering and of applied physics; and Mark Davis, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology.

Garcia, Davis, Quake and Khatri are members of Stanford Bio-X. Garcia, Davis and Quake are members of the Stanford Cancer Institute and of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Khatri and Davis are members of the Stanford Child Health Research Institute. Davis and Quake are members of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute.

Researchers at California Institute of Technology and at the Netherlands Cancer Institute also contributed to the study.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grant R01AI103867), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Stanford's departments of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and of Structural Biology also supported the work.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/school.html. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/.

Print media contact: Hanae Armitage at (650) 725-5376 (harmitag@stanford.edu)

Broadcast media contact: Margarita Gallardo at (650) 723-7897 (mjgallardo@stanford.edu)
Researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the Colorado School of Mines received a two-year grant to investigate contamination of the drinking water in the communities of Fountain, Security and Widefield. Residents of these areas were exposed to drinking water contaminated with pollutants originating from aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) used in firefighting and training activities.

By measuring biological markers of exposure and health indicators in a sample of approximately 200 people who consumed contaminated water, this study will provide communities and scientists with an improved understanding of the biopersistence and potential health impacts of AFFF-derived poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). PFASs are a class of chemicals widely used in industrial and commercial applications since the 1950s.

In July, a nine-month U.S. Air Force study verified that firefighting foam used at Peterson Air Force Base contaminated groundwater and soil with PFASs at levels more than 1,000 times an Environmental Protection Agency health advisory limit for similar chemicals.

The grant is from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a program of the National Institutes of Health. This study is being funded because of the recent discovery of the source of contamination, which has impacted the water supplies of these communities for several years.

"This research will contribute to our understanding of the factors driving this unique exposure and how it may affect long-term health," said Dr. John Adgate, chair of ColoradoSPH's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and principal investigator of the study. "We will collect the first systematic data on blood levels of these persistent compounds in this PFAS-impacted community. While exposure to PFASs has been significantly reduced due to work by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the local water utilities, our hope is that by gathering data on blood levels shortly after people's peak exposure we can provide better answers on related health effects and potential next steps."

Currently, little is known about the health effects of human exposure to PFASs in areas with drinking water contaminated by AFFF, and no systematic biomonitoring has been done in these communities.

"Because we suspect that any health effects are likely related to peak blood levels, it is important to collect the blood data and health effect information as soon as we can," Dr. Adgate said.

Dr. Christopher Higgins, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Mines and a co-investigator for the study, will be applying advanced analytical techniques to examine the potential that a much broader suite of PFASs is present in the impacted water supplies and possibly in people's blood.

"By using high resolution mass spectrometry to look at both water samples and a subset of human serum samples, we hope to improve our understanding of exactly which compounds bioaccumulate in humans and how long they stick around in the human body," Higgins said. "We will also explore the links between drinking water exposure, PFAS blood levels, and the potentially related health effects."

###
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Research in the past two decades has revealed that microbial organisms in the gut influence health and disease in many ways, particularly related to immune function, metabolism and resistance to infection. Recent studies have shown that gut microbes also may cause or worsen Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

University of Louisville neurology professor Robert P. Friedland, M.D., and Matthew R. Chapman, Ph.D., professor at the University of Michigan, have proposed a new term to describe an interaction between gut microbiota and the brain in an article released today in PLOS Pathogens.

Friedland and Chapman propose the term "mapranosis" for the process by which amyloid proteins produced by microbes (bacteria, fungi and others) alter the structure of proteins (proteopathy) and enhance inflammation in the nervous system, thereby initiating or augmenting brain disease. The term is derived from Microbiota Associated Protepathy And Neuroinflammation + osis (a process).

Friedland hopes that giving the process a name will facilitate awareness of the process, as well as research leading to therapeutic opportunities.

"It is critical to define the ways in which gut bacteria and other organisms interact with the host to create disease, as there are many ways in which the microbiota may be altered to influence health," Friedland said.

Research into the multitude of microbes that inhabit the human body has expanded considerably in recent years. Genomic analysis has begun to reveal the full diversity of bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea and parasites living in and on the body, the majority of them in the gut. Even more recently, researchers have begun to explore how the proteins and other metabolites produced by microbes inhabiting the gut influence functions in other parts of the body, including the brain. However, we do not yet have a full understanding of how these systems work. The relationship between the microbiota and the brain has been called the "gut-brain axis."

It is understood that the clumping of misfolded amyloid proteins, structures produced by neurons in the brain, are associated with neurodegeneration and conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

"It is well known that patterns of amyloid misfolding of neuronal proteins are involved in age-related brain diseases. Recent studies suggest that similar protein structures produced by gut bacteria, referred to as bacterial amyloid, may be involved in the initiation of neurodegenerative processes in the brain," Friedland said. "Bacterial amyloids are produced by a wide range of microbes that inhabit the GI tract, including the mouth."

In research published in 2016 in Scientific Reports, Friedland and colleagues showed that when E. coli microbes in the gut of rats and worms (nematodes) produced misfolded amyloids, the amyloids produced in the animals' brains and intestines also misfolded, a process called cross-seeding.

"Our work suggests that our commensal microbial partners make functional extracellular amyloid proteins, which interact with host proteins through cross-seeding of amyloid misfolding and trigger neuroinflammation in the brain," Friedland said.

In today's article, Friedland and Chapman also address other factors related to the microbiota and its products and how they influence neurodegenerative disorders.

The microbiota modulates (enhances) immune processes throughout the body, including the central nervous system. The microbiota may induce oxidative toxicity (free radicals) and related inflammation that contributes to neurodegeneration. Metabolites produced by the microbiota may be either beneficial (health sustaining) or damaging (pathogenic). Host genetics influence microbiota populations, illustrating that the gut-brain axis is bidirectional.

Friedland believes further research in this area may lead to therapies for these neurodegenerative diseases, which are increasing in frequency and for which there are few effective treatments.

###

Chapman's research is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Friedland's work has been supported by The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (12/21/2017) -- For the first time ever, scientists are gaining ground in the race against wheat stem rust, a pathogen that threatens global food security because of its ability to kill wheat. A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Rothamsted Research, the University of Minnesota and USDA have discovered the first rust virulence molecule that wheat plants detect to 'switch on' built-in resistance and stave off the disease.

Stem rust, historically the most dangerous pathogen of wheat is caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt). A particularly destructive form of Pgt, Ug99, has recently received much attention because of its spread across Africa and the Middle East. Such geographic expansion and the emergence of other virulent strains related and non-related to Ug99 have caused great concerns for wheat production. Even more alarming is the recent detection of new virulent strains in Europe which could easily make their way to the US. Findings by this group of scientists published in Science reveal how the immune system in plants resistant to this disease directly recognizes a specific fungal protein to subsequently "turn on" resistance and fend off the pathogen.

"For the first time, it will be possible to do DNA testing to identify whether a rust in a wheat crop anywhere in the world can overcome a rust-resistance gene, called Sr50, which is being introduced in high-yielding wheat varieties," said University of Sydney Professor of Sustainable Agriculture Robert Park, co-leader of the research team. "This will indicate whether or not a given wheat crop needs to be sprayed with expensive fungicide quickly to protect against rust, which would otherwise devastate the crop in a matter of weeks."

This is a key finding to stay ahead of rust disease epidemics, like those that have been extremely damaging in East Africa and making a comeback in Europe.

"It's like an ongoing arms race - we've got to keep one step ahead of this changing pathogen," said Park.

Co-corresponding author, University of Minnesota Plant Pathology Adjunct Professor Peter Dodds from CSIRO, said demand for wheat in the developing world was expected to jump 60 percent by 2050 and in economic terms alone the ramifications were huge.

"Now that we've identified how stem rust strains are able to overcome Sr50 resistance - by mutation of a gene we've identified called AvrSr50 - this information can be used to help prioritize resistance genes for deployment," said Dodds.

Owning to a long-history of stem rust research expertise, University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) Professor Brian Steffenson and Adjunct Professor Yue Jin have been collecting Pgt isolates from around the world, including those causing epidemics in Africa. Plant Pathology Professor Melania Figueroa and graduate student Feng Li leveraged these resources to examine the genetic variability of AvrSr50 in a set of Pgt isolates with global importance.

"Close examination of the sequence of this gene in strains from diverse origin can provide important clues to understand the evolution of this pathogen and how virulence emerges," said Figueroa.

A key contribution to the study was the analysis of an Sr50-virulent strain collected by United States Department of Agriculture scientist Yue Jin from barberry, the alternate host of Pgt where the pathogen undergoes sexual reproduction. This strain contains a variation of a gene that is not recognized by Sr50, which helped to confirm the identity of the gene and showed how stem rust can evolve to overcome resistance.

Using a Biosafety Level - 3 containment facility, the University of Minnesota team was also able to work with the African strain Ug99 under maximum restricted conditions to prevent pathogen escapes.

"It is essential we determine the propensity of Pgt strains to evolve virulence to specific resistance genes, in this case we know that Ug99 may be primed to defeat Sr50 in the field," said Figueroa.

While this is a vital step forward in understanding how plants and this disease interact, there is much work yet to be done before science will have a complete understanding of these interactions. Unraveling these molecular interactions can also assist in understanding other important rust diseases such those affecting other cereals and crops like soybean and coffee.

"Our results so far show that the plant immune system is able to directly recognize the fungal protein, but we want to understand the whole process better - what's going on at the protein level, at the gene level, and how the fungus can escape recognition," said Dodds.

The scientific contribution to this study made by the University of Minnesota scientists highlights the commitment of our institution to work in teams to solve important challenges in agriculture. For fourth year Ph.D. student Feng Li, who is extremely passionate about food security, this has been a highly valuable training experience. "I hope to apply this knowledge to address similar problems in food security. Wheat production is affected by two other rust pathogens, the research plan we followed in this project can guide other scientists to uncover additional virulence molecules in their systems " says Li.

###

This research was supported by the TwoBlades foundation, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (grants US00067 and CSP00161), University of Minnesota Lieberman-Okinow and Stakman Endowments, Experimental Station USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Funds (project MIN-22-058), and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (project BB/P016855/1).

To learn more about how rust fungi invade and affect plants and also how plants can resist pathogen watch this video from CSIRO.
ANN ARBOR--The psychological and social risks that adolescents experience can have a lasting impact on adulthood.

When those risks include drug use, mental distress and exposure to violence, they may engage in unsafe sexual behavior that increases their chance of HIV infection, according to a new longitudinal study by the University of Michigan.

"Our findings support the notion that the increasing frequency of psychosocial risk factors experienced during adolescence may have effects on HIV risk behaviors decades later," said study lead author David Cordova, U-M assistant professor of social work.

Cordova and colleagues conducted the study from September 1994 to May 2013 in Flint, Mich. The participants involved 850 students, mainly African-American, who were asked about their sexual behaviors, mental health, being a victim or witness of violence, and social conditions (family, peer and community factors) beginning at age 14. They were assessed six times during the study until age 32.

One out of four respondents who had a relatively higher frequency of co-occurring psychological and social risk as adolescents were more likely to report unprotected sex with recent partners, as well as sexual intercourse with someone they just met in adulthood.

In addition, they were more likely to use illegal drugs prior to sex, and had at least four sexual partners. This segment was more vulnerable to HIV risk than those who were part of the low frequency of risk group, which had fewer instances of drug use, violence and mental distress during adolescence.

Since the study mainly involved African-American respondents, the findings may not be generalized to all adolescent populations, Cordova said.

###

The paper's other authors are U-M researchers Justin Heinze, Hsing-Fang Hsieh, Ritesh Mistry and Marc Zimmerman; Christopher Salas-Wright of Boston University; and Stephanie Cook of New York University.

The findings appear in the journal AIDS.
Scientists have isolated the very first rust pathogen gene that wheat plants detect to 'switch on' resistance

Famine may be largely a thing of the past but in recent years the re-emergence of a disease that can kill wheat - which provides a fifth of humanity's food - has threatened food security; now a breakthrough is being announced just before Christmas, in two companion papers being published in the journal Science.

In a world first, science has leaped a step ahead of an old foe that has recently re-emerged in some parts of the world, where it has devastated crops because of its ability to evolve, undoing much of the hard work that began in earnest with the Green Revolution - using natural techniques to isolate the first rust pathogen gene that wheat plants detect and use to 'switch on' in-built resistance.

The breakthrough in research targeting the stem rust foe - historically the most dangerous pathogen of wheat - will mean suspect samples could be analysed within hours in an emergency rather than weeks, potentially saving crops from being destroyed.

"For the first time it will be possible to do DNA testing to identify whether a rust in a wheat crop anywhere in the world can overcome a rust-resistance gene, called Sr50, which is being introduced in high-yielding wheat varieties," said Professor Robert Park, corresponding author from the University of Sydney.

"This will indicate whether or not a given wheat crop needs to be sprayed with expensive fungicide quickly to protect against rust - which would otherwise devastate the crop in a matter of weeks."

Rust disease epidemics have emerged at times in tandem with carefully refined selective breeding in cereals; the disease is once again extremely damaging in East Africa and is making a comeback in Europe.

The new findings are being published in one of the world's leading journals, the US-based Science.

Mr Jiapeng Chen, a PhD candidate from the University of Sydney who initiated the work by sequencing and analysing the genome of a virulent rust isolate, said this was the first important step in addressing the diagnostic challenges posed by ever-changing fungi, which result in new rust pathogen strains.

Professor Park explained: "It's like an ongoing arms race - we've got to keep one step ahead of this changing pathogen.

"The last major epidemic of wheat stem rust in Australia alone, in 1973, caused $AU300 million in damage - imagine what that would be today."

Co-corresponding author, Dr Peter Dodds from the Commonweatlh Scientific Industrial Research Organisation, said demand for wheat in the developing world was expected to jump 60 percent by 2050 and in economic terms alone the ramifications were huge.

"Now that we've identified how stem rust strains are able to overcome Sr50 resistance - by mutation of a gene we've identified called AvrSr50 - this information can be used to help prioritise resistance genes for deployment.

"Our results so far show the plant immune system is able directly to recognise the fungal protein, said Dr Peter Dodds, from CSIRO's Agriculture and Food team. "We are gaining a better understanding of the whole process - what's going on at the protein level, at the gene level."

Co-author Dr Kostya Kanyuka from Rothamsted Research, an agricultural science centre in the United Kingdom, said stem rust had been making a comeback in Europe, for example in Sweden as recently as this year, and was threatening Asia and the US.

"The highly virulent Ug99 race of the stem rust fungus - which emerged in 1998 in Uganda - has become even more potent as it has spread through Africa and the Middle East, with winds threatening to carry it into Asia," Dr Kanyuka said.

US collaborators Professor Melania Figueroa, Professor Brian Steffenson and Dr Yue Jin were able to extend the results of the study by examining strains of the stem rust pathogen from other parts of the world, including the US and Africa.

"It is important to look at this gene in worldwide rust strains to gain a picture of where virulence is most likely to evolve," Professor Figueroa said.

Professor Park, from the Plant Breeding Institute, part of the University's Sydney Institute of Agriculture and School of Life and Environmental Sciences, said the results should also lead to a better understanding of how rust pathogens infect wheat, evading detection by the wheat plant, and causing yield losses.

"In addition to the immediate practical benefit regarding the important rust-resistance gene Sr50, our world-first finding could potentially have a longer-term payoff in the 10-15-year horizon," he said.

###

MULTIMEDIA

HD footage, b-roll, animation and high-rez photos can be downloaded via https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/s/z2O7HTXvRqfqF9U/authenticate - with password: WST17.

Notes to Editors

- The developments enabling scientists to get a clear understanding of what is happening at the gene and protein levels occurred for the first time by coincidence in parallel research groups led from Australia and at Kansas State University in Manhattan.

- Australians have been breeding for resistance to rusts and studying how they evolve for 95 years but this is the first time scientists have been able to look down at the gene level.

- Researchers used new technologies and techniques - including whole-genome sequencing that decodes DNA, and computer bioinformatics that allow the vast amounts of sequence data generated to be analysed.

- A key element of the research was carried out by PhD candidate Mr Jiapeng Chen, partially funded by the University of Sydney through the affiliated Judith and David Coffey Life Laboratory in the Charles Perkins Centre.

- Work in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) supported by the philanthropic TwoBlades foundation used model tobacco plants to identify a candidate fungal gene identified by Mr Chen as the likely avirulence candidate of the resistance gene Sr50. However, it needed confirmation of this hypothesis in wheat.

- Rothamsted then developed a virus-based system that can deliver alien proteins inside wheat cells, known as virus-mediated overexpression of heterologous protein (VOX) and tested it on proteins from the candidate gene in wheat with Sr50.
TORONTO, ON (Canada) - Paleontologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto have entirely revisited a tiny yet exceptionally fierce ancient sea creature called Habelia optata that has confounded scientists since it was first discovered more than a century ago.

The research by lead author Cedric Aria, recent graduate of the PhD program in the department of ecology & evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T, and co-author Jean-Bernard Caron, senior curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the ROM and an associate professor in the departments of ecology & evolutionary biology and Earth sciences at U of T, is published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Approximately 2 cm in length with a tail as long as the rest of its body, the long-extinct Habelia optata belongs to the group of invertebrate animals called arthropods, which also includes such familiar creatures as spiders, insects, lobsters and crabs. It lived during the middle Cambrian period approximately 508 million years ago and comes from the renowned Burgess Shale fossil deposit in British Columbia. Habelia optata was part of the "Cambrian explosion," a period of rapid evolutionary change when most major animal groups first emerged in the fossil record.

Like all arthropods, Habelia optata features a segmented body with external skeleton and jointed limbs. What remained unclear for decades, however, was the main sub-group of arthropods to which Habelia belonged. Early studies had mentioned mandibulates -- a hyperdiverse lineage whose members possess antennae and a pair of specialized appendages known as mandibles, usually used to grasp, squeeze and crush their food. But Habelia was later left as one of the typically unresolved arthropods of the Burgess Shale.

The new analysis by the U of T-ROM researchers suggests that Habelia optata was instead a close relative of the ancestor of all chelicerates, the other sub-group of arthropods living today, named for the presence of appendages called chelicerae in front of the mouth and used to cut food. This is mostly due to the overall anatomy of the head in Habelia, and the presence of two small chelicerae-like appendages revealed in these fossils.

"Habelia now shows in great detail the body architecture from which chelicerates emerged, which allows us to solve some long-standing questions," said Aria, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, in China. "We can now explain why, for instance, horseshoe crabs have a reduced pair of limbs - the chilaria - at the back of their heads. Those are relics of fully-formed appendages, as chelicerates seem to originally have had heads with no less than seven pairs of limbs."

Aria and Caron analyzed 41 specimens in total, the majority of which are new specimens acquired by ROM-led fieldwork parties to the Burgess Shale.

The research illustrates that the well-armoured body of Habelia optata, covered in a multitude of different spines, was divided into head, thorax and post-thorax, all bearing different types of appendages. The thorax displays five pairs of walking legs, while the post-thorax houses rounded appendages likely used in respiration.

"Scorpions and the now-extinct sea scorpions are also chelicerates with bodies divided into three distinct regions," Aria explained. "We think that these regions broadly correspond to those of Habelia. But a major difference is that scorpions and sea scorpions, like all chelicerates, literally 'walk on their heads,' while Habelia still had walking appendages in its thorax."

The researchers argue that this difference in anatomy allowed Habelia to evolve an especially complex head that makes this fossil species even more peculiar compared to known chelicerates. The head of Habelia contained a series of five appendages made of a large plate with teeth for mastication, a leg-like branch with stiff bristle-like spines for grasping, and an elongate, slender branch modified as a sensory or tactile appendage.

"This complex apparatus of appendages and jaws made Habelia an exceptionally fierce predator for its size," said Aria. "It was likely both very mobile and efficient in tearing apart its preys."

The surprising outcome of this study, despite the evolutionary relationship of Habelia with chelicerates, is that these unusual characteristics led instead the researchers to compare the head of Habelia with that of mandibulates from a functional perspective. Thus, the peculiar sensory branches may have been used in a similar fashion as mandibulates use antennae. Also, the overlapping plate-like appendages in the middle series of five are shown to open and close parallel to the underside of the head -- much as they do in mandibulates, especially those that feed on animals with hardened carapaces.

Lastly, a seventh pair of appendages at the back of the head seems to have fulfilled a function similar to that of "maxillipeds" -- appendages in mandibulates that assist with the other head limbs in the processing of food. This broad correspondence in function rather than in evolutionary origin is called "convergence."

"From an evolutionary point of view, Habelia is close to the point of divergence between chelicerates and mandibulates," Aria said. "But its similarities with mandibulates are secondary modifications of features that were in part already chelicerate in nature. This suggests that chelicerates originated from species with a high structural variability."

The researchers conclude from the outstanding head structure, as well as from well-developed walking legs, that Habelia optata and its relatives were active predators of the Cambrian sea floors, hunting for small shelly sea creatures, such as small trilobites--arthropods with hard, mineralized exoskeletons that were already very diverse and abundant during Cambrian times.

"This builds onto the importance of carapaces and shells for evolutionary change during the Cambrian explosion, and expands our understanding of ecosystems at this time, showing another level of predator-prey relationship and its determining impact on the rise of arthropods as we know them today," said Caron, who was Aria's PhD supervisor when the bulk of this research was completed.

"The appearance and spread of animals with shells are considered to be one of the defining characteristics of the Cambrian explosion, and Habelia contributes to illustrate how important this ecological factor was for the early diversification of chelicerates and arthropods in general."

###

The findings are described in the study "Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate," where Habelia optata is brought to life by visual artist and scientific illustrator Joanna Liang with animations depicting the spectacular body architecture and complex feeding mechanism of this fossil. Liang collaborated with Aria and Caron to produce the animations as part of her master of science thesis in biomedical communications at U of T under supervisor Dave Mazierski.

The University of Toronto and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada provided funding for the research.

The specimens of Habelia curated at the Royal Ontario Museum were collected in the 1990s under several Parks Canada Research and Collection permits. The Burgess Shale fossil sites are located within Yoho and Kootenay National Parks. Parks Canada protects the sites and works with leading scientific researchers to expand knowledge and understanding of this key period of earth history. The Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 due to its outstanding universal value, and is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountains World Heritage Site.

Notes to media:

The study will appear online at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-017-1088-7 after the embargo lifts. Images and illustrations with descriptive captions are available for download at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fjln1yk2mt52kik/AACSztGnr2uK2yaP9AScVOINa?dl=0 Animations available for embedding demonstrate Habelia optata's spectacular body architecture and complex feeding mechanism.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Cedric Aria

(bilingual - English-French) Post-doctoral researcher

Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology

86-153-7100-2536

cedric.aria@protonmail.com

Skype ID: c.aria

Jean-Bernard Caron

(bilingual - English-French) Senior Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology

Royal Ontario Museum and Associate Professor

Departments of Earth Sciences and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

University of Toronto

1-416-586-5593

jcaron@rom.on.ca (preferred mode of communication)

Sean Bettam

Communications, Faculty of Arts & Science

University of Toronto

1-416-946-7950

s.bettam@utoronto.ca

David McKay

Communications Coordinator

Royal Ontario Museum

1 416 586 5559

davidm@rom.on.ca

Lesley Matheson

Public Relations and Communications Officer

Agente des relations publiques et communications

Lake Louise

Yoho & Kootenay Field Unit

Unite de gestion du secteur de Lake Louise et des parcs nationaux Yoho et Kootenay

Parks Canada Agency

Agence Parcs Canada PO Box 99, Field BC, V0A 1G0

1-403-431-2325

lesley.matheson@pc.gc.ca

Government of Canada

Gouvernement du Canada

Other online information:

ROMblogs (http://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/blog)

Website: The Burgess Shale (http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/), Virtual Museum of Canada, by Royal Ontario Museum and Parks Canada

Royal Ontario Museum Burgess Shale Projects (http://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/research/natural-history/burgess-shale-projects)

The Royal Ontario Museum's Dawn of Life Gallery Preview (http://www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/dawn-of-life-preview)

ABOUT the ROM

Opened in 1914, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) showcases art, culture, and nature from around the globe and across the ages. One of North America's most renowned cultural institutions, Canada's largest museum is home to a world-class collection of more than six million objects and specimens, featured in 40 gallery and exhibition spaces. As the country's preeminent field research institute and an international leader in new and original findings in biodiversity, palaeontology, earth sciences, the visual arts, material culture and archaeology, the ROM plays a vital role in advancing our global understanding of the artistic, cultural and natural world. The Renaissance ROM expansion project (2007) merged the iconic architectural heritage of the original building with the Studio Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. A distinctive new symbol of Toronto for the 21st century, the Crystal marked the beginning of a new era for the ROM as the country's premier cultural and social destination.

ABOUT the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Established in 1827, the University of Toronto is Canada's largest university, recognized as a global leader in research and teaching. The university consistently ranks among the top 25 universities in the world. Its distinguished faculty, institutional record of groundbreaking scholarship and wealth of innovative academic opportunities continually attract outstanding academics and students from around the world.
Small municipalities in Ontario are less likely than larger centres to be able to accommodate the needs of their aging populations, according to a report from the University of Waterloo.

The report, Prepared for the Silver Tsunami: An examination of municipal old-age dependency and age-friendly policy in Ontario, Canada, examined the current and projected demographic profiles of 159 Ontario municipalities with populations over 10,000 people.

The report found that smaller municipalities were the least likely to have started any municipal-level planning for older adults, despite expected increases in service and mobility needs of their aging population.

"When we look at jurisdictions like British Columbia where age-friendly principles have been made mandatory in the creation of statutory planning documents, we see a longer history and greater uptake on age friendly projects, such as the age-friendly outdoor fitness park in Keremeos", said Maxwell Hartt, who co-authored the release while doing his PhD at the University of Waterloo. "When we look at Ontario, we find that smaller communities are less likely to have the capacity, funds or political will to enact these kinds of policies for older members of their communities.

"It's also possible many of these communities are unaware of the magnitude of their ongoing demographic shift and the kind of impact that will have on the kind and level of services they're expected to provide."

As part of the report, Hartt and Samantha Biglieri, a PhD candidate at Waterloo's School of Planning, performed a systematic review of what kind of age-friendly policies each Ontario municipality had adopted.

The report recommended that to help municipalities become more age friendly, they should follow the model of British Columbia and examine how municipalities are implementing strategic plans, how budget dollars are allocated and how age-friendly planning is incorporated into municipal success indicators.

"As we age, our access to the world shrinks, which makes the role of the surrounding city in our health and wellbeing more important than ever," said Biglieri. "With the number of Canadians over 65 now outnumbering those under the age of 15, there are so many opportunities for municipalities to support older adults in context-specific ways that can make a tangible difference in their lives."

In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on municipalities to take steps to assist their citizens to age well in place. The WHO's Age-Friendly City policy encouraged municipalities to look at a number of factors in their planning, including outdoor and indoor spaces, transportation, housing, social participation, inclusion, civic participation, employment, community support and health services.

###

The report appears in the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Bacteriophages, or simply phages, are viruses that infect and replicate within bacteria, and they hold considerable potential for combatting antibiotic-resistance and other threats to human health. Timed with the hundredth anniversary of their discovery, a new review published in the British Journal of Pharmacology examines the challenges and opportunities of developing phages as health-promoting, commercially-viable biopharmaceuticals.

In the review, Amanda Forde, PhD, and Colin Hill, PhD, of the APC Microbiome Institute at University College Cork, in Ireland, note that phages have complex relationships with bacteria in the gut that could affect health and disease. "Through an intricate 'predator-prey' strategy, phages have the ability to alter the microbial balance within an ecosystem, and given that they are the most abundant biological entities on earth, it would be odd to ignore or underestimate their power and potential," said Dr. Forde. She explained that phages outnumber their bacterial prey by a factor of 10 to 1, and that they have been proposed as the agents of change in recipients of faecal microbiota transplantations used to treat resistant or recurring bowel disease.

"We tend to think of phages as nature's 'nano-machines', self-assembling complex biological survival machines capable of replicating faster than any other biological agent," said Dr. Hill. "They are highly diverse, highly dynamic, and highly specific to their targets, and as antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' continue to emerge around the world, they may be among our best allies in the future."

Despite having been discovered a century ago, their use in clinical therapy continues to encounter several challenges. "One of the challenges lies in the fact that more than 90% of phage populations are as yet unidentified, and therefore considered to be the 'dark matter' of the biological world," said Dr. Hill. "Coupled with manufacturing challenges, regulatory hurdles and the need for clinical validation, the path to pharma may seem long, but researchers are heading in the right direction."

Phages were used for more than 75 years as therapy in Eastern Europe, but they fell out of favour in the western world when antibiotics were discovered. They are now becoming attractive again because of the rise in antibiotic resistance. A unique selling point is their host specificity, meaning little or no collateral damage to neighbouring ('good') bacteria, and they do not drive the development of resistance in non-target bacterial species.

"Whilst regulated phage therapy may take some time, it has been highly successful in recent 'compassionate' cases where patients' lives were on the line," said Dr. Forde. "But for regulated interventions, we need to play the waiting game as more genomic, physiological, pharmacological, and clinical data are gathered. And wait we will."

###

Additional Information

The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Members of the media may sign up for embargoed news or to request a copy of any study please contact:

Dawn Peters (US)

1-781-388-8408

sciencenewsroom@wiley.com

Follow us on Twitter @WileyNews

Full citation: "Phages of life - the path to pharma." Amanda Forde and Colin Hill. British Journal of Pharmacology; Published Online: December 20, 2017 (DOI: 10.1111/bph.14106).

URL Upon Publication: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/bph.14106

Author Contact:

Catherine Buckley

Communications Manager

APC Microbiome Institute

University College Cork

C.Buckley@ucc.ie.

About the Journal

The British Journal of Pharmacology is a broad-based journal giving leading international coverage of all aspects of pharmacology research. Its scope includes all aspects of pharmacology from hypothesis generation and target validation through to model development, safety pharmacology and to early translational research. BJP's 2015 Impact Factor is 5.259, and as such it is a leading general research pharmacology journal (Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index).

About The British Pharmacological Society

The British Pharmacological Society is a charity with a mission to promote and advance the whole spectrum of pharmacology. Founded in 1931, it is now a global community at the heart of pharmacology, with over 3,500 members from more than 60 countries worldwide. The Society leads the way in the research and application of pharmacology around the world through its scientific meetings, educational resources and peer-reviewed journals: the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, and the British Journal of Pharmacology, which includes the Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY, featuring open access overviews of the key properties of over 1,700 human therapeutic targets and their drugs, and links to http://www.guidetopharmacology.org.

Press Office

44-207-239-0180

nick.courtney@bps.ac.uk

About Wiley

Wiley, a global research and learning company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 210 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The company's website can be accessed at http://www.wiley.com.
Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.
Welcome to the News Release Wire Selection Control Panel.

Instant News Wire
by Gary VanDyke | Saints Correspondent | Wed, Dec 20th 6:03pm EST

Cameron Jordan is heading to the Pro-Bowl and should also be considered for the leagues defensive MVP. Still in the middle of his prime and with an improved defense around him, he is as dominant as they come. (espn.com)
A slightly frayed, white and peach-trimmed quilt now lays unfolded on one of our spare beds.

Twenty-nine of its 30 squares each feature the carefully stitched name of one member of the Ladies Aid of Immanuel Lutheran Church in rural Rising City, Nebraska.

The quilt

The stitching on the quilts 30th and final block, also in peach and positioned in the bottom right corner, is testament to its making.

It reads: Aug 1914 Nov 1936. Neither I nor anyone I know can explain the Aug 1914 date.

My mother, however, knows exactly what the Nov 1936 date means.

It was the month and year she, her three siblings, and parents left Nebraska to return to their native Illinois after Grandpa lost his 160-acre, Butler County farm to hard weather, hard luck, and hard times.

But that black stain cant be seen in the quilts subtle colors and simple elegance. What comes through clearly, though, is its many names.

Names

They are sturdy, solid names like Etta Bauer, Maggie Buck, Anna Poppe, and Eda Hahn.

Sturdy and solid, I suspect, because during the awful, terrible year of 1936, sturdy and solid were all they had left after almost a decade of poor crops and poorer prices.

Throughout it, however, the ladies brought their needles, thimbles, and love to their country church to make my grandmother a treasured keepsake I now treasure.

And these solid, sturdy workers  Alice Klingemann, Esther Glock, Mattie Hoeft, and Anna Ditmar  were modest because they reserved the very center of the quilt for the block that carries my grandmothers solid, sturdy name, Lottie Hanebutt.

It floats amid her neighbors names: Cente Glock, Metta Jaenike, Frieda Voss, Emma Hinze, Agnes Hinze. Most of those last names can still be found at Immanuel today.

They are chiseled into gray granite and white marble and they stand sturdy and solid still during winters fiercest wind or summers sweetest breeze.

Depression

Only my mother remains to remember the site of her familys Depression farm and her memories are mostly of a hungry little girl tired of meal after meal of flour pancakes and cabbage. She never looked back or ever went back.

I did last week, however, and through happy coincidence and uncanny luck, was able to talk with the sons of two of the quilts makers.

Both knew the exact location of the farm my grandparents operated until their lives, like most of American agriculture, unraveled in the 1930s.

A stop at the county courthouse yielded an aerial photograph of the farmstead before most of its buildings were razed decades ago to grow corn no one needed then or now.

Three buildings remain; a cobweb-filled livestock barn, a drive-through corncrib, and a sagging, weathered brooder house. None have held anything other than mice, raccoons, and owls since Berlin, not Mexico, had a wall.

Thirty yards south, a car-sized hole marks the farms collapsed cistern. Nearby, an equal-sized pile of bricks points to where the house once stood.

As I look around, sparse clouds begin to stack against the eastern horizon and a cold wind finds its way through the neglected shelterbelt.

Ghostly

A passing shadow, slight and quick moving like my grandfather, sends a chill through me and the pain the land still holds hits my chest like a hammer.

I look to the east to see, just a mile away, the church where the quilting ladies of Immanuel had, more than three generations ago, gathered in warmth and love despite the swirling dust and growing fear.

Sunlight strikes the white building to make it look like a dove resting in a brown, thousand-acre nest.

Was this the last image my grandfather saw as he walked off his lost farm 81 years ago? I hope so.

Did he cry as he left or was he simply empty after watering the land with years of sweat and tears? I dont know.

I do know, however, that I will never return to where he still walks.
Large groups of birds usually attract attention and curiosity. If several thousand crows roost in trees above someones driveway, I hear about it.

Or if during a mid-January thaw 400 robins show up and begin hunting for earthworms in a backyard, Ill get a call.

The frigid, cold air that moved in a few days ago triggered another such phenomenon. Gulls suddenly appeared at fast-food restaurants, mall parking lots, and garbage dumpsters.

Sea gulls

And I heard about it. My email box overflowed with notes from readers asking why sea gulls were showing up at these places.

Before I explain, let me address the term sea gull.

If you have ever been to a coastal beach, you know what it means, but sea gulls are not limited to ocean beaches. In fact, Franklins gulls nest on the prairies of the northern Great Plains.

Bonapartes gulls nest on the edges of the boreal forest in Canada and Alaska. And California gulls nest near lakes throughout the west. Among ornithologists and birders, the term gull suffices.

Back to the original question  why did so many gulls show up last week when it turned cold?

Most of the winter gulls seen here in the inland east are ring-billed gulls and herring gulls. Both are common along the Atlantic coast in the summer, but large populations also nest inland on the many islands of the Great Lakes.

Wandering gulls

When winters are mild, they stay near the lakes. But when cold Canadian air masses plunge southward, gulls wander in search of open water. Small lakes can ice up quickly, but even the Great Lakes can freeze almost completely by mid-winter.

When this happens, gulls head south in search of open water. During the day, they scavenge at landfills, dumpsters, parking lots, and anywhere else they can find food.

At night, they roost (sleep) on ice near open water where they are relatively safe from predators.

This raises another interesting question. How do gulls (and ducks and geese, for that matter) roost on ice all night long without their feet freezing? They use an amazing network of blood vessels that act as counter-current heat exchangers to reheat blood as it returns from the feet to the body.

When blood flows into the feet, it cools quickly. But rather than freezing, venous blood flowing back to the body core is reheated by the warmer blood in the arteries that flows next to it.

Winter feet

Furthermore, bird feet can tolerate low temperatures because they contain mostly tendons and bones and little muscle or nerve tissue. Sometimes winter flocks of gulls draw attention from crowds of both birders and nonbirders.

In Pittsburgh, for example, when frigid temperatures settle in for a few days, as many as 10,000 gulls sometimes gather near the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers.

Most are ring-billed and herring gulls. Similar gatherings occur in New York near Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

So thats why we see gulls in winter. Ice freezes them out of preferred places, and they head south for open water. In the spring when the ice thaws, the gulls return north to islands in the Great Lakes and beyond.

The most frequently seen winter gulls are ring-billed gulls. Adults are about 18 inches long and have a four-foot wingspan. The yellow bill is encircled by a black ring near the tip, hence its name.

Herring gulls, the other common winter species, resemble ring-bills, but are larger, about 25 inches long with a five-foot wingspan. The bill is yellow, and the lower bill has a red spot near the tip.

Opportunistic scavengers

In nature, gulls are opportunistic scavengers. They eat fish, carrion, crabs, insects, mollusks, and almost any sort of organic garbage, including French fries and hamburger buns.

Larger gulls can be quite predatory and even take small birds and mammals. If youre puzzled by seeing gulls this winter, just look around.

Its probably very cold, youre probably just a few miles from a lake or river, and theres probably an open dumpster nearby.
Its funny how a good read can provoke shelved memories. I just closed the cover on a most interesting book, 200 pages of wilderness adventure, danger and discovery.

The paperback was lent to me by an acquaintance with whom I shared a Lake Erie perch fishing trip this summer. We hadnt met prior to the trip but I quickly found New Middletown farmer Matt Brungard to be a friendly and inquisitive member of a mixed band of anglers.

Somewhere and somehow we steered our rambling conversation to Alaska, a destination Ive visited many times but simply an indelible item on Brungards bucket list.

As one might expect, casual talk of Alaska between sportsmen always ends up face to face with a bear.

After all, the state is chock full of them and given enough time, every Alaska fisherman or hunter is going to bump into a bear or two or three.

Brungard mentioned that he had just read a book, Death Dance, True Life and Death Adventures from Alaska to Africa by adventure seeker Wade Nolan.

Many of the chapters, Brungard said, described some brutal Alaska bear incidents.

Sometime a couple months later, the book showed up in my mail box. And indeed, it was like being there.

Bear stories

Flashbacks, followed by more flashbacks. I could smell the tundra in a couple chapters, feel the hair on my neck stand up in others. It was 1989 and my first trip to Alaska.

My brother-in-law Dick Bonner teamed up with me and we roughed out a schedule during which we could explore on our own and also visit a string of characters and hire enough side trips to flesh out several magazine and newsprint stories.

The first person we met after landing in Anchorage was a fellow writer who I had corresponded with during pre-trip research.

Dick and I were both taken back as we looked at the stitch tracks that crisscrossed his weathered face. He saw our alarm and led us into his emotional tale of an encounter with a grizzly, a traumatic near-death mauling that left his face and other areas in tatters.

As I recall, it was 450 stitches worth.

Author Nolan describes a similar story in his book. Reading it brought long-relaxed goosebumps to attention.

Bear repellent

A few days later, we were waist deep in the current of a wild river casting for silver salmon.

A float plane ride across Cook Inlet got us there and our pilot was standing on the shoreline keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors  just like the one running through the grass like it meant business.

The pilot yelled one word, bear!

We scrambled out of the water and the pilot to the Cessna grabbed his always present 12 gauge bear repellent.

That particular salmon-fed brown bear was the largest wild thing I had ever seen. Luckily, it skidded to a stop when it actually saw that we were not another bear in its fishing spot; just a couple wide-eyed, touristy guys waving eight weight fly rods.

Nolans Death Dance brought vivid memories of that encounter to mind and more, like the time a momma grizzly and her two cubs wanted to use the same game trail that a good friend, Paul Fedorchak, and I were walking.

We had pitched a tent the night before on the immense and featureless tundra of the Alaskan Peninsula.

It was the first morning of a week-long caribou hunt. We were on our own and by then had just enough experience under our collective belts to not panic.

That bear was not about to give up her claim to the trail and made very sure we knew it. Popping her teeth, spitting slobber, and huffing, she stood up tall and made her intention clear.

We were fortunate enough to back away unharmed but suddenly very well aware of our vulnerability in such a wild place.

If you like to read about wild encounters, some with less fortunate results find a copy of Nolans book and enjoy.
DALTON, Ohio  A funding opportunity has been created to help the James and Julia Geiser family, of Dalton, as they battle a very difficult year.

In March, James was diagnosed with various forms of cancer, and after a brief, but intense battle, including several hospital stays, he died April 8. Shortly before his death, James purchased a used double-wide trailer, as they discovered the house they were currently living in had developed toxic mold.

After James death, Julia began the difficult adjustments of life without her husband of 36 years, along with the process of moving into her double-wide trailer.

Cleaning

When cleaning day arrived on May 30, several church ladies were present to assist. While Julia was coming out of her house, she lost her balance and fell down a 10-foot newly constructed stairwell, onto concrete, where she landed on her head.

Doctors did an emergency surgery to stop bleeding on her brain, and to repair her skull. She suffered traumatic brain injuries and was in the hospital for nearly two months. Doctors told the family that she was in a permanent vegetative state, and would never improve. Her seven children, four of which are married, made the decision to move her home and care for her there.

Julia is at home now and is making small improvements. She is undergoing extensive therapy and requires the constant help of hired assistants and family members.

Her insurance does not cover out-of-hospital expenses and help is appreciated.

Donations may be made at all CSB locations or mailed to Commercial & Savings Bank, 4980 Olde Pump Street, Walnut Creek, OH 44687. Make checks payable to Julia Geiser Fund Donations made at CSB locations are tax deductible.

For updates and more information, visit Gofundme.com/juliageiser or Facebook.com/juliageiser2017.
UTICA, Ohio  Utica FFA agriculture educator, Gina Neff, received a grant from Ohio Corn and Wheat and The Ohio State University. Neff earned the $3,000 grant by participating in an OSU Ph.D. students study about inquiry-based learning.

Neff plans to use the money to purchase more equipment for the agricultural education classroom.

  

LOUDONVILLE, Ohio  The annual Loudonville FFA greenhand ceremony was held Nov. 30 for all new FFA members. The evening included official opening ceremonies from the current officer team, and Greenhand Jenna Book reciting the FFA creed.

The 2017-2018 State Treasurer, Emily Mullen, gave a motivational speech to members and parents. The 2017-2018 greenhands are eighth graders Jenna Book, Emily Dickson, Ryan Stull, Connor Portz, Olivia Withrow; and freshman, Max Verrochi.

  

COVINGTON, Ohio  The Covington-UVCC FFA chapter hosted the first Safe Choices Week at Covington High School, the week of Nov. 13.

On Monday FFA members passed out Smarties and Dum Dums to students and staff that had or didnt have their seatbelts. On Tuesday, the FFA held a self-defense class during the eighth period for seniors and after school for the rest of the students.

On Wednesday, the FFA held challenges with drunk goggles in the gym in the high school. The goggles varied in intoxication from low to high and from day to night.

On Thursday, each homeroom class was given a safe driving test. Only two students had a perfect score: Jamie Roth and Legend Patty. At the end of the week , overman Staley and Dickerson sponsored Safe Driving shirts for all students that signed the safe driving pledge and gas cards from Als BP for the students who participated.
The Artisan Cheese Fair is the UKs largest cheese fair with over 70 artisan cheesemakers from Britain and Ireland and around 300 cheeses to try and buy.



Other food & drink on sale; wine, cakes, beer, pies, hot street food, etc is complemented by a range of other stands.



This is a particularly difficult time for cheesemakers, you can support them buy buying their cheese directly from them or through your local cheesemonger, deli, farmshop and specialist food store.

FarmingUK assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this page.

The information contained in this site is provided on an "as is" basis, and should be independently verified before travel.
Brits who are worried about the price of their foreign produce going up after Brexit should be more patriotic about their choices, according to Michael Gove.

Mr Gove, who attended the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) on Wednesday (20 December), has criticised claims that the price of cheddar cheese will go up by 40 percent if Britain leaves the EU without a trade deal.

The Defra Secretary said Brits should instead focus their priority on British cheddar. He said that, in a WTO scenario, if cheese prices rise steeply then the British public should buy more British cheese.

But Labour MP Angela Smith explained that much of the cheddar in British supermarkets comes from Ireland. She said if the UK left the EU with no deal, tariffs of 40 percent will apply.

Mr Gove responded: "I am deeply concerned about your unpatriotic attitude towards cheese." He explained DEFRA is "very pro UK cheddar", and that Britain's dairy farmers respond to what the market wants.

He boasted that British dairy farmers boast some of the finest cheeses in the world.

He told MPs: "If it is the case that we end up on WTO terms then I'm sure that British farmers and British food producers will find the opportunity to meet demand in this and other areas.'

"One of the striking things about British farmers and British food producers is that they are capable of responding with rapidity and skill to fluctuations in the market."

Consume more British

Defta's farming minister George Eustice told the environment committee: "What would probably happen, if everybody put up such a tariff wall, is that we would consume more of the cheese we produce, rather than send it to Ireland, and Ireland would be selling us less cheese."

Mr Eustice added: "We are the best manufacturer of cheese anywhere in the world." He said the UK currently exports 320m of cheddar to Ireland every year and imports 389m of cheddar.

Mr Gove explained to the committee that the government did not want to leave the EU without a trade deal, and that going to WTO rules was as likely as "a tsunami hitting the South West of England".

During the committee, Mr Gove also suggested that MPs will be able to block certain parts of a US trade deal with the UK post-Brexit.

He said that certain parts of a post-Brexit US trade deal could be blocked if it included allowing the import of chlorine-washed chickens.
Two leading retailers will now publish their data on antibiotic use in the supply chain, in a move welcomed by the industry.

Marks and Spencer became the first British supermarket to publish its antibiotic data. In response, Waitrose has published its own data, which it had planned to release in the new year.

The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has welcomed the decisions by M&S and Waitrose to publish data on antibiotic use in their supply chain.

Coilin Nunan of the Alliance said: We very much welcome M&Ss and Waitroses decisions to publish data on their suppliers antibiotic use.

We want to see all supermarkets increase transparency for consumers by publishing similar data. Several other supermarkets have already collected data, but are so far refusing to publish it.

Below average

Both data sets show antibiotic-use levels which are well below industry averages.

M&S data covers only pig, chicken and dairy farming, but shows that their pig and chicken farmers are using less than one quarter of UK averages.

Waitrose data is much more comprehensive, additionally covering beef cattle, lamb, turkeys, ducks, egg production and farmed fish. Antibiotic use in Waitroses pig and chicken suppliers is about one third or less of the industry averages, and use in turkeys is about one sixth of the average.

Mr Nunan said: The publication of this data should help drive average use across the farming industry down, as it illustrates the extent to which many other producers are still overusing antibiotics, despite recent cuts.

We are also calling for all supermarkets to publish antibiotic-use data by farming system, so that consumers can compare free-range and organic farming with indoor farming and intensive systems.

'Biggest threat'

The overuse of antibiotics in farming has been highlighted as one of the "biggest threats to human health", a UN report warns.

The World Health Organisation has already urged farmers to stop using antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease in healthy animals because of the serious risks to human health.

As such, the UK government has recently reported a 27% drop in use of antibiotics in animals reared on British farms over the last two years in a bid to cut domestic use.

Sector-specific targets have now been developed looking at how each sector can reduce their usage of antibiotics.
Campaign putting spotlight on stress levels in farming gets new boost


The first song from Akshay Kumar starrer Pad Man released on Wednesday. Titled 'Aaj Se Teri,' the song is about finding love in little things you do for your loved ones. Along with the leads Akshay Kumar and Radhika Apte, director R Balki and producer Twinkle Khanna were also present for the launch of the first song of the film.



At the launch, when asked if Akshay was her first choice for the film, Twinkle, said, "No. R Balki convinced me that Akshay should do this part. When further questioned about who was on her mind when conceptualising the character, she said, Are you trying to make trouble in my marriage now?



Twinkle said she had some names in her mind but realized Akshay would be perfect for the role."I did think of a few people. But again the thing is that if we have somebody who the Indian public idealises, and men look up to and he holds a sanitary pad, then it's completely a game-changing event."



She added, "I think Akshay, after seeing the movie and see what Balki has made Akshay do, of course Akshay is very talented himself, Balki has brought out the best in him. So I don't think anybody else could have played this as wonderfully as Mr K (Akshay Kumar) here."



Directed by R Balki, Padman revolves around Muruganantham, a social activist from Tamil Nadu, who revolutionised the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India by creating a low-cost sanitary napkin machine.The film, which also has Sonam Kapoor playing a pivotal role, is set for a January 26 release.
Kangana Was Supposed To Win An Award For Life In A Metro

"I remember one incident where I was late for an award function. They told me in advance that I was receiving the award for Metro and that I had to be there on time because it was for the supporting category."

She Got Stuck In Traffic

"I got stuck in traffic and I didn't make it on time. I started to get calls asking me where I was and telling me it's almost time for my category to be presented. At one point the calls stopped coming."

Then Came A Shocker

"At one point the calls stopped coming. When I reached the venue Soha Ali Khan had received the award for Rang De Basanti because I didn't reach there on time."

Kangana Was Shattered

The actress said, "Imagine a young woman, that whole notion that you are somebody who is getting an award, that entire thing was shattered. It is like everyone gets a little candy to play with. I was late by some 10-15 minutes and I didn't get the award."

She Didn't Even Spare The Filmfare Awards

Sharing another anecdote, Kangana revealed, "I was in the United States for my screenwriting course when I got a call from Filmfare in 2014. They told me I was going to get an award for Krrish 3 and they requested me to come back for just one day so I could attend the awards."

She Was Denied An Award For This SHOCKING Reason

"I told them I am doing my course and going back and forth will cost me around 10 lakh. Because I would miss my classes, I told them it's not possible. They decided to give the Best Supporting Actress award to Supriya Pathak for Ram Leela instead. It is not to take their credit away, but just that you guys want anecdotes."

Kangana Made Some Shocking Allegations Against The Filmfare Editor

"The editor was so mad with me that I didn't show up for #Queen that he still doesn't talk to me. The next year they made sure I didn't get the Best Actress award for #TWMR and then I got the National Award. Then they got trolled."

She Even Taunted Deepika

"For another award function, Deepika Padukone got an award for Happy New Year. And they didn't give me an award for Queen as I didn't show up."

The Editor Of Filmfare Hit Back At Kangana In A Series Of Tweets

Jitesh Pillai, the editor-in-chief of Filmfare magazine lash out at Kangana in a series of tweets where he refuted Kangana's claim.

Sonam Kapoor Too Supported Him

The actress called Filmfare the most legitimate award.

Does Kangana Misses Attending Award Functions?

To this she replied, "It was very hard to make the decision not to attend awards. I am a red carpet diva and I am missing out on wearing those gowns. If there is any grudge that I have, it is missing out on the limited editions Chanel and Dior would send me."
This week, we bring you a special bonus Rule Breaker Investing: an interview with David Campbell, co-founder of All Hands and Hearts-Smart Response, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities internationally and in the U.S. rebuild after disasters. His motto: maximum impact, minimum bureaucracy.

Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner talks with him about the events that led him to leave the tech world and refocus his life on projects like constructing new schools in villages devastated by tsunamis or earthquakes, how his organization differs from other similar charities, the unusual story behind a nonprofit merger, and more about the amazing work they're doing.

A full transcript follows the video.

10 stocks we like better than Wal-Mart

When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of December 4, 2017

The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.

This video was recorded on Dec. 16, 2017.

David Gardner: And welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. A delight to have you join me, and my friend David Campbell, for this Rule Breaker Investing Audio Extra. A little bit of fun for your weekend.

We're delighted this time of year, every year, at The Motley Fool to do what we call a Foolanthropy drive, where you can come and see a new partner of ours. Generally, a not-for-profit. One that we admire, one that we've gotten to know, and one that The Motley Fool community can come together and support.

And, of course, for most of us that might mean a holiday check, and I hope you'll consider that, although I know we're going to talk a little bit about giving away stock. I'm going to talk about that a little later, but you can also just check out AllHandsAndHearts.org. You can see David Campbell's creation. You can see ways that you, yourself, could volunteer.

Well, before I get into that too much, let me introduce my guest. "Maximum impact. Minimum bureaucracy." That's David Campbell's motto. David has been a technology executive, board member, investment banker, humanitarian, field volunteer [this is a very motley life], and for the last 13 years the co-founder of All Hands and Hearts, our Foolanthropy holiday partner for 2017.

He's also the author of two books, most recently All Hands: The Evolution of a Volunteer-Powered Disaster Response Organization. I want to welcome David Campbell to the show today. Welcome!

David Campbell: Thank you, David! It's great to be here! We really appreciate The Motley Fool's support: the economic support from you and your fans; from the organization, itself; as well as from [those on] your team who volunteered onsite with us in Houston.

Gardner: And they had a great time with you in Houston. They were very much inspired. Not surprising, because the work that you do is so inspiring not just to the people who volunteer but, of course, the people that they're serving in disastrous situations. Giving them hope and rebuilding hope, which I know is a big phrase for you.

Let me start by asking you, David. What inspired you to start All Hands?

Campbell: It came not by plan, but by one of those synergistic events. I have had 40 years of running different technology companies. One of them a company up in Cambridge, MA called Bolt Brannick & Newman, [BBN Corp.], that had a lot to do with the development of the internet. And when the tsunami happened on December 26, 2004 I was motivated by the thought of how you would use the internet to help in the largest disaster that ever happened in my lifetime.

I went to Thailand and helped with a group of people -- put up websites and so on -- mainly to tell the story out about what was going on there and what might be needed. And what surprised me is [there's a] phrase called SUVs, but in this space it stands for "spontaneous unaffiliated volunteers." People who saw the need and started coming just to help. And over the next three months, that project did tremendous things to rebuild fishing boats, and rebuild homes, and so on. And I thought it was a one-time event.

Then eight months later Katrina hit the U.S., and several of us who'd been together in Thailand realized that everything we had learned in Thailand was relevant, and so we incorporated as a 501(c)(3) that weekend and literally went from not existing to five weeks later having over 200 volunteers living in a church building in Biloxi, Mississippi and it's all I've done ever since.

Gardner: Wow! Before we go forward, I have to ask you a little bit of a BBN question, because I remember. Was your company not acquired by America Online?

Campbell: It was acquired by GTE. [With] BBN we did a major part of building out the networks of America Online in the 1994-1997 period of time, and then we were acquired by GTE as they were merging with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon.

Gardner: OK, got it. I remember BBN because I was on the AOL side. We were an AOL site and we were AOL shareholders. We were very grateful for the partnership. BBN really enabled AOL to become America Online in a lot of ways.

Campbell: Well, we were building out that network. It was a big project for us.

Gardner: That's great! David, how do you decide whether a site is right for you? Clearly, Houston was one. Were you also, then, in Miami? Can you be everywhere? How do you triage? How do you make those tough decisions?

Campbell: No. 1, we can't be everywhere. We're still a small organization, now, with about 135 full-time staff and today probably 500 volunteers in the field, so substantial but frankly modest in comparison to the needs in the world. One of the phrases that I've used in the organization was "events that overwhelm the community's ability to respond."

In the early years after we did Biloxi, we did mostly international projects. The next year we did Indonesia [and the] Philippines. Then Peru and Bangladesh. It wasn't until 2008 we did our first major response within the U.S. out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And ever since then we've done a very large number of modest-scale projects in the U.S. after tornadoes. After flooding. We've done maybe 60 projects within the U.S. and about 30 internationally, so we're approaching having 100 projects going on.

We don't go to countries where we think a cluster of mainly Western volunteers would actually be [in danger]. That tends to [be limiting], to some extent. But we've done projects in 20 different countries. Today we're in Nepal and Peru. Very large projects in both Texas and Louisiana, and new projects because of the tremendous spate of activity in the last several months based in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Florida Keys. An assessment team in Puerto Rico as we speak. And one going to Mexico because of the recent earthquake activity there.

Gardner: I'm just guessing that it's much more complex to do this internationally as opposed to domestically. That may be a misconception. And you started internationally, so if that is harder, then you were doing the harder stuff. How do you assess international vs. domestic?

Campbell: They're very different businesses. I refer to them as businesses. We really look at international and domestic [as having] two different sets of rules and issues, and then within each of those response vs. recovery. As part of the merger, we talked about the phrase of being "smart response." But smart response is not just focusing on the first 30 or 60 days, but looking at the two-or-three-year needs of these communities, and so we really are those four different business units: international response and recovery, domestic response and recovery.

In a way the international are easier, because we're generally going into, frankly, underdeveloped countries. Haiti and Nepal are marginal places like Peru and Ecuador. And there are, frankly, less rules. We can get directly into communities that have a great need. In the international process, much of our current focus is on rebuilding schools.

For example, when the earthquake hit Nepal in April of 2015, in 60 seconds there were 8,000 schools destroyed. So, in infinite need it's easy to identify communities that no longer have a school and as my partner, Petra Nemcova, says, if you don't get a school replaced for four or six years, you've lost a generation of kids that will never have a school. So, Petra started an organization called Happy Hearts Fund.

She actually was in Thailand when the tsunami hit back in 2004. She lost her partner in the tsunami and was injured. And when she went back to thank the people who had taken care of her, she was shocked to find that schools weren't being rebuilt. So, she created her organization to raise money [using her celebrity and frankly wonderful personality], to raise money to rebuild schools. We first met in Peru 10 years ago, but then we started working together in Nepal, and over the last year decided we could be better together. So, we officially merged the organizations and just announced that four weeks ago.

Gardner: I started by using the phrase "All Hands Volunteers," but that's not really the phrase these days, just in the last few weeks.

Campbell: Correct. Our new name is "All Hands and Hearts-Smart Response." And all of those things are important to us. It's important to use the power of the hands: the volunteers who show up. We really do pay attention to having the heart and wanting to be part of bringing a community back. And we're very focused on the need for really systemic change in the disaster response space -- and Smart Response is part of that -- allocating capital to be there for the recovery, and doing the recovery as rapidly as you can, but also as effectively as you can.

I was [in Peru] with Petra last month. We dedicated the first new school built in Peru after an event that had happened 12 months ago. That school was opened within seven months of when we started that project, and that's important.

Gardner: I want to go back there in a sec, but let's step back for one minute. I know you've been a CEO. You were an investment banker, as I mentioned, so you have a business mind. And as business people, you and I recognize [that] very frequently in the corporate world there are mergers. But this is more unusual in the not-for-profit world. How did the decision come about and how do the finances comingle? What is the process by which these things merge?

Campbell: It is quite different, and again, in my corporate life I was involved in more than 30 transactions, either acquiring companies or being acquired a couple of different times, so I was very familiar. There's a very simple motivational system in the capital markets to combine things that doesn't exist in the not-for-profit space.

We were both financially strong organizations. We both had several million dollars plus on our balance sheets, but we were working together and recognized. Frankly, to some extent Petra presents and accesses a different community of donors, and we bring the ability to commit to a schedule of delivering a result like building a school.

And when we're building a school, we look at it as we really do three things. No. 1, we hand over the physical product like an earthquake-resistant, safe school that probably will also become the center of a small community.

No. 2, when a group of volunteers come into a community that's had tremendous loss, it's a great psychological benefit to them to see the outside world coming to help them. That's important.

And honestly, I think the most important thing we do is [have an] impact on the volunteers. In our theoretically connected space, we don't have people connected to each other the way we might want them to be. And when our volunteers live in a village in Peru, or Haiti, or Nepal, or anywhere -- and actually work with the people in those communities -- they get a bond with the community of respect, and affection, and mutual support that creates space unlike, really, almost anywhere else in the world of people united by purpose and doing something for someone else. And those are very powerful forces that I think, honestly, are needed in our world.

Gardner: You bet, and the phrase that I led off with, and that you use on your website, "Maximum Impact. Minimum Bureaucracy." Can you give me an example of each of those?

Campbell: We have tremendous trust in our people in the field. In the early days when I was running the organization and also doing the fundraising, it would be one person's decision on the field. You could see the need. You could buy more chainsaws. Get more vehicles. Approve materials to tarp a house.

From that beginning, at each of the projects we have tremendous confidence in the individuals on that project, and we have a very interesting unfair advantage. If I'm running a project in Nepal, and I have 75 volunteers working, I'm getting a free opportunity to meet potential new employees who are going to live with us for weeks or months. They would love to have an entry-level position in our organization... so we get to see people like no corporation ever does. We see them work. We see them interact. And after three projects, we all know that "Margaret" is a wonderful person interacting, and then we offer her an entry-level position. All the people in the organization have come up, initially, as volunteers, and we really know them well before they get to join the organization.

Gardner: Yes, I'll bet.

Campbell: Therefore, we put tremendous trust in the people at that local project to make decisions about pace and about economics. That allows us, I believe, to continue growing as long as we can maintain the culture at really the project level.

Gardner: Obviously, David, you're not the only one doing this kind of work, in the world, and that's good news, because we want as many people there for disaster relief and response as possible. How do you differ from somebody, let's say, like the American Red Cross or other organizations that are dealing with disaster relief?

Campbell: Well, No. 1, the demands created by disasters are significant, and they're increasing rapidly. The total number of people impacted by disasters has doubled in the last 25 years, partly because people are moving to urban areas on an international basis. Partly because of climate change -- an increase in the amount of flooding -- and so on and so forth.

It's very important to look at how organizations define their actual mission. The actual responsibilities of the Red Cross are to do things like provide temporary shelter immediately after a major event. Provide food immediately after a major event. They don't have a responsibility to rebuild schools, for example. That's not in their mission, so it would be important to understand the whole tableau of disaster needs.

For example, there's tremendous media coverage immediately after an event, but the recovery activity is two, three, five, seven years long. As we know, New Orleans was recovering after Katrina for more than 10 years. There were still homes needing recovery.

So, it's important for donors to think, "Where do I want my support to go? Do I want it to be in shipping cartons of water to people in the first 30 days, or do I want it to be helping people in Houston return to their homes over the next year?" We're recovering homes in Louisiana that were flooded starting in March of 2016, and there are people that haven't been able to move back into their homes in almost two years.

Part of our motivation is to get people back into their homes, so you can hold communities together. The disaster space has great needs. Has multiple players. I think it's important to pick trustworthy players, and we advise people to go to things like Charity Navigator, and GuideStar, and services like that. We've always been frugal, and so we get great ratings, but partly because we're living in the community we're very cost-effective, and we're directly engaged with immediate impact.

Gardner: Well, I'll certainly be donating and I'm going to donate appreciated stock, because that's the way that I like to give. We've talked about this certainly before. My Rule Breaker Investing listeners will know that that's the most efficient way that I found, so far, to give. There are some really interesting other ways -- donor-advised funds and those kinds of things -- and David you might want to speak to that; but at least for me, I'm going to be finding one of my stocks that has run up really well over the years, I'm going to find some shares of that, send them off to Hands.org, and know that any capital gains tax I would have paid is forgiven, and so all of the money that you give from appreciated stock reaches your organization.

Campbell: And I would second that, David. I've funded my donor-advised fund with appreciated stock, too. There's two other things that occur to me. One, for people who have 401(k)s and are past the age of 70, anyway, they can give up to $100,000 a year directly from their 401(k) to a not-for-profit. The tax code is a 501(c)(3). And that has no compensation implications at all, and that's still in the current code.

More significantly, with the impending changes to the tax code, it may be worthwhile for people in 2017 to think of setting up a donor-advised fund with a gift in 2017, which would be deductible, and then you could give from the donor-advised fund several years in the future just in case you may no longer be able to get charitable deductions under the new tax law. So even if people have a more modest donation ability [$5,000 or $20,000], putting money into a donor-advised fund in 2017 to get the tax deduction this year may be a prudent step.

Gardner: Of course, consult your tax professional. We all have our different situations. A donor-advised fund is not something we regularly talk about on this particular Motley Fool podcast but, again, I'm a Schwab customer. Typically, you can ask your broker about these. It's a very effective, more convenient way to give, because you just make your one-time stock donation into that fund, and then you just write checks off of that. You don't have to do all these individual, "I'll give you these three shares, and this other guy I'll give 10 shares." [This] can be a little time-consuming.

Campbell: Plus, you can basically pre-fund years of donations. All the donations you might make for the next three to five years, you could put into a donor-advised fund in 2017, be certain of getting a deduction, and then still make your donations over the next five years.

Gardner: So, David, you are, again, coming from the corporate world. I'm curious. Have you done some work, or have you had partners who are public companies today? Are there some companies that you think are doing good work out there? They're for-profit, but they're partners. They're doing good stuff in the world.

Campbell: We have some wonderful partners. One of the reasons is they like to have their employees engage with what we do. Motley Fool sent a team of people to work with us in Houston. Companies like Southwest, who give us great support for our travel but then send teams of their people to volunteer when there are particular events, as there were in Texas. Medtronic has been a great partner of ours. We're looking to partner with them because they have facilities in Puerto Rico where we're looking to launch a project.

One of the things that we offer to corporations is that your employees can live with us and see the benefit of the corporate donations helping communities. And to me it's like the ultimate transparency. We've always pushed transparency. Our financial reports, our audited reports are on the website. But the ultimate transparency is, say, come and live with us. You'll be on-project. See how we manage. See that we don't waste a dollar. And [for those] corporations who want to have employee engagement, All Hands and Hearts is a great partner. [We're] enthusiastic and open to partnering with corporations for a combination of employee engagement [along with] support in an area that has tremendous need.

Gardner: It's interesting to hear you mention those two companies, much admired, especially by Americans since they're both American companies. I know there are others, too. But throwing a little love to LUV, ticker symbol [LUV], and then, of course, Medtronic. [These are] both companies that have been led by people who are very visionary...

Campbell: Correct. Absolutely.

Gardner: ... and big-hearted, so I'm really glad to hear that. I guess I have to ask you the Rule Breaker question, as we close. This is the Rule Breaker Investing podcast. Underneath our name is this concept that we don't like conventional wisdom. We like to look at the world as Fools and say, "Maybe we should break the rules of how things are being done in this industry or this context." Birds of a feather flock together, David, with people who, themselves, are visionary and looked at the world and said, with Robert Frost [this line is on his gravestone], "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." They have something that they think can be fixed.

Could you briefly share one angle, here, where you've gone after conventional wisdom? Maybe a story? A Rule Breaker story?

Campbell: Well, certainly the conventional wisdom for people who see a disaster [is to] say, "I wish I could help," and most organizations would say, "Stay home and send money." Since I had chosen to go, I realized that with the right approach and the right platform, individuals can be successful. The Thailand experience taught me that and certainly the post-Katrina, Biloxi experience.

So, the breaking of the rule is not a yes or no, "Can I go and help?" It's find the right vehicle to go and help. There is nothing quite the same as being personally engaged with the people you're helping, whether you're cleaning out a house and the family is going to be able to move back into it, or building a school and celebrating that with the community. Throwing yourself against the need, whether it's after a disaster like ours, or helping in a day care center. I think engagement is an important way to link your soul with your philanthropy and find organizations that you are proud to work with and live with, and then support them. That's really a double benefit.

Gardner: Well, David, I want to thank you very much for spending a little time with me and my listeners this weekend. A delight to learn more about AllHandsAndHearts.org, this wonderful, charitable organization that you have co-founded. You initially founded it, but having merged, you're now a co-founder and that's just a great story, too.

For Fools everywhere it's Give.Fool.com. That's the page you can go to on our website to make a donation. But I also want you to think -- and I hope you will think about that, because I'm going to do that myself, as well -- about volunteering. And David, as we close, if I raise my hand and say, "I want to go to the next place, wherever it is," what is that actual experience like?

Campbell: Well, it's different if you go domestic vs. international, and if people go again to the website AllHandsAndHearts.org, there's a volunteer button. You click that button and you can start to get information. You can look through that site as to what it's like on our project in Nepal, or Houston, or wherever.

We'll then start the process of looking at your dates and your skills, and assign you a bunk bed that you're going to move to. And you're going to live in a community of the nicest, most generous, most purpose-driven people in the world. You are going to work hard, starting early in the morning until late in the afternoon, six days a week, and have the most interesting conversations in the evening with people from all across the world that work together with you on accomplishing a result for someone else. And that's the most powerful and positive and wonderful evening you'll ever spend.

Gardner: And do I have that opportunity to say, "I have this much time." How does that work?

Campbell: You can identify one day and in places like Houston we'll actually have groups from companies come out just for the day. Then we have people on a project that will stay for three months. My objective was to eliminate barriers that prevented people from volunteering, so we're flexible with when you can come, and we're flexible with how long you can come.

Gardner: That's tremendous. So, a lot of ways for us all to give and help others, and that's kind of a lot about what this season is about. David Campbell, thank you so much for joining me on Rule Breaker Investing.

Campbell: Thanks so much, David! Enjoyed it.

As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at RBI.Fool.com.
125 makeshift huts handed over to flood displaced in Morang

The flood affected families of Khaptol settlement in Biratnagar-19 have received makeshift shelters after four months of the disaster.
Christmas offers on Samsung, Vivo, Apple, Motorola, Xiaomi, Huawei, Micromax, Gionee and more phones Features oi -Harish Kumar

The Christmas season is approaching in a few days and the festive spirit has already kicked in everywhere. As it is common for people to shop during the festive season, there are several offers and deals to avail now.

These days, there are numerous enticing deals and offers on all sort of products. Even the smartphone brands such as Vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung, etc. have come up with Christmas offers. If you are looking for a great deal to upgrade your smartphone, then this is the right time that you should not miss as you can get never seen before offerings.

SEE ALSO: Mi Fan sale on Flipkart: Offers on Mi A1, Redmi Note 4, Mi Mix 2, Mi MAX 2, Redmi 5A and more

Several smartphones are available at temporary price cuts this festive and holiday season. Some of the notable mentions are the Moto G5S, Moto G5S Plus, 10.or E, 10.or G, Gionee A1 Plus, etc. Samsung is hosting the Christmas Carnival sale for the consumers and Vivo phones are available on discount during the Vivo Amazon Carnival.

Take a glance below to know the enticing Christmas offers on smartphones right now.

30% off on Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime Gold (16GB) Key Features 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD TFT display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection

1.6GHz Octa-Core Exynos 7870 processor

3GB RAM

16GB internal memory

expandable up to 256GB with microSD

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

Dual SIM

13MP rear camera with LED flash, f/1.9 aperture

8MP front-facing camera with f/1.9 aperture

Fingerprint sensor

4G LTE

3300mAh battery 12% off on Samsung Galaxy J7 Max (Gold, 32GB) Key Features 5.7 Inch Full HD Display

1.6GHz MediaTek Helio P20 Octa-Core Processor

4GB RAM With 32GB ROM

Dual Nano SIM

13MP Camera With LED Flash

13MP Front Camera With LED Flash

4G LTE/WiFi

Samsung Pay Mini

Bluetooth 4.1

3300mAh Battery 20% off on Vivo V5s Key Features 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection

Octa-Core MediaTek MT6750 (4 x 1.5GHz A53 + 4 x 1.0GHz A53) processor with Mali T860 GPU

4GB RAM

64GB internal memory

expandable memory up to 256GB

Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano/microSD)

Funtouch OS 3.0 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

13MP rear camera with LED Flash, PDAF, f/2.2 aperture

20MP front-facing camera

Fingerprint sensor

4G VoLTE

3000mAh battery 5% off on Vivo V7 Key Features 5.7 Inch HD+ IPS LCD Touchscreen Display

1.8GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 450 Processor

4GB RAM With 32GB ROM

Dual Nano SIM

16MP Rear Camera With LED Flash

24MP Front Camera With LED Flash

Fingerprint Sensor

4G VoLTE/WiFi

Bluetooth

3000 MAh Battery 4% off on Vivo V7 plus Key Features 5.99 Inch HD IPS LCD Touchscreen Display

Octa-Core Snapdragon 450 Processor

4GB RAM With 64GB ROM

Dual Nano SIM

16MP Rear Camera With LED Flash

24MP Front Camera With LED Flash

Fingerprint Sensor

4G VoLTE/WiFi

Bluetooth

3225 MAh Battery 29% off Vivo V5 Plus Key Features 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD In-Cell display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection

2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 processor with Adreno 506 GPU

4GB RAM

64GB internal memory

Dual SIM (nano + nano)

Funtouch OS 3.0 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

16MP rear camera with LED Flash, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF

20MP front-facing camera with Moonlight Flash and secondary 8MP front camera

4G LTE

3160mAh battery with fast charging 24% off on Vivo Y66 Key Features 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) 2.5D curved glass display

Octa-Core MediaTek MT6750 (4 x 1.5GHz A53 + 4 x 1.0GHz A53) processor with Mali T860 GPU

3GB RAM

32GB internal storage

expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) with Funtouch OS 3.0

Hybrid Dual SIM (Micro + nano/microSD)

13MP rear camera with LED flash, f/2.2 aperture

16MP front-facing camera

4G VoLTE

3000mAh (non-removable) battery 6% off on Vivo Y69 Key Features 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) 2.5D curved glass display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection

Octa-Core MediaTek MT6750 (4 x 1.5GHz A53 + 4 x 1.0GHz A53) processor with Mali T860 GPU

3GB RAM

32GB internal storage

expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD

Android 7.0 (Nougat) with Funtouch OS 3.2

Dual SIM

13MP rear camera with LED flash

16MP front-facing camera with soft Moonlight flash

4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS

3000mAh (non-removable) battery 17% off on Motorola Moto G5s Plus Key Features 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD display with Corning Gorilla glass 3 protection

2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 Mobile Platform with Adreno 506 GPU

4GB RAM

64GB storage

expandable memory up to 128 GB with microSD

Android 7.1 (Nougat)

Hybrid Dual SIM (nano + nano/microSD)

13MP (RGB) + 13MP (monochrome) dual rear cameras with dual-tone LED flash, f/2.0 aperture, 4K video recording

8MP front-facing camera with flash, f/2.0 aperture

4G VoLTE

3000mAh battery with Turbo Charging 24% off on Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 Key Features 5.7 Inch FHD Super AMOLED Display

1.9GHz Octa-Core Exynos 7880 Processor

3GB RAM With 32GB ROM

Dual Nano SIM

16MP Camera With LED Flash

16MP Front Camera

4G VoLTE/WiFi

Bluetooth 4.2

NFC

Type-C

Fingerprint Sensor

3600mAh Battery 13% off on Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro Key Features 6-inch (19201080 pixels) Full HD Super AMOLED 2.5D curved glassdisplay

Octa Core Snapdragon 653 processor with Adreno 510 GPU

6GB RAM

64GB Internal Storage

expandable memory up to 256GB via micro SD card

Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow)

Dual SIM (nano + nano)

16MP rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, f/1.9 aperture

16MP front camera

4G LTE

4000mAh battery with fast charging 12% off on Samsung Galaxy J2 2017 (Black, 8GB) Key Features 4.7-inch (960 x 540 Pixels) qHD Super AMOLED display

1.3 GHz quad-core Exynos 3475 processor

1GB RAM

8GB internal memory

expandable up to 128GB with microSD

Android

5MP auto focus rear camera with LED Flash

2MP front-facing camera

4G VoLTE

2000mAh battery 11% off on Apple iPhone 7 (Black, 32 GB) Key Features 4.7 Inch Retina HD Display With 3D Touch

Quad-Core Apple A10 Fusion Processor

Force Touch Technology

2GB RAM With 32/128/256GB ROM

Dual 12MP ISight Camera With OIS

7MP Front Facing Camera

Touch ID

Bluetooth 4.2

LTE Support

Water And Dust Resistance 13% off on Xiaomi Mi A1 (Black, 64 GB) (4 GB RAM) Key Features 5.5 Inch FHD LTPS Touchscreen Display

2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 Processor

4GB RAM With 64GB ROM

Dual SIM

Dual 12MP Camera With PDAF And Dual Tone Flash

5MP Front Camera

4G VoLTE

WiFi

Bluetooth 4.2

Infrared Sensor

USB Type-C

3080 MAh Battery 15% off on Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (Gold, 64 GB) (4 GB RAM) Key Features 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD 2.5D curved glass display, up to 72% NTSC color gamut, 1000:1 contrast ratio

2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 14nm processor with Adreno 506 GPU

2GB / 3GB RAM with 32GB storage (eMMC 5.0) / 4GB RAM with 64GB storage

expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD

MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano/microSD)

13MP rear camera with PDAF

5MP front-facing camera

4G VoLTE

4000mAh (minimum) / 4100mAh (typical) battery 9% off on Lenovo K8 Plus (Venom Black, 32 GB) (3 GB RAM) Key Features 5.2-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD 2.5D curved glass display with 450 nits brightness, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection

2.5GHz Octa-core MediaTek Helio P25 16nm processor with Mali-T880 GPU

3GB / 4GB RAM

32GB storage

expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD

Android 7.1.1 (Nougat), upgradable to Android 8.0 (Oreo)

Dual SIM

13MP rear camera with Largan 5P lens and secondary 5MP camera

8MP front-facing camera

4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, USB OTG

4000mAh built-in battery 7% off on Gionee M7 Power (Black) Key Features 6-inch (1440 x 720 pixels) 18:9 FullView 2.5D curved glass display, 85% NTSC color gamut, 500 Nits brightness, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection

1.4GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 435 Mobile Platform with Adreno 505 GPU

4GB RAM

64GB internal storage

expandable memory up to 256GB with microSD

Android 7.1.1 (Nougat) with Amigo OS 5.0

Hybrid Dual SIM (nano+nano/microSD)

13MP rear camera with LED flash, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF

8MP front-facing camera

Fingerprint sensor

4G VoLTE

5000mAh built-in battery with fast charging 38% off on Gionee A1 (Black, 64GB) Key Features 5.5 Inch FHD IPS Display

1.8 GHz Octa-Core MediaTek Helio P10 Processor

4GB RAM With 64GB ROM

Dual SIM

13MP Rear Camera With LED Flash

16MP Front Facing Camera With Led Flash

Fingerprint Sensor

4G VoLTE

WiFi

Bluetooth 4.1

4010mAh Battery 12% off on Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Black, 64 GB) (4 GB RAM) Key Features 6.44-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD IPS 2.5D curved glass display with 450nits brightness, 1000 : 1 contrast ratio, 72% NTSC color gamut

2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 14nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 506 GPU

4GB RAM with 64GB / 128GB storage

expandable memory with microSD

MIUI 8 based on Android 7.1.1 (Nougat)

Hybrid Dual SIM (micro+nano/microSD)

12MP rear camera with dual-tone LED Flas

5MP front-facing camera

4G VoLTE

5300mAh (typical) / 5200mAh (minimum) battery with Quick Charge 3.0 13% off on Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (Black, 128 GB) (6 GB RAM) Key Features 5.99-inch (2160  1080 pixels) Full HD+ 18:9 display with 1500:1 contrast ratio, DCI-P3 color gamut

2.45GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 835 64-bit 10nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 540 GPU

6GB LPDDR4x RAM with 64GB / 128GB / 256GB (UFS 2.1) storage

8GB LPDDR4x RAM with 128GB storage (Special Edition)

Android 7.1 (Nougat) with MIUI 9

Dual SIM (nano + nano)

12MP rear camera with Sony IMX386 sensor

5MP front-facing camera with facial recognition, 1080p video recording

Fingerprint sensor

4G LTE

3400mAh (typical) / 3300mAh (minimum) battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging 21% off on Gionee A1 Plus Key Features 6-inch IPS 2.5D Gorilla glass 3 display with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution and 367.15 ppi pixel density

13+5MP primary dual camera with night, panorama, professional, time-lapse, slow motion, smart scene, text recognition, GIF, picnote, smart scan, mood photo, cards scanner and 20MP front facing camera

Android v7.0 Nougat operating system with 2.6GHz MediaTek 6757CD octa core processor

4GB RAM

64GB internal memory expandable up to 256 GB and dual SIM (micro+nano) dual-standby (4G+4G)

4550mAH lithium-polymer battery providing talk-time of 48 hours and standby time of 510 hours 25% off on Gionee A1 Lite (Gold, 32 GB) (3 GB RAM) Key Features 5.3 inch HD Display

3 GB RAM

32 GB ROM

Expandable Upto 256 GB

13MP Rear Camera

20MP Front Camera

4000 mAh Battery

MT6753V/WA Processor

Best Mobiles in India
29 out of 100 people poor

Around 29 out of every 100 people living in Nepal are poor, with Province 2 hosting the largest number of poverty-stricken people in the country, a latest report of the National Planning Commission (NPC) says.
4G Nokia feature phone could be launched soon, hints Bluetooth SIG certification News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu

Word has it that HMD Global is prepping to launch a new Nokia 4G feature phone soon. A few days back, we saw a Nokia branded handset with the model numbers TA-1047 and TA-1060 clear the FCC certification in the US.

These are believed to be variants of an upcoming Nokia 4G feature phone as the FCC listing describes that the device will be a feature phone and not a smartphone. Following the FCC approval, this 4G feature phone has bagged the Bluetooth SIG certification too pointing out that its launch is drawing closer.

The Bluetooth SIG certification via NokiaMob reveals five model numbers such as TA-1047, TA-1060, TA-1056, TA-1079 and TA-1066 hinting that five variants of the Nokia 4G feature phone are in the making. Of course, these variants will be meant for different markets. There are claims that the Indian market will get both the single SIM and dual SIM variants of the feature phone. Even the Asian and European markets are likely to get the dual SIM edition of the device. The other parts of the world will get the single SIM variant of the Nokia feature phone.

The description of the software suggests that the device does not run on Android and that it might be loaded with the series 30+ feature OS similar to the Nokia 3310 (2017).

The FCC listing of the Nokia 4G feature phone revealed that the handset will measure 133 x 68 mm in dimensions and that it might have a QWERTY keyboard similar to the Nokia E72.

HMD Global is being churned out heavily by the rumor mills for its upcoming smartphone launches. The company is expected to unveil the Nokia 9 flagship smartphone that was spotted on FCC and Geekbench databases and the next generation Nokia 6 smartphone on January 19, 2018. In addition to these launches, the company is claimed to be involved in making the 4G feature phone as well. We can expect all these handsets to be launched in the first quarter of the next year.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
Samsung Galaxy On Nxt 64GB to get a price cut of Rs. 4,000 tomorrow News oi -Chandrika Samsung launched the Galaxy On Nxt 64GB model earlier this year at Rs. 16,990.

Samsung launched the Galaxy On Nxt 64GB model earlier this year at Rs. 16,990. Guess what? The smartphone will be receiving a price cut of Rs. 4,000 on Flipkart tomorrow as a part of the Christmas celebration. However, it should be kept in mind that this offer is only applicable to the 64GB variant of the smartphone.

The sale will be held on 22 December on the e-commerce platform between 12 PM to 1 PM. In tomorrow's one hour long sale, Samsung Galaxy On Nxt will be available for just Rs. 12,990. Other than that, Flipkart is yet to announce if there will be additional offers on the smartphone. The e-commerce website has not announced any offers on the phone yet.

However, once the sale is live tomorrow, we'll come to know all the offers available with its purchase.

Talking about the specifications, the Samsung Galaxy On Nxt is fitted with a 5.5-inch FHD display with the screen resolution of 1,9201,080 pixels. The display is covered with a 2.5D curved glass on top for further protection.

Under its hood, the smartphone makes use of a 1.6GHz octa-core Exynos 7870 processor. This processor is teamed up with ARM Mali T830 MP1 graphics unit and 3GB of RAM. The storage capacity is 64GB and the same can be expanded further up to 256GB with the help of a microSD card.

On the imaging front, the Galaxy On Nxt 2017 edition adorns a 13MP auto focus rear camera with f/1.9 aperture and LED flash. Up front, there is an 8MP selfie camera with the same f/1.9 aperture. The smartphone boots on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and features a fingerprint scanner at the front that is embedded on the physical home button.

The Galaxy On Nxt 64GB model gets the necessary power from a 3,300mAh non-removable battery. This battery is claimed to provide up to 21 hours of talk time. The smartphone has the Power Planning feature to manage the battery with features like Reserve Battery, Extend Battery and Call Forwarding. The other aspects of this smartphone include dual SIM support, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, S Secure and more.

The Galaxy On Nxt 64GB model is offered in two color options; Black and Gold.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
Is the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus the actual Redmi Note 5? News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu

With the immense success of the Redmi Note 4, Xiaomi is highly anticipated to unveil its successor - the Redmi Note 5. Recently, we came across reports tipping that the smartphone might be unveiled sometime in January and the key specifications of the device were also revealed.

While the Mi fans are eagerly awaiting the launch of the Redmi Note 5, there are fresh claims making the rounds on the internet that the device has already been announced with a different moniker. As per a super moderator (mitch002) on the official MIUI forum via GSMArena, Xiaomi will not release the Redmi Note 5 this time. The moderator claims that the Redmi 5 Plus with a full-screen design that was launched earlier this month in China alongside the Redmi 5 is the actual successor to the Redmi Note 4.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 was expected to be launched with a 5.99-inch FHD+ display with 2160 x 1080 pixel resolution. The device was speculated to feature either a Snapdragon 630 or a Snapdragon 660 chipset under its hood. While the Redmi 5 Plus also features a similar display, the processor used by the smartphone is the Snapdragon 625 SoC that was used by the Redmi Note 4 as well.

If the Redmi 5 Plus happens to be Redmi Note 4 successor, then it is quite disappointing to know that the latest model also uses the same processor without any upgradation. In fact, there have been several complaints about the continuous usage of the Snapdragon 625 chipset on the mid-range smartphone from Xiaomi. The company failed to upgrade the processor to the Snapdragon 652 or the Snapdragon 626 chipsets. And, this appears to be the case with the fifth generation Redmi smartphones as well.

Though the super moderator has revealed that the Redmi 5 Plus is the successor of the Redmi Note 5, there is no official confirmation from Xiaomi regarding the matter. We can expect this information to turn out to be false as well. However, we need to wait for the company to reveal something regarding the same.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
Intense Price Wars

It all started when Reliance Jio announced free unlimited data and voice services essentially for about nine long months since its launch. This helped Jio to attract a lot of customers and crack open the mass market. Jio became the fastest-growing telecom network in the world adding lakhs of subscribers each day.

However, as it all happened cases were filed, debates arose, and all major telcos including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, and BSNL finally came out with enticing plans that packed in as much data and calling services for cheap rates. While the Jio Effect spread like a wildfire customers no doubt were the biggest beneficiaries of the price wars. All made the most out of it.

Explosive Growth in 4G Data Usage

This again can be directly related to Jio offering free and cheap data offers to the customers. While the tariffs decreased the monthly data consumption reached a new high. According to reports from November, India jumped to the top spot in data usage in a period of 1 year after Reliance Jio launched its 4G (LTE) services. Indians consumed more than 1.3 EB (exabytes) of data in 2017. In fact, India became the world's second-largest 4G user base overtaking the U.S.

Meanwhile, Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson in its mobility report has stated that the monthly data consumption on every smartphone in India is estimated to grow nearly five times from 3.9GB in 2017 to 18GB by 2023. Likewise, explosive growth in data usage, driven by attractive offers from operators will push India to the top spot by next year, predicts Counterpoint Research.

Cheap 4G Phone Revolution

With the ongoing tariff wars and after mobile data consumption increased, Jio had other plans and strategy to work out. The company eventually turned to tap into the feature phone market. While smartphones have become prominent in India but the majority of the users still consisted of more than 400 million feature phone users. Interestingly India might be the only feature phone market in the world that is still thriving.

And yet again at the forefront of this revolution was Reliance Jio. The company announced a 4G-enabled feature phone at an effective' price of zero. The handset would further provide customers with free and unlimited voice calls along with 4G data packs. The 4G feature phone which was dubbed as JioPhone was being offered at a price tag of Rs. 1,500 which was refundable after three years. This was indeed a very clever strategy from Jio.

Following suit, telcos like Airtel and Vodafone and even BSNL jumped into the handset game. These players partnered with domestic budget phone manufacturers and announced devices that combined basic smartphone functionalities with super-attractive data packs.

Now, the competition was back. As such Airtel joined hands with Karbonn, Lava, Intex, and Celkon, Vodafone-Idea contacted Micromax while BSNL formed partnerships with Lava and Micromax. With this huge movement, we witnessed "India's cheapest smartphone" being launched almost every week.

4G and Beyond

With easy access to the internet and with the proliferation of smartphones, India is ranked as the world's second-largest mobile internet market trailing just behind China. Reports have further revealed that India has over 450 million users, while overall mobile subscriptions have crossed 1.18 billion as per TRAI data.

However, from what we have witnessed in 2017 till now and how 4G technology has expanded, almost all the telecom service providers now have a massive opportunity to double or treble their 4G customers going ahead.

And not only 4G, telcos will be slowly moving towards 5G that has been making headlines in the latter half of the year. Airtel is already working on the deployment of 5G technology. Vodafone and Jio too are taking measures to deploy the technology.

Global network equipment makers Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei are involved with telcos to make India 5G-ready by 2020. Moreover, the Indian government has also set up a Rs 500-crore fund to usher in the 5G revolution.

In India, 5G can dramatically improve user experience by supporting high-quality videos and speeding up file transfers. The biggest impact could be on new-age connected technologies, namely the Internet-of-Things (IoT).

Moreover, the Narendra Modi government's Digital India dreams could be possible when 5G comes into play and 5G will no doubt enable the increased use of smartphones, wearables, augmented reality devices, smart speakers, and other devices.

Conclusion

In any case, 2017 no doubt will go down as the year that truly changed India's internet and telecom landscape forever. While we witnessed explosive growth in data usage, which was led by lucrative offers from telecom operators, India did set a new record in the telecom space. It will be interesting to see how 2018 will turn up both for the companies as well as for the consumers.
Top telecom highlights of 2017: Interconnection Charge, IMG formation, Mergers, and more News oi -Priyanka The entire Industry has seen a hefty loss of revenu

As we all know that ever since Reliance Jio has entered the telecom sector, all incumbents are going through a bumpy ride as they are trying their level best to retain customers by launching new and attractive plans on a daily basis. This has already led to hurtful balance sheets over the months. Much more than that, due to the lower revenue generation, the entire Industry has seen a hefty loss of revenue this year.

Having witnessed the depredations among the telecom players this year, we at GizBot have got for you a couple of major highlights of year in the telecom sector, which are worth your attention.

Interconnection Usage Charges

The interconnect charges are those charges which are paid by a telecom operator to another when the former's call terminates on the latter's network. Now the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has slashed interconnection usage charges to 6 paise per minute from 14 paise per minute. TRAI in its notification has also said that for Mobile to Mobile, termination charge has been reduced from 14 paisa per minute to 6 paise per minute which was deemed effective from October 1, 2017.

Inter-ministerial group (IMG) Formed

The IMG was set up in May this year to suggest reforms in the telecom sector. The sector is under a serious financial stress due to increasing pressure after the entry Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio with free services and cheap data was launched. This led to massive fall in revenues and a debt of about Rs. 4.6 lakh crore. Now Telecom Commission will take all recommendations suggested by IMG.

IMG in its recommendations has proposed to extend the time period for the payment of spectrum bought in auctions by telecom companies to 16 years from 10 years.

JioPhone Launched

At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) this year on July 21, Reliance Jio announced the launch of the JioPhone and as expected this also created a major jitter for both the telecom and mobile phone industry. Since, JioPhone is a 4G VoLTE feature phone, that supports 22 Indian regional languages, voice commands, and a lot of offers and schemes tied to it, it became quite a success in the market. With the growth in the demand, now the company is planning to shift its production of 4G feature phones to India. This led to a several tie-up between smartphone manufacturers and telecom service providers; Micromax Bharat series being one, and iTel another.

Mergers and Acquisition

Almost all telecom players are in a process of merging or acquiring after Jio's advent in the market. Obviously triggered by Jio surge, this year in March India's second and third largest telecom operators Vodafone and Idea Cellular respectively announced their merger in operations in India (excluding Vodafone's 42 percent stake in Indus Towers). The combined company would become the leading communications provider in India with almost 400 million customers, 35 percent customer market share and 41 percent revenue market share. Post the merger, Vodafone will hold 45 percent in the combined entity while Idea promoters will hold 26 percent share. The rest will be held by the public.

On the other hand, Airtel also announced MoU with Tata Teleservices & Tata Teleservices Maharashtra to merge their Consumer Mobile Businesses, while Reliance Communications merged with MTS.

Best Mobiles in India
Birgunj LPG bottling plant fire kills two firefighters

Two firefighters died and two others suffered serious burn injuries in an LPG bottling plant fire at Sukhachaina in Birgunj Metropolis-22, Parsa, on Wednesday.
Marines say goodbye to the Shadow

US Marine Corps News

By Lance Cpl. Melany Vasquez | Marine Corps Forces Reserves | December 20, 2017

Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 4 prepared the RQ-7B Shadow Unmanned Aircraft System for its final flight during Exercise Steel Knight in Twentynine Palms, California, Dec. 11, 2017.

Steel Knight is an annual exercise led by 1st Marine Division that combines air and ground assets to complete a wide range of military operations focusing on ground fires, maneuver warfare tactics, and command and control capabilities.

"The flight was our last of the evolution for Steel Knight and also our last Shadow flight in the Marine Corps," said Capt. Shanna Ream, an operations officer for VMU-4, Marine Aircraft Group 41, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Forces Reserve. "We have been flying the Shadow for a very long time, it is a system that we employed to Iraq and Afghanistan. It has a lot of capabilities and it's been in the fight for a long time."

For over five years with the unit, the Shadow has been operated by two enlisted Marines through the use of a computer system or a remote control system.

"It's been very reliable and it has a lot of capabilities," Ream said. "For example, we could physically launch and recover an aircraft from one spot and then task it off and fly it out."

Through skillful use of the Shadows capabilities, VMU-4 was able to effectively support the active duty component throughout Steel Knight. The capabilities include sustained flight times of six to nine hours, depending if the drone is the short wing or the long wing model, and flying out 25 kilometers with a speed of about 90 knots.

"For most of our missions with the Shadow, we did a lot of control of indirect fire," Ream said. "We participated in close air support, aerial escort, and then we did expedition operations, which is where we used our remote control."

The Shadow is an Army owned product leased by the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is currently phasing out the Shadow and upgrading to the RQ-21A Blackjack system, which is a Marine Corps owned product.

The Blackjack will provide day and night intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance coverage in real time. It can fly up to 16 hours, is eight feet long, and will include day and night full motion video cameras, infrared markers, laser range finders, a communications relay package and automatic identification system receivers.

The Marine Corps completed its first land based operational deployment for the system in September 2014. After several test runs and operations, the Marine Corps is ready to begin training on the RQ-21A Blackjack in March 2018.

"The RQ-21A Blackjack is going to bring a lot of capabilities for us to the fight," Ream said. "Because of its upgraded features, we will have a smaller footprint then we did with the Shadow, and we couldn't be more excited for it."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Finnish Intelligence Bill May Allow to Put Foreign Diplomats Under Surveillance

Sputnik News

16:25 20.12.2017(updated 16:26 20.12.2017)

HELSINKI (Sputnik) - Finland's draft bill on intelligence services may allow conducting surveillance of foreign embassy's employees, Helsingin Sanomat reported on Wednesday.

Helsinki is currently drafting a new intelligence law, which stipulates the expansion of intelligence agencies' rights and powers, including the right to put employees of diplomatic missions under surveillance, even in violation of Finland's existing laws, according to the newspaper.

The draft bill has been revealed after media reports that a Finnish agency which allegedly put Russian troops based on the Russian north under surveillance.

The media reports have sparked a scandal in Finland, with the country's president, Sauli Niinisto, and Defense Minister Jussi Niinisto calling on law enforcement agencies to investigate how the journalists obtained this classified information as its disclosure "poses a risk to the security of the republic."

On December 16, the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reported that there was an intelligence agency in the city of Tikkakoski in central Finland that had allegedly put Russian troops on the territory of the former Leningrad Military District under surveillance. The home of Laura Halminen, one of the authors of the report on the alleged surveillance of Russian troops, was searched the day on Sunday.

The Russian Embassy in Finland told Sputnik that it would not comment on the reports as the issue was "a matter for Finnish law enforcement agencies and Finnish press."

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Colonel Ryan Dillon, Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve Spokesman; Eric J. Pahon, Defense Department Spokesman December 19, 2017

Department of Defense Press Briefing by Colonel Dillon via Teleconference From Kuwait

ERIC J. PAHON: All right, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us for not the last OIR briefing of the year, but next to last.

As a reminder, next week, December 27th, we'll have Major General Gedney. He's the OIR deputy commanding general for strategy and support.

With us by phone today, however, is the infamous Colonel Ryan Dillon, the CJTF-OIR spokesman. He's live from Kuwait today via phone. He was headed back home for some much-needed R&R, but we made him do one last thing before we'd let him -- before we'd give him a plane ticket.

So, sir, can you hear us?

COLONEL RYAN DILLON: I can hear you well. Thanks, Eric.

MR. PAHON: And go ahead, sir.

COL. DILLON: All right, great. And I just want to highlight that next week is -- Major General Gedney is a British officer, one of our coalition -- non-U.S. coalition members, and so you will get proper English coming out of his mouth next week.

So good morning. Sorry you can't see me today, but I'm currently in Kuwait, as Eric has mentioned, for a few days before taking off on leave. However, because you don't have me on camera, I've tried to beef up the visual aids for today's brief. So we'll go ahead and get started in Syria, and then we'll move to Iraq.

In Syria, and the map should be showing, in Syria since the liberation of Raqqa in October, the Syrian Democratic Forces have maintained momentum in their advance against ISIS into the Khabur and Middle Euphrates River Valleys. The SDF have deliberately and meticulously cleared more than 4,400 square kilometers of former ISIS territory since the beginning of operations in September.

Despite recent claims from Russia that Syria is free from ISIS terror, the SDF are still meeting resistance from ISIS fighters in the region. ISIS is putting up a stiff defense in remaining territories in the MERV, likely as a delaying action to allow other elements to displace to southwest and northwest Syria to seek sanctuary and/or continue to fight.

Syrian regime commanders in eastern Syria suggest that ISIS fighters from the MERV may have slipped through porous Syrian and Russian defenses to arrive in areas near Damascus. And we've also seen a recent ISIS attempt to transit westward through the Al-Tanf area, albeit unsuccessfully because of our partners' actions to interdict.

The SDF remains steadfast, making progress in the MERV, specifically in villages south of Mayadin. In the town of Abu Hamam, highlighted with the yellow star on the map -- I know it's hard to see, but I'll give you a -- an idea of where -- a desperate and dwindling ISIS force continues to fight vigorously.

All right. A milestone -- you should now be seeing a photo of the linkup between ISF and the SDF on the screen there -- a milestone was met Monday, December 11th, when the SDF reached the border of Iraq, linking up with Iraqi Security Forces that were completing their clearance of ISIS from the final pockets in Iraq. Our two Defeat ISIS partners are working together to reestablish a secure international border, and I'll touch on it a little bit more when we shift to Iraq.

In Raqqa province, the Raqqa Civil Council continues to focus on rubble and explosive remnants of war removal as top priority, while also facilitating the needs of both IDP camps and returning Raqqa residents.

The colossal task of restoring Raqqa to a city free of explosive hazards is one that is taking many hands and organizations working together on this problem. From counter-IED training to employment of bulldozers and RCC working closely with NGOs and our partner forces, all available resources are being used to make the streets and homes of Raqqa habitable again.

Just as coalition has been committed to the military defeat of ISIS, we are equally committed to securing the gains on the battlefield and preventing the return of this terrorist group. The broader efforts of the global coalition are also focused on the stabilization of areas clear devices.

These civilian-led efforts address vital needs, such as restoring essential services and fostering education and employment. Stabilization and humanitarian efforts go hand-in-hand with our military campaign. And all these efforts lead to lasting security and help people return to their homes and get on with their lives.

Before switching countries, I'd like to announce three ISIS senior leaders the coalition has killed in Iraq and Syria in the past three weeks. Abu Faisal and his deputy Abu Qudamah al-Iraqi were killed in a coalition strike on December 1st near Karachi, Syria, and Mustafa Kamal Jasim Muhammad al-Zawian, an ISIS senior leader courier, was killed in an operation on November 28th near al-Sharqat, Iraq.

The removal of these key terrorists disrupts ISIS leadership and information dissemination activities, reducing the terrorist group's ability to plan and conduct terrorist attacks within Syria and Iraq and abroad. And there will be a press release with these terrorists' names, and they should be waiting for you by the time you return to your desk.

The coalition will continue to exert pressure on ISIS senior leaders and associates across multiple networks in order to degrade, disrupt and dismantle remaining ISIS structures and remove the extremist terrorists throughout Iraq and Syria.

Shifting to Iraq, the coalition congratulates Prime Minister Abadi and all the Iraqi people on the achievement of full liberation from ISIS. We honor the sacrifices of all elements of the Iraqi Security Forces that fought ISIS for the last three years.

The military parade in Baghdad was well received, and other celebrations were well attended and highlighted the professionalism of the Iraqi Security Forces. Prime Minister Abadi said in his liberation announcement that "Iraq must wipe out any ISIS remaining relics, and never allow terrorism to return."

The fight against ISIS remnants continues today. Iraqi Security Forces conduct clearance operations and pursue pockets of enemy ISIS fighters to thoroughly eradicate these terrorist elements hiding throughout the country.

The coalition will continue to partner with the ISF, advising, training and equipping them in their efforts to eliminate ISIS as a threat to Iraq. On December 5th, the high-level committee of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and our CJTF leaders met to discuss the way forward for the coalition's continued support of the Iraqi Security Forces.

The meeting prepared for the -- as a -- in preparation for the future transition of the defeat of ISIS campaign. The campaign will tailor our support based on Iraqi requirements, with a particular emphasis on the capabilities needed to hold and secure liberated areas.

As an example, the coalition began specific training with the Iraqi border guard force, with the delivery of the first border guard in a box at Bismayah Training Complex this week. Sixty members of the border guard force began a two-week training course, and after the training is complete, the boxes will be divested to the battalion commander and shift to the western border.

The border guard project instructs these forces in the subsequent deployment on the border for controlling movement and denying the passage of terrorist infiltrations. We have also focused on developing essential life-sustaining and logistical capabilities within the Iraqi Security Forces.

In November, the coalition began training Iraqi military leaders in medical planning for military operations, as well as providing combat medic training to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence.

And also, just last week, we provided a course on nursing administration and these efforts will continue as we support the ISF in becoming an even more capable and sustainable force. As with Syria, our focus in Iraq is increasingly on long-term stabilization, setting conditions so that life can return to normal and the people can look forward to a brighter future.

We have made it clear that the defeat of ISIS will not occur on the battlefield alone. And that is why we are working with many governments and nongovernmental partners around the world to counter the terrorist group's efforts to radicalize, recruit and inspire people to violence.

Although ISIS' physical caliphate has crumbled, we fully expect the enemy to make a concerted effort to maintain their presence and influence in the virtual domain. While ISIS has been defeated as a conventional fighting force, we cannot forget their terrorist roots.

To recap, across Iraq and Syria, ISIS has lost nearly all of the territory they once held. And that's more than 105,000 square kilometers. And they have not regained a single meter of those territories liberated by coalition partners. More than 7.7 million people are now free from ISIS, and this does not, however, mark the end of the campaign. We know this enemy is as adaptive and savvy as it is cruel and evil.

We will continue to support our partners and keep pressure on ISIS to deliver a lasting defeat so that these terrorists in Iraq and Syria cannot return. And, with that, I'll go ahead and now take your questions.

MR. PAHON: All right, Ryan. Thank you very much.

Bob Burns, AP.

Q: (Off mic) Thank you.

Colonel Dillon, I don't believe you mentioned anything about Russian air activity over Syria, unless I didn't hear it. But there have been, of course, a number of complaints by the U.S. in recent weeks, of dangerous -- what you called dangerous and unprofessional activity by Russian air -- Russian pilots.

As of -- can you bring us up-to-date? Have there been any recent incidents and what's the state of play on that?

COL. DILLON: So you did see those initial -- or those statements and announcements that came out, particularly with the F-22 and Su-35. There has been an uptick in these either sloppy flying, or overtly provocative flying, however, things have -- we have maintained using that deconfliction line, both the air deconfliction and the ground deconfliction, and since those incidents were reported last week, there have not been any more. You know, things have tampered down since last week. We will continue to use that deconfliction line and continue to work with the Russians so that we can remain focused on fighting the remnants of ISIS, at least on our side, on the eastern side of the Euphrates River.

Q: Are they still flying the same amount, or have they decreased the amount of flying, the Russians?

COL. DILLON: We have seen a -- in the last two to three days, there has been a decrease in the presence along the Middle Euphrates River Valley. And that's about as far as I'll go about that. I'll let them address where they're flying, but there has been a decrease in the amount of sorties that they have flown around the MERV.

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: All right, thanks, Bob.

Lucas Tomlinson.

Q: Colonel, how many ISIS fighters do you estimate are still alive today?

COL. DILLON: We still -- I know that I put this out a while ago, maybe a couple weeks ago. We estimate that there are less that 3,000. And, as you've seen with some of these press releases that we've put out recently, like with the incident that happened in Al-Tanf last week that number continues to go down to include with those ISIS fighters that we continue to identify and capture as they are trying to either leave the country or transit across Iraq and Syria.

MR. PAHON: Okay, thank you very much.

Ryan Browne, CNN.

Q: Hello Colonel, thank you for doing this. Just a quick one on the -- you mentioned the ISIS fighters were kind of passing from the Middle Euphrates River Valley, and heading westward. And, again, that's why they kind of pass through the Al-Tanf area.

You've mentioned porous defenses by the Syrian regime and the Russians. Is this kind of permissible environment, is this done intentionally or is this done because they're unable to enforce kind of a hard defensive line? And I have one follow-up.

COL. DILLON: Okay. Good question, Ryan, thanks for that. I think it's the latter. We have seen, throughout this campaign -- and I did highlight how the -- our partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Iraqi Security Forces, how they have meticulously and deliberately cleared these areas, back-clearing and making sure that they have been cleared of ISIS.

We have seen, over the course of this campaign, several times on the western side of the Euphrates, where that has not been the case. So what -- what I'll say to that is, I mean, you have their own Syrian commanders in Damascus that are calling out the other elements of his military, saying that they are making their way across from the MERV to areas south of Damascus, in one particular instance.

We estimate that the ISIS fighters understand this and they know if they were to come east of the river that they have to contend with our partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces. So they would opt for the easier solution, and -- which is, moving west. So that -- that's our estimate with that. And you said you had a follow-up?

Q: (Off mic) Yes. So, given this westward movement by ISIS, is there talk of kind of re-engaging with the Russians on this deconfliction agreement? Because are you able to strike these ISIS groups as they move to the west? Do you have -- are you able to do that without coming into conflict with the Russians?

COL. DILLON: What I'd say is, that's one of the reasons why we have the deconfliction line, and typically, it is in and around the -- the MERV area. So if it's on the -- the banks of the western side and we happen to see it, may be something that we deconflict to say, "We see this, we're prepared and ready to strike." And then request to do so. Or they pick it up and they take it.

As far as going further into the western part, or the interior parts of the -- of Syria, I'm not prepared and ready to address that, to say that we are doing that further into Syria. So I'll just leave it at, right now those deconfliction measures are really tailored to the MERV area.

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: Okay. Lots of hands raised today. I think I got everybody.

Jamie, I've got you down in the order here.

Joe Tabet, Al Hurra.

Q: Thank you. Colonel Ryan, I would like to ask you about the local reports saying that the SDF and the Syrian regime have had sort of deal to exchange some territories around a town called Al-Hasham in Deir ez-Zor Province. Are you aware of that?

COL. DILLON: You know, Joe, I am not aware of that.

What I do know is that, from the, you know, beginning, when we -- the regime elements started to move into and getting close to the SDF, and as we started to do deconfliction and move from just air deconfliction to ground deconfliction, we're -- know that, in the past, there have been elements on the ground that have linked up from the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian regime.

But, as far as what you are talking about, I can't talk specifics. I don't know anything about the specific town that you are talking about, or any deals.

Q: A quick follow-up. Do you have a number -- do you know what's the number of the ISIS fighters who were able to go to the south of Damascus?

COL. DILLON: What was quoted in Open Source by this commando -- the Syrian commando battalion commander -- he said hundreds. So I'll just leave it at that. I think it was -- well, I'll just say that, because that's where we saw that. And that's where I'll leave it.

MR. PAHON: Okay, thank you.

Next, to Tom Bowman, NPR.

Q: Colonel, I wonder if you could get into the issue of U.S. troops in Syria. I know the Marine artillery unit left. Do you anticipate any other U.S. forces leaving?

And you talked about stabilization. Is that their main role now? Just -- what, providing security force stabilization?

COL. DILLON: So the first -- Tom, I fully expect to see that, as the campaign matures, as we continue to take more territory away from ISIS, that those commanders on the ground will make recommendations based on the progress.

And, just as we saw with the Marines, when that commander said, "We do not need this capability and we can send it home early," I suspect that, as we progress, those calls will continue to flow up to the decision makers, and they'll either approve them or deny them.

Now, as far as what they're doing, I don't know if we can go back to that first map in the MERV, but there still are areas that need to be cleared in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, along the Euphrates River specifically, and this town of Abu Hamam specifically.

There has been some fierce fighting, and we're talking about vehicle-borne IEDs, we're talking about indirect fire, we're talking about ISIS attempts at counterattack. So this is not just -- this is specific areas, not just a pocket of two or three or five to seven. It is -- it is much more formidable.

So -- and there are those areas that remain towards the border with Iraq. So what we were doing, you know, a month ago, two months ago, is still what we're doing now in Syria. So those coalition members and those coalition advisors are doing all those things that they were doing in Raqqa and in -- outside of Deir ez-Zor and for the -- everything that we've been doing. So there has not been a downtick in what those advisors are doing.

The number of strikes clearly have gone down. I think we've seen -- if you follow the strike releases, we've seen, in September, about 1,500. In October, we went down to 700. November was down to just below 300, and I don't have the latest tally, but the number of strikes have gone down. Therefore, that was one of the reasons why those Marines were sent back, you know, without a replacement.

I hope that addresses that.

Q: Right. And if you could just expand a bit on stabilization, where is that being done? Who's doing it? Where's the money coming from, and how much money?

COL. DILLON: Okay, so that is a -- across many different -- a whole-of-government approach on that. And I know that we have some hand in that, militarily. We do that through some of the counter-IED training that we showed you.

So you have the Raqqa Internal Security Force that we're training on these counter-IED techniques, so they can identify and, you know, clear IEDs, but then there's a much larger and broader effort that is required for the explosive remnants -- that removal, and that is a larger project, and that is typically done through the Department of State and contracted. So there are some companies that are working towards that.

Other stabilization efforts go towards the restoring of essential services, and that includes water, electricity and getting schools back up and running. And I certainly don't want to steal any thunder from Special Envoy McGurk -- Special Presidential Envoy McGurk. I think he has a press avail within the next 24 hours. So I think he will address a lot of them -- a little bit more of the specifics on the stabilization efforts.

MR. PAHON: All right. Thanks, Tom.

Ryan, we did miss a few of your photos as we were going through the topper, just FYI. We put back up the demining training photo there. I don't know if there's anything in particular you want to say about that.

COL. DILLON: Okay. Well, what I'll say about that is that that is some of the training that we are doing with -- and, as most of you all know -- that the -- just how much ISIS saturated not just Raqqa, but Mosul -- there have been reports of up to 8,000 IEDs and booby traps that have been left behind in Raqqa.

So there is very much a need to remove that before you can even get in to start, you know, bringing in the essential services in particular neighborhoods. We've seen how real this threat is. The former Raqqa Internal Security Force commander was -- he was killed, along with two SDF soldiers, when he was going through one of his relatives' houses. So it's a real threat.

I know that there are challenges that the RISF face, because there are several families who want to return back to their homes. But we have seen too many times where families have returned to their homes to find these explosives and -- explosives that are hidden in -- you know, in really -- in places where you can -- that it only points to ISIS. Specifically looking to maim and harm civilians.

So we're talking dresser drawers and ovens, and we're also talking about inside of toys, like a teddy bear. So clearly some very twisted and -- this needs to be removed. So I'll go ahead and pause on that one and open it up for the next question.

MR. PAHON: All right, thanks.

Idrees Ali, Reuters.

Q: The Russian, I think, a few weeks ago said they would be removing some forces from Syria. Have you seen any withdrawal from the Russians? And I have a follow-up.

COL. DILLON: Russians have said more than once that they would remove their forces, but they don't often correspond with actual troop reduction. So whatever they have said, the bottom line is it does not affect the coalition's priorities in Syria.

They will stay on -- on their side of the Euphrates, and -- and we'll continue to support our partners on the -- the east side, and we'll continue to deconflict as necessary, so we can continue doing what we're doing. And your follow up?

Q: Yeah, but in this instance, have you seen -- I know previously they haven't followed through, but in this instance, have you seen any recurrence?

COL. DILLON: I have -- we have not seen any withdraws. What I mentioned earlier, I think it was Tom's question, is that -- and this is really, it's hard to call any trends, since it's really only been in, like, the last, you know, 48 hours, 42, 72 hours, just be the downtick in the presence of Russian sorties along the MERV. So I think we have to wait and see what comes in the coming week and weeks afterwards.

Q: Colonel, just one last follow up. How many U.S. troops are there in Iraq -- not FML, but troop number?

COL. DILLON: So you got the -- the FML, and that's the number that -- that we've got.

Q: Could you remind us why you're not giving it?

COL. DILLON: I'll let -- I'll let, you know, the Pentagon address that.

MR. PAHON: Do you want me to address it now? The public approximate number is 5,200. Syria is 2,000. That's our public approximate. Okay,

Jamie McIntyre.

Q: Colonel, this is the time of year when our editors assign us stories to look back on the year we've just completed. I wonder if you could help us out a little bit by just describing, if you can characterize what the -- what the state of play was, what the situation was in January regarding ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and -- and where it is today? What -- what kind of progress was made in 2017?

COL. DILLON: Well, I'll tell you clearly, you know, 2017 and the fight against ISIS has been -- has accelerated quite a bit, and I say that because you look at where we were in January, and we were still in West Mosul, so -- well, actually, so East Mosul finished out 25 January.

So, that nine-month campaign was still underway. And the isolation of the other capitol, the twin capitol in Raqqa, was just -- was being isolated. So you had the -- the two most precious and dear locations to ISIS both isolated. One was being isolated -- the other one was halfway through it's, you know, being in the east side, was complete.

Now clearly, after Mosul, we have seen in Iraq how quickly ISIS crumbled in the fight that came afterwards. So when you look at Mosul when West Mosul was complete in July, when they transitioned, and they began their offensive operations in places like Tal Afar, Hawija and Al-Qaim -- hold on a second. Sorry, guys. Okay.

Okay, so you -- you saw how quickly the -- I just want to make sure I still have the right folks on the line. Am I still talking to you?

Q: Yes, we're still here.

COL. DILLON: Okay. There's like a -- like a space phone here, with a bunch of different numbers, but --

So we saw clearly that the Iraqi security forces were able to very, you know, swiftly and -- and dominate against ISIS in their remaining locations throughout Iraq. We saw, and like I said, in these locations, when all the Iraqi security forces and elements can work together -- we're talking about the Peshmerga. We're talking the Iraqi army, the popular mobilization forces, you know, also played a role in much of this. We're talking, you know, even in some of these locations, victories that happened in a day.

And I think a lot of that has to do with, we talked about Mosul, and we talked about Raqqa. Once those fell -- or Mosul in particular -- you had a -- a very confident Iraqi army and Iraqi Security Forces. And I think you also had a demoralized ISIS element that, it just snowballed, and it turned into where we are right now, with a full liberation of Iraq, and in Syria, continuing to chase down ISIS elements, the remnants of ISIS elements, in Syria.

So I think that we'll have -- I'll ask General Gedney to prepare for that.

MR. PAHON: Hello?

COL. DILLON: I'll ask General Gedney to prepare for that as well.

Q: And do you -- one quick thing. I know you're -- you're on leave, or heading home, but do you think, as you guys or CENTCOM could shake loose some, you know, before and after maps that you -- you know, the maps that you released that show how much territory is controlled by ISIS? Where things were in January, and where we are today?

COL. DILLON: Absolutely. We can -- we can definitely do that. I know that yesterday General Funk briefed some Fort Hood, central Texas media, and I know that he showed where we are today and where we were when III Corps took over, but we will go back and provide that information to you. We'll -- we'll dig it up, and if I don't have it for you by tomorrow, we'll make sure that we provide that to you in next week's brief when General Gedney comes on board. That -- that sound good?

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: I think that got happiness from everybody.

Laurie Mylroie, Kurdistan 24.

Q: Thank you, Colonel Dillon, for doing this. There were clashes today between Peshmerga and ISIS around Makhmur. Could you provide any more details on the clashes? And it's -- does it -- what does it say about what ISIS is doing in Iraq now?

COL. DILLON: Well, Laurie, I can confirm that there were attacks near Makhmur. We initially got that through open source, but we were able to confirm through Peshmerga on the ground that crashes did happen. And there were some reports of KIA on the ISIS side, but I do not want to, you know, provide -- it is still, not developing, but before I provide any numbers, I just want to make sure that we're clear and -- and we are not right now.

We, as a coalition, were attempting to get some intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over that area, we do have some assets overhead but the weather has been sporadic in allowing us to really assist and help with the elements on the ground.

So going back, yes, we can confirm there was attack. The details on that, we still don't have them.

Q: And are -- are you still working with the Peshmerga?

COL. DILLON: Yes, we are. So there is training that is still underway at our training location in northern Iraq. But as far as the advise and assist, we -- we do not have coalition elements that are -- conventional coalition elements that are with them doing advise and assist right now. So training is still underway, and we suspect that that will continue into the future.

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: Next, we'll go to Kasmi Ileri, Anadolu.

Q: Thanks, Colonel -- Actually, nearly all of my questions were covered, but the Russian Defense Ministry also made a statement about the air activity in eastern Syria, and they say that their aircraft did not pass to the eastern banks of the Euphrates River; rather, the U.S. aircraft engaged them in the western side of the river.

So this -- both your statement and Russian statement -- both are official. Why should we believe you and not them? Or do you have any proof of -- showing? Or what will you say about the Russian statement?

COL. DILLON: Well, I'm -- I mean, I'll just say, if you look at a track record on, you know, what Russian MOD has said in the past, I'll leave that to you to decide who you want to believe. But I think it is pretty clear to most reasonable people who they -- who they would believe.

I know that we are also looking to perhaps provide some further information on that. But I think our word stands, and I know that -- I'll just leave it to you to decide who you want to believe.

Q: Yes, okay. (Laughter.) So you will be -- you will be sharing some kind of other information that prove that Russians were actually -- Russian aircraft were actually at the east of -- east side of the Euphrates River, right?

COL. DILLON: Well, like I said, we are looking to, you know, see if we can have some information that provides that. But I'm not promising anything just now. You have our word -- you have my word that it was on the east side.

Q: Okay. And then the -- another question. About the -- those ISIS fighters going back toward the southern Damascus, could you say, or do you have any kind of indication that some of those fighters were the ones who -- that, actually, SDF let to leave Raqqa and -- yes, a part of the deal with the elders in Raqqa?

COL. DILLON: We have not seen this. So I know that with those ISIS fighters that came out of Raqqa as a part of their local deal, there was those that we have biometrically enrolled. We have not seen any of those 200 members show up in any of the locations where -- either if we have detained someone, or if there have been ISIS members that have been killed.

So we have not seen any of the Raqqa, you know, SDF -- or not SDF, the Raqqa ISIS elements that were a part of that deal show up elsewhere in Syria or Iraq, at this point.

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: All right, thanks, Kasmi.

I am drawing a blank on your name. I'm really sorry.

Q: Jack Detsch from Al-Monitor.

MR. PAHON: Alright, Jack.

Q: Colonel, can you tell us, sort of with Iraqi elections coming up, how many PMU have said they're going to hand over authority to the Iraqi government? It seems like an increasing number saying that they'll hand over authority to the Iraqi government.

COL. DILLON: Yes, Jack, I don't have the numbers. I know that you have, you know, certain elements that were within the Popular Mobilization Units that have -- those leaders have told their followers to, you know -- to work for and listen to -- and turn in your weapons, but I don't have those numbers.

Q: Got it. And just -- so, even if these units are cooperating with the government, if sort of Iran has any type of presence in the country, will these militias ever be disarmed? Will they ever sort of be able to swear full allegiance to Baghdad?

COL. DILLON: I -- yes, I missed some of that. There was something scratching, you know.

Q: It's just if Iran still has a -- has a presence or influence in Iraq, will the PMU be able to swear full allegiance to Baghdad? Do you guys assess that?

COL. DILLON: That's a question for the government of Iraq. I mean, they are the ones who have constitutionally, you know -- you know, said that, you know, the PMF are a subset of the Iraqi Security Forces.

So it'll be completely up to them on what happens to the PMF as they transition, whether that be, you know, blended into the other elements of the Iraqi Security Forces. But that's clearly a government of Iraq, you know, answer -- for them to answer.

MR. PAHON: Okay. Thank you. Paul McLeary, Foreign Policy.

Q: Hey, Colonel. You mentioned earlier that some elements of SDF have linked up with Syrian regime forces. Can you give us some more detail on what that means? And if they -- if they joined those forces or if they lose support -- if they do that?

COL. DILLON: So we're talking about our -- our Syrian Democratic Force partners that had reached the border between Iraq and Syria, and they linked up with Iraqi units on the Iraqi side. So this was a coordinated link-up on the border and they are looking to establish some sort of coordination center, and then we'll continue to systematically clear and establish border control points north, as they move north along the border.

And it's significant because this is a -- an area, vast desert area, and it has been known as traditional hiding spots and areas for ISIS and insurgent elements to -- to hide and infiltrate those borders. So establishing these posts and establishing this coordination center and working with one another to prevent a flow of ISIS fighters moving through Iraq and Syria is only a good thing.

Q: I'm sorry, I thought you meant that they hooked up with Syrian regime forces, not --

COL. DILLON: No. So this is Syrian -- our two partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces on the eastern side, and -- or correction, I'm sorry, on the Syria side and Iraqi Security Forces on the west side. I don't know if you want to pull up the map, map number one, to show that. It's the highlighted areas in the green along the border, is where they linked up.

MR. PAHON: Okay. Thank you.

Caroline Houck, Defense One.

Q: Thanks, Colonel, for doing this. This is also the time of year that our editors assign us look-ahead stories, of what's coming in 2018. So any broad goals? I understand the finally routing ISIS, stabilizing, clearing. But I guess, just what should we be looking for in 2018? Shifts in posture, shifts in the types of forces sent to the region.

Can you talk about that? Any timelines you want to offer would also be great. I know that's probably asking too much. But what should we be looking for in 2018?

COL. DILLON: Okay. Well, I'd say that, number one, just -- we're not going to talk timelines. I think that we've been pretty clear about that, and much of what we do on the ground is conditions-based. And so, what we see, in both Iraq and in Syria, is after ISIS has been cleared of -- of all areas, meaning, like in Syria, we've talked about this concentration of ISIS fighters that are along the Euphrates River.

But once they are cleared, and they no longer hold any territory, the next step is to make sure that they can't come back. And in Iraq, that is by working with the Iraqi security forces and knowing the right type of training and the right amount of trainers for, not just the Iraqi army, but also the other elements of the Iraqi security forces. So the police, the federal police, the local police, the border guard forces, the counterterrorism service and tribal mobilization forces, as an example in Iraq.

And then, in Syria, that also looks very much like the -- expanding the Raqqa Internal Security Force, the local security forces that are going to prevent any kind of resurgence or emergence of ISIS or other groups like them, to come back into areas that have been cleared.

Right now, in Raqqa, the Raqqa Internal Security Force sits at about 3,000 strong, more than 3,000 strong, and there are -- there are continuing training that happens in those areas, and we're starting to see that elsewhere in -- as more civil councils are established and start working to get the stabilization efforts under way so that people can start coming home to where they're from, voluntarily and in a dignified manner.

We also see that the -- our support to our partners would likely not be limited to just training, but also continuing to provide intelligence in several different forms. And then, also, a longer-term -- and this is through the embassy, typically, but more -- a longer-term efforts for foreign military sales and -- and things like that.

So I think is what -- you'll see more of that in the future. And, just like you saw with the last three months, the -- the downtick in strikes, I would think that that would continue to move in -- in a direction that would be fewer than, even, what we have now.

MR. PAHON: All right, Ryan.

I think we've got a couple of folks with some second-round questions.

Is there anybody that hasn't asked a question yet? Okay.

And then I'll save you a couple of minutes. I know you want to talk about some stuff going on over there.

Laurie Mylroie, Kurdistan 24.

Q: Yeah, I just want to clarify your answer to the question I -- I asked before. You said the advise-and-assist coalition mission to the Peshmerga had ended. Is that because the Peshmerga aren't really engaged with ISIS any more, or is it for a political reason?

COL. DILLON: Oh, no, it's strictly because -- and we talked about this before. In areas -- so, in particular, so when there was that initial incursion between the Kurdish -- the Peshmerga and the government of Iraq in October, when we were asked all the questions, we did not have advisors on the ground in that area because we were in the middle of transitioning.

Hawija operations were done, so we were transitioning to western Anbar operations. So in areas that have been cleared of ISIS, we don't have elements on the ground, you know, doing a lot of the -- the offensive operations that we were doing in the past.

So we don't have -- you know, ISIS does not control territory in areas in northern Iraq. There might be sporadic, you know, small groups that still need to be hunted down, but they do not hold territory. So it is not political, it is strictly conditions-based.

Q: Thank you very much.

MR. PAHON: Just got two more. I think Ryan Browne's got a follow up, and then we'll go to Tom Bowman. Ryan.

Q: Colonel, just really quickly. Syrian President Assad recently ratcheted up the rhetoric against the SDF, calling them traitors and also pledging to retake the entire country. Have you seen the partners kind of adjust their defensive posture as a result of this rhetoric? Has there been any change, any kind of hunkering-down in anticipation of a regime attack?

COL. DILLON: Not that I know of, Ryan. And I only say that because, I mean, those are -- that is rhetoric, those statements. We're continuing to go about doing business of ridding Syria of ISIS. And we've been successful at that. Our partners have been successful at that. And that's what they are focused on, not words.

Q: And you will defend -- the coalition will defend its partners if it's attacked?

COL. DILLON: I think that we have proven that in the past, both in Al-Tanf, and in the north just outside of Raqqa. We will continue to support our partners and their efforts to defeat ISIS.

Q: Thank you.

MR. PAHON: Yes. And Tom Bowman.

Q: Colonel, wondered if we could go back to the issue of U.S. forces in Syria. U.S. forces were invited into Iraq, but not to Syria. Iran force -- Iranian forces, Russian forces were invited in.

Assad says you're there illegally. Russia sort of says the same thing. Can you explain to us the legal rationale here? And why are you not violating Syrian sovereignty?

COL. DILLON: Well, I would say number one is the ISIS threat -- we don't even have to go back to two or three years ago, when they're at their -- the height of where they were. But, even still today, they're -- they still pose a threat. They pose a threat not just to Iraq and Syria, but globally.

And there is some legal justification. Number one is that Iraq has said that ISIS is a threat, and they have invited us to that -- into Iraq to support their operations.

So -- and again, I would just point to -- clearly, we have seen that ISIS, even prior -- even just before Raqqa was taken, they were still claiming, executing and resourcing external attacks outside of the country, outside of Syria, outside of Iraq. And the coalition and the 70 member partners continue to work to rid the world of ISIS not just in Iraq and Syria, but elsewhere.

Q: And, when ISIS is defeated, Secretary Mattis said the U.S. forces will remain there to prevent an ISIS 2.0. Talk a little bit about that.

COL. DILLON: Well, I'm not going to go too much further than what Secretary Mattis said on it. He has said we will be there until the political process, the Geneva process to -- gains traction. So we're going to be there until that happens.

And I'll just point out, we -- and just in the last -- made a couple of these statements, but Assad and the regime, they have not demonstrated long-term ability to prevent ISIS from resurgence or threatening us or our partners.

So I think that, you know, there is definitely a legitimate -- legitimacy for the coalition being in Iraq and in Syria, and for remaining there until some kind of process -- political process takes ground.

MR. PAHON: Okay. And we're coming up on an hour. Anybody else? Anybody else?

Okay, Jack Detsch, one more.

Q: You just mentioned the Geneva talks. They collapsed the other week. So, I mean, what type of momentum would you hope to see from the Geneva talks that, you know, would affect U.S. conditions on the ground?

COL. DILLON: That is very much a -- I mean, we'd certainly want to see something move forward. But I will -- I'll let the politicians and those higher than the CJTF -- to address that. You know, we'll continue to support our partners and -- in defeating the remnants of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.

MR. PAHON: Okay.

And, Colonel Dillon, do you have a few closing comments for us, sir?

COL. DILLON: You know, I think you've got some photos there. So what I just want to say is that, you know, even though we're very much committed to defeating ISIS and working with our partners here, we know that service members from all coalitions will always find ways to celebrate the holidays.

And I just wanted to show a couple of pictures there -- that our halls and our walls are lit up with lights and ornaments and designs that are as good and as creative as I've ever seen.

So I just wanted to say -- (Laughter.) -- you know, to a broader American, you know, audience -- and not just Americans, but also those countries that are providing forces here -- thank you for all their care packages. There's certainly been no shortage of cakes, cookies, decorations, elves or any of the funny accoutrements that come in these things.

So I just want to say -- I'm going on leave, but I want to say happy holidays and merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everybody there, and we'll see you after the New Year.

MR. PAHON: All right, sir. And, with that, thank you very much. Enjoy your leave.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1400723/

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






F-35 testers wrap up Weapons Delivery Accuracy tests

By Kenji Thuloweit, 412th Test Wing Public Affairs / Published December 20, 2017

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- Testers from the 461st Flight Test Squadron and F-35 Integrated Test Force completed a major test milestone bringing the F-35 Lightning II's full combat capabilities closer to the battlefield.

Weapons Delivery Accuracy flight tests began in July 2013 and wrapped up earlier this month. The WDA portion of the F-35 developmental test and evaluation mission ensures the fifth-generation fighter's weapons system can deliver lethal ordnance both air-to-air and air-to-ground using the jet's warfighting Block 3F software.

The ITF used all three F-35 variants and delivered air-to-air missiles including AIM-120s, the AIM-9X and the United Kingdom's advanced short range air-to-air missile. The WDA tests also confirmed air-to-ground delivery of the Paveway IV laser-guided bomb, GBU-39 small diameter bomb, GBU-12, GBU-31 joint direct attack munition and the AGM-154 joint standoff weapon.

"Weapons delivery accuracy tests are important, because without proof that the F-35 can actually drop these weapons where we need them to go, then the F-35 is just an information-gathering system," said Lt. Col. Tucker Hamilton, 461st FLTS commander and F-35 ITF director. "The F-35 proved it was extremely capable in delivering these weapons where we wanted it and how we wanted it delivered. These are the most complicated and intricate missions that we had and the jet did extremely well."

Hamilton said the air-to-air accuracy tests finished in August with air-to-ground tests ending in October. The F-35 ITF then capped off WDA tests by completing testing on the F-35's GAU-22 25mm gun at the beginning of December. The WDA gun tests included the Air Force's A-variant where the gun is internally carried and on the Marine Corps' and Navy's B and C variants, which employ a gun pod beneath the jet.

Each weapon test required multiple missions including software development, "dry runs" and then the actual weapon release. Not including the gun, Hamilton said the F-35 ITF delivered 55 weapons during WDA testing, which was mainly done over the military sea range off the California coast and at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California.

Maj. Jonathan Gilbert, 461st FLTS pilot, completed the final air-to-ground WDA test as a new test pilot to the F-35 Integrated Test Force.

"I didn't even know it was a milestone, I just knew I was dropping a weapon," said Gilbert. "It wasn't until after that I felt the excitement from the team and the squadron to close out the WDA program. It is a credit to the team and the planning as it did not appear this would be achievable in the time the squadron accomplished it in, but yet they were able to complete it. I just had the pleasure of dropping the last one."

Hamilton said the F-35 Joint Program Office analyzes the data from all the WDA tests and any upgrades to the F-35 mission systems software will be sent out to the F-35 operational fleet.

"When they get their 3F software, the one that is going to be productionized for full 3F capability, (the fleet) will be confident they can load these weapons and drop them on the target they're selecting," Hamilton said.

The F-35 Integrated Test Force, operating at both Edwards Air Force Base and at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, continues to conduct developmental flight test for the Defense Department's F-35 Joint Program Office. Ongoing testing at Edwards AFB includes mission effectiveness testing, suppression of enemy air defenses, maritime interdiction, and offensive and defensive air-to-air combat testing.

"The ITF takes these extremely challenging and intricate data requirements and then finds a way to coordinate with multiple outside agencies, drones, tankers, ranges and basically conduct these missions and make them happen in a historical manner," said Hamilton. "No one before them has ever been able to pull off executing weapons deliveries like the individuals in the ITF."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Centcom Officials Provide Update on Recent Counterterrorism Strikes in Yemen

From a U.S. Central Command News Release

TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 20, 2017  U.S. Central Command officials announced today that U.S. forces have conducted multiple ground operations and more than 120 strikes this year to remove key leaders and disrupt the ability of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS-Yemen to use ungoverned spaces in Yemen as a hub for terrorist recruiting, training, and base of operations to export terror worldwide.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is one of the terrorist groups most committed to and capable of conducting attacks in America, as assessed by the intelligence and defense communities, the officials said, while intelligence estimates indicate that ISIS-Yemen has doubled in size over the past year.

In November, the U.S. conducted 10 strikes across Yemen governorates Bayda and Marib, including a strike on Mujahid al-Adani, the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula Shabwah leader, who was killed Nov. 20 in Bayda. Al-Adani, also known as Mohammad Shukri, was a senior leader responsible for planning and conducting terrorist attacks against Yemeni, coalition and tribal security forces. He exerted significant influence within al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's terrorist attack networks, similarly, maintained close ties and access to the group's other senior leaders, and previously served as an al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula military leader in Aden.

Abu Layth al-Sanaani, an al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula facilitator for Bayda governate, and three al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula associates were also killed in the Nov. 20 strike.

Ruwahah al-Sanaani, also an al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula facilitator, was killed Nov. 2 in Marib governorate.

In October, a strike Oct. 19 killed Ubaydah al-Lawdari, the Emir of Lawdar, and four associates in Bayda governorate. Al-Lawdari had been known to provide equipment and money in support of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula attacks against coalition forces, posing an increased threat to U.S. interests.

Disrupting the Organization

Meanwhile, a series of strikes on Oct. 16 against two ISIS terror training camps in Bayda killed more than 50 ISIS-Yemen combatants, disrupting the organization's attempts to recruit and train new fighters.

"The removal of key facilitators in this region will interrupt al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's freedom of movement and likely force the group into a reactionary posture, limiting their ability to challenge Yemeni security forces and partnered advances," said Army Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a Centcom spokesman.

"U.S. forces also expanded counterterrorism operations in October to encompass both al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS. This parallel targeting effort is required to prevent ISIS-Yemen from filling the vacuum left by a diminished al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula footprint or influence in the region," he said.

Ongoing operations pressuring the network have also degraded al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's propaganda production, reducing one of the methods for the terror group to recruit and inspire lone wolf attacks across the globe. The al-Masra newsletter, previously published three times a month, has not been published since July.

Al-Malahim Establishment for Media Production, which produces al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's terrorist-inspiring video series, as well as Inspire Magazine, saw a large drop in October. Unable to produce video series and graphic terror-inspiring magazines, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has resorted to using low-tech audio messages.

"U.S. forces have enabled regional counterterrorism partners to regain territory from these terrorists -- forcing them to spend more time on survival," Brown said. "These operations have helped to illuminate terrorist networks, making intelligence gathering, subsequent targeting and follow-on operations increasingly productive and effective.

"Every strike, every raid and every partnered operation advance the defeat of these violent extremist organizations. U.S. forces will continue to use all effective measures to degrade the groups' ability to export terror."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






NATO Secretary General Stresses Change, European Union Integration

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2017  NATO is evolving and adapting to changing times, and part of that evolution must involve the European Union, the alliance secretary general said at the French Ecole Militaire yesterday.

Jens Stoltenberg told students at the illustrious university in Paris that NATO has proven its ability to evolve to face changing threats.

"Our history has taught us that our ability to adapt is crucial to our success," the secretary general said. "Again and again, faced with a changing world, the alliance has evolved."

The alliance formed to combat the Soviet Union and ensure Western Europe's freedom and independence. It evolved when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

It evolved again with the al-Qaida attacks on 9/11, with NATO taking a lead role in Afghanistan.

Three years ago, the alliance had to change again when Russia illegally annexed Crimea -- the only time since World War II that a European country has seized part of another by force. And in the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria captured Mosul and Raqqa, and declared those cities as parts of its so-called caliphate.

"As a result, NATO has to both strengthen our collective defense at home and manage crises beyond our borders," Stoltenberg said.

Deter, Defend

In Europe, NATO allies "have implemented the largest reinforcement of our deterrence and defense since the Cold War," he said. The NATO Response Force tripled to 40,000 troops, including a high-readiness force, ready to move within days. The alliance also stepped up military exercises and enhanced air policing in the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

"We have deployed almost 5,000 troops in four multinational battle groups to the east of the alliance," he said. Those battle groups are in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.

And the allies are continuing to increase defense spending, he said.

"NATO's actions are defensive, proportionate and in line with our international commitments," the secretary general said. "Our aim is not to provoke conflict, but to prevent conflict. We don't want a new Cold War, and we don't want a new arms race."

Russia is a neighbor and the alliance approach to Russia combines strong defense with meaningful dialogue.

But Russia is only one problem that must be dealt with. "Since 9/11, NATO allies have stood together in solidarity against terrorism," Stoltenberg said. "In Afghanistan we have transitioned from combat operations, to the training and advising of local Afghan forces. But we are now increasing the number of troops serving in our mission to 16,000 NATO soldiers in the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan."

The alliance is also a full partner of the global coalition to defeat ISIS. NATO assets -- such as the AWACS capability -- and NATO expertise are on display throughout Iraq, the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.

NATO Stronger With EU

"NATO is strengthening its collective defense and, at the same time, projecting stability in its neighborhood," Stoltenberg said. "Both of those are more effective when NATO and the European Union work together."

Stoltenberg had one big statistic to back up his claim: About 94 percent of the EU's population lives in a NATO member nation.

Talks continue and the two alliances have made progress. "We have boosted our cooperation on cyber defense, maritime security, fighting terrorism and countering hybrid warfare, among many other things," the secretary general said. "Neither NATO nor the European Union have all the tools to tackle the challenges alone, but together we are a formidable force for good."

He called on France, a founding member of both NATO and the EU, to play a key role to ensure the coherence of these efforts. "I am convinced a strong European defense is good for the European Union, it is good for Europe and it is good for NATO, as long as it respects three key principles," he said.

Build, Strengthen, Compliment

The first is to build the necessary capabilities: spending more and spending better. That means tackling the fragmentation of the European defense industry. "The U.S. has one type of main battle tank, while Europe has 17 different types," he said. "The U.S. has four types of frigates and destroyers; Europe has 29. The U.S. has six types of fighter planes; Europe has 20."

He does not want to eliminate competition, but he does want to see some coherence, interoperability and cost savings in the process.

"Second, a stronger European defense also needs to involve non-EU allies to the fullest possible extent, of course respecting the autonomy and integrity of the European Union," he said.

Stoltenberg said nations on both sides of the Atlantic continue to be engaged in European security. "For the first time in years, the United States and Canada are increasing their military presence on our continent," he said. "And, after Brexit, non-EU allies will account for 80 percent of NATO defense spending, and three of the four battle groups in the eastern part of the alliance will be led by non-EU allies."

There is no way the EU can replace NATO, he said, but it could strengthen the European pillar of the alliance.

Finally, a stronger European defense needs to compliment, not duplicate, NATO's own efforts.

"On duplications, for instance, NATO already has a well-established defense planning process," Stoltenberg said. "We've had it for decades, and as part of that process, we identify in detail the capabilities that each ally needs to deliver to ensure the alliance has the tools it needs to do its job. It would be a mistake for the EU to duplicate that process. Capitals should not be faced with two conflicting lists for capability requirements."

"We share 22 members, so to compete would be like competing with ourselves," he continued. "That makes no sense. Our roles are distinct but mutually reinforcing. We must work together in a coherent way."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Class 11 final exam results expected within January 5

The National Examinations Board is preparing to publish Class 11 final examinations results of by January 5.
Turkish, Palestinian FMs scold US over Quds decision ahead of UN vote

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 06:55PM

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says the United States has been isolated over its recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital and therefore it is threatening countries that might vote against Washington's move during an emergency session of the UN General Assembly.

The top Turkish diplomat made the remarks on Wednesday during a press conference before leaving Istanbul with his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki to attend Thursday's gathering in New York on US President Donald Trump's December 6 decision, which has enraged the Muslim world and triggered criticism from other nations, including Washington's allies.

The emergency meeting comes after the United States on Monday vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution calling on Washington to withdraw its declaration. The 14 other council members, including four European Union countries, backed the Egypt-drafted resolution.

The emergency session, proposed by Arab and Muslim states, has sparked warnings from Washington, with US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley saying on Twitter that "the US will be taking names."

Also in a letter to dozens of UN states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, the US envoy warned that the US would remember those who voted for the resolution criticizing Washington's decision.

Cavusoglu described the US diplomat's remarks as a threat.

"We expect strong support at the UN vote, but we see that the United States, which was left alone, is now resorting to threats. No honorable, dignified country would bow down to this pressure," Cavusoglu said, adding, "God willing, we will push through the General Assembly a resolution in favor of Palestine and al-Quds."

Maliki, for his part, accused Washington of "threatening" member countries of the UN General Assembly ahead of Thursday vote on rejecting the US decision.

He said American officials were "committing another mistake when they have distributed this famous letter trying to threaten countries, (and) threaten their sovereign decision to choose how to vote."

He also said the UN session would show "how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience."

On Monday, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, expressed hope that there would be "overwhelming support" in the General Assembly for the resolution. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight.

Israel lays claim to the whole Jerusalem al-Quds, but the international community views the ancient city's eastern sector as occupied land and the Palestinians consider it their future capital.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Trumps threatens to cut aid to UN members over Jerusalem al-Quds vote

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 06:50PM

US President Donald Trump has threatened to discontinue financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution against his decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital.

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care," Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

Arab and Muslim states have requested that the 193-nation assembly hold an emergency special meeting on Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital," days after Washington used its veto power to block an Egypt-drafted resolution against the move at the UN Security Council.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki accused Washington of "threatening" member countries of the UN General Assembly ahead of Thursday's vote.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of the world body's member states, warned that Washington would remember those who voted for the measures.

"The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," read the letter seen by Reuters.

She also echoed the warning in a Twitter post, saying, the US will be "taking names" of the countries that support the resolution.

In a diplomatic blow to Israel, the UN General Assembly on Tuesday voted 176-7 in favor of a resolution reaffirming the Palestinians' right to self-determination.

On December 6, Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital and relocate the US embassy in occupied lands from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






EU may punish Poland for 'undemocratic' legal reforms

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 09:31AM

The European Union (EU)'s executive branch may start an unprecedented disciplinary process against Poland over its judicial reforms, which the EU says are in violation of the bloc's human rights and democratic values.

The European Commission intends to invoke the never-before-used Article 7 of the EU's founding Lisbon Treaty in its bid to punish Warsaw over what it views as "systemic threats" to the independence of the Polish judiciary.

Poland's new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had announced last week that the EU would "probably activate" Article 7 proceedings, which are regarded as the "nuclear option" against an EU member state as they can lead to a suspension of voting rights at the European Council.

The development came after Polish lawmakers last week adopted new reforms allowing the parliament to pick members of a body that protects judicial independence and to reinforce political control over the Supreme Court.

"Unless the Polish government postpones these court reforms, we will have no choice but to trigger Article 7," a senior EU official said anonymously on Wednesday, prior to a Commission meeting where Poland's reforms were on the agenda.

The Commission's Deputy Chief Frans Timmermans had also warned in July that Poland was "perilously close" to facing sanctions.

However, such a penalty may still be blocked, since Poland's closest ally in the EU, Hungary, will likely argue strongly against the move and veto it.

Still, the mere threat of triggering the article points to the sharp weakening of ties between Warsaw and Brussels, which started when the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) Party took power in Poland in late 2015.

The PiS government rejects allegations of undemocratic behavior and emphasizes that its reforms are necessary since courts are slow, inefficient, and impacted by a communist-era mentality.

The reforms would grant the PiS-controlled legislature de facto control over the selection of judges and bring an early end to the terms of some Supreme Court judges.

The Council of Europe, which serves as the EU's human rights authority, has compared such measures to those of the former Soviet Union.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US, Israel scramble to block UN General Assembly resolution on Quds

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 07:12AM

Prior to an emergency UN General Assembly session on Jerusalem al-Quds, the United States and Israel have resorted to pressure tactics and lobbying efforts in an attempt to prevent the world body from adopting a resolution critical of Washington's policy shift on the occupied city.

Arab and Muslim states have requested that the 193-nation assembly hold an emergency special meeting on US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital," days after Washington used its veto power to block an Egypt-drafted resolution against the move at the UN Security Council.

The vetoed resolution, which had been approved by the other 14 members of the council, stipulated that "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem [al-Quds] have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council."

During the Thursday session, the General Assembly member states will reportedly vote on a non-binding resolution that mirrors the vetoed measure.

Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said he expected "overwhelming support" for the General Assembly's Thursday vote, stressing that Jerusalem al-Quds is an issue "to be resolved through negotiations" between Israelis and Palestinians.

"The General Assembly will say, without the fear of the veto, that the international community is refusing to accept the unilateral position of the United States," he added.

'Trump watching,' Haley threatens

On Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of the world body's member states, warned that Washington would remember those who voted for the measures.

"The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue," read the letter seen by Reuters.

She also echoed the warning in a Twitter post, saying, the US will be "taking names" of the countries that support the resolution.

Israel steps up lobbying

Additionally, the Israeli ministry for foreign affairs has instructed its embassies around the world to lobby against the upcoming General Assembly resolution.

It advised Israeli diplomats to encourage their host countries to oppose the document or at least to refrain from voicing public support for it.

On December 6, Trump declared that Washington was recognizing Jerusalem al-Quds as the "capital" of Israel and that he had instructed his administration to begin the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

The dramatic shift in Washington's Jerusalem al-Quds policy drew fierce criticism from the international community, including Washington's Western allies, and triggered protests against the US and Israel worldwide.

Israel lays claim to the whole Jerusalem al-Quds, but the international community views the ancient city's eastern sector as occupied land and the Palestinians consider it their future capital.

UN passes resolution on Palestine cause

In a diplomatic blow to Israel, the UN General Assembly on Tuesday voted 176-7 in favor of a resolution reaffirming the Palestinians' right to self-determination.

The US, Israel and Canada were among the opponents of the text while four states abstained.

The General Assembly approves a similar text each year.

Mansour said that vote should be seen within the context of international opposition to Trump's Jerusalem al-Quds decision.

Abbas sends envoys to China, Russia

Reacting to Trump's contentious move, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he would no longer accept the US as a mediator to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Therefore, he dispatched delegations to China and Russia on Tuesday to find replacement for the US in the so-called Middle East peace process.

"The two delegations will convey a message from President Abbas to Russia and China, the purpose of which is to find a new international sponsor for the peace process, in the framework of the United Nations, in order to replace the American sponsorship," Wafa news agency quoted senior Palestinian Authority official Ahmad Majdalani as saying.

Abbas is now in Saudi Arabia to discuss the US decision on Jerusalem al-Quds with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to the Palestinian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Bassam al-Agha.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Military barracks attacked in Venezuela, arms stolen

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 06:53AM

A group commanded by a rogue former police officer in Venezuela has attacked a military barracks near the capital Caracas, stealing a small amount of weapons.

President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday that the group, which he called "terrorists," had broken into a National Guard barracks near Caracas.

The group reportedly stole 26 rifles.

Oscar Perez, a rogue Venezuelan former police pilot, who previously attacked the parliament building in the capital, claimed responsibility for the theft of the weapons from the military post in what he called "Operation Genesis."

The Venezuelan government has issued an Interpol alert demanding the arrest of Perez over the "terrorist attack."

"Behind all these attacks is the government of the United States," Maduro emphasized in remarks carried by the state media, adding that it had been "organized from [the southeast US city of] Miami," where some of his political opponents have chosen to live.

"Wherever they appear, I've told the armed forces: Fire at the terrorist groups!" he said, referring to the group commanded by Perez.

While Venezuela has experienced political and economic crisis for months now, the brazen Tuesday attack may be a sign that the political tussle in the country is moving to a new, armed chapter.

Maduro tacitly referred to but also ruled out that prospect in his Tuesday remarks.

"Do these people think they can attack a unit of the armed forces to steal some guns and threaten democracy and that that's going to be tolerated? Zero tolerance!" he said.

The Venezuelan president has repeatedly condemned Washington for the political and economic crisis in his country, underlining that the US intends to strangle the Latin American nation with sanctions.

Venezuelan opposition leaders make regular visits to Washington as well as Western European capitals to request aid and increase political and economic pressure on Maduro.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Interview: EU Urges Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership Countries To Speed Up Reforms

Rikard Jozwiak December 20, 2017

BRUSSELS -- The European Union is urging Western Balkans countries and members of the Eastern Partnership program that have visa-free travel arrangements with the EU to do more to fight organized crime and corruption.

In an interview with RFE/RL on December 20, the European commissioner for home affairs, Dmitris Avramopoulos, singled out Ukraine and Moldova in particular as countries that need to speed up reforms.

He said all the countries concerned need to "step up their efforts to address irregular migration and fight organized crime and corruption in particular."

Avramopoulos spoke as the European Commission published a report on how Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine implement their visa-free regimes with the EU as well as rule-of-law reforms.

It is the first such annual report since the EU adopted a visa suspension mechanism and since visa-liberalization deals enabling Georgian and Ukrainian citizens to travel freely to the visa-free Schengen area came into force earlier in 2017.

The visa-suspension mechanism allows for visa-free regimes to be halted under certain circumstances once they are in place. It was drafted as a condition for the implementation of visa-liberalization agreements for non-EU countries.

'Two To Tango'

Avramopoulos said that "no visa-free suspension is being decided or proposed today," but added that the council expects all the countries to "step up their efforts to address irregular migration and fight organized crime and corruption in particular."

The commissioner called on Kyiv to "take immediate action to safeguard anticorruption measures introduced with previous reforms and to allow further progress to be made."

The report criticizes Moldova, which was granted EU visa liberalization in 2014, over evidence of corruption and money laundering.

Asked whether Ukrainians and Moldovans should worry that visa-free EU travel could be suspended, Avramopoulos said "it is not within our intention so the question should be asked to the citizens of these countries if they really want to defend these privileges and this right. It is up to them."

"As far as the European Union is concerned, we are very positive to continue on the same path but as you understand, it takes two to tango," he added.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-urges-western- balkans-eastern-partnership-reforms-corruption- visa-crime-free-travel/28928936.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Trump, Uzbekistan's Mirziyoev Discuss Ties, Regional Security In Phone Call

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken to Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev in a telephone call that focused on security in Central Asia and the prospects for closer ties.

The White House said that the purpose of the December 19 call was "to discuss regional security and to explore opportunities for improved cooperation."

They also discussed "Uzbekistan's role in Central Asia, including its support for President Trump's South Asia strategy and United States efforts in Afghanistan," it said in a statement.

Trump "noted Uzbekistan's reform efforts, which will set the conditions for increased trade and improved security against terrorist threats," the White House said.

Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are involved in a war against militants that began after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Forces of the extremist group Islamic State (IS) fighting in Iraq and Syria since 2014 have included Uzbeks and others from ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Suspects in several attacks in the West in recent years have been from Uzbekistan, including the man authorities say killed eight people in a truck attack in New York City in October.

Mirziyoev was named interim president after the death of autocratic longtime President Islam Karimov was announced in September 2016, and was subsequently elected in a tightly controlled vote in December that year.

He has taken steps aimed at decreasing Uzbekistan's isolation, mending tense ties with neighboring Central Asian countries, and improving the struggling economy in the former Soviet republic of some 30 million people.

A statement on the Uzbek president's website said that Trump hailed Uzbekistan's "open and constructive foreign policy and its active efforts to develop friendly ties and cooperation with neighboring countries in the region."

"The U.S. president expressed his support to the new stage of democratic changes and economic reforms taking place in our country, aiming at strengthening of the civil society, rule of law, and liberalization of economy," the Uzbek statement said.

Mirziyoev and Trump have met twice while in office -- in Saudi Arabia in May and during the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump- mirziyoev-call-uzbekistan-u-s- regional-security/28928827.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Egyptian President Calls Army, Interior Ministry to Tackle Terrorism in N Sinai

Sputnik News

21:32 20.12.2017

CAIRO (Sputnik) - Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Sisi has ordered the army and police to put an end to terrorism in the northern part of Sinai Peninsula.

"It is necessary to make every effort to eradicate terrorism and to pursue terrorists, wherever they may be," the president said at a meeting with the heads of Egyptian security agencies.

According to the Egyptian president, the fight against terrorism in Sinai should be accompanied by the peninsula's development and the improvement of the standard of living of local population.

The meeting with security agencies officials followed the Tuesday inspection visit of the Egyptian defense and interior ministers to the city of Arish in North Sinai. During the visit the Arish airport was attacked by Daesh militants belonging to Daesh, with one armed forces officer being killed and two others injured.

On November 24, terrorists broke into the Rawda mosque near the Egyptian city of Arish during prayers, detonated an explosive device and then began shooting, killing hundreds, including children. Egypt's chief prosecutor's office stated that that there were some 25-30 militants involved in the crime, with gunmen carrying a Daesh flag.

Egypt has been conducting counterterrorist operations in North Sinai on a regular basis, as a number of terrorist groups have established themselves in the region. Police and security forces have been the target of deadly attacks staged by Islamists in the area.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Ceasefire Violation Allegations Keep India-Pakistan Tension Simmering

Sputnik News

16:50 20.12.2017(updated 16:52 20.12.2017)

India alleges that there has been a two-fold increase in ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops in 2017. Last week, India reportedly turned down the Pakistani foreign minister's request for an independent verification of ceasefire violation allegations.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  A week after Pakistan accused India of turning down its "message for peace," India's Home Ministry has claimed that Pakistan violated the ceasefire 881 times since the beginning of 2017, the highest in the last decade.

"Pakistan has violated the ceasefire along the LoC (Line of Control) in Jammu and Kashmir 771 times till December 10 this year. Violations on the international border were 110 times till November this year," Hansraj Ahir, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs told the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal had claimed in his weekly briefing that India had committed over 1,300 ceasefire violations along the Line of Control in 2017, killing 52 of its nationals.

He further claimed that Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, in a letter to his Indian counterpart, Sushma Swaraj, had urged that the 2003 ceasefire agreement be respected, but India's response was far from positive.

"India has responded to the letter and instead of accepting our message for peace, it has once again repeated old allegations of cross-border incursions and refused to stop violations," the spokesperson said.

India and Pakistan share a 3,323 km long border of which 740 km is demarcated as the Line of Control (LoC) and 221 km is recognized as the international border. The two sides had signed an agreement in 2003 to maintain the ceasefire along the LoC and the international border. There have since been frequent cross-border firings between the forces with the neighbors blaming each other for provocations.

The number of ceasefire violations attributed to the Pakistani forces by India is double the number recorded by India in 2016. In 2016, India had accused Pakistan of unprovoked firing on 449 instances.

Pakistan has proposed giving access to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) for an independent verification of ceasefire violation allegations by both sides, but India maintains that the UNMOGIP has outlived its utility and is irrelevant after the 1972 Simla Agreement and the consequent establishment of the Line of Control (LoC).

Meanwhile, a major fall out of the border skirmishes has been the restriction on Pakistani nationals traveling to India. The number of visas issued to Pakistani nationals dropped by almost 35 percent in 2017 as compared to 2016.

"A total of 34,445 visas were issued to Pakistani nationals in 2017. While the Home Ministry had issued 52,525 visas to Pakistan in 2016," the minister of state for home affairs, Kiren Rijiju, informed the Parliament.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Ambassador Haley: 'US Will Be Taking Names' During UN Jerusalem Vote

Sputnik News

04:10 20.12.2017

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned that the US will be "taking names" when the UN General Assembly would vote on recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us," the Ambassador wrote in her Twitter account Tuesday.

"On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names," she added.

The United Nations General Assembly is set to have an emergency session later this week in the wake of US President Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

It is expected that the Assembly will vote in favor of resolution that will call on US to reverse the move, the Hill reports.

The vote of the General Assembly comes just days after the US unilaterally vetoed the United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned the Washington's move on Jerusalem.

Ambassador Haley, who defended the veto on Monday, said that the Security Council's unequivocal condemnation of the move was an "insult" to US sovereignty.

"What we witnessed here in the Security Council is an insult," she said. "It won't be forgotten."

While the US has the veto power in the UN Security Council, it does not have such power in the General Assembly. However, the Assembly resolution will not be legally binding.

As the Hill points out, the Haley already used the very same warning about "taking names" shortly after she took office as UN Ambassador.

"There is a new US-UN," she said during her first speech at UN headquarters in January. "We talked to the staff yesterday and you are gonna see a change in the way we do business."

"For those who don't have our back, we're taking names. We will make points to respond to that accordingly," she added at the time.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Fertiliser shortage hits farmers in Western Tarai

Many farmers in the countrys southwest have been facing a shortage of fertiliser, urea in particular. According to the District Agriculture Development Office (DADO), around 40 percent of the farmers have been affected by the scarcity in the midst of the wheat and mustard growing season.
Pentagon to Test Swarming Drones Concept by 2019 - Report

Sputnik News

03:20 20.12.2017

The Pentagon's secretive Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is planning a demonstration for 2019 of their ability to shoot out swarms of drones from larger transport aircraft and recover them mid-flight, according to a new report.

The drones are part of the Gremlin program, which seeks to deploy and retrieve small unmanned aerial vehicles launched from US Air Force C-130 aircraft that are capable of flying 300 nautical miles and carrying 60 pounds of electronic equipment.

Current state-of-the-art manned-unmanned aerial capabilities allow pilots to launch swarms of mini-drones, but they are not able to recover them, according to a December 17 Scout Warrior report. In the future, defense contractors think the Gremlins will even launch out of the larger weaponized MQ-Reaper drone.

"We see the potential for using this technology on our own Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper to offer our customers new mission capabilities," David Alexander, an executive at General Atomics, told the defense publication.

When the Pentagon announced the Gremlin program in 2016, the question of the type of missions the small drones would fly was left vague and open-ended. DARPA said they would "be deployed with a mixture of mission payloads capable of generating a variety of effects in a distributed and coordinated manner."

Analysts have suggested the Gremlins could be used for jamming radars, allowing manned aircraft to operate at safer distances from hostile targets; testing high-risk air defense systems; weapons delivery; or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

DARPA hopes for each Gremlin to survive about 20 missions, according to a March announcement.

"Named for the imaginary, mischievous imps that became the good luck charms of many British pilots during World War II, the program envisions launching groups of [unmanned aerial systems] from multiple types of military aircraft  including bombers, transport, fighters, and small, unmanned fixed-wing platforms  while out of range of adversary defenses," DARPA stated in March.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Security Council calls for efforts to ensure stability in Lebanon

20 December 2017  Welcoming the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Lebanon and his decision to continue his term, the United Nations Security Council highlighted the need to protect the country from crisis that are destabilizing the Middle East.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the 15-member Council called on all regional States and organizations "to work for the political, social, economic and financial stability and security of Lebanon."

The Security Council also called upon all Lebanese parties "to implement a tangible policy of disassociation from any external conflicts, as an important priority."

The members of Council also reaffirmed their support for ongoing efforts of Lebanese authorities to restore normal functioning of institutions and to prepare for the holding of legislative elections by May 2018.

They also urged the Government to speed up its reform programmes to ensure political and economic stability built on a functional, transparent and democratic State.

Further in the statement, the Council commended the efforts of the people and authorities in Lebanon to host Syrian refugees and encouraged the international community to continue and increase its support to the country, including for Lebanese host communities and refugees.

The Council also noted that any returns of refugees, when conditions allow, must be in full compliance with international law.

Also in the Statement, Security Council urged the International Support Group for Lebanon (ISG) to continue its work, in coordination with the office of the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), to seek opportunities to help address the challenges to Lebanon's security and stability.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Yemen's Children Risk Death as Fuel Shortage Creates Water Crisis

By Lisa Schlein December 20, 2017

The U.N. children's fund (UNICEF) warns children in Yemen risk death as access to clean water runs out, due to import restrictions of fuel into the country.

Saudi Arabia's blockade of humanitarian and commercial goods into Yemen is causing a crisis on many levels. UNICEF says the blockade is creating a severe fuel shortage, causing steep price hikes and deepening the country's already serious water and health crisis.

UNICEF reports the cost of diesel fuel has doubled during the past month, jeopardizing the provision of water especially for the poorest families. It says water pumping stations serving more than three million people in 14 cities are quickly running out of fuel.

Spokesman Christophe Boulierac says prices of commercially trucked water, a main source for one-fifth of the population, have skyrocketed.

"For over two thirds of Yemenis living in extreme poverty, safe water is now completely unaffordable ... Almost 400,000 children suffer from severe, acute malnutrition in Yemen ... and they are fighting for their lives and the poor access to safe drinking water is one of the most important causes of malnutrition," said Boulierac.

UNICEF warns the lack of safe water and other vital services are having a serious impact on health care and sanitation for children. It says thousands of children are in a particularly weakened condition and are vulnerable to outbreaks of diseases including acute watery diarrhea and cholera. It notes life-saving vaccines worth millions of dollars are at risk of being damaged because they cannot be properly stored without fuel.

UNICEF is urgently calling for an end to the blockade. It warns the crisis afflicting the Yemeni population, and children in particular, will spiral out of control unless fuel and other life-saving humanitarian aid can freely enter the country.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Haley: US 'Will Take Note of Each and Every Vote' on Jerusalem

By Margaret Besheer December 20, 2017

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned other United Nations envoys that she will be 'taking names' when the U.N. General Assembly holds a rare emergency session on Thursday to consider a resolution rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The President will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us," the letter, seen by VOA, says. "We will take note of each and every vote on this issue."

In a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy, President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that Washington would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and begin preparations to build a new embassy there.

That announcement was met with a move in the U.N. Security Council on Monday to adopt a resolution noting its "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

While not specifically mentioning the U.S. decision, the text also said, "any decision and actions which purport to have altered the character, status, or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded."

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favor of the draft resolution, but the United States used its veto power to block its adoption.

"The United States will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy," Ambassador Haley told council members after the vote.

Haley followed up with Tuesday's letter with a tweet:

"At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names."

In Washington Wednesday, President Trump praised Haley for sending a message at the U.N. to "all of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council, or they vote against us potentially at the assembly."

"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot. We don't care," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

At the U.N., several diplomats said they had received Haley's letter, but did not plan to change their stance.

"Our position on this case has been very clear, we have had the opportunity to express ourselves in the Security Council, so that is our very strongly principled position," said Sweden's U.N. ambassador Olof Skoog. "For us this is not at all about our bilateral relations with the United States, which is very good."

Thursday's emergency General Assembly session was requested by Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour, with the backing of Arab and non-aligned countries.

Mansour told reporters on Monday he hopes there will be "overwhelming support" in the General Assembly for the measure rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. He said the Palestinians would continue applying pressure to urge the Trump administration to reverse its position.

General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, but still carry moral weight, demonstrating the majority opinion of the international community.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its eternal capital, while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state and say the United States is no longer a reliable partner in the peace process.

The Trump administration says it is committed to a two-state solution in the Middle East if that is what the parties want, and that the physical location of its embassy should have no bearing on the talks.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Fighting Pushes More South Sudanese Into Congo

By Jason Patinkin December 20, 2017

Hundreds of South Sudanese refugees entered the Democratic Republic of Congo this week after South Sudanese government forces captured a rebel base near the border.

Amid gunfire late Sunday, South Sudanese troops entered Lasu town, which had been the rebels' second general headquarters. The rebels pulled out the next day.

Mary Awate fled her home to the forests when the clashes began. With her children to take care of, she spent two days hiding in the bush before reaching the Congo border on Tuesday.

"We just heard the sound of the gun, especially these big ones, so everyone just started running in the bush," she said.

The new arrivals fled to the Congolese town of Aba. More than 30,000 people had already gone there since the start of South Sudan's civil war in December 2013.

More than two million people have fled South Sudan during the war. There have been many ceasefires declared, but none have been observed.

In Aba's hospital, Isaac Bida lay with a bullet wound in his back. He said he was shot by South Sudan government troops near Lasu as he tried to flee on a motorbike.

Bida said he is a civilian.

"When I saw the soldiers before from far away," he said. "... They were calling me, please come come, but something came into my mind to be careful of them, and as I tried to turn and go, they shot three bullets. The fourth one hit me. ... Maybe they thought I was a rebel."

Refugees were still entering Aba on Wednesday. Liwa Morris Taban, the chairperson of the South Sudan refugee community in Aba, said some of the new arrivals are in critical condition after fleeing through the forests.

He urged fellow refugees to stay at the refugee site, rather than go back to South Sudan to search for lost relatives.

"It is very, very risky for them to go back to South Sudan," he cautioned. "People are running from there, they are fearing government soldiers. ... It is very hard for me as chairperson of the site to allow people to go back. I know some left their relatives, their kids behind and they have that intention of going to bring their kids, but its a bit risky."

A new round of peace talks between the government and rebels began this week in Ethiopia.

Thirty-five-year-old Charity Awate, who fled the Lasu fighting with her husband and six children on Tuesday, said the fresh fighting has dimmed her hopes of an end to violence.

"At first we heard of the talks and we were happy," she said, "but now we have been chased to Congo, we are not confident in that. "

With no peace in sight, she and others must look toward a new life as refugees in Congo.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






South Sudan's Warring Parties May Sign Cease-fire Friday

By John Tanza December 20, 2017

Members of South Sudan's many warring factions are gathered at a forum in the hope of working out a cease-fire as soon as Friday.

More than 100 members of various groups are attending talks in Addis Ababa, sponsored by Intergovernmental Authority on Development, that are aimed at revitalizing a 2015 peace deal.

Representatives of both armed and unarmed groups met Tuesday at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to discuss a draft permanent cease-fire.

Civil society groups at the forum said the warring parties should first silence their guns. Clashes between government forces and rebel fighters loyal to Riek Machar were still being reported Tuesday in Lasu, Kajo Keji in Yei River state and Lol state.

Edmond Yakani of the Community Empowerment Network told South Sudan in Focus that warring parties were positioning themselves to gain territory on the ground before signing a cease-fire.

"We are heading to dry season," when fighting typically flares up. "And that is why we called for the armed groups, for the sake of the lives of the citizens of South Sudan," to stop fighting for at least a week, Yakani said.

Rebecca Nyandeng, widow of South Sudan's founding father, John Garang, said at the forum that President Salva Kiir's ineffective government should be replaced.

How many must die?

"If you are afraid to say it, I am saying it, because there is nothing they are delivering," she said. "Three weeks ago, hundreds of people died. How many people do we need to die in order for us to see this government [is] not delivering?

"The way forward is for the government in Juba to go, because there is nothing that they can deliver and they will never change. Dr. John used to say the government in Khartoum is too deformed to be reformed. It is this government in Juba who is too deformed to be reformed.''

South Sudanese gender activist Rita Lopidia told South Sudan in Focus the fighting has taken a heavy toll on women and girls.

"The suffering of the women and girls in the republic of South Sudan has surpassed all levels of carnage," she said. "The massive displacement, the deteriorating economy, lack of protection, fear, insecurity, hunger, disease and poverty, the sexual violence committed with impunity must not be tolerated.''

The atmosphere at the talks was tense, with various parties holding side meetings to discuss specific parts of a cease-fire agreement, including security arrangements and unfettered access of humanitarian agencies operating in South Sudan.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Russia spy agencies foiled 60 terror attacks: Putin

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 06:33PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed security and intelligence forces in his country for efforts that foiled more than 60 terrorist attacks.

Putin said Wednesday that intelligence agencies in Russia had played a huge role in ensuring security in the country over the past years as the government was busy countering terrorism in the region.

He said "over 60 terrorist crimes" had been neutralized by those security forces, but gave no further details.

The comments came during a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of an intelligence service in Russia. The Kremlin also used the occasion to honor the employees of its security and spy agencies.

Putin, himself a former intelligence officer and director, said during the event that intelligence and security workers "were true patriots and defenders of the state" who chose a very difficult profession.

He also mentioned increased security threats against Russia as a result of the country's involvement in the war in Syria.

Russia began a military campaign in Syria in late 2015, when the Syrian government submitted an official request. The anti-terror campaign proved to be useful as it enabled the Syrian government to regain control over swathes of territories that had been seized by terrorists.

Putin has repeatedly defended Moscow's military involvement in Syria as a means of preventing the return of thousands of Russian nationals who joined terrorist groups in Syria over the past years.

In his Wednesday remarks, Putin said Russia was determined to continue its foreign fight against terrorism as a top priority. He said Moscow was ready to "act together with other nations, all those who fight that global threat and ready for joint work and information exchange."



NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






China's military aircraft spotted again near Taiwan: MND

Central News Agency

2017/12/20 23:04:50

Taipei, Dec. 20 (CNA) Several Chinese military aircraft were seen flying near Taiwan again on Wednesday, passing through the Bashi Channel to the south then going north before flying over the Miyako Strait that lies between two Japanese islands, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said.

The military aircraft returned to their bases in China on the same route after apparently conducting training missions in the western Pacific, the ministry said in a press release.

One of the planes was a TU-154 electronic surveillance aircraft, while the others included an Su-30 fighter, IL-78 aerial refueling plane and a Xian H-6 bomber, the ministry said.

In addition, the ministry said, a Shaanxi Y-8 transport aircraft flew over the Bashi Channel into the western Pacific and returned to its base in China via the Miyako Strait.

It seems to have become a regular occurrence for Chinese military aircraft and vessels to pass through the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait on their way to long-distance training missions in the western Pacific, the ministry said.

Therefore, it said, it will no longer issue public statements on such movements unless something unusual occurs.

The MND reiterated that Taiwan's armed forces are capable of safeguarding the national territories and it urged the public not to panic over reports of Chinese military aircraft and ships passing near Taiwan.

(By Lu Hsin-hui and Romulo Huang)

Enditem/pc

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Transport planes boost PLA abilities

People's Daily Online

(China Daily) 08:07, December 20, 2017

New Y-9 aircraft can carry more cargo over greater distances

The People's Liberation Army Ground Force has put two Y-9 transport planes into service, a move that reflects its aspiration to build stronger strategic projection capabilities.

On Friday, a Y-9 turboprop transport aircraft was delivered to an aviation brigade of the 81st Group Army, becoming the second of its type to be fielded by the Ground Force. In December 2016, the brigade received the Ground Force's first Y-9.

The addition is expected to enhance the Ground Force's overall operational capability, according to a news release from the force.

The release also said the Y-9s' delivery indicates that the Ground Force is on a fast track to strengthen its long-range projection capabilities. It noted that the brigade has become familiar with the plane, and that the unit will send the two planes to train on plateaus and to practice tactical maneuvers.

Information previously published by the Ground Force indicates that the Y-9 can be deployed in tough environments, including in bad weather, thanks to its adaptability. It can perform a wide variety of tasks including personnel and freight transport as well as airdrops.

According to sources with knowledge of the matter, the PLA Ground Force maintains a small number of Y-7 and Y-8 transport aircraft for use by its aviation wing, but these planes have reportedly reached retirement age. As a result, the Ground Force wants to replace them with the Y-9, which is more advanced, with greater carrying capacity and longer flight range.

Developed by the State-owned aircraft giant Aviation Industry Corp of China, the Y-9 is propelled by four WJ-6C turboprop engines and has advanced avionics systems. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 65 metric tons, a maximum payload capacity of 20 tons and a top range of 5,200 kilometers, according to Jane's Defense Weekly.

The Ground Force has steadily added power to its aviation units by commissioning new aircraft over the past several years. This is not only because the Chinese military intends to transform its land forces to be leaner, more flexible, agile and capable, but also because the country's aviation industry is rapidly catching up with its Western counterparts in terms of technology and capability.

So far, all of the Ground Force's aviation units have deployed the domestically developed WZ-10 combat helicopters. Observers said the Ground Force now has at least 1,000 helicopters in active service.

Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said the Ground Force needs more heavy-lift transport helicopters and fixed-wing transport planes to improve its large-scale, long-range mobility capability.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






China Again Holding Drills Near Disputed Territory of Taiwan

Sputnik News

17:10 20.12.2017

China has intensified its drills around Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory, after US President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, paving the way for mutual naval visits between Washington and Taipei.

As tensions between Beijing and Taipei have increased, Chinese jets are holding drills near Taiwan for the sixth time this month. Recent "island encirclement patrol" comes shortly after China's fighter planes flew over the Sea of Japan, prompting a reaction from South Korea.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said that Taipei would dispatch jets armed with missiles if necessary in response to Beijing's increased military activity near the island. Commenting on the drills, which have already become commonplace, Ministry spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi urged people not to panic, claiming that the armed forces would be able to ensure their security.

Relations between the mainland and Taiwan have worsened since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen came to power last year and rapidly deteriorated since US President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law last week. Taiwan has always been a stumbling block in Sino-American relations despite the fact the Washington doesn't recognize Taiwan as a separate state and sticks to the so-called "One China" policy. However the US seeks to enhance military ties with Taiwan through mutual naval visits. As for Beijing, it sees Taipei as one of its autonomous provinces, which eventually will be reunited with the mainland, even by the use of force, while Tsai refuses to accept the "One China" policy, and is allegedly preparing for a full-fledged independence referendum next year.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Hydro project held up as NEA dawdles over PPA

Construction of the Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project has been delayed as the board of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has been taking its time approving the power purchase agreement (PPA) signed with its developer.
Study: China to Boost Military Muscle at Sea to Deter Foreign Powers

By Ralph Jennings December 20, 2017

China is widely forecast to bolster its military power next year in the South China Sea to resist Japan, India and the United States, as well as the Asian states that dispute Beijing's maritime claims.

Scholars believe China will eventually enhance radar surveillance and let fighter jets use tiny islets for stopovers. Beijing might declare an air defense identification zone or other means of maritime control, too, they suggest.

It probably hopes the United States, along with militarily powerful allies such as Japan and India, will stay out after they jumped into the dispute this year, according to Oh Ei Sun, international studies instructor at Singapore Nanyang University.

"I don't think they're primarily offensive in nature, but of course with those installations in place, they will have more bargaining chips, they're in a stronger position to say the U. S. should not perform [freedom of navigation operations] and such in the South China Sea," Oh said.

New hardware

China this year added installations in the Paracel and Spratly Islands, said the Asia Maritime Transparency Institute of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In 2017, China built underground storage areas, administrative structures and "large radar and sensor arrays," said the Washington-based research group. The construction covered about 290,000 square meters "of new real estate."

Beijing built most actively at Fiery Cross reef in the Spratlys, it said, including work to finish tunnels that are likely for ammunition storage. High-frequency radar gear also appeared on the reef, it adds.

China is the most militarized of six governments that claim all or part of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, which is valued for fisheries and fossil fuels. It has been building up islets since 2010.

China has enough installations to land fighter jets, refuel, rearm and let crews rest, said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

State-run China Central Television said earlier in the month the military had deployed jet fighters to Woody Island in the Paracel chain.

China may draw a line of control around its holdings in the Spratly Islands, contested by four Southeast Asian countries plus Taiwan, and consider an air defense identification zone, the initiative's director Gregory Poling said.

China declared an air defense identification zone off its east coast, in a sea disputed by Japan, in 2013.

Outside influence

Analysts say China's buildup is aimed at claimants Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam as well as powerful nations that do not claim ownership over the sea.

But the United States particularly irks China as a powerful arms supplier and military trainer for the Philippines. Washington sends naval vessels into the South China Sea periodically to back its position the waters are open to freedom of navigation.

"When the Chinese are suddenly trying to stop resupply of the Philippine forces at Pag-Asa or on the Sierra Madre [ship] at Second Thomas Shoal, then [Philippine President Rodrigo] Duterte is going to face an enormous amount of pressure to react strongly," Poling said, referring to two Manila-held features in the Spratly chain.

"The only way the Philippines can possibly react, really, is to strengthen the defense relation with the U. S.," he said.

India, a Western ally, upgraded its partnership with Vietnam last year year as part of its Act East policy, which analysts say is designed to check Chinese expansion.

Japan, an ally of the United States, passed a helicopter carrier through the sea in mid-2017, adding to repeated comments from Tokyo the waterway should be ruled by international law.

China bases its claim to about 90 percent of the sea on historical fishing records. It has eased the dispute through offers of aid and investment around Southeast Asia. Next year, it's due to sign a code of conduct with regional countries to head off accidents at sea.

Deterrent effect

After appeals by other claimant countries a U. N. arbitration tribunal said China lacked a legal basis to much of its claim.

But China's buildup has continued. It's "like the Cold War," when opponents stocked nuclear weapons to head off attacks, Oh said.

Some other countries see China's current level of control as a "fact," Koh said.

But in November, heads of state from Australia, India, Japan and the United States met in Manila to call for "free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Asian seas, according to an Indian external affairs ministry statement.

China, which resents the role of outside powers in the South China Sea, sees provocation from outside players as cause to keep strengthening its claims, Koh said.

"Now they are trying to demonstrate to the U. S. or allies like Japan and Australia that China is in to stay, and more importantly it's not just purely staying power," he added, "It's the ability to sustain and project force in that area. "

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Pyongyang Denies Biochemical Weapons Development Charges

Sputnik News

22:03 20.12.2017(updated 22:41 20.12.2017)

The North Korean government has insisted that it does not maintain a biochemical weapons program, despite new reports that Pyongyang's military has started testing the use of an anthrax-based weapon on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump sent his first National Security Strategy report to lawmakers. The 56-page unclassified strategy document states that Pyongyang is "pursuing chemical and biological weapons which could also be delivered by missile."

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that South Korean intelligence officials have warned North Korea is working on a program to prevent anthrax from disintegrating at the kinds of high temperatures that would be experienced during an ICBM's re-entry of Earth's atmosphere from space.

Within 48 hours of Trump's speech, the Institute of American Studies, an affiliate of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, told the Korea Central News Agency, "the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], as a state party to the Biological Weapons Convention, maintains its consistent stand to oppose development, manufacture, stockpiling and possession of biological weapons."

"The more the US clings to the anti-DPRK stifling move," the institute was quoted as saying, "the more hardened the determination of our entire military personnel and people to take revenge will be."

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was the first disarmament treaty prohibiting the "development, production and stockpiling of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction," according to the United Nations. North Korea became a signatory in 1987.

A fact sheet on the treaty compiled by the Arms Control Association notes, however, that the BWC "does not ban the use of biological and toxin weapons but reaffirms the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits such use. It also does not ban biodefense programs."

During a public presentation of his national security strategy, Trump remarked that North Korea's continued nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development "should have been taken care of long before I got into office, when it was much easier to handle. But it will be taken care of. We have no choice."

"North Korea  a country that starves its own people  has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that could threaten our homeland," the strategy document says.

Pyongyang has long said that its weapons development programs are intended to provide defensive and deterrent capabilities. Following the notion that "biodefense programs" aren't prohibited by the treaty cited by KCNA, it is possible that both Pyongyang's Institute of American Studies' assertion  that its activities are consistent with the treaty  and the South Korean reports of testing anthrax weapons for ICBMs are both true.

The US previously alleged in 2001 that North Korea was violating the BWC. South Korean officials have estimated that North Korea has between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, Bloomberg noted.

The Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a South Korean government organization in Seoul, reported in 2016 that Pyongyang has 13 substances that can be used for biological or chemical weapons, including anthrax and clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that causes botulism.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






India Goes Ahead with $2Bln Purchase of US Predator Drones Sans Weapons

Sputnik News

18:43 20.12.2017

India is purchasing 22 Predator "B" drones from the US in order to fulfill an urgent demand from the navy. However, since the drones are strictly for reconnaissance, India is simultaneously developing on its own armed drones that can be used for surveillance as well as for precision strikes.

New Delhi (Sputnik): The Indian government has initiated the procurement of 22 naval surveillance drones from the US for approximately $2 billion. The decision comes five months after the purchase proposal was approved by the Trump administration.

"A request for Information (RFI) for Predator 'B' Sea Guardian was issued to the US Office of Defense Cooperation on November 14 and the response is awaited," Subhash Bhamre, India's Minister of State for Defense informed the Parliament on Wednesday.

The Minister also informed that the deal does not involve the transfer of critical technology to India.

"Procurement of Predator 'B' Sea Guardian is being progressed under Buy (Global) category and no transfer of technology is envisaged," Bhamre added.

The MQ-9B Guardian UAV is a variant of the MQ-9 Reaper drone (also called the Predator B), but it replaces the Reaper's missiles with several radar platforms and is primarily meant for maritime search operations.

On October 18, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson clarified that the US was ready to share technology with India but would not part with some closely guarded defense technologies as it would hurt the country's competitive advantage.

The Indian Navy is in dire need of high-altitude, long-endurance drones that can be used for surveillance as well as for precision strikes in the Indian Ocean Region. However, the 22 UAVs offered by the US are non-lethal in nature and can fly non-stop for over 27 hours for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions only.

To fill this gap, India is developing its own drone "Rustom II."

"The development of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Rustom-II is an indigenous effort wherein the majority of sub-systems like airframe, landing gear, avionics systems, flight control systems and data link systems have been developed indigenously by various private industries," the Minister of State for Defense informed the Parliament.

However, the propulsion systems and sensor systems of the Rustom II are being imported which the state-owned labs have promised to develop on their own at a later stage.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






India Conducts Massive Military Exercise Near Pakistani Border

Sputnik News

14:24 20.12.2017(updated 14:39 20.12.2017)

Besides conventional warfare, Indian troops are rehearsing responses to chemical and nuclear threats. The drills are aiming to evaluate the capability of the armed forces to strike deep into enemy territory in the event of an integrated air-land battle.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The Indian armed forces are conducting a major exercise along the border with Pakistan, exhibiting their preparedness to respond to any "provocation" by its neighbor. The massive show of military strength comes two days after Pakistan warned of a possible nuclear war.

The exercise is "unique in scope and scale" and being conducted in battle-like conditions, says the Indian Army.

"A large number of troops along with tanks and other armored vehicles duly supported by overwhelming land and air-based firepower have commenced conducting fully integrated operational maneuvers to validate their operational plans. The exercise is conducted in battle like conditions, aims at fine-tuning surveillance and destruction mechanisms to support precision strikes and maneuvers by network-enabled forces," Manoj Tuli, a top Indian Army official said in a statement.

Earlier on Monday, Pakistan's National Security Advisor Nasser Khan Janjua warned of a possible "nuclear war" in South Asia, peeved with the Trump administration's national security strategy (NSS), which recognizes India as a US strategic partner to fight terrorism in South Asia.

"The stability of the South Asian region hangs in a delicate balance, and the possibility of nuclear war cannot be ruled out," Janjua was quoted as saying by the Pakistani media.

Furthermore, this is the first time that the Indian Army has revealed extensive details of a military exercise.

"With an emphasis on joint operations, the exercise would test robust sensors to shooter grids by employing a vast array of surveillance and air assets networked with land-based strategic and tactical vectors. Besides conventional warfare, troops will also be rehearsed to operate in the backdrop of chemical and nuclear contingencies," an Indian Army statement read.

The exercise involves new age aviation assets and armored vehicles, which are being overseen by a large number of senior officers of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran condemns new US national security strategy

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Wed / 20 December 2017 / 12:04

Tehran (ISNA) - Iran's foreign ministry spokesman has rapped the US administration's new national security strategy, saying that the document would undoubtedly lead the world towards more insecurity.

In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said, "The document published by the Trump administration is full of futile efforts by its fabricators to introduce Iran as a threat, which is totally rejected and condemned".

"The contents of the unconventional text lack any rationale and realism, and are nothing but a repetition of the same allegations, unfounded accusations, and baseless illusions by Washington and a few regional states," Qassemi stressed.

"The unwise content of this unbalanced and one-sided strategy clearly show that the US government is trying to play the blame game in face of the challenges, dysfunctions and self-created problems it has always been dealing with in the domestic and international arena," he noted, adding that such problems have become more and more visible over the past year.

"The threats that the US assumes to be facing mostly emanate from wrong policies, behaviours and practices of its politicians and statesmen over the past decade towards other nations of the world, especially their numerous mistakes in the sensitive and strategic West Asian region and the Persian Gulf," he went on to say.

"It seems that US statesmen still do not have the will to review their policies and behaviours, especially their view about the world and other nations. That is why they cannot tolerate the independent policies and approaches of some countries like Iran, and see them as contrary to their national interests and security".

"By insisting on obsolete and repetitive approaches, they are trying to keep the world at a standstill by causing problems that mostly arise from the policies of various US administrations," he added.

The Iranian spokesman underlined that the new US national security strategy is a reckless one which will undoubtedly lead the world towards more insecurity, increase instability and expand terrorism.

Qassemi further noted that the international community's inattention to the adventurism of the US president has allowed Donald Trump to develop his policies and future outlook based on fabricated and unrealistic threats.

Such policies, he added, will definitely have no achievement but further defeats for the US in the international arena and its areas of interest.

End Item

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US claim on Yemen missiles ridiculous charade: Iran defense minister

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 10:45AM

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami has dismissed as a "ridiculous charade" fresh US allegations that an Iranian missile was used by Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement to target Saudi soil.

"Such baseless claims indicate the failure of US policies in the region and the world, and they look more like a worthless and ridiculous charade. However, the Islamic Republic of Iran will legally follow up on the issue," Hatami said at a conference in Tehran on Wednesday.

The Iranian defense chief further said the enemies of Iran have come to the realization that they are not capable of posing any threats against the country, and are therefore now attempting to restrict Iran's regional influence and defense capabilities.

Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is in Baku for a tripartite meeting with his Turkish and Azeri counterparts, also condemned the US "baseless allegation" and pledged to pursue the issue at the UN Security Council.

The top Iranian diplomat noted that Tehran has already informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of the issue.

By leveling such accusations against Iran, Zarif added, the Americans are trying to cover up their "highly dangerous moves" in the region, including their support for the deadly Saudi war on Yemen and their recent policy shift on Jerusalem al-Quds.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley went on live television Thursday to display debris purportedly from a ballistic missile that had been fired on November 4 from Yemen at an airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The Yemeni movement and its allied forces have been defending the nation against a Saudi war, which began in March 2015.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the allegation as "provocative and baseless," saying the Yemenis had shown an "independent" reaction to the Saudi bombing campaign on their country.

Haley repeated those allegations at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

She also pointed to the the missile fired by Yemeni forces towards the royal palace in Riyadh earlier in the day, claiming it "bears all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons."

A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition also alleged on Tuesday that the ballistic missile fired at Riyadh was "Iranian-manufactured."

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015 in a bid to crush the Houthi movement and reinstate the former Riyadh-friendly regime, but they have achieved neither of their goals.

The Saudi-led war, which has been accompanied by a naval and aerial blockade on Yemen, has so far killed over 12,000 people and led to a humanitarian crisis as well as a deadly cholera outbreak.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran urges global action against US bids to undermine nuclear deal

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 08:02AM

Iran's ambassador to the UN has denounced the US for its blatant violations of the 2015 nuclear deal, saying the world community must stand against Washington's efforts to undermine the multinational pact, which enjoys strong global support.

Gholamali Khoshrou made the remarks following a Tuesday meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' periodic report with regard to the implementation of the nuclear agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

He added that the new US administration's opposition to the JCPOA and its imposition of a series of new sanctions against Iran are in blatant violation of Washington's commitments under the JCPOA, emphasizing that the global community should not allow the US to continue undermining the nuclear deal.

Khoshrou pointed to the allegations by US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley about Iran's role in the region, noting that the US envoy failed to mention the destabilizing activities of her respective government and Washington's multi-billion-dollar arms sales in the region, part of which ended up in the hands of Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

US efforts to link its baseless accusations against Iran's missile program to the JCPOA are aimed at covering up its hegemonic policies in the Middle East, the senior diplomat added.

Khoshrou hailed the other signatories for honoring their obligations under the nuclear deal and noted that the US stood alone at the UNSC meeting due to its unconstructive approach towards the JCPOA.

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council  the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China  plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.

During the Tuesday meeting, the UN chief confirmed Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal, but noted that the UN Secretariat is investigating allegations with regard to Tehran's ballistic missile program.

Also at the session, US ambassador Haley urged the Security Council to punish Iran for what the administration of US President Donald Trump calls Tehran's "dangerous violations" of UN resolutions and "destabilizing behavior."

She said the US will explore a number of options with UNSC members in the coming days to exert pressure against Iran and called for a tougher resolution which prohibits all Iranian ballistic missile activity, imposes sanctions against Tehran for alleged arms supplies to Yemeni fighters and holds the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) accountable for alleged violation of the UNSC resolutions.

However, Russia's deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov called on the parties to the nuclear deal "to abandon the language of threats and sanctions, and to start using the instruments of dialogue  and concentrate on broadening cooperation and mutual trust."

Safronkov argued that the UN resolution on Tehran's nuclear deal makes no demand, but it calls on Iran not to conduct ballistic missile activity that could be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

He lashed out at the UN Secretariat for conducting investigations without prior approval of the UNSC, adding that the UN Secretariat "has neither the authority nor the expertise" and the information obtained "cannot be considered accurate."

Also at the meeting, the representative of Britain expressed support for the JCPOA and stressed that Iran has been committed to its obligations under the nuclear deal.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






U.S. Urges UN To Punish Iran Over Missile Activity; Russia Rules Out Sanctions

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has urged the United Nations Security Council to punish Iran for what she called "destabilizing behavior" and "dangerous violations" of UN arms embargoes, but Russia ruled out sanctions and said dialogue is needed.

Speaking before the council late on December 19, Haley said a ballistic missile strike on Saudi Arabia by Shi'ite Huthi rebels in Yemen earlier in the day was "a flashing red siren for this council."

She also said the strike had "all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons."

Riyadh said it intercepted the missile, which had targeted the palace of Saudi King Salman, and accused Iran of supplying it to the rebels.

Predominantly Shi'ite Iran denies arming Huthi rebels who are fighting Yemen's government and a military coalition led by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia.

"It is only a matter of time before one of these missiles hits the target," said Haley. "If we don't do something, we will miss the opportunity to prevent further violence from Iran," she said.

'Undeniable Evidence'

Haley last week presented reporters in Washington with what she called "undeniable evidence" that Iran had supplied missiles for two previous Huthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and said she would bring the matter before the UN.

Haley told the council on December 19 that it should consider sanctions over what she called Iran's "clear violation" of a UN embargo on weapons sales to Yemen, and she said it should also hold the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accountable for violating numerous council resolutions.

Other options for pressuring Iranians "to adjust their malign behavior," she said, include adopting a resolution prohibiting all Iranian ballistic missile activity, and strengthening a UN council resolution implementing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to prohibit ballistic missile activity.

But Russian Deputy UN Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov quickly ruled that out, urging the council instead "to abandon the language of threats and sanctions, and to start using the instruments of dialogue."

Safronkov said the council should "concentrate on broadening cooperation and mutual trust" with Iran.

Guterres' Report

The council meeting had been called to discuss a report this month from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that found Iran was complying with the nuclear deal, which requires curbs on its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

But the report said Tehran may be defying the UN council's call for Iran to halt ballistic missile development, which was included in the resolution carrying out the nuclear deal. Iran and Russia have maintained that part of the deal was not binding on Tehran.

Guterres said the UN is investigating whether Iran provided the ballistic missiles that the Huthi rebels in Yemen have used in strikes against Saudi Arabia.

Safronkov accused the UN Secretariat of carrying out investigations without prior council approval, saying it "has neither the authority nor the expertise." He also said the information obtained "cannot be considered accurate."

After the Huthi missile strike on December 19, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying it was "deeply disturbed by aggressive Huthi actions supported by Iran's provision of advanced weapons, which threaten regional security and prolong the Yemen conflict."

With reporting by AFP, dpa, and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-urges-un-security-council- punish-iran-ballistic-missile-activity-russia- rules-out-sanctions/28928240.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






U.S. Jury To Begin Deliberating In High-Profile Iran Sanctions Case

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

A U.S. jury in Manhattan is due to begin deliberating on December 20 in a high-profile Iran sanctions trial that has implicated top Turkish officials while straining relations between the United States and its NATO ally.

U.S. prosecutors and defense lawyers delivered their closing arguments on December 19, with prosecutors alleging that the defendant, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank, participated in a scheme to launder $1 billion of Iranian oil and gas revenues through U.S. banks in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The prosecution's case relied heavily on testimony from the accused mastermind of the scheme, Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to several charges and became the prosecution's star witness in a cooperation deal last month.

Zarrab testified that he bribed Turkish officials and worked with Atilla to carry out the sanctions evasion scheme, at first by laundering the Iranian oil revenues through gold trades, and later by disguising the transactions as food aid transfers that were exempt from the sanctions.

Zarrab's testimony implicated a former Turkish economy minister and other high-level officials with taking bribes, and he testified that even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan aided in the scheme, which he said Atilla helped him organize.

Much of Zarrab's testimony was later corroborated by a Turkish police investigator who had led a Turkish investigation into the sanctions evasion scheme in 2013 that was later quashed by Erdogan's government.

Erdogan for months after Zarrab was arrested in March 2016 lobbied U.S. authorities to drop the case and release Zarrab.

But after Zarrab turned witness for the prosecution, Erdogan and his deputies charged that the case was "politically motivated" and aimed at bringing down his government.

Defense lawyers said that if Zarrab told the truth in his testimony, then their client Atilla is guilty. But they argued that Zarrab is a "liar and a briber" who cast blame on Atilla in hopes of evading a U.S. prison sentence himself.

Defense attorney Victor Rocco called Atilla an "honest, hard working man," who was "not corrupt" and, testimony showed, "has never been bribed."

"Hakan Atilla is a blameless pawn, collateral damage in a story that belongs in The Twilight Zone, not in American court," Rocco said.

Atilla took the stand for two and a half days, denying that he had ever been in "any meeting where violating the sanctions were discussed."

But U.S. prosecutors said Atilla had a history of lying himself, and was known to be Halkbank's "sanctions fixer."

Conviction of Atilla would likely further strain relations between Ankara and Washington, and could lead to U.S. sanctions on the Turkish banking sector, beginning with Halkbank, analysts said.

Halkbank has denied violating U.S. sanctions, saying it has "not been a party" to any "illegal" transaction.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-jury-begin-deliberating -high-profile-iran-sanctions-case-zarrab- atilla-erdogan-manhattan/28928278.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran Slams US 'Unreasonable' Claims of Involvement in Houthi Missile Attacks

Sputnik News

14:50 20.12.2017(updated 15:17 20.12.2017)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami has refuted Washington's allegations about Tehran's involvement in the latest missile attack launched by Yemeni Houthi rebels targeting Saudi Arabia's capital city of Riyadh.

"Such unreasonable statements prove the collapse of US policy in the region and the world and they are more like a ridiculous and unworthy performance," Hatami said in a statement published on the ministry's website.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has also refuted the statements accusing Tehran of supplying the Houthis with arms.

"Iran does not have any ties with Yemen regarding armament. Yemen is in a blockade, and there is generally no such possibility," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi told Al Alam broadcaster, adding that "the people of Yemen" are using weapons taken from military bases.

The US Blames Iran

The statement was made after the US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley during her speech at a UN Security Council meeting had accused Iran supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen with weapons in violation of two UN resolutions.

Reacting to the "baseless and provocative" accusations, Iran summoned Swiss ambassador on December 19, who also represents the US in the country, to express protest over Washington's statements.

On the same day, Houthis have reportedly launched a ballistic missile targeting the royal palace in Riyadh, intercepted by the Saudi forces south of the capital, with no casualties reported as a result of the attack.

Over the past several months Saudi Arabia has intercepted several ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis, closing Yemeni ground, air, and sea borders with the aim of halting Iran's alleged arms deliveries to the Houthis.

The military conflict in Yemen has further escalated since late November after clashes between the former allies, Houthis and Saleh's forces, had broken out in Sanaa. The intensified clashes resulted in the killing of Saleh by the Yemeni rebels on December 4, soon after he had reiterated the termination of the alliance.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Its not over

When Nepal should be moving ahead with all its people on board, the marginalised are still struggling
Iraqi Kurdistan parliament speaker resigns amid anti-KRG protests

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 03:00PM

The parliament speaker of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan has resigned amid fatal protests against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Sources within leading Kurdish opposition movement Gorran said on Wednesday that its member Yousif Mohamed had resigned as parliament speaker. The party also withdrew its ministers from the KRG.

The Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), another opposition party with a smaller presence in parliament, also quit the government.

The news comes after Kurdish security forces fatally shot five protesters as demonstrations continued for the second day on Tuesday amid widespread anger over unpaid salaries and corruption.

UN denounces violence in Kurdistan protests

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) expressed its deep concern about violence and clashes during the demonstrations, urging all sides to show restraint.

"The people have the right to partake in peaceful demonstrations, and the authorities have the responsibility of protecting their citizens, including peaceful protesters," UNAMI said in a statement on Wednesday.

During the protests, people attacked several offices of the main political parties in Sulaymaniyah.

"Security forces also are urged to exercise maximum restraint in dealing with the demonstrators. UNAMI also calls on the demonstrators to avoid any act of violence, including the destruction of public and private properties," the statement said.

UNAMI also urged the KRG to respect media freedoms after Kurdish Asayish security forces on Tuesday raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcast NRT in Sulaymaniyah, and cut its transmissions.

Frustration over unpaid salaries to teachers and other civil servants, in addition to the deterioration of basic services and widespread corruption, have been described as the main reasons behind mass protests in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

The Kurdistan region has been suffering from financial and economic hardships as a result of disagreement with the central government in Baghdad over distribution of crude oil revenues extracted from the northern oilfields.

Tensions have been running high between Baghdad and the KRG after the Kurds held a controversial referendum on the independence of Kurdistan on September 25.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Resigns Amid Protest in Region - Source

Sputnik News

19:06 20.12.2017(updated 19:08 20.12.2017)

BAGHDAD (Sputnik) - Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq, the speaker of Iraqi Kurdistan's parliament, has resigned, while the Gorran Movement party and the Kurdistan Islamic Group party withdrew from the regional government amid protests in the autonomy, a source told Sputnik Wednesday.

"The head of the parliament of the region of Iraqi Kurdistan has officially resigned along with all the members of the Gorran bloc in the parliament," the source said.

According to the source, the Gorran and the Kurdistan Islamic Group parties has left the regional government.

"Having neglected the demands to conduct reforms and create a government of national salvation, as well as after yesterday's manifestations, the Gorran movement and the [Kurdistan] Islamic Group withdrew from government today," the source explained.

According to the source, two political parties have seven seats in the regional government.

On December 19, at least seven people died and over 80 people were injured in demonstrations across Iraqi Kurdistan, which were triggered by wage arrears and a difficult economic situation in the country. The protesters attacked one of the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and burned it.

The situation in Iraqi Kurdistan has further escalated since Iraqi authorities had launched a military campaign in the region across the border from Syria, provoked by their independence bid. The loss of oil-rich territories hit a hard blow to the local powers, with Kurdish leader Massud Barzani's announcement of his resignation in late October.

Following the move, the legislative and presidential elections set to take place on November 1, were postponed.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Violent Protests Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan, Anger Remains

By Kurdish Service December 20, 2017

Violent protests eased Wednesday in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, but concerns remained that the crisis could grow as opposition politicians quit Parliament and the government cracked down on media accused of fomenting the unrest.

The protests began mostly peacefully Monday over unpaid wages, poor services and government corruption but turned violent Tuesday as security forces tried to prevent people from gathering. Several people were killed as security forces opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. The United Nations called for calm and restraint.

Curfews were imposed in several areas. The Ministry of Culture said Wednesday that it had suspended NRT's Kurdish and Arabic services for a week to "stop chaos" and force media to commit to the "ethics of journalism."

Karwan Anwar, secretary of the journalist syndicate in Sulaimania and editor in chief of PUK Media told VOA's Kurdish Service that NRT violated journalistic principles by airing interviews with people who encouraged attacks on government offices and private property.

Westganews.net reported the abduction of Sarkawt Shamsulddin, NRT TV's Washington bureau chief in Sulaimania after he reported live on Facebook about the suspension and arrest of Shaswar Abdulwahid, owner of Nalia group of companies and Nalia Radio and Television (NRT), for allegedly promoting violent protests in the province.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement supporting "freedom of expression in Iraq as a key component of the country's democratic foundation."

"It is the duty of the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government to protect the freedom of the press and to allow media to exercise their profession responsibly," the embassy statement said. "The United States believes that more voices, not fewer, are needed for democracy to flourish in Iraq and elsewhere in the region."

The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, known as UNAMI, urged Kurdish security forces "to exercise maximum restraint in dealing with the demonstrators.''

The mayor of the town of Rania, Hiwa Qarani, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that at least two civilians were killed and 80 wounded the day before.

The situation in Iraq's Kurdistan has deteriorated since it voted overwhelmingly to pursue independence from Iraq and ran into punitive measures from the Iraqi government.

Although the demonstrators are directing their demands at the Iraqi government, they say they have lost faith in the Kurdistan government and are demanding that it resign.

"We are here to demand our legitimate rights and our livelihood," one protester said. "This government has not kept the promises it made. This Kurdish government lacks the basic requirements of governing."

Two parties removed their legislators from the provincial government Wednesday, and the parliamentary speaker resigned in response to the violence.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






2 Opposition Parties Withdraw from Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government

By VOA News December 20, 2017

Two opposition parties, the Gorran and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), have withdrawn from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), party sources said.

The withdrawals came Wednesday after two days of violence in the region, as Kurdish demonstrators protest years of austerity measures and unpaid public sector salaries.

Regional tensions escalated after the central government in Baghdad imposed stringent measures due to the KRG's holding of an independence referendum, on September 25, in which the Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede.

The decision to withdraw came in defiance of Baghdad and alarmed neighboring Iran and Turkey, which have sizable Kurdish minority populations.

The opposition parties have said they support the demands of the protesters but urged calm after two days of deadly protests.

At least three people have been killed and more than 80 others injured since Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish security forces, local officials said.

On Monday and Tuesday, protesters also attacked several offices of the main political parties in northern Iraq's Sulaimaniya province.

There were no major protests Wednesday in Sulaimaniya, but security forces from the regional capital of Irbil have been deployed in the area, enforcing curfews after Tuesday's violence.

Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Tuesday while on an official visit to Germany he understood the protesters' frustrations, but that torching the offices of political parties was "not helpful."

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said Wednesday it was "deeply concerned" about the unrest and issued a plea for restraint.

"The people have a right to partake in peaceful demonstrations, and the authorities have the responsibility of protecting their citizens, including peaceful protesters," UNAMI said.

The U.N. mission also urged the KRG to respect the rights of the media after Kurdish security forces took a private Kurdish television station, NRT TV, off the air.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Japan to procure two destroyers to monitor China's maritime activities

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 15:26, December 20, 2017

"The minister of finance approved the allocation of 105.5 billion yen for the procurement of two new destroyers under the fiscal 2018 draft budget, as we need more destroyers for surveillance purposes due to China's maritime expansion and other factors," said Itsunori Onodera, Japan's minister of defense on Tuesday, who added that China has been using the most advanced destroyers for its surveillance activities.

According to an announcement released by Japan's defense ministry on Monday, the new destroyers can perform anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare operations, as well as other tasks, including minesweeping, which until now has been implemented by minesweepers.

Onodera's claims are supported by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who on the same day called on government to strengthen maritime security.

"We will advance efforts to secure large patrol vessels equipped with helicopters for response in the territorial waters around the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, new jets for maritime surveillance, and large research vessels for maritime surveys," Abe said.

According to Abe, the maritime security environment remains severe, so Japan cannot let its guard down for "even a moment."

Finger pointing has being escalating between China and Japan regarding the Diaoyu Islands in recent years, especially after Japan illegally purchased three disputed islands in 2012. China has repeatedly reiterated its sovereignty over the Islands, urging Japan to face up to history and stop all provocations that harm China's territorial sovereignty.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Myanmar blocks UN investigator amid Rohingya crackdown

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 10:00AM

The United Nations (UN)'s independent investigator on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has been denied access to the country, amid a deadly crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims there.

UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee had been due to visit the Southeast Asian country in January in an effort to assess the human rights situation there, including widespread abuses against the Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State.

The Myanmarese government, however, blocked her visit and told her that it would not cooperate with her or grant her access to the country for the rest of her tenure, she said in a statement on Wednesday.

She suggested that that was a sign Myanmar had something "terribly awful" to hide in Rakhine.

"This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country," she added.

Lee visited Myanmar back in January this year but was denied access to some areas in Rakhine. Citing "security concerns," the government only allowed her to speak to individuals who were preapproved by it in Rohingya villages. During her 12-day visit to Myanmar, she spent three days in Rakhine.

The government released a statement later that month, saying it would refuse entry to members of a UN investigation team focusing on the situation of the Rohingya people.

Backed by the government and Buddhist mobs, the military launched a heavy-handed crackdown against the Muslim minority in Rakhine State late last year. That crackdown intensified in August.

Over the past three months, government troops, apart from raping, have been committing killings, making arbitrary arrests, and carrying out mass arson attacks to destroy houses in predominantly-Rohingya villages in Rakhine.

Only in a period of one month since August 25, the crackdown, called by the UN an "ethnic cleansing campaign," killed some 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including more than 700 children, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Almost 870,000 Rohingya Muslims have so far been forced to flee to Bangladesh. About 660,000 of them after August 25.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said on Monday that those behind the horrific crimes against the minority group should be brought to justice. He did not rule out the possibility that Myanmar's leader and military face genocide charges in court in the future.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UN Special Rapporteur Will Be Denied Access to Myanmar, Country's Gov't Informed

Sputnik News

11:29 20.12.2017(updated 12:05 20.12.2017)

The UN Myanmar human rights investigator was set to visit the country in January to review the human rights situation in the country, including abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

According to UN human rights investigator Yanghee Lee, she was denied to access Myanmar, as the country's government notified her, ceasing cooperation with the UN envoy for the whole period of her tenure, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has reported.

"This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country," Lee said in a statement.

As the UN envoy has explained, the ban took place weeks before her visit to the country, set for January, aiming to assess human rights across the area, including abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State.

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein in his interview to Sputnik on December 19 accused the Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor of Myanmar and the de-facto leader of the state of one of the worst humanitarian crisis of the recent times, saying that it might be qualified as genocide in the future.

The Rohignya minority remains the most persecuted group in the Buddhist country, which has forced a lot of them to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and other countries, causing probably the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.

The US has reacted to the issue, calling acts against this minority an "ethnic cleansing," and introducing a bill on sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military officials, while a number of human-rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International, have accused Myanmar of "apartheid".

The conflict betweet Rohignya and Myanmar's government recently escalated after Muslim insurgents attacked security posts in the state on August 25, 2017.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UN rights expert 'disappointed' by Myanmar's decision to refuse visit

20 December 2017  The United Nations expert on the human rights situation in Myanmar on Wednesday expressed disappointment at the Government's decision to deny her all access to the country and withdraw cooperation for the duration of her tenure.

"I am puzzled and disappointed by this decision by the Myanmar Government," said UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee. "This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country."

Ms. Lee had been due to visit Myanmar in January to assess the state of human rights countrywide, including the human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

The Special Rapporteur said she hoped Myanmar would revisit the decision.

"Only two weeks ago, Myanmar's Permanent Representative informed the Human Rights Council of its continuing cooperation with the UN, referencing the relationship with my role as Special Rapporteur," she said.

"Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July."

Ms. Lee had previously been afforded cooperation and access to Myanmar, and had maintained a relationship of mutual respect with the Government. The Government has now claimed that her end-of-mission statement in July was biased and unfair.

The Special Rapporteur's mandate requires two visits to Myanmar a year, in order to report to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. Since taking up the mandate in June 2014, she has visited six times.

While the Government had responded positively to past requests to visit, access to some areas had been consistently refused, with the authorities citing security concerns.

The Government is also not cooperating with the Human Rights Council independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar, established in March 2017.

"It is a shame that Myanmar has decided to take this route," said Ms. Lee.

"The Government has repeatedly denied violations of human rights are occurring throughout Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine state. They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise," said the expert.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Myanmar Bans Special UN Envoy From Visiting Country

By VOA News December 20, 2017

The United Nation's special human rights envoy to Myanmar says the government is barring her from visiting the country to assess the current situation in the East Asian nation.

Wednesday's announcement by Yanghee Lee coincides with Myanmar's military disclosing the discovery of 10 bodies in a mass grave in northwestern Rakhine state, which more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims once called home before fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a brutal military offensive.

The grave was discovered Monday in the village of Inn Din. The army says it is conducting an investigation.

The South Korean-born Lee said she is "puzzled and disappointed" by the government's decision, which gives off "a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine."

Amnesty International condemned the decision, calling on the international community to demand access to the region.

"The Myanmar military claim they have done nothing wrong during the past months. If so, the authorities should have nothing to hide. Why are they denying access for independent and impartial investigators?" said James Gomez, Amnesty International's Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Myanmar's military has been accused of launching a scorched earth campaign in August against Rohingya villages in response to attacks on Myanmar police outposts by Rohingya militants.

Rohingya refugees have told human rights workers of a host of atrocities committed by security forces, including random shootings, rapes and the burning down of homes and entire villages. Myanmar dismisses the stories as exaggerated, and the army has cleared itself of any abuses.

The United Nations has described the reported actions carried out by Myanmar forces as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing."

The Rohingya minority has been denied citizenship and other rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Myanmar views the Rohingya as immigrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that many families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim visited the Mainnaghota refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Wednesday and echoed the U.N.'s assessment of the treatment of the Rohingya.

"This is ethnic cleansing," he said. "No doubt about it."

He called on Muslim nations to send aid, saying if they want to "do a blessing," the Rohingya refugee camps are "the best place. If they want to serve their religion, this is the best place."

While in Bangladesh, Yildirim handed over two ambulances from Turkey for use in the medical treatment of Rohingya refugees.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






South Korea ready to delay joint US drills to de-escalate with North: Moon

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 04:58PM

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he is ready to postpone joint military drills with the United States in order to reduce tensions with North Korea, provided that the North "stops its provocations."

Speaking to NBC News, Moon said Wednesday that he had already asked Washington to consider the plan.

"It is possible for South Korea and the US to review the possibility of postponing the exercises," Moon said in an interview with the US broadcaster NBC," he said.

"I have made such a suggestion to the US and the US is currently reviewing it. However, all this depends on how North Korea behaves," the president added.

Washington and Seoul have held a series of high-profile war games near the Korean Peninsula over the past months, amid an ongoing standoff over Pyongyang's development of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.

While North Korean leaders have denounced the joint military activity, which sometimes also involves Japan, as rehearsals for an invasion, the US and the South insist that the practices are defensive in nature.

Tensions between the two sides peaked earlier this month, when the US and its allies launched large-scale joint aerial drills in the Pacific, which involved more than 230 aircraft, including six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.

The most recent exercise, dubbed the "Warrior Strike," saw American and South Korean troops practice infiltrating North Korea and removing the country's nuclear weapons in the event of war, according to South Korea news agency Yonhap.

The war games were said to be a response to the North's test-firing of what US military experts said was an all-new Hwasong-15 missile capable of hitting targets across the US mainland.

US seeking more aggressive approach

Despite the South's apparent push for de-escalation, the US seems to be adopting more aggressive policies against the North.

The administration of US President Donald Trump, which is seeking to slap more UN sanctions on Pyongyang, is now working with the UN Security Council to blacklist a number of ships that have reportedly circumvented the bans, according to Reuters.

The 10 vessels are accused of conducting ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or transporting North Korea's coal.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Much-delayed Postal Road project gains momentum

The much-delayed the Postal Road project in the Tarai has finally gathered pace, with the first phase of the works set to be completed in two years.
U.S. Sanctions Chechen Leader Kadyrov, Four Others Under Magnitsky Act

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Treasury has hit the leader of Russia's Chechnya region with financial sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that aims to punish Russians alleged to be involved in human rights violations.

Ramzan Kadyrov, whose name was added to the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on December 20, is one of the most prominent Russian officials to be added to the list established by the 2012 law, a move that infuriated the Kremlin.

Four other individuals were also added to the sanctions list: Ayub Katayev, Yulia Mayorova, Andrei Pavlov, and Aleksei Sheshenya.

Kadyrov, and another man appearing to be from Chechnya, were targeted for "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" in Chechnya. The Treasury Department said one allegedly was involved in abusing gay men in Chechnya in 2017.

The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta earlier this year was the first to document that police in Chechnya rounded up, tortured, and humiliated dozens of gay or bisexual men.

The report was later corroborated in part by RFE/RL as well as by Human Rights Watch, which said the "antigay purge" lasted from late February until at least early April and that "it was ordered and conducted by officials in Chechnya."

Kadyrov himself denied the accusations, as did the Kremlin.

The other three were accused of involvement in the criminal conspiracy exposed by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian whistle-blower for whom the law is named.

The United States passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012, punishing people alleged to be connected to Magnitsky's death and the massive tax-fraud scheme he helped uncover.

Magnitsky was employed by British-American financier William Browder when he was arrested and charged with the $230 million tax-fraud scheme that he helped uncover.

He died in a Moscow jail in 2009. His friends and family say he was tortured while detained.

A Council of Europe investigation concluded the conditions leading up to his death amounted to torture.

In the wake of the 2012 U.S. law, Moscow banned American parents from adopting Russian children. Congress later passed an expanded version of the Magnitsky law, amid a secretive lobbying campaign in Washington aimed at undermining the facts of the Magnitsky case.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-sanctions-kadyrov-four- others-magnitsky-act/28929548.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






News Analysis: U.S. Policy Toward Russia Toughens, Despite Trump Talk

Mike Eckel December 20, 2017

Statements from the Kremlin and the White House last weekend about thwarting a purported terrorist attack in St. Petersburg seemed to suggest that the United States and Russia were entering a new era of comity and cooperation.

That's not the case by a long shot, judging by the countervailing indications from the White House's new National Security Strategy, the aisles of Congress, and the State Department, among others.

The Kremlin has suggested as much, too, most recently on December 20 when President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said Russia was "working on and taking active measures aimed at defending our interests against a backdrop of possible new restrictive actions and sanctions" by unnamed countries.

Within much of the Washington foreign-policy establishment and among many members of Congress, the hardening line toward Russia is welcome in light of U.S. intelligence warnings that Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

But the contrast with U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated calls for greater cooperation with Moscow makes the tough talk coming from policy officials all the more striking.

"I am surprised by how tough the language is toward Russia, because while it reflects where a lot of the foreign-policy establishment is, it clearly doesn't reflect where the president is or has been," says Richard Haass, a former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In August, Trump reluctantly signed into law new U.S. sanctions against Moscow for its actions in Ukraine, Syria, and cyberspace. Senior administration officials have recently accused Russia of offenses from seeking to cause "crises of confidence" in the West to abrogating a key Cold War treaty.

Such concerns were underscored by the National Security Strategy issued by the U.S. president on December 18, which calls out Russia as a "revisionist power" seeking to "undermine the legitimacy of democracies."

Cooperation Or Confrontation?

Throughout his campaign and into the early months of his presidency, Trump repeatedly called for closer cooperation with Russia and Putin.

The fight against international terrorism and Islamic State (IS) militants in particular is foremost among the areas Trump and his inner circle say Moscow and Washington should be working closely together. A nuclear-armed Pyongyang and resolving tensions on the Korean Peninsula is another.

"There's been a consistently...denying or a sanguine view about Russia and a tremendous optimism about Russia," Haass says.

Trump has also repeatedly cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence consensus on Russian election meddling.

But U.S. investigations into contacts and possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russians have dogged Trump's first year in office, efforts that he has decried as a "witch-hunt."

The December 17 announcements from Washington and Moscow that the CIA provided intelligence to its main Russian counterpart, the Federal Security Service, to help thwart a terror attack in Russia's second city was striking not only in its timing but also in the fulsome praise between the Kremlin and White House, something not seen in years.

The Republican-led Congress has at times sought to limit Trump's ability to maneuver on Russia. That prompted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to complain over the summer as lawmakers moved to cement existing sanctions and impose new ones.

And when Trump grudgingly signed that legislation into law, he made clear in an accompanying signing statement that he did not want to be handcuffed, particularly in his effort to resolve the 3 1/2-year conflict in Ukraine, pitting Russia-backed fighters against government troops.

"My administration particularly expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our important work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine," the statement said.

Missiles Vs. Diplomacy

Earlier this month, Congress passed a $700 billion defense-policy bill that contained several provisions that have irked Moscow. They include more money for Ukrainian security and billions more to bolster U.S. and NATO military deployments in Eastern Europe. There is also funding to develop a new ground-launched cruise missile in response to a missile that Washington says Russia has deployed in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Trump again pushed back, saying those provisions "could potentially dictate the position of the United States in external military and foreign affairs" and interfere with diplomacy.

Moscow has said a major irritant in relations was the decision by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, in the final weeks of his presidency to seize two Russian diplomatic compounds near Washington and New York. The Russian Foreign Ministry repeatedly expressed hope for their return.

Not only has that not happened; in August, the State Department ordered the closure of Russia's San Francisco Consulate, which may have been an important site for Russian intelligence gathering.

"Russia continues aggressive behavior toward other regional neighbors by interfering in election processes and promoting non-democratic ideals," Tillerson said last month. "We, together with our friends in Europe, recognize the active threat of a recently resurgent Russia."

Last week, previewing the release of the National Security Strategy, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster did not appear to be laying the groundwork for any softening in the administration's approach.

Russia has pioneered "new-generation warfare" that uses "subversion and disinformation and propaganda using cybertools, operating across multiple domains, that attempt to divide our communities within our nations and pit them against each other, and try to create crises of confidence," he said on December 12.

Then this week, McMaster said that "we have to counter Russia's destabilizing behavior and the sophisticated campaigns of propaganda and disinformation."

However, in the speech to unveil his administration's 68-page National Security Strategy, Trump gave only passing mention of possible threats from Russia before turning to the topic of potential partnership with Moscow, says Thomas Wright, director of the Brookings Institute's Center on the United States and Europe.

He and other foreign-policy observers and veterans say the perceived disconnect between Trump's statements and some officials' policy statements and speeches could hint that some cabinet members and other senior administration policymakers might not be totally in sync with their boss.

"There is clearly a difference between the policy...of the cabinet members of the Trump administration involved in making policy toward Russia; between them and the president and I suppose a small group of people in the White House," says Angela Stent, who served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia in 2004-06.

Haass says divisions might not bode well for foreign governments -- Russia included -- trying to discern Washington's policies not just toward Moscow, but on issues like Syria, North Korea, or Iran as well.

"This is just one statement among many that this administration will make," Haass says. "The risk is that it will tend to be dismissed if the inconsistencies in it...become pronounced."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-trump-putin-tough-policy-despite-talk/28929575.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






What is Known About Russia's 5th Gen Husky-Class Stealth Subs

Sputnik News

18:31 20.12.2017

The first Husky-class submarine is planned to be completed by 2030. The fifth-generation sub will join Russia's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, many of which are currently being modernized, including with advanced cruise missiles.

As Russia continues to build its new Yasen-class nuclear submarines and keeps modernizing the Soviet-era Shchuka-class submarines, the Russia Navy has set its sights on a fifth-generation multipurpose sub, which is already in development.

The project is known under the name "Husky" and is planned to replace the Shchuka- and Yasen-class submarines.

On Wednesday, the commander of the Russian Navy, Adm. Vladimir Korolev, reviewed the preliminary designed of a fifth-generation submarine, which was developed by St. Petersburg Marine Design Bureau "Malachite."

The research and development stage of the project is scheduled to be completed next year. The first Husky-class submarine will be laid down in 2023-2024 and will be completed by 2030, Deputy Navy Commander Vice Adm. Viktor Bursuk told Sputnik in July.

The construction will be funded under the 2018-2025 State Armaments Program, adopted in 2015 and defining massive military hardware upgrades, with the plan of 70 percent rearmament by 2020.

Open sources provide very few details on the project, but what is known already suggests that it will be a breakthrough in scientific and technological terms.

Hypersonic Arsenal

According to information from open sources, the main feature of the new Russian submarine will be armed with the 3M22 Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missile, which is already undergoing tests.

The specifications of the missile are also kept secret. It is known that the Zircon will be able to reach speeds of Mach 5-10 (5-10 times faster than the speed of sound) and hit a target at a distance of 300-500 kilometers. Currently, the Russian Navy has in service anti-ship missiles with a maximum speed of Mach 2-2.5.

"The treats are getting more obvious and more dangerous now. They need to be responded," Adm. Vladimir Komoedov, former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, told RIA Novosti. "I advocate for a multipurpose submarine with maximum versatility. It should have reliable target detections and weapons systems. In addition, it should be able to receive target information from aviation and from space."

According to Western and Russian experts, the deployment of Zircon missiles will weaken the positions of the United States' naval force, which is based on aircraft- carrier striking groups. The National Interest's observer Sebastien Roblin suggested that the new missile would be more dangerous for the US Navy than the Soviet-made Granit missiles (NATO reporting name Shipwreck).

According to Komoedov, the Russian Navy needs new multipurpose submarines that would be armed with a hypersonic anti-ship missile, instead of the Kalibr subsonic cruise missile.

Stealth, Equipped With Robots

The key difference between the Husky-class and the submarines of previous generations is its extremely low level of noise. According to Bursuk, the new submarine will be at least twice as silent as the Yasen- and Shchuka-class.

The construction of the Husky-class will involve light and durable composite materials. The submarine will be equipped with advanced electronic systems and will have automatic control and weapons systems. As a result, the submarine will be relatively compact and will be capable of simultaneously tracking a large number of targets.

Oleg Vlasov, head of the robotics sector of the Malakhit Marine Engineering Bureau, said that the Husky-class submarine would would be equipped with robotic systems to be used for carrying out tasks for military and civilian purposes.

"I can say that there will be robotics on the Husky, which will work in two environments. The development is already underway, now that the forms are laid out, they will be specified," Vlasov told Sputnik.

Russia's Fleet of Nuclear Submarines

The construction of fifth-generation nuclear-powered submarines will begin after the commission of seven Yasen-class (project 885) submarines, which are planned to join the Russian Navy by 2023. The flagship, the Severodvinks, is already in service.

The second submarine, the Kazan, has been floated out and is undergoing sea trials, after which it will join the military in 2018. It will be armed with 533-mm torpedoes, Kalibr-PL cruise missiles and P-800 Oniks missiles.

"A global war today is unlikely, but the risk of regional conflicts is high. Taking this into account, submarines armed with cruise missiles will be tremendously important because they can attack both surface and ground targets," Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, former commander of the Northern Fleet, told RIA Novosti.

The Russian Naval Doctrine envisages that such submarines will be the core of the multipurpose submarine force until the Husky-class submarines enter service.

According to Popov, today the most important capability of a naval force is versatility.

According to the Military Balance report by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the Russian multipurpose submarine force currently includes one Yasen-class submarine, 11 Shchuka-class submarines, five Antey-class subs, two Kondor submarines (project 945A) and three project 671RTM (Shchuka-class, second generation) submarines.

Currently, several project 971 submarines are undergoing modernization, including being equipped with Kalibr-PL missiles. By 2025, four Antey submarines will be upgraded with Kalibr and Oniks missiles.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Treasury Targets Individuals Involved in the Sergei Magnitsky Case and Other Gross Violations of Human Rights in Russia

U.S. Department of the Treasury

December 20, 2017

A total of 49 individuals have been designated under the Magnitsky Act

WASHINGTON  The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated five individuals pursuant to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 (the Magnitsky Act). In addition, the U.S. Department of State issued its annual submission to Congress on the U.S. Government's actions to implement the law. As a result of today's actions, any property or interests in property of those designated within U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and transactions by U.S. persons involving the designated persons are generally prohibited.

"Treasury remains committed to holding accountable those involved in the Sergei Magnitsky affair, including those with a role in the criminal conspiracy and fraud scheme that he uncovered," said OFAC Director John E. Smith. "We will continue to use the Magnitsky Act to aggressively target gross violators of human rights in Russia, including individuals responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and other despicable acts."

The Magnitsky Act (P.L. 112-208) targets individuals who are responsible for or participated in efforts to conceal the legal liability for, or financially benefitted from, the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or were involved in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. It also targets those responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals seeking to either expose illegal activity by Russian government officials or obtain, exercise, defend, or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms in Russia.

Today's action brings to 49 the total number of individuals designated by OFAC pursuant to the Magnitsky Act. In addition to these designations, OFAC today announced regulations implementing the Magnitsky Act, which will take effect on Thursday, December 21, 2017 when they are published in the Federal Register.

Sergei Magnitsky's Detention, Abuse, Death, and the Criminal Conspiracy He Uncovered

Sergei Magnitsky was an attorney-auditor who uncovered a large-scale tax fraud scheme while performing audit work for the Russia-based Hermitage Fund. In November 2008, he was arrested and detained by Russian authorities shortly after testifying as a witness as part of a complaint filed by Hermitage alleging that a group of officials in the Russian Interior Ministry had been involved in a 5.4 billion ruble ($230 million) tax fraud involving three Hermitage-owned companies, Riland, Parfenion, and Makhaon. Russian Interior Ministry officials previously had raided the Hermitage offices and removed the original seals of incorporation for those three Hermitage-owned companies. The companies then were illegally re-registered under different ownership, and sham lawsuits were brought against those companies  with the same lawyers on both sides of the case  resulting in large court judgments against the three companies, for which the companies then claimed a significant and illegal tax refund from the Russian Government. For exposing this fraud, Magnitsky was subjected to organized physical and psychological pressures while detained, and on November 16, 2009, he died in a pre-trial detention center in Moscow, Russia.

OFAC today designated Alexei Sheshenya for his involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Sheshenya was the shareholder of Grand Aktiv, the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Parfenion. The lawsuit involved one of six claims against the three Hermitage Fund subsidiaries, Parfenion, Riland, and Makhaon, illegally re-registered under different ownership in 2007. The judgment in these lawsuits served as the basis for an illegal tax refund in 2007, which Magnitsky exposed.

Yulia Mayorova was also designated for her involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Mayorova represented Makhaon and Riland (two of the subsidiaries of the Hermitage Fund illegally re-registered under different ownership in 2007). As noted above, the judgments in the lawsuits served as the basis for an illegal tax refund in 2007, which Magnitsky exposed. The Hermitage Fund had no prior knowledge of or acquaintance with Mayorova and never hired her or authorized her appointment.

OFAC also designated Andrei Pavlov for his involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Pavlov represented two of the illegally re-registered Hermitage Fund subsidiaries in separate lawsuits brought by a company he helped to register. The Hermitage Fund had no prior knowledge of or acquaintance with Pavlov and never hired him or authorized his appointment.

Gross Violations of Internationally Recognized Human Rights in Russia

OFAC designated Ramzan Kadyrov for being responsible for extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals seeking to expose illegal activity carried out by officials of the Government of the Russian Federation, or to obtain, exercise, defend, or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms, such as the freedoms of religion, expression, association, and assembly, and the rights to a fair trial and democratic elections, in Russia. As the head of the Chechen Republic, Kadyrov oversees an administration involved in disappearances and extra-judicial killings. One of Kadyrov's political opponents was believed to have been murdered at Kadyrov's direction, after making allegations of torture and ill-treatment taking place in Chechnya, including alleged torture carried out by Kadyrov personally.

Ayub Kataev was also designated for being responsible for extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals seeking to exercise internationally recognized human rights and freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, association, and assembly, in Russia. Kataev is a law enforcement official in the Russian Republic of Chechnya. Kataev is reported to have been involved in abuses against gay men in Chechnya during the first half of 2017.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Sanctions Chechen Strongman Kadyrov, 4 Other Russians

By Ken Bredemeier December 20, 2017

The United States has financially blacklisted five Russians, including Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whom it accused of carrying out deadly repression against people trying to expose government corruption.

The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday, as head of the Chechen republic, Kadyrov "oversees an administration involved in disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

One of Kadyrov's political opponents was believed to have been murdered at Kadyrov's direction, after making allegations of torture and ill-treatment taking place in Chechnya, including alleged torture carried out by Kadyrov personally."

In addition, the U.S. accused Ayub Kataev, a prison warden and head of a branch of the Chechen internal affairs ministry, of extrajudicial killing and other human rights violations, including abuse of gay men.

The U.S. alleged that three others, Alexei Sheshenya, Yulia Mayorova, and Andrei Pavlov were involved in the $230 million tax fraud conspiracy uncovered by attorney Sergei Magnitsky at the Russia-based Hermitage Fund.

The U.S. action came under its 2012 law named after Magnitsky, who after exposing the Hermitage fraud was subjected to physical and mental abuse while detained by Russian officials.He died in a pre-trial detention center in Moscow in 2009, with his treatment in captivity drawing worldwide condemnation.

The sanctions block the five individuals from conducting any financial transactions in the United States and also generally prohibits any Americans from doing business with them.

The director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, John Smith, said the U.S. agency "remains committed to holding accountable those involved in the Sergei Magnitsky affair, including those with a role in the criminal conspiracy and fraud scheme that he uncovered.We will continue to use the Magnitsky Act to aggressively target gross violators of human rights in Russia, including individuals responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and other despicable acts."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Russian MoD Denies Allegations of Strikes in Syria's Idlib

Sputnik News

16:14 20.12.2017(updated 17:21 20.12.2017)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian Defense Ministry has denied allegations of carrying out airstrikes in Syria's Idlib province.

"The Russian Defense Ministry denies the reports of some western media outlets that Russian Aerospace Forces' planes allegedly launched strikes near the Ma'ar Shoreen settlement in the Syrian province of Idlib The Russian Aerospace Forces' planes did not carry out sorties in this region," the statement read.

Earlier in the day, media reports citing the controversial NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights emerged alleging that almost 20 people were killed in the village by either a Syrian or a Russian airstrike in the Idlib province.

The province, bordering Turkey, is part of the de-escalation agreements brokered by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran. According to the deal covering the Idlib province, Turkey deployed observation points in the area.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said recently that the operation in Idlib aimed to support the Free Syrian Army rebels' anti-terror campaign has been largely completed.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Taiwan moves to upgrade 'three mini links' with China

ROC Central News Agency

2017/12/20 17:05:48

Taipei, Dec. 20 (CNA) The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said Wednesday that from next year, it will streamline the process for Chinese nationals traveling via the "three mini links," between mainland China and Taiwan's two offshore counties.

Starting Jan. 1 next year, the NIA said, Chinese nationals holding a permit for travel to Taiwan from Fujian Province in China will no longer be required to present a so-called G note detailing the date and purpose of their travel, once they are arriving in Kinmen or Lienchiang (Matsu), two island counties under Taiwan's administration.

In addition, the time to review applications by Chinese citizens to visit via the three mini links for artistic, cultural or business purposes will be reduced from five to three days, the NIA said.

The immigration agency said Taiwan will also expand the range of activities allowed for Chinese travelers who visit via the three mini links.

The new measures will be implemented not just for greater travel convenience, but also to encourage more exchanges between the people on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and stimulate local tourism, NIA official Lin Tse-chien () said.

Chinese visitor arrivals to Taiwan have decreased since President Tsai Ing-wen () took office in May 2016, mainly due to strained cross-strait relations.

In 2016, visitor arrivals from China dropped by an annual 16 percent to 3.5 million, according to Tourism Bureau data.

This year, the number of Chinese visitors fell to 2.4 million in the period January-October from 3.1 million in the same period last year, representing a decline of 27.45 percent, the data showed.

(By Claudia Liu and Elizabeth Hsu)

Enditem/pc

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkey court sentences 15 soldiers to life in prison over coup attempt

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 04:44PM

A Turkish court has handed down life sentences to 15 soldiers for their role in a failed military coup in July 2016, which sparked a wide-scale crackdown.

The court in Silivri, outside Istanbul, on Wednesday convicted the men, most of whom officers, of "participating in an attempt to invade" Istanbul provincial offices of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The case is one of several against the people suspected of involvement in the July 15, 2016 attempt to oust Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey witnessed the coup attempt when a faction of the Turkish military declared that the government of President Erdogan was no more in charge of the country. However, over the course of two days, the putsch was suppressed.

The Turkish government accuses the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of having orchestrated the attempted coup. Gulen, a former Erdogan ally turned arch-foe, has denied the allegation.

Turkey has called on Washington to extradite Gulen, but the demand has not been taken heed of.

Turkey, which remains in a state of emergency since the coup, has been engaged in suppressing the media and opposition groups suspected to have played a role in the failed coup.

In a post-coup crackdown, Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, policemen, teachers, and civil servants and has arrested over 55,000 others.

Many rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have denounced Ankara's heavy clampdown.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






No Ruling the Waves for Royal Navy as Major Warships Remain Tied Up in UK Ports

Sputnik News

17:27 20.12.2017

For the first time in living memory, Britain has no major warships on operations anywhere in the world, it has been revealed, as one senior defense expert warns UK military might is less than half what it once was.

A combination of mechanical problems, maintenance, holiday leave and a shortage of crew manpower has resulted in all six of the UK's Type 45 destroyers  HMS Daring, HMS Dauntless, HMS Diamond, HMS Defender, HMS Dragon, and HMS Duncan  all being left tied up in Portsmouth harbor.

Similarly the navy's 13-strong fleet of Type 23 frigates are split between Portsmouth and Devonport in Plymouth to allow maintenance programs to be carried out as well as give sailors leave over the Christmas period.

The only vessel still at sea is HMS St Albans, presently on duty protecting home waters. It is scheduled to take over as the British Royal Navy's flagship when HMS Ocean, a helicopter carrier, goes out of service early in 2018.

In an interview, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at The Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S defense strategy and use of military force, admitted the situation was "a bit of an aberration.

"But it is true overall, UK military strength is probably less than half of what it once was, say in the 1980s," he told Sputnik.

Unprecedented

Vice-Admiral John McAnally, national president of the Royal Naval Association, described the absence of deployed frigates and destroyers as being unprecedented. He blamed stringent cuts to the defense budget by successive UK governments for the embarrassing situation.

In an interview, he told The Times: "This is an indication that the navy is too small. I am distressed and alarmed. I do not see that it is easily remedied. The only answer is an increase in the defense budget. It is too small to meet what government want the armed forces to do."

Gulf Role

Normally there is, at least, one frigate or destroyer deployed to the Gulf on a permanent basis, but HMS Diamond which was due to take up that role, returned to Portsmouth after suffering a propeller fault.

HMS Duncan

Naval chiefs are now prepared to send HMS Duncan to fill this void, although it will take part also in a NATO role in the Mediterranean at the beginning on the new year.

A Ministry of Defense spokesman said: "The Royal Navy is deployed globally on operations and will be protecting our national interests throughout Christmas and the new year."

This latest plight to hit the UK navy comes just days after it was revealed Britain's newest and most expensive warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, has been hit by technical problems, namely a leak around one of its two propellers during sea trials. It's not expected to be commissioned for at least another three years.

Tobias Ellwood, the veterans minister, took to social media to reassure people over the problem on board the warship, built at a cost of 3.1 billion (US$4.15 billion). He posted on Twitter: "Let's keep things in perspective. It's a 65,000 tonne ship taking on a bathtub of water every hour. Not uncommon with big ships  will be fixed."

Gavin Williamson, Britain's Defense Secretary, insisted also the cost of the repair will not be met by the British taxpayer but by the companies involved in constructing the aircraft carrier.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Sea Ceptor missile test firing complete at sea

Firing trials from the first Royal Navy ship to test the new Sea Ceptor air defence system have been successfully completed.

20 December 2017

The second ship fitted with Sea Ceptor has also conducted a successful firing to verify the weapon system upgrade.

The new missile defence system will provide UK personnel with a powerful shield against airborne targets  including hostile combat jets and helicopters, as well enemy missiles travelling at supersonic speeds.

The completion of the firing trials from Type 23 frigate HMS Argyll means Sea Ceptor can proceed to the next stage of the acceptance into service with the Royal Navy.

Minister for Defence Procurement Harriett Baldwin said:

"In the face of intensifying global threats, cutting-edge systems like Sea Ceptor will keep the UK safe. These successful trials from HMS Argyll mark a major milestone towards the introduction of this world-class missile system into service for the Royal Navy."

"Work to develop and install Sea Ceptor across the Royal Navy is also boosting British industry, supporting 600 jobs in the Bristol, Stevenage and Bolton areas."

The first firings of Sea Ceptor were conducted from HMS Argyll at the Hebrides range off the coast of Scotland and involved firing the system to assess its performance against a range of scenarios.

Two sets of trials were conducted by Defence, Equipment and Support (DE&S) and supported by a number of other organisations, lasting around two weeks each.

During the firings the system was first tested against single aerial targets. This was followed by more demanding tests, including a single target engaged by two missiles and a twin firing (two targets, each engaged by a single missile at the same time).

An installation test firing from HMS Westminster - the second ship fitted with Sea Ceptor - took place in November, with each of the Type 23 ships due to carry out installation test firings in due course.

Lieutenant Nick Andrews, HMS Westminster's Anti-Air-Warfare Officer, said:

"HMS Westminster managed to explore the real potential of the system during her training and to say it is a real game changer is an understatement. Unlike its predecessor, the system is capable of defending ships other than Westminster herself. Whether it's engaging multiple air threats or fast incoming attack craft, Sea Ceptor represents a massive capability upgrade for the Type 23 frigate."

Designed and manufactured by MBDA in the UK, Sea Ceptor is being fitted to replace the Sea Wolf weapon system on the Type 23 frigates and will provide the same capability for the Royal Navy's future Type 26 Frigates.

Sea Ceptor defends escort vessels within a maritime task group, such as for the new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, and with HMS Argyll due to deploy to Japan next year, the trials successfully showcased the short range capabilities of the new defence system. Another Type 23, HMS Sutherland, is due to deploy to Australia in the New Year.

The system uses a new UK-developed missile, the Common Anti-air Modular Missile or CAMM, that is capable of reaching speeds of up to three times the speed of sound, and will have the ability to deal with multiple targets simultaneously, protecting an area of around 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometres) over land or sea.

Sea Ceptor supports around 600 MBDA jobs and its supply chain in key locations across the UK such as Bristol, Stevenage and Bolton.

Richard Smart, Director Weapons, for the MOD's procurement organisation Defence Equipment and Support, which is based at MOD Abbey Wood in Bristol, said:

"These trials are a significant step in getting the Sea Ceptor weapon system to acceptance and a great example of how important live trials are in helping us to understand a new military capability before using it in operational service. The success of the trials is testimony to the hard work put in by the DE&S project team and the working relationship they have with industry."

"The results of the firings are now going through extensive analysis; our assessment so far is positive and shows how Sea Ceptor is capable of protecting both the ship which fired it and other ships in its task group, which could include the UK's two new Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carriers."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Mustang wears deserted look as locals move to lower land to avoid cold

Most of the villages in Himalayan district Mustang have worn a deserted look with all locals moving to lower land to escape cold.
Conflict sharply escalates in east Ukraine: Monitor

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 20, 2017 05:54AM

A European organization, which monitors the implementation of peace in eastern Ukraine, has warned about a sharp deterioration in the security situation in the region.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said in a statement on Tuesday that it had recorded 16,000 ceasefire violations between December 11 and 17, a 35-percent increase compared to the week before.

"We note with concern a sharp deterioration in the security situation with ceasefire violations reaching levels not recorded since February this year," said chief monitor Ertugrul Apakan.

The ceasefire was implemented to put an end to the conflict that erupted between pro-Russia forces and Ukraine's military in the region back in 2014.

In March 2014, the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for secession from Ukraine and unification with Russia. The armed conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted shortly afterwards. The crisis has so far left over 10,000 people dead and more than a million others displaced, according to the United Nations (UN).

The pro-Russians have turned the two regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east  collectively known as the Donbass  into self-proclaimed republics.

Apakan explained that the latest escalation of conflict indicates an established trend "in which a recommitment to the ceasefire by the sides was followed by a steady increase in the level of violence, culminating in fierce fighting."

Meanwhile, several aid agencies issued warnings over the humanitarian situation in the Donbass.

The situation deteriorated there after a Monday attack on the village of Novoluhanske, which affected some 2,000 residents, according to the UN's humanitarian arm. At least eight civilians were wounded and more than 50 buildings were damaged in the Monday shelling.

The world body's High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Twitter that the residents were fleeing the area in extremely cold conditions.

The Ukrainian military accused the pro-Russia forces of "deliberately firing" more than 40 times from multiple-launch rocket systems at the village.

The pro-Russians, however, denied attacking Novoluhanske, saying the Ukrainian military had fired at the village to justify attacks on residential areas controlled by the pro-Russia forces. The pro-Russia forces also said attacks from the Ukrainian side had almost doubled in the past 24 hours.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Moscow of having a hand in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Moscow, however, dismisses the accusation.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UN Approves Measure Condemning Rights Violations In Russian-Annexed Crimea

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

The UN General Assembly has approved a resolution strongly condemning human rights violations in Russian-annexed Crimea and referring to Russia as an "occupying power" there.

The resolution,put forward by Ukraine and 30 other countries, was approved by 70 states. Twenty-six, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and China, voted against. Seventy-six countries abstained from voting.

Ukraine's Permanent Mission to the United Nations said that the resolution confirms there is an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia and condemns the retroactive application of Russian laws to the territory, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said the resolution was the "toughest one" yet to pass the UN, which adopted its first resolution condemning human rights abuses in Crimea with a similar vote a year ago.

"The pressure on Russia is being increased," Klimkin said on Twitter.

Ukrainian diplomats at the UN said Russia, which claims that Crimeans voted to join Russia in a March 2014 referendum that has not been internationally recognized, put "enormous pressure" on UN member states to reject the resolution or abstain from voting.

Ukrainian's UN mission said the resolution condemns the compulsory naturalization of Ukrainian citizens under the Russian occupation and calls for the immediate release of unlawfully detained Ukrainians.

The measure calls for an immediate end to all rights violations, including "arbitrary detentions, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," and demands that Russia fulfill the interim decision of the International Court of Justice on the restoration of rights and freedoms for Ukrainian citizens on the peninsula.

It urges Russia to revoke its decision declaring the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar people's assembly, an extremist organization and banning its activities. It also called on Moscow to reverse other limitations imposed on Crimean Tatars.

The resolution also appeals to Russia to maintain the teaching of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages in the territory.

The measure condemns Russia for failing to provide access to Crimea for the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission while it commends Ukraine for providing unhindered access to Crimea for journalists and human rights activists, and for supporting media and non-governmental organizations that were forced out of Crimea after Russia's takeover.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko thanked those who co-authored and voted for the resolution, calling them the "real friends of Ukrainian Crimea" in a Twitter post.

With reporting by Unian and Kyiv Post

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/un-general-assembly-approves- resolution-condemning-human-rights-violations- russia-annexed-crimea/28928165.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






EU's Mogherini Warns Situation In Eastern Ukraine Deteriorating

RFE/RL December 20, 2017

The European Union's top diplomat has warned that the humanitarian and security situation has "deteriorated abruptly" in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv government forces since 2014.

The comments by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on December 20 follow similar remarks made a day earlier by the U.S. special envoy for the Ukraine conflict, Kurt Volker, who said 2017 was the deadliest year in the region since the outbreak of violence three years ago.

The words of warning, issued in a statement by Mogherini's spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, came as international monitors reported intense shelling in recent days in parts of eastern Ukraine and continued violations of a cease-fire mandated under the so-called Minsk agreements.

The separatists in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions have been battling Ukrainian government forces since April 2014 in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 people.

The statement said OSCE monitors deployed in the region "have seen the highest number of cease-fire violations since February 2017."

The positioning of forces near residential areas and "firing from or toward critical infrastructure shows complete disrespect for peoples' lives," Kocijancic said in the statement.

Several cease-fire deals have been announced as part of the Minsk accords -- in September 2014 and February 2015 -- but they have failed to end the fighting.

"The cease-fire needs to be respected, [and] military forces must disengage and withdraw heavy weapons to verifiable storage areas," she said.

"We expect Russia, in particular, to make full and immediate use of its influence on the separatists in this regard."

The Trilateral Contact Group -- Ukraine, Russia, and the OSCE -- on December 20 announced that representatives had agreed on a "comprehensive, sustainable, and unlimited" cease-fire connected to the holiday period in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to begin on midnight on December 23.

Mogherini's spokeswoman called the agreement a "necessary step," but she added that "immediate restraint in the meantime remains imperative."

"We also reiterate that full, safe, and unhindered access for the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and its technical equipment throughout the entire area foreseen by its mandate is essential."

She said the EU sees "full implementation of the Minsk agreements as the basis for a sustainable political solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine that respects Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity," Mogherini added.

In his December 19 comments, Volker, the U.S. envoy, warned that hostilities are again ratcheting up in eastern Ukraine.

"A lot of people think that this has somehow turned into a sleepy, frozen conflict and it's stable and now we have...a cease-fire. It's a problem, but it's not a crisis," Volker said in a speech in Washington.

"That's completely wrong. It is a crisis. This has been the most violent year, 2017, and frankly last night was one of the most violent nights, certainly since February, and possibly this year," he said.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-mogherini- ukraine-crisis-deteriorating-russia -volker/28929755.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






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.
Following Honors success in the United States with its high-value X series, the company is announcing its expansion into Latin American markets across Central and South America. Honor will begin to sell smartphones in stores starting next year.

The company is certainly excited to see how its Honor 7X will do in the new region. The Latin American market is certainly different from North American markets in that people are more likely to purchase an unlocked phone at a physical store or through a carrier than directly from an online retailer. It will be interesting to see how Honor transitions into Latin America.

The company held a small reception in Miami where it announced the news to potential partners in the area. Miamis variety of cultures and large number of Spanish speakers makes it a major hub for trade and distribution with South American markets.

Honor will continue to invest heavily in order to fill a consumer need in an underserved market with the most competitive and inspirational products to Latin America. - Zack Zhang, Vice President of Honor USA.

Huawei already has a strong presence in South America, so translating that presence into a sub-brand shouldnt be terribly difficult. Honor is certainly after the younger crowd of consumers, so perhaps it will be easier to reach the always-connected generation of South and Central America.

Honor is going to bring the View 10 and the Honor 7X to Latin America  the same two devices that will be hitting the United States.

The Honor 7X puts an 18:9 display and an all-metal body with a fingerprint scanner and dual-camera for $199 in the States. Meanwhile, the View 10 features hardware and software identical to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro at a cost that directly rivals the OnePlus 5T.

Pricing and availability for these new markets have not been announced just yet, we may hear more at CES next month.

Source
Huawei sub brand Honor has announced that global sales of its X series of smartphones - consisting of devices from the Honor 4X to Honor 7X - has hit the 40 million milestone.

The company also revealed some sales figures for the newly-launched Honor 7X smartphone. 30,000 units were sold within the first two hours of November 11 sale in China, and 20,000 units were sold out in one hour in each of the three flash sales in India.

In London, sales in the first two weeks were double that of the Honor 6X, while in Russia, the number was triple, making Honor one of the top 3 brands in the country.

"In the United States, Honor 7X achieved a 250% growth in pre-paid orders from 5th Dec to 14th Dec compared to the sales of Honor 6X during the first 10 days of its debut," the press release said.
Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news

Login Sign Up

 New Ad-free Subscriber Login

Email

Password

Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password.

Stay logged in

Help
By Vasia Orion | Published on 2017/12/20

The upcoming two-episode drama "A Midsummer's Memory" has dropped its first teaser and things are looking pretty grim for our heroine's relationship prospects. Han Yeo-reum (Choi Kang-hee) has a few men in her life and from the school sweetheart to the one rejecting commitment, I can see why she would be somewhat frustrated over her dating luck.

Advertisement

The teaser is visually striking and the cast is lovely, which just makes the contrast of what we see and what our heroine experiences sting a little. May Han Yeo-reum put every man in his place, clear up her and their regrets and find a worthy mate, now or in her future.

Speaking of gentleman callers, the series has released stills of Lee Joon-hyuk as Park Hae-joon, a pop columnist who seems cold and rational, but is very warm in his love life. He dated Yeo-reum six years ago and everything was looking great. The man loved her a lot, but the obstacles of reality ended their relationship. Despite their break up, Hae-joon cannot forget our heroine.

I am curious to see and read more about the other characters as well, so I'll be keeping track of this and hope to watch it myself in the future.

Written by: Orion from 'Orion's Ramblings'

Sources (1)
One killed in road accident

A man died after being hit by a vehicle at Surunga municipality-4 along the East-West Highway in Rajbiraj on Wednesday.
Bob Geldof and Culture Minister Josepha Madigan with Dr Sandra Collins and Paul Shovlin from the National Library

The National Library of Ireland will hold exhibitions to showcase original material from Band Aid, after the charity's archive was donated by Bob Geldof.

One element of the deal to secure the archive for the library, which was sought-after around the world, was that it would be shown to the public.

Geldof said the decision to gift the material to his hometown was a thank you to the people Ireland for their support of the Live Aid and Band Aid movement.

As an example of the generosity of the Irish, he spoke about one case in which two elderly women gave their wedding rings to help raise funds.

The 1985 Live Aid broadcast was watched by 1.5 billion people and raised tens of millions for starving people in Africa.

"We could have gone to some wealthy university, they did offer us a lot of money, and a couple of the other institutions did as well," Geldof said.

"But, we want to ensure Band Aid's continuity.

"It has still got a lot of money, so we're going to continue as an organisation.

"But into the future, it's time now that the whole archive was catalogued and categorised, because there are too many aspects to it."

Geldof said students and schools will be able to look at the material.

"Of course, there'll be exhibitions here and that was part of the deal," he said.

The Department of Culture has committed 245,000 to digitise the collection and to facilitate the development of the archive by the National Library.

Among the material contained in the collection are letters from private individuals and well-known figures, original musical recording tapes, photographs, and reports of projects in Africa.

Thoughtful

It will be transported from London to Dublin in the coming days.

President Michael D Higgins welcomed the gift from the rocker.

"It is a most thoughtful and generous gesture that will be appreciated for generations," he said.

"It is the decision of the National Library not to just accept the archive but to arrange a major exhibition at the National Photographic Archive that is to be particularly welcomed.

"As is the fact that the public will be able to view these unique archives free-of-charge.

"It is also heartening to learn that consideration is being given to a travelling exhibition of the archive."

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also paid tribute to Geldof.

"This donation of the Band Aid archive is a huge gift to the State," the Taoiseach said.

"Band Aid was a milestone of that era.

"It showed Ireland and in particular an Irishman taking the lead in tackling hunger and injustice."
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Joseph Tyrell had been in and out of custody since he was 16.

A 56-YEAR-old burglar with 85 previous convictions has spent more of his life in prison than in the community, a court has heard.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Joseph Tyrell had been in and out of custody since he was 16.

The longest time he had spent out of prison in the past 40 years had been 15 months.

Tyrell's convictions included 27 for burglary, three for aggravated burglary and four for robbery.

Tyrell, of Poddle Close, Kimmage, Dublin, pleaded guilty to burglary at Lower Kimmage Road on August 31 last week.

opportunistic

Det Gda Jason Weir told Eoin Lawlor, prosecuting, that Tyrell was identified after the homeowners took CCTV of the break-in to gardai.

Tyrell had taken 600 from a wallet in the house after gaining entry through an open window.

Det Gda Weir agreed with Ronan Kennedy, defending, that the offence had been opp- ortunistic.

Mr Kennedy told Judge Cormac Quinn that the root of Tyrell's problems was a combination of institutionalisation, a chaotic lifestyle and drug addiction.

He added that the father-of-three was committed to bettering himself.

Judge Quinn adjourned sentencing until March 2.
RTE's Tracy Clifford has a good excuse for putting her feet up this Christmas - she's nursing a broken coccyx.

The 2fm presenter (below) slipped while on holi- day in Iceland and didn't even realise the damage she had done to her- self until she got to the hospital and doctors saw the bone sticking out of her back.

"I was in the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa in Iceland, which is absolutely amazing," she said.

"I got out of it really fast and slipped on what I think was a swimsuit and I went high up in the air like a banana."

Tracy had no idea how serious the injury was until she got to the hospital and was told she had definitely broken her tailbone.

Weird

"I didn't even need to have it X-rayed," she said.

"I was like, 'How do you know?' and they went 'The bone's sticking out of your back'.

"I have a really high pain threshold, but it's weird that I didn't feel it at all."

Since coming home, Tracy said she's been "the butt of all the jokes".

She was among a number of radio stars at the 3Arena on Tuesday night for the 2fm Xmas Ball, held in aid of the ISPCC.

The annual event, which was spearheaded by Carol- ine Downey, raised more than 500,000 for charity on the night.
A High Court action brought by convicted murderer Graham Dwyer against the Garda Commissioner and State over the use of mobile phone records could be heard by a three-judge divisional court.

Dwyer was charged in October 2013 with the murder of Elaine O'Hara and was convicted by a jury in March 2015, following a lengthy trial at the Central Criminal Court.

In his High Court proceedings, commenced in 2015, Dwyer claims certain provisions of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 breached his rights to privacy under the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The directive underlying the 2011 Act was struck down by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in 2015.

The matter, which is due to commence on February 20, was briefly mentioned before Ms Justice Caroline Costello at the High Court yesterday.

Invalid

Sean Guerin SC, for the State defendants, said the case raised a number of important legal issues, and one of the aspects that the High Court may want to consider is that the case be heard by a divisional or three-judge court.

The judge agreed to adjourn the matter to early January, when pre-trial issues between the parties can be addressed.

The hearing of the case is expected to last for several weeks.

In his action, which is opposed by the State, Dwyer claims the ECJ ruling means that Irish legislation implementing the directive was illegal and that data collected from the phone was also therefore invalid.

Many requests for disclosure of mobile phone records were made under the relevant provisions of the 2011 Act by gardai investigating Ms O'Hara's murder and were granted by the relevant service providers.

Phone data was also admitted into evidence during the trial.

During Dwyer's criminal trial, his lawyers argued the mobile phone data was inadmissible as evidence, but those arguments were rejected by the trial judge.

The High Court proceedings are against Ireland, the Garda Commissioner, Director of Public Prosecutions, Justice and Communications Ministers and the Attorney General.

In his action, Cork-born Dwyer seeks, if appropriate, damages and, if necessary, a reference of issues to the ECJ.

Following his conviction for the murder of Ms O'Hara in August 2012, the married architect was jailed for life. His appeal has yet to be heard.
A student has pleaded guilty to the murder of a DJ who was stabbed to death at his Dublin home.

Charles Cleary (24), of no fixed abode but originally from the Rathfarnham area, appeared before the Central Criminal Court yesterday, where he admitted the murder of Leo Carolan.

The budding DJ was stabbed to death at his flat on the South Circular Road, Dublin 8, on October 4, 2016.

Gardai believe that Mr Carolan (24) was attacked after he confronted Cleary in his apartment.

It is understood that Cleary, who was well-known to the victim, was attempting to steal from the apartment when he was caught by Mr Carolan.

Wounds

It has also emerged that the killer admitted to gardai that he stabbed Mr Carolan, and told how he "finished him off" in the flat.

"He initially stabbed him, but then attacked him again to ensure that Mr Carolan would not recover from his injuries," a source told the Herald.

Another man, Swiss national Ludovic Thomas, was left with serious knife wounds after being attacked by Cleary.

He has been charged with the assault and attempted murder of Mr Thomas, as well as robbery on the same date.

Mr Thomas was treated in St James's Hospital over a number of days owing to the seriousness of his injuries.

Prosecution counsel Patrick Gageby told the court that these charges would be disposed of on January 11, when Cleary is due to be sentenced.

Mr Gageby also asked Justice Patrick McCarthy to remand Cleary in custody.

He said the victim's family would make a statement to the court in January.

Mr Carolan was a second-year student at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where he had been studying creative music technology.

He had been living in his apartment at South Circular Road for some time after returning from France, where he had studied anthropology at Universite Lumiere in Lyon.

At his funeral, Leo's brother Alex told how the popular DJ was born in Ireland and went to school in Straffan, Co Kildare, before moving to France when he was 11.

He lived in various parts of France before returning to Ireland a few years ago.

"I never got to see Leo much these last few years, being in different countries, but we'd always talk on the phone," Alex said.

"Even when we'd fight we'd talk like we never fought. Even after he'd punch or headbutt me we'd talk the next day.

"He'd always be there to call if you were his friend or his family.

"I can't really think of much to say. It's good to see he had so many friends and family.

"He was loved by everyone and will always be loved by everyone. It's just unfortunate we didn't get to grow old together."

His friend Emily said she learned from speaking to Leo's friends and family this week that there were so many layers to him and he was loved by all who knew him.

Blood

Pals Tara and Tasha read several tribute posts that friends of Leo from around the world wrote on Facebook in the days after his death.

Cleary fled the scene but was apprehended days later after stepping off a ferry from Holyhead at Dublin Port.

He was taken to Kevin Street Garda Station, where he was quizzed over a number of days before being charged with murdering Mr Carolan.

In the aftermath of the double stabbing, an eyewitness told the Herald how they saw a man stagger across the road from the property before collapsing on the footpath.

Basser Clkhodaior (36), who had been living in the area for the past three years, described how he saw the injured man with knife wounds being tended to.

"He wasn't talking, he was full of blood," Mr Clkhodaior said.

"I didn't know him to see. He wasn't saying anything, there was blood all over the floor.

"He looked very bad, there was blood on his face and on his clothes."

Gardai were alerted after receiving reports of a man outside an apartment on the South Circular Road with stab wounds.
Police open probe against Silwal on forgery charge

A week after the Supreme Court directed the government to take action against those involved in forging of performance evaluation report of former Deputy Inspector General and the recently elected member of the House of Representatives,
How good are these two guys, Penn State fans? It may surprise you ...
Safe migration, not leaky boats

Global mobility is denied to the majority trapped in hopelessly bad economic or conflict circumstances
Senior neurosurgeon Devkota admitted to London hospital

Senior neurosurgeon Dr Upendra Devkota has been admitted to a hospital in London.
How many steps will it take to walk off Thanksgiving dinner?

Study: You'd need to walk nearly 80,000 steps to walk off the calories associated with the 10 most popular Thanksgiving Day dishes.
T he picturesque market town of Sudbury has topped a league table of house prices rises outside of London.

Famous as the birthplace of painter Thomas Gainsborough and the centre of the area that inspired John Constables best landscapes, prices in the unspoilt town within commuting distance of London have rocketed by 13 per cent over the past year, according to Rightmove.

Average asking prices rose from 234,569 in the last quarter of 2016 to 265,291 in the last quarter of this year.

Sudbury ticks all the boxes in terms of location, standard of living, mix of attractive properties and wealth of amenities, says Dan Gurney, area manager at William H Brown Estate Agents in Sudbury.

Sudbury is a property hotspot for those buyers attracted to its close proximity to Cambridge and range of Georgian and Victorian properties, plus weve seen a wave of buyers from London.

One of the reasons for the rise could be its imminent direct train link to Colchester. At present, commuters from the local station must change at Marks Tey - a 20-minute journey - before boarding services that get into Liverpool Street an hour later.

However, in 2020 Abellio Great Anglia will introduce a direct link to Colchester, from where London-bound trains take as little as 49 minutes, shaving vital minutes off a commute to the capital.

THE BEST OF THE REST

Sowerby Bridge, in West Yorkshire, takes second spot in the Rightmove table, with average prices of 191,716 after a 12.5 per cent rise.

Kendal, on the edge of the Lake District in Cumbria, was third with a 10 per cent rise to 226,163; prices in the pretty coastal town of Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset rose 9.9 per cent to 235,083, while there was an identical rise in Todmorden in West Yorkshire.

In Havant, Hampshire, prices rose by 9.7 per cent to 254,379. Its a two-hour commute to Waterloo, but you do get waterside living for your money in the small town that sits between the attractions of Portsmouth and Chichester.

Rushden and Kettering, in Northamptonshire, both recorded rises of 9.7 per cent, with average prices now topping 227,534 and 198,354 respectively. London commuters from Rushden can be in St Pancras in one hour and 40 minutes, while Kettering residents can get to the capital in just 53 minutes.

West Bromwich in West Midlands was ninth in the table with a rise of 9.5 per cent to an average of 149,360, while the last spot was taken by March in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Prices there rose by 9.4 per cent to 210,157, reflecting not only its proximity to Cambridge where that housing market has long been out of reach for local people, but also a 90-minute commute to Kings Cross, albeit with a change at Peterborough.
Turf war

Focus is on govt formation, but decentralisation of bureaucracy will be equally tough
Tyre industry at a cost of Rs 500 million

Bishal Group is all set to run a tyre industry at Katahari of Morang in partnership with Eicher Group, India.
Participants from around the world joined the Official Closing ceremony of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017 at the Palace of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The event reviewed the years main achievements and discussed the roadmap for advancing the contribution of tourism towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

"2017, the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, has been a unique opportunity for all of us to come together to promote the contribution of tourism to shape a better future for people and planet and to contribute to making this world a better place." said UNWTO Secretary General, Taleb Rifai, opening of the event. "We count on you as we embark on this exciting new journey towards 2030. I trust that together, as a sector, as people with the same vision and commitment, we will go far." he added.

"Sustainability remains the bedrock of our activity. We will continue to drive the conversation on planning for and managing tourism growth, define a sector-wide response to climate change, work on how the sector can reduce illegal trade in wildlife and contribute to inclusive job creation" said Gloria Guevara, President and CEO, World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC)

"It is so important that we succeed in making tourism sustainable by making sustainable tourism economically viable, culturally accepted, and universally practiced." said Michael Mller, Director General, United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG). "The United Nations World Tourism Organization deserves great credit for tackling this head on throughout this past year." he added.

"I personally believe that the future of tourism lies in enabling ICT capacities. Accordingly, we should harness those powers for smart tourism I believe that the way forward in our journey to 2030, is smart tourism. I call on all of you to guide me and support me in this endeavor" said Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization in Jordan.

"In the future, a strong international cooperation of all relevant actors involved in the tourism sector should become the driving force to promote sustainable tourism and to implement tourism policies efficiently" said Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch, State Secretary Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland.

Addressing the event was also HM King Simeon II, Special Ambassador of the IY2017 who stressed the importance of public/private partnerships for sustainable tourism.

The panel discussions counted with the participation of the Ministers of Tourism of Costa Rica, Mauricio Ventura, Jamaica, Edmund Bartlett and Kenya, Najib Balala alongside representatives of IY2017 partners such All Nippon Airways, Amadeus, the Balearic Islands Tourism Agency, ECPAT International, the Institute for Tourism and Leisure, HTW Chur University in Switzerland, Minube, Myclimate, PRMEDIACO and the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority in the United Arab Emirates.

As part of the legacy of the IY2017, UNWTO presented the results of the 'Tourism and SDGs' Report developed in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report which looks into the links between tourism and the SDGs in national policies as well as private sector strategies shows the relevance for the sector of Goals 1 (No Poverty), 4 (Quality Education), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), 13 (Climate Action), 14 (Life Below Water) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).

On the occasion, UNWTO launched the Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals Programme as a legacy of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017. The Programme aims at advocating for the contribution of sustainable tourisms to the 17 SDGs and encouraging the full integration of tourism and the SDGs in national, regional and global agendas. It includes the future 'Tourism and SDGs' online platform  a co-creation space to inspire and empower the tourism sector to act - developed by UNWTO with the support of SECO and an Ambassadors Initiative.

The Tourism and SDGs Ambassadors designated on the occasion include HE Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, President of Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, the President of Costa Rica, HE Luis Guillermo Solis, Mr. Huayong Ge, President of UnionPay China; Dr Talal Abu Ghazaleh, Chairman of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization and Dr Michael Frenzel, President of the Federal Association of the German Tourism Industry.

About The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations specialized agency fostering tourism as a vehicle for equal, inclusive and sustainable development. Working with its Member States, international organizations and the private sector, UNWTO promotes safe and seamless travel for all. UNWTO also works to make tourism the foundation of trust and international cooperation and a central pillar of recovery. As part of the wider UN system, UNWTO is at the forefront of global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including through its ability to create decent jobs, promote equality and preserve natural and cultural heritage.

Follow UNWTO on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.

Rut Gomez Sobrino

Principal Media Officer

(+34) 91 567 81 60

UNWTO
Few industries make greater use of part-time and seasonal employees than the hospitality industry. But even as they provide extra hands in busy times and the high season, part-timers and seasonal workers are less likely to consider themselves to be 'insiders', who are generally more willing to suggest improvements or accept additional duties. For this reason, many employers go to some lengths to encourage all employees to regard themselves as insiders (for example, with pep talks or other employee events).

With that goal in mind, a new study from Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne highlights the key elements that would encourage employees to perceive themselves as insiders. In this study of more than 200 restaurant employees, EHL Professor Steffen Raub confirms that employment status drives employees' perceptions of insider status, particularly when a job involves a permanent, full-time position rather than seasonal or part-time work. But even employees in part-time and seasonal jobs can gain a greater perception of insider status when their jobs are well designed.

Raub explains that core job characteristics generally promote employees' belief in the meaningfulness of their work, together with taking responsibility for outcomes and building their knowledge of work activities. Based on previous research, the elements of a well-designed job are: skill variety (that is, the variety of different activities that need to be carried out in a job); task identity (the degree to which the job allows for the completion of a whole identifiable piece of work); task significance (the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people); autonomy (the extent to which the job provides for independence and decision-making); and feedback.

In addition to examining the benefits of having employees making helpful suggestions and showing initiative, Raub looked into the effect of specific job characteristics on two of the industry's greatest issues, job satisfaction and turnover. To do this, he surveyed 203 employees and eighteen of their supervisors in nine casual-dining restaurants operated by a firm in Singapore. The male-female ratio was about 2:1, most of the employees were in their twenties or early thirties, and the average tenure was about one year.

Work status (permanent versus seasonal, as well as full-time versus part-time) had a noticeable effect on employees' perceptions of whether they regarded themselves as insiders. Permanent employees were more likely to see themselves as insiders, with permanent full-time workers scoring significantly higher in perceived insider status than permanent part-time employees. The perception differences between seasonal full-time employees and seasonal part-time workers were not significant, although the part-time seasonal employees did report the lowest insider perception.

The study found that employees' perceptions of being insiders were significantly related to their job satisfaction and their intention to remain on the job (that is, turnover intention). Insider perception also drove higher in-role performance, voice behavior (such as making helpful suggestions), and personal initiative.

Even more important for those five outcomes are core job characteristics. Employees in well-designed jobs are also more likely to stay in the job and experience relatively high job satisfaction, in-role performance, voice behavior, and personal initiative. By the same token, poorly-designed jobs make for diminished outcomes. Some of those poor outcomes can be offset somewhat by improving workers' perception of insider status. The study showed that insider status can limit the negative effects of a poorly-designed job on turnover intentions and performance, but that is not the case for other outcomes. Instead, insider status boosts the willingness of employees, who are already in well-designed jobs rather than poorly designed jobs, to make suggestions and show initiative. Raub sees the relationship as being synergistic, rather than identifying insider status as a compensatory factor.

Given the importance of insider status  and the beneficial outcomes of those perceptions  one implication of this study is for managers to re-examine job design. In that context, however, we know that most hospitality operations need part-time and seasonal employees. For this reason, Raub suggests that managers do what they can to make the part-timers feel that they are an integral part of the organization. One step in this direction would be to bring human resources policies in line as far as possible between permanent full-time employees and their part-time and seasonal colleagues. Raub also proposes that managers create a supportive company culture that encourages all employees to feel they are "part of the team."

To underscore the study findings, these recommendations are not just "feel good" policies. By encouraging all employees to regard themselves as insiders, managers can bring about positive outcomes for the organization, based on employees' performance and their willingness to make helpful suggestions, while reducing staff turnover.

EHL Hospitality Business School

Communications Department

+41 21 785 1354

EHL

View source
HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee  The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 10-16 December 2017, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 11-17 December 2016, the industry recorded the following:

Occupancy: +4.5% to 56.4%

Average daily rate (ADR): +3.5% to US$115.67

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +8.1% to US$65.24

Among the Top 25 Markets, New Orleans, Louisiana, reported the largest increase in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (+39.2% to 72.9%), ADR (+27.7% to US$142.35) and RevPAR (+77.8% to US$103.78). STR analysts note that performance was helped by the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (11-15 December).

Atlanta, Georgia, posted the second-highest lift in ADR (+23.3% to US$117.71), which contributed to the second-largest rise in RevPAR (+39.4% to US$79.96).

Overall, eight of the Top 25 Markets reported double-digit increases in RevPAR.

San Francisco/San Mateo, California, reported the only double-digit declines in the three key performance metrics: occupancy (-13.7% to 72.1%), ADR (-10.7% to US$186.69) and RevPAR (-22.9% to US$134.54).

Dallas, Texas, saw the second-largest decreases in occupancy (-5.3% to 59.7%) and RevPAR (-3.4% to US$60.07).

Chicago, Illinois experienced the second-largest drop in ADR (-1.9% to US$111.27).

About STR

STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 15 countries with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, an international headquarters in London, and an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. STR was acquired in October 2019 by CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. For more information, please visit str.com and costargroup.com.

Nick Minerd

Public Relations Coordinator

+1 (615) 824 8664 ext. 3305

STR
ONE Lodging Management Inc. unveiled the Baymont Inn & Suites Wellington, Kan., one of 44 Oak Tree Inn hotels now converted to three of Wyndham Hotel Group's brands as part of an agreement announced last month.

"Over the past month and a half, we've transitioned three or four hotels each day to a Baymont Inn & Suites, a Travelodge, or a Super 8 brand" says Robert Pratt, President of ONE Lodging Management. Mr. Pratt continued, "It's all about appealing to a wider audience and Wyndham's brand recognition, reach in the economy lodging segment, and their award-winning loyalty program will ensure our hotels stay competitive in their markets."

Attendees for the milestone event comprised Wyndham Hotel Group's executive team including President and CEO Geoff Ballotti as well as leadership from the company's development team and Baymont Inn & Suites, Travelodge and Super 8 brands. Kevin Brickner, Vice President of Development and Wyndham's lead on establishing the unprecedented agreement, congratulated the team on the 44 successful conversions. From ONE Lodging Management's executive team, Robert Pratt, President; Bruce Pittet, Senior Vice President of Operations; and Brett Sundstrom, Managing Director of Lodging Enterprises as well as from the hotel ownership group, Ian McAuley, President of American Hotel Income Properties REIT LP were also present for the celebratory unveiling.



Executives and leadership teams from Wyndham Hotel Group, ONE Lodging Management Inc. and American Hotel Income Properties REIT gather to celebrate the unveiling of Baymont Inn & Suites Wellington, KS.



Yesterday's property unveilings included two Baymont Inn & Suites in Wellington, Kan. and Yuma, Ariz.; and one Travelodge, also in Wellington, Kan. In total, ONE Lodging Management has converted 28 hotels to Travelodge, 15 hotels to the Baymont Inn & Suites brand, and two hotels to Super 8 properties. One Days Inn property remaining with its existing Wyndham brand. Following the transition, ONE Lodging Management will operate 47 hotels licensed under a Wyndham brand.

"The ONE Lodging team has over 30 years of experience operating all segments of hotels across the United States and in Canada; we are confident that they are the perfect partners as we continue expanding our iconic brands with 44 new hotels to the Wyndham portfolio by year end in the places everyday travelers want to be," said Chip Ohlsson, Wyndham's Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer.


The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) announced today that it has named Amy Travieso as vice president of government affairs, covering regulatory and legislative affairs on technology, innovation and other policy areas. She officially joins AHLA on January 2, 2018.

Travieso comes to AHLA from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where she currently serves as the lead Democratic liaison for the Chamber's Technology Engagement Center (C-Tec). Before joining the Chamber, she spent 10 years in the House of Representatives, serving the last six as the deputy chief of staff for Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28), who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition.

"We are excited to welcome Amy to our advocacy team. She brings wealth of experience and expertise in issues that impact our industry," said Brian Crawford, incoming Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at AHLA. "Amy will be instrumental in building relationships and elevating the industry's message on Capitol Hill and the Administration."

In addition to supporting AHLA's advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill and with the Administration, Travieso will also provide strategic support for the association's political action committee, HotelPAC. Travieso rounds out a team of 10 government affairs professionals with extensive experience on Capitol Hill and in federal and state advocacy. During the past year, AHLA has advanced legislation in several cities and states to combat illegal hotels, joined a U.S. Department of
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has announced that it will manage a new luxury hotel and branded residences on Hanover Square in the heart of London's Mayfair district. The project is expected to open in 2021.

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has announced that it will manage a new luxury hotel and branded residences on Hanover Square in the heart of London's Mayfair district. The project is expected to open in 2021.

Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, London will be an intimate, boutique property featuring 50 guestrooms and suites as well as 80 Residences at Mandarin Oriental. It will be developed by Clivedale London and designed by architects, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to provide an exclusive oasis of contemporary luxury.

The property will feature a vibrant fine-dining restaurant, a lobby lounge, stylish bar and a private roof terrace with bar overlooking Mayfair.

The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, located in the building's upper floors, will be some of the most exclusive private homes in the city. With the world of art, fashion, culture and business already on the doorstep, owners will enjoy direct access to the hotel experience, which will include an indoor pool, a comprehensive fitness centre and an intimate spa, providing Mandarin Oriental's renowned wellness services. A full suite of five-star hotel services will be available to owners, including in-residence dining, housekeeping, valet parking and a dedicated 24-hour residential concierge.

The development, which will be marketed as Hanover Bond, is situated between Bond Street and Regent Street, on Hanover Square, in one of London's most exclusive residential, retail and fashion districts. The Bond Street Cross Rail station, located on Hanover Square, is due to open in 2018 and will give residents and guests access to super-fast rail connections across London, with Heathrow airport accessible in under 30 minutes.

"We are delighted to be opening a second Mandarin Oriental property in London, and look forward to extending the Group's legendary hospitality to another of the city's most exclusive addresses," said James Riley, Group Chief Executive of Mandarin Oriental. "Operating two complementary hotels in a single destination is something that the Group has already done successfully in Hong Kong." he added.

The project is owned by Clivedale London, an independent, Mayfair based developer.

"As a company, we share Mandarin Oriental's unwavering commitment to quality and service, making this the perfect partnership," said Clivedale London's Chief Executive Officer, Tarun Tyagi. "Together we are setting a new precedent for architecture, design and lifestyle in a world-class location, and we look forward to bringing the best of both worlds to our discerning clientele  the comforts of a private home combined with Mandarin Oriental's legendary hospitality."
UML rank and file struggle to get over Gautams poll defeat

While the left alliance of the CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre) are busy in power-sharing arrangements on the back of a comfortable majority in the recent elections to Federal Parliament and Provincial Assemblies, the UML rank and file in Bardiya-1 are yet to get over the shocking loss of its influential leader and party Vice-chairman Bamdev Gautam.
Dual Branded Fairfield Inn & Suites and Residence Inn to Open in St. Louis, Missouri

Marriott International, Inc. announced that a dual-branded 88-room Fairfield Inn & Suites and 96-suite Residence Inn property will open today in St. Louis / Maryland Heights, Missouri. Located at 11918 Westline Industrial Boulevard, the hotel is owned and managed by Midas Hospitality of St. Louis, Missouri. The hotel will share an indoor swimming pool, a modern fitness center, an outdoor patio with a fire pit and barbecue grill, 1,114 square feet of meeting space, and offer a complimentary breakfast and complimentary Wi-Fi.

Located 15 minutes from Lambert International Airport and 25 minutes from downtown St. Louis, the hotel is adjacent to Westport Plaza, Worldwide Technologies Headquarters and Edward Jones Headquarters with easy access the St. Louis Zoo, Busch Stadium and the St. Louis Art Museum.

"Attracting both business and leisure travelers, the St. Louis area is an ideal location for this dual opening," said Janis Milham, senior vice president, Classic Select Brands for Marriott International. "Each brand offers distinct amenities and services that tailor to all visitors."

About The Fairfield Inn & Suites St. Louis Westport

The signature smart room decor warmly welcomes guests into a comfortable, productive and restful environment. Flexible and functional, the guest room includes a well-designed work area, an ergonomic chair, task lighting and electrical outlets where guests need them. A curved, mobile desk enables guests to create their own work space, while also optimizing their television viewing.



Advertisement

About The Residence Inn St. Louis Westport

Residence Inn is an all-suite brand that offers studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom suites. Designed for stays of five nights or more, each suite also has a fully-equipped kitchen with a coffeemaker, microwave oven and residential-sized appliances. Guests looking for a revitalizing sleep experience will enjoy the hotels plush mattresses and crisp linens, while guests focused on being productive will value their suites large, well-lit work desk, ergonomic chair and complimentary high-speed Internet access.

The Residence Inns complimentary breakfast has a variety of great options, including specially made featured items. Guests can start their day off right with healthy food choices and, with a convenient to-go offering, can make sure they do not miss the most important meal of the day.

About Midas Hospitality

Midas Hospitality, LLC, was established in 2006 and quickly became one of the premier hotel management groups in the Midwest. Midas has developed, opened and managed numerous properties, including Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott and Residence Inn by Marriott among others. Midas Hospitality, LLC is an owner, operator, and developer of hotels with a growing portfolio consisting of 40 hotels, in 12 states, serving six different global brands.
Colm O'Callaghan Named Managing Director for the Montage Beverly Hills

O'Callaghan served as regional vice president of Trump Hotels, where he oversaw that portfolio's properties in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

Montage Hotels & Resorts has announced the appointment of Colm O'Callaghan as managing director of Montage Beverly Hills. Drawing upon over 30 years of experience at luxury properties from coast to coast, O'Callaghan will oversee all operations of the urban hotel located steps away from iconic Rodeo Drive in the heart of the Golden Triangle of Beverly Hills.

"Colm's extensive background in luxury hospitality and his wide-ranging experience in gateway cities across the country will be a true benefit to Montage Beverly Hills," said Alan J. Fuerstman, founder, chairman and CEO of Montage International. "We look forward to him applying his expertise to deliver the high-touch service for which Montage is known."

Over his career, O'Callaghan has served various notable properties including The Peninsula Hotel, Chicago; Mandarin Oriental Hotel, San Francisco; The Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills; and The St. Regis, New York City. More recently, O'Callaghan served as regional vice president of Trump Hotels, where he oversaw that portfolio's properties in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

O'Callaghan graduated with honors from Shannon College of Hotel Management in County Clare, Ireland. O'Callaghan has been involved in multiple charity organizations and most recently sat on the Board of Directors for Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, Chicago. A native of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, Colm is a third generation hotelier.
The Official Gift Guide for Hotel Marketers

Forget the silly gadgets and fancy chocolates! Listen up hotel owners and asset managers, we know what hotel marketers really want for the holidays... Heres our annual list of the things that hotel marketers tell us they crave the mos

This article originally appeared on Tambourine.

Forget the silly gadgets and fancy chocolates!

Listen up hotel owners and asset managers, we know what hotel marketers really want for the holidays

Heres our annual list of the things that hotel marketers tell us they crave the most:

1. They Want to Be Rewarded for Driving Measurable Revenue

Hotel owners expect their marketing team to contribute to the hotels revenue targets in ways that can be tangibly measured.

And hotel marketers are responding!

By tracking their marketing cost-per-booking (MCPB) and return on ad spend, they are showcasing the marketing teams direct ROI this new breed of revenue marketer is moving away from the squishy, legacy metrics of hotel marketing into a new era of accountability (and hopefully increased compensation)!

2. They Want the Budget Correlated to Targets



Nothing would make hotel marketers happier this holiday season than a budget that was actually correlated to the targets being set for them (by segment)! Unfortunately, there are still many hotel owners who believe their sales and marketing teams can hit increasingly lofty revenue targets with less money and resources than the year before.

This year, hotel marketers are hoping to convince upper management that their ambitious revenue goals need to be supported with bigger budgets (and maybe even more staff). Lets hope hotel owners realize that investing in marketing is one of the smartest moves they can make to boost revenue.

3. They Want Continued Investments for Direct Booking Campaigns

The launch of major campaigns by industry giants this year further reinforced the industrys message on the benefits of purchasing directly through a hotel website rather than an OTA. But to rely solely on the AHLA, Marriott and Hilton to communicate these advantages to travelers is insufficient. Every property, regardless of size, affiliation or location, should be showcasing the benefits of booking direct and changing their message to expose the real weakness of OTAs.

4. They Want Standardized Metrics That Really Matter

Instead of leaning on squishy metrics, most hotel marketers crave consensus on KPIs that will actually measure important things, including:

MCPB (Marketing cost per booking): Tracks the cost of each sales and marketing channel versus actual conversions. (Try using this for OTA commissions as well and see how that channel stacks up versus your other campaigns.) DRR (Direct revenue ratio): Measures percentage of online revenue from direct sources (your website) versus pricey third-party sources, like OTAs. If youre not generating more than 60 percent of your transient revenue from direct reservations, you still have work to do! Website Conversion Rate (from unique visitor to entrances into the booking environment): Converting a higher percentage of visitors into booking searches (or phone calls) is critical to reducing your cost of revenue and MCPB. Variance from Revenue Target BY SEGMENT: This metric showcases revenue goals versus actual results. TripAdvisor Sentiment Score: Using a reputation/sentiment monitoring tool allows hotels to measure guest satisfaction. This reflects whether your guests are enjoying your product, along with alerting you to hotel deficiencies. A bad hotel experience will outweigh any of your clever sales and marketing tactics.

5. A Better Product Please!

Successful hotel marketing depends on a great product.

Period. Full stop.

If youre trying to sell a tired, flawed, aging or otherwise inferior hotel experience, no amount of marketing  no matter how innovative or brilliant  can avoid the inevitable downward spiral.

There are far too many hotels that continue to sink millions of marketing dollars to over-compensate for or to cover up an aging, lackluster, or grungy hotel product. Sadly, as long as owners delay investing in the appearance, service or amenities of the property, hotel marketers will continue to fight an uphill battle in attracting and retaining guests.

6. They Want to Celebrate Authentic Local Experiences

The vast majority of hotel marketers understand that todays traveler cares as much or more about the EXPERIENCE than the thread count of the hotels sheets or the convenient parking. But not everyone is on board with converting the focus of a hotels marketing to focus on life-enriching experiences. Hotel marketers unanimously tell us they crave more time, resources and freedom to celebrate their properties connection to local experiences.

7. They Want Better Photography!



Like it or not, weve become a very visual society.

Just as important as a hotels service, extraordinary hotel digital marketing requires extraordinary photography because it plays such a strong role in consumers travel purchase process, from the inspiration phase to booking. Images define guest expectations and poor quality shots are the equivalent of telling potential guests that the hotels offerings are subpar, especially if the competitive set has better visual content on its website.

8. They Want to Decrease Their Dependence on OTAs

Yes, we know statement of the obvious.

Everyone wants this, but rather than complaining, its time to change the overarching hotel industry strategy from emphasizing price parity to tapping into consumer fears of OTAs.

Instead of obsessing about Best Rate Guarantees, we all need to start focusing instead on how reservations, cancellations, changes, room selection and refunds are perceived by consumers when they book direct vs indirect.

Many consumers (especially older ones) have preexisting concerns about third-party bookings and fear that one mishap with an OTA could unravel their travel plans in seconds.

9. Can We Get a Little Acknowledgment Please?

Its not about ego.

Its about progress Marketers arent looking for a pat on the back!

What they want is for executives, owners, and hotel asset managers to understand all that falls on the shoulders of marketing. Because, when management truly understands the resources required, the marketing department usually gets the resources and the budget required to keep up with their compset and meet the revenue requirements of ownership.

10. They Want an End to the Rising Cost of Guest Acquisition!

Owners cant control many of their rising costs, particularly debt service, brand fees and credit card fees. Thats why hotel owners and asset managers are looking more closely than ever at marketing costsparticularly the cost of guest acquisitionwhich are also rising fast.

According to experts, acquisition costs commonly in the range of 5% to 10% less than a decade ago have jumped to between 15% and 25%. If a hotel cannot acquire guests at a tolerable, sustainable rate, then the property is worthless as a long-term asset.

And one of the reasons that marketing costs are rising so quickly is because hotel marketers are often unable to create perceived value in their product, which ends up being treated like a commodity instead. Part of the problem lies with the brands, many of which have become redundant, overdone and difficult to distinguish from one another, prompting travelers to book solely based on price.

Happy holidays!

We hope all your wishes come true this holiday season too!

About Tambourine

Tambourine uses technology and creativity to increase revenue for hotels and destinations worldwide. The firm, now in its 33rd year, is located in New York City and Fort Lauderdale. Please visit: www.Tambourine.com
Of the three rappers who make up the immensely popular trio Migos, Takeoff is likely the one that casual music fans are the least familiar with. Both Quavo and Offset have raised their profiles by taking feature work on songs by more mainstream artists and, while that is in no way a slight at Takeoffs rapping skills, it means that hes just not in the public eye as much. However, according to TMZ, hes doing just fine when it comes to standing out, especially with his bling.

In an exclusive picture obtained by the gossip outlet, Takeoff has copped himself an incredibly detailed spaced-themed pendant for his latest iced-out chain. With a NASA emblem adorning the diamond-encrusted spacesuit, the creature portrayed in the piece has more in common with the likes of E.T. or one of the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind than it does with any humanoid figure.

[Image via TMZ]

With 30 karats of VVS diamonds covering the otherworldly visitor, the accessory set Takeoff back a reported $60,000, which is good enough to also buy yourself a few Bitcoin. Jurys out on which one is the better investment long-term, but not amount of Bitcoin shimmers like this pendant does.

Elliot Aviannes company Avianne & Co Jewelers, the entity that has fashioned bling for some of hip-hops richest personalities, was the one who supposedly handed off the piece to the rapper during a visit to Miami. Theres no indication as to whether or not Takeoff was involved with the design but, with several space-themed jewelry pieces in his possession, its clear that hes got a running theme when it comes to the iciest part of his wardrobe.

Takeoff
Netflixs upcoming Will Smith blockbuster Bright has received a lot of attention with its hip-hop studded soundtrack and reported $90 million dollar budget. The action film follows two police officers  one a human and the other an orc (played by Joel Egerton)  who embark on a mission to save their city, and ultimately their world, from ending.

The latest on the anticipated film is that its made some history as the first film to start a franchise off a streaming platform. Bright will hit Netflix on December 22nd and Netflix has already signed on to make the sequel. Business Insider reports that this endeavour marks the first ever streaming service movie franchise.

Its no surprise that Netflix has hit a new record in the Hollywood movie-making lane considering how its already taken over the way we watch T.V. More and more people seem to be opting out of cable packages over the cheaper option of just getting a Netflix account  or using a friends. Either way, lets hope all the hype surrounding the film is worth it making this milestone one thats in the right direction.

Check out the trailer for Bright below. Are you guys into it?
Jordan Brand reportedly has plans to release a limited edition, demin-based Levis Air Jordan 4 collab in 2018 and last night we got our first look at the exclusive pair of kicks, courtesy of Travis Scott.

The Houston-born rapper took to instagram last night to give a preview of whats in store, revealing an all-over denim construction, including the laces, accompanied by a tan tongue label, white midsoles, and a gum sole.

This latest sneaker collab with Levis comes nearly 10 years after the two brands first collaborated for a special Air Jordan 1 Mid, which released alongside a pair of jeans in Michael Jordans personal size and style.

Jordan Brand has not yet announced when the Levis x Air Jordan 4 will release, how many will be available, what the price tag will be, or if it will include any apparel like the aforementioned Levis x Air Jordan 1 Mid.

While we await more details on the denim AJ4, check out Travis Scotts unveiling video and additional pics below.

Levi x AJ4
December 1, 2017, marked the 29th annual World AIDS Day. For many, this day came and went without much notice. For those who did notice, it probably served as a historical reminder of an epidemic that, in the United States at least, many of us think is over. Unfortunately, while HIV/AIDS receives less attention today, it is still infecting and killing Americans each year. In fact, Texas is among the top 10 states with the most new diagnoses each year - 4,493 people in 2016. In total, there are more than 86,000 Texans living with HIV. Our state government needs to take notice of its HIV problem and take action to eradicate it once and for all.

There are multiple ways to contract HIV. The most common transmission category in Texas is sexual contact (about 83 percent of female transmission and 93-96 percent of male transmission), followed by drug use (16 percent of female and 4-7 percent of male cases). Some may be surprised that drug use is not a more prevalent mode of contracting HIV. In fact, as a transmission category for new diagnoses statewide, drug use declined by nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2016. Unfortunately, the only transmission category that increased in that time period is male-to-male sexual contact, with about 1,000 more diagnoses in 2016 than in 2007.

Indeed, there are enormous gender and racial disparities when it comes to who lives with HIV in Texas.

According to a state report, 79 percent of Texans living with HIV in 2016 were men. In the same year, 37 percent of HIV-positive Texans were black, 32 percent were Hispanic/Latino, and 26 percent were white. Representing 13 percent of the Texas population, African-Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. The fact that people of color and the LGBTQ community are most at risk of contracting HIV may explain why the HIV problem in Texas has been underreported for so long.

Medical advancement has greatly improved HIV/AIDS treatment and outcomes for patients. Today, a person with HIV is expected to have the same life expectancy as someone without HIV, as long as they take their medication regularly. However, we cannot treat those with HIV unless they know they have the disease. About 13,000 HIV-positive Texans do not know they have HIV. Now that medicine can ensure that HIV patients live otherwise normal lives, policy makers need to step in to ensure that more people are tested and receive treatment.

San Antonio set a good example when, on this year's World AIDS Day, it joined the Fast Track Cities initiative to eliminate AIDS by 2030. The Texas Legislature would do well to follow San Antonio's lead. While one HIV-related bill, HB 1629, passed during the 2017 legislative session, it alone cannot halt Texas' HIV emergency. The Legislature should focus on increasing testing among all Texans when they go to the doctor - not only those who are high-risk - as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends. State Rep. Gene Wu authored a bill last session, HB 717, that would have done just that. Unfortunately, the House Insurance Committee never even voted on it.

The state also should increase awareness of HIV and other STIs and promote the use of barrier methods of contraception in schools and clinics. Given that Texas ranks 13th out of 50 states for chlamydial infections and 11th for gonorrheal infections - both of which can increase the spread of HIV - more contraception use would benefit many Texans. Of course, for more testing and treatment to take place, the state should ensure that all Texans can access and afford a visit to a health clinic.

With Texas having the highest uninsured rate in the country, we have a long way to go on this front. In the meantime, we can all do our part by supporting grass-roots-level organizations like the Afiya Center in Dallas, which advocates for better reproductive health outcomes for black women, an especially high-risk population.

If Texas does more to fund and coordinate efforts among its health agencies, care providers and health care advocates, we can make some progress on the HIV problem in Texas.

We would all do well to anticipate the 30th World AIDS Day in 2018 with a sense of purpose instead of with a mere nod to history.

Crockett is a student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. This op-ed first appeared in the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans - and engages with them - about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
loyers are being reminded of their obligations over the festive period after one Auckland restaurant was hit with a five-figure fine for failing to pay staff fairly.



New Lucky Star was ordered to pay $20,000 in penalties and $2,700 in arrears after a Labour Inspectorate investigation found the company hadnt paid 10 employees time and a half for working public holidays.



This was the second time the Papatoetoe-based restaurant had been found committing these breaches, with an improvement notice issued by a labour inspector to the business in 2015.



The Labour Inspectorate stands for fair workplaces and fair competition, and will not tolerate businesses failing to provide employees with at least their minimum entitlements, said Labour Inspectorate regional manager David Milne.



Ultimately this employers breaches left employees working hard to sustain the business out of pocket, meaning theyve had less to take home and put under their tree this year, he continued.



This case should provide a good reminder for businesses during the coming holidays of their obligations, and that being a Christmas Grinch when it comes to entitlements can prove costly.



Along with not paying time and half for public holidays, New Lucky Star and its directors Tony Ping Kwan Kwok and Yam Ching Wong failed to keep compliant holiday and leave records.



The ERA acknowledged that while the employer had not been driven by a wish to prevent employees being treated fairly, ultimately this was occurring as a consequence of their breaches.



New Lucky Star had now repaid all arrears owed, which were $2,700, with the employer having paid a day off at the employees normal rate instead of time and a half during their non-compliance.


MP Computer Engineer Quits Job to Take Up Farming, Aims to Earn Rs 20 lakh a Year
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Burma have told how the military targeted children and the elderly in sickening attacks.

The Muslim minority refugees said soldiers and Buddhist leaders carried out a systematic campaign of murder and burning villages - accusations that military leaders have denied.

Shawkat Ara, 38, said soldiers attacked her village in the middle of the night and she hid in the jungle with fellow villagers as they watched their houses burn.

She said: The military told the young boys to stand in a line and told them to run. When they were running they rushed them from behind and they were falling in ditches.

Some were cut into pieces and thrown into ditches. They were all between 10 and 12 years old.

The military were actually playing with the boys. They were telling them to run and then cutting them.

She added: I broke my hand crawling into the jungle. When the soldiers started firing, people were running here and there, it was totally messed up.

Fathers were not staying with their sons and sons were not looking for their fathers, just running for their lives.

The small children were the worst affected because they can't run.

Despite a recent agreement with the Burmese government for repatriation, refugees continue to arrive in Bangladesh, joining 646,000 who have braved the dangerous border crossing since the surge in violence after Rohingya militants reportedly attacked border posts in August.

Alistair Dutton, director of the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (Sciaf), which has raised more than 160,000 to help the refugees, said: I don't know who's guilty of what but what has happened are crimes against humanity.

The chopping people up, shooting them, burning bodies, torching villages, stealing belongings and driving people out their country - these are crimes against humanity whoever perpetrated them.

Mr Dutton warned the crisis could last for years, stressing that Sciaf and charity partner Caritas Bangladesh were planning for the long term as the average time a person spends as a refugee is 17 years.

Mrs Ara, who saw her parents and one son die from hunger as she made the arduous journey to safety in Bangladesh, said she also witnessed soldiers attacking the elderly.

She said her neighbour, an elderly imam, was shot and attacked with machetes before being burned.

Kamal Hossain, 41, one of the Rohingya refugees who met the Pope on his recent visit to Burma and Bangladesh, said 80% of 9,675 people were killed in the district where he was leader.

He said: The military applied their tricks - they were killing the elderly and young people first so that the other people would do nothing to them. They apply these techniques.

Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Show all 15 1 /15 Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Badiul Alam, 52, appointed as the manager of one grouping of refugees, shows the rifle-butt injury he sustained during his flight from Myanmar Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Abdur Rahim, 50, fled Myanmar with his family of seven. It took a month for them to walk to Bangladesh, carrying all their possessions on their shoulders. They havent yet found a place to put down their belongings after a gruelling journey Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Various refugee camps  Kutupalong, Balukhali and Moinerghona  have merged into one vast sprawl spread over many muddy hills that just a few months ago were a rolling green nature reserve Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps A Red Cross aid-worker supervises an aid distribution point on the edge of the Moinerghona camp, saying they have never known refugees anywhere in the world stand so patiently in line in such heat to be registered and receive aid without any tension or anger Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Last week the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a deal to return the Rohingya to Rakhine. But many worry that they will face further reprisals if they return, and there was no mention of what would happen to those who refused to go back Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps A quiet calm pervades the camps. Is it relief at being free from fear, or do feelings about the horrors witnessed remain suppressed? Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps The aid response is focused on providing food, water and shelter for people who fled with nothing Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps The effort is now well-organised and trucks delivering supplies move up and down the main road between Coxs Bazar and Teknaf all day long Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Only men are in the aid queue, as separate queues are often set up for men and women. Sixty-five-year-old Nur Ahmed wears his ID card which shows he has been formally registered to receive aid Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Ajmin Ara, 70, wanders around disorientated. She has lost her entire family and fled to Bangladesh alone; she is painfully thin/skeletal and very weak, but is receiving medical care from a small clinic set up to the side of the aid queue Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Its estimated that 620,000 Rohingya people have fled violence in Myanmars Rakhine State in the last three months. Many say they were doing their morning prayers or cooking food when their villages were attacked and they fled, often with only the clothes they were wearing Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Nur Asha, 47, sits quietly in the crowd until she can no longer restrain herself and her story comes out in a torrent: how she fled with her son when the military attacked her village but doesnt know where her other relatives are, how throats were slashed, how children were thrown into fires, how rice paddy fields were filled with bodies left for the dogs to eat Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Mohammed Sayed, 24, fled Myanmar about a month ago with his parents, wife and sister after their home was burnt down and many people in their village were killed Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Children flock around the queue and one boy has made a hat from an empty medicine package to shield himself from the heat, but other boys playing nearby tease him and knock it off his head and soon it is ripped to pieces Hope in Bangladeshs Rohingya camps Children who have fled with nothing make toy cars from empty bottles and kites from plastic bags. Despite the horrors they will have witnessed, children still laugh and play for the camera

Most people were burned and killed in fires set by the military. After the killing they threw the bodies into the ditches so people can't take the water because it is full of blood.

The villagers had no food, so that made them flee.

He also said the military forced him to watch as they raped his daughter-in-law.

PA
A Brexit transition deal will not last beyond the end of 2020, the European Commission has said.

The Commission has formally sent a recommendation to the European Council to begin discussions on the next phase of the Brexit negotiations.

While it sets out the length of the transition period, it also states that issues related to Ireland should be dealt with as a specific strand within the phase two talks.

The Commission also warns the UK against "cherry picking" during the transition period. "The United Kingdom will continue to participate in the Customs Union and the Single Market, with all four freedoms," the Commission states.

"The Union acquis [the accumulated legislation, legal acts, and court decisions which constitute the body of European Union law] should continue to apply in full to and in the UK as if it were a member state.

"Any changes made to the acquis during this time should automatically apply to the United Kingdom."

The Government here had said a transition period of four to five years would be preferable.

The four pages of new directives for the EU's chief Brexit negotiator were in line with guidelines issued by EU leaders at a summit on Friday and will form the basis of talks on the transition that he hopes to start next month.

The directives spell out that Britain will effectively remain in EU institutions, bound by all their rules including new ones, while not having a say in their making.

The document said that all existing Union regulatory, budgetary, supervisory, judiciary and enforcement instruments and structures will apply, including the competence of the Court of Justice of the EU.

The transition period needs to be clearly defined and precisely limited in time. The Commission recommends that it should not last beyond 31 December 2020," the Commission said.

The recommendation also recalls the need to translate into legal terms the results of the first phase of the negotiations, as outlined in the Commission's Communication and Joint Report.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May had sought a two-year transition, but EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the 2020 deadline was logical and avoid complications in the next 2021-2027 EU budget period.
Two men will appear in court this morning in relation to a large number of thefts of valuable quad bikes in the Munster region over the past year.

Following an investigation into the theft of Quad Bikes following burglaries in the Limerick/ Kerry and North Cork over the past twelve months Gardai attached to Newcastlewest Garda Station have arrested two men.
Gardai are investigating if a prolific crime gang led by a serial burglar from the midlands was behind an armed raid in which a visually impaired farmer was savagely beaten.

Joseph Waters (77) was sitting at his kitchen table in his rural bungalow in the Kildangan area of Durrow, Co Offaly, when the gang broke in at around 8pm on Monday.

He was struck a number of times on the body, suffering a particularly severe "belt" to his head. Neighbour PJ Gorman said Mr Waters was alone when the attackers climbed through a window they had smashed at the back of the house.

Investigators are probing if a violent burglary gang, which is suspected over more than 20 raids in the last month, was behind the attack on the elderly bachelor.

The ruthless gang members are also chief suspects in the horrific aggravated burglary of farmer Richard McKelvey (54).

He was dragged from his bed and beaten by a gang of four men at his home in Glassderry beg, Brosna, near Birr, Co Offaly, over two months ago.

The gang is led by a serial burglar in his early 20s from Laois and has become a priority for gardai as they aim to clamp down on the criminals over the festive season.

Shortly after 8pm on Monday, a gang broke into Mr Waters's home before he was pinned to the floor, viciously beaten with sticks and threatened with a knife as three masked men ransacked his home for his life savings.

When the attackers later fled, Mr Waters stayed in the house for about half an hour because he was afraid he'd be attacked again if the men were still outside.

"They started shouting, 'We want the money, we want the money, we'll kill you, we'll kill you'. They then pegged him to the floor," Mr Gorman told Independent.ie.

"Two of them went into another room, searching and pulling the place apart.

"The other lad held Joe in the kitchen, took out a knife, and held it to his throat.

"Each of them also had sticks about an inch-and-a-half thick, and three-foot long.

"They belted him with their weapons, and pulled him around the yard to try and loosen him up."

A Garda spokesman said that Mr Waters was treated for shock and minor injuries but was later discharged from hospital.

Irish Farmers' Association national treasurer Jer Bergin appealed for anybody in Offaly who can help gardai with their investigation to come forward.

"Community-based gardai are the most effective tool in policing a country like Ireland.

"The continued recruitment of new Garda members, and their allocation in rural areas, or the reallocation of experienced gardai to rural areas, will go a long way to restoring a sense of security to rural dwellers," he said.
Brussels will stop checking the height and width of hedgerows and the number of trees in fields in the future as Member States become more responsible for shaping the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan told the 2017 EU Agricultural Outlook Conference in Brussels yesterday that the future CAP would continue to be based around simplification and modernisation, but would have less of a 'top down' approach, with greater flexibility for Member States to suit local needs.

The recent white paper on the future of CAP outlined a new 'green architecture', which Mr Hogan (pictured) said will build on the positive experience of greening and cross compliance; he added that farmers must develop a higher level of climate ambition for themselves.

"We are focused on moving to a results-based approach," he said, pointing out that while 30pc of direct payments are linked to greening, a one-size fits-all approach does not work.

"The CAP needs more ambitious targets and greater flexibility for Member States to suit local needs," he said.

"The present policy is too prescriptive with Brussels imposing a top-down approach as regards what should or should not be good actions to take to comply with our policies.

"We are asking Member States to be able to show us how they can meet EU-wide objectives. Through those particular policies they will have to show us how they can meet the EU-wide objectives.

"This is a better effort to take account of the diversification and diversified nature of agriculture right around Europe and remove ourselves from a 'one-size-fits-all' approach and give more flexibility on the context of implementation of EU policy objectives in each Member State."

Initial reaction, he said, to the recent white paper is that "people are concerned the EU is moving away from the C (common) in the CAP and towards what is being described as the renationalisation of the CAP."

The European Commission, he said, is not shirking its responsibilities or dismantling the internal market. "The principle of what we are proposing is greater subsidiarity of Member States," he explained.

High-level objectives will be set at EU level, he said, and they will be translated into a set of specific objectives that will have results set and qualified output indicators, so Member States can define their targets.

Decisions

"Member States' plans will not take decisions in isolation but within a structured Commission process with a common EU objectives," he said.

This will mean that the CAP and greening will move towards a more results-based policy and that Brussels will no longer be setting the width or height standards for hedgerows or the amount of trees in a field.

"What we ware proposing is a significant step change," he said - one that will change the relationship between Member States, the Commission and CAP beneficiaries.
THE possibility of strike action at Ryanair in Ireland has receded today but pilots in Germany have announced strike action for tomorrow.

Scheduled Ryanair flights from German airports between 5.01am local time to 8.59am local time on Friday, December 22 will be affected.

The German pilots' association Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) said talks ended today without successful results.

In a statement Ryanair said: Ryanair has written today to the VC union on a number of outstanding issues arising from the meeting in Dublin yesterday (20 Dec), and has agreed to meet them again in Frankfurt on 5th January to progress and resolve these issues which Ryanair expects will lead to a Collective Labour Agreement (CLA) for Ryanairs pilots in Germany.

A Ryanair spokesman confirmed they will meet the union for crunch talks next month.

He said: "Ryanair has written today to the VC union on a number of outstanding issues arising from the meeting in Dublin yesterday, and has agreed to meet them again in Frankfurt on January 5 to progress and resolve these issues which Ryanair expects will lead to a Collective Labour Agreement for Ryanairs pilots in Germany."

Meanwhile, Trade Union IMPACT said it has received confirmation from Ryanair today that the airline now recognises IMPACT as the representative of the airlines pilots in Ireland for collective bargaining purposes, with immediate effect.

The two sides will meet again on January 3 to agree a comprehensive recognition agreement that will establish collective bargaining procedures in the airline, said IMPACT.

The union cautioned that it expected management to reach agreement on procedures quickly so that the parties could move on to negotiate substantial issues around pilots pay and working conditions. IMPACT confirmed that the threat of industrial action in Ireland has receded for now.

This advance is good news for Ryanair pilots, passengers and shareholders, said IMPACT official Ashley Connolly.

The union had set a deadline of midday today to receive such confirmation from the airline.

In a statement Ryanair said: Ryanair apologises sincerely to any German customers worried or affected by this threatened four hour strike tomorrow morning. We hope that our German pilots will put the needs of our customers first during Christmas week. We advise all customers in Germany to turn up as normal tomorrow, as we plan to operate all scheduled flights, and we will be doing our upmost to minimise any disruptions to the Christmas travel plans of our German customers.
Ryanair confirmed on Tuesday that not only would it recognise pilot unions, but also those for cabin crew. Photo: REUTERS

Both Impact and Siptu are now jostling to represent Ryanair cabin crew and ground-handling staff after the airline said it would recognise trade unions.

A dispute 20 years ago between Ryanair and trade union Siptu could raise the likelihood of the union emerging as the representative body.

The 1997 dispute saw Siptu issue notification of strike action by the airline's baggage handlers over wages and conditions.

The following March, Dublin Airport came to a standstill as firefighters, airport police, clerical staff, IT workers, catering staff and cabin crew working at the gateway stopped work in sympathy with Ryanair baggage handlers who had gone on strike.

But with Impact already representing unionised Ryanair pilots in talks that began on Tuesday, it would appear to be in a strong position to later recruit the hundreds of Ryanair cabin crew who are based in Ireland. Impact also represents about 1,500 cabin crew at Aer Lingus.

Whether or not Siptu becomes the driving force behind those workers could become clearer before Christmas.

Ryanair confirmed on Tuesday that not only would it recognise pilot unions, but also those for cabin crew.

The decision by Ryanair to recognise unions across Europe is already resulting in some unions trying to recruit the airline's cabin crew to their ranks.

A spokesman for Italian trade union Anpac, which represents about 300 of the 650 Ryanair pilots based in Italy, said the union was actively recruiting. Anpac is set to meet Ryanair management in Rome on January 9 regarding recognition for pilots.

Impact has given Ryanair until noon today to deliver a union recognition agreement, before talks can continue.

Its head of communications Bernard Harbor told the Irish Independent that the union remain hopeful it can continue to engage with Ryanair.

"The events of the last six days have been very positive," he said. "What they've been saying and doing is very significant. The language is very positive, and we want to accept that as being positive."

Ryanair probably has about 350 cabin crew based in Dublin. The airline relies on third-party agencies to supply it with flight attendants, of which there are about 8,000 in total at the carrier.
The Law Society has failed in a bid to avoid paying the vacant site levy.

An Bord Pleanala has ruled that a city centre site in its ownership will be subject to an annual levy of 162,000 from January 2019, because it is not being developed, despite being suitable for housing.

In its decision, the board said the Law Society's site at 32-40 Benburb Street, Dublin, valued at 5.4m, was "vacant and neglected" for an extended period of time. It was added to the register of vacant sites on July 28 last by Dublin City Council.

The vacant site levy comes into force from January 1 next year. Each local authority must publish a register, and the levy is applied at a rate of 3pc of the site value. If the site remains undeveloped for 2018, the levy is paid in January 2019.

If the site remains undeveloped during 2019, the levy increases to 7pc of the land value and this charge must be paid in January 2020, resulting in an effective levy of 10pc over the two years.

For the Law Society, the levy will amount to 162,000 if the site is undeveloped in January 2019, rising to 378,000 the following year.

Additions to the register by local authorities can be appealed to An Bord Pleanala.

It has already ruled on three appeals from Ballymore, Cairn Homes and Hammerson, finding in favour of the local council in each case.

Cairn Homes owns a 1.7-acre site at Newcastle, Co Dublin, valued at 920,000, and will be hit with a levy of 27,600, rising to 64,400 in the second year. Hammerson's site on O'Connell Street is valued at 5.4m, and it will be hit with levies of 162,000, rising to 378,000 the following year if it is undeveloped.

Ballymore owns a site with planning permission for 71 homes at Pelletstown, Dublin 15. It will not be obliged to pay the levy, which would have amounted to 60,000 in 2019 and 140,000 in 2020, because construction works have begun. A housing scheme will be launched next year, a spokesperson said.

The Law Society site, which is owned by a company called Benburb Street Property Company, is 0.43 hectares and includes a warehouse in the north-west corner, with part also being utilised as a construction compound for works taking place on an adjoining site.

In its appeal, the Law Society said it was acquired to facilitate an extension of its existing accommodation over the next 50 years, and was not in a "ruinous or neglected condition". Part of the site was used for storage, it added.

The planning appeals board inspector's report noted the society said it had commissioned an update of a "previously prepared masterplan" and "it is the intention to commence development on site in the next three to four years".

"Imposition of (the) vacant site levy will further undermine the Law Society's ability to develop the site, and will simply serve to further delay the redevelopment of these lands," it added. It said that the society had "gone out of (its) way" to maintain the quality of the streetscape by sponsoring "art installations", and would be "prepared to further improve" the site.

The board's inspector said that only a small part of the site was used for storage, adding: "The remainder of the site not in use as a temporary construction site or occupied by the warehouse is in a vacant, overgrown or disused condition."

The board said it was appropriate to class the site as vacant due to its "adverse" impact on the area. The decision of Dublin City Council was upheld.
Investigators for Italy's Ministry of Labour have door-stepped Ryanair pilots and cabin crew at the airline's biggest bases, near Milan and Rome, to probe them on matters such as how and where they pay their taxes.

Tuesday's probe comes just a week after Ryanair threatened pilots and cabin crew in Italy with pay cuts and promotion freezes if they went on strike.

Italian trade union Anpac had called a four-hour strike for last Friday by its Ryanair members.

However, the strike was called off after Ryanair said it would recognise unions.

But the threats made to Ryanair staff incensed Italian politicians and unions.

A spokesman for Anpac said that labour officials questioned both Ryanair pilots and cabin crew on Tuesday as they left crew rooms in the airline's biggest base, at Bergamo, about 40km from Milan.

Ryanair workers at the airline's second biggest Italian base, at Rome Ciampino, were also questioned.

The union spokesman could not yet determine how many staff had been questioned.

The Anpac spokesman told the Irish Independent that the staff were asked about a number of issues, such as where they pay their taxes, as well as the number of days off they received and other matters. Ryanair declined to comment.

Anpac, which said its members include almost half the 650 Ryanair pilots in Italy, is already in the process of recruiting Ryanair cabin crew.

The union spokesman also said that Anpac will sit down with Ryanair management on January 9.

The questioning of Ryanair staff in Italy came as the airline's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, insisted that he's not planning on leaving the company.

In an interview with news agency Reuters, Mr O'Leary - who's been notably absent from the media following Ryanair's September rostering debacle - broke his silence to defend his decision to recognise unions.

Mr O'Leary said the decision was his idea and that he would not step down.

But he also warned unions that he would not be a soft-touch and if they put forward unreasonable demands he would simply shift planes and jobs to other jurisdictions.

"This is not a ruse. This is serious," Mr O'Leary said of the decision, which he said was "in many respects my idea" and which he ran past the company's board of directors last Thursday night.

"But if someone is being unreasonable and we are being completely messed around by a union, we will still move aircraft away from that base or country," he said in the interview in his Dublin headquarters, flanked by his chief operations officer Peter Bellew and chief people officer Eddie Wilson, who are leading talks with unions.

Mr O'Leary rejected media speculation that he may step aside to make way for Mr Bellew, who left his position as chief executive of Malaysia Airlines last month and has been the face of Ryanair in recent days.

"Am I going to leave? No. I am going to stay," said Mr O'Leary.

The airline chief said union recognition would open new opportunities for Ryanair, allowing it to work in heavily-unionised countries such as France and Denmark.

The airline could move 50 planes to France - one eighth of its current 400-plane fleet - he said, although he said the speed of such a deployment would depend on the availability of planes and deals with airports.

Ryanair will still meet its target of flying 200 million passengers a year by 2024, up from just under 130 million this year, he said.

Mr O'Leary said the decision to recognise unions would not have an impact on the company's annual profit forecast and that he did not expect staff costs to increase beyond the extra 100m announced following the cancellation of 20,000 flights in September. (Additional reporting: Reuters)
Despite setbacks Richard is confident his firm will be on the up in 2018. Stock image

This is the last startup diary entry for 2017. We've had 12 entries so far, each one documenting our progress in real time.

I write about my decisions as CEO as they happen, as I make them with the data that I have. There is no sugar coating. This is not a self-serving ghost-written autobiography. It is a decision-journal.

It's purpose is threefold: to let you observe a startup from genesis to product-market fit and beyond; to allow me review and analyse my decision-making after the fact, and thus hopefully free from subjective bias; and to provide a radically open forum for internal and external communication. At year end, let's review how this has all worked out.

First, the state of the startup. I chose a name that needed to meet some key criteria. The .com domain needed to be free for the website. The twitter account needed to be available. The trademark was also necessary. And finally, the name should be easy to spell phonetically. I chose the name metsitaba. I also based this decision on the view that names are not important, in the sense that they do not provide meaning. The history of the company will provide the meaning. Thus I also avoided descriptive names.

How has my choice worked out? It has been an absolute disaster! The name metsitaba is a total failure phonetically. The transcription from ear to voice, and from voice to ear, fails for most people. I was genuinely surprised by this. In hindsight, the cadence is quite African, which is natural to my ears (I lived in South Africa till I was 10 years old), but quite unnatural for most native English speakers.

A new name will be needed. The criteria are still the same, but it will be a project for the New Year. It is not urgent given that we already have a name. Was I wrong to choose a name quickly and just forge ahead? On the negative side, the branding work already done is now a sunk cost. We may have developed some emotional attachments to the name within the company that will make the change a little painful. Our remote working infrastructure is configured to use the old name. That said, changing the name now has low impact - we don't even have a Minimum Viable Product launched yet.

On the positive side, we've avoided a fatal mistake. Our name needs to be transferable by word of mouth. We live within the conferences and events industry, and it is on the conference floor, noisy and distracting, that people will recommend our website to each other.

Our name simply must work phonetically.

Further, we did not overspend intellectual energy on the initial choice of name. I believe that when it comes to business decisions, you should never wait for enough data - by then it's too late. We had so many other things to do, that wasting time on the name would have been an energy-draining distraction. As the great World War II General George S Patton was fond of saying: "a good plan violently executed today, is better than a perfect plan executed next week".

Speaking of data, where have we ended up on the numbers? Our newsletter, which was the first major production effort for the company, now has 326 subscribers and an open rate of 22pc. Will we make our goal of 500 by December 31? It will be close.

What we have done is demonstrated a demand from conference speakers and aspiring speakers for supporting material and tools to help them deliver better talks. This was the purpose of the newsletter.

The first few editions of the newsletter were entirely hand-crafted. We have since put in place a production process to generate a content library in advance of the weekly publication. The publication process is still quite manual, which has led to some content bloopers. In the New Year I'll refine the publication process to ensure higher quality. Measuring your delivery, validating the market need, and only continuing to build and improve if you are validated, is a the key activity of a startup.

Since resources are scarce, you must always wait until manual delivery really hurts before spending money to automate or hire. We've executed well on the newsletter in this regard. As validation increased, we increased expenditure on both the content and promotion.

What about the size of the company? As of year end we have six employees and five contractors. This will grow to 14 by the end of the first quarter of 2018. Everybody works remotely, and only three work full-time. This is quite a different structure to a traditional company, or indeed a traditional startup.

I made a deliberate decision to build a fully remote-working company in order to bring on board a wider range of skills and talents, and also to find people who can contribute effectively, despite not being available to sit in a cube in a traditional office building all day long.

This has been a great success. The company has been able to execute a content marketing strategy, a social media strategy, and a software development strategy, almost concurrently.

The other driver for this decision was our location: Waterford, Ireland. This location is a weakness in the sense that it has a small population of potential hires for a tech startup, but also a strength in that it forces you to adopt alternative recruitment strategies. Ironically we now have access to the global talent pool.

Remote working is not without challenges. You can't just pop over to a colleague and clear up an issue. You can't, as a manager, provide the hands-on guidance and support that your people often need. Solving these challenges requires openly acknowledging that they exist.

You have to have more patience in the short term, as there will be inevitable wasted effort, and you have to put more effort into the long term, to make people more autonomous.

You have to give people a lot of freedom to make mistakes. Surprisingly, this can be stressful for employees if they have not experienced such latitude before. It is rather sad that our modern work environments have some become so toxic and politicised that building an organisation based on openness and trust, even from the ground up, is a huge effort.

Luckily it is 2017 and there are great tools to make remote working much easier.

We use them all, from Google Docs (great for collaborating on shared documents), to Slack and WhatsApp (for internal chat and messaging), and Github (for software development), - and quite a few more. I'm not recommending any specific set of tools. There is a wealth of options out there to suit many different teams, and all you need to do is look.

However, it is a mistake to think that you can buy good interpersonal relationships and communication.

This is a mistake I have made in former businesses. In this business, I am actively developing a set of information strategies and ways of working that support good, and safe, communication.

Last week I discussed one of your first major projects on this front, the 'playbook'.

Everybody gets a playbook describing their goals and tasks, and also their preferences for communication and remote availability. We will refine over time, of course.

The purpose of the playbook is to help everyone avoid mistaken assumptions about their colleagues. It should also help reduce the power of managers as the company grows, as private empires are hard to build out in the open. Come back to me in two years time and I'll tell you if playbooks have helped with that issue.

The company is now starting developing of the Minimum Viable Product. This will be a software platform to help conference speakers and event managers.

We are putting in place a process to deliver a working version of the system each week.

The idea is that, once you have this process in place, you can go live at any time.

The deliverable each week is a live version of the system with a few more features. The team that builds the MVP will be the entire company, and a few external contractors.

A strict weekly delivery schedule really helps bind the entire team together. It also provides sustainable pacing.

In the New Year I will discuss this process in detail - it's something you can easily use for your own startup efforts, especially if you are non-technical. See you in 2018!

Richard Rodger is the founder of Metsitaba. He is a former co-founder of Nearform, a technology consultancy firm based in Waterford.
The long wait for hip hop musical Hamilton to open in London will finally end on Thursday.

The show, which has been a sensation on Broadway, bagged 11 Tony Awards and scored creator Lin-Manuel Miranda a Pulitzer Prize. It uses different musical genres to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton  one of Americas founding fathers.

The show is opening in London two weeks later than originally planned after renovations to the Victoria Palace Theatre delayed the start of previews.

The run in London will be the first outside the US, after receiving rapturous receptions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

In the programme notes for the production, co-producer Cameron Mackintosh writes: In only two years this brilliantly original musical has already become a legendary success in America and, whatever anybody tells you about it, the experience of seeing it is what really matters.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

With a stupendously talented cast, I have no doubt that London audiences are in for a theatrical experience like no other.

The show has been in previews since December 6 and audiences have heaped praise on the performances before critics deliver their own verdicts.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Video of the Day

Performances were initially slated to begin on November 21 and thousands of ticket-holders have had to be re-seated.

Miranda, who penned the musical and starred as the title character in the original Broadway cast, has previously told the Press Association he is excited to see how the comedic portrayal of King George III, the British monarch who lost the American colonies, is received in the UK.

He said: King George III is a crowd favourite with every actor, every rapper.

When Busta Rhymes saw the show he said I need that outfit.

There is something about the character, he becomes an audience surrogate.

Its sort of delightful, as he pokes holes in the American mythology, hes all of us in a way.

Miranda added that he does not think the fact the show details another countrys history will affect the audiences enjoyment and understanding.

He said: That was one of the first questions I got when I was in London  We dont know your history here. I would sheepishly add, Well most Americans dont know our history either so thats not an impediment to enjoying the musical.

But Im very curious to see how you guys react to King George III in the show, that theatre is in the shadow of Buckingham Palace so Im very curious to see how that goes over.

Miranda is expected to attend opening night with his wife Vanessa Nadal after the couple offered fans the chance to make a donation to charities to be in with a chance of joining them at the show.

They teamed up with online fundraising platform Prizeo to invite fans to make a donation to the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) and the UK-based climate change charity 10:10 to be in with a chance of winning the prize.

Hamilton opens at the Victoria Palace Theatre on December 21.
Domhnall Gleeson is probably the most recognisable male redhead in Hollywood but he has dispensed with his trademark flame tresses for his latest role.

The Dublin star is completely unrecognisable as a brunette in new Netflix flick, A Futile and Stupid Gesture.

Expand Close Domhnall Gleeson in Netflix film A Futile and Stupid Gesture / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Domhnall Gleeson in Netflix film A Futile and Stupid Gesture

It's the story of comedy king Doug Kenney, who co-created the National Lampoon, Caddyshack, and Animal House.

Kenney was at the center of the 70s comedy counter-culture which gave birth to Saturday Night Live and a whole generation's way of looking at the world.

We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference

Domhnall plays Henry Beard, one of the founders of National Lampoon magazine and the author of several best-selling books.

The Netflix film is directed by David Wain and also stars Emmy Rossum, Seth Green, and Natasha Lyonne. It's landing on Netflix on January 26.

Gleeson has two more films landing next year. He'll play Mr McGregor in Peter Rabbit which releases on February 9 and he'll also star in The Little Stranger.

The latter will see him reunite with Frank director Lenny Abrahamson, this time for a horror mystery set in 1947.

In recent months he has been on the press trail for Star Wars: The Last Jedi in which he reprised his role as General Hux.
A young Irish actor beat 1200 other hopefuls to land the lead role in the big screen adaptation of Eoin Colfer's best-selling book series Artemis Fowl.

Ferdia Shaw, from Kilkenny, will make his onscreen debut in the title role of the film which is being produced and directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Expand Close Artemis Fowl books by Irish author Eoin Colfer are about to get the big screen treatment / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Artemis Fowl books by Irish author Eoin Colfer are about to get the big screen treatment

Casting director Lucy Bevan saw more than 1200 candidates for the part, but Branagh chose the young Dublin star for the role.

Artemis is a 12-year-old genius descended from a long line of criminal masterminds and he finds himself in a battle of strength and cunning against a powerful, hidden race of fairies who might be behind his father's disappearance.

Expand Close 'Artemis Fowl' author Eoin Colfer. Photo: Dave Conachy / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp 'Artemis Fowl' author Eoin Colfer. Photo: Dave Conachy

Josh Gad has been cast as Mulch Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf who works for the fairies while Dame Judy Dench will play Commander Root, the leader of the fairy police force.

The screenplay will be written by award-winning playwright Conor McPherson.

Production will kick off in the UK early next year and the film is slated for release in Irish cinemas in 2019.
Almost 100,000 households face being hit with a new water charge from 2019.

Households found to be using an 'excessive' amount will be hit with a bill in just over 18 months, and one in 14 households can expect to pay.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has revealed the amount of water which each of Irish Water's 1.35 million customers will be allowed to use before paying a charge.

In a report to Government, it says that an 'average' household of four people uses 125,000 litres of water a year, which falls to 47,000 litres for a single-person home. Families that consume 1.7 times the average - 213,000 litres for a four-person household and 79,900 litres for a single-occupant home - will be charged.

The tariff will be decided following a public consultation process next year. However, based on current tariffs of 1.85 per 1,000 litres of drinking water and 1.85 per 1,000 litres of wastewater, a household which consumes twice the average - or 250,000 litres a year - could face a levy of 68.45 a year. This is based on the cost of the excess of 37,000 litres of water.

The report comes after the Dail Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services last April recommended that charging a fee for excessive usage would demonstrate Ireland was complying with EU rules aimed to improving water quality.

The analysis was based on metered data from 475,000 households.

The CRU said the charges would be subject to public consultation, and would not come into force until mid-2019.

"Based on the multiplier of 1.7, the analysis indicates that a charge for water usage above the threshold would apply to about 7pc of all customers of Irish Water who actually use approximately 31pc of all of the water provided," it added.

Irish Water confirmed it has 1.35 million customers. This means almost 95,000 face being hit with a charge.

The CRU said customers would face a charge if they exceeded the threshold for the full 12 months of 2018, and continued to use excessive volumes for the first six months of 2019, despite being warned by Irish Water in early 2019 about their usage. Billing for that six-month period would begin after June 2019.

The decision to introduce an excess tariff has been criticised as an attempt to re-introduce water charges, with campaigners vowing to oppose any such measure. Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said the aim of the levy was to encourage conservation.

"I think water charges by the back door is a bit ridiculous," he told the Irish Independent. "When you look at the allowance before the excess charge, it will essentially allow for about eight adults, which is more than enough. Even where you have more than four adults in a house, you can get an allowance.

"It's about targeting the 7pc of households which are using one-third of our water through leaks or through excessive wastage. Exemptions for medical conditions will be brought through on regulations. We're not trying to bring in a new charging regime. Our goal is the excessive charge will raise no money. It's about getting conservation at the front of our agenda, and getting pipes fixed."

It is not clear how Irish Water will monitor excessive usage in non-metered households. In a statement, it said domestic meters or "operational leak detection" would be used to identify excessive water usage.
Friends have paid tribute to an Irish man who died in a kite surfing accident in Thailand on Thursday.

The man has been named locally as 43-year-old Jonathan Wogan.

Mr Wogan is originally from mid-Louth and has family in both Dunleer and Castlebellingham.

He is understood to have been living in Thailand for a number of years and was married with an infant daughter.

Mr Wogan is also a past pupil of the Franciscan College in Gormanston, County Meath.

The college paid tribute to him saying he was a past pupil from the class of 92 and a former prefect.

The college said he passed away, "after a tragic kite surfing accident in Thailand. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, young daughter and the extended Wogan family. May he rest in peace."

The parish of Dunleer also paid their respects saying Mr Wogan was a son of Nora and John.

The parish offered its deepest condolences to his wife and young child.

Mr Wogan was a keen kite surfer and often frequented the beach at Hua Hin where he was well known and popular with locals and other kite surfers.

Friends in Thailand posted on Facebook to pay their own tribute to him.

One said; "Jonathan always carried a smile, a friendly hello, a sweet joke to cheer me up.

"A Lad of genuine character and values.

"Shocking witnessing a brilliant Lad, a brilliant Husband with a brilliant future and Your life sadly and suddenly cut so short. You will be missed Jonathan .

"From heaven, You, and all of us, will watch your baby grow Strong and Healthy and so proud of her cheerful and sweet Papi. You have touched many peoples hearts with Your unselfish kindness.

"Thank You Jonathan. May You Be an inspiration to all of us. Rest in peace."

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the death of an Irish citizen and are providing consular assistance.
Veteran journalist Padraig Beirne has died following a lengthy illness.

Aged 76, he had been a pivotal editorial figure with Independent Newspapers for over 40 years. Padraig was primarily associated with the 'Evening Herald', where he served as reporter, deputy News Editor and News Editor, before being appointed to the key role of Group Photographic Editor.

He covered major national and international news stories, including the Tuskar Rock air crash in 1968, the papal visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979 and the Stardust tragedy in February, 1981.

He also reported for the Independent group from Belfast and Derry during the early years of the Troubles.

A native of Boyle, Co Roscommon, he began his career with the 'Roscommon Champion' before spells with the 'Southern Star', 'Leinster Express', and the 'Leinster Leader'.

Former Managing Editor with Independent News and Media Michael Denieffe paid tribute to his former colleague: "Padraig Beirne was a superb journalist - sharp, accurate and balanced. He was of the old school of print journalism, with a superb shorthand note, quick-fire turnaround and delivery of stories, and fine writing style.

"As a reporter, he was fiercely competitive. As a news executive, he revelled in the daily pre-online battle of attrition for street sales, especially against the 'Evening Press'. He could be a fierce but always fair taskmaster. A valued friend.

"Deepest sympathies to his wife Ida, son Mark and daughters Sheragh and Alison and grandchildren."
Bob Geldof at the National Library of Ireland, where he announced the transfer of the Band Aid archive. Photo: Gareth Chaney/Collins

The National Library of Ireland is to hold exhibitions showcasing original material from Band Aid, after the charity's archive was donated to it by Bob Geldof.

One element of the deal to secure the archive for the library, which had been sought after around the world, was that it would be shown to the public.

Geldof said the decision to donate the material to his home town was a 'thank you' to the people of Ireland for their support of the Live Aid and Band Aid movement.

As an example of the generosity of the Irish people, he spoke about one case in which two elderly women gave their wedding rings to help raise funds for the starving in Africa.

The Live Aid broadcast in 1985 was watched by 1.5 billion people and raised tens of millions of pounds for starving people in Africa. Geldof explained: "We could have gone to some wealthy university, they did offer us a lot of money and a couple of the other institutions did as well. But we want to ensure Band Aid's continuity. It has still got a lot of money, so we're going to continue as an organisation.

"But into the future, it's time now that the whole archive was catalogued and categorised, because there are too many aspects to it."

Geldof said developmental students and schools would now be able to look at the material.

"Of course, there'll be exhibitions here and that was part of the deal," he added.

The Department of Culture has committed 245,000 to digitalise the collection and to facilitate the development of the archive by the National Library. Among the material in the collection are letters from private individuals and well-known figures, original recording tapes, photos and reports of projects in Africa which have been funded by the trust since 1985. It will be transported from London in the coming days.

President Michael D Higgins welcomed the gift, saying: "It is a most thoughtful and generous gesture that will be appreciated for generations.

"The decision of the National Library not to just accept the archive but to arrange a major exhibition at the National Photographic Archive is to be particularly welcomed, as is the fact that the public will be able to view these unique archives free of charge. It is also heartening that consideration is being given to a travelling exhibition of the archive."

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: "Band Aid was a milestone of that era. It showed Ireland - and in particular an Irishman - taking the lead in tackling hunger and injustice."
Hundreds of motorists whose drink-driving prosecutions were put on hold should now have their cases dealt with following a significant Supreme Court ruling.

As many as 1,500 cases were delayed after a Romanian man challenged his prosecution on the basis that he had not been supplied with a breath-alcohol statement in Irish, as well as in English.

Mihai Avadenei successfully challenged his prosecution in the High Court in 2015, but that judgment was overturned by the Court of Appeal last year.

Yesterday, a five-judge Supreme Court unanimously rejected an appeal by Mr Avadenei, paving the way for prosecutions which had been on hold to proceed.

Although some District Court judges exercised their discretion to dismiss prosecutions on the basis of delay, it is believed that the vast majority of the 1,500 or so affected cases are still able to proceed.

Giving the Supreme Court judgment, Ms Justice Iseult O'Malley stressed that the issues to be decided did not relate to any asserted constitutional entitlement to an Irish-language version of the statement relied upon to prove the breath-alcohol level, but rather its evidential status.

She found that while the relevant regulations require a single bilingual form to be provided in two identical versions, Section 12 of the Interpretation Act applied because the deviation from the prescribed form did not materially affect the substance of the form.

As a result, no right of Mr Avadenei was breached.

Mr Avadenei, of Swords, Co Dublin, was stopped by a garda when he was doing 80kmh in a 50kmh zone in the early hours of April 21, 2014.

He was breathalysed at Store Street garda station but the intoxilyser apparatus printed out the results in English only.

Mr Avadenei, who was represented by solicitor Michael Staines, later successfully argued in the High Court that the form was invalid as it was not also printed in Irish and his prosecution was halted.

The case centred on interpretation of the Road Traffic Act 2010 and whether or not a print-out is a "duly completed" document for use in evidence if it is not printed in both English and Irish.

The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court ruling following an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Supreme Court then agreed to hear an appeal by Mr Avadenei against the Court of Appeal judgment.

Giving the Supreme Court judgment, Ms Justice O'Malley said that she agreed with the appeal court's analysis and finding.
A grandfather who raped his 41-year-old niece as she slept in her own home on Christmas night 2014 has been jailed for five and a half years.

The 62-year-old Dublin man, who cannot be named in order to protect his victim's identity, later claimed to have taken a lie-detector test about the incident and claimed that the sex was consensual.

After a four-day trial at the Central Criminal Court last month a jury convicted him of raping the woman. He had pleaded not guilty to the offence.

At a sentence hearing last week the court heard the woman only reported the case to gardai three months after the offence when she discovered her uncle had circulated a letter to his family with a lie-detector test attached.

Her uncle had claimed that his niece had participated in consensual oral sex which led to sexual intercourse.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said at last week's hearing that the man had made a catastrophic misjudgement, followed by a second catastrophic misjudgement, and that the only option for such an offence was a custodial sentence.

God knows what he thought he was doing; there was nothing in the background relationship between these two people to suggest anything, said the judge.

Mr Justice Hunt said it was an astonishing feature of the case that the victim was prepared to leave it lying, and he went out looking for trouble.

Today Mr Justice Hunt noted the profound effect the offence had had on the victim. He said the family had been happy and close and this has been shattered irreparably by the conduct of the accused man.

Mr Justice Hunt took into account in mitigation that the accused man had been of very significant previous good character, was going into custody for the first time at a relatively advanced age and that he had medical issues.

He noted the offence was a single incidence and did not involve repeated sexual offending.

Mr Justice Hunt imposed a five and a half year sentence, noting the case was a terrible tragedy for all concerned.

Desmond Dockery SC, prosecuting, said the woman was part of a closely-knit extended family which was now sundered because of the rape.

The man cooperated with gardai but maintained his version of events which was rejected by the jury.

The woman, who was not present in court, wrote a victim impact statement which was read out on her behalf.

She said she was attending counselling to help her deal with the trauma she had endured, but that she didn't think she would ever understand why this horrible crime had happened to her.

She said she did not think she would ever be able to be in a relationship again and that her own and her children's lives had been changed forever.

This happened to me in my own home; a place where you're supposed to feel secure and safe  I no longer feel safe in my own home, she said.

She said she had trusted her uncle who had been like a brother, but that he had violated her.

People used to describe me as positive, happy-go-lucky and confident, but I'm the opposite of that now, she said.

The woman said she had repainted and redecorated her bedroom so many times but remained haunted by what happened to her. She said the trauma had totally destroyed her parents and that their health had deteriorated.

Sean Gillane SC, defending, said the man had no previous convictions and had worked all his life since leaving school early.

The court heard the man was good and decent father and was deeply committed to his wife. He has had poor health in recent years including a heart attack.
A 34-year-old Dubliner accused of a double murder has been refused bail by the Central Criminal Court.

Jason ODriscoll, with a previous address at Richmond Avenue, Fairview is charged with murdering 31-year-old Anthony Burnett and 25-year-old Joseph Redmond, Co. Louth on March 7, 2012.

The two men were found shot dead in a burnt-out car in Ravensdale Forest Park that night. Theyd stolen the car in Dublin in the early hours of that morning.

Diana Stuart BL applied to the court for bail this morning. She said that her clients mother, who was not in good health, was prepared to put up her life savings of 9,000 to secure bail for her son. She was also prepared to have him live with her in the family home.

Read More

Ms Stuart said that his brother was also willing to put forward 5,000. The barrister said that this could be taken as an indication of their faith that Mr ODriscoll was not going to breach any conditions the court would impose.

However, the State called Detective Inspector Patrick Marry, the senior investigating officer in the case.

Im strenuously objecting to Mr ODriscolls bail, he said, outlining his reasons to Alexander Owens SC, prosecuting.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said he always had to be careful refusing bail when the trial was some months away, noting that Mr ODriscolls trial was set for June 25 next.

However, he refused bail and remanded the accused in custody until that date.
A man who turned up at a Dublin garda station in a distressed state and spontaneously admitted to having been involved in a burglary the previous day has received a suspended sentence.

Garda Brian Hunt, of Store Street Garda Station, said Michael Alexis (53) had presented in a bad way physically and mentally and alluded to having been involved in a burglary.

Alexis was not sure where it had taken place but using the information given to them gardai were able to retrieve stolen electrical equipment. They found only one burglary had been reported the previous day and were able to return the items to their owners.

Alexis, of Fonthill Cottages, Clondalkin, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary at The Gasworks Apartments, Dublin 4 on September 25, 2015. He has nine previous convictions in the district court including theft and drugs offences.

Today Judge Karen O'Connor accepted that the other people involved had greater roles in the offence and imposed a two and a half year suspended sentence.

She noted Alexis's mental health issues and difficulty with alcohol and ordered that he attend addiction treatment programmes and do offence focused work under probation service supervision.

You're getting a chance here to address your problems, the judge told Alexis, adding: You have a difficult journey ahead of you but I sincerely hope you will be able to achieve it.

At the sentence hearing, the court heard that the burglary occurred between 9.30am and 11am while the residents were out. They returned to find the apartment ransacked and some property missing including four laptops, a tablet and iPad mini.

The following day Alexis attended at Store Street station in a distressed state and told gardai he had been involved in a burglary where a large amount of electrical equipment was taken. He was able to say the property had been taken to a premises on Moore Street.

Alexis was initially sectioned under the mental health act but was interviewed by gardai the following month. He told gardai he had not known about the burglary in advance and the individual he was with had a key. He said his role was a lookout and he had drank the 200 he received.

Defence counsel John Moher BL told the court Alexis, originally from Grenada, had trained as a chef and had a strong work history which included a number of "well known establishments."

While working in Toronto Alexis met and married an Irish woman. He came to Ireland but after this relationship and a subsequent one broke down Alexis began having issues with alcohol abuse.

Counsel said Alexis wished to work again and submitted his client was someone who was turning a corner. He asked the court to take into account his personal circumstances and his admissions  without which there would be no case against him.
THE Court of Appeal has by a split decision upheld a finding of contempt of court against Independent News & Media (INM).

Judges on the court clashed on the issue, with Mr Justice Gerard Hogan finding that articles published by the Irish Independent in 2014 were protected by the constitutional right to free speech.

However, in a majority judgment, Mr Justice John Edwards found the articles did amount to contempt of court as they contained prejudicial commentary about an individual who was awaiting trial for conspiracy to defraud.

In contrast, Mr Justice Hogan said free speech was the lifeblood of democracy and a finding of contempt would have a chilling effect on all discussion regarding certain events.

Mr Justice Edwards was supported in his views by the third member of the court, Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan.

More precise details of the articles cannot currently be published for legal reasons.

The court said it was issuing redacted judgments to avoid the creation of potential prejudice to a number of pending criminal trials.

INM and a subsidiary company, Internet Interactions Ltd, had appealed a finding of contempt made by Judge Iseult OMalley in the High Court in April 2015, which resulted in fines totalling 100,000.

A stay was put on those fines pending the outcome of the appeal.

The Court of Appeal may hear submissions on the size of the fines next year if the matter is not appealed further to the Supreme Court.

In his dissenting ruling, Mr Justice Hogan said the Irish Independent articles complained of made no reference to any pending criminal trials and did not make any direct suggestion of criminal conduct. He also said they revealed no information directly concerned with the offences the individual was charged with.

If the Irish Independents publication amounted to contempt, the same might also be said with as much justification of almost any publication which was critical of certain other persons or which discussed certain events forming the background to this trial, Mr Justice Hogan said.

He said the articles were part of a long line of publications which were highly critical of certain individuals and he could not say they presented any real risk to the fairness and integrity of the trial that was pending.

He added that the courts would be failing in their duty to uphold the substance of the right to free speech in Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution if they did not protect publications of this kind.

While the right to a fair trial must naturally be protected, we cannot live in some sort of antiseptic and sterile society where robust comment on public affairs is treated like some sort of hostile germ against which the most elaborate of anti-bacterial precautions must be taken, he said.

However, in the majority ruling, Mr Justice Edwards said he was satisfied the articles were in contempt of court.

During the appeal, INM pointed out that other publications covering the same ground remained on sale throughout the prosecution and that the DPP clearly felt these did not constitute a contempt.

Mr Justice Edwards said date of publication was a key factor on this issue.

The other publications referred to were all published before the individual concerned was charged, he said.

He said it would have been of questionable utility to bring contempt proceedings against those publishers or to seek to restrain further sales as there was already a significant number of the publications already in circulation.

He said the situation in this case was different and the fact the Director of Public Prosecutions did not act on other publications was irrelevant when considering whether or not INMs publication constituted a contempt of court.

Mr Justice Edwards said he did not accept that the contempt findings had a potential chilling effect on discussion of matters of undoubted public importance.

The judge said the story could have been adequately reported without naming the individual concerned and without accompanying prejudicial commentary.
A teenager who kicked a garda as she lay unconscious on the ground has been given a suspended sentence.

Leon Kavanagh, then aged 17, kicked Garda Paula Carter, who had been attempting to locate a missing boy, as she lay unconscious after striking her head on a footpath.

Gda Carter had been knocked to the ground while attempting to assist her colleague Garda David Egan. He had been struggling with a number of youths after the gardai located the missing boy at a house party in the early hours of the morning. Kavanagh fled the scene but was later arrested.

Kavanagh, now aged 20, of Buttercup Park, Darndale, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault of a peace officer and violent disorder at an address in Clarehall, Dublin 17 on February 14, 2015.

Judge Sinead Ni Chulachain, who viewed CCTV of the incident, noted Kavanagh had been very aggressive and highly intoxicated on the night and took part in preventing gardai from approaching the vulnerable young person they were making enquiries about.

She noted the assault was not premeditated, no weapon was used and Kavanagh was not the only person involved.

Judge Ni Chulachain noted that Kavanagh was a young man at the time and since this offence he has enrolled in a number of courses as well as maintaining full time employment. She took into account his relatively early guilty plea and a letter of remorse.

She imposed sentences totalling three years which she suspended in full on strict conditions, including that he attend alcohol, offending behaviour and anger management work.

Sergeant Brendan Bergin told Fiona McGowan BL, prosecuting, that gardai had been alerted that a 13-year-old boy was missing and his mother was concerned for his well being.

Information was received about a house party taking place in the Clarehall area where the boy might be located. Gdai Carter and Egan arrived at 1.05am and asked to speak to the boy.

A number of youths at the house, including Kavanagh, were aggressive towards the gardai.

The boy they were seeking walked out of the house but the gardai were prevented from speaking to him by the youths. Gda Carter felt herself being pulled back by her fleece by Kavanagh.

She told him to desist and as she was speaking, saw her colleague Gda Egan struggling with other youths. She radioed for assistance due to the number of people around them. Gda Carter slipped and fell to the ground. She attempted to grab Kavanagh but he ran towards Gda Egan.

Gda Carter regained her feet and went to Gda Egan's assistance. During a struggle Gda Carter was pushed by Kavanagh with significant force to the ground and struck the back of her head off the footpath rendering her unconscious.

Kavanagh kicked Gda Carter a number of times as she lay on the ground unconscious. Gda Egan went to her assistance and the youths fled the scene.

Gda Carter was taken to Beaumount hospital and received a stitch to a cut at the back of her head. She had concussion and bruising to her legs from being kicked, as well as pain in her neck, back and a headache.

The court heard in her victim impact statement that she now suffers from anxiety dealing with the public, particularly around large groups of young males.

Kavanagh has three previous convictions. A co-accused was prosecuted in the District Court for an assault on Gda Egan and received a suspended sentence.

Kenneth Kerins BL, defending, put it to Sgt Bergin that Kavanagh had been acting in a misguided protective manner towards the young boy. I don't know, it was definitely misguided. He was just not for allowing him to be brought home, said Sgt Bergin.

Sgt Bergin agreed that Kavanagh had an unmanageable lifestyle and issues with anger.

Mr Kerins said Kavanagh had a difficult background but was fortunate to have had his late grandmother to provide him with a solid base. He said Kavanagh was now in full time employment.

He asked the court to take into account factors including that Kavanagh had expressed remorse, the the assault had not been prolonged and no weapon was used.
Two men charged following a 2.8m drug seizure in Dublin will be in prison on remand this Christmas.

Gardai intercepted two cars in the Drumcondra area on Wednesday this morning and approximately five kilos of cannabis herb were seized.

Two men, aged 25 and 30, were arrested at the scene and detained at Finglas Garda Station under the provisions of Section 2- Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996.

More drugs were found in a search at an address in Drumcondra.

Father-of-one Leroy Howard, 25, appeared before Judge Bryan Smyth at Dublin District Court today afternoon charged with possessing cannabis for sale or supply after a car was stopped at St Josephs Avenue, D.9 on Dec. 20 last.

He was refused bail following a hearing in which the court heard that this to be his first Christmas as a father.

Objecting to bail citing the seriousness of the offence, Det Garda Redmond OLeary told the court that Mr Howard was caught red-handed following covert surveillance. He alleged that a Ford Focus driven by Mr Howard pulled up in front of a black taxi.

The driver of the taxi got out and was allegedly approached by Mr Howard. It was alleged he was handed a two large white bags which he placed on the rear seat of the Ford Focus.

It was alleged Leroy Howard drove away along on St Josephs Drive in the direction of St Alphonsus Road where he was stopped. Five kilos of suspected cannabis and a quantity of white powder substance believed to be a controlled drug, were recovered, the court heard. The value of the cannabis was 100,000 and the charge before the court carried a five-year sentence.

Det Garda OLeary agreed with defence solicitor Amanda Connolly that the accused has strong family ties and was rooted in his community. The garda accepted that this alleviated one concern in relation to the Mr Howard being a flight risk.

The solicitor also said that Mr Howard and his partner have an eight-month old baby and a second child due in March.

He also agreed that it was accepted that Mr Howard was low down on the scale.

The family had raised 7,000 for bail and the garda accepted that this was a large amount of money for them.

The defence solicitor said her client, who did not address the court, would surrender his passport and would abide by bail terms. She said that this was his first Christmas as a father and it is weighing heavily on his mind.

However Judge Smyth refused bail and remanded him in custody to appear on Dec. 26 next.

Co-accused Michael Smullen, 33, from Oak Park Avenue, Santry, Dublin was charged with having cannabis, cocaine and heroin for sale or supply at a building on St Columbas Road in Drumcondra and having cannabis for supply at St. Joseph's Road on Dec 20.

He made no application for bail when he appeared before a late sitting of Dublin District Court on Thursday evening. Det Garda Patrick Hearne said the man had no reply when charged. Judge Gerard Jones remanded him in custody to appear again on Dec. 27 next.
Marie Varley, a 27-year-old store manager, of Sigurd Road, Arbour Hill, Dublin, has settled a 75,000 defamation claim against Irish Rail for an undisclosed sum in the Circuit Civil Court.

Varley told her counsel Kevin DArcy she had booked a Westport to Claremorris train ticket online. When she turned up at the Westport station the train was about to leave and she had no time to obtain a print-out of her email reservation.

She claimed that while on the train a ticket inspector had refused to accept her e-mail as appropriate to allow her to travel to Claremorris. The inspector had told her he would give her a chance to get off at Roscommon to print it and if she failed to do so he would issue a 100 fine.

When she got off at Roscommon the cashier there told her to get back on the train as the email was sufficient as proof of a ticket. The inspector had obtained her reservation number and tapped it into the ticket machine which then read unknown number.

Varley stated that the inspector told the cashier: She is lying and messing around with numbers. She said she was in tears at this stage and said she had most certainly paid for her ticket.

Mr DArcy, who appeared with ORegan Little solicitors for Ms Varley, told Judge Pat Quinn Ms Varley had then been permitted to get back on the train where a discussion had taken place between Ms Varley and the inspector.

Ms Varley said the inspector had then told her Youre lying and youre getting a 100 fine, now get back to your seat. She alleged the inspector had pushed her.

The Irish Rail inspector involved in the alleged incidents gave evidence in which he denied pushing Ms Varley or having spoken the words she alleged he had.

After Judge Quinn said he would rise for a few minutes the parties engaged in talks in the corridor. A short time later Mr DArcy told the court the case had been settled and could be struck out with costs to the plaintiff.
The drugs that were seized by gardai

A man is expected to appear in court this morning following the seizure of more than 2.8 million worth of drugs yesterday.

The man (25) is due to appear before a sitting of Dublin District Court at 10.30am charged in relation to the investigation.

As part of ongoing investigations targeting serious criminal activity in Dublin, two cars were stopped in the Drumcondra area of Dublin yesterday morning.

During the search of these vehicles, approximately 5 kilos of Cannabis Herb (subject to analysis) was seized.

Read More

Two men (25 and 30) were arrested at the scene and are currently detained at Finglas Garda Station under the provisions of Section 2- Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996.

A follow up operation a search was carried out at an address in Drumcondra, a significant amount of drugs was seized including Cocaine, Heroin, Cannabis Herb, Cannabis Resin and Ecstasy tablets, along with drug packaging and mixing paraphernalia.
NAVAL Service and Cork Fire Brigade units are battling a major fire at Haulbowline Naval Base.

The fire erupted shortly before 9pm in a disused warehouse building adjacent to the officers mess in the main base complex.

Flames billowing out of the Naval Base in Cork Harbour @ralphriegel pic.twitter.com/645EQkXylx  Darragh McGann (@McGannDarragh) December 21, 2017

The blaze quickly spread to the roof of the old structure.

Naval Service fire fighting units were at the scene within minutes and began working to bring the fire under control.

They were supported by two units of Carrigaline-based Cork Fire Brigade tenders who worked to ensure the blaze did not spread to other buildings.

The structure in which the fire erupted was disused and unoccupied.

However, it is surrounded by some of the core office buildings of the Naval Service.

Flames from the fire were visible across the harbour in nearby Cobh.

One navy source said an evacuation of all personnel from the area was enacted to facilitate the work of fire fighting personnel.

The fire came less than a decade after another major blaze at the Haulbowline base destroyed an old storage building which dated back to Royal Navy times.

Haulbowline is Ireland's main navy base and serves as both the accommodation, operations, berthing and refitting complex for the Irish fleet.

It is also the site of a major fuel bunker complex for patrol ship operations.
An Irish campaigner who has fought for better services for cystic fibrosis patients is on life support in New York, and has now been told she is set to receive a double lung transplant.

Orla Tinsley (30), a Kildare-born journalist who now lives in New York, has been too unwell to travel home and is currently in New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was awaiting news of a potential lung transplant and was told yesterday morning that she is set to receive a double lung transplant.

She wrote online: "This morning we got a call but I wanted to wait. Well, here it is, Lucky Number7. Im not afraid.. Please send love, prayers and best wishes. Double lung transplant is a go! Love love love."

The young woman has campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of cystic fibrosis and has written extensively on the subject.

From hospital this week, she urged people to carry an organ donor card.

She told well-wishers: "I am currently on life support fighting intensely."

Ms Tinsley said on Tuesday she was hopeful of a transplant this time around, having been called for a transplant on six other occasions only to discover they were not a match.

A number of people in Ireland have sent messages of support to her as she awaits news.

She also uploaded a picture of her oxygen mask to social media site Instagram, and said her "entire focus now is on breathing".

"I am struggling a lot but I am strong and hopeful," she said.

"I'm a ninja. They don't quit and they are adaptable to all situations.

"They karate chop their way with stealth, fancy footwork and a determined mind.

"I have an incredible team @nyphospital who are working intensely around the clock to keep me alive. We are hopeful that lungs are coming."
The HSE is promising that nobody will be waiting more than 15 months for surgery or an outpatient appointment in 2018 - despite seriously failing to live up to the same pledge this year.

The most recent figures show nearly 100,000 are waiting more than 15 months to see a specialist, and 7,335 are facing the same delay for surgery.

HSE chief Tony O'Brien insisted yesterday it will be possible to meet the target by the end of next year with the support of an additional 55m in extra funding.

He was speaking as the HSE launched its service plan for 2018, setting out how it will carve up its 14.5bn budget between various services.

It is promising extra money across a range of areas including home care, disability services, mental health care, hospital beds, diagnostics and scoliosis operations for children and adolescents.

But a cloud hangs over the plan, which also has to make 346m in "savings" which it says will be done through efficiencies that won't have an impact on care.

But previous plans which have imposed savings have inevitably cut into patient services.

The HSE is also promising that no patient over 75 years of age will have to spend more than nine hours on a trolley - but four in 10 elderly people had to endure longer than that target in 2017.

Question marks also remain over the Government's promise in the Budget to sanction 1,800 more staff for the health service. It has now emerged this is part of a "one out, one in" policy. Many of those who get full-time jobs in the health service next year are already working there through agencies, which means much the same number of bodies will be on the ground at the patient's bedside and elsewhere.

Although more funding is to be invested in mental health, there is no commitment to have a 24-hour service, which is key to responding to people in suicidal distress who may have nowhere to go but an overcrowded A&E department.

It makes no mention of the Government promise to extend free GP care to more children.

A key promise is more beds, and these are earmarked for a number of hospitals including University Hospital Limerick, Cork University Hospital, University Hospital Galway and St Luke's in Kilkenny.

The plan said people applying for home help or a homecare package should have a simpler application process. The aim is to deliver 17 million home help hours to 50,000 people.

It concedes, however, this will not meet demand and waiting lists will continue.

The Fair Deal scheme is being allocated 962m to support 23,334 people in nursing homes.

The prescription charge for medical card holders will come down from 2.50 to 2 from January.

The drug payment scheme threshold will also be reduced from 144 to 134 a month.

Health Minister Simon Harris said he will bring an implementation plan for the Slaintecare report - the cross-party blueprint for the health service in the next decade - to Cabinet in January.

He said he will also include the findings of a review, setting out where extra hospital and other beds should be allocated, in the capital plan for next year.

He revealed he is no longer going ahead with a proposal to set out a future plan for services in Portlaoise Hospital, which he said would have been ready at the end of this year.

Instead, he is to begin consultations with doctors in the hospital and in the community which was absent from a plan drawn up by the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, which includes Portlaoise.

It proposed its downgrading over the coming years with the loss of its 24-hour A&E and the removal of maternity services. It has led to angry local reaction.

The hospital is in the constituency of Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, who has been a strong defender of the retention of services.

Mr Harris said it will be next year before a decision is made on Portlaoise, and even then it will be years before any changes would be made.

Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath said he welcomed the extra funding for disabilities.
Newly-born animals brought joy to staff and visitors at Dublin Zoo throughout 2017.

Over the past 12 months, the zoo has welcomed some of the natural world's biggest babies, including a southern white rhinoceros calf, two Asian elephant calves, an eastern bongo calf, and no less than three scimitar-horned oryx.

Dublin Zoo director Leo Oosterweghel said: "It has been a truly remarkable year for all of us here.

"We were delighted to welcome a total of 40 new animals to Dublin Zoo."

He said the scimitar-horned oryx is a species classified as extinct in the wild - the births of three of them were "wonderful".

Also celebrated was the birth of a healthy eastern bongo, a species which is classified as critically endangered.

The calf is the offspring of mother Nanyuki and father Hodari.

This was a particularly significant arrival for Dublin Zoo, as only between 75 and 140 eastern bongos exist in the wild. The eastern bongo is hunted in the wild for its horn and meat and its population is in rapid decline.

The two Asian elephant calves were born in March and May.

Bernhardine, the herd's matriarch, gave birth to a female calf on March 13.

Just two months later, on May 15, Yasmin gave birth to a male calf. This was the sixth elephant born at the zoo in less than three years.

The newborns bring the number in the elephant herd to 11, which includes father Upali, in the Kaziranga Forest Trail.

Both births were a significant success as part of the international breeding programme established to assist the survival of the Asian elephant.

"We are continuously reinvesting, building world-class habitats that closely reflect the animals' natural environments," Mr Oosterweghel said. "We are committed to offering a memorable day out."
One in six female students either knows or suspects that someone had sexual contact with them without their consent when they were passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated or asleep, according to a new study.

Male students reported similar events but the incidence was less than half of that reported by females, researchers from NUI Galway's School of Psychology found.

The findings emerged from the first comprehensive survey in Ireland of sexual behaviour and assault among 18-to 29-year-old college students, which also explored the role of alcohol.

The survey was conducted in 2014-15 and key findings include that over the course of a year:

8pc of females and 3pc of males were certain someone had sexual contact with them where they were unable to provide consent or stop what was happening because they were passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated or asleep.

A further 8pc of females and 4pc of males were uncertain but suspected that something similar had happened to them.

The two sets of figures bring to 16pc - about one in six - female students who were either certain, or suspected, that someone had sexual contact with them without their consent.

The report's main author, PhD student Elaine Byrnes, said students were also invited to say what happened in situations where they were unable to give consent and there were a range of answers, including forced touching, attempted sexual intercourse or sexual intercourse.

Among the other insights gleaned were that 27pc of females and 35pc of males agreed with the statement that "guys don't usually intend to force sex on a girl, but sometimes they get too sexually carried away".

Meanwhile, 76pc of females and 69pc of males agreed that they were less nervous about sex after drinking and 35pc of females and 58pc of males said they had had sex with people with whom they wouldn't have done so if they had been sober.

Researchers found that 75pc of women and 56pc of men were extremely/very likely to confront a friend who planned to give someone alcohol to get sex.

Dr Byrnes said the results showed the incidence of sexual violence and assault were comparable to international studies of college students.

"Findings on alcohol-related sex consequences, particularly where students report being forced or pressured into sexual activity, highlight the importance of continuing consent education, how it [consent] is understood and communicated and the role of alcohol in sexual decision-making."

The survey involved students in NUI Galway and Ms Byrnes said it highlighted the need for a national study of third-level students on this issue.

Dr Pat Morgan, vice-president for the student experience at NUI Galway, said the university was committed to supporting and enhancing the holistic development of students, and that the data would contribute to the development of sexual-health policies and services on the campus.
Senator Catherine Noone, head of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment, says the report represents the majority view. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins

A Fine Gael TD who opposes holding a referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment has said there is a "big split" in the party over abortion.

Peter Fitzpatrick also said he's "very disappointed" in Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for announcing the Government's intention to hold a referendum on abortion before the Oireachtas Committee examining the issue did its work.

The committee last night published its final report which recommended repealing the Eighth Amendment and allowing terminations without restriction up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy. It also recommended allowing abortions in circumstances where a woman's life or health - either physical or mental - was at risk, in consultation with doctors.

Terminations would also be permitted in cases of fatal foetal abnormality.

The report has been handed over to the Dail and the Government for consideration ahead of the drafting of wording that would ultimately be put to the people in a referendum as early as next May.

The chairperson, Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone, said the report represented the majority of the committee's views on this "very difficult and deeply personal issue" and lay "somewhere in between the two traditional polar positions".

Expand Close Cruel recommendations: Louth TD Peter Fitzpatrick. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Cruel recommendations: Louth TD Peter Fitzpatrick. Photo: Tom Burke

She said politicians didn't have ownership of the issue and she couldn't envisage a situation where the Oireachtas would block a referendum on abortion next year.

Ms Noone said the Government wasn't obliged to implement the committee's recommendations, but hoped they would help in forming the basis for legislation.

Kate O'Connell, a strongly pro-choice Fine Gael TD, said the report was based on a huge amount of evidence and gave a "clear direction" to Government on what the legislation should include.

Mr Fitzpatrick was among three committee members who oppose abortion under all circumstances and are against the holding of a referendum on the matter.

Expand Close Senator Ronan Mullen says nobodys right to life should be put to a vote. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Senator Ronan Mullen says nobodys right to life should be put to a vote. Photo: Tom Burke

The Louth TD, along with Independent TD Mattie McGrath and Independent Senator Ronan Mullen, published a minority report that claimed the committee process had been biased and led to "cruel and unjust recommendations".

Mr Mullen said he believed there was no category of person whose "right to life should be put to the vote".

Mr Fitzpatrick agreed and also said: "Talking to a lot of backbenchers, I think there's a big split in Fine Gael.

"I'm not going to say it's 50:50 but, in fairness, I think it's very positive towards keeping the Eighth Amendment."

Asked about his comments that he was "disappointed" in Mr Varadkar, he said he wouldn't resign from Fine Gael over the matter as the party's members have a free vote on abortion.

Mr Varadkar is to consider the committee's report over Christmas before he shares his views on its contents in the new year.

The Eighth Amendment, introduced in 1983, guarantees equal status to the life of a mother and her unborn child.

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said she opposed its introduction at the time and that the 1980s were "dark days for women".

She mentioned the Kerry Babies case among other examples. "I'm just delighted we're moving out of that darkness and into the light," she said.

Another committee member, Fianna Fail TD Lisa Chambers, said the testimony that resonated with her was a presentation on fatal foetal abnormality.

She said most committee members "were in tears".

Her party is also divided on abortion, but fellow Fianna Fail TD Billy Kelleher said he will personally advocate for repealing the Eighth Amendment.

The committee's recommendation that terminations be permitted up to 12 weeks without restriction was proposed due to the complexity of legislating for cases of rape and incest.

Independent Senator Lynn Ruane, who had proposed a 22-week limit, said she believed that while the committee's recommendations were positive, women would still have to travel to Britain for abortions if the 12-week rule was implemented.
Mr Connolly said that the Eighth Amendment imposes a restriction on bodily autonomy. Stock photo: Tom Honan/PA Wire

The Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment has registered with political watchdog the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) ahead of next year's abortion referendum.

An umbrella organisation for the pro-choice movement, it counts more than 100 groups among its members and supporters.

This includes Amnesty International, which is in dispute with Sipo over a 137,000 donation it got from the US-based Open Society Foundations (OSF).

The coalition registered with Sipo this month and joins other so-called 'third parties', including some on the opposing side of the abortion debate like the Pro-Life Campaign. Third parties are organisations other than political parties who accept donations exceeding 100 for political purposes.

The coalition's convenor, Ailbhe Smyth, said it registered with Sipo after receiving such a donation but didn't respond when asked who the donor was or what sum was involved.
A local Tidy Towns organisation has been dragged into a bitter dispute between two Sinn Fein politicians, the Irish Independent has learned.

Sinn Fein TD Dessie Ellis has sent a legal letter to Ballymun Tidy Towns over remarks allegedly made about him at the organisation's annual general meeting (AGM) earlier this month.

Mr Ellis claims that a completely false allegation was made against him at the meeting by a male party colleague, who is a supporter of Sinn Fein councillor Noeleen Reilly.

Well-placed Sinn Fein sources have confirmed that Mr Ellis and Ms Reilly have been involved in a long-running dispute in the constituency and this has been referred to senior party bosses.

Mr Ellis claims it was alleged at the meeting that he has a picture hanging in his constituency office of another party member.

The meeting allegedly heard that the face of the person in question has been circled by Mr Ellis, alongside a derogatory term.

In his letter, sent through his solicitors earlier this month, Mr Ellis completely rejects the allegation and has warned the committee that it must not be repeated.

The Dublin North West deputy has also asked Sinn Fein to sanction the individual who he claims made the allegations at the meeting.

A party source last night insisted that Mr Ellis was not seeking any redress from the Tidy Towns but merely did not want the false allegation to be repeated at future meetings.

It is understood that the Tidy Towns group has yet to respond to the TD.

When contacted by the Irish Independent, the chairman of the local Tidy Towns, Robert Murphy, said: "I have absolutely no comment to make."

Both Mr Ellis and Ms Reilly declined to comment.

However, sources said both politicians had grievances with each other and wanted the party hierarchy to address the dispute once and for all.

It is expected that the matter will be sent to Sinn Fein chairman Declan Kearney for consideration.

The party's press office confirmed that it is examining the allegations and differences between party politicians in Ballymun.

In a statement, a spokesman told this newspaper: "Sinn Fein is aware of the difficulties in the constituency and is continuing to work to bring them to a satisfactory conclusion."

There is growing pressure on soon-to-be leader Mary Lou McDonald to address the bullying crisis within Sinn Fein.
Jordan Culbert, from Birr, Co Offaly, gets down on bended knee to propose to girlfriend Alison Parsons. Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

A sailor proved that romance is alive and well in the Naval Service with a festive marriage proposal to his girlfriend just minutes after he arrived home from humanitarian duties in the Mediterranean.

Jordan Culbert proposed to Alison Parsons on the quayside at Haulbowline naval base in Cork, to the cheers of his LE Niamh shipmates, immediately after the patrol ship docked after a three-month tour of duty off the North African coast.

The couple, both from Birr, Co Offaly, were congratulated after a tearful Alison accepted his proposal. The sailor had been planning the proposal since he sailed to the Mediterranean on migrant rescue duties last October. "I was just hoping she would say 'yes' - so it'll be a very special Christmas for us all," he said.

Alison admitted it was the best Christmas gift she could have asked for.

There were tears and cheers across the Cork naval base as the 57-strong crew under Lt Cmdr Stuart Armstrong arrived back in Ireland for Christmas.

LE Niamh was the first Irish patrol ship to operate under the new UN mission mandate, Operation Sophia, which aims to crack down on people smugglers.

Expand Close Jordan with his new fiancee Alison. Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Jordan with his new fiancee Alison. Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

Irish personnel have now rescued almost 19,000 people from drowning since the mission began in 2015.

Defence Minister Paul Kehoe said: "I feel immensely proud of the work that Naval Service personnel are doing."
Ryan Tubridy meets Beth Byrne (9), from Old Bawn, Co Dublin, as he visited Crumlin Childrens Hospital as part of the Childrens Medical & Research Foundation. Photo: Robbie Reynolds

Self-professed 'toy man' Ryan Tubridy paid a special visit to patients at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin.

The visit was to raise awareness of the CMRF Crumlin 'Toughest Journey' campaign which aims to provide vital supports for sick children and their families - as hundreds of Irish children will spend Christmas Day in hospital this year.

CMRF Crumlin ambassador Ryan Tubridy said: "For lots of children, they get a laugh out of meeting the 'Toy Man' when they are staying in any hospital, especially at Christmas time.

"It's important we remember that while most families are enjoying Christmas Day surrounded by loved ones at home, not everyone is so lucky."

For more information visit cmrf.org
Gardai are investigating after two women were held at gunpoint after withdrawing cash from a bank.

The incident happened on New Ireland Road, Rialto Dublin 8 on December 7.

The two women (aged 30s and 50s) had collected an undisclosed amount of cash from a bank on the Crumlin Road.

They then drove to New Ireland Road, Rialto, where they parked their car at approximately 12.45pm.

As the passenger was exiting the car, a lone male on foot approached her and pushed her back into the car. He then produced a hand gun and threatened both women.

The man proceeded to take a handbag containing the cash and the keys of the car.

The suspect, who is approximately 5 foot 9 was wearing dark clothing, sunglasses and a helmet, then went down New Ireland Road on a pedal cycle.

Gardai are appealing for witnesses or anyone with information to contact them in particular for anyone who they may have seen acting suspiciously around South Circular Road or New Ireland Rd prior to the robbery.

Gardai are also seeking any motorists that were travelling from St Jamess Hospital to Rialto on South Circular Road, Dublin 8 or vice versa who may have a dash camera.

The times required are between 12:30pm and 1pm on the 7th of December 2017.
It may not be as big, or as well known, as Newgrange, but Knockroe Passage Tomb, on the Kilkenny-Tipperary border, is just as important.

The megalithic burial site, which dates back more than 5,000 years, is unique, in that it aligns with both the rising and the setting sun on the Winter Solstice.

It has separate tombs, one facing east and one with a westerly aspect. Conditions permitting, the east facing chamber lights up at sunrise and the west facing chamber is illuminated at sunset, c 3.40pm. Newgrange is only illuminated at sunrise.

Picture, by Chris Corlett of the National Monuments Service, Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, was taken at sunset on Tuesday December 19. It shows the alignment as it would occur today, if the conditions allow.

Read More

On Tuesday, said the sun appeared for a few seconds at exactly the right time before the clouds rolled in again.

Knockroe, in the foothills of Slievenamon, is one of a series of megalithic tombs in the area.

Dr Muiris OSuillivan, Professor Emeritus Archeaology, University College Dublin, who led the excavation of the site over a 25 year period, will be among those gathering at Knockroe today for the solstice. He calls the site the Newgrange of the south".

According Dr OSullivan, the Knockroe tomb, which is richly illustrated with artwork, was designed from the beginning to be an impressive monument.

He has described the design as very similar to that of Knowth, not far from Newgrange, in the Boyne Valley, Co Meath.

Read More

Earlier this year, An Bord Pleanala shot down plans for eight 126-metre high turbines in the area.

Locals and conservationists campaigning against the plans submitted by a Dutch company had warned that the development would have impacted hugely on the Knockroe Passage Tomb.
Inside the chamber at the Winter Solstice at Newgrange yesterday morning. Picture Steve Humphreys

Rebecca Smyth with an Irish Wolfhound at Newgrange in Co Meath in 2016 Photo: Mark Condren

Sean Nicholston, Dublin, and Siobhan Carroll, Roscommon, in the chamber at Newgrange. Photo: Damien Eagers

For the first time ever, people all over the world can watch sunlight creep into Newgrange passage tomb on winter solstice.

Weather-permitting, of course (clouds are forecast).

A live stream organised by the OPW and Failte Ireland will broadcast the moment when the 5,000-year-old tomb's internal chamber is lit up (#Solstice2017).

You can watch it live (below) from 8.30am on Thursday, December 21.

The annual event, which sees sunlight enter the roofbox of the Co. Meath tomb and light up its inner chamber over the course of around 17 minutes, is simulated for all visitors to Newgrange - but only a lucky few get to see the real deal.

Each year, the OPW runs a Winter Solstice Lottery - in 2017, it says, over 33,000 people applied from as far afield as Austria, Italy and the US.

Just a handful are ever successful in entering the chamber itself.

Newgrange is believed to be older than Stonehenge (below) and the Egyptian pyramids, and its "alignment" is considered a marvel of Neolithic engineering.

The live stream comes on a notable anniversary, too.

50 years ago, on December 21, 1967, Irish archaeologist Dr. Michael J. OKelly stood inside the famous passage tomb as the light from the rising sun travelled 19m up the corridor to illuminate the central chamber.

Dr O'Kelly is believed to have been the first human to witness the winter solstice from inside Newgrange in millennia.

Today, Bru na Boinne is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and key Ireland's Ancient East attraction visited by over 207,000 people a year.

Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year.

See more on irelandsancienteast.com.

Read more:
Don't wrap your Christmas presents if carrying them through security, Dublin Airport says.

Dublin Airport is preparing for its busiest ever Christmas, with almost one million passengers expected over the festive season.

From Friday, December 23 to Friday, January 6, 2017 some 978,000 people will travel through the country's largest airport., it says.

The figure is an 8pc rise on the same period in 2015.

Once again, passengers taking presents through security are being advised not to wrap them - as they may be requested to open the gifts.

"Many passengers take a lot of care and time to wrap Christmas gifts for family and friends overseas," said Dublin Airports Siobhan ODonnell.

"We would ask them not to wrap these gifts, otherwise they may be disappointed if they are requested to open them at the passenger security screening area,"

Wrapped presents can be transported in hold luggage, however.

Despite the crowds, the airport can be a magical place at this time of year, and Dublin has already seen a number of marriage proposals, lots of fun costumes, and grandparents meeting grandchildren for the first time, O'Donnell added.

Some 30 musical groups will be serenading passengers over the Christmas season, with the airport now hosting over 100 Christmas trees, she says.

RTE's Ryan Tubridy and 2FMs Eoghan McDermott will broadcast their radio shows live from the airport on Friday, December 23 from 9am and 4pm.

The airport issued the following tips for festive travellers:

1. Check your terminal

Aer Lingus, Etihad Airways, Emirates and all American carriers operate from Terminal 2 while all other airlines operate from Terminal 1.

2. Don't wrap your presents!

If you are planning to bring Christmas gifts by air this festive season Dublin Airport is asking passengers not to gift wrap presents.

3. Remember the 100ml rule

The EU aviation liquid regulations are still in place, so passengers are reminded to pack gifts in bottles or containers measuring more than 100ml into their checked luggage. Details can be found on dublinairport.com.

4. Remove sharp objects from hand luggage

Passengers are also reminded not to carry sharp objects in their hand-luggage - such as scissors, nail files, blades, corkscrews, cutlery or other sharp objects of any description. These objects should be packed into checked in luggage.

Christmas crackers may be brought through the passenger security screening area provided the novelty gifts inside are not sharp/prohibited items.

5. Check-in on time

Passengers should plan to arrive in the terminal building at least 90 minutes before their flight irrespective of whether they are checking in online or at the airport. Passengers flying long-haul are advised to consult their airline's website for check-in times.

6. Allow for road traffic

Finally, passengers travelling this Christmas season are also advised to allow extra time to get to the airport in the event of road congestion to ensure they comply with check-in and airport security regulations.

Dublin Airport is expected to announce 2016 as its busiest ever year.

Read more:
There's a spin the 'wheel of crisis' game going on in Government.

The run in to Christmas was always earmarked for housing. The new year will bring a trolley problem to the door of Health Minister Simon Harris.

And when that passes we'll go back to questioning Charlie Flanagan as to what on Earth is going on at the heart of Justice.

But for the next few days, it will be Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy who faces the cameras in a bid to reassure the nation that the homelessness problem is being solved.

Christmas is a time of year when we all feel that little bit more charitable and the idea of 3,333 children without a definitive location for Santa to drop their presents tugs at the heartstrings.

And that's a major problem for the Government. It's almost 18 months since Simon Coveney launched 'Rebuilding Ireland' in a blaze of fancy literature.

He described it as "a really ambitious and far-reaching initiative" that was his own and the Government's number-one priority. Mr Coveney ultimately switched his focus to Brexit, leaving Mr Murphy to take the flak.

There are many laudable ideas in the plan. One positive result was on display yesterday as the minister officially opened 29 so-called 'rapid build' units in Drimnagh, Dublin. The nicely designed homes will be home to more than 50 children this Christmas. But they are just a drop in an ever-growing ocean.

At the launch, Mr Murphy promised things would improve but they would take more time. He quoted figures. Lots of figures. Some 1,000 social homes have been completed, while 3,600 homes are on site with another 2,000 homes ready to be built.

But asked whether he could guarantee the 3,000-plus children in emergency accommodation this Christmas that they will have a home by next year, he replied: "What I can tell those children is that we are building new homes for those children and their families."

He said there has never been any secret that we need the private sector delivering at least 25,000 new homes every year.

"When we get to that point...then we'll have overcome the problems," Mr Murphy said, adding that 6bn is available, so money is not a problem.

It could easily have been Mr Harris quoting investment in new measures to stall the numbers on hospital trolleys.

Statistics don't work for ordinary people.

It's true that every house moves us one step closer to ending the crisis - but for anybody who watched RTE's 'The Big Picture' on Tuesday night, the reality is on the ground.
Premium

John Downing Opinion Deja vu for weary North voters as yet another election looms, but what will be the outcome?

Northern Ireland voters face their fourth election in six years  for an Assembly that has not worked at all for four of the past six years. Here are four potential outcomes and their likely effects for all of Ireland:
Going from a property bubble to a homelessness and housing crisis, while enduring endless guff from the Government on great strides being made, it is pertinent to ask: why are 9,000 people still without a roof over their heads?

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has refused to guarantee that the number will be reduced by this time next year. He insists he has the resources to solve the problem - but won't provide a timeline. This matters.

Last Christmas, the headlines were about homeless people taking over Apollo House. There were soothing soundbites and calls to action - yet the crisis worsens.

With rents rising and an acute shortage of homes, clearly we need an urgent step change by the Government. The minister needs to deliver homes, either by building or buying more for social or affordable housing. The local authorities are not doing enough.

Is it not time for a national housing agency to engage with what ought to be a subject of national shame? Those who rent are finding themselves driven out by the soaring increases. Their tenancies are short term and they are expected to move on, but there is nowhere to go.

Homeless children are growing up in hotel rooms, so used to eating off the floor they do not know what it is to sit at a kitchen table. The sight of huddled human bundles sleeping in doorways in every city is a scandal.

With the average rent nationally at a record 1,056 and the number of homes being built by the Government falling hopelessly short of the level of need, we had better get comfortable with either stepping over them or doing something about it.

President Michael D Higgins used his annual Christmas message to highlight their plight. "This Christmas, once again, the burden of homelessness will overshadow the festive season for those deprived of a secure and permanent shelter," he said. His "once again" should trouble us.

A welcome triumph for common sense in court

The Supreme Court's dismissal of the challenge by a Romanian man, who claimed that his drink-driving prosecution should be stopped as he had not been supplied with a breath-alcohol statement in Irish, as well as in English, is an all-too-rare triumph for common sense.

It has implications for more than 1,000 drink-driving prosecutions that have been put on hold, so clarity on the issue is welcome. The rules around the use of the breathalyser and the intoxilyser, and how they are applied and interpreted, have been proved to be needlessly complex. Lawyers, gardai and the courts have gone back and forth and loopholes and lacunae have been found to either make or break a case.

The case hinged on Sections 13 of the Road Traffic Act 2010 and whether or not a print-out is a "duly completed" document for use in evidence if it is not printed in both English and Irish. As Ms Justice O'Malley pointed out, the omission of the Irish part did not materially affect the substance of the document. She also noted that, under the 2010 Act, a "duly completed" breath-alcohol statement "shall, until the contrary is shown, be sufficient evidence in any proceedings".

While, strictly speaking, an Irish-language version should have been included, what really matters is that all of the required information was present.

That a form could be deemed invalid as it was not also printed in Irish should not be deemed more important than the evidence or information submitted in any case.
With a strong vision to be a leader in healthcare in Ireland, innovative to new medical developments and services, and empowering to staff in reaching their full potential, Bon Secours Health Systems future is optimistic. John McPhillips, Group HR Director of the Bon Secours Health System, speaks about the reasons to become a part of the organisation.

To continue to support the healthcare needs of our communities, one of our main goals is to grow our services and invest in new developments, says McPhillips. Bon Secours Health System is currently investing 150 million over the next five years, as part of its ambitious 2020 Plan to deliver Advanced Medicine Exceptional Care across its hospital sites in Ireland.

Bon Secours Health System is the largest private Hospital Group in Ireland, with a network of five modern JCI (Joint Commission International) accredited acute hospitals in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Tralee, as well as a Care Village in Cork. The group employs over 3,000 staff who, with 450 leading consultants, work in partnership to provide the highest standard of care to more than 280,000 patients each year

Recently, Minister Jim Daly marked another important milestone in the history of Bon Secours Hospital Cork, turning the sod on a 77m development at the largest private hospital in Ireland, which has been treating patients in the Munster region for over 100 years, says McPhillips. The extensive expansion is the largest ever investment undertaken by the Bon Secours Health System. Other developments include the recent acquisition and development of Bon Secours Hospital Limerick at Barringtons, the opening of a new Cath Lab in Galway, the expansion of our Care Village, and the development of new theatres and Consultant Clinics in Tralee.

McPhillips says innovation is also vital in the ever-changing healthcare landscape.

We need to continue to invest in our infrastructure and facilities, along with our innovative practice to benefit our patients. Such an example of innovation includes the launch of our Direct Access Endoscopy Service at Bon Secours Hospital Dublin, together with the simultaneous commencement of the innovative small bowel capsule endoscopy pilot programme for PillCAM.

These are all testament to our plans for growth, and continuous development.

Opening doors

These new developments open up a door full of opportunities for both candidates moving back to Ireland after living abroad, or those already living here.

There are excellent career prospects. In particular, a key priority for 2017 was the development of a Nurse Recruitment Plan, says McPhillips. We have already increased our workforce in 2017 with the development and launch of our new services. The Bon Secours Health System has invested heavily in the recruitment of nurses through attendance at Jobs Expo, overseas recruitment initiatives, open evenings and targeted social media campaigns. We are planning to expand our Care Village in Cork in 2018, which will require an increase in Nursing Staff and Health Care Assistants.

McPhillips adds, Bon Secours Health System is a well-respected and progressive employer. We want to be recognized as a healthcare provider and employer of choice. We have an ambitious and exciting plan to get there  our People Strategy 2017-2020. Being a Great Place to Work and an Employer of Choice means proactively building a workplace environment where staff trust those they work for, appreciate working as part of an innovative team, and becoming part of the Bons family. It means having pride in what they do and enjoying working with those around them, within the distinct culture of our organisation.

We will enhance and strengthen our employer brand in ways that enable us to attract, engage and retain the most talented people to make a positive difference in healthcare delivery.

When asked about the type of candidates the Bon Secours Health System looks for, McPhillips says enthusiastic, self-motivated employees with a passion to make a difference.

He continues, Our employees embody the Bon Secours Health Systems values of respect, justice, integrity, stewardship, innovation, compassion and quality. They are what make our outstanding people. Such values empower us all to achieve our very best for the patients we serve.

Complementary to our vision to create a great workplace, we will continue to promote, champion and support our staff in their leadership and management growth with a view to creating an organisation built on excellence and continuous development. As part of our People Strategy, we have developed a Leadership and Management Development Strategy, including a Leadership and Management Competency Framework aligned to our values.

In partnership with the Institute of Leadership at the RCSI, we will continue to build on the targeted suite of the Leadership Development Programmes and Nursing Development Programmes already in place. We will also introduce further programmes to meet the needs of our staff and the organisation, for example, frontline management and clinicians.

Path to success

McPhillips says the Health System will also be introducing career pathways and succession management programmes to identify career opportunities that prepare and stretch employees to succeed. This is envisaged to span all staff categories across the organisation, and to be part of the Groups talent-spotting commitment to new joiners and existing staff, leading to career skills, matching and development.

As well as a commitment to the career development of staff, the Group also believes that the unique skills, diversity and hard work of staff should be celebrated and rewarded.

The Bon Secours Health System maintains competitiveness with attractive rates of pay and allowances. For staff to feel recognised and valued, the Bon Secours Health System host a group-wide Annual Staff Recognition and Awards event to celebrate their success, achievements and dedication. This is in addition to a range of initiatives taking place locally, which also highlights our commitment to recognising staff.

We have done a considerable amount of work to ensure we look after the health and wellbeing of our staff. We are committed to caring for them through our occupational health facilities, health screening, employee assistance programmes, stress management support such as mindfulness training, and wellbeing promotions such as Pilates and yoga programmes.

McPhillips considers the new year to be a great time to take stock of your career and look for new opportunities.

Look for roles in which you can make a real difference and work in a culture that values your talent and contribution. Bon Secours Health System is waiting for you and is always seeking talented individuals and professionals who have a passion for change, career development and want to deliver excellence in patient care.

For further information on careers and opportunities available within the Bon Secours Health System, visit www.bonsecours.ie/careers. The full details of the 2020 Action Plan are outlined on www.bonsecours.ie/2020-strategy-plan
America is drawing up plans for a "bloody nose" military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons programme.

The White House has "dramatically" stepped up preparation for a military solution in recent months amid fears diplomacy is not working, well-placed sources said.

One option is destroying a launch site before it is used by the regime for a new missile test.

Stockpiles of weapons could also be targeted.

The hope is that military force would show North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that America is "serious" about stopping further nuclear development and trigger negotiations.

Three sources - two former US officials familiar with current thinking and a third figure in the administration - confirmed military options were being worked up.

"The Pentagon is trying to find options that would allow them to punch the North Koreans in the nose, get their attention and show that we're serious," said one former US security official briefed on policy.

President Donald Trump's decision to bomb a Syrian government airfield earlier this year to defend America's "red line" on chemical weapons use is seen as a blueprint.

Details emerged after reporters talked to around a dozen current and former officials in America and Britain about policy towards North Korea. The conversations show that the Trump administration is more willing to consider military options to end the conflict than widely assumed.

It can be revealed that senior British diplomats fear America has already begun a "step by step" military build-up in the region that could escalate.

Alastair Morgan, the UK ambassador to North Korea, visited Washington DC for behind-closed-doors talks about forcing the regime to the negotiating table last month.

The UK is also urging south-east Asian and African countries to expel some North Korean diplomats amid fears they are secretly financing the regime.

Meanwhile, America wants North Korean ships to be stopped and searched amid fears they are being used to get round UN sanctions. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
A Palestinian protester during a protest against US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near Qalandia checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Photo: Goran Tomasevic

The US ambassador to the UN has said she is "taking names" of the countries that vote against America in a meeting called to censure President Donald Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

Today, the general assembly of the United Nations will hold a highly unusual emergency session, to vote on Mr Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Only 10 such emergency sessions have been convened since 1950, and the last time was in 2009, to discuss occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories.

The vote to condemn Mr Trump's decision is expected to pass by a wide margin, but Nikki Haley tweeted on Tuesday night that the US would take careful note of which countries voted against them.

Expand Close US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley

"At the UN we're always asked to do more and give more," she said.

"So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American people, about where to locate our embassy, we don't expect those we have helped to target us.

"On Thursday there'll be a vote criticising our choice. The US will be taking names."

She has also sent a letter to fellow UN ambassadors, including "key US allies" such as Britain, warning that "the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us.

"We will take note of each and every vote on this issue."

Diplomatic sources said that the letter would not change their vote, although the "bullying" might force some members of the general assembly to abstain, or stay away.

One diplomat told Bloomberg News that his country's mission was told that its vote on the resolution would be taken "personally" by Ms Haley.

The vote comes after the US was forced on Monday to use its veto at the Security Council for the first time in six years, to block a resolution asking countries not to establish diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

The vote reflected widespread criticism in the Middle East and among US allies in Europe over Mr Trump's December 6 announcement.

Ms Haley said in a letter to many of the UN's 193 member states that the Trump administration was "simply asking that you acknowledge the historical friendship, partnership, and support we have extended, and respect our decision about our own embassy".

The letter drew sharp criticism from both the Turkish and Palestinian foreign ministers, who accused the US of intimidation.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki and Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu, who are travelling to New York for today's vote on the non-binding resolution, said that they believe UN member countries will ignore the "pressure" from Ms Haley.

While Mr Trump cast his move as an effort to help promote Middle East peace, most countries have said that it would only make peace more elusive.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives gave its final approval yesterday to the biggest overhaul of the US tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion (1.25 trillion) bill to Mr Trump, for his signature.

In sealing Mr Trump's first major legislative victory, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that will slash taxes for both corporations and the wealthy, while also giving mixed, temporary tax relief to middle-class Americans.

The House approved the measure 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up that had forced another vote yesterday.

The Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of yesterday.

Mr Trump had emphasised a tax cut for middle-class Americans during his 2016 presidential campaign.

At the beginning of a cabinet meeting yesterday, he said that lowering the corporate tax rate from 35pc to 21pc was "probably the biggest factor in this plan".
Emergency cars are seen on the street following the incident outside Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia, December 21, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media. Malcolm Sheridan/via REUTERS

Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton

Emergency medical workers offer aid to victims struck by a vehicle (Australian Broadcast Corp. via AP)

Emergency services attend to injured people at the in Flinders St station in Melbourne,

Emergency services attend to injured people at the in Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia

Pedestrians walk past as police and emergency services attend the scene of an incident involving a vehicle and pedestrians in Melbourne

More than a dozen people have been injured

More than a dozen people have been injured, some seriously

A man has been arrested after a car collided with pedestrians outside a major train station

Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton

Local media say over a dozen people have been injured after a car drove into pedestrians on a sidewalk in central Melbourne

Melbourne police believe car ploughing incident outside train station was a "deliberate act".

In a terrifying incident during the pre-Christmas shopping rush, the white Suzuki SUV rammed into a large number of pedestrians at high speed on the pavement outside Flinders Street railway station at around 5pm local time (6am GMT), one of the Australian citys main transport hubs.

Police said the driver and another man have been arrested after what they said they believed "was a deliberate act". Asked if the incident was terrorism-related, Victorian Police commander Russell Barrett said: "The motivations are unknown."

More than a dozen people have been injured, a number of whom are in a critical condition.

Media conference regarding the Flinders Street incident with Commander Russell Barrett. pic.twitter.com/j7zx0V5fYQ  Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) December 21, 2017

Police now report that the driver arrested was a 32-year-old Australian of Afghan descent with a history of drug use and mental health problems, and there is no evidence to suggest a link with terrorism at this stage.

A second man, aged 24, who was arrested in close proximity to the scene in Melbourne was discovered to have a bag containing knives after he was seen filming the incident, police said.

Scene on Flinders St. White SUV has gone through pedestrians and crashed into tram stop @9NewsMelb pic.twitter.com/dDYYVFCpMW  Andrew Lund (@andrew_lund) December 21, 2017

Police are currently attending an incident on Flinders Street between Elizabeth and Swanston streets where a vehicle has collided with a number of pedestrians. Police have arrested the driver of the car. Extent of injuries are not known at this stage. (1/2)  Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) December 21, 2017

Images from the scene showed a number of people receiving medical attention, while a white Suzuki SUV appeared to have collided with a phone box.

They included a pre-school aged child with head injuries who was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

The force said: "Police have saturated the CBD (central business district) area following an incident where a car has collided with a number of pedestrians on Flinders Street.

"The incident occurred when the vehicle struck a number of pedestrians in front of Flinders Street Station just after 4.30pm.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close More than a dozen people have been injured Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton More than a dozen people have been injured, some seriously Emergency medical workers offer aid to victims struck by a vehicle (Australian Broadcast Corp. via AP) A man has been arrested after a car collided with pedestrians outside a major train station Local media say over a dozen people have been injured after a car drove into pedestrians on a sidewalk in central Melbourne Pedestrians walk past as police and emergency services attend the scene of an incident involving a vehicle and pedestrians in Melbourne Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton Emergency services attend to injured people at the in Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia Emergency cars are seen on the street following the incident outside Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia, December 21, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media. Malcolm Sheridan/via REUTERS / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp More than a dozen people have been injured

"The driver of the vehicle and a second man have been arrested and are in police custody.

"A number of people were treated at the scene for a range of injuries and have been transported to hospital."

If members of the public have video or images which might assist police with their investigation into the Flinders Street incident they are encouraged to upload them here  https://t.co/oFfWkid509 pic.twitter.com/fzmX79HOv5  Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) December 21, 2017

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Dozens injured after car collides with pedestrians in Melbourne Close More than a dozen people have been injured Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton More than a dozen people have been injured, some seriously Emergency medical workers offer aid to victims struck by a vehicle (Australian Broadcast Corp. via AP) A man has been arrested after a car collided with pedestrians outside a major train station Local media say over a dozen people have been injured after a car drove into pedestrians on a sidewalk in central Melbourne Pedestrians walk past as police and emergency services attend the scene of an incident involving a vehicle and pedestrians in Melbourne Members of the public stand behind police tape after Australian police said on Thursday they have arrested the driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at a crowded intersection near the Flinders Street train station in central Melbourne, Australia December 21, 2017. REUTERS/Melanie Burton Emergency services attend to injured people at the in Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia Emergency cars are seen on the street following the incident outside Flinders St station in Melbourne, Australia, December 21, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media. Malcolm Sheridan/via REUTERS / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp More than a dozen people have been injured

A woman called Sue told 3AW radio: "As it (the car) approached this intersection... it just mowed everybody down, people were flying everywhere."

And man who was working in a nearby shop, and was at the scene before emergency services arrived, told the Australian Associated Press: "There was no screaming, just people lying there."

Vince added that onlookers were "just holding them and comforting them".

Kyra Gillespie was one of "hundreds of people" who were told to get off trams near the area following the incident.

She told ABC News: "I think everyone is a little bit shaken up by the experience.

"Lots of people were phoning their loved ones to tell them they were OK."

Another witness, John, told ABC Radio Melbourne that he saw a "SUV coming at high speed".

"(I) really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys - and I hope not prams," he said.

"I've really never seen anything like this before and I haven't stopped shaking."

Leader of the opposition Bill Shorten tweeted: "Shocking scenes in Melbourne this afternoon. Credit to first responders who are doing us proud once again. Thinking of everyone caught up in this atrocity."

Social media images from the scene showed casualties being treated in the street by paramedics.

A young man in jeans and a T-shirt could also be seen being arrested by three police officers on the steps of the station, although it was unclear if he had been in the car.

According to the AAP, a witness said the Suzuki was travelling at around 60mph.

"The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just ploughed through," the witness named Jim told ABC TV.

"The only thing that slowed him down was him hitting pedestrians.

"There was no braking, there was no slowing down. Whether it was targeted or whether he had a heart attack, or was drunk, I don't know."

Authorities evacuated surrounding buildings and have offered counselling to traumatised bystanders.

A shop owner near the scene said: The only thing that seemed to be slowing him down was the amount of pedestrians he had hit.

"All you could hear was just 'bang bang bang bang bang'," he told ABC Radio.

The incident came months after a car struck pedestrians in Melbourne's busiest shopping centre in January, killing six people.

The driver, whose case is still being heard in court, had allegedly been pursued by police on suspicion of stabbing his brother.

After the crash, officials installed concrete bollards in various locations of the city - including Flinders Street -in an attempt to prevent similar incidents.
The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly against Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, largely ignoring his threats to cut off aid to any country that went against him.

The non-binding resolution declaring US action on Jerusalem "null and void" passed by a vote of 128-9 - a victory for the Palestinians but one that was not as big as they had predicted.

Amid the Trump administration's threats, 35 of the 193 UN member nations abstained and 21 others were absent.

The resolution, sponsored by Yemen and Turkey, reaffirmed what has been the United Nations' stand on the divided holy city since 1967 - that Jerusalem's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterwards that he totally rejects the "preposterous" resolution.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the resolution, with US Ambassador Nikki Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the US.

But when it came to the vote, major US aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution.

The nine countries voting "no" were the US, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo. Among the notable abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of US aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close US ties.

The US is scheduled to dispense 25.8 billion dollars in foreign aid for 2018. Whether Mr Trump follows through with his threat against those who voted "yes" remains to be seen.

Mr Trump's threat had raised the stakes at Thursday's emergency meeting and triggered accusations from Muslims of US bullying, blackmail and intimidation.

Arab, Islamic and non-aligned nations rejected his warnings and urged a "yes" vote on the resolution.

Yemeni Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany warned that Mr Trump's recognition of Jerusalem undermines any chance for peace in the Middle East and "serves to fan the fires of violence and extremism".

He called Mr Trump's action "a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world," and "a dangerous violation and breach of international law".

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, who flew to New York for the meeting, called the US action "an aggression on the status of Jerusalem" and said: "Those who want peace must vote for peace today."

On Wednesday, Mr Trump complained that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by countries that take billions of dollars and then vote against the US. He said he would be watching the vote: "Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

Ms Haley echoed his words in her speech to the packed assembly chamber, threatening not only member states with funding cuts, but the United Nations itself.

Ms Haley said the vote will make no difference on US plans to move its embassy to Jerusalem, but it "will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN, and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN".

"And this vote will be remembered," she warned.

The Palestinians and their Arab and Islamic supporters sought the General Assembly vote after the US on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other UN Security Council members that would have required Mr Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem.

AP
Theresa May has sacked her lifelong friend and de facto deputy Damian Green after he made "misleading" statements about allegations that pornography was found on computers in his parliamentary office in 2008.

Mr Green leaves his post as First Secretary of State continuing to deny "unfounded and deeply hurtful" claims he downloaded or viewed porn on his parliamentary computer.

But an investigation by the Cabinet Office found two statements Mr Green made on November 4 and 11, which suggested he was not aware indecent material was found by police in a 2008 raid, were "inaccurate and misleading" and breached the ministerial code.

Mrs May said she was "extremely sad" to ask her close ally to resign but stressed his behaviour "falls short" of the Seven Principles of Public Life.

In a letter to Mr Green, she said: "While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of ministers of the Crown.

"It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the Government and have accepted your resignation."

Mr Green apologised for making misleading statements and said he "regrets" being sacked.

In a letter to the PM, he said: "From the outset I have been clear that I did not download or view pornography on my parliamentary computers.

"I accept that I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and that the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013.

"I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.

"The unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations that were being levelled at me were distressing both to me and my family and it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police's professional standards department."

The inquiry was triggered after Kate Maltby, who is three decades younger than Mr Green, claimed he "fleetingly" touched her knee during a meeting in a pub in 2015, and a year later sent her a "suggestive" text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in a newspaper.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said that with "competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings" it was "not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green's behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015, though the investigation found Ms Maltby's account to be plausible".

A source close to Brexit Secretary David Davis confirmed he would not quit the Government in protest at Mr Green's sacking, despite a report earlier this month that he had threatened to resign if the First Secretary of State was forced out over the material found by the police.

Mr Davis was Mr Green's boss as shadow home secretary at the time of the raid.

Mr Green is the second Cabinet Minister to resign over the Westminster sexual harassment scandal, after Sir Michael Fallon quit as Defence Secretary on November 1.

He said his behaviour had "fallen below the high standards required" after he admitted putting his hand on the knee of radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer some years ago.

He was among a number of politicians caught in a wave of allegations of improper behaviour.
The European Commission has taken the "nuclear option" against Poland over democratic back-sliding, announcing Article 7 proceedings against the eastern EU state for undermining democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The unprecedented step creates a massive diplomatic headache for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is due to land in Poland today with the chancellor and foreign secretary for an annual UK-Poland summit designed to boost relations with Poland after Brexit.

The decision to trigger Article 7 - an official disciplinary process that could lead to Poland being stripped of its voting rights in the European Council - highlights the growing division between eastern and western Europe over democratic values and migration.

The action against Poland's hardline conservative ruling Law and Justice party, which was elected in 2015, has raised awkward questions for Mrs May about her decision to launch a major diplomatic charm offensive with Warsaw, including sending the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Poland for an official visit last summer.

The Polish foreign ministry has already indicated that it expects Britain to back Poland if it comes to a vote. Hungary has already said it will veto any attempt to sanction Poland, but senior UK diplomats said that the symbolic vote will force the UK to make "extremely uncomfortable" decisions.

In a statement, the EU said: "The Commission has today concluded that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland. Judicial reforms in Poland mean that the country's judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority. In the absence of judicial independence, serious questions are raised about the effective application of EU law."

The Polish foreign ministry said it was "ready for talks" over the Article 7 action, but a spokesman said the decision was "political" and related to Poland's refusal to accept mandatory EU migrant quotas.

"This decision has no merit, it is in our opinion solely a political decision," said Beata Mazurek, the Law and Justice party spokeswoman.

Frans Timmermans, the European Commission vice-president, said 13 laws adopted by Poland in the space of two years had created a situation where the government "can systematically politically interfere with the composition, powers, the administration and the functioning" of judicial authorities.

Among these is a reform that would force 40pc of Poland's Supreme Court judges to retire on age grounds and seek reappointment from the ruling party.

"We do not dispute the rights of a nation to reform its judiciary. It's a thing that's being done in many nations all the time.

"I'm not even disputing the fact that it might be right to do that in Poland.

"But if you reform the judiciary you have to reform by the constitution, and EU law as well, and both the constitution and EU law require the separation of powers," he said.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will testify before Peruvian opposition politicians intent on throwing him out of office on Thursday in a sudden impeachment proceeding that threatens to make him the region's first president to be ousted over the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

The 79-year-old former Wall Street banker is in a fight for his political survival after an opposition-led investigative committee revealed documents showing the Brazilian construction giant at the centre of Latin America's largest corruption scandal made 782,000 dollars (587,000) in payments to his private consulting firm a decade ago. Some of the payments overlap with years that Kuczynski spent as a government minister.

Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing, stating in repeated appeals to the public that he left control of his firm in the hands of a business partner and knew nothing of the Odebrecht contract.

Analysts worry the impeachment vote could usher in a new period of uncertainty for Peru, which is one of South America's most politically volatile nations.

The vote is scheduled to come just eight days after the Odebrecht documents were first disclosed and is being pushed by the opposition Popular Force party led by Keiko Fujimori, who is the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori and who narrowly lost to Kuczynski in last year's presidential election.

"That they would impeach the president is not an unthinkable thing," said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist who has spent years studying Peru. "It's that they would do it in a week without serious investigation, without a serious process of public debate."

High-ranking politicians across Latin America are being charged and sentenced to jail for taking bribes from Odebrecht.

In Ecuador, Vice President Jorge Glas has been sentenced to six years in jail for orchestrating an Odebrecht bribery scheme. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is appealing his conviction on charges of corruption and money laundering related to the plot. In Peru, two former presidents stand accused of accepting money from Odebrecht. One is behind bars and the other is in the US seeking to avoid extradition.

In a letter to a Peruvian newspaper on Saturday, Odebrecht confirmed Kuczynski's assertion that the payments in question were all handled by his colleague, Gerardo Sepulveda. Though little has been shared regarding exactly what services Kuczynski's First Capital provided, Odebrecht officials said the money was taxed, accounted for and not part of the corruption investigation.

"These are contracts that I didn't sign, that were completely legal and accounted for," Kuczynski said in an hour-long televised interview with half a dozen Peruvian journalists on Sunday.

"If this was a bribe would it have been done like that? Of course not."

On Tuesday, Kuczynski wrote to the Organisation of American States requesting that the Washington-based group send an observer to monitor impeachment proceedings, arguing that Peru's democratic stability is at risk. The OAS said it was sending two delegates to Lima for Thursday's vote.

The president's detractors contend he should have disclosed the payments before taking office and that, at the very least, as a high-ranking government minister when the money was paid he should have done a better job to shield himself from potential conflicts of interest. Polls within Peru suggest a majority of Peruvians want the already deeply unpopular president out of office.

As a senior business leader and statesman with many ties to the private sector, Kuczynski was "sort of Trump-like in not clearly breaking those ties. And he's paying a price for it," Levitsky said.

In order to oust Kuczynski, opposition lawmakers would need to secure 87 of 130 votes. The Popular Force party holds 71 seats in congress. Party spokesman Daniel Salaverry said that if Kuczynski appears on Thursday "it should be to submit his resignation letter".

If Kuczynski should be removed, First Vice President Martin Vizcarra would be next in line. The former engineer has relatively little political experience at a national level and it is likely he would face many of the same difficulties Kuczynski has encountered in governing.
Toys R Us looks to have staved off the threat of administration after a key creditor to the retailer agreed to a restructuring plan that will secure around 2,500 jobs.

The beleaguered retailers proposal for a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) is expected to be voted through on Thursday after it obtained the backing of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).

However, while the CVA will allow Toys R Us to stay afloat, at least 26 loss-making UK stores will shut as part of the restructure, meaning up to 800 jobs are set to be lost.

Malcolm Weir, the PPFs director of restructuring and insolvency, said: We have been working closely with Toys R Us and their advisers in the run-up to the CVA vote. We can confirm that an agreement has now been reached and we will now be voting in favour of the proposals at the CVA meeting today.

The fate of all 3,200 Toys R Us jobs was hanging in the balance ahead of the ballot, with administrators waiting in the wings had the CVA been rejected.

The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) had earlier refused to back the retailers rescue plans, but concessions from the company, including an offer to reduce its deficit recovery plan to 10 years from 15 years, meant the deal received the PPFs blessing.

In total, Toys R Us has agreed to pay 9.8 million into the pension plan, made up of 3.8 million in 2018, with a further 6 million promised over 2019 and 2020.

This offer goes a long way to addressing the PPFs concerns and in de-risking the pension scheme, offering greater protection for the current and retired members in the pension scheme.

The PPF will always seek assurances on behalf of the pension schemes and pension scheme members it protects, as well as consider the interests of other UK companies that pay the Pension Protection Fund levy.

Other creditors include the firms landlords, who will stomach rent cuts as part of the restructuring.

The retailer, which is owned by US-based Toys R Us Inc, trades from 84 stores in the UK and has 21 concessions.

Toys R Us has said that trading has suffered as its warehouse-style stores, opened in the 1980s and 1990s, have proved too big and expensive to run, while it has also struggled to keep up with online competitors.

The announcement comes just months after the US-based retailer filed for bankruptcy protection in the US and Canada.
Ukraine's security agency says it has detained a government official accused of spying for Russia.

Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said the suspect allegedly passed government secrets to his Russian handlers.

Ukrainian media reports identified the suspect as an aide to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman who accompanied him on foreign trips.

Mr Groysman thanked the SBU for its "vigilance and professionalism" on Facebook.

Prime Minister Theresa May said on a trip to Warsaw that she is aware of reports that an interpreter for Ukraine's premier who was photographed with her in Downing Street has been arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy.

Russia and Ukraine have been in a tug-of-war following Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
The United States has stepped back from a half-decade effort to forge closer relations with Burma, condemning a top general to a blacklist of shame for his role in atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

The new sanctions were the most serious US response so far to what it calls "ethnic cleansing" in the western part of the Southeast Asian nation.

The Trump administration announced penalties against 13 people worldwide in all. They included Gambia's former president, the daughter of Uzbekistan's late dictator and the son of Russia's prosecutor-general.

The sanctions were the first set imposed under a 2016 law, named after a Russian lawyer who died in prison, that empowers the Treasury Department to target officials anywhere for human rights violations and corruption.

The inclusion of Burma's Maung Maung Soe on the list was perhaps the most dramatic move in US foreign policy. Washington progressively eased economic and political sanctions against Burma starting in 2012 to reward the country's shift toward democracy after decades of military rule. Ties expanded further as Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi rose to power.

But the relationship has soured since Burma's crackdown in Rakhine province, which has forced 630,000 people to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. Maung Maung Soe was until last month the military commander in Rakhine, and the US said he was responsible for "widespread human rights abuse", including credible evidence of mass killings, rapes and villages being burned.

Other prominent individuals punished on Thursday include:

:: Yahya Jammeh, Gambia's former president. He is alleged to have created an armed squad known as "the Junglers" that terrorised and killed numerous political foes, including religious leaders, journalists and dissidents, while he was in power from 1994 to 2017. Jammeh is also accused of plundering his country's treasury by stealing at least 50 million dollars in state funds.

:: Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the late Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov. She is said to have headed an organised crime syndicate that used government agencies to expropriate businesses, monopolise markets, solicit bribes and run extortion rackets.

:: Artem Chaika, son of Russia's Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika. The younger Chaika is accused of using his family connections to unfairly buy state-owned assets and win contracts, as well as harass and interfere with competitors.

The Treasury Department's action freezes any assets these people have under US jurisdiction. Americans are banned from doing business with the individuals. It is unclear whether these people have extensive financial holdings or relationships in the United States. But the blacklist is designed to cause reputation al damage that would get banks in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to also cut ties.

"Today, the United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the US financial system," treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said. He said the penalties send a "message that there is a steep price to pay for their misdeeds".

The penalties are the first batch released under the Magnitsky Global Act.

Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund owned by British citizen William Browder. After accusing Russian officials of carrying out 230 million dollar tax fraud, he was charged with tax evasion and put in prison, where he died in 2009 at 37. An official Russian probe blamed a heart attack, but Russia's presidential council on human rights concluded he had been beaten and denied medical treatment.

On Wednesday, the United States levied sanctions on five Russian officials under an earlier law, also named after Magnitsky, specifically targeting Russian officials.

Among the others on Thursday's global list were an Israeli businessman alleged to have earned billions of dollars through corrupt mineral and oil deals with the president of Congo; a Serbian arms dealer; a Pakistani transplant specialist blamed for trafficking human organs and taking kidneys from people against their will; a former Chinese security director said to have mistreated human rights activists; and a former Ukrainian police commander blamed for beating and killing peaceful protesters in 2014.

AP
New Delhi, Dec 21 (IBNS) : Congress President Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday spoke to DMK MP Kanimozhi over the phone after she, along with A Raja and 17 others, was acquitted in the 2G spectrum scam case, media reports said.

According to CNN-News 18, Kanimozhi told Singh that she would seek an appointment with him, while the ex-PM asked her to convey his regards to her half-brother and DMK working president MK Stalin.

DMK is a key constituent of the Congress-led UPA. Singh and the Congress was subjected to a scathing criticism during the second tenure of the UPA for not snapping ties with the southern ally following the CAG report on 2G scam. .

. In the 1,552-page order on Thursday, special CBI judge OP Saini acquitted all the accused, saying the quality of prosecution totally deteriorated and it became directionless and diffident.

Elated by the verdict, the DMK and the Congress said the entire case was a massive conspiracy and propaganda.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the acquittal of all the accused in 2G scam case proved the massive propaganda against the UPA government, which was charged with being involved in corruption, had no foundation.

"Truth has prevailed" Singh told media.

Reacting to the verdict, former Union Finance Minister and Congress leader, P. Chidambaram said: "Allegations of scam against the highest level of government (Congress government) was never true and correct."

Former UPA ministers Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Veerappa Moily demanded that former CAG Vinod Rai  who had pegged the loss to the exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore be held accountable.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, said the Congress shouldnt treat the verdict as a badge of honour.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, a private complainant in the case, wanted the Government to appeal against the acquittals in High Court.

The trial had started in 2011. All licenses of Raja were cancelled earlier by the Supreme Court.

Raja was accused of allocating airwaves and licenses for cellphone networks in exchange of kickbacks leading to an alleged loss of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore.

He was also accused to have been the mastermind in the scam.

One of the lawyers of the accused told NDTV: "I have no hesitation in saying that the prosecution miserably failed to prove the case to the judge."

After the verdict, one of the accused Kanimozhi said: "Justice prevailed. Thanks to everyone who stood by me."

The 2G scam was one of the biggest allegations of corruption against the UPA government which then opposition BJP used as political weapon.
New Delhi, Dec 21 (IBNS): A group of 18 students from Bishnupur district of Manipur attending the National Integration Tour, organised by the 42nd Assam Rifles, called on the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju in New Delhi, on Thursday.

The team is on a visit to the National capital and Agra.

Speaking on the occasion, Rijiju complimented the Assam Rifles for organizing the National Integration Tour under Operation Sadbhavna, giving children from the remote region an opportunity to visit the national capital and other historic cities to discover the grandeur of India.

While interacting with the students, Rijiju said that the National Integration Tour is a good initiative taken by the Assam Rifles since this is the first visit outside the state for a majority of these students.

He called upon the children to share their experiences with family and friends back home.

The aim of the National Integration Tour is to promote harmony and awareness. The tour is aimed at integrating the students with the nation and promoting concept of unity in diversity.

Image: PIB
New Delhi, Dec 21 (IBNS): Union Minister of State for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Dr. Satya Pal Singh in a written reply in Lok Sabha, on Thursday, said that the Government has intensified its efforts for pollution abatement of river Ganga.

Cleaning of river Ganga is being carried out through various activities including treatment of municipal sewage, treatment of industrial effluent, river surface cleaning, rural sanitation, afforestation & bio-diversity etc, he said.

The municipal sewage being generated in cities on banks of Ganga is being managed by a mix of Interception & Diversion projects, sewerage network and Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) projects.

Over 3,000 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage is generated by the towns situated on the main stem of river Ganga, the minister said.

Against this, sewage treatment capacity available is 1,580 MLD.

National Mission for Clean Ganga has sanctioned projects for creation of additional 1,570 MLD capacity and these projects are at various stages of implementation.

The minister, in his reply, mentioned that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in its final judgement order in the matter of M.C. Mehta vs. Union of India dated July 13, 2017 had stated that the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), UP Jal Nigam and Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) with due consultation with Director NMCG and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) shall submit a complete project report giving time bound program for completion of the project related to augmentation and up-gradation of conveyance drains, Primary Effluent Treatment Plants (PETPs), Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) and Common Chrome Recovery Plant (CCRP) at Jajmau in Kanpur, Banthar and Site-II in Unnao in a period of six weeks.

The NGT had said that the work on such project report should start in four months and the project should be complete and made operational in all respects without exception within two years from the date of pronouncement of this judgment.

In the event, the above direction is not carried out in its true spirit, then the tannery industries at Jajmau shall be directed to be shut down and shifted to a new industrial site, which is fully developed or to be developed having provisions for CETP and Common Chromium Recovery Plant.

The NGT had also observed that even after spending Rs.7304.64 Cr. upto March, 2017, by the Central Government, state Government and local authorities of the state of UP, the status of river Ganga has not improved in terms of quality or otherwise and it continues to be a serious environmental issue.

The task of cleaning Ganga is undertaken by different authorities under different programme/schemes.

NGT vide its order dated Aug 7, 2017, had noted that the Central Government and state government of Uttar Pradesh had released an amount of Rs. 6,691.55 crore, the minister said.
New Delhi, Dec 21 (IBNS): In an attempt to sustain an anti-corruption image, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday hinted at a conspiracy theory over the court's acquittal of all accused including former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK leader M Kanimozhi in the 2G scam case.

Hours after the verdict, Kejriwal tweeted: "2G scam is one of the biggest scams. It rocked the country n was one of the reasons for UPAs downfall. Today everyone goes scot free. Did CBI mess up the case? Intentionally? People need answers."

2G scam is one of the biggest scams. It rocked the country n was one of the reasons for UPAs downfall. Today everyone goes scot free. Did CBI mess up the case? Intentionally? People need answers  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 21, 2017

Union Finance Minister and BJP leader, Arun Jaitley, tweaked Congress saying the Opposition is wearing the verdict as a badge of honour, reports said.

Both Kejriwal and Jaitley were countered immediately by Congress leader Priyanka Chaturvedi asking both to read the judgement and apologise to the people of the country.

Priyanka tweeted: "Cc @arunjaitley @BJP4India @ArvindKejriwal @amitshah @narendramodi this is part of the verdict. Do read and apologise to the country for cheating this nation for your power hungry politics. #TruthPrevails #UPANotGuilty."

Giving a relief to the Congress and its ally DMK, all accused have been acquitted as the prosecution failed to provide sufficient proofs.

The trial had started in 2011. All licenses of Raja were cancelled earlier by the Supreme Court.

One of the lawyers of the accused told NDTV: "I have no hesitation in saying that the prosecution miserably failed to prove the case to the judge."

After the verdict, one of the accused Kanimozhi said: "Justice prevailed. Thanks to everyone who stood by me."

The 2G scam was one of the biggest allegations of corruption against the UPA government which then opposition BJP used as political weapon.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the acquittal of all the accused in 2G scam case proved the massive propaganda against the UPA government, which was charged with being involved in corruption, had no foundation.

"Truth has prevailed" the former PM told media.

Reacting to the verdict, former Union Finance Minister and Congress leader, P. Chidambaram said: "Allegations of scam against the highest level of government (Congress government) was never true and correct."

Another Congress leader Kapil Sibal said: "Unfortunately the country had to go through this. They have attacked former Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh). (It is clear) nothing has happened."

Senior Congress leader Sashi Tharoor told media: "Justice has worked as it should in our country."



Image: facebook.com/pg/AAPkaArvind
On the occasion, a colourful Parade consisting of troops from various units of the Frontier under Command of Desh Raj, Deputy Commandant presented a colourful March past at the historical Shivaji Parade Ground of Recruit Training Centre, SSB Salonibari.



P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier took the salute and inspected the Parade on a decorated inspection vehicle accompanied by Deputy Inspector General, SSB Recruit Training Centre SSB Salonibari.



At the outset Tsering Dorjai, DIG, SSB, Recruit Training Centre SSB salonibari welcomed the Chief Guest and highlighted evolution of SSB.

P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier presented the DGs Disc. to the Officers and Personnel of SSB Tezpur Frontier, RTC SSB Salonibari and the field units. 42 Personnel of Tezpur Frontier were awarded DGs Disc.

Trophies for best Operational, Administration and best Area of the Frontier were awarded by the Inspector General to 61st Battalion SSB Bhairabkunda, 23rd Battalion SSB Lalpool and Udalguri Area respectively.



P.S. S. Negi, Inspector General,SSB Tezpur Frontier recalled the origin of SSB from Tezpur by none other than our late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and B.N. Mullik.

The aim of SSB was to provide security to people of remote areas on Indo-China border and promote the sense of service security and brotherhood.



SSB was transformed into a border guarding force in the year 2001 and since then the force is performing the duties of sentinel on Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan Border.

SSB Tezpur Frontier is protecting the international border with 2 Sectors at Bezpara and Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh.

SSB is also deployed in Disturbed Area Belt on Assam-Nagaland border to maintain peace in the region.

In his closing remarks, the IG extended his thanks to all the participants and the invited guests with the hope that the Personnel of Tezpur Frontier will be re-dedicated to serve the nation with enhanced fervor and zeal.



(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati, Dec 21 (IBNS): Calling on the employees to extend full cooperation to the government in fulfilling the objectives of making Assam best in all aspects, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Thursday urged the state government employees to consider starting working hours in government offices from 9.30 a.m in view of early sun rise in these parts of the country.

Laid foundation stone of Sadou Asom Karmachari Parishads headquarter Karmachari Bhawan at Panjabari in Guwahati, the Assam CM said that, if Assam is to become one of the top states in the country and develop its socio-economic condition, then the government employees must set an example of work culture which would inspire the young generation to participate in the nation building process through hardwork and dedication.

Calling on the employees to help the government in rooting out corruption from the system, the Assam CM acknowledged the support of the employees in the campaign against corrupt practices undertaken by the state government.

Only with the help of its employees the state government can achieve the goals of a pollution free, corruption free, illegal immigrants free and terrorism free Assam, Sonowal said.

The Assam CM urged the state government employees to set an example of efficient work culture before the young generation of the state and contribute towards the resurgence of the states economy.

Hoping that the Karmachari Bhawan would provide a platform to the state government employees to hold meetings, congregations etc and to carry out Parishads official works from a permanent address, Sonowal said that the Bhawan would be symbol of the employees prestige and it would be one of the landmarks of the city.

Informing about the Global Investors Summit to be held in the state in February, the Assam CM said that the state government has been organising roadshows in different parts of the country and the world for bringing big ticket investments to the state and the government has left no stone unturned to give a good impression of the state as an investment destination to the visiting delegates to the Summit.

President of Sadou Asom Karmachari Parishad Basab Kalita thanked the state government for felicitating the construction of the Karmachari Bhawan building and hoped that PWD would maintain best standards in the construction work of the building.

He also thanked DONER for approving an amount of Rs 8.85 lakh for the construction of the Bhawan and said that it would fulfil a long felt of need of the government employees of the state.

CEM of Rabha Hasong Autonomus Council Tankeswar Rabha, Housefed Charirman Ranjit Dass, MLAs Ronuj Pegu, Bimal Bora, Commissioner and Secretary of PWD JA Ahmed were also present on the occasion among others.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Toronto, Dec 21 (IBNS): Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan will help Sherman family in a case which pertains to the suspicious death of Canadian billionaire Barry and his wife Honey Sherman, media reports said.

The relatives of Barryand Honey Serman sought assistance from Greenspan, report said.

Confirming the news of helping the family of deceased couple, the Toronto lawyer told Star: "I have been serving as a resource person for the Sherman family and Barry and Honey were people who I admired and respect."

He added: "The family did contact me to be a resource person for them and Ill fill that role."

Police have confirmed that the duo died of neck compression.

Following the development, Toronto police have said that their murder unit will investigate the case.

A police statement read: "Post-mortem examinations were carried out yesterday and today. The cause of death for both deceased was ligature neck compression. Toronto Police Service Homicide has taken the lead in this suspicious death investigation."

Earlier, the Sherman family rejected police theory that the death was unnatural.

A family statement read: "Our parents shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumours regrettably circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths."

"We are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true," the statement added.

The couple were found dead by their estate agent in Toronto.

The founder of Apotex, the largest exporter of generic drugs in Canada and the world's seventh largest pharmaceutical company, Barry Sherman's wealth was estimated to be around $3.2 billion by Forbes.

(Reporting by Suman Das)
Toronto, Dec 21 (IBNS): York Regional Police will investigate the case in which a 28-year-old woman was found dead in Richmond Hill on Wednesday morning, media reports said.

The Homicide Unit of York Regional Police have been called up to investigate the case.

The report said, when the police reached the spot, the woman was dead. Later the police arrested a 27-year-old man.

Const. Laura Nicolle was quoted by Star: "We believe that they are known to one another."

Police said a post-mortem will have to be conducted to identify the cause of the death.

The body of the deceased has several signs of trauma, report said.



(Reporting by Suman Das)

Image: Creative Commons
Prevent Unauthorized Transactions in your demat / trading account Update your Mobile Number/ email Id with your stock broker / Depository Participant. Receive information of your transactions directly from Exchanges on your mobile / email at the end of day and alerts on your registered mobile for all debits and other important transactions in your demat account directly from NSDL/ CDSL on the same day." - Issued in the interest of investors.

KYC is one time exercise while dealing in securities markets - once KYC is done through a SEBI registered intermediary (broker, DP, Mutual Fund etc.), you need not undergo the same process again when you approach another intermediary.

No need to issue cheques by investors while subscribing to IPO. Just write the bank account number and sign in the application form to authorise your bank to make payment in case of allotment. No worries for refund as the money remains in investor's account."

www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others.
Most of us are in favour of eco-friendly measures that can help the planet in whatever way needed. While burning bodies get slack for polluting the air, burying them requires tonnes of energy, resources and not to mention a lot of space.

udaypai.in

In lieu of the existing techniques available Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council plans to offer an eco-friendly alternative to liquefying the dead instead.

The council has sanctioned the approval for the installation of a 300,000 Resomator for water cremations to be held at its Rowley Regis crematorium in Black Country. Theyre working in conjunction with the UK-based company, Resomation that produces these pressurised chambers.

mirror.co.uk

The process they are following is a sped up version of decomposition called alkaline hydrolysis, which uses chemicals, heat and pressure to dissolve bodies to bone. It does so in less than three hours and uses significantly lesser energy.

However, Severn Trent Water Services has denied the crematoriums request for a trade effluent permit, which is needed to for the council to dispose off the remains of the body in the water supply.

"This is an absolute first in the UK," a source at Water UK, the trade body representing regional water suppliers, told the newspaper. "We have serious concerns about the public acceptability of this.

corporatewatch.org

"It is the liquefied remains of the dead going into the water system. We don't think the public will like the idea."

These burials are already taking place in several countries, including Canada, Australia and the US.

Canadian company AquaGreen for instance said that it had completed more than 200 water cremations in the first year of its business. They also went on to say that the water is filtered twice before being pushed back out into Ontarias water supply and that the process is a 100 percent safe!

"It brings your body back to its natural state," Hilton said. "It's the same way as being buried in the ground, but instead of taking 15, 20 years to disintegrate, it does it in a quicker process. And it's all environmentally friendly," says Dale Hilton, the owner AquaGreen.

A Sandwell Council spokesperson said: "The funeral industry is evolving and modernising and we want to offer people more choice.

"Water cremation is the next phase in this evolution and would give people an option that is more environmentally friendly than traditional cremation. "We are working closely with Resomation UK, Water UK and other regulatory bodies to explore all options for the introduction of this new process.

"Once approved, Rowley Regis Crematorium in Sandwell will be the first in the UK to offer a water cremation."
Air India, it seems can't get its name off the news for all the wrong reasons. This time the national carrier is accused of serving food with cockroach to a first class passenger in the VIP lounge at Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport.

The incident came to light after the passenger posted a photo of the plate with a cockroach on twitter.

BCCL

"Cockroaches on food plates at your Delhi Lounge for biz and first class passengers. Disgusting," the passenger wrote.

Dear @airindiain cockroaches on food plates at your Delhi Lounge for biz and first class passengers. Disgusting pic.twitter.com/LEy9GtrgTY  Harinder Baweja (@shammybaweja) December 20, 2017

Following the complaint, Air India replied to the user and apologised for the incident.

Ma'am we have alerted the agency managing lounge at T3. Necessary corrective measures are being taken immediately. We deeply apologise for this incident.  Air India (@airindiain) December 20, 2017

Later, Air India Spokesperson GP Rao said the caterer has been informed to take necessary steps so the same is not repeated.

An airline source said that Air India subsidiary Hotel Corporation of India, which manages Centaur group of hotels, provides catering services at its lounge.
The Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi on Wednesday granted visas to Kulbhushan Jadhav's mother and wife. Jadhav was accused for spying in Pakistan.

Pakistans Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal on Twitter said, Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today."

BCCL

The mother and the wife will travel to Pakistan to meet Jadhav on December 25, along with an Indian diplomat.

Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued the visas to the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav to visit Islamabad to meet him, today.  Dr Mohammad Faisal (@ForeignOfficePk) December 20, 2017

ALSO READ: Kulbhushan Jadhav's Wife Can't Meet Him Because Pakistan Is Not Ensuring Her Safety

BCCL

The death sentence case was challenged by Indian in the International Court of Justice, which ruled that the execution be halted until it decides on the case.

ALSO READ: Kulbhushan Jadhav May Get A Fair Trial As India's Dalveer Bhandari Re-Elected As ICJ Judge
In an incident that's nothing short of a miracle, a 6-year-old who was run down by a minibus whilst playing with a friend escaped without a scratch.

CCTV footage shows the moment the young boy was knocked to the ground by the minivan. The incident in Jining city, Shandong province, south-west China, occurred when Siu Ho ran into the path of the van, according to People's Daily Online.

The mother and other people only realise what happened, after the child emerges from under the vehicle. A few bystanders run towards the toddler and pick him up.

Police officer Xu Li Yan was on the scene quickly and said: 'The driver may not have necessarily seen the little boy squatting on the ground, which resulted in the accident.'

It's shocking how the person on the minibus nonchalantly drove away after the incident.
In a heartbreaking incident, a Chinese teenager has been struggling to cope with her terminal illness after her father refused to help her through the treatment.

YouTube/ Top News 24

According to local news reports, the 18-year-old university student, named Xinxin, was diagnosed with leukaemia about three months ago. Her biological father, who had divorced her mother, was her only hope of a bone marrow transplant, before he abandoned her.

Xinxin has been undergoing chemotherapy at Henan People's Hospital in Zhengzhou and the doctors at the hospital diagnosed her with a rare condition wherein, she had developed sarcoma and abnormal blood cells.

YouTube/ Top News 24

But ever since her treatment started, her father has been absconding. The girl's uncle - who is currently her only support - has tried his best to track him down, but to no avail.

YouTube/ Top News 24

"I've watched Xinxin grow since she was five years old. She is a pretty girl, very optimistic," said uncle Zhang. "But now she is receiving bone marrow puncture and doing blood test every day." the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

Xinxin has just about three months left to live if she doesn't get a transplant.

While we cannot really fathom why her father abandoned her, we hope she finds the strength to recover, and help comes her way soon.
It's that time of year again. You're trying to figure out what you're going to donate before the tax year is over, and Wikipedia is covering its webpage with a desperate-sounding plea that makes it sound like if you don't pony up then Wikipedia will be off the internet tomorrow.

But, as I wrote last year, Wikipedia is not in any financial risk. This year, Charity Navigator reports that Wikipedia could operate for another 1.75 years if no one gave it another dime. (And that's up about 18 more days from last year.) A standard goal for a charity is one year, so Wikipedia is in great financial shape. Of course, you're funding not just Wikipedia but its parent Wikimedia's larger goals and programs, which you may or may not care about.

[ The art of programming moves rapidly. InfoWorld helps you navigate whats running hot and whats going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorlds App Dev Report newsletter. ]

I love Wikipedia, but the truth is there are many less-well-funded but worthy tech charities out there that could use your help. So before you give Wikimedia another contribution, consider these technology- and education-focused charities first.

Girls Who Code: GWC runs two-week summer immersion programs and after-school clubs that teach and support girls in grades six through 12 in learning how to write code. One of the main sources of economic growth is technology. This is where high-paying jobs are, especially those in software development. Yet this is an area where women are grossly underrepresented. Whether you support this on moral terms or economic ones, increasing the number of women in technology is the right thing to do.

Black Girls Code: This is BGC's second year on my list. If women are underrepresented in technology, socio-economics and structural racism have ensured that black women are especially underrepresented. If you want a more fair and just society, Black Girls Code is a great place to start.

Code.org: Code.org seeks to increase access to computer science, especially among women and underrepresented minorities. Its programs include Hour of Code, which seeks to expose more students to computer science, as well as longer term programs that partner with teachers in public schools. If you want to ensure the next generation has access to computer science, supporting Code.org is a good idea.

Prison Books Collective: Last year when I covered Prison Books Collective (which I personally support and volunteer for on a weekly basis), I gave a message of hope where the tide was turning on mass incarceration and private prisons. Sadly, the tide has turned back and people in prison need your support more now than ever. Prison Books Collective mails paper books to people who need them most. One of the first letters I ever handled was by a fellow who could barely put together a sentence but who wanted to learn to write. From then on I was hooked. You may have upgraded to a Kindle, but people in prison aren't allowed to have Kindles. That's why it is on my list. If you want to increase literacy and support social justice for our very large prison population, Prison Books Collective is a great way to do that.

Free Software Foundation: We live in an era where even your TV spies on you. Today, you can't change the code on a device you bought outright, and Big Brother wears a hoodie. But there is still the Free Software Foundation supporting our right to have software for which we can actually see what it is doing and fix if we don't like that. It is hard to imagine the internet having developed as quickly without free software. If you want to continue to have software for everyone, supporting the FSF is one great way to do that.

Public.Resource.org: Did you know that there are parts of the law that are secret or cost money to know what they are? Public.Resource.org transcribes, archives, and makes these sorts of laws widely and publicly available, including in HTML format. It is hard to imagine we can have a democratic nation with laws that are secret and where you just have to take the word of an authority. If you want to support the rule of law and transparency, Public.Resource.org is a good choice.

Freedom of the Press Foundation: In an era where the people in charge of the government seem to be constantly assailing the press instead of the other way around like it is supposed to be, we need to use all the technical resources possible to preserve our freedom. The Freedom of the Press Foundation works to protect public interest journalism through automation, digital security, and crowd funding. If you're feeling a bit like 1984 is too realistic, the Freedom of the Press Foundation might be a good way to stop The Man.

Your local school: DonorsChoose.org lets your local public school teacher create a project (like buy your class Kindles) that you can then fund. These projects include getting basic supplies, adaptive learning aids for special-needs kids, and more technology-oriented equipment for classrooms.

Look, Wikimedia does these big panicky sounding ads not because it desperately needs money to save a sinking ship, but because such ads work. I'm not saying Wikipedia doesnt deserve support, but its well-funded whereas as other tech-oriented charities simply are not. So, please give to one of these eight charities first, before you help out Wikimedia and other not-so-struggling charities.
Fed official suggests substantial rate hikes may be needed AP - Thu Nov 17, 5:16PM CST The Federal Reserve may have to raise its benchmark interest rate much higher than many people expect to get inflation under control, That's according to James Bullard, who leads the Federal Reserve Bank... $SPX : 3,946.56 (-0.31%) $DOWI : 33,546.32 (-0.02%) $IUXX : 11,676.86 (-0.19%)

Red Thursday for Cotton Barchart - Thu Nov 17, 4:47PM CST Cotton futures closed off their lows on Thursday, but still gave back 122 to 148 points across the front months. New crop cotton ended the day firmer with only 25 to 33 point losses. Cotton bookings from... CTZ22 : 86.68 (-0.41%) CTH23 : 84.62 (-0.77%) CTK23 : 83.77 (-0.73%)

Cattle Rally on Strong Feeder Market Barchart - Thu Nov 17, 4:47PM CST Front month feeder cattle futures finished the day with $0.95 to $1.17 gains. Cash trade picked up on Thursday; the USDA confirmed $148 to $156 sales on Thursday, citing $152 as the bulk of business in... LEZ22 : 152.750s (+0.63%) LEG23 : 155.400s (+0.75%) LEJ23 : 158.900s (+0.74%) GFX22 : 175.850s (+0.09%) GFF23 : 179.975s (+1.41%)

Hogs Gain on Thursday Barchart - Thu Nov 17, 4:47PM CST The lean hog market continued to work higher through the Thursday session, save for the Dec contract which gave back 60 cents. The other nearbys added 5 to 12 cents to the move. The USDA National Average... HEZ22 : 84.975s (-0.70%) HEJ23 : 96.000s (+0.39%) KMZ22 : 95.500s (-0.42%)

Soy Futures Continue Lower, Beans Down Double Digits Barchart - Thu Nov 17, 4:47PM CST Soybean futures ended the day 11 3/4 to 12 3/4 cents in the red, as Jan printed a 25 cent range on the day. Meal stayed weaker as well with $0.90 to $1.50/ton losses to close. BO futures closed off their... ZSF23 : 1424-4 (+0.53%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.9182 (-0.86%) ZSH23 : 1430-0 (+0.54%) ZSK23 : 1436-2 (+0.54%)

Red Thursday for Wheat Futures Barchart - Thu Nov 17, 4:47PM CST Domestic wheat prices ended the day with 10 3/4 to 12 cent pullbacks in the SRW market. KC futures faded by 11 1/4 to 17 1/2 cents in the front months. Spring wheat futures were down 11 3/4 to 13 1/2 cents... ZWZ22 : 812-2 (+0.68%) ZWH23 : 830-2 (+0.64%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.4110 (-1.43%) KEZ22 : 939-4 (+0.16%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.9632 (-1.92%) MWZ22 : 953-2 (unch)
Starr Companies has announced the appointment of Steve Blakey as the president and chief executive officer of Starr Insurance Holdings.



We are pleased to introduce Steve as our new company president, said Maurice R. Greenberg, chairman of Starr Companies. With over 35 years of experience, including establishing Starrs presence in the United

Kingdom and throughout Europe, as well as making Starr one of the leading providers of aviation and aerospace insurance in the world, Steve is uniquely qualified to lead the company going forward.



Blakey succeeds Chuck Dangelo, who is retiring after more than four decades in the industry.



After 46 years in the insurance industry, we would like to thank Chuck for his contributions to our company and industry, Greenberg said. He has been instrumental in leading Starrs growth, and we wish him well in his retirement.


The worlds busiest airport was thrust into darkness on Sunday (December 17) after a fire in a Georgia Power underground electrical facility caused a total blackout.An estimated 30,000 people were affected by the 11-hour power outage at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, and more than 1,500 flights were canceled on Sunday and Monday, according to flight data website FlightAware.The Federal Aviation Administration was forced to declare a ground stop at the airport, which prevented Atlanta-bound flights in other airports from travelling and caused mass diversions. Airport delays were reported across the US, with nearly 92% of all canceled flights being attributed to the Atlanta power outage.This fiasco  which struck right at the start of the hectic holiday season - could not have come at a busier time. A study compiled by Generali Global Assistances Travel Insurance division found that 40% of Americans  or 99.8 million people  plan to travel over the course of the 2017 holiday season.Travel delays and cancelations are becoming more common in the US. Luckily, most travel insurance policies will cover delays and fill the gaps left open by the airlines, according to Chris Carnicelli, CEO of Generali Global Assistance.Airlines will generally rebook passengers, but they dont always cover the extra expenses caused by delays and cancelations, such as hotel fees, meals and local transportation, Carnicelli told Insurance Business.Most travel insurance policies offer coverage for delay and will fill the gap for things not covered by the airline, who dont often have a legal obligation to cover the delay. If you find yourself in a situation where youre not being covered for an out-of-pocket expense related to a travel delay and you have the travel insurance, you should most certainly look to submit a claim.At least 30,000 people were impacted by the power outage in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Officials and staff pooled together to lend a helping hand and stranded passengers were given food and water - but reports suggest there wasnt enough to go around and many would have had to dig into their own pockets for some relief.Travel insurance policies also include travel assistance, where the policyholder can contact a call center to get help to make alternative arrangements when facing this kind of mass-delay event, Carnicelli commented.They can also help passengers file a claim. Many companies, like Generali Global Assistance, try to make it as easy as possible for people to submit claims for out-of-pocket reimbursements for things that arent being covered by the airline, such as hotels and meals and local transportation.Like all insurance policies, the devils in the detail, Carnicelli added. Its worth checking policies for any exclusions and to ensure that out-of-pocket delay expenses are covered.
Addiction and misuse of powerful opioid drugs has reached epidemic proportions in North America. The crisis has been deemed a public health emergency by President Trump and the US Department of Health and Human Services.Almost 100 Americans die every day from overdoses linked to opioid drugs . Many are calling for safer alternatives to be offered by healthcare professionals.One such possible substitute is cannabis, which is legal for medical purposes in 29 out of 50 US states and the District of Columbia, as of April 2017. As an alternative to opioids, cannabis seems to make sense, according to Tim Pietrucha, medical cannabis expert at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co Medical cannabis isnt something youre going to overdose from, even if taken incorrectly  as opposed to an opioid, which you clearly can misuse, Pietrucha told Insurance Business. Its not nearly as addictive as an opioid, and if its something that helps with treatment for certain types of pain, why not make it available?Of course, this issue depends on the pharmaceutical industry and what their stance will be with opioids in light of the current epidemic, versus the cannabis industry which is trying to push for legalization. On top of that, the medical cannabis industry continues to highlight the many possible medicinal uses of the drug  pain relief being just one.Insurance Business asked Pietrucha if the replacement of opioid treatment with medical cannabis could correlate to fewer medical liability claims among healthcare professionals  where exposures have increased massively due to the opioid crisis I would think that might be the case, but keep in mind that cannabis isnt FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved, he replied. So, when a doctor recommends cannabis, its always purely a recommendation  its not a prescription because medical cannabis does not have FDA approval.In states where medical cannabis is allowed, the cannabis part almost has to be a last resort for the doctor, meaning they have to go through a number of protocols and pretty much the whole opioid issue before landing on cannabis.The medical cannabis industry is fighting hard to try to remove the last resort status from the drug. Many believe it should be raised a few notches and offered ahead of much more addictive opioid options. To do this, doctors need to be fully educated, the solutions need to be approved and healthcare professionals need to be given a clear go-ahead.If you take the state of Illinois as an example, its extremely difficult for doctors to prescribe medical cannabis because theyre scrutinized immensely by the state, Pietrucha added. If the healthcare professionals dont take extreme care dotting their Is and crossing their Ts, theyre going to get in trouble for prescribing medical cannabis.A doctor might prefer not to risk his or her license, or risk getting into trouble for recommending medical cannabis, when theres punishment if something is done incorrectly moving forward.Those issues are likely to be ironed-out in the near future as more and more states opt for legalization
MGT Construction, based in Richmond, VA, is closing down its operations after nearly three decades of business.The construction companys closure comes as its parent, real estate company Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, is facing a lawsuit filed in October.MGT is experiencing financial challenges, Thalhimer chairman, president, and CEO C. Lee Warfield III told Richmond Times-Dispatch, adding that the contracting company is still operating but is not pursuing any new projects and is working to complete existing ones.Warfield explained that MGT Construction is a separate corporate entity, distinct from Thalhimer.Looking forward to 2018, we are bullish on the regions business climate and our companys ability to perform at a high level for our clients, Warfield commented on Thalhimers commercial brokerage business.When asked for his thoughts about the lawsuit MGT is facing, Warfield did not provide any comment.Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that MGTs pending closure is seemingly related to its poor performance, not the lawsuit. However, the lawsuit alleges that top Thalhimer executives had mismanaged and violated an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that the company had adopted on January 01, 2003. Filed October 26 in the US District Court in Richmond by former Thalhimer senior vice-president and board director Steven B. Brincefield, it accuses top executives of infringing the Employment Retirement Security Act of 1974, breach of fiduciary duties and conspiracy, and other charges.The civil document alleges that the stated purpose of the stock ownership plan was to allow employees to share in the growth of the company. Brincefield, however, claimed that the goal of the plan was to enrich only the top executives.One purpose of the ESOP was to create a market and financing mechanism to buy out the [top executives] shares of company stock at favorable prices, the lawsuit says. Put simply, the goal was for Thalhimer to become a tax-free cash warehouse for the benefit of [top executives].
New Years resolutions will hit the ground running starting January 01, but, for many insurance agencies, 2018 business goals have been in the works months before the holidays. Now, as e-commerce increasingly goes the way of consumerism, is it time that you evaluate your agencys website for the new year?Attracting more online insurance shoppers to your agencys website is a key goal for 2018, and Matt Farrell, website coordinator at Insurance Technologies Corporation ( ITC ) shares three website design techniques to incorporate in 2018.In my experience, an agents first instinct is to put everything their clients need right on the home page. Where we start to get overloaded is the difference between what we think they need and what they actually need, he says.The solution: Giving consumers a taste that will encourage them to explore further. Modern customers want to see wide open spaces, says Farrell, while still noticing that the important items remain front and center.According to Farrell, there are two types of image files: Vector and raster, with the former referring to graphics that can get bigger or smaller without any loss of quality while the latter cannot.In 2018, expect to see the use of .SVG files in websites  vector graphics that can scale in size without losing any quality.Responsive designs will scale to fit any device theyre viewed on, such as mobile, tablet or desktop, Farrell says. As the website scales up or down, it may be necessary for the logo to change size as well. If we use an old raster image file, it may get pixelated or blurry. SVGs will not. This can make or break a website for online visitors.One hard and fast design rule moving into 2018, says Farrell, is to make your website stand out.Where muted colors were once all the rage, showcasing a sense of energy on websites has become a hot trend. But theres a catch.Use too many bright colors and youll cause a sense of vibration and eye tension. When in doubt, keep it simple, he says.These are a few of the design techniques we may be turning to in the new year. Lets make a resolution we can actually keep and try to implement some of these on our websites moving forward, Farrell concludes.
Professional Insurance Agents of Connecticut Inc.s past president, Augusto Russell, has been appointed to a General Assembly task force to improve the insurance industry workforce in Connecticut.

He was appointed by Sen. Len Fasano, the Senate Republican President Pro Tempore. Russell is a principal with Insurance Provider Group in Wethersfield, Conn.

Russell presented testimony in March of this year in support of the legislation S.B.989/Special Act No. 17-10, which created the task force.

As an association supported by members, we strive to assist our members with many issues pertaining to their agencies and businesses, Russell said in his testimony. The most reoccurring issue our members reach out to us for tips and advice on is recruiting and retaining talented independent insurance agents. Our members continue to express frustration in this area.

The perpetuation of the insurance industry was a key issue of Russells PIACT presidency in 2013 and 2014. During his term, Russell helped to establish a collaborative effort with Goodwin College to provide training and education for students to explore pathways to careers in the insurance field. PIACT also offers members access to its Agency Staffing Assistance Program, which helps members recognize, recruit and train employees.

Perpetuation is an issue that continues to affect professional, independent insurance agencies, PIACT President Ken Distel said in a PIACT press release.

Russell and the other members of the task force will conduct a study on the methods of developing, expanding and improving the insurance industry workforce in Connecticut by evaluating and analyzing the status of the states workforce in the industry, reviewing the employment needs of the industry and developing methods of expanding and improving the industrys workforce.

PIACT is a trade association representing professional, independent insurance agencies and their employees throughout the state of Connecticut.

Source: PIACT

Topics Agencies Market Connecticut
A New Jersey yacht captain is barred from piloting ships as he awaits trial in the death of an 81-year-old Connecticut boater in Rhode Island waters.

U.S. District Court Magistrate Patricia Sullivan ordered Cooper Chick Bacon on Tuesday to surrender his Merchant Marine license and refrain from operating any vessel.

The 78-year-old Cape May resident pleaded not guilty and was released on a $50,000 unsecured bond. His public defender didnt immediately comment.

Bacon is accused of not paying attention when he crashed his 60-foot yacht into 81-year-old Walter Krupinskis fishing boat in 2015. Krupinski lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and had been fishing off of Westerly.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management had previously found Bacon violated three U.S. Coast Guard navigation rules and had been negligent during the crash.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation
Travelers Europe announced it has appointed Nick Rnjak to lead Travelers Syndicate Management Ltd., its wholly owned platform in the Lloyds insurance market.

Rnjak most recently served as chief underwriting officer for Travelers Syndicate. In his new role, he will continue to focus on expanding its industry sector expertise and building relationships with brokers at Lloyds. He will report to Travelers Europe Chief Executive Officer Matthew Wilson.

Rnjak has more than 40 years of industry experience in the London market. Before joining Travelers in 2007, he held a number of underwriting leadership roles at ACE, Gerling, Cox Syndicate and HSB.

Travelers said it has operated in Europe for decades in both the general insurance market and through Lloyds. Travelers Insurance Co. Ltd. offers business insurance, bond and specialty insurance and risk management services. Travelers Syndicate at Lloyds underwrites specialist and complex business classes, including marine, global property, power and utilities, accident and special risks, aviation and energy.

Source: Travelers

Topics Excess Surplus Europe Lloyd's
A long-running lawsuit between the Trump administration, House Republicans and Democratic attorneys general over billions of dollars of Obamacare subsidies has been settled, according to an agreement filed in federal court Friday.

The settlement agreement, details of which werent available in the filings but described as conditional, could pave the way for eventual payment of the cost-sharing reduction payments, or CSRs. The CSRs had been paid to health insurers as a way to subsidize some lower-income patients insurance co-payments and deductibles, allowing them easier access to health care.

The Trump administration had stopped making the payments, throwing the Affordable Care Acts markets into chaos and causing premiums to rise, and state Democratic attorneys general continued the legal effort to try and preserve the subsidies.

The White House, Justice Department and several offices for Democratic attorneys general either didnt respond to requests for comment or declined to comment late Friday.

The agreement comes within hours of Republicans release of their package of individual and business tax cuts.

Republican leadership in the Senate had promised Maine Senator Susan Collins they would allow a vote on a bill to fund the CSR payments as part of a deal to win her vote on the tax package. While the measure had support in the Senate, it was expected to be an obstacle in the House.

The case is U.S. House of Representatives v. Hargan, 16-5202, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (Washington).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Lawsuits
That theres abuse behind the scenes in restaurant isnt news. Within the chef community, the news is that people are surprised to hear about it.

The true scale of the issue has yet to be revealed, though its been hinted at in details of the behavior of some of the countrys highest-profile food figures, such as Spotted Pig restaurateur Ken Friedman and chefs John Besh and Mario Batali. Accounts include incidents of groping, stalking, abuse, and even industry blackmail. Almost everyone agrees this is just the beginning.

The potential price tag for these harassment cases to restaurants is quite large. In 2014, P.F. Changs paid almost $1 million to two women over harassment claims. In addition to payments, brands experience ripple effects: Batalis products, such as tomato sauce and cookbooks, have been pulled off the shelves at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., and even Eataly, in which Batali holds an ownership stake.

According to Myles Share of Myles Share and Associates, one of the New Yorks biggest restaurant insurance providers, the landscape has changed drasticallyin a lasting manner, he hopesfollowing the recent rush of scandals.

In the past decade, I can count on one hand the number of sexual harassment lawsuits Ive covered. After last week, things will be different, says Share. He predicts that Employee Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI), which covers charges over sexual harassment, discrimination, and wages, plus hourly legal fees, will become much more popular.

Currently, EPLI coverage costs at least $100 per employee per year; a business with 100 employees would cost at least $10,000 for insurance, annually. Five years ago, 20 percent of our clients had EPLI coverage, says Share. By the end of 2018, Id say 80 percent of our clients will have secured coverage.

Restaurant consultant Stephen Loffredo, of Seasoned Hospitality Strategy and Management notes that the $100 per person figure can be higher if there have been previous settlements.

Loffredo has a 60-page handbook he provides clients that includes proprietary templates with sexual harassment clauses on how to report any inappropriate behavior to management. Hes owned a version of it since he opened his former restaurant, Zoe, in 1992 in New York. I came from the hotel industry, where these types of documents were standard. It becomes more necessary in the restaurant every day, he says. Noweven at small, casual operationsyou need to have {human resources] policies in place. It has become 100 percent necessary.

Not every restaurant business sees the answer as more rules and insurance coverage; Danny Meyers Union Square Hospitality Group, a company that has been vocal about its emphasis on employee well-being, has opted to start round tables in the wake of the stories that have surfaced. USHG recently hosted its first, inviting company women and men at all levels to talk with Meyer, Chief Culture Officer Erin Moran, and other members of the management committee.

Training, Training, Training

Other chefs were working to put systems in place long before the recent rash of allegations and reports. For Martha Hoover of the Patachou Restaurant Group in Indianapolis, culture training is so essential that her orientation can stretch to three weeks. It focuses on respecting colleagues. Before she got into the restaurant business, Hoover worked in the sex crimes unit of the prosecutors office in Indianapolis. Im fully aware of how women are treated and how the restaurant system rarely protects them, she says. I put money in the front end to retain employees and make sure everyone feels safe.

Key to her philosophy is instantaneous response, coupled with an intensity that comes from prosecuting crimes. We should all stop saying, Im sorry you feel offended. My position is: Youre offended; lets address the person who offended you right this minute.'

When Alex Stupak opened 160-seat Empellon Midtown in New York earlier this year, he created the position of director of human resources as part of growing his company. Counting this as a prescient move, he has since added an annual, mandatory anti-harassment training seminar that will take place at each of his three restaurants. (He estimates the cost at $15,000). I want everyone to know what harassment means, Stupak says. Now is the time to talk about it.

In 2016, California began requiring mandatory sexual harassment training for company supervisors. Caroline Styne, who employs about 400 people at her L.A. restaurants, including A.O.C. and Tavern, was ahead of the curve. Since 1998, when she and chef Suzanne Goin opened their first restaurant, Lucques, shes had a handbook that addresses the problem of sexual harassment, among other issues. Were a women-owned business and conscious of every single thing. The minute any employee relates an experience that might be inappropriate, we investigate. Theres no gray area, she says.

Over time, the Lucques Group has added a human resources attorney and a human resources adviser to the roster, and the handbook has grown to 50 pages. Theres not a ton of sexual harassment issues. We did fire a chef for inappropriate behavior at a holiday party. Now, we dont have any more holiday parties.

No Employee Drinks

For Top Chef star Hugh Acheson, whose Georgia restaurants include Empire State South and Five & Ten, documentation employees sign isnt enough. A lot of them are just there to appease the insurance company. And then they go straight in the drawer. Restaurants are alive and need to be watched over constantly.

The chef stresses the need to make a distinction between employees professional and personal lives. I find that the restaurants that are the most out-of-control, the most exploitative, are where everyone drinks together after hours. Acheson continues: Im not the guy dancing on the bar at an Aspen after party. And your employees shouldnt be dancing on the bar at their workplace, either.

Sang Yoon of California spots such as Fathers Office and Lukshon has the same policy. The problems we are seeing now arent a lack of established rules, he says. Its people at the top not following their own rules; its no different than senators and studio heads. With the late hours and alcohol, restaurants are an incubator for bad behavior. Yoons rule for avoiding these issues is to prohibit shift or after-work drinks. Shift drinks turn into a two-hour thing, and nothing good comes of it. I strongly advocate a separation of church and state. You just cannot hop from one side of the bar to the other.

Get in Peoples Heads

One of the few women in the male-dominated barbecue industry is Amy Mills of 17th Street Barbecue, which has a couple of locations in Southern Illinois. Mills makes every employee sign a document drafted by her lawyer: Sexual Harassment and a Hostile Work Environment. A lot of people in the barbecue industry are from a different generation, where bad behavior was acceptable. We are breaking that mold, Mills says. She regularly posts stories that relate to industry problems on the restaurants social media and in the hallways. More important, she now makes a point of talking about them in pre-shift meetings. You talk and talk and get in peoples heads.

Sherry Vallaneuva, who runs six restaurants, including the Lark, Lucky Penny, and Les Marchands in Santa Barbara, Calif., has instituted a harassment training program that her managers take every year. Vallaneuva used to work at Twist Worldwide, researching trends for companies such as Target; now shes responsible for almost 300 employees. Those trainings are expensive, and they cut into the already thin margins you have as a restaurant operator. But this is not sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Were the hospitality equivalent of a PG 13 movie. Because theres such a dramatic labor shortage in restaurants, Vallaneuva sees some places putting up with more bad behavior than they should. Once she gets a report, she moves fast to eliminate a problem employee. Im a believer in that one bad apple cliche. Id rather do the job myself then keep that violating the rules. Im fine to go in and work the line.

Change the Message

Bobby Stuckey, owner and wine director of Colorados renowned Frasca Food and Wine and Tavernetta, believes that even just changing the messaging can help fight the problem of abuse in restaurants. Hes intent on getting rid of the glamorized, hard-partying chef credo. (Thats been celebrated since before Anthony Bourdains Kitchen Confidential came out in 2000. Late in February, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll (HarperCollins, 2018) by Andrew Friedmanno relation to Kenwill be released. It will highlight the origin of American cooking culture in the 1970s and 80s.)

On a more concrete level, Stuckey credits a human resources manager he hired as a non-biased person to oversee problems. The company now executes confidential surveys among the staffnot a common restaurant practice. Its not cheap; Stuckey says the manager makes close to a six figure salary. But its so much better and more healthy now that our staff knows they have a voice.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics New York Leadership Training Development Human Resources
Though employers and workers compensation insurers have been utilizing telemedicine for quite some time, theres been a recent uptick in interest surrounding virtual physical therapy, also known as telerehab.

Telerehab provides virtual access to physical therapy and is intended to be a replacement for an in-person visit to an outpatient facility. According to a recent white paper released by MedRisk, while not all treatment is translatable to telerehab, online exercise demos, virtual workout supervision, and secure communication tools make it possible to supplement in-clinic physical therapy with valuable remote services including patient follow-ups, home treatment plans, questions and answers, and consultations with specialists.

Sean Sullivan, chief operating officer and vice president of Business Development for the national rehab and wellness provider Go2Care, said telerehab can include the whole spectrum of what is called musculoskeletal care management.

According to Michelle Despres, vice president and national product leader at workers compensation firm One Call, telerehab is convenient because it can be done via a cell phone, tablet or a computer. The process can work via live or pre-recorded videos and mobile apps, said Despres. Remote patient monitoring can be achieved by using health and fitness trackers or through patient self-reporting.

They would have access to one on one live treatment with a physical therapist (PT), the idea being that theres a convenience factor. If someone would like to be treated, we offer hours between 6:00 AM and 10:00 PM. Theres a lot of flexibility. Most outpatient clinics are not open to those hours, added Despres. There may be a possibility that someone could say at lunchtime, Im going to do my PT. Im not going to leave my office. Im going to do it right here.'

She added that injured workers could do it anywhere they have the privacy and the availability to perform their visit.

Highly adaptable, telerehab can begin with online videoconferencing and move toward live, face to face interaction, according to Sullivan of Go2Care.

With a remote home exercise program, for example, patients can get access to automated solutions when theyre not with the physical therapist to monitor how theyre doing, he explained.

Were also looking at telerehab being defined as a home exercise program support application. This is an apps based concept, said Despres. It allows the treating therapist in the brick and mortar facility to offer their individual patients and injured workers the ability to log into an app, much like a fitness app, that many people use on their phones or their tablets and have the opportunity to have their home program delivered electronically.

The app allows injured workers the ability to access their home exercise program and provide feedback on the assigned exercises.

The PT can customize their exercises within the app. The PT also has a dashboard that they can access at any time thatll show them when the injured worker has done their exercises, how often, what their compliance is, she added.

The physical therapist can pull up the information to determine if adjustments need to be made.

Interest in Telerehab Grows

While theres been traction in both the group health and Medicare markets, there has been a slow adoption rate by the workers compensation industry, despite the fact the concept has been around for quite a while, said Sullivan.

Youll see articles about someone testing it out in 1990 with some population of patients that had a spinal cord injury. Or the VA using it for remote veterans for very specific subsets of conditions, said Sullivan.

In workers compensation, to my knowledge no one yet has any deliverable data or outcomes information to be able to say that its being adopted at X rate in the work comp space, said Despres.

Momentum began to shift this year.

There was a push, not from the carriers but fromthe employers, said Sullivan. Im having a lot of carriers come to me saying, We want to do it, but they dont know where to start. When the carriers right now are talking to me, theyre saying, Do we do the prevention? Do we do the treatment, or do we do the monitoring?'

He expects carriers will pilot one or all three aspects to determine the best fit.

According to both Despres and Sullivan, this type of virtual treatment is best suited for soft tissue injuries, strains and sprains.

Not every conditions appropriate for telerehab, said Sullivan. When a patient comes to see us, the very first thing we do is we implement a triaging system that determines whether that patient is too complex to be seen online. Things like common sprains and strains, lateral epicondylitis, early carpal tunnel syndrome, things that we can address remotely, explained Sullivan. Its not going to be complicated disc herniations. Im focused on joint sprain and strain as what were going to have the most success treating.

Despres added that its driven both by diagnosis and circumstances. She provided the example of an individual that had fractured their neck and their wrist.

The wrist came out of a cast and required therapy, but this person lived hours from everything. It was at least two hours to get to a facility for therapy for their wrist. There were no home health options in the persons area. There were not a lot of options for anything that this person could receive at home, and putting a person in a car for two hours or four hours a day in order to receive therapy, especially if theyre in a halo for their neck, is not a great approach, explained Despres. Someone like that would be a great candidate for a virtual visit, because their circumstances have dictated it.

Someone who travels quite a bit or does a lot of overnight travel could also be a good candidate for telerehab.

Its difficult to get some continuity of care if the person either is not home enough to have therapy with their therapists facility, or they have to try to go to different facilities, said Despres.

Not much is needed for telerehab to work, said Sullivan and Despres.

They dont require anything except the injured worker has to have their own Wi-Fi or their own device a cell phone, a smartphone or a tablet, or a computer, said Despres.

The employer doesnt have to set up anything, though they might choose to offer a private room that employees could use at lunchtime or at their own discretion.

They could give them an on site opportunity, but that would just require a space. It wouldnt require any particular equipment, she added.

It can be done from anywhere. Were servicing a manufacturing site in rural America. Theres not a whole lot around it, but there are 600 employees, Sullivan said. We just set up a kiosk at the location. The employee has the freedom to elect to conduct that visit in the comfort of their home, should they choose. But theyre not choosing that, at least, to date.

Sullivan described a large pilot program with a national employer.

We go ahead and set all the visits to occur at the employer worksite. The technology needed is a computer. We set them up with a webcam, and we put it in the nurses office, said Sullivan.

Benefits of Telerehab

According to Sullivan, employees like the idea of personalized treatment.

Since we are actually integrated with your employer, we know all about your job as a mechanic. We know all about the types of push/pull forces youre working with, said Sullivan. Were actually going to provide you rehab thats a little bit more tailored to what you might recognize as work conditioning.

MedRisks white paper, Telerehabilitation & the Injured Worker, noted several benefits of telerehab, including greater patient compliance, smoother care coordination among clinicians, a more flexible rehabilitation timeline, and cost and time savings for key stakeholders.

In addition, the paper noted that injured workers benefited from increased access to care.

A Good Fit for Some

Telerehab might not work for everyone, said Despres, who added that its a better fit for those who embrace technology.

I think by and large, as a society, we think its going to be the younger folks, said Despres. This will be a no brainer for the younger group, but I do think we cant discount the older population either. Anyone who embraces technology and possibly leads a busy life. Someone whose employer might say, Hey, you have to do your therapy outside of work hours. or whatever the case may be.

While Sullivan said there is no specific data on utilization, such as by gender or age, usage is trending towards a younger population thats looking for convenience.

In addition, workers may be more open to telerehab where employers promote the treatment option, said Despres.

Sullivan said hes seeing telerehab opportunities in certain industries.

Were finding our sweet spot is heavy industry, working with oil and gas sector, working with transportation, said Sullivan. These guys are on the move. Working with distribution and warehouse facilities, where we see the type of injury that we can service in high volume.

MedRisks white paper stated, The value and the convenience for traveling sales reps, cruise ship staff and employees in the transportation and distribution industries is enormous.

Small businesses also stand to benefit from telerehab.

For the first time, small businesses or mid sized businesses that formed cooperatives or aggregates now have access to an online solution, where if youre an employer and youve got 10 people, youre not going to get the same kind of on site PT access as Amazon gets, right? You dont get access to the same type of benefits, explained Sullivan. Since were online, we want to go to the carriers and say, Hey, we can be available to any of your clients, no matter their size and no matter their location.'

A challenge, both Despres and Sullivan said, is that while everyone wants to know about telerehab, no one really knows how to implement it.

I hear, Hey, how can we get that as a solution?, but I find that most people havent clearly defined in their head what that means, said Despres. When I ask payers What do you have in mind? Beyond the term telerehab, I dont find that people have a real clear plan for what they think it is.

A clearer definition of how it impacts the injured worker is needed, she added.

Everything doesnt necessarily require us to touch a person to be successful, said Despres. I think theres a place for it. Were going to do a pilot for six months to come back and give some solid answers as to where it fits into the work comp world. Hopefully, at that point well have a better understanding of how these folks are going to adopt it.

Sullivan added there are barriers to expanding workers comp, including the fact that not a lot of workers comp laws have specific language to address the concept.

Another challenge, he said, is that employers are not as quick to adopt telemedicine options.

Topics Carriers Trends Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance Talent
The Senate gave final approval Thursday night to a short-term extension of federal funding to keep the government running for three more weeks while shoving a raft of fiscal and policy fights into the new year.

The spending measure, which now heads to President Donald Trump for his signature, would maintain current levels of spending through Jan. 19 and provide $4.5 billion in emergency funding for missile defense work as well as other Pentagon expenses. It passed the Senate 66-32 after winning approval in the House 231-188.

It also would provide money for several health programs and a funding bridge of $2.85 billion for the Childrens Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. A temporary extension of a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that allows collection of emails and other messages without a warrant also was included, as was an extension for the federal flood insurance program.

Among the most noteworthy provisions in the stopgap measure is a waiver of a budget rule that would trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and dozens of other federal programs because of the deficit impact of the tax overhaul passed this week. The waiver would clear the way for Trump to sign the tax legislation before the end of the year rather than waiting until January.

Disaster Aid

The Senate shelved a separate $81 billion disaster aid package passed by the House, a blow to representatives from Texas, Florida, California and Puerto Rico, all of which were hit by devastating natural disasters this year. It was done in by a group of Republicans who argued it should be offset by spending cuts elsewhere and some Democrats who decried the package insufficient and want to use it as leverage on other issues.

The debate over the aid package now will carry into January, where it will be added to an already loaded agenda for lawmakers when they return from a holiday recess, which includes debates about the budget, immigration, health care and raising the federal debt ceiling.

The wrangling that it took to cobble together a stopgap spending plan that could pass both the House and Senate drained away some of the euphoria in the Republican ranks left over from passage of their tax overhaul.

I think its an acceptable solution, Representative Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, said after the House voted for the pared down stopgap measure. Its just frustrating that were doing it this way.

House GOP leaders backed down from their initial plan to appease the defense hawks in their ranks by attaching full funds for the 2018 military budget and forcing the Senate to decide how to approach the Democrats whose help they would need to help pass it. There was simmering resentment  as Republicans cast their votes just before leaving town for the holiday  that their policy making would once again be held hostage by the minority party in the Senate.

Republican unity still held strong enough in the House to approve the spending bill without having to count on votes from Democrats  14 of whom voted for the measure. But Wednesdays late night negotiations on how to fund the most basic functions of government yielded a bill that was exciting to no one, but ultimately acceptable enough to send over to be tested by the tricky math of the slim GOP majority in the Senate.

As a sign of just how deep partisan divisions run, Republicans and Democrats couldnt even agree on how to fund the Childrens Health Insurance Program, which provides assistance to low-income families. This program has been running on emergency funding for months, and in this bill receives only enough to get it through March.

The House passed a version of CHIP funding earlier this year, but Democrats opposed it because its costs were offset by cuts to other government health programs.

The Veterans Choice Act, to give veterans more flexibility in their health care options, also receives $2.1 billion under the spending bill.

And the defense spending that some conservatives have for weeks said was their No. 1 priority will continue for just three more weeks, along with some extra funds that the military requested for things like ballistic missile defense and repairs to naval ships. House Speaker Paul Ryan, recognizing the political risks of removing the full defense spending bill because of Senate concerns, assured his members Wednesday night that Defense Secretary James Mattis had signed off on this strategy, according to a person who was in the closed-door meeting.

Republicans still have to negotiate with Democrats on the ultimate levels for defense and non-defense spending for fiscal year 2018, because the Budget Control Act of 2011 caps those costs. Those levels must be worked out before congressional appropriators can write the package of spending bills that will last until the end of fiscal year 2018. Ideally, this legislation would be ready ahead of the new Jan. 19 shutdown deadline.

Tough Negotiations

However, the acrimony left over from Ryan switching strategies in the hours between the tax vote and the spending vote could limit his wiggle room on the tough negotiations that await when Congress returns in January.

Democrats stepped down from their demands for immigration protections this year, but the status of undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children must be resolved before March. Some Republicans like Florida Representative Carlos Curbelo and Arizona Senator Jeff Flake say this immigration fix is a priority for them as well.

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine also relented on her demand for legislation this year that would stabilize health insurance markets, but these bills  which are extremely unpalatable to House Republicans  are certain to resurface next year.

Although the Republicans who control Congress are on their way to avert a government shutdown on the heels of their tax victory, the tough decisions they didnt confront this week sets them up for a difficult start to 2018.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Legislation
Independent wholesale insurance broker All Risks Ltd. has added Nancy Batten as energy property broker in its Dallas office.

Batten has nearly 30 years of experience in the insurance industry on the wholesaler side. Most recently, she served as vice president, director of Well Control/Energy Property at Towerstone Inc. in Dallas. She was responsible for the Control of Well/Energy Property Department, and managed all of the control of well risks and the majority of the complex energy property placements for the office.

Previously, Batten was the vice president, control of well underwriter at Swett & Crawford in Dallas, where she performed underwriting duties for an exclusive control of well program on behalf of two national carriers.

Batten holds the Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) and Certified Insurance Service Representatives (CISR) professional designations.

All Risks Ltd. is based in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

Source: All Risks Ltd.

Topics Agencies Property
The Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers Compensation (DWC) has released the 2017 Health Care Provider Performance Based Oversight (PBO) assessment results.

Health care providers were assessed on their performance in one of three categories:

Timely filing the DWC Form-069, Report of Medical Evaluation

Completeness of the DWC Form-073, Work Status Report

Documentation supporting why the injured employee was prevented from returning to work as reported on the DWC Form-073, Work Status Report.

Of the 152 health care providers reviewed for the timeliness of filing the DWC Form-069, Report of Medical Evaluation:

113 had scores placing them in the high performer tier

30 were in the average performer tier

Nine had scores placing them in the poor performer tier.

Of the 87 health care providers reviewed for the completeness of the DWC Form-073, Work Status Report:

50 had scores placing them in the high performer tier

26 were in the average performer tier

11 had scores placing them in the poor performer tier.

Of the 87 health care providers reviewed for documentation supporting why the injured employee was prevented from returning to work, as reported on the DWC Form-073, Work Status Report:

41 had scores placing them in the high performer tier

29 were in the average performer tier

17 had scores placing them in the poor performer tier.

If a health care provider is not listed, he or she was not assessed in 2017; however, no health care provider in the Texas workers compensation system is exempt from compliance with the Workers Compensation Act and DWC rules.

More information on PBO and the 2017 assessment is available on the TDI website at www.tdi.texas.gov/wc/pbo/hcppbo.html.

DWC will assess insurance carriers separately in 2018.

Source: DWC

Topics Texas Workers' Compensation Medical Professional Liability
Ashley Casey, owner of Brightway, The Casey Agency in St. Augustine, Fla., has opened a new Brightway store in Palm Coast, Fla., making him the latest multi-unit owner with Brightway Insurance.

The new agency, located at 55 Plaza Drive, Suite 5, has been rebranded to Brightway, The Casey Agency.

According to Brightway President, Talman Howard, Casey is among the top 10 percent most successful store owners at Brightway based on sales. Caseys first agency in St. Augustine opened in May 2008.

He is one of nine Brightway multi-unit owners.

Brightway, The Casey Agency offers customized home, condo, renters, auto, flood, RV, motorcycle, boat, ATV, umbrella and business policies from numerous insurance brands including American Colonial, Bankers, Nationwide, Progressive, Safeco and Travelers.

Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance retailer selling through a network of franchised independent stores throughout the country.

Brightway began franchising operations in 2008 and has since grown to more than 700 people in 19 states serving customers in all 50 states.

Topics Florida
A top Mississippi official said Tuesday that the state will stop suspending peoples drivers licenses purely because they havent paid court fines and fees, meaning tens of thousands of people who lost driving privileges could get them back in coming months.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Marshall Fisher made the joint announcement with lawyers from the MacArthur Justice Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, after advocates complained that it was another way the state was criminalizing poverty. It parallels a court rules change enacted in July that requires a judge to determine whether a person can afford to pay a fine before jailing anyone for nonpayment.

These changes are consistent with those new rules and a recognition across the state that a person couldnt be punished just for their poverty, said Micah West, a lawyer for the Alabama-based SPLC.

More than 100,000 people have had their Mississippi licenses automatically suspended at the request of a court clerk. MacArthur Center lawyer Cliff Johnson said its hard to tell how many will get their licenses back, although he estimated it would be in the tens of thousands.

Both legal groups have also sued cities and counties in Mississippi for jailing poor people who cant afford to pay bail or fines. This time, it didnt take a lawsuit, although Johnson said we discussed the potential for litigation challenging their license suspension policy. West said talks had been ongoing since January.

The state will begin reinstating licenses starting in January. Mississippi will waive its $100 reinstatement fee, sending letters to anyone who benefits. Officials say people should await written notification before driving again. People whose licenses were suspended for additional reasons, such as reckless driving or driving under the influence wont get them back. Licenses will continue to be suspended for people who dont respond to a citation or if a judge holds someone in contempt for failing to pay fines.

We will continue to suspend licenses for other reasons allowed under Mississippi law, and we certainly take it seriously when people drive with suspended licenses, Fisher said in a statement. The reinstatement of these licenses will not relieve the drivers of the legal obligation to pay the fines, fees or assessments.

Mississippi becomes the fifth state to require a consideration of ability to pay before suspending a license. Others include Louisiana, which enacted the change as part of a package of criminal justice changes last year. Mississippi lawmakers had been mulling the change as well  it was originally proposed last year in a bill meant to make it easier for people to re-enter society after being convicted of criminal offenses. The drivers license provision was dropped and Gov. Phil Bryant ultimately vetoed the bill because it allowed some repeat offenders to be paroled after serving only a quarter of their sentence.

Johnson said suspended licenses were also driving people deeper into trouble because, lacking other options, they kept driving, incurring citations up to $500 for driving without a license and up to $250 for driving without auto insurance each time theyre caught.

Were making it illegal for people to drive a car in a state where we dont have any public transportation, Johnson said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Personal Auto Mississippi
The rush to launch service on a new, faster Amtrak route near Seattle, Wash. came at a deadly cost: none of the critical speed-control technology that could have prevented a derailment was active before the train set off on its maiden voyage.

Work to install the sophisticated, GPS-based technology known as positive train control isnt expected to be completed until next spring on the newly opened 15-mile span where the train derailed, according to Sound Transit, the public agency that owns the tracks.

The rest of the project was under a very aggressive schedule, according to documents posted on Sound Transits website. The terms and conditions for funding the $180.7 million project, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, required track, signal and other infrastructure work be completed by June 30, the documents said. Even a one-month delay would significantly impact the project.

The train in Mondays crash was going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone when it raced off the rails as they curved toward a bridge, hurtling train cars onto a highway below, investigators said. Three people were killed, and dozens were injured. Federal investigators say they are looking into whether the engineer was distracted.

A positive train control system could have detected the speeding and automatically applied the brakes to stop the train, said Najmedin Meshkati, a University of Southern California professor who has studied the technology for three decades.

It is another layer of safety, he said.

Amtrak and the Washington Department of Transportation started publicizing the switch to the new route in October. Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said that no one wants PTC more than me but would not directly answer questions about why it is taking so long to get the speed-control technology up and running across the board.

Im a huge believer in positive train control, he said at a news conference Tuesday evening. It just makes so much scientific sense.

Anderson said the companys safety culture can continue to improve and said the crash should be seen as a wake-up call.

Its not acceptable that were involved in these types of accidents, he said.

Railroads are under government orders to install positive train control by the end of 2018 after the industry lobbied Congress to extend earlier deadlines, citing complexity and cost.

Union Pacific, the nations largest freight carrier, said it was spending about $2.9 billion on the technology. Industry groups estimate railroads will spend a total of about $10 billion to install and implement the systems.

Mondays wreck is just the latest example of a deadly crash that experts say could have been prevented if the technology were in place to slow down the train when engineers go too fast, get distracted or fall ill.

U.S. investigators have listed a lack of such a system as a contributing factor in at least 25 crashes over the last 20 years, including two in the last four years where a train approached sharp curves at more than double the speed limit.

A Metro-North train crashed in New York City in 2013, killing four people, when an engineer with sleep apnea dozed off. An Amtrak train crashed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight people, when investigators say the engineer was distracted by radio traffic and lost his bearings.

Positive train control was installed on 23 percent of the nations passenger route miles and 37 percent of freight route miles as of July, the last time the Federal Railroad Administration updated its online tracker for the technology.

It is activated on the tracks Amtrak owns along the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington, D.C., and on Amtraks Michigan line. Many of its locomotives are equipped for positive train control.

Throughout the rest of the country, Amtrak operates on track owned by freight carriers and other entities that have made varying progress on installing the technology.

Its a work in progress on the route where the train derailed Monday. Sensors have been installed, but the system needs to be synchronized, tested and certified before it goes online, Sound Transit spokeswoman Rachelle Cunningham said.

The new route was designed to speed up service by removing passenger trains from a route along Puget Sound thats bogged down by curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.

The National Transportation Safety Board first recommended the use of automatic train control in 1970, a year after two Penn Central commuter trains collided, killing four and injuring 43.

The railroad industry was opposed for decades until a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles in 2008. Investigators said the trains engineer was texting and ran a stop signal, killing 25 people.

Its a good fail-safe for human error, said Fran Kelly, assistant general manager for SEPTA, the Philadelphia-area commuter railroad that was an early adopter of positive train control. Its using the best technologies available to complement what the human engineer is doing  the human element of it.

Sisak reported from Philadelphia, and Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. AP writer Lisa Baumann contributed to this report from Seattle.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Tech Washington
A former seaman has sued a fisherman who starred in Discovery Channels Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove show, alleging the man was negligent and caused severe injury.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Nolan Dean filed a suit Dec. 6 in federal court against Gary Ripka, nicknamed The Ripper, who appeared in the first episode of Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove in September 2016.

Dean claims his arm was broken because Ripka was negligent and his ship wasnt seaworthy.

The complaint says Dean was working in the back of Ripkas ship, Western Breeze, on May 30, 2015, when Ripka activated a hydraulic control. Deans arm got caught in a line, and he was hoisted over the deck. Multiple bones broke in his arm.

Ripka declined to talk about the specifics of the case.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Oregon
A former Vancouver, Wash. police officer has agreed to a $6 million settlement after he spent nearly 20 years in prison on a wrongful conviction of sexually abusing three children in 1980s.

Clyde Ray Spencer will receive more than $5 million from Clark County and the Washington Counties Risk Pool will pay the rest.

Spencer, who now lives in California, was convicted in 1985 and was sentenced to two life terms. His sentence was commuted in 2004, and the conviction was later vacated.

Spencer told The Columbian that its not that big of a settlement considering the amount of time he was imprisoned, but its nice its going to be settled.

Clark County prosecutor Chris Horne says there is still disagreement but the settlement was in the best interest of all.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Washington
Boeing Co. (BA), one of the world's leading aerospace companies, develops and manufactures commercial jets, military aircraft, weapons systems, and strategic defense and intelligence systems. Boeing provides services and support to customers globally, and provides financing for orders and deliveries.

The top shareholders of Boeing are Timothy J. Keating, Leanne G. Caret, Theodore Colbert, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. (BLK), and Newport Trust Co.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) began recertification testing on Boeing Max 737 aircrafts at the end of June. The aircraft has been grounded since early 2019 following two fatal crashes in the span of five months. The FAA indicated that it would lift the grounding order as soon as the aircraft has satisfied certification standards.

Boeing's 12-month trailing net loss and revenue are $3.4 billion and $70.6 billion, respectively. The company's market cap is about $103.7 billion. These financial data are as of July 15, 2020.

Below we look in more detail at Boeing's top 6 shareholders.

"Insider" refers to people in senior management positions and members of the board of directors, as well as people or entities that own more than 10% of the company's stock. In this context, it has nothing to do with insider trading.

Top 3 Individual Insider Shareholders

Timothy J. Keating

Timothy J. Keating owns a total of 80,080 Boeing shares, representing 0.01% of the company's total shares outstanding. Mr. Keating has served as Boeing's executive vice president of Government Operations since early 2018 and is a member of the company's leadership team, the Executive Council. He is responsible for leading Boeing's public policy efforts, liaising with government officials, and leading the Boeing Global Engagement organization, which was first launched under his leadership in 2017.  Mr. Keating first joined the company in 2008 as senior vice president of Government Operations and has worked to strengthen Boeing's relationship with all levels of government and the communities in which the company conducts business. Before Boeing, Keating worked in public affairs at Honeywell International and as a special assistant to the President in the Clinton Administration.

Leanne G. Caret

Leanne G. Caret owns a total of 59,148 Boeing shares, representing 0.01% of the company's total shares outstanding. Ms. Caret has served as president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS) since early 2016. A company veteran with more than 30 years of experience at Boeing, she previously led Boeing's Global Services & Support business, which is the U.S. Department of Defense's largest performance-based logistics contractor and an industry leader in providing sustainment services for a diverse range of military products and systems. She has served in numerous other roles, including as chief financial officer (CFO) at Boeing Defense, Space & Security, which she now leads.

Theodore Colbert

Theodore Colbert owns a total of 54,846 Boeing shares, representing 0.01% of the company's total shares outstanding. Mr. Colbert serves as Boeing's executive vice president, president and CEO of Boeing Global Services, and is a member of the Executive Council. He leads the company's aerospace services development and aviation industry customers globally. Mr. Colbert first joined Boeing in 2009 and has served in a number of different roles, including chief information officer (CIO) and senior vice president of Information Technology & Data Analytics. Prior to joining Boeing, Colbert was senior vice president of Enterprise Architecture at Citigroup, and before that worked at Ford Motor Co. in its Information Technology group.

Top 3 Institutional Shareholders

Institutional investors hold the majority of Boeing's shares at about 62% of total shares outstanding. 

Vanguard Group Inc.

Vanguard Group owns 41.8 million shares of Boeing, representing 7.4% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. The company is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with about $6.2 trillion in global assets under management (AUM). The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) is one of the company's largest exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with about $151 billion in AUM. Boeing comprises 0.31% of VOO's holdings.

BlackRock Inc.

BlackRock owns 33.3 million shares of Boeing, representing 5.9% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. The company is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with approximately $6.47 trillion in AUM. The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) is among one of BlackRock's largest ETFs with approximately $198 billion in AUM. Boeing comprises 0.36% of IVV's holdings.

Newport Trust Co.

Newport Trust owns 32.7 million shares of Boeing, representing 5.8% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. Newport Trust, owned by Newport Group Inc., is a private company that provides trustee and independent fiduciary services to leading U.S. companies and institutions, including 25% of the corporations in the Fortune 500.  The total value of the company's portfolio is $24.3 billion. Boeing is among Newport Trust's top 10 holdings, comprising about 20% of the portfolio's total value, as of March 31, 2020.

Diversity & Inclusiveness of Boeing

As part of our effort to improve the awareness of the importance of diversity in companies, we offer investors a glimpse into the transparency of more than just who are the shareholders at Boeing. We highlight the company's commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibility as a whole. Find out how Boeing reports the diversity of its management and workforce. The  shows if Boeing discloses its data about the diversity of its board of directors, C-Suite, general management, and employees overall across a variety of markets.
Once considered a niche area of investment practice, socially responsible investing (SRI) now embraces a wide investment audience that includes individuals, including those of high net worth and otherwise, and institutions such as pension plans, endowments, and foundations. Religious tenets, political beliefs, specific events, and the broad remit of corporate responsibilitysuch as green investing and social welfareall drive this investment practice.

Examples of Socially Responsible Investing

Socially responsible investing expresses the investor's value judgment, of which several approaches may be used.

One example is when an investor avoids companies or industries that offer products or services the investor perceives to be harmful. The tobacco, alcohol, and defense industries are commonly avoided by people who try to be socially responsible investors.

Another is considering a performance ranking in terms of how well a company performs, not only in terms of financial metrics but also regarding social, environmental, governance, and ethical issues.

Yet another involves active engagement between the company's shareholders and its management.

Finally, there is the activist tack that involves the investor advocating for specific issues.

One or a combination of these approaches can be a critical driver in the process of portfolio management and fiduciary oversight. Moreover, the practice is global, with different approaches emphasized in various countries as a function of their culture, government, business environment, and inter-relationship of these factors.

One form of socially responsible investing involves promoting racial justice, equality, and inclusion. Known as racial justice investing, the purpose is to leverage both institutional and retail dollars to invest in ways that advance this and other anti-racist causes.

For Whose Benefit?

Socially conscious investors may assume a more holistic view of a company when making investment decisionslooking at how it serves its stakeholders, as well as creditors, management, employees, the community, customers, and suppliers. Within this context, socially responsible investment seeks to maximize the welfare of people and their environment while earning a return on one's investment that is consistent with the investor's goals.

On the surface, these two notions may appear contradictory. For example, there may be an implicit cost of such an approach to the extent that it eschews profitable companies and sectors. Tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and gambling have been lucrative industries.

However, to a socially conscious investor, their inclusion in a portfolio would fail to serve the investor's objectives of living in a world void of conflict and legal stimulants and depressants. As with any investment approach, the socially conscious investor needs to:

Define his, her, or its risk and return objectives and constraints.

As to the latter, the investor needs to determine what their socially conscious constraints are. These may differ considerably, depending upon the investor. Muslims who wish to be compliant with Sharia law would exclude any companies connected with the production, sale, and distribution of alcohol, any financial institution that lends, and any business that profits from gambling.

Investors opposed to armed conflict as a means of dispute resolution may avoid any company or industry associated with defense, national security, or firearms.

Once an investor defines their constraints, they must decide upon an approach to implement them, be it the use of inclusionary or exclusionary screens, best practices criteria, or advocacy. The type of investor may determine the most suitable approach. For example, advocacy and dialog with a company or industry would be better suited to a large public pension fund. Consider the work of CalPERS or the Swiss billionaire activist Martin Ebner, the latter an example of individual shareholder activism. By contrast, an individual investor working with an advisor would find the screening process more feasible.

Social investing has implicit coststhe returns potentially foregone through the exclusion of companies with unacceptable products or business practicesand explicit costs. For those considering an active approach, fees for exchange-traded and mutual funds tend to be a bit higher. For investors seeking passive management, there are fewer indices to replicate.

Diversification is always an important consideration. Screens may hamper this process, unintentionally or otherwise.

Utilizing this type of traditional investment framework would appear to make the process manageable, so long as the investor weighs the costs and benefits of this type of investment approach carefully.

However, there could appear to be a dilemma upon whose horns the investor invariably would be impaled. For example, if investment in such "vice" products as alcohol and tobacco is an anathema to a socially conscious investor, what about the transportation and energy sectors?

After all, the products have to be shipped to the point of sale, which requires various means of transport which, in turn, require fuel. These types of considerations make the precise definition of one's socially responsible investment goals all the more crucial.

Depending upon the perspective of the individual, companies may display characteristics that are both irresponsible and responsible.

The Bottom Line

Socially responsible investing reflects an investor's values. While the opportunities in this realm of investment management have grown considerably, one may not ignore the best practices of investing.

Investors must clearly define their goals when undertaking this sort of approach, recognizing its potential trade-offs and clearly articulating a policy that considers all the variables when looking to maximize the good over the plentiful and abundant.

Risk management and attention to costs are essential. Research seems to indicate that results from socially conscious investing are not more statistically significant than a more conventional approach.
What Is a Golden Handshake?

A golden handshake is a stipulation in an employment agreement which states that the employer will provide a significant severance package if the employee loses their job. It is usually provided to top executives in the event that they lose employment because of retirement, layoffs, or for negligence. However, payment can be made in several ways, such as cash or stock options.

Key Takeaways Golden handshakes are pre-negotiated employment agreements that provide a severance if the employee were to involuntarily leave their position early.

Payment can be made in cash, stock options, or anything else accepted in the contract.

Golden Handshakes often come with non-compete clauses.

Golden Handshakes are often controversial and can cause upset in the general public.

Sometimes low-level employees receive a smaller version of the golden handshake.

1:25 Severance Package Basics

How a Golden Handshake Works

Sometimes these golden handshakes are for millions of dollars, which makes them a very important issue for investors to consider. For example in 1989, R.J. Reynolds Nabisco paid F. Ross Johnson over $52 million as part of a golden handshake clause. Some contracts, along with compensation, include non-competition clauses, which state that the employee is not allowed to open a competing business for a specified period of time after they are terminated.

A golden handshake can also be referred to as a golden parachute.

Special Considerations

Occasionally non-executives receive a golden handshake as a bonus. It is usually drastically different than the compensation that CEOs and top executives get, so one might call it a "silver handshake." Nevertheless, it is better than leaving with nothing.

An example of this is automotive companies that buy out union workers' contracts. This can then free up that capital to hire new workers at a more advantageous labor cost. Another example is people who are forced into early retirement. Often times companies want to bring in new talent so these people are paid severance packages.

Criticism of Golden Handshakes

Golden handshakes can be very controversial. They can damage a company's public image because large executive payoffs are viewed as a reward for failure. For example, in 2010 British the oil company BP had an oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

The rig was leased to BP for exploration of the Macondo Prospect, an oil field off the coast of Louisiana. After the accident, which resulted in costs to the company of more than $69 billion, BP's CEO Tony Hayward was pushed out. However, he received a golden handshake payout of a year's salary, worth $1.5 million, in addition to keeping his approximately $17 million pension fund.

Other famous golden handshake controversies occurred during the 2008 financial crisis. After many of these banks got into financial trouble, top executives were forced to depart but left with large pay packages intact. Some big banks allowed top-level staff to cash out of incentive programs by accelerating the vesting of their stock awards. For example, Antonio Weiss, a former Lazard banker, acknowledged that he received up to $21 million in unvested income and deferred compensation following his departure.

Bank shareholders who were left with worthless stock and bond investments were upset by these agreements. Since then, some companies have given investors a say on executive pay packages at shareholder meetings. These shareholder votes are usually non-binding, but do provide a strong signal to management about investors' attitude toward excessive executive payouts.
In previous US-led peace talks between the two groups, the status of Jerusalem had always been left to the final stages. Trumps move alters the approach to these peace talks, and some observers conclude that it makes the successful conclusion of those talks virtually impossible before they have begun. But the potential impact of the move has ramifications that extend well beyond the Israel and Palestine. It may also affect the longstanding tensions among regional power players, including the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Iran has long used the Palestinian issue as a rallying cry for Muslim unity under the banner of the Islamic Republic. In the interest of promoting that message in recent months, the Iranian regime has made concerted efforts to repair its relations with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. These relations are indicative of the ability of the Islamic Republic to bridge natural sectarian differences when doing so serves a larger goal such as the development of an axis of resistance against Western influence and US-allied regional powers like Saudi Arabia. Hamas, like the leaders of the Saudi kingdom, is Sunni, whereas Iran is a Shiite theocracy more naturally aligned to Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

In line with Tehrans tendency to use the Palestinian issue as a tool of state propaganda, leading Iranian officials quickly seized upon Trumps announcement. Reuters quoted Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as attributing the decision to the incompetence and failure of the Trump administration. And Irans own Tasnim News Agency highlighted comments from Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Irans Supreme National Security Council, in order to outline Irans position on the matter.

Muslim countries should unanimously condemn this conspiracy that violates the rights of the oppressed people of Palestine and paves the way for the continuation of the occupation by the Zionist regime, he said, adding that Iran considers Jerusalem to be an inseparable part of Palestine. Shamkhani also pointed to concerns about the possible emergence of new conflicts, saying that the US and Israel will be held accountable for the instability and insecurity that results from Trumps announcement.

But other reports indicate that Tehran is not just warning of such instability but is actively trying to instigate it. The Washington Free Beacon issued a report on Thursday describing threats from top Iranian officials regarding reprisals against the US and Israel. Via state media, Khamenei declared, Without a doubt, the Islamic world will stand against this conspiracy, and with these actions, the Zionists will be hit harder. And dear Palestine, without a doubt, will eventually be freed.

Trumps announcement seemed to prompt an upsurge of this rhetoric, but it is a familiar type of rhetoric among Iranian officials and Iranian propaganda networks. Tehran routinely calls for the outright destruction of the state of Israel, and last year the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps displayed long-range ballistic missiles painted with the phrase Israel must be wiped out in Hebrew.

The current situation may nonetheless prove helpful in spreading the reach of that familiar rhetoric, and there are indications that it is being used as a means of solidifying relations with other regional powers that have been gravitating toward Iran and away from its Western adversaries. The Middle East and North Africa Financial Network reported on Wednesday that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had spoken with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan shortly after Trumps announcement and that both had reiterated Khameneis call for Islamic resistance, as well as saying that the Palestinian issue would be a leading priority for both governments.

At the same time that the announcement has created common cause for this and similar fledgling alliances, it has also created a challenge to the emergence of alliances that are motivated by mutual concern about the expanding influence of the Islamic Republic. Prior to the White Houses announcement, a number of reports highlighted the various signs of potential cooperation between Israel and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. Now, Iranian officials have begun using the latest developments in an attempt to undermine these states reputation in the broader Muslim world.

The Reuters report on Khameneis response quoted him as saying that Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council work against Islam by virtue of their longtime alliance with the government that announced its new view on the status of Jerusalem this week.

But as much as this rhetoric poses a threat to countries like Saudi Arabia, it remains to be seen whether that threat outweighs the threat that they perceive as coming from Irans intrusions into the affairs of its neighbors. US Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and well-known Iran hawk, suggested otherwise, according to the Washington Examiner. The report quotes him as saying that the worsening tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia may have actually provided the Trump administration with an opening for its move, because the Arabs may prove willing to accept it in order to continue the trend of unified opposition to Irans expansionism.

But the full extent of that unity remains undetermined, as does the status of the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which spans a proxy war in Yemen and a number of other flashpoints of sectarian competition. Reuters ran a report on Thursday that opened with the declaration that Iran had come out on top in the wake of a political competition in Lebanon, but the details painted a picture that was less clear.

On one hand, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri did revoke his resignation on Tuesday, which he had announced last month after traveling to the Saudi capital of Riyadh. But whereas this may indicate that the Saudis backed down from an effort to instigate a political crisis in the sharply divided country, the Reuters report also notes that the Iran-backed paramilitary Hezbollah had offered appeasing language about its role in Lebanon after welcoming Hariris return. This may suggest that Riyadhs gambit with Hariri paid off, even if not to the extent it had hoped.

Nevertheless, a conciliatory promise from Hezbollah can hardly be said to represent a meaningful contraction of Iranian influence in the region as a whole. Indeed, there are numerous indicators that that influence continues to expand. PBS Newshour issued a three-part report this week about Irans influence over Iraq, noting that the boundaries between religious, political, and paramilitary influence are often blurred.

That being the case, the religious significance of Trumps Jerusalem announcement may further inflame the sentiment of those Shiites throughout the region who look to Irans clerical leadership. But at the same time, the current extent of that influence raises serious questions about what Sunni powers might be willing to tolerate in the interest of retaining friendly or collaborative relations with the Trump administration, Israel, and other entities that are committed to pushing back against the advance of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Failte Ireland is to increase the marketing of less- popular domestic holiday destinations in a bid to keep Irelands tourism offering buoyant in the face of outside threats such as Brexit.

It said that there is scope for growth beyond attracting peak-time visitors to traditional hot-spots.

A new study by the body shows that while sentiment among hotels and B&Bs is high, it is less positive this year than in most post-financial crisis years. An increase in visitor numbers from Germany and north America, in particular, has bolstered confidence but UK visitor numbers have declined.

Failte Ireland has warned that Dublin and the border counties, in particular, are likely to face further Brexit-related challenges.

Over 60% of hotels in northern counties have been affected by the sterling/ euro exchange rate this year, while 61% of Dublin hotels have seen a reduction in UK visitors.

There is no denying that 2017 was another good year for tourism businesses, but for the first time in a few years we certainly hit some speed-bumps, said Paul Keeley, head of business development at Failte Ireland.

If we are to enjoy continued growth we need to target those markets with most potential and ensure that activity is spread regionally and across a longer tourism season. Otherwise, if future growth is simply concentrated in traditional hotspots and in the high season, we will be faced with the downsides of success  capacity constraints, congestion and a poorer visitor experience, said Mr Keeley.
The warning comes as the Central Bank revealed a dramatic increase by 13,600 to 33,700 in the number of cases it has forced lenders to acknowledge.

It said the compensation and redress by the mortgage banks has to date reached almost 300m.

However, financial consultant and consumer advocate Padraic Kissane said the new figures mean the total compensation bill for the scandal will reach 1bn, while the follow-on from the investigation will mean that fines for the banks will be off the charts.

Padraic Kissane (left)

After winning the cases for two customers eight years ago, Mr Kissane went on to liaise with the Central Banks investigation to fight for 3,000 customers.

He said everyone who lost a home because of the scandal should be compensated and have their tracker mortgages restored and their stamp duty paid, if they qualify for a home loan.

The Central Bank revealed that its pressure led to lenders admitting:

13,600 additional customers were brought into the scope of the investigation;

297m has been paid into compensation to date with more to follow;

KBC said its total for affected customers has increased to 3,545 as the reviews progressed;

Bank of Ireland confirmed in November that it had identified another 6,000 borrowers who were overcharged, bringing its total to 14,500, including 5,000 who had been addressed in 2010;

AIBs number of affected customers is up to 5,402;

Ulster Bank had 3,500 customers on the wrong rates and Permanent TSB 1,980.

Central Bank governor Philip Lane said: Many lenders publicly state they put customers first. The evidence of the examination that we have suggests otherwise.

Its report said all of the main lenders will likely face enforcement investigations.

In previous reports, the Central Bank said it had engaged with gardai and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

Economist Jim Power

Economist Jim Power said staff in the banks had been lied to by top bank executives about the scope of the scandal.

Banking is still characterised by extreme arrogance and the Central Bank systems in place like almost everywhere are not nearly sophisticated enough to deal with financial services, he said.

The numbers involved in the tracker scandal will rise further and the banks must now come clean as to the full extent of the crisis, the chair of the Oireachtas finance committee has said.

John McGuinness, who highlighted the issue earlier this year, said the committee will now hold further meetings with the Central Bank and the ombudsman to to find out the extent of this crisis.

John McGuinness TD

We will hold further meetings in the New Year. It is clear Padraic Kissane was correct. This will get worse and bigger in terms of the numbers affected.

"I would urge the banks to get ahead of this and come clean and make sure adequate and fair compensation is given to those affected, which would mean substantial compensation in some cases, he said.

The need for accountability at both the institution and individual senior executive level is imperative, according to Fianna Fails finance spokesman Michael McGrath.

Speaking in the wake of the report, Mr McGrath said: The real story behind this update is that the lenders did not voluntarily reveal the full extent of the tracker mortgage scandal.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said the five banks are making compensation and redress payments in line with the Central Banks framework, which ensures fair treatment is assured for customers.

He said customers can be assured that any payment that they receive, they will keep.
Burma Authorities Urged to Let Detained Reporters See Lawyers, Family

Reuters journalists Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone were charged under the Official Secrets Act

YANGON  The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) on Thursday urged authorities to grant two detained Reuters journalists access to lawyers, family members and health care.

The two journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were arrested in Yangon on Dec. 12 allegedly for possessing police reports containing detailed information about the fighting between government troops and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in late August. Authorities have not disclosed where they are being held.

According to a police report last week, the two are accused of violating Article 3 of the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which allows for prison sentences of up to 14 years. Two border guard policemen who allegedly provided the documents to the reporters are accused of violating both the Official Secrets Act and the Myanmar Police Force Maintenance of Discipline Law.

The MNHRC has learned according to a complaint that family members of the two reporters are unable to meet with them while the location of the place the pair is being detained is not disclosed and they have no access to lawyers to defend them against the accusations, the commission said in a statement.

The MNHRC urged authorities not to torture the reporters during their detention and ensure that they be allowed to exercise their full rights, including accessing lawyers and contacting family members.

When The Irrawaddy asked if the commission would contact the Ministry of Home Affairs to find out more about the case, commissioner U Yu Lwin Aung said that issuing statements like todays was the most effective tool the MNHRC had to let everyone concerned know about its position.

The statement will reach all parties concerned  the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Presidents Office, the judiciary, media and the public, he said, insisting that the commissions call would not be ignored.

U Yu Lwin Aung predicted that there would be some developments in the case in a few days because of the statement. He said the arrests were made in line with the law, but stressed that the reporters should be granted the rights they deserve according to human rights norms.

The Myanmar Press Council said on Wednesday that it would like to mediate in the case, offering to provide the reporters with legal assistance and serve as an expert witness should the case go to trial and if the court allows it.

According to a Reuters reported on Wednesday, Presidents Office spokesman U Zaw Htay said police had nearly completed their investigation of the two journalists and that their case would head to court soon afterward.

In 2017, 11 journalists were arrested by the police or military for defamation or under various laws including the Telecommunications Law, the Official Secrets Act and the Unlawful Associations Act.
Burma Foreign Correspondents Forced to Jump More Hoops to Get Visas

A Thai woman walks past the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok. / Reuters

YANGON  Some foreign journalists have left Myanmar and others are preparing to depart after the government tightened visa regulations following critical coverage of the militarys handling of the unrest in Rakhine State.

Several foreign journalists told The Irrawaddy that the visa application process was now much more onerous and even required them to sign a declaration promising not to travel to restricted areas. Some foreign reporters said they had to wait as long as four weeks to get a new visa to re-enter the country after making a trip abroad.

U Win Kyaing, permanent secretary of the Ministry for Immigration and Population, told The Irrawaddy that the changes were part of a wide- ranging overhaul of visa regulations that began last year.

For the case of the journalist visa, they are required to get a recommendation letter from the MOI [Ministry of Information]. For other visas, that is not necessary, he said.

However, there appeared to be some confusion among government officials about the new rules with a representative of the Ministry of Information saying his office was no longer providing recommendation letters to foreign journalists.

U Myo Myint Maung, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Information, told The Irrawaddy that before his agency could sign off on journalist visas, it had to secure approval from the ministries of immigration and labor, Immigration and Population.

In fact, the visa application regulations are not our ministrys business. It is the business of the Immigration Ministry and the Labor Ministry, he said.

In the past, the MOI had provided recommendation letters to media workers applying for visas, but U Myo Myint Maung said journalists could now apply directly to an embassy in a foreign country for a 28-day visa.

We relaxed the restriction on visa applications; they no longer require a recommendation letter, he said.

However, U Thit Sar Hla Htwe, the secretary of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar, said that as for journalists stationed in Myanmar who were seeking a long-term three- or six-month visa, they still needed the MOI to issue a recommendation letter, which also needed to be approved by both the Immigration Ministry and the MOFA.

He said that the 28-day visas were only for media representatives who did not have an office in Myanmar. Lets say they came from Bangkok. The government used to give them a three-month visa and it was multiple entry. They could travel in and out of the country on this visa.

But, the government is no longer giving them three-month multiple entry visas. They now get only 28 days and it is single entry. Reporters have to apply for a new visa if they want to get back in the country, he said.

Many foreign journalists have complained a lot about it, U Thit Sar Hla Htwe said, adding that a German reporter had called him just on Tuesday and recounted the problems he was having getting a new visa. The MOI even told the reporter that a green registration card from the Myanmar Foreign Correspondents Club was needed before a visa would be issued.

While the MOI claimed that new regulations were issued in December last year, U Thit Sar Hla Htwe said that the new rules only started to be applied in October this year when two journalists from Turkish outlet TRT World were detained in Naypyitaw for trying to fly a drone over Parliament.

Myanmar had previously tightened up on journalist visas in 2014 when violence broke out in Thu Chee Yar Tan, in Maungdaw. But, the former government later relaxed the procedures.
Burma International Reaction to Arrest of Reuters Reporters in Myanmar

Reuters journalists Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo, who are based in Myanmar, pose for a picture at the Reuters office in Yangon, Myanmar, Dec. 11, 2017. / Reuters

Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar.

The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine State, scene of around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since August.

Myanmars Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs.

It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known.

We and their families continue to be denied access to them or to the most basic information about their well-being and whereabouts, Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in a statement calling for their immediate release.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing, he said.

Here are comments on their detention from governments, politicians, human rights groups and press freedom advocates around the world:

Latest Reaction

 Germany said on Wednesday it would push Myanmar to release the journalists. We see press freedom as a cornerstone of a democratic order, the German foreign ministry said.

 Astrid Sehl, a spokeswoman for Norways Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Wednesday in response a question, Norway expects the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights and to release the journalists as quickly as possible.

 UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression David Kaye said on Wednesday, Journalists have the right to cover information and they shouldnt be arrested for coming into possession of information.

 Human Rights Watch said the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. Brad Adams, the groups Asia director, said, Their secret, incommunicado detention lays bare government efforts to silence media reporting on critical issues.

 In Washington, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for their immediate release. This is outrageous, said Senator Ben Cardin. It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule.

Governments, Multilateral Organizations

 US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. On Tuesday, the State Department reiterated the US demand for the reporters immediate release.

 Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, leaders of the US Senate Human Rights Caucus, said they were gravely concerned about the reporters arrests and that press freedom was critical to ensuring accountability for violence against the Rohingya. Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, called the arrests outrageous and a direct attack on press freedom.

 Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano said in response to a question from a Reuters reporter on Tuesday, Freedom of the press is extremely important, including in order to protect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government would like to watch [this matter] closely. Tokyo-based Human Rights Now called on Japan on Wednesday to take a stronger stance.

 The European Union urged Myanmar on Monday to release the reporters as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said, Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy.

 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and press freedom in Myanmar. It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country, he said.

 Britain, Holland, Canada and Sweden have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. Australia has expressed concern and Bangladesh has denounced the arrests.

 Vijay Nambiar, former special adviser on Myanmar to the UN Secretary-General, said in a statement to Reuters on Monday that the detentions had caused widespread disappointment within and outside the country that is likely to further damage the international reputation and image of Myanmar, already under stress as a result of its handling of the Rakhine crisis.

 President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the reporters.

Journalists, NGOs

 The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on Myanmar to immediately disclose the reporters whereabouts. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, Frederick Rawski, ICJs Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said on Monday.

 The Committee to Protect Journalists said the arrests were having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance.

 Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests and the charges being considered against the journalists were completely spurious.

 Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded Myanmar immediately and unconditionally release the Reuters journalists.

 Myanmars Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. It said it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed  as police normally do to criminals  on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime.

 The Southeast Asian Press Alliance said the journalists were only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict.

 The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, local reporters who have demonstrated against prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom.

 The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about press freedom in Myanmar.

 The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club and Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong have issued statements supporting the journalists.
Burma Military Team to Investigate Involvement in Mass Grave in Rakhine State

Military and police travel through Maungdaw, in northern Rakhine State on Oct. 17, 2016. / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The Myanmar military said that its own investigation team will find out whether security forces were involved in the case of unidentifiable corpses unearthed in Inn Din village, southern Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State.

On Tuesday, the military reported on its Facebook page that security members found the mass grave at Inn Din cemetery while investigating an anonymous tip.

According to local authorities, 10 heads and skeletons were unearthed at the burial site.

The military stated in its announcement on Tuesday that deterrent action in accord with the law would be taken against any security member found to be connected with the case.

Followed that announcement, the military stated on Wednesday that its five-member investigation team led by inspector Lt-Gen Aye Win left Inn Din village cemetery where the corpses were found.

A team comprising the township judge, police inspector of Inn Din police station, township medical officer, assistant surgeon and led by deputy commissioner of Maungdaw Districts General Administration Department U Ye Htut were carrying out an investigation in order to study the bodies and expose the truth, the army stated.

On Nov. 13, the militarys investigation team denied atrocities and use of excessive force against Rohingya Muslims during clearance operations that sent more than 620,000 fleeing to Bangladesh, in its report on findings after about a month internal investigation regarding any misconduct by government forces in Rakhine State.

The international community has condemned the army for arbitrary killing, rape, torture and the torching of Rohingya homes during the counter operations in northern Rakhine State in response to Muslim militant attacks on 30 police outposts in the area.
Friday, Mar 10th, 2017 (7:38 am) - Score 4,103

After an exhausting year of disagreements its today been announced that BT and the UK telecoms regulator have finally reached an agreement on the future of the operators network access division, which means that Ofcom wont need to force through Openreachs legal separation.

The situation began last February after Ofcom published their Strategic Review (full summary), which aimed to build a new framework for the next decade of telecoms and broadband regulation in the United Kingdom. The review noted that Openreach still had an incentive to make decisions in the interests of BT, rather than BTs competitors, which can lead to competition problems and that the BT had failed to sufficiently consult rival ISPs, such as those that piggyback off their network, on future investment plans that affect them.

Openreach was also accused of having under-invested in its network to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. The newly appointed chairman of Openreach, Mike McTighe, recently appeared to support this claim by agreeing that the operator should have invested more into their national infrastructure.

A further Strategic Review update followed in July 2016 (here) and then another one in November 2016 (here). In short, Ofcom aimed to boost competition by giving rivals greater access to BTs infrastructure and fostering an independent governance structure for Openreach, as well as tougher minimum service quality standards, new consumer protection measures and better information sharing.

However until now there has been no voluntary agreement because of several outstanding issues. One of the roadblocks was BTs huge pension pot and related deficit, with the operator being concerned about the risks and costs of moving staff and pension liabilities to the new company.

The other problem related Ofcoms demand for Openreach to become a ring-fenced, wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group, with its own purpose and board members. As part of that Openreach would be allowed to have confidential discussions with its customers (i.e. without oversight by BT). However no CEO likes to lose full control over part of their business, even if the BT board would still have a say.

Ofcom had warned that it would force its changes through if no agreement could be reached but that is no longer necessary as the two have managed to find some common ground. The regulator said that BT has agreed to all of the changes needed to address [our] competition concerns. Openreach will now become a distinct company with its own staff and management, together with its own strategy and a legal purpose to serve all of its customers equally.

How the new Openreach will work * Openreach will become a distinct company. Openreach will be incorporated as a legally separate company within BT Group, with its own Articles of Association. Openreach  and its directors  will be legally required to make decisions in the interests of all Openreachs customers, and to promote the success of the company. * The Openreach Board will run the company. The Openreach Board that BT has already established in recent weeks, which has a majority of directors independent of BT, will become the Board of the new company. It will be truly responsible for running Openreach, under a new governance agreement. * A separate strategy and control over budget allocation. Openreach will develop its own strategy and annual operating plans, within an overall budget set by BT Group. * Executives will be accountable to the new Board. Openreachs Chief Executive will in future be appointed by, and accountable to, the Openreach Board. BT Group will be able to veto appointment of the Openreach CEO, but only on notification to Ofcom. The Openreach Chief Executive will then be responsible for other executive appointments, and will report to the Openreach Chair  with a secondary accountability to the Chief Executive of BT, limited to necessary legal, fiduciary or regulatory obligations. * Staff will work for Openreach. The new Openreach will directly employ all its 32,000 staff, who will be transferred across from BT. This will allow Openreach to develop its own distinct organisational culture. * Assets will be controlled by Openreach alone. Openreach will have control of those assets  such as the physical access network  required to deliver on its purpose. The Openreach Board will make decisions on building and maintaining these assets: BT will hand these powers to Openreach, while retaining a title of ownership. * Consultation and confidentiality for Openreachs customers. Openreach will be obliged to consult formally with customers such as Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Vodafone on large-scale investments. In future, there will be a confidential phase during which customers can discuss ideas without this being disclosed to BT Group, as well as further protections for confidential customer information. * Distinct branding. BT will be removed from Openreach branding, to reflect these changes and the companys greater independence.

On BTs Pensions its noted that to implement this agreement with the smallest possible effect will require that the existing Crown Guarantee (i.e. this requires the Government to foot the bill in the unlikely event that the company should be wound up) would need to be maintained for Openreach staff who are members of BTs pension scheme. This will require the Government to change their existing legislation.

The deal also means a change for Northern Ireland. Historically, Openreach has existed in Great Britain, but not in Northern Ireland. Instead, BT Northern Ireland has adapted its processes to closely reflect those of Openreach, which Ofcom says is an arrangement that has generally worked well.

However todays deal will extend the benefits of the Openreach changes to BT Northern Ireland  including greater independence, confidentiality and independent branding. BT Northern Ireland will also remain able to take account of specific local circumstances and opportunities.

Sharon White, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: This is a significant day for phone and broadband users. The new Openreach will be built to serve all its customers equally, working truly independently and taking investment decisions on behalf of the whole industry  not just BT. We welcome BTs decision to make these reforms, which means they can be implemented much more quickly. We will carefully monitor how the new Openreach performs, while continuing our work to improve the quality of service offered by all telecoms companies.

Gavin Patterson, BT Chief Executive, said: I believe this agreement will serve the long-term interests of millions of UK households, businesses and service providers that rely on our infrastructure. It will also end a period of uncertainty for our people and support further investment in the UKs digital infrastructure. This has been a long and challenging review where we have been balancing a number of competing interests. We have listened to criticism of our business and as a result are willing to make fundamental changes to the way Openreach will work in the future.

Ofcom states that their new model for Openreach will also be supported by careful, continual monitoring to ensure it is effective. As part of this, BT will provide Ofcom with additional transparency on the nature of interactions between the new Openreach and the rest of BT Group.

The agreement will also necessitate the transfer of around 32,000 employees, under TUPE regulations, which will be one of the largest such transfers in UK corporate history. It will take place once the agreement has been implemented and pension arrangements are in place for these employees. Under the agreement, Openreach will manage and operate its assets and trading but ownership of those assets and trading will remain with BT.

We should point out that Openreach has already begun to introduce many of the proposed changes, such as by establishing a new independent board and separating some of their other work practices. However there may be some disappointment that todays deal does not appear to have encouraged a greater roll-out of ultrafast FTTP services than the currently proposed 2 million premises by 2020 (mostly businesses and new builds).

Its important to recognise that most of major changes under this agreement wont have a huge impact on consumers in the short to medium term. However, over the longer term, Ofcom hopes that fostering greater independence and competition at the infrastructure level will deliver a more diverse and flexible market for better / faster digital connectivity.

The Governments recent decision to push fresh investment towards alternative ultrafast fibre optic broadband providers (here and here) appears to form part of the same approach, although it takes time to grow new networks and copper line based technology will still be around for a long time to come.

Crucially todays changes arent a magic quick-fix for the economic challenges of getting such connectivity into rural areas and indeed such locations will, with a few exceptions, remain last on the list to benefit. But given enough time even they may benefit.

The commitments that BT has notified to Ofcom are available on this page http://www.btplc.com/UKDigitalFuture/ and the regulator has said that they will shortly publish further detail on how todays agreement addresses their competition concerns, together with proposals to release BT from its previous undertakings around Openreach once the new commitments are fully in place.

It may be worth keeping tabs on BT Groups share price this morning..



UPDATE 8:01am

The first comment on todays deal has come from Sky (Sky Broadband), although weve put out requests from quite a few of the big players so expect a lot more to follow.

A Sky spokesperson said: This is a welcome step that we have long called for on behalf of our customers. A more independent Openreach is a step towards delivering better service to customers and the investment that the UK needs. Its important that todays agreement is now implemented by BT in good faith and without delay.

UPDATE 8:36am

Now one from TalkTalk.

Dido Harding, TalkTalks CEO, said: We welcome the agreement to create a legally separate Openreach. The new company will be better placed to deliver the improved investment and service that consumers and businesses deserve. This deal will require robust Ofcom monitoring and enforcement to ensure it delivers the improvements the regulator expects. We hope this is the start of a new deal for Britains broadband customers, who will be keen to see a clear timetable from Openreach setting out when their services will improve.

UPDATE 10:58am

Cityfibres turn.

Mark Collins, CityFibres Director of Strategy and Policy, said: The real story here is the UKs shocking fibre gap. Whilst it is welcome that these time-consuming negotiations seem to be at an end, there is nothing in this announcement to suggest Openreach will now start to build the fibre infrastructure this country needs. Ofcoms focus needs to shift to encouraging alternative fibre builders to do the things Openreach cant or wont do  whatever its legal status. CityFibre is well placed to take on that challenge and to meet Ofcoms strategic objective of reducing the UKs reliance on Openreach to get the job done. The substantial Government funding for fibre announced in the budget this week will help to accelerate our own full fibre rollout programme.

We wouldnt describe 600m as substantial Government funding when talking about FTTP/H networks because it could take tens of billions to blanket the country with it. A good improvement, but a lot more will be needed.

UPDATE 12:30pm

No beating around the bush from Virgin Media today.

Tom Mockridge, CEO of Virgin Media, said: Openreach is just the same old snails paced network with a new shell. Call it what you like but its still BT, four times slower than Virgin Media.

Oh and they also tweeted this..
Thursday, Dec 21st, 2017 (8:34 am) - Score 2,037

Dark fibre builder Cityfibre has signed a new 19 year framework agreement with UK ISP Commsworld for 15.7m, which is their largest public sector award to date and will extend the existing Gigabit capable fibre optic (FTTP) network in Glasgow (Scotland) to 506 city council owned sites.

Cityfibres rollout in the centre of Glasgow, which connects into an existing fibre network, began deploying back in November 2016 and theyve spent much of 2017 steadily expanding its reach. HighNet was one of the original ISP partners for this network, which aimed to be completed by the end of 2017, but that was primarily for business connectivity (i.e. covering about 7,000 businesses but possibly rising to 17,000 in the future).

By comparison the new deal appears to require the construction of an additional 243km of new core network infrastructure in order to connect all 506 sites across the Glasgow City Council estate, along with 15 BT exchange-to-exchange links. This will apparently supplement the 50km of existing core metro infrastructure in the city centre, which was built to satisfy existing contracts with HighNet, Capita and Commsworld in the enterprise and public sector markets.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: This award demonstrates the potential for forward-thinking local authorities to attract the private investment in their digital infrastructure that is so critical to their future success. The citys full-fibre spine will be built with the future in mind, capable of supporting 5G mobile networks and laying the ground-work for an inevitable roll-out of fibre to every home and business in the city. Following on the heels of our recent contract win in Aberdeen, todays agreement marks a strong end to a very eventful year for CityFibre and again underlines the ongoing robust demand from the public sector for world-class digital infrastructure to enhance economic development and competitiveness. This will be the largest public-sector project in our history and makes us the leading digital infrastructure provider to the public sector in Scotland. We look forward to working with our partners, Commsworld and CGI, to usher in a full-fibre future to even more Scottish cities.

The initial 7-year term is said to carry a minimum initial contract value (ICV) of 6.4m, with options to extend to a maximum of 19 years. Unfortunately we arent told how long the new deployment will take to complete or how many sites and businesses have already joined their existing network in the city.

The expansion could also help to make Glasgow another option for Cityfibres partnership with Vodafone, which is currently planning for a major roll-out of 1Gbps capable FTTH broadband connectivity to several million UK homes (here).
Thursday, Dec 21st, 2017 (4:30 pm) - Score 738

Many more homes and businesses in the rural Worth Valley area of West Yorkshire (England, UK) can now gain access to ultrafast broadband speeds of 100Mbps+ after Boundless Networks expanded their fixed wireless network coverage with the help of local contractor Pennine Plus.

A few months ago we reported that residents of Slippery Ford in the same area had become some of the first to benefit from the new service (here). Since then the network has continued to expand and its now gone live across Wilsden, Stanbury, Haworth, Cross Hills, Oakworth, Oxenhope and Oldfield.

The ISP suggests that better broadband in the Worth Valley could eventually make a dramatic difference to as many as 15,385 residential and 1,263 business properties.

David Hood, Boundless Networks Chairman, said: We are really proud and pleased to be the provider of ultrafast broadband to the Worth Valley, bringing real, positive life changes and opportunities. We are investing in providing services that other providers say are not possible and I am proud to be able to deliver these services to local villages and communities. We are currently working with public officials, organisations, businesses and residents within the Worth Valley to ensure we deliver improved broadband to everyone requiring it.

Geoff Higgins, Pennine Plus Managing Director, said: Its an incredible feeling to be a part of something such as this, to be able to provide these people with what is nowadays considered a basic necessity of modern day life, broadband. Not only have we been able to deliver ultrafast broadband to a remote area, weve given them the means to become part of the digital era and join the rest of the world, and we couldnt be prouder of this achievement.

According to the ISPs website, home subscribers can take a download speed of 30Mbps (10Mbps upload) for 29.99 inc. VAT on a 12 month contract and with unlimited usage (Fair Usage Policy), which doesnt include the one-off installation charge (this is usually around 150 and includes a broadband router but the cost may vary, depending upon your location).

The cheapest package available costs from 19.99 per month and offers symmetric speeds of 10Mbps, while the top 100Mbps (25Mbps upload) service costs 51.99 per month.
Australian-listed global parking business Smart Parking is set to operate in Adelaide, after being advised that the City of Adelaide intends to provide Smart Parking sensors, smart phone guidance and payment application and maintenance services in the city.

Smart Parking (ASX:SPZ) says it has received a formal letter of intent from the City of Adelaide and will make a further announcement when the contract has been executed.

Under the contract, Smart Parking will also provide maintenance services for five years.

Smart Parking chief executive Paul Gillespie says the the deployment of 2800 Smart Parking sensors will help the city make parking more accessible, as well as giving residents real-time data on available parking spaces through its guidance and payment app.

We are proud to announce the new contract with Adelaide City Council. The continued uptake of our systems in Australia and beyond further cements our position as a world leader in the design, development and management of parking technology. We are looking forward to the deployment of the project and bringing a more accessible and streamlined parking experience to the people of Adelaide, Gillespie said.

The smart parking programme is a key initiative of the City of Adelaides ongoing Smart City agenda.

Smart Parking is delighted to be on board to help support the citys aspirations of reducing congestion, cutting emissions and reinventing the parking experience in Adelaide, Gillespie said.

Smart Parkling claims over 55,000 vehicle detection sensors installed in 16 countries, and the largest market share of the global intelligent parking sensor and integrated smart parking services market.
The second edition of the China (Shenzhen) Innovation and Entrepreneurship International Competition has just officially launched, "aiming to gather global high-end talent quality projects, integrate innovative entrepreneurial resources, and help Shenzhen build international science and technology, industry innovation centre".

We're told the competition "will be held in nine cities across eight countries and it is the second time to hold the regional competition in Sydney".

"China Shenzhen has been hosting the innovation and entrepreneurship competition globally for two consecutive years, and successfully attracting more than 1800 outstanding projects from 24 countries," a statement from the organisers says.

"As a platform to stimulate the innovation potential and vitality, the competition provides the driving force for innovation-focused development and creates new opportunities for technological innovation in Shenzhen."

The statement tells us "the registration of the competition will start from 1 December to 28 February 2018 and its pre-selection will be started simultaneously. Next April, more than 100 outstanding projects will gather in Shenzhen and aim for the highest honour and award, performing various rounds of fierce competition by Professional Finals, Industry Finals and Finals.

"In order to encourage more entrepreneurs to participate in the upsurge of innovation and entrepreneurship in Shenzhen", the total cash prize pool has risen from RMB9.112 million last year to RMB10.91 million.

"In addition to big cash prizes, the competition also provides policy support such as talent incentives, industry awards, science and technology finance and project incubation for talents, teams and projects in Shenzhen.

"The registration of this competition started on 1 December with a deadline of the end of February 2018." Registration can be done at the competition's official website.

"The competition finals have invited well-known professionals as judges including Barry Marshall, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, George Slimt, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Donald Wright, the president of the Wellington Financial Group in Canada.

"The host city has attracted talents at home and abroad for entrepreneurial development for its open, inclusive and innovative culture. There were 982 participants from different countries other than China (53.8% of the total). The city's high-quality environment for innovation and entrepreneurship has impressed global talents through the international competition, while the city image of innovative and its international popularity have been further enhanced.

"Participants with a master's degree or above accounted for 67% of total enrollment, including more than 40% with a doctoral degree. The categories of projects are mainly concentrated in the field of Internet and mobile Internet (information technology) industries (31.8%), electronic technology industry (29.5%), and biomedicine industry (18.1%).

"According to the competition results, for the 99 projects participating in the finals, 65 projects have reached initial co-operation with various parks in Shenzhen, and 11 have officially settled in Shenzhen. Four people have been identified as Shenzhen Peacock Plan Talents and one project team has won funding from Shenzhen Peacock team.

Directed by the Ministry of Science and Technology and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of China, "this years competition is sponsored by the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government and undertaken by Shenzhen Baoan District People's Government, Shenzhen Longgang District People's Government, Shenzhen Pingshan District People's Government, Shenzhen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, and Shenzhen Municipal Commission of Science and Technology Innovation".

Additional information about the competition

The Second China (Shenzhen) Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition sticks with four key features: focusing on high end and expanding the competition scale, planning the future to improve professional standards, providing opportunity to participate in industry competitions and gathering resource to promote market participation.

Focusing on high end and expanding the competition scale: To attract more global talents to Shenzhen, this years competition has expanded into Sydney, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Stockholm, Boston, Silicon Valley and London.

Planning the future to improve professional standards: In order to vigorously implement the innovation-driven development strategy and form the industrial structure of echelon development with new competitive advantages, on the basis of five major industry competitions of Internet, advanced manufacturing, electronic technology, biology and life sciences, materials and energy (including energy saving and environmental protection), this years competition includes three additional fields of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and anti-cancer technology.

Providing opportunity to participate in industry competitions: Awards and cash prizes are set in four competition sections in this international competition, namely, the overseas finals (total cash prizes of 2.61 million yuan), professional competitions (total cash prizes of 1.5 million), the industry finals (total cash prizes of 2.5 million) and the finals (total cash prizes of 4.3 million), where the final winner will have the opportunity to achieve a total cash prize of RMB 1.4 million yuan.

Gathering resources to promote market participation: Thirty-four 34 entrepreneurships and investment institutions are participating this year. Investors from investment institutions in Shenzhen will serve as judges and mentors to carry out project docking activities during the preliminary competitions. All participating projects can gain investment opportunities of social capital through the investment docking service platform. Meanwhile, two banks will be selected to carry out various forms of financial service solutions such as "Investment & Financing Loan" and "Talent Loan", enriching the financing choices of land-based enterprises and help participants to faster realise landing development.

Here's a video from the first year's competition:
Facing complaints from users, Apple has admitted that the latest iteration of its iOS operating system restricts the computing power of some iPhone models in order to cut the risk of unexpected shutdowns.

The Wall Street Journal said the admission was a rare statement that showed how the company managed a growing complaint internally.

Apple's statement came two days after Geekbench founder John Poole wrote a post about iPhone performance as a function of battery age.

"While we expect battery capacity to decrease as batteries age, we expect processor performance to stay the same," Poole wrote. "However, users with older iPhones with lower-than-expected Geekbench 4 scores have reported that replacing the battery increases their score (as well as the performance of the phone). Whats going on here?"

Apple's statement said that as iPhone batteries get older, or in cold weather or at low charge, they could not manage the power demands of the device. This could result in the iPhone shutting down to protect its electronic components.

In order to prevent iPhone 6, 6s and SE devices from powering off - there were complaints about this in China last year - Apple said it had changed iOS to curtail the speed of certain tasks that needed more power than the device could provide.

"Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," Apple said.

"Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions.

"Weve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future."
Security firm Keeper Security has sued Ars Technica security editor Dan Goodin, accusing him and his employer of defamation, violation of the Illinois Deceptive Trade Practices Act and commercial disparagement under Illinois law.

The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division.

The company took exception to an article written by Goodin on 16 December which described a critical bug in the Keeper Password Manager bundled with Windows 10; the flaw was discovered by Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy.

The article, headlined "For 8 days Windows bundled a password manager with a critical plugin flaw", was revised twice to include comment from Keeper and Microsoft, and also to remove a characterisation that Keeper was forced on some Windows 10 users.

An abstract under the heading read: "Plugin for Win 10 version of Keeper had bug allowing sites to steal passwords."

The initial headline read: "Microsoft forced users to install a password manager with a critical flaw." The abstract read: "Win 10 version of Keeper had bug allowing sites to steal passwords."

The revisions also sought to clarify how long the pre-bundled version was vulnerable and to define the role of the browser plugin.

In my professional opinion, suing those who discuss software vulnerabilities is itself a reliable indication of dangerously vulnerable software and incompetent security practices. For that reason, I will be avoiding Keeper Security products. https://t.co/hJVHHisTyL  matt blaze (@mattblaze) 20 December 2017

In the lawsuit, Keeper claimed Goodin and Ars Technica had published the article knowing and intending that it would be read by Illinois residents cause injury to Keeper which is an Illinois company.

It also claimed that Goodin had failed to contact Keeper for comment and to check his facts with Keeper or Microsoft before filing the story.

The suit alleged that the article misled users into believing that they were infected by merely having the Keeper software on their systems. It added that there been no reports of loss of information or security breaches due to the vulnerability in the password manager.

Haven't seen its accuracy disputed anywhere yet. Also, multiple major edits to the story don't look good for Ars or Goodin.  Seth Hall (@loteck) 20 December 2017

Keeper claimed that publication of the article had caused it to suffer damages to its business, stakeholder relationships and other damages. It said these would be proven at trial to exceed US$75,000.

The company has sought damages, lawyers' fees and costs, removal of the article, and any other relief deemed suitable by the court.

Some security professionals were not impressed by Keeper's reaction.

Researcher and academic Matt Blaze said in a tweet: "In my professional opinion, suing those who discuss software vulnerabilities is itself a reliable indication of dangerously vulnerable software and incompetent security practices. For that reason, I will be avoiding Keeper Security products."

Computer networking and security research Steven Bellovin said: "Did you read the suit? As I read it, they're unhappy that the article didn't describe the precise steps users had to take to be vulnerable -- but didn't dispute the flaw at all."

But others were supportive of Keeper's lawsuit.

Developer Scott Arciszewski said: "How dare Ars/Goodin try to update their article to be more accurate. That's what all slanderers do."

And another tech professional, Seth Hall, said: "Haven't seen its (the lawsuit's) accuracy disputed anywhere yet. Also, multiple major edits to the story don't look good for Ars or Goodin."

iTWire contacted Goodin but he declined to comment.
Five Romanians suspected of spreading the CTB-Locker Windows ransomware throughout Europe and the US have been arrested in Bucharest.

A statement from Europol said six houses in Romania were searched as a result of a joint investigation carried out by the Romanian Police (Service for Combating Cyber Crime), the Romanian and Dutch public prosecutors office, the Dutch National Police, the UKs National Crime Agency, the US FBI with the support of Europols European Cyber Crime Centre and the Joint Cyber Crime Action Taskforce.

Investigators seized hard drives, laptops, external storage devices, digital currency mining devices and numerous documents. The group is accused of unauthorised computer access, serious hindering of a computer system, misuse of devices with the intent of committing cyber crimes and blackmail.

Romanian authorities received information about the group's operations in early 2017 from the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit. The group was said to be sending spam which was masqyerading as messages from well-known companies in Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.

Help was sought from the American security firm McAfee in identifying malware samples and answering other queries.

Each email had an attachment in the form of an acrhived invoice that contained the CTB-Locker ransomware.

First detected in 2014,CTB-Locker was one of the first ransomware variants to use Tor to hide its command and control infrastructure.

It targets Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. Once infected, all documents, photos, music, and videos are encrypted asymmetrically, which makes it very difficult to decrypt the files without the private key which is in possession of the attackers.

Europol said that more than 170 victims had been identified and their complaints would help in prosecuting the suspects.

Two men from the group are accused of spreading the Cerber ransomware to a large number of Windows PCs in the US.

The group was not creating its own malware, but rather renting it and paying about 30% of whatever it earned as rent.

McAfee chief scientist Raj Samani and lead scientist and principal engineer Christiaan Beek said: Today, a clear message has been sent  involvement in cyber crime is not zero risk.

"The law enforcement action emphasises the value of public-private partnerships and underscores the determination behind the McAfee mantra 'Together is power'."
The ASX-listed Envirosuite (ASX: EVS), a provider of the comprehensive real-time monitoring, investigative and predictive environmental management software, says the acquisition will further bolster its existing technology platform offering and enable it to compete more effectively on a global scale through a product platform that will integrate the best of both organisations feature functionality.

Peter White, chief executive, Envirosuite, said the addition of Odotech would add a depth of experience and expertise of industries where odour is a major cause of environmental issues and complaints  particularly in the wastewater, composting, pulp and paper sectors as well as municipal services.

The acquisition represents a major step up for Envirosuite. The acquisition will further build on our strategy in environmental management best practice with Odotech providing us with expanded functionality and the potential for a material increase in our customer base as well as new strategic partner relationships to enhance our business, White said.

At the same time, this is a strategic move to rapidly increase our worldwide footprint with an offering that will combine the best of both software platforms. Odotechs deep odour experience will augment our existing solutions for the wastewater market. Well now set our sights on incorporating the complementary elements of the Odotech platform into the market-leading Envirosuite SaaS platform.

White noted that Envirosuite was already the environmental management system of choice for global mining companies like BHP and AngloAmerican, and for Thames Water, the largest water utility in Europe. The company has also recently been awarded contracts for air quality monitoring in both San Francisco and Los Angeles from the air quality regulatory bodies for those regions.

With the merger, Envirosuite will have its product development team based in both Brisbane and Montreal, while Odotechs sales and support functions in Canada and Chile will integrate with the existing global Envirosuite sales and marketing team.

Together with our new colleagues from Odotech, we are committed to providing world-leading environmental management solutions to industry, community and governments and we are well placed to capitalise on the building groundswell of interest in air quality management that we are seeing across the globe," White said.
The long awaited first implementable and interoperable 5G New Radio specification has been turned into a standard, with all the world's major telcos, tech companies and equipment makers on board

The 3GPP TSG RAN Plenary Meeting in Lisbon "has successfully completed the first implementable 5G New Radio (NR) specification".

The news was sent to me by Huawei, with Ericsson having sent me a similar but different media release, which I'll be making available on iTWire once this article has been published.

We're told that the following companies "have made a statement that the completion of the first 5G NR standard has set the stage for the global mobile industry to start full-scale development of 5G NR for large-scale trials and commercial deployments as early as in 2019".

These companies are: "AT&T, BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, KT Corporation, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, MediaTek Inc., NEC Corporation, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom, Sony Mobile Communications Inc., Sprint, TIM, Telefonica, Telia Company, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone, and ZTE."

Well, on 27 February in Barcelona, we're told that "global mobile industry leaders announced their support for the acceleration of the 5G NR standardisation schedule, which introduced an intermediate milestone to complete the first implementable specification for Non-Standalone 5G NR operation. As a result of this announcement, the schedule acceleration was agreed at the 3GPP RAN Plenary Meeting on March 9 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This first specification was completed as part of 3GPP Release 15".

"This standard completion is an essential milestone to enable cost-effective and full-scale development of 5G NR, which will greatly enhance the capabilities of 3GPP systems, as well as facilitate the creation of vertical market opportunities. 3GPP plans to continue to develop Release 15, including the addition of support for Standalone 5G NR operation also agreed upon by 3GPP in Dubrovnik.

"The 5G NR lower layer specifications have been designed so that they can support Standalone and Non-Standalone 5G NR operation in a unified way, to ensure that 3GPP benefits the global industry with a large-scale single 5G NR ecosystem. We express our appreciation for the tremendous efforts that 3GPP has dedicated to accomplishing this challenging standardisation schedule."

The statements from all the companies listed above are below this embedded tweet:

NSA 5G NR specs were approved today at RAN#78. Balazs Bertenyi , RAN Chair called it an Impressive achievement in a remarkably short time, with credit due particularly to the Working Groups. News article to follow on the 3GPP site and from 3GPP Member announcements. pic.twitter.com/b10fTV5V5n  3GPP Live (@3GPPLive) December 20, 2017

AT&T

Were proud to see the completion of this set of standards. Reaching this milestone enables the next phase of equipment availability and movement to interoperability testing and early 5G availability, said Hank Kafka, vice-president, Access Architecture and Analytics at AT&T. It showcases the dedication and leadership of the industry participants in 3GPP to follow through on accelerating standards to allow for faster technology deployments.

BT

BT welcomes the first significant step to 5G deployment and we remain excited about the further innovations that 5G will bring. said Neil J. McRae, chief architect at BT, We are proud to have played a part in this and BT is committed to continuing to drive further 5G standardisation at pace to benefit our customers and communities.

China Mobile

The first version of 5G NR not only provides a NSA solution for 5G deployment but also completes the common part of NSA and SA, which lay a solid foundation for a global unified 5G system with global market scale. We believe the next important milestone that is SA standard providing end to end 5G new capability could be completed by June of 2018, which is very crucial to enable the operators to explore the enterprise and vertical markets. China Mobile is actively working with industry partners for 5G commercialisation in year of 2020 and providing various services to customer.  said Zhengmao Li, executive vice-president of China Mobile Group.

China Telecom

China Telecom is proud of being part of the 3GPP standard efforts that led to the completion of the first implementable 5G new radio specification. We expect that this important milestone, together with the SA part to be completed later, will promote and accelerate the development of 5G products, trials and commercial deployment in the coming years, said Liu Guiqing,executive vice-president of China Telecom. With this successful completion of the 5G new radio standard, China Telecom plans to lead the 5G effort by launching field trials in many major cities in China as early as 2018, and prepare for the possible commercialisation thereafter.

China Unicom

Guanglu Shao,executive vice-president of China Unicom Group, said: It is the significant step for both 3GPP and the whole industry. This first version of 5G NR standardisation provides essential functionalities for NSA and SA deployment, which are equally important for operators. We believe in that the industry could joint together further to make 5G more advanced for both human and vertical societies. We welcome the 5G eras coming, and will continue collaborate with industry partners to make successful 5G commercialisation.

Deutsche Telekom

We view both the Non-Standalone and Standalone modes of New Radio as equally important for the completeness of the 5G standard specification. This timely finalisation of NSA is one important step on that journey and in the development of the 5G ecosystem, said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, chief technology officer, Deutsche Telekom. It is crucial that the industry now redoubles its focus on the Standalone mode to achieve progress towards a full 5G system, so we can bring key 5G innovations such as network slicing to our customers.

Ericsson

Erik Ekudden,chief technology officer at Ericsson, said: 3GPP has done a tremendous job to complete the first 5G specifications according to industry demand and expectations. As a prime contributor to 5G standardisation, Ericsson has worked with industry partners in the evolution of mobile technology to a global network platform for consumers and enterprises. Our research team has worked on 5G since 2010 including early 5G testbed efforts created together with these industry partners. The open contribution-driven specification work and the rapid completion of the first 5G standards for global deployment demonstrates the strength of the 5G eco-system.

Fujitsu

Masayuki Seno, executive vice-president and head of Network Products Business Unit at Fujitsu, said: Im very pleased that the first 5G NR standard has been completed today. Fujitsu will accelerate development of 5G NR products based on the first 3GPP 5G NR specifications and provide them to worldwide markets to support our customers trials and commercial deployments.

Huawei

Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei 5G product line, said: As one of the key players, Huawei has committed to develop a single global 5G standard. With the a successful cooperation and join efforts with global organisations including governments, regulatory agencies, research organisations, academia, industries, and many more sectors, 3GPP 5G NR standardisation Phase 1 has been completed with great progress. Huawei will keep working with global partners to bring 5G into the period of large-scale global commercial deployment from 2018.



Intel

We are pleased to work in cooperation and close alignment with global mobile industry leaders to support the new 3GPP Non-Standalone 5G NR standard and to accelerate the first NR trials, said Asha Keddy, Intel vice-president and general manager, Next Generation and Standards. As part of this co-ordinated effort, Intel will continue to play a leading role across the network, cloud and client devices; and with our first commercial 5G modems, we will help the ecosystem lead the way to 5G deployments worldwide.

KT Corporation

Dongmyun Lee, chief technology officer and head of Institute of Convergence Technology, KT said: As one of the 5G leaders, we are greatly excited to witness the first ever release of 5G NR NSA specification that the whole industry including KT has endeavoured to achieve in recent years and therefore make a strong commitment to finally bring full-scale services of the true 5G standards to commercial market as early as 2019. KT expects that such 3GPPs efforts meeting the market needs will further accelerate the realisation of the 4th Industrial Revolution for telecommunication industry.

LG Electronics

I.P. Park, chief technology officer, said: LG Electronics is pleased to be one of key contributors to the first global 5G NR standard completed in a timely manner, which will play a pivotal role in enabling innovative IoT services and expediting the convergence of diverse industry sectors. Along with continued contributions to evolved 5G standards, we will make all the efforts to introduce new innovative 5G convergence products and services in the market.

LG Uplus

Joosik Choi, head of 5G Strategy Planning, said: We would like to thank to 3GPP and all companies for great effort on initial 5G NR NSA standard which will accelerate promising future. As one of the big contributor for RF analysis on LTE band, 3.5GHz and 28GHz dual connectivity operation, LG Uplus will keep endeavour for bring 5G NR deployment and advanced standard into industry for this ecosystem.

MediaTek Inc.

The milestone reached is significant as it is an important step towards making 5G NR a commercial reality, said Dr. Kevin Jou, corporate senior vice-president and chief technology officer, MediaTek. As a leading baseband chip provider, MediaTek has actively contributed to the standardisation of 5G NR and will continue to do so. With the standard becoming stable, our focus is now on delivering viable commercial solutions that will enable the use of 5G NR technology to its full potential.

NEC Corporation

Atsuo Kawamura, executive vice-president and head of the Telecom Carrier Business Unit at NEC Corporation, said: Completion of Non-Standalone 5G NR standardisation is a significant milestone for the realisation of full-scale 5G services. NEC is strongly committed to driving the progress of standardisation for a global mobile system, and believes future 5G services will benefit society in an unprecedented manner by utilising advanced information and communications technologies. NEC is creating secure and intelligent technologies to realise such services.

Nokia

Marcus Weldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs and chief technology officer, Nokia, said: This is a key milestone in bringing 5G to market, and one in which Nokia is proud to have played a significant role. 5G will advance new possibilities for the role of wireless technology in society, leading to dynamic innovation in mobile broadband and in industrial automation for industry 4.0, enabling the creation of exciting new applications that connect and control our physical and digital worlds.

NTT DOCOMO

Dr. Hiroshi Nakamura, executive vice-president and chief technology officer, NTT DOCOMO, said:  I would like to express my deepest gratitude for 3GPPs great effort to successfully complete the first release of 5G NR specification six months ahead of schedule. NTT DOCOMO has made tremendous contributions to the standardisation as a world-leading mobile operator. We have been collaborating with various partners across industries to co-create 5G services through 5G Trial Sites since this May. This completion will accelerate these activities and we will launch 5G services with Non-Standalone 5G NR by 2020.

Orange

Arnaud Vamparys, senior vice-president, Radio Networks said: Orange welcomes this inaugural first release of a worldwide standard for 5G. With subsequent 3GPP releases expected from mid 2018 that will accelerate application and IoT development, Orange sees a myriad of opportunities to deliver a differentiated and high quality network, and is therefore fully committed to working with the industry to roll out 5G. 

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

We are excited to be part of this significant milestone, and to once again be at the forefront making the 5G vision a reality in 2019, said Cristiano Amon, executive vice-president, Qualcomm Technologies, and president, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. We look forward to continue working with our mobile industry peers to bring 5G NR commercial networks and devices in 2019 in smartphone and other form factors, for both sub-6Ghz and mmWave frequency bands, and to continue developing 5G technologies to connect new industries and enable new services and user experiences in the years to come.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

DJ Koh, president and head of IT and Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics, said: As a global leader in the mobile industry, Samsung has been collaborating with the whole industry to achieve this milestone in 5G standards. With the completion of 5G NSA NR standard, we will be able to expedite 5G commercial deployments including chipsets, devices and network equipment. Samsung will continue making every effort to deliver complete Rel-15 NR standards. Rel-15 NR and its further evolution will be a key milestone for the industry to meet the increasing global demand for enhanced mobile broadband services and exploring new business opportunities and services inspired by 5G.

SK Telecom

Having global 3GPP 5G NR standard by 2017 is one of key milestones to bring 5G into early commercial service in 2019, said Jinhyo Park, executive vice-president and head of ICT R&D Centre, SK Telecom is proud to be one of key contributors to the accelerated 3GPP 5G NSA-NR standardisation. We will continue to work on further development of 3GPP 5G NR to ensure readiness for early 5G commercial deployment.

Sony Mobile Communications Inc.

Mr. Izumi Kawanishi, Director,executive vice-president, Sony Mobile Communications Inc., said: Sony has been part of the 5G NR and NSA standardisation and recognises the progress in 3GPP to reach this important milestone with features targeting evolved mobile broadband and ultra low latency communications. Sony Mobile is ready for full-scale development of 5G NR smartphones to take benefit of the opportunities offered by the new standard.

Sprint

Were excited to help usher in the next generation of wireless networks that will drive new levels of innovation and progress around the world, said Dr. John Saw, Sprint chief technology officer.We congratulate 3GPP and its delegates on this important milestone, and we look forward to working with our industry partners to deploy 5G NR in our 2.5 GHz (NR band n41) spectrum.

TIM

Giovanni Ferigo, chief technology officer, said: TIM has already defined a sound track towards 5G and is collaborating with key industry players, municipalities and public Institutions to unleash the full potential of 5G for people and vertical markets by 2020 expanding the footprint of LTE-A. The extraordinary work done in 3GPP in a few months to keep the promise of a first set of standards coping with the strict requirements of a new radio interface is a fundamental step in this roadmap. We are looking forward to contributing to the next 3GPP milestones which will complete the work on Release 15.

Telefonica

Enrique Blanco, Telefonicas Global Systems and Networks director, said: Telefonica greatly appreciates the efforts made by the industry for completing this major milestone towards 5G. Telefonica acknowledges the full potential of 5G, and encourages the industry to keep developing ambitious ideas in order to deliver outstanding connectivity and bring the best possible experience to our customers. Telefonica is fully committed to working with the industry in this direction.

Telia Company

We are happy to see that the acceleration of 5G standardisation that we and the whole industry called for in February has been achieved. This allows for the early commercial deployments needed to open up for innovation and new business opportunities that our customers expect from us, says Mauro Costa, director, Network Architecture & Strategy, Telia Company. In order for the industry and society to take advantage of the full potential of 5G, it is vital that the standardisation now continues with a focus to complete also the stand alone version.

T-Mobile USA

This is an important moment and a crucial development toward making 5G NR happen, said Neville Ray, chief technology officer for T-Mobile US. At T-Mobile, were committed to drive a 5G rollout across the US in 2020, and the efforts of 3GPP will help us to realise this great win for our customers.

Verizon

Verizon is delighted that the 3GPP is moving quickly to release a global standard for mobile 5G, said Ed Chan, chief technology architect and Network Planning.With this important 3GPP milestone, Verizon is once again well positioned to deliver next-generation technology to customers just as we did with 4G LTE.

Vodafone

Luke Ibbetson, head of Vodafone Group R&D, said: Completion of the 5G standard six months earlier than originally anticipated is a significant milestone that should enable compliant network infrastructure and phones to be delivered in line with our requirements. This first version of 5G will build on the success of 4G, providing fast and highly efficient mobile broadband services to our customers and setting the foundation for the Gigabit Society.

ZTE

Xu Huijun, chief technology officer of ZTE Corporation, said: The completion of the Non-Standalone 5G NR standardisation is a critical milestone in the industry. I really appreciate 3GPPs efforts in meeting this challenging schedule. As one of the contributors to the 5G standards-making process, ZTE will partner with the fellow mobile industry players to commit to accelerating the 5G NR large-scale trials and deployments.
2017 was a good year for Google Cloud Platform. But 2018 promises to be even better. Although Google still sits well behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in cloud revenue, with just 2.3 percent market share against AWSs 44.1 percent and Azures 7.1 percent, according to Gartner data, 2018 could well prove Googles breakout year.

That is, if it can just deliver on one, eensie weensie thing: helping enterprises operate more like Google.

In the past, this has seemed like a fairy tale. Mainstream enterprises, after all, lack the DNA necessary to push thousands of changes a day to their systems in the way a Google routinely does. Early indicators, however, suggest that maybe this isnt as true as we once thought and that, in fact, run like Google just might be an attainable goal for the typical enterprises. If so, that be what gets Google Cloud seriously into the enterprise mix.

Maybe enterprise can run like Google after all

Sure, AWS dominates, but much of that dominance comes down to a seven-year head start gifted to it by legacy infrastructure vendors and the current crop of cloud contenders. The legacy vendors are, in fact, doomed (though doom takes decades to occur in the enterprise). But cloud contenders like Microsoft and Google? Game on!

Microsoft has managed to accelerate adoption of Azure with a combination of enterprise bona fides (CIOs that do a lot of business with Microsoft trust the vendor to help cloudify their infrastructure) and next-generation AI smarts.

Google is growing market share even faster than Microsoft (100 percent compared to 61 percent, by Gartners estimates), and primarily through a combination of smart open source bets (such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow) and industrial-strength AI offerings.

This latter advantage has almost appeared to be a liability at times, with Google seemingly saying that enterprises could run a lot more like Google if they werent so stubbornly like themselves. However, its becoming clear that the run like Google tagline is an attainable goal, one that even the most staid of enterprises can realize.

Some of Googles early customer wins may have served to solidify the no, real enterprises cant run like Google argument. For example, when it was learned that Snap was paying Google $400 million a year for the vast majority of its computing, storage, bandwidth, and other services, it was easy to respond, Well, of course a new school company like Snap would do that.

More recently, Spotify announced its intention to build on Google Cloud. Although Spotify is also a new-school enterprise, its reasons for dumping not-that-old Hadoop, Hive, and other such data infrastructure for Googles BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc, and Pub/Sub suggested that run like Google is within reach of mainstream enterprises. Although Spotifys vice president of engineering and infrastructure, Nicholas Harteau, cited his belief that Googles infrastructure is (for the moment) superior to others offerings, ultimately the decision came down to data:

What really tipped the scales towards Google for us, however, has been our experience with Googles data platform and tools. Good infrastructure isnt just about keeping things up and running, its about making all of our teams more efficient and more effective, and Googles data stack does that for us in spades.

Harteau went on to laud the sophistication and quality of [Googles] data offerings:

From traditional batch processing with Dataproc, to rock-solid event delivery with Pub/Sub to the nearly magical abilities of BigQuery, building on Googles data infrastructure provides us with a significant advantage where it matters the most.

This advantage will only increase as Googles data infrastructure improves. Already best in class, Google hasnt been resting on its laurels, as this BigQuery example demonstrates.

Software may be eating the world, but its data that fuels its appetite. Any data advantage, in other words, has the potential to change an enterprise and, by extension, entire industries. Spotify isnt new school because it streams music but because of how data-driven that data streaming has become, something that it expects Google Cloud to significantly advance.

Making enterprises less dull and more like Google

This wouldnt be very interesting if only the Snaps and Spotifys could benefit, but its not just them. Old-school enterprises are climbing about Googles data-friendly cloud, too. Take nonagenarian Schlumberger, for example. Hardly a cloud native, Schlumbergers decades-old business has traditionally dealt with oil and gas, not ones and zeroes. This is changing, however, and Google Cloud has enabled that change.

Part of Schlumbergers Google story begins with scale: Google Cloud enables Schlumberger Omega geophysical data processing platform to run at a scale not possible in traditional data center environments, the company says. Of course, Schlumberger could have done the same with AWS or Azure. But its data that made the difference, and got Schlumberger on Google Cloud:

Schlumberger launched the Delfi cognitive E&P [exploration and production] environment and the deployment of an E&P Data Lake based on Google BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, and Cloud Datastore, with more than 100 million data items comprised of over 30TB of petrotechnical data.

Schlumberger leverages TensorFlow for complex petrotechnical interpretation of seismic and wellbore data, as well as automation of well-log quality control and 3D seismic interpretation.

This focus on innovative data processing/analysis at scale, coupled with strength in AI, has pushed other mainstream enterprises to embrace Google Cloud, including:

Telegraph Media Group : As the solution we use to power our enterprise data warehouse, Google Cloud Platform is miles ahead of the competition in terms of delivering cost-effective speed, flexibility, and accuracy.  The ability to iterate rapidly over multiple terabytes of data across user interactions comprehensively has dramatically improved our audience intelligence. Google Cloud Platform makes this all possible.

As the solution we use to power our enterprise data warehouse, Google Cloud Platform is miles ahead of the competition in terms of delivering cost-effective speed, flexibility, and accuracy.  The ability to iterate rapidly over multiple terabytes of data across user interactions comprehensively has dramatically improved our audience intelligence. Google Cloud Platform makes this all possible. Airbus: In our tests, Google Cloud Machine Learning enabled us to improve the accuracy and speed at which we analyze the images captured from our satellites. It solved a problem that has existed for decades.

Philips: With the help of Google Cloud Platform, we are changing the fundamental business model of selling lighting to consumers. Were providing an entirely new set of value-based services that transform the home, rather than just replacing bulbs that burn out.

Add to these BNP Paribas, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, and more, and its clear that plenty of boring, old-school enterprises are learning to run like Google with Googles help.

Is Google afraid of its own message?

And yet Google has shied away from arguably its greatest assets. To the question Why Google? the company responds, Easy to set up. Easy to run. Security built in. Yes, lower on that same page the company mentions data and analytics and datacenter innovation, but these are stuck alongside security and pricing, as if theyre equivalent differentiators. Theyre not.

The thing that Google offers, which no other cloud vendor can, is access to Googles secret sauce for being Google. To the extent that Google can democratize the technology and processes that let it run at massive scale, all while processing and analyzing data to fuel its advertising business, Google will reap huge rewards. Yes, the company needs to continue to cater to enterprises, and things like data governance and security are a big deal to CIOs.

CIOs, however, arent building the future. Their developers are.

Google needs to light up possibilities for those developers, and the lines of business they serve, to do more, to be different, to run like Google. A few companies like Schlumberger have figured it out without assistance from Googles marketing department, but a key to Google winning big in 2018 and beyond is selling the reality that it uniquely has the cloud to reshape the enterprise in its image.
Google's attempt this week to plant an installer for Chrome in the Microsoft Store failed when Microsoft yanked it from the Windows 10 app market.

The "app" Google submitted Tuesday - and which Microsoft's review process greenlighted - was more a glorified link than a true application. Users who downloaded, installed and ran it on their Windows 10 device simply saw a window open with a button marked "DOWNLOAD CHROME." Clicking the button downloaded the x86 or x64 version of Chrome for Windows, not, as some expected, a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app suitable for Windows 10 or its spin-off, the locked-down Windows 10 S that runs only UWP programs.

Within hours, the applet had vanished, pulled by Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash. company did not reply to a request for comment, but told other news outlets Tuesday that the Chrome installer had gotten the hook because it "didn't provide a quality/valuable experience" and "it violate[d] our Microsoft Store policies."

Sources familiar with Google's plans said that the maneuver was meant to stifle the Chrome copycats the company thinks mislead Microsoft Store patrons into downloading worthless apps.

Yet that left unexplained the real purpose Google had - Chrome wannabes have not overwhelmed the store - or why the company thought the applet would pass muster and make it into the store, or getting that far, that it would remain unnoticed by Microsoft for any amount of time.

One motivation was forwarded by a Google software engineer, Chris Blume, who tweeted, "Microsoft denies Chrome the tools it needs to protect users when installed from the Windows Store. ([By the way], they grant those tools to Edge.) So, we made a mini-app to help users get the full, safe version of Chrome. It was pulled."

Later, after others asked him what Microsoft withheld from Google that prevented the latter's developers from crafting a UWP Chrome app, Blume replied, "Multiple processes is one example. Chrome uses this to sandbox the renderer so a compromised renderer can't do harm to your system."

Others didn't care for Google's move, describing it as hypocritical. "My only issue with this is why you all can call Microsoft out on their restrictions but refuse to do so for iOS," tweeted someone identified only as Code. "This alone sucks almost all of Google's credibility."

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]

Code was referring to the limitations Apple puts on rival browser makers that require competitors, like Google and Mozilla, Firefox's maker, to use the same rendering and JavaScript engines as Safari to gain access to the App Store. Microsoft has had similar rules in place for browsers in its e-market, which compel others to use Edge's engines.

These restrictions have kept Safari dominant on iOS, even though both Firefox and Chrome have created mimics that look like their namesakes but are actually Safari under the hood. Microsoft has done the same as Apple, but in its case rivals have not bothered. The reason has been simple: Windows 10 users can download Chrome, install and run it, just as they can virtually any other x86 or x64 application - from Microsoft's own Access database and Adobe's Photoshop to the Quicken personal finance program and the WinZip archiving and compression utility.

(Replacing Edge as Windows 10's default with Chrome is more difficult because it requires several steps.)

Although Microsoft has been criticized by browser adversaries over Windows 10's practices -- Vivaldi and Mozilla have each blasted Redmond for restoring Edge as the default after feature upgrades. But none of the major players has bothered to build a UWP browser for Windows 10.

The work just hasn't been worth it, not when traditional Windows desktop applications run on Windows 10. And not when Edge poses no threat.

According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Edge accounted for just 13% of the browsers run on Windows 10 in November. (It's not possible to estimate Chrome's share of Windows 10 using public data, but it was the primary browser on about 69% of all Windows PCs that month.)

With those statistics in mind, it's possible that Chrome's raid on the app store was nothing more than a poke in Microsoft's eye, an unsubtle reminder that Edge has failed to replicate Internet Explorer's former supremacy, that IE itself has fallen on hard times, and that Microsoft's app ecosystem remains wanting.

It's possible that Chrome will, at some point, have to eat crow. But that would happen only if Windows 10 S, the UWP-only operating system, becomes the leading player, or at the least a major one.

For now, Google has no reason to help Microsoft by making a UWP Chrome, because doing so would only aid its opponent's efforts to promote Windows 10 S. That's contrary to Google's interests. It has its own Chrome OS to push, and the revenue-generating Google productivity software to tout on that platform.
1. Yes. The ordinance goes against state law and is not in the best interest of the cities.

2. Yes. At the very least, it should be amended to give police officers some discretion.

3. No. Voters approved the ordinance by large majorities; the councils cant ignore that fact.

4. No. The petition process has to be given a chance to work. Leave the ordinance alone.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say how the cities should move forward regarding the ordinance.

Vote

View Results
Investments in the interest of fighting crime was a primary talking point during Police Chief Doug Wright's quarterly police report at the Town of Summerville's Standing Committees meeting on Nov. 7 that saw the public official expound on an Intel Narcotics Detector.. Read moreS'ville PD reports drug enforcement, traffic offenses at Council meet
Reddit Email 57 Shares

By David Ruiz | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) |  

The debate over how to reauthorize certain NSA surveillance authorities has seen a whirlwind of activity, culminating in the major news that the House Rules Committee postponed a vote today to potentially expand NSA spying powers.

As we wrote yesterday:

According to reports published Tuesday evening by Politico, a group of surveillance hawks in the House of Representatives is trying to ram through a bill that would extend mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. We expect a vote to happen on the House floor as early as [December 20], which means there are only a few hours to rally opposition.

The backers of this bill are attempting to rush a vote on a bill that weve criticized for failing to secure Americans privacy. If this bill passes, we will miss the opportunity to prevent the FBI from searching through NSA databases for American communications without a warrant. Worse, nothing will be done to rein in the massive, unconstitutional surveillance of the NSA on Americans or innocent technology users worldwide.

With the House Rules Committees postponed vote, this crisis is currently avoided. But the fight isnt over.

We do not know the exact steps House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, who authored the bill (H.R. 4478), will take this week. We do not know if other bills to reauthorize Section 702, originally enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Actthe NSAs powerful surveillance authority scheduled to sunset in less than two weekswill be introduced for a House floor vote.

But we do know that our voices are being heard. And we still know that we stand against attempts to expand NSA surveillance by hitching it to separate efforts to fund the government, a strategy that some members of Congress have considered.

As we wrote previously:

[It] is completely unacceptable for Congressional leadership to shove Section 702 reauthorization into an end-of-year funding bill. This program invades the privacy of an untold number of Americans. Before it can be reauthorized, Congress must undertake a transparent and deliberative process to consider the impact

this NSA surveillance has on Americans privacy.

You can speak up. Call your representatives and let them know that it is unacceptable to attach H.R. 4478or S. 2010to any year-end spending bills. Attempts to sneak expanded NSA surveillance powers into entirely separate legislation are attempts to rob surveillance reform of its own needed debate. This hurts the American people and it removes the opportunity for open, transparent discussion.

Call today. Your efforts are working.

Call Now

Call Your Representatives

Via Electronic Frontier Foundation
Reddit Email 500 Shares

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

The thuggish Trump and his gun moll Nikki Haley have threatened member countries of the UN General Assembly with a cut-off of US foreign aid if they vote against the US on Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump said, They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us Were watching those votes. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care.

Haley, who apparently breaks peoples legs in her spare time for not paying their vig, had tweeted that the US will be taking names of the countries that vote against the Trump decision at the UNGA.

The right wing in the United States has long spread around the false story that the US government gives away enormous amounts of money to other countries. Opinion polls show that many Americans think it is as much as 25% of the $4.094 trillion budget, which would be a trillion dollars in aid. That is hilariously absurd. The actual US foreign aid budget is $41.9 billion, about one percent of the Federal budget.

Having retailed a false narrative for decades, the GOP has now been caught in its own trap, making threats on the basis of facts not in evidence.

1. So the first thing to say about Trumps threat is that almost nobody really needs US aid, because Washington gives out so little.

In fact, Germany has a fourth the population of the US, and the UK has a fifth, and each gives out almost $20 bn. in aid, so that those two countries actually account for nearly as much aid as the whole US.

2. Another key point here is that a lot of US so-called aid is just corporate welfare for Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Most of the money the US gives to Egypt is in the form of weapons. The Egyptian government has more military helicopters than it knows what to do with, and theyre just stacked in warehouses. So the money actually went to US arms manufacturers, and Egypt gets a fairly useless shiny military toy. Trump would be hurting US corporations nore than Egypt if he cut it off.

3. Although 200 countries get US aid, the bulk of it is distributed to a small handful of countries. The The Council on Foreign Relations says the US gave the most to these countries in 2015: Afghanistan ($5.5 billion), Israel ($3.1 billion), Iraq ($1.8 billion), Egypt ($1.5 billion), and Jordan ($1.1 billion).

4 The US does not give this aid selflessly or for its own health. It is a form of influence peddling. The $1.2 bn the US gives to Egypt is intended to make sure its officers dont renege on Camp David with Israel.

The fairly useless aid to Egypt is a bribe to continue with the peace process with Israel. If you take it away, we may finally get to see what an independent Egyptian government policy would look like. So punishing Egypt for its UNGA vote would likely simply diminish US standing at the UN and with the countries it woos by charity. Since the money is influence peddling, if you cut it off, the EU, China and Russia will fill in, in search of influence. China is giving Pakistan nearly $50 billion in development aid. It dwarfs what the US provides, and that is mostly in weapons.

5. Money by the US constitution is controlled by Congress. Trump may want to punish some countries, but Congress may disagree.

So to recap: The US doesnt give out much aid, and therefore cant hold it over the heads of many other countries. The aid it does give out is for establishing US influence, and discontinuing it is an opening for China to get US clients instead.

I very much doubt anyone will pay attention to Trumps threats.

-

Related video:

Al Jazeera English: Trump and the Ethics of Foreign Aid | People and Power
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novo Resources Corp. (Novo or the Company) (TSX-V:NVO) (OTCQX:NSRPF) is pleased to provide an update on exploration activities at Purdys Reward, a farm-in and joint venture Novo has with ASX-listed Artemis Resources Limited (Artemis) and part of Novos greater Karratha gold project, Western Australia. Recent events include:

Completion of 3,294 meters of scout diamond drilling in 69 holes testing approximately 1,550 m strike along the targeted conglomerate sequence.

Initial 3D modeling of lithologies.

Study of in situ gold mineralization confirming Purdys Reward is a coarse gold system.

Undertaking an assessment of appropriate sample size.

Receipt of first bulk sample results including 15.7 gpt Au from a 304 kg sample of basal conglomerate from Trench 1 and 17.7 gpt Au from a 371 kg sample of basal conglomerate from Trench 2.

Scout Diamond Drilling and 3D Modeling

The 2017 diamond core drill program concluded on December 15 with a total of 3,294 meters drilled in 69 holes. Most drill holes fall within a 1,550 m long northeast-trending corridor up to 500 meters wide. In addition, a line of three step-out holes was completed approximately 300 m southeast of this corridor, the first test of continuity of strata into the basin.

Upon completion of initial lithological logging of all diamond core, a first-pass 3D computer model illustrating lithology was constructed from this data (please access this model via the following link: Click Here; LeapFrog Viewer is necessary to view the model and can be accessed here: Click Here).

Continuity of the conglomerate sequence appears strong within the targeted drilling corridor. With the exception of three paleo-topographic highs, areas where basement gabbro intrusive rocks form islands in the southwest part of the target area, the conglomerate sequence forms a continuous sheet-like unit at the base of the Fortescue Group. The conglomerate sequence dips at about 4-7 degrees southeast.

A northeast-trending normal fault down-drops strata southeast of the targeted drilling corridor. Three step-out holes, 17PDD065, 17DD067 and 17PDD069, drilled in this area all intercept the targeted conglomerate sequence thus confirming continuation of these rocks into the greater Fortescue Basin. Timing of faulting is uncertain. It may have been active while the basin was forming or after deposition of strata. Interestingly, some conglomerate beds intercepted in these deeper holes display increasing quartz clast content and local concentrations of detrital pyrite, a potential indication the system is evolving further from the paleo-shoreline.

Novo considers the results of the scout diamond drilling program significant for the following reasons:

Continuity of the conglomerate sequence has been firmly established. Although paleo-islands are present, these are considered localized.

Data indicates Purdys Reward is a near-shore fluvial depositional environment periodically reworked by marine processes.

The system appears to evolve as it extends into the basin, a potential indication other favorable depositional environments may be present nearby.

In Situ Gold  Discussion:

Over the past several weeks, Novo personnel have extracted numerous samples of in situ gold mineralization from trenches excavated at Purdys Reward. Each sample was washed and waste rock material was removed to expose gold particles for study. A discussion of findings is presented below:

Virtually all gold occurs as coarse nuggets within conglomerate matrix (Figure 1). Most nuggets are rounded and flattened consistent with primary alluvial transport and deposition. All display frosty surface textures imparted by the matrix in which they occur. As mentioned in the Companys news release dated November 24, 2017, chlorite-rich shale clasts are commonly spatially associated with gold nuggets.

Overgrowths of chlorite, a clay mineral, surround each nugget. Chlorite appears to replace sandy matrix, and in in some cases, the gold nugget itself.

A 1-3 mm halo of fine gold particles is observed around most nuggets and may originate from late-stage chemical remobilization of gold from the nugget.

Occasionally, concentrated clusters of fine gold particles are observed surrounding a few ragged remnants of coarser gold. Such remnants are thought to be nuggets that have undergone significant chemical remobilization and re-precipitation as fine gold.

Gold discussed above is not supergene. Such gold is observed in fresh rock just the same as in partially oxidized rock.

Gold nugget purities range from approximately 87% to nearly 100% with most toward the higher end of this range. Silver and lesser copper and mercury make up impurities. Basement lode gold deposits may be a source of nuggets with purities at the low end of this range, but a source for higher purity nuggets remains elusive. Novo thinks such gold could possibly be derived from recycling of earlier gold-bearing sedimentary deposits.

Assessing Appropriate Bulk Sample Size:

Given the overwhelming indications that Purdys Reward is an extremely coarse gold system, Novo is undertaking a comprehensive size analysis of gold distribution in a 3-tonne sample collected from Trench 1. Independent coarse gold expert Dr. Simon Dominy is directing this work, and its completion is expected in January 2018.

Data from this analysis will help determine, going forward, the:

appropriate sample size, and

appropriate methods of analyzing the large samples to obtain results that can be relied upon for grade determination.

Current indications are that samples weighing 250-400 kg may be of insufficient size to accurately reflect grade. Samples weighing several tonnes may be required. On completion of this work, metallurgy sampling and assaying will be accelerated.

Early Au Results:

Novo has received Au results from Nagrom (please refer to the Companys news release dated August 31, 2017 for a discussion of assay protocols) for three trench bulk samples (see Figures 2 and 3 for sample locations):

Commissioning Sample 1 (CS-001), a 304 kg bulk sample collected from the basal conglomerate and footwall rocks in Trench 1. This sample was determined to have a calculated head grade of 15.7 gpt Au (Note, the mass of sorted concentrate generated by the Steinert sorting machine was high from this sample, 83 kgs, therefore a sub-set of 10, 1-kg samples of concentrate was analyzed to generate a weighted average concentrate grade.)

KX083, a 371 kg bulk sample collected from the basal conglomerate and footwall rocks in Trench 2, was determined to have a calculated head grade of 17.7 gpt Au.

KX078, a 356 kg bulk sample collected from conglomerate 40 cm above the basal contact, was determined to have a calculated head grade of 1.3 gpt Au.

A photograph of jigged concentrate extracted from KX083 is shown in Figure 4 and clearly illustrates the challenge coarse gold poses at Purdys Reward. A small number of coarse nuggets contain most of the mass of gold and therefore heavily influence the resulting grade. As discussed above, Novo believes larger bulk samples may be required than the 371 kgs that were collected for sample KX083. Part of Novos multi-pronged approach to exploring Purdys Reward has been a component of scout diamond drilling to assess the depth and thickness of targeted gold-bearing conglomerates (please refer to the Companys news release dated August 31, 2017 for further details). Novo recognized early on that diamond core samples are of insufficient size to accurately assess nuggety gold mineralization at Purdys Reward. Therefore, Novo planned to utilize large diameter drilling to generate bulk samples for Au assay. In the Companys news release dated November 24, 2017, Novo discussed its attempt at large diameter drilling and how it was unsuccessful at generating samples of consistent size and integrity. Novo has since shifted its efforts to bulk sampling trenches for meaningful Au assays.

In spite of being of inadequate size for meaningful gold analyses, Novo cut, sampled and submitted diamond core for multi-element and 1-kg cyanide leach analysis. Cyanide leach results from the mafic conglomerate sequence from holes 17PPD001, 17PPD003 and 17PPD004 (see Figures 2 and 3 for locations) returned anomalous level gold results (0.03 ppm Au from 0-4 m, 0.04 ppm Au from 3-6 m and 0.01 ppm Au from 12.5-15 m, respectively). No significant gold values were encountered in hole 17PPD002 which went straight into basement rocks at the top of the hole.

Novo does not consider these results surprising given the nuggety nature of gold mineralization at Purdys Reward. Given the small diameter of diamond drill holes (8.5 cm diameter), the odds of encountering gold nuggets is small. Notably, these four drill holes are in close proximity to bulk sample sites containing appreciable gold as discussed above. Current assay data from bulk samples and diamond core collectively demonstrate the need for large samples to assess gold grades at Purdys Reward (please refer to a news release dated November 24, 2017 for further details).

Figure 1: Photomicrographs. Top left, a disk-shaped gold nugget is encased in sandy matrix material. Dark green chlorite and fine gold particles can be seen in the matrix immediately next to the nugget. Top right, the edge of a rounded nugget emerges from sandy matrix material. Dark green chlorite intergrown with fine gold particles replaces the matrix in places near the nugget. Lower left, dark green to black chlorite and fine gold particles form a distinct clot within sandy matrix. A few coarser gold particles form the core of this clot and may represent the remains of a chemically remobilized nugget. Lower right, a cluster of coarse gold particles forms the core of a dense cluster of very fine gold within sandy matrix material. Coarse gold particles may represent the remains of a chemically remobilized nugget. Note the sharp boundary on the halo of fine gold.





Figure 2: Plan map showing the location of Trenches 1, 2 and 3 and diamond drill holes 17PPD001, 17PPD002, 17PPD003 and 17PPD004. Bulk sample locations are also highlighted.





Figure 3: Cross Section looking down dip through trenches 1, 2 and 3. The respective intercepts of mafic conglomerate encountered in holes 17PPD001, 17PDD002, 17PPD003 and 17PPD004 are shown as bold black lines.





Figure 4: Photograph of jigged concentrate extracted from KX083. The extremely coarse nature of gold mineralization at Purdys Reward is clearly illustrated in this image. Most of the mass of gold is concentrated in just a few nuggets.





Quality Control and Quality Assurance:

Novo staff, under the supervision of Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Novos President and Chairman, collected bulk samples and drill samples discussed in this news release. Bulk samples were submitted to Nagrom Metallurgical Laboratory in Perth, Australia, where they were processed according to procedures detailed in Novos news release dated August 31, 2017. Diamond drill core was sawn and sampled by Novo personnel and submitted to Genalysis Laboratories, Perth, WA for multi-element and cyanide leach analysis. Preparation entailed crushing the entire sample to -2 mm, pulverizing a subsample split and subjecting a 1-kg charge to the LeachWell technique, an accelerated CN leach (6 hour leach time). Au analysis of the resulting solution is done by mass spectrometry.

Dr. Quinton Hennigh, the Companys, President and Chairman and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has approved the technical contents of this news release.

About Novo Resources Corp.

Novos focus is to explore and develop gold projects in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, and Novo has built up a significant land package covering approximately 12,000 sq km. Novo also controls a 100% interest in approximately 2 sq km covering much of the Tuscarora Au-Ag vein district, Nevada.
HIGHLIGHTS

Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - E3 METALS CORP. (TSX-V: ETMC, FSE: OU7A, OTC: EEMMF) (the Company, E3 or E3 Metals) is pleased to announce it has been awarded $40,000 of grant funding from the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) towards the salaries of an Intermediate Chemical Process Engineer and a Junior Geologist for a period of 6 months. The Engineer will be focused on developing and optimizing the E3 Metals extraction flow sheet, a key focus for the Company in 2018. The Geologist will be focused on supporting the technical team to deliver National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) compliant resources, including a new Inferred Resource and upgrading Inferred Resources to Measured and Indicated.

The Company is also pleased to announce it has appointed Liz Lappin as Vice President Project Development. Liz joined the Company in early 2017 as Exploration Manager, and has been responsible for leading the delivery of two NI 43-101 Inferred Resources in 2017 and building collaborative relationships with 11 operators to facilitate the ongoing sampling program. Liz has been an instrumental part of the team over the past 7 months. stated E3s CEO Chris Doornbos. Her determination and drive have allowed E3 Metals to achieve its technical goals. Her new position will allow her to expand into developing the project parameters, coordinating government liaison and continuing with our grant funding; all critical elements for 2018.

Liz Lappins Bio

Liz is a Professional Geologist with a solid background in capturing value from Albertas hydrocarbon and geothermal resources. Leveraging a foundation of technical excellence and creative collaboration between disciplines, Liz is now driving E3s technical group towards the development of lithium brine projects and maximizing shareholder value. Working across Western North America, Liz built a foundation of technical experience with oil and gas majors such as Cenovus, Encana and Suncor. More recently, Liz was the founder and principal consultant at Castle Rock Consulting Ltd., a boutique consulting firm which specializes in geothermal value creation for the energy industry in Canada. She was appointed a Fellow with the Energy Futures Lab in 2017 and volunteers for the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association working on policy initiatives. Liz was honoured to receive a 2017 Young Women in Energy award for her leadership and commitment to pioneering new and innovative initiatives in Albertas energy space.

About E3 Metals

E3 Metals is a publically listed company in the emerging Petro-Lithium space (TSXV: ETMC). E3 has brought together an experienced team that has secured the lithium (and other mineral) rights to over 580,000 hectares (~1.4 million acres) in Alberta covering the prolific Leduc Reservoir. Over 60 years of reservoir data from the oil and gas operators is readily available, and E3 has acquired this data to target its own sampling of the brines from existing wells. This now includes the development of a sizable lithium resource that can be potentially exploited by direct lithium extraction technologies currently under development by industry leaders. More information about E3 Metals can be found our website by visiting: www.e3metalscorp.com.
MONTREAL, Dec. 21, 2017 /CNW/ - MONARQUES GOLD CORPORATION ("Monarques" or the "Corporation") (TSX.V:MQR) (OTCMKTS:MRQRF) (FRANKFURT:MR7) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Agnico Eagle Mines Limited ("Agnico") (NYSE: AEM, TSX:AEM) to acquire the McKenzie Break and Swanson properties (see our new property map covering close to 300 km2), which both host gold deposits near Monarques' wholly-owned Beacon and Camflo mills. The terms of the agreement are described at the end of this press release.

"This is an excellent transaction for Monarques, as it could significantly increase the resource available for processing at our Beacon mill," said Jean-Marc Lacoste, President and Chief Executive Officer of Monarques. "The previous owners made significant investments on these properties, including building ramps to access the two deposits. Furthermore, both deposits have the benefit of lying close to surface. The next step for Monarques will be to confirm the historical estimate of the two deposits in line with NI 43-101 and explore the options for extracting those resources. We will also try to determine the potential for increasing the resources of the deposits, as most of the drilling done on the properties was at a shallow depth."

McKenzie Break Property

The McKenzie Break property hosts a high-grade gold deposit that lies just 40 kilometres north of the Beacon mill and 25 kilometres north of Val-d'Or, Quebec. It consists of nine mineral claims covering a total area of 336.3 hectares, and is accessible year-round via Route 397 and a gravel road. The property is also about nine kilometres south of the rail link between Barraute and Senneterre. The property has surface and underground infrastructure, including a ramp providing access to the deposit, 80 metres below surface.

The McKenzie Break deposit has a historical estimate of 813,871 tonnes grading an average 6.63 g/t Au for a total of approximately 173,500 ounces of gold (source: Technical report on the McKenzie Break property, Claude P. Larouche, July 15, 2007). This historical estimate was realized by Placer Dome in 1991 and was calculated using the polygonal method and all the data collected from the green and orange zones and a cut-off grade of 1.70 g/t Au. Close to 60% of those ounces are located in the green zone, which grades an average of 8.49 g/t Au. In 1994, following the drilling of 67 additional holes in high-grade areas identified by Placer Dome's mineral inventory, Western Quebec Mines performed a new resource estimate for two of the six lenses interpreted. Both lenses were drilled on a tight grid (30 x 30 metres) to optimize the resource estimate. This new calculation, based on the polygonal method and using a cut-off grade of 3.5 g/t Au, shows a historical estimate of 161,348 tonnes grading 10.86 g/t Au, or approximately 56,300 ounces of gold, classified as indicated, and 24,695 tonnes grading 5.23 g/t Au, or approximately 4,200 ounces of gold, classified as inferred (Mannard, 1994). These estimates are not supported by an official technical report. A Monarques qualified person has not performed sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources as defined by NI 43-101, and the Corporation therefore does not consider them as current mineral resources. Although the historical estimates may not be reliable, the Corporation nevertheless believes that they provide an indication of the property's potential and are relevant for any future exploration program. In order for the historical estimates to become current resources, the Corporation must carry out new drilling on the property, and issue a new mineral resource estimate pursuant to NI 43-101.

A total of 37,750 metres of diamond drilling coming from 258 holes was carried out on the property. Drilling was concentrated on the green and orange zones. Most of the holes were shallow, with an average length of 150 metres per hole.The mineralization consists of multiple narrow veins, some of which are high-grade with a nugget effect.

In addition, metallurgical testing on samples involving gravity separation followed by direct cyanidation yielded a recovery rate of up to 99.5% (Source: Laboratoire LTM, July 2010).

Swanson Property

The Swanson property hosts a gold deposit located 65 kilometres from the Beacon mill and 12 kilometres northeast of Barraute, Quebec. It consists of one mineral lease and 129 claims covering a total area of 5,111 hectares, as well as a 500-metre ramp down to a depth of 80 metres. The property is accessible year-round via Route 367 and a gravel road. A railway track also crosses the property, as does a transmission line.

The Swanson deposit contains a historical estimate of 814,600 tonnes grading an average of 3.71 g/t Au, classified as inferred, for a total of approximately 91,200 ounces of gold. The historical estimate was realized by Lac Minerals in 1985. Previous operators concluded that there was potential to mine a smaller resource via an open pit. These estimates are not supported by a formal technical report. A Monarques qualified person has not performed sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources as defined by NI 43-101, and the Corporation therefore does not consider them as current mineral resources. Although the historical estimates may not be reliable, the Corporation nevertheless believes that they provide an indication of the property's potential and are relevant for any future exploration program. In order for the historical estimates to become current resources, the Corporation must carry out new drilling on the property, and issue a new mineral resource estimate pursuant to NI 43-101.

Terms of the agreement

Monarques can acquire the McKenzie Break and Swanson properties by paying Agnico a total of CA $4,600,000, including CA $1,600,000 payable in cash and CA $3,000,000 payable in common shares of the Corporation over a four-year period. Payments are as follows:

At signature of the agreement: CA $600,000 in common shares;

in common shares; On the first anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares;

in cash and CA in common shares; On the second anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares;

in cash and CA in common shares; On the third anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares; and

in cash and CA in common shares; and On the fourth anniversary of the agreement: CA $400,000 in cash and CA $600,000 in common shares.

In addition, Agnico is entitled to a 1.5% net smelter return royalty on each property. Monarques can reduce each of these royalties to 1.0% by paying Agnico CA $750,000.

Concurrent with this transaction, the Corporation bought back a 1.5% net smelter return royalty on the McKenzie Break property in exchange for US $50,000 in cash and 600,000 common shares of Monarques.

These transactions are subject to regulatory approval.

The technical and scientific content of this press release has been reviewed and approved by Kenneth Williamson, M.Sc., P.Geo, the Corporation's qualified person under National Instrument 43101.

ABOUT MONARQUES GOLD CORPORATION

Monarques Gold Corp (TSX-V: MQR) is an emerging gold producer focused on pursuing growth through its large portfolio of high-quality projects in the Abitibi mining camp in Quebec, Canada. The Corporation currently owns close to 300 km of gold properties (see map), including the Beaufor Mine, the Croinor Gold (see video), Wasamac, McKenzie Break and Swanson advanced projects, and the Camflo and Beacon mills, as well as six promising exploration projects. It also offers custom milling services out of its 1,600 tonne-per-day Camflo mill. Monarques enjoys a strong financial position and has more than 150 skilled employees who oversee its operating, development and exploration activities.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. (NYSE:FSM) (TSX:FVI) is pleased to provide an update on construction activities at its 100 % owned Lindero gold Project located in Salta, Argentina.

Jorge A. Ganoza, President, CEO and Director, commented, The start of construction activities for a new mine is always an energizing event for an organization. Mr. Ganoza continued, We are fully funded, key positions in the project team are in place and the Company feels very welcome in the Province of Salta. Mr. Ganoza concluded, We are looking forward to building and commissioning on time and within budget the first modern large scale precious metals mine in Salta.

In September 2017, the Company announced a positive construction decision for Lindero with commissioning expected in the second quarter of 2019 (see Fortuna news release dated September 21, 2017). Lindero has been designed as an 18,750 tpd1 owner operated open pit mine with a pit life of 13 years based on existing reserves. Crushed ore will be placed on a leach pad with the pregnant solution pumped to SART2 and ADR3 plants prior to electrowining and refining where gold will be poured to dore bars. The technical report of the Lindero Project is available on the Company's website at Click Here

With Lindero in its first year of full production, Fortunas consolidated precious metals annual production is expected to increase to 190,000 ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver or 340,000 gold equivalent4 ounces.

Note:

Tonnes per day Sulphidization-Acidification-Recycle-Thickening Adsorption, Desorption and Recovery Gold equivalent is calculated using a gold to silver ratio of 1 to 60 and does not include lead nor zinc

Project Update

In September 2017, the commencement of construction at Lindero was officially launched. As of the end of November, initial contracts have been awarded for approximately US$14 million or 6 percent of the projects capital expenditure.

Detailed Engineering

Engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) was awarded in October 2017 to SAXUM Ingenieria, an Argentinian company with international experience in infrastructure and mining. Detailed engineering work has been launched, procurement packages are being prepared and the bidding process initiated.

Advanced basic engineering of the SART plant is being completed by Kestrel Engineering, an American firm that will work under the direction of Mr. Mike Botz, a qualified engineer with extensive experience of the SART process.

The construction of the leach pad, a critical path of the project, is in the bidding process. Mass earth moving activities are scheduled to commence in February 2018 and are estimated to conclude with the commissioning of the pad in March 2019. Detailed engineering and construction supervision has been awarded to Anddes Argentina, a company specialized in geotechnical engineering and leach pad design and construction.

Mine Equipment

Mine fleet and other heavy equipment are in the process of being awarded. The principal components of the initial mine fleet include six 100 ton trucks, two 17 cubic yard wheel loaders, two bulldozers and two drill rigs.

The Company is evaluating a non-recourse vendor financing of US$15 million for the purchase of mining equipment.

Initial Site Activities

The project requires the upgrading of the existing exploration camp in order to host the initial workforce who will be responsible for building the temporary construction camp. On site activities commenced in November and the temporary facilities will be ready to host the inflow of construction personnel in January 2018. The construction workforce who will build the permanent facilities is estimated to gradually increase and peak at 600 people. The permanent camp facilities will accommodate 320 people.

The Company is in the process of obtaining municipal approval from the town of Tolar Grande for the start of construction activities on new infrastructure. Formal authorization is expected in January 2018.

Project Funding and Financing

The estimated fully scoped capital cost for the construction of Lindero is US$239 million. Capital expenditures are estimated at US$200 million for 2018, and US$36.5 million for 2019; amounts do not include VAT which is expected to be recovered in the first 24 months from the start of mining operations.

The Company plans to fund the construction from a combination of existing cash reserves, projected cash flow generation and an upsized US$120 million credit facility.

Project Construction Milestones

The Company is providing the following selected milestones from the project construction schedule:

2018

February: Start mass earthworks

April: First concrete for permanent installations

August: Start of equipment installation, including HPGR tertiary crusher

November: Construction of roads and platforms in preparation for initiation of mining activities

2019

January: Commissioning of power plant

March: Placing of first ore on the leach pad

May: First dore poured as part of commissioning

Construction updates will be provided on a regular basis throughout the development of Lindero.

Qualified Person

Eric N. Chapman, Vice President of Technical Services of Fortuna, is the Qualified Person for Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Chapman is a Professional Geoscientist of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia (Registration Number 36328) and is responsible for ensuring that the information contained in this news release is an accurate summary of the original reports and data provided to or developed by Fortuna Silver Mines.

About Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.

Fortuna is a growth oriented, precious metal producer with its primary assets being the Caylloma silver mine in southern Peru, the San Jose silver-gold mine in Mexico and the Lindero gold Project in Argentina. The company is selectively pursuing acquisition opportunities throughout the Americas and in select other areas. For more information, please visit its website at www.fortunasilver.com.
Bryan Samuel hired as Kansas State University chief diversity and inclusion officer

Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017

MANHATTAN  Following a national search, Bryan Samuel has been selected as Kansas State University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, effective March 2018.



Samuel is the director of the Office of Equity and Diversity at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, where he has been a leader in diversity and inclusion initiatives since 2009. In his new position at Kansas State University, he will report to the university president and serve on the President's Cabinet.



"Bryan Samuel's leadership experiences and extensive professional qualifications give him the tools he will need to effectively lead Kansas State University toward greater diversity and inclusion," said President Richard Myers. "We hope to build on the momentum from our KSUnite efforts and become a model campus."



Samuel will lead Kansas State University in facilitating best practices and resources that will continue to strengthen the university's culture of inclusion. He will focus on employee recruitment and retention; institutional equity; and faculty development and curriculum. In addition, he will partner with the university's new associate vice president for student life, Adrian Rodriguez, to strengthen student recruitment and retention.



"It is a distinct privilege to serve as a member of the Kansas State University community and I am excited to work with all campus constituents," Samuel said. "Joining a nationally recognized institution with such an unswerving commitment to diversity and inclusion is indeed an honor. I look forward to working alongside President Myers and his cabinet as we move K-State forward in our ongoing efforts to meet the needs and interests of a global and diverse society."



In addition to his current position, Samuel has served as director of multicultural affairs and affirmative action programs at Western Connecticut State University from 2006-2009; director of the office of multicultural affairs at the University of Nebraska, Kearney from 2004-2006; executive assistant to the vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Nebraska at Kearney from 2000-2002; and coordinator for scholastic enhancement from 1998-2000 and coordinator of support services from 1996-1998 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In addition, he was an Equity in Opportunity Presidential Fellow at the University of Nebraska Central Administration from 2002-2003.



Samuel has received several awards and honors, including the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga's Student Support Service Outstanding Contributions Award, the Kappa Leadership League Scholarship Debonair Service Award, the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Horace Traylor Diversity Leadership Award, the Southeastern Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel TRIO Achiever Award and the Noel-Levitz Retention Excellence Award.



A member of the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, or NCORE, National Advisory Council, Samuel serves on the Chief Diversity Officer Executive Leadership Committee. In addition, he is an adviser to several student organizations and a member of numerous employee and diversity committees. Samuel also has served as an instructor for social work courses during his tenure at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.



Samuel has a doctorate in educational leadership and higher education administration from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a Master of Education in community counseling and a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Samuel also is a designated Cornell Certified Diversity Practitioner/Advanced Practitioner awarded by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.






You can now donate to Kiwiblog
Leitrim District Superintendent, Kevin English, has praised members of the public for their quick response after they immediately contacted gardai when they witnessed a car being broken into last week.



Two men with addresses in Dublin have been refused bail in relation to the incident, which occurred over the weekend in Carrick-on-Shannon. The men are charged with the theft of a substantial amount of cash.



The men, aged in their 20s and 30s, are alleged to have carried out surveillance at a bank on Main Street, Carrick-on-Shannon on Friday, December 16 last and are alleged to have followed a businessman carrying a substantial sum of money, to Rosebank Shopping Centre.



The businessman is understood to have left his vehicle for a short period of time and when he returned discovered the cash had been taken.



Gardai obtained CCTV footage of the suspected vehicle, and in a joint operation with Longford Gardai, the two male suspects were arrested near Longford. Gardai have since recovered all of the money.



Both men appeared before a special sitting of Sligo District Court on Saturday, December 16 where they were remanded in custody to Castlerea Prison to appear at Harristown District Court, tomorrow, Friday.



Speaking to the Leitrim Observer this week, Leitrim District Superintendent, Kevin English said he wished to acknowledge the excellent co-operation of members of the public who witnessed the injured party's car being broken into at Rosebank Shopping Centre, and immediately alerted gardai.



He also thanked the gardai in Longford for their assistance with the apprehension of the two suspects.

I would also like to take this opportunity to advise business people or any persons withdrawing cash from financial institutions to do so in small amounts and be vigilant that you are not being watched, he said.



He stressed that at this time of year, people should be extra vigilant when using cash machines and when withdrawing substantial amounts of cash as criminals could be watching.
The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring TD, officially launched Connaughts first whiskey in 104 years at The Shed Distillery of PJ Rigney at the Food Hub in Drumshanbo,last Thursday.

Minister Ring also unveiled plans for a 1.5 million visitor centre which is due to open at the Shed Distillery next year.

The distillery is one of a number of start-up businesses that are based at the Food Hub which was established in 2004 and has become one of Irelands premier artisan multi-tenant food production and enterprise centres.



The Department of Rural and Community Development has allocated over 280,000 to support the Food Hub in Drumshanbo.

Minister Ring said "I am very encouraged to see the great progress here at the Food Hub and the Shed Distillery in particular.

This excellent initiative is testament to the hard work and dedication of Pat and Denise Rigney and the determination of the local community here in Drumshanbo to build a future for themselves and generations to come.



My Department has allocated over 280,000 to support the Food Hub in Drumshanbo over the last two years.

From small beginnings, the Food Hub is thriving and now has over 70 people working out of it. The Shed Distillery, which is part of the Hub, has been particularly successful and employs 18 people with further support staff based in Dublin.



The enormous success of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Gin which is produced in the Shed Distillery is an extraordinary story.

I will continue to support this proactive approach and facilitate sustainable development of rural communities all over Ireland.

This excellent initiative is very close to another very innovative project, the Acres Lake Boardwalk that received funding through the Outdoor Recreation Infrastructure Scheme in 2016 and was opened earlier this year.



Projects such as this demonstrate a measured collaboration between the Local Authority, the local community and business interests and I am delighted that my Department has been able to support them.



Projects such as these are indicative of a real proactive approach to development that is evident in Leitrim and throughout this region. The benefits will be felt by the entire community through employment and increased economic activity in the area.



Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland (ABFI), the representative body for drinks manufacturers and suppliers in Ireland, has welcomed the news from Leitrim that the first whiskey produced in Connacht in 104 years has come of age, at The Shed distillery in Drumshanbo.



Patricia Callan, Director of ABFI said The whiskey industry makes a hugely positive contribution to the Irish economy, as it continues to grow apace. Todays announcement from The Shed distillery is another sign that the Irish whiskey renaissance is continuing at a promising rate.



Irish whiskey is the fastest growing spirits category in the world, with sales of premium Irish whiskey up by 135 per cent in the last five years. Exports grew rapidly again in 2017. The number of distilleries operating in Ireland has grown from just four a few years ago to 18 now, and there are 16 more with planning permission.



Its imperative that the Government recognises the value of the sector and helps it to continue growing, as it faces issues such as Brexit, the second highest excise rate in the EU, and the unintended consequences of the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill.

Opening of the first whiskey cask from @thesheddistillery shortly in Drumshanbo Co. Leitrim. Will be tasted in specialist Irish whiskey glasses from @TuathGlass pic.twitter.com/HhfEBANMfw  Kevin McParland (@kevin_mcparland) December 21, 2017

Congrats to the Pat and his team.Great day out @SHEDDISTILLERY ! We even got to sample a drop of the precious first cask !!! pic.twitter.com/OMpAzAFbND  Connacht Whiskey (@connachtwhiskey) December 21, 2017
UFOs have fascinated and puzzled people for decades, yet hard evidence seems ever elusive. Many people are convinced that not only are extraterrestrials visiting Earth, but that governments have perpetuated a top-secret global conspiracy to cover it up. Here's a look at UFOs throughout history.

Today, most people equate UFOs with extraterrestrial intelligence and advanced technologies, but this is a very recent idea. That's not to say that historically people did not report seeing unusual things in the skies, for they surely did: comets, meteors, eclipses and the like had been reported (and sometimes recorded) for millennia  in fact some researchers believe that the Star of Bethlehem may have been an illusion created by a merging of Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred right around Jesus' birth).

Promotional poster for the 1950 film 'The Flying Saucer.' (Image credit: Colonial Productions)

But it's only been in the past century or so that anybody assumed that unknown lights or objects in the sky were visitors from other planets. Several of the planets had been noticed for millennia, but were not thought of as places where other living creatures might reside (for example ancient Greeks and Romans thought the planets were gods).

Early science fiction writers like Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe fueled the public's interest in voyages to other worlds, and as technology developed some people began to wonder if that might not indeed be possible for advanced civilizations. The first reports of what could be called UFOs emerged in the late 1800s, though in those days they didn't use terms like "UFO" or "flying saucer," but instead "airships."

The most dramatic early UFO encounter occurred in 1897 Texas, when E.E. Haydon, a newspaper reporter for the Dallas Morning News, described an amazing encounter complete with a crashed spacecraft, dozens of eyewitnesses, a recovered dead Martian body, and metallic wreckage (50 years later a nearly identical story would circulate about a crash in the neighboring state of New Mexico). The fantastic tale unraveled when researchers could find no eyewitnesses to support Haydon's story, and nothing of the alien or the "several tons" of mysterious spacecraft wreckage was ever found. It turned out that Haydon had made the whole story up as a publicity stunt to attract tourists.

UFO sightings

GoFigure today visits the states where the most UFOs are sighted. (Image credit: Ross Toro, LiveScience Contributor)

Early newspaper hoaxes aside, there have been countless UFO reports over the decades, and a few of them stand out as especially important. The first report of a "flying saucer" dates back only to 1947 when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects resembling boomerangs in the sky. He described their movement as "like a saucer if you skip it across the water," which a careless reporter misunderstood as saying that the objects themselves resembled "flying saucers," and that mistake launched many "flying saucer" reports in later decades. Investigators think that Arnold probably saw a flock of pelicans and misjudged their size, their large wings creating the "V" shape he described.

The most famous UFO crash allegedly occurred when something  skeptics say a top-secret spy balloon; believers say a spacecraft with alien pilots  crashed on a ranch in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and the debate rages to this day.

The first UFO abduction case  and to this day the most famous  was that of Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple who in 1961 claimed to have been chased down and abducted by a UFO. However, since there were no other eyewitnesses to the event and they didn't report the abduction at the time (only remembering it under hypnosis), many remain skeptical.

Another famous UFO sighting occurred near Phoenix, Arizona, in March 1997 when a series of bright lights were reported in the night skies. Though it is known that the military dropped flares over a nearby proving ground during routine exercises around the time of the sightings, UFO buffs dismiss the government's explanation of the lights and insist there's more to the story.

A strangely shaped object near the sun in a new NASA image has drawn the attention of UFO believers. (Image credit: NASA via YouTube Streetcap1)

Since then, a host of UFO sightings have been reported. Here are a handful that in recent years got a lot of attention, with links to articles from the time:

Jan. 7, 2007: Strange lights over Arkansas fueled much speculation on the Internet until the Air Force debunked the UFO claims, explaining that flares had been dropped from airplanes as part of routine training.

April 21, 2008: Phoenix lights were reported again. It was a hoax, created by road flares tied to helium balloons. The hoaxer admitted it, and eyewitnesses reported seeing him do it.

Jan. 5, 2009: New Jersey UFOs that proved so baffling they were reported on the History Channel turned out to be helium balloons, red flares and fishing lines, all part of a social experiment. The men who perpetrated the hoax, Joe Rudy and Chris Russo, were fined $250 for creating what could have been a danger to the nearby Morristown airport.

October 13, 2010: UFOs over Manhattan turned out to be helium balloons that escaped from a party at a school in Mount Vernon.

Jan. 28, 2011: Videos of UFOs hovering over the Holy Land (the Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem's Temple Mount) was revealed as a hoax  the effects of video editing software's use were discovered.

July 2011: The sighting of a UFO on the ocean floor was attributed to a Swedish scientist, but that researcher, Peter Lindberg, merely said the thing he detected in blurry images was "completely round," an assertion not supported by the low-resolution sonar image. A second "anomaly" made the case seem even more bizarre, but no evidence has emerged to suggest alien origin.

Peter Lindberg's team found what appears to be a crashed flying saucer on the ocean floor. (Image credit: www.oceanexplorer.se)

April 2012: A UFO near the sun, spotted in a NASA image, turned out to be a camera glitch.

April 2012: A viral UFO video taken from a plane over South Korea likely showed a droplet of water on the airplane's window.

May 2012: A nephew of the famous Wayans brothers comedy team, Duayne "Shway ShWayans" Wayans, filmed a UFO over Studio City, Calif. But like many, many UFO sightings, this one turned out to be the planet Venus. In fact, even airline pilots have mistaken Venus for a UFO.

Official investigations

When UFO reports became more common (and in some cases achieved national and even international attention) the U.S. government began to pay attention.

Given that UFOs are literally "unidentified flying objects," the Pentagon's interest in the topic is both understandable and appropriate. After all, unknown objects over American skies could be a threat  whether their origin is Russia, North Korea or the Andromeda Galaxy. The Air Force investigated thousands of unexplained aerial reports between 1947 and 1969, eventually concluding that most of the "UFO" sightings involved clouds, stars, optical illusions, conventional aircraft or spy planes. A small percentage remained unexplained because of a lack of information.

In December 2017, The New York Times reported on the existence of a secret U.S. Department of Defense program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). It began in 2007 and ended in 2012 when, according to Pentagon spokesman Thomas Crosson, "it was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding."

Much of the program and its conclusions have not been released, and it's not clear what if any useful information came from the effort. Several short videos of military jets encountering something they couldn't identify have been released by AATIP. Already some have suggested that distant jets might be the culprit, and in the past crowdsourced research has yielded answers to seemingly inexplicable phenomena in our skies; a "mystery missile" seen off the coast of California in November 2010, for example, stumped military experts at first but was later determined to be an ordinary commercial jet plane contrail seen from an odd angle.

The fact that the U.S. government had a program dedicated to researching unidentified craft and objects has caused many UFO buffs to triumphantly announce that they were right all along, that this finally proof that the wall of silence is breaking and the government coverup is cracking.

There is, however, significantly less here than meets the eye. The government routinely spends money to research (and sometimes promote) topics that turn out to have little or no evidence or scientific validity. There are hundreds of federal projects that have been funded despite never having been proven valid or effective, including the Star Wars missile defense program, abstinence-only sex education, and the DARE anti-drug program. The idea that there must be some validity to the project, or else it would not have been funded or renewed is laughable.

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, the U.S. government had a secret project called Stargate, designed to explore the possibility of psychic powers and whether "remote viewers" could successfully spy on Russia during the Cold War. The research went on for about two decades, with little apparent success. Eventually, scientists who were asked to review the results concluded that psychic information was neither validated nor useful. Like AATIP, Project Stargate was soon shut down.

One possible clue as to why the $22 million program might have continued despite yielding no clear evidence of extraterrestrials is the financial incentive to keep it going. The New York Times noted that "The shadowy program . ..was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time ... Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid's, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space."

UFO psychology

It's not hard to understand why there are so many UFO sightings. After all, the only criterion for a UFO is that some "flying object" be "unidentified" by whoever is looking at it at the time. Any object seen in the sky, especially at night, can be very difficult to identify because of the limitations of human perception. Knowing how far away something is helps us determine its size and speed; that's why we know that moving cars seen at a distance aren't really smaller, nor are they moving slowly; it's simply an optical illusion. If the eyewitness doesn't know the distance, then he or she cannot determine the size. Is that thing or light in the sky 20 feet long and 200 yards away, or is it 200 feet long and a mile away? It's impossible to know, and this makes estimates of size, distance and speed of UFOs very unreliable. Even the planet Venus  at least 25 million miles away  has been mistaken for a UFO by pilots and others on many occasions.

When residents of Morris County, NJ saw bright lights in the night sky Jan. 5, many thought it was a UFO. But Joe Rudy and Chris Russo perpetrated the hoax with helium balloons and flares as part of a

Psychologists also know that our brains tend to "fill in" missing information, which can mislead us. For example, many sightings of three lights in the night sky are reported as appearing as a triangular spacecraft. The fact is that any three lights in the sky, whether connected or not, will form a triangle if you assume (without evidence) that each of those lights are fixed at the ends of three points. Had a witness seen four lights he or she would have assumed it was a rectangular-shaped object in the night sky above him; our brains sometimes make connections where none exist.

All that is needed to create a UFO sighting is one person who may not recognize a light or object in the sky. But just because one person  or even several people  can't immediately identify or explain something they see doesn't mean that someone else with more training or experience (or even the same person seeing the same object from a different angle) may not instantly recognize it. While it's possible that extraterrestrials in spacecraft exist and have visited Earth, the UFO sightings so far provide no real evidence. The lesson, as always, is that "unknown lights in the sky" is not the same as "extraterrestrial spacecraft."
An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica. Liquid water is thought to take thousands of years to pass through the lake, which is the size of North America's Lake Ontario.

Deep, dark and mysterious, Lake Vostok is one of the largest subglacial lakes in the world. Once a large surface lake in East Antarctica , Lake Vostok is now buried under about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice near Russia's Vostok research station. Covered with ice for millennia, cut off from light and contact with the atmosphere, the lake is one of the most extreme environments on Earth , Live Science previously reported .

"The lake has been ice-covered for at least 15 million years," said Brent Christner, a Louisiana State University biologist who has examined ice cores collected above the lake. Some estimates suggest the lake has been covered with ice for up to 25 million years, according to NASA (opens in new tab).

Related: Stunning photos of Antarctic ice

Subglacial Lake Vostok lies 4000 meters below Vostok Station, in East Antarctica. (Image credit: U.S. Antarctic Program)

Below the surface

Lake Vostok is one of the largest freshwater lakes on Earth in size and volume, rivaling Lake Ontario in North America, according to NASA. The lake is roughly 149 miles (240 km) long and 31 miles (50 km) wide, and hundreds of meters deep, according to a blog authored by glacial scientist Bethan Davies (opens in new tab). The south end of the lake may be up to 0.6 miles (1 km) deep, but the northern and southwest corners are comparatively shallow, Davies said.

The presence of a large buried lake was first suggested in the 1960s by a Russian geographer and pilot who noticed the large, smooth patch of ice above the lake from the air. But it wasn't until 1993, when scientists used satellite-based radar to survey the area, that scientists confirmed the subglacial lake's presence, Science reported (opens in new tab).

"Lake Vostok is one of the easiest subglacial lakes to detect due to its size," Christner told Live Science. "[Yet] I believe most of its secrets remain."

The lake's only water supply is meltwater from overlying ice sheet, Christner said. "To my knowledge, there is no evidence for influx or efflux of water from Lake Vostok," he said. This constant replenishment from melting ice means the water in the lake may be relatively young, just thousands of years old, according to ice core studies. But the true age of the lake water is unknown, he said.

Researchers have mapped Lake Vostok's shape with remote-sensing techniques, such as seismic soundings and ice-penetrating radar. The deep and shallow regions of the lake are separated by a ridge. Some scientists think the ridge could be a hydrothermal vent, similar to the ocean floor black smokers that are known to teem with tubeworms, Popular Science reported (opens in new tab). The long, narrow lake may lie in a rift valley, similar to Lake Baikal in Russia.

Related: Incredible technology: How to explore Antarctica

Geothermal heat from the Earth keeps the temperature of the lake water hovering around 27 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celsius), according to a 2001 review article in the journal Nature (opens in new tab). The weighty pressure of the overlying ice changes the melting point of water and keeps the lake liquid despite its below-freezing temperatures, according to World Atlas (opens in new tab).

An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok (Image credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller / NSF, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Life in the lake

In the 1990s, Christner was part of an international team that discovered microbes in frozen lake water collected above Lake Vostok's liquid surface, called accretion ice. The top half-inch (1 centimeter) of the lake surface freezes onto the flowing ice sheet above the lake.

Analysis of the life forms suggests Lake Vostok may harbor a unique ecosystem based on chemicals in rocks instead of sunlight, living in isolation for hundreds of thousands of years, Live Science previously reported . "The types of organisms we found suggested they derived their energy from minerals present in the lake and sources from the underlying bedrock," Christner said.

More recent studies of genetic material in Vostok's accretion ice revealed snippets of DNA from a wide variety of organisms related to single-celled creatures found in lakes, oceans and streams, Live Science previously reported . These "extremophiles" could mimic life on other moons and planets, such as Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

Related: Image gallery: Alien life of the Antarctic

In a paper published June 26, 2013, in the journal PLOS One (opens in new tab), researchers, led by Scott Rogers, a Bowling Green State University professor of biological sciences, discussed the thousands of species they identified in Lake Vostok through DNA and RNA sequencing.

The researchers took samples from two areas of the lake: the southern main basin and near an embayment on the southwestern end of the lake.

By sequencing the DNA and RNA taken from samples of accretion ice (frozen lake water attached to the bottom of the overriding glacier), the team discovered far more complexity than anyone thought, Rogers said in a press release (opens in new tab).

"It really shows the tenacity of life, and how organisms can survive in places where a couple dozen years ago we thought nothing could survive," he said.

In addition to fungi and two species of archaea, which are single-celled organisms that often live in extreme environments, the researchers identified thousands of bacterial species, including some that are commonly found in the digestive systems of fish, crustaceans and annelid worms, according to the press release.

Using a RADARSAT dataset of Antarctica, an abandoned Russian station on top of frozen Lake Vostok is visible. It is in the left section of the lake in this image. (Image credit: NASA)

They also discovered psychrophiles, or organisms that live in extreme cold, and heat-loving thermophiles, which suggests the presence of hydrothermal vents deep in the lake.

"Many of the species we sequenced are what we would expect to find in a lake," said Rogers. "Most of the organisms appear to be aquatic (freshwater), and many are species that usually live in ocean or lake sediments."

Rogers notes that the presence of both marine and freshwater species supports the theory that the lake once was connected to the ocean, and that the freshwater was supplied by the overriding glacier. The embayment contained the most biological activity with the largest number of species identified.

After two years of computer analysis, the team determined that Vostok Lake contains a diverse set of microbes, as well as some multicellular organisms. Rogers emphasizes that the team erred strongly on the conservative side while reporting their findings. They chose to include only those genetic sequences that they were absolutely certain came from the accretion ice. Because of this, Rogers believes there are most likely a multitude of other organisms in the lake, opening the door to further research.

A cross-section of Lake Vostok shows how ice accumulates above the lake, and a list of some of the different organisms discovered in the ice core. (Image credit: PLOS ONE)

Additional resources

Check out Live Science's Guide to Antarctica (Infographic) , which provides a map of notable places such as research stations, significant glaciers, explorations and more.

, which provides a map of notable places such as research stations, significant glaciers, explorations and more. Learn more about Antarctica's subglacial lakes from glacial scientist Bethan Davies (opens in new tab) . The page describes how the lakes are found and even includes an animation of subglacial lake behavior.

. The page describes how the lakes are found and even includes an animation of subglacial lake behavior. Learn about what would happen if you fell into Lake Vostok, with this " What If (opens in new tab) " video on YouTube.

Additional reporting by Traci Pedersen, Live Science contributor.

Editor's note: This article was last updated on Dec. 20, 2021.

Originally published on Live Science.
There are many methods of sex prediction out there for expecting parents, but the most commonly used and widely accepted is ultrasound .

Ultrasound exams have a variety of purposes during pregnancy , but the use that often receives the most attention is its ability to reveal the sex of the baby.

Some parents-to-be can't wait to find out whether they're having a boy or a girl, while others choose to put off knowing the sex until birth. Either way, a sonogram  the grainy, black-and-white image that results from an ultrasound scan  will be the baby's earliest picture and a couple's first chance to see the developing fetus.

Ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves to produce an image on a screen of the baby in the mother's uterus. The scans are typically done at least twice during pregnancy, but the one done between 18 and 22 weeks is when the sonographer (ultrasound technician) might identify the sex of the baby, if parents want to know, according to the U.S Food & Drug Administration .

Expectant parents who want their child's sex to remain a secret until birth are in the minority, said Dr. Stephen Carr, director of the Prenatal Diagnosis Center and of maternal-fetal medicine diagnostic imaging at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island in Providence. He said about 85% of couples want to find out the baby's sex before delivery. They do so for several reasons: to know how to paint the nursery, pick a name or satisfy their curiosities about the family composition.

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN MEDICALLY REVIEWED BY THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN MEDICALLY REVIEWED BY Yasmine S. Ali, MD MSCI, FACC, FACP, award-winning physician writer Yasmine S. Ali is an award-winning physician writer who has published across multiple genres and media. She is President of LastSky Writing, LLC, and has 25 years of experience in medical writing, editing, and reviewing, across a broad range of health topics and medical conditions. Dr. Ali is board certified in general internal medicine and the subspecialty of cardiovascular disease. She is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).

A pregnancy women receiving an ultrasound scan. (Image credit: Getty Images)

However, "more and more people are telling us they want to wait until the baby arrives to find out the sex," Carr said. "It's the last great surprise left," he noted.

Increasingly, Carr said, couples have asked him to write down the baby's sex and place the answer in a sealed envelope. This is because some parents-to-be want to host a gender-reveal party for family and friends to share the news.

Beyond ending the guessing game, there are can be medical reasons why mothers and fathers may want to learn the sex of their baby from an ultrasound, such as identifying some congenital conditions which are more prevalent in one sex.

U.S. hospitals have used ultrasound since the late 1970s and early '80s, Carr said. But the common prenatal scan wasn't intended as an exam to find out the baby's gender; it was meant to image the developing fetus for other medical reasons, he said.

Although the test can be done at any point during pregnancy, women typically get their first one during the first trimester. This early ultrasound is often done to confirm a pregnancy, detect the fetal heartbeat and determine the due date, according to the Mayo Clinic .

A second ultrasound is usually done between the 18th and 22nd weeks of pregnancy to make sure that the baby is growing and developing properly. It's typically during the second ultrasound that parents can learn the sex of the baby.

The scan is also done to see if a woman is having more than one baby, as well as to determine the location of the placenta and umbilical cord. In addition, ultrasound can identify certain birth defects, such as Down syndrome and spinal abnormalities, and investigate pregnancy complications, including miscarriage, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Is ultrasound a safe way to predict gender?

An ultrasound uses energy to generate an image of a fetus. (Image credit: John Fedele via Getty Images)

(opens in new tab)

Ultrasound is a safe prenatal test, according to research published in the journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology . It uses sound energy and not radiation, such as X-rays , to generate images of the fetus.

During a transabdominal ultrasound, a pregnant woman lies on her back while a clear gel is spread on her belly, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine . Next, a gel that can help transmit sound waves is placed on the skin of the abdomen, and a probe called a transducer is moved over the gel. This transmits sound waves that can produce images of the fetus as it develops inside the mother's womb.

There is no harm to the baby during the procedure, Carr said. And the only risks to the mother may come from lying flat on her back, which might make her feel dizzy, along with the discomfort of having a full bladder, he said. (Women may be asked to drink several glasses of water before an ultrasound because a filled bladder helps give clearer images.)

How accurate is gender prediction using ultrasound?

Gender predictions made by ultrasound have an accuracy rate "north of 90 percent," Carr said. But mistakes can be made when determining gender because it depends on the clarity of the images and the skills of the person interpreting them.

Until the 14th week of pregnancy, baby boys and girls look exactly the same on ultrasound, Carr said. Beyond this point, noticeable anatomical differences in the genitalia can show up on the scan.

After 18 weeks of pregnancy and beyond, Carr said that ultrasound has pretty good reliability for gender prediction if the baby is in a good position in the mother's uterus (meaning that it is not in a breech, or feet-down position), and the legs are far enough apart that there is good visibility between them.

"Gender-telling is not exotic," Carr said. When a sonographer looks between the legs, if it's "an outie," it's a boy, he explained.

Be wary of keepsake ultrasounds

A pregnant woman holding an image from an ultrasound (Image credit: Chanintorn Vanichsawangphan / EyeEm via Getty Images)

(opens in new tab)

Carr said that he understands the psychology of expectant parents wanting to see an image of their baby. However, he doesn't endorse so-called "bonding scans," which are also known as recreational or keepsake ultrasounds. These scans are done to produce keepsake pictures or videos, and not for medical reasons.

Ultrasound should be used as a diagnostic tool when there's a medical reason to do one, Carr said. The procedure is tightly regulated when it occurs in a hospital or medical clinic, he added.

That's generally not the case for commercial places doing keepsake images: There is no regulation of ultrasound facilities outside of a medical setting, so their quality can vary wildly, Carr said. And the technicians may have limited medical training to interpret the scans, he noted.

Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT)

An illustration of the movement of fetal DNA into the mother's bloodstream, which can be used to identify the baby's sex. (Image credit: Getty Images)

(opens in new tab)

A type of screening called Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) is used by doctors during pregnancy to screen for genetic conditions such as Down Syndrome and Edwards Syndrome (syndromes whereby children are born with 3 copies of a chromosome instead of 2), according to the NHS . The test examines a fragment of DNA thats released from the mothers placenta into the bloodstream and contains the genetic information of the fetus. A simple blood test from the mother is able to collect the DNA required to carry out NIPT.

Along with detecting genetic conditions, the NIPT test can reveal the sex of the fetus after only the 7th gestational week, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health . There are now at-home NIPT kits, such as SneakPeek , which use a small blood sample  taken from the fingertip  to identify the presence of Y chromosomes (only found in males).

Old wives' tales are fun but generally not reliable for predicting sex

Pregnant woman with doughnuts. There is no evidence that cravings during pregnancy indicate the baby's sex. (Image credit: IAN HOOTON via Getty Images)

For some people, waiting until the 18th week of pregnancy to find out the sex of a baby can feel like an eternity. To fill the void, people may turn to some of the following six old wives' tales to predict whether the fetus is a boy or girl.

Baby bump: One popular belief is that if a woman is carrying the baby high, she is supposedly having a girl, while carrying the baby low means it's a boy. "Carrying high or low is a function of the mother's abdominal wall muscle tone and the baby's position," Carr said. "It has no influence on gender," he said.

Food cravings: Another theory holds that a mother's food cravings during pregnancy may reveal the baby's sex, with sweet cravings signifying a girl and cravings for salty, sour or odd foods linked with a boy. "This has no basis in physiology," Carr said.

Fetal heart rate: There may be some truth to the idea that fetal heart rate could be a clue. Early in pregnancy, there is no difference in heart rate between the sexes, Carr said. But by the third trimester, a girl's heartbeat tends to be a little faster and a boy's a little slower, he said. Still, Carr cautioned that although researchers may find this association holds true over an average of 1,000 babies studied, an individual baby boy could still have a faster heartbeat, and an individual baby girl could have a slower one.

Morning sickness : Folk wisdom has linked experiencing severe morning sickness with having a girl, and this idea may have some science to back it up. Women carrying girls have higher levels of the pregnancy hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), and these higher levels are associated with an increased risk of severe morning sickness, Carr said. But he warned there's not a hard and fast relationship between morning sickness and fetal sex.

The Drano test: For this urban legend, a woman combines some of her first morning urine with the liquid drain cleaner. If the color turns green, the baby is said to be a girl; if it's blue, a boy may be on the way. Unfortunately, "there's nothing to this idea, and Drano is really caustic," Carr pointed out.

Ring test: To try this old favorite, a woman ties her wedding band to a string and hangs it over her pregnant belly to guess the baby's gender. If the ring swings back and forth, the baby is believed to be a boy. If it swings in a circle, the child is thought to be a girl. "It's fun, but it isn't science," Carr said, chuckling.

Additional resources

For a complete guide to your babys development check out DKs "Pregnancy Day by Day: An Illustrated Daily Countdown to Motherhood, from Conception to Childbirth and Beyond (opens in new tab)." A great reference guide to all things related to pregnancy "The Pregnancy Encyclopedia (opens in new tab)" by DK. Johns Hopkins Medicine (opens in new tab) also explains: What Is a Fetal Ultrasound?

Bibliography

Sebastian Manzanares et al, Accuracy of fetal sex determination on ultrasound examination in the first trimester of pregnancy, Clinical Ultrasound, Volume 44, June 2016, https://doi.org/10.10 (opens in new tab)02/jcu.22320 (opens in new tab)

Ricardo Saviron-Cornudella et al, "Ultrasound measurement learning of fetal sex during the first trimester: does the experience matter?" Research and Reports in Focused Ultrasound, Volume 3, August 2015, https://doi.org/10.2147/RRFU.S88738 (opens in new tab)

Maria-Elisabeth et al, "Discordant fetal sex on NIPT and ultrasound," Prenatal Diagnosis, volume 40, March 3, https://doi.org/10.1002/pd.5676 (opens in new tab)

U.S. Food & Drug Administration, "Ultrasound Imaging (opens in new tab)," September 2020.

Mollie Minear et al, "Global perspectives on clinical adoption of NIPT," Prenatal Diagnosis, Volume 35, June 2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/pd.4637 (opens in new tab)
Church ruins

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

The ruins of a richly decorated church were unearthed during salvage excavations in the city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, in Israel. [Read the full story on the Israel monastery]

Ancient marble

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

Archaeologists and high-school students participating in the dig uncovered architectural elements at the site, including this marble pillar base decorated with crosses.

Valuable decor

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

The elaborate mosaic floor and the marble imported from Turkey indicate that the Byzantine church was wealthy when it was in use 1,500 years ago.

Mosaic pattern

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

The mosaic floor includes images of birds and pomegranates, as well as leaf patterns.

Abandoned?

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

Archaeologists are trying to understand why the church seems to have been cleared out and abandoned in the seventh century.

Good preservation

(Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority)

The researchers working on the excavation say the ruins make up one of the best-preserved examples of a Byzantine church and monastery complex in the region. [Read the full story on the Israel monastery]
What to make of a Las Vegas building full of unidentified alloys?

The New York Times published a stunning story Saturday (Dec. 16) revealing that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had, between 2007 and 2012, funded a $22 million program for investigating UFOs. The story included three revelations that were tailored to blow readers' minds:

Many high-ranking people in the federal government believe aliens have visited planet Earth. Military pilots have recorded videos of UFOs with capabilities that seem to outstrip all known human aircraft, changing direction and accelerating in ways no fighter jet or helicopter could ever accomplish. In a group of buildings in Las Vegas, the government stockpiles alloys and other materials believed to be associated with UFOs.

Points one and two are weird, but not all that compelling on their own: The world already knew that plenty of smart folks believe in alien visitors, and that pilots sometimes encounter strange phenomena in the upper atmosphere  phenomena explained by entities other than space aliens, such as a weather balloon, a rocket launch or even a solar eruption. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]

Point No. 3, though  those buildings full of alloys and other materials  that's a little harder to hand wave away. Is there really a DOD cache full of materials from out of this world?

One of the authors of the Times report, Ralph Blumenthal, had this to say on MSNBC about the alloys: "They have, as we reported in the paper, some material from these objects that is being studied so that scientists can find what accounts for their amazing properties, this technology of these objects, whatever they are." When asked what the materials were, Blumenthal responded, "They don't know. They're studying it, but it's some kind of compound that they don't recognize."

Here's the thing, though: The chemists and metallurgists Live Science spoke to  experts in identifying unusual alloys  don't buy it.

"I don't think it's plausible that there's any alloys that we can't identify," Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, told Live Science. "My opinion? That's quite impossible."

Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They're very common  in fact, Sachleben said, they're more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are  and very well understood. Brass is an alloy. So is steel. Even most naturally occurring gold on Earth is an alloy made up of elemental gold mixed with other metals, like silver or copper. [8 Important Elements You've Never Heard Of]

"There are databases of all known phases [of metal], including alloys," May Nyman, a professor in the Oregon State University Department of Chemistry, told Live Science. Those databases include straightforward techniques for identifying metal alloys.

If an unknown alloy appeared, Nyman said it would be relatively simple to figure out what it was made of.

For crystalline alloys  those in which the mixture of atoms forms an ordered structure  researchers use a technique called X-ray diffraction, Nyman said.

"The X-ray's wavelength is about the same size as the distance between the atoms [of crystalline alloys]," Nyman said, "so that means when the X-rays go into a well-ordered material, they diffract [change shape and intensity]  and from that diffraction [pattern] you can get information that tells you the distance between the atoms, what the atoms are, and how well-ordered the atoms are. It tells you all about the arrangement of your atoms."

With noncrystalline, amorphous alloys, the process is a bit different, but not by much.

"These are all very standard techniques in research labs, so if we had such mysterious metals, you could take it to any university where research is done, and they could tell you what are the elements and something about the crystalline phase within a few hours," Nyman said.

Sachleben agreed.

"There are no alloys that are sitting in some warehouse that we cannot figure out what they are. In fact, it's pretty simple, and any reasonably good metallurgical grad student can do it for you," he said.

Nyman said that if metals did fall from some mysterious aircraft, some forensics experiments would quickly answer a lot of questions about that aircraft. [UFO Mysteries: These Sightings Have Never Been Solved]

"How has the hunk of metal changed?" Nyman said. "From my scientist's perspective, that's the kind of question I'd be asking. Maybe, if it has to do with world politics, and we want to know where the metal comes from, maybe there's some analysis that can lead you to where it was mined, or what country uses that particular alloy, that kind of thing."

If the aircraft had come from space, Nyman said, that travel would leave telltale signs in the metal as well, in the form of spacefaring debris and ionization (changes to the electrical charges of the substance's atoms).

Even if a chunk of alloy that hadn't been seen before did fall to Earth from outer space, both Nyman and Sachleben agreed that it wouldn't necessarily have come from an alien craft. In fact, Sachleben said, alloys strike the planet regularly  space-traversing alloys like those found in fairly common nickel-iron meteorites  leaving behind telltale signs. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was even identified by the rare-Earth metals it left behind in certain geological formations in Earth's crust.

It's important to point out that while Blumenthal did go on cable news and say the alloys were unidentifiable mysteries, helping to spur speculation, that's not what his article actually stated. Here's the full quote from Saturday's piece:

"The company [involved in the DOD research] modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that  program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft."

From this statement, there's no actual sign that there's anything unusual about the alloys themselves. All the Times wrote was that the DOD researchers tasked with finding weird UFO stuff collected some metal, interviewed some people who had claimed startling experiences with it, and decided that it was UFO-related.

In an email to Live Science regarding these metal alloys, Blumenthal said, "We printed as much as we were able to verify. Can't go beyond that."

As for whether there's an explanation at least for the metals themselves, Sachleben said: "There's not as many mysteries in science as people like to think. It's not like we know everything  we don't know everything. But most things we know enough about to know what we don't know."

Originally published on Live Science.
A biohybrid sperm microrobot might one day deliver anti-cancer drugs to tumors in the female reproductive tract, according to a new paper from Germany.

The sci-fi-sounding microbot, which was described in a December article in the journal ACS Nano, consists of sperm from a bull combined with a plastic, 3D-printed microstructure covered with an iron-based coating.

This coating allows the researchers to magnetically steer the robot to the target. Then, when the biohybrid bot hits the tumor, four arms on the microstructure automatically bend, releasing the sperm cell, which penetrates the cancer cells and delivers its medical cargo. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

The technology is still far from being ready for practical applications  so far, it's only been tested in lab dishes, and much more research is needed before it could be tried in humans.

Though "spermbots" may seem like an odd way to deliver drugs to certain locations in the body, the researchers said that sperm are a natural fit for the job.

"We decided to work with sperm cells because they have the ability to naturally swim in the female reproductive tract," said study co-author Mariana Medina-Sanchez, leader of the Micro- and Nanobiomedical Engineering Group at the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Dresden, Germany.

"The sperm has the natural ability to fuse with the [egg cell], and this is very beneficial," Medina-Sanchez told Live Science. "It can do the same thing with the cancer cells and release the drug inside the cancer cells, making the treatment much more effective."

In the study, the researchers loaded a cervical cancer drug, called doxorubicin hydrochloride into the head of the sperm cell, Medina Sanchez said. The sperm head protects the drug from the surrounding environment, she said. In addition, the drug doesnt affect the sperm cells in the same way that it affects cancer cells, so the sperm cell stays healthy and is able to move around, she said.

The drug-carrying spermbots were tested in lab dishes, where they were tasked with delivering the drugs to cervical cancer cells.

The researchers said that they hope to move to animal experiments in the future. And at some point, they will have to replace the bull sperm with a human sperm, Medina-Sanchez said.

From lab cells to humans?

Though the lab-based experiments were successful  the spermbot was guided to the cervical cancer cells, where the sperm was released and delivered the cancer drug  there are still some challenges that the researchers are trying to address, Medina-Sanchez said.

For example, the researchers "want to make the [iron-coated plastic] structure biodegradable so that it dissolves after the release of the drug, Medina-Sanchez said. This adjustment would help "to avoid immunological and other reactions these structures could possibly cause."

At the moment, the researchers can only guide individual sperm cells. But for practical applications, they would need to be able to steer multiple sperm cells at the same time to deliver the right dose of the drug, since a single sperm cell can only hold so much. [Sexy Swimmers: 7 Facts About Sperm]

In practical applications, the sperm cells could be injected into the female reproductive system with a catheter  a method that's similar to artificial insemination, Medina-Sanchez said. The spermbots would still need to be guided magnetically, but the magnetic field used to control the bot is very weak and has no effect on the human body, she added.

In the study, the spermbots were tested using cervical cancer cells. But the researchers "want to use it for all types of gynecological cancers  ovarian cancer, cancer of the uterus, cervical cancer," Medina-Sanchez said.

Some further technological advances will be needed for the technology to make it into hospitals. Current imaging techniques are not precise enough to allow doctors to monitor in real time the motion of the sperm cyborgs inside the body, which is something they would want to do in clinical settings, she said.

"Ideally, we would like to visualize [the spermbots] in real-time in the deep tissue  to really bring [the bots] to the target position," Medina-Sanchez said. "But currently, the spatial resolution of magnetic resonance or ultrasound imaging systems is only about 100 micrometers."

The sperms head is 5 by 10 micrometers in size, Medina Sanchez said, and the 3D-printed microstructure is only slightly bigger, which means that the sperm cyborg would be invisible to current systems.

Originally published on Live Science.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 21 2017

Consent Decree Forces Croman to Pay $8 Million in Restitution to Tenants  Largest-Ever Monetary Settlement with an Individual Landlord.

New York, NY - December 21, 2017 - Today, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced an unprecedented settlement with Steven Croman, a major New York City landlord, for engaging in illegal conduct, including harassment, coercion, and fraud, to force rent-regulated tenants out of their apartments and convert their apartments into highly profitable market-rate units.

The consent decree requires Croman to pay $8 million into a Tenant Restitution Fund  the largest-ever monetary settlement with an individual landlord. The settlement also requires over 100 Croman residential properties to be run by a new, independent management company with no ties to Croman, for five years  the longest-ever term for independent management in OAG history. Moreover, the settlement requires seven years of a monitor who will oversee compliance with the terms of the consent decree and provide regular reporting to the Attorney General  the longest-ever monitorship required in any tenant harassment case.

Croman is currently serving one year in jail and paid a separate $5 million settlement as a result of criminal charges brought by Attorney General Schneiderman.

Over and over again, Steven Croman acted as though he was above the law, putting profits before his tenants safety and wellbeing. Earlier this year, we put Mr. Croman in jail for an elaborate scheme that was intended to push out rent-regulated tenants. And today, were ensuring tenants get the restitution and protections they deserve  including the largest-ever settlement with an individual landlord, and unprecedented independent management and monitoring at his properties, said Attorney General Schneiderman. New Yorkers are already struggling with high rents. We have zero tolerance for those who try to boost their bottom line by disregarding the welfare of their tenants. My office will continue to ensure that all landlords play by the rules, and aggressively pursue anyone who doesnt to the fullest extent of the law.

Eligible tenants will be able to apply for restitution; the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) will announce details of a claims process early next year. Tenants will be eligible for restitution if they are or were a tenant in a rent-stabilized or rent-controlled apartment owned by Croman between July 1, 2011 and the date of the agreement (December 20, 2017); they received a buyout of less than $20,000, not including any amount that purported to cover rent or arrears; and no other tenant in their apartment received money from the restitution fund.

The Attorney Generals office will approve both the independent management company and the monitor. The independent management company will oversee operations and institute new policies at the Croman properties to ensure full compliance with the law and correction of all past violations. It will also post a comprehensive set of Tenants Rights in every building it manages. The monitor will provide quarterly reports to the Attorney General, which will include at minimum any complaints received from tenants and actions taken; the total number of rent-regulated apartments that became deregulated during the reporting period, the reason for deregulation, and all supporting documents; and the monitors assessment as to whether Croman has complied with the consent decree.

The consent decree also ensures that Anthony Falconite  another defendant in the Attorney Generals lawsuit whom Croman allegedly referred to as his secret weapon in intimidating rent-regulated tenants  will have no interaction with any Croman tenants.

In addition to the $8 million Tenant Restitution Fund, Croman is responsible for covering the costs of the management company and monitor, as well as any outstanding government fines.

In May 2016, Attorney General Schneiderman filed a civil lawsuit against Croman and Falconite for allegedly engaging in illegal, fraudulent, and deceptive conduct in connection with Cromans real-estate business. The lawsuit alleged that Croman directed an illegal operation that wielded harassment, coercion, and fraud to force rent-regulated tenants out of their apartments and convert their apartments into highly profitable market-rate units. The lawsuit further alleged that Croman deployed Falconite, a former New York City police officer, to frighten and intimidate rent-regulated tenants into surrendering their apartments.

The civil lawsuit, which was the product of an independent investigation, alleged that Croman used the following illegal tactics to push working-class and low-income tenants out of their homes:

Harassing tenants into surrendering their apartmentsand their rights under the rent-stabilization lawsin exchange for buyouts, which are often no more than a few thousand dollars or a few months of free rent.

Incentivizing his employees and agents to obtain buyouts, at the expense of their other responsibilities. Employees allegedly referred to rent-regulated tenants as targets and competed with each other to obtain the most buyouts. In one characteristic exchange, Falconite allegedly wrote to a property manager that obtaining buyouts was a team sport, to which the property manager responded, I know that!! Whos our next target? We have to start lining them up!!!

Pressuring tenants into surrendering their apartments by repeatedly filing baseless lawsuits against them. In internal emails, company employees acknowledged that such lawsuits would aggravate tenants or pressure them to accept buyouts. In some cases, Cromans employees allegedly created a false record for litigation by refusing to acknowledge receipt of tenants rent checks and then suing them for unpaid renta deliberate fraud upon the court.

The lawsuit also alleged that Falconite, whom Croman referred to as his secret weapon, used deceptive and frightening tactics to intimidate rent-regulated tenants, including using false pretenses to gain access to tenants apartments, often posing as a repairman or building manager.

In addition, the lawsuit alleged that Croman, in his rush to flip vacant rent-regulated apartments into high-rent units, presided over a disturbing pattern of illegal and hazardous construction. The lawsuit alleged numerous examples of illegal construction, including the following:

On at least 175 occasions, Cromans companies allegedly performed construction without obtaining permits.

Croman allegedly regularly directed his employees to flout stop-work orders and conceal unlawful construction from Department of Building inspectors.

Croman allegedly filed false documents with the Department of Buildings on dozens of occasions in an attempt to avoid stricter oversight of his construction projects and elude tenant protection measures.

Croman and his companies allegedly violated lead-safety laws repeatedly, exposing numerous tenants to lead-contaminated dust. On more than 20 occasions, the Department of Health (DOH) found impermissibly high levels of lead dust in Cromans buildings, including levels up to 65 times the legal threshold.

Croman allegedly defied DOH orders to address the lead hazards. On one occasion, after DOH ordered Croman to stop all work and begin lead-abatement measures, Croman directed his property manager to postpone the lead abatement so that the construction could continue.

Cromans alleged illegal construction had devastating consequences for tenants. As alleged in the lawsuit, DOH identified lead-dust hazards in the apartment of a tenant who cared for her young grandsons, ages three and nine, both of whom were disabled. The tenant had to move her grandsons out of the apartment because of the dangers posed by the construction and lead dust and was forced to sue Croman to obtain repairs.

In addition, Croman allegedly repeatedly defied court orders to make repairs and address intolerable living conditions. The lawsuit alleged that throughout his portfolio, Croman had been issued hundreds of hazardous and immediately hazardous violations, which he had failed to correct. The suit further alleged that, on six occasions, the city has sued Cromans companies for falsely certifying that they corrected violations on his properties.

In October, Croman was sentenced to a year in jail and paid a $5 million tax settlement following separate criminal charges brought by Attorney General Schneiderman for fraudulent refinancing of loans and tax fraud. Rarely, if ever, has a landlord been sentenced to serve time in jail for engaging in these practices.

Earlier this year, the Attorney General Schneiderman formally introduced new legislation aimed at holding the citys most unscrupulous landlords criminally accountable for Harassment of a Rent Regulated Tenant. Current state law demands prosecutors reach an inexplicably high bar in order to criminally charge landlords with that crimewhich is why in the past twenty years, not a single landlord has ever been convicted of the crime of Harassment of a Rent Regulated Tenant.

The Attorney Generals legislation would set a more reasonable standard that removes the need to prove physical injury to a tenant, and opens the door to Harassment of a Rent Regulated Tenant prosecutions arising out of more commonplace and insidious tactics, such as turning off heat and hot water, exposing young children to lead dust, and making rent-stabilized buildings deliberately uninhabitable for current tenants and their families.

The Attorney General has taken a number of other steps to combat tenant harassment and illegal practices by landlords across New York City, including:

The Attorney General would like to thank the NYC Department of Buildings, NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, NYC Department of Health, and NY State Homes and Community Renewal for vital assistance in this case.

This case is being handled by Special Counsel Jessica Attie, Senior Advisor & Special Counsel Laura Wood, Assistant Attorneys General Diane Lucas, Anjana Samant, and Ajay Saini, under the supervision of Civil Rights Bureau Chief Lourdes Rosado and Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice Alvin Bragg. Consumer Frauds & Protection Bureau Chief Jane Azia, Real Estate Finance Bureau Chief Brent Meltzer, Senior Enforcement Counsel Rachel Hannaford, Civil Enforcement Section Chief Mayur Saxena, Special Counsel Nicholas Suplina, and researcher Meredith McCarron contributed to the case. The case was investigated by Investigators Luis Carter, Angel Laporte, Brian Metz, Edward Ortiz, Anna Ospanova, and Elsa Rojas under the supervision of Deputy Chief Investigator John McManus and Chief Investigator Dominick Zarrella.

State Senator Brad Hoylman said, For the better part of a decade, Steven Croman ran a company predicated on the persistent and systematic harassment of tenants, particularly in my district. Attorney General Eric Schneidermans settlement, which includes an $8 million restitution fund and a building monitor, provides deserved justice to tenants and sends a powerful message to other would-be Cromans: respect rent-regulated tenants or face the consequences. Im grateful to Attorney General Schneiderman for his efforts on behalf of tenants and for giving my constituents a holiday season to remember.

A staggering number of New Yorkers have suffered at the hands of Steven Croman, said Senator Liz Krueger. Today those tenants can take some satisfaction in knowing that justice has caught up with one of our city's worst landlords. This settlement will go a long way to protecting Croman tenants and making them whole, and it will send a chill down the spines of other unscrupulous landlords. I commend Attorney General Schneiderman, and I call on my colleagues in the Legislature to give him the tools he needs to expand the fight for tenants rights by passing his Tenant Protection Act, which I carry in the Senate.
Local News, Crime, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 21 2017

AG Seeks Refunds For As Many As 1,100 Consumers Who Were Allegedly Charged As Much as $4,000 Apiece By Victory Mitsubishi of Larchmont and Victory Suzuki of the Bronx.

New York, NY - December 21, 2017 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a lawsuit against Victory Motors, LLC (Victory Mitsubishi of Larchmont) and Victory Auto Group, LLC (Victory Suzuki of the Bronx) alleging that the car dealerships deceptively charged as many as 1,100 consumers for an unwanted and bogus anti-theft product that cost up to $4,000 per consumer. The lawsuit alleges that this item, known as an after-sale product, was often added onto the final cost of the vehicle without the consumers knowledge or consent, after the customer had agreed upon the purchase price of a vehicle but before the sale transaction was finalized. Since 2015, Attorney General Schneiderman has obtained approximately $19 million in restitution and penalties from auto dealers; nearly 29,000 consumers were eligible for restitution under these settlements.

Consumers shouldnt have to worry about being scammed by auto dealers when they buy a car, said Attorney General Schneiderman. We will continue to protect New Yorkers  and take on those who seek to rip off consumers with hidden and unwanted fees and products.

In April 2015, the Attorney General received a complaint from a consumer who, after purchasing a vehicle from Victory Mitsubishi in Larchmont, noticed that there was a puzzling charge of $1,995 labeled Etch on the bill of sale. When contacted by the Attorney Generals office, the dealership allegedly explained that the charge was for a glass etch product, a security add-on in which a serial number, often the vehicle identification number (VIN), is etched onto each of the vehicles windows. However, the consumer said that she had not been made aware by the dealership that she was purchasing the etch product, and that had she been made aware, she would have declined to purchase it. The dealership made a full refund.

Concerned that other consumers could have been charged for the product without their knowledge or consent, the Attorney General then launched an investigation that found that both Victory Mitsubishi and Victory Suzuki of the Bronx  another dealership with common ownership  had allegedly charged as many as 1,100 consumers for a product called the Etch Guarantee, which is intended to serve as a theft deterrent.

Consumers were charged amounts ranging from $129 to $3,998. In many instances, the two Victory dealerships allegedly added this fee onto the final sales price without the knowledge or consent of the consumers. As a result, the final price paid by the consumers was inflated by the amount charged for the after-sale product.

Furthermore, the two Victory dealerships allegedly failed to clearly disclose the nature of the after-sale product to their customers. The Vehicle Replacement Discount Allowance, also known as the Etch Guarantee, is supposed to include a permanent etch or engraving of the vehicles VIN, or a registered serial number, on the windows of the vehicle  supposedly to deter theft. However, in many instances, the Victory dealerships did not actually etch the VIN onto the windows of the vehicles.

Consumers were also allegedly led to believe that there would be a guaranteed credit of up to either $2,500 or $5,000 towards the purchase of a new vehicle should their car be stolen. However, there were numerous conditions and limitations  such as that the credit would not be applied if it eliminated the dealerships profit on the sale  which rendered the credit illusory.

The Attorney General commenced the lawsuit because the Victory dealerships  although they have ceased selling the Etch Guarantee  failed to offer full refunds to the other consumers who had been charged (i.e., the consumers not involved in the original complaint). The lawsuit seeks to permanently stop the dealerships from engaging in deceptive business practices and to obtain full refunds for the consumers. It also seeks an accounting to determine the precise number of consumers who were charged.

This lawsuit is part of the Attorney Generals wider initiative to end the practice engaged in by some auto dealers of jamming, or unlawfully charging consumers for products and services without their knowledge or consent.

Since 2015, Attorney General Schneiderman has reached 14 settlements with auto dealerships, including over $19 million in total restitution and penalties; nearly 29,000 consumers were eligible for restitution under these settlements. For example, in October 2017, the Attorney General obtained two settlements with auto dealers that returned $900,000 in restitution and $135,000 in penalties.
The Plainview Water District was a case study in mismanagement run like a bad family business and not as a public utility. Everywhere the auditors looked they found fiscal, administrative, and control deficiencies, said Comptroller George Maragos. We are pleased that the new superintendent has accepted the audit recommendations and seems eager to implement changes.

Major findings of the audit included:

In both 2015 and 2016, the budgets included tax levies that were 6% higher than the previous years budget, which exceeded the States 2% tax levy cap. The resulting unexpended surplus was not used to lower rates.

Commissioner compensation was among the highest for water districts in Nassau County by more than double to comparable water districts such as Port Washington and Glenwood.

Supplemental benefits such as dental, optical, AFLAC and life insurance averaged almost $6,000 per fulltime employee, per year, an extraordinary amount. Total employee benefits averaged $35,000 per full time employee per year.

During the two year audit period there was 162 million gallons of unaccounted water loss unbeknownst to the District.

During the two year audit period the District employed four full-time and seven part-time employees, approximately 40% of staff, who were immediate family members of two Commissioners and two former Commissioners, the former Superintendent and the Clerk to the Board.

A lack of managerial oversight allowed the Clerk to the Board to grant excess leave to the spouse, and to process unapproved leave requests, including 55 hours of leave for herself.

Approximately $7,000 in payouts to three employees upon their separation from the District were not adequately documented or explained, and were not in accordance with District policies or an employment agreement.

The Districts records lacked documentation to substantiate the validity and appropriateness of travel and conference expenses totaling over $44,000. None of the reimbursement claims submitted used a standardized travel claim voucher, which violated the Districts own policy.

Late payment fees were not applied in accordance with Town Law and District policy. In addition, waivers of late fee penalties were not approved by the Board or documented in Board Minutes.
According to detectives, a school security officer discovered that the walls, doors and windows in the rear of Syosset High School  70 Southwoods Road, had been sprayed painted with anti-Semitic writings that included swastikas. Also discovered written in various colors of spray paint were MS13 and other profanities . The incident occurred between the hours of 2:00 am and 4:00 am.
Local News, Health & Wellness, Politics

By Chris Boyle Published: December 21 2017

Eight New York Members of Congress Voice Support for CHIP, DSH, and Community Health Centers.

Long Island, NY - December 21, 2017 - Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) led a bipartisan delegation of eight New York Members of Congress in authoring a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urging full funding of the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Community Health Centers (CHC), and a delay in the implementation of Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) cuts.

These essential programs provide millions of children, veterans, and individuals with the health care services they need, Congressman Zeldin said. In New York alone, failure to support these programs could mean the loss of health insurance for 300,000 New York children, $800 million dollars less for safety net hospitals, and the possible elimination of care for the nearly 2 million New Yorkers who depend on Community Health Centers. On behalf of the millions of New Yorkers who rely on these vital programs, my New York colleagues and I urge full funding.

This November, the House passed the CHAMPIONING HEALTHY KIDS Act (H.R. 3922), which included a 5-year reauthorization of CHIP, 2-year reauthorization of Community Health Center funding, and the elimination of the Affordable Care Act mandated DSH reductions. The Senate has not passed that legislation yet. This letter urges funding for these programs to be included as the House considers another short-term spending measure to fund the government through the end of the year, which is expected to be voted on later this week.

Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) was joined by Representatives Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY-18), Peter King (R, NY-2), Thomas Suozzi (D, NY-3), John Katko (R, NY-24), Elise Stefanik (R, NY-21), Dan Donovan (R, NY-11), and Kathleen Rice (D, NY-4) in sending this letter.

A PDF of the signed letter is available here

Full text of the letter is as follows:

Dear Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi,

As Congress continues to negotiate end-of-the-year legislative items, we wish to call your attention to three issues in particular, Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding, Community Health Center (CHC) funding and Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payment reductions. Each of these issues must be addressed in a bipartisan fashion before the end of this year in order to ensure essential care and services go uninterrupted. Without meaningful action on all three of these matters, countless New Yorkers and Americans across the nation will be negatively and unfairly impacted.

Community Health Centers:

Community Health Centers serve over 27 million individuals across the country, including over 300,000 of our nations veterans. In our home state of New York, over 60 CHC facilities provide services for roughly 2 million New York State residents. The Community Health Center Fund authorized by Congress represents 70% of CHC funding, which expired earlier this year. Without knowing whether funding will be renewed, these facilities face significant financial hardships and could cause programs to scale back the services they provide, and in some instances, staff reductions and facility closures are also being considered. In order to ensure timely funding, we respectfully request that funding for Federally Qualified Community Health Centers for a period of at least two years be passed into law before the end of the year.

Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funding:

In New York, safety net hospitals across the state rely upon Medicaid DSH funding. If the current Medicaid DSH cuts are not delayed, New York State safety net hospitals stand to see, on average, a 20%, or roughly $800 million cut in funding for 2018 and 2019. Without action on this issue, some of the nations most vulnerable populations will be unnecessarily impacted, and hospitals will be required, once again, to do more with less. To remediate this issue, we request a delay of at least two years be considered to ensure services to patients go uninterrupted.

Childrens Health Insurance Program:

The Childrens Health Insurance Program has been an enormously successful program responsible for dramatically reducing the volume of uninsured children across the nation. In New York State alone, over 300,000 children receive insurance through this vital program, however, the authorization for this has also expired. Congress must take immediate action in order to ensure continuous coverage for the roughly 9 million children benefiting from this program nationwide. We request that a 5 year extension of CHIP be included in any year-end measure to ensure our nations children receive the best care possible.
Nature & Weather, Local News, Health & Wellness, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 21 2017

Closes Loophole in Latest Step In Fight to Improve Water Quality on Long Island.

Mineola, NY - December 21, 2017 - Executive Steve Bellone today signed legislation banning the continued installation of cesspools that have been identified as a primary source of nitrogen pollution that has degraded water quality throughout Suffolk County, contributing to harmful algae blooms, beach closures and fish kills. Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today signed legislation banning the continued installation of cesspools that have been identified as a primary source of nitrogen pollution that has degraded water quality throughout Suffolk County, contributing to harmful algae blooms, beach closures and fish kills.

Today marks another historic step forward in our ongoing effort to reverse decades of nitrogen pollution that has degraded water quality in our lakes, bays and harbors, and it is a step that is long overdue, said County Executive Bellone. It is fairly unusual for the local governments, environmental groups and the regions largest builders group to agree on the importance of tightening up outdated regulations to protect water quality, but that is exactly what happened in this instance. This inclusive, collaborative approach is making a huge difference in our efforts to reduce decades of nitrogen pollution.

The County Executive was joined by Suffolk County Legislators, civic leaders, environmentalists, and representatives of the building industry for a bill signing ceremony overlooking Lake Ronkonkoma.

The use of cesspools in new construction has been banned in Suffolk County since 1973, when a requirement for the addition of a septic tank was added, but the County Sanitary Code did not require that homeowners add a septic tank when replacing an existing cesspool, making it legal to install a new cesspool to replace an existing one. But by now closing this loophole, it will advance the water quality efforts undertaken by Suffolk County and set the stage for the evolution away from the use of non-performing cesspools and septic systems to the use of new, state-of-the-art technologies that reduce nitrogen in residential wastewater by up to 70 percent.

In addition to banning the installation of new cesspools, the legislation approved by the Suffolk County Legislature on December 5 requires the wastewater industry to provide data regarding system replacement and pumping activities to the Department of Health Services beginning July 1, 2018, requires permits for replacement of existing systems effective July 1, 2019. The legislation also requires business properties with grandfathered' non-conforming wastewater flows to install nitrogen reducing innovative-advanced systems if they make significant changes to the use of the property.

Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hann said: For over 40 years, cesspools have been prohibited for new construction within the County, however, with the continued practice of grandfathering inadequate sanitary systems that are largely comprised of cesspools, we never advanced past that primitive technology. With todays action I would like to say that we, as a county, have adopted the policies necessary to adequately address our regions nitrogen pollution epidemic, but in reality this gets us closer to where we should have been in the decades following 1973, said Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn a co-sponsor of the Article 6 revisions and chairwomen of the Legislatures Environment, Planning and Agriculture Committee. I thank the County Executive and my colleagues for taking these first steps toward correcting policies that have degraded our water quality and look forward to continuing the process of finally bringing Suffolk Countys sanitary code into the 21st century.

Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski said: These changes to our sanitary code represent the hard work of many including the County Executive and his staff, Suffolk County Economic Development and Planning and the Department of Health Services. This is another big step towards cleaner water through the use of advanced wastewater technologies and I want to thank everyone who was involved in developing these important changes.

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said: Today we take an important step toward eliminating the use of cesspools, and upgrading onsite septic systems throughout the county. These revisions represent more decisive action to clean up our water. This advance will be helpful in attracting much-needed funding for the enormous and critical task of reversing the destructive effects of contamination in our bays, creeks and harbors. Thats why I am proud and grateful to be part of a team that has finally stepped up to take action to revise the Sanitary Codes woefully outdated wastewater regulations. And I am thankful to County Executive Steve Bellone and Deputy County Executive Peter Scully for their leadership.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine said: Closing this loophole is an important step in the continuing effort to protect our groundwater. Living on an island, one of our most vital resources is our water - both groundwater and surface water. For far too long we have seen them degrade because of high nitrogen levels. Brookhaven has been a leader in implementing new, stringent standards to offer greater protection, long-term conservation and water quality for the benefit of current and future generations.

Both a Working Group comprised of County Legislators, town planners and engineers, representatives of environmental organizations  as well as the Long Builders Institute recommended the Sanitary Code changes. The County Board of Health and Council on Environmental Quality unanimously approved the changes.

The changes are the first in what is expected to be a series of updates of the County Sanitary Code over the next several years as county officials consider whether to put in place policies that require new nitrogen reducing system in new construction projects, require installation of the new systems when a cesspool or septic system fails and needs to be replaced, or upon sale of a property.

Over the past three years, the County has instituted a pilot program to test the new technologies, using a lottery system to select homeowners willing to have a donated system installed to demonstrate system performance. Under the pilot program, a total of 14 different technologies have been installed at 39 homes throughout the County. Four have been provisionally approved for use in the County after demonstrating six months of acceptable operating data.

In July, the County launched its voluntary Septic Improvement Program, the first of its kind in New York State, which provides grants and low interest financing to make the replacement of cesspools and septic systems with new IA technologies affordable for homeowners who choose to upgrade their systems. Over the first five months, nearly 850 homeowners have registered for the program, 228 have completed applications, and 160 have been awarded grants and are moving towards installation of the new systems.

In addition, Suffolk County was the first in the state to apply to for funding from New York States newly created, $75 million Septic System Replacement Fund, and will use the funding to expand its efforts to see the new technologies installed throughout the County.

Richard Amper, Executive Director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, said: Todays is a huge step toward ending pollution from cesspools and septic systems  Suffolks number one threat to clean water. Now, were not just complaining  were doing something about it.

Kevin McDonald, conservation finance and policy director for The Nature Conservancy on Long Island, said: improving water quality on Long Island as our health, economy and quality of life are all inextricably linked to our waters, said Kevin McDonald, conservation finance and policy director for The Nature Conservancy on Long Island. There is more work to do but passage of this bill means less nitrogen pollution in our water, and more resilient, healthy bays and people  for generations to come.

Mitchell H. Pally, Chief Executive Officer of the Long Island Builders Institute, said: The Long Island Builders Institute is very pleased to stand here today with our friends from the environmental community to thank County Executive Bellone and the members of the County Legislature for their passage of this legislation which will be the first step in combating the nitrogen problem into our waterways. We look forward to making continuing progress in the months and years ahead on this most important issue for Suffolk County.

Bob DeLuca, President of Group for the East End, said: The Sanitary Code is the most important set of standards governing the proper disposal of Suffolk Countys wastewater, and these recent reforms establish a new framework for improved treatment and tracking of sewage, as well as improving the standards for septic system replacement. The restoration of our local waters requires actions on many fronts, but few are more important than updating the fundamental rules under which all septic systems are reviewed, approved and monitored over time.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 21 2017

Jose Medina, 76, and Gisela Medina, 82, were last seen leaving their Florida residence for a destination in Bethpage.

NCPD are seeking Jose Medina, 76, and Gisela Medina, 82, two Missing Vulnerable Adults from Florida.

UPDATE - December 22, 2017 - Police report that Jose Medina and Gisela Medina have both been located.

Below is the original report.

Nassau County, NY - December 21, 2017 - The Missing Persons Squad is investigating two (2) Missing Vulnerable Adults that occurred on Sunday, December 17, 2017 at 9:00 am in Palm Bay, Florida.

According to detectives, Jose Medina, 76, and Gisela Medina, 82, were last seen leaving their Florida residence. Jose Medina is described as a male, Hispanic and 59 tall. Gisela Medina is described as a female, white. No further description is available. Jose and Gisela are traveling in a silver Hyundai, Florida Registration PRERWIN. Their destination is Bethpage
by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 21, 2017

Whether you like their shows or not, you cannot accuse the folks at FX of not going out on the edge with whatever they come up with.

Depending on your point of view, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Which is why it should surprise no one that the TV Blogs pick for best new show of 2017 would also be an FX series -- Taboo -- just a day after naming another FX series, Fargo, as the years worst.

Taboo premiered way back on January 7 and it held on for almost an entire year to emerge as my favorite of all the new shows I reviewed here in 2017.

This pungent series, which took place in some of the gamier sections of 1814 London, concerned itself with the arrival back in England of a mysterious figure named James Delaney and his apparent quest to reclaim a family fortune after a long absence.

advertisement advertisement

Delaney was played with extraordinary commitment by Tom Hardy in a performance that still stands as the best of the year. In addition to Hardy, this show's best feature was its ability to re-create a world I had never seen before and make it real.

Elsewhere on TV, the shows that came in for the most praise here this year came in a wide range of forms and aired on a variety of networks.

The best made-for-TV movie was so engrossing that it had no real competition. It was The Wizard of Lies, HBOs Bernie Madoff movie with Robert de Niro as Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, Ruth. Both portrayals were uncanny.

Another HBO show, Crashing, starring comedian Pete Holmes, was one of the best comedies of the year. So was TruTV's I'm Sorry, which introduced the world to a bold new comic talent, Andrea Savage.

I even liked Downward Dog on ABC, the sitcom about a dog whose thoughts served as narration for the show. This show was reportedly cancelled, which was a doggone shame.

My pick for best comedy of 2017, however, was Brockmire, the Hank Azaria comedy on IFC in which he played a washed-up sportscaster who couldnt find work for several years in the United States because he had a drunken, profane meltdown on the air one day.

Other standout shows this year included some unlikely candidates. One of them was Sun Records, a drama with music about the early days of rock n roll in Memphis. Watching this show was one of the year's happier experiences.

Another show I would not have predicted would be reviewed favorably here was Midnight, Texas on NBC -- a summer drama about an eerie Texas town. For reasons that are still difficult to explain, this show worked for me, even though so many other shows of its type over the years located in other eerie TV towns did not.

Call me an old softie, but I also liked Fox's new Love Connection introduced last summer. Host Andy Cohen applied just the right touch to this one, and he was one of the key reasons why it worked so well.

In the realm of non-fiction content on TV this year, I was fascinated by The Putin Interviews, Oliver Stone's multipart interview series with the Russian leader that was seen on Showtime.

This show was so revealing that it made me realize that our news media here in the United States barely scratches the surface when it comes to covering other parts of the world. Theyre too busy producing meaningless argument shows every night.

Two documentaries earned their way onto the years-best list -- The Vietnam War on PBS from co-directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and Brillo Box (3 Off) on HBO from director Lisanne Skyler. The "Vietnam War" documentary was 18 hours long. Brillo Box was 40 minutes. They couldnt have been more different, except for one thing -- they both worked perfectly.

The most memorable day in TV in 2017 was probably July 20, the day O.J. Simpsons parole hearing in Nevada was broadcast live and a great swath of the country stopped what they were doing to watch it. This parole hearing was great television. It even had a mildly surprising ending: His parole was granted.
by Melynda Fuller , December 21, 2017

2017 has been a rough year for the press. With constant attacks by the Trump administration, the slightest mistake that would once require a quick correction can turn into a contentious political debacle. (The president's frequent claim of "fake news" is most often leveled at stories reporting truths he cannot abide.)

But while the president has called the media the enemy of the American people, the media is ready to steel itself against these attacks, beginning with some changes to the newsroom. Fact checks of the Presidents speeches and comments have become regular, and alarming online stories.

The Washington Post is tracking every false or misleading claim by President Trump. As of November, 14, the total stands at 1,628 claims in 298 days, or an average of 5.5 claims a day.

advertisement advertisement

Recently, The New York Times' Washington D.C. Bureau introduced a new position at its headquarters: a fact checker.

Fact checkers, the unsung heroes of journalism, offer a safety net when it comes to human error in reporting. But they are rarely used in breaking news or in newsrooms. Which is why this new appointment is something of a revelation.

The importance of fact checking has become a focus in journalism over the past few years. The Poynter Institute launched its International Fact-Checking Network in 2015 to support initiatives across media that insure accuracy and best practices.

In just a few months, the new fact checker for The New York Timess, a former intern named Emily Cochrane, has become an indispensable part of the newsroom.

While traditional fact checkers work directly with sources to verify the information being shared by a journalist, Cochrane works in real time with the journalists, checking their work for accuracy as they write, sometimes providing additional links to pertinent information.

New York Times Washington bureau chief Elizabeth Bumiller stated in a story with Politico that this type of fact checking wouldnt have prevented the slips seen at ABC or CNN this month. But so far, the addition of Cochrane has fortified the bureaus journalistic accuracy.

Other sources for Politico also advocated for higher scrutiny when choosing sources.

Cochranes work is expected to extend to news assistants that work night shifts in the bureau. The New York Times emphasized the position wasnt created in response to the new administrations attacks, but was required because of the sheer volume of news that comes from it.

Whatever the reason, there is an irony to the situation. The presidents repeated attacks on the media may help to improve and galvanize the very industry he hopes to destroy.
by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 21, 2017

Pay TV companies are increasingly worried about password sharing when it comes to streaming apps and platforms of TV networks and other services.

Key question: Should they make logging onto so-called TV Everywhere apps even harder? Maybe. But say goodbye to good consumer experiences. Parks Associates says the TV industrys losses from password sharing are expected to rise to near $10 billion by 2021 from $3.5 billion this year.

If that doesnt say much to you, consider this: Tom Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, said he knew of one channel owner with 30,000 simultaneous streams from a single account.

Taking about your password sharing! Seems more like a successful crowdsourcing deal. TV and cable network owners would say its piracy -- pure and simple.

All this comes as traditional pay TV owners continuing to lose plenty of business due to cord-cutting. Many individual networks see annual subscriber declines from 3% to 3.5% -- due in large part to TV consumers seeking cheaper alternatives, like virtual pay TV providers such as Sling TV, DirecTV, Now, Hulu with Live TV and Playstation Vue.

advertisement advertisement

But we should also include a segment doing other stuff -- free stuff like YouTube, advertising-supported video platforms, and yes, password sharing.

TV networks are now looking for consumers to do a bit more work -- re-entering existing or new passwords more often, not just once a year. Some like ESPN are looking to narrow the number of simultaneous streams -- to three or five -- that focus on specific household members.

Plus, the pay industry has been losing business to advertising-free subscription video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. And that becomes more complicated as well: Dont those services also have password-sharing issues?

According to an HBO spokesman who spoke to Bloomberg, there has been little to no economic impact from password sharing for its streaming platforms.

All this stems from initial TV Everywhere efforts a few years ago when, according to analysts, access to sites was cumbersome to begin with -- that is logging into streaming sites with account numbers, correct IDs and password information.

Want to drive more traditional pay TV customers away from new digital platforms of TV networks? Make it even tougher for TV consumers.

Feel free to share this insight.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, December 21, 2017

In a week that saw two middle-aisle competitors snatch up healthy snack food companies, General Mills yesterday released an upbeat earnings report for its fiscal 2018 second quarter with its 1% year-over gain in the North American retail segment primarily driven by a 7% increase in cereal and 5% growth in its snacks unit in the U.S.

General Mills has been in a prolonged cereal slump, but customers scooped up Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Reese's Puffs and Cocoa Puffs last quarter, helping lift sales for the first time in more than two years, Nathaniel Meyersohn reports for CNN Money. The company said its new chocolate peanut butter flavored Cheerios, which hit stores in October, were a quick hit.

advertisement advertisement

Hey, theyre made with real cocoa and real peanut butter. And have 12 vitamins and minerals.

People are snacking more, GM CEO Jeff Harmening tells the Wall Street Journals Annie Gasparro in an interview, adding that GM believes 30% of cereal in the U.S. is eaten as a snack rather than a meal, up from 10% a decade ago.

Its probably one of the reasons our cereals that taste really good are the ones that growing, he said. Sweeter, classic cereals like Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch are driving General Mills sales, while its Fiber One brand struggles.

But GM also has been sprucing up its organic offerings to expand beyond its packaged foods portfolio, according to a Reuters report published on CNBC.com. The company said on Wednesday it expects initiatives such as the launch of two flavors in its Shreds cereal and adding more fruit to its Original Style Yoplait yogurt to fuel sales growth in the second half of the year.

Overall, U.S. yogurt sales were down 11%.

Continued declines for Yoplait Greek and Yoplait Light products were partially offset by increasing benefits from the new Oui by Yoplait and Yoplait Mix-Ins product launches, according to the company.

As always, executives saw products leap out during the quarter, reports Evan Ramstad for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. A peanut butter-flavored Haagen-Dazs ice cream found an unexpected level of demand in Europe, Harmening said, considered surprising because peanut butter has traditionally been a flavor that only did well in the United States. And Pillsbury Stuffed Waffles, a product that General Mills only sells in 7-Eleven, also made a strong debut.

People are eating healthier and want organic and non-GMO and they want pure ingredients, Harmening said, Ramstad reports. Well, Stuffed Waffles is probably none of those things, but they taste really good and they've got a job to do, which is fill you up in the morning. If you have a job that requires a lot of energy, you need something that fills you.

All in all, revenue rose 2.1% in the second quarter to $4.2 billion and things are looking better for the upcoming months, GM says. It revised its fiscal 2018 full-year organic net sales outlook based on the better than expected year-to-date results. Organic net sales are now expected to range between flat and down 1%, compared to the previous range of a decline of 1 to 2%.

Im pleased with the breadth of the topline improvement we delivered this quarter across our geographies, product platforms, and channels. Were executing better, with stronger innovation, more effective brand building, and better merchandising leading to market share gains in the majority of our key global platforms, crowed CEO Harmening.

Analysts were positive, too, if a bit more reserved.

"I am ready to be cautiously optimistic about General Mills once again, is the top takeaway in the summary for D.M. Martins Researchs analysis for Seeking Alpha. I continue to believe the stock has legs as the return to sales growth seems to be in its early stages, the piece concludes.

Meanwhile, sure its a multinational conglomerate with about 38,000 employees and $15.6 billion in fiscal 2017 net sales on six continents, but no doubt theres a compelling human interest story to be tweeted about every one of them.
by Chuck Martin , December 21, 2017

The adoption of artificial intelligence across multiple industries will drive significant revenue growth during the next decade, according to a new research report.

AI software will increase from $3.2 billion last year to $89.9 billion by 2025, according to the study by Tractica.

Artificial intelligence is already key to how consumer internet companies operate today, allowing them to roll out hyper-personalized services by following an AI-first strategy, stated Aditya Kaul, research director.

The consumer share of total AI revenue will drop from 26% last year to 8% by 2025, according to Kaul. However, its revenue in terms of absolute dollars will increase more than sevenfold during the same timeframe.

Artificial intelligence will create more than 2 million jobs in 2020, according to a recent report by Gartner. It also will eliminate nearly 2 million, with education, healthcare and the public sector seeing growing demand while manufacturing declines.
Some cancers are difficult to beat, even with modern drugs. New research sheds light on how one type of chemotherapy provides a safe haven for tumor cells, boosting cancer recurrence and growth in the long-run. Share on Pinterest In the midst of sleeping cancer cells, something is stirring. Finding the right drug to treat a cancer can be just like searching for a needle in a haystack; cancer cells are particularly good at evading everything that modern medicine throws at them. The hallmark of a good chemotherapy is to stop or slow the growth of a tumor. Many drugs achieve this by activating a pathway called programmed cell suicide, or apoptosis. However, some cancer types are resistant to apoptosis. Other avenues must therefore be pursued to destroy these tumors. An alternative is to damage the DNA genetic code within cancer cells to the point where it is beyond repair. The cells then respond by activating a process called cellular senescence. Discovered more than 50 years ago, senescence is thought to be a state of irreversible growth arrest. This means that the cells stay where they are but do not grow any further. However, senescence turned out not to be the fool-proof method of eradicating cancer that some had hoped. Scientists have now found a missing piece of the puzzle that could explain why senescence might provide a breeding ground for cancer stem cells, leaving the way open for tumors to grow back and spread.

Senescence sends cancer cells to sleep Writing in the journal Frontiers in Oncology last month, Markus Schosserer, Ph.D.  an assistant professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria  explains that senescence is important in embryogenesis, wound healing, and the natural aging process. Senescence can also be harnessed to send cancer cells into a state that can be likened to extended sleep  in that the cells are alive but not dividing. The basic arguments about the role of senescence in cancer protection are as follows: senescent cells have lost the ability to undergo cell division permanently, although they may be metabolically fully active, writes Prof. Schosserer. This would certainly protect individuals carrying a primary cancer from further cancerous growth. However, he adds, its not as simple as that. There is plenty of evidence that senescent cancer cells can secrete molecules that cause inflammation and promote a rich environment for cancer to grow back. Researchers from Germany have now made a surprising discovery: senescence not only helps cancer cells avoid death, but it actually turns them into cancer stem cells.

From sleeping beauties to cancer stem cells Dr. Clemens A. Schmitt  a professor in the Department of Hematology, Oncology, and Tumor Immunology at Charite-University Medical Center and the Max-Delbruck-Center for Molecular Medicine, both in Berlin, Germany  presented the groups breakthrough findings in Nature yesterday. For their recent research, the scientists used lymphoma tumor cells from mice. Lymphoma is a type of cancer that affects white blood cells called lymphocytes. When lymphoma cells were treated with drugs to induce senescence, they stopped dividing, as expected. But they also did something else: the senescent cancer cells started to resemble stem cells. Specifically, the cells started to express genes  such as p21 and p53  that are vital for maintaining stem cell functions, the collective name for which is stemness. The reason why stemness is such a problem in cancer is that cancer stem cells are thought to drive the recurrence and spread, or metastasis, of tumors. But, if senescent cells do not divide, does it matter that they develop stemness? It seems so.

Stemness speeds up cancer growth The scientists did not just find evidence of this senescence-associated stemness in their lymphoma model. They also found it in other cell models of cancer, and, crucially, they detected these cells in tumor samples from patients with primary B-cell chronic leukemia, as well. Next, Prof. Schmitts team released the cancer cells from senescence, using genetic manipulation. Would the cells re-enter the normal process of cell division? Yes: they started to multiply within a few days. And multiply they did  much faster, in fact, than cells that had not undergone senescence. When the team transplanted these previously senescent cancer cells into mice, very few cells were needed to kick-start the development of new lymphoma tumors. These results show that when cells that have acquired stemness escape senescence, they become highly cancerous. But what is the likelihood that cancer cells can outfox the supposedly irreversible state of senescence? The team found evidence that cancer cells can, in fact, escape senescence, identifying significantly more previously senescent stem cells in tumor samples of patients after lymphoma recurrence than were present in the same individuals when they received their initial treatment. So, does this spell bad news for senescence-inducing chemotherapy drugs?
In 2007, Imtiaz Ali gave us a movie that managed to hit home with every single person, irrespective of their differences. We found a bit of Geet and Aditya in each one of us. Well, that's the charm of Imtiaz's films. He brings on-screen what other directors just can't at timemagic.

Not only do we live his stories but he makes the plot so relatable that you can't get over it. Such was the story of 'Jab We Met' and the memories of the film are still like a breath of fresh air.

 Twitter

And after a decade Shahid Kapoor and Imtiaz Ali are all set to recreate that magic once again and we are can't wait to see their final product.

The two have collaborated on a new project and fans obviously are exhilarated with the news. The project goes on the floor as soon as Shahid wraps up Shree Narayan Singh's 'Batti Gull Meter Chalu'. Earlier there were speculations about the news and, finally, Shahid confirmed the same.

 Twitter

The 'Rangoon' actor is excited to work with Imtiaz, who he feels is a phenomenal director. The two worked together when they were kick-starting their careers and their coming back together looks like a perfect choice.

Not much is known about the film, but it is very different from what they both have done in the past. Imtiaz's 'Jab Harry Met Sejal' starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma turned out to be a disaster and this news brings in new hope for his fans.

 Twitter

Currently, Shahid is looking forward to the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Padmavati', whose release has been delayed due to controversies. It would be interesting to see who is cast opposite the actor in Imtiaz's next.
Officials say the device was known as an "unexploded ordnance," or an explosive weapon that did not explode and still posed a...
The U.S. for the first time has acknowledged conducting "multiple ground operations" along with airstrikes at a stepped-up rate of more than two per week in Yemen this year against offshoots of al-Qaida and ISIS.

In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Central Command did not give any details on when and where the ground attacks were carried out in Yemen, but said that more than 120 airstrikes in 2017 have targeted al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and the relatively new group known as ISIS-Yemen, of ISIS-Y.

The more than five-fold increase in airstrikes in Yemen this year, compared to the 21 in 2016, was in line with President Donald Trump's directives to pursue terror groups aggressively, said Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a CentCom spokesman.

Trump "has made it abundantly clear" that AQAP and ISIS-Y sites and facilitators should be targeted, Brown said.

"AQAP is one of the terrorist groups most committed to, and capable of, conducting attacks in America, as assessed by the intelligence and defense communities, while intelligence estimates indicate that ISIS-Y has doubled in size over the past year," CentCom said.

CentCom noted a series of 10 airstrikes in November in the Yemeni governates al-Bayda and Marib, including a strike on Mujahid al-Adani, an AQAP leader, who was killed Nov. 20 in al-Bayda.

Al-Adani, also known as Mohammad Shukri, was a senior leader responsible for planning and conducting terrorist attacks against Yemeni, coalition and tribal security forces, CentCom said.

On Oct. 16, a series of airstrikes against two ISIS-Y training camps in al-Bayda killed more than 50 ISIS-Y combatants, disrupting the organization's attempts to recruit and train new fighters, CentCom said.

"The removal of key facilitators in this region will interrupt AQAP's freedom of movement and likely force the group into a reactionary posture, limiting their ability to challenge Yemeni Security Forces and partnered advances," Lt. Col. Brown said.

"U.S. forces also expanded counterterrorism operations in October to encompass both AQAP and ISIS. This parallel targeting effort is required to prevent ISIS-Y from filling the vacuum left by a diminished AQAP footprint or influence in the region," he said.

The CentCom statement did not go beyond stating that "multiple ground operations" took place in Yemen following a well-known raid in January shortly after Trump took office.

In the first offensive operation personally approved by Trump, a Jan. 28 raid in Yemen resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, the wounding of several other service members and the destruction of an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Trump and White House officials at the time stressed that valuable intelligence was recovered in the raid on an AQAP stronghold.

In that raid, Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens, 36, of Peoria, Illinois, became the first combat death of Trump's presidency.

The stepped-up airstrikes against AQAP and ISIS-Y were occurring during the civil war in Yemen pitting tribal Houthi rebels backed by Iran against the remnants of government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The U.S. has been providing intelligence and aerial refueling to the Saudis. Last week, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley used the charred remnants of a ballistic missile with Iranian markings as a backdrop to call on Iran to stop supporting the Houthis.

The U.S. has also called on the Saudis to ease a blockade to allow food and humanitarian aid to enter Yemen, where UN officials have warned of a spreading famine.

The White House said Wednesday that Trump had called Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on the shootdown Tuesday of a ballistic missile allegedly fired by the Houthis and aimed at the king's al-Yamamah palace.

The attack was "enabled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," the White House said in a statement.

"The leaders discussed the importance of engaging the United Nations to hold Iran accountable for its repeated violations of international law and agreed on the importance of re-invigorating a political process to end the war in Yemen," the statement said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
The U.S. Army on Thursday announced plans to deploy two brigades to Afghanistan this spring.

In separate releases, the service identified the deploying units as the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division; and the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Both brigades are based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

The Army didn't specify how many troops would be affected by the orders.

"To balance the need for transparency with operational security, the Army will not provide specific numbers on deploying operations capabilities such as forces and equipment," Aleah Castrejon, a spokeswoman for the division, said in a brief telephone interview with Military.com.

A brigade typically numbers between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers.

The 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, will replace the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, while the 2nd Infantry Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, will replace 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, according to the Army.

"The 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, is trained and ready for any mission in the Army," Col. Monte L. Rone, the brigade's commander, said in a release. "Our formation of soldiers are fit, inspired, disciplined, and trained. We couldn't do this without our families and owe a special thanks for their willingness to stand by our most precious resource -- The American Soldier."

"The 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division has a proud deployment history in support of operations in Afghanistan," Col. David Zinn, the unit's commander, said in a release. "Our War Horse soldiers are trained, ready, and are honored that the Army has selected our unit for the deployment."

The deployments are part of a regular rotation of forces to support Operation Freedom's Sentinel, so they're unlikely to significantly alter the total number of U.S. service members in country.

While Pentagon officials have been reluctant to disclose the number of U.S. troops on the ground in combat zones, the Defense Manpower Data Center's most recent quarterly report listed 8,992 American service members in Iraq, 1,720 in Syria and 15,298 in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military has ramped up airstrikes in Afghanistan this year.

The Air Force's monthly bombing campaign in the country hit a five-year high in August. That came a few months after it dropped its biggest non-nuclear bomb on the ISIS Khorasan terrorist branch and a few months before unleashing the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to bomb Taliban drug labs.

Even so, the Taliban still control or influence 54 of 407 districts in the country, or 13 percent, according to an October report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.

-- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry.
VAERNES GARRISON, Norway -- The stated goals of the Marine Corps' newest rotational force in Norway are to enhance partnerships with European allies and improve the service's ability to fight in cold weather.

But on a brief visit to the 300-member unit ahead of Christmas, the commandant and the sergeant major of the Marine Corps both described the strategic role the small unit fills -- and the fact that a peacetime mission can be preface to combat if circumstances change.

The Norwegian Home Guard base near Trondheim that houses the Marine rotational force was the first stop on Gen. Robert Neller's annual Christmas tour.

The stop was a new one for the tour. The first Norway rotation, from 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, deployed in January and was replaced by a new unit from 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines, in late August.

Neller emphasized to the Marines that they should remain ready to fight at all times, predicting a "big-ass fight" on the horizon.

"I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming," Neller said. " ... You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence."

Neller later told the Marines that he expects the Pacific and Russia to be the service's operational points of focus as the nation looks beyond the fights in the Middle East that have stretched into the better part of two decades.

The United States' position that Russia presents a major threat was re-emphasized in the new National Security Strategy released Monday. The document discusses Russia's practice of "using information tools" to interfere with other nations' democracies and militant aggression that crosses borders.

"With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrates its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region," the strategy states.

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ronald Green put the Marines' role starkly.

"Just remember why you're here," he said. "They're watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We've got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar."

The rotational force itself is much more circumspect about its role in the region. On a visit to the unit in May, Military.com found troops assigned to the unit had even been instructed not to use the word "Russia" in interviews with the media.

In large part, this is due to regional sensitivities.

The rotational unit is in Norway at the invitation of the Norwegian government, which maintains an economic relationship with Russia and shares a 120-mile border on its northeastern edge with the country.

While Norwegian feedback on the Marines' presence has been generally positive -- then-Norwegian Defense Minister Ina Eriksen Sreide announced in June that the rotation had been extended for a year, until 2018 -- others have cited misgivings.

In October, Norway opposition leaders asked Prime Minister Erna Solberg to explain exactly what the American troops are doing in the country.

Russian officials, for their part, have been outspoken in opposing the presence of Marines in Norway and warning of diplomatic repercussions.

Though Green did not name Russia, he referred to its displeasure at the Marines' presence nearby.

"They don't like the fact that we oppose them, and we like the fact that they don't like the fact that we oppose them," Green said. "Three hundred of us, surrounded by them, we've got them right where we wanted, right? We've done this before."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at \ @HopeSeck.
The Trump administration has approved the sale by private companies of sniper rifles, scopes and ammunition to Ukraine but held off on a larger weapons package backed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to counter Russia.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters that any decisions on the sale of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons repeatedly requested by the Kiev government would come from the State Department.

"Those types of decisions come from the State Department" on foreign military sales, he said.

"We're standing by waiting for the State Department" to sign off on additional weaponry for Ukraine, Shanahan said, but noted that increases in foreign military sales to allies are a major policy focus for Mattis.

For years, the U.S. has debated whether to provide Ukraine with "lethal" defensive weapons to counter separatists backed by Russia in eastern Ukraine.

The small-arms sale was announced Wednesday, a day after U.S. and Western observers reported an escalation of fighting along cease-fire lines in eastern Ukraine.

In a speech in Washington earlier this week, Kurt Volker, the administration's special envoy for Ukraine, said that shelling Tuesday resulted in "one of the most violent nights" of the war, which began in Spring 2014.

"A lot of people think that this has somehow turned into a sleepy, frozen conflict and it's stable," he said, calling that view of the situation in eastern Ukraine "completely wrong."

At the State Department, spokeswoman Heather Nauert made the technical distinction that the small-arms sale is between Ukraine and private companies -- the U.S. only approved the export licenses.

"The U.S. government is not selling the Ukrainian government these weapons," Nauert said. "Under the previous two administrations, the U.S. government has approved export licenses to Ukraine, so this is nothing new."

However, the small-arms sale could be seen as testing the waters for a $47 million package including Javelin anti-tank missiles that has the backing of Mattis and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser.

In a statement Wednesday night, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "The sale of sniper rifles and ammunition must only be a first step."

The senator, who is battling the aftereffects of chemotherapy for cancer, added, "I urge the president to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions, and to fully utilize security assistance funds provided by the Congress to enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Military Update: Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, expected on Tuesday that every committee member, Democrat and Republican, would vote for the VA Care in the Community Act (HR 4242), his comprehensive plan developed over months to reform the flawed Veterans Choice program.

Roe therefore said he was surprised and disappointed when all nine Democrats at the bills mark-up hearing opposed the legislation they helped to shape and for which they were original co-sponsors.

In a phone interview, Roe blamed the split vote on pure, blatant, raw politics based on this tax bill.

The tax bill in dispute is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act backed solely by Republicans. Democrats and many independent analysts contend it overwhelmingly favors corporations and the wealthy over middle-class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts it will drive up the nations debt by $1.5 trillion in a decade.

Democrats told Roe they could not in principle vote for his Choice reform bill, given uncertain funding support ahead if many more veterans need outside care, and on the same day House Republicans alone approved a mammoth tax relief bill.

During markup of Roes bill, various amendments were accepted or rejected. But Democrats and Republicans also traded insults and challenged motives in a committee room where compliments over bipartisanship typically are exchanged.

I am troubled that we are going to put Choice funding at risk, again, on the very day that some people on this committee will be voting to drive up deficits and to give a tax break to the wealthiest Americans, said Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.).

Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), ranking Democrat on the panel, said the Republican tax relief bill attacks Obamacare funding and Medicaid eligibility, so that more veterans from these populations might have to rely on VA for health care, increasing budget strain on VA-paid community care as reforms take hold.

What particularly upset Democrats, in the shadow of a massive tax relief bill, was an amendment Roe planned to offer at markup that would cap growth of authorized funding for VA-paid community health care at three percent annually for four straight years, starting in fiscal 2019.

Roe drafted his cap language after CBOs cost estimate for his Choice reform bill came in at roughly $39 billion over five years, more than double what Roe expected. It alarmed Republicans negotiating the easing of spending caps on other federal departments, including for defense, to avoid a government shutdown.

Roe said he decided moments before mark-up to withdraw his amendment, at the urging of veteran service organizations who opposed it. He didnt reveal his decision, however, until late in the hearing, after members had traded harsh words.

The Choice reform bill cleared committee on a straight 14-9 party-line vote. Many of its reforms are also proposed in the Caring for Our Veterans Act (S. 2193), approved by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee three weeks earlier.

Veterans service organizations prefer the Senate bill, in part because it embraces another key goal, to expand eligibility for Post-9/11 caregiver benefits to older generations of veterans and caregivers. Some veteran groups are also nervous that Roes bill would allow veterans referred to community-based primary care providers to stay with them for a year or even longer. Guardians of the VA health care system worry this would be a step toward privatizing veterans care.

Roe, an obstetrician who ran a private practice for 31 years, said his intent is not to privatize veterans health care but, through competition, force improvement in care quality and management of staff and resources across VAs 168 hospitals.

Ive said from the beginning [that] I most likely would have written more choice into the bill if possible, he said, given how competition improved outcomes in his own practice. If Id been taking care of your wife for 20 years and, all of a sudden, I quit doing a good job, she could vote with her feet. The poor veteran is stuck there. And one of the ways the VA gets better is to compete for patients.

The House and Senate are expected to debate and vote on their Choice reform bills in early 2018. Differences then will be resolved a House-Senate conference led by Roe and Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate committee. In our interview, Roe said he probably will not support including Senate caregiver expansion language in a final Choice reform bill.

His own committee hasnt held a hearing on how the current caregiver plan operate to help severely injured veterans of the Post-9/11 era, Roe said. It would be irresponsible of me as the chairman to just okay something thats going to cost tens of billions of dollars.Im going to be pretty hardnosed about that.

But he added, Were going to need some hearings [to] look at the current program, see what are the good parts, what are the parts not working. And Im committed to do that. That one of the things we want to do next year.

Roe said his Choice reform bill would create a permanent consolidated VA Care in the Community program, replacing arbitrary administrative rules that use driving distance and wait times to determine eligibility for private sector care. Instead, providers and patients will decide on referrals based on clinical needs.

VAs current fee-for-service approach to community care would be replaced with a managed care model. Every VA enrolled veteran would be assigned to a primary care provider. VA care overall would gain from modern health care management techniques, telemedicine and cutting-edge practices and technologies.

Were going to look at best practices, how you get better outcomes with lower money. I can tell you that our practice [in Tennessee] took 25,000 Medicare patients and, in the first year, saved $6 million in Medicare money because their care was managed. Part of the Choice plan I put together is a managed care plan, and for older, sicker patients its the most savings you get. I was astonished that you could do that but you absolutely can. And get better outcomes.

Roe didnt disagree with Walz that during future negotiations over VA budgets, Roes proposal of a three-percent cap on annual growth in VA community care spending might be adopted. But Roe said he is confident that sustaining the current level of VA spending on community care is likely adequate, given the savings expected from program consolidation and from managed care reforms.

Roe dismissed as bogus Walzs argument that proper funding of a reformed Choice program could be secured for veterans if Republicans would just add one half of one percent to favorable tax rates that still permitted wealthy hedge fund managers under the GOP tax relief bill President Trump will sign soon.

Democrats believe, Roe said, if government spends money it will somehow help the economy. Republicans and most small business owners believe leaving people more of the money they earnedlets the economy grow and expand.

Roe said his own experience in private practice after Reagan-era tax cuts support his view that tax relief spurs job creation and employee compensation.

Also, Roe suggested, sounding alarms over the funding of VA community-based care is unnecessary. During his own nine years in Congress, he said, we have never not supplied the money that veterans have needed for health care.

To comment, write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120 or email milupdate@aol.com or twitter: @Military_Update.

# # # # Tom Philpott has been breaking news for and about military people since 1977. After service in the Coast Guard, and 17 years as a reporter and senior editor with Army Times Publishing Company, Tom launched "Military Update," his syndicated weekly news column, in 1994. "Military Update" features timely news and analysis on issues affecting active duty members, reservists, retirees and their families. Visit Tom Philpott's Military Update Archive to view his past articles. Tom also edits a reader reaction column, "Military Forum." The online "home" for both features is Military.com. Tom's freelance articles have appeared in numerous magazines including The New Yorker, Reader's Digest and Washingtonian. His critically-acclaimed book, Glory Denied, on the extraordinary ordeal and heroism of Col. Floyd "Jim" Thompson, the longest-held prisoner of war in American history, is available in hardcover and paperback. Buy Glory Denied from Amazon
It's so hard to believe that 2017 is almost over! The December end-of-month payday is coming pretty early, thanks to the 1 January federal holiday and the weekend. The last regular, active duty military pay day for 2017 is Friday, 29 December 2017. Lots of people are already eagerly awaiting that paycheck, with the expenses of the holidays growing every day. So when will that paycheck show up in your bank account? That depends...

Unless you know, for sure, that your bank or credit union credits military pay early, you should expect to have your pay deposited at some time on Friday, 29 December 2017.

Banks and credit unions that I know offer early crediting of military pay include:

USAA

USAA credits pay one business day prior to the day they're instructed to make the payment. For this pay period, that will be Thursday, 28 December 2017.

Keep in mind that pay may be deposited at any time on the business day. Many people report that USAA "always" pays at the same time. This may be your experience in the past, but it doesn't represent a policy and you shouldn't always expect that it will occur that way in the future.

Service Credit Union

Service Credit Union credits military pay two business days prior to the day they are instructed to make the payment. For this pay period, that will be Wednesday, 27 December 2017.

Pacific Marine Credit Union

Pacific Marine Credit Union (PMCU) credits military pay two business days prior to the day they are instructed to make payment. For this pay period, that will be Wednesday, 27 December 2017.

Navy Federal Credit Union

Navy Federal Credit Union is a little confusing, because they offer early crediting with one type of checking account but not the others.

Members who use an Active Duty Checking account for their military pay deposit will have their pay available for use one business day prior to the actual payday. For this pay period, that will be Thursday, 28 December 2017.

Members who use any other type of checking account for their military pay deposit will have their pay available for use on the actual military payday, Friday, 29 December 2017.

Head's Up

Regardless of whether you're paid on the actual payday, or your financial institution credits your pay early, we're all facing an extraordinarily long pay period at the end of January. Take a minute now to figure out what changes you'll need to make to help your money last through that time.
Communications Minister Ursula Owusu Ekuful has slammed the continuous airing of the popular Indian series, Kumkum Bhagya, on television.

The series has been on air in Ghana since 2015.

A lot of Ghanaians have been obsessed with the foreign telenovela to the extent that it made its way into the Class Four English Language examination questions set by the Yilo Krobo Municipal Education Directorate.

Question 10 of the English paper written on Monday, July 17, 2017 and sighted by Kasapa News Eastern regional correspondent Kojo Ansah instructs the pupils to choose appropriate conjunction (A.and, B.But ,C.So .D.Or ) to fill the question below.

Kumkum Baagya is a popular watched TV series ..I don't watch.

The question sparked controversy as a section of the public believed the examiners shouldn't have set question on Kumkum Bhagya, given that there are more salient questions that should have been set.

Recently, the leading actors in the Kumkum Bhabya series were in Ghana, where fans were being charged GH600 to have dinner with the stars.

But speaking at an event, Mrs Owusu Ekuful urged Ghanaians to be proud of their culture and further called for the development of more local content to be aired on TV to showcase the Ghanaian way of life to the world.

I'm looking forward to the conclusion of this forum to guide the policy implementation, especially in the creation of content. Africa has very rich culture and this is our opportunity to showcase what we have to the rest of the world. We should not always be consumers of contents produced in other jurisdiction but also be proud of what we have and sell our culture, our lifestyle, our belief to the rest of the world. For us in Ghana, I was trying very hard not to mention any programme, so let me apologise to I don't even know what station broadcasts it. The DTT Platform should not just be a platform to showcase Kumkum Byagya, she pointed out.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) on Monday launched the Primary Health Care (PHC) advocacy materials to ensure accessibility of comprehensive health service to the citizenry.

The advocacy materials would provide a holistic spectrum of services, offering the patient options through the coordinated effort of primary health care providers, traditional healers and alternative resources.

Mr Leonard Shang-Quartey, the Policy Analyst of ISODEC, said PHC had been identified as the first level of contact for individuals, families and community within the national health system, adding that these tenets must be maintained at all stages of development.

'The document is about ensuring that health care is as close as possible to where people live. Within the context of the three-tier system of health care, the document is intended to take care of the largest population of the citizens,' he added.

He said efforts at providing PHC in the country had been ongoing over the past four decades and that the document focused on prevention rather than curative and relied on self-help, home-care, community participation and technology that the people find it appropriate and affordable.

Mr Shang-Quartey said over the years, the country's health policies and programmes had carried on aspects of the PHC agenda, but the preventive dimension had not been sufficiently emphasized.

He added that the socio-cultural considerations and governance issues had also not been acknowledged in approaches to ensuring proactive and responsive primary health care.

He said the country's PHC approach must offer a comprehensive package of essential services, including reproductive health services and supplies.

Mr Shang-Quartey said the National Health Insurance Act 650 of 2003 and Act 852 of 2012 stipulated major weaknesses affecting membership management which included low membership renewal rate, delay in imbursement to providers, low education on NHIS benefits package as well as rights and responsibilities of subscribers.

He stated that ISODEC would ensure geographical access to health care delivery, so that services were not only close to citizens and communities, but citizens and communities were involved in the approaches adopted and the planning of these engagements.

Mr Shang-Quartey also launched a report on 'The fall of prepaid water meters in Ghana, An Account of Civil Society Organisations Campaign for Human Right to Water'.

The objective of the report is to document lessons learned in the various campaigns against prepaid water meters in the country and to share these with other groups, local and international groups for solutions.

'The report is targeted at CSOs and meant to contribute to existing knowledge and conversation about effective, ineffective strategies and review of strategies confronting introduction of prepaid water meters for the broader agenda of commercialization and privatization of water,' Mr Shang-Quartey added.
Madam Olivia Agbeko, Midwife of the Dodo Amanfrom Health Centre in the Kadjebi District of the Volta region has blamed the alarming rate of teenage pregnancies in the country on poverty.

She explained that most of the victims were from poor homes and were unable to properly take care of their daily needs.

She observed that many of the teenage pregnant girls who come to their facility for antenatal services were either school dropouts or unemployed thus putting them and their unborn children in a more precarious situation.

Madam Agbeko was addressing some clients in Dodo Amanfrom at the weekend as part of an innovative health educational campaign strategy being implemented by Savana Signatures, an NGO in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service aimed at improving maternal and child health in three regions of Ghana.

The Technology for Maternal and Child Health (T4MCH) project is being implemented in the Northern, Upper West and Volta regions with funding from Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

Madam Agbeko appealed to parents to take good care of their children in order to prevent them from falling foul to pre-marital activities stressing that men who impregnate teenagers should be severely dealt with to serve as deterrent to others.

She commended Savana Signatures for introducing such an innovative educational technology which aided them in their outreach programmes explaining that many pregnant women received periodic voice and sms messages on pregnancy and child care.

Mrs Diana Isaac, a pregnant woman who had been receiving periodic voice and sms messages through the T4MCH project urged the implementors to extend the facility to all pregnant women to enhance quality health and reduce maternal and infant mortalities.

Mr Abdul-Rashid Imoro, Programmes Manager of Savana Signatures said the T4MCH is being implemented in nine districts in 33 health facilities targeting 30,000 women and 28,000 men to reduce maternal and new born mortalities.

'The immediate outcomes of the project is to improve delivery of essential health services to pregnant women and new mothers and also to improve on the utilisation of essential health services by pregnant women and newborns', he said.

Mr Imoro explained that more health facilities had been included in the project to ensure many people benefited stressing that voice messaging component of the programme would be translated to include more languages.

He suggested the need for sexual reproduction and rights education to be introduced to young people in the communities to reduce teenage pregnancies that contributed to early marriages.

GNA
21.12.2017 LISTEN

The School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management (SHORT MGT) has held a graduation ceremony for 57 students who completed their studies successfully with a charge on the students to exhibit professional standard on the field.

Mr Goyimwole Enukomeko Kpodo, President of the School, who made the call urged the graduating students to go out and transform the hospitality industry with the training and skills they have acquired.

He said the hospitality and tourism industry was a fast growing industry, which contributed immensely to the economy of Ghana, adding that those who worked in the industry must have good attitude and sense of professionalism.

Mr Enukomeko noted that "as a nation we have a serious problem when it comes to service delivery. So our students as expected to go and transform the industry by providing excellent services in the industry.

'At the end Ghana will be the winner because a lot of people will be willing to come to Ghana, so that we become number one hospitality nation in the world".

He said that good attitude and discipline were virtues that the graduating students must consider as key to a career success.

He said good human relation was a necessary ingredient in their field of work.

"As you are going out, make sure the people you work with go and come back again. Because in the industry we rely more on old clients than new ones because the old ones will go and talk to others when you give good services," he added.

Mr Rabbi Kohain Halevi, Chief Executive Officer of Panafest Foundation, admonished the graduating students to be hardworking as they went to the job market.

He said it was time for the students to show the substance they received by practicalising the theories they learnt in school.

The ceremony witnessed 20 students graduating with Diploma in Hospitality Management, 20 with Certificate in Hospitality Management, one student in Decoration with 16 graduands in In-Service Training.

Two of the students were foreign students from Central Africa Republic and Cote d'Ivoire.

Mr Darlington Ankamah emerged as the overall best student whilst Mr Borketey Borquaye Micheal was adjudged the best Diploma student.

Mr Ayittey Micheal also won the best Certificate student with Mr Galley Atsu John and Miss Agmortey Patience together were awarded as the most hardworking students.

SHORT MGT was established in 1997 as a professional hospitality training school and was granted authorization by the National Accreditation Board (NAB) in 2011 to establish a tertiary institution. The school which has produced over 4,000 students since its establishment is affiliated with Stratford University and Chicago State University (USA).

GNA
A women's right activist has stated that the role of traditional leaders especially Queen Mothers is key to the sustenance of the gains made by the Empowering Mutual Partnerships for Women Economic Resilience (EMPOWER) project.

Mr. Benard Y. Guri, Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD) said through EMPOWER the culture of silence and non-participation in decision making among women in the northern part of Ghana was gradually being broken.

He said many of the women who benefited from the project's community level trainings have had their confidence boosted and were now able to speak up at public gatherings on issues affecting their wellbeing.

Mr. Guri said this during a stakeholders meeting in Wa on the theme: 'Sustaining the 'EMPOWER' Gains: the Role of Traditional Women Leaders and other Stakeholders.'

He said it was exciting and refreshing to note that some of the women after the training were now actively participating and taking up leadership positions that hitherto were male dominated positions.

The Executive Director of CIKOD noted that development was about women and children empowerment, adding that women all over the world were those who sustained families in times of difficulties, hence the focus of the project on women and their economic and political empowerment.

Madam Elham Mumuni, Gender and Women Empowerment Manager for the CIKOD, disclosed that a total of 691 women benefited directly from the implementation of EMPOWER across the Upper West and Upper East Regions.

She said the women received training in 10 different themes including leadership, economic empowerment, food processing, soap making, bleach, powder and pomade making among others.

'For us, it is refreshing to find women in local communities whose capacities have been built and they are challenging the status quo,' she said, and added that over 67.1 percent of women who benefited from the project had taken up leadership roles in their families, within groups, the community and at the district level.

Mrs. Eugenia H. Atami, Empower Project Coordinator, said the purpose of the meeting was to afford them the opportunity to deliberate on the gains made and to find out what role traditional women leaders could play to sustain the project and improve on the gains made.

Additionally, she said the project idea was to build women leadership to promote economic empowerment and food security, adding that based on the impact of the project, there was the need for them to review what they did over the past five years and see what gains could be carried forward as the project came to an end.

EMPOWER, is a women leadership and food security programme that is being implemented in Ghana, Zambia and Ethiopia with funding from Global Affairs, Canada through the Coady International Institute.

It was attended by traditional women leaders from Upper West and Upper East Regions, representatives of the five local partners, some government departments, civil society and other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
Government would soon resource members of the parliamentary press corps to perform their duties effectively and professionally, Mr Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzra, Member of Parliament for Ho West, said on Tuesday.

He said a percentage of an "appreciable amount" had been made available in the 2018 budget to cover and resource journalists who report from Parliament.

The MP said this at a forum organized by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) - Ghana with support from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an NGO, and Parliament of Ghana to solicit views from opinion leaders in the Volta Region on 'Promoting Parliamentary Openness, Transparency, Responsiveness and Accountability'.

Mr Bedzra, who doubles as the Dean for the Volta caucus in Parliament, said Parliament was also collaborating with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy for some training for members of the press corps outside Ghana.

The programme brought together people from the media, civil society organizations and Parliament.

Mr. A.B. Kafui Kanyi, the Volta Regional Chairman, Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), said that the passage of the Right to Information Bill into law was crucial in enhancing the accountability and transparency of Parliament.

He reminded MPs on the need to engage their constituents regularly, especially on key issues before voting on them in Parliament to win the trust and confidence of the people.

Mr Kanyi noted that only Public Accounts and Appointment Committee meetings were open to the public and the media and underscored the need for other parliamentary committee meetings to be made open to the media to enhance transparency.

Dr. Richard Abotsi, Dean, School of Engineering, Ho Technical University, said it was unfortunate that majority of Ghanaians understood democracy only as voting every four years and said "vigilance" on the part of the people would make leaders accountable.

Madam Regina Tetteh, the Senior Programmes Officer, Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) - Ghana said it was important for constituents to know what their MPs did in Parliament so that they could appreciate their efforts.

She said round five of the Afro Barometer Index indicated that constituents were demanding more developmental projects from MPs due to promises they made during the campaign period and said those projects were duties of the local assemblies.

Madam Tetteh noted that many Parliamentarians were not doing their oversight responsibilities of checking the executive arm of government, because they were playing dual roles as MPs and Ministers of State, making Parliament a weak institution.

Mr. Harrison Belley, Lecturer, Evangelical Presbyterian University College (EPUC), said Parliamentary Hansards should be made available to the public to keep them abreast with parliamentary proceedings.

GNA

By Ebenezer Sowah, GNA
President Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo has challenged the media to remain committed to the truth at all times.

In an interaction with the Presidential Press Corps (PPC) at the Flagstaff House in Accra, he urged the media to discharge its mandate without fear or favour and to leverage its role to strengthen social cohesion and good governance in Ghana.

The interaction with the Presidential Press Corp was to enable the President relate informally with the Flagstaff House Correspondents and to appreciate their commitment and dedication to duty.

President Akufo-Addo told the correspondents that as the fourth estate of the realm, the media must focus on empowering citizens and promote accountable governance and good democratic ideals.

He urged the media not to compromise the truth whatsoever and should be the pivot on which the regeneration of the country and building a climate of change for national development should revolve around.

The President commended the PPC for their devotion to duty and for keeping Ghanaians informed on the policies, plans and directions of government.

He was grateful to the correspondents for their impartial reportage of the activities of the Presidency, saying, "So the work you are doing is very, very important and you should recognize that you are doing an important work for the development of the society.

"It shouldn't be that this is your job, yes this is your job but its consequences, its impacts are very, very widespread. They help in shaping and moulding our society.

"You are an indispensable part of governance. You are the mirror which the nation and the society looks through and see what is going on," he noted.

The Dean of the Presidential Press Corps, Charles Takyi-Boadu thanked the President for recognizing the work of the Corps and assured him that the group would discharge at all times, its mandate professionally to aid the development of the nation.

GNA
21.12.2017 LISTEN

The Eastern Regional Minister, Eric Kwakye Darfour, has stated categorically that Ghana is not ready to respect the rights of homosexuals and lesbians in this country.

Adding his voice to the highly sensitive debate on homosexuality which has been on the table for discussion after President Akufo Addos interview with Al Jazeera a month ago, the Minister declared that, Ghana is not ready to even discuss rights of homosexuals and lesbians.

The Member of Parliament for Nkawkaw made this statement when he delivered a speech at a dissemination forum organized by the Social Accountability Monitoring Committee (SAMC), in partnership with the Eastern Regional Coordinating Council and the Ghana Aids Commission, after visiting some prayer camps and healing centres in the Eastern Region, to access the state of Persons Living with HIV.

The youth and young ones are now sexually active which beats my imagination, now the issue trending and emerging which is difficult to even discuss is homosexuality and lesbianism, which is alarmingly causing an increase in HIV prevalence.

Lesbianism and homosexuality is becoming a fashion in this country, now some popular spots have been identified as a safe haven for homosexuals and lesbians to carry out their acts, those who patronize those places are known, and they go there to feel comfortable among others who also share their way of life. They go there and do things to enjoy themselves shamefully all in the name of human rights, these people perpetuate their shameful acts putting everybody at risk .

The Eastern Regional Minister Eric Kwakye Darfour then advised the committee and other relevant stakeholders to intensify their efforts in ending the HIV menace in the region.

The committee has a responsibility to intensify their efforts, so I hope today as we do the dissemination, we will put it on the table and examine the situation, we should not massage the issues or recommendations, let us not miss words because if it is happening it is happening.

I want everyone to be part of this meeting because I do not like where we are going as a country and as a region. We are creating more jobs for the people and we need healthy community and healthy population, we cannot continue to jeopardize the health of the people and opportunities and prospects by living an irresponsible life.

He added that There is wisdom in following what has been given to us by our fathers as to how we can relate and co-habitat. Ghana is not ready to have homosexuals and lesbians now, I strongly do not think we are ready for such things.

On her part, the Eastern Regional Coordinator of the Ghana Aids Commission, Madame Golda Asante, expressed shock at the number of People Living with HIV in prayer camps.

After a visit to healing centres, prayer camps and some abode of herbalists in the region, we noticed that some of the structures which housed PLHIV were not in good conditions.

Secondly, we also noticed that most of the leaders of these herbal centres and prayer camps have little or no knowledge about HIV and AIDS. Some even could not differentiate between AIDS and HIV, as some believe they are acquired through dreams and eating with infested persons.

We also established that some PLHIV were sleeping in the mud when it rains, and on the bare floor of the facilities they were being held at which really broke our hearts. In our findings, we got to know that some prayer camps claimed to be curing HIV with fasting and prayers, while some herbal centres also claimed to be curing HIV with a mixture of orthodox medicines and herbs deceiving the general public.

Madame Golda Asante explained that, the leaders of these prayer camps and healing centres were going to be sensitized on the disease and how to deal with it.

Going forward, the Aids Commission will be engaging the leaders and pastors of these prayer camps to give them training and equip their knowledge on HIV and AIDS, for them to get a fair knowledge on the real issues. We are also encouraging them to refer such cases to health centres close to them for immediate medical attention, treatment and care.

This is a good course that civil society and other private entities can jump on, we are calling for immediate support to help reverse the trend and minimize the high prevalence rate in the region, so we want people to come out and help us organize the training for them.



By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Ghana not ready to respect rights of homosexuals  Minister appeared first on Ghana News .
21.12.2017 LISTEN

The Northern Regional Command of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), has secured a four housing unit project for some senior officers.

Constructed by the State Housing Company (SHC) at Kugani, near the Tamale Airport, each self-contained apartment has two bedrooms, a hall, kitchen, a balcony and other ancillary facilities.

The GIS Northern Regional Commander, Chief Superintendent Ahomka Noah Yeboah, at the official inaugural ceremony, described the project as the beginning of strategic steps adopted to defray the GIS housing deficit in the region.

According to him, the GIS in partnership with the State Housing Company is to construct a four-storey 24-unit block for other ranks.

Mr. Noah Ahomka called for operational logistics to ensure the proper monitoring of the nations entry points to the Northern Region.
An African pastors miracle discovery of a massive uncut diamond has just been sold at auction so the community leader can bring clean water and medical supplies to his village.

The 709-carat Peace Diamond was discovered in the village of Koryardu in March.

The diamonds owner, Pastor Emmanuel Momoh, vowed to sell the gem in order bring the struggling village the relief it needed.

The Peace Diamond will greatly improve the lives of our people as it will bring clean water, electricity, schools, medical facilities, bridges and roads to our villages and the Kono District, Momoh said in a statement, obtained by Forbes .

After an initial offer for the worlds 14th largest diamond was rejected by Sierra Leones government in May, the stone went back on the auction block and sold for $6.5 million in New York on Dec. 4 . The hefty price tag, which is actually $1.3 million less than the offer in May, was paid by British jeweler Graff Diamonds.

The sale of the Sierra Leone Peace Diamond represents a new future for the people of Sierra Leone, said Martin Rapaport, head of the group appointed to oversee the diamonds sale. While the government of Sierra Leone says it intends to help Pastor Momoh keep his promise, its uncertain how much of the profit will now go to the Kono District.

According to local reports , Momohs failure to have a proper mining license at the time of the discovery means he will only receive 41 percent of the $6.5 million the Peace Diamond sold for.

Technically, he did not own the diamond. The diamond belongs to the government of Sierra Leone, Sahr Wonday of the minerals regulatory agency told the Daily Nation .

Rapaports group claims the other 59 percent of the diamonds profit will go to the African nation in the form of taxes which will be used to benefit the community.

We anticipate a virtuous cycle of development as taxes from the sale provide a tangible benefit to the artisanal sector, the groups chairman added.

Its not yet know how the change will affect Pastor Momohs plans for his village.

Source: CBS
Maxam Ghana Limited has donated assorted items worth thousands of cedis to the Child Protection Center at Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region.

According to the Managing Director of Maxam, Patrick Lombardia, the company aims at giving unprivileged children protection and putting smiles on their faces especially ahead of the Christmas festivities.

Speaking to citifmonline.com, Mr. Lombardia said the children deserve better education which is the company's focus.

For Maxam Ghana limited, it is very important that we give children a bright future and protect them. We are really focused on helping children to have good education and all around the world we have programmes to this effect. The child protection center is doing an outstanding job and we deem it right to join them during this Christmas season to celebrate

Receiving the items on behalf of the center, Director of the Center, Father Peter Savior, commended Maxam Ghana Limited for their kind gesture.
Karpowership Ghana Company Limited has donated some items to the Osu Childrens Home ahead of the Christmas celebrations.

The donation, which is a part of the companys corporate social responsibility activities, has become an annual tradition to enable the children to enjoy the festivities.

According to the Corporate Communications Specialist of the company, Sandra Amarquaye, the donation is part of the companys commitment to giving back to society.

The items included tomatoes puree, toiletries, drinks, beverages, uncooked rice, biscuits among others food items.

At Karpowership, we believe in investing in countries we operate in. While we ensure providing uninterrupted and reliable electricity to the national grid, we are also committed to giving back to society by addressing its needs, she stated.

Receiving the items on behalf of the home, Mrs Christiana Addo, the Homes manageress, expressed gratitude for the act of kindness.

We are grateful to Karpowership for making a stop at our home during this festive season. This gesture marks the beginning of a lasting relationship between Osu Childrens Home and Karpowership.

"You have brought us much more than we could imagine. You have actually touched the needs of every child here with your donation from the youngest to the oldest. These items will indeed put smiles on the faces of these children. We are very grateful, she said.

Since it began operations in Ghana, the company has engaged in some major projects that include providing bursary for brilliant but needy students.

The company has also adopted and fully furnished an ultra-modern computer laboratory, provided storage water tanks to schools, hospitals, police stations and the fisherfolk within the Tema Manhean Community.

As a strategic partner, Karpowership is committed to Ghanas development and will continue to provide all Ghanaians reliable, sustainable, and affordable electricity.
The Board Chairman of the Millennium Excellence Foundation, Victor Gbeho, has stated that donations were actively solicited for the Ghana Expatriate Business Awards on December 8, which has courted some controversy over extortion allegations.

Allegations were made that the Ministry of Trade and Industry charged expatriates between $25,000 and $100,000 to enable them to sit close to the President at the awards ceremony.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Mr. Gbeho indicated that, special treatment was given to the higher donors, but there is no suggestion that the donations were used as a basis to secure sitting places next to President Nana Akufo-Addo.

The Board Chair stressed that, the Foundation was a Non-Governmental Organisation and was issued notes by the Ministry of Trade to give to potential donors.

All our ceremonies are based on funds that we realise. We have no other source of money except what we raise for each occasion and in this case, we asked the Ministry of Trade and Industry if it was going to be our partner, and give us an introduction to the business community, Mr. Gbeho explained.

Because of the variance in the donations received, he said it was only right that the higher donors were favoured.

In some of the awards [ceremonies], there is the platinum, then gold and then the silver [categories], all for protocol, if we come to you and you give us GHc 20,000 and somebody else gives us GHc 150,000, it will be the highest form of perversion of principles if the one that gave GHc 20,000 is going to be given more special treatment than the one who gave GHc 150,000.

It doesn't mean that anyone was being compelled. Those who gave [donations] gave of their free will knowing very well the categories that we had, Mr. Gbeho added.

Allegations denied

But the President of the Foundation, Ashim Morton, flatly refuted the allegations at the press conference, where he also noted that President Akufo-Addo was not even originally scheduled for the event.

In an attempt to clear the air on the matter, Mr. Morton noted that, reserved seating was for expatriates who have contributed enormously in our development and not necessarily whether they sponsored or would win a prize.

He was also was keen to note that, the President's table was originally designated for him and not Ghana's Head of State.

Nowhere in our literature did we say specifically or categorically say that the Presidents' Gold table was designated for the President of the Republic of Ghana. I am the President of the Foundation and that Centre seat was designated for me.

Background

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has since dissociated itself from these allegations first trumpeted by the Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak.

The allegations have even led to the Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Carlos Ahenkorah, clashing with the Minority Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa in Parliament.

This was followed by President Akufo-Addo writing to the Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kyeremanten, demanding answers from him over the allegations.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Money collected from expatriates was for fundraising  Organisers appeared first on Ghana News .
Former National Security Advisor, Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah says leadership at the highest place is to blame for Ghanas underdeveloped status.

We should have been long, long [developed], [and not be] behind Europe, he registered his disappointment with the country's slow pace of development.

Speaking at the African Business Centre for Developing Education (ABCDE) Awards ceremony held at the British Council Tuesday, he said the misfortunes of the past must not be repeated in the future.

What we are lacking today is leadership at the highest place, he said, calling for the mentoring of the youth to avoid repeating the mistakes made by their parents.

Mr Nunoo-Mensah said when Ghana attained its independence on March 6, 1957, Asian giant, Malaysia was nowhere near it, in terms of potentials and resources.

But 60 years down the lane we are still languishing in the wilderness, he said, adding the focus should be on the training of the youth to aim higher.

I have so much experience that I have to share with the youth. We should all share our experience with these young children [because] they need guidance and they need to be motivated, he said.

Chairman of ABCDE, Dr Ekwow-Spio Gabrah also implored corporate institutions to reach to the youth in the society.

The award winners include;

Corporate Sponsors

British Council Ghana

Ecobank Ghana

The Business Sector Advocacy Challenge Fund (BUSAC)

Margins Group Company Limited

Mentors

Mrs Petra Aba Asamoah

Brigadier General Nunoo-Mensah

Dr Michael Agyekum Addo

Unilever Ghana

Hosting ABCDE Interns

Ms Kathleen G. Beegle  World Bank Ghana

Club Patrons

Mr Francis Opare Aniagyei  Accra Girls SHS

Mr Tony Nii Ayertey  Achimota SHS

Interns

Baaba Sampson  World Bank Ghana

Gilbert Martey  British Council Ghana

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | M: [email protected] | Instagram: @realbrakopowers
A 22-year old South African with Ghanaian parents, Elijah Djan, has adopted a rather improbable approach to address the Southern African country's urgent housing and waste challenges.

Elijah Djan's brick-made paper, named nubrix, specifically addresses South Africa's build-up of paper waste and the shortage of low-cost housing.

These bricks, according to Elijah, are weather resistant.

I have built a wall with these bricks and I left it outside in the rain and it is still standing tall, he said.

His innovation was inspired by a documentary highlighting South Africa's low-income housing shortage.

Recounting how his innovation started off, Mr. Djan recalled on the Citi Breakfast Show that  New bricks came back in primary school when I was 11 years old. Back then I was very passionate about Science. When I was in Grade 6 my dad use to burn his old photocopy text books and this was the time during global warming and me, being the scientist thought of something to do.

He further narrated that In about a few days later, one of the TV programmes was poaching one of the shortest of RDP housing in South Africa and RDP housing is a form of cheaper housing by the government, so I said let's see if I could use a paper to help cellutape this [papers] so I did different tests, different ratios of different stuff, different methodologies of how we can turn the paper into bricks and use that whole scientific process.

Host of Citi Breakfast Show Bernard Avle [Left] with 22 year old innovator [Middle] and Uncle of Innovator At 11, Elijah was awarded after submitting a prototype of his brick for a national science competition. He did his first experiment in science at age 3, with the help of her mum who teaches physical science.

After a successful innovation, Elijah intends turning nubrix into a viable commercial product.

He however indicated that, he needs a regulatory board's official certification of approval to make this dream a reality.

This, according to him, will happen after the bricks are tested for water penetration, thermal capability and fire resistance.

In March, 2017, Elijah's product was one of the projects selected by the first Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) organised on the African continent.

Elijah was born and bred in South Africa by Ghanaian parents.

Elijah, who is in his third year in the University studying Industrial Engineering, was in Ghana for the 2nd Kwame Nkrumah African Genius Awards held in Accra, where he won the award for the Young Icon Category.

Other award winners included Professor Akua Kuenyehia in the leadership category, Dr. Thomas Owusu Mensah in the Science, Technology and Innovation category, Professor Ablade Glover in the Visual Arts category and Dr. Daniel Amponsah, popularly known as Koo Nimo in the Performing Arts category.

Others geniuses awarded are Professor Oheneba Boachie-Adjei for his exploits in Medicine, Professor Opanyin Kofi Agyekum, language; Professor Kwame Gyekye, Philosophy.

The event was also in celebration of the renowned late Professor of Mathematics, scholar and nuclear physicist, Francis Ampenyin Allotey, for his achievements and influence in the study of STEM in Ghanaian and international schools, colleges and universities.

It was on the theme 'Celebrating the contribution of African genius to the making of civilization.'

Elijahs entrepreneurial interest has seen him involved in a bow tie business, and also manages a clothing line in South Africa.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Kumasi City Mall (KCM) has teamed up with one of its tenants, Rent Air Ghana, in a special photo exhibition aimed at raising funds to support the destitute and socially deprived across the Ashanti Region.

KCM, Ashanti Regions pride in modern one-stop retail shopping, and Rent Air, a pace-setting air route buying company have opened an exclusive photo expo at the mall to highlight the plight of the needy, inspire philanthropy and motivate individual sympathizers and organisations to support the cause of upgrading the quality of life of the needy.

In a relentless pursuit of its social responsibility crusade dubbed On the Ground, Rent Air Ghana has, over the years, reached out substantially to scores of needy widows in the Juabeng Municipality, the Central Destitute Infirmary at Bekwai and hosted professional hawkers on the jammed streets of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.

The companys charitable initiatives have occasionally been extended to desperate cases of individuals in dire strait, such as the sponsorship of surgery for Little Emmanuel who suffered from Anorrectal Malformation - a rare disease prevalent in the Northern parts of the country and the rehabilitation of a Fumso woman who was exiled from her hometown due to indebtedness.

Ms Akweley Okutu, Project Manager for On the Ground said the exhibition is essentially a fundraiser which will run till January 4, 2018 and the proceeds of which will be used to invigorate outreach efforts in the various facets of Rent Airs social responsibility campaign.

The content of the Exhibition would all be drawn from a series of projects accomplished from August, 2016 to December, 2017. They are as follows; The Widows Mite (Juabeng), Road to Fumso (Fumso), Street fete (Kumasi Metropolis), Pain of no Exit(Northern Region) and our current project The Homeless Home (Bekwai) which, we hope will be the glare of the exhibition, said Ms. Okutu.

As the most popular and the most compelling destination for shopping and recreation in Kumasi, we are happy that KCM is the venue for showcasing mementos for such a noble cause. We are proud to have partnered Rent Air for this very revealing and touching exhibition, said John Bedu-Bonsu, marketing manager at KCM.

Mr. Bedu-Bonsu urged all Kumasi residents to take time off to visit the mall and patronize the exhibition to help improve the living conditions of the thousands of needy persons across the Ashanti Region and elsewhere.

Kumasi became the second city in Ghana (after Accra) to have the complement of an A-grade shopping and recreational centre when the $95 million Kumasi City Mall opened for trading in April this year. With its superb location at Asokwa and countless novel attractions, including its unique architecture and a massive car park, KCM has become Ashanti Region's front-runner in retail shopping and the trendiest address for social rendezvous and recreation.
Plan International Ghana with funding from the European Union Ghana has launched the Green Skills Project in Accra.

The Green Skills Project is a three-year campaign aimed at creating livelihood opportunities for 6,000 youth and women through the promotion of local environmentally sustainable businesses.

In her welcome address, Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Madam Fadimata Alainchar called for openness and accountability on the part of partners on the project while committing to strong partnerships which will lead to strengthened outcomes.

She said, the Green Skill Project will create livelihood opportunities for 6000 youth in the Sunyani Municipal, Ga South and Tano North District Assemblies. Let us be accountable in the work we do so that we may support the government to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 13.

According to the Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relation, Honorable Bright WirekoBrobbey, who launched the project, the project is in consonance with governments flagship programmes which will create jobs for the youth in order to create an enabling environment that will curb migration.

He said, The government is anchoring its efforts on public-private partnerships which will make people especially the youth, constructively engaged in order to attain the Ghana beyond aid agenda set by the President.

Mr Joseph Allan, a programme officer at the European Union Ghana, representing the Ambassador, indicated the European Unions willingness to support competent NGOs like Plan International who can implement projects that will support women and the youth to achieve development.

Madam RhodalineConduah, the District Coordinating Director of Tano North, who chaired the occasion called on the youth to be patient in their business ventures and be steadfast as every milestone achieved did not come about easily.

The launch was attended by Members of Parliament for ObomDomeabra and Dormaa West, Honorable Sophia Akuokor and Honorable Halidu Ali Maiga; representatives from the Ga South Municipality, Tano North District and Sunyani Municipality Assemblies; Local NGO implementing partners : Microfin Plus Ghana, Women Integrated Development Organisation (WIDO), Plan International Ghana staff and youth from Ga South Municipality.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has lashed out at his predecessor Jerry John Rawlings stating that the former Military dictator must know what to say and accord him some respect.

The National Democratic Congress founder has on several occasions attacked Mr. Kufuor describing him as corrupt.

But speaking on Starr Chat Wednesday evening, former President Kufuor told host Bola Ray that Rawlings incessant attacks on him are unfounded.

According to him, Mr. Rawlings must confront him if he has an issue with him.

I would have preferred being friendly with him but every now and then somehow he will burst out saying unfounded things about me and making me feel awkward.

I am not worried because I keep a free mindfor the sake of our society naturally I would want the relationship to be quite normalhe was the longest serving Head of State, he should be guided by above all himself, he should know what to say and what not to say.

I keep an open and I wish he keeps the same, if he really feels there is something Kufuor has done, he rather should approach me to find out.

Mr. Agyekum Kufuor was born on 8 December 1938. He was President of Ghana from 7 January 2001 to 7 January 2009.

His victory over John Evans Atta Mills after the end of Jerry Rawlings second term marked the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Ghana since independence in 1957.

He was a minister in Kofi Abrefa Busias Progress Party government during Ghanas Second Republic, and a Popular Front Party opposition frontbencher during the Third Republic.

In the Fourth Republic he stood as the New Patriotic Partys candidate at the 1996 election, and then led it to victory in 2000 and 2004.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

A Kumasi Circuit Court on Wednesday remanded a trader accused of robbery into prison custody.

Kofi Owusu-Ansah, 26, had reportedly attacked and robbed his victims - twin brothers, at gunpoint.

He is facing charges of conspiracy and robbery and has pleaded not guilty.

The court, presided over by Mrs. Lydia Osei Marfo, ordered him to make his next appearance on January 19.

His two accomplices are, however, on the run.

Police Inspector Eric Asare said the crime was committed on November 25, this year, at about 0200 hours, at Adehyeman in Kumasi.

The victims - Kenneth Kwadwo Konadu Senior and Kenneth Kwadwo Konadu Junior, were on their way to board a vehicle to Bampenase, when the accused and his fugitive colleagues attacked and seized their cash of GH 6,200.00, US$ 300.00, iPhone, Nokia and Samsung phones together with a Ghanaian passport.

A formal report was made to the police and later in the day the pair spotted Owusu-Ansah and with the assistance of a police officer, arrested him.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says the business opportunities in their Sector could create about 80 million jobs in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, the FAO Representative to Ghana, said this would be around two per cent of the forecasted size of the labour force in 2030.

Dr Abebe was speaking at a day's forum on leveraging private sector investment for food security and nutrition in Ghana in the context of SDGs in Accra.

The forum organised jointly by FAO and the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) is to create a shared understanding of the implications of the 2030 Agenda for food security and nutrition in Ghana and also create shared understanding of the important role of the private sector in contributing to the SDGs, with particular focus on how business contributions can accelerate progress in advancing Food Security and Nutrition.

It is also to provide a platform for business, investors, Government, and civil society organisations to explore new pathways for enhancing the impact of business contributions to achieving Food and Nutrition Security, inspire action in support of the SDGs by business - both as individual companies, enterprises and in partnership with others and identify priorities for support and collaboration.

He said the private sector would be crucial to delivering the SDGs and there were potentially over $ 2.3 trillion of business opportunities related to the sector.

The FAO Representative said the realisation of the business opportunities in the food system could also help deliver a wide-range of societal benefit including; job creation, benefit of food security, poverty alleviation, climate change mitigation and waste reduction and health outcomes.

He said according to a study conducted by the Business and Sustainable Development Commission in 2016, business opportunities in implementation of the SDGs related to food and agriculture could worth over $ 2.3 trillion annually for the private sector by 2030.

He said harnessing the above mentioned business opportunities would require new approaches and development of new business models.

'Private sector engagement with public policy will be critical to fully capture the value of many of the SDGs opportunities to ensure the requisite policy tools were in place,' he added.

He said the private sector would also need to understand the potential opportunities emerging from the SDGs areas in their sector and how to better partner government, civil society organisations and other stakeholders on developing new solutions, thereby turning public-private partnership into business opportunities.

Dr Abebe said the two organisations organised the forum to create awareness on the many business opportunities that the private sector stands to gain from engaging in the implementation of the SDGs and more importantly in addressing hunger and malnutrition.

Ms Kosi Antwiwaa Yankey, the Acting Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), said it was important that the private sector g0t on board to know the business opportunities that were in the SDGs.

'A lot of private sector players need to take advantage of the business opportunities and grow their businesses,' she added.

She said the year had been successful for the NBSSI, since government released some funds to boost business growth in the SME area and they have also been able to foster some relationships with other partners to support them develop and create about 400 plus jobs.

'We have also initiated and strengthened our apprentice programme and next year will pledge to do more for the small and medium enterprises.

Mr Moses Agyemang, Senior Economist, PEF called on government together with stakeholders to endeavour to achieve the SDGs as compared to what the country achieved with the MDGs.

He called on stakeholders to address the challenges of sharing information with each other to grow their businesses.

GNA

By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Two men arrested for attacking and robbing a man of his gold, cash and other valuables worth GH 31,721.00 at gun point have been sentenced to a total of 50 years imprisonment.

Justice Anim and Gabriel Asante had pleaded not guilty to the charges of conspiracy and robbery.

They would each spend 25 years in prison.

Nana Konadu Owusu Banahene, a State Attorney, told the court, presided over by Mr. John Ekow Mensah that the incident happened on January 24, last year, at about 1915 hours, at Kunsu in the Ahafo-Ano South Municipality.

The pair, armed with pistol and knives, attacked the victim, Mr. Frederick Tawiah, a gold dealer, in his shop, ordered him to open his safe and seized his gold, cash and mobile phones.

They also mercilessly beat up the man and stabbed him in the head with a knife.

The convicts from there continued to the chief's palace on the next leg of their robbery operation but things did not work out the way they had expected.

Asante was overpowered, arrested and handed over to the police as his criminal colleague fled.

Asante later led investigators to apprehend Anim.

The State Attorney said some of the stolen items including cash of GH 1,850.00 and phones were retrieved from them.

GNA

By Gifty Amofa, GNA
It was supposed to be tiny Cape Verde's moment to shine: a chance for the Atlantic island nation to take up the rotating presidency of the commission of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

But the archipelago has found itself once again out of step with its mainland cousins, who decided to hand the responsibility to Ivory Coast at a meeting in Nigeria last weekend.

Cape Verde is different. A pillar of democracy, stability and human rights, it is cited near the top of the yearly Ibrahim Index, which measures and monitors governance performance in African countries, this time coming fourth out of 54 nations.

Its nine inhabited islands have weathered different cultural currents for hundreds of years which is shown in its unique musical traditions and racial diversity: 71 percent of its people identify as mixed race, according to official figures.

In the generally culturally conservative West African region, Cape Verde has a vibrant LGBT community. The Afrobarometer polling company found in 2016 it ranked "most tolerant" of all African nations in terms of attitudes to homosexuality.

But its impact is barely felt a hop and a skip across the Atlantic, where its population of 500,000 is dwarfed by giants such as Nigeria (population some 190 million).

"In a world dominated by quantity, Cape Verde feels that it barely registers," Cape Verdean diplomat Corsino Tolentino told AFP of the former Portuguese colony.

Mutual ignorance

Chronically poor transport links between Cape Verde and the rest of Africa have not helped to foster ties, says former president Pedro Pires

Whispers of unmet financial contributions began surfacing after the decision to exclude Cape Verde from heading up the Commission but President Jorge Carlos Fonseca took to public broadcaster TCV to denounce "political subterfuge" which he said broke ECOWAS rules.

Created in 1975, ECOWAS is seeking greater long-term economic integration for its 330 million citizens, notably with the longstanding aim of a single currency.

But chronically poor transport links with the rest of Africa have not helped to foster greater understanding, said former president Pedro Pires, who won the Ibrahim Prize for African leadership in 2011.

"Regarding our relationship with ECOWAS, one has to look at everything that makes it complicated," he said in an interview with AFP. "How do you develop economic links if you don't have any sea transport?"

In fact, Cape Verde has vastly better flight connections to former colonial master Portugal and fellow former colony Brazil than with West Africa.

Pay more attention

President Fonseca said this weakness was compounded by mutual ignorance, with Cape Verde often unfamiliar with decision-making processes in the bloc.

"Cape Verdians don't really know how the structure and projects of ECOWAS work. It's not an accident that there aren't many of us working in these bodies. And the other countries don't know what Cape Verde is really like," he explained.

Cape Verde's nine inhabited islands have weathered different cultural currents for hundreds of years, as shown its unique musical traditions

Of the more than 50 protocols and conventions, Cape Verde has signed less than half -- the lowest total of all member states.

Former prime minister Jose Maria Neves has defended the country's ECOWAS record, saying its officials have been appointed to senior posts, even if he admits more is left to be done.

"I don't think ECOWAS ignores Cape Verde, but the organisation needs to pay more attention to the peculiarities of the archipelago," he told AFP.

Nelson Magbagbeola, Secretary-General of the ECOWAS parliament, said naming an ambassador to the body and putting into practice the rules of free movement of people and goods would go a long way towards better integration.

The country's labour market is already saturated, however, making free movement of migrants from the rest of West Africa a difficult proposition, according to the government.
The president of Ghana, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo has been petitioned to initiate investigations into the imprisonment of Samuel Kwafo, a 26 year old Driver by a Sunyani Magistrate Court even though available evidence has proven he is innocent.

Samuel Kwafo was handed an 18 year sentence by a Sunyani Magistrate court Judge called Joan King, after he was accused by a Chinese national of allegedly stealing his mobile phone and a laptop.

Before his imprisonment, Samuel Kwafo was made to serve one year (12 month sentence in Remand Prisons in Sunyani by Joan King , the Magistrate. He was not allowed to have a lawyer or any legal representative to defend him, an act which is said to have violated the rule of natural Justice.

Speaking in an interview with the New Crusading Guide at the Nsawam Prisons, Samuel Kwafo narrated that prior to his imprisonment he was the personal driver of the Chinese National one Penli, for many In 2015, a brother of the Chinese immigrant who also lived in Techiman reported of his missing Iphone and a laptop and an amount of GHC4,00.

According to Samuel Kwafo in this interview at the Nsawam Prisons. The Chinese national mentioned his name as a suspect in the case because he (Samuel Kwafo) driving, Penli, also known as William.

The Police arrested me and sent me to court where I was placed in prison custody for one year. This was after they took me to my house and searched the place and found nothing .

After his arrest, Samuel Kwafo Was sent to his house where it was thoroughly searched but nothing was found in his room.

In spite of that, the Judge placed, Samuel Kwafo into prison remand for one year to enable Police concludes investigations into the case. In the course of the year 2015, Samuel Kwafo said the Police managed to arrest a man who possessed the stolen laptop and Iphone and arrested him .

During interrogation the man confessed that he bought the devices from some guys in Techiman and led the Police to the house where the guys were arrested. Upon their arrest these guys confessed stealing the items and denied my involvement. They stated categorically that I, Samuel Kwafo was not involved in the crime and that they had never met me and that I was not involved in the crime.

Despite all these clear evidence, the Judge would not let me go. He went ahead to sentence me to 18 years in prison with hard labour for reasons best known to her.

The unfortunate part of the whole issue was that Samuel kwafo was not allowed to have a lawyer or any legal representative in court during the trial

May be she has a personal score to settle with me. Only God can tell. However, I can assure you that I am praying and God is answering my prayer. I am innocent and whoever tries to punish the innocent soul of spill innocent blood will have the curse on the lord on him and his children.

Upon his arrest in Techiman, Samuel Kwafo was sent to Sunyani for trial and placed in prison custody for one year. Last week he was transferred to the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons to continue serving the rest of the sentence..

Last week he was transferred to the Nsawam Medium security prisons where the New Crusading Guide Team paid him a visit. In an interview he pleaded with the Chief Justice to do further investigations into his case and ensure that he is released since he is innocent.

Why would a judge decide to imprison me when the people who committed the crime were arrested and freed . I believe that I have been denied justice and my rights have been trampled upon. I dont belong here because in my heart I believe that I havent committed any crime. I am therefore appealing to the president to intervene and properly investigate the case and release me since I dont belong here.
Emmanuel Odoye, Circuit Supervisor of the Ghana Education Service, Tema, has congratulated the founders of Saint Nicholas Preparatory School at Tema Manhean, for working hard to tackle poverty in the community, through the provision of education.

Speaking at the 5th Anniversary celebration of the school, Mr Odoye admonished parents to support their wards education, though Saint Nicholas Charity was doing its best to provide free education to the beneficiaries.

This was during the anniversary celebration of Five Years of Quality Education. The event was held on December, 1, 2017 at the schools premises at Tema Manhean.

As parents, we have to do our best to provide the basic things that will push our children to a brighter future. Let us guide them with their homework, and if the child will be bright, it begins at home. The child should feel comfortable to learn, he stated.

Mr Odoye also called on the teachers not to rest on their oars, but consistently provide the children with quality and holistic education.

That, he said, would go a long way to properly mould the children as future leaders.

Madam Deborah Eleazar, CoFounder of Saint Nicholas Preparatory School, thanked the teaching and non-teaching staff for their immense sacrifice over the years, urging them to continue delivering quality education to the children in the community.

She paid homage to the schools Co-Founder, Captain Kappas, for his immense role in the formation of the school.

She said: I have to say that none of these would be possible without his extraordinary input, and Im truly appreciative that I had somebody wonderful beside me in doing this.

The 5th Anniversary of Saint Nicholas Preparatory School was marked with a naval cadet parade and cultural display by the pupils.

Additionally, honours and awards were bestowed on various individuals and corporations, who, have, over the years, contributed to the schools success.

Saint Nicholas Preparatory School was founded in February 2012, with the aim of breaking the vicious cycle of poverty within the Tema New Town community.

It received, and has continued to receive, immense donations and support from the Tsakos Group of Companies and Maria Tsakos Foundation, in order to make the school run.

Over a five-year period, the school has developed from a two classroom Nursery and Kindergarten to a Primary School, with a 12-classroom annex, library, ICT laboratory, as well as a cadet corps, trained by the Ghana Navy.

The school is run entirely on voluntary donations. The Sailors Society of the United Kingdom (UK) helped with a donation to support the new school building and the Navy Cadet Corps, and some students. They were represented at the event by Reverend Yankey.

During the event, a new sponsor, Metka Ghana, a construction firm, offered to assist in building a kitchen and canteen for the school. Additionally, it donated towards the Christmas party for the children.

Tema Manhean is one of the closest towns to the Tema Fishing Harbour, where most of the indigenes lack proper education. And so, for parents in the community, Saint Nicholas Preparatory School has been an oasis of hope.

It has the support and blessing of the Paramount Chief of Tema, Dr Osongaa Nii Adjei Kraku ll, and the Tema Traditional Council.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Does anyone remember or know the saying that on your way up, remember those you climbed on because you may need them on your way down. It is never easy for African Americans in the managerial or supervisory positions as the lonely ones or when they are the minorities. Get this straight, you are supposed to be the sharp shooter and the shield against criticism, justifiably or not. Damn if you push back, damn if you dont. It is a balancing act and you may still fall or fail!

It is immaterial whether Omarosa Onee is an African American, Kenyan or Nigerian, her skin color commands the same indifference. There are those that would not take direction from her, no matter how sweet she is. They may like it if she baked cookies and brought it to work or had the best candies in a jar on top of her table for everyone. Any black in a managerial position that told you she has never encounter racism or dis(respected) is stingy with the truth.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. the late famous O. J Simpsons lawyer had been the prosecutor defending police officers against many black criminals complaining about police brutalities. He got sick and tired of doing that and became a defense attorney that finally got O. J Simpson exonerated in a highly controversial case because of police unfair and sometimes outrageous tactics. When you manage a system that is indifferent to the welfare or justice for your people, be careful O!

Africans or first-generation Africans like Obama also face additional tasks to overcome. Some African Americans wage a tribal storm in a tea cup against them. You are better off if you ignore them and face the bigger tasks. It was the job of Omarosa to defend the President whom she later claimed had racial attitude but not a racist. African Americans seized upon making that distinction without a difference to justify their disdain for knowingly defending her boss.

Why did it take the end of her job, resignation or outright firing to start speaking out? Some African brothers say the job was too good to quit. Omarosa do have other qualifications and qualities but she got the job because of her affiliation to the highly rated show Apprentice: You Are Fired! Others claimed she had no qualitative duties as African Americans Outreach Director of Communication that were very offended each time she defended the Administration.

Let us be fair, it was a political job and anyone the President so desired could have got that job. If it comes to keeping a job, Africans know how to keep their jobs than African Americans. It has nothing to do with competency. Its the difference between their feeling as a right and not a privilege. This could be worse when unqualified African American assumes that a well-qualified first-generation African should not get the job since there are African Americans.

Unfortunately, even someone as highly informed and educated as the only African American in cabinet, Dr. Ben Carson thinks President Obama does not have the generational experience of African Americans. So, it is not only some whites that thought Obama should not be President, some African Americans thought so too. But that is a tribal war we would rather keep within.

Therefore, Omarosa did what she could to keep her job. Nonetheless, lonely. You should believe her when she said it was an emotional draining experience for her and how her people were viewed including some slights she must have encountered on that job. Of course, she had no place to go to turn to but to her people and her community. Even if Africans live mostly in white area, there are reasons to go into black community for parties or get some spicy chicken!

Africans claiming that Omarosa never identified with Africans are very unfair. Her wedding pictures were there as she donned African attires with her friends. Moreover, all your friends do not have to be blacks or Africans. If you are not careful, through a few bad companies or jealousy some may get you into trouble.

This is what African parents in Diaspora warn their children about. It is a delicate advice between keeping and losing your identity as Africans. Some Africans kids are now going astray! Unlike the days when Africans mainly got out to study and returned home after graduation. Africans stay put and only come back home on visits, lately. So are the older Africans, especially when their bodies need medical repairs, tune up and oil change.

Some background while we wait for Omarosa to give details of her emotional experience at the White House. Many have been in her shoes, in positions bigger than hers, already know. During the reign of President Reagan, he came into the conference room one day and saw Samuel L. Pierce his Housing Secretary, he politely greeted him as one of the mayors he was going to have a meeting with. It tells you that he hardly met or knew him as a member of his cabinet.

Dr. Ben Carson was placated as a Vice-President at one time, then for other high profiled posts, but he ended up as Housing Secretary, a traditional post for African America. When Ron Brown became the commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration, it was another First. Clinton will be remembered for ending the traditional Welfare system and got mixed reviews as the First honorary Black President that incarcerated too many black men with the three strikes law.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed the first black division head at the Department of Justice, the first black female Cabinet member Ms. Patricia Harris as Housing Secretary and the first black ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young. President Carter named more blacks, Latinos and women to the federal judiciary than all previous administrations combined.

However, Barbara Jordan never got Attorney General (or nothing) job she desired so much from President Carter. The position of Attorney General for the first black had to wait until Obama Administration and Eric H. Holder Jr. got it!

When Reagan came in 1981, African American suffered a reversal of fortune. Though Omarosa joined an Administration after the reign of Obama, another first generation African American, there may be another reversal of fortune, again for Africans in general like the one suffered when Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter as President.
The Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak, wants Parliament to set up a committee to probe the alleged extortion of various amounts from the expatriate business community.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has been accused of charging expatriates between $25,000 and $100,000 to enable them to sit close to the President at the Ghana Expatriate Business Awards on December 8.

This allegation has since generated controversy, resulting in a brawl in Parliament between two Members of Parliament, Carlos Ahenkorah and Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.

Speaking to Citi News following the turn of events, Muntaka Mubarak said the investigation will establish the veracity of the allegations and put the matter to rest.

Only when you investigate them and get to the very bottom that you get to know who might have been doing this because if someone says that pay $100,000 or $75,000 and apart from this meeting you are going to be also having an exclusive meeting with the President, this is the biggest opportunity for Parliament to redeem itself. Investigate this!

How it started

The allegation was first made by Minority Chief Whip Muntaka Mubarak, who said it was inappropriate.

The Asawase legislator argued that the fees charged at the event were not the kind of fees approved by Parliament, and that the monies were also not accounted for in the Internally Generated Funds [IGF] of the Ministry's accounts.

The Ministry however in a statement challenging the claims, said it played no role in determining prices for seats at the event.

It added that, it only facilitated the implementation of the new initiative [GEBA], by the Millennium Excellence Foundation, an entity noted for organizing world class events.

As a Government that believes in the private sector as the engine of growth, the Government through the Ministry of Trade and Industry welcomed the initiative to collaborate with the Foundation to see to the birthing of the initiative. The Ministry consequently signed an MoU with the Foundation that spelt out the roles of both parties. Resource mobilization to ensure that the event was organized at no cost to the taxpayer was the sole responsibility of the Foundation.

The Ministry only wrote letters to introduce the Millennium Excellence Foundation to sponsors and solicited support whilst the Foundation prepared the sponsorship package kits and presented it to potential sponsors at a later date. It is very worrying for people who are expected to know better (especially if some happen to be leading members of the august House of Parliament) to conveniently join the streets wagon in pursuit of petty partisan parochial interests to churn out deliberate falsehood to perpetuate the fallacy that access to the President has to be secured with financial inducements, excerpts of the statement said.

This was however disputed by the Minority in Parliament, who in a statement issued through Okudzeto Ablakwa, insisted that the Ministry's own letter dated October 23, 2017, confirmed that it went beyond facilitation, to actually collect monies from the expatriates.

It said that letter also directed that interested expatriates were to direct their cheques to the accounts office of the Trade Ministry, although such monies were not accounted for by the Ministry

President Akuffo Addo subsequently wrote to the Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kyeremanten, demanding answers from him over the allegations.

We're ready to provide evidence  Ablakwa

Meanwhile, Mr. Ablakwa has indicated that the Minority is willing to submit evidence of extortion in the allegations against the Trade and Industry Ministry, and the Millennium Excellence Foundation.

The President of the Foundation, Ashim Morton, had refuted the extortion allegations leveled against the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

But speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ablakwa said Mr. Morton was only trying to be clever with his response.

He [Mr. Morton] says that of the funds collected, nobody paid before the event. He is choosing his words, playing smart with us by saying that nobody paid before the event because he knows we have receipts that we will be putting out of people who paid and the dates the receipts were issued. He is trying to play clever saying that nobody paid before the event, so how about after?

Money collected from expatriates was for fundraising  Organizers

But even the claims by Mr. Morton, somehow contradicts the accounts of the Chairman of the Millennium Excellence Foundation, Victor Gbeho, who said monies were given willingly as sponsorship for the event, and that cannot constitute extortion.

All our ceremonies are based on funds that we realise. We have no other source of money except what we raise for each occasion and in this case, we asked the Ministry of Trade and Industry if it was going to be our partner, and give us an introduction to the business community, Mr. Gbeho explained.

Because of the variance in the donations received, he said it was only right that the higher donors were favoured.

In some of the awards [ceremonies], there is the platinum, then gold and then the silver [categories], all for protocol, if we come to you and you give us GHc 20,000 and somebody else gives us GHc 150,000, it will be the highest form of perversion of principles if the one that gave GHc 20,000 is going to be given more special treatment than the one who gave GHc 150,000.

It doesn't mean that anyone was being compelled. Those who gave [donations] gave of their free will knowing very well the categories that we had, Mr. Gbeho added.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah

The post Parliament must probe alleged Trade Ministry extortion  Muntaka appeared first on Ghana News .
Ghana winner of the Universal Concept of Mental and Arithmetic System (UCMAS) global competition returned to Kumasi to a rousing welcome on Friday.

Nine-year-old Enoch Asiedu of Bethelinter Academy beat competition from contestants from 56 countries to clinch honours for Ghana in the competition held in Malaysia.

The Class Five pupil began his glorious journey to winning global laurel by emerging regional and national champion.

Enoch was met at the Kumasi Airport by a huge welcome party of management, staff and children of Bethelinter Academy as well as relatives and well-wishers.

He has lifted Ghanas flag high by grabbing picking the first prize in the above -age -seven category.

The global laurel winner thanked supporters and well-wishers.

Elated parents, Benjamin and Christiana Asiedu, cannot hide their excitement as they urge parents to prioritize their children s education.

Enochs father said that today is my happiest day; I dont know what to say than to thank God for how far he has brought my son. I will urge all parents to prioritize their wards education, for the future benefits are enormous.

He charged parents to yearn for the childs education.

Proprietress of Bethelinter Academy, Vida Adu Amankwaa, believes it is time to introduce UCMAS as the basic course in schools.

I am looking out for the day UCMAS will be taught in all basic schools to enhance the thinking ability of children and boost their knowledge to solve complex situations.

I am calling on authorities to come up with policies to make UCMAS a compulsory subject in all basic schools.

Ashanti Regional Coordinator of UCMAS, Erasmus Asamoah Cudjoe, wants the government to consider the proposal for adoption nationwide.

He says that it empowers children physically and mentally to solve complex situations.

It is about time for policymakers to set their priorities right on issues bothering education. Countries like China and Malaysia are developing all because of the enlightenment of students in UCMAS. We can only progress as a country if we enhance the teaching of maths and science in our various schools. 
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Seoul.

Atrocity tourism and what might be termed the tourism of divisive obstacles (fences, barbed wire, mine fields) can be great money earners. Former concentration and extermination camps in Europe bring in currency even as visitors shake with stunned grief and moral disturbance - tears and foreboding as valuable currency.

In South Korea, the money earner is the Demilitarised Zone, shortened to the seemingly innocuous DMZ. Euphemised in such a manner, and one can forget the tens of thousands of helmeted men who gaze at each other at border points, or the thousands of artillery pieces in concealed spaces waiting to be deployed in a moment of annihilating fury.

Gazing across a territory with millions of unexploded mines, a territory that, ironically enough, is meant to be demilitarised, chills the blood. Here, along the 38th parallel, another legacy of great power cruelty and avarice, two Koreas face each other on one of the most heavily armed borders on the planet. This may be the site of the next regional, or world war, one that promises to be over with apocalyptic brevity.

Time and history are suspended here, a form of cryogenic storage. There are monuments to the signing of the armistice that never formally concluded the war of 1950-1953. There are scrap items such as shot up trains gloomily present in rusty solemnity. A crisp, biting air adds to the atmosphere as the field glasses are deployed across from the Dora observatory. Birds of prey hover over an area teaming with ornithological variety, and seem indifferent, or certainly acclimatised to the megaphone music blaring across the border. Two enormous flagpoles gaze at each other, accompanying flags limp.

Kaesong City can be seen from Mount Dora. To the left, is something that could hardly count as a village. If you look to the left, it is a fake city, points the guide Han. That purports to be Propaganda Village or Kijong-dong, supposedly an incentive to lure those in the South who have had enough, and wish for the offerings of the north.

The guide is intent on educating his guests. In the manner of an overly enthusiastic master, he wishes to dictate things early. You will all be known as Hans guests. He insists, with a weak stab at humour, on being called Han, or, should you wish, Han Solo. If all things fail, he will settle with Rob.

As we make our way to the DMZ, Han feels obligated to regale us with stories punctuated by trivia. In time, he starts to ramble, even prattle. His points of discussion are suitably packaged for morsel-sized consumption, directed at social media junkies rather than bookish types. These are not visitors who are too aware of their history, offering easy pickings.

He describes the situation for defectors, most of who come through China rather than brave the murderous parallel. They are offered assistance and programs to integrate into South Korean society, though these are, in the scheme of things, modest. The arms might be open in welcome, but these are only ever at half-stretch. The citizens of the DPRK remain, at best, second in the political and social lottery.

To the border, moments of absurd optimism are presented. What promises to be an international station at Dorasan, a potential future meeting point on the way to Pyongyang, is heralded as another hopeful sign. We do not know when, but the sense here is that the train service to the DPRK will commence, a state of affairs that will link the Koreas to lucrative trans-continental train lines, including the Trans-Siberian. Not the last station from the South, comes the advertisement, But the first station toward the North.

Even across the unpromising barbed wire, the frosty gazes, the lethal defences, Han is confident: Eventually, we are all going to be re-unified. At the station entrance is yet another installation to press home the point: a piano for reunification with its strings replaced by barbed wire.

The absurdity does not stop there. Infiltration tunnels provide visitors a glimpse into the efforts of North Korean burrowers to find means of penetrating South Korean territory, though suggestions that these might be used in the event of an invasion are simply not convincing. For one thing, they are squat, narrow constructions that would only be suitable for an army of malnourished midgets on a suicide mission. An Indonesian lady, burnished with a hard hat, barely grazes the top. Taller visitors are not so lucky, and helmets crash and graze the tunnel as the claustrophobia sets in.

A few beat a hasty retreat on initially seeing the 263 metres before them. To get to that tunnel requires traversing another dug entrance. Too crazy, too hot, comes the surrendering lament of a thick set Indian man. The walls, covered in coal glazing to give the impression of a legitimate mining venture, seem to be moving in; the back begins to ache, the muscles to tighten.

The tourist spectacle resolves itself in being stark, though, in anticipation of US tourists, take away coffee options are plentiful at meeting points through the DMZ tour. The knickknacks are poor in variety. Ginseng brandy from North Korea is available for purchase, as are a range of trashy trinkets reflecting the parlous state of border relations.

On the return to Itaewon, the guide makes a modest effort to rein in his enthusiasm. He decides the visitors to go to the amethyst factory, promoting the magic of Koreas national stone. The employees at the factory pounce with unremitting fury, hoping to make a killing. Some succeed. Han Solo-Rob looks pleased. Even in the shade of potential, existentially harmful conflict, business will go on as the Koreas continue, to a large extent, to remain ghosts at the feast of power politics.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Such was his shock and anger at the turn of events that the real estate magnate and owner of the resplendent, opulent and stunningly beautiful 'Amen Estate' on the outskirts of Lekki in Lagos, Babatunde O. Gbadamosi, wrote the following:

"I have studied the case. I am going to withdraw ALL my funds from Guaranty Trust Bank tomorrow morning".

The basis of his angst and consternation was the plight of the propietor of Innoson Motors at the hands of Guaranty Trust Bank, the EFCC and the Buhari administration.

Babatunde's disgust and repugnance at the way in which the bank and the EFCC behaved accurately reflects the mood and sentiment of millions of Nigerians on this matter.

Yet in my view the matter goes much further and deeper than just GTB and the EFCC.

They are simply willing puppets, tiny minions and minor players in a much bigger game and a much wider picture.

Permit me to cross the "t"s, dot the "i"s, consider the background and look at the facts.

In the last one year alone no less than three prominent Igbo businessmen have been arrested, humiliated and detained by the Buhari administration.

All three are major employers of labour who fared extreemly well under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and whose companies have become household names.

The first is Cletus Ibeto of Ibeto Cement, a humble, charming, hard-working, low-profile and exceptionally profound and insightful man who I met when I was in detention last year.

The second is the ebullient, young and vocal Ifeanyi Uba of Capital Oil and Gas, who later joined politics and who was indeed a member of President Goodluck Jonathan's campaign organisation in 2015 where we worked closely together.

The third is Innocent Chukwuma, the owner of Innoson Motors whose company is the only one in Nigeria that produces cars, who I am told is an absolute gentleman and whom I have never met.

These three men are amongst the five biggest and most prominent Igbo businessmen in the country today. The remaining two are Arthur Eze of Atlas Oronto Petroleum International and Emeka Offor of Chrome Oil both of whom have done very well but that have also had their own fair share of persecution and travails over the years.

I made a point of doing the research in the cases of Chukwuma, Ibeto and Uba and why they were having issues with the EFCC and the SSS respectively and I came to the conclusion that not only had they done nothing wrong but they were being targetted simply because they were perceived as being "Jonathan men", because they were deemed as being sympathetic to the PDP, because they were Igbo and finally simply out of envy from ruthless competitors.

Given that it came as no surprise to me when, just yesterday morning, I was informed that Chukwuma's home was raided and tear-gassed by the EFCC and he was arrested and detained in what can only be described as brutal and questionable circumstances.

I was reliably informed that officers of the EFCC and the Nigerian Police not only injured many in his home but that they also slapped his wife.

Never mind that he was later reportedly offered bail after what can only be described as a gruelling and harrowing period of torment and trauma: the fact is that his home should never have been raided and he should never have been arrested, detained and subjected to this brutal affront and indecorious indignity in the first place.

Such was my concern for him and the way in which the security forces had behaved at his home that I was constrained to post the following on both my twitter handle and Facebook page on that same day. I asked,

"Why should anybody be surprised about the arrest of the owner of Innoson Motors? They did the same to Cletus Ibeto about a year ago.These people come from the "wrong" part of the country and they are providing a service and employment for Nigerians. They must be punished for it!".

I went further by offering some gentle and wise counsel to an old and dear friend by also posting the following:

"I have known the MD of GTB, Segun Agbaje and his two older brothers, Femi and Jimi, for close to 40 years and I have immense respect and deep affection for them. I urge him not to expose himself to the shark infested waters of politics by allowing himself to be used by these barbarians to destroy Innoson. If he does he will regret it".

Yet it does not stop there. The matter goes much deeper and further than just the travails of Innocent Chukwuma of Innoson Motors or indeed those of Cletus Ibeto and Ifeanyi Uba.

It goes to the very heart and foundation of the fundamental problem of what Nigeria has been turned into by those who believe that they own her.

It touches on the nationality question, the quest and struggle for equal rights and opportunities for the various ethnic naionalities that make up Nigeria and the unofficial and unannounced policy of the Buhari administration to treat southerners as slaves and to discredit, crush and malign any Igbo person who aspires to excellence and greatness and who is a source of pride and inspiration to their people.

To those that doubt this grave assertion I have one question to ask: can they, under ANY circumstances, imagine or envisage Aliko Dangote of the Dangote Group or Abdul Samad Rabiu of the BUA Group , both of whom are highly successful, extreemly wealthy and very well-known northern Muslim Hausa-Fulani businessmen, being treated in this way by ANY Nigerian government let alone one like Buhari's that was established by the Fulani and solely for the interests of the Fulani? The answer to the question is a resounding "no".

Yet for the southern businessman and particularly for the Igbo one the rules are very different and the treatment that they get from the government and its security agencies are a world apart.

As a matter of fact they are unfairly deemed and insidiously labelled as the "fatherless ones" and the "orphans of the corporate world" simply because they are on their own and they have no favour or protection from government.

It is clear that any Igbo man that has the temerity and the fortitude to shine and to rise up by dint of conviction, vision, passion and hard work must be humiliated, demonised and denigrated.

The story and the theme appears to be a never-ending one and it touches on all spheres of human endeavour in Nigeria. The policy, principle and practice is the same: as long as you are Igbo you are in trouble and in order to survive you must sing the praises of the Buhari administration, bow and grovel to the Fulani, accept your servitude and slavery with stoic ignomy and "bend the knee".

In the field of the struggle for self-determination and the quest for the establishment of the independent and sovereign state of Biafra the powers that be did it to the great Nnamdi Kanu, to his IPOB and to MASSOB.

In the field of business they have done it to the Chukwumas, the Ubas and the Ibetos of this world.

In the field of partisan politics they have done it to countless Igbo elders and leaders who have refused to bow to the Fulani hegemony that the Buhari administration represents.

In the field of the Armed Forces, the Nigerian Police Force and the various security and intelligence agencies they have done it as countless Igbo career officers have either been denied promotion and operational command or they have been prematurely retired.

Yet all this pales before the fact that thousands of young Igbo men and women have been secretly slaughtered, have been subjected to mass murder and genocide and have been buried in mass graves by agents of the Buhari government and security forces over the last two years and six months.

I have written about this over and over again simply because I believe that an attack on the Igbo is an attack on the whole of the south and is indeed an attack on humanity and all right-thinking people.

It is also an attack on the Christian faith of which I am a member because virtually every single one of the 50 million Igbos in Nigeria are Christians whilst those that are waging this unofficial and undeclared war against them are predominantly Muslims.

That is why the meeting between the Igbo and the Yoruba leaders slated for Jaunuary 11th in Enugu, under the auspices of Nzuko Umunna and which will be attended by the Obi of Onitsha, the Ooni of Ife, Afenifere, Ohanaeze and all the key Igbo and Yoruba leaders, intelligensia and politicians from all sides of the political divide is so crucial.

The Igbo and the Yoruba must set aside our dfferences, look at these matters, speak the bitter truth, come together and agree on how to move forward and protect our collective interest.

Whichever way it goes and whatever happens the matter shall come to an expected end because the God of Heaven will not sit by idly and allow this injustice and wickedness to go on for much longer.

I say this because the blood of the innocent cries to Him in heaven for vengeance and sooner or later He will hear their cry and both deliverance and judgement shall come.

In the meantime when I heard about the injustice that Innoson and his family had been subjected to I wrote the following words which came to my spirit and which burn in my soul right up until this very moment.

It is a heart-felt and powerful lamentation and it reflects the way virtually every right-thinking and sensitive southerner feels and thinks today about what is happening in Nigeria even though they may be too scared to voice it.

"O Igbo what have you done to the sons of Futa Jalon? Why do the heathans rant and rage? Why do the cow-loving aliens and foreign invaders seek to subjugate you and wipe you off the face of the earth?

In silent whispers they claim that they have cursed you, that you are not fit to rule or lead and that they hate you with a perfect hatred. Yet in 1966 you saw all this coming.

You warned us about what would happen and you tried to do something about it. Sadly we would not listen and we laughed you to scorn. You saw what we never saw. You knew what we never knew.

You suffered what we never suffered and you shed the tears that we never shed. 51 years later nothing has changed. They still kill you and rape your women. Only now they have widened the circle and it is no longer just you.

They have enslaved the rest of us as well. They kill us too and rape our women. Those of us from the South West, South South and the Middle Belt that joined forces with them to kill you and starve your children to death have now been turned into their slaves and serfs.

They kill us too and rape our women as well. They also take our land, shame our children and hate and denigrate our faith.

Yet we look on sheepishly and helplessly all in the name of keeping the peace and political correctness: we accept our pitiable plight and we suffer in silence.

The Bible asks, "what can flesh do to me?", yet we ignore this divine injunction and holy scripture and bow our heads in trepidation and shame.

Our men have become women and we mask our accursed fear of death, destruction and incarceration and our inexplicable awe of our collective oppressors with a shameful and cowardly smile.

We readily accept every shame, every insult, every indignity and every act of savagery, brutality, barbarity and callousness that they inflict on us all for the sake of an illusionary, ephemeral, undefined and far-fetched concept known as "one Nigeria" which bears false and delusionary pretentions and claims of nationality and nationhood.

We even thank our collective oppressors and captors and we rejoice with them when they denigrate our faith and when they slaughter our children and our beloved in the fields and in the streets.

O Southern Nigeria: who has bewitched you? Cowardice is thy name."

May God deliver us!

.
MTN Ghana has emerged the PR organization of the year in the telecommunications sector for the third consecutive time at the just ended 6th IPR awards in Accra. The event was organized under the theme Deriving Value from Values.

At the same event, MTN Ghana was also adjudged the best in non-profit communication and the best in crisis and issues management.The IPR Excellence Awards aims at honouring and generating public recognition for the achievements and positive contributions of Public Relations units in their organisations. It was also instituted to promote professionalism in the practice of PR in Ghana.

Commenting on the awards, Mrs Georgina Asare Fiagbenu, Ag. Corporate Services Executive of MTN Ghana thanked all workers of MTN Ghana for their dedication. Being the leader in the telecommunications industry with over 17 million subscribers places a unique responsibility on us to ensure business is clearly represented and understood by our communities, clients, customers and stakeholders. This is the reason why MTN Ghana is always at the forefront of continuous engagements with its stakeholders.

MTN Ghana considers Communications and Public Relations very critical to its business growth and sustainability. To this end, MTN will continue to implement strategies that will enable it builds goodwill amongst all its stakeholders, Mrs. Fiagbenu said.

MTN Ghana has over the years demonstrated its commitment to Create and Manage Stakeholder Value through its Communications strategies. In 2016, MTN Heroes of Change was adjudged the Best Community Relations Programme of the Year whilst the Senior Manager for Corporate Communications was adjudged PR Discovery of the Year. In 2015, MTN Ghana won the best Public Relations organization in the telecommunications sector in Ghana.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

My earlier publication titled Fraud Detection and Prevention in Financial Reporting  Is it the Auditors Responsibility? as published on this same platform, sought to discuss on whose responsibility is it for fraud detection and prevention in financial reporting, however, this publication focuses on dealing with fraud detection and prevention in the workplace.

In todays environment, companies of all sizes need to consider the risk of fraud and take proactive measures to help mitigate the risks that they face and Small businesses often suffer disproportionate fraud losses, as the median loss suffered by organizations with fewer than 100 employees was $190,000 per (fraud) scheme, says James P. Martin, managing director for Cendrowski Corporate Advisors LLC.

Fraud is defined by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners as any intentional or deliberate act to deprive another of property or money by guile, deception, or other unfair means; and is expressed in forms such as corruption, cash asset misappropriation, non-cash asset misappropriation, fraudulent financial statements and fraudulent actions by third parties. Refer to earlier publication for more details.

It was also established that fraud involves the motivation to commit fraud and a perceived opportunity to do so and as such a perceived opportunity for fraudulent activities may exist when an individual believes internal control could be circumvented because of an individuals position of trust or has knowledge of specific weaknesses in the internal control system. Three variables thus fuel fraud in every organisation - pressures, opportunity and rationalization.

Organisation processes such as procurement, payment, recording, receipts etc. are all exposed to fraudulent activities as fraud is a no respecter of persons  from bottom to top, all employees risk being fraudulent.

Some Indicators for Existence of Potential Fraud in Business  Detection

There is no specific rule, checklist or manual for fraud detection, however, options such internal audit, external audit, financial report analysis, surprise audits, anonymous information/tips, and data mining or forensic audits, especially if targeted at fraud detection is highly recommended. other indicators are:

Display of Unusual Behaviour  display of unusual behaviour and attitude is often associated with perpetrators of fraud. Most fraudsters hardly take their leave or vacation (even when sick) with the fear that when they vacate their desk, the new person may unravel their deals and are also unlikely to assign work even with overloaded with work.

Unresolved Items in Reconciliations  the purpose of reconciliations is to identity and resolve issues, if any, however, items that stay unresolved for so long in reconciliations could be indicative of fraud/theft.

Excessive Voids  frequent and excessive voiding of invoices could give an indication that goods may have been sold but payment is diverted for use by perpetrators hence subsequent cancellation of sales slip or invoices to cover up the theft.

Missing Documents  eventhough documents may be misplaced at one point in time, frequent disposal or unusual disappearance of documents like deposit slips, receipt or cheque books could also give a potential case of fraud.

Excessive Credit Memos  just like excessive voids, this technique is also used to cover the theft of cash because an unwarranted or unsubstantiated credit memo could easily be written out to a customer, and cash taken to make total cash balance.

Frequent and unreasonable adjustments to debtors and creditors balance - where customer payments are misappropriated, adjustments could be made to debtors balance to cover the shortage whiles perpetrators can use a forged billing scheme convert cash for personal use and just use adjustments to make the creditors balance.

Duplicate Payments  not all duplicate payments are considered errors because they could equally be converted to use by perpetrators. This is usually a cartel thing by group of employees and/or a third party, which is carefully planned and executed especially where there are weak controls for payment processing.

Inventory Shortages  normal operating shortages over time could easily be explained where proper inventory records exist, however, frequent and excessive decline in inventory could give a red flag for fraud, theft or misappropriation.

Increased Scrap  the frequent or excessive increase in amount of scrap could indicate a scheme to steal and resell materials or items especially in the manufacturing sector because such activities are carried with less scrutiny than normal inventory.

Some Adverse Effects of Fraud on Business  Adverse Implications

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) 2012 Report to the Nation is one study that describes the losses that an entity may experience because of fraud and it indicates that a typical organization loses approximately 5 percent of its annual revenue to fraudulent acts. Some identified adverse effects of fraud are:

financial loss

reduced credibility of financial reports

reduced confidence by the public (i.e. external stakeholders)

shattered company culture and employee morale (such as mistrust, loss of key staff etc)

increased audit cost

threaten the survival of business

loss of potential funding or investors

Some Possible Ways to Minimise or Eliminate Fraud in Business - Prevention

The fraud cases studied in the ACFE 2014 Report revealed that the fraudulent activities studied lasted an average of 18 months before being detected and you can imagine the type of loss a company could suffer with an employee committing fraud for a year and a half. Cecilia Locati in the Journal of Accountancy suggested some tips to help companies decrease the presence of fraud. These include:

Segregation of duties  the lack of segregation of duties makes it easy for one individual to have complete control over a process, such as procurement. Implementing segregation of duties will disperse the responsibilities over more than one individual.

Reviews and approvals  it is important that the review process for invoice payments is thorough and complete in order for a reviewer to determine the legitimacy of the invoice and the vendor.

Vendor selection  the vendor selection process should include a bidding procedure and a due-diligence process to determine that the vendor is genuine and that the company is getting a quote that is reasonable based on other vendors in the market. Additionally, after the vendor is selected it should go to a second party for final review and approval.

Automated controls  companies should implement automated controls to go along with manual processes which are more prone to errors and fraud. Automated controls include processes in areas such as payment and other systems that cannot be overwritten by a manual control.

Consistent vendor monitoring  it is recommended that an individual other than the one maintaining a relationship with the vendor monitors vendors performance over time, to ensure expectations are being met and maintained regarding service and performance. This will help to eliminate the likelihood that fraudulent or fake vendors will be used in business.

Budget reviews  reviewing the budget to actual numbers will help a company to detect any outliers from expectations, along with reviewing financial ratios to determine any numbers that are not consistent with expectations.

Anonymous reporting of fraud availability  according to the ACFE 2014 Report, most occupational fraud (over 40%) is detected because of a tip. While most tips come from employees of the organization, other important sources of tips are customers, vendors, competitors and acquaintances of the fraudster. Companies should thus implement formal and structured processes for reporting suspected fraud. This can be done through the use of an anonymous hotline or other systems for employees to use at their convenience.

Know Your Employees - it is prudent for management to be involved with their employees and take time to get to know them because fraud perpetrators often display behavioural traits that can indicate the intention to commit fraud and thus observing and listening to employees can help you identify potential fraud risk. This can also reveal internal issues that need to be addressed such as an employee who feels a lack of appreciation from management or anger at their boss which could lead him or her to commit fraud as a way of revenge.

Implement Internal Controls  management must implement strong internal controls to safeguard companys assets, ensure the integrity of its accounting records, and deter and detect fraud and theft and a typical example is segregation of duties which can reduce the risk of fraud from occurring.

Live the Corporate Culture  it is believed that a positive work environment can prevent employee fraud and theft hence the need for a clear organizational structure, written policies and procedures and fair employment practices. An open-door policy can also provide a great fraud prevention system as it gives employees open lines of communication with management. Directors and management should lead by example and hold every employee accountable for their actions, regardless of position.

Conclusion

As Corne Mouton, a Forensic Services Partner with Mazars will say fraud is unavoidable, and for those in business, it is an occupational hazard. The costs and long-term effects of fraud are many because organisations that are victims of fraud not only bear the cost of the fraud itself but also the costs of investigating the fraud, of clearing up the problem and of ensuring there is no reoccurrence.

Fraud is on the rise and it is therefore necessary to fight against fraudulent activities and financial misconduct and fighting it through education, prevention, detection and, ultimately, the prosecution and punishment of fraudsters should be seriously considered by every organisations management team and it should be incorporated into the organisations strategy.

About the Author

The author is a Financial Reporting/Analysis, Audit and Tax professional, a Consultant at Danisa Consult (Accounting, Audit & Tax) and a Facilitator for accounting, tax and audit at Global Institute of Resource Development (GiRD), a capacity development and training institution. A member of the Institute of Chartered Accountant, Ghana; Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana; Association of International Accountants, UK; International Association of Accounting Professionals, UK; Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, US; Southern African Institute of Business Accountants, SA.

All comments and suggestions to [email protected] /0242844114.
Legally, it goes by the codename Representation of the Peoples Amendment Law (Act 699), and its termed ROPAL/ROPAA; either way, for short. ROPAL was enacted way back in the year 2006 under then Kufuor-led NPP government. Primarily, the 2006 law establishes the legal basis and spells out eligibility criteria for Ghanaians working and residing outside the country/abroad to be able to vote, especially, in general elections.

Keep in mind youre nobly recognized if you belong to the group of fair-minded Ghanaians here at home wondering why after its passage in 2006, ROPAA is still stored in out-of-reach, dusty, legal cabinet somewhere in the Electoral Commission bureau? In fact, one of the most important explanations for the needlessly long delay in the implementation of ROPAL is complete lack of political will and genuine commitment toward the Act 699. To say the least, the successive administrations, till now, have shown lukewarm attitudes for ROPAA, the reason(s) for which is best known to them.

The fact is it is quite right to blame the Electoral Commissioners for the widespread clouds of corruption and mismanagement hanging over their office; but in the same vein, it may not be fair to fault the EC for the non-implementation of ROPAA. The onus of responsibility in terms of pushing for ROPALs implementation must rest on the backs of the nations parliament, plain and simple!

In this political systemmultiparty democracysuch as Ghanas, the nerve center of power must be the parliament/legislative branch. In addition to passing laws, efficient legislature has powerful oversight subcommittees/mechanisms to ensure that laws passed are adequately funded and effectively monitored. If the countrys parliament isnt weak, none of us we would be talking about the abysmal failure of the EC to implement the ROPAA.

It is confounding trying to come to grips with a political culture that is grounded in democracy like we have in Ghana, and yet the peoples main national house (parliament) almost always plays second fiddle not only to the executive branch `but also to the Electoral Commission, too? In America or Britain, the legislative body would have passed the law (diaspora suffrage legislation), fund it, and oversee that the appropriate bureaucratic body is executing the law.

Why should an elected body like the national parliament, passes a bill into law, and sits back for some years and allows an unelected bureaucrats comprising a three-member ECs to put bureaucratic impediments in the way of its implementations? If the EC wields that much constitutional power, does it come as a surprise, therefore, that the current Electoral Commissioner has been behaving as the Colossus that bestride the world? In many ways the EC strongly believes her commission is so independent that she doesnt even have to respond to parliamentary inquiries of the ECs activities.

Under these circumstances, does anyone blame the Electoral Commissioner for not having any sense of urgency, especially, with regard to implementing the ROPAL? Obviously the big takeaway or lesson in the aftermath of the ROPAAs ordeal since 2006 is the fact that the countrys 4th Republican Constitution is far behind the times. It is hopeful that the leaders of all political persuasions in Ghana today may join forces sooner than later to effect some key changes to this constitution to help makes it mirrors through the actual time Ghanaians are living in. Ghana in the late 1980s and the early 1990s is different from the social media/Internet-inspired Ghana of the 21st century.

As of now, the phrase Ghanaians in diaspora only exists in name but not in actuality because the social media phenomenon has made international borders relatively porous and distances almost non-existent. Though many of us live abroad; still its almost like we all live here at home in Ghana because we are fully aware of what is unfolding in the country every minute/hour. The nation is socially connected everywhere in the world; we live in the global village of the Internet. The physical presence of people is just about irrelevant.

The ROPALs undue delay in the hands of the EC is a clear pointer that the 4th republic constitution needs amendments so as to make parliament more relevant with backbone and vigorous oversight powers. No determined representative democracy will allow unelected Electoral officials dictate or move at its own pace vis-a-vis implementation of an all-important ROPAL. Indeed, the part of the constitution that empowers the EC to treat Ghanaians in diaspora in such disdainful manner needs critical reappraisal.

We need to be mindful that Ghanas current military-commissioned Constitution has notable traces of military dictatorship where power is not properly disbursed but heavily concentrated in the executive margins of the government. Ghanaians may recall that at the time of the composition of the Constitution, Ghana was under the military regime of (P)NDC. One could imagine the strong influences then one-man rule Rawlings government directly or indirectly brought to bear on the members of the Constituent Assembly tasked with putting together the present constitution.

In short, Ghanaians in diasporas money, talents, and expertise are sought after by potential office runners, including presidential candidates during major elections in Ghana. Yet these large groups of people living abroad are literally disenfranchised. Denying Ghanaian diasporans from voting offends the 21st century sense of basic human rights and international law. Major/serious democracies encourage their citizens living abroad to vote; they dont put obstacles or show some love-hate tendencies toward their overseas brothers and sisters! ROPAA, to some degree, has shown how Ghana treats its own sons and daughters residing overseas. It is a shameful shame in this social media universe!

Bernard Asubonteng is United States-based writer; send your comments to: [email protected]
The Asokwa Circuit Court (1) has remanded into juvenile cells the three boys who allegedly gang-raped a teenage girl at Bantama, Kumasi, for one week, implying that they will spend the Christmas holidays outside their homes.

The prosecution told Magistrate Peter Oppong Boateng that the police were still investigating the case.

The magistrate, who presided over the case in-camera, therefore remanded the three suspects.

The boys, including two Senior High School (SHS) 1 and one Junior High School (JHS) 3 students, would reappear in court on December 27, 2017 for the case to be heard.

The three suspects (name withheld) were among seven boys who allegedly gang-raped a teenage girl at Bantama.

The seven suspects supposedly recorded the obscene act on video, which has since gone viral on several social media platforms.

The about five minutes video shows a teenage girl pinned to a mattress by one of her abusers while his accomplices take turns to have sex with her.

The victim, who was resisting her attackers throughout the ordeal, was restrained from escaping by her abusers who appeared to be having fun with the torture.

Three of the boys were apprehended in their various homes at Bantama over the weekend, but the remaining four absconded.

John Boamah, lawyer for the suspects, politely refused to talk to the media, explaining that the matter was still in court.

He, however, said the police asked for more time to investigate the case, adding that the plea of the trio was not taken.

From I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) made history by becoming the first city in Africa and the fourth in the world, to be selected as part of the City Cancer Challenge (C/CAN 2025) project.

An initiative of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), the C/CAN 2025, is a multi-sectorial project that supports selected cities to design, plan and implement cancer treatment solutions.

The KMA beat other vibrant cities in the world which were eager to be selected to be part of the C/CAN 2025 project in order to derive immense benefits.

Cities that are selected to be part of the C/CAN 2025 project are periodically given technical and financial support from UICC to position them properly to be able to fight cancers of all forms.

World Cancer Summit

The KMA was declared the fourth city in the world to be part of the C/CAN 2025 project during the 2017 World Cancer Leaders' Summit, which was held at Palacio De Mineria, Mexico City, Mexico, in North America in November, 2017.

Ghana was represented at the programme by the Kumasi Mayor Osei Assibey Antwi, Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman Manu, Ashanti Regional Minister Simon Osei Mensah and Dr Baffuor Awuah of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), among others.

Standing Ovation

The Ghanaian delegation was given a standing ovation by the other attendants of the programme when Kumasi was declared the first city in Africa to be selected to be part of the C/CAN 2025 project.

Dr Dennis Laryea, Programmes Manager for Non-Communicable Diseases, Ghana Health Service (GHS), who also made the trip to Mexico, stated that the KMA was selected on merit because it submitted quality proposal.

According to him, the assembly was selected because Kumasi boasts of a National Cancer Treatment Center and Cancer Registry facility.

MoU

Dr Laryea disclosed that the KMA/Ghana and UICC had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) from 2018 to 2020.

According to him, during the three-year period, the UICC would provide the KMA with technical and financial support, which would be geared towards making Kumasi a self-reliant city in the prevention and control of cancer.

Dr Laryea said UICC would periodically visit Kumasi to assess the prevention and treatment of cancer in the city, adding that the project could be extended to other cities in Ghana based on its performance.

He stated that the selection of KMA as a member of the C/CAN 2025 project is a boost for the city and Ghana in general, stressing that KMA's achievement would go a long way to enhance the prevention and treatment of cancer in the country.

Dr Laryea said an executive committee, which comprise representatives from all the major stakeholders in the fight against cancer in the country, would soon be formed.

From I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Folks, when torment visits a people, they are first made mad or afflicted with an inexplicable syndrome that levelheaded people call social delinquency. From the behaviour of some learned fools, this statement can be argued to be a strong proof of mental complex; a blend of schizophrenia, hallucination, delusion, and neurosis. You dont have to be walking naked on the streets to be mad, but many scenarios can be adduced to ascertain that. For example, transporting a bunch of madmen from one sanitarium to another between two different cities by air, the clamour in the cabin was more than the captain of the DC3 could bear. He peeped into the chaos and noticed one quiet person in the midst of the rambunctious lot. So he took him by the hand into the cockpit and slammed the door shut behind them. The quiet madman was asked why he was not as noisy as the rest. He claimed that he wasnt mad, but rather a victim of societal confusion. He sounded sane, so the Captain told him that if he would make the rest all shut up, then upon arrival, a recommendation would be made that his condition be reevaluated and released.

Lo and behold, within five minutes, the plane was as quiet and sturdy as the calm before the storm. When the man returned to the cockpit of the DC3, an old unpressurised aircraft, the amazed Captain asked how he did it. It turned out that the quiet man was madder than all the others because he opened the door and told his mates to step outside if they wanted to play.and they all did!

So I am not surprised by the utterances of normal looking psychopaths. Joseph Yamin, for the yearning to be recognised as a human being sought to blame the FREE SHS for the gang rape of a young lady. You would hardly be surprised when you realise that the dishonest former President John Mahama is sponsoring this blubber of lard to become NDCs Ashanti Regional Chairman. So what kind of opinion can be deduced from the foolishness of a dirty lot who can hardly say anything better than the incoherence of empty discourse?

Jospeh Yamin, the man who does not know his father would have the audacity to desecrate a heavenly policy as the FREE SHS that has the propensity to help many unfortunate children including the fatherless so that they do not grow to become numbskulls as he is. That is what I mean when I refer to "educated fools". Does he want Ghanaian children to become delinquent like him? Chai tofiakwa, GOD forbid. Such a calamity will not afflict us! I pray so in ALLAHs name! Ameen!

The FREE SHS has come to stay, and as in every good initiative, challenges will pop up. They will be dealt with as we lurch along the track of progress until we become perfect and the road becomes smooth. But such enemies of progress and enemies of GOD will never prosper in their mindset of destroying all that the President, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has chalked thus far; feats far more significant than the scanty evidence of a rather loud 27 year empty legacy of the thieves in the NDC.

Ghanaians suppurated under the extremity of a non-thinking blank-minded John Mahama, who was persistently high on weed and alcohol (cognac is now called John Mahama). He has sponsored all the futile efforts by his mongers and naysayers to shoot down and destroy Akufo-Addos divine prophecies. I have always opined that this man was sent by a heavenly decree, so all the machinations of the evil NDC, Jospeh Yammin, and his brainless frats of the NDC swinery, including a few of our own, will be shot down, in shaa ALLAH, by a heavenly decree, too.

I am baffled that some of our own, for a parochial interest of implementing an agenda, will walk with the NDC to disturb the smooth governance of the President. Fortunately, we all understand that when GOD is with you, those against you can never succeed in stalling your good deeds.

Nana Akufo-Addo, Nyame nka woho wate! GOD be with you! FREE SHS is here to stay. The results of this heavenly ordinance will soon make manifest in the ever dwindling fortunes of the NDC, as we search for a better opposition in another party! And of course they would claim that this article is one of sycophancy. Because of their instability, they can never understand that I, Fadi Dabbousi, am staunchly supportive of initiatives that would help heal us in this country. What is worse is that the NDC ingrates are themselves benefitting from the FREE SHS, and other developmental policies initiated and implemented by Akufo-Addo irrespective of the disappointment they feel with their party for not achieving so much in 27 years.

#NDCisJustaDisgrace
21.12.2017 LISTEN

By Kofi Ata, Cambridge, UK December 20, 2017

Last week, I read about a constitutional amendment to be submitted at the Extra-Ordinary Delegates Conference of the ruling National Patriotic Party (NPP) to exclude party members in the Diaspora from contesting national executive positions. The proposal was strongly opposed by the Diaspora branches and as this matter was of interest to me, though not a member of the party, I decided to follow the development at the conference on Sunday December 16, 2017. What was unknown then were other hideous and more anti-democratic and dictatorial constitutional amendments to be tabled at the conference. This short article is a review of one of the most despotic constitutional amendment ever proposed by a political party under the Fourth Republican Constitution.

I was listening to President Nana Akufo-Addos speech when he pronounced that three of the proposed constitutional amendments had been rejected outright and withdrawn. The most alarming was a constitutional amendment for the partys MPs to appoint constituency executives of the party. In fact, when I hear it I though the president had made a mistake. A party that claims to be the cradle of democracy in Ghana, tracing its roots from the Busia-Danquah tradition and forming alliance with conservative parties across the developed democracies, to even dream of, let alone make such a proposal by no other group within the party than the elected representatives of the people in parliament, is beyond madness.

What also shocked me was the fact that, the party leadership allowed such communist proposal to be discussed at all, be accepted and included as agenda items for the extra-ordinary conference. The question is, what the hell were the National Executive and Council of Elders thinking if the party MPs have gone bonkers?

This dictatorial and kim jong-un style diktat by unashamed and dishonourable MPs of the party raises a number of questions not only about Ghanas democracy but democracy as a whole in Africa.

First, is the problem of how parliamentary candidates are selected every four years by political parties in Ghana, especially the two main parties, NPP and NDC. This is compounded by the fact that being a member of parliament in Ghana is the most lucrative political career because at the end of the parliamentary term, whether an MP retires, is re-elected or not, all MPs are paid handsome ex-gratia that public workers with thirty or forty years continuous service can never aspire to. Until the four yearly ex-gratia awards to all MPs is reformed so that it is only paid to MPs who retire or lost their seats, the urge to be parliamentary candidate will continue to haunt sitting MPs, irrespective of their performance, the party or constituency they represent.

The other question is, do Ghanaians really understand and believe in western democracy? If so, why would elected MPs of the people who are at the pinnacle of the democratic dispensation seek to introduce dictatorship and undermine democratic representation through elections? What the MPs sought to do is to eliminate any competition to secure their positions as MPs for life. This is because, constituency executives are very important and play powerful roles in the election of the parliamentary candidates through the primaries. Therefore, had their proposal been accepted, NPP MPs would have had the sole responsibility for appointing their cronies who would ensure that every four years sitting MPs are re-elected at the primaries by whatever means to enable them become MPs for life. In fact, in such scenarios, many would be elected by acclamation or unopposed. I am not sure if even former communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had such system that NPP MPs sought to introduce in twenty-first Century Ghana.

This proposal by NPP MPs also raises the question of what could happen should NPP secure two-thirds majority in the legislature. Could they use their two-thirds majority to change the constitution and introduce more dictatorial legislation such as changing the constitution to allow for a president from the party to contest for more than two terms permitted by the Constitution and plunge the country into conflict? In fact, the proposal by the party to change their constitution to make an incumbent president from the party, party leader and automatic presidential candidate together with MPs wish list suggest that, NPP MPs would vote for such constitutional amendment if an incumbent president from the party proposes to do so to allow him or her to contest more than two-terms.

The behaviour of NPP MPs explains why there have been and there are still too many despots in Africa. MPs from the ruling party in Rwanda voted to change the countrys constitution to allow Paul Kagame to run for president after two terms and currently, MPs from the ruling party in Uganda are doing the same by voting to remove the age limit to allow Museveni to contest as president again. What NPP MPs did is an indication that they could do the same in Ghana if they had two-thirds majority. This should be a worry to all Ghanaians. I used to say that what happened in Rwanda and is happening in Uganda will never happen in Ghana. After NPPs proposed constitutional amendments, though rejected, I no longer hold such views.

They were rejected because the president said no to them. Imagine a situation where the president had dictatorial tendency and had made all the three rejected proposals to the party. What would have happened? The delegates supported by the National Executive, Council of Elders and MPs would have would have voted for it.

The MPs behaviour is not only anti-democratic but shameful and despicable. It puts not only NPP but Ghana in a bad light. It also shows that NPP pretends to be democratic when in reality, by these actions they are not. In fact, they do not understand democracy and given the chance, they could introduce dictatorial laws, rules and regulations to suit their political ambition of ruling the country for as long as they want.

Another important question the MPs failed to envisage is, would such constitutional amendment have been in tandem with the 1992 Constitution? Did the MPs, think about this before their selfish and parochial proposal? Were they aware that any action or omission by a registered political party in Ghana must comply with the 1992 Constitution? Yet, there are Barristers among the MPs who made this unconstitutional proposal.

NPP MPs should bow down their heads in shame for wanting to appoint constituency executives for the sole purpose of extending their stay in parliament. They are dishonourable despots. In fact, had this happened in a truly democratic society, all the MPs would either be recalled or deselected by their constituencies at the next election. But in Ghana where NPP is pretending to be a democratic party but exhibiting communist inferior tactics, nothing will happen and it would be business as usual. Democracy is dead on arrival in Ghana.

Kofi Ata, Cambridge, UK
Students of Ejisuman Senior High School in the Ashanti Region now have a modern facility to enhance Information and Communication Technology education.

It follows refurbishment of the Ghana-China Association ICT Center and subsequent supply of 50 brand new computers by the Chinese government.

The Chinese government spent 400, 000 Ghana cedis on the initiative which is meant to leverage Information and Communications Technology education at Ejisuman SHS.

Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Sun Boahong, and Ghanas Trades Minister, Alan Kyerematen, have inaugurated the renovated centre.

Sponsored Article Robbing the Assemblies - The Full Story (Video)

Manasseh Azure Awuni's investigative Documentary, Robbing the Assemblies, which features the GHc 320 milion shady landfills management contract with Waste Landfills Company Limited, a subsidiary of the Jospong Group.

Madam Boahong says the Chinese Embassy has built 11 ICT centres for students in eight regions of Ghana.

They are named China-Ghana ICT Centers to promote deep ties between the two countries. She advised Ghanaians to patronize locally manufactured goods to boost the economy.

Madam Boahong says Ghana will feature prominently in Chinas first import expo in November, next year.

Minister of Trades, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen encouraged students to take advantage of the ICT center to broaden their scope of knowledge and skill.

Headmistress of Ejisuman SHS, Grace Amo Adjei, also advised students to desist from cyber crime and other forms of ICT abuse.

Meanwhile, two communities in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality have received agricultural input support worth 70 thousand Ghana cedis from the Chinese Embassy.

Farmers at Bepoase and Domeabra will also share 500 knapsack spraying machines, 1,540 bags of fertilizer, 480 pieces of machetes and 480 pairs of Wellington boots.

Trades Minister, Alan Kyeremateng, accompanied Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Sun Boahong, to present the items.

He said government is poised to bringing development to the people through its flagship One District, One Factory programme.

Mr. Kyeremateng indicated Ejisuhene, Nana Afrane Okese IV, has released land for such projects to make the area an industrial hub in Ghana.
The Ghana Logistics and Transport Awards (GLOTA), an awards scheme conceptualized to reward excellence and outstanding achievements in the transport and logistics sector, has been launched recently.

The award event is being organized by Drive 5 Ghana Limited, a PR and Events firm in conjunction with Adams 360 and Eves Media, and with support from the Ministry of Transport, Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF).

It is endorsed by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT).

Throwing light on the awards, Don Obilor, Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the awards, stated the awards, besides promoting excellence in the sector, also seeks to promote and attract private investments into Ghana's transport and logistics sector, a move which ties in with government's efforts to effectively tap into the vast resources available to the private sector towards the nation's economic development.

Our duty as enablers of development is to create a system to reward and by so doing encourage more private participation in the various sectors of the nation's development, especially the transport and logistics sector which draws a huge chunk of government's resources, he added.

In the meantime, a board of trustees, headed by Emma Ocran, an astute legal practitioner and Director of Legal Affairs of the National Insurance Commission (NIC), has been set up to provide direction and advice to the organizing committee.

Other members of the board include Kwabena Agyekum, President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIMG) and Senah Vuley, General Manager of DDP.

The maiden awards event is billed for the first quarter of 2018.

A business desk report
Martha Kodua, the Ashanti Regional captain of the Loyal Ladies, a female wing of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), has passionately called on wealthy people in the country to assist the needy in society, especially inmates of orphanages and rehabilitation centers.

Ms Kodua made the call when the Loyal Ladies, which was formed in 2016 to campaign strenuously to help the then opposition NPP to win the general elections, donated some items to the inmates to the Edwenase Rehabilitation Center.

The Loyal Ladies, who are known for their generosity, presented bags of rice, detergents, toiletries, dining hall tables and mattresses to the inmates.

The NPP group, made up of elegant young ladies, realized that the rehabilitation center lacked several key amenities, especially dining tables, so decided to offer a helping hand to them.

Inmates and managers of the rehabilitation center were elated following the love that the NPP Loyal Ladies showed to them on the day.

Ms Kodua, in her remarks, stated that government alone cannot fund orphanages and rehabilitation centers.

It is a blessing to give than to receive, therefore I urge people and companies that are making substantial profits in the country to always share them with the needy in society, according to her.

Ms Kodua stated that her group would sustain its good works by sharing the little that they have with the needy in society, notably inmates of orphanages and rehabilitation centers.

She heaped praise on the Kumasi Mayor, Osei Assibey Antwi, who has immensely supported the NPP Loyal Ladies, saying the mayor's support helped to make the donation possible.

From I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
21.12.2017 LISTEN

According to last months edition of African Business magazine, the total mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is estimated to be $24 trillion  equivalent to the GDP of Europe and the United States combined.

The DRC has the worlds largest reserves of cobalt and significant quantities of the worlds diamonds, gold and copper. This makes the DRC potentially the richest country in the world.

But this central African country has been ranked among the poorest and most underdeveloped countries on this planet (Rasna Warah)

INTRODUCTION

Prof. Kofi Kissi Dompere notes in his book The Theory of Philosophical Consciencism (p. 319):

In general, philosophical consciencism must be constructed with the use of epistemic tools of that society as well as the experiential information structure of the society. The epistemic tools and the experiential information structure may be internally constructed or externally induced.

This remarkable statement clearly defines the task of restructuring African societies to fit the categorial expectations of what one of the worlds and Africas most important and foremost philosophers and political strategists, Kwame Nkrumah called philosophical consciencism in the policy domains of socio-economic and socio-political development.

This important question of economic development remained a central feature of Nkrumahs ideational and pragmatic reformulating of Africas economic and political geography to meet the analytic rigors of his formulaic, strategic epistemology of philosophical consciencism, a social-economic-political vision fortified by an enabling infrastructure of humanism, equity, and social justice.

Nevertheless, it is a nagging question that required the advanced instruments of mathematics, science, and logic to unravel its subterranean complexities in order that the potential of Africa can finally be unleashed to address the myriad material and spiritual needs of its industrious people.

Yet the question has neither been seriously, confidently posed nor sufficiently addressed, if at all, by the post-Nkrumah leadership of Africa, a leadership mostly made up of uninformed and misguided characters with Eurocentric and neocolonial casts of mind. A number of observers have noted that this leadership with a prosthetic, borrowed head does not have the strategic interests of Africa at heart, the reason Africa continues to bleed internally, let alone divest itself of its Eurocentric pretexts and inveterate hatred for Africa. These African leaders are the real enemies of Africa.

It is, however, within reason to advance the argument that the epistemic implications of this progressive intellectual vison which Prof. Dompere thoughtfully sets up for African intellectuals, researchers, academics, and policy makers to digest, ideally calls for serious, firm, and African-centered adjudication in the corridors of the academy and of power, given its potential and largely unexplored benefits in the unconsidered arenas of pragmatic nationalism and comparative advantage.

This is all the more important because the question itself, an indispensable one at that, carries an unresolved continuum of Diopian imperativeness into contemporary discourse on development, political economy, and pertinent issues of national prioritization. A case can be made that African leaders, researchers, policy makers, and academics have consistently failed to reach a rallying consensus on this important question of development economics on account of their Eurocentric orientation. Perhaps, Nkrumah was among the very few who provided the most forceful arguments charting the way forward for Africa out of its externally imposed developmental quagmire.

We should quickly add that what Noam Chomsky calls manufacturing consent may partly explain the Machiavellian proclivities of this African Eurocentric leadership in preventing a critical mass from among the masses rising up against the entrenched decay. What Prof. Dompere calls "an awakened intelligentsia to challenge the status quo seems to be in perpetual hibernation, and whether this awakened intelligentsia, a silent minority, can usefully translate itself into the kind of critical mass required to bring about the expected African-centered revolution in thought and action among the masses remains to be seen. Before then, the dilemma however remains unresolved.

But then again the conscious distortion of Africa, in addition to the phenomena of manufacturing consent and agitprop and social engineering, in international affairs and relations has an underlying economic motive, mostly, a policy statement that, for all intents and purposes, may or may not have anything to do with the corollary question of economic imperative and economic justice. It is nonetheless a complex question that demands thoughtful, uncompromising, educated response from African intellectuals and academics.

Now talking about the conscious distortion of Africa, in the controversial book The South African Gandhi, for instance, South African scholars Desai and Vahed, both of Indian descent, provide powerful insights into certain convenient economic arrangements calculated to support the status quo and to reinforce relations of unequal dichotomy between the major races. They write (p. 102):

The tax challenged patriarchal authority in Zulu society, which was incrementally destroyed by the British from the 1880s, and disrupted the spiritual forces that linked sons to their fathers and their fathers fathers whose shades watched over the homestead.

They note elsewhere (p. 106):

Competitive challenges for the colonial market from independent African producers brought antagonism from white settlers long before the assault on the Indian trader and was dealt with through a variety of state-sponsored methods, particularly various forms of taxation that had the effect of forcing many Africans into the labour market.

What are they saying? Propaganda churned out from official and non-official state sources in the racist South African political economy turned hardworking South African blacks into a leprosarium farmhouse of ungrateful, undignified loafers, a mischievous characterization that led to outrageous taxes being forcibly imposed on them to support and underwrite the expensive lifestyle of White South Africa.

Even Mahatma Gandhi, who lived in South Africa for some 21 years and practiced law there, a place where he also developed his controversial profile of activist persona and nonviolent resistance, meekly succumbed to this outrageously convenient labeling of South African blacks as lazy for his own selfish ends, wondering what he would have made of the destruction of Black Wall Street via the Tulsa Race Riot (1921). In this regard, Desai and Vahed write of Gandhi (p. 107):

the statements on African laziness and inferiority make Gandhi stand out not as one of apartheids first opponents but as one of its first proponents.

All these statements and observations do not take into consideration the industrious personality of the African and how this quality spawned a captivating panorama of cultural and historical richness across the length and breadth of pre-colonial Africa, where the African state, classical African civilizations and empires matched their counterparts elsewhere on the planet, including the advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian America, China, Greece, and Rome to mention but three.

In fact, pre-colonial African civilizations served as templates for the Greco-Roman worlds. Cheikh Anta Diops meticulous arguments set forth in African Origin of Civilization and Pre-colonial Black Africa, and those discursively advanced by Americas first urban sociologist and prolific academic, African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois The World and Africa, as well as by Molefi Kete Asantes History of Africa, and Thomas Brophys and Robert Bauvals Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt, all eloquently speak to this contentious academic and scientific question on the primacy of classical African civilizations and humanity in carrying the rest of the world along the paths of intellectual and cultural development.

Ultimately, it is not in question also that Africa is indubitably the autochthonous home of mankind, Africas empowering humanity quintessentially having been the creative embodiment and source of the phenomenology of the soul and spirit of man.

None of these, however, imputes any imposing typology of superior humanity to Africans. In this case we emphasize that Africans are equal in intellection and mental capacity to other humans. The history of human intellectual development confirms this fact. And this important history remains inviolate or sacrosanct today, although history is sometimes written to favor and protect the privileges, interests, and supremacy of one group over the other (s). Prof. James W. Loewens Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American Textbook Got Wrong, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Got Wrong, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong are a case in point.

Granted the above, what differences there actually might in fact be could be merely reduced to serious questions of culture and of cultural exegesis, or of interpretation of the environment, and even of perception in the humanistic topology of race relations. Racism and ethnic chauvinism therefore tend to dissemble our common humanity, thereby undermining the oversight of collective efforts and solidarity in the face of the grinding challenges posed by the human condition.

Du Bois was indeed not far from incorrect when he prophetically asserted in The Souls of Black Folk that the problem of the 20th century is the color-line. We should bear in mind that the concept of race itself has no biological or scientific basis in fact, although one cannot deny its entrenched element of sociological import and political signification in intra- and inter-national psychosocialization and academic discourse. We are here referring specifically to the political sociology of race.

If so, then what becomes of the seemingly perennial question that Africans are inferior? This question resolves into a roaring cascade of related queries, of which the justification for slavery, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, so-called, became a rallying anthem for slavers and their sympathizers, a form of moral anesthesia marshalled against the specter of universal guilt associated with the undignified commodification of African humanity. It was possible then to strip the African of any semblance of civilization. Thus slavery and colonization seared the conscience of the perpetrators, which made it possible for them to manufacture alibis for their own moral lapses and gross misdeeds. Bob Marley may have captured this for us on the track Guiltiness:

Guiltiness

Pressed on their conscience

And they live their lives

On false pretense every day, each and every day

They'll eat the bread of sorrow.

As Shakespeare had Antony say in Julius Caesar, The evil men do lives after them The real motivation for slavery and its corollary, colonization, it would turn out, was an economic one, though this one too was carefully dressed up in a deceptive rhetoric of civilizing mission, reportedly meant to bring native Africans out of their caged Neanderthal cottage of primitive rawness and savagery.

That slavery and colonization were ultimately good for the pagan African. Asiento eventually entered the picture.

No one told the enslaved African that capital and land, two crucial factors of production were readily available to the colonizers, except for labor, which Africans would have to supply to meet acute labor shortage in colonial America and elsewhere across the Western Hemisphere.

Therein lies the still-unresolved policy conundrum posed by Africas continuing underdevelopment, a concept which Walter Rodneys How Europe Underdeveloped Africa painstakingly articulates in surgical precision. In other words, denigrating the humanity of Africa corrupted the political morality of what should otherwise have constituted a just economic imperative, though not necessarily for a commercial undertaking as morally egregious and outrageous as slavery and colonization.

The alleged inferiority of Africans can therefore be traced to this concocted justification for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which also became a rallying anthem for the eventual colonization of the continent of Africa and its welcoming humanity. The postcolonial writer and novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongos Something Torn and New painstakingly details the planned calculus leading to the colonization of Africa. According to Thiongo, the British used similar strategies to colonize the Irish.

We should stress that before the Euro-Christian enslavement of Africans, and colonization of Africa, Arabs and Muslims had been the main traders in human flesh. The Muslim-Arab world, like its Euro-Christian counterpart, imposed its cultural hegemony on Africa. This led to gross distortions in the African cultural character as they could not have succeeded enslaving and colonizing Africa without first questioning Africans humanity and degrading their cultural and historical accomplishments.

The African was consequently reduced to an animal, forcibly made the humanoid sibling of primates in thought, action, body, and intellect. This set the stage for scientific racism, or that scientific racism gave birth to the animalization of the African, the Chicken-or-the Egg question, whatever, in the space of political socialization.

This distorted perception of the African has continued almost unabated in Western literature (see Joseph Conrads famous or infamous novel Heart of Darkness, for instance) and mass media, Hollywood movies, the political discourse of right-wing personalities and conservatives, and the world of white supremacist groups. Our friend Milton Allimadis book The Hearts of Darkness sharply critiques Western journalism on Africa. American journalism Professor Neil Henrys American Carnival: Journalism under Seige in an Age of New Media critiques American journalism, exposing how the media unfairly treat minorities particularly African Americans.

OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS

The mass media in Africa on the other hand are not doing any better. For instance, investigative journalism in Africa is far from the critical pole of ideological neutrality and political partisanship. In fact non-partisan investigative journalists are an endangered species in Africa, while the African mass media themselves behave as though they are bastardized copycat appendages to those of the metropoles, aping the uncritical journalese and singing the praises of the metropoles, and refusing to act as the moral voice and conscience of the masses.

Then having lost the critical eye and rigors of African-centered methodology and critiquing of African societies, including of the external patrons of Africa's kleptocrats, the African media have instead chosen to become infected prostitutes in bed with the continent's Eurocentric leadership. The African media have simply taken on the fawning characterology of Malcolm Xs proverbial house slave. Regardless, Bob Marley captures a dimension of this contradictory nature of historical revisionism and media distortions on the track Crazy Baldhead:

I'n'I build a cabin

I'n'I plant the corn

Didn't my people before me

Slave for this country?

Now you look me with that scorn

Then you eat up all my corn

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools

Brainwash education to make us the fools

Hate is your reward for our love

Telling us of your God above

Unfortunately, the Eurocentric leadership across Africa is trapped in a cesspool of cognitive imbecility to negate these entrenched perceptions. Self-trust, victorious consciousness, and possibility thinking are priceless currencies we need to cultivate for our own collective survival given that, after all, the myriad problems we are confronted with are not idiopathic to say the least. Africa needs to invest in its own internal resources and not get trapped in the embrace of Ellisonian invisibility. Diops Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State provides some of the most creative answers to our developmental conundrums.

This is where Nkrumahs reformist ideas on philosophical consciencism and categorial conversion come into the bigger picture. Nkrumah formulated these creative ideas to help negotiate Africa out of the overlapping contradictions brought about by the forced grafting of Euro-Christian culture/Arabo-Muslim culture and ideas onto African culture, including inducing self-hatred in the vast majority of Africans. The African in this condition supports and underwrites his own negation through self-destruction, self-hatred, and hatred for nation-building.

In these related contexts, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinkas Of Africa is intellectually and factually revealing when it comes to the question of the internecine tensions that have accrued, and continues to accrue, between the purported cosmopolitan humanism of Traditional African Religion on one hand and the invasive hegemony of Islam and Christianity on the other hand, and the dire implications of these tensions for political stability and development across the continent.

What then is philosophical consciencism? Prof. Dompere defines it thusly (p. 326):

The set of propositions within which a philosophy in support of an African liberating ideology retains Africentric humanism and collective freedom

He continues (p. 327):

The epistemic totality of philosophical consciencism is a structure of cognitive program for knowledge production and use, logic of institutional creation, strategic social-policy formulation and creative-destructive positive-action process to continually set the potential against the actual in the dynamics of social systemicity.

In this respect, philosophical consciencism is the backbone of socio-economic transformation actions in the actual-potential polarity where the transformation actions are social decision-choice dependent.

It is this interdependency between philosophical consciencism and social decision-choice system with relational continuum and unity that allows one to claim that national social history is an enveloping of success-failure outcomes of decision-information process.

Prof. Dompere is calling for a revolution in thought and action. This goes all the way to curriculum development. It appears, then, that the problem we have on our hands may be essentially a battle of ideas. The West, quite frankly unlike Africa, understands the power of information and intelligence and how to effectively use them to serve it ends, to control the world and its strategic interests for purposes of economic advantage, while the neocolonial African leadership of today merely exists as a fawning appendage to this most sophisticated of imperialistic matrix and design.

The ideological conflict from which Africa is expected to redeem itself, to restructure its priorities to serve its people and to develop the continent, to recapture its lost sense of self and degraded humanity, to exert its influence and moral authority on the character of global politics,and to reinstate humanism and confidence and the African personality in politics simply boils down to mediating the polarizing questions of oppressive intentionality and liberation intentionality (Dompere, p. 328).

Africa is at a critical crossroads as regards this matter, and it is also ironically problematic where its future lies. In the main, whether Prof. Domperes ideas point to the question of essentialism is irrelevant here. What is rather important here is that, as Profs. Asante and Dompere have consistently argued, the solutions to African problems are within Africa itself and that it is incumbent upon Africans to come together in the spirit of oneness and for the unquestioned love of and loyalty to the continent to find these solutions, a view Bob Marley shares on the song Zimbabwe:

No more internal power struggle

We come together to overcome the little trouble

'Cause I don't want my people to be contrary

To divide and rule could only tear us apart

In everyman chest, there beats a heart

And I don't want my people to be tricked by mercenaries

Every man got a right to decide his own destiny

Yes, we have every right to decide our destiny without the calculating intrusiveness of external interests.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

African leaders and scholars who lack African-centered academic training tend to forget that the art of dehumanizing an entire race or ethnic group directly and indirectly translates into undue economic advantage for whichever group that manages to successfully control and own the powerful language of economic relations on the international stage. Negating this misanthropic tendency and bringing the shine of cosmopolitan humanism to bear on race relations, globalization, human development, and modern civilization are the greatest challenges we face today.

Information ownership is power itself, which then feeds the engine of power dynamics as it relates to the question of economic relations. Again, this salient fact is lost entirely on the African leadership. Knowledge deficit about Africa in the international community, and also about the continent's potential to make a positive change in human affairs, is patently undermined by the lingering specter of information asymmetry in favor of those who control and manage the traffic of global information. Nkrumah realized this and put in place institutional mechanisms to address the anomaly. As Bob Marley said on the track "One Love":

'One love

"One heart...

"Let's get together and feel alright...

"Let's get together and fight this holy Armageddon...

What Bob Marley called "holy Armageddon" is an albatross around our neck, a Sisyphean problem requiring radical resolution. The challenging, painful paradox of the Congolese example as set forth in the epigraph cautions us against turning our backs on the grand vision of Nkrumah. At this point we should say both Prof. Dompere and Nkrumah have spoken well for the African world, and this is highly commendable. In the next essay we shall explore other dimensions of the formers ideas and the role which Black Studies and researchers and academics in the field have to play in reversing and challenging the distortions in the African personality. Africology is Africas future, no doubt.

That said, readers may as well consult Prof. Domperes body of scientific works and those of Nkrumah.

REFERENCES

Desai, A., & Vahed, G. (2016) The South African Gandhi: stretcher-bearer of empire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Dompere, K.K. (2017). The theory of philosophical consciencism: practice foundations of Nkrumaism in social systemicity. London, UK: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd.

Warah, Rasna. (2009). Blood mobile phones fan DRCs murderous conflict. Retrieved from http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/546106/-/item/0/-/rwp6loz/-/index.html
Ubers Ghanaian-American Global Brand Chief Bozoma Saint John will be the guest speaker in Accra on January 4, 2018 at the inaugural Speaker Series of the prestigious Africa Leadership Initiative West Africa (ALIWA).

The brunch event will take place at the Labadi Beach Hotel. Both of Saint Johns parents come from Ghana. Saint. John is a global marketing icon and one of the most respected gures in Silicon Valley.

She will be speaking about her life, and work, as well as on how technology is reshaping the world. Nicknamed The Boz, Saint John 40, has earned a formidable reputation as a trailblazing marketing and advertising executive having worked as Head of Global Consumer Marketing for Apple Music and iTunes.

She was born in Connecticut, USA, but spent part of her early childhood in Accra, Ghana, before immigrating back to the USA at age 12. She was recently described by Buzzfeed as the "coolest person to ever go on stage at an Apple event. Her father, Dr. Appianda Arthur, was a Minister in the administration of President Hilla Limann.

The Africa Leadership Initiative West Africa (ALIWA), co founded by Minister of Finance Ken Ofori Atta in 2002, is as a joint venture of the Aspen Institute, LEAP Africa (Nigeria), Databank Foundation (Ghana), and Techno Serve. ALIWA seeks to nurture a new generation of leaders who have achieved signicant career and personal success across all elds, and inspire them towards becoming impactful and signicant on the wider society.

ALIWA raises money to fund a cohort of Fellows in the sub-region every three to four years and engages them to confront some of the foremost challenges of their countries and times. ALIWA is aliated with the prestigious US-based Aspen Global Leadership Network Fellows of ALIWA include Nigerias current Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, former Nigerian Communications Minister, Dr. Omobola Johnson, Ghanas former Minister of Foreign Aairs, Hannah Tetteh, and former Gender and Social Protection Minister, Nana Oye Lithur,.Other

Fellows in private sector include Founder of Ashesi University, Patrick Awuah; Co-Founder of Access Bank PLC, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, Google Country representative, Estelle Akoo-Sowah and Managing Director of FC Group of Companies, Grace Amey-Obeng.

Speaking about the upcoming event, Mr. Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, a broadcaster and director at ALIWA said;were really looking forward to hear Badass Boz  as she calls herself - tell her incredible story, share her tech insights and inspire us to dream large and believe that we can compete at the global top.and win!

The ALIWA Leadership Speaker Series will be a twice-a-year event where thought  leaders form diverse backgrounds, sourced from ALIWAs global networks will be hosted at speaking sessions on topics of public interest and relevance.

The aim of the series is to engage and inspire a wider network of leaders across dierent sectors of the society to work towards creating the Good Society It is also to create awareness about the need for value-based leadership
Some persons believed to be members of the governing New Patriotic Party in the Ellembelle Constituency of the Western Region, have besieged the party's headquarters in Accra, demanding that their National Executives furnish them with their original polling station register.

The governing party is expected to go to the polls in January 2018, to elect polling station executives. As part of that, all party members are to have their names captured on the party's register by December 25, 2017.

According to the livid NPP members, their constituency's party chairman, Samuel Akenya, has refused to make available the original registers to the 16 polling station officers.

They claimed the Constituency Chairman has instead made available other forms for the registration process which he will collate all registered names himself.

In the view of the constituents, this is a ploy to manipulate the election of party executives at the constituency level, through to the national level.

Speaking to Citi News at the NPP headquarters today, Thursday, the Communications Director for the group, Felix Dickson, said directives from the police and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to Samuel Akenya to release the original register, have yielded no results hence their action.

The group has been at the NPP headquarters since 5:00am, and is yet to meet any national party executive to whom, they can present their petition.

'Controversial' NPP constitutional amendment proposals withdrawn

The leadership of NPP over the weekend shot down some three 'controversial' proposals submitted for amendment to the partys constitution.

President Akufo-Addo, while addressing party delegates at Kumasi in the Ashanti Region at the partys Extraordinary National Delegates' Conference said some of the proposed amendments will be a disaster if adopted.

The proposals included suggestions for Members of Parliament to appoint constituency executives, party members with dual citizenship to be disqualified from contesting for any party position and for the flagbearer of the party to be considered as the leader of the party.
The Renal Unit of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi has taken delivery of a brand new haematology analysing machine to ensure that patients receive optimum treatment.

The machine, which was donated by the Unitylink Money Transfer Company  an international firm  at the cost of GH 30,000, is expected to assist patients who are on dialysis at the referral hospital when they go for sessions.

The Country Director of Unitylink Money Transfer Company, Adwoa Odom, who made the presentation on behalf the company, said she hopes the machine would be beneficial to patients and the hospital.

According to her, the company deems it a great honour to contribute to the growth of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and the health sector as a whole by donating the dialysis equipment and other materials to save lives.

She mentioned that the gesture formed part of the company's corporate social responsibility, and pointed out that this would not be the last.

Ms Odom stated that Unitylink Money Transfer Company is an indigenous money transfer company founded by a Ghanaian entrepreneur by name Douglas Mensah to serve the Ghanaian communities in the diaspora.

Our close relationship with our motherland dates back in 26 years, helping Ghanaians to transfer money to their loved ones through our relationship with local banking partners, she asserted.

Dr Kodwo Eyeson, Head of Renal Unit of KATH, who received the items on behalf of the hospital, expressed gratitude to the company for the kind gesture and added that the equipment would aid in the establishment of a laboratory for the unit.

We want this to be a major springboard towards getting a laboratory for the unit. It has come at an opportune time. We have a great number of clientele who share laboratory with other patients from different units, he stated.

Dr Eyeson indicated that the unit sometimes gets overwhelmed with the numbers and this contributes to overuse of facilities.

He praised Unitylink Money Transfer Company for the donation, whilst the Medical Director of KATH, Dr Baffour Awuah, called on officials of the company to come and adopt the unit.

From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi
Kobina Asante Asare

21.12.2017 LISTEN

The Association of Gold Exporters of Ghana (AGEG) says any decision to stop Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) from gold certification and assaying could result in the collapse of the firm.

Chairman of the Association, Kobina Asante Asare, disclosed this to BUSINESS GUIDE while commenting on the impasse between PMMC and Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) over the right to certify and assay gold for export.

The impasse reportedly started after GSA and the Chamber of Mines signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to test the quality of gold refined in the country.

The MoU was aimed at enhancing and strengthening technical cooperation in the areas of standardization, metrology and conformity assessment.

Reports suggest that the deduction of 0.176 percent of the value of gold to be exported as commission to the testing agency is the basis of the impasse.

But Mr Asante Asare warned that PMMC could eventually collapse if care is not taken.

That, he said, was because the main source of revenue for PMMC currently is the 0.176 percent deduction.

He explained that owing to a court action involving PMMC and Bank of Ghana (BoG), on one hand, and AGEG in 2016, an out-of-court agreement was reached to mandate PMMC to assay and certify gold for export.

He wondered why the authorities were considering GSA, which has several duties to perform.

Mr Asante Asare stated categorically that the association was not supporting either side, but said PMMC will perish if GSA succeeds, saying our position is factual.

The jewelry business is not raking in any sufficient money to sustain PMMC's operations as a chunk of the revenue generated reportedly goes to the Indian partners of PMMC.

The only source of revenue for PMMC today is assaying, he said.

He urged government to be circumspect in taking a decision that will lead to the demise of PMMC which would result in job losses.

He called on government to organize a meeting with AGEG, PMMC, GSA and Ministry for Lands and Natural Resources to resolve the impasse.

By Melvin Tarlue
Employees and partners of Samsung Electronics Ghana have engaged in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative through their partnership with international medical group Operation Smile to fund free cleft surgeries in Ghana.

The Samsung team, together with their key trade partners including Compu-Ghana, Electroland and Franko Trading, visited the Koforidua Regional Hospital to fund cleft surgeries for close to 150 children.

Samsung's contribution to the initiative was $50,000.

Through its Smile with Samsung project, the company is donating $1 for every authorized smartphone bought towards free cleft surgeries from now until the end of January 2018.

The team was involved in organizing logistics for the operations, registering of patients, playing with the children and also congratulating patients who came out of surgery.

Statistics indicate that every three minutes somewhere in the world a child is born with a cleft.

In Ghana, this equates to one out of every 750 births.

Despite the fact that a cleft can be fixed with a simple surgery lasting just 45 minutes, one out of every 10 children with cleft dies before their first birthday.

Commenting on the initiative, Tracy Kyei, Marketing Manager at Samsung Ghana said: Our aim is to support a worthy cause in which our customers can partake  we want them to be proud to own a Samsung phone. We are grateful to all our customers for choosing Samsung and intend supporting this initiative to put smiles on the faces of children during this festive season.

She urged all customers, who purchase a Samsung device to register on the e-warranty to ensure Samsung recognizes the sale.

They will then receive a confirmation message via SMS that $1 has been donated to the 'Smile with Samsung' project, Ms. Kyei added.
The Sukura 1 branch of the ASA Savings and Loans Limited has donated items to Ansaru-Deen Islamic School Complex in Sukura to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the school.

The donation include items such as 50 plastic chairs, 10 dual desks, 10 ceiling fans, Acer Desktop computer, pre-technical tools, 10 boxes of chalk and a box of wooden duster worth Gh7000.

The Accra North Regional Manager of ASA Savings and Loans Limited, Mohammed Majad Ali Khan said the donation forms part of their Corporate Social Responsibility of giving back to the society.

He indicated that education forms the basis of every society adding that it can only be measured by increasing the support especially to the deprived schools.

Mohammed Majad Ali Khan noted these items will urge the school children to learn and excel academically.

He added that the teaching aides when properly used will enable the school children to develop their reading and learning skills.

The Headmaster of the Ansaru-Deen Islamic Complex School, Siba Salifu Shakibu expressed his gratitude to management of the Sukura 1 branch of ASA Savings and Loans Limited for the kind gesture.

He noted that since its establishment in 1986, the school has never received any major boost before even though there have been donations from individual organisations.

We are overwhelmed, delighted, happy and grateful to the company for putting smiles on the faces of these school children with items that will make teaching and learning easy, he intimated.

The Vice Chairman of the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA), Yakubu Ali assured management of the company that the items will inure to the benefit of the school children, the school and the community at large.

He indicated that the school has put up a proper maintenance culture to ensure that these items last longer.
French anti-terror judges have ended an investigation into the missile attack on a plane that killed former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking Rwanda's 1994 genocide, legal sources said Thursday.

The long-running probe has been a major source of tension between the two countries following accusations that a Tutsi militia headed by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame was responsible for the attack on the plane in April 1994.

The missile strike near Kigali's airport sparked 100 days of slaughter of the Tutsi ethnic minority by members of Habyarimana's Hutu ethnic group, leaving an estimated 800,000 people dead.

Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide by supporting the Hutu regime, training the soldiers and militiamen who carried out the killings.

Ties had been on the mend until 2014 when Kagame repeated accusations that French soldiers had been involved in the bloodbath.

The relationship took an even worse turn when the French judiciary decided in October 2016 to reopen an investigation into the attack on the plane, as the French crew were among the victims.

In October, sources close to the probe told AFP that the judges had heard from a new witness who claimed to have seen the surface-to-air missiles used to launch the attack at the headquarters of Kagame's militia.

The testimony corroborates other versions of events that point the finger at Kagame's regime.

French authorities have been investigating the strike as French citizens were among those killed aboard Habyarimana's plane.

A total of seven people have been charged in France over the deaths, including Rwanda's current defence minister, James Kabarebe, and Franck Nziza who allegedly fired the missile.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Sunyani - A Private Legal Practitioner, Nana Obiri Boahen, has dragged a High Court Judge in Sunyani, Justice John Bosco Nabrese to court for allegedly displaying open bias against a party in an election petition case before him.

Lawyer Obiri Boahen has therefore filed an application for the issuance of judicial review in the form of certiorari and prohibition at the Sunyani High Court against Justice John Bosco Nabrese, who is the trial judge in the said case.

The case involves a petition challenging the validity of the election of Gabriel Osei as the Member of Parliament of the Tain Constituency in the Brong Ahafo Region and in the matter of Article 99 of the Constitution 1992, the Representation of the People ACT, 1992 (PNDCL 284) as amended and the Public Election Regulations and in the matter Parliamentary elections for the Tain Constituency held on 7th December 2016.

The Petitioner in the above case is Kwasi Agyeman Gyan-Tutu of Asuafu Badu while Gabriel Osei and the Electoral Commission are the respondents.

Lawyer Obiri Boahen, who is the Counsel for Gabriel Osei, has however raised red flags about the trial judges conduct, alleging since the hearing of the case commenced in court, the trial judge never did hide his pent-up hatred and open bias for the New Patriotic Party.

The trial judge  His Lordship John Bosco Nabrese pent-up and unparalleled dislike for our chambers, coupled with his open and bias, disdain, etc. for the New Patriotic party manifested itself on countless occasions ever since the said petition was filed, Lawyer Obiri Boahens affidavit to the Sunyani High Court seeking a judicial review in the form of certiorari and prohibition at the Sunyani High Court against Justice John Bosco Nabrese said in part.

He wondered why on 12 April, 2017, the trial judge ordered the Exchange of documents even though memoranda of issues had not been filed in court as at the time, saying the learned trial judge ordered the Exchange of documents at the time that issues which the parties intend to rely upon had not been filed and same agreed upon.

That, unless the learned trial judge was just exhibiting his usual hatred, disdain, contempt, dislike, etc for my good self, my chambers and the New Patriotic Party; no trial judge of a Superior Court of Judicature would order the exchange of documents when issues for the trial have not been agreed upon by the litigating parties and their counsel.

He further stated that even though he used appropriate channels to register his displeasure about Justice John Bosco Nabreses conduct through a Notice of Appeal, he remarked that the appeal filed was a ploy to delay the trial of the petition.

Upon the receipt of the remarks or comments by His Lordship, Justice John Bosco Nabrese; I personally lodged a complaint by writing to the Chief Justice. In order to be fair to Justice Nabrese, I served him with a copy of the letter.

According to Lawyer Obiri Boahen, the trial judge has feigned disinterest in the petition when he realized that his bias, antics, political affiliation and patronage had been caught pants down.

Another issue of concern to Lawyer Obiri Boahen is the conduct of two judicial secretaries to the Chief Justice - Justice Juliana Amonoo Neizer (Mrs.) and Mr. Opoku Acheampong.

The two officials are alleged to have issued two different directives in one particular month concerning the same subject matter.

Richard Kofi Boahen, Sunyani
As South Sudan's warring parties met for peace talks this week, dozens of refugees streamed into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, fleeing what they said was a fresh government offensive.

The push to recapture a key rebel stronghold came shortly before mediators tabled a ceasefire agreement in Addis Ababa, raising serious doubts over the government's commitment to talks seen as a last-ditch chance to end the country's four-year war.

On Sunday, President Salva Kiir's troops attacked the town of Lasu in Central Equatoria State, which has served as the headquarters for Riek Machar's SPLA-IO, the main opposition movement in South Sudan.

"They came with armoured vehicles and machine-gun-mounted pick up trucks," SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP over the phone from Kampala.

Gabriel said the two sides fought each other for several hours on Monday morning before the rebels withdrew.

Army spokesman Santo Domic Chol denied troops had launched an offensive on the town, accusing the rebels of attacking a government position as well as looting a village for food -- forcing troops to step in to save civilians.

"We have been ordered not to engage hostilities by pursuing rebels (but) at times we will fight if we are attacked in our positions which is what happened in Lasu."

However it was unclear what government position he was referring to -- as both civilians and an official document released earlier this month indicated the area was under rebel control.

"These government soldiers came from Yei and they were shooting guns and killing people. That's what made us come this way," said James Mana, one of the fresh arrivals in the DRC, near the town of Aba.

Congolese authorities registered over 200 refugees since fighting began on Sunday.

Smoke could be seen rising from a village across the border.

'Cost and consequences'

South Sudan this month entered into its fifth year of a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven nearly four million from their homes.

The UN Security Council warned last week that there would be "cost and consequences" for any side who blocks "last chance" peace efforts mediated by the regional authority IGAD, in a bid to revitalise a shattered peace agreement.

The peace deal was signed in 2015 to end 21 months of civil war between Kiir's government and Machar's rebels which broke out just two years after independence in 2011.

However the deal effectively collapsed in July 2016, when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then-first vice president Machar out of the country and his supporters back to battling the government in the bush.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million people to flock to neighboring Uganda and the DRC in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016, a factor that is likely to further complicate negotiations.

Even if all sides sign a cessation of hostilities agreement Thursday, the last day of talks, civilians who have fled the latest fighting have lost faith in the peace process.

"I'm not sure the government wants peace. If they wanted peace, why would they attack Lasu so that we have to run again with our children," said Betty Moriba, a 28-year-old mother of five.

Having fled violence twice before, Moriba grabbed her children at the first sound of gunfire and ran towards the DRC, but was unable to salvage any of the family's prized possessions.

Observers are equally sceptical.

"The regime is clearly not interested in negotiations or compromise and is the principle obstacle to peace," said Payton Knopf, the head of the South Sudan working group at the US Institute for Peace and former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan.

"It's therefore hard to see any negotiating process being productive unless there is a fundamentally different international approach toward that regime."

'I don't want to run anymore'

Rights groups have blamed the government for systematic attacks on civilians in Equatoria, including killings, torture and rape.

As a result, many have sought shelter behind rebel lines, offering opposition fighters food in return for protection. But over the past couple of months, there have also been growing allegations of abuses at the hands of the SPLA-IO, gradually eroding popular support for the rebellion.

For the rebels, weakened by lack of ammunition and infighting, the loss of Lasu is just the latest in a series of military setbacks.

The rebel spokesman Gabriel said the opposition was preparing to retake Lasu, should the government not withdraw voluntarily as part of ongoing efforts to negotiate a cessation of hostilities agreement.

Civilians like Betty Moriba see little point in returning to South Sudan.

"I just want to be in one place, where I can raise my children," she said. "I just don't want to run anymore."
21.12.2017 LISTEN

A mystrious granite stone with a design of a cross and three lines of ropes has been discovered at Gomoa-Ojobi in the Central Region in Ghana.

The miracle granite stone, bearing engraved designed picture of the cross of Jesus Christ, was discovered by Sarcon Quarry Ltd, working in the community.

The black and white granite stone, with the brown and red cross colour, releases fragrance when water is poured on the cross.

The huge rock also bear the marks of long robes, which seems to have been used to erected Christ crucifixion cross.

The mysterious rock in no doubt portraits exact representation picture of Christ crucifixion which occurred over two thousand years ago.

Mr El Aridi Choaki Youssef, the Quarry Operations Manager of the company speaking in an interview with Modern Ghana said, "I discovered the stone in November during a process of breaking the rock with machines".

" A greater force", he said, "pushed me when I was processing the chippings to where the granite stone was".

He hinted, the machine was used for the cutting of the rock, but that could stone would not break and, therefore, he had to use his manpower to remove the stones from the area.

I do not have much knowledge about the Christian religion, but what I can say to Ghana and the world at large is that we need to wake up again to know exactly where we are going and this is a good sign for Ghana.

What we found in November was a big miracle. God has really blessed Ghana,

The site, Choaki believed will served as a christian tourist site to replace Jerusalem and Israel in the country, where believers could offer religious prayers to God.
Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, December 21, 2017 The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) , managed by the African Development Bank, has approved a grant of US $ 995,000 to Asticom Kenya Ltd., to support the construction of a 10 megawatt (MW) grid-connected municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) plant.

The grant will fund the cost of conducting a full environmental and social impact assessment, detailed engineering designs, and provide project-related legal advisory services, as well as financial/transaction advisory services.

The project will be located in Kabira, a suburb of Nairobi, and will generate electricity from municipal solid waste by converting them to biogas/ fuel ethanol. The planned diversion and use of municipal solid waste will have significant health, social and development outcomes, and will be of benefit to the inhabitants of Kabira a community that receives 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily from the Nairobi County.

For instance, local dwellers will be contracted in the sorting of the municipal waste, thereby providing them with additional employment and income.

The project aligns with the Banks High 5 development priorities and in particular, the agenda to Light up and Power Africa, the 10-Year Strategy, the Private Sector Development Strategy (2013-2017), the Energy Sector Policy 2012, and the New Deal on Energy for Africa . It is also in line with Kenyas National Development Plan and the African Development Banks Country Strategy Paper (CSP) for Kenya, which prioritizes the enabling of physical infrastructure to unleash inclusive growth.

About the Sustainable Energy Fund For Africa (SEFA)

Launched in 2012, SEFA is a US $90-million multi-donor facility funded by the governments of Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy. It supports the sustainable energy agenda in Africa through grants to facilitate the preparation of medium-scale renewable energy generation and energy efficiency projects; equity investments to bridge the financing gap for small- and medium-scale renewable energy generation projects; and support to the public sector to improve the enabling environment for private investments in sustainable energy. SEFA is hosted by the Renewable Energy Department of the AfDB.
An educationist has suggested that teachers who are patrons of a students mentorship programme should be introduced to the workings of industries in order to acquire knowledge and practical experience to share with the students. That would help students to be exposed to career opportunities to choose and pursue in adult life.

The suggestion was made by Mr Ebenezer Graham Acquah, the assistant headmaster of Achimota Senior High School, when he was speaking on behalf of the headmistress at an awards ceremony in Accra organised by African Business Centre for Developing Education (ABCDE), a Ghana-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to bridging the gap between industry and academia in Africa.

Mr Acquah asked ABCDE to organise follow-up mentorship programmes and inter-school competition for students, adding that the NGO should explore opportunities for more students to have internships. He lauded ABCDE for its mentorship programme.

The corporate award winners are the ECOBANK Ghana, British Council, Margins Ltd. and BUSAC. Personalities who were recognised with awards for their mentorship are Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, a two-time Chief of Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces and former presidential adviser on security; Madam Petra Aba Asamoah, General Manager of Media General Ltd.; Dr Michael Agyekum Addo, an award-winning entrepreneur and author; and Catherine Beegle of the World Bank. The other awardees are Baaba Samson and Gilbert Martin who were rewarded as interns.

Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the immediate past Minister for Trade and Industry and former Education Minister, invited prominent alumni of senior high schools to volunteer to become mentors in order to guide and inspire students of their alma mater to choose careers which would enable them contribute to national development. Dr Spio-Garbrah added that ABCDE student mentorship programme currently has about 50 mentors. He said ABCDE had requests from senior secondary schools in the rural areas to introduce the mentorship programme there, and assured that the NGO would engage these schools soon.

He said the mentorship curricula include personal health, financial literacy, ICT, IT knowledge, sanitation, entrepreneurship and other skills sets. He said ABCDE would assist in incubation programmes which would be commercialized so that student entrepreneurs could get sponsorship. He urged that innovation and creativity are taught in our schools so that the country could boast of technology-driven products and services. He asked students to seek scholarships from the directorate published by ABCDE.

Dr Spio-Garbrah revealed that ABCDE would hold a forum next year for government, industry and academia to engage in consultative dialogue on matching education with the requirements of the workplace. He said ABCDE could expand to other African countries with the assistance of corporate sponsors, mentors, volunteers and interns. He expressed gratitude to all sponsors, partners, mentors and well-wishers.
Gutters and open drains at Accra Academy (Bubiashie) has become a dumping, defecation site for man and animals within the community. The presence of chemicals, stench in the air causes air pollution, which can cause dangerous medical conditions and contracting diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, etc in humans. All these diseases claim the lives of people.

Not all household within the community has toilet facilities which have resulted to open defecation and the widespread diseases like cholera. Also public toilet facilities have become more expensive than before. With this, one needs to pay 70pesewas before he or she can use the washroom.

Drainage Construction in the community begun by former President Kufuor but the project was abandoned when NPP left power in 2008.It can be recalled that former member of parliament, Nana Akomea played an important role to force the then government to construct the drainage system within the community.

Ghana has been ranked as second in Africa in open defecation with 19 per cent of its population resorting to sanitation practice deemed the riskiest of all. It should be noted that,Perfect sanitation within our communities makes an ideal village.

In spite of the numerous National Sanitation Day and program not much has changed .Residents living in the area have complain to authorities but no lasting solution has been given.

According to World Health Organization, sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities.

Mahatma Gandhi said, Sanitation is more important than independence, With this he urges his compatriots to clean up their act. In May 1925, Ghandi wrote about the importance of keeping lavatories clean. I learnt 35 years ago that a lavatory must be as clean as a drawing-room. I learnt this in the West, he wrote. The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere. I, therefore, believe in the absolute necessity of a clean place for answering the call of nature and clean articles for use at the time.

A key challenge facing many developing communities in Ghana is the issue of sanitation and waste management.

Religious bodies should partner with the assemblies to deal with the issue of sanitation (open defecation).Religious bodies should also note that uncleanliness is sin and poverty. Man shall give an account on sanitation to his creator. The pulpits shouldnt be used to preach prosperity message but rather preach messages of holiness, faithfulness and fear of the God.

Authorities should have bold approach in dealing with sanitation issue .Assembly should prosecute and fine all people who are guilty of such act. Its time government takes initiative to bring back the concept of sanitation officers, who were present in the 1960s and 70s to help check the level of filth not only in Bubiashie communities, but the country as a whole.
MP For Asante Akyem North, Andy Appiah-Kubi

21.12.2017 LISTEN

We the undersigned Constituency Executive Members of the New Patriotic Party in Asante Akyem North wish to bring to the notice of the general public some internal wrangling in the party which started immediately after the Partys primaries to elect candidates for the Parliamentary Elections. If these problems are not resolved immediately, apathy will set in and the consequences may be disastrous.

Some of the problems are listed below:

 Suspension of Six Executive Members

The M.P. Hon. Andy Appiah-Kubi since he assumed office has suspended six Constituency Executive members who according to him, were supporters of the immediate past M.P. Hon. Kwadwo Baah Agyemang without following the laid down procedures in the Party Constitution. No charges were preferred against us and we did not appear before the Regional Disciplinary Committee. No official letters have been given to us.

The M.P. and the Chairman have appointed some party members outside the Executive to replace us. Taking a cue from the National Executive when the Chairman and the General Secretary were suspended, we feel the action of the M.P. and the Chairman is unconstitutional. These appointed executive members attend meetings at the Regional Office and even attended the recent National Extraordinary Delegates Conference in Kumasi.

The Executive Members who have been illegally suspended are:

1. Joe Nimo Aikins-1st Vice Chairman

2. Kwame Pese-Danquah-Secretary

3. Emmanuel Buabeng-Youth Organizer

4. Nana Yaw Asiedu-Deputy Organizer

5. Amanpene Patricia-Women Organizer

6. Rebecca Osei-Deputy Women Organizer

We have followed the procedures outlined in the Partys Constitution for a peaceful solution of this problem but all our efforts have proved futile. We made our complaint to the Constituency Disciplinary Committee and the Reconciliation Committee set up by the Regional Executives and finally to The Regional Minister. Copies of these complaints have been attached.

 The Constituency Chairman has failed to pay some monies due us. The Regional Executives invited the Constituency Executives to a meeting in Kumasi immediately after the Elections to say thank you for the hard work done that ensured success in both Presidential and Parliamentary Elections. After the meeting, honorarium was given in envelopes. The 2nd Vice Chairman who represented the Chairman handed all the envelopes to the Chairman but up to date, the Chairman has not paid some of us despite several appeals by the Constituency Council of Elders Chairman. The Council of Elders Chairman wanted to ensure peace in the Constituency but the Constituency Chairman did not give peace a chance.

Again, the Chairman has failed to pay the honorarium due us after the Extraordinary National Delegates Conference in Kumasi recently.

 Registration for New Membership Cards

The registration for new membership cards which should have been done openly to enable old party members re-register for the new cards and new members to be registered was done nicodemously without opening it to the public. Many party members were not registered not to talk of new members. This, especially the registration for new members has affected the membership drive.

 Registration of Party Members in the various Polling Stations

According to the Partys directives, this exercise should be done at the Polling Stations and the list forwarded to the Constituency Office. Unfortunately in our case especially in Agogo, this exercise is being done in the Constituency Office under the supervision of the 2nd Vice Chairman, Mr. Owusu Nyantakyi with the intention of deleting names of some genuine party members because according to him, he will not add those names to the Register for them to vote against the incumbent Chairman in the next Constituency Executives Elections.

 Sacking of Polling Station Executives and Electoral Area Co-ordinators

The Party Chairman, Mr. Sampson Agyei has taken the party as his bonafide property. He has sacked some Polling Station Executives and some Electoral Area Co-ordinators.

Just recently, the Chairman made a public pronouncement that he has sacked the Electoral Area Co-ordinator for Obuasi, Mr. Alfred Gyimah because according to him, the Co-ordinator is an aid to the former M.P. and for that matter, he cannot work with him. True to his word, he no longer involves Mr. Gyimah in any party activity. He has appointed another person who has not been voted for as the Electoral Area Co-ordinator.

Another Electoral Area Co-ordinator for Newtown, Christopher Oppong Ampadu-Kwakwah has also been sacked and replaced with somebody who has not been voted for because he is the special assistant to the former M.P. These two Electoral Area Co-ordinators were not invited to the Constituency Disciplinary Committee.

 Refusal by the Chairman to recognize the Suspended Executives to the Extraordinary Delegates Conference in Kumasi

At the recently held Extraordinary Delegates Conference held in Kumasi, the Constituency Chairman failed to recognize us the elected Executives and gave our accreditation to the appointed executives. This is an infringement on the Party Constitution, that is, for somebody appointed to assume a position of Constituency Secretary, Constituency Youth Organizer, Constituency Women Organizer and Constituency 1st Vice Chairman.

In the previous years, there used to be general meetings once every month in Agogo for the Polling Station Executives in the town to report on happenings in their areas. This rekindled interest in the party and made Polling Station Executives active. If the Constituency Chairman is not seeing to it that this is done in Agogo where he stays, then we cant tell what is happening in the other towns. NPP is virtually dead in Asante Akyem North Constituency.

These and many others are issues affecting the New Patriotic Party in Asante Akyem North and as a matter of urgency, we call on the National Executives to come in and resolve these issues because if not resolved immediately, it will have a negative impact on the Partys fortunes here in Asante Akyem North in the next general elections.

Mr. Joe Nimo Aikins

1st Vice Chairman

Patricia Amanpene

Women Organizer

Mr. Kwame Pese-Danquah

Secretary

Mrs. Rebecca Osei

Women Organizer

Nana Yaw Asiedu

Deputy Organizer

Mr. Emmanuel Amakye Buaben

Youth Organizer
Zimbabwe's new leader on Thursday appealed to millions of nationals who fled economic decline and political turmoil to return home and help rebuild the nation following the fall of Robert Mugabe.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, took over from the long-time leader who resigned on November 21 following a military takeove. Mugabe had ruled the southern African country for 37 years.

"You are so many here in the diaspora because of in particular economic challenges that beset our country," said Mnangagwa during a speech in Pretoria in South Africa during his maiden foreign trip.

"I appeal to you to come to Zimbabwe," he said exactly a month after Mugabe tendered his resignation under popular pressure and as he faced impeachment.

"Zimbabwe is your home, you are welcome (back)," said Mnangagwa adding the country needed the skills and experience Zimbabweans have acquired in the diaspora.

Millions of Zimbabweans have left the country over the past nearly two decades and the bulk of them are in neighbouring South Africa.

"Whatever offence we committed to you please put that behind you.... forgive.

"I wish to say may we together agree that let bygones be bygones and look in the future with hope.

"The country is ours together, it is not the country of (ruling) ZANU-PF, it is not the country of (opposition) MDC.

"From now on Zimbabwe is now open for business," he told Zimbabwean business people who fled to South Africa.

The new president was a long-time ally of Mugabe, and his critics say he is also a hardliner from the ruling ZANU-PF party with a record of alleged graft and repression in Zimbabwe.

As he spoke, a group of fewer than 20 protesters chanted outside the embassy building over Mnangagwa's role during the early 1980s killings of perceived political dissidents in a campaign known infamously as Gukurahundi.

An estimated 20,000 people were killed by an elite North Korean-trained military unit. At the time Mnangagwa was a security minister under Mugabe.

"How can we work with the killer?" shouted one protester.

Two others carried giant pictures of dead bodies with gruesome cuts and burns.

Another protester yelled: "There's no difference between Mugabe and Mnangagwa."

Mnangagwa met South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and was also scheduled to meet ANC's newly elected leader Cyril Ramaphosa.

The South African presidency said Zuma and Mnangagwa "have undertaken to strengthen economic trade and cooperation between South Africa and Zimbabwe".

Mnangagwa said his government had reviewed investment laws that forced foreign companies to cede a majority stake to local investors and spooked investment.
One student of the Asamankese Senior High School (ASASCO) in the Eastern region has died out of a suspected case of meningitis prompting health authorities to quarantine about 60 individuals.

The quarantined individuals are believed to have come into contact with the deceased who passed away on Wednesday, December 20 and necessary steps are being taken to prevent further spread.

Class FM's Eastern region correspondent, Appiah Kubi, who visited the school on Thursday, December 21 reported that the student was sent home from school after falling sick.

The parents took him to the Asamankese government hospital on Sunday, December 17, where he was treated. He was still not feeling better and returned to the hospital on Wednesday complaining of headache, stiff neck and fever.

A laboratory test of fluids from the body of the General Arts student confirmed meningitis but he died before he could be treated for the disease.

Health experts had to step in and conduct contact tracing leading to the quarantine of the 60 individuals.

One student from the Koforidua Secondary Technical School (SECTEC) also died from meningitis few weeks ago.
As South Sudan's warring parties haggled over a ceasefire deal this week, dozens of refugees streamed into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, fleeing what they said was a fresh government offensive.

The apparent push to recapture the key rebel stronghold of Lasu came as mediators tabled a ceasefire agreement in Addis Ababa, which was signed by major parties to the four year conflict on Thursday and is to go into force on December 24.

However with South Sudanese rebel forces vowing to take back their stronghold of Lasu in Central Equatoria State -- regardless of the ceasefire -- the fragility of the deal was thrown into stark relief.

"I'm not sure the government wants peace. If they wanted peace, why would they attack Lasu so that we have to run again with our children," said Betty Moriba, a 28-year-old mother of five.

Having fled violence twice before, Moriba grabbed her children at the first sound of gunfire and ran towards the DRC, but was unable to salvage any of the family's prized possessions.

She and other witnesses say President Salva Kiir's troops attacked Lasu on Sunday, which has served as the headquarters for the Riek Machar's SPLA-IO, the main opposition movement in South Sudan.

"They came with armoured vehicles and machine-gun-mounted pick up trucks," SPLA-IO spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told AFP over the phone from Kampala.

Gabriel said the two sides fought each other for several hours on Monday morning before the rebels withdrew. He has vowed to launch a counter-offensive if government forces do not pull out.

Army spokesman Santo Domic Chol denied troops had launched an offensive on the town, accusing the rebels of attacking a government position as well as looting a village for food -- forcing troops to step in to save civilians.

"We have been ordered not to engage hostilities by pursuing rebels (but) at times we will fight if we are attacked in our positions which is what happened in Lasu."

However it was unclear what government position he was referring to -- as both civilians and an official document released earlier this month indicated the area was under rebel control.

"These government soldiers came from Yei and they were shooting guns and killing people. That's what made us come this way," said James Mana, one of the fresh arrivals in the DRC, near the town of Aba.

Congolese authorities registered more than 200 refugees in the last five days.

Smoke could be seen rising from a village across the border.

'Cost and consequences'

South Sudan this month entered into its fifth year of a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven nearly four million from their homes.

The UN Security Council warned last week that there would be "cost and consequences" for any side who blocks "last chance" peace efforts mediated by the regional authority IGAD, in a bid to revitalise a shattered peace agreement.

The peace deal was signed in 2015 to end 21 months of civil war between Kiir's government and Machar's rebels which broke out just two years after independence in 2011.

However the deal effectively collapsed in July 2016, when fresh fighting in the capital Juba forced then-first vice president Machar out of the country and his supporters back to battling the government in the bush.

Violence spread to the southern region of Equatoria, forcing over a million people to flock to neighbouring Uganda and the DRC in what has become the biggest refugee crisis on the continent.

In addition to Kiir's government and Machar's SPLA-IO, this round of peace talks also includes half a dozen armed opposition groups that have sprung up since July 2016, a factor that is likely to further complicate negotiations.

A permanent ceasefire is the first step in negotiations to include a "revised and realistic" timeline to holding elections.

However after numerous failed ceasefires and collapsed peace deals, observers are sceptical.

"The regime is clearly not interested in negotiations or compromise and is the principle obstacle to peace," said Payton Knopf, the head of the South Sudan working group at the US Institute for Peace and former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan.

'I don't want to run anymore'

Rights groups have blamed the government for systematic attacks on civilians in Equatoria, including killings, torture and rape.

As a result, many have sought shelter behind rebel lines, offering opposition fighters food in return for protection. But over the past couple of months, there have also been growing allegations of abuses at the hands of the SPLA-IO, gradually eroding popular support for the rebellion.

For the rebels, weakened by lack of ammunition and infighting, the loss of Lasu is just the latest in a series of military setbacks.

Civilians like Betty Moriba see little point in returning to South Sudan.

"I just want to be in one place, where I can raise my children," she said. "I just don't want to run anymore."
Test batsman Temba Bavuma hit a fluent 70 as a South African Invitation team took a 91-run first innings lead against the touring Zimbabweans on the second day of their three-day day-night match at Boland Park on Thursday.

Bavuma made 70 off 77 balls with seven fours as the Invitation team hit 287 all out in reply to the tourists' first innings of 196.

The match is the only warm-up for the Zimbabweans ahead of a one-off day-night Test against South Africa, starting in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday.

While it was a chance for the tourists to get used to playing with a pink ball under floodlights, it was also an opportunity for Bavuma to cement a place in South Africa's starting line-up in the Test.

Bavuma was the only one of South Africa's top five batsmen who did not make a big score in a recent series against Bangladesh.

With AB de Villiers returning to the Test side, Bavuma's position was under threat depending on the balance of the side to play Zimbabwe.

Captain Graeme Cremer was the most successful Zimbabwean bowler, taking four for 67 with his leg-spinners. Kyle Jarvis, Blessing Muzarabani and Chris Mpofu took two wickets each.

The match was evenly poised when the Invitation lost their ninth wicket on 197, a lead of one run, before Dayyaan Galiem and Shaun von Berg added a rapid 90 for the last wicket.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

Citi FM's Marie-Franz Fordjoe and journalists from TV3 and Ghanaweb, were on Thursday attacked by some irate youth of the governing New Patriotic Party, NPP.

Following up on hints of an ongoing protest at the party's national headquarters in Accra, the reporters headed there.

Upon their arrival, scores of the party's members, numbering about 200 from the Ellembelle Constituency in the Western Region, had besieged the headquarters demanding a clean register ahead of the party's internal elections in January 2018.

Whilst filming the happenings, they were attacked by about six well-built men who are security guards at the party's head office.

GhanaWeb's cameraman was slapped, thrown on the ground and kicked mercilessly by the 'macho' men.

When the issue was reported to the NPP Deputy General Secretary, Sam Payne upon his arrival at the scene, he retorted that, no one asked him [the reporter] to come and film and walked away.

Efforts by onlookers and the protesters were simply insufficient to calm the anger and energy with which the security guards were manhandling the cameraman.

TV3's reporter earned slaps, after which his phones and other equipment were seized.

Citi FM's reporter was also attacked by a female party loyalist and the 'macho' men. Her spectacles were broken, whereas her phones and bag were seized. She later was given back her items.

The Ellembelle protesters, who tried protecting the journalists, were also attacked.

About two of the protesters received slaps as a result, and one other person, sustained injuries, including a burst lip and a broken nose.

Ghanaweb's cameraman complained of blurred vision and pains. Such offenders are often not punished, supposedly due to political affiliation with the governing party.

The defiant protesters insist on a clean register, as they allege some fraudulent activities in their constituency will mar the voting in January.

The governing party is expected to go to the polls in January 2018, to elect polling station executives. As part of that, all party members are to have their names captured on the party's register by December 25, 2017.

According to the livid NPP members, their constituency's party chairman, Samuel Akenya, has refused to make available the original registers to the 16 polling station officers.

They claimed the Constituency Chairman has instead made available other forms for the registration process which he will collate all registered names himself.

In the view of the constituents, this is a ploy to manipulate the election of party executives at the constituency level, through to the national level.

Speaking to Citi News at the NPP headquarters today, Thursday, the Communications Director for the group, Felix Dickson, said directives from the police and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to Samuel Akenya to release the original register, have yielded no results hence their action.

The group has been at the NPP headquarters since 5:00am, and is yet to meet any national party executive to whom, they can present their petition.

'Controversial' NPP constitutional amendment proposals withdrawn

The leadership of NPP over the weekend shot down some three 'controversial' proposals submitted for amendment to the party's constitution.

President Akufo-Addo, while addressing party delegates at Kumasi in the Ashanti Region at the party's Extraordinary National Delegates' Conference said some of the proposed amendments will be a disaster if adopted.

The proposals included suggestions for Members of Parliament to appoint constituency executives, party members with dual citizenship to be disqualified from contesting for any party position and for the flagbearer of the party to be considered as the leader of the party



By:citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post NPP security men assault Citi FM, TV3 and Ghanaweb journalists appeared first on Ghana News .
Ghana has voted against the US President, Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Ghana was among the 128 countries that endorsed a position that Jerusalem, which is being claimed by Israel and Palestine as capital, can only be said to be Israel's capital after a peace deal is reached.

At an emergency session of United Nations on Thursday, only 9 countries, including the US and Israel, voted against the position of waiting until consensus has been built on the matter.

The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, ahead of the votes threatened that the US will remember which countries that disrespected it by voting against it.

The US government had also threatened to cut funding to countries that did not back the US' position.

She said the US would be taking namesWhen we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have expectation that we will be respectedWhat's more, we are being asked to pay for the dubious privileges of being disrespected.

If our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our investment in other ways The United States will remember this day, she said.

Donald Trump, while speaking at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, said Let them vote against us We'll save a lot. We don't care. But this isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

We're not going to be taken advantage of any longer.

Despite the threat, countries such as Nigeria, Congo, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mali, and Zimbabwe all voted against the US position.

Countries which supported the US included Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Other countries abstained

About 32 other countries including Canada, Benin, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Mexico declined to vote for or against the motion.

The US has been at the center of global outrage after its President, Donald Trump, declared that countrys recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Many believe the declaration was premature as the world was expecting an amicable settlement of the matter between Israel and Palestine.

Trumps declaration sparked series of violent protests, especially in Palestine.

Some groups in Ghana have declared solidarity for Palestine in the impasse between that country and Israel.

They believe Israel was oppressing Palestine.

The opposition National Democratic Congress [NDC], Member of Parliament for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, who is the Spokesperson for the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, had said in a previous interview that Ghanaians should boycott the use of American and Israeli products in solidarity with Palestine.

What Trump has done will not bring peace in Palestine let alone the globe, he said.
21.12.2017 LISTEN

"I am asking for nothing less than a revolution- a revolution that would transform the socio-economic structures of the country. That was Jerry Rawlings on 31st December 1981 who further said that he was prepared to face the firing squad if what he had initiated was not acceptable to the majority of the Ghanaian people. That was 36 years today.

By November ending 1981, a revolution was seen to be inevitable in Ghana. The proclamation made in the early hours of 31st December, 1981 by flt Lt, J.J Rawlings was an intervention. Many may see it as a coup detat but to some of us it was a revolution. For the general accepted opinion, I think partial coup/revolution. The jubilation of the civilians from Northern part of the country to Southern part of the country was attested to the fact that it was a popular revolution. 31st December therefore was like a festival day for the suffering people, the unemployed and the exploited. They jumped on to the streets without prompting and some joined in the looting of shops belonging to the Lebanese and Syrians. Very sad!.

Cadres who answer the role call from 31st December 1981 were cadres from the June Four Movement,( JFM) headed by Comrade Alolga Akata-Pore,Sergent, The New Democratic Movement ,(NDM) headed by Comrade Chris Bukari Atim, Africa Youth Command (AYC)headed by comrade Nyenya Yen, Kwame Nkrumah Revolutionary Guards(KNRG),headed by comrade Nicolas Atampugri and the Peoples Revolutionary Movement(PRM) also headed by comrade Kwesi Adu and others. With this people in positions, I stand to be corrected in their roles in this bodies,Rawlings really trusted his comrades- in- the -struggles And everything was left entirely in the hands of the above cadres.

Hence,taking their inspiration from both the Cuban and the Libyan experiences, they thought it wise to establish committees in same Photo-scenario as those in Havana and Tripoli. The idea was sold to unsuspecting Chairman Rawlings. These cadres were very influential in management decision making. Also, in both cities, towns and villages, there were organizations similar to the above.

In early January 1982, there was amalgam of revolutionaries of June Four Movement (JFM) and the New Democratic Movement (NDM). In this type of revolutionary congregation lay the beginning of their disagreements, vis-a-vis a National philosophy or an ideological basis for the PNDC. Chairman Rawlings again still maintained, sustained and above all, the trust he upheld for his team from the inception of the revolution.

There was mistrust between these amalgam revolutionaries bodies. The New Democratic Movement (NDM) thought that the 31st December Revolution was not necessary, ill conceived and considered and classified their partners from the June Four Movement as Misfits. Hence a socio-ideological conflict had been natured.

It therefore stands to reason that, because of these defects and mistrust within the central committee of the PNDC, National affairs could not move as expected and Chairman Rawlings with all the ideas was left in the limbo. It was alleged that, the ante-Rawlings within presidium of the PNDC hatched a wicked plan that will make former president Jerry Rawlings looked bad in the eyes of the citizenry.

On the 30th June, 1982, three High Court Judges(Jusice Cecilia Koranteng,Justice F.B Sarkodee and Justice K.A Agyepong) and Major Sam Acquah(Director of personel,GIHOC) was brutally murdered by some criminals who presented themselves As people taking some instructions from above,may their souls rest in peace . Special investigation board was constituted on the 15th July 1982 by Jerry Rawlings to investigate these murders. Lance Corporal and Joachim Amartey Kwei and some run away accomplices were found for this "madness". They were finally executed by firing squad in August 1983.

This then set the PNDC and dissidents on a collision. It will surprised you to know that fifteen (15) coup d etat was attempted on former president Rawlings. The main aim of the dissidents was to eliminate former president Rawlings himself. Their afore-thought was, if former president Jerry Rawlings is eliminated, they will have their way to implement their ideologies. I will not talk about the alleged J.H Mensah's and his people in the far away foreign land.

On 29th October 1982, a collaboration of some dissidents within presidium of the PNDC and outside, a coup detat was attempted by some junior officers. On 23rd November 1982 came another attempted coup detat lead by Akata-Pore and his group. Akata-Pore was arrested and detained whiles Chris Bukari Atim,one of the suspects of the above coup detat managed to escaped to Togo. Senior military officers were implicated and former president Rawlings was forced by this act, to overhaul his establishment.

On 27th, Feb. 1983 about nine (9) soldiers and two (2) civilians were arrested around Achimota forest in Accra. In April 1983, various types of foreign mercenaries allegedly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A) of America and the Israeli intelligence Wing were set to invade Ghana through Aflao. The most serious of them all 23rd April 1983, was the plot which was to have coincided with the PNDC political Rally in Kumasi.

19th June 1983 was the Master of all coup attempts, they attacked Ussher Fort (James Town) prison; and some other secret military locations within the Accra metropolitan area. They succeeded in releasing some men who were arrested on the 23rd November 1982 as

a result of the failed coup detat. These descendents succeeded in temporarily capturing Ghana Broadcasting and Television station. On the same day, 1 oclock,a spokesman of the PNDC announce to the Ghanaians and the world that,former president Rawlings is still in control of Ghana and no one else. Its interesting to know that, in the trial of the coup detat suspect, at least ,twenty (20) death sentences were passed and only five (5) of them who were in detention at the time of Judgment finally faced the firing squad. For most of those convicted either might have died during the exchange of fire between the revolutionary guards of the PNDC,but majority of them were sentenced in absentia.

In the spirit of third anniversary of the 31st December revolution, that is 1984, former president Jerry Rawlings granted a general amnesty to prisoners in Ghana and it was extended to some of the Coup detat suspects who were already serving various sentences , but were found to be of Good behavior.

On the 2nd February 1985, a plot was hatchet to assassinate Jerry Rawlings in Kumasi, when he will be delivering a speech during a durbar. Five military men and a civilian (Mallam Tula) were apprehended. In the middle of March 1986, Mr.Godfrey Osei, a Ghanaian fugitive from Jail was alleged to have recruited 18 mercenaries, eight (8) of the American and ten (10) Argentine nationals. 26th of May 1986, Nine (9) Ghanaians were put before a military tribunal as alleged coup detat suspects. Among them was Captain Edward Adjei Ampofo, A former head of Ghana Military Intelligence.

Finally on 22nd June 1986 about sixteen (16) suspects were arrested. Dissidents will not stop their advances towards the destabilization of the Rawlings regime.

Whatever you may look at it,former president Jerry Rawlings is my Hero.

Ibrahim Hardi,contact;0208235615 Email;[email protected]
Prophet Bayode Olubo of House Favour Church, Lagos has extended his hands of love and charity to widows,a practice that has been sustained for over 10 years by the Church.

Recently the Church gave 1500, Ankara, money and food items to widows within Lagos state to celebrate this festive season.

This year's charity exercise which took place at the Church Premises at No.12, Oni street off Jimoh akinremi, Egbeda, Lagos included Police widows association as a way of supporting the families of the women who lost their husbands. Prophet Bayode Olubo admonished the widows to remain steadfast in the Lord as they can never be forgotten.
Nigerias minster for Information & Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has commended the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Prof Ben Ayade, for sustaining the tradition of theatre, arts and cultural development as a tool for creating employment for Nigerian youths.

The minister made the statement while giving his remark after the stage play NIGERIANA was presented by the Cross River State Ministry of Culture & Tourism. This was on the evening of Saturday, 16th December 2017, preceding the third and final dry run for the Carnival Calabar, dubbed Africas biggest street party.

In NIGERIANA, the playwright, award winning, PHD in Choreography holder, Arnold Udoka carefully displays ethnic characters to express cultural pluralism in postcolonial Nigeria. While the aftermath of a conflict between two major characters creates trajectory of forgiveness, love, sense of purpose and unity.

The performance explored the concept of total theatre as described by American character actor, Steven Berkoff. The stage play NIGERIANA is the first in the series of presentations made by the ministry since the pioneer commissioner, Eric Anderson was sworn in two months ago. And in the words of the minister, it is astonishing. It was directed by Affiong Effiong, a theatre director, choreographer and experimentalist.

The minister had spent the early part of the day on tour of mass camps of the carnival bands; worthy of note was SEAGULL BAND, after a stop at FREEDOM BAND camp. Before retiring for the day, he was hosted at the historic Cultural Centre Calabar, where he was held spell bound by the breath taking performance of NIGERIANA by Arnold Udoka, as it exhibits Nigerias geo reality and diversity through the dance culture.

In his vote of thanks, Mr. Anderson rendered his utmost appreciation of the presence of the minister at the first presentation since he took charge of the ministry; saying it is really a good start for him, he thanked the Governor for the creation of a ministry of Culture & Tourism, and the appointment of a practitioner, a thespian, in person of himself.

Speaking further, he appreciated the Governor for the platform the stage offers many talents to hone their skills, for those with good materials, it is certain the stage will catapult them to higher level in their career he said.

The entire audience left the hall with joy in their hearts, smiles on their faces and applauds echoed from their hands.
Last night, bitcoin took another tumble. A single coin now trades for US$16,482.

What caused the bitcoin price drop?

Rather than taking profits, investors were pulling out of bitcoin and jumping into bitcoin cash. Bitcoin cash, which forked from bitcoin months ago, has more than doubled in price in December.

Source: Coin Gecko

The switch came after Coinbase announced their 30 million customers would be able to transact into bitcoin cash. Within minutes of their announcement, Coinbases website froze.

Also not helping bitcoin prices was the subpar open to futures trading.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launched their bitcoin future contracts earlier this week. However, the January contracts climbed 6% before dropping more than 9%.

What surprised me is the volumes traded in bitcoin futures. Providers Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and CME havent seen any real spikes in volume since offering bitcoin futures.

In fact, volumes have actually been declining. You would think offering bitcoin futures means you had already received strong demand to provide them. But so far, that isnt the case.

Contracts provided by CBOE are thinning and CME is yet to see big buyers and sellers come into the market.

Source: CBOE

Source: CME Group

So whats next for bitcoin?

At first people were buying bitcoin outright. Then it seemed that there was demand for bitcoin futures. What will be the next bitcoin-related product?

According to CoinDesk, bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) could be next:

NYSE Arca has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed rule change that would allow for the listing of two exchange-traded funds tied to bitcoin futures.

Public records dated Dec. 19 show that the company wants to list two ETFs  the ProShares Bitcoin ETF and the ProShares Short ETF  that were originally proposed in September. According to the document, NYSE Arca, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), submitted the proposed rule change on Dec. 4.

As indicated in the filing, the ETFs would track two recently launched futures contracts, released in the past week and a half by Cboe and, later, CME Group.

Yet I suspect a bitcoin ETF might not fare as well as buying the real stuff. As bitcoin futures have shown, investors are willing to pay up for regulated exposure to bitcoin. But most prefer the real thing, probably because of the potential returns.

If volumes for bitcoin futures dont pick up, Id be far more sceptical about the success of bitcoin ETFs.

Cheers,

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Want to find out more about the secret world of bitcoin? Click here.
I stuck to what the coaches ...
Yves here. One of the many frustrations of reading the sloganeering in the UK on Brexit that is presented as analysis is the oft-repeated claim, The EU exports a lot to us, they have more to lose than we do.

This is slipshod for a whole host of reasons. For instance, implementing hard borders with the EU will lead multinationals to shift a lot of their operations in the UK to the Continent. Moreover, even if the EU were to take a bigger GDP hit (debatable at best), it would be spread across a much larger economy and population, making the relative decline on an aggregate and per capita basis smaller.

This post provides a more granular look at which regions are likely to suffer most as a result of Brexit.

By Wen Chen, Bart Los, Philip McCann, Raquel Ortega-Argiles, Mark Thissen, and Frank van Oor. Originally published at VoxEU

Analyses of the impact of various types of Brexit at the national level hide a lot of regional economic heterogeneity. This column deploys a new interregional dataset to quantify the shares of regional labour income that are exposed to the implications of Brexit for trade, taking into account the indirect effects of supply chain relations. The results show that much more is at stake for UK regions than for the rest of the EU, with the exception of Ireland.

Over the past two years, several studies have addressed the question of the extent to which the UK and other EU countries will be affected by various types of Brexit (e.g. Ebell et al. 2016, Dhingra et al. 2016, Brakman et al. 2017). These studies adopted a range of methodologies, some of which rely on global input-output tables. The main advantage of global input-output tables is that they provide a natural link between trade and value added. In a world of global value chains, the value added by an economy cannot be deduced from gross trade balances. This is important, because if Brexit leads to higher trade barriers, the reductions in value added are not necessarily proportional to reductions in gross exports.

Analyses at the national level hide a lot of regional economic heterogeneity. In this column, we present evidence of this using the EUREGIO database. EUREGIO consists of an annual time series of global input-output tables with regional detail at NUTS2 level for EU countries. The tables have been constructed by merging data from regional accounts, Cambridge Econometrics, and transportation surveys (Thissen et al. 2013) with (survey-based) regional supply and use tables and global supply and use tables from WIOD (Timmer et al. 2015). The regional economies have been disaggregated into 14 industries.1

We focus on the Brexit exposure of regional labor income, rather than of regional GDP. The main reason for this is that profits are not strongly tied to the region where economic activity takes place, since they are often repatriated to company headquarters. In contrast, commuting between regions defined at NUTS2 level is limited, so labour income can be considered as more sticky.

Method

Currently, various varieties of Brexit scenarios are still on the table, in a broad range from a cliff-edge Brexit to a Brexit in which the UK (or parts of it  i.e. Northern Ireland) would remain in the customs union and/or the Single Market. We do not estimate the regional labour income effects due to any of these scenarios. Instead, we estimate the shares of labour income that are exposed to Brexit. We arrive at these estimates by comparing actual labour income to labour income in a situation in which bilateral trade flows between all EU regions on the one hand, and all UK regions on the other, would be set to zero. This hypothetical extraction of trade flows is done for both UK-EU trade in intermediate inputs and trade in final products. For UK regions, this amounts to computing the regional labour income in exports to the EU following Los et al. (2016), which provides the required bilateral extension of Koopman et al. (2014). The approach is based on Leontiefs input-output model, which has a demand-driven nature. We derive our indicator of labour income exposed to Brexit as the difference between actual labour income and the hypothetical labour income. This compares the actual situation to the situation that would prevail if Brexit would have its maximum trade effects (zero trade crossing UK-EU borders) and substitution among products and among regions/countries-of-origin would not take place. Given that firms and consumers will of course react by substituting away from more expensive products, our indicator should not be seen as predictions of the actual effects of Brexit, but rather as the share of regional labour that is at risk due to Brexit-related trade barriers.

A major advantage of using this approach is that it takes the consequences of outsourcing and offshoring of stages of production (Timmer et al., 2013, Baldwin, 2016) explicitly into account. Labour income in the business services industry in Noord Holland (the Dutch region of Amsterdam) might be affected if it delivers part of its services to a manufacturer in South Holland (the Rotterdam region) who exports to the UK. An analysis based on only bilateral trade data would therefore be biased.

Results

The analysis is based on the most recent EUREGIO table, for 2010. Figure 1 presents the results for each of the NUTS2 regions in the UK. The lowest level of labour income exposure to Brexit is just below 8%, in the Highlands and Islands (Northern Scotland). Other regions with low exposure levels include Northeastern Scotland, Merseyside and both Inner and Outer London (slightly above 9%). This latter result might be seen as remarkable, in view of the popular claim by the Leave campaign in the run-up to the referendum that EU membership mainly benefitted the metropolitan elite in the City. There are two reasons why London appears less exposed to Brexit than the average British region. First and foremost, the London economy is very large, as a consequence of which it produces a large part of its output for local use. Second, the important financial services industry caters to many British clients elsewhere in the UK and a substantial part of its exports have non-EU countries as their destination.

Figure 1 Shares of regional labour income exposed to Brexit (UK regions)

The highest labour income exposure level amounts to almost 17% (in Cumbria). Other regions with high levels of exposure include Lancashire, Leicestershire and East Riding/North Lincolnshire, which are located in the old British industrial heartland. In these regions, the exposure levels are 14-15%.

Figure 2 focuses on the exposure levels of non-UK regions. Not surprisingly, Irish regions might well suffer the most. According to our indicator, their exposure levels (about 7.5%) are comparable to the least vulnerable regions in the UK. For the vast majority of other EU regions, the risks are much smaller. In the regions in Southern Germany with a lot of high-tech manufacturing, exposure levels amount to 6-7%. For other German regions and Belgium and the Netherlands, the risks are about half this magnitude, while in the remainder of European regions the exposure levels are even lower.

Differences among regions are the outcome of the interplay of two broad factors. First, some regions have higher export intensities to the other side of the Brexit divide (direct and/or indirect, via participation in supply chains spanning multiple regions) in virtually all sectors. Second, some regions are highly exposed to Brexit because they have specialised in producing tradable products, such as manufactures. Kent, in the extreme Southeast of the UK, is ranked 9th among the UK regions with regard to its overall exposure. Its manufacturing industry, however, is extremely vulnerable to Brexit due to Kents port of Dover  we estimate that almost 44% of its labour income in manufacturing is at risk. In Cumbria, a smaller proportion of manufacturing labour income is exposed (38%), but as much as 30% of its labour income is generated in this sector (as opposed to 17% in Kent).

Figure 2 Share of regional labour income exposed to Brexit (UK regions excluded)

Conclusions

We focus on the extent to which regional labour income is exposed to trade barriers due to Brexit, taking configurations of supply chains into account. The estimated effects may be seen as an upper bound of the actual effects, yet the fact that we do not consider the income that might be lost due to relocation decisions, for example by multinationals, may on the other hand render our estimates more conservative. Bearing this in mind, two results stand out.

First, labour income in London will most probably be hit less than in many regions in the Western and Northern parts of England.

These regions are already poorer and have higher unemployment levels than the UK average (McCann 2016), which means that economic inequality among UK regions is likely to increase.

Second, labour income in regions in the UK are much more exposed to Brexit than labour income anywhere else in the EU, despite marked differences across EU27 regions.

Hence, the stakes in the Brexit negotiations are much higher for the UK than for the EU27, despite the fact that the EU27 is a net exporter to the UK. The nature of the recent deal that concluded the first stage of UK-EU negotiations seems to reflect this finding.

See original post for references
One of the reasons I have owned Apple desktop and laptop computers (once I finally had to abandon my NeXT) was that you could use them for longer than comparable Microsoft boxes (unless you were a hard core techie and very good at cannibalizing and reassembling parts). I used my TiBook for 8 1/2 years, and then a MacBook Air for 5 1/2 years, and probably could have eked another year out of it. That plus it requiring pretty much no tech support justified the high price.

Now Apple has knocked the foundations out from under the longer potential product life argument. While the Cupertino company admitted to misconduct only as far as older iPhones are concerned, its not hard to imagine that this extends to other products as well. Here is the overview from the Wall Street Journal, which gives only the official corporate-speak version:

Apple Inc., facing questions from users and tech analysts about reduced performance in older iPhones, acknowledged Wednesday that its latest software curtails the computing power of some models to prevent unexpected shutdowns.. The statement came two days after John Poole, founder of the computer-performance testing group Geekbench, wrote a blog post illustrating how iPhone computing performance slows as battery health declines on iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices. Apple said that as iPhone batteries age, or in certain conditions such as cold weather or at low charge, they can struggle to respond to a phones power demands. This can cause the device to unexpectedly shut down to protect its electronic components, the company said. Apple Inc., facing questions from users and tech analysts about reduced performance in older iPhones, acknowledged Wednesday that its latest software curtails the computing power of some models to prevent unexpected shutdowns. It was a rare statement from the company that shed light on how Apple internally dealt with a growing user complaint. The statement came two days after John Poole, founder of the computer-performance testing group Geekbench, wrote a blog post illustrating how iPhone computing performance slows as battery health declines on iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices. Apple said that as iPhone batteries age, or in certain conditions such as cold weather or at low charge, they can struggle to respond to a phones power demands. This can cause the device to unexpectedly shut down to protect its electronic components, the company said.

If you believe Apples excuses, I have a bridge Id like to sell you. First, Apple didnt fess up to its practice until it was caught out. Second, if this throttling were a benefit to customers, as opposed to Apple, theyd tell you about it proudly. I dont know about how rapidly newer phone batteries decay, but as a laptop owner, its something I anticipate and expect to have to manage around as my machine gets older. Or at least they could have allowed customers to opt out of this throttling feature.

Lets be clear as to what Apple is doing: it deliberately downgrades older phones when you update your software. And since Apple (and Google) heretofore have never demonstrated undue concern about the impact of drained batteries on devices, its pretty obvious that the reason for selectively downgrading the performance of older devices is to speed replacements.

And further consider: if Apple had choked performance across the board, that might have been too obvious, as well as too difficult to rationalize if outsiders could prove it or an insider leaked.

Business Insider published a more consumer-oriented story, save consistently presenting users who were early to flag the performance problem as conspiracy theorists. Ahem, if anyone engaged in a conspiracy, it was Apple that was conspiring against its customers. But in this Best of All Possible Worlds that we inhabit, anyone who questions the established order must be a rabble rouser or crank, right?

From Business Insider:

Apple has long inspired an almost religious devotion among customers and tech-aficionados  but it just seriously undermined its fans faith and loyalty. The company on Wednesday admitted what some people have long suspected: that it has been secretly stifling the performance of older iPhones. Critics have accused the company in the past, based on anecdotal evidence, of purposely slowing phones to compel users to upgrade to the latest model. While Apple admitted to the practice on Wednesday, it stressed that it did so for a purely altruistic reason  to prevent older phones from shutting down unexpectedly. If Apple didnt acknowledge that it was throttling older phones until one year after it started doing so, what else is the company not telling customers? Why should iPhone users believe the companys explanation for why its throttling phones? And why should they believe that it only started doing that a year ago?

I wonder whether users have noticed performance on other types of Apple products after upgrading the OS. Note this latest revelation, as well as the

When I got my latest Mac laptop, I got the older version because the later one got poor reviews. Since I despise making any changes to my infrastructure, I waited a full six months after buying it to finally start using it. I also had a tech guy help me set it up, mainly because I have no tolerance for frustration.

The installed OS was at that point old, so he updated it. I was shocked that my new laptop, with 4 times as much RAM as the one Id been using, was barely faster.

Michael Olenick wrote in a recent post describing why Apples recent security debacle, in which users of its latest OS, High Sierra, could have someone who had access to a machine gain root access in seconds, and then issued a patch that didnt work, was a world-class security disaster. He concluded:

Apple  seriously?! Since the untimely death of Steve Jobs the company has been off their game. Its not only this boneheaded move: despite a quarter-trillion dollars in the bank Apple has repeatedly failed to do anything interesting in about five years. The root security bug is an obvious severe process failure but I think the flaw runs a lot deeper: Apple management just doesnt seem to care anymore. The company lacks a passion that once fueled users even in the darkest days. Every senior person is insanely rich and just doesnt seem to give a shit. The money might explain things but every senior person at Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix is also ridiculously wealthy and they still seem to care. Even Microsoft management seems to be waking up: their Surface Studio computer is genuinely cool. Lower level employees are friendly and competent. When the High Sierra upgrade destroyed a colleagues computer Apple employees spent hours patiently talking to and texting her; they eventually restored it. Contrast that to Dell: family members bought my daughter a new Dell as a present from the US. It intermittently will not turn on and has been a brick for weeks. Nobody has been able to resolve the problem and Dell customer service is abysmal. But just because competitor computer makers are godawful doesnt mean you have to be too. Besides, it makes better business sense to not nuke a computer with an update in the first place rather than providing friendly and helpful employees to spend hours restoring it. There are countless articles comparing Apple CEO Tim Cook to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who succeeded Bill Gates. Ballmer, like Cook, raised revenue but sat idly by while Microsoft was clobbered in search, mobile, social, cloud, and virtually every other new tech development during his tenure. Now were watching Cook languish. I cant tell Siri next song (well, I can but it doesnt understand). iCloud is awful. The iPhone X looks suspiciously like a Samsung Galaxy from a few years ago. And, oh yeah, my eleven-year-old rooted the family Mac in seconds.

Im never getting an iPhone and this incident confirms my decision that my next machine will be a Linux box. Youve been warned.
A particle like slow light (Nanowerk News) There was great excitement back in 2015, when it was first possible to measure these 'Weyl fermions' - outlandish, massless particles that had been predicted almost 90 years earlier by German mathematician, physician and philosopher, Hermann Weyl.

Now, once again, there has been a breakthrough in this field of research, with researchers at TU Wien being the first to successfully detect Weyl particles in strongly correlated electron systems - that is, materials where the electrons have a strong interaction with each other (PNAS, "WeylKondo semimetal in heavy-fermion systems").

In materials like this, the Weyl particles move extremely slowly, despite having no mass. The discovery should now open the door to an entirely new area of physics, and enable hitherto unimagined material-physical effects.

Quasiparticles: only possible in a solid state

After physician Paul Dirac had arrived at his Dirac equation in 1928, which can be used to describe the behaviour of relativistic electrons, Hermann Weyl found a particular solution for this equation - namely for particles with zero mass, or 'Weyl fermions'. The neutrino was originally thought to be such a massless Weyl particle, until it was discovered that it does indeed have mass. The mysterious Weyl fermions were, in fact, detected for the first time in 2015; they turned out not to be free particles like the neutrino, which can move through the universe independently from the rest of the world, but rather 'quasiparticles' in a solid state.

"Quasiparticles are not particles in the conventional sense, but rather excitations of a system consisting of many interacting particles," explains Prof. Silke Buhler-Paschen from the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Wien. In some sense, they are similar to a wave in water. The wave is not a water molecule, rather it is based on the movement of many molecules. When the wave moves forward, this does not mean that the particles in the water are moving at that speed. It is not the water molecules themselves, but their excitation in wave form that spreads.

However, although the quasiparticles in a solid state are the result of an interplay between many particles, from a mathematical perspective they can be described similarly to a free particle in a vacuum.

This is Sami Dzsaber and Prof. Silke Buhler-Paschen.

A "light speed" of just 100 m/s

The remarkable thing about the experiment, conducted by Sami Dzsaber and other members of the research group for quantum materials led by Silke Buhler-Paschen at TU Wien, is the fact that the Weyl particles were discovered in a strongly correlated electron system. This type of material is of particular interest for the field of solid state physics: their electrons cannot be described as separate from one another; they are strongly interconnected and it is precisely this that lends them extraordinary properties, from high-temperature superconductivity through to new kinds of phase transitions.

"The strong interactions in such materials usually lead, via the so-called Kondo effect, to particles behaving as if they had an extremely large mass," explains Sami Dzsaber. "So it was astonishing for us to detect Weyl fermions with a mass of zero in this particular type of material." According to the laws of relativity, free massless particles must always spread at light speed. This is, however, not the case in solid states: "Even though our Weyl fermions have no mass, their speed is extremely low," says Buhler-Paschen. The solid state lends them its own fixed 'light speed' to a certain extent. This is lower than 1000 m/s, i.e. only around three millionth of the speed of light in a vacuum. "As such, they are even slower than phonons, the analogue to the water wave in the solid state, and this makes them detectable in our experiment."

In search of new effects

At the same time as these measurements were being made at TU Wien, theoretical investigations were being carried out under the leadership of Qimiao Si at Rice University in Texas - Buhler-Paschen was a visiting professor there at the time - which looked at the question of how these Weyl fermions could even exist in a strongly correlated material. This combination of experiment and theory thus produced a conclusive picture of the new effect, which is now enabling new research to be carried out.

The newly detected quasiparticles are interesting for a number of reasons: "Even if Weyl fermions were initially found in other materials, it is much easier to control the effect in our strongly correlated materials," says Silke Buhler-Paschen. "Due to their low energy, it is significantly easier to influence them using parameters such as pressure or an external magnetic field." This means the Weyl fermions can also be used for technological applications.
Fewer laboratory animals thanks to secondary nanobodies

(Nanowerk News) Antibodies are indispensable in biological research and medical diagnostics. However, their production is time-consuming, expensive, and requires the use of many animals. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany, have now developed so-called secondary nanobodies that can replace the most-used antibodies and may drastically reduce the number of animals in antibody production (Journal of Cell Biology, "A toolbox of anti-mouse and rabbit IgG secondary nanobodies").

This is possible because the secondary nanobodies can be produced in large scale by bacteria. Moreover, the secondary nanobodies outperform their traditional antibody counterparts in key cell-biological applications.

As a central part of our immune system, antibodies protect us humans and other vertebrates against pathogens. They are, however, also essential tools in medical diagnostics, therapy, and basic research  for example in fluorescence microscopy. When researchers want to study a certain protein within a cell, they can mark it selectively with antibodies directed against this protein. Once these so-called primary antibodies have bound their target, secondary antibodies are applied. These bind the primary antibodies, carry fluorescent dyes that light up under the microscope, and thus make the protein of interest visible.

Three-dimensional structure of a nanobody. (Image: Tino Pleiner and Sergei Trakhanov / Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry)

The great variety of primary antibodies is traditionally produced in small mammals such as rabbits and mice: First, the animals are immunized with the purified protein  this is comparable to vaccinating humans. As a result, the animals immune system forms antibodies against the protein. The antibodies are finally collected from the blood of the animals, and processed.

As antibodies are used by thousands of labs worldwide and because most of their applications rely on secondary antibodies, the latter are in enormous demand. Therefore, the production of secondary antibodies necessitates not only many, but also large animals such as donkeys, goats, or sheep. This poses an ethical problem.

Secondary nanobodies can be produced in bacteria

Researchers at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen now present a sustainable alternative that can replace secondary antibodies directed against primary ones from mice or rabbits. It relies on so-called nanobodies and may drastically reduce the number of animals used for antibody production. Nanobodies are fragments of special antibodies from camels and related species such as alpacas.

We have developed secondary nanobodies that not only perform very well, but also, they can be produced microbiologically at any scale  just like beer in a fermenter, explains Dirk Gorlich, Director at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry and head of the project.

Secondary antibodies have to meet extremely stringent quality requirements and must detect only primary antibodies of a single species and no structures in the analyzed cells or medical samples. Thus, the problem was to obtain construction plans for truly perfect secondary nanobodies. We started with a vast number of variants that we extracted from a small amount of blood from two immunized alpacas. By so-called phage display, we then fished out the best variants and eventually used them to program bacteria for nanobody production, elucidates Tino Pleiner, first author of the work now published in the Journal of Cell Biology.

Secondary nanobodies coupled to fluorescent dyes can replace respective secondary antibodies in microscopy. The image shows cancer cells stained with primary antibodies against lamin A/C (highlighted in green) and the cell proliferation marker Ki-67 (red) that were detected with specific secondary nanobodies. (Image: Tino Pleiner / Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry)

Nanobodies were first described in 1993 by a Belgian pioneering group of scientists. Since then, researchers try to take advantage of them for their work in the lab. However, replacing secondary antibodies with nanobodies turned out to be not trivial at all. One reason is the nanobodies size: They are ten times smaller than normal antibodies. Therefore, they offer much less space for coupling fluorescent molecules and thus appear far dimmer in the microscope than conventional antibodies.

Indeed, our first experiments with secondary nanobodies were rather disappointing and produced only dark and noisy images. However, we did not give up, and immunized the two alpacas again to stimulate their immune system to improve the initial nanobodies. Further evolution in the test tube, a special coupling strategy for the fluorescent dyes, and combining two or more compatible nanobodies did the rest, Gorlich tells about initial difficulties. By now, the nanobodies at least match conventional antibodies in terms of signal strength.

Improved resolution in light microscopy

Nanobodies have clear advantages over secondary antibodies. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, for example, can optically resolve cellular structures in the range of a few nanometers. However, such images get blurred when primary and secondary antibodies are used that each measure 15 nanometers already. Using nanobodies with a size of just 3 nanometers indeed improves resolution, Pleiner says.
In November and December this year, a mobile training team led by Slovakia conducted a training course in manual demining for Iraqi Security Forces. This was held in Iraq in the framework of NATO's training and capacity building activities in support of Iraqi security forces and institutions. It was developed and implemented in coordination with the NATO Core Team in Baghdad.

Twenty-one students from the Ministry of Defence attended the course. Upon completion seventeen of them were certified as instructors; four were awarded with certificates of basic demining."Most of the students were experienced explosive ordnance disposal personel and were really eager to learn new techniques," the Commander of the Slovak Training Team, 2ndLieutenant Lukas Cabovsky,said.

Following the liberation of Iraq from Daesh/ISIS, more clearance of explosives is required. Civilians are often the victims, as Daesh/ISIS are reported to have planted bombs and other explosive devices in heavily populated areas, as well as in schools and parks. To deal with this, NATO is helping to build a sustainable Iraqi demining capacity by conducting a series of training activities for future Iraqi instructors. "Our contribution is focused exclusively on carrying out training tasks and on providing advice and assistance in support of the Iraqi forces," 2nd Lieutenant Cabovsky highlighted.

Other training courses and seminars already conducted in the framework of NATO's training and capacity building activities in support of Iraqi security forces and institutions have focused on countering improvised explosive devices, maintenance of Soviet-era armoured vehicles, military medicine, civil-military cooperation, reform of security institutions, and civil emergency planning to deal with natural emergencies.
(Natural News) A former Planned Parenthood manager called the abortion organization demonic in a Wednesday interview, explaining why she left the abortion business.

(Article by Grace Carr republished from DailyCaller.com)

I knew what I was doing was wrong, Former Planned Parenthood Manager Ramona Trevino told TheDCNF in an exclusive interview. Trevino worked as the manager of a Planned Parenthood abortion-referral facility in Sherman, Texas, for three years before leaving in 2011.

I am involved and it took a few years after working at Planned Parenthood to recognize my part in abortion even through referrals. I was still involved in a demonic organization, she said. Theres no other word you can use for what takes place.

Trevino justified working at the Planned Parenthood because it was a non-abortion facility, realizing only after an extended period of time that she was still culpable for what goes on at other facilities. They are being groomed as future abortion patients because Planned Parenthood promotes a promiscuous lifestyle, she said. Were not discouraging them from having sex at a young age. We have monthly quotas to meet. Theyre just numbers, she said.

I was forced and challenged to look at my own beliefs and actions. I couldnt continue to be indifferent, she said. She also explained that she was shocked with the amount of medication fraud that went on, as well as the number of 12, 13, and 14-year-olds who came into the clinic for contraception or abortion referrals.

She added that she was amazed at the number of young women who came to the clinic with multiple sex partners and STDs. I started to connect the dots and realize that it all goes together, she said. (RELATED: Attorneys Use Former Abortion Doctors Brutal Abortion Stories To Plead Their Case).

Getting Planned Parenthood employees to stop their life-ending work is tough she explained, because there are two types of people who usually work at the abortion organization. There are those who feel very strongly about the work they do and are angry with you for coming over to the other side, and those who are struggling with what they do but dont know how to get out, Trevino said. Using reason and logic even if its not from a spiritual standpoint, is the best way to get though to Planned Parenthood employees she said.

Its really just about using a logical perspective and asking what this organization is about, she said. Really just look at the truth and ask if you want to be involved in illegal practices like baby body parts, she continued. (RELATED: AG Sessions: Planned Parenthood Could Be Charged With Crimes For Selling Fetal Body Parts).

Despite being a Christian, I knew I wasnt practicing my faith, Trevino said. Theres real love on the other side, she finished.

Read more at: DailyCaller.com
(Natural News) Poor Rosie ODonnell. The washed-up comedian and actress is so distraught over Republican control of Congress and Donald J. Trump having beaten the most corrupt presidential candidate in the history of the republic (that would be one Hillary Clinton) she has been reduced to behaving like a Mafia figure.

On the eve of the Senates vote to support the Trump-led tax reform proposal  the first major reform and reduction of taxes in more than 30 years  ODonnell took to Twitter to make this Mafioso-type offer: She offered to pay Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and/or Jeff Flake of Arizona $2 million each if they would just vote no on the bill.

Wow. Rosie is just like her Democrat friends and soulmates; they really hate it when Republicans try to let Americans keep more of their own money rather than have it confiscated at gunpoint by the IRS so Democrats can redistribute it to constituents.

As The Daily Caller notes, ODonnell was very plain and open, writing on Twitter, so how about this i promise to give 2 million dollars to senator susan collins and 2 million to senator jeff flake. Later in her tweet, she added, no s**t 2 million cash each.

so how about this

i promise to give

2 million dollars to senator susan collins

and 2 million to senator jeff flake if they vote NO

NO I WILL NOT KILL AMERICANS

FOR THE SUOER RICH DM me susan

DM me jeff no shit

2 million

cash

each  ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017

No Republicans took her up on the offer; all 51 voted for the measure. (Related: Rosie ODonnells contribution to treason.)

That said, she probably committed a felony when she made her offer.

So, a little statute called 18 U.S. Code  201  Bribery of public officials and witnesses states:

(a) (1) the term public official means Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after such official has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function, under or by authority of any such department, agency, or branch of Government, or a juror

Naturally, a senator is a member of Congress.

Theres more:

(b)Whoever

(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent

to influence any official act

Adds USLegal.com:

The General Federal Bribery Statute punishes the offense of bribery in the U.S[iii]. According to 18 USCS prec  201(b), whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official with intent to influence that persons official act will be fined for the offense of bribery.

Thats pretty much what ODonnell did with her stupid, ridiculous, ham-handed attempt to influence the votes of two sitting U.S. senators. I mean, if I were a prosecutor who was handed this case, the only negotiating I would be doing with ODonnells lawyers is over the amount of time in prison shed be spending.

Which, according to the statute, can be a fine of an amount not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, or imprisonment for not more than fifteen years, or both, according to USLegal.com.

So in other words, in her lunacy, ODonnell stepped in it big time when she very publicly offered to bribe two sitting U.S. senators. And as such, we are now calling on the Trump Justice Department to do its job and prosecute this very obvious attempt to unduly influence the constitutional processes of our government.

There should be no excuses. Frankly, Im surprised the president hasnt picked up the phone to Attorney General Jeff Sessions yet and requested this case be pursued, because if what ODonnell just did doesnt qualify as attempted bribery, then nothing does.

J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

U.S.Legal.com

DailyCaller.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A group of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Karolinska Institute in Sweden has revealed that our skin plays an important role when it comes to regulating blood pressure and heart rate.

Even though the discovery was made while observing mice, the researchers posit that the same also holds true for humans. The study shows that skin, our largest organ that covers two square meters in humans, aids in the regulation of blood pressure and heart rate, depending on changes in oxygen level of the environment.

High blood pressure is linked to cardiovascular disease like heart attack and stroke. In most cases, causes remain unknown. The condition is often associated with reduced blood flow through small blood vessels in the skin and other parts of the body, which is a symptom that might worsen should hypertension remain untreated.

Earlier studies determined that a tissue starved of oxygen  like when in areas of high altitude, or because of pollution, smoking, or obesity  blood flow to that tissue will increase. In these cases, the increase in blood flow is partly managed by the HIF (Hypoxia-inducible factors) family of proteins.

The team of scientists from Cambridge and Sweden looked into the role of the skin in the flow of blood through small vessels by exposing mice to low-oxygen conditions. The mice were genetically modified to make them unable to produce specific HIF proteins in the skin. (Related: 3 Miracle Ingredients You Need to Detox Your Skin.)

Professor Randall Johnson from the Department of Physiology, Development, and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge said, Nine of ten cases of high blood pressure appear to occur spontaneously, with no known cause.  He continued, Most research in this areas tends to look at the role played by organs such as the brain, heart, and kidneys, and so we know very little about what role other tissue and organs play. Our study was set up to understand the feedback loop between the skin and the cardiovascular system. By working with mice, we were able to manipulate key genes involved in this loop.

Based on the results of the study, the loss of the HIF proteins or other proteins used in response to oxygen starvation in the skin, displays a significant change when this process starts and its duration.

First author Dr. Andrew Cowburn, who is also from Cambridge, explained that the results imply that our skins response to low oxygen levels could be linked to how the heart pumps blood around the body. Cowburn hopes that their study can be used to learn more about how the bodys response to similar conditions can increase our risk of, and maybe even cause hypertension.

Professor Johnson concluded, Given that skin is the largest organ in our body, it perhaps shouldnt be too surprising that it plays a role in the regulation of such a fundamental mechanism as blood pressure. But this suggests to us that we may need to take a look at other organs and tissues in the body and see how they, too, are implicated.

Natural remedies for dry skin

Now that a link between skin, blood pressure, and heart rate has been established by this study, consider these natural remedies for dry skin:

Olive oil cleanser  You can use olive oil as a natural cleanser and moisturizer. Rub the oil into your skin and out a warm, damp cloth over your face until it cools. Wipe away the excess oil.

 You can use olive oil as a natural cleanser and moisturizer. Rub the oil into your skin and out a warm, damp cloth over your face until it cools. Wipe away the excess oil. Avocado mask  Make a homemade avocado mask to soothe dry skin. Puree half an avocado and mix it with a teaspoon of olive oil. For very dry skin, add a tablespoon of honey. Apply the mask to your face, and leave it on for 15 to 20 minutes, then wash it off.

You can read more articles about other natural remedies at Healing.news.

Sources include:

CAM.AC.uk

EverydayHealth.com
A wildfire that broke out Thursday in the Santa Ana River bottom near downtown Riverside blackened 50 acres and spawned multiple spot fires amid high winds before being partially contained.

The blaze was reported about 11:10 a.m. on the perimeter of a Boy Scout camp, in the area of Mission Inn Boulevard and Indian Hill Road.

According to the Riverside Fire Department, flames quickly spread into deep brush along the dry river bottom, propelled southward by 30 mph winds.

As of 4 p.m., the fire was 50 percent contained, and crews remained busy knocking down small spot fires ringing the main burn area.

Evacuation orders were issued for residents on the north side of Mission Inn, on the south side, around Mount Rubidoux and in places along Arfon Way, Glenwood Drive, Loring Drive, Mount Rubidoux Drive, Redwood Drive and several other side streets abutting Mount Rubidoux Park.

All evacuations were lifted as of about 6:30 p.m.

A temporary evacuation center was established at the Dale Senior Center, 3936 Chestnut St., next to White Park. Some residents had also displaced to Bonaminio Park on Tequesquite Avenue, where fire crews were staging.

Arson investigators were called to the point where the fire began, but there was still no word on what triggered it.

A property on Redwood Drive was reportedly damaged by flames, but the extent of the loss was not immediately known. The backyard of a home in the 4600 block of Ninth Street caught fire, but crews rapidly deployed and kept the flames at bay.

A woman residing in the 4000 block of Redwood Drive, just off of Glenwood, crawled onto the roof of her home in an apparent attempt to douse embers and fell. She was taken to Riverside Community Hospital for treatment of a possible broken leg, according to reports from the scene.

Embers hurled skyward by the intense Santa Ana winds lit on palm trees along Arfon, Glenwood, Mount Rubidoux, Mission Inn, Pine Street and Redwood, sparking isolated fires with which individual engine crews had to contend. Riverside police officers cordoned off streets to assist firefighters and ensure public safety.

The Mission Inn Avenue bridge connecting Jurupa Valley and Riverside was shut down.

Engine and truck companies from Riverside County, Cal Fire, Corona, the March Air Reserve Base and other agencies assisted with battling the wind-whipped fire. By 4 p.m., some personnel were being released.

Several Cal Fire water-dropping helicopters and air tankers made runs on the blaze, mostly on the north side of Mount Rubidoux, in the vicinity of Carlson Dog Park. The choppers were using nearby Lake Evans at Fairmount Park to take on water.

All aircraft were called off and headed back to their respective bases as nightfall approached.
A candlelight vigil in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza on Thursday will honor the lives of those who died while homeless this year, but advocates say there are likely many whose names will not make it on to the list.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director for the Coalition on Homelessness, one of the event's co-sponsors, said she understood that around 126 names are currently on the list of names pulled together by organizers from sources including the medical examiner's office and service providers.

However, usually many more names are added during the event by participants who call out the names of friends and loved ones lost during the year. The city does not currently have a single agency tracking such deaths.

Last year, Friedenbach said around 170 names were read aloud at the vigil.

"A lot of times, they're passing away without a bed and without that dignity that every human being should have at the end of their life, so we just like to take a moment at the end of the year, at the Winter Equinox, and honor people who have passed away destitute," Friedenbach said.

She said homeless people are three times as likely to die prematurely, and have a greatly reduced life expectancy, often dying of preventable causes.

The vigil, which is co-sponsored by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, Glide Memorial Church and the San Francisco Night Ministry, has been taking place annually in San Francisco since around 1990, and was for many

years led by the Rev. Glenda Hope of the now-disbanded San Francisco Network Ministries.

It is part of a national event, National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day, organized by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Thursday's event will start at 5:30 p.m. at Civic Center Plaza. Those attending are asked to bring their own candles.
While President Donald Trump celebrated the passing of his tax reform package, a deal that slashes tax rates for corporations and reorganizes the individual tax code, homeowners in the Bay Area were expressing concern over how it will impact them.

Supporters of the bill say it will create more jobs and put more money in the average earner's pocket. But many homeowners in California will lose valuable deductions. The deal puts a $10,000 cap on state and property tax deductions in 2018.

Bay area real estate agent Paula Pagano says homeowners count on property tax deductions.

"It's hurting us, especially in California, where prices are higher," she said. "So your talking 16,000 with bonds for property taxes; you can only deduct 10,000."

Pagano says the change will scare some buyers out of the market.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez says she is hearing from concerned residents and says homeowners should consider paying the second installment of their 2017 property tax bill before the end of the year to get the full deduction.

"Some people are starting to ask questions about what the impact will be," Chavez said. "If they are paying $10,000 or more in property taxes and can pay before the end of 2017, and they're going to itemize, this may be an opportunity to still get a deduction this year."

Chavez is urging homeowners to ask a professional for help navigating the new tax rules.


A freeze warning has been issued for seven Bay Area counties early Friday as bone-chilling temperatures grip the region, according to the National Weather Service.

The freeze warning will go into effect for all areas excluding San Francisco, the immediate coastline and Solano County starting at 1 a.m. before expiring at 7 a.m., according to the NWS.

While not under a freeze warning, coastal areas of San Mateo, Marin and Sonoma counties are under a frost advisory, according to the NWS.

Overnight lows can dip to anywhere from 22 to 32 degrees in some spots, the NWS predicts.

People across the Bay Area are encouraged to seek a warm place to stay, keep pets inside, protect crops and other vegetation, and wrap any unprotected or exposed pipes. Drivers should also keep an eye out for potentially icy conditions on roadways.

The freeze warning has homeless advocates concerned. On Thursday night, there was a big push to get people who are on the street out of the cold.

The cold snap has prompted the city of Berkeley to activate its emergency overnight shelter program. Recreation and senior centers are being used as shelters this week as the city works to get a more permanent winter shelter ready to open.

Those who live on the street say the weather at night is nearly unbearable. Homeless advocates say it can be deadly.

"People die from it. That happens," said Bob Whalen of the Berkeley Emergency Storm Shelter Program. "People are out there. A lot of older people get exposed to the weather."

The city of Oaklands new Tuff shed program is also getting people out of the elements just as winter weather kicks in. But the need for shelter still remains great.
Raiders cornerback Sean Smith will stand trial on charges felony assault and battery stemming from a July 4 incident in Pasadena involving his sister's ex-boyfriend.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge decided in a Tuesday preliminary hearing there was enough evidence to proceed to trial, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Smith will be arraigned on Jan. 3, a few days after the Raiders' regular-season finale against the Chargers. If convicted, he could face a maximum of seven years in prison.

Two witnesses identified Smith as a man who stomped Christopher Woods' head in the Old Town neighborhood of Pasadena.

According to the L.A. Times, Woods had a metal plate installed under his right eye and had surgery to repair five facial fractures. Woods also tore a knee ligament and testified to having blurry vision. He also said he will need more surgery.

Smith has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Woods has also reportedly filed a civil suit against Smith and his employer, the Oakland Raiders, seeking damages. The Raiders are accused of training Smith to "injure and disable" people.

Smith will have two years left on a four-year, $38 million contract signed during the 2016 offseason. He's scheduled to make $8.25 million base salary, though he has no guaranteed money left in the deal. The Raiders could release him without dead money against the salary cap.

Smith has 28 tackles, four passes defensed and a team-high two interceptions. He struggled to start the year, but has played far better in the second half.
Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park has now officially been renamed in honor of the late comedian, Robin Williams.

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department announced Thursday that the meadow located directly adjacent to Golden Gate Parks Sharon Building will now be known as the Robin Williams Meadow.

Through his comedy, Robin Williams brought so much light into this world, which is why it is only fitting that we are naming a beautiful outdoor meadow in his honor, said late Mayor Ed Lee in a September statement, when the proposal was initially made. Robin was one of San Franciscos cherished sons, whose selfless acts of philanthropy benefitted communities across our city.

[NATL] Remembering Robin Williams

Williams made many contributions to the local San Francisco community and always shared his support for the annual Comedy Day event, which was eventually relocated to Sharon Meadow over the years. The funny event brought together nearly a thousand of the worlds funniest comedians, and Williams played a major role in it.

Robin Williams was known for his humor and kindness and like Comedy Day, he was about making people laugh  no matter who they are, said General Manager of San Franciscos Recreation and Park Department, Phil Ginsburg.

The vote to rename the meadow is the latest honor for Williams who passed away in August 2014; last year the Waldo Tunnel on U.S. Highway 101 in Marin County was also renamed after the beloved comedian.

The 38th annual Comedy Day, a free event, is expected to take place on Sunday, September 17th in Robin Williams Meadow at Golden Gate Park.

We will forever remember him fondly and the Robin Williams Meadow will be a lasting testament to his legacy, said late Mayor Lee.

[NATL] Memorials for Robin Williams: The Nation Mourns
A U.S. Marine veteran who served at Camp Pendleton, and was later deported to Mexico 15 years ago, walked onto U.S. soil once again Thursday and immediately hugged his father.



Marco Chavez, 45, said he hopes his will be the first of many happy homecomings for other deported veterans.

"I think it's good to use me as an example so it could open the door for other veterans to come back," he said Thursday. "Hopefully it brings them all home."



Chavez learned this week that a judge vacated his removal proceedings after a pardon from California Governor Jerry Brown.

Chavez and other deported veterans have been receiving immigration assistance from fellow veteran Hector Barajas, director of the Deported Veteran Support House in Tijuana, Mexico.

We need to bring these men and women home, Barajas said.

Leading the charge on the U.S. side of the border is Nathan Fletcher, chair of the Honorably Discharged, Dishonorably Deported Coalition, and a Marine combat veteran.

It was Fletcher who worked for more than a year to help Bring Chavez back to the U.S. He helped convince Gov. Brown to pardon Chavez.

If youre willing to die for this country you shouldn't be deported from it, Fletcher said.

Chavez served 10 months in jail for animal cruelty, and it was this crime that cost him his chance at U.S. citizenship over a decade ago.

Chavez was brought to the U.S. as an infant, and while he had the opportunity to apply for citizenship, he never did.

This week Chavez learned a federal judge cleared the way for him to return to the U.S. to see his parents, children, and grandchildren.

His deportation had put a strain on his marriage, and his wife who had initially moved to Mexico to be with him eventually moved the family back.

I think that's what hurt most, he said, about missing his children. His sons are ages 17 to 21 and last visited him in Tijuana in 2013.

He leaves behind a job in Mexico and Barajas, who has also been pardoned but is still waiting for the federal courts to take action. But watching Chavez go home gives him hope.

We will also follow suit in the same way he's going home, Barajas said.

Chavez' parents, who live in Los Angeles, would visit regularly. Chavez plans to live with them while he waits for his residency card to be replaced. He then will move to Iowa and try to rebuild a relationship with his children.

He also hopes to someday become a U.S. citizen.
Restaurant and concessions workers at OHare International Airport announced Thursday that theyve walked off the job in the midst of a busy holiday travel season.

The workers warned holiday travelers last week that their trips could be affected by a possible strike after representatives from Unite Here Local 1 and HMSHost remained far apart in the unions ongoing contract negotiations, according to union spokesman Noah Carson-Nelson.

Despite the workers walking off the job and picketing outside airport terminals, the restaurants are fully staffed and operating smoothly, an HMSHost spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times. The company, which runs venues at the airport including Starbucks, Chilis, The Publican Tavern, Wolfgang Puck Express and Rick Bayless Tortas Frontera, said it plans to keep restaurants open throughout the holiday season.

The workers are asking for more affordable health insurance and higher wages. About 42 percent dont enroll in insurance plans offered by HMSHost because they cant afford it, according to the union. About 25 percent said that in the past year, a family member had not received doctors care, prescription medications, or other medical treatment because the family needed the money to buy food, clothing, or pay for housing.

My coworkers and I need a contract that protects our health, our jobs, and our families. We are going to keep up the pressure on HMSHost until we get it, said Boddrick Barnes, a cook at HMSHost and union negotiating committee member.

HMSHost had said last week it was hopeful an agreement would be reached soon after a productive negotiating session on Dec. 14.

Unite Here Local 1 continues to threaten temporary walkouts at HMSHosts restaurants at Chicago OHare, inflicting unnecessary stress on holiday travelers over issues best resolved at the bargaining table, a spokesman for HMSHost said Thursday in an emailed statement. It is unfortunate that Local 1 seems determined to inconvenience travelers despite our continued progress at the bargaining table.

More than 1,200 bartenders, baristas, cooks, servers and other workers represented by Unite Here Local 1 voted in favor of authorizing the possibility of a strike by 84 percent, Carson-Nelson said. The Dec. 7 vote authorized the unions negotiating committee to call a strike at any time.
An elderly woman was found dead and a 5-year-old girl is in critical condition in Northwest Indiana Wednesday night after fire officials responded to a home and discovered an oven was being used to heat the home, fire officials said.

The incident occurred at a home in the 700 block of King Street about 4:30 p.m. on Gary's west side.

High carbon monoxide readings were registered by responders when they arrived.

The woman and girl were taken to Methodist Northlake Campus. The adult was later pronounced dead.

The 5-year-old was to be airlifted to another hospital, a fire official said.

No other information was immediately available.
What to Know Scorching at 272,000 acres, the Thomas Fire has been dubbed as the second largest wildfire in modern state history.

The blaze was contained by 60 percent since Thursday.

Officials said gusty winds could cause the inferno to grow into the state's biggest fire ever.

All evacuation orders related to the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara County were lifted Thursday, more than two weeks after the wildfire started in Ventura County and grew into one of the state's largest blazes on record.

The announcement from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department came after many evacuated residents remained out of their homes for days, taking shelter from California's second-largest wildfire.

After a welcome lull in powerful winds that drove Southern California's massive wildfire, crews and homeowners braced for the return of potentially dangerous gusts that could revive the flames. Some residents were watching from afar at hotels and evacuation centers, while others are waiting in their homes and hoping for the best.

Katy and Bob Zappala have stayed in their home in Santa Barbara, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, despite a mandatory evacuation order that's been in place since Saturday.

"Our cars are packed, we have all our clothes and jewelry, so we're ready to leave at a moment's notice should we have to," Katy Zappala, 74, said Wednesday. "We're ready to leap in and leave, and we're just keeping a good eye on the sky."

The Zappalas and their cat, Madeline, haven't left home since the evacuation order was issued because authorities wouldn't allow them back in. They're starting to run out of food and are hoping that if they make it through the next wave of winds, the ordeal will be over.

"It's a critical day," Zappala said. "You're always nervous when the winds come up."

Some 18,000 homes and other buildings remain threatened in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The Thomas Fire, which began Dec. 4, is responsible for two deaths, has destroyed at least 750 homes, and has burned about 425 square miles (1,100 square kilometers).

The blaze scorched through 272,000 acres and was 60 percent contained. It is now the second-largest in California history. Officials said the new winds could cause it to grow into the state's biggest fire ever.

Firefighters used three days of calm conditions to bulldoze containment lines and set controlled fires to clear dry brush ahead of winds expected to whip up late Wednesday.

Forecasts called for winds of 30 mph with gusts of up to 60 mph by early evening.

That would force fire crews to fall back to safe zones rather than risk being trapped by the surging flames.

"When it's being pushed by 60-plus mph winds ... you're not getting in there and extinguishing the fire, you're just trying to get out of its way and clean up its aftermath," said Capt. David Zaniboni of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

Days and days of such fierce, often erratic gusts combined with extremely dry weather have pushed the blaze with virtually unprecedented speed, blackening more ground in weeks than other fires consumed in a month or more.

It would take an hour to drive from one end of the fire to the other by freeway, Zaniboni said.

"It's burned through downtown Ventura, it burned through the foothills of Montecito ... and it's also burning in the back wilderness up in the mountains," he said. "It's done a little bit of everything. It's massive."

"We're obviously not going to be able to put out every hotspot," Zaniboni said. "We worry about it blowing an ember, sparking a fire over the (containment) line and basically, doing it all over again."

Brian Bromberg, 57, and his fiancee, Wendy Frank, were staying at their home in Upper Ojai on Wednesday despite several brushes with death the first week of the fire.

Bromberg defended their 20-acre (8-hectare) property with buckets of water for hours as flames burned their neighbors' homes and embers began hitting theirs on Dec. 5. The couple could feel the heat from the flames as they fled the property with their four horses and later drove through a wall of fire as it jumped a major highway.

"We're basically waiting and seeing," Bromberg said of Wednesday's forecast. "I can't believe these winds keep coming back. We thought it was over."

Around his property, even though the flames went through more than two weeks ago, Bromberg said the ground was still smoking and smoldering.

"It's scary," he said. "It's like it never ends."

Those who remain evacuated are watching the blaze from afar, hoping their homes survive another possible onslaught.

"My husband has the feeling, 'Why aren't they letting us back in?'" said 82-year-old Curry Sawyer, whose Christmas tree is up still waiting for her grandkids to decorate it after she and her husband Ray were forced to flee from their Santa Barbara home two weeks ago.

"But they've got hot spots up there and if we get more Santa Ana winds, we're going to be back to square one," she said. "I'm not sure we're out of the woods."

Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
A Roman Catholic priest in Milwaukee has come out as gay, writing that he will no longer live in the shadows of secrecy and plans to be authentic to his gay self.

The Rev. Gregory Greiten disclosed his sexual orientation on Sunday to the St. Bernadette Parish and was greeted with a standing ovation from his parishioners, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. He also wrote a column that was published Monday in the National Catholic Reporter.

It's rare for a priest to come out. Greiten said he revealed his sexual orientation because he wants to be a role model for others. He said he's helping to break the silence of gay men in the clergy so he could reclaim his own voice.

"I will embrace the person that God created me to be," Greiten wrote. "In my priestly life and ministry, I, too, will help you, whether you are gay or straight, bisexual or transgendered, to be your authentic self  to be fully alive living in your image and likeness of God.

Greiten wrote that has decided to stand with the "few courageous priests who have taken the risk to come out of the shadows and have chosen to live in truth and authenticity."

The church's silent stance on gay priests perpetuates toxic shaming and systematic secrecy, Greiten wrote. The church needs healthy role models for priests who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation, he said.

Greiten met with Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki before coming out, according to an archdiocese spokeswoman.

"We support Father Greiten in his own personal journey and telling his story of coming to understand and live with his sexual orientation," Listecki said in a statement Monday. "As the Church teaches, those with same-sex attraction must be treated with understanding and compassion."
The maker of UGG boots said a promo code for 60 percent off an online order was intended only for internal use.

UGG posted a statement on its website explaining that the CAMPUSFREEFORALL code was released at an internal employee event and circulated to the public without authorization.

As a result, UGG said it cannot honor the deal, upsetting many customers.

A Stamford woman reached out to NBC Connecticut after her order was canceled.

Jackie placed two separate orders with ugg.com on Tuesday morning.

The first order totaled $335. After applying the code, it came to $134 before tax. Jackie saved even more on the second order, which came to $690 at full price. After the discount, her total was $276 plus tax.

A few hours after receiving emails confirming the orders, Jackie received two identical cancellation emails.

They read, Unfortunately, when reviewing your UGG order we were unable to fulfill it due to problems with the payment or billing information provided.

A few hours later, another email from UGG appeared in Jackies inbox, explaining what happened and offering 15 percent off her next order.

Jackie said shed like to see UGG honor the deal, even though it has no obligation to do so.

According to the terms and conditions on its website, UGG reserves the right to correct any pricing errors, "Even after an order has been placed. We may change or update information without prior notice at any time. Consequently, we apologize for any inconvenience that such errors may produce."

NBC Connecticut reached out to UGG to find out how many orders were placed using the unauthorized code, and if any of those orders were processed before the leak was discovered.
A New Britain couple has been arrested and charged with animal cruelty after someone brought their emaciated Shar-Pie mix with a severe skin condition to animal control, according to police.

Police learned about the dog on May 24.

They said they received a call just after 10 p.m. that day from someone who reported finding an emaciated tan and white Shar-Pei mix on Willow Street in New Britain and it needed a veterinarian, according to court paperwork.

At the request of police, the woman brought the dog to Connecticut Veterinary Center in West Hartford.

Police later determined that the woman who called them knew the dogs owners and she told them she didn't want to be involved when police asked if she took the dog from the owners because it needed care, according to court paperwork.

When the dog was taken to the vet, he was barely able to walk and each step looked uncomfortable, according to the police report. He was also so thin that his ribs and hips were protruding.

A veterinarian diagnosed the dog with a severe case of mange, a painful condition caused by mites that can be treated with medication.

In the event that he had not been brought to animal control and fed, the dogs organs would likely have begun to shut down from starvation within just a few days, the veterinarian told police.

On May 26, soon after the dog was brought to authorities, the dog pound in New Britain received a phone call from Emily Vazquez, of New Britain, who said she was a friend of the person who brought the dog in, fell in love with him and was interested in adopting him, according to police.

She then filled out an application.

In the hopes of identifying the dogs owner, police posted a photo of the dog on Facebook with information on where he was found. (WARNING: The photo is disturbing.)

A veterinarian then reached out to them with information from a client who reported knowing where the dog lived and the conditions he was kept in, according to the police report.

Police later determined that Emily Vazquez, now 21, and her 23-year-old husband, Emmanuel Vazquez, were the owners of the dog.

When police spoke with him, Emmanuel Vazquez told them he knew" they "were going to get in trouble when his wife filed the application to adopt the dog, according to police.

He went on to tell police that they had just gotten the dog and he was in bad shape when they got him, according to police.

However, he was evasive about who they got the dog from and said someone they knew would verify that theyd tried to get help for the dog.

Emily Vazquez then called police and admitted to lying to them, police said. She also said theyd had the dog for about four months and he had a skin condition when they got him.

However, someone who reported having seen photos of the dog from earlier contradicted that, according to police.

Police said it appears the couple had not taken the dog to the vet and instead tried to treat his ailments by giving him baths.

Then there was the issue of the dog's emaciated condition.

Emily Vazquez claimed the dog had stopped eating, but others told police the dog had a healthy appetite when given food and thought he was not being fed, according to police.

After being hospitalized for around 17 days, the dog was transformed and was active, playful and affectionate, according to police.

Charges were filed against the couple and they were arrested earlier this week.

They were both released on a promise to appear and are due in court on Jan. 2, according to online court records. It's not clear if either has an attorney.


Residents of the rural town of Scotland, Connecticut, are becoming lords and ladies in the United Kingdom country of the same name.

The Scottish land preservation company Highland Titles said Tuesday it's gifting all 1,694 residents 1 square foot of land on its nature reserve in Glencoe Wood, Scotland. The residents will get courtesy titles of Lord or Lady of Glencoe and instructions on how to visit their plots.

The company sells forest land ranging from 1 square foot to 1,000 square feet so they can't be developed.

Scotland First Selectman Dan Syme says the Connecticut town was settled by a Scotsman named Isaac Magoon in 1700 and celebrates that heritage by hosting an annual Highland Festival.

Highland Titles says residents have to call Town Hall to claim their free plots.
A Dallas-based locksmith company is responding to a customer's complaint that her car was damaged by an employee they sent and the company wouldn't do anything about it.

Supreme Locksmith was the subject of an NBC 5 Responds story earlier this week which details how Jordan Cornelson claimed her car door and window were damaged by a Supreme Locksmith worker.

Cornelson said the locksmith told her not to worry because her car was under warranty and the company would take care of it. Supreme Locksmith never called her back, and the locksmith blocked her number, she said.



"Now I just kind of feel helpless," she told NBC 5 Responds.



Our team started looking into the business and discovered it was operating under several different names, including Avenue Locksmith, 24/7 Mobile Locksmith and Supreme Locksmith.

NBC 5 Responds emailed and called, finally speaking to a manager who told us customers have to work directly with the locksmith to fix any problems, not the company.

We tracked down the registered owners name, Matan Abehasira, and tried calling him, but we never heard back. So, we stopped by the Avenue Locksmith office in Dallas, but were asked to leave.

After that visit, the company made major changes to their website, including a new disclaimer telling customers to call immediately if they have any trouble.

And a day after our story aired, the company sent us a statement, calling this a big misunderstanding.

An officer manager named Celeste Lopez told NBC 5 Responds the following:

"We at Avenue Locksmith do take care of our customers that we service, and the owner/manager were unaware that this happened with this specific customer since she went directly to the dispatching center. The company did not bring this to our attention, and had we known that this happened, we would've definitely taken care of this customer. Their manager did not inform us about what happened on location. The customer did not email or call the number or email that was listed on the invoice and went straight to dispatching company, and we were not aware of the situation."

"If they're saying I didn't call, that's just bologna," said Cornelson.

Avenue Locksmith said Cornelson only contacted the dispatch number instead of the number listed on the company's invoice. Cornelson said thats not true, she called both numbers, and tracked down her call log to prove it.

When we sent Avenue Locksmith her call log, their response was "no comment."

As for Cornelson's damaged car, a spokesman said, "Our company is required to have insurance to cover damages in such instances as this. We would like to reach out to the customer & would like to have an insurance adjuster go to her location to make sure the damage to her car door will get taken care of."

Cornelson said a local auto shop took care of the repairs free of charge.

We also asked about an investigation the Texas Department of Public Safety opened regarding the company's business practices.

An Avenue Locksmith spokesman said, "We are aware that the Texas Department of Public Safety is conducting a formal investigation, and we are working with them to get all proper rules and regulations in line and corrected. Since their visit with the owner of the company, we have then ordered new business cards, uniforms for each technician, proper presentation for each technician's vehicle, and invoices that have our phone number and company business license number on each of the items listed above."

An Avenue Locksmith spokesman added, They are in the process of changing many things in their company and that they apologize for any inconvenience.

We offered the company the chance to speak to us on camera, but they declined.
A triumphant President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul Wednesday as a "historic victory for the American people." The American people, however, will need some convincing.

As Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement  and the biggest tax changes in a generation  some Republicans warned that the party could face a painful political backlash against an overhaul that offers corporations and wealthy taxpayers the biggest benefits and triggers the loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

There was no hint of anxiety at the White House, though, as the president and congressional Republicans pushed any qualms aside and reveled in a much-needed win at the end of a year marked by GOP infighting and political stumbles.

"We are making America great again," Trump declared, personally thanking his "little team" of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticized.

"I don't know if we'll have bigger moments, but we hope to," said Trump.

The president was expected to sign the bill at a later date for technical reasons. In fact, the signing may be postponed until the start of the new calendar year in order to delay $120 billion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as Medicare and spare Republicans from having to explain them in an election year.

The tax package provides a deep cut in the corporate rate, from 35 percent to 21 percent. On the individual side, about 80 percent of American households will get tax cuts next year, while about 5 percent will pay more, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

People who make less than $25,000 will see an average tax cut of $60; those who earn between $49,000 and $86,000 will get about $900, and those in the top 1 percent of income  earning more than $733,000  will receive around $51,000 in tax savings, the policy center said.

The cuts will come at a price: The Congressional Budget Office predicts the legislation will add $1.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Some of the president's strongest allies conceded that voters may not immediately warm to the new law.

Andy Surabian, a senior aide for a pro-Trump super PAC, likened the president's position to that of Ronald Reagan, who struggled through low approval ratings early in his presidential term after Congress passed a tax cut that led to huge Republican losses in the 1982 midterm elections. Reagan went on to a sweeping re-election in 1984 after the economy improved.

Said Surabian: "Even if we don't start seeing positive effects in 2018, the important thing here is President Trump sets himself up to win re-election in 2020."

GOP strategists and candidates alike called on Trump to launch an immediate public relations tour to sell the plan to help avert an anti-Republican tsunami in 2018.

"People don't understand it," said Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, though he still called passage "a massive win" for Trump and the GOP.

Only about 1 in 3 voters have supported the legislation in recent days, according to several polls. About half of Americans believe the plan will hurt their personal finances. And 2 in 3 voters say the wealthy will get the most benefits, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last week

The White House said Wednesday that Trump will actively promote the bill. Aides argued that media coverage has not accurately portrayed the benefits and that people will come around as they feel the payoff.

Trump himself complained in a tweet that "defeated Dems" and the media were out to "demean" the tax package but "the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon."

Democrats, who unanimously opposed the tax plan in Congress, were furious about the new policy yet upbeat about the potential political fallout in next year's elections. They need to flip 24 House seats and just two Senate seats to take control of each chamber.

Asked if the tax bill will help Republicans hold the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leaned into a microphone and said, "Let. Them. Think. That."

The bill goes far beyond taxes.

While it does not repeal the law known as "Obamacare," the legislation finalized by the House on Wednesday attacks a central tenet of the health care system by eliminating the requirement that all Americans have health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office says elimination of the "individual mandate" will boost health care costs by about 10 percent for those with coverage and leave 13 million additional Americans without health insurance in 10 years.

Millions of people will still remain covered under the law's Medicaid expansion and health care exchanges, but Trump cast the package as a shadow repeal.

"We have essentially repealed Obamacare," the president declared.

On taxes, the first modest effects will be felt in February paychecks.

People living in high-tax states like New York and California may ultimately pay more. Among those who benefit, the wealthy will make out far better than the working-class voters who fueled Trump's victory last year.

Trump said Wednesday the bill will spur economic growth as corporations, flush with cash, increase wages and hire more workers. Democrats questioned, even mocked that prediction.

Reflecting the political risks, some of the nation's most vulnerable House Republicans voted against the bill.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., one of 12 GOP House members to vote no, said the tax plan would hurt many people in high-tax states. The bill imposes a $10,000 cap on taxpayers who deduct their state, local and property taxes. Currently, there is no limit on how much in state and local taxes you can deduct.

All but one of the GOP no votes came from like-minded Republicans facing re-election in 11 months in moderate districts across New Jersey, New York and California.

The road to a Democratic House majority, if there is one, runs through these districts.

All the salesmanship in the world won't change the reality that the tax overhaul overwhelmingly favors the rich, Democratic critics said.

"People think it's unfair. They want tax reform, they don't want tax cuts for the wealthy," said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia. "And I think people will realize they've been sold a pig in a poke."
The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to denounce President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, largely ignoring Trump's threats to cut off aid to any country that went against him.

The nonbinding resolution declaring U.S. action on Jerusalem "null and void" was approved 128-9  a victory for the Palestinians, but not as big as they predicted. Amid Washington's threats, 35 of the 193 U.N. member nations abstained and 21 were absent.

The resolution, sponsored by Yemen and Turkey, reaffirmed what has been the United Nations' stand on the divided holy city since 1967: that Jerusalem's final status must be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterward that he completely rejects the "preposterous" resolution. He thanked Trump for his "stalwart defense of Israel" and said Jerusalem "always was, always will be" the capital of the Jewish state.

The United States and Israel had waged an intensive lobbying campaign against the measure, with U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley sending letters to over 180 countries warning that Washington would be taking names of those who voted against the U.S. Trump went further, threatening a funding cutoff: "Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."

But in the end, major U.S. aid recipients including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa supported the resolution. Egypt received roughly $1.4 billion in U.S. aid this year, and Jordan about $1.3 billion.

The nine countries voting "no" were the U.S., Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo. Among the abstentions were Australia, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Mexico.

The absent countries included Kenya, which was the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid last year, Georgia and Ukraine, all of which have close U.S. ties.

The U.S. is scheduled to dispense $25.8 billion in foreign aid for 2018. Whether Trump follows through with his threat against those who voted "yes" remains to be seen.

After the vote, Haley tweeted a photo naming the 65 nations that voted no, abstained or were absent, and said: "We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN."

But within hours, the Trump administration appeared to be backing away from its funding threats. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said cuts to countries that opposed the U.S. are not a foregone conclusion.

"The president's foreign policy team has been empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations," Nauert said. "However, no decisions have been made."

Trump's pressure tactics had raised the stakes at Thursday's emergency meeting and triggered accusations from the Muslim world of U.S. bullying and blackmail.

"It is unethical to think that the votes and dignity of member states are for sale," said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. "We will not be intimidated! You can be strong but this does not make you right!"

Arab, Islamic and non-aligned nations urged a "yes" vote on the resolution.

Yemeni Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany warned that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem undermines any chance for peace in the Mideast and "serves to fan the fires of violence and extremism."

He called Trump's action "a blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nations, and all Muslims and Christians of the world," and "a dangerous violation and breach of international law."

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, who flew to New York for the meeting, called the U.S. action "an aggression on the status of Jerusalem" and said, "Those who want peace must vote for peace today."

On Wednesday, Trump complained that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by countries that take billions of dollars and then vote against the U.S.

Haley echoed his words in her speech to the packed assembly chamber, threatening not only member states with funding cuts, but the United Nations itself.

Haley said the vote will make no difference in U.S. plans to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but it "will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N., and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N."

"And this vote will be remembered," she warned.

The Palestinians and their supporters sought the General Assembly vote after the U.S. on Monday vetoed a resolution supported by the 14 other U.N. Security Council members that would have required Trump to rescind his declaration on Jerusalem.

The resolution adopted by the assembly has language similar to the defeated measure.

It "affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded."
Video obtained by NBC 6 shows what residents along Biscayne Bay say is happening on an island not far from downtown Miami. The images show the huge mess left behind from parties the residents claim are aided by illegal jet ski operators.

The residents exclusively told us they fear the situation with the noise, crowds, and danger to those renting from what they say are illegal operators will get worse between now and the parties on New Years Eve and New Years Day.

Every time you have a holiday weekend, the crowd multiplies," Biscayne Bay resident Eric Cormouls-Houles said. "We had called the police. It seems like it takes them a very long time to get to the island to try and sort things out."

The residents in a condo building at 22nd Street and Biscayne Bay said their doorstep has turned into a location where jet ski operators who dont have the legal clearance to do so are renting jet skis to partygoers who head over to Pace Picnic Park.

Dominique Bailleu, who lives in the high rise condo here, told us:

What happens here on the street it's pretty simple. Its like a taxi station to go to the island. So people are coming in with two jet skis  one driver  one empty jet ski. They load up people who are paying their fee to go up on the island. No it's not a legitimate business activity.

The island is located between the MacArthur Causeway and the Julia Tuttle Causeway to the north. Its less than a mile from the shore. Several months ago, we showed you how police were cracking down on those renting jet skis without the proper credentials. Tragically, two tourists were killed including 32-year-old Sabrina Daniels. Her mother told us those renting the jet skis broke the rules.

Angela Hester spoke to us in August and stated: My daughter would be alive today if the procedures were followed properly.

The City of Miami told illegal operators to knock it off. A letter went out stating: if you are currently operating without permission and have not yet ceased operations ... you are instructed to immediately cease.

But the residents tell us that hasnt happened.

We have seen an increase in disruption  noise, Cormouls-Houles said.

And now theres another nuisance for those living here.

Dominique says drones are flying from the island over to their building.

I opened the blinds and there is a drone right basically three feet from the window inside the space of the balcony, he said.

We reached out to Miami Dade Police, police in the City of Miami, and Miami City Hall.

The city sent us a statement saying: Pace Picnic Island is within the jurisdictional boundaries of the City of Miami. However, weekly custodial maintenance is handled by a county vendor."

"The Miami Police Departments Marine Patrol has scheduled enforcement there this weekend and will continue those operations beyond the holidays. The Miami PD will be coordinating with other Marine Law Enforcement agencies from neighboring jurisdictions to address enforcement issues in the area," police said.
The driver of an SUV that rammed into a crowd in central Melbourne on Thursday, injuring 19 people, is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent with a history of drug use and mental illness but no known links to terrorism, police said.

Police said the 32-year-old driver, who was not identified, was arrested and had been known to police for minor assault and traffic offenses. The motive for the attack was not immediately known.

"We don't at this time have any evidence or any intelligence to indicate there's a connection with terrorism," said Victoria state police acting commissioner Shane Patton.

The streets outside the city's iconic Flinders Street railway station were crowded with Christmas shoppers Thursday afternoon when a white Suzuki SUV ran a red light and sped up to slam into pedestrians crossing the road before crashing into a traffic barrier.

While police had earlier said 14 people had been injured, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed that 19 people had been taken to hospitals, matching early media reports. Four were listed in critical condition and were believed to include a preschool-aged child, Australian media reported.

Andrews described the incident as "an act of evil and an act of cowardice, perpetrated against innocent bystanders."

Witnesses described a horrific scene.

"I was crossing Flinders Street on the way to the train station. I heard an engine rev behind me and heard a thump," one man identified only as David said on ABC TV. He said he turned around saw "people literally getting thrown into the air as it hit them."

Bystanders rushed to drag the driver out of the vehicle before police arrived to arrest the man. Early reports said there were two men in the car, but Patton confirmed the suspect was driving alone.

Confusion had arisen when a second man was seen being apprehended alongside the driver. Patton said he was a 24-year-old man seen filming the incident on his mobile phone and found carrying a bag with three knives.

Patton said that man was taken into custody to determine whether he was connected.

"At this stage, we don't believe that to be the case," he said.

Patton said the investigation would involve the force's counterterrorism unit to ensure "that there isn't that connection, and that there is no ongoing threat" but that the attack was being treated as a singular incident.

He said police were working with Australian intelligence agency ASIO and Australian Federal Police and that there was no intelligence to suggest the man was a person of interest to those agencies.

"We understand he's on a mental health plan and receiving treatment for a mental illness," Patton said.

While police numbers would be increased around Melbourne in the coming days, Patton said, there was no increased threat surrounding the city over the busy holiday period.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a tweet calling the incident "shocking" and said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and those treating them.

It is the second time this year that Melbourne, regularly ranked one of the world's most livable cities, has been traumatized by a car attack.

In January, six people were killed and more than 30 were injured when a car was driven up a footpath in Bourke Street, near Thursday's incident. Police arrested the driver, who was known to police for a history of illicit drug use, family violence and mental health problems. Police said the case was not terrorism-related.

There have been a number of car attacks in other parts of the world in recent years, many of them linked to terrorism.

In October, a man drove a truck down a New York City bicycle path, killing eight people. The driver is accused of providing material support to the Islamic State group among other charges, including murder.

In an August attack, 13 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded when a vehicle rammed into pedestrians on a walking street in Barcelona. London has seen three such attacks this year, two linked to Islamic extremists and another seen as a reprisal attack outside a mosque, killing 13 people altogether.

A vehicle attack on a shopping street in Stockholm in April killed five people, while an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last December killed 12.

The deadliest such attack in recent years took place in Nice, France, in July 2016 when a man drove a refrigerated truck weighing about 20 tons into a crowd, killing 86 people.
What to Know Saint Vincent, a 10- to 12-year-old shepherd mix, was found with its mouth taped shut and inside a garbage in Brooklyn

The dog showed signs of long-term neglect, including a urine scald on his stomach

New York Bully Crew will take care of Saint Vincent and is planning on putting him up for adoption once he is healthy enough

Animal advocates have saved the life of a dog that had been dumped in a trash bag near a Brooklyn highway with its mouth taped shut.

The Veterinary Emergency & Referral Group in Brooklyn said in a statement Tuesday that authorities are now looking for the person who tossed Saint Vincent, a 10- to 12-year-old shepherd mix, near Jackie Robinson Parkway and Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York Tuesday night.

According to the animal hospital also known as VERG, a good Samaritan passing by saw a large black bag moving on the side of the roadway and heard what later turned out to be the labored breaths of Saint Vincent and called the NYPD.

When officers arrived, they cut open the bag and found the poor pooch inside the bag. They then called the New York Bully Crew -- a Long Island-based rescue with a lengthy record of saving and rehabilitating neglected, abused and dumped dogs -- for help, and volunteers and police brought the senior pup to to VERG-South in Marine Park for emergency treatment.

VERG veterinarians said when Saint Vincent got there, veterinarians began treating him with antibiotics, pain medication and IV fluids. He also showed signs of long-term neglect, including a urine scald on his stomach.

They quickly discovered he couldnt move his hind legs, likely from a neurological or spinal condition, and was transferred to another VERG branch in Gowanus for an MRI and further treatment. He also has hip dysplasia, according to Dr. Brett Levitzke, VERGs medical director.

His prognosis is currently guarded, but we are hopeful that he will be able to continue with treatment and recover, he said.

But on Wednesday night, the fluffy dog already seemed to make an improvement, eating and drinking water at the animal hospital.

The animal hospital said New York Bully Crew will continue to take care of Saint Vincent and is planning on putting him up for adoption once he is medically able to be put in a new home. The shelter is accepting donations for his care.

The rescue is also taking donations for a reward for information leading to an arrest in the case; already, the purse has topped $4,500.

"Because he can't walk his owners threw him away like a piece of trash," said Carla Moran with the New York Bully Crew. "That's the most disguting part of it."

She added, "the same person that can do this to an animal can do this to a child."

Anyone with information on Saint Vincents former owners or the person who may have dumped him is asked to call the NYPDs Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.
What to Know New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina will announce her departure from the Department of Education on Thursday, sources say

She led NYC schools for four years and implemented many of Mayor de Blasio's education policies, including universal pre-kindergarten

Farina was a deputy schools chancellor, principal and teacher in the city school system before becoming its top educator

The head of the nation's largest school district is stepping down, city government sources tell News 4 New York.

New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina plans to announce her departure from the city Department of Education after four years on the job on Thursday, according to the sources.

Farina, 74, will leave the post after four years overseeing the school system that educates more than 1 million students a year and implementing several of Mayor de Blasio's educational policies and campaign promises, including universal pre-K for city kids.

Her departure is not a surprise to City Hall: Farina had planned on retiring to Florida in 2013 but was coaxed into taking on the role by the then-newly elected mayor. City government sources said the mayor's office is already conducting a nationwide search for Farina's replacement.

Farina had previously served as deputy chancellor of city schools under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She was once also a teacher at P.S. 29 in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill and a principal at the high-achieving P.S. 6 on the Upper East Side.

She had worked with de Blasio as early as 2001, when the mayor was a member of Brooklyn's District 15 school board. She also served as an informal policy adviser during his first mayoral run in 2013.
A state police dog in Connecticut has disappeared, hours after he helped search for a missing man in the woods, authorities say.

The K9 bloodhound named Texas had gone into the area of Wooster Mountain with Connecticut state troopers Wednesday evening, according to police. Another police dog found the man, who left the woods with police.

During the search, Texas' handler lost his footing on steep terrain and let go of the 15-foot leash. Texas continued climbing up the slope, and when the trooper reached the top of the hill, Texas wasn't in sight.

Texas is a non-aggressive brown bloodhound, according to state police. He was wearing a green tracking vest.

State police, along with Danbury police and fire departments, are still searching for him. Anyone with information is asked to contact Troop A at 203-267-2200.
What to Know Firefighter Tim Zyla is looking for a kidney donor as he battles polycystic kidney disease, a genetic and degenerative disease

His wife is a perfect match for him but cannot donate her organs after a freak accident at the gym

His son Brandon also has his condition; Zyla wants to make sure one of his siblings can donate a kidney if his son needs it

For years, Tim Zyla has rushed to the help of perfect strangers, even putting his life at risk to help those he didnt know.

And now, the former Fairfield, New Jersey, fire chief is holding out hope for his own as-of-yet unknown savior.

Thats because Zyla is battling a genetic and degenerative kidney condition and has less than 18 percent function of the vital organ -- and its getting worse by the day. And after a false start on a transplant from his wife, who is a perfect match to him but is now no longer healthy enough to donate an organ, hes hoping that a good Samaritan can come through with a life-saving donation.

Its pretty urgent, he said. The clock is ticking, and its going pretty fast.

Zyla, who is currently a firefighter with the West Caldwell Fire Department, suffers from polycystic kidney disease, a disorder where clusters of cysts develop on the kidneys and causing them to enlarge. According to the National Kidney Foundation, the cysts damage the kidneys as they continue to grow and slowly replace healthy tissue. That can reduce kidney function and lead to kidney failure.

Luckily, Zylas wife, Ann Marie, is a perfect match for blood and tissue type and they immediately began to plan for a transplant.

It was actually overwhelming when I got that phone call, said Anne Marie Zyla.

Tim Zyla laughed, I guess I married Mrs. Right.

But then, they had a heartbreaking setback. Anne Marie Zyla had a freak accident at the gym and tore two arteries in her neck. Now shes a risk of stroke and cant donate her kidney for now.

It was like a punch in the gut, she said. Were almost there. Were jumping through hoop after hoop.

The firefighters kids wanted to come to their dads rescue, but Zyla wont ask them for a transplant. Thats because one of his three children, Brandon, has the same condition and may one day need the kidney from one of his siblings, Melissa and Ryan.

Its upsetting because, you know, its our father, Brandon Zyla said. Were just hoping that everything will be fine at the end of the day.

Tim Zyla said the current wait for a kidney is five to seven years, but he is hoping someone will help him sooner than that. Doctors said he doesnt need a kidney immediately, and he could get dialysis if his condition deteriorates further. But the family said they hope it doesnt come to that.

The firefighter said he hopes that he can make long enough to see his kids grow up.

Id like to walk them down the aisle, he said.

If you are interested in seeing if you are a match for Tim Zyla, call St. Barnabas Hospital Living Donor Institute at 973-322-5346.
A Philippine inter-island ferry with more than 250 passengers and crew, including Christmas holiday travelers, sank Thursday after being battered by fierce winds and big waves off the country's northeast, leaving at least four people dead and at least seven others missing, officials said.

About 240 were pulled alive, some with injuries, from the rough sea by navy and coast guard personnel and a flotilla of fishing boats after the M/V Mercraft 3 sank in the Polillo Strait between Quezon province's Infanta town and the ferry's destination, Polillo island, officials said.

A survivor, Donel Jade Mendiola, told DZMM radio that bad weather briefly delayed the ferry's departure, but the weather improved and the vessel then left from Quezon's Real town. Strong winds and large waves started to lash it about two hours into the trip, he said.

"The vessel came to a halt and started taking in water in the front side. The passengers dashed to one side and the ferry started to sink," Mendiola said. He said the passengers were instructed to don life vests.

Coast guard boats, navy vessels and fishing boats rescued 240 people, including many who drifted in the rough sea, coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said, adding that the 206-ton ferry could carry 286 people and apparently wasn't overcrowded.

Among the survivors taken to a Quezon hospital was a 61-year-old Australian identified by authorities as Roland Kempt, who lives in the Philippines, the coast guard said in a statement.

The dead consisted of two women and two men, Quezon officials said.

Earlier this week, a tropical storm left more than 50 people dead and 31 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines before weakening and blowing into the South China Sea. The storm drenched Quezon province on the southern tip of northern Luzon island, but there were no storm warnings when Mercraft 3 sailed out, officials said.

Rescue efforts were temporarily stopped after nightfall due to bad weather, coast guard officials said, adding that a coast guard helicopter that tried to fly to the area earlier in the day was hampered by strong winds.

Many of those rescued were taken to a government emergency hall in Dinahican village in Infanta, where Quezon officials brought clothes, food, water and medicine, Juanito Diaz, who heads Quezon's disaster-response agency, said by telephone.

Frequent storms, badly maintained vessels and weak enforcement of safety regulations have been blamed for past accidents at sea in the Philippines, including on Dec. 20, 1987, when the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster.

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez contributed to this report.
An 8-year-old died after a driver T-boned a car in Philadelphias Crescentville neighborhood Wednesday then sped off.

The hit-and-run driver made a left from the 5000 block of Whitaker Avenue onto Jericho Road before striking the other car round 1:35 p.m., Philadelphia police said.

Witnesses watched as responding paramedics tried to free an 8-year-old passenger in the car that was struck. Neighbors tried to comfort the child as he lost consciousness.

"I ran into the car and I saw it was a little boy there and I was walking, telling him, I didn't touch him or anything. I was telling him, 'Calm down. You're going to be okay,'" said Jeannette Agosto, one of the witnesses.



The child was rushed to St. Christophers Hospital for Children where the child died a short time later. A driver who was in the car with the child was taken to Temple University hospital and is in stable condition.



The striking driver led officers on a pursuit that ended about one mile away in the parking lot of the Home Depot along Roosevelt Boulevard, police said.

The driver was taken to Temple University Hospital with chest pains. Police said the man claimed he was diabetic. It's not clear if the driver had a medical emergency when the crash happened.


There are more than 115,000 servicemembers in San Diego who will receive a pay raise in 2018.

Military pay will increase by 2.4 percent, and eligible service members will receive a .07 percent bump in their Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH.

It is the biggest bump since 2010.

But for newly enlisted service members, who receive far less pay than officers or senior enlisted members, paying bills may still be a struggle.

Even without kids its hard, said Haley Dice, a military spouse. Im working two jobs just to cover everything.

In 2017, Navy enlisted personnel at the entry level of E-1 make a little more than $1,500 a month, while those at the rank of E-5 top out at just over $2,600 a month.

Justin Makaleb, an E-4, lives in military housing with his wife. The housing costs $2,500 a month, but he only receives $2,409 a month for housing allowance.

Even when youre not in military housing its tough trying to find a decent apartment and support a family, he said.

Tim Ney is Executive Director of the Armed Services YMCA. He said with the Navy's plans to nearly double the number of ships they have in San Diego, over the next five years the housing shortage is only going to get tougher for military families.

His agency distributes food to 210 military families a month to help, since military families may end up in crisis when an emergency comes up.

The struggle of those unexpected things that happen to all of us, it could be all of a sudden they need new brakes or tires for the car," said Ney. "Any family emergencies.

In the end, however, it is the members of the military who have served a little longer and lived through the tough times where the raises and increases really pay off.
It's the cutting edge of beauty -- and growing in popularity throughout the DMV -- so the News4 I-Team went undercover to see just how safe microblading is in our area.

Our cameras found plenty of artists and salons operating without the required license, and not much the state can do about it.

"Im a mother of five I dont have time to get up in the morning with the eye pencil and fill in," Christina Hernandez told the News4 I-Team.

And her face is her business.

Thousands watch her makeup tutorials on Facebook. So she likes to try out products and services and share the outcome with her fans.

NBCWashington

"I wanted to get my eyebrows microbladed," she said. "Its all the rage, its the fad."

Microblading is a form of permanent cosmetic tattooing. The artist uses a tool with tiny needles to push pigment into the skin in little lines to look like hair.

The final outcome is supposed to be fuller, more natural looking brows that can last for years.

"To me it was as simple as a few strokes and I would be done," Christina said.

But she says that's not what happened when she walked into Veera Spa in Fairfax County in September.

"[It was] extremely painful. I could feel the cuts were really deep," recalls Christina. "I expected some swelling and discomfort, but I looked like someone took a pen to my face and just drew lines wherever they felt like it."

Christina filed a complaint with Virginia's Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR), the board that oversees permanent cosmetic tattooing licenses, and was surprised to find there was already an open investigation into Veera Spa.

"I didnt think, Let me research her to the depths," said Christina. "Theres always a disgruntled person. I didnt put great weight on researching reviews for this place."

If she had, she might have seen a negative review written by Ashlea Hardin.

Two days after Ashleas microblading procedure, her skin was inflamed and swollen, so she went to a doctor, she said.

"He said that it was an infection where the area wasnt properly cleaned," recalled Ashlea, adding that her brows are not the color or shape she wanted.

"Virginia is very much a buyer-beware state," said DPOR Deputy Director Mary Broz Vaughan.

Virginia licenses salons for permanent cosmetic tattooing; currently there are 88 of them statewide. The people doing the procedure also have to be licensed individually. But Vaughan admits that might not mean what you'd think.

"It means you're minimally competent," said Vaughan. "So consumers have some assurance that they're dealing with professionals who are not going to hurt them -- not necessarily that they're dealing with the cream of the crop."

Vaughan said state investigators only respond to complaints. They do not drive around checking for licenses or looking for violations. So the I-Team sent a producer undercover, and she quickly found both.

NBCWashington

Along Maple Avenue in Vienna, our hidden cameras caught several salons offering microblading services, but state records show none had a permanent cosmetic tattooing license that allows that.

Plus, the state requires microblading be done in a separate, sterile room, not out in the open. At least one salon offered to do the procedure right next to other customers who were receiving other services.

Later, when reached by phone, a few representatives of the unlicensed salons told the I-Team they thought their cosmetology licenses allowed microblading. The state said it does not.

But the I-Team found state investigators have no way to shut those facilities down, because Virginia only has jurisdiction over licensed salons.

"We can only go into licensed facilities unannounced under the law," said Vaughan.

Veera Spa was a licensed facility and its owner La-Or Wood, who goes by the nickname Lynn, also had a license -- at least she did when our undercover producer paid her a visit.

Lynn Wood first explained on camera how microblading works, then told the producer, "You'll like it, most people love it!"

But Paola Soto doesn't think so. She's a state-licensed permanent cosmetic tattooing instructor who told the I-Team at least five women, including Christina, came to her asking to correct their brows after visits to Veera Spa.

"It was like, Wow, I can't believe that this person is still working," recalled Soto.

In fact, when she first saw Christina's brows, Soto asked her if she'd been to Veera Spa.

"It's giving us a bad name," said Soto. "You can destroy a person's face if you don't have the skill."

Wood has now voluntarily surrendered her permanent cosmetic tattooing license and closed Veera Spa. So the I-Team tracked her down and tried to ask about the state's ongoing investigation.

"Oh she's not home," said the woman who answered the door at Woods home, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in the undercover video. When pressed, she continued to deny that she was Wood. The car parked in the driveway of her Washington, D.C. home was the same one parked in front of the Vienna salon the day our producer visited.

Vaughan said the states investigation against Veera Spa will continue, even though it's now closed, so if there are negative findings that would keep the spa from reopening down the road.

Wood just renewed her aesthetician license through 2019, allowing her to offer facials and skin care services.

"I went in feeling beautiful and I left feeling like a clown," said Christina.

Despite her embarrassment, Christina wants others to learn from her experience, though it's not quite the lesson she planned to give her fans.

"If its helpful to people, Im all for it," she said. "But would I do it again? Not without checking a license not without reading all the reviews."

Look up licenses for microblading and other cosmetic services here:

Virginia License Look Up



Maryland License Look Up (cosmetics only) NOTE: In Maryland, microblading and other forms of permanent, semi-permanent or long-lasting makeup are all considered to be cosmetic tattooing. Cosmetic tattooing is prohibited in any full-service or limited-practice salon or in regard to any salon-sponsored services. The procedure may only be performed in a tattoo parlor. The state does not license those, but some local jurisdictions do.

Washington, D.C., License Look Up NOTE: Washington, D.C., licenses individuals as body artists, with a particular designation to perform micropigmentation. Only four people have that special designation. The District does not issue separate licenses for salons but does license tattoo parlors.

Reported by Jodie Fleischer, produced by Tolleah Price and Rick Yarborough, and shot and edited by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper.


Control of the country's oldest legislative body could come down to which old film canister an election official pulls out of a glass bowl  or maybe an old fashioned tri-corner hat or a silver cup.

A three-judge panel in Virginia certified the 94th District in Newport News as tied Wednesday, one day after a dramatic recount appeared to give Democrat Shelly Simonds a victory over Republican Del. David Yancey by a single vote. Democrats decried the decision and indicated they may file a legal challenge.

At stake could be control of the Virginia House.

Here are some key questions and answers on the election:

HOW IS A WINNER PICKED IN A TIE VOTE?

Virginia law says in a tied race, the state elections board publicly determines the winner "by lot." The law doesn't specify the actual method or when that takes place.

Virginia Board of Elections Chairman James Alcorn said barring some kind of legal challenge, the board will likely try to meet as soon as possible. He said the board would probably pick the winner the same way it picks ballot order. He said each candidate's name is placed into a separate film canister. The canisters are placed into a glass bowl and shaken up. The canister containing the winner's name is pulled out at random by a board member.

If the board feels festive, it may use an old-fashioned tri-corner hat to put names in, which Alcorn said he thinks has been used to settle local election ties in the past.

HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?

In Virginia, where the state House has been around since the 1619 founding of the House of Burgesses at Jamestown, something similar has happened at least once. In 1971, Republican candidate William H. Moss Sr. appeared to have lost the election for a Fairfax seat. He demanded a recount, which ended in a tie, and then won when his name was drawn at random, according to news reports from the time.

"The bowl used, in somewhat typical Virginian style, is a silver loving cup," reported The Washington Post.

Outside Virginia, various methods of settling ties have been used.

Two years ago in Mississippi, two House candidates broke a tie by reaching into a red canvas bag and pulling out a silver-plated business card boxes engraved with the state's name. The winner drew the box with a longer straw in it.

In Alaska in 2006, a coin flip broke the tie in a Democratic primary for a state House seat. The incumbent called "heads" and lost.

WHAT ARE THE STAKES?

At stake in the race could be control of the state House.

If Yancey wins, Republicans would have a 51-49 majority as long as no other seats switched. Democrats could force a 50-50 power-sharing agreement if Simonds wins.

However, two other state House races have not been finalized and could also affect the House's partisan balance. One of those contests could be decided by a federal judge.

Powered by unhappiness with GOP President Donald Trump, Virginia Democrats rode a tidal wave in November, erasing Republicans' 66-34 advantage. Democrats nationwide hope it's a preview of the 2018 elections.

But the possible 50-50 split could also foreshadow political chaos in the Old Dominion, as Republicans and Democrats will have to hammer out some kind of power-sharing agreement in order for the House to function. If they can't, the House won't operate. Electing a speaker is one of the first things delegates do once they are sworn in, right after a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. If no one is elected to the role, there's not much else the body can do except adjourn.
Prince Georges County officials have confirmed that the areas only shelter for abused women and their children fails to meet standards of acceptability, days after residents told News4 they were living without proper heating in a mold-infested home.

Theres mice popping out of couches. Theres mold everywhere, one resident said.

Another woman said she and her daughter have asthma, making conditions at the home scary. Asthma can be aggravated by mold, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

The mold seems to grow in the bathrooms, kitchens and other areas of the house, according to photos the residents shared. Mold can even be found on food in the kitchen, residents said.

The house is also extremely cold, multiple residents reported.

I cannot even let my kids stay in the room because its so cold, a mom of four kids said.

The women live in a shelter provided by the Family Crisis Center of Prince George's County, a non-profit organization funded by city and state dollars.

The city have the shelter more than $300,000 last year. The state of Maryland gave the shelter over $1 million last year.

A woman who worked for the Family Crisis Center for two years, but was fired one month ago, says the pictures show the true situation.

The stuff that theyre saying is true. Those pictures are accurate, the former employee, Keiyauna Stanley-Gregg, said.

All of these women are survivors of domestic violence who went to the Family Crisis Center to escape abuse.

Theyre victims being revictimized. In a domestic violence shelter, Stanley-Gregg said.

Sophie Ford, director of the Family Crisis Center, denied the complaints. When asked about the cleanliness and warmth of the home, she indicated it was acceptable.

Elana Belon-Butler, the director of Prince Georges County Family Services, inspected the shelter and found conditions below par.

Things were not fine, Belon-Butler said. "We need to make sure that this facility is safe and clean. Not just for the women that are there, but their children."

Before the county inspectors came, residents say the Ford threw out molded food and the trash. Some residents also said someone was shredding paper, and they believe Ford was trying to dispose of evidence they had documented.

Some residents videotaped the alleged cover-up, and former employee Stanley-Gregg identified Ford in the videos.

Belon-Butler promised that the county would work closely with the shelter to fix the problems as soon as possible. The shelter has been open since 1993.

Family Services offered to house the women in hotels if they don't want to stay in the house.

If you are interested in helping the shelter, you can drop off clothing, toiletries and more at this address:

Domestic Violence Shelter Help

Prince Georges County Department of Family Services

6420 Allentown Road

Temple Hills, MD 20748
A Virginia woman was mauled to death by her two dogs while out on a walk with them, authorities said.

Bethany Lynn Stephens, 22, had been gone for about a day since she left to walk her dogs, so her father went out to look for her in the area she frequented. He found her there last week, Goochland County Sheriff Jim Agnew told The Washington Post.

Authorities said he found her two dogs guarding what he initially thought was an animal carcass. Much to his horror, he discovered that it was not, Agnew told reporters Friday.

Investigators said the petite woman of about 100 pounds was mauled to death by the dogs, which had a combined weight of about twice hers. The sheriff described the dogs as pit bulls although their specific breeds were not known.

"It appears she was taken to the ground, lost consciousness and the dogs mauled her to death,'' Agnew said. "There were no strangulation marks. The victim had puncture wounds in the skull, and this was not a homicide."

Stephens had defensive wounds on her hands and arms, indicating she was attacked while still alive, according to the medical examiner's office. Investigators said Stephens was first attacked on her throat and face.

Officials spent at least an hour trying to tranquilize the animals, Agnew said. Investigators do not know why the animals turned on Stephens.

Agnew said her relatives have requested that the dogs be euthanized.
As President Donald Trump completes his first year in office, Americans are increasingly concerned about health care, and their faith that government can fix it has fallen.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 48 percent named health care as a top problem for the government to focus on in the next year, up 17 points in the last two years.

The poll allows Americans to name up to five priorities and found a wide range of top concerns, including taxes, immigration and the environment. But aside from health care, no single issue was named by more than 31 percent.

And 7 in 10 of those who named health care as a top problem said they had little to no confidence that government can improve matters. The public was less pessimistic in last year's edition of the poll, when just over half said they lacked confidence in the problem-solving ability of lawmakers and government institutions.

"We are way up there on the cost, and as far as giving good health care, we are way down," said Rebekah Bustamante of San Antonio, a retired medical imaging technician. "Now in health care, you're a number."

Bustamante said she voted for Trump, but "he's learning on the job, and he's got a long way to go."

Trump initially promised his own plan that would deliver "insurance for everybody" and "great" health care, "much less expensive and much better." But the White House never released a health care proposal from the president.

GOP legislation to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law failed in Congress, although the tax bill scraps the Obama requirement that most people get health insurance. Bloodied on both sides, Republicans and Democrats seem to have battled to an uneasy draw on health care.

Meanwhile, conflicting policy signals from Washington, including an abrupt White House decision to cancel insurer subsidies, roiled insurance markets. Premiums on health plans purchased by individuals jumped by double digits. Progress reducing the number of uninsured stalled, and one major survey found an uptick this year.

"There is zero bipartisanship, and it's frustrating," said Eric Staab, a high school teacher from Topeka, Kansas. "It seems like we have thrown everything at this dartboard, and nothing is improving the coverage."

Rumblings of discontent have political repercussions for next year's midterm elections and the presidential contest in 2020, said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who follows opinion trends on health care.

"It's the issue that won't go away," said Blendon. "Given the news cycle, taxes should be first, the economy should be second, and this health care thing should be buried."

Three in 10 Americans listed taxes among their top priorities, about double the percentage who said that last year. About a quarter mentioned immigration, and just under 2 in 10 mentioned environmental issues and education. Meanwhile, concerns about unemployment plunged to 14 percent, about half the mentions as last year.

Health care was by far the top issue mentioned by Democrats and independents. Republicans were about equally likely to mention immigration, health care and taxes.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say they have little to no confidence that the government will make progress on health care, 84 percent to 57 percent.

The reason health care doesn't fade away is that costs aren't getting any more manageable, said some people who took part in the AP-NORC survey.

Bustamante said she is planning a trip to Mexico for some dental work, because she can obtain quality service for much less there. "Thank God I live in Texas, where getting to Mexico isn't that far away," she said. "But everybody doesn't have that option."

ShyJuan Clemons of Merrillville, Indiana, said he's currently uninsured because his previous health plan was costing too much money for the benefit he got from it. He faced his insurance plan's annual deductible when he went to the doctor, so he'd wind up paying out-of-pocket for visits, on top of premiums.

"You are not constantly worried about taxes, but you are constantly worried about health care  be it major or minor," said Clemons, a personal care attendant who works with disabled people. "You catch a cold, and you just think about it in passing  'I hope it doesn't develop into a problem.'"

Clemons, a Democrat, said he's disappointed that Trump and Republicans in Congress seem to be trying to tear down "Obamacare" instead of building on it. "I would like to see them make the thing run smoothly so we can do better, instead of just trying to cripple it," he said.

The lack of confidence in the ability of government to find pragmatic solutions extended to other problems in the AP-NORC poll, including climate change, immigration, and terrorism.

Just 23 percent said that Trump has kept the promises he made while running for president, while 30 percent said he's tried and failed, and 45 percent said he has not kept his promises at all.

Nearly 2 in 3 said they were pessimistic about the state of politics in the U.S. About half were downbeat about the nation's system of government, and 55 percent said America's best days are behind.

___

The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,444 adults from Nov. 11-Dec. 4 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

Interviews were conducted online and using landlines and cellphones.
A San Diego resident's cross-border marriage at Friendship Park last month proved love had no boundaries, but a recently-filed federal complaint shows drug charges may have been what was keeping them apart.



Brian Houston, a U.S. citizen, married Evelia Reyes, a Mexican national, in November through an open gate at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the sixth annual "Opening the Door of Hope" event, that allows selected families to reunite with loved ones for three brief minutes between two border fences.

"Love has no borders," Houston said before the ceremony. "A wall might divide two countries, but it can't divide the love of two people."

At the time, Houston declined to explain why he was unable to go to Tijuana, but said the couple's attorney was trying to obtain a green card for Reyes to join him in the U.S.

A month after the wedding, a federal complaint shows Houston was unable to cross into Mexico because he surrendered his passport in March when he was released on bail after he was caught smuggling more than 120-pounds of heroin, meth and cocaine across the border. He pleaded guilty to three felony charges of importing a controlled substance.

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said his agents are angry about what happened.

The agents were there for what they felt was a humanitarian purpose opening Friendship Park up," said Joshua Wilson, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613. "And what they ended up doing was providing armed security for a cartel wedding."

"That's certainly discouraging," he added.

The cross-border event has been brokered annually since 2013 by Border Angels founder Enrique Morones, with the cooperation of CBP.

Morones says though he knew Houston had legal issues, he didn't know details. He says his group submits the names of people who want to participate and it's the responsibility of Homeland Security to do the vetting. He says Houston's name was on the list.

"Border Angels has never done any background checks, as the Border Patrol advised us, they will do all background checks and advise us which families have been cleared," Morones said.

Morones said he was surprised to learn this week that Houston had a "very serious" criminal conviction. That goes against everything Border Angels stands for."

"It doesn't look good for us. It's totally their fault," Morones said. "They're the ones that are the main people that can do it...We had no idea what these people's records are."

CBP did not immediately return calls or respond to emails requesting comments.

Wilson called the partnership between CBP and Border Angels "problematic at best.

"When you factor in that Morones is not an honest broker, it makes it even more complicated," Wilson said.

According to the complaint, in February Houston attempted to drive a silver 2013 Volkswagen Jetta across the San Ysidro Port of Entry, but the vehicle was flagged twice. During an inspection, agents discovered 67 pounds of drugs in the lining of the car.

Houston plead guilty to the charges in May. His sentencing is scheduled for January 2018.

Houston's immigration attorney, Cesar Luna, said he didn't know the extent of his client's legal troubles because they weren't relevant to helping the immigration process with his bride.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) allows families to see each other through a fortified fence at Friendship Park while still remaining firmly in their countries. But for this special event, agents open the gates that separate them, allowing loved ones to hug, kiss and talk without boundaries.

Luna called the issue with Houston's case a "miscommunication" and said he hopes it won't put an end to the cross-border event.


Police in New Hampshire have arrested a man who they say allegedly exposed himself at a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru in Dover.

Skylar Addington, 32, of Dover, was charged with one count of indecent exposure, after turning himself into police on Wednesday.

Authorities said on Saturday, Dec. 9, an employee at the Dunkin Donuts on Portland Avenue contacted police after a man allegedly went through the drive-thru and exposed his genitals.

The employee was able to provide a description of the man and his vehicle.

After surveillance video of the suspect was released, numerous people contacted police with information on the man's identity.

An officer was also able to match the vehicle description and connect Addington to the case.

After further investigation, police obtained an arrest warrant for Addington, who turned himself in without incident.

Addington was released on $5,000 personal recognizance. He is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 26 in the 7th Circuit Court - Dover District.
A messy storm is set to arrive in New England on Friday, and stick around into the first part of the weekend.

Logan Airport was busy Thursday night with holiday travelers trying to get out before potential snowfall.

Snow will spread into New England from west to east Friday morning, starting first in western Massachusetts, Vermont, and southwestern New Hampshire. The snow will then expand eastward towards Boston and the coastline into the lunch hour. The snow will continue to fall along and near the Massachusetts Turnpike, along with points to the north, into the evening commute.

2 Chances for Snow Over the Holiday Weekend

By late afternoon and evening areas south of there will start to change over to plain rain as warmer air moves up from the south.

That warm air will have a hard time making progress, however. It will surge over the top of stubborn cold air near the surface Friday night into Saturday in parts of north central Massachusetts and northern and western New England in particular. That means after the snow most places will see a period of freezing rain. That will create very slippery travel.

The ice is likely to be the bigger issue than the snow, which will only amount to 1 to 3 inches from the Boston area, back to Worcester and Hartford. Totals ramp up to 3 to 6 inches for parts of north central Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, much of Maine, and much of Vermont. Totals 6 to 9 inches will fall in the highest terrain around the southern Green Mountains, the White Mountains, the mountains of Western Maine.

The freezing rain and ice will linger straight into Saturday across many of the colder communities of eastern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, while plain rain falls farther south as temperatures climb into the 40s and even 50s in some cases.

New England is no stranger to piles of snow being dumped onto the region each winter. Take a look at some of the worst storms to hit in modern history.

This first storm will finally wrap up and depart Saturday night.

Christmas Eve on Sunday will then be quiet, and fine for travel. Highs will be in the 30s to near 40.

[NATL] Extreme Weather Photos: Record Heat Threatens Europe

Another system will try to spin up on Christmas morning, clipping New England with another round of precipitation. This looks to be a fast mover, so most of the impacts would be during the morning before seeing afternoon improvements.

Snow is most favored north and west of Boston, with a mix changing to snow closer to the coast. The exact track will be key in determining both what type of precipitation falls, and how much falls.

Regardless, a blast of cold arrives after Christmas. That cold air, with highs only in the teens and 20s, will last pretty much until the New Year.
This Christmas, a woman from Wilton, Maine, is preparing to give the gift of life. Beckie Bowerling has signed up to donate her kidney to someone she may never know.

"I have two kidneys, I only need one, so to be able to help is amazing," she said.

Bowerling said the idea to donate first occurred to her about 15 years ago, while working at the Franklin Savings Bank in Farmington. One of her customers was a veteran who regularly received dialysis treatments. She will never forget his joy when he finally received a kidney donation.

About six months ago, she was watching the local news and saw a story about the need for kidney donors. According to the National Kidney Foundation, about 110,000 people are on a waiting list, and each day, 13 people die waiting.

"I just looked at my husband and said, 'I'm doing it,'" she recalled.

Bowerling went to the Maine Transplant Program and signed up to be a non-directed donor. According to Dr. Juan Palma at the Maine Transplant Program, these kind of altruistic donors are extremely rare: only about three in Maine each year, and 200 across the country, volunteer.

"I think the donors are wired differently than us," Dr. Palma said. "They see the greater good."

Dr. Palma said sometimes these non-directed donors can be the missing link for whats called a kidney donation chain  triggering successful transplants for multiple people.

"It's amazing," he said. "Donation basically portrays the best of human kind."

If everything goes according to plan, Bowering could be in surgery as soon as January. Recovery from this major surgery typically takes three days in the hospital, and several weeks of rest.

"My daughter did ask  can you die from this surgery?" said Bowering. "The chances are so, so low, but for the people who dont get a kidney  they will die."

It will be up to the recipient to decide to reveal his or her name. Bowering hopes they will decide to meet her.

"Just to give them a hug, and see the smile on their face  to know I've extended their life," she said.

She hopes her story will inspire others to consider organ donation.




Finding peace through the storms of life

Darren Woodward reflects that Jesus can bring peace to our lives, whatever storms we my face.

I love the sea, but as we walked along the beach at Rossbeigh, County Kerry, Ireland in October a day or two prior to Storm Ophelias arrival, we were already being battered by the wind, waves and rain, and I was reminded again of the sheer power that exists in this natural force.



Our return flights were (sensibly) cancelled on the Monday, so instead we spent a day indoors watching the weather around us. By the following day, beyond the normal autumnal debris, there was very little evidence that we had been subjected to gale force winds and rain for the previous 24 hours.



Since it was our last full day, we visited the Gap of Dunloe and were privileged to witness the bluest skies, and most picturesque views of hills, rocks and completely calm lakes  how peaceful!



It reminded me of the story in Marks gospel where Jesus is with his disciples travelling across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus falls asleep in the bottom of the boat, during which time a ferocious storm whips up, and the disciples are in fear for their lives. In a panic they wake Jesus requesting his help. Jesus utters the words Peace be still and immediately the wind ceased and there was a great calm.



Peace is a running theme, in Jesus life. Prophesied as the Prince of Peace, Jesus entered the world almost under the radar. Rather than post an announcement on social media, God chose to announce the birth of His Son to some shepherds huddled up on the hill overlooking Bethlehem  the heavenly host of angels filled the skies with singing proclaiming Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and goodwill to all men.



Immediately before his death, Jesus in conversation with his disciples reassures them Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.



Looking around at our world, on the news, even within our own lives and communities, peace can appear transient or even out of reach altogether.



However, Jesus, the very embodiment of peace, the incarnate promise of eternal life, demonstrates to us through His life and teaching that whatever we may face, whether we are being thrown around in the midst of the storm or experiencing moments of calm, that one day all things will be made new and if we put our trust in Him, we will live in peace and wholeness forever.

Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth!



The image above is courtesy of https://pixabay.com



Darren Woodward is the senior pastor at Oak Grove Community Church in Norwich.

The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users.
Richard Benyon not present for vote to guarantee MPs' say on final EU exit deal

NEWBURY MP Richard Benyon has said he believes MPs should be given a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal, despite admitting he would have voted against legislation to guarantee MPs exactly that.

Mr Benyon, who was not present for a crucial vote on the amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill last Wednesday, said assurances from the Government that MPs would be granted a vote before the EU exit deal was ratified was good enough for him.

The vote ended in an embarrassing defeat for Theresa Mays Government as opposition MPs, along with 11 Tory rebels, voted in favour of the amendment by a majority 309 to 304.

Speaking to the NWN, Mr Benyon said: I would have supported the Government had I been there.

I think the concerns of those who didnt support the Government were addressed in the Commons earlier in the day.

Mr Benyon explained a ministerial statement released that day had offered assurances that MPs would have a meaningful vote on the final exit deal.

However, opposition MPs had claimed the paper gave no guarantee.

Asked why he would have voted against an amendment which legally guaranteed something for which he himself was in favour, he said: Because there was no need for it. Sometimes if you vote for an amendment that contradicts the bill in other ways you get unworkable law.

Its like pulling a thread and you can risk unravelling other parts of the legislation, and I thought there was a risk of that here.

At the time of the vote, Mr Benyon was in Washington, leading the UK delegation for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for the Trans-Atlantic Forum  an engagement arranged months in advance, according to the Conservative MP.
Police believe body is that of missing Thatcham man Steve Holland

POLICE have recovered the body of a man from the River Kennet in Newbury today (Thursday).

Officers have said that although the body has not yet been identified, it is believed it is that of Steve Holland, who has been missing since December 8.

His next of kin have been informed, and the death is currently being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

The 59-year-old was last seen leaving the Slug and Lettuce pub in Newbury at 11.15pm on December 8.
Gene editing could someday help people at risk of hearing loss from genetic mutations, according to research by a new Rice University faculty member.

Xue (Sherry) Gao, who joined Rice in the fall as the Ted N. Law Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is co-lead author of a new Nature paper that reports on the promise of gene editing to treat autosomal dominant hearing diseases.

Gao performed the research while a postdoctoral associate under the guidance of David Liu at Harvard University. She said that while hearing diseases are typically not life-threatening, hearing loss is the most common human sensory impairment and has a substantial impact on individuals and society.

Many genetic mutations affect the sensory hair cells that amplify acoustic vibrations and translate them into electrical nerve signals. Gao said humans are born with about 12,000 hair cells that do not regenerate spontaneously if damaged. It has been reported that one in every 1,000 infants born in the United States has genetic mutations that contribute to deafness. Nevertheless, she said, few treatments are available to slow or reverse genetic deafness.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

The researchers used rodent models of human genetic disease since a rodent cochlea -- the organ in the inner ear that sends sounds to the brain -- is strikingly similar to that of humans, Gao said. They focused on editing hair cells inside the cochlea, which they found suitable for the delivery of one-time, nonreplicable edits through Cas9/single-guide RNA. The RNA is a ribonucleotide (RNP) protein complex designed to specifically disrupt genes associated with hearing loss.

"Delivering the RNP complex instead of DNA into the cochleae showed significantly fewer off-target effects," Gao said. This enabled the researchers to effectively disrupt one genomic site containing a single point mutation and avoid the billions of other sites available for modification.

Eight weeks after injecting the protein complex into the cochleae of rodents with progressive, genetic hearing loss, the researchers observed higher hair cell survival rates compared with those in a control group that did not receive the injection.

Tests that measured brain waves in response to audio cues showed the treatment significantly preserves the animals' hearing compared with the control group. The treatment also helped preserve the injected animals' acoustic behavioral reflexes, according to the researchers. "We believe this is a leading study on using Crispr-Cas9 genome editing technology to treat genetic hearing diseases," said Gao, whose lab is at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative. "We hope to develop more advanced genome-editing tools and test them on other animal species to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness as we move them toward humans.

"I'm definitely looking for collaborators at Rice, the Texas Medical Center and in Houston who also are interested in developing genome-editing technology," she said.
Sticker shock may be leading many insured Americans with cancer to forego treatment with a wide range of oral cancer drugs, suggests a study published online this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the findings point to high out-of-pocket costs as a barrier to potentially life-saving or life-prolonging treatments. As breakthroughs in cancer care continue, the study raises questions about whether patients will able to take advantage of new treatment options.

The study used a large database of prescription claims to track more than 38,000 people in the U.S. who received a new prescription for one of 38 oral cancer medications from 2014-2015, to see whether patients filled the prescription after it was approved by their insurance. All insurance types were included, including Medicare.

The researchers found that 10 percent of patients failed to pick up their prescription when they were required to pay less than $10, but this jumped to 32 percent among those who were charged $100$500 and to nearly 50 percent among people whose out-of-pocket costs were more than $2,000. This was true even after taking other relevant factors into account, including type of insurance, pharmacy, and patient characteristics such as age and health status. There was no evidence that patients began treatment with the oral medications over the next three months, and so they were considered to have "abandoned" their prescription.

The relationship between high out-of-pocket costs and prescription abandonment remained consistent for all cancers, even for conditions where treatment can significantly extend life. When patients with higher out-of-pocket costs did fill their prescriptions, they were more likely to be delayed in doing so. Prior research has shown that insured people with other medical conditions often delay, interrupt, or discontinue their medications when faced with high out-of-pocket costs, but the authors say it's especially concerning to see this pattern with life-threatening cancers

"Patients in our study were facing a new cancer diagnosis or a change in their disease that required a new treatment. Imagine leaving your doctor's office with a plan, ready to start treatment, only to find you can't afford it," said lead author Jalpa A. Doshi, PhD, a professor of General Internal Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of Value-Based Insurance Design Initiatives at the Leonard Davis Institute's Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics. "It adds more stress at what is already a stressful and scary time."

The advantages of oral medications include simpler administration and convenience, since they do not require a visit to the hospital or doctor's office (as is the case with older, intravenous chemotherapies). Yet oral drugs are typically covered under a separate pharmacy benefit, with more of the medication's cost often passed on to the patient through coinsurance that requires patients to pay a percentage of the cost rather than a fixed copayment. Complete payment is also due up front, instead of patients receiving a bill after their treatment session. These factors increase the risk of delayed access or treatment abandonment, the researchers said.

The study also examined whether patients who abandoned their prescription went on to initiate any other cancer drug in the same drug class in the following three months, including intravenous therapies. They found that few did.

"This shows the importance of discussing financial barriers up front, during conversations about treatment options, even with patients who don't raise concerns," Doshi said. "Patients may not be aware of how expensive their prescriptions will be, and physicians may not realize that a patient has opted not to fill the prescription."

One in eight patients in the study had out-of-pocket costs higher than $2,000, but patient obligations at that level have become even more common in the years since the data were captured. The commercial insurance market continues to trend toward high deductible health plans and use of higher coinsurance. Such high out-of-pocket prescription costs are typical for most Medicare patients at the beginning of the year, unless they receive low-income subsidies.

In light of these trends, the researchers illustrated what would happen if study patients' out-of-pocket costs shifted to a higher cost category. They found that if patients currently responsible for $50$100 per prescription were to be charged $100$500 instead  all other things being equal  abandonment rates would be expected to double.

"Our results highlight the pressing need for all stakeholders  including manufactures, pharmacy benefit managers, payers, and policy makers  to identify fiscally sustainable strategies to improve patient access to cancer medications," the researchers wrote.
New recommendations, led by experts at the University of Birmingham, have been published to improve the use of liver blood tests.

The recommendations, published in Gut, are aimed at helping healthcare workers diagnose patients with liver disease as well as preventing unnecessary repeat tests for people unlikely to have significant liver disease.

While the number of deaths from other common conditions is falling in the UK, those due to liver disease have been increasing dramatically, with a 400% increase in death rates between 1970 and 2010. Death rates due to liver disease has also risen sharply in younger people, with a 500% increase in the same period for those aged under 65.

Lead author Professor Philip Newsome, Director of the Centre for Liver Research at the University of Birmingham's Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy, said: "Liver disease develops silently; there may be no signs or symptoms until the complications of liver failure develop.

"Since the current liver blood tests were developed in the 1950s, they have been the mainstay of liver disease identification. Unfortunately the way liver blood tests are interpreted means that many patients with liver disease are not identified until at a late stage.

"Liver blood or function tests are checked ever more frequently in both primary and secondary care in an attempt to exclude liver disease, for the monitoring of potential adverse effects of drugs on the liver such as statins, and for the investigation of the generally unwell patient.

"These tests often produce an abnormal result, the clinical significance of which is unclear.

"In many cases they are requested in response to non-specific symptoms where there is little potential link between symptoms and likelihood of liver disease, or the blood tests are performed for unrelated reasons such as chronic disease monitoring.

"This frequently leads to a cycle of additional liver blood test testing in an otherwise asymptomatic individual. Notably, many patients referred to hospital with abnormal liver tests do not have any evidence of significant liver disease."

The new guidelines, which cover both adults and children, recommend that initial investigation in patients with potential liver disease should include bilirubin, albumin, ALT, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) plus a complete blood count.

They also include definitions for 'abnormal' blood tests and advise when patients should have liver blood tests, as well as offering advice on pathways and tools for managing patients with abnormal test results.

Professor Newsome adds: "The pathways will be freely disseminated and should be incorporated into primary care IT systems to allow automatic calculation of risk scores when appropriate, to ensure recommendations can be put into practice."

They also state that research is needed to establish the most cost-effective approach to identify patients with alcohol-related liver disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at risk of having advanced liver fibrosis.

The recommendations now supersede earlier guidelines in 2000 and were commissioned by the Clinical Services and Standards Committee of the British Society of Gastroenterology.

Source: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2017/12/new-guidelines-liver-tests-birmingham.aspx
The blink reflex has been shown to be sensitive to a number of neurological insults, including traumatic brain injury, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, suggesting that it could be a useful tool for neurological assessment. Although electromyography (EMG)-derived time metrics were used to analyze the blink reflex as early as the 1950s, quantitative assessment of the blink response was never adopted widely in clinical practice, in part because existing technology was somewhat cumbersome and uncomfortable. Moreover, EMG is a highly sensitive technology requiring strict ambient parameters and was not easily performed outside the health care setting, limiting the applications of the blink reflex as a diagnostic indicator of neurological health. Advances in video and computer technology -- including improved digital image capture, higher frame speeds and higher processing speeds -- have now put portable, noninvasive, quantitative assessment of the blink within reach.

The Blink Reflexometer, a portable device developed by the Zucker Institute for Applied Neurosciences at the Medical University of South Carolina that has since been licensed to BLINKtbi (Charleston, SC), uses high-speed video to capture and quantitatively analyze a series of blinks that it stimulates with puffs of air. The device analyzes the recorded blinks based on data acquired from decades of blink reflex research to determine if the patient has experienced neurological insult.

In a validation study in ten healthy college students, the results of which were reported in an article published online December 12, 2017 by the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, a team of investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina and The Citadel obtained blink measurements for ten healthy college students using the Blink Reflexometer and compared them to published measurements obtained with EMG. Three parameters were measured: latency (time between stimulus to first eyelid movement), differential latency (difference in start time between eyelids) and duration (time from start of eyelid movement to eyelid open). Latency and duration measurements obtained with the Blink Reflexometer were in line with published results; only differential latency fell outside of published ranges. These findings suggest that the Blink Reflexometer can provide quantitative measurements of the blink that are on par with those obtained via EMG.

Neuroscience eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

"We are excited to be able to take something that had been qualitative and make it quantitative and objective," says lead author Nancey Trevanian Tsai, M.D. "We talk about metrics all the time in medicine but when you are actually able to provide quantitative, objective data, it's a game changer. It's analogous to the difference between saying someone is feverish to measuring the patient's temperature, an objective measurement, with a thermometer."

This study was based on a small number of young, healthy patients, so larger studies in participants that better represent the general populace will be required. More studies will also be required to verify the usefulness of the blink reflex and of this novel device for neurological assessment in each area of clinical need. Although the Blink Reflexometer can measure changes in the blink reflex, it does not provide information on the underlying causes of those changes.

If the findings of those studies are promising, the device could make it possible to include the blink reflex as a metric or vital sign in medical examination. Because it is portable, it could be taken into the field for on-site neurological assessments. Potential uses are field-side assessment of athletes for concussion or field sobriety tests for marijuana intoxication.
Some secrets to repairing our skeletons might be found in the silky webs of spiders, according to recent experiments guided by supercomputers. Scientists involved say their results will help understand the details of osteoregeneration, or how bones repair themselves.

The recently published study found that genes could be activated in human stem cells that initiate biomineralization, a key step in bone formation. Scientists achieved these results with engineered silk derived from the dragline of golden orb weaver spider webs, which they combined with silica. The study, published in September 2017 in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, was the result of a combined effort from three institutions: Tufts University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nottingham Trent University.

Study authors used the supercomputers Stampede at the Texas Advanced Supercomputing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin and Comet at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego through an allocation from XSEDE, the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The supercomputers helped scientists model how the cell membrane protein receptor called integrin folds and activates the intracellular pathways that lead to bone formation. The research will help larger efforts to treat bone growth diseases such as osteoporosis or calcific aortic valve disease.

"This work demonstrates a direct link between silk-silica-based biomaterials and intracellular pathways leading to osteogenesis," said study co-author Zaira Martin-Moldes, a postdoctoral scholar at the Kaplan Lab at Tufts University who researches the development of new biomaterials based on silk. "The hybrid material promoted the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells, the progenitor cells from the bone marrow, to osteoblasts as an indicator of osteogenesis, or bone-like tissue formation."

Silk has been shown to be a suitable scaffold for tissue regeneration, due to its outstanding mechanical properties, Martin-Moldes explained. It's biodegradable. It's biocompatible. And it's fine-tunable through bioengineering modifications. The experimental team at Tufts University modified the genetic sequence of silk from golden orb weaver spiders (Nephila clavipes) and fused the silica-promoting peptide R5 derived from a gene of the diatom Cylindrotheca fusiformis silaffin.

The bone formation study targeted biomineralization, a critical process in materials biology. "We would love to generate a model that helps us predict and modulate these responses both in terms of preventing the mineralization and also to promote it," Martin-Moldes said.

"High-performance supercomputing simulations are utilized along with experimental approaches to develop a model for the integrin activation, which is the first step in the bone formation process," said study co-author Davoud Ebrahimi, a postdoctoral associate at the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Integrin embeds itself in the cell membrane and mediates signals between the inside and the outside of cells. In its dormant state, the head unit sticking out of the membrane is bent over like a nodding sleeper. This inactive state prevents cellular adhesion. In its activated state, the head unit straightens out and is available for chemical binding at its exposed ligand region.

Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

"Sampling different states of the conformation of integrins in contact with silicified or non-silicified surfaces could predict activation of the pathway," said Ebrahimi. Sampling the folding of proteins remains a classically computationally expensive problem, despite recent and large efforts in developing new algorithms.

The derived silksilica chimera they studied weighed in around a hefty 40 kilodaltons. "In this research, what we did in order to reduce the computational costs, we have only modeled the head piece of the protein, which is getting in contact with the surface that we're modeling," Ebrahimi said. "But again, it's a big system to simulate and can't be done on an ordinary system or ordinary computers."

The computational team at MIT used the molecular dynamics package called Gromacs, a software for chemical simulation available on both the Stampede and Comet supercomputers. "We could perform those large simulations by having access to these XSEDE computational clusters," said Ebrahimi.

Computation combined with experimentation helped advance work in developing a model of osteoregeneration. "We propose a mechanism in our work that starts with the silica-silk surface activating a specific cell membrane protein receptor, in this case integrin V3," said Martin-Moldes, adding that this activation triggers a cascade in the cell through three mitogen-activated protein kinsase (MAPK) pathways, the main one being the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) cascade.

Other factors are also involved in this process such as Runx2, the main transcription factor related to osteogenesis. According to the study, the control system did not show any response, and neither did the blockage of integrin using an antibody, confirming its involvement in this process. "Another important outcome was the correlation between the amount of silica deposited in the film and the level of induction of the genes that we analyzed," said Martin-Moldes. "These factors also provide an important feature to control in future material design for bone-forming biomaterials."

The researchers are building a pathway to generate biomaterials that could be used in the future, with the mineralization being a critical process. The final goal is to develop models that help design the biomaterials to optimize the bone regeneration process, when the bone is required to regenerate or to minimize it when we need to reduce the bone formation.

These results help advance the research and are useful in larger efforts to help cure and treat bone diseases. "We could help in curing disease related to bone formation, such as calcific aortic valve disease or osteoporosis, which we need to know the pathway to control the amount of bone formed, to either reduce or increase it," Ebrahimi said.
Who is Silk - the powers, enemies, and comic history of the Korean America Spider-hero

Spider-hero Silk is about to headline her own streaming series. Here's what you need to know
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.
CHESHIRE  A lawsuit against the state Department of Correction by the town involving a disputed sewer bill has resulted in a damage award of $1.45 million by the Connecticut Superior Court.

Cheshire officials announced the outcome of the lawsuit Tuesday. Arnett Talbot, the towns public information officer, said the Department of Correction has until Jan. 2 to appeal the court ruling.

We have no idea at this point whether there will be an appeal, Talbot said. The court denied a claim made by town officials that the state agency should also be required to pay $1.13 million in interest payments on the amount of the unpaid retroactive bill, she said.

The dispute started in 2011 after town Wastewater Treatment Plant Superintendent Dennis Dievert discovered that the states Cheshire Correctional Institution had been underpaying for the wastewater that was flowing from the prison complex on Highland Avenue. The wastewater flow meter at the prison had under-reported the volume of seweage that was being sent to the treatment plant  for a decade.

Town manager Michael Milone said Tuesday that Department of Correction officials were made aware of the problem in 2011 and paid $180,000 for the previous 12-month billing period. But the agency officials refused to pay for the remaining nine years owed, an amount estimated at more than $1.4 million

Our position was and has always been that if they agreed with the methodology that we used for that 12-month period, they should pay for the remaining period because we used the same calculations, Milone said. But they didnt come up with an alternative figure to pay, they just said they werent going to pay any more.

Before the town filed the lawsuit in February 2016, it spent two years trying to get the Connecticut legislature to bring its complaint to bring the State Claims Commissioner. The town filed its claim with Claims Commission in July 2014, which granted Cheshires request to sue the state 19 months later.

The trial on Cheshires lawsuit against the state was held earlier this year.

Andrius Banevicius, a state Department of Correction spokesman, called the lawsuit a long and complex case.

The department respects the courts decision and is reviewing the ruling to determine if it is going to appeal, Banevicius said.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
Learn whether your employer can terminate you while you're receiving workers' comp benefits.

At some point after a workers' compensation injury, most employees will be able to return to work in some shape or form. But what if there's no job to return to? Can an employer fire you while you're out on workers' comp leave? Or refuse to take you back once you've recovered?

Most states do not require employers to hold jobs open for injured workers or even offer other available positions when they are cleared to return to work. However, a handful of states do provide employees with a right to reinstatement or rehire within a certain period of time. And, there are other laws that might provide an injured worker with job protection rights or additional financial support.

Injured on the job and don't know where to start? Our guide to workers' compensation will walk you through the process of applying for benefitsfrom reporting your injury to filing a claim to appealing a denialand explain how much you might receive.

Majority of States Do Not Require Reinstatement

In all states, your employer cannot fire you because you injured yourself at work or because you filed a workers' compensation claim. That would be illegal retaliation, which is prohibited by workers' comp laws. However, in most states, the protection ends there. Employers are otherwise free to fire injured employees while they are out on workers' comp leave. For example, if your doctor has taken you off work and your employer needs to fill your position, it is typically free to do so.

However, it can be in an employer's best interest to hire an employee who is able and willing to return to work. It minimizes the employee's wage loss, which reduces the workers' comp benefits being paid out to the employee. In many states, the employee's benefits will stop or be reduced even if he or she refuses to take the job. (To learn more, see our articles on light-duty job offers and offers of suitable work after reaching maximum medical improvement.)

Some States Have a Right to Reinstatement or Rehire Preference

A handful of states have laws that offer job protection to injured workers. In some states, it is a right to reinstatement to their jobs within a certain period of time. For example, in Rhode Island, injured employees have the right to demand their previous jobs for up to one year from the date of injury. Employers with ten or more employees must return the employee to his or her previous position, even if it has been filled by someone else in the interim.

In other states, employers are prohibited from firing employees who are still healing from their work injuries. For example, in Oklahoma, workers who are receiving temporary total disability benefits may not be fired due to absence from work.

In other states, the injured employee gets a hiring preference only. For example, in Massachusetts, an injured employee who reapplies for employment must be given preference over other applicants who are not already employees of the employer. The preference only applies to suitable and available positions. (To learn more about these laws, see our article on the right to job protection in workers' comp.)

Federal Employment Laws That Provide Job Protection

Sometimes, a work injury causes a significant long-term impairment that qualifies as a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) or similar state laws. Under the ADA, employers with 15 or more employees must provide reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities to allow them to do their jobs. Reasonable accommodation can take many forms, but it might include additional time off from work, providing workplace equipment, or moving you to another job for which you are qualified.

Similarly, the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for employees with a serious health condition. A serious health condition may or may not rise to the level of a disability under the ADA. The FMLA applies only to employers with 50 or more employees, but some states have similar laws that apply to smaller employers. At the end of the leave, the employee must be reinstated to his or her old job or an equivalent one. (Learn more in our article on FMLA reinstatement.)

Unemployment Benefits If You're Out of a Job

In some states, such as Rhode Island, employees can collect unemployment benefits if their employers refuse to hire them at the end of their workers' comp leave. You must be able and available to work and cannot have voluntarily resigned from your job. In many cases, though, you cannot receive workers' comp benefits and unemployment benefits at the same time (at least not in the full amounts). To learn more, see our state articles on collecting unemployment.
Huawei's sub-brand, Honor, recently launched its smartphones in the US, India, Europe, and the Middle East. The next region to get the company's attention will be Latin America, with the Honor 7X slated to be sold in that market for just US$199.

4 Reviews

Honor's bid to conquer the world looks to be coming on rather nicely. The company recently announced its ambitions to take over the Indian market by 2020, and made good on that statement by releasing the new Honor 7X for that market, with the V10 to follow suit in the near future. The Huawei subsidiary also launched its new batch of devices in the US, and we have received confirmation that Latin America will be the next region to enjoy Honor's presence.

Latin America, alongside Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia, is the smartphone market with the highest growth rate at the moment, so it's no surprise that Honor is looking to cash into that. The newly released Honor 7X has been in the headlines of recent, as the device's US$200 price tag makes it, debatably, the most value for money buy on the market at the moment. Potential buyers in Latin America will also get that deal, starting January, as the Honor 7X with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage will hit shops with the same US price tag of $200. Other devices will also make the trip. Sadly, we're not quite sure of the company's plans for Canada, as that market has been mostly ignored.
You are clearly a super-user of NUVO.net. Thats a good thing. It means you depend on independent and local news sources to keep you informed. You are a smart person.



Coincidentally, independent and local news sources depend on you too. Youve read 25 articles this month and now, wed like you to be join our mission and become a NUVO Supporter. For as little as $4 a month, you can keep us alive and fighting -- and can have unlimited access to the independent news that cant be found anywhere else.
2G verdict: What happens to the 122 licences that SC quashed?

Understand compulsions that prevented you from supporting me: Raja writes to Manmohan Singh

No interference from us says Supreme Court on senior journalists arrest

2G scam: Accused have suffered a lot, says Mukul Rohatgi

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Former Attorney General, who had appeared on behalf of big corporates in the 2G scam trial, said that the prosecution's main argument was on civil issue, never it was an issue of criminality.

A special court today acquitted 19 accused, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kanimozhi in the Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case relating to the 2G scam.

Talking to media after the Special CBI court verdict, Mukul Rohatgi, said, " Prosecution's main argument was on clause 8, it is a civil issue.It was never an issue of criminality, this is what court also held." "All the people of the industry who were accused have suffered enough, licenses cancelled, they were also unable to travel abroad, he said.

Mukul Rohatgi had appeared on behalf of Essar Group in the 2G scam trial. He had recused from appearing in all those ongoing cases pertaining to the case after he was appointed Attorney General of India.

The Essar Group welcomed the judgement of the special court acquitting its promoters Ravi Ruia and Anshuman Ruia in a case arising out of the probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 13:44 [IST]
2G scam verdict: Subramanian Swamy claims 'internal sabotage'

India

oi-Madhuri

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said that judgment is a very bad judgement, and said that it must be appealed in higher court.

Addressing the media in Delhi, Swamy said,''Today's judgment is a very bad judgement, this must be appealed in higher court.''

''Judge says earlier there was a lot of enthusiasm, but later it became worse and worse. Judge also said counsels were lackadaisical. This is a big condemnation of the Govt's controlling of the case,'' he said.

The BJP leader further said,''Former AG Mukul Rohatgi has welcomed this verdict, I had written to PM opposing his appointment as AG. Rohatgi had appeared for some of accused companies.''

''This is not a setback at all, its an aberration as the law officers were not serious on fighting against corruption. So I hope the PM takes lesson from this.We must now fight corruption on war footing. It has been derailed, but it can be put back on track again provided we have honest law officers and lawyers who don't do 'chamchagiri' of ministers.'' added Swamy.

OneIndia News
India's stand on Rohingyas gracious so far but housing them would be risky

The Rohingya influx continues as Tripura police nets seven of them

40,000 Rohingyas: Why its difficult for govt to give accurate figures on illegal immigrants

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 21: On Tuesday, Union minister Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament that around 40,000 Rohingya migrants were illegally living in India. He added that India has not deported any Rohingya immigrant in the past three years.

"As per available information, approximately 330 Pakistani and approximately 1,770 Bangladeshi nationals have been deported during the last three years. No Rohingya immigrant has been deported during the last three years," Rijiju said in a written reply.

The minister informed the Lok Sabha that the entry of illegal migrants was clandestine and surreptitious and thus, an accurate figure of how many of them were currently living in the country was not available.

The Rohingyas, who fled to India after violence in the western Rakhine State of Myanmar, have settled in Jammu, Hyderabad, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR and Rajasthan.

Some instances of violation of the law and involvement in illegal activities by foreign nationals have been reported, the minister said.

"Registration of cases and action thereon comes within the purview of the police stations and state governments/ Union territory administrations concerned. Statistical data of this nature is not centrally maintained," Rijiju said.

Central government is vested with powers to deport a foreign national under section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

These powers to identify and deport illegally staying foreign nationals have also been delegated to the state governments/Union territory administrations and the Bureau of Immigration under the Foreigners Act, 1946.

"Detection and deportation of such illegal immigrants is a continuous process," he said. Rijiju said the procedure includes sending back then and there the illegal immigrants who are intercepted at the border while entering India unauthorisedly.

The central government is also implementing a mission mode project on Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking which will facilitate improved tracking of foreigners by integrating and sharing information captured during visa issuance at missions, during immigration check at the immigration check posts and during registration at the offices of the Foreigners Regional Registration Officers, the minister said.

"The law enforcement agencies also maintain a strict vigil on the activities of foreigners in the country and take appropriate action in cases of any illegal activities," he said.

The statement made by the minister has come at a time when Bangladesh and Myanmar had agreed for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees who have taken shelter in Bangladesh since August this year.

At least 655,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine State since August and are staying in various refugees camps in Bangladesh.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh and Myanmar reaffirmed their commitment to begin repatriating Rohingya refugees in January.

However, various international rights groups warned that the situation in Myanmar was not right for the repatriation of Rohingyas. "Unless their (Rohingyas) safety is not assured, it would not be right to send them back to Myanmar in such a hasty manner," said a member of a rights group.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 6:48 [IST]
Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000

Bihar's Gopalganj by-poll to see a tough fight between BJP and RJD

Bihar: Over 200 students sick, claim they saw 'dead lizard' in mid-day meal

Bihar's sugar mill blast: Death toll rises to 4, owner arrested

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Patna, Dec 21: In an unfortunate incident, four workers were killed and several others were left injured after a blast occurred at a sugar mill in Gopalganj, Bihar on Thursday. The blast is stated to have occurred in the mill's boiler.

Early morning report indicated that three people died in the blast, however, later the death toll rose to four.

"The death toll rises to four in Gopalganj boiler blast," stated ANI. The ANI report added that the police had arrested the sugar mill owner.

#UPDATE: Death toll rises to 4 in Gopalganj boiler blast. Police arrest sugarmill owner pic.twitter.com/2mWAhV2YTZ  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

"Three laborers killed, many others injured after boiler blast at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj," ANI had tweeted earlier.

Three laborers killed, many others injured after boiler blast at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj pic.twitter.com/ImJmjJ6BGm  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Visuals provided by ANI show the extent of damage caused in the sugar mill due to the blast. The authorities are yet to issue a statement in this regard.

"#Visuals from boiler blast site at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj; three laborers killed, many others injured," tweeted ANI.

#Visuals from boiler blast site at Sasa Musa sugar mill in Bihar's Gopalganj; three laborers killed, many others injured. pic.twitter.com/RRUKvPpPme  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

Most of the sugar mills in the state blatantly flout safety norms, alleged a local activist. "The government and the mill owner are answerable to the disaster. How long businessmen are going to play with the lives of poor workers?" questioned the activist.

OneIndia News
Dawood aide Shakeel, dead, alive or broken away: NOTA says the syndicate

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The timing of an audio clip being released suggesting that Dawood Ibrahim's close aide Chhota Shakeel may be dead is quite interesting. There has been no confirmation or denial by the central agencies who say that they are looking into the issue in-depth.

There are four versions to the Chhota Shakeel story. First- he died of a heart attack in January. Second- he was bumped off on the directive of the ISI. Third- he is alive, but has broken away from the D-syndicate. Fourth- None of the Above.

When we speak about the timing of this news, it is pertinent to mention that it comes just two weeks after reports of him breaking away from the D gang surfaced. There was a call made by Shakeel a day after the news broke out and during the conversation, he said that the reports were untrue and he was with bhai and will be with bhai till his death.

Now the Shakeel call too is under dispute as there are question marks over whether he has been really making those calls. The name of one Rahim Merchant who has been masquerading as Shakeel has surfaced. It is said that Shakeel had trained him to speak like him. Since his ISI approved entry into Pakistan 20 years back from the UAE, he has not been making any calls. Instead it is Merchant who has been making those calls at his behest.

While all this needs confirmation and as the central agencies work on the same, it would not be wrong to say that all is not well in the D-syndicate. There has been a bitter succession battle on within the gang. Shakeel had been upset that Dawood's brother Anees had been calling the shots despite him being told not to handle the India territory. Anees had been told by Dawood to handle operations out of India. On the other hand Shakeel was tasked with the India operations.

Highly placed sources in New Delhi tell OneIndia that the syndicate is shaky. They have been hit financially and the boat is not exactly sailing smoothly. There are bound to be more shake ups and all the news relating to the syndicate which includes Dawood going into depression are signals that all is not well in Dawood land.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 5:47 [IST]
Delhi Police conducts raids at Rohini ashram

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 20: The police carried out a raid at an ashram in Rohini following the Delhi High Court's order to inspect the insitute where girls and women were allegedly kept in illegal confinement.

The court had dubbed the situation in the institute -- Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya -- located in north Delhi's Rohini as being "similar" to that witnessed in Gurmeet Ram Rahim's ashram in Haryana's Sirsa, but without making any direct reference.

An NGO has alleged that girls and women were kept at the "university" for 14 years and more. While producing one girl in the court, who, the NGO claimed, had managed to get out of the premises, it alleged that she was raped during her stay there, which she has not even disclosed to her parents.

The NGO also alleged that girls confined at the ashram have committed suicide in the past, but the police never registered a case. The raid, which went until late night, saw the presence of Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Rajneesh Gupta, Delhi Commission For Women chief Swati Maliwal and a group of lawyers.

Maliwal claimed that when they reached the ashram, it took more than two hours to meet the girls and most of them were minor. "We were also attacked in the ashram and held hostage for one hour," said Maliwal. She said that in the institute, letters about alleged sexual assault faced by the inmates, were found from a box and also certain injections and medicines were also found in huge quantities.

The Delhi High Court today directed the CBI to investigate the alleged illegal confinement of girls and women in the ashram where they were kept in "animal-like" conditions behind metal doors in a "fortress" surrounded by barbed wire.

PTI
Indian Navy conducts naval exercise with Oman Navy

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 20: The Indian Navy deployed a submarine and the P8I long-range maritime aircraft for the first time for a bilateral naval exercise with the Omani navy.

The 11th edition of the exercise, 'Naseem Al Bahr' or 'Sea Breeze', was held on December 17 off the coast of Oman.

The exercise is a biennial feature since 1993. The Indian Navy also deployed two naval ships - INS Trikand and INS Teg - for the exercise. The Indian ships entered Muscat on December 16 for the harbour phase.

"Delegations from the Royal Navy of Oman embarked on the Indian Naval Ship Teg on December 18 for a briefing on basic anti-submarine warfare procedures," the Indian Navy said in the statement. The Indian Navy ships and four Royal Navy of Oman ships - Al Rasikh, Khassab, Al Mubashir and Al Bushra - sailed for the sea phase of the exercise, in which an Indian Navy submarine and the versatile P8I long-range maritime aircraft participated for the first time, according to the statement.

India has an ancient maritime tradition and maritime interaction with Oman dating back to more than 4,000 years. Bilateral relations between Indian and Oman were formally established with the signing of the 1953 Indo-Oman Treaty of Friendship, Navigation and Commerce, a first between India and an Arab country. Since then, naval exercises have contributed to strengthening bilateral ties between India and Oman.

PTI
Karnataka assembly elections: AAP yet to take a call on contesting 2018 polls

India

oi-Anusha

Recommended Video

Karnataka elections 2017 : AAP contemplating its approach says Sanjay Singh, Watch | Oneindia News

As the race for Karnataka assembly elections 2017 hots up, Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is contemplating its approach to the poll. While the party debuted in 2013 assembly elections in Karnataka, it failed to open its account with abysmal performances across constituencies. This time around, the AAP intends to study ground realities before taking the plunge.

"The suggestions of local AAP leaders have been taken. A report will be compiled and sent to the party's political affairs committee. The final decision will lie with the PAC," said Sanjay Singh, National spokesperson, AAP unwilling to commit on whether the party would contest the 2018 assembly elections in Karnataka.

The AAP- in the run up to the 2013 assembly elections- had run massive membership drives and campaigns. The party had chosen activists, writers, social workers as its candidates and hoped to create a wave in Karnataka politics. The results of the election had come as a massive blow to the party that failed to open its account in any of the 224 constituencies.

Local leaders, after assessing ground realities, will now compile a report on the party's winnability. The PAC that includes Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Dr Kumar Vishwas, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Atishi Marlena, Sadhu Singh, Gopal Rai and Durgesh Pathak will take the final call on whether the AAP will contest the Karnataka elections.

Karnataka assembly election is expected to be a three-cornered contest with the incumbent Congress government led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, BJP led by B S Yeddyurappa and the JD(S) led by H D Kumaraswamy already indulging in aggressive campaigning.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 15:57 [IST]
Karnataka assembly elections: Why you cannot ignore the JD(S)

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

As the election heat in Karnataka is gradually building up, there is already talk on a coalition government. Several surveys have predicted a hung assembly. Both the Congress and the BJP say that they are confident of forming the government on their own.

The big question is can the JD(S) be ignored? As things stand today, there is a clear indication that the JD(S) will be a major player in the formation of the next Karnataka government in 2018.

Let us take a look at the pre-poll survey that was conducted by Suvarna News. Of the 224 seats, it gives the Congress 88, BJP 82 and JD(S) 43. These numbers are a clear indicator that none are getting even close to the half way mark.

While the JD(S) says that they would get many more seats than what is being predicted, the fact of the matter remains that as of today both the Congress and BJP would need the party to form the next government.

The pre-poll survey also predicts that the JD(S) will get 20 per cent of the votes. This makes the JD(S) a strong player in the Karnataka elections and government formation that would follow.

Analysts say that it is too early to predict anything for now. None of the parties have revealed their cards as yet. A clearer picture would emerge from January onwards when all parties go all guns blazing.

Kumaraswamy in a recent interview had said that there was no question of forming the government with BJP in case of a hung assembly. He called the pre poll survey manipulative and said that the party was confident of crossing the 100 mark. While he did not indicate which party he would pick in case the numbers were short, he however made it clear that a truck with the BJP was not possible.

The JD(S) is already in campaign mode. It has been focusing on its strongholds of rural Bengaluru, Mandya and the Mysuru region. Apart from this the JD(S) has also been reaching out to the Veerashaivas and Kurubas to elect him chief minister again.

OneIndia News
Karnataka assembly polls: BJP plays Mahadayi card in Hubli, Yogi Adityanath pushes Hindutva

India

oi-Anusha

Recommended Video

Yogi Adityanath accuses Congress party of worshiping Tipu Sultan, Watch | Oneindia News

The Mahadayi water sharing row and Yogi Adityanath became the highlights of BJP's Parivartana Yatra in Hubballi on Wednesday. With the Lingayat religious tag issue eating into the BJP's vote bank, B S Yeddyurappa turned the Kalasa-Banduri water sharing row into a poll agenda. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath propelled the Hindutva card with scathing attacks on the Congress.

"Following my request, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has finally agreed to consider our demand for drinking water from Mahadayi river to people of North Karnataka," announced B S Yeddyurappa, reading a letter from Parrikar at the rally. The carefully worded diplomatic letter from Parrikar is being looked at by the Congress as an election gimmick.

#Mahadayi:

When @CMofKarnataka met @PMOIndia-negative response. Wrote to Goa CM-negative response.

Fixed meeting-Goa CM didnt turn up.

Suddenly on eve of election @manoharparrikar writes to @BSYBJP & not to our CM.

Another Jumla by @AmitShah & BJP??  Dinesh Gundu Rao (@dineshgrao) December 21, 2017

The crowd gathered at Hubballi's Nehru Maidan on Wednesday was easily one of the largest ever that BJP's Parivarthana Yatra has seen ever since its launch. While the presence of Yogi Adityanath was one of the factors, the anticipation of BJP's announcement in the Mahadayi issue was another. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the BJP's saffron icon, did his job of propelling his party's Hindutva card well.

"I am confident that you will ensure that the BJP will form a government in Karnataka. Tell the Congress that in India, Hanuman will be revered and not Tipu Sultan," is how Yogi Adityanath chose to conclude his speech as the crowds roared. He launched scathing attacks on the Siddaramaiah government and urged the people to "teach the anti-Hindu Congress a lesson."

With an intention to turn the Mahadayi water sharing row into an election agenda, state BJP leaders along with Manohar Parrikar, union Ministers Prakash Javdekar etc met Amit Shah on Wednesday. Even as its ally in Goa, the Goa Forward Party, warned the Parrikar government of withdrawing support if the Mahadayi dispute was raked up, Parrikar wrote a letter assuring to hold talks on "humanitarian grounds".

"Government of Goa is willing to consider the request to work out an amicable settlement strictly restricted to drinking water only to the drought-prone areas," the letter read. Karnataka has been in a long pitched battle with Goa over the waters of Mahadayi river for the Kalasa-Banduri project. The project is aimed at improving drinking water supply to people of Belagavi, Dharwad and Gadag. Karnataka requires 7.56 TMC of water from two tributaries of the Mahadayi river- a demand that Goa has vehemently opposed in the Tribunal.

OneIndia News
NRTU: Indias dream of first ever Rail University comes true, all you need to know

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

It was a major boost for the Indian Railways with the Cabinet approving the setting up of the first National Rail and Transport University (NRTU).

The premier institution will be set up in Vadodra, Gujarat and according to the Railway Ministry, the university would skill human resources and the build the capability of the Indian Railways.

The ministry also said, " India's 1st National Rail & Transportation University to transform Indian railway and transport sector for a New India." Railway Minister, Piyush Goyal said that realising PM Narendra Modi's vision of Make in India, Skill India and Startup India, Government sets up 1st National Rail and Transportation University in Vadodara, Gujarat. The Rail University will foster entrepreneurship and generate large scale employment opportunities, Goyal also said.

The PM himself has been taking a keen interest in the university and its development. The Cabinet approval comes after a three year standstill. Now the university is a reality and will see its first batch of students starting June 2018.

The first of its kind university will create employment and also improve productivity, a government official said. It is also aimed at providing gainful employment for the youth as it would help in upgradation of sill.

The Railway Ministry said that not-for-profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, will be created by the ministry of railways which shall be the managing company of the proposed university.

"Existing land and infrastructure at National Academy of Indian Railways at Vadodara will be utilised, and suitably modified and modernised for the purpose of the university."

In its full enrolment, it is expected to have 3,000 full-time students. The funding of the new university/institute is to entirely come from the Ministry, the government further said.

The university plans to use latest pedagogy and technology applications such as satellite based tracking, radio frequency identification and artificial intelligence to improve on-the-job performance and productivity, it was further informed.

OneIndia News
Parivartana Yatra: Ahead of big Hubbali campaign, Yeddyurappa has an answer to Mahadayi issue

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

As the BJP's Parivartana Yatra chugs through the roads of Karnataka, its leader and chief ministerial candidate will make an important announcement. The announcement regarding the Mahadayi row will be an important one considering the BJP launches a formal campaign in the Hubbali region.

The Mahadayi issue is extremely crucial in the Hubbali region and the BJP has alleged that the Congress has been unsuccessful in bringing about a resolution with Goa.

On Wednesday, top leaders of the BJP including Yeddyurappa, Jagadish Shettar and Prahlad Joshi were in Delhi. They held discussions with National President, Amit Shah on reaching a solution regarding the inter-state dispute over Mahadayi water sharing.

Yeddyurappa is expected to make an announcement to this effect and it would send a signal to the people of the Hubbali region on how important it is for the party to sort this issue. The BJP in its announcement is expected to suggest that there has been progress on this issue. The BJP will tell the people that there has been progress in convincing Goa to agree for the diversion of water from the Mahadayi basin to the Malaprabha river for drinking purposes.

Yeddyurappa's announcement to this effect is seen as crucial as he had told the agitators the last time that he would come back to the Hubbali area next only with good news.

During the meeting in Delhi held on Wednesday, Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar too was present. There were discussions and deliberations to this effect. However there was no clarity on the issue and only once an announcement is made will what transpired be known.

Yeddyurappa said that the meeting was a satisfactory one.

At 3.30 on Thursday, the Parivartan Yatra would be held at the Nehru Stadium in Hubbali. Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath would take part in the event. He will visit Moorusaviramutt before attending the convention, and would leave for Lucknow by a special flight after the rally.

Unions ministers Ananth Kumar, D V Sadananda Gowda, Ramesh Jigjinagi, Anantkumar Hegde and other BJP leaders will also attend the convention.

Prior to the convention, the BJP workers took out a bike rally. The BJP says that it expects at least 1 lakh people to attend the event.

OneIndia News
Rajasthan: Protesters disrupt Christmas celebrations over alleged religious conversion

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Jaipur, Dec 21: After members of a Hindu right wing group issued diktats to schools in Uttar Pradesh not to celebrate Christmas, protesters allegedly belonging to another Hindu right wing group disrupted Christmas celebrations in Rajasthan's Pratapgarh town on Tuesday evening.

According to reports, members allegedly belonging to the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) which owes its allegiance to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state and at the Centre, barged inside the room where the Christmas event was underway and asked the revellers to immediately put an end to it.

The members of the right wing group alleged that religious conversion was being done during the event, reported ANI. In fact, the police arrested two persons on charges of forceful conversion, added ANI.

Protests in Rajasthan's Pratapgarh during a #Christmas event, protesters alleged religious conversion was being done during the event. Two people arrested on charges of forceful conversion pic.twitter.com/AQjyKmjAQ1  ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2017

Karu Lal, a human rights activist who was one of the organisers of the programme, told Scroll.in that the protesters snatched their microphones, threw away their Christmas calendars and books on Gospels and also accused them of carrying out religious conversions on the pretext of Christmas celebrations.

Lal added the men were known to most of the organisers and had claimed to be members of the VHP. The organisers, however, in their complaint to the police referred to the "goons" as "anti-social elements".

According to reports, in UP, the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM) sent letters to schools in Aligarh asking them not to celebrate Christmas. The group alleged that the festival would be a step towards "forced conversions" of Hindu students.

A few days ago, suspected Bajrang Dal activists were claimed to have beaten up some Christians, including 10 priests, and torched their car outside a police station in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh over alleged conversion of Hindus to Christianity.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 7:46 [IST]
Central Vista to be unveiled by PM Modi today | 7 things to know

Winter session of Parliament likely to commence from December first week in old building

Ruckus in RS over Modis conspiracy with Pak remarks against Manmohan, 2G scam case

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 21: The Winter Session of Parliament continues to be a stormy one as the Opposition remains hell-bent to get a clarification from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "conspiracy with Pakistan" remarks against his predecessor Manmohan Singh during the Gujarat Assembly elections.

As leaders of opposition parties raised slogans against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 2 PM on Thursday.

"Ruckus in Rajya Sabha over PM Modi's remarks against Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during Gujarat elections. House adjourned till 2 PM," tweeted ANI.

Ruckus in Rajya Sabha over PM Modi's remarks against Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during Gujarat elections. House adjourned till 2 PM pic.twitter.com/BLoQlO3PvZ  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2017

The acquittal of all 2G telecom spectrum allocation scam accused also found echo in the Rajya Sabha, with the Opposition Congress disrupting proceedings demanding an explanation from Modi.

Congress members shouted slogans, drowning the voices of other members and forcing Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to adjourn the proceedings till 2 PM, but not before threatening to invoke rules against them and rapping them for their unruly behaviour.

Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad sought an explanation from Modi for the "false propaganda" on the 2G scam to come to power in 2014.

Congress, he said, has been since the past week seeking an explanation from the PM over "false" allegations he made against his predecessor Singh during the Gujarat elections.

Today, after the acquittal of all the accused, "we want to ask where did all the allegations (of scam) go," he said.

The BJP had run a propaganda on the 2G spectrum allocation that helped it "move from that side (opposition side in Rajya Sabha) to this side (ruling side) and us from that side (ruling side) to this side (opposition benches)," Azad said.

Naidu said he was not allowing Azad's submission as he had not given any notice, as he asked members to return to their seats. He also said "nothing will go on record".

But Congress members were in no mood to listen and rushed to the Well raising slogans against Modi and the BJP.

Naidu then cited a May 22, 1990 ruling of then Rajya Sabha Chairman Shankar Dayal Sharma that the Chair's ruling on not allowing suspension of a Question Hour or allowing a discussion is final.

"Democracy means working according to rules (and) not shouting," he said.

Stating that he is willing to use his discretion to allow serious matters to be raised, Naidu said "some people have developed the habit of giving notices under rule 267 and then disrupting proceedings."

Notice under rule 267 calls for setting aside of the listed business of the day to take up the issue being raised.

As some slogan-shouting Congress members moved in front of the ruling benches, Naidu castigated them for moving from the opposition side to the treasury side of the Well.

At the persuasion of Azad, the Congress members left the Well and returned to their seats but kept raising slogans, drowning the voices of members whom the Chair had called to raise Zero Hour issues.

Naidu went on to rap the Congress members for the unruly behaviour, saying "3/4ths of the House wants to take up Zero Hour issues".

"Please follow some decorum. I condemn your behaviour," he said, adding "I will have to think about invoking rules. Don't force me to do that. ... The whole country is watching your behaviour."

When deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma tried to raise a point, Naidu snapped back at him saying it was not good for a deputy leader of the party to defy the Chair.

As the Congress members continued to shout slogan, Naidu went on to state that it was not the right tradition to take the names of the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister or political parties.

With Congress members remaining unrelenting, he adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

Normally, the chair in case of disruptions in the first hour of the sitting, adjourns proceedings till 1200 hours. But when Naidu adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm, members were surprised.

Thursday, being the Question day for the Prime Minister's Office, Modi was expected to be present during Question Hour slated at noon.

Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was seen asking the Rajya Sabha officials if he has indeed adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

The Winter Session of Parliament started on December 15. It will last till January 5, 2018 and 14 bills are scheduled to be tabled during the period. On Wednesday, the Lok Sabha passed the Indian Forest (Amendment) Bill, 2017 before adjourning it till Thursday.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 13:30 [IST]
Morbi Bridge is not the only Incident - Quality of Bridges, roads and Highways in BJPs government!

TTV Dinakaran likely to win RK Nagar by-election, says Cauvery TV exit poll

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Recommended Video

BJP to decide on next Gujarat CM today, Vijay Rupani and Mansukh Mandaviya top runners Oneindia News

Sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran is likely to win the by-polls held in Chennai's RK constituency, according to an exit poll conducted by Cauvery TV. The RK Nagar seat had fallen vacant following the demise of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa after which the AIADMK plunged into crisis and split into several factions.

The campaign witnessed the top leaders of various parties--Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam of the AIADMK, DMK leader MK Stalin and TTV Dhinakaran, who is contesting as an independent candidate, reaching out to voters.

Dhinakaran, who fell out of favour with EPS-OPS faction and also lost the battle for party's 'Two Leaves' symbol, had expressed confidence that he can spring a surprise against the AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan as well as the DMK's candidate Maruthuganesh.

According to Cauvery TV exit polls, Dinakaran would emerge victorious with Madhusudhanan and Maruthuganesh likely to end up at second and third places, respectively.

The exit poll, which saw participation of 1071 voters, predicts that Dinakaran would bag 37% votes, while Madhusudhanan and Maruthuganesh are expected to get around 26% and 18% votes, respectively.

The exit poll also came out with some other key statistics. 90% of the respondents said that they were not bribed by parties while 10 % said that they got money from parties. 95% voters said that there won't be any impact on the Jayalalitha's hospital video released a day before polls, while 5% said that it will have some impact.

All parties are keen to make a mark in the election which has become a battle of pride as Jayalalithaa represented the constituency earlier. Her death in December last year necessitated the bypoll. The campaign also saw old rivals Stalin and MDMK founder Vaiko share stage for the first time in many years. The opposition is putting up a united show in a bid to to snatch victory in this city segment.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 21:10 [IST]
In UP 166 criminals killed in encounters in past five years: Yogi

Yogi Adiyanath imposes selfie ban near his Lucknow residence, Akhilesh calls it New Year gift

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has banned folks from clicking selfies on the road leading up to his official residence in Lucknow.

A sign put up by the state's police at the beginning of the road warning against selfies has however been removed after much criticism and mirth on social media.

The signal stated said that taking pictures and selfies in this VIP area is an offence. Those who caught doing it will face strict action.

Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav was the the first to comment on Twitter.

"A New Year's Gift for the people of Uttar Pradesh, taking selfies could attract Uttar Pradesh Control of Organized Crime Act (UPCOCA)," Akhilesh tweeted.

         ,       !  Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) December 20, 2017

Akhilesh even linked it to UPCOCA, a new law in the state that opposition parties are up in arms against. "A New Year's Gift for the people of Uttar Pradesh, taking selfies could attract UPCOCA," the former chief minister and Samajwadi Party boss tweeted in Hindi.

Akhilesh Yadav, who is also national president of the Samajwadi Party, said that UPCOCA is a tool to threaten the voices against the government. He said, "BJP used to say that encounters of the criminals will improve the law and order situation in the state but nothing has changed. Nothing will change until the government gives charge to able officers. UPCOCA will be used to suppress the voice of the opposition and to threaten them."

"The government should instead focus more on Dial 100 and 1090 emergency numbers, then only law and order situation can improve," he added.

Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati also raised her concerns against UPCOCA and said that this would be used against Dalits, minorities and poor.

On the other hand that BJP said that the opposition to UPCOCA by other parties is very unfortunate.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)
Several Afghans on Germany's evacuation list have died

13th batch of medical assistance to Afghanistan delivered by India

Taliban bans women from parks and gyms in Afghanistan

Afghanistan: 3 killed in explosion in Herat

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Three people were killed and two injured in an explosion in Afghanistan's Herat city on Thursday evening.

The explosion took place in Jibreel area around 5.30 pm local time, reported TOLO news while quoting Herat police.

On November 16, at least five policemen were killed after an explosive device detonated near Lab-e-Jar square in Kabul City's PD4 area.

On November 10, at least one police personnel was killed and five others injured in a heavy explosion in Bolan area of Lashkargah City, Helmand province of Afghanistan.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 20:06 [IST]
Avoid 'complicating' Myanmar dispute, urges China

International

pti-PTI

Beijing, Dec 21: China urged other governments on Thursday to "constructively help" Myanmar and Bangladesh resolve the fate of Rohingya Muslims "instead of complicating the issue" after Myanmar blocked a visit by UN human rights official.

Events in Rakhine state, where more than 630,000 Rohingya fled a military crackdown, are an internal affair for Myanmar that "contains complicated historical, national and religious factors," said a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

"We think the international community should constructively help Myanmar and Bangladesh to solve the issue instead of complicating the issue," said Hua at a regular briefing. The UN official, Yanghee Lee, said yesterday that Myanmar's government barred her from the country.

She said officials told her that was in response to her criticism of official restrictions on her movement when she visited in July. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed last month that some Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh could start returning on about January 21. A Bangladeshi official said on Tuesday that might be delayed.

Human rights groups warn the Rohingya may face more violence if they are sent back. The government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar has refused to accept Rohingya Muslims as a minority group, though they have lived in the country for generations. Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship in 1982.

PTI
This is the truth: All people of India are Hindus says Dr. Mohan Bhagwat

India slams China, Pakistan for not clearly understanding threat of terrorism

International

pti-PTI

India has hit out at some UN members for failing to "clearly understand" the common threat of terrorism due to their "narrow political and strategic concerns," apparently referring to Pakistan and China.

India's Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said terror networks operate across borders in terms of propagation of hateful ideologies, sometimes based in deep-rooted perceived grievances; raise finances; procure arms; and recruit operatives.

"This is a common challenge which requires greater focus by this Council, one where closer international cooperation needs to be, can be and should be expanded for our common interest," Akbaruddin told the Security Council during an open debate on December 20 on 'Addressing complex contemporary challenges to International Peace and Security.'

"It appears that this common threat to states and societies is not clearly understood here. Even on counter-terrorism, cooperation continues to elude the Council," he said.

Akbaruddin was apparently referring to China's decision to repeatedly block a move by India to designate Masood Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant group, as a global terrorist.

On an issue as serious as designation of terrorist individuals and entities, the Council-mandated Sanctions Committees fail to make concrete progress and fall victim to "narrow political and strategic concerns in some cases," he said.

Akbaruddin also referred to the fact that the U.N.-designated terrorist and Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, was seeking to contest elections in Pakistan.

Hafiz Saeed had announced that his Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) will contest the 2018 general elections in Pakistan under the banner of the Milli Muslim League, which is yet to be registered with the Election Commission.

"In other cases where Sanctions Committees have designated terrorists, there are states who venture to mainstream U.N. designated terrorist individuals into their political process in total disregard of international law, thus putting our common security in peril," Mr. Akbaruddin said in his address to the Security Council.

PTI
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
WorldNews 06 Mar 2020

Boris Johnson is facing the prospect of his first Commons rebellion since the general election over his decision to allow Huawei a..
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a 9,993 km2 (3,858 sq mi) metropolitan area known as Greater Melbourne, comprising an urban agglomeration of 31 local municipalities, although the name is also used specifically for the local municipality of City of Melbourne based around its central business area. The metropolis occupies much of the northern and eastern coastlines of Port Phillip Bay and spreads into the Mornington Peninsula, West Gippsland, as well as the hinterlands towards the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong and Macedon Ranges. It has a population over 5 million, mostly residing to the east side of the city centre, and its inhabitants are commonly referred to as "Melburnians".
Wibbitz Top Stories 10 Nov 2022

Biden Prepares, for His First Face-to-Face , With Xi Jinping.

On November 14, United States President Joe Biden will meet with..
From FPIF

The very tools that Erdogan has used to make himself into a sort of modern day Ottoman sultan are backfiring.



(Image by (Image: Democracy Chronicles / Flickr)) Details DMCA



Viewed one way, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan looks unassailable.

He weathered last year's coup attempt, jailed more than 50,000 opponents, fired more than 100,000 civil servants, beheaded the once powerful Turkish military, eviscerated much of his parliamentary opposition, dismissed almost half of the county's elected officials, and rammed through a constitutional referendum that will make him an all-powerful executive following the 2019 election. In the meantime, a seemingly never-ending state of emergency allows him to rule by decree.

So why is the man running scared?

Because the very tools that Erdogan has used to make himself into a sort of modern day Ottoman sultan are backfiring.

The state of emergency is scaring off foreign investment, which is central to the way the Turkish economy functions. The loss of experienced government workers has put an enormous strain on the functioning of the bureaucracy. And the promises he made to the electorate in order to get his referendum passed are coming due with very little in the till to fulfill them.

"No Neighbors Without Problems"

Part of the problem is Erdogan himself. In that sense he's a bit like U.S. President Donald Trump, who's also alienated allies with a combination of bombast and cluelessness. The Turkish president is in a war with Washington over a corruption trial, at loggerheads with Germany (and most of the European Union) over his growing authoritarianism, and -- with the exception of Russia, China, Qatar, and Iran -- seems to be quarreling with everyone these days.

It's certainly a far cry from a decade ago when the foreign policy of Ankara was "zero problems with the neighbors." As one Turkish commentator put it, it's now "no neighbors without problems."

What's thrown a scare into Erdogan, however, isn't so much the country's growing diplomatic isolation, but the economy -- and how that might affect the outcome of presidential elections in 2019.

Hot Money, Cold Corruption

In the run-up to the constitutional referendum last year, the government handed out loans and goodies to the average Turk. Growth accelerated, unemployment fell, and the poverty rate was reduced.

But the cost of priming that pump has come due at the very moment that international energy prices are on the rise. Turkey imports virtually all of its energy, but when the price of oil was down to a little more than $30 a barrel, the budget could handle it.

The price of oil in December, however, was close to $60 a barrel, and a recent agreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia to curb production will drive that price even higher in the future. Rate hikes for gasoline and heating will be up sharply in the coming months.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).


The Great Depression

(Image by paulsimpson1976) Details DMCA



Identity politics fiddled while America burned.

The passage of the Trump-Republican tax plan--along with the 40 years of increasing economic inequality in the United States--speaks to the failures and limits of identity politics in America.

Final passage of the Trump-Reagan tax plan will be among the most economically regressive policies ever passed by the American government. The combination of permanent tax cuts for corporations and temporary tax cuts for wealthy individuals (along with small temporary tax cuts for the middle class and poor), as well as the elimination of the Affordable Care Act individual mandate, the increase in the standard deduction (which will hurt non-profits), exacerbates an economic trend that has been building since the 1970s in America and which was documented by the likes of economist Thomas Piketty, the Congressional Budget Office, and a host of other agencies.

The tax plan does nothing to repatriate corporate money to the US or to repeal the laws (criticized at least since Bill Clinton) that incentivize companies to offshore jobs. It will do nothing to help the white working class who voted for Trump, instead, benefitting the top 1% and people like Trump. It is simply class warfare against the poor and middle class, but the latter are not fighting back. Why? The reason is the turn to identity politics among progressives in the last 40 years that has all but eclipsed class as a rallying and unifying principle of liberal and left politics.

Historian Louis Hartz wrote once that the weakness of class politics in America stemmed from the fact that the country lacked a feudal past. We were all born Lockean-liberal individualists with a belief that America was the land of opportunity and we could all become millionaires. Paraphrasing historian Daniel Boorstin, the genius of American politics was in creating political structures that transformed class into interest politics. While James Madison in Federalist number 10 declared that the most "common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property," many such as historian Charles Beard and political scientist Michael Parenti see the resulting constitution devised by the framers as insulting the minority wealthy against the tyranny of the poor majority.

Despite this class bias, traditional liberal if not real progressive politics was class-based. What was once called the Old Left drew some of its inspiration from socialist theories of class struggle. Politics was about social justice, the battle between rich and poor, and it involved labor unions, the working class, and workers. It was about fighting for economic equality and democracy, seeing political unity in the shared struggle of class. In contrast, the New Left was the politics of the 1960s. It was born in the student campus movement against the Vietnam War, and for civil rights. The New Left was less about class than about identity politics, and it had stronger middle class roots than did the Old Left. The Old Left and New Left both sought to transform American politics, yet their visions of what a revolution would look like and what would emerge were different. The Old Left saw political progress rooted in class struggle and transformation that would eventually achieve liberation for oppressed groups, the New Left focused directly on the liberation of groups because of their social identity.

The Old left produced the New Deal and the Great Society programs. The New Left produced the civil rights revolution. Yes, the Old Left ignored racism, sexism, and homophobia, but it did help produce a politics that reduced the inequalities of the 1920s to their most egalitarian by the early 1970s. If the Old Left politics was unity in a shared class struggle to transform political economic power relations, the New Left is coalitional interest group politics. Political change is about empowering individual groups, the daily grind of groups using the official institutions of power to achieve change. America is less fundamentally corrupted and can be incrementally reformed.

Identity politics and the New Left helped kill class politics and the Old Left. It unwittingly cooperated with conservatism to kill progressive politics. It helped divert attention away from labor unions which pushed for economic security, it drove a wedge between white working class and people of color by making the latter the bearers of white privilege. Fostering leftist identity politics produced the counter-movement of identity politics of the right, along with the resurgence of White Supremacy. While the New Left correctly pointed to the failures of the Old Left, it was willing to support political candidates such as Bill and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama who embraced Neo-Liberal policies that did very little to address the politics of the rich and poor. In the case of Bill Clinton, he presided over "ending welfare as we know it" and supporting regressive racial criminal justice policies that did more to hurt class and identify politics that perhaps any other politician.

Obama did get modest health care reform based, but did little if anything to help out the homeowners after the economic crash of 2008. He continued the Bush-era policies of bailing out the banks, ignoring the demands of labor unions and workers to make it easier organize or get better wages. Obama also did little to address the role of money in politics, and, at the end of the day, his advocacy for the Trans-Pacific Partnership did little to rectify the inequities that many free trade agreements such as Clinton's NAFTA have in terms of disproportionately burdening the working class. Overall, identity politics and the New Left singularly came to be identified with the Democratic Party, a party complicate in the erosion of economic equality over the last 40 years. The New Left and the Old Left--identity and class politics--failed to synthesize to produce a meaningful alternative to conservatism.

No wonder Democrats have lost the support of working class America. No wonder why the Trump-Reagan tax bill is about to pass. Progressivism, as it came to embrace identity politics, fiddled while America burned.
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.



Dr. Jill Stein

(Image by Gage Skidmore) Details DMCA



Jill Stein Denounces Probe over 'Collusion with Russians'

The Green Party presidential candidate says she will comply with the Senate investigation of her campaign, but warns that "a noose is tightening around our democratic institutions"

AARON MATE: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Mate'.

As a third party presidential candidate in a two-party system, Dr. Jill Stein was marginalized during the 2016 election. But, over a year later, the ever growing Russiagate controversy has pushed her into the spotlight. The Senate Intelligence Committee is now investigating Stein for, yes, possible "collusion with the Russians." Stein's campaign says it will comply with the Senate request for all relevant documents. Stein is likely being scrutinized for attending the 2015 RT Gala in Moscow, where she sat at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Despite numerous interviews explaining the nature of her trip to Russia, Stein has remained the target of a smear campaign, and this Senate move only adds fuel to that fire.

Dr. Jill Stein joins me now, physician, activist, and the Green Party's presidential nominee in 2016. Dr. Stein, let's start with the Senate request. What have they asked you for?

JILL STEIN: They've basically asked us for all relevant documents, and in truth, we have been very transparent throughout, from the get-go, when we first contemplated going to Russia as a part of the 10-year anniversary conference being held by RT. I was asked to participate in a panel addressing foreign relations, a subject that was at the top of our agenda during the presidential election, and we really welcomed the opportunity to lift up those ideas, calling, essentially, for a peace offensive in Syria and in the Middle East, looking really to do a 180 in our warmongering, not only with Russia but in the Middle East, and to put our foreign policy on a footing of international law, human rights, and diplomacy.

So, we welcomed the opportunity to go. We had to raise money to get there, because we were not going to accept money from a foreign government and violate campaign finance laws and ethics and so on, and create a conflict of interest, so we were raising money to get there from before the time that we went. We thanked our donors afterwards. We put out press releases about exactly who we were meeting with, and what the subject of discussion was. That was it.

Essentially, they're going to see a lot of administrative email arranging logistics, and in particular our [inaudible] on RT as an independent political candidate excluded from corporate media, to whom we represent a threat, and I think that's part of what it boils down to that [inaudible] political party, in an election, where 76% of Americans were clamoring for other voices and other choices, wanted open debates, held the two establishment candidates in greater [inaudible] than in any election in modern history. People were hungry for what we were offering, and they continue to be. I think this is another effort to [inaudible] the competition to the two establishment political parties who are running the show.

AARON MATE: All this is stuff you've explained before in public interviews, especially as you face questions about that infamous trip to the RT Gala in 2015, but yet, this continues, and I was struck at looking at the reaction yesterday to this news of your being summoned before the Senate Intelligence Committee. One staffer, who worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, put out tweets saying, "Jill Stein is a Russian agent," over and over. Many people celebrated this as if this was going to prove something, as if this was a cause to celebrate. What do you think accounts for the reaction that has greeted this news, and just the overall hostility you've gotten over the past year, and the suggestion that you've been in league with the Kremlin?

JILL STEIN: Yeah. Well, I think both parties are nervous about the political revolt that's taking place, and it's well known that many Bernie Sanders supporters then became Trump supporters, thinking that this was how we protest this political status quo that's been throwing everyday people under the bus. Look at the last several weeks where the Democrats have really been focused on Russiagate rather than on this outrageous tax plan, which has all of a 30%, approximately, support, or the attack on the FCC.

The Democrats are essentially missing in action. They're very busy trying to Trumpify their programs, and are essentially waiting for an election to be able to run against Donald Trump in the mid-terms. It doesn't serve them well, it doesn't serve the American public, and I think in this case, we see a committee, which is being led by a Republican, looking for something that the Democrats and Republicans can agree on, because their time is coming due now, and they have to write a report, and come up with something, and they haven't exactly come up with something solid, not with a smoking gun.

I think the American public is widely confused. It's very hard to see the forest through the trees here. I do want to go on record that there is a valid and important dimension to addressing the question of interference in our elections. That is why my campaign launched a recount immediately after the election, to look into this question by essentially examining the voting machines. Unbeknownst to most Americans, those voting machines are still off limits. They have never been examined. Voting machines have never been examined for forensic evidence to confirm or to disprove, for once and for all, the question of interference, actually, in the hardware and the software of our elections, which is an important aspect. Our point is that it's not only foreign interference, it's interference by domestic agents, partisans, lone wolves, gangsters, and so on, and corporations, private corporations who own and run the software, that interference is not okay in our elections across the board.

We are now in a position of having to prove our innocence. We are presumed guilty, largely because of the Democratic party opposition research, which was essentially what the Trump dossier was all about. This was Democratic DNC-sponsored, secretly, and sort of using laundered money to avoid reporting in campaign finance laws, but this was essentially Democratic party opposition research, which declared, without a shred of evidence, that our campaign was being sponsored by the Kremlin, an outrageous statement, presented without one bit of fact or documentation, that was then used to begin smearing us and establish this presumption of guilt out there.

But, last I heard, we still had a presumption of innocence, although certainly that is under attack as well. That brings us to where we are today, essentially, what began with Democratic party propaganda, opposition research, that began to target us as a real, perceived threat, and likewise, to the Republicans, we are a perceived threat, because we are a politics that is not controlled by predatory banks and fossil fuel giants and war profiteers and pharmaceutical companies and all the rest, which have thrown the American people under the bus.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).








CNN's Don Lemon Interviews Beto O'Rourke 12-13-2017 After the huge Alabama senate race victory for Democrats, Don Lemon speaks with Congressman Beto O'Rourke about what this means for battles in other states. O'Rourke is running against Senator Ted Cruz, presuming he wins the primary and gets the nomination.





(note from Stephen Fox: I met Congressman O'Rourke when he was in Santa Fe for a wedding a few months ago. We talked in my gallery, and he struck me as very bright, sincere in his populism and his creative solutions, and a worthy opponent to beat Ted Cruz for the Texas Senate seat. I will publish more of his press releases and letters, starting with this one. To read more about this Congressman with the bright future, here is his Wikipedia article: wikipedia.org/wiki/Beto_O%27Rourke)

The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in America hasn't been this pronounced since the Gilded Age -- a time of intense concentration of power and wealth, with officeholders captured by special interests, corrupted by their purchase of access and outcomes. The priorities of the wealthy, the corporations, the trusts, the privileged dominate American life today, much as they did a hundred years ago.

We have sadly lost the way charted by Teddy Roosevelt and the trust-busting, democratizing, progressive leadership that met the challenge of that earlier era. Continued by FDR and the New Dealers, the next generation fought for the common woman and man, to make sure that the dignity of work and the national interest took priority over the preferences of the privileged. And with John F. Kennedy another generation forward, we found the sense of national purpose that comes when we ask each other to put our country ahead of ourselves, to be ambitious for the common good and for mankind itself.

Where is that leadership today?

It's not as though we lack for real challenges -- the disparity between the rich and poor, the inequality of schools in the same city but on different sides of the track, the disconnect between the jobs that we are creating and the training available to the unemployed, the investment missing in broadband internet, flood mitigation or just rebuilding the homes destroyed by Harvey.

But instead of meeting these challenges with determination and leadership, we are in danger of succumbing to the whims of the political patrons of the party in power.

Hours ago, the House voted to ask Americans to pay $1.5 trillion in debt to finance tax cuts to the very wealthiest in this country. This will exacerbate this historic divide, further concentrate wealth and power and continue to undermine what it means to be American.

But this tax bill also betrays a contract that we've had with each other going back to the New Deal -- one that says we will take care of each other so that we can each contribute to our fullest potential.

If this passes the Senate -- which it almost certainly will -- and becomes law, 13 million Americans will lose their health insurance.

One million additional Texans -- already the least insured state in the country -- won't be able to see a doctor, or a therapist, a nurse, a psychologist, that person who will make the difference in the lives of those we care about. That's in addition to possible cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that will come with mounting pressures from the additional deficits and debt.

If we are going to stop this slide into a country where power, wealth and privilege are concentrated for the few at the expense of the many, we can't wait for the next presidential election. We've got to win in 2018, we've got to be the 51st vote in the Senate and finally get back on the path of progress, ensuring that we all work together to do something great for Texas and important for the country.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).


The real story of Christmas

(Image by Win_Photography) Details DMCA



The Real Christmas Story... A single unwed teenage mother of enslaved people of color, living in poverty gave birth to a child, with no place to lay their head. This birth was revealed to the working class, despised and poor shepherds. Kings, mystics of other races, nationalities, and religions came to see this child. The child and his family fled as refugees to Egypt to escape a genocide of young children as ordered by a puppet King of the Roman Empire... That is the Christmas story in its real and raw earthy form. So why in light of the historical context of this story does western capitalist religion, particularly Christianity, not teach this reality?



The reasoning it is not taught is varied, but I believe the core reasoning for this has a lot to do with those in leadership in the church and religious institutions, aspiring for and seeking power. The institutionalization and corporatization of religion has led to a dangerous coziness between the church, corporations and the government. The church has bowed to Caesar! This surrender has made it possible for the commodification of religion and holidays like Christmas, the blurring of church and state, the power of the "Christian" right, and their unabashed support of Trump.



To truly teach the inclusivity, diversity and circumstances of the birth of Jesus in its context would be devastating to the toxic relationship of the church and its religious affiliates. It would turn things upside down! It would mean that ministers and religious leaders must speak truth to power, truth to their congregations and truth to the wealthy and powerful that attend their churches, donate money, populate their deacon and elder board. This would likely bring down the mega-church empires, religious TV empires and political relationships with government.




From Our Future

This simple rule of thumb has rarely failed: When Democrats get confident, I get nervous. That's true, even when Republicans inflict disaster on the country -- and potentially on themselves.

"This tax bill will be an anchor around the ankles of every Republican," says Sen. Chuck Schumer. "If they haven't learned it yet, they're going to learn it next November."

It must have been a satisfying image for Schumer to conjure up: legions of Republicans dragged down to Davy Jones' locker, like a spectral corpse crew from The Pirates of the Caribbean. And it certainly should be true of the bill currently being finalized by Republicans.

After all, we're at a crossroads in American history. We are experiencing historic levels of inequality, where two families -- the Waltons and the Koch brothers -- own more wealth than 115 million people, or more than a third of the population. Over 40 million Americans live in poverty, more than 27 million are without health insurance, wages for most people have stagnated, and the middle class is dying.

This bill will make those problems much, much worse, and the ensuing disaster should offer Democrats a historic opportunity to win in 2018, and in 2020. But for that to happen, Democrats need to do something they've been reluctant to do so far. In the face of elitist piracy, they must become economic populists.

Take the debate that's been raging since Doug Jones [won] his Alabama Senate seat. Did black voters win the seat for Jones, or did a shift in the white vote win the race? Two things can be true at once: It is entirely possible that a shift in white votes lifted Jones over the top -- while, at the same time, the black vote was essential to Jones' win.

People sometimes confuse voter analyses, which are tactical in nature, with political values. There are certainly reasons to fear the conclusions that could be drawn once analysts start tracking changes in the white vote. The analysts' fear is this: If Democrats need to appeal to white voters, they may ignore other black and brown voters -- or worse, will resort to conservative, if not overtly racist, pitches to woo whites.

That's a holdover from the divisive, Mark Penn-style Democratic strategizing of past years. But it ignores the fact that voters in all groups share some common economic and social concerns.

And yet, some people are intent on maintaining the false notion that class politics and racial politics are in conflict. That's misguided. And when Democrats try to base their appeal on one without considering the other, as Doug Jones sometimes did, the results aren't always pretty.

The Democratic Party should be deeply concerned about a recent Black Women's Roundtable/ESSENCE Magazine poll showing a dramatic 11-point slip in the number of African-American women who "felt the Democratic Party best represented their interest" over the past year. While support remains very high, this drop is deeply troubling. Is it borne of racial pain, economic discouragement, or some combination of the two?

Black voters continue to face the unique and ongoing trials laid out by our country's history of slavery and racism. But they also face the same economic woes as other working Americans. In fact, black Americans are worse off as a group on most economic and social measures. It's not racist to point that out, despite what some Democrats claim.

In fact, it may be racist to deny it.

With this tax bill, the Republican Party has issued its legislative manifesto. It has declared its allegiance to the wealthiest and most powerful among us, and proclaimed its willingness to sacrifice everyone else on the flaming altar of unbridled greed. That's an opportunity for Democrats, but it's not a guarantee of victory.

For Democrats to win in 2018 and 2020, they'll need to do more than tie this bill around the Republicans' ankles and hope they sink. It's not enough to tell voters that the ideology of greed is a lie. They'll have to offer a more compelling vision based on egalitarian values, both social and economic, along with concrete proposals for turning that ideology into reality.

Without that vision, the tax bill will have raised only false hopes -- and the Democratic Party will be just another sinking ship.
By Robert Weiner and Michael Hariman

Now in the era where even sexual harassment is considered a national crime, what happens to the annual 100+ rapes by UN peacekeepers annually? The nations that perpetrate these rarely emphasized but documented atrocities go unpunished by the world body. This is a real situation that is the UN's shame. So if we're talking about resolutions of peace among nations, perhaps it's time to stop the funding for nations that allow rapes of helpless victims they are supposed to protect.

The Department of State Authorities Act, Fiscal Year 2017 was passed into law on December 16, 2016. S.1635 is a far cry from the original S.2937, which proposed sweeping measures to stop sexual harassment by peacekeepers in the United Nations and other international organizations. Unlike S.2937, which would have cut funding for international organizations guilty of condoning sexual crimes by peacekeepers, S.1635 simply stated that the US would withhold security assistance to nations whose security units are responsible for sexual crimes, without specifying what security assistance would be withheld.

Sounds like the new legislation simply twirls around the issue rather than stops the rapes.

The bill details two measures towards individual rapists. First, it enables the trial of guilty UN peacekeepers by court-martial. Second, it waives immunity for civilian UN personnel accused of sexual crimes, the immunity preventing criminal UN personnel from being tried. Countries providing military units as peacekeepers who are found guilty of sexual crimes will be barred from sending more units, and their peacekeeper reimbursements withheld. The strategy also denies training, and resources to peacekeeper-contributing countries that fail to prevent sexual crimes among their peacekeepers.

Rather than dealing with the United Nations as an institution, which has inexplicably long been complicit in enabling sexual crimes, the strategy punishes the individual nations that contribute the peacekeepers. While targeting individual nations is better than allowing UN peacekeepers to remain unaccountable, it is a narrow measure, which is bound to yield narrow results that cannot stop the rapes. Until the UN knows that it can and will lose funding and power if it does not address these sexual crimes by its peacekeepers, it will continue to whitewash, and bury those accusations. Rapists will remain unpunished, and their victims unheard.

As the single largest donor to the United Nations, the US is in a unique position to influence policy and practices within the UN, however, the legislation fails to exploit that position. The only place where funding is leveraged against the UN is in the whistleblower provisions, which threatens a 15 per cent withholding requirement if international organizations, such as the UN, do not protect whistleblowers. If anything, the legislation is lip service, and its passage might not even affect how the United Nations conducts itself as an institution.

UN peacekeeping operations should provide sanctuary for innocent civilians from violence and rapes, not for rapists and pedophiles -- many of the victims are under 15-- who are rarely prosecuted. The US had an opportunity to rectify this UN failure in the State Department Authorities Act. Instead, the Act provides piecemeal provisions that fail to make the UN accountable as an institution, and will leave host countries bracing for another round of rapes.

Robert Weiner is a former Clinton White House spokesman and spokesman for the House Government Operations Committee. He was senior staff for Congressmen Ed Koch, Charles Rangel, Claude Pepper, and John Conyers, Jr. Michael Hariman is a policy analyst and opinion-editorial writer at Robert Weiner Associates.
After he served 8 years of a 27-year sentence for money laundering, kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin had his sentence commuted.



We should eat lab animals says the new FDA commissioner

(Image by Martha Rosenberg) Details DMCA



On May 14, 2008, hundreds of officers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) swooped down on Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, with helicopters in the largest single- site raid in US history, arresting half of the eight-hundred-person workforce. Two hundred and ninety Guatemalans, ninety-three Mexicans, two Israelis, and four Ukrainians were marched off to a waiting phalanx of buses and vans and a makeshift detention center.

Initial charges against Agriprocessors's employees included harboring illegal aliens, use of child labor, document fraud, identity theft, physical and sexual abuse of workers, unsafe working conditions, wage and hour violations, and shorting workers' pay. According to the search warrant, one thousand discrepancies between worker names and social security numbers occurred in three years. There was even a methamphetamine production plant existing within the slaughterhouse, sanctioned by management.80 Even Barack Obama, then an Illinois senator, weighed in on Agriprocessors.

"They have kids in there wielding buzz saws and cleavers. It's ridiculous," he said during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa.

Three hundred workers served federal prison sentences of five months for identity theft, and human resources managers and floor supervisors were convicted of felony charges of harboring illegal immigrants. Agriprocessors itself filed for bankruptcy. While thousands of child-labor charges were initially filed against Agriprocessors's owner, Aaron Rubashkin; his son Sholom; and others, the charges were dropped as prosecutors unspooled elaborate financial wrongdoing at the plant, which they pursued instead. In 2008, Sholom Rubashkin was convicted of eighty-six counts of federal-bank fraud in connection with loans to the company, including fabricating fake collateral for loans, ordering employees to create false invoices, and laundering millions through a secret bank account in the name of Torah Education, reported the New York Times. Sentencing documents also suggest the Postville mayor, Robert Penrod, received or extorted money from Agriprocessors to discourage unionizing at the plant.

The immigration raid was not Agriprocessors' first troubles. In 2004, an undercover video showed cows very much alive after being "slaughtered" and having their throats cut, and it led to a USDA investigation that "reported many violations of animal cruelty laws at the plant," says the New York Times. A year and a half after the cruelty video, the Forward paid a visit to Postville and reopened public scrutiny. Hundreds of semi-indentured immigrant employees were working ten- to twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, for $6.25 to $7 a hour, wrote the newspaper calling them "the impoverished humans who do the factory's dirty work."

Before the immigration raid, Agriprocessors had six Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations in one year, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints that supervisors extorted bribes from workers. Employees were untrained and unprotected from dangerous equipment, reported the Forward. Two workers required amputations in one month, and one was still working at the plant with a hand missing when the Forward visited, "hoping to collect enough to pay off his debts back home."

After the immigration raid, prosecutors asked for a life sentence for the young Sholom Rubashkin, citing his lawlessness and lack of remorse, more than one dozen former US attorneys cried to the judge: Unfair! "We cannot fathom how truly sound and sensible sentencing rules could call for a life sentence--or anything close to it--for Mr. Rubashkin, a 51-year-old, first-time, nonviolent offender," said a letter signed by former attorney generals Janet Reno, William Barr, Richard Thornburgh, Edwin Meese III, Ramsey Clark, and Nicholas Katzenbach. Nonviolent if you leave out what happened to the workers and the animals at Agriprocessors.

(Article changed on December 22, 2017 at 18:14)

(Article changed on December 22, 2017 at 18:46)
From Smirking Chimp

As special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation moves closer to Donald Trump, there is a concerted effort by the president's apologists to shut it down. Commentators on Fox News and Republican Congress members are attacking Mueller, causing speculation that the special counsel's days are numbered.

Since his investigation began in May, Mueller has already obtained two indictments and two guilty pleas. Most recently, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI. Although he could have been charged with more serious crimes, Flynn secured the deal by promising to cooperate with prosecutors and provide evidence against other, as yet unnamed, individuals. Flynn's guilty plea brings Mueller's investigation into the White House.

The president himself has cause for concern, particularly since Mueller subpoenaed financial records from Deutsche Bank, one of the largest lenders to Trump companies. "Since 1998, the bank has led or participated in loans of at least $2.5 billion to companies affiliated with Mr. Trump," the Wall Street Journal reported. That figure doesn't count "at least another $1 billion more in loan commitments that Deutsche Bank made to Trump-affiliated entities."

Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General (AG) Rod Rosenstein after AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Rosenstein expressed confidence in Mueller, saying there was no good cause to fire the special counsel. Rosenstein testified:

"Based on what I know, I believe Director Mueller is appropriately remaining in his scope and conducting himself appropriately, and in the event there is any credible allegation of misconduct by anybody on his staff, that he is taking appropriate action."

Rosenstein was alluding to a recent GOP complaint against Mueller. FBI agent Peter Strzok, a former member of Mueller's team, sent anti-Trump messages to his girlfriend during the presidential campaign. When the messages were discovered, Mueller removed Strzok from the investigation. Nevertheless, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway declared that Strzok's inclusion on the Mueller team was evidence that "the fix was in against Donald Trump from the beginning."

Mueller is also being attacked for obtaining "many tens of thousands" of emails, including messages from Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, from the General Services Administration (GSA), a government agency that hosted the email system for the presidential transition. Kory Langhofer, counsel for the transition team, wrote a letter to congressional committees complaining that the provision and use of the emails may violate privilege rules and the Fourth Amendment.

But Peter Carr, a spokesperson for Mueller's office, told The Hill, "When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process."

GSA deputy counsel Lenny Lowentritt said in an interview with BuzzFeed that the Trump transition team was told that any material "would not be held back in any law enforcement" situation. "Therefore," he said, "no expectation of privacy can be assumed." Norman Eisen, deputy general counsel for Obama's transition team, agrees. He tweeted, "I warned everyone: there is NO expectation of privacy in your transition emails."

In order to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, there must be a reasonable expectation of privacy in the documents obtained.

Indeed, if Langhofer felt his legal arguments had merit, he would appeal to a judge, instead of simply writing to Congress.

The talking heads at Fox News are also fanning the anti-Mueller flames. This is particularly disturbing because Trump, whose favorite television show is "Fox & Friends," parrots much of what he sees and hears during his reported four to eight hours of daily TV watching. (Trump denied he watches that much television, also tweeting that he seldom watches CNN or MSNBC.)

Sean Hannity called the special counsel "the head of the snake" and "a disgrace to the American justice system." Greg Jarrett stated, "I think we now know that the Mueller investigation is illegitimate and corrupt." Laura Ingraham declared, "What a total travesty, they should all step aside ... including Bob Mueller." Jeanine Pirro said, "[The FBI and the Justice Department need] to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in handcuffs."

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
From To The Point Analyses



Trump and Netanyahu

(Image by flickr.com) Details DMCA



Part I -- The Relevance of International Law

It is not easy to write anything new about President Trump's 6 December 2017 announcement that he -- and supposedly the U.S. as a nation -- was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After all, plenty of very smart and attentive people have already commented on this decision. I particularly like those who pointed out that Trump's move replicated that of Arthur Balfour. As Balfour had assumed in 1917 that he could promise Palestine to the Zionists, so Trump seems to have assumed he could legitimize Jerusalem as Israeli territory. The connection seems to support the philosopher George Santayana's observation that those who know no history are bound to repeat it.

As was the case with Balfour, neither Trump nor the U.S. Congress (whose edict the president has so eagerly carried out) has any legal authority to proceed in this fashion. In the case of Trump and the Congress, what should get in their way is international law -- which, when represented in signed treaties, is incorporated into U.S. law. The Geneva Conventions are such a case. Part of these conventions (again, now made U.S. law) makes it illegal to conquer territory and then absorb it by moving your own citizens in while ethnically cleansing the original population. One can also cite the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court declaring apartheid policies a crime against humanity. This is not U.S. law but reflects international consensus. Israel is in violation of aspects of the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, as well as a host of United Nations resolutions.

Trump, along with the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, seems to be ignorant, or perhaps just callously unconcerned about international law -- even when it has become their law! Nowhere is it referenced in Trump's announcement. It is doubtful that he and those in Congress give it any thought at all. It is this shameless stupidity that concerns me. For, to the extent that we ignore international law, the world returns to the conditions that led to World Wars I and II, and of course, to the Holocaust.

Part II -- "Open Eyes and Fresh Thinking"

Trump: "When I came into office I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking."

Comment: This state of mind cannot be completely achieved because we all are shaped by culture and personal past experiences. However, it can be approximated if one is (a) conscious of one's biases and assumptions and (b) knows enough relevant history to recognize what is indeed relatively "fresh" and original. I think it is safe to say that President Trump is nowhere near this level of consciousness. Rather than clear-headed and original, he behaves erratically and is very much in the grips of cultural prejudices and personal biases.

President Trump, though a particularly outrageous example of this impaired condition, is not the only American leader to mistake his own ignorance for clear-sightedness (George W. Bush comes to mind). It is perhaps because it is so difficult to really see the world's problems "with open eyes and fresh thinking" that wiser men and women than Mr. Trump have laid down international laws designed to prevent nation-states from taking actions that have, beyond doubt, proven to be disastrous.

Part III -- "Alternative Facts"

Trump: The announcement on Jerusalem "marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians." Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocating the U.S. embassy there will "advance the cause of peace." We know this to be so because putting off this step for the past 20 years has not advanced that cause.

Comment: Trump's reasoning here is, well, unreasonable, and historically mistaken. Previous presidents did not delay moving the U.S. embassy because they thought not doing so would help bring about Palestinian-Israeli peace. First, they promised to make this move for domestic political reasons during election campaigns -- a nod to the Zionist lobby's funding potential. Afterward, they held back because to actually take this step would only make things in the Middle East worse, and not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis. The United States has other Muslim rulers in the region who are its "allies." Trump's predecessors, or at least their advisors, knew that the men who ruled Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the like had populations with significant numbers of people who would be quite agitated over just the move Trump has now undertaken. These U.S. leaders feared, not without reason, that ceding Jerusalem to the Israelis would destabilize those allies and boost the threat of terrorism.

No doubt aided by an abiding ignorance, President Trump has replaced the facts which held back the hand of his predecessors with "alternative facts." For instance, he has replaced the facts that make up the history of Jerusalem as related to both Islam and Christianity, and the millennia-old emotions that go along with it, with the reality of an illegal 50-year occupation of the entire city by Israel. Having rendered truth in this fashion, the president concludes that his decision must be in the interest of both the U.S. and peace because it is "nothing more or less than the recognition of reality."

How simple is President Trump's world! Simple as only the ignorant can see it. No wonder Secretary of State Tillerson (who is not without his own short-sightedness) called President Trump a "moron."

Part IV -- Don't Misunderstand Me

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

From Down With Tyranny Blog

I want to put this on people's radar and suggest a few questions as the drama begins to unfold: What would happen if Bernie Sanders ran for President in 2020?



Barring Change, Sanders Could Easily Enter the Race



First, let's make all the enabling assumptions -- that he remains healthy and strong, that he remains the most popular politician in America and that no disruptive scandals emerge to derail him in the meantime.





"Bernie makes moves pointing to 2020 run

"The Vermont senator is taking aggressive steps to address long-running political weaknesses, like his lack of foreign policy bona fides.



"Bernie Sanders is taking steps to address longstanding political shortcomings that were exposed in 2016, ahead of another possible presidential bid in 2020.



"From forging closer ties to the labor movement to shoring up his once-flimsy foreign policy credentials, the moves have provided the senator inroads into party power structures that largely shunned him in favor of Hillary Clinton last year. They've also empowered the progressive icon to harness his newfound political power and help Democrats fight President Donald Trump's administration.



"Sanders has been working closely with figures who are close to the party establishment he's long railed against, like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. And he's been meeting with international affairs experts such as Bill Perry, a defense secretary in the administration of President Bill Clinton, around a series of speeches designed to define his international vision, one year after running a campaign heavy on domestic policy and light on the rest of the world.



"The Vermont independent hasn't decided whether to run for president again in 2020. To his closest allies, his efforts represent a natural next step in his role as 'outreach chairman' for Senate Democrats, a new position created for him late last year by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.



"Yet the maneuvers could form an important part of a Sanders 2020 effort, a dozen of those allies acknowledged to POLITICO -- one that looks markedly different from his surprise 2016 bid, which often suffered from a lack of mainstream political support."

"How Dem insiders rank the 2020 contenders

"Democrats predict that as many as 30 candidates will compete in their party's presidential primary in 2020.



"And while it's still too early to say who might come out on top, buzz is building around some potential candidates, even as other hopefuls fade to the background.



"A year after a devastating 2016 defeat, Democrats are craving new faces with fresh ideas. Yet many of their leading contenders for the White House in 2020 are politicians who have been around for decades.



"There's also no clear standout in the potential field. ...



"The Hill interviewed nearly a dozen prominent Democrats to find out who has captured the party's attention in recent months and who has fallen out of favor.





Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"The most effective ways to create a more inclusive, fair-for-all future will be from the bottom up. Rob Kall's book lays out how that would look with a hopeful, pragmatic vision that will change the way you see the world."



Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for The Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People's History of Spo
Quicklink Not Found

Sometimes, authors delete their quicklinks after publishing them.



To see if the quicklink was renamed or re-published, please click here.
Progressive Content Not Found

Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing.



To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here.


Which surgeon would you choose?

(Image by pixabay) Details DMCA



This is the story of two Ukraine's, but it's not the tired and typical before and after the coup tome. This is a side by side view of two Ukraine's as they stand today in December 2017. Looking at it this way, you have to decide which Ukraine is the terrorist entity and which Ukraine works to save and better the lives of its people.

You get to tell me which Ukraine would make a good partner for the US, Europe, Russia, and the rest of the world. Which Ukraine would you want for your neighbor or to come to that BBQ?

For every story there has to be a backbone of facts it rides on, doesn't there? And yet, despite a glut of facts, both you and the rest of the world are sometimes expected to ignore the grim realities and cozy up to the dysfunctional monsters of our time. And not just cuddle up but lean over and give em' a big smooch too. Let's look our Ukraine(s).

One Ukraine is centered in Kiev . It has not been attacked by a foreign nation since WWII. It has received and squandered tens of billions of dollars in IMF loans and international support. More to the point, tens of billions in aid has been stolen and will never be repaid. The money will never be used for reforms or to rebuild the economy.

Instead of starting the reforms that the aid was tied to, Poroshenko's Ukraine has consistently and persistently lowered the standard of living for its own people. This Ukraine is a country that a failed state like Somalia can look down on today.

This Ukraine led the world in some medical treatments and now has consistently dropped its own health care standards and system to rival 3rd world countries.

Even more striking is that under the watchful eye of the Ukrainian-American Diaspora's Ulana Suprun, who as Ukraine's Health Minister pushed Ukraine to legalize the organ trade. Ukraine used to lead the world in the illegal organ trade has now legalized it and the Ukrainian government now takes your loved one's organs without consent.

Suprun's idea of health reform is destroying the health care for heart patients by denying them medications for life-threatening conditions. Borys Todurov, head of the Heart Institute in Kiev and a heart surgeon accused Suprun of negligence that he claimed has led to thousands of patients' deaths. "I absolutely responsibly declare (and I can repeat it in court) that your negligencetook more lives of Ukrainians than the war in recent years," Todurov said."

Suprun has likewise destroyed cancer treatment in Ukraine. She did this by systematically refusing to purchase the medications needed to treat cancers, heart conditions, and disease.

Her idea of giving children a great start was to just not purchase the vaccinations children normally receive against childhood disease. To what extent you might ask? Documented vaccinations dropped from 96% in 2007 to 20% in 2017.

To really understand the level of criminality US citizen and Diaspora activist Ulana Suprun has been involved with in Ukraine, you need to go back to February 2014. Ukraine was considered a friendly nation by the USA. Ulana Suprun violated the Neutrality Act by intervening and helping to overthrow the sitting president, Victor Yanukovych. The last time US citizens were prosecuted for this was in 2016. They are serving 25 year sentences for their trouble. Why isn't she being charged?

How does this translate as this philosophy of death is passed into Ukrainian society?

Meet Alexandr Chernov, a man the Observer branded as Ukraine's Dr. Mengele . In the same fashion that every western medical doctor subscribes to the Hippocratic Oath, Ukraine did too. The stresses on Ukrainian society with the new Ukrainian nationalist leaders has changed society to the point that doctors who have sworn to do no harm, now seek to harm, maim, and kill people they perceive as their enemies.

According to Chernov"Having ensured my own security, my number one priority was to inflict damage on enemy patients--to the soldiers on the enemy's side--by means of medication."

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
'



alienation

(Image by metamatic) Details DMCA



To a nation whose income and wealth inequality has already risen to levels last seen in the gilded age, President Trump plans to give a "great, big, beautiful Christmas present." Under its gaudy wrapping, this package includes a corporate tax reduction (from 35% to 21%), large tax cuts for the already wealthy and little or nothing for the rest of us. By 2027, taxes will go up for households earning less than $75,000. Congressional Republicans are planning to cut back on Medicare, Social Security and welfare programs as a way to pay for revenue lost to these tax cuts. That's why the non-partisan Tax Policy Center concludes that

"If you consider plausible ways of financing [the deficit created by the tax cuts in] either the House or the Senate bill, most low-and middle-income households would eventually end up worse off than if the bill did not become law."

The bills also end the Obamacare mandate. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this will result in 13 million fewer Americans with health insurance. Merry Christmas.

To justify this awful legislation, Republicans invoke a trickle-down, supply-side mantra that is discredited by nearly all economists and by history. They claim that if wealthy investors get tax cuts, they will use their extra money to make profits from new production that creates jobs and raises paychecks. Yet, as Michael Bloomberg points out, corporations don't need the extra trillion dollars generated by the corporate tax cut; they're already sitting on $2.3 trillion in liquid assets.

According to Market Watch, corporate profits are at a record high but "America is starved for new investments in infrastructure, capital equipment and new technology." Big corporations have discovered that it's "a lot easier to invest in Wall Street securities than it is to build a factory or office on Main Street." With wages stagnant, demand for new products and services is slack. So why invest in new production?

Republicans know that CEOs won't use their trillion-dollar gift to engage in socially useful investment. Last Nov. 14 Trump's Treasury Secretary Gary Cohn was sitting onstage in front of a large audience of CEOs and top executives at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council meeting. "A Journal editor asked the crowd to raise their hands if their company plans to invest more if the tax reform bill passes. Very few hands went up." Cohn was embarrassed but undeterred.

The overriding agenda of the GOP is to add to the wealth of their rich donors. They can lie about it (e.g. calling the tax bill relief for the middle-class) or hide their agenda behind appeals to nativism, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-intellectual and anti-scientific attitudes lurking in conservative Christianity, and single-issue voters opposed to abortion.

But sometimes there are moments of candor, as when Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) said: "My donors are basically saying, 'Get it [the tax bill] done or don't ever call me again.'" Or when Sen. Lindsey Graham told a journalist that if the tax bill failed, "the financial contributions will stop."

Capitalism is essentially predatory--it seeks to subordinate all the functions of the state to the growth of capital. It seeks to privatize and profit from formerly public functions such as prisons, education, defense, intelligence, communication networks, water supply and the supervision of banking and monetary policy.

It follows the imperative laid out by Milton Friedman in his hugely influential 1970 New York Times essay "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits." He argued that in a typical corporation there is one and only one group of stakeholders to whom management is responsible: shareholders. Management is obliged "to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom."

What his simple-minded argument overlooked was that the growth of capital is growth in the power of capitalists to shape "the basic rules of the society" to their advantage, as we have seen in a succession of tax cuts for the investor class under Reagan, Bush and now Trump. And just a few days ago the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became a striking example of capitalist predation.

On Dec. 14 the Republican majority on the FCC voted to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rule which barred internet service providers such as Comcast or Verizon from deliberately speeding up, slowing down or blocking traffic from specific websites and apps. They can now discriminate based on political views. A public function, what was our information freeway, is about to become a toll road controlled by large corporations who can charge you different rates for different speeds and destinations.

'Capitalism' is often confused with other, more positive aspects of our economic life, as in the opening words of Britannica.com's entry on capitalism: "Capitalism, also called free market economy or free enterprise economy." It is good for a society to have a market in which entrepreneurs are free to offer products and services in a market. But we can have these without subordinating our society to the goals of predatory Friedmaneque mega-corporations.

'Capitalism' needs to lose its luster. It should be understood as a great danger to democracy and human flourishing.
Twenty-Seven psychiatrists and mental health experts have produced a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which I think, despite stating that the fate of the world is in the hands of an evil madman, understates the danger.

The case that these authors make is one that I believe would strike most readers not loyal to Trump as common sense. The evidence that they compile, and with which we're mostly already familiar, strongly supports their diagnosis of Trump as hedonistic, narcissistic, bullying, dehumanizing, lying, misogynistic, paranoid, racist, self-aggrandizing, entitled, exploiting, empathy-impaired, unable to trust, free of guilt, manipulative, delusional, likely senile, and overtly sadistic. They also describe the tendency of some of these traits to grow ever worse through reinforcing cycles that seem to be underway. People, they suggest, who grow addicted to feeling special, and who indulge in paranoia can create circumstances for themselves that cause them to increase these tendencies.

As the Justice Department closes in on Trump, writes Gail Sheehy, "Trump's survival instincts will propel him to a wag-the-dog war." Of course, this builds in the assumptions that Trump stole the election and that we will all remain dogs, that we will start approving of Trump if he starts bombing more people. Certainly this has been the U.S. corporate media's approach thus far. But need it be ours? The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists disapproves and has moved the doomsday clock closer to zero. The Council on Foreign Relations has begun listing the United States as a top threat to the United States. A Congressional committee has held a hearing on the danger of a Trumpian nuclear war (even while feigning impotence to do anything about it). It's not beyond the realm of imagination that the U.S. public could refuse to cheer for more mass murder.

In this regard, certainly most past presidents have been more successful, not less, than Trump at what Robert J. Lifton calls the normalization of evil. He gives as an example the creation of the acceptance of torture. And certainly we've moved from Bush Jr. secretly torturing to Obama refusing to prosecute to Trump publicly supporting torture. But many still deem torture unacceptable. Hence this book's assumption that the reader will agree that torture is evil. But murder by bomb or drone missile has been so normalized, including by Barack "I'm really good at killing people" Obama, that it's passed over by this book as simply normal. Lifton does refer to the normalization of a nuclear threat during the (previous) Cold War, but seems to believe that phenomenon to be a problem of the past rather than one so successfully normalized that people don't see it anymore.

Most of the symptoms found in Trump have existed in various degrees and combinations in past presidents and in past and current Congress members. But some of the symptoms seem to serve only as icing. That is, alone they are deemed unobjectionable, but in combination with others they point to severe sociopathy. Obama switched positions, lied, schemed, falsely marketed wars, reveled in the commission of murder, joked about using drone missiles on his daughter's boyfriends, etc. But he spoke well, used a better vocabulary, avoided blatant racism, sexism, and personal bullying, didn't seem to worship himself, didn't brag about sexual assault, and so on.

My point, I very much wish it were needless to say, is not the equivalence of any president with another, but the normalization of illnesses in society as much as in individuals. This book goes after Trump for falsely claiming that Obama was spying on him. Yet the unconstitutional blanket surveillance of the NSA effectively means that Obama was indeed spying on everyone, including Trump. Sure, Trump was lying. Sure, Trump was paranoid. But if we avoid the larger reality, we're lying too.

The symptoms from which Trump suffers may be taken as a guide to action by his followers, but they have long been understood to be an outline of the techniques of war propaganda. Dehumanization may be something Trump suffers from, but it's also a necessary skill in persuading people to participate in war. Trump was given the presidential nomination by media outlets that asked primary candidates questions that included "Would you be willing to kill hundreds and thousands of innocent children?" Had a candidate said no, he or she would have been disqualified. The authors fault Trump for his joining the long list of presidents who have threatened to use nukes, but when Jeremy Corbyn said he wouldn't use nukes, all hell broke loose in the UK, and his mental state was called into question there. Alzheimer's may be a disease afflicting Trump, but when Bernie Sanders mentioned important bits of history like a coup in Iran in '53, the television networks found something else to cover.

Is it possible that refusing to confront reality has been normalized so deeply that the authors join in it, or are required to by their agent or editor? Academic studies say the U.S. government is an oligarchy. These doctors say they want to defend the U.S. "democracy" from Trump. This book identifies Vladimir Putin as being essentially the same as Adolf Hitler, based on zero offered evidence, and treats Trump denials of colluding with Russia to steal an election as signs of dishonesty or delusion. But how do we explain most members of the Democratic Party believing in Russiagate without proof? How do we explain Iran being voted the biggest threat to peace in the world by Americans, while people in most countries, according to Gallup and Pew, give that honor to the United States? What are we to make of the vast majority of Americans claiming to "believe in" "God" and denying the existence of death? Isn't climate denial child's play beside that one, if we set aside the factor of normalization?

If a corporation or an empire or an athlete or a Hollywood action film were a person, it might be Donald Trump. But we all live in the world of corporations, empire, etc. We also apparently live in a world in which numerous men enjoy abusing women. That all these sexual harassers in the news, some of whom I am guessing are innocent but most of whom appear guilty, have convinced themselves that women don't really mind the abuse can, I think, be only a small part of the explanation. The large part seems quite clearly to be that we live in a country of sadists. And shouldn't they get a chance to elect someone who represents their point of view? Trump has been a public figure for decades, and most of his symptoms are nothing new, but he's been protected and even rewarded throughout. Trump incites violence on Twitter, but Twitter will not disable Trump's account. Congress is staring numerous documented impeachable offenses in the face, but chooses to look into only the one that lacks evidence but fuels war. The media, as noted, while remarkably improving on its enabling deference, still seems to give Trump the love he craves only when he brags about bombing people.

The U.S. Constitution is and has always been deeply flawed in many ways, but it did not intend to give any individual beyond-royal powers over the earth. I've always viewed the obsession with the emperor that this article I'm now writing feeds as part of the problem of transferring power to him. But the authors of The Dangerous Case are right that we have no choice but to focus on him now. All we'd need would be a Cuban Missile Crisis and our fate would be sealed. The Emperor Formerly Known As Executive should be given the powers of the British queen, not be replaced by an acceptable Democratic emperor. The first step should be using the Constitution.

Similar analyses of George W. Bush's mental health, not to mention a laundry list of abuses and crimes, never resulted in any action against him. And despite this new book's claim to defend "democracy" it does not use the word "impeachment." Instead, it turns to the 25th Amendment which allows the president's own subordinates to ask Congress to remove him from office. Perhaps because the likelihood of that happening is so extreme, and because further stalling and protecting of Trump is naturally a means of appearing "reasonable," the authors propose a study be done (even though they've just written a book) and that it be done by Congress. But if Congress were to take up this matter, it could impeach Trump and remove him without asking permission of his cabinet or doing any investigations. In fact, it could impeach him for any of a number of the behaviors that are studied in this book.

The authors note that Trump has encouraged imitation of his outrages. We've seen that here in Charlottesville. They note that he's also created the Trump Anxiety Disorder in those he frightens. I'm 100% on board with treating fear as a symptom to be cured.


(Image by The UnAmerican Struggle) Details DMCA



When Doug Jones won the Atlanta Senate seat on December 12, most Americans breathed a sigh of relief. They were able to point to the victory as a sign that the beating heart of American values was not yet dead, and that there was hope for the country's future.

A new documentary film, "The UnAmerican Struggle ," written and directed by Ric Osuna , is a primer on how to revitalize the American quest to fulfill a vision of liberty and justice for all in the age of Trump.

Those concepts have often fallen quite short of the idealized notion Americans identify with -- beginning with the decimation of the indigenous population inhabiting the land when Europeans first arrived.

Speaking to the camera, Osuna states his mission: "To examine the resurgence of bigotry that Trump brought about with his words."

Osuna weaves darker pages from American history with the challenges the nation is currently facing. For those unaware of these narratives, they contextualize our current issues with lessons from the past.

Setting the tone with an image of the Statue of Liberty and the words of Emma Lazarus, Osuna presents the popular view of America as a haven to the oppressed and downtrodden.

How then, Osuna asks, did 62 million American voters cast their ballots for a candidate promoting a message of "racism, sexism, and xenophobia?"

Interviewing a group of experts to address this question, Osuna hopes to inform viewers by examining the specific challenges facing Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, women, and the Transgender communities -- as they struggle to achieve the promise of "Tolerance, Equality, and Diversity" in an "inclusive" America.

Throughout the film, Osuna features clips of Trump's inflammatory rhetoric as he expounds upon his "Make American Great Again" vision. Osuna juxtaposes it with footage of previous presidents.

Trump riles up a crowd about "bad hombres" and "building a wall." Obama states, "We can be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants." Ronald Reagan addresses Mikhail Gorbachev when he implores him to tear down the Berlin Wall. Post 9/11, George W. Bush makes a point of visiting a mosque and emphasizing, "The face of terror is not the true face of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about."

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).


Mike Pence - Caricature

(Image by (From Wikimedia) DonkeyHotey, Author: DonkeyHotey) Details Source DMCA





Between the Mueller investigation into collusion with Russia and the sexual assault claims, the end of President Trump looks like it could be a real possibility . If he were removed from the presidency, we would have a new man in the oval office: President Pence.

So what would a Pence presidency look like? And would we be better with Trump (provided he doesn't get us nuked)?

A Man of Morals (for Sale)

Pence's most defining characteristic is his morality. He pushes legislation based on his religious beliefs, and he is guided by those beliefs. It's the reason why he once signed legislation making it legal for businesses to discriminate against gay people (causing the biggest brouhaha of his governorship). Of course, he quickly backtracked on that once the uproar threatened to take jobs from his state. His bid to "remoralize" America faltered hard -- and he caved.

When the famous "Grab 'em" Access Hollywood audio was released, Karen Pence was disgusted, according to The Atlantic. And even though she reportedly finds Trump "vile," Mike Pence is still his vice president. Did he think about jumping ship? Sure. In the end, though, he stuck with the vile man for political gains.

Who's the Boss (of President Pence)?

Part of the reason for his loyalty lies in the concept of servant leadership -- the idea that no matter your position, there's always someone to serve. Without Trump, who is the boss of President Pence? According to former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, it's the Koch brothers.

Trump ran on a platform of bucking the system; his money gave him freedom from being bought. Mike Pence, however, is not a wealthy man. The Koch brothers, worth roughly $90 billion, have a corporate strategy that involves heavily investing in candidates in order to push through legislation that benefits them. They've financed Pence's campaigns. Ironic, then, that a platform of bucking the system could bring us the most bought-and-paid-for president of all time. The Kochs's political agendaincludes repealing the Affordable Care Act, abolition of Medicare and Medicaid, welfare (and all government assistance programs), and Social Security. They're for the de-regulation of campaign finance laws, and the insurance industry. The want the dissolution of the Department of Transportation, the EPA, Department of Energy, and OSHA.

Women's Rights (and the Wrongs Pence Inflicts on Them)

If you're female, President Pence is going to be a bad time. He's supported and has attempted to push through horrific legislation restricting women's rights. While he was governor he signed House Bill 1337, one of the most stringent pieces of anti-abortion legislature. It forbade the abortion of fetuses with life-ending chromosomal damage, and more disturbingly, required the burial of miscarried or aborted fetuses. The latter led to a movement called "Periods for Pence," wherein women flooded his office with calls and tweets to talk about where they were in their menstrual cycle, and what they should do about it. He's a part of the movement to defund Planned Parenthood and has funded abortion crisis centers -- places that pressure women into having unwanted children, don't provide medical assistance of any kind, and then charge insurance for the visit.

All of that aside, his views on women are just plain odd. He doesn't believe in sharing a meal with another woman or attending a gathering with mixed company and alcohol unless his wife is present. That's a strangely restrictive policy, and it has disturbing ramifications for any women who work with the president. He also calls his wife "Mother," both in private and public, but that's a whole other issue.

Anti-Gay (Is OK to President Pence)

Pence's opinions on LGBTQ issues are the stuff of nightmares. When the Ryan White Care Act was in the works, he argued that resources provided by the act should be "directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior." He was a board member of the Indiana Family Institute, who believed the protests around vicious murder of Matthew Shepard to be homosexual-activist "propaganda." He thinks gay couples represent social collapse.

And let's not forget he thinks businesses should be allowed to discriminate against gay couples in the name of religious freedom.

Put all that together and it's hard to tell what's worse: a president with a tendency to rage tweet or a morally reprehensible gargoyle?
Setting QR Version Number & Enhanced DatabarStacked Barcode Recognition in SQL Reports

https://docs.aspose.com/display/barcodenet/Managing+Barcodes

http://www.aspose.com/docs/display/barcodereportingservices/How+to+Display+BarCodes+in+Report+Header

http://www.aspose.com/products/barcode/reporting-services

http://www.aspose.com/downloads/barcode/reportingservices

http://docs.aspose.com/display/barcodereportingservices/Home

What's New in this Release?Aspose team is happy to announce the new release of Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services 17.12.0. The major development in this release is the support to generate QR coded barcode with setting version number. Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services now enables the developers to generate QR coded barcode with setting its version number. Setting QR version number is very simple and is demonstrated in the code snippet on blog announcement page. The code snippet contains comments that makes it self-explanatory. This release also fixes exceptions that were reported by Aspose valued customers, Such as Process of setting license has been improved, Now API will show correct exception message in case license, subscription is expired. Setting license time has also been improved, Working of Aspose.BarCode in multi-threaded environment has been enhanced, DatabarStacked barcode recognition process has been enhanced & more. Below is the list of new and improved features added in this new release Support to set QR version while generating barcode image Setting License in Aspose.BarCode throws exception Aspose.BarCode throw exception when used in multi-threading Setting License in Aspose.BarCode takes too long Unable to recognize DatabarStacked barcode with big white spaceNewly added documentation pages and articlesSome new tips and articles have now been added into Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services documentation that may guide users briefly how to use Aspose.BarCode for performing different tasks like the followings.- Managing Barcodes:- How to Display BarCodes in Report Header:Overview: Aspose.BarCode for Reporting ServicesAspose.BarCode for Reporting Services is a .NET solution for the rendering of barcode images in SQL Server 2000, 2005 & 2008 Reporting Services. It supports 40+ linear (1D) and 2D barcode symbologies including MacroPdf417, Australia Post, OneCode, Code128, Code39, PDF417, UPCA, Codabar, MSI and QR etc. Also render barcode images on reports in BMP, JPG, PNG and GIF formats. Other features include EAN-128 application identifiers, DPI resolution settings, barcode size and location adjustments.More about Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services- Homepage of Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services:- Download Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services:- Online documentation of Aspose.BarCode for Reporting Services :Aspose Pty Ltd was founded in March 2002 in Sydney, Australia. The corporate portal was firstly launched in October 2002. Aspose strives to provide the richest component choices for global .NET programmers. Thousands of organizations from tens of countries have acquired Aspose products, including Microsoft, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, DuPont, Hilton Hotels, Reader's Digest, Bank of America, Boeing, Siemens, etc.Aspose Pty LtdSuite 163, 79 Longueville RoadLane Cove, NSW, 2066AustraliaPhone: 888.277.6734Fax: 866.810.9465
Hepatitis C Treatment Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Hepatitis C Treatment Market

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com/market-reports/global-hepatitis-c-treatment-market/#ulp-4H8Z4LpNMLEuOnnx

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com/market-reports/global-hepatitis-c-treatment-market/#ulp-c654SbFYO64MsOhu

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com/market-reports/global-hepatitis-c-treatment-market/#ulp-14mlyhjMGhVjZqa3

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com/market-reports/global-hepatitis-c-treatment-market/

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by Hepatitis C virus (HCV) and affects primarily the liver. Hepatitis C is commonly caused by blood to blood contacts such as intravenous drug use, unsterilized equipment, blood transfusions, and sexual intercourse. Hepatitis C may also cause from mother to fetus during birth. People with alcoholism and HIV infection of any age group are at increased risk. Currently, there is no vaccine available to treat hepatitis C conditions. However, various drugs such as protease inhibitors, HCV polymerase inhibitors, and HCV NS5A inhibitors are commonly used to treat Hepatitis C. Early stage of infection typically has no symptoms. The critical stage of infection may display symptoms such as fever, dark urine, abdominal pain, and yellow-tinged skin occurrence. The severity in hepatitis C may lead to liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, liver failure, and sometimes also causes the dilated blood vessels in the oesophagus and stomach. Hepatitis C can be prevented by using sterilized equipment, screening of blood donors, avoiding multiple sexual partners, and avoiding sharing of injections and razors.The global market for Hepatitis C treatment market is expected to grow at a significant CAGR due to increase in the prevalence of Hepatitis C infection. Rising awareness regarding Hepatitis C treatment, increase in healthcare expenditure, and government initiatives and various NGOs creating awareness regarding the Hepatitis C treatment is expected to fuel the market growth over the forecast period. In addition, rise in the funding in research and development activities for Hepatitis C treatment and strong pipeline products might boost the global Hepatitis C treatment market over the forecast period. However, lack of antibiotics in the market, high cost of medications, and lack of hepatitis C infection awareness in poor countries might hamper the growth of global Hepatitis C treatment market over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Hepatitis C treatment market segmented on the basis of drug class, route of administration, and distribution channelBased on drug class, the hepatitis C treatment market has been segmented into the following: Polymerase Inhibitors NS5A Inhibitors Interferons HCV protease inhibitors Combination TherapyBased on route of administration, the hepatitis C treatment market has been segmented into the following: Oral ParenteralBased on distribution channel, the hepatitis C treatment market has been segmented into the following: Retail Pharmacies Hospital Pharmacies OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Increase in prevalence of hepatitis C infection and liver cirrhosis expected to fuel the growth of Hepatitis C treatment market. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally there are 80 Mn people suffers from chronic hepatitis C virus, in that approximately 700,000 will die each year as a result of the infection. Acquisitions and mergers, collaborations, launching of new products, increase in research and development activities, and approvals for new products from various drug regulatory bodies such as U.S. Food and Drug Administration are some strategies followed by various companies to increase their market share in global hepatitis C treatment market. For instance, in July 2011, Merck MSD, inked an agreement with Roche for the marketing approvals of Victreli (Boceprevir) triple combination therapy with peginterferon alfa and ribavirin (peg/riba). In addition, in August 2011, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated announced that Health Canada approved its Incivektm (Telaprevir) tablets for people with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C with compensated liver disease. In January 2014, European Commission (EC) granted marketing authorization for Gileads Sovaldi (Sofosbuvir) to treat chronic hepatitis C infection.Need more information about this report @Geographically, the hepatitis C treatment market has been segmented into following regions Viz. North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to dominate the global hepatitis C treatment market followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. Increase in prevalence of hepatitis C infection (according to Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), approximately 2.7-3.9 Mn people in the United States are chronically infected with hepatitis C Virus), rise in the awareness among the key stakeholders towards the use of novel products and technologies to treat the hepatitis C, and increase in research and development activities are the key factors bolster the hepatitis C treatment market in North America region. Europe holds a key share in hepatitis C treatment market owing to increase in prevalence of Hepatitis C infection (according to European centre for Disease Prevention and Control approximately 5.9 Mn people are suffering from HCV infection), rise in the geriatric population, change in the lifestyle, people involving in the unprotected sexual intercourse, and increase in the research and development activities might boost the hepatitis C treatment market in Europe region. Asia-Pacific hepatitis C treatment market growth is attributed to increase in the prevalence of hepatitis C infection, rise in the population in Asia-Pacific region, and increase in the healthcare infrastructure. The Middle East & Africa region has high prevalence of HCV infection majorly in Egypt that is approximately 8434 prevalent cases per 100,000 people.Some of the players in Hepatitis C treatment market are GlaxoSmithKline, plc. (U.K.), Bristol-Myers Squibb (U.S), F. Hoffmann- La Roche Ltd. (Switzerland), Merck & Co, Inc. (U.S), Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. (U.S.), Gilead Sciences (U.S.), AbbVie Inc. (U.S.), Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (U.S.), and Kadmon Holdings, Inc. (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 @
Multi-million Diamond Deal busted

The diamonds in question

https://www.bclique.com/

Bclique a social network for entrepreneurs uncovered a multi-million diamond deal which was being conducted under its hood by some Bclique members. The diamond deal was unearthed this week by the vigilant Bclique team.All the members involved in the deal had their Bclique accounts suspended pending investigation being carried out by the Bclique team .The team suspects these diamonds not to be legit and are demanding to see the full Kimberly certification of the diamonds before they can consider lifting the suspension on the affected members. Meanwhile the Bclique team has advised all its members not to be involved in any dodgy deals .Bclique co-founder Mr Brown Sugar said Bclique will not hesitate to suspend any member of the community found on the wrong side of the law. He also went further to advice all entrepreneurs on Bclique not to accept any suspected dirty cash offered to them by any member of the community.The Team has also advised all Bclique members to raise the alarm whenever they suspect wrong doing by another member of the community .More details of the deal will be revealed after full investigation has been completed by the Team.The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) imposes extensive requirements (*) on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as conflict-free' and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate trade.Under the terms of the KPCS, participating states must meet minimum requirements' and must put in place national legislation and institutions; export, import and internal controls; and also commit to transparency and the exchange of statistical data. Participants can only legally trade with other participants who have also met the minimum requirements of the scheme, and international shipments of rough diamonds must be accompanied by a KP certificate guaranteeing that they are conflict-free.Source:Bclique is a social network for entrepreneurs28 burlington roadleedsls11 0ds
AdminDroid Office 365 Reporter Now Includes Microsoft Teams Auditing Reports and Analytics

AdminDroid Office 365 Reporter Now Includes Microsoft Teams Auditing Reports and Analytics

http://admindroid.com/office-365-reporter-release-notes

http://admindroid.com/download

www.admindroid.com

AdminDroid, the company dedicated to solving IT administrators challenges, today announced that its flagship product AdminDroid Office 365 Reporter solution now includes Office 365 Auditing Reports and Analytics. This new version helps the administrators to visualize the activities happen inside their Office 365 environment in a clear way. The auditing dashboards show the summarized activities performed on Office 365 applications such as Azure AD, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive and Security & Compliance Center. Using this powerful tool, IT administrators will not only be able to extract rich Office 365 auditing reports and statistics, but can also schedule the reports and have them emailed at selected intervals.AdminDroid adds Microsoft Teams Auditing Reports and Usage Tracking.Microsoft Teams is a team communication service available in Office 365 which helps organization people to communicate and collaborate with themselves. As more people are moving towards Microsoft Teams from Skype and Yammer, IT admins need to keep track of usage across their organization's departments.AdminDroid O365 Reporter comes handy for IT admins who want to measure the Microsoft Teams usage in their organization. It helps to find the Teams usage across organization's departments, cities, states or people's designations. Also, the auditing reports help to take control of Microsoft Teams' channels, bots, connectors, tabs, etc.Easily Measure Microsoft Teams Adoption with AdminDroidThe Usage & Adoption dashboard helps the admins to get the Microsoft Teams adoption metrics using a few mouse clicks. Also, the auditing reports make it is easy to monitor the users activities in Microsoft Teams services. Microsoft Teams Logins  Keep track of user logins and monitor the devices used to access Microsoft Teams. AddOn Management  Monitor the Bots, Connectors, and Tabs which are added or removed to various Channels. Teams Configuration Changes  Monitor all the settings changes applied to various Teams and Channels. Teams Management  Monitor management activities such as creation, deletion on Teams and Channels.AdminDroid Reporting Capabilities HighlightsAdminDroid Office 365 Reporter comes with advanced reporting capabilities which make tedious reporting task to an easier one. Automatic Schedule  Schedule one or more reports to run automatically at configured time and delivered straight to your preferred mail-ids. Rich Filters  Apply filter on any columns to see only the required information and save the filter for future use. Easy Customization  Allow you to easily customize the reports by rearranging, adding or removing the columns and its size. Report Export  Ability to export the reports to CSV, PDF, HTML, XLS or XLSX.For more information about the release:Download the product:About AdminDroidAdminDroid is a leading Office 365 solution provider whose objective is to build IT products that are highly user-friendly and discerning solutions. The solutions built by AdminDroid are always making everyone's life easier, and more productive. The flagship product AdminDroid Office 365 Reporter tool has been trusted by more than 2500 companies around 90+ countries and it has managed over 5 millions of Office 365 users so far.AdminDroid Solutions,28, Shri Kalyani apartments,6th cross, Kodihalli,Bangalore - 560017website:email: support@admindroid.com
AeroMACS Advances Worldwide as the Standardized Solution for the Airport Surface

www.wimaxforum.org

Ground Communication Improvements Enabled by Secure Wireless Broadband Technology to Support the Safety and Regularity of FlightsThe WiMAX Forum, the leading nonprofit organization that certifies and promotes the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon IEEE Standard 802.16, continues its efforts to advance the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS) globally. The WiMAX Forum and its member companies, through a wide variety of worldwide activities, are raising awareness about the value of this secure wireless broadband technology for the airport surface to further advance AeroMACS deployments and improve ground communication.In 2017, the WiMAX Forum has participated in several industry events, meetings, and technical activities to demonstrate AeroMACS as a vital industry standard selected to support the safety and regularity of flights. AeroMACS is key to improving Air Traffic Management (ATM), it brings multiple advantages to the aviation industry in terms of connectivity, cost-effectiveness, security and efficiency. AeroMACS operates in the protected and licensed aviation spectrum band enabling ground-to-aircraft communications through hundreds of fixed and mobile applications. It lowers operating costs, financial risk, and fuel consumption while reducing the risk of airport mishaps and time spent maneuvering in congested areas.Throughout the year, AeroMACS achieved significant milestones with the collaboration of key players in the aviation industry. In February, the WiMAX Forum welcomed Leonardo Company and Telrad Networks to its Board of Directors. These two companies along with Siemens, an existing Board Member, are the three worldwide leaders in the development and deployment of AeroMACS. In March, EUROCONTROL shared the results of a survey which confirmed the interest in AeroMACS among European stakeholders and the capability of the technology to address the aviation communitys needs. In April, the WiMAX Forum submitted a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting adoption of service rules for AeroMACS in the United States. In June, the FCC Implemented the WRC-12 AeroMACS Report and Order.In July, the ARINC 766: AeroMACS Transceiver and Aircraft Installation Standards, which specifies the form, fit, and function for AeroMACS to be installed in aircraft was published. Also in July, the WiMAX Forum initiated a strategic partnership with Eonti to secure AeroMACS networks and deliver AeroMACS Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Implementation and Management. In September, the WiMAX Forum published the Embraer tests with Siemens in Brazil establishing that Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry Services (AMT) and AeroMACS can operate together without interference. Also in September, the WiMAX Forum met with the FCC to discuss the overwhelming positive comments received on the AeroMACS Rulemaking Petition and address certain issues raised. In December, the WiMAX Forum and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) signed an agreement to collaborate in the oversight of AeroMACS PKI globally to deliver secure networks.Over the next few months, more AeroMACS announcements will be forthcoming. In the United States, AeroMACS has been confirmed to be widely deployed through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) program, and it is part of the Boeing datalink implementation roadmap ecoDemonstrator program focused on harvesting new technologies.In China, Aviation Data Communication Corporation (ADCC) has implemented AeroMACS projects in Chengdu and Beijing Capital Airports. ADCC has been formally authorized to install AeroMACS in 110 airports and expects installation in the top 30 traffic ranked airports prior to 2019. The Civil Aviation Authority of China is supporting the implementation of AeroMACS across the Chinese National Air System to enable D-Taxi. ADCC is in active trials with 4 Chinese Air Carriers to test this connectivity and is supported by Honeywell and Siemens.In Latin America, an AeroMACS multilateration project is under consideration in Argentina and a test is being planned in Brazil. In Europe, an AeroMACS project expansion has been approved in Portugal. In the Middle East, deployments are budgeted in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. WiMAX Forum AeroMACS Manufacturers have committed to delivering complete WiMAX Forum Certified systems (Base Stations and Devices) to the market in 2018.AeroMACS was highlighted at various aviation events this year including ACI-NA Annual Conference in Fort Worth, AAAE Runway Safety Summit in Orlando, AEEC AeroMACS Working Group in Coral Gables, ATCA in National Harbor, Avionics for NextGen in Herndon, DECEA Communications Workshop in Rio de Janeiro, ICAO GANIS/SANIS in Montreal, ICNS in Herndon, IFALPA in Montreal, World ATM Congress in Madrid, and other locations to foster a more prosperous environment and future for the ecosystem.Our activities this year have led to the expansion of AeroMACS worldwide, said Declan Byrne, WiMAX Forum President. We will continue to increase awareness of, educate, and meet with industry leaders about implementing and developing AeroMACS networks in ways that will best serve all stakeholders to relieve traffic, reduce congestions, prevent delays, and support the safety and regularity of flight.For more information, please visitAbout the WiMAX ForumThe WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization that certifies and promotes the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon IEEE Standard 802.16. The WiMAX Forums primary goal is to accelerate the adoption, deployment and expansion of WiMAX, AeroMACS, and WiGRID technologies across the globe while facilitating roaming agreements, sharing best practices within our membership and certifying products. WiMAX Forum and WiGRID Certified products are interoperable and support broadband fixed, nomadic, portable, and mobile services. The WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements.9009 SE Adams Street, Suite 2259Clackamas, OR 97015-2259
CLINICAL TRIAL REVEALS EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMON TREATMENTS FOR DEEP VEIN THROMBOSIS

ORANGE, CALIF. (Dec. 20, 2017)  Not all patients with blood clots in their legs  a condition known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT)  need to receive powerful clot-busting drugs, according to results of a large-scale, multicenter clinical trial.The study showed that clearing the clot with drugs and specialized devices could reduce the likelihood of long-term complications of DVT in some but not all patients.What we know now is that we can spare many patients the need to undergo a risky and costly treatment, said Principal Investigator Suresh Vedantham, MD, a professor of radiology and of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.The findings were published Dec. 7 in The New England Journal of Medicine.Between 300,000 and 600,000 people a year in the United States are diagnosed with a first episode of deep vein thrombosis and, despite standard treatment with blood thinners, roughly half will develop post-thrombotic syndrome, a condition leading to leg pain, pressure, swelling and difficulty walking. There is no treatment to prevent the potentially debilitating complication. However, small studies had suggested that a procedure that delivers clot-busting drugs directly into the clot may reduce the chance the syndrome will develop. The procedure is currently used as a second-line treatment to alleviate pain and swelling in people who do not improve on blood thinners.The Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis (ATTRACT) study  a randomized controlled trial primarily funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  was designed to determine whether performing the procedure as part of initial treatment for patients when they are first diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis would reduce the number of people who later develop the syndrome. In 2008, then-Acting Surgeon General Steven K. Galson, MD, issued a national call to action on deep vein thrombosis and specifically called for research into the benefits and risks of removing clots.The clinical research in deep vein thrombosis and post-thrombotic syndrome is very important to the clinical community and of interest to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, said Andrei Kindzelski, MD, PhD, the NHLBI program officer for the ATTRACT trial. This landmark study, conducted at 56 clinical sites, demonstrated in an unbiased manner no benefits of catheter-directed thrombolysis as a first-line deep vein thrombosis treatment, enabling patients to avoid an unnecessary medical procedure. At the same time, ATTRACT identified a potential future research need in more targeted use of catheter-directed thrombolysis in specific patient groups.The study involved 692 patients, randomly assigned to receive blood thinners alone or blood thinners and the procedure. Each patient was followed for two years.St. Joseph Hospitals Heart and Vascular Services program was one of the participating sites and a major contributor to the study. Site Principal Investigators were Interventional Radiologist Mahmood Razavi, MD, who also acted as a study steering committee member and James Pierog, MD, medical director of Emergency Services.The clinical trial showed that routine use of the procedure did not reduce the chance of developing post-thrombotic syndrome in all patients, but did reduce the severity of post-thrombotic syndrome, easing patients long-term symptoms. About 24 percent of people on blood thinners alone experienced moderate to severe pain and swelling, but only 18 percent of people who were treated with blood thinners and clot busters did so.The procedure also alleviated pain and swelling in the early stages of the disease, when patients are often very uncomfortable.However, the researchers noted an increase in the number of people who developed major bleeding after undergoing the procedure. While the numbers were small (0.3 percent versus 1.7 percent) and none of the bleeds were fatal, any increase in bleeding is a red flag.We are dealing with a very sharp double-edged sword here, said Vedantham, who also is an interventional radiologist at the universitys Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. None of us was surprised to find that this treatment is riskier than blood-thinning drugs alone. To justify that extra risk, we would have had to show a dramatic improvement in long-term outcomes, and the study didnt show that. We saw some improvement in disease severity but not enough to justify the risks for most patients.While the study showed that most patients should not undergo the procedure, the data hint that the benefits may outweigh the risks in some patients, such as those with large clots.For now, the procedure should be reserved for use as a second-line treatment for some carefully selected patients, who are experiencing severe limitations of leg function from deep vein thrombosis and who are not responding to blood-thinners, Vedantham added.Dr. Razavi, the principal investigator with St. Joseph Hospitals Heart and Vascular Services program added, This is why recent advances in clearing the blood clot from veins without the use of more risky clot-busting medications such as that used in this study are a substantial contribution to the care of patients with DVT. One such device is now in common use at St. Joseph Hospital to treat patients with DVT.The ATTRACT study was led by researchers at Washington University; McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; and St. Lukes Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo.###Vedantham S, Goldhaber SZ, Julian J, Kahn SR, Jaff MR, Cohen DJ, Magnuson E, Razavi MK, Comerota AJ, Gornik HL, Murphy TP, Lewis L, Duncan JR, Nieters P, Derfler MC, Filion M, Gu C-S, Kee S, Schneider J, Saad N, Blinder M, Moll S, Sacks D, Lin J, Rundback J, Garcia M, Razdan R VanderWoude E, Marques V, Kearon C and the ATTRACT Trial Investigators. Pharmacomechanical Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis for Deep-Vein Thrombosis. The New England Journal of Medicine. Dec. 7, 2017.The ATTRACT Trial was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers U01-088476 and U01-088118; Washington Universitys Center for Translational Therapies in Thrombosis, grant number U54-HL112303; Washington Universitys Institute of Clinical & Translational Sciences, which is supported by the National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences, grant number UL1-TR00044810; Boston Scientific; and Covidien (now Medtronic). Study drug and funding were provided by Genentech (a Roche Company). Compression stockings were donated by BSN Medical.About St. Joseph HospitalFounded in 1929, St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California is a nationally recognized, 463-bed, not-for-profit Catholic hospital dedicated to extending the healing ministry of Jesus in the tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission and designated as a Magnet hospital for nursing excellence, St. Joseph Hospitals reputation for clinical excellence and compassionate, family-centered care draws patients from all over the United States. This is one reason why St. Joseph Hospital was named one of the top hospitals in the Los Angeles/Orange County area by U.S. News & World Report. With a highly recognized 1,000-member medical staff and more than 3,100 support staff, St. Joseph Hospital is home to more than 75 specialty programs, including The Center for Cancer Prevention and Treatment, the Heart and Vascular Center and a nationally acclaimed Orthopedics program that has been ranked among the top 50 in the nation by U.S.News & World Report. Equally important is St. Joseph Hospitals dedication to caring for the medically underserved through health education programs, a free-standing medical and dental clinic, and mobile health vans. St. Joseph Hospital depends on philanthropic support from the community to carry out its mission. These efforts are coordinated through the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation. St. Joseph Hospital is a member of the Irvine-based St. Joseph Hoag Health alliance, an integrated health network of seven hospitals, 26 urgent care centers and an array of programs and services throughout Orange County and the High Desert.3532 Katella Avenue, Suite 110
Latin America Scar Treatment Market Analysis, Size, Growth and Demand, 2023

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/latin-america-scar-treatment-market/report-sample

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/latin-america-scar-treatment-market

https://www.psmarketresearch.com

The Latin America scar treatment market size was valued at $677.2 million in 2016, which is expected to attain $1,225.0 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period (2017-2023). Topical scar treatment held the largest share of the market in 2016, ahead of surface, laser, injectable, and invasive surgical treatments. Scar treatment for keloid & hypertrophic scar is expected to witness the highest growth during forecast period in the regional market mainly due to increasing number of dermal injuries in the region.Explore Report Sample at:Hospitals were the largest end user in the scar treatment market in Latin America and are expected to witness the highest growth, as compared to the private clinics, pharmacies & drug stores, and e-commerce in Latin America scar treatment market.The demand for scar treatment in Latin America has been growing, mainly due to increasing awareness and consciousness about appearance among people in the region. The growth in the region is expected to be concentrated around Brazil, due to increasing demand of scar treatment products in the country. Additionally, the disposable income in Brazil has been increasing, due to which the affordability for such procedures has also increased. It has been also observed that the number of aesthetic plastic surgeries performed in the country for various purposes, including scar treatment has also been increasing. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), 461,544 cosmetic surgeries were performed in Mexico in 2016, the third highest in the world after the U.S. and Brazil and 907,913 non-surgical procedures were performed in Mexico, the fourth highest in the world after the U.S., India and Brazil, thus driving the growth of the Latin America market.Explore Report at:Some of the key players operating in the Latin America scar treatment market include Advanced Biotechnologies Inc., Scar Heal Inc., Silimed Inc., Natura Cosmeticos S.A., Grupo Biomayan, Biodermis Cosmetics Ltd., GC Aesthetics PLC, Humco Holding Group, Inc., Farmoquimica S.A.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market ResearchManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Medical Tapes and Bandages Market Analysis, Size, Trends, Drivers and Forecast, 2023

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/medical-tapes-and-bandages-market/report-sample

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/medical-tapes-and-bandages-market

https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Medical Tapes are used as a medicine and first aid to hold a bandage or other dressing onto a wound. These tapes are designed to hold firmly to skin, dressing materials, and underlying layers of the skin (due to the presence of adhesive), without damaging the skin, and allow air to pass through them and reach the skin. Some breathable tapes such as Kinesiology Tape, and other elastic bandages with adhesives, are made of cotton. Surgical tape is often white because it contains zinc oxide, which is added to prevent infections. The global medical tapes and medical bandages market, is expected to grow in the forecast period due to increasing number of surgeries and growth in aging population. Medical bandages are generally used to support a medical device such as dressing or splint or to restrict the movement of any part of the body. Some of the other medical tapes used include micropore paper tape, trans-pore polyethylene tape and zinc oxide tape.Explore Report Sample at:The medical tapes and bandages market is divided on the basis of product, application and end user. On the basis of product, the market is segmented into medical tapes and bandages. Further types of medical bandages include gauze bandages, adhesive bandages, cohesive and elastic bandages, and other medical bandages. Medical tapes are further segmented as fabric tapes, paper tapes, plastic tapes, and other medical tapes. Medical bandages held the largest share of the global medical tapes and bandages market, in 2016, due to high number of surgical procedures, increasing aging population, and a rise in the number of various medical conditions that require surgical intervention.The rise in the number of surgeries performed, rapid growth in geriatric population and rising cases of chronic wounds are the factors driving the growth of the medical tapes and bandages market, during the forecast period. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) report on the global aging population, the population of people aged 60 years or above is growing at a high rate. The number of people aged 60 years or over is projected to grow by 56.0 % globally, i.e. from 901 million in 2015 to 1.4 billion by 2030, and is projected to more than double its size of 2015, to reach 2.1 billion by 2050. Additionally, according to the World Bank, 30,537 surgeries were performed per 100,000 population, in the U.S., in 2012. Similarly, in 2015, number of surgical procedures performed in Australia was 28,907, per 100,000 population. According to a publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2016, around 266.2 to 359.5 million surgeries were performed, globally, in 2012.Explore Report at:Some of the other key players operating in the medical tapes and bandages market are Beiersdorf AG, Covidien PLC (Medtronic PLC), Johnson & Johnson, Smith & Nephew PLC, Medline Industries, Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cardinal Health, Inc., Nitto Denko Corporation, BSN Medical GmbH (A Part of Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA)) and Derma Sciences, Inc. (Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corporation).About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market ResearchManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016US/ Canada Toll-Free: 1-888-778-7886Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Industrial Vehicles Market Synopsis and Highlights, Key Findings, Major Companies Analysis and Forecast to 2022

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2259

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/industrial-vehicles-market-2259

Global Industrial Vehicles Market Information Report by Product type (Forklift, Tow Tractor, Aisle Truck, Container Handler, Others), by drive type (Internal Combustion Engine, Battery-Operated, Gas-Powered and Others), By Application (Industrial, Cargo and Others) and By Region - Global Forecast To 2022Market Scenario:Industrial vehicle can be defined as any vehicle which is useful to carry, push, pull, lift, stack or tier materials for use in industries. The various types of industrial vehicles are used by different industries such as tow tractors, utility vehicles, burden carriers and stock chasers among others. Industrial vehicles facilitate the movement of goods efficiently and safely with no or very low emissions.The Industrial Vehicles market is majorly driven by the increase in the number of huge warehouses set up by the e-commerce companies such as Amazon, eBay and others. These e-commerce warehouses majorly require the industrial vehicles to stack up large quantities of the products and also transportation of the stocked goods from the warehouse to the end user in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The market is also driven by the increase in use of battery operated industrial vehicles with increasing awareness about the environment and with the government regulations for controlling the carbon-dioxide emissions from industrial vehicles. The increase in the fuel prices is expected to boom the sales of the fuel efficient industrial vehicles such as battery operated industrial vehicles. The increase in need of transporting the temperature sensitive products fuel the demand of refrigerated industrial vehicles.Get Sample of Report @Regional Analysis of Industrial Vehicle MarketAsia pacific is expected to be the largest region of global industrial vehicle market with the high growth of the automobile sector in the developing nations of the region. The rapid industrialization in the region is leading to the increase in need of using industrial vehicles for better transportation of finished goods & raw materials and its storage at warehouses. The growth will be followed by the North America and the Europe region as the concept of driverless industrial vehicles is gaining popularity in the region which has led to cost efficiency.Key PlayersThe key players of Industrial vehicles market are Anhui Heli Co., Ltd (China), Crown Equipment Corporation (U.S.), Hangcha Group Co. Ltd. (China), Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.(U.S.), Jungheinrich AG (Germany), Kion Group AG (Germany), Konecranes plc. (Finland), Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Co., Ltd. (Japan), Toyota Industries Corporation (Japan) and others.Intended Audience Industrial vehicle manufacturers Distributer & Supplier companies End Users consultants and Investment bankers Government as well as Independent Regulatory AuthoritiesThe report for Global Industrial Vehicles 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, 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
Shrink Packaging Market at 4.8% CAGR : Share, Analysis, Trend, challenges, Opportunities and Forecast to 2023

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4264

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/4264

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/shrink-packaging-market-4264

Global Shrink Packaging Market Information Report by Material (Linear Low Density Polyethylene (LLDPE), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) and others), by Product (Hoods, Labels & Sleeves, Wrap, and Other), by Application (Food Packaging, Beverages, Paper & Textile Products, and Others) and By Region - Forecast To 2023Global Shrink Packaging Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% during the forecast periodGrowing demand for packaged and processed food across the globe driving the growth of the market. Shrink packaging is the process in which sheets of transparent plastic film are wrapped around a product to form a solid, weather-resistant packaging layer. This packaging is transparent, making it suitable for retail and wholesale display, and ideal for general marketing purposes due to its clear surface. These are the factors also impact positively on the growth of the market. However, stringent government regulation may hamper the growth of the marketGet Sample of Report @On the basis of regions, global shrink packaging market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). Asia-Pacific dominates the global shrink packaging market. It is expected to be the fastest growing region for the market. Rapid growth in food and beverage industry in this region driving the growth of the market. Increasing demand for consumer goods in the region mainly due to high population is also fuelling the growth of the market. Additionally, availability of raw materials and low labor cost are the factors have the positive influence on the growth of the market. North America is also expected to contribute significantly during the forecast period. Increased consumption of beverages fuelling the growth of the market.Global shrink packaging market has been segmented based on material, product, application and region. On the basis of material, the market is segmented as Linear Low Density Polyethylene (LLDPE), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Poly vinyl chloride (PVC). Low Density Polyethylene dominates the material segment of the market. Majority of shrink film is LDPE. LLDPE is expected to be the fastest growing material segment. PVC is a dense material. It is considered to be a common material in India, when clarity is an important selection criterion, particularly for consumer packaging. This is because it is relatively strong, inexpensive and has a good shrink ratio. Based on product, shrink film hoods are expected to register highest growth rate. The growth is expected to be driven by increasing demand for hoods in industrial packaging and consumer goods packaging. On the basis of applications, the market is segmented as food packaging, beverages, paper & textile products, and others. Beverages segment dominates the application segment of the market. Increased consumption of beverages across the globe driving the demand of beverages.Shrink packaging is the process in which sheets of transparent plastic film are wrapped around a product to form a solid, weather-resistant packaging layer.Asia-Pacific region dominates the global shrink packaging marketOn the basis of regions, global shrink packaging market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). Asia-Pacific dominates the global shrink packaging market. It is expected to be the fastest growing region for the market. Rapid growth in food and beverage industry in this region driving the growth of the market. Increasing demand for consumer goods in the region mainly due to high population is also fuelling the growth of the market. Additionally, availability of raw materials and low labor cost are the factors have the positive influence on the growth of the market.North America is also expected to contribute significantly during the forecast period. Increased consumption of beverages fuelling the growth of the market.Enquiry before Buying @Global shrink packaging market has been segmented based on material, product, application and region. On the basis of material, the market is segmented as Linear Low Density Polyethylene (LLDPE), Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), Poly vinyl chloride (PVC). Low Density Polyethylene dominates the material segment of the market. Majority of shrink film is LDPE. LLDPE is expected to be the fastest growing material segment. PVC is a dense material. It is considered to be a common material in India, when clarity is an important selection criterion, particularly for consumer packaging. This is because it is relatively strong, inexpensive and has a good shrink ratio.Based on product, shrink film hoods are expected to register highest growth rate. The growth is expected to be driven by increasing demand for hoods in industrial packaging and consumer goods packaging. On the basis of applications, the market is segmented as food packaging, beverages, paper & textile products, and others. Beverages segment dominates the application segment of the market. Increased consumption of beverages across the globe driving the demand of beverages.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 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.Akash Anand,Market Research FuturePune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone No. :+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Enterprise Wearable Market to Witness Steady Growth in the Near Future

Enterprise Wearable Market

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/4518

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/enterprise-wearables-market

According to a recent report published by Allied Market Research, titled, Enterprise Wearable Market by Product Type, Technology, and End User: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20172023, the global enterprise wearables market was valued at $3,232 million in 2016, and is projected to reach at $32,418 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 38.8% from 2017 to 2023.Request for Sample PDF of the Report@North America dominates this market presently, followed by Europe. In 2016, China dominated the market in Asia-Pacific; similarly, Germany led the overall market in the European region. At present, the U.S. dominates the market in North America.Rise in healthcare awareness and increase in mobile penetration drive the demand for the enterprise wearables market. Further, the benefits such as ease of use, flexibility, and convenience fuels the market growth rate. However, high cost of enterprise wearables and rising data security and privacy concern impedes the market growth.In 2016, the Bluetooth technology segment dominates the global enterprise wearables in technology segment, in terms of revenue. However, based on product type, wrist wear and head wear leads the global market followed by eye wear in year 2016.Healthcare segment leads the enterprise wearables market by end user in 2016 in terms of revenue. However, aerospace & defense segment is anticipated to depict highest CAGR throughout the forecast period.Access Full Summary of the Report@North America is expected to lead the global enterprise wearable market throughout the forecast period followed by Europe. Furthermore, in 2016 Japan dominates the enterprise wearables market in Asia-Pacific. Similarly, the U.S. dominates the enterprise wearables market in North America and Germany leads the enterprise wearables market in Europe.Key Findings of the Enterprise Wearable Market: Wrist wear generated the highest revenue of the global electric vehicle chargers market, in 2016. In 2016, Bluetooth technology generated the highest revenue among the enterprise wearables market. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to exhibit a highest CAGR during the forecast period. In 2016, the healthcare segment contributed the highest market shares in the enterprise wearables market.The key players profiled in the report include Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., Adidas AG, Eurotech S.p.A, Fitbit Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Sony Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, Misfit Inc., and Xiaomi Inc.About Us:Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of Market Research Reports and Business Intelligence Solutions. AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Contact Us:Rahul Thakur 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220 United StatesDirect: +1-503-894-6022Toll Free: +1 (800) 792-5285 (U.S. & Canada)Fax: +1 (855) 550-5975E-mail: sales@alliedmarketresearch.com
Feeding System Market 2017 Global Trends and Key Players: Cormall AS, Agrologic, DairyMaster, DeLaval Holding AB, Cormall AS

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3756

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/feeding-system-market-3756

Market Research Future published a research report on Global Feeding System Market Research Report- Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Market HighlightsThe study reveals that Feeding Systems are trending in North America region. The increasing demand of various types of feeding system is expected to open up new growth opportunities in the US is one the key factors driving this market growth. Moreover, the feeding systems market has been segmented on the basis of the offering, the feeding systems market has been classified into hardware, software, and service. Several other factors, such as standardization of hardware and software systems has enhanced the performance of these hardware and software systems. The hardware offering segment is marked to lead the feeding systems market during the forecast period.The study indicates that the feeding systems market has been classified into rail guided system, conveyor belt system, and self-propelled system. The manual feeding of livestock is very costly and time-consuming process due to large-scale labor involvement in it. And the hardware and software feeding solutions enable automatic identification of livestock and data capturing, which result in accurate and quick tracking of livestock and their feeding.The Feeding System Market is growing rapidly over 8.6% of CAGR and is expected to reach at USD ~$1,411.21 Million by the end of forecast period.Key Players:The prominent players in the Feeding System Market are  Cormall AS (Denmark), GEA Group AG (Germany), Lely Holding S.A.R.L (Netherlands), Agrologic Ltd (Israel), DairyMaster (Ireland), Rovibec Agrisolutions Inc. (Canada), DeLaval Holding AB (Sweden), Trioliet B.V. (Netherlands), and Cormall AS (Denmark) among others.Get Sample of Report @Study Objectives of the Feeding System Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Feeding System market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Feeding System 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 Pacific (APAC), 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 on the basis of offering, product, analysis, end users 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 Feeding SystemSegments:The global Feeding System market has been segmented on the basis of offering, product, analysis, end users and region.Feeding System Market by Offering:Hardware Automation and Control System Sensing and Monitoring DevicesSoftware Local/Web-based Cloud-basedServices Connectivity Services Assisted Professional Services Maintenance and Support Services System Integration and Consulting Managed Services OthersFeeding System Market by Product: Self-Propelled System Rail Guided System Conveyor Belt System OthersFeeding System Market by Analysis: Supply and Consumption Analysis Production Analysis Sales and Revenue Analysis OthersFeeding System Market by End-User: Swine Farm Equine Farm Dairy Farm Poultry Farm OthersFeeding System Market by Region: North America Europe Asia Pacific (APAC) Rest of the World (ROW)Market Research Analysis:On geographic basis, Feeding System market is studied in different regions as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of world. It has been observed that North America region is leading with the highest growth rate in the Feeding System market as the reduced time and cost associated with feeding management are encouraging the livestock owners to adopt different types of feeding systems has boosted the growth & demand of Feeding System in this region. Europe is expected to show slower growth rate compared to other regions in the Feeding System market. The developing economies in Asia-pacific regions like China, Japan, India and others are propelled to good growth in the Feeding System market.Get Complete Report @Intended Audience Feeding System device manufacturers Technology Providers of Feeding Systems Technical Universities Research Institutes and Organizations Component Suppliers Feeding Equipment Manufacturers Suppliers and Distributors of Feeding System Standardization and Testing Firms Livestock Research and Consulting Firms Manufacturers of Dairy Farm Equipment Safety equipment manufacturers Distributers 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 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.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
Bearing Isolators Market worth 1.67 Billion USD by 2022

MarketsandMarkets Research Pvt. Ltd

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/bearing-isolator-market-12179696.html

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=12179696

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=12179696

The report "Bearing Isolators Market by Material Type (Metallic and Non-Metallic), End-use Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemical Processing, Mining, Paper & Pulp, Metal Processing, and Manufacturing & Processing), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", The bearing isolators market is estimated to be USD 1.26 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 1.67 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.7% from 2017 to 2022. Rising awareness about the advantages offered by bearing isolators and its growing demand from end-use industries such as oil & gas, chemical processing, mining, paper & pulp, manufacturing & processing, etc., are the key factors driving the growth of the bearing isolators market globally.Browse 121 market data Tables and 30 Figures spread through 131 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Bearing Isolators Market by Material Type (Metallic and Non-Metallic), End-use Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemical Processing, Mining, Paper & Pulp, Metal Processing, and Manufacturing & Processing), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022"Metallic is the fastest-growing material type segment of the bearing isolators market.Based on material type, the metallic segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2022. Metallic bearing isolators are widely utilized in oil & gas, chemical processing, mining, metal processing, and other industries due to their various properties such high wear resistance, high load carrying capacity, non-sparking, etc.Request For Sample Pages:Oil & gas is the fastest-growing end-use industry of the bearing isolators market.Based on end-use industry, the oil & gas segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2022. Bearing isolators enhance the performance as well as the life of rotating equipment, such as motors, pumps, agitators, steam turbines, etc. Thus, there is a high demand for bearing isolators in this industry.Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing market for bearing isolators.The bearing isolators market in the Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. China, Japan, and India are the key countries contributing to the high demand for bearing isolators in the Asia Pacific region. Availability of cheap labor and raw materials in the Asia Pacific region has made it a preferred region for leading manufacturers for the expansion of their business, thus making the region the fastest-growing bearing isolators market. In addition, due to the increasing awareness about the advantages offered by bearing isolators, there is a rise in their demand from various end-use industries such as oil & gas, chemical processing, paper & pulp, mining, metal processing, and manufacturing & processing.Speak To Analyst:Some of the leading players operating in the bearing isolators market are Inpro/Seal (US), The Timken Company (US), Aesseal (UK), Parker Hannifin (US), Flowserve Corporation (US), Garlock Sealing Technologies (US), John Crane (US), Baldor Electric Company, Inc., (US), Elliott Group (US), Advance Sealing International (US), Beacon Gasket & Seals Co. (US), and IsoMag Corporation (US), etc.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.MarketsandMarketss flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.630 Dundee RoadSuite 430Northbrook, IL 60062USA : 1-888-600-6441sales@marketsandmarkets.com
Global Flap Discs Market 2017-2023 ATA Group, Eisenbltter, Garant

Flap Discs Market

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-floating-lng-terminals-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/#request_for_sample

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-floating-lng-terminals-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/

Flap Discs Market Research 2017A market study "Global Flap Discs Market" examines the performance of the Flap Discs market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Flap Discs market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Flap Discs market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Flap Discs Market 2017 report includes Flap Discs market Revenue, market Share, Flap Discs industry volume, market Trends, Flap Discs Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Flap Discs Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Flap Discs Market 2017 :1. ATA Group2. Camel Grinding Wheels3. Eisenbltter4. Extreme Abrasives5. Garant6. HERMES7. PFERD8. RHODIUS9. SAIT Abrasivi10. WALTERFlap Discs Market : By ApplicationShipbuilding IndustryAutomobile IndustryAviationInstrumentFlap Discs Market : By TypeStainless Steel Type Flap DiscsCorundum Type Flap DiscsSilicon Carbide Type Flap DiscsFirstly, the report covers the top Flap Discs manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Flap Discs report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Flap Discs industry, Flap Discs industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Flap Discs Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Flap Discs 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 Flap Discs market revenue worldwide.Finally, Flap Discs 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.5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAContact: +1-214-661-1669Web:
Global Floating LNG Terminals Market 2017-2023 Royal Dutch Shell, Excelerate Energy

Floating LNG Terminals Market

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-floating-lng-terminals-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/#request_for_sample

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-floating-lng-terminals-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/

Floating LNG Terminals Market Research 2017A market study "Global Floating LNG Terminals Market" examines the performance of the Floating LNG Terminals market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Floating LNG Terminals market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Floating LNG Terminals market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Floating LNG Terminals Market 2017 report includes Floating LNG Terminals market Revenue, market Share, Floating LNG Terminals industry volume, market Trends, Floating LNG Terminals Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Floating LNG Terminals Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Floating LNG Terminals Market 2017 : Royal Dutch Shell Excelerate Energy Samsung Heavy Industries Golar LNG and H?egh LNG Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering PETRONAS Hyundai Heavy IndustriesFloating LNG Terminals Market : By ApplicationFPSOsFSRUsFloating LNG Terminals Market : By TypeFloating LNG Import TerminalsFloating LNG Export TerminalsFirstly, the report covers the top Floating LNG Terminals manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Floating LNG Terminals report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Floating LNG Terminals industry, Floating LNG Terminals industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Floating LNG Terminals Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Floating LNG Terminals 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 Floating LNG Terminals market revenue worldwide.Finally, Floating LNG Terminals 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.5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAContact: +1-214-661-1669Web:
Integrated Passive Devices Market - Large Players In Industry & Forecast 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=2435

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=2435

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=2435

Global Integrated Passive Devices Market: OverviewIntegrated passive devices are gaining popularity due to soaring needs for further reduction in size and cost and increment in functionality in handheld devices. These devices enable miniaturization of devices by combining different functional blocks, including couplers, impedance matching devices, harmonic filters, and baluns, and integrating them into one semiconductor chip. There are primarily three types of integrated passive devices, which are electrostatic discharge (ESD), electromagnetic interference (EMI), and radio frequency (RF). They find application in LED lighting, data converters, and EMI/RFI filtering. The report provides a 360-degree view of the global integrated passive devices market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Integrated Passive Devices Market: Key TrendsThe rising adoption of integrated passive devices in consumer electronics is one of the primary forces behind the remarkable growth of the global integrated passive devices market. Integrated passive devices are being increasingly acknowledged due to their ability to reduce costs and interconnection complexities in electronic devices and enhancing yield, reliability, and tolerance. The increasing integration of these devices with RF modules is also working in favor of the market.On the flip side, the higher cost of these devices as compared to discrete component is restricting the global integrated passive devices market from realizing its utmost potential. Moreover, the longer product design cycle due to the RF tuning of these devices is negatively impacting the growth of the market.Request TOC of the Report @Global Integrated Passive Devices Market: Market PotentialA raft of players are bonking on mergers and acquisitions to strengthen their product portfolio and enhance their visibility in the global integrated passive devices market. A case in point is Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., (Murata), which in October 2016 announced the acquisition of IPDiA. The acquisition will help the former in stepping up its game in the market and also strengthen its business within the sectors such as automotive, communication, and medical. Moreover, it will facilitate them in manufacturing leading edge integrated passive devices. The introduction of such devices is likely to revolutionize the global integrated passive devices market.Global Integrated Passive Devices Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key regions reviewed in the report are North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. Europe will represent a substantial share in the global arena. A large number of integrated passive devices manufacturers are headquartered in the region. Moreover, the early adoption of novel technologies and strong demand for wearable devices and consumer electronics are creating fertile ground for the growth of the integrated passive devices market in the region.Get Discount @Asia Pacific is a highly promising market. The rapid development in the telecommunication infrastructure and rising demand for consumer electronics and communication devices are supplementing the growth of the region. Emerging countries such as South Korea, India, and China will be the sights of high growth rate in the region.Global Integrated Passive Devices Market: Competitive LandscapeThe majority of large players in the global integrated passive devices market are investing sizeable funds in research and development activities to introduce advanced and innovative products, which will help them in staying ahead in the market. Companies are also focusing towards mergers and acquisitions to expand and diversify their product portfolio. Some of the prominent global participants in the market are On Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies AG, Stats ChipPAC, Amkor Technology Inc., Murata-IPDiA, STMicroelectronics, Onchip Devices, and AFSC.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
PBX Phone System 2017 Global Industry Key Players - 3CX , Twilio , Veritas Technologies , Voicent , CallFire , Symantec Market Analysis And Forecast To 2022

Global PBX Phone System Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2644557-global-pbx-phone-system-market-research-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/2644557-global-pbx-phone-system-market-research-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=2644557

Global PBX Phone System MarketIn this report, the global PBX Phone 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.Global PBX Phone System market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including3CXTwilioVeritas TechnologiesVoicentCallFireSymantecMicrosoft (Skype)NextivaRingCentralMitelVonageShareTelRequest a Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of PBX Phone System in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoTraditional PBX/Analogue PBXHosted PBXVoIP/IP PBXOn 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, includingSMEsLarge EnterpriseTo enquire about this report visit @Table of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal PBX Phone System Market Research Report 20171 PBX Phone System Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of PBX Phone System1.2 PBX Phone System Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global PBX Phone System Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global PBX Phone System Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Traditional PBX/Analogue PBX1.2.4 Hosted PBX1.2.5 VoIP/IP PBX1.3 Global PBX Phone System Segment by Application1.3.1 PBX Phone System Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 SMEs1.3.3 Large Enterprise1.4 Global PBX Phone System Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global PBX Phone System Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of PBX Phone System (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global PBX Phone System Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global PBX Phone System Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022).7 Global PBX Phone System Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 3CX7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 3CX PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Twilio7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Twilio PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Veritas Technologies7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Veritas Technologies PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Voicent7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Voicent PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 CallFire7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 CallFire PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Symantec7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Symantec PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Microsoft (Skype)7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Microsoft (Skype) PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Nextiva7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Nextiva PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 RingCentral7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 RingCentral PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Mitel7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 PBX Phone System Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Mitel PBX Phone System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Vonage7.12 ShareTelContinued..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
Global FTIR Spectrometer Market 2017-2023 Thermo Fisher, Agilent, Shimadzu

FTIR Spectrometer Market

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-ftir-spectrometer-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/#request_for_sample

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-ftir-spectrometer-market-2017-size-share-research-demand-and-forecast-to-2022/

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/

FTIR Spectrometer Market Research 2017A market study "Global FTIR Spectrometer Market" examines the performance of the FTIR Spectrometer market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the FTIR Spectrometer market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of FTIR Spectrometer market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global FTIR Spectrometer Market 2017 report includes FTIR Spectrometer market Revenue, market Share, FTIR Spectrometer industry volume, market Trends, FTIR Spectrometer Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, FTIR Spectrometer Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global FTIR Spectrometer Market 2017 : Thermo Fisher Agilent Perkin Elmer Shimadzu ABB Bruker Netzsch Mettler Toledo Jasco Foss MKSFTIR Spectrometer Market : By ApplicationOrganic SynthesisPolymer SciencePetrochemical EngineeringPharmaceutical IndustryFood AnalysisFTIR Spectrometer Market : By TypePortable TypeLaboratory TypeFirstly, the report covers the top FTIR Spectrometer manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the FTIR Spectrometer report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of FTIR Spectrometer industry, FTIR Spectrometer industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. FTIR Spectrometer Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The FTIR Spectrometer 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 FTIR Spectrometer market revenue worldwide.Finally, FTIR Spectrometer 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.5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAContact: +1-214-661-1669Web:
Card Connector Market 2017 Comprehensive Analysis and Key Players: TE Connectivity, Molex, The 3M Company, Amphenol, Yamaichi Electronics, Hirose Electric, AVX, Kycon

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4019

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/card-connector-market-4019

Market Research Future published a research report on Card Connector Market Research Report- Global Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Market Highlights:The global card connector market is highly competitive. Various established international brands, domestic brands and as well as new entrants form a competitive landscape. The key players are nonstop increasingly seeking market expansion through various strategic mergers and acquisitions, innovation, increasing investments in research and development and cost-effective product portfolio. The Card Connector Market is highly competitive due to the presence of several large vendors. The competition among the vendors will intensify due to the increase in product extensions and various above mentioned factors. The players in the card connector market compete on the basis of the factors such as pricing, technology, features, design and compatibility. The vendors or the manufacturers are continuously coming up with new ideas and technologies to gain competitive advantage over their competitors.Key PlayersThe key players in the global card connector system market include- TE Connectivity Ltd (Switzerland), Molex Incorporated (U.S.), The 3M Company (U.S.), Amphenol Corporation (U.S.), Cinch Connectivity Solutions (U.S.), Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (U.S.), HARTING Technology Group (Germany), Yamaichi Electronics Co., Ltd. (Japan), Hirose Electric Co., Ltd. (Japan), AVX Corporation (U.S.), CW Industries(U.S.), Kycon, Inc. (U.S.), Eaton Corporation Plc (Republic of Ireland) and CW Industries(U.S.) among others.Get Sample of Report @Regional AnalysisThe global card connector market is expected to grow significantly over the forecast period, 2017-2023. Consumer durables segment of card connector market globally drives the market majorly due to increasing demand for smart mobile devices. The market is expected to have higher growth rate as compared to the previous years. The global card connector market segmented into four main regions such as North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Rest of the World.Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at a fast pace over the forecast period, 2017-2023. Countries such as Japan, China and India contributes largely to the overall market share. The reason is attributed to the increasing number of manufacturers, stringent government regulations, growing advancement and increasing adoption of high end technology in the field of measurement equipment, control equipment, measurement devices are boosting the growth of card connector market in this region.North-America accounted for the largest market share. Countries such as U.S. and Canada contributes largely to the overall market share. The reason is attributed to the growing healthcare sector and growing demand for advanced technological solutions and high investments by the manufacturers to manufacture new product portfolios to survive in the market.SegmentsFor the purpose of this study, Market Research Future has segmented the market of card connector market into type, application and region.Type Edge Card SIM Card Memory Card PC Card OthersApplication Consumer Durables Electronic Appliances Mechanical Appliances Electrical Equipment OthersRegion North-America Europe Asia-Pacific RoWGet complete Report @Intended Audience Device manufacturers Network Operators Distributors Suppliers Research firms Software Developers Commercial Banks 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 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.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 membersMedia Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Mental Disorders Drugs Market to Witness an Outstanding Growth by 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/mental-disorders-drugs.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=904

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/mental-disorders-drugs.html?secure=NTIxNS41&type=PB

Global Mental Disorders Drugs Market: OverviewA mental disorder can be explained as a psychological anomaly that is reflected in patients behavior through disability, distress, or any conduct that is not considered as normal mental development. The causes of mental disorders are very diverse and often unclear in most cases. However, some of the commonly addressed drug classes for the treatment of mental disorders are anxiolytics, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. Some of the common mental disorders affecting millions around the world are depression, schizophrenia, and intellectual disabilities and disorders due to drug abuse.The most common factor aiding the expansion of the global mental disorders drugs market is the rising incidence of mental disorders. For instance, as per the WHOs reviewed fact sheet, as of 2016 over 350 million people worldwide are affected by depression, over 60 million people are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and almost 21 million people around the world have schizophrenia and other psychoses. The incidence is rising and there is less likely for it to subside anytime soon. Governments around the world are thus focusing on development effective treatment and drugs to eliminate the prevalence of mental disorders.Considering the scenario, the global mental disorders market is poised to surge at an exponential pace between 2016 and 2024. In the report, TMR provides a granular analysis of the various factors supporting the markets growth and lists down the restraints threatening its expansion. Using Porters five forces, the report gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, degree of competition prevailing in the market, and threat of product substitutes and new entrants. The effect of government policies on the market is analyzed in detail.Report Overview and TOC @Besides these, the report also studies the regional market for mental disorders drugs across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Factors influencing the markets growth across these regional segments are studied in detail. In addition, the global mental disorders drugs market has been segmented based on various parameters to help the market participants identify the most lucrative areas in the market. Compiled with exhaustive information, the report thus provides a holistic overview of the global mental disorders market.Global Mental Disorders Drugs Market: Trends and OpportunitiesFactors such as improvement in patient security policies, increasing prevalence of mental disorders, growth in domestic and international investment in research and development on mental medication, and increasing awareness about these conditions are aiding the growth of the global mental disorders market.Overall, the market has been witnessing lucrative prospects, however, skepticism surrounding the social pressure and stigma often attached with mental disorders and their treatment could restraint the market to an extent. The situation is more critical in case of less developed countries, where medical advancements are yet to penetrate into. Furthermore, inadequate government initiatives could create bottleneck for the market in underdeveloped countries, despite the high prevalence of unmet medical needs.Nevertheless, rising government spending in the healthcare sector, especially across emerging economies such as India and China, increasing medical tourism in these nations due to the availability of advanced treatments at affordable price, and supportive reimbursement policies will help the expansion of mental disorders drugs market over the course of the forecast period. Besides this, the market is also expected to gain from the launch of novel therapeutics.Request for Brochure @Overall, the global mental disorders drugs market can be segmented into antipsychotics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, drugs for adolescent and childhood mental illness, schizophrenia, drugs for the treatment of addiction, and bipolar disease drugs. The report studies in detail the recent developments supporting the markets growth across these segments.Global Mental Disorders Drugs Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, North America dominates the global mental drugs disorders market. The increasing government initiatives, high awareness about mental disorders and available treatments, and better reimbursement policies are supporting growth of the market in North America. In addition, the market is expected to witness lucrative opportunities in Asia Pacific. The expanding healthcare industry and favorable initiatives supporting the growth will help market participants rake high profits in the region.Global Mental Disorders Drugs Market: Vendor LandscapeThe report includes a detailed assessment of the vendor landscape, to study the competition prevailing in the global mental disorders market. Some of the companies profiled are Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Using SWOT analysis, the report studies the strengths and weaknesses of the companies profiled. The analysis also provides insights into the threats and opportunities that the companies will witness over the course of the forecast period.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
Smart Factory Market - Competitive Dynamics ,Growth & Forecast 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=2444

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=2444

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=2444

Global Smart Factory Market: OverviewThe global smart factory sector has been propelled by the need for efficient and precise ways of operating a manufacturing unit. The increasing adoption of industrial robots in the global manufacturing sector was the first step for the smart factory market. Modern factories incorporate sophisticated industrial robotic systems, Internet of Things technology, and machine communication technology to enable smooth automated manufacturing. The rising government support to the smart factory sector, due to their increased output and the benefit of the same on the nations economy, is likely to enable sustained growth of the smart factory market in the coming years.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Smart Factory Market: Key TrendsThe rising demand for industrial robots and the steady technological progression of the industrial robotics sector is one of the key drivers for the global smart factory market. Industrial robots offer significantly higher precision and a lower error rate than human workers. Large-scale use of industrial robots also raises the productivity of the manufacturing unit, providing a significant cost advantage. As a result, human factory workers across the world could find themselves without a livelihood following steady growth of the global smart factory market.The booming automotive industry is one of the prime consumers in the global smart factory market and is likely to remain influential in the smart factory sector in the coming years. Due to the rising need for extremely precise engineering in automotive design, smart factory solutions such as industrial robotics are becoming popular in the automotive industry. The steady growth of the automotive industry due to the rising disposable income of consumers across the world is thus one of the key drivers for the global smart factory market in the coming years. The rising automotive industry in Southeastern and Eastern Asia could play a particularly important role in the global smart factory market in the coming years.Request TOC of the Report @Global Smart Factory Market: Market PotentialSouth Korea is likely to be a leading regional market for smart factory technology in Asia Pacific due to rising government as well as corporate interest. The South Korean government had earlier set the target of having 10,000 smart factories operational in the country by 2020. In April 2017, the government extended its support to the smart factory market in the country by upping the target to 30,000 smart factories by 2025. South Koreas determination to remain a leading light in the industrial sector has made it a pioneer in terms of the adoption of digital and automation technologies, which is likely to benefit the smart factory market immensely in the coming years.Global Smart Factory Market: Geographical DynamicsDeveloping countries in Asia Pacific are likely to be the dominant leaders in the global smart factory market in the coming years. Apart from South Korea, the smart factory market has also received steady government support in China, Japan, Taiwan, and India. The rapid pace of urbanization in these dynamic economies is a prime factor aiding the smart factory markets growth in the region.Get Discount @Global Smart Factory Market: Competitive DynamicsThe global smart factory market is dominated by companies that have established mutually beneficial partnerships with technology companies. Fanuc-Cisco and Kuka-Huawei are among the leading lights in the global smart factory market. ABB-IBM, a relatively recent collaboration, could also play a key role in the development of the global smart factory market in the coming years. Other key players in the global smart factory market include Emerson Electric Co., General Electric Co., Atos SE, Schneider Electric SE, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens AG, and Yaskawa Electric.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
Smart Meters Market - Current Scenario and Forecast 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=2447

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=2447

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=2447

Global Smart Meters Market: OverviewSmart meters are electronic devices that keep track of electric energy, gas, and water consumption in uniform time intervals and sends the information digitally to utility for monitoring and billing. They have been designed to better understand energy usage and ensure accurate energy bills. Besides this, they are also effective in controlling the levels of radioactive emissions in the eco-system. Smart meters are used for electricity, gas, and water and can be deployed across residential, industrial, and commercial sectors. These meters use technologies such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and automatic meter reading (AMR).Global Smart Meters Market: Key TrendsGovernment policies are playing a vital role in the growth of the global smart meters market. The ever-rising demand for energy in form of electricity is compelling governments worldwide to pay attention to not just its production and transmission but also keep a check on losses due to theft and leakage. This is promoting the installations of smart meters across the globe. In addition, the growing emphasis on energy and water conservation is augmenting the market. The global smart meters market is also supported by the increasing deployment of smart grid. Furthermore, the rising awareness regarding environment conservation is stoking the growth of the global market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @On the flip side, the lack of awareness among consumers is limiting the widespread adoption of smart meters. Moreover, the high cost of installation makes end users less willing to switch to these meters from traditional meters, thereby hampering the growth prospects of the market.Global Smart Meters Market: Market PotentialThe majority of key players in the global smart meters market are enjoying the encouraging policies by governments in several parts of the world to set up smart meters. For instance, with the digitization of the Energy Turnaround Act in July 2016 in Germany, the legislation established guidelines for initial smart meter rollout, which is set to begin in 2017. These guidelines lay the foundation for a new phase in Energiewende. Similarly, in the U.K. in July 2016, British Gas decided to offer free daytime electricity for one day per weekend to over 2 million customers who had smart meters deployed. Such initiatives encourage people around the world to deploy smart meters, thereby boosting the sales.Request TOC of the Report @Global Smart Meters Market: Geographical SegmentationThe North America market for smart meters is a highly lucrative marketplace for global participants. Continuous efforts by governments to improve the infrastructure pertaining to electricity, water, and gas supply along with deployment of devices that monitor and prevent their leakage are escalating the growth of the region. Governments in several parts of the U.S., and Mexico are rolling out smart meters at subsidized prices, which in turn is encouraging the growth of the market in North America.Asia Pacific, on the other hand, is an emerging market. The robust growth of the industrial sector and the pressing need for reliable systems to address growing electricity and water scarcity are driving the region. Besides this, the increasing investments in repairing and upgrading aging infrastructure and the booming concept of smart city are supplementing the growth of APAC.Get Discount @Global Smart Meters Market: Competition ScenarioThe high capital investment and technical acumen required for the manufacturing and distribution of smart meters is restricting new players from venturing into the global smart meters market. However, government regulations and strategic partnerships could help new players in overcoming high entry barriers. To deal with the high competitive rivalry, players are resorting to strategies such as product innovation and mergers and acquisitions. Some of the key companies operating in the global smart meters market are Itron Inc., Kamstrup A/S, Holley Metering Ltd., Landis+Gyr, Honeywell International Inc., and Toshiba 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
Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Forecast To Growth At a 5.9% CAGR Between 2017 - 2022

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1336304

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1336304/automotive-electronic-power-steering-market-research-reports.pdf

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1336304

https://www.researchmoz.com/checkout?rep_id=1336304&licType=S

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"The Latest Research Report Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market: OverviewThe world automotive electronic power steering (EPS) market is prognosticated to showcase an enhanced growth due to the shift from the previous technology to EPS systems. This could be on account of the urgent need to find fuel-efficient solutions followed by the global fuel crisis. Independence from the combustion engine and the usage of alternator for sourcing power are envisaged to have assisted the new EPS technology to overshadow the conventional steering system.Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market: DynamicsTechnological advancements are forecasted to be at the forefront of the world automotive EPS market. Several companies are making their individual contribution toward the growth of technology in the market. For instance, the SPIDAN power steering system developed by GKN PLC uses remanufactured replacement components to ensure the preservation of natural resources. It also helps in decreasing carbon dioxide emission and fuel consumption. Moreover, it boasts of intelligent energy management. Another instance could be Hitachi Automotive Systems Co. Ltd. and Nissan collaborating to develop a new electro-hydraulic power steering system.Get Sample copy of this Report @The rapid rise in vehicle-owning households and worldwide population are projected to play a significant role in the substantial increase in automotive vehicle production. Today, the EPS systems market is said to have surpassed the traditional hydraulic steering in less than two decades. Advantages such as lower fuel consumption, high durability, improved response at different speeds, low maintenance, and lower weight coupled with simple architecture could fuel the adoption of EPS over hydraulic systems. This, in turn, could fuel the demand in the world automotive EPS market.Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market: SegmentationAccording to the researchers authoring the report, the international automotive EPS market could be split up into four chief products, viz. hydraulic (H)-EPS, column-assist (C)-EPS, pinion-assist (P)-EPS, and rack-assist (R)-EPS. Amongst these, H-EPS is anticipated to secure a leading share of 31.2% in the market by the end of 2022. The H-EPS market could expand at an annual US$0.4 bn absolute growth, which is prophesied to be larger than any other product.The international automotive EPS market is also predicted to be classified into heavy commercial vehicles, light commercial vehicles, luxury passenger cars, premium passenger cars, mid-sized passenger cars, and compact passenger cars, as per vehicle type segmentation.In terms of regional segmentation, the international automotive EPS market could be divided into six key geographies, i.e. North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific except Japan (APEJ), and the Middle East and Africa (MEA).Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market: CompetitionIn all, the report on the worldwide automotive EPS market studies 10 industry players, viz. JTEKT, Bosh, Nexteer, NSK, Mando Corporation, KSR International Company, Showa, ThyssenKrupp Presta, Hitachi Automotive, and Sona Koyo. Readers are also provided with a detailed company share analysis followed by SWOT analysis and company overview of each player studied. Furthermore, for each company analyzed in the report, the analysts offer a study of their important developments, sales data and key financials by type of product, and a list of their products.View Sample PDF @Table Of Contents1. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market - Executive Summary2. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Overview2.1. Introduction2.1.1. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Taxonomy2.1.2. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Definition2.2. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size (US$ Mn) and Forecast, 2012-20222.2.1. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Y-o-Y Growth2.3. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Dynamics2.3.1. Drivers2.3.2. Restraints2.3.3. Trends2.4. Supply Chain2.5. Cost Structure2.6. Pricing Analysis2.7. Raw Material Sourcing Strategy and Analysis2.8. List of Distributors2.9. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By Region3. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Analysis and Forecast By Product Type3.1. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast By Product Type, 2012-20223.1.1. H-EPS Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20223.1.1.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region3.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region3.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region3.1.2. C-EPS Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20223.1.2.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region3.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region3.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region3.1.3. P-EPS Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20223.1.3.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region3.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region3.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region3.1.4. R-EPS Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20223.1.4.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region3.1.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region3.1.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By RegionSend An Enquiry Request @4. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Analysis and Forecast By Vehicle Type4.1. Global Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast By Vehicle Type, 2012-20224.1.1. Compact Passenger Cars Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.1.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.2. Mid-sized Passenger Cars Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.2.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.3. Premium Passenger Cars Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.3.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.4. Luxury Passenger Cars Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.4.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.5. Light Commercial Vehicles Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.5.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.5.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.5.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.6. Heavy Commercial Vehicles Automotive Electronic Power Steering Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20224.1.6.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.6.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.6.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By RegionBuy 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
Surgical Sutures Market - Geographical Segmentation Of Industry & Forecast 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=2450

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=2450

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=2450

Global Surgical Sutures Market: OverviewSurgical sutures are medical tools used to stitch open wounds and close the surgical incision. The growing awareness regarding healthcare, especially in low- and middle-income countries is impacting the global market for surgical sutures. On the basis of product, the global surgical sutures market can be bifurcated into non-automated sutures and automated suturing devices. Non-automated sutures can be absorbable and non-absorbable. Similarly, automated devices are disposable and reusable. Based on applications, the market can be segmented into general surgeries, cardiovascular surgeries, orthopedic surgeries, gynecology surgeries, and ophthalmic surgeries.Global Surgical Sutures Market: Key TrendsThe growing prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and diabetes is leading to the rising number of surgical procedures worldwide. This factor is, thereby, creating a staggering volume of demand for surgical sutures. The increasing focus on research and development activities is facilitating the launch of advanced sutures, which in turn is also working in favor of the market. Besides this, expenditure on the majority of surgical sutures is covered under insurance policies, therefore, the presence of favorable reimbursement scenario is stoking the growth of the market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @On the flip side, the growing preference for minimally invasive surgical procedures is creating a dent in the global demand for surgical sutures. Moreover, the lack of proper sterilization systems in healthcare organizations and presence of a number of substitute wound care management products are impeding the growth of the market.Global Surgical Sutures Market: Market PotentialTo ensure maximum profit, market players are focusing towards the development of innovative and safe sutures. For instance, in September 2016, Mellon Medical unveiled a precision-suturing instrument, Switch, which allows surgeons to suture tubular and layered structures about twice as fast as the traditional technique at reduced risk of complications. This is expected to allow enhanced patient outcome and reduced costs. The international market launch of this instrument is anticipated to happen by 2018. The advent of such suturing devices is likely to work in favor of the global surgical sutures market. The adoption in robotics in suturing procedures is also poised to open new avenues for market players.Request TOC of the Report @Global Surgical Sutures Market: Geographical SegmentationGeographically, North America will account for a large chunk in the revenue pie of the global surgical sutures market. The expanding pool of patients suffering from lifestyle disorders, rapidly growing geriatric population, and conducive healthcare reforms are contributing to the growth of the region. The domicile of a large number of key players also provides a competitive edge to North America over other regions.Asia Pacific is expected to witness healthy growth during the forecast period. Large population base, rising consumer spending on healthcare, and booming medical tourism sector are rendering the region highly opportunistic. The growth of the region can also be attributed to the growing number of people undergoing surgical procedures and improving healthcare infrastructure.Get Discount @Global Surgical Sutures Market: Competitive ScenarioKey companies are primarily focusing towards developing absorbable and anti-bacterial sutures, which will help them in enhancing their visibility in the global surgical sutures market. Several players are looking upon mergers and acquisitions as key growth strategies to expand their product portfolio. The market features high competitive rivalry among players in terms of pricing. Some of the prominent participants in the global market are Lotus Surgicals Pvt. Ltd., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Ethicon Inc., DemeTECH Corporation, Medtronic Plc., Smith & Nephew Plc., Sutures India Pvt. Ltd., CP Medical, Boston Scientific Corporation, and Teleflex Medical OEM.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
Sparking Plug Market by Global Share, Size, Trends, Supply, Demand, Consumption and Growth in CAGR Estimation till 2022

ReportsWeb

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320811/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/global-sparking-plug-market-professional-survey-report-2017-2022

http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW00011320811/buy/3500

Sparking Plug Market by Global Brands, Countries, Type and Applications 2017 updated report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Sparking Plug market focusing on the market size and trends with industry structure reviewThis report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringNGK Spark PlugsBoschHELLABriskTorch Sparkplug...Request a Sample on Sparking Plug Market atOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoNickel Alloy ElectrodeSilver Alloy ElectrodePlatinum Alloy ElectrodeOthersBy Application, the market can be split intoAutomobileMotorcycleElectric Power EquipmentOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaBrowse Complete Report on Sparking Plug Market atKey Point from Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview of Sparking Plug2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Sparking Plug3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Sparking Plug4 Global Sparking Plug Overall Market Overview5 Sparking Plug Regional Market Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Sparking Plug Segment Market Analysis-by Type)7 Global 2012-2017E Sparking Plug Segment Market Analysis-by Application)8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Sparking Plug9 Development Trend of Analysis of Sparking Plug Market10 Sparking Plug Marketing Type Analysis11 Consumers Analysis of Sparking Plug12 Conclusion of the Global Sparking Plug Market Professional Survey Report 2017Purchase Complete Report atContact Information:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Global Prawn Market Overview 2017, Demand by Regions, Share, Price Trends and Forecast to 2022

http://www.imarcgroup.com/request?type=report&id=84&flag=B

http://www.imarcgroup.com/prefeasibility-report-prawn-processing-plant

http://www.imarcgroup.com/prefeasibility-report-shrimp-processing-plant

http://www.imarcgroup.com/prefeasibility-report-mayonnaise-manufacturing-plant

www.imarcgroup.com

The global prawn market has experienced a positive growth over the years, owing to the increasing consumption of various processed prawn products, such as peeled prawn, shell-on prawn, cooked prawn, and breaded prawn.Request a sample report:The latest report by IMARC Group, titled Prawn Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022, finds that the global prawn market reached a volume of nearly 5 Million Tons in 2016. Prawns are shrimp-like aquatic crustaceans with ten legs and an exoskeleton. People residing near seashore often consume prawns as they offer numerous health benefits. They are an excellent source of high quality protein and also provide minerals and vitamins in an extremely diverse set of healthy and tasty meals. Prawns are extremely low in calories and help the body to build muscles, produce energy and replenish red blood cells. On account of this, they form an important part of various cuisines and represent one of the most traded seafood species.Highlights of the global prawn market:Consumers demand for fresh and frozen seafood is anticipated to be the major demand driver.Peeled prawn is the most popular product type, holding the majority of the total market share.China accounts for the majority of the global share, representing the largest producer of prawns.The surging consumption for fresh and frozen seafood products is one of the major factors that is fueling the demand for prawns worldwide. Additionally, prawns offer an ideal combination of fats and proteins which makes them very beneficial for the human health. This has led to a shift in the food habits of the consumers across the globe towards the consumption of healthier seafood products, thereby boosting the global prawn market. Some of the other factors contributing to the market growth include easy availability of prawns, launch of new ready-to-eat product variants with improved taste and versatility, rising purchasing power of the consumers, rapid urbanization, growth in the aquaculture activities, and improved cold storage facilities, particularly in the emerging regions. According to the report, the global prawn market is further expected to reach a volume of more than 6 Million Tons by 2022, exhibiting a CAGR of more than 4% during 2017-2022.On the basis of species, the market is segmented into Penaeus vannamei, Penaeus monodon and others. Currently, Penaeus vannamei is the most popular species, holding the majority of the total market share. Based on the type of processed prawn products, the market includes peeled prawn, shell-on prawn, cooked prawn and breaded prawn, wherein peeled prawn dominates the market. Region-wise, China represents the leading market, accounting for the largest share. Other major regions include Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Thailand and Ecuador.Read full report with TOC:The report by IMARC Group has examined the global prawn market on the basis of:Species:Penaeus vannameiPenaeus monodonOthersType:Peeled prawnShell-on prawnCooked prawnBreaded prawnRegionChinaIndonesiaVietnamIndiaThailandEcuadorBrowse related report:Shrimp Market:Mayonnaise Market:About UsIMARC Group is a leading market research company that offers management strategy and market research worldwide. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses.IMARCs information products include major market, scientific, economic and technological developments for business leaders in pharmaceutical, industrial, and high technology organizations. Market forecasts and industry analysis for biotechnology, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, travel and tourism, nanotechnology and novel processing methods are at the top of the companys expertise.Contact usIMARC Group309 2nd St, Brooklyn, NY 11215, USAWebsite:Email: sales@imarcgroup.comUSA: +1-631-791-1145Follow us on twitter: @imarcglobal
3.8% CAGR Anticipated for Concrete Block and Brick Manufacturing Market During 2017-2027

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1100

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=1100

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Characterized by the presence of a multitude of local and international players, the global concrete block and brick manufacturing market renders a highly fragmented vendor landscape. For instance, there are almost 100,000 brick kilns in India itself. Large vendors are striving to enter regional markets by means of strategic alliances with local players. This is not only helping large players expand their geographical presence, but is also making the market somewhat consolidated.Prominent participants in the global concrete block and brick manufacturing market include CRH plc, Wienerberger AG, Boral Limited, Acme Brick Company, UltraTech Cement Ltd., Xella Group, CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V. Lignacite Ltd., LCC Siporex Company, MaCon LLC, Midwest Block and Brick, Oldcastle, Magicrete Building Solutions Pvt. Ltd., General Shale Inc, Monaprecast Brickworks Limited, and Midland Concrete Products Inc. among others.As per a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global concrete block and brick manufacturing market was evaluated at 1,837.48 billion units in 2016 and is anticipated to reach 2769.24 billion units by 2027 at a CAGR of 3.8% during the forecast period between 2017 and 2027.Among the key product type segments, brick segment is anticipated to lead the market vis-a-vis value and volume during the forecast period. The brick segment is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 3.5% during the forecast period between 2017 and 2027. However, AAC product segment is estimated to emerge lucrative as AAC blocks offer incredible building quality at considerably low cost.Request For Report Sample:In terms of geography, Asia Pacific held a significant share in the concrete block and brick manufacturing market in 2016; going forward the region is expected to emerge dominant in the market over the forecast period. Rising population and increasing construction activities are predominantly driving the concrete block and brick manufacturing market in the region.Need to Serve Housing Needs of Growing Population in Developing Countries Ramps up GrowthFirst and foremost, the growth of the building and construction industry is driving the global concrete block and brick manufacturing market. The need for new housing units to serve the residential needs of growing population in developing nations is stoking demand for concrete blocks and bricks. A concrete block which is primarily used as a building material in the construction of walls is less susceptible to damage and it provides insulation as well. Bricks are typically made of dried clay and are used as building material in the construction industry. For example, Brazil leads the concrete block and brick manufacturing market in Latin America in terms of manufacturing volume. The presence of small and micro enterprises account for the production of artesian bricks in the region.Further, rising urbanization along with changing geopolitics account for the increasing demand for new infrastructure in developing regions.In several countries of Asia Pacific, foreign direct investments in manufacturing and construction sectors have led to significant expansion of the concrete block and brick manufacturing market in recent years.Request For Report Brochure:Uptake of Eco-friendly Building Materials to RiseThe emergence of eco-friendly building materials such as autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) is leading to a substantial demand for sustainable buildings. AAC blocks are obtained from industrial waste and non-toxic ingredients that do not leave fumes, unlike synthetic building materials.The review presented is based on the findings of a TMR report, titled Concrete Block and Brick Manufacturing Market (Product Type - Concrete Block (Hollow, Cellular, and Fully solid), Brick (Clay, Sand lime, and Fly ash clay), and ACC Block - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 20172027.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
Global Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 10.0% between 2015 and 2023

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cone-beam-computed-tomography-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=10508

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=10508<ype=S

The trend in the global cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) indicates that players must invest in developing countries to cater to consumers unmet medical demands and attain bigger revenue shares, says Transparency Market Research in a new report. Danaher, Planmeca, and Sirona jointly held a massive share of 70% in the global market in 2015.Request Sample Report@Analysts have identified Asia Pacific as the most promising region for growth in the coming few years. Furthermore, leading players are also focusing on strategic mergers and acquisitions to expand their product portfolio and their access to the customers.Statistics published by the United Nations Population Division in 2013 suggested that the aging population is anticipated to reach 2 billion by the end of 2050 from 841 million in 2013. This whopping rise is likely to be the basic premise ushering in a new wave of growth for the CBCT technologies across the globe. The dental complications of the aged people are going to increase the demand for sophisticated imaging techniques in dentistry, thereby propelling the revenues earned by these technologies in the coming few years. This growth will also be complemented by factors such as the need for effectiveness in medical interventions and result-oriented research and development activities.Request Sample Report@The tough excise duty imposed on the sale of medical devices across the U.S. is an unfair constraint for the CBCT market. The high cost of utilizing this technology is also holding back several institutes and healthcare centers to use CBCT technologies. TMR analyst says, The adamancy to stick with conventional methods instead of adopting new-age technologies is also hampering the growth of the CBCT technologies across the world.Analysts predict that strengthening economies of Mexico, Brazil, China, and India will offer a score of opportunities to the overall CBCT market to grow in the near future. Furthermore, the increasing healthcare expenditure of these countries is also going to play a major role in the surge of this market. The improving disposable incomes of Asia Pacific are also going to contribute generously to the CBCT market in the coming years.The report published by Transparency Market Research states that the opportunity in the global CBCT market will be worth US$ 960.8 mn by the end of 2023. As of 2014, the market was valued at US$407.5 mn. However, the market will expand at a CAGR of 10.0% between 2015 and 2023. The report also suggests that oral surgery will be fastest-growing application segment promoting the use of CBCT technology. As of 2015, this application segment held a share of 26.4% in the overall market. Regionally, North America held a share of 41.4% in the total of CBCT market in 2015. The soaring demand for dental procedures is expected to keep this region as the leading geographical segment in the coming years.Get 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
Naphthenic Base Oil Market Projected To Become Worth US$2,605.7 mn by 2025

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1422704

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1422704/naphthenic-base-oil-global-market-research-reports.pdf

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1422704

https://www.researchmoz.com/checkout?rep_id=1422704&licType=S

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"The Latest Research Report Naphthenic Base Oil Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Global Naphthenic Base Oil Market: OverviewNaphthenic base oil is hydro-treated group V base oil obtained through distillation of sweet crude. They possess low pour point, low wax content, and excellent swell properties. Naphthenic base oils also provide better low-temperature performance than paraffinic oils, which makes them ideal for formulating hydraulic fluids and automatic transmission fluids. Naphthenic oils respond well to antioxidants and additives due to high solvency power.Global Naphthenic Base Oil Market: Scope of StudyThe report estimates and forecasts the naphthenic base oil market on the global, regional, and country levels. The study provides forecast between 2017 and 2025 based on volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) 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 naphthenic base oil 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 naphthenic base oil 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 global average price trend analysis of naphthenic base oil.Get Sample copy of this Report @The report includes Porters Five Forces Model to determine the degree of competition in the naphthenic base oil market. The report comprises a qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein application 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 naphthenic base oil between 2016 and 2025.The study provides a comprehensive view of the naphthenic base oil market by dividing it into following types: by viscosity index, by application, and by geography. The naphthenic base oil market based on viscosity index type has been segmented into 35-60 SUS, 80-130 SUS, 200-300 SUS, 400-800 SUS, and above 1200 SUS. Application segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated in terms of volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) between 2016 and 2025.Global Naphthenic Base Oil Market: Research MethodologySecondary 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 a 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.View Sample PDF @Global Naphthenic Base Oil Market: Market SegmentationRegional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for naphthenic base oil 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 application and viscosity index type segments. Key countries such as the U.S., Germany, Russia, the U.K., India, China, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil have been included in the study. Market segmentation includes demand for individual application and products in all the regions and countries.The report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Nynas AB, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Calumet Specialty Products Partners, L.P, Ergon LLC., and Chevron Corporation. 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 naphthenic base oil market has been segmented as follows:Naphthenic Base Oil Market  Viscosity Index Type Analysis35-60 SUS80-130 SUS200-300 SUS400-800 SUSAbove 1200 SUSNaphthenic Base Oil Market  Application Type AnalysisMetal workingProcess OilElectrical OilIndustrial Lubes & GreaseRubber OilOthersNaphthenic Base Oil Market  Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeGermanyRussiaU.K.Rest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaJapanASEANSouth KoreaRest of Asia PacificMiddle East & AfricaGCCSouth AfricaRest of Middle East & AfricaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaSend An Enquiry Request @Table of Content1. Preface1.1. Report Scope and Market Segmentation1.2. Research Highlights2. Assumptions and Research Methodology2.1. Assumptions and Acronyms Used2.2. Research Methodology3. Executive Summary3.1. Market Size, Indicative (US$ Mn)3.2. Top 3 Trends4. Market Overview4.1. Product Overview4.2. Key Industry Developments4.3. Market Indicators4.4. Drivers and Restraints Snapshot Analysis4.4.1. Drivers4.4.2. Restraints4.4.3. Opportunities4.5. Global Naphthenic base oil Market Analysis and Forecasts4.6. Naphthenic base oil Market: Global Demand-Supply Scenario4.7. Porters Analysis4.7.1. Threat of Substitutes4.7.2. Bargaining Power of Buyers4.7.3. Bargaining Power of Suppliers4.7.4. Threat of New Entrants4.7.5. Degree of Competition4.8. Value Chain Analysis4.9. Global Naphthenic Base Oil Market: SWOT Analysis4.10. Key Naphthenic Base Oil Industry DevelopmentsBuy 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
Automotive Power Electronics Market Estimated to Expand at a Double-Digit CAGR through 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=34853

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=34853

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Amidst a high concentration of savvy players in the global automotive power electronics market, the creme-de-la-creme are investing heavily to employ advanced technology and develop novel products, states Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. For instance, key players such as Infineon Technologies AG, Texas Instruments Inc., ON Semiconductor Corp., Renesasa Electronics Corp., and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Are investing heavily to develop technologically advanced electric vehicles for transportation.Some prominent participants in the global automotive power electronics market are Maxim Products Inc., NXP Semiconductors N.V., Qualcomm Ins., Robert Bosch GmbH, and Vishay Intertechnology Inc.As per the TMR report, the global automotive power electronics market is likely to clock an impressive 19.0% CAGR during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025, for the market to become worth US$22,658.4 mn by the end of 2025.Among the various segments based on electric vehicle, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) held the leading share in the global automotive power electronics market in 2016. The growth of HEV segment is mainly because of its role in decarbonizing the transport sector and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. In terms of vehicle type, the passenger car segment is not only expected to contribute the leading revenue over the forecast period of 2017 to 2025, but also expand at a significant pace during this period. On the basis of geography, Asia Pacific is anticipated to surpass other key regions in terms of growth rate over the forecast period. This is mainly because of fast adoption of technologically advanced cars.Request For Report Sample:Thrust to Equip Vehicles with Advanced Power Solutions stokes GrowthThe foremost factor driving the global automotive power electronics market is the growing demand for technologically advanced power solutions for vehicles. Automotive power electronics are devices installed in electric vehicles to control the high magnitude of voltage and to convert varied electric power most efficiently. With the introduction of high frequency and high power converting devices, the applications of power electronic converters have increased manifold.Further, increasing installation of advanced driver assistance systems and safety and convenience systems have been stoking growth of automotive power electronics market.Environmental Concerns Leading to Adoption of Electric Vehicles Benefits MarketApart from this, the rising number of electric vehicles is also a significant factor boosting the growth of automotive power electronics market. Electric vehicles are increasingly becoming popular as they are battery-operated and do not release emissions that are harmful for the environment. As a result, the automotive power electronics market is anticipated to witness substantial growth for the forecast period between 2017 and 2025. For instance, in the U.K., the sale of diesel and petrol cars is anticipated to be banned by 2040 as part of the governments efforts to improve the air quality. Due to this, the sale of electric vehicles is likely to shoot up substantially in the next decade.Request For Report Sample:On the downside, high cost of electric vehicles leading to slow adoption is anticipated to challenge the automotive power electronics market.The data and information presented is based on the findings of a TMR report, titled Automotive Power Electronics Market (Electric Vehicle  Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV); Vehicle Type  Passenger Cars (PC) and Commercial Vehicles (CV); Application - Powertrain and Chassis, Body Electronics, Safety & Security Systems, and Infotainment & Telematics)  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2017  2025.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
Herbicides Market Expected to Behold a CAGR of 6.1% through 2017-2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=6994

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=6994

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

The concentration of a few large players that hold close to 75% market share renders the global herbicides market to be highly consolidated and an organized one, as stated in a new report by Transparency Market Research (TMR). Competition among these players, however, is stiff as they are contend to garner a larger market share. In this scenario, leading players are resorting to strategic alliances and mergers and collaborations to introduce novel and economical products.Syngenta International AG, BASF SE, Bayer AG, DowDuPont Inc., Monsanto Company, Agrium Inc., and Israel Chemicals Limited are to name some of the leading companies in the global herbicides market.The need to up agricultural produce to feed the growing global population is chiefly driving the global herbicides market. Driven by this and various other factors, the global herbicides market is likely to display a CAGR of 6.1% between 2017 and 2025, for the market to attract a revenue of US$29.30 bn by 2025 end. The global herbicides market stood at US$17.37 bn in 2016.Product-wise, glyphosate led the global herbicides market in terms of value and volume in 2016. The segment is likely to hold on to its dominant position over the forecast period. Cereals and grains, among the key application types dominated the market vis-a-vis revenue in 2016. The segment is likely to display the leading CAGR over the forecast period. Geography-wise, Europe stood as the leading regional segment in 2016; going forward the region is likely to display a slightly declined market share during the forecast period.Request For Report Sample:Need to Clear Unwanted Vegetation Affecting Agricultural Crop Production Boosts UptakeMajorly fuelling the global herbicides market is the need to increase crop yield to feed the rising global population. The decreasing cultivable land has necessitated the use of herbicides to clear weeds that that grow around planted crops and consume major portion of nutrition for crops. Herbicides are synthetic crop protection products that are used to kill unwanted vegetation such as weeds that affect crop production. Weeds affect as much as 50% crop yield, as weeds thrive on the nutrition meant for planted crops and thus results in reduced crop yield. This is necessitating the use of herbicides to decrease the gap between demand and production of food.As per the statistics of United Nations, the world population has increased significantly in the past two decades and is anticipated to rise at a rapid pace in the near future. The world population is estimated to be 9.8 billion by 2050, from a population of 7.6 billion in 2017. Increasing crop yield is of utmost importance, from the point of view of production of sufficient food to cater to the rising population.Health and Environmental Concerns lead to Declined UseHowever, health and environmental concerns have imposed ban on a number of herbicides. For instance, glyphosate, which is one of the most widely used herbicide is anticipated to be banned in Europe by the end of 2017. Also, 2,4-D has been banned for use in Europe. California has put restrictions on the use of glyphosate due to the presence of herbicide active ingredients that are strictly monitored for health and environmental considerations.Request For Report Brochure:In addition, the increasing awareness of health hazards associated with synthetic agrochemical products is leading to a shift towards bio-based products, especially in developed economies of Europe and North America.The data and information presented here is based on the findings of a TMR report, titled Herbicides Market (Product - Acetohlor, 2,4-D, Glyphosate, Atrazine; Application - Oilseeds & Pulses, Cereals & grains, Fruits & vegetables) - 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 USState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Global Twilight switches Market 2017- ELKO, ETI, FINDER, Hager, Theben AG

Global Twilight switches Market

https://goo.gl/t2oQ3s

https://goo.gl/R1Vyqq

www.apexmarketreports.com

Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Global Twilight switches Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Global Twilight switches 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 Twilight switches industry, and estimates the future trend of Global Twilight switches market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Global Twilight switches Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportB+B Thermo-TechnikDoepke Schaltgerate GmbHDynamic Motion SAELKOETIFINDERHagerORBIS TECNOLOGIA ELECTRICAPERRY ELECTRICSTEINELTheben AGSchneider ElectricElectro ArtsThe market research report explores the Global Twilight switches market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Global Twilight switches 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 Global Twilight switches market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Global Twilight switches. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Global Twilight switches 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 Global Twilight switches is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Global Twilight switches market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Global Twilight switches market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The Global Twilight switches market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Global Twilight switches production volume, data pertaining to demand and Global Twilight switches supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Global Twilight switches 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 Global Twilight switches 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 Night Vision Security Cameras Market 2017 - Axis Communications, BAE Systems, FLIR Systems, Pelco

Global Night Vision Security Cameras Market

https://goo.gl/63FtuL

https://goo.gl/Z4qadg

www.apexmarketreports.com

Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Night Vision Security Cameras Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Night Vision Security Cameras 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 Night Vision Security Cameras industry, and estimates the future trend of Night Vision Security Cameras market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Night Vision Security Cameras Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportAxis CommunicationsBAE SystemsFLIR SystemsHikvision Digital TechnologyL-3 Communications HoldingsPelcoRaytheonRobert BoschSamsung ElectronicsHoneywellThe market research report explores the Night Vision Security Cameras market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Night Vision Security Cameras 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 Night Vision Security Cameras market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Night Vision Security Cameras. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Night Vision Security Cameras 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 Night Vision Security Cameras is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Night Vision Security Cameras market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Night Vision Security Cameras market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The Global Night Vision Security Cameras market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Night Vision Security Cameras production volume, data pertaining to demand and Night Vision Security Cameras supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Night Vision Security Cameras 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 Night Vision Security Cameras 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 -
Learning Management Systems Market Likely To Touch US$18.8 Bn by 2024

MRRSE

https://www.mrrse.com/sample/311

https://www.mrrse.com/learning-management-system-market

https://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/311

https://www.mrrse.com/

https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/

Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has been serving as an active source to cater intelligent research report to enlighten both readers and investors. This research study titled Learning Management Systems (LMS) Market Get Free Sample Report @The learning management system (LMS) market report provides analysis for the period 20142024, wherein the period from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast and 2015 is the base year. The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a key role in the LMS markets growth over the forecast period. It also highlights the drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the markets growth during the said period in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn), across the geographies including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South America.North America comprises of the U.S., Canada and rest of North America, while the Europe region covers the Scandinavia, Germany, and rest of Europe. The report further provides the in-depth analysis for countries in Scandinavia that include Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Furthermore, the Asia Pacific region is divided into China, India, and rest of Asia Pacific. While the Middle East and Africa region includes Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), South Africa, and rest of Middle East and Africa. South America region provides the market size for Brazil, Argentina, and rest of South America.The report provides key market indicators that have a strong impact on LMS market. The market overview section of the report outlines the drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current nature and future standing of this market. The report represents the market attractiveness for segments that include deployment type, user group, and module depending of various factor that influence the adoption of LMS. Moreover, the report provides an overview of the various strategies of key players in the market.Learning Management Systems Market: SegmentationThe report segments the global LMS market on the basis of deployment into on-premise and hosted. Furthermore, on the basis of modules the LMS market is divided into administration, content delivery and management, progress management, interaction and integration technologies, user management, and others (access management and reporting). Depending on the user group, the LMS market is dived into education and corporate sector. Furthermore, the education user group is further segmented into kindergarten, K-12, and higher education.View Complete Report with Table of Contents @The report provides industry evolution to understand the development of LMS over the years. Considering the competition in the market, supply-demand ratio, and macro and micro economic factors the prices are estimated for the forecast period. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross-segment analysis of the LMS market and classifies it at various levels, providing valuable insights at the macro and micro levels. Moreover, the report analyses potential opportunities for LMS in different regions and countries considering the macro and micro factors expected to aid the LMS market.Learning Management Systems Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report also highlights the competitive landscape of the LMS market, positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, solutions/services offered, focus on research and development, and key recent developments. Furthermore, global market share of the major players are estimated depending on the revenue generated from LMS in 2015. The comprehensive LMS market estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews, and in-house expert panel reviews. These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the LMS markets growth.The major companies profiled in LMS market study include ACS Technologies Group, Inc., Blackboard Inc., Cornerstone Ondemand, Inc., IST AB, IBM Corporation, McGraw-Hill Education, Oracle Corporation, Saba Software, Inc., SAP SE, Skillsoft Limited, Upside Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd., and Instructure, Inc. Details such as financials, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players have been duly provided as part of company profiling.Send an Enquiry @About Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
The report comprises the forecast of the global revenue generated by the sales of Structured Cabling Market, 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1745

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1745

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=1745

Global Structured Cabling Market: OverviewStructured cabling market has been gaining momentum due to the high demand for comprehensive cabling infrastructure that includes hardware. Structured cabling has enabled high-speed internet and transmission of data along with seamless voice and video signals from one point to the other. The demand for sturdy telecommunication network and infrastructure is yet another reason for the buoyant market. Analysts anticipate that the demand for structured cabling will remain steady between 2017 and 2025 as telecommunication forms the backbone of every industry and will thus require advanced cabling solutions for smooth operations.Global Structured Cabling Market: Drivers and TrendsThe spurt of internet providers across the globe has augmented the demand for structured cabling in recent years. The progressively rising number of internet users have led to surging demand for structured cabling in recent years. Analysts anticipate that the demand for this type of cabling will be especially high in the corporate sector as it is known to be an advanced solution. Furthermore, efforts to bring in modernization in communication networks is also projected to favor markets growth in the near future.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Structured cabling is predominantly used in areas such as industrial, transportation, government, residential, and commercial. The report indicates that the commercial sector will dominate the global market due to a soaring demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP). The emerging trend of moving customer relationship management (CRM) to third-party datacenters has created a need for better bandwidth in various commercial. Thus, this trend will also be responsible for rising demand for structured cabling in various commercial sectors in the near future.Global Structured Cabling Market: Market PotentialSeveral leading players are expected to focus on mergers and acquisitions to expand their operational areas and improve their geographical reach. For instance, Scheider Electric SE acquired a Gunsan Elektrik, a Turkish wire and cable manufacturer in December 2014. This move is expected to help the company expand its operations to commercial and residential sectors. On a similar note, earlier in the same year, Scheider Electric SE bought over Invensys plc, which has allowed the company to venture into structured cabling for software businesses across the globe.Request TOC of the Report @Scheider Electric SE also plans to build a research and development facility in the U.S. The Global Innovation and Technology Center will serve as a key research and development unit for the entire North America in due time. Thus, the efforts to expand horizons in terms of developing better technology and operations is expected to be the winning strategy of market players operating in the global structured cabling market.Global Structured Cabling Market: Regional OutlookIn terms of geography, the global structured cabling market segmented into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The report indicates that the North America structured cabling market is likely to lead the pack in the coming years. The regions progress will be attributable to the strong presence of datacenters that have led to a high penetration of internet in remotest parts of the region. The regional market is expected to prosper against the backdrop of rising demand for internet in the region.Request Discount of the Report @The analysts predict that Europe is also expected grow steadily in the global structured cabling market. The emergence of Europe structured cabling market will be due to the efforts made by the European Commission to cut down carbon emission and consumption of electricity.Key Players Mentioned in this Report are:Some of the leading players operating in the global structured cabling market are Schneider Electric SE, Legrand SA, CommScope Holding Company Inc., Belden Inc., and Corning Inc. among others.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
Light Sensor Market - New Tech Developments and Industry advancements to watch out for 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=17759

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/light-sensor-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

A light sensor is an electronic device used to detect light. It is available in several forms in the global market. Cadmium sulfosolenide photoconductive photocell used in its manufacturing is the component that helps perceive light. This product modifies its resistance value based on the amount of incident light. Light sensors can detect visible light, just like humans. Their principle requirement is electrically charged signals.For more information on this report, fill the form @The global light sensor market is expected to expand steadily during the forecast period due to the increasing demand from the automotive sector, smart homes, and outdoor lighting applications. It is highly competitive and dominated by a few major players.The product has applications in consumer electronics and in the automotive, defense, aerospace, industrial, and medical sectors. In terms of voltage, it is classified into the following categories: 0.5 to 5 V, 1.5 to 6 V, 2.4 to 3.6 V, and 3 to 5.5 V. The technology-based divisions of the market include complementary metaloxidesemiconductors (CMOS), charge-coupled devices (CCD), and contact image sensors (CIS). Geographically, it is distributed over North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America.The global light sensors market currently is and anticipated to be primarily driven by an increasing demand for electronic consumer goods such as mobile phones and televisions. For instance, light sensors help reduce power consumption in mobile devices. Moreover, prominent automotive suppliers being in the process of increasing their usage for specific functions is also predicted to propel the market at an exponential rate. The requirement for ambient light sensing, proximity detection, and gesture recognition in electronic devices plays a role as well.Light sensors are also used to detect light in robotic programs, resulting in rapid technological advancements. However, low profit margins for manufacturers restrains the growth of this product. Smart lighting solutions which are currently trending have been significantly adopted by developing countries, directing lighting manufacturers to introduce light sensors in these devices.Obtain Report Details @Geographically, in terms of revenue, Asia Pacific (APAC) holds a major share in the global light sensors market as of 2015. Within Asia Pacific, China generates the maximum revenue due to the growing consumer demand for electronic products. On the other hand, North America is projected to be promising with a substantial share in the market. Ever-changing needs of consumers when it comes to electronics and their increasing usage in advanced medical technology equipment are key factors influencing the light sensor market.The global market is fragmented with the presence multiple players, including Avago Technologies Inc. & Heptagon in Singapore, ams AG in Germany, Elan Microelectronics Corp., Sitronix Technology Corp., & Everlight Electronics Co. in Taiwan, Maxim Integrated Products Inc. & Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. in the U.S., ROHM Co., Ltd. & Sharp Corporation in Japan, (Taiwan), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in South Korea, and STMicroelectronics NV in Switzerland.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:
Dental Wound Dressings Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2016 - 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/dental-wound-dressings-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=20549

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=20549<ype=S

Surgery in oral cavity can cause trauma to surrounding tissues and can create a wound which requires a long time to heal. Bleeding is one of the expected consequences of surgery. Bleeding after the extraction of a tooth or a dent alveolar surgery can be usually self-limiting. Some of the surgical materials are anticoagulants and are useful in achieving hemostasis when controlling the bleeding is not possible. Mainly primary closure of the wound is more used than secondary healing. However, primary closure is not feasible every time a surgery is done. Oral tissues such as the attached gingivae and mucosa of hard palate are tightly bound to the underlying bone and it cannot be easily mobilized for providing primary closure. In case of surgery of lower wisdom tooth, if there is increased swelling and postoperative pain, mucoperiosteal flap primary closure is preferred over secondary healing and flap repositioning. Hence, dressing material is being advocated and used for wounds in the mouth to reduce postoperative pain, prevent any type of infection, and promote healing.Read Report Overview @Dental wound dressing can have detrimental effects on oral tissues. Nerve damage, toxicity, and local tissue reactions are reported with dental wound dressings. It is therefore necessary to know about the constituents of dental wound dressing materials along with their uses and potential adverse reactions. Dental wound dressing performs three major functions: helps in protecting wounds, prevents infection, and maintains optimal moisture.Based on type of dressing, the dental wound dressings market can be segmented into oxidized regenerated cellulose, whiteheads varnish, carnoys solution, bismuth iodoform paraffin paste, zinc oxide-based dressings, alvogyl, and collagen. Oxidized regenerated cellulose is primarily used as a hemostatic agent, which works by chemically interacting with the blood. Whitehead varnish contains ether, iodoform, and turpentine which together make varnish antiseptic. Carnoys solution used as tanning agent is prepared from ferric sulfate, acetic acid, and chloroform. Bismuth iodoform paraffin paste is a combination of iodoform and bismuth along with paraffin. Zinc oxide is combined with different materials forming a cement or paste, which is then used to cover the extraction socket or gingival tissue. Alvogyl used for treatment of alveolar osteitis contains iodoform, butamben, and eugenol as active ingredients.Increasing demand for pain free dental treatment by patients is one of the major drivers of the dental wound dressings market. Another factor driving the market is the increasing number of dental surgeries due to unhealthy eating habits such as confectionaries and junk food. Less care given to teeth and their hygiene due to the busy lifestyle in cities is another factor driving the market. However, high cost of dental surgeries is a major restraint of the market. More advanced and chemical free dental wound healing material that removes discomfort of the patients provides significant opportunity in the market.Request for Brochure @Geographically, the dental wound dressings market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America accounts for the largest share of the dental wound dressings market owing to rise in unhealthy eating which causes damage to teeth. Europe is the second largest market for dental wound dressings due to the aging population who suffer from dental problems. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market due to the increasing adoption of western junk food eating habits which makes people in the region susceptible to various dental problems.Key players in the dental wound dressings market include Sabra Dental, Collagen Matrix, Cologenesis Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., Novabone, and Kerr Dental.Get 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
Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market : An overview section of the report includes qualitative analysis 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1748

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1748

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=1748

Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market: OverviewThe testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) solutions verify that a product conforms to regulatory standards pertaining to quality, performance, and technical safety that are universally accepted. Product testing, inspection and certification is an approach to provide assurance to consumers and are in the interest of consumers for a safe purchase.Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market: Key TrendsThe top factor driving the global TIC market is the increasing awareness among consumers about the quality, performance, and safety assurance attached with products that conform to international standards. The increasing volume of international imports and exports, which is controlled by a combination of local and global standards and regulations is further fuelling growth of the global testing, inspection, and certification market. This has necessitated manufacturers to adhere to quality control specifications and obtain universally accepted certifications for participation in international trade. This is expected to boost the adoption of testing, inspection, and certification services predominantly in food and beverages, aerospace, automotive, and oil and gas industries.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The oil and gas industry has contributed significantly to the growth of the TIC market over the past few years; the end-use segment held a dominant share of over 35% in the global market in 2015. This is because testing, inspection, and certification are mandatory across all stages of any exploration and production project, starting from project feasibility to de-commissioning of the site.With the increasing number of oil and gas exploration activities both onshore and offshore, the oil and gas industry is expected to extend growth opportunities to the testing, inspection, and certification market.Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market: Market PotentialTop companies in the TIC market are vying to obtain accreditation from international agencies in a bid to cater to regional markets and operate globally. In a recent industry development, Bureau Veritas  a world leader in testing, inspection, and certification services has obtained certification from United Kingdom Accreditation Services to carry out verifications and assessments for services that are compliant with the regulations of European Union Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification.Request TOC of the Report @Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market: Regional OutlookEurope is a leading regional market as it has high concentration of some of the top vendors in the global testing, inspection, and certification market. The region contributed over 30% to the revenue of the global market in 2015.The developing economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America are expected to contribute significantly to the growth of the testing, inspection, and certification market. The region is anticipated to display growth at the fastest pace in the near future. Factors such as rapid industrial development and a growing middle class population with disposable incomes have led to high volume of international imports and exports in these regions. This has necessitated product manufacturers to comply with diverse safety and quality standards that are universally accepted, thereby driving the need for testing, inspection, and certification services. The booming food and beverages industry in the region and the increasing awareness among about the quality assurance of certified products will be predominantly driving the TIC market in the region.Request Discount of the Report @Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the key players in the global testing, inspection, and certification market are Bureau Veritas SA, SGS Group, ASTM International, Dekra SE, Lloyds Register Group Limited, TUV SUD AG, Intertek Group PLC, ALS Ltd., AsureQuality Ltd., Underwriters Laboratories Inc., DNV GL, and TUV Rheinland Group.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 Tableware Cleaning Agent Market, Market Share, Size, Forecast and Trends by 2020

http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/9dime9634/global-tableware-cleaning-agent-market-research-report-2016

http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=9dime9634

http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=9dime9634

www.marketintelreports.com

2016 Global Tableware Cleaning Agent Industry Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Tableware Cleaning Agent industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).Browse 155 Pages of Recent Research report on Global Tableware Cleaning Agent Market Research Report 2016 to 2020 @Scope of the Reports:The report firstly introduced the Tableware Cleaning Agent basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.Request Sample PDF Brochure@The report includes six parts, dealing with:basic informationthe Asia Tableware Cleaning Agent Marketthe North American Tableware Cleaning Agent Marketthe European Tableware Cleaning Agent Marketmarket entry and investment feasibilitythe report conclusionProcure this Report @About Us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers. MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients. MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand  Supply Gap.Contact us:Sales Manager: Srikanth VishnuMarket Intelligence Reports PTE. LTDNorth Bridge RoadHigh Street CentreSingapore (179094)sales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343
Mini UAV Global Market 2017: Key Players  Bormatec, Cyberflight Ltd, INNOCON, SURVEY Copter, Uconsystem

Mini UAV Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1760855-global-mini-uav-market-research-report-2017-2022-by-players-regions

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1760855-global-mini-uav-market-research-report-2017-2022-by-players-regions

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/2531451-global-electric-medical-bed-market-professional-survey-report-2017

Mini UAV Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Mini UAV Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report offers an overview of the market trends, drivers, and barriers with respect to the Mini UAV market. It also provides a detailed overview of the market of different regions across United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and Others. The report categorizes Mini UAV market by By Distance, By Wing, and application. Detailed analysis of key players, along with key growth strategies adopted by them is also covered in this report on Mini UAV market.This report focuses Global market, it covers details as following:Key PlayersBormatecCyberflight LtdINNOCONSURVEY CopterUconsystemCarbon-Based Technology Inc.Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L.Aeryon Labs Inc.Aibotix GmbHRequest a Sample Report @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsMini UAV Market, by DistanceUltra Short Range Mini UAVShort-Range Mini UAVShort-Range Mini UAVMedium-Range Mini UAVRemote Mini UAVMini UAV Market, by WingFixed WingRotor WingParasol WingMini UAV Market, by Key ConsumerMilitaryCivilIf 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 Mini UAV Market Research Report 2017-2022 by Players, Regions, Product Types & ApplicationsChapter One Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source1.2.1 Secondary Sources1.2.2 Primary Sources1.3 DisclaimerChapter Two Mini UAV Market Overview2.1 Market Coverage2.2 Global Mini UAV Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-2017Chapter Three Mini UAV by Key Players 2012-20173.1 Global Mini UAV Sales Volume Market Share by Key Players 2012-20173.2 Global Mini UAV Revenue Share by Key Players 2012-20173.3 Global Key Players Mini UAV Key Product Model and Market Performance3.4 Global Key Players Mini UAV Key Target Consumers and Market Performance.Chapter Six Global Key Players Profile6.1 Bormatec6.1.1 Bormatec Company Details and Competitors6.1.2 Bormatec Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.1.3 Bormatec Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.1.4 Bormatec Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.2 Cyberflight Ltd6.2.1 Cyberflight Ltd Company Details and Competitors6.2.2 Cyberflight Ltd Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.2.3 Cyberflight Ltd Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.2.4 Cyberflight Ltd Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.3 INNOCON6.3.1 INNOCON Company Details and Competitors6.3.2 INNOCON Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.3.3 INNOCON Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.3.4 INNOCON Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.4 SURVEY Copter6.4.1 SURVEY Copter Company Details and Competitors6.4.2 SURVEY Copter Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.4.3 SURVEY Copter Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.4.4 SURVEY Copter Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.5 Uconsystem6.5.1 Uconsystem Company Details and Competitors6.5.2 Uconsystem Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.5.3 Uconsystem Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.5.4 Uconsystem Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.6 Carbon-Based Technology Inc.6.6.1 Carbon-Based Technology Inc. Company Details and Competitors6.6.2 Carbon-Based Technology Inc. Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.6.3 Carbon-Based Technology Inc. Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.6.4 Carbon-Based Technology Inc. Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.7 Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L.6.7.1 Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L. Company Details and Competitors6.7.2 Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L. Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.7.3 Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L. Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.7.4 Aerovision Vehiculos Aereos, S.L. Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.8 Aeryon Labs Inc.6.8.1 Aeryon Labs Inc. Company Details and Competitors6.8.2 Aeryon Labs Inc. Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.8.3 Aeryon Labs Inc. Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.8.4 Aeryon Labs Inc. Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.9 Aibotix GmbH6.9.1 Aibotix GmbH Company Details and Competitors6.9.2 Aibotix GmbH Key Mini UAV Models and Performance6.9.3 Aibotix GmbH Mini UAV Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.9.4 Aibotix GmbH Mini UAV Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross MarginContinued.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
The analysis of the Waste to Energy Market by region, material type, distribution network and primary usage, 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1751

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1751

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=1751

Waste to Energy Market: OverviewWaste to energy involves generation of energy in the form of electricity or heat using municipal solid waste, which is produced from commercial, domestic, and industrial sectors. Several technologies are deployed to compress and dispose waste from various sectors to generate steam, fuel cell, and electricity. While each technology employs a unique course of action, the end product is utilizable for domestic dwellings, commercial spaces, and industries.Waste to Energy Market: Key TrendsThe global waste to energy market is predominantly driven by the need to develop alternate or unconventional energy sources as conventional forms of energy are nearing exhaustion and to safeguard the environment from ill-effects of conventional fuels. Furthermore, several governments around the world are imposing stringent regulations to control production of waste and to control landfill waste. To address this, waste treatment plans have been developed to minimize solid waste to become part of landfills or to be exported to third world countries. The market is anticipated to be further benefitted from incentives offered by governments in the form of tax rebate and subsidies.Request Sample Copy of the Report @In recent years, the utilization of thermal technology for conversion of waste to energy has gained prominence over biological technology. This is because the former is flexible in terms of feedstock used in the plant and is advantageous in terms of weight and volume of ash produced from waste. In 2012, thermal technology held a share of 80% in the global waste to energy market. However, thermal technology faces challenges due to the various types of feed that are used resulting in varying output and unsteady effectiveness of waste conversion plants.The adoption of biological technology is also on the rise as it employs anaerobic digestion for converting waste in to energy. This technology is preferred by farmers due to the biodegradability and high moisture content of the process.Request TOC of the Report @Waste to Energy Market: Market PotentialThe development of mega capacity waste to energy plant is in the developmental agenda of several governments around the world for a sustainable ecosystem. In a bid for sustainable economic development along with safeguarding the environment, Indias largest solid waste to energy plant has been developed at Delhi. The project will convert 2,000 metric tonnes of waste each day to produce 24 megawatt of energy. The development of the plant has finally provided a solution to the garbage woes of the capital and some respite to overflowing landfills as it will convert waste to generate energy.Waste to Energy Market: Regional OutlookAsia Pacific is currently the leading regional waste to energy market contributing a significant revenue to the global market. This regional market is expected to rise further due to improving economic conditions and increasing awareness about safeguarding the environment for humans and for the ecosystem. India, China, and Japan are the major countries that are boosting growth of the waste to energy market in Asia Pacific. At present, Japan has a well-established waste management system for converting waste into energy for everyday operations. On the other hand, rapid economic development in China and India leading to the production of large volume of waste also holds immense potential for the growth of the Asia Pacific waste to energy market.Request Discount of the Report @Waste to Energy Market: Competitive OutlookSome of the key players that operate in the global waste to energy market are Suez Environment S.A., Constructions industrielles de la de la Mediterranee, Covanta Energy Corporation, Veolia Environment, Waste Management Inc., C&G Environmental Protection Holdings, and China Everbright International 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
Slovakia - The Future of Foodservice Market 2017: Key Players  McDonald's, Subway, KFC, Pizza Mizza and More

Slovakia - The Future of Foodservice Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2478965-slovakia-the-future-of-foodservice-to-2021

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/conferences

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/seminars

SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Slovakia - The Future of Foodservice"Slovakia - The Future of Foodservice to 2021", published by provides extensive insight and analysis of the Slovakian foodservice market over the next five years (2016-2021) and acts as a vital point of reference for operators or suppliers.Value growth of the Slovakian profit sector rose at a CAGR of 3.1% between 2014 and 2016, far outpacing wider European averages. Despite a positive economic climate, purchasing power in Slovakia remains among the lowest in the EU, resulting in a highly price-oriented marketplace. Over 40% of surveyed Slovakians therefore cite price to be the most important factor influencing decision making within foodservices.Few Slovakian consumers view eating out as simply part of their daily routines, often restricted by their own personal finances. The countrys low-cost, qualified labor force has made Slovakia an attractive destination for international foodservice providers. In recent years operators such as Starbucks, Wagamama and Vapiano have entered the market, but their presence remains limited to the capital of Bratislava.The report includes - Overview of Slovakia's macro-economic landscape: Detailed analysis of current macro-economic factors and their impact on Polands foodservice market including GDP per capita, consumer price index, population growth and annual household income distribution.- Growth dynamics: In-depth data and forecasts of key channels (QSR, FSR and coffee & tea shops) within Slovakia's foodservice market, including the value of the market, number of transactions, number of outlets and average transaction price.- Customer segmentation: identify the most important demographic groups, buying habits and motivations that drive out-of-home meal occasions among segments of the Slovakian population.- Key players: Overview of market leaders within the three major channels including business descriptions and number of outlets.- Case Studies: Learn from examples of recent successes and failures within the Slovakian foodservice market.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Companies mentionedMcDonald'sSubwayKFCPizza MizzaPrimiMedusa GroupKubuAltrivioBeAboutCoffeeshop CompanyCoffee & CoCafe DiasDoctor's AssociatesYum! Brands IncSchnitzelScope- As one of the smallest foodservice markets in the European Union, expansion opportunities are limited. Major chained operators are typically only financially sustainable within Bratislava and tourist hotspots.- Due to lowered levels of consumer purchasing power, trends towards healthier eating are less pronounced in Slovakia when compared to most of wider Europe.- Starbucks arrival in Slovakia is expected to act as a catalyst for change in the coffee and tea shop market, delivering a much-needed boost to average consumer spending which, in 2016, stood at just EUR 2.32.Key points to buy- Specific forecasts of the foodservice market over the next five years (2016-2021) will give readers the ability to make informed business decisions through identifying emerging/declining markets.- Consumer segmentation detailing the desires of known consumers among all major foodservice channels (QSR, FSR, Coffee & Tea shops) will allow readers understand the wants and needs of their target demographics.- Relevant case studies will allow readers to learn from and apply lessons discovered by emerging and major players within the Slovakian foodservice market...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 understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS) Market trends research and projections for 2017-2024

https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/728

https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/728

https://www.gminsights.com

https://gminsights.wordpress.com

Automated breast ultrasound system (ABUS) market has completely revolutionized the diagnostic approach of breast cancer. Increasing incidence of breast cancer across the world in the recent past has indeed propelled the market growth. ABUS has now become a full-fledged diagnostic approach adopted worldwide for the preoperative evaluation of breast tumors. Speaking of technology, subsequent intervention of advanced technologies has only enhanced its pivotal clinical role in the oncology department. A recent technological breakthrough, Invenia ABUS, is anticipated to shift the overall ABUS market dynamics to a new hike, grounding on its credibility of obtaining adjunctive breast images from different angles. Statistics depict that the usage of this system improves cancer diagnosis almost by 55% than mammography. Furthermore, regulatory approval from FDA for deploying automated breast ultrasound systems for supplement screening as an assistive method with mammography is expected to augment the market growth. As per a report by Global Market Insights, Inc., Automated Breast Ultrasound System Market will witness a giant leap in terms of revenue from USD 285 million to USD 2 billion over a period of 2015-2024. It is also projected to record lucrative annual growth rate of 21% over the forecast span.U.S. prominently observes an increasing prevalence of breast cancer, which is why the market growth prospect in this region is huge. It dominated the North America ABUS market in 2015 by contributing maximum share toward the regional industry in that particular year. Implementation of hi-tech breast screening methods, supportive governments initiatives, reimbursement scenarios, and concentration of leading players are some of the factors that have complemented the business landscape of the country. China ABUS market is anticipated to mark a billion-dollar business landscape by 2024, by collecting USD 1 billion within next seven years. Amenability toward novel technology and spreading awareness about breast cancer treatment among the common folks is changing the market outlook in China. It covered almost 60% of the Asia Pacific ABUS market in 2015, and is likely to remain one of the major contributors also in the years ahead.Request Sample Copy of this Report @Based on the product front, automated breast ultrasound system market is bifurcated into ABVS (Automated breast volume scanner) and ABUS. ABVS market is expected to witness maximum gains in the coming years. Since together ABVS in adjunct with mammography enables superior detection and evaluation of breast cancer, automated breast ultrasound system market growth from this product segment is expected to experience a surge in the years ahead. As per estimates, ABVS based market will exceed a revenue of USD 950 million by the end of 2024. Automated breast ultrasound systems held the largest share in 2015, by consuming 48% of the overall volume. Quick turnaround time, accurate diagnostic results, cost affordability are some of the factors that will allow the market to record a revenue of USD 1.1 billion by 2024. Since these advanced systems are widely employed in hospitals, overall ABUS market from hospitals applications accounted for more than 60% of the overall volume in 2015. With the increasing availability of skilled professionals and improved funding in the hospitals, this sector is projected to chart a profitable roadmap in the years ahead at a CAGR of 21.2% over 2016-2024.Make Inquiry about this report @The business landscape of automated breast ultrasound system market has remarkably evolved in the past few years with technological involvements that have brought advanced innovative systems in the industry. Though high capital investment, unattractive reimbursement policies, and lack of proper awareness are hampering the market penetration in some of the nations, yet key market players continuous involvement in research activities will thrive the expansion in the years ahead. Some of the prominent ABUS industry participants include Siemens, SonoCine, General Electric Company, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Koninklijke Philips.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.Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Digital has made its way into the retail industry

www.trginternational.com

https://www.trginternational.com/

Digital takes an important role today in every operation across industries; we can do almost everything using any digital devices. Emails, mobile apps, computers have made it easy for us to do almost everything we would like to.Since digital is now an unseperated part in people's life, consumers now expect that communication between them and brands would be personalised case by case and they don't want to be disturbed by any spam messages. This trend urges retailers to adopt tools or solutions that help them better communicate with their consumer which help improve their loyalty.Digital has made its way into the retail industryTrue facts regarding the importance of digitalA numbers of studies have pinpointed the fact that digital plays a critical role in retail industry; mobile app, social media and personalized communication are actively helping retailers gain customer loyalty.More than half (54%) of respondents in a research by CME council said that they need relevant information about the product in order to maintain their commitment to a brand; meanwhile 57% of individuals agree that a "poorly designed" mobile website will also discourage them from coming back, according to a study by Mobile Marketer.Between 2011 and 2017, the value of retail transaction that people make from their mobile devices will rise eleven fold across Europe.This estimate look conservative with the continuing emergence of app-based shopping and we will see e-commerce and mobile commerce would be very popular and become a mainstream means of shopping.Retailers need to meet customers digital demandPoint-of-sale purchase decisions are not just evolving in the physical world but on the web as well. The rise of social media platforms have brought interaction between the brands and the customers, viral marketing and social storefronts to provide an alternative channel for retailers to sell through.Compendium's research cited that the average number of Facebook likes among the Top 100 retailers is around 1.2 million.Nevertheless, the engagement rate through the social site among these brands is only about 2 percent, which indicates that retailers haven't taken full advantage of this channel.Additionally, a study by Exact Target showed that the average time for a merchant to answer a customers enquiries through social media is about 7 hours which is actually too long of a time spanand the customer may buy products from competitors.Retailers need to meet customers digital demandTechnology will play a key part in developing the virtual marketplace. In the next decade, there will be a market where online purchases account for a far greater proportion of overall retail sales than currently.Physical products like books and consumer electronics has limited to online shopping. However, views that try before you buy categories such as clothing or groceries would not catch on are being proven wrong with the success of firms like ASOS and the increasing focus on online sales for mainstream grocery retailers.Tablet and smartphone applications will be the key driver for this trend as they increase connectivity and provide more choices to the consumers, plus the recent economic downturn has acted as a catalyst to increasingly sophisticated consumer behaviour.The emergence of price comparison sites for retail is not new, but austerity has supplied a strong incentive for consumers to move online.By 2022 these bargain-driven technologies will have merged and expanded in scope so that sophisticated sites are able to tailor the best voucher or Groupon-type offers into much more personalised and bespoke retail services. Marketplacing, where different retailers compete under one virtual roof, will offer maximum choice to consumers.eBay and Amazon already cater to the virtual marketplace concept. This means that 2022 will see retailers competing head to head with one another and with producers further up the supply chain through consolidated platforms.ConclusionDigital has gradually proven their priority in many companies, as Digiday suggested. Many brands has utilised personalised information such as past purchases to elevate customer loyalty. Also, mobile sites and apps updating has become daily tasks for many brands. Therewithal, social media has also become a tool to foster customer engagement rather than just a sale boosting tool, which in turn helps nurture trusting relationships between retailers and consumers.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:Contact-Details: Ngoc DoanPR Communication Officer2nd Floor, 145  147 Nguyen Co Thach Street, An Loi Dong Ward, District 2Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamngoc.doan@trginternaltional.com2nd Floor, 145  147 Nguyen Co Thach Street, An Loi Dong Ward, District 2
Antiviral Drugs is likely to exhibit a solid CAGR of 6.40% between 2016 and 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/antiviral-drugs-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=21083

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/21083

The global antiviral drugs market is reasonably consolidated, with Gilead Sciences holding a majority 51% share in 2015. The high level of consolidation is likely to help the global antiviral drugs market develop sustainably over the 2016-2024 forecast period, as the competitive makeup of the market is unlikely to change. Other leading players in the global antiviral drugs market include Merck & Co. Inc., Mylan NV, F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Cipla Inc., AbbVie Inc., and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. The lucrative opportunity in the antiviral drugs market is, however, likely to draw new players on a consistent basis, leading to the competition in the market intensifying over the coming years.According to Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global antivirus drugs market is likely to exhibit a solid CAGR of 6.40% between 2016 and 2024. The markets valuation is expected to rise from US$48.3 bn to US$82.9 bn over the forecast period. antiviral drugs market North America, Europe Likely to Dominate Antiviral Drugs MarketReport Overview @The global antiviral drugs market is segmented by region into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Developed countries in North America and Europe are likely to play a key role in the development of the global antiviral drugs market in the coming years due to the steady availability of advanced medical research infrastructure. North America accounted for more than 50% of the global antiviral drugs market in 2015 and is likely to retain a similar level of dominance through the 2016-2024 forecast period.Emerging countries in Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America could also play important roles in the growth of the global antiviral drugs market in the coming years. The rising prevalence of viral diseases has made these regions crucial for antiviral drug development and thus are likely to carry significant commercial weightage for players in the antiviral drugs market over the coming years.By disease indication, the global antiviral drugs market is segmented into HIV-AIDS, hepatitis, respiratory viruses, and others. The growing prevalence of AIDS is likely to keep it prominent within the international medical research field, leading to steady activity in the global antiviral drugs market in the coming years. Hepatitis has also become a key target for antiviral drugs market players and is likely to draw significant investment in the coming years.Request Sample Report @Improving Medical Research Sector in APAC Economies Vital for Antiviral Drugs Market One of the key drivers for the global antiviral drugs market is the steady growth of the medical research sector in emerging Asia Pacific economies such as India, China, and Japan. The rising government support in these countries to indigenous drug development and native pharmaceutical industry players has resulted in a steady opportunity for the global antiviral drugs market. Focusing on collaboration with medical research companies based in Asia Pacific could thus turn out to be a prosperous tactic for players in the global antiviral drugs market over the forecast period.The high unmet need for antiviral medication in Africa is also likely to remain a key driver for the global antiviral drugs market over the coming years. Underdeveloped countries in Africa have received firm support from several international medical bodies in order to combat the growing prevalence of viral diseases and the lack of resources to counter the problem, which has led to a promising situation for the antiviral drugs market.Summary of Table of Content @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
Japanese Encephalitis (JE) Therapeutics Pipeline Market Analysis and Forecast for the Drug Candidates in the Latest Stage of Development

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/japanese-encephalitis-therapeutics-pipeline

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/japanese-encephalitis-therapeutics-pipeline/report-sample

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/send-enquiry?enquiry-url=japanese-encephalitis-therapeutics-pipeline

https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Japanese encephalitis is a viral infection that spreads by mosquito bites. The study analyzed that the Japanese encephalitis therapeutics pipeline comprises approximately 12 drug candidates in different stages of development.Access Detailed Report Summary at:Shandong Hengye Biotech Co., Ltd., and VABIOTECH, have one drug candidates each in the Phase III stage of development for the treatment of the disease. The clinical studies of the vaccine, Vero cell-derived inactivated, is currently going on in China in the Phase III stage of development for the treatment of Japanese encephalitis.Download Report Sample at:The companies developing drugs for the treatment of Japanese encephalitis are laying more emphasis on the drug candidates to be developed as vaccines, due to the promising results shown by these candidates the in the clinical development. Based on molecule type, around 75.0% of the therapeutic candidates are being developed as vaccines, around 13.0% are made as peptide and 12.0% are being developed as small molecule.Make Enquiry Before Buying the Report:In September 2017, VABIOTECH in collaboration with National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), Vietnam, initiated a Phase III, randomized, multi-centered, parallel groups assignment trial to assess the immunogenicity and safety of the JECEVAX in healthy male as well as female children of age between nine to 24 months.Some of the key players developing drugs for the treatment of Japanese encephalitis include Shandong Hengye Biotech, Co. Ltd., Panacea Biotec Ltd., and Ennaid Therapeutics, LLC.Japanese Encephalitis (JE) Therapeutics Pipeline Analysis By Phase By Molecule Type By Route of Administration By CompanyAbout P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Hyperhidrosis Therapeutics Pipeline Market Analysis and Forecast for the Drug Candidates in the Latest Stage of Development

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/hyperhidrosis-therapeutics-pipeline-analysis

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/hyperhidrosis-therapeutics-pipeline-analysis/report-sample

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/send-enquiry?enquiry-url=hyperhidrosis-therapeutics-pipeline-analysis

https://www.psmarketresearch.com

The study analyzed that the hyperhidrosis therapeutics pipeline comprises approximately 12 drug candidates in different stages of development.Access Detailed Report Summary at:Allergan Plc, TheraVida Inc., and GlaxoSmithKline Plc have one drug candidate each in the Phase II development for the treatment of hyperhidrosis. Glycopyrronium tosylate is the only drug candidate that has the Phase III stage of development for the treatment of hyperhidrosis. Majority of the pipeline drug candidates are being developed using the topical route of administration.Download Report Sample at:Major players in the market are putting more emphasis on targeting cholinergic receptors. The drug candidates used for the treatment of hyperhidrosis, act on cholinergic receptors and block its activity that interfere with sweating. For instance, Glycopyrronium tosylate, a Phase III drug candidate by Dermira, Inc. acts topically and blocks the cholinergic receptor.Make Enquiry Before Buying the Report:In March 2015, Kaken Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and Brickell Biotech, Inc. entered in an agreement concerning the exclusive licensing and joint development of BBI-4000. Under the terms of agreement Brickell Biotech, Inc. agreed to conduct a Phase IIb clinical trial of BBI-4000 in the U.S. for patients with primary focal hyperhidrosis.Some of the key players developing drugs for the treatment of hyperhidrosis include Dermira, Inc., Allergan plc, TheraVida Inc. and others.Hyperhidrosis Therapeutics Pipeline Analysis By Phase By Molecule Type By Route of Administration By CompanyAbout P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
IT Management Software Market Overview by Application and Top Players 2017 to 2022

https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=151301

https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=151301

https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=151301

www.researchnreports.com

Global IT Management Software Market is an all-encompassing study of the industry sectors, up-to-date outlines, industry development, drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It contains an analysis of late augmentations in innovation, Porter's five forces analysis and progressive profiles of hand-picked industry competitors. The report furthermore articulates an analysis of trivial and full-scale factors indicated for the new and tenured candidates in the market along with a methodical value chain exploration.Top Key Players: Vivantio Pro, Google Drive, Microsoft Azure, PagerDuty, SOS Online Backup, CertainSafe, Vmware, HappyFox, AssetExplorer, Microsoft OneDrive, iDrive, MMSoft Pulseway, Box, CrashPlan, Zendesk, Quorum, InvGate, Stackify APM+, Google Cloud Platform, SpiceworksGet Sample Copy of this Report @In this IT Management Software statistical surveying report, the foremost dynamic factors of this market were observed and the business partners and end-users were lengthened. The structure of the business sector, cases, and complexities monitoring the market typically are similarly a trace of this extensive examination. Precise get-togethers and meetings were driven by the evident pioneers of this industry to get dedicated and strengthened bits of data concerned to the market.An in-depth synopsis of key market drivers, inclinations, & manacles is offered and analysis of the way they shake the IT Management Software market in an affirmative as well as the adverse way is granted. The topographies which are enclosed in this report are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and Latin America. Taking into consideration the given prediction period and specifically studying each and every data annually, an elaborate report is been enlisted to ensure the data is as well anticipated by the client.Know more about this Premium Report@The major growth drivers, challenges, and trends influencing the global IT Management Software market are inspected at length. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects. A number of analysis tools such as Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis have been employed to provide an accurate understanding of this market. Also, the report is compiled in a way for the readers and customers to understand better.The industry chain of the IT Management Software market is elaborated upon in detail in the report. A detailed manufacturing cost structure analysis and upstream raw material sourcing information are combined with an analysis of key buyers of carbon and energy software. This provides readers with a solid framework for understanding the markets growth potential in the coming years.In the concluding divisions of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the IT Management Software Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global IT Management Software Market Research Report 2017-2022Chapter 1 IT Management Software OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2017-2021)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2017-2021)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 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 Market Forecast (2017-2021)Chapter 13 AppendixGet Discount 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 ,
Diamond Mining 2017 Global Key Players - Alrosa, De Beers SA, Rio Tinto Plc Market Analysis and Forecast to 2020

Diamond Mining

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/815473-global-diamond-mining-to-2020

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/815473-global-diamond-mining-to-2020

www.linkedin.com/company/4828928

https://twitter.com/WiseGuyReports

https://www.facebook.com/Wiseguyreports-1009007869213183/?fref=ts

Pune, India, 21st December 2017: WiseGuyReports announced addition of new report, titled Global Diamond Mining to 2020.Summary"Global Diamond Mining to 2020", provides in-depth overview of global diamond mining industry, global diamond reserves by country and historic and forecast data on rough diamond production. The report covers factors affecting demand for global diamond and information on the active, exploration and development diamond projects. It also gives profiles of largest diamond mining companies in the world.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Companies mentionedAlrosaDe Beers SARio Tinto PlcDominion Diamond CorporationPetra Diamonds LtdScope- Provides overview of global diamond mining industry.- Information about global diamond reserves by country, reserves by major operating mines and diamond grade.- Historic and forecast rough diamond production data from 2000 to 2020.- Comprehensive information of major operating diamond mines in Asia-Pacific (APAC), Oceania, Middle East and Africa (MEA), Americas and Former Soviet Union (FSU)- Comprehensive information of major exploration diamond projects in North America (NA), South and Central America (SCA), Oceania, MEA and FSU.- Comprehensive information of major development diamond projects in APAC, NA, SCA, MEA and FSU.- Obtain various factors affecting the global diamond industry and demand for the commodity.- Company profile, including company overview, business description and information on current and upcoming diamond projects.Reasons to buy- Get the scenario of global diamond mining industry.- Get an overview of global diamond reserves and bifurcation by country, selected operating mines and diamond grade.- Obtain historic (2000-2015) and forecast data on rough diamond production to 2020.- Identify various factors that drive and affect the demand for diamond.- Information about various active, exploration and upcoming diamond projects in the world with bifurcation by region.- Identify and understand various companies operating in the global diamond mining industry with complete profile and business description.Table of Content: Key Points1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 32 GLOBAL DIAMOND MINING - RESERVES AND PRODUCTION 62.1 Reserves by Country, Grade and Major Mines 62.1.1 Australia 72.1.2 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 72.1.3 Botswana 82.1.4 South Africa 92.2 Historical and Forecast Production 92.2.1 Production by country 112.2.1.1 Russia 132.2.1.2 Botswana 152.2.1.3 Australia 172.3 Active Mines 192.4 Exploration Projects 242.5 Development Projects 262.6 Factors Affecting Global Demand for Diamonds 293 MAJOR GLOBAL DIAMOND PRODUCERS 303.1 Alrosa 313.2 De Beers SA 323.3 Rio Tinto Plc 343.4 Petra Diamonds Ltd 353.5 Dominion Diamond Corporation (DDC) 384 APPENDIX 394.1 Abbreviations 394.2 Bibliography 394.3 Methodology 394.3.1 Coverage 394.3.2 Secondary Research 404.3.3 Primary Research 404.3.4 Expert Panel Validation 414.4 Contact Us 41ContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook: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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Unmanned Surface Vehicle Market Foraying into Emerging Economies During 2016 - 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=19523

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=19523

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Unmanned surface vehicles are the machineries that are operated remotely on water surface without any human involvement. They are also known as autonomous surface vehicles. The unmanned surface vehicles are more valuable in oceanology due to their enhanced flexibility and cheaper in cost than the weather ships or research vessels. The unmanned surface vehicles has increased the interest of various government organizations and private manufacturers and due to this they are investing huge sums of money in developing the autonomous machinery. These unmanned surface vehicles has the ability to replace the conventional ocean vessels as they are either fully automated or semi-automated and they reduce the risk of operators in the manned surface vehicles.The rising demand for the unmanned surface vehicle is due to the research in the fields of oceanography and hydrography. Another major driving factor of market for unmanned surface vehicle is the growing need for monitoring water quality and anti-submarine warfare. The rising demand for advanced, reliable and efficient unmanned surface vehicles and the trend to modernize military sector worldwide is expected to drive the market for unmanned surface vehicle. Moreover, increase in maritime security and threats and increasing need for ocean data mapping is driving the market for unmanned surface vehicle.A sample of this report is available upon request @The major factor inhibiting the market for unmanned surface vehicles is the capability to understand the situation. Researches are being still conducted to improve the situational awareness of the unmanned surface vehicle. In addition, the collision detection and avoidance factor is also limiting the market to grow. Collision detection and avoidance is one of the major factor for the unmanned systems and due to this, the manufacturers are developing robust technologies to improve this limitation.The leading manufacturers are partnering with established players as well emerging companies to design and develop an unmanned surface vehicle that can operate for a longer period. Currently, the unmanned surface vehicles operate for 3 months at a stretch. This technological development can grow the market exponentially over the years. Moreover, another opportunity for the unmanned surface vehicle manufacturers is to collaborate unmanned surface vehicles with unmanned underwater vehicles, which will lead to improvement in the fields of naval and maritime surveillance applications, oil and gas exploration markets, and environmental surveys.The market for unmanned surface vehicle can be segmented based on payload, based on end user and geography.By payload, the unmanned surface vehicle can be further bifurcated into sidescan sonar, towed array, dipping sonar, mini autonomous underwater vehicle, expandable mine neutralizers, unmanned aerial vehicle, geotechnical seabed data collector, and underway water column profilers.The end users of these unmanned surface vehicles can be categorized as defense sector and commercial sectors. The usage in defense sector includes Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), Mine Counter Measures (MCM) and Anti-Submarine warfare. The commercial sector uses the unmanned surface vehicles for oil and gas explorations, oceanology data mapping, among others.Based on geography, the unmanned surface vehicle market can be segmented as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. The manufacturers in North America are investing huge amounts in research and development to to technologically upgrade the existing unmanned surface vehicles and so, North America is the dominating region in the market for unmanned surface vehicle, followed by Asia-Pacific and Europe.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The key manufacturers of unmanned surface vehicles across the globe are ASV Global (U.S.), Liquid Robotics Inc. (U.S.), Teledyne Marine (U.S.), Ocius Technologies (U.S.), ATLAS ELECTRONIK GmbH (Germany), Clearpath Robotics Inc., (Canada), Ocean Aero (U.S.) , Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. (Israel), QinetiQ North America (U.S.), Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc. (U.S.), Marine Advanced Research, Inc. (U.S.), Elbit Systems, Ltd. (Israel).The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About USTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Abhishek BudholiyaState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
3D Cardiac Mapping System Market Growth to be Driven by Technological Advancements 2026

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/3d-cardiac-mapping-system-market.asp

www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11383

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Cardiac mapping is a technique in which the information from cardiac electrograms is gathered and displayed. Cardiac mapping is used to diagnose the heart rhythms especially in case of arrhythmia. The cardiac mapping procedure is usually done by inserting catheter into the heart chamber percutaneously and recording the electrograms sequentially, this is done in order to correlate the electrograms with cardiac anatomy. The new 3D cardiac mapping systems create the three dimensional model of any chamber of heart and can track exact location of the catheter. This allows movement of the catheters without using X-ray. They are designed to improve the resolution and gain prompt cardiac activation maps.View Report Preview:3D Cardiac Mapping System Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe 3D cardiac mapping system market is anticipated to grow with a significant CAGR owing to the increase in number of patients with arrhythmia and other cardiac disorders, rising pressure to reduce diagnosis errors and increasing healthcare expenditure. The major factors driving the growth of 3D cardiac mapping systems is the precision and patient safety enabled by real-time monitoring. The increase in aging population who are more prone to chronic heart disorders will elevate the demand for the 3D cardiac mapping system. The increase in prevalence and diagnosis rate of cardiac illness is the major factors which is creating the demand for 3D cardiac mapping systems. The 3D cardiac mapping also help in reducing the time of diagnosis. The restraining factors for the 3D cardiac mapping system market are high cost of services and limited adoption rate of the systems.3D Cardiac Mapping System Market: SegmentationThe global 3D cardiac mapping system market are classified on the basis of technology, end use and geography.Based on the technology, the global 3D cardiac mapping system market is divided into following:Electroanatomical mappingBasket Catheter mappingReal-time positional management (Cardiac Pathways) EP systemBased on end user, the global 3D cardiac mapping system market is divided into following:HospitalsClinicsDiagnostic Centers3D Cardiac Mapping System Market: OverviewThe awareness of 3D cardiac mapping system is giving rise to the adoption of the systems. The elimination of errors in diagnosis helps the physician in providing better treatment and cure. The adoption rate of 3D cardiac mapping system by the hospitals is high as compared to that of independent clinics and is estimated to be the fastest growing segment. Electroanatomical mapping are used widely as it hold the potential to increase the safety, efficacy and efficiency of catheter. Real-time positional management (Cardiac Pathways) EP system contribute maximum share in the overall 3D cardiac mapping systems during the forecast period.3D Cardiac Mapping System Market: Regional OverviewOn the basis of geography, the global 3D cardiac mapping system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. North America contributes maximum share to the 3D cardiac mapping system market. European countries are expected to represent significant growth rates due to the growing healthcare practices. Amongst the Asian countries, India and China are more promising due to large population pool, increased prevalence of cardiac diseases, increasing awareness, rapid improvement in healthcare services with the saturation in the developed markets.Request to view Sample Report:3D Cardiac Mapping System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in 3D cardiac mapping system market are Biosense Webster, Inc., St. Jude Medical and Boston Scientific Corporation, Inc. The companies are majorly focusing in the improvement of services provided to customers with the new techniques that provide the physicians in better and quick diagnosis.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 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesT: +1-646-568-7751Tollfree: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Truck Crane Market to 2023: Historical Analysis, Growth Rates, Generation, Investment Trends and Opportunities

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4863

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/truck-crane-market-4863

Market HighlightsCrane is primarily used for lifting heavy loads and transporting them to other places. The truck is a type of mobile crane. Truck cranes are principally used in civil engineering construction works and in heavy equipment manufacturing for material handling. Technological innovations in crane models, have resulted in lighter and more energy efficient cranes. These factors have had a positive influence on the growth of the market. However, high initial investment, may hamper the growth of the market.Hence, Global Truck Crane Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.43% during the forecast period.Market Research AnalysisFor this study, the global truck cranes market has been segmented on the basis of types, and applications. On the basis of type, the market has been segmented as Mounted Cranes, Sidelift Crane, Boom Truck Crane, and Others. Mounted cranes is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Mounted cranes means cranes mounted on a rubber tire truck to provide great mobility. A side lifter crane is a road-going truck or semi-trailer, which is able to hoist and transport the containers. Container lift is done with parallel crane-like hoists, which can lift a container from the ground or from a railway vehicle.Based on applications, the market has been segmented as Construction, Industries, Utilities and Others. Construction segment accounted for the largest market share. Due to increasing population and urbanization, there is seen a shift in the population to the urbanized areas, especially in developing nations. This transition leads to the increasing demand for homes and residential complexes. This drives the demand of the market from this sector. Additionally, increased investment in new commercial constructions and infrastructure projects, also increase demand of this segment. Utility is another major application of the market. Increasing investments in power transmission and distribution (T&D) networks, is a factor driving the market for truck crane.Get Sample of Report @Prominent Players in the Global Truck Crane Market include Liebherr Group (Switzerland), The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (U.S.), Terex Corporation (U.S.), Tadano Ltd. (Japan), Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co., Ltd. (China), Kato Works Co., Ltd (Japan), Elliott Equipment Company (U.S.), Manitex International Inc. (U.S.), Sany Group (China), Altec Industries (U.S.), Bocker Maschinenwerke GmbH (GermanyAsia Pacific region dominates the global truck crane marketGeographically, the global truck crane market has been divided into the four major regions of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific, of all the regions, has accounted for the largest market share, in 2016, followed by Europe. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Increase in construction activities in countries such as China, Japan, India, and Indonesia in Asia Pacific region, is the major factor fuelling the growth of the market. Additionally, increase in industrialization, rising urbanized population, and growth in purchasing power, raise the growth of the market in Asia Pacific region. China is one of the leading markets in the Asia Pacific region. The Chinese Government issued several favorable policies for lowering the proportion of down payment for second house loans and exempting of sales tax for ordinary housing, which helped the recovery of commercial housing market. These factors have a positive influence on the growth of the market.Increasing up gradation, and repair & rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure and power grids & distribution networks, are driving the growth of the market in Europe. Germany and the U.K. are the major markets in Europe. The construction values of both the public and private sectors in the U.K., are continuously increasing. This will create potential for huge demand for the market, in coming years. North America is another major region for the market. The U.S. is a major market of North America. Strong development in commercial and residential structures in the U.S., is expected to further fuel the demand of the market in the region.Get Complete Report @Table of Content1 Executive Summary2 Scope Of The Report2.1 Market Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Definition2.2.2 Research Objective2.2.3 Assumptions2.2.4 Limitations2.3 Research Process2.3.1 Primary Research2.3.2 Secondary Research2.4 Market Size Estimation2.5 Forecast Model3 Market Landscape3.1 Porters Five Forces Analysis3.1.1 Threat Of New Entrants3.1.2 Bargaining Power Of Buyers3.1.3 Bargaining Power Of Suppliers3.1.4 Threat Of Substitutes3.1.5 Segment Rivalry3.2 Value Chain/Supply Chain Analysis4 Market Dynamics4.1 Introduction4.2 Market Drivers4.3 Market Restraints4.4 Market Opportunities4.5 Market Trends5 Global Truck Crane Market, By TypeContinue..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
Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market Worth 2.96 Billion USD by 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/surgical-sealants-adhesives-market-38230314.html

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=38230314

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=38230314

According to a new market research report "Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market by Product (Natural & Synthetic, Fibrin, Collagen, Gelatin, Cyanoacrylate, Albumin, Human blood), Indication (Hemostasis, Tissue Sealing), Application (CNS, Cardiovascular, Cosmetic Surgery) - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market witnessed a healthy growth rate during the last decade and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.6% between 2016 and 2021 to reach 2.96 Billion by 2021.Browse 212 market data Tables and 41 Figures spread through 265 Pages and in-depth TOC on"Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market"Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.The growth in this market is majorly attributed to factors such as increasing need to manage blood loss in patients, growing rate of surgeries being performed annually, greater uptake of technologically advanced products, and increasing FDA and CE Mark approvals. Moreover, factors like rising geriatric population, increasing prevalence and incidence of chronic disorders, and increasing trauma and accident cases are driving the adoption of these sealants and adhesives.The Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market is segmented on the basis of product, indication, application, and region. On the basis of product, the market is segmented into natural/biological sealants and adhesives and synthetic & semi-synthetic sealants and adhesives. The natural/biological sealants and adhesives segment is further divided on the basis of type and origin.Speak To Analyst:On the basis of type, natural/biological sealants have been segmented into polypeptide/protein-based and polysaccharide-based sealants and adhesives. The polypeptide/protein-based sealants segment consists of fibrin, gelatin, collagen, and albumin-based adhesives, while the polysaccharide-based sealants segment comprises of chitosan-based and other polysaccharide-based adhesives.On the basis of origin, the natural/biological sealants and adhesives segment have been categorized into human blood and animal-based adhesives. The synthetic and semi-synthetic sealants and adhesives have been segmented into cyanoacrylates, polyethylene glycol hydrogels, urethane-based adhesives, and other synthetic adhesives.Download PDF Brochure@On the basis of indication, the Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market has been segmented into surgical hemostasis, tissue sealing, and tissue engineering. Based on application, the market is segmented into CNS, general, cardiovascular, orthopedic, cosmetic, urological, pulmonary, ophthalmic surgeries, and other applications.In 2016, North America is expected to account for the largest share of the market. The largest share of this regional segment is driven by rising healthcare expenditure, the presence of many large and well-equipped hospitals, greater uptake of technologically advanced medical products, increasing FDA approvals for surgical sealants, and the presence of major market players in this region.However, the market in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR, owing to growing per capita income, increasing medical tourism, the presence of less stringent regulations, and growing demand for quality healthcare. In addition, increasing investments by major players in this region is propelling the market further.Baxter International, Inc. (U.S.), Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon, Inc.; U.S.), CryoLife, Inc. (U.S.), and C.R. Bard, Inc. (U.S.) held the major share of the Surgical Sealants and Adhesives Market and will continue to dominate the market between 2016 and 2021.Some of the major players operating in this market are Medtronic plc (U.S.), Sanofi Group (France), B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany), Cohera Medical, Inc. (U.S.), Ocular Therapuetix, Inc. (U.S.), Vivostat A/S (Denmark), and Sealantis Ltd. (Israel).About MarketsandMarkets:MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarketsandMarkets701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United StatesTelephone No: 1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com
3G Expansion, Fiber Deployment and Mobile Money to Boost Data Revenue Growth

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001505388/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/niger-3g-expansion-fiber-deployment-and-mobile-money-to-boost-data-revenue-growth

http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001505388/buy/990

"Niger: 3G Expansion, Fiber Deployment and Mobile Money to Boost Data Revenue Growth," a new Country Intelligence Report by Publisher, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Niger today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, and mobile, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.The telecom services revenue in Niger is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.6% during 2016-2021, driven by growth in fixed Internet and mobile data revenue. Mobile voice will continue to be the largest revenue-contributing segment in 2016 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.0% during 2016-2021. Mobile data will be the fastest-growing segment in the telecom market, mainly driven by operators' investments in network expansions and value-added service offerings such as mobile money services to stimulate data adoption. Going forward, operators plan to invest in network expansion, infrastructure development and rollout of fiber services, which will provide significant opportunities for vendors and investors to support operator initiatives.Get Sample Copy of Report@The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following:- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Niger compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in Niger.- The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.- A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data markets.- Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice, data and video from 2016 to 2021.- The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.- In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data services: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period.- Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Niger's telecommunications markets.Read More Information and Full TOC of the Report@Key Finding- The overall telecom service revenue in Niger will grow at a CAGR of 3.6% during 2016-2021, mainly driven by the growth in the data segment.- Mobile revenue will account for 89.0% of the total telecom revenue in 2021; mobile data will be the fastest-growing segment over 2016-2021.- 2G will be the most adopted mobile technology through 2021. However, its share in the overall mobile subscriber base will decline over the forecast period 2016-2021, owing to the adoption of 3G and 4G services in the coming years.- The top two operators, Airtel Niger and Orange Niger, account nearly 78.2% share of overall service revenue in 2016.- Operators will continue to invest in 3G network expansion and improving network infrastructure and fiber optic deployments to boost connectivity. Moreover, mobile money services will be a key revenue of source for the operators.Buy This Report@Key Players:Airtel NigerOrange NigerMoov NigerSonitelSahelcomNiger TelecomAbout 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:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com
Adhesive Tapes Market Expected to Behold a CAGR of 6.8% through 2016 - 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=10229

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=10229

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

LINTEC Corporation, Nitto Denko Corporation, tesa Tape Inc., and 3M collectively enjoyed close to 39% of revenue in 2015, in a moderately consolidated global adhesive tapes market, says Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. TMR states these players are likely to hold on leading shares on account of continual efforts for development of newer products and efforts for improving global presence.Further, factors such as volatile prices of raw materials and high entry barriers that avert new entrants to enter in the market consolidates the position of existing players, leading to stifled growth of the market.The report by TMR reveals that the global adhesive tapes market is likely to rise at a CAGR of 6.8% for the forecast period between 2016 and 2024 vis-a-vis revenue. At this pace, the market is projected to become worth US$92.36 by the end of 2024 which was evaluated at US$51.54 bn in 2015. The global adhesive tapes market is likely to rise at a CAGR of 5.9% from 2016 to 2024 in terms of volume.Request Report Brochure @The global adhesive tapes market has been classified based upon end use into consumer goods, graphics, building and construction, automotive, health care, and others.From a geographical perspective, Asia Pacific is anticipated to display promising growth over the forecast period between 2016 and 2025. This is mainly because of developing manufacturing infrastructure, technological developments, and easy availability of raw materials. Countries such as China and India are expected to contribute substantially due to economic development.North America stands as a significant market for adhesive tapes due to the growing demand for adhesive tapes from a host of industries.Revival of Automotive Sector Ramps up Adhesive Tape DemandFirst and foremost, the advancement of the automotive industry has been favorable to the growth of adhesive tapes market. At present, the high demand for lighter vehicles is the key factor responsible for the high demand of adhesive tapes. The use of bolts, rivets, screws, and other traditional fastening devices are increasingly being replaced by stronger adhesive tapes, which in turn leads to significant reduction in overall weight of a vehicle as well as significant reduction in the amount of metal that is used in the vehicle.As per the lead analysts of the study, traditional sealants and adhesives are also increasingly being used in advanced adhesive tapes that are at par in terms of shear strength, surface adhesion, and durability. The revival of the automotive industry post the economic slump of 2008 is expected to positively impact the global adhesive tapes market.The rising trend of miniaturization of electronic devices is also benefitting the global adhesive tapes market. The growing purchasing power of individuals leading to the demand for advanced consumer electronics that are compact in size is also acting in favor of the adhesive tapes market.Regulations to Monitor Emissions Limit Demand of Several Variants of Adhesive TapesThe growth of global adhesive tapes market is anticipated to be challenged due to stringent regulations in place that monitor emission of restricted chemicals, such as volatile organic compounds. These restrictions are likely to maximum affect sales of pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes that are currently in use. Pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes are extensively used in product design and manufacturing industries.Request For Report Table of Contents (TOC):The review presented here is based on the findings of a report by Transparency Market Research, titled Adhesive Tapes Market (Products - Single Coated, Double Coated, Transfer Tape, and Foam Tape; Composition - Acrylic, Rubber, and Silicone; Backing Materials - Polypropylene, Paper, and Polyvinyl Chloride; End Users - Health Care, Building & Construction, Consumer Goods, Automotive, and Graphics) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024.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
Contact Lenses Market : Demand is Increasing in Most Part of World 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1760

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1760

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=1760

Global Contact Lenses Market: SnapshotThe global contact lenses market is foreseen to find lucrative growth opportunities produced by specific types of products such as corrective contact lenses. Some of the important applications of corrective contact lenses include the treatment of visual deficiencies, viz. presbyopia, astigmatism, myopia, and hyperopia/hypermetropia. The growth of the market could be further expanded by the growing number of visual inaccuracies. Soft lens is anticipated to be a major contributor to the market because of its wide range of applications. Between 2017 and 2025, players could acknowledge developments in contact lens technology as a significant factor augmenting their market growth.Drug delivering lenses and other trends have been growing in prominence in the recent time due to their increasing adoption. Players could sign up for long-term partnerships with distributors and suppliers in order to strengthen their geographical presence and product portfolios. For instance, Vision Direct Group Ltd. was acquired by Essilor International S.A. in 2016 to bolster the latters retail business and sale of online optical offerings. On account of their ability to incorporate multiple prescriptions, multifocal lenses are predicted to embrace an amplified demand in the coming years. These are mainly engaged in the treatment of age-related ophthalmic diseases such as presbyopia.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The global contact lenses market is envisaged to perceive a rising count of consolidations brought about by the execution of strategic initiatives such as acquisitions, mergers, and alliances. This could be because of the loyalty base and brand value built up by market players while establishing their global footprint.Global Contact Lenses Market: OverviewContact lenses are wafer-thin plastic lenses, placed directly on the eye ball to rectify vision or for decorative purposes. On account of being sensitive, they need to be handled carefully to prevent dislocation and infections. Depending upon the eye disorder, different types of contact lenses are available in the market, namely bifocal lens for astigmatism, scleral contact lenses, bifocal contact lenses, color contact lenses, and daily disposable contact lenses.Contact lenses have contributed substantially to the global eyewear and eye care industries. From being considered lifestyle products to becoming common eye accessories supplanting the traditional glasses  they have come a long way.Request TOC of the Report @Global Contact Lenses Market: Key TrendsTwo of the primary growth drivers in the global market for contact lenses are a wide array of lenses and competitive prices. Additionally, the burgeoning world population afflicted with different ophthalmic disorders such as refractory errors and weakened eyesight is also bolstering growth in the market. The youth are a major contributor to the sales in the market. Efforts by contact lens manufacturers to train people about the correct and safe use of contact lenses coupled with the different types of products available for sale has also led to an uptick in demand.Extra caution needs to be exercised while wearing contact lenses as they are placed directly on the cornea of the eye and can easily cause eye infections, ulcerations and other eye diseases. They also need to be stored and handled carefully. This is one factor that is posing a roadblock to their swift uptake. Further, the fact that most practitioners are not equipped enough to prescribe contact lenses in certain developing countries in Asia Pacific and Middle East, is also negatively impacting the market to some extent.Global Contact Lenses Market: Market PotentialExhaustive research and development to come up with cutting-edge contact lenses by integrating it with recent technologies is slated to revolutionize the market in the near future. Google and Novartis, for example, are working on a contact lens that can measure glucose levels. In fact, the smart contact lens is one of the most eagerly awaited medical IoT (Internet of Things) technologies. Such groundbreaking applications of contact lenses along with an ageing population, economic upliftment, resultant rise in GDP, and growing urbanization will spell tremendous opportunity for the market in the next couple of years.Request Discount of the Report @Among the different technologies used in manufacturing of contact lenses, cast molding technology contributes to a lions share in the revenue. Going forward, the contribution of lathe cutting technology to revenues will likely increase at maximum pace.Global Contact Lenses Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the key segments of the global contact lenses market are Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest of the World. Among them, North America leads the market with a dominant share on account of the increase in ophthalmic issues among people of all age groups. In terms of pace of growth, on the contrary, Asia Pacific is slated to overtake all other regions due to the growing awareness about correct usage and benefits of contact lenses, application of sophisticated technologies in the manufacture of contact lenses, rising fortunes of people, and swift pace of urbanization.Global Contact Lenses Market: Competitive AnalysisThe global contact lenses market is dominated by a handful of players and hence is consolidated in nature. The prominent players holding a sway over the market that have been studied in the report are Johnson & Johnson, Alcona Inc., the Cooper Companies, and Bausch and Lomb.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
Timepot is Offering a Reliable Time Tracking Application

https://www.timepot.io/

The statement Time is valuable has never been made better in modern times than with Timepot which is an exceptional time tracking application. Designed and built specifically to give an easy-to-use platform from where users can manage and monitor each second spent on a task or project.Besides time tracking, Timepot comes with An Exclusive features that aid in clear reporting, effective planning, and accurate billing making it complete for a business environment.Talking about their integration with Nozbe, the Company Director said, For more than ten years, Nozbe has been assisting professionals to become more productive by creating, managing, and prioritizing tasks in Any kind of project. Now Nozbe users through the powerful features allowing real-time data tracking have more control over how they spend their time .Our app allows you to log in to Nozbe and access the tasks created which are then analyzed over a period of time and at the end of it a comprehensive report on the exact time taken to complete a task is given.Timepot is one of the best time tracker app currently in the market. It gives its users wide rage of time management features and reporting capabilities.It is Suitable both individual and organizational use as it can simultaneously track several employees. Application is an effective way to collect data and have a bigger view of the overall performance. The built-in filter feature gives administrators the flexibility of separating work hours by users, tasks and projects. All of it can be used while paying salaries and commissions or creating work schedules.Speaking on the importance of time tracking, the Company Director further said, The most common excuse against time tracking was the lack of a simple tool to aid in the process over longer periods. With the introduction of Timepot, it has become among the simplest tasks that work at the push of a button for better managing of a days work. Time tracking application can also teach you discipline which is among the life skills that be learned by staying focused on the important tasks and neglecting time wastage.A trial version of Timepot - the best time tracker online - can be accessed via their website for a hands-on experience on the abilities of the app before purchasing it. The 30 day period is an offer unlike any other that gives the full benefits of its features without any commitments for individual evaluation before making purchases. Timepot can track time in Youtrack, Nozbe,Jira, Trello, Google docs, slides & sheets, and Gmail after integration with its Chrome extensions. The app is compatible with most platforms including Android,Windows.About TimepotTimepot is giving professionals and businesses an effective time tracking application customized to make them more productive and have more control over work hour data while enjoying comprehensive reports that are based on actual recordings.Company Name: TimepotDembego 10/151Warsaw 02-796, PolandWebsite:
SIBUR holding has once again been confirmed as the main partner of the CIS Petrochemicals conference in 2018

www.globuc.com

The major vertically-integrated gas processing and petrochemical complex in Russia and Eastern Europe, SIBUR will act as the main partner of the 6th CIS Petrochemicals conference, which will traditionally be held in Moscow (11-13 of April)In 2017 SIBUR has been represented by an impressive delegation of 24 employees.Vladimir Vladimirovich Razumov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the JSC SIBUR Holding has confirmed his participation as an honourable guest in 2018.SIBUR owns and manages the biggest infrastructure for processing and transportation of APG and NGL in Russia, located mostly in Western Siberia  the main oil & gas processing region in Russia. This infrastructure includes 5 compressor units and 2 gas fracturing units.In the petrochemical sector alone SIBUR owns 3 pyrolysis units, one propane dehydrogenation unit, 2 base polymer plants producing polyethylene and polypropylene, 3 synthetic rubber plants producing special rubbers and thermoplastic elastomers, and 13 plants producing a wide range of semi-finished products, plastics, and organic synthesis products, including polyethylene terephthalate, glycols, alcohols, BOPP films, expandable polystyrene, and acrylates.SIBUR has 23 production sites and their client portfolio includes over 1,400 major end-users in the fuel and energy complex, automotive plants, construction, consumer sector, chemicals, and other industries in nearly 75 countries of the world. Their overall employee number exceeds 27, 000.Global Business Club Ltd (GBC) is the organiser of international conferences in the oil & gas sector with a specific focus on the CIS, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.Global Business Club Ltd.22 Highbury grove, LondonN5 2EF, United Kingdom+448451542544Anastasija Ovcinikova - Marketing Executivea.ovcinikova@globuc.com
Stem Cell Therapy Market : Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2017 - 2025

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1787

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1787

https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=D&rep_id=1787

Stem Cell Therapy Market: SnapshotOf late, there has been an increasing awareness regarding the therapeutic potential of stem cells for management of diseases which is boosting the growth of the stem cell therapy market. The development of advanced genome based cell analysis techniques, identification of new stem cell lines, increasing investments in research and development as well as infrastructure development for the processing and banking of stem cell are encouraging the growth of the global stem cell therapy market.One of the key factors boosting the growth of this market is the limitations of traditional organ transplantation such as the risk of infection, rejection, and immunosuppression risk. Another drawback of conventional organ transplantation is that doctors have to depend on organ donors completely. All these issues can be eliminated, by the application of stem cell therapy. Another factor which is helping the growth in this market is the growing pipeline and development of drugs for emerging applications. Increased research studies aiming to widen the scope of stem cell will also fuel the growth of the market. Scientists are constantly engaged in trying to find out novel methods for creating human stem cells in response to the growing demand for stem cell production to be used for disease management.Request Sample Copy of the Report @It is estimated that the dermatology application will contribute significantly the growth of the global stem cell therapy market. This is because stem cell therapy can help decrease the after effects of general treatments for burns such as infections, scars, and adhesion. The increasing number of patients suffering from diabetes and growing cases of trauma surgery will fuel the adoption of stem cell therapy in the dermatology segment.Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: OverviewAlso called regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy encourages the reparative response of damaged, diseased, or dysfunctional tissue via the use of stem cells and their derivatives. Replacing the practice of organ transplantations, stem cell therapies have eliminated the dependence on availability of donors. Bone marrow transplant is perhaps the most commonly employed stem cell therapy.Osteoarthritis, cerebral palsy, heart failure, multiple sclerosis and even hearing loss could be treated using stem cell therapies. Doctors have successfully performed stem cell transplants that significantly aid patients fight cancers such as leukemia and other blood-related diseases.Request TOC of the Report @Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Key TrendsThe key factors influencing the growth of the global stem cell therapy market are increasing funds in the development of new stem lines, the advent of advanced genomic procedures used in stem cell analysis, and greater emphasis on human embryonic stem cells. As the traditional organ transplantations are associated with limitations such as infection, rejection, and immunosuppression along with high reliance on organ donors, the demand for stem cell therapy is likely to soar. The growing deployment of stem cells in the treatment of wounds and damaged skin, scarring, and grafts is another prominent catalyst of the market.On the contrary, inadequate infrastructural facilities coupled with ethical issues related to embryonic stem cells might impede the growth of the market. However, the ongoing research for the manipulation of stem cells from cord blood cells, bone marrow, and skin for the treatment of ailments including cardiovascular and diabetes will open up new doors for the advancement of the market.Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Market PotentialA number of new studies, research projects, and development of novel therapies have come forth in the global market for stem cell therapy. Several of these treatments are in the pipeline, while many others have received approvals by regulatory bodies.Request Discount of the Report @In March 2017, Belgian biotech company TiGenix announced that its cardiac stem cell therapy, AlloCSC-01 has successfully reached its phase I/II with positive results. Subsequently, it has been approved by the U.S. FDA. If this therapy is well- received by the market, nearly 1.9 million AMI patients could be treated through this stem cell therapy.Another significant development is the granting of a patent to Israel-based Kadimastem Ltd. for its novel stem-cell based technology to be used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other similar conditions of the nervous system. The companys technology used for producing supporting cells in the central nervous system, taken from human stem cells such as myelin-producing cells is also covered in the patent.Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Regional OutlookThe global market for stem cell therapy can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. North America emerged as the leading regional market, triggered by the rising incidence of chronic health conditions and government support. Europe also displays significant growth potential, as the benefits of this therapy are increasingly acknowledged.Asia Pacific is slated for maximum growth, thanks to the massive patient pool, bulk of investments in stem cell therapy projects, and the increasing recognition of growth opportunities in countries such as China, Japan, and India by the leading market players.Global Stem Cell Therapy Market: Competitive AnalysisSeveral firms are adopting strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships, apart from product development with a view to attain a strong foothold in the global market for stem cell therapy.Some of the major companies operating in the global market for stem cell therapy are RTI Surgical, Inc., MEDIPOST Co., Ltd., Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., NuVasive, Inc., Pharmicell Co., Ltd., Anterogen Co., Ltd., JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd., and Holostem Terapie Avanzate S.r.l.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
Wind Power Market Update 2017-Global Market Size Average Price Turbine Market Share and Key Country Analysis to 2025

ReportsWeb

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320500/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320500/buying

http://www.reportsweb.com/wind-power-market-update-2017

"Wind Power Market, Update 2017-Global Market Size, Average Price, Turbine Market Share, and Key Country Analysis to 2025", is the latest market analysis report from Publisher, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market.The report provides a clear overview of and detailed insight into the global wind market. It explains the key drivers and challenges affecting the market and provides data covering historic and forecast market size, average capital cost, installed capacity and generation globally, and in eleven key wind power markets-China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, UK, US, South Africa, Germany, and Japan.The report uses data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research, and in-house analysis by Publisher's team of industry experts.Request a Sample Report@Report Scope:The report includes--Wind power market study at global level and at key country level, covering countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, UK, US, South Africa, Germany, and Japan-Coverage of the key growth drivers and challenges related to each country's wind power market, and the market's influence on the environment and the country's economy.-Historic (2006-2016) and forecast data (2017-2025) for cumulative and annual installed wind power capacity.-Average turbine size for onshore and offshore installations for the 2006-2025 period, globally and for each of the key countries.-Market share of the major turbine manufacturers in 2016 and market share trend for the period 2010-2016 for individual country and global.-Capital cost and market size data at key country and global level.Companies Mentioned:GE PowerVestas Wind Systems A/sNordex SEGamesaSiemens AGSuzlonXinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd.Enercon GmbhEnvision Energy LimitedChina Ming Yang Wind Power Group LimitedInquire before Buying@Reasons to buy:The report will allow you to--Facilitate decision-making by providing historical and forecast data in wind power sector-Develop business strategies by understanding the trends shaping and driving the wind power market-Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industry's growth potential-Maximize potential in the growth of the wind power market-Identify key partners and business-development avenues-Respond to business structure, strategy and prospectsTable of Contents:1 Table of Contents 22 Executive Summary 143 Introduction 204 Wind Power Market, Global 245 Wind Power Market, US 546 Wind Power Market, Canada 777 Wind Power Market, Mexico 958 Wind Power Market, Brazil 1129 Wind Power Market, Germany 14010 Wind Power Market, UK 16311 Wind Power Market, France 18712 Wind Power Market, China 20913 Wind Power Market, India 23614 Wind Power Market, Japan 26015 Wind Power Market, South Africa 28216 Appendix 301For 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
Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Canada, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2017-Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

ReportsWeb

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320501/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320501/buying

http://www.reportsweb.com/solar-photovoltaic-in-canada-market-outlook-to-2030-update-2017

"Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in Canada, 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 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market in Canada.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Canada (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 Photovoltaic (PV)) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Canada Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to Solar Photovoltaic (PV) 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.Request a Sample Report@Report Scope:The report analyses global renewable power market, global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market, Canada power market, Canada renewable power market and Canada Solar Photovoltaic (PV) 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 hydro power (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.-Detailed overview of the global Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major Solar Photovoltaic (PV)power countries in 2016 and key owners information of various regions.-Power market scenario in Canada 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 Canada 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 Canada Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming Solar Photovoltaic (PV) projects.-Deal analysis of Canada Solar Photovoltaic (PV) 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 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in particular.-Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Companies Mentioned:TransCanada CorporationOsaka Gas Co., Ltd.Northland Power Inc.Mitsubishi CorporationKKR & Co. L.P.Fiera Axium Infrastructure Inc.Enbridge Inc.BlackRock, Inc.Inquire before Buying@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 Canada Solar Photovoltaic (PV) market.-Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for Solar Photovoltaic (PV) 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.Table of Contents:1 Table of Contents 22 Executive Summary 93 Introduction 124 Renewable Power Market, Global, 2006-2030 185 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Global, 2006-2030 346 Power Market, Canada, 2006-2030 497 Renewable Power Market, Canada, 2006-2030 638 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Canada, 2006-2030 779 Power Market, Regulatory Scenario, Canada 9010 Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market, Canada, Company Profiles 11511 Appendix 149For 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
Global Beer Market Reflect a Significant CAGR Growth of 2.43% Between 2017 - 2021 With AB InBev, Calsberg Breweries and Heineken

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1287977

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-beer-market-2017-2021-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Beer Market Reflect a Significant CAGR Growth of 2.43% Between 2017 - 2021 With AB InBev, Calsberg Breweries and Heineken" to its huge collection of research reports.Beer is the highest consumed alcoholic beverage in the world and the third-most consumed beverage after water and tea. The growth of the global beer market is directly determined by the global economic conditions. Beer also forms an integral part of the heritage and traditional cuisines in many countries, especially in Europe and the Americas. The global beer market is directly proportional to global economic conditions. Beer is also an integral part of the heritage and traditional cuisines in many countries, especially in Europe and the Americas.Technavios analysts forecast the global beer market to grow at a CAGR of 2.43% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global beer market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the sale of beer products to individual consumers.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Beer 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 vendorsAB InBevCalsberg BreweriesHeinekenRadeberger ExportbierbrauereiOther prominent vendorsAllied Blenders and Distillers (ABD)Asahi BreweriesBirra MenabreaBitburger BraugruppeBoston BeerBrauerei Beck & CoBudweiser BudvarCsu AlusChimay BreweryD.G. Yuengling & SonsDiageoDistellDuvel MoortgatERDINGER WeibruHarpoon BreweryKrombacher BrauereiMolson Coors Brewing CompanyOakleaf BreweryOettingerPaulaner BreweryPivovarna LakoRoyal UnibrewvyturysMarket driverPremiumizationFor a full, detailed list, view our reportBrowse TOC @Market challengeIncreasing prices of raw materialsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIntroduction of new flavorsFor 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 @
Aquaculture Market in Indonesia by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2021

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1287962

https://www.researchmoz.us/aquaculture-market-in-indonesia-2017-2021-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/aquaculture-market-in-indonesia-2017-2021-report.html

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/

Albany, NY, 21st December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Aquaculture Market in Indonesia 2017-2021" globally.Aquaculture is a process of rearing and cultivating aquatic animals and plants for food under controlled conditions.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @It includes the farming of more than 500 species of finfish, mollusks, crustaceans, and other invertebrates, over 30 seaweed species, more than 30 freshwater macrophytes species, a few amphibians and aquatic reptile species, and approximately 50 microalgae and invertebrates species as fish-food organisms in hatcheries.Technavios analysts forecast the aquaculture market in Indonesia to grow at a CAGR of 13.19% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the aquaculture market in Indonesia for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the production and retail sales of different types of aquaculture animal species.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:JavaKalimantanSulawesiSumatraROIView Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Technavio's report, Aquaculture Market in Indonesia 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 vendorsPT. Bumi Menara InternusaPT. Dharma Samudera Fishing IndustriesPT. Japfa Comfeed IndonesiaPT. Mega Marine PrideOther prominent vendorsBaiyang Investment GroupLiancheng Overseas Fishery (Shenzhen) CompanyNingde Xiawei FoodPT. Central Proteina Prima Tbk (CP Prima)Shandong Oriental Ocean GroupMarket driverRich nutritional sources in aquaculture productsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeInversely proportional behavior of aquafarming seed quantity and qualityFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendDevelopment of new aquaculture speciesFor 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 Continuous Wave Laser Diode Market Research Report Indicating Latest Trends, Growth Factors and Industry Forecast till 2022

Market Research HUB

https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=enquiry&repid=1425474

https://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/global-continuous-wave-laser-diode-market-research-report-2017-report.html

https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=enquiry&repid=1425474

https://www.marketresearchhub.com/

https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/

The market for Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode 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 Continuous Wave Laser Diode 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 Continuous Wave Laser Diode 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 is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Continuous Wave Laser Diode in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanGlobal Continuous Wave Laser Diode market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingOsram Licht Group (Germany)Panasonic Semiconductor Solutions Co., Ltd. (Japan)ROHM Co., Ltd. (Japan)IPG Photonics Corp. (U.S.)Sharp Corp. (Japan)Coherent, Inc. (U.S.)Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (Japan)JDS Uniphase Corp. (U.S.)Jenoptik AG (Germany)Newport Corp. (U.S.)Rofin-Sinar Technologies, Inc. (U.S.)Finisar (U.S.)Avago Technologies (Singapore)Trumpf GmbH + Co. KG (Germany)Nichia Corp. (Japan)On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoInjection Laser DiodeOptically Pumped Laser DiodeOthersOn 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, includingCommunications & Optical StorageIndustrialMedicalMilitary & DefenseInstrumentation & SensorOthersBrowse Full Report with TOC@Table of ContentsGlobal Continuous Wave Laser Diode Market Research Report 20171 Continuous Wave Laser Diode Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Continuous Wave Laser Diode1.2 Continuous Wave Laser Diode Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Injection Laser Diode1.2.4 Optically Pumped Laser Diode1.2.5 Others1.3 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Segment by Application1.3.1 Continuous Wave Laser Diode Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Communications & Optical Storage1.3.3 Industrial1.3.4 Medical1.3.5 Military & Defense1.3.6 Instrumentation & Sensor1.3.7 Others1.4 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Continuous Wave Laser Diode (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Continuous Wave Laser Diode Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)ContinuedEnquire About this Report@About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of semiconductor 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 :-
Forecast on Electric Vehicle Motor (EVM) Controller Market for the Period 2017 - 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=27428

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=27428

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Motor controller is a device that improves the performance of an electric motor in a prearranged manner. Motor controllers can include an automatic or manual means for starting/stopping the motor, choosing forward/reverse rotation, selecting and controlling the speed, modifying or limiting the torque, and shielding against faults and overloads. The major constituents of electric vehicle systems are the motor, power supply, controller, drive train and a charger. An EVM controller or electric vehicle motor controller is a machine that is employed to regulate the torque generated by the motors of electric vehicles by means of modifying the energy flow from the power sources to the motor.Control of an electric vehicle is time-variant; for instance, the operating parameters of EV and the condition of the road vary. Hence, the controller must be intended to make the system adaptive and robust. This is achieved by developing the system on both dynamic as well as steady state performances. Presently, the key factor limiting the wide-spread use of electric vehicles is the diminutive running distance for each battery charge. Therefore, besides regulating the performance of vehicle, considerable efforts have to be made so that the EVM controller does not consume high energy to the energy management of the batteries on the vehicle. Technological advancements have led to the development of such energy efficient EVs that in turn is likely to fuel the global electric vehicle motor controller market in the coming years.Request For Report Sample:Severe norms on vehicular efficiency as well as emissions have encouraged the implementation of high-level controllers. This is one of the key driving factors for the growth of the electric vehicle motor controller market. Quite a lot of countries have taken initiatives in order to lessen the greenhouse gas emissions. Countries including China as well as India follow norms that are comparable to the Euro norms. Furthermore, India adheres to BS IV norms at the present and the country is planning to implement BS VI regulations by the end of the year 2020. Japan on the other hand follows norms that are analogous to the Euro 5 norms and the US 2010 and is planning for a next revision by the year 2017. These regulations mandate the automobile manufacturers to manufacture virtually zero emission vehicles such as electric vehicles, thereby encouraging the growth of the electric vehicle motor controller market.Another trend that is likely to gain momentum in the global electric vehicle motor controller market is the introduction of the vehicle to grid or V2G storage and charging system. This system is an innovative concept that is emerging from the wireless charging system or WCS technology and the latest trend in this technology is in the induction reversal process where the charged vehicle powers the grid. This power is then used to run office buildings or additional facilities all through the peak hours thereby lowering the power demand of national grids. These factors are likely to encourage the overall growth of the electric vehicle motor controller marketThe global electric vehicle motor controller market can be segmented on the basis of powertrain type and geography. By powertrain type the market can be segregated into full hybrid, mild hybrid, plug-in-hybrid, pure EV. In 2016, the full hybrid powertrain segment accounted for the maximum share of the global electric vehicle motor controller market. Introduction of stringent fuel regulations as well as tax incentives is likely to fuel the adoption of full hybrid electric vehicles in the future. On the basis of geography, the market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Asia Pacific dominated the global market in 2016. High production rates and increasing sales of hybrid vehicles in Japan coupled with rise in sales of electric vehicles in China are the major contributing factors towards the growth of the market in this region. Furthermore, governments initiatives in numerous countries in the region towards the adoption of low-emission electric vehicles are expected to propel the growth of the market in the region.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Some of the major companies operating in the global electric vehicle motor controller market are Continental, American Motors Corporation, Air International Thermal Systems, Sevcon, Fujitsu Ltd, Delphi Automotive, Siemens AG, Texas Instruments, Robert Bosch GmbH, Metric Mind, EVS Auto Group, Denso Corporation, Fuji Electric, BYD Auto, Hitachi Automotive Systems, Mitsubishi Electric, and Toyota Industries Corporation.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
Hydropower in Canada Market Outlook to 2030 Update 2017

ReportsWeb

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320502/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011320502/buying

http://www.reportsweb.com/hydropower-in-canada-market-outlook-to-2030-update-2017

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 Canada, 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 hydropower market in Canada.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 Canada (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 Canada 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.Request a Sample Report@Report Scope:The report analyses global renewable power market, global hydropower market, Canada power market, Canada renewable power market and Canada 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 Canada 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 Canada 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 Canada hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming hydro projects.-Deal analysis of Canada 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.Companies Mentioned:TransAlta CorporationSaskatchewan Power CorporationRio Tinto AlcanOntario Power Generation Inc.Newfoundland and Labrador HydroNew Brunswick Power CorporationNalcor EnergyManitoba Hydro-Electric BoardHydro-QuebecBC HydroInquire before Buying@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 Canada 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.Table of Contents:1 Table of Contents 22 Executive Summary 103 Introduction 144 Renewable Power Market, Global, 2006-2030 205 Hydropower Market, Global, 2006-2030 366 Power Market, Canada, 2006-2030 517 Renewable Power Market, Canada, 2006-2030 658 Hydropower Market, Canada, 2006-2030 799 Power Market, Regulatory Scenario, Canada 9510 Hydropower Market, Canada, Company Profiles 12011 Appendix 156For 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
Russia Automotive Parts Die-Casting Market Report 2017, Trends, Analysis, Share, Estimates and Forecasts to 2022.

http://www.strategymrc.com/report/russia-automotive-parts-die-casting-market-outlook

http://www.strategymrc.com/report/russia-automotive-parts-die-casting-market-outlook

The Russia 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 OthersFor More, Please Visit:The report focuses on current and upcoming market trends such as Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, and Challenges, technological advancements, Porters Five Forces analysis to assess the intensity of competition in the market. The market values are presented in the form of tables and graphs for better interpretation.Market Size EstimationsThe market assessment is made by the core industry experts using our 360 research approach. The data is derived from the most reliable, authenticated data sources and is validated by the industry experts (Primary Research). Both top down and bottom up analysis are implemented to enhance the accuracy of the market figures. The market projections are calculated for the next 8 years using the actual market numbers of previous year as the base 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
Global Basic Petrochemical Sales Market By Product Type | Ethylene, Propylene, Butadiene, Benzene, Toluene, Xylene and Mehtanol

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1387505

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-basic-petrochemical-sales-market-report-2017-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Basic Petrochemical Sales Market By Product Type | Ethylene, Propylene, Butadiene, Benzene, Toluene, Xylene and Mehtanol" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Basic Petrochemical 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 MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Basic Petrochemical for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Basic Petrochemical market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Basic Petrochemical sales volume, Price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingSABICLyondellBasell Industries N.V.Exxon Mobil Corp. (ExxonMobil)Sinopec Limited (China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation)Royal Dutch ShellTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoEthylenePropyleneButadieneBenzeneTolueneXyleneMehtanolOthersOn 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, includingTransportationConstructionAgricultureElectronicsOthersBrowse TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal Basic Petrochemical Sales Market Report 20171 Basic Petrochemical Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Basic Petrochemical1.2 Classification of Basic Petrochemical by Product Category1.2.1 Global Basic Petrochemical Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Basic Petrochemical Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Ethylene1.2.4 Propylene1.2.5 Butadiene1.2.6 Benzene1.2.7 Toluene1.2.8 Xylene1.2.9 Mehtanol1.2.10 Others1.3 Global Basic Petrochemical Market by Application/End Users2 Global Basic Petrochemical Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Basic Petrochemical Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Basic Petrochemical Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Basic Petrochemical Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Basic Petrochemical (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Basic Petrochemical Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Basic Petrochemical Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Basic Petrochemical (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global Basic Petrochemical Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)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 @
Baby Food in France Market 2017: Key Players  Bledina SA (Danone), Nestle France, Groupe Lactalis, Sodiaal Group and More

Baby Food in France Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1271466-the-baby-food-market-in-france-2017

Pune, India, 16 October 2017: WiseGuyReports announced addition of new report, titled The Baby Food Market in France 2017.The report provides complete overview of Baby Food Market in France. Major profile and market profile of various manufacturing areas including major features and developments, departments, per capita trends and various manufacturers and brands.Detail profiling of baby food retailers mentioned in the report along with that France country leading distribution channels. Insight information about companies operating in companies and new companies focused on giving access to the industry. Future projections considering various trends which are likely to affect the industry.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Companies mentionedBledina SA (Danone)Nestle FranceGroupe LactalisSodiaal GroupUnited Pharmaceuticals SASodilacHipp FranceVitagermineGood GoutThe major key finding of the report are: By the early 1990's the French baby food revolutionized the retail trend of the food market until the late 1980s, the pharmacy played an important role in the supply of barbecue, on which they enjoyed the near monopoly. France has is dominating milk content required for baby milk and increasing demand for China due to which France has strengthened its position in recent years. In the status of volumes, in 2016, India has 56 percent consumption of dining in the French market. However, value has been valued with 53% of retailers. The market is expected to do well after 2017 due to few positive results from 2015 and 2016. However, by the year 2022, it is expected to grow by only 2.9% because the number of births is likely. To continue decreasing, limit the potential market for feeding the baby. Bledina (Danone) and Nestle control most of the baby's food sales. Bledina is leading, 41% of total sales in 2016, Nestle contributes 29%.The number of births has decreased continuously in last few years. Most families are willing to spend on commercially prepared food items, but due to the financial crisis of 2008, pressure has increased due to the practice of getting domestic food. Thus there more demand for home-made food. Even though so many challenges it is the largest market in Western Europe and is very advanced and divided, but down by financial conditions have declined by 14% during 2010 and 2016.Finally, Baby Food Market in France market is expected to be good since 2017, but by 2022, consumption is expected to increase by just 2.9%, because the number of births is declining. The government playing a major role by growing awareness for importances of baby food. Due which there is expectations more positive financial references, increasing customer confidence.The major player cover in the report are Bledina SA (Danone), Nestle France, Groupe Lactalis, Sodiaal Group, United Pharmaceuticals SA, Sodilac, Hipp France, Vitagermine, and Good Gout.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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Death Care & Funeral Service Market: Key Players - SCI in the U.S., Nirvana Asia Ltd. and Fu Shou Yuan International Group in Asia

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=676360

https://www.researchmoz.us/death-care-funeral-service-market-trends-opportunities-20162020-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Death Care & Funeral Service Market: Key Players - SCI in the U.S., Nirvana Asia Ltd. and Fu Shou Yuan International Group in Asia" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Death Care & Funeral Service Market: Trends & Opportunities (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the death care and funeral service market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides market size of cremation or burial services.The report provides detailed country analysis of the U.S. and Asian countries which include Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand for the death care and funeral service market. Country analysis includes market sizing by value along with the analysis of the segments of the market in each of the above mentioned countries.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall death care and funeral service market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in the death care and funeral service market is stiff and dominated by the big players like SCI in the U.S. Further, key players of the death care and funeral service market Nirvana Asia Ltd. and Fu Shou Yuan International Group in Asia are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Country CoverageThe U.S.MalaysiaSingaporeIndonesiaThailandCompany CoverageService Corporation InternationalNirvana Asia Ltd.Fu Shou Yuan International GroupExecutive SummaryThe term death care industry refers to the array of providers of funeral and burial goods and services, such as funeral directors, cemeteries, and third-party sellers. The death care industry is currently undergoing a major transformation.Browse TOC @Historically, it has been fragmented, with limited overlap among various segments of the funeral and burial industries. Funeral homes and funeral directors sold funeral merchandise and services. Cemeteries sold burial merchandise and services. Cemeteries and monument/memorial dealers sold monuments and memorials. A funeral home or cemetery generally arranged cremation services, and independent florists sold flowers. Today, such distinctions are diminishing. The industry is consolidating. Large chains are buying and managing locally owned funeral homes and cemeteries. Many nonprofit cemeteries are now owned by, managed by, or otherwise affiliated with for-profit chains.Death care and funeral service market has increased at a significant CAGR during the period 2011-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. Death care and funeral service market can be segmented on the basis of products into as-need and pre-need, of which, pre-need market exhibited greater increase as compared to as-need, driving the death care and funeral service market. The upsurge in the market was due to various factors such as rapid growth in urbanization, rising aging population along with the increasing awareness about various products and services provided by the organizations operating in the market.The major growth drivers for the death care and funeral service market are: strong economic growth, rapid urbanization, increase in disposable income, steady population growth, aging population & increase in death rate and unmet demand for premium death care services and products. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as: injuries from manual tasks, embalming operations biological exposure, embalming operations chemical exposure & musculoskeletal hazards, embalming room ventilation & maintenance and unique hazards during cremation.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 @
Border Security System Market Intelligence with Competitive Landscape 2016 - 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18938

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=18938

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Border security systems are critical to a nation security and the citizens. These systems are deployed by several defense agencies and military forces for better security, intelligence, safety, and surveillance. The growth generated in the global border security system market is accredited to the rise in geopolitical instabilities and territorial conflicts, and a requirement of advanced border security solution technologies. Besides, the market in Asia Pacific has been growing at the highest rates in recent times because of the increase in budget of governments for tackling infiltration, terrorist attacks, criminal activities, and illegal immigration.However,the growth in the global border security system market is impeded by certain restraining factors. One of the major restraints is the stringent regulatory environment. The usage of the border security system has witnessed strict laws and rules of respective governments. The suppliers of border security system must follow foreign and local norms and regulations. Failure to do so has resulted in civil, criminal, and administrative liabilities. These forces have been hampering the market growth. Other adversities in case of this market are cross-border infiltration, conventional global disputes, smuggling, illegal immigration and other criminal activity forms, need for critical infrastructure to test security systems, and high cost of research and development. In spite of the hindering influences, the border security system is expected to grow at a decent rate owing to upgrading of present border security system infrastructure, and increasing defense budget by the developing countries.Request For Report Sample:The global border security system market is segmented on the basis of system, environment, and geography. On the basis of system, the market is segmented into laser systems, radar systems, camera systems, unmanned vehicles, intelligent fencing systems or perimeter intrusion detection systems, broadband wireless communication systems, biometric systems, command and control systems, and other systems. In recent times, ground based systems has been holding the largest share in terms of the market size, while the biometric systems has been growing at the fastest rate because of the use of these systems on a mass scale for tackling human trafficking and illegal immigration. Besides, e-passports, developing national IDs, and e-visas are estimated to drive the biometric systems segment.Radar systems are further segregated by platform into air, coastal and ground surveillance, and by band type into X & Ku Band and S&L Band. Camera systems are divided into CCTV, and IR and Thermal imaging cameras. Perimeter intrusion detection systemsare classified into laser fencing systems, and electric fencing systems. Unmanned vehicles are categorized into ground, aerial, and underwater. Command and control systems are segregated into audio systems, video distribution systems, and projection based displays or LED displays. The other systems segment includes microwave intrusion detection system, and RF jammers.According to environment, the market is divided into aerial, naval, and ground.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):According to geography, the market is segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. Among the geographic regions, the Asia Pacific is estimated to witness the highest rate of growth during the forecast period. The key driving factors behind the Asia Pacific segment are the increase in government budget for tacking infiltration, terrorism, and other criminal activities, and the increase in investment to strengthen the weapon guidance and surveillance abilities by India, China and Japan. On the basis of market share, North America has been leading the market in the recent past.The key players in the global border security system market are Raytheon Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Thales SA, BAE Systems PLC, Flir Systems, Inc., Elbit Systems, Saab AB, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Finmeccanica SPA, Safran, Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., Rockwell Collins, Inc., Moog, Inc., Airbus Group SE, and Controp Precision Technologies Ltd.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
Drones Market: Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2020

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=655939

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-drones-market-trends-and-opportunities-20162020-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Drones Market: Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Drones Market: Trends and Opportunities (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global drones market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides market size of global video surveillance system market. The report provides detailed regional analysis of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa for the drones market. Regional analysis includes market share of each region along with the actual and forecasted market sizing of drone market for the aforementioned regions.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global drone market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in global drone market is stiff and dominated by the big players like DJI. Further, key players of the drone market AeroVironment and 3D Robotics are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Region CoverageNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificMiddle EastLatin AmericaAfricaCompany CoverageDJI InnovationsAeroVironment3D RoboticsExecutive SummaryDrones are the front-end video surveillance system products which are gaining popularity and playing their part in driving the global video surveillance system market. Drones market is currently at the nascent stage but is anticipated to rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously at a significant CAGR. The market is largely governed by the military drones but civil drones are also gaining momentum and driving the market in the positive direction. The upsurge in the civil drones market is due to the increased need for video surveillance at various places as crime rate is increasing over the period.Browse TOC @The major growth drivers for the drone market are: technological innovation, rise in civil drones market, persistent intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance and internal & external safety threats. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as legal and regulatory policies & procedures, negative environmental impact, privacy issues, high cost, spectrum allocation and UAS integration in the national airspace.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 @
Morocco Ceramic and Porcelain Tiles Market will Register a CAGR of 6.4% through 2016 - 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=15155

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=15155

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

The ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories market in Morocco is primarily dependent on the presence of unorganized regional players and a handful of key international players, such as Roca, RAK Ceramics, NG Kutahya Seramik, PORCELANOSA, and Marazzi. Transparency Market Research has observed that a few regional companies with a significant presence have established a strong and loyal customer base in various cities across Morocco. This has intensified the degree of competition with other local players as well as with international companies supplying imported tiles and other bathroom materials.The ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories market in Morocco is expected to rise from a valuation of US$1.5 bn in 2015 to US$2.7 bn by 2024.Casablanca and Tangier to Present Promising Scope for Growth in MoroccoFull-body porcelain tiles led the ceramic and porcelain tiles market in Morocco, accounting for a 34.6% share in 2015. The segment is also projected to witness strong growth over the coming years. Registering a 7.3% CAGR from 2016 to 2024, glazed porcelain is likely to emerge as the most attractive investment option for the market. Thin tiles are a relatively newer generation of ceramic and porcelain tiles and the segment is expected to be highly lucrative in the near future.A sample of this report is available upon request @Within the bathroom materials market in Morocco, ceramic led the market for floor as well as wall materials. On the other hand, porcelain was the most rapidly expanding segment in both cases. The bathroom furniture and accessories market is dominated by the bath and sanitary ware segment and faucets are anticipated to register a high growth rate during the forecast period.Casablanca led the ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories market in Morocco, accounting for a share of more than 30% in 2015. Tangier, on the other hand, is projected to be the most lucrative market, exhibiting a CAGR of over 6% from 2016 to 2024.Government of Morocco Plays Key Role in Boosting MarketMorocco has gained much popularity as a tourist destination in the recent past, with an estimated 9.8 mn tourists in 2011 alone. A surge in the inflow of tourists translates into a rise in the construction of hotels, thereby driving the demand for ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories, the TMR analyst states.Further supporting the building and construction sector is the Government of Morocco, with its efforts in undertaking new construction projects under its housing scheme. The promise to construct 150,000 social housing units by 2020 and the rise in the renovation of old properties is anticipated to boost the market for ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories in Morocco.Access Full Report With TOC @Availability of Substitutes Hampering Demand for Ceramic and Porcelain TilesThere are several factors that are going against the Morocco ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories market, the key one being the availability of substitutes. On the one hand, porcelain and ceramic tiles are higher priced compared to tiles made of cement and terracotta, or even zellige tiles, the author of the study points out. Moreover, the benefits offered by cement tiles, for instance, are many, including water resistance, durability, and environment-friendliness. This drives consumers to opt for the substitute rather than porcelain and ceramic tiles.Another factor acting as a deterrent is the fact that construction activities in Morocco are limited to just a few major cities. Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangier, and Agadir are among the cities that have been reporting a rise in construction projects. This is likely to restrict the demand for ceramic and porcelain tiles, bathroom materials, and furniture and accessories in the rest of the country.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
Global Insulin Pump Market with Focus on Patch Pumps by 2020: Key Players - Insulet Corporation, Medtronic, Animas Corporation, Roche and Cellnovo

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=655936

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-insulin-pump-market-with-focus-on-patch-pumps-2016-2020-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Insulin Pump Market with Focus on Patch Pumps by 2020: Key Players - Insulet Corporation, Medtronic, Animas Corporation, Roche and Cellnovo" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Insulin Pump Market with Focus on Patch Pumps 2016 - 2020 analyzes the significant trends and potential opportunities in the global insulin pump market. The market size and forecast in terms of US$ for global insulin pump market has been provided for the period 2016 to 2020, considering 2014 as the base year. Analysis of insulin patch pump, a latest technology, is also covered in the report.Over the next five years the global insulin pump market revenue is expected to grow due to increasing diabetic population, increasing diabetes health expenditure and innovation in technology etc.The report provides global diabetic population in terms of volume, global diabetic population by region and diabetes health expenditure etc. It provides detailed analysis of global insulin pump market in terms of value as well as volume. The report summarizes the revenue, number of pump users, pump penetration rate and top market players etc. In addition to traditional insulin pumps, the report also focuses on recent launched innovative insulin patch pumps in the market in terms of value and its market share.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report also provides the detailed analysis of the US insulin pump market. It provides detail on total diabetic population in the US with Type1 and Type2 diabetes. The US insulin pump market is measured in terms of volume and market share of top players has also been provided in the report. The US is the market leader of the insulin pump market globally.The report also provides competitive landscape of the global insulin pump market. The global insulin pump market is very less fragmented as major part of market share has been captured by top market players such as Medtronic, Insulet Corporation and Animas Corporation etc. Medtronic is the market leader with the highest revenue earned in the fiscal 2014.Furthermore the report profiles key market player such as Insulet Corporation, Medtronic, Animas Corporation, Roche and Cellnovo on the basis of attributes such as company overview, recent developments, strategies adopted by the market leaders to ensure growth, sustainability, financial overview and recent developments.Browse TOC @Country CoverageThe USCompany CoverageMedtronicInsulet CorporationAnimas CorporationRocheCellnovoExecutive SummaryA medical device that is used in for the management of insulin in the treatment of diabetes is known as insulin pump. It is a small automated device almost similar to the dimension of a mobile phone. It is very convenient in use, as this can be easily carried on a belt or inside a pocket. The device contains buttons to program insulin and navigate through the menu, LCD color screen to show the programming, battery compartment and a reservoir compartment. There are various types of insulin pumps available in the market and the latest pump available in the market is patch pump which is technologically more advanced than traditional pumps.The number of diabetic population around the world is growing at a rapid rate which ultimately helps to grow the insulin pump market. Global insulin pump market has shown continuous growth over the past few years and is expected to grow in the near future. The growth in the market has driven by ageing population, increasing number of diabetic patients and technological advancements etc. The market is expected to achieve a significant growth in the forecasted period. Global insulin demand continued to expand at a rapid pace in 2015 over the previous year. Global insulin pump market is very less fragmented as major part of market has captured by top players.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 @
Hydraulic Fluids Market Revenue and Value Chain 2017 - 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=26798

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=26798

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Hydraulic oils, hydraulic liquids, or hydraulic fluids is a major part of hydraulic systems, through which power is conveyed in hydraulic equipment. Hydraulic liquids are primarily used in conveying kinetic and potential energy in a hydraulic system. Hydraulic liquids generally provide a flow of volume in hydrostatic motors and pumps. Hydraulic fluids also help in decreasing the wear and tear of parts involved in friction in the piston assembly. Hydraulic fluids also protect the internal systems from corrosion and erosion caused by external environments. Functions of hydraulic fluids have changed by a great magnitude in the last few years. Hydraulic systems are designed to function optimally during the operations at high temperatures, high pressures, and different complex circumstances. Ordinary hydraulic fluids are primarily made of mineral oils and water, which offer very less compressibility and flexibility of usage.Demand for various types of hydraulic systems is increasing constantly, as the modern industry requires high speed and efficiency at higher operating pressures and temperatures. Hydraulic fluids are developed to perform tasks such as lubrication, energy transmission, and removal of heat from parts of the machinery. Selection of an optimum hydraulic fluid highly depends on basic properties and the technicality of grade of hydraulic fluid with respect to the hydraulic machinery. An ideal hydraulic fluid should be selected on the basis of the following properties: hydrolytic stability, thermal stability, low tendency to cavitate, low chemical corrosiveness, high anti-wear characteristics, constant viscosity, long life, total water rejection regardless of temperature, and low cost. Major functions served by hydraulic fluids include efficient transmission of power and protection of intrinsic hydraulic components from wear and tear. A majority of hydraulic fluids are used in large machines for various purposes.Request Report Sample@Increasing demand for rapid construction, growing infrastructure, and increased use of heavy machinery in civil engineering projects are factors projected to drive the global market for hydraulic fluids during the forecast period. Most of the hydraulic fluids are based on hydrocarbons and mineral oil, which are considered toxic and hazardous for the environment. Hydraulic fluids need to comply with several environmental and regulatory obligations for their disposal. Manufacturers provide special guidelines and specifications for safe handling and storage of hydraulic fluids. Splashed or spilt hydraulic fluids need to be properly absorbed with specified absorbents so as to avoid the contamination of groundwater and sewerage systems. High toxicity, stringent environmental regulations, and growing popularity of organic hydraulic fluids are the major restraints for the hydraulic fluids market.The market for hydraulic fluids in Asia Pacific (APAC) is likely to expand at a significant rate during the forecast period, due to high demand for hydraulic fluids and their increased consumption in heavy construction equipment used for construction and civil engineering projects. Risen demand for hydraulic fluids in APAC is also attributable to rapid infrastructure development, rapid industrialization, growth of the economy, and high capital investments by major industrial players in the region. APAC is anticipated to witness high growth in the consumption of hydraulic fluids. The market in the country is estimated to expand at a remarkable CAGR during the forecast period. In terms of consumption and production of hydraulic fluids, North America follows APAC. The market for hydraulic fluids in North America is anticipated to expand significantly during the forecast period, led by rising demand from sectors such as infrastructure and heavy engineering in the region. Growth of the hydraulic fluids market in Europe is likely to remain consistent during the forecast period. Growth of industrial and infrastructure sectors in Middle East & Africa and the rising demand from the oil & gas industry in the region are factors projected to propel the hydraulic fluids market in MEA during the forecast period.Access Report With TOC @Major players in the global hydraulic fluids market are Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Exxon Mobil Corporation, British Petroleum Plc, Process Oil Inc., Renkert Oil Inc., Sasol, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation, and Castrol Limited. Manufacturers of hydraulic fluids around the globe are strengthening their market position by acquiring new technologies; expanding the product portfolio; and developing an improved and robust distribution network all over the work.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:
Australia Pizza Market 2017- Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Research Report 2021

Australia Pizza Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2260244-pizza-prepared-meals-market-in-australia-outlook-to-2021-market-size

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/conferences

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/seminars

SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, title Pizza (Prepared Meals) Market in AustraliaPizza (Prepared Meals) Market in Australia - Outlook to 2021: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Pizza market in Australia.Pizza within the Prepared Meals offerings includes all Chilled (Pizzas that require to be stored in cold temperature for preserving but are not frozen) and Frozen (Pizzas that are to be frozen always and are to be stored at temperatures below -15C).Pizza market in Australia registered a positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.13% during the period 2011 to 2016 with a sales value of AUD 375.13 Million in 2016, an increase of 4.30% 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 Pizza and its variants Chilled Pizza, Frozen Pizza.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 Australia's Pizza (Prepared Meals) 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 Pizza (Prepared Meals) 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 Pizza (Prepared Meals) 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 Pizza Market Overview2 Australia Pizza Market Analytics, 2011-213 Australia Pizza Market Analytics, by Segment 2011-214 Australia Pizza Brand Analytics by Value, 2013-165 Australia Pizza Brand Analytics by Volume, 2013-166 Australia Pizza Distribution Channel Analytics by Value, 2013-167 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 understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Market: Immaculateflight, ABM, JetFast, Diener Aviation Services

Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Market

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/851569-global-civil-aircraft-cleaning-services-market

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/851569-global-civil-aircraft-cleaning-services-market

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=851569

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/851569-global-civil-aircraft-cleaning-services-market

HTF MI published a new industry research that focuses on Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services market and delivers in-depth market analysis and future prospects of Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services market. The study covers significant data which makes the research document a handy resource for managers, analysts, industry experts and other key people get ready-to-access and self-analyzed study along with graphs and tables to help understand market trends, drivers and market challenges. The study is segmented by Application/ end users [Jetliners, Business jet, Regional aircraft & Commericial Jetliner], products type [Exterior Service & Interior Service] and various important geographies like United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia].Get Access to sample pages @The research covers the current market size of the Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services market and its growth rates based on 5 year history data along with company profile of key players/manufacturers such as Immaculateflight, ABM, JetFast, Diener Aviation Services, LGS Handling, Sharp Details, Higheraviation, K.T. Aviation Services, AERO Specialties, Australian Aviation Detailers Cairns, Dyn-o-mite, Paragonaviationdetailing, Kleenol Nigeria Limited, Clean before flight, TAG Aviation, Libanet & Plane Detail. The in-depth information by segments of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services market helps monitor future profitability & to make critical decisions for growth. The information on trends and developments, focuses on markets and materials, capacities, technologies, CAPEX cycle and the changing structure of the Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Market.The study provides company profiling, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information of key manufacturers of Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Market, some of them listed here are Immaculateflight, ABM, JetFast, Diener Aviation Services, LGS Handling, Sharp Details, Higheraviation, K.T. Aviation Services, AERO Specialties, Australian Aviation Detailers Cairns, Dyn-o-mite, Paragonaviationdetailing, Kleenol Nigeria Limited, Clean before flight, TAG Aviation, Libanet & Plane Detail. The market is growing at a very rapid pace and with rise in technological innovation, competition and M&A activities in the industry many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new manufacturer entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability, and innovations in technology.Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such as Exterior Service & Interior Service. Further the research study is segmented by Application such as Jetliners, Business jet, Regional aircraft & Commericial Jetliner with historical and projected market share and compounded annual growth rate.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2017 to 2022.Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @What this Research Study Offers:Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Market share assessments for the regional and country level segmentsMarket share analysis of the top industry playersStrategic recommendations for the new entrantsMarket forecasts for a minimum of 5 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional marketsMarket Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimationsCompetitive landscaping mapping the key common trendsCompany profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developmentsSupply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsBuy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to display the Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services market.Chapter 1, to describe Definition, Specifications and Classification of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services , Applications of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services , Market Segment by Regions;Chapter 2, to analyze the Manufacturing Cost Structure, Raw Material and Suppliers, Manufacturing Process, Industry Chain Structure;Chapter 3, to display the Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services , Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, R&D Status and Technology Source, Raw Materials Sources Analysis;Chapter 4, to show the Overall Market Analysis, Capacity Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment);Chapter 5 and 6, to show the Regional Market Analysis that includes United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia, Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Segment Market Analysis (by Type);Chapter 7 and 8, to analyze the Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Segment Market Analysis (by Application) Major Manufacturers Analysis of Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services ;Chapter 9, Market Trend Analysis, Regional Market Trend, Market Trend by Product Type [Exterior Service & Interior Service], Market Trend by Application [Jetliners, Business jet, Regional aircraft & Commericial Jetliner];Chapter 10, Regional Marketing Type Analysis, International Trade Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis;Chapter 11, to analyze the Consumers Analysis of Global Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services ;Chapter 12, to describe Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Civil Aircraft Cleaning Services sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA  08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218
Banknote Market: Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2017

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1129608

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-banknote-market-report-2017-edition-report.html/toc

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Banknote Market: Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.Banknote is a promissory note which is issued by banks that is payable on demand to the bearer. The production and distribution of new banknotes and destruction of the unfit banknotes is the responsibility of the central bank of the respective countries. The demand for banknotes and substrate is fulfilled by state print works (SPW), state paper mills (SPM) and few commercial print and paper manufacturers. SPWs and SPMs can also turn in to commercial providers to cater the unmet demand for banknotes.Major factors contributing to the growth of the market include increasing domestic transactions and increasing demand for foreign currencies across different countries. The global financial crisis led to a one-time increase in the demand for these notes, thereby leading to increased market value.The report Global Banknote Market provides a comprehensive study of banknote market globally. It also provides detailed information for key regional markets of banknote industry. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the industry are being presented in this report. The four major players in the industry, De La Rue plc, Geisecke & Devrient Group and Fortress Paper Ltd. are being profiled.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The key factors driving the growth of banknote market are financial instability of the economy and GDP of the economy. Some of the noteworthy trends and developments of this industry are adoption of polymer banknotes and new banknotes developments. However, the expansion of banknote market is hindered by rise of digital or cashless payment, secured production of banknotes and overcapacity.Table of Content1. Banknote Market - An Overview1.1 An Introduction1.2 Banknote Manufacturing Process1.3 Banknote Printing, Packaging and Waste Management1.4 Banknote Distribution Logistics ModelBrowse TOC @2. Global Banknote Market Analysis2.1 COEFER of Major Currencies Worldwide2.2 Share of Currencies Worldwide2.3 Global Banknote Substrate Market by Segments2.4 Global Banknote Market by Threads3. Regional Market Analysis3.1 The US3.1.1 Annual Production Volume of US Currency Notes3.1.2 Production Share of US Currency Notes by Denomination3.1.3 Production Value of US Currency Notes by Denomination3.2 The Eurozone3.2.1 Euro Banknotes Production Volume3.2.2 Euro Banknotes Production Share by Denomination3.2.3 Value of Euro Banknotes Produced in the Eurozone3.3 The UKAbout 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 @
Smart Home Appliances Market Forecast Report 2017-2022: Growth Factors, New Trends, Future Perspectives, Types, Applications, Market by Regions, and Competitive Analysis of Top Key Players

http://www.qyreports.com/request-sample/?report-id=49885

http://www.qyreports.com/enquiry-before-buying/?report-id=49885

www.qyreports.com

The report is titled Global Smart Home Appliances Market Research Report 2017 and hastens a boundless and centered investigate into this market. The market size is concluded through comprehensive study and examination through subordinate research. The numbers interpreted from subordinate research is converged into the research report after approval of the market data approximations through different conferences and analyses directed and gathered information from the industry and market authorities.GET SAMPLE COPY OF THIS REPORT @On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Smart Home Appliances Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.This research study presents an all-inclusive evaluation of the global Smart Home Appliances market taking various industry parameters, such as the capacity of production, product pricing, demand, supply, and sales dynamics, returns on investments, and the growth rate of the overall market into consideration.KNOW MORE ABOUT THIS PREMIUM REPORT@According to the research report, the global Smart Home Appliances market is witnessing a continual rise in its valuation with the advancement in technologies, which is impacting the consumer behavior and, accordingly, their purchasing patterns to a great extent. In addition to this, the increasing penetration of internet and the surge in mobile surfing are expected to boost the demand across the world, states the research report.The major growth drivers, challenges, and trends influencing the global Smart Home Appliances market are inspected at length. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects. A number of analysis tools such as Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis have been employed to provide an accurate understanding of this market. Also, the report is compiled in a way for the readers and customers to understand better.In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Smart Home Appliances Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Smart Home Appliances Market Research Report 2017-2022Chapter 1 Smart Home Appliances OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2017-2021)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2017-2021)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 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 Market Forecast (2017-2021)Chapter 13 AppendixAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
PharmaPoint of Diagnostic Imaging Services Market in Global Industry : Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts 2017-2025

Market Research Report

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1423516

https://www.researchmoz.us/diagnostic-imaging-services-market-global-industry-analysis-size-share-growth-trends-and-forecast-2017-2025-report.html

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Diagnostic Imaging Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025" to its huge collection of research reports.Imaging services have become a cornerstone in the diagnosis of various chronic conditions including cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Technological advancements to improve the quality of images and reduce the risk associated with using these equipment, especially X-ray based devices, and development of cost-effective imaging technologies have led to wider acceptance of diagnostic imaging procedures among healthcare providers.Availability of reimbursement for radiology procedures in major countries and regions such as the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and China has been one of the major factors driving the market. For example, the National Health Service (NHS), U.K.s publicly funded national healthcare system, reimbursed around 40 million diagnostic imaging tests in 2016. Demand for diagnostic imaging services is expected to continue to rise at a significant rate due to the increase in aging population and growth in prevalence of chronic diseases. People aged 60 years and above are projected to account for 17% of the global population by 2030, up from 12% at present (Source: WHO). According to a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health, the utilization of imaging services among patients aged 65 years and above is at least twice as compared to that among younger people. As per the Lancet study on Global Burden of Disease, non-communicable diseases accounted for around 70% of global deaths in 2015. For example, the global cancer incidence is projected to rise from 14.1 million in 2012 to 24 million by 2024 (Source: World Cancer Research Fund International).To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Based on type of diagnostic imaging services, the global diagnostic imaging services market can be segmented into diagnostic radiology, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear imaging, and others. Diagnostic radiology and ultrasound segments constitute significant share of the market in terms of volume; however, the proportion of spending is higher on more expensive procedures such as CT and MRI. In Australia, CT and MRI held around 16% share of the total diagnostic imaging procedures in 2015; however, these two modalities accounted for around 40% of the total spending on diagnostic imaging services.In terms of geography, the global diagnostic imaging services market can be divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. In terms of value, North America accounts for the key share of the market, as diagnostic imaging services are estimated to constitute around 10% of the total healthcare spending of over more than US$ 3.2 Tn in the U.S. market at present. Asia Pacific holds prominent share of the market in terms of volume due to the higher prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases in the region.Based on end-user, the diagnostic imaging services market can be segregated into hospitals, clinics, diagnostic imaging centers, ambulatory surgery centers, and others. The distribution of the market in terms of end-user varies based on the presence of private diagnostic imaging centers in a country or region. For example, the outpatient imaging centers market in the U.S. is worth around US$ 17 Bn at present.Make an Enquiry about TOC @Key private companies operating in the global diagnostic imaging services market include RadNet, Inc., Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI), MedQuest Associates, Inc., Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited, Sonic Healthcare, and Alliance Medical. Private diagnostic imaging practices are likely to continue to witness consolidation due to the decline in rate of reimbursements, increase in competition, and fragmented nature of the market.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 breakthroughsNorth 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)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,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.us
Lacrimal Cannulae Market is Expected to Witness a Steady Growth by 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/lacrimal-cannulae-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=20432

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=22727<ype=S

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

http://www.theglobalhealthnews.com/

Lacrimal cannulae is an ophthalmic instrument used for irrigation and probing of the lacrimal duct. Irrigation and probing is a procedure used to evaluate the structure and functional status of the lacrimal drainage system. In case of trauma, it is helpful to look for the presence of canalicular injury. It is also used for overflow tearing known as epiphora due to either overproduction of tears or inadequacy of lacrimal drainage system. Lacrimal Cannulae used in Lacerations of the canalicular system. The canaliculi are several small ducts in the eye through which tear drains. The probing and irrigation is performed whenever the analysis of the lacrimal drainage system is indicated.Request Report TOC @The lacrimal irrigation and dilation are generally performed in hospital. However, with practice and care, the procedure can be carried out by an optometrist or general physician. Several dilators and cannulas are available for lacrimal dilation and irrigation, for example stainless double-ended type. Lacrimal dilation may be used prior to syringing and inserting punctum plugs. It also provides relief for short time from stenosis of the punctum. Lacrimal syringing and irrigation of lacrimal system dislodges intra-canalicular punctum plugs. The canaliculus and punctum may require dilation prior to the procedure. Lacrimal cannula is attached to a disposable syringe filled with saline and plunger removed. The cannula is inserted into the vertical canaliculus and the plunger is pressed down to irrigate the lacrimal duct. In addition, the procedure is efficacious for treating congenital nasolacrimal duct obstruction. The ease of process and effective results along with low cost of the product is anticipated to drive the global lacrimal cannulae market.The lacrimal cannulae market has been segmented based on product, end-user, and region. In terms of product type, the market has been categorized into curved lacrimal cannula, straight lacrimal cannula, and others (pediatric lacrimal flush cannula, etc.). Based on end-user, the market has been classified into hospitals, ophthalmic clinics, and ambulatory centers. Typically, procedures such as lacrimal syringing are performed in hospitals. Hence, the hospitals segment accounts for the largest share of the market. General practitioners also use cannulas with a little practice and care.Request For Brochure @In terms of region, the lacrimal cannulae market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe are likely to dominate the lacrimal cannulae market. Factors driving the growth of the lacrimal cannulae market in North America are increasing prevalence of eye diseases among the geriatric and diabetic population. Additionally, technological developments in the field of ophthalmic surgical devices and increasing awareness among the population about surgical treatments of various retinal diseases are boosting the growth of the lacrimal cannulae market in North America.Europe held the second largest share of the lacrimal cannulae market. Asia Pacific is the most progressive region for the lacrimal cannulae market. Increasing health care awareness and per capita income are likely to drive the market in Asia Pacific. Large population base, greater initiatives taken by governments to promote health care, and robust economic growth are the factors attributed to the high growth in the region. Moreover, improving consumer awareness about eye care and better disease management are projected to propel the lacrimal cannulae market in Asia Pacific.Major players in the lacrimal cannulae market are Medtronic, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Conmed, Cook Medical, Inc., Smiths Medical, and Devilbiss Healthcare, among others. Regional players also account for a significant share of the lacrimal cannulae 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:
New Market Research Report Announced on Surgical Stapling Devices Market ; Global Industry Analysis 2017  2026

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1287891

https://www.researchmoz.us/surgical-stapling-devices-market.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/surgical-stapling-devices-market.html

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/

Albany, NY, 21st December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Surgical Stapling Devices Market: APEJ, Western Europe, & North America in a Cutthroat Competition to Record the Highest CAGR Throughout the Forecast Period: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" globally.Two U.S. based companies are likely to dominate the global surgical stapling devices market in terms of market shareIn 2015, two leading U.S based companies Johnson and Johnson and Medtronic plc held around 80% share of the global surgical stapling devices market.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Although the global surgical stapling devices market is not very niche, other vendors are scattered and focus only on certain countries for the expansion of their business. For instance, vendors in the global surgical stapling devices market are focussing on India and a few other countries in the Asia Pacific region except China and Japan to explore hitherto untapped markets for expanding their business. One such vendor is India based surgical stapling devices company Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., which exports around 90% of its surgical stapling devices along with its other products to the MEA region.Rising prevalence of obesity and a geriatric population requiring surgical procedures anticipated to fuel the growth of the global surgical stapling devices marketA sedentary lifestyle leads to higher BMI, as a result, a large number of people are opting for bariatric surgeries. This is a major factor driving adoption of surgical stapling devices over conventional suturing. The increasing prevalence of obesity drives the incidence of bariatric surgeries. Moreover, healthcare professionals, especially in developed regions, are increasingly inclined towards the adoption of surgical stapling devices for bariatric surgeries, which is creating a positive impact on the global surgical stapling devices market. Another factor driving the growth of the global surgical stapling devices market is an increasing geriatric population across the globe. This population is expected to drive demand for surgical stapling devices due to increasing number of surgeries performed for the prevention of various diseases related to old age.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Surgical stapling devices are preferred over conventional suturing devices during laparoscopic surgeries, as suturing becomes difficult when a surgeon is operating on the 3-dimensional plane while concentrating on the 2-dimensional plane. Surgeons get the required accuracy and precision while operating with surgical stapling devices. This factor is fuelling the growth of the global surgical stapling devices market. Besides, reusable surgical stapling devices are preferred by the procurement team of hospitals as it labelled under the category of green products, resulting in considerably less impact on the environment, compared to plastic single-use disposable surgical stapling devices. These products can be easily cleaned and sterilised by standard hospital processes, commonly used for all other stainless steel surgical instruments, thereby creating robust development in the global surgical stapling devices market. Though suturing is considered to be a gold standard in wound closures, stapling devices yield similar and comparable results involving less time to complete the process. Hence the use of stapling devices yields similar results to that of the suturing process with less time required to heal the wound.Regional overview of the global surgical stapling devices marketThe global surgical stapling devices market revenue is expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.6% over the forecast period. In terms of revenue, Powered Surgical Stapling Devices segment is projected to remain dominant among product types. This segment is expected to further gain traction, owing to increasing demand for advanced technology. The North America surgical stapling devices market accounted for the largest revenue share of a little more than 30% in 2015. Increasing geriatric population and growing demand for advanced medical technology in the U.S. present key growth opportunities for manufacturers of surgical stapling devices. The APEJ surgical stapling devices market is slated to register a CAGR of 8.6% over the forecast period due to rising healthcare awareness and demand for advanced medical technology.Browse Report @Remarkable development in the global surgical stapling devices marketOne of the key players operating in the global surgical stapling devices market Dextera Surgical Inc. collaborated with Intuitive Surgical in August 2016 for research and development of new robotic stapler products. The U.S. based Dextera Surgical Inc. is a core surgical stapling manufacturing company whose key product is surgical stapling devices. In September 2016, the company introduced micro cutter technology at the annual meeting of the German Society for Thoracic Surgery. This new technology will decrease the pain of cancer patients by reducing the invasiveness of lung surgery. The effectiveness of this technology does not stop here. Micro cutter technology has the potential to improve recovery time after lung surgery. In October 2016, just a month after introducing the micro cutter technology, Dextera Surgical Inc. signed an exclusive agreement with B.Braun Surgicals S.A. for the distribution of its micro cutters in Spain.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 :
Authorized Generics Market for Growth and Global Expansion by 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/authorized-generics-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=20609

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=20609<ype=S

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

http://www.theglobalhealthnews.com/

A generic drug is a duplicate copy of original branded drug, which has same dosage form, active pharma ingredients (API), strength, route of administration, and also same intended use as the branded one. Regulatory authorities and governments have mandated that an authorized generic drug has to medicinally correspond to the branded drug and sanctioned as an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An authorized generic is the branded companys individual product, but repackaged and marketed as generic drug either via subsidiary or third party. These are already approved as a New Drug Application by the FDA, only they are promoted via private label. The authorized generics market grew rapidly in the past few years as these provide consumers with branded quality drugs at generic prices. Presently, there is a growing trend of original maker giving approvals to a subsidiary or a private label distribution company to sell its brand name drug as a generic drug at a subsequently low price.Report Overview and TOC @An example of authorized generic drug is Azithromycin Pak which is sold under by the company name Greenstone. Pfizers original branded drug Z-pak was approved by the FDA. Before patent expiry of Z-pak, Pfizer allowed Greenstone to sell Z-pak using authorized generic name Azithromycin Pak. Greenstone is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer.The global authorized generics market is expected to witness strong growth. Authorized generic drugs are priced at significantly discounted rate i.e. 50% to 70% as compared to branded counterparts. Additionally, many of the popular branded drugs of pharma companies are losing patent protection rights, which is also termed as patent cliffs. This would pave the way for entry of new complex generics in the market. These factors are likely to drive the authorized generics market in the near future. Other factors driving the market are health care plans by governments across the world, rapidly increasing cost of branded drugs, and aging populations. On the other hand, possibility of side effects, and lack of regulatory awareness about products and quality management are factors likely to restrain the global authorized generics market.Request brochure @The global authorized generics market can be classified based on product type, application, end-user, and region.In terms of product type, the global authorized generics market can be segmented into biosimilars, simple generic, super generic, and others. Based on applications the market can be classified into cardiovascular, anti-infective, anti-arthritis, central nervous system, anti-cancer, respiratory, and others.Geographically, the global authorized generics market can be divided into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America accounted for the largest share of the market, primarily due to technological advancements, rise in demand for generic drugs, increase in overall cost of branded drugs, and presence of key players. Europe held a significant share of the market attributed to advancements in generic drugs, rise in various types of cancer, and blood related disorders. Asia Pacific, however, has been exhibiting high growth rate on account of growing demand for generic drugs, rise in geriatric population, increase in disposable income, and government initiatives to support generic drugs. Rapidly rising population in the region has increased demand for better health care and induced both private and government players to meet the demand. Developing economies such as India and China have also made a significant contribution to the rise of the global authorized generics market by focusing on establishing a better health care infrastructure.Key players in the market are Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sandoz, Allergan, Mylan, Sun Pharmaceuticals, and STADA Arzneimittel. Other prominent vendors in the market are Abbott, Amgen, Apotex, Aspen, AstraZeneca, Aurobindo Pharma, Baxter, Berlin-Chemie, Biocon, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celltrion, Cipla, Coherus Biosciences, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Company, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Eurofarma Laboratories, Gedeon Richter, Gilead Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline.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.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:
Matcha tea Market To Make Great Impact In Near Future by 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=21245

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/matcha-tea-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Matcha is a powdered green tea grown and produced in China and Japan. The matcha powder is used to brew antioxidant rich green tea, baking and in smoothies. Use of matcha in foods as flavors and to dye foods in trending. Matcha tea is made from shade-grown tea leaves. Matcha tea have multiple health benefits which is increasing its popularity in consumers globally. Matcha tea have 137 times more antioxidants than other tea which more health beneficial for the health conscious people. Due to high antioxidant content matcha tea also helps in boosting metabolism and also buring more calories. Matcha tea helps calm the mind along with relaxing body. Matcha tea contains high amount of vitamin C, chromium, selenium, magnesium and zinc which helps in lowering cholesterol and blood sugar in turn helping in weight loss.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Market Segmentation: Matcha Tea:The matcha tea market is segmented on the basis of its product forms as powder, ready to drink and instant premixes. Use of these matcha tea instant premixes is used into lattes, ice drinks, smoothies, milk shakes and also in alcoholic beverages such as liqueurs and in matcha green tea beers.The matcha tea market is segmented on the basis of product types as traditional, unsweetened, sweetened and flavored. Matcha tea comes in flavors such as spices, flowers and herbs etc. For health conscious consumers matcha tea is also available in unsweetened type which contains comparatively less sweetening agents. Trend of consuming traditional food is growing market for traditional matcha green tea.The matcha tea market is segmented on the basis of nature of raw material used as organic and conventional. Increasing demand for organic matcha tea globally due to awareness of leading health issues is driving organic matcha tea market.The matcha market is segmented on the basis of distribution channels as supermarket/ hypermarket, specialty stores, online sales, retail stores and departmental stores etc. Health beneficial properties of matcha tea is making it popular in consumers which is increasing sale of matcha tea in every distributional channel.Obtain Report Details @Global Matcha tea Market: Regional OutlookDepending on geographic regions global matcha tea market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, APAC and MEAJapan is a leading consumer of matcha tea as ceremonial tea followed by China. Sale of match ate in the U.S. and Canada is expected to grow in the forecast period.Global Matcha tea Market: Drivers and TrendsThe global matcha tea market driving due to increasing demand for matcha tea in many consumers as it has many health benefits. Matcha tea contains comparatively high antioxidant content which makes it popular in health conscious consumers. Increasing ceremonial tea consumptions and tea parties is also driving market for matcha tea. Due to matcha teas energy boosting property along with the health benefits consumption of matcha tea is increasing in corporate world. Trend of tea and coffee shops like Starbucks is increasing globally which is driving matcha tea market. Trend of adding varieties of flavors in the matcha tea is also driving market in youths globally. Easy availability of matcha tea products in retail shops, supermarket/ hypermarket and online stores is one of the key drivers of matcha tea market.Global Matcha Tea Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global matcha tea market include The AOI Tea Company, Aiya, D?Matcha Japanese Green Tea, Vicony Teas Company, Encha Organic Matcha, Tenzo Tea, Green Foods Corporation, ITO En North America Inc., Nature's Way Products, LLC and Kiss Me Organics U.S. etc. amongst them.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:
Open API Banking 2017 Global Key Players - BBVA, Capital One, Credit Agricole, Fidor Bank Market Analysis and Forecast

Open API Banking

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/640604-open-api-banking-defining-of-open-banking

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/640604-open-api-banking-defining-of-open-banking

www.linkedin.com/company/4828928

https://twitter.com/WiseGuyReports

https://www.facebook.com/Wiseguyreports-1009007869213183/?fref=ts

SummaryRegulatory and technological developments are pushing banks in Europe and the UK to open up access to their systems and data via the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). If banks embrace the concept, they will be able to become one-stop shops for the best products on the market, crowdsource the development of new services, and generate revenue by selling access to their data and capabilities.Get Sample Report @Companies mentionedBBVACapital OneCredit AgricoleFidor BankMonzoN26OCBCOpen Bank ProjecSilicon Valley BanksolarisBankStarling BankSutor Bank.Key Findings Regulatory initiatives such as PSD2 in Europe and the Open Banking Standard in the UK are forcing banks to open up their systems to third parties, and this will hasten the rollout of open APIs. Starling Bank and N26 are among those using the bank as a marketplace approach. Here, banks transform themselves into portals, using their open APIs to allow third-party services to be accessed from within their own platforms. Fidor Bank is an exemplar of the bank as a service strategy. Startups and other entities that want to offer banking services to their customers can connect to Fidor Banks capabilities via its APIs and build their own services and user interface on top.SynopsisOpen API Banking: Defining the Potential and Opportunities explores the impact of open banking initiatives and assesses the various strategies that banks can employ. This report is based on findings from our Retail Banking Insight Survey, together with interviews with industry figures and secondary research.The report offers insight into: The current state of open banking and open API initiatives in the UK, Europe, and further afield. The advantages and disadvantages associated with the main open API strategies banks can use. Advice and recommendations for how to effectively deploy an open API strategy.Reasons to Buy Learn more about the distinct open API strategies a bank can deploy, together with the specific advantages and disadvantages associated with each approach. Gain an understanding of the opportunities  and the threats  that open APIs will create for banks. Discover more about how specific banks around the world are already using APIs, their rationale for doing so, and their experiences to date.Table of Content: Key PointsEXECUTIVE SUMMARYAPIs have the potential to bring about an open banking revolutionKey findingsCritical success factorsDEFINING THE OPEN BANKING LANDSCAPEOpen banking will be the most important banking trend over the next few yearsThe free exchange of data will increase competition and benefit consumersConsumers will benefit from access to enhanced servicesEasier product comparisonsSafer use of account aggregation toolsWider access to creditProvision of enhanced PFM servicesConsumers are put off account aggregation by security concernsThere is a reluctance to give external aggregators access to account informationConcerns about account aggregation are high among those who are the most favorable towards the conceptThe use of APIs will address most consumer concernsSeveral initiatives are pushing providers towards open bankingPSD is at the forefront of European effortsThe UK is pushing ahead with the creation of an OBSThe OBP in Germany has developed its own open API standardUS moves towards open banking are more limitedALTERNATIVE OPEN BANKING STRATEGIES FOR BANKSBank as a marketplace ContinuedAccess Report @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook: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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Research Background & Research Ideas on Gestational Diabetes Treatment Market Size & Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1422713

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1422713/gestational-diabetes-treatment-global-market-research-reports

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1422713

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/checkdiscount/1422713

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"Gestational Diabetes Treatment Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025 " is the latest addition to MarketResearchReports.Biz industry research reports collection.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 @Gestational diabetes can be defined as a type of diabetes that affects pregnant women. It is usually a temporary condition which develops during pregnancy and subsides after the birth of the baby. However, there are possibilities that diabetes may return in the later stages of life as type II diabetes mellitus. It is the inability of insulin to absorb the sugars consumed as part of the meal. It may be caused due to insulin resistance in a womans body because of increasing levels of placental hormones being produced to sustain the development of the fetus. This condition starts when the female body is not able to make and use required amounts of insulin needed in pregnancy, resulting in a build-up of sugar in the bloodstream causing hyperglycemia. According to a case study published by the World Diabetes Foundation, gestational diabetes is an undertreated condition and affects nearly 18 million women each year. It is known to impact over 14% of the pregnancies globally and over 18 million live births every year. Risk factors associated with the condition include overweight babies, risk of developing diabetes mellitus in the later stages of life, birth trauma, respiratory distress, pre-eclampsia, hypocalcemia, and glucose-mediated macrosomia.The global gestational diabetes treatment market is anticipated to grow during the forecast period driven by increase in prevalence of the condition in the population. According to the American Pregnancy Association, over 2% to 5% of the pregnant women in the U.S. suffer from gestational diabetes, which is likely to rise to 7% to 9% in the near future. Changing lifestyle habits, increasing obesity, delayed pregnancies, and rise in screening for gestational diabetes during prenatal testing contribute to the growth of the market. However, lack of awareness among the people and non-symptomatic nature of the condition are likely to hamper market growth.The global gestational diabetes treatment market can be segmented based on drug class, mode of administration, distribution channel, and region. In terms of drug class, the market can be categorized into insulin, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, SGLT-2 inhibitors, and others. Insulin therapy is the most preferred mode of treatment due to its effectiveness in treating the diabetic condition. Based on mode of administration, the global gestational diabetes treatment market can be classified into oral, intravenous, and others. Intravenous mode of administration is mostly preferred owing to the fact that insulin, the commonly employed treatment for gestational diabetes is administered intravenously. In terms of distribution channel, the market can be divided into hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies, and others.View Report @Geographically, the global gestational diabetes treatment market can be segmented into five major regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America accounted for the largest share of the global market in terms of revenue in 2016. The trend is anticipated to continue during the forecast period. Strong growth in the region can be attributed to rise in prevalence of gestational diabetes among the population and ongoing efforts on spreading awareness among the people. Europe is expected to be the second leading market for gestational diabetes treatment. However, the sluggish economy in the region is likely to negatively impact the growth of the market. The market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to record a significantly high CAGR due to high patient population, rise in government focus on enhancing health care facilities, and increase in product approvals.Leading players operating in the global gestational diabetes treatment market are Biocon Limited, Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Sanofi S.A., Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, Merck & Co., Inc., Novartis International AG, Adocia, Peptron, AstraZeneca plc, Pfizer, Inc., Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., and Abbott Laboratories, among others.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
Non-Life Insurance in Ireland Market 2017: Key Players Visa, Mastercard, AIB, BOI

Non-Life Insurance in Ireland

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1325435-non-life-insurance-in-ireland-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1325435-non-life-insurance-in-ireland-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020

www.linkedin.com/company/4828928

https://twitter.com/WiseGuyReports

https://www.facebook.com/Wiseguyreports-1009007869213183/?fref=ts

Synopsis'Non-Life Insurance in Ireland, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Irish non-life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Irish insurance industry with its regional counterparts.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Companies mentionedAIBBOIUlster BankPermanent TSBAvantCardVisaMastercardIt provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Irish economy and demographics, explains the various types of natural hazard and their impact on the Irish insurance industry, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.Summary'Non-Life Insurance in Ireland, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Irish non-life insurance segment, including: The Irish non-life segments detailed outlook by product category A comprehensive overview of the Irish economy and demographics A comparison of the Irish non-life insurance segment with its regional counterparts The various distribution channels in the Irish non-life insurance segment Detailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Irish insurance industry Details of the competitive landscape in the non-life insurance segment in Ireland Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Irish insurance industryScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the non-life insurance segment in Ireland: It provides historical values for the Irish non-life insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period. It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Irish non-life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020. It provides a comparison of the Irish non-life insurance segment with its regional counterparts It analyzes the various distribution channels for non-life insurance products in Ireland. It analyzes various natural hazards and their impact on the Irish insurance industry It profiles the top non-life insurance companies in Ireland, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons to Buy Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Irish non-life insurance segment, and each category within it. Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Irish non-life insurance segment. Assess the competitive dynamics in the non-life insurance segment. Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Irish insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key Highlights The Irish non-life segment is moderately concentrated, with the 10 leading insurers accounting for 73.0% of the segments gross written premium in 2015. Solvency ll was implemented on January 1, 2016. On September 4, 2014, the European Court of Justice delivered a judgment stating that motor insurance should cover accidents on private land. In 2015, brokers accounted for 58.9% of the segments direct written premium, while direct marketing accounted for 41.1%.Table of Content: Key Points1 Key Facts and Highlights2 Executive Summary3 Economy and Demographics4 Segment Outlook4.1 Regional Comparison4.2 Segment Indicators4.2.1 Gross written premium4.2.2 Claims4.2.3 Profitability4.2.4 Assets and investments5 Outlook by Category5.1 Property Insurance5.1.1 Product overview5.1.2 Premium5.1.3 Claims5.1.4 Profitability5.2 Motor Insurance5.2.1 Product overview5.2.2 Premium5.2.3 Claims5.2.4 Profitability5.3 Liability InsuranceContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook: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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Xanthan Gum Market size will estimated CAGR of 6% from 2016 to 2023.

North America Xanthan Gum Market size, by application, 2013-2023 (USD Million)

https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/512

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/xanthan-gum-market

https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/512

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/identity-and-access-management-market

Xanthan Gum Market size is expected to reach USD 1.184 billion by 2023; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.Asia Pacific xanthan gum market size was the largest among all regions and is expected to generate over USD 495 million by 2023. Increasing urbanization, rising disposable income, expansion of stores, supporting economic factors and availability of easy finance is driving regional demand. Automotive growth in India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand is expected to fuel demand for paints and coatings manufacturers to boost regional production capacity.Approvals from FDA and USDA for the use of product in medicines and bakery foods. FDA recognized the use of product for direct food human consumption under the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR 21) to fuel in food & beverage and pharmaceutical applications. Imposition of antidumping duties by the U.S. Department of Commerce may affect xanthan gum market price trend.Make an Inquiry before buying this report @Food & beverage dominated the market share and is expected to grow over 5.5% CAGR by 2023. Xanthan gum drives moisture retention, while inhibiting staling and prolonging shelf-life. It helps to stabilize frozen products through freeze and thaw cycles by controlling ice crystal growth.Increased drilling activities in North America on account of growing demand for petroleum and petroleum based products in oil & gas industry to boost xanthan gum market share. Rising expenditure on technological development in oil & gas sector to increase the production output for crude oil and natural gas resulted in growing importance for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).Cosmetic industry is expected to grow in revenue terms at USD 35.2 million by 2023. Growing demand for cosmetics in emerging economies owing to growing disposable income of consumers coupled with changing lifestyles mainly in India, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. Cosmetic products such as shampoos, lotions and denture cleaners are used as thickening and stabilizing agents.Browse key industry insights spread across 94 pages with 62 market data tables and 17 figures & charts from the report, Xanthan Gum Market Size By Application (Oil & gas, Food & Beverages, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetics), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Russia, Germany, Netherlands, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016  2023 in detail along with the table of contents:Key insights from the report include: Oil & gas applications are set to grow at 6.2% CAGR in revenue terms. Strong Chinese O&G indictors, will drive xanthan demand. Asia Pacific, led by China xanthan gum market size, dominated regional consumption. Rising geriatric population and changing climate conditions in China, Australia and India have raised concerns for skin problems, which are expected to fuel personal care products demand and contribute to xanthan gum market growth. North America, driven by the U.S. xanthan gum market share, is poised to grow at 5.3% CAGR by 2023. Strong pharma spending cue will be a telling factor on demand. Europe xanthan gum market size is expected to exceed in terms of revenue at USD 235 million by 2023. Pharmaceutical applications are expected to exceed USD 10.2 million by 2023. Increasing R&D investments across the pharmaceutical industry will drive growth. MEA, led by Saudi Arabia may grow significantly, with rising health expenditure coupled with government support.Request for a sample of this research report @Global xanthan gum market share is consolidated. Deosen Biochemical, Fufeng Group, CP Kelco, DuPont, ADM and Cargill are among notable industry players. Other participants include Pfizer, Sancho & Lee, Meihua Holdings, Solvay Group, Kantilal Brothers, Jungbunzlauer and Qingdao Unichem.Increasing R&D investments by major companies to explore untapped applications of xanthan gum, anticipated to open new avenues.Related Report:Identity and Access Management (IAM) Market Size By End-Use (BFSI, Education, Healthcare, Energy, Oil & Gas, Telecom &IT, Manufacturing Public Sector & Utilities), By Deployment (Hybrid, Cloud, On-Premise), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2015  2022About Global Market Insights, Inc.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 UsArun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.com
Beauty Devices Market Expected to Account US$54.2 Bn by 2020 end

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3375

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3375

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/beauty-devices-market.asp

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research Global Market Study on Beauty Devices: Asia to Witness Highest Growth by 2020, the global beauty devices market was valued at USD 19,389.1 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.7% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an estimated value of USD 54,186.9 million in 2020.Globally, the beauty devices market is witnessing significant growth due to increasing disposable income, which is enabling people to spend more on personal care. In addition, rise in aging the population and increasing prevalence of skin diseases and harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation are also driving the growth of the market. However, there are various risks and complications associated with beauty devices which may lead to bruising, swelling, and redness. In addition, extended availability of easy-to-use beauty products inhibits the growth of the market. The global beauty devices market is anticipated to grow from an estimated USD 19,389.1 million in 2014 to USD 54,186.9 million in 2020 at a CAGR of 18.7% during the forecast period.Request Sample Report @In North America, increasing aging population and availability of advanced devices are driving the use of beauty devices in the market. In addition, in the U.S., there are around 750,000 beauty salons and spas. These beauty salon and spas have propelled the demand for beauty devices and personal care products in order to offer better services to their customers.In Europe, the beauty devices market is driven by rising aging population. In addition, in Spain the market is evolving due to rising awareness about potential healing applications of beauty devices in the treatment of skin and hair problems.Request to view table of content @However, in Asia the growth for beauty devices is much higher than developed countries due to increasing disposable income, availability of multinational brands and the introduction of less expensive beauty devices.LOreal Group, Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc., Home Skinovations, Ltd., PhotoMedex, Inc., TRIA Beauty, Inc., Syneron Medical, Ltd., Koninklijke Philips N.V., Panasonic Corporation, Carol Cole Company and Procter & Gamble are some of the major players of beauty devices market.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:
Smart Factory Market by Technology DCS, PLC, MES Development, Key Manufacturers Report 2017-2025

The Insight Partners

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000243

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/smart-factory-market

Advancing trends in digital technologies and automation systems, the developments in factory have taken new dimension. There is fair awareness among companies about the systems and automation devices which allows them to compete with their competitors and ensure to meet the requirements of the customers with added efficiency. Smart factory is that platform which help companies to bridge the gap between physical and digital objects, manufacturers are focusing on cyber world where the entire eco-system is connected to deliver high efficiency in factory and low defects and intervals.The report aims to provide an overview of global smart factory market with detailed market segmentation by product, end-user vertical and geography. The global smart factory market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period.Worldwide Smart Factory Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Smart Factory industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global Smart Factory market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global Smart Factory market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Smart Factory players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Request a Sample Report atSmart Factory Market Players:ABB Ltd.Emerson Electric CompanyFanuc CorporationGeneral Electric CompanyJohnson Controls Inc.Honeywell International Inc.Rockwell AutomationSchneider ElectricSiemens AgYokogawa Electric CorporationThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global Smart Factory market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Smart Factory market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Also, key Smart Factory market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason 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 Smart Factory 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
Small Cell Market Insights by Trend, Growth & Forecast

Small Cell Market

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/852191-global-small-cell-sales-market-1

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/852191-global-small-cell-sales-market-1

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=852191

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/852191-global-small-cell-sales-market-1

https://www.linkedin.com/company/13388569/

HTF MI published a new industry research that focuses on Small Cell market and delivers in-depth market analysis and future prospects of Global Small Cell market. The study covers significant data which makes the research document a handy resource for managers, analysts, industry experts and other key people get ready-to-access and self-analyzed study along with graphs and tables to help understand market trends, drivers and market challenges. The study is segmented by Application/ end users [2G, 3G & 4G/LTE], products type [Femtocell, Microcell, Metrocell & Picocell] and various important geographies like United States, China, Europe, Japan, Korea & Taiwan].Get Access to sample pages @The research covers the current market size of the Global Small Cell market and its growth rates based on 5 year history data along with company profile of key players/manufacturers such as Airvana, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nextivity, Nokia & SpiderCloud. The in-depth information by segments of Small Cell market helps monitor future profitability & to make critical decisions for growth. The information on trends and developments, focuses on markets and materials, capacities, technologies, CAPEX cycle and the changing structure of the Global Small Cell Market.The study provides company profiling, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information of key manufacturers of Global Small Cell Market, some of them listed here are Airvana, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nextivity, Nokia & SpiderCloud. The market is growing at a very rapid pace and with rise in technological innovation, competition and M&A activities in the industry many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new manufacturer entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability, and innovations in technology.Global Small Cell (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such as Femtocell, Microcell, Metrocell & Picocell. Further the research study is segmented by Application such as 2G, 3G & 4G/LTE with historical and projected market share and compounded annual growth rate.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Small Cell in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States, China, Europe, Japan, Korea & Taiwan and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2017 to 2022.Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @What this Research Study Offers:Global Small Cell Market share assessments for the regional and country level segmentsMarket share analysis of the top industry playersStrategic recommendations for the new entrantsMarket forecasts for a minimum of 5 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional marketsMarket Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimationsCompetitive landscaping mapping the key common trendsCompany profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developmentsSupply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsBuy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to display the Global Small Cell market.Chapter 1, to describe Definition, Specifications and Classification of Small Cell , Applications of Small Cell , Market Segment by Regions;Chapter 2, to analyze the Manufacturing Cost Structure, Raw Material and Suppliers, Manufacturing Process, Industry Chain Structure;Chapter 3, to display the Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Small Cell , Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, R&D Status and Technology Source, Raw Materials Sources Analysis;Chapter 4, to show the Overall Market Analysis, Capacity Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment);Chapter 5 and 6, to show the Regional Market Analysis that includes United States, China, Europe, Japan, Korea & Taiwan, Small Cell Segment Market Analysis (by Type);Chapter 7 and 8, to analyze the Small Cell Segment Market Analysis (by Application) Major Manufacturers Analysis of Small Cell ;Chapter 9, Market Trend Analysis, Regional Market Trend, Market Trend by Product Type [Femtocell, Microcell, Metrocell & Picocell], Market Trend by Application [2G, 3G & 4G/LTE];Chapter 10, Regional Marketing Type Analysis, International Trade Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis;Chapter 11, to analyze the Consumers Analysis of Global Small Cell ;Chapter 12, to describe Small Cell Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Small Cell sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Connect with us atHTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA  08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218
Emerging Opportunities in Incidence Management Software Market with Current Trends Analysis

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1894

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/incidence-management-software-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

An Incidence Management Software is used to manage the action of the existing system and workforce in response to a particular incident. Here an incident is defined as a disruption to an organizations operations, services or functions. An Incidence Management Software assures that a uniform and swift approach is being followed, so as to return to the normal at the earliest. A standard Incidence Management Software allows simultaneous input from multiple locations, automate the information flow between response team members, logs and record the incident information, create a central repository for recovery information and simultaneously produce reports. The primary goal of an Incidence Management Software is to warn and minimize the impact of any incident ranging from earthquake and power outages to product failures and market shifts. Incidence management software are nowadays commonly used in various industries like IT, Oil & Gas, Transportation, Retail, Government, Electrical utilities etc. While prevention is always the first defense, still every organization also needs to be fully capable of responding efficiently to any kind of incidence, regardless how large or complex it is. Hence the Global Incidence Management Software market is anticipated to show a decent CAGR over the forecast period.Get an exclusive sample of this report @Incidence Management Software Market: Drivers and ConstraintsThe growing dependence on IT and data services across every industry raises many concerns related to losses, security and unwanted disruptions leading to the requirement of an Incidence Management Software. Similarly rising incidents of losses related to theft, damage, or other factors across retail and manufacturing industries also drives the market for incidence management software. Product failures, market shift, workplace violence, poor management activities and transportations delays can occur in any functional organization these days and adversely affect the productivity. The rising number of such incidences will definitely fuel the demand for Incidence Management Software.Contrary, the high cost of software  additional expense is preventing small organizations to adopt the solution. Also these softwares are generally complex in nature and requires proper training, to enable operators to use it during emergency situation. These factors might put some hurdles in the growth of global incidence management software market.The global economic advancement has increased the value of every second, leading organizations to deploy every possible system/softwares that helps them reduce their unproductive time, henceforth driving the market for Incidence Management Softwares.Obtain Report Details @Incidence Management Software Market: Regional OutlookGlobal Incidence Management Software market is segmented into seven key regions, which includes North America (NA), Eastern Europe (EU), Latin America(LA), Western Europe(W.EU), Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) , Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Japan. North America which contributes 20% of the World GDP, currently owns the largest market share of Incidence Management Software. However with significant economic growth, and enormously growing IT and Manufacturing sector, the APEJ nations are next in line and will contribute notably to the growth in the market over the forecast period.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 consumersContact FMI3rd Floor, 207 Regent Street,London W1B 3HHUnited KingdomT: + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790D: +44 (0) 20 3287 4268Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Nanocomposites Market to grow at a CAGR of 23.66% during the period 2017-2021

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1326158/global-nanocomposites-market-research-reports

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1326158

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1326158

"The Report Global Nanocomposites Market 2017-2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About NanocompositesNanocomposites consist of at least one material in the nanometer range. The addition of nanoparticles to composites significantly improves the mechanical properties of nanocomposites. Thus, nanocomposites are regarded as the new generation of high-performance materials. They are gaining huge popularity in advanced and niche applications. Nanocomposites have gained a lot of attention in the recent years. Vendors are putting in significant efforts to control nanostructures with the help of innovative synthetic approaches. Nanocomposites are high-performance materials that exhibit unique property combinations and enhanced mechanical properties. The manufacturing of nanocomposites can be done in three ways: solution blending, molten state, and in situ polymerization.Technavios analysts forecast the global nanocomposites market to grow at a CAGR of 23.66% during the period 2017-2021.View Report @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global nanocomposites 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:AmericasAPACEuropeMEATechnavio's report, Global Nanocomposites 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 vendors3MArkemaBASFCabotEvonik IndustriesGet Sample Copy Of This Report @CyclicsDuPontElementis SpecialtieseSPin TechnologiesFosterInframatInMatMelodeaNanocorNYACOLPowdermetALTANAUnidymUnitikaZyvex TechnologiesMarket driverIncreasing investments in construction activitiesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHigh R&D costsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendUse of nano PVDF aluminum composites in decorationFor 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?Send An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: IntroductionMarket outlinePART 05: Market landscapeMarket size and forecastFive forces analysisPART 06: Market segmentation by applicationGlobal nanocomposites market by applicationGlobal nanocomposites market in construction segmentGlobal nanocomposites market in electronics segmentGlobal nanocomposites market in automotive segmentGlobal nanocomposites market in aerospace segmentGlobal nanocomposites market in packaging and plastics segmentGlobal nanocomposites market in others segmentPART 07: Market segmentation by productGlobal nanocomposites market by productGlobal nanocomposites market by polymer and clayGlobal nanocomposites market by CNT and grapheneGlobal nanocomposites market by metalMarketResearchReports.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
Marine Propulsion Engine Market size and Key Trends in terms of volume and value 2017-2027

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2804

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2804

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Marine propulsion is the system or mechanism used to generate thrust that allows a small boat or even a ship to move across waterways. Modern ships are usually equipped with mechanical systems consisting of an electric motor turning a propeller, or even pump-jets or an impeller. These ships employ reciprocating engines as their main source of power because of their robustness, operational simplicity and lower emissions. The power required by a ship largely depends on the way it is used during regular operations  for e.g.  A passenger ship requires less power than either a trade or naval ship. The marine propulsion engine market serves offshore support vessels, commercial vessels, inland waterway vessels, submarines and more.Request Report Sample @Focus on renewable energy fuelling the marine propulsion engine marketA growing need for dependent and fuel-efficient ships is anticipated to be the main driver of the marine propulsion engine market. There has been rapid innovation in the industry that has led to the development of new high-performance engines that are more fuel-efficient than their predecessors. Leading companies in the marine propulsion engine market are continuously innovating and extending their product offerings to handle the growing demand for greater capacity handling. This is mainly due to a rise in international seaborne trade caused by a globalised world with heavy interdependence and interconnectivity.The second major factor that is likely to impact the marine propulsion engine market is the focus on renewable energy sources. Global warming and an impending energy crisis are some of the biggest challenges faced by the world in the 21st century. Commercial and transport ships notorious for causing a lot of pollution and accidental oil spills not only damage the regional natural ecosystem but also negatively impact the companys goodwill and market image. That is why energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy, electric energy and hydroelectric energy are becoming more important than ever before. The development of electric motors that can power ships and reduce fossil fuel consumption will definitely have a positive impact on the marine propulsion engine market. The depletion of shale gas and conventional reserves will increase the demand for LNG, particularly as a marine fuel.Regulatory hurdles  the biggest challenge to the marine propulsion engine marketUncontrollable CO2 emissions from conventional engine systems have led to the implementation of stringent environmental regulations and various taxes such as carbon tax to help reduce the impact of climate change. The marine pollution convention (MARPOL) regulations help prevent sewage, oil and chemical spill contamination along with air pollution caused by marine propulsion engine exhaust fumes. Non-adherence to these governmental rules and regulations may lead to severe penalties running into billions of dollars. This can stifle the growth of the marine propulsion engine market particularly as smaller domestic companies may not be able to comply.Asia Pacific is the key marine propulsion engine market to watchAsia Pacific accounts for a major portion of the marine propulsion engine market and is anticipated to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period. This is primarily because of key nations China, Japan and South Korea that have become manufacturing powerhouses heavily dependent on external trade. China is already the worlds largest exporter and would naturally require a greater number of commercial ships, thus having a positive impact on the demand for marine propulsion engines. In addition to trade, countries across the world have begun beefing up their navies to combat ocean piracy. Asian navies, in particular, are rapidly building their defence capabilities and this should increase the size of the marine propulsion engine market across the Asia Pacific region.Visit For TOC @Marine propulsion engine market: key playersSome of the key players in the marine propulsion engine market are Caterpillar, Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., General Electric Company, and Masson Marine.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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.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.comWebsite:
Dental CAM Milling machine Market | USD 1415.6 Million By 2022 | Assert MRFR

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1936

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/dental-cam-milling-machines-market

The dental CAM milling machine global market and is expected to reach $1415.6 million by 2022. Lab Scale milling machines holds the largest share of 65.2% of the market. Several major players in this market are: Axsys Incorporated, B&D Dental Technologies, DATRON AG, Dentsply Sirona, KaVo Dental GmbH, Planmeca OY, Straumann, and Yenadent Ltd.Dental CAM Milling Machine Market-Overview:CAD/CAM dental systems is a software used to both design and mill dental prosthetics. CAD (Computer Aided Design) consist of digitally scanning and designing prosthetics, while CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) is the process of sending final models to the output device and manufacturing them through milling or 3D printing. DGSHAPE devices and software are particularly manufactured to perfectly fit into this digital workflow.The dental CAM milling machine global market and is expected to reach $1415.6 million by 2022. Lab Scale milling machines holds the largest share of 65.2% of the market.Get a Copy of Sample Report @In the last few years computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) have occupied many practices and is so precise that dental restorations made by CAM milling machines often fits more better than those made manually in a dental laboratory. Patient satisfaction is constantly increasing as the tooth gets repaired in a single day instead of having to return for repeat appointments. This time saving factor is hugely helping the market growth of Dental CAM Milling Machine Market. CAD/CAM dentistry technology is assisting patients move on faster than ever before. By using the technology dentist can completely control the final result. CAD/CAM technology was developed to solve 3 important challenges. The first challenge was to ensure adequate strength of the restoration, especially for posterior teeth. The second challenge was to create restorations with a natural and beautiful appearance. The third challenge was to make tooth restoration easier, faster, and more accurate. In some cases, CAD/CAM technology provides patients with same-day restorations. All these factors benefitted the growth of dental cam milling machine market globally.The global dental CAM milling machine market has been estimated as vastly growing market and expected that the market will reach high growth figures. There has been high adoption of the CAD CAM systems and dental CAM milling machines in the field of dentistry in the last few years. The benefits like high accuracy and the precision provided by the dental CAM milling machines in the process of dental restorations is boosting the growth of the Dental CAM Milling Machines Market globally.Some of the factors restraining the market growth of CAD/CAM milling machine market are Computers can be affected by software problems, viruses and corrupted files meaning work could be lost. Lesser workers are needed, so unemployment will increase and conventional skills will be lost.Dental CAM Milling Machine Market-Competitive Analysis:Being launched at IDS Cologne, hall 3.2, stand G18, Renishaws incise dental milling system will permit dental laboratories to create zirconia frameworks in-house. Styled and sized to match carve dental scanning machine it uses a highly accurate Renishaw contact probe for job set-up and monitoring of the cutting tool. Organized with Renishaws central milling option, dental laboratories now have access to a dental CAD/CAM system that offers both in-lab and out sourced manufacturing options.Several major players in this market are: Axsys Incorporated, B&D Dental Technologies, DATRON AG, Dentsply Sirona, KaVo Dental GmbH, Planmeca OY, Straumann, and Yenadent Ltd.Browse Full Report Details @Dental CAD/CAM Milling Machine Market- Segmentation:Dental Cam Milling Market- Regional Analysis:Geographically, Europe is the biggest market for dental CAM milling machines. North America is the second-largest market Primary US is contributing in the market growth of dental cam milling market. Next market of Asia pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for dental CAM milling machines. However, Middle East & Africa are expected to have a limited growth but it is expected that these regions will also help greatly in the market growth in the forecasted period.Dental CAD milling machine market can be segmented into 4 divisions:Segmentation by Type: in-lab scale milling machines, and office scale milling machines.Segmentation by Application: crowns, dentures, bridges, veneers and inlays/onlays.Segmentation by End User: dental laboratory, dental clinic, and research/academic institutes.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Dental CAM Milling Machine Market Research Report- Global Forecast To 2022 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
Aircraft Washing Systems Market Revenue, Opportunity, Forecast and Value Chain 2017-2027

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2855

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2855

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Over the years, more than dozens of people would be involved in washing an aircraft, which was not only immensely time consuming, but the eminence of work was also not up to international standards. On an average, a team of 17 to 20 people would take about 9 to 10 hours to clean one Jumbo (707) aircraft. Also, there are other issues to be considered, such as injuries caused by even a minor carelessness. Presently, in many countries aircraft washing and cleaning is assigned to manual labor. In India, Indira Gandhi International Airport (New Delhi) will soon get washing robots to clean jumbo jets. According to DIAL (Delhi International Airport Limited), the technology will be imported from Sweden. Currently, apart from British airports, this technique is used by Qatar and Thai airways. The new aircraft washing systems will be entirely computerized and will comprise spray nozzles, cleaning brushes and mobile power units.Request Report Sample @In the Middle East region, the aviation industry is very keen on green practices. Airlines cannot afford spending extensive periods of time on cleaning activities. Therefore, a company named Clean Middle East developed a new aircraft washing technology known as dry wash. Dry wash is developed and produced by Rhoba-Chemie GmbH, (Germany) to clean aircrafts without water. This concept has a big edge over its counterpart since it inhibits corrosion, improves physical appearance, reduces chemically contaminated waste water and minimizes water consumption.As the use of airplanes has increased exponentially, commercial and private aircraft agencies spend billions of dollars every year in aircraft maintenance. Now, international standards of aviation safety and rules also mandate aircraft cleaning. Cleaning is done by both, private and in-house agencies. However, cleaning is not a secondary job and must be carried out with possible aircraft washing systems (equipment).Aircraft Washing Systems: DynamicsThere is a never ending battle against corrosion in aircraft maintenance, particularly in rotary aircrafts operating over saltwater. Therefore, the U.S. Department of Defense has concluded on rinsing the aircrafts on a weekly or daily basis to combat this problem. Increase in these aircrafts and their running is forecasted to directly create demand and a large growth opportunity for the aircraft washing systems market.Aircraft Washing Systems: Segmentation by MethodWhen it comes to washing the exterior of an aircraft, there are two types of methods: dry and wet. The wet wash requires water and cleaning agent (soap) in three steps, i.e. scrub, rinse and dry. The major problem with this method is that the water needs to be clean and mineral-free. However, most water has some mineral content, which actually captures dirt and leaves deposits on the surface.Visit For TOC @On the other hand, the dry wash method cleans and shines the surface in a single step and hence, is becoming a more popular choice. As compared to a wet wash, the cost of dry wash chemicals are expensive and much like waxing your car. This process involves a lot of elbow grease but end results are often less intrusive. With a dry wash interior cleaning and maintenance can be performed simultaneously.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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.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.comWebsite:
Europe CBCT Dental Imaging Market be Worth over USD 325.5 Mn by 2023

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4137

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/europe-cbct-dental-imaging-market-two-4137

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.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
3D Printing in Healthcare Market Report 2017-2025: Advance Technology Research, Key Manufacturers, Competitive Analysis and Development Forecasts

The Insight Partners

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000717

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000717

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/3d-printing-in-healthcare-market

Global 3D Printing in Healthcare Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the 3D Printing in Healthcare industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global 3D Printing in Healthcare market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global 3D Printing in Healthcare market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the 3D Printing in Healthcare players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Request a Sample Report atMajor 3D Printing in Healthcare Market Players:1. 3D Systems, Inc.2. Arcam AB3. Envisiontec, Inc.4. SLM Solutions Group AG5. Stratasys Ltd.6. Javelin Technologies Inc.7. Tissue Regeneration Systems Inc.8. Materialise NV9. Organovo Holdings, Inc.10. Biomedical Modeling Inc.The report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global 3D Printing in Healthcare market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall 3D Printing in Healthcare market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Inquire before Buying atAlso, key 3D Printing in Healthcare market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason 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 3D Printing in Healthcare 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.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.533, 5th Floor, Amanora Chambers,Amanora Township, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Dental Software Market to Reach USD 4,185.5 Mn by 2027 End

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/675

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/675

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.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.Globally Dental Software Market is expected to grow at 8.0% GAGR (2016-2027).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.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.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
Insulinoma Market to Witness a Rise of USD 3.3 Bn through 2016 - 2023

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4437

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/insulinoma-market-4437

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
Future of Incident Response System Market 2025 - New Development, New Expansions and Advance Technology

The Insight Partners

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000732

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000732

http://www.theinsightpartners.com/incident-response-system-market

Global Incident Response System Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Incident Response System industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global Incident Response System market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global Incident Response System market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Incident Response System players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Request a Sample Report atMajor Incident Response System Market Players:1. Hexadite2. Acronis International GmbH3. Honeywell International Inc.4. FireEye5. NetApp6. Veritas Technologies7. Asigra Inc.8. Rockwell Collins9. Cisco Systems, Inc.10. Dflabs SpaThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global Incident Response System market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Incident Response System market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Inquire before Buying atAlso, key Incident Response System market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason 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 Incident Response System 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.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.533, 5th Floor, Amanora Chambers,Amanora Township, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
NEW - SWEET AND SALTY SENSATIONS FROM PECAN DELUXE

Leading inclusions specialist Pecan Deluxe Candy (Europe) Ltd is helping to meet the enduring consumer demand for salted caramel, with the launch of two new additions to its fudge range.The enhanced fudge selection offers a range of salt levels and even a sea salt option, providing a choice for numerous applications. Perfect for adding to ice cream or as sundae toppings, the bakestable properties of two of the fudges also make them ideal for baked treats such as pastries, puddings, traybakes and cookies. Pecan Deluxe can fat coat the products for use in chilled or frozen desserts, for example  or add an indulgent touch and an extra dimension with chocolate coating.According to Mintel there have been dozens of new product launches based on salted caramel applications in the last year alone, from cookies to cakes, ice cream applications to simple squeezy or pouring sauces. Pecan Deluxes latest fudges have been developed and launched in direct response to demand from food manufacturers for a greater choice of ingredients in salted caramel flavours. And course they are even more versatile in combination with other Pecan inclusions such as chocolate, pralines and ribbon sauces  options only limited by imagination.Pecan Deluxe R&D Director Liz Jones explained: Every season sees the emergence of experimental new flavour combinations but many have a brief lifespan until the next innovation  chilli chocolate, anyone? Salted caramel has endured like few other flavour combinations, its secret being the layered contrast: the caramel sweetness sends energy signals to our brain, whilst the salt is interpreted as a compound that our system needs to function  and of course its a flavour enhancer as long as the sweet/salty proportions are just right.Salted caramel was first invented nearly 40 years ago by a chocolatier called Henri Le Roux, based in Brittany, France, which was famed for its high quality salted butter, and its still going strong. Well doubtless still see crazy new flavour combinations come to market each year but salted caramel has an enduring appeal thats hard to beat, and were delighted to provide new ingredients that will help manufacturers meet demand and maintain its popularity across multiple market sectors.All Pecan Deluxe products  which include traditionally made but innovatively flavoured fudges, moulded chocolate shapes, brownie pieces and praline nuts - are made using natural colours and flavourings in strict allergen controlled, BRC double A grade facilities, and the company is constantly innovating to develop new flavour and texture options.Pecan Deluxe Candy (Europe) Ltd was established in the UK in 1999 and is a fully owned UK subsidiary of US based Pecan Deluxe Candy Company, a family owned business founded in 1950.In conjunction with its sister facilities in the US and Thailand, the UK based ingredients specialist and food tailor now supplies all of Europe, the Middle and Far East and APAC (Australia-Pacific) regions  not to mention the US - with its traditionally made solutions including cookie dough, flavoured fudges, moulded chocolate shapes, sauces, cake and biscuit pieces and praline nuts.The UK factory is fully BRC double-A grade and Halal accredited and can offer allergen segregation, as well as certification to various other standards including RSPO, UTZ, Fairtrade and Kosher.Quality and innovation are at the very forefront of Pecan Deluxe Candys focus and its team of dedicated food technologists is constantly innovating to develop new flavour and texture options tailored to both industry demand and geographical tastes.Pecan Deluxe Candy (Europe) LtdF7 First FloorLincoln HouseAshbrooke ParkSherburn-in-ElmetLeedsYorkshireLS25 6PJ
Market Research on Personalized Cancer Therapy Market 2017 and Analysis to 2025

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/personalized-cancer-therapy-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=35768

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/personalized-cancer-therapy-market.html?secure=NTIxNS41&type=PB

Personalized therapy is related to the genetic makeup of a person. It helps doctors to understand how a tumor grows in a particular patient to identify effective screening, control, and treatment methods. : Doctors are engaged in developing novel treatments with fewer side effects as compared to the traditional treatments. Doctors perform various genetic tests on cancer cells and on normal cells, to develop new customized treatment according to the patients needs.Before personalized therapy, most patients with a specific stage and type of cancer received similar treatment. However, it is evident that certain treatments work specifically on some patients and give better results, as compare to other patients. Development in the field of genetics has led scientists to identify genetic differences in certain patients and their cancer, this described several other responses to treatment. A cancer patient can obtain a standard treatment strategy, such as tumor removal. The doctors can prescribed a personalized cancer treatment. Personalized therapy is an important part of cancer treatment or a part of the clinical trial. A clinical trial is an investigation study including people.Report Overview and TOC @Targeted cancer treatment targets specific genes and proteins that allow cancer cells to survive and grow. Research scientists are continuously identifying new targets each year. They develop and test new medicines for these new targets. Targeted therapy is used for lung cancer, kidney cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumor, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer, among others. For the treatment of cancer by targeted therapy, it is very important to find out whether the tumor has specific target or not, and this can be identify by the testing of the tumor sample.Therapy that targets definite mutant genes, have been existing for few type of cancers since 2001, and by the several studies researchers determined that which tumors will respond best with which drug. For example, changes in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene that affects the response of patient, suffering with lung cancer when the medicine target the EGFR protein. However, recent studies have indicated the shortcomings of targeted therapy by highlighting that the genetic origins of several cancers are both complex and unclear. An extensive diversity of rare mutations can give rise to any type of cancer and mutations in the similar genetic pathways arise in several types of tumors. Rise in the prevalence of cancer, across the world, growing awareness about existing treatments available in the market, and an increasing directness toward the acceptance of promising innovative treatment procedures are key factor driving the global personalized cancer therapy market. The market is also driven by substantial developments in gene sequencing methods and high accuracy in its results.Request for Brochure @The global personalized cancer therapy market has been segmented into application, technique, technology, and geography. In terms of technique, the global personalized cancer therapy market has been classified into genomics, proteomics, epigenetics, and metabolomics. Based on technology, the market has been segmented into immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization (ISH), quantitative PCR, next-generation sequencing, and microarray. In terms of application the global personalized cancer therapy market has been categorized into personalized medicines, biomarker discoveries, diagnostics, prognostics, and research applications. Based on geography, the global personalized cancer therapy market has been segmented into five regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.Key players operating in the global personalized cancer therapy market include Illumina Inc., QIAGEN N.V., NeoGenomics Laboratories, HTG Molecular Diagnostic, and Genomic Health Inc.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
Mycobacterium Avium-Intracellulare Infections Market Expected to Expand at a Steady CAGR through 2020

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=3571

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=3571

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/mycobacterium-avium-intracellulare-infections.html?secure=NTIxNS41&type=PB

Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare also known as Mycobacterium avium complex causes pulmonary infections in immune compromised patients. Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) consists of two species: M. avium and M. intracellulare. As these species are difficult to differentiate, they are collectively referred to as Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare. MAC is the most common infection caused due to nontuberculous mycobacterium in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients. Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare infections are rarely found in immunocompetent individuals. According to Medscape, M. intracellulare accounts for 40% of infections in immunocompetent patients with underlying lung diseases. Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare is ubiquitous and has been isolated from various samples such as household hot water systems, dust, soil, cigarette filters and others. This ubiquitous nature has been responsible for higher rate of infections in immunocompromised patients and patients with lung disorders such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary malignancy, and cystic fibrosis. Literature suggests that individuals acquire the infections via inhalation or through the gastrointestinal tract by ingestion of food contaminated with the bacterium. The infection may also lead to lymphadenitis in children aged 1 to 4 years of age. Commonly affected lymphnodes include submandibular, parotid, postauricular.submaxillary, and preauricular.Report Overview and TOC @Common symptoms for Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare are cough, excessive sputum production, dysponea, fever with night sweat, fatigue and weight loss. Diagnosis is confirmed through acid fast staining of sputum samples. Various publications report that Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare is resistant to antibiotics and antituberculosis drugs. Currently, following antibiotics have been prescribed for treatment of MAC infections: Aminoglycosides (amikacin and streptomycin), Clofazimine , Ethambutol, Fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, and moxifloxacin), Macrolides (clarithromycin, and azithromycin), Rifamycins (rifampin, and rifabutin)Pulmonary Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare infection in patients with lung disease can be treated by surgical excision of pulmonary nodules. Surgeons also advocate that lobectomy has been effective in treating extensive lung infection in patients with antibiotic resistance. Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare lymphadenitis in children is mostly treated by surgical excision of affected lymph nodes. Several of the above mentioned drugs are on WHOs list of essential medicines. Although various drugs are available for treatment of the infection, weak research pipeline has posed a threat to the market. Higher prevalence of infectious diseases exists in low and middle income countries. According to World Health Organization (WHO), more than 95% of HIV infected individuals live in developing countries; sub-Saharan region contributes over 25 million HIV infected people while Asia-Pacific contributes 7 million HIV patients. In the U.S. and U.K. however over 1 million individuals suffer from AIDS. Pulmonary diseases are also major predisposing factors for Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare infections. WHO estimates that over 60 million individuals globally have been known to suffer from moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is predicted that over 90% of COPD deaths occur in low and middle income countries.Request for Brochure @The statistics also forecast that COPD is expected to become third leading cause of death worldwide by 2030. According to statistics published by World Health Organization, lung cancer accounts for over 1.5 million deaths globally. Majority of these mortalities are accounted to developing countries. These statistics suggest that chances of Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare infections are higher in developing countries. Low awareness of disease and related medical treatment, poor reimbursements and financial inability are major restraints impeding market growth in developing countries. In addition, rapidly developing healthcare sector and increasing per capita income in countries such as India, China, and Brazil have created a profitable market in these courtiers. Rapid diagnosing techniques such as dipsticks will help accumulate accurate perspective of the disease and the population it affects in developing countries. Due to low sanitation in many regions, incidence recorded may well be below the actual number.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 AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Trends, Growth Research Report 2017-2022 : Apple, Google

QYResearchReports

https://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1304423&type=S

Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Trends, Growth Research Report 2017-2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker market has been deeply evaluated in this publication with the help of both primary and secondary research and useful inputs provided by industry experts. The analysts who have prepared the publication have been among the best in the lot with sound understanding about almost all vital aspects of the market. The publication has come out as a detailed guideline for industry players to explore hidden prospects and take advantage of the best opportunities in the market. Players could also use the information presented in the publication to plan the best strategies that will help them to secure a strong position in the market.Free Sample of this report is available upon request @Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingAmazon.com, Inc.Apple (U.S.)Google (U.S.)Bose Corporation (U.S.)Harman (U.S.)LG Electronics (South Korea)By segregating the global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker market into different segments, the analysts have offered crucial information that could help players to gain a competitive edge over their toughest opponents. Each segment studied in the publication has been meticulously evaluated with market figures to go by. This could help readers to tap into unexplored regions or other categories of segments and ensure a continuing success in the market. Besides segmentation, the publication has offered information on factors detaining market growth, backing them up with opportunities to counter the challenges about to show face in the near future.The analysts have also shed light on key aspects of the vendor landscape while profiling some of the leading companies operating in the global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker market. Starting from the nature of the current and future competitive scenarios of the market, the publication has foreseen the future plans of leading companies to gain a strong foothold in the industry. This could help readers to stay cautioned about any surprising changes in the vendor landscape of the market beforehand. Furthermore, readers could use the information to build extraordinary strategies to strengthen their product portfolio and give a tough competition in the market.Table of Contents1 AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker1.2 AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.3 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Segment by Application1.3.1 AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.4 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Competitive Situation and Trends3 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 United States AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 EU AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 United States AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 EU AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 South Korea AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 Taiwan AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of AI (Artificial Intelligence) SpeakerFigure Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production (K Units) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)Figure Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Production Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2016Figure Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Consumption (K Units) by Applications (2012-2022)Figure Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Consumption Market Share by Applications in 2016Figure Global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Market Size (Million USD), Comparison (K Units) and CAGR (%) by Regions (2012-2022)Figure United States AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure EU AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Japan AI (Artificial Intelligence) Speaker Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)About Us:QYResearchReports.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
Global Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market 2017-VDM Metals (Germany), Fort Wayne Metals (US)

Global Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market

https://goo.gl/WKUGQo

https://goo.gl/8ak9W2

https://market.biz

http://ereports.asia

Global Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market Report illustrates the present development status of Corrosion Resistant Alloy along with the growth of Corrosion Resistant Alloy expected during the forecast period during 2017-2022. Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market analyses the industry based on different factors like growth trends, consumer volume, Corrosion Resistant Alloy market size and demand and supply status. Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market is a beneficial research material which conducts a competitive analysis of the Corrosion Resistant Alloy market. This report also portrays the Corrosion Resistant Alloy industry structure based on the product cost, major industry players, product applications, import/export details and Corrosion Resistant Alloy market competition.A complete study of Corrosion Resistant Alloy based on emerging and dominant market segments, major geographical regions, supply chain analysis, Corrosion Resistant Alloy revenue analysis will drive important business decisions. This research also lists covers the details related to the downstream buyer analysis, supply chain scenario, distributor scenario, labor cost and the cost of raw materials.A thorough analysis of Corrosion Resistant Alloy based on the primary market segments, sub-segments, emerging market sectors, Corrosion Resistant Alloy development trends, opportunities and threats to the market development has been evaluated. Comprehensive details related to Corrosion Resistant Alloy market development during the forecast period, investment return analysis, technological advancement taking place in Corrosion Resistant Alloy will assist all the market players for planning development strategies.More regarding Global Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market 2017 Report at:Complete details of Corrosion Resistant Alloy are listed in the below TOC, Figures, Charts, Graphs. The major Companies leading to the growth of Corrosion Resistant Alloy are covered in this report with their consumer base, company profile, and Corrosion Resistant Alloy revenue share.Complete Manufacturer study of Global Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market:The world Corrosion Resistant Alloy market is highly competitive and concentrated due to the presence of regional and global Corrosion Resistant Alloy vendors. The primary focus of Corrosion Resistant Alloy companies is to strengthen their technological expertise. This will help them to broaden their Corrosion Resistant Alloy product portfolio and survive for a long time in Corrosion Resistant Alloy industry. Vendors of the Corrosion Resistant Alloy market are also focusing on Corrosion Resistant Alloy product line extensions and product innovations to increase their Corrosion Resistant Alloy market share. Leading vendors in world Corrosion Resistant Alloy industry are Hitachi Metals Ltd (Japan), Fort Wayne Metals (US), VDM Metals (Germany), Nippon Yakin Kogyo Co Ltd (Japan), AMG Aluminum (US), Eramet Group (France), Carpenter Technology Corporation (US) and Haynes International Inc (US).Request A Sample Copy Here:Major regions and their revenue analysis covered in Corrosion Resistant Alloy include North America, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East Asia. This report also covers the Corrosion Resistant Alloy marketing strategies followed by Corrosion Resistant Alloy distributors analysis, potential buyers, marketing channels and Corrosion Resistant Alloy development history. Corrosion Resistant Alloy Market analysis based on top players, Corrosion Resistant Alloy market gains, sales, product type, production capacity and gross margin analysis will favor the market development.Based on the dynamic Corrosion Resistant Alloy market trends, developments taking place in Corrosion Resistant Alloy, competitive study, growth opportunities, Corrosion Resistant Alloy market will reflect huge development in coming years. All the crucial Corrosion Resistant Alloy market factors leading to growth has been covered in this Corrosion Resistant Alloy study.About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Market.Biz has access to the world's most comprehensive and up-to-date databases in your business sector, including countless market reports that can provide you with valuable data relating to your business. We understand the needs of our clients, and keep our reports updated as market requirement changes.Contact US:GlobeMetrixJames JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4,Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns,Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Email: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Blog:
Poisoning Treatment Market Market Segments, Opportunity, Growth and Forecast By End-use Industry 2014 - 2020

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=3165

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=3165

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/poisoning-treatment-market.html?secure=NTIxNS41&type=PB

The incidence of and fatalities from poisoning have increased drastically in recent years, according to figures presented by the World Health Organization. It is alarming to know that in 2004 alone, nearly 346,000 people around the world died due to deliberate or unintentional poisoning. While these numbers are increasing at a frightening pace, it is consoling to know that advancement in medicine and growing awareness about pharmacokinetics has led to the discovery and development of numerous antidotes for most poisons. Traditional methods such as gastric lavage are now being replaced by modern techniques and antidotes.Report Overview and TOC @Monitoring and analyzing trends within the poisoning treatment market at national and global levels, the report provides in-depth data with regard to overall market share and size. Breaking the market down into various sub-categories, the research report discusses the factors that drive and restrict the growth of the industry. With the help of high-quality data derived from firsthand interviews and reliable sources, and views from industry experts and analysts, the research report allows stakeholders of the poisoning treatment market to make informed business decisions.Overview of the global poisoning treatment market Sedatives, pesticides, chemicals, overdose of drugs, and alcohol are some of the common agents of poisoning, cyanide being the most fatal kind. The primary factor that drives the growth of the poisoning treatment market around the world is increasing awareness among healthcare providers as well as the common populace regarding the importance of antidotes. The presence of mandatory regulations and initiatives of community education are key to saving the lives of billions.Request for Brochure @The regional markets for poisoning treatment are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Presently, North America and Europe dominate the global market owing to the availability of new and effective antidotes, presence of a flourishing pharmaceutical industry, government aid, rigorous research activities, and increased knowledge of pharmacokinetics. Countries in Asia Pacific such as India and China have been identified as regions with immense potential owing to improved healthcare infrastructure and services and growing availability of key antidotes in government as well as private hospitals. A sad yet true fact that drives the market for poisoning treatment in the low-income nations of Africa is high suicide rates, which drives the demand for various kinds of antidotes.Pre Book Full Report @Companies mentioned in the research report Studying the overall poisoning treatment market and its competitive environment, the research report offers information on company overview, strategic development and decisions, mergers and acquisitions, marketing and brand management, and financial standing of the major market players. Some of the notable participants of the poisoning treatment market are Cumberland Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies, Inc., Protherics, Inc., BTG International, Inc., Novartis AG, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.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
Industrial Bluetooth Market Sees Promising Growth during 2017-2022

Industrial Bluetooth Market

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/851854-global-industrial-bluetooth-market-1

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/851854-global-industrial-bluetooth-market-1

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=851854

https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/851854-global-industrial-bluetooth-market-1

HTF MI published a new industry research that focuses on Industrial Bluetooth market and delivers in-depth market analysis and future prospects of Global Industrial Bluetooth market. The study covers significant data which makes the research document a handy resource for managers, analysts, industry experts and other key people get ready-to-access and self-analyzed study along with graphs and tables to help understand market trends, drivers and market challenges. The study is segmented by Application/ end users [Water and wastewater, Power, Oil and gas & Mining], products type [Single-mode module & Dual-mode module] and various important geographies like United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia].Get Access to sample pages @The research covers the current market size of the Global Industrial Bluetooth market and its growth rates based on 5 year history data along with company profile of key players/manufacturers such as Cypress Semiconductor, Dialog Semiconductor, Microchip Technology, Nordic Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Atmel, Advantech, CEL, Intel & STMicroelectronics. The in-depth information by segments of Industrial Bluetooth market helps monitor future profitability & to make critical decisions for growth. The information on trends and developments, focuses on markets and materials, capacities, technologies, CAPEX cycle and the changing structure of the Global Industrial Bluetooth Market.The study provides company profiling, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information of key manufacturers of Global Industrial Bluetooth Market, some of them listed here are Cypress Semiconductor, Dialog Semiconductor, Microchip Technology, Nordic Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Atmel, Advantech, CEL, Intel & STMicroelectronics. The market is growing at a very rapid pace and with rise in technological innovation, competition and M&A activities in the industry many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new manufacturer entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability, and innovations in technology.Global Industrial Bluetooth (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such as Single-mode module & Dual-mode module. Further the research study is segmented by Application such as Water and wastewater, Power, Oil and gas & Mining with historical and projected market share and compounded annual growth rate.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Industrial Bluetooth in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2017 to 2022.Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @What this Research Study Offers:Global Industrial Bluetooth Market share assessments for the regional and country level segmentsMarket share analysis of the top industry playersStrategic recommendations for the new entrantsMarket forecasts for a minimum of 5 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional marketsMarket Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimationsCompetitive landscaping mapping the key common trendsCompany profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developmentsSupply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsBuy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to display the Global Industrial Bluetooth market.Chapter 1, to describe Definition, Specifications and Classification of Industrial Bluetooth , Applications of Industrial Bluetooth , Market Segment by Regions;Chapter 2, to analyze the Manufacturing Cost Structure, Raw Material and Suppliers, Manufacturing Process, Industry Chain Structure;Chapter 3, to display the Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Industrial Bluetooth , Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, R&D Status and Technology Source, Raw Materials Sources Analysis;Chapter 4, to show the Overall Market Analysis, Capacity Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment);Chapter 5 and 6, to show the Regional Market Analysis that includes United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia, Industrial Bluetooth Segment Market Analysis (by Type);Chapter 7 and 8, to analyze the Industrial Bluetooth Segment Market Analysis (by Application) Major Manufacturers Analysis of Industrial Bluetooth ;Chapter 9, Market Trend Analysis, Regional Market Trend, Market Trend by Product Type [Single-mode module & Dual-mode module], Market Trend by Application [Water and wastewater, Power, Oil and gas & Mining];Chapter 10, Regional Marketing Type Analysis, International Trade Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis;Chapter 11, to analyze the Consumers Analysis of Global Industrial Bluetooth ;Chapter 12,13, 14 and 15, to describe Industrial Bluetooth sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact Us:HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road, Edison, NJ USA - 08837sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218
Global Contract Research Organization Market-Size Trends & Forecasts 2017-2021

ReportsWeb

http://www.reportsweb.com/global-contract-research-organization-market-size-trends-and-forecasts-2017-2021

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011264492/sample

http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011264492/buying

The report entitled "Global Contract Research Organization (CRO) Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021)", provides analysis of the global contract research organization (CRO) market, with detailed analysis of market size and growth, and segmentation of the industry. The analysis includes the market by value, by outsourced penetration and by segmentation.For more information about this report:Moreover, the report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global contract research organization (CRO) market has also been forecasted for the years 2017-2021, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.Lab Corporations, INC Research, PRA Health Science Inc. and QuintilesIMS (IQVIA) are some of the key players operating in the global contract research organization (CRO) market, whose company profiling has been done in the report. In this segment of the report, business overview, financial overview and business strategies of the companies are provided.Company CoverageQuintilesIMS (IQVIA)Lab CorporationsINC ResearchPRA Health Service Inc.Request Sample Copy atExecutive SummaryContract Research Organization or CRO is described as an organization which provide assistance and services generally to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the form of data research, drug tests, clinical trials, post development marketing, and related services for the development of both drugs and medical devices. CROs are available in a vast range from large, international full service organizations to small, niche specialty groups and can propose their clients the experience of moving a new drug/medicine or device from its commencement to FDA marketing approval without the drug sponsor having to maintain a staff for these services.CRO performs many activities which are segmented into four functions/segments: post approval, pre-clinical, clinical and central lab. Clinical segments are the most important segment as all the clinical trials are performed in this segment after which only FDA approve the drug.There are many services which are provided by the CRO such as project management, data entry and validation, database build, clinical trial data management, medicine and disease coding, quality reporting. Many points are looked before selecting a CROs service such as scientific expertise, technology capability, geographical presence, access to data, cost efficiency, breadth of service, etc. CRO assistance comes with both pros and cons. There are many advantages of taking CRO assistance such as time efficiency, expertise and experience, cost effectiveness, proper research, etc. However, there are some disadvantages as well like confidentiality, communication management, etc.The global contract research organization (CRO) market is expected to increase at a significant growth rate during the forecasted period (2017-2021). The global contract research organization (CRO) market is supported by various growth drivers, such as increased use of mass spectrometry in clinical labs growing spending in biopharmaceutical research and development, escalating costs of therapeutic development, favorable outsourcing trends, etc. Yet, the market faces certain challenges, such as, industry consolidation, data integrity, few barriers to entry for limited-service providers, etc. Few market trends are also provided such as, diverse and faster growing end-market, growing preference of outsourcing to full service CROs by biopharmaceutical companies, etc.Company Profiling6.1 QuintilesIMS (IQVIA)6.1.1 Business Overview6.1.2 Financial Overview6.1.3 Business Strategy6.2 Lab Corporations6.2.1 Business Overview6.2.2 Financial Overview6.2.3 Business Strategy6.3 INC Research6.3.1 Business Overview6.3.2 Financial Overview6.3.3 Business Strategy6.4 PRA Health Science Inc.6.4.1 Business Overview6.4.2 Financial Overview6.4.3 Business StrategyInquire Before Buying atContact 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
Endobronchial Cancer Market Revenue, Opportunity, Forecast and Value Chain 2014 - 2020

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=3135

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=3135

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/endobronchial-cancer-market.html?secure=NTIxNS41&type=PB

Endobronchial cancer are characterized by small size, slow growth and usually misdiagnosed as asthma or chronic bronchitis due to their common symptoms. These cancers are usually benign and rare. Due to these reasons, they may remain undiagnosed for a long time and lead to serious complications. The term bronchial adenoma encompasses a diverse group of tumors of mucous glands, trachea or bronchi. Common symptoms of endobronchial cancer include difficulty in breathing (dyspnea), wheezing due to obstructed windpipe, cough and in some cases fever. Cigarette smoking and alcohol addiction have been found to be in close association of endobronchial cancer. Scientists also suggest that various lung cancer cases have shown endobronchial metastases.The cancer is diagnosed through various radiology tests such as X-ray, computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Octreotide scan, also known as somatostatin receptor scintigraphy, is also used for diagnosis of endobronchial cancer. It is a non-invasive diagnostic method used to detect presence of tumor cells. Bronchoscopy is a routine method to visualize cancer growth. A bronchoscope is a thing flexible tube which possesses a camera at its tip. A clear image of the cancer and its progression can be obtained through bronchoscopy method. Tissue biopsy by endoscopic methods also helps in gaining more insight to cancer type and its further assessment.Report Overview and TOC @Surgical removal of the cancer can be done through open lung surgeries or endoscopic methods. Although choice depends on size and nature of the tumor. Small and localized tumor can be excised through bronchoscopic surgeries. Certain tumors can also be ablated through laser treatment. This method is usually accompanies with chemotherapy, as there are chances of cancer relapse.Brachytherapy, Argon beam coagulation, photodynamic therapy and other radiation methods have also shown promising results in treating endobronchial cancer. Steba Biotech S.A. is conducting phase II clinical trials for its investigational drug WST11. Pinnacle Biologics manufactured PHOTOFRIN (porfimer sodium) has been widely employed in photodynamic therapy for treating endobronchial cancer. Pinnacle Biologics has also received FDA approval for the treatment of oesophageal and endobronchial cancer and high-grade dysplasia in barretts oesophagus.Request for Brochure @Cancer has been a major cause of mortalities worldwide. World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that 60% of the new cases occur in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. Over 8 million mortalities were recorded in 2012 globally, with lung cancer accounting for approximately 3 million cases, while oesophageal cancer accounting for 400,000 deaths worldwide. Over one-fifth of all cancer cases are diagnosed in India. Despite high smoking rate, prevalence of lung cancer in China is lower than European countries. According to Cancer Research, U.K., approximately 43,000 individuals in the UK were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011. Such high prevalence of cancer has demanded for quicker and effective treatment.Advances in biotechnology have introduced innovative methods of cancer diagnosis and cure, however because of high cost these technologies have not yet available to low and middle income countries. Countries such as India, China, Brazil and Japan have been the most attractive geographies for endobronchial cancer. Japan is the second largest individual healthcare market after the U.S. Constantly developing healthcare sector in China, India and Brazil have created promising opportunities in these countries. Higher cancer prevalence, increasing per capita income and evolving government policies are other factors favoring market growth.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
Compression Garments 2017 Global Market Key Players  3M, BSN Medical, Covidien, Sigvaris, Santemol Group Medikal  Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Compression Garments Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1599427-global-compression-garments-market-professional-survey-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1599427-global-compression-garments-market-professional-survey-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1599427-global-compression-garments-market-professional-survey-report-2017

Compression Garments Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Compression Garments 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 Compression Garments Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Compression Garments Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline, the quantity of production, required raw material, and the financial health of the organization.This report studies Compression Garments 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, covering3MBSN MedicalCovidien (Medtronic)Medi GmbH & Co KGSigvarisTherafirm2XU Pty. LtdSantemol Group MedikalLeonisa, IncNouvelle, IncMedical ZRequest 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 intoUpper Compression GarmentsLower Compression GarmentsBy Application, the market can be split intoHospitalsClinicsAmbulatory Surgical CentresOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:1 Industry Overview of Compression Garments1.1 Definition and Specifications of Compression Garments1.1.1 Definition of Compression Garments1.1.2 Specifications of Compression Garments1.2 Classification of Compression Garments1.2.1 Upper Compression Garments1.2.2 Lower Compression Garments1.3 Applications of Compression Garments1.3.1 Hospitals1.3.2 Clinics1.3.3 Ambulatory Surgical Centres1.3.4 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Compression Garments2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Compression Garments2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Compression Garments2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Compression Garments.8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Compression Garments8.1 3M8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 3M 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 3M 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 BSN Medical8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 BSN Medical 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 BSN Medical 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Covidien (Medtronic)8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 Covidien (Medtronic) 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Covidien (Medtronic) 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 Medi GmbH & Co KG8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 Medi GmbH & Co KG 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 Medi GmbH & Co KG 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 Sigvaris8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Product A8.5.2.2 Product B8.5.3 Sigvaris 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 Sigvaris 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 Therafirm8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Product A8.6.2.2 Product B8.6.3 Therafirm 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 Therafirm 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 2XU Pty. Ltd8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Product A8.7.2.2 Product B8.7.3 2XU Pty. Ltd 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 2XU Pty. Ltd 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Santemol Group Medikal8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Product A8.8.2.2 Product B8.8.3 Santemol Group Medikal 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Santemol Group Medikal 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 Leonisa, Inc8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.2.1 Product A8.9.2.2 Product B8.9.3 Leonisa, Inc 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 Leonisa, Inc 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 Nouvelle, Inc8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.2.1 Product A8.10.2.2 Product B8.10.3 Nouvelle, Inc 2016 Compression Garments Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.10.4 Nouvelle, Inc 2016 Compression Garments Business Region Distribution Analysis8.11 Medical ZContinued.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
Global Wireless Broadband Market Growing at Steady CAGR to 2022

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/544401/?utm_source=OPR-PSR

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/check-for-discount/544401/

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-north-america-europe-and-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa-wireless-broadband-market-2017-forecast-to-2022

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/asia-pacific-wireless-broadband-market-by-manufacturers-regions-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022/?utm_source=RR-PSR

https://www.marketstudyreport.com

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/category/news-releases/

Market Study Report Add New Global Wireless Broadband Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 to its research database presenting a deep study of the market growth factors and drivers. The report spread across 115 pages with table and figures in it.Wireless broadband connects a home or business to the Internet using a radio link between the customers location and the service providers facility. Wireless broadband can be mobile or fixed.Wireless technologies using longer-range directional equipment provide broadband service in remote or sparsely populated areas where DSL or cable modem service would be costly to provide. Speeds are generally comparable to DSL and cable modem. An external antenna is usually required.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report:Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Global Wireless Broadband 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:Cambium Networks, Intracom Telecom, RADWIN, Redline communications, Proxim Wireless, LigoWave (Deliberant), Netronics Technologies, SuperCom (Alvarion Technologies).Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa).Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Public Safety, Transportation, Energy, Other Application.Get Discount on this Report:There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Wireless Broadband market.Chapter 1, to describe Wireless Broadband Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Wireless Broadband, with sales, revenue, and price of Wireless Broadband, 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 Wireless Broadband, 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, Wireless Broadband market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Wireless Broadband sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get More Details On this Report:Related Report:Asia-Pacific Wireless Broadband Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022This report focuses on the Wireless Broadband in Asia-Pacific market, especially in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, India and Australia. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries/Regions, type and application.About Us: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.Contact Us:Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:
US Government Cyber Security Market Forcast To Grow At CAGR Of 7.99% Between 2017-2021

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1326097

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1326097/government-cyber-security-in-the-market-research-reports

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1326097

https://www.researchmoz.com/checkout?rep_id=1326097&licType=S

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"The Report Government Cyber Security Market in the US 2017-2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Cyber Security MarketCyber threats are Internet-based attempts to disrupt or damage information systems and hack critical information using spyware, malware, and phishing. Cyber security solutions enable the US government to maintain data confidentiality by monitoring, detecting, reporting, and countering cyber threats. The adoption of cyber security solutions is expected to increase with the growing penetration of the Internet among organizations of the US government.Get Sample copy of this Report @Technavios analysts forecast the government cyber security market in the US to grow at a CAGR of 7.99% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the government cyber security market in the US for 2017-2021. The report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.Technavio's report, Government Cyber Security Market in the US 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 vendorsBAE SystemsGeneral DynamicsLockheed MartinNorthrop GrummanRaytheonView Report @Other prominent vendorsBoeingBooz Allen HamiltonDXC TechnologyDell EMCMarket driverIncreasing frequency and complexity of cyber attacksFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHigh cost of deploymentFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendImplementation of BYOD policyFor 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?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.Send An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: IntroductionMarket outlinePART 05: Market landscapeMarket overviewProduct lifecycle analysisMarket size and forecastPART 06: Market segmentation by productMarket overviewServicesSolutionsPART 07: Market segmentation by end-userMarket overviewUS Intelligence CommunityDepartment of DefenseDepartment of Homeland SecurityPART 08: Market segmentation by deploymentMarket overviewOn-premisesCloud-basedPART 09: Decision frameworkPART 10: Drivers and challengesMarket driversMarket challengesPART 11: Market trendsImplementation of BYOD policyAdoption of cloud-based servicesAvailability of defense-specific security solutionsEscalation in the number of DDoS attacksPART 12: Five force analysisFive forces analysisPART 13: Vendor landscapeCompetitive scenarioProduct offeringsVendor matrixCompetitive analysisPART 14: Key vendorsBAE SystemsGeneral DynamicsLockheed MartinNorthrop GrummanRaytheonOther prominent vendorsPART 15: AppendixBuy 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
Container Glass Market Poised for Steady Growth in the Future

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=30137

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/container-glass-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Materials used in the manufacture of container glass contain approximately 70% of sand, while chemicals and natural substances such as alumina and calcium make up the rest of the substances. Low amount of sodium oxide and magnesium oxide is used in a container glass. This makes container glass less susceptible to water erosion. The container glass market can be segmented based on type of glass, manufacturing process, product type, end-used industry, and region.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Based on the type of glass, the container glass market can be segregated into borosilicate glass and soda lime glass. Borosilicate glass is prepared with silica and boron trioxide. It low coefficient of thermal expansion and cannot be recycled. Soda lime glass is prepared by melting sodium carbonate, silica, lime, aluminum oxide, and dolomite. Soda line glass accounts for almost 90% share of the total container glass manufactured globally. It is inexpensive and extremely workable. It holds major share in terms of volume and value.Based on manufacturing process, the container glass market can be classified into blown glass process and tubing glass process. Under the blown glass process, which is also known as molded glass process, gobs of heated glass are directed to molding machines and air or gas is blown to obtain the shape of the mold. Blown glass can be sub-segmented into blow & blow process and press & blow process. The blow & blow process uses narrow containers where the parison is shaped by the compressed air. The press & blow process uses larger diameter containers, wherein the parison is shaped by pressing the glass against a blank mold. Tubing glass process is a continuous draw process where the heated glass is drawn by a drawing machine over a line of support rollers. The tubing glass segment can sub-segmented into Danner process and Vello process. Under the Danner process, the glass flows from furnace in the form of a ribbon. Under the vello process, the glass flows from a furnace into a bowl, which is then given a shap. The blown glass process segment is estimated to expand at a fast-paced CAGR during the forecast due to its wide application in glass bottle manufacturing.Obtain Report Details @Based on product type, the container glass market can be categorized into glass bottle, glass jars, glass vials, and candle glass containers. The glass bottle segment accounted for major share of the market due to the wide usage of glass bottles in food & beverage packaging, perfume bottles, and laboratory applications.Based on end-used industry, the container glass market can be divided into cosmetics & perfumes, pharmaceuticals, food packaging, beverage packaging, and other products. Market share of the beverage packaging segment is increasing owing to the rise in use of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.In terms of region, the container glass market can be divided into North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Currently, Europe is leading the market for container glass, followed by North America. This can be ascribed to the rise in demand for green and sustainable beverage packaging in these regions.Glass containers do not fade or deteriorate. They also do not stain the product inside the container. Products inside the container have longer life and are safe, since glass is chemically inert to many substances. These properties are augmenting the container glass market. However, cheaper plastic containers are used as substitutes. This hampers the container glass market.Key players operating in the container glass market are Owens-Illinois (the U.S.), Verallia (Germany), Consol Glass (Pty) Ltd (South Africa), Ardagh Group S.A.( Luxembourg), Saverglass Group (France), Amcor Limited (Switzerland), Hindusthan National Glass & Industries Limited (India), BA Glass (Portugal), Nampak Ltd ( South Africa), Wiegand-Glas ( Germany).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:
Hemostats Market Expansion Projected to Gain an Uptick During 2013-2019

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/hemostats-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=1890

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=1890<ype=S

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Hemostat is a surgical tool used to control bleeding during surgery. Hemostats are applied by the means of tissue sealants and tissue adhesion agents. Tissue sealants and adhesives are mainly classified into two types namely, physical agents and biological substrates. Tissue sealants, tissue adhesives and adhesion prevention products are rapidly replacing conventional sutures for wound and incision closure.Advantages of tissue sealants, tissue adhesives and adhesion prevention products over conventional suture involve minimal invasive application, improve visualization, reduced operating time, prevention of leakage of non-blood fluids and reduced post-operative infection risks and thereby reduction in hospital stays and overall medical costs.Request Report TOC @Wide rangeof applications, continuous advancement in product portfolio, technological advancement facilitating the end users and insurance support to manufacturers in promoting tissue sealants are the major driving forces of the global hemostatsmarket.On the other hand, low awareness about the products and stringent regulatory rules to control and regulate the tissue adhesives and tissue sealantsindustry are restraining the potential growth of this market.Request Brochure @Currently, North America dominates the global hemostats market and is followed by Europe due early adoption of highly developed technologies in general healthcare and swift adoption of innovative products in these regions.Asia-Pacific is a promising market for hemostatsand is expected to undergo rapid market growth due to phenomenal growth in the medical tourism industry, increase in purchasing power, rapidly improving healthcare infrastructure and increased awareness. Some of the major companies contributing to this market include 3M, ADCO Global, Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Advanced Medical Solutions Group, Plc. and Dymax Corporation.Pre Book Full Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Smart Pulse Oximeters Market to Incur Rapid Extension During 2026

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/smart-pulse-oximeters-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1665

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/1665

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Smart pulse oximeter is one of the fastest growing product type in the vital sign monitoring devices segment. Smart pulse oximeter is a non-invasive medical device used to measure the oxygen saturation level and heart rate in human. Smart pulse oximeter is a clip like device also known as a probe and is placed on body parts such as fingertip or ear lobe to measure the heart rate and oxygen level. It uses infrared light to measure the oxygen level and heart rate.Report overview@The measurement of oxygen level and heart rate are very important while performing surgeries and injecting the anaesthesia, because the changes in the oxygen level in such a conditions may cause life threatening effects. Smart pulse oximeter also used to check the human health with a conditions such as heart attack, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), anaemia, lung cancer and asthma. However, the readings of smart pulse oximeter may not accurate in peripheral vascular diseases. Smart pulse oximeters products market is segmented into handheld pulse oximeters, finger pulse oximeters, paediatric pulse oximeters and wrist pulse oximeters.. Hand held smart pulse oximeters are useful for pilots to check the oxygen level when they are operating at above 10,000 feet. These devices are also useful to the mountaineers and athletes to check the oxygen level. Paediatric pulse oximeters mainly used in the hospitals and these devices are separately designed to measure the oxygen saturation level and heart rate in the infants.The use of pulse oximeter in the home care settings has expanded over the last few years and is expected to register a healthy growth rate during the forecast periodRequest to sample report@Over the past few years, leading players in the vital sign monitoring devices segment are manufacturing devices with new technology such as Bluetooth which displays the readings in the smartphone. Moreover, the availability of cost effective smart pulse oximeters are the factors driving growth of overall smart pulse oximeter market., World Health Organization (WHO) started safety pulse oximetry project to improve the health in middle-income countries also expected to boost the smart pulse oximeter market. Increasing incidence rates of trauma conditions and increasing prevalence of heart related diseases are also expected to drive the smart pulse oximeter market. However, availability of high end devices to measure the heart rate is expected to hamper the overall market.Depending on geographic region, Smart Pulse Oximeter Market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is estimated to contribute maximum revenue share in the global market of smart pulse oximeter followed by Europe. Asia Pacific regions are expected to grow at a higher growth rate owing to high occurrence of chronic disease. Middle East & Africa is expected to show a healthy growth rate during forecast period.Pre book full report@Key players of smart pulse oximeter market are Nonin Medical Inc, Shenzhen Creative Industry Co.,Ltd, iHealth Labs Inc. Indiegogo, Inc., Technocare Medisystems, Contec Medical Systems Co.,Ltd., and MasimoABOUT 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:
Automotive Metal Stamping Market Global Research Report 2017 Analysis & Forecast to 2022

Automotive metal stamping Market 2017

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2002

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-metal-stamping-market-2002

Automotive metal stamping Market 2017Summary:Global Automotive metal stamping market Information Report by Technology (Blanking, Embossing, Flanging, Bending, Coining and Others), by Application (Passenger Cars, Commercial Vehicles, Recreational Vehicles and Others) and By Region - Global Forecast To 2022Market ScenarioMetal stamping is a process in which metals are punched to achieve the desired shape. The process is performed with the help of stamping dies. The Metals used in automotive metal stamping are aluminium, steel, brass, copper and stainless steel.The growth of global automotive metal stamping market is expected to be driven by the booming automotive industry and the rapid increase in demand for smart automobiles. The increase in competition in the automotive industry is also leading to the rising demand of the metal stamping market. The process of metal stamping is applied in various stages of manufacturing in the automotive industry, such as panels, brackets, bonnets, roofs, hangers, and others, thus constantly inducing demand in the automotive metal stamping market. Increase in the use of metal sheet for the manufacturing of automobile chassis, transmission components, interior & exterior structural components, is projected to drive the growth of global automotive stamping market over the forecast period.Key PlayersThe key players of Automotive metal stamping market are Aro Metal Stamping co. (U.S.), Kenmode Precision Metal Stamping (U.S.), Martinrea International Inc. (Canada), Shiloh Industries, Inc. (U.S.), Acro Metal Stamping Co. (U.S.), Manor Tool & Manufacturing Company (U.S.), American Industrial Company (U.S.), Wisconsin Metal Parts, Inc. (U.S.), and Clow Stamping Co. (U.S.).Request For Sample Report @Study Objectives of Automotive Metal Stamping MarketTo provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the automotive metal stamping marketTo provide insights about factors affecting the market growthTo Analyse the Global Automotive metal stamping market based on various factors such as supply chain analysis, and Porters five force analysisTo provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to regions and their respective key countriesTo provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospectiveTo provide country level analysis of the market for segments by technology, application and regionTo provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analysing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the marketTo track and analyse competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Engineering plastic MarketRegional Analysis of Automotive Metal Stamping MarketThe metal stamping market in North America and Europe region is expected to grow, owing to the growing automotive industry in the region. The emerging trend of replacing the ferrous materials with the non-ferrous materials for reducing the weight of the machinery, is further driving the market in the region. North America region is also expected to grow further due to the existence of major players such as Kenmode Precision Metal Stamping, and Wisconsin Metal Parts, Inc. in the region.The report for Automotive metal stamping 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, 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 Automotive Metal Stamping Market, By Technology5 Global Automotive Metal Stamping Market, By Application6 Regional Market Analysis7 Competitive AnalysisMRFR ConclusionLIST OF TABLESTABLE 1 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET, BY TECHNOLOGYTABLE 3 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET, BY APPLICATIONTABLE 4 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET, BY REGIONSTABLE 5 NORTH AMERICA AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET, BY COUNTRYLIST OF FIGURESFIGURE 1 RESEARCH TYPEFIGURE 2 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET: BY TECHNOLOGY (%)FIGURE 3 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET: BY APPLICATION (%)FIGURE 4 GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET: BY REGIONFIGURE 5 NORTH AMERICA AUTOMOTIVE METAL STAMPING MARKET, BY TECHNOLOGY (%)Continued.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:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Europe Kitchen Ranges Market Forcast To Grow At CAGR Of 10% Between 2017-2021

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1326101

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1326101/kitchen-ranges-in-europe-market-research-reports

https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1326101

https://www.researchmoz.com/checkout?rep_id=1326101&licType=S

http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/

"The Report Kitchen Ranges Market in Europe 2017-2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Kitchen Ranges MarketA kitchen range is a single appliance used for cooking food and incorporates both a stove and oven in a compact kitchen appliance. It is a large cooking stove with burners or hotplates and one or more ovens. A prototypical stove is usually about 30 inches wide, while a range measures about 36 to 60 inches wide. Ranges may have six, eight, or upto 10 burners, but in regular stoves the number of burners is limited to four. Ranges are usually powered by electricity, gas or a combination of the two.Get Sample copy of this Report @Technavios analysts forecast the kitchen ranges market in Europe to grow at a CAGR of 3.89% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the kitchen ranges market in Europe for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the retail sales of different types of kitchen ranges to residential and commercial segments.Technavio's report, Kitchen Ranges Market in Europe 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 vendorsElectroluxLG ElectronicsRobert BoschSamsung ElectronicsWhirlpoolView Report @Other prominent vendorsArcelikBERTAZZONIGorenjeHaierILVE AppliancesMieleSUB-ZERO GROUPSMEGVIKING RANGEVeronaMarket driverProduct upgrades and new designs increasing demand for kitchen rangesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeInfrequent purchases and high average replacement cycleFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendSmart homes augmenting the demand for smart kitchen rangesFor 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?Send An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: IntroductionMarket outlineMarket size and forecastIndustry outlook: Modular kitchen market in Europe ($ bn)PART 05: Market landscapeMarket overviewFive forces analysisPART 06: Market segmentation by productFreestanding kitchen range marketSlide-in kitchen range market (including drop-in range)PART 07: Market segmentation by fuel-typeElectric kitchen ranges marketGas kitchen ranges marketDual fuel kitchen ranges marketPART 08: Market segmentation by end-userResidential usersCommercial usersPART 09: Market segmentation by retail formatOffline retail store formatOnline retail store formatPART 10: Key leading countriesGermanyFranceUKItalyPART 11: Decision frameworkPART 12: Drivers and challengesMarket driversMarket challengesPART 13: Market trendsSmart homes augmenting the demand for smart kitchen rangesIncreasing fascination with making gourmet dishes at homeGrowing popularity of induction cooktop rangesIncreasing popularity of black-stainless steel finish kitchen rangesPART 14: Vendor landscapeCompetitive scenarioPART 15: Key vendor analysisElectroluxSamsung ElectronicsWhirlpoolLG ElectronicsRobert BoschOther prominent vendorsPART 16: AppendixList of abbreviationsBuy 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
Comprehensive Report on Energy Harvesting Market by Future Market Insights 2014-2020

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-58

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-58

Energy harvesting, one of the most promising technologies to address the energy crises without altering the existing energy sources, is foreseen to witness staggering demand and innovation in the near future. The process of energy harvesting harnesses the power of ambient energy to use later in varied applications. With growing use of ambient energy and advent of the energy harvesting technology, the energy harvesting market is currently heading at a considerable pace globally.FMI extensive research indicates that the global energy harvesting market is anticipated to gain momentum and grow at a double-digit CAGR by 2020 end. A number of newly innovated efficient energy applications and widespread acceptance of renewable energy sources are expected to play a vital role in the growth of the global energy harvesting market during the forecast period 2014-2020.Request For Report Sample@Key Drivers: Energy Harvesting MarketDuring the past decade, there has been growing demand for safe, power efficient, and enduring systems, which require minimum or no maintenance. This is a major driver of market growth, expected to continue pushing the demand for devices based on the energy harvesting technology. Growing applications of the energy harvesting technology in building and home automation is another key driver to the market growth.Moreover, industrial WSN demand energy harvesting on a large scale, which is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The green energy trend is effectively governing the market, while favourable initiatives by various governments are also boosting the market on a global level.Abundance of renewable energy sources, including tidal, wind, and ocean energy provide a dependable platform for the innovation of energy harvesting applications. This is also an influential factor contributing to the growth of market.Key Restraints to Market GrowthThe technology based on energy harvesting is typically used off-grid or on-demand. However, both of these usage patterns possess some technological complexities, which may restrict the widespread demand for energy harvesting devices in the market. Another deterring factor includes inadequate awareness among consumers about the availability and usage of the devices based on harvested energy.Moreover, relatively higher initial costs associated with these devices are expected to curtail the growth of the market globally. The energy harvesting technology generates lower current, which makes it incompatible for the application in all types of energy domains.Global Energy Harvesting Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global energy harvesting market provides a six-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of different energy sources/fields, applications, and geography.On the basis of different energy sources/fields, the energy harvesting market is segmented into radiation (solar, electromagnetic, and light), mechanical (fluid, elastic, kinetic, and potential), chemical (battery, fuel cells, and phase change), nuclear, magnetic, electric, thermal, and gravitational. Among these, electric and magnetic fields form the most common source for harvesting energy.Based on the application, the energy harvesting market is segmented as wireless sensor network (WSN), consumer electronics, industrial, building, bicycle dynamo, military and aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and others (research, animals, and farming). Among these, consumer electronics, including mobile phones, wrist watches, calculators, and piezoelectric gas lighters cover the maximum share of the global energy harvesting market, followed by military and aerospace-based applications. However, building and home automation is the fastest growing application segment in the energy harvesting sector. Energy harvesting is also an integral part in a wireless sensor network (WSN) these days.According to the geography, the energy harvesting market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. Among these, Americas are projected to remain the dominating markets in 2016, with a significant market share. However, Europe will be the fastest growing market, owing to burgeoning promotion and investments by The European Commission in R&D of energy harvesting and storage devices. North America and Asia Pacific will also account for remarkable market shares by 2020 end. In North America, the U.S. will dominate, whereas in APAC, Japan will reportedly contribute the largest share to the total energy harvesting market revenues.Notable Market TrendsBuilding and infrastructure, automation of lighting, security, and electronics at homes, and WSNs for bridges include some of the most sought after applications of energy harvesting since the past few years.The use of mmWave (millimetre wave) for 5G cellular networks has been a popular trend of wireless energy harvesting.The market is expected to gain traction from growing application of energy harvesting in wearable devices and mobile phones.Energy harvesting is estimated to find increasing applications in automobile industry in the near future.The advent of nanotechnology has offered ample of growth opportunities to the energy harvesting market. Since nanotechnology helps manufacturing of compact-sized devices, the emergence of portable devices based on energy harvesting technology is the most likely occurrence in the market.Key Players: Global Energy Harvesting MarketSome of the prominent players competing in the industry include ABB Limited, Arveni, Enocean, Fujitsu, Cypress Semiconductor Corp., Green Peak Technologies, Honeywell International, Inc., Levant Power Corporation, Marlow Industries, Inc., Microchip Technology, Inc., MicroGen Systems, Maxim Integrated, G24 Innovations Limited, Texas Instruments Inc., and STMicroelectronics.Visit For TOC@Other notable players include Silicon Laboratories, Inc., Siemens AG, Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Mide Technology Corporation, Laird Plc., Lord Microstrain, EnOcean GmbH, Cymbet Corporation, POWERleap, Inc., Schneider Electric, Linear Technology, Microstrain, and Micropelt.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.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Therapeutics Market Projected to Discern Stable Expansion During 2013 - 2019

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=1950

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=1950<ype=S

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Global Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Therapeutics Market: OverviewPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychological condition that occurs in individuals of any age and gender. Its symptoms can show up immediately after a traumatic experience or with the course of time. It is one of the most common psychological disorders, affecting about 8 mn adult Americans and an annual incidence rate of close to 3.5% across the globe. Its first line of treatments includes counseling and psychotherapy. The population at risk includes veterans and soldiers. Some of the drugs that are usually prescribed are Zoloft by Pfizer, Elavil by AstraZeneca, and Paxil by GlaxoSmithKline.Request Report TOC @The research report provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of the global PTSD therapeutics market and the extent to which they impact the growth of the market. It offers insights into the historical data and current scenario of the market to understand the growth rate of the market and also to make predictions about the future trends. For a coherent understanding, it segments the market on the basis of various criteria including treatment and geography. It presents invaluable information regarding the different parameters of the market that help new as well as existing players in making informed business decisions. It extensively covers the competitive landscape of the global PTSD therapeutics market.Global Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Therapeutics Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe rising prevalence of PTSD is the primary factor driving the global PTSD therapeutics market. Globally, there are increasing cases of cross-border tensions and violence. To control such situations, military troops and police forces are deployed at sights of violence. This is leading to the development of PTSD among military personnel, which in turn is driving the demand for therapeutics for the treatment of this disorder. In addition, the increasing emphasis on rehabilitation programs for injured military personnel is working in favor of the growth of the market. Moreover, the growing number of road accidents, particularly in developing countries, is augmenting the market.On the flip side, the serious side effects of certain drugs are leading to bad publicity and several lawsuits, which in turn is adversely affecting the growth of the market. Consumption of Zoloft and Paxil by pregnant women led to septal heart defects, miscarriage, delayed development, cranial defect, and persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN). However, the increasing research and development activities for understanding the mechanisms underlying PTSD is likely to pave way for new and safe therapeutics.Request Brochure @Global Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Therapeutics Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key segments studied in the report on the basis of geography are Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. North America will be one of the major revenue contributors to the growth of the global market. The rising prevalence of PTSD is fuelling the demand for its therapeutics in the region. The presence of pharmaceutical giants along with the increasing research and development in the field is providing a fillip to the growth of the region. Asia Pacific will be a potential market owing to the high rate of motor accidents in high population countries.Global Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Therapeutics Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global PTSD therapeutics market is characterized by high competitive rivalry. The market scenario is anticipated to change after the launch of novel therapies. Some of the prominent players in the market are GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Neurocrine Biosciences, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Azevan Pharmaceuticals, and Baylor Research Institute.Pre Book Full Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Gas Leak Detectors Market: Analysis and Forecast by Future Market Insights 2014-2020

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-67

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-67

A gas leak detector is a piece of equipment or a device that senses and detects the existence of gases in a particular area. These devices are used as a part of safety systems installed in factories, homes and commercial complexes. A gas leak detector system detects the gas leaked and generates a signal to take proper action. Industrially, gas detector systems are fitted with a sound alarm to evacuate the area in case of toxic gas leakage. The popularity of such devices is growing due to the influx of new chemical facilities across the world. Further, the growing gas storage facility network across the globe has deployed a significant number of gas leak detectors for safety systems.Due to their design modifications, gas detectors are broadly categorised on the basis of technology as electrochemical, infrared imaging, infrared point, ultrasonic, semiconductor and holographic. On the basis of product type, the global gas detectors market is bifurcated into portable gas detectors and fixed gas detectors.Request For Report Sample@Portable gas detectors are widely used in lab application whereas fixed detectors find their maximum application in gas extraction and processing fields. Fixed gas detectors can also be used for residential applications such as using itin a bedroom. Further, industrial fixed type gas detector application includes SCADA monitoring.Gas detectors are used in applications such as gas turbines, building and construction, health care, food and beverages, water treatment, oil and gas refineries, chemical plants, underground gas storage facilities, and others. The segments for refineries and chemical plants applications dominate the global market at present. Nevertheless, gas detectors are widely used in underground gas storage. The growing gas supply network is spurring the demand in this segment.One of the major driving factors for gas leak detectors market is the ever growing oil & gas industry. The increasing number of gas field explorations and widening gas supply network has been fuelling the demand for gas leak detectors. In addition, active government organizations have been imposing safety regulations on the industries. This, in turn, has propelled the demand for gas leak detectors. Further, Asia Pacific is likely to lead the league in terms of growth of the industrial sector, mining sector, medicine and healthcare sector, and construction sector. This is likely to create opportunities for the growth of theglobal gas leak detectors market. However, the market is facing strong competition due to the influx of new players in the market and frequent product launches.Multi-gas detector coupled with an analyzer system is one of the emerging trends in the global leaked gas detector market. This kind of detector is gaining popularity due to its compact designs and better features as compared to conventional gas leak detectors. It is expected that the after sales market is likely to develop further in future and a number of market participants will enter this segment. It is also expected that the gas leak detector manufacturers will expand their business to aftermarket sales through forward integration and strategic alliances.A number of product launches can be seen in the global gas leak detectors market. For instance, market participants such as Scott Safety, GE and RAE Systems recently launched a few new gas leak detectors. The global gas leak detectors market has also been witnessing strategic alliances such as that between Cbiss and Old Man Partner. To expand the business globally, a number of gas leaked detectors manufacturers have acquired other companies such as the acquisition of Edinburgh Instruments Ltd by Techcomp Group Ltd., the acquisition of RAE Systems by Honeywell International Inc. and the acquisition ofGroveley Detection Ltd by Emerson.Some of the prominent players in global gas leak detectors market are City Technology Ltd., Honeywell International Inc., Mine Safety Appliances Co., Dragerwerk AG & Co., KGAA, Testo AG, ABB Ltd, Industrial Scientific Corporation, California Analytical Instruments Inc., Figaro Engineering Inc., Yokogawa Electric Corporation, Hitech Instruments Ltd, Ametek Inc., Emerson Electric Co.,Halma Plc, Trolex Ltd,GE Measurement & Control, Gasmet Technologies OY, Enerac Inc., Xtralis Pty. Ltd, Horiba Ltd and others.Visit For TOC@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 geographies, technology, application and product type. The report covers exhaustive analysis on: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.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Mens Health Therapeutics Market to Reap Excessive Revenues By 2024

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/mens-health-therapeutics.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=1974

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=1974

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Global Mens Health Therapeutics Market: OverviewThe rising psychological, economic, biological, and social factors affecting mens health are slated to propel the global mens health therapeutics market. Research conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that life expectancy at birth for males was 69.1 years, while that for women was 73.8 years. Thus, it was found that women live longer than men on a global scale in a study conducted in 2015.Request Report TOC @The report conveys key information related to the recent market developments, opportunities, trends, growth drivers, and restraints of the global mens health therapeutics market. The business strategies, product portfolios, and market shares held by the major players are discussed in detail. The market attractiveness, Porters five force analysis, market forecasts, value chain analysis, the past, present, and projected leading segments of the global mens health therapeutics market are also presented in the report.Global Mens Health Therapeutics Market: Drivers and RestraintsChanging lifestyles, indulgence in risky activities, usage of illegal drugs, consumption of liquor, and smoking have been causing several disorders and health conditions among men. Work-related problems such as stress and anxiety have also been contributing to the prevalence of health conditions, fuelling the demand for these therapeutics.Moreover, studies have found that cancer prevalence among males is more than that among females. The widespread popularity of convenience food, junk food, and other unhealthy eating habits have further augmented the incidence of mens health issues. The rising health awareness among people, increasing disposable incomes, and large healthcare expenditures are also driving the growth of this market.On the other hand, hesitation of seeking medical advice might restrict the growth of the market due to factors such as social taboos and negative self-perception. However, a gradual shift in attitudes about mens health are likely to aid in the expansion of the market as several healthcare providers, physicians, and medical organizations are ensuring that men feel more comfortable when seeking medical assistance. Moreover, the development of numerous pipeline drugs for the treatment of mens health issues are likely to present significant opportunities for the global mens health therapeutics market.The global mens therapeutics market can be segmented to include categories such as male hypogonadism therapy, prostate cancer therapy, erectile dysfunction therapy, and premature ejaculation therapy.Request Brochure @Global Mens Health Therapeutics Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of geography, the global mens health therapeutics market can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World.The region of North America is projected to contribute to market expansion to a significant extent due to aging baby boomer population and sedentary lifestyles. Increased incidence of diseases caused by smoking such as emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer among the western population are slated to drive the demand for these therapies in Europe and North America. The American Lung Association found that increasing number of men are diagnosed with lung cancer every year. Compared to other ethnic groups, the African-American men are at a higher risk of dying from this disease, finds the study.Decreasing fertility rates among the population of countries such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Indonesia will have a positive effect on the global market for mens health therapeutics, boosting the growth of Asia Pacific.Companies Mentioned in the ReportSome of the major companies operating in the global mens health therapeutics market are Access Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd., ASKA Pharmaceutical Co., CordexPharma, Inc., Trophogen, Inc., ZydusCadila Healthcare Ltd., and Pantarhei Bioscience BV.Pre Book Full Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Travel Retail Market Reach $125.1 Billion By 2023

http://bit.ly/2BIEcBj

http://bit.ly/2kTTzPB

http://bit.ly/2BdVzt0

The global Travel retail market size is expected to reach $125.1 billion by 2023, registering a CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period.Rise in disposable income has elevated the consumers lifestyle and shifted their preference towards apparels, luxury goods, premium fragrances, cosmetics, and other products. Moreover, the development in emerging nations such as Asia-Pacific and LAMEA is projected to supplement the global travel retail market growth. However, unorganized local market and stringent government regulations in airport retailing hamper the global travel retail market growth.For More Info, Get Sample :The global travel retail market is segmented on the basis of product, channel, and geography. The product segment includes perfumes & cosmetics, wine & spirits, tobacco, electronics, luxury goods, food & confectionery, and catering & others. In 2016, beauty products, namely, perfumes & cosmetics accounted for the maximum revenue with more than 30% market share. Based on channel, the global travel retail market is classified into airports; cruise liners; railway stations; and border, downtown, & hotel shops. Regionally, it is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.On the basis of product type, the luxury goods segment is anticipated to register the highest growth rate during the forecast period in the travel retail market. The purchase of these goods is extremely dependent on the economic stability of any region, as the goods are majorly procured by the upper economic classes. Regionally, Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the global market during the analysis period, due to the presence of large number of retail companies in China, India, Thailand, and others. In addition, the market in Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest rate due to increase in number of high net worth individuals and a growing tourism industry.KEY MARKET PLAYERS PROFILED IN THE REPORT ARE: DFS Group Dufry LS Travel Retail Lotte Duty Free King Power International Group The Shilla Duty Free Gebr. Heinemann China Duty Free Group (CDFG) Aer Rianta International (ARI) The Naunace GroupKEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS This report provides an in-depth analysis of the global travel retail market to identify the potential investment pockets. It outlines the current trends and future scenarios to determine the travel retail market potential and gain stronger market foothold. Key drivers, restraints, and opportunities and their detailed impact analysis are elucidated. Quantitative analysis of the travel retail industry from 2016 to 2023 is highlighted to recognize the financial competency of the market. Porters Five Forces model illustrates the threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and strength of the buyers & suppliers.Enquire About Report :KEY MARKET SEGMENTSBy Product Type Perfumes & Cosmetics Wine & Spirits Electronics Luxury Goods Food, Confectionery, & Catering Tobacco OthersBy Channel Airports Cruise Liners Railway Stations Border, Downtown, & Hotel ShopsBy Geography North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe UK Italy France Germany Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia-Pacific LAMEA Latin America Middle East AfricaAlso Request For Discount :THE OTHER PLAYERS IN THE MARKET INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: Regstaer Duty Free Baltona Duty Free Le Bridge Duty Free Autogrill Dubai Duty Free James Richardson CorporationTable Of Content CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3 MARKET OVERVIEW CHAPTER 4 TRAVEL RETAIL MARKET, BY PRODUCT CHAPTER 5 TRAVEL RETAIL MARKET, BY CHANNEL CHAPTER 6 TRAVEL RETAIL MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHY CHAPTER 7 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
Employee Scheduling Software Market Size, Analytical Overview, Growth Factors, Demand and Trends Forecast By 2022

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/726718/?utm_source=OPR-PSR

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/check-for-discount/726718/

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-north-america-europe-and-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa-employee-scheduling-software-market-2017-forecast-to-2022

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-online-employee-scheduling-software-market-size-status-and-forecast-2022/?utm_source=RR-PSR

https://www.marketstudyreport.com

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/category/news-releases/

Market Study Report Add New Global Employee Scheduling Software Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 to its research database presenting a deep study of the market growth factors and drivers. The report spread across 122 pages with table and figures in it.This report studies the employee scheduling software (also appointment scheduling software) market. Employee scheduling software allows businesses and professionals to manage scheduling appointments and bookings. This type of software is also called appointment booking software and online booking software. Companies use online employee scheduling software to automate scheduling tasks. The system can be used to arrange meetings and appointments. Top features include appointment reminders, employee and customer management, and calendar integration. Advanced solutions include payment processing, revenue processing, and mobile compatibility. You can use this software to update scheduling tasks and improve your companys efficiency.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Employee Scheduling Software 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:Acuity Scheduling, Simplybook.me, Appointy, SetMore, MyTime, TimeTrade, Pulse 24/7, Calendly, Bobclass, Shortcuts Software, Veribook, Reservio, BookingRun, Cirrus Insight, CozyCal, Square, MINDBODY.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa).Market Segment by Type, covers:Cloud, SaaS, Web, Mobile - Android Native, Mobile - iOS Native, Other.Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Small Business, Midsize Enterprise, Large Enterprise, Other.Get Discount on this Report:There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Employee Scheduling Software market.Chapter 1, to describe Employee Scheduling Software Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Employee Scheduling Software with sales, revenue, and price of Employee Scheduling Software, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Employee Scheduling Software, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in 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, Employee Scheduling Software market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Employee Scheduling Software sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get more Details on this Report at:Related Report:Global Online Employee Scheduling Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022This report studies the global Online Employee Scheduling Software market, analyzes and researches the Online Employee Scheduling 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 Acuity Scheduling, Simplybook.me, Appointy, SetMore.About Us: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.Contact Us:Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:
Neuromodulation Market Thriving Worldwide $11,717 Million By 2022

http://bit.ly/2BciOaa

http://bit.ly/2BsRhC3

http://bit.ly/2Bd7Qhb

The global neuromodulation market size is expected to reach $11,717 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 13.1% from 2016 to 2022. The global neuromodulation devices market is estimated to reach $11,717 million by 2022.For More Info, Get PDF Sample :Neurological disorders such as epilepsy, Alzheimer disease, cerebrovascular diseases, and Parkinson's disease affect the central and peripheral nervous system. Bacterial, viral, and fungal infections can also cause neurological disorders. To manage such disorders, neuromodulation is used, wherein small electrodes generate electrical most precise stimulation with the help of pulse generators to supplement neurological activities in effected people. The electrodes are generally placed directly in the brain or peripheral nerves or spinal cord whereas pulse generators are implanted within the skin. The key drivers for the growth of neuromodulation market include rise in geriatric population, their vulnerability for neurological disorders, increase in incidence of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases, and the increase in awareness regarding the safety and efficacy of neurostimulator devices. However, restrains, such as lack of trained healthcare professionals and stringent approval policies, are expected to hinder the market.The report analyzes the neuromodulation market based on product type, namely, internal and external neuromodulators. Internal neuromodulators are further segmented into deep brain stimulation, sacral nerve stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, spinal cord stimulation, and other neurostimulators, whereas external neuromodulators are classified into transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. The market is also segmented based on application, material, and geography. The report includes the revenue generated from the sales of the previously mentioned segments of neuromodulator devices. Spinal cord stimulation is the dominating segment whereas repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is the fastest growing segment among various neuromodulation technologies. Chronic pain management is the largest application segment and migraine is the fastest growing segment owing to the high incidence rate.The spinal cord stimulation has huge potential to treat widespread chronic back pain. Around 20% of adult Americans experience chronic pain. Recently, USFDA and similar regulatory agencies have approved many products of the SCS technology, for instance Senza SCS System by Nevro Corporation and Proclaim Elite SCS by St. Jude Medical. The use of technology is expanding to new indications such as failed-back surgery syndrome, refractory angina pectoris, peripheral vascular disease, and complex regional pain syndrome. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) market is projected to exhibit significant growth due to high adoption rate in developed economies for neurological disorders, such as Parkinsons disease, which have no known cure. The use of DBS is expanding to new indications such as severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, treatment-resistant depression, Alzheimer's type dementia, and movement disorders.Tremor is one of the major applications of neuromodulation devices. Tremor is a nerve disorder characterized by uncontrollable shaking or tremors in different parts of the body such as hands, arms, head, larynx (voice box), tongue, and chin. Tremor affects several million people above the age of 40 years. It is majorly caused due to genetic mutations. Tremor impairs routine activities, such as eating, drinking, and writing of patients. Number of implantable deep brain stimulators is now available for the management of tremors. For instance, Medtronics deep brain neurostimulators are implanted surgically within the thalamus, which is the brains communication center. The lead is connected to an implanted pulse generator by an extension wire running beneath the skin. The electrical stimulation can be noninvasively adjusted to block signals that cause disabling motor symptoms of essential tremor. Increasing prevalence of this disorder, technological improvement in neurostimulator devices, and increasing FDA approvals for neurostimulators are expected to drive the market.North America is the most attractive market in the global neuromodulation industry and is expected to be the first preference for new entrants due to the increasing end-use in the region. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market; hence the established players are focusing on the region.Enquire About Report :Government and private initiatives to increase awareness regarding mental health and increase in incidence of neurological disorders drive the market growth in Asia Pacifc. Japan has the highest revenue share in the region, followed by China. India is projected to witness rapid growth in future due to growing awareness regarding mental disorders and increasing expenditure in the healthcare sector. In Japan, Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency has approved numerous neurostimulators for pain management since 2010 such as Eon Mini and Genesis spinal cord stimulation (SCS) system by St. Jude and Precision Spectra by Boston Scientific. Increase in approval rate of neurostimulators by the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) has fueled their adoption in the Japanese market.The report also provides comprehensive analysis of the key players operating in the global neuromodulation market such as Medtronic plc, St. Jude Medical, Inc., LivaNova PLC, Boston Scientific Corporation, Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA, BioControl Medical, Bioness Inc., EnteroMedics Inc, Nevro Corporation and NeuroPace Inc. The report presents competitive market study by analyzing market shares and position of major players, recent strategic moves and detailed profiles of these players.NEUROMODULATION MARKET KEY BENEFITSThe study provides an in-depth analysis of the global neuromodulation market with current trends and future estimations to elucidate the imminent investment pockets. The report provides a quantitative analysis from 2014 to 2022, which is expected to enable the stakeholders to capitalize on prevailing market opportunities. The report provides actual historical figures for 2014 and 2015 and provides Y-o-Y forecasts for 2016 to 2022, considering 2015 as base year. Extensive analysis by product helps in understanding the various types of devices used for the treatment of neurological diseases and other related conditions. Competitive intelligence highlights the business practices followed by leading players across various regions. SWOT analysis studies the internal environment of the leading companies for strategy formulation.NEUROMODULATION MARKET SEGMENTS The global neuromodulation market is segmented based on technology, applications, material and geography.By Technology Internal neuromodulation Deep Brain Stimulation Sacral Nerve Stimulation Vagus Nerve Stimulation Spinal Cord Stimulation Other Neuromodulation Technologies External neuromodulation Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation Transcranial Magnetic StimulationAlso Request For Discount :By Application Chronic Pain Management Failed back syndrome Epilepsy Tremor Urinary and Fecal Incontinence Depression Dystonia Gastroparesis Parkinson's disease Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Migraine Other ApplicationsBy Biomaterial Metallic Biomaterials Polymeric Biomaterials Ceramic BiomaterialsBy Region North America U.S. Canada Mexic Europe Germany UK France Italy Spain Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific Japan China India South Korea Malaysia Rest of Asia-Pacific LAMEA Brazil Israel South Africa Saudi Arabia Rest of LAMEATable Of Content CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3 MARKET OVERVIEW CHAPTER 4 WORLD NEUROMODULATION MARKET, BY TECHNOLOGY CHAPTER 5 WORLD NEUROMODULATION MARKET, BY APPLICATION CHAPTER 6 WORLD NEUROMODULATION MARKET, BY BIOMATERIAL CHAPTER 7 WORLD NEUROMODULATION MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHY CHAPTER 8 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
Chloroacetyl Chloride Market Growing at a CAGR of 5.3% by 2024

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4551

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/4551

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/4551

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Persistence Market Research delivers key insights on the global chloroacetyl chloride market in a new report titled Chloroacetyl Chloride Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 20162024. Global sales of chloroacetyl chloride is estimated to be valued at US$ 403.1 Mn by 2016 end, witnessing a Y-o-Y growth of 5.3% over 2015. Asia Pacific is estimated to account for a market value share of 39.5% in the global chloroacetyl chloride market by 2016 end and is anticipated to remain dominant throughout the forecast period (2016  2024).Market dynamicsFixed arable land and shortage of agricultural workers is expected to increase the dependency on chemical fertilizers/pesticides to increase crop production and meet the rising global demand for food. Thus, the demand for herbicides to increase crop productivity is expected to drive the demand for chloroacetyl chloride over the forecast period and boost the growth of the global chloroacetyl chloride market. The use of chloroacetyl chloride in the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and as an acylating agent in various reactions is expected to increase over the forecast period and fuel overall growth of the global chloroacetyl chloride market.Request Report Sample@However, adoption of substitutes of chloroacetyl chloride in herbicides and in active pharmaceutical ingredients can hamper the growth of the global chloroacetyl chloride market over the forecast period.Market forecastOn the basis of manufacturing process, the global chloroacetyl chloride market can be segmented into chlorination of acetyl chloride, oxidation of 1,1-dichloroethylene, and others. The others segment is expected to witness a significant growth over the forecast period. This is mainly attributed to the development of new processes. Reaction of chloroacetic acid with chlorinating agents such as phosgene and phosphoms trichloride is expected to augment the share of the others segment over the forecast period.On the basis of application, the global chloroacetyl chloride market can be segmented into herbicides, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and chemical production. The herbicides segment is expected to witness stagnant growth over the forecast period due to a ban in Europe as well as few other countries on the use of alachlor and butachlor herbicides that are made from chloroacetyl chloride. However, use of chloroacetyl chloride as an intermediate in other herbicides products is expected to increase 1.3X over the forecast period. The active pharmaceutical ingredients segment is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period. Recent outbreaks and increasing life threatening diseases have increased the demand for active pharmaceutical ingredients with complex protein assembly. Thus, it is expected to increase the demand for chloroacetyl chloride as an intermediate over the forecast period. The active pharmaceutical ingredients segment is estimated to be valued at US$ 154.6 Mn by the end of 2016.Visit For TOC@On the basis of region, the global chloroacetyl chloride market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. Sales of chloroacetyl chloride in the APAC region is estimated to be valued at US$ 159.1 Mn by the end of 2016 and this region is expected to remain dominant throughout the forecast period. Latin America is expected to witness a significant growth over the forecast period. This growth is mainly attributed to developing economies in Latin America that are investing in production facilities in agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Development in APIs due to increasing risk of life-threatening diseases is expected to fuel the demand for chloroacetyl chloride as a reaction intermediate in North America over the forecast period.The global chloroacetyl chloride market report features some of the leading companies operating in the global chloroacetyl chloride market. Companies profiled in the report include CABB GmbH, Daicel Corporation, Altivia Corporation, Shiv Pharmachem Ltd., Transpek Industry Limited, Taixing Shenlong Chemical Co. Ltd., and Chengwu Chenhui Environmental Protection Technology Co. Ltd. among others. Top companies operating in the global chloroacetyl chloride market are focusing on enhancing their global presence by entering or expanding their footprint in a largely untapped market.You can now buy a single user license of the 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:
Fish Feeds 2017 Global Key Players  Tetra, UPEC, Canadian Aquatic Feed, Coppens International BV, Ocean Star International (OSI), Hikari Market Analysis And Forecast To 2022

Fish Feeds Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2652504-global-fish-feeds-market-research-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/2652504-global-fish-feeds-market-research-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=2652504

Fish Feeds Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Fish Feeds  Global Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Manufacturers, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Description:In this report, the global Fish Feeds 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 Fish Feeds in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Fish Feeds market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingTetraUPECCanadian Aquatic FeedCoppens International BVOcean Star International (OSI)HikariJBLSeraOcean NutritionMarubeni Nisshin FeedAquaoneDongpinghu FeedInch-Gold FishSanyou ChuangmeiBeijing New Rainbow Feed IndustriesCargillSunSunAqueonKayteePorpoise AquariumHaifeng FeedsRequest 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 intoGoldfishKoiTropical FishOtherOn 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, includingLive foodProcessed foodEnquiry 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 Fish Feeds Market Research Report 20171 Fish Feeds Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Fish Feeds1.2 Fish Feeds Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Fish Feeds Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Fish Feeds Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Goldfish1.2.4 Koi1.2.5 Tropical Fish1.2.6 Other1.3 Global Fish Feeds Segment by Application1.3.1 Fish Feeds Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Live food1.3.3 Processed food1.4 Global Fish Feeds Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Fish Feeds 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 Fish Feeds (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Fish Feeds Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Fish Feeds Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Fish Feeds Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Fish Feeds Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Fish Feeds Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Fish Feeds Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Fish Feeds Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Fish Feeds Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Fish Feeds Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Fish Feeds Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Fish Feeds Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Fish Feeds Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion.7 Global Fish Feeds Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Tetra7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Tetra Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 UPEC7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 UPEC Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Canadian Aquatic Feed7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Canadian Aquatic Feed Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Coppens International BV7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Coppens International BV Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Ocean Star International (OSI)7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Ocean Star International (OSI) Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Hikari7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Hikari Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 JBL7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 JBL Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Sera7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Sera Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Ocean Nutrition7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Ocean Nutrition Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Marubeni Nisshin Feed7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Fish Feeds Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Marubeni Nisshin Feed Fish Feeds Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Aquaone7.12 Dongpinghu Feed7.13 Inch-Gold Fish7.14 Sanyou Chuangmei7.15 Beijing New Rainbow Feed Industries7.16 Cargill7.17 SunSun7.18 Aqueon7.19 Kaytee7.20 Porpoise Aquarium7.21 Haifeng FeedsContinued..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
Global Exhibitions Market Likely to be Worth $36.359 Billion by 2023

https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/exhibitions-market

https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/exhibitions-market

https://www.arizton.com/news/press-release/global-exhibitions-market-growth

The global exhibitions market is projected to grow from $27.31 billion in 2017 to $36.35 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 4.88%.Ariztons recent market research report on the global exhibitions market segments the market by economic development (mature economies and emerging economies) and by geography (APAC, Europe, North America, and ROW).Request for your free sample today!The three leading drivers and trends of the global exhibitions market are discussed below:Sustained Popularity in Elusive Industry SectorsThe use of conventional marketing methods such as e-mail marketing, newsletter, online advertisements, and media campaigns is unresponsive to highly specialized sectors such as manufacturing and mining. Such niche industries use exhibitions in the form of expert panels, trade associations, and research to make decisions about its products and services. Exhibitions for their specific industries provide a high level of thought leadership, enable interpersonal marketing, get the right exposure, and aid to laser-target these hard-to-reach professionals in a niche, specialist focus sectors. B2B exhibitions are an extension used to break into new, exclusive markets and as marketing tactics. Exhibition programs are largely used to boost the conversion rates and are increasingly being used as a cost of sale among various exhibitors.Integration of Trade Shows and Digital TechnologiesExhibitions organized by various service providers are highly sophisticated digitally advanced channels of marketing that enable increased communication and conversions for business owners. The development of materials and technologies is promoting the digitalization of exhibitions. Exhibition organizers are augmenting value to business via online, social, technological, and mobile solutions in a space abound with trading and networking. The launch of multi-sensory storytelling, increase in monetization potential, implementation of tools to monitor customer behavior, and the provision of a comprehensive brand information will result in an emotional brand experience for end-users. The integration of technology such as AR, VR, wearables, interactive walls, digital lounges, and gamification will revolutionize the global exhibitions market.Request for your free sample today!Redesign of Exhibition ModelsB2B exhibition models are witnessing a drastic shift of expectations, and consumers are leaning towards new connections, knowledge sharing, and access to expertise. This change in behavior is ideally targeted because of the proliferation of digital media that allows end-users to access all information with a click of a button. Exhibitions are changing their models to focus more on content than branding by offering new data and innovation. This change in the exhibition model will enable business owners to engage with consumers and increase their interest through interactive exhibitions. The launch of new formats such as trade shows, congresses, and conferences is driving the growth in the global exhibitions market. Show floors are gaining immense popularity in the market for its breakout sessions, workshops, and keynotes, and provide subject matter expertise in ways that increase interaction levels by providing valuable knowledge about the product. Such diversification of models will allow business owners to choose an ideal method that suits their operations, thereby, propelling the growth of the global exhibitions market.The leading vendors in the vapor products market are Fiera Milano, GL Events, ITE Group, MCH Group, Messe Frankfurt, RELX Group, and UBM.The complete overview of the latest market research report on global exhibitions market by Arizton is now available.The report offers a detailed study of major trends, drivers, challenges and also provides the market size and forecast for major geographical regions and key countries.Source Link:About AriztonArizton  Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. The reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.Arizton Advisory & IntelligenceChicago, Illinois, 60605Mail: enquiry@arizton.comCall: +1-312-465-7864
Global Coffee Key Opportunities, Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast (2016-2020)

Coffee Market

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=703135

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-coffee-market-trends-and-opportunities-2016-2020-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Coffee Market: Trends and Opportunities (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Coffee Market: Trends & Opportunities (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global coffee market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides the production and consumption analysis of the market. The report provides detailed market analysis of the global retail coffee market by value and volume along with the segments of the market.The report provides detailed regional analysis of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America Middle East & Africa and Australasia for the coffee market. Regional analysis includes market sizing by value along with the production and consumption analysis. It also provides the retail sales value of each region.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report also includes the country analysis of Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ethiopia and India. It provides the production and consumption analysis along with the export-import trends in each of the above mentioned countries.Furthermore, the report assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the global retail coffee market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in global coffee market is stiff and dominated by the big players like Nestle. Further, key players of the coffee market The J.M. Smucker Company, Mondelez International Inc. and Strauss Group Ltd. are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Regional Coverage- Western Europe- Eastern Europe- North America- Asia Pacific- Latin America- Middle East and Africa- AustralasiaCountry Coverage- Brazil- Vietnam- Indonesia- Ethiopia- IndiaCompany Coverage- The J.M. Smucker Company- Mondelez International Inc.- Strauss Group Ltd.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Executive SummaryGlobal coffee market increased at a significant CAGR during the span of 5 years i.e. 2011-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. The market can be segmented on the basis of end-users as retail coffee market and food services market, of which global retail coffee market displayed an increase, driving the global coffee market. The increasing consumption of coffee led by the westernization trend in India, China and Latin America drive the market in the positive direction.The growth drivers for the global coffee market are: rise in disposable income, rapid urbanization and increase in the population along with the emergence of caf culture and new consumer base. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as: aging of coffee trees, lack of government support, negative impact of climate change, price volatility and increase in production cost.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 @
Green Cement Market is forecasted to have huge market share with 15% CAGR

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2907

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/green-cement-market-2907

Market ScenarioGreen cement refers to a cementitious material, which can be manufactured by the use of industrial wastes such as recycled concrete, power plant wastes, burnt clay, mining and quarrying wastes, and slag.The major drivers for the growth of the green cement market are the advantages of manufacturing with the use of green cement such as low requirement of natural resources and use of less water to carry out the process of construction. The utilization of wastes such as used oils, used tires, animal meal, solid recovered fuels, foundry sand, fly ashes, sewage sludge, and filter cakes in cement kilns help reduce carbon dioxide emissions during the process of the production of cement. However, low awareness among the people for use of green cement is expected to hinder the growth of the market.The Green Cement Market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 15 % during the period 2017 to 2023.Regional AnalysisThe North America region is expected to dominate the green cement market owing to the introduction of stringent rules and regulations regarding the GHG emissions by the government authorities of the region. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow, owing to the rapid industrialization and urbanization in the region. The increasing number of construction activities in the region along with the increasing awareness for green cement is expected to contribute to the growth of the market.Request a sample @Key PlayersThe key players of green cement market are Heidelberg Cement AG (Germany), LafargeHolcim Ltd. (Switzerland), Taiheiyo Cement Corporation (Japan), Taiwan Cement Corporation (Taiwan), Ecocem Ireland Ltd. (Ireland), ACC Limited (India), UltraTech Cement Ltd (India), Calera Corporation (U.S.), Ceratech, Inc (U.S.), Solidia Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Cenin Cement (U.K.) and others.The report for Green Cement 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, 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.Browse report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by 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
Global LED Lighting Market Opportunities, Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report (2016-2020)

LED Lighting Market

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=676390

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-led-lighting-market-trends-opportunities-20162020-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global LED Lighting Market: Trends & Opportunities (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global LED Lighting Market: Trends & Opportunities (2016-2020), provides an in-depth analysis of the global LED Lighting market with detailed analysis of market size and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides market size of the global lighting market and its segments.The report provides detailed regional analysis of North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific (China and India) for the LED lighting market. The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Growth of the global lighting market and global LED lighting market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The market for global LED lighting is facing a tough competition due to price wars and entry of small firms. Further, key players (Cree, Philips and Osram) of the global LED lighting market are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Country Coverage- North America- Europe- Asia Pacific (China and India)Company Coverage- Cree, Inc.- Philips- OsramExecutive SummaryThe LED lighting can be segmented according to its application into lighting, backlighting, signage, automotive lighting and others. Some of the advantages of LED lights over the traditional light sources are long life, energy efficient, ecologically friendly, durable, zero UV emission, design flexibility, low voltage, etc.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Global LED Lighting market has increased at a significant annual growth rate in 2015 as compared to the preceding year and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. The upsurge in the market was due to various factors such as rapid growth in the global automotive industry, increasing focus on fuel and energy efficiency, etc.The major growth drivers for the LED lighting market are increasing shipment and penetration of LED TVs, growing automobile industry, increasing LED penetration, phasing out of incandescent bulbs in many countries, supportive government policies and focus on energy efficiency. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as temperature dependence, high initial costs of LED, high research and development costs, etc.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 @
Automotive Aftermarket Market Expected to Rise Steadily throughout 2017 to 2027

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-as-661

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-as-661

In Future Market Insights market report titled, Automotive Aftermarket: ASEAN Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, poor road infrastructure and extended vehicle life have been identified as profitable factors for the growth of the automotive aftermarket in ASEAN. On account of growing out-of-warranty car parc, the US$ 19.3 Bn ASEAN automotive aftermarket is predicted to surpass US$ 48 Bn in revenues by 2026 end, increasing at a healthy CAGR of 9.6% through 2026.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @Key Trends Impacting the ASEAN Automotive AftermarketGrowing popularity of new, lightweight vehicle modelsAdvances in OEM technology and OEM globalisationAdoption of remote vehicle diagnostic systems, growing awareness about self-inflating tyres, and widespread acceptance of electric vehicle technologyOnline sales of automotive parts and accessoriesEstablishment of franchises in emerging countries, especially those where vehicle parc is steadily gaining tractionSegmentation Highlights: Tyres Will Remain Highest Selling Parts; Indonesia to Remain the Largest MarketBy type, tyres will continue to account for the largest revenue share. In the accessories segment, the interior accessories segment  which includes steering wheels, seat covers, seat belts, liners, floor mats, liners, gauges, dash boards, and shift knobs  will reportedly hold a major share of over 66%, crossing a value of US$ 9.0 Bn by 2026 end.By service, general automotive repair is estimated at over 86% value share during the forecast period, maintaining dominance over automotive transmission repairs. By vehicle type, passenger cars will continue to attract higher revenues compared to commercial vehicles. Indonesia will remain the largest market accounting for 35% revenue share of the market in 2026. Thailand and Malaysia, the other key markets will collectively account for over 50% revenue share of the market.Fundamental Shift in Consumer Preference and Drivers Choice Will Impact the MarketWith driverless car technology and dashboard pyro techniques steadily gaining traction, consumers are likely to have more aftermarket channels to shop. Consumer behaviour is expected to shift from a conventional way of buying vehicle parts, accessing repair services, and selecting accessories. Moreover, evolving driver preferences also reflect a new set of revenue generation opportunities for automakers, auto part suppliers, repair shops, and accessory retailers. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the latest launched products and thus, will access a plethora of aftermarket product offerings to cater to their comfort, aesthetics, and infotainment-related requirements.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Key Players Focussing on Boosting Expansion CapacityThe key players highlighted in the ASEAN automotive aftermarket include Denso Corporation, Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., Continental AG, Delphi Automotive PLC, ACDelco, Faurecia SA, Magneti Marelli SpA, Robert Bosch GmbH, Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd., and Bridgestone Corporation. Bridgestone, one of the top companies, announced expansion of its international manufacturing capabilities in Germany this year. Post-acquisition of Speedy France, the company also launched a new manufacturing plant based in Indonesia. Continental AG also opened its new production plants in India and China this year.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, ,
Entrance Matting Market; Latest Developments, Growth & Demand Future Outlook 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16132

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16132

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Entrance Matting Market: OverviewEntrance mats are mats which are laid inside or outside of the house and primarily used for the purpose of removing dirt from the footwear of the person by scrubbing or wiping their soles on the mat. Entrance matting can be classified on the basis of the material like cotton, rubber, nylon, coir, etc. The augmented availability of nitrile rubber is the major driver for the entrance matting industry. Growing infrastructure industries and construction in various regions is going to drive the global entrance matting market.Entrance matting is a mat placed on the floor at the entrance of house, office, or supermarkets. It provides safety at the workplace, traps mud, sand, stones, & other material stuck in footwear, and enhances the appearance of the floor. The type of materials used in manufacturing depends on location. The noise while walking and trapping ability of dirt are some of the benefits of entrance matting. Various innovations are done due to numbers of technological advancements.Entrance matting are placed outside or inside on the floor of the houses, offices, and supermarkets. The main purpose of entrance matting is to remove the dirt from footwear by scrubbing or wiping their footwear on Entrance mats. Entrance matting is used at workplaces for the security to trap the mud, dirt, and other substances.Request sample copy of the report @Entrance Matting Market: SegmentationBased on the type, Entrance Matting Market can be segmented into:Scraper/WiperAnti-FatigueFlow ThroughLogo and SpecialtyBased on the Material, Entrance Matting Market can be segmented into:NylonPolypropyleneCottonNitrile RubberPVCBased on the application, Entrance Matting Market can be segmented into:ResidentialNon-ResidentialIndustrialSportsHospitalityCommercialGymSchoolsHotelsSwimming poolBased on the Utility, Entrance Matting Market can be segmented into:IndoorOutdoorEntrance Matting Market: Segment OverviewOn the basis of entrance matting type, the market is segmented into scarper/wiper, anti-fatigue, flow through, logo and specialty. Scraper/wiper is anticipated to grow in terms of revenue and remain dominant in the entrance matting market during the forecast period.On the basis of application, the entrance matting market is segmented into residential and non-residential. The residential sector is projected to grow during the forecast period as demand for the walk-off, logo, and anti-fatigue entrance matting is rising at residential areas, currently, also it holds the largest market share among global entrance matting market.Entrance Matting Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe global entrance matting market is expected to witness sustained growth over the forecast period. The growth of entrance matting market is driven as the demand for entrance matting is increasing the importance of workplace safety and growing industries is a major factor which will boost the entrance matting market. Moreover, increasing safety concern and stringent regulations in the hospitality industry and offices will boost the new entrance matting market. The major factor that influences the growth of global entrance market as the increasing growth in the flooring. The improving technology in the entrance matting industry also led to the development of anti-fatigue and special mars which are an opportunity for the entrance matting market growth.Entrance Matting Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of the geographical market segment, Entrance Matting Market is segmented into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific region, Japan and the Middle East and Africa.In regional segments, North America is presently the market leader in terms of revenue in the global entrance matting market followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. The entrance matting market is well established in the developed regions and the market is still establishing in the developing economies like China, India, and Indonesia which is expected to grow in the forecast period.Request TOC of the report @Entrance Matting Market: Key Market PlayersSome of the market players operating in the Entrance Matting Market are 3M Company, Forbo Holding AG, Birrus Matting Systems, Cintas Corporation, Millikan & Company, Eagle Mat & Floor Products, Superior Manufacturing Group, and Bergo Flooring AB, and few other regional players. Manufacturers all over the world are escalating the product portfolio and increase the sales strategies and investing in research & development and also focusing on different strategies to maintain their market share in the global Entrance matting 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:
Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Global and United States In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022 | Honeywell, Solvay, Ineos, Derivados del Fluor, Sinochem Lantian

Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF)

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1295137

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-and-united-states-anhydrous-hydrogen-fluoride-ahf-in-depth-research-report-2017-2022-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global and United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) 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 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) industry.Major CompaniesHoneywell (US)Solvay (US)Ineos (Switzerland)Derivados del Fluor (Spain)Sinochem Lantian (China)Sanmei Chemical (China)Yingpeng Chemical (China)Do-Fluoride Chemicals (China)Dongyue Group (China)Fujian Shaowu Yongfei Chemical (China)Shaowu Huaxin Chemical (China)Juhua Group (China)Jiangxi Chinafluorine Chemical (China)Fujian Yongfu (China)Jiangxi Tianxing (China)Hunan Youse (China)3F (China)Fubao Group (China)Tiancheng Chemical (China)Luoyang Fluorine Potassium Technology (China)China Starf (China)Yingguang Chemical (China)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCaliforniaTexasNew YorkOthersCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsAnhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market, by PurityPurity 99.99%Purity 99.9%Purity 99.7%Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market, by CharacterLiquidGasAnhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market, by Key ConsumersChemical IndustryMining IndustryMetallurgical IndustryGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Table of ContentsGlobal and United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022Chapter One Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market Overview1.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20171.2 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), by Purity 2012-20171.2.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Purity 2012-20171.2.2 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Market Share by Purity 2012-20171.2.3 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Price by Purity 2012-20171.2.4 Purity 99.99%1.2.5 Purity 99.9%1.2.6 Purity 99.7%1.3 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), by Character 2012-20171.3.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Character 2012-20171.3.2 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Market Share by Character 2012-20171.3.3 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Price by Character 2012-20171.3.4 Liquid1.3.5 GasChapter Two United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market Overview2.1 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20172.2 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), by Purity 2012-20172.2.1 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Purity 2012-20172.2.2 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Market Share by Purity 2012-20172.2.3 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Price by Purity 2012-20172.2.4 Purity 99.99%2.2.5 Purity 99.9%2.2.6 Purity 99.7%2.3 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), by Character 2012-20172.3.1 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Character 2012-20172.3.2 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Market Share by Character 2012-20172.3.3 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Price by Character 2012-20172.3.4 Liquid2.3.5 GasChapter Three Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) by Regions 2012-20173.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.2 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.3 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) 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 Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) by Companies 2012-20174.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20174.2 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20174.3 Global Top Companies Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Key Product Model and Market Performance4.4 Global Top Companies Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Five United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) by Companies 2012-20175.1 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20175.2 United States Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20175.3 United States Top Companies Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Key Product Model and Market Performance5.4 United States Top Companies Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Six Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) by Consumer 2012-20176.1 Global Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF) Sales Market Share by Consumer 2012-20176.2 Chemical Industry6.3 Mining Industry6.4 Metallurgical Industry6.5 Consuming Habit and PreferenceContinue...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 Oleochemicals Market 2017 Industry Key Players -Wilmar International, IOI Group, KLK Oleo, Emery Oleochemicals, Clariant AG,..

Oleochemicals Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1653711-oleochemicals-market-by-type-fatty-acids-fatty-alcohols-glycerine-fatty-amines

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/1653711-oleochemicals-market-by-type-fatty-acids-fatty-alcohols-glycerine-fatty-amines

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=five_user-USD&report_id=1653711

Oleochemicals Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Oleochemicals Market 2017 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2022reports to its database.Executive SummaryOleochemicals are chemicals that are derived from plants and animal fats. Many a times they are analogous to petrochemicals which are derived from petroleum. During the 1970s, when there were considerable amount of profits generated from petroleum based products, the market for natural oils and fats-based chemicals saw a reduction in the gains. However, when the petrochemical industry experienced a steep plunge in the crude oil prices, the attention got shifted from petrochemicals to natural-based feedstock.The manufacturing of oleochemicals deals with a series of enzymatic reactions across the production process to manufacture basic oleochemicals like fatty acids and alcohols along with glycerine. The hydrolysis of fats result in 95% production of fatty acids and glycerine is produced as a by-product. These fatty acids are further utilized for the production of fatty alcohols and methyl esters. Fatty acids are anticipated dominate the global oleochemicals market by type and are estimated to control around 51% of the total oleochemicals consumption by type in 2021. However, fatty amines are estimated to attain the fastest growth rate during the forecast period. The global market size is estimated to reach $31.7bn by 2021 at a CAGR of around 4.9% during the forecast period of 2016 and 2021.Request Sample Report @The report explains that global oleochemicals market is segmented on the basis of types, application and geography. Based on types, oleochemicals is classified intoFatty AcidsFatty AlcoholsGlycerineFatty Acid Methyl Esters andFatty AminesOleochemicals find their applications into a variety of end used industries which include,PharmaceuticalsPersonal CareFood & BeveragesSoaps & DetergentsLubricant & GreasePulp & PaperPlastics, rubber and textilesPaint & Surface CoatingsIntermediates and OthersEach of these segments is further broken down to give an in-depth analysis of the market. The oleochemicals market report analyses the oleochemicals in various applications and covers the market demand with respect to regions.With environmental safety being the prime concern and the non-renewable resources getting depleted, stringent regulations are forced to be amended. With this initiative there has been a big opportunity for the oleochemicals to pave into the market and substitute the traditional petroleum based products.The oleochemicals market is driven by increased demand from the end-use industries such as soaps and detergents, personal care, pharmaceuticals, lubricants and many others. Abundant supply of raw materials and competitiveness of the prices are yet other reasons which will propel the growth of oleochemicals in the near future.As far as the geographical region are concerned, Asia-Pacific, due to its expanding economy and rapidly growing industrial and commercial activities is estimated to experience the highest growth in the oleochemicals market between 2016 and 2021. The Key Players profiled in this report include like:Wilmar InternationalIOI GroupKLK OleoEmery OleochemicalsClariant AGThe report analyses the oleochemicals market demand with respect to various regions. Competitive landscape for top five oleochemicals market is highlighted and market players are profiled and are analysed on disparate aspects like company overview, financial overview, product portfolio and recent developments.For further information on this report, visit -Table of content:1. Oleochemicals Market Overview2. Executive Summary3. Oleochemicals  Market Landscape3.1. Market Share Analysis3.2. Comparative Analysis3.2.1. Product Benchmarking3.2.2. End user profiling3.2.3. Top 5 Financials Analysis4. Oleochemicals  Market Forces4.1. Market Drivers4.2. Market Constraints4.3. Market Challenges4.4. Attractiveness of the Oleochemicals Industry4.4.1. Power of Suppliers4.4.2. Power of Customers4.4.3. Threat of New entrants4.4.4. Threat of Substitution4.4.5. Degree of Competition5. Oleochemicals Market  Strategic Analysis5.1. Value Chain Analysis5.2. Pricing Analysis5.3. Opportunities Analysis5.4. Product/Market Life Cycle Analysis5.5. Suppliers and Distributors6. Oleochemicals Market: By Type6.1. Fatty Acids6.2. Fatty Alcohols6.3. Glycerine6.4. Fatty Amines6.5. Fatty Acid Methyl Esters6.6. Others7. Oleochemicals Market  By Application7.1. Pharmaceutical7.2. Personal Care7.3. Food & Beverages7.4. Soaps & Detergents7.5. Lubricant & Grease7.6. Pulp & Paper7.7. Additives for Plastics, Rubber and Textiles7.8. Paint & Surface Coatings7.9. Intermediates7.10. Others8. Oleochemicals Market -Geographic Analysis8.1. Americas8.1.1. US8.1.2. Canada8.1.3. Mexico8.1.4. Argentina8.1.5. Others8.2. Europe8.2.1. France8.2.2. Germany8.2.3. Italy8.2.4. Others8.3. APAC8.3.1. China8.3.2. India8.3.3. Japan8.3.4. Malaysia8.3.5. Indonesia8.3.6. Philippines8.3.7. Others8.4. ROW8.4.1. Middle East8.4.2. South Africa8.4.3. Russia8.4.4. Others9. Market Entropy9.1. New Product Launches9.2. M&As, Collaborations, JVs and Partnerships10. Company Profiles10.1. BASF SE10.2. Clariant AG10.3. Croda International Plc10.4. Ecogreen Oleochemicals10.5. Emery Oleochemicals10.6. IOI Group10.7. KUALA LUMPUR KEPONG BERHAD (KLK)10.8. Musim Mas Group10.9. Procter & Gamble Co.10.10. Sinar Mas Group10.11. Stepan Company10.12. The Vegetable Vitamin foods Company (VVF Ltd.)10.13. Unilever Oleochemical Indonesia10.14. Vantage Specialty Chemicals, Inc.10.15. Wilmar International Limited*More than 40 Companies are profiled in this Research Report, Complete List available on Request*"*Financials would be provided on a best efforts basis for private companies"11. Appendix11.1. Abbreviations11.2. Sources11.3. Research Methodology11.4. Bibliography11.5. Compilation of Expert Insights11.6. DisclaimerContinuousBuy 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
Retail Analytics Global and United States Industry In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022 | Researchmoz

Retail Analytics

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1295136

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-and-united-states-retail-analytics-in-depth-research-report-2017-2022-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global and United States Retail Analytics 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 Retail Analytics industry.Major Companies1010data, Inc. (US)Angoss Software Corporation (Canada)BRIDGE Analytics Solutions Private Limited (India)Capillary Technologies (Singapore)Diaspark Inc. (US)FLIR Systems, Inc. (US)Fujitsu Limited (Japan)GainInsights Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (India)Happiest Minds (India)Information Builders (US)IntelliVision (US)International Business Machines Corporation (US)LoyaltyOne (Canada)Manthan Software Services Private Limited (India)Microsoft Corporation (US)MicroStrategy Incorporated (US)Oracle Corporation (US), QBurst (India)Qlik Technologies Inc. (US)RetailNext Inc. (US)SAP SE (Germany)SAS Institute Inc. (US)Trax (Singapore)Visual BI Solutions (US)Zebra Technologies Corporation (US)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCaliforniaTexasNew YorkOthersCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsRetail Analytics Market, by Business FunctionFinanceSalesMarketingSupply ChainStore OperationRetail Analytics Market, by ComponentSoftwareServicesRetail Analytics Market, by DeploymentOn-premisesOn-demandRetail Analytics Market, by OrganizationSMEsLarge EnterprisesRetail Analytics Market, by Key ConsumersOnlineOfflineGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Table of ContentsGlobal and United States Retail Analytics In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022Chapter One Global Retail Analytics Market Overview1.1 Global Retail Analytics Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20171.2 Retail Analytics, by Business Function 2012-20171.2.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Business Function 2012-20171.2.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Business Function 2012-20171.2.3 Global Retail Analytics Price by Business Function 2012-20171.2.4 Finance1.2.5 Sales1.2.6 Marketing1.2.7 Supply Chain1.2.8 Store Operation1.3 Retail Analytics, by Component 2012-20171.3.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Component 2012-20171.3.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Component 2012-20171.3.3 Global Retail Analytics Price by Component 2012-20171.3.4 Software1.3.5 Services1.4 Retail Analytics, by Deployment 2012-20171.4.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Deployment 2012-20171.4.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Deployment 2012-20171.4.3 Global Retail Analytics Price by Deployment 2012-20171.4.4 On-premises1.4.5 On-demand1.5 Retail Analytics, by Organization 2012-20171.5.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Organization 2012-20171.5.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Organization 2012-20171.5.3 Global Retail Analytics Price by Organization 2012-20171.5.4 SMEs1.5.5 Large EnterprisesChapter Two United States Retail Analytics Market Overview2.1 United States Retail Analytics Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20172.2 Retail Analytics, by Business Function 2012-20172.2.1 United States Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Business Function 2012-20172.2.2 United States Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Business Function 2012-20172.2.3 United States Retail Analytics Price by Business Function 2012-20172.2.4 Finance2.2.5 Sales2.2.6 Marketing2.2.7 Supply Chain2.2.8 Store Operation2.3 Retail Analytics, by Component 2012-20172.3.1 United States Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Component 2012-20172.3.2 United States Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Component 2012-20172.3.3 United States Retail Analytics Price by Component 2012-20172.3.4 Software2.3.5 Services2.4 Retail Analytics, by Deployment 2012-20172.4.1 United States Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Deployment 2012-20172.4.2 United States Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Deployment 2012-20172.4.3 United States Retail Analytics Price by Deployment 2012-20172.4.4 On-premises2.4.5 On-demand2.5 Retail Analytics, by Organization 2012-20172.5.1 United States Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Organization 2012-20172.5.2 United States Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Organization 2012-20172.5.3 United States Retail Analytics Price by Organization 2012-20172.5.4 SMEs2.5.5 Large EnterprisesChapter Three Retail Analytics by Regions 2012-20173.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.3 Global Retail Analytics 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 Retail Analytics by Companies 2012-20174.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20174.2 Global Retail Analytics Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20174.3 Global Top Companies Retail Analytics Key Product Model and Market Performance4.4 Global Top Companies Retail Analytics Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Five United States Retail Analytics by Companies 2012-20175.1 United States Retail Analytics Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20175.2 United States Retail Analytics Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20175.3 United States Top Companies Retail Analytics Key Product Model and Market Performance5.4 United States Top Companies Retail Analytics Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Six Global Retail Analytics by Consumer 2012-20176.1 Global Retail Analytics Sales Market Share by Consumer 2012-20176.2 Online6.3 Offline6.4 Consuming Habit and PreferenceContinue...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 @
In-Depth Research Report on Global and United States Industrial Robot 2017-2022 | Fanuc, ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa, SIASUN, Staubli, NACHI, Comau, Efort

Industrial Robot

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1295135

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-and-united-states-industrial-robot-in-depth-research-report-2017-2022-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global and United States Industrial Robot 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 Industrial Robot industry.Major CompaniesFanuc(Japan)ABB(Switzerland)KUKA(Germany)Yaskawa(Japan)SIASUN(China)Staubli(Switzerland)NACHI(Japan)Comau(Italy)Efort(China)EPSON(Japan)Kawasaki(Japan)Estun(China)Mitsubishi(Japan)Topstar(China)JANOME(Japan)OTC(Japan)Panasonic(Japan)Honeywell(US)SIEMENS(Germany)GE(US)Schneider(France)YAMAHA(Japan)Emerson(US)Omron(Japan)Johnson Controls(US)Hyundai(Korea)Rockwell(US)MartinLord(UK)Banner(US)GSK(China)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCaliforniaTexasNew YorkOthersCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsIndustrial Robot Market, by Types of Industrial RobotsMobile RobotSpot Welding RobotArc Welding RobotLaser Machining RobotOthers (Vacuum Robot, Clean Robot)Industrial Robot Market, by Classification of Arm MotionRectangular Coordinate TypeCylindrical Coordinate TypeSpherical Coordinate TypeJoint TypeIndustrial Robot Market, by the Control Functions of an APoint PatternContinuous Trajectory ModelIndustrial Robot Market, by Program Input ModeProgramming Input TypeTeach Input TypeIndustrial Robot Market, by Key ConsumersPower and ElectricalMachine BuildingFactory OperationRailway AviationOthersGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Table of ContentsGlobal and United States Industrial Robot In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022Chapter One Global Industrial Robot Market Overview1.1 Global Industrial Robot Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20171.2 Industrial Robot, by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20171.2.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20171.2.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20171.2.3 Global Industrial Robot Price by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20171.2.4 Mobile Robot1.2.5 Spot Welding Robot1.2.6 Arc Welding Robot1.2.7 Laser Machining Robot1.2.8 Others (Vacuum Robot, Clean Robot)1.3 Industrial Robot, by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20171.3.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20171.3.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20171.3.3 Global Industrial Robot Price by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20171.3.4 Rectangular Coordinate Type1.3.5 Cylindrical Coordinate Type1.3.6 Spherical Coordinate Type1.3.7 Joint Type1.4 Industrial Robot, by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20171.4.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20171.4.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20171.4.3 Global Industrial Robot Price by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20171.4.4 Point Pattern1.4.5 Continuous Trajectory Model1.5 Industrial Robot, by Program Input Mode 2012-20171.5.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Program Input Mode 2012-20171.5.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Program Input Mode 2012-20171.5.3 Global Industrial Robot Price by Program Input Mode 2012-20171.5.4 Programming Input Type1.5.5 Teach Input TypeChapter Two United States Industrial Robot Market Overview2.1 United States Industrial Robot Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20172.2 Industrial Robot, by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20172.2.1 United States Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20172.2.2 United States Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20172.2.3 United States Industrial Robot Price by Types of Industrial Robots 2012-20172.2.4 Mobile Robot2.2.5 Spot Welding Robot2.2.6 Arc Welding Robot2.2.7 Laser Machining Robot2.2.8 Others (Vacuum Robot, Clean Robot)2.3 Industrial Robot, by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20172.3.1 United States Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20172.3.2 United States Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20172.3.3 United States Industrial Robot Price by Classification of Arm Motion F 2012-20172.3.4 Rectangular Coordinate Type2.3.5 Cylindrical Coordinate Type2.3.6 Spherical Coordinate Type2.3.7 Joint Type2.4 Industrial Robot, by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20172.4.1 United States Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20172.4.2 United States Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20172.4.3 United States Industrial Robot Price by the Control Functions of an Ac 2012-20172.4.4 Point Pattern2.4.5 Continuous Trajectory Model2.5 Industrial Robot, by Program Input Mode 2012-20172.5.1 United States Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Program Input Mode 2012-20172.5.2 United States Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Program Input Mode 2012-20172.5.3 United States Industrial Robot Price by Program Input Mode 2012-20172.5.4 Programming Input Type2.5.5 Teach Input TypeChapter Three Industrial Robot by Regions 2012-20173.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.3 Global Industrial Robot 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 Industrial Robot by Companies 2012-20174.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20174.2 Global Industrial Robot Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20174.3 Global Top Companies Industrial Robot Key Product Model and Market Performance4.4 Global Top Companies Industrial Robot Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Five United States Industrial Robot by Companies 2012-20175.1 United States Industrial Robot Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20175.2 United States Industrial Robot Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20175.3 United States Top Companies Industrial Robot Key Product Model and Market Performance5.4 United States Top Companies Industrial Robot Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Six Global Industrial Robot by Consumer 2012-20176.1 Global Industrial Robot Sales Market Share by Consumer 2012-20176.2 Power and Electrical6.3 Machine Building6.4 Factory Operation6.5 Railway Aviation6.6 Others6.7 Consuming Habit and PreferenceContinue...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 @
Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market; Latest Developments, Growth & Demand Future Outlook 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16153

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16153

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Pneumatic Valves & Accessories: OverviewThe global valves & accessories market earns a foremost share in terms of revenues due to its applications in oil and gas industries. In the oil and gas industry, especially, most valve and accessories installed in the oil and gas industry presently are replacements of valves and accessories which are previously fixed. The scenario of valves has a significant influence on the markets growth lately. Though, applications of valves in the wastewater management industries and F&B (food and beverages) industries are leading to sustainable returns.Pneumatic valves help in providing the safe and precise controller of actuators in a compressed air system which is used in factory automation, medical applications, and packaging. Pressure relief valves control pressure at their inlet port by exhausting pressure to atmosphere. Pneumatic valves and accessories is a part of the large market for industrial machinery components. Pneumatic valve & accessories are used for control valve and isolation actuators. The pneumatic valve and accessories have wide usage in mining, oil and gas facilities, and power generation plants and, where clean air (less humid) is abundantly accessible for compression.Request sample copy of the report @Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market: SegmentationBy product type, Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market is segmented into:Sliding shaftRotating shaftBy end-user, Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market is segmented into:Chemicals and petrochemicalsPower generation and managementMiningWater and wastewater managementPneumatic Valves & Accessories Market: Segment OverviewBased on the types, Pneumatic Valves & Accessories is segmented into the sliding shaft and rotating shaft. Sliding shaft segment is the foremost segment among types of Pneumatic Valves & Accessories market over the projected period, increasing adaption of sliding shaft in the end-use industry like oil & gas and chemical and petrochemicals.On the basis of the end user, Pneumatic Valves & Accessories market is segmented into Chemicals and petrochemicals, Power generation and management, Mining and Water and wastewater management. Power generation and management is the major end-user segment during the forecast period.Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market: DriversThe global Pneumatic Valves & Accessories market is expected to witness sustained growth over the forecast period. This industry research report identifies the anticipated upsurge in demand for pneumatic valves & accessories from the oil and gas industry would be the major factors that will have a positive impression on the development of pneumatic valves & accessories market over the forecast period. The oil and gas industry uses pneumatic valves in numerous applications including the early stages of the abstraction of crude oil and gas till the refinery processes and in the associated pipelines. Increasing investment in the automotive, electronics, and semiconductors is also driving the pneumatic valves & accessories market.Pneumatic Valves & Accessories Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of the geographical market segment, it is segmented into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific region, Japan and the Middle East and Africa.As low-cost products are available like butterfly control valves and the V-notch ball is anticipated to drive the progress of the Global Pneumatic Valve & Accessories market.Asia-Pacific region is presently the market leader in terms of revenue in the global Pneumatic Valve & Accessories market. Vendors from the APEJ countries have started producing low-cost pneumatic valve and accessories, these low-cost valves quality is not on par with other products, various end users are adopting solutions as they are cost-effective.Request TOC of the report @Pneumatic Valves & Accessories: Key Market PlayersSome of the players operating in the Pneumatic Valves & Accessories market include Kitz, IMI plc, Emerson Electric, GE, Flowserve, GEMU, Rotork, Circor, VANATOME, Watts Water Technologies, Tyco International, Cameron, Crane Company, VELAN, and few other regional players.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:
Ride on Power Trowel Market; Latest Developments, Growth & Demand Future Outlook 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16156

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16156

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Ride on Power Trowel Market: OverviewRide on Power Trowel is mainly used for trowelling concrete surface through finishing and floating operations. Ride on power trowel is used in warehouses, housing, industrial buildings, airports and garages since heavy loads in these areas. As ride on power trowel is required by airports and huge warehouse construction as they have more requirements for the flat and smooth surfaces as they need to be protected and set-up requirements.Ride on power trowel machines consists of twin blades fluctuating in diameter between 36-60 inches. Ride on power trowel machines can also be chosen from overlapping & non-overlapping machines. Overlapping models have overlapped blades are suited for trowel finishing, which cannot be used for floating. Non-overlapping equipment has space between the blades so it can be used for mount float pans for primary finishing and later switch to trowel blades for final finishing. Smaller twin is of 36-inch diameter which delivers satisfactory coverage and also easier to move for small and medium sized floor slabs. Largest twin is of 60-inch diameter which is the finest ride on machines which ease the pitch control.Request sample copy of the report @Ride on Power Trowel Market: SegmentationBased on the type, Ride on Power Trowel market can be segmented into:Hydrostatic Ride on TrowelMechanical Ride on TrowelBased on the applications, Ride on Power Trowel market can be segmented into:Commercial BuildingsIndustrial BuildingsOthersRide on Power Trowel Market: Segment OverviewHydrostatic-Drive Ride on Trowels- Hydrostatic Series Trowels are the market leaders among types segment. These models can be easily operated with smooth running. The hydraulic drive adjusts the speed of the engine technique that looks like cars automatic broadcast. A computer regulator continuously monitors the speed of the engine which regulates the hydraulic burden at the similar time. The electro-hydraulic steering idea with two joysticks assists correct indicator and without fatigue working.Mechanical-Drive Ride on Trowels- Mechanical-Drive Ride on Trowels feature more built-in features and unique benefits that surpass servicer expectations like, durable gearboxes, TwinPitch controls, steering assist and constant-velocity joints.Ride on Power Trowel Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of the geographical market segment, ride on power trowel market is segmented into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific region, Japan and the Middle East and Africa.Among the aforementioned regions, APEJ will dominate the Ride on Power Trowel market over the forecast period. The countries such as India and Germany will be the key contributor to the growth of Ride on Power Trowel market. The presence of a huge population and automobiles industries to meet such a huge populations demand is the key factor for the growth of Ride on Power Trowel market in APEJ region.China is performing well in Ride on Power Trowel market such industry provides the necessary scope for growth of Ride on Power Trowel market. North America is presently the market leader in terms of volume in the global Ride on power trowel market in manufacturing. Japan is also a prominent market for Ride on Power Trowel market owing to the presence of automobiles industries that has been established to meet general masses consumption demand. Latin America is also expected to perform well in Ride on Power Trowel market such industry provides the necessary scope for growth of Ride on Power Trowel market.Request TOC of the report @Ride on Power Trowel Market: Key Market PlayersSome of the market players operating in the Ride on Power Trowel Market are Multiquip, Wacker Neuson, Allen Engineering, Altas Copco, Dragon, Parchem Construction, Bartell, Dynamic, MBW, Shenhua, Masterpac, Roadway and few other regional players. Manufacturers all over the world are escalating the product portfolio and increase the sales strategies and investing in research & development and also focusing on different strategies to maintain their market share in the global Ride on Power Trowel 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:
PVC Floor Global and United States Market Analysis, Trend, Growth and Forecast 2017-2022 | Research Report

PVC Floor

https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1295134

https://www.researchmoz.us/global-and-united-states-pvc-floor-in-depth-research-report-2017-2022-report.html/toc

https://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global and United States PVC Floor 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 PVC Floor industry.Major CompaniesLG Hausys (KR)Armstrong (NL)Gerflor (FR)Targett (FR)Polyflor(James Halstead) (UK)Bonie (US)Takiron (JP)HANWHA (KR)Forbo (CH)Dajulong (CN)Serfleks (TR)Mannington (US)Mohawk (including IVC) (US)M.J. International Co. Ltd. (CN)Nox (KR)GRABO (PL)Suzhou Huatai (CN)Taoshi (CN)Windmoeller flooring/Witex Flooring (CN)Yihua (CN)Tinsue (CN)Weilianshun (CN)BEIJING LITONG (CN)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCaliforniaTexasNew YorkOthersCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsPVC Floor Market, by StructureHomogenousHeterogeneousPVC Floor Market, by FormCoiled FloorSheet FloorPVC Floor Market, by Rub ProofnessGeneral TypeDurable TypePVC Floor Market, by Key ConsumersCommercialResidentialTable of ContentsGlobal and United States PVC Floor In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022Chapter One Global PVC Floor Market Overview1.1 Global PVC Floor Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20171.2 PVC Floor, by Structure 2012-20171.2.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Structure 2012-20171.2.2 Global PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Structure 2012-20171.2.3 Global PVC Floor Price by Structure 2012-20171.2.4 Homogenous1.2.5 Heterogeneous1.3 PVC Floor, by Form 2012-20171.3.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Form 2012-20171.3.2 Global PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Form 2012-20171.3.3 Global PVC Floor Price by Form 2012-20171.3.4 Coiled Floor1.3.5 Sheet Floor1.4 PVC Floor, by Rub Proofness 2012-20171.4.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Rub Proofness 2012-20171.4.2 Global PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Rub Proofness 2012-20171.4.3 Global PVC Floor Price by Rub Proofness 2012-20171.4.4 General Type1.4.5 Durable TypeGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Chapter Two United States PVC Floor Market Overview2.1 United States PVC Floor Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20172.2 PVC Floor, by Structure 2012-20172.2.1 United States PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Structure 2012-20172.2.2 United States PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Structure 2012-20172.2.3 United States PVC Floor Price by Structure 2012-20172.2.4 Homogenous2.2.5 Heterogeneous2.3 PVC Floor, by Form 2012-20172.3.1 United States PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Form 2012-20172.3.2 United States PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Form 2012-20172.3.3 United States PVC Floor Price by Form 2012-20172.3.4 Coiled Floor2.3.5 Sheet Floor2.4 PVC Floor, by Rub Proofness 2012-20172.4.1 United States PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Rub Proofness 2012-20172.4.2 United States PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Rub Proofness 2012-20172.4.3 United States PVC Floor Price by Rub Proofness 2012-20172.4.4 General Type2.4.5 Durable TypeChapter Three PVC Floor by Regions 2012-20173.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.2 Global PVC Floor Revenue Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.3 Global PVC Floor 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 PVC Floor by Companies 2012-20174.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20174.2 Global PVC Floor Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20174.3 Global Top Companies PVC Floor Key Product Model and Market Performance4.4 Global Top Companies PVC Floor Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Five United States PVC Floor by Companies 2012-20175.1 United States PVC Floor Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20175.2 United States PVC Floor Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20175.3 United States Top Companies PVC Floor Key Product Model and Market Performance5.4 United States Top Companies PVC Floor Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Six Global PVC Floor by Consumer 2012-20176.1 Global PVC Floor Sales Market Share by Consumer 2012-20176.2 Commercial6.3 Residential6.4 Consuming Habit and PreferenceContinue...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 @
Steering Columns System Market 2017-25 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals and Forecasts

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16183

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16183

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Global Steering Columns System Market: OverviewThe Steering Column System is a device which is mainly used to connect the whole mechanism and transfers the driver's response rotation through the steering wheel. The steering column system comprises a transferable housing which holds a collapsible revolving shaft. The steering column system is linked to the shaft of steering gear by a flexible point, which permits the position and the transmission of the driver is reduced from road shocks. Few steering columns consist of the shaft which is in between that runs at slanting angle, from the steering column to the gear. Some of the steering columns system manufacturers produce sensors which control the steering column that provides all the information to the control modules of an electric assisted or any steering systems.Request sample copy of the report @Global Steering Columns System Market: SegmentationBased on the Steering Systems type, Steering Columns System market can be segmented into:Manual Rack And Pinion Steering SystemManual Recirculating Ball & Nut Steering SystemManual Worm & Roller Steering SystemElectric Power Steering SystemHydraulic Power Steering SystemBased on the column types, Steering Columns System market can be segmented into:Active-Energy Absorbing Steering ColumnsNon-Adjustable Steering ColumnsPower Adjustable Steering ColumnsPower one touch Adjustability ColumnsRake Adjustable Steering ColumnsTouch Control Electronic Transmission Shifter Steering ColumnTilt-Adjustable Steering ColumnBased on the vehicle types, Steering Columns System market can be segmented into:Light Commercial VehiclesHeavy Commercial VehiclesPassenger CarsBased on the Pivot Alignment, Steering Columns System market can be segmented into:Lower pivot Tilt Steering ColumnLower Pivot Steering ColumnLower pivot Tilt and Telescopic Steering ColumnUpper Pivot Tilt & Telescope Steering ColumnGlobal Steering Columns System Market: Segment OverviewAmong steering types, electric power steering segment is anticipated to grow at rapid pace in the forecast period as the fuel efficiency and improving technology by electric power steering is the foremost driver for the segment. Almost all the passenger vehicles and cars have Electronic Power Steering Systems, which is driven by an electric motor which is not connected to the main engine and only operates when it is required.On the basis of vehicle types, the passenger cars segment expected to expand at relatively high CAGR during the forecast period, the segment is driven by increasing demand for power consumption vehicles. Moreover, commercial vehicles segment will witness high growth rate.Global Steering Columns System Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of the geographical market segment, it is segmented into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific region, Japan and the Middle East and Africa.In regional segments, Asia-Pacific is the leading market for the global steering columns system and is anticipated to continue its position during the forecast period. The expansion is mainly attributed to increasing of the automotive industry in developing nations such as India and China.Global Steering Columns System Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe Global Steering Columns System Market is expected to witness sustained growth over the forecast period. The growth of steering columns system market is driven as there is favorable growth in the automotive industry is a major factor which will boost the steering columns system market. Moreover, rising purchasing power of the consumers is also driving the steering columns system market. As the increasing vehicle production in all the regions around the world is also influencing the demand for steering columns system market.Huge capital and high research & development costs that are related to the production & development of steering columns system market are major restraints of the market.Request TOC of the report @Global Steering Columns System Market: Key PlayersSome of the players operating in the Steering Columns System includes Bosch, Nexteer automotive, Pailton Engineering Ltd, TRW Automotive, Kostal of America Inc., Denso Corporation, Continental AG, Delphi Automotive PLC, Schaeffler, Marimba Auto, LLC, NSK, Coram Group, Mando Corporation and COBO International and few other regional players. Manufacturers are investing in research & development and also focusing on different strategies to maintain their market share in the Global Steering Columns System 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:
Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Market Expected to Rise Steadily throughout 2017 to 2027

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4149

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-4149

Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems is a mature heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technology which simultaneously heat and cool area through extracting heat from an area which needs cooling and transfer heat to another area. Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems are installed with air conditioner inverter that adds a dc inverter which drives the control of compressor that modulates heat or cooling in the area. The compressor unit of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) are installed on the roof of the building, and heat & cool refrigerant are connected through piping connected to condition the building.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Market: DynamicsVariable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems is driven by the energy efficient source that saves up to more than 40% energy when compared to VAV electric coil and is a potential factor to the growth of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems market. Moreover, variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems incur a lower cost to provide heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. A key driver for variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system is its efficiency to control the units with a simple on and off the operation as well as its ability to provide a different level of heating and cooling to a different part of building with variation in motor speed and regulator in refrigerant flow. For the commercial purpose such as in offices, a variable refrigerant flow system is more appealing than a variable air volume (VAV) systems as the temperature can be controlled in each office thus adds as another potential factor to the growth of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems market. Moreover, if a variable refrigerant flow is installed in a smaller building, it can offer special benefit as compared to features in high-end building automation system owing to built-in controls offered by a variable refrigerant flow system with its ability to provide less energy consumption. Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system is well-suited applications in older buildings because it can be added on to or replace prevailing equipment in narrow space, where it is currently limited or no ductwork. Hotels have also been a big supporter of variable refrigerant flow systems as they can save the overall operational cost of the hotel owing to HVAC control restricted to particular rooms when needed. Aspects such as quieter operation in working of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems compared to traditional PTAC units adds a factor of growth, to the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems market.A challenging factor to the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system is the guidelines that are shared by ASHRAE to control the concentration limits of refrigerant. Thus time to time maintenance is needed. The leakage of refrigerant which is being piped around the building in larger variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system of 14-20 tons is potentially high and thus can restrain the growth of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems.Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Market: SegmentationBased on system type: Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems market is segmented intoHeat recovery systemHeat pumpBased on compressor units: Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems market is segmented intoAir cooled unitWater-cooled unitBased on end-user: Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems market is segmented intoCommercial (Hotels & restaurant)ResidentialTransportGlobal Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Market: Region Wise OutlookThe Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Japan holds a relatively higher market share in the global variable refrigerant flow system market due to a higher presence of the key manufacture of the VRF systems. Followed by Japan is Western Europe which has higher consumption of variable flow (VRF) systems for the commercial building owing to changing the climate in the region. Developed region of Japan and Europe are estimated to grow at a healthy CARG during the forecast period. The U.S. in North America is one of the growing markets in variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems. Currently, the U.S. market has major manufacturer products that are certified by AHRI. APEJ is estimated to expand at high CAGR of global variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems during the forecast period owing to increasing adoption in the buildings, offices as well as hospitals.Visit For TOC@Global Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Market: Prominent PlayersFew of the prominent players in the Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems market are as followsDaikin industries Ltd.Fujitsu LtdMitsubishi ElectricalJohnson Controls, Inc.Toshiba CorporationIngersoll Rand Plc.LG ElectronicsMidea GroupUnited Technologies CorporationLennox International Inc.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, ,
Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market : Sales Forecast , Pricing Forecast 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16189

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16189

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market: OverviewAn Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve is a valve which is operated electromechanically. An electric current controls the valve through a solenoid. Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve are the most frequently used control elements in aqueous as well as gaseous fluids. They are used in various industry verticals such as automotive, oil and gas, water treatment and so on. Their tasks are to shut off, release, dose, distribute or mix fluids. Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve can be controlled by passing an electric current through the solenoid, thus creating a magnetic field to open or close the plunger mechanism. They are primarily used as controlling devices in systems and motors where liquid and gas flow rate needs to be regulated. Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve are used in fluid power pneumatic and hydraulic systems, to control cylinders, fluid power motors or larger industrial valves. These Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valves perform various tasks including releasing, shutting-off, mixing or distributing fluids and so on. Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve offer fast and safe switching, high reliability, long service life, good medium compatibility of the materials used, low control power and compact design.Request sample copy of the report @Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market: Market DynamicsThe global market for Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve is booming due a significant rise in its applications and the usage across various industries. The critical industries for the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve market include Oil and Gas, Water Treatment, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals and so on.The other drivers in the global market of Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve are new control design, automation of the flow system and low power consumption. As the various industries or verticals in which they are used continue to grow, there arises a need for the improvement in the design structure of the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valves. This has also led to the derivation of valves that are low in the consumption of power. Another driving factor for the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve market has been the automation of the flow systems. Be it any industry, automation is on the rise. This automation of the flow systems will act as a catalyst in the market of Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve.The global Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve market will continue to grow with the advancement of new technologies. This has led to the manufacturing of valves with improved features and performance such as the micro-miniature valves, customized valves and pinch valves. Because of this there has been an increased demand for the fluid control needs. Therefore improvement in the technologies and providing more and more improved industry specific valves will trigger the demand of valves with better features.Another important driver for the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve has been the increasing government regulations on the industries such as Oil and Gas. The government regulations have prioritized the safety factors. Therefore there has been the improvement in the safety features of the valves such as detecting internal and external leakages. All the above factors will contribute in the growth of the global market of Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve.One of the challenge that lies in the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve market is the environmental conditions at its point of use. It can have serious effects on the overall efficiency of the control valve. Also the outdated control valves can pose a few problems including poor performance, noncompliance with current regulations and so on. A few more hurdles in the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve market are power failure issues, uneven pressure situations and wrong or uncontrolled voltages. An important challenge is also to setup an efficient logistics and supply system.Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market: SegmentationBased on the type of design, the Oil pressure control Solenoid valve market can be segmented as follows:2-way3-way4-way5-wayBased on the type of material, the Oil pressure control Solenoid valve market can be segmented as follows:AluminiumBrassStainless SteelPlasticBased on their usage in various industries, the Oil pressure control Solenoid valve market can be segmented as follows:Oil and GasRefiningChemical and PetrochemicalFood and BeveragePharmaceutical and BiotechnologyPower GenerationPulp and PaperMining and Ore ExtractionWater and Waste Water TreatmentIron and Steel ProductionOil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market: Segment OverviewThe Chemical and the Petrochemical vertical will continue to dominate the global Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve market.Also there has been an increasing influence of the selection of valve equipments that are used in the power generation plants.With the growing investments in Oil and Gas sector, the demand for the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve will continue to grow. This is because they find application right from the extraction of crude oil and gas till it reaches the end customers via refinery and oil terminals and depots.Also the global Oil Pressure Control Solenoid valve market will continue to boom because of the water and waste water treatment plants. The obvious reason behind this is that there will be an ever increasing demand for the supply of clean water.Request TOC of the report @Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market PlayersThe players in the Oil Pressure Control Solenoid Valve Market are as follows:Mitsubishi ElectricRotex AutomationSMC Corporation of AmericaDanfoss GroupParker Hannifin CorporationAIGNEPDropsABurkert CorporationASCOHAWE HydraulikBell Automatic Group Co.,LimitedZhejiang Yongsheng Instrumentation Co.,LtdHydraForceCLA-VALMagnetbau-Schramme GmbH & Co. KGAbout 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:
Powder Coating Market : Sales Forecast , Pricing Forecast 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16192

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/16192

www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Powder Coating Market: IntroductionA dry finishing process in which fine particles of paint are electro-statically charged and sprayed on a workpiece is known as Powder Coating Process. Once this is done, the workpiece is put into an oven at high temperatures so that it can flow and form a uniform layer of coating which is durable and environmentally safe. The coating finally obtained is of high quality and has attractive finish. Powder coating can be applied on various substrates such as metal, plastics, glass, and wood of which metal type accounts for over 90% of the overall use.Generally, six ingredients are used in the production of powder coating: resin, curing agents, additives, post additives, tint pigments and extenders. The powder may be thermoplastic or thermoset polymer in nature.Powder Coating possesses some unique properties. For instance, it is durable and abrasion, corrosion, chemicals and scratch resistant. It also meet the various requirements of end use industries  it can offer both high and low gloss. It offers a wide array of color selection and texture choices, such as for smooth surfaces, rough textures, etc. Powder coating can be very effective at hiding imperfections and providing matte finish. Powder Coating maximizes production as well as improving efficiency of coating while reducing the cost as coating that has been over spayed can be re-used and retrieved in comparison to liquid coating. Due to the eco- friendly nature of Powder Coating, when applied on a surface or equipment, it gives an attractive finish and is resistant to moisture, chemicals, ultra violet radiations and extreme weather conditions. Powder coating also reduces the risk of chipping, fading and wear and tear and is able to last for a longer period of time.Request sample copy of the report @There are many advantages of using Powder Coating instead of liquid coating. Some of these includeNo volatile organic Compounds (VOCs) are generated.They Produce Less wasteThey are Eco- FriendlyThey do not contain any solvents, thereby reducing the risk of fire and the hassle of disposing wastePowder can be recycled when applied in excess.Health risk for operator is reducedPowder Coating Market: Market DynamicsThe stringent government regulations on solvent based coatings with respect to emissions, air quality, toxicity controls and individual and industry associates/initiatives is expected to favor the growth of powder coating market during the forecasted period owing to its non-hazardous effects .Factors such as increasing consumption of consumer goods, increased spending on vehicle refinish surface coatings, etc. have been driving factors of the powder coatings market. Currently, the demand from domestic appliance and furniture industries has been driving the consumption of powder coatings due to superior finish and product durability characteristics. It is expected that increasing scope of application in construction & architecture, agricultural & construction equipment, transportation, etc. will fuel the growth of the Powder Coating Market in the forecasted period.However, high installation cost and non-conformance to thin layer coatings in major end use applications is considered to be a restraint for the Powder Coating Market.Powder Coating Market: Market SegmentationThe global Powder Coating market can be segmented on the basis of resin type into-ThermosetEpoxyPolyesterAcrylicFluoropolymersOthers (epoxy-polyester hybrid, etc.)ThermoplasticPolyvinyl Chloride (PVC)NylonPolyolefinPolyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF)Others (Polyamides, PEEK, etc.)The global Powder Coating market can be segmented on the basis of end use into:Construction & Agricultural EquipmentDomestic Appliances & Electrical GoodsTransportationAutomotiveAerospaceMarineHVAC SystemsMetal FurnitureOther Industrial EquipmentThe global Powder Coating market can be segmented on the basis of substrate used into:MetalPlasticWoodCeramicsPowder Coating Market: Regional OutlookThe ever increasing population, growing retail sector, hospitality sector and increased urbanization coupled with higher purchasing power of population in China, Brazil and India is expected to drive the demand for furniture and automobiles, which in turn, will fuel the consumption of Powder Coating, thereby driving the Powder Coating Market in the region.Increased demand for domestic appliances, such as washing machines, microwave ovens and freezer cabinets is expected to increase the use of Powder Coating in these applications in China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and Philippines. China is expected to be the growing market for Powder Coatings during the forecasted period.Latin America, Middle East countries and Europe are expected to be economically progressive regions having huge potential opportunities. Higher income of people along with a general increase in the consumption of automobiles has triggered the boom in the automobile market. It is expected that countries, such as Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will invite automobile coating companies to invest in the region and generate better revenue. Countries like Germany, Hungary, U.K. and Romania are expected to show an increase in demand for Powder Coating as various automobile producing companies are located in these countries. Support from regulatory bodies like REACHES and EPA to use powder coating over conventional materials will also help the growth of the Powder Coating market in the region.Mexico is expected to witness significant growth in Powder coatings Market as many companies have shifted their manufacturing operation to Mexico, thereby driving the Powder coating market in the region.Request TOC of the report @Powder Coating Market: Market ParticipantsSome of the examples of the market players operating in the global Powder Coating Market areAxalta Coating Systems,LLCThe Valspar Corporation.Akzo Nobel N.VAmerican Powder Coatings IncAllnex groupProcoatPPG Industries Inc.IFS CoatingsRPM International Inc.Midwest Industrial Coating Inc.Guangzhou Kinte Powder Coating Co. Ltd.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:
Lipolyzed Butter Fat Market: Technological Advancements, Evolving Industry Trends and Insights

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/lipolyzed-butter-fat-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4617

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Lipolyzed butter fat usually used in bakery and dairy products. It is a yellow creamy liquid with a typical enzymolysis milk fat odour. Lipolyzed butter fat is derived by breaking butter fat using microbial lipase enzyme in order to provide flavour to the dairy and bakery products. The use microbial lipase enzyme is essential in lipolyzed butter fat, therefore it is considered as halal. As a result high demand for lipolyzed fat containing food products in countries including GCC countries, Israel, etc.This, in turn, leads to relatively high growth of lipolyzed butter fat market in Middle East and Africa over the forecast period.The global lipolyzed butter fat market is expected to grow at a significant growth rate, attributed to increasing application of the compound in bakery and dairy market. The market in Asia-Pacific lipolyzed butter fat market is expected to register a relatively high revenue share over the forecast period followed by Europe lipolyzed butter fat market, attributed to increasing health consciousness among the consumers.Obtain Report Details @Global Lipolyzed Butter Fat Market: DynamicsMicroeconomic factors factor driving the global lipolyzed butter fat market include growing food and beverages industry and high demand for products such as dairy, bakery, etc. which have high demand across the globe particularly in regions such as North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. Approval for lipolyzed butter fat by the certified bodies such as Halal, Kosher, etc. leads to increasing demand for the product among the Muslim population.Companies manufacturing Lipolyzed butter fat products can leverage potential opportunities in regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, attributed to rapidly growing demand for low-fat food products, and the trend is expected to continue over the forecast period. Companies have a significant opportunity in the global lipolyzed butter fat market through collaboration with end-users i.e. food and beverages manufacturers.Global Lipolyzed Butter Fat Market: SegmentationThe global lipolyzed butter fat market is segmented on the basis of end-use and region. Among the end-use segments, dairy segment contributes for significant value share over the forecast period in global lipolyzed butter fat market, owing to high demand for the compound in products such as ice-cream, yogurt, and other frozen dairy products. Bakery segment is followed by dairy segment attributed to rapid growth the low fat bakery products including cakes, muffins, pizza, breads, etc.Obtain Sample Of Report @Global Lipolyzed Butter Fat Market: Regional OverviewOn the basis of geography, the global lipolyzed butter fat market is segmented into seven regions namely, North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific except Japan (APEJ), Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East & Africa and Japan. Among the regions, Asia-Pacific dominates the global lipolyzed butter fat market in terms of revenue contribution owing to the relatively high demand for lipolyzed butter fat from the food and beverages industry.Asia-Pacific is followed by North America, attributed to increasing health consciousness among consumers in the region. Western Europe lipolyzed butter fat market is expected to account for significant growth rate, attributed to high growth of low fat food products over the forecast period. Eastern Europe and Japan account for a relatively low-value share in the global lipolyzed butter fat market. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to represent a moderate opportunity in the global lipolyzed butter fat market, owing to the moderate economic as well as industrial growth in the region. Overall, the outlook for the global lipolyzed butter fat market is positive over the forecast period.Global Lipolyzed Butter Fat Market: Key PlayersSome of the players in the global lipolyzed butter fat market include Shanghai Fuxin Fine Chemical Co., Ltd.,Flavorjen group, Cargill Inc., and Dairyland Laboratories 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, type of product and applications.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.ContactFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Plant Based Beverages Market: Applications and Global Markets

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/plant-based-beverages-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4641

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Plant-based beverages are dairy alternatives made from plants such as potato, oat, coconut, almond, hemp, soy, and rice. The global plant-based beverages market is expected to grow at a significant growth rate, attributed to food and beverages industry across the globe over the forecast period.The Europe plant-based beverages market is expected to register a relatively high revenue share over the forecast period followed by North America plant-based beverages market, attributed to increasing demand for plant-based beverages in the retail as well as food service centres segment. Asia-Pacific is expected to account for relatively high volume share with a significant growth rate in the global plant-based beverages market over the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Global Plant Based Beverages Market: DynamicsThe major factor driving the industrial segment in global plant-based beverages market include increasing health consciousness among consumers and high demand for low-fat food and beverages across the globe. Growing food & beverages industry and medicinal benefits of plant-based beverages are also some of the important factors driving the global plant-based beverages market.Companies manufacturing plant based beverages products can leverage potential opportunities in regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, attributed to rapidly growing demand for food & beverages and low-fat food and beverages over the forecast period. The changing food habits and trying new and expensive food items by the consumers are another important factor trending the global plant-based beverages market.Global Plant Based Beverages Market: SegmentationThe global plant-based beverages market is segmented on the basis of product type, distribution channel, source, and region. On the basis of product type, a single segment is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market over the forecast period. The retail segment is expected to expand at a significant growth rate over the forecast period on the basis of a distribution channel. Among the source segments, a natural segment is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market. The natural segment is followed by organic segment and is expected to expand at a significant growth rate over the forecast period in global plant-based beverages market.Obtain Sample Of Report @Global Plant Based Beverages Market: Regional OverviewOn the basis of geography, the global plant-based beverages market is fragmented into seven regions namely, North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East & Africa and Japan. Among the regions, North America is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market in terms of revenue contribution owing to increasing health consciousness among consumers in the region.North America is followed by Western Europe in global plant-based beverages market, attributed to high demand for low-fat food and beverages across the region. APEJ plant-based beverages market is expected to expand at a significant growth rate, attributed to the high growth of plant-based products and beverages in the region over the forecast period. The Middle East & Africa is expected to represent a moderate opportunity in the global plant-based beverages market, owing to the moderate economic, agricultural, and industrial growth in the region. Overall, the outlook for the global plant-based beverages market is positive over the forecast period.Global Plant Based Beverages Market: Key PlayersSome of the players identified in the global plant-based beverages market include So Delicious Dairy Free, E.I. WhiteWave Services, Inc., Blue Diamond Growers, Pacific Foods of Oregon, Inc., Dream Beverage, Inc., Califia Farms LP, The Coca-Cola Company, Sunrich Naturals, Chia Star, Inc., and Graindrops LLC.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.ContactFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Trifold Packaging Market: Worldwide Industry Analysis and New Market Opportunities Explored

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/trifold-packaging-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3591

www.futuremarketinsights.com

The global packaging market is driven by an enormous number of packaging innovations undertaken by manufacturers to sustain in the highly competitive market. Trifold packaging is a result of such innovative product development activities. Trifold packaging provides the product an all-round visibility which is not possible using a one piece packaging.A trifold package is hinged in 2 places to form a triangular base. Trifold packaging is one of the unique forms of packaging which helps in merchandising the product by shelving it or hanging it on a wall. It is mainly suitable for products which need to stay in vertical position. In trifold packaging, the location where the product has to be stored is important as it lays its effect on the stability of the product. Trifold packaging is extensively used in retail stores and supermarkets to hang the product and allowing more versatility.Trifold Packaging: Market DynamicsTrifold packaging is preferred, by manufacturers as it increases the product visibility by incorporating the products shape and hence contributing to marketing and brand identity of the product. This is one of the key factor driving the global trifold packaging market. The trifold packaging also enhances the product flexibility which is also fuelling the growth of the global trifold packaging market.Obtain Report Details @Factor restraining the growth of the global trifold packaging market is the high cost of the packaging as compared to other types of packaging due to the requirement of more plastic material as compared to standard packages. Government regulations that ban the use of plastic is also a restraining factor for the global trifold packaging market.Manufacturers are reluctant on incorporating trifold packaging in their product packaging line. Moreover, a larger mold is required for manufacturing trifold packaging due to their increased size. Since a large amount of plastic is used for manufacturing, increasing emphasis on the use of bioplastics is a key trend prevailing in the global trifold packaging market. Sustainable packaging solutions is also a key focus of the manufacturers making trifold packaging.Trifold Packaging: Market SegmentationGlobal trifold packaging market is segmented on the basis of raw material, end use, and geography. On the basis of raw material, the global trifold packaging market is segmented into PVC, PP, PET, and polystyrene. PVC is the most extensively used raw material for trifold packaging. On the basis of end use, the global trifold packaging market is segmented into Food & Beverages, Electronics, consumer goods, healthcare, and others. In the food & beverage segment, the trifold packaging is mainly employed for storing eggs, and packaging nutraceuticals. In healthcare, the trifold packaging is used for packaging medical devices and in electronics, for circuit board packaging.Obtain Sample Of Report @Trifold Packaging Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of geography, the global trifold packaging market is segmented into Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. North America is leading the global trifold packaging market followed by Asia Pacific region. The boom in the healthcare sector of developing economy like India is anticipated to boost the trifold packaging market of the Asia Pacific region. Latin America is expected to exhibit moderate growth over the forecast period owing to an increased market penetration of retail companies. The demand for Trifold packaging is anticipated to show sluggish growth due to the economic downturn in the leading European countries.Trifold Packaging Market: Key playersKey players of the global trifold packaging market are Transparent Container Inc., Berkeley Sourcing Group, Panic Plastics Inc., Smurfit Kappa, and Plastic Ingenuity.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.ContactFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Author Virginia Sollars Believes The Need For Kindness Extends Beyond The Holiday Season

Author Virginia Sollars

http://www.virginiasollars.net

The Holidays are the time of year when we collectively attempt to be a bit more forgiving and little less judgmental perhaps. However the Holiday season is not the only time of year for kind words and good deeds. Judging from the headlines we see day after day, it might be important for all of us to stop and reflect on the importance of kindness, not only during the Holidays but all year long. While some might believe kindness is a weakness, it is instead a sign of real courage, demonstrating that we respect and honor each other, regardless of station in life or status. Virginia Sollars, author of 'And Some Will Triumph', issued a statement that is both timeless in content and urgent in regards to its core message."A little bit of kindness goes a long way - it can make someones day," Sollars stated. "A smile, or a friendly hello might bring a smile to someones face and make them feel as if the world is not a lonely place. Helping an elder across the street, or complimenting them on how well they look might make their day. Remember, it may be difficult for them to do things we take for granted. Do you have a neighbor that can use a hand? It may just take fifteen minutes of your time to find out, and the feeling of helping someone can increase your own feelings of self worth. It can make you feel powerful. I always feel better when Ive helped someone. It gets me out of my own head and problems for a while. I use to work with a friend who would take all her old blankets and search for the homeless. Imagine their surprise when she handed them something to keep them warm, how her kindness helped them."The full statement is available at her website.Sollars' book, 'And Some Will Triumph', relates the journey of Elizabeth, a compassionate nurse who comes to California from New York with her teenage daughter to work at the fictional Raine Correctional Facility. Elizabeth finds herself interacting with some of societys most troubled and challenging inmates and shows how she must at times fight the system to give the best care to her patients. Elizabeth tells the stories of both the psychiatric inmates as well as the nurses who have problems in their lives as well. Since the book is based on my professional experience, it is an insiders look into the minds of psychiatric inmates revealing their secrets, regrets, frustrations and hopes and how they cope with their life in jail. But my book is more than just the story. It explains the many mental health disorders in such a way that people without a medical background can understand, points out the broken mental health system and describes the reasons why the mentally ill are incarcerated.""I believe my book has great potential for a television series or a movie," Sollars said, "My book is very informative, it is written in such a way that everyone will finally understand what is means to be burdened with a psychiatric disorder, how the thought process is so different from ours and how it sometimes leads to involvement with law enforcement. My book is so different from any undertaking that has been taken before, its potential is great and I think that people will be amazed at what I have to say. I just need the right people to believe in me to get the word out. I know my book can make a difference. "Sollars' book has received rave reviews from readers. Kirkus Reviews said the book is . a remarkable timeline of the treatment of mental illness in the past 40 years, and its a triumphant account of her boldness as a mother, nurse, and woman. At a time when mental health is in the forefront of conversations about our health care system, her story is one of hope."One reader stated, "Absolutely the best book Ive read in years, uncensored look into correctional mental health, patients, inmates and the professionals who deal with some of societys most troubled criminals, their day to day struggles all interwoven within a gripping story of murder and suspense. A must read!" Another said, "Awesome story! While the story keeps you turning the pages to see what happens next, the real plight of the mental health patients in a correctional setting is heartbreaking.Virginia Sollars is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at virginiasollars@yahoo.com. 'And Some Will Triumph' is available at online retailers. More information is available at her website.Virginia Frusteri Sollars was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and became a registered nurse in 1980, working as a psychiatric nurse for most of her career. She worked in the jail system for twenty-six years, caring for and treating the mentally ill. She continues to advocate for the mentally ill though her presentations and radio shows advising people of the plight of the mentally ill.PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Status, Analysis and Forecast 2022

QYResearchReports

https://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1359166&type=S

Qyresearchreports include new market research report "South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System market 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 South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System market 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 free sample copy of this report @The major players in Asia Pacific market includeHitit Computer Services A.S.Radixx International, Inc.Bravo Passenger SolutionsHexaware Technologies Ltd.Intelisys Aviation SystemsSITA NVUnisys Corp.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 South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System market so that they can take timely, useful decisions. The report is a repository of information on the Aviation Passenger Service System market.The report also scrutinizes the macro-fundamentals such as the recent-most international and domestic policies affecting the dynamics of the South East Asia and Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System market. 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 Contents1 Industry Overview1.1 Aviation Passenger Service System Market Overview1.1.1 Aviation Passenger Service System Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2012-2017)1.2.1 Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Market Status and Outlook1.3 Classification of Aviation Passenger Service System by Product1.3.1 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Revenue (Million USD) and Growth (%) Comparison by Product (2012-2022)1.3.2 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Revenue (Million USD) Market Share (%) by Product in 20161.4 Aviation Passenger Service System Market by End Users/Application2 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) by Players (2012-2017)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) Profiles and Key Data3.1 Hitit Computer Services A.S.3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Hitit Computer Services A.S. Aviation Passenger Service System Revenue (Million USD) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Radixx International, Inc.3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Radixx International, Inc. Aviation Passenger Service System Revenue (Million USD) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments4 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size by Product and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size by Product (2012-2017)4.2 Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Aviation Passenger Service System in Future4.4 Top Consumer / End Users of Aviation Passenger Service System5 Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Development Status and Outlook5.1 Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (2012-2017)5.2 Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size and Market Share by Players (2012-2017)5.3 Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size by Application (2012-2017)List of Tables and FiguresFigure Asia Pacific Market Size (Million USD) Status and Outlook 2012-2022Table Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) Split by ProductTable Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) by Application (2016-2022)Figure Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Table Asia Pacific Market Aviation Passenger Service System Revenue (Million USD) Comparison by Regions 2012-2022Figure Asia Pacific Aviation Passenger Service System Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)Figure Australia Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)Figure Korea Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)Figure Japan Aviation Passenger Service System Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)About Us:QYResearchReports.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
Blood Coagulants Market of ME&A Segment to Reach CAGR of 9.5% by 2023 with key vendors: Shire, SOBI, Octapharma, and CSL Limited, Pfizer Inc., Bayer AG, Novo Nordisk AS

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2743

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/blood-coagulants-market-2743

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/2743

Blood Coagulant Market is expected to grow at the CAGR of 9.5% during the forecast period 2017-2023. As per a study published in Blood Coagulation Fibrinolysis journal in 2016, Yaounde Hemophilia Treatment Center (HTC) of Cameroon multiple cases of hemophilia and von willebrand disease (VWD) were registered.Get Sample Report @Blood Coagulant Market of Middle East & Africas growth is majorly attributed to increasing prevalence of the bleeding disorders, rising funding, healthcare insurance coverage, and awareness programs for bleeding disorders. Coagulation is the procedure through which blood changes from a fluid to a gel, framing a blood coagulation. Coagulation also reffered as clotting. It is a natural process occurs to heal a lesion/wound/cut and stop the bleeding. In the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, bleeding disorders have become a huge problem due to limited screening, ignorance of diseases, and poor access to treatment.According to the Annual Global Survey of World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH), in 2014 the total population of Egypt was 86,895,099 out of which 5,246 people were living with hemophilia, 513 were living with von willebrand disease, and 1,123 had bleeding disorders. It is also reported that 4201 cases of hemophilia A were registered and among them 37% patients were under 4 years. A research study published in Medicine journal in 2017 stated that hemophilia A is the most common type of hemophilia in Saudi Arabia and dominant in male: 1: 5000 to 10,000. Whereas, prevalence rate of hemophilia B: 1: 34,500 male patients.Market Segments:On the basis of drug class which comprises of coagulation factor which is further sub-segmented into plasma derived and recombinant coagulation factor; vitamin K analogues, fibrinogen analogues and others. UAE is the largest market for blood coagulant drugs in Middle East and Africas market of blood coagulating drugs closely followed by Egypt. Middle East and Africa blood coagulants market has been segmented. clinical indications; market is segmented into accidents, surgery, hemophilia and others.Key Findings:MEA blood coagulants market for hemophilia segment was estimated to be USD31.55 million in 2016UAE is the fastest growing region in the MEA market and projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.1% during forecast periodHemophilia segment dominates the market with nearly 45.5% share of the MEA marketMEA blood coagulation market is projected to reach about USD141.68 million by 2023Excess Full Report @Regional Analysis of Middle East and Africa Blood Coagulants Market:Another market that has witnessed good growth rates is Saudi Arabia, because of the greater expenditure on health by the local government and the rise in per capita income of the people. Noteworthy markets in Africa include South Africa and Algeria. The demand for these products have given rise to many biotechnological firms especially in India. The rest of Africa market is however the fastest growing with a huge unmet medical needs.The market for blood coagulants favors organizations with solid innovative research and hello there tech in-house abilities. The market mirrors an oligopolistic nature with a couple of players ruling the market.Study Aims Middle East and Africa Blood Coagulants Market:To provide detail analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 6 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Middle East and Africa blood coagulants market. Insights about factors affecting the market growthOverview of key players and their strategic profiling in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the marketTrack and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments globally. Important people for the market of blood coagulants Blood coagulants are manufacturers, Blood coagulants suppliers, Private research laboratories, Research and development (R&D) companies, Market research and consulting service providers, Government research laboratories, Contract manufacturing organizationsHuge Companies Participated for Middle East and Africa Blood Coagulants Market: Shire (Republic of Ireland), SOBI (Sweden), Octapharma (Switzerland), and CSL Limited (Australia), Pfizer Inc. (U.S.), Bayer AG (Germany), Novo Nordisk AS (Dernmark).List of Tables:Table 1 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 20Table 2 Middle East & Africa Coagulation Factor Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 21Table 3 Middle East & Africa Coagulation Factor Market By Countries, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 22Table 4 Middle East & Africa Recombinant Coagulation Factor Market By Countries,2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 23Table 5 Middle East & Africa Plasma Derived Coagulation Factor Market By Countries,2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 24Table 6 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market By Indication, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 26Table 7 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market For Haemophilia By Country,2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 27Table 8 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market For Surgery By Country,2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 28Table 9 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market For Other Bleeding Disorders By Country,2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 29Table 10 Middle East & Africa Blood Coagulants Market, By Country, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 31Table 11 Saudi Arabia Blood Coagulants Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 32Table 12 Saudi Arabia Coagulation Factor Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 32Table 13 Saudi Arabia Blood Coagulants Market By Indication, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 33Table 14 United Arab Emirates Blood Coagulants Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 34Table 15 United Arab Emirates Coagulation Factor Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 34Table 16 United Arab Emirates Blood Coagulants Market By Indication, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 35Table 17 Qatar Blood Coagulants Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 36Table 18 Qatar Coagulation Factor Market By Type, 2014 To 2023 (USD Million) 36Get Discount for this Report @At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Diffractive Optical Elements  Emerging Markets in Developing Countries 2018

https://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1045084&type=S

https://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-diffractive-optical-elements-sales-market-report-2017.htm/toc

http://www.qyresearchreports.com

Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Market Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The global Diffractive Optical Elements market has been deeply evaluated in this publication with the help of both primary and secondary research and useful inputs provided by industry experts. The analysts who have prepared the publication have been among the best in the lot with sound understanding about almost all vital aspects of the market. The publication has come out as a detailed guideline for industry players to explore hidden prospects and take advantage of the best opportunities in the market. Players could also use the information presented in the publication to plan the best strategies that will help them to secure a strong position in the market.Get Free PDF Brochure For More Technical Insights@By segregating the global Diffractive Optical Elements market into different segments, the analysts have offered crucial information that could help players to gain a competitive edge over their toughest opponents. Each segment studied in the publication has been meticulously evaluated with market figures to go by. This could help readers to tap into unexplored regions or other categories of segments and ensure a continuing success in the market. Besides segmentation, the publication has offered information on factors detaining market growth, backing them up with opportunities to counter the challenges about to show face in the near future.The analysts have also shed light on key aspects of the vendor landscape while profiling some of the leading companies operating in the global Diffractive Optical Elements market. Starting from the nature of the current and future competitive scenarios of the market, the publication has foreseen the future plans of leading companies to gain a strong foothold in the industry. This could help readers to stay cautioned about any surprising changes in the vendor landscape of the market beforehand. Furthermore, readers could use the information to build extraordinary strategies to strengthen their product portfolio and give a tough competition in the market.Table of ContentsGlobal Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Market Report 20171 Diffractive Optical Elements Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Diffractive Optical Elements1.2 Classification of Diffractive Optical Elements by Product Category1.2.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Beam Shapers1.2.4 Beam Splitters1.2.5 Diffusers/ Homogenizers1.3 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Biomedical Devices1.3.3 Laser Material Processing1.4 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market by Region1.4.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Status and Prospect (2012-2022)Access the full Report TOC in Detail@2 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Diffractive Optical Elements (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Diffractive Optical Elements Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Diffractive Optical Elements (Volume and Value) by Region3 United States Diffractive Optical Elements (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Players3.3 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Application4 China Diffractive Optical Elements (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China Diffractive Optical Elements Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Players4.3 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.4 China Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Application5 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by Players5.3 Europe Diffractive Optical Elements Sales Volume and Market Share by TypeQYResearchReports.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
Asia-Pacific Skin Cancer Market on Track to Rise at 8.8% CAGR during 2017-2023

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1173

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/skin-cancer-market-1173

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/1173

Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer, which arise due to uncontrolled growth of abnormal skin cells. It occurs when skin cells are damaged by unrepaired DNA or genetic defects that lead the uncontrolled growth of cells in the skin. Over 100 types of cancer are found across the globe but skin cancer is the most common form of cancer, which accounts for at least 30% of total cancer cases. The prevalence of skin cancer is increasing owing to depleting ozone level and increasing solar UV radiation entering the Earth's surface. According to the WHO, it is estimated that a 10% decrease in the ozone level is likely to result in an additional 300,000 non-melanoma and 4,500 melanoma skin cancer cases. Asia Pacific skin cancer market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.8% during the forecasted period.Get a Sample Report @There are three major types of cancer: basal cell skin cancer (BCC), squamous-cell skin cancer (SCC) and melanoma. The basal cell skin cancer is the most common type of cancer. The major cause of the skin cancer is overexposure to harmful radiation and HPV infections, which increases the risk of skin cancer. The major driving factor for the growth of the market is increasing the prevalence of skin cancer. Furthermore, extensive R&D pipelines and increasing usage of combination therapies have fueled the growth of the market. On another hand, stringent regulatory guidelines, side effects associated with the treatment and long approval time for the drugs may hamper the growth of the market over the review period.Competitive Analysis:Some of the key players in the market: F. Hoffmann-la Roche Ltd. (Switzerland), Novartis International AG (Switzerland), Sun Pharma Industries Ltd. (India), Elekta AB (Sweden), Varian Medical Systems Inc. (US), Cannabis Science Inc. (US), Cellceutix Corp. (US), LEO Pharma A/S (Denmark), Moberg Pharma AB (Sweden), Mylan Pharmaceutical Inc. (US), Oncothyreon Inc. (US), Eli Lilly and Co. (US), Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (US), Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (Germany), Aqua Pharmaceuticals LLC (US), Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc (Canada), Meda AB (US), iCAD Inc. (Sweden), and Merck & Co. Inc. (US).Regional AnalysisOn the regional basis, Asia Pacific market is segmented into Japan, India, China, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and the Rest of Asia Pacific.Order Single User License Copy of 80 Premium Pages is Available @Asia Pacific is the fastest growing skin cancer market. Japan, Australia, and China are the major contributor to the market growth. The incidence of skin cancer per 100,000 population is 20-25 cases in Japan, 11-12 cases in China. About 80% of the cases are basal cell carcinoma (BCC), 16% squamous cell carcinoma, and 4% are melanoma.Continuously increasing the prevalence of skin cancer in Japan is driving the growth of this region. Furthermore, increasing government support for research and continuous development in technology is an important driving factor for the growth of the Asia Pacific market.Brief TOCIntroductionResearch MethodologyMarket DynamicsMarket Factor AnalysisAsia-Pacific Skin Cancer Market, By TypeAsia-Pacific Skin Cancer Market, By TreatmentAsia-Pacific Skin Cancer Market, By End UserAsia-Pacific Skin Cancer Market, By RegionCompetitive LandscapeCompany ProfileAsk to Expert @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Off-road Vehicle Engines 2017 Global Market Expected to Reach USD 21900 million and Forecast to 2022

Off-road Vehicle Engines 2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2468408-global-off-road-vehicl-engines-market-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/2468408-global-off-road-vehicl-engines-market-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=2468408

WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Off-road Vehicle Engines 2017 Global Market Expected to Reach USD 21900 million and Forecast to 2022.The Off-road Vehicl Engines industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Off-road Vehicl Engines market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of 0.64% from 20800 million $ in 2013 to 21200 million $ in 2016, The analysts believe that in the next few years, Off-road Vehicl Engines market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2021 , The market size of the Off-road Vehicl Engines will reach 21900 million $.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThis 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.Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: type segment, 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.Sections:-Section 1: FreeDefinitionSection (2 3): 1200 USDManufacturer DetailCumminsCaterpillarMANYuchaiKubotaVolvo PentaFPTDeutzYanmarDeereWeichai PowerKunming Yunnei PowerMitsubishi Heavy Industries Engine & TurbochargerLombardiniIsuzuQuanchaiContinueAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsSection 1 Off-road Vehicl Engines Product DefinitionSection 2 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Manufacturer Share and Market Overview2.1 Global Manufacturer Off-road Vehicl Engines Shipments2.2 Global Manufacturer Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Revenue2.3 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market OverviewSection 3 Manufacturer Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.1 Cummins Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.1.1 Cummins Off-road Vehicl Engines Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.1.2 Cummins Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Distribution by Region3.1.3 Cummins Interview Record3.1.4 Cummins Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Profile3.1.5 Cummins Off-road Vehicl Engines Product Specification3.2 Caterpillar Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.2.1 Caterpillar Off-road Vehicl Engines Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.2.2 Caterpillar Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Distribution by Region3.2.3 Interview Record3.2.4 Caterpillar Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Overview3.2.5 Caterpillar Off-road Vehicl Engines Product Specification3.3 MAN Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.3.1 MAN Off-road Vehicl Engines Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.3.2 MAN Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Distribution by Region3.3.3 Interview Record3.3.4 MAN Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Overview3.3.5 MAN Off-road Vehicl Engines Product Specification3.4 Yuchai Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.5 Kubota Off-road Vehicl Engines Business Introduction3.6 Volvo Penta Off-road Vehicl Engines Business IntroductionSection 4 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Region Level)4.1 North America Country4.1.1 United States Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.1.2 Canada Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.2 South America Country4.2.1 South America Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3 Asia Country4.3.1 China Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.2 Japan Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.3 India Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.4 Korea Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4 Europe Country4.4.1 Germany Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.2 UK Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.3 France Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.4 Italy Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.5 Europe Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5 Other Country and Region4.5.1 Middle East Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5.2 Africa Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5.3 GCC Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.6 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Region Level) Analysis 2013-20164.7 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Region Level) AnalysisSection 5 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Product Type Level)5.1 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Product Type Level) Market Size 2013-20165.2 Different Off-road Vehicl Engines Product Type Price 2013-20165.3 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Product Type Level) AnalysisSection 6 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Industry Level)6.1 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Industry Level) Market Size 2013-20166.2 Different Industry Price 2013-20166.3 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Industry Level) AnalysisSection 7 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Channel Level)7.1 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Channel Level) Sales Volume and Share 2013-20167.2 Global Off-road Vehicl Engines Market Segmentation (Channel Level) AnalysisContinue.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.
Explosive growth on Global Brass Wires Market, Trends, Analysis by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, chain structure, competitive landscape, new projects focusing by key players

https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=175274

https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=175274

https://www.researchnreports.com/checkout?id=175274

https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=175274

www.researchnreports.com

The Report added on Brass Wires Market added by DecisionDatabases.com to its huge database. This research study is segmented on the bases of applications, technology, geography and types. The Report provides a detailed Brass Wires Industry overview along with the analysis of industry's gross margin, cost structure, consumption value and sale price. The leading companies of the Brass Wires Market, manufacturers and distributors are profiled in the report along with the latest Industry development current and future trends.The report has been gathered using the principal and subordinate research methodologies. Both these methods are directed towards cooperating accurate and meticulous data concerning the market dynamics, historical events, and the current market landscape. Additionally, the report also includes a SWOT analysis that concludes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats impacting the segments of the overall market.Request a sample @:Companies Profiled in this report includesRIVADOSSI TRAFILERIE SRL, FITCO METAL WORKS S.A., PRECISION BRASS WIRE MESH FACTORY, HEBEI GENERAL METAL NETTING CO.,LTD, Wintwire, United Wire Industries, Accurate Wire, Bedra edm, Amin Metal Industries, HUEI CHERNG ENTERPRISES, Yinan Copper.Get Reasonable Discount on This Report @:The drifts and inclinations of this market were considered and it demonstrates that there was an illustrious strategic direction observed. By the grasping market foundation and using the determined standards, methodologies, and inclinations of other driving markets for references, market data was understood. The present development and improvement patterns of this Brass Wires market have also been plotted in this study. The competitive scenario section of the report shields the crucial players and throws light on the policies being adopted by them for better perception into the market.Get Complete Report @:Objective to Access the Report:A detailed segmentation of the market has been conducted to make it possible for readers to study the market in a much more detailed manner. Charts, graphs, statistics, and tables have been included wherever required to present the information in a clear manner. The Global Brass Wires Market is a highly fragmented, niche market with the presence of a limited number of vendors. Providers in the market compete based on pricing, innovation, service, reputation, distribution, and promotion. On the basis of geography, the global Brass Wires market is divided into North America, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia. The research report observes that North America will be a key regional market in the overall market.Inquiry before buying @:Table of ContentsGlobal Brass Wires Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1 Global Brass Wires 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 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,
Mead In Europe Market 2017 Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022

Mead In Europe Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2468303-europe-mead-market-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/2468303-europe-mead-market-report-2017

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=2468303

WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Mead In Europe Market 2017 Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022.The Mead industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Mead market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of (Growth Rate X%) from (2013 Market size XXXX) million $ in 2013 to (2016 Market size XXXX) million $ in 2016, The analysts believe that in the next few years, Mead market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2021 , The market size of the Mead will reach (2021 Market size XXXX) million $.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThis 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.Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: type segment, 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.Sections:-Section 1: FreeDefinitionSection (2 3): 1200 USDManufacturer DetailSaint-Roch (Italy)Giorgio Poeta (Italy)Campo Giardino (Italy)Duir Idromele (Italy)Idromele Chimere (Italy)Rookery (UK)St.Aidans Winery (UK)Lancashire Mead Company (UK)Lyme Bay Winery (UK)Friary Liqueurs (UK)Liqueurs Fisselier (France)Zymurgorium (UK)New Quay Honey Farm (UK)Avalon Vineyard (UK)Cwm Deri (UK)London Honey Co. (UK)Section (4): 500 USDRegionGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalyNetherlandsSpainContinueAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsSection 1 Mead Product DefinitionSection 2 Europe Mead Market Manufacturer Share and Market Overview2.1 Europe Manufacturer Mead Shipments2.2 Europe Manufacturer Mead Business Revenue2.3 Europe Mead Market OverviewSection 3 Manufacturers Who Have Mead Business in Europe Introduction3.1 Saint-Roch (Italy) Mead Business Introduction3.1.1 Saint-Roch (Italy) Mead Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.1.2 Saint-Roch (Italy) Mead Business Distribution by Region3.1.3 Saint-Roch (Italy) Interview Record3.1.4 Saint-Roch (Italy) Mead Business Profile3.1.5 Saint-Roch (Italy) Mead Product Specification3.2 Giorgio Poeta (Italy) Mead Business Introduction3.2.1 Giorgio Poeta (Italy) Mead Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.2.2 Giorgio Poeta (Italy) Mead Business Distribution by Region3.2.3 Interview Record3.2.4 Giorgio Poeta (Italy) Mead Business Overview3.2.5 Giorgio Poeta (Italy) Mead Product Specification3.3 Campo Giardino (Italy) Mead Business Introduction3.3.1 Campo Giardino (Italy) Mead Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.3.2 Campo Giardino (Italy) Mead Business Distribution by Region3.3.3 Interview Record3.3.4 Campo Giardino (Italy) Mead Business Overview3.3.5 Campo Giardino (Italy) Mead Product Specification3.4 Duir Idromele (Italy) Mead Business Introduction3.5 Idromele Chimere (Italy) Mead Business Introduction3.6 Rookery (UK) Mead Business IntroductionSection 4 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Region Level)4.1 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Region Level) Market Size (Volume) 2013-20164.2 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Region Level) Market Size (Value) 2013-2016Section 5 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Product Type Level)5.1 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Product Type Level) Market Size 2013-20165.2 Different Mead Product Type Price 2013-20165.3 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Product Type Level) AnalysisSection 6 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Industry Level)6.1 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Industry Level) Market Size 2013-20166.2 Different Industry Price 2013-20166.3 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Industry Level) AnalysisSection 7 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Channel Level)7.1 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Channel Level) Sales Volume and Share 2013-20167.2 Europe Mead Market Segmentation (Channel Level) AnalysisContinue.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.
Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market Research Report by Manufacturers, Trend, Industry Growth 2017 to 2022

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=62855

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=62855

http://qyreports.com/enquiry-before-buying?report-id=62855

http://qyreports.com/payment-form?report-id=62855

www.qyreports.com

The automotive exhaust aftertreatment systems market is estimated to be 141,000 Thousand units in 2017, and is projected to reach 206,000 Thousand units by 2022, growing at a CAGR of +8% from 2017 to 2022. The automotive exhaust aftertreatment systems market has witnessed considerable growth in countries such as the U.S., China, India, and Mexico, owing to the increasing vehicle production and stringent emission norms.Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market offers a clear understanding of the subject matter. The report has been hoarded using primary and secondary research methodologies. Both these methods are envisioned towards collaborating accurate and exact data relating the market dynamics, historical events, and the current market scenario. Moreover, the report also includes a SWOT analysis that determines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats impacting the segments of the overall market.Companies Profiled In This Report:Continental, Delphi Automotive, Tenneco, Cummins, Donaldson Company, John Matthey, Clean Diesel Technologies, ESW Group, DCL International, Nett Technologies, Tata AutoComp Systems, Amminex Emissions,ACS Industries,Dinex GroupAccess Sample Copy:By Regions, this report covers North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, IndiaThe report provides information on the diverse factors impacting the Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market. These includes the trends, drivers, and restraints. The significant growth opportunities in the market are also been studied and the ways these opportunities will raise the market growth have also been encapsulated.The competitive landscape of the market has been examined on the basis of market share analysis of key players. Detailed market data about these factors is estimated to help vendors take strategic decisions that can strengthen their positions in the market and lead to more effective and larger stake in Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market. Pricing and cost teardown analysis for products and service offerings of key players has also been undertaken for the study.Access to Remarkable Discount & Benefits on This Report:In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report. The recent developments that took place in Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market and their impact on the future growth of the market have also been presented through this study.For More Information:Table of Contents:Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1: Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems 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: Automotive Exhaust Aftertreatment Systems Market ForecastIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Access This Report Now:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
MRFR Released Autism Disorder and Treatment Market Is Expected to Reach a Millions of U.S Dollars by Forecast to 2022

Market Research Future

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1605

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=1605

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/1605

Due to the substantial rate of cases that are detected the population group that the cure could be directed towards is vast. However the demand levels can be characterized as high for autism related therapy procedures and medications. Market Research Future, a firm which specializes in market reports related to the healthcare sector among others, published in its recent report on Global Autism Disorder and Treatment Market Research Report- Forecast To 2022 that the market is anticipated to grow with a stellar CAGR percentage during the forecast period. Despite manifold developments in the fields of medical sciences and technology, the cure for autism is still under development. The immense level of demand for this particular segment has spurred action from government bodies by way of initiatives to develop treatment methods for the autism spectrum.Get Exclusive Sample Copy @Autism Disorder and Treatment Market Latest Updates:Dec 2017 Australias Zelda Therapeutics Ltd has teamed up with Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) to study the pharmacology of cannabinoids, with a focus on the potential for treating autism.Nov 2017 Scientists have performed a successful test of a possible new drug in a mouse model of an autism disorder. The candidate drug, called NitroSynapsin, largely corrected electrical, behavioral and brain abnormalities in the mice. NitroSynapsin is intended to restore an electrical signaling imbalance in the brain found in virtually all forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Nov 2017 Researchers at the School of Medicine and at UCLA have received a $9.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to study the ways that many genes associated with autism spectrum disorder may converge to affect a smaller number of molecular pathways or cellular processes responsible for the condition.Mar 2017 In a new study, Juergen Hahn and Daniel Howsmon of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and colleagues present a method to identify a child as being on the autism spectrum based on concentrations of specific substances found in a blood sample. The team is also hoping to study whether treatments could be used to alter the concentrations of FOCM and TS products and, if so, whether this could impact symptoms of autism spectrum disorder.June 2017 In a small randomized Phase I/II clinical trial (SAT1), researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have stated that a 100-year-old drug called suramin, originally developed to treat African sleeping sickness, was safely administered to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who subsequently displayed measurable, but transient, improvement in core symptoms of autism.March 2017 Servier, Frances largest independent pharma company, has entered into a partnership to accelerate the development of a medicine that could become the first treatment for the core symptoms of autism. It has signed an exclusive agreement with Marseille-based Neurochlore to develop and market bumetanide in pediatric autism in Europe. The development plan includes three Phase III trials with an oral liquid form designed for children.Autism disorder affects a significant percentage of population. It can be characterized by a collection of multidimensional neurodevelopment disabilities characterized by social, behavioral and communication challenges. Private bodies have also invested heavily in the treatment methods for discovering possible cures for autism through establishing various grants. Increased level of research and awareness drives by patients and prominent public figures has created more traction for this market. The market may find itself restricted due to lack of proper diagnostics to detect the disease, slow pace of R & D as compared to the number of cases being discovered.Global Autism Disorder and Treatment Market - Competitive Analysis:With the entry of new industry players in the global autism disorder and treatment segment, a trend of solid, volume-driven growth has been observed in the market with the addition of new and advanced products. Companies are aiming to capture & solidify their share of the market segment, by competing and experimenting with various advantage points. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies.Some of the key players in this market are GlaxoSmithKline plc (UK), Pfizer Inc. (US), Eli Lilly and Company (US). A few of the other players in the market are Allergan (Ireland), Merck & CO Inc. (US), Consern Pharma Private Limited (India).Order a Premium 90 Pages Report Enabled with Respective Tables and Figures @The Global Autism Disorder and Treatment Industry is segmented into four main geographic regions namely Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa. Globally North America is the largest market for Autism disorder and Treatment. The North American market for Autism disorder and Treatment is expected to grow at an exceptional CAGR% and is expected to reach Million dollar growth by the end of the forecasted period. This is primarily due to growing technology in the healthcare industry which is resulting in providing new effective drugs for treatments of patients. Europe is the second-largest market for Autism disorder and Treatment which is expected to grow at an affirmative CAGR%. Whereas Asia pacific is expected to be a growing market for Autism disorder and Treatment market and expected to grow at a rapid rate.Global Autism Disorder and Treatment Market  Segments:Global Autism disorder and Treatment market has been segmented on the basis of types, treatment types, drugs and regions:On The Basis Of Types: Autistic Disorder, Asperger Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder & Others.On The Basis Of Type of Treatment: Neurofeedback, Auditory Integration Training, Chelation Therapy, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Facilitated Communication and Others.On The Basis of Drugs: SSRIS, Anti-Convulsants, Stimulants  Ritalin, Anti-Psychotic, Risperidone and Others.On The Basis Of Region: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and ROW.Global Autism Disorder and Treatment Market - Regional AnalysisMajor Table of Content for Autism Disorder and Treatment Market:1 Report Prologue2 Market Introductions2.1 Introduction2.2 Scope of Study2.3 Research Objective2.4 Assumptions & Limitations2.4.1 Assumptions2.4.2 Limitations3 Research Methodologies3.1 Research Process3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary ResearchT.O.C ContinuedAsk Questions 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
Botulism Illness Market Global Trends and Forecast by Types, Applications, Major Regions, Dynamics, Development Status and Outlook 2017-2027

Market Research Future

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/822

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/822

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/822

The Global Botulism Illness Market report explores the expert analysis of Botulism Illness Industry on the basis of shares, revenue, demand and Forecasts period of 2017 to 2027. The major driving factors considered for the global botulism illness market are the availability of proper treatment of botulism illness, huge spending on research and development activities, clean environment. In addition to this, the government is taking proper initiative and working on the hygiene factor in many countries.The Global Botulism Illness Market report is an expert comprehensive research data from the well know key players as MerckMillipore, Sigma Aldrich, Fisher Scientific, Otsuka Chemical Co Ltd, MerckMillipore, Loba Chemie, Lenntech, Arkema SA,Bann Quimica, Chemtura Corporation, Behn Meyer Solutia Incorporated, Emerald Performance Materials, Lanxess AG, Eastman Chemicals Co and others.Exclusive Sample Copy @Rising awareness about the care and treatment are easily available in the North America and European region. The report for Botulism Illness 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.Major Regional Analysis of Botulism Illness Market:Americas: North America, US, Canada and Latin America.Europe: Western Europe, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, U.K, Rest of Western Europe and Eastern Europe.Asia Pacific: Asia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, Rest of Asia Pacific.In North America, the US is one of the major markets for the treatment of botulism illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has been looking forward to the proper treatment and care. Rising awareness and proper diagnose has meet the expectation of the North America, particularly in the US region. Followed by North America, European medical and healthcare associations along with WHO has implemented the proper treatment for botulism illness.Get Discount @Major TOC for Botulism Illness Market:Research methodologyMarket dynamicsMarket factor analysisGlobal Botulism Illness market, LandscapeGlobal Botulism Illness market, by DynamicsGlobal Botulism Illness market, by End usersGlobal Botulism Illness market, by RegionCompetitive landscapeCompany profileConclusionContinuedAsk Questions 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 .
Antifouling Coatings Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2023 Globally

www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/antifouling-coatings-market

www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/antifouling-coatings-market/report-sample

www.psmarketresearch.com

Antifouling coatings market is growing with the expansion of global trade through sea routes, the number of container ships, bulk carrier ships and cargo ships manufactured have increased, which in turn widens the scope of the antifouling coatings market in Asia-Pacific. The key countries contributing to the antifouling coating industry in Asia-Pacific region are China, South Korea and Japan.Antifouling coatings are coatings or paints that are applied to the hull of a boat, yacht or ship to prevent corrosion of metallic hulls and to decrease the expansion of organisms on the water submerged surfaces. The performance and durability of vessel can be improved by using antifouling coatings.To Browse Full Report Visit Here:Growth of organisms affects the performance and profitability of the ships or yachts in many ways, including decrease in the maximum speed of the ships and severe damage overtime by some marine growth such as shipworms. Also, harmful marine organisms may get transported by ships to other areas.In modern time, antifouling coatings are formulated by using special chemicals which impede the growth of barnacles, algae, and marine organisms. These special chemicals include organotin compounds, copper, and some other biocides. The commercial ships commonly use an anti-fouling coating that includes synthetic chemical compounds that have harmful effects on the environment. The prohibition on the use of these antifouling coatings led to the exploration for biologically inspired antifouling strategies which may provide with the natural and biomimetic antifouling surface coatings.Companies are investing a lot in research and development to expand the efficiency of antifouling coatings, which in turn is expected to increase the demand from end-users. Technology advancement worldwide is one of the trends expected to add to the growth of the global antifouling coatings market. Increased demand of oil and gas, increasing population and urbanization are drivers for growth of antifouling coatings market. These are also widely used for the protection of structural infrastructure and machinery in rigs.Request For Sample Pages:Opportunities in the market lie with the growth in oil and gas industry. Upcoming technology and advancement in antifouling coatings industry owing to environmental focus amongst ship owners and shipyard clients has led to the search for biologically inspired antifouling strategies which would impact the future of antifouling coating market development.Some of the key players in the industry include PPG Industries Inc., Jotun, Sherwin-Williams Company, AkzoNobel N.V., BASF SE, Hempel, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Chugoku Marine Paints LTD, Advance Marine Coatings AS, Kansai Paint and Nippon Paint Holdings Co. Ltd among othersP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact Us347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Technology Aspects on of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Market CAGR of +24% by 2022 with Advanced Technologies, Competitive Analysis, Regional Outlook & Key Players like Uber, Didi, Lyft, GETT, Hailo,

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=52342

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=52342

http://qyreports.com/enquiry-before-buying?report-id=52342

www.qyreports.com

Our analysts forecast the Global Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Market to grow at a CAGR of +24% during the period.Mobility as a Service Market is growing rapidly mainly due to the high adoption of online Mobility Services. According to a recent study report published by the QYReports, Globally, the market for Mobility as a Service has increased its market growth in recent years and is expected to grow at a rapid pace during the forecast period. The key driving forces, restraining factors, limitations, prominent trends, opportunities, and future prospects of the global market have also taken into consideration in this market study. Increasing online mobility service is a key driver for Mobility as a Service market.Get Sample Report @The report is presented in a clear and concise manner so that readers can understand the market structure and dynamics effectively. Recent trends and developments in the global Mobility as a Service market have been analyzed. Opportunities leading to the growth of the market have been analyzed and stated. The report focuses on this global market, and answers some of the most critical questions stakeholders are currently facing across the globe.Key Players Profiled in this Report:Uber, Didi, Lyft, GETT, Hailo, Addison Lee, Ola Cabs, Meru, BlaBla Car, Mytaxi, Grab Taxi, Kako Taxi, Hailo, Sidecar, Flywheel, VIA, Curs, Ingogo, Chaffeur-Prive, Lecab, Easy, CareemRegions Covered:United States, North America, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and RoW.Leading players in the Global Mobility as a Service Market are profiled in the report to understand their role in the market and their upcoming strategies. The manufacturing base of each key player and their share in the market for each product and application segment of the gem quality diamonds market have been described in the report. Various marketing channels and strategies likely to bear fruit in the 2017-2022 period have been described in the report to help readers formulate winning strategies.Get Reasonable Discount @The research report tries to understand the innovative approaches taken by vendors in the global Mobility as a Service market to offer product differentiation through Porters five forces analysis. It also points out the ways in which these companies can strengthen their stand in the market and increase their revenues in the coming years. Ongoing technological advancements and the unstoppable penetration of Internet in the remote corners of the world are also responsible for the remarkable growth of the global market.Some of the factors posing a challenge and restricting the growth of the Global Mobility as a Service Market include changing regulatory compliances, dynamic business activities, and volatile economic conditions. Lack of knowledge about energy consumption and capacity limitation will be other factors inhibiting the growth of this market to the fullest potential.For more Information:Table of ContentsGlobal Mobility as a Service Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1 Global Mobility as a Service 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 AnalysisThis market is also explained to the clients as a holistic snapshot of a competitive landscape within the given competitive forecast period. A comparative analysis of regional players and segmentations, which helps readers get a better understanding of the areas and resources with better understanding.About QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Technology Aspects on English Learning Software Market Future Growth 2022 with Advanced Technologies, Competitive Analysis, Regional Outlook & Key Players like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Fluenz

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=52091

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=52091

http://qyreports.com/enquiry-before-buying?report-id=52091

www.qyreports.com

One of the primary drivers for this market is the rise in the number of English language learners. Increased number of student enrollment for graduate schools to English speaking countries considered to be the primary contributor to the growth of this market. In an attempt to excel in these tests students are compelled to enroll in private English language training (ELT) institutions. One of the foremost factors driving the expansion of this market is the budding market English Learning Software. In the higher education segment, universities in the US, Australia, the UK, and Canada require applicants to pass language tests such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and International English Language Testing System (IELTS).Get Sample Report @It explains the key market drivers, trends, restraints and opportunities to give a precise data which is required and expected. It also analyzes how such aspects affect the market existence globally helping make a wider and better choice of market establishment. The English Learning Software markets growth and developments are studied and a detailed overview is been given. With help of this report, clients can understand the market strategies and make right decisions.Key Vendors:Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Fluenz, Rocket Language, Babbel, Simon&Schuster, Transparent Language, Living Language Platinum, English Live, Exceller, FluentlQ, Instant Immersion, Learn it Now, Merit Software, Side by Side, Wordsmart, PCMag, Softonic, Cafe English, Speed Learning Languages.Regions Covered:United States, North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and RoW.Get Reasonable Discount on this Report:The Global English Learning Software Market is gaining pace and businesses have started understanding the benefits of analytics in the present day highly dynamic business environment. The market has witnessed several important developments over the past few years, with mounting volumes of business data and the shift from traditional data analysis platforms to self-service business analytics being some of the most prominent ones.The main goal for the dissemination of this information is to give a descriptive analysis of how the trends could potentially affect the upcoming future of English Learning Software market during the forecast period. This markets competitive manufactures and the upcoming manufactures are studied with their detailed research. Revenue, production, price, market share of these players is mentioned with precise information.The market intelligence tries to understand the innovative approaches by vendors in the global market to offer product differentiation through Porters five forces analysis. It likewise points out the means in which these organizations can fortify their stand in the English Learning Software market and boost their incomes in future.For More Information:Table of ContentsGlobal English Learning Software Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1 Global English Learning Software Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global English Learning Software 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 English Learning Software 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 AnalysisFor a stronger and more stable business outlook, the report on the English Learning Software market carries key projections that can be practically studied. The report highlights major technological developments and changing trends adopted by key companies over a period of time. To achieve this, the research segments and sub-segments this market by using many criteria. The growth predictions for each of these segments are included in this market report.About QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Global Online Dating Services Market Detail insight to 2022 Market Analysis- Size, Share, Sales, Growth, Forecast, Segment, Application Analysis

http://www.qyreports.com/request-sample/?report-id=52351

http://www.qyreports.com/ask-for-discount/?report-id=52351

www.qyreports.com

This report studies the global Online Dating Services market, analyzes and researches the Online Dating Services 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: Match, PlentyofFish, OkCupid, Zoosk, eHarmony, JiaYuan, BaiHe, ZheNai, YouYuan, NetEaseMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers: United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.For Sample copy of this report :This report delves into the complete scenario of the global Online Dating Services market. During the research, it has found that the driving force behind this market is the consumers demand for the Online Dating Services products. The growing consumers demand is pushing companies to come up with efficient products which in turn is aiding the growth of the Online Dating Services industry.The measures, strategies, applications, services are prominently used to make the global Online Dating Services occurrence in the market. This market is attracting high demands from the regions United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia . These regions are anticipated to be the higher producer of global Online Dating Services market. The report also covers raw materials, equipments, marketing channels, industry developments, and its proposals.Avail Discount on this report :The reports have also focused on the markets restraint facts which can actually slow down the demand of global Online Dating Services market and hamper the regional economy. Whereas, the opportunity for its future growth is also mentioned for the customers so that they can easily understand the market scenario.In the end, the report includes global Online Dating Services new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, investment return analysis, and development analysis. The report also presents a round-up of vulnerabilities which companies operating in the market must avoid in order to enjoy sustainable growth through the course of the forecast period.For technical data and manufacturing plants analysis, the report analyzes leading suppliers on capacity, commercial production date, manufacturing plants distribution, R&D Status, technology sources, and raw materials sources. In this report, applications, delivery mode, region, technology, service type, solutions, and company size is explained in detail for better understanding of this global market.About QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market Global Market Trend, Share, Profit, Growth and Key Manufacturers Analysis Report

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=64408

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=64408

http://qyreports.com/enquiry-before-buying?report-id=64408

http://qyreports.com/payment-form?report-id=64408

www.qyreports.com

Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market offers a clear understanding of the subject matter. The report has been hoarded using primary and secondary research methodologies. Both these methods are envisioned towards collaborating accurate and exact data relating the market dynamics, historical events, and the current market scenario. Moreover, the report also includes a SWOT analysis that determines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats impacting the segments of the overall market.Companies Profiled In This Report:Aviation Technology, Cel, Emprise, Test-Fuchs Gmbh, Avtron Aerospace, Hainzl Industriesysteme Gmbh, Airline, A&P Hydraulics, Blum-NovotestAccess Sample Copy:By Regions, this report covers North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, IndiaThe report provides information on the diverse factors impacting the Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market. These includes the trends, drivers, and restraints. The significant growth opportunities in the market are also been studied and the ways these opportunities will raise the market growth have also been encapsulated.The competitive landscape of the market has been examined on the basis of market share analysis of key players. Detailed market data about these factors is estimated to help vendors take strategic decisions that can strengthen their positions in the market and lead to more effective and larger stake in Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market. Pricing and cost teardown analysis for products and service offerings of key players has also been undertaken for the study.Access to Remarkable Discount & Benefits on This Report:In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report. The recent developments that took place in Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market and their impact on the future growth of the market have also been presented through this study.For More Information:Table of Contents:Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1: Universal Hydraulic Test Stand 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: Universal Hydraulic Test Stand Market ForecastIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Access This Report Now:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Diamond Tools Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2017 To 2022, Focusing On Top Key Vendors: Asahi Diamond Industrial, Husqvarna AB, Tyrolit, Ehwa, Hilti, ICS, Blount.

http://www.qyreports.com/request-sample/?report-id=63464

http://www.qyreports.com/request-sample/?report-id=63464

www.qyreports.com

The report, titled Global Diamond Tools Market. The report on the global market offers an elaborate assessment of key drivers and restraints, emerging trends, notable opportunities, prominent business use cases, and recent technological advancements. The research presents a thorough insight into the share and size of various types of lucrative avenues, and competitive landscape.Top Key Vendors: Asahi Diamond Industrial, Husqvarna AB, Tyrolit, Ehwa, Hilti, ICS, Blount, Bosun, Saint Gobain, Disco, Hebei XMF Tools, Gangyan Diamond, Reliable Diamond Tool, Makita, Bosch, Shibuya Company, Syntec Diamond Tools, OX Group International.Get Sample Copy of this Report @The report offers a fundamental overview of the Global Diamond Tools Market. It includes definitions, product specifications, classification, and applications of the global market. The study also comprises an industry chain analysis and an industry overview of the major regions and their status in the global market.The next section of the report analyzes the development plans and policies, manufacturing process, and product cost structure of the Diamond Tools Market. The report specifically focuses on the leading regions and manufacturers engaged in the production of consumer devices along with the analysis of the competitive landscape, development trends, and prime regions status of development. The report also contains information such as company profiles, product specification and picture, production capacity, cost, revenue, and gross profit margin.Know more about this Premium Report @The report profiles the key market players which are dominant in the global Diamond Tools 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.On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Diamond Tools Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.Additionally, the report also includes a Porters five forces analysis, which examines the threat of the new entrants, the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, and the intensity of the competitive rivalry. The report also discusses the business and marketing strategies likely to be implemented by these in the coming few years.In the concluding divisions of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the  Diamond Tools Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Diamond Tools Market Research Report 2017-2022Chapter 1 Diamond Tools Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2017-2022)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2017-2022)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 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 Market Forecast (2017-2022)Chapter 13 AppendixAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market Ready With Future SWOT Analysis 2023

Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/586

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/586

The Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market Research Report provides detailed analysis of the key regional market status of the Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Industry.Healthcare is one of the biggest sector to collect revenue in America. Human resource software plays an important role in healthcare sector. Human resource department operates various functions like recruitment, salary hikes, vacation leaves, bonus, training, management and payment benefits management. HR software offer various benefits like document control and security. North America has the highest share of revenue in Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market. Human resource professionals face many problems in their attempt to deliver the superior-quality health care to citizen. These is because of lack of budget, high rates of turnover and low morale of health personnel.Get Sample Copy @In North America, Canada and USA are the most important countries to contribute the Healthcare HR software market. Because of lot of funding these country are leading in the HR software market. Canadian Healthcare system is publicly funded and divided into several groups like provincial and territorial governments, the federal government, physicians, nurses and allied health care professionals. The need to reduce the labour costs in hospital, increase in operational efficiency are the major factors for the growth of this market in America. North America share the total 65% of the global healthcare software market.Key Players for Human Resources Software MarketIBM Corporation (U.S.), Infor, Inc. (U.S.), BambooHR (US), Oracle Corporation (U.S.), Kronos, Inc. (U.S.), McKesson Corporation (U.S.), Gusto (US), Halogen Software Inc(Canada), SumTotal Systems Inc. (US), Zenefits Z2 (US), and Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (U.S.).SegmentationHR software market has been segmented on the basis of administration software which are payroll, time and attendance, benefits management and others. On the basis of type of software like Recruiting, software-as-a-service (SaaS), core HR and others. By Organizations Type, Medium Businesses, Large Enterprises, Small Business. By user end, they are Pharmaceuticals, hospital and laboratories and other. By countries it is segmented as Canada, USA and Rest of America.American Healthcare Human Resources Software Market, by CountriesNorth America is the largest market for the healthcare human resource software market. This is because of development in healthcare sector. Among this Canada and USA are the two most important countries for healthcare human resource software market. USA has the highest share in North America followed by Canada.Ask Question to Expert atTable Of Contents1 INTRODUCTION1.1 DEFINITION1.2 SCOPE OF STUDY1.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE1.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS & LIMITATIONS1.2.2.1 ASSUMPTIONS1.2.2.2 LIMITATIONS1.3 MARKET STRUCTURE:2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2.1 RESEARCH PROCESS:2.2 PRIMARY RESEARCH2.3 SECONDARY RESEARCH:3 MARKET DYNAMICS3.1 DRIVERS3.2 RESTRAINTS3.3 OPPORTUNITIES3.4 MACROECONOMIC INDICATORS4 MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS4.1 PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL4.2 BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS4.3 BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS4.4 THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS4.5 THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES4.6 INTENSITY OF RIVALRYAbout 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
New Research on Commercial Building Automation Market: Studying Influencing Factors and top Companies in the Market

Commercial Building Automation, Commercial Building Automation market, Commercial Building Automation market research

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=52675

http://qyreports.com/payment-form?report-id=52675

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=52675

www.qyreports.com

One of the major factors driving the market for commercial building automation is increasing demand from key end user such as retail, healthcare, offices and hospitality sector among others. According to UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), buildings contribute to about one third of the total greenhouse gas emissions, mainly due to the usage of fossil fuels. In addition, a slow but gradual evolution of IoT sensors based technology has resulted in the emergence of solutions which are significantly more intelligent and have the ability to analyze granular aspects of buildings such as space utilization, gauging occupant's comfort levels and similar derive business intelligence.Commercial Building Automation market research is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.Get Sample Copy of this Report @:Companies Profiled in this Report includes, Johnson Controls, Honeywell International, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Circon Systems, Delta Controls, Invensys Building Systems, Novar Controls, Solidyne, Trane, Tyco International, YamatakeThis report covers Commercial Building Automation market from the bottom line, starting from its definition. Later, it segments the market on various criteria to give a depth of understanding on the various product types and pricing structures and applications. Each and every segment is examined carefully by factoring in sales, revenue and market size in order to understand the potential of growth and scope.This study estimates the factors that are boosting the development of the Global Commercial Building Automation market. On the basis of key principles segments such as end-users, application, product, technology, and region are surveyed comprehensively of the global Commercial Building Automation market. The thorough examination has been done in this report to bring about the share and position of global market. In the report, the complete analysis of the growth revenue is offered. The report studies the different product segments and end-user applications segment of the market.Access Complete Report @:Reasons for Access Commercial Building Automation Market Research Report:This report on Global Commercial Building Automation market is a detailed research study that helps provides answers and pertinent questions with respect to the emerging trends and growth opportunities in this particular industry. It helps identify each of the prominent barriers to growth, apart from identifying the trends within various application segments of the global market for Commercial Building Automation. Collecting historical and recent data from various authentic resources, and depending on all the factors and trends, the report presents a figurative estimate of the future market condition, along with compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Prepared by an expert team, the report on the global market highlights recent developments, key trends, and new project developments in the market. As leading companies take efforts to maintain their dominance in the global Commercial Building Automation market, the right way to do so is by adopting new technologies and strategies.Get Discount on this Premium Report now @:Table of ContentsGlobal Commercial Building Automation Market Research ReportChapter 1 Commercial Building Automation Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Global Trend AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Market ForecastAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Textile Acoustic Panel Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 Saint-Gobain, G&S Acoustics, RPG,Abstracta and Others

Textile Acoustic Panel Market

https://goo.gl/zL87JD

http://www.marketreportscompany.com/report.php?report=manufacturing-and-construction/global-textile-acoustic-panel-market-report-for-period-2017-till-2023-/36121

https://goo.gl/zL87JD

Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market report emphasizes on detailed analysis of companies and manufacturers like Saint-Gobain, G&S Acoustics, RPG,Abstracta and Others.This market study includes data about global market statistics, market share, company performances, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc. The Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market report provides detailed segmentation of Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market based on product type, application, end user and regional segmentation. The regional segment is further bifurcated on country level.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market 2017 @Top Manufactures of Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market:ArmstrongSaint-GobainG&S AcousticsRPGAbstractaTexaaAcoustics First?VicousticEkousCMS DanskinAcousticpearlsSonata AcousticAcoustical SurfacesPrimexCarpet ConceptSontextSoundsorbaSlalomGotessonsOthers(Note: We can profile additional players without extra charges)Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market: Key Product Type:Ceiling TypeWall TypeOthersKey Application Types for Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market:Residential BuildingsCommercial BuildingsothersThe Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. The report also provides Porter analysis, PESTEL analysis and market attractiveness which helps to better understand the market scenario. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities occurred in current and past few years. The Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors. The report also covers import/export data across all major regions covered in this report. Moreover, import/export data across any particular country as per requirement.The report finally provides detailed research report conclusion, which provides summary of entire report and vital suggestions from analysts particular to Textile Acoustic Panel Market which will help existing as well as new players who wish to enter this market.Enquire before Buying @ put actual website like for exampleTable of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Ceiling Type1.1.2.2 Wall Type1.1.2.3 Others1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Residential Buildings1.1.3.2 Commercial Buildings1.2 Global and Regional Market Size.......................Continue (Global Textile Acoustic Panel Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Market Reports Company:Market Reports Company delivers high quality precise research studies which include data about top manufacturers and market survey of various industries. We also work as a consulting company and publisher of market research reports. We are specialized in providing customized reports according to clients needs and requirements which ultimately help them grow in industry and beat their competition.What We Offer:Customized Reports: We provide customized research reports on your demand.Region Specific Study: We have resources all over the world so, if you are Interested in region specific study please contact us.How we work: Perfect blend of primary and secondary research to provide best result.Expertise: Team of Industry experienced research associates and experts, primary and secondary sources, 24*7 customer care service and post-sale support.Contact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website: marketreportscompany.comEmail: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Subscriber Identification Module Market: know about Basic Influencing Factors Driving the growth in International market in New Research Report

Subscriber Identification Module, Subscriber Identification Module market, Subscriber Identification Module market research

http://qyreports.com/request-sample?report-id=55073

http://qyreports.com/payment-form?report-id=55073

http://qyreports.com/ask-for-discount?report-id=55073

www.qyreports.com

Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) is an IC, which is used to store the IMSI number. The IMSI number is used to identify and authenticate subscribers on telephonic devices. The SIM cards consist of memory capacities such as 32KB, 64KB, 128KB, and 256KB. SIM cards are always used in Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) phones, code-division multiple access (CDMA) phones, LTE handsets, and satellite phones.Subscriber Identification Module market research is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.Get Sample Copy of this Report @:Companies Profiled in this Report includes, Gemalto, G&D, Oberthur, Morpho (Safran), VALID, Eastcompeace, Wuhan Tianyu, DATANG, KONA I, CPI Card Group, Watchdata, HENGBAO, XH Smartcard (Zhuhai)SIM cards are necessary in all cell phones for connecting to any particular network. The flash memory integrated in SIM cards also works as a memory card for storing the information such as phonebook contacts, messages, and others. Most of the currently available SIM cards come with the capacity of 32 or 64 KB of storage for holding the personal identity information, and other data. With the incorporation of multimedia functions in mobile phones, the need for SIM cards with more memory storage capacity is increasing.This study estimates the factors that are boosting the development of the Global Subscriber Identification Module market. On the basis of key principles segments such as end-users, application, product, technology, and region are surveyed comprehensively of the global Subscriber Identification Module market. The thorough examination has been done in this report to bring about the share and position of global market. The report studies the different product segments and end-user applications segment of the market.Access Complete Report @:Reasons for Access Subscriber Identification Module Market Research Report:This report on Global Subscriber Identification Module market is a detailed research study that helps provides answers and pertinent questions with respect to the emerging trends and growth opportunities in this particular industry. It helps identify each of the prominent barriers to growth, apart from identifying the trends within various application segments of the global market for Subscriber Identification Module. Collecting historical and recent data from various authentic resources, and depending on all the factors and trends, the report presents a figurative estimate of the future market condition, along with compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Prepared by an expert team, the report on the global market highlights recent developments, key trends, and new project developments in the market. As leading companies take efforts to maintain their dominance in the global Subscriber Identification Module market, the right way to do so is by adopting new technologies and strategies.Get Discount on this Premium Report now @:Table of ContentsGlobal Subscriber Identification Module Market Research ReportChapter 1 Subscriber Identification Module Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Global Trend AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Market ForecastAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Medical Supplies Market - Global Industry Insights, Size, Growth and Demand, 2023

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/medical-supplies-market

https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/medical-supplies-market/report-sample

https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Medical supplies are the medical instrument and device supplies, that are used in various medical centers, medical institutions and hospitals. Various medical instruments and devices include thermometers, glucose meters, blood processing devices, wound care instruments and accessories, and monitoring systems. The demand for the medical supplies is experiencing an increasing trend since the market players are introducing technically advanced medical supplies that can aid medical professionals to handle their patients in a better way. The outpatient facilities and hospitals are adopting strict policies towards infection- prevention for better care of the patient, which is driving the growth of the market.Explore Report at:Based on application, the global medical supplies market is segmented into urology, ophthalmology, radiology, anesthesia, sterilization, cardiology, wound care and others. Anesthesia was the largest application in 2016 due to increase in the number of surgical procedures performed and rise in respiratory diseases.Global medical supplies market is expected to grow during the forecast period due to the growing population, increase in number of hospitals, rise in the frequency of communicable diseases, and aging population. Also, increase in medical conditions such as diabetes and renal disease, rise in surgeries, rise in hospital acquired infections and increase in awareness are driving the growth of the global medical supplies market. The increase in number of hospital acquired infection cases have significant positive impact on the growth of the global medical supplies market. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every 10 people in developing countries and 7 in developed countries acquire at least one infection from hospital, of every 100-hospitalized patient, at any given point of time.Explore Report Sample at:Geographically, North America holds the major market share of the global medical supplies market due to increasing aging population and presence of key market players in this region. The U.S. has almost 11,000 medical supplies companies and is home to the medical supplies market leaders such as Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Boston Scientific Corporation and Baxter International. It imports medical supplies from Mexico, Ireland and China and exports to Canada and Japan. However, Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing medical supplies market followed by Europe because of the rise in aging population, increase in the cases of various diseases, rising medical tourism industry, and improvement in the infrastructure of healthcare industry.Global medical supplies market is highly competitive and major players are acquiring smaller players to increase their market share. The key players in the global market are Boston Scientific, Medtronic plc, Baxter International Inc., Johnson & Johnson. Other players in this market are Cardinal Health Inc., Halyard Health Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, B. Braun, Becton, Dickinson and Company, and 3M Company.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market ResearchManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016US/ Canada Toll-Free: 1-888-778-7886Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
On Jan. 20, the day of Donald Trumps presidential inauguration, protests broke out across Washington, D.C. Thousands of people flocked to our nations capital to announce to the world that they could not abide the man elected president, nor the things he stands for.

The protests were almost uniformly nonviolent, and D.C. police corroborate that view, but they also arrested over 200 people that day on riot-related charges following a scuffle. The Daily Beast reports that the first six of those arrested have been declared not guilty by the jury.

The federal jury somehow came to this conclusion after a trial that literally involved the prosecution bringing up YouTube conspiracy theory videos and footage edited by James OKeefe as evidence, not to mention a star witness who was not even present at the protest itself. Other highlights included an attempt to characterize a photojournalists monopod as a dangerous baton and an attempt to question why an oncology nurse volunteering as a medic at the protest would need medical gauze.

The real crown jewel of the trial came when Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff was reprimanded by the judge after she told the jury that reasonable doubt shouldnt influence their decision. (Paste would like to note here that if you are serving on a jury, reasonable doubt should, in fact, influence your decision).

The trial began in November with Kerkhoff saying that the United States had not indicted these six defendants because they had anything like evidence of them breaking windows or hurting anybody. Of course not, that would be silly. Instead, she explained that they were trying to convict the accused of inciting a riot.

Well, with no evidence of any violent behavior, the jury decided that maybe people shouldnt be imprisoned for protesting. We cant remember exactly which law it is, but were pretty sure American citizens are guaranteed the right to express their opinions in the form of protest. The rest of the 194 protesters indicted for their roles in the riot will be tried next, in equally small groups. For now, Michelle Macchio, Jennifer Armento, Oliver Harris, Brittne Lawson, Christina Simmons and Alexei Wood are free to go.
Petoskey players bring in All-BNC soccer honors, seven total recognized

PETOSKEY  The Petoskey soccer team found themselves in 2022 right in the thick of where they expect to be every season: in a tight Big North Conference race.
partypoker Announces Record-Breaking $20M Gtd. MILLIONS Online

December 20, 2017 Jason Glatzer Editor

A couple of weeks ago, partypoker hosted the biggest event in the site's history, the $5,300 partypoker MILLIONS Online. The event grabbed the attention of the poker world and proved to be a huge success by surpassing its $5 million guarantee after 1,047 entrants generated a $5.135 million prize pool. Jonathan "sordykrd" Van Fleet won the inaugural event for $1.027 million or slightly more than the $1 million guaranteed for first place.

partypoker announced that the event will return next year on Dec. 1-4, 2018. The second rendition of the event features a guaranteed prize pool quadrupled to a mind-blowing $20 million, which is the biggest guarantee in online poker history.

Paths to Qualify

In addition to the many satellites and feeder tournaments planned throughout the year, partypoker announced two paths for players to win a free seat to the event.

Starting Feb. 5, the online poker room will host a weekly MILLIONS Online Leaderboard where the top 10 spots each week will be awarded entry to the $5,300 buy-in event. A total of $3 million will be awarded through this promotion which will also include mid and low leaderboards that will give out $22, $109 and $530 satellite tickets to the top 20 players.

Additionally, partypoker will be rewarding the best players in every partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Main Event with 10 seats to the partypoker MILLIONS Online or $53,000 in value awarded to the top 10 players. This will begin for the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany on Feb. 10-18 at King's Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic.

A Very Big Thank You

partypoker Managing Director Tom Waters shared the enthusiasm of the poker world about the first partypoker MILLIONS Online and wanted to find a way to thank the players who supported the event.

"Running the first MILLIONS Online this year was an exciting time for us, bringing the concept of our live tour online. The feedback we had from our players was overwhelming, so what better way to say thank you than to run it again but this time making the guarantee a whopping $20,000,000," said Waters.

President of partypoker LIVE John Duthie also believed that a record-breaking online prize pool was in order after the first event exceeded expectations.

"I love the concept of a MILLIONS leg on partypoker, it gives us the opportunity to bring together our MILLIONS players from all over the world at the end of the year to compete for an unprecedented prize pool," Duthie said. "I was a little nervous about trying this concept out, but players supported us this time so we should return the favor and go for a record-breaking online prize pool in 2018.

They are definitely going for it in a big way with just under a year to drum up enough hype and enough players to cover the lofty guarantee.
An early Christmas present was delivered this morning: a trailer for one of the most anticipated films of 2018!

After Mindy Kaling posted on Instagram the poster for the highly anticipated sequel in the Ocean's film series, the Internet started to freak out about the possibilities of an all-female cast, including big names like Rihanna, Anne Hathaway, and Awkwafina. Speculation about what was in store for the film started to swirl and this morning theories started to be confirmed and denied with the release of the first official trailer.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the sister of Danny Ocean (played by George Clooney in the original films) who is released from prison and immediately begins to return to her crime-filled ways. She's got her eye on a $150 million necklace that will be on display at the Met Gala, and is looking for the perfect way to wrangler it from its owner, a celebrity donning it down the red carpet.

Enter Cate Blanchett as Bullock's partner in crime, as well as the rest of the gang working as everything from computer hackers to fur aficionados to help get a piece of the prize. And of course, each of them is wearing a super fabulous coat in the trailer, so those of us with cold weather wear envy as sure to be pleased.

Watch the Ocean's 8 trailer below.

The trailer looks to be in the same style as all of the other films in the franchise, even from the way it opens with Bullock's character in her orange jail duds, giving an imagined interview. However, it also differentiates from the crime thrillers that were last produced eleven years ago, where the numbers in the names signified how many members were in the pack. What livens up this premise is the female-dominated cast, much needed in the current sociopolitical environment. It goes to show us that a taste for the criminal life runs across genders in this family.

However, what still has fans up in arms is the reported inclusion of Matt Damon's character in this installment in a cameo appearance. Damon has appeared in all three films in the franchise. Critics are questioning his place in this girl-power-driven film after he recently made comments questioning sexual misconduct allegations that have flooded Hollywood, saying there is not enough discussion about the men affected. We'll see what carries out as the film inches closer and whether or not Damon's scenes will kept in final production.

For now, let's embrace the big move these leading ladies are taking on the screen and clear our schedules for a girl's night at the movies come summertime.

Ocean's 8 is scheduled to be released in June 2018.

Rachel A.G. Gilman is a writer, a radio producer, and probably the girl wearing the Kinks shirt. Visit her website for more.

POP DUST | Read More About Film...

Comic Book Movies Are Serializing Film & Making Us All Nerds

SATURDAY FILM SCHOOL | An Unlikely Love Story That Somehow Works

BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN | What's coming to theaters this weekend?
Like most ordinary people, every superhero has bad days. Some of those bad days are worse than others. Some of those bad days make for iconic stories, as well. Events like The Phoenix Saga, Secret Wars, Civil War, and House of M often start with a particularly bad day that spirals out of control, sometimes leading to retcons, wars, and clone armies. Short of being trapped in a cage with Deadpool and an unlimited supply of tacos, a bad day for a superhero often becomes the cornerstone for a major upheaval in Marvels over-arching mythos.

While every major superhero and their assorted teams have bad days, few have had more or worse days than the members of the Fantastic Four. No matter how much Peter Parker complains about not catching a break or how much the X-men complain about people hating mutants, they cant deny that the Fantastic Four have it much worse.

Its not just that theyve been victimized by horrible movies, so much so that Pixars The Incredibles is often cited as the best Fantastic Four movie. Despite being Marvels first family and one of the most pivotal creations of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the influence and prestige of the Fantastic Four has never been lower.

The events of Secret Wars effectively shoved a wedge the size of an entire multiverse between the team. Reed, Sue, and their children are no longer playing an active role in the Marvel universe. Ben and Johnny, conversely, find themselves relegated to weak supporting roles in books like Inhumans and Guardians of the Galaxy. Their struggles are often a punchline within Marvel, but Chip Zdarsky and Jim Cheung look to get serious with what remains of the Fantastic Four in Marvel Two-In-One #1. While Marvels first family may still be split, Ben and Johnny keep the spirit alive in a story thats as compelling as it is heart-felt.

This is one of those stories that reflects a particular sentiment at a particular time in the history of a franchise. Its not unreasonable to say that, in wake of the failure of Josh Tranks Fantastic Four movie and the subsequent cancellation of the Fantastic Four comics in 2015, these are the darkest of times for Marvels first family. Reed, Sue, and their children are gone. The Baxter Building is gone. On top of all that, Dr. Doom isnt even acting like Dr. Doom anymore. Its as though everything that makes the Fantastic Four endearing has been lost.

Marvel Two-In-One #1 acts as the first beacon of light within the darkness that has shrouded Fantastic Four for years. The first family is still not whole, but Zdarsky and Cheung make it a point to show that the heart and soul of the Fantastic Four is still there. Not only that, they make the case that theres still a place for them in the Marvel universe and by nearly every measure, they make that case well.

The foundation of the story is basically the remnants of the first family being at rock bottom. Neither is in a particularly good place with Johnny being especially broken. Ben, true to his rocky nature, acts as the last remaining anchor of the team. He carries himself as the only one with the strength and fortitude to carry on the legacy that the Richards family left behind. He doesnt have much to begin with, but he gains a lot over the course of the story.

What he gains and how he gains it doesnt feel cheap or contrived. In fact, it makes for one of the most heart-felt moments the Fantastic Four have had since the events of Secret Wars. Zdarsky and Cheung dont discount the events that tore the first family apart, nor do they make light of just how much those events hurt Johnny and Ben.



(Marvel Comics)

Part of what makes the Fantastic Four so compelling is that theyre not just heroes. Theyre family. When one of them is lost or gone, it hurts. That pain in Marvel Two-In-One #1 is undeniable. By the end, though, theres a sense that the time for healing has arrived. Even though the memories of bad movie adaptations still linger, the darkest hours of the Fantastic Four are behind them. Now, theyre ready to move forward.

Moving forward, however, still means confronting the less-than-ideal situation in the present. That involves Johnny revealing a distressing secret about his powers and Ben having a productive, but messy conversation with Dr. Doom. Its dramatic and overdue, but the fact theyre finally confronting the situation is probably the biggest sign of progress that Marvel Two-In-One #1 can have. Overdue or not, its still refreshing.

More than anything else, Marvel Two-In-One #1 is a clear, yet poignant reminder of what the Fantastic Four stand for. Theyre not just a family with superpowers. Theyre not just heroes either. They look beyond the horizon and dare to go farther. They seek to explore, learn, and grow together. Thats how they often end up encountering beings who ride cosmic surf boards, giant world-eating beings, and shape-shifting aliens. The heroics are often secondary, but still just as important.

Theres a lot to be said about the current state of the Fantastic Four, how they got there, and why theyve struggled to remain relevant at a time when every superhero seems to reinvent/reboot themselves every other week. There are still plenty of ongoing issues with that state that cant be easily resolved over the course of a single issue, let alone several. However, Zdarsky and Cheung take the biggest, and arguably most important, step in that process.

Marvel Two-In-One #1 is one of those books that will give a certain segment of fans a genuine emotional uplift. Its as though someone finally comes to their front door, gives them a reassuring hug, and lets them know they havent forgotten about the Fantastic Four and everything they stand for. It may have taken a while. It may not undo all the damage that the first family have suffered over the past several years. Its still a first step, but one that feels like a giant leap in the right direction.
Theres this half-joke in the Midwest that living the American Dream amounts to refurbishing your basement by putting a bar in it. My little brother called from the Chicago suburbs last year to tell me his home bar was complete and he could now die a happy man. When I last visited him, we spent our time down there every night after he put his three-year-old to sleep. We werent necessarily even drinking.

The home bar is a national aspirational treasure not so much because its a bar but because its a home. Maybe its a uniquely suburban delight, a personal oasis hiding amongst the great swaths of strip malls. As a metro-dweller, I have my pick of bars. Sometimes I want that baller skyscraper view and a $40 sip of small-batch gin, but mostlywell, you know: I just want to go where everybody knows my name. Not because Im famous, but because Im a regular.

That badge of regular is the citified equivalent of a suburban home bar dream. It takes a whole lot of patience, some forethought and logistical sense, and a steady wallet. It takes a willingness to try whatever is on tap at the moment, the ability to match faces of bartenders with their names and chat them up just the right amount so they can still do their job at the other end of the counter, and it takes a respect for the boundary of that counter itself. You cant just call yourself a regular; its a title bestowed upon you with mild, half-joking fanfare at first by one of the more veteran staff members, then word of your title has to proliferate through the organization. Eventually, you walk in and find a glass being put down in front of your favorite seat before you can even plant your butt in it. The other customersthats what they are, merely customerscan feel how your entrance shifts the space. Its a vibe that says: Im at home here.

As a noun, a regular is a repeat customer. Another meaning of the noun refers to what you orderthe regular is your usual thing. Over time, conforming to the standard of the regular order becomes boring and ordinary. Sometimes thats a comfort, but a true regular also embraces the adverbial: regularly, a frequently repeating action. A regular can regularly order her regular, or a regular can regularly order the new, the experimental, the surreal, the limited edition, the secret menu, the insane idea, the weird thing the kitchen made because the people in that kitchen are thinking specifically about you and waiting for you to come back in so they can give you their weird thing.

This is a kind of hospitality that most people only find in their own house, but certain bars and restaurants can also nail it, can also build that kind of trust and attention that most people reserve for family in their own homes. Its often found at hole-in-the-wall sushi joints where most of the English is broken. The Japanese word for this is omotenashi. According to the Michelin guide: Omote means public face  an image you wish to present to outsiders. Nashi means nothing. Combining them means every service is from the bottom of the heart  honest, no hiding, no pretending.

Honest and earnest hospitality, with no false face or bogus promises, is perhaps the most authentic type of performance art when it comes to matters of dining and drinking. We dont need a manual for hospitality, declares Nobu Matsuhisa in his new memoir, Nobu. Yeah, that Nobu. maybe youve heard of it. Noof course youve heard of it. Because its expensive? Nope. Because the menu is cutting-edge? Nope. Because its the most rapidly expanding namesake restaurant group in the entire world? Nope. Though all of those things might be true. Ive never personally been to a Nobu, but have always wanted to go. A lot of people go to a place like this for a special occasion.

Viewing a restaurant as occasional freaks me out; Id rather feel welcomed and at home wherever I am. Many people feel intimidated or even policed by the severe attentiveness of a sushi spot. They feel they dont know the rules, or the cuisine, so theyre constantly at risk of making wrong decisions and being an embarrassment. I always thought Nobu would be one of these places, but after reading the memoir, I feel at ease and am looking forward to visiting a Nobu soon. One is even expected to land in my city of Atlanta next year and I full expect to be meeting Matsuhisa himself at that time.

When he opens a new restaurant, he knows he must never lose sight of the companys roots or the philosophy of its founder. If we condense that into a manual and assume that just by reading it, the staff will understand, the future of our business will be limited (183). This limitation is regularity in the automatic sense. He understands that manuals and systems never change once they have been made, unless someone deliberately revises them. Communication, on the other hand, is constantly evolving in response to circumstances (183).

The anxiety that customers often feel will eventually prevent them from becoming regulars at those places that confuse automation with communication. Matsuhisas standard of evolving communication is what is sometimes read as severe attentiveness. Not everybody can get on board with it, but they certainly should try, for this is the consideration that everyone working at the restaurant shows the guests and each other. If the servers merely perform each task mechanicallywelcoming the guests, guiding them to a table, giving them a menu, taking their order, serving the food, and bringing them the billits not a real restaurant (146).

The proliferation of Nobu spots does not then imply that his restaurant concept has become routine. Its a growth thats proof of having regularly experimented. The memoir delightfully extends this restaurant lesson as a metaphor for Matsuhisas own life, where he has tended to just go ahead and try things, instead of planning them through carefully in advance, and for the most part, the results have been good. More important than calculated plans, I think we need to have the courage to try something that catches our interest and the determination to do it right once we get started. [] If we just get started, the value of what were doing will become clear to us later on (180).

Written in short, conversational essay style, the memoir approaches Nobus career in chronological order. The anecdotes are good ones and Nobu has a flair for telling his own story, yet the lessons of his lifes work tend to repeat themselves in the most surprising, gratifying manner. This is certainly not a Bildungsroman, where the protagonist grows and changes or finds resolve at the very end. Like the incessant training of a proper sushi chef, Nobus memoir itself puts emphasis on the regularity of the obstacles we encounter in life. The things he cared for as a young chef as the same things he still cares for, so many of the anecdotes feature the same set upeither an encounter with one of his regulars or a risk he took in the kitchen.

The memoir details his many failings, both professional and personal. Despite the occasional epic disaster, he says, I am a very happy man, but if you asked me what the secret of happiness is, I could not tell you. Because you can only understand life by living it for yourself. You will never find the answer without making your own efforts (197). The chief leap of faith in Nobu: A Memoir is that effort always generates value one way or another. Effort: thats what it takes to be a regular, to progress by way of regularity.

Indeed, Nobu is a narrator in good spirits throughout, able to disclose and laugh at his own errors because he is committed to doing better next time. Though the memoir can be read cover to cover linearly, the eternal return of its main themes means the book is also fit for flipping through. Many a chef might take comfort in a two-minute meditation on any given chapter segment. The book cleverly performs its own argument about the nature of regularity.

A lot of foodie types might begrudge Nobu Matsuhisha his success, but this book reveals the genuine extent to which he is a workhorse who had earned it, and I think thats a damn fine thing to aspire to be. I may turn out to be a regular with Nobu some day, because you know what a workhorse is really up to? Im simply trying to do my best at all times. [] For me, thats just the easiest way. Just think about it. If youre always doing your best, you never need to make excuses. People who work hard are cool. People who give everything their best shot are forgiven when they make mistakes. [] You can just carry on doing your personal best (192). I can certainly make a home in that idea.
Watchdog and Public Service reporter

Thad Moore is a reporter on The Post and Couriers Watchdog and Public Service team and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. To share tips securely, reach Moore via ProtonMail at thadmoore@protonmail.com or on Signal at 843-214-6576.
You are the owner of this article.
FrontDoor Communities builds several homes throughout the Charleston region, including this house in the Mixson neighborhood of North Charleston. The Atlanta-based company is selling its assets to Stanley Martin Communities of Virginia. File/Jim Parker/Staff
The area had been blocked off by city officials. No one was hurt and nothing damaged. The wall has been menacing passersby for many years. A fix is in the works. Read morePortion of old brick wall by Charleston's Second Presbyterian Church gives way
There was a combination of superlative hysteria and political opportunism behind the warnings about the end of democracy leading up to last weeks elections, but it wasnt inconceivable that wed have flare-ups of violence and intimidation, that people who embrace the fantasy that the 2020 e Read moreEditorial: Election 2022 gave everybody something to celebrate
Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the attack on her husband, Paul, by an intruder in their family home made her think about staying on as the House Democratic leader. She says she almost thought about being leader again because she couldnt give them that satisfaction of intimidating her out of politics. Pelosi spoke to reporters Thursday at the Capitol after announcing she would step aside for a new generation of leaders. She will remain the congresswoman from California. Pelosi says shes not sad about her choice to step aside but feels balanced in her decision. She has no plans to endorse a successor and no desire to meddle with the new leadership's vision. Read morePelosi's big decision: 'Theres a life out there, right?'
Rep. Adam Schiff is a highly partisan proponent of the thesis that the Trump campaign colluded with Putin in the 2016 election. This week he made his incredibly thin case in this Wall Street Journal column (behind the Journals paywall). I infer from Schiffs column that the collusion thesis is impervious to the failure of proof. Complex global investigations take time, he explained.

Schiff went further on CNN. There he supported former DNI James Clappers proposition that Vladimir Putin is running President Trump as a Russian asset. Decency imposes no limits on these hacks.

The collusion line is not only impervious to the failure of proof, it is impervious to contrary evidence. Yesterday, for example, reversing Obama administration policy pleasing to Putin, the Trump administration approved the sale of lethal weapons to Ukraine. The Washington Posts Josh Rogin reported:

The Trump administration has approved the first ever U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, in a clear break from the de facto U.S. ban on arms sales that dates back to the Obama administration. The move was heavily supported by top Trump national security Cabinet officials and Congress but may complicate President Trumps stated ambition to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. These weapons address a specific vulnerability of Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian-backed separatist movement in two eastern provinces. There has been no approval to export the heavier weapons the Ukrainian government is asking for, such as Javelin antitank missiles.

Vladimir Putin could not be reached for comment.

And thats not all. Yesterday the Treasury Department announced that it added five Russians to the list of those sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. Treasurys press release is posted here. The press release identifies three of those sanctioned by Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as a result of their involvement in the scandal uncovered by Magnitsky:

OFAC today designated Alexei Sheshenya for his involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Sheshenya was the shareholder of Grand Aktiv, the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Parfenion. The lawsuit involved one of six claims against the three Hermitage Fund subsidiaries, Parfenion, Riland, and Makhaon, illegally re-registered under different ownership in 2007. The judgment in these lawsuits served as the basis for an illegal tax refund in 2007, which Magnitsky exposed. Yulia Mayorova was also designated for her involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Mayorova represented Makhaon and Riland (two of the subsidiaries of the Hermitage Fund illegally re-registered under different ownership in 2007). As noted above, the judgments in the lawsuits served as the basis for an illegal tax refund in 2007, which Magnitsky exposed. The Hermitage Fund had no prior knowledge of or acquaintance with Mayorova and never hired her or authorized her appointment. OFAC also designated Andrei Pavlov for his involvement in the criminal conspiracy uncovered by Magnitsky. Pavlov represented two of the illegally re-registered Hermitage Fund subsidiaries in separate lawsuits brought by a company he helped to register. The Hermitage Fund had no prior knowledge of or acquaintance with Pavlov and never hired him or authorized his appointment.

Again, Vladimir Putin could not be reached for comment.
Digital Pathology Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 12:34:10

Press Information

Coherent Market Insights

1001 4th Ave,



#3200



Mr Shah

CEO

2067016702

email

http://www.coherentmarketinsights.com





# 802 Words

1001 4th Ave,#3200CEO2067016702

Construing images of cells and tissues at a higher resolution than the naked human eye is the core of pathology. From a long time, microscopes has been the only instrument available which provides the live images at a higher resolution. This is achieved through never ending improvement in the optics.In the last decades, optical pathology has been changed gradually by the introduction of digital cameras, which produces still images of slides and thus can be accessed or transported to another pathologist for examination. A further improvement in this method is through introduction of digital slide scanner. These scanners produce whole slide images that can be examined through an image viewer. The advantage of this system is that it produces live as well as high resolution images. This in turn is expected to be one of the vital factor to support the growth in digital pathology market.Digital pathology is the use of computer technology to convert analog microscopic images into digital images. It is also known as digital imaging, virtual slides, or virtual microscopy. In other words, it is the practice of converting glass slides into digital slides that can be viewed, managed, and analyzed on a computer screen. With the introduction mod whole slide imaging, this technology has been regarded as the most promising method of diagnostic medicine, which is expected to favor the growth in the digital pathology market in the near future.Digital imaging in pathology can definitely improve workflow thereby increasing productivity while reducing costs, enable automated image analysis and quality control. However, the efficient use of digital slide systems is still a challenge.Request For Sample Copy@Some of the main challenges in digital pathology market are:Adoption rate: Technology and market trends,Quality requirements accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility and validity,Financial/Reimbursement status,Regulatory bodies,Medical ethics,New mindsetsRadiological procedures have already included digital methods in their regular procedures. For e.g.: CT Scans, MRI, X-rays etc.Digital pathology market is segmented on the basis of product, on the basis of application and on the basis of end user:On the basis of product:Software,Scanner,Communication system,Storage systemOn the basis of application:Teleconsultation,Disease Diagnosis,Drug Discovery,Education and TrainingOn the basis of end user:Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies,CRO,Hospital laboratories,Academic and Research institutesGlobally, the market of digital pathology is expected to grow around 10-15% CAGR. Over the years there has been an increased need to connect laboratories to hospitals and clinics. This owes to increase in the demand for pathology screening service in disease diagnosis and prognosis. The global value of this market is somewhat in between US$ 100-300 Mn and is continuously increasing year by year.Effect on digital pathology market by increase in the incidences of deadly diseases:Rising cancer prevalence, increasing tele consultations, utilization of digital pathology systems for drug discovery, and increasing government & industry players initiatives into the pathological services are the main driving factors of this market.Increasing number of hospitals and diagnostics laboratories can also be a factor which are expected to fuel the overall demand for digital pathology systems.North America dominates the digital pathology market over the forecast period:Currently, North America (USA, Canada and Mexico) is the market leader of digital pathology market owing to vast number of companies. Also, increase in the inclination of the healthcare providers towards the integrated healthcare IT systems and cloud based systems to provide better interoperability in diagnostic research are the key factors of future growth in this region.After North America, European region holds the second position for this market, which further followed by Asia-pacific and Latin America.In the near future, Asia Pacific digital pathology industry is expected to expand at the highest CAGR with more focus on the countries like India, China and Japan. Factors for such a steep growth is growing patient population and rise in adoption rate for advanced technologies of disease diagnosis.Key Players:Some of the major players which are dominating the market are: Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., Definiens AG, Omnyx, LLC, Hamamatsu Photonics K.K, Corista LLC, GE Healthcare, Inspirata Co, Philips Healthcare, 3D-Histech Ltd., Olympus Corporation, Sectra AB, Perkin Elmer, Inc, etc.Get more details on this report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit Coherent Market Insights Blog @ https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com Connect with us on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights
"Browse And Choose From Our World Class Research Reports"

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 10:40:50

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

USA



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager (International Business Development)

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 516 Words

USASales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

The Europe Autoimmune Diagnostics Market was worth $3.39 billion in 2016 and estimated to reach $ 4.08 billion by the end of 2021 with a growing potential of 3.78%.Autoimmune diseases arise once the immune system attacks one or more of the body's normal parts as if they were invaders. When the immune system fails to identify "self" it may produce immune cells or antibodies that target its own tissues, cells and organs. Developed countries of Europe have projected high occurrence rate of auto immune disorders compared to other regions of the auto immune disease diagnostics. The strike rate of auto immune diseases is more in women compared to men. The presence of large untapped opportunities available in the developing eastern European countries is expected to fuel the growth of the market.Full report at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-autoimmune-diagnostics-market-1192/ High occurrence of auto immune disorders, Supportive government policies, increasing public awareness, increased government funding aimed at improving healthcare infrastructure, introduction of advanced technologies such as novel biomarkers and portable diagnostic equipment are the major factors driving the growth of the market. The key restraints that inhibiting the growth of the auto immune diagnostics market are low prevalence of localized auto immune disorders as compared to systemic diseases and growing rate of diagnostics errors.The Europe Auto immune diagnostics Market is broadly categorized based on Test type into Complete Blood Count (CBC), Autoantibody Tests, Antinuclear Antibody Tests, C - reactive protein (CRP), Comprehensive Metabolic panel, Urinalysis, Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) and others.Based on Disease type the market is categorized into Localized auto immune disease diagnostics and systemic auto immune disease diagnostics. Local auto immune disease diagnostics is further classified into Graves disease, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Type 1 diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Psoriasis and Others. Systemic auto immune disease diagnostics is categorized into Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), and Ankylosing Spondylitis.Based on End users into Hospitals, Research centres, and diagnostic laboratories and on the basis of geography, the Europe Auto Immune Diagnostics market is analysed under various regions namely U.K, Germany, Italy, France and Spain.Request sample: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-autoimmune-diagnostics-market-1192/request-sample Some of the key players operating in Europe include Bio-Rad, Siemens Healthcare, Abbott Laboratories, Crescendo Bioscience, Roche Diagnostics SQI Diagnostics, AESKU Diagnostics, INOVA Diagnostics Inc., BioMerieux SA, Beckman Coulter Inc., Hemagen Diagnostics, Quest Diagnostics, Eli lilly, Glaxosmithkline Plc.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: 2017-12-21 10:59:22

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager (International Business Development)

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com





# 1051 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.Sales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

European Oxygen Therapy Devices Market was worth USD 0.50 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 5.77%, to reach USD 0.67 billion by 2021. Oxygen therapy involves administering oxygen through an external device. COPD includes chronic obstructive bronchitis and emphysema, and is predicted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be the fourth leading cause of death worldwide by 2030.Oxygen Therapy devices are useful specially for people suffering from severe COPD or cystic fibrosis who suffer from chronically low oxygen levels in their body. Advantages of oxygen therapy also include increased mental stamina, aversion of heart failure, and an enhanced breathing pattern. The administration and supply of supplementary oxygen have turned into an indispensable part in the management of numerous diseases. Furthermore, oxygen therapy is applicable to numerous diseases, for example, asthma, respiratory distress syndrome, and obstructive sleep apnoea. Long-term oxygen treatments in patients suffering from chronic lung disease are believed to enhance the length and the quality of life.View Full Report: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-oxygen-therapy-market-3690/ In Europe, the prevalence of COPD varies markedly across countries. For example, the Ministere de la Sante et des Solidarities estimates that between 6% and 8% of the adult population in France suffers from COPD. Interestingly, the Netherlands displays just a 2% prevalence rate as evaluated by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Generally, these devices are used to treat patients who are no longer able to receive adequate volumes of oxygen through the breathing of natural air and require higher concentrations of oxygen. A significant increase is expected in the number of patients on oxygen therapy as the population ages and as members of the 50 to 75 age demographics, who were often smokers in their youth, develop emphysema and related conditions. It is estimated that over 85% of the patients on oxygen therapy are, or were, once smokers.Request for Sample Brochure: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-oxygen-therapy-market-3690/request-sample The European oxygen therapy devices market is segmented into product type, application and end user. On the basis of product, it is segmented into Oxygen Source Equipment, Cylinders, Concentrators, Liquid Oxygen Devices, PAP, Oxygen Delivery Device, Masks, Nasal Cannula, Venturi Mask, Non-Rebreather Mask, Bag Valve and CPAP. Oxygen source equipment are expected to grow at 11% CAGR It is attributed to the consolidation of this equipment in the extensive variety of uses as the first line of treatment. On the basis of application, it is segmented into Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Asthma, Obstructive Sleep Apnoea, Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, Pneumonia. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease holds the largest share of the application segment and it is anticipated to grow lucratively at a CAGR of over 10.5% over the next five years. This is due to increasing popularity of supplemental administration in conjunction with first line treatments available for COPD. Moreover, this treatment includes faster response rates, reliability and portability, and above all improves chances of survival. On the basis of end use it is segmented into Home Healthcare and Hospitals. Home health care dominates the end-use segment, owing to the rise in elderly population coupled with increasing number of patients with low mobility and long-term care requirement in conditions such as Alzheimers disease.Inquire Before Buying: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-oxygen-therapy-market-3690/inquire The European region is geographically segmented into Germany, U.K, Italy, Spain and France. Europe has the second highest revenue in the oxygen therapy devices market and is expected to grow further in the coming years. Favourable government policies and initiatives such as European Committee for Hyperbaric Medicine (ECHM), involved in promoting awareness pertaining to the treatment and thereby promoting growth of oxygen therapy devices market.Market SegmentationProductIntroductionOxygen Source EquipmentOxygen ConcentratorsFixed Oxygen ConcentratorsPortable Oxygen ConcentratorsLiquid Oxygen DevicesOxygen CylindersOxygen Delivery DevicesOxygen MasksNasal CannulasVenturi MasksNon-Rebreather MasksBag Valve MasksOther DevicesPortabilityIntroductionStationary Oxygen Therapy DevicesPortable Oxygen Therapy DevicesApplicationIntroductionChronic Obstructive Pulmonary DiseaseAsthma, Obstructive Sleep ApneaRespiratory Distress SyndromeCystic FibrosisPneumoniaEnd UserIntroductionHome Care SettingsHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical Centers & Physician OfficesOthersThis market is extremely disjointed with numerous big and developing players operating in the business. The major companies dominating the oxygen therapy devices market in this region are Philips Respironics, ResMed, GEHealthcare, Drager, Medtronic  Covidien, Teleflex Medical, Fisher & Paykel, Invacare, Smiths Medical, Ambu  King, Carefusion  BD, Intersurgical, Maquet, Flexicare, PARI, Breas, DeVilbiss  Drive, Mindray and AirSep.Scope Of the Report: Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of product, portability, application, end user , and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the Regional market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for 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 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.
Dysphagia Supplements Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023

Dysphagia Supplements Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 05:51:30

Press Information

Precision Business Insights

Kemp House,



152  160 City Road,



London EC1V 2NX



satya

Lead Marketing

+1-866-598-1553

email

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com





# 585 Words

Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Dysphagia alluded as side effects of trouble and agony in gulping. Besides in a portion of the cases gulping might be unthinkable. Trouble in gulping may happen in quick eating and nourishment isn't bitten appropriately. Yet, steady dysphagia is a genuine condition which needs treatment. Dysphagia happens at any age yet more typical in more seasoned grown-ups. Different side effects may incorporate dribbling, disgorgings, visit acid reflux and others. There are two sorts of dysphagia, esophageal and oropharyngeal and a large number of the causes, for example, radiation treatment, scleroderma, neuronal disarranges and esophageal tumors and other many makes lead dysphagia.Increment in predominance of the maturing populace and esophageal growth cases who are vulnerable to dysphagia is relied upon to drive the dysphagia supplements showcase over the estimate time frame. Moreover, dysphagia is one of the significant symptoms found in chain smokers. World Health Organization assesses that there are almost 6 million individuals lose their lives because of tobacco consistently. Moreover increment in neurological strokes anticipated that would additionally push the market development. Be that as it may, absence of standard tests for dysphagia and absence of mindfulness are relied upon to hamper the market development amid the figure time frame.A sample of this report is available upon request @The dysphagia supplements market is classified on the basis of product type, distribution channelBased on product type, global dysphagia market is segmented as Powder thickener Instant food Ready to drink thickened beverages Oral nutritional supplementsBased on distribution channel, global dysphagia supplements market is segmented as Hospitals Retail Pharmacies OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Dysphagia Supplements market is expected to grow at significant rates owing to the factors such as esophageal cancer and growing aging population. According to World Health Organization (WHO), in 2010, estimated 524 million people are aged over 65 and it is expected to triple its number 1.5 billion in 2050. The marketplace has many strong players and scattered globally. Companies are collaborating the hospitals and nursing homes in dysphagia supplements market. Furthermore new product development and mergers and acquisitions key strategies adopted by the companies in the regions for expanding their global presence. For instance, in 2016, Alicia Foundation collaborated with Nutricia for suppling Catalonian hospitals with Nutilis thickening product from the company.Need more information about this report @Geographically Dysphagia Supplements Market is segmented as Latin America, Europe, Asia- Pacific, North America, and The Middle East & Africa. Europe is expected to grow at significant rates owing to rise in aging population, well-developed infrastructure and increase in tobacco usage. North America market is expected to grow at notable rates owing to factors such as widespread of awareness, aging population, and presence of many players in the region. Asia Pacific expected to grow at fastest rates owing to developing infrastructure, increase in healthcare expenditure and growing awareness.Some of the players in dysphagia supplements market are Kent Precision Foods Group, Inc. (Kent Corporation) (U.S.), Abbott Laboratories (U.S.), Nestle Health Science France. (Nestle S.A) (Switzerland), Danone S.A. (France), Nutri Co., Ltd.( Mitsui Sugar ) (Japan), Kissei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Japan), Saraya Co., Ltd. (Japan) Kewpie Corporation (Japan) and Healthy Food Co., Ltd. (Japan) to name a few.Get access to full summary @Contact to Precision Business Insights,Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com Website @ https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 09:31:12

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager

9985550206

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com





# 939 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.Sales Manager9985550206

Immunoassay is a biochemical process that determines the presence or concentration of a macromolecule or a smaller molecule in the solution making use of antibodies generally or sometimes an antigen, and the end product is termed analyte which is mostly a protein, yet it can be other kind of molecules also.These assays are more adaptable and can be applied to various formats reliant on the needs of the end user. The principle constitute of an immunoassay is designed to detect a specific antigen, such as nucleoprotein, are the antibodies that have been selected precisely to ensure the identification of the antigen at low concentration with high specificity, meaning will not react with similar analytes.Get a comprehensive overview of the Immunoassays Market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-immunoassays-market-1567/ Immunoassays Market: Drivers & RestraintsIncreasing prevalence of infectious diseases, increasing geriatric population, advancements in novel assays in various diseases of cardiology and oncology, increasing application in drug development and increasing investments in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology segments are the factors driving the growth of market. Lack of reimbursement policies, adoption of immunoassays in emerging markets, stringent regulations for storage are hindering the growth of the market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Immunoassays Market. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-immunoassays-market-1567/request-sample Immunoassays Market: SegmentationBy Technology Enzyme Immunoassay Fluorescent Immunoassay Chemiluminiscence Immunoassay Nephelometric Immunoassay Radio Immunoassay Counting Immunoassay OthersBy Application Oncology Cancer Hematology Cardiology Thyroid Infectious Disease Allergies OthersBy End Users Hospitals Clinics Academic Research Institutes Pharmaceutical and Biotech Vendors Laboratories OthersFrom 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/global-immunoassays-market-1567/customize-report Immunoassays Market: OverviewThe hospital segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global immunoassay market in 2016 owing to the growth in public healthcare awareness and increasing affordability of treatments. The infectious diseases segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global immunoassay market in 2016. The rise in incidence of HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and other hospital-acquired infections has fuelled the demand for immunoassay tests.Immunoassays Market: Region-wise OutlookBased on Geography, the Immunoassays market is analysed under various regions namely North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. North America accounted to have largest share in the market owing to increasing adoption of low cost immunoassay instruments in research and clinical laboratories, rising application of immunoassay techniques in cancer research, and increasing infrastructure for laboratory. Asia-Pacific market is expected to show high CAGR over the forecast period. The expected growth is attributed by increasing development of new biologics, drugs, and vaccines, large number of investment opportunities in these immature/emerging markets, rising diagnostics laboratories in this region, growing government and corporate investment in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology segment, increasing focus on attracting international and domestic leaders in the market.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Immunoassays Market outlook in Global? What trends are affecting the market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Immunoassays Market space in Global? What are the key, high growth markets that Immunoassays Market manufacturers should expand into? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What are the unmet needs with the Immunoassays currently on the market? How will emerging technologies fulfil these unmet needs? What is Consumer perception and market outlook of Immunoassays? What are the challenges and barriers that have hindered widespread adoption of Immunoassays?Immunoassays Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players influencing the Global Immnoassays market are Roche Diagnostics, DiaSorin S.p.A, Beckman Coulter, Siemens Healthcare, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, bioMerieux, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Abbott Laboratories, Akers Biosciences, Inc, Becton Dickinson and Company, Devon Medical Products, EDP Biotech Corporation, Hologic (Gen-Probe), Intrinsic LifeSciences.Reasons to buy Immunoassays Market Report: Global, regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of product type, application, colour along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com 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
Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Market is on the rise in developed regions such as North America and Europe are expected to grow at a high degree in the near future, said by Market Data Forecast

Global NGS Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 08:22:02

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, India



Abhishek

Sales Manager

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 890 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, IndiaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

According to the report Global Next generation sequencing market, published by Market Data Forecast, the market was worth USD 4.02 billion by the end of 2015 and projected to reach USD 10.69 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 21.6% from 2015 to 2020.Next Generation Sequencing is a modern technology which assist in sequencing of DNA and RNA much more quickly and cheaply than the sanger sequencing which transformed the study of genomics and molecular biology. This technique is also known as high throughput sequencing. Its arrival minimizes the requirement for fragment-cloning methods used in sanger sequencing of genomes. Low cost, high accuracy and speed, and precise results even from low sample input are the main advantages NGS offers over sangers sequencing method.Get a comprehensive overview of the Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-next-generation-sequencing-market-116/ Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: Drivers & RestraintsTechnological advancements in NGS platforms and it is emerging at a rapid pace, due to its increasing application in clinical diagnosis, increasing applications of NGS, growing partnerships & collaborations, speed, cost, and accuracy of the technology, efficient replacement of traditional technologies, increasing adoption of NGS among research laboratories and academic institutes, and the decline in the cost of sequencing are driving the growth of this market. However, interpretation of complex data, accuracy and standardization concerns in diagnostic testing, legal & ethical issues and the lack of skilled technical personnel are some of the key factors limiting the growth of the market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-next-generation-sequencing-market-116/request-sample Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: Segmentation By Producto Softwareo Services By Technologyo Whole Targeted Re-Sequencingo Genome Sequencingo De Novo Sequencingo Exome Sequencingo RNA-Seqo ChIP-Seqo Methyl-Seq By Applicationo Diagnosticso Drug Discoveryo Biomarker Discoveryo Personalized Medicineo Agriculture and Animals ResearchFrom 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/global-next-generation-sequencing-market-116/customize-report Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: OverviewNext generation sequencing is used to execute various applications such as biomarker discovery, oncology studies, personalized medicine, agricultural & animal research, and others. The arrival of next generation sequencing technologies has brought noteworthy changes in the sequencing process by providing speed, flexibility and reduced sequencing cost over thousand folds. Next generation sequencing has streamlined nucleotide analysis and has widely replaced conventional tools of genomics, especially microarray efficiently.Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: Region-wise OutlookEach market is further analysed at a ground level by geography, under Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and Africa & Middle-East. North America is poised to account for the prime market share of the NGS market, followed by Europe.Asia-Pacific region presents significant opportunities for the investors/venture capitalists as the developed markets get saturated. The presence of noteworthy developments in China and Japan for integration of new technologies, and the development of healthcare, R&D and clinical development frameworks of developing economies such as India and Australia have led to the Asia Pacific market to witness rewarding growth throughout the forecast period.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Next Generation Sequencing market outlook in Global? What trends are affecting the Global market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Next Generation Sequencing in Global? What are the key, high growth markets that Next Generation Sequencing should expand into? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What are the unmet needs with the Next Generation Sequencing currently on the market? How will emerging technologies fulfil these unmet needs? What is physician perception and market outlook of Next Generation Sequencing? What are the challenges and barriers that have hindered widespread adoption of Next Generation Sequencing?Global Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market: Key PlayersKey players in the Next generation sequencing market are Illumina Incorporated, Thermo Fischer Scientific, Life Sciences (Roche), Pacific Biosciences, Life Technologies Corp. (Thermo Fischer Scientific), Macrogen Inc., Partek Inc., Genomatix Software GmbH, Perkin Elmer inc.,GATC Biotech Ag, Agilent Technologies Inc., Biomatters Ltd., CLC Bio (Qiagen), BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute), Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd.,Pacific Biosciences, DNASTAR Inc., Knome Inc., Illumina Inc., and Qiagen N.V.Checkout other related studies in the Healthcare Segment:Global Anticoccidial Drugs Market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/Global-anticoccidial-drugs-market-23/ Global Cardiac Assist Devices Market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/Global-cardiac-assist-devices-market-30/ Global Dental Consumables Market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/Global-dental-consumables-market-43/ 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
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 13:00:39

Press Information





Published by

ACCESSWIRE News Network

888.952.4446

e-mail

http://www.accesswire.com







# 394 Words

ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446

FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for GreenBank Capital Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Toronto, Ontario (FSCWire) - GreenBank Capital Inc. (CSE:GBC). has issued a press release with the following headline:GreenBanks Affiliate Blockchain Evolution Inc Successfully Clones Its BlockchainTo 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 GreenBank Capital Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/GreenBank Capital Inc.Source: GreenBank Capital Inc. (CSE: GBC, OTC Pink: GRNBF, WKN: A1W8UJ, ISIN: CA3935762029)Date: December 21, 2017Time: 7:00 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of GreenBank Capital Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Latin America Bio Surgery Market is on the rise, after seeing recent market happenings, it is estimated that the market to grow at a high degree in the near future, said by Market Data Forecast

Latin America Bio Surgery Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 10:33:38

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, India



Abhishek

Sales Manager

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 883 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, IndiaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

According to the report Latin America Bio Surgery Market, published by Market Data Forecast, the market is projected to reach USD 3.77 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 9.74% from 2016 to 2021.Bio Surgery is an area dedicated to providing aid in surgery by focusing on an array of technologies to minimize the intra- and post-operative complications. Solutions commonly used in bio surgery comprise innovative, biologically based products for surgical conditions that are often difficult or expensive to manage otherwise.Get a comprehensive overview of the Latin America Bio Surgery Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-bio-surgery-market-2783/ Latin America Bio Surgery Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe major driver of the Bio Surgery market is the strong focus on research development, which in turn leads to the launch of various new products and various other technological advancements in the field. This along with the increasing number of surgeries due to changing lifestyles and the increasing consumer awareness serve as boosters for the market growth. The major factor restraining the Bio Surgery market is the non-acceptance of certain products such as human tissue, which is essential for regenerative purposes, due to ethical concerns in certain parts of the region. This along with the high costs and the stringent government regulations act as restraints for the market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Latin America Bio Surgery Market. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-bio-surgery-market-2783/request-sample Latin America Bio Surgery Market: SegmentationBy type Sealantso Naturalo Synthetic and Semi-synthetic Haemostatic Agents Adhesion barrierso Naturalo Synthetic Soft tissue attachmento Synthetic mesheso Biological meshes Bone graft substituteso Bone allograftso Demineralised bone matrixo Bone morphogenetic proteinso Synthetic bone grafts Staple line reinforcement agentsBy application Orthopaedic General Neurological Cardiovascular Reconstructive Gynaecological Urological ThoracicFrom simple data collation through secondary and primary research toad-hoc research requests relating to specific information, we provide our services via customization. Get customization at http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-bio-surgery-market-2783/customize-report Latin America Bio Surgery Market: Region-wise OutlookBased on geography, the Latin America market is divided into Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The Latin American region is one that offers immense scope for development in the forecast years as is evident from the high growth rate of the region. In spite of having only a minor market share, the CAGR of the region is the second highest globally only behind Asia-Pacific. This market is one that shows promise in the coming years.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Latin America Bio Surgery market outlook? What trends are affecting the market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Latin America Bio Surgery market? What are the key market segments that currently occupy the highest market share? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What challenges are restraining the growth of the Latin America Bio Surgery market? How will emerging technologies answer these challenges? What is physician perception and market outlook of Latin America Bio Surgery?Latin America Bio Surgery Market: Key PlayersKey market players include Baxter International, C.R. Bard, Johnson & Johnson, Covidien plc., Getinge Group, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Cryolife Inc., Stryker Corporation, Hemostasis LLC., and Sanofi Group.Reasons to buy Latin America Bio Surgery Market Report: Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of type, application along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketCheckout other related studies in the Medical Devices Segment:Bio Surgery Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-bio-surgery-market-2782/ Latin America Medical Device 3D printing Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-medical-device-three-dimension-printing-market-336/ 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 MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
Latin America Liquid Biopsy Market is on the rise, after seeing recent market happenings, it is estimated that the market to grow at a high degree in the near future, said by Market Data Forecast

Latin America Liquid Biopsy Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 11:28:09

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, India



Abhishek

Sales Manager

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 932 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana, IndiaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

According to the report Liquid Biopsy, published by Market Data Forecast, the Latin America market is projected to reach USD 942 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 12.05% from 2016 to 2021.Head and Neck cancer is one of the most prevalent and a common type of cancer worldwide. As the root cause of many of these cancers are the higher intake of tobacco and alcohol, it is most prevalent in those regions where the consumption is high. Detection of cancer in early stages and appropriate treatment offer the best possible cure for these diseases. The primary reason for the growth in the market is attributed to the increasing number of diagnostic procedures for head and neck cancer, particularly the procedures for the diagnosis of pharyngeal and oral cancers.Get a comprehensive overview of the Latin America Liquid Biopsy: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-liquid-biopsy-market-954/ Latin America Liquid Biopsy: Drivers & RestraintsLiquid Biopsy market in this region is primarily driven by factors like rising consumption of tobacco and alcohol in this region. Hence the number of diagnostic procedures for this market are increasing. Detecting these cancers in the early stages helps a lot in treating these diseases.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Latin America Liquid Biopsy. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-liquid-biopsy-market-954/request-sample Latin America Liquid Biopsy: SegmentationBy Test type Diagnostic imagingo PET/CTo MRIo X-rayo Barium Swallow test Biopsyo Incisional Biopsyo Fine needle aspiration Biopsyo HPV testing Endoscopyo Pharyngoscopyo Laryngoscopyo Panendoscopy Dental diagnosticso Fluorescence Visualizationo Toluidine blue dye based methodo Acetic acid rinse methodo Brush biopsyFrom simple data collection 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/latin-america-liquid-biopsy-market-954/customize-report Latin America Liquid Biopsy: OverviewThere is an increased prevalence of chronic diseases due to rise in aging population, especially cancers relating to head and neck, increasing awareness among the individuals towards cancer. This results in rise in the healthcare expenditure of government. However, low adoption rate of digital technology based systems, conventional CT and MRI scanners, excise duty imposed on sale of Medical Devices in mature markets.Latin America Liquid Biopsy: Region-wise OutlookThe market for Liquid Biopsy in Latin America region is divided based on geography into Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and other parts in the region. With an increase in demand for diagnostic imaging, incorporating novel technologies in diagnostic instruments and advances in treatment modes, it is expected that market growth is going to propel during the forecast period.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Liquid Biopsy outlook in Latin America market? What trends are affecting the Latin America market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Liquid Biopsy space in Latin America market? What are the key, high growth markets that Liquid Biopsy manufacturers should expand into? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What are the unmet needs with the Liquid Biopsy currently on the market? How will emerging technologies fulfil these unmet needs? What is physician perception and market outlook of Liquid Biopsy? What are the challenges and barriers that have hindered widespread adoption of Liquid Biopsy?Latin America Liquid Biopsy: Key PlayersSome of the key players influencing the market dynamics Philips Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, Varian Medical Systems, Shimadzu Corporation, GE Healthcare, Shimadzu Corporation, Identafi, Velscope VX, AdDent Inc.Reasons to buy Latin America Liquid Biopsy Report: Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of product type, application, colour along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketCheckout other related studies in the Latin America Healthcare Segment:Genetic Testing Drugs Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-genetic-testing-market-40/ Head and Neck Cancer Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-head-and-neck-cancer-diagnostics-market-57/ 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
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 11:16:59

Press Information

Bright Light Australia

1/49 Links Ave Nth, Eagle Farm, QLD 4009, Australia







1800 793 185

email

https://www.brightlightled.com.au/



Published by

Cam Wilkes

006499503888

e-mail

https://www.pureseo.co.nz







# 429 Words

1/49 Links Ave Nth, Eagle Farm, QLD 4009, Australia1800 793 185Cam Wilkes006499503888

With the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs in many countries, LED suppliers are racing to compete with newer products with exceptional quality. Bright Light has been sourcing and supplying LED lamps for discerning consumers in Australasia.The GU10 LED Lamp is a 7W, 220-240V AC full glass halogen replacement that is bright and has low energy consumption. It comes in warm white and is available for indoor use only. It can last up to 25,000 hours and comes with a two-year warranty. The GU10 comes in a pack of ten. The MR16 LED Lamp is a 7W, 12V full glass halogen replacement comes in warm white. Perfect for indoor use it is bright and consumes less energy.The G50 is a dimmable down light module with a CRI of 83. Equivalent in lumen output to a 35 watt halogen, the G50 is a great choice for residential applications. It is available in warm white 3000K and natural white 4000K. The lens is available in frosted and clear options. It has a warranty of five years and a life of 50,000 hours.Bright Light stocks a matte white mounting trim with a 15 tilt that is for use with G50, S50, and R50 down lights. The advantages of LED lighting products are almost too many to list, covering financial and ethical concerns that are universal to Australian consumers. They are energy efficient, have a longer life span, are non-toxic and can save money on electricity bills. Ninety per cent of LED lights components can be recycled.Bright Light has been supplying LED light fittings and power supplies for residential and commercial facilities, hospitality, marine and architectural lighting industries. All Bright Light products have undergone strict quality checks, including local testing, to ensure they comply with Australasian safety regulations and come with a three-year warranty. The company provides warranty and returns information on the website.Bright Light has started an online shop aimed at the signage supply market, cabinet makers and shop fitters, promotional companies and electrical contractors. There is a wide range of products available that are listed by category  LED lighting, power supplies, LTech control gear and signage modules. There are a variety of colours to choose from along with the wattage. The store makes it simple to search by industry such as electrical contractors, signwriters and others.Call Bright Light to speak to one of their knowledgeable lighting technicians to find the best outdoor lights for your project. The toll free number is 1800 793 185 and email is info@ brightlightled.com.au For more ideas: https://www.brightlightled.com.au/collections/lamps
Lipase Market By Source (Microbial Lipases, Plant Lipases, Animal Lipases), By Application (Animal Feed, Dairy, Bakery, Confectionery, Others), By Functions (Frozen Food And Beverage Additives And Food And Beverage Texturants) And By Region - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, And Forecasts (20162021)

We Think Through Different Layers, We Work Across Different Verticals

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 12:22:40

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

USA



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager (International Business Development)

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com





# 872 Words

USASales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

The Global Lipase Market was worth USD 457.2 million in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.6%, to reach USD 629.3 million by 2021.View report: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/ Lipase is an enzyme produced by pancreas which catalyzes biochemical reactions in which hydrolysis of fats take place. It also hydrolyzes ester bonds in triglycerides to form mono glycerides and free fatty acids and also helps in formation of fatty acids. Lipases are also involved in inflammation and cell signaling.Absence or inadequacy of lipase in body results in high cholesterol, high risk towards diabetes, decreased cell permeability, muscle spasms and high levels of triglycerides in the body. Lipases are used in industries for yogurt and cheese fermentation. Recombinant lipase enzymes are being used in applications such as laundry detergents, baking and as biocatalysts in converting vegetable oil into fuel.Download free sample report: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/request-sample Increase in pancreatic disorders and number of patients undergoing pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, use of lipases in cosmetics industry, changing food habits and increase in consumption of dairy products are driving the lipase market. Use of lipase in food and beverages industry as flavoring agent and to increase shelf life of food products is also expected to drive the market. Uncertainties in patent protection laws are restraining the market growth.The global lipase market is segmented on the basis of source, application, functions and region. Based on source of lipase, the market is segmented into microbial lipases, animal lipases and plant lipases. Microbial lipases produced from bacteria and yeast account for the largest market share as they are most preferred in enzymes industry due to the low cost and high effectiveness compared to that of plants and animals. Based on applications, the market is segmented into Animal Feed, Dairy, Bakery, Confectionery and Others. Animal feed application leads the market in this segment due to increase in livestock production and increasing meat consumption. Dairy products applications are the fastest growing segment due to the changing eating habits and rise in disposable incomes of people. Based on functions the market is segmented into Frozen Food and Beverage Additives and Food and Beverage Texturants.Inquire before buying: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/inquire On the basis of geography, the global market is analyzed under various regions namely North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific region is the largest market segment due to the increase in demand for bakery and processed dairy products in this region. Latin America region is projected to be the fastest growing segment due to the increase in food and beverage industries.Major players in the lipase market are E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Associated British Foods PLC, Amano Enzymes Inc., Novozymes A/S, Advanced Enzymes, Enzyme Development Corporation, Renco New Zealand, Koninklijke DSM N.V., Chr. Hansen Holdings A/S, and Clerici-Sacco Group.Market SegmentationSource Introduction Microbial Lipases Plant Lipases Animal Lipases Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Source Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Source Market Share Analysis, By SourceApplication Introduction Animal Feed Dairy Bakery Confectionery Others Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Application Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Application Market Share Analysis, By ApplicationFunctions Introduction Frozen Food and Beverage Additives Food and Beverage Texturants Other Functions Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Functions Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Functions Market Share Analysis, By FunctionsThe scope of the report: Global, regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis, and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and skillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 08:26:49

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager

9985550206

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com





# 786 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.Sales Manager9985550206

Medical animations can be used to explain physiological or surgical topics with the help of computer graphics. They are mostly made for patients and medical professionals among other users. At the start, these animations were primitive in nature but with technological advancements the videos became more advanced. They can be used along with devices such as haptic gloves, head mounted displays and electronic lenses.Get a comprehensive overview of the Medical Animation Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/medical-animation-market-3175/ Medical Animation Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe driving factors of Medical Animation market are rising geriatric population, increasing number of surgeries, increasing number of pharmaceutical companies using medical animations, growing advancements in technology, increasing penetration of electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers and entry of start-ups among others. However the market is restrained by factors like high cost of generating medical animations.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Medical Animation Market. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/medical-animation-market-3175/request-sample Medical Animation Market: SegmentationBy type 3D animation 2D animation Flash animation Real time animationBy therapeutic area Cardiology Cosmeceuticals Oncology Dental OthersBy application Drug mechanism of action Cellular and molecular applications Patient education Surgical training Planning Other applicationsBy end users Life science companies Academic institutes Hospitals, Surgical centres and clinics Medical device manufacturersFrom simple data collation through secondary and primary research toad-hoc research requests relating to specific information, we provide our services via customization. Get customization at http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/medical-animation-market-3175/customize-report Medical Animation Market: Region-wise OutlookThe Global Medical Animation market is divided based on geography into North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Europe. North America holds the largest market share in the world which is followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. The highest growth rate is witnessed by the Asia-Pacific region.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Medical Animation market outlook? What trends are affecting the market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Medical Animation market? What are the key market segments that currently occupy the highest market share? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What challenges are restraining the growth of the Medical Animation market? How will emerging technologies answer these challenges? What is physician perception and market outlook of Medical Animation?Medical Animation Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players in the market include Infuse Medical (U.S.), Hybrid Medical Animation, Inc. (U.S.), Ghost Productions, Inc. (U.S.), Radius Digital Science (U.S.), Nucleus Medical Media, Inc. (U.S.), AXS Studio, Inc. (Canada), Visible Body (U.S.), Elara Systems, Inc. (U.S.), Animated Biomedical Productions (Australia), XVIVO Scientific Animation (U.S.), Scientific Animations, Inc. (U.S.), INVIVO Communications, Inc. (Canada), Random42 Scientific Communication (U.K.), Blausen Medical Communications, Inc. (U.S.), Trinsic Medical Animation, LLC. (U.S.), Viscira (U.S.), Understand.com (U.S.), and Medmovie, Inc. (U.S.).Reasons to buy Medical Animation Market Report: Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of product type, therapeutic area, application, end users along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
According to the report Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration, published by Market Data Forecast, the North America market is projected to reach USD 7.85 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.5% from 2017 to 2022.

Browse And Choose From Our World Class Research Reports

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 11:21:25

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

Hyderabad, India



Abhishek

Sales Manager

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 830 Words

Hyderabad, IndiaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

Almost all industrial approaches for the substances to pass between two segments using permeable membranes is covered by membrane technologies. Usually, membrane technology is utilized in machine-driven separation processes for segregating liquid or gaseous streams. Membrane separation processes use less energy than straight thermal separation processes such as sublimation, distillation or crystallization because they function without heating. Both segments (retentate and permeate) can be utilized for separation which is purely physical.North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration: Drivers & RestraintsPharmaceutical Membrane Filtration market in this region is driven by factors like wider adoption of the Nano filtration technology, growing biopharmaceutical industry, and rapid development in generics production.Stringent regulatory requirements and growing prices are inhibiting the growth of this market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-pharmaceutical-membrane-filtration-market-3212/request-sample North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration: SegmentationBy Product MCE Membrane Filters Coated Cellulose Acetate Membrane Filters Nylon Membrane Filters PTFE Membrane Filters PVDF Membrane Filters Other Membrane FiltersBy Technique Microfiltration Ultrafiltration Nanofiltration Crossfiltration Reverse Osmosis Ion ExchangeBy Application Final Product Processing Raw Material Filtration Cell Separation Water Purification Air PurificationFrom simple data collection 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/north-america-pharmaceutical-membrane-filtration-market-3212/customize-report North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration: OverviewFactors like wider adoption of the Nano filtration technology and growing biopharmaceutical industry are affecting the growth of this market positively. However, other factors such as stringent regulatory requirements and growing prices are restraining the growth of this market. The MCE membrane filters category is estimated to account for the biggest market share in the products segment which can be attributed to the high adoption rate of membrane filtration products. By techniques, the microfiltration category is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the aforementioned forecast period which can be attributed to the high rates of production of pharmaceutical products and drugs. The final product processing category is estimated to growth at the highest rate during the aforementioned forecast period in the applications segment.North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration: Region-wise OutlookThe market for Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration in North America region is divided based on geography into US and Canada. Presently, North America accounts for the largest market share. Growth in North America is basically due to the increasing instances of cases of air borne diseases which result in higher production generic drug production.Key Questions Answered What is the current and future Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration outlook in North America market? What trends are affecting the North America market? What is the competitive landscape and market share of major players in the Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration space in North America market? What are the key, high growth markets that Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration manufacturers should expand into? Which market segments are growing the fastest? What are the unmet needs with the Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration currently on the market? How will emerging technologies fulfil these unmet needs? What is physician perception and market outlook of Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration? What are the challenges and barriers that have hindered widespread adoption of Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration?North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration: Key PlayersSome of the major companies dominating North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration Market areReasons to buy North America Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration Report: Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of product type, application, colour along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 12:37:29

Press Information

Market Data Forecast

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana



Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://marketdataforecast.com





# 692 Words

531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, TelanganaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

Pea isolates are a more refined version of pea concentrates while textured pea protein contains higher amount of protein as compared to concentrates and isolates. Pea protein products can replace a significant percentage of other proteins in many food products without impacting the colour, taste, or texture of the product. They also offer health benefits such as weight management, boosting metabolism, and regulating blood sugar levels.View Full Report @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-pea-protein-market-766/ As Pea Protein is a non-allergen and non-GMO protein, there is a great demand for Pea Proteins, which is witnessed in the recent times in Europe. Also, rising lactose intolerance cases and increased use of dairy and plant protein ingredients as additives are some of the factors which are rising the market growth for Pea Proteins in Europe. But, high cost involved in raw material processing and also stringent rules by the food administration bodies on the pricing of the products can dampen the market growth.Free sample of the report is available @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-pea-protein-market-766/request-sample The Europe pea protein market is segmented on the basis of type, application and region. On the basis of type, the pea protein market is segmented into concentrated, isolated and textured. In addition, textured pea protein is sub-segmented into wet and dry. Furthermore, on the basis of application the market is segmented into snacks & bakery products, meat extenders, meat substitute, food & beverages and other food application. Meat substitute segment is likely to grow at a significant rate over the forecast period compared to other areas.Inquire before buying @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-pea-protein-market-766/inquire Furthermore, on the basis of geography, the European Market is analysed under various regions namely, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Europe is the second largest market after North America, in the global market. The European market is mainly attracting the investors and companies with rising lactose intolerance cases, due to which there seems a high potential in this region.Some of the key players operating in Europe pea protein market are A&B Ingredients, Axiom Foods, Inc., Consucra-Groupe Warcoing, Burcon NutraScience Ltd., Roquette Freres and Nutri-Pea Limited.Market Segmentation1) By Type1.1 Concentrated1.2 Isolated1.3 Textured2) By Application2.1 Snacks and Bakery products2.2 Meat extenders2.3 Meat substitute2.4 Food & Beverages2.5 Other food applicationScope of the Report Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and sksillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 14:00:13

Press Information





Published by

ACCESSWIRE News Network

888.952.4446

e-mail

http://www.accesswire.com







# 398 Words

ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446

FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Preferred Dental Technologies Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Winnipeg, Manitoba (FSCWire) - Preferred Dental Technologies Inc. (CSE:PDTI). has issued a press release with the following headline:Preferred Dental Technologies Inc. (Company) (CSE: PDTI): Begins Trading with New Symbol Today, and Provides Corporate UpdateTo 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 Preferred Dental Technologies Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Preferred Dental Technologies Inc.Source: Preferred Dental Technologies Inc. (CSE: PDTI)Date: December 21, 2017Time: 8:00 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Preferred Dental Technologies Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
A celebration of special occasions calls for cakes. If you are looking to send cakes to Surat for an upcoming event, then Myfloralkart is at your service.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-21 17:33:35

Press Information

Myfloralkart

Shop No.L-11, Jain Mandir Market, South-ex-2 New Delhi,





Delhi 110049



Sunil Singh

PR Head

+919899886258

email

https://www.myfloralkart.com/cakes.html





# 386 Words

Shop No.L-11, Jain Mandir Market, South-ex-2 New Delhi,Delhi 110049PR Head+919899886258

The company has an impeccable Online Cake Delivery in Surat ( https://www.myfloralkart.com/cakes-delivery-surat.html) that takes care of your celebrations. If you are running late in sending cakes to Surat, then Myfloralkart has same day delivery service of cakes in Surat to bring you your order in just a few hours right at your doorstep. So, have your loved ones a delightful treat on special occasions who are living in Surat by sending cakes from Myfloralkart.com Myfloralkart is an Indian online gifting portal that aims to make your special occasions better and happier by its offerings. The company has its wide range of gifts on several occasions like Valentines Day, Christmas, New Year, Mothers Day, Diwali, Rakhi, etc. Besides, you can also send gifts to your loved ones on occasions like wedding, anniversary, birthday, parties, etc. You can make the best pick from the website, and send it across to any part of the country.If you are looking for the Best Birthday Cakes in Ahmedabad ( https://www.myfloralkart.com/cakes-delivery-ahmedabad.html) , drop by Myfloralkart.com . With its wide array of cakes in different flavors, you will have lots of options to choose from. The price is also reasonable. They have tied up with world class bakers in the city who get you fresh cakes for any special occasion. Besides, they also have Midnight Cake Delivery in Ahmedabad for occasions like birthday, through which you can send cakes in just a few hours at 12 a.m. With our midnight delivery service of cakes, we are sure that we are offering our consumers something new, which will help us in building loyalty., says Mrs. Alka Arora Marketing Head at Myfloralkart.com . So, if you want to turn your occasion into a grand affair, shop for cakes from Myfloarlkart. The cakes come in different shapes, flavors and icings such as Strawberry cakes, Chocolate cakes, Vanilla cakes, Pineapple cakes and many other fruit cakes, all the cakes are sourced from the best confectionaries of the city you order your cake to, now order Birthday or Anniversary cake to someone special on specific date and time on myfloralkart.com About MyFloralKartMyFloralKart is an online florist and gifting website in India.Media ContactName: Sunil SinghDesignation: PR Marketing HeadContact: +919899886258Email: info@ myfloralkart.com
The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation, ITFC, and African Export-Import Bank, AFREXIMBANK, on Thursday signed a $100 million and a EUR 50 million agreement to facilitate financing of exports amongst African countries and between Africa and the rest of the world.

ITFC is a member of the Islamic Development Bank, IsDB Group, while AFREXIMBANK is a multilateral financial institution established by African governments and institutional investors to finance and promote intra- and extra-African trade.

The agreements were signed by the CEO of ITFC, Hani Sonbol, and the Executive Vice President, Business Development & Corporate Banking of AFREXIMBANK, Amr Kamel.

The signing ceremony was held during the Afro-Arab Trade Finance Forum organised by the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, BADEA in Dubai under the Arab Africa Trade Bridges Programme.

A statement at the end of the agreement explained that the financial facilities were intended to support procurement from suppliers from member and non-member countries, including local purchases, to promote trade across Africa.

Mr. Sonbol said the partnership between ITFC and AFREXIMBANK was part of the commitment to support the development of the African member countries exports as an important lever toward the sustainable growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

He said that the partnership would be utilised to finance African Organisation Islamic Conference, OIC, member countries under the Arab-Africa Trade Bridges Programme, a regional trade promotion programme aimed at addressing some of the challenges faced in promoting trade between the two regions and supporting South-South cooperation.

The ITFC CEO, who delivered a keynote speech at the opening session of the Forum, focused on identifying the prospects and opportunities between the Arab countries and Africa, and the best ways to tackle the challenges that hinder the development of the trade flows in these countries.

On his part, AFREXIMBANK Executive Vice President, Amr Kamel, said the bank saw the partnership agreement as a stepping stone towards greater collaboration in pursuit of the Banks shared vision with ITFC.

He said that ITFC had demonstrated that it stood shoulder to shoulder with the African Export-Import Bank as they collaborate to develop the African Continent and promote inter-African trade.

I see great prospect for the unfolding AFREXIMBANK-ITFC partnership, Mr. Kamel said. But, I am mindful that realising the tremendous opportunities will require determination and hard work. We are committed to invest our resources in that direction.

Murabaha is a transaction arrangement under which a bank, rather than loan money to the client, purchases the goods from a third party and then sells them to the client at a preset price.
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday said Britain and Poland were concerned about Russian attempts to weaponise information.

We have agreed today to bolster our cooperation to counter Russian disinformation in the region. We are both deeply concerned at Russias attempts to weaponise information.

The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system and it will not succeed, she told reporters during a visit to Poland.

(Reuters/NAN)
The Somaliland authorities should release two journalists, Ahmed Saed and Abdirahman Mohamed Ege, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Police on December 18 arrested the Somali journalists on allegations of publishing false news about the mayor of Berbera, a port city in the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland, according to Guleid Ahmed Jama, chairperson of the advocacy group Human Rights Center, and Yahye Mohamed, the Somaliland Journalists Association executive director.

Their arrests came after Messrs. Abdirahman and Ahmed ran separate television stories both alleging the mayor, Abdishakur Mahmoud Hassan, misused public property, according to Messrs. Yahye and Guleid.

Somaliland authorities must immediately release Ahmed Saed and Abdirahman Mohamed, and permit reporters to operate without fear of arrest, Angela Quintal, CPJ Africa program coordinator, said from Durban, South Africa.

Somalilands new president, Muse Bihi Abdi, should seize the opportunity to end such blatant attempts to intimidate journalists and make press freedom a priority for his administration.

Mayor Hassan did not answer a call and text message from CPJ.

Following the journalists arrest, Berbera authorities brought Ahmed, who works for the privately owned Saab TV, and Abdirahman, who works for the privately owned Eryal TV, to a local court, which remanded them for seven days pending further investigation, Guleid told CPJ.

The detentions of Abdirahman and Ahmed follow the arrest on December 5 ofAbdirisak Dayib Alil. His arrest came after CPJ conducted its most recent prison census, which indicated that on December 1 Somalia was jailing one journalist, Mohamed Adan Dirir.

Somalilands police commissioner, Abdullahi Fadal Iman, did not respond to phone calls and text messages for comment from CPJ.

Reached yesterday, the recently appointed information minister, Abdurrahman Abdullahi Farah asked CPJ to contact him today. CPJ was unable to reach the minister today: the phone connection was poor and the spokesperson did not immediately return a text message seeking comment.
Innoson Motors has rejected claims that its founder and CEO, Innocent Chukwuma, was arrested because he ignored an invitation from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It said the businessman was never invited prior to his arrest and dared the anti-graft agency to present evidence of invitation to Nigerians.

Mr. Chukwuma was arrested on Tuesday morning at his residence in Enugu by EFCC officers who remanded him at their field office in the city. He was later released on bail on Wednesday evening.

The EFCC said anti-graft detectives decided to take the industrialist into custody after attempts to summon him were rebuffed.

His arrest followed his refusal to honour invitation by the Commission having earlier jumped an administrative bail granted him in a case being investigated by the Capital Market and Insurance Fraud Unit of the Commissions Lagos office, the EFCC said in the statement signed by Wilson Uwujaren, its spokesperson.

Cornel Osigwe, a spokesperson for Innoson Group, debunked the account of the EFCC in a statement to PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday.

The statement was sent before Mr. Chukwumas release was announced by the EFCC.

Mr. Osigwe challenged the EFCC to bring out any evidence to support its claim that Mr. Chukwuma was invited or earlier granted administrative bail by the commission

Mr. Osigwe blamed the GTBank for orchestrating the arrest of his principal, a claim the bank denied in an exchange with PREMIUM TIMES shortly after Mr. Chukwuma was arrested Tuesday.

Mr. Chukwuma and GTBank have been locked in a prolonged legal battle over claims by the industrialist that the bank made arbitrary deductions in his bank accounts.

The bank countered the allegations, saying it was Mr. Chukwuma who allegedly falsified bank and shipping documents to obtain tax waivers from the Nigerian government.

Mr. Uwujaren did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES request for the anti-graft agency to present evidence that Mr. Innoson was summoned.

Read the full response of Innoson Group to the EFCC statement about Mr. Chukwumas arrest below:

Re: EFCC ARRESTS INNOCENT CHUKWUMA (INNOSON)

Our attention has been drawn to the Official Statement with the above caption released by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, stating the reason Dr Innocent Chukwuma was arrested by the Commission.

According to the statement published on EFCCs official website, Dr Innocent Chukwumas arrest followed his refusal to honour invitation by the Commission having earlier jumped an administrative bail granted him in a case being investigated by the Capital Market and Insurance Fraud Unit of the Commissions Lagos office.

The statement went further to claim that Dr Chukwuma rather than honouring invitation by the EFCC, mobilized six truckloads of thugs pretending to be staff of his company tohis residence, where they manhandled EFCC operatives.

In as much that we would not want to join words with EFCC, but because their Official Statement has been widely circulated among many News media including various online blogs and social media platforms, we would for record purposes state the facts on the alleged invitation as well what

happened in his residence during his arrest yesterday.

1. We wish to deny EFFCs claim categorically that Dr Innocent Chukwuma (Innoson) was invited by the Commission or was there any time or that he jumped an administrative bail granted by the EFCC. Dr Chukwuma (OFR) is a law-abiding citizen, a public figure

and a well-known industrialist of international repute. There is no how he would be invited by the EFCC and he would ignore or refuse to honour the invitation.

2. Dr Chukwuma has never had any issues or query from the EFCC recently. The last issue he had with EFCC was an invitation extended to him in 2012 based on a complaint against him by Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), which he duly honoured.

3. Upon the completion of investigation, EFCC requested him through a letter to pay some money to GTB saying that the money is what Innoson owes GTB after it-EFCC- deducted excess charge of about

N560M which GTB illegally and unlawfully took from their account.

Innoson rejected the demand maintaining that it was GTB that was owing it and that GTB is to pay interest on the excess and unlawful charges. This resulted in a stalemate between Innoson and EFCC. Consequently,

Innoson commenced a lawsuit against GTB at Federal High Court in Suit No: FHC/AWK/139/2012 at Federal High Court Awka division and thereat got a judgment in its favour in the sum of N4.7B against GTB.

4. As a consequence of the above, EFCC filed a charge against him at the Lagos High Court. The Charge was subsequently struck out after EFCC filed a notice of discontinuance.

However, Dr Innocent Chukwuma and Innoson Nigeria Ltd appealed against the order striking out the case on the basis that it ought to be dismissed and not struck out. The appeal- appeal no: CA/I/1330Cm/2017 till date is still pending at the court of Appeal Lagos State. Since then EFCC has never invited Dr Chukwuma again.

5. We challenge EFCC to show proof and evidence of EFCC invitation extended to Dr Chukwuma; the various dates of the invitation and the letter of invitation extended to him.

We further challenge EFCC to also show proof of how and when did Dr Chukwuma jump an administrative bail granted to him.

6. EFCC also claimed that Dr Chukwuma is being investigated by the Capital Market and Insurance Fraud Unit of the Commissions Lagos office. We equally challenge EFCC to show proof of this investigation: On whose petition is this investigation being carried out and proof of any letter on this investigation ever written to Innoson from this unit stating also the month and year.

7. The Commission is being economical with the truth by stating that Dr Chukwuma mobilized six truckloads of thugs pretending to be staff of his company to his residence, where they manhandled EFCC operatives.

The truth available at our disposal is that some factory workers on hearing their boss was being arrested, mobilized themselves to his residence to protest what they said was an illegal arrest. However, the EFCC operatives together with the Police team fired tear gas and dispersed them. We have pictures to back up our claim. At no point did these factory workers manhandle the armed

EFCC and Police officials at his residence. This is pure falsehood aimed at tarnishing the reputation of Dr Innocent Chukwuma (OFR).

8. EFCC as a law-abiding organisation and a strong advocate of rule of law as constantly shown and practised by its Head led by Ibrahim Magu should allow the court processes to reach its logical conclusion.

Dr Chukwumas case against GTB is already at the Supreme Court. We have absolute faith the Nigeria Judiciary. They should be allowed to adjudicate over this matter without undue interference from any quarters.
Contrary to claims by embattled Kogi East Senator, Attai Aidoko, that he remains the rightful occupant of the Kogi East senatorial seat, court documents indicate the seat was declared vacant.

Shortly after the Abuja Division of the Appeal Court on Monday dismissed Mr. Adokos Appeal, requesting the determination of three issues from the lower court, the senator reacted to media reports which interpreted the court ruling to mean that the seat had become vacant.

In his reaction, Mr. Aidoko described the reports as laughable and misinforming. He further claimed that nothing was said regarding the supposed occupant of the seat during Tuesdays ruling.

Copies of the said judgement obtained exclusively by PREMIUM TIMES, however, indicate that by the virtue of Mondays ruling, the Kogi East senatorial seat remains without an occupant, until a decision of the Federal High Court is made, as directed by the Supreme Court on June 16, 2017.

The Appeal Court in a unanimous judgement on Monday condemned the decision of Mr. Aidoko to return to the appellate court seeking its interpretation on a matter that had been resolved by the Supreme Court.

A three-member panel of judges led by Abdul Aboki described as reckless and bizarre the application brought by Mr. Aidoko, after the June 16 Supreme Court judgement.

The appellate court ruled that following the decision of the Supreme Court, its earlier judgement was no longer valid. It ordered the senator to pay N1 million compensation to the contender to the seat, Isaac Alfa.

The earlier judgement which went on appeal to the Supreme Court was no longer valid, in view of the facts that all courts below are bound to follow the decisions and order (s) of the Supreme Court.

This application lacks merit. It fails and is accordingly dismissed. N1, 000, 000. 00 (One million naira) cost is awarded against the applicant in favour of the respondent, the court ruled.

It was based on that December 2016 appeal court ruling that Mr. Aidoko was sworn in as senator in January this year. Therefore, with the same appeal court now saying that ruling was no longer valid, the controversial senator has no basis to claim legitimacy to the seat.

The appellate court on Monday also affirmed the Federal High Courts interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling which overturned all pronouncements on the rightful occupants of the seat, pending the federal high courts analysis of evidences in the matter.

Mondays decision of the Appeal Court was a fallout of various court decisions on the controversial seat, as previously decided by the Federal High Court in Abuja, presided over by Justice Nnamdi Dimgba in May, 2016.

Ruling on an application filed by Mr. Alfa, the trial court had decided that Mr. Alfa was the authentic occupant for the Kogi East senatorial seat.

Dissatisfied with the judgement, Mr. Aidoko approached the Appeal Court, challenging the jurisdiction of the lower court to have entertained the matter in the first place.

Mr. Aidoko further argued that Mr. Dimgba was wrong to have decided on such an issue after accessing only originating summons, without looking into evidences from parties in the matter.

In its ruling, the Appeal Court in December 2016 agreed with Mr. Aidokos submission that the lower court should have first analysed the evidences before reaching its conclusion.

Subsequently, the appellate court annulled the decision of the lower court but failed to refer the matter back to the federal high court for reassessment based on evidences. Rather, the court pronounced Mr. Aidoko as the rightful occupant of the seat.

Dissatisfied with that decision, Mr. Alfa proceeded to the Supreme Court.

In its decision, the Supreme Court agreed with the judgement of the Appeal Court, that the matter ought to have been first analysed at the lower court on the basis of evidences from parties. The apex court therefore ordered a fresh start of the matter, in effect annulling all decisions earlier taken on the case.

When the case restarted at the lower court, now presided by another judge, Binta Nyako, Mr. Aidoko requested the leave of the FHC to refer some issues to the appeal court for interpretation from the lower court.

The main objective of the three issues intended for interpretation was to prove that the lower court, according to Mr. Adokos lawyers, lacked jurisdiction on the matter.

They contended that the Supreme Court only decided on the need for the lower court to have accessed evidences before reaching its conclusion, but that the apex court did not set aside the appeal court decision, affirming Mr Aidoko as the authentic occupier of the seat.

In a ruling delivered on Mr. Aidokos request at the FHC, Mrs. Nyako interpreted the Supreme Courts decision to mean that the matter was taken back to the stage it was, before it came to the Federal High Court in 2016, where no authentic occupant of the seat was known.

Before granting the applicant leave to proceed to the appeal court, Mrs. Nyako noted the previous decisions taken by both high courts and concluded that the overall implication is that the case has become none-existent.

Having read the position of parties and having read the decisions of both the court of appeal and the Supreme Court: to my understanding the court of appeal set aside the judgement of the trial court. Then ordered that a fresh certificate be issued to the first respondent. This was the decision that went to the Supreme Court.

Now to my mind, the effect of setting aside means to annul. It goes back to the beginning, as if it did not exist, Mrs. Nyako said.

Citing the above interpretation at the appeal court, another member of the appeal court panel, Emmanuel Akomaye said the decision of Mr. Aidoko to return to the appellate court, despite the annulment of the entire case at the lower courts, amounts to a great disdain and contempt for the Supreme Court.

To my mind the applicant has exhibited great disdain and contempt for the Supreme Court decision aforesaid. All he is out to do is to circumvent and render the judgement and frustrate the hearing de-novo ordered by the Supreme Court.

The lower court has ably stated the decision of the Supreme Court. This court as well as parties are duty bound to obey and ensure the enforcement of the Supreme Courts decision aforesaid. This court will not be party to the intransigence of the applicant to truncate the decision of the Supreme Court, Mr. Akomaye said.

The appeal court dismissed the request for interpretation of the three issues brought before it, stressing that, It is not the duty of this court to decide unnecessary hypothetical or academic constitutional issues.

Although Mr. Aidoko on Tuesday apparently deceived senators in the upper chamber when he addressed them on the matter, with the appeal court judgement now officially available, Senate President Bukola Saraki may have to act to formally ask Mr. Aidoko to stop referring to himself as a serving senator until the High Court decides.

Messrs. Aidoko and Alfa have battled for the Kogi East Senatorial seat since December 2014.

While Mr. Alfa claims he won the primaries conducted by their party, the Peoples Democratic Party, and was issued certificate of return by INEC after winning the main election, Mr. Aidoko insists he is the rightful occupant of the controversial seat, partly because his name was submitted to INEC, after the said primaries by the PDP as the partys flag-bearer for the election.
Nigeria on Thursday joined 127 other countries to back a UN resolution which effectively called on the U.S. to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

A total of 128 countries approved the non-binding resolution. Nine countries voted against it, 21 did not turn up to vote, while 35 abstained.

Togo was the only African country that voted against the resolution. The other eight that voted against the resolution were the U.S., Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau.

Apart from the U.S., all the other four permanent Security Council members voted in support of the resolution on Thursday.

The vote comes a day after President Donald Trump threatened that the U.S. could withdraw funding from countries that back the resolution.

They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us, the American leader told reporters at the White House.

Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care, Mr. Trump said on Wednesday.

That threat did not, however, deter countries like Nigeria, Egypt and several others who despite receiving millions of dollars of American aid every year, chose to stand by majority of the world in condemning the U.S. decision.

The solution adopted by the UN General Assembly states that any decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem are null and void and must be cancelled.

Thursdays vote by the General Assembly comes days after the UN Security Council adopted a similar resolution. That resolution was, however, vetoed by the U.S.

Both Israel and Palestine want Jerusalem as their capital with most countries of the World supporting a two-state solution that would see East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Thursdays resolution is non-binding and therefore largely symbolic, but the voting pattern indicates the extent to which the Trump administrations decision to defy a 50-year international consensus on Jerusalems status has unsettled world politics and contributed to Americas diplomatic isolation.

A spokesman for Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed the result, calling it a a victory for Palestine.

After the vote, the German Foreign Office tweeted its reasoning, writing that the status of Jerusalem should be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. It should not be prejudged.

Israel denounced Thursdays vote, likening it to a 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.

Its shameful that this meeting is even taking place, Israels envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the body.

Israeli Prime Minister Banjamin Netanyahu thanked Mr. Trump for his stance on Jerusalem and condemned the vote. Earlier, he slammed the UN as a house of lies.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel whether UN recognise that or not. It took 70 years for the U.S. to recognise it officially and it will take more years for the UN to recognise it as well. The state of Israel completely rejects this vote, before it is made, Mr. Netanyahu said prior to the voting.
The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, NAHCON, has commenced the process of selecting airlines and cargo service providers ahead the 2018 Hajj exercise.

The commission on Wednesday in Abuja began screening six airlines that submitted bids to convey Nigerian pilgrims to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj.

Of the six airlines, four are from Nigeria, while the other two are Saudi based airlines.

Authorities of the Holy land have made it mandatory to allow Saudi-based airlines to be part of those ferrying pilgrims.

Those who applied for cargo services airfreight of pilgrims excess luggage were Cargo Zeal Technologies Limited, Med-view International Travels and Cargoes and Dynasty Airline.

Speaking before the commencement of the screening exercise, acting chairman of the commission, Yusuf Adebayo, assured that transparency and adherence to the rule of law will guide the screening.

Mr. Adebayo urged participating airlines to make their concerns known at any time during the screening process.

Chairman of the screening committee, NAHCONs Commissioner of Operations, Abdullahi Saleh, said the bidding and selection of carriers would be done transparently.

Mr. Saleh heads a 28 member committee with membership drawn from all the relevant government agencies that have to do with airline and airspace management in Nigeria.

We are assuring you that the committee would do its work diligently as it includes other stakeholders. The large number of the committee is also to ensure its transparency and diligence, Mr. Saleh said.

The committee was earlier on Tuesday inaugurated by Mr. Adebayo.

He had charged the committee to ensure that the selection of qualified and competent air carriers with viable capacity and wherewithal.

Part of the terms of references of the committee include; screening of prospective air carriers that apply to airlift pilgrims and those for excess luggage in respect of the 2018 Hajj and to determine the suitability and capacity of the applicants (airlines) in line with the extant laws of the Nigerian Civil Aviation and ICAO standard and recommended practices.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar left the All Progressives Congress (APC) not for the reasons he claimed but because APC governors had endorsed President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term in 2019, Kaduna governor, Nasiru El-Rufai, said.

Mr. El-Rufai spoke on a Voice of America (VOA) Hausa service programme, Democracy Today.

The governor featured on the programme alongside the former vice president and a former governor of Jigawa state, Sule Lamido.

Mr. El-rufai had also disputed the claims of the former vice president that the ruling APC abandoned him after he sponsored the 2015 campaign of President Buhari.

The governor challenged Mr. Abubakar to show proofs that he gave out money in support of Mr. Buharis campaign.

When asked about his ambition now that he is a full member of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the former vice president said he would let Nigerians know his position about 2019 if he eventually make up his mind.

Prior to his defection to the PDP, Mr. Abubakar was reportedly said to have given conditions before returning to the party, and that included assurance of getting the partys presidential ticket for 2019.

The former governor of Jigawa state, Mr. Lamido, who is also being tipped as a contender for the PDP presidential ticket come 2019, said though the party celebrates the return of Mr. Abubakar, his being in the party would not deter him from actualising his dream of running.

Obviously we are happy that our former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has come back to PDP. It was PDP that made him; so his coming back to his party is our collective joy. We are not talking about him only; as a matter of fact, we want others who left the party like the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, as well as former governors to come back home.

If our interest is to see the progress and development of our dear country, Nigeria, then we should also pray that everyone who left PDP should return home.

Governor El-Rufai said Mr. Abubakars exit from the APC was more about his personal ambition than the interest of Nigeria.

We in the APC were aware of it long ago that Atiku was going to leave the APC back to the PDP in December; but we even thank God that he left in November, said Mr. El- Rufai.

He said the former vice president left simply because it was made clear to him that he would not get the APC ticket following the governors endorsement of Mr. Buhari for a second term in 2019.

Atiku had seen that we in the APC, especially the APC governors, had made up our mind to support President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019, Mr. El-Rufai said. That is why he left APC since he was only looking for where to contest for president.

He argued that even without Mr. Buhari contesting the 2019 election, Mr. Abubakar who was defeated by Kano state former Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to third position in the 2015 APC primary, would not have been the partys ticket bearer in the next election.

Even in the 2015 APC primary election, Atiku didnt come second; he was floored by Kwankwaso. So, even if President Buhari decides not to contest, Atiku knows that the APC ticket is not sure for him. Majority of the APC governors have endorsed President Buhari as our candidate for 2019.

And God has continued to improve the health condition of the President. Each time I see him, I thank God and I still pray that God continues to give him sound health.

So, by 2019, we are waiting to see Atiku contest; we are waiting to contest against him and see what happens. I cannot lose sleep because Atiku wants to contest because, by Gods grace, this is the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari.

It is agreed that in politics if you lose even only one person, it should worry you, but the utterances of the former Vice President that APC used his money; who did he give the money to? For me, I know those that supported us with their money and property that we used during election, and I never heard the name of Atiku that he brought a dime. If Atiku said he brought money, who did he give it to? Let him come and say it and how much did he give and what was it used for?

And, in fact, if Atiku brought money, I ought to know, because I was part of the leadership of the party and during campaign, along with former Governor Rotimi Amaechi. We were at the centre of the presidential campaign. Therefore, we are supposed to know. So, let him mention who he gave the money and how much?

On his opinion about the rumour that large number of politicians are likely to follow Mr. Abubakar in defecting to the opposition PDP, Mr. El-Rufai said Sure, we know that, we cannot rule out the possibility of some greedy people following him; those that are following material things. But, if people will consider how we can work for the progress of our country, everybody knows that you cannot compare Atiku with President Muhammadu Buhari.
His recent political comments, realignments and permutations notwithstanding, Atiku Abubakar has not decided to run for president in 2019.

The former vice-president told VOA Hausa when he featured on a magazine programme there Tuesday that Nigerians will know when he eventually takes the bold move.

For now I have not made up my mind, Mr. Abubakar said. When I decide, I will let the world know.

Mr. Abubakars statement is capable of demoralising his supporters, some of whom have already commenced groundwork for his 2019 bid, said Azibola Omekwe, the national coordinator of The Atiku Rennaisance, a political group.

Mr. Azibola said the 2019 ambition of Mr. Atiku has gained considerable momentum in recent weeks, a moving train he said would be difficult to reverse.

Just recently, some people came out to say that they will sue the former vice-president if he fails to join the race, Mr. Azibola said. Thats how serious some of his supporters have now taken his ambition.

Mr. Abubakars spokesperson, Paul Ibe, said the politicians fans should not be demoralised by the comments.

He spoke in the context of his ongoing consultations, but hell eventually make up his mind to run, Mr. Ibe said. Those who have started politicking on his behalf should continue.

Mr. Azibola acknowledged that the final decision on Mr. Atikus political choice in 2019 would be the former vice-presidents to make.

But Im sure he will ultimately decide to run because hes the best option to beat President Buhari, said Mr. Azibola, a former state legislator in Bayelsa. We expect him to do this within the first quarter of 2018.

The last one month had seen Mr. Abubakar resign from the ruling All Progressives Congress to return to the Peoples Democratic Party, under which he served eight years as VP between 1999-2007.

After using his resignation letter to convey his misgivings about President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Atiku granted a media interview in which he accused the president of incompetence.

He also accused Mr. Buhari of stoking ethnic and tribal divisions in the country, saying he will handily defeat the president in 2019.

Mr. Buhari has not openly exchanged words with Mr. Abubakar, but the presidency warned the former vice president to stop disparaging the president.

The reprimand followed allegations that Mr. Buhari was banned from travelling to the United States for 15 years as a consequence of his religious views.

Mr. Abubakar used the purported ban to ward off allegations that he is wanted in the U.S. for fraud.

Mr. Abubakar said he had applied for visa to the U.S. but was denied on administrative grounds.

He, however, failed to present evidence of his claim that Mr. Buhari was also banned from the U.S. despite being challenged by the State House to do so.

American authorities have not responded to PREMIUM TIMES requests seeking clarification about both Mr. Atikus status and the alleged ban of the president some years back.

Mr. Ibe said Mr. Abubakar will continue sparring with the Buhari administration ahead of his formal announcement.

What has been happening in recent weeks is sparring, Mr. Ibe said. We expect this to continue, but its not the same as a formal declaration of a presidential run.
The National Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, and allied unions under the aegis of Petroleum Tanker Drivers, PTD, on Thursday vowed to expose anyone, including their members sabotaging the smooth distribution of petroleum products in the country.

The two groups gave the commitment during a stakeholders meeting on the challenges of products supply and distribution led by the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Resources Downstream, Joseph Akinlaja.

The meeting is part of ongoing efforts by the NNPC to find lasting solutions to the hiccups currently being experienced in the supply and distribution of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, otherwise called petrol, in parts of the country.

The NARTO National President, Kassim Bataiya and the PTD National Chairman, Salimon Oladiti, said their focus was to end the current hardship experienced by Nigerians at filling stations.

We are transporters. We know how many litres of fuel we have been moving across the country every day. If anybody is found guilty of smuggling products out of the country or to any unauthorised locations within the country, even if they are our members, we would not only disown them, we will also expose them, Mr. Bataiya vowed.

Noting efforts by the NNPC to make products available to Nigerians, the NARTO National President assured that its members would ensure that trucks were made available to deliver products to any destination at any given time.

He said their coming to the meeting was to show solidarity with the NNPC and to pledge their continuous support to the corporation.

The official frowned at a situation where the NNPC was the only importer of refined petroleum products at the moment, saying government should encourage other marketers to complement its efforts.

On his part, the PTD National Chairman, Mr. Oladiti condemned the activities of unpatriotic citizens who engage in smuggling of products outside the country and subjected Nigerians to the current hardship.

Mr. Oladiti called on all interest groups to join hands with others to address the issues of tanker hijacking, vandalism and smuggling, amongst others, assuring that tanker drivers would work to ensure the coming Christmas holiday was not disrupted by products scarcity.

Mr. Akinlaja, who led the unions to visit the NNPC, said he was confident the outcome of the meeting would help end the crisis within the next few days.

On the allegation of products diversion, he stated that the House of Representatives would investigate the issue and come up with workable solutions.

Responding, the NNPC Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru, noted the support by critical groups like the House of Representatives, NARTO and PTD in addressing the challenges of products supply nationwide.

He said the NNPC would partner with relevant interest groups to address the issues raised at the meeting, including collaboration with security agencies as well as state governments to secure befitting parking spaces for tankers at designated places.

Mr. Baru said in line with NNPCs commitment to transparency, it has commenced the automation of loading pumps in all its fuel depots nationwide.

The GMD, who decried the activities of some unscrupulous elements involved in products diversion, said volume of products supplied into the market has been increased until the problem is resolved.

He said the NNPC plans to import at least 1 billion litres of petrol by the end of December.

The Chairman of NNPC committee on products supply and distribution, who is also the corporations chief operating officer, Ventures, Babatunde Adeniran, said products diversion was a major challenge that must be fought by all and sundry.

He lamented for instance, a situation where eight trucks were sent to Bauchi State and, none of them delivered products at their destination.
Another Muslim law graduate, Aisha Zubair, has come out to say she was victimised and forced to remove her Hijab by officials of the Council of Legal Education and the Law School during the last call-to-bar exercise.

Ms. Zubair, who made her claim known to PREMIUM TIMES through the Muslim Rights Council, MURIC, said she was never allowed to put her Hijab on despite pleas.

Ms. Zubairs claim is coming against the backdrop of the controversy generated over the barring of Amasa Firdaus, another law graduate, from the exercise.

Ms. Amasa was barred from accessing the venue of the exercise for refusing to remove her Hijab.

The issue has continued to generate heated debates across the nation with the House of Representatives promising an investigation of the matter.

MURIC quoted Ms. Zubair as narrates her experience at the venue of the exercise thus:

I was called to the Nigerian Bar on the 12th day of December, 2017 in the morning. Some other sisters and I were on the queue together to enter the hall. At the entrance, the law school lecturer there demanded for our hijab, she asked that we remove both the hijab and the cap and give it to her. She demanded same of those wearing ordinary cap too.

We begged to go and remove it properly in the toilet and she obliged. We were allowed to enter only when we had removed everything from our heads. When I went to my seat, I donned the hijab back on but I was approached about twice to remove the hijab, as other sisters were approached too.

When the programme started, I put it back on, tucked it into the collarrete and placed the wig on it. When it was my turn to be called to the stage, I approached the stage with the hijab on, took a bow like everyone else but did not shake the hands of the bencher there. I was given my certificate like everyone else and I proceeded to my seat.

When I got to my seat, a law school lecturer was waiting there and she started shouting at me and hurling insults at me for daring to wear the hijab in the hall saying I wanted to disgrace them. She demanded I remove the hijab and throw it on the floor, which I did, then she started to rub the hijab on the floor. Then she kicked it around several times before asking a guard to guard the hijab and not allow me retrieve it. Then she came back with another lecturer to seize the certificate I had just collected from me saying it was order from above for doing what I did. I begged but they didnt listen. After the ceremony, I went to them and after so much pleas, I was given back the certificate with a stern warning.

PREMIUM TIMES could not immediately get a reaction from the Council of Legal Education and the Law School at the time of filing report.

MURIC in a statement on Thursday commended the House of Representatives for wading into the controversy.

Nonetheless, we wish to call the attention of the Committee on Justice and Judiciary which has been saddled with the task of unearthing the truth about this matter to the fact that AbdulSalaam Firdaus Amasa was not the only female Muslim law graduate whose Allah-given fundamental human right was violated on that day and at that event, the rights group said.

The organization alleged further that, All the female Muslim law graduates who wore hijab to the event were forced to remove their hijab but one of them, Aisha Zubair by name, was treated like an ordinary criminal and subjected to public disgrace. She suffered serious psychological trauma which still haunts her to date as a result of being forced to appear half nude in public. We must add here that an average female Muslim, who is used to wearing hijab is naturally sensitive to being made to appear in public without it. It breaks them down emotionally.

MURIC takes serious objection to the treatment of Aisha Zubair. It is tyrannical, repressive and horrible. We urge the Committee on Justice and the Judiciary to consider this information during its investigations. The lecturer who traumatised this lady must be fished out and punished according to the law of the land. She has subjected Aisha Zubair to public opprobrium, inflicted emotional injury on her and assaulted her personal dignity. This action violates Section 34 (i) (a) of the 2011 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

Not only that, she has provoked all Nigerian Muslims by treating the hijab in such a contemptuous manner. It is a hate action capable of igniting a monumental religious crisis whose outcome no one can predict. Only due punishment can satisfy Nigerian Muslims and calm frayed nerves. This law teacher is a disgrace to the law profession, a square peg in a round hole. She must be taught a lesson as a deterrent to many others like her.

The organisation appealed to Nigerians who have been provoked by the ugly incident to exercise patience and wait for the House Committee on Justice and the Judiciary to submit its report.
The umbrella body of Nigerian muslims, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, has again spoken about the current hijab controversy rocking the Nigerian Law School.

The group had on Tuesday sent a statement to PREMIUM TIMES signed by its Deputy Secretary General, Salisu Shehu, a professor, accusing the Nigerian Law School of lawlessness and Islamophobia.

NSCIA was responding to the refusal of the authorities of the Nigerian Law School to call to bar Firdausa Amasa for wearing a hijab during the call to bar ceremony.

The group had threatened nationwide protest and a fierce legal action should the law school fail to rescind its decision not to call Ms. Amasa to the bar.

In the second statement on Thursday, also signed by Mr. Shehu, the NSCIA said while it appreciated the support of Nigerians on the matter, it however advised  strongly that nobody should take the laws into his/her hands.

The group asked Nigerians to show restraint no matter the level of our worry and however much we may be provoked. This is what Islam teaches us and we must abide by the teachings.

 Many are ignorant of the level of provocation this intolerant act of the Council for Legal Education has ignited.

We wish to assure our Muslim brothers and sisters that we will not relent on this matter and we will doggedly follow all legitimate ways to resist this apparent injustice.

Our focus is to secure our constitutional rights in the Nigerian System. We are having issues only with the governmental authorities, organizations, institutions and instruments that deny us those rights or persecute and oppress us for demanding our rights, the NSCIA said.

The organisation also said it had to speak for the second time and call for caution  because of critical matters that have been arising out of it (the controversy)

The NSCIA appreciated the overwhelming support the Muslim community not only in Nigeria but all over the world has given to Ms Amasa.

 Similarly appreciated are thousands of non-Muslims who supported her position and with unbiased and objective minds stood for justice and fairness .

The statement said the concerns and worries of Muslims all over the world on the issue of Miss Amasa, who, for wearing a hijab under her wig was wrongfully denied the opportunity of being called to the Nigerian bar as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria with her colleagues, on the 13th December, 2017 were certainly justified.

 It is undoubtedly painful that, after encouraging our female children to strive to acquire Education, they are unnecessarily and unjustifiably being persecuted and constantly put against the unwholesome, uncharitable and unworthy options of having to either choose between disregarding/disrespecting their essential religious tenets and values or the opportunity of the qualifications/certificates they struggle and strive hard to obtain.

 The NSCIA is not unaware of the persecutions and molestations the Muslim mothers, sisters and daughters go through in various institutions of learning, on NYSC orientation camps and other specialized and professional training schools simply because they choose to observe their Hijabs. This has to stop we cover our heads not our brains, the group said.

NSCIA assured all Muslim faithful that it would not relent on the matter and  will doggedly follow all legitimate ways to resist this apparent injustice, adding our focus is to secure our constitutional rights in the Nigerian System.

READ FULL STATEMENT BELOW;

RE: STOP PRESS! HIJAB IS CONSTITUTIONAL

The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) under the leadership of its President-General, His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Saad Abubakar, CFR,mni., is once again obliged to make a second Press Statement on the issue of our dear Sister Firdausa Amasa. This has become necessary because of critical matters that have been arising out of it. First of all the NSCIA appreciates the overwhelming support which the Muslim Ummah not only in Nigeria but all over the World have given to the correct position of the young lady. Similarly appreciated are thousands of non-Muslims who supported her position and with unbiased and objective minds stood for justice and fairness.

The concerns and worries of Muslims all over the world on the issue of Miss Firdausa Al-jannah Amasa, who, for wearing a hijab under her wig was wrongfully denied the opportunity of being called to the Nigerian bar as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria with her colleagues, on the 13th December, 2017 were certainly justified.

It is undoubtedly painful that, after encouraging our female children to strive to acquire Education, they are unnecessarily and unjustifiably being persecuted and constantly put against the unwholesome, uncharitable and unworthy options of having to either choose between disregarding/disrespecting their essential religious tenets and values or the opportunity of the qualifications/certificates they struggle and strive hard to obtain.

The NSCIA is not unaware of the persecutions and molestations the Muslim mothers, sisters and daughters go through in various institutions of learning, on NYSC orientation camps and other specialized and professional training schools simply because they choose to observe their Hijabs. This has to stop we cover our heads not our brains.

While appreciating the support of our people on this particular issue, the Council wishes to advise strongly that nobody should take the laws into his/ her hands. We must show restraint no matter the level of our worry and however much we may be provoked. This is what Islam teaches us and we must abide by the teachings. Many are ignorant of the level of provocation this intolerant act of the Council for Legal Education has ignited.

We wish to assure our Muslim brothers and sisters that we will not relent on this matter and we will doggedly follow all legitimate ways to resist this apparent injustice. Our focus is to secure our constitutional rights in the Nigerian System. We are having issues only with the governmental authorities, organizations, institutions and instruments that deny us those rights or persecute and oppress us for demanding our rights.

We wish to seize this opportunity to inform all that the correct name of the concerned sister is Miss Firdausa Al-jannah Amasa

And our final prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, the Almighty, Lord of the Worlds.

Signed

Prof. Salisu Shehu

Deputy Secretary-General
The Borno government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday declared the state free of cholera, four months after the disease claimed 61 lives.

The state government said no case of cholera has been reported in the last two weeks.

Since August 15 when the outbreak of cholera hit the state, the ministry of health in collaboration with WHO said it had immunised over 900, 000 persons in the six local government areas that were affected by the disease.

The affected areas comprise, Jere, Maiduguri Metropolitan Council (MMC), Dikwa, Monguno, Mafa and Guzamala local government areas of Borno state.

Speaking at a joint press conference organised by the Borno state ministry of health and the WHO, the states director, medical response and humanitarian services, Mohammed Ghuluze, said cholera outbreak is over in Borno state.

He said since the outbreak, the state government in collaboration with the WHO and other health actors moved to control the disease.

He said a little over 5000 cases were recorded across six local government area of Jere, MMC, Dikwa, Monguno, Mafa and Guzamal where 61 death cases were reported.

Giving a breakdown of the total deaths cases recorded, the official said the disease killed 17 children, who were within the ages of zero and 4 year; 14 children within the ages of 5 to 9 years and two children within 10 to 19 years.

Others killed by the disease comprised six persons under the the ages of 20 and 21 years; nine persons within 30 to 39 years and one person, who was between 40 to 49 years. He added that two others between the ages of 51 to 59 years also died alongside 5 persons that were 60 years and above.

Mr. Ghuluze blamed the 2017 outbreak and its devastating effect on poor healthcare system that was weakened by years of insurgency.

He also spoke on how the state navigated the storm.

I must say that we have succeeded in controlling the outbreak through multi-sectoral strategies adopted alongside the strong partnership from WHO that coordinated other development partners to support the state in closing identified gaps in surveillance, risk communication, water and sanitation, Mr. Ghuluze said.

Today we are more than two weeks without any case reported and this signifies that we have come to the end of this outbreak.
The Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, on Thursday said he would remain grateful to the Nigerian armed forces for the sacrifices made in ensuring Boko Haram does not overrun the state in the last eight years.

The governor said, the armed forces stood for his state at a time the world thought Bornos sun had finally set.

Mr. Shettima spoke during the launch of the 2018 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Emblem at the Government House, Maiduguri.

A delegation of the legionaires attended the event.

He said: we all owe the Armed Forces of Nigeria for the sacrifice they have made in keeping Nigeria in one piece from the times of world wars to the civil war, the peace-keeping mission in Liberia, Seria-Leone, Mali up to our own Boko Haram insurgency. Many of them have lost their lives in the line of duty.

We thank them so much for making sure that we still remain safe and alive today.

The governor said he had approved several plots of land to help members of the Nigerian Legion in the state build houses and live a decent retirement life.

Earlier, the chairman of the Legion, William Mamza (retired captain) said the over 60,000 members in his group are in need of support in order live in meaningful retirement.

He said the group was specifically soliciting for the renovation of its office at the Ramat Sqaure, which is usually the venue for the armed forces parade.
The Plateau Head of Service (HoS), Izam Azi, has said that 10 civil servants of the state are being prosecuted in various courts for various corruption offences.

Mr. Azi told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Jos that the state government had zero tolerance to any form of financial or character corruption in the civil service.

We are presently prosecuting 10 civil servants from various ministries in different courts for deeping their hands into the coffers of the state.

Unfortunately one of them died while standing trial, leaving only nine of them to answer for their nefarious actions while in service,  the head of service disclosed.

The HoS explained that four of the suspects tampered with students scholarship allowances of College of Nursing, Vom, running into millions of Naira, while another set of them allegedly was collecting salaries meant for a commissioner.

Mr. Azi warned civil servants to resist any form of temptation to involve in corruption.

According to him, civil servants are the engine room of any government and so should not be involved in any form of corrupt practices, no matter the temptation.

He stated that Governor Simon Lalongs administration had been trying its best to improve the welfare of workers as demonstrated in the prompt payment of their salaries, promotion allowances and leave grants.

As it is today, we are not owing workers or pensioners any salary/pension arrears as the government pays when due.

He further disclosed that the state was in dire need of more workers to employ but that the challenge before it was funds with which to pay their salaries.

The head of service explained the situation prompted the government to set up a Task Force on Revenue, to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).

He lamented the embargo on employment for a very long time in the state which explained reason for 11,000 people applying for 1,000 jobs indicated by government.

Mr. Azi sympathised with the un-employed, whom he said had to go for the forms year in year out in anticipation that the state government would open the window for them to gain employment.

He explained that there were vacancies in the state civil service, especially Ministry of Health and Education, but that government was constrained by lack of funds.

It is our desire to improve our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) so that it can help us pay workers salaries and open more doors for more to join the work force since we are in dire need of more workers.

(NAN)
A senior wife to the Olubadan of Ibadan land, Saliu Adetunji, identified as Kudirat Aduke, is dead.

Ms. Aduke died in the early hours of Thursday, PREMIUM TIMES gathered.

A statement by the Director , Media and Publicity to the Olubadan, Adeola Oloko , said that the late queen died in the early hours of the day at the age of 71.

The Olori passed away in the early hours of Thursday December 21 , 2017. Until her death, she was the Iyaloja of Bolade , Oshodi Market , Lagos, the statement said.

She will be buried today (Thursday) at the Popoyemoja , Ibadan palace of Olubadan of Ibadanland at 4 p.m. according to Muslim rites .

She is survived by her husband , many children and grandchildren.

The Oyo State governor, Abiola Ajimobi, in a condolence message said that the demise of the queen was unfortunate and disheartening.

Mr. Ajimobi, who said that he received the sad news with shock and disbelief, described the incident as a big loss, not only to the Olubadan but also, to the entire people of the ancient city.

I am greatly saddened by the passing away of Olori Kudirah. It is very unfortunate and disheartening, especially because we were still together with Kabiyesi and the royal retinue at the Chief of Army Staff conference, held in Ibadan, last week, he said.

Her death is indeed a big loss, not only to our father, the Olubadan, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Saliu Adetunji, but also, to the entire people of Ibadanland. May the Almighty grant Kabiyesi, Mamas children and loved ones the fortitude to bear this great loss.

I enjoin the good people of Oyo State to join me in praying for the repose of her gentle soul and may Allah grant her the highest place in Jannah.
A civil rights group, Education Rights Campaign, ERC, has condemned the arrest and detention of protesting students of the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic MAPOLY, by the police reportedly on the orders of the Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun.

This was made known in a press statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday and signed by the National Coordinator, Hassan Soweto.

The group also said the Ogun State government should immediately halt its agenda to sack staff of the institution and meet all the demands of the staff unions so that the institution can be re-opened for students to write their examinations and conclude the semester.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Ogun State Police Command arrested 20 students of the school for allegedly vandalising government and personal property in Abeokuta metropolis. The students were protesting the stalling of their semester examinations.

Over the past few weeks, the state government and lecturers of the institution have been at loggerheads over the conversion of the polytechnic to a university and subsequent relocation of the polytechnic to Ipokia, a border town in the state.

The lecturers alleged that the state government did not follow due process. They resolved not to resume at the new school premises until the governor met the criteria set by the National Board of Technical Education for such a process.

However, the state has stood its ground on the matter.

Meanwhile, ERC said the imbroglio was as a result of the irresponsibility of the state government.

We make bold to say that the crisis rocking MAPOLY today is entirely due to the fault and irresponsibility of the Ogun State government, Mr. Hassan said.

In a bid to save their jobs, the staff unions have had to embark on strikes which have led to the disruption of the academic calendar with terrible consequence for students of the institution. With their lives wasting away at home, the students embarked on protest with a bid to call the attention of the state government to their plight. But instead of listening to them, Governor Amosun ordered the police to unleash terror on them resulting in many students sustaining injuries and several arrested and detained.

The group said it found it preposterous that a government saddled with the responsibility of improving the education system and ensuring that the students graduating from the institution are able to contribute meaningfully to the society is treating students in this manner.

Clearly the Governor Ibikunle Amosun-led state government has proven in both words and action that the improvement of the education sector is of no priority to it, the statement said.

To add salt to injury, some of the protesting students whose sole crime was to demand for the resumption of academic activities and the improvement of the education sector which should have been the priority of a responsible government are now being held in police custody.

We, simultaneously reassert our position that if sincerely the government is interested in the provision of quality university education, the huge and vast resources of the state, if judiciously spent, can go a long way in funding public education adequately in the state.
The Osun State Government has announced its annual Christmas and New Year free train ride to convey holiday makers from Lagos to the state.

A statement by the Commissioner for Industry, Commerce and Cooperatives, Adekunle Jayeoba-Alagbada, said the gesture which started since 2011, was in line with the Rauf Aregbesola administrations practice of facilitating convenient movement of its indigenes in and out of the state during festive seasons.

He urged indigenes of the state to make adequate use of the opportunity.

The train would, by 10 a.m. on Saturday the 23rd of December 2017, convey people from Lagos to Osogbo, the statement said.

The return journey to Lagos from Osogbo will be Tuesday the 26th of December by 10 a.m.

The train will also resume from Lagos to Osogbo for the New year celebration at 10 a.m. Saturday, December 30th 2017and return to Lagos on Tuesday 2nd of January 2018, the statement added.
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.




By Samuel Ssebuliba:

The Uganda Medical Association President Dr. Ekwaru Obuku who was assaulted by unknown assailants last evening is still in intensive care unit but out of danger.

According to the deputy police spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Lucas Oweyesigire, there was an aggravated robbery in Kitikifumba Kiira Division at around 11:00pm.

He says Dr.Obuku was attacked and his phone taken as he waited for his gate to be opened.

Speaking to Dr Brian Kasagga the association spokesperson, Dr. Obuku sustained head injuries after being hit with a stone.

Dr. Ekwarus mother Joyce Akiigwa was also robbed of her hand bag that contained an unspecified amount of money and some important documents.

Ekwarus name recently hit headlines for leading the medical doctors strike over poor pay and welfare.
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AB Global High Income Fund, Inc.[NYSE: AWF] (the "Fund") today released its monthly portfolio update as of November 30, 2017.

AB Global High Income Fund, Inc.















Top 10 Fixed-Income Holdings

Portfolio % 1) Brazil Notas do Tesouro Nacional Series F 10.00%, 1/01/21 - 1/01/27 3.66% 2) U.S. Treasury Notes 0.875%, 4/15/19

3.55% 3) Mexican Bonos Series M 20 10.00%, 12/05/24 1.06% 4) Turkey Government Bond 11.00%, 2/24/27 0.95% 5) U.S. Treasury Bonds 6.25%, 5/15/30

0.91% 6) Mexican Bonos Series M 6.50%, 6/10/21 0.85% 7) Argentine Republic Government International Bond 6.875%, 4/22/21 - 1/26/27 0.79% 8) U.S. Treasury Bonds 8.125%, 5/15/21

0.73% 9) Wachovia Mortgage Loan Trust Series Series 2006-ALT1, Class A2 1.508%, 1/25/37 0.69% 10) U.S. Treasury Notes 2.25%, 2/15/27

0.65%





Investment Type

Portfolio % Corporates - Non-Investment Grade



Industrial



Energy

5.77% Communications - Media

4.40% Consumer Non-Cyclical

3.92% Basic

3.59% Consumer Cyclical - Other

2.87% Communications - Telecommunications

2.71% Capital Goods

2.02% Technology

1.63% Services

1.59% Consumer Cyclical - Automotive

1.22% Other Industrial

1.08% Transportation - Services

1.02% Consumer Cyclical - Retailers

0.96% Consumer Cyclical - Entertainment

0.22% Transportation - Airlines

0.10% Consumer Cyclical - Restaurants

0.08% SUBTOTAL

33.18% Financial Institutions



Banking

4.48% Finance

1.03% Insurance

0.51% Other Finance

0.42% Brokerage

0.14% REITS

0.06% SUBTOTAL

6.64% Credit Default Swaps

5.62% SUBTOTAL

5.62% Utility



Electric

1.35% Natural Gas

0.03% SUBTOTAL

1.38% SUBTOTAL

46.82% Global Governments

13.98% Interest Rate Swaps

13.31% Collateralized Mortgage Obligations



Risk Share Floating Rate

9.27% Non-Agency Fixed Rate

1.73% Non-Agency Floating Rate

1.11% SUBTOTAL

12.11% Interest Rate Futures

9.02% Corporates - Investment Grade



Industrial



Basic

0.97% Technology

0.55% Energy

0.48% Communications - Media

0.40% Consumer Cyclical - Automotive

0.28% Capital Goods

0.26% Communications - Telecommunications

0.26% Consumer Non-Cyclical

0.17% Consumer Cyclical - Other

0.08% Services

0.06% Transportation - Airlines

0.06% SUBTOTAL

3.57% Financial Institutions



Banking

1.57% Insurance

1.22% REITS

0.60% Brokerage

0.09% SUBTOTAL

3.48% Credit Default Swaps

0.93% SUBTOTAL

0.93% Utility



Electric

0.12% SUBTOTAL

0.12% SUBTOTAL

8.10% Emerging Markets - Treasuries

8.04% Emerging Markets - Sovereigns

6.95% Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities



Credit Default Swaps

4.08% Non-Agency Fixed Rate CMBS

2.18% Non-Agency Floating Rate CMBS

0.22% SUBTOTAL

6.48% Emerging Markets - Corporate Bonds



Industrial



Energy

0.97% Basic

0.75% Consumer Non-Cyclical

0.51% Communications - Telecommunications

0.43% Capital Goods

0.27% Consumer Cyclical - Other

0.18% Transportation - Services

0.15% Consumer Cyclical - Retailers

0.07% Technology

0.05% Transportation - Airlines

0.04% Other Industrial

0.04% SUBTOTAL

3.46% Financial Institutions



Banking

0.29% Finance

0.05% SUBTOTAL

0.34% Utility



Electric

0.05% SUBTOTAL

0.05% SUBTOTAL

3.85% Total Return Swaps

3.82% Bank Loans



Industrial



Consumer Non-Cyclical

0.57% Technology

0.56% Consumer Cyclical - Retailers

0.40% Capital Goods

0.35% Consumer Cyclical - Other

0.34% Energy

0.24% Other Industrial

0.19% Communications - Telecommunications

0.09% Services

0.09% Consumer Cyclical - Entertainment

0.08% Basic

0.08% SUBTOTAL

2.99% SUBTOTAL

2.99% Asset-Backed Securities



Other ABS - Fixed Rate

0.77% Home Equity Loans - Fixed Rate

0.63% Autos - Fixed Rate

0.06% Home Equity Loans - Floating Rate

0.03% SUBTOTAL

1.49% Common Stocks

1.43% Preferred Stocks



Industrial

0.76% Financial Institutions

0.31% Utility

0.03% SUBTOTAL

1.10% Inflation-Linked Securities

0.77% Local Governments - Regional Bonds

0.58% Whole Loan Trusts



Performing Asset

0.48% SUBTOTAL

0.48% Local Governments - US Municipal Bonds

0.46% Quasi-Sovereigns



Quasi-Sovereign Bonds

0.26% SUBTOTAL

0.26% Investment Companies



Funds and Investment Trusts

0.18% SUBTOTAL

0.18% Collateralized Loan Obligations



CLO - Floating Rate

0.11% SUBTOTAL

0.11% Options Purchased - Calls



Options on Forward Contracts

0.01% SUBTOTAL

0.01% Options Purchased - Puts



Options on Forward Contracts

0.01% SUBTOTAL

0.01% Warrants

0.01% Currency Instruments



Forward Currency Exchange Contracts

-0.21% SUBTOTAL

-0.21% Put Options Written

-0.32% Equity Futures



Equity Index Futures

-1.87% SUBTOTAL

-1.87% Reverse Repurchase Agreements

-6.59% Net Cash Equivalents



Cash

0.93% Emerging Markets - Sovereigns

0.49% Investment Companies

0.31% Governments - Treasuries

0.23% SUBTOTAL

1.96% Derivative Offsets



Futures Offsets

-7.24% Swaps Offsets

-28.09% SUBTOTAL

-35.33% Total

100.00%





Country Breakdown

Portfolio % United States

60.35% Brazil

5.38% Mexico

3.57% Argentina

3.29% United Kingdom

2.86% Turkey

2.45% Indonesia

1.67% Luxembourg

1.58% Canada

1.49% Dominican Republic

1.24% France

1.19% Ireland

1.12% Italy

0.98% Egypt

0.92% Colombia

0.82% Spain

0.80% Switzerland

0.79% Russia

0.78% Netherlands

0.63% Sri Lanka

0.59% South Africa

0.58% Ivory Coast

0.53% Ukraine

0.47% Malaysia

0.46% Jamaica

0.38% Cayman Islands

0.37% India

0.35% Germany

0.33% Zambia

0.33% United Arab Emirates

0.29% Ecuador

0.27% Gabon

0.24% Mongolia

0.19% Norway

0.17% Angola

0.17% Guatemala

0.16% Venezuela

0.15% Sweden

0.14% Bahrain

0.14% El Salvador

0.14% Trinidad & Tobago

0.13% Macau

0.13% Senegal

0.12% Nigeria

0.12% Pakistan

0.12% Israel

0.12% Uruguay

0.12% Cameroon

0.11% Honduras

0.09% Peru

0.08% Australia

0.06% Kenya

0.06% Iraq

0.05% Jordan

0.05% Ethiopia

0.05% Finland

0.05% China

0.04% Hong Kong

0.04% Chile

0.04% Jersey (Channel Islands)

0.02% Belarus

0.02% Serbia

0.01% Portugal

0.01% Total Investments

100.00%





Net Currency Exposure Breakdown

Portfolio % United States Dollar

102.79% Brazilian Real

2.04% Argentine Peso

1.64% Polish Zloty

1.58% Indonesian Rupiah

1.53% Russian Rubles

1.23% Chinese Yuan Renminbi

1.00% Egypt Pound

0.72% Indian Rupee

0.50% Malaysian Ringgit

0.50% Dominican Peso

0.48% Sri Lankan Rupee

0.48% Colombian Peso

0.43% Norwegian Krone

0.36% Peruvian Sol

0.25% South Korean Won

0.20% Uruguayan Peso

0.13% Mexican Peso

0.07% Chinese Yuan Renminbi (Offshore)

-0.01% South African Rand

-0.46% Canadian Dollar

-0.62% Great British Pound

-0.75% Australian Dollar

-0.85% Swedish Krona

-1.27% Japanese Yen

-1.28% Euro

-1.47% New Zealand Dollar

-1.51% Swiss Franc

-1.68% New Turkish Lira

-1.99% Taiwan New Dollar

-2.01% Israeli New Shekel

-2.03% Total Net Assets

100.00%





Credit Rating

Portfolio % AAA

8.32% AA

0.96% A

4.56% BBB

15.69% BB

31.47% B

27.60% CCC

6.78% CC

0.58% C

0.12% D

0.21% Not Rated

6.57% Short Term Investments

1.04% Reverse Repurchase Agreements

-6.59% N/A

2.69% Total

100.00%





Bonds By Maturity

Portfolio % Less than 1 year

3.13% 1 to 5 years

43.20% 5 to 10 years

37.26% 10 to 20 years

9.63% 20 to 30 years

4.27% More Than 30 years

1.07% Other

1.44% Total Net Assets

100.00%





Portfolio Statistics:



Average Coupon:

7.61% Average Bond Price:

103.57 Percentage of Leverage(based on gross assets):

Bank Borrowing:

0.00% Investment Operations:

40.10% Preferred stock:

0.00% Tender Option Bonds:

0.00% VMTP Shares:

0.00% Total Fund Leverage:

40.10% Average Maturity:

7.15 Years Effective Duration:

5.08 Years Total Net Assets:

$1,198.15 Million Net Asset Value:

$13.89 Number of Holdings:

1419 Portfolio Turnover:

48%

* Investment Operations may include the use of certain portfolio management techniques such as credit default swaps, dollar rolls, negative cash, reverse repurchase agreements and when-issued securities.

The foregoing portfolio characteristics are as of the date indicated and can be expected to change. The Fund is a closed-end U.S.-registered management investment company advised by AllianceBernstein L. P.

SOURCE AB Global High Income Fund, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.alliancebernstein.com


Company aims to build local teams to increase response capabilities

HOUSTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Accuworx (http://accuworx.com), a leading environmental services organization known for taking on the toughest jobs, today announced it has acquired Texas-based CTI Group as part of its plan to expand services across the US. The acquisition enables Accuworx to deliver its diversified suite of services in cities across Texas including: Midland, Eagle Ford, Houston, Baytown, and Corpus Christi. The company plans to triple its workforce in Texas in 2018.

Video: Taking On The Toughest Jobs is what were all about. We apply innovative methods to tackle the most challenging situations and emerging environmental concerns, to provide our clients with solutions that bring peace of mind. By using the most advanced technologies available and employing the best people in the industry, we continually perform above and beyond government regulations and client expectations.

"We have set a plan to become North America's first-choice for environmental and industrial services. Joining forces with the incredible team at CTI is a major step in accomplishing our vision," said Jason Rosset, CEO, Accuworx. "Our Gulf Coast clients will now be able to take advantage of our expanding offerings and local presence - responding to their needs where, when and how they need."

Accuworx provides a comprehensive suite of environmental services including: emergency response, soil and groundwater remediation, hazardous waste management, and industrial services. Its clients include Enterprise Products, Union Pacific Railroad, Phillips 66, National Oilwell Varco, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Accuworx offers clients a single destination for a broad range of services to increase project efficiencies and accountability, while delivering economic benefits. Accuworx teams are highly skilled in emergency response, long-term remediation, and site reconstruction using sophisticated technologies and chemistry to go beyond initial clean up.

Included in the acquisition of CTI Group are its subsidiaries: CTI Oil Field Services, CTI Environmental Services, Box Tight (Waste Disposal), Clean Tank, CTI Industrial Services, CTI Oil Spill Services, and Go Safety. Clients of CTI Group can expect to benefit from the growing remediation, waste treatment, industrial cleaning, and emergency response programs now offered under the Accuworx umbrella.

"Our goal is to be lock-step with our clients - an extension of their team," continued Rosset. "To do this, we are making significant investment in localizing our teams, streamlining project management, and tailoring our services to meet the unique needs of our clients."

"Accuworx brings the resources and experience needed to transform how emergency response is traditionally deployed," said Cara Causey, CTI founder. "We are now better positioned to serve our clients while focusing on operational efficiencies, improving programs, increasing training, and ensuring the level of support we can provide our clients is first-rate."

CTI Group's founders Cara and Cayce Causey, will remain part of the new Accuworx team as President and VP Special Projects, respectively.

About Accuworx

Accuworx is an award-winning provider of environmental and industrial services for oil and gas, construction, aviation, industrial, marine, railway, and government clients. With a reputation for taking on the toughest jobs, Accuworx employees are highly-skilled across a diverse suite of services in emergency response, site remediation, and reconstruction for land and marine clients. The highly responsive team provides services across Canada and the United States.

accuworx.com

SOURCE Accuworx Inc
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following Tuesday's brutal assassination of another Mexican reporter, Gumaro Perez Aguilando, the National Press Club and its nonprofit Journalism Institute are renewing their call for U.S. authorities to grant asylum and freedom to this year's NPC Press Freedom award-winner, Emilio Gutierrez Soto.

Perez's murder, before children assembled for his son's Christmas pageant at a school in Veracruz, could be the 12th journalist murdered in Mexico this year, according to a tally compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

It came despite Perez's enrollment in Mexico's Commission for the Care and Protection of Journalists, an organization launched by the government following a wave of violence against reporters. And the latest murder came as the Press Club is urging U.S. authorities to rescind a deportation order against Gutierrez and his son, Oscar. The two fled to this country in 2008 after the elder Gutierrez's reporting on abuses by Mexico's military made him the target of death threats.

They had been living and working in Las Cruces, New Mexico while Gutierrez's asylum case languished for years in legal limbo. In July however, El Paso immigration Judge Robert Hough denied the two men asylum, concluding, among other things, that Gutierrez "failed to establish that the Mexican government would be unable or unwilling to protect him." He also suggested that Gutierrez could ensure his security by relocating elsewhere in Mexico, away from the town where he had done his reporting

Hough's decision is now before the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. The National Press Club and its Journalism Institute have written a letter asking the board to grant Gutierrez's asylum petition and to free him from detention in El Paso, where he has been confined since immigration authorities detained him on Dec. 7.

"We have said repeatedly that Emilio should not have to prove his journalism bonafides and that Mexico is the most dangerous country other than Iraq and Turkey to be a practicing journalist. Emilio is a proven colleague," said National Press Club President Jeff Ballou. "The assassination of Gumaro Perez in front of children at a Christmas party is brutal evidence of endangerment that we wish we did not have to present. Being pressed to prove Emilio is a journalist and having to present another colleague's murder are both examples of everything that we think is wrong with Judge Hough's decision. It underscores why Emilio is worried about his safety, and why he has good reason not to trust that he will be protected by his government."

Added Journalism Institute President Barbara Cochran: "Perez's murder took place in Veracruz, hundreds of miles southeast of Chihuahua, where Emilio lived and worked. So that seems to undercut the judge's theory about relocation as a means to journalist security. The fact is, there is no safe place in Mexico for journalists."

Earlier this year, the National Press Club urged U.S. authorities to grant asylum to Martin Mendez Pineda, another reporter who fled after being threatened. He worked in Acapulco, on the opposite coast of Mexico from Veracruz. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement found he had "credible fear" or returning to his country, but refused to release him from detention. After months in conditions that he described as intolerable, Mendez returned to Mexico, where he is now in hiding.

Dozens of press organizations are supporting Gutierrez's asylum appeal. On Friday, National Press Club General Manager Bill McCarren will be in El Paso to deliver a petition with nearly 17,000 signatures in support of the journalist's case.

Contact: Kathy Kiely, Press Freedom Fellow, National Press Club Journalism Institute, [email protected]; 202-256-4748

SOURCE National Press Club
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC is dismayed by the overwhelming support of UN Member States for the General Assembly resolution condemning U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"For those genuinely committed to achieving a negotiated, comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, today's UN General Assembly action is deeply disheartening," said AJC CEO David Harris.

"Once again, UN member states have chosen to succor Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's misguided strategy of internationalizing the conflict instead of pressing him to negotiate directly with Israel," Harris continued. "Collecting UN resolutions that do not advance peace one iota complicates an already complex conflict that direct negotiations can resolve."

The General Assembly resolution was adopted today by a vote of 128 to 9, with 35 abstaining. The U.S, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo voted no. The GA emergency session was called following the U.S. veto of a similar resolution in the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

"America will put our embassy in Jerusalem," declared U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, addressing the General Assembly. "No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that."

She emphasized that President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital "does not prejudge any final status issues, including Jerusalem's boundaries. The decision does not preclude a two-state solution, if the parties agree to that. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts."

Praising those countries that joined with the U.S. in voting against the resolution, Harris said, "Why should Israel alone be denied the right to determine its capital? The connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish people is more than 3,000 years old; all of Israel's government offices are in Jerusalem."

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


HARRISBURG, Pa., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Propane Gas Association has joined with over 300 organizations nationwide to urge Congress to reinstate the $0.50/gallon Alternative Fuels Tax Credit (AFTC) in year-end legislation.

These partner organizations have sent a letter to members of the United States Senate Committees on Ways & Means and Finance in effort to accentuate the importance of the AFTC to economic growth and energy independence. The letter states that "Extending the AFTC promotes increased private-sector investment in infrastructure and equipment, which leads to more jobs and economic output." Increased utilization of alternative transportation fuels results in proven environmental benefits and helps promote America's energy security.

Nearly 200,000 vehicles in the United States are powered by propane, including 12,000 school buses that transport more than 700,000 school children every day. A school bus powered by propane emits 13 percent fewer GHG emissions than its gasoline counterpart. Propane-powered vehicles are also much quieter than diesel or gasoline vehicles, which creates a safer environment for drivers and pedestrians.

"With the abundance of propane produced in the United States, Congress should support reinstating the AFTC and the use of our domestic natural resources. This credit remains a critical part of promoting alternative fuel use in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States," stated Shelby L. Bell, executive director, for the Pennsylvania Propane Gas Association.

Propane users can help to reinstate this important tax credit by sending a message to your member of congress using this link provided by NPGA.

PAPGA was formed in 1947 to offer opportunities to learn through training and networking with peers, and to aid with legislative issues that contribute to operating a safe and successful industry. In addition to its continued focus on education, networking and representing the interest of Pennsylvania's propane businesses to the government, PAPGA also assists members in remaining current on topics vital to the propane industry.

Contact: Shelby Bell

Executive Director

717-441-6040



SOURCE Pennsylvania Propane Gas Association
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shareholder Rights Law Firm Johnson Fistel, LLP is investigating potential violations of the federal securities laws by Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE: AYX) ("Alteryx") and certain of its officers. Alteryx provides self-service data analytics software platform that enables organizations to enhance business outcomes and the productivity of their business analysts.

On December 19, 2017, UpGuard, a cyber risk company, reported that Alteryx left a database containing sensitive information on 123 million American households unsecured and open to the public. Chris Vickery, UpGuard's cyber risk research director, told HuffPost he stumbled across the 36-gigabyte database during a routine search of Amazon Web Services' storage "buckets," which houses data for numerous companies of all sizes. Vickery stated, "If you're an American, your information probably was exposed."

According to CNET and the HuffPost, the databases contain addresses, phone numbers, number of children living in your household and their age ranges and gender; your age, occupational, marital, and educational status; your mortgage and many other detailed types of information about your household.

If you have information that could assist in this investigation, including past employees and others, or if you are an Alteryx shareholder or consumer and are interested in learning more about the investigation or your legal rights and remedies, please contact Jim Baker [email protected] ) at 619-814-4471. If emailing, please include a phone number.

About Johnson Fistel, LLP:

Johnson Fistel, LLP is a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm with offices in California, New York and Georgia. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.johnsonfistel.com . Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Contact:

Johnson Fistel, LLP

Jim Baker, 619-814-4471

[email protected]

SOURCE Johnson Fistel, LLP

Related Links

http://www.johnsonfistel.com


The Anatomage Cloud service is free to medical professionals for basic use. It provides HIPAA-compliant image transfer and storage through the cloud, with no need for CDs or USBs. In addition, Anatomage brings its award-winning 3D imaging technology to the cloud in the form of a zero-footprint 3D DICOM viewer for instant mobile viewing from any location.

This technology enhances the speed and ease of collaboration for dental specialists, medical professionals, veterinarians, chiropractors, ENT specialists, and more. "Anatomage Cloud opens the door to the most comprehensive network of medical and dental collaboration through 3D visualization," said David Skoff, Business Development Manager at Anatomage.

Medical professionals can try Anatomage Cloud for free by visiting: https://anatomagecloud.com/

About Anatomage

Anatomage Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, CA that designs, manufactures, and markets medical and educational tools for anatomists.

Anatomage products are used in tens of thousands of clinics and hospitals both in the United States and internationally. These include image-guided surgical devices, surgical instruments, radiology software, imaging equipment, medical tables, and display equipment. Anatomage has established partnerships with renowned educational institutions and medical equipment companies; they use Anatomage software as their exclusive imaging software.

Contact:

Jack Choi, Ph.D.

CEO

Anatomage Inc.

Phone: 1-408-885-1474

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Anatomage

Related Links

http://www.anatomage.com


His recent experience as a principal for Hangar 41, working on large mixed-use and multi-family projects around Denver, along with a high end senior housing project called Balfour at Riverfront Park and the Denver Place Towers Remodel with GKK Works, has led him to know the Denver market and the needs of the community. In his role at ADC, Price will be involved with the growth of the office, along with Mike Ohara, ADC Principal. "Derek's diversity in an ever-changing market is what ADC needs, as we begin to bring on more diverse projects in residential, office, and mixed use. His leadership will position ADC to be ready for the anticipated growth of the office," says Craig Chinn, Founding Principal, ADC.

Price will join the ADC team in their new Colorado Office located at 7375 West 52 Avenue, Suite 210, Arvada, CO 80002. "The substantial growth of our office, in the Denver area, prompted us to move to a larger location. The addition of Derek to our team will allow us to continue to grow and serve the community at large," says Chinn.

Architecture Design Collaborative (ADC) is a Top 25 Architecture Firm and "Fastest Growing Architecture Firm" for two years running according to the Orange County Business Journal. The collaborative nature, with the team and client, is what sets ADC apart from other firms. Collectively the team brings a wide range of expertise across many design and related disciplines serving all of their client's needs. ADC offers services from initial conceptual design to construction administration, specializing in retail, commercial, residential, and interior projects.

www.adcollaborative.com

Contact: Mike Ohara, ADC Principal

[email protected]

www.adcollaborative.com

SOURCE Architecture Design Collaborative

Related Links

http://www.adcollaborative.com


GLENDALE, Calif., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Beyond Limits, an artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing company, announced today that they have been named a finalist for the Tech Trailblazers Award in the category of AI. These tech awards aim to recognize both established and up-and-coming startups in 16 different categories. Voting is now open online and will close on January 9, 2018. The winners will be announced on January 11, 2018.

Beyond Limits is a 2017 finalist for the Tech Trailblazers Award.

Launched in 2014, Beyond Limits is a leader in AI and cognitive computing. Beyond Limits' cognitive AI is inspired by the functional behaviors of the human brain to provide human-like cognition and reasoning. With 42 technologies developed for NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), tested and proven in programs like the Mars Rover missions, the company offers cognitive AI and reasoning systems available for the first time for commercial use. Powered by Beyond Limits innovations, the company's technology is an evolutionary leap beyond conventional "machine" AI to a human-like ability to perceive, understand, correlate, learn, teach, reason and solve problems faster than existing AI solutions.

With technologies proven in the unknown and extreme environment of space, Beyond Limits adapts and delivers AI software capable of tackling complex industrial and enterprise challenges for leading industrial enterprises here on earth. Beyond Limits announced a Series B investment with BP Ventures, and has been mentioned in top press such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Financial Times and more.

With many technology companies to consider, the selections have become difficult for the judges on this 6th annual award competition. The finalists listed in the competition for The Tech Trailblazers Awards currently have to gather online votes from the public and await the judges' deliberation.

Rose Ross, Chief Trailblazer, The Tech Trailblazers Awards said; "Another amazing year for trailblazing enterprise tech start-up entrants to the awards. The judging seems to get harder year-on-year. Huge thanks to our judges for continuing to take the time to evaluate all the start-up gold. The Tech Trailblazers team wish these amazing start-ups and start-up superheroes the very best of the luck."

"We are proud to be recognized as one of the top AI companies by Tech Trailblazers," says AJ Abdallat, CEO of Beyond Limits. "Beyond Limits continues to provide cutting-edge AI solutions, bringing the can-do spirit of JPL to help customers solve problems in industries like energy, healthcare, fin-tech and beyond. Beyond Limits exists to create artificial intelligence solutions that go far beyond the conventional."

Beyond Limits has been announced as a finalist in the Artificial Intelligence Trailblazer category in the Tech Trailblazers Awards. For more information on the Tech Trailblazers, please visit www.techtrailblazers.com, follow the buzz on Twitter @techtrailblaze, hashtag #TTawards or check out LinkedIn for the latest updates http://www.linkedin.com/company/tech-trailblazers-awards.

About the Tech Trailblazers Awards

Tech Trailblazers is a new concept in awards, designed explicitly for smaller businesses and startups under six years old or less and at C-series funding or below. The awards have low barriers to entry and aim to recognise both established and up-and-coming startups.

The Tech Trailblazers Awards, is supported by sponsors and industry partners including AfriLabs, Amoo Venture Capital Advisory, beSUCCESS, bnetTV, China AXLR8R, the Cloud Security Alliance, Computing, The Green Grid, GSMA, The Icehouse, Innovation Warehouse, Launchpad Europe, Lissted, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, Mynewsdesk, The Next Silicon Valley, Outsource, Prezi, RealWire, Silicon Cape Initiative, Skolkovo, StarTau, Startup America, Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), Tech in Asia, TechNode, TiE Silicon Valley, Wazoku, Ventureburn and VMware.

About Beyond Limits

Beyond Limits is a pioneering Artificial Intelligence company based in Glendale, California, with a storied history in space and defense, notably AI technology developed at JPL that assisted operation of the Mars Rover Curiosity. From its origins at Caltech/JPL, the NASA facility in Southern California, Beyond Limits owns exclusive licenses to 42 blocks of sophisticated IP developed through NASA R&D investment, a $150 million AI technology head start.

Founded in 2014, Beyond Limits develops IP enhancements for NASA, and also drives new innovation on its mission to bring space program technology to commercial applications here on Earth. The company is a recognized AI leader with breakthrough cognitive technology that goes beyond conventional AI, binding deep learning and machine learning tools together with symbolic AIs that emulate human intuition. Beyond Limits cognitive agents are trained and deployed to solve a variety of industrial and enterprise problems in energy, fin-tech, healthcare, and logistics. For more information, please visit our website www.beyond.ai

Media Contact:

Jennifer Rodriguez

Firecracker PR

[email protected]

SOURCE Beyond Limits

Related Links

http://www.beyond.ai


With close to 2 decades of professional experience as a seasoned and trusted managing director and entrepreneur, Brett Saunders has certainly proven himself as an accomplished business leader and expert in the field. He has demonstrated success not only as CEO of HIFLOW, but he has been successful at all positions that he has held. His impressive repertoires of roles have included QLD Account Manager at James L. Williams, where he was responsible of a portfolio of commercial clients throughout Brisbane. Brett's key responsibilities for JLW included management of contracts, securing new business, managing a team working on his portfolio and providing mechanical services solutions. Now as CEO and Founder of HIFLOW, Brett's key duties include: managing and overseeing the HIFLOW group of companies that have operating offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth Australia; he implements company development and growth strategies; provides financial planning and management; structures team management and deliverables, quality assurance, strategic planning for improvement and evolving as a group to adapt to constant change and providing air conditioning & mechanical services solutions.

HIFLOW Industries delivers innovative and proactive commercial air conditioning services and mechanical services solutions and are known in Australia to be the best in the business. Over the years HIFLOW has serviced Australia's most prestigious commercial properties and architecture and have also acquired ACES (Air Conditioning Engineering Services) in Queensland and Victoria. HIFLOW has continuously strengthened their position in the market place winning the National ARBS (Air Conditioning Refrigeration & Building Services) multiple years in a row and has maintained as Outstanding Maintenance and Service Provider.

For more information on Brett please visit http://www.hiflow.com.au/Default.aspx

CONTACT: Stephanie Cirami, 212-634-4427

SOURCE IAOTP

Related Links

http://iaotp.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- https://cpsc.gov/Recalls/2018/Brompton-Bicycle-Recalls-Bicycles-Due-To-Fall-Hazard

Recall Summary

Name of Product: Folding Brompton bicycles

Hazard: The bicycle's bottom bracket can break during use, posing a fall hazard.

Remedy: Replace

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled bicycles and contact an authorized Brompton dealer for free installation of a new bottom bracket cartridge.

Consumer Contact:

Brompton at 800-578-6785 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or online at www.brompton.com and click on Voluntary recall for more information.

Recall Details

Units: About 8,400 (In addition, about 1,300 were sold in Canada)

Description:

This recall involves Folding Brompton bicycles with "Brompton" printed on the bicycle's frame. Only bicycles with serial numbers 1403284144 to 1705150001 (manufactured from April 2014 through May 2017) are included in the recall. The serial number is printed on a curved plate or sticker, applied to the rear of the seat tube. If the barcode sticker on the bike is faded or rubbed off, submit the six digit frame number stamped into the metal plate behind the bottom bracket and seat tube via email to [email protected] to receive the correlating serial number.

Incidents/Injuries: None reported

Sold At: Specialty bicycle stores and Brompton dealers nationwide from April 2014 through September 2017 for between $1,200 and $3,000

Importer: Brompton Bicycle Inc., of Brooklyn, New York

Manufactured in: Great Britain

In Conjunction With: Canada

Health Canada's press release is available at: http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2017/65474r-eng.php

This recall was conducted, voluntarily by the company, under CPSC's Fast Track Recall process. Fast Track recalls are initiated by firms, who commit to work with CPSC to quickly announce the recall and remedy to protect consumers.

About U.S. CPSC:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazard. CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters and household chemicals  contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years.

Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly-announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission.

For more lifesaving information, follow us on Facebook, Instagram @USCPSC and Twitter @USCPSC or sign up to receive our e-mail alerts. To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury go online to www.SaferProducts.gov or call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 or teletypewriter at 301-595-7054 for the hearing impaired.

CPSC Consumer Information Hotline

Contact us at this toll-free number if you have questions about a recall:

800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054)

Times: 8 a.m.  5:30 p.m. ET; Messages can be left anytime

Call to get product safety and other agency information and to report unsafe products.

Media Contact

Please use the phone numbers below for all media requests.

Phone: 301-504-7908

Spanish: 301-504-7800

SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

Related Links

http://www.cpsc.gov


TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Capital Square 1031, a leading real estate investment and management firm specializing in Delaware statutory trust investments, announced today its acquisition of a 71,150-square-foot office/research and development building in Tampa, Florida. The property is 100 percent leased to a division of Capsugel, an award-winning global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO).

Located at 4910 Savarese Circle, the single-story building is comprised of 45,000 square feet of office space and 26,150 square feet of tech space. The building was renovated in 2015 to accommodate the tenant's expansion.

"This acquisition represented an excellent opportunity for our firm to acquire a stable asset with a credit-worthy tenant that has experienced tremendous growth," said Louis Rogers, founder and chief executive officer of Capital Square 1031.

Earlier this year, Capsugel was acquired by Lonza Group, one of the world's leading suppliers to the pharmaceutical, biotech and specialty ingredients markets.

"The facility is on a long-term, net lease, which is guaranteed by Lonza's American subsidiary, Lonza America Inc., a demonstration of the corporate parent's long-term commitment to the facility," Rogers added. "Further demonstrating its commitment to the property, Capsugel recently made a substantial investment in renovations and new equipment at the facility. Capital Square is very pleased with this acquisition, which brings the firm's assets under management to nearly $660 million."

Capsugel provides research and development services for pharmaceutical companies seeking to outsource the development of new drugs. With clients providing initial research, Capsugel completes the process of developing drugs into a marketable FDA approved product. This process involves the research and testing necessary to design the chemical components of a drug in a way that is stable and resistant to stress (temperature, degradation, etc.), and formulating the drug to achieve proper consistency and solubility in a tablet or capsule. Capsugel's Tampa staff also provides small-scale clinical commercial manufacturing, including packaging of clinical supplies, specialized analytical services, and logistics.

Lonza Group harnesses science and technology to create products that support safer and healthier living and that enhance the overall quality of life. An integrated solutions provider serving the healthcare continuum, Lonza offers products and services from the custom development and manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients to innovative dosage forms for the pharma and consumer health and nutrition industries. In addition to drinking water sanitizers, nutraceuticals, antidandruff agents and other personal care ingredients, the company provides agricultural products, advanced coatings and composites and microbial control solutions that combat dangerous viruses, bacteria and other pathogens.

Home to more than 3 million residents, the greater Tampa area was reported by the U.S. Census Bureau as having the fourth-highest population gain in 2016.

"Capital Square is bullish on the Tampa area, given its growing population, low unemployment, low cost of living and excellent quality of life," Rogers added. "The State of Florida also is an income tax-free state with a positive business environment and exceptional economic growth."

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area has experienced a growth in population of more than 43 percent since 2000, according to BestPlaces.net. Visit Tampa Bay reports that the tourism industry is a significant driver of Hillsborough County, where the Capsugel facility is located and one of greater Tampa Bay's largest counties, with $3.6 billion in visitor spending that supports a total of $5.6 billion in sales. The area is also home to Port Tampa Bay, the largest port in the state of Florida. As of October 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA as having an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent.

About Capital Square 1031

Capital Square 1031 is a national real estate investment and management company. The firm sponsors institutional-quality real estate exchange programs that qualify for tax deferral under Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code. Capital Square uses the Delaware Statutory Trust (DST) structure to make quality real estate available to a larger number of investors. Capital Square provides a range of services, including due diligence, acquisition, loan sourcing, property management/asset management, and disposition, for a growing number of high net worth investors, private equity firms, family offices and institutional investors. As of December 19, 2017, the firm oversees a growing national portfolio of 62 real estate assets valued at nearly $660 million (based on investment cost). In August 2017, Capital Square ranked 485th on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies, making it the top-ranking Richmond, Virginia-area company, with 925 percent three-year growth. In 2016, Capital Square was ranked as the second fastest growing company in the Richmond, Virginia area by Richmond BizSense. To learn more, visit www.CapitalSquare1031.com.

Disclosures

This is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy a DST interest. Offers are made solely pursuant to the Confidential Private Placement Memorandum. Prospective investors should consult their own tax advisors to evaluate the tax consequences of a DST interest. An investment in real estate involves significant risk and is suitable only for investors who have adequate financial means, desire a relatively long-term investment, who will not need immediate liquidity from their investment and can afford to lose their entire investment. Securities offered through WealthForge Securities, LLC member FINRA/SIPC. Capital Square and WealthForge Securities are not affiliated.

Contact: Julie Leber

Spotlight Marketing Communications

949.427.5172, ext. 703

[email protected]

SOURCE Capital Square 1031

Related Links

http://www.capitalsquare1031.com


LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Under the influencing factors like "Collective Reading of Four Meters (water, electricity, gas and heat meters)", differential pricing as well as the evolution of Internet of Things, China's smart meter industry has developed rapidly. In 2016, the total shipment of smart meters in China was 280 million pieces with a CAGR of 20.5% from 2011 to 2016. With further penetration of smart meters in various fields, the market growth will slow down in the future and it is estimated that shipments during 2017-2021 will show an AAGR of above 10.0%.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4420306





In terms of market segments, the smart electric meter market is currently the most mature in China, with its shipment making up over 70% of total smart meter shipments in 2016. Additionally, the smart electric meter market boasted the highest penetration rate, namely over 90%, followed by smart gas meter with 55%; meanwhile, smart water meters and smart heat meters saw less than 20% each.



Smart Electric Meter: China's shipment of smart electric meter hit 130 million pieces in 2016 with a CAGR of 7.1% between 2011 and 2016. The open bidding is mainly invited by State Grid and China Southern Power Grid, targeting 2S single-phase smart electric meters (bids account for over 85%). Due to the near-saturation of the smart electric meter retrofit market, the growth mainly comes from newly-built residential buildings; however, China has lowered the real estate growth goal again during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period (2016-2020). Therefore, it is estimated that the shipment CAGR in 2017-2021 will be between 3%-5%.



Smart Water Meter: China's shipment of smart water meter was 18.49 million pieces in 2016 with a CAGR of 20.2% from 2011 to 2016. Due to the relatively low penetration rate, the demand in the smart water meter market will climb steadily under the impetus of "Smart Water" in the coming years, and shipments is expected to be 21.03 million pieces in 2017 and 34 million pieces in 2021.



Smart Gas Meter: Facilitated by the national policy, the traditional gas meters are gradually transformed into smart ones, conducing to the boom of smart gas meter market. In 2016, the shipment of smart gas meters in China reached 23.37 million pieces with a CAGR of 26.2% during 2011-2016. In the future, with the expedited process of converting coal to gas, the demand for smart gas meters will continue to ascend and shipments will present an AAGR of at least 15% between 2017 and 2021.



Heat meter: Mostly used in northern China, the heat meter grows slowly in an immature market and an industry without uniform standards compared with several other smart meters. Shipments for 2016 were 3.31 million pieces, edging up 1.2% from a year earlier. Some southern cities have expressed their intention to provide heating in winter, a move that creates new demand for heat meter if the idea comes true.



Major global smart meter producers include Itron and Xylem (United States), Diehl (Germany), Landis +Gyr (Switzerland), and Ningbo Sanxing Medical Electric, Wasion Group, Sanchuan Wisdom Technology, Goldcard Smart Group and Suntront Technology (China). Itron, Xylem, Elster, Wasion Group, and Suntront Technology provide products covering water, electricity, gas and heat fields, while most of the rest get involved in only one or two segments.



Smart meter industry is lowly concentrated in China with CR10 standing at only 37.9% in 2016. The industry leader- Ningbo Sanxing Medical Electric occupies a market share of less than 10%. By market segment, smart electric meter, smart water meter and smart gas meter all see a low concentration with CR10 being merely around 20% in 2016.



China Smart Meter Industry Report, 2017-2021 highlights the followings:

Smart meter (definition, classification, characteristics, business model, technical path, etc.);

Smart meter in China (development environment, market size, market structure, competitive landscape, development prospects, etc.);

Smart electric meter industry in China (policies, market size, market structure, competitive landscape, import & export, development trends, etc.);

Global and Chinese smart water meter markets (size, pattern, etc.);

Global and Chinese smart gas meter markets (size, pattern, etc.);

Global and Chinese heat meter markets (size, structure, competitive landscape, etc.);

Six foreign and sixteen Chinese smart meter producers (operation, smart meter business, etc.)



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4420306



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


"This is not your typical Silent Night," said Nyawal, 23, a South Sudanese refugee who sings in the choir. "This is a version of a holiday carol that tells the story of people like us."

The women are no strangers to suffering themselves, as each of them is a from a conflict area  ranging from Iraq to Sudan. The words they sing are helping to build awareness of conflict around the world and drive donations to the United Nations' Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which helps people caught up in crises.

"Every year, millions of people around the world are struck by crises not of their own making," said UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock. "This song shines a light on their experiences, and emphasizes how humanitarian aid can make a difference. CERF is one of the fastest ways to support people in need whenever and wherever a crisis strikes. Each donation helps CERF prepare for the crises yet to come."

The performance has been turned into a docu-style video now available on social media until 7 January 2017, with the goal of raising funds for CERF. Please visit the UN CERF Facebook page or DonateMiracles.org to support this effort.

SOURCE United Nations CERF

Related Links

http://www.DonateMiracles.org


BEIJING, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited ("Concord Medical" or the "Company") (NYSE: CCM), a leading specialty hospital management solution provider and operator of the largest network of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China, today announced that it held its 2017 annual general meeting of shareholders on December 21, 2017. Each of the proposals submitted for shareholders' approval was approved.

Specifically, the shareholders approved:

1. The appointment of Ernst & Young Hua Ming as independent auditor of the Company for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 at a fee agreed by the directors be and is hereby ratified, confirmed and approved in all respects;

2. The appointment of Ernst & Young Hua Ming as independent auditor of the Company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2017 at a fee agreed by the directors be and is hereby approved; and

3. The financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 contained in the Company's 2016 annual report be and is hereby ratified, confirmed, approved and adopted in all respects.

About Concord Medical

Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited is a leading specialty hospital management solution provider and operator of the largest network of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China. As of June 30, 2017, the Company operated a network of 60 centers with 41 hospital partners that spanned 34 cities and 19 provinces and administrative regions in China. Under long-term arrangements with top-tier hospitals in China, the Company provides radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging equipment and manages the daily operations of these centers, which are located on the premises of its hospital partners. The Company also provides ongoing training to doctors and other medical professionals in its network of centers to ensure a high level of clinical care for patients. For more information, please see http://ir.concordmedical.com.

For more information, please contact:

Concord Medical Services

Ms. Carol TIAN (Chinese and English)

+86 10 5903 6688 (ext. 608)

[email protected]

SOURCE Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- JAFCO celebrated the holiday season with their annual Family Funday. This annual event has become a staple for the families they serve at the JAFCO Children's Ability Center. The day was filled with holiday spirit as the families celebrated the holiday with a family meal and the children picked the toys they wanted from a vast selection of toys, donated in part through a toy drive held by the Craig Zinn Automotive Group.

(L-R) Zachary Zinn and Craig Zinn, Romero Britto, Martine Zinn #SharetheLove

During the festivities, an 8-foot tall monumental sculpture created by world-renowned artist Romero Britto was unveiled and will adorn the entrance to the JAFCO Children's Ability Center. The sculpture was generously donated by Craig and Martine Zinn of The Craig Zinn Automotive Group and represents the creative ability children have to design their future.

JAFCO was selected by Craig and Martine Zinn, and The Craig Zinn Automotive Group (CZAG) who own and operate Subaru of Pembroke Pines, as the 2017-2018 Subaru of Pembroke Pines Share the Love Event charity partner. Now through Jan. 2, 2018, Subaru of Pembroke Pines will donate $250 of each vehicle sold or leased to the JAFCO Children's Ability Center.

Share the Love is a cornerstone of the mission of the entire Subaru Company, whose mission is to support causes that are important to it as a company, its retailers and customers. Over the last three years Craig and Martine Zinn, the CZAG, and Subaru of Pembroke Pines have participated in the Share the Love program. Their financial contributions have culminated in a donation total of $337,509 benefiting local South Florida charities.

"We are here with our hearts, we accept everyone, we appreciate what everyone does, this is all about sharing the love. We want the children and families served at the JAFCO Ability's Center to be inspired by Britto's art, the same way we are inspired by his art," said Craig Zinn, founder and CEO, at The Craig Zinn Automotive Group.

JAFCO's mission is to care for abused and neglected children and those with disabilities in the Jewish community and to work in partnership with families and the entire community. They believe that the care of children in our community is everyone's responsibility, one they accept with joy, pride, and love  giving every child a place to belong.

"Martine and Craig Zinn have shared the beauty of artist Romero Britto by dedicating this sculpture that will welcome each family as they enter the Ability Center that gives every child and their family a place to belong. In conjunction with the Subaru of Pembroke Pines share the love event, we are able to receive life-changing funds to support our programs and services thanks to their kind hearts and support," said Randi Winter, philanthropy director at the JAFCO Children's Ability Center.

ABOUT SUBARU OF PEMBROKE PINES:

At Subaru of Pembroke Pines, we offer a vast variety of Subaru cars, trucks, and SUVs. Our sales team will help you find that new or used Subaru vehicle that you have been searching for. We proudly serve new and used car shoppers from all over the South Florida region. For years, our financial staff at Subaru of Pembroke Pines has offered expert advice for those seeking a loan for a Subaru purchase or lease. Our service doesn't stop there, our customers can trust our knowledgeable Subaru car repair technicians and take advantage of our fully-stocked inventory of Subaru auto parts in our service department. You can reach Subaru of Pembroke Pines any time by filling out the contact form on our website, subaruofpembrokepines.com, by calling us, (888) 821-9697, or simply visiting our Subaru of Pembroke Pines dealership at 16100 Pines Boulevard, Pembroke Pines, Florida.

About JAFCO:

JAFCO is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1992 to provide services to abused and neglected children and those with developmental disabilities in South Florida. For more information visit, jafco.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Rixys Alfonso

305.558.8877

[email protected]

Related Images

image1.jpg

Craig and Martine Zinn, and Subaru of Pembroke Pines Chooses JAFCO as Beneficiary Charity for the 2017-2018 Share the Love Event

image2.jpg

Craig and Martine Zinn, and Subaru of Pembroke Pines Chooses JAFCO as Beneficiary Charity for the 2017-2018 Share the Love Event

image3.jpg

Craig and Martine Zinn, and Subaru of Pembroke Pines Chooses JAFCO as Beneficiary Charity for the 2017-2018 Share the Love Event

image4.jpg

Craig and Martine Zinn, and Subaru of Pembroke Pines Chooses JAFCO as Beneficiary Charity for the 2017-2018 Share the Love Event

SOURCE Subaru of Pembroke Pines
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Curacity has partnered with Wonderlust and its owner, Bob Guccione Jr., the legendary publisher who founded Spin and Gear magazines. Wonderlust is the latest entity to join Curacity's fast-growing network of digital media brands. Through this partnership, Curacity's marketing technology will enable Wonderlust to earn revenue from its hotel-focused articles. To do this, Curacity data products capture the financial impact that an article has on direct hotel bookings over the course of the twelve months following content exposure.

"We believe Curacity to be the missing link in the travel publishing ecosystem, and have made it a crucial component of our monetization strategy" said Bob Guccione Jr., founder of Wonderlust. In keeping its finger on the pulse of the industry, and in taking advantage of Curacity's offerings, Wonderlust is investing heavily in hotel content.

"Publishers generate demand for hotel bookings but only capture a fraction of the spend that is inspired by their content. Curacity is helping reset this broken thinking by putting the capital in the hands of the publisher that inspired a particular booking" said Nick Slavin, Curacity's co-founder and President.

Moreover, Curacity will align Wonderlust and hotel marketers' objectives by proving that editorial drives direct bookings, turning media into a desirable and measurable revenue-generating tool for hotels.

"I founded Curacity to change the relationship between hotels and the publishers that write about them. For a hotel, our product can yield 10x the direct booking revenue a hotel would have seen if a publisher had not been on the Curacity network," explained Mike Keriakos, co-founder and CEO of Curacity. "It is very gratifying to have the creator of Spin and Gear recognize that what we're doing is transformative."

About Wonderlust

Wonderlust brings the world's most interesting, exciting places and experiences closer. The site publishes with the high end traveler in mind, and is a manual on how to better enjoy the planet. Bob Guccione Jr. launched Wonderlust in August 2017.

About Curacity

Curacity has built a content and data driven marketplace serving the travel industry. Using proprietary technology, its products help hotels reach and monetize travelers at the critical point of inspiration, while enabling publishers to earn OTA-like commissions for hotel bookings catalyzed by their content within a 12-month window. Mike Keriakos, Co-Founder and CEO, is a digital marketing veteran who formerly cofounded Everyday Health. Nick Slavin, Co-Founder and President has a background in real estate and hospitality private equity. Curacity launched in 2015 and is headquartered in Stamford, CT and New York City.

SOURCE Curacity

Related Links

https://www.curacity.com


ATLANTA, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A quick weekend getaway to explore some of America's unique and trendy cities is now more possible with Delta Vacations. The official vacation provider for Delta Air Lines recently announced the addition of six new U.S. destinations to its portfolio including Asheville, North Carolina; Aspen, Colorado; Panama City, Florida; Oakland, California; Lexington, Kentucky; and Fairbanks, Alaska. Vacation packages to these destinations are available to book now, with travel beginning Dec. 19, 2017.

"Domestic travel has been growing in popularity among our customers," said Elizabeth Moriarty, vice presidentproduct development, Delta Vacations. "Quick trips allow travelers to maximize their vacation time by exploring unique places that may only be a short flight away such as these destinations."

In each destination, Delta Vacations offers a wide range of accommodations such as boutique hotels, country inns and beach resorts. With flight service aboard Delta and optional add-ons such as car rentals, travelers can fully customize their vacation experience when they book their trip with Delta Vacations, resulting in savings.

With the addition of these U.S. cities and others across the globe such as The Islands of Tahiti in July 2017, Delta Vacations now offers more than 300 destinations around the world for customers to explore. To book a vacation, travelers can contact their travel agent, call 1-800-800-1504 or visit delta.com/vacations.

About Delta Vacations  Delta Vacations, the official vacation provider of Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL), offers travel agents convenient, one-stop shopping for vacation packages that bundle flights aboard Delta and its strategic partners  Air France, KLM, Alitalia, Aeromexico and Virgin Atlantic  with stays at more than 4,000 hotels and resorts in more than 300 of the world's top leisure destinations. Delta Vacations also offers rental cars and hundreds of exciting activities, tours and excursions that can be added to vacation packages. Delta Vacations has earned numerous industry awards including Travel Weekly Readers Choice Awards. Delta Vacations is managed by MLT Vacations, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. For more information visit www.delta.com/vacations or follow Delta Vacations on Twitter and Instagram @deltavacations.

SOURCE Delta Vacations

Related Links

http://www.delta.com/vacations


PITTSBURGH, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- F.N.B. Corporation (NYSE:FNB) today announced that Mary Jo Dively and Pamela Bena have been elected to the Boards of Directors of both the Corporation and its largest subsidiary, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, effective January 1, 2018.

"We are pleased to add to our Board Mary Jo Dively and Pamela Bena, who will be valued contributors in the areas that are priorities for FNB, including risk management, technology and financial accounting," said Vincent J. Delie, Jr., Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of F.N.B. Corporation and First National Bank.

Dively serves as Vice President and General Counsel for Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where she oversees domestic and international legal affairs, as well as the Information Security Office, Risk Management and Government Relations. She has more than 34 years of experience as a nationally-recognized technology and corporate lawyer, having played a pivotal role in the drafting and enactment of cornerstone information technology laws. Prior to joining CMU, Dively spent nearly two decades in private practice. Notably, she was named one of the "Best Lawyers in America" in the Cyber Law category based on her accomplishments as head of the global Technology, Media and Communications Group for Reed Smith LLP, an elite international law firm headquartered in Pittsburgh. Dively actively contributes to community improvement, serving as a member of, or having served on, multiple prominent non-profit boards, including Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, the UPMC Health System, Shady Side Academy and the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She has also served local government through various appointments. Dively received both a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science from the University of Kansas and her Juris Doctor degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Law.

Bena is a seasoned accounting and finance professional with more than 30 years of experience and has held senior accounting, audit and finance roles for large organizations in a range of industries, including commercial printing, industrial services, environmental health and safety, construction and banking. A Certified Public Accountant, Bena is currently Vice President of Finance for Heeter Printing Company, Inc., a full-service commercial printing, direct mail and fulfillment services provider, where she is responsible for accounting, treasury management, and all human resources functions. Previously, Bena served as a senior financial executive for organizations with global operations, where she oversaw strategic initiatives including establishing domestic and foreign subsidiaries and performing due diligence for potential acquisitions. Bena received both a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration from Duquesne University and has attended formal executive education programs at Harvard Business School and Carnegie Mellon University. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Financial Executives International.

About F.N.B. Corporation

F.N.B. Corporation (NYSE:FNB), headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a diversified financial services company operating in eight states. FNB holds a significant retail deposit market share in attractive markets including: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; and Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham and the Piedmont Triad (Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point) in North Carolina. The Company has total assets of $31 billion, and more than 400 banking offices throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The Company also operates Regency Finance Company, which has more than 75 consumer finance offices in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

FNB provides a full range of commercial banking, consumer banking and wealth management solutions through its subsidiary network which is led by its largest affiliate, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, founded in 1864. Commercial banking solutions include corporate banking, small business banking, investment real estate financing, international banking, business credit, capital markets and lease financing. The consumer banking segment provides a full line of consumer banking products and services, including deposit products, mortgage lending, consumer lending and a complete suite of mobile and online banking services. FNB's wealth management services include asset management, private banking and insurance.

The common stock of F.N.B. Corporation trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FNB" and is included in Standard & Poor's MidCap 400 Index with the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) Regional Banks Sub-Industry Index. Customers, shareholders and investors can learn more about this regional financial institution by visiting the F.N.B. Corporation website at www.fnbcorporation.com.

SOURCE F.N.B. Corporation

Related Links

http://www.fnbcorporation.com


LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bistro Planet  the technology company making the mobile food marketplace more efficient for food truck owners and customers  today announced that it is partnering with SeedInvest to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign.

Like all investment opportunities offered by SeedInvest, Bistro Planet has been vetted through a vigorous due diligence process. It is one of less than 200 companies accepted by SeedInvest out of more than 20,000 that have applied to raise capital via equity crowdfunding.

The funds raised will help Bistro Planet enhance and market its technology platform, which is already helping food truck owners and customers be in the right place at the right time, with the right items on the menu.

"People have an appetite to invest in things they enjoy, and food trucks provide a source of joy for a growing legion of consumers," said Bistro Planet Co-Founder and CEO Roie Edery. "Our partnership with SeedInvest serves up a unique opportunity for food truck fans to add some gastronomic zeal to their investment portfolio."

Edery also noted that investing in Bistro Planet is a way for investors to support local business owners, as the vast majority of food trucks are owned and operated by local entrepreneurs.

Bistro Planet's turnkey technology platform includes:

A vending lot and event booking portal that matches food truck owners with commercial landlords at the most profitable locations. A food truck point-of-sale (POS) system for sales tracking, supply planning, payment processing, geo-mapping, data analytics and marketing. A mobile consumer app that helps customers locate nearby trucks, browse menus, order, pre-pay and avoid waiting in line.

Bistro Planet's three-pronged technology platform is in use currently and generating revenue across California (Los Angeles/Orange Counties and the San Francisco Bay Area) and in Spokane, Washington and other select markets nationwide. Food truck owners are using it to book lot rentals and manage business operations, while consumers are using it to find their favorite food trucks and improve their food truck experience.

The Bistro Planet team is led by Edery and Co-Founder Aleksey Klempner  two entrepreneurs boasting a long track record of success with publicly-traded companies in a range of industries. Most recently, they were part of the founding team at Eaze --the cannabis industry's fast-growing technology startup that raised more than $30 million in venture capital backing. At Eaze, they led the company's product development, engineering and marketing.

The mobile food business is growing rapidly. According to research firm IBISWorld, revenue grew at an annual rate of 7.9 percent from 2011 to 2016. This year, it is projected to be a $2.7 billion marketplace (a 4x increase since 2012), making mobile food one of the fastest growing segments in the food industry. Food trucks tap into many potent consumer trends, including the growing desire for food that is fresh, local, budget-conscious and prepared in a range of styles.

"The food truck industry is ready for a new technology solution, and we're ready to fill that need," added Edery. "Our platform optimizes and brings order to a fragmented marketplace with an all-in-one solution for food truck owners and consumers."

Individuals interested in Bistro Planet's SeedInvest equity crowdfunding campaign can find more information at https://www.seedinvest.com/bistro.planet.

About Bistro Planet

Los Angeles-based Bistro Planet is a technology solutions company that optimizes the mobile food experience for customers and food truck owners alike. From free downloadable apps for consumers to operations and marketing systems for food truck owners, Bistro Planet aims to grow the food truck industry. More information is available at www.BistroPlanet.com.

Bistro Planet is offering securities under Regulation CF and Rule 506(c) of Regulation D through SI Securities, LLC ("SI Securities"). The Company has filed a Form C with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its offering, a copy of which may be obtained at: http://www.seedinvest.com/bistro.planet

Contact

Erik Deutsch

(323) 851-2455

erikd[at]excelpr[dot]com

SOURCE Bistro Planet

Related Links

http://www.bistroplanet.com


Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 22F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 22F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.
The 9 th annual Digital Health Summit , presented by Living in Digital Times , returns this year to CES 2018 with two days of provocative, hard-hitting and inspiring discussions covering today's hot topics in digital health. Digital Health Summit will take place Wednesday, January 10 and Thursday, January 11 at the Venetian, Level 4, Lando 4304. Registration is now open at www.digitalhealthsummit.com .

CES attendees will not want to miss a keynote address by Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, on The Future of Brain Optimization. As the Founder and Executive Director of the Neuroscape research center at the University of California-San Francisco, Dr. Gazzaley is a trailblazer in the study of how our brains process information. He will discuss how and why we struggle with interference in our inner and outer worlds, and share a novel approach from his research center which uses custom-designed video games to achieve cognitive enhancement via personalized closed-loop systems and addresses such conditions such as Alzheimer's, ADHD, Autism, PTSD, depression and more. The keynote will kick off the Digital Health Summit on Wednesday, January 10 at 9:00 a.m.

Another can't-miss session brings Dr. Oz back to Digital Health Summit for Sleep Awakens: Consumer's Biggest Brands Wake Up to the Sleep Epidemic. Joining him for an important discussion on the growth in the sleep tech market are speakers from SleepScore Labs, Williams Sonoma, University of Washington and Big Health. The session begins on Thursday, January 11 at 1:35 p.m.

Also highlighting massive growth in sleep tech will be USC's Dr. Raj Dasgupta joined by leadership from Philips and National Jewish Health for The Day Medicine, Science and Tech Built a Better Snooze Button, beginning at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 11.

In addition to these standout sessions, Digital Health Summit will feature a roster of over 75 speakers representing startups and established healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, physicians, researchers, associations, regulators and other top thought leaders in the caregiving community, sharing their insights on topics such as:

- How technology is making extraordinary impacts on brain health and opening up an exciting frontier in treating some of our greatest healthcare challenges.

- How physicians are using genetics, behavior and lifestyle to match patients with the most effective treatments for them.

- The changing role of cutting-edge technologies, like AI, VR and biometric sensing, in medical training, patient care and personal health management.

- How highly-sensitive, AI-powered, clinical-grade diagnostics and wearables are being used for early disease detection, personalized treatment and prevention.

- The hurdles the healthcare industry faces in addressing regulation, privacy, business models, reimbursement and the ever-looming changes to the ACA.

- How blockchain processes -- decentralized, accessible, and cryptographically protected -- may offer the digital solutions that healthcare has been seeking to managing data.

- How the pharmaceuticals industry is embracing technology to produce better monitoring and results for patients.

"Since last year's Digital Health Summit, so much has shifted and progressed in healthcare technology. It can be hard to keep up, which is why this gathering of some of the most brilliant and innovative minds in the business is so vital to what healthcare looks like in 2018," said Jill Gilbert, producer of the Digital Health Summit. "This year's summit will explore key topics that are heavy on the minds of healthcare professionals, business leaders and tech innovators, starting discussions that we hope will extend far beyond the two days we spend together."

In addition to the summit, CES attendees can get a first-hand look at the latest digital health products at the four-day corresponding Health & Wellness and Sleep Tech Marketplaces starting Tuesday, January 9 at CES 2018, Tech West within the Sands Expo, Level 2, Halls A-C.

Keep up on the latest news from Digital Health Summit by following @DHSummit on Twitter. Join the conversation online with hashtag #DigitalHealthCES.

About Living in Digital Times

Founded by veteran technology journalist Robin Raskin, Living in Digital Times brings together the most knowledgeable leaders and the latest innovations impacting both technology and lifestyle. It helps companies identify and act on emerging trends, create compelling company narratives, and do better business through strong network connections. Living in Digital Times produces technology conferences, exhibits and events at CES and other locations throughout the year by lifestyle verticals. Core brands include Digital Health Summit, Digital Money Forum, FitnessTech, Baby Tech, [email protected], Family Tech Summit, FamilyTech TV, Beauty Tech, Wearables and FashionWare runway show, Last Gadget Standing and the KAPi Awards. The company also works with various foundations and manages the Young Innovators to Watch awards recognizing student STEAM innovations. For more information, visit www.LivinginDigitalTimes.com and keep up with our latest news on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

About CES

CES is the world's gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies. It has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years-the global stage where next-generation innovations are introduced to the marketplace. As the largest hands-on event of its kind, CES features all aspects of the industry. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)TM, it attracts the world's business leaders and pioneering thinkers. Check out CES video highlights. Follow CES online at CES.tech and on social.

Media Contact:

Kristen Joerger

LKPR, Inc. for Living in Digital Times

[email protected]

646-484-4577, 603-494-3295 (mobile)

SOURCE Living in Digital Times

Related Links

http://www.livingindigitaltimes.com


" The widespread demonstrations by citizens of Libya with a vested interest in creating stability across their country was an encouraging sign from these brave men, women and children seeking to take control of their future. They believe that the LNA, under the courageous leadership of General Hifter, is the strongest and most comprehensive leadership structure for insuring temporary control of Libya. The stability coming from his leadership will lead to a future representative government, stabile economic development, renewed infrastructure and education programs, which is the vision that General Hifter has for Libya as well ." ( Daniel Faraci, Director, Grassroots Political Consulting LLC )

The Libyan people realize that a government structure focused on the future of the country, its tribes, citizens, institutions, economy, etc. does not exist at this time. The desire for stability in the country, leading to a future of long-term governance and economic strength, will enable Libya to lead in the region and global stage as well. Unfortunately, the Seraj government (GNA) does not provide a path for the future for all Libyans, and has shown its inability to eradicate jihadists, destabilizing outside forces, as well as the slave trade (part of which is taking place in the territory under their control).

General Hifter has actively been working to create stability and a long-term vision for the future of Libya, and fully intends to support a representative government to lead the country. He has been able to express this throughout the African Union, European Union (via direct dialogue with President Macron, many Ministers in Italy, Germany, etc.), and in a variety of other countries as well. He has also developed the trust of many Arab countries, as well as the U.S., as a partner working to eradicate terrorists. The LNA, under the leadership of General Hifter, is encouraged by the outpouring of support across Libya from these brave and peaceful demonstrators. They will continue to work extensively to create the best future for the Libyan people and the country they reside in.

**FARA Disclosure Statement: This material is distributed by Grassroots Political Consulting LLC on behalf of Khaled Hifter. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.**

SOURCE Grassroots Political Consulting LLC
LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Automotive seat is a seating facility for passengers to sit, with complete decorations. As a key functional part which plays an important role in overall automotive safety technology, it directly impacts safety, comfort and appearance of automobile. Manufacture of core parts of seat has high requirements on accuracy and strength and it is difficult to build them, seating industry is actually a capital-intensive and technology-intensive business.







Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4275463







Global automotive seating market saw an ASP of roughly USD804 in 2016 with a market size of USD73.6 billion, a figure projected to climb to USD75.9 billion in 2017 and further jump to USD92.5 billion in 2021 as auto market grows steadily.



Global automotive seating market has a high concentration due to technology accuracy and manufacturing difficulties, with over 90% share seized by top10 seat manufacturers including Adient, Lear, Toyota Boshoku and Faurecia, of which Adient and Lear perch at the first and second place in the world, with a combined share of 43% in global market in 2016.



As auto market developed rapidly, especially new energy vehicle, manufacturers successively expanded capacity through extension or acquisition, aiming at faster global layout and stronger competitive strength. For example, Adient bought seat maker Futuris, and Japanese seat companies like Toyota Boshoku and TACHI co-funded business; Lear set up joint ventures with TACHI-S and NHK Spring, purchased AccuMED Holdings Corp., a special fabrics company in late 2016 and also automotive seat manufacturer Grupo Antolin at the beginning of 2017.



China is the biggest consumer of automotive seating in the world, but its market is dominated by foreign brands like Adient, Lear, Faurecia, Toyota Boshoku and TS. Targeting medium- and high-end markets, these foreign players make layout in China by setting up joint factories with local companies, while Chinese automotive seating brands only concentrate on low-end market due to a technology gap with joint ventures or overseas peers.



In China, automakers co-built by Chinese companies with European, American, Japanese and Korean auto manufacturers, use seats from foreign or joint factories; majority of Chinese auto brands also choose joint ventures as their suppliers; Great Wall, BYD, Chery and Geely adopts a combination model of local manufacturers and joint venture brands. In October 2017, BYD branched out its seating business and founded a new company with Faurecia in Shenzhen. It will use seats produced by the new factory in the future.



In the coming years, foreign seating brands and joint ventures will grab a larger market share as upgrading of consumer demand requires improvement of intelligence and comfort technologies; Chinese seating makers will firmly evolve into joint ventures for supporting upgrade and edge into the supply chains of mainstream automakers, through technological breakthroughs.



Global and China Automotive Seating Industry Report, 2017-2021 highlights the following:

Composition and function of automotive seating;

Global automotive seating industry (market size, competition pattern of companies, seating supply relationship of main automakers, development trend, etc.);

China automotive seating industry (market size, competition pattern of companies, seating supply relationship of main automakers, development trend, etc.);

Global and Chinese automotive seating manufacturers (operation, seating business, development trend, etc.).



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4275463



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Global Solar Robot Kit Market 2017-2021" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The global solar robot kit market to grow at a CAGR of 32.50% during the period 2017-2021.

Global Solar Robot Kit Market 2017-2021 covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is Science fairs and events stimulating interest in STEM-related careers in Europe. The STEM skills gap in European countries has widened in comparison to other regions. European countries are focusing on organizing more science fairs, exhibitions, and events, which will encourage students to develop their skills and interest in STEM-related jobs. For instance, a network of science fairs, supported by Intel, is held across Europe, which culminates into a final level event known as the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS). These science fairs include The Big Bang Fair in the UK; and Eastern European festivals such as AMAVET Science Fair, and Festival of Science and Technology in Slovakia.

According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is Increase in adoption of activity-based learning methods in schools. Within the education market, activity-based learning is gaining traction due to the growing number of educational institutions that are adopting technologically advanced pedagogical methods in their curricula. A substantial part of academic activities focuses on practical assignments and experiments due to a stronger focus on STEM subjects. The forecast period will see an increase in the emphasis on methods that can help institutions combat challenges such as technological barriers and high costs related to performing experiments and practical assignments, which hinder the knowledge-sharing process.

Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is Threat from counterfeit products. Counterfeit products emerging in the market and can replace the relatively expensive original products. The key factor that is encouraging the production of such counterfeit products is the low production cost. Manufacturers of these products pack them in a way that is similar to original branded products, tricking retailers and consumers into thinking that they are purchasing authentic products.

Market trends

Science fairs and events stimulating interest in STEM-related careers in Europe

Emergence of maker culture

Promotion of alternative energy sources



Key vendors

Edu-Science

Elenco Electronics

OWI

Solarbotics

TEDCO

Other prominent vendors

Embo

Robotics Gate

Seeed Development

Thames & Kosmos

Key Topics Covered:



Part 01: Executive Summary



Part 02: Scope Of The Report



Part 03: Research Methodology



Part 04: Market Landscape



Part 05: Market Sizing



Part 06: Five Forces Analysis



Part 07: Market Segmentation By Application



Part 08: Regional Landscape



Part 09: Decision Framework



Part 10: Drivers And Challenges



Part 11: Market Trends



Part 12: Vendor Landscape



Part 13: Vendor Analysis



Part 14: Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7m5c6p/global_solar?w=5





Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The global wine barrel market is expected to project a fairly positive outlook over the forecast period, with emerging economies such as South Africa, China, Brazil, India, etc. registering comprehensive growth over the forecast period. The Western Europe region accounts for nearly 1/3th of the global wine barrel market. A new report published by Future Market Insights titled "Wine Barrel Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012 - 2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017 - 2027)" tracks the performance of the global wine barrel market during the projected period of 10-years between 2017 and 2027. The global wine barrel market was valued at US$ 3,197.8 Mn in 2016, and is forecast to be valued at US$ 5,268.1 Mn by the end of 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 4.7% over the forecast period. Highest production of American Oak and French Oak is a key factor boosting market revenue growth. Countries such as Argentina, Chile, Australia and China are most favorable in the global wine barrel market and are expected to drive global sales of wine barrels.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO )

Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents and Figures: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/REP-GB-2206

Global Wine Barrel Market: Forecast by Oak Type

On the basis of oak type, the global wine barrel market is segmented into French Oak, American Oak and Eastern European Oak. The French Oak segment is expected to gain 160 basis points over the forecast period. This segment is likely to emerge as the most attractive oak type over the forecast period. The French Oak segment is anticipated to create an incremental opportunity of US$ 1,114.4 Mn during the forecast period, accounting for an estimated value share of 49.8% of the global wine barrel market in 2017.

Global Wine Barrel Market: Forecast by Toast Level Type

Segmentation by toast level type includes light toast, medium toast, medium plus toast and heavy toast. Medium toast level type is a popular segment and is expected to hold more than 40% revenue share in the global wine barrel market throughout the forecast period. The medium toast segment is expected to create an incremental opportunity of US$ 910.1 Mn during the forecast period. Medium plus toast is the second largest segment anticipated to account for 26.1% of the global wine barrel market share in 2017.

Global Wine Barrel Market: Forecast by Capacity

By capacity the global market is classified into barrique, hogshead, puncheon and others. The barrique segment (i.e. 225 litres) is expected to generate an incremental opportunity of 1,156.9 Mn over the forecast period.

Browse Research Release at https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release/wine-barrel-market

Global Wine Barrel Market: Forecast by Region

The seven key regions of North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, APAC, Japan and MEA are analysed in this report. Western Europe is estimated to be the leading market for wine barrels with a market share of 37.1% in 2017 in terms of value and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period.

Global Wine Barrel Market: Key Manufacturers

Seguin Moreau Napa Cooperage, StaVin Inc., Tonnellerie de l'Adour, Damy Cooperage, Premier Wine Cask, Inc., The Barrel Mill, Billon Cooperage, Tonnellerie Radoux , The Oak Cooperage, East Coast Wood Barrels Corp, POZVEK d.o.o., Canton Cooperage, Nadalie USA, World Cooperage and A.P. John Cooperage are some of the top manufacturers of wine barrels.

Popular Reports by FMI:

Stretch Hood Films Market: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/stretch-hood-films-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/stretch-hood-films-market Frozen Food Packaging Market: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/frozen-food-packaging-market

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/frozen-food-packaging-market Plastic Rigid IBC Market: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/plastic-rigid-ibc-market

Browse More Packaging Market Insights

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.

Contact Us

616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,

Valley Cottage, NY 10989,

United States

T: +1-347-918-3531

F: +1-845-579-5705

T (UK): +44(0)20-7692-8790

Sales: [email protected]

Press Office: [email protected]



SOURCE Future Market Insights
ANNVILLE, Pa., Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Wolf, Maj. Gen. Tony Carrelli, Pennsylvania's adjutant general, and numerous members of the Pennsylvania National Guard recently visited Commonwealth residents at Department of Military and Veterans Affairs' (DMVA) State Veterans Homes to spread holiday cheer.

"Visiting with some of Pennsylvania's proud veterans at the Southeastern Veterans' Center was a highlight and an honor," Governor Wolf said. "It is important that we remember our veterans year-round and not just at the holidays, and to thank them for their service. It was good to be able to do that in person recently."

"What a great honor to visit our brave veterans and thank them for their service to our country, especially during the holiday season," said Carrelli. "Spending time with America's greatest heroes and their families shows them that we still appreciate their great service and sacrifice despite the passage of time."

Gov. Wolf was able to lead the visit to the Southeastern Veterans' Center in Spring City, Chester County, along with Carrelli and the other men and women in uniform while they wished the residents and staff happy holidays.

"We appreciate the governor spending so much time with our veterans, families and staff, especially with his incredibly demanding schedule," said Carrelli. "His presence was a huge hit and certainly brightened an already special day for our Veterans' Home family."

In addition to Spring City, the five other State Veterans' Homes are: Delaware Valley Veterans' Home in Philadelphia; Gino J. Merli Veterans' Center in Scranton; Hollidaysburg Veterans' Home in Hollidaysburg; Pennsylvania Soldiers' and Sailors' Home in Erie; and the Southwestern Veterans' Center in Pittsburgh; Photos of the visit to each State Veterans Home can be viewed on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/padmva/albums.

The State Veterans Homes, operated by DMVA, offer personal and skilled nursing care to Pennsylvania veterans and their spouses. Anyone interested in applying for residency or who would like to inquire about eligibility, should call 717-861-8906 or visit http://www.dmva.pa.gov/stateveteranshomes/Pages/default.aspx for more information.

MEDIA CONTACT: Joseph Butera, 717-861-2178

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs

Related Links

http://www.dmva.state.pa.us


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Honduran government thanked Dale Vukanovich, the firm that processed the votes in the country's November 26 election, for providing additional information on how voting data was audited by the Organization of American States in its recent report on the Honduran election.

According to final results released by the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal on December 17, President Juan Orlando Hernandez has been re-elected to a second term.

The Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, has requested new elections in Honduras, citing the findings of a preliminary report from the Organization's Electoral Observation Mission in Honduras.

In a statement, Dale Vukanovich disputed the findings of the OAS report. "We emphatically affirm that the [electoral] database was not altered at any point. If the OAS technician had done his job and forensically analyzed the database, he would have determined that in no way were there any events that affected the electoral process."

The electoral processing firm also said that the database logs were not reviewed by OAS auditors. "At all times the database, the primary source, was at the disposal of the OAS so they could run all necessary tests and then issue an opinion with certainty on whether the database was altered. Inexplicably, the OAS technician rejected our offer and, therefore, arrived at erroneous conclusions," Dale Vukanovich said.

The firm asked that "the OAS amend the irregularities and deficiencies in the auditing report submitted, otherwise it will only cause more doubt, as the allegations made have no real or accurate support."

In a recent tweet, Minister Executive Secretary of the Cabinet of the Republic of Honduras Ebal Diaz called Secretary-General Almagro's request for a new election "irresponsible."

The OAS sent an Electoral Observation Mission with 83 observers to Honduras to monitor the national elections. In its preliminary report released November 28, OAS EOM stated that "[No OAS recommendations] should contravene the Honduran legal system."

Since the Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced President Hernandez's re-election, the governments of Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Guatemala, Israel, and South Korea have all called to congratulate him.

In a statement today to international reporters, a senior U.S. State Department official said, We have not seen anything that alter[ed] the final [Honduran election] result[s]" released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Media Contact:

Andrew Grafton

[email protected]

(202)-471-4228 ext. 119

www.keybridgecommunications.com

SOURCE Republic of Honduras
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hornet, the world's premier gay social network, today announced the expansion of its sales and marketing team. Award-winning media executive Josh Rosenzweig will join Hornet as director of marketing, while Jillian Rendace and Sam Sim Morgan will spearhead U.S. sales on the east and west coasts, respectively. All will work directly with Hornet senior vice president of global sales, Matthew Adam Smith, to create and capitalize on the brand's revenue driven marketing initiatives.

"As we begin the new year, we're thrilled to expand our sales and marketing team to meet the large and growing advertiser demand for our community and cutting-edge technology," said Hornet SVP of Global Sales, Matthew Adam Smith. "The diverse expertise that Josh, Jillian and Sam bring is a differentiator in Hornet's ability to deliver the innovative, effective solutions that our brand partners demand."

Rosenzweig has held executive positions in marketing and content at ICTV's The Flying Tent, in special projects and supervising production at Viacom, and, over the span of 10 years, led original programming, integrated marketing as well as acquisition and business development for Here Media. Following Here Media's acquisition of OUT and The Advocate in 2008, Rosenzweig created the company's first Integrated Marketing Department, where he developed customized, multi-platform programs for clients such as AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Wells Fargo and more, for which he won the prestigious GLAAD Media Award in advertising. As a seasoned media executive specializing in branding, consumer and integrated marketing, he will work with the sales team to create innovative and strategic partnerships and execute advertising and marketing campaigns for Hornet partners and advertising clients to reach targeted demographics.

After holding director positions at several global advertising agencies and at Conde Nast, Jillian Rendace will serve as the Director of Sales and Partnerships for the east coast and based out of New York. With a deep understanding of the LGBTQ audience from her previous work at Pride Media as well as Participant Media, Viacom and AMC Networks, Sam Sim Morgan will hold the Director of Sales and Partnerships position in Los Angeles for the west coast. Rendace and Morgan will expand the brand's presence through key collaborations in their respective divisions.

"I look forward to joining the Hornet team and continuing to build the brand's presence," said Rosenzweig. "We will find new and innovative ways to amplify Hornet's robust platform in the marketplace and foster impactful partnerships in order to develop successful initiatives."

Hornet's free social network app is available on iOS, Android, and the web.

About Hornet Networks

Hornet is the world's premier gay social network. Founded in 2011 with the mission to build the digital home for the gay community, Hornet has grown to 25 million total users by utilizing cutting-edge technology for its dating platform and producing original editorial content to connect a community around common interests. Hornet provides a superior user experience and is number one in the key markets of France, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan, and is consistently expanding its sizable user base in the United States. For more information, please visit: http://gethornet.com.

SOURCE Hornet

Related Links

http://gethornet.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Genpact (NYSE: G), a global professional services firm focused on delivering digital transformation, was recently named a leader in social media analytics for the life sciences industry by the IDC MarketScape.

The report, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Life Science Social Media Analytics 2017 Vendor Assessment (doc # US40511016, August 2017), notes that Genpact's social media analytics service is considered by its customers to deliver best-in-class capability, business insight, and overall value. The report also acknowledges Genpact's strong customer support and project management, and its well-established and global client base of pharmaceutical companies.

"Genpact understands how to integrate social media analytics throughout the enterprise to deliver true business impact for life science companies," said Michael Townsend, research manager, IDC Health Insights Life Science Commercial Strategies. "Genpact's position as a leader in the IDC MarketScape report also reflects its strong customer support and project management abilities."

Social media analytics for enterprise insights

If leveraged properly, social media analytics in the life sciences industry has the potential to generate powerful insights on brand perception, consumer sentiment about specific products and categories, and competitor activities.

"In today's hyper-connected world, there's no more powerful way for life sciences companies to understand, align to, and address consumer sentiment than with social media analytics," said Balkrishan 'BK' Kalra, Life Sciences business leader, Genpact. "By combining our digital capabilities, analytics proficiency, and domain expertise  and entrenching them into our clients' business operations  we're able to deliver returns on data that generate fast, transformational value to life sciences companies."

Driving business impact

Genpact's analytics products are powered by its automation to artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform, Genpact Cora, that helps companies solve real world business issues. For example, Genpact's AI-driven social media analytics provided insights to uncover $67 million in revenue opportunities for a life sciences client that faced revenue erosion. Genpact also helped unlock $17 million in revenue opportunity for a leading pharmaceutical company by understanding and analyzing the patient journey at the pre-diagnosis stage, and enabling early engagement and care.

For more information, see these links for details about Genpact's healthcare and life sciences analytics capabilities, Genpact Cora, and the IDC MarketScape report excerpt.

About IDC MarketScape

IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor's position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

About Genpact

Genpact (NYSE: G) is a global professional services firm that makes business transformation real. We drive digital-led innovation and digitally-enabled intelligent operations for our clients, guided by our experience running thousands of processes for hundreds of Global Fortune 500 companies. We think with design, dream in digital, and solve problems with data and analytics. We obsess over operations and focus on the details  all 78,000+ of us. From New York to New Delhi and more than 20 countries in between, Genpact has the end-to-end expertise to connect every dot, reimagine every process, and reinvent companies' ways of working. We know that rethinking each step from start to finish will create better business outcomes. Whatever it is, we'll be there with you  putting data and digital to work to create bold, lasting results  because transformation happens here. Get to know us at Genpact.com and on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

For more information:

SOURCE Genpact

Related Links

http://www.genpact.com


LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- WindRoc Media Group (WMG) and Identifying Dyslexia have just announced Ill-literacy: The Divided States of Dyslexia, the first film in the School Stories documentary series. The social impact documentary takes audiences through the school system in several states to reveal the single greatest cause of the current illiteracy crisis: unidentified and misidentified dyslexia. The film follows students and their families, exposing the systematic cover-up of decades of mismanagement and denial of the illiteracy problem behind increasing dropout rates and achievement gaps.

One of the best-kept secrets of modern education is the neglect of students with learning differences, who are stigmatized while denied the free and appropriate education promised by federal law. Ill-literacy gives voice to our most vulnerable students and provides a platform for marginalized families and educators to come together in order to address the roots and ramifications of our educational crisis. Connecting unequal literacy instruction to the achievement gap, dropout rates, and poverty, this film calls for accountability for schools failing the 20% of students with some degree of dyslexia. Personal stories reveal how dyslexia is often ignored, misdiagnosed, and outright banned from discussion, even in cases where teachers and school psychologists are pushing to address the world's most common learning difference.

"Struggling students are largely overdiagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and behavioral issues, and consequently up to 8.5 million dyslexic learners remain unacknowledged, struggling alone to process and meet the rigid curriculum. If failing and frustrated enough, these students are diagnosed and sequestered," says Stephen Polk, writer/director of Ill-literacy and producer of School Stories.

The film series is part of a dynamic social impact engagement platform, Identifying.org, where audiences are encouraged to immerse themselves in the anecdotal evidence and compelling stories presented by the film. Ill-literacy is the first impact documentary that spotlights institutional mistreatment and neglect of families confronting school administrations as well as the educational policies that affect children's lives. The film shifts between first-person narratives and visual experiences of students, families, and leaders speaking up at schools and state capitalsall frustrated and disturbed by intellectual bullying, educational mismanagement, lost opportunities, and wasted potential.

"We wondered why we kept hearing the same untold story of dyslexia and related processing issues, why school systems fail not just students but also ignore the families and teachers who trust and depend on transparency. In three key states with low literacy ratesNew York, Minnesota and Californiathe team identified a familiar pattern: weak legislation, dyslexia disinformation, and claims of a lack of funds to support change. Without infrastructure to keep schools accountable, lip service and the status quo prevail, dashing the trust, hopes and dreams of millions of families," Polk reveals.

Ill-literacy: The Divided States of Dyslexia shines a light for those kept in the dark and provides a way to move forward, highlighting leaders and activist groups like Decoding Dyslexia working to change attitudes and act before more children are impacted by antiquated curriculums and mismanaged funds.

The launch of the School Stories series and its engagement platform, identifying.org, are the first of many new media and awareness innovations from the Identifying Dyslexia brand. The film has already inspired the creation of a tie-in video assessment tool for dyslexia, and other films in the School Stories impact seriesMed-ucation Inc. and Incarceration Inc.are currently in pre-production. Together with strategic partners, the project is making strides not only in giving voice to our most vulnerable students and their parents, but also awakening widespread acceptance of dyslexia, energizing what some professors are calling the "next civil rights movement of our time."

About WindRoc Media Group:

WMG is a full-service independent film, TV and omni-media company developing feature films, documentaries and multimedia properties, as well as providing consultation, production, and distribution services.

About Identifying Dyslexia:

Identifying Dyslexia is a nonprofit focused on media, awareness, and resources around dyslexia. We are a network of dyslexic students, families, educators, and activists united by our school stories, our achievements and our failuresbeing different together and learning better.

SOURCE Identifying Dyslexia
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Integrated Ventures, Inc., (OTCQB: INTV) (the "Company") today announced that it has executed a $1 million Term Sheet with the Institutional Investor. This funding is the CryptoFunder's first transaction which offers the borrower a unique lending structure featuring an option to pay down the principal via digital currency.

The use of proceeds as follows:

To purchase $600,000 warehouse facility to be used as main mining farm

warehouse facility to be used as main mining farm To fund facility build out: shelving/connectivity/vent/heavy power system installation

To purchase additional mining rigs and related equipment (mining and sales)

To complete blockchain development for CryptoFunder

To re-design corporate website

To engage an investor relations firm.

"We view this multi-tranch funding round as our beta test and an initial entry into the financial sector. Blockchain technology along with all digital currencies are gaining increased market attention and adoption. CryptoFunder is a great business tool that can assist public companies to secure a minimally dilutive funding, driven by a secured ledger. This lending platform is a prime example of how blockchain-based technologies can be leveraged to disrupt financial markets. Today's news is a win-win for the Company and its shareholders: (1) it secures funding to purchase mining equipment and (2) it signals the start of a new revenue stream. Integrated Ventures intends to act only as an exclusive cloud mining partner and to establish relationships with lending groups and investment funds, so that they can directly market CryptoFunder to their client base including initiating and managing the loan process," said Steve Rubakh, CEO of Integrated Ventures, Inc.

In addition to the $1 million funding round, the Company has retired all outstanding and highly dilutive warrants, by issuing a $50,000 convertible note with an option to pay down the outstanding principal with digital currency. The Company expects to complete both transactions by the end of next week and to file an 8K.

* About Integrated Ventures, Inc: the Company is focused on acquiring, launching and operating companies in the cryptocurrency sector, mainly in digital currency mining, and equipment manufacturing, sales of branded mining rigs, as well as blockchain software development.

For more details, please visit www.integratedventuresinc.com.

** About BitcoLab: This majority owned subsidiary is pursuing opportunities in the cryptocurrency sector with focus on bitcoin mining, hosting, pooling, manufacturing and distributing of its own brand of mining equipment and the development of blockchain based applications for financial markets.

For more details about BitcoLab, Inc , please visit www.bitcolab.io .

About CryptoFunder: The world's first financial blockchain platform which acts like a decentralized and encrypted lending ledger that offers a secure, efficient, verifiable and permanent way of storing records and other lending information. These protocols are the backbone of numerous digital currencies that are being mined by the Company, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. The CryptoFunder blockchain consists of qualifying, initiating, underwriting, processing and managing funding transactions, including tracking of digitally mined assets and using them as a main mode of payment for loans, lending contracts and convertible notes.

*** About CryptoCurrency Investments & Risks: The Company urges all current and potential investors to visit https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-2017-12-11 to fully understand all risks involved in CryptoCurrency investing.

Safe Harbor Statement: The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.

SOURCE Integrated Ventures, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.integratedventuresinc.com


NEW YORK, December 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Cobalt is a key component of lithium-ion batteries, with cobalt sulfate the preferred feedstock for the cathodes in these batteries. During 2017, the spot price of cobalt has seen an upward trend, surging more than 120 percent on the London Metal Exchange (LME) since the beginning of the year to a nine-year high (http://nnw.fm/f38iT). Predictions are that 2018 will see growing demand for cobalt in line with the increased production of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide and the increasing adoption of lithium-powered mobile technology in developing countries, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that the shift toward these batteries will continue to increase, sending demand for cobalt up an astounding 30-fold by 2030 (http://nnw.fm/dArn3 ). Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B) (QBOT Profile) is gearing up to take advantage of this surge in demand for the metal by developing its cobalt interests in North America. With recent significant exploration results, Quantum is pacing alongside other companies looking to scale up their exploration, development and production endeavors, including Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (TSX-V: KBLT), First Cobalt Corp. (TSX-V: FCC) (OTC: FTSSF), eCobalt Solutions Inc. (TSX: ECS) (OTC: ECSIF) and Katanga Mining Limited (TSX: KAT).

The biggest market for electric vehicles is China, where the number of EVs sold in 2016 was double the amount in Europe and triple the amount in the United States. Sales of electric vehicles are likely to increase exponentially on the back of China's requirement that one in five cars sold by 2025 must be powered by alternatives to fossil fuels. France and Britain have also announced their intention to ban combustion engines for vehicles by 2040. As signatories to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, more countries will follow suit, leading to an even higher expected global demand for cobalt. Lithium-ion batteries account for a third of the cost of producing an electric vehicle. To date, battery prices have made EVs cost-prohibitive, but the price fell by 35 percent in 2015 and has continued to decrease each year since. Bloomberg reported on a prediction that EVs will be as affordable as combustion-driven vehicles by 2022, and that EVs will account for over a third of all new vehicle sales by 2040 (http://nnw.fm/bc0hI).

While impressive, these predictions are saddled with worrisome controversy. Today, China generates 80 percent of the world's cobalt products; a large percentage of its feedstock is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where more than 50 percent of the world's cobalt is mined despite a long history of volatile political instability and serious ethical concerns. To say circumstances in the DRC are "troubling" is putting it mildly. Human rights activists and NGOs are ramping up their efforts to abolish forced labor, child labor and financial corruption concerns in the DRC, while industry leaders Apple and Tesla - both of which heavily rely on cobalt for their lithium batteries - are walking away from "Conflict Cobalt" and looking for alternatives supplies outside of the DRC (http://nnw.fm/ay9B1 http://nnw.fm/2AmMj).

Increasing global awareness also has many cobalt producers pursuing opportunities to develop safer alternatives in North America rather than risking their investments in the DRC. And herein lies the opportunity for Canada.

Well-aware of the shifting supply scene, Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B) is focusing its attention on developing its mining interests in Canada (http://nnw.fm/0uPqp), where the company owns three properties tucked into the core of Ontario's cobalt belt.

Quantum earlier this week announced significant results from an exploration program at its wholly owned Kahuna Property near the town of Cobalt. At Kahuna, the exploration program focused on prospecting, geological mapping and geochemical sampling included 166 soil samples and 28 grab samples. According to the press release (http://nnw.fm/B4Vhp), Kahuna produced assay samples as high as 10.59 percent cobalt. Keep in mind that the discovery of 2 percent cobalt is considered "high grade" - samples at 10.59 percent put Quantum in a favorable position to consider its options to produce cobalt from the historic workings to potentially capture its share of surging demand for cobalt.

Quantum also recently published the results of assays from its exploration program at its Nipissing Lorrain mine (http://nnw.fm/2LX5n), reporting that from 28 grab samples collected and 15 submitted for analysis, the average grade at the pile was found to be over 2.33 percent cobalt, with a peak value of 8.33 percent. Based on these positive results, the company says it is considering options to produce cobalt from the historic workings.

Quantum in late November acquired the Nipissing Lorrain Project, which includes two separate claims in land packages around the mining town of Cobalt, a historically mined area with rich deposits of cobalt, nickel and silver, and easy access to infrastructure, power and road transport. Past production at this property included over 16,500 pounds of cobalt and 5,500 pounds of silver.

Located in the epicenter of past producing cobalt mines in Ontario, Quantum is gearing up to breathe life into Canada's supply line, potentially providing investors and automakers an alternative outside the ethically-crippled DRC. With Tesla alone pushing to roll-out 500,000 electric vehicles by the year 2020 - which would require roughly 6 percent of cobalt produced worldwide annually - global demand is rapidly outpacing supply, triggering what many are calling a modern-day "exploration rush."

Leading Quantum's aggressive push forward is CEO Greg Burns, who has more than two decades of corporate and technical experience in mineral exploration. He is also currently the director of M&A for Capital Investment Partners, an investment bank headquartered in Western Australia. Burns previously was the previous managing director of Xenolith, which was taken over by Cline Group in 2015, and was also formerly the director of White Canyon Uranium before the company was taken over by Denison Mines in 2010. He has also held senior operations roles with Goldstream Mining, Adamus Resources Limited and Platinum Australia Limited.

With Burns at the helm, this CAD$45+ million mining company is gaining ground on its larger counterparts.

Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (TSX-V: KBLT) is one of the few pure-play companies in the cobalt sector. The company holds physical cobalt stock and is focused on developing a portfolio of revenue streams, royalties and direct interests in cobalt mineral properties through acquisitions. It has a high-quality management team and advisory board experts in the fields of mining, investment management and streaming/royalty companies. Cobalt 27 holds just over 2,160 tons of physical cobalt, consisting of 1,488 tons of premium grade and 672 tons of standard grade cobalt. It does not intend to actively speculate with its physical holdings, which are stored at secure warehouses certified by the LME. Cobalt 27 provides an investment alternative for investors interested in direct cobalt investment without the risks associated with exploration and processing companies.

With a market cap of over $232 million, First Cobalt Corp. (TSX-V: FCC) (OTCQB: FTSSF) is in the process of completing mergers with Cobalt One Ltd. and CobalTech Mining Inc., which will enable it to control over 10,000 hectares of prospective land and 50 historic mining operations around the town of Cobalt, Ontario. Currently, the company owns 4,300 hectares that include the historic Keeley-Frontier, Drummond, Silver Banner and Bellellen mines. These mines historically produced more than 3.3 million pounds of cobalt and 19.1 ounces of silver. First Cobalt's mission is to build the largest pure-play cobalt exploration and development company in the world. On Dec. 7, 2017, the company announced that it had purchased four contiguous mining claims located near the historically producing Caswell Mine within the Cobalt Camp.

eCobalt Solutions (TSX: ECS) (OTC: ECSIF) has interests in base and precious metals, as well as uranium projects, in Canada, the United States and Mexico. It has made a conscious decision to distance itself from the risks associated with unethical mining operations in the DRC. The company has focused its cobalt efforts on its wholly owned Idaho Cobalt Project, which is one of the few predominant cobalt deposits in the world. This means that mining feasibility is unaffected by the nickel and copper markets. Engineering studies have indicated that this project has the potential to produce high-purity cobalt and is at advanced-stage, near-term production.

Katanga Mining Ltd. (TSX: KAT) is a well-established mining company that began exploring opportunities in the DRC in 1997. It operates a large-scale copper-cobalt project with substantial high-grade mineral reserves and integrated mineral processing operations. In January 2008, the company merged with Nikanor PLC and also holds a 75 percent stake in two joint ventures with Gecamines, a DRC-owned mining company. Although it conducts all its operations in the DRC, Katanga Mining is fully committed to the socio-economic development of the community within its sphere of influence.

Due to the surge in demand for cobalt and expectations for a continuing trend, industry experts predict a looming cobalt deficit, which would likely push the price of the metal even higher. These companies are scaling up their efforts in exploration and development to take advantage of this rising global demand.

For more information on Quantum Cobalt Corp., visit: Quantum Cobalt Corp. (CSE: QBOT) (FRA: 23B)

About NetworkNewsWire

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) NetworkNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge.

Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer



DISCLAIMER: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with NNW or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by NNW are solely those of NNW and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable NNW and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. NNW and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security.



The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author, and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, NNW, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment.



NNW & FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.



This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and NNW and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements.

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is affiliated with the Investor Based Brand Network (IBBN).

About IBBN

Over the past 10+ years we have consistently introduced new network brands, each specifically designed to fulfil the unique needs of our growing client base and services. Today, we continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients.

Please feel free to visit the Investor Based Brand Network (IBBN) http://www.InvestorBasedBrandNetwork.com



Corporate Communications Contact:

NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

New York

+1-212-418-1217 Office

[email protected]

Media Contact:

FN Media Group, LLC

[email protected]

+1(954)345-0611



http://www.NetworkNewsWire.com

SOURCE NetworkNewsWire
CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A dedicated and loving father in the midst of a prolonged legal saga with the mother of his nine-year old daughter, sought help from attorney Jeffery Leving in Chicago. For the past eight (8) years, this father had been subjected to countless unfounded allegations by the mother. This dedicated and loving father was falsely accused of being unfit to parent his own daughter. The mother asked the Court to severely restrict his parenting time as a father.

This terrified father called Jeffery Leving to ensure that his daughter would remain in his life and that she would be protected from the continued alienation at the hands of the mother and maternal grandparents. When this father met with Leving, firm attorney Austin Vandeveer joined them as Leving and Vandeveer's extensive experience in cases involving parental alienation would be vital to accomplishing this father's goals. The Leving team immediately began to dissect this father's unfathomable situation and was able to quickly formulate and implement a strategic legal plan aimed at thwarting the mother's attempt to remove this father from his daughter's life.

On the day before Thanksgiving, this father contacted the firm at 9:00 a.m. in a state of panic due to the mother's steadfast refusal to allow him any parenting time on Thanksgiving Day. Vandeveer learned that the mother would only allow this father parenting time on Thanksgiving if he would forgo his previously scheduled parenting time. The Leving team, astounded and motivated by this mother's attempt to use the child as a bargaining chip to further her own personal agenda, immediately sprang into action, and without a Court order, was able to skillfully secure Thanksgiving Day parenting time for this adoring father by 4:30 p.m. on the same day.

This father now has peace of mind that he was able to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with his beloved daughter. Thanks to the success of the Leving legal team, they were able to ensure that this father was able to give thanks for the single most important aspect of his life, his daughter. They are now looking forward to finally spending Christmas together too!

For more information on law and fatherhood, follow Leving's victories on Twitter @fathersmatter and Facebook.

Contact: Jennifer Whiteside

[email protected]

312.296-3666

SOURCE Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd.
Valued at $840,000, the Christmas baskets contain food staples such as wheat, rice, beans and meat, along with cleaning supplies. With the assistance of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, the Knights' gift is being distributed to Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean Catholic families, as well as Yazidis.

"Even though we are still in a time of great uncertainty, the knowledge that our brothers in the Knights of Columbus are in solidarity with us, especially at this time of year, brings great comfort," said Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil. "God bless them all."

The K of C has committed more than $17 million in aid to Christians and other religious minorities in the region since 2014.

"We will be able to celebrate a true Christmas in our ancient Christian town of Karamles for the first time in years," said Father Thabet Habib, parish priest of the town, which is located on the Nineveh Plain.

Karamles was a predominantly Christian town before ISIS overran it, driving out inhabitants, damaging or destroying homes, and desecrating churches. The inhabitants have been able to return in recent months, thanks to the defeat of ISIS and a commitment of $2 million by the Knights of Columbus to help restore much of the town's infrastructure.

"We will be giving thanks this year for the wonderful Christmas gift we have received  the return of our town," said Father Thabet.

In addition to advocating on the behalf of persecuted religious minorities in Iraq, Syria and the surrounding region, the Knights also assisted Christian refugee programs in Lebanon and Jordan and provided aid to those targeted by ISIS in Egypt.

The Knights led a major campaign urging Congress and the State Department to declare ISIS' terrorism an act of genocide in 2016. To support the cause, it produced a nearly 300-page report on ISIS' atrocities against Christians and gathered 140,000 signatures for a petition calling for a declaration of genocide.

In addition, the K of C has urged the U.S. government to ensure that communities targeted for genocide not be overlooked. The Knights applauded Vice President Mike Pence's recent announcement that the Trump administration will begin providing aid directly to religious minorities impacted by ISIS' genocide.

More information on the Knights' efforts is available at www.ChristiansAtRisk.org.

SOURCE Knights of Columbus
SEATTLE, Dec. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LATCareers.com reviews hundreds of toy requests from families each December as part of their Annual Toy Drive to decide which families will benefit from the toys the most. This year is the 15th year LATCareers.com has partnered with their clients nationwide to provide toys for children of families in need.

LATCareers.com has been leading the Puerto Rican Recruitment Effort for those displaced by the Hurricane this year in Puerto Rico to find jobs on the mainland. LATCareers.com has assisted more than 3,700 Puerto Ricans with finding jobs in just the past sixty days. This included providing job search assistance, assistance with finding temporary housing and assistance with travel to interview with employers. Given the success of the viral YouTube video that LATCareers.com produced regarding the Puerto Rico hurricane, it has received nearly 20,000 views. Puerto Ricans have been visiting the LATCareers.com website and searching jobs and posting their resume in overwhelming numbers.

One of the families receiving toys is the Rodriguez family of Ponce, Puerto Rico. They are receiving toys donated by LATCareers.com and its sponsors. Carmen Rodriquez states, "We did not know where to turn as our family had lost everything in the hurricane. We decided to make a life changing decision to come to New York City to stay with some relatives. With little money and no jobs my husband and I moved our three kids. We saw the video posted about the hurricane employment relief with LATCareers.com and contacted them. We were able to both find jobs within less than a month and have enrolled our kids in elementary school and are now working. We also are receiving toys for our kids which will make a big difference this holiday as we try to rebuild our lives here in New York. Thank you to the LATCareers.com team for all your help and for making the holiday season now bright for our family."

Rubicela Acosta, CEO of LATCareers.com, states, "We are proud this year again to partner with our sponsors to provide happiness in the form of toys to those families who have been displaced by this life changing event. Our team has been working tirelessly for the past months to help each career seeker find employment. We would like to thank our sponsors for not only providing employment for those in need but for supporting us for our 15th year of providing toys for those families in need as part of our Annual Holiday Toy Drive."

Career seekers interested in searching career opportunities may visit www.latcareers.com

About LATCareers.com

LATCareers.com is the industry leader for the recruitment of Bilingual, Latino and Diversity in the U.S. As a niche job board, we have the only nationally scalable bilingual diversity recruitment platform for both Digital and Career Fairs with coverage in 90 U.S. Cities. With over 15 years in business, we work with the top employers nationwide to connect them with career seekers online through our job board and in person at over 200 annual Bilingual and Diversity Career Fairs in 90 U.S. Cities. For more information contact www.latcareers.com

SOURCE LATCareers.com

Related Links

http://www.latcareers.com


The first order approves a settlement of a Vegetation Management Surcharge filing that decreases by about $15 million costs associated with a multi-year vegetation management plan designed to help reduce the frequency and duration of tree-related power outages. The second order approves a filing by the companies requesting a $5.4 million reduction in the costs to operate energy efficiency programs in the utilities' West Virginia service areas in 2018.

Taken together, the orders will lower the monthly bill for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity by about 1.7 percent or $ 1.95. The savings components include a $1.44 decrease for tree trimming and a $0.51 decrease for energy efficiency costs.

Since the enhanced tree trimming program began in April 2014, forestry crews have trimmed trees ground to sky along more than 19,000 miles of transmission and distribution line right-of-way. The work helps reduce the risk of overhanging limbs getting into electrical equipment and causing outages. The remaining 11,000 miles will be completed in 2018 and 2019. To date, more than 2.9 million trees have been trimmed and about 800,000 dead or dying trees have been removed.

"The enhanced vegetation management program is a vast undertaking, considering that the 30,000 miles of power line right-of-way in our West Virginia service area exceeds the circumference of the Earth," said Holly Kauffman, president of FirstEnergy's West Virginia Operations. "Our customers have benefitted from the work, experiencing fewer and shorter tree-related outages since the program was implemented."

Mon Power serves about 385,000 customers in the northern half of West Virginia and Potomac Edison serves about 140,000 customers in the state's Eastern Panhandle. Follow the companies on Twitter @MonPowerWV and @PotomacEdison.

FirstEnergy is dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company's transmission subsidiaries operate more than 24,000 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Follow FirstEnergy on Twitter @FirstEnergyCorp or online at www.firstenergycorp.com.

Editor's Note: Photos of FirstEnergy's enhanced tree trimming program are available for download on Flickr.

SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.

Related Links

http://www.firstenergycorp.com


TORONTO and BOSTON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Manulife Asset Management, the investment management arm of Manulife, saw strong growth in both sales and assets under management in 2017. The firm continued to build its global capabilities and delivered strong long-term investment performance for clients.

Total global assets managed by the firm were CAD$477 billion1 as of September 30, 2017*, up six per cent from September 30 last year. The firm's institutional assets under management were CAD$86 billion as at September 30, 2017, a 16 per cent increase from the prior year.

"We remain focused on serving our clients' needs through our deep local expertise and execution strength," said Christopher Conkey, President and CEO of Manulife Asset Management and CIO of the firm's public markets business. "I'm pleased by our solid performance across all asset categories, as well as the overall investment performance of our publicly traded assets this year. Manulife Asset Management's public markets capabilities continue to be an important part of Manulife's global Wealth and Asset Management platform."

"Our teams leveraged our broad capabilities to create innovative investment solutions for the benefit of our clients across our private asset classes," said Kevin Adolphe, President & CEO, Manulife Asset Management Private Markets. "We are committed to growing across geographies and broadening the solutions we offer."

The firm's long-term investment performance continued to be strong, with more than three quarters of public asset classes outperforming their benchmarks on a 3- and 5-year basis2. As at September 30, 2017, Manulife Asset Management advised or sub-advised funds that had 127 Four- and Five-Star Morningstar ratings, an increase of 17 funds since September 30, 2016. Total institutional gross flows through September 30, 2017, were CAD$10.7 billion, and total net flows were CAD$4.9 billion.

Milestones and Capabilities

Manulife Asset Management continued to expand its business in 2017. In Chile, the firm began marketing eight UCITS (Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) sub-funds of the Manulife Global Fund, through a distribution partnership with Banchile Administradora General de Fondos (AGF), one of the largest financial services providers in the country.

In Asia, Manulife Asset Management further expanded its differentiated product capabilities. The Manulife US Real Estate Income Trust in Singapore acquired two office buildings in New Jersey, including its largest acquisition to date, raising equity via a rights offering to partially fund the acquisition of a 30-floor, Class A office building in Jersey City.3

Manulife launched Manulife Investment (Shanghai) Limited Company, an Investment Company Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise, to bring its global public and private assets solutions and co-investment opportunities to the fast-growing institutional asset management market in China.

In addition, senior economist Frances Donald was named one of the top 40 social influencers in Canada in finance, innovation, and risk by Thomson-Reuters.

Mandates

New mandates in 2017 include:

US$631 million funded in U.S. Core Plus Fixed Income across six Outsourced Chief Investment Officer mandates.

funded in U.S. Core Plus Fixed Income across six Outsourced Chief Investment Officer mandates. US$625 million funded in a custom LDI mandate from a Canadian corporation.

funded in a custom LDI mandate from a Canadian corporation. US$520 million funded in Taiwan Fixed Income from a Taiwanese corporation.

funded in Fixed Income from a Taiwanese corporation. US$497 million funded in Strategic Fixed Income Opportunities from a U.S. corporation.

funded in Strategic Fixed Income Opportunities from a U.S. corporation. US$488 million funded in U.S. Core Fixed Income from a U.S. public fund.

funded in U.S. Core Fixed Income from a U.S. public fund. U.S. separately managed account and unified managed account combined gross sales of more than US$1 billion .

Global Thought Leadership

Manulife Asset Management's Thought Leadership program continues to provide clients with insights to help make sense of an increasingly complex and sometimes unpredictable investing environment.

Key pieces this year included:

"U.S. Border Tax Adjustment: The Path to Stagflation, Debt and Inflation," by Chief Economist Megan Greene . In late January, Ms. Greene looked at speculation the U.S. might impose a 20 per cent tax on imported goods

. In late January, Ms. Greene looked at speculation the U.S. might impose a 20 per cent tax on imported goods "Liability-Driven Investing: Seeking A Balance Between Risk & Return In An Uncertain World," by Serge Lapierre , Global Head of Liability-Driven Investments Research. In April, Mr. Lapierre discussed how Liability-Driven Investing can assist pension plans and sponsors better match their income to liabilities, while optimizing investment opportunities.

, Global Head of Liability-Driven Investments Research. In April, Mr. Lapierre discussed how Liability-Driven Investing can assist pension plans and sponsors better match their income to liabilities, while optimizing investment opportunities. "Bank of Canada Preview: Reading The Tea Leaves & The Odds of A July Rate Hike," by Senior Economist Frances Donald . In July, Ms. Donald's piece put the Bank of Canada's surprise shift from its dovish position to a hawkish stance into context.

. In July, Ms. Donald's piece put the Bank of surprise shift from its dovish position to a hawkish stance into context. "Are Markets Complacent: Thoughts on Risks And Valuation," by John Addeo , Deputy Chief Investment Officer, US Fixed Income. In August, Mr. Addeo examined whether investors are complacent, against a backdrop characterized by rich valuation, heightened geopolitical uncertainty, and record-low volatility.

, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, US Fixed Income. In August, Mr. Addeo examined whether investors are complacent, against a backdrop characterized by rich valuation, heightened geopolitical uncertainty, and record-low volatility. "Conviction In The U.S. Banking Sector Remains High," by Senior Portfolio Manager Lisa Welch and US Financial Institutions Team. In September, the team outlined why they believe the U.S. banking sector is poised to do well, even if the sector's market performance underwhelmed through the first three quarters of 2017.

and US Financial Institutions Team. In September, the team outlined why they believe the U.S. banking sector is poised to do well, even if the sector's market performance underwhelmed through the first three quarters of 2017. "Emerging Markets Debt: Moving From A Tactical To A Strategic Asset Allocation Decision," by Paolo Valle and Roberto Sanchez-Dahl , Senior Portfolio Managers, Emerging Markets Debt. In September, the team made the case for asset allocators to view emerging market debt as a strategic investment as opposed to a short-term investment option.

and , Senior Portfolio Managers, Emerging Markets Debt. In September, the team made the case for asset allocators to view emerging market debt as a strategic investment as opposed to a short-term investment option. "An Investor's Guide to U.S. Commercial Real Estate," by the Manulife Private Markets team. This piece from October aimed to showcase the asset class to investors who might not have previously considered it and shows how US real estate has fared vis- a-vis its global peers in the last 17 years.

* All figures Canadian dollars, as of September 30, 2017, unless otherwise noted.

1 Information shown represents advised and sub-advised, public and private assets as of September 30, 2016 managed by Manulife Asset Management (Manulife AM) and certain of its affiliates on behalf of Manulife AM, its clients, and the general accounts of the insurance company affiliates of Manulife AM. Manulife AM assets under management include assets of Manulife TEDA Fund Management Company Ltd.'s 49% joint venture ownership structure. The methodologies used to compile the total assets under management are subject to change.

2 Past performance is no guarantee of future results

3 Not available in all markets.

About Manulife Asset Management

Manulife Asset Management is the global asset management arm of Manulife Financial Corporation ("Manulife"). We provide comprehensive asset management solutions for investors across a broad range of public and private asset classes, as well as asset allocation solutions. We also provide portfolio management for affiliated retail Manulife and John Hancock product offerings. Our investment solutions include public and private equities and fixed income, timberland, farmland, real estate, power and infrastructure, oil and gas, renewable energy, and mezzanine debt. We operate in the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, as well as through a China joint venture, Manulife TEDA. We also serve investors in select European, Middle Eastern and Latin American markets. As at September 30, 2017, assets under management for Manulife Asset Management were approximately C$477 billion (US$383 billion, GBP286 billion, EUR324 billion). Additional information may be found at ManulifeAM.com.

About Manulife

Manulife Financial Corporation is 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, as well as wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions. At the end of 2016, we had approximately 35,000 employees, 70,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving more than 22 million customers. As of September 30, 2017, we had over $1 trillion (US$806 billion) in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months we made $27.1 billion in payments to our customers. Our principal operations are in Asia, Canada and the United States where we have served customers for more than 100 years. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges and under '945' in Hong Kong.

PR-2017-94

SOURCE John Hancock Financial

Related Links

http://www.jhancock.com


CSE: MDM

FSE: 2M0

OTCQB: MRPHF

KELOWNA, BC, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Marapharm Ventures Inc. "Marapharm" has selected American Builders to manufacture the third building for its cannabis property located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Delivery is expected within 60 days.

"American Buildings is located in Carson City Nevada and it's great that we can support a "local" manufacturer. There is the potential of a tax credit benefit because Marapharm Las Vegas LLC is also a Nevada company. American Builders is a division of Nucor Corporation which is the largest producer of steel in the United States. Quality, price, reliability and service was our criteria and American Buildings fits all of these items," Linda Sampson, Marapharm CEO.

NEWS RELEASE REFERENCE

Marapharm announced on October 10, 2017 construction plans for a third building which will be 65,635 square feet on the 7 acre property located in Las Vegas, adjacent to 2 existing cultivation buildings.

The ground prep pad is ready to build on, most infrastructure is designed and in place and building plans go for bid in October 2017.

Construction will begin soon thereafter. This building is slated to be the first 3 story cannabis building in the state of Nevada.

"Current pricing and comparable facilities in Nevada indicate that revenue from the new 3 story building will potentially be $50 million gross and $30 million net, after operating costs, for the first year (source Kurt Keating). We will be at about 20% build out with regard to the square footage of the licenses we have. The projected revenues are estimated based on current average sales prices in the Nevada area and presumes full scale production, sales and consistent pricing in the future when the facility comes online. There is no guarantee that the new facility will achieve these levels of production and sales therefrom. Marapharm is the largest marijuana license holder in Nevada," Linda Sampson, CEO, Marapharm.



ABOUT MARAPHARM VENTURES INC.



www.marapharm.com

Marapharm is a publicly traded company primarily investing in the medical and recreational cannabis space, with corporate operations based in British Columbia, Canada. Since 2016 they have rapidly expanded their footprint to include production locations in the key North American states of Washington, Nevada, and California. They actively seek expansion opportunities worldwide.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Facebook: facebook.com/marapharm

Twitter: twitter.com/marapharm

Web Program: marapharm.tv

STOCK EXCHANGES:

Marapharm trades in Canada, ticker symbol MDM on the CSE, in the United States, ticker symbol MRPHF on the OTCQB, and in Europe, ticker symbol 2Mo on the FSE. Marapharm also trades on other recognized platforms in Europe including Stuttgart, Tradegate, L & S, Quotnx, Dusseldorf, Munich, and Berlin.

Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQB has approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE, the FSE nor the OTCQB accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

MARIJUANA INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT:

Canadian listings (CSE) will remain in good standing as long as they provide the disclosure that is rightly required by regulators and complying with applicable licensing requirements and the regulatory framework enacted by the applicable state in which they operate.

Marapharm owns marijuana licenses in California and Nevada. Marijuana is legal in each state however marijuana remains illegal under US federal law and the approach to enforcement of US federal law against marijuana is subject to change.

Shareholders and investors need to be aware that adverse enforcement actions could affect their investments and that Marapharm's ability to access private and public capital could be affected and or could not be available to support continuing operations. Marapharm's business is conducted in a manner consistent with state law and is in compliance with licensing requirements.

Copies of licenses are posted on Marapharm's website. Marapharm has internal compliance procedures in place and has compliance focused attorneys engaged in jurisdictions to monitor changes in laws for compliance with US federal and state law on an ongoing basis. These law firms inform any necessary changes to our policies and procedures for compliance in Canada and the US.

FORWARD - LOOKING STATEMENTS:

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", 'may", "will", "project", "should", 'believe", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumption but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and the forward-looking statements included in this news release should not be unduly relied upon.

SOURCE Marapharm Ventures Inc.

Related Links

www.marapharm.com


SAN DIEGO and LONDON, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mapp Digital (www.mapp.com), global independent marketing technology company, today announced the appointment of Steve Warren as its new CEO. Warren is assuming this position from his role as Chief Revenue Officer from Mapp Digital.

"Mapp is at the forefront of ensuring brand marketing is engaging, personalized and real-time," said Nathan Pingleton, Principal at Marlin Equity Partners, the primary investor in the company. "The Mapp technology proves marketers are living in the past if they don't see the possibilities of real-time cross-channel marketing  we're proud of Steve for taking on the new role, and for preparing us for the next phase of growth."

"I'm delighted to be with Mapp at such an exciting period in the company's history, and I look forward to building on the tremendous work the team have done until now," said Steve Warren, CEO of Mapp Digital. "I'm passionate about helping organizations provide customers with the tools to grow their business, and I expect the team to put our customers first, ensuring their success can drive greater customer engagement."

Prior to his appointment, Steve Warren was CRO at Mapp Digital. As CRO, Steve was responsible for managing and overseeing all of Mapp Digital's customer relationships, while growing use of Mapp Digital's Customer Engagement Platform, integrated Data Management Platform (DMP) and Customer Centric Services, across the globe.

Prior to joining Mapp Digital, Steve was Teradata's Chief Customer Officer, responsible for managing global services and the company's entire customer lifecycle. Steve led the launch of Teradata's digital marketing business in the US in 2012. Steve has over 20 years of sales management experience. He also spent nine years with Fifth Gear (formerly Sigma Micro) in various executive positions, and was instrumental to the growth of that business.

To learn more, follow @Mapp_Digital and visit mapp.com

About Mapp Digital

Mapp is one of the largest, global independent marketing technology companies. Our Customer Engagement Platform streamlines insights and pushes business results by identifying consumer and behavioral data to acquire new customers and grow brand affinity. Our efforts are propelled by people, cross-channel insights, marketing automation and orchestration. Mapp integrated Data Management Platform (DMP), modular software and customer-centric services enable marketers to go the extra mile, to bridge the digital gap and enhance brand engagement and marketing execution across channel and display.

Mapp is headquartered in San Diego with global offices in eight countries. The company helps more than 3,000 companies obtain the maximum return from their digital marketing executions. Mapp customers include CNET, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Lloyds Banking Group, Pepsi, Puma, TNT, TSB Bank, Xerox. Follow us @Mapp_Digital, or visit us at mapp.com.

Contact:

Taylor Szabo

646-291-6018

[email protected]

SOURCE Mapp Digital

Related Links

http://mapp.com


MIAMI, Dec. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL) has named Martha Poulter senior vice president and chief information officer. Poulter joins RCL after spending the last 13 years of her career as CIO for major corporations such as Starwood Hotels and Resorts and GE Capital. Poulter will report directly to Adam Goldstein, president and COO of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

"Martha certainly has the background to make a difference at Royal Caribbean," said Goldstein. "She'll bring that experience to bear on a full range of challenges here, including our plans to evolve the fleet's IT infrastructure, keep pace with the rapid evolution underway in important areas like data privacy and security, and ramp up support for the Excalibur digital transformation that is underway across our company."

Poulter most recently served as executive vice president and CIO for Starwood Hotel and Resorts, where she led a global IT team integrated across Starwood's nine brands and operational platforms, as well as serving as a member of Starwood's leadership team. Prior to that, Poulter spent nearly two decades at General Electric, including time as CIO of GE Capital.

"I am looking forward to the opportunity to join Royal Caribbean, a company that stands for excellence and innovation in the travel industry," said Poulter. "Working with the IT team, we will help RCL develop and support the technologies necessary for running a global business in a digital world."

Poulter graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering and received her MBA from the University of New Haven.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL) is a global cruise vacation company that owns and operates three global brands: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises. We are a 50 percent joint venture owner of the German brand TUI Cruises, a 49 percent shareholder in the Spanish brand Pullmantur and a minority shareholder in the Chinese brand SkySea Cruises. Together, these brands operate a combined total of 49 ships with an additional twelve on order. They operate diverse itineraries around the world that call on approximately 535 destinations on all seven continents. Additional information can be found www.rclcorporate.com.

SOURCE Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.royalcaribbean.com